Читать книгу The Sargasso Ogre: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5

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Doc Savage reached the huge block of stone that was the door. He exerted a tentative shove. The rock only groaned. It was as solid as the entrance of a bank vault. Turning, he strode back to join his friend.

Long Tom had cut himself loose, and was stumbling about, gathering up knives which had been dropped in the retreat. He picked up his travelers’ checks, patted them lovingly, and pocketed them.

“Those things,” he said dryly, “are all that kept me alive until you could get here.”

“Was it robbery?” Doc asked him.

Long Tom ran fingers through his thin blond hair. “I don’t think so, Doc. Of course, they delayed slipping a knife into me in hopes I would sign those travelers’ checks. But I don’t think robbery was at the bottom of the trouble. I had only a few dollars in change. The checks were worthless unless countersigned.”

“This is rather mystifying.”

“You said it! I can’t imagine why they picked on me.”

“Unless they were hired!”

“Yes. I thought of that. But who would hire them? And why? We have no enemies in Alexandria. Or I haven’t, at least.”

Speaking rapidly, Doc explained how he had gotten on the trail by observing the man removing the note from Long Tom’s hotel room.

“That note was a bait, of course,” Long Tom grunted.

At this point, there sounded a faint scuffle in the near-by darkness. Doc raced his flashlight beam to the spot the sound had come from.

It was the man who had been stunned by being flung against the wall. He was seeking to flee.

With two long leaps, Doc collared him. He turned his light on the fellow’s face.

It was Homar. His brown features were convulsing with terror.

“This is the lad who got the letter out of your room,” Doc told Long Tom. “We’ll just see if he still has it.”

Homar was so frightened he remained perfectly docile, and, trembling greatly, let himself be searched. Doc’s mighty bronze form had been frightsome in the fight; at close range, it was even more productive of terror.

Doc found the note. He studied it.

“The name signed at the bottom—Leland Smith—is false,” he said. “The writing is somewhat stilted, exactly like the rest of the message. A man usually scrawls his signature in a more free, practiced fashion than the rest of his writing. The author of the missive was a big man and a strong one, as denoted by his forceful strokes. He was a fellow of fair education, as shown by the correct spelling and the fact that he mentioned that atomic business. That seems to be all the note tells us at present. There are no finger prints.”

Long Tom frowned thoughtfully at the cowering Homar.

“I wonder what he can tell us?”

Homar shivered and whined: “Ma atkallimsh el loghah el Ingeliz!”

He had stated in Egyptian that he did not speak English.

“You are lying!” Doc said ominously. “Otherwise, how did you know we were wondering what you could tell us?”

“Wallah!” Homar gasped, then added in fair English: “I know nothing! I am an innocent man, who has always been good to his mother.”

Long Tom snorted loudly.

Doc Savage now began ominous preparations. He selected from Long Tom’s collection the knife which had the brightest blade. He polished this on his sleeve; then advanced.

Homar screamed, shrank back, and dashed his fists madly at Doc. But he was swiftly pinned and held helpless. He found the gleaming knife blade suspended before his eyes.

“Keep your light on the blade,” Doc directed Long Tom.

Before Homar’s distended orbs, the length of steel became a glittering sliver. It twirled slowly, monotonously. Homar’s eyes held it in a sort of fixed terror. He thought, no doubt, that the blade would at any instant plunge into his heart. He did not dream what Doc was actually doing.

Except for Homar’s breathing, silence enwrapped the awesome catacomb interior. Seconds trickled away and became minutes. The knife spun interminably, fluttering white-hot in the flash glare.

Homar watched it, fascinated.

So softly that at first it was unnoticed, Doc’s weird trilling sound came into being. It rose and fell, mellow and unending, possessing no tune.

Homar’s eyes became more protuberant. He was rapidly being hypnotized.

“Talk to the flashing knife,” Doc commanded him softly. “Tell it why you sought to kill my friend!”

Homar’s throat pumped a few times. At last, words came out.

“We are paid money, oh knife. We were to get four thousand piastres for the death of Long Tom Roberts.”

“Who hired you? The knife wishes to learn that.”

“I do not know. It was a man who met our chief, Pasha Bey. The man did not show his face.”

“Tell the knife—were you to meet this man again?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Homar had been speaking in Arabic, a tongue which Doc Savage could handle fluently, just as he could speak countless other languages.

“The meeting was to be in a street near the Place Mehemet Ali,” mumbled Homar. “Pasha Bey was to report to that spot.”

“Name the street and describe the place. We wish to go there.”

Homar complied.

Doc Savage now cast the knife aside, and, by slapping Homar sharply and calling to him, broke the hypnotic spell.

“Come on!” he told Long Tom. “We’ll let this fellow go, little as he deserves his freedom. We’ll have to make it snappy, or we’ll miss the Cameronic when she sails shortly after midnight.”

Leaving Homar behind, still too dazed to walk or talk coherently, they hurried along the catacomb passage, and came to the door of stone.

“Good night!” Long Tom groaned. “We’re stuck! We have nothing but knives to attack that thing! It’ll take days to chip a hole through!”

Then he glanced at Doc, and brightened somewhat. The big bronze man usually had a way out of jams like this.

Doc had thrust two fingers far back in his mouth. They came out, bearing two molars. These were extras which Doc always wore. They held two different chemical mixtures.

Mingling the chemicals, Doc hastily stuffed them in a crack in the huge stone door.

“Get back!” he rapped, and rushed Long Tom away from the vicinity.

Whur-r-oom!

An explosion shuddered the stone floor under their feet. Dust gushed in choking clouds. The shock cascaded bones off the catacomb shelves, and caused skulls to carom across the floor like baseballs.

Doc’s two chemicals, after being mixed together, had become a powerful explosive, self-detonating.

They felt their way forward through the dust, and found the door little more than a heap of broken rock.

Long Tom advanced, once more uneasy. He saw that the catacombs were a trackless labyrinth. Suppose they should get lost in the grisly passages?

But a miracle seemed to have occurred. Ahead of them, marking the way to the exit, was a procession of glowing spots. These might have been red-hot coals! As a matter of fact, they were the chemical powder which Doc had sprinkled along his incoming path. This powder, although it possessed no glow at first, became phosphorescent after a short exposure to damp air.

They came out by the route Doc had entered—through the stone hut.

Doc set out at a run, explaining: “We should be able to find a cab over beyond Pompey’s Pillar.”

Long Tom made no reply—he needed all his breath to maintain the pace Doc was setting.

They found no cab. But they did locate a conveyance—a pudgy tourist and his driver, who consented to take them to the Place Mehemet Ali. The car started out slowly.

Doc showed the tourist’s driver a fat American bank note.

“Imshi bil ’agal!” he requested. “Go more quickly!”

The driver needed no more urging. Indeed, they had to remind him repeatedly that he could not take right-angle turns at forty miles an hour.

In the darkened street off the Place Mehemet Ali, three innocent-looking gentlemen in burnooses shuffled slowly forward. They kept their hands out of sight, and their faces well enveloped. This was to hide numerous scrapes and bruises acquired in mad flight through the catacomb passages.

Pasha Bey had not come directly to this gloomy thoroughfare. He had stopped en route to take council with himself. As a result, he had decided only two of his best murderers should accompany him to the rendezvous with the man who had hired them.

“Wallah!” Pasha Bey muttered. “You understand what we are to do?”

“We understand, oh great one!”

“This man who hired us did a very evil thing when he failed to tell us we were to dispose of one of Doc Savage’s friends. For that, he must pay.”

“Aye, master!” the other two agreed heartily. “He shall pay!”

“With his life!”

“Aye! With his life, he shall pay! And with his money, if he has any on his person!”

Pasha Bey kneaded his bony knuckles. “I have been thinking, oh brethren, of those diamonds which this Doc Savage is said to possess.”

“The diamonds may be only drinking-place talk.”

“They might not be, too. Wallah! It would be very nice to dip our hands in chests of the bright gems.”

“To whence does this talk of yours lead, oh master?”

“To this: I shall converse with this man who hired us, before I slip my garrote cord over his evil neck. It may be that he knows something of the diamonds.”

“A thought worthy of Allah, himself! With Doc Savage entombed in the catacombs, we might easily get the bright stones.”

The speaker would have been no little shocked to know that, at this instant, Doc Savage and Long Tom were watching him from a corner near the Place Mehemet Ali.

He would have been more shocked had he seen Doc and Long Tom whip forward silently the instant Pasha Bey and his companions entered the darkened tunnel where the meeting was to take place. Without showing themselves, Doc and Long Tom were lurking outside the passage in time to hear all that was said.

Pasha Bey pressed his skinny face to the barred hole in the door and called softly.

“Well?” growled the voice of the man who had hired them.

“Your humble servant begs to report a failure. We failed to kill Long Tom!”

This, as far as Pasha Bey was concerned, was an untruth. He thought Doc and Long Tom were fast in the catacombs, where they would eventually starve to death.

“What?” roared the man behind the barred door. “You fell down on the job?”

“It was not our fault,” Pasha Bey murmured meekly. “You, oh master, should have told us Long Tom Roberts was a friend of this man of mystery and power—Doc Savage. Then we could have prepared more carefully.”

“Savage gummed the works, did he?”

“Aye. He thwarted our plans.”

The man back of the bars cursed violently for some moments. To the listening Pasha Bey—and to Doc Savage and Long Tom, concealed in the murky street—a notable fact was disclosed by the man’s swearing. The fellow’s coarse voice was disguised in tone. Probably the slangy way of talking was assumed, also.

The unseen man had actually a powerful, ringing voice, and was capable of speaking good English.

“You’ve get to get Doc Savage’s friend, Long Tom!” the man snarled, when his profanity was expended. “Or you can get one of the other four who belong to his crew! Any one will do!”

“It is very difficult—this thing you ask us to do,” Pasha Bey temporized. “Four thousand piastres is not enough payment.”

“I’ll put up more jack for the job.”

Pasha Bey now got around to the thing he was angling for. “It might be that our ends would best be served if we were to go into partnership,” he suggested.

“What d’you mean, you bony camel?”

“I mean, oh master, that we would be glad to help you get the diamonds for a very small share of the stones.”

An explosive curse blasted through the bars.

“I’m not after any diamonds! I don’t know anything about the gems, except the talk that’s been going around this stinkin’ burg. I ain’t after ice!”

“You do not speak with a forked tongue?” Pasha Bey muttered suspiciously. He thought he detected a falsehood.

“I’m not lying!”

“Then why, oh master, did you want Long Tom Roberts slain?”

“Doc Savage and his five pals have booked passage on the Cameronic, sailing to-night!” the unseen man said, after hesitating momentarily. “I don’t want them to go on the Cameronic, savvy! I’ve got reasons of my own for not wantin’ them on the tub. I thought, if I got Long Tom Roberts killed, Doc Savage would stay behind to investigate the murder. Him and his crowd wouldn’t be on the boat.”

To say this filled Pasha Bey with rage was putting it mildly. He had been used as a tool to draw Doc Savage’s wrath and make the bronze man miss the Cameronic! Shades of Allah!

“Wallah!” he hissed.

Whipping the silk garrote cord from inside his burnoose, he swung it through the bars. His hand was experienced. He snared the neck of the man inside. By flinging his bony frame backward, he wrenched the terrible cord tight.

A single, startled bleat came from the trapped man. It ended sudden when the cord snugged, as if his head had been cut off.

Pasha Bey leered from ear to ear. He had his prey—the man would soon strangle.

Came the surprise! The door whipped open. Men piled through—men who had been with the fellow the garrote cord had trapped. Knives flashed! Pistols slammed thunder!

The dark tunnel became a bawling bedlam! Screams, blows, wails, all came at once!

It was over as swiftly as it started. Pasha Bey and his two men were slain with a dispatch as abrupt as any murder they had ever committed themselves.

The barred door slammed behind the retreating killers, while Pasha Bey and his two helpers still thrashed about, spouting their life fluid upon the dank stone floor.

Doc Savage and Long Tom glided into the gloom-filled tunnel. They had held back from the fight, practicing a policy of letting dog eat dog. But they had not expected the slayers to flee so swiftly.

The door was big and stanch, and there was no sign of a latch on the outside. The bars were thick.

Doc splashed his flash beam on the three bodies. It was a grisly sight, for scarlet was rapidly spreading a wet sheet over the floor. Each of the trio had been stabbed.

“Whew!” Long Tom breathed. “Pasha Bey was a bad one, but he was a babe in arms compared to the crowd he went up against! Those fellows had killed men before! It takes practice to do a job like this!”

Pasha Bey had, it appeared, closed with one of his assailants. His clutching hand had seized upon a belt. In falling, he had torn this from his attacker. His bony claw still held it.

Doc picked up the belt and inspected it. The thing was perhaps three inches wide, and made of soft leather. Upon the leather was sewed, side by side, more than a score of circular, braided insignia. Each of these bore an embroidered name.

Doc glanced over some of the names.

Sea Sylph, Henryetta, U. S. S. Voyager, Queen Neptune, Gotham Belle, Axtella Marie.

Saying nothing, Doc slipped the strange belt in a pocket. He grasped the iron bars. These had no doubt been put there by the original builder to defy the strength of any man. They were very substantial.

The stout iron groaned under the terrific strength of Doc’s bronze, corded hands. It was something fabulous, this muscular power Doc had developed in himself. Opening horseshoes and bending half-dollar coins—feats of professional strong men—he could accomplish easily.

With a ripping of wood, one bar came out. Then another. With the two, he struck and pried, tearing off planks in an effort to reach the lock.

Up toward the Place Mehemet Ali, excited yelling denoted the approach of bulis zabtieh. The shots and screams had drawn the policemen.

Doc got the door open. He whipped through, hands empty except for his flashlight. Doc Savage never used a gun in his fighting.

Long Tom trod his heels.

They ran down a corridor which smelled of samak and tobacco smoke. Another door barred their way. It was locked, but less substantial.

Doc struck a blow with his unprotected fist, a blow only alloy-hard tendons could withstand. The panel caved like a banana crate.

They found only more passages, empty rooms, silence—and open doors which gave upon another street. There was no one in sight.

“They got away!” Long Tom grumbled.

“They did,” Doc agreed, “and we had best follow their example. Otherwise, the police are liable to hold us for questioning, and cause us to miss the Cameronic.”

They ran silently along the handiest street, speedily leaving the vicinity of the Place Mehemet Ali.