Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 073 - The Freckled Shark

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THE FRECKLED SHARK
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE TOUGH LUCK OF JEP DEE
? Chapter II. THE WAMPUS-CAT
? Chapter III. THE DIRTY TRICK
? Chapter IV. THE MISSING MAN
? Chapter V. IMPULSIVE MR. HENRY PEACE
? Chapter VI. THE NOSE BUMPER
? Chapter VII. FLORIDA RACE
? Chapter VIII. BAT BRAWL
? Chapter IX. SCRAMBLE FOR JEP DEE
? Chapter X. PEOPLE IN DUNGEONS
? Chapter XI. THE VIOLENT MR. PEACE
? Chapter XII. THE BRONZE MAN
? Chapter XIII. SEÑOR STEEL
? Chapter XIV. HAVENS—CROOKS
? Chapter XV. SHARK WITH FRECKLES
? Chapter XVI. MUD
? Chapter XVII. HORROR CACHE
? Chapter XVIII. WHEN DEAD MEN FIGHT
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE TOUGH LUCK OF JEP DEE
MATECUMBE is one of the largest of the string of islands extending south from the tip of Florida and called the
Florida Keys.
Jep Dee came to Matecumbe. He stayed two weeks and nothing out of the ordinary happened, except that he did a lot
of crawdadding—every day, once in the morning and once in the evening, Jep Dee went hunting crawfish.
That is, he pretended to go for crawfish.
The Caribbean lobster—called crawfish—really looks much like a crawdad from a Missouri creek, although it is served
in restaurants and cafeterias and called "Florida lobster"; and there are recorded instances where these tropical
lobsters have weighed fifteen pounds, which is fully as large as the regular Northern lobster. But it is always called by
the natives, crawfish. Properly cooked, the tropical lobster, or crawfish, makes a very savory, succulent and appetizing
viand.
True, Jep Dee never ate any of the crawfish he caught.
As a matter of fact—but that was a secret—he never caught any crawfish. He bought them from an old cracker who
lived on a nearby island. The old cracker made a living, such as it was, by crawfishing for the market
Jep Dee never made any effort to catch a crawfish.
He did tell a lot of lies about how he caught them. He would tell how he reached into coral holes and under ledges in
the daytime and pulled the big ones out.
He told how he sculled his boat over the reefs at night with a gasoline lantern burning in the bow, until the eyes of the
crawfish gleamed like the eyes of cats in automobile headlights along a road at night, after which he gigged them with
a little three-tined spear. He was a liar. All he ever gigged was his leg, by accident, one night.
Jep Dee had a nose and fists that looked as if they’d had accidents in the past. He had a mouth that never said much;
it had thin lips. Suns had burned him. Sea brine had turned his hide to leather. He was about a foot shorter than an
average man, also a foot wider.
One night Jep Dee got drunk and said he could whip his weight in wild cats. There were no wild cats available, but he
did very well with four tough crackers and three big yacht sailors who got tired of his chest-beating and tied into him.
They still talk about that fight on Matecumbe; it’s the main topic of conversation. The main topic used to be the big
hurricane of 1934.
Jep Dee paid fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for the boat—twelve feet long, cypress-planked, rusty iron
centerboard, two oars, a ragged, dirty sail—in which he went "crawfishing."
He came to Matecumbe, and every day for two weeks he went out and came back and said he had been crawdadding,
until finally he found what he was looking for.
Jep Dee went out on one of his usual nightly crawdad hunts, and found what he sought, and never came back.
A COLLEGE boy in a yawl was the next person to see Jep Dee. This was weeks later.
At first, the college boy thought he was seeing a wad of drifted seaweed lying on a beach, and his second opinion was
that it must be a log. Fortunately, he put the yawl tiller over and went in to look.
The college boy was sailing down to Dry Tortugas to see the flock of flamingos, birds that are getting about as scarce
as buffaloes. He was on vacation. He was just passing a tiny coral island about sixty miles from Key West, Florida.
The island had no vegetation—it was almost as naked as Jep Dee.
Jep Dee could not talk enough to give his name. So he became, in the newspapers, "an unidentified man."
The only thing Jep Dee wore was a rope about four feet long and an inch thick. It was tied to his neck. Not with a
hangman’s knot, however. From head to foot he was a mass of blisters and sores, the result of exposure to terrific
tropical sun and salt water, and the fact that the crabs had not waited until he was dead before starting to eat him.
He had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no finger nails. These items had been plucked off.
Also, Jep Dee seemed to be insane.
He had just enough strength to kick the college boy in the face; and while the astonished young alumnus sprawled on
his back, Jep Dee got up and ran. His sense of direction was bad, and he dashed into the sea, where he floundered
until the college boy caught him.
They had quite a fight. Jep Dee had no strength, but he knew all the evil tricks of brawl fighters, many of which didn’t
require much power.
Jep Dee did much yelling during the struggle. Most of it was incoherent, but now and then a phrase was
understandable. Once he screeched:
"Damn you, Horst! You go back to the island and tell Señor Steel—"
Just what he wanted a man named Horst to tell one named Señor Steel was unintelligible. The fight went on, in water
about waist-deep. Once more, Jep Dee spoke understandable words.
"I’ve seen men being tortured to death before," he screamed, "but the way these—"
He did not finish that sentence, either.
The college boy got him overpowered, rolled him into the dinghy and rowed out to the yawl and spread him under the
cockpit awning. Jep Dee lay limp and sucked in breath, making weak whistling sounds. It seemed remarkable that he
should be alive.
"Hey, fellow," the college boy said, "you have had some tough luck, haven’t you? How are your eyes? Can you see
me?"
As the doctor explained, later, Jep Dee couldn’t see anything. He was temporarily blinded.
"Who is this Horst?" the college boy asked. "And who is Señor Steel?"
No answer.
"What about men being tortured to death?" inquired the young man. "What did you mean by that?"
Jep Dee went on breathing with whistles.
"You’re pretty far gone, old boy," the college boy said kindly. "I’ll untie that rope from your neck, and you’ll feel
better."
The college boy took hold of the rope, and Jep Dee began to fight again. He fought with a whimpering desperation,
wildly and unceasingly, as long as the other made any attempt to get the rope loose.
Jep Dee wanted to keep that rope around his neck more than he wanted to keep alive.
THE yawl sailed into Key West, and they put Jep Dee in a hospital that stood in a nice part of town in a grove of palm
trees.
"Exposure," the doctors said. But this was before they looked more closely at Jep Dee. After a better examination, they
stared at each other in bewilderment.
"Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes have been—pulled out," one doctor said.
"And fingernails plucked off," another stated.
"Take the rope off him," said the head doctor.
So Jep Dee began to fight again. He struck at them, and although his eyes were swollen shut, so that he couldn’t see,
his hands managed to find a tray of medicines; and he threw bottles at the spots where he imagined doctors would be
until he grew so weak that his most furious heaves barely got the bottles over the edge of the hospital bed.
"Mental trouble," the head doctor said. "Thinks he has to keep that rope around his neck."
"What’ll we do about it?"
"Humor him. Let him keep it for a while. The man is in very bad shape, and there’s no need of exciting him by taking
away his rope. I doubt if he lives."
But Jep Dee did live. He lay on the cot on his back, and during the hours when he was awake, he stared fixedly at
things in the room, as if he were trying to see only them, and not something that his mind kept trying to resurrect.
For days, he did not sleep. Sleep-producing drugs seemed to have no effect. And when, finally, he did sleep, a
nightmare seemed to come upon him at once and he kept making mewing sounds of horror.
He got better.
"Now," the head doctor said, "we can untie that silly rope from his neck."
Three doctors and a nurse got messed up in this attempt before it came to an end with Jep Dee still in possession of
the rope, which he kept tied around his neck. It was a thick rope, and when he slept he kept it coiled neatly on his
chest, like a snake.
They had not yet identified Jep Dee.
Off a drinking glass they took his fingerprints, distorted prints, because his fingertips had swollen and festered as a
result of the plucked-off nails. They sent these to the Key West police, also to the headquarters of the State police at
Tallahassee, and to the department of justice in Washington, and from the latter place they got a telegraphic answer
that read:
OUR RECORDS SHOW MAN’S NAME JEP DEE. RECENTLY SENTENCED TO BE SHOT IN CENTRAL AMERICAN
REPUBLIC OF BLANCA GRANDE. SAVED BY INTERVENTION OF AMERICAN CONSUL. UNDERSTAND
PRESIDENT-DICTATOR OF BLANCA GRANDE HAS STANDING OFFER OF
TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-DOLLAR REWARD FOR DEATH OF JEP DEE. IF REWARD OFFER IN ANY WAY
RESPONSIBLE FOR PRESENT CONDITION OF JEP DEE, AMERICAN GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO BE
INTERESTED BECAUSE IT IS ALREADY NOT ON GOOD TERMS WITH PRESIDENT-DICTATOR OF BLANCA
GRANDE.
After this telegram came from the department of justice, they questioned Jep Dee. He could now talk. That is, he had
been asking for food and swearing at the doctors.
"Go to hell!" he said.
"If the president-dictator of some South American country ordered you tortured," the doctor said, "they want to know
about it in Washington."
"You heard me!" Jep Dee snarled.
"But you should tell—"
"It’s none of your damn business," Jep Dee said.
"But—"
"G’wan away!"
"You might at least let us remove that rope—"
"Scram! Vamoose!"
IN the dark and quiet hours of that night, Jep Dee reached under his pillow and got a pair of scissors—small scissors
which a nurse had used to snip off his innumerable bandages when dressings were changed and which Jep Dee had
stolen and hidden. With the scissors, Jep Dee carefully cut the rope loose from his neck.
He did not cut the knot in the rope. He untied it. With infinite care—and pain too, because of his missing fingernails.
The untying took almost an hour. Just before he finished untying it, he listened intently and looked all around, taking
great precautions not to be observed.
Twisted between the rope strands, in that part of rope which had been tied in the knot, where it could be discovered
only when the rope was untied and untwisted, was a piece of dried shark skin.
The shark skin was freckled.
Whether the shark which was original owner of the skin had been freckled, or whether the freckled aspect of the shark
skin came from some other cause, was impossible to ascertain at a glance.
Jep Dee was still quite blind. He fingered the piece of shark skin carefully and caressingly, as if he enjoyed feeling of it.
He did something which no one had heard him do before. He giggled. Not hysterical giggling, nor mad; just the elated
chuckle of a man who had put something over.
He got out of the white bed. He was stronger than anyone had thought. He went to the window and dropped the
scissors outside, listening carefully to see how far they fell, and by this, concluded that the window was on the first
floor. He crawled out, dropped to the ground and felt his way through the grove of palms until he fell over a low
hedge, beyond which was a sidewalk.
Jep Dee wore white hospital pajamas. He walked two blocks, feeling his way. Because Key West, Florida, was a winter
resort, it was not unusual for people to be seen on the streets in beach pajamas, or suits of slacks that looked very like
pajamas. The white hospital pajamas of Jep Dee attracted no attention.
He walked until he heard footsteps approaching, when he stopped and listened. Heavy footsteps. A man’s.
Jep Dee said, "I’m not walking in my sleep. I’m a blind man. Will you help me to the post office?"
"The post office is closed at this time of night," reminded the man Jep Dee had met.
"I know," Jep Dee said. "I want you to stop me at a drugstore and loan me a dime for an envelope, a sheet of paper and
a stamp."
The man laughed pleasantly, said, "Sure, I’ll accommodate you," and took Jep Dee to a drugstore, where he got paper,
envelope and stamp, then to the post office.
Jep Dee could write legibly without the aid of his eyes, but it must have been agony without his fingernails. On the
paper he scrawled:
SHARK SKIN TELLS EVERTHING
He folded the piece of freckled shark skin inside the paper, inserted it in the envelope, and addressed the missive to:
Miss Rhoda Haven
Tower Apartments
New York City
While Jep Dee was licking the stamps and sticking them on the envelope and putting the envelope in the mail
slot—the letter went air mail—the good Samaritan who had led him to the post office went out and called a policeman,
because he could see that Jep Dee was the next thing to a dead man, and had no business up and running around. The
cop came.
Jep Dee got the idea the cop intended to retrieve the letter which he had mailed, so there was a rousing fight there in
the Key West post office, before they got Jep Dee back to the hospital.
News of the mêlée got to the papers, and a reporter came and took a picture of Jep Dee.
Chapter II. THE WAMPUS-CAT
BY the barest margin, the story—picture included—caught the final edition of the morning newspaper, the one that
the newsboys sold on the streets around eight o’clock, to people who were going to work.
However, one newspaper was purchased by a man who did not happen to be going to work. He had been up all night
raising hell, as a matter of fact, and was going out to a drugstore—before he went to bed—to buy a box of aspirin,
experience having taught him how his head might feel when he awakened.
He looked at the Jep Dee story and forgot all about aspirin.
"Damn!" he croaked.
He put his head back and ran like a pickaninny who had been walking through a lonesome graveyard at dark midnight
when he heard a deep groan. He got out in the street and ran, because people were in his way on the sidewalk. He
bounded aboard a ritzy, streamlined cabin cruiser moored to one of the yacht docks.
He fell down a companionway into the cruiser cabin in his haste.
Half a dozen men were in the cruiser cabin. They began laughing.
"Horst is seeing things!" one man chuckled.
"After the way he drank last night, I don’t wonder," said another.
The man who had been in the market for aspirin—Horst—lay on the cabin floor and panted and glared.
Horst had the look of being twin to the devil. Twin to the pictures that depict the devil, at least. Horst was a little
heavier than the devil, thicker through the neck, possibly not so tall, and did not have quite the same pointed dog ears
with which artists equip their devil pictures. He was a rather brown devil.
"Stop that laughing!" Horst snarled.
The mirth died. Suddenly. As if ice water had been dumped on the chucklers.
Horst got up and took a gun out of his clothing, a large gun that was as black as the murder-mood in Horst’s eyes.
"Who thinks this is funny?" he asked gutturally.
No one said anything. For a minute, terror walked around and around on feather-light feet.
At last a man took hold of his courage and said, "We came to Key West to throw a party and celebrate the last of Jep
Dee. Nobody meant anything when they laughed, Horst."
The men had been a little drunk. They were shivering sober now.
Horst said, "Listen to me."
He didn’t need to tell them to do that.
"Jep Dee is alive," Horst said.
TEN minutes later, the occupants of the cabin cruiser had scattered to check on the newspaper story. None of them
had slept, for they had caroused the previous night through, but now there were no thoughts about sleep. Some went
to the post office where they stood around looking innocent and asking casual questions.
Horst and another man went to the hospital, where Horst told a glib story about a pal of his who resembled the
published picture of Jep Dee, a ruse that got him a close look at the blind castaway whom the college boy had found
on a desert island.
Horst stood looking down at Jep Dee, and he put a hand in his pocket, resting it on the black gun. But there were too
many doctors around. Not to mention two policemen who stood out in the hall. The cops were asking a doctor when
Jep Dee would be able to answer questions. It seemed that Jep Dee had fainted and not yet revived.
Horst went back to the big, sleek, fast cabin cruiser.
His men joined him.
"It’s Jep Dee, all right," Horst snarled. He looked more devillike than ever. "The sharks didn’t get him. He must have
made it by swimming."
One of the men who had gone to the post office reported, "I talked to the guy who led Jep Dee to the post office. Jep
Dee mailed something in an envelope."
"Mailed what?"
"It looked," the man said, "like a piece of freckled shark skin."
"Like what?"
"A chunk of hide off a freckled shark. That’s the best description I could get, and this guy who led Jep Dee to the post
office had a good memory."
"Oh, damn!"
Horst made unpleasant faces while he thought.
"You say the guy that led Jep Dee had a good memory," he continued. "Good enough to remember the address on the
envelope? Or did he see it?"
"He saw the address."
Horst scowled. "Well?"
"The piece of freckled shark skin," the man explained, "went to Miss Rhoda Haven, Tower Apartments, New York
City."
Horst acted as if he had taken a hard hammer blow between the eyes. His mouth fell open slackly, his arms dropped,
and he sank on a transom seat.
Small waves hit the boat hull and made the sounds of a kid with an all-day sucker, sea gulls circled around outside and
gave their rather hideous I-feel-like-I’m-going-to-die squawks, and inside the cabin the boat clock clicked steadily.
"Damn, this is bad!" Horst croaked.
Suddenly he bounded to his feet.
"Call the airport," he yelled. "Reserve places for all of us on the first plane to New York."
"But what about Jep Dee?"
Horst said, "He’s helpless. He won’t be leaving the hospital. We’ll leave a man to watch him. Hutch, you do that."
"Any preference about how I watch Jep Dee while you’re gone?" Hutch asked.
"Use your judgment," Horst snapped. "Call the airport, somebody."
"You have to go to Miami," a man reminded him, "to catch the regular air line."
"Then charter a fast private plane!" Horst yelled.
WHILE one of his men was finding a plane and chartering the craft, Horst paid a visit to the cable office. He spent
some time composing a cablegram, which he dispatched.
The cable was in code, and there was almost two pages of it.
The plane they rented was fast, so they ate dinner that evening in the restaurant at the airport where they landed on
the outskirts of New York City. The dinner was grim. All of them were worried, Horst most of all.
They were dressed in dark, discreet business suits, the coats of which were cut full under the armpits so as not to
reveal the firearms that rested in shoulder holsters. They spoke little.
Two of them, who had a distinct accent that marked them as South Americans, spoke not at all when there was any
stranger near enough to overhear. Horst and the other two spoke excellent English, so much so that it was difficult,
even after a conversation with them, to say whether they were native Americans.
There was an air of viciousness about almost everything they did. They did not have to act vicious. They were
vicious.
From the airport, Horst went to the main New York cable office. He asked for a message for Jerry Shinn, stated
convincingly that this was his name.
There was a cablegram, and it was in code; had been sent from the South American republic of Blanca Grande, was in
answer to the message Horst had sent from Key West.
Riding uptown in a taxicab, Horst translated the cablegram. It said:
GET THAT FRECKLED SHARK SKIN, THEN WIPE OUT THE HAVENS AND EVERYONE CONNECTED WITH
THEM.
STEEL
The men gazed at the message dubiously.
"Get the shark skin, eh?"
"And wipe out the Havens."
"That last order," Horst said grimly, "may be easier to give than to carry out." He leaned back and thought in silence
for a few moments, and what he was thinking about must have been unpleasant, because he shivered.
"That Tex Haven," he said, "is an old wampus-cat."
Chapter III. THE DIRTY TRICK
THE "wampus-cat" being an imaginary creature, its exact measurements and specifications and qualities are
necessarily indefinite. It may be long or short, high or low; and it may bark or mew or squall, as the circumstances
require. But generally the qualifications state that it is an eat-’em-up kind of an animal.
But it was hard to look at Tex Haven and imagine a wampus-cat of any kind.
The man looked mild. He had a long face that was as benign as the countenance of a village parson. He had a long
body that looked as if it had been constructed to fit inside a judge’s robes. His teeth showed a lot, his brownish hair
was always tangled, the light of sunny Ireland was always in his blue eyes; and one looked at him and naturally
expected him to laugh and chuckle more than he was silent. In truth, he rarely spoke a word; and when he did, it was a
low-voiced one.
Tex Haven spoke gently to men, spoke loudly and pleasantly to babies, and hardly ever spoke to women. He kept
away from high windows, looked four or five times each way before he crossed a street. He never drank. He swore
terribly. He smoked a corncob pipe.
He did not get a letter during the time—six weeks—he had lived at the Tower Apartments, until the missive came from
Jep Dee. Tex Haven got it out of the mail box.
"Rhoda!" he called gently.
His daughter came.
She was a tall girl, as long and gentle-looking as her father; but whereas old Tex Haven’s construction ran a bit too
much to bones, the daughter was streamlined.
Her hair was deep and coppery and always perfectly waved, her eyes were gentle, her mouth sweet and kind. There
was a Madonnalike gentleness about her face. She dressed well, but with almost nunlike severity. She never drank.
She swore only when it was necessary. She did not smoke, and whenever she got hold of one of old Tex Haven’s
corncob pipes, she invariably took a hammer to it—then threw away the pieces.
"Jep Dee," Tex Haven said, and extended the letter.
Rhoda Haven read Jep Dee’s letter.
Rhoda Haven had degrees from four of the world’s greatest universities. She had explored the Inca country of South
America, and written a book which was used as a text by archaeologists. She had nearly lost her life in experiments
with a terrible tropic fever, and had come out with a cure for the fever, something that had previously baffled
scientists. She had written a treatise on governmental administrative science that would probably win a Nobel prize.
A great sculptor had said that her head was the perfect type of patrician beauty.
The president-dictator of the South American republic of Blanca Grande had offered one hundred thousand dollars to
anyone who would bring him Rhoda Haven’s head—without body attached.
"FROM Key West," Rhoda Haven said of the letter, "with no name signed."
Tex Haven sucked thoughtfully on his corncob pipe.
"Be from Jep Dee, figures like," he said.
"I think so, too."
They examined the shark skin. It was thin, so it must be the skin off a very young shark. It was also stiff, and had a
tendency to curl. The freckle spots were not regular, but scattered; some of them were rather large and others were
small. All freckles were shades of deep-brown or black.
Tex Haven said, "Mean anythin’ special to you?"
"Not a thing."
"Here, neither."
"But the note," Rhoda Haven pointed out, "says that the shark skin explains everything."
Tex Haven took his corncob pipe out of his teeth and gave it a look of mild reproach.
"Kinda looks like there might be a headache comin’ up," he said.
The telephone began to ring. It rang steadily. Tex Haven went over to it, an ambling, peaceful-looking tower of a man,
picked up the instrument, said, "Hello, hello?" several times, then stood holding the instrument and looking mild and
patient.
"Tarnatin’ thing just goes on ringin’," he said.
The telephone rang and rang. About five minutes later, knuckles tapped the door politely.
"Yes," Rhoda Haven said.
A voice outside the door said, "Telephone man. There’s something wrong with your phone that makes it ring steadily.
May we come in and fix it?"
Gentle-looking old Tex Haven started to open the door.
His daughter grabbed his arm, breathed, "No!"
To the man on the other side of the door, the girl said, "Just a minute, until I get into a robe. I’m taking a bath."
Tex Haven knocked the fire out of his corncob, poured the smoldering tobacco into a tray, put the pipe in his pocket.
"‘Twould have fooled me," he said in a voice so low that it was hardly audible.
Rhoda Haven said, "I may be wrong. But I think trouble of this kind only originates in the mechanical ringer at the
switchboard. I doubt if it would be our instrument."
Each day since coming to the Tower Apartments, one of their first morning acts had been to carefully pack all their
belongings in two handbags.
Tex and Rhoda Haven moved swiftly, got the two bags, whipped to a window and went down a fire escape. From the
bottom of the fire escape, they dropped into a garden where the shrubbery was thick and where pigeons fluttered and
cooed.
Three men stood up in the bushes. They held guns.
One gun-holder said, "We figured the phone gag might not work, in which case you’d maybe be going this way."
Tex Haven eyed them mildly.
"You-uns downright serious about this?" he asked.
"What do you think?" one said. "Horst sent us. We want that piece of shark skin."
Tex Haven said, "Waal, in such case—"
QUITE a number of people had seen old Tex Haven go into a gun fight at one time or another, and not many of them
had ever been able to explain where he got his guns. There was apparently some kind of magic about it. One minute
the mild-looking old codger’s hands would be empty—next they were full of spouting iron.
Tex Haven fired once with his right hand and once with his left. One man barked and turned around from the force of a
bullet in his shoulder. A second man stood for a moment very stiff and dead, hit between the eyes, before he fell.
Rhoda Haven doubled down, scooped a handful of soft dirt, sent it toward the face of the third man. He snarled, tried
to turn his head from the flying dirt and shoot the girl at the same time. His shot echoes gobbled into the echoes of Tex
Haven’s shots. The bullet missed the girl.
Tex Haven flicked his guns at the man.
A fourth man came into the garden fifty yards away. It was Horst. He lifted a long-barreled revolver deliberately.
Tex Haven saw Horst aiming and suddenly flattened. The man Haven had been about to shoot ran away. Tex Haven
let him go; Haven seemed to have more respect for Horst’s marksmanship than desire for the life of the running man.
More men came into the garden. The place began to convulse with ripping shot crashes.
Tex and Rhoda Haven crawled slowly and carefully. Old Tex kept his gun ready. Neither seemed particular excited, and
each dragged one of the suitcases. They got behind a fountain which was spouting three streams of water into a
concrete bowl that overflowed into a fake brook, that trickled across the garden and eventually vanished into a sewer
through a grille. Tex and Rhoda Haven got into the brook, were very wet by the time they reached the grille.
Horst and his men had lost track of them. When the Havens came up, they had the advantage of surprise. Horst had
climbed on a garden bench, was staring. He had nerve, at least. But he flung himself off the bench when old Tex Haven
leaped up and fired.
Shot sound again slammed through the garden. Bullets knocked red dust off bricks, broke two windows, frightened the
pigeons anew.
Tex and Rhoda Haven dived into a narrow passage that led to the back street. They ran down the street.
Inside the apartment house, residents were very quiet, although occasionally one stole a furtive look from a window. A
woman had been screaming, but had stopped. The snarling sirens of police cars were already approaching.
The Havens got into a subway and took a southbound train.
THERE was no trace of excitement in the manner of Tex Haven or his daughter. Sitting beside her suitcase, the girl idly
contemplated the allurements of a tooth paste as set forth by a car poster, and old Tex Haven even purchased a tabloid
newspaper from a newsboy who was working the subway train, and calmly scanned it.
Once Tex Haven said in a low voice, "Nobody ‘cept Jep Dee knowed we was livin’ at them Tower Apartments."
"Jep never told Horst," Rhoda Haven said quickly.
"Betcher life he didn’t. Horst likely learned from that letter. He ‘peared to know a piece of shark skin was in it."
They changed subway trains three times, shifted to taxicabs and used four different cabs.
The hotel to which they went eventually was small and respectable, had a proprietor notable for the size of his
stomach and the proportions of his black mustache, who nearly fell over when he saw his guests, then exploded a
delighted, "Tex Haven, you old bobcat in a rabbit skin!"
"Professor Smith and daughter be the names," Tex Haven said mildly.
"Oh, ho! So you’re charming snakes again?"
"Bein’ charmed, more like."
摘要：

THEFRECKLEDSHARKADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THETOUGHLUCKOFJEPDEE?ChapterII.THEWAMPUS-CAT?ChapterIII.THEDIRTYTRICK?ChapterIV.THEMISSINGMAN?ChapterV.IMPULSIVEMR.HENRYPEACE?ChapterVI.THENOSEBUMPER?ChapterVII.FLORIDARACE?Chap...

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