Читать книгу Mad Mesa: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 7

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Doc Savage had often considered changing the location of his headquarters. Too many people knew that he could be found on the eighty-sixth floor of the New York skyscraper that came near to scratching clouds, and not all of these people wanted to see the “Man of Bronze” go on living.

That was why Doc Savage, or one of his five assistants, always X-rayed the incoming mail. The X-ray would show which packages contained bombs. The bomb percentage in the mail had been high during the last year. Also, all the mail was subjected to a spectroscopic analyzing device which detected such clever ruses as perfume on a letter, to invite one to sniff, coupled with a subtle poison to bring death with the sniff.

In fact, the headquarters was a maze of scientific gadgets to protect the bronze man and his five aides.

But in spite of these irritations, Doc Savage had maintained his establishment on the top floor of the skyscraper, an aerie which could be seen from any part of the city, and on a clear day, from far out to sea. He wanted certain kinds of people to find him.

Doc Savage had been trained from childhood for the strange avocation which he followed—that of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of the earth. It was an unusual profession. In medieval times, knights in armor went around following the profession, but it had been out of fashion for several hundred years. The knights helped others for the glory of it, whereas Doc Savage did all he could to avoid the glory. He had a genuine horror of publicity; as a result he almost never went to a theater, a prize fight, or walked the streets any more than he had to.

But his avocation was helping other people out of trouble, so he used the skyscraper in order that persons with trouble would not have difficulty finding him.

People’s troubles came to him in many fashions.

Tom Idle’s trouble—which had now become that of his sister, Nona—came in the form of a letter.

The letter was X-rayed, tested for poisons, then passed on to Doc Savage on the theory that it was a safe letter—no one dreaming that it was going to cause more excitement, terror and bloodshed than all the bombs and poison letters they would ever receive.

The letter was lying on the big inlaid table in the reception room when Doc Savage came out of the laboratory. Doc was a physical giant with a handsome but not a pretty face; and he had strange flake-gold eyes which had been known to give an enemy a large case of the creeps, but which could be very persuasive and friendly when the bronze man wished. A peculiar aspect of Doc’s size was that he appeared to be a man of normal build when seen from a distance; it was only on close examination that one realized here was a physical phenomenon, a man who could probably tie a knot in a horseshoe.

Doc Savage wore a germ-proof suit, something like a featherweight diving regalia, as he came out of the laboratory, and he was throwing back the hood. He had been in the laboratory twelve hours straight, trying to perfect a cure for the common cold.

“Hello, Doc,” said Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett (Monk) Mayfair. “Here’s this mornin’s crop of mail.”

Monk Mayfair would not have to be seen in a very thick jungle to be mistaken for an ape, masculine gender. He was built very wide, and there was no danger of his ever having to stoop for a door. He did not look like one of the world’s noted industrial chemists. Monk was one of the five Doc Savage assistants.

Monk asked, “Did you find a cure for colds, Doc?”

Doc Savage looked at Monk and sneezed.

“All I found out,” he admitted, “was how to catch one.”

“How?”

“Work standing in a draft.”

“Ah, so that’s what science has come to,” Monk chuckled. “Here’s the mail.”

The contents of the envelope was ample explanation of the reason for its arrival. There was really another letter inside, and this was accompanied by a note.

The note, addressed to Doc Savage, read:

The inclosed letter, received from my brother, Tom Idle, will explain itself.

There is something so incredible and mysterious about the whole thing that I thought it best to mail my brother’s letter ahead, and not carry it on my person. Perhaps I am foolish. At any rate, will you hold this letter until my arrival? I am coming to New York by bus.

Nona Idle

The inclosed letter that the note mentioned was the one in which Tom Idle had explained to his sister exactly what had happened to him, beginning when he was awakened by the exclamation of a bum known as Seedy Smith, in a Salt Lake City park, and ending where he was now, sitting in the Utah penitentiary with the name of Hondo Weatherbee, outlaw.

While they were reading, Colonel John (Renny) Renwick came in. Renny was a tall, bony man with a long face that always wore a my-but-aren’t-these-funerals-awful expression. He was famous for two things: One, his boast that he could knock the panel out of any wooden door with the two coconuts which he called fists. Two, he had few superiors in ability as a civil engineer.

“Holy cow!” Renny rumbled, having read the letter.

This was his favorite expression. Also, he had a voice something like a troubled bear in a deep cave.

“Holy cow!” he repeated. “That’s fantastic enough, to be one of these nut letters like we sometimes get.”

“Me, I like it already,” Monk said.

“You would!” Renny rumbled. “But you don’t know whether she’s good-looking.”

“I didn’t mean the girl,” Monk disclaimed.

“You’re a liar,” Renny assured him. “You like anything that’s got a girl connected with it.”

“You’re gettin’ so you ride me as bad as that over-dressed shyster, Ham Brooks,” Monk complained. “Some day, I’m gonna bob both your tails off right up next to your ears.”

Doc Savage had not joined the discussion. He rarely had much to say. However, he had seated himself at the telephone, put in a call, and was waiting.

Doc sneezed twice.

Monk grinned. The idea of Doc Savage catching a cold while conducting a scientific experiment to find a cure for colds was something Monk found amusing. He knew that Doc Savage was one of the greatest living scientists, and the more remarkable because his knowledge covered a number of lines. He knew more about electricity than Long Tom Roberts, another associate, for instance, and Long Tom was supposed to be a combination of Steinmetz and Marconi. Personally, Monk was sure Doc knew more about chemistry than he himself.

Doc Savage finished that telephone call, and made several others.

“The girl disappeared,” he said, “at a highway dining room near Columbus, Ohio.”

“Then we’d better investigate!” Monk exploded.

“It might not be a bad idea,” Doc admitted.

Doc Savage maintained a combination hangar and boathouse on the bank of the Hudson River, on Manhattan Island. The huge building masqueraded as a warehouse.

Brigadier General Theodore Marley (Ham) Brooks was waiting at the warehouse when they arrived. Ham was another Doc Savage assistant, as well as being a noted Harvard lawyer, and one of the best-dressed men of the twentieth century, as a noted men’s magazine had recently dubbed him.

Ham, a thin-waisted man with the large, mobile mouth of an orator—he was a sharp-tongued talker who could stick words into a man as though they were knives—was always correctly dressed for the situation.

Ham wore an extremely natty aviator’s outfit for their flight. Monk scowled at the lawyer. Monk considered Ham’s attire unnecessary affectation, since they were to fly in a cabin plane and business suits would be just as appropriate. Moreover, Monk had quarreled with Ham for years.

“You’ll probably turn up in the hot place,” Monk told Ham unpleasantly, “equipped with an asbestos suit.”

Ham scowled and suggestively fingered a sword cane which he always carried.

“Listen, you missing link,” he said, “you start anything with me today, and I’ll take this sword and sculpture you into something that bears some resemblance to a man!”

Monk glared. “Start any old time! I’ll thread you on that sword cane like a fishin’ worm on a hook!”

In the past they had risked their lives for each other, and would doubtless do so again.

Doc Savage entered the control cockpit of a large twin-engined, streamlined monoplane. He had scarcely spoken, but that was not unusual since he never did any pointless talking solely to make conversation. As Monk frequently put it, words only came out of Doc when they were jarred out.

Yet it was an undeniable fact that the big bronze man completely dominated any group and every situation. It was not necessary for him to tell anyone who he was to make an impression, and he never appeared to issue an order directly. Yet his quiet presence carried complete power.

They landed—Doc Savage, Monk, Ham and Renny—in a meadow near Columbus, Ohio, less than three hours later. Alighting from the plane, they crossed to the roadside dining room at which Nona Idle had last been seen.

Doc Savage questioned the waitress who had been on duty.

“I remember the girl you mean,” the waitress said. “She fainted, or something, and Dr. Joiner took her to a hospital.”

“Do you know this Dr. Joiner?” Doc asked.

“Why, no. I never saw him before that night, nor since. But he said his name was Dr. Joiner.”

“And the hospital?”

“Why, he never said what hospital.”

Doc looked meaningly at Monk, Ham and Renny, who at once got busy on telephones.

“There is no Dr. Joiner,” they reported later.

Which was what Doc had expected.

Monk scowled. “This guy turned up and drugged the girl and carried her off.”

Ham said, “That was to keep Doc from learning anything about Tom Idle. The fake Dr. Joiner didn’t know she’d mailed the letter.”

Big-fisted Renny rumbled, “Holy cow! There’s somethin’ blasted queer behind this.”

Doc said quietly, “We will have to do some detective work.”

Shortly after this, the bronze man disappeared.

The vanishing of Doc Savage startled his assistants, but it did not surprise them. Doc had a habit of dropping out of sight when he wished to pursue a private investigation, and he usually turned up again with something accomplished.

The three aides, waiting at the roadside dining room, marked time. Monk and Ham went into a competition, to see who could date up the waitress. The waitress was not good-looking and did not seem overly bright, and neither man really wanted a date.

What they did want was something to quarrel about. Renny got in a corner with a pencil and paper and sketched out a bridge which he was supposed to construct soon across a tide rip between two Florida cays.

They did not discuss the mystery of Tom Idle and his sister Nona, because they had not yet found out enough to make sense.

Two hours later, Johnny and Long Tom turned up. These were the remaining members of Doc’s group of five associates.

Johnny was William Harper Littlejohn, one of the tallest and thinnest men alive—you wondered how such a bony man could stay alive—and was also a famous archæologist and geologist. He could read an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic as freely as his afternoon newspaper. He could say, without hesitating, what kind of rock was ten thousand feet under Sapulpa, Oklahoma.

Johnny at once went into discussion with Renny, for he was to help on the Florida bridge. He began using big words. “I’ll be superamalgamated,” he said. “An enigmatical verbal summation precipitated our eventuation.”

Big words were Johnny’s bad habit. He could have said merely that they were here because they had gotten a call from Doc.

Long Tom was Major Thomas J. Roberts, a scrawny fellow who looked as if he had spent his early life in a mushroom cellar. He was an electrical wizard who knew more about the innards of an electron than the average citizen knows about the construction of his fountain pen.

Long Tom and Johnny had come by plane, and they had brought along Habeas Corpus and Chemistry. Habeas Corpus was a runt pig which was Monk’s pet; and Chemistry was, according to his owner Ham, a thoroughbred South American jungle chimpanzee, although Monk had other opinions. Chemistry looked distressingly like Monk.

The five men looked at each other and wondered what Doc Savage was doing. They fell into a discussion.

The waitress, neglected for the moment, made her way to a back room, where there was a telephone.

The waitress put in a call.

“Listen, Dr. Joiner,” she said, “do I get that fifty dollars you promised me for information?”

The answer she received evidently reassured her about the fifty.

“Well, you better be sure you mail it to me,” she said. “Here’s the information: Doc Savage’s five assistants are right in this place now. And Doc Savage is out roaming around somewhere.”

After she had listened to Dr. Joiner swear for a while, the waitress hung up.

Doc’s men had made a mistake about both the moral level and the deceitfulness of that waitress.