Читать книгу Devil on the Moon: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6
ОглавлениеBEHEMOTH, QUEER MAN
It was somewhat later in the night—a bit over an hour—and two voices were conversing tensely in the darkness. One was Behemoth.
“... it might save a great deal of trouble,” Behemoth was saying.
“No,” said the other speaker. “You’re wasting your time.”
“You won’t tell me what is behind this thing?”
“I won’t tell you anything.”
Behemoth seemed patient enough. “Who was the green man—Vesterate or whatever his name was?”
Silence replied.
“What did that stuff about the moon mean?”
More silence.
“Where is the green man?” Behemoth asked.
“I told you, you’re wasting your time!” insisted the other voice.
“How about telling me what that little blue glass capsule means?”
A shaky sigh was the only response to this query.
“That’s gratitude!” Behemoth complained. “Not only do I pull you out of that inlet after Lurgent threw you in, but I work over you half an hour before you revive.”
“Thank you!” said Lin Pretti.
Behemoth made a growling noise. “Too bad I gotta keep my hands off Lurgent!”
“Do you?”
“Course! And to clear up some doubts in your mind—here’s why. By getting into Lurgent’s gang and pretending to be one of the gang, I hope to learn what’s behind this. Suppose you tell me your story.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The whole thing. Then I’ll give you what I’ve learned. We’ll swap information and maybe have something.”
Lin Pretti shuddered. “It’s all so horrible—so impossible. Those things—I still can’t think they’re men—yet they look like men, only their terrible green garments ...”
“Wait a minute! What the heck kind of talk is this?”
“The first one came over a year ago.” The girl seemed to have trouble controlling her voice. “It was first seen—in my country. No one knew what it was. The initial reports were simply of a man-figure dressed in green tights. Then—then ...”
“I wonder who’s kidding who, here,” Behemoth muttered.
“First a man was found dead, then a woman,” Lin Pretti continued. “Later two more men—it was terrible! They all died the same way—their bodies becoming a deep blue. And doctors could not explain it.”
“Um-m-m.” Behemoth scratched his head.
The girl coughed. “We finally realized that the green man—if you could call it that—was responsible. The police began to hunt. They fired on it several times.”
Behemoth grunted.
“It was a farm boy who first uncovered the truth,” Lin Pretti continued. “He saw the things landing from the sky in strange machines. The farm boy realized they were coming from the moon. Nobody believed him, of course. It seemed impossible. It does seem impossible, doesn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” agreed Behemoth.
“We don’t know why the man-things are here, nor do we know how to combat them. If we could only get hold of one of them, we might learn something. The government of my country has agents all over the world looking for the thing. I heard that one of them was here in America, lurking near the Spanish Plantation roadhouse, so I came to find it.”
“You did, too.”
“I was lucky. The thing acted so strangely when I found it—it seemed to know me—gave me a capsule which looked like blue glass.”
“You know what I think, young lady?”
“Eh?”
“You’re the tallest liar I ever listened to,” Behemoth said.
She did not answer.
Behemoth proceeded to bind the girl and gag her. Then he left her lying there, and went directly to the highway which ran past the Spanish Plantation. There was no traffic this late at night. Behemoth used his flashlight, casting the beam over the road as he walked along.
He came upon two rabbits which lay on the road. They were lifeless and might have been run over by a car during the night. Behemoth stopped when he found the rabbits.
Removing a bit of paper and a pencil from a pocket, Behemoth wrote:
THING DOES NOT MAKE SENSE YET. LOOK
AROUND FOR MAN WEARING GREEN TIGHTS.
HE IS PROBABLY NEAR INLET SOMEWHERE.
Behemoth turned back, dropped this note at the roadside near the rabbits, then hurried on.
A few moments later, a shadowy figure appeared and got the note Behemoth had left.
Later in the night—in fact it was almost dawn—the huge Behemoth appeared at the rear of a rather shabby-looking tourist camp in the vicinity. He carried the bound and gagged girl in his arms. His destination was one of the tourist cabins.
Lurgent opened the door. Sight of the girl made him look as startled as an owl. “Where’d you find her?”
“Oh, just around loose,” Behemoth explained.
Silence followed that. Then Lurgent relaxed.
“Swell!” he said. “Did you find Vesterate?”
“No.”
Lurgent growled. “Then we’d better get back to the inlet and hunt for him.”
Lurgent bawled orders. In a few minutes they were headed toward the inlet.
Morning sunlight on the surface of the inlet made it resemble a mirror as Lurgent, Behemoth and the others, having parked their cars on a road near the Spanish Plantation, reached the shore of the lake.
The men looked around carefully, but it was Behemoth who pointed out the tops of taller trees which had been scorched. He indicated the fact that the scorched tops were in a line leading toward the lake.
Now that it was daylight, the surroundings appeared somewhat different than they had during the night. As they sought the green man’s trail, Lurgent gave too many orders, as if trying to rebuild any damage which Behemoth might have done to his prestige.
Behemoth finally located the trail of the green man.
“He lay here for a while, and the girl and Bob Thomas talked to him,” Behemoth pointed out. “Then the girl and Bob Thomas walked away from him, as if they were searching, then came back. But in the meantime the green man had fled.”
“You a clairvoyant?” Lurgent asked Behemoth.
Behemoth then indicated tiny signs—freshly crushed blades of grass, disturbed dust on leaves—which he claimed were as plain as footprints in mud to him.
“Well, where did that green devil go?” Lurgent snarled.
“This way.”
Behemoth pointed out dried drops of crimson on some weeds. These bloodstains were plain enough for all to see.
“The green man was wounded,” Behemoth explained. A bit later he showed where the man they were trailing had fallen. “Evidently lay here a while. He was probably here while you were off after the girl.”
Lurgent scowled.
“Look!” Behemoth exclaimed. He leveled an arm. The others stared. Lurgent whipped out a gun.
“Who’s that?” Lurgent exploded.
The cause of this excitement was a group of five men. Three were running toward the road about two hundred yards distant. Two of the men sat in a large sedan.
The three running strangers were distinctive. One was a huge, soberly dressed fellow with tremendous hands; his fists seemed large and out of proportion. The second man was a lean, dapper fellow, remarkably well-dressed, carrying a black sword cane. But the third man was the most unusual of the lot, being short, almost as broad as tall. He resembled an ape dressed in a hand-me-down suit. This fellow was trailed by a pig distinguished by amazingly large ears.
These strangers were carrying the green man toward the car.
Behemoth emitted a howl. Diving a hand into a pocket, he brought out a gun, leveled it, fired.
The trio carrying the green man whirled. They seemed startled. Then they dashed for the car with their burden.
Behemoth emitted another howl and let fly more bullets. “C’mon! You paralyzed?” he snapped at Lurgent.
Lurgent acted as if he were in a trance. He didn’t move for a minute. Something seemed to have happened to him; his eyes were wide, his mouth open, his face pale. His knees appeared to be made of rubber. He tried to say something, said, “Wah-wah-wah” instead of words. He acted as if he had suddenly been smitten with a powerful disease that had momentarily rendered him powerless to act as he normally would have.
Behemoth, looking disgusted, ran toward the strange trio who had the green man. Behemoth was not fast enough. His quarry got to the car. Behemoth stopped, planted himself on widespread feet, took deliberate aim, and emptied his revolver.
The car departed with no more concern than if Behemoth had been firing blank cartridges.
Behemoth went back to Lurgent, examining a handful of cartridges as he walked. He seemed to doubt that the cartridges were genuine. Just to make certain, he fired the revolver at the ground. He scowled in astonishment at a hole the bullet made.
“Them guys must’ve had a bulletproof car!” he muttered.
Lurgent cleared his throat. He wore the expression of a man in the middle of a bad dream.
“What the blazes ails you?” asked Behemoth.
Lurgent rubbed his forehead with palm. He didn’t say anything.
“A fine brave bunch of mugs you turned out to be!” Behemoth said scathingly to Lurgent and his men.
Lurgent croaked. “Didn’t you recognize those five men?”
“Huh.”
“I didn’t think you did!” Lurgent said grimly.
“Whatcha mean?”
“Those five—with one exception—are the five most dangerous men you could probably find.”
Behemoth looked bewildered. “I don’t get you.”
“They were Doc Savage’s five assistants!” Lurgent said grimly.
