Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 015 - Mystery on the Snow

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THE MYSTERY ON THE SNOW
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE BEGINNING
? Chapter II. THE BRONZE MAN
? Chapter III. RADIO ORDERS
? Chapter IV. MIDNAT
? Chapter V. DISASTER RAID
? Chapter VI. BEN LANE, MYSTERY MAN
? Chapter VII. CRIMSON MAP
? Chapter VIII. THE SKY SCENT
? Chapter IX. MIDNAT’S STORY
? Chapter X. THE GLASS CAGE
? Chapter XI. BEN LANE’S MESSAGE
? Chapter XII. SNOW ENIGMA
? Chapter XIII. KULDEN
? Chapter XIV. TREACHERY
? Chapter XV. THE LIAR
? Chapter XVI. THE ARREST
? Chapter XVII. THE DISAPPOINTMENT
? Chapter XVIII. MAN WITHOUT A FACE
? Chapter XIX. THE MASTER METAL
? Chapter XX. SNOW MAGIC
? Chapter XXI. SOMETHING INVISIBLE
? Chapter XXII. CORPSE PLANE
? Chapter XXIII. THE WHITE TERROR
? Chapter XXIV. THE UPSET
? Chapter XXV. DEATH PLAN
? Chapter XXVI. HABEAS DOES A BIT
Scanned and proofed by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE BEGINNING
NEW YORK is a city where many people have unusual occupations. There are, for example, individuals who
make their living snipping at newspapers with a pair of scissors.
These persons operate news-clipping agencies. Pay them a fee, and they will deliver to you clippings
concerning yourself from all over the world—providing you are important enough to have had your name
appear in all those newspapers. Clippings can be had concerning others, as well.
Celebrities who like to keep scrapbooks patronize these clipping agencies. Another type of gentry, not so
wholesome, also do business with them.
Mahal was a sample of the latter.
Mahal was an oily specimen. He had a head like an almond, and many fine white teeth. He claimed to be an
Oriental and, probably, he was. He also claimed to be a mystic. On that point, he was, beyond doubt, a liar.
But he had made a little money out of the gullible with his fakery.
The police had a time or two considered putting a detective to watching him. It was too bad they did not do
this. A sharp-eyed sleuth on Mahal’s trail might have made some interesting observations.
Mahal was careful to pick a clipping agency which did not inquire too carefully into the motives of its
customers.
"I am Mahal," he announced. "Yesterday I telephoned you for clippings concerning a certain individual. You
have them, sahib?"
Mahal spoke excellent English, but he affected occasionally a word of his mother tongue of the Orient. It lent
color to him.
He was handed an envelope, stuffed full with paper.
Mahal seemed surprised by the number of clippings the envelope obviously held. But he thrust the container
in the outside pocket of his immaculate brown topcoat, paid the rather exorbitant fee requested, and walked
out.
The clipping agency was on the seventeenth floor of an office building. Mahal took an elevator down.
In the elevator, a strange thing happened. There were numerous passengers aboard the car. Among these
was a stooped gentleman with a flowing white beard. His clothing was extremely well-cut. He seemed rather
feeble, for he leaned heavily on a plain black cane. He looked benign, peaceful.
The white-bearded gentleman’s cane slipped on the smooth floor of the elevator, and he stumbled heavily
against Mahal.
"
Burha bakra!" growled Mahal, and gave the elderly-looking one a shove.
Respect for age is one of the finer qualities of Orientals. But Mahal did not have it. He had called, in his
native tongue, the bearded fellow an old goat. He would have called him an old goat in English, but he
did not want trouble. He thought the white-whiskered one could not understand the Oriental words.
But he would have been surprised. For the benign old chap with the snowy beard had now the envelope
of clippings. He had slipped it expertly from Mahal’s pocket during the collision.
THE elevator reached the ground floor and discharged its passengers.
Mahal strode out to the street and glanced about for a taxi. He had not as yet missed the envelope.
The elderly-looking gentleman now showed surprising agility in scampering around behind a cigar stand. This
concealed him from the door.
The envelope was not sealed. He opened it, drew out the clippings. There were scores of them. Headlines on
the topmost read:
DOC SAVAGE SMASHES
TIBETAN MENACE
Another story was captioned:
DOC SAVAGE ON MYSTERY MISSION
GOES TO ARABIA BY SUBMARINE
His white beard shook as the reader said something explosive under his breath. He worked toward the back
of the clipping sheaf and studied another headline:
DOC SAVAGE, MAN OF MIRACLES, GIVES SURGERY NEW OPERATION METHOD
By now, the whiskered one was certain all the clippings concerned Doc Savage. He replaced the contents of
the envelope; then he hobbled toward the door, leaning heavily on his black cane.
At the door, he met Mahal.
Mahal had missed his property, and he was in a sweat. He saw the envelope in the elderly-looking man’s
hand.
"Old Goat!" he yelled, this time in English. "Where did you get that?"
"It came out of your pocket in the elevator," was the reply, delivered in a quavering voice.
And that was no lie.
Mahal snatched the envelope. Without a word of thanks, he stamped outside.
A taxi swung to the curb. Mahal got in, and gave the address of his séance room uptown.
Now the driver of the cab had some remarkable characteristics. His hands were of an almost unearthly
hugeness. Each was composed of only a little less than a gallon of bone and gristle. The driver’s face was a
long one, and it bore an expression of great gloom, as if he were going to a funeral. The fellow hunched low in
the seat, possibly to hide the fact that he was a giant who weighed all of two hundred and fifty pounds.
Had Mahal been in an observant mood, he might have noted that the taxi seemed to have an engine of
unusual power and smoothness.
Mahal, however, was sulking. He smoked a perfumed cigarette, which he carelessly dropped, still burning, on
the taxi cushions when they reached the address he had given.
Mahal entered the building which held his séance room. He did not glance back. Had he looked around, it
was doubtful if he would have observed the big-fisted taxi driver wheel his machine around a corner, park,
extinguish the cigarette Mahal had dropped, and slide stealthily from behind the wheel.
The fellow with the huge fists was very careful that Mahal did not see his actions.
In the sidewalk near by was a metal hatch. This was intended for delivering freight to the basement of the
building which held Mahal’s establishment. Opening the hatch, the big man with the enormous fists dropped
into the basement.
Apparently, he had been there often before. He went to a stand which held many pieces of
complicated-looking apparatus, and clamped a telephone headset over his ears.
MAHAL’S séance rooms were up three gloomy flights of squeaky stairs. One expected to hear rats scamper
about.
The mystic’s establishment consisted of two rooms. One—the reception chamber, where customers awaited
Mahal’s pleasure—had windows. The inner room, where Mahal conducted his mystic rites, and extorted a few
dollars from gullible clients, if it was humanly possible, was perpetually dark.
Mahal’s trade was not one that flourished in the light.
The sanctum of fakery was hung with impressive tapestries, which would have looked their true cheapness in
full daylight. There were cushions, curtains, a raised dais—and the inevitable crystal ball glistened in the rays
of a tiny concealed light.
Mahal got a harsh-voiced reception when he entered.
"No lights, my oily friend!"
The snarl came from a spot beyond the dais. Even after Mahal’s eyes became accustomed to the
incense-drenched gloom, the speaker remained totally unseen. He was behind a curtain—and the voice was
obviously a disguised one.
Mahal knew who was talking—knew him by name only. He had never seen the individual’s face. All of his
contacts with the person had been over the telephone, or by interviews during which the other remained out of
sight.
The unseen speaker’s mouselike, squeaking tones were such an excellent disguise that Mahal was not even
sure whether the other was a man or not.
The mysterious one used the name of Stroam.
"You are being unnecessarily cautious, Stroam," Mahal suggested.
"Possibly," Stroam squeaked in agreement. "But it is best that I keep completely under cover. What
information concerning Doc Savage have you secured for me today, my friend?"
Mahal seemed to be well entrenched in the confidences of this enigmatic person whose countenance he had
never seen. To a certain extent, he knew what it was all about. But he desired to know more.
"You think Ben Lane may be here in New York, hunting you?" he asked, instead of answering Stroam’s
query.
"Ben Lane is in the Canadian wilderness," replied the hidden one. His squeak sounded impatient.
"Then why fear him?"
"It is not a question of fear!" the other retorted sharply. "It is a matter of caution. Ben Lane is not a dumb
man. He may be having me watched."
Mahal was a born showman. He habitually assumed a trance-like attitude when in conversation. He now
seated himself beside the crystal ball and looked as if he were communing with a, higher plane. As a matter
of truth, he was slyly pumping his mysterious employer. Any information he gained, he might later use to his
own profit—he hoped.
"But where could Ben Lane have put watchers on your trail?" he asked.
"I had trouble with Ben Lane," replied Stroam. "That was in the Canadian wilderness, far north in the snow
country. But all that, I have told you before. I will dispose of Ben Lane. And there must be no outside
interference."
"Such as Doc Savage entering the affair, eh, sahib?"
"
Doc Savage must never hear a word of Ben Lane!" shrilled Stroam. "And I am here to prevent it!"
THAT Stroam was in New York to prevent Doc Savage from going to the assistance of Ben Lane, Mahal had
known. But there were many other things he did not know. Thus he continued his angling for information.
"You think Ben Lane may have had someone follow you to New York?"
"Lane is not a fool!" squeaked Stroam. "Now, about the information concerning Doc Savage which you have
been gathering—"
"Who are you, actually?" Mahal interrupted. "I like to know something about the people I work for."
"That need not concern you too greatly, my friend. I am powerful, and mysterious. I have a knowledge of
things occult, a learning beyond that of other men."
"That sounds as if you might have come from the Orient, like myself?"
"I have studied for a time in the Orient. But this is no ordinary fakery, my friend. This is big business. I will tell
you this much: I control the destiny of one of the greatest business syndicates in Asia and Europe."
"And Ben Lane has something which you want?" queried Mahal.
"Something I must have! Something which, if I do not get it, will bring financial ruin to my syndicate."
"What is it?"
"Your nose is getting too long, my friend!"
Mahal ignored this warning that he was becoming too inquisitive. "I might be of much assistance, if you would
tell me—"
"No! You have merely been hired to secure information concerning Doc Savage, that I may know how best to
combat him. What have you learned today?"
"If you will tell me—" Mahal parried.
"No more questions, fool! What of Doc Savage?"
Mahal felt like heaving a disappointed sigh, but refrained from doing so.
"What you told me about your being powerful reminds me of Doc Savage," he grumbled.
"Make your meaning clearer!"
"Doc Savage, from what I’ve been able to learn by asking questions, has developed one of the most
remarkable brains ever owned by a man. I heard, Stroam, that Savage is a mental wizard. I heard, too, that
he has unbelievable strength. Sach bat! Indeed! I believe it, too, after having seen him."
"You saw Doc Savage?"
"
Han, sahib. Yes, sir. I have been trailing him, observing him."
"That was reckless!"
"You underestimate my cleverness. There is not a possibility that Doc Savage knew I was watching him."
Stroam, behind the curtain, was silent a bit, as if doubtful.
"You got the newspaper clippings, Mahal?"
"
Han, sahib. Here they are."
Mahal drew the envelope of clippings from his pocket and tossed it to the individual behind the curtain.
A tiny light appeared—but did not illuminate Stroam’s face, much to Mahal’s disgust. Stroam riffled
through the clippings.
"The fool newspapers seem to think Doc Savage is a miracle man!" came a disgusted squeak.
"Savage is what these Yankees call a big shot," said Mahal.
"What is his profession?"
"Punishing evildoers all over the world."
"
WHAT?" Stroam seemed startled.
"I know it sounds strange," Mahal grunted. "But that is straight. He goes around helping people out of trouble,
and handing those outside the law what he believes they deserve."
This information did not seem to set well with Stroam. Squeaking sounds of rage came from behind the
curtain.
"If you are what Savage considers a wrongdoer, you’ll have trouble with the bronze man," Mahal declared.
"Doc Savage looks like a giant made out of bronze. And, sahib, you never saw such muscles!"
Stroam studied the contents of the envelope.
"There is a clipping here which says Doc Savage has some mysterious source of fabulous wealth."
"He must have. He has built free hospitals which cost millions, and seems always to have plenty of money."
"That is bad. Ben Lane may want financial aid from Doc Savage, as well as help in combating me."
"Savage is a tough customer," Mahal put forth.
"I like worthy foes!"
While Stroam continued reading, there was to be heard only the crinkling of the clippings and an occasional
blare of an automobile horn from the street outside.
Stroam spoke finally, and his squeaking voice sounded slightly uneasy. "You are sure Doc Savage did not
learn you were observing him?"
"Positive, sahib," insisted Mahal.
"It is well. I do not want Savage put on his guard."
Mahal detected a hidden meaning in this. "What do you mean?"
"I have already taken measures to dispose of this Doc Savage."
"But how did you know where to locate him?"
"From your previous reports, my friend."
Mahal shivered slightly. "I hope there is no slip, sahib. What are these measures you have taken?"
"That," said Stroam sharply, "is my own affair."
Chapter II. THE BRONZE MAN
MAHAL would have been somewhat less certain of himself could he have stood at a designated spot on the
Hudson River water front at that moment. What occurred there would have been a shock to the wily fakir.
The Hudson’s banks here were lined with piers and warehouses. Passenger liners and freight steamers were
tied up at some of the wharves. Others had apparently not been used for some time.
The extremely large pier-warehouse with "Hidalgo Trading Company" emblazoned on its front seemed to
belong to the latter category. The pier on which the edifice stood was of somewhat unusual construction. The
warehouse walls extended down into the water. These walls were of concrete, not beautiful, but substantial in
appearance.
Had anyone been offered an opportunity to measure those walls, they would have been found to be several
feet thick, and reinforced with a mesh of stout steel beams. They were virtually bomb-proof. There were no
windows in the building. The innocent-looking roof was as substantial as the walls.
This Hidalgo Trading Company warehouse was little less than a gigantic vault.
A roadster drove up and stopped before the huge steel doors at the shoreward end of the building. The big
engine of the roadster was almost noiseless under its long, somber-colored hood.
The driver was the white-bearded gentleman who had temporarily relieved Mahal of his envelope of newspaper
clippings.
Apparently, he was expected, for the ponderous metal warehouse doors slid open, and an instant after the
roadster rumbled inside, they closed again.
The warehouse interior presented a remarkable spectacle. It held almost a dozen airplanes. These ranged
from a gigantic tri-motored speed ship, which could carry a score of passengers at almost three hundred
miles an hour, to a pair of true gyros, or helicopters, which could rise vertically.
In their line, each of these planes showed the handiwork of a master designer—someone whose ability as an
aëronautical engineer was little short of wizardry.
The white-bearded fellow vaulted out of the roadster, black cane in hand. He was greeted with a hooting roar
of laughter. The mirth echoed and whooped through all of the vast, vault-like hangar.
"What a sweet grandpa you make!" gulped the author of the laughter.
A WRATHFUL expression showing above the snowy whiskers, the elderly-looking gentleman spun quickly
around.
The individual doing the laughing had apparently opened and closed the hangar doors. The fellow presented a
startling appearance. A stranger, seeing him on a moderately gloomy street, would have sworn he had met a
two-hundred-and-sixty-pound ape.
The fellow was incredibly homely. His mouth was entirely too big, and his ears were tufts of gristle. His hands
dangled well below his knees and were covered with reddish hairs almost as large as rusted nails.
This personage was Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. He rarely heard that name. His associates called him "Monk."
He ranked among the three or four greatest chemists in the world.
The irate, white-haired gentleman manipulated his black stick, and it was suddenly evident that this was a
sword cane with a blade of fine steel.
"Some of these days I’m going to whittle that hair off you and stuff a mattress," he predicted fiercely.
The homely Monk doubled over in a fresh spasm of mirth.
"You’re sure a panic behind that snow bank," he gulped.
The tormented one now snatched off his ample white beard. It was false. The face which emerged was long
and sharp. The features were far from being those of an old man.
This was Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks. Up at Harvard, they considered Ham one of the
most astute lawyers ever to be graduated from that institution.
With a gesture of distaste, Ham flung the white whiskers into the roadster.
"You’d better make out a will," he snapped.
Monk stopped laughing. "Why?"
"Because, if you keep on riding me, you’re going to come to a sudden end," Ham promised.
Monk began laughing again.
Ham scowled blackly, then asked, "Where’s Doc?"
"At the other end, installing some contraption in the big plane," Monk said, without interrupting his mirth.
Ham stamped away. Judging from his ferocious expression, it apparently would give him the greatest
pleasure to slaughter Monk. It was always thus. When they were together, bloodshed seemed imminent.
As a matter of fact, each had, on numerous occasions, risked his life to help the other. Their never-ending
quarrel was good-natured, violent though it might seem to an onlooker.
HUGE and apelike, Monk trailed along behind Ham. Great cables of muscle curled and uncurled under the
simian fellow’s coat with each movement of his arms. Monk was tremendously strong. He had an impressive
trick of taking silver dollars between a thumb and forefinger and folding them neatly.
Came a rattling noise at the front door.
"Who in blazes is that?" Monk grunted. "Can’t be one of our outfit. They all know the location of the secret
catch which opens the door from the outside."
A fresh banging drifted to them.
"They sound impatient," Ham said, and started for the door, sword cane tucked under an arm. Monk trailed
along behind.
Inset in the front of the warehouse was a periscope device. Unnoticeable from without, this permitted a view of
the warehouse front to those within.
A truck had rolled up to the building. Several men had alighted from this and were clustered about the doors.
They were tanned fellows; all wore greasy coveralls.
Monk counted. "Six of ‘em," he grunted.
Monk and Ham now noticed that the side of the truck bore the name of a prominent concern manufacturing
aircraft engines.
"Doc must’ve ordered somethin’ we don’t know anything about," Monk said, and manipulated a lever which
opened the doors.
"This Doc Savage’s place?" asked the spokesman of the crowd with the truck. "Zis address was give us,
m’sieu’."
"If you have anything for Doc, we’ll see that he gets it," Monk grunted.
"We ‘ave ze engine for M’sieu’ Savage." The man tugged papers from his pocket. "You weel sign for it, non?"
He came forward.
Monk reached for the document. He was ordinarily a canny fellow, hard to take unawares. But this incident,
which seemed an ordinary business transaction, fooled him.
The papers suddenly fluttered from the man’s hand. They had concealed a small revolver. The ugly blue snout
centered on Monk’s midriff.
"Get zem up!"
Undecided, Monk bounced up and down like an angry gorilla. But good sense triumphed, and he hoisted furry
arms.
The other overalled men had drawn guns; they menaced Ham. The lawyer lifted his arms rigidly above his
head; there was nothing else to do. But the canny barrister retained a clutch on his sword cane.
The overalled men crowded into the hangar. They were a wolf-faced crew.
"Zat airplane engine story is smart trick, non?" queried one.
Monk and Ham knew accents. They marked this fellow as a native of northern Canada, a breed of French
descent. The others seemed to be of the same nationality.
"You lookin’ for a compliment?" Monk growled.
"We look for Doc Savage," said the other. "Where is he, m’sieu’?"
"No savvy," said Monk. "Splickee English."
"Doc Savage," snarled the other. "Where he is? Quick!"
"What in blazes is this all about?" Monk countered.
The man with the gun opened his mouth to make some answer—then closed it. He peered about. His hand
which did not hold the gun drifted up vaguely and touched his ears. It was as if he thought something had
happened to his organs of hearing.
His behavior was caused by a strange sound which had come into being.
THE sound almost defied description. It had an uncanny quality. Of a trilling nature, it ran up and down the
musical scale, yet adhered to no tune. It might have been the note of an exotic jungle bird, or the filtering of a
wind through a denuded forest.
Perhaps the thing which befuddled the man was the way the fantastic trilling seemed to fill all the vast
hangar, yet no particular spot could be designated as its source.
Monk and Ham exchanged glances. It was obvious that the eerie note conveyed a meaning to them.
"What is zat noise?" hissed the gunwielder.
Neither Monk nor Ham answered. Instead, their chests swelled. They were drawing in full breaths—breaths of
relief.
Monk shifted slightly. Ham did likewise.
"Quiet, m’sieu’s!" they were ordered harshly.
Their captors watched them intently. This was the very thing Monk and Ham wished. They did not want the
visitors to glance upward.
A crisscross maze of great steel girders supported the heavy roof. Through these girders a great bronze figure
was swinging.
At one place, the girders were many feet apart. The bronze man spanned this space with a leap which
showed an almost fabulous strength and agility. Tendons cabling his hands and neck resembled bundled
piano wires, bronze-coated.
Making scarcely more noise than drifting smoke, he neared a point above the overalled men. He crouched
there like a gigantic cat. The bronze of his hair was slightly darker than that of his skin, and was like a
metallic skullcap.
Many features, about this giant man of metal, were arresting. His eyes, for instance, were strange. They were
like pools of flake-gold—a dust-fine gold which was whirled continuously about by tiny winds.
The giant launched outward and down. He landed beside the spokesman of the gang. Simultaneously, he
struck.
The recipient of the blow made not a sound. He spun away, eyes glazed, arms limp as strings. When he
went down, it was to land in a slack pile.
Long before he fell, however, two more of the group began screaming. Bronze hands had gripped them, hands
which possessed an almost unearthly strength. Muscles ground under the thewed fingers, skin burst and
oozed crimson droplets.
Monk and Ham went into action.
They had held the attention of their captors to permit the bronze man to attack unobserved.
They had expected the bronze man to make such a move, for the strange trilling sound they had heard
belonged to the bronze giant. It was part of him, a small unconscious thing he did when contemplating some
course of action, or in moments of stress.
Monk dived at a foe, avoided getting shot by a ducking, weaving process. Monk’s victim fired once, missing.
Monk clipped him alongside the head; then, using him as a shield, rushed the others.
Ham unsheathed his sword cane. The blade leaped, twanged, and seemed to lose itself in the air, so swiftly
did it dart.
A man squawked, grasping a tiny cut in one cheek which the blade had opened. Then the fellow sank down
on his knees. He seemed to go to sleep, and toppled forward on his face.
The tip of Ham’s sword cane was coated with a drug which brought instant unconsciousness.
An overalled raider stumbled clear of the mêlée. He took deliberate aim at Ham. He was gripping a
double-action revolver. The hammer started its backward march.
The Herculean man of bronze seemed to materialize beside the gunman. His palm clamped over the gun,
stopping the falling hammer. He twisted, got the weapon in his own grasp.
Then he laid a hand alongside the man’s face. He seemed to put forth no particular effort, yet the blow was
loud, and the man was knocked out instantly.
That terminated the affair.
Chapter III. RADIO ORDERS
MOVING rapidly, the bronze man disarmed the unlucky raiders. Cartridges for the guns came to light. There
were three blackjacks in their possession.
摘要：

THEMYSTERYONTHESNOWADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEBEGINNING?ChapterII.THEBRONZEMAN?ChapterIII.RADIOORDERS?ChapterIV.MIDNAT?ChapterV.DISASTERRAID?ChapterVI.BENLANE,MYSTERYMAN?ChapterVII.CRIMSONMAP?ChapterVIII.THESKYSCENT?C...

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