Читать книгу The Sargasso Ogre: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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In the Hotel Londoner, Homar hurried to get the note from Long Tom’s room, as he had been bidden to do. In Egyptian, Homar’s name meant “donkey.” The fact that he seemed always half asleep had earned him the cognomen. He was neither slow-moving nor stupid, however. He was a sharp fiend, or he would not have been in Pasha Bey’s crew.

He had very little difficulty picking the lock of Long Tom’s room. Entering, he seized the note. He drew a kabrit from a pocket, with the idea of burning the paper. Then, on second thought, he put the match away and stuffed the missive inside his burnoose. Pasha Bey might find use for it, for there was such a thing as blackmail in Egypt.

He turned to depart.

The door had opened and closed while Homar was getting the paper, but he had not been aware of this. The thing had happened with great silence.

Nor did Homar, upon leaving the room, notice that the window at the end of the corridor was open. He scuttled down the stairs, anxious to join Pasha Bey in the killing.

A moment after Homar vanished, the giant bronze form of Doc Savage appeared in the open window. He had been outside, hanging to the ledge by his fingers. Furthermore, it was he who had opened and shut the door of Long Tom’s room so silently. Doc had come upstairs in time to witness the undeniably suspicious act of Homar in picking the door lock.

He followed Homar. Doc knew all the signs. Trouble was once more seeking out him and his men, as it had a habit of doing. He was intent on finding out what it could be this time.

Homar engaged a ramshackle cab near the hotel. Doc got into another, commanding his driver to trail the first machine.

They progressed to the region of the city where stood Pompey’s Pillar, in the highest part of Alexandria.

The red granite shaft of Pompey’s Pillar, exquisitely polished, glistened faintly in the moonlight. From there, the course led southwest.

Homar dismissed his hack.

The pilot of Doc Savage’s vehicle drove on at a soft order from the rear. Several score qasabs, he traveled, then suddenly discovered a gold fifty-piastres coin on the cushions beside him. He looked around. Much to his astonishment, his fare was gone.

Doc Savage had quitted the cab some distance back, silent as a phantom for all his great size. He lurked in the shadow of a heap of ancient masonry, watching Homar’s alert progress.

Doc had a fair knowledge of this section of Alexandria, just as he had, stored in his retentive memory, what amounted to a map of every large city on the globe. This was part of an amazing course of training which Doc had administered to himself—a training to fit himself for this strange life work of helping those in need of help, and punishing those who deserved it.

This part of Alexandria held the ancient catacombs—vast underground caverns, possibly dating back to the day of Cleopatra—which held the bones of Egyptians long dead. Parts of the catacombs had been seen by no living man, Doc knew.

Homar moved to a ramshackle stone hut. Doc haunted him like a bronze ghost.

A gritty rasp came from within the stone hut. Doc glanced in. Using a flashlight, Homar was tilting a slab of rock from the floor. He dropped into the cavity, closing the stone plate after him.

A flashlight came out of Doc Savage’s clothing. It cast a beam like a glowing white-hot wire, the thin luminance switching back and forth over the hut floor.

A drop or two of wet crimson glistened in the ray. Near the trapdoor edge was a group of slightly larger smears. Five! Red finger prints!

Bending low, Doc examined them.

Into the sour murk of the hut there abruptly came a strange, exotic sound. It was a low, trilling, mellow note, which might have been the sound of some weird bird of the jungle, or a wind filtering through the piled stone of the ancient ruins around about. Although melodious, it had no tune. It had an uncanny quality, for it seemed to come from no particular spot.

It was part of Doc Savage, this sound—a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of stress.

The bloody finger prints were from Long Tom’s right hand! Doc had seen the prints of his five men countless times, and could recognize them instantly.

He grasped the stone lid. It had rasped under Homar’s clutch, but it lifted noiselessly under Doc’s hand—so silently, that it almost seemed the bronze man had a supernatural power to command quiet.

Cold, damp steps led down; then came a black, low tunnel. Dust of ages lay on the floor. The sound of Homar’s footsteps thumped like the beat of a water-filled drum.

Doc whipped forward without noise, showing no light, sensitive hands feeling out the way. The walls were rough. In spots, there were hard, crusted deposits formed by water seepage through the centuries.

They came to a spot where the ancient corridor branched three ways. Homar took the one to the right. He seemed to know where he was going.

The character of the walls abruptly changed, becoming solid instead of jointed masonry. The passages were hewn out of natural rock.

Doc drew a small case from a pocket. This held a peculiar powder. At frequent intervals, he dropped a pinch on the tunnel floor.

Homar’s footbeats led on interminably. Shuffle and thud! Shuffle and thud! The noises had a dull, deathlike quality. The air was dusty. It was like breathing within a trunk which had been long closed.

Again and again, the passages branched. And every few yards, Doc left a bit of his powder on the floor. His actions might have seemed a bit puzzling. The stuff gave off no odor, no phosphorescent glow.

The tunnel widened, forming a series of long rooms. Doc’s hands, along the walls, encountered what felt vaguely like rounded stones. These were arched entirely to the ceiling. He knew what they were.

Human skulls! The walls were lined with them.

Farther on, there were many casket-shaped niches cut in the rock, and in these were stacked arm and leg bones, spinal columns, ribs. It was a macabre, hideous place. Compared to these catacombs, a walk through a graveyard at midnight was no more awesome than a stroll through a town park.

Doc Savage went forward without flinching or shivering. If he experienced any of the feelings which would have gripped another man, he did not show it. Doc had remarkable powers of concentration. He avoided the ghostly, spine-chilling effects of his surroundings simply by putting his attention on following the man ahead, and keeping it there.

Homar was carrying his flashlight at his side.

Deeper and deeper into the maze, they penetrated. They descended steps. The catacombs seemed to be cut several stories deep. Countless thousands were the dead who had been buried here, for the city had been founded in the third century.

In some passages the stone had caved in, closing them, probably forever. Three times, Homar opened stone doors. Doc, a silent specter at his heels, kept leaving small deposits of his powder.

They came finally to their destination.

Several brightly glowing flashlights marked the spot. Men were squatting cross-legged, or standing about a sprawled form. The latter was Long Tom.

The right side of Long Tom’s face was a sticky red smear from a cut on his scalp, evidently the result of a blow which had knocked him senseless. His dazed manner showed that he had just revived.

A large heap of bones shrouded in a white burnoose, Pasha Bey was hunkered in front of Long Tom. In the professional murderer’s gaunt claw was a book of ordinary travelers’ checks. These comprised Long Tom’s traveling funds, and they totaled more than a thousand dollars.

“By the left eye of Allah, himself, I swear it!” Pasha Bey was murmuring. “If you will sign these travelers’ checks, I will let you go free and guide you out of this devil’s den of bones!”

It was apparent Long Tom was still alive only because of Pasha Bey’s greed. Long Tom had signed each of the checks when buying them, as was customary. They could be cashed only when he signed them a second time in the space which was provided. Pasha Bey no doubt had a way of getting the money for them, once they were complete with both signatures.

Long Tom scowled. “No! You can’t kid me!”

“By both eyes of Allah, I swear that I——”

“I know a liar when I see one! You can swear by all of Allah, and I wouldn’t believe a word!”

Pasha Bey slipped one of his razor-sharp singas from an arm sheath. In the fitful glare of the flashlights, he presented a sinister figure. He might have been an assembly of bones taken from the surrounding catacomb walls, stained brown, animated with life, and covered with a white burnoose.

“Wallah!” he snarled. “You will have but one more chance to sign these paper slips!”

Long Tom slowly propped himself to a sitting position. His wrists and ankles were tightly bound. His pale face was even whiter than usual, and grimly composed. He was wise enough to know he was very near death, whether he signed the travelers’ checks or not.

His roped feet suddenly drove out. He had decided to take a desperate chance. The awkward kick sent Pasha Bey spinning head over heels. The singa flew up, clinked on the ceiling, and all but speared Long Tom as it dropped at his back near his bound hands.

Sliding his bound wrists over the blade, cutting the ropes with one slice, Long Tom grasped the big knife. He chopped desperately at the bonds on his feet.

Howling, Pasha Bey’s men rushed forward. Nearly every brown paw clutched a foot or more of glinting steel. They crouched low to the floor. They were like evil, tobacco-colored mice in white sheets.

The next instant, they were even more like mice. Mice with a gigantic bronze cat in their midst!

Two blows popped. Each broke bones, crushed flesh. The two men who had been hit fell without knowing what had happened—knocked out.

The form of Long Tom was wrenched bodily from under the descending knives.

The thing happened with such blinding speed that even Long Tom did not get a glimpse of his rescuer before he was out of danger. But he knew who it was, the moment he felt the clutch which jerked him to safety. Only one man possessed such strength and agility—Doc Savage!

One of Pasha Bey’s men goggled as Doc appeared before him—a mighty genie of bronze. He yelled, struck with his singa! His yell became an agonized squawl as his wrist was trapped in midair. Came a jerk such as the would-be killer had never felt before. He sailed to one side like a tossed bundle, struck the wall, and bounced back to lie so dazed he could not move.

Knifemen charged the bronze giant, only to have him seemingly vanish before their eyes, so quickly did he whip out of the flashlight luminance.

Two fellows in the rear dropped, knocked stiff as toppling logs, before they knew Doc had attacked again from that point.

This was too much. It bordered on the supernatural. It was hard to believe flesh and blood could move so swiftly.

“Wallah!” wailed a man. “He is a ruh! A spirit!”

Maybe the others thought that, too. Or maybe it was that they had no stomach for a real fight. Ten-to-one odds in a dark alley was their style.

They fled, plunging headlong through the catacomb passages, their flash beams darting like terrified things. One man, less agile, bringing up the rear, screeched as fingers like steel bands trapped his neck. A tap on the temple reduced the fellow to senselessness.

The rest could not run much faster, but that did not keep them from trying to do so.

Far ahead was a bounding flashlight glow. This was Pasha Bey, the master murderer. And master of discretion, too! He knew when flight was wise. He had taken a big head start on the others.

He knew, now, that Long Tom was one of Doc Savage’s group of five aids. At least, he had guessed it. And between jumps, he was cursing the man who had hired him to murder Long Tom.

That man would pay for not mentioning the fact that Long Tom was one of Doc Savage’s crew. He would pay dearly! And that, as soon as Pasha Bey could hurry to the darkened street off the Place Mehemet Ali for a meeting.

The fleeing murder gang passed through one of the stone doors. The hindermost fellow wrenched the heavy rock slab shut. It was swung on great iron hinges, and there was a massive iron bar. He slid the bar.

“Wallah!” he howled. “By the life of my father, we are safe! The bronze man and the one we sought to kill will never escape! There is no other way out of that place!”

The whole gang kept on at full speed, however.