Читать книгу The Other World: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE GANG-UP
The yellow-haired young man who was built like a blacksmith was having his troubles.
The airplane stewardess said, “I saw the fight begin, and he didn’t start it. The other man hit him first.”
The policeman asked, “Who kicked your teeth out?”
“The other one,” admitted the co-pilot. “Not this fellow, but the one who got away.”
The yellow-haired young man made an impatient gesture with his large, strong-fingered hands, then gave a convincing speech.
“So why not turn me loose?” he argued. “This fellow attacked me and I simply defended myself, so the fracas was not my fault. I didn’t even know the man, therefore he must have been a nut of some kind. You better be devoting your time to finding him. Why, he’s probably a crazy man running around loose, a menace to humanity.”
The policeman said, “You didn’t even know him?”
“My name,” said the young man who had furnished half the fight, “is Arnold Columbus, but naturally I get called Chris Columbus. I’m from New York. I’m a fur specialist, and I frequently travel to remote parts of the world. You’re liable to run into me inside the Arctic Circle hunting unusual sealskins, or you might find me in the Andes Mountains dickering for a catch of special chinchilla. I was simply coming to St. Louis on business, and this fellow attacked me.”
“According to the plane company records, the other man’s name was Wilmer Fancife,” the policeman explained. “You say you never knew a Wilmer Fancife before?”
Chris Columbus lied without batting an eye.
“Never heard of the cuss,” he said.
The policeman thought it all over and came to a conclusion. “Thank you very much. Will you kindly keep in touch with us, in case something should develop?”
Chris Columbus grinned pleasantly and said, “I take it that I can leave now?”
“Yes. Where do you intend to stay?”
“The Ritz Hotel.”
“Thank you.”
Chris left the airport in a taxicab and did not go near the Ritz Hotel, visiting instead a tobacco shop which was open at this late hour. He examined the telephone directory for Gerald Evan Two Wink Danton’s address. Having found the address, he rode to within two blocks of the spot in a taxicab, then alighted.
Chris told the taxi driver Two Wink Danton’s address. He also gave the driver a five-dollar banknote.
“I want you to do me a favor,” Chris explained. “A friend of mine lives there, and he is very sociable indeed and he also likes his liquid refreshment, so I suspect he may be somewhat pixilated. If he is oiled, I doubtless will have trouble getting away from him without hurting his feelings, and there is where you come in. If I do not return in half an hour, say, you come to the door and knock and explain to whoever answers that there is a policeman downstairs and he is going to come up and get me if I don’t come down. I will tell my friend that I was pinched for speeding, and the cop is taking me to the bastille, but merely let me stop off to see my friend as a great favor.”
Chris Columbus was sometimes rather proud of his ability as a liar.
“It sounds kind of complicated,” said the taxi driver.
“But you’ll do it? There’s some more bucks in it for you.”
“Oh, sure. In half an hour.”
Chris Columbus listened intently outside Two Wink Danton’s door and heard a radio playing softly, and no other sound, so he knocked. The door soon opened.
“Hello, Mr. Two Wink Danton,” said Chris. “You alone?”
“Why, yes, by myself.” Two Wink stood back hospitably. “Come on in. I didn’t expect you to arrive so soon. I only sent my telegram slightly after noon today.”
“It doesn’t take much over six hours to come from New York to St. Louis by plane,” Chris said.
He walked in unsuspectingly, not realizing his mistake until Two Wink slammed the door and disclosed that Fancife had been standing behind the panel with a cocked gun ready in his right hand, and his left hand gripping a pillow with which to muffle noise of the gun, should it be necessary.
The glare Chris gave Fancife held such desperate fury and hate that the craggy fat man clapped the pillow over the muzzle of the gun, ready to fire.
“No!” Two Wink barked wildly. “Somebody’ll hear the shot, sure!”
Fancife snarled, “Get your hands up!”
Chris Columbus lifted his arms. His fists were clenched, his face drained of color, his mouth hate-twisted. He hated Fancife, it was obvious, more than anything else in the world.
Fancife added, “You tie him, Two Wink.”
Two Wink secured a cotton clothesline—he was such a skinflint, and cared so little for his personal appearance that he did his own laundry in the apartment—and bound the prisoner, showing an extensive knowledge of knots.
“Now a gag,” Fancife suggested.
Two Wink rammed a dishrag into Chris Columbus’ mouth, and over this tied a bath towel.
Then suddenly Two Wink looked at Fancife, exclaimed, “I just thought of something. That damned dog—and I’ve got some of the stuff left.”
“What has a dog got to do with it?”
“One of the neighbors had a dog, and the blasted thing always barked at me and kept me awake at night with howling. Once it bit me. So I got some chloroform, and one night I caught the dog.”
“And you have some of the chloroform left?”
“Yes.”
“Get it.”
Two Wink had started worrying over his own suggestion by the time he came back with a chloroform bottle that was wide-necked and stoppered with a wadded rag.
“If we kill him,” he said hoarsely, “and they catch us, it might be kind of bad.”
“If we kill him and they don’t catch us,” advised Fancife, “we will both be millionaires.”
Two Wink was an amateur as far as murder was concerned. His hand began shaking, and somehow it occurred to his twisted mind that—if they were caught—his part of the crime might be held less heinous if he didn’t actually apply the lethal chloroform. He handed the bottle to Fancife.
“You do it,” he said shrilly.
Fancife said, “With a lot of pleasure,” and got down on his knees and poured the chloroform on the towel, running a small stream out until the bottle was entirely empty, and by the time he had finished the victim’s eyes were closed.
Fancife shoved Chris Columbus’ head, and there was looseness of unconsciousness in the neck.
“Now,” said Fancife, “where’s this fellow who brought the strange skins to St. Louis? What name did you say he used?”
“Decimo Tercio,” explained the white-faced Two Wink.
Two Wink was not enjoying his first participation in a murder.
Decimo Tercio had stopped at the Black Fox Hotel, which was in the fur district, an ancient hostelry constructed back in the days when a black fox skin was a rare and expensive article, before fur farming brought the price down to almost the level of a first-class dark mink pelt.
The Black Fox Hotel, although it had entertained its share of queer patrons—the guests had included shaggy trappers from Alaska and black lion hunters from Africa—was a hostelry that was somewhat agog. Decimo Tercio, with his buckskin suit and his metal shoes, was something different.
Two Wink and Fancife used a simple ruse.
“Will you advise Mr. Tercio,” said Two Wink, “that two fur buyers wish to see him. Two buyers who are perfectly willing to pay him five thousand dollars apiece for his skins, and take the whole lot.”
This admitted them to the fourth-floor room where Decimo Tercio had established himself.
Tercio was standing in the middle of the room—he merely called, “Come in,” and they entered—naked except for a towel which he had wrapped around his middle. They could not help but stare at him. He had a body of remarkable muscular development, and a skin marked by numerous scars. The scars were irregularly shaped, some much larger than others. As if the man had been torn and mauled by animals, Two Wink reflected.
A new suit of ordinary clothing was lying on the bed, so it was evident Tercio was just preparing to change to civilized garb. The buckskin suit, together with the metal shoes, lay on the floor.
Fancife closed the door, then produced his gun.
“You know what this is?” he asked threateningly.
Tercio knew; he put up his arms.
“Look the place over,” Fancife ordered Two Wink. “We might find maps, which would make our job simple.”
Two Wink conducted an enthusiastic search. He was probably much more interested in finding something than his new partner, Fancife.
It had occurred to Two Wink that he really knew very little about the whole affair, and it made him uneasy. He had thrown his lot with Fancife, a comparative stranger, and had immediately taken part in a murder. He wondered if that didn’t make him a profound damn fool.
There were some pockets in Tercio’s skin garments, but they contained nothing.
“What kind of hide are these things made of?” Two Wink asked, puzzled.
“You’ll find out later,” Fancife said enigmatically.
Two Wink scowled and hefted the metal shoes. He found them very light, noticed also that the soles were scarred.
“What kind of metal is this?” he asked. “Never saw stuff like it before.”
“Hurry up the search,” Fancife said shortly.
In a bad humor, Two Wink completed his hunt, ending up with empty hands.
“Nothing,” he reported.
Fancife now addressed their prisoner, Tercio, in a tone that left nothing in doubt.
“You can get shot here,” Fancife said, “or you can do what you’re told, and live through it. You will put on your clothes. Those street clothes there, and not that rig you wore when you came out of—er—came to St. Louis. And you will come with us to a place where we can talk privately.”
Tercio, who had been scowling at them, asked, “Just who are you two gentlemen, anyhow?”
Fancife countered, “Do you know Lanta?”
Tercio didn’t need to answer. His surprised start was sufficient affirmative.
At which Fancife grinned and said, “That should give you some idea. Now are you coming with us, or are you going to stay here and get buried?”
“That doesn’t give me much choice,” Tercio said in his strangely difficult English. He began dressing.
After a while, they walked out of the hotel, Tercio presenting a much more normal appearance in his civilian clothing, and not making any move toward resistance.
Two Wink said, “I don’t see the object of this.”
Fancife snorted. “We’re simply going to make our friend here, Tercio, take us back to where he came from.”
They drove away in Two Wink’s car.
