Читать книгу Pirate of the Pacific: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5

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The quarry came rapidly closer. More details of the craft were discernible. The half-caste Mongol pilots continued to use their binoculars. They tilted their planes down in steep dives toward the unusual vessel below.

It was a submarine. It resembled a lean-flanked, razorback whale several hundred feet long. Big steel runners extended from bow to stern, sled fashion. Amidships, a sort of collapsible conning tower reared.

The underseas craft floated high. On the bows, a lettered name was readable:

HELLDIVER.

It was this submarine which had been the subject of the radio news commentator’s broadcast.

With deadly precision, the four planes roared down at the submersible. The Orientals had discarded their binoculars, and had their eyes pasted to the bomb sights. Yellow hands were poised, muscles drawn wire-hard, on bomb trips.

A naval bombing expert, knowing all the facts, would have sworn the submarine didn’t have a chance of escaping. It would be blown out of the water by the bombs.

The Mongol pilots were hot-eyed, snarling—yellow faces no longer inscrutable. They were about to accomplish the purpose of their bloody plot—the death of every one aboard the under-the-polar-ice submarine.

They got a shock.

From a dozen spots, the sub hull spewed smoke as black as drawing ink. Heaving, squirming, the dense smudge spread. It blotted the underseas boat from view, and blanketed the surface of the Sound for hundreds of feet in every direction.

With desperate haste, the Orientals deposited bombs in the center of the smoke mushroom. These explosions drove up treelike columns from the black body of the smoke mass. It was impossible to tell whether the sub had been damaged.

The four planes might have been angry, metallic bees droning over some gigantic, strange, black blossom, as they hovered watchfully. They did not waste more bombs, since the smoke cloud was now half a mile across. In it, the sub was like a needle in a haystack.

Several minutes passed. Suddenly, as one unit, the four planes dived for the western edge of the heavy smoke screen.

Their sharp eyes had detected a long, slender mass moving some feet beneath the surface. This was leaving a creamy wake.

In quick succession, the war planes struck downward at the object under the water. Four bombs dropped. The half-caste Mongols knew their business. Each bomb scored an almost perfect hit.

Water rushed high. The sea heaved and boiled. The concussions tossed the planes about like leaves.

Swinging in a wide circle, the planes came back. The commotion in the water had subsided. The pilots made hissing sounds of delight.

The long, slender mass was no longer to be seen. Oil filmed the surface. Oil such as would come from the ruptured entrails of a submarine.

The pursuit planes whirled a half dozen lazy spirals. Convinced the deadly work was done, the leader of the quartet angled for the shore, four or five miles distant. Once over land, he dived out of the cockpit, fell a hundred feet, and opened his parachute. The plane boomed away. Eventually, it would crash somewhere.

Two other pilots followed their leader’s example.

The third lingered a bit above the grisly smear of oil on the Sound surface.

He chanced to notice a small object near the cloud of black smoke. This seemed nothing more than a floating box. It bobbed lightly on the choppy waves.

The flyer ignored the box. It looked harmless—a piece of wreckage. A few moments later, he winged to shore and quitted his plane by parachute, as the others had done.

The man might have saved himself a lot of trouble had he taken time to investigate the floating box he had noted. Close scrutiny would have shown the top and sides of the box were fitted with what resembled large camera lenses.

Inside the box were other lenses, spinning disks perforated with small holes, sensitive photo-electric cells—a compact television transmitter. Waterproofed electric wires led from this down into the water.

Long Island Sound was not deep at this point. The under-the-polar-ice submarine, Helldiver, rested on the bottom. The wires from the television box entered the underseas boat.

Before the scanning disk of the television receiver in the sub, six men stood. They were a remarkable group. Six more unusual men than these probably had never assembled. Each possessed a world-wide reputation in his chosen profession.

There was “Renny,” a hulking six feet four and two hundred and fifty pounds of him—with possibly fifty pounds of that weight concentrated in a pair of monster fists. Renny had a sober, puritanical face. About the only entertainment he permitted himself was knocking panels out of doors with his huge fists—a stunt he pulled at the most unexpected moments. As Colonel John Renwick, the engineer, Renny was known in many nations, and drew down fabulous fees when he worked.

There was “Long Tom,” pale and none too healthy-looking, the weakling of the crowd in appearance. His looks were deceptive, though, as more than one big man had discovered. As Major Thomas J. Roberts, the electrical wizard, he had worked with the greatest electrical minds of his day.

“Johnny”—William Harper Littlejohn—was tall, gaunt, studious and bespectacled. He seemed half starved, with shoulders as bony as a coat hanger. Once he had headed the Natural Science department of a famous university. His knowledge of geology and archæology was profound. His books on these subjects were in every worthwhile library.

Two individuals stood on the edge of the group and scowled at each other like a cat and dog. They were “Monk” and “Ham.” They always seemed on the point of flying at each other’s throats. They swapped insults at every opportunity. Yet Ham had several times risked his life to save Monk, and Monk had done the same for Ham.

They were as unlike as men could be. Monk was a hairy monster of two hundred and sixty pounds, with arms some inches longer than his short legs, and a face incredibly homely. He was a human gorilla. The world of chemistry knew him as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of the most learned chemists alive. But he looked dumb as an ox.

Ham was slender, lean-waisted. His clothing was sartorial perfection—tailors had been known to follow Ham down streets, just to see clothes being worn as they should be. His business cards read: “Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks,” and he was possibly the most astute lawyer Harvard ever turned out. Ham carried a black cane of innocent aspect—a sword cane, in reality. He was never to be found without it.

The sixth member of the group was a mighty man of bronze—Doc Savage.

Man of mystery, the radio commentator had labeled Doc Savage. Wizard of science! Muscular marvel!

The radio speaker had not exaggerated. Doc Savage was all of these things. His mental powers and strength were almost fantastic. He was the product of intensive expert, scientific training that had started the moment he was born.

Each day of his life, he had performed a two-hour routine of unusual exercise. Doc’s powers might seem unbelievable, but there was really no magic about them. Rigid adherence to his exercise, coupled with profound study, was responsible.

Doc was a big man, almost two hundred pounds—but the bulk of his great form was forgotten in the smooth symmetry of a build incredibly powerful. The bronze of his hair was a little darker than that of his features, and the hair lay down tightly as a metal skullcap.

Most striking of all were the bronze man’s eyes. They glittered like pools of flake gold when little lights from the television scanning disk played on them. They seemed to exert a hypnotic influence.

The lines of Doc’s features, the unusually high forehead, the mobile and muscular and not-too-full mouth, the lean cheeks, denoted a power of character seldom seen.

“There goes the last of the flyers!” Doc said.

Doc’s voice, although low, held a remarkable quality of latent power. It was an intensively trained voice—everything about Doc had been trained by his exercise routine.

“They sure enough thought it was the sub they had bombed,” grinned Johnny, the bony archæologist. He adjusted the glasses he wore. These spectacles had an extremely thick left lens which was actually a powerful magnifying glass. Johnny, having practically lost the use of his left eye in the War, carried the magnifier there for handiness.

“Our contraption fooled them,” Doc admitted. “But it might not have worked so well in daytime. A close look would have shown the thing was only a strip of canvas painted the color of steel, and some oil barrels, pulled along under the surface by a torpedo mechanism.”

At the rear of the group, Monk stopped scowling at Ham long enough to ask: “You made that torpedo mechanism a couple of days ago—but how’d you know that early that something like this would happen?”

“I didn’t know,” Doc smiled faintly. “I only knew we were barging into trouble—and made preparations to meet it.”

“If you was to ask me, we didn’t have to barge into it,” Monk grinned. “It came right out and grabbed us around the neck. Who were them guys who just tried to lay eggs on us?”

For answer, Doc Savage drew two radio messages from a pocket.

“You all saw the first one of these when it came,” he said.

The five men nodded. They had been far within the arctic regions when the first message had reached them by radio. It was very short, reading:

IN DESPERATE NEED OF YOUR HELP.

JUAN MINDORO.

Doc Savage had promptly turned the submarine southward. There was no need of lingering in the arctic, anyway. They had just completed the mission which had sent them into the polar regions—a desperate, adventurous quest for a fifty-million-dollar treasure aboard a derelict liner.

That treasure now reposed in the submarine—a hoard of wealth that had threatened to cost its weight in the blood of men.

Doc had not told his five men what meaning Juan Mindoro’s mysterious message might have. They had not asked questions, knowing he would tell them in good time. Doc was sometimes as much of a mystery to his five friends as he was to the rest of the world.

They had guessed there was danger ahead, however. Several days ago, Doc had hailed a liner they chanced to pass, and had put aboard the vessel three persons who were passengers on the submarine. These three people—a famous violinist and his wife and daughter—were, with Doc and his five men, the only survivors of the grisly episode in the arctic through which they had just passed.

The radio commentator had not mentioned these three. He had not known of them. Nor would he ever know, for the polar episode was now a closed book.

The fact that Doc had transferred the three passengers to the safety of a liner showed he wanted them out of danger—and told Doc’s men they were headed for more trouble. They didn’t mind. It was the thing they lived for. They went to the far corners of the earth to find it.

But they had not known Doc had received a second message from the same source.

Doc extended the missive. “I copied this myself a few days ago. Read it.”

Crowding about, the five men read:

I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO GO INTO HIDING AT THE HOME OF THE MAN WHO WAS WITH ME WHEN I LAST SAW YOU. MEET ME THERE UPON YOUR ARRIVAL. AND BE PREPARED FOR ATTACKS ON YOUR LIFE.

JUAN MINDORO.

“Huh!” ejaculated Monk, wrinkling his flat, apish nose. “That don’t tell us any more than the first one.”

“Exactly,” Doc replied. “And that explains why I have not informed you fellows what we’re headed for. I don’t know myself—except that it has something to do with the Orient.

“Juan Mindoro is a political power in the Pacific island group known as the Luzon Union. He is the most influential man in the island. And you know what recently happened to the Luzon Union.”

“They were given their independence,” said Ham. “I remember now. Juan Mindoro had a big hand in electing the first president after the island group became self-governing. But what could that have to do with this?”

Doc shrugged. “It is too early to say.”

He glanced at the television scanning disk. “The men who tried to bomb us are gone. We might as well get under way.”

The submarine arose to the surface. The pall of black smoke still hung over the Sound.

Doc pulled in the television box which had been trailing the boat. Then the sub put on speed. It ran low in the water to escape attention from passing boats.

Once it dived to pass a launch loaded with newspaper reporters.