Читать книгу The Mental Wizard: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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The young woman with the strange golden hair and metallic cloth garments approached with a calmness which was somewhat unnerving. Amber O’Neel felt an impulse to run, and he could not explain it. There was just something about the girl. She seemed to have some power.

She came close to O’Neel and lifted an arm. He half ducked, thinking she was going to strike him. But she waved, instead, that he should pursue the fleeing aviator.

O’Neel thought of the big .45 automatic, and was not enthusiastic about the pursuit. Anyway, he had some ideas, and wanted to ask questions.

“Look!” he said. “That aviator guy found you inland somewhere, and he wants to know where you got the gold that queer cloth you’re wearing is made out of. Right?”

The girl said nothing. She jerked her arm, directing O’Neel to pursue the aviator.

“What tribe are you from?” O’Neel asked.

She continued to point, to say nothing.

“Hablah Espanol?” O’Neel asked, his Spanish bad.

Apparently she didn’t speak Spanish. O’Neel tried Portuguese, one or two Indian dialects, and French—all the languages he knew. Results were zero.

“Aw, heck!” he exploded finally. “The cat got your tongue?”

When the girl still said nothing, he glowered at her with the idea of causing her to avert her gaze. She had been staring at him steadily. Her eyes were a most unusual shade of blue, he noted, and there was something disquieting about them.

As he watched the eyes, they seemed to radiate something like an invisible solid that gripped him and held him. He tried to move his hands, but the idea somehow didn’t quite seem to get to his hands, so that they did not move.

The girl’s eyes seemed to get more and more potent, until they were incredible magnets of blue. O’Neel felt the world begin to turn slowly under his feet——

He gave a violent jump, whirled, got his back to the girl, and began to beat himself in the face.

“Hell’s bells!” he squawled. “Hypnotizing me! She’s two thirds witch!”

He had snapped the spell. He ran to the spot where he had been forced by the aviator to drop his guns. They were still there, and he used them to menace such of his patriots as he could find.

“Grab that girl!” he yelled at them, in their native tongues. “Tie her with bark rope.”

The patriots, afraid of the two guns, ran swiftly and encircled the girl, then came toward her. There was nothing subtle about them. They came in crouching, with arms open ready to grab, like so many wrestlers approaching an opponent.

They stopped. They did it as if they were one man. And all of them stared at the girl.

“Rush her!” O’Neel yelled.

They not only didn’t rush her, but they acted as if they were going to sleep on their feet.

O’Neel knew a little about hypnotism. He lifted his guns, and they roared, almost together. Two patriots howled as the bullets burned grooves in their skin. It was amazing shooting.

“Grab her!” O’Neel barked, in the aboriginal tongue.

They grabbed her, four of them—and the next instant all four were flying backward.

It was as if they had tackled the flying weights on a big engine governor. Amber O’Neel, pop-eyed, knew he had seen as blinding a bit of applied self-defense as he had ever witnessed.

He had started to rush in himself. But now he held back. One of the men had been barely touched by the strange girl, it seemed, but now he had a broken arm.

“Seize her, all of you!” O’Neel bawled, and his two guns cracked like vicious whips.

The patriots ran in. They swarmed over the girl, so many of them that she was lost to sight. Out of the pile of struggling forms came moans and screams. All of these sounds were emitted by the natives. When the mêlée moved a few yards to the right, senseless forms were left behind.

Unexpectedly, the girl broke free. She got clear. As she ran, her fleetness of foot was startling. Her bright, golden garments, unscathed by the fray, glistened in the sunlight as she crossed the clearing.

O’Neel, excited and not wanting to lose the wealth represented by the girl’s golden attire, lifted his guns.

“Stop, or I’ll kill you!” he shrieked.

He meant it.

The girl stopped. She stood perfectly still. O’Neel ran toward her, stopped before he was too close, and howled for the natives to seize and bind the girl.

“I’ll kill you if you try to fight them!” he snarled.

He still meant it.

The remarkable young woman let herself be bound. Two patriots used cords braided out of the same tough bark strands which they used to make their clothing, and it was not likely she would break loose.

Amber O’Neel crouched beside the young woman, taking care that her eyes did not meet his. This was easy. She seemed to be watching one of the natives.

O’Neel dug into a pocket and brought out a bottle holding one of the regular acids for making a gold test. His business was platinum, but there was gold in this country. He doused some of the stuff on the upper part of the girl’s garments. It was gold.

“Where’d this stuff come from?” he yelled at her.

She didn’t answer, and she was still staring at the native.

“C’mon an’ answer me!” O’Neel commanded angrily. “You can speak some kind of language, can’t you?”

She still stared at the native.

O’Neel looked at the native. The act kept the world from losing a fellow who was doing it no good. It saved Amber O’Neel’s life.

The native had slipped his machete from its sheath, raised it, and was creeping forward. He sprang, eyes glaring a desire to kill. O’Neel dodged. Quarters were too close for his guns. Yet the guns still saved his life, for he got them up before him.

The machete blade hit the steel and stopped, which was lucky, for the native had spent a lifetime chopping paths through jungles with a machete, and he had swung a blow that could have cut O’Neel in two. O’Neel grunted loudly, then clubbed a gun to the native’s head.

The native fell senseless, and O’Neel was too shaken to do something he ordinarily would have done—shoot the native.

“You done that!” he yelled at the girl. He met her strange eyes, then wildly shifted his gaze away from hers.

He was panting excitedly, and not until he had wrenched off his shirt and tied it around the girl’s head to cover her eyes did he breathe anywhere near normally.

“A confounded witch!” he gulped.

He tested her bonds to make sure the patriots had done a good job of tying her, muttering as he did so, “She hypnotized that native, made him jump me! But how’d she do it without tellin’ him what to do?”

He stood up, satisfied she was tied.

“Come here, you fellows!” he yelled at his patriots. “We’re going to catch that aviator!”

The aviator was traveling like a fellow who would be easy to catch. He hooked the ground with his toes as he ran. At times, weaving to pass trees, he did not quite make it, and the shocks knocked him reeling. Almost any kind of a bush tripped him.

He was collecting mud and scratches. The unusual leather skirt which he wore did not protect him much. He kept the .45 automatic in his hand, as if afraid of losing it. And frequently he stopped to listen.

He, like Amber O’Neel, had a habit of talking to himself, and Ireland was now in his voice. It hadn’t been so noticeable before.

“Sure, and they’ll follow me!” he muttered. “The gold Z is wearin’ will make that white devil greedy. And Z won’t tell the scut where it came from, so he’ll be followin’ me ve-r-ra soon!”

He pronounced it as “Z,” the last word in the English alphabet.

He smashed his face against a tree which he either didn’t see or couldn’t avoid, got up, then ran out.

“Or mayze Z will steer the scamp wrong long enough so that I can get away.” He thought a bit, then amended: “No, she won’t! She’ll do anything she can to keep me from gettin’ to the outside with news of Klantic and the secret!”

A sharp stick would have disemboweled him, except that he saw it in time.

“Mother of Mercy!” he mumbled. “I’ve gotta get to the world with this! It’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to mankind!”

He stumbled into a thorn thicket and came out a sight that was not pleasant to look at. That stopped his muttering to himself, and evidently started him thinking. Finally, he stopped.

“Sure, and I can’t make it!” he told himself hollowly.

He tried to sit on the ground, but fell, utterly exhausted.

“Overwork—strain—planning to escape—got me down!” he mumbled. “Shouldn’t have saved—so big share of rations—for escape food supply. Starved myself. Didn’t need it when—found they hadn’t destroyed plane. But how was I—know they hadn’t destroyed it?”

He shook his head solemnly over that mistake.

“If was only some way—of getting diary—outside.” His voice had a whine of despair.

He fumbled in a pocket cleverly contrived to strap to his leg under his leather skirt. The notebook which came out was an expensive one. Otherwise it would not have stood the wear it had stood.

Amber O’Neel came out of the jungle about the same time the notebook came out of the pocket.

The meeting was an accident, in a sense. Amber O’Neel had not expected to meet his quarry so soon, so he walked out boldly, feet making some swishing noises in the rank jungle weeds.

The aviator looked up, saw his enemy, dropped the notebook and grabbed at the automatic. The gun banged the instant he got his hand on it.

By rights, Amber O’Neel should have died then. But the aviator was either a poor shot or very much out of practice. He missed. O’Neel yipped like a dog just missed by a rock, and flashed his two guns.

Immediately, there was a great thundering of guns in the little glade in which the men had met. Both men moved rapidly as they fired. Weeds were tall, bushes rank. Neither man was exactly sure where the other was. Both guns went empty about the same time.

Neither man made a sound. Amber O’Neel, not proud of the shooting he had been doing, lay still and strained his ears, guns ready.

The South American jungle is noted for its noisy birds. The shooting had stirred them up. Parrakeets squawked raucously. Gaudy birds made squawking, whistling and moaning noises, and there was one that sounded like a clear bell.

Amber O’Neel was so on edge that he failed to notice something that should have caught his attention. One particular uproar of bird cries was receding. When O’Neel did notice this, he sprang erect and cursed.

“The aviator guy’s runnin’ away!” he gritted.

He scrambled forward through the weeds and small bushes. Still uppermost in his mind was catching the flier and making him tell where the strange girl—the girl with such weird powers—had come from, and especially the source of her gold frock.

Anyway, it wouldn’t help the temper of the Colombian officials if the aviator came out of the jungle with the story of the attack and the captured girl.

But Amber O’Neel saw the notebook. It lay where the flier had dropped it. The notebook covers were a bright red, despite being worn, an eye-catching contrast against the green of the weeds.

Because he was a greedy devil who overlooked few bets, Amber O’Neel veered over to snatch up the notebook. Naturally, he looked inside.

DAVID HUTTON, HIS DIARY.

Amber O’Neel spoke aloud to himself.

“That name,” he said, “is damn familiar for some reason.”

Men alone a great deal of the time get the habit of talking to themselves.

He examined the first entry in the diary. It was dated almost ten years ago, and the first line started off:

To-day I leave on my attempted flight from Rio de Janeiro to the United States, flying alone.

“Hell!” O’Neel said, and stopped running. “I remember now. This guy was an aviator. He was lost. A lot of birds went hunting him, and some of them didn’t——”

He stopped, as if he wanted to think over what he had been about to say.

“Some of them didn’t get back,” he finished.