Читать книгу The Motion Menace - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5

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There were occasions when Doc Savage would have better been a more ordinary-looking individual. As it was, his appearance was so striking that he could hardly put a foot on the street without being recognized. Almost all New York knew him.

He towered in any crowd. His skin had a distinctive bronze tint. His hair was an unusual bronze hue, only a bit darker than his skin. His eyes were striking, like pools of flake gold always stirred. And the eyes possessed something magnetic.

For the last few weeks, Doc had been molested. People were spying on him. Doormen, clerks, newsboys, taxi drivers. When asked the idea, they freely admitted they were gathering information for a series of articles on the bronze man by a newspaper syndicate. They got paid for each tip they turned in about him.

Doc never gave interviews, so the syndicate seemed to be using this other method. There was no law against it.

So Doc at the moment was using obscure routes to his headquarters on the eighty-sixth floor of the city’s most prominent skyscraper. He came out in the skyscraper lobby and beat three autograph-seekers to an elevator.

The elevator operator immediately whisked his passenger upward. He did not say anything.

Doc Savage said, “You are new here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the operator replied as tonelessly as a machine.

“Whose place did you take?”

“Walter’s, sir.”

“Walter is a nice boy,” Doc Savage said.

“Yes, sir.”

The elevator reached the eighty-sixth floor. The operator opened the door.

Doc Savage stepped out. Then he reached back into the elevator, grasped the operator and pulled him out. The fellow made noises like a tomcat. He kicked, struck and even spat.

Doc Savage gripped a handful of the left breast of the operator’s coat. The coat fabric was a stout weave. Yet it tore away as if it were ancient cheesecloth. Altogether, Doc’s fingers got coat, shirt, undershirt—and a flat pistol and its holster.

The operator continued to fight. He hung limp finally, not because he had given up, but because his strength was gone.

“How—how’d you fall to me?” he asked thickly.

“It came out as a matter of routine checking, a safety-first check, we call it,” the bronze man said without emotion. “Walter’s parents were called. It developed he has not been home for a week. Each day or so, he telephones to say he is all right, and merely not coming home because he is working overtime.”

The operator said nothing.

“Where is the other operator—Walter?” Doc Savage asked.

“You won’t get nothin’ outta me!” the other snarled. “And if you’re wise, you’ll let me go and forget about it!”

“And why?”

“Because you’re stickin’ your nose into somethin’ a lot bigger than you dream!”

Doc Savage did not look particularly alarmed. He propelled the prisoner to the door of his headquarters suite—a bronze-colored panel which bore his name in letters so small as to be hardly noticeable. Inside, there was an impressive anteroom. Beyond was another room, much more vast, which was a library. One of the world’s greatest collections of scientific tomes was there.

There was a third room, also huge. The laboratory. The chamber of magic where the man of bronze concocted some of his amazing scientific gadgets.

Doc Savage stopped on the threshold of the laboratory. Something had arrested him. His trilling noise came into being briefly.

The bronze man stepped swiftly to a panel in the wall which looked innocent enough, but which, when opened by some undetected catch, disclosed a number of recording instruments similar to inking barometers. Each was glass-enclosed. They were attached to the establishment’s remarkable system of burglar alarms, and registered any furtive entrance into the place.

Every one of the devices had stopped working.

The bronze man whipped a quick gaze over the laboratory. There was just one thing there that should not have been. Stillness! Utter silence.

Doc Savage was carrying on experiments with the effect of electrochemical stimulation on musculature, and he had a number of guinea pigs, parrots, pigeons, in the place. They should have been moving about.

Every one of the live things was dead!

The captive elevator operator looked around. He was scared. He had seen the dead things.

“It’s been—they——” He threw back his head and blared out a howl of utter fright. “If it comes back and catches us here, we’ll die!”

Doc Savage said quietly, “This place is literally a fortress. It would take a small army to break in.”

The prisoner shook and bubbled.

“You c-can’t s-stop it!” he gurgled.

The prisoner did not stop shaking until Doc Savage had him down on the street, in a taxicab. The fellow was still scared, but he had been overjoyed at getting out of the skyscraper.

“You do not think that your employers would kill you in an effort at my life?” Doc asked.

The man shivered. “Brother, them old guys with the whiskers ain’t like nobody you ever went up against before.”

Doc Savage said quietly, “You are going to have some interesting things to tell me, it would seem, especially since an attempt on my life has just been made.”

“Not me!”

A line of taxicabs were drawn up before the Pennsylvania Station, awaiting fares as the bronze man’s car neared it.

“Pull in there,” Doc directed.

The driver pulled in. The bronze man got out, and went to eight different cabs which were operated by the same concern and therefore looked alike. He gave each of the eight drivers a bill and explained briefly what he wanted. He got in one of the cabs with his prisoner.

What happened next was intended to confuse any one who might have been following. The eight cabs which all looked alike drove in a compact group. They shifted about, one taking the lead, another dropping back. In and out of traffic, they dodged. Doc and his prisoner got down on the floorboards.

“Slick,” the prisoner muttered. “I’ve been making tails for years, and I’d never be able to follow a guy through this.”

“So you are an expert?” Doc queried.

“I’m a private detective,” the man said.

Their cab stopped suddenly.

“Hey!” the driver squawled. “What—what——”

There was a series of deafening crashes. Yells. Curses. Breaking glass. Doc lifted for a look.

A strange thing had happened in the street ahead. Several cars appeared to have come to a dead stop. Other cars had smashed into them. Two had upset.

Doc moved rapidly. He whipped out of the rear, got into the front seat, shoved the driver over. The driver was agog. Doc meshed gears, backed, and with expert speed, got out of the jam. Then he stopped the machine, thrust his head out and scrutinized the buildings on each side of the street.

The glance which he gave each side was fleeting, but enough. Doc took two hours of intensive exercise daily. A part of it was devoted to strengthening observation powers.

He saw a man with a beard standing at a fourth-story window of a building on the right side of the street.

Doc got the cab rolling. He took the first corner—turning right—on two wheels. An alley appeared. The taxi slid into that, stopped.

“Run!” Doc told the driver, and the fellow ran.

The bronze man’s fingers then did something to the captive’s neck. The fellow became strangely rigid. He seemed fully conscious, but unable to move. Doc heaved him into the cab.

Fire escapes came down the backs of the buildings to the alley. They were supposed to end high enough so that no one could reach them from the alley. Doc ran, jumped, got hold of the fire escape landing. An instant later, he was gliding up the steps.

The fourth-story window was locked on the inside. The bronze man bumped the sash with a palm, and got to the lock. It made some noise, so he did not lose time. The corridor, after the daylight outside, was dark. It smelled of furs. This was the fur district. A bulb on a dropcord made some light at the other end.

Doc had covered about fifteen feet when the light went out.

The bronze man whipped to one side, waited.

A minute passed.

There were cautious footsteps. Some one moving.

Doc eased out into the hall, made for the footsteps. He made no sound. He could hear the other. One man, apparently. The fellow was descending stairs.

Because it was very dark in the old corridor, once he had rounded a corner, Doc kept an arm out ahead, feeling the way.

He reached the stairway. But he never went down it. Something incredible took hold of his arm.

Pain was the first thing. Stinging pain, the kind that comes from a healing wound when it is hurt. It was so agonizing that it put strange lights in front of Doc’s eyes. It started at the end of his extended arm, and flooded back. He wrenched to get the arm free.

The arm would not come back! An irresistible force had gripped it! His muscles—gigantic sinews—stretched, and the joints seemed to give, but he could not free his hand.

Doc kicked with terrific force. His foot hit something. It felt as hard as bone. The impact stung all the way up to the hip. And the thing grabbed the foot. Held it! No amount of yanking freed the leg.

Then, without warning, and before he could get a light going—the bronze man carried a tiny flashlight—to tell what the thing was, it released him.

There was no sound, no noise of breathing, no odor of anything. It just released him. And when Doc lunged, kicked and struck, there was nothing.

Silence, except for the patter of footsteps retreating down the steps, now far below. A moment after he had been released, the footsteps paused.

A cackle of laughter came up the stairs. Then an ancient, gleeful voice came gurgling up. It was hollow, as if spoken back of a hand.

“You have been treated gently this time, Savage,” the croak said. “You probably do not understand what has happened. Unfortunately, if your curiosity persists, you will not learn much more.”

The footsteps hurried on downward.

Doc Savage, instead of going down the stairs—even his speed would not catch the one who had fled—went toward the front of the building.

The room he entered was grimy, had no furniture. On the floor lay cigarette stubs and a small bottle. The window was open. Doc went to it.

He was in time to see two old men with white beards get into a new, expensive sedan. The car left in a great hurry.

Doc leaned out of the window and called, “Stop that sedan!”

The bronze man’s voice was a powerful crash that caused every one within blocks to look up. But it did no good. There was too much excitement where the cars had smashed together.

The sedan got away.

Doc then made an investigation. But his search netted him nothing.

He went down into the street. A policeman was questioning the drivers of the cars which had stopped so suddenly and caused all the mixup. All the men were drivers of the taxicabs which Doc had hired. They were being raked over the coals.

“How the hell do I know what happened, I tell you!” one driver yelled irately. “My hack musta locked gears or somethin’. It just up and stopped!”

“Same here,” said another driver earnestly.

“Fishy,” grumbled the cop. “Very fishy!”

Several persons recognized Doc Savage and started asking him questions. Doc escaped and went back to the alley. The prisoner was still in the cab, still in the strangely rigid condition.

Doc got into the cab and drove it down to a thoroughfare very near Wall Street. He picked the prisoner up and carried him into a towering office building.

A private elevator served the penthouse. Doc walked in, the rigid man over one shoulder, and said, “Andrew Blodgett Mayfair’s laboratory.”

The gaping elevator operator let the bronze man and his burden out in an ultra-modernistic hallway. It was doubtful if there was a more flamboyant-looking hall in the city.

Doc stopped and listened.

A man was groaning. Swearing, rather, but he was doing it in a tone so low and full of horror that it sounded as if he were groaning.

Doc Savage lunged for a chromium slab of a door, shouldered it open, and halted.

There was a dazzling, modernistic table of glass and chromium in the center of the room. On the table lay a pig.

The pig was quite a specimen of the genus porker. It had long ears, no body worth mentioning, a tremendous snoot, and wing-sized ears. It seemed to be dead.

“Doc!” squeaked a tiny, boylike voice. “Quick! I’ve been tryin’ to locate you! Habeas! He’s dead! Can’t you do somethin’? You gotta! Here! Look! Oh, hurry!”

The author of this machine gun volley of pleas was as unusual-looking in his race as the hog he was so anxious about was in his.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Boldgett Mayfair was, as might be expected, called “Monk.” His resemblance to an ape would not permit anything else. Back of his forehead, which was not an inch wide, was a brain that had gotten him the repute of being one of the greatest living industrial chemists.

“I was out!” he wailed. “I came back. Somethin’ had happened! My clocks had stopped. So had a generator. So had my air-conditioning machine. And Habeas was dead! Doc, do somethin’!”

The bronze man lowered his burden and went to the pig. The shote was Habeas Corpus, and he was no ordinary hog. He was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair’s pet, and if not the only trained hog in captivity, he was surely the most adept.

“Adrenaline!” Doc said abruptly.

Monk ran into his laboratory. He knew what the adrenaline was going to be used for, so he brought a syringe with a long needle.

Doc Savage ran the needle of the hypodermic into the pig’s heart and squirted in the adrenaline. Then he worked over the shote with skilled fingers.

Monk danced about. He would rather have parted with his right arm than lose the hog.

Doc did not seem to be having much luck. He himself whipped into the laboratory, to come back soon with more chemicals. He began mixing them, administering them, experimenting.

Monk wailed, “I don’t savvy what’s happenin’!”

“This same thing occurred at my place,” Doc told him. “The animals and birds on hand for scientific experimental purposes were all killed. None had a mark on them. You notice that Habeas is unmarked.”

“That’s what gets my goat!” Monk groaned. “What’s done it?”

Doc Savage said quietly, “It is something a good deal more dangerous than anything we ever ran across before.”

Monk’s small, boylike voice was thoughtful as he said, “That takes in a lot of territory.”