Читать книгу Murder Mirage: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lawrence Donovan - Страница 11

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Renny and Long Tom shot upward in the high-speed elevator. They ascended to the eighty-sixth floor headquarters of Doc Savage with somewhat the manner of a released rocket.

Only in the last few yards of its upward flight did the bounding car slow.

Lightning crackled across the windows at the end of the skyscraper corridor. Thunder rumbled and shook the vast mass of metal and stone.

Long Tom grinned appreciatively. He had remained at the offices of the weather bureau long enough to see his prophecy of an electrical storm fulfilled.

As Renny started toward Doc Savage’s door, the lightning ripped brilliantly. The instant clap of thunder told the bolt had come close. The lights in the building flicked out. Renny and Long Tom were in darkness.

“Holy cow!” bellowed Renny. “Call off your thunderstorm! When you’ve made good, what’s the use in overdoing it?”

Long Tom chuckled.

“Didn’t mean to make it quite so tough,” he remarked, dryly. “Seriously, I’d give something to know what’s causing all this.”

He was slightly behind Renny. The engineer’s big hand gripped his shoulder. The electrician winced. Renny never seemed to realize the strength in his bone-crushing hands. Perhaps that was why his favorite pastime was smashing tough door panels with his fists.

“Stay back!” thundered Renny. “Look! What do you suppose that is?”

The sudden Stygian gloom of the corridor had lightened. The luminance was of a strange quality. The light was vividly blue. It seemed to be composed of invisible particles.

Renny and Long Tom halted. They stared at the origin of the eerie illumination. This appeared to be a spot directly in front of Doc Savage’s door. Renny started to advance.

“Wait a minute; I wouldn’t touch it,” advised Long Tom. “You never can be sure what funny contrivance some one might be trying to wish onto Doc.”

The building electrician had found the fuses burned out by the lightning. The corridor around Renny and Long Tom flooded suddenly with light. The strange blue glow remained, but it was dimmed.

“Huh, after all, it’s only a funny stone,” grunted Renny. “Looks like it might have been painted.”

“I’d be careful,” warned Long Tom. “Might be an explosive, or maybe some acid.”

Renny seldom heeded warnings. The giant engineer often blundered into trouble. Usually his huge fists mowed a way out. He picked up the curious flat stone. Nothing happened, except the blue glow was spread over Renny’s wide hands and along his arms.

Renny turned the stone over. It was worn and pitted, as if it had lain for a long time exposed to the weather. Centuries had added up to thousands of years since the flat stone had been cut into its present form.

“Looks like an ancient,” Renny said. “You can see where it’s pitted. Might have been ground with sand.”

The pair pushed through Doc’s door. Johnny’s attenuated bundle of bones reared in the doorway leading to the library and laboratory. Johnny had observed the approach of Renny and Long Tom before the lights went out. He was wondering what had delayed their entrance.

“Got a puzzle for that erudite brain of yours,” said Renny. “Perhaps you can make something out of this. It’s had something cut into it, but the figures look like some kid’s first lesson in geometry.”

He placed the stone on the laboratory table. The scholarly Johnny picked it up. He placed a thick-lensed monocle in his eye. This affectation of Johnny’s was really a powerful magnifying glass.

The stone was covered by rows of uneven characters. These had the appearance of having been inscribed with some sharp tool, but the carving had been smoothed by generations of time.

Johnny’s knowledge of archæology equalled that of the leading scholars. Only the man of bronze himself had studied the subject more deeply. Johnny plucked half a dozen long words from his extensive vocabulary.

“Luminance polarized indefinitely upon an opaque infragible substance,” he pronounced, reflectively. “The characters are of the ancient Himyarite symbolism. They have been definitely affected by long exposure to the vagaries of atmospheric changes.”

“Sure,” grunted Renny. “That’s what I thought. But in a few words of one syllable, does it mean anything?”

Johnny was studying the worn symbols intently.

“Humph!” he emitted. “Unless I’m on the wrong key, this is a direct, if peculiar, warning.”

When Johnny thus descended to simple verbiage, it denoted he was either strongly impressed or somewhat excited.

“The characters are clear enough, and they were inscribed on this stone perhaps as long as five or six thousand years ago,” he added. “The stone undoubtedly came from the desert in the vicinity of the River Euphrates. It’s Himyarite, without doubt.”

“What do they mean, if you know?” questioned Renny. “How could those crazy figures carved thousands of years ago be a warning?”

Johnny squinted more intently through his monocle.

“As nearly as I can explain,” he stated, “the lines read, ‘Concern thyself with thine own business if thou would continue to live.’ I might have missed a word or two, but it sums up to the same thing.”

“Holy cow!” boomed Renny. “In plain English then, it means stay out of somebody’s business or take a chance on getting bumped off?”

“An elemental interpretation, but one hundred per cent perfect,” nodded Johnny. “This stone is an original Himyarite brought from the Arabian desert. It is intended as a warning to Doc, and I’ll venture it is connected with those telegrams.”

“I had been expecting something of that character,” spoke the quiet but penetrating voice of Doc Savage from the doorway. “Brothers, this is Lady Sathyra Fotheran, the sister of Denton Cartheris; and Carson Dernall, until recently the explorer’s aid in Syria.”

They had just arrived from the alleyway where Doc had found Lady Sathyra.

Seen in the bright lights of the laboratory, the face of Lady Fotheran was even more beautiful. Her wide golden eyes seemed to reflect the luminance.

Carson Dernall’s thin countenance looked more sallow and unhealthy. The gray eyes, however, were alert in a cold way. He exclaimed, as he took in the multitude of scientific devices in the bronze man’s laboratory.

“I had imagined the stories of your investigations were slightly exaggerated, Mr. Savage,” said Dernall, slowly. “But I must apologize for having had such a thought. I have never had the good fortune to see such a complete—what is this?”

In the midst of his fulsome words, Carson Dernall paused for the abrupt question. His cold gray eyes were fixed on the flat stone which Johnny had replaced on the table.

“Ancient Himyarite, Mr. Dernall,” said Johnny. “From the Syrian desert, I would say.”

Without touching the stone, Carson Dernall leaned closer.

“You understand the symbolism?” said Doc Savage.

“Why, yes, of course,” admitted Carson Dernall. “I would interpret it to mean ‘keep out of our business if you want to live.’ ”

Johnny’s keen eyes flickered.

“Approximately, we agree,” he stated. “The carvings are subject to various expression in English.”

Dernall touched the stone with the tips of his long fingers. The fingers were of unusual length. They gave the impression of writhing, as they moved.

“This is indeed strange, Mr. Savage. How did the stone come here?”

“Some fellow who didn’t want to hang around left it as a calling card at the door,” explained Renny.

Carson Dernall’s thin face became a grave mask.

“Left at the door? Mr. Savage, knowing what I do of the desert, I fear that stone means great danger to you! It undoubtedly was brought all the way across the world for a definite purpose.”

The little whirlpool stirred in the flaky gold eyes of the bronze man. Though he had not appeared to do so, he had read and instantly put his own interpretation on the symbols of the Himyarite stone. Doc did not reply directly to Carson Dernall’s statement.

“You said you identified some of the Bedu you encountered on the street?” said the man of bronze.

Apparently, he was ignoring the flat stone. The strange blue glow remained, as if the stone itself were alive with hidden fire.

“Yes, yes!” replied Carson Dernall. “Naturally, I was attracted when I saw some Bedouins cloaked in the abbas. Rather a peculiar costume for the streets of New York. I managed to get close to them as they were entering a car. Then I followed in a taxicab.”

“The Arabs came from a car and ran into the alley where I was being held by those other men,” said Lady Fotheran. “Mr. Dernall followed them.”

“Yes, yes!” agreed Dernall. “Among those Bedouins was the man I knew in Syria as a slave. He was called Hadith. I recalled that in Syria, where we were digging when Denton——”

Dernall caught himself. Lady Fotheran’s golden eyes were deep with sudden, inner pain.

“This Hadith, as you might have noted from his embroidered abba, had been a first slave to a sheik. That gave him a reputation as a warrior. He was a ruthless leader in ghrazzu, the great game of the Bedouins in raiding other tribesmen and robbing them. Hadith was reported to have disappeared.”

“I recognized the leader with the scimitar as a Nubian of the slave order,” stated Doc Savage.

“Yes, yes!” said Dernall quickly. “And this Hadith was reported among the Bedu as having vast evil powers. We were told a legend in Alleppo, even before we entered the lower country of Syria. A dried-up old man, a Kurd, swore by Allah it was true.”

“And what was this legend?” inquired the man of bronze.

“Simply one of the fantasies of the Syrian hills, I’d say. But the old Kurd declared the ancestors of Hadith, the Nubian, were of a mystic sect. The Kurd asserted they possessed the power to convert their enemies into motionless shadows on the desert.”

Doc Savage quietly picked up the glowing blue stone, inspecting it as if absorbed in thoughts unrelated to Dernall’s fabulous statement.

“Denton and myself looked upon this as one of the many wild fables of the Bedu of the hills,” said Dernall. “But it was a part of the legend that violent changes of weather accompanied the conversion of men and horses into shadows. It is all incredible! But this snow and the storm to-night, together with the appearance of the Bedu, was very upsetting. Of course, the fable of the shadows is a myth.”

Peal after peal of thunder filled the rooms of Doc Savage’s headquarters. The tall skyscraper reverberated and trembled with the smash of the electrical elements. It was as if the storm was cannonading in mockery at Carson Dernall’s doubt of the desert fable.

Johnny’s quiet voice was heard.

“Of course, such a story could only be a fable,” he commented.

The well-modulated, calm voice of Lady Fotheran observed.

“But it is no fable; it is all true,” she said, surprisingly. “The weather is only a part of it. There are shadows on the desert—the shadows of men, or what had been men. And that’s why I am here, Mr. Savage. My brother, Ranyon, believes only you can solve this terrible mystery.”

“Ranyon would be your younger brother,” said Doc Savage. “I knew he was in the desert. I had some interest in perhaps learning of what he might discover.”

If Lady Fotheran was amazed at the bronze man’s knowledge, she did not betray it.

“Yes,” she said. “Ranyon is following the directions in the will left by Denton. It is a strange will, Mr. Savage. With it was a parchment writing. It directed my younger brother to form a cavaran at Wejh. He was to choose only Harb and Juheina tribesmen, as being all that were trustworthy.”

“You had confirmation of your brother Denton’s death?” said Doc Savage.

“Only his will, which we received,” said Lady Fotheran. “It was brought from the desert by a band of tribesmen. They came to Wejh. Ranyon was then directed to seek a place of hitherto unknown diggings into an ancient city in the lower hills near the River Euphrates. The place, known as the Tasus Valley, was mapped. The spot Ranyon is seeking was marked with care.”

“This will of your brother’s,” said Doc Savage. “It possibly indicated some treasure might be found?”

“No, and that is the strangest part of it. Its message, after leaving Denton’s small estate to Ranyon and myself, was ‘you must seek this place for the good of humanity’!”

“A strange will indeed,” commented the man of bronze.

“And Ranyon was instructed to take advice only from one man called Mahal, an ancient Bedawi, on where to go and how to proceed.”

Lady Fotheran hesitated. An inscrutable light came into her wide golden eyes.

“There are shadows on the desert,” she said, repeating her earlier assertion this story was not a fable. “I am desperately afraid for my brother. Perhaps, even now, I am too late. I have no doubt but that death threatens any one who may become interested in this place of the Tasus Valley. I, too have been warned.”

“Holy cow!” gasped Renny.

The eyes of Johnny and Long Tom jumped with surprise.

Lady Fotheran had reached into the bosom of her dress. Now in her hand lay a stone. It was a flat stone, glowing with blue, phosphorescent fire.

“I received this just before I sent my first telegram from Los Angeles,” announced Lady Fotheran. “I could not, of course, decipher the ancient inscription; but it seems much like the other stone.”

Johnny peered closely through his magnifying monocle.

“Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!” he exclaimed. “The warning is indubiously identical!”

“Then I had this letter from my brother Ranyon,” said Lady Fotheran, extracting it from her hand bag. “In it he tells of a violent rainstorm, strange to the desert, coming up. It was accompanied by terrific thunderings and lightning flashes. Then a ball of fire appeared over the tents of his camp and descended with a terrific explosion. The tents were burned. The following day, on a rock outcrop near his camp, he saw imprinted the shadows of mounted horsemen. On the desert floor below were rifles, knives, saddle trappings and bridle bits scattered about.”

Lady Fotheran unfolded the letter and read aloud the concluding passage: “I am proceeding with Mahal, a faithful old Bedouin, who has advised me, to the place known as Tasus Valley. You must seek Doc Savage. I have learned danger threatens you. The welfare of a hidden city is at stake. Sudden weather changes may precede the peril. I am going on. I have a strange feeling that Denton is alive. Perhaps I am wrong. This may only be caused by my overwrought imagination. This former slave, the Nubian, Hadith, may have gone to America.”

Lady Fotheran’s perfect hands fluttered to her face. Her golden eyes questioned the man of bronze.

“Now that you have heard,” she said, evenly, “do you still tell me that Marian, my secretary, has been taken away?”

“She is beyond further danger,” advised Doc Savage. “It is of your own peril you must think now. Have you had the feeling your older brother is not dead?”

“I never have believed he was dead,” the calm woman announced. “I had hoped Ranyon would find him. Now I am greatly worried. Ranyon would never turn back. Unless he is stopped, or this murder mirage is solved, he is going to his own death.”

Doc Savage said nothing. His corded tendons flexed in his wrist and the mighty column of his neck. One bronze hand lifted the blue stone of the Himyarite warning. The glowing color seemed to intrigue the giant adventurer.

“This is all too incredible to be believed!” crackled the voice of Carson Dernall. “There must be some logical explanation.”

“If there is, it will be found,” announced Doc Savage.