Читать книгу The Vanisher: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 3

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The early fall issue of a magazine of national circulation had carried a feature write-up about Doc Savage. The item was dramatic, well-written, and particularly interesting because it carried an excellent picture of Doc Savage. Good pictures of the man of bronze were scarce. The story told about Doc Savage’s strange, Galahadian life work of traveling to the ends of the earth, righting wrongs, aiding the oppressed, and punishing evildoers. It told about the bronze man’s scientifically developed brain and his equally remarkable muscles, and gave examples of the fantastic feats he could accomplish, and some of his eerie adventures. The writer of the article had drawn on his imagination only a little. Almost every one got around to reading the article.

So it was not so remarkable that John Winer, penitentiary guard, should be reading the magazine article at the moment when the horrible and incredible thing known as “The Vanisher” made its first public appearance—or, perhaps more correctly, disappearance.

That John Winer was reading the article was a coincidence because the mystery of The Vanisher was going to involve Doc Savage in one of the most startling adventures of his unusual career. John Winer was one of the night guards at the prison. He was reading in the northwest corner tower. The hour was three o’clock in the morning.

John Winer had a habit of talking to himself.

“Hey!” he said, suddenly. “What was that?”

There was no one around. He simply asked himself this question because he had heard a small grating noise. He got up, went to a powerful searchlight and turned it on, raking the prison yard below, and the terrain outside, with the beam. The light roved like a great, deadly white spook.

Inside the prison wall, in a large open space, stood an ordinary freight car. This had been switched inside the prison earlier in the evening. It held a great deal of complicated machinery in boxes and crates.

John Winer knew there was nothing but machinery in the car, because he had been one of a squad of guards who had searched it. The car was billed as holding the new pipe organ which a rich man was giving to the prison chapel.

The rich man donating the organ was named Sigmund Hoppel. This fact became something to think about later.

John Winer gave the freight car only cursory inspection, because he knew it was harmless. Hadn’t he helped search it? Freight cars and trucks were customarily frisked upon entering the prison walls, lest they be used to smuggle guns inside.

But John Winer would have found a closer watch on the freight car productive of interesting things. For instance, he might have seen a furtive shadow drift swiftly from the car to a near-by wall.

Some one had left the freight car and was now prowling the interior of the prison. The sound which John Winer had heard was the freight car door opening and closing.

Even a close observer might have experienced difficulty in getting an idea of what the furtive prowler looked like. For one thing, the being kept where the shadows were darkest. Light seemed malign.

If it was a man—and there could be no certainty on this point—it was not a large man. The contrary, rather. In stature, the individual would hardly have topped a youth in his early teens. The Senegambian marauder did not have the slimness of youth, however; although the legs were spindling, the torso was burly and misshapen.

Just what gave the prowler the queer look became evident when a faint gleam of light chanced to be encountered. The creature was a pronounced humpback!

So furtively did this strange individual move that nothing more was seen or heard of the sinister presence until a tiny light appeared in the section of the prison set aside for offices.

It was evident from the manner in which the light roved about the offices that the strange skulker had not been there before, and knew little of the layout. Finally, a metal filing case was located. This held cards which showed in what cells the prisoners were confined.

The marauder seemed interested in those cards dealing with only certain prisoners.

A drawing of the prison hung on the wall. The prowler consulted this for some moments; cells holding the selected prisoners were being located.

The shadowy, humpbacked one produced a cane from inside darksome garments. It was a dark cane which looked heavy. Exactly similar canes were commonly carried by guards within the prison. The guards were not permitted to carry guns; the canes were their only weapon.

The humpbacked one eased soundlessly out of the offices, haunted shadows under the walls, and a few minutes later approached the guard in front of the huge cell house which contained the bad ones. The approach was made boldly.

The guard was alert. He frowned at the newcomer, noted the regulation cane the fellow carried, and must have believed the strange person was a guard. The light was not good.

“I’m a guard of the day shift,” said the humpback. “Making an inspection round. Is everything all right?”

“Yep,” said the guard.

He did not notice that the other had stopped so that the end of the cane was thrust forward almost below the guard’s face. Nor did the guard notice a grayish vapor which was now pouring from the end of the cane. The vapor arose, and the guard unwittingly inhaled it.

The guard fell over on his face, unconscious almost at once, and began to grovel and kick. In time he became limp, absolutely senseless.

The guard carried keys to the cell block. These were appropriated by the humpbacked one and employed to unlock the grilled door.

From the central interior court, the door of every cell could be seen. Ordinarily, only a single guard was on duty inside the cell blocks at night, but since this was the building housing some bad actors, two guards were on duty.

The humpbacked marauder acted with heartless rapidity. The anæsthetic fumes from the cane accounted for both guards while they stood in front of the strange intruder and asked suspicious questions.

The humpbacked prowled now secured the cell keys, moved to the barred door of a cell which housed one of the selected prisoners, opened the door, crept in and shook the inmate.

The cell occupant aroused, took one look at his visitor and acted as if confronted by a genuine witch.

“A woman!” he exploded.

“Sh-h-h-h!” warned the other. “Don’t make wild guesses! Are you Jules R. McGinnis?”

“Yes—yes,” gulped the prisoner. “What in blazes is going on here?”

“You were sentenced to fifteen years for forgery?”

“Y—yes. Damn them! I wasn’t guilty!”

“I know all about it. Now listen to this: Will you spend a year of your life fighting those who sent you here, if I get you out?”

Jules McGinnis said, “Eh?”

“Will you do absolutely what I tell you, warring on the men who framed you, for a period of one year from to-night in return for my getting you out of here?”

“What the heck is this, anyway?” gasped McGinnis.

“It is a chance to get out of spending fifteen years here.”

McGinnis swallowed several times. He seemed to be trying to think and having a difficult time getting his thoughts organized.

“I’m to—to do—to do what you say for a year?” he stuttered.

“You’re taking too long to make up your mind.” The deformed prowler then made a move as if to close the cell door on McGinnis.

“Wait!” McGinnis exploded. “I’ll do it! Hell, yes!”

“Help me get the others,” directed the humpback. “There are exactly twenty men here, including yourself, whom I want. They have all been framed by the same men who sent you here.”

McGinnis looked utterly dumfounded. “Twenty! You mean there’s that many here—in this penitentiary alone? That many of their victims?”

“Twenty, exactly,” said the other.

McGinnis made croaking, stunned sounds in his effort to speak.

“I didn’t dream the system was that—large!” he gulped finally.

“The system, as you call it, has become a billion-dollar industry,” said the hunchback. “It has become a Juggernaut.”

There was a gritting, metallic intensity about the strange figure’s remark. A radio actor would have called it a registration of utter hate.

McGinnis peered closely at his strange benefactor.

“Good love!” he muttered, “You’re just about the homeliest hag I ever saw!”

The humpbacked creature seemed to mind the insult not at all. Low, businesslike orders were issued. Cell after cell was opened. Prisoners were questioned as to their identity and then propositioned.

The human male is by nature a suspicious cuss. This was proved by the fact that not a single cell inmate agreed instantly to being freed. Two even flatly refused after hearing it explained that they were to be freed to fight a common enemy.

The humpback calmly blackjacked the two who refused to leave their cells.

“Carry them along,” the creature ordered, harshly. “If they do not want to go willingly, we will draft them.”

Most of the freed prisoners had by this time gotten a fair look at their benefactor. Several had shivered. A movie director would have made up such a monster as this humpback to haunt a spooky castle.

“Who in blazes are you?” asked one of the rescued cell inmates.

“I am your brain for the next year,” said the camel-backed person.

Which was an answer that was something to think about.

A bit later, another of the criminals, after staring for some length at the humpback, said, “I don’t think you’re a woman after all.”

The camel-backed one did not reply.

“Sure, it’s a woman,” said McGinnis. But he sounded unsure.

The last crook on the list was taken from his cell.

The twenty convicts and their remarkable rescuer filed out of the cell block. The convicts saw the limp guards, and they began to get scared.

“We’re in a hell of a jam!” one groaned. “We can’t get outside the walls!”

Another echoed, “Well get solitary for this!”

The humpback spoke with brittle calmness.

“Shut up! Walk to that freight car and get inside!”

The convicts stared incredulously.

“Listen,” one growled, “there ain’t no way of that car gettin’ outside the walls. They even got it fixed so a railroad engine can’t be used to smash down the walls.”

The humpback produced a big revolver. “Get in that freight car!”

The twenty men got in the freight car. They did it very carefully, making no appreciable noise, and when they were inside, the weird figure with the distorted torso produced a flashlight which exuded a tiny beam. This light roved over the box car floor, illuminating a number of objects in succession.

Jules R. McGinnis goggled at what the light was revealing. He was speechless.

“G-g-good love!” he choked. “Why these—what—what—why are the men here?”

The camel-backed individual replied in a violent, fanatical whisper, “They are to be placed in the cells which you men just left.”

Stunned silence held the freed convicts.

Jules R. McGinnis started a laugh; something almost mad was in his mirth. He did not get far with the laugh, because the humpback grabbed his mouth with rough fierceness. “You fool! Be quiet!”

McGinnis had recovered his composure when he was released.

“I don’t understand this,” he said, hoarsely.

“You don’t need to,” rasped the humpback. “This is the first move in a strange campaign.”