Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 077 - The Merchants of Disaster

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MERCHANTS OF DISASTER
A Doc Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. A MYSTERY MESSAGE
? Chapter II. A CALL FOR HELP
? Chapter III. VISITORS ARRIVE
? Chapter IV. A FEMININE RAIDER
? Chapter V. A KIDNAPING
? Chapter VI. THE THIN MAN LEADS
? Chapter VII. MONK FINDS HIS FIGHT
? Chapter VIII. DOC GETS A MESSAGE
? Chapter IX. TRAPPED
? Chapter X. A BLAZING TOMB
? Chapter XI. SNOW MEN
? Chapter XII. DEATH STRIKES AGAIN
? Chapter XIII. KILLERS AT WORK
? Chapter XIV. A STRANGE TRAP
? Chapter XV. DEATH SENTENCE
? Chapter XVI. AN AMBUSH FAILS
? Chapter XVII. CHEMISTRY CAUSES TROUBLE
? Chapter XVIII. A SECRET REVEALED
? Chapter XIX. MERCHANTS OF DISASTER
? Chapter XX. A NEW REMEDY NEEDED
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. A MYSTERY MESSAGE
JOE GOOPY encountered it first. Two of his companions saw it happen. Those companions didn’t
believe what they saw and took the attitude that it didn’t matter much anyway. Joe probably would have
agreed with them. He was rather tired of living.
The three were making their way to the hobo jungles outside Washington. Not one of them was sober.
Panhandling had been better than usual. They had bought some canned heat, squeezed the alcohol out
and gulped it down.
That was one reason Joe’s companions believed their eyes had deceived them. They had seen strange
things before when under the influence of canned heat.
It was just after dusk when it happened. Joe had plunged on ahead of his drinking partners, was weaving
his way along the railroad tracks.
Joe’s once tall figure was bent. His faded blue eyes were blank. He kept putting one foot in front of the
other only because his subconscious mind told him to do so.
Then he paused suddenly. His skinny arms beat the air about him and he tried to run.
Behind him, his two companions had halted, mouths open. There was a faint burning odor in the air, and
a sight such as they had never seen before directly ahead of them.
A faint cry came from Joe. It was a strangled sort of cry, apparently for help. It shut off in mid-beat as if
strong fingers had been applied to his neck.
His companions turned and ran. It was some minutes before their courage returned enough for them to
come back and investigate.
When they did, everything was calm and peaceful. Even Joe looked calm and peaceful. There were no
marks of violence of any kind on his body. But he was very dead.
The body was picked up later that same night. The deputy coroner who examined it did his job hurriedly.
The death of one human derelict more or less meant nothing to him.
He did note on the record that Joe Goopy’s death was not homicide. Then he wrote "acute alcoholism"
as the real cause, and let it go at that.
Being young and with a fair amount of curiosity, he wondered just what had killed the aged tramp, but he
wasn’t curious enough to perform an autopsy. Had Joe’s companions told their story there might have
been an investigation. As it was, the death was left a mystery.
LES QUINAN was confronted with a mystery also—a minor mystery, he believed at first. And to begin
with, he paid but little attention.
In fact, he had noticed the queer light signals for several days before his interest was aroused. Even then
he was only mildly intrigued.
That is, until he discovered he was the only one who saw the signals at all!
At that, he had no inkling of what he was about to discover or his actions might have been different. In
which case the course of many lives would have been altered. A great number of those lives probably
would have been saved.
Les Quinan didn’t know about the death of Joe Goopy, of course. But if he had he wouldn’t have
connected that death with the queer light flashes.
The flashes, in themselves, seemed insignificant enough. Actually, they appeared only as long streaks of
sunlight.
But sunlight does not originate in the fifth floor of a Washington office building. And besides, Les Quinan
could not see sunlight anyhow. He was snow-blind.
Big, dark-colored glasses covered his eyes. He paced his office restlessly, unable to read, cursing the
impulse that had taken him on a skiing trip and his own lack of caution which had resulted in the
snow-blindness.
Les Quinan was a patent attorney, and a good one. But he needed his eyes to read law books and to
draw up legal documents.
Those eyes were improving, but he still could barely see well enough to get around at all.
But he could see the queer light flashes!
The surprise of that was so great that unconsciously he yanked the dark-colored glasses from his eyes,
trying for a better look.
Without the glasses he could see nothing at all!
When the significance of that penetrated, the lawyer almost forgot his irritation. He called his secretary to
see if she could see the strange lights. She couldn’t.
There still would have been time for the attorney to have prevented much of what followed if he had
obeyed his first surge of interest and investigated. He didn’t.
He might be excused for that. He had expected an important client to arrive several days before. The
client still hadn’t appeared. Quinan was worried. He would have been more than worried had he known
how much his client was involved in what was to happen.
It wasn’t until next day that he turned his attention back to the queer flashes. Then he noticed they were
of different timing. Some were short and some were long.
For the first time he realized that signals of some kind were being sent.
Before he could do anything about it, the flashes stopped. But now, Quinan was fully aroused. He
grabbed a handful of paper clips, paced back and forth flipping those clips absently at an old-fashioned
cuspidor, but keeping his eyes on the fifth-story window across the way.
THE flashes had seemed to shoot upward and out at a slight angle. They would, he estimated, miss all
buildings, continue on up into the air.
A frown creased his forehead. He turned, tossed another paper clip and nodded with satisfaction as a
metallic cling rewarded his effort.
If the flashes merely went on out into space, how could they be received at the other end, that is if they
were really intended to be signals?
Still frowning, he spun back to the window. He could barely distinguish the outline of the building across
the street, but light streaks suddenly shot before his eyes.
Those light streaks were going on and off with great rapidity.
A gasp came from the lawyer’s lips. He whipped a pencil out of his pocket, then swore helplessly.
The next moment and he had bellowed for his secretary. She came on the run. Her eyes opened wide as
her employer began to dictate furiously. What he said apparently made no sense, but she obeyed orders
and put down letters as Quinan barked them. The letters read:
QPWDZ BRHYZ BBOPD WICGH
WGBUF QXPUM WBEIE CHAUK
EBRQS LTGJP RINDU LYLMF
OETYM FINDP BDTCZ VPTQD
BMSSS
The flashes stopped. Les Quinan was fairly jumping up and down in his excitement.
"Transcribe that, write the letters out large, then read them over to me," he barked.
Quinan had been a radio operator on a subchaser during the World War. He had found it easy to read
the letters, being sent in international code. And during recent years he had become interested in cipher
codes.
The one in which the message had been broadcast was a mediumly difficult one, but the first two words
had caught his attention and had given him a clue. Those words were not in cipher and they were:
"Death Today!"
ON the fifth floor of the building across the street, a tall, slender, well-dressed man turned away from a
window. His features were almost handsome, his smile attractive, but his black eyes were hard.
"I believe you were right about that lawyer," he said calmly.
His companion grunted, raised his eyebrows slightly.
The tall man nodded. "I’ll take care of it." Still smiling, he left the room.
Les Quinan was unaware that his interest had attracted attention. He probably would have ignored it if he
had known.
His secretary had repeated the sequence of letters he had seen several times. His mind was accustomed
to grasping details.
Pencil in hand, making huge letters and trying hard to see more clearly, he was working with deep
concentration. Slowly, word by word, he was piecing the message together.
His jaw dropped. Perspiration appeared on his forehead. Something was wrong, radically wrong. Yet no
one would believe him if he tried to tell what he knew.
The message he had decoded was too horrible.
For a moment he wondered who that message could have been intended for. No one could see that light,
flashed up into the air. Yet had it been directed at anyone close at hand, a personal call or a telephone
would have served the purpose just as well, probably better.
Then he dismissed that problem from his mind. He had to call help, had to get someone to aid him. He
could call police, or Federal men, but then, if this proved to be a hoax or false alarm, he would be the
subject of ridicule.
But he knew instinctively this wasn’t a false alarm. And if it meant what it said the police and Federal men
probably would be helpless anyway.
Les Quinan was unaware of the passage of time, did not realize that his secretary had gone to lunch, that
he was alone in the office.
Inspiration had struck him. He would call Doc Savage—Clark Savage, Jr. A smile lighted his features.
He should have thought of that before. Doc Savage was the one man for this job. For Doc Savage had
fought mysterious forces before. He had been victorious, and conquered even when the odds were great.
The lawyer swung around, reaching blindly for a telephone.
He heard the door of his office open and close. Dimly, he made out a tall, lean figure approaching him.
"Busy! Can’t see you!" he almost shouted. "Come back some other time!"
His visitor’s slow, unhurried approach did not pause.
The tall man’s eyes flicked over the glasses the lawyer wore, noted the scribbled paper with its group of
letters on the desk. He nodded, almost sadly, as if confirming something that pained him.
"Were you going to telephone someone?" he asked politely. His voice was low, refined.
"Get out, I said," Quinan barked. "I’ve got to get Doc Savage. I’ve—" His lips shut firmly, as if he had
said more than he had intended.
"Ah!" The other’s voice remained low. "So you were going to call the famous adventurer and mental
marvel, the man who spends his life fighting evildoers. How touching."
Les Quinan came to his feet. There had been a subtle change in the other’s tone, a touch of menace. For
the first time the lawyer felt a touch of fear, realized the secret he had learned might be dangerous.
"Will you go?" he snapped. "I—"
The tall man moved, swiftly. Quinan saw the move but faintly. Instinctively, he tried to dodge. Then he
swayed drunkenly for a moment and collapsed to the floor.
His visitor calmly drew a handkerchief, wiped a faint stain of crimson from a long, slender knife.
Still calmly, the tall man gathered up the papers on the lawyer’s desk, put them in his pocket. On his way
out he gathered up the notebook Quinan’s secretary had used in taking his excited dictation.
Chapter II. A CALL FOR HELP
THE story told by Quinan’s secretary had no significance to the police. Even when the girl told them her
notebook was gone, detectives could see no connection between the jumbled letters Quinan had dictated
and his murder.
Since the girl did not know where Quinan had gotten those letters, or what they meant, the detectives
could not be blamed overly much.
They never did connect the murder with what happened at the army proving ground that afternoon.
The proving ground was the center of more than ordinary interest.
The site was used for testing new inventions, new explosives and other developments in warfare.
Theoretically, it was so located that it could not be spied upon by civilians.
Actually, it was possible to see the grounds, although from quite a distance, if high-powered binoculars
were used.
The two men, well hidden, who were watching the activity on the proving ground had high-powered
binoculars. And they appeared just as well pleased that they were considerable distance away.
They were the two who had offices across from that of the late Les Quinan.
Conversation lagged between them. They already knew what was going to occur. They were interested
merely in seeing that everything went as expected. But even their features became more tense as drama
unfolded before them.
At least two hundred soldiers and officers were on the field. They stood at ease, waiting for the test to
begin.
They were not sure just what the test was to be, but rumor had it that they were to try out a new type of
smoke screen. All had gas masks ready to don.
The gas masks really were not needed, the officers had reported, except that the glass in the goggles had
been treated with a special preparation which it was hoped would make it fairly easy to see while passing
through the smoke screen.
What the officers did not add was that intelligence reports were to the effect that a certain power had
developed a combination smoke screen and poison gas, and it was hoped the preparation on the goggles
would enable American troops to combat such an attack should it ever prove necessary.
That the tests were considered important was shown by the number of high army officers present. These
high officials, however, made themselves as inconspicuous as possible. They had withdrawn to a nearby
hill, and also expected to watch the test through field glasses.
Only a slight breeze was blowing. Everything was considered perfect for the business in hand.
The airplane that drifted overhead attracted no attention whatsoever. It was up so high, for one thing, and
its motors could scarcely be heard. For another, thin banks of clouds made it impossible to see from the
ground.
Then the smoke screen tests began.
SMOKE was released suddenly from a dozen points. It was caught in the slight breeze, gradually
covered the big parade ground.
The smoke was dense. It was impossible to see through it with the naked eye. The troops had been
drawn up at one side of the field. Gas masks were adjusted.
Clouds of the thick smoke drifted toward the soldiers, billowed high into the air. Officers gave arm
signals. The troops advanced.
The first passage through the smoke screen was made successfully. The watching high command noticed
that it took the soldiers just fifteen minutes to make the trip.
And the troops came through in perfect skirmish line. Evidently the preparation used on the goggles had
been highly successful.
Then officers signaled briskly. The troops pivoted, reëntered the smoke screen.
That was when the unexpected happened. The first impression the watchers got was that of a receding
picture. Smoke screen, proving ground and all appeared to move backward, rapidly.
The effect was that of watching a movie fadeout, where the camera is drawn back suddenly, changing
from a close-up to a distant view.
Some of the high military officers yanked their field glasses from their eyes. Still the scene seemed to be
dropping backward.
Then gasps came from the officers. A pyrotechnic display of great intensity appeared before them. It
started some fifty feet in the air and continued all the way to the ground.
There was a maze of tiny blue and red sparks. The air was so full of them the smoke screen could hardly
be seen—but the men beneath that smoke screen remained invisible.
The scene might have been one of awe-inspiring beauty had it not been so unexpected and inexplainable.
A cold chill of dread gripped the watching high command. Hands clenched, faces became tense.
Something was wrong, radically wrong.
The strange sparks laced through the smoke screen as if they had been darts of lightning—but lightning
gone mad. The sparks made circles, then seemed to condense into an almost solid sheet of tiny points of
fire. Again they appeared like darting light-signals.
A general shouted a command. The watchers darted for automobiles, racing downward toward the
proving ground.
Minutes went by before they arrived. But the troops remained hidden in the smoke screen.
Soldiers who had been operating the smoke generators leaped into action as the officers arrived. Huge
fans, prepared for the purpose, roared into action.
A strong surge of air swept the field, drove the smoke screen away.
Then the soldiers beneath that screen could be seen. They no longer were marching. They were sprawled
in grotesque positions. Some had snatched the gas masks from their heads. Others apparently had been
clawing at their throats when they went down.
SHARP commands rang out. Ambulances raced to the field. Bewildered doctors started to work. Each
used a different method in trying to revive the more than two hundred victims.
Several of the stricken were revived. But there were not more than half a dozen of these.
The others were dead beyond all hope of saving.
There were no marks on any of the bodies. And despite the display of "fireworks" which the watchers
had seen, not a body was burned or showed any sign of having been near flames.
The survivors could offer little assistance in solving the mystery.
"I just found myself gettin’ faint," one of them reported. "It seemed like I couldn’t breathe all at once.
Then I went down. That’s all I know."
And that was all the medical and laboratory workers had learned late that night.
A thorough test had been made of the type of smoke used in the tests. It was found to be perfectly
harmless, even without a gas mask. And the masks used were tested with every kind of known gas and
found to be good.
Newspapers were making a terrific clamor. The first reports were sensational in the extreme. Some
hinted at a surprise attack by some jealous rival nation.
The army felt it knew better than that. Autopsies showed clearly the cause of death. That was what made
it all so unbelievable.
Stern-faced men met that night in the war department. Lights burned late.
They knew nothing of the deaths either of Hobo Joe or of Les Quinan. Nor did they have an inkling that
Quinan had made a horrible discovery.
But they did reach the same conclusion that the patent attorney had reached.
They decided to call Doc Savage.
"OUR own intelligence services will go to work at once, naturally," one declared. "But we should use
every precaution, make available the services of everyone who might possibly be able to help us."
"It still might have been an accident," a second mused. "Remember, there have been instances in France
where scores have been overcome mysteriously, some dying, in circumstances almost similar."
A bemedaled general snorted. "Nothing mysterious about those events. Fog merely forced poisonous
fumes from factories close to the ground. The people breathed the fumes and collapsed. These men
today were not poisoned."
The war secretary nodded. "I agree. And we will get Doc Savage to aid us."
He reached for a telephone, gave a number.
In New York, on the eighty-sixth floor of a giant skyscraper, a man answered that call.
At first sight, that man did not seem so tall or so unusual. But there was something about him that always
drew a second glance, and that second look proved how erroneous the first impression had been.
He was tall, but so perfectly put together that his height was not noticeable. His skin was a distinctive
bronze, while his hair, combed close to his scalp, was only a slightly darker hue.
But his eyes were his most impressive features. Those eyes were like pools of flake gold, impelling,
magnetic, almost hypnotic.
"Doc Savage speaking," he said. His voice was not loud, but it had a peculiar carrying timbre.
In Washington, the war secretary spoke swiftly. A strange trilling sound filled the office. It came
apparently from no one particular place, but from everywhere. It was a sound Doc Savage always made
when surprised.
Across the room a giant of a man, with huge, bony monstrosities of fists, stirred himself up in his chair and
looked interested.
Colonel John Renwick, known as Renny to his friends, was the only one of Doc’s aids in the office with
him at the time. Renny was a world-famous engineer, one who took pleasure in his work.
Even better than that work, however, he loved the adventures he encountered with Doc Savage. But he
never showed that pleasure. Now, his features drew themselves into stiff, disapproving, puritanical lines.
Doc’s trilling sound had been enough to prove that something was up.
The bronze man spoke softly, returned the telephone to his desk.
"Give me just one guess," Renny grumbled. "I’ll bet it’s about those soldiers who got killed today. We’re
going to get into something."
Doc nodded. "The army," he said quietly, "has found how those men died."
Renny showed a flicker of interest. The stern lines of his face relaxed a trifle. "And that was—"
"They all suffocated," Doc explained gently. "But not from any gas or any other known cause. The army
is sure it was no accident, but deliberate murder."
Chapter III. VISITORS ARRIVE
WORD of the army’s conclusion reached the press. It increased the clamor in the newspapers.
Pacifist organizations claimed the army deliberately was trying to cover up a blunder that had cost the
lives of two hundred men. They charged officers had allowed men to walk into a new and deadly gas
without adequate safeguards.
Militarists were just as far on the other side of the fence. They charged that enemies of foreign powers
had operated a death machine, one that paralyzed the lungs, killing American soldiers wantonly. Had the
United States gone to war with all the countries accused, she would have been fighting more than half the
world.
Scientists were interviewed. They gave as their solemn opinion the statement that the soldiers could not
have been killed, that it was impossible for them to have suffocated in the manner described, and that, as
a matter of scientific fact, they could not be dead.
A mass funeral was scheduled for the soldiers just the same.
And special orders went to all army posts calling for extra precautions. No one knew where the terror
might strike next.
The affair attracted attention in other countries also, particularly those countries whose leaders made
threatening speeches and pompous declarations about "our rights."
Strangely, those leaders quieted for the time. Intelligence departments of the various nations were
instructed to get and learn just what had caused the mysterious deaths.
Doc Savage’s fame was world-wide. Word was sent down the line to keep an eye on the bronze man
and his aids.
Those who received the orders tried to do just this. Certain secretive individuals suddenly manifested
great interest in office space at the building where Doc had his quarters. The investigators were
disappointed. Doc’s offices were deserted.
An effort was made to pick up the trail either of the bronze man or of his five skilled aids. For a time, this
also proved in vain.
Then came a rumor of strange visitors arriving in Washington. The investigators rushed there, sought trace
of those strange visitors.
Two of those who came to the capital did not appear mysterious at all, nor did they seem to be courting
secrecy.
In fact, they attracted much attention.
They came in a battered car. It rattled and clattered exceedingly and was covered with signs indicating it
had once been the property of some college youth.
"Blondes and brunettes enter at their own risk," read a sign on one sagging door. "Redheads should
know better."
The present occupants of the car did not seem interested in female companions of any kind. And
certainly none of Washington’s attractive stenographers showed any heart interest in them.
The driver was a slender man, clad in garments that would have been the despair even of a junk dealer.
They were tattered and torn, as was an ancient felt hat that shaded a dirty face. His companion was no
better dressed. He had the build and expression of a gorilla—not a pleasant, agreeable gorilla, but one in
a bad mood.
The third occupant of the ancient wreck alone appeared presentable, and he was not human. While
bearing a remarkable resemblance to the gorillalike man, this one was without doubt an ape. A bright red
hat was on his head, while he squirmed uncomfortably in a vivid green sweater.
At a crowded corner the clattering car drew up to the curb and came to a stop. Solemnly, the big man
hunched his way to the sidewalk, flipping one end of a chain. The ape leaped out, a tin cup in his hand.
The slender man behind the wheel also slid to the sidewalk, producing a battered hand organ. Without a
word he began turning the crank.
The strains of "The Sidewalks of New York" startled passers-by. The ape danced about clumsily,
bowing and scraping, his red hat in one hand, the tin cup held in the other.
"What’s the second ape doin’ along, he ain’t even dancin’," someone snickered in the crowd.
A crimson flush crept up the face of the gorillalike man. His companion appeared to be having difficulty in
breathing. Several undignified snorts came from him, and he turned the crank of the hand organ more
rapidly.
A burly, red-faced cop pushed his way through the giggling crowd.
"Come on! Get out of here," he roared. "Yuh can’t block traffic this way!"
The gorilla-man looked up pleadingly, "Butta, officer," he whined in a child-like voice, "we gotta makka
da mon—"
摘要：

MERCHANTSOFDISASTERADocAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.AMYSTERYMESSAGE?ChapterII.ACALLFORHELP?ChapterIII.VISITORSARRIVE?ChapterIV.AFEMININERAIDER?ChapterV.AKIDNAPING?ChapterVI.THETHINMANLEADS?ChapterVII.MONKFINDSHISFIGHT?ChapterVIII.DO...

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