Читать книгу The Sargasso Ogre: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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Doc Savage and Long Tom reached the Hotel Londoner without incident. Consulting his watch, Doc found it would be two hours until the Cameronic sailed.

In that two hours, several things happened. The incidents were such that they gave grave hint of trouble ahead.

“Confound it!” said Long Tom, grinning widely. “I was in hopes we would have a nice, restful sea voyage to New York.”

Long Tom’s grin gave the lie to his complaint. There was nothing Long Tom—or Doc’s other four aids, for that matter—liked better than the excitement that came out of their association with Doc. They took to danger like bees to honey. And there was always danger around Doc, it seemed. That, together with the pleasure of associating with one of the most remarkable of living men, was the attraction which drew them to the man of bronze.

“I wonder, Long Tom, if you have drawn the same conclusions about this thing that I have?” Doc asked dryly.

“You mean about what must be behind it?”

“Exactly.”

Long Tom popped shirts and socks into his traveling bag.

“This guy who was trying to get me killed didn’t want our gang on the Cameronic,” he grunted. “Maybe I flatter myself, but I’ll bet he didn’t want us aboard because he was afraid we’d be on hand to throw a monkey wrench in some plan—some devilish scheme that involves the Cameronic!”

Doc nodded. “My own suspicions are along that line.”

Long Tom finished his packing. “What about our four pals, Renny, Monk, Ham, and Johnny?”

The four men named were the other members of Doc’s group of five aids. Each, in his way, was an unusual personage. Just as Long Tom was an electrical wizard of no mean note, so were these others men of fame in the fields of engineering, chemistry, the law, and geology.

“They are to meet us on the ship,” Doc explained.

Doc now produced the strange belt which the dead Pasha Bey had clutched. He examined it further.

Long Tom came over and also bent a scrutiny on the unusual object.

“Sea Sylph, Henryetta, U. S. S. Voyager, Queen Neptune,” he read some of the embroidered names aloud. “Say—those sound like the names of boats!”

“Right,” Doc agreed. “Moreover, the circular, braided insignia, which bears each name, is in reality a tab such as is worn on the peak of a ship officer’s cap.”

“Any of the names familiar?”

Doc did not reply immediately. But weird little lights seemed to come and go in his golden eyes.

“I’ll answer that later—after I confirm a suspicion!” he said slowly.

Long Tom did not push for an answer. He knew he would not get it. But Doc’s manner had told him this belt, with its score or more of insignia from the uniform caps of ship officers, had an important meaning.

For some reason hard to define, the belt dangling from Doc’s muscular hand impressed Long Tom as being a thing of sinister portent.

They completed their packing, gathered up their baggage, paid their bill, and got in a taxi in front of the hotel.

Just before the cab departed, Long Tom bought a late copy of one of the Alexandria newspapers which was printed in English. One look at the headlines, and he let out a surprised squawk.

“Hey! What d’you make of this newspaper item?” Doc took the paper, and as their hack rolled down the narrow streets, read the item which had startled Long Tom.

BANK CLERK FOUND SLAIN

John Mack O’Minner, clerk in the Alexandria branch of the American Bank, was found dead on the outskirts of the city early to-night. His body bore marks which indicated he had been tortured before being slain.

The clerk had apparently been dead at least a day.

On the face of it, this bit of news was not unusual. Murders were no more infrequent in Alexandria than in other large cities.

But the dead clerk had been employed by the American Bank. And that bank was handling the transfer of Doc’s hoard of diamonds—gems to a fabulous value. The bank had put the stones, under heavy guard, aboard the Cameronic for shipment to New York.

“I see the whole thing!” Long Tom barked excitedly. “That bank clerk was kidnaped and tortured until he told where the diamonds were! Then he was slain! And the gang who killed him set about keeping us off the Cameronic, so they would have a free hand to get the stones!”

Doc, saying nothing, took the strange belt of cap insignias from his pocket and studied it thoughtfully.

Down at the water front, they encountered the hubbub which always accompanies the sailing of a passenger liner. Hucksters howled themselves hoarse peddling nut meats, dates, and carved knicknacks for tourist souvenirs. Porters dashed about. Policemen yelled.

Their taxi rooted noisily through the uproar. They alighted near the pier entrance. Doc gave his bags to a Cameronic flunky to be taken immediately to the suite he had engaged.

Some delay followed while he and Long Tom settled matters about their passports. They had entered Egypt without these necessities, having flown the lost dirigible there at the conclusion of their last great adventure in the lost oasis.

The papers which the American consul had supplied to Doc and his men were finally passed upon, however. They went aboard, being plentifully elbowed en route by excited tourists. The screaming din of peddlers trying to make a last sale, was deafening.

A neat modernistic elevator lifted them to the top deck, which held their cabins. The Cameronic was a new craft. They turned down the corridor which led to their quarters.

They had not taken a dozen steps when a volley of yells crackled through the passage! Blows whacked! A man screeched in terrible pain!

Three thin brown men dived out of a door down the corridor. They were half naked, their burnooses torn off. One streamed crimson from a gash in his arm.

After the latter man, pursuing him closely, appeared a slender, dapperly dressed gentleman. This fellow’s clothing was sartorial perfection. He was in the heat of action, yet his attire was as unruffled as if he had been presiding at a banquet.

He flourished a thin-bladed sword cane. It was obviously this which had opened the gash in the fleeing one’s arm.

This man was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, better known as “Ham.” He was one of the cleverest lawyers Harvard had ever matriculated. And he was one of Doc Savage’s five aids.

Close on Ham’s heels came probably the homeliest man ever to set foot on the Cameronic. He weighed close to two hundred and sixty pounds, and he had the physique of a gorilla. His arms were inches longer than his legs. His hide was furred with a growth of coarse, red bristles. His rather pleasant, unlovely features, bore numerous ancient scars—thin, gray lines, as if a chicken with chalk feet had paraded on his face.

“Monk!”

No other nickname would have fitted him. As Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, he was conceded to be among the greatest of modern chemists. He, too, was one of Doc Savage’s five men.

Monk and Ham pursued the three fleeing brown villains.

The swarthy trio veered into a cross-ship passage which led out on deck. They never hesitated, but cleared the rail with wild leaps. The splashes, as they hit the water far below, came in such near succession as to be a single loud swish of a sound.

Doc and Long Tom arrived at the rail close behind Ham and Monk.

“What was the trouble?” Long Tom demanded.

“Those three rats tried to nab Doc’s baggage!” the big, hairy Monk explained, in a voice surprisingly mild for one of such bulk.

Ham snapped his sword cane like a short whip. The blade twanged and sent a spray of scarlet drops over the rail.

“We happened to be in your suite, Doc, looking the place over, when these fellows came in,” he declared. “The baggage had just arrived.”

“I sent it in only a moment ago,” Doc explained.

He cast his flash beam downward. It disclosed the three marauders swimming briskly away.

Monk grasped the rail. “I’ve got a notion to go after them sheiks!”

“Let them go,” Doc suggested. “It is my guess that we would find they were merely hired thieves.”

Monk pulled thoughtfully at a gristle tuft of an ear. “Have you any idea what is back of it, Doc?”

Doc made no reply, but Long Tom grinned widely.

“The belt!” Long Tom grunted. “I’ll bet they were after it!”

“What belt?” chorused Ham and Monk.

Long Tom explained about the adventure in the catacombs, and described what had happened in the street off the Place Mehemet Ali, where they had found, in Pasha Bey’s clutch, the strange belt of cap insignias.

They returned to Doc’s suite, where Ham secured the sheath portion of his sword cane. When the blade was cased, it became an innocent black walking stick. Ham was never seen without this article.

There was some speculation over the significance of the belt, as well as guesses at the nature of the trouble which was undoubtedly brewing.

Monk blew thoughtfully upon his bristle-covered fists.

“I think I’ll prowl around the decks and see if there’s anything suspicious going on,” he said mildly.

“I wouldn’t,” Ham suggested with biting dryness.

“Why not?”

“There’s no need of frightening the passengers off the boat before we sail!” Ham retorted, and squinted wryly at Monk’s homely features.

This unkind cut was typical of Ham. He was always riding Monk. He missed no chances for a crack at Monk’s expense. It had been thus for years, since an incident in the Great War had given Ham his nickname.

As a joke, Ham had taught Monk some French words which were highly insulting, telling him they were exactly what one should say to flatter a French general. Monk had used them—and landed in the guardhouse. But soon after his release, the dapper Brigadier General Brooks had been hailed up on a charge of stealing hams. Somebody had planted the evidence. Ham had never been able to prove it was Monk’s work, and the thing still irked him.

Monk, however, was far from helpless under Ham’s sharp tongue. He had many methods of goading Ham, from imitating Ham’s snappy attire, to impersonating a pig grunting and squealing. This last always threw Ham into a rage.

Monk now twisted his simian features into a frightsome grimace, preparatory to emitting a piggy squeal.

“We’d better look up our other two friends,” Doc suggested, to head off a verbal battle which might last for hours. “Where are they?”

“Down keeping an eye on the strong room, where our diamonds are stored,” Monk said, with a regretful scowl at Ham.

They descended to a middle deck. This held the purser’s office, a grilled inclosure not unlike a bank teller’s cage. The back of this cage was a wall of thick steel, pierced by a heavy metal door fitted with combination locks—the ship’s safe.

Passengers milled about in front of the purser’s cage, checking valuables and transacting other business. Mingling with the crowd were several uniformed, heavily armed men. These were guards from the Alexandria branch of the American Bank. They were present to watch Doc’s diamonds. They would remain until the Cameronic sailed.

The diamonds reposed in the vault. An even half dozen cases held the stones. The gem hoard was of fabulous value. There were so many of the stones that the diamond market would have declined, had they all been offered for sale at once. Doc intended to dispose of them, a few at a time.

The money from the gems was to be expended on hospitals and other philanthropic projects which Doc Savage conducted.

Two men occupied chairs in unobtrusive corners of the room facing the purser’s cage. At sight of Doc’s group, they arose and came forward.

The first man was nearly as tall as Doc, and almost as heavy as Monk. He was a giant. Yet he had a pair of hands so huge that they seemed to dwarf the rest of him. Half a dozen people in the crowd stared at the size of those hands, as if doubting their eyes.

This man was Colonel John Renwick, a personage known in a number of nations for his accomplishments as an engineer. “Renny” was also noted for a disquieting habit of amusing himself by knocking panels out of doors with those big fists.

The second fellow was tall, gaunt. He looked half starved. His clothes hung upon his frame as if it were a structure of hard sticks. He wore glasses. The left lens of these spectacles was very thick. It was actually a powerful magnifying glass.

William Harper Littlejohn had lost the use of his left eye in the Great War. “Johnny” needed a magnifying glass in his profession of archæologist and geologist, so he carried it in his spectacles for convenience.

“Seen anything suspicious?” Doc asked the pair.

“Nope!” Renny had a voice which gave the impression that a lion had jumped roaring out of its den. “Not very—that is!”

“What do you mean—not very?”

“A man came in and hung around a while ago,” Johnny put in, his extremely clear manner of speaking giving a clew to the fact that he had once headed the natural science research department of a famous American university.

“We both saw this chap,” he continued. “He was very large—as big as Renny. He had a flowing white beard.”

“He looked like Santa Claus,” Renny rumbled a chuckle.

“But that was not what got us interested in him.” Removing his spectacles with the magnifying left lens, Johnny polished them briskly. “This white-whiskered gentleman stood and stared at the vault for some time. Just why he did that, we could not understand. We did not see him leave any valuables with the purser to be put in the vault.”

“Maybe he was just sizing up the safe to see if it was secure enough to hold his bank roll!” snorted Monk.

Johnny shrugged his bony shoulders, then adjusted his glasses. “Maybe. But it struck me that there was something peculiar in his manner!”

Doc Savage and his five friends continued to loiter in the vicinity of the vault. They were taking no chances. The sum their diamonds represented was great enough to purchase outright some smaller European countries. It was conceivable that thieves might make a bold raid upon the Cameronic strong room.

Nothing of the sort happened, however. The large gentleman with the white whiskers did not appear. Amid much shouting and blaring of native musicians, the gangplank was hauled back.

Whistles tooted, and the brilliantly lighted pier began slowly to recede, seeming to draw after it a stretch of oily, trash-speckled harbor water.

Doc Savage, accompanied by Long Tom, repaired to the radio room. Doc wrote out a message, consulting the strange belt of cap insignias as he did so.

“What’s the idea?” Long Tom asked.

Doc let him read the radiogram.

CHIEF INSPECTOR

SCOTLAND YARD LONDON

CAN YOU FURNISH ME INFORMATION PRESENT WHEREABOUTS FOLLOWING SHIPS STOP SEA SYLPH STOP HENRYETTA STOP U S S VOYAGER STOP QUEEN NEPTUNE STOP GOTHAM BELLE STOP AXTELLA MARIE STOP RADIO ME CARE OF LINER CAMERONIC

DOC SAVAGE

Long Tom scraped thoughtfully in his thin hair. “You think that getting in touch with the ships named on the belt will cast a light on this mystery?”

“I believe Scotland Yard’s answer to this radiogram will throw light on something a good deal more horrible than these present difficulties of ours,” Doc replied quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“I have heard of most of those ships—heard something which suggests a very unpleasant possibility. We will know more about it when we get Scotland Yard’s reply.”

Long Tom would have liked to probe for more definite information, but knew it would be futile. Doc was not in the habit of giving voice to idle theories. When he had proved his suspicions to be facts, word would be forthcoming.

They went out on deck, after filing the wireless message for immediate transmission.

The lights of Alexandria receded rapidly in the warm night. Monk and the others joined Doc. Together, they stood at the rail and conversed, speculating on whether or not their troubles had been left behind.

The Cameronic rapidly quieted, for the passengers—mostly tourists—had spent a strenuous day sight-seeing, and were quick to retire. The liner plowed silently through the night. Somehow, it had the aspect of a shiny, new coffin fitted with lights.

The tomblike atmosphere, enwrapping a ship so new and so elaborate, lent the impression that they were starting a voyage of death.

Not until the light on the Cape of Figs, at Alexandria harbor, was a winking white eye in the distance, did Doc and his men retire for the night.