Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 070 - The Devil Genghis

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THE DEVIL GENGHIS
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. A MYSTERY MOVING SOUTH
? Chapter II. A MYSTERY IN GOTHAM
? Chapter III. BRONZE MAN TAKEN
? Chapter IV. ESCORT FOR A COFFIN
? Chapter V. CLOWNS ON A SHIP
? Chapter VI. THE FIRE ALARM
? Chapter VII. AT MONTE CARLO
? Chapter VIII. MADMAN VANISHING
? Chapter IX. LONDON GRIM
? Chapter X. THREE STEPS FROM THE ARCTIC
? Chapter XI. JOHN SUNLIGHT’S GHOST?
? Chapter XII. SKY PASSAGE
? Chapter XIII. THE STOP-OFF
? Chapter XIV. THE GENGHIS
? Chapter XV. THE RIVAL GENGHIS
? Chapter XVI. GENGHIS MEETS GENGHIS
? Chapter XVII. SINISTER MOUNTAIN
? Chapter XVIII. A ROOM FULL OF DREAM
? Chapter XIX. DEATH IN BLACK
? Chapter XX. BACK TO FIRE
Chapter I. A MYSTERY MOVING SOUTH
IT was too bad the dog could not talk.
The dog came yelping and kiyoodling across the ice at a dead run. It was an Eskimo dog. The dog stopped in front of
an igloo and had a fit.
The dog seemed to be trying to bite something in the air above it. It kept jumping up and snapping its teeth. For hours
it just sprang high and snapped its jaws.
The Eskimos stood around and wondered what on earth.
Or maybe it would not have helped if the dog could talk.
The Eskimo could talk. It didn’t help in his case.
The Eskimo was a hunter named Kummik. He could speak the Eskimo language, and he could also say, "Hello, baby,
how about a nice juicy kiss?" just as plain as anything.
An explorer with a certain variety of humor had taught him that, and told him it was the proper way to greet a white
man. Kummik could also say, "By Jiminy, you’re big and fat and as ugly as a mud fence!" The explorer had taught
Kummik those words, also, and advised him they were the correct greeting for a white woman.
This Eskimo named Kummik went out hunting on the arctic ice.
It was not particularly cold. A white man, an inhabitant of Missouri, for example, would have thought it was pretty
chilly; but in the estimation of the Eskimos, it was just good hunting weather. Only about fifteen below zero. It was
cloudy and rather dark, for the six-months-long winter had begun. The wind, which was getting a running start up
around the North Pole somewhere, blew hard and scooped up much snow and drove it along in stinging, stifling
clouds, so that the effect was something like a western Kansas dust storm. Except that this was snow.
The Eskimo came back as naked as the day he was born.
He still had his spear.
If he had just been naked, and carrying a spear, the other Eskimos would not have been particularly shocked, although
they might have done some wondering. These Eskimos lived farther north than any others, so no one bothered them,
except a genuine explorer now and then—but only genuine explorers.
The drawing-room explorers never got this far, not only because it was a long way north, but because this spot in the
arctic was surrounded by some very tough traveling. At any rate, the Eskimos had escaped the white man; so they had
escaped modesty.
Hence the Eskimos did not have any modesty to be shocked when their fellow citizen named Kummik came galloping
back to the igloo village without a stitch of clothes—rather, without a hair of clothes, since his garments had been
made of furs.
There was plenty else to shock them.
THE spear Kummik carried was the short type of hunting spear called an oonapik. It was made up of a wood
shaft—wood was very valuable here in the ice wastes—and a point of bone, which was not so valuable. The spear
was used to harpoon ogjuk , the seal, was employed to stick nanook, the bear; and occasionally, it was used to give
little innuks, the kids, a few chastising whacks.
Kummik was using his spear to jab, stab and belabor the air over his head.
Now Kummik had always been a sennayo. A sennayo is a good worker, a family man, an excellent provider. A sennayo
is the equivalent of a good Missouri farmer who is on the school board. And Kummik was a sennayo.
It was unusual for a fellow like Kummik to be stabbing at the air over his head with a spear.
Moreover, there was nothing but air over his head.
It was so strange that a legend was at once made up about it, and will probably go down through time to puzzle and
awe future generations of little innuks.
Kummik, the Eskimo, kept jumping around and wielding his spear. He fought a great battle right there among the
igloos, surrounded by astounded Eskimos. He fought for hours. He seemed unaware of the other Eskimos, and he did
not call on them for help. He went at it on his own. He would jab with his spear, leaping up. Then he would retreat,
holding his spear ready, and suddenly stab again with all his might.
It was comical; but nobody laughed.
The expression on Kummik’s face kept anyone from laughing. The expression was horrible. It consisted of rage,
desperation and utter terror.
Kummik’s fight was so real, but nothing was there for him to fight.
Kummik never uttered a word.
There probably is not a primitive people who do not believe an invisible devil drops around to haunt them
occasionally. In the case of these Eskimos, this undesired fellow was an evil spirit called Tongak.
The existence of Tongak had been vaguely discussed at times by the Eskimos, and he’d been used as bogey man to
frighten little innuks out of wandering off bear hunting with their toy spears.
But here was a grown man fighting Tongak, the evil spirit.
"What will we do about this?"
Decision was simple. Only Kummik saw Tongak, so the spirit devil must be after Kummik alone. Better let him have
Kummik. Better stop Kummik from fighting the devil, before the devil got aggravated about it. Better coöperate with
the devil, and please him, in hopes he would go away.
So the other Eskimos grabbed Kummik, tied him hand and foot, and left him.
Sure enough, very soon the Tongak got Kummik’s spirit, and went away to Eskimoland again. At any rate, Kummik
died.
An American doctor, skeptical about Tongak, would have said Kummik froze to death.
AN American doctor would have done something with Kummik that was probably more terrible than what his fellow
Eskimos did to him.
An American doctor would have put Kummik in an insane asylum. Like the English doctors did to Fogarty-Smith, for
example.
Fogarty-Smith was an aviator, and a capable one, who had a reputation for brave flying, as well as being known as the
man who at one time held the England to Australia speed flying record. He was a tall, quiet man, well-liked.
It was Fogarty-Smith’s job to fly supplies to the English weather observing station on the arctic ice pack in the far
north. There was currently an international epidemic of arctic weather observing, and the ice pack station was
England’s contribution. Fogarty-Smith flew food and fan mail up to the meteorologists.
One gloomy day, Fogarty-Smith took off from the ice pack weather station to fly back to England. He left in his plane.
Fourteen hours later, Fogarty-Smith came back to the weather station—on foot.
He had his clothes. He didn’t have his plane.
The behavior of Fogarty-Smith completely confounded and horrified the arctic weather station personnel, from head
meteorologist to newspaper correspondent.
But then, the same kind of behavior had confounded the Eskimos.
There seemed to be nothing in the air for Fogarty-Smith to be fighting, either.
He had saved some cartridges for his pistol. He shot those away at nothing overhead. He began hurling his empty gun
at whatever it was. He would throw the gun as hard as he could, then run and get it and throw it again.
Fogarty-Smith never uttered a word.
They never found Fogarty-Smith’s airplane.
The meteorologists turned seamsters and made a strait jacket in which Fogarty-Smith was taken to England, where he
was confined to a padded cell while learned psychiatrists and doctors examined him, shook their heads, gave out
statements full of technical multi-syllabled onomatopoeian nomenclature which didn’t mean a thing.
The English believed that a man could suffer such shock and exposure that he would go insane.
The Eskimos had thought an evil spirit called a Tongak could get after a man.
One was as screwy as the other, in this case.
The mystery was moving south.
IN the south of France there is a pleasant spot known as the Riviera, a delightful stretch of seashore widely renowned
as a spa, a watering place, a playground for grown-ups, a lovely section which probably is to Europeans what Florida
or southern California is to those who live in the United States. If the alluring printed descriptions of the Riviera are to
be believed, this balmy Valhalla combines the good qualities of both Florida and California, with some added. Here
Europe goes to bask in the sun, to make love.
Park Crater was there to make love.
The sun didn’t intrigue Park particularly, and certainly he didn’t need it, because he always seemed to look as though
he had a strikingly healthy suntan. Park had a little Latin blood in him. The Latins are reported to be great lovers. In
Park’s case, there wasn’t any doubt.
No other lad had ever made the grade with Toni Lash.
Park Crater’s business was making love. He didn’t need to have any other kinds of business. A young man who had a
father who’d drilled two thousand oil wells and struck oil with one thousand of them did not need to have any other
business. Park Crater’s father had done that.
Park Crater was so handsome that the other boys all threw rocks at him at school. Park threw just as many rocks back
at them, and later practiced up until he was intercollegiate boxing champ. He was no sissy.
Park was a nice guy. He was many a mother’s idea of first-class son-in-law material.
Toni Lash liked Park Crater. Whether Toni Lash’s feelings went any deeper, whether she loved Park, only she knew. It
was certain that no one else knew, because Toni Lash was an unfathomable person.
Toni Lash was the current mystery woman of the Riviera. The reigning sensation. She was tall, dark-haired and—well,
striking was the only word. She struck the men breathless. She made the other women, especially the married ones, feel
as though they were being shot at.
"Great Jehoshaphat!" gasped Park Crater when he first saw her.
Cleopatra could take a back seat. So could all the current beauties of stage, screen and society, as far as Park was
concerned. When Toni Lash smiled, every man in sight felt his toes curl; and Park discovered himself getting selfish
and wishing that the toe curling could be confined exclusively to himself.
"Love!" exclaimed Park. "It must be love."
Park Crater and glorious Toni Lash had been seeing a great deal of each other for about six weeks.
One night Park arrived, carrying a club, unable to speak a word, and wearing an expression of indescribable terror.
Park was using the club to fight the empty air about his head. Toni Lash, with presence of mind, tried to quiet him,
calling her servants to help, and later she summoned the best doctors. They tried holding Park Crater in a bathtub full
of warm water for hours, a treatment which will usually calm the most violent cases of insanity.
But it was of no appreciable benefit in this instance. Park Crater went to the best Riviera hospital, with six strong men
holding his arms and legs.
Toni Lash went into seclusion in her villa. After she had grieved two days, she had a visitor.
"Oh," she said. "I saw you last week. I thought you had gone away."
AS the young woman looked at her visitor, there was awe and dislike on her grieved face, but fascination, too, almost
as though the visitor were a serpent and she a weakened bird.
The visitor did not have a snaky look. There was something about him that was a great deal worse. But it was hard to
define. At first glance, the man just seemed to be a long sack of bones with a thin, poetic face and a pair of smoldering,
compelling eyes.
Toni Lash said, "I checked up on the newspaper stories after I saw you last week. You are supposed to be dead."
Something strange and hideous appeared, as a brief flicker of emotion, on the man’s long poetic face. It was as though
his face had turned fiercely animal for a moment.
"Perhaps I am dead, and come back to haunt people," he said. Then he laughed grimly.
He wore solid gray. Every article of clothing on him was gray—shoes, socks, suit, tie, shirt, hat—all exactly the same
shade of gray.
"You were wearing all the same shade of blue the last time I saw you," Toni Lash said. "You seem to—"
"Let us not talk of small things," the long, sinister man said quietly. "I have heard of your grief."
Toni Lash bit her lips.
"You loved Park Crater, did you not?" the man asked.
Toni Lash nodded quickly, and tears came.
"You should forget," the man said. The awful expression flickered on his face again. "Will you do a job for me?"
"Is it dangerous?" the girl asked.
"Very," the man said frankly.
"I’ll do it," Toni Lash said with a kind of desperation.
One day soon, the sun worshipers of the Riviera noticed that the windows of Toni Lash’s villa were boarded up tight.
Toni Lash had gone away.
The impression got around that Park Crater had gone mad—over beauteous Toni Lash.
The idea was as screwy as those about the dog, about Kummik the Eskimo, and about Fogarty-Smith the inventor.
The mystery had only moved southward.
Like something that had taken three great strides, the mystery had come south as far as the Riviera. Starting in the
vicinity of the North Pole, it had left a grisly footprint at the Eskimo village, another footprint at the English weather
station on the ice pack, and a third track on the Riviera.
It was gathering itself now, getting ready to spring all the way across the Atlantic and stamp with both feet on a man
in New York City.
Chapter II. A MYSTERY IN GOTHAM
DARKNESS had fallen over New York City, the sky having turned into a murky mantle on which a myriad of pleasant
stars were scattered, while the lights of the city, particularly those in the theatrical district along midtown Broadway,
were so clustered and brilliant that they threw a soft glow high toward the night heavens. The streets were a happy
rumble of traffic sounds, for this was the hour around eight o’clock in the evening when Gothamites went to the
theater.
Clark Savage, Jr., rode through the city in a taxicab.
The giant man of bronze, who was better known as Doc Savage, was breaking a personal rule, doing something he
almost never did. He was preparing to appear on a stage, before an audience, and exhibit one of his many abilities.
Now he rode in a taxicab, heading toward huge and famous Metropolitan Hall, where he was to stand on a stage and
play a violin. Later in the program, he understood he was scheduled to "lick a licorice stick" and "send out with some
hep cats," which was the current slang way of saying he was to play a clarinet with a good orchestra. He did not mind
mixing classical music with popular "swing," because he had no false, highbrow ideas about what music should be.
Still, he would as soon not have done this.
There would be an audience—his appearance had been advertised in the newspapers—and among the audience might
possibly be some enemies. A great many men would like to see an end to him, he knew. This was natural, because of
his unusual career of righting wrongs which the law did not seem able to remedy.
He did not feel any special fear, for he had been in real danger too many times before. Also he had learned that fear
was a bad thing to allow in the mind when one followed a career such as his. For the rest, he knew he would enjoy the
program to-night, because he liked all types of music, although he rarely had a chance to enjoy it.
Doc Savage had not been able to enjoy many of the pleasant things in the life of a normal man. From infancy, he had
been trained by elderly, learned scientists who had forgotten how to play; and sometimes he wondered if this unusual
upbringing didn’t cause him to unconsciously regard men and women with reference to the psychological
classification of their minds and how many chemical elements their bodies contained.
To-night, he would enjoy himself.
He was appearing in Metropolitan Hall because the proceeds were going to a really deserving charity.
His appearance was scheduled for late in the program, and he intended to find a quiet spot in the audience where he
could sit unobserved and enjoy the early numbers.
He did not expect to be noticed. As a matter of fact, he had no public reputation at all as a musician, so he doubted
very much that his name among the artists would bring anyone near Metropolitan Hall to-night.
As the taxicab drew nearer Metropolitan Hall, it began stopping with increased frequency. Traffic was becoming
unaccountably thick. Finally, the cab became wedged in a traffic jam and could not move.
"Just what," Doc Savage asked, "seems to be wrong?"
His voice was deep and gave an impression of controlled power.
"There’s umpteen thousand people," the taxi driver explained. "Lookit ‘em! The whole block is packed."
This seemed to be a fact.
The taxi driver said, "Pay me, if you don’t mind."
Doc paid him. The taxi driver then got out and slammed the door.
"I’m gonna go get a look at the guy, too," he said.
"A look at who?" Doc asked, surprised.
The driver snorted at such ignorance.
"Doc Savage is gonna be here to-night," he said. "Who else d’you think that mob is waitin’ to see?"
The driver left, horning people aside with his elbows.
DOC SAVAGE sat in the cab a few moments. He made, unconsciously, a tiny trilling note which came from deep in his
throat somewhere, a sound as weird and exotic as the call of a strange bird in a tropical jungle. This sound was an
absent-minded habit when he was mentally perturbed.
He began to feel an attack of stage fright. During the taxi ride, he had looked forward to enjoying some music quietly.
He was in a mellow, human mood, and it was a shock to find a packed, shoving throng hoping to get a glimpse of him.
Maybe the taxi driver was wrong.
Doc turned up his dark coat collar, pulled his black hat down, tucked violin and clarinet under an arm, and got out of
the cab.
He accosted a man with, "Just what is going on?"
"Doc Savage is to be here," the man said. "Damn the luck! I don’t think I’m gonna be able to get within a block of the
door."
That was that.
Realizing that his height put him head and shoulders above the crowd, Doc assumed a stoop.
The crowd milled and shoved. Policemen blew whistles and were helpless. At the entrance to Metropolitan Hall, a
battery of powerful mercury-vapor floodlights blazed so that motion pictures could be taken, and a number of movie
cameras were visible, mounted on top of cars.
Doc’s stage fright got worse. He had always been embarrassed by public attention, and right now the last thing he felt
like doing was to run a gauntlet as this one.
He discovered himself retreating, toying with the idea of telephoning that he was ill, a thought he put aside at once. He
had promised to appear, and he always kept a promise.
He turned and walked, unnoticed, into the back street which ran along the rear of Metropolitan Hall. It was dark here,
and there was no crowd, because there was no door into the Hall.
There were windows, however. But the lowest one was at a height about equal to a third story, and between it and the
sidewalk was naked brick, evidently the back wall of the stage. Apparently ingress here was impossible.
Doc examined the wall, particularly a point where the bricks were outset a trifle in a kind of old-fashioned ornamental
corner-piece. He was pleased. Removing his belt, he used it to sling violin and clarinet cases over his back.
Then he climbed. An observer would have said it was impossible—incredible. But the observer wouldn’t have realized
the kind of strength a lifetime of training had given the bronze man.
Having mounted carefully, Doc swung over to the window, found it unlocked, and entered. He stood now on a catwalk
beside the huge scenery curtains. An iron stairway led downward, and he descended.
He was greeted profusely by the charity organization officials.
"So you came early and secluded yourself upstairs!" they exclaimed.
Doc let it go at that.
An usher was dispatched to the entrance to announce that Doc Savage had arrived, and that there was no more
standing room, and that the doors would be closed.
The audience inside heard the announcement and broke out in applause.
One in the audience did not applaud. This person was a woman. She looked incredulous, then disappointed, and
springing to her feet, hurried to the front of Metropolitan Hall and began trying the doors of offices used by the
management.
Visitors on the French Riviera a few weeks ago would have recognized the young woman as Toni Lash.
The young woman found an unlocked door, stepped through it into an empty office. Her first glance was to see if there
was a window. There was.
A small flashlight came out of her bag. She went to the window, got her bearings and centered her attention on a
second-story window in the building across the street.
She began blinking her flashlight, spelling out words in code.
"You fools," she flashed. "He is already inside."
The building across the street was of brick, many stories high, the first floor being occupied by a used-car show
window. Adjoining the showroom, and also a part of the used-car establishment, was a doorway through which cars
could be driven across the sidewalk into the building—or from the building to the street.
The girl stopped sending.
A light flashed from the window of the used-car building which she was watching.
"He could not be," the light signaled. "We have watched the entrance."
The girl’s light replied in a long string of flashes that meant nothing but rage.
"Keep watching," her light ordered. "We may be able to get him when he leaves."
"O. K.," the man signaled from the used-car building window.
He shoved his flashlight in a coat pocket. He was a squat man with long arms, a reddish face and a tangle of blond
hair. He was very well dressed. The tips of all ten of his fingers were masses of scar tissue—they had been burned
with acid sometime in the past to destroy his fingerprint identity.
"Now what do you know about that?" he said disgustedly.
He had spoken to himself; there was no one else in the bar room with him. The one door stood open.
The man ran a hand absent-mindedly over the military type of machine gun which stood, squat and blue and ugly on
its spraddled tripod, on a low table in front of the window, the muzzle pointing down into the street. The ammunition
belt of the gun was draped across the table like a snake of brown canvas with lead-and-brass striping.
The cartridges in the belt were "mercy" bullets, a type of slug consisting of a hollow shell which contained a powerful
drug that would cause unconsciousness rather than death.
On the other end of the table lay a gas mask.
The blond man with the marred fingers picked up the gas mask and dangled it from one hand as he descended the
stairs.
An armored truck stood inside the closed doors which led to the street. The truck was painted white. Lettered on each
of its sides was:
AMBULANCE
The white paint and the name on the armored truck gave it enough resemblance to an ambulance to fool casual
observers.
"What’s the word, Cautious?" greeted one of the men in the ambulance-fortress.
Cautious scowled at the men. There were four of them, assorted sizes. They wore white coverall suits to disguise their
clothing. Bulletproof vests made their bodies bulky. Gas masks hung ready from their necks.
"Savage got in the Hall, somehow," Cautious explained sourly.
Chapter III. BRONZE MAN TAKEN
THE four men in charge of the ambulance-fortress frowned at Cautious. They were nervous, on edge; they did not like
the idea of things going wrong.
"Thought you knew this Doc Savage by sight?" one growled.
Cautious looked them over. Cautious had a mobile face and he could make his expression vicious.
"I’ve seen his pictures," he said. "He didn’t go in the front door. And, buddy—just remember who’s running this."
"We ain’t in no army!" the other said sourly.
Cautious took a flat pistol out of a pocket.
"At a time like this, there’s only one answer to argument," he said, hardly changing tone or expression.
The other man swallowed. It suddenly dawned on him that he should be frightened.
"I ain’t arguin’!" he said hoarsely.
Previously, he had known Cautious only by reputation. Cautious was not a gangster; as to just what Cautious was
there seemed to be some doubt. Cautious had the habit of disappearing from New York for long periods, and was
reputed to be something of an international gadder.
The four ambulance-fortress attendants subsided. Cautious had hired them, but they knew he was working for the girl,
Toni Lash. They were to seize Doc Savage—a job they did not like, since they had heard a great deal about Doc
Savage. That they had been offered a startling sum of money to help was all they knew. Why Doc Savage was to be
seized was a mystery.
"You took this job," Cautious told them grimly, "and don’t think you won’t go through with it!"
They looked at his gun, then assured him they would go through with it.
Cautious put the gun away and went back upstairs to the window. Standing beside the machine gun, he watched the
entrance of Metropolitan Hall with fixed intensity.
He could hear a roar of applause coming from the Hall.
The applause was filling the interior of the great hall with deafening volume. There was hand-clapping, whistling,
stamping.
Doc Savage, on the stage, did not look nearly as ill at ease as he felt. He had been trained to conceal his emotions.
And certainly the skill with which he had played his classical number on the violin left no suspicion that he was not
perfectly at home. The quickest and loudest applause had come from the members of the audience who really knew
music.
Now the bronze man played the clarinet number with the swing orchestra. The result was a joyful uproar. No one had
to have an advanced education in classical music to know here was a number well done. In the vernacular of swing,
the boys "sent gate," "slapped jibe on the dog house," "busted hide" and "gripped that git box." They went to town.
The "jitterbugs" in the audience got up and danced in the aisles. It was a tremendous success.
Doc Savage, putting his instruments in their cases, and walking along a passage to the front entrance, was in a
thoughtful frame of mind. Suddenly, he was realizing just how far from normal was the life he had lived, and was living.
THE gobble of the machine gun across the street was a complete surprise.
The gun burst was short. Ten shots. Doc went down.
One moment, he stood at the top of the entrance steps. There was an open space around him—police were holding the
crowd back. Then he was tumbling down the steps.
He landed loosely. His great bronzed hands gripped his legs. He’d been hit only in the legs. He started to get up. His
knees buckled. He crouched, still gripping his legs.
Then he slumped, a giant limp form. Turmoil had the crowd now. Some surged forward. Others fled. Police were
helpless. There was screaming, yelling, angry shoving and frightened scrambling. The surface of the throng became a
storm-tossed human sea.
Into that bedlam came the armored truck that looked like an ambulance, moving slowly. It had been equipped with a
regulation siren, and now this moaned steadily. The vehicle nosed the crowd aside, reached Doc Savage.
The attendants sprang out. Their white coveralls gave them somewhat the appearance of ambulance attendants. And
they had left their gas masks inside. There had, as yet, been no need to use tear gas.
"Stand aside!" they yelled. "We’ve got to get him to a hospital!"
Doc Savage’s limp form was rolled onto a stretcher, lifted into the fortress-ambulance. The attendants got in. So did
two cops. That was not so good. But nothing was said.
The ambulance rolled. The siren frightened a path through the throng. Gathering speed, the disguised armored car
rolled north.
"Hey!" exploded one of the two policemen riding inside. "You’re not going toward the hos—"
A blackjack blow over the ear put him to sleep. Simultaneously, the other cop got the same kind of an anaesthetic.
Cautious peered back through the bars which separated the driver’s seat from the rear of the armored truck. Cautious
had managed to get aboard, and was riding with the driver.
"There’s two squad cars of cops followin’," he said grimly. "Lay a few eggs."
The "eggs" were tear-gas bombs. The men tossed out a few. One police car left the road and knocked over a telephone
pole. The other one stopped, and a few bullets from police guns hit the armored steel sides of the truck harmlessly.
Then pursuit was left behind.
"Slow up," Cautious ordered, "and dump the two cops out."
This was done.
The ambulance-fortress drove north at high speed, turned left, entered a dark patch of woods, and the men transferred
Doc Savage to an innocent-looking sedan. The bronze man was still limp.
"Everybody been wearin’ gloves?" Cautious demanded.
They had. White gloves. No fingerprints had been left.
"Make sure Savage ain’t dead," Cautious ordered. "Sometimes the dope in them bullets is strong enough to kill a
man."
"He’s still alive," a man advised.
"Swell. Let’s get going with him."
They went on in the sedan. Doc Savage made a considerable bulk on the rear floor boards, and they tossed a lap robe
over him. The car traveled decorously enough so that no speed cops would be interested.
IT had been a roadhouse. It was off the busy roads and patronized during the summer months by a certain type of
clientele who did not care to be seen in the more popular places, but in the off season such as this there was not
enough business to keep open. So the dive was closed.
It was a rambling, unlovely building which stuck on the side of a hill. There was a rain barrel under one eaves’ spout.
There were scrubby, wooded hills all around.
Cautious knocked open the door, and they carried Doc Savage inside and lifted him onto the table.
One of the men drew back, looked at the bronze man, and rubbed his jaw uneasily.
"I’ve heard a lot about that guy," he muttered. "If I thought half of it was true, a team of mules couldn’t have pulled me
into this."
"He’s helpless enough now, isn’t he?" Cautious demanded.
The other shrugged. "Just the same, the sooner I’m through and get my dough, the better."
Cautious laughed.
The laugh seemed to irritate the four men who had been hired to handle the ambulance.
"Just why," one demanded, "did we grab Savage?"
"Because you’re getting paid for it, I thought," Cautious said dryly.
"I don’t like your sass!" the man snapped.
"Suit yourself," Cautious moved his shoulders. "But why Savage was grabbed is something you’ll have to take out in
guessing. I’m not putting out."
There was some scowling, but Cautious had a reputation with a gun; furthermore, he was the man who was going to
pay them, so the four hired men subsided.
摘要：

THEDEVILGENGHISADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.AMYSTERYMOVINGSOUTH?ChapterII.AMYSTERYINGOTHAM?ChapterIII.BRONZEMANTAKEN?ChapterIV.ESCORTFORACOFFIN?ChapterV.CLOWNSONASHIP?ChapterVI.THEFIREALARM?ChapterVII.ATMONTECARLO?ChapterV...

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