Читать книгу The Metal Master: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 7

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Doc Savage allowed the young woman to rest, after ascertaining that she knew no more than what she had told. While she was resting, he telephoned the cable company.

He learned about the two clerks who had been murdered and about the cablegram which had been taken. He got a copy of the cablegram from the central office, where it had been relayed.

“How is your nerve?” he asked the girl.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Doc tried her.

“Seevers is dead,” he said.

Her nerve was all right. She bit her lips.

“He was a nice old man,” she said.

“Do you have any idea what is behind this?” Doc Savage asked.

She considered. “I can’t think of a single angle.”

“You were poisoned,” Doc told her. “They smeared a cyanide powder over your mouth.”

“I know.” She shuddered. “And after that, it was the strangest thing! I seemed to be flying through infinite space at terrific speed! And yet it didn’t seem like it was me doing that, but some one different, some part of me that I had never been conscious of before.”

“You were dead,” Doc Savage told her.

She eyed him solemnly. “You wouldn’t kid me?”

“That,” he assured her, “is the truth.”

“And you brought me back to life?”

“It has been done often before. People actually die on operating tables and elsewhere, only to be revived by the use of adrenalin and other methods.”

Nan Tester did not say anything. Apparently having been dead was something to think about.

“You are going to be left here again for a few minutes,” the bronze man told her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Do not make any noise in here,” Doc told her, apparently not hearing her question. “The place was searched a while ago. They were probably looking for you.”

Doc Savage left her concealed in the secret compartment. She had wanted to know what he planned, but he had appeared not to hear the inquiry—a small and aggravating habit which he had when he did not wish to explain his future moves.

He went to the cable office to which had come Louis Tester’s cable from South America, and where the two clerks had been murdered. The place was full of police officers, investigating the killing.

Two new clerks were on duty.

Doc Savage filed two cablegrams for transmission. The first one was addressed to Louis Tester, care of the airport at Panama, Canal Zone, where his plane would be apt to land for refueling. It read:

SEEVERS MURDERED STOP YOUR LIFE MAY BE IN DANGER STOP DESIRE YOUR STORY IMMEDIATELY STOP CHANGE YOUR COURSE TO HAVANA CUBA AND INTERVIEW MY ASSISTANT COLONEL JOHN RENWICK AT HOTEL MIRMA IN HAVANA STOP TELL HIM STORY STOP ACCEPT HIS HELP STOP YOUR SISTER WITH ME

DOC SAVAGE

The second cable was directed to Colonel John Renwick, Hotel Mirma, Havana, Cuba, and said:

MAN NAMED LOUIS TESTER WILL ARRIVE IN HAVANA FROM SOUTH AMERICA BY PLANE STOP MEET HIM AND GET STORY CLEARING UP MYSTERY OF METAL MASTER STOP HIS LIFE MAY BE IN DANGER

DOC SAVAGE

Doc handed these two communications over the counter for immediate transmission. The two clerks behind the counter seemed to be nervous, which was no wonder, with the place full of frowning cops.

Doc Savage now gave his attention to the policemen. They listened to him with the greatest of respect, for they knew his reputation, knew also that he was a high, honorary officer in the police department, among other things.

Doc told them to go to the elevator operators in the skyscraper which housed his headquarters for a description of men who might be the murderers. Doc did not explain why he happened to make this suggestion. The policemen looked very curious about it, but did not insist when Doc failed to volunteer a full explanation.

Doc Savage also mentioned that it might be interesting to investigate the alley where old Seever’s body lay imbedded so incredibly in a blob of metal.

Two officers went to see about this. One soon came tearing back with his eyes wild. He had found the mass of metal, and the body.

The police investigators now asked Doc Savage to have another look at the fantastic thing in the alley, and furnish them with any theories which they might pursue in their investigation. Doc was not unwilling. He knew very well that the police had an efficient organization, and he frequently coöperated with them.

Doc went to the alley with the policemen.

The two clerks in the cable office seemed very glad indeed to see the bronze man and the cops depart. Their relief was tempered somewhat by the fact that one cop remained behind, to see that no one wandered around messing finger prints. The clerks, pretending to examine messages, held a whispered consultation.

“This is sorta risky,” one said. “We better blow. We’ve got them two cablegrams that the bronze guy filed.”

“We better see what the chief wants us to do,” the other muttered.

The man went to a telephone. The cable office phones were fitted with box affairs over the mouthpieces, so that the instruments could be spoken into with privacy. This made it simple for the man to telephone without the policeman on guard overhearing.

“Doc Savage filed two cablegrams,” said the clerk, when he had his party.

“Read them to me,” directed the person at the other end of the wire.

This individual spoke in a whisper. It is very difficult to identify a voice from a whisper over a telephone wire.

The clerk read both messages.

The whisperer cursed heartily, but did not forget to keep whispering.

“That means the girl got to Doc Savage,” said the whisperer. “It also means that she couldn’t tell him what it is all about. He’s trying to get hold of Louis Tester, to learn the story. We’ve got to stop that.”

“Sure,” said the clerk. “But how?”

The other had quick wits. Almost immediately, a cablegram was dictated over the phone. It was addressed to Louis Tester, care of the airport at Panama, Canal Zone, and read:

SEEVERS MURDERED WITHOUT TELLING STORY STOP WANT YOU TO GIVE STORY TO MY AID COLONEL JOHN RENWICK WHO IS ABOARD SCHOONER NINETY MILES SOUTH SOUTHWEST OF DRY TORTUGAS ISLAND STOP FIND SCHOONER LAND AND COOPERATE WITH COLONEL RENWICK STOP SCHOONER IS THE TWO-MASTED VESSEL INNOCENT

DOC SAVAGE

“Send that message, then destroy it,” directed the voice. “Do not send the message which Doc Savage filed to Louis Tester, but stamp it as if it were sent, so nobody will get suspicious.”

“O. K.,” said the clerk. “What about the other message, to Colonel Renwick?”

“Go ahead and send it, so Doc Savage will not get suspicious,” ordered the whisperer. “Louis Tester will never get near Colonel Renwick.”

“Who is Colonel Renwick, chief?”

“Doc Savage has five men who are his assistants. Colonel Renwick is one of them.”

“Oh!”

The whisperer commanded, “And after you get the messages sent, clear out of there before the cable company gets wise that two fake clerks are on duty there.”

“O. K., chief. What about that girl?”

“I am taking measures about the girl.”

“O. K. So long, chief.”

This terminated the telephone conversation. The two phony clerks went about the business of sending the fake message to Louis Tester, directing him to find the schooner Innocent.

“The chief will have men on the schooner to grab him, I guess,” said one clerk.

They had evidently once worked in a cable office, these two, for they knew how the messages were transmitted over the teletypes. But they could have been a little more skillful.

They sent Colonel Renwick’s message as Doc Savage had filed it. Then they exchanged more whispers.

“We better blow, now,” said one.

“O. K.,” agreed the other.

They walked out.

“Gonna get a cup o’ coffee,” one told the policeman, laconically. The cop swallowed that, and let them go.

They walked boldly down the street, then turned into a side thoroughfare.

“That was simple,” said one.

“Sure, it was,” agreed the other. “Brother, we fooled this Doc Savage plenty!”

“The bronze guy ain’t up to that reputation of his.”

“Yeah. He’s overrated.”

Then something happened to them. It was as if the wall of the building had fallen on them. Only the hard things which struck them were not bricks, but fists. Before either could more than squawk in agony, they were battered down to the sidewalk.

To the accompaniment of metallic clicks, light steel handcuffs came to rest on their wrists. Dazed, they blinked and groaned and peered into the gloom, to see what manner of nemesis had overtaken them.

When they saw, they became so quiet that it seemed their hearts had stopped.

“Doc Savage!” one choked finally.

Doc Savage said nothing. Being a psychologist, he knew the value of silence in a moment such as this. It was much more effective than anything he could say.

After a bit, one of the men muttered a single word that was adequately expressive.

“Well?”

Doc Savage said, “You fellows are not very good actors. You were nervous.”

“Anybody would be nervous,” growled the other. “That didn’t give us away.”

“But it moved me to telephone the cable company, and they said your description didn’t fit the clerks they had sent,” Doc explained. “You waylaid them, did you not?”

“Yes,” the other admitted promptly.

“Kill them?”

“No. There wasn’t no need.”

Doc Savage picked them up. He did it perfectly easily, and carried them both as if they had no weight at all. His physical strength was great.

“Whatcha gonna do?” one gulped.

“That depends on you,” Doc told him. “Plenty, probably. That is, if you are reluctant about telling what you know.”

“Wait a minute!” said the man hastily. “Maybe we can get together.”

“How?”

“We were just hired for a job. All we get out of it is our pay. We won’t get that, now that we’ve been caught. So what’s the profit in bucking you?”

“None,” Doc agreed. “Start talking.”

“We were hired,” said the man. “Me and my pal here. We haven’t been told much. We don’t know what’s behind this.”

“Who hired you?”

“A big guy with black whiskers. He didn’t give no name. Said it wasn’t necessary.”

“Can you find him again?”

They hesitated. One cleared his throat. The other spoke jerkily.

“We know—where he hangs out—red-brick house in the Forties.”

The house was of red brick, right enough, and it was old, with boards over the windows on the ground floor. Doc Savage saw this from the taxicab in which he arrived with the two men.

“Get out,” he told them.

“You’re going to walk right in?” one demanded.

“Going to try it.”

They got out. The street was deserted, for it was getting along toward morning. It was still sleeting. The feet of the two fake telegraphers skidded a little as they worked across the sidewalk.

Then they fell down. Fell slackly, heavily. But it wasn’t the slippery pavement. They had been knocked down, knocked by bullets that arrived in a bedlam of noise.

A machine gun! It was firing, not from the house, but from a roof at the end of the block. Its cackle made the street hideous.

Doc Savage flung sidewise, hit the sleety walk, and slid. He smashed against a fire plug. That was what he wanted. A fire plug will not shelter much more than a man’s head, but that was enough in this case. Doc Savage never went out without a garment of chain-mail under his outer clothing. Only the best of high-powered hunting rifles, shooting hard slugs, could perforate the mail.

The machine gun continued its gobbling. Slugs, hitting the bronze man’s mail, threatened to knock him away from the fire plug.

The gun went silent.

Doc Savage lay where he was. The quieting of the gun might be a trick to see if he moved.

The two men who had been his guides were dying. One was already dead, in fact. The other was groaning his last, and raving a little.

“Trap—double-crossers!” this one was shrieking. “If we got caught—bring you here—they would rescue us—— Liars—intended fix us so we wouldn’t talk——”

His shrieking turned to a bubbling and with a few lusty coughs that sprayed crimson over the sleety sidewalk, he turned in his checks.

By now, Doc Savage had decided the machine gun was silent because the gunner was making a get-away. The bronze man heaved up and ran for the corner.

He heard a car engine start up. The machine went away fast.

Doc turned back to the taxi in which he had come. The driver was scared. He got out and ran for dear life in the opposite direction. So Doc drove the cab in pursuit of the fleeing car, and did not get to first base, which was not his fault, but the fault of a careless motorist who had failed to put on chains to run on the sleet.

The cab skidded uncontrollably. Doc Savage’s driving ability, which was considerable, did not help enough.

He did not find the car he was seeking, for the cab lost its front wheels against the curb in an effort to avoid a smash.

Doc went back and examined the machine gun. It was a foreign military weapon. Small chance of it ever being traced.

Doc searched the house in which the two men had said he would find the big man with a black beard. There was no such man; and no others in the house. Probably there had never been such a man.

Searching the two victims, Doc Savage found the cablegram which had been dictated by the whispering leader over the telephone, the one which had been sent to Louis Tester, in Panama, Canal Zone. They had been careless and had not destroyed it.

Doc Savage lost no time in getting to a telephone and trying for a land-line-radio hookup to the airport in Panama. He wanted to get hold of Louis Tester.

But Louis Tester had landed, refueled and gone on North. Louis Tester was headed for the trap.

Doc Savage hurriedly got a telephone connection to Havana, Cuba. He spoke, when he had his party, ancient Mayan, a language which few outside his five aids and himself spoke. He talked for some time.

Doc Savage’s regular bronze features were emotionless as he headed back toward his skyscraper aerie. Whatever was involved in this mysterious affair must be tremendous.

The “Metal Master”! That was it, whatever it was.

Doc Savage knew something was wrong the moment he entered the lobby of his building. He ran to the elevators. The three attendants were inside.

They were not dead. But their heads had been thoroughly battered, probably with blackjacks. Not one was conscious. Doc ran his private elevator up to the eighty-sixth floor. He went through reception room and library into the laboratory. There, he stood still for some moments.

His strange, fantastic trilling noise came into existence and traced its eerie tremor for some moments. It was smaller, more exotic than usual, and after it faded away into nothingness, the echo of it seemed to persist, as the strains of enthralling music sometimes seem to hang in the air afterward.

The laboratory walls were of steel—or had been. A good bit of the steel had melted down on the tiled floor. Melted, it appeared, without any heat. A number of the secret wall compartments had been thus opened.

The one in which Doc Savage had left titian-haired, exquisite Nan Tester had been opened. She was gone.