Читать книгу The Squeaking Goblin: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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On the yacht, the dance orchestra still made melody of a kind, although a number of individuals lined the rail, staring shoreward, an indication that some of them had glimpsed the excitement, and were curious. One shouted a question, was ignored, and did not press the matter.

The plane lockers held extra garments, and Doc hurriedly exchanged some of these for his water-soaked clothing. Then they shoved the plane off the beach, taxied a little distance out and anchored.

A second collapsible boat—the plane carried three, all told—was rigged for the water and carried them to the beach again, where they stood for a time studying the spot where the rifleman had vanished.

“When he shot at you, Doc, did you catch the sound?” Long Tom queried.

“A squeak,” Doc agreed.

The electrical expert sucked at a front tooth. “Queer, eh?”

“The whole thing was a bit strange.”

“Any idea what’s behind it?”

“Since he was waiting for us, it was obvious he was in a hurry to stop us. Our present mission is to aid this man Chelton Raymond, so it is probable that our friend in the coonskin cap didn’t want us mixing in the Raymond affair, whatever it is.”

They began to mount the cliff—and Renny, playing a flashlight beam, discerned a small sign in the shape of a pointing hand.

AQUATANIA HOTEL

“This Chelton Raymond was to meet us at that hotel, wasn’t he?” the big-fisted man queried.

“Yes—according to the long-distance telephone conversation I had with him in New York,” Doc agreed.

“What did he tell you on the phone, Doc?” Long Tom asked.

“He seemed excited,” Doc said slowly. “His story was disconnected, although he did make it clear that his life was in danger. On that point, his story was quite coherent. And the menace hanging over him had already accounted for nearly a score of murders, he declared.”

“A score!” Renny gulped.

“At least twenty, he put it,” Doc replied. “It was that last statement which brought us up here in such a hurry.”

Long Tom sucked at a front tooth again; it was a gold tooth.

“Did Chelton Raymond give any particulars on this menace?” he asked.

“Said he’d tell us the whole yarn when we arrived.”

“He didn’t hint anything about—a ghost in deerskins?”

“No.”

They topped the cliff, the coarse sand of the path grinding a little underfoot, and found themselves in a forest of boulders and weathered stone through which the trail led in a rather trying fashion, traversing narrow walks and flights of rustic steps. The place was a gloomy labyrinth.

“Wait!” Doc Savage said softly.

Renny and Long Tom stopped. Renny opened his mouth to ask a question, but voiced no inquiry, however, for their giant bronze chief had faded into the shadows amid the boulders, vanishing as silently as wind-drifted smoke.

“Blazes!” Renny breathed. “Doc doesn’t do tricks like that for nothing. Something’s up!”

Like the stealth of a great cat, the passage of Doc Savage was marked through the maze of rugged stone. He seemed never to leave the shadow, and after he had traversed a number of yards, he slowed his pace and used even more caution, his gaze fixed upon the trail immediately ahead where an upthrust ledge of stone slanted over it.

Two men crouched there, obviously waiting.

It was no gadget of science, such as had disclosed the skulker in deerskins, which had shown Doc these two. The bronze man’s senses—hearing, sight, olfactory organs—were almost inhumanly keen, thanks to a ritual of exercises, developing them, which he had taken each day since childhood. He had distinguished faint movement on the path where the two men waited, the motion caused by their shrinking back at the sound of Doc and his two men approaching.

Very close to the pair now, Doc jutted a flashlight out and put weight on the button. The two men started wildly as light sprayed upon them.

One was young; the other old. The young man was tall, red-headed, a rangy, heavily muscled sorrel colt of a fellow. He squinted tawny eyes in the flash glare, lifted red, lumpy hands in a half gesture of defense, and showed white teeth in a fighting snarl. Somehow he was like a healthy, cornered animal.

The old man had gnarled hands, faded eyes, a sparsely bearded chin, and no hair at all on his shiny head. He was small in stature, would have had to jump up to see over the younger red-headed man’s shoulder. He peered into the flash glare with eyes very wide.

“Waiting for something?” Doc asked dryly.

The two continued to stare steadily into the light, trying to distinguish the bronze man behind it.

“Who in tarnation are you?” growled the redhead.

The very bald old man blinked. “Moughtn’t you be a-minded to take thot light out’n our eyes.”

Doc did not budge the light. “You two had better do some fast talking,” he said. “Why were you skulking along the path?”

They were not good actors. The eyes of both shifted simultaneously as they sought to exchange glances. They hesitated. It was the elderly man who spoke.

“We-e-e-l, we-uns heer somethin’ thot we figger as how mought be somebody a-shootin’.” He paused to stroke his shiny pate. “We was a-comin’ to have a look. Ain’t no harm in that, be there?”

“That noise you heard was some time ago,” Doc pointed out.

“Reckon as how we musta talked hit over a spell,” said the elderly man.

The red-headed man put in angrily, “Who’re you to be askin’ folks a passell a’ questions?”

Doc ignored that. “You two live around here?” he queried.

They hesitated about answering; then the old man, who seemed to have the most agile brain, said, “Reckon as how you mought call us visitors.”

“Who be you?” asked the redhead for the third time.

“Doc Savage,” said Doc, and turned the light briefly on himself.

If the pair had ever heard of the bronze man, they gave no sign of that fact.

“Figger we-uns’ll go on ’bout our lookin’,” the red-thatched one grunted.

They stepped past Doc and continued down the path toward the cliff edge, walking close together, not looking back. They passed the spot where Doc had left Renny and Long Tom, but did not encounter Doc’s two aides, for they had cannily left the path and crept up to listen to what was being discussed.

Renny and Long Tom stepped out of the gloom a few feet from Doc, after the two strangers had gone on.

“Did you hear what was said?” Doc asked them.

“Yep,” said Long Tom.

“Follow those two,” Doc directed. “Report to me at the Aquatania Hotel. I’m going there to talk with this Chelton Raymond.”

The word exchange was couched in whispers so that the two who spoke in mountaineer dialect would not hear. Renny and Long Tom were careful to make no noise as they set out after the pair.

“That was a fishy yarn they told Doc,” Long Tom breathed.

Renny agreed. “They were punk liars,” he said.

The two quickened their pace so as to catch sight of the quarry, who had become lost in the darkness. Footsteps of the two ahead, however, were audible, and Renny, listening intently, was sure he could distinguish the clumping of four feet, which meant both of the men were descending the path down the sheer cliff.

“C’mon,” Renny whispered. “Hear ’em both on the path?”

Long Tom listened. “Yes, both of them, undoubtedly. They’re going down.”

Renny leading, Long Tom close at his heels, the two ran forward. They neared the brink. Boulders were profuse about them, very high.

No warning prefaced what occurred next. A long arm clubbed down out of the murk behind a stone mass. The hand on the arm gripped a rock somewhat smaller than a football. The rock and Renny’s head, coming together, made a clanking sound. Renny dropped as if poleaxed.

Long Tom gasped, spun around. The mysterious hand snapped the rock at his head. He ducked—and the missile sailed on and over the cliff and downward, after a time sinking with a faintly audible chung in the ocean.

Out of the rock shadow came the red-haired mountaineer. It was he who had wielded the rock. He sprang upon Long Tom.

The undersized, pallid electrical wizard did not look as if he were a match for his assailant. The gaunt mountaineer grinned confidently and reached out to gather in his smaller foe. He got a surprise.

Came a dull smack. The sorrel-headed man’s mouth flew open, air roared out, and he folded like a limp ribbon about the fist which Long Tom had driven into his middle. With an uppercut, Long Tom straightened him. He hit the fellow again.

The older man appeared, bounding up the trail from the cliff face. In his hands he carried the younger man’s heavy shoes.

Seeing the shoes the old man held, it dawned on Long Tom what had happened. The bald fellow had merely gone down the cliff path on all fours, the extra footgear on his hands giving the impression of two men walking which had deceived Renny and Long Tom.

The fight ended shortly after the bald gentleman joined the scrap, swinging the brogans. One heavy shoe descended on the top of Long Tom’s head. That stunned him. A blow to the jaw toppled him over, unconscious.

“Tarnation!” puffed the younger man, “Lil’ scamp kin scrap!”

His bald companion surveyed the senseless Renny and Long Tom.

“Kinder lucky we thought a’ usin’ thot there extra shoe trick to see if anybody be a-follerin’ us,” he grinned.

“What ought we better do with ’em?” asked the other.

The older one did not answer directly, and for a moment there was silence. Then, as if the two understood each other’s desires perfectly, they stooped over, the red-thatched fellow picking up Renny’s great bulk without undue trouble, and the other handling Long Tom’s limp, slighter frame.

They faded quietly into the black shadows with their burdens.