Читать книгу Mystery under the Sea: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Paradise is a beach. It is on Long Island Sound near New York City and, being one of the most convenient spots for swimming, is much frequented during the summer. The patrons are jaded citizens of Manhattan who, having struggled for a living in the great city all week, come for a rest.

Paradise Beach was quiet. That was another reason why it was so popular.

On the first Saturday of September, however, the quiet of Paradise Beach was rudely shattered.

The life guard—he sat atop a tower which stood out where the water was deep—was first to see the thing in the water. It was night, about two hours after sunset. Big floodlights blazed along the locker house, while others were on high poles out beyond the life guard’s tower. It was the illumination of these which first disclosed the thing in the water.

“Drowning man!” yelled the life guard, making a mistake.

The guard executed a snappy dive off his platform and swam rapidly out into the Sound. A man was swimming feebly out there. The guard had thought he was a bather who had ventured out too far. But, reaching the swimmer, he discovered the fellow was clothed, except for shoes and coat.

A wave came in; it was not large, for they do not have large waves on Long Island Sound during calm weather. Yet it submerged the man swimming in his clothing, and it was some moments before he came up, gasping feebly.

The life guard lent a hand, holding the fellow up and, at the same time, peering out into the Sound in an effort to learn where the unfortunate had come from. It was too dark to see much. The guard decided the man must have been in a boat, that had sunk.

“Were you alone?” he demanded. “Does anybody else need help?”

“Shut up!” said the one who was being rescued. “Either get me ashore or leggo so I can swim.”

A light skiff, rowed by another life guard, arrived at that moment and both the first life guard and the man swimming in his clothes were taken aboard and paddled to the beach. The rescued man started to get out of the boat, as if he were in a great hurry to leave.

The fellow was restrained, however, by the life guard, who knew that persons who have been near drowning sometimes become hysterical and do not quite know what they are doing.

“Leggo, dope,” snarled the man who had been found swimming in his clothes.

“Not until the doctor looks you over,” said one of the guards.

The rescued man then acted very ungallantly. He seized an oar and managed, after a short skirmish, to crack the life guards over the head, knocking them both senseless.

The man ran away, his wet clothing making slopping noises.

A throng of no small proportions was on the beach, but the rescue had been executed so quietly that only a few had realized what was happening. Most of the sharper observers had been advancing cautiously to investigate. They broke into a run, and a loud outcry went up as they saw the brief skirmish which felled the two life guards.

At first, there was no attempt to apprehend the fleeing man. New Yorkers learn early that attending to their own business is a policy which avoids trouble. However, two ambitious souls did attempt to stop the runner. One of them, a fat man, got an oar jabbed in the stomach for his pains. The other was discouraged by a blow over the head.

The fleeing man reached a row of bathhouses and ducked between them.

At this point, it was doubtful if many persons were aware that a dark motor boat had come into the floodlighted area from the Sound. This craft carried several men. Driven by a powerful motor, it swerved in close to the beach, and all but one of the occupants sprang overboard and waded ashore.

The man who remained in the boat took it back out into the Sound, and it was shortly lost in the darkness.

Electric excitement suddenly swept Paradise Beach. Those men who had gotten out of the motor boat were masked. Moreover, they carried revolvers.

The masked, armed men raced after the one who was fleeing. At first, they were not interfered with, the patrons of the bathing beach naturally being unarmed.

Then one of the Paradise special policemen came racing forward. He shouted, and had a gun in his hand. There was a prompt burst of shots. The special officer suddenly concluded that his salary did not cover gun fighting, and ignominiously took shelter.

The procession—fleeing swimmers and armed pursuer—left the confines of Paradise Beach behind them. In the pavilions, the bathhouses, half a dozen telephones were being employed to call policemen. This, incidentally, did no good whatever.

The fugitive, by now, knew the pursuit was close on his heels. There was a parking lot beyond the bathing beach buildings, and he ducked into this, dodging among the parked machines, peering frequently into vehicles, obviously trying to find one that was not locked.

On the far side of the lot, an automobile engine started. It was a motorist who, blissfully unaware of what was going on, had decided to leave. The fugitive raced madly for this machine.

His pursuers outguessed him. Hearing the car start, they surmised what he would do and directed their course to cut him off. They succeeded. In grim silence, they sprang upon the runner.

The late swimmer was virtually exhausted, which was one reason they had caught him so easily. He was beaten down, knocked as thoroughly senseless as had been the two life guards.

Half an hour later, the victim regained his senses. He looked about at the grim forms of his captors, still masked and visible in the glow of a single flashlight, and peered at thick scrub brush beyond them. This was plainly a remote spot.

“He should be dead by now,” one of the captors said, callously. “The guy has more lives than a cat.”

The prisoner said nothing, tried to move and did not succeed. He was being held tightly.

“He’s bound to be in Davy Jones’s locker before long,” said another of the men.

“Turn me adrift,” growled the prisoner. “You swabs have your lines tangled.”

“So you think,” snarled one of the masked group. “You scuttled our ship for us. Fixed it so it’ll sink sure.”

“I didn’t,” snapped the victim.

“We caught you,” the other pointed out.

“I don’t know anything about Taz, or the rest of it,” wailed the prisoner. “You got me all wrong! Sure you have!”

“We got you, all right,” one echoed, and laughed. Others also laughed, not pleasantly.

“Your name is Verne, ain’t it?” demanded one of the masked men. “Twenty-Thousand-Leagues Verne they call you, don’t they?”

The prisoner denied this vehemently. “No!”

“Oh yes, you are,” said the masked man. “And Diamond Eve Post hired you!”

“Diamond Eve Post?” the prisoner mumbled. “Never heard of her.”

He tried to sound puzzled, earnest, but he was not a very good actor.

“Listen, guy,” said the other, “don’t lie about it. We know she hired you.”

“No,” the man insisted.

“She sent you aboard to open the sea-cocks of our hooker, while all hands were ashore,” the other told him, grimly. “You went her one better than that. You smuggled a keg of acid aboard.”

“And dumped the acid in the bilge,” echoed another. “The cursed stuff ate the plates right out of the bottom of our hooker. She’s leakin’ like a sieve!”

“This is all a mistake,” insisted their captive.

“We found the empty acid keg,” he was told. “It was glass lined. It was a keg you said held your private stock of liquor.”

The prisoner rolled his eyes wildly.

The captive was a small man, but he had very large bones which gave him a sturdy aspect. There was a bald spot as round as a plate on top of his head. His clothing was rough and his pants legs had large bottoms, sailor fashion.

One thing about his appearance was particularly striking—his skin: it looked as if some weird phenomenon had brought all blood vessels to the surface. This gave a purple complexion which was rather hideous.

He struggled slightly, and there was a great horror coming over his features.

“I’m gonna die, if you don’t let me go,” he wailed. “After what you scuts done to me, there’s only one thing——”

A captor kicked him, snarled, “Put lashing on that tongue!”

The masked group seemed to be undecided about what to do next.

“Puttin’ a knife in his ’midships is the quickest way out,” one suggested.

“Nix,” another objected. “We want to give that Diamond Eve dame somethin’ to think about. We had him fixed, only he’s tougher than we expected.”

“He’s done for,” said a third. “It may take a little time, but he’s done for.”

The one who had suggested the knife snorted.

“What if he gets to a hospital? Some of them Manhattan hospitals are fitted up to take care of what’s gonna happen to him.”

They thought that over.

Suddenly, one grunted and drew a bottle from his clothing. He shook the bottle, so that the liquid inside gurgled.

“This is a sample of what’s left in that glass-lined keg,” he said. “I was keepin’ this stuff to show the big shot. But I got an idea.”

He fell upon the prisoner, wedged the fellow’s mouth open with a gun barrel, uncorked the bottle and poured some of the contents into the captive’s mouth. The result was grisly. The unfortunate man emitted a series of horrible shrieks, until they clamped a coat over his face. It was some moments before they removed the coat.

The captive’s mouth, lips and the lower part of his face were hideously burned. His whining and gagging noises were pitiful.

“Acid,” said the man with the bottle. “It’d eat the flukes off an anchor.”

“What about his hands?” a man objected. “He’ll write a note asking to be taken to a hospital.”

The man with the bottle leered. “I’ll fix that, too.”

He flashed a sheath knife and used it.

“Scuttlin’ our ship is nearly gonna make us lose out on that Taz thing,” he growled. “This pays you back for that. And it’ll teach Diamond Eve a lesson!”

He released the victim and the man staggered away, making small, unearthly noises. Agony from his burned mouth was so great that he was oblivious of the trickle of scarlet from his wrists. He began to run as best he could.

His hands were now useless. The tendons had been severed.

A shout, ugly, full of threat, came from those who had maltreated him. But it was doubtful if he heard.

“Tell the dame—if you can—that she’ll get worse than that, if she don’t furl her sails!” advised the one who shouted.

The mutilated man’s run was more of a stagger, which an average walk would have outpaced. He came, unexpectedly, out of the brush and found himself on close-mown grass, beyond which glittered light on a great shedded platform which stood on steel stilts.

The victim’s eyes were running with tears of pain and he had to peer for some moments before he recognized the structure as the terminus of an elevated line. He ran toward it.

There was a crowd of sweltering citizens, bound for the parks, the beaches. Many gasps of horror were brought by sight of the mutilated man. A woman fainted. Strangely enough, no one touched the fellow or offered to help him. Possibly, the hideous sight of him kept them away.

The metal steps of the elevated stairway were slippery with scarlet before the man got to the top, and he had fallen twice. The crowd—those who had stout stomachs, followed him up, but kept their distance, as if he were some poisonous thing. The man faced them, made his horrible sound at them, but nothing that could be understood.

Below, they were shouting for policemen, for an ambulance. A woman was screaming that a maniac was at large and had butchered himself.

The mutilated man was plainly desperate. He roved his pain-hazed eyes.

And at this point, fate stepped in. Probably the fact that the victim observed a certain poster, could not be attributed to anything but a combination of circumstances. But it was certain that he saw the poster. For he stumbled close to it, let his blurred eyes observe it more closely.

It was merely one of the large posters exhibited on railway station platforms in the metropolitan area for advertising purposes. This one was plugging a certain popular national magazine. The man plainly was not interested in the title of the magazine. His attention was centered on the words which described the leading features in the magazine for the month. It read:

DOC SAVAGE’S AMAZING SAGA—

ASTOUNDING DETAILS ABOUT THE

MAN OF MYSTERY

IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE

What he had read suggested something to the mutilated man. He dived into a train which had been standing at the platform.

The train was due to leave and the conductor must have been unaware of what was happening, because he applied the current and the string of cars clanked away. The victim huddled in the rear of a coach and rebuffed those who sought to aid him.