Читать книгу Red Snow: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3

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As far as was ever learned, a Seminole Indian alligator hunter named Duck-With-No-Wings was the first to see the Red Snow. The first to see it, that is, and live to discuss it later.

The Red Snow had appeared before, and had been seen, it developed in the course of time, but the witnesses had been victims of the scarlet horror and had not been heard from again. Nor had their bodies been found. It was very fantastic and quite inexplicable.

In the case witnessed by Duck-With-No-Wings, the victims were riding in a canvas boat, one of the collapsible kind which hunters carry in their automobiles. Duck-With-No-Wings saw the boat pull across an open patch of water in the Everglades and into a black gullet of a creek which ran under the interlacing mass of swamp vegetation.

The Seminole alligator hunter admired the boat. Then he noted that the occupants—they numbered two—seemed to be in a great hurry. They were stripped to underwear shorts—except that one had a small package slung about his neck by a string. They were drenched with perspiration. They looked back often.

Duck-With-No-Wings knew the signs. He had seen before fugitives from the law flee into the swamp, and they had acted thus. The Seminole drew back out of sight and watched the boat vanish into the swamp.

Some five minutes later, Duck-With-No-Wings was looking at the muddy trail of a bull ’gator when he gave a start which was very violent, considering that he was a member of a people noted for their command of facial expression. He ensconced himself behind a cypress.

The two half-naked men had appeared again. They were running now, sloughing madly through the morass, struggling out their hearts in the hopeless tangle. Then Duck-With-No-Wings saw an interesting thing.

One of the fleeting men paused beside a tree which was dead, and from which the bark was peeling. He reached up and removed the small package which was slung around his neck. This, he shoved under a scab of bark, concealing it. Then they ran on.

Duck-With-No-Wings continued to watch. He saw no sign of pursuers. But, not long afterward, he saw something which caused him to drop his rifle, his dearest possession, into the slime underfoot. And that meant he was very surprised.

There was no cloud in the sky. It was a very warm December day in Florida. Yet snow had started falling.

This snow was not white. It was not even a dusty color. Its hue was as red as blood.

Almost any one would have been surprised, and Duck-With-No-Wings was no exception. He stared upward, his round copper face distorted with amazement. There was nothing at all to show from whence the Red Snow came. It seemed to materialize in the thin, warm air of the swamp.

The flakes were not falling on Duck-With-No-Wings, but they were descending close enough that he could clearly see that they were flakes. He had seen snow, of course, and he had not the slightest doubt that this stuff was red snow.

About that time, a series of awful screams began coming from the spot whence had gone the two nearly naked fugitives. Their squawling was extremely hideous.

The combination of red snow and fearful shrieks made Duck-With-No-Wings decide he would rather be elsewhere. But before he fled, he ran over to the tree, under the bark of which one of the men had thrust a package.

Duck-With-No-Wings was an acquisitive soul. He drew out the package. Then he ran with great speed and did not stop until he was far away in the swamp. After a due interval, he found time to examine the package. He expected to see money, or maybe jewelry. He was disappointed, no little disgusted.

There were many wrappings of oiled paper around the object in the package. Removed, these disclosed a cube, less than two inches in diameter, of a substance the nature of which defied Duck-With-No-Wings. It was red—a dull, unimpressive carmine.

Duck-With-No-Wings had seen the sealing wax which they sometimes put on letters at the Indian Agency, and he at first decided this stuff was sealing wax. Then he thought it over, and was not so sure. The man who had hidden the stuff had acted as if it were extremely valuable.

Duck-With-No-Wings decided to keep the red substance and, if it was valuable, market it. But he let the marketing endeavors wait. He was still a little terrified by the red snow which he had seen. He talked about it some, but after the other Seminoles began to ridicule him, he kept silent.

Duck-With-No-Wings sat much by himself, thinking of the day when he would go to one of the white man’s towns and perhaps get much money from the red lump which he now carried in the pouch around his own neck. It was nice to think of such things.

The police departments in various American cities were doing some thinking about this time, too. In Cleveland, they were thinking about what could have happened to Valdemar Svelaska.

Valdemar Svelaska was a plump, pleasant-looking man who, years ago, had designed war planes for Germany; but now he was an American citizen, and perhaps the greatest designer of aircraft, as well as the owner of a large plane factory.

He had disappeared, had Valdemar Svelaska. His family insisted he had gone rabbit hunting with his dog. He had simply not been heard from again.

There was a farmer who told of seeing a cloud of what looked like red snow fall upon the portion of his field where it was thought Valdemar Svelaska might have gone rabbit hunting. But this farmer was known to be something of a spiritualist, a fellow who frequently claimed he had seen manifestations. No one gave his story a great deal of attention.

It was thought that the famous airplane designer might have suffered amnesia and wandered away.

H. U. Summervane Lawmer was the next one to disappear. Lawmer was a gentleman who had the right to place numerous letters designating university degrees after his name, and he had just been appointed to the chair of chemical research in one of the nations most erudite universities. He was visiting in South Carolina.

After taking off in his private plane, flying alone, H. U. Summervane Lawmer was not seen again.

A fisherman reported seeing a cloud of reddish substance in the sky, and said this seemed to fall toward the earth and disperse, as if it were snow melting.

Now it happened that this fisherman was a notorious liar who was always seeing things, usually sea serpents. No one credited his story.

This was unfortunate. The other witness had been a farmer who saw visions. The second witness was a confirmed liar. So the significance of their stories was entirely missed, and thereby was also missed a clue which might have saved the world much terror and grief.

In the next week, five more men vanished. All were, colloquially speaking, “big shots”; one was an international banker, another a famous mechanical engineer, the third a United States senator, the fourth a noted manufacturer of automobiles, and the fifth an extremely brilliant young undersecretary in the United States War Department.

Such is the phlegmatic nature of the American public that these disappearances did not gain a great deal of attention. No one had seen any more red snow.

No one suspected there was a connection between the disappearances. No one dreamed that the disappearances had a profound importance, that they were of a magnitude vital beyond any importance of the separate individuals themselves.

And then Doc Savage came to Florida.