Читать книгу The Submarine Mystery: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 7
ОглавлениеGIRL IN ARMOR
Doc Savage’s headquarters occupied the eighty-sixth floor of one of Manhattan’s tallest buildings, and it was an enormous, modernistic Aladdin’s cavern consisting of a reception room, a library containing one of the finest collections of scientific tomes in existence, and a laboratory holding instruments which scientists came from all over the world to observe.
There was a pneumatic tube running from the place to Doc Savage’s boathouse and airplane hangar on the Hudson water front, and there was also a private high-speed elevator to the private garage in the basement of the skyscraper. However, ordinary visitors came up in the regular elevators.
Prince Albert came up in the ordinary way: in an elevator. He wore a large hat yanked down over his eyes, an enveloping yellow topcoat, and he carried a large traveling bag with holes punched in the end.
The door of Doc Savage’s aërie was bulletproof steel painted bronze, with no knob or keyhole. The door was opened electromechanically by the effect of a radioactive material on an electric eye hidden in the wall.
The “keys” were small coin-shaped pieces of radioactive metal which Doc Savage and his men carried. When a “key” was brought near the electric eye, mechanism did the rest.
Prince Albert had taken Monk’s “key,” and he seemed to know how the door functioned, because he opened it and entered. Then he took off his hat and long coat and put them out of sight. His next operation was to close all doors and windows and select a brassie from a bag of golf clubs standing in a corner.
Opening his large traveling bag with care, he let the pig Habeas Corpus escape. When the shote showed inclination for hostilities, Prince Albert made a few warning passes with the brassie.
“You’re a convenience around here, hog,” he said. “And not an absolute essential. Just paste that on your snoot.”
Habeas Corpus retreated to a corner, and the homely man picked up one of the several telephones which stood on the inlaid table that, with a huge safe, comprised the principal furniture of the reception room. He dialed a number.
“Hello!” He apparently recognized the voice which answered. “Put Henry on the wire.”
There was a delay, and Prince Albert waited patiently.
Then Henry spoke sadly over the telephone.
“How now,” Henry inquired, “has aught gone amiss?”
“Nope. So far, it’s been slick as silk.” Prince Albert chuckled. “How’s the new sub comin’? Can we shove off by daylight?”
“They work frantically,” Henry said gloomily.
“Hell, they’ve been workin’ frantically all the time! Will they get done in time?”
“Perchance.”
“There’d better not be any chance about it. I’m in Doc Savage’s headquarters now. Some joint, too!” Prince Albert grinned widely. “I’m all set for the girl—when she shows up.”
“Dost thee feel able to seize her alone?” Henry asked dubiously.
“Sure. She won’t get away.”
“Perchance it will cost us some millions of dollars if she does.”
“To say nothin’,” added Prince Albert, “of the hangin’-bee that would follow.”
“ ’Twould be firing squads,” Henry said.
He did not sound as if he was trying to be funny.
That terminated the conversation. Prince Albert sat in a chair, parked his heels on the edge of the table, kept his brassie handy and a wary eye on Habeas Corpus, and waited something over two hours, after which knuckles gave the door a tapping. Prince Albert opened the door.
“Good evenin’,” he said. “Somethin’ we can do for you?”
The girl said, “Forsooth, it may’st be thou——” She caught herself, changed to, “Brother, you said a mouthful!”
“Do come in,” Prince Albert said.
The girl examined him. She was a long, corny girl with well-made rather than delicate features, a large and nice mouth, and an arrogant mass of cornsilk hair. She wasn’t the kind of girl you thought of as cuddly.
Rather, you pictured her in a chorus line, or yelling her head off at the races, or balanced on an aquaplane behind a motor boat doing forty an hour. She was a nice athletic-looking girl. And she also looked like a girl who could take care of herself.
“What can I do for you, miss——”
“Miss China Janes,” she said.
“Huh?” Prince Albert said, and looked as if he had been hit with a hammer.
“I know it’s a funny name,” China Janes said. “But usually it doesn’t floor ’em.”
Prince Albert tried to talk, but the best he could do was make two or three strange noises. He covered his vocal confusion by coughing behind a hairy hand.
“Somethin’ in my throat,” he explained. “I beg your pardon, Miss Janes. I am Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, called Monk by my friends. I hope you will call me Monk.”
“I seem to have read somewhere,” China Janes remarked, “that you were a fast worker.”
Prince Albert looked as pleased as he could. He indicated the belligerent pig.
“This,” he said, “is Habeas Corpus, my pet pig.”
The girl examined the pig. “You two don’t seem to be getting along together.”
“Oh, we’re havin’ one of our tiffs.”
Wearing a manufactured grin, Prince Albert led China Janes to a chair, seated her with a flourish, then planted himself opposite her.
“What,” he asked, “may we do for you?”
“Nothing for me, I hope,” the girl said. “But I’ve got a friend who thinks you can do plenty for her. From the way she talks, you’ll be doing the rest of humanity quite a man-sized good turn at the same time.”
“And who,” Prince Albert asked, “is your friend in need?”
“Her Highness, the Duchess Portia Montanye-Norwich,” China Janes replied.
Prince Albert tried not to look as relieved as he felt.
“Ah,” he said, “royalty.”
“Um-m. It depends on how you look at it.” The girl leaned forward. “But look here. Portia sent me to get Doc Savage. The poor kid needs help bad. Is Doc here?”
Prince Albert, shaking his head regretfully, said, “Doc Savage is away on an important mission, and will not be available for a number of days.”
“That,” China Janes said, “is tough. From what I’ve read of Doc Savage, a screwy business like this is right up his alley.”
“However,” Prince Albert murmured, “I am a Doc Savage associate, and glad to be at your service.”
The girl examined Prince Albert and frowned. She seemed apprehensive.
“If I hadn’t heard so much about Doc Savage’s outfit,” she said, “I’d be doubtful. But I guess it’s all right.”
“Of course it is all right.”
China Janes leaned back.
“I’ll go back to the beginning,” she said. “When I first met the Duchess Portia Montanye-Norwich, she was plain Portia Bowen, and we both kicked a wicked heel in the same chorus. Portia and I got to be friends. We had something in common. We both liked to get out and do things. That was six years ago. That is, it was six years ago when Portia grabbed off her duke.
“Boy, was she lucky! The duke was rolling in shekels. He didn’t know how much money he had. Portia took him back to England, and they lived in the family castle for two years; and then the duke was killed in a plane crack-up.
“Portia went haywire after that. She loved the guy, I guess. Anyway, she started flying to Cape Town and across oceans. Remember when she flew the Atlantic?”
Prince Albert admitted, “Seems I do recall such an event.”
“She was a wow. And all through those years, I never saw her.” China sighed. “Oh, we swapped a letter now and then. But two years ago, her letters stopped coming. She had disappeared. I never saw anything in the newspapers about it. But my letters all came back. That happened for two years. Then this afternoon, she walked in on me.”
“The duchess appeared this afternoon?”
“Maybe you’d call it materialized. Ghosts materialize, don’t they?”
“Eh?”
“After you take a look at her, you’ll understand. Plenty had happened to her. You could see that.”
“Just what had occurred?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Heh!” Prince Albert looked relieved in spite of himself. “She didn’t, eh?”
“Not a thing.” China Janes leaned forward excitedly. “But you remember the submarine that blew up near Boston?”
“Hm-m. Yes, indeed.”
“Remember that a yacht rescued a girl and brought her ashore, and she got away?”
“Well——”
“And the girl wore pieces of medieval armor?”
“Yes, I recall——”
“And she talked the kind of English they spoke four or five hundred years ago?”
“I read somethin’ of the sort,” Prince Albert admitted. “It sounded fantastic.”
“You bet it did. And it’s a lot more fantastic now that I know the girl was my old kicking mate, Portia.”
“Goodness!” said Prince Albert.
“And she won’t tell me a thing. Oh, she talks. But such talk!” China made a face. “She sounds like one of them Shakespeare plays. ‘Forsooth’ and ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ and that kind of stuff. Spills it with a straight face, too.”
China Janes pounded both fists on the arms of the chair in which she sat. “I tell you, something has happened to that girl! Something that’s done things to her mind! She keeps raving about a lot of people who need help.”
Prince Albert stood up. He did his best to look like a deeply sympathetic man who intended to do something about this.
“What about these people who need help?”
“She won’t go into details,” China said.
“I shall speak to Duchess Portia Montanye-Norwich at once,” Prince Albert said emphatically. “Where can I find her?”
China said, “I’ll take you there.”
The man made a business of considering that, then shook his head pleasantly.
“It would be better,” he said, “if you told me where she can be found. I will send some of Doc Savage’s men after her.”
“But——”
“You may be in danger,” Prince Albert interrupted. “If I were you, I would stay here until we find out what this is about. You said the duchess was scared, didn’t you? If she is scared, obviously there is danger.”
China thought that over.
“O. K.,” she said. “The duchess—Portia—is at my apartment. 476 North Avenue, Apartment 12.”
Prince Albert went to the telephone, dialed a number, and said, “I’ve got the dame located.” He gave the address China Janes had just furnished. “Get her out of there and where she can’t talk.”
Prince Albert then listened a moment.
“Yeah,” he told the party at the other end of the wire, “I’ve got another dame here that we’ll have to keep quiet, too.”
He put down the phone, turned, took a gun out of his coat pocket, pointed it at China Janes.
“Tough break, kid,” Prince Albert said. “I’m afraid you’re goin’ to be out of circulation from now on.”
China Janes’s eyes got very wide. She seemed to try to stand on tiptoes.
“I don’t—what——”
“Turn around!” the man said.
Something in Prince Albert’s eyes made the girl scream. She screamed as if trying to get out every bit of noise possible.
“My understandin’,” the man said, “is that this place is soundproof.” His voice went guttural. “Turn around!”
China Janes hesitated, her teeth nearly making holes in her lips. Very slowly, she wheeled around and put her back to the man.
Prince Albert got a long needle out of his clothing and took a step toward the girl.
Then he jumped as high into the air as he could. He also screamed as loud as he could.
Just before Prince Albert jumped, a swarm of blue sparks buzzed up around his feet. After he came back to the floor, the sparks appeared again, sizzling, snapping.
