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

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The gunman was very lean, with dreamy blue eyes and an extraordinarily long chin which swung down and out to attain the contour which artists like to give to the features of witch drawings. He had used his trombone case to smash in the front of the box which held the transmitting-and-receiving apparatus. His other hand, the left, juggled an automatic pistol which seemed composed mostly of barrel.

Monk rolled one eye at the department store across the street and growled, “How’d you get out of there and come up behind us?”

The witch-faced man held his weapon below the level of the door, where it was out of sight, which was fortunate, because many of the pedestrians who passed turned to stare at the coupé and its occupants. Monk was undoubtedly the magnet which drew their attention.

Monk’s physical appearance was startling. Perhaps three out of four citizens who passed were taller than Monk, but Monk weighed in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds, was nearly as tall as he was broad, and had arms some inches longer than his legs. He had a leathery skin, furred with hair that looked like coarse, rusted steel wool. His face was almost incredibly homely, the mouth being far too large.

“Sap!” said the gunman. “That department store has a branch on this side of the street. A tunnel under the street connects the two buildings.”

Monk, blinking his small eyes, looked unutterably stupid—which showed how deceptive appearances can be, for Monk, under his full name of Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was known as an industrial chemist whose ability was that of a wizard.

The man with the automatic looked at the other occupant of the car—Ham. Major General Theodore Marley Brooks—it was with this name that Ham was formally designated—looked like a gentleman who might qualify as a perfume salesman or a male clerk in an exclusive feminine shop.

He was a wasp-waisted man with the large mobile mouth of an orator and a pair of brightly intent eyes. His garments were sartorial perfection—from creased afternoon trousers to gray derby. He held a thin, plain black cane across his knees.

Ham was also a gentleman who belied his appearance, being one of the most astute lawyers ever to acquire an accent and a degree from Harvard.

The witch-faced gunman, looking puzzled, shook his head slowly but did not divert the menace of his automatic.

“I don’t get this,” he growled. “Are you two guys laws?”

Ham said in an aggravating, drawling accent, “Really, old fellow, you do misuse the English language dreadfully.”

“Horse collar!” said the man with the gun. “Why’d you two tail me.”

Ham began, “My dear chap——” Then he stopped and watched the other.

The gunman was wearing a topcoat of some furry gray material, and he stepped back, burying his gun in a pocket of the coat. It was chilly on the street and perfectly natural that a man should keep a hand in a pocket.

“I’ll let Boke talk to you,” he said. “Let’s stagger along.”

“Huh?” The homely Monk blinked small eyes.

“Get a move on,” advised the other.

“Who’s Boke?” Monk demanded.

“We’re going for a walk,” the man said.

The witch-faced fellow now opened the car door, stepping back with it as if performing a polite service, but he kept his eyes high, watching the faces of Monk and Ham, and their hands. When they got out of the coupé, he fell in behind them and murmured, “Up the street. Boke’s joint is close.”

They walked several paces, the chill Fall air pulling breath steam out of their nostrils; a few chill particles of snow, more like hail than flakes, crunched out whitely on the sidewalk.

Monk, chin down in his collar as if cold, said three loud words in an absolutely unintelligible dialect.

The gun wielder growled, “Cut it out, whatever you’re tryin’ to do.”

Then the man gave a mad leap and squawled out in agony, and Monk moved with a speed which indicated he had expected the happening and had set himself. He lunged, both big, hairy hands cupping down on the pocket which held the witch-faced man’s hand and gun.

Reaching their objective, Monk’s paws closed, wrenched. The whole side came out of the man’s gray coat. They began to fight over the wad of cloth, hand and gun. The trombone case dropped.

Ham had tucked his black cane under an arm. He snatched at it now, gave the handle a twist and it pulled apart, disclosed that it was a sword cane. At the tip, and for a few inches back, it was coated with a substance which seemed to have a mucilaginous quality.

Ham, manipulating the sword cane with an expert ease, inserted the daubed tip perhaps a half inch under the shoulder skin of their foe. The results were remarkable.

The witch-faced man stared, turned to see what had pricked him, then began to look dazed. His endeavors to use the gun in spite of Monk’s restraining clutch, became feeble. Eventually, he seemed to go completely asleep and it was only the support of Monk and Ham which kept him erect.

At that point, there was a series of satisfied grunting sounds at their feet, and for the first time, the two men looked at the animal which had made the conquest possible. This was a pig.

“Not bad, Habeas,” the pleasantly ugly Monk grinned.

Habeas Corpus, the pig, was Monk’s pet. Habeas was as freakish an example of the porker species as Monk was of the human race. Habeas had the legs of a dog, a thin, gaunt body and a pair of ears which might have doubled for wings.

Monk expended most of his spare time in training Habeas, with the result that the pig had some unique capabilities. Doc Savage and his five men, when wishing to consult each other in a tongue which eavesdroppers could not understand, used the speech of the ancient Mayans, the civilization which once flourished in Central America. Probably not half a dozen men in the civilized world, outside of themselves, could speak and understand the language. Monk had taught Habeas to obey commands given in Mayan.

The shoat, on the floorboards of the coupé, had escaped the witch-faced man’s notice, and his attack, directed by Monk in Mayan, had been a surprise.

“We can’t stay here,” Ham said briskly, and glared at Habeas. Ham treated the pig with no more civility than he did Monk.

The scuffle, brief as it had been, had attracted notice, causing pedestrians to stop and stare, undecided as to what they should do.

“Move on!” Ham commanded sharply.

This did not secure very pronounced results. No policemen were in sight as yet.

“Let’s get this guy to the coupé,” Monk grunted. “Doc will want to know about this, and he’ll want to look up Boke, whoever he is, when he gets here.”

The two men started for the coupé, still supporting their unconscious captive. They did not go far.

There was a flurry on the outskirts of the crowd and a man came plunging through, wielding his elbows. He was a scrawny man, unshaven, somewhat shabbily garbed, and he peered at Monk and Ham as if he were very delighted indeed to see them.

“You’re cops!” he gulped excitedly. “I know you’re cops. Sure! You made a swell pinch when you got this guy.”

Monk squinted small eyes at him. Ham opened his orator’s mouth to say something, but the newcomer spouted on without pause.

“Come on,” he snapped. “This mug has been up to some funny business. I want to show you what I accidentally saw in his room.”

He wheeled off and Monk and Ham, vastly surprised, tramped along after him, the cold snow making gritting noises underfoot and the heels of their unconscious captive dragging along with a series of raspings. The stranger had picked up the trombone case.

They came to a doorway and the guide muttered, “It’s in here. I was waitin’ for ’im to come back when I saw you put the hand on ’im.”

Monk stopped suddenly. “You were waiting here?” He pointed at the door.

“Yes,” said the unkempt man.

Monk pointed at the snow particles which did not lie on the sidewalk in sufficient depth to hold footsteps but which had drifted into the doorway in a shallow, cold bank that was unbroken by tracks or other marks which certainly would have been made by the door opening.

“You’re a liar!” Monk said. “A poor one, too.”

The shabby stranger coughed as if he were cold, and under cover of the convulsion, his hands made a bewilderingly swift gesture and were suddenly holding a pistol.

“I’m good enough to get by,” he said.

The crowd, as curious persons will, had followed the little cavalcade, wondering what it was all about and possessed of a morbid desire to see what would happen. They had not followed quite fast enough, however, for any one to be near enough to catch exactly what passed between Monk, Ham and the stranger.

Three men, burly fellows swathed in mufflers, now detached themselves from the crowd and turned upon it, hard-faced and belligerent of manner.

“Here, beat it!” one of them said, and his words threw small puffs of steam into the frosty air. “G’wan! You don’t live here. We’re cops.”

The crowd melted, sheeplike, as city crowds will do in the face of authority.

Monk said something in the strange, not unmusical Mayan dialect, and the pig, Habeas Corpus, spun and raced down the street, feet making clickings and scratchings.

The man with the gun growled, “You say another word I can’t understand and it’ll be just too damn bad!”

The men who had turned the crowd back now joined the fellow with the gun and they themselves produced weapons.

“Inside,” one said. “You know by now that we saw you playing games with our pal here and come down to invite you in where it’s warm.” He picked up the trombone case.

Some one laughed, and snow rasped as Monk and Ham mounted, still carrying the man who had been made unconscious by Ham’s sword cane. In the door, they looked at each other, then let their burden fall heavily.

“Pick ’im up,” they were ordered.

They complied with the command and marched into a passage which seemed colder than the street outside. While guns menaced them, hands searched them. The casual thoroughness of the search showed that these men knew the spots where weapons were carried.

Monk and Ham each wore in an expertly padded holster a firearm which resembled an oversized automatic pistol. These had curled magazines, intricate mechanisms, fine workmanship.

“Damn me,” one man said softly. “First rods I ever saw like these.”

Another man looked at the guns.

“Hell’s bells!” His face blanched; his hands shook a little.

The others eyed him, and one demanded, “Why the chalk and shiver?”

The excited man tapped one weapon. “Doc Savage,” he said.

“Listen,” some one rapped. “What’s this?”

“I’ve read about these. Only Doc Savage’s men carry them. They’re supermachine pistols. The bronze guy himself invented them.”

There was nothing more said for some seconds. One man took out a cigarette, put it between his lips, then took it away from his mouth and mashed it up between slow-moving fingers. Another man, breathing heavily, went back to the door, and looked out.

“Let’s go talk to Boke,” some one rapped. “I don’t like the way this damned thing is shaping up.”

The witch-faced man, reviving from the stupefying effects of the chemical on the end of Ham’s sword cane, began to squirm and moan. Ham and Monk stood him on his feet, but his legs refused to support him and bowed, letting him down face-first to the floor. Saliva came from his mouth and puddled on the grimy, cold carpet.

Monk kicked him; the impact rolled the man half over.

“Cut it!” snarled one of the others.

The witch-faced man reached back and rubbed the spot where he had been kicked, then rolled over and jacked himself up by the strength of his arms. Slowly he raised himself erect.

“The kick was what he needed,” Monk said gloomily.

One of the men scowled at Monk, then at Ham, and said, “Walk ahead of us—and be sure you got a will all made out before you squawk or make a jump.”

The man with the face of a harridan weaved toward the back door, saying, “I’ve got plenty to tell Boke.”

The hallway gave into a cement-floored courtyard which smelled of cold garbage. A cat, the sole living thing in sight, hackled its back and slunk among garbage cans.

Crossing the court, the cavalcade entered a hallway where the air was too hot and mounted stairs, and opened a door. Warm, tobacco-laden air gushed out. A fireplace made fitful red light in the room beyond. The place was windowless. It whitened up blindingly when some one thumbed an electric switch.

Monk and Ham were forced to stand with their faces jammed in corners, not unlike schoolboys receiving punishment. They were warned not to turn around; and Monk, disobeying, was knocked rubber-kneed with a slender stick of stovewood from the fuel rack beside the fireplace.

Some one said, “I wonder what happened to that hog?”

“Hell with the hog!” another snorted. “Hey, Boke, things have been happening!”

One of the most pleasant voices Monk and Ham had ever heard said, “That is to be regretted.”

Monk and Ham both turned their heads. The speaker was not in the room. Just where the voice was coming from, they could not tell, for the menace of a clubbing forced them to face into the corners again.

The spokesman began, “We were all watching the back way just in case something might turn up, and we saw——”

“Let Frightful tell it,” directed the mysterious, amiable voice.

Monk snorted loudly, suddenly realizing that “Frightful” was the nickname of the witch-faced man.

Frightful, listlessness in his voice showing the effects of the drag on the sword cane, said, “I followed your orders, Boke.”

Boke’s voice asked pleasantly, “What do you mean?”

“I plugged Janko Sultman in the head,” said Frightful.

“You cold-blooded devil!” exploded the pleasant-voiced Boke. “Don’t be so definite about such a hideous thing. It gets on my nerves.”

The witch-faced Frightful seemed accustomed to this squeamishness on the part of his chief, for he went on rapidly:

“I wanta tell you about a strange thing I saw when I posted myself on the roof,” he said. “I could see into Janko Sultman’s office, but Sultman wasn’t there. The office was empty. But after while a guy come in. Who d’you think it was?”

Instead of answering as expected, Boke’s remarkably suave voice said hollowly, “I would give my right arm if it had not been necessary to eliminate Sultman. A murder! Horrible!”

Frightful said, “Leander Court came into Sultman’s office while I was watching.”

Boke’s voice, yelling suddenly, demanded, “Who?”

“Leander Court,” Frightful repeated patiently. “He sat around in the office by himself until the telephone rang, and he answered it. What he heard must have made him excited. He threw the phone down and broke the glass out of the office door and crawled through. The door must have had a trick lock.”

“It has,” said pleasant-voiced Boke. “Then what happened?”

“Some guy in the reception room up and fills Leander Court full of bullets. I could see that. Then the guy ran for the stairs. After that, something must’ve happened to the guy, because I heard some bellowing and a lot of cops came, and I heard one of ’em say something about the guy being dead with his eyes sticking out.”

“With what?” demanded Boke.

“His eyes sticking out. Like you’ve been reading about in the papers.”

“It is all very clear to me except that last,” said Boke, puzzlement in his amiable tone. “Janko Sultman had double-crossed us, as we already knew, and had an appointment with Leander Court. He must have put his proposition up to Court over the telephone, or perhaps he had already advanced his proposal and Court had come to give his answer.

“Court refused and tried to flee, and the gunman was one who had been posted by Janko Sultman to kill Court in case the latter was stubborn or threatened to go to Doc Savage. Yes. All is very clear. But what happened to the gunman? Are you sure that his eyes popped out?”

“I’m only tellin’ you what I overheard,” Frightful grumbled.

“Baffling,” said Boke. “I cannot understand it.”

Monk turned his head in another effort to learn where the voice of Boke was coming from, and one of the guards slugged the homely chemist, knocking him against the wall. Monk lashed back with an astounding speed and the assailant staggered away, his jaw possessed of a slightly different shape than it had had a moment before. Pistol muzzles forced Monk back into his corner and made him face the wall.

“Where did these two men come from?” asked Boke’s mysterious voice.

“They got on my trail somehow,” snarled Frightful. “They’re two of Doc Savage’s men.”

“They’re who?” Boke sounded as if he had swallowed something painful.

“Doc Savage’s men,” Frightful repeated, then looked very uneasy, and the others registered concern also.

When Boke’s unique tone sounded again, worry had gone from it, and he laughed.

“It was only a matter of days, anyway,” he said. “Or perhaps of hours. We would have had to fight Doc Savage eventually over this affair. You all know that.”

Frightful made a wry face. “I haven’t been looking forward to it.”

“Hold these two prisoners,” Boke ordered. “Then get hold of Leander Court’s partner. You know who I mean?”

“Yeah.” Frightful nodded. “Robert Lorrey.”

“Exactly,” said Boke. “Arrange an appointment for me with Robert Lorrey. We must whip things up before Doc Savage gets a line on what it is all about. And do not make the mistake of underrating this man Savage. He is assuredly clever.”

A man began, “Don’t worry, chief, I don’t think any of this crowd underrates that bronze——” He did not finish and his eyes flew roundly open and his jaw sagged enough to pull his lips apart so that his teeth showed. They were not nice teeth, being veined up and down and stained so that they resembled chips from an old bone which had lain a long time in the weather.

The man reached up and felt of his ears as if he suspected them of tricks.

For there was a strange trilling loose in the room.