Читать книгу The Mystery on the Snow: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Mahal would have been somewhat less certain of himself could he have stood at a designated spot on the Hudson River water front at that moment. What occurred there would have been a shock to the wily fakir.

The Hudson’s banks here were lined with piers and warehouses. Passenger liners and freight steamers were tied up at some of the wharves. Others had apparently not been used for some time.

The extremely large pier-warehouse with “Hidalgo Trading Company” emblazoned on its front seemed to belong to the latter category. The pier on which the edifice stood was of somewhat unusual construction. The warehouse walls extended down into the water. These walls were of concrete, not beautiful, but substantial in appearance.

Had anyone been offered an opportunity to measure those walls, they would have been found to be several feet thick, and reinforced with a mesh of stout steel beams. They were virtually bomb-proof. There were no windows in the building. The innocent-looking roof was as substantial as the walls.

This Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse was little less than a gigantic vault.

A roadster drove up and stopped before the huge steel doors at the shoreward end of the building. The big engine of the roadster was almost noiseless under its long, somber-colored hood.

The driver was the white-bearded gentleman who had temporarily relieved Mahal of his envelope of newspaper clippings.

Apparently, he was expected, for the ponderous metal warehouse doors slid open, and an instant after the roadster rumbled inside, they closed again.

The warehouse interior presented a remarkable spectacle. It held almost a dozen airplanes. These ranged from a gigantic tri-motored speed ship, which could carry a score of passengers at almost three hundred miles an hour, to a pair of true gyros, or helicopters, which could rise vertically.

In their line, each of these planes showed the handiwork of a master designer—someone whose ability as an aëronautical engineer was little short of wizardry.

The white-bearded fellow vaulted out of the roadster, black cane in hand. He was greeted with a hooting roar of laughter. The mirth echoed and whooped through all of the vast, vault-like hangar.

“What a sweet grandpa you make!” gulped the author of the laughter.

A wrathful expression showing above the snowy whiskers, the elderly-looking gentleman spun quickly around.

The individual doing the laughing had apparently opened and closed the hangar doors. The fellow presented a startling appearance. A stranger, seeing him on a moderately gloomy street, would have sworn he had met a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound ape.

The fellow was incredibly homely. His mouth was entirely too big, and his ears were tufts of gristle. His hands dangled well below his knees and were covered with reddish hairs almost as large as rusted nails.

This personage was Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. He rarely heard that name. His associates called him “Monk.” He ranked among the three or four greatest chemists in the world.

The irate, white-haired gentleman manipulated his black stick, and it was suddenly evident that this was a sword cane with a blade of fine steel.

“Some of these days I’m going to whittle that hair off you and stuff a mattress,” he predicted fiercely.

The homely Monk doubled over in a fresh spasm of mirth.

“You’re sure a panic behind that snow bank,” he gulped.

The tormented one now snatched off his ample white beard. It was false. The face which emerged was long and sharp. The features were far from being those of an old man.

This was Brigadier General Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks. Up at Harvard, they considered Ham one of the most astute lawyers ever to be graduated from that institution.

With a gesture of distaste, Ham flung the white whiskers into the roadster.

“You’d better make out a will,” he snapped.

Monk stopped laughing. “Why?”

“Because, if you keep on riding me, you’re going to come to a sudden end,” Ham promised.

Monk began laughing again.

Ham scowled blackly, then asked, “Where’s Doc?”

“At the other end, installing some contraption in the big plane,” Monk said, without interrupting his mirth.

Ham stamped away. Judging from his ferocious expression, it apparently would give him the greatest pleasure to slaughter Monk. It was always thus. When they were together, bloodshed seemed imminent.

As a matter of fact, each had, on numerous occasions, risked his life to help the other. Their never-ending quarrel was good-natured, violent though it might seem to an onlooker.

Huge and apelike, Monk trailed along behind Ham. Great cables of muscle curled and uncurled under the simian fellow’s coat with each movement of his arms. Monk was tremendously strong. He had an impressive trick of taking silver dollars between a thumb and forefinger and folding them neatly.

Came a rattling noise at the front door.

“Who in blazes is that?” Monk grunted. “Can’t be one of our outfit. They all know the location of the secret catch which opens the door from the outside.”

A fresh banging drifted to them.

“They sound impatient,” Ham said, and started for the door, sword cane tucked under an arm. Monk trailed along behind.

Inset in the front of the warehouse was a periscope device. Unnoticeable from without, this permitted a view of the warehouse front to those within.

A truck had rolled up to the building. Several men had alighted from this and were clustered about the doors. They were tanned fellows; all wore greasy coveralls.

Monk counted. “Six of ’em,” he grunted.

Monk and Ham now noticed that the side of the truck bore the name of a prominent concern manufacturing aircraft engines.

“Doc must’ve ordered somethin’ we don’t know anything about,” Monk said, and manipulated a lever which opened the doors.

“This Doc Savage’s place?” asked the spokesman of the crowd with the truck. “Zis address was give us, m’sieu’.”

“If you have anything for Doc, we’ll see that he gets it,” Monk grunted.

“We ’ave ze engine for M’sieu’ Savage.” The man tugged papers from his pocket. “You weel sign for it, non?”

He came forward.

Monk reached for the document. He was ordinarily a canny fellow, hard to take unawares. But this incident, which seemed an ordinary business transaction, fooled him.

The papers suddenly fluttered from the man’s hand. They had concealed a small revolver. The ugly blue snout centered on Monk’s midriff.

“Get zem up!”

Undecided, Monk bounced up and down like an angry gorilla. But good sense triumphed, and he hoisted furry arms.

The other overalled men had drawn guns; they menaced Ham. The lawyer lifted his arms rigidly above his head; there was nothing else to do. But the canny barrister retained a clutch on his sword cane.

The overalled men crowded into the hangar. They were a wolf-faced crew.

“Zat airplane engine story is smart trick, non?” queried one.

Monk and Ham knew accents. They marked this fellow as a native of northern Canada, a breed of French descent. The others seemed to be of the same nationality.

“You lookin’ for a compliment?” Monk growled.

“We look for Doc Savage,” said the other. “Where is he, m’sieu’?”

“No savvy,” said Monk. “Splickee English.”

“Doc Savage,” snarled the other. “Where he is? Quick!”

“What in blazes is this all about?” Monk countered.

The man with the gun opened his mouth to make some answer—then closed it. He peered about. His hand which did not hold the gun drifted up vaguely and touched his ears. It was as if he thought something had happened to his organs of hearing.

His behavior was caused by a strange sound which had come into being.

The sound almost defied description. It had an uncanny quality. Of a trilling nature, it ran up and down the musical scale, yet adhered to no tune. It might have been the note of an exotic jungle bird, or the filtering of a wind through a denuded forest.

Perhaps the thing which befuddled the man was the way the fantastic trilling seemed to fill all the vast hangar, yet no particular spot could be designated as its source.

Monk and Ham exchanged glances. It was obvious that the eerie note conveyed a meaning to them.

“What is zat noise?” hissed the gun wielder.

Neither Monk nor Ham answered. Instead, their chests swelled. They were drawing in full breaths—breaths of relief.

Monk shifted slightly. Ham did likewise.

“Quiet, m’sieu’s!” they were ordered harshly.

Their captors watched them intently. This was the very thing Monk and Ham wished. They did not want the visitors to glance upward.

A crisscross maze of great steel girders supported the heavy roof. Through these girders a great bronze figure was swinging.

At one place, the girders were many feet apart. The bronze man spanned this space with a leap which showed an almost fabulous strength and agility. Tendons cabling his hands and neck resembled bundled piano wires, bronze-coated.

Making scarcely more noise than drifting smoke, he neared a point above the overalled men. He crouched there like a gigantic cat. The bronze of his hair was slightly darker than that of his skin, and was like a metallic skullcap.

Many features, about this giant man of metal, were arresting. His eyes, for instance, were strange. They were like pools of flake-gold—a dust-fine gold which was whirled continuously about by tiny winds.

The giant launched outward and down. He landed beside the spokesman of the gang. Simultaneously, he struck.

The recipient of the blow made not a sound. He spun away, eyes glazed, arms limp as strings. When he went down, it was to land in a slack pile.

Long before he fell, however, two more of the group began screaming. Bronze hands had gripped them, hands which possessed an almost unearthly strength. Muscles ground under the thewed fingers, skin burst and oozed crimson droplets.

Monk and Ham went into action.

They had held the attention of their captors to permit the bronze man to attack unobserved.

They had expected the bronze man to make such a move, for the strange trilling sound they had heard belonged to the bronze giant. It was part of him, a small unconscious thing he did when contemplating some course of action, or in moments of stress.

Monk dived at a foe, avoided getting shot by a ducking, weaving process. Monk’s victim fired once, missing. Monk clipped him alongside the head; then, using him as a shield, rushed the others.

Ham unsheathed his sword cane. The blade leaped, twanged, and seemed to lose itself in the air, so swiftly did it dart.

A man squawked, grasping a tiny cut in one cheek which the blade had opened. Then the fellow sank down on his knees. He seemed to go to sleep, and toppled forward on his face.

The tip of Ham’s sword cane was coated with a drug which brought instant unconsciousness.

An overalled raider stumbled clear of the melee. He took deliberate aim at Ham. He was gripping a double-action revolver. The hammer started its backward march.

The Herculean man of bronze seemed to materialize beside the gunman. His palm clamped over the gun, stopping the falling hammer. He twisted, got the weapon in his own grasp.

Then he laid a hand alongside the man’s face. He seemed to put forth no particular effort, yet the blow was loud, and the man was knocked out instantly.

That terminated the affair.