Читать книгу Meteor Menace: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Within range of Monk’s and Ham’s eyes was a heterogeneous collection of humanity. Swart Andean Indians and Cholas, or mixed bloods, made up the bulk of the crowd, but there were also Chileans as white-skinned as Swedes. There were scores of Yankees, these for the most part being engineers connected with Chile’s great nitrate industry.

One man caught the attention of Monk and Ham. This fellow did not stand many feet distant, and he was facing directly toward them.

He was an apple of a man. His body was a plump apple equipped with arms and legs, and his head another ruddy apple. He wore a fawn-colored lap-over vest, striped trousers, and a gray derby. The derby was hardly a headgear for tropical wear.

He seemed rotund and amiable, except for his mouth, which was reminiscent of a bear trap.

He saw Monk and Ham centering their attention on him, and promptly spoke. He had a strong Cockney accent.

“Wot ’appened?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Monk grunted.

“The girl acted ’arf barmy,” said the Cockney. “She must o’ seen somethin’ behind me to scare ’er bad.”

The Cockney turned, lifted on tiptoe, and peered over the heads of the crowd. Then he settled back on his feet and shook his head.

“Hi bloody well don’t see nothin’ corkscrewey.”

“Is your name Shrops?” Ham asked the Cockney.

“Blimme, no!”

Speaking from the corner of his enormous mouth, so that only Ham could hear, Monk said: “Let’s go get that girl.”

Ham gave the handle of his cane a slight twist, an act which prepared the hidden sword for a quick draw.

“O. K. Come on!”

The Cockney watched them as they shoved through the crowd. He even stood on tiptoe to keep them in sight.

Gorillalike Monk, glancing back, noted the Cockney’s curiosity. He growled: “I wonder if he could be Shrops?”

“What makes you wonder that?” Ham demanded.

“Well, he’s gawking——”

“Anybody would gawk, after the way that girl acted!”

Ham shouldered lustily at poncho-clad Indians, and did not hesitate to whack an occasional son of the Andes with the sword cane. But he was not making much progress in the throng.

“Get behind me!” Monk ordered. “Let a guy go through this crowd who knows how to do it.”

Carrying the case containing his pet pig high over his head with one hand, and using the other to move people out of the way as if they were stalks in a ripe grain field, Monk plowed through the assemblage.

Ham kept close at Monk’s heels, craning his neck. Being taller than Monk, Ham could peer over the crowd. Brown-eyed, mahogany-haired Rae Stanley should have been easy to locate. She was taller than the Chileans.

Her head, however, was not visible above the sea of mantillas, flat straw hats, and colored knit caps.

“Blast it!” Ham grunted. “She’s ducked out of sight.”

They veered to the right, and when the young woman did not materialize, worked in a circle. Nowhere did they see the attractive bit of femininity who had claimed she had a warning for Doc Savage.

“Let’s go back and talk to that Cockney,” Monk growled. “There was somethin’ suspicious about that mug!”

Monk and Ham furrowed their way back to the spot where they had left the Cockney. Reaching the vicinity, they halted to stare about disgustedly.

“He’s skipped!” Monk grunted.

“I’ll bet he really was Shrops!” Ham said thoughtfully.

A soft hissing came from the public address loud-speakers, which were mounted atop poles. The amplifiers had been switched on.

Monk grasped Ham’s elbow. “Have you forgotten that Doc sent you here to make a speech?”

Ham objected. “But that girl has something important——”

“We may be able to spot her from the rostrum,” Monk interrupted. “Come on!”

The huge, hairy chemist, and the slender, immaculate lawyer worked toward the speakers’ platform.

A stiff-backed, official-looking Chilean gentleman marched up and positioned himself in front of the bank of microphones which fed the public-address system. Waving his arms in the animated fashion to which Latins are addicted, he began to speak.

“We still hope that this bronze wonder man, who is the hero of all Chile, will appear at our ceremony,” he said in flowery Spanish. “As you all know, however, this heroic gentleman is not one who likes to accept public acclaim in person. Therefore, he informed me he would not be present.”

A profound silence settled over the crowd. The human sea seemed to have frozen, with the exception of one spot, where Monk and Ham were elbowing a path.

“While we wait, hoping that he will come,” continued the Chilean spellbinder, “I am going to give you a few facts about this mighty personage to whom Chile owes more than can ever be repaid.”

Monk and Ham exchanged glances, and Monk grinned. “I wonder how much this speechmaker really knows about Doc?”

The orator continued: “The bronze man, Doc Savage, is an individual, the like of whom the world has never before seen. He is a superman, a colossus of brawn and brain who has been trained scientifically from the day of his birth to follow his present career.”

The speaker paused to let that sink in, then went on: “Doc Savage, by a routine of daily exercise, pursued each day since childhood, has acquired an almost fantastic muscular development, a physical strength beside which that of Samson would pale.

“In addition, it is said that no one ever studied as intensively or as widely as has Doc Savage. This has equipped him with a knowledge which borders on the profound on every subject. Doc Savage is a rare combination of muscular strength and mental perfection.”

“Hm-m-m!” Monk grunted thoughtfully, juggling his pet pig’s box. “Some of this crowd may think that bird is laying it on thick, but he’s not. He isn’t even exaggerating, and that’s probably something he don’t suspect, himself.”

“This unusual training was to fit Doc Savage for a unique profession,” the speaker went on. “He rights wrongs and punishes evildoers, traveling to the far corners of the earth to accomplish these things. His most recent accomplishment was here in Chile, when he wiped out a gang of fiends who were seeking to get control of the Chilean nitrate industry in order to supply ingredients for explosives to a European nation which contemplates war.”

Monk and Ham mounted the rostrum steps, looking about in an endeavor to locate the Cockney and pretty Rae Stanley.

“Doc Savage refused remuneration for his services,” continued the Chilean speaker. “But he requested that a hospital be erected to offer free medical and surgical service to the poor of Chile, and a trust fund established to insure its operation for many years. The hospital construction has started, and we are here now to dedicate it. We hope Doc Savage will appear——”

Ham stepped forward, indicated that he wished to address the crowd, and the Chilean orator stepped back politely.

“I have an unpleasant duty to perform,” Ham said in clear, perfect Spanish. “You good people have all heard that Doc Savage is one of those scarce individuals, a genuinely modest man. It embarrasses him to play the hero in public. For that reason, he will not appear on this platform to-day.”

A disappointed murmur arose from the crowd as they understood they were not to glimpse the famous man of bronze.

“Look, Ham!” Monk snapped. “Over there by the hospital corner!”

Monk’s words impinged against the microphones, and all of the two hundred thousand or so people present must have heard the ejaculation. Countless necks craned, eyes seeking the corner of the hospital building.

A girl, tall and exquisitely beautiful, with hair the hue of mahogany, was struggling with several swarthy, broad-faced men.

“It’s Rae Stanley!” Ham barked.

Monk was already lumbering across the speaking rostrum, holding the box containing his pig over his head with both hands. Ham leaped after the hairy chemist. They hammered heels down the rostrum steps.

Monk put his head down, hunched his shoulders, and hit the crowd like a torpedo. Ham trod his wake, fending off Chileans who resented being shoved, and showed it by lustily swinging their fists.

Hands suddenly seized Ham’s ankles and jerked. He went down.

An avalanche of moon-faced, stocky men piled up on the lawyer.

“Hey, Monk!” Ham howled.

Monk spun and saw what was happening. He lowered his pig case carefully, then leaped into the fight, emitting a bawling roar. Monk was ordinarily quiet, but his fights were howling bedlams.

Monk’s hirsute hands clamped on the necks of two of Ham’s assailants, and banged their heads together. The pair became magically limp, their arms and legs hanging like strings.

Ham managed to sit up. His sword cane, whipping about, glinted like a sliver of solidified sunlight. The steel leaped at a brown man.

The man threw himself madly backward, but saw he was going to be too late. His eyes protruded, and a scream ripped past his teeth. Mentally, he could feel that glittering steel blade already fixed in his pumping heart.

Ham turned the blade aside, however. Doc Savage and his men had a policy of never directly taking human life.

The blade merely opened a small gash in the squat man’s shoulder. But a surprising thing happened. His eyes closed slowly and his arms dropped to his sides. The man seemed to go to sleep on his feet. He fell heavily, blindly to the ground.

The tip of Ham’s sword cane was covered with a drug, a tiny quantity of which in a wound was sufficient to produce instant unconsciousness.

The dark attackers cursed viciously in their native tongue and rattled orders at each other. Monk and Ham spoke many languages, and could recognize others.

“Tibetans!” Ham snapped.

Monk opened his mouth to make some reply. There was a sharp report, not unlike a handclap. Monk closed his mouth and a vacant expression came into his eyes. His legs hinged at the knees.

A Tibetan had struck him from behind with a heavy revolver.

Ham, staring at the fallen Monk, saw a gun clubbing for his own head. He tried to dodge, but too late, and cartwheels of colored fire spun in his eyeballs as the weapon landed.

Ham sank in what seemed like a pleasantly warm sea of black ink.

The Tibetans gathered up Monk, Ham, and their own unconscious companions. They even took the case holding the pig, Habeas Corpus. Then they moved through the crowd. Their menacing guns opened a path.

At the corner of the hospital building, the seizure of pretty Rae Stanley had been effected as thoroughly as had the downfall of Monk and Ham.

The young woman apparently had no weapon except her small fists and the sharp toes of her slippers, but she managed to draw several roars of pain from her assailants before they overpowered her.

Saturday Loo was in personal charge of the gang.

“You were warned to stay away from here,” he told the girl angrily. “It is a foolish bird which pecks the friendly cat.”

“Tell your men to take their filthy hands off me,” snapped the young woman.

Saturday Loo favored her with a vicious smile, and accused her: “You came here to warn Doc Savage!”

Instead of replying, Rae Stanley kicked her captors on the shins. They made gobbling sounds which were Tibetan exclamations of pain.

“Come!” Saturday Loo ordered. “Bring the she-tiger!”

Drawing the rope from under his gaudy poncho, Saturday Loo looped it over the girl’s arms. Flourishing revolvers in a threatening manner, the Tibetans made for the outskirts of the throng with their prisoner.

It chanced that their course led them directly toward an Antofagasta policeman. The officer confronted them.

“Que hay?” he barked. “What is the matter?”

Saturday Loo did not attempt to palaver. He did not even give the officer a chance to get out of their path. With murderous intent, the Tibetan leader leveled his revolver.

The Spanish race is one quick to show emotion, but it was doubtful if a son of Castile ever changed expression quicker than did that Chilean policeman. He was looking at death. His eyes glazed, and his sagging jaw made his mouth a round hole.

“No, señor!” he screamed.

But Saturday Loo only leered, and tightened his finger on the trigger.