Читать книгу The Other World: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4
ОглавлениеTHE QUARRELSOME MEN
The fight at the airport that evening was a honey. The hostess saw it start. Two of her passengers—they had not left their seats during the nonstop flight from New York, had boarded the plane separately in Newark, hence obviously neither had known the other was aboard—arose to leave their seats after the big sky cruiser landed in St. Louis. The instant they saw each other, fireworks started.
One man was young, not far beyond late college age; he had the body of a young blacksmith, hair as yellow as a new oat shock, a rather grim expression.
The other fellow was a tough fat man. His mouth looked as if it had been made carelessly with a hatchet. Nature had not given him much of a nose, and this donation had been hammered upon until it had somewhat the appearance of a large wart. He was cross-eyed. His skin gave the impression of having been appropriated from a rhinoceros.
The fat man saw the young one first. He was carrying a suitcase, which he immediately lifted and crashed down on the young man’s head. The case split and clothing erupted.
The young man was, jarred down on his knees, but he got up and wheeled around to face his assailant.
“Fancife!” he yelled.
He lunged in, hooked a fist to the fat man’s ribs. He might as well have slugged a draft horse. The fat man was tough.
The young man was no lily. He made a roaring noise, waded in. He slugged and got slugged. The two men fell on the plane floor amid the litter of Fancife’s suitcase.
Seizing a necktie, the young man wrapped it around Fancife’s neck like a garrote cord, and tied a hard knot in it. Fancife got an extra shoe that had been in the case, pounded the young man between the eyes, loosened him.
The thing became serious. Fancife snatched up a razor, tried to cut the other’s throat. He failed. The foe got a belt, began whipping the other across the eyes, finally jerked the razor out of his hand.
Fancife began turning purple, due to the knotted tie about his neck.
The co-pilot—the hostess had been screaming ineffectually for them to stop it—came rushing back and tried to part the men. He made progress for a moment, then got two teeth kicked down his throat. He doubled over, coughed up the teeth, and as mad as either combatant, he rushed forward to hunt a wrench.
The fat man, Fancife, had started the fight with confidence. By now, he was changing his mind. The younger man was fighting with a fury that was maniacal.
Fancife snatched up a bottle of rubbing alcohol and struck the younger man on the forehead with it. The bottle broke, not harming the victim greatly. But the alcohol ran down into the young man’s eyes, making stinging blindness.
Fancife took advantage of his foe’s blindness to get out of the plane and run.
Tearing off the throttling necktie as he raced past the airport waiting room, Fancife vaulted a low steel-wire fence, reached a taxicab. He did not waste time. He reached into the cab, clutched the astonished driver by the coat, slugged him on the jaw and made him senseless, then dumped him on the ground. The cab leaped away, tires throwing gravel, Fancife at the wheel.
En route into town, Fancife proved that the taxicab could do eighty. Later, he abandoned the cab, straightened his ruffled clothing, and caught another hack in a conventional fashion. He changed cabs twice thereafter.
Between one of the cab changes, Fancife looked up the residence address of Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton.
Two Wink Danton, being owner of a vinegary disposition and a completely selfish nature, had always lived alone. At present he occupied a rat trap of an apartment—he was also as stingy as Scrooge—in a part of town that was down at the heels. The living room was lighted inadequately by a twenty-watt bulb dangling on the end of a cord from the center of the ceiling, and by this bad light, he surveyed his visitor. He did not immediately recognize the other.
“Who—what——?” Then he understood. “Oh, it’s Mr. Wilmer Fancife.”
“Hello, Two Wink,” Fancife said.
“You got my telegram, I guess. But I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
Fancife began coughing and put his hand to his chest as if in pain; when he took the hand away, there was a large blue gun in it.
“You weren’t expecting this either, probably.” Fancife waggled the gun. “I hope you understand what happens when these things go off at a man.”
“What’s the idea?”
“We’ve got to get away from here in a hurry. It just happens there isn’t time for explanations, hence the gun.”
Two Wink was not without judgment, so he walked down to the street meekly, and even said, “I have my car handy, if you would prefer we take that.”
“Let’s.”
Two Wink drove out toward Forest Park, the park being one of his preferred haunts because it was free. Fancife rode silently, holding the gun against his ample keg of a stomach, pointed at Two Wink.
“I fail to understand this at all,” Two Wink said finally.
“My hurry to take you with me, you mean?” Fancife made a noise that did not contain enough humor to be a laugh. “That was because somebody besides me could read the telephone book.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“You don’t?”
“Slightly less than three years ago,” Two Wink said thoughtfully, “you came to me and gave me a small piece of fur, a wonderful fur of a type that was totally unknown to me. You offered a five hundred dollar reward to be notified if pelts of such a fur appeared on the St. Louis market. Today, such pelts did appear. I wired you, and you rush here by plane. You must have come by plane.”
Fancife said, “Would it puzzle you more to know that I had left samples of that fur at every major fur center in the world, together with the same reward offer?”
“It strikes me as strange.”
“It’ll have to keep on striking you as strange, then.”
“What do you mean?”
Fancife apparently decided he no longer needed his gun, and he put it back in the underarm holster from which he had taken it.
“All you’ve got to do with this is produce information,” Fancife explained. “I want to know who brought the furs today, and where I can find the person.”
“Wasn’t there something said about five hundred?”
Fancife reached into his hip pocket for a billfold and began counting out twenty-dollar bills.
“You’ll get it,” he said.
Two Wink casually reached into his coat and a moment later Fancife was looking into the threatening twin maws of a large-caliber derringer.
“I’m afraid I’ll need more than five hundred,” Two Wink said.
The two men examined each other during tense moments while Two Wink brought the car to a stop near a street light in a deserted section of the park. Each one saw that the other was not afraid, and a mutual respect sprang up between them.
“I didn’t figure you would have a gun,” Fancife said disgustedly.
“I did have, you see.”
The strained silence continued. There was no noise other than the muttering of the engine and the ticking of a valve tappet. Breeze moved the park trees, and leaves cast squirming clusters of shadow.
“Well?” Fancife said questioningly.
“I can see only one answer to this,” Two Wink said thoughtfully. “Someone has bred a new type of fur-bearing animal, and skins of that animal were offered on the market today. That fur, if a man had had a monopoly, would be worth millions. So I want in. I’m no hog.”
“What do you mean—no hog?”
“I want fifty per cent. Half.”
Fancife chewed his lower lip. He was thinking. “And if there was more to it than just a new fur-bearing animal?”
“Half. Still half.”
Fancife continued thoughtful, until finally he drew in a deep breath.
“I like your style.” He scowled at Two Wink. “I don’t think I would care much for you personally, but you don’t handle yourself bad. I could use you.”
Two Wink said frankly, “I was just thinking the same thing. We might do each other some good.”
There was a silence. Then, without further speech, with no other manifestation, they shook hands to seal the bargain. Another silence followed, for they were both somewhat surprised, suddenly realizing that they understood each other fully, that their minds worked in exactly the same fashion, so that each seemed to know exactly what the other thought and intended to do. It was almost uncanny.
“We should make a team,” Fancife said.
Two Wink put away his derringer, admitted, “Yes, we should.”
“Our first move,” Fancife announced, “is to get hold of the man who brought those furs to St. Louis. And the next move,” added Fancife, “will be to get rid of a fellow named Columbus.”
