Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 027 - The Secret in the Sky

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2024-12-19 1 0 509.86KB 97 页 5.9玖币
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THE SECRET IN THE SKY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE FRIEND WHO DIED
? Chapter II. THE HIGH-PRESSURE GHOULS
? Chapter III. THE MAN FROM OKLAHOMA
? Chapter IV. OKLAHOMA ACTION
? Chapter V. FLAME THREAD
? Chapter VI. TWO GENTLEMEN OF TULSA
? Chapter VII. PERIL IN FRISCO
? Chapter VIII. THE DEAD MAN'S BROTHER
? Chapter IX. MURDER SPREE
? Chapter X. DEATH ZONE
? Chapter XI. THE FARMER GAG
? Chapter XII. MAN IN THE RUBBER MASK
? Chapter XIII. SINISTER ORGANIZATION
? Chapter XIV. OSAGE RENDEZVOUS
? Chapter XV. PLANS SINISTER
? Chapter XVI. DEATH RODE THE SKY
? Chapter XVII. HOLOCAUST
Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE FRIEND WHO DIED
THE matter of Willard Spanner was almost unbelievable. It was too preposterous. The newspapers
publishing the story were certain a mistake had been made somewhere. True, this was the Twentieth
Century, the age of marvels. But—then—
At exactly noon, the telephone buzzer whirred in Doc Savage's New York skyscraper headquarters.
Noon, straight up, Eastern Standard Time.
The buzzer whirred three times, with lengthy pauses between whirs, which allowed time for any one
present to have answered. Then an automatic answering device, an ingenious arrangement of dictaphone
voice recorder and phonographic speaker—a creation of Doc Savage's scientific skill—was cut in
automatically. The phonograph record turned under the needle and sent words over the telephone wire.
“This is a mechanical robot speaking from Doc Savage's headquarters and advising you that Doc Savage
is not present, but that any message you care to speak will be recorded on a dictaphone and will came to
Doc Savage's attention later,” spoke the mechanical contrivance. “You may proceed with whatever you
wish to say, if anything.”
“Doc!” gasped a voice, which had that strange quality lent by long-distance telephonic amplifiers. “This is
Willard Spanner! I am in San Francisco. I have just learned something too horrible for me to believe!”
Several violent grunts came over the wire. There were thumps. Glass seemed to break at the San
Francisco end. Then came silence, followed by a click as the receiver was placed on the hook at the San
Francisco terminus of the wire.
The mechanical device in Doc Savage's New York office ran on for some moments, and a stamp clock
automatically recorded the exact time of the message on a paper roll; then the apparatus stopped and set
itself for another call, should one come.
The time recorded was two minutes past twelve, noon.
Thirty minutes later, approximately, the newspaper press association wires hummed with the story of the
mysterious seizure of Willard Kipring Parker Spanner in San Francisco. Willard Kipring Parker Spanner
was a nabob, a somebody, a big shot. Anything unusual that happened to him was big news.
The newspapers did not know the half of it. The biggest was yet to come.
Financially, Willard Kipring Parker Spanner did not amount to much. A post-mortem examination of his
assets showed less than five thousand dollars, an insignificant sum for a man who was known over most
of the world.
Willard Kipring Parker Spanner called himself simply, “a guy who likes to fiddle around with
microscopes.” It was said that he knew as much about disease germs, and methods of combating them,
as any living man. He had won one Nobel prize. He was less than thirty years old. Scientists and
physicians who knew him considered him a genius.
When Willard Spanner was found dead, many a scientist and physician actually shed tears, realizing what
the world had lost.
When Willard Spanner was found dead, the newspapers began to have fits. And with good reason.
For Willard Spanner's body was found on a New York street—less than three hours after he had been
seized in San Francisco! Seized in Frisco at noon; Eastern Standard Time. Dead in New York at ten
minutes to three, Eastern Standard Time.
A NEWSBOY with a freckled face was first to convey the news to Doc Savage. The newsboy was also
cross-eyed. Neither the newsboy, nor his freckles, nor his crossed eyes had other connection with the
affair, except that the lad's reaction when he sighted Doc Savage was typical of the effect which the
bronze man had on people.
The boy's mouth went roundly open with a kind of amazement when he first saw the bronze giant; then,
as he sold the paper, his demeanor was awed and very near worshipful.
“I know you, mister,” he said in a small voice. “You're Doc Savage! I've seen your picture in the
newspapers!”
Doc Savage studied the boy as he paid for the paper. He seemed particularly interested in the crossed
eyes.
“Wear glasses?” He asked. He had a remarkable voice; it seemed filled with a great, controlled power.
“Sure,” said the newsboy, “They give me headaches.”
Doc Savage produced a small business card. The card was not white, but bronze, and the printing—his
name only was on it—was in a slightly darker bronze.
“If I asked you to do something,” he queried, “would you do it?”
“Betcha boots!” replied the newsboy.
Doc Savage wrote a name and address on the card and said, “Go see that man,” then walked on, leaving
the boy puzzled.
The name and address the bronze man had written was that of an eye specialist whose particular forte
was afflictions such as the boy had.
More than one gaze followed Doc Savage along the street, for he was a giant of bronze with a face that
was remarkable in its regularity of feature and a body that was a thing of incredible muscular
development. His eyes attracted no little attention, too. They were like pools of flake-gold, stirred into
continuous motion by some invisible force.
He read the newspaper headlines, the galleys of type beneath, but there was nothing on his features to
show that he was perusing anything of importance.
The skyscraper which housed his headquarters was, in size and architecture, probably the most
impressive in New York City. A private high-speed elevator lifted him to the eighty-sixth floor. He
passed through a door that was plain, except for a name in small bronze letters:
CLARK SAVAGE Jr.
The reception room inside had large windows, deep leather chairs, a strange and rich inlaid table of great
size, and an impressive safe.
An automatic pistol lay on the floor. A pig, a shote with long legs and ears like boat sails, walked around
and around the gun; grunting in a displeased way.
A man sat in a chair. He was a very short man and the chair was huge and high and faced away from the
door, so that only red bristles which stuck up straight on top of the man's head could be seen.
The man in the chair said in a small, childlike voice, “Shoot off that gun, Habeas, or I'll tie knots in all
your legs.”
With an uncanny intelligence, the pig sat down, inserted a hoof inside the trigger guard, and the gun went
off with an ear-splitting report.
“Swell!” said the man in the chair, “Only you better stand, Habeas. Next time, the gun might be pointed
at your posterior and there might not be a blank in it.”
Doc Savage said, “Monk.”
“Uh-huh,” said the man in the chair. “Sure, Doc, what is it?”
“Willard Spanner was a friend of mine.”
“MONK”—Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair—lifted out of the chair. He was not much
over five feet tall. He was only slightly less broad than that, and he had a pair of arms which gave the
grotesque impression of being nearly as long as he was tall. Red hairs, which looked coarse as match
sticks, furred his leathery hide. His was the build of a gorilla.
“I read about it in them blasted newspapers,” he said, and his small voice was doubly ridiculous,
contrasted with his physique. “Willard Spanner was seized in Frisco at noon. He was found dead here in
New York at ten minutes to three. Screw loose somewhere.”
Monk wrinkled a fabulously homely face to show puzzlement. He looked amiable, stupid, when, in truth,
he was one of the most clever industrial chemists alive.
“Maybe the newspapers got balled up on the difference in time between San Francisco and New York,”
he added.
“All times given are New York time,” Doc Savage said.
“Then the guy seized in San Francisco wasn't Willard Spanner, or the one dead here in New York isn't
Spanner,” Monk declared. “The bird didn't go from Frisco to New York in a little over two hours. It just
isn't being done yet.”
Doc Savage asked, “Any messages?”
“Ham phoned, and said he was coming up,” replied the homely chemist. “I haven't been here long.
Dunno what was recorded before I got here.”
The bronze man went into the next room, which was a scientific laboratory, one of the most complete in
existence, and crossed that to the vast, white-enameled room which held his laboratory of chemical,
electrical and other devices. He lifted the cover on the telephone recorder, switched a loud-speaker and
amplifier into circuit with the playback pickup, and started the mechanism.
Monk came in and listened, slackjawed, as the device reproduced the call from San Francisco, complete
to its violent termination. The pig—Habeas Corpus was the shote's full appendage—trailed at the homely
chemist's heels.
Doc Savage examined the time stamped on the recording roll.
“Two minutes past twelve,” he said.
“Was that Willard Spanner's voice, or would you know it?” Monk demanded.
“I would know his voice.” Doc replied. “And that was, unquestionably, Willard Spanner.”
"Speaking from San Francisco?” Monk grunted incredulously.
"We will see.” Doc Savage made a call, checking with the telephone people, then hung up and advised,
“The call came from San Francisco, all right. Willard Spanner appears to have been seized while he was
in the booth making the call.”
Monk picked the pig, Habeas, up by one oversize ear—a treatment the shote seemed not to mind.
“Then the dead man here in New York is not Willard Spanner,” declared the simian chemist. “Nobody
goes from Frisco to New York in not much more than two hours.”
“We will see about that,” Doc told him.
“How?”
“By visiting the New York morgue where the dead man was taken.”
Monk nodded. “How about Ham?”
“We will leave him a note,” Doc said.
APPARENTLY, it had not occurred to any one in authority on the New York civic scene that the
surroundings of the dead were of aesthetic value, for the morgue building was a structure which nearly
attained the ultimate in shoddiness.
Its brick walls gave the appearance of having not been washed in generations, being almost black with
soot and city grime. The steps were grooved deep by treading feet, and the stone paving of the entry into
which the dead wagons ran was rutted by tires. Rusting iron bars, very heavy, were over the windows;
for just what reason, no one probably could have told.
“This joint gives me the creeps—and I don't creep easy,” Monk imparted, as they got out of Doc
Savage's roadster before the morgue.
The roadster was deceptively long. Its color was somber. The fact that its body was of armor plate, its
windows—specially built in the roadster doors—of bullet-proof glass, was not readily apparent.
Monk carried Habeas Corpus by an ear and grumbled, “I wonder why anybody should kill Willard
Spanner? Or grab him, either? Spanner was an all-right guy. He didn't have any enemies.”
Doc listened at the entrance. There was silence, and no attendant was behind the reception desk where
one should have been. They stepped inside.
“Hello, somebody!” Monk called.
Silence answered.
There was an odor in the air, a rather peculiar tang. Monk sniffed.
“Say, I knew they used formaldehyde around these places,” he muttered. “But there's something
besides—”
Doc Savage moved with such suddenness that he seemed to explode. But it was a silent explosion, and
he was little more than a noiseless bronze blur as he crossed to the nearest door. He did not try to pass
through the door, but flattened beside it.
Monk, bewildered, began, “Say, what the blazes? First I smell—”
A man came through the door, holding a big single-action six-gun. He said, “Start your settin' up
exercises, boys!” Then his eyes bulged, for he had apparently expected to see two men—and Doc
Savage, beside the door, escaped his notice.
The man with the six-shooter was bony and looked as if he had been under bright suns much of his life.
He wore a new suit, but his shirt was a coarse blue work garment, faded from washing. The tie was blue
and looked as if it had been put on and taken off many times, without untying the knot. The knot was a
very long one.
Doc Savage struck silently and with blinding speed. The gun wielder saw him, but could not move in
time, and the bronze man's fist took him on the temple. The six-gun evidently had a hair trigger. It went
off. The bullet made a hole, round and neat, in the wall behind Monk.
Monk began howling and charged for the door.
“Now ain't this somethin'!” he bellowed.
DOC SAVAGE had gone on with a continuation of the dive which he had made at the six-gun wielder,
and was already through the door. The room beyond was an office with four desks and four swivel
chairs.
Five persons were arrayed on the floor. The morgue attendants, obviously. They were neither bound nor
gagged, but they lay very still. The odor of chloroform was heavy in the air.
Two men were on their feet. One was tall, the other short, and the short one wore overall pants and his
legs were bowed. Both were weather-beaten.
The tall one held in one hand a blue revolver and in the other a bandanna handkerchief, which gave off
chloroform stench. The short man had an automatic rifle from which barrel and stock had been bobbed
off short.
A bundle of clothing lay in the middle of the floor.
The automatic rifle smacked loudly as Doc came through the door. But the marksman did not lead his
target quite enough. He shot again. The cartridge stuck in the ejector.
“Damn it!” the rifleman bawled.
“Throw it away!” gritted the tall man. “I told you that gun wouldn't work if you bobtailed it!”
The tall man danced back as he spoke, seeming in no hurry to shoot. He waved his blue revolver, that
Doc Savage might be sure to see it.
“Don't be a sucker!” the man suggested. “Behave yourself”
Doc Savage held his hands out even with his shoulders and came to a stop, but not until momentum had
carried him to the center of the room.
Monk lumbered through the door. He stopped, looked closely at the blue gun as if it were some strange
animal, then put up his stub-fingered hands.
"That's bein' sensible,” said the tall man. “I can bust poker chips in the air with this here hogleg. Stunted,
there, is a good shot, too, only he thought he knew more about that auto rifle than the gent who made
her.”
“Stunted,” the short man, was peering into the innards of his doctored rise.
“Aw-w,” he mumbled. “I took too much tension off the spring.”
Monk grunted, “What's the idea, you guys?”
“We like to look at dead people.” the tall man said dryly. “We're strange that way.”
Doc Savage was standing with his toes almost against the bundle of clothing. The bundle was snug, being
strapped around tightly with a belt.
Doc hooked a toe under the bundle and kicked with great force.
THE human nervous system is capable of registering impressions only so fast. The tall man undoubtedly
knew the missile was coming, but could do nothing. When it hit him, he recoiled instinctively.
The next instant, he was flat on his face, held there by one foot which Doc Savage jammed down on his
neck.
Monk whooped loudly, rushed Stunted. Monk's fights were always noisy.
Stunted clung like a zealot to his bobtailed auto rifle, trying to get it in operation. He failed. He tried to
club with the gun. Monk jerked it out of his hands as if he were taking a lollypop from a child, then
dropped it.
Monk picked the short man up bodily, turned him over and dropped him on his head. He accomplished
the motion with such speed that the short man was helpless. Stunted did not move after he fell on his
head.
Monk blinked small eyes at his victim.
“Gosh,” he said. “I wonder if that hurt him?”
The tall man on the floor snarled, “What in blue blazes kind of a circus is this, anyhow?”
Monk felt of Stunted's head, found it intact, then twisted one of the short man's rather oversize ears, but
got no response. The homely chemist turned on the tall man.
“So it's a circus, huh?” he grunted. “I wondered.”
“Aw, hell!” gritted the other.
Monk came over and sat on the lean prisoner. Doc Savage removed his foot from the man's neck. Monk
grabbed the fellow's ears and pulled them. He seemed fascinated by the rubbery manner in which they
stretched out from the man's head.
“They'd make swell souvenirs,” Monk grunted.
“Cut it out!” the tall men howled. “What're you gonna do with me?”
"I'm gonna ask you questions,” Monk told him. “And I'm gonna be awful mad if you don't answer 'em.”
“Nuts!” said the captive.
“Has this raid, or whatever it was, got anything to do with Willard Spanner?” Monk asked.
“What do you think?” the other snapped.
Monk pulled the ears. Tears came to the man's eyes. He cursed, and his voice was a shrill whine of
agony.
“I'll kill you for that!” he promised. “Damn me, if I don't!”
Monk shuddered elaborately, grinned and said, “If I had on boots, I'd shake in 'em. What did you come
here for?”
A new voice said, “You gentlemen seem to be humorists.”
MONK started violently and twisted his head toward the door. He gulped, “Blazes!” and got hastily to
his feet.
The man in the door was solid, athletic-looking, and he held a revolver with familiar ease. He was in his
socks. That probably explained how he had come in from the outside so silently; that, and the faint
mumble of city traffic, which was always present.
“Get up!” he told the tall man. “Wipe your eyes. Then grab that bunch of clothes. This is sure something
to write home about!”
“I'll kill this ape!” bawled the tall man.
“Some other time,” the rescuer suggested. “Get the clothes. Say, just who is this big bronze guy and the
monkey, anyhow?”
“How would I know?” snarled the man whom Monk had been badgering. He picked up the bundle of
clothing and started for the door.
“You wouldn't leave Stunted, would you?” asked the first.
Without a word, the tall man picked up the short fellow and made his way, not without difficulty, out
through the door.
The gun wielder looked on benignly. He had one stark peculiarity. His eyes were blue. And something
was wrong with them. They crossed at intervals, pupils turning in toward the nose. Then they straightened
out. The owner seemed to do the straightening with visible effort.
Monk demanded, “Who did them clothes belong to?”
The man said, “They'll answer a lot of questions where you're going.”
Monk did not get a clear impression of what happened next. Things moved too fast. Doc Savage must
have read the intention of the man with the queer eyes. Doc lunged.
The gun went off. But the man with the eyes had tried to shift from Monk to Doc for a target and had not
quite made it. His bullet pocked the wall. Then Doc had a grip on the revolver.
The man let go of the revolver. He bounced back, fast on his feet, reached the door and slipped through.
He was yelling now. His yells caused noise of other feet in the next room. There were evidently more
men.
Doc grasped Monk and propelled him backward. They got into a rear room and slammed the door. Doc
shot the bolt.
Revolver bullets chopped around the lock. Wood splintered. The lock held. A man kicked the door.
Monk roared a threat.
There was no more kicking, no more shooting. Silence fell, except for the traffic noises.
Monk looked at Doc.
“That guy with the performing eyes was gonna kill us both,” he mumbled.
Doc Savage did not comment. He listened, then unlocked the door. The room beyond was empty. He
advanced. In the next room, one of the chloroformed morgue attendants was sitting up and acting sick.
The street outside held no sign of the violent raiders. There was no trace of the bundle of clothing.
The reviving morgue attendant began to mumble.
“They wanted clothes off a corpse,” he muttered. “Whatcha know about that?”
“Off what corpse?” Doc asked him.
“Off Willard Spanner,” said the attendant.
Chapter II. THE HIGH-PRESSURE GHOULS
DOC SAVAGE exited to the street and made inquiries, finding that the men had gone away in two cars.
Persons questioned named four different makes of cars, in each instance insisting that their information
was correct.
“They're all wrong, probably,” Monk grumbled.
Pursuit was patently hopeless, although Monk cast a number of expectant glances in Doc Savage's
direction. The bronze man had a way of pulling rabbits out of hats in affairs such as this. But Doc only
reëntered the morgue. None of those who had been chloroformed were in immediate danger.
“We came here to see the body of Willard Spanner,” Doc told the attendant who had revived.
“Sort of a coincidence,” said the attendant, and managed a sickly grin which typified a peculiarity of
human behavior—the fact that persons who work regularly in close proximity to death are inclined to arm
themselves with a wise-cracking veneer.
The bodies were stored in bins not unlike huge filing boxes. The marble slabs on which they lay slid into
the bins on rollers. The attendant was still too groggy to bring the Willard Spanner slide out after he had
found the identifying card, and Monk helped him.
Doc Savage looked at the body for a long time.
“This is Willard Spanner,” he said finally.
They went out.
Monk scratched his head, then said, “But the man seized in San Francisco—that couldn't have been
Willard Spanner.”
“The voice on the phone recorder,” Doc reminded.
“You said it was Willard Spanner's voice.” Monk found his pig, Habeas, and picked him up by an ear.
“Could you have been mistaken about that voice?”
“I think not,” Doc Savage said slowly.
They examined those who were still senseless from the chloroform, gave a description of the morgue
raiders to police officers who had arrived, then walked out to the roadster.
Monk seemed to be thinking deeply. He snapped his fingers.
“That bundle of Willard Spanner's clothing!” he grumbled. “Now what in the dickens did they want with
that? The police had searched the pockets and had found nothing.”
“It must have been something important,” Doc told him. “They wanted the garments badly enough to
make quite a disturbance in getting them.”
A policeman came to the morgue door and called, “You are wanted on the phone.”
Doc and Monk went back, and Doc picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?” inquiringly.
A clipped, melodious voice spoke rapidly. It was the voice of an orator, and it carried the accent which
is commonly associated with Harvard.
“I got to the morgue in time to observe that something was badly wrong,” advised the speaker. “I
followed the chaps outside when they left in such a hurry. They are now at Albemarle Avenue and Frame
Street. I will meet you at the corner.”
Doc Savage said, “In ten minutes,” and hung up.
Monk, making for the street in a series of ungainly bounds, demanded, “Who was it?”
“Ham,” Doc replied.
“The shyster!” Monk growled, and there was infinite contempt in his tone.
ALBEMARLE AVENUE was a twin groove through marsh mud on the outskirts of New York City.
Frame Street seemed to be a sign, scabby and ancient, which stuck out of the salt grass. If there ever had
been a Frame Street, it had long ago given up to the swamp.
Darkness was coming on when Doc Savage and Monk arrived in the roadster.
“There's Ham,” Monk said.
“Ham” was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, Park Avenue fashion plate, and a lawyer, the
pride of Harvard Law School. He was a slender man with the manner of a wasp and a tongue as sharp
as the fine Damascus sword blade concealed in the innocent-looking black cane which he carried.
He came out of the marsh grass, stepping gingerly to avoid soiling his natty afternoon garb, the sword
cane tucked under an arm.
“Hy-ah, you fashion plate,” Monk growled.
“Hello, stupid,” Ham retorted insultingly.
The two glared at each other. A stranger would have thought fisticuffs imminent. As a matter of fact, each
of these two had time and again risked his life to save the other, although no one had ever heard one of
them address a civil word to the other.
摘要：

THESECRETINTHESKYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEFRIENDWHODIED?ChapterII.THEHIGH-PRESSUREGHOULS?ChapterIII.THEMANFROMOKLAHOMA?ChapterIV.OKLAHOMAACTION?ChapterV.FLAMETHREAD?ChapterVI.TWOGENTLEMENOFTULSA?ChapterVII.PERILINFR...

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