Читать книгу The Dagger in the Sky: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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The street should be very clean. The long-faced man had been sweeping it since daylight.

He had appeared at dawn with a broom and a cart—and his curiosity—and he had been cleaning the street since, up and down and back and forth, doing all his sweeping in the one block.

Twice he had been nearly run over. First a truck almost got him; the next time it was a taxicab, the driver of which leaned out and swore for a minute and ten seconds without once repeating himself, after which the long-faced street sweeper walked over to the cab driver and they had words in voices low enough for nobody to overhear. The taxi driver pulled his head back inside and drove off meekly.

If onlookers were interested, they probably thought the street sweeper had said something like, “Beat it, or I’ll take this broom and knock your ugly head off!”

As a matter of fact, the conversation was slightly different.

“Doc Savage has not appeared,” said the street sweeper.

“Any sign of the one from South America?”

“None.”

“Well, you know the orders.”

“You bet.”

The long-faced man went back to sweeping streets; he continued to sweep back and forth, up and down, on the same block.

The hours passed, and it got to be four o’clock in the afternoon. Now and then during the day a pedestrian had paused and stared up curiously at the top of the huge building which filled one side of the block. In a number of instances, pedestrians had also turned into the lobby of the skyscraper and stood for a time gawking at the directory listing the firms which occupied office space in the building.

Two of these curiosity seekers came out and stopped, purely by chance, so that the street sweeper overheard them.

“Joe, you’re as crazy as a bedbug!” said one. “His name wasn’t even listed in the lobby.”

“Don’t care. He has his headquarters on the eighty-sixth floor. I know a guy who knows him, I tell you.”

“Then why ain’t he listed?”

“How would I know? Because of guys like you and me, maybe—mugs who are just curious. Would you want guys barging in on you just to see what you looked like? It must be hell to be a celebrity.”

The other gave his jaw a thoughtful rub.

“It would be more hell,” he said, “to do the kind of work that big bronze guy does.”

The pair ambled away.

Soon after four o’clock a taxicab nearly ran over the long-faced street sweeper again. It was the same cab. They went through the same display of tempers in order to exchange a few low-voiced words.

“Hey, Sid, any sign yet?” asked the cab driver.

“Nope.” The long-faced man scowled disagreeably. “Say, I didn’t know this Doc Savage—or the Man of Bronze, as they call him—had quite so much reputation. You know something? Half the people who pass here gawk up at that eighty-sixth floor. I thought you said the public didn’t know much about him?”

“They don’t.”

“Then why do they gawk?”

“They’re curious, Sid. It’s what they don’t know that makes them gawk, don’t you see? They’ve just read wild stuff in the newspapers. A lot of guess-writing by the reporters. Stuff about Doc Savage being one of the greatest scientists of this century, and—well—a physical marvel and mental wizard—those are the words they use. And the other things they tell about him—the things he is supposed to have done.”

“And that stuff isn’t true?”

“He’s overrated. Hell, every celebrity is overrated!”

“This one had better not be half what they seem to think he is,” said the street sweeper grimly, “or I’m personally heading for tall timber.”

The long-faced man had endeavored at the beginning of his day to give the idea that he was stoop-shouldered and afflicted with a limp, but now he was getting tired, and he frequently forgot to affect both stoop and limp. He was not a tall man, in spite of the lean length of his face. He had dark eyes and hair; his face, once the make-up was removed, would probably be more healthy-looking, but not exactly confidence-inspiring.

He did not seem overly happy about his present job.

Suddenly—it was exactly six o’clock—the man stopped sweeping, chucked his broom in the cart, shoved the cart against the curb, and climbed into the most convenient taxicab. It happened—not by accident, either—that the cab was the one driven by the man with whom he had talked twice that day.

“Savage leaving?” asked the hackman.

“Yes. Just pulled out of that drive from his private garage in the basement.”

“Which car?”

“That black one yonder.”

“Hell, that little jalopy? If I had his reputation, I would have me a limousine a block long, with a Jap to drive and two Russian dukes to open the doors.”

“Sure. And attract so much attention you’d get your head shot out from between your ears inside of twenty-four hours!”

The cab followed the small black car. It was not a difficult pursuit, the pace being slow and traffic not too thick, particularly after they reached the vicinity of the Hudson River water front.

The cab driver had been thinking.

“If I had that bronze guy’s reputation, I would also have me a harem of chorus babes,” he said cheerfully. Then he made a clucking noise of disapproval. “I hear he never has anything to do with women. What do you think of that?”

The small black car halted before a large, unimpressive-looking brick warehouse which was built so that it extended out into the river, and bore a sign reading: Hidalgo Trading Company. The car remained stationary a moment, then big doors in the end of the structure rolled mysteriously open.

“Radio-controlled doors,” the long-faced man muttered.

“Yeah. Say, Sid, I hear he uses more different kinds of gadgets ...”

“Drive to the plane. Quick!”

The taxicab swung right, gathered speed for half a dozen blocks, then careened out onto a ramshackle pier to which a seaplane was moored. There was nothing ramshackle about the plane; it was as fast a thing as money could buy.

The pilot was a wide man with a gloomy expression and a habit of frequently looking all around him.

“Hello, Sid,” he said. “What goes on?”

“Savage just went to his warehouse hangar,” the long-faced man barked. He scrambled into the plane. “Come on! Let’s get this thing in the air!”

“What if he don’t leave by plane? Hadn’t we better wait and watch?”

“And make him suspicious by having us take off directly behind him? Don’t be a dope! He ain’t as likely to suspect a plane already in the air.”

They untied the plane and started the motor, propeller slipstream flattened the water, and the ship soon climbed up into the afternoon sky.

“There he comes,” called the pilot, looking down.

Far below, a lean, bronze-colored seaplane moved out of the huge old structure that pretended to be a warehouse. It nosed into the wind, suddenly gathered speed, then slanted up into the sky.

It flew south.

“Going south, Sid,” said the pilot grimly.

The other man settled back, and his long face became longer and slowly twisted under the grease paint, street sweeper disguise, so that his manner and his expression both were almost completely frightened.

“This is exactly what we were afraid of!” he groaned.

The pilot snorted.

“Why worry, Sid?” he said. “He’ll be dead inside of three hours!”

The day was cold, but not as cold as it might have been, for the weather was not seasonal. This was a late fall day. It had been pleasantly warm, even a little sultry, although radio predictions indicated a blizzard boiling down from the north and the sun was wrapped in a cold, purplish haze. There was something unnatural about the day.

Doc Savage flew the plane alone, relaxed in the comfortable seat. The air was sultry, the whole aspect of the world was unpleasant, and he was glad to be heading south on his first real vacation.

It was his intention that nothing should happen to him—except eating and sleeping and fishing—for at least a month.

Recently it had occurred to him that he might be turning into too much of a machine—becoming, in fact, as superhuman as many persons thought he was. He did not like that idea. He had always been apprehensive lest something of the kind occur. The scientists who had trained him during his childhood had been afraid of his losing human qualities; they had guarded him against this as much as possible. When a man’s entire life is fantastic, he must guard against his own personality becoming strange.

Doc Savage’s existence had been fantastic from the cradle. In childhood he was turned over to science for training, and scores of the leading scientists of the world had contributed to building his body and mind. The whole weird project—the scientific endeavor to build a superman—had been successful to an uncanny degree, possibly because nature had already equipped Doc Savage with a strong body and an unhampered brain.

The training was no experiment, no scientist’s crack-brained dream. There had been a deliberate purpose, and the purpose was to fit Doc Savage for a strange career, the one he followed now.

The career was the unusual and always trouble-earning one of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers who seemed to be outside the law, traveling to the far corners of the earth, if necessary, to do so.

He had five assistants in this unusual work. Each of the five was a specialist in some particular science. They had associated themselves with Doc Savage because of a liking for adventure, and probably admiration for the rather amazing fellow who was Doc Savage.

Outwardly, even, Doc Savage was unusual. His size was startling, although he was proportioned so symmetrically that when he stood apart from other men, and from objects to which his magnitude could be compared, he seemed of average build. His skin had a perpetual deep-bronze tint given by tropical suns, his hair was a slightly darker bronze, very straight. But his eyes were undeniably the most striking aspect of him; they were a strange golden tint, like pools of flake gold, and full of alert life, as if always stirred by tiny winds. His unusual eyes gave him the most trouble whenever he donned a disguise.

He had made scientific discoveries in a dozen fields that were half a century ahead of the times; mention of his name was enough to give the jitters to criminals in any part of the world; he could be instantly received into the presence of any president, king or dictator in the world.

But he was getting worried lest he not feel the same things, like the same things, as an ordinary guy. He hoped that a month of complete change would fix that up. It would be his first real vacation.

He landed at the big transatlantic seaplane base in Baltimore and watched the plane refueled, then entered the comfortable restaurant. For dinner he deliberately ordered one or two dishes which scientists claimed people would be better off if they never ate. On this vacation he wasn’t going to live scientifically if he could help it. He spent two hours over dinner.

Sid, the long-faced man, watched Doc Savage come out of the restaurant. The pilot of Sid’s plane—the craft had followed Doc’s ship carefully to Baltimore—stood nearby.

“There he goes,” Sid muttered.

“Take a good look,” the pilot suggested. “It’s probably the last anybody will ever see of him.”

They kept their eyes on Doc Savage while he climbed into his plane—a group of airport attendants and fliers had gathered to admire the advanced design of the ship—and taxied out into the bay. The breeze was offshore at this point, so it was necessary to taxi far out in the bay in order to take off into the wind, the proper way.

It was very dark out where the plane stopped and turned.

Sid made an uneasy growling noise. “We had better follow him.”

“Why?” asked the pilot.

“Just to be sure we haven’t guessed wrong.”

The pilot did not favor the idea, but Sid was evidently in charge, so they returned to their own fast plane, which they had moored nearby, and climbed in.

A moaning comet passed them in the darkness, climbing skyward.

“There he goes,” Sid said. “Keep track of his lights.”

They whipped over the water, went on step with waves rattling against the pontoons, then arched up and lined out after the Doc Savage plane, the white taillight of which was barely discernible. Their own lights they kept extinguished.

Clouds dropped behind, and darkness gave way to remarkably bright moonlight.

“He may see us,” Sid warned.

“What if he does? It’s too late for him to do anything about it.”

Sid did nothing but look apprehensive and frightened. He watched tensely.

“Look!” he squalled.

Intense white light had flooded the cabin interior of the Doc Savage ship. It was flame. Peculiar flame, like the blaze that comes from old-fashioned photo flashlight powder. But there was no smoke. The flash was momentary, then gone.

The plane rolled over slowly, as if tired, and began falling. It tumbled for the first few hundred feet, then went into the madly erratic falling horror known as a tailspin. No smoke came from the ship, no flames.

It did not hit the earth squarely. It struck at a slant, nose first, scooping up a long cloud of dust that got fatter. Out of this dust the plane came hopping, what was left of it. The carcass rolled possibly a hundred yards, then stopped.

The black dagger then appeared in the sky.