Читать книгу Resurrection Day: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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General Ino absorbed the morning papers and his coffee-and-spot-of-brandy simultaneously. Then he descended to Proudman Shaster’s offices.

Proudman Shaster was just signing on the dotted line for a bustling young man who looked General Ino over hopefully before he was shooed out.

“What have you been doing?” General Ino wanted to know.

“Taking out more insurance,” groaned Proudman Shaster. “Insurance is a really wonderful thing. Really wonderful.”

“There’s a lot of really wonderful things in this world,” said General Ino. “Uncle Sam makes a lot of them and calls them dollars. By the way, what of the worthy gentlemen I call my colleagues?”

Proudman Shaster sighed and put away his new insurance policy.

“I have been in touch with them.”

“All?”

“Yes. And they are assembling. They will be together in three different hotels at four o’clock this afternoon, awaiting your visit.”

General Ino had long ago stopped assembling his mob all in one body, where, if things went wrong, every one would be nabbed at once by the police. Good, skilled, unscrupulous followers were too difficult to obtain to take such chances of losing them.

“Good,” said General Ino. “I’ll tell them we are going to tackle this Doc Savage. I believe I have picked an excellent time. Have you seen the late newspapers?”

“I have,” Shaster admitted, nervously.

“Doc Savage is getting ready to break something big.”

“He has never done a thing like this before,” Shaster said, gloomily. “Always, he has shunned publicity. Any one wanting his help goes to him. But now, he seems to be coming out to the public for some reason or other.”

“It’s big, I’ll agree,” chuckled General Ino. “And we need something big to line our pocketbooks.”

“It’s so big we’ll choke on it, I’ll bet,” groaned Shaster.

General Ino eyed him narrowly. “Shaky, eh? I believe I’ll give my men the choice of going up against this Doc Savage with me, or of not going. That’ll insure me of having men who are not afraid.”

“It’ll insure you of having no men at all,” Proudman Shaster predicted, gloomily.

General Ino considered.

“On second thought, I won’t give them their choice,” he decided.

Proudman Shaster wailed, “I wish I knew what this Doc Savage is up to!”

A lot of others had Proudman Shaster’s idea. Nobody seemed to really have a gnat’s notion of what it was all about.

The newspapers—afternoon editions—didn’t help any with their second paid ad:

A SECOND PRELIMINARY

ANNOUNCEMENT

We, having faith in Doc Savage’s scientific genius, and knowing him as few—we really believe none—others know him, wish to pave the way for what is coming with some more facts.

For years, Doc Savage has been experimenting along a certain scientific line.

Doc Savage, in fact, has been trying to accomplish something that magicians and fakirs and charlatans have from time immemorial been trying to make people think they could do.

This thing can be done! Some day, some one will do it. That day has come.

Doc Savage can now do it!

But he can do it only once! Just once! And he wants that once to do the world as much good as possible, so he is going to ask the aid of the United States public.

But we will let the details remain for Doc Savage himself to explain.

DOC SAVAGE WILL SPEAK

OVER THE RADIO AT

7 O’CLOCK TO-NIGHT!

It was signed by the same five men who had signed the previous advertisement.

Quite a few radios which were out of order were hurriedly repaired that afternoon.

Statistically minded persons who figured it up decided Doc Savage had spent all of a quarter of a million dollars in advertising. Every newspaper—daily—in the country had carried the announcements. The radio proclamation, study of any radio column revealed, was to be a really nation-wide network. Every single radio station broadcasting in the United States was on the hook-up. And those who knew radio knew it had taken plenty of money to swing that.

But every one knew that Doc Savage had, and had had for years, some secret source of fabulous wealth.

A pin dropping would have sounded like a gunshot on the ether waves of the nation at seven o’clock that night.

Doc Savage came on the air without any trace of a preliminary announcement.

Nobody was confused. Nobody thought for an instant that any one except Doc Savage was speaking. And yet Doc Savage had never before spoken over the radio on a national hook-up.

There was something about the voice. It was controlled, modulated, deep, and it somehow conveyed the impression that it was a voice which could do some amazing things, and that its owner was an individual who could do even more amazing things.

Anyway, Doc Savage’s first thirteen words knocked the breath out of his listeners.

“It is in my power to bring a dead man back to life,” he said.

Then he waited for that to soak in.

“Only one man can be brought back to life,” he went on. “That is because the process requires the use of a new element in a combination which takes at least ten years to develop. You all know how the juice of an apple must be allowed to ferment before it becomes vinegar. It is the same with this element combination, except that the time process covers years.”

Another pause for it to be absorbed.

“It does not matter how long the dead man has been dead,” the remarkable voice of Doc Savage continued. “The body must be intact, or the mummy of it intact.”

Again, a pause.

“Now, so much for the statement of what can be done. Here is the real reason for all of the display behind this. Here is why we have gone to so much trouble to get the public attention of the country.

“We want help. We want suggestions. In short, we want to know who the people of the United States want brought back to life.”

The ether was remarkably quiet all over the nation. Strangely, it happened that there was practically no static, so almost every listener got a perfect reception from his set.

“Who will do the world the most good, if brought back to life? These are the names of the committee of men and women who have been appointed to make the final decision. They will want your instructions. Mail, telephone, or telegraph them to the committee members.”

There followed a list of names and addresses, given slowly, and strangely enough, given in some uncanny fashion so that even the listeners with poor memories had no trouble remembering at least one or two of the names.

The newspapers commented on this the next day, but none of them hit on the truth—Doc Savage had developed a teaching technique, the ability to tell a thing so that it was not forgotten. It was simply in the manner in which the words were delivered, the dramatic emphasis put on them.

An announcer came on the air and said, “That was Doc Savage speaking.”

He nearly scared his listeners out of their skins. The announcer had always been credited with a pleasant, excellent voice; but now, after that remarkable voice which had just finished speaking, he sounded like a crow dying.

Of course, there was excitement. Talk, at least. Every one had probably at some time or other dreamed what a great thing it would be to bring a dead person back to life; so the thing caught the popular fancy.

The following day was a holiday—Sunday—so every one had plenty of time to talk about it. A number of hastily arranged sermons were preached on the subject. They were, remarkably enough, favorable. Let Doc Savage go ahead, if he could, was their consensus. There was not much talk about mere man keeping his hands off the celestial arrangement of things.

Telephone operators, telegraphers and mailmen had no time to think or talk, though. The suggestions were already pouring in. The judges had a phalanx of secretaries classifying the suggestions, and numbering them.

The following day, Monday, newspapers printed everything they could find about Doc Savage. For the first time in his history, Doc Savage permitted some facts about himself to get out. Mainly, they had to do with his scientific training, and there was enough data to convince even the most skeptical that Doc Savage was little short of an inventive wizard.

He had perfected, it seemed, innumerable scientific and surgical discoveries about which the public had no idea of the inventor. The skeptics, and there were a number, dug up plenty of proof that all this was the truth.

The suggestions from the public continued to pour in. There were all kinds. As to the man to be brought back to life, they wanted the sublime and the ridiculous. Names advanced ranged from Napoleon to Lincoln to a grieving neighbor woman’s dead little daughter.

Innumerable parents wanted departed children resurrected, and living children wanted parents back. These latter pleas were sincere, moving, and often came in on tear-stained stationery. On a number of occasions the secretaries doing the classifying were found sobbing as the result of some particularly heart-stirring appeal.

The general effect was to bring home the undeniable fact that death is one of the profound things of life, and that the power of resurrection, by science or by a miracle, was a thing of fabulous possibilities in the bringing of joy to a bereaved one, to say nothing of the feelings of the deceased who might or might not be snatched out of a place where he or she didn’t care to be.

One anonymous suggestor wanted Lucrezia Borgia brought back so she could administer poison to the current crop of politicians.

The thing grew every day, and it was not, to use an old Dutch expression, all beer and skittles for Doc Savage and his idea and plan. There is probably no such thing as getting the press of the United States all in accord about one thing, and this was no exception.

While one newspaper would sing Doc Savage’s praises in print, another would demand that he be drawn, quartered and hung out for inspection so the public could see just what kind of a mechanism he was that he should get the country so stirred up over something he couldn’t, obviously, accomplish. He was a fakir, that’s what. A humbug, an overrated publicity snatcher.

The name and the fame, as it were, of Doc Savage were growing, of course. His picture was in all the newspapers, and commentators on the radio discussed him, some reverently, some with the sharp scalpels of ridiculing disbelief. The comedians on the stage began to crack their bum jokes, and those on the radio, worse ones.

Naturally, it all took a few days. The barbed-wire fences around Doc Savage’s skyscraper offices proved a wise precaution, because most of New York City took turns at trying to pay the place a visit. Newspapermen, writers, photographers and cranks and quacks and wise guys of every description were turned away. Doc Savage was in seclusion on the eighty-sixth floor of the skyscraper.

Communication with the public was handled by two of Doc Savage’s aids commonly called “Monk” and “Ham.”

Monk was practically as broad as he was tall; he had no forehead to speak of, enough mouth for several men, and with only a little more stubby, red hair his skin would have made a fair ape-skin rug. His full name was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and he had a pet pig named Habeas Corpus which was as funny a hog as Monk was a human. Monk was also one of the world’s leading chemists.

Ham was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and Harvard acclaimed him as its greatest law-school graduate, and the rest of the world admitted that might be right.

That part of the world interested in snappy clothes admitted also that Ham was the best dressed man in New York, if not in the United States.

Ham not only admitted the distinction. He claimed it, and was practically willing to use his innocent-looking black cane, in reality a sword cane with the tip chemically treated so that a prick produced quick unconsciousness, on any one willing to argue the point.

Ham also had a pet. Chemistry. Chemistry had been named after Monk’s profession. That was to aggravate Monk. Chemistry by himself also aggravated Monk, because Chemistry was a runt edition of some kind of an ape, and he was what they call in the Missouri hills, “just about a spittin’ image” of Monk.

These four—Monk, Ham, Habeas Corpus, Chemistry—got along, as far as the outside world could see, in an alarming way. It seemed only a question of time until they ate each other up.

A newspaper reporter asked questions through the barbed-wire fence.

“Tell me one thing, you two. Doc Savage has always dodged publicity. Now he’s handing it out by the barrel. Why?”

Monk said, “It’s this way. Doc can bring a guy to life, and——”

“A guy?” said the newsman dryly. “The women of the country will like that! Why not bring a woman to life?”

“Doc ain’t never gone for the fems,” Monk grinned. “That end is my specialty.”

Ham put in crisply, “Whoever the committee selects will be brought back to life. It will be necessary for the country to have faith in Doc Savage and his scientific wizardry, or some people will think the thing is a fake.

“The person brought back to life is to be one who will do, it is hoped, infinite good for mankind. That person will have to have the confidence of the public. The public will have to believe the individual is the real, genuine, original article who has been brought back to life; otherwise it will be impossible to accomplish what we hope for.

“In other words, we are bringing a great person back to this trouble-ridden world to aid humanity, and humanity must believe in him to be aided.”

Monk put in, “About half the suggestions coming to the judges are to bring Jesus of Nazareth back to life. That illustrates the point. If we tried to make the public think we were going to produce Christ, they’d know we were fakes, because even Doc Savage’s assistance would hardly be necessary there.

“This thing is dead on the level, and one man, and only one, can be brought back to life. It might be a woman. The judges will tell. We’re trying to make the American public understand that Doc Savage can do this thing, incredible as we’ll admit it sounds.”

“Doc Savage has spent a period of years perfecting the method,” Ham said.

“The judges,” Monk repeated, “will select the subject to be resurrected by modern science.”