Читать книгу The Squeaking Goblin: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4

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Chelton Raymond opened the stateroom door, swung outside and moved along the corridor, the silent and staring detectives making a path for his passage.

The sleuths were curious, but when the tall, expensively dressed blond man made no suggestion that they accompany him, they did not move to do so.

Tige trailed Chelton Raymond. They stepped through bulkhead doors, mounted a companionway and entered a cubicle walled with instrument panels—the radio room. A rather meek young man was handling the instruments.

“I want a shore line,” said Chelton Raymond briskly. “Get the Aquatania Hotel in Bar Harbor, hooking up by telephone.”

The radio man flicked switches; generators began to hum. After some moments of low-voiced speaking, the operator spun in his swivel chair.

“Your connection, Mr. Raymond,” he said. “Radio-land line hookup.”

Tige looked on, as his blond and more sophisticated cousin lifted a mouthpiece-receiver set, and there was an almost open-mouthed wonder in the gangling mountaineer’s expression. The look told plainly that Tige was awed by the fact that one could converse from the boat to shore with such ease. Radio transmitters were evidently foreign to Tige’s environment.

“Aquatania Hotel?” Chelton Raymond asked over the radio-land line hookup. “It is.... Has Doc Savage registered there yet? ... When he does, tell him Chelton Raymond desires his presence at once aboard the yacht.”

With a few words, the blond man gave the location of the cove where the yacht was anchored. Then he hung up, nodding at the radio man to break down the connection.

Tige blinked. “You already sent fur this hure feller?”

“I radioed for him this afternoon,” Chelton Raymond admitted.

“You ’lowed as how we’d need ’im?”

“Don’t we?” the other demanded dryly.

“Yop. We be needin’ somebody.” Tige knobbed a fist and looked at its flinty hardness. “Mought take a pow’ful lot a’ man to put the fritz on this hure Squeakin’ Goblin spook.”

“This Doc Savage is a ‘powerful lot of man,’ as you call him.”

“How d’you know?”

“I’ve heard talk, Tige.”

“I ain’t never heard a’ him.”

“Talk don’t get around the mountains much, Tige.”

“Yop, thot’s so. This hure Doc Savage—whut mought be the trade thot he makes his livin’ with?”

“His profession is helping other people out of trouble, Tige.”

Tige drew out a twist of native “long green,” then extracted a knife from a holster inside his shirt. As indicated by certain small marks, the long and razor-sharp blade had been hand-hammered from a file. He cut himself a fresh chew.

“Doc Savage be a hired fighter?” he asked. “Thot it?”

“No!” Chelton Raymond shook a vehement negative. “This man never takes money for his services.”

That seemed to bewilder Tige. “He don’t go fur to take no pay?” he asked incredulously.

“Doc Savage is an unusual character—a very famous individual,” declared the other. “They tell many stories of his great strength and his remarkable knowledge. If we have time, Tige, I’ll repeat some of the yarns before he arrives.”

“Be he a lowlander?” Tige demanded.

Chelton Raymond shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You ain’t called in a furriner, be you?” Tige asked sourly. “Kain’t no feller from the low country be man enough to help us.”

Chelton Raymond smiled faintly at that. He had been away from the mountains and their people for many years, and contact with the wild scramble of the cities had caused the foibles and pet hates of the mountain folk to become small and trivial in his mind. It struck him as funny that the mountaineers should consider anybody not of their mountains as not worth associating with. Another time, he would have laughed.

One of the detectives came running toward the radio room. He was excited; he breathed rapidly as he popped through the door.

“Did you take the bullet?” he demanded.

“What bullet?” questioned Chelton Raymond, not comprehending.

“Slug that was fired at you, of course. The one that went through the dummy you fixed up in front of the porthole.”

“No,” said the blond man. “I didn’t get it.”

“We been huntin’.” The sleuth threw out his hands, palms upward, to indicate defeat “We can’t find it.”

“What?”

“There is a hole in the bulkhead, Mr. Raymond, where the bullet must have hit. It’s a small hole, as if the slug wasn’t much bigger’n a twenty-two. But there ain’t no lead in the hole.”

Chelton Raymond came forward suddenly and grasped a handful of the detective’s coat front. “Are you sure?” he gasped.

“As sure as I stand here,” the detective said earnestly.

Chelton Raymond released his grip and stepped back. He gazed thoughtfully at the floor, at his rubber-soled shoes, then roamed his glance up until he and Tige were exchanging steady, blank looks.

“Hell!” he said. “Not so good.”

“ ’Pears like this spook shoots spook bullets,” grunted Tige.

“Spook?” said the detective. “There ain’t no such animal.”

“So I always thought,” Chelton Raymond agreed.

“Mought be,” corrected Tige. “If thot be the Squeakin’ Goblin, he’s sure enough a spook, ’cause my great-grand-daddy shot the Squeakin’ Goblin plumb dead comin’ on eighty year ago.”

The sleuth clapped fists on his hips, arms akimbo. “Say, what’re you guys givin’ me?”

“Did you,” Chelton Raymond asked dryly, “get a good look at that figure in the coonskin cap?”

“Did I? You said it. I was holdin’ the flashlight that first picked him out.”

“How did he strike you?”

“Well——” The detective reached up absently and loosened his collar. “I didn’t care much for him. If he didn’t have the face of a corpse, I never saw one.”

Chelton Raymond nodded vehemently, as if he had seen as much watching from the boat with his binoculars. “You don’t watch the newspapers very close, do you?” he asked.

“I read the big stuff,” retorted the sleuth.

“This wouldn’t be big stuff,” the blond man told him slowly. “It would be a small story on an inside page, about a mountain feud in Kentucky. There wouldn’t be much. You see, the mountaineers do not talk to outsiders, to lowland men, as they call them. They regard such as foreigners. Many mountain feud killings never come to the attention of the local sheriff, much less to the newspapers outside.”

“So what?” grunted the detective.

“So you haven’t read those short newspapers items, and that explains why you don’t know that a phantomlike figure such as we saw to-night, clad in deerskins and a coonskin cap and with a long rifle, has killed several mountaineers in Kentucky within the last two months.”

“Several!” Tige snorted. “More’n thot!”

Chelton Raymond eyed Tige. “How many people has the Squeaking Goblin killed in the last few weeks, Tige?”

“Ain’t sure a’ the exact number,” said Tige, “but hit’s more’n twenty.”

“Well for——” The detective gulped, swallowed. “Twenty!”

Tige nodded soberly. “Ain’t be no less’n thot.”

“Twenty! Hell’s bells! And that hasn’t been in the newspapers?”

“Why should we-all ’uns peddle our troubles to lowlanders?” Tige growled.

Chelton Raymond put in dryly to the detective, “So you see why Tige and myself called in the Coastal Detective Agency.”

“Yeah—for protection.”

“Exactly. This Squeaking Goblin—this phantom, appeared and on two different occasions took shots at me. Once, the bulletproof window of my car saved me. The second time, the shot was directed at a mirror in my home, the sniper evidently being fooled by my reflection. I sent for Tige.”

Tige nodded. “Raymonds stick by Raymonds, so I come a-runnin’.”

“You sure it was the same guy who fired the first two shots as let that one go to-night?” asked the Coastal operative.

“The same rifle, at least. There was no sound of a shot in each case—only that loud squeak.”

The sleuth rubbed his nose, pulled at an ear, the gestures indicating an upset mind and much puzzlement.

“But why’s this Squeakin’ Goblin after you, Mr. Raymond?” he questioned.

Raymond spread his hands. “You guess!”

“Meanin’ you don’t know?”

“I mean that very thing. I haven’t the slightest idea why this Squeaking Goblin wishes to kill me.”

The detective turned on Tige. “Well, why’s the Goblin shootin’ guys back in your mountains?”

“Kain’t say,” said Tige.

“I hope he ain’t doin’ it without a reason!” snapped the sleuth.

“Fur as folks kin tell, thar ain’t no reason fur his shootin’ nobody,” Tige muttered.

The operative of the Coastal Detective Agency thought it over deeply, his heavy features wearing a profound expression, then ridded himself of an emphatic opinion.

“Damned if it makes sense,” he said.

“Have you heard of Doc Savage?” asked Chelton Raymond.

“Who hasn’t,” grunted the sleuth.

“I have radioed Savage for help,” said Raymond. “I hope there will be no professional jealousy on the part of you or your men when he arrives.”

“Jealousy—hell!” The private detective grinned widely. “Say, I’d give my good right arm to see that guy Doc Savage work, just once. They say he’s a ring-tailed wizard.”

“What do you mean—wizard?” Raymond asked curiously.

“Savage can do anything,” asserted the Coastal operative earnestly. “Or so I’ve heard. And that’s no kidding, brother.”

Shortly after this discussion, the yacht became silent and the lights went out. Chelton Raymond had suggested that the sleuths and the crew retire—with the exception of two guards posted on the upper deck, and three alert detectives, who took up positions on shore.

The cove walls were high and precipitous, and the moon had now descended in the night sky so that it was concealed from view, with the result that long, very black shadows had crept across the cove surface and enwrapped the yacht.

The private detectives on shore were extremely alert and kept close to the shelter of boulders. In truth, their hair felt an absurd inclination to stand on end when they thought of the spectral figure in the wilderness garb of the last century.

“Wonder what that egg who looked like Daniel Boone wanted?” pondered one in a whisper. “I mean—why’s he tryin’ to croak Raymond?”

“Search me,” breathed the second. “It’s a goofy business.”

“Ain’t it,” added the third watcher.

A few seconds after this conversation, which could be heard farther away than those who took part in it imagined, there occurred a faint commotion in the cove waters. This was very subdued, and the cause of it approached shore cautiously, coming from the direction of the yacht.

On the beach some distance from where the three detectives conversed, the sound ended. It might have been someone swimming ashore from the yacht. Whatever the presence was, it landed with a minimum of disturbance; after which there was an interval of nearly absolute quiet.

The prowler in the night could move with the stealth of a ghost; the next sound it made was nearly a hundred yards distant, that space having been traversed with the utmost quiet. And it was not noise of physical movement of the skulker that became audible even then, but a product of pure accident, for a night bird took sudden, wild fright at the presence and fled with terrified cries.

By rare fortune, it chanced that one of the detectives had moved along the beach and now stood near enough to be greatly startled by the scared bird. The man held a flashlight. He nearly dropped it in his first shock, then recovered and thumbed the scalding white beam among the boulders. His eyes popped.

Before him stood the apparition in deerskins and coonskin cap, carrying the remarkably long rifle. The features of the figure looked more dead than ever, masklike, cadaverously pale. The eyes were cavities of black shadow that might have been the empty sockets of a skull.

The detective had half suspected to see just this; yet so surprised was he that he could only stand, gaping. In this moment of advantage, the form in deerskins whipped behind a boulder.

Wrenching out a revolver, the detective ran forward. He yelled for his two companions, then dashed his flash beam over the rocky protuberance behind which the figure had leaped. He found nothing. Racing to the rear of the upthrust, he still saw no sign of the ghostly vision.

He looked for tracks. There were none, although the sand was soft.

The other two sleuths ran up. They also searched, and found nothing. They swapped blank looks.

“Say, I thought I heard somethin’ in the water a while ago,” muttered one man. “I wonder if that spook could have been on the yacht.”

“Yeah!” rasped the second. “If he was, he might’ve learned Doc Savage has been called, and is gonna show up at the Aquatania Hotel. He might lay for Savage.”

“His leather clothes was dry,” insisted the one who had glimpsed the eerie figure.

“He could’ve pulled ’em off an’ left ’em ashore ’thout much trouble,” snorted another.

“Aw, the spook was just prowlin’ and scared a bird an’ I heard it,” the other said decisively.