Читать книгу The Feathered Octopus: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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They took an elevator of breathless speed to the eighty-sixth floor, and stepped out into a plain corridor, then approached a bronze-hued door which bore simply a small-lettered legend:

CLARK SAVAGE, JR.

Monk opened the door, which gave into a reception room floored with a deep rug, containing no furniture but an inlaid table of unusual size, and a large and strong-looking safe.

Crossing this, Monk and Weaver entered a vast library, filled almost to capacity with bookcases containing ponderous scientific tomes. Continuing on, they came to a laboratory which plainly occupied the remainder of the floor of the skyscraper—and the building, at its base, occupied an entire block, and was only slightly smaller up here. The laboratory was a labyrinth of complicated scientific apparatus.

There was a figure at the far end of the great room.

Monk stopped. No doubt he had seen that figure at the opposite end of the laboratory thousands of times, yet for a moment a touch of something like awe seemed to hold him in a spell. A new respect seemed to come into his rather uncouth, boisterous manner.

“Doc,” he said. “A man to see you.”

The distant figure turned. It was a man whose figure seemed to be remarkably well proportioned. A man who was quietly attired in dark clothing. A man who seemed to be working at a table that was rather small; it appeared that if the table was a little smaller, it would be a toy piece.

Then the man came toward them, and it was evident why the table seemed small. The table had normal proportions. It was the man who was big. A giant of bronze. Tropical suns had darkened his skin. His hair, of a bronze hue only slightly darker than his skin, was straight and smooth as a metal skullcap. The sinews in his neck and on the backs of his hands indicated strength beyond the usual.

“Doc Savage,” Monk said.

Then he left.

Tobias Weaver, the old codger, was shown to a comfortable chair in the library. He, too, seemed in awe of the bronze giant, which was understandable because, beginning with the surprise of the traffic cop, the importance of the man had been indicated. The people downstairs, some of them plainly big shots. The impressive size of this library and laboratory. And the stature of Doc Savage himself. All contributed to the certainty that this man was out of the ordinary.

“I—thank you for—seeing me,” said Tobias Weaver rather nervously.

“You are entirely welcome,” replied the bronze man. “Just take your time and tell your story.”

Doc Savage’s voice was quiet, but there was a quality in it that suggested great power and facility under full control.

Tobias Weaver’s hands were shod in cheap gloves. He clasped them around his cane.

“Teddy—Teddy”—he paused and looked at the floor, and his face looked miserable—“Teddy is eight years old. He was a splendid little boy, and he has been with me four years, since his—his mama and papa were killed in an automobile accident. I used to take him camping. He’s small, but he liked to camp out, and we used to go into the woods and cook our dinners.”

Doc Savage asked, “And what happened?”

“You know how little boys play,” Tobias Weaver said. “They—they play at imitating famous figures. I remember in my day we played at imitating General Grant and Abraham Lincoln. Teddy’s father, I remember, used to play like he was Buffalo Bill.” Tobias Weaver’s voice, with steady talking, became less hesitant, like a rusty piece of machinery that worked better after it was used a few times.

“Poor little Teddy,” he murmured. “He was injured while at play. It was his back. He cannot be cured—and—he cannot live much longer. He just lies there, on his little cot—just lies there—”

Tobias Weaver stared at the floor, his hands clenched and his lips compressed, and Doc Savage, in a voice that somehow seemed to convey comfort and strength, said, “Is there something I can do?”

Tobias Weaver nodded slowly. “I have seen enough today to show me that you deal—in large affairs. My little request is so insignificant in comparison. It concerns only an old man and a little boy who will not be in this world much longer. It may seem a small request. But to the little tike it would mean a lot. You see, he has read about you, and heard of you, young as he is.”

The elderly man hesitated, staring at his hands, then added, “You see, Teddy was playing he was Doc Savage, and was climbing on the house as he heard you can climb; and he wasn’t careful enough, and got his injury while imagining he was you.”

Doc Savage’s metallic features showed sincere regret, and a troubled expression came into his eyes—the eyes that were probably the most remarkable of the bronze man’s features. They were like pools of flake gold, always stirred by tiny, invisible winds. At times the eyes seemed to have a power, something compelling that was almost hypnotic.

“Would you visit Teddy?” asked Tobias Weaver. “It would make—his end—as happy as such a—thing—could be made.”

“Of course,” the bronze man said simply.

Tobias Weaver bowed his head, and for a moment bent his efforts toward controlling himself.

“Thank you,” he said. “I know now that you are a truly great man. Poor Teddy will be delighted.”

Doc Savage, obviously to get the old gentleman’s mind out of its morbid channel, asked, “Where do you live?”

“In the little town of Stormington. You—you drive through town on the main street, turn—turn right—and it is a large gray house on top of the hill. There—there is an iron deer in the yard. But—but could—of course—you are too busy to go with me now?”

Doc Savage arose. “No. We’ll leave at once.”

Tobias Weaver arose from the deep library chair. And in the laboratory, the great room beyond, a small indicator light in a large instrument panel went dark.

Down the street, the bronze man and Weaver entered a dark coupe, one of several cars which the bronze man owned, and drove away.

There was a limousine parked across the street, a large discreet car, the rear seat occupied by an exotically exquisite woman with a slightly Asiatic cast to her features. The limousine did not follow Doc Savage’s coupe—but it did take another route for the same destination.

Stormington was a bit of the old world set down close to New York City. An antique asleep in the hills. The streets were narrow, and some of the houses dated back to the Revolution. One main street ran through the center of the town, continued on, and passed around various hills, and atop one of these hills sprawled the house where Doc Savage stopped the coupe.

A winding lane led up from the road to the house, which was surrounded by a low stone fence. In the lawn, not too well tended, stood an iron deer.

“I—want to apologize—for my house,” quavered Tobias Weaver. “It has been—in my family for centuries—and I do not have the—finances—to keep it in repair.”

The house was of gray stone, outwardly ornate after the old way, with frescoes, tall, arching windows of stained glass, and a sharply gabled roof. The door creaked on its hinges and let them into an atmosphere of museum antiquity, uncarpeted floors and plain, stark old walls stamped infrequently with ancient oil paintings and prints.

In the vestibule stood a rickety table, on this an aged silver holder for four candles; and Tobias Weaver applied a match to the candles, then handed them to Doc Savage. It was gloomy in the old house.

“This is a—queer old house,” he said shakily. “It was built—by an ancestor who was—eccentric. Teddy—Teddy will enjoy telling you about it, if you care to listen. And later, I will show you—the strange place.”

He advanced toward a door, and the door opened before he reached it, making a strange, low sigh as it did so.

“Teddy will be asleep,” Tobias Weaver said, pointing through the portal, “and it would be wonderful if you would go to him alone and awaken him. Teddy—will think it is—a dream.” He pointed again. “You just go straight ahead, through the doors.”

Doc Savage nodded and passed through the door, leaving old Tobias Weaver behind. The bronze man’s tread was easy for one of such, physical build, and silent except for an occasional creak of old flooring underfoot. The flames of the four candles leaned backward slightly in the air as he moved forward and the tips of the flames gave off little yarns of smoke.

The first room through which Doc passed was narrow and long, made dark as a vault with drawn shades, and furnished only with a carved table at which stood two fragile chairs. There was no sign of the party who had caused the opening of the first door, and as the bronze man approached the door on the far side of the bare chamber, that also opened, making as it did so a low sound that was between sigh and groan.

And, stepping through that aperture, the bronze man lifted the candles; but there was no trace of human presence, except his own Gargantuan shadow leaping along the aged walls when he moved. Here, also, there was no furniture, but only plain floors, plainer walls, and antiquity everywhere.

Doc went on. The air was not dank, for dankness is moisture, humidity; and this air had the dryness of something shut up for a long time. The kind of air that would be expected in a desert tomb, where they find the mummies that have been there a half dozen thousand of years, and which collapse the instant there is a freshening of the air.

Even the wails of the boards underfoot were dry whinnies. And then the flooring changed to stone, and the walls, too, and there was another door which opened in the same uncanny fashion as the others, with no one to be seen; apparently no human agency was behind the phenomenon.

The giant bronze man, silent now, stepped through the opening, holding his candles out to one side, where the light would not get in his eyes. It was inevitable that the eerie, labyrinthian old house would create an effect on his mind, but his metallic features had not changed expression. But he came to a stop now, holding the four candles high.

This room was smaller. Of stone, too—ceiling, walls and floor, all gray, flinty rock; while the door—the one through which he had come was the only door—was of wood on one side, and sheeted with steel on the inside.

The sheeting had the appearance of ancient doing. The stone walls here were marred with strange carvings; initials and hearts pierced with arrows, and one or two funny faces. There were dates on the walls, all old—1773, 1780, 1761. In another place, “Down with the Kind!” was cut in the stone. All which indicated this had been some kind of prison, probably, back in Revolutionary days.

It was a strange place for a boy to be.

The little fellow lay on a bed directly in the center of the room in a great four-poster bed, the four legs extending up and meeting crossbars of an awning support. The awning was of old lace, and the sheets on the bed were heavy, very white, almost as substantial in appearance as canvas.

Swatched as it was under the sheets, not a great deal could be told about the boy’s figure. There was a sleeping stocking, a kind of dunce cap, drawn over the small head almost to the brows; and the face, wasted until it looked aged, and very pale, was a sallow spot above the sheet.

The fixed eyes were open, dark pools, and Doc Savage went over to the bed, which was the only article of furniture in the room.

The dark eyes followed him, growing wider, and the wan lips parted, then warped up at the ends in an incredulous grin which spread over the whole of the tiny face.

“You—you are Doc Savage!” chortled the figure on the bed, weak-voiced.

The bronze man was silent for a moment, as though embarrassed by the incredulous admiration of the wan form. Then the figure on the bed spoke.

“Could—could—I touch you?” the little form asked with pitiful eagerness.

The bronze man showed by his unease that he was in a situation with which his remarkable training had not prepared him to cope. Doc was a scientific product, in a sense; but science had failed to do one thing: it had failed to put a shell around his heart.

And so Doc brought a hand down to touch the little figure on the bed. And a hand that was not as tiny as it should have been, and certainly not as wasted, came darting out from under the covers with the speed of a rattlesnake.

The fangs it held—one fang, really, and that the drooling nozzle of a hypodermic needle—hit the bronze man’s arm accurately near the veins and emptied its contents into his life stream.

The hypodermic needle stabbed again. Doc shifted backward, evading it.

Out of the bed came the “boy.” No boy at all. A grown man, with a tiny face which artful disguise had made into the visage of a dying tike. Where his body had lain in the bed, the mattress was hollowed out; and the form that had shown under the covers was only a dummy of the type which ventriloquists use. The man sprang away from the bed.

The trickster was fast on his feet. Even then, he had no need of the needle again, for Doc Savage, a strange expression on his features, seemed to comprehend that the stuff which had gone into his arm was quick-acting. He whipped toward the door.

That door closed, with an abrupt groan, and there were the muffled sounds of other doors closing, with groaning sounds—noises made, it was now evident, by electrical mechanism which operated the doors.

The big bronze man bent at the knees and sank, swayed a little and upset on his side, and thereafter did not move.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the day was Tuesday.