Читать книгу The Spook Legion: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Leo Bell was a counter clerk in a Boston telegraph office. Leo was level-headed. He certainly did not believe in spooks. At least, he did not believe in spooks at precisely ten o’clock at night, as he moved behind the counter straightening the books of message blanks.

At five minutes past ten Leo’s disbelief in spooks received a rude jarring.

It happened that Leo Bell was an ambitious young man who had studied the finer points of selling, so, of course, he knew the importance of making things convenient for a customer, even the small things. It was Leo’s habit to place three or four books of message blanks on the counter top so that prospective senders of telegrams had merely to step up and start writing.

As he went along tidying the counter, Leo examined each of these books, because careless customers sometimes went off and left scribbling on them. At this particular examination, all of the blanks were clean and fresh, showing unmarked sheets. Leo was sure of that. He remembered it particularly.

Leo stood at the end of the counter and waited for a customer. None came in. Leo was positive of that, also. No one even passed on the street outside. It was very quiet.

Then the wastebasket upset.

The wastebasket was not placed exactly where it should have been—near the writing table—but was out about a yard from the table. It upset noisily. Trash fell out.

Leo Bell leaned over the counter and his eyes popped. He licked his lips. Then he rubbed a hand over his eyes. Finally, he walked around the counter. He thought a cat or a dog might have gotten into the wastebasket. But there was no cat or dog.

Leo straightened the basket, then stood and scratched his head, trying to decide what had overturned the basket, and failing to reach any satisfactory conclusion, he moved over to the counter. There, he got his next shock.

The telegraph blanks there had borne no writing when he arranged them a moment before. But one now bore a message printed in heavy but somewhat uncertain strokes. It read:

DOC SAVAGE

NEW YORK CITY

MATTER OF VITAL DANGER TO THOUSANDS MERITS YOUR ATTENTION STOP PLEASE BOARD BOSTON TO NEW YORK PASSENGER PLANE OF EXCELSIOR AIRWAYS AT NOON TO-MORROW STOP GET ABOARD IN BOSTON STOP SUGGEST YOU USE DISGUISE AND BE PREPARED FOR HIDEOUS AND AMAZING EXPERIENCE

A N ONYMOUS

(1440 Powder Road)

Leo Bell stared at the message, noting that it was marked to be sent collect at destination. He was dumfounded. He felt as if cold water had trickled unexpectedly down the back of his neck. He eyed the address on the message and shook his head, because he knew, from past experience, that a telegram addressed to one man in a city as large as New York had very little chance of being delivered.

Leo carried the message back to the night manager.

“I have here a straight telegram addressed to Doc Savage in New York City,” he told the night manager. “I think we should get a better address.”

“Where have you been all your life?” demanded the manager.

“Huh?” Leo blinked.

“I thought everybody had heard of Doc Savage,” said the other.

Leo asked, “Who is this Doc Savage?”

The night manager opened his mouth as if to speak, but did not.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll show you something.”

The night manager walked to his desk in the rear. The night manager was a studious individual. There was a large book open on his desk. The counter clerk knew this book was a late work outlining in brief the discoveries of scientists during the past ten years or so. The night manager was interested in different branches of science. He riffled through the pages, and opened them to the section marked, “Light.”

“Read this,” he advised, and pointed out a paragraph.

Some of the most advanced study of the dispersion of doubly refracting and naturally gyrating substances has been conducted by Clark Savage, Jr., (better known as Doc Savage).

Leo Bell asked, “What are naturally gyrating and doubly refracting substances?”

“Never mind,” said the night manager.

He opened the book at another section marked, “Chemistry,” and said, “Read this.”

Great impetus has been given colorimetric analysis by recent work of Doc Savage.

Before Leo could speak, the night manager turned to another part of the book marked, “Electricity,” and pointed out an item:

To Doc Savage, the field of electric science is indebted for new theories concerning velocity of propagation of electro-magnetic effects through air.

The night manager hurriedly shifted to a portion of the volume designated as dealing with “Surgery.”

One of the greatest methods of recent years for the intravenous administration of hypertonic solutions in delicate brain operations is credited to Doc Savage.

Leo Bell exploded.

“Whew!” he gulped. “That guy Doc Savage seems to be tops at everything!”

The night manager grinned. “There’s a note at the front of this book about him. It says that Doc Savage has one of the most remarkable brains of any man ever to live. It says he is a mental marvel.”

They both re-read the telegram which had been found on the counter blank. Leo Bell now broached the subject of the upsetting wastebasket and the mysterious appearance of the missive, but he spoke hesitantly, and none too firmly, because the whole thing seemed ridiculous.

The night manager laughed him down.

“Somebody came in and left the message,” he said. “Of course we’ll send it!”

They sent it.

Half an hour later, the telephone rang, and Leo Bell answered it. He heard the most striking voice to which he had ever listened. It was a man’s voice, and even over the telephone it had impressive quality and a tone of great flexibility and power under careful restraint. There was something compelling about the voice.

“This is Doc Savage speaking from New York City,” the voice said. “A telegram to me was filed from your office tonight, was it not?”

So gripping was the unusual voice that Leo Bell had to swallow twice to loosen his own vocal cords.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Will you describe the sender, please,” Doc Savage requested over the telephone.

“I c-can’t,” Leo Bell stuttered. It was the first time he had stuttered in years.

“Why not?” queried the unusual voice.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the appearance of the message then came out. Doc Savage heard it through without comment, then advised, “There is probably no A. N. Onymous listed in your directory.”

Leo Bell looked in the directory.

“No,” he said. “There is not.”

“The name was the result of a trick writing of the word ‘anonymous,’ ” Doc pointed out. “The dictionary defines an anonymous work as one of unknown authorship, which seems to fit this case. Was there an address of sender given on the message?”

“There was.”

“What was it?”

“1440 Powder Road,” said Leo Bell, after consulting the message.

“There is no such address in Boston,” Doc Savage said, and hung up.

Leo blinked dazedly after the connection was broken, wondering how Doc Savage had known the address was a fake—and it was indeed false. Leo ascertained a moment later, upon consulting the street directory. There was no such number on Powder Road.

Leo wondered vaguely if Doc Savage did not know as much about Boston as he did about the different branches of science. Leo would have been surprised.

The two employees in the telegraph office discussed the happening through the remainder of their tour of duty. It seemed as if something smacking of high adventure had touched them briefly, and they rather liked the manner in which it spiced their humdrum lives.

They would have liked more of it. But this was, fortunately, or unfortunately, as near as they were to come to the chain of horror and mystery which followed the sending of the strange message.

The affair really got under way the next day at noon.

The Excelsior Airways was among the most modern lines serving the east coast of the United States. Their planes were huge tri-motored jobs carrying a pilot, co-pilot and a stewardess in the crew.

The seats were comfortable, and each bore a number, for it was customary for passengers to make seat reservations in advance. The passengers who got aboard were prosperous-looking individuals, business persons obviously—with one exception.

The fat man was not the one exception. There was nothing particularly outstanding about him. He was neither larger nor smaller than the average portly man. His gray suit was neat, well-tailored. The only thing which characterized him at all was the black felt hat which he wore, and his white-gold-rimmed spectacles which he adjusted from time to time as if they were not comfortable.

This fat man presented two tickets. These called for seats located one behind the other. The fat man walked slowly down the aisle and took the rearmost of the two seats which his tickets called for.

If any one noticed there was something just a bit strange in that, they gave no sign.

And if there was nothing exceptional about the appearance of the fat man, there was a great deal out of the ordinary about the last passenger to enter the ship. The size of this man was tremendous. He had to bend over much more than any one else as he came down the plane aisle.

Nor was his great size the least of the man’s marked qualities. His face was something with which to frighten infants. It was scarred in fearsome fashion. The ears were thickened, tufted with welts. One of the eyes drooped almost shut. Over the brows, there were rolls of gristle which might have been put there by much pounding. When the man opened his mouth, he showed numerous gold teeth.

The passengers looked at him curiously. The mark of the man’s trade was unmistakable. He was a prizefighter.

The pugilistic-appearing individual lurched down the aisle, came to the vacant seat ahead of the fat man, looked around, saw the closing of the plane door to indicate no more passengers were expected, and started to take the empty seat.

“No, no!” the fat man squawled.

He leaped to his feet, gave the scarred giant a lusty shove, and looked very belligerent.

The other kept his balance with the ease of a man who might have received many lusty belts in the squared ring.

“Whatsa idea?” he growled.

He had a voice fully as pleasant as the sound of a heavy box being dragged over a concrete floor.

“I reserved this seat and paid for it!” snapped the fat man.

The prizefighter scowled. His scarred face was terrible. He gave the appearance of being but little less dangerous than an angry lion, and he seemed on the point of doing violence to the other. But finally, when the hostess approached and indicated the seat which he had paid for was in the rear, but on the side of the plane which would be in the sun, he shrugged.

“You needn’t have been tough about it!” he rasped to the fat man, and padded back to his rear seat.

The plane took off without more incident. To all appearances, there was to be no more excitement during the flight. But appearances are deceptive.

It was near New York that one of the passengers forward reached up and jerked open the window beside his seat. No doubt he wanted to thrust his head out and stare at the skyscrapers of Manhattan, which were coming into view ahead and below.

As a result of the window being opened, a strong wind whipped into the plane cabin.

Swept by the gale, a square of paper appeared over the back of the empty seat in front of the fat man. It slapped into the face of the fat man. Startled, he grabbed at it, and securing it, naturally glanced at it.

The results of that one look at the paper which had been blown over the back of the empty chair were surprising. The fat man lifted slightly in his seat, as if his leg muscles had tensed. His mouth came open and round; his eyes grew equally round. He was naturally a florid man, and it was distinctly noticeable that he became pale. Suddenly he sagged back in the chair as if some nerve cord had been cut.

He sat there for some time. Then he reached under his coat, thrust a hand beneath the left armpit and brought out a stubby but deadly-looking revolver. Simultaneously, he wrenched at his hip pocket and produced a handkerchief. He wrapped the handkerchief around the muzzle of the gun as he stood up.

He leaned over the back of the empty seat in front of him. There was an expression of wild desperation on his features.

His gun went off three times, as rapidly as he could pull the trigger. The reports were loud.

In the middle of the shooting, a shriek piped out. It was an eerie, hideous shriek, a sound which held the rasp of death.

The fat man sat down and wrapped both arms over his head and face. The way he did this was very strange.

Then the voice sounded. It was a strangled voice, one which was labored, gurgling, and hardly understandable. It said four words—really two pairs of words with a slight pause between the first pair and the second. Just where the words came from, it was impossible to say. The fat man had his mouth covered with his arms. The other passengers were watching the fat man and not each other. But almost every one heard the words, which sounded above the uproar.

“Doc Savage—be careful!”