Читать книгу The Midas Man: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 8

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A brittle tension seemed to clamp over the confines of the room.

“He’s not Alex Mandebran!” gulped the girl.

Hando Lancaster looked as if he was about to attack the prisoner.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Action was the captive’s answer. He got out of the coffinlike box. The manner in which he did this was the first indication that he was an individual of amazing abilities.

His wrists were tied with thick, fuzzy cord, almost small rope. It was unquestionably stout. Yet, by levering his wrists apart, he broke the binding with ease.

Coming out of the box, he gave Hando Lancaster a violent shove. The spiderlike man sailed backward, collided with the girl. They both fell, but the girl retained her gun. She made a frenzied effort to get it pointed at the late prisoner. The latter was too fast for her.

A flash part of a second later, Sylvan Niles was looking at her own empty hand with a dazed expression. She had been relieved of her weapon in a way that smacked of magic. She gaped at the tartar they had caught.

“Who—who——” She swallowed twice. “Who are you?”

“You do not know?” demanded the late prisoner. This unusual individual’s voice had undergone a striking change. Previously, he had used an uncanny imitation of Alex Mandebran’s voice. The tone he was using now was apparently his natural one.

The voice was not only deep and resonant, but was vibrant with an impression of controlled power.

Sylvan Niles and Hando Lancaster exchanged looks, which were not so much discomfited as bewildered. It was plain that they did not have the slightest idea as to the identity of this man.

The man picked up the girl’s revolver, emptied the cartridges, then tossed the weapon to the floor.

“An examination of this coffin-shaped box should prove interesting,” he suggested.

Hando Lancaster stared at Sylvan Niles. The young woman stared back.

“He doesn’t know what it’s all about!” Hando exploded.

“He’s sure to find out!” the girl retorted. “We’ve got to do something.”

It began to look as if they contemplated desperate measures.

“Be careful,” warned their late prisoner.

He seemed on the point of saying more, but did not. Instead, he whipped to the door of the room. There was something almost inhuman about the speed with which he moved. He glanced through the door, then ducked back.

A bullet came in, richocheted from ceiling to wall to floor. Gun noise filled the building with a great whooping.

The big man whipped back and got the girl’s empty gun. He lunged to the door and threw the gun. A man squawked in a loud, shocked voice. Judging from thumps, curses and other squawks, the fellow hit by the gun fell down the stairway.

“Nobody knew I was hiding out here!” screeched Hando Lancaster.

“They are no friends of yours,” said the late prisoner. “They shot the instant my form was distinguishable in the door, and before they possibly could have told my identity.”

With that, he was out through the door.

Sylvan Niles looked at her companion. “You know what I think?”

“The same thing I do!” retorted Hando Lancaster.

“I have guessed who that man is!” said Sylvan Niles. She pulled in a long, shaky breath.

“We’ve been fooling with dynamite!” said Hando Lancaster.

“Worse than that!”

“Listen!” exclaimed Sylvan Niles.

A man was making sounds. They were wild, involuntary sounds, as if the man could not help what he was doing. Great agony seemed to have fallen upon him. The uproar ended with suggestive abruptness.

The victim had fallen forward on his face. Strangely enough, he did not seem to be exactly senseless. His eyes were open. He breathed regularly, but his arms and legs were quite rigid.

The amazing individual who had played the part of Alex Mandebran paused a few feet from the victim he had just overpowered. He did not move for a moment. There he took from his cheeks certain wax paddings which had given the upper part of his features a beefy aspect and had made his lips seem thicker.

He straightened, and it was evident that by a semicrouch and by keeping his head drawn down, he had kept his true height from being apparent.

The thing which he did to his eyes was the most remarkable of all. From each eyeball, where it had been held by suction, he carefully removed a glass cap. These were similar to the very modern eyeball lenses which some opticians employ. But the bits of polished glass had not been there to aid vision. They were carefully colored, although not enough to hinder sight. What they accomplished was to change the color of the wearer’s eyes.

Suddenly, every light went out. Intense darkness clamped down.

The interior of the big building was so quiet that few human ears could have picked up a sound. But the man who had been disguised seemed to have abilities beyond those of an ordinary mortal. He plainly detected the sound of a man shifting his position off to the right. He glided in that direction, and an instant later he struck again. His fingers were on the neck of a crouching man before the fellow became aware of any threat.

What followed would have been cause for further amazement to an observer. The mysterious one’s fingers did something swift, and seemingly not very violent, to the back of the victim’s neck. The unfortunate never emitted a sound. His arms and legs became rigid.

He was a victim of paralysis induced by pressure on certain sensitive nerve centers.

At that instant, a flashlight came on and the beam fell on the individual who possessed so many unusual abilities.

The sight of this person had a pronounced effect on the fellow with the flashlight.

“Lookit!” he bawled. “Old King Trouble himself!”

There were other men in the building, several at least. Gasps and startled curses betrayed their presence. They did not seem happy.

The man who held the flashlight dropped it. The drop did not extinguish the flash. The man ran for the door.

“Damn you!” a voice squalled at him from somewhere. “Stick with this!”

“Stick with it yourself!” barked the runner. “I’m not gettin’ paid to buck that guy!”

Others seemed to have the same idea. “Where’s the door?” yelled a man.

“Over here!” shouted the first to start running.

An instant later, the fellow got the door open, letting in light. He popped outside.

A gun started banging. One man, at least, had courage. He fired several times. The bullets clouted around the spot where had stood the one whose mere appearance frightened them so.

Then the man who had done the shooting switched on a flashlight. Daylight from the doorway did not penetrate throughout the interior of the big building.

“Douse that glim!” a man squalled. “That guy’ll be able to see to shoot!”

“He never carries a gun!” barked the other.

“Well, douse the damn light anyway, so he can’t see us!”

A shrill scream broke up the conversation. The giant had taken another victim on the opposite side of the room.

“I’m clearin’ outta here!” one of the raiders yelled.

Came another burst of shots as some one got a glimpse of their enemy. Apparently, none of the bullets took effect. No one showed willingness to go over and make sure, however. All were working toward the door.

“Pick up the unconscious men!” ordered a fellow who seemed to be in charge. “We can’t leave them here!”

Not very willingly, the others obeyed the command.

The men were scared, but they kept their heads. Had they separated and fled wildly; there would have been a good chance of their being picked off one at a time. They stuck together. When they got outside, they were in a compact group. They were carrying two unconscious men.

They kept a sharp watch on the door of the big building as long as it was in sight. When it was shut off from view by shrubbery, they quickened their pace. Those in the middle of the group carried the unconscious men. Those on the outskirts kept a watch.

“We were suckers to leave the cars so far away,” one complained.

“How the heck was we to know we’d run into something like this?” another countered. “We trailed old Hando Lancaster here, but there wasn’t no sign of that other—that other guy.”

“Reckon they’re workin’ together?” a man demanded.

“If they are, it’s bad,” the first said.

Suddenly, the leader of the gang emitted a bellow of anger, waved his arms.

“What’s eatin’ you?” one gasped.

“We left a man behind!” the leader shrieked.

The group stopped. In the confusion and haste, they had not realized they were short a man.

“It’s too late now,” one pointed out uneasily.

“Right!” agreed the chief. “Thing for us to do is clear out of here.”

They fled. They did not follow the road, but surmounted the high wire fence by ladders, which they no doubt had placed there at the start of the raid. They struck out across the fields, through brush and coarse weeds.

“The big guy is poison, from what I’ve heard,” one muttered. “Ain’t like ’im to let us get away like this.”

“Maybe he’s overrated,” snorted another.

“A lotta birds have figured that!” retorted the first.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a rumor that he don’t ever kill anybody,” explained the other. “But he does somethin’ queer to ’em. I know a guy that had a brother that this bronze guy got. My pal later met his own brother on the street. The poor guy didn’t even know him. He’d had somethin’ queer done to him.”

A little-used byroad appeared ahead. Two cars were parked on it. They were big, fast machines. But neither was new enough or expensive enough to attract undue attention.

The men piled into the cars as if they had been swimming in an ocean and had reached lifeboats.

“Where to?” demanded one driver.

“We better check on the Happy Skeleton,” said a man near the window.

“You wanta go to the Happy Skeleton now?” demanded the other.

“Yeah. Make it snappy.”

The cars left hurriedly.