Читать книгу The Other World: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE MYSTERIOUS FUR
When the plane landed on a farmer’s oat-stubble field in the Mississippi bottoms near St. Louis, the time was around ten in the morning.
The farmer had turned his cattle on to the stubble field to graze, and among the animals was a rogue bull which was a horned devil with strangers.
This bull charged the aviator.
The flier then killed the bull with a spear.
Naturally, the farmer who owned the bull was astounded. The farmer happened to be watching, and his astonishment came not so much from the fact that the aviator killed the bull; if the flier had drawn a gun and shot the animal, the farmer would not have been surprised. The spear was the astonishing item.
The spear was small—seven feet or so in length, not very heavy. When hurling the spear the flier used a peculiar device, a stick about the length of his arm, equipped at one end with two thong loops for the forefingers, so that it could be clasped very tightly, while the other end of the stick was forked to grip the spear shaft. With this device, the spear could be thrown with great force, as a rock is hurled from the split end of a stick. There was something primitive about it.
“Hey!” The farmer dashed into the oat field. “You all right?”
“I’m extremely sorry,” the flier said.
“About the bull? Hell, that’s all right” The farmer wiped off perspiration. “Brother, we been afraid that ox was gonna gore somebody.”
The flier said, “I shall pay you for the animal, of course.”
The farmer’s eyes began to pop with astonishment as he eyed the aviator. “I’ll be jiggered!” he said.
Because he had been a little astonished over the business of the bull, the farmer had failed to particularly notice the flier’s clothing.
“Bless my boots!” the farmer muttered.
The flier’s garments—skin tight trousers, very loose coat-blouse—seemed to be made of buckskin, or animal hide of similar nature. Further, his feet were shod in a covering that the farmer at first thought was steel, but later concluded must be some metal more nearly like aluminum. This metal footgear was solid, after the fashion of Dutch wooden shoes.
“I shall,” repeated the flier, “pay you for the animal.”
The farmer was not too surprised over the pilot’s appearance to overlook a dollar. “Well now,” he said, “he was a pretty good bull. Thoroughbred. I can show you the papers on him.”
“Unfortunately, you will have to wait a few days for the money.”
“Eh?”
“I will leave my plane here,” the pilot said, “and be gone two or three days. Then I shall return and pay you.”
The farmer had noticed by this time that the man was having some difficulty with his speech, as if he had not spoken English for a long time, or had recently learned it.
Since an airplane was obviously more valuable than a bull, hence good security, the farmer said: “Sure. That’s all right.”
The flier took a large bundle from the plane—a package about three feet square, wrapped in the same type of skin from which his clothing was made, and equipped with packstraps for carrying.
“As I said,” the aviator remarked, “I shall return later.”
He walked across the oat stubble and disappeared into a woods.
The prominence of St. Louis as a fur-buying center, while possibly not fully known to the public, is an appreciated fact by the fur industry, a multitude of dealers in raw skins converging on the city during the season to dicker for pelts. Mink, raccoon and skunk from the Middle West. Muskrat from Louisiana. Fox from the Hudson Bay. Wolf from the Rockies. Chinchilla from South America.
The flier got a laugh when he walked into the market rooms. A rather contemptuous glance or two, as well. Some of them figured, from his skin clothing, that he was a nut.
“Dan’l Boone come to town,” someone said, and snickered.
The flier’s unusual metal shoes made a loud noise on the tiled floor as he crossed to an exhibition table, upon which he lowered his bundle. Before he opened his bundle, he made a speech. Not a long one.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “you can buy these furs for five thousand a skin.”
Someone laughed at that, but there was no mirth after the man opened his bundle and spread out the contents, slowly and proudly, handling them as though each was a jewel as fragile as a cobweb.
“Holy cats!” someone said.
They weren’t cat hides, but something else, something incredible. A fur so luxurious, with such subtle coloring and quality, that the buyers were stunned. A man stepped forward, held one of the skins up and stroked it with his hand, and it was indeed as if a fabulous jewel were being shown. Fur men came to the spot, magnetized by such a fur as they hadn’t dreamed existed.
A fur man said, “Who owns that dyeing process? My firm will pay plenty for it.”
The man who was holding up the pelt studied the fur closely.
“Not dyed,” he said.
“You’re crazy. There’s no animal with fur like that.”
They gathered around the table. They were not passing the skins about but touching them reverently.
“How much did you say?” a man asked the flier.
“Five thousand a skin.”
“Dollars?”
“Yes.”
The other laughed. “Be yourself, guy. Chinchilla is the most expensive fur in the world, and it doesn’t bring that.”
The aviator did not seem impressed. “And what makes Chinchilla cost?”
“Scarcity. The animals are getting rare—”
“Not as rare as these.” The flier held up his hand and silence fell; they listened to him speaking in his strangely difficult fashion. “You see here,” he said, “a collection of skins which is complete. And by complete, I mean that in this pile here are all the skins of this animal that you will find in the world, and there will be no more such skins. Never. I have twenty-seven skins here, and there will never be any more.”
“You mean,” put in a new voice, “that no more of that particular fur you’ve got there will ever come on the market?”
“Exactly,” said the flier.
“Why not?”
The flier seemed, judging from his hesitation, reluctant about answering that question.
“Because,” he said finally, “there are no more of the animals. I killed and skinned them all. Their pelts are here.”
“Just who are you, anyhow?”
“My name,” the flier said, “is Tercio.”
“Tercio?”
“Decimo Tercio, yes.”
“And you’re from——?”
“That,” advised Decimo Tercio, “is not your business.”
The man who had taken up the questioning of Decimo Tercio stepped back and showed his teeth unpleasantly. He was a dealer specializing in sealskins, and he somewhat resembled one of the animals himself, particularly about the countenance. His face was equipped with a pair of large dark pop eyes.
Someone whispered to a companion, “It didn’t take that Tercio, whoever he is, very long to get Two Wink’s number.”
“Is Two Wink a crook?”
“He hasn’t been caught at it.”
There were no fireworks. Two Wink Danton merely scowled, growled, “I just asked you a civil question,” and walked away. He went directly to his office, wasting no time.
Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton was not particularly liked on the fur exchange, nor was there anything definite to account for this. The man had a rather long nose as far as other people’s business was concerned, his principal interest apparently being directed toward becoming an encyclopedia of gossip. However, he was like a blotter where gossip was concerned; he absorbed, but did not give forth. Which wasn’t so bad.
Danton’s nickname of Two Wink came from his habitual bidding gesture. During fur auctions, when large numbers of bidders are gathered before the auctioneer, bidding is usually done by giving slight signals—the lifting of a finger, the tilting of a cigarette, a tug at an ear with the fingers. Danton invariably winked twice, and if there was any secretive intent about the gesture, it was futile, the man’s pop eyes making a double wink quite noticeable. He might as well have jumped up and waved both arms.
Two Wink dived into his office and sent an excited bark at his stenographer.
“Where’s them two fur samples?” he rapped.
“What samples?” the girl asked nervously.
“The two that were left with me about three years ago. The men wanted to be notified if any similar fur appeared on the market. Offered me five hundred dollars reward if I found a similar fur on the market and notified them.”
“Oh, that.” The girl went into an adjacent room and soon came back with two envelopes.
Each envelope bore a name and address, and each contained a small piece of fur. One of these bits of fur was worn somewhat more than the other, but there was no doubt but that they were of identical type.
Two Wink carried the two fragments of fur back to the display room and, without doing anything that drew attention to himself, carefully compared the two bits with the pelts which Decimo Tercio was attempting to sell for five thousand dollars each.
It had now become apparent that Decimo Tercio stood a very good chance of getting five thousand dollars apiece for the skins. Someone had already offered twenty-five hundred, providing examination showed that the skins were genuine and not a clever piece of manufacturing.
Two Wink listened to the bidding, and he was very thoughtful when he went back to his office. Several things were on his mind. This Decimo Tercio was a strange fellow, and his clothing was even more unusual. The buckskin pants, as snug as an acrobat’s tights. More particularly, the metal shoes that served him as footgear.
“You know,” muttered Two Wink, “I think there’s something queer about this.”
“What did you say?” asked the stenographer.
“Never mind.”
Two Wink went into his private sanctum and had a silent argument with himself. On one side of the argument was a conviction, rather vague now but growing stronger, that there might be a great deal of money to be made if a properly interested fellow who played his cards right, such as Two Wink considered himself capable of doing, could get hold of breeding pairs of the animals which had produced that amazing new fur. On the other side of the argument stood one thousand perfectly good dollars, five hundred each from two men who had offered the sums as a reward to be notified if such a fur as this appeared on the market.
The philosophy of a bird in the hand beating two in the bush eventually won out in Two Wink’s mind, so he telegraphed the two men who had offered the rewards.
One telegram recipient was named Arnold Columbus.
The other was named Wilmer Fancife.
Both of them were in New York City, although at different addresses.
