Читать книгу The Feathered Octopus: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3

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It was spring. Spring, with sunlight soft and warm, with birds nest-building in Central Park, and an occasional colored butterfly astray among the skyscrapers of New York City. Flowers were never brighter in Bryant Park, adjacent to the grimy old tomb that was the public library. And if the air was ever wine for man to breathe, it was wine this day.

Perhaps that was why the cop was gentle with the old codger. The cop’s name was Finnigan. He was Irish, bigger than men usually get; and he had a tongue like a blacksnake. He handled traffic at Forty-second and Fifth, a spot that would make any man tough. He was tough. He was very tough.

He came over to the old codger and said, “Look, Pop, you want to get run over?”

The old codger had been gandering along rather feebly.

“I—I can’t see very well, officer,” he said.

It was pretty obvious that he couldn’t see very well.

“Pop, this is no place for you,” said the policeman. “I’m gonna put you on the sidewalk, and sure you’d better stay on it.”

The old fellow wore overalls which were that very pale hue that comes from much scrubbing. One knee of the overalls bore a patch. Over the denims the elderly man wore a clean but rather shabby coat of coarse stuff, and it became almost certain after a close look at the coat that its vintage was ancient enough that the pants which originally went with it were of the peg-top style.

His shoes were old-fashioned buttoned brogans, cracked under their polish; his tie was a shoe string that went out of style before the World War, and his hat was a genuine beaver, what there was left of it. He was thanking the officer.

“Thank—thank you, officer,” he wavered. “I—I don’t get down to town much any more. It—it’s changed a lot these days. And I can’t hardly find my way around. I wonder—would you—could you—help me?”

“Help you how?”

“I—I’m trying to find a man.”

“Well, Pop, there’s a lot of men in New York. What does this man do? Where does he work?”

“I—only know—the man’s name.” The old fellow had a way of hesitating two or three times in each sentence. It added greatly to his impression of feebleness. “Doc Savage,” went on the old codger, “is—the man’s—name.”

The name came within an ace of doing bodily damage to the traffic cop. That is, it surprised him and caused him to step back and a passing motor car just shaved him. He jerked the menaced part of his anatomy to safety, threw a profane opinion after the car, then wheeled on the old man.

“What’s wrong, Pop?”

“Why—officer—nothing.”

“Don’t kid me, Pop. People who look for this Doc Savage have usually got trouble. Bad trouble. Because other persons’ troubles happen to be Doc Savage’s business.”

The old codger fumbled uncertainly at the buttons of his worn coat.

“There is—nothing—wrong,” he insisted.

“Yeah, I bet.” The traffic policeman frowned at him. “O.K., Pop. It’s your funeral. Forget it. You want to know where you can find Doc Savage, eh?” He slanted an arm up, as though pointing out the sun at ten o’clock. “See the top of that building? The eighty-sixth floor? They tell me Doc hangs out in a kind of special place he’s got up there.”

The old man thanked the lawman kindly and shuffled on toward the skyscraper which had been designated.

And across the street, a discreet-looking limousine, which had been loitering at the curb, pulled out into the traffic, rolled down into the next block, and again loitered.

The old codger made slow and wavering progress.

And the limousine loitering across the street moved on to keep abreast with him, while on the sidewalk near where the machine had tarried, a few pedestrians stared after the car in a surprised fashion. For, on chancing to look into the car, they had seen, alone in the rear seat, a Eurasian woman with a beauty that was almost breath-taking.

But no one noticed that the limousine was trailing the old codger.

The feeble ancient had his head down now, plodding purposefully for the skyscraper. Reaching the portals of the giant building, he entered and found himself on the glassy floor of a great, arching, modernistic lobby where there were shops and elevators and elevator starters in striking uniforms. The number of elevators seemed to confuse the old man. There were nearly a hundred elevators in the building.

Just as he had approached the cop for information, the old codger accosted a uniformed elevator starter. And as soon as he had asked for Doc Savage, he was shown to an elevator which stood apart from the others. Apparently a private elevator. The door closed and the cage went up—but only one floor.

The elevator door opened, and stepping out, the old fellow found himself in a long, narrow hallway. He stood at one end of this hallway, and at his right hand, arranged along the wall, were comfortable chairs occupied by numerous types of people.

At the far end of the long room was a desk. In front of the desk was a large, solid-looking chair. Behind the desk sat a remarkable fellow who looked like a pleasant ape. Seated on the floor beside the desk was a pig—a pig with remarkably large ears and four long legs. And with one of the legs, the pig was industriously kicking a spot behind one of its huge ears.

The old codger was shown to one of the chairs arranged along the wall.

The man who escorted the elderly fellow to the chair was a slenderish man with a lean waist, a sharply featured but not unhandsome face, and a large mobile mouth peculiar to orators—the type of mouth frequently found on congressmen, senators and carnival barkers. At various times he was addressed by people in the room as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and once he was called “Ham.” The homely fellow was called either Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, or “Monk,” a nickname which certainly fitted him.

The old codger sat in the chair where he had been placed and watched the scene with his faded eyes. It became evident that this long room was in the nature of a receiving chamber. In fact, every occupant of the chairs was here to see Doc Savage about something, and these two unusual men, Monk and Ham, were interviewing the visitors.

Some of the visitors wanted gifts of money. These got rather short treatment, which included being handed a slip bearing an address where they could get a job of hard work with a living wage.

Others seemed to have an illness they wanted Doc Savage to treat, and these were also sent away with slips of paper bearing addresses where they could get treatment.

The interviewing proceeded, and finally came the old codger’s turn.

The elderly man was escorted to the large chair in front of the desk, planted therein, and before he knew it, his sleeve was rolled up, and around his arm was placed a contrivance which somewhat resembled the device which doctors use to take a patient’s blood pressure. The old man gaped at this. He didn’t seem to know what it was.

The device was part of a “lie detector,” and every other person who sat in that chair to be interviewed had sat with the contrivance strapped to his or her arm.

Monk glanced at the front of a drawer on his side of the desk. He was interested in a small meter located here. The needle of this stood at a point only a shade from zero, which meant the old fellow had metal buckles on his overalls, and possibly a little silver in his pockets.

If there had been any large piece of metal on his person, a gun or a knife, the needle would have registered well over on the dial.

“So you came to see Doc Savage?” Monk inquired.

“Yes—yes; that’s right,” said the old fellow.

“What do you want with him?” Monk asked.

And as the old gentleman responded, Monk kept an eye cocked on the jiggling needle of another meter, attached to the lie detector.

The codger answered the other questions, slowly and haltingly, and Monk watched the lie detector, but the needle moved only slightly, only to the extent that was normal. Any undue activity on the part of the indicator when a question was put meant that, if a lie was being told, nervous excitement was generating minute electrical currents in the subject’s body.

The device, an adaptation of the conventional type in use by some police centers, was, as Monk well knew, not entirely infallible; but it offered an excellent guide. And finally, Monk leaned back.

“Now,” he said, “that you’ve told your story, Mister—”

“Weaver,” said the old man. “Tobias Weaver. I am Teddy’s grandfather.”

“Yeah; sure,” Monk said. “What I started to say, Mister Weaver, is that it’s very seldom any one gets to see Doc. Very seldom.”

The elderly man quavered. “But I—I so wanted to see Mister Savage. Teddy—”

“You’re going to see Doc,” Monk said. “And you’re the first man in three days we’ve thought worth while to send on up to Doc.” Monk rose. “Follow me.”