Читать книгу The Monsters: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTERROR
Months passed.
Bruno Hen went southward during the fishing season. Pickings as a guide, much to his disgust, proved slender. Only two short engagements did he obtain in some ten weeks. Finally, there was a third job. This one promised to pay well.
Bruno Hen, however, made the mistake of trying to lift a fat wallet which his temporary employer carried in a hip pocket. Upon being discovered, he narrowly missed getting shot. To evade jail, he was forced to flee back to the timber fastnesses out of which he had come.
If stolid Carl MacBride was surprised at Bruno Hen’s premature return, he said nothing about it. MacBride’s fish traps had yielded a more abundant catch during the past weeks, but he had failed to attach the true significance to this.
If Carl MacBride was not surprised at Bruno Hen’s early return, he was surprised when the breed paid him a visit a few nights later.
Something was wrong. MacBride could see that as he admitted the breed to his cabin. Bruno Hen’s eyes rolled. He perspired freely, although the night was cool.
There was a noticeable bulge in one of his coat pockets.
“Did you hear anything a few minutes ago?” the breed asked bluntly.
Carl MacBride shook his head. He never used a word where a gesture would do. He had heard only the usual night sounds—insects and nocturnal birds.
Bruno Hen’s next question was more surprising. “What happens when a man goes crazy?”
MacBride did not laugh. “Search me. He has funny ideas, I guess.”
“He sees things, huh?”
“I reckon.”
The visitor wiped his forehead with his palm, then swabbed the palm on his corduroy pants. Abruptly, he thrust a hand in his bulging coat pocket.
He brought out an enormous roll of greenbacks.
“You’re the only honest man I know, MacBride,” he said. “Want you to do me a favor.”
Carl MacBride was a great mountain of a man, reddened by many winds, and with eyes as blue as Lake Superior itself. He eyed the money placidly.
“Sure, I’ll do you a favor,” he rumbled. “But I ain’t takin’ pay for it.”
Bruno Hen placed the money on a table.
“Take it,” he directed. “If anything happens to me, use this kale to hire the best detective in the world.”
Carl MacBride batted his lake-blue eyes.
“I want the detective to investigate whatever happens to me,” Bruno Hen went on. “I want the best damn detective there is anywhere! Plenty of money here to pay his bill.”
MacBride eyed the currency. There were many thousands of dollars in the bank roll. He knew it must be Bruno Hen’s life savings.
“What’s got into you?” MacBride rumbled. “This whole talk don’t make sense.”
Bruno Hen swallowed uneasily, squirming. A flush darkened his swarthy skin. He seemed on the point of answering.
“Maybe it don’t amount to nothin’, after all,” he mumbled. “But if somethin’ happens to me—hire the detective.”
“I’ll do that,” MacBride agreed.
Bruno Hen took his departure, ignoring the slow questions which Carl MacBride asked. The breed carried a flashlight, and kept this blazing steadily as he made his way through the timber. He washed the beam about continuously, seeming to be in deathly fear of some habitant of the darkness.
From the door of his cabin, big Carl MacBride watched the retreating breed. He shook his ponderous head slowly.
“Somethin’ is sure wrong with that guy,” he grunted. He fingered the roll of money thoughtfully. “Bruno Hen kinda acts like he’d seen the devil.”
With that last statement, Carl MacBride came far nearer the truth than he dreamed.
Having reached his shack, Bruno Hen locked himself in. He tore up parts of the floor and spiked the rough plank across the windows. Loading his rifle, he placed it on the table alongside a fresh box of cartridges. He charged both barrels of his shotgun, and arranged a little mound of shells. Loading his revolver, he belted it on.
He did not sleep at all that night; he scarcely sat down. Around and around the hut he paced nervously, stopping frequently to peer outside through the cracks.
There was a brilliant moon. In the surrounding timber there were no stirrings except for the undulating of tree boughs before a gentle breeze. Out of the far distance came sometimes the squawling uproar of fighting lynxes; a lonely wolf howled mournfully. The odor of pine came with the breeze.
This peace of the woodland night seemed to soothe Bruno Hen not at all.
Strangely, the breed did not leave his cabin at all the following day. Literally hundreds of times, he peered outside as if in deadly expectation. It was apparent that he had seen something—probably on the night before he visited Carl MacBride—which had frightened him. The more he thought of what he had seen, the more terrified he seemed to become.
Toward noon, he slept a little. He did not sleep that night. The following day, Carl MacBride came over.
“Wondered how you was comin’,” MacBride said.
Bruno Hen peered out at his neighbor through his barred window. He did not invite MacBride in. In fact, he said nothing.
MacBride, big and slow moving, ambled around the shack. He noted that the place had been turned into a fortress.
“Afraid of somebody?” he asked.
The breed scowled. “You git! Tend to your own business.”
Not taken back, MacBride grinned pleasantly. “I’ve got your money, if you want it back.”
“Keep that money. If somethin’ happens to me, you hire the best detective in the world, like I told you.”
“I been readin’ in a magazine about a feller that makes a business of helpin’ other people out of trouble,” MacBride offered. “Maybe he’d do.”
“What’s his name?”
“Doc Savage.”
Bruno Hen recalled the flattering references which he had heard the circus side show barkers make to Doc Savage. A muscular Hercules and a mental marvel, they had termed Doc Savage.
“He’ll do,” growled the breed.
“O. K.,” said MacBride. “But listen, Bruno, what’s ailin’ you?”
“Nothin’,” snarled the breed. “You go ’way.”
“You must be nuts,” opined Carl MacBride, and took his departure.
By way of paying the good-natured giant back for that last crack, Bruno Hen left his cabin during the afternoon and raided one of MacBride’s fish traps. He selected several choice walleyes, and turned the rest of the catch loose. The breed was thoughtful as he slunk back toward his cabin.
“I ought to have told MacBride about what I seen prowlin’ around here the other night,” he said slowly. “Hell! He would think I was crazy.”
Reaching his shack, he fastened himself in securely. Exercise seemed to have lulled his fears somewhat.
He lay down and slept.
The night was well along when Bruno Hen opened his eyes. He lay in a sort of drawn rigidity, listening to what had aroused him.
It was a strange wind, which seemed to be blowing outside. This came in puffs, regularly spaced.
The breed shivered from head to foot. The gusty sounds were too peculiar to be made by a natural wind.
Using extreme care to make no noise, Bruno got up. He gripped his rifle in one hand, his shotgun in the other. He crept to one of the timbered windows and crammed an eye to the crack.
What he saw caused him to shriek out in awful horror.
Jumping back, he lifted his rifle. It was high-powered, intended for bagging moose. He fired. The slug slapped through the planks as if they had been paper. Again the breed fired. He pumped jacketed lead through the wall until the magazine was empty.
Plugging in fresh cartridges, he continued his wild firing.
“It’s worse’n it was before,” he moaned, referring to the horror outside.
Over the whacking of the rifle and the breed’s moaning there sounded a tremendous rending and tearing. The breed stared upward in ghastly terror.
Parts of the roof of his shack were being torn off. Stout boards split apart or snapped off. Rafters buckled under some cataclysmic force.
Still firing madly, Bruno retreated to the other side of the cabin.
With a final squawling of withdrawn nails, and a cracking of wood, a section of the roof came off. Something extended through the aperture.
The breed emitted one squawling shriek after another. He dashed from end to end of the cabin. He was like a trapped rabbit.
The breed’s neighbor, Carl MacBride, unlike many big men, was a light sleeper. He heard the yelling and shooting coming from Bruno Hen’s cabin. Leaping up, he yanked on his pacs, grasped a rifle and ran for the uproar.
Long before he reached the breed’s cabin, MacBride heard Bruno Hen’s shrieking die. Its termination was a piercing, bleating sound, remindful of a mouse which had been stepped upon.
Arriving at the shack, MacBride found an amazing sight. The structure itself was little more than a great shapeless wad of timber and planks.
Striking matches for light, he circled the spot. His gaze lighted upon a timber as thick as his leg, and he whistled softly in amazement; for something snapped off that timber as if it were a match stick.
MacBride stood still, straining his ears. There was an occasional creak from the settling ruin of the cabin. From out on the lake he thought he heard faint splashing. This was very distant.
No other sound came. The bedlam at the cabin had been so awesome that the night birds, animals, and insects had been frightened into complete silence.
MacBride now dug into the cabin wreckage. He found a gory wad of a thing. He had to examine it for some seconds before he would believe it was the earthly remains of Bruno Hen.
Bruno Hen had been crushed to death in ghastly fashion!
Carl MacBride made a slow circle of the cabin and the vicinity, searching. Then he headed for his own cabin, running.
“This is a job for that Doc Savage!” he muttered.
