Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 064 - The Submarine Mystery

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THE SUBMARINE MYSTERY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE SUBMARINE MYSTERY
? Chapter II. TROUBLE BUMP
? Chapter III. THE FISH AND THE BAIT
? Chapter IV. PRINCE ALBERT
? Chapter V. GIRL IN ARMOR
? Chapter VI. LOST RACES
? Chapter VII. MISSING DUCHESS
? Chapter VIII. IRON SHARKS
? Chapter IX. THE BREAKS
? Chapter X. RAIDERS
? Chapter XI. DANDRUFF
? Chapter XII. RAIDER ISLAND
? Chapter XIII. SLAVES
? Chapter XIV. HENRY’S DILEMMA
? Chapter XV. THE TERRIBLE ISLAND
? Chapter XVI. THE FIGHT
? Chapter XVII. UNLUCKY PLANE
? Chapter XVIII. WAR ON AN ISLAND
? Chapter XIX. PIRATE’S PATH
Chapter I. THE SUBMARINE MYSTERY
THE story made the front pages of most of the newspapers. A typical headline and bulletin was the one
appearing in the Planet, a morning newspaper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It read:
BLAST SINKS U. S. SUBMARINE
NEAR BOSTON
A mysterious explosion sank the U. S. navy submarine Swordfish four miles outside Boston harbor at 2
P.M. to-day.
A young woman survivor was picked up by a private yacht cruising in the neighborhood at the time. The
survivor seemed dazed by the shock, and when the yacht brought her ashore in Boston, she broke away
and escaped. She has not been found.
It is reported this girl leaped from the submarine some moments before the explosion.
There is also a rumor that the girl wore a portion of a suit of ancient armor, and that the few words she
uttered were couched in accents of the Sixteenth Century in England.
It is feared the submarine sank in water too deep for a rescue to be affected.
Naval officials are reluctant to discuss the matter.
This was the story which appeared in the Tulsa newspaper. The only difference between this story and
the others which were printed was a matter of wording and color. Some papers printed a dramatic
eyewitness story by the yachtsmen, telling how the sub had been literally ripped from end to end by the
blast.
There were also fuller descriptions of the young woman who had been rescued. Her unusual attire—the
portion of a suit of ancient armor—came in for comment. It was remarkable. It was unusual for a woman
to be on a U-boat. And for the woman to be dressed in the fighting garb of another century was puzzling.
The newspapers guessed at various explanations, the most prevalent one being that the young woman
was a professional artist’s model dressed for some kind of publicity photograph.
All the descriptions mentioned the look of terror which had been in the girl’s eyes.
And all the newspaper stories mentioned the fact that naval officials were reluctant to discuss the affair.
They were reluctant for a very good reason.
A rear admiral at the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the first one to discover an incredible fact about the
submarine disaster. He read a radiogram to the effect that the U. S. navy U-boat Swordfish had blown
up.
"Hell’s bells!" he bellowed.
The U. S. navy had a submarine named Swordfish. But the Swordfish was lying at the Panama Canal.
Or was it? The rear admiral sent a volley of radio messages. It was. The U. S. navy submarine
Swordfish was at the Panama Canal. It was really there. Nothing had happened to it.
"Must have been another one of our subs that sank," the rear admiral muttered.
He sent another batch of radio messages. The replies apprised him of an astounding fact: Every single U.
S. navy submarine could be accounted for! Not a U-boat was missing!
The submarine which had sunk was obviously not a U. S. navy sub.
"Darn yachtsmen must have made a mistake identifying it," the rear admiral decided.
He flew to Boston and personally questioned the yachtsmen who had observed the blast. He left that
conference holding the back of his neck. The yachtsmen had positively seen U. S. S. Swordfish on the
submersible. The U-boat had absolutely been flying American colors. The rescued girl had certainly worn
part of a suit of ancient armor, and her few words had been spoken in Sixteenth-Century English.
All of which was a headache.
THE American people and the American newspapers are prone to credit their government, their army
and their navy with little or no ability as diplomats. For some contrary reason, they like to insist that
whenever a mess comes up, the Americans are sure to put their foot in it. At the drop of a hat, they will
declare an American diplomat is no diplomat at all. It now developed that this was a slight mistake.
The world at the moment was in one of those stages where it is called a powder keg. There was an
undeclared war or two going on in Europe; the Japanese were swallowing another chunk of China, and
various dictators were shaking hands with each other and making faces at the rest of the universe.
Fully a dozen so-called civilized nations had teeth and claws all set to fly at each other. All they needed
was something to give a little push.
If somebody’s submarine had been blown up, that might be just the little push that would start world
fireworks.
There was a tense conference of U. S. government bigwigs. No one ever told exactly what was said
there.
But the U. S. navy submarine Swordfish lying in Panama suddenly had its name changed to Trigger
Fish.
The navy did not deny paternity of the submarine Swordfish which sank near Boston. True, the navy did
not seem to coöperate in its usual hearty fashion with the newspapers. It did not, for instance, publish a
list of names of those who had died in the disaster. As the rear admiral said privately, the U. S. navy had
no way of communicating with the dead to get the information.
At any rate, no European or Asiatic war started over the matter.
If any of the newspapers smelled a rat, they did not manage to dig the rodent out of its hole.
The U. S. Naval Intelligence, the Feds, and other government-sleuthing agencies did conduct an intensive
hunt for the girl who had escaped—the girl with the armor and the look of horror. They made just one
discovery:
A girl wearing armor and a look of horror on her face had stolen a fast airplane from a flying field near
Boston. The plane had contained enough gas to fly to South America, Ireland, Spain, Canada or other
places.
The armor-wearing girl took the plane off in the direction of the South Atlantic, which was no help. There
was nothing she could fly to in that direction.
New York was only one of the places where the government agencies kept a sharp watch for her.
Chapter II. TROUBLE BUMP
WHO said that great oaks grow from little acorns isn’t important. Who said it had no bearing on Clark
Savage, Jr.
What did have a bearing on Doc Savage was a piece of gray rock. No great oak grew from this gray
rock, but what did grow was a great deal more interesting.
Doc was driving along a Long Island road and saw the gray rock where it had no business to be,
geologically. Among many other things, Doc was a geologist, experts admitting that he knew as much
about rocks as almost any other man. That gray rock was as irregular as a polar bear walking around in
Florida.
Doc stared at the rock. So he did not see the two men in the passing truck. The men were blowing their
noses in big bandanna handkerchiefs, a ruse to hide their faces. The truck whipped in front of Doc’s car
and stopped.
Doc stamped brakes and stopped.
The truck was a huge van. The back end of this suddenly dropped. It became an inclined ramp.
A car promptly crashed into Doc’s machine from the rear. Doc Savage’s automobile was knocked
scooting up the ramp into the van.
The back of the van closed up tightly.
The truck lurched into motion.
Doc Savage dived out of his car. He was much taller than an average man, but so balanced in
development that the fact was not evident until he stood close to some object to which his size could be
compared.
Tropic suns had given his skin a pronounced bronze coloration, and his hair was straight, of a bronze
color only slightly darker than his skin, and fitted remarkably like a metal skullcap.
Doc’s eyes searched the van. His eyes were probably the bronze man’s most unusual feature. They were
like pools of flake gold, never inactive, always stirring, and possessing a compelling power that was
distinctly hypnotic.
The van was sheathed—floor, walls and ceiling—with armor-plate steel. Getting out of a jail would be
simple compared to getting out of this.
Doc Savage made a small sound which was an unconscious thing he did in reaction to moments of
intense mental effort, or puzzled surprise.
The sound was a trilling; low, exotic, as fantastic as the night wind around the eaves of a haunted house.
It was made somehow in the bronze man’s throat. Its strangest quality was the fact that it seemed to
come from everywhere in the van.
DOC SAVAGE sat down on the running board of his car to reflect. Also to eliminate possible
explanations for what had just happened.
In five minutes, he was mystified, and after ten minutes had passed, he was completely at a loss. He had
no idea why he’d been kidnaped, or where his captors might be taking him.
Doc Savage was not unaware that he had been for some time acquiring a world-wide reputation as a
modern scientific Galahad who went about the globe righting wrongs and punishing evil-doers. He did not
work for pay. He had a source of fabulous wealth, gained in one of his early adventures.
Since he did not have to make a living out of his strange profession, he could select any crime that
interested him, the result being that any criminal was likely to find the man of bronze on his trail.
Doc had better than a sprinkling of potential enemies, and they had a habit of trying to dispose of him
unexpectedly. Possibly a potential enemy was trying something now.
The big van rolled along fast, exhaust throbbing, tires wailing on concrete pavement.
Doc got a hammer out of his tool kit and began to beat on the front of the van. Sparks flew. Finally a tiny
barred window opened in the front of the van.
A hand displayed a small cylindrical metal object. The article was equipped with a spout similar to a
perfume atomizer, but without the squeeze bulb.
A voice said, "Know’st thou what this be?"
Two things immediately interested the bronze man: The first was the manner in which the words were
spoken. The speaker used the delivery and pronunciation of an actor doing a bit of Shakespeare.
The second thing of interest was the device which the man was displaying. Doc recognized it as a type of
tear-gas gun which was sold in novelty stores and could be bought by anybody with fifteen dollars to
spend for such a thing. He did not care to have it start spouting.
"The idea," Doc said, "seems to be that you are in a position to make it disagreeable for me."
A second voice spoke from the driver’s seat.
"You got it right, pal," this man said. "Cut out the racket, or Henry will squirt tear gas in there with you."
Doc Savage decided there was certainly nothing Shakespearean about the speech of the second man.
Doc stooped and looked through the aperture to determine how many men were in the driver’s
compartment of the truck.
There were only two men.
THE man holding the tear-gas gun had been called Henry by the other man.
Henry was a very long, lean article, chiefly notable for his ample ears and the expression of a fellow who
has just taken a bite of apple which he suddenly suspects may contain a worm.
This expression of finding life a bitter pill to taste was apparently a habitual one with Henry. Additionally,
Henry had very red hair which looked as if it had no life, like the hair in a very old wig. Henry was about
forty.
"‘Tis best thee be peaceable!" Henry said gloomily.
Doc Savage then gave his attention to the second of his two captors.
He saw a man who had a warped nose, snaggly teeth, black hair as curly as bedsprings, and a skin that
would have been appropriate on a rhinoceros. In his necktie, this man wore a stick pin containing a pearl
that was large, yellowish and obviously artificial. He had a very red face. His age might be thirty, but it
was hard to tell about such a man. He was very wide for his height.
"Have you got a name?" Doc asked him.
"Pipe down and get your schnozzle out of that hole!" the wide man said.
He had a deep and coarse voice; when he spoke, it was about equivalent to hearing a canary croak like
a frog.
"I do not understand this," Doc said.
The man said, "Curiosity is good for you!" Then he slammed the window shut, and the truck continued on
its way.
Doc Savage climbed into his car, apparently not greatly concerned. He felt under the dashboard until he
located a hidden switch, which he turned on, and the result was a hum of a radio warming up. It was not
a conventional car radio; this one was a short-wave transmitter and receiver.
"Hello, Monk!" Doc said into the microphone.
Almost at once, a voice replied, "Yes, Doc?"
It was a very small voice; it might have belonged to a boy, or a midget.
"Monk," Doc Savage said, "an unusual thing has happened. I have just encountered two gentlemen, and
one of them seems to insist on talking like Shakespeare."
"Like what?"
"Shakespeare."
"I don’t get you, Doc."
"It is a strange story, ending with a slight predicament," the bronze man explained.
Chapter III. THE FISH AND THE BAIT
"MONK," otherwise known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was a man who was
somewhat ridiculous in two or three ways—being amazing in appearance, shorter than many men, wider
than most men, and more hairy than almost any man; and he had a face that was something to start
babies laughing, the little tikes probably not thinking it human, but something funny made for their
amusement.
As "Ham" frequently remarked: if worst came to worst, Monk might get a job posing for Halloween
funny-face masks. "Ham" was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, lawyer and sartorial artist.
Ham and Monk had three things in common: they both belonged to Doc Savage’s crew of five; they both
had unusual animals for pets, and each one liked to quarrel with the other. They quarreled interminably. It
went on when they ate, fought, or made love. Nothing seemed to interfere with their squabbling.
As for Monk, it was not likely he would ever have to pose for Halloween funny-faces to make a living.
Monk was world-renowned as a chemist. Whenever a big corporation hired him as a consulting chemist,
they usually paid him a fee as large as the salary of the president of the United States. That was the most
ridiculous thing about Monk. His head did not look as if it had room for a spoonful of brains.
Monk leaned back lazily, put his feet on the inlaid table in the reception room of Doc Savage’s
skyscraper headquarters in New York City, and spoke into the microphone. His mind was at peace, for
he had made a mistake—by "predicament," he supposed Doc meant something minor.
Doc did not sound excited.
"Here’s a good one, Doc," Monk chuckled. "Chemistry, that blasted runt ape pet of Ham’s, has been
devilin’ my pet pig, Habeas Corpus, for weeks. But the worm finally turned. Habeas got hold of
Chemistry and blamed near ate a leg off him, and the ape has been roostin’ on the chandelier all day,
afraid to—"
"I’ve been kidnaped!" Doc advised.
Monk’s feet fell off the desk. "What?"
Doc Savage could hardly have been as calm mentally as he was physically. He was a prisoner in the van,
which meant trouble. Serious trouble, conceivably. If it was not serious, the captors probably wouldn’t
have gone to such elaborate pains to get him.
The bronze man had been speaking in a low voice. His captors might discover at any moment that he
was talking over a radio from inside the van. Or the van might reach its destination. Haste seemed
advisable.
"You and Ham," Doc said, "might sort of trail along."
Monk’s voice was an astonished squeak over the radio. "Trail where? What’s goin’ on?"
DOC explained with small words that he had been bumped, car and all, into a big van, and that the van
was now taking him to an unknown destination.
"And the way one of them talks," the bronze man finished, "is the queerest thing of all."
"Way he talks?"
"He uses Sixteenth-Century English."
"He what?"
"He sounds like Shakespeare."
"Just what kind of gag," Monk demanded, "is this?"
"It does sound queer," the bronze man admitted. "This man talks Sixteenth-Century English, but I do not
know why or anything else about it. It is very strange. But you might get on our trail. Have you got a
radio direction-finder handy?"
"Sure. There’s one in a car downstairs."
"I will leave this transmitter turned on," Doc explained. "They may not notice it. I will also lay the
microphone on the transmitter so it will pick up generator hum. You trace us with the direction-finder."
"Then what?"
"You might have to use your own judgment."
"On my way!" Monk said. Then as an afterthought he added. "How many of them Shakespeares is
there?"
"Two men are in the van, but only one is a Shakespeare, as you term it. At least one or two more men
were in the car that bumped my machine up into the van."
"As long as they ain’t over a dozen," Monk said confidently, "I can handle ‘em."
"Bring Ham."
"Oh—O. K.," Monk grumbled.
DOC switched off the receiver portion of the radio, so that static noises would not draw attention. Then
he got out and leaned against the car to wait. All his men—he had five assistants—made it a practice to
have instant two-way radio communication available at all possible times.
The bronze man had radios everywhere—in cars, planes, boats, apartments, and even portable
short-range sets which could be carried around in pockets. Sometimes the devices were not used for
weeks, and they began to seem like useless gimmicks. But when they were needed, it was usually no
fooling.
Then the truck stopped. The back of the van opened. Two men with guns got in.
One was the wide man with the incredibly homely face and the imitation pearl tie pin. The other was
bitter-looking Henry. Under their topcoats, both fellows wore breastplates of steel armor which looked
rather ancient.
"Perchance thou can touch the roof!" suggested Henry gloomily.
Doc demonstrated that he could.
Henry walked around and handcuffed the bronze man.
Henry’s wide companion went over and peered under the dashboard of the car. He chuckled.
"Yep!" he said. "He’s had the radio workin’!"
Henry asked, "You think, sire, perchance his friends may locate the transmitter with another device?"
"Good bet."
"Aye, then ‘tis well," Henry said, wearing, however, the expression of a boy who had lately learned there
was no Santa Claus.
Doc Savage said, "You knew that was on?" He pointed at the radio.
"Aye, we knew." Henry sighed. "We ourselves do have a short-wave radio. We heard thee converse
with one addressed as Monk."
"You are leading Monk and Ham into a trap?" Doc demanded sharply.
"Aye."
MONK, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was a man who was easily satisfied; but nothing
that Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks did would ever satisfy him.
"Somethin’ must be wrong with you!" Monk complained.
"Why?" Ham snapped.
"Well, you ain’t drivin’ in the center of the road for a change."
Ham, who was driving the big limousine, turned around to give the homely Monk a bilious eye. Ham was
a lean-waisted man who was known in the higher spheres of civilization as the best-dressed man of the
day. However, he was also a lawyer, and he had practiced putting a bilious eye on witnesses in court. He
wielded a very bilious eye.
"One more crack out of you," Ham said, "and I’ll tap you on top of that wart you call a head so hard that
you’ll think the eyelets in your shoes are windows!"
Monk ignored that. He gave attention to the little portable radio direction-finder which he was
manipulating.
"Head more to the south," he ordered. Then he added, "I wonder if Doc could have gone wacky?"
"Wacky?"
"Well, that talk about people speakin’ Sixteenth-Century English sounds wacky, don’t it?"
"If it wasn’t against my policy to agree with you," Ham muttered, "I’d say it was."
They crossed a bridge over the East River, followed boulevards, and passed beyond the suburbs of New
York City. The car rocketed through a flat, sandy region of truck farms.
"The signal is gettin’ louder," Monk announced. And later, he declared, "We’re right on it! I can hear
Doc’s generator hum like nobody’s business!"
The car passed a low rambling white house with green shutters which sat in a nest of shrubbery. Monk
swung the radio loop excitedly.
"They’re there!" he barked.
Behind the low white house stood a white shed and a white barn, and they were also surrounded with
brush.
"Regular jungle," Ham said.
"Doc said they bumped his car up in a big van, didn’t he?" Monk asked.
"Yeah."
"The van is probably in the shed or the barn. We might as well drive right in, hadn’t we?"
"That is as good a course as any," Ham said, "even if the idea was yours."
The aids drove up the road a bit, turned around and came back. They might be heading into plenty of
trouble, but neither was much bothered. Without looking at all like a rolling fortress, the sedan had
bulletproof glass, armor-plate steel sides and gasproof sealing.
And while the car did not look like an armory, compartments held machine-pistols, gas masks, smoke
bombs, demolition bombs, and there was a tank slung under the chassis filled with a type of gas which
would make a man unconscious whether he wore an ordinary gas mask or not. The stuff would get in
through the skin pores.
Ham wheeled the sedan into the driveway.
Out of the shrubbery stepped four men wearing trim blue uniforms and shiny badges.
"Huh!" Monk exploded. "Cops!"
Chapter IV. PRINCE ALBERT
THE men in uniforms peered into the limousine, and one of them said, "Say, aren’t you Monk and Ham,
the two Doc Savage aids?"
The voice, heard through the armor-plate steel and bulletproof glass, was very faint. Monk lowered the
window a trifle.
"That’s right," he said. "We’re Monk and Ham."
"Quite a coincidence," said the uniformed man.
Monk said, "How do you mean?"
"One of the neighbors around here called the police and said there were some queer-acting characters
around here," the man in blue explained. "We came to investigate, and got here in time to catch them
making a prisoner of Doc Savage."
"The dickens you did!" Monk said.
"Yep. They had worked the dangdest gag on him. Bumped his ear up inside a big steel moving van."
"Is Doc all right?" Monk demanded anxiously.
"Sure."
"That’s swell." Monk opened the car door. "What’s it all about?"
"Why was Doc Savage grabbed, you mean?"
"Yeah. Why was he?"
"He says he don’t know. We don’t know, either. We can’t make head or tail of it. They just up and
grabbed him."
Monk muttered, "That’s queer."
"You bet. It’s the dangdest thing."
"Where are the birds who grabbed Doc? And where’s Doc?"
"They’re all in the house. You want to help us question the mugs who grabbed Doc?"
"I’ll say I do!" Monk scrambled out of the limousine. "I’ll bet I can make ‘em talk. I’ll take the arms and
legs off ‘em!"
MONK started for the house. Ham got out of the limousine and followed him. Habeas Corpus and
Chemistry also got out of the car and joined the procession. Habeas Corpus was a runty-looking pig with
摘要：

THESUBMARINEMYSTERYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THESUBMARINEMYSTERY?ChapterII.TROUBLEBUMP?ChapterIII.THEFISHANDTHEBAIT?ChapterIV.PRINCEALBERT?ChapterV.GIRLINARMOR?ChapterVI.LOSTRACES?ChapterVII.MISSINGDUCHESS?ChapterVIII.I...

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