Читать книгу The Feathered Octopus: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5

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It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the day was not Tuesday, but Wednesday. There were more visitors than ever in the office. Monk was paying no attention to them. As a matter of fact, Monk was busy. He was doing a crossword puzzle.

Right now he was stuck. Only one word was needed to complete the puzzle. And Monk, in vain it seemed, was scratching his furry head for the answer. Then, suddenly, he gave a loud “Whoop!” that startled every one and grinned as he put down the answer.

Monk looked as if he didn’t even know the answer to what two and two added up to. Not that Monk didn’t possess any brains. The fact was that Monk, whose low, apish forehead did not appear to hold room for a spoonful of brains, was one of the world’s greatest chemists.

His laboratory was a penthouse affair down near Wall Street, and such was his ability that spending only a short time there at wide intervals, he was able to make all the money he needed. And having a great liking for excitement, Monk therefore spent most of his time as one of Doc Savage’s small group of five assistants.

Monk had two other enjoyments of life: One was a great delight in pursuing every pretty girl that met his eye, an avocation at which he had remarkably good luck considering that he was as homely as the proverbial mud fence. His other joy was a never-ending battle, verbal and otherwise, with the dapper lawyer, Ham.

Monk pressed an interoffice communicating system which was connected with Doc’s eighty-sixth floor headquarters, and got no answer. A worried expression came over his homely face, and he fell to frowning at the pig with the large ears and long legs, which sat beside the desk.

“Wonder what’s happened to Doc, Habeas Corpus?” Monk asked the pig seriously.

“I ain’t studied mind-reading, Monk,” the pig, Habeas Corpus apparently said.

Monk was a strange fellow. He liked to use a certain ability as a ventriloquist which he possessed to hold facetious discussions with his pet pig.

Abruptly, Monk announced that receptions were over for the day and shooed the aspirants out and locked up.

At this point, Ham, the dapper lawyer, put in an appearance. He wore this afternoon a completely new outfit which, if possible, was more immaculate than his sartorial splendor of the previous day.

“T’sk, t’sk,” Monk said sarcastically. “Gosh, but you’re pretty this afternoon.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to spruce up a little!” Ham snapped.

“But I’ve got me a suit of clothes for every day in the week,” Monk snorted.

“And where are they?”

“This is it I’ve got on,” Monk explained.

Ham scowled. He could scowl with a great deal of browbeating dignity, an art he had learned in becoming one of the most astute lawyers in the land.

“Here, Chemistry, old top,” Ham called.

Chemistry appeared. Chemistry was Ham’s pet anthropoid. Ham insisted Chemistry was a pure-blooded, blue-blooded member of the strain anthropopithecus troglodyte. Monk’s claim was that Chemistry was an ordinary mangy runt of a baboon. But regardless of who was right, Chemistry, the pet ape, bore a resemblance to the homely Monk that was distressing to the chemist.

Monk did not care for Chemistry. Ham did not care for Habeas Corpus. Monk did not care for Ham. It was a combination which never gave any one any peace.

“Doc,” Monk said thoughtfully, “has been missing since yesterday.”

“Yes,” Ham said soberly, “he has.”

It was a strange animosity these two had. They could drop it instantly if anything serious came up.

“We better go up and see what we can learn,” Monk suggested.

Monk and Ham entered the great establishment on the eighty-sixth floor. There was no sign of Doc Savage. They went through the mail, and there was no note from the bronze man.

“The last seen of Doc, he went away with that old codger yesterday,” Monk reminded. “Let’s see what they talked about before they left.”

Ambling into the laboratory, Monk opened a section of the wall which looked quite solid, and worked over a complicated piece of apparatus contained in the niche thus revealed.

The apparatus, among other things, consisted of two large reels of fine steel wire. The reels were geared so that the wire passed slowly between the poles of a powerful electromagnet. The contrivance, in fact, was a device for magnetically recording sound on wire.

By running the wire through a playback, Monk reproduced through a loudspeaker all that had been said between Doc Savage and Tobias Weaver.

This apparatus, wired to hidden supersensitive microphones, reproduced all that was said in the bronze man’s headquarters. The device, far from being an unnecessary crack pot scientific gadget, had done valuable service in the past.

Finally the talk between Doc and Tobias Weaver, as repeated by the wire recording, ended.

“Huh,” Monk muttered, “nothing suspicious about that. The old fellow just came to get Doc to visit a little boy who was dying.”

Ham snapped his fingers suddenly, “Monk! Do you know something?”

“Not to hear you tell it,” Monk said suspiciously. “What you getting at, shyster?”

“Suppose some one wanted to trap Doc—what kind of bait would be sure to get him?”

“There’s been lots of baits tried.”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean.”

“Explain,” Monk requested, “exactly what do you mean.”

“You and I know,” Ham said grimly, “that Doc Savage, who strikes some people as being a scientific product who isn’t exactly human, has a heart as big as a red sofa pillow, and as soft. This story about a dying kid is exactly the kind of thing he would fall for.”

Monk squinted at Ham. “You know, much as I hate to admit you ever had a sensible idea, that sounds reasonable.”

“The location of Tobias Weaver’s house is given on that wire,” Ham said. “I think we should go there and have a look around.”

“Sure,” Monk agreed. “And not because you suggested it, either. It’s my idea, too.”

The two quarrelsome fellows went down to the street, and each took his own car for the drive to Stormington. The reason for this was that Ham had a new roadster, very expensive, very classy.

Monk, insisting at every opportunity that nobody but a snob could feel at home in such a chariot, insisted on taking his dilapidated old flivver, which rattled a great noise when moving, and for which he had paid a hundred dollars. Ham, on the other hand, had paid an even seven thousand dollars for his snappy job.

They drove north, Monk deliberately menacing Ham’s shiny fenders with his crumbled old ears of tin at intervals. Each man had his pet, and each gave voice to such insults as he could think of.

“Great grief, Monk,” Ham yelled, drawing alongside Monk’s old wreck, “what part of that car of yours makes such an awful noise?”

“That?” Monk grinned at Ham’s seven-thousand-dollar vehicle. “Why, that’s the six thousand nine hundred dollars jingling in my pocket!”

In their usual glaring fashion, the two arrived at a hill beyond Stormington. Alighting, they gazed at a low stone fence.

“There’s the iron deer in the yard,” Monk offered.

And so it was. An old-fashioned iron deer standing on the lawn.

The house beyond was a bungalow, small, neat, white, modern.

Monk and Ham strode up the sidewalk, casting glances about them as a matter of keeping a precautionary outlook for danger. But they saw nothing more alarming than the fact that the sun was setting behind a bank of clouds in the west, indicating it would soon be rather dark.

And, stepping upon the porch of the little bungalow, they naturally had no suspicion that this house was nothing like the one which Doc Savage had entered yesterday.

Monk rested a large, hairy forefinger on an electric bell-button. The door opened. Monk stepped back. His mouth fell open.

No doubt the woman who opened the door had caused many gentlemen to let their mouths fall open. She was almost hypnotically beautiful. She was not tall, but rather gemlike in her exquisite shaping. She had large, liquid, fascinating eyes that were as dark as sloes; her lips were warm and inviting; and every other feature was calculated to upset male equilibrium.

The woman was a Eurasian—the exotically beautiful type that sometimes results from the mingling of Asiatic and European.

She floored Monk, figuratively. He was speechless. To his disgust, Ham got off to a head start conversationally.

“I am Major General Theodore Marley Brooks,” Ham explained. He jerked a thumb, half apologetically, at Monk, at whose heels was trailing the pig, Habeas Corpus. “This swineherd,” Ham added, “is a fellow who does odd jobs for me.”

Monk could not have turned more purple had he putrified on the spot. Before he was certain Monk was not going to drop dead of rage, Ham was inquiring about Doc Savage.

“I am Lo Lar,” the stunning Eurasian woman smiled at Ham. “Tobias Weaver is my uncle—my—my father’s brother. And Doc Savage was indeed here yesterday; although, of course, he has now gone.”

“Where’d he go to?” Monk asked.

“Doc Savage is a wonderful man,” murmured the Eurasian woman. “He believed that, with facilities obtainable in Europe, little Teddy would be saved. So Doc Savage and Tobias Weaver took little Teddy away yesterday. I think they intended to sail on a liner which departed at midnight.”

This explanation, given smilingly by the exquisite Lo Lar, sounded quite reasonable to Monk and Ham. That was the kind of thing Doc Savage might be expected to do, for the bronze man’s lifework was helping others; and while he more often found himself in violence and trickery, fighting evil-doers, he still found time to perform acts such as the one Lo Lar had just described.

What neither Monk nor Ham would have admitted was that Lo Lar was such a knock-out, and had such a disturbing smile, that she could have told them the world was a flat table held up by a green goblin, and they would almost believe it.

Ham happened to be as susceptible to femininity as Monk. They were usually great rivals, and this case proved no exception. Immediately they began outdoing each other to show attentions to the divine little Eurasian.

Lo Lar was surprisingly nice to the pair, showing them about the trim, modernistic little cottage, explaining things. Instead of treating them as a couple of fresh pups, which they undoubtedly were, she laughed at their witticisms and smiled at each impartially, but in such an exciting manner that it would be remarkable if there was not blood shed later as a result.

Monk made one faux pas. He noted a photograph of a wizened, homely gentleman standing on a piano.

“What an ugly bird that is,” Monk remarked thoughtlessly.

“Isn’t he?” said Lo Lar dryly. “That is my father.”

“Gosh,” said Monk quickly, “isn’t it remarkable how the homely men always have the prettiest daughters?”

Monk was nothing if not quick in climbing out of a hole.

The two Doc Savage aides were completely sidetracked by the Eurasian woman’s loveliness. Moreover, they were convinced that Doc Savage had come here and departed for Europe with the dying boy. It all seemed perfectly logical. Their heads were swimming in an amorous haze.

It was almost an hour before they reluctantly departed. Both had tried unsuccessfully to date Lo Lar, but they had her telephone number. Bowing themselves out, they stalked down the sidewalk toward the iron deer and the gate, each in a scowling silence as he tried to think of something that would blister the other.

Monk had the greatest grievance. Ham had told the vision that Monk was a swineherd and Ham’s lackey, and Monk was afraid he hadn’t been able to dispel the impression. So, without the slightest warning, Monk hauled off and tried to belt Ham one on one ear by way of a lesson.

Ham evidently knew about what to expect. He was ready, dodged, and all Monk succeeded in doing was to knock Ham’s natty pearl-gray derby over beside the iron deer.

“Listen, my scullion,” Ham said. “There is a strong possibility of your springing a leak.”

And Ham twitched at the handle of his neat cane, thereby making it evident that the stick, instead of being a foppish affectation, was a sword cane.

“Come on down the road a piece where she can’t see us,” Monk invited, “and I’ll tie a complicated Turks’ head knot in each of your two legs, you over-dressed viper!”

“That’s perfectly agreeable!” Ham snapped.

Ham stepped over to get his hat, which had fallen beside the iron deer. He did not locate it at first in the darkness, so he struck a match. And he was reaching for the hat when he saw something interesting.

“Monk!” he breathed.

“You polecat in ermine regalia!” Monk gritted. “Come on and—”

“Sh-h-h, stupid!” Ham breathed. “There’s something phony about this set-up!”

“Huh?”

“Come here! Look!”

Monk came over about the time Ham’s match burned out. “I don’t see nothin’,” the homely chemist remarked.

Ham said, “Wait until I get a match—No, wait! We better get away from this place.”

“What—”

“If that woman sees us acting suspicious around this deer, it will put her wise. Come on, Monk. We don’t want her to know we found anything.”

“And just what did you find, shyster?”

“Tell you later!” Ham snapped.

Monk, strangely enough, was not for an instant suspicious that Ham might be framing a practical joke on him. They frequently did pull practical jokes on each other. But there was a tone which appraised him now that Ham had discovered something, that Ham was in earnest.

They understood each other, did these two strange fellows. And remarkably enough, in view of their frequently avowed intention to rid humanity of each other, each had on past occasions risked his life to save the other. In their queer way, they were the best of friends.

So Monk followed Ham silently in the direction of their cars. They covered in excess of a score of yards, then Monk exploded a grunt and stopped.

“Ugh!” he said.

“What’s wrong?” Ham whispered.

“Feels like somebody threw a base, cowardly egg at me,” Monk muttered.

“What—”

“A base, cowardly egg,” Monk muttered, “is one that hits you and then runs.” He shook his clothing. “Phooey! Pho-o-o—”

He went silent.

Ham said, “Monk! What is it?”

No answer.

“I say, Monk! Monk!”

Words gave no response, but there was a slumping sound, and something large and slack rolled against Ham’s ankles; and, reaching down with exploring hands, Ham discovered it was Monk, quite limp.

Ham opened his mouth and took in breath to cry out a demand as to what was wrong, but there was a burning sensation in his lungs—a burning that he knew was gas of some kind—and he held his breath, making no sound.

He tried to bend over to shoulder Monk’s limp form; then, realizing he could not make it with Monk, he tried to flee himself, but could do neither, because the vapor he had inhaled seemed to have struck with a sleepy paralysis that preceded unconsciousness.

For unconsciousness did come shortly, and Ham piled down on top of Monk, cutting one hand slightly on fragments of the thin bottle which stuck to Monk’s clothing—the bottle which, when it struck him, Monk had thought was an egg breaking.

That is, Ham thought it was a bottle. What he did not know was that it was an old-time electric light bulb which had been inserted in liquefied gas, and the nib then pinched off, so that the vacuum within drew in the liquid, after which a bit of adhesive tape was placed over the pinched-off nib.

Shortly afterward, Lo Lar, the Eurasian woman, came and stood pointing a flashlight beam down at them. She was joined by several men, shadowy figures who stood in silence awaiting her word.

“They discovered what was wrong at the last minute,” Lo Lar said. “At least, the one called Ham discovered that something was amiss. What a break! Just because one of them knocked the hat of the other over by that iron deer. Those microphones hidden in the grass to pick up sounds was a clever idea.”

“A happening may be small, like a mouse, but it is said that the mouse has always stampeded the elephant,” murmured one of the bystanders.

Lo Lar seemed to be considering. Once her flashlight beam drifted across the faces of the waiting men. Some of them were Orientals, some white men, and one or two were strapping physical specimens of the Polynesian race inhabiting some islands of the South Seas.

Among the bystanders was Tobias Weaver. Only he did not look the feeble, old Tobias Weaver now, for his hair had become dark, and his carriage upright and wiry. He was just a man, aged thirty-five or so, who had a very wrinkled countenance, and also a great facility with acting.

Lo Lar pointed at the senseless men.

“Take them away,” she directed. “Four of you are enough for that. The rest of you come with me to High Lar.” She turned, then paused. “No, we must dispose of those cars. Take them and place them with the machine used by Doc Savage.”

Two men departed to do this.

“There are three more members of Doc Savage’s group,” Lo Lar said. “That is, three men. There is the cousin, Pat Savage, who sometimes helps the bronze man. But she spends her time running a beauty shop on Park Avenue, and we’ll not worry about her for the time being. It is only the three remaining men who help Doc Savage that we must take care of.”

The strange group standing in the night on the hill melted away on their respective jobs.