Читать книгу The Spook Legion: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 10

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Bull Retz proved one thing conclusively in his match last night. As a fighter, he makes an excellent doormat.

Telegraph laughed, and went through the other clippings.

“What a fight that must have been,” he murmured.

“This guy seems to have been genuine,” said one of the others. “Maybe we shouldn’t have bopped him.”

“Why not?” Telegraph demanded. “He was a stranger, wasn’t he? And what saps we would be to take a stranger in. This thing is too big for mugs like this palooka.”

That seemed to settle the affair—and they went on, hurrying. One of the party evidenced a knowledge of their surroundings, and before long they came out on a heavily traveled thoroughfare. They did not advance to the pavement itself, but paralleled the road for a quarter of a mile until one of the men pointed and said, “I knew it was around here somewhere.”

The object he indicated was a telephone pole alongside of which stood a small booth. It was one of the telephones provided along the highway for motorists who might need emergency aid.

One of the men went to the telephone and made a call.

“One of our cars will be out here for us in half an hour,” he said.

They retired into the brush to wait and to talk.

“Give us the lowdown on what happened in that plane, Telegraph,” one of the men requested.

Telegraph took off his black hat and began to turn it around on one knee.

“It seemed that everything was going perfectly,” he said. “I got two seats reserved in the plane, and took the rear one. Then, when we were nearing New York, some guy up in front opened a window to stick his head out and get a look or something. That made a draft, and a paper blew out of the front seat—the seat right in front of me, I mean.”

One of the men lifted a hand.

“Ps-s-t!” he warned. “A guy is driving down the road in a cart. He might hear us.”

They lifted up and made out the man in the cart—the cart was rickety, laden with junk, and the man was a shabby fellow whose garb advertised his calling: a junk collector.

Telegraph ceased speaking. But that did not mean his recital was interrupted. He began to make the small, unusual gestures with his hands. The movements seemed to comprise a semaphore shorthand by which rapid communication was possible. They were certainly not the system of alphabetical letters used by the deaf and dumb.

The communication in this strange fashion went on until the peddler and his cart were out of hearing, after which oral discussion resumed. The recital seemed to have progressed a good deal during the period in which they had talked with signals.

“And you say after you fired the shots, you heard a voice yell?” asked one of the men.

“Exactly!” said Telegraph.

“Was it Easeman who yelled?”

“Easeman?” Telegraph shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought Easeman was dead. By all the laws, he should be dead.”

One of the men shrugged. “Well, I told you what we found when we searched the plane. Exactly nothing!”

Telegraph groaned and took his head in his hands. “It’s all a damned mess—and I haven’t told you what really worries me.”

“What?” demanded a man.

“The words that were yelled out in the plane,” said Telegraph.

“What were they?”

“Doc Savage—be careful!” announced Telegraph.

For the space of a dozen seconds, no one said anything. Then one of the men, a thin fellow who looked as if his health were none too good, leaned forward. He had become quite pale.

“Listen,” he gulped hoarsely, “did I get that right? Somebody mentioned Doc Savage in that plane?”

Telegraph’s nod was slow. “Exactly!”

The frail man groaned audibly, sank back and mumbled, “Now I remember!”

“You remember what?” Telegraph scowled.

The frail man straightened up nervously. “Look! What do you know about this Doc Savage?”

“Just the stuff that’s cropping up in the newspapers all of the time,” Telegraph said. “I don’t pay much attention. Doc Savage is supposed to be a combination of muscular strength and mental skill something out of the ordinary.”

“But his profession,” the man gasped. “You’ve heard of that?”

“Maybe you’d call it a profession,” Telegraph said dryly. “I don’t. The man goes around mixing in other people’s troubles.”

“He helps those whom he thinks deserve it,” the other pointed out.

“From what I’ve heard of him, he’s a big-time adventurer—a soldier of fortune,” Telegraph retorted. “But what are you getting at?”

“You’ve heard of his five assistants—I mean the five guys who help Doc Savage?” asked the one who was patently scared.

Telegraph nodded impatiently. “I’ve read of them, too. Each one of them is supposed to be a specialist in a particular line. One is a chemist, another a lawyer, another an engineer, one an electrical expert and——”

“Say!” interposed another of the group. “What has all of this got to do with the fact that Doc Savage’s name was yelled out in that plane? I’ve seen Doc Savage. I know him by sight. Once you see that guy, you’ll never forget him. He wasn’t on that plane.”

“Shut up!” snapped the frightened one. “I’m talking about his two assistants named Monk and Ham. Monk is the chemist in his line-up, and Ham is the lawyer.”

“So what?” Telegraph asked wearily.

“So didn’t you ever hear of the pet pig named Habeas Corpus that this chemist, Monk, carries around with him?” demanded the other.

“Pig!” Telegraph looked stunned. “Why—those two men back there—they had a pig!”

“You said it!” the other told him. “The guy who looked like an ape was Monk. The other one, the bird with that black cane, was Ham. That’s a sword cane.”

Telegraph took his head in his hands. For a long minute, he said nothing.

“This is hell,” he muttered finally.

“It’s a fair sample,” the frail man said grimly. “But when this Doc Savage catches up with us, we’ll get the real thing. I’ve heard things about that guy.”

There was silence while they said nothing and exchanged uneasy glances.

“Doc Savage has got a line on us,” one said. “How did that happen?”

Another reached out suddenly and gripped Telegraph’s arm.

“Was it Easeman who yelled out in the plane?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Telegraph said wearily. “It was a strangled voice. And I told you I thought Easeman was dead.”

“How do you account for the note that blew into your face?” he was asked.

The man put his black hat on his head and unfolded the note under discussion.

“There were little boxes with writing paper, ink and a pen on the backs of the seats,” he said. “This is a sheet of the paper. Here—look it over.”

The men crowded their heads together to read the note. Telegraph stood up and moved away from them a few paces and kept his eyes fixed on the road. It was a busy highway. Cars passed at intervals. Telegraph came back when the men had finished reading.

“That makes it pretty plain what has happened, does it not?” he asked. “That’s Easeman’s handwriting, you know.”

“But how’d he get the information?” one of the group questioned vacantly.

“By spying on us!” Telegraph snapped. “That’s the only way he could have gotten it. Damn that fellow! He wasn’t as weak as we thought. He was getting ready to gang up on us.” He tapped the note angrily. “This proves it!”

“Maybe Easeman rang in Doc Savage,” some one suggested.

“I’ve been thinking of that,” Telegraph said. “It’s not nice to think about. Hell’s bells! Just when we thought we had things going nicely!”

“Maybe Easeman is dead after all,” a man muttered hopefully.

“That would help,” Telegraph agreed.

Telegraph was refolding the note slowly. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, he prepared to stow it back in his pocket. He never completed the gesture.

His mouth flew wide. A shriek ripped out. His pudgy frame convulsed. His legs drew up and an uncanny thing happened—for the space of several seconds, he seemed to be suspended entirely in mid-air, with nothing whatever supporting him. Then he collapsed heavily to the earth.

The note came out of his pocket and fluttered up vertically to a height of some six feet, opening as it arose, then the breeze seemed to catch it and the missive fluttered away, spinning over and over.

Telegraph’s face was a mask of horror. He fought to regain his voice.

“Use your guns!” he shrieked.

The men had picked up their weapons on the road after the fellow who looked like a pugilist had released them. They whipped the guns out, began shooting. Their firing was wild. They aimed at no target, but it was noticeable that they did not drive bullets into the air, or into the earth. The slugs clipped leaves, chiseled bark off trees.

Telegraph scrambled to his feet. His features were flushed, his eyes protruded. He stroked his neck.

On his neck, long purple marks were visible. At one point, the skin had been broken. Scarlet drops gathered there, loosened from their anchorage and chased each other down to stain his neat white collar. He seemed to recover his self-control.

“It’s no use!” he yelled. “Stop shooting!”

The thunder of guns ceased.

“Where’d that note go?” Telegraph demanded.

A man pointed. “Over that way. The wind blew it.”

“Get it!” Telegraph snapped. “Then we’ll clear out of here.”

Their behavior was strange. They grouped together, back to back, eyes, ears and guns alert, and moved for the spot the breeze had carried the bit of paper. Covering some yards, they began to look about with increasing anxiety.

“It’s gone!” Telegraph groaned.

One of the men yelled, pointed.

“Look!” he bawled.

Fifty yards distant, a bush was swaying as if it had been disturbed. There was, however, nothing visible in the shrubbery. The men advanced, guns ready, until one, eying the ground, made a hissing sound and leveled an arm.

The earth was soft, and it bore tracks—footprints and such marks as a man might make while crawling on the ground.

“Somebody was hanging around,” Telegraph grated.

They broke into a run, following the tracks. A moment later, they caught sight of a flashing motion ahead. It was a man, a giant of a figure, lunging for the shelter of a clump of trees. They all saw him.

“It’s that damn prizefighter!” Telegraph snarled. “We should’ve finished him off!”

Two of them discharged bullets. Both, knowing they had missed, cursed.

“Spread out,” commanded Telegraph. “We’ll get that guy out of our hair, anyhow!”

A thin wailing sound sprang up in the distance and grew perceptibly louder. It had an unearthly quality. Telegraph and his men exchanged pained glances.

“State troopers,” Telegraph said.

From near by on the road came the three musical notes of an automobile air horn. Almost immediately, the notes repeated.

“That’s our car,” one volunteered. “We’d better blow.”

“Good idea,” agreed Telegraph.

They sprinted for the road.

As they ran, the men whipped out handkerchiefs and carefully wiped finger prints from their guns. Then they threw the weapons away. They had obviously experienced difficulty with the police before and knew of the regulations against carrying firearms.

“Sure none of you left finger prints inside of your guns when you oiled them last?” Telegraph puffed. “And you wiped off the magazines of the automatics before you clipped them in?”

“Think we’re amateurs?” some one grunted.

They reached their car. It was a big sedan, neither too old nor too new. A neatly dressed, pleasant-faced young man was driving. He got the doors open.

“Cops must have heard your little war,” he offered. “Where d’you wanta go?”

Telegraph was the last into the car. He leaned out to grasp the door and close it.

“We’ll have a talk with Easeman’s daughter,” he said grimly. “You know the address—Central Park West. She may have a line on her old man.”

He was facing the brush patch which they had just quitted when he said that.

The sedan door slammed shut. The driver let out the clutch and clashed gears. The machine lunged away. It gathered speed rapidly, going in a direction opposite that from which came the siren noise of the State police car.

The car was not yet out of sight, nor had the police machine put in an appearance—there was a bend in the highway which hid it from view—when there was a great crashing in the brush and Monk and Ham put in an appearance. They had been running, but neither breathed heavily, an indication of good physical condition. The afternoon garb of the lawyer, Ham, was somewhat less immaculate than it had been before. He still carried his sword cane. The pig, Habeas Corpus, trailed them.

It was the shote which first located the personage who resembled a prizefighter. The latter was standing in a brush clump, holding the compact cylinder of a telescope.

Monk and Ham ran to him. Both grinned widely, and the pig, Habeas Corpus, bounced about as if delighted beyond measure.

“Say, Doc, what’s this all about?” Monk questioned.