Читать книгу Death in Silver: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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The archer was not a large man—if he was a man. He was shorter than Ham, who was not tall, and he was also scrawny, with thin arms and gnarled legs.

His garb was the strange, the gripping thing. It was silver. The cloth was of the metallic stuff such as is used to make the stage costumes of show girls, and it was cut in one garment—a coverall.

There was a hood over the head, also of silver, elastic and tight fitting. Because eye and mouth openings were dark against the shiny metallic hood, the affair had the aspect of a death’s-head, a silver skull. A costly wrist watch adorned one of his pipestem arms.

The silver archer stood in the door of an adjacent office, holding a heavy medieval bow, evidently one of the antiques which filled the rooms. He dropped the bow, it thumping loudly as it fell; then he leaped backward.

The movement snapped Monk and Ham out of their trance. They dived headlong in pursuit. But the killer slammed the door; a key clinked among the tumblers. Doc Savage’s two aides, flinging against the panel, found it solidly resistant.

“So there isn’t any such thing as the Silver Death’s-Heads!” Ham snapped.

Monk knotted an enormous, bristle-covered fist and grated, “You were the first one to get that idea, you nitwit shyster.”

Then Monk grimaced and hit the door panel with his fist. The wood splintered, gave a trifle; it splintered more extensively under a second blow, then collapsed, making a hole large enough to pass the apish chemist’s hairy hand. Standing well clear of the door, Monk groped for the key, found it in place, and unlocked the panel. He shoved it open.

Ham started through, sword cane in hand.

“Wait, stupid,” Monk growled, and shoved the dapper lawyer back.

From a holster, so cleverly padded under an armpit that it was unnoticeable, Monk drew a weapon bearing close resemblance to an overgrown automatic pistol. But it was no automatic.

It was a supermachine pistol, product of Doc Savage’s mechanical genius, a weapon which fired at an incredible speed, discharging, instead of regulation lead slugs, thin-walled composition bullets which carried an anæsthetic compound producing quick, harmless unconsciousness.

Machine pistol in hand, Monk jumped through the door. Considering that a murderer had just entered the room, his act might have seemed reckless. But Monk wore a bulletproof vest which protected his entire body, and he knew gunmen of the modern type do not often shoot at a man’s head.

Ham trailed the homely chemist. He, too, wore one of the bulletproof vests which were so light and thin as to be unnoticeable under their clothing, and was not at all uncomfortable. These vests were also a product of Doc Savage’s mechanical skill.

Both men jerked up inside the room. Their jaws sagged; their eyes, roving, widened in amazement.

“Well, I’m a camel’s uncle!” Monk breathed. “Where’d he go?”

Ham shook his head slowly and turned his sword cane in his hands, for their quarry was nowhere in the room. Both the outer windows were down, and the lawyer knew that this skyscraper had a wall sheer and smooth, impossible for even a so-called “human fly” to scale by ordinary methods.

Monk, charging around the room, jerked a rectangle of expensive tapestry from the wall, scowled when he saw there was no aperture back of it, and flipped the carpet up. Nowhere was there a trapdoor.

“The windows are unlocked,” Ham pointed out.

“But that bird in silver couldn’t have——” Monk swallowed the rest, ran to a window and wrenched it up. He looked out, seemed stunned, but said nothing.

Ham leaped to his side. Together they peered down.

“We must be getting very dumb,” Ham said disgustedly.

“Speak for yourself,” Monk growled, then placed a hand on the window sill and vaulted through the opening, out into space.

Without hesitating, Ham followed, instinctively using care not to disrupt the neat hang of his garments. It was a rare occasion when Ham forgot his clothing.

Perhaps six feet below the window was a wide ledge. For the moment, the two men had forgotten that the skyscraper was set back, pyramid fashion, at intervals, and that one of these setbacks was at the level of the Seven Seas offices. The killer must have fled by this route, after closing the window behind him to confuse his pursuers.

Monk pointed, “He went this way!”

City grime was smeared on the roof of the set-back, soot and dust which retained footprints plainly. The two men followed the tracks around the skyscraper. They disappeared into a window on the opposite side.

Monk and Ham clambered through the window and found themselves among mops, buckets and window-washing paraphernalia; the room was obviously one used by janitors. There was no trace of the weirdly garbed slayer.

A corridor was beyond the store room, this being deserted for the moment. Not until Monk emitted an angry roar did any one appear, then two policemen popped out of the offices of Seven Seas.

“What’s going on here?” snapped an officer.

“Where’d that killer go?” Monk demanded.

The cop gulped. “Killer! Say, what’re you talking about?”

And that was the first inkling the police had of the slaying of unfortunate Clarence Sparks, for the meek-spirited billing clerk was dead, the arrow having punctured his heart. They found that out when they examined him.

Where the killer had gone remained a mystery through the course of the next fifteen minutes. Then an excited call came up from the basement regions. A fireman had been found knocked senseless in the basement.

Monk and Ham hurried down.

The fireman had thick blond hair, and that had possibly preserved his life, for the blow he had received over the head, judging by the bruise, had been terrific. A policeman was waiting for a doctor to revive the fellow.

“Let me do it,” said Ham. “I have an infallible system.”

Ham unsheathed his sword cane, and the onlookers say that the tip was coated for a few inches with a brownish substance which was slightly sticky. This was a drug mixture which produced senselessness when a victim was pricked.

With a finger tip Ham removed a bit of the drug from the sword and applied it to the tongue of the unconscious fireman. The stuff, in small quantities, was a stimulant, but if administered in quantity, produced senselessness.

The fireman revived almost at once.

“What happened to you?” Ham demanded.

“Aye not bane know,” mumbled the fireman, feeling his blond head.

“Who hit you?” Ham persisted.

“He bane a feller all dressed up in shiny suit,” was the reply. “Aye just see him—then bop! He hit me with gun.”

The room where they stood was a concrete inferno far below the street, where the great oil-burning boilers roared, generating steam for the radiators and hot water for the washrooms.

Moved by a thought—he was sharp in spite of Monk’s habit of terming him a nitwit shyster—Ham went over and peered into one of the fire boxes. He started violently, moved to use his sword to probe in the heat, then changed his mind and employed a cleaning bar.

Out of the fire box Ham brought a crinkled mass that had once been silver metallic cloth.

“The suit the murderer was wearing,” he declared.

“Then it is some one in the building,” Monk growled. “The fellow burned his rig because the police have the doors blocked and are not letting any one out.”

Unnoticed, a man was standing in the background near the door. He was a scrawny fellow, bedecked with grease stains and dust, garbed in the green coveralls which the janitors of the building wore. It was because he was one of the janitors that he was receiving no attention.

He deserved attention. No hint of the fact showed on his features, but he was catching every word that was being said. He had a stupid face, anyway; it was almost without a jaw, being round, with small features, and having a sickly gray color. His whole head was very much like an old, white rubber ball which had been handled with grimy fingers. He wore a costly wrist watch.

The fellow glanced over his shoulder, as if anxious to get out of the boiler room. Shortly, he did leave, but he took his time so that no suspicion was attached to his departure.

Finding his way to a telephone, he called a number. A voice—a coarse, whispering voice, obviously disguised—answered.

“This ain’t goin’ so hot,” said the man in janitor regalia.

“What is wrong, Bugs?” asked the whispering voice.

“Two of Doc Savage’s men are snooping around,” reported “Bugs,” his round, pale face close to the transmitter.

The whispering one swore. “I saw that in an extra edition of a tabloid newspaper. What on earth got those two involved in the affair?”

“One of them, named Monk, has a chemical laboratory on top of the building,” Bugs advised.

This called forth more sibilant profanity.

“If I had known one of Doc Savage’s men had a place on the building, we would have used other methods on old Winthrop,” grated the distant whisper. “Doc Savage is the last man on earth we want on our necks at this stage of the game. Savage is almost inhuman. He is a mechanical wizard, a scientific genius, and a man as strong as Hercules; and he applies all of his abilities to helping other people out of trouble. He goes in for big stuff. Something like we are pulling would be his meat.”

“Boss,” Bugs muttered, “there’s somethin’ else.”

“What?”

“A clerk must’ve been listenin’ outside old Winthrop’s door when—well, you know—and he overheard stuff. I don’t know how much, because I croaked him before he could tell it all to Doc Savage’s two men.”

“You damned fool!” snarled the other. “There was nothing said in that telephone talk which would give me away.”

“How was I to know that?” Bugs whined. “I was afraid he had a line on us. I had my silver outfit on, and I got hold of an old bow and arrow and let him have it.”

“Oh, you idiot!” the whispering man groaned. “Right in front of two men who are as brainy as they come. Doc Savage does not have any mental blanks working for him—like I seem to have.”

“Aw,” Bugs mumbled. “I got away, banged a fireman over the head and burned my silver outfit, so they couldn’t find any finger prints or where it was made or maybe trace the cloth.”

Several seconds of silence followed this; the distant mastermind seemed to be giving deep thought to the affair. Bugs, impatient at the delay, began speaking.

“If we just hadn’t bumped old Winthrop,” he said. “That was——”

“That was necessary!” the distant voice finished for him. “Winthrop was a man who would not hesitate to swindle an orphan, if it could be done legally. That fooled me. The old nut had his own screwy idea of honor. Or maybe he was afraid of the law. Anyway, he was going to tell the police all about us. And he knew plenty, especially about the job we had done in his shipyard.”

“Well, Savage’s two men are snooping,” Bugs muttered. “What’re we gonna do about that? Let it ride, huh? They ain’t got a line to go on.”

“They’ll get a line, don’t worry,” grated the whisperer. “Doc Savage’s men are wizards, and that fellow Savage himself is positively inhuman. We must do something.”

“What?” Bugs wanted to know.

After a pause, the other said, “Listen to this.”

Following that, there was a chain of rapid commands, Bugs mumbling frequently that he understood. An expression of evil pleasure overspread his unhealthy moon of a face as he heard the plans unfolded. He consulted his remarkably high-priced wrist watch.

“That oughta fix ’em,” he grinned finally.

Hanging up, he made his way back through the corridor labyrinths of the great building until he located Monk and Ham. Lurking in the background, unnoticed, he kept an eye on Doc Savage’s two aides.

Bugs was waiting for something, and he eyed the watch often.

As for Monk and Ham, they had given up all hope of the blond fireman furnishing any valuable information. The fellow had seen only a grotesque figure in silver. The ashes of the silver garment, a shapeless sediment of metal and cinders, furnished no clue.

“Even Doc couldn’t learn anything from this,” Monk complained, indicating the garment.

Ham started to nod, then refrained, since agreeing with Monk on any subject was against his policy.

“We’re killing time,” snapped the dapper lawyer. “Why don’t we go upstairs and look over the explosion scene.”

“The police have done that,” Monk grunted.

“They have not found what caused the blast,” Ham pointed out.

That seemed to settle the question, and they started mounting stairs, the elevators not yet being in working order.

The skyscraper had, not one basement, but three, one below the other, and the boilers were in the lowermost level, deep in the solid bed rock of Manhattan Island and probably below the surface of the near-by East River, which at this point was very wide, actually a neck of New York Harbor.

The two men reached the second basement and encountered a police officer. The cop had the rank of lieutenant, but he was deferential, for Monk and Ham held honorary police stations far above his own. Doc Savage and all of his men held these honorary commissions, issued out of gratitude for past services in aiding the law enforcement agencies of the city.

“We have learned something,” reported the lieutenant. “I knew you gentlemen would want all information as quickly as we got it.”

“Shoot,” Monk invited.

The police officer explained rapidly: “We are entirely mystified as to the cause of the explosion which killed Winthrop, although a more intensive search may turn up some clue. We are overlooking no bets. The blast might have been a bomb, launched in some manner from a plane. In checking up, we learned that a plane was flying over the river, very near the building, at the time of the explosion. Too, there was a man on the river in a motor boat.”

No one paid attention to Bugs, who was loitering within earshot.

“Any way of identifying the plane?” Monk asked the policeman.

“You would be surprised how people notice things like that when something grabs their attention,” replied the officer. “I suppose some persons wondered if the plane had dropped a bomb. Anyway, we have several witnesses who got the number on the lower wing surface of the plane.”

“Great!” grunted Monk. “You’re checking?”

“You bet. And, moreover, two or three dock workers identified the motor boat which was on the river. There was one man in the boat, and he may have seen the plane drop a bomb.”

“It’s pretty foggy,” Monk pointed out.

The officer nodded, fumbled in a uniform pocket and produced a notebook. He thumbed through the leaves.

“Gilbert Stiles is the owner of the plane, according to the check we made on the numbers,” he said. “Stiles keeps the plane for his personal pleasure. The man in the boat was a fisherman named”—he stumbled over the pronunciation—“named Gugillello Bellondi, or something like that. The flier lives on Eighty-fifth Street in Jackson Heights, and the fisherman on Sand Street in Brooklyn.”

Bugs, who had overheard all of this, turned surreptitiously, fumbled out a sheet of paper and a pencil stub and put down the name of Gilbert Stiles and Gugillello Bellondi. He added data on their residences. Bugs did not put much trust in his memory.

Monk and Ham, accompanied by the police lieutenant, mounted the stairs into the topmost basement.

“We had better ring Doc in on this,” Monk suggested, eying Ham.

Ham said, “I had the same idea before you did.”

In the skyscraper lobby were a number of telephone booths. Monk entered one of these, found the outside connections undisturbed by the blast, and called the number of Doc Savage’s headquarters.

The headquarters was a strange aerie on the eighty-sixth floor of the most impressive skyscraper in uptown New York, and the bronze man spent much of his leisure there. Actually, Doc Savage allowed himself no leisure in the accepted sense, all of his time being spent in research, in experiments, in study. There was a fabulously equipped library and laboratory in the headquarters.

“Doc?” asked Monk.

The question was unnecessary—Doc Savage had a remarkable voice, one which was powerful, yet controlled, modulated, giving the impression of almost eerie strength. Unmistakable, that voice.

“I just saw an extra edition of the newspaper,” said Doc Savage. “Was your laboratory damaged by the explosion?”

“Some,” Monk admitted. “But that isn’t what I called about, Doc. There is something underhanded going on down here.”

“We do not involve ourselves in anything the police can handle,” Doc reminded.

“I figured you’d be interested,” Monk explained. “You see, it’s a queer business all along. First, there’s nothing to show what caused the explosion—or if there is, they haven’t found it yet. Then a guy in silver murdered Clarence Sparks, a Winthrop employee.”

“What is this?” Doc asked sharply.

“A bird dressed up in a sort of silver coverall suit and a silver mask, shot Sparks with a bow and arrow just as we were about to question the fellow. Sparks seemed to know something.”

“Did the killer resemble the strange silver-clothed figures who have recently committed a series of big robberies and who also sunk the Transatlantic Company’s liner, Avallancia?” Doc questioned.

“Sure,” said Monk. “I think he was one of the gang.”

Doc Savage was silent a moment, as if engaged in thought, then a weird, a most unusual sound came from the telephone receiver. It was a sound defying description. It was a most unmusical trilling, a whistle and yet not a whistle. Possessing a throaty, exotic quality, it ran up and down the musical scale, but without adhering to a definite tune.

It might have been a wind whistling with ghostly quality through a ship’s rigging, or it might have been the song of some strange jungle bird.

Monk stiffened as he heard the sound; he had heard the eerie note many times before. It was the sound of Doc Savage the small unconscious thing which the bronze man did in moments of mental excitement. It usually came before some startling development; often it marked Doc’s discovery of some obscure fact which was later to possess great significance.

“Monk,” Doc said, “have you noticed anything queer about the robberies these so-called Silver Death’s-Heads have been committing?”

Monk began, “Well, their silver disguises——”

“Not that,” Doc told him. “There is one strange point about the robberies themselves. Have you noticed?”

“No,” said Monk. “What is it?”

“A number of men have been killed in the course of the thefts,” Doc stated.

“Sure. But men are often killed during robberies.”

“In each case, these men were prominent,” Doc explained patiently. “And on one or two occasions, the thefts during which they were shot down were of a trivial nature. I can give you one very good example.”

“Let’s have it,” Monk requested.

“Two weeks ago a gang of the Silver Death’s-Heads, seven of them to be exact, held up a small filling station on Long Island,” Doc announced. “The filling station was very small and never had more than a few dollars on hand. But a limousine had just driven into the station to fill up with gas. It was occupied by a wealthy man named Kirkland Le Page. He was shot and killed. The filling station attendant was lying on the floor of his station at the time and did not see what provoked the shooting. Le Page was driving his car himself.”

“I remember,” said Monk.

“Kirkland Le Page was vice president of Transatlantic Company, owners of the liner Avallancia, which was later sunk by the Silver Death’s-Heads,” Doc stated.

“Blazes!” exploded Monk. “There’s something big behind this!”

“Exactly,” Doc agreed.

Monk stood silently in the telephone booth, mentally turning over what Doc Savage had just revealed. The homely chemist nodded slowly to himself. He would have been willing to bet that Doc had been on the verge of investigating the weird Silver Death’s-Heads, even if this afternoon’s explosion had not occurred.

Monk opened his mouth to speak further—but things began to happen.

There was a stifled yell from the lobby behind Monk, where Ham and the policeman stood. Feet pounded on the lobby floor. There was another yell. A shot banged.

Monk tried to turn. His shoulder spread was vast, the telephone booth small. At first, he did not make it. He squirmed to get around.

The booth had glass windows. With a jangling crash, these caved in. Glass showered Monk. The homely chemist got a flash of a hand encased in a silver glove. The hand held a heavy automatic.

Silver glove and weighty gun were all that Monk saw. The weapon lashed for his head. He sought to duck. The booth was too small, and the automatic came down full on the top of his nubbin of a head.

Monk slumped and never felt the gun club down on his head twice again, the blows murderously vicious.