Читать книгу The Sea Angel: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5

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Doc Savage and Nancy Quietman hurriedly entered the museum. They found the phalanx of guards blissfully unaware that anything had happened to Leander Quietman.

“Those men probably doubled back and seized him!” the girl said, and added that it was a wonder some one had not taken to stealing the New York City police stations.

Whatever the cops thought about this, they were polite enough not to say. Doc Savage and the young woman walked out on the street.

The newsboy was still there, yelling the headlines. Doc bought a paper. When he opened it, black type was big on the page.

GRAND JURY FAILS TO INDICT MAYFAIR!

——

“Awful Miscarriage of Justice,” District Attorney Says.

Nancy Quietman said, “I suppose you have dismissed that man, Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, or Monk, as he is called, from your organization?”

“I have,” Doc said quietly.

The girl nodded approvingly.

“It was terrible, the way he swindled that poor lawyer, Theodore Marley Brooks—Ham, as he is nicknamed,” the girl said.

Nancy Quietman, in referring to the swindle mentioned in the newspapers, was talking about a scandal that had started the politicians in Washington howling, and which had turned collective Wall Street as pale as a ghost. The politicians were claiming it proved the laws governing Wall Street were too lax, and Wall Street was afraid of what the politicians would do.

Andrew Blodgett “Monk” Mayfair had cleverly swindled Brigadier General Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks, noted war veteran, out of three million dollars, reducing Ham to a pauper. Poor, impoverished Ham had attempted to take his own life.

On the other hand, the rapscallion Monk boasted that everything had been perfectly legal, and apparently it had, because they were still trying to get him in jail.

Doc Savage had ejected Monk from his organization and publicly branded any one who would commit such a swindle as a type of rascal which was not doing the country any good.

The method by which Monk had perpetrated his swindle on Ham was a bit too complicated in its legal aspects for an average citizen to understand.

“Your grandfather may have gone home,” Doc told the girl.

“I live at grandfather’s house,” she said. “Would you care to accompany me there and perhaps talk with him?”

The bronze man accepted the invitation.

The Leander L. Quietman mansion bore more resemblance to a church than to a home. It was an old-timer, and situated on an uptown eminence overlooking the Hudson River.

A butler in exactly the correct attire opened the door.

“Your grandfather just left, Miss Quietman,” he said, when asked about Leander L. Quietman.

“So he got back safe!” the girl exclaimed happily.

The elderly butler adjusted his eyeglasses. “Your grandfather took his bags, miss. He asked me to tell you he might be gone for some time.”

“Where did he go?”

“He didn’t say, miss.”

“That’s queer,” Nancy Quietman said, and looked worried for a few moments. Then she smiled at Doc Savage. “Would you like to have coffee with me?”

They entered a room which she explained was her grandfather’s laboratory.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, looking around. “What—what——”

The desk drawers were hanging out, the papers in them birdnests of confusion. Other papers were on the floor.

“Grandfather left in a hurry!” Nancy Quietman gasped, explaining a scene that spoke for itself.

“Would you give me your permission to make an investigation, Miss Quietman?” Doc Savage asked quietly.

“You think something is wrong?”

“Manifestly,” Doc said. “First, the call for bodyguards, then the attempted kidnaping, now this.”

“Go ahead with your investigation!” the girl said, vehemently. “This whole thing is as strange as—as that monster!”

Doc Savage’s investigation was interesting. First, he visited his car, and returned with a small metal case on which were some knobs which were like those on ordinary radio sets.

“A device which howls when any metal is brought near it,” the bronze man explained.

Doc now moved the contrivance about the room, keeping near the walls. It howled. He located a spot in the wall where it howled very loudly.

The wall, of wood paneling, looked solid at that point; but after the bronze man had worked on it a bit, a secret door came open. This revealed a safe door.

“Know the combination?” the bronze man asked.

“I didn’t even know the safe was there!” the girl exclaimed.

Doc then opened the safe door.

Had the bronze man unexpectedly moved a wall with a hand wave, the old butler’s eyes would not have come nearer jumping out of their receptacles. He emitted a great croak of astonishment.

But Doc Savage was already taking a bundle out of the safe. There seemed to be nothing else in the safe. The bundle was letters, some new and some old.

Riffling them like cards, the bronze man inspected the dates. The most ancient was about ten years old, the newest only a few weeks. All were addressed to Leander L. Quietman.

Not a letter bore a return address.

Doc started to pluck out the contents of a missive.

“Your permission?” he asked the girl.

“You have it.”

Doc spread the letter out. It read:

I am killing myself to-night. I hope that will satisfy you!

There was no signature.

The second letter read:

Hitherto I have been the exemplification of skepticism about things after this life. Perhaps atheism was my failing, perhaps only a lack of contemplation. But I have changed, and now I know there is a hell, and that it is expressly for the likes of you!

That one was not signed either.

The next one threatened:

I have made up my mind. I shall kill you!

No signature.

The fourth:

For heaven’s sake, will you relent? I am ruined, but you continue to wreak your horrible work upon my family and relatives. Surely the human race cannot claim you as a member!

I do not know what I shall do!

Thomas Canweldon.

Doc Savage put the missive down, and said, “This is dated a year ago last January third. The day after that, a Thomas Canweldon went mad and murdered his wife and family.”

Nancy Quietman had become pale. Now she sank on a chair.

“What does it mean?” she asked hoarsely.

Doc Savage did not speak.

The girl choked, “But grandfather—he—every one knows he is one of the sweetest old souls who ever lived. He has given millions to charity!”

The girl, still seated on the chair, passed a shapely hand over her brow several times. Then she fell to looking at the bronze man steadily.

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Nancy Quietman said slowly. “You started looking around in this room as if you were searching for something very definite. It appeared almost as if you really knew there was a safe here. Did you?”

“Not exactly,” the bronze man said. “It merely seemed possible there might be a private safe here.”

“Did you expect to find—what you found?”

“The letters?” The bronze man was silent a moment. “What I sought was proof of a theory.”

“And are those letters the proof?”

“They are. All that is necessary for my own purpose, at least.”

Nancy Quietman suddenly made fists out of her hands. She got to her feet, looking determined.

“Look here!” she snapped. “You know more about this than you are telling me. I demand to know the whole story!”

The bronze man relented to the extent of saying, “This affair is part of something infinitely greater than you imagine. It is, according to the evidence these letters contain, part of a mystery we have been trying to solve for weeks.”

“I don’t understand. What mystery have you been trying to solve for weeks?”

Doc Savage produced, from an inside coat pocket, a sheaf of newspaper clippings held together with a rubber band. He removed the elastic and handed them to the girl for inspection.

She read the first: It was the oldest. Exactly one year old!

NORFOLK STILL MISSING!

Police to-day stated that Elvin O. Norfolk, the financier who was reported missing by his family five days ago, has not been located. It was also stated that Norfolk had no financial troubles. He is a millionaire. His family furnished police with names of persons whose enmity Norfolk might have incurred in the course of business, and officials have decided none of these could have had a hand in Norfolk’s disappearance.

The gill riffled through the others, catching only the headlines. The second:

UNABLE TO FIND BUSINESSMAN

The third:

ASSOCIATES REPORT JOHN COLE

“WINE KING,” HAS DISAPPEARED

The fourth:

HUSBAND DESERTED, WIFE SAYS

COPS CANT FIND HUBBY

The fifth:

FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN

MISSING BROKER CASE

And so on. None were dated more than a year back.

Nancy Quietman, apparently stricken by a sudden thought, ran quickly through the whole sheaf of clippings, counting them.

“Twenty-two!” she gasped in horror.

“Exactly,” the bronze man agreed.

“But grandfather muttered something about his being a twenty-third!” the girl cried.

“That,” Doc said quietly, “puts your grandfather in with the mystery of the twenty-two missing men, which myself and my aids have been working upon for some weeks.”

Nancy Quietman was a young woman with courage. She took a gulp of coffee, which the bow-legged butler had thoughtfully brought while she was reading the clippings.

The bronze man drew another pair of clippings from his pocket.

“Just so you will be thoroughly puzzled,” he said, and presented them.

The first clipping was from a New York newspaper, and bore a date sixteen months old. Just four months older than any of the others.

H. O. G. COOLINS’S MISSING

ASSOCIATES SEEK FINANCIER

It became known to-day that for almost two weeks private detectives have been vainly seeking H. O. G. Coolins, Wall Street financier and silk magnate. The detectives were employed by business associates of Coolins.

Police stated they have no clues to Coolins’s whereabouts. Coolins’s business associates refused to make a statement.

There was a column of that.

The second clipping:

COOLINS FOUND

H. O. G. Coolins, financier and silk magnate who has been reported missing for almost three months, reappeared in New York to-day.

Coolins only laughed when police questioned him, and asked the officers if they had ever heard of the Sea Angel.

Later, Coolins explained that he had been away on a private business trip.

He refused to explain what he meant by the Sea Angel.

Nancy Quietman shuddered violently and put the clippings down.

“The Sea Angel!” she said, after swallowing. “That man Coolins must know something about what it is. Why haven’t you questioned him?”

Doc did not answer immediately.

“Coolins went about his business for some two months after he returned,” the bronze man said finally. “Then he suddenly dropped from his usual haunts. He did not disappear. He just became very scarce.”

Nancy Quietman nipped her lips. “You mean—he—perhaps he got scared of this Sea Angel—that impossible monster—and is hiding out?”

The bronze man did not answer, because there was an interruption. This came out of Doc’s coat pocket, the rightside coat pocket, in the form of a tiny, metallic voice.

“Reporting, Doc,” the voice in the pocket said.

Doc Savage immediately removed from the coat pocket a flat case which had rather well filled the pocket. He held the case close to his lips and spoke to it.

“You have something to report, Renny?” he asked.

The voice out of the case said, “Long Tom and I were watching the north side of the museum while you watched the other side, Doc, and we saw old Leander Quietman sneak away. We trailed him. He hurried home, got a bag, and took a taxicab to a steamship office, where he bought a ticket on a liner sailing for South America at noon.

“He gave a fake name when he bought the ticket. Then he went to the small office which he maintains in a building at the lower end of Wall Street. Probably he is in there now gathering up his papers, or whatever he would want to take along with him on his sudden trip to South America.”

Nancy Quietman exclaimed, “A portable radio outfit!”

“What do you want us to do about this, Doc?” Renny asked.

“Where are you?” the bronze man queried.

“In the corridor of a Wall Street office building,” Renny replied, via the tiny radio. “The steamer on which Leander Quietman booked a passage to South America is tied up to a pier not far from the foot of Wall Street.”

“Seize Leander Quietman,” Doc said. “It is possible he can answer some rather important questions. I am at his home. Bring him here.”

“Holy cow!” Renny thumped. “He is as good as seized!”