Читать книгу The Submarine Mystery: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 5
ОглавлениеTHE FISH AND THE BAIT
“Monk,” otherwise known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was a man who was somewhat ridiculous in two or three ways—being amazing in appearance, shorter than many men, wider than most men, and more hairy than almost any man; and he had a face that was something to start babies laughing, the little tikes probably not thinking it human, but something funny made for their amusement.
As “Ham” frequently remarked: if worst came to worst, Monk might get a job posing for Halloween funny-face masks. “Ham” was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, lawyer and sartorial artist.
Ham and Monk had three things in common: they both belonged to Doc Savage’s crew of five; they both had unusual animals for pets, and each one liked to quarrel with the other. They quarreled interminably. It went on when they ate, fought, or made love. Nothing seemed to interfere with their squabbling.
As for Monk, it was not likely he would ever have to pose for Halloween funny-faces to make a living. Monk was world-renowned as a chemist. Whenever a big corporation hired him as a consulting chemist, they usually paid him a fee as large as the salary of the president of the United States. That was the most ridiculous thing about Monk. His head did not look as if it had room for a spoonful of brains.
Monk leaned back lazily, put his feet on the inlaid table in the reception room of Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters in New York City, and spoke into the microphone. His mind was at peace, for he had made a mistake—by “predicament,” he supposed Doc meant something minor. Doc did not sound excited.
“Here’s a good one, Doc,” Monk chuckled. “Chemistry, that blasted runt ape pet of Ham’s, has been devilin’ my pet pig, Habeas Corpus, for weeks. But the worm finally turned. Habeas got hold of Chemistry and blamed near ate a leg off him, and the ape has been roostin’ on the chandelier all day, afraid to——”
“I’ve been kidnaped!” Doc advised.
Monk’s feet fell off the desk. “What?”
Doc Savage could hardly have been as calm mentally as he was physically. He was a prisoner in the van, which meant trouble. Serious trouble, conceivably. If it was not serious, the captors probably wouldn’t have gone to such elaborate pains to get him.
The bronze man had been speaking in a low voice. His captors might discover at any moment that he was talking over a radio from inside the van. Or the van might reach its destination. Haste seemed advisable.
“You and Ham,” Doc said, “might sort of trail along.”
Monk’s voice was an astonished squeak over the radio. “Trail where? What’s goin’ on?”
Doc explained with small words that he had been bumped, car and all, into a big van, and that the van was now taking him to an unknown destination.
“And the way one of them talks,” the bronze man finished, “is the queerest thing of all.”
“Way he talks?”
“He uses Sixteenth-Century English.”
“He what?”
“He sounds like Shakespeare.”
“Just what kind of gag,” Monk demanded, “is this?”
“It does sound queer,” the bronze man admitted. “This man talks Sixteenth-Century English, but I do not know why or anything else about it. It is very strange. But you might get on our trail. Have you got a radio direction-finder handy?”
“Sure. There’s one in a car downstairs.”
“I will leave this transmitter turned on,” Doc explained. “They may not notice it. I will also lay the microphone on the transmitter so it will pick up generator hum. You trace us with the direction-finder.”
“Then what?”
“You might have to use your own judgment.”
“On my way!” Monk said. Then as an afterthought he added. “How many of them Shakespeares is there?”
“Two men are in the van, but only one is a Shakespeare, as you term it. At least one or two more men were in the car that bumped my machine up into the van.”
“As long as they ain’t over a dozen,” Monk said confidently, “I can handle ’em.”
“Bring Ham.”
“Oh—O. K.,” Monk grumbled.
Doc switched off the receiver portion of the radio, so that static noises would not draw attention. Then he got out and leaned against the car to wait. All his men—he had five assistants—made it a practice to have instant two-way radio communication available at all possible times.
The bronze man had radios everywhere—in cars, planes, boats, apartments, and even portable short-range sets which could be carried around in pockets. Sometimes the devices were not used for weeks, and they began to seem like useless gimmicks. But when they were needed, it was usually no fooling.
Then the truck stopped. The back of the van opened. Two men with guns got in.
One was the wide man with the incredibly homely face and the imitation pearl tie pin. The other was bitter-looking Henry. Under their topcoats, both fellows wore breastplates of steel armor which looked rather ancient.
“Perchance thou can touch the roof!” suggested Henry gloomily.
Doc demonstrated that he could.
Henry walked around and handcuffed the bronze man. Henry’s wide companion went over and peered under the dashboard of the car. He chuckled.
“Yep!” he said. “He’s had the radio workin’!”
Henry asked, “You think, sire, perchance his friends may locate the transmitter with another device?”
“Good bet.”
“Aye, then ’tis well,” Henry said, wearing, however, the expression of a boy who had lately learned there was no Santa Claus.
Doc Savage said, “You knew that was on?” He pointed at the radio.
“Aye, we knew.” Henry sighed. “We ourselves do have a short-wave radio. We heard thee converse with one addressed as Monk.”
“You are leading Monk and Ham into a trap?” Doc demanded sharply.
“Aye.”
Monk, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was a man who was easily satisfied; but nothing that Brigadier General Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks did would ever satisfy him.
“Somethin’ must be wrong with you!” Monk complained.
“Why?” Ham snapped.
“Well, you ain’t drivin’ in the center of the road for a change.”
Ham, who was driving the big limousine, turned around to give the homely Monk a bilious eye. Ham was a lean-waisted man who was known in the higher spheres of civilization as the best-dressed man of the day. However, he was also a lawyer, and he had practiced putting a bilious eye on witnesses in court. He wielded a very bilious eye.
“One more crack out of you,” Ham said, “and I’ll tap you on top of that wart you call a head so hard that you’ll think the eyelets in your shoes are windows!”
Monk ignored that. He gave attention to the little portable radio direction-finder which he was manipulating.
“Head more to the south,” he ordered. Then he added, “I wonder if Doc could have gone wacky?”
“Wacky?”
“Well, that talk about people speakin’ Sixteenth-Century English sounds wacky, don’t it?”
“If it wasn’t against my policy to agree with you,” Ham muttered, “I’d say it was.”
They crossed a bridge over the East River, followed boulevards, and passed beyond the suburbs of New York City. The car rocketed through a flat, sandy region of truck farms.
“The signal is gettin’ louder,” Monk announced. And later, he declared, “We’re right on it! I can hear Doc’s generator hum like nobody’s business!”
The car passed a low rambling white house with green shutters which sat in a nest of shrubbery. Monk swung the radio loop excitedly.
“They’re there!” he barked.
Behind the low white house stood a white shed and a white barn, and they were also surrounded with brush.
“Regular jungle,” Ham said.
“Doc said they bumped his car up in a big van, didn’t he?” Monk asked.
“Yeah.”
“The van is probably in the shed or the barn. We might as well drive right in, hadn’t we?”
“That is as good a course as any,” Ham said, “even if the idea was yours.”
The aids drove up the road a bit, turned around and came back. They might be heading into plenty of trouble, but neither was much bothered. Without looking at all like a rolling fortress, the sedan had bulletproof glass, armor-plate steel sides and gasproof sealing.
And while the car did not look like an armory, compartments held machine-pistols, gas masks, smoke bombs, demolition bombs, and there was a tank slung under the chassis filled with a type of gas which would make a man unconscious whether he wore an ordinary gas mask or not. The stuff would get in through the skin pores.
Ham wheeled the sedan into the driveway.
Out of the shrubbery stepped four men wearing trim blue uniforms and shiny badges.
“Huh!” Monk exploded. “Cops!”
