Читать книгу Resurrection Day: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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Orchid Jones now did something that cost a great many persons their lives in the course of time. The thing was done in an effort to save his own neck.

He simply attempted to cover up all clues by going over the place thoroughly for finger prints, using a towel and a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of the senatorial bathroom.

The finger prints were not many, for Orchid had worn rubber gloves while washing dishes and cooking, and cotton ones while dusting and making the bed—a circumstance to which Senator Funston had failed to attach enough importance.

Orchid listened from time to time, but no sounds indicated any one coming. He was not worrying too much about being discovered. He had a henchman outside to keep a lookout.

The murderer, satisfied that any clues were removed to the last degree, left the apartment, joined his confederate in the street, and they drove away.

It was then that Orchid Jones observed his hands, but he did not realize he was looking at what was the equivalent of a death warrant for many people. He merely noted that the alcohol he had used to remove the finger prints had dissolved some of the unusually good black stain with which he had given himself a Negro’s complexion.

Twenty minutes later, Orchid Jones walked into a hotel room where General Ino sat giving Proudman Shaster a gem of Oriental philosophy which he had composed himself on the spur of the moment.

“The success of a careful planner looks like the success of a damn fool to an outsider who doesn’t know——” Ino stopped and eyed Orchid Jones. “Well, dark flower, what is wrong?”

“I had to kill the damn senator,” said Orchid.

“Knowing you, I’ll bet you did—not,” said General Ino. “But what were the circumstances?”

“The windbag tricked us.”

“You don’t say! Who ever heard of a senator being tricky!”

“They ain’t bringing Thomas Jefferson back to life,” growled Orchid Jones.

“No?” General Ino made the one-word sound like an inquiry. And he had become suddenly serious.

“I thought it’d be Thomas A. Edison,” said Orchid. “Edison was my guess, see. But I was wrong.”

“Not an impossible circumstance,” General Ino reminded, dryly. “But you can spare us the drama.”

Ino frowned and waited.

Orchid whispered the name which had been yielded by poor Senator Funston.

The name gave General Ino a shock. He was silent for moments.

“I’ve heard,” Proudman Shaster put in uneasily, “that Savage does not miss many bets.”

Ham, the other lawyer who was one of Doc Savage’s aids, held about the same ideas—of Doc Savage’s habit of passing up no bets.

A big plane slammed over Washington with a volleying sound, coming from the direction of New York, and Ham sat in a comfortable seat in the plane and carefully daubed the tip of his sword cane with a fresh supply of the sticky chemical which produced harmless unconsciousness a very few moments after it got into an open wound.

“Listen, pitiful and stupid,” Ham said. “We’re here in Washington in such a hurry because that attempt to get the name from Senator Funston means somebody is up to something, and Doc wants to look into it.”

“You’re so bright you can’t see nothin’ but your own glitter!” Monk complained in his small, childlike voice. “Don’tcha think I know why we’re here?”

Major Thomas J. Roberts, better known as “Long Tom,” sat opposite Monk. He was a thin, pale man who would have been eyed speculatively by any undertaker. Despite his unhealthy appearance, no one could recall his ever having been ill. He was an electrical wizard, and one of Doc Savage’s aids. The name Long Tom had been earned long ago, after he had staged a hectic experience with one of those old-fashioned cannons known as a “long tom.”

“You two have become pickled in your own bile,” Long Tom told Monk and Ham.

Doc Savage was flying the plane. He slanted it down upon the airport just across the Potomac. Two airport attendants sauntered out, one finishing off a sandwich, the other picking his teeth. They looked at who was getting out of the plane and the one nearly choked on what was left of the sandwich.

“Doc Savage!”

“Yeah,” agreed the other. “I’d recognize him anywhere!”

The taxi driver recognized him. So did two policemen, one of whom was standing on the traffic circle below the Capitol building which you pass before you turn to get on Delaware Avenue.

They went into Senator Funston’s apartment house, and got no answer to their ring. The door lock delayed Doc Savage about half a minute, which was long for him, and they went in and looked at the Senator’s corpse.

They had hardly glanced at the body the first time when a strange and fantastic sound came into existence—a trilling with a quality that defied description. So low that at times its existence seemed more imagination than actuality. It rose and fell, definitely musical without having a tune. It was exotic. It might have been the result of a small wind in a naked, sleet-laden forest.

This fantastic sound was made, without conscious effort, by the giant bronze man who was the fourth of the plane’s party.

The physical development of this bronze man was striking. Not alone because he was a giant with Herculean muscles, but because his development was so symmetrical that his true size was apparent only when he stood close to others to whom his proportions might be compared.

His skin had a fine texture and a bronze hue that must have come from countless tropical suns. His features were regular, but not what could be called finely chiseled, and the result was a striking handsomeness.

But the bronze giant’s eyes were the most unusual thing about him. Like pools of flake gold stirred away by tiny, invisible winds, the eyes had something almost weird about them. They seemed to have a power to compel, to do super-natural things.

There were many unusual qualities in this bronze giant who was Doc Savage.

Monk, the chemist, said. “Well, here’s my chance to try out my new finger print stuff.”

He was carrying it with him—a small case containing what looked like a flat perfume atomizer. He pressed the bulb of this, and threw an almost invisible spray over the telephone, the backs of wooden chairs, the table and anywhere else that hands might have touched. Wherever the vapor settled, finger prints came out instantly.

The prints were as plain as if they had been painstakingly printed there.

Monk looked at Doc Savage. “By George, you were right about me mixing this junk up wrong, Doc! The suggestion you gave me made an improvement!”

They began to go over the prints, Doc Savage employing a small pocket magnifier.

“Senator Funston apparently had no visitors at all at his apartment,” the bronze man said quietly at last. “There are no prints around except the senator’s.”

Eventually, the bronze giant picked up the towel and the bottle of rubbing alcohol with which Orchid Jones had wiped off his finger prints.

“There was some one here when the senator telephoned me,” Doc said. “He spoke to the person, his exact words being, ‘Quit that cussing, Orchid!’ Ham, you see the apartment superintendent, and ask about Orchid.”

The dapper lawyer did not take long to report back. “Orchid was Orchid Jones, the cook,” Ham stated.

Doc Savage’s flake gold eyes seemed occupied by the towel he was holding. “Negro?”

“Black as Monk’s conscience,” Ham admitted.

Doc glanced at Monk, and the homely chemist at once declared, “Ham’s a liar, as usual! My conscience is as pure and white as—as——”

Doc said, “Have you got your pocket laboratory with you?”

“I’ve got some key chemicals,” Monk said. “I always carry ’em. Stuff you can make a lot of basic tests and combinations, and——”

“Let me have them a moment.”

Monk passed them over.

Doc made several simple chemical tests on dark areas of the towel. These were hardly smears. More like sections where the linen had darkened.

“All right,” he said. “We will leave now.”

“But the killer!” Ham demanded. “There’s no clue, and we can hardly pass this killing up!”

“On the contrary,” Doc corrected. “There is a very definite clue. It should lead us directly to Orchid Jones.”

Orchid Jones was not afraid. He leaned back, lolling a cigar around with his tongue. He dearly loved cigars, and playing the part of Orchid Jones had not permitted him to smoke them. He angrily threw down a washrag with which he had endeavored to make some imprint on the dye on his face and hands. The rag smelled of alcohol.

“No dice!” he complained. “I thought alcohol would take the stuff off, but it only gets a little of it at first; then it don’t do any more good.”

General Ino looked vaguely interested. “What made you think alcohol would help?”

“Some of it came off on the towel when I was wiping off my finger prints in the senator’s apartment,” Orchid explained.

“I see. Where’s the towel?”

“Left it. It wasn’t stained enough that anybody’ll notice.”

“I see.”

General Ino got up and went into another room. When he came back, he was holding a small packet in his hands, and a slip of paper.

“Listen,” he said. “I told you the only thing that will take that stain off is a certain combination of three rather unusual chemicals. You can purchase them at a chemical supply house. There is surely one in Washington.”

He handed over the slip of paper.

“The names of the chemicals are written on that,” he said.

Orchid Jones looked at them, frowned while his lips made futile twistings trying to pronounce the chemical terms; then he said, “You mix one part of each, and add enough water to make a paste, eh?”

“Right.” General Ino leaned forward. “Now, here’s something else I want to talk about.”

Orchid put away the paper with the chemical names. “Let fly.”

General Ino unwrapped his package. “You see this?”

He held up a tiny jar of something that might have been a salve. The jar had no label.

“What is it?” Orchid asked.

“You take it and put some under your finger nails,” said General Ino, not answering the question directly. “When they catch you, if they do, you do something that looks perfectly natural. You gnaw your finger nails.”

Orchid wet his lips and looked as if he didn’t like the idea much. “I gnaw my finger nails, eh?”

“The stuff under them will make you unconscious for about a week,” explained General Ino. “They can’t question you, and by that time, we’ll have things straightened out.”

“I see,” Orchid said uneasily.

General Ino stood erect.

“Ever’thing bane sat,” he observed, sounding something like a Scandinavian. “Aye tank Aye ban’ go home.”

He did.

Orchid Jones slept well the rest of the night. He had been one of General Ino’s men for years, and he knew the general was about as smooth an article as lived; or, at least, as followed criminal ways.

Came nine o’clock and Orchid Jones turned up at the town’s leading drug house, to ask for the chemicals on his list. There was a delay of perhaps ten minutes while the order was filled because, it was explained, these chemicals were a bit rare and would have to be gotten out of stock.

Orchid Jones was dressed as a Negro.

He got his chemicals, paid for them, walked out of the door, and two men came alongside of him and grasped him by the elbows.

Orchid looked at the men and nearly had heart failure. One of the men was squat and hairy, the other slender and very dapperly clad. Orchid knew they were Doc Savage’s two aids, Monk and Ham.

He tried to get out his gun. They hit him on the head, and while he was stunned, took his gun away from him. They got Orchid into a curtained car.

“Pretty soft,” Monk said. “Orchid Jones has changed his sex, but that didn’t make no difference.”

Orchid swallowed several times and managed to get his heart back somewhere near where it belonged. He had not been so scared since he was a small kid and had been caught stealing a revolver.

“H—how’d you find me?” he gulped.

“Doc analyzed the stuff on the towel and learned the dye on your skin was a type which had to be removed by a certain mixture of chemicals,” Monk informed him. “All we did was check on all the drug concerns around here to see who had bought that combination of chemicals. Nobody had. So we waited for somebody to buy ’em. All the drug concerns were to notify us. When they telephoned about you, we zipped right over.”

Orchid Jones was silent and looked at his hands. The stuff under his finger nails looked as innocent as traces of grime.

“What you gonna do with me?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Monk said, “but ask you some questions. I mean, maybe we won’t do nothing to you, if you answer the questions.”

Orchid Jones glanced furtively at his captors and read that they meant what they said and that he was in a very bad jam. He looked at his finger nails again.

He began gnawing his finger nails.

He took only a couple of gnaws and he began to shake, a vile-looking foam came to his lips. He shook more violently. His eyes popped. He made some gargling noises.

A horrible look got into his eyes and showed that Orchid Jones understood what was happening to him.

“Arg-aw-r-gr!” he said, and it was no more understandable than that.

“What the heck?” exploded Monk.

Orchid Jones continued to make noises that he hoped were words, but among the words, only a name was understandable.

“Carson Alexander Olman,” was the name.

Orchid Jones stopped shaking and frothing after a time.

Monk examined him.

When the homely chemist looked up from his examination, he wore an expression both startled and disgusted.

“Orchid Jones,” said Monk, “is as dead as he can be.”