Читать книгу Meteor Menace: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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The mutter of the car motor was the bait in the trap that Doc had set. He hoped the Tibetans would be drawn by the sound.

It was not a vain hope, for soon running feet spatted the sun-baked ground. A jar and a squeak from the springs indicated some one had leaped upon the running board.

A voice barked in Tibetan: “Our ancestors are smiling upon us! Here is a car ready and running! Who among you can drive?”

“I can,” said a voice.

“Then take the wheel, O Gifted One!” ordered the leader. “Place the two prisoners in the rear seat, and retain tight holds upon them. What is in that box from which grunting sounds come?”

“A pig, O Master.”

“A pig! Truly the things white men do are beyond understanding! But bring the pig along. It may be of a great deal more importance than any of us think.”

Another Tibetan muttered: “A wise man does not carry a musk deer which he has shot in the forbidden forest.”

“Aye,” another agreed. “Why take the two prisoners?”

“You talk too much, offspring of a wild donkey,” growled their leader. “The master’s orders were that they were to be taken prisoners, but not slain. Hurry, fools! Load our wounded, also!”

This settled the argument.

In getting under way, the car seemed to shake itself and spring into the air. It careened over ruts, skidded onto the road, and took itself away amid a great roaring and rattling.

Raising the trunk lid slightly, Doc Savage got an idea of the route. The car seemed to be headed for a thinly settled hill district near the city.

Doc lowered the lid, satisfied. Back among the parked cars, he could have rescued his two men. In passing up that chance, he had been adhering to a deliberate plan.

Desiring to learn what was behind the trouble, Doc was seeking to trick the Tibetans into taking him with them. He wanted to get his hands on their chief. He was curious to know what was back of the trouble.

The headlong rush of the car slackened after a time, and it pitched over bumps, boulders gnashing at the under side of the chassis.

Habeas Corpus, the pig, was squealing disgustedly in the car.

The phæton turned several times. It seemed to be following a narrow lane. Then it stopped. The engine became silent. Habeas Corpus promptly stopped squealing.

“It is said that the wisest fox has the deepest den,” one of the Tibetans remarked complacently. “This retreat of ours is the equivalent of a deep den.”

“True words,” agreed the leader. “We will carry the two Yankees up to our retreat. I note that our ancestors, who see all actions, have favored us with a trunk on the back of the car. Look in it, my sons. See if it does not hold something of which we may fashion a sling, the more easily to carry our captives.”

Doc Savage heard a man walk around the car. Hands settled upon the trunk lid and lifted it.

The Tibetan who opened the trunk was a squat fellow who, thanks to a Tibetan national custom of consuming thirty to fifty cups of buttered tea a day, was extremely fat. He did not look like a man who had received many great shocks. But he got one now.

Doc Savage’s metallic hands fixed on the fellow, one set of fingers encircling his neck, the others covering his mouth. The bronze digits sank in the Tibetan’s soft flesh until they threatened to become lost to view.

The agony of that awful clutch completely paralyzed the Tibetan. Not only was he unable to cry out, but his limbs trembled as if palsied.

Retaining a grip on the fellow, Doc Savage slid out of the trunk. Unfortunately, he was discovered.

“The Devil Man of Bronze!” a Tibetan shrieked.

The other Tibetans, engaged in hauling Monk and Ham out of the car, whirled and stared. They still wore their poncho disguises. Not needing their guns, they had holstered them under the flowing ponchos. They clawed frantically for the weapons.

Long before the first gun could be drawn, however, Doc Savage flung his prisoner at the Tibetans. The human projectile hit two men squarely and with terrific force. These men carried down a third as they fell.

Only two men remained on their feet. Dancing away, they sought to draw their guns. They grossly underestimated Doc’s speed. Blinding blows from great fists dropped them in feebly squirming heaps.

It had happened with explosive suddenness. Snapping fingers could hardly have kept pace with the blows which rendered the men senseless.

With gusto, Doc gave further attention to the men squirming on the ground. He swooped upon each in succession, fists driving short, terrific punches.

In each case, he struck just hard enough to produce ten or fifteen minutes of unconsciousness, something his vast knowledge of surgery enabled him to do.

It was at surgery that Doc Savage was skilled above all things. The world’s masters in that profession crossed oceans and continents to look on when the man of bronze gave his periodic demonstrations of newly discovered technique.

When the last Tibetan was limp-muscled and senseless, Doc turned to the car. Monk sprawled half out of the door, motionless, and Ham was behind him, unmoving, draped across the pig’s carrying case.

Also lying in the car were the Tibetans who had been victims of Monk and Ham. These had not recovered consciousness, and had been dumped carelessly on the floorboards by their fellows.

Doc hauled Monk and Ham out. His nostrils caught an odor which told him why the chemist and the lawyer were so limp. It was chloroform smell, and the handkerchief by which the stuff had been applied lay on the floorboards of the car.

Doc held Monk’s furry wrist, then Ham’s fine-skinned one. In both he found a pulse. They should awaken, eventually, unharmed.

Doc studied his surroundings. The car had stopped in a bleak valley, the rocky slopes of which slanted up steeply on either side. Scattered among the rocks were thorny desert shrubs. Nowhere was there discernible as much as a blade of grass.

Perhaps three hundred yards distant, clinging high on the valley walls, was a small box of a house. The roof was of bright-red tile. To one side of the structure, a stone pen held several llamas. These woolly beasts, heads held high and facing the valley floor, were not unlike humpless camels.

A narrow path angled to the house. There was no other habitation near.

This, then, must have been the destination of the Tibetans.

Doc Savage strode toward the habitation.

The bronze man did not follow the path, for that would invite lead from any rifleman who might be lurking in the house. Boulders were plentiful on the slope. He kept behind them.

Veering slightly, he approached the house from the side opposite the llama pen. He did not want the long-necked sheeplike beasts to betray his presence by staring inquisitively.

Windows of South American homes are usually fitted with stout iron bars, after the fashion of jails in the United States. But this dwelling, being situated in a remote region, was an exception. The windows were unbarred; moreover, they boasted no glass, being simply square holes in the walls.

Doc whipped silently across the nearest sill. He sank to all fours on the floor and crouched there.

A two-hour ritual of exercise, which Doc Savage had taken daily since childhood, included not only muscular development, but also work with sound waves above and below the frequencies audible to a normal ear, which had equipped him to hear sounds that escaped other ears.

Also among the exercising devices was an array of small vials containing various odors. By identifying these, and concentrating intently on the act, the bronze man had perfected his olfactory senses to an abnormal degree.

Just as a hunting dog can test a brush pile and tell whether there is game inside, so did Doc’s superior senses inform him that the house was empty.

He went through the rooms rapidly, searching. He found a number of things of interest. For instance, there was a box holding a churn, lumps of yak butter, and tea leaves. This was equipment for making the buttered tea to which Tibetans are addicted.

In a corner, suitcases were heaped. All of these looked new. They were plastered with steamship labels. These, according to custom, were dated.

Doc noted the dates, thereby learning that the Tibetans had arrived from their native land only a few days before.

Doc found nothing pointing to the identity of the chief of the Tibetans, nor did he find anything which clarified the mystery back of their actions.

Faint sounds—a weak shout and squealing noises—came to Doc’s ears. He vaulted outdoors, through the window.

It was Monk who had shouted. The homely chemist had recovered from the stupefying chloroform, and had freed the pig. He was working over Ham. Even as Doc watched, Ham got shakily to his feet.

The lawyer looked around, then stumbled to the car and fumbled inside. Even at that distance, Doc knew the barrister was seeking his sword cane. Ham was lost without the weapon.

Suddenly, Doc’s eyes switched to the right. Far away on a mountain top—two miles at least—he had caught a movement. The air was clear, and Doc’s eyes were sharp. He distinguished a man. The fellow must have been watching the place.

From the distant man’s hand, a puff of smoke jumped. A dot of blue fire climbed into the sky. A Very signal pistol had been fired.

Doc’s weird trilling note came into being. Vague, flaunting description, the eerie sound ran up and down the musical scale, then ebbed into nothingness. Doc stared steadily into the west.

The sky, in answer to that rocket signal it seemed, had taken on a weird, faint blue color. This was not the blue of infinite stellar space, but more like the arc of an electric welding torch.

The fantastic radiance grew steadily brighter. Doc Savage brought an arm in front of his face, for the glitter was becoming blinding.

A whistling noise reached his ears. Very faint at first, it grew slowly louder. Beyond a doubt, the piping wail was accompanying the steadily intensifying blue glare.

There was a devilish quality in the whistling note. It seemed to cut at the eardrums with razor sharpness. It actually caused Doc’s head to ache.

Down on the valley floor, Monk and Ham were facing the west. They had arms thrown across their faces. It would have been easier to stare naked-eyed into the incandescent orb of the sun, than to look at this weird phenomenon.

Doc Savage lifted his voice in a call to Monk and Ham.

“Get under cover!”

They did not hear him, due to the deafening whistle from the western heavens.

Doc picked up a weather-rounded rock the size of a baseball and hurled it. The rock did not carry all the distance, but it collided with boulders and started a small avalanche.

Monk and Ham heard the rattle of rock. They reacted as Doc thought they would. They looked up and saw the bronze man.

Doc gestured with an arm.

Monk and Ham rapidly mounted the opposite side of the canyon.

The bronze man began to climb his own side of the defile. He mounted with every ounce of speed that he could muster. At the same time, he kept behind the boulders. His leaps were prodigious, and very seldom did he show himself.

Reaching the top of the hill, he continued his wild progress down the other side. He did not look back, but gave all of his attention to where he was going.

Finally, selecting a crevice between two house-sized boulders, he dropped in. He waited there, motionless.

The whistling had grown infinitely louder. The horrible shriek of it was unlike anything Doc had ever heard.

This phantasm out of the western skies, whatever it was, seemed to be coming down the valley, just above the floor. Its noise mounted and mounted until its scream made awful agony in his eardrums.

A few yards from Doc, a harmless snake had been sunning itself on a rock. But now the reptile was behaving strangely under the influence of the titanic whistle and the tremendous blue glare. It was twisting, writhing, biting itself repeatedly.

Then, like the snap of a whip, the uncanny blue transient from the sky was gone. It receded, dimming its unearthly blue glitter and sucking away its weirdly ear-hurting whistle.

Springing erect, Doc Savage sought to stare after the thing; but the blue glare defeated him. He could not tell what was making the glittering, azure luster.

Doc glided back over the hill. Twice, he stumbled and fell. Once, he found himself veering off to one side. This seemed to worry the bronze giant, whose powers were usually dependable.

It was as if the whistling blue thing had done something to him, had dulled his senses.

Once over the hill, he searched with his eyes for Monk and Ham. The two were not in sight. He went on and came to the valley floor, where the car stood, with the unconscious Tibetans scattered about. None of these had as yet awakened from the effects of Doc’s fists, or the chemical on Ham’s sword cane.

“Monk!” Doc called.

There was no answer. The bronze man climbed the opposite side of the valley. Freshly overturned rocks showed him the route Monk and Ham had taken in their flight.

“Ham!” Doc’s powerful voice rattled in echoes off the valley walls.

After the echoes there was only quiet, except for the ringing effect which persisted in tortured eardrums, a result of the piercing noise of the blue visitant.

“Hey, you fellows!” Doc boomed. “What’s wrong?”

Then Doc saw the pig, Habeas Corpus.

The pig had legs like a dog and ears so large that they could nearly double for wings, and ordinarily was quite comical to look at; but there was something hideously wrong with it now.

Doc called softly, and the pig did not come. It was the first time Habeas had ever failed to respond. The pig stood on rigid legs. Its eyes, ears, tail—nothing moved. Doc reached down to touch the animal.

The pig pitched straight forward in flight. It ran blindly and with a weirdly erratic movement. Chancing to be headed for a rock, the small porker did not turn aside, but smashed at full speed into the stone. Then it whirled and charged Doc, and when he stepped aside, went senselessly on and hit another boulder.

“Monk—Ham!” Doc yelled loudly.

He mounted on up the valley slope, and called again for the chemist and the lawyer.

Then he heard it—the sound. There was something in it, some quality, that curdled the blood. It was man-sound. But it was not articulated, interrupted, or otherwise possessed of syllables. It was just a product of vocal cords.

Doc did not voice names again, but advanced quietly.

He found Monk and Ham.

They were horrible.

Doc Savage, mighty man of bronze, had schooled himself until few things really appalled him to a point beyond acceptance. But there had been a few instances when he had felt utter horror. One, long ago, was when he learned his own father had been murdered.

He had that same awful sensation now.

Monk and Ham were men without brains—not, however, that there had been a physical operation; but the evidence of an entirely dormant mentality was apparent the instant Doc saw them.

They stood perfectly motionless, no muscle stirring, and when Doc spoke, they plunged away, pitifully, like wild creatures in flight. When they crashed into rocks, they seemed to feel no pain. And at the same time, they emitted those hideous, unarticulated sounds which Doc had first heard.

It was Ham who was the most unnerving to watch, possibly because of his intellectual appearance. He smashed blindly, face-first, into a boulder, and dropped back, making low bleating sounds. Pain from his hurt—scarlet streams began to creep down his face and dangle off his lips and chin like red yarns—seemed to affect him not in the least bit.

Gibbering, he rushed madly at Doc. His arms were thrust straight out, but he tried to strike no blow.

Doc caught him. They struggled in his embrace.

All of Doc’s men were experts at wrestling and jujutsu, the bronze man having taught them. And in the teaching he had come to know exactly how much strength each of his five aides possessed.

Ham now showed a far greater muscular power than Doc knew was his normal strength.

“Stop it!” Doc rapped.

If he comprehended, the weirdly afflicted lawyer gave no heed. There was no intelligence to his assault, however. His blows were blind; he tried to bite like an animal, and emitted snarlings and hissings.

To Doc, who had seen the astute lawyer comprehend and expound the most complex legal problems, the effect was gruesome in the extreme.

Suddenly, Ham quieted. There had been no reason for his attack; there was equally no reason for its ending. He became still and mute, and in his eyes was an absolute lack of expression, while his lips, crimson-streaked, hung slack and vacant.

“Ham!” Doc said sharply.

The lawyer picked foolishly at his ears as if he had heard sound for the first time, and thought it was something wrong with that part of his head.

Doc touched him.

Ham struck savagely at the spot which had been touched, and seemed to show no pain from the effects of his own blow, which broke skin and started scarlet droplets running.

Reaching out, Doc placed a finger tip gently against the lawyer’s eye. There was no automatic reaction of drooping lids, and after the contact between finger and eyeball, Ham made a convulsive gesture and might have torn his own eye out, except that Doc gripped his arms and held them immovable.

“Brain functioning suspended,” Doc said slowly.

Ham cackled giddy, unintelligible sounds.

Something hideous, something totally new on the face of the earth, had happened to Monk and Ham with the passage of the screaming blue visitor of the skies.

Doc went back to the car. In a fender tool box he found wire, towing rope and tire tape. With these articles he managed to secure Ham, Monk, and all of the Tibetans.

It was apparent, as one of the Tibetans sat up, that they also were now men unguided by brains.

Doc completed the binding with the pig, Habeas Corpus. He loaded all in the car. Dropping behind the wheel, he sent the machine hurtling in the direction of Antofagasta.

The whistling blue luminary had caused the grisly affliction which gripped Doc’s cargo. That was certain. Doc himself had escaped a like fate simply because he had crossed over the hill and had been farther from the weird thing than had the others. At no time, while it was close, had its unearthly blue glitter shone directly upon him.

Doc drove fast and watched the road.