Читать книгу Mad Eyes: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 3

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“They’re after me!” screamed the gaunt, loose-jointed man. “Take them away!” His voice cracked out with a nasal twang.

The man’s arms were long. His big hands flapped. He was beating at the empty air about him. One set of fingers clutched suddenly at his colorless hair. The hand came away with strands the man had torn loose.

The long man was clad in brown overalls. Lights slanting across the railroad yards showed him to be beyond middle age. His wild, terror-filled screams were loud enough to be heard above the grinding and the clanking of switch engines.

A cut of freight cars was being shunted onto a siding. The running man evaded these by only a few feet He was headed back toward the building from which he had dashed.

A thin rain slashed down on the railroad yards. The mist of it almost obscured the building from which the man had darted.

“They’ll tear me to pieces!” screamed the man.

He pitched to his hands and knees in the middle of a track. Two brakemen were riding the bumper step of a switch engine. One man shouted hoarsely.

“Hey! Look out! You gone nuts? You’ll be pulverized!”

The brakie’s lantern swung. The switch engine stopped with a squealing of brakes. The two railroad men scrambled off. But the tall man had leaped to his feet.

“Grab ’em!” he shrieked. “That one’s got ten heads!”

The two brakemen tried to seize and restrain the fellow. The man was too quick for them. His hands apparently were batting at nothing.

“They’re everywhere!” the tall man continued to scream.

Having escaped the switch engine, he leaped across the tracks. He tried to reenter the building from which he had come. But there appeared to be no doors.

“That’s the watchman—an’ he’s gone nuts!” growled one brakeman. “Anybody’d go off his bean, locked up in that crazy place every night!”

“Yup!” barked the other railroad brakie. “This big guy, Doc Savage, fixed them doors. Even the yardmaster can’t open ’em!”

The doors of the long, low, concrete building were as described by the railroad men. The structure, unlike other industrial plants along the metropolitan railroad yards, bore no sign.

In the thin rain, the building looked much like a tomb. No windows appeared anywhere. The wildly screaming watchman had emerged from a small door. This door was of chromium steel.

One end of the long building appeared the same as the other. But at intervals—perhaps twice a week—one end would slide open. When this took place, the yardmaster would be notified.

All of the incoming and outgoing shipments were handled in special sealed cars. None of the regular yard crews were ever permitted inside. It was not surprising that the railroad men viewed the plant with suspicion.

Especially ominous were those doors. On a few occasions, the railroad men had seen persons connected with the plant enter the place. It seemed to the railroad men that these persons merely stopped and looked at that small, low door of chromium steel.

The yardmen were not aware the small door and the house track slide were locked by an electroscopic device. Those opening the doors were equipped with radio short-wave control of these electroscopes.

The screaming watchman had now returned to the small door.

For a few seconds he beat his fists against the steel. His voice still rose above the pounding of wheels in the yards. When he was not hitting the door, the man was whirling and striking at something invisible to the near-by brakemen.

“Guess we’d better sit on ’im an’ get one of the yard bulls to take ’im out,” suggested one of the brakemen. “He’ll bump into something around here!”

Though the engineer and fireman of the switch engine climbed down and joined the chase, the screaming man evaded them.

His long arms writhed above his head, as if he were being tortured. Though he might have been, as the railroad men imagined, in an advanced stage of delirium tremens, John Corbin, the trusted watchman, never would describe the frightful monsters he may have seen.

Leaving the concrete building, the man started running across the maze of yard tracks. He leaped and screamed, tearing off some of his clothing. The four men of the switch engine crew were close behind him.

“If he runs into one of them third rails——”

One of the brakemen yelled this. His cry was lost in the roar of a local train coming out of Manhattan. The crazed watchman apparently just missed being struck by this train.

He had fallen and rolled over when the local flashed past. Now he again staggered to his feet. The blinding headlight of a limited express came across the yard and bore down on the watchman.

The crew of the switch engine stood frozen to the spot. They could do nothing more. Against the brilliant headlight of the express, the leaping watchman showed for a few seconds. His long body with the flapping arms was like that of some black human bug about to be impaled.

“Goshamighty!” gritted the engineer of the switch engine. “It got ’im!”

The roaring express had hit John Corbin, the watchman.

For an instant it was a fearful human projectile. Then the watchman was only a bag of crushed bones, lying more than a hundred feet from the spot where he had been struck.

The four men from the switch engine were the first to reach the crushed body. The watchman’s face had escaped disfigurement. But the railroad men were sick.

John Corbin’s eyes were still wide open. Though his hands no longer batted at invisible monsters, all his features were twisted, as if the man still saw something horrible.

“By criminy!” grunted the engineer. “If that’s what hooch does, I’m never takin’ another drink!”

The whole tragedy thus far had the brand of being an overdose of intoxicants.

“Couldn’t blame a guy for takin’ on a few snifters in that daggoned graveyard buildin’!” said one of the brakemen.

One of the railroad men had summoned a yard bull. This representative of the law had in turn put in a call for a regular State police detail, an ambulance and the nearest deputy coroner. Waiting for the arrival of proper authority, the yard bull went over to the long, concrete building.

Like the other railroad men, the bull suspected the business of this windowless, lockless structure might not be on the up and up. But the name of Clark Savage, Jr., was a power with the railroad officials.

Among his countless other interests, the noted Doc Savage had a considerable financial finger in the affairs of this transportation line. The railroad officials knew only this building was under the control of Doc Savage. They also knew the plant was operated by a rather queer old codger, a Professor Lanidus Spargrove.

“That’s funny,” muttered the yard bull, walking around the end of the building where two lines of railroad tracks disappeared under the blank wall of the door. “Never saw it up like that before.”

The yard bull bent down in the rain. This end of the concrete building was in darkness. The bull played a flashlight across the two tracks. The immense door was made to fit down evenly over the rails.

Now the big door was almost a foot above the tracks. It looked as if the door had been opened and then improperly closed. The yard bull was a bulky man. But there seemed to be space for him to crawl under the door.

“Might as well have a look,” he murmured, and started twisting under the walllike door.

Something happened. It was noiseless. Only the agonized yell of the yard bull hit the ears of the railroad men beside the watchman’s body. Two men ran through the rain around the side of the building.

The yard bull had screamed only once. What the two railroad men saw was worse than the body of the watchman. The door over the tracks had dropped.

The yard bull had been part of the way under it.

There were two cases awaiting for the county police and the deputy coroner. That of the yard bull was the most horrible. But the brakemen, still beside the watchman’s body, had quit looking at the twisted face.

“I’m signin’ off this yard after to-night,” muttered one of the men.

The twin lights of a motor car showed on the highway just below where the body of the watchman lay. The car stopped. Apparently the driver had been attracted by the railroad men’s lanterns near the track above.

The man who got out of the automobile was a bulky figure. Yet he moved up the embankment with the easy, soundless steps of a cat. A slicker over his other clothes protected him from the rain.

“What’s happened here?” said the new arrival. “One of your men get hit?”

“No,” said one brakeman. “It’s the old guy who had the job of watchman at that nutty building without the windows. Acted like he’d been hit by the D. T.’s an’ run right into the——”

The brakeman stopped speaking abruptly. His mouth hung open.

The big man from the car on the highway had thrown back his slicker. He had dropped on one knee beside the dead John Corbin. One big hand was passing softly over the dead watchman’s face.

The stranger was making a swift examination. The light from the brakemen’s lanterns were shining on him. It was this that had caused the brakeman to quit talking so suddenly.

For the driver’s hands were the color of bright bronze. The skin of his face and his thickly corded neck was of the same golden hue. The rain slid off his hair as if it were a waterproof mask.

The hair, also, was bronze in color. It was only slightly different from the skin.

The brakeman found his voice again after his survey.

“You must be Doc Savage himself,” he said. “Then maybe you know more about this guy than we do. Say! One of the bulls got hurt over there! A couple of the boys have gone over!”

The big bronze man rubbed the tips of his fingers across the forehead of the dead watchman. He straightened to his feet. Once more the slicker was around his body. But his eyes were fixed on the brakemen.

These orbs seemed now to be shining like flakes of polished copper.

“You say one of your men was hurt over by the building?” asked the bronze man. “I shall see about it.”

The bronze man walked around the corner of the building. The men there could do nothing for the yard bull. The door on his body weighed tons. The bronze man stood behind them.

Perhaps the others thought the bronze man only looked at the great door over the house tracks. One hand was under his slicker. Suddenly, the great door started upward.

“Remove the man,” stated the bronze giant. “Have the police been called?”

“Ye-yes, Mr. Savage,” stammered one of the railroad men. “I—I guess all this trouble’s over that watchman hittin’ the hooch.”

The body of the yard bull was then removed. The bronze man said nothing. When the railroad men looked where he had been, he was no longer visible.

Police Inspector Higgins had an Adam’s apple which seemed to make him mad. When he talked, this lump slid up and down his thin neck. Inspector Higgins talked most of the time.

“Well! Well! Well!” jerked out Inspector Higgins, walking around the bodies of John Corbin, the watchman, and the yard bull. “Whyntcha stop ’im from runnin’ head-on into that express? An’ where’s the engine that hit ’im? Why’d this bull crawl under the door, an’ how’d he get out? Answer me that?”

The railroad men attempted to reply to all of these several inquiries at once. One said, “Well, the watchman was crazy with too much booze an’ he got away from us.”

The deputy coroner who was also the medical examiner shook his head mildly.

“You’re all wrong about the liquor,” he stated. “This man shows no evidence of having been drinking. It must have been something else.”

The railroad men stared at each other.

“Then it must be that crazy building where Doc Savage makes machinery for war or something,” one man volunteered. “When the watchman came out of there, he was nuts an’ runnin’ in circles. An’ when the bull tried to crawl in, the door come down on him.”

Inspector Higgins hopped around the building on his skinny legs. He took in the railroad door with a jumping Adam’s apple and a gleam in his eyes.

“Well! Well! Well!” he snapped. “Somebody open these doors, an’ we’ll have a look at what started this!”

“You have to know how to look at them doors to make them open,” grinned a railroad man. “I guess it’s done with mirrors or something.”

“Don’t try bein’ funny!” snapped Inspector Higgins. “You fellas in the yard know how to get cars in and out! Where’s the yardmaster?”

“He don’t know no more than the rest of us,” said another railroad man. “That dump’s Doc Savage’s own plant, an’ none of the crews ever get inside.”

“That’s a good story!” yapped Inspector Higgins. “Then how in time didja get the bull’s body out from under that door? Will you answer me that?”

“Sure,” said a railroad man. “Doc Savage himself just stood there an’ looked at the door. It opened and closed.”

“Doc Savage?” barked Inspector Higgins. “Well, where is this Doc Savage? This is his trouble! Where’d he go? Why didn’t you hold him here until duly constituted authority arrived?”

A chunky brakeman scratched his head.

“You mean you think we should’ve grabbed Doc Savage himself?” he said. “Say, from what I’ve heard of that big bronze guy I wouldn’t try grabbin’ him if he was already tied up with barbed wire!”

“I guess you fellas are just dumb because you’re shackies on a railroad, or maybe it’s the other way around!” sneered Inspector Higgins. “Me, I’m gettin’ into that dump an’ seein’ what’s been goin’ on! Come on, boys, bust down that little door!”

Inspector Higgins was accompanied by half a dozen of his men. If he said break down a door, it was their job to do it. They failed, however, to carry out this laudable intention.

“Well! Well! Well!” snapped Inspector Higgins. “Jam it in with the end of a railroad tie!”

But though he added his bony weight to the tie, the improvised door-buster might as well have been rammed into the two-foot thickness of the concrete itself.

“I would suggest calling Professor Spargrove, the fellow who runs this joint,” said one of the railroad men. “He’ll just look at that door and it’ll open up.”