Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 098 - The Golden Man

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The Golden Man
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE SUPERNATURAL
? Chapter II. THINGS TO WONDER ABOUT
? Chapter III. THE WEIRD
? Chapter IV. THE UPSET PITCHER
? Chapter V. THE FIFTH COLUMN
? Chapter VI. THE BROKEN FRAME
? Chapter VII. THE LAST MINUTE
? Chapter VIII. WATCH RUTH DORMAN
? Chapter IX. DEATH BY IMPOSSIBILITY
? Chapter X. BEAUTY AND A SPHINX
? Chapter XI. SISTERS
? Chapter XII. TRAIL TO THE WIZARD
? Chapter XIII. DARK SANCTUARY
? Chapter XIV. THE FISH MAN
? Chapter XV. DECEIT
? Chapter XVI. MURDER IS AN ACT
? Chapter XVII. THE EMPTY BUSHES
? Chapter XVIII. THE SHOCK CURE
? Chapter XIX. THE CRASH
Chapter I. THE SUPERNATURAL
It began on the American passenger steamer, Virginia Dare, while the vessel was en route from Portugal
to New York with a load of war refugees. It was at night.
Mr. Sam Gallehue, in spite of the full-bodied Irish of his name, his West Tulsa, Oklahoma, birthplace, his
American passport, was really quite English. Quite.
Referring to the incidents of that night, "Disturbing," Sam Gallehue said. "Disturbing— Yes, definitely."
But disturbing was hardly a strong enough word.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Monk Mayfair had a word—several words, in fact. But his words
were not from Sunday school, or from any respectable dictionary, although expressive. Unfortunately,
they were not printable.
Brigadier General Theodore Marley Ham Brooks had no word whatever—the thing left him speechless.
Ham Brooks was a noted lawyer who could talk a jury out of its eyeteeth, and it took a lot to make him
speechless. But, as everyone admitted, what happened that night was a lot.
First, there was the star.
It was a clear night and the usual number of ordinary stars were visible—the Encyclopedia Britannica
states the unaided human eye can see about six thousand stars on a clear night—in the crystal dome of a
tropical heavens. The sea, with no more waves than a mirror, was darkly royal-blue, except where now
and then a porpoise or a shark broke surface and caused a momentary eruption of phosphorescence that
was like spilling sparks.
As to who first saw the star, there was some question whether that honor fell to Ham Brooks or Monk
Mayfair.
Both these men were standing on the starboard boat deck, where there was a nice breeze. It was a hot
night; it had been hot since the Virginia Dare had left Portugal, and Monk and Ham—so had everyone
else, too—had grumbled extensively about the heat, although there were scores of Americans on the ship
who should have been overjoyed to be there instead of in Europe, dodging bombs, bullets and
blitzkriegs.
The truth was: Monk and Ham were irked because they were leaving Europe by request. Not at the
request of anybody in Europe; they would have ignored such urging. The request had come from Doc
Savage, who was their chief, and who meant what he said.
The mess in Europe had looked enticing—Monk and Ham liked excitement the way bears like
honey—and they had slipped off with the idea of getting their feet wet. Doc Savage had cabled them to
come back—quick—before they got in trouble.
"Trouble!" Monk snorted. "Compared to the kind of things Doc gets mixed up in, Europe is peaceful.
Hey, look!"
"Look at what?" Ham asked.
"Over there." Monk pointed out over the sea.
THEY could see the star plainly. It was not a star in the sense of being a planet or a heavenly body
twinkling far off in outer space. This was an actual star; a five-cornered one.
The star was black. In the dark night—this fact was a little confusing to newspaper reporters later—the
star could be readily distinguished in spite of its blackness. This black star could be seen in the black sky
because, around its edges, and particularly at its five tips, it had a definitely reddish, luminous complexion.
As Monk expressed it later—Monk’s descriptions were inclined to be grisly—the star looked somewhat
as if it had been dipped in red blood. The star was high and far away in the night sky.
"Hey, you on the bridge!" Monk yelled. "Hey, whoever’s on watch!"
Monk’s speaking voice was the small, ludicrous tone of a child, but when he turned loose a yell, the
seagulls got scared a mile away. An officer put his head over the bridge railing.
"What the blankety-blank goes on?" the officer asked. "Don’t you know people are trying to sleep on
this boat? You’ll wake up the whole ship."
"Look at that star!" Monk said. "What the dickens is it?"
The officer stared, finally said he would be damned if that wasn’t a funny-looking thing, and pointed a
pair of strong night glasses—the night glasses being binoculars with an extraordinary amount of
luminosity—at the star. He handed the glasses to Monk, then Ham. The consensus was that they didn’t
know what the thing might be. Something strange, though.
The steamer, Virginia Dare, was commanded by Captain Harley Kirman, a seaman of the modern
school, with looks, dress and manners of a man behind a desk in an insurance office, although he loved
his ship, as much as any cussing, barnacle-coated bully of the old windjammer school.
Captain Kirman was summoned from a game of contract bridge. Another participant in the card game, a
Mr. Sam Gallehue, accompanied the skipper when he reached the bridge.
The captain stared at the star. He unlimbered a telescope as large as a cannon—inherited from his
seafaring grandfather, he explained—and peered through that. He took off his hat and scratched his bald
spot. The bald spot was crossed from right front to left rear by a scar, that was a souvenir of a World
War mine. Captain Kirman’s bald-spot scar always itched when he got excited.
"Change course to west, quarter south," Captain Kirman ordered. "We’ll have a look."
Monk propped elbows on the bridge rail and contemplated the five-pointed thing in the sky.
"What do you suppose it is?"
Ham shrugged. "Search me. Never saw anything like it before."
MONK MAYFAIR was a short man, and wide. His long arms—his hands dangled to his knees—were
covered with a growth of what appeared to be rusty shingle nails. His mouth had startling size, the
corners terminating against his tufted ears; his eyes were small and twinkling, and his nose was a
mistreated ruin. The narrowness of his forehead conveyed the impression there was not room for a
spoonful of brains, which was deceptive, since he was one of the world’s leading industrial chemists. In
general, his appearance was something to scare babies.
Ham Brooks has good shoulders, medium height, a wide, orator’s mouth in a not unhandsome face. His
clothing was sartorial perfection; in addition to being one of New York’s best lawyers, he was its
best-dressed man. He carried an innocent-looking dark cane which was a sword-cane, tipped with a
chemical that could produce quick unconsciousness.
They watched the star.
"Blazes!" Monk said suddenly. "Look at the ocean. Right under that thing!"
Mr. Sam Gallehue hurried over to stand beside them. Gallehue was a lean man with some slight
roundness in his shoulders that was either a habitual stoop or a sign of unusual muscular strength. His face
was long, his jaw prominent, a combination which expressed sadness.
Mr. Sam Gallehue wore his usual ingratiating smile. He was a man who invariably agreed with anything
and everything anyone said. If anyone should state the ship was sailing upside down, Mr. Gallehue would
agree profusely in a phony English accent.
"That’s puzzling," Monk said.
"Yes, puzzling, definitely," agreed Mr. Gallehue. "Very puzzling. You’re right. Very puzzling."
They meant the sea. It had become—the phenomenon was confined to one spot directly beneath the
luminous-rimmed black star—filled with a fiery brilliance that was astounding, because it could hardly be
the natural phosphorescence of the sea. Phosphorescence like a multitude of sparks pouring through the
water in momentary existence, was visible here and there, but this was different. It was not like sparks,
but a steady luminance, quite bright.
"It covers," Ham decided aloud, "less than an acre."
"Yes, you’re right," agreed Mr. Sam Gallehue. "Less than an acre. Exactly."
The steamer plowed through the dark sea, with the only sounds the faint steady rushing of water cut by
the bows, and tendrils of music amidships that escaped from the first-class lounge where there was
dancing. But on the bridge there was breathless quiet, expectancy, and eyes strained ahead. The
luminous area was still on the sea, the black star steady in the sky.
The lookout in the crow’s-nest gave a cry.
"Man swimming!" the lookout yelled. "Off the starboard bow. Middle of that glowing patch of water.
Man swimming!"
Captain Kirman leveled his granddad of telescope and stared for a while. Then he scratched his
bald-spot scar.
"What’s wrong?" Monk asked.
Wordlessly, Captain Kirman passed the big telescope. Monk discovered that the instrument was one of
the most efficient he had ever used.
The crow’s-nest lookout had been wrong on one point—the man in the sea was not swimming. The man
lay perfectly still. On his back, with arms and legs outflung. He was a large, golden man. There was
something unusual about him, a quality distinguishable even from that distance—something about him that
was hard to define, yet definite. He was not unconscious, but merely floating there.
Monk lowered the telescope.
"Well?" demanded Ham impatiently.
"It’s kind of indecent," Monk explained. "He ain’t got on a darned stitch!"
THE Virginia Dare lowered a lifeboat with speed which demonstrated the efficiency of modern davit
machinery. Captain Kirman dashed into his cabin and came back with a blanket and a pair of trousers.
"Put the pants on him before you bring him in," he said.
The modern steel lifeboat had a motor which, gobbling like a turkey, drove the craft across the sea into
the luminous area, and, guided by searchlights that stuck straight white whiskers from the liner bridge,
reached the floating golden man.
The bright area in the sea slowly gathered itself around the lifeboat. A phenomenon so startling that Monk
and Ham stared at each other, blinked, then peered at the sea again. "D’ you see what I do?" Monk
demanded.
"The phosphorescence is gathering around the lifeboat," Ham said.
"Yeah. Only I don’t think it’s phosphorescence. The stuff glows too steadily, and the color ain’t like
phosphorescence."
They stared, dumfounded as the glowing patch in the sea followed the lifeboat to the steamer When some
fifty or sixty yards separated the lifeboat and ship, the luminous area rapidly left the smaller craft and
surrounded the liner. The Virginia Dare was much larger, and the glowing mass spread out thinly to
entirely surround the vessel.
Monk grunted suddenly. "Where’s a bucket, a rope, and a jug?"
Ham said, "I know where there’s a jug. I’ll get it. You find the rope and the bucket."
The dapper lawyer secured from the bar a clear glass jug which had contained foundation sirup for a soft
drink. He rinsed it hurriedly.
They hauled up a bucket of sea water, poured it into the jug, and inserted a cork.
"I swear I never saw water shine like that before," Monk declared. "I’m gonna analyze it."
Ham held the jug up to the light. He shook it briskly, and the water charged back and forth against the
glass with bubble-filled fury.
"Kinda spooky," Ham said in an awed voice.
Monk carried the jug to a darkened part of the deck, and held a hand close to it. His palm was bathed in
reflected magenta radiance.
"What is that stuff?" Ham asked.
"I’ll have to analyze it," Monk said. He sounded puzzled.
HAM rubbed his jaw, his expression thoughtful. "You ever hear of ectoplasm?" he asked.
"Eh?"
"Ectoplasm," Ham said. "The stuff spiritualists and mediums talk about. When they perform, or pretend to
perform, the feat known as telekinisis, or locomotion of objects at a distance—such as making a table lift,
or causing rappings on a table—they claim the phenomenon is the work of ectoplasm."
"Hey, wait a minute," Monk said. "What’re you talking about?"
"Ectoplasm. E-c-t-o-p-l-a-s-m, like in a ghost. It is supposed to be a material of living or protoplasmic
nature, drawn either from the medium or from some other presence, which is independently manipulated
after being drawn."
Monk considered this.
"Nuts!" he said finally.
Ham shrugged. "Ectoplasmic material is supposed to be manipulated or controlled through an etheric
connecting link, so that a tremor or vibration in the ether, such as a light wave which normally excites the
retina of the eye, is detrimental to its activity."
"Where the hell’d you get that stuff?"
"Out of an encyclopedia one time."
Monk snorted. "Oh, be reasonable. This stuff is just something in the water that happens to glow."
"Then what made it follow the lifeboat?"
"I don’t know."
"The golden man was in the lifeboat. It followed him."
"Huh?"
"And, when the golden man was taken aboard the steamer, why did it surround the bigger ship?"
Monk peered at the jug of luminous water with a mixture of emotion. "I got half a notion to throw this
overboard and get rid of the whole mystery."
Ham strode out on the open deck and looked upward, craning his neck.
"That black star is gone," he announced.
Chapter II. THINGS TO WONDER ABOUT
THE rescued golden man had been taken to the ship’s hospital. Monk and Ham accompanied Captain
Kirman to the hospital, and the agreeable Mr. Sam Gallehue brought up the rear, being stickily polite
whenever they gave him a chance.
Monk carried the jug of luminous water under his arm until he passed his cabin, where he paused to
deposit the jug on the table. After he had left the jug, Monk hurried forward and touched Ham’s elbow.
"Hey, what got you started on that talk about ectoplasm?" he wanted to know.
"It just occurred to me," Ham said.
"But that’s spook stuff."
"Sure."
"There ain’t no such animals as spooks."
"You’ll find a lot of people," Ham said, "that will argue there is such a thing as spiritualism."
"Yeah," Monk agreed. "And you’ll find in the United States about five hundred institutions for treating
insane people."
The hospital was situated in the midships section of the liner on B deck. They found the officer who had
been in charge of the lifeboat standing outside the hospital door, which was closed.
Captain Kirman asked the officer, "Was he conscious when you picked him up?"
"Yes, indeed, sir."
"Was he injured in any way?"
"He did not appear to be."
"Who is he?"
The officer looked somewhat queer. "He said that he did not have a name."
Captain Kirman frowned. "That’s a strange thing for him to say."
"I know, sir. And that wasn’t the strangest thing he said, either. He said his name might be a problem,
because parents usually named their children, but, since the sea was his mother and the night was his
father, and neither parent could talk, getting him named might be a problem."
Captain Kirman scowled. "Are you drunk, mister?"
The officer smiled. "It did not make sense to me, either."
CAPTAIN KIRMAN rubbed his scar, chewed his lower lip in exasperation, and finally knocked on the
hospital door, which was opened by a genial gentleman—he was looking bewildered just now—who
was the ship’s doctor.
"How is he, John?" Captain Kirman asked.
The doctor looked at Captain Kirman steadily for almost a minute. "What is this?" he asked finally. "A
rib?"
"Eh?" Captain Kirman was surprised.
"This man your sailor just hauled out of the ocean." The doctor jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the
hospital door.
"What about him?" Captain Kirman asked.
"He looked me in the eye," the doctor growled, "and he said, ‘How are you, John Parson? I believe you
will enjoy living in that little villa in Maderia. It is very peaceful there.’"
"Oh," said Captain Kirman. "An old friend of yours, is he?"
The surgeon swallowed.
"No."
Captain Kirman peered sharply at the doctor. "Hey, wait a minute! You don’t know him?"
"Never saw him before in my life. So help me!"
"But you just said he called you by name."
"That’s exactly what I did just say."
"But—"
"And that isn’t the half of it," added the doctor. "You heard me say he mentioned that villa in Maderia."
"What about the villa?"
"Nobody on this green earth but myself and the man who owns the villa knows I have been dickering to
buy it. And here is something else! I don’t know myself whether I have bought it yet. The man had to
talk to his daughter about selling, and she was going to visit him last week, and he was going to cable me
in New York, and the cable would cinch the deal."
Captain Kirman’s laugh was a humorless spurt of breath past his teeth. "And you never saw this man we
rescued before?"
"Never."
"Somebody around here must be crazy."
Monk Mayfair had been taking in the conversation so earnestly that he had his head cocked to one side.
Now he interrupted. "Dr. Parsons," he said. "I’m Mr. Mayfair—Monk Mayfair."
"Yes. I’ve heard of you." Dr. Parsons smiled. "But I’ll confess I’ve heard more about the man with whom
you are associated—Clark Savage, Jr. Or Doc Savage, as he’s better known. I’ve always hoped I
would some day meet him. I’ve seen him demonstrate surgery."
Monk said, "Let’s try something, just for fun, doctor."
"What do you mean?" Dr. Parsons asked.
"Just for fun," Monk said, "let’s send a radiogram to that man you were going to buy the villa from. Ask
him if he really sold it to you."
The ship’s physician gave Monk a queer look.
"So you’ve sensed it, too."
"Sensed what?"
"That this man we rescued tonight may not be—well, may be different from other men, somehow."
Monk said, "I haven’t even seen the guy, except through a telescope. What do you mean—different?"
The physician examined his fingernails for a moment.
"You know, I think I’ll take you up. I’ll send that radiogram about the villa," he said.
Captain Kirman snorted, shoved open the hospital door, and entered. Monk was about to follow the
skipper when Ham tapped the homely chemist on the shoulder. Monk turned. Ham said, "Aren’t you the
guy who was sneering at spiritualism a while ago? Now you want radiograms sent."
"I just want to satisfy my curiosity," Monk explained sheepishly.
"You saw the golden man through the telescope," Ham said. "Have you ever seen him before?"
"I’m sure I haven’t," Monk declared.
"What if he knows all about us, too?"
"Don’t be silly," Monk said, somewhat uneasily.
THEY entered the hospital, a white room with square windows, modern fluorescent lighting, and neat
equipment which included a nurse who was eye-filling.
The golden man lay on the white sheets on a chrome-and-white examination table. He was not as large
as Monk had somehow expected him to be—he was very little above average size, in fact. His shoulders
were good, but not enormous; the rest of his muscular development, while above average, was not
spectacular. His body did give the impression of perfect health and magnetic energy.
Monk decided—he checked on this afterward with Ham, Mr. Sam Gallehue, Captain Kirman and
others, and they agreed with him—that the golden man’s face was the most outstanding of his features. It
was hard to explain why it should be outstanding. The face was not a spectacularly ugly one, nor a
breathlessly handsome one; it was just a face, but there was kindliness about it, and strength, and power,
in addition to something that could hardly be defined.
The golden man spoke in a voice which was the most completely pleasant sound Monk had ever heard.
"Good evening, Captain Kirman," he said.
Astonishment jerked Captain Kirman rigid. The golden man seemed not to notice. He turned to Monk
and Ham.
"Good evening, Mr. Mayfair and Mr. Brooks," he said. He contemplated them and seemed to radiate
approval. "It is too bad the human race does not produce more men like you two and like the man with
whom you work, Doc Savage."
Monk became speechless. Ham, fighting down astonishment, asked, "Who are you?"
For a moment, the golden man seemed slightly disturbed; then he smiled. "I have no name, as yet."
"Where’d you come from? How did you get in the water?"
The golden man hesitated, and said finally, "The sea was my mother and the night was my father, but you
will not believe that, so perhaps we should not discuss it."
Ham—he confessed later that his hair was nearer to standing on end than it had ever been—persisted.
"There was a black star in the sky," he said, "and there is something that glows, a kind of radiance, that is
following the ship. What are those things?"
The golden man sighed peacefully. "Do not be afraid of them," he said. "They will go away, now that I am
safe, and you will not see them again."
He leaned back, closed his eyes, and, although Ham asked him more questions—Monk also tried his
hand at inquiring—they got no results. The golden man simply lying, conscious and composed, seeming
to care nothing about them or their questions. The nurse finally shooed them out of the hospital, saying,
"After all, no telling how long he had been swimming in the sea before we found him."
In the corridor, Ham asked, "What do you think, Monk?"
Monk became indignant. "How the hell do I know what to think?" he growled.
THE sea next morning was calm, so Monk and Ham breakfasted on the private sun deck—they had one
of the high-priced suites, with a private inclosed sun deck adjoining—under a sky that was the deep,
cloudless, blue color of steel. They could look out over a sea of navy corduroy to the horizon. Smoke
from the funnels trailed back like a black tail astern, and there was a lean, mile-long wedge of wake.
Ham had orange juice, toast, delicate marmalade, a kipper. Monk had a steak, eggs, hot biscuits, four
kinds of jam. The breakfast steward was pouring coffee when Dr. John Parsons, the ship physician,
arrived.
Dr. Parsons grinned wryly. "Remember that radiogram we talked about last night?"
Monk nodded.
"Well, I sent it," the physician said. "And I got an answer a few minutes ago."
"What did the answer say?" Monk asked seriously.
"I had bought the villa."
Monk peered at his coffee cup as if it was a strange animal. "Now—how do you figure this man we
found in the ocean knew that?"
The physician jerked at his coat lapels impatiently. "I wish you would figure that out," he said.
After Dr. Parsons had gone, Monk and Ham drank coffee in silence. There seemed to be no words. This
verbal drought persisted while they fed their pets. The pets were a pig and a chimpanzee. The pig, named
Habeas Corpus, was Monk’s pet; the chimp, Chemistry, belonged to Ham. Both animals were freaks of
their respective species, Habeas Corpus being mostly snout, ears, legs and an inquiring disposition.
Chemistry did not look like chimp, ape, baboon, orang, or monkey—he was an anthropological freak.
Chemistry did look remarkably like Monk, which was one of the reasons why Monk did not care for the
animal.
Ham broke the silence. "How long did you hang your head out of the porthole after I went to bed last
night?"
"Last night—you mean when I was looking at that glowing stuff in the water?" Monk asked.
"Yes. How long did the glow stay in the water around the ship?"
"Until about an hour before dawn," Monk confessed.
"It followed the ship all the time up until then?" Ham demanded.
"Yes."
"How did it disappear?"
"It just faded away."
"How fast was the ship going all that time?"
"Over twenty knots. Practically top speed."
"How do you explain that?"
"The top speed, you mean?"
"No, the luminous stuff following the ship."
摘要：

TheGoldenManADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THESUPERNATURAL?ChapterII.THINGSTOWONDERABOUT?ChapterIII.THEWEIRD?ChapterIV.THEUPSETPITCHER?ChapterV.THEFIFTHCOLUMN?ChapterVI.THEBROKENFRAME?ChapterVII.THELASTMINUTE?ChapterVIII.WAT...

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