Читать книгу The Lost Oasis: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

Table of Contents

When the two reporters had moved on, Doc Savage appeared from a recess into which he had stepped to avoid discovery. He approached the water, keeping to the shadows. His bathing suit was almost the color of his bronze skin, and both blended well with the night.

Halting where small waves sloshed gently against wharf piling, he opened the waterproof bag which he carried. Out of this came a luminous-dial compass fitted with a wristband. He donned it.

The next object to appear was the end of a flexible hose, equipped with a mouthpiece, and terminating in an artificial “lung”—the latter contained in the bag. There was also a small metal clamp for holding the nostrils closed.

Doc grasped the mouthpiece in his teeth, fitted the nose clamp, and adjusted the oxygen-feeding and breath-purifying mechanism in the bag. Then he closed the container, sealing it to make it waterproof. He slung it tightly to his back with straps provided for that purpose.

Hardly a splash sounded as the giant bronze man entered the water. He swam far beneath the surface, using an experienced, easy stroke. He glanced often at the luminous, watertight compass, so as to keep going in the direction he desired.

Doc Savage was headed for the little steamer, Yankee Beauty, to investigate the source of the fabulous reward. He was taking this unusual means of reaching the ship because he wanted to learn whether there was anything sinister about the fantastic offer. He desired to know what was back of it before he showed himself.

There might conceivably be men who would pay a million dollars to have Doc Savage killed.

In a way, it was part of Doc’s life work to make enemies. Many of those whom he antagonized were powerful. Doc played no favorites. Doc’s career, his purpose in life, was a strange one. He helped those who needed help, and punished those who deserved it. He traveled to the far corners of the earth in doing his work.

Naturally, his career was one calculated to make bitter foes of all evildoers. So Doc was taking no chances about this fantastic million-dollar reward business.

It was nothing unusual for a bad man, fearing Doc’s vengeance, to come seeking to murder the bronze man. This might be such a plot.

No ripple appeared on the bay surface to betray Doc’s presence, although searchlights frequently sprayed the water. He made great speed, a speed few professional swimmers could have equaled.

Doc was a wizard in the water, just as he was a wizard at many other things. His life work was one which called for the abilities of a superman, and Doc had been trained from the cradle, that he might have the strength to arise to any occasion. Each day, he went through an intensive exercise routine to develop his great brain and body. Two hours of intense practice!

There was no mystery about Doc’s powers. His terrific daily exercise accounted for them.

The necessity for a sanctum in which to study, that he might periodically increase his vast fund of knowledge, had led Doc to establish a mysterious retreat known as his “Fortress of Solitude.” None but Doc knew the whereabouts of this place, or what amazing scientific equipment it contained. No human could get in touch with Doc during the periods when he retired to his retreat for study. His strenuous mental labors brooked no interruption.

Doc had returned to-night from his Fortress of Solitude. Just how thoroughly a mystery his retreat was could be realized by the fact that not even an offer of a million-dollar reward had located him. Doc’s five men, those closest to him, could not find him!

Deciding he was near the Yankee Beauty, Doc stroked to the surface. He had calculated well. The ship lay only a few yards distant.

Doc sank once more, and when he came up, he was near the stern.

He removed the artificial “lung” and placed it in the bag. Out of the container, he took a coil of thin, stout silk fine. To one end of this was affixed a grapple hook of light alloy metals.

Doc flipped the grapple upward. It dropped over the rail and hooked securely.

The silken cord, because of its small diameter, would have presented quite a problem to an ordinary climber. But so toughened were the big sinews in Doc’s hands, that he gripped the line and climbed it with what looked like comparative ease.

He surmounted the rail, making no noise, and whipped behind a near-by capstan, which was nearly as large as a barrel. Lurking there, he wrung water out of the skirts of his bathing suit. His bronze hair, straight and lying tightly to his head, possessed the remarkable quality of seeming impervious to water—like the pelt of some water-dwelling animal. Scant moisture clung to his fine-textured bronze skin.

Doc was soon dry enough that he did not leave wet footprints on the deck. A great form which seemed to flow from shadow to shadow, he glided forward. The waterproof bag reposed under an arm.

Doc was hardly out of sight when a creeping figure appeared around the opposite corner of the deck house. A man! The fellow carried a large revolver, cocked for a quick shot.

He was tall, but with a body so wasted that it was composed of little else than bones. His skin was unnaturally white, as if it were a sheet stretched over his bony frame. His eyes were feverish, staring, sunken far in his head. He was not an old man—yet his hair was entirely white! A man physically broken!

It was apparent he had discerned some movement on the deck, but did not know what it meant. He crept slowly ahead.

A distant searchlight, its glow reflected by the white-deck house, lighted the deck faintly.

The skulking man discovered the damp spots where water had dripped from Doc’s bathing suit. The sight set him shaking as with the ague.

Whirling, he fled down the deck. His eyes roved incessantly, and he pointed his gun at every patch of darkness. His movements showed the grip of a consuming terror.

He made his way to a passenger cabin. He rapped twice on the door, then made a scratching noise with his finger nails. A signal!

“Who is there?” asked a shaking, scared voice from within the cabin.

“Eet ees me—Jules!” gulped the first man. “Let me een, M’sieu’ Red! Sacre! I have ze worst of news!”

The cabin door opened, framing a man who also held a revolver. This individual had a great, bristling thatch of fiery red hair. Once he had been stocky, powerful; but now he was hardly more than a gaunt frame of bones.

They were strangely alike, these two men, with their wasted bodies and their haunted, ridden faces. It was as if they belonged to the same brotherhood of terror. Both were broken men.

“What is your bad news, Jules?” asked the flame-haired one.

Jules shivered. His eyes rolled.

“Let us go to ze Lady Nelia,” he suggested. “Eet ees better that we three be together, oui.”

This seemed agreeable to “Red.” He and Jules moved down the passage a few yards, where they gave the knock-and-scratch signal upon a stateroom door.

The panel opened slightly, to disclose a gun muzzle.

“Oh—it’s you two!” said a musical feminine voice. “Come in.”

The young woman who admitted them, presented a striking figure. Her features were aristocratic, finely molded. She was as tall as either of the men, and an athletic grace marked her movements. Her hair and eyes were shades of brown; her lips were an inviting curve.

She was a queenly beauty—yet there was in her manner an air of restrained panic, a pervading terror.

“What is wrong?” she questioned tensely.

“Lady Nelia—M’sieu’ Red!” Jules gasped. “Some one ees come on ze ship secretly! I am on deck and I t’ink I see somet’ing zat move! Me, I go for ze look. Sacre! I fin’ on ze deck wet prints of ze human foot!”

Lady Nelia’s slender hand tightened visibly on her gun. “It must have been Sol Yuttal or Hadi-Mot! No one else would have reason to come aboard furtively!”

Red hefted his revolver grimly. “Yuttal and Hadi-Mot know we’re on the Yankee Beauty, I guess.”

“Of course they do!” Lady Nelia agreed emphatically. “The Yankee Beauty was the only boat sailing from Africa around the time we reached the coast in our flight. The fact that several times we heard the moan of engines overhead shows they were trying to find the boat. The only thing that saved us was the cloudy, foggy weather which the Yankee Beauty met during the first days of the voyage. They could not locate the boat.”

“You’re right,” Red assented. “It was the infernal Zeppelin we heard. If it hadn’t been for the fog, they’d have dropped bombs and blown us to pieces.”

“But ’ow could Yuttal and Hadi-Mot arrive at New York ahead of us?” Jules put in.

“In the airship!” Red pointed out. “The craft is easily capable of a non-stop ocean flight!”

“They will seek to murder us, of course!” Lady Nelia said in a strained tone. “Should we finally escape, it would mean the collapse of their whole hideous project!”

The young woman’s words had the effect of shattering Jules’s remnant of nerve. He emitted a tortured sob of a cry, covered his emaciated face with his hands and sank trembling into a chair.

“C’est trop fort!” he moaned. “Eet ees too bad! Eet ees more zan I can stand! I am defeat!”

“Jules!” Lady Nelia exclaimed sharply. “Brace up! You cannot lose your nerve after we have gone through so much and gotten this far!”

Jules rocked his face in his hands, whimpering, “Non, non! We ’ave no chance to escape! Yuttal and Hadi-Mot will trap us. They will turn upon us zat horrible death which they command! Zat death of ze darkness! Sacre! Eet will get us! Me, I cannot stand ze t’ing no longer! I will end eet!”

The broken, dread-stricken voice had lifted hysterically toward the last. Mad desperation suddenly seized him. He whipped up his gun and clamped the muzzle against his own temple!

“Jules!” Red snapped out the yell as he leaped. He knocked the weapon aside. The two men struggled a moment. Red finally got possession of the revolver.

Jules fell upon a berth and lay there shaking, sobbing from weakness and shame.

Lady Nelia and Red exchanged glances. There was no disgust in their eyes—only pity for the man on the berth. A man who had undergone an experience so frightful that it had reduced him to a frail, tremulous hull!

In their eyes was some of the dread and despair which racked Jules, even though they tried hard to mask it.

Lady Nelia moved to Jules’s side and dropped a sympathetic arm across his trembling shoulders.

“You must not take a coward’s way out, Jules,” she told him gently. “You must help us. We must fight this thing out together.”

“Non,” mumbled Jules. “Eet ees no use.”

Realizing sympathy was not going to bolster Jules’s nerve, Lady Nelia tried another method. She drew away from the frightened man. Scorn came upon her aristocratic features.

“Very well!” she said bitingly. “If you wish to think only of yourself, do so. Red and I will carry on. We’re going to save those hundreds of poor souls whom we left behind, if it is humanly possible!”

Jules flinched under her words as if they were lashing whips.

“Those others—those others,” he mumbled. “Sacre! I have almos’ forget zem!”

“So I thought!” Lady Nelia snapped witheringly. “You would leave them helpless, doomed to a ghastly living death! In us rests their only hope. And you haven’t the nerve to carry on for them, even if not for yourself.”

The scathing words obtained the effect desired. Jules straightened his shoulders. He even managed a strained twist of a smile.

“Non, non!” he said grimly. “Jules will see zis t’ing to ze end. He promise zat he will not try again to take ’is own life.”

Lady Nelia smiled and slapped his shoulder. “That’s the attitude, Jules! Things are not so hopeless! If we can manage to keep away from Yuttal and Hadi-Mot, we should eventually find Doc Savage. Then, if what I have heard of Doc Savage is true, our troubles will be in competent hands.”

Jules nodded. “Oui! Our offer of a million-dollars’ reward should find ze M’sieu’ Savage!”

“The million reward offer found plenty of other people,” Red interposed, forcing levity into his voice. “From the crowd on shore waiting to get a look at us, you’d think a circus was coming to town. This Doc Savage can’t very well help but hear we’re hunting him.”

“Maybe zis M’sieu’ Savage ees not want to aid us,” Jules muttered. “Maybe zat ees why he not answer our pleas.”

“I do not think so!” Lady Nelia said sharply. “Although I do not know Doc Savage, I have heard of him. Getting others out of trouble and punishing those who need punishing is his life’s work. He turns no one down.”

Jules brightened somewhat. “Bon! Maybe ze radio operator ’ave at las’ get a message from M’sieu’ Savage. Me, I go see.”

“Be careful,” Red warned him. “I’ll stay here and guard Lady Nelia.”

Opening the door, Jules cast a nervous glance up and down the passage, then stepped out. The door closed, and the lock clicked as Red secured it.

The radio cabin was a little box of a structure on top of the deck house. Jules climbed a companion and made his way through a forest of ventilators and skylights. He kept his revolver in hand.

In the wireless room, Jules met disappointment.

“Sorry, no message,” advised the single operator on duty.

Disheartened, feet dragging, Jules descended a companion to the sun deck. The darkness there was intense. Lifeboats, cradled along the rail, shut off whatever illumination that might have come from street lamps on the near-by shore.

A ghastly event occurred there in the sepia gloom. A listener might have heard Jules take a few steps. Then came a strange sound! A hideous sound! It was low, fluttering. It might have come from some foul cloth, gently shaken, for there was a slight loathsome odor.

Jules heard. He screeched—a ripping cry of terror which seared the membranes of his throat! His feet banged the deck as he ran wildly! His gun crashed again and again! Frenzied shots!

The gruesome fluttering became louder, more violent. It overtook Jules. A thud! The sound was not loud.

Jules shrieked—shrieked again and again! It was as though he were crying out his very life stream. His screeching became a spasmodic gurgling. The gurgling weakened, weakened until at last nothing at all could be heard.

A dreadful silence followed. It persisted for some seconds.

From far off in the darkness sounded a series of tiny, squeaky whistles.

As if this were some sort of a signal, the hideous fluttering sound arose where Jules had fallen. There was a wave of the faint, nauseating odor. The fluttering receded in the darkness until finally swallowed by distance.