Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 050 - Terror in the Navy

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THE TERROR IN THE NAVY
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter 1. WRECK!
? Chapter 2. THE "POWER"!
? Chapter 3. CAUTIOUS CROOKS
? Chapter 4. THE MAN OF METAL
? Chapter 5. PERSISTENT PAT
? Chapter 6. THE TRAP
? Chapter 7. INDIA ALLISON
? Chapter 8. THE DEATH PATROL
? Chapter 9. DOOMED FLIGHT
? Chapter 10. ZEPHYR!
? Chapter 11. SOMETHING TO SELL
? Chapter 12. THE BIG DEATH
? Chapter 13. CRACK-UP!
? Chapter 14. CHAOS
? Chapter 15. TRIAL
? Chapter 16. TRICK!
? Chapter 17. LOTS OF LUCK—ALL BAD
? Chapter 18. TORPEDO ROOM!
? Chapter 19. BURIAL AT SEA
? Chapter 20. TUMULT UNDER THE SEA
Chapter 1. WRECK!
THE two seamen met in the darkness near the stern of the navy destroyer, under an awning. They were
cautious. They stood for a long time listening, and at last they were satisfied that no one was near enough
to overhear.
One growled, "The chief’s orders are for none of us to be seen talkin’ together!"
The other hissed, "I know it! But something’s gone wrong!"
"What? We’ve covered every angle."
"That nosey Lieutenant Bowen Toy! He’s haunting me. He’s shadowing me. If he keeps it up, he may
learn too much. He’s got to be killed!"
There was no light and no sound to show that four other naval destroyers were steaming full speed in the
wake of this one, guided by a radio beam transmitted from this, the leading craft.
"What put the bug in Lieutenant Toy’s bonnet?" asked one of the two furtive seamen.
"His brother, Captain Blackstone Toy."
"How much do you think Lieutenant Toy knows about—well, to-night’s business, for instance?"
"I’ve got no idea how much he knows. All I know is that if he keeps on haunting me, he’ll learn too
much!"
The other man laughed.
"What’re you laughing at?" the first man wanted to know.
"I was just thinking that Lieutenant Toy will probably learn what it feels like to die."
"O. K. We take Toy at the first chance, then?"
"First chance."
The two separated and left the vicinity.
A moment after they had gone, a man swung down off the top of the awning under which the two men
had met and secretly plotted death. He had heard every word that they had said.
This man walked away, headed toward the lower deck.
LIEUTENANT BOWEN TOY went directly to his cabin, closed the door, locked it, and took out a
revolver he had been carrying in an armpit holster. He went over to the mirror and looked at himself. He
was pale. He held his hands up, first one, then the other.
"Shaking like an old woman!" he snapped. Then aloud: "I’ve got to do something!"
Lieutenant Bowen Toy went to his bag, opened it and got out a long-bladed kris, an ugly weapon which
was evidently a souvenir of a visit to China. About to close the bag, his gaze fell upon another object in it.
An idea seemed to seize him. He lifted the object out.
It was a book.
THE ARMOR PLATE VALUE OF
CERTAIN ALLOYS
By Clark Savage, Jr.
It was a thick book, full of fine print and intricate mathematical computations.
Lieutenant Bowen Toy stowed the kris inside his belt, where it would evidently serve as reserve weapon.
He did not take his attention off the book, or, rather, off the name of the author, Clark Savage, Jr.
Abruptly, Lieutenant Toy left his cabin and walked, with his hand always on his automatic and his eyes
wary, to the bridge, where he addressed the navigating officer.
"Where can Doc Savage be found?" asked Toy.
"Doc Savage is well known enough that a telegram addressed to him in New York City should reach
him," said the officer.
It was dark on the bridge, except for a subdued glow from the binnacle. The navigating officer had been
intrigued by something queer in Lieutenant Toy’s voice. He now thumbed a cigarette lighter aflame and
held it to throw light on Toy’s features. The utter terror he saw there startled him.
"Lieutenant!" he gasped. "What on earth is wrong?"
Lieutenant Bowen Toy, in his nervous excitement, drew the revolver, which had been in one pocket, and
held it in his hand.
"I have just made an incredible discovery," he gulped. "The entire United States navy is menaced! No
telling how many ships will be destroyed! No telling how many men will be killed, before the thing can be
stopped! I’ll give you the whole incredible story in a minute! But first, I’m going to send a radiogram and
ask this Doc Savage to get started on the New York end of it!"
He bounded off, eyes darting warily from side to side, the gun held ready for defense.
The navigating officer stared after him and exploded, "I’ll be damned! Lieutenant Bowen Toy has gone
nuts!"
The officer was blissfully unaware that imminent events would convince him that he himself, if anybody,
was losing his mind.
LIEUTENANT BOWEN TOY went to the radio room, seized a blank and wrote:
DOC SAVAGE
NEW YORK
HAVE DISCOVERED AMAZING AND TERRIBLE THING ABOUT TO HAPPEN STOP GO TO
APARTMENT OF MY BROTHER CAPTAIN BLACKSTONE TOY IN PARKVIEW HOTEL
AND GET NOTES HIDDEN IN PICTURE OF MYSELF
LIEUT BOWEN TOY
"Send this to a commercial station," Toy directed, handing the operator the message. "And get that
message out instantly!"
"Yes, sir!"
Lieutenant Toy stepped out of the radio shack and walked warily toward the bridge.
Then, with stunning suddenness, he was flying headlong down the deck. He hit a stanchion, glanced off
that, fell and turned over and over. There followed a moment of brittle silence.
The ship had been traveling at about thirty knots a moment before. Now it was at a standstill.
Bells began ringing. There was a loud report amidships, followed by a shrill hissing. This meant a steam
line had been broken. The destroyer rolled heavily as a wave hit it, and there was a grinding from
underneath the hull.
Lieutenant Toy gained his feet, scrambled across the sloping deck, hauled himself up a companionway
and reached the navigating bridge.
The navigating officer’s face was pale and terrible. The helmsman was propped against his wheel, mouth
open, eyes weird. Both men looked as if they had just seen a horned devil.
"What’d we hit!"
Toy shouted.
The navigating officer made feeble, stabbing gestures at the helmsman.
"Tell what—what happened—again!" he croaked. The helmsman blinked. When he spoke, it was in a
tone that sounded, somehow, as if he did not believe himself.
"
Something—something—pulled the ship through the sea!" he mumbled. "It just took hold of us and
pulled us into whatever we hit!"
Chapter 2. THE "POWER"!
NAVY men are well trained, and it was natural mat some one should immediately take a sounding. The
cry of the one who had dropped the lead overboard came from forward.
"By the mark, two!" the voice yelled. "Solid rock!"
Lieutenant Toy gulped, "Only two fathoms of water under the stern, and a rock bottom! That’s
impossible! Our course was ten miles offshore!"
The steersman gasped, "I tell you, a thing had this ship!"
"Don’t be ridiculous!" snapped the navigating officer.
The steersman said, sullenly, "I could feel the pull of the thing! It was drawing the ship through the
water! I fought it. I put the wheel hard over half a dozen times, but the vessel simply wouldn’t respond. I
tell you, there was a thing!"
Lieutenant Toy heard that, and his eyes came wide and seemed about to pop out of his head. "It struck
this destroyer first!" he shrieked. "It’s real! It can destroy ships!" A moment of terrible silence followed.
"Those men—the two sailors I overheard talking under the awning—they know about it!" Toy howled.
"Grab them before they can get away! Get them! Quick, I’ll point them out and tell—"
The rest of his howl was lost in a terrific crash alongside. There was a rending and grinding noise. There
was that peculiar, uncanny screech made by steel plates being ripped apart. Men shouted wildly.
Lieutenant Toy grabbed a brass stanchion, and a ghastly expression came over his lace.
"The other boats are hitting!" he gasped.
A second crash came, followed shortly by a third. A scraping rumble stopped Toy’s forthcoming groan.
It came from farther away. The last destroyer had piled on the rock.
Rockets, parachute flares, began going up, and their light illuminated a confused scene. Five sleek gray
war craft with their bellies torn out on hard rock. They rolled as big, greasy swells nudged them about,
and there was an almost steady grinding of steel hull plates on stone.
Officers on the boats’ bridges megaphoned profanely at each other. They blamed the lead destroyer for
what had happened.
THE confusion became more orderly. Rockets got answers from shore, obviously not more than half a
mile distant. The radio apparatus was used to secure radio compass bearings, and from this it was
ascertained that the five war craft were piled up on a long, narrow reef which had deep water on each
side.
Within fifteen minutes, one destroyer slid off the reef and sank. One sailor was drowned. The others got
away in lifeboats.
It became evident that the big swell was going to jar the other unlucky vessels around until they also slid
off the reef and sank. And it was not going to be long before this happened.
Other navy boats and two passenger steamers were heading for the scene of the holocaust at full speed,
but they stood little chance of arriving on time.
Officers on the wrecked destroyers gave hurried orders. Lifeboats were launched, and the destroyers
abandoned.
Lieutenant Bowen Toy was ignored in the excitement. No one had time to ask him questions. He moved
about, doing his share, but all the time he kept a sharp watch, and his gun convenient.
When he got into a lifeboat, Lieutenant Toy sat in the bow, where no one was at his back. The lifeboat
lunged into the surf breaking over the reef.
It was one of the two lifeboats which were unfortunate enough to be overturned in the surf.
Lieutenant Toy was a strong swimmer. The shore was not more than half a mile distant. The remaining
lifeboats were full. Toy swam.
Flares had burned out by now, and the darkness was rather dense. Along the shore, automobile lights
and regulation marine flares were making a prominent display.
The next thing heard of Lieutenant Bowen Toy was when a man—he happened to be the helmsman of
the leading destroyer—came rushing madly to his superior officer, who stood on the beach swearing at
what had happened.
"I felt it again!" the helmsman shrieked. "I felt it, I tell you! It was something you couldn’t see and
couldn’t touch, but it pulled you!"
The man’s superior officer sprang upon the gibbering helmsman, grabbed his arms and held him tightly,
shouting at other sailors, "Help hold this man! He’s gone off his nut!"
The helmsman screeched, "I’m not mad, I tell you! It got Toy! It grabbed Lieutenant Toy and pulled him
under! I felt it!"
"You what?"
"I felt it’s pull!" screamed the helmsman. "It drew Toy under! It was something you couldn’t see! Oh, I
know you don’t believe me!"
Nor did they believe him, even after they found Lieutenant Bowen Toy. But his story sounded a little
more credible after they found Lieutenant Toy.
Toy had been drowned.
OF course, there was a hullabaloo along the beach, and a great crowd of landlubbers came to see the
wrecked warships and look at the wet, excited, dazed sailors. Newspaper reporters arrived and began
to ask the sailors questions about what had happened, and to snort unbelievingly at the answers they got.
But long before anything about the disaster was put in print, two men in navy uniforms—uniforms of
common seamen—made their way ashore and skulked to a telephone.
They were the same two to whose furtive conversation Lieutenant Toy had eavesdropped.
They called a long-distance number in New York.
"Chief?" one asked.
"Yes," said a dry voice.
"Lieutenant Toy Sent a message to Doc Savage," said one of the sailors. "We weren’t able to stop the
message or even get a look at it."
"This message went to whom?" the voice asked.
"Doc Savage. Ever hear of him?"
The "Chief" swore.
"I’ve heard entirely too much about him! How was this message sent?"
"Radio. It’ll reach New York as a regular commercial message."
"Thanks," said the distant speaker. "We’ve got to do things fast."
He hung up.
Chapter 3. CAUTIOUS CROOKS
THE man in New York did not replace the telephone on its stand after hanging up. He held the
instrument close to his chest and thought deeply.
It was night, and the man was in bed.
He reached over and touched a tiny jack-switch concealed under the telephone stand. This apparently
connected the telephone with a private wire. The man jiggled the hook.
"Yeah, chief?" said a sleepy voice.
"We have received what is sometimes called a bad break," said the man in bed.
"Yeah?"
"You have the file of information which we gathered about Doc Savage?"
"Yeah," said the sleepy voice, not so sleepy now. "But I still don’t see why we went to the trouble of
finding out so much about Doc Savage."
"Doc Savage is logically the one man we have most to fear," reminded the man in bed. "In short, we
learned everything we could about him because he might menace our plans. I thought it would be a wise
move. Now I know."
"You mean that Doc Savage has an inkling of what we’re going to do?"
"Lieutenant Toy sent a radiogram to Doc Savage before he—ah—before Toy met a mysterious fate, as
the newspapers will put it. That is the bad break I mentioned. We’ve got to stop that message before it
reaches Doc Savage."
"Was it a radiogram?"
"Yes."
"Leave it to me!" said the man on the other end of the wire, and listened until he heard his chief hang up.
Then the fellow put the receiver on the hook and began to remove his pajamas.
He was a long, snaky man with an almost animal growth of black hair on his chest and up and down his
back. It is a popular theory that eyes have to be small to be mean. This man’s eyes were big—and mean.
When he had dressed, he glanced about the close and rather untidy room, took two nasty-looking flat
pistols in holsters off a wall hook, fastened them under his coat, and walked to the door. He passed into
another close and untidy room, in which six men lay on cots.
One of the men on the cots opened an eye and said, "What a conscience you must have! Don’t it ever let
you sleep?"
"Get dressed!" The snaky, hairy man shook the others. "Get dressed, you Davids—we’re gonna sally
forth after a Goliath!"
HALF an hour later, they were tying shoestrings and ties and yawning, as their car moved through
downtown Manhattan. The snaky, hairy man was talking, explaining. When he finished, one of the others
addressed him by what seemed to be his nickname.
"Fuzzy," said the man, "this Doc Savage is big-time poison."
"Keep your shirt on," said the hairy "Fuzzy." "We’ll do this so Savage will never know a thing about it."
The driver stopped the sedan, and they all looked out. They saw a giant office building which hurled itself
upward until it was lost against the cloudy night sky.
Fuzzy pointed a limber, hairy finger almost straight up into the night.
"Top floor," he said. "Eighty-six stories up. Sort of an eagle’s nest."
They got out and went into the giant building—it was admittedly the most imposing in New York City.
An elevator let them out two flights below Doc Savage’s floor, and they climbed stairs, so as not to be
seen.
On the last flight of steps, Fuzzy waved the others back.
"Kind of erase yourselves," he directed. "Let me look the ground over."
Fuzzy then ran up the final flight of stairs. There was a door which seemed to be made of bronze. Letters
on it were so unobtrusive as to be almost difficult to locate.
Clark Savage, Jr.
There was no knob on the door, no handle; it seemed to be just a slab of bronze. Fuzzy happened to
know it was a slab of armor steel, bronze-plated.
Repeated pressings of the button beside the door got no answer, and Fuzzy went back to his men.
"Coast clear," he grinned. "The bronze guy ain’t in."
"How we gonna get into that place?" asked the pessimist. "It’s more burglar-proof than a bank vault."
Fuzzy held out a hand to one of the men. "Gimme that package I gave you to carry."
The packet which the man handed over was the size of a pocket match box. Fuzzy tapped it with a
finger.
"This holds a piece of radioactive metal," he said. "Watch what happens."
He walked toward the door of Doc Savage’s office. The door opened mysteriously.
"Hah!" said Fuzzy, pleased. "What’d I tell you? There’s a sensitive electroscope hidden beside the door.
When a piece of radioactive metal is brought near it, the electroscope causes a relay to close and that
makes a machine open the door."
He walked through the door.
"You guys wait outside," he directed.
THE room in which hirsute, serpentine Fuzzy found himself seemed to be a reception room. Principal
items of furniture were an enormous safe, a number of comfortable-appearing chairs, and a rather
remarkable-looking inlaid table.
Fuzzy ignored everything in the room, and went into a library which held thousands of tomes.
Libraries are traditionally gloomy places, but this one was not. The windows along one side were so large
that the wall seemed almost solidly of glass.
Fuzzy looked at the windows and grinned. It was by watching through these that a great deal had been
learned about Doc Savage. The method employed had been ingenious, and Fuzzy was particularly proud
of it because he had thought it up himself.
He picked up a telephone and called the office of the concern handling radio messages.
He asked, "Has a message come for Doc Savage, signed by Lieutenant Bowen Toy? This is Doc
Savage’s headquarters. . . . No? Will you telephone the message as soon as it arrives? Do not send it by
messenger. Telephone it. Thank you."
Fuzzy hung up and gave every sign of being ready to wait as long as necessary. He wandered over to the
window.
In the night sky, some distance away, blazed an electric sign advertising a little-known variety of beer. In
fact, the variety of beer did not even exist!
The sign was held in the air by a balloon, which was in turn moored to a barge in the Hudson River.
Fuzzy waved both arms. The electric sign on the balloon promptly blinked. Fuzzy grinned. His men, with
extremely powerful astronomical telescopes trained on Doc Savage’s office, had recognized their straw
boss.
Some time elapsed before the telephone rang. Fuzzy sprang to the receiver, lifted it, said, "Doc Savage’s
headquarters!"
"This is the radio office with a message," the voice said.
The voice read Lieutenant Bowen Toy’s message.
"Thank you," said Fuzzy. "Do not bother to send a copy by mail, or by messenger. It won’t be
necessary."
"Very well," replied the radio office clerk. "We will not."
Fuzzy hung up, went out, let the trick outer door close behind him, and shoved his chest out triumphantly
at his men.
"That fixes it!" he said. "Doc Savage will never know a message was sent to him!"
They walked toward the stairs.
A young woman came up the stairs. She pointed on old-fashioned six-shooter at them—a six-shooter
with a barrel so big that any man present could have put his little finger in the barrel with ease.
"They gave me this thing to cut my teeth on!" the girl said, jiggling the six-shooter in her hand.
THE men goggled.
The young woman would have gotten a monopoly of male attention anywhere. She was tall and had
every curve necessary to make an exquisitely moulded feminine form. Her features were what the old
literary masters would have called finely chiseled, with an outdoor skin.
One remarkable quality was the unusual bronze hue of her hair and the almost matching color of her eyes.
Or perhaps her eyes tended more to golden.
Her frock and accessories—it was a silver and white evening creation—were the ultra in fashion.
Fuzzy gulped, "Who’re you?"
"Patricia Savage," the woman said. "Oh, you’ve never heard of me, probably. Doc Savage is my cousin.
I have a beauty establishment uptown where I charge outrageous prices, and the customers like it."
Fuzzy swallowed. The mouth of the six-shooter seemed incredibly big.
"Uh—well—uh," he mumbled.
"You gentlemen look like a bunch of crooks to me," Pat said brightly. "And why were you pussy-footing
around? While you think up some lies to answer, you can back into Doc’s office, with your hands in the
air."
A man appeared silently on the stairs behind Pat Savage. He threw a gun which he held. It hit the back of
Pat’s head.
Fuzzy, the others, lunged forward. Pat was dazed. She tried to get her gun up. Fuzzy kicked it out of her
hand.
Another man drew an automatic pistol.
"Let her have it?" he wanted to know.
"And get Doc Savage on our trail for murder!" snorted Fuzzy. "Don’t be like that! Here! We’ll do this!"
He picked up Pat’s big six-shooter, measured her, and hit her over the temple. She fell. Fuzzy dropped
her big six-gun beside her.
"Amscray, as Caesar would say!" he ordered.
They went down some flights of stairs, entered an elevator, and, looking very innocent, rode down to the
street.
As they got into their car on the darkened street, the man who had thrown the gun reminded every one,
"It was lucky I saw this dame and hid me out while she passed me up!"
"Don’t worry, you’ll get your bouquets!" said Fuzzy. The men did not drive away fast enough to attract
attention from any cops who might be around.
Chapter 4. THE MAN OF METAL
PATRICIA SAVAGE opened her gold eyes and with her hands tried to help herself up off the floor. She
sniffed indignantly when she discovered she was sitting in a chair. She looked around.
"Oh!" she said. She sounded exasperated. "I might have known you would happen around and catch me
when I wasn’t at my best!"
The giant bronze man standing before her smiled faintly, which was a rare thing for him to do. Some
persons had known him for years and had never seen him smile. Not that he went around looking
gloomy. His amazingly regular features, almost classic in their firm handsomeness, simply had no
expression at all, most of the time.
He stood near the door, and it looked doubtful if he could pass through it without ducking. Yet, when he
stepped away from the door, he seemed to shrink in stature, due to the remarkable symmetry of his
development. There had to be something around to which his size might be compared before his full
Herculean stature was apparent.
His hair was straight, a slightly darker bronze than that of Pat Savage, and his eyes were gold, also, but
of a different nature. The bronze man’s orbs were like pools of flake metal, always stirred by some
摘要：

THETERRORINTHENAVYADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?Chapter1.WRECK!?Chapter2.THE"POWER"!?Chapter3.CAUTIOUSCROOKS?Chapter4.THEMANOFMETAL?Chapter5.PERSISTENTPAT?Chapter6.THETRAP?Chapter7.INDIAALLISON?Chapter8.THEDEATHPATROL?Chapter9.DOOME...

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