Читать книгу The King of Terror: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Doc Savage had had an overcoat over his arm when he went out of the midtown skyscraper on the trail of Percy and Francis.

The overcoat was a flowing one which had pads to take the squareness out of the shoulders—instead of putting it in, as customary in coats—and another pad to give a roundness to the back of the wearer. Doc put it on. His character, as far as general appearance went, quickly underwent a considerable change. He drew one of those you-can-fold-it hats from the overcoat pocket and put this on. It looked about as neat as such hats generally look, and further helped change his usually neat appearance. He did not, then, look so much like Doc Savage.

The cane had been hooked over his arm under the overcoat.

He kept watching the cane as he walked. The cane was a pastel shade of yellow. Occasionally it underwent a quick change in hue, becoming blue. Whenever the cane started getting blue, Doc hastily changed his course; hunted around, in fact, until the cane went back to its yellow tint.

The litmus cane, Long Tom Roberts had called it when they developed it.

Actually, it was superlitmus in effect, if the effect was litmus at all. Litmus is the coloring matter employed by chemists for the detection of free acids and free alkalis. In true litmus, the coloring matter results from the action of air and ammonia on orcin during the preparation of litmus from the lichens from which it is made. Almost every high school and agricultural student has seen the action of litmus paper demonstrated. And the general operation of this stuff was the same.

A chemical coated on the cane changed color when in the presence of vapor, even the most minute quantity of vapor, of the type which had been released in the lobby corridor while Percy and Francis were using their machine guns.

Enough of the vapor had clung to the clothing of Percy and Francis—they were actually sprayed with the stuff—to leave an aura that could be detected by the cane.

The whole idea of this method of trailing had seemed fantastic to Doc Savage when he first began working on it; but the thing had proved astonishingly feasible.

He found that Percy and Francis had entered a newsreel theater in the neighborhood. Doc took a back seat and, after a while, spotted the pair.

Francis and Percy enjoyed the newsreel thoroughly, and particularly did they like a cartoon feature toward the end.

“That was good,” Percy said as they left the theater.

“It certainly was good,” Francis agreed heartily. “Beautiful and refined. The art of making animated films certainly has advanced.” He shivered and pulled a muffler tighter about his throat. “I emphatically cannot say the same for the weather.”

“I wonder if it would be advisable to take a taxi?” Percy pondered.

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But don’t you imagine that it might not be advisable? One of these uncouth oafs of taxi drivers might remember our faces.”

They agreed this was true, and walked on uptown. Francis, having gotten on the subject of taxi drivers, said some more on the point. He didn’t seem to care for taxi drivers individually or as a class, in New York or in Cairo. It developed that one of the profession, in London, had whacked the daylights out of Francis in a dispute several years ago. Francis grimaced at the recollection. “And the police found his body before I had planned, and almost caught me,” he finished. “That would have been beastly, wouldn’t it? Hanged for doing in a low fellow like a cabby.”

The hotel they entered was not the largest in the city, but it was one of the most expensive—and supposedly, ultra-genteel. Percy and Francis became part of the suave atmosphere of the lobby.

“Mr. Francis and Mr. Percy to see Fraulino Jones,” they told the desk clerk.

“Fraulino Jones, to be sure.” The clerk was back in a moment, saying, “She is expecting you. Boy! Boy, show Mr. Percy and Mr. Francis to the Fraulino Jones suite.”

The bellhop showed them to the seventh floor and rapped on the door for them. A maid opened the door, an utterly perfect-looking foreign maid. Not a European, but some type of Asiatic.

The maid looked at Percy and Francis and fear jumped into her eyes, but she hid it by doing a little bow.

“I will tell the Fraulino you are here,” she said in English.

She left them in a vaulted parlor, a magnificent chamber, the kind of room that would make a Hollywood interior decorator look around for the sound cameras. The furniture was fine, genuine, expensive.

Francis and Percy expanded with appreciation of their surroundings.

“Lovely,” Francis breathed. “So much more than one comes to expect of hotels.”

“The Fraulino has excellent taste,” Percy agreed.

Francis nodded. “By the way, I think it would be a shame to disturb her unnecessarily in connection with the Doc Savage matter. The thought of deliberate, ruthless killing has a depressing effect on some people, and I believe the Fraulino Jones is one of those.”

Percy considered the point. “Self-defense might be less offensive.”

“Oh, indeed. Self-defense has a righteous ring even to sensitive ears,” Francis told him. “I am sure it would be a kindness to tell the Fraulino it was self-defense.”

Percy grinned. “And, of course, to speak bluntly, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Meaning that she needn’t know Abraham Mawson gave us strict orders to kill Savage, regardless of what the Fraulino told us to do?”

Percy nodded, then said, “Ah, the Fraulino is coming.”

She was.

The Fraulino Jones entered. And, immediately, everything else in the magnificent room seemed ordinary.

She had all the things that beauty has, height and blondness, grace and curves in the interesting places. But she had more than that, and some of what she had was not easy to define. It was a quality of the spectacular. Just a little extra of everything, so that you looked at her and thought: Great grief, she can’t be that complete! And you looked for flaws, and did not find them.

Her frock was the kind of thing that would have come out of the Rue de la Paix, if the French had not lost a war.

“Ah, you are lovely, Fraulino,” Percy said.

“Thank you,” she told him.

“Comment allez vous, mademoiselle,” Francis said.

She returned the greeting in French that was flawless, and Francis smiled approvingly. He had been testing her out on what foreign languages he knew, and so far he hadn’t found a one which she could not speak better than he.

They took cigarettes. The Asiatic maid brought them drinks of good brandy in little glasses. A bit to warm them against the outer cold. They talked of the weather a little. Then Fraulino Jones confessed to being a little piqued with the weather, but after all it was childish to expect better in New York, at this season of the year. Spring, though, was lovely. For about six weeks it was lovely.

And finally she got around to saying, “By the way, you might wish to see the newspapers. Oga”—this to the Asiatic maid—“Oga, will you bring us the newspaper you purchased, please?”

The black type on the front page of the newspaper was so big that it looked as if a horse had stepped in black ink and then on the newspaper.

Doc Savage had been killed. Shot down in the lobby of the building which housed his headquarters.

The Fraulino waited until Percy and Francis had read the headlines.

“I think you had better visit an ear specialist tomorrow,” she said. Her voice had turned grim.

Francis and Percy looked puzzled, the latter saying, “I do not believe we understand.”

“Am I to take it you did not hear me say there was to be no killing?”

Percy and Francis now looked astonishingly distressed. They became so overwhelmed with regret that they were abject. Percy actually had tears in his eyes. They were wonderful actors.

“It was a horrible accident,” Percy said in a low, emotion-ridden voice. “Mr. Savage grabbed my gun and it was discharged without any intention of mine.”

Francis said, “No, Percy, tell her the truth. It was my gun he seized and which killed him. I will not have you taking the blame for me just because I am your friend.”

Their argument was better than their acting.

Without lifting their voices, they reached pitches of emotional violence in telling each other that they shouldn’t sacrifice each other on the altar of friendship. They developed the friendship theme. They made it sound like something lovely and sacred, a gentle treasure between them that was in danger of being destroyed.

It was a tear-fetching thing. A horrible mistake, an accident between two friends, and each trying to take the blame for it. Very touching, and all with a genuineness to it that was remarkable.

In five minutes Percy and Francis had the Fraulino Jones sympathizing with them and telling them that they shouldn’t talk about the terrible thing.

Percy and Francis then fell into a remorseful silence.

The Fraulino Jones took out a handkerchief and dabbed it to her eyes. Her emotion, however, was genuine.

She took up the newspaper.

There was half a page of history of Doc Savage inside. Or, at least, as much of the history of the Man of Bronze as the newspapers knew, for Doc was not one who sought publicity.

The item stated that Doc Savage was a remarkable individual who had been trained from childhood by scientists who specialized in various lines. This, said the newspaper, was probably part of a modernistic experiment in taking an ordinary baby and turning him into a superman. Actually, this guess was not entirely true as to motive; the training had been directed and financed by Doc Savage’s father, and its sole purpose had been to fit Doc for a career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of the earth.

The newspaper article mentioned the bronze man’s strange career, and stated in broad terms that he was a man who’d had many fantastic adventures in his lifetime. It said that Doc Savage had contributed many new discoveries in the fields of surgery—his specialty—and in electricity, chemistry and other sciences.

It named Doc’s group of five associates—Monk Mayfair, Ham Brooks, Johnny Littlejohn, Long Tom Roberts, and Renny Renwick. It gave these associates their full names and titles, so that just naming them completely took a whole paragraph.

Three of the associates were now in Europe, according to the paper, assisting in the war effort. Only Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks were known to be in New York City, and these had not been reached for a statement.

The Fraulino Jones was very pensive when she finished reading. “This makes me very sad,” she said. “It was a sickening thing to have happen.”

“Very, very sad,” Francis agreed. “All that we needed to do was take him alive.”

The Fraulino nodded. “Taking him alive, and holding him a prisoner for a few weeks, or until our affair was completed, would have been sufficient.”

“We are so sorry,” Francis said.

The Fraulino Jones looked at the newspaper a long time. Her voice was sad when she said, “A man cannot take the chances Doc Savage has taken and expect to live forever. The law of averages has got to come in somewhere.”

They sat in silence for a time. Then the Fraulino Jones arose and excused herself, and went away, obviously to bathe her reddened eyes in cold water.

While she was gone, Percy and Francis gave each other little glances of approval. They had put it over nicely.

Fraulino Jones came back. She had control of herself.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “we have one other thing to do, then we can leave this winter climate.”

Percy and Francis sat up. They were the soul of eagerness to oblige.

The Fraulino said, “We want some more good men. Four or five or more. But they must be good men, suitable for work with our organization.”

“What, Fraulino, would you say constituted a good man?” Percy asked.

Enumerating on her fingers, the Fraulino said, “Efficiency, a lack of squeamishness, a certain amount of dash to them. I would say the important quality, the really important one, was a command of equilibrium where material things are concerned. In other words, men who will not be awed by the largeness of things.”

Francis smiled at that. “A very desirable quality, Fraulino. Not being awed by the largeness of things. We need that.”

The Fraulino nodded. “This matter is so big that it will scare the wits out of the average man,” she said. “What we want is men who won’t get stage fright.”

“Men,” said Percy, “with the confidence of Napoleon and Caesar.”

“And the qualities of Captain Kidd and Adolf Hitler,” the Fraulino said dryly.

Percy and Francis nodded.

She added, “More good men like yourselves.”

Percy and Francis looked pleased.