Читать книгу The Spook Legion: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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The average American lives in a high-pressure world where things happen with rapidity. He is not inclined to become wildly excited about an occurrence which does not menace him directly.

These plane passengers were no exceptions. They merely looked around. Those farthest away stood up. Nobody screamed. Nobody yelled.

The stewardess went forward and said something to the two men in the control compartment. The assistant pilot left his seat, came back and confronted the fat man with the revolver.

“What’s the idea, brother?” he demanded.

The man with the gun moistened his lips, then reached up and absently adjusted his black felt hat.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

The co-pilot did not seem impressed, but repeated, “What was the idea?”

The plump man became glib.

“I am an actor,” he said. “I was mentally rehearsing a scene from my new show. My enthusiasm got the better of me, and before I realized this was no place for such a thing, I had leaped up and reënacted a bit from my part.”

The fat man was still standing up, and he absently reached around and stowed his handkerchief in a hip pocket. The paper which had blown over the back of the empty seat was still in the hand which held the handkerchief.

The man carefully stowed the paper in an inner pocket.

The assistant pilot whipped out a hand suddenly and seized the other’s gun before he could resist.

“You might have shot somebody,” he said angrily.

The portly man rolled his eyes, then fixed them downward at the empty seat. Perspiration beads came out from under the band of his black hat.

“I fired blank cartridges,” he said.

The associate pilot broke open the gun, ejected the cartridges, and three empties and two slugs came out. With a finger, he indicated the leaden pellets in the two unfired cartridges.

“This don’t look like it,” he said.

“The first three were blanks!” the plump man gulped.

“Yeah?” The flier scowled. “I’ll see about that. The bullets should have hit somewhere.”

He leaned over, as if to get into the empty seat and hunt for bullet holes.

The fat man did a surprising thing. He leaped back, threw out his arms dramatically and began to speak in a stagelike voice.

“The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,” he intoned. “And the sad augurs mock their own presage. Incertainties now crown themselves assured, and peace——”

The associate pilot straightened.

“What the hell?” he demanded.

“Shakespeare,” declared the plump man. “The supreme dramatist, my good fellow. The supreme dramatist! And a very good friend he was indeed.” The man winked and crossed two fingers. “He and I were like that.”

The pilot smiled slightly, and his weather-beaten features assumed a knowing look. He winked at the other passengers, then dropped an arm over the fat man’s shoulder.

“So you and Shakespeare were buddies,” he said, with the manner of one agreeing with a person he considers insane. “Tell me about it, mister. I’ve always wanted to meet some one who knew Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare was the supreme dramatist,” said the fat man. “Knowing him was a pleasure, a supreme pleasure. Indeed it was!”

“Sure, sure,” said the pilot.

The aviator thrust the portly one down in his seat, then sat on the chair arm and encouraged him to talk ramblingly of Shakespeare, who had been dead hundreds of years. The plane swung down toward the landing field.

The passengers had been interested in the little drama. Two or three had crowded close, among these the big fellow who looked like a prizefighter. He had looked closely at the empty seat into which the gun had been discharged.

There were no holes or tears in the seat where a bullet might have struck.

The prizefighter individual went back to his seat. Seated in such a position that no one could see his hands, he opened one hand and examined the object which it held. This was the fat man’s handkerchief, the one which had been wrapped around the gun muzzle. It had been filched from the owner with consummate cleverness.

There were holes in the handkerchief, undoubtedly holes made by leaden bullets ripping through.

The plane landed without event, and the portly man arose to get his baggage and disembark with the rest of the passengers. But the co-pilot grasped his arm firmly and requested, “Please wait.”

The plump man’s next words were not nearly as inane as his earlier ramblings.

“What for?” he demanded.

“Shakespeare wants to see you,” said the flier.

It looked as if the portly one was on the point of venting an explosive, “Hell!” but he did not. Instead, he stated, “Shakespeare has been dead a long time.”

“Well, you’d better talk to this fellow who says he is Shakespeare,” said the assistant pilot, and went forward to consult with the airport operations manager.

They discussed the fat man and the shots.

“He’s daffy,” said the co-pilot. “Something ought to be done about a guy like that running around with a gun. He’ll kill somebody.”

“Put him in a car and take him to the police station,” suggested the manager.

“Good idea,” agreed the co-pilot.

“The pilot will help you,” added the manager.

There were two observers to this conference, neither of whom was close enough to overhear. The fat man was one, standing and fumbling his black hat uncertainly. The prizefighter individual was another, although he looked on in a fashion calculated not to arouse suspicion. He was ostensibly fumbling over his baggage.

The plane had emptied by now, and mechanics had appeared to wheel it into a hangar. One of them drove a small caterpillar tractor, which was hitched to the ship and pulled it toward the hangar.

The pilot and co-pilot approached the fat man.

“We’re going to take you to this guy who claims to be Shakespeare,” said the pilot.

The plump fellow put a very serious look under the black hat.

“The man is an imposter!” he declared loudly. “He cannot be Shakespeare, because I am Shakespeare!”

The instant he got that out, the man spun and leaped wildly in the direction of the operations office. The abruptness of his move took the pilot and his assistant by surprise. By the time they started in pursuit, their quarry was already passing through the operations office door. He slammed the panel. The spring lock clicked.

Pilot and co-pilot hit the door with their shoulders. It held. They bounced back, looked at each other.

“He’s sure bats!” said the pilot.

Inside, the fat man made a silent snarl when he heard that. His face had been benign, a bit vacuous. The snarl turned it into the visage of an animal.

He fanned a glance around the room. There was a desk, a typewriter. He leaped to the typewriter, seized it and used it as a clumsy club, and with one driving blow, smashed glass and metal crosspieces from a window in the rear wall. The aperture was hardly ample to pass his plump frame, and he struck again, so violently that his black hat fell off. Then he started to jump through.

His eyes lighted on a small group of men standing a short distance away. He waved his arms and caught their attention.

The fat man now made a remarkable series of gestures with his hands. These gestures were small—such casual movements as might be made unthinkingly by a man who was merely idling time away. He rubbed thumb and forefinger together. He made various kinds of fists. He drummed soundlessly with his fingers.

All of these small gestures were made with lightning speed, and the group of men whom the fat fellow had sighted saw them, and when they were finished, one went through the motion of adjusting his right coat sleeve slightly.

The fat man’s manner showed that the sleeve adjusting was a signal that his other pantomiming had been understood.

The fat man now turned, picked up his black hat, put it on, went over to a mirror and tried three or four grins before he got one which was particularly silly. With it fixed on his face, he opened the door and admitted the excited pilot and his assistant.

“What on earth has so excited you fellows?” he demanded calmly.

The men to whom the fat individual had signaled were no longer standing inactively. They had moved at a fast walk toward the hangar where the passenger plane had been hauled. The noisy little caterpillar tractor was still attached to the plane, and three field attendants were assisting in storing the air giant.

The attendants stared in surprise at the group to whom the fat man had signaled. The men had stalked into the hangar without speaking.

There were six men in the group. They ranged from a young fellow who looked as if he might be a high school student to a white-haired individual who looked as if he were past sixty. None of them wore flashy clothing, but all were neat. Neither would any of them attract attention because of their garb. They might have been a party of conservatively dressed business people. It was certain that all of their faces were above the average in intelligence.

“What do you want?” demanded one of the airport flunkies.

One of the six strangers coughed twice. It was obviously a signal—for all six men drew revolvers and pistols of various sizes and calibres.

“Silence,” said the one who had coughed. “We want a lot of it, too!”

The attendant stuttered, “W-w-what’s t-t-the idea?”

“Turn around,” directed the spokesman. “Stand with your backs to us.”

The attendants complied, which was obviously the sensible thing to do.

Two of the six nice-looking strangers kept the attendants covered while the other four went to the plane, opened the cabin door and scrambled inside. The plane, being large and high, could not be surveyed from the level of the hangar floor. One of the attendants, turning his head, could not see what the four in the ship were doing.

Another of the attendants did not waste more than a single glance on the ship, then shifted his attention to a row of oil drums a few feet from where he stood, a row three drums thick and almost as high as his own belt, and extending several yards to a small side door used by the mechanics. This door was open.

One of the four strangers in the plane all but fell out of the cabin door. He was highly perturbed.

“It ain’t here!” he said shrilly.

“But did you look in the seat?” squawled the spokesman.

“Yeah,” said the other. “We went all over the ship. We even got down on our hands and knees and felt around.”

The spokesman was the nice-looking old man with the white hair. He began to curse. He stopped quickly, however, and spun and grabbed one of the attendants.

“That plane door was closed when we got here,” he snapped. “Was it open at any time while you were hauling the plane from in front of the operations office?”

“I d-don’t k-know,” stuttered the grease-monkey.

One of the nice-looking men said, “Damn it, anyhow! The door was open when the passengers got out. That was enough!”

At this point, the attendant who had been looking at the oil drums decided this was his chance. He gave a great leap, sailed over the drums, landed in their shelter and scuttled for the door.

The men with the guns yelled at him. They fired, but their bullets only made oil leak from the drums.

The attendant got outside through the door, slammed it, secured the hasp fastening; then ran away as fast as he could.

The shots threw the airport into an uproar. Two men loading mail into a postal service truck drew their guns and took shelter behind their vehicle.

The group of nice-looking men came racing from the hangar. The mail guards yelled at them to stop, and were promptly shot at. They fired back. A pitched battle ensued, with the raiders retreating toward two sedans which were parked on the airport road.

They reached the machines, dived inside and drove off at high speed. The mail truck tried to pursue, but its tires were promptly punctured with bullets.

There was much running and shouting, but the pilot of the Boston plane and his assistant kept a tight grip on their fat prisoner. The latter was now talking quite rationally and insisting he had never claimed to be Shakespeare.

After some delay, a plane took the air to scout for the two fleeing sedans.

The burly individual who looked like a prizefighter—the same who had been a passenger in the plane—was still at the airport. As a matter of fact, it was he who suggested that a plane be sent up in search for the sedans.

He had been observing proceedings more closely than any one suspected. But he remained in the background, and no one paid him particular attention, except to give his unusual appearance a second scrutiny.

Two other individuals were not receiving much attention. These gentlemen had not even put themselves in marked evidence. They were in a car parked on the large lot reserved for spectators at the airport.

The machine was small, unobtrusive. Only a very close scrutiny would have shown that its motor was not the one provided by the manufacturer, but one with nearly three times as much power, and that the windows were of thick bulletproof glass and the body of armor steel.

The two men sat slumped down in their seats. From time to time they pressed small but powerful binoculars to their eyes. In each case, the glasses were focused on the burly man who had the appearance of a pugilist.

The pilot and his assistant were arguing with the fat man.

“I certainly cannot recall insisting I was Shakespeare,” asserted the latter. “Nor do I remember firing a revolver in your plane.”

“Maybe we’re wrong,” the pilot said.

The fat man moistened his lips, looked indecisive, then shrugged elaborately.

“I guess I will have to tell you men my weakness,” he said.

The pilot looked interested. “What do you mean?”

“I must have been airsick,” said the fat man. “I have a peculiar ailment. When I become airsick or seasick, I grow slightly demented. Once, when crossing the Atlantic, I was unbalanced the whole way over.”

“Hm-m-m.” The pilot did not seem very impressed.

“I hope you two men are not going to embarrass me by turning me over to the police,” the plump man said anxiously.

With a noisy whoop from its exhaust stacks, the plane which had taken off to search for the two sedans came in and landed. The pilot got out and reported that he had found the two cars, but that, by flying low, he had peered inside and ascertained that they were abandoned. The group of nice-looking men had escaped.

The pilot of the Boston plane gave the fat man’s arm a tug and said, “Come on.”

“What are you going to do?” demanded the prisoner.

“We’re going to embarrass you,” said the pilot, “by turning you over to the police for observation.”

The pilot used his own car, an open touring, and he got behind the wheel, designating the task of guarding the fat man to the assistant pilot. The latter was husky, and he had a gun.

“I thought for a while that you were nuts,” he advised their guest. “But now you seem all right. Just keep in mind that if you try any funny business I’m liable to blow holes in you.”

“Even riding in a car makes me airsick, or seasick, or landsick, or whatever it is, sometimes,” said the fat man.

“You’d better hope this is not one of the times,” the other told him.

They drove out of the airport.

The prizefighter individual had been loitering, but now he came to life, striding out onto the gravel area where the cars were parked. He paused beside a machine which was empty. This was a coupé. The windows were up. The man’s hand made a series of lightning-fast gestures, as if he were writing on one of the windows.

There was, however, no visible mark on the window when he walked on.

The pugilistic-looking one got into a roadster. This machine was long, sombre, a vehicle designed to escape notice, to merge unobtrusively with other traffic. On this car, too, a close examination would have shown tires filled with particularly soft sponge rubber, tires which could not be punctured readily with bullets, and an enormous motor, along with armor plate and glass which could not be penetrated by ordinary bullets.

The roadster raced out of the parking lot, the grind of its tires on the gravel almost its only sound, and speeded after the touring car bearing the two fliers and the fat man who had fired the mysterious shots in the plane.

The two men who had been waiting, and occasionally using the binoculars, in the small car, now whipped open a door of the machine and alighted.

The first to appear had an astounding physique. His height was little greater than that of a boy in his early ’teens, but he had shoulders, arms, a bull neck that a professional wrestler would have envied. His head was a nubbin with an enormous slash for a mouth and eyes like small, bright beads sunken in deep pits of gristle. Reddish hair, only slightly less coarse than rusty shingle nails, covered his frame. A stranger would not have to encounter the man in a very dark alley to think he had met a bull ape.

The second man was slender, with lean hips and an hour-glass waist. His not unhandsome face was notable for its large orator’s mouth. The man was attired to sartorial perfection; his frock coat, afternoon trousers, gray vest and silk topper left nothing to be desired. The costume was set off perfectly by the slender black cane which he carried.

The man who was a fashion plate wheeled to get a small leather case from the car.

“Hurry up, Ham,” the apish individual urged. He had a tiny voice which was reminiscent of a small child talking.

“Ham”—Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks—the dressed-up one, got the case. It was about the size of those used to carry home-movie cameras. He carried it as they ran to the coupé, on the windows of which the prizefighter individual had been seen to write—yet had left no visible traces of writing.

“Hold the lantern case, Monk,” directed the dapper man.

The gorillalike “Monk”—Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair—took the leather case. Ham manipulated the device which he had extracted, an apparatus outwardly resembling a small, old-fashioned magic lantern. He turned it on the coupé window, threw a switch on the apparatus.

The lantern itself threw no visible light. But upon the glass of the car window, lettering appeared. It was very faint, almost indistinguishable in the sunlight, a nebulous tracery of eerie, electric blue. Not without some squinting difficulty, Monk read it:

Follow and keep out of sight.

There was no signature, but the writing itself was so distinctive that it needed no signature; it was machine-perfect.

Neither Monk nor Ham commented on the manner in which the message had been brought out. Ham switched off the lantern—it was in reality a projector of “black light,” or ultra-violet light which was invisible to the naked eye, but which had the property of making certain substances glow, or fluoresce.

The writing on the glass had been done with a chalk which left no visible mark but only a tracing which would glow when subjected to the ultra-violet beam.

“Things are looking up,” grinned the small-voiced Monk.

“Come on, you missing link!” Ham told him unkindly.

The tone was insulting, but it seemed to make no impression on the homely Monk. They turned toward their car.

From down the road came a series of distant rapping sounds.

“Shots!” Monk squeaked.