Читать книгу The Submarine Mystery: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 4
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Who said that great oaks grow from little acorns isn’t important. Who said it had no bearing on Clark Savage, Jr.
What did have a bearing on Doc Savage was a piece of gray rock. No great oak grew from this gray rock, but what did grow was a great deal more interesting.
Doc was driving along a Long Island road and saw the gray rock where it had no business to be, geologically. Among many other things, Doc was a geologist, experts admitting that he knew as much about rocks as almost any other man. That gray rock was as irregular as a polar bear walking around in Florida.
Doc stared at the rock. So he did not see the two men in the passing truck. The men were blowing their noses in big bandanna handkerchiefs, a ruse to hide their faces. The truck whipped in front of Doc’s car and stopped.
Doc stamped brakes and stopped.
The truck was a huge van. The back end of this suddenly dropped. It became an inclined ramp.
A car promptly crashed into Doc’s machine from the rear. Doc Savage’s automobile was knocked scooting up the ramp into the van.
The back of the van closed up tightly.
The truck lurched into motion.
Doc Savage dived out of his car. He was much taller than an average man, but so balanced in development that the fact was not evident until he stood close to some object to which his size could be compared.
Tropic suns had given his skin a pronounced bronze coloration, and his hair was straight, of a bronze color only slightly darker than his skin, and fitted remarkably like a metal skullcap.
Doc’s eyes searched the van. His eyes were probably the bronze man’s most unusual feature. They were like pools of flake gold, never inactive, always stirring, and possessing a compelling power that was distinctly hypnotic.
The van was sheathed—floor, walls and ceiling—with armor-plate steel. Getting out of a jail would be simple compared to getting out of this.
Doc Savage made a small sound which was an unconscious thing he did in reaction to moments of intense mental effort, or puzzled surprise.
The sound was a trilling; low, exotic, as fantastic as the night wind around the eaves of a haunted house. It was made somehow in the bronze man’s throat. Its strangest quality was the fact that it seemed to come from everywhere in the van.
Doc Savage sat down on the running board of his car to reflect. Also to eliminate possible explanations for what had just happened.
In five minutes, he was mystified, and after ten minutes had passed, he was completely at a loss. He had no idea why he’d been kidnaped, or where his captors might be taking him.
Doc Savage was not unaware that he had been for some time acquiring a world-wide reputation as a modern scientific Galahad who went about the globe righting wrongs and punishing evil-doers. He did not work for pay. He had a source of fabulous wealth, gained in one of his early adventures.
Since he did not have to make a living out of his strange profession, he could select any crime that interested him, the result being that any criminal was likely to find the man of bronze on his trail.
Doc had better than a sprinkling of potential enemies, and they had a habit of trying to dispose of him unexpectedly. Possibly a potential enemy was trying something now.
The big van rolled along fast, exhaust throbbing, tires wailing on concrete pavement.
Doc got a hammer out of his tool kit and began to beat on the front of the van. Sparks flew. Finally a tiny barred window opened in the front of the van.
A hand displayed a small cylindrical metal object. The article was equipped with a spout similar to a perfume atomizer, but without the squeeze bulb.
A voice said, “Know’st thou what this be?”
Two things immediately interested the bronze man: The first was the manner in which the words were spoken. The speaker used the delivery and pronunciation of an actor doing a bit of Shakespeare.
The second thing of interest was the device which the man was displaying. Doc recognized it as a type of tear-gas gun which was sold in novelty stores and could be bought by anybody with fifteen dollars to spend for such a thing. He did not care to have it start spouting.
“The idea,” Doc said, “seems to be that you are in a position to make it disagreeable for me.”
A second voice spoke from the driver’s seat.
“You got it right, pal,” this man said. “Cut out the racket, or Henry will squirt tear gas in there with you.”
Doc Savage decided there was certainly nothing Shakespearean about the speech of the second man. Doc stooped and looked through the aperture to determine how many men were in the driver’s compartment of the truck.
There were only two men.
The man holding the tear-gas gun had been called Henry by the other man.
Henry was a very long, lean article, chiefly notable for his ample ears and the expression of a fellow who has just taken a bite of apple which he suddenly suspects may contain a worm.
This expression of finding life a bitter pill to taste was apparently a habitual one with Henry. Additionally, Henry had very red hair which looked as if it had no life, like the hair in a very old wig. Henry was about forty.
“ ’Tis best thee be peaceable!” Henry said gloomily.
Doc Savage then gave his attention to the second of his two captors.
He saw a man who had a warped nose, snaggly teeth, black hair as curly as bedsprings, and a skin that would have been appropriate on a rhinoceros. In his necktie, this man wore a stick pin containing a pearl that was large, yellowish and obviously artificial. He had a very red face. His age might be thirty, but it was hard to tell about such a man. He was very wide for his height.
“Have you got a name?” Doc asked him.
“Pipe down and get your schnozzle out of that hole!” the wide man said.
He had a deep and coarse voice; when he spoke, it was about equivalent to hearing a canary croak like a frog.
“I do not understand this,” Doc said.
The man said, “Curiosity is good for you!” Then he slammed the window shut, and the truck continued on its way.
Doc Savage climbed into his car, apparently not greatly concerned. He felt under the dashboard until he located a hidden switch, which he turned on, and the result was a hum of a radio warming up. It was not a conventional car radio; this one was a short-wave transmitter and receiver.
“Hello, Monk!” Doc said into the microphone.
Almost at once, a voice replied, “Yes, Doc?”
It was a very small voice; it might have belonged to a boy, or a midget.
“Monk,” Doc Savage said, “an unusual thing has happened. I have just encountered two gentlemen, and one of them seems to insist on talking like Shakespeare.”
“Like what?”
“Shakespeare.”
“I don’t get you, Doc.”
“It is a strange story, ending with a slight predicament,” the bronze man explained.
