Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 067 - The Red Terrors

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THE RED TERRORS
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE RED MEN!
? Chapter II. DOCTOR COLLENDAR
? Chapter III. THE BRONZE MAN
? Chapter IV. MENACE IN CRIMSON
? Chapter V. THE HIDING DIVER
? Chapter VI. THE VANISHING MEN
? Chapter VII. THE HOSPITAL RAIDERS
? Chapter VIII. THE SECOND RESURRECTION
? Chapter IX. SEA TRIAL
? Chapter X. WHERE LITTLE JUGS COME FROM
? Chapter XI. THE BLUE ZONE
? Chapter XII. DEATH IN BLUE
? Chapter XIII. RED ANGELS
? Chapter XIV. THE ANCIENTS
? Chapter XV. SUNKEN SHIP
? Chapter XVI. SEA TRAP
? Chapter XVII. THE HUNDRED BUGS
? Chapter XVIII. JUDAS IN SKIRTS
? Chapter XIX. DEATH IN THE BLUE
? Chapter XX. MINDS AT PEACE
Scanned and Proofed
by
Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE RED MEN!
A SAILOR named Steve ate an apple, and killed thirty-eight men. By eating the apple, he killed the thirty-eight men just
as effectively as though he had taken hold of the trigger of a machine gun and pumped lead into the victims. Steve’s
process, however, was a little slower and more terrible.
Steve bought his apple off a cart in Majunga, Madagascar. Apple vendors in Majunga have a habit of breathing on
their apples when polishing them.
The merchant who breathed on Steve’s apple had diphtheria.
Steve was a sailor on the steamer Muddy Mary. Muddy Mary was fairly fittingly named. Some of her crew said she
should have been named Creaking Mary, or other things not so complimentary.
The Muddy Mary was an old hag of the sea, and like the old hags of the streets, she wandered around oceans, picking
up a nickel here, a penny there.
She picked up Harry Day in Cape Town, South Africa. Harry Day was a man who had peculiarities of physical
appearance which made him an easy person to remember; in other words, he was striking.
He had a great quantity of white hair, and each hair was as white as snow and as thick as a banjo string, and usually
about six inches long. Every hair on his head also stood on end. His long face was a weather-beaten brown.
The effect was rather like an Indian with a headdress of white feathers. Also, Harry Day was sufficiently tall that he
always cocked an eye at a doorway before he went through it, to see if it was high enough.
Harry Day was known all over the world as the deep-sea diver who went down to the U-71 when she lay trapped so
deep that no other diver could make it.
Harry Day loaded his deep-sea equipment in the Muddy Mary hold, and the ship hoisted anchor, put out to sea and
set a compass course for New Orleans.
The nicest thing that could be said about the Muddy Mary
’ s speed was that she was slower than the itch. Even less could be said for her abilities in a storm, but she
had one quality in common with the Rock of Gibraltar—every wave that came along hit her with everything it
had, and she could take it.
The six lifeboats she carried could not take it. The storm that hit the Muddy Mary in the middle of the South Atlantic
smashed every last lifeboat aboard, tore the life raft off the deckhouse and carried away most of the ring life buoys.
But by that time, the crew didn’t care much. There were thirty-eight men, crew and officers, and Harry Day, the only
passenger. Three fourths of them were in their bunks with diphtheria. Some of the men in the bunks were dead; the
corpses were left lying because no one had time or energy to give them sea burial, what with each man on his feet
having to do the work of three on their backs.
Life on the Muddy Mary became a hysteria of fear and fatigue. The unsick were so driven that they could not tell
whether they had contracted diphtheria or not. They had dizzy spells brought on by utter tiredness, and were stricken
with needless terror lest they had diphtheria.
"Poke" Ames, one of the engine-room black gang, was such a case. At five o’clock, he grew dizzy and nearly fell over.
Thereafter he worked silently, mouthed prayers for salvation, and didn’t pay attention to his duties.
It was seven o’clock approximately when Poke Ames accidentally closed the wrong valves from the boilers to blow a
thirty-foot hole in the belly of the Muddy Mary.
A lot of sea water can come through a thirty-foot hole.
HARRY DAY was in the forehold when the blast came, trying to spike down his heavy cases of diving equipment so
that they would not be smashed by being tossed from one side of the ship to the other. He had just succeeded in
securing every box so that it would not be broken when the explosion came and blew the cases loose again.
For thirty seconds—and seconds could be long after an explosion like that—Harry Day lay on his back and screamed.
He didn’t believe, like the American Indians, that you were a coward and a weak sister if you screamed when in pain.
Harry Day was in pain. His left arm had been broken in three places.
When he picked himself up to stagger, still screaming, to the bulkhead door which offered the only exit except a hatch
that he couldn’t reach, he got the screams scared out of him, for the blast had jammed the bulkhead door. He couldn’t
get it open! He was trapped! He could tell from the way the floor began slanting that the Muddy Mary would be on top
of the Atlantic four or five minutes more at a generous most.
Harry Day didn’t want to die. Several newspapermen and an article writer for a magazine had written that the deep-sea
diver Harry Day was a man unafraid of death. They were wrong. When he was diving, Harry Day knew what he had to
do to be safe, and knew that if he did it, he would be safe.
Right now, he knew he was going to die. He knew nothing could save him. He was trapped in a fast-sinking ship, in a
sea so rough that he would not have been any better off on deck. He was going to die.
He wanted to live. The superficial was stripped from everything, and one raw reality was left: death! And Harry Day
wanted to live more than he had ever wanted anything, and more than he could ever want anything again. He wanted
to live! Even for a minute! A few seconds!
That was why Harry Day, in wild haste, put on the diving suit he used for his deepest work. The suit was alloy steel
reënforced to withstand pressure. It was entirely self-contained; a mechanical "lung" supplied oxygen and purified
exhaled air so it could be used again.
Harry Day, wearing the suit, resembled the cartoon pictures labeled "robot". Fortunately the suit was designed so it
could be donned without external aid.
There was a telephonic device inside the helmet, and this ran to the amplifier. Earlier in the voyage, Harry Day had
been demonstrating the communications arrangement to one of the Muddy Mary
’ s officers, and the amplifier and loud-speaker were still attached to the microphone inside the helmet.
In his nervous haste to turn on the "lung", he also turned on the communicator. The result was that every sound
Harry Day made inside the all-metal diving suit as the ship sank was amplified and poured from the loud-speaker.
FOR a time, there was only the doomed man’s breathing. He was doomed; he knew that. This was an unfrequented
part of the Atlantic between South America and Africa, where soundings showed depths of thousands of feet. And
Harry Day’s diving suit, modern as it was, would not let him descend to a depth of even a thousand feet and live.
Harry Day’s breathing was staccato. He panted. He also made a small sound occasionally, the kind of noise that men
make when very terrified. Such a sound as soldiers make when watching a bomb fall toward them, or some dogs when
they see a man with a club.
The old Muddy Mary was breaking slowly amidships and folding up. The floor slant grew steeper and Harry Day went
sliding to one end of the hold. Boxes of equipment slid down and piled up on him. The hatch caved under water
pressure. Tons of sea poured in. It was the pouncing roar of a deluge that chased things around in the hold and
jostled the diver in his suit.
The old steamer broke completely apart in the middle with loud whistles of escaping air and rotten-egg reports of
hatches caving. The two halves then sank. Madly driven waves, fighting bubbles, and flotsam were soon all that
showed where she had been.
Harry Day lay in his alloy steel diving suit and waited for the end. He was wishing he hadn’t seized these few seconds
of life. They were the worst moments he had ever lived.
There was little movement as the ship sank. But the needle on the water-pressure gauge inside the diving suit hood
kept creeping up. Harry Day watched the needle with eyes that seemed to be trying to get out of their sockets.
Unexpectedly, Day’s half of the steamer rolled over again. There was a great shock as heavy equipment cases toppled
across the hold and landed on the diver.
A compressor-case came down on Day’s broken left arm. The case weighed three tons. It bent the metal diving-suit
terribly, and more bones broke in the diver’s arm with sounds like traps catching rats.
Harry Day fainted.
IT was agony that brought Harry Day back to consciousness. Grinding, jerking, electric pain. Because he was so
stupefied that he only knew he was being hurt, he yelled out in anger; but the anger turned to fear as he remembered
he was in a ship that was sinking.
He had been senseless, but it must have been for only a few minutes, because it would not take long for the steamer to
sink deep enough for pressure to crush his diving suit. Then he saw the luminous-dialed watch which was part of the
instruments inside the hood.
The watch said it was nearly four hours since the ship sank.
Four hours! That couldn’t be. Impossible! The water was thousands of feet deep all over this part of the Atlantic,
according to the charts.
Harry Day peered at the luminous watch. Four hours was what it read. And there was nothing wrong with the watch.
He had been careful to keep it wound and running as he visited the hold daily to see that his instruments were not
being corroded by the salt air.
But four hours. It couldn’t be!
Then he realized something had hold of one of his legs and was twisting, pulling.
Harry Day remembered two things, and neither one was pleasant. He remembered the giant octopuses which live at
great sea depths. And he thought of a thirty-five foot shark he’d once seen.
Then he saw what had hold of him. What he saw was the last thing on earth he expected to see. It was not a shark or
an octopus. The thing peered through the bulletproof glass of the diving helmet at Harry Day’s face.
"Oh, Mother of Mercy!" screamed Harry Day, and fainted.
Chapter II. DOCTOR COLLENDAR
DOCTOR HUGO COLLENDAR was a man who had made mistakes. His first error was conceivably in being born at all,
and that one was the most unfortunate, as far as the world was concerned. Everything that came afterward merely
compounded and aggravated the situation.
Doctor Collendar had traits supposed to be desirable. He was persistent. He made up his mind at a very early age to be
a doctor and surgeon, and he stuck to that and became one.
He was no coward, and that is also supposed to be a virtue. He did not let any such thing as fear of going to the
penitentiary stand in his way when getting something he wanted. He was ambitious. He made up his mind to have a
million dollars when he was forty. So have a lot of men. But Doctor Collendar was making good.
When the diver Harry Day disappeared, Doctor Collendar was not quite forty, and he wasn’t far from having a million,
either.
However, by that time Doctor Collendar had raised his sights. His goal was now unlimited millions—and power.
Bossing chauffeurs and butlers had given him a taste of telling men what to do, and he wanted to tell the world what to
do, and have his word law.
Altering "Snig" Bogaccio’s face was still another mistake. Doctor Collendar’s desire to earn one hundred thousand
easy dollars was the cause of that error.
He contracted to change Mr. Snig Bogaccio’s face, fingerprints, and physical contour with plastic surgery so that the
increasingly efficient Department of Justice could not find Bogaccio nor identify him if they did find him.
The operation was a great success. So much of a success that Snig Bogaccio sent one of his cronies around for the
same treatment. Unluckily, the crony died. Snig Bogaccio was not aggravated; he understood it was just one of those
things. He and Doctor Collendar remained good friends.
But the police found the body of Snig Bogaccio’s crony and began investigating. Doctor Collendar had made some
further mistakes in covering up, the first thing he knew, he realized he’d better be taking a vacation in some faraway
place like Madagascar.
Doctor Collendar sailed on the Southern Wind, a craft advertised as a liner, but nearer a freighter with passenger
accommodations. Destination Cape Town.
Nothing happened until the Southern Wind was approximately halfway across the South Atlantic.
Doctor Collendar was a tall collar ad. He was aware that he was handsome, and enhanced it by the way he dressed. His
large blue eyes were afflicted with astigmatism, but he refused to wear glasses because he thought he didn’t look well
in them.
Since he couldn’t see distinctly, he’d formed a habit of opening his eyes very wide at intervals. At such times, it was
as though he had peeled two hard-boiled eggs.
The thing Doctor Collendar resented most about his enforced ocean voyage was the lack of suitable feminine
companionship. There were nothing but homely females aboard.
He was standing at the rail, brooding about this lack, when there was a shout on the bridge.
"Distress signal!" yelled the voice on the bridge. "Distress signal! Hard off port bow!"
DOCTOR COLLENDAR peeled eyes several times before he saw a spot of purplish light on the sea ahead. This
flashed on and off methodically. The light would make three short flashes, three long flashes, then three more short
ones. Doctor Collendar recalled that this was the international distress signal, S O S.
Southern Wind
engines reversed the ship to a standstill. Searchlight beams lunged out from the bridge and licked the sea
like anteaters’ tongues. The lights did not disclose anything. A sea of some size was running, and it was
obvious the sensible thing was to lower small boats and search. This was done.
Leaning against the rail, Doctor Collendar gave himself over to contemplation of the aspects of life, the lack of
femininity aboard, and other more personal things. The fact that someone might be in distress on the dark windswept
sea did not move him, except impersonally. He was cold to other people’s misfortunes.
"Is there a doctor aboard?"
This inquiry came from behind Doctor Collendar. He turned at once to see who had spoken.
"We need a doctor badly," the voice added from the shadow of an awning. Doctor Collendar could not make out the
person who spoke, peel his eyes as he would.
Doctor Collendar decided to deny that he was a doctor. Second thought reminded him he was chafing at the monotony
of the trip, and it might be a diversion to keep his hand in practice.
"I am a doctor," he admitted.
"Surgeon or physician?" asked the voice.
"Both."
"Are you a pathologist?"
"Why, yes."
"Have you had much experience?" asked the voice.
"A great deal," said Doctor Collendar rather proudly.
"Then we are very fortunate to find you," the voice said.
The speaker stepped out of the shadows. Doctor Collendar stared. He could tell no more about the person than before!
The unknown walked directly toward Doctor Collendar and held out a hand.
Too late, Doctor Collendar learned the other did not want to shake hands.
The tall form, draped from head to foot in something wet and clinging which had a dull purplish tint, took hold of
Doctor Collendar’s hand, and its clutch felt like a thing. The next instant, Doctor Collendar was seized in a grip of great
strength.
Doctor Collendar yelled in fright.
"Help!" he bawled. "I’m being thrown overboard!"
His scream was heard on the bridge, and an officer cocked a searchlight on the spot.
Just as the light splattered across the scene, the two struggling figures went over the rail.
No one but Doctor Collendar saw the exact nature of the thing he was fighting.
The crew never forgot what Doctor Collendar screamed as he fell into the sea with his assailant. His words were:
"
The thing is red!"
The steamer searched the vicinity for hours, without finding a trace of Doctor Collendar or his assailant.
Chapter III. THE BRONZE MAN
CLARK "DOC" SAVAGE, JR., had heard of Doctor Collendar.
However, Doc Savage did not pay particular attention to the newspaper clipping concerning Doctor Collendar’s
peculiar death. That is, he did not give it personal attention. He came upon the clipping among many others which one
or another of his five assistants had thought deserving of his attention and had placed on his desk.
Doc Savage passed the clipping to "Renny". Renny was Colonel John Renwick, a man with a pair of incredibly big
fists, a voice equally as big, an unfailingly sad expression, and a reputation as one of the world’s greatest engineers.
Renny was one of Doc’s five aids.
"Might have our Cape Town operative to question those on the Southern Wind concerning the disappearance of this
Doctor Collendar," Doc Savage said.
Renny scrutinized the clipping.
"That shout about a red thing is kinda interesting," he said, sounding like a big bear in a small cave.
Renny then cabled the Cape Town operative, but nothing substantial came of that. Not that the Cape Town operative
wasn’t efficient. He was. All Doc Savage’s operatives, scattered in the far corners of the earth, were efficient.
All these highly efficient operatives of Doc Savage had one very peculiar thing in common: Each one could remember
back just so far in his life, and no farther. There was not one of them who could recall any incident in his youth. More
peculiar, none of these operatives could remember a period when he or she had been a desperate criminal.
The operatives were "graduates" of Doc Savage’s unique "College" for curing criminals—an institution where the
patient first underwent a remarkable brain operation which wiped out all memory of the past.
After the operation, the former criminals were educated to hate crime and to like being upright citizens. Many of the
"graduates" became operative in the information-gathering agency which Doc Savage had created to aid him in his
life’s work.
Doc Savage’s life’s work was unusual.
His work was righting wrongs and thwarting evildoers in all parts of the world. He did not hire out his services. He
never took a case unless a wrong was being done, and unless it appeared that the regularly constituted law authority
was unable to cope with the malefactor.
Within a very few years, Doc Savage and his group of five scientific assistants had built up a world-wide reputation.
Doc Savage had also become something of a mystery name. He was sometimes called "The Man of Bronze". The world
knew he was a combination of scientific genius, muscular marvel and mental wizard. But not much else was known.
Newspaper reports concerning Doc Savage were usually so fantastically garbled that even the public didn’t believe
them.
The newspapers found it practically impossible to get any interviews with Doc Savage. The bronze man avoided
publicity. The newspapers resented this.
At the time Doctor Collendar disappeared, the newspapers were resenting it more than usual.
A PLATOON of reporters and cameramen cornered "Long Tom" and "Johnny", two of Doc Savage’s group of five
colleagues, in the lobby of a skyscraper, on the eighty-sixth floor of which the bronze man had his huge
laboratory-library headquarters.
"We want a statement from Doc," said one of the reporters, "about the cure for cancer which he just invented."
"Doc hasn’t invented any cure for cancer," Long Tom said.
Long Tom was Major Thomas J. Roberts, and he wasn’t long. His height was average, and his general physical
condition appeared to be much below average. He looked, in fact, like a hospital case of anemia.
This was deceptive, because Long Tom had never been ill, and he could whip ninety per cent of the men he met on the
street. He was an electrical expert.
"Don’t kid me!" said the reporter loudly. "Doc Savage just treated twenty-four cases of cancer and cured them!"
"Yes," Long Tom said, "but he treated a twenty-fifth case and didn’t cure it."
"It looks like a pretty dang good average to me," stated the newspaperman.
"Doc gave you fellows one statement," Long Tom said, "in which he said he didn’t want newspapers to arouse a lot of
false hopes among cancer sufferers. Doc said the twenty-four cures he effected could be duplicated by any specialist."
Long Tom frowned. "We’re getting tired of these wild newspaper stories you print about Doc. This cancer business is
typical. You came right out and said he had discovered a cure."
"Mistakes wouldn’t happen," snapped the newshawk, "if Doc Savage would take us into his confidence."
"And let you publish stories about what he does?"
"Exactly."
"If he did that," Long Tom said, "he wouldn’t live six months."
"Why not?"
"Because his enemies would learn all about his methods from reading your newspaper stories, and they’d get him
sure."
"Doc has a lot of enemies, eh?"
"Everybody who is doing something wrong," said Long Tom, "is a potential enemy of Doc Savage."
"Who is Doc Savage’s most outstanding enemy at present?" asked a newspaperman, fishing for a story.
Long Tom considered.
"I believe his prominent foe at the moment is a Mr. Lucifer," he said.
"Where does Mr. Lucifer live?"
"I believe in a place known as Tartarus."
The newshawk grew excited. "Look, what’d this Mr. Lucifer do that was wrong? What—"
"He’s kiddin’ you, Hank," interrupted another reporter.
"Eh?"
"Lucifer is the devil," said the reporter, "and Tartarus is another name for hell."
The first reporter glared indignantly.
"I resent such treatment!" he shouted. "We want an interview!"
At this point, Johnny spoke,
"An amphigourish pedantical pedagoguery," Johnny said calmly.
Johnny was William Harper Littlejohn, who was often described as being two men high and less than half a man wide.
He carried a monocle magnifier which he never put in his eye, and he was an eminent archaeologist and geologist, and
an eminent user of big words.
The newspapermen looked at Johnny.
"
What?" one of them gasped.
Long Tom said, "He means that you might as well save your breath."
With which Long Tom and Johnny took a dignified departure. Long Tom remarking audibly, "Hurry up!
We promised to talk to Doc in a few minutes. He’s waiting."
The newspapermen heard this remark. As a squadron, they fell in and trailed Long Tom and Johnny.
"They’re doin’ what we hoped they’d do," Long Tom chuckled.
LONG TOM and Johnny entered what looked like a very dilapidated old car parked at the curbing. The
machine was a sedan with a body vintage at least ten years outdated, and a general air which indicated its
top speed might be at the most thirty-five miles an hour. Paint was peeling off its flanks.
"Some chariot," Long Tom muttered.
"A proficuous conveyance," Johnny said with dignity.
The very tall Johnny drove. Unhealthy-looking Long Tom drew a small case from his pocket, held it
close to his cheek and spoke to it in a pleased tone.
"The reporters are all followin’ us, Doc," he said. "The coast is clear for you to get away for that
vacation."
"Very well, Long Tom," said a voice from the case, which contained a diminutive ultra-short-wave radio
transceiver.
Doc Savage’s voice was remarkable, even when reproduced by the tiny loud-speaker in the transceiver.
"Anything else for us to do?" Long Tom asked.
"No," Doc Savage said. "Unless something should develop, I will be back in a few weeks. In the
meantime, you can reach me at Salisbury, on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay."
"O. K.," Long Tom said. "Good luck, Doc, on the vacation."
Long Tom replaced the transceiver in his pocket. He grinned at Johnny.
"That means Doc isn’t goin’ to his Fortress of Solitude," the electrical wizard remarked. "I’m glad of that.
I’m always kinda worried when Doc goes to the Fortress."
For a change, Johnny spoke and used small words.
"Yes," he said, "something may happen to Doc up there sometimes, and that would be bad, because
none of us have the slightest idea where this Fortress of Solitude is located, except that it is in the Arctic
somewhere."
Long Tom turned around and examined several taxicabs holding pursuing newspapermen.
"Scribes," he said, "here’s your surprise."
They fed the dilapidated old car gas, and the old heap came to life and went eighty miles an hour up a
boulevard, making hardly a sound. It turned into a side street, took corners, and left the newspapermen
feeling foolishly lost.
The scribes went back to Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters.
"Doc Savage," they were informed, "has left the city."
WHEN an elderly looking gentleman—he had flowing white hair and a neatly clipped white Vandyke
beard—arrived in Salisbury, Maryland, center of the oyster industry, no one gave him more than average
attention.
The elderly gentleman had only one outstanding characteristic that the public associated with Doc
Savage; He was a giant. He habitually walked with a stoop, but even this did not disguise the fact that he
had a figure of Herculean proportions.
The newspaper-reading public knew that Doc Savage was a giant man of bronze with straight bronze
hair only slightly darker than his skin, and eyes like pools of flake gold that were vitally alive.
The white-haired, white-bearded gentleman who busied himself studying oysters was not recognized as
Doc Savage for several weeks.
Doc had intended to return to New York after a brief vacation—if studying oysters could be considered
a vacation. However, it was quiet around Salisbury, and a relief not to be plagued by newspapermen and
curious people, and Doc remained overtime.
Another reason for staying was the importance of his work in Salisbury. The oyster industry was being
menaced by a plague of starfish. The starfish fed on the oysters, using a form of attack on the bivalve that
was deadly.
The starfish approached an oyster, which, of course, clamped its shell tight. The starfish would then crawl
upon the oyster, fix its sucking feet to the oyster’s shell, and begin exerting a pressure which was not
great, but which was inexorable.
Eventually the compression overcame the tired muscles holding the oyster’s shell closed, after which the
starfish calmly turned its stomach inside out, wrapped it around the unfortunate oyster, and began
digesting.
Doc Savage hoped to develop a parasite which was a natural enemy to the starfish and thus fight the
scourge of echinoderms.
He worked in Salisbury a few weeks; then his identity was discovered, and a swarm of newspapermen
arrived. However, there was nothing of much reading value in a scientific attempt to rid oysters of a
natural enemy, and the journalists departed.
IT was nine weeks to the day after Doc Savage arrived in Salisbury when a buzzing came from a case
which stood in the little shack that the remarkable bronze man was using for his headquarters.
The buzzing meant that one of his men was seeking to get in touch with him by radio.
"Yes?" Doc Savage said into the microphone.
"This is Monk in New York," a squeaky voice said.
The voice was almost childish, but "Monk" was no child. Monk was a man practically as broad as tall,
furred over with red hairs that resembled rusty shingle nails, and who could take a half dollar in his right
hand and bend its two edges together, then duplicate the feat with his left hand. He was a skilled chemist,
was this Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair.
"Doc," Monk said, "you remember that Doctor Collendar who disappeared in the middle of the South
Atlantic, hollering something about, ‘The thing is red!’?"
"Yes."
"Well, there was a fight on a waterfront street here last night that kinda reminded me of this Doctor
Collendar."
"Reminded you? Why?"
"A taxi driver who saw the fight," Monk said, "claimed that there was one white man in the scrap and the
fellow was fighting what the taxi man called ‘something red.’ I saw an item in the newspapers this mornin’
and the stuff about somethin’ red made me remember Doctor Collendar, so just for fun I went out to see
the taxi driver.
"He said it was too dark to tell anything, except that something red was fightin’ a white man. Then the
white man got loose, and he fled past the taxi driver, and the driver got a good look at him."
Monk paused a few seconds for dramatic effect.
"Just for fun," he said, "I showed this hackman a picture of Doctor Collendar. And what do you think,
Doc?"
Monk paused again for drama.
"Never mind the trimmings," Doc suggested.
"Well, the white man was Doctor Collendar," Monk said, "or so the hackman insisted."
"But Doctor Collendar disappeared off a ship in the South Atlantic two months ago," Doc Savage said.
"That’s why I called you," Monk said. "It’s queer, and I figured you’d be interested."
"The taxi driver might have made an error."
"I don’t think so, Doc. He said this fellow he saw had a way of poppin’ his eyes. The picture of Doctor
Collendar that I showed the taxi driver didn’t indicate any such thing. But I made inquiries. And that
eye-poppin’ was a habit of this Doctor Collendar."
Doc Savage did not say anything for a moment. During the interval, a weird and tiny sound came into
existence. It rose and fell, at times hardly audible, at other times having considerable volume, and always
with a quality of vague unreality that made it almost indefinable. It was as ethereal as the sounds of an
arctic breeze among ice pinnacles.
摘要：

THEREDTERRORSADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEREDMEN!?ChapterII.DOCTORCOLLENDAR?ChapterIII.THEBRONZEMAN?ChapterIV.MENACEINCRIMSON?ChapterV.THEHIDINGDIVER?ChapterVI.THEVANISHINGMEN?ChapterVII.THEHOSPITALRAIDERS?ChapterVIII.T...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：81 页 大小：471.03KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

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