Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 045 - Resurrection Day

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RESURRECTION DAY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter 1. THE COMING MIRACLE
? Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!
? Chapter 3. SCHEMES
? Chapter 4. CARSON ALEXANDER OLMAN
? Chapter 5. MASTER PLOTTER
? Chapter 6. WISDOM
? Chapter 7. THE MUMMY SWAPPERS
? Chapter 8. RESURRECTION!
? Chapter 9. THE STRANGE MUMMY MAN
? Chapter 10. THE PIRATE PHARAOH
? Chapter 11. AIR FANGS
? Chapter 12. BLACK MOUNTAINS
? Chapter 13. THE DEVIL OF THE DESERT
? Chapter 14. CROOKED TWO
? Chapter 15. TOMB TRAP
? Chapter 16. THB SLY MUMMY MAN
? Chapter 17. THE FIGHT IN THE TOMB
? Chapter 18. WATER
Chapter 1. THE COMING MIRACLE
IT just happened that General Ino was the first man who saw a truckload of policemen stop in front of
the skyscraper which housed Doc Savage's New York headqtiarters. The general would have read
about it in his newspaper, along with the rest of the world, a bit later, no doubt. But by seeing the
truckload of policemen arrive. he got in on the ground floor, in a manner of speaking.
The general stopped to watch. He was interested in what the policemen had on their truck heavy lumber
posts, barbed wire, and a keg of staples.
The general had a vocational interest in policemen, anyway, having spent many of his waking hours, as
well as manv hours taken from his sleeping time, in figuring out ways of keeping out of their clutches.
The policemen began unloading their posts. timbers and barbed wire. The orncer in charge gestured and
called orders. General Ino's jaw dropped in astonishment. The cops were going to build a barbed-wire
barricade acrossone of the busiest streets in New York City!
General Ino crowded around with some other curious people who had stopped. The general was not
afraid of cops. Not for nothing had he stayed awake nights, for he could walk New York streets
undisguised and - practically - unafraid.
There was a commotion at the other end of the block, and another truckload of policemen and the
makings of a barbed-wire barricade came to a stop near the giant skyscrapers.
It was true that General Ino had thus far operated in Egypt, Italy, Japan and elsewhere. Places far from
NewYork, but places where they have rich men. Particularly rich are the new merchant princes of Japan.
One of them had paid a quarter of a million yen ransom for his son, his only man-child.
More trucks were arriving. It seemed that the entire block was going to be barricaded. That meant the
building, really. The building was a block square and taller than ihe length of the longest ocean liner in the
world.
General Ino had killed the Japanese merchant prince's man-child, but the merchant prince didn't know
that before the ransom was paid. Didn't know it yet, in fact. Years later, the general had thought he might
work off some phony brat as the man-child. He had kept the baby clothes of the man-child and the bit of
jewelry it had worn.
There was quite a hullabaloo now, with the policemen stopping traffic and beginning to build their
barbed-wire fences across the most teeming streets in a city noted for its traffic.
General Ino had played the races. That took money. He had practically kept himself a harem. That took
more money. Moreover, he had kept his old organization of crooks and killers intact. That took the most
money of all. In that organization he believed he had some of the coldest, slickest crooks alive.
The general had once added up the rewards hanging over the heads of his organization members. The
total had stunned him. But it was an asset which he hadn't yet been able to think out a method of cashing
in on.
For General Ino was about broke. All ripe for one of the fabulously big, cleverly planned, cunningly
executed hauls which was the only kind he touched.
General Ino walked over to the nearest policeman.
"M'sieu' Gendarme," he said, "could you tell me why all thees ees happen?"
The general could fake almost any accent. He loved to.
THE cop had come from a long line of brick-throwing ancestors, and his grin was big.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Frenchy." The officer jerked a thumb upward. "The powers that be say
fence in the streets around here; so fence 'em in we will."
"But, m 'sieu', some reason you 'ave give thees people why you not let zem pas', no?"
"This is the only reason we have to give 'em." The cop tapped his badge.
"Velly stlange," said the general, singsonging. "Velly stlange."
The cop watched him walk off, then scratched his head.
"Dang me," he grunted. "First he's a frog, then he's a laundryman!"
The general was at that moment also much the master of evil - and profitable - schemes, He went directly
to the offices of Proudman Shaster.
Proudman Shaster gave his visitor a dry smile and a dried-up hand, then went back behind his huge desk
and sat down. The result was that Proudman Shaster about disappeared. Only his bulging melon of a
head showed over the formidable desk.
Proudman Shaster's head was all that counted, anyway. It was full of brains and all the ideas they
hatched were bad.
"It's really a wonderful day," he said. "Really wonderful." Proudman Shaster was a well-known attorney.
and everything was usually "really wonderful" with him. It was a small habit of speech he had.
"Si, si, senor," said the general, imitating a Spaniard. "Look, I have an idea. A mucho bueno idea! I want
it looked into."
Proudman Shaster folded his dry hands and looked as if he hadn't heard a word of it.
"I want all of mv men assemblcd here in New York at once," said General Ino. "All of my hombres,
understand!"
"Can do," Proudman Shaster admitted, lighting a cigarette.
He should have been able to d it. He was Ino's mouth, his eyes, his ears, even a wee bit of his brains,
when the occasion demanded. He had furnished the acid that had disposed of the last bit of epidermis of
the Japanese merchant prince's man-child.
General Ino shook hands with himself, Chinese fashion, and murmured, "This humble one is most proud
of such a worthy servant."
Proudman Shaster looked at his finger nails, found grime under one and began to clean it with a small,
sharp tooth.
"Who are we going to take to the cleaners now?" he asked.
"Doc Savage," General Ino said.
Proudman Shaster gave a violent leap, closed his eyes, and seemed to stop breathing. He dropped his
cigarette.
GENERAL INO was plainly quite amused by the actions of his lieutenant - not his most valuable one,
incidentally. Ino smiled, picked up the cigarette stub and extinguished it in a bronze tray.
"Oh, don't worry, I knew you'd be quite surprised," he said.
Proudman Shaster went through some convulsive facial expressions.
"Water!" be gasped faintly. "And one of the pills out of the box on the water cooler!"
General Ino seemed about to laugh, as if it were a good bit of acting; then be peered closely at his
follower. He ran to the cooler, got the water and pill, then administered both to Proudman Shaster.
"Don't you know I have a weak heart?" were Shaster's first words.
"I never expected merely mentioning a name would kill you off," Ino told him.
Shaster got up shakily, helped himself to more water and another pill, and topped it off with a drink from
a brown bottle with a black label. He looked closely at his chief.
"Look here!" he said grimly. "Don't you know about this Doc Savage?"
General Ino said, "It is not my habit to go into things half baked."
"You'll come out of this one with your goose cooked," said Proudman Shaster. "Doc Savage is one of
the most dangerous men in the world to meddle with."
"A reputation," murmured General Ino, "is like a snowball."
"Doc Savage is a man who was taken by his parents at birth and trained intensively and scientifically to
become a catcher of crooks and a righter of wrongs," explained Shaster.
"The snowball," continued General Ino, "starts off as a little ball, but grows until it becomes as big as
hell."
"Doc Savage is a scientific genius, a mental wizard, and as strong as the Bull of Bashan!" snapped
Shaster.
"The snowball gets big because it rolls down the hill," Ino reminded.
"Doc Savage is not entirely human. Everybody, almost, has heard about him. His business is righting
wrongs, aiding the oppressed, and sort of putting the kibosh on crooked schemes."
"Nature put the hill there," General Ino pointed out.
"Every crook alive, when he hears about Doc Savage, crosses his fingers and hopes the Man of Bronze -
they call Savage that sometimes - will not get on his trail."
"A little shove starts the snowball. After that it grows by itself."
"Doc Savage alone is bad enough," groaned Proudman Shaster. "But he also has five assistants. One of
them I have personally seen in action. He is a lawyer named Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks,
and those who are not afraid call him Ham. Not many people call him Ham."
"As I have been saying," said General Ino, "it does not take much to make a big snowball."
"HAM almost got me disbarred once," moaned Shaster. "He is the cleverest lawyer I ever saw. Doc
Savage's other aids are equally clever in their lines. One is said to be an engineer, another a chemist, a
third an archaeologist, and the fourth an electrical wizard."
"Reputations are like snowballs," declared Ino.
"Doc Savage is the master of any of his aids in his respective line, incredible as it seems, according to
reports."
"A big reputation can grow out of a little of nothing," Tno reminded.
Shaster snapped, "I would rather commit suicide than tackle Doc Savage!"
General Ino calmly drew a revolver out of his coat pocket and laid it on the desk.
"Then you'd better shoot yourself," he said. He pressed a small catch on one of his cuff links and it flew
open. A whitish-looking powder fell out on the desk top. "Or touch your tongue to that. It's potassium
cyanide of a newer and more lethal type."
Proudman Shaster gulped, "But I don't understand!"
"Well, we are going to tackle Doc Savage," General Ino told him. "Doc Savage is a man after my style.
He goes after big things."
"And little ones, too, I've heard," Shaster put in. "They say he helps an infinitely greater number of people
in small ways, but only his big deeds find their way into the newspapers - "
"Then we'll wait for one of his big ones," said General Ino.
"I still don't understand what you're driving at," Shaster told him nervously.
"Did you ever see a seagull wait until a pelican had dived, gotten a fish and come up breathless, then the
seagull would pounce in and grab the fish?"
"My acquaintance with seagulls is limited."
"Well, we are going to play seagull."
"One will get you five," said Proudman Shaster, "that we all wind up inside looking out."
General Ino chuckled. He spoke like an Irishman.
"Sure, an' thot reminds me of what brought all this to me mind," he said. "They're buildin' a barbed-wire
fence around Doc Savage's headquarters, no less!"
"THE afternoon newspapers had pictures of the barbed-wire fence. Fences, rather. They were four in
number, one at each street corner, and they completely blocked off, for anything less than a tank, ingress
or egress from the cloud-piercing giant of a building.
One headline said:
MYSTERY MAN MAKES MYSTERY MOVE!
A second read:
POLICE PREPARE FOR STARTLING EVENT!
Another:
MORE DOC SAVAGE GRANDSTANDING!
The stories were about the same. The police were telling nothing. Passes were being issued to persons
employed in the skyscraper which was being fenced off. Newspapermen and cameramen were not
getting passes.
There was a lot of talk about it over dinner cocktails that evening. Some people went down to look at the
barricade, and the cops had traffic-jam trouble.
A little more of it developed the next morning. The newspapers all had a paid advertisement, one full
page. It was alike in every paper, and in such plain type that some readers passed over it until they heard
about it; then they went back and read it.
Most of them got the feeling that something was coming, and that they'd better hold onto their hats.
The ad read:
PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT
We wish to give the public some facts about Doc Savage, although the public may already know them.
Doc Savage is Clark Savage, Jr., a man who has been developed scientifically, exactly as a great
scientific laboratory would develop a product. This scientific development has been carried on for many
years, and the results are amazing.
We personally know Doc Savage to possess one of the most amazing scientific minds in existence. He is
a wizard.
To-morrow, Doc Savage will print an announcement. It is an announcement that will stir the world.
We believe it will change the entire course of civilization. (SIGNED)
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. Major
Thomas J. Roberts. William Harper Littlejohn. Colonel John Renwick.
Almost every one knew the identity of the five men who had signed the advertisement.
"They're Doc Savage's five aids," those who didn't know were informed.
Of course, it was now generally realized that something was coming, and that was why the barbed-wire
barricade was being erected around Doc Savage's skyscraper headquarters.
The police around the barricade had more traffic troubles.
Chapter 2. THE MIRACLE WAS REAL!
GENERAL INO absorbed the morning papers and his coffee-and-spot-of-brandy simultaneously. Then
he descended to Proudman Shaster's offices.
Proudman Shaster was just signing on the dotted line for a bustling young man who looked General Ino
over hopefully before he was shooed out.
"'What have you been doing?" General Ino wanted to know.
"Taking out more insurance," groaned Proudman Shaster. "Insurance is a really wonderful thing. Really
wonderful."
"There's a lot of really wonderful things in this," said General Ino. "Uncle Sam makes a lot of them and
calls them dollars. By the way, what of the worthy gentlemen I call my colleagues?"
Proudman Shaster sighed and put away his new insurance policy.
"I have been in touch with them."
"All?"
"Yes. And they are assembling. They will be together in three different hotels at four o'clock this
afternoon, awaiting your visit."
General Ino had long ago stopped assembling his mob all in one body, where, if things went wrong, every
one would be nabbed at once by the police. Good, skilled, unscrupulous followers were too difficult to
obtain to take such chances of losing them.
"Good," said General Ino. "I'll tell them we are going to tackle this Doc Savage. I believe I have picked
an excellent time. Have you seen the late newspapers?"
"I have," Shaster admitted, nervously.
"Doc Savage is getting ready to break something big."
"He has never done a thing like this before," Shaster said, gloomily. "Always, he has shunned publicity.
Any one wanting his help goes to him. But now, he seems to be coming out to the public for some reason
or other."
"It's big, I'll agree," chuckled General Ino. "And we need something big to line our pocketbooks."
"It's so big we'll choke on it, I'll bet," groaned Shaster.
General Ino eyed him narrowly. "Shaky, eh? I believe I'll give my men the choice of going up against this
Doc Savage with me, or of not going. That'll insure me of having men who are not afraid."
"It'll insure you of having no men at all," Proudman Shaster predicted, gloomily.
General Ino considered.
"On second thought, I won't give them their choice," he decided.
Proudman Shaster wailed, "I wish I knew what this Doc Savage is up to!"
A LOT of others had Proudman Shaster's idea. Nobody seemed to really have a gnat's notion of what it
was all about.
The newspapers - afternoon editions - didn't help any with their second paid ad:
A SECOND PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT
We, having faith in Doc Savage's scientific genius, and knowing him as few - we really believe none -
others know him, wish to pave the way for what is coming with some more facts.
For years, Doc Savage has been experimenting along a certain scientific line.
Doc Savage, in fact, has been trying to accomplish something that magicians and fakirs and charlatans
have from time immemorial been trying to make people think they could do.
This thing can be done! Some day, some one will do it. That day has come.
Doc Savage can now do it!
But he can do it only once! Just once! And he wants that once to do the world as much good as
possible, so he is going to ask the aid of the United States public.
But we will let the details remain for Doc Savage himself to explain.
DOC SAVAGE WILL SPEAK OVER THE RADIO AT 7 O'CLOCK TO-NIGHT!
It was signed by the same five men who had signed the previous advertisement.
Quite a few radios which were out of order were hurriedly repaired that afternoon.
Statistically minded persons who figured it up decided Doc Savage had spent all of a quarter of a million
dollars in advertising. Every newspaper daily in the country had carried the announcements. The radio
proclamation, study of any radio column revealed, was to be a really nation-wide network. Every single
radio station broadcasting in the United States was on the hook-up. And those who knew radio knew it
had taken plenty of money to swing that.
But every one knew that Doc Savage had, and had had for years, some secret source of fabulous
wealth.
A pin dropping would have sounded like a gunshot on the ether waves of the nation at seven o'clock that
night.
DOC SAVAGE came on the air without any trace of a preliminary announcement.
Nobody was confused. Nobody thought for an instant that any one except Doc Savage was speaking.
And yet Doc Savage had never before spoken over the radio on a national hook-up.
There was something about the voice. It was controlled, modulated, deep, and it somehow conveyed the
impression that it was a voice which could do some amazing things, and that its owner was an individual
who could do even more amazing things.
Anyway, Doc Savage's first thirteen words knocked the breath out of his listeners.
"It is in my power to bring a dead man back to life," he said.
Then he waited for that to soak in.
"Only one man can be brought back to life," he went on. "That is because the process requires the use of
a new element in a combination which takes at least ten years to develop. You all know how the juice of
an apple must he allowed to ferment before it becomes vinegar. It is the same with this element
combination, except that the time process covers years."
Another pause for it to be absorbed.
"It does not matter how long the dead man has been dead," the remarkable voice of Doc Savage
continued. "The body must be intact, or the mummy of it intact."
Again, a pause.
"Now, so much for the statement of what can be done. Here is the real reason for all of the display
behind this. Here is why we have gone to so much trouble to get the public attention of the country.
"We want help. We want suggestions. In short, we want to know who the people of the United States
want brought back to life."
The ether was remarkably quiet all over the nation. Strangely, it happened that there was practically no
static, so almost every listener got a perfect reception from his set.
"Who will do the world the most good, if brought back to life? These are the names of the committee of
men and women who have been appointed to make the final decision. They will want your instructions.
Mail, telephone, or telegraph them to the committee members."
There followed a list of names and addresses, given slowly, and strangely enough, given in some uncanny
fashion so that even the listeners with poor memories had no trouble remembering at least one or two of
the names.
The newspapers commented on this the next day, but none of them hit on the truth - Doc Savage had
developed a teaching technique, the ability to tell a thing so that it was not forgotten. It was simply in the
manner in which the words were delivered, the dramatic emphasis put on them.
An announcer came on the air and said, "That was Doc Savage speaking."
He nearly scared his listeners out of their skins. The announcer had always been credited with a pleasant,
excellent voice; but now, after that remarkable voice which had just finished speaking, he sounded like a
crow dying.
OF course, there was excitement. Talk, at least. Every one had probably at some time or other dreamed
what a great thing it would be to bring a dead person back to life; so the thing caught the popular fancy.
The following day was a holiday Sunday, so every one had plenty of time to talk about it. A number of
hastily arranged sermons were preached on the subject. They were, remarkably enough, favorable. Let
Doc Savage go ahead, if he could, was their consensus. There was not much talk about mere man
keeping his hands off the celestial arrangement of things.
Telephone operators, telegraphers and mailmen had no time to think or talk, though. The suggestions
were already pouring in. The judges had a phalanx of secretaries classifying the suggestions, and
numbering them.
The following day, Monday, newspapers printed everything they could find about Doc Savage. For the
first time in his history, Doc Savage permitted some facts about himself to get out. Mainly, they had to do
with his scientific training, and there was enough data to convince even the most skeptical that Doc
Savage was little short of an inventive wizard.
He had perfected, it seemed, innumerable scientific and surgical discoveries about which the public had
no idea of the inventor. The skeptics, and there were a number, dug up plenty of proof that all this was
the truth.
The suggestions from the public continued to pour in. There were all kinds. As to the man to be brought
back to life, they wanted the sublime and the ridiculous. Names advanced ranged from Napoleon to
Lincoln to a grieving neighbor woman's dead little daughter.
Innumerable parents wanted departed children resurrected, and living children wanted parents back.
These latter pleas were sincere, moving, and often came in on tear-stained stationery. On a number of
occasions the secretaries doing the classifying were found sobbing as the result of some particularly
heart-stirring appeal.
The general effect was to bring home the undeniable fact that death is one of the profound things of life,
and that the power of resurrection, by science or by a miracle, was a thing of fabulous possibilities in the
bringing of joy to a bereaved one, to say nothing of the feelings of the deceased who might or might not
he snatched out of a place where he or she didn't care to be.
One anonymous suggestor wanted Lucrezia Borgia brought back so she could administer poison to the
current crop of politicians.
ThE thing grew every day, and it was not, to use an old Dutch expression, all beer and skittles for Doc
Savage and his idea and plan. There is probably no such thing as getting the press of the United States all
in accord about one thing, and this was no exception.
While one newspaper would sing Doc Savage's praises in print, another would demand that he be
drawn, quartered and hung out for inspection so the public could see just what kind of a mechanism he
was that be should get the country so stirred up over something he couldn't, obviously, accomplish. He
was a fakir, that's what. A humbug, an overrated publicity snatcher.
The name and the fame, as it were, of Doc Savage were growing, of course. His picture was in all the
newspapers, and commentators on the radio discussed him, some reverently, some with the sharp
scalpels of ridiculing disbelief. The comedians on the stage began to crack their bum jokes, and those on
the radio, worse ones.
Naturally, it all took a few days. The barbed-wire fences around Doc Savage's skyscraper offices
proved a wise precaution, because most of New York City took turns at trying to pay the place a visit.
Newspapermen, writers, photogra phers and cranks and quacks and wise guys of every descrip tion
were turned away. Doc Savage was in seclusion on the eighty-sixth floor of the skyscraper.
Communication with the public was handled by two of Doc Savage's aids commonly called "Monk" and
"Ham."
Monk was practically as broad as he was tall: he had no forehead to speak of, enough mouth for several
men, and with only a little more stubby, red hair his skin would have made a fair ape-skin rug. His full
name was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and he had a pet pig named Habeas Corpus
which was as funny a hog as Monk was a human. Monk was also one of the world's leading chemists.
Ham was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and Harvard acclaimed him as its greatest
law-school graduate, and the rest of the world admitted that might be right.
That part of the world interested in snappy clothes admitted also that Ham was the best dressed man in
New York, if not in the United States.
Ham not only admitted the distinction. He claimed it, and was practically willing to use his
innocent-looking black cane, in reality a sword cane with the tip chemically treated so that a prick
produced quick unconsciousness, on any one willing to argue the point.
Ham also had a pet. Chemistry. Chemistry had been named after Monk's profession. That was to
aggravate Monk. Chemistry by himself also aggravated Monk, because Chemistry was a runt edition of
some kind of an ape, and he was what they call in the Missouri hills, "just about a spittin' image" of
Monk.
These four - Monk, Ham, Habeas Corpus. Chemistry - got along, as far as the outside world could see,
in an alarming way. It seemed only a question of time until they ate each other up.
A NEWSPAPER REPORTER asked questions through the barbed-wire fence.
"Tell me one thing, you two. Doc Savage has always dodged publicity. Now he's handing it out by the
barrel. Why?"
Monk said, "It's this way. Doc can bring a guy to life, and - "
"A guy?" said the newsman dryly. "The women of the country wili like that! Why not bring a woman to
life?"
"Doc ain't never gone for the fems," Monk grinned. "That end is my specialty."
Ham put in crisply, "Whoever the committee selects will be brought back to life. It will be necessary for
摘要：

RESURRECTIONDAYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?Chapter1.THECOMINGMIRACLE?Chapter2.THEMIRACLEWASREAL!?Chapter3.SCHEMES?Chapter4.CARSONALEXANDEROLMAN?Chapter5.MASTERPLOTTER?Chapter6.WISDOM?Chapter7.THEMUMMYSWAPPERS?Chapter8.RESURRECTION...

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