Читать книгу The Sea Angel: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 7

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In the uptown home of elderly philanthropist Leander Quietman, Doc Savage was waiting for Renny and Long Tom to appear with the old gentleman.

Nancy Quietman, having asked Doc if he knew who the men were who had threatened her grandfather, and received in reply a bunch of words which did not really answer the question either way, had turned on her grandfather’s radio.

She sat listening to an orchestra moan through the latest song about a cowboy and his dying horse, and studied the bronze man, obviously with approval.

Doc asked abruptly, “Do you know a young man with red hair and a pug nose?”

Nancy Quietman wondered fleetingly if this was some roundabout method the bronze man was using to learn if she was at present being monopolized by any one particular young man.

“No,” she said, after pretending to think. “I don’t know such a fellow.”

“Then it’s probably rather strange that he should be peering through the window,” Doc said.

The bronze man was on his feet the next instant, reached the window, noted it had a steel frame and bulletproof glass, and threw it up.

A young man who had been doing a “Peeping Tom” at the window was legging it through the shrubbery. Doc whipped over the window sill and set out after him. The young man glanced back, seemed stunned at the way he was being overhauled. When Doc was close, the fellow began dodging like a rabbit with a dog blowing breath on his tail.

It did him no good. Neither did the first blows he tried. He squared off with some boxing skill, missed two hooks, and was suddenly grabbed by the bronze giant and carried ignominiously to the study.

The gardeners, who seemed to have been collected on the other side of the house, came running. Nancy Quietman spoke sharply and sent them away.

Doc took the red-headed, pug-nosed young man into the study. The young fellow was tall, athletic, and apparently unable to comprehend how his captor was handling him so effectively.

“Just who are you, anyway?” Nancy Quietman asked.

“Nat Piper,” said the man with freckles and red hair.

A thump jarred from the study door.

The bow-legged butler had fainted there.

Nancy Quietman leaped to the butler’s side, and began worrying over him. Doc advised her quietly that it was only a faint, and that the man would revive unaided. After that, Nancy Quietman glared at “Nat” Piper.

“Why did he faint when he heard your name?” she demanded.

Nat Piper opened his mouth and made his eyes big. “Surely you don’t think that made him faint?”

“What are you doing here?” the girl countered.

Nat Piper, instead of answering, reached out tentatively with one hand and felt of Doc Savage’s arm in three different places. Then he shook his head and whistled.

“They must be muscles, but they feel like bone,” he said. “I begin to see how you handled me.”

He looked Doc Savage over intently. “Say, there’s something familiar about you!”

“That is Doc Savage,” the girl said.

Nat Piper acted as if he had swallowed a bug for a moment.

“Doc Savage!” he exploded. “Why, you’re—you’re—no wonder I couldn’t handle you! I’ve read about you! I guess the description of you made you look familiar.”

“Why were you sneaking around here?” the girl repeated.

“I had a business appointment with Leander Quietman,” Nat Piper replied.

Doc Savage put in his first question. “What was the nature of your business with Quietman?”

Nat Piper took time out to marvel at the bronze man before replying.

“Art,” he said. “I’m a promising young painter whom nobody ever heard of. I showed Leander Quietman some of my work, and I think he is going to let me paint his portrait.”

Doc Savage made no reply. Instead, the bronze man got up and took a turn around the library. He paused to close the bulletproof window, which was still open, and while he stood there, he made for an instant a tiny, mellow and remarkably eerie, trilling note. This was a small habit which he had when mentally agitated.

Doc looked at Nancy Quietman.

“Do your gardeners change shifts in the middle of the morning?” he asked.

“Why, no!”

“A completely new set of gardeners has appeared on the grounds,” the bronze man advised quietly.

The girl flew to the window.

“Oh!” she gasped.

The new gardeners had all started toward the house. Each man carried a gunny sack under his arm—gunny sack in every sense of the word, because it was obvious the sacks concealed guns.

Nat Piper flung to the window, stared, rapped, “They’re attacking the house!”

His voice was a squawk of alarm.

“I’ll call the police!” Nancy Quietman cried.

She scooped up a dial telephone, listened, frowned, tried dialing, called, “Operator! Operator!” a few times.

“It’s dead!” she gasped. “I can’t get a dial tone!”

Doc Savage up to this point had shown no special excitement. He now dipped into a pocket and brought out a handkerchief, absently wiped his palms, then sat down.

Nat Piper rapped, “Aren’t you going to put up a fight?”

The bronze man only looked mildly unconcerned.

Nat Piper snatched a poker and an andiron from the study fireplace, and charged out into the hall.

Following this, there was a great deal of noise in the hallway, punctuated by such vocal emissions as, “Hold him!” “Damn!” and “Ouch!”

Then the raiders dragged Nat Piper into the study. They pointed guns at Doc and the girl, neither of whom moved.

The surprising development now came. The raiders seemed interested only in Nat Piper. They looked him over closely, even lifting his eyelids—they had knocked him out—to make sure his eyes were blue.

“This is the guy Coolins described!” a man growled.

“Yeah,” said another, scowling at Nat Piper. “He’s the guy we had orders to grab if he showed up around here.”