Читать книгу Mad Mesa: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3

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The life of Thomas Idle had been an ordinary one. Nothing fantastic had ever happened to him.

Nor, unfortunately was Tom Idle a well-known young man. Had he been a person of importance, the newspapers might have blazed up about his disappearance, and perhaps this would have focused attention on the utterly incredible thing that happened to him.

Still, the thing was so strange that no one might have believed it, even if it had happened to Hitler, or Mussolini, or someone equally well known. No one believed Tom Idle. No one believed him in time, that is, to stop the baby monster of horror which began to grow when it took its first bite and swallowed Tom Idle.

Tom Idle was born on a Missouri farm, soon orphaned, went to high school, then worked on a farm as a hired man. A few weeks ago, he had become tired of farming, and, seeking greener fields, had vagabonded westward on freight trains and by hitchhiking.

Now he was trying to find a job in Salt Lake City, Utah.

So far, the nearest he had come to an adventure was the time old Jinn, the farm mule, kicked him; but old Jinn kicked him on the leg, not the head, so the incident in no way explained what occurred in Salt Lake City.

Tom Idle was using the city park for his hotel.

He awakened on the same park bench he had occupied three nights running. He carefully folded the newspapers he had used to keep the dew off, and placed them in a trash can—he had learned that the park cop, Officer Sam Stevens, did not mind you using the place for a hotel, but resented having the grass littered.

Officer Sam Stevens passed. Tom Idle gave him a grin, and the policeman grinned back.

“Today’s a lucky day, kid,” Officer Stevens said. “I been feelin’ it all mornin’. Today, you find that job.”

“Thanks!” Tom Idle said.

The officer’s hunch made him feel better. He was no clairvoyant, so he could not know what a phantasm the near future held.

Morning air was bracing, the sunshine was bright, and the sky had that remarkably healthful clarity peculiar to Salt Lake City. It did look like a lucky day, at that. Tom Idle went to Skookum’s lunchroom.

“Sinkers and java, Skookum.” He deposited his last nickel on the white counter.

He tried not to remember this was the third day he’d subsisted on coffee and doughnuts.

Skookum said, “This monotony’ll get you down, chief.”

“It’ll have to, then,” Tom Idle answered wryly, “because I’m broke.”

Skookum’s name wasn’t Skookum; it was something which nobody but a Greek could pronounce. Everyone called him Skookum because he was always using slangy Indian expressions when he talked. Skookum was liked.

A few moments later, Skookum unexpectedly put a plate of ham and eggs in front of Tom Idle.

“I can’t pay for that,” Tom Idle said.

“Pay when you land job, chief.”

“What makes you think I’ll land one?”

“Don’t kid yourself. Heap plenty job. You catch.”

Tom Idle’s eyes became suddenly damp with gratitude.

“Thanks, Skookum,” he mumbled.

Physically fortified with Skookum’s unexpected ham and eggs, and mentally perked up by Officer Sam Stevens’ statement that this was a lucky day, Tom Idle did his best—but did not find work that day. He visited all the employment agencies, and even solicited from door to door; but as one man put it, “Jobs are as scarce as hen’s teeth!”

Tom Idle slept that night on his usual bench in the park.

Ever afterward, it seemed to him that this was the last really normal day that he ever spent.

The next morning, a strangled rasping sound caused Tom Idle to awaken. He jerked erect, scattering his newspaper blankets. Because he had really starved for several days, he at once felt nervous and shaky.

He batted his eyes in the morning sun, looking around.

He saw the horrified man immediately.

The man stood beside the park bench. He was past middle age, looked seedy, might have been a professional bum. There was much of the furtiveness and insolence of a confirmed hobo in his face.

The man had obviously made the strangled sound which had aroused Tom Idle. There was utter horror on the man’s face.

“Hondo Weatherbee!”

“What?” Tom Idle said. “What’d you say?”

“Hondo!”

Tom Idle looked blankly at the man’s shocked, terrified expression, and came to the conclusion that the fellow was a drunk. He was some souse who’d mistaken Tom Idle for someone named Hondo Weatherbee. That must be it.

“Better sit down,” he suggested soothingly, “and get your eyes uncrossed.”

The horrified man acted as if the devil had asked him to come down and sample the warmth. He started back. Whirled. Fled. He ran wildly away, not looking back.

“I’ll be darned!” Tom Idle said.

He gazed after the fleeing man—the fellow looked so comically ridiculous in his flight. But Tom Idle somehow could not smile, because there was something unnerving about the whole thing. He had a creepy feeling.

“Snap out of it, guy,” he told himself. “The bum was only plastered to the gills.”

Trying to get rid of the creeps, Tom Idle made an elaborate business of stretching and scratching himself, then of retying his shoestrings and necktie, for loosening shoestrings and necktie were about the only bedtime preparations he’d made since a park bench was his hotel.

Again this morning, the world was full of beautiful sunshine, with birds singing in the park trees, and the air pleasant with the fruity odor of the orchards surrounding oasislike Salt Lake City, while a few clouds were sitting like big white rabbits on top of the black mountains to the eastward.

But Tom Idle was in no frame of mind to enjoy a balmy morning.

He was looking at his shoes.

They were not his shoes! They were gaudy yellow shoes—his shoes had been black and scuffed. He dropped his eyes and stared at the necktie he was wearing, and it was not his necktie; it was flashy green and yellow in color, whereas his necktie had been a subdued brown. Nor was the shirt his, nor the suit. All the clothes he was wearing were different.

He stared in horror at his hands—for they were not his hands either, it seemed; they looked pale, and on one finger was a ring he had never seen before, a big, ugly, yellow gold ring with the top carved in the shape of a skull.

Tom Idle stood up, feeling like a man having a bad dream, and walked out of the park.

He did not see Officer Sam Stevens just then.

Since the incredible thing had already started to happen to Tom Idle, it was doubtful if it would have made any difference had he seen the cop at this juncture.

Tom Idle was partially rid of most of his creeps by the time he entered Skookum’s lunchroom.

But he got them again when Skookum grabbed a gun and began shooting at him.

There were some brief preliminaries.

First, Skookum saw Tom Idle and jumped up. Skookum was eating his own breakfast, and he knocked his cup of coffee to the floor.

“Hondo Weatherbee!” Skookum yelled.

Tom Idle began to think this was all some kind of a gag. They must be having some fun with him.

“Hey, cut it out!” he said. “Heap much is enough.”

But Skookum stood so rigidly and stared with such ghastly fixity, that Tom Idle suddenly saw that it could not be acting. Skookum was not that good an actor.

“Cut it,” Tom Idle muttered. “You know me. I’m Tom Idle, the guy you staked to ham and eggs yesterday. Some darn fool swapped clothes on me.”

Skookum licked his lips.

“Who you trying to kid, Hondo?” he snarled. “I know that nice kid. You’re not him.”

Tom Idle then did something which he habitually did when he was ill at ease; he put his hands in his coat pockets. In thinking it all over later, he realized that Skookum might have thought he was reaching for a gun.

Skookum made a wild dive, got down behind the counter, came up with a sawed-off shotgun. He blazed away.

Gun roar was ear-splitting. The blast blew a hole in the lunchroom wall so close to Tom Idle’s head that he could have put his arm through it.

There was no joke about this. That shotgun was real, and Skookum was trying to kill him.

Tom Idle wheeled, ducked, dived out of the lunchroom. He ran. It was only a short distance to the park. He turned into the park. Behind, the shotgun slammed again. Shot cut leaves off the trees, and frightened birds flew up all over the park.

The Officer Sam Stevens met Tom Idle for the first time that morning.

Officer Stevens was a tall young man, a year or two older than Tom Idle. He came racing through the park to see what all the shooting was about, rounded a clump of bushes, and almost bumped into Tom Idle. Tom Idle never forgot that meeting.

“Hey help me!” Tom Idle panted. “That fool, Skookum, is trying to kill me!”

Officer Stevens stared at Tom Idle.

“Damn!” he barked. “It’s Hondo Weatherbee!”

He struck with his club, swung a blow at Tom Idle’s head. Tom Idle’s reaction was instinctive. He dodged, and the club hit his head a glancing blow; he grabbed the club and they fought over it. Idle got the officer’s billy.

Then the cop reached for his revolver.

Tom Idle struck the officer down with his own club. There was nothing else he could do. Something fantastic had happened, and he wasn’t a young man named Tom Idle in search of a job; he was a sallow-skinned, garishly dressed man named Hondo Weatherbee, and everyone was either afraid of him or wanted to kill him. He could not understand it.

Officer Sam Stevens fell senseless.

Tom Idle dropped the club, whirled and ran. He did not know how long Officer Stevens would remain unconscious, and he had no idea at what instant Skookum might haul into view with his shotgun.

“The thing is to get out of here!” he thought.

Professional humorists claim that anything so unbelievable that it is preposterous constitutes a joke. Tom Idle was bewildered, frightened, horror-stricken; but one thing he did know—that no part of the last few minutes had been a joke. Everybody had been in dead earnest, from the seedy bum whose gasp had awakened him on the park bench, to Skookum and his shotgun and Officer Stevens and his pistol.

Probably the most incredible thing of all to Tom Idle was that he had gone to sleep wearing black shoes and a neat, if worn, blue suit—and had awakened with strange yellow shoes and a gaudy suit. And his skin! His tanned brown skin! It had become pale! He was completely bewildered.

The appearance of the black-gloved man did not clarify the situation, either.