Читать книгу Meteor Menace: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3

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There is a theory among scientists that the ancestors of the Indians of North and South America came from Asia.

This probably explained how “Saturday” Loo could don a bright-colored blanket poncho, mingle with a crowd in Antofagasta, Chile, and pass himself off as a native son of the Andes.

Saturday Loo’s poncho was not a disguise, exclusively. It concealed an object which resembled a single-shot pistol, with a barrel large enough to accommodate shotgun cartridges. The poncho also hid a long rope, six pairs of handcuffs, a gas mask, and an assortment of tear-gas bombs.

Safety first was a fetish with Saturday Loo. The shotgun-sized implement, which was a Very pistol firing a slug that would burst into a smoke puff high in the air, should set machinery in motion to settle the business at hand. But there was always the chance of a slipup. Hence the rope, handcuffs, and tear gas to fall back upon.

Taking care not to bump into any one, which might call attention to what he carried under his poncho, Saturday Loo worked forward.

At least two hundred thousand Chilean citizens were gathered on this hill outside Antofagasta. The center of attention was a high speakers’ rostrum of temporary construction. Everybody was pushing and elbowing to get closer to the rostrum, although great loudspeakers of a public-address system were scattered everywhere, and should guarantee all hearing what was to be said.

“Puerco!” gritted a man who had been elbowed. “Pig! Why do you shove?”

“I want to see the bronze man at close range,” said the one who had done the elbowing, unabashed.

That seemed to be the thought every one had. They wanted to see the bronze man.

Back of the speakers’ rostrum towered a structure which, once it was completed, would undoubtedly be the largest building in Antofagasta. It was possibly half finished. Its architecture was plain and substantial. A great sign hanging over the freshly mortared bricks read:

EL HONOR DE DOC SAVAGE

In case there should be any one unable to read Spanish, the legend was elaborated below in English:

THIS FREE HOSPITAL ERECTED

IN HONOR OF DOC SAVAGE

The building was being dedicated. The crowd was here for the ceremony, and to see the bronze man.

The bronze man was Doc Savage, that giant, mysterious worker of miracles about whom all Chile was agog.

In make-up, the crowd ranged from austere grandees of Castilian descent, who had driven to the ceremony in shiny American limousines, to stocky brown Aymaran Indians from far back in the Andes mountains, who probably had come to town driving a string of llamas. The resemblance of these latter to Asiatics was startling.

Saturday Loo was an Asiatic, so he passed among them without drawing attention. To be exact, Saturday Loo was a Tibetan.

As many as one fourth of the Tibetan men become monks or holy men, with a very strict code of morals. Saturday Loo had never been tempted in that direction. A more thorough rogue than he could not be found between the Himalaya Mountains and the Gobi Desert.

Saturday Loo made directly for a cluster of poncho-clad men who hardly seemed to share the enthusiasm of the crowd about the bronze man. These also resembled Aymaran Indians, but were swart Asiatics.

“My children,” Saturday Loo hailed them grandly, “make less long the expressions on your faces. One would think you were going to your respective funerals.”

“If there should be an error, our fate may be exactly that,” mumbled a man.

“Aye,” agreed another. “I have heard that this bronze man, this Doc Savage, is very dangerous.”

“They say those who molest the bronze man disappear and are never heard from again,” offered a third.

“He is indeed what Yankees call ‘hell-on-wheels.’”

“Look what he did here in Chile.”

“Two hundred thousand people have come to catch a glimpse of him. That proves he is a great man, and dangerous to molest.”

“The gun which makes the loudest report does not always shoot the hardest,” quoted Saturday Loo. “You are children scaring each other with ghost stories. Stop it! This great crowd only makes our work the easier.”

The conversation was carried on in a Tibetan dialect, which none of the surrounding Chileans understood. In addition, voices were kept low.

Saturday Loo stared narrowly at his assistants. He could see that his words had not relieved them a great deal. Several times, the tobacco-colored men rolled uneasy glances upward. They squirmed, and tried not to let their chief see these overhead stares.

The skyward gazing came to Saturday Loo’s attention, however. He understood what was really making his helpers uneasy.

“So that is it!” he snapped. His voice, however, was a bit shrill.

The Tibetans shifted their shoulders under the ponchos, but said nothing.

“You fear the blue meteor!” Saturday Loo accused.

“Aye,” one fellow mumbled admission. “We fear it.”

“Suppose the blue meteor could not be controlled,” said another, and shuddered visibly. “You all know what would happen to us in that case.”

In the general exchange of looks which followed this statement, Saturday Loo joined. They were hardened rogues, yet mention of the blue meteor had conjured up a stark terror within their souls.

Whatever the mysterious blue meteor was, these men obviously feared it more than they dreaded the possibility of being, after death, sent back to earth in the form of rabbits, which, in some Tibetans, is their idea of going to hell.

“We will draw away a safe distance,” Saturday Loo said hoarsely. “Inside this blanket of a thing which I am wearing is a signal gun. When the bronze man appears, I am to discharge the weapon into the sky.”

“And the blue meteor will come?” asked a man.

“Aye. And the blue meteor will come.”

They moved through the crowd. Not wishing to attract attention, they curbed a natural inclination to elbow people out of their path, and only jostled gently.

“How far is a safe distance?” asked one Tibetan.

“A very great distance!” muttered another.

“Two hundred yards, in this case,” said Saturday Loo.

“But the blue meteor has been known to affect men for miles——”

“Two hundred yards!” snapped Saturday Loo. “This time, it is not powerful.”

As the villainous Saturday Loo and his fellow miscreants worked out of the crowd and took up a position in the shade of a rickety stand selling beer, fruit and empanadas, or meat pies, there was one person who watched them intently.

The observer was a young woman; and in her gaze was fear, loathing, and a growing horror.

The young lady herself was in turn the focus of no little attention, for she was possibly the most exquisite thing in femininity that Antofagasta had seen recently.

Once sure the Tibetans would not see her, she squeezed rapidly through the crowd toward the speaking rostrum. Desperation was in her brown eyes, and she nibbled nervously at the inside of entrancing Cupid lips.

She was taller than many of the Chileans, even the men, and she gazed anxiously over heads toward the rostrum.

Chilean señoritas, those of pure Castilian descent, are noted for the comeliness of their figures, but more than one envious eye followed the girl who was working her way feverishly toward the speaking stand.

The tall Venus had hair about the hue of rich mahogany, which was in marked contrast to the tresses of the surrounding señoritas.

She reached the vicinity of the rostrum and glanced anxiously about. She was an American herself, and apparently searching for Yankee faces. Seeing none, she accosted a Chilean.

“I must find Doc Savage,” she gasped. “It’s on a vitally important matter. Where can I locate him?”

“No sabe el Ingles,” replied the Chilean.

The young woman shook her head and nipped her lips in exasperation. She did not speak Spanish. She supposed the fellow had told her that he did not understand English. She continued her search for a Yankee—and found two of them a moment later.

They were such an incongruous pair that she stopped and stared.

One of the Yanks looked as if an immediate ancestor had been a three-hundred-pound gorilla. His great, corded, red-bristled arms were nearly long enough to permit him to walk on all fours without stooping.

He had an enormous mouth, a tuft of a nose, which apparently had been pounded by many fists, and little eyes almost lost in pits of gristle. His ears were shapeless, and one was perforated with a hole the size of a lead pencil—an opening which could have been made by a bullet.

The hair on his nubbin of a head, as coarse as rusty shingle nails, and of about the same hue, seemed an extension of his shaggy eyebrows. This gave one the impression of a skull with no room provided for brains.

The girl looking on did not yet know it, but this apish giant was Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair, one of the world’s greatest chemists, former lieutenant colonel in the U. S. army, and at present one of a group of five men associated with Doc Savage in his worldwide adventures.

The anthropoidlike Monk carried a large box under an arm. One end of this was fitted with a screened ventilating hole. From the box came grunting sounds.

Monk was leering at his companion.

The other was a perfectly dressed wasp of a man, by far the most impeccably clad personage in the crowd of two hundred thousand or so. He had a prominent nose, bright eyes, and the large, mobile mouth of a trained orator.

In both hands he gripped a slender, black cane. With this, he seemed about to strike the human ape before him.

“You fuzzy accident!” he snarled. “You hairy missing link!”

Some of the dapper gentleman’s colleagues in New York might have been shocked at his performance, for he was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, considered one of the most astute lawyers Harvard had ever turned out.

He was also commonly called “Ham,” and was one of Doc Savage’s group of five men.

Ham’s cane, which was harmless enough to the eye, was actually a sword cane.

Ham was also—he probably would have died rather than admit it—the best friend of the apish Monk. He would have freely sacrificed his own life for Monk’s well-being, should that be necessary. Monk would also do the same for Ham.

An observer would have sworn the pair were perpetually on the point of slaughtering each other.

“You bobble of nature!” Ham continued vitriolically. “You overgrown, bob-tailed jungle denizen.”

Monk leered blissfully at Ham. From the box under the apish chemist’s arm came a series of piggy grunts and shrilling squeals.

“You only brought that blasted pig along to get in my hair,” Ham growled.

“Where d’you get that stuff, you loud-dressin’ shyster?” Monk grunted. “I’ll take Habeas Corpus wherever I daggone——”

Monk swallowed the rest. His pleasantly ugly face became somewhat blank. His little eyes glistened in their pits of gristle.

A vision whom Monk would have taken oath was the prettiest girl in the world, had confronted them.

“Can you gentlemen tell me where Doc Savage may be found?” asked the young woman.

Monk and Ham stared, tongue-tied. The girl’s beauty had taken the wind from their sails.

“Darn it!” the young woman said disgustedly, apparently addressing herself. “I thought you looked like men who could speak English. I guess you cannot.”

Monk and Ham hastily ceased staring, and registered some embarrassment.

“I hope you will overlook the bad manners of my hairy friend, here,” Ham told the beauty politely. “Monk used to be the wild man in a circus, and he got the habit of looking at everybody as if he wanted to eat them.”

“He’s a liar, miss,” Monk put in hastily. “He’s got a wife and thirteen children. His offspring are all half-witted, like their father.”

Instead of smiling at what Monk and Ham intended to be humor that would break the ice, the young lady seemed distressed. When she spoke, there was brittle fear in her voice.

“If you know where I can find Doc Savage, please tell me,” she pleaded in a strained voice.

Monk and Ham sobered.

“Is your business with Doc important?” Ham asked sharply.

“Extremely!”

The chemist and the lawyer exchanged glances. The girl sounded as if she were in earnest.

“Does Doc Savage know you?” Monk queried.

“Rae Stanley is my name. My father is Professor Elmont Stanley. Mr. Savage does not know me, but he has probably heard of my father.”

“What do you want to see Doc about?”

Attractive Rae Stanley shook her head. “That must be strictly between Doc Savage and myself.”

“In inquiring about Doc, how did you happen to pick on us?” Monk asked curiously.

“You were the first men I saw who looked as if they might be able to speak English,” Rae explained.

“Then you didn’t know we’re two of Doc’s outfit?”

The girl’s brown eyes widened. Her exquisite features showed delight.

“This is a break!” she ejaculated. “I can give my warning to you, then go back to my quarters. I am in danger every minute that I am away.”

This caused Monk and Ham to register intense curiosity and bewilderment.

“You’re risking something to come here and warn Doc?” Ham demanded.

“My life,” said Rae Stanley.

“What do you want to warn Doc against?”

The girl moistened her lips and glanced upward. There was a nervousness in her manner which indicated that she would not have been surprised had some menace been lurking above.

“The blue meteor!” she said rapidly. “I came to warn—oh-h-h—there’s Shrops!”

Her words changed into a scream which put teeth on edge. She clapped both hands over her mouth, as if to make a lid that would keep the sound back. Stark horror had come suddenly into her eyes. She spun and fled.

“She saw some guy named Shrops behind us,” Ham barked.

Both he and Monk turned to scrutinize the crowd.