Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 019 - Fear Cay

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2024-12-19 0 0 584.78KB 113 页 5.9玖币
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FEAR CAY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE POCKETBOOK GAG
? Chapter II. THIRTY-STORY DEATH
? Chapter III. MISTER SANTINI
? Chapter IV. THE UNSEEN MESSAGE
? Chapter V. THE HANGING MAN
? Chapter VI. DAN THUNDEN
? Chapter VII. MURDER
? Chapter VIII. FAST STUFF
? Chapter IX. KEL AVERY'S STORY
? Chapter X. THE PACKAGE TRICK
? Chapter XI. THE SEIZURE
? Chapter XII. THE DISAPPOINTING PARCEL
? Chapter XIII. FEAR CAY TRAIL
? Chapter XIV. THE ISLAND OF DEATH
? Chapter XV. THE NET TRAP
? Chapter XVI. THE TRAIL SINISTER
? Chapter XVII. TROUBLE UNDERGROUND
? Chapter XVIII. LOTS OF LUCK—ALL BAD
? Chapter XIX. THE WEEDS
? Chapter XX. THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
? Chapter XXI. THE CRAWLING TERROR
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE POCKETBOOK GAG
ONE of two pedestrians walking on a New York street turned, pointed at the big bronze man they had
just passed, and said earnestly, “I wouldn't trade places with that bird for a million bucks!”
The pedestrian's companion also looked at the bronze man.
“You said it,” he agreed. “I wouldn't last a day in his shoes, if half of what I've heard is true.”
If the bronze man was aware of their attention, he gave no sign. Many persons turned to stare at him;
newsboys stopped shouting abruptly when they saw him; but the bronze man merely went on with long,
elastic strides.
“He's not often seen in public,” some one breathed.
“And no wonder!” another exclaimed. “The newspapers say his enemies have made countless attempts
to kill him.”
The heads of the tallest individuals on the New York street did not top the bronze man's shoulders. He
was a giant. Yet it was only the manner in which he towered above the throng that made him seem as
huge as he really was, so symmetrically perfect was his great frame developed.
“They say he can take a piece of building brick in one hand and squeeze it to dust,” offered a man.
Huge cables of sinew enwrapped the bronze man's neck, and enormous thews stood up as hard as bone
on the backs of his hands. There was a liquid smoothness about the way they flowed.
Persons who saw the metallic man's eyes made haste in getting out of his path. Not that the eyes were
threatening, but there was something about them that compelled. They were like pools of flake-gold,
those eyes, and the gold flakes were very fine and always in movement, as if stirred by diminutive,
invisible whirlwinds.
Strange eyes! They held power, and the promise of an ability to do weird things.
Two policemen on a corner saluted the bronze giant enthusiastically.
“Hello, Doc Savage,” they chorused.
The mighty man who looked as if he were made of metal acknowledged the greeting with a nod and went
on. His features were strikingly regular, unusually handsome in an emphatic, muscular way.
More than one attractive young stenographer or clerk felt herself inexplicably moved to attempt a mild
flirtation the instant she saw the big bronze fellow. But the amazing giant had a manner of not seeming to
see such incidents.
The bronze man came to a section where the sidewalk was almost deserted. He stopped.
On the walk before him lay a small object of leather. Stooping, he picked it up.
The article was a pocketbook of good quality, and its plumpness hinted at a plentiful content. The sinewy
cables on the bronze man's hands flowed easily as he opened the purse.
There was a popping sound, such a noise as might have been made by a stubborn cork being pulled from
a bottle. Instantly after that, the bronze man dropped the wallet, and it slithered along the sidewalk for a
few feet before coming to a rest.
The man's arms became slack, his strikingly handsome head slumped forward, and he began to weave
slightly from side to side. Suddenly, as If a master nerve controlling all of the muscles in his mighty frame
had been severed, he collapsed upon the street.
NUMEROUS INDIVIDUALS saw the bronze giant drop, but one was nearer than the others. This man
was a bulky fellow with an extremely long nose, a round puncture of a mouth, and a skin which was
flushed redly, as if the fellow were very warm. One thing particularly outstanding about the man's
appearance was the manner in which he always seemed to be perspiring a little.
The man carried a small, plain black leather case.
He ran toward the prone form of Doc Savage, swooping enroute to pick up the pocketbook which the
bronze man had been examining an instant before he collapsed. This went into a pocket.
Reaching Doc Savage, the perspiring man sank to a knee. As he placed his black leather case on the
sidewalk, it came open—and those curious persons who ran up, saw that it held a doctor's equipment.
“This man has been stricken by heart failure!” the man said loudly, after a brief examination.
A taxicab swerved to the curb and the driver craned his neck. The perspiring man stood erect and
beckoned sharply at the hackman.
“Give me a hand!” he shouted. “We've got to rush this big fellow to an emergency hospital to save his
life!”
The taxi driver tumbled from his machine, ran over and lent his aid to moving the recumbent Doc Savage.
The hackman was burly, but the two of them grunted and strained, so heavy was the giant bronze form
they were carrying to the cab.
A cop pounded up, puffing, “Begorra, what's goin' on here?”
“Heart trouble,” he was told. “The big bronze fellow had an overworked heart, and it caved on him.”
They managed to haul Doc Savage into the cab. The long-nosed man, perspiring somewhat more freely,
dashed back, got his bag of instruments, and piled into the taxi.
“Begorra, I'm goin' along,” said the cop.
“Is that necessary?” snapped the sweating man.
“This bronze lad be Doc Savage, no less,” declared the officer. “The finest ain't half good enough for him,
and I'm gonna see that he gets it!”
The cop leaped into the machine.
Behind the wheel, the driver made a pass at the shift lever and the cab lunged forward. The horn blared,
pedestrians dived aside, and the cab volleyed down the street.
“Ride your horn and tromp on it!” called the cop.
Tires howled as they took a corner; skyscrapers shoved up close walls that shut out the sunlight, so that
the cab pitched through gloom. On the sidewalks not many people could be seen.
The perspiring man dipped a hand into a coat pocket, brought out a heavy blue automatic pistol and lifted
it. The policeman was occupied in examining Doc Savage and never saw the gun whip toward his own
head.
There was the sound as of a football being kicked hard. The officer let air out of his lungs and slumped,
head lolling.
The rear door of the cab opened and the cop toppled out, driven by a lusty shove. Momentum of the car
caused him to roll end over end and slam into a parked machine, where he lay, not seriously damaged.
THE HACK driver looked around. He had freckles, a loose lower lip and cigarette-stained fingers.
“When that cop piled in I figured we was sunk, Leaking,” he chuckled.
“Watch your driving!” growled “Leaking,” and dabbed at the perspiration on his forehead.
Leaking now produced the billfold which had lain on the sidewalk. Once he had opened it, there was
disclosed a small flat metal phial, the cork of which was yanked when the folding halves of the purse
were separated.
“Neat!” the sinister, long-nosed man chuckled. “He never smelled a rat—and when he opened it, the gas
in the metal phial got him before he knew what it was all about.”
He passed the ingenious wallet forward to the freckled, slack-lipped driver. “Stick this away
somewhere.”
“Sure.” The hackman had been watching his rear-view mirror to make sure there was no pursuit.
The cab swung west and streets became shabby.
A robe hung on the rack in the rear, and Leaking drew this over the slack form of Doc Savage to prevent
casual observers from sighting the giant bronze man.
“Sure his nibs is alive?” asked the driver.
“I don't care a hell of a lot,” said Leaking. “But he's still breathing.”
“Hallet wanted him alive, didn't he?”
“Sure.”
“Any idea what that shyster has up his sleeve?”
“No,” said Leaking. “Shut Lip and drive.”
“Whose idea was that pocketbook trick?”
“Mine,” Leaking snapped. “And will you shut up and drive!”
The cab passed a play street where grimy kids howled, skirted tall gas tanks and a solid vast cube of
bricks wherein generators wailed like banshees, and from which high-tension wires stretched in
profusion.
Streets became even more decrepit, and the hack ran more swiftly, a carbon knock tinkling under the
hood. They were going downtown toward the financial section now, using streets which were almost
deserted. The machine slackened speed and turned into more populous streets after a time.
“This is the joint,” said Leaking.
The “joint” was a towering skyscraper of white brick, modernistic, impressive, one of scores, all
resembling each other closely, which shot up like cold thorns around Wall Street. Between the structure
and the one adjacent was a narrow alleyway intended as a freight entrance.
The cab popped into this and dragged its tires to a halt.
The driver alighted and entered the skyscraper. Probably he engaged the attendant on the freight elevator
in conversation, for that worthy did not appear to interfere with Leaking as he unloaded Doc Savage's
great frame from the hack and, not without some laboring, conveyed the bronze man into the lift.
At the twentieth floor, Leaking unloaded his cargo and employed a large janitors' closet for temporary
storage while he returned the freight elevator to the ground level without any one being aware that he had
taken it.
Then the man rode up on a passenger lift to the twentieth floor, swabbing at perspiration, waited in the
corridor until no one was in sight, then picked Doc Savage up and staggered out of the janitors' closet
with him.
Gold-lettered on a frosted glass door was:
N. BECKELL HALLET
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
Leaking shoved this door open and walked in with his burden. He dumped Doc's great frame in a swivel
chair, and the chair squeaked loudly.
Across the office, the solid wooden door of an inner sanctum flew open.
“I knew it!” wailed the man who looked out. “I knew it!”
LEAKING scowled and snapped, “You knew what, Hallet?”
“Knew that Doc Savage would damage you or one of your men seriously,” groaned the other.
Leaking's scowl turned into a laugh as he realized that Hallet was not standing where he could see Doc's
features and had mistaken the identity of the bronze man.
“Hell!” chuckled Leaking. “This is Doc Savage.”
“What?”
Hallet gulped incredulously, then advanced gingerly to eye the bronze giant.
Hallet was a fat man with the manners of a bird. He was round and sleek and plump, but there was a
mincing daintiness to his movements. His suit was sparrow-colored and added to his birdlike aspect, as
did his sharp beak of a nose.
“It is Doc Savage!” Hallet wrung his plump hands.
“Well, you wanted him, didn't you?” Leaking growled.
“Yes, but—” Hallet slumped into a chair, pulled a foaming square of silk handkerchief from his breast
pocket and dabbed it at his neck. “How did you do it?”
“Fake pocketbook with a doo-dad in it that threw gas into his face when he opened it,” grinned Leaking.
“I never thought you would secure him that easily,” Hallet murmured, restoring the handkerchief. “They
say this bronze man is incredibly clever. Wrongdoers all over the world fear him.”
“Does he look like something to be scared of now?” Leaking jeered.
“His name is synonymous for fear in the far corners of the earth,” Hallet went on earnestly. “His life
career is helping others out of trouble. They say he has accomplished fabulous things, feats that range
from stopping a revolution in an European country to--”
“In your hat!” laughed Leaking. “He's overrated. Here he is. What do we do now?”
“Tie him up,” Hallet said hastily. He minced into the other office and came back with thin, stout, braided
cotton rope.
The two men grasped Doc Savage, apparently with the idea of moving him from the chair to the floor,
where he could be bound with more facility. But what happened was hardly the thing they anticipated.
There was blinding motion, two slapping sounds. Leaking and Hallet tried to cry out. They made no
sound, for a great corded bronze hand had grasped each of them by the throat.
Chapter II. THIRTY-STORY DEATH
THE next few seconds offered a study in abject helplessness and an exhibition of incalculable strength.
The two seized men at first windmilled their arms, but the awful agony of the grip on their necks seemed
to surge like deadening poison through their bodies, and they became limp.
Around Doc Savage's metallic fingers, and between them, the flesh of his victims all but oozed, so terrific
was the pressure. The faces of the pair turned purple, eyes ogled and tongue stuck out stiffly.
Doc arose, and the two were limp as rags hanging from his great hands. They quivered a little and that
was all.
The bronze man released them, and although neither was fully unconscious, they were too weak to do
more than make croaking noises.
A search of their clothing brought the light small sums of money and billfolds containing cards. Leaking's
full name seemed to be Manuel Caesar Dicer. Hallet carried a blue army automatic and Leaking the
slightly smaller gun with which he had clubbed the cop in the taxicab.
The outer office was fitted with a leather divan. Doc popped the two captives down on this, bound their
wrists and ankles securely with the same cord they had intended to use upon him, and fell to eyeing them
steadily.
“I want to know what is behind this,” he said. “It is going to be very, very unfortunate unless you start
talking.”
The captives glared, exchanged glances and said nothing. The globules of moisture on Leaking's forehead
fattened, broke from their moorings and chased each other downward, forming little rivulets.
“Talk up!” Doc said sharply.
The pair registered discomfort, but held silence. This was something of a feat in itself, for there was a
fierceness in the giant bronze man's weird flake-gold eyes.
Doc straightened suddenly, swung around the office once, then went into the inside room. This was fitted
with desk, chairs, ice water stand, a large sheet metal clothes locker the color of grass, and shelves
holding innumerable law books. Atop a fat legal volume on torts perched a telephone.
Scooping up the instrument, Doc unpronged the receiver and asked for a number. His voice was low,
and traffic sounds from the street below the open window kept his words completely from the two in the
other chamber.
“Monk?” Doc asked when he got an answer.
“Sure,” said a mouselike voice.
Doc Savage now spoke rapidly, but not in English. The tongue he used was not unmusical, composed of
liquid gutturals and sharp clackings, but it was doubtful if more than half a dozen people in the so-called
civilized world would have understood it. Yet the language was the mother tongue of a race once among
the most powerful and cultured—the ancient Mayans of Central America.
His conversation completed, Doc hung up and went back to the prisoners. They had been trying
ineffectually to escape, but desisted when they saw him.
“I never saw either of you gentlemen before this afternoon,” he said in an ominously calm tone. “Yet you
go to great trouble to seize me off the street.”
Birdlike Hallet trembled; Leaking perspired; and neither let a word escape.
“Why did you seize me?” Doc asked, his voice vibrating a grim power. “What did you intend to do with
me?”
This time, Leaking spoke. “H-how did you get rid of the effects of that gas so quick?”
“The gas never had any effect on me in the first place,” Doc said.
“W-what?” Leaking stuttered.
“You underestimate the human powers of observation,” Doc assured him dryly. “When you dropped that
trick purse, I saw you.”
“You picked it up, knowing it was a trick?”
“The picking was done most carefully, if you had noticed,” Doc told him. “There were two logical things
to suspect—a poisoned needle and gas. To avoid a needle, I did not open the purse in the usual manner
of a man who has found one. And to checkmate the gas, I merely held my breath until the breeze blew
the vapor away.”
“But why—”
“Why pretend to be overcome? Merely to find out what your game was. And now, any more
questions?”
Leaking only glared.
“Then perhaps you will relieve my curiosity,” Doc suggested. “Why did you seize me?”
Leaking blew sweat off his upper lip and said, “You go to hell!”
VIOLENT action followed Leaking's profane suggestion. Doc Savage lunged, closed metallic hands
upon the fellow and lifted him.
Leaking grimaced in agony and opened his mouth wide to cry out. Doc corked a wadded handkerchief
into the gaping maw, and Leaking could only squeal through his nose.
Next, Doc gagged plump Hallet.
Leaking was carried helplessly through the door into the inner office. The door was slammed shut.
Hallet, the sparrowlike lawyer, sprawled helpless on the divan and ogled the closed door. He tried to
move. His ropes were drawn excruciatingly tight, many of the strands almost buried in the fellow's soft
flesh, and the gag distended his mouth to its greatest capacity.
Suddenly his eyes flew wider and his jaw sagged in horror. Out of the inner office were coming awful
thuds, smackings and grunts. It was as if a man were being horribly beaten.
“You won't talk, eh?” Doc Savage's grim, powerful voice came through the door.
The sound of more blows followed, together with buzzing sounds that might have been a gagged man
crying out in terrible pain.
Hallet tried to scream, but his own gag made his best effort a whining, and he desisted to lay panting
through his nostrils, round face draining of color until it had a clay hue. He was the picture of a man
scared out of his wits.
Certainly the sounds emanating from the adjacent office were such as to strike horror. Again and again
Doc Savage's unusual voice put questions, to which Leaking only whizzed or whined through his nostrils,
or, the gag removed, cursed smashingly. The blow thuddings always resumed, more violent than before.
And finally there came the climax.
“Well, if you won't talk, out of the window you go!” Doc boomed.
The window rattled up.
Hallet's face was white enough to he written upon with a pencil, for he was visualizing that twenty-story
drop to the street, and the hard sidewalk below. Many times he had looked down and visualized what
would be the lot of one who fell.
Hallet abruptly tried to scream through his gag. He had heard a scuffling sound, as of a living body
pushed over the window sill. A gruesome cry, faintly receding, followed that.
The connecting door leaped open. Doc Savage came through, his weird eyes hot aureate pools, the
tendons on his neck standing out like rifle barrels.
Hallet sought to scream again. He had never glimpsed anything which looked quite as terrible as did the
bronze giant.
Doc swept Hallet up easily and carried him to the inner office. The window was open, and Doc shoved
Hallet half outside.
“Look down!” he directed.
Hallet looked, and shook as if he had taken hold of a charged electric wire.
The crowd on the sidewalk below resembled flies around some dark speck of succulence, while other
flies came scudding across the street or climbed out of cars which were stopping. A fly in blue ran for the
spot, tweetling a police whistle.
Doc wrenched Hallet back. His great voice was a grim crashing.
“They'll be up here to investigate in about two minutes,” he said. “You have that long to tell your story.”
“I d-don't know anything!” Hallet stuttered when his gag was out.
Doc picked him up helplessly and ran him toward the open window, and the man screeched out in
chilling fright, confident the bony hand of death was cupped to receive him down there in the street.
“I'll tell you everything!” he shrilled.
Doc calmly carried him back into the outer office and tossed him on the leather divan.
“Why did you and our—er—unlucky friend, Leaking, attempt to seize me?” the bronze man demanded.
Hallet wet his lips. “We were hired. We were to get ten thousand dollars for grabbing you and holding
you where no one could find you for two weeks.”
“So some one wants me out of circulation for two weeks, eh?” Doc showed no great surprise at the
news; indeed, now that Hallet was talking, the bronze features had settled into a metallic repose. “Who
hired you?” he continued.
“I don't know,” Hallet muttered.
Doc grasped the man, rumbling, “The window is still open!”
“Fountain of Youth, Inc., hired me!” Hallet shrieked fearfully.
“Who?”
“It was handled in a roundabout way,” Hallet mumbled rapidly. “I was approached over the telephone
with this proposition to seize you and hold you. The party who called me said there was no need of us
ever seeing each other, and it would be better, in fact, if we didn't. The only name I got was Fountain of
Youth, Inc.”
“Man or woman?”
Hallet squirmed. “I am not positive.”
“Don't forget that window!” Doc said meaningly. “You should know whether you talked to a man or a
woman over the telephone.”
“It was a shrill, unnatural voice,” Hallet gulped. “I couldn't tell. Honestly, I couldn't.”
“Why did this Fountain of Youth, Inc., want me held?”
“I haven't the slightest idea. I asked that question, of course, but was told that there was no necessity for
me knowing.”
Doc's strange eyes dwelled upon the frightened lawyer for a moment. “Since you have no information of
importance, I shall have to consign you to that window, it seems. Has Fountain of Youth, Inc., got an
office?”
“Yes. It is Room 1402, the Queen Tower building.”
“What about a telephone?”
“Yes. It is in the Queen Tower office. I had it traced.”
“So you tried on your own hook to learn something of this mysterious Fountain of Youth, Inc.?”
Hallet had gotten some of his nerve back and was almost chirping, birdlike, when he spoke. “Do you
blame me for trying to get a line on them?”
Doc did not answer, but considered. Although his features showed no expression, there was a certain
finality about his manner which indicated that he was sure Hallet had no more information to reveal.
Doc swung into the next office. Hallet could see the bronze man through the open door. Doc went to the
big grass-green clothes locker and opened it.
Sight of the object which rolled out caused Hallet to turn very purple in the face.
LEAKING had been in the locker, bound and gagged. He fell out when Doc pulled the door ajar, and
his garments made moist squishings, so profusely had he perspired. Leaking was uninjured.
“I thought—I thought—” The words choked Hallet up and he could not finish.
“The power of suggestion,” Doc assured him dryly. “A few noises, some words, and you got the idea he
had gone out of the window.”
“But the body on the street—”
“Ever hear of my five assistants?” Doc asked.
“Y-yes,” Hallet mumbled. “But w-what—”
“One of them, Monk by name, played the part of the body in the street,” Doc explained shortly. “New
Yorkers are curious souls, and they all ran to see what a man could be lying on the sidewalk for. That
naturally made Monk's trick very lifelike. You see, Monk was summoned by telephone.”
“Oh!” Hallet swallowed. “I remember I did think I heard you phoning.”
Leaking, when the gag was removed from his jaws, swore choice profanity in a low voice that dripped
rage. When it was suggested that he tell what he knew, he only snarled.
Of a different caliber was this Leaking. A block of a jaw and ugly eyes showed determination, offering a
hint that to get information from him would take application of a more moving third-degree method than
had urged Hallet to talk.
“My assistant, Monk, who played the dead man in the street, will be up here shortly,” Doc stated. “With
him will be another of my group of five aides, Ham. By the way, Ham is a lawyer of no little reputation
and may want to take measures to have you, Hallet, barred from practice.”
Hallet scowled; Leaking went on profaning in a guttural, hoarse monotone.
The afternoon sun sloped through both offices, throwing shadows into the fear lines on Hallet's face, and
glistening on the wetness that filmed Leaking's features.
An elevator door clanked in the corridor outside, then feet tramped the hallway. They approached the
office door.
摘要：

FEARCAYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEPOCKETBOOKGAG?ChapterII.THIRTY-STORYDEATH?ChapterIII.MISTERSANTINI?ChapterIV.THEUNSEENMESSAGE?ChapterV.THEHANGINGMAN?ChapterVI.DANTHUNDEN?ChapterVII.MURDER?ChapterVIII.FASTSTUFF?Chapt...

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