Читать книгу The Terror in the Navy: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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Patricia Savage opened her gold eyes and with her hands tried to help herself up off the floor. She sniffed indignantly when she discovered she was sitting in a chair. She looked around.

“Oh!” she said. She sounded exasperated. “I might have known you would happen around and catch me when I wasn’t at my best!”

The giant bronze man standing before her smiled faintly, which was a rare thing for him to do. Some persons had known him for years and had never seen him smile. Not that he went around looking gloomy. His amazingly regular features, almost classic in their firm handsomeness, simply had no expression at all, most of the time.

He stood near the door, and it looked doubtful if he could pass through it without ducking. Yet, when he stepped away from the door, he seemed to shrink in stature, due to the remarkable symmetry of his development. There had to be something around to which his size might be compared before his full Herculean stature was apparent.

His hair was straight, a slightly darker bronze than that of Pat Savage, and his eyes were gold, also, but of a different nature. The bronze man’s orbs were like pools of flake metal, always stirred by some invisible force. They seemed also to possess a weird, compelling power.

The sinews in his neck were like hausers, the thews in the backs of his hands like round files.

“Doc Savage!” Pat exclaimed cheerfully. “You’re smiling! You’re actually becoming human!”

The remarkable-looking bronze man spoke. He had a voice that was arresting, not so much because of the things that were in it, but because of the feeling of things that were left out, things the voice could do if called upon.

“You happened along at an unlucky time, Pat.”

Pat sniffed audibly. “I’ll have you know if it hadn’t been for me, you might never have known some men had raided your office!”

“Wrong,” Doc Savage said quietly.

“You’re not telling me I got hit on the head for nothing?”

Doc Savage walked into the corridor. Despite his size, he seemed remarkably light on his feet. He touched the corridor wall, and an apparently solid section opened, showing a recess large enough to hold a man.

Pat stepped into the niche and perceived there were obscure peepholes from which could be seen, not only the corridor, but the reception room, and library.

“You weren’t in here when those men came?” she demanded.

“And when you got your clip on the head.”

“But why?” Pat gasped.

Doc escorted her around and into the headquarters reception room.

“Notice the electric sign advertising beer in the sky beyond the window,” he suggested. “Do not stare noticeably at it, however.”

“Oh!” said Pat, understanding. “A balloon! Telescopes! How long has this been going on?”

“For days,” the bronze man replied.

“Who are they? What are they up to?”

“That,” Doc Savage said, “is what we have decided it is time to find out.”

Pat said cheerfully, “You figure something is getting ready to happen?”

“Possibly.”

“Big?”

“That balloon cost a few thousand dollars,” the bronze man reminded. “Whatever is about to happen must be big before any one would spend that much money just to get information on me.”

“Good!” said Pat. “Great! Swell! I like excitement, big excitement.”

Doc said quietly, “You are not going to get involved in this—whatever it is—and possibly get killed. Out you go.”

“I won’t!” Pat snapped. “I won’t go!”

But she did go. She made indignant noises as Doc propelled her out and shut the door and locked it.

There were small lights of appreciation in the bronze man’s flake-gold eyes as he went into the library. Pat was his cousin and she had many of his own qualities, not the least being her love for excitement. It was a rare week that passed without her being asked to be let in on something.

Doc refused as often as he could. Too dangerous. But Pat was hard to discourage.

Doc swung a bookcase away from the wall, disclosing a niche which held a machine.

The machine was the bronze man’s telephonic monitor. Attached to the telephone lines, it recorded all conversations with immense fidelity of tone.

Doc played the record back. It gave him the text of the radiogram sent by Lieutenant Bowen Toy from the destroyer which had met such a mysterious fate—the message directing Doc to go to the apartment of Captain Blackstone Toy in the Parkview Hotel.

Doc played the record back again. He wanted to fix Fuzzy’s voice in his memory, so that he would know it if he heard it in the future.

The bronze man’s private speed elevator lowered him to the garage in the skyscraper basement. Few persons knew of the garage.

The car he chose was a convertible coupé, discreetly dark, with a wheel base longer than usual. The top was down, the windows up. Glass in the windows was of the type known as bulletproof. The steel boot into which the top recessed came up high enough at the back to decrease the chances of being shot from behind.

The convertible coupé was equipped with a two-way radio, and the bronze man switched it on.

“Renny, Long Tom, Johnny!” Doc called into the microphone.

Doc Savage had five aids, men as remarkable, almost, as himself. The names he had just called belonged to three of the aids.

“Holy cow!” rumbled an answering voice out of the loudspeaker. “Don’t you ever sleep, Doc?”

“Anything new, Renny?” Doc asked.

“Nope,” said big-voiced “Renny.”

“Be with you in a few minutes,” Doc told him.

“So we’re gonna do something about this at last!” Renny rumbled happily.

Doc drove toward the water front, and passed a newspaper plant from which late editions were being loaded. The bronze man stopped, got a paper and studied the page black with headlines.

NAVY PLANE CARRIER WRECKED!

CRASHES STEAMER!

The wreck of the aircraft carrier had occurred only a short time previously, near Norfolk, Virginia.

In an adjacent column was another expressive headline.

NAVAL EXPERTS BLAME MYSTERY

FORCE FOR FIVE DESTROYER

AND PLANE

CARRIER WRECKS.

Navy officials hinted to-night that some mysterious and unexplained influence caused the five destroyers and the plane carrier to run off their courses to disaster.

That was all of that angle of the story. Evidently navy officials had been afraid about hinting. It was enough of an inference, however, coupled with what was to follow, to set the entire country agog within the next twenty-four hours.

Doc Savage folded the paper slowly, his bronze features expressionless, and drove on.

Renny gave the impression of being a walking pair of fists. His hands were tremendous, each almost half a gallon of bone and gristle with the consistency of flint. He had a long face, and habitually wore the expression of a man going to the funeral of a good friend.

Renny was Colonel John Renwick, who loved two things: trouble and engineering. As an engineer, he was world-famed. As an associate of Doc Savage, he got his excitement.

Renny dropped out of a freight car near the water front. He had a newspaper in his hand and he rustled it in the murk.

“Queer thing about the wrecking of them five navy destroyers,” he said. “I’ve just been reading about it.”

“It is queer,” Doc agreed.

“Queer!” Renny tossed the newspaper aside. “Say! Long Tom and Johnny and me have been watching them guys in that beer-sign balloon for almost a week. How much longer do we have to keep it up?”

Renny had difficulty pitching his tremendous, rumbling voice in a low tone.

Doc said, “We’ll look into it now.”

They advanced through the murk, using care to avoid noise, and shortly came upon two other men crouched in the darkness on the river bank.

“I’ll be superamalgamated!” whispered one of the pair, who was very tall, and thinner than it seemed a man could be and still live.

He was William Harper Littlejohn, eminent archæologist and geologist, and an inveterate user of big words. He was commonly called “Johnny.”

“They’ve got one guy watching the balloon cable winch,” said the second of the two men.

This second man was not an impressive physical specimen. He gave the impression of having grown up some place where it was always dark.

He was Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard, a man whose appearance of being a physical wreck was deceptive. He had secured the nickname of “Long Tom” somewhere.

“How many in the balloon?” Doc queried.

“Two,” said pale Long Tom.

“And one watching the winch,” added Renny.

“Can you grab them?” Doc asked.

“We can have a swell time trying!” grinned big-fisted Renny.

“Question them,” Doc directed. “Find out what connection their watching me has with the wrecking of the destroyers and the aircraft carrier.”

The darkness then absorbed him, or seemed to, so silently did he depart.