Читать книгу The Sea Magician: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

Table of Contents

“Keep your shirt on, guy,” Monk advised.

Wall-Samuels was walked forcibly toward the nearest corner. He dared not protest; the formidable expressions on the features of Monk and Ham promised violent handling if there was the slightest resistance. Around the corner, they halted.

“Doc will be here shortly,” imparted Ham. The dapper lawyer had shoved his sword cane through his belt.

There was a brief wait, then Doc Savage approached. The bronze man seemed more Herculean than ever as he swung up out of the murk.

“What do you want with me?” Wall-Samuels demanded, trying to bristle. “I told you my story.”

“You told us a string of lies,” Monk informed him.

“I did not!”

“Then why did you run after you left us? And who did you just call?”

Wall-Samuels moistened his lips. “So you followed me?”

“Sure,” said Monk. “What kind of saps did you think we were?”

The pretended detective neglected to reply to that; he was reflecting that if any one had showed a lack of canniness, it was himself. These men, he was realizing, were considerably harder to deceive than he had thought.

Doc Savage inquired, “What about telling the truth, Wall-Samuels, or whatever your name is?”

Wall-Samuels swallowed rapidly. He looked scared. He tried to assume an appearance of even greater fright, which was unnecessary.

“Listen,” he whined. “I can’t talk. It’ll get me into all kinds of trouble.”

“Maybe you think you’re at a tea social now?” Monk asked sourly. “Doc, how about me giving this guy a little osteopath treatment?”

Monk opened and closed his enormous furry hands, and Wall-Samuels stared at the hirsute digits as if they were ravenous animals. Then he peered at Doc’s bronze-cabled hands, and his fright increased. He knew inhuman strength when he saw it, and was fully convinced either of these men could do him infinite damage.

“I was hired by a man who is being chased by William Harper Littlejohn,” the man gulped, rolling his ostrich eyes.

“Hey!” Monk exploded. “What’s Johnny got himself mixed in?”

Wall-Samuels told his false story slyly, letting a bit of it slip each time he was threatened. The whole fabrication came out as if it were being rendered by a man in mortal terror. Wall-Samuels, studying the faces of his three unusual captors, became convinced that the story was getting over.

The yarn was substantially the same one which the man on the telephone had outlined.

“Wait here,” Doc Savage directed, at the end of the tale.

The bronze man departed with the silence of a metallic wraith, a silence which caused Wall-Samuels to shiver. He was becoming convinced that this giant of metal was not entirely human.

Early milk wagons and delivery trucks were beginning to rumble over the Southampton streets, and a few porters had started to work on show windows with sponges, wipers and suds buckets, cleaning up for the day which was soon to come.

Doc Savage reappeared.

“A call to Johnny’s London hotel discloses that he left last night,” the bronze man imparted. “He has not come back.”

“I told you he sailed for South America,” Wall-Samuels stuttered.

“Pipe down!” Monk growled.

“Other calls reveal that a steamer did sail for South America last night,” Doc continued. “The vessel was fitted with ship-to-shore radio telephone, so it was a simple matter to establish communication.”

Wall-Samuels began to tremble violently. He had not foreseen this contingency. He would have to try to make them believe that Johnny must have taken another ship.

“Was Johnny aboard the ship?” Ham questioned.

“His name is on the passenger list,” Doc informed them. “But the authorities aboard the vessel were unable to locate him. A steward did report, however, that the bed in his stateroom had been slept in. The steward reported also that there were bloodstains on the bed clothing.”

“Damn it!” Monk grated. “Something has happened to Johnny!”

Wall-Samuels tried not to look as relieved as he felt. At the same time, he experienced a rush of admiration for the chief of the sinister organization to which he belonged. Nothing had been overlooked; they must have put a man aboard the South American-bound vessel. The fellow was using the name of William Harper Littlejohn to mislead further Doc Savage.

“You can see,” Wall-Samuels said happily, “that I have told you the truth.”

“There any chance of our overhauling Johnny’s ship?” Monk demanded.

“No,” Doc advised. “But we can take passage on another craft which sails almost at once. It is a faster vessel, and arrives in Buenos Aires, South America, a day ahead of Johnny’s ship.”

“Then we’d better grab it,” Monk grunted.

Wall-Samuels swallowed and asked, “What about me?”

“How about a nice English jail for him, Doc?” Monk questioned.

“That is as good a solution as any for the present,” Doc decided.

Hardly more than fifteen minutes after that, Wall-Samuels found himself behind bars, charged with nothing more serious than malicious mischief. He immediately demanded a lawyer—and got something of a shock. The lawyer was refused him. Furthermore, he was denied even the privilege of telephoning outside the jail.

The indignant pseudo detective failed to understand exactly what had happened. The charge against him was one which was ordinarily bailable, but he could not get bail without contacting some one to put it up for him, and he was being kept strictly incommunicado. This was not like the usual procedure of the police.

Wall-Samuels did not know that Doc Savage had once been tendered an honorary inspector’s commission with Scotland Yard as an expression of gratitude for services rendered. A word from the bronze man had been sufficient to cause the fake detective to be held in the state which an American cop would have called “buried.”

But Wall-Samuels had been in jails before, and he knew the ropes. There is scarcely a bastile existent where the inmates do not have secret methods of smuggling messages outside. Quite often this is done through the trusty who delivers the meals.

Wall-Samuels had an early breakfast, and, at his request, was served with milk. Fashioning a brush of a twist of cloth wrenched from the lining of his coat, he dipped into the milk and wrote on the bottom of the plate on which the breakfast was served. He was careful not to make too pronounced smears out of the milk.

The trusty was given the accepted signal; the cook, also a trusty, placed the plates on the stove, and when it became very hot, the milk stains came out in a readily decipherable brown.

Wall-Samuels had used one of the most primitive of invisible inks; but it had served its purpose, and before long, his message was relayed to the intended destination. It read:

Doc Savage on way to South America. Better check on him to see that he actually leaves. Savage clever. And get me out of this jail.

Wall-Samuels.

In due course of time an answer came by the same obscure route.

Savage angle being taken care of. You will stay in jail and be paid for it. To release you might give a line on the organization.

The communication was unsigned—and Wall-Samuels, after swearing steadily for some minutes, carefully destroyed it. His position was not so bad. He could not imagine an easier way of earning money than reposing in jail—at least, no other method of earning the amount of money which he was being paid.

In the meantime, Doc Savage and his two men arrived, amid a flurry of excitement, at the dock from which the South American-bound boat was due to sail in a very few minutes. A small army of flunkies rushed their baggage aboard.

Doc and his men were ensconced in a suite. The bronze man retired at once to the radio room, where he attempted to get in touch with Johnny on the other South American boat. He was unsuccessful. The commander of the other boat transmitted that his stewards had been unable to find a trace of William Harper Littlejohn.

Mooring lines were cast off; the gangplanks hauled in, and a bevy of snorting and whistling tugs busied themselves at jockeying the liner out into the harbor.

It is the custom on passenger ships to put such visitors as are caught aboard at sailing time, off on the tugs or pilot boats. It now developed that there was one such individual who had failed to heed the warning gong that meant visitors down the gangplank.

This man was a fat fellow who kept his coat collar turned up so as not to show too much of his features, and he was put aboard a tug amid some mild excitement.

The South American liner nosed out into the Channel and set a course into the Atlantic.

The man who had been taken off on the tug showed extreme anxiety to reach shore, and the instant he set his foot on land, he sought a telephone and called a number.

“It worked,” he reported. “Doc Savage and his two men are on the boat bound for South America.”

“Excellent!” said the same gruff voice which had given Wall-Samuels his orders. “But something else has come up, and there is hell to pay.”

“What?” gulped the informant.

“Old Wehman Mills,” said the other.

“What about that old buzzard?”

“He’s gotten away!”

The fat man swore in a low, uneasy voice. “How did it happen?”

“The old man said he had to get some machinery from France,” replied the other. “In order to keep him from getting suspicious, we took him over. But he must have been wise. When we got him to Brest, he cut loose and skipped out.”

The fat man swore again. “He’ll try to see the girl,” he said.

“Of course he will,” said the voice over the wire. “And that has me worried.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to Brest,” said the distant mastermind. “I’ll keep in the background there, but it’s best for me to be on hand.”