Читать книгу The Feathered Octopus: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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The remarkable group assembled by Doc Savage at the inception of his career was unique in many respects.

Colonel John Renwick was tops in his line. “Renny” was a civil engineer, bridge-builder, mechanical genius. A tall, wide frame of bones and muscle, Renny had a long, puritanical face which had the peculiar habit of looking saddest when its owner was feeling his best.

Renny also had a pair of enormous, incredible fists, almost a quarter of bone and gristle, which he liked to employ in a pleasant little pastime of knocking wooden panels out of doors. He had a voice like a political campaign loudspeaker.

William Harper Littlejohn was another man who was tops in his way. He was also pretty tall, and with it, thinner than it seemed any human could be and still go on living. “Johnny’s” profession was archaeology and geology. His hobby, to the amazement of all who knew him, was his big words. His clothes never fitted him. He carried a monocle which was a magnifier that he frequently needed in his business.

Major Thomas J. Roberts, the remaining member of Doc’s group of five male aides, was not much to look at. In fact, his appearance rated him as a liability. Undertakers often brightened when they saw “Long Tom.” Major Roberts had acquired the name Long Tom after an unfortunate adventure with a cannon by the same name. He had acquired his ability as an electrical expert through years of study and experiment.

These three men, each strikingly successful in his line, were on a vacation. Closing a vacation, rather. They had been to Bimini, the tiny island fifty miles or so off the Florida coast, across the Gulf Stream, fishing for marlin. For giant blue marlin weigh often up into the hundreds of pounds, gun-metal gamesters of the salty deep, which drew sportsmen from all over the world.

A plane dropped down toward the Hudson River, made a splash, taxied to a large hangar which was ostensibly a warehouse, and was ensconced inside.

Twenty minutes later, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny, laden with fishing gear and dark-skinned with tropical sunburn, and also bursting to tell lies about the big ones that got away—all ruddy with health and eagerness—entered Doc’s skyscraper headquarters.

The day was Thursday. On Tuesday, Doc had disappeared. On Wednesday, Monk and Ham vanished. And this was Thursday.

“Holy cow!” Renny rumbled. “Wonder where everybody is?”

That expression, “Holy cow!” was Renny’s trademark, through the frequency with which he used it.

“An enigmatical nullibiety,” remarked tall, gaunt Johnny, who never used a small word when he had time to think of a large one.

Long Tom, the electrical wizard, tossed his fishing tackle aside—he was never an enthusiastic sportsman—and went to a cabinet in which Doc Savage usually filed data on his late electrical experiments.

Doc’s custom was to give Long Tom the results of all electrical experiments. For the bronze man was probably more skilled in electrical research than Long Tom, who was widely noted—just as the bronze man was a greater engineer than Renny and the possessor of a wider fund of knowledge concerning archaeology and geology than the big-worded Johnny.

“Doc has not been here since Tuesday,” Long Tom decided after noting the entries.

“That’s kind of unexpected,” Renny remarked, examining his big fists thoughtfully. “Seems like he would have left some word around here.”

The three aides were not particularly alarmed. They washed, then went down a few floors to a restaurant, ate a hot meal, then came back up. And by that time Renny had thought of something.

“Holy cow!” he boomed. “We might ask Iron Mary what has been going on around here!”

“Sure, ask Iron Mary,” Long Tom agreed.

“Iron Mary” was the nickname they had applied to the mechanical device which recorded all conversation, stenographer fashion, on the wire. So they retired to the laboratory, still not at all concerned, and switched on the device.

They heard the recording through, including the voices of Monk and Ham as they decided something might be wrong with Doc.

“Holy cow!” Renny thumped.

“I’ll be superamalgamated!” said Johnny.

“It looks like something fishy is going on, or Monk and Ham would have come back,” Long Tom declared.

They stood there considering for a while.

“We know where they all went,” Renny rumbled at last. “What are we waiting for?”

Ten minutes later they were in one of Doc’s cars, a long sedan, headed for Stormington. The sedan, outwardly notable for nothing except unusual size, had such hidden features as armor plate and bulletproof glass construction, oxygen apparatus so it could remain sealed for hours with men inside, if needed, as well as gas equipment of its own, including a form of gas which would choke and stall the motor of any pursuing machine.

Approximately two hours before sunset saw the three aides in Stormington. A quiet, pleasant afternoon, warm, still beautiful spring. And Stormington, unlike its name, was the kind of peaceful place where chickens scratched in the road.

Through the town, and up a hill, then Renny pointed and boomed, “There’s a lawn with an iron deer. That’s the place, on top of the hill.”

They drove up, got out, and stood looking. They looked past the iron deer for some time, then they looked at each other.

“But where’s the house?” Long Tom wanted to know.

A fitting question. For there seemed to be no house.

There was a low stone fence, an iron gate, ancient and rusty. Inside that stood the iron deer, head up as if startled by visitors to the quiet scene.

Renny vaulted over the low fence, walked across grass which needed trimming. His interest centered in a spot where it seemed a house might have stood. He reached the area and looked around. He kicked at the grass. He picked up a stick and poked around a moss-covered stone or two.

Finally he went back to the others.

“Been thirty years or so since there was any house here,” he declared.

“That’s kinda queer,” Long Tom remarked. “This is the place that was described.”

But it was Johnny, the gaunt archaeologist, who strode around the iron deer, eyeing it curiously, as though it were a relic of antiquity instead of a day only fifty or so years past, when iron deers on the lawn were the latest thing.

He picked up a natty pearl-gray derby from the opposite side of the iron deer. After a glance inside the headgear, he remarked, “An unanticipated eventuation.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Long Tom agreed. “Looks a little like rain, though.”

“Eh?”

“Put it in English. What’d you say?”

“This,” said Johnny, “is Ham’s hat.”

“How do you know?”

“Quite simple. Elementary. It says, ‘Made expressly for Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks’ in the crown of the hat.”

The aides looked over the scene at some length, even making another visit to the spot where a house had stood once upon a time. But no dwelling, no structure of any kind, had bulked there for many years—if appearances were any indication.

Riding back to the city, they were puzzled.

Some one had been in the skyscraper headquarters since the three aides’ previous visit. They noted that in the laboratory, where things were changed around a little. Long Tom made an examination and came up with some information.

“The portable chemical laboratory belonging to Monk is gone,” he said. “And also some of the equipment Doc usually takes when he goes on a trip.”

“Holy cow; let’s see what Iron Mary says!” Renny boomed.

Iron Mary, when turned on, registered the opening of a door, then a small, squeaking voice.

“Looks like Renny, Long Tom and Johnny have gotten back,” said the small, childlike voice.

“That’s Monk’s voice,” Renny remarked.

Iron Mary, continuing to reproduce voices, said, “Pipe down, you accident that nature made! Get the stuff that Doc wants!”

“Don’t order me around, you over-dressed shyster!”

“Go on about your business, lummox! I’ll type out a note and leave it in the mail box for Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny.”

There were other sounds from Iron Mary, noises indicating two men had assembled some equipment.

“Ham, you look funny without a hat,” remarked one of the voices, the small one.

“That pig of yours carried my gray derby off,” complained the other voice. “I know he did.”

The pair evidently departed.

“That was Monk and Ham, quarreling as usual,” Long Tom declared. “Let’s see what Ham’s note said.”

The note, typewritten, even to the signature, said:

DOC IS MAKING A TRIP TO HIS FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE TO CONDUCT SOME EXPERIMENTS, AND MONK AND MYSELF ARE GOING ALONG. WE’LL BE BACK IN A FEW WEEKS. DON’T BOTHER ABOUT US.

INCIDENTALLY, DOC HAD A FUNNY ONE HAPPEN TO HIM YESTERDAY. AN OLD MAN CAME TO GET DOC TO SEE A DYING BOY, BUT IT TURNED OUT THERE WASN’T ANY DYING BOY AND NO HOUSE WHERE THE OLD MAN TOOK DOC. THE OLD MAN, TOBIAS WEAVER BY NAME, WAS WACKY. STARK INSANE.

HAM.

Renny let out a long breath of relief. “Well, that explains it,” he remarked. “We took a wild goose chase for nothing.”

Both Renny and Long Tom knew that at times it was Doc Savage’s habit to disappear without a word of explanation. Sometimes the bronze man was gone for months, completely shut off from the world in a far-off spot which he called his “Fortress of Solitude.” There Doc Savage went to study and experiment.

Even the bronze man’s five aides did not know where the exact location of this Fortress of Solitude was, though they presumed it was somewhere within the Arctic Circle. But the bronze man had many enemies, and it was always possible that some one had slipped over something. However, Iron Mary hadn’t lied. Both Monk and Ham had been in the office. It looked as if Doc was, for the first time, revealing his Fortress of Solitude to others than himself. Doing so he must have a reason. Both aides wondered what it was.

Long Tom spoke soberly. “You know, a lot of queer things happen to Doc, don’t they? Sometimes it’s nuts who write fool letters or try to pull stuff. And sometimes it’s a lot more sinister, some fellow with a diabolic scheme trying to accomplish an end in the most indirect manner.”

There was a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” said Renny.

The visitor was a portly gentleman, ample around the middle, and he wore eyeglasses attached to a ribbon. He had the self-important air of a rooster pigeon.

“For several days I have been endeavoring to see Doc Savage,” said this gentleman. “I am S. Portsmouth Upstainbridge. The ‘S’ is for Shaughnessy. I demand to see Doc Savage.”

“What about?” Renny asked.

“That will be private business between Doc Savage and myself,” retorted the important man.

Renny took a quick dislike to the fellow. He rumbled, “Brother, Doc’s business is all our business, and you can either give a civil answer to my question or get out. It’s immaterial to me, I can tell you.”

The newcomer purpled. “Such impertinence!”

“What’s your business?”

“I wish to interest Doc Savage in becoming a member of our corporation,” said the other grandly.

“So you can unload a lot of stock on the public?” Renny inquired, and added: “On the strength of Doc’s name?”

“Where is Doc Savage?” the other yelled.

“He’s out of town and will be for weeks!” Renny thundered. “And don’t yell at me!”

At this the visitor whirled in a grand dudgeon and stalked out, leading Renny to grin and muse that, “I probably hit the nail on the head about his having a stock promotion scheme, at that.”

Long Tom rubbed his pale jaw. “Wait a minute! Did you notice something?”

“Eh?”

“That guy wasn’t at all disappointed at not seeing Doc,” Long Tom said. “I was watching him. He seemed to expect to learn exactly what he learned.”

“Yeah? Which adds up to what?”

“I don’t know,” Long Tom said. “But suppose we give that guy a little attention just to keep in practice at finding out things.”