Читать книгу The Monsters: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 9
ОглавлениеMYSTERY MANSE
It was more than an hour later when the telephone buzzer whined and Doc Savage picked up the instrument.
The tiny childlike voice which had spoken to him from the televisor-phone in the laboratory came over the wire.
“At the junction of Hill Road and the Hudson Turnpike, in New Jersey,” said the small tones.
“Be right out,” Doc replied, and hung up.
The bronze man took his private high-speed elevator to the skyscraper basement. This lift was the product of his inventive genius, and operated at hair-lifting speed.
Stepping from the elevator, Doc entered his basement garage. This was the chamber with the array of parked cars which had appeared on the scanning screen of the televisor-phone.
For his immediate purpose Doc chose a long, somberly colored roadster. This machine, as he wheeled it up to the street, showed by its acceleration that the hood housed a powerful engine. Wending through traffic, it attracted no attention, due to its quiet hue.
Not so the bronze man. Scarcely a glance rested upon him that did not become a stare, so striking was the picture he presented.
The roadster swept over George Washington bridge, which connects Manhattan Island with New Jersey. When traffic thinned, the machine increased speed. It traveled just within the bounds of safety.
Several times, traffic policemen sprang into startled life as the car moaned past; but they subsided upon observing the occupant. The greenest rookie knew there was an imperative order out to extend to this man of bronze every possible coöperation.
Hill Road ran east and west, and the Hudson Turnpike was a north and south thoroughfare. The two intersected in a nest of filling stations and hot-dog stands.
Doc Savage pulled into a gasoline station at the intersection and ordered fuel.
A few yards distant, a crowd of excited children surrounded a man whose appearance was nothing if not startling. He came near bearing more resemblance to an ape than to a man. His furry hands dangled on beams of arms well below his knees. He had a little nubbin of a head. His hair grew back from his eyebrows. The huge simian fellow’s face was likeable, although entirely homely.
This pleasantly ugly personage was amusing the kids by calmly folding pennies between a hairy thumb and forefinger. The feat of strength he performed without great exertion.
The gorilla of a man hardly glanced in Doc’s direction.
He ceased performing for the amusement of the children and entered a large sedan which stood near by. He drove westward along Hill Road.
Doc Savage, having paid for his tank of fuel, also rolled westward along Hill Road. He topped the first hill. In the valley beyond, the gorillalike man had stopped his car.
Doc came to a halt alongside the simian one. “Where’s Ham, Monk?” he queried.
Monk grinned, showing a tremendous array of large white teeth. His head seemed to disappear entirely behind the grin; certainly, there did not seem to be room for much intelligence in his head.
His looks belied the truth, however. He was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, whose ability as an industrial chemist had brought him worldwide fame and a fortune in money.
Monk was one of a group of five who had associated themselves with Doc Savage. These five men were all capable of commanding high monetary returns, had they chosen to exercise the professions at which they were skilled. But they loved adventure. Possessing ample wealth, they had thrown in with Doc Savage in his career of punishing evildoers in the far corners of the earth.
Monk pointed down Hill Road. “We trailed the killer to a kind of a funny-lookin’ country estate. Ham’s watchin’ the place. We better go on afoot.”
Doc switched off the roadster motor. So silently had it operated at idling speed that cessation of movement of the ammeter needle was all that showed the cylinders had ceased firing.
The two men strode along Hill Road, leaving the cars drawn into weeds beside the highway.
“We had the televisor from your office to the basement garage turned on while we were working on a car,” Monk said. “We thought you might want us or something. It was lucky we did. We saw the killing, and got a good look at the guy who did it. We caught sight of him as he left the building.”
Doc nodded. “I figured you would have the televisor-phone turned on.”
Monk was puzzled. He scratched his knob of a head and eyed the giant bronze man curiously. “Wonder why that guy was killed,” he offered.
“To shut his mouth, obviously,” Doc Savage replied. “The killer may have been a hired slayer. That’s why I allowed him to escape—so you fellows could trail him to the man who hired him, if any.”
Monk nodded as he waddled along. His legs were so bowed that his gait was grotesque; he seemed momentarily on the verge of taking to all fours.
“Any idea what’s behind it?”
“Remember the mysterious advertisements which have been appearing in newspapers recently?” Doc queried.
“You mean that ‘Beware the Monsters!’ stuff?”
“That’s it. Those ads were mailed to newspapers all over the country. They were postmarked, every one of them, as being mailed from Trapper Lake, Michigan.”
Monk squinted his small eyes. He had known of the “monster” advertisements, but had not been aware that they had been mailed from Trapper Lake. Doc, he realized, had unearthed this fact in the course of his usual checking on things which might be of sinister nature.
“Why’d the murdered man want to see you, Doc?”
“Possibly concerning the mysterious death of a trapper named Bruno Hen, near Trapper Lake,” Doc replied. “He had a clipping concerning the Bruno Hen death in his pocket.”
“What about Bruno Hen’s death?”
“He perished, according to the report of the local officers, in a mysterious tornado which struck on a moonlight night, and did nothing but demolish Bruno Hen’s shack and tear a path to the nearby lake.”
“Queer tornado!” Monk grunted.
“A neighbor claimed there was no tornado. His name was Carl MacBride—the man who was killed at our office door.”
“Huh! If not a tornado, what did he claim it was?”
“The clipping didn’t say.”
Monk squinted ahead. His small eyes in repose were nearly invisible so deeply were they sunk in their pits of gristle.
Hill Road at this point was seldom traveled, due probably to the fact that its macadam surface was uncomfortably roughened by the weather. Untended brush made a wall on either side.
“That shyster lawyer, Ham, should be waiting along here somewhere,” Monk declared, his small voice pitched even lower than usual.
The gentleman to whom Monk referred in such undignified terms promptly stepped out of the brush. He was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, one of the most astute lawyers ever to be graduated from Harvard.
“You homely missing link!” Ham whispered irately at Monk. “One of these days I’m going to skin you and make a red fur rug!”
Ham was slender, slim-waisted, quick-moving. His clothing was absolute sartorial perfection. He was a tailor’s dream.
In his right hand Ham carried a black cane. Ham was rarely seen without this.
The unlovely Monk turned an innocent look on the enraged Ham.
“Always threatenin’ me!” he complained in low tones. “What’s on your mind now?”
Ham shook his cane in the air and turned purple. He was not, however, making undue noise with his dramatics.
“You left that infernal pig behind and had him follow me around!”
Monk seemed grieved.
“Habeas Corpus must be takin’ a fancy to you,” he groaned. “I never thought that pig would stoop so low as to associate with a shyster lawyer.”
At this point, Habeas Corpus walked out of the brush.
A more astounding-looking specimen of the pig family than Habeas would be difficult to find. The pig was under-sized, razor-backed. He had the legs of a dog and ears so large as to resemble wings.
Habeas eyed the dapper Ham, emitted a friendly grunt and ambled toward the lawyer. Ham launched a spiteful toe at the pig. In dodging this, Habeas displayed an agility as surprising as his appearance.
Habeas was Monk’s pet. The homely chemist had trained the pig until the porker seemed to possess a near-human intelligence.
Doc, low-voiced, interrupted what amounted to a perpetual quarrel. “Where’s the killer, Ham?” he asked.
“He went into a funny-looking place over the hill.”
Doc noted the appellation, “funny-looking.” Both Monk and Ham had used it.
“What do you mean—funny-looking?”
Ham, like many orators, had a habit of making gestures when he spoke. He gestured now, although his words were whispered.
“We’re in the country,” he said. “There’s no reason for anybody having a high wall around his place. But there’s one around this joint. It’s at least forty feet high.”
“Forty!”
“Every inch of that.” Monk entered the conversation with his small voice. “I ask you, Doc—what does any one want with a forty-foot wall out here in the country?”
“I walked around the place,” Ham said, scowling at Habeas Corpus. “There’s only one entrance. That’s secured by the strongest steel gate I have ever seen.”
Doc Savage did not comment on the somewhat startling revelations. He went forward.
Monk and Ham trailed him. They exchanged throat-cutting looks. Actually, either of them would have sacrificed his life for the safety of the other, should necessity for such an act materialize.
The pig, flopping big ears at Monk’s heels, grunted contentedly.
“Put on the muffler, Habeas,” Monk directed.
Obediently, the pig fell silent.
