Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 033 - Murder Melody

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MURDER MELODY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter 1. DEAD MAN'S MESSAGE
? Chapter 2. THE FLYING CORPSE
? Chapter 3. LANTA IS SEIZED
? Chapter 4. THE GREAT DIAMOND
? Chapter 5. SNATCHED INTO SPACE
? Chapter 6. THE GIRL ON THE ICE
? Chapter 7. THE BEWITCHED SHIP
? Chapter 8. PRISON JACKETS
? Chapter 9. A SHIP IN THE NIGHT
? Chapter 10. THE "NARWHAL" ANCHORS
? Chapter 11. CAPTIVES OF LANTA
? Chapter 12. THE DEEPEST OCEAN
? Chapter 13. THROUGH THE EARTH
? Chapter 14. IN SUBTERRANAE
?
? Chapter 16. SCIENTIST FUGITIVES
? Chapter 17. DOC'S SHIP CRASHES
? Chapter 18. ALL THE KING'S MEN FAIL
? Chapter 19. THE MISPLACED BLAST
? Chapter 20. LAND OF TOMORROW
Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
Chapter 1. DEAD MAN'S MESSAGE
THE earth shook. Tall fir trees swayed. Brittle branches snapped. Loosened stones clattered from a lighted
tower. These bounded and plummeted several hundred feet. They splashed in a turmoil of white-slashed blue
water.
The tower was a government lookout station. It was concreted at the peak of a rocky wall. Lights of red and
white knifed alternately into the misted darkness. Their timed luminance guided shipping into and out of
Burrard Inlet, the canyon-deep harbor of Vancouver. Their radiance could be picked up far out over the Bay of
Georgia.
On a trail hewn through the firs back of the lookout tower a tall man staggered, holding his balance. His
compactly knitted figure seemed to have been poured into his garments. Small bulbs of incandescence were
haloed by the fog. These were spaced at intervals of perhaps a hundred yards along the woodland trail.
This dim illumination revealed the passage of some inner pain across the man's regularly molded features.
His face was of the smoothest texture. He might have been an actor grease-painted with a silvery mixture.
Even in this misted gloom it glowed strangely.
Under the man's feet the ground trembled. The earth jerked spasmodically. The motion was both lateral and
forward. The man stumbled as he walked toward an iron bench placed in a secluded niche.
Dried cones from a lone pine tree pelted about the bench. The quivering earth rumbled as if some monster of
tremendous size and weight were stalking past. Though he was apparently the only person in the many
square miles of Vancouver's wilderness park, the man on the bench began talking. He spoke rapidly, but not
loudly.
As the terse, clear words tumbled from his twitching lips, the man fumbled with the buttons set in a double
row along a tuniclike garment. Except for unusual looseness and length, the garment might have been a vest.
One hand found a button. The fingers lingered upon it. They pressed inward and turned the button slightly.
Immediately there was another voice. This was faint, but its enunciation was clear.
"Three Zoromen have departed. Andro, Namos and Lamo. Beware! Write quickly the message as instructed."
The word Zoromen was spoken as if this was the name of a clan. The speech had that perfection which a
well-educated foreigner gives to a new language. The man on the bench spoke only three words in reply to
the mysterious voice.
"Lanta is understood."
Through the rumbling of the apparent earthquake a weird melody had been permeating the misty night. This
was low but shrill, as if played upon a flute. Its cadence became higher. The mystic music was drifting
nearer.
WITH the three final words, the man quickly pulled a roll of dull yellow substance from under his coat. He
next produced what might have been a stylographic pencil. This gleamed in the misty light. A section of the
yellowish roll was removed.
The man already was sagging forward. But the parchment-like scrap was on his knee. He wrote rapidly with
the stylographic instrument. The yellowish roll fell among the rotting leaves at his feet.
The shrill, piercing melody increased in volume. Shadowy figures flitted among the still-shaking bushes in the
vicinity of the bench in the isolated niche. The man upon it was no longer sitting erect. He was doubled over
in a silent contortion of agony. The stylographic instrument dropped to the ground. The man's feet shuffled it
into the loose gravel.
Under a repetition of the earth shock of a minute before, one towering tree snapped near its base and came
crashing down. The tree was an ancient spruce. The supporting ground had betrayed it after two centuries of
growth.
The man of the shining face clapped both hands to his ears as if to exclude the weird melody. His body
crumpled on the bench. He writhed as if he were being tortured. One hand came slowly downward.
He thrust a small yellow roll into his mouth.
"It is done, Lanta," he gasped.
As if the little roll of yellow parchment had cut off his breath, the man stiffened and died. The eerie melody
ceased abruptly. The bushes behind the bench, rustling as the ground trembled, closed like a green wall
upon the shadows that had been near.
THE mysterious earthquake, which apparently had made Stanley Park, on the Bay of Georgia front of
Vancouver, one of its damaging centers, was recorded on the seismograph at the University of British
Columbia. The first awakened savant to reach the observatory of the provincial university saw the recording
stylograph had fixed the time of the first shock at four and a half seconds after two a. m.
From the sharply defined inclination of the lines, the center of the tremor seemed to have been under the
barrier mountains to the northward. This serrated range of peaks and canyons extended from back of North
Vancouver, across Burrard Inlet, past The Narrows for several miles to the lighthouse promontory in the Bay
of Georgia.
Other members of the university faculty were awakening to find telephone inquiries and reports pouring in.
Chimneys had been shaken down in North Vancouver.
Rocks were still rolling from the heights and blocking the highway along the northern shore through the
suburban section of West Bay.
White Cliff reported windows broken, dishes rattled and the summer residents fleeing to boats.
After the second mysterious temblor, which followed at an interval of one and three-quarter minutes, Nanaimo
and Victoria on Vancouver Island, reported lesser effects from the quake. Port Angeles on the American side,
and much of the Olympic Peninsula, had experienced slight tremors.
Much slighter recording on the seismograph at Washington University in Seattle brought the quick deduction
that the earthquake was unusually localized.
"This is a strange coincidence," remarked one of the professors at the University of British Columbia. "The
two American coasts have had similar tremors within forty-eight hours."
His fellow savants recalled the newspaper accounts of only the previous day. These had been, briefly:
Fishing villages and towns in the vicinity of Province-town, Mass., at an early hour today, were visited by
slight but distinct earthquake shocks. The seismograph at the University of Harvard recorded the center of the
disturbance 77½ miles from Harvard—at Provincetown. Audiences fled from motion picture theaters and
apartment buildings, but none has been reported injured. A Coast Guard station reported the shock was such
as might have been caused by some ship being blown up at sea.
SELDOM is an earthquake so accurately anticipated as to have a recording close to its point of origin. Such
was the case with this mysterious double tremor in the British Columbia mountains.
A tall, bony man was standing with two others near the cement reservoir topping the main trait above the
zoological gardens in Vancouver's Stanley Park. At the moment the trembling earth and the weird wailing
melody sent the man staggering to die on the bench below the lookout station, the skeletonish figure placed
a leather, boxlike case on the ground.
The lid of the case was opened. There was a low whirring sound from the leather-covered box. A stylographic
needle moved so sharply it jumped from the recording roll. The only light was a finger as thin as a pencil
playing upon the portable seismograph.
"This prearranged phenomenon might well be merely some combustible manifestation," spoke the dry voice
of the bony man. "We are at considerable distance from the identified geological fault from which a major
temblor might be promulgated."
"It don't seem possible," piped up a thin voice, all the more remarkable because the childish tone was
emitted from a barrel chest set between shoulders a jungle gorilla might have envied. "You think, Johnny,
that's what's doin' it?"
The first speaker, "Johnny," or world-noted as William Harper Littlejohn, eminent geologist and archeologist,
never employed words of only one or two syllables when multi-syllables would serve.
The second speaker was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, a quite impressive and dignified name
for his quite undignified person. For his long, dangling arms, his sloping forehead and general anthropoidal
contour had given him the name of "Monk." Though Johnny's high flights in the English language often went
far over his head, Monk was one of the world's greatest industrial chemists.
The seismograph needle continued its abrupt gyrations. Johnny steadied the case by holding it in his long,
thin hands.
The third man, the one holding the flashlight with its steady pencil ray, swayed easily to the movement of the
jumping ground. He was in darkness like the others, but the slight reflection from the pencil ray showed a
face of smooth, golden bronze. His eyes, too, were of a flaky golden hue.
Just now, as he watched the demonstration being given by Johnny, the bronze man's eyes were stirred by
whirlwinds of motion, as if they were pools suddenly rippled. His voice seemed low when he spoke, but it was
possessed of a carrying, penetrating quality that made each calm, unhurried word distinct.
"Perhaps our friend will arrive with the demonstration," he stated. "It was exactly two o'clock."
As if his words had signaled it, an eerie, flutelike melody quivered through the grumble of the complaining
ground.
"Whatcha hear, Doc?" questioned Monk instantly.
Johnny shifted the recording seismograph and peered intently into the gloomy tunnel of the main trail under
the canopy of firs.
"Is some one approaching? I haven't heard anything but the underground rifling of strata."
Both men then shifted their gaze to Doc.
The eerie melody, though it was faint, was similar in its musical running of the scale to the weird whistling
emanation which always came from Doc Savage in periods of deep concentration or at the moment of some
impending happening. The companions of the bronze man always took it to mean that danger; swift action
might be expected in such a moment.
The weird music really was coming from up the main trail.
Doc snapped off the generator flashlight. For seconds he stood as motionless as a carved rock. The heaving
of the ground did not disturb the bronze man's balance. His massively corded legs were immovable as pillars
of granite.
When Doc Savage spoke, the weird wailing in the distance continued.
"The woman has spoken the truth," he said quietly. "There is danger. We shall investigate."
JOHNNY and Monk knew the bronze man referred to the mysterious message which had brought the world's
most amazing adventurer and his five companions to the British Columbia coast. This message had required
much extra postage because of its weight, though it had been contained in an envelope of ordinary size.
The letter had been addressed simply to "Clark Savage Jr., New York City." Such general address was
sufficient. The postal authorities of the big city knew of only one such man. His regular address was the
eighty-sixth floor of Manhattan's most impressive skyscraper.
The message had been sent by registered mail from Seattle. It was unique in that the "paper" on which it was
written was not paper at all. It was thinner than the average onionskin parchment, but it was very heavy.
For it was, amazingly enough, of rolled gold leaf, virgin gold.
The writing upon this was stylographic, couched in perfect English. The words seemed to have been etched
into the gold leaf with what might have been "silver ink," or some similar chemical.
Doc had known instantly a woman had written it. A young woman. The letters were firmly formed. The style
was gracefully flowing.
The bronze man had read the character of the writer. He knew she was a girl of determined and extraordinary
personality.
The message read:
Clark Savage, Jr.—Your safety is threatened. Watch Aleutian Islands. Come to Stanley Park, Vancouver, B.
C., at 2 a. m. on the 16th. Be at old reservoir above zoological gardens. Perhaps slight earth shaking will
precede my messenger. You will learn more.
This message had been unsigned. The uncanny intuition of Doc Savage made him know when one of the
countless communications he received was of great importance. Then he had received the letter the previous
day. About that time came the inexplicable temblor in the New England coastal region.
Doc and his five companions had arrived on Burrard Inlet in two of his special airplanes only this evening. One
of the planes had immediately taken off for the north, at Doc's order.
AS always, when the bronze man said, "We shall investigate," he was already many yards in advance of
Johnny and Monk. The three followed the gloomy tunnel of the main trail in the direction from which the queer
melody had come.
Doc's swift gliding movement always was soundless. Johnny was likewise jungle trained to catlike progress.
Monk's feet scuffed some in the trail gravel. The hands at the ends of his long arms swung below his knees.
The occasionally spaced light bulbs gave them little illumination. Doc's ultrasensitive ears, however, were
guiding him directly to the secluded bench on which a man was in the final throes of death. The bronze man's
auditory nerves were several times as selective as those of an ordinary man.
Doc surprised the others by suddenly placing his finger tips in his ears. For some reason, he was not
surprised when this did not seem to lessen the impact of the music. It had a knifelike piercing quality.
"Sounds like a whole hive of giant bees," stated Johnny. "And I can almost feel them stinging."
"Nothin' but some dag-goned mosquitoes buzzin' around," complained Monk, slapping at his small ears
buried in tufts of gristly hair.
"Keep your ears plugged," advised Doc. "This is strange to me."
Johnny and Monk hastily followed their leader's example. Anything which might be strange to the bronze man
must be strange indeed.
Even with his ears thus stopped by his fingers, Doc heard the final, faint scuffling of a man's feet in the dead
leaves and gravel just off the main trail.
The earth shook again. The weird music ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The rumbling crash of the dead
tree obliterated all other sound.
Doc had led the way around the trunk of a massive fir tree.
Here the yellowish, misty glow of the string of trail lights played into a niche where sat a bench. The bench
was of carved iron. It was painted green.
"Some guy's sleepin' on it," whispered Monk. "Gosh! You'd think all them trees jumpin' and crackin' woulda
waked him up!"
Doc had glided to the bench. His flashlight was held down close, its presence nearly obscured by his corded
bronze hands.
"This one will never awaken," he said quietly.
He was lifting the man's head.
"Looks like he has been strangled," said Johnny. "Say, he's wearing some kind of make-up!"
Doc said nothing. He lifted the dead man's head gently. The mouth of the corpse was gaping open. The man
had every appearance of having been choked.
But there was total absence of any discoloration such as would appear from strangulation. The man's thin
throat bore no marks of any character.
The face was smooth, even calm. It had a silvery glowing texture, which had caused Johnny to remark the
make-up effect. The skin seemed poreless, as if encased in a layer of tinfoil, only of a much finer color.
Outwardly, the man was normally clad. A tan raincoat was pulled around his body. Doc lifted the man's chin.
The mouth gaped open with ghastly effect. The raincoat fell open.
"Lookit!" exclaimed Monk. "He's the fella was playin' that crazy tune, Doc!"
THEY could see the dead man apparently carried no weapon. Under his coat was a curious, tightly woven
shirt of some silken substance. It came down like a tunic. Glass buttons of an obsidian character
ornamented the front of the garment, but they were irregularly spaced. They were not employed to fasten the
garment.
Monk pushed forward. A slender metal tube was sticking under what seemed to be the loose belt of the tunic.
Doc said nothing as Monk removed the instrument. The bronze man's fingers had moved so rapidly the eyes
of his companions had not followed them.
He had removed a small roll of papery gold from the throat of the corpse.
Johnny took the slender tube from Monk. He fiddled it over his long, thin fingers. He tested it experimentally
with a thumbnail. The weight of it was obtained by delicately balancing it over his finger tips.
"This is an example of remarkable metallurgical craftsmanship," concluded Johnny. "This has one-fifth the
specific gravity of aluminum with a carboniferous molecular density. I have never before encountered such an
alloy."
"Huh?" piped up Monk's childish treble. "It ain't nothin' but one of them flutes what the fella plays marchin' in
that picture of Washington crossin' the Delaware in the Revolutionary War."
Monk's knowledge of chemistry was vast, but history was mostly an unexplored region to him.
"That dead man's the fella was playin' it, I'll betcha," Monk added. "I used to know how to blow a horn.
Lemme show yuh."
One of his hairy paws extracted the flutelike instrument from Johnny's hands. Monk placed it to his lips.
Doc hardly seemed to move. But the "flute" did not reach Monk's mouth for him to demonstrate how he had
once blown a horn.
"It was death music," stated Doc. "But this man was not playing it."
Chapter 2. THE FLYING CORPSE
JOHNNY and Monk stared at Doc Savage. The bronze man was testing the metal of the slender instrument
taken from the dead man’s belt. He had seen the metal was of a hitherto unknown alloy before Johnny had
announced his long-worded conclusion.
"It is not only of a strange alloy," Doc stated, "but the texture of the grain indicates it contains at least two
elements never before employed in a metallic combination. The tunic this man is wearing also is of woven
metal of the fineness of sheerest silk."
"Well, I'll be dag-goned!" squealed Monk. "Some kind of a new bulletproof vest?"
"Perhaps that is it," assented Doc, but he did not tell quite all his perceptive hands had revealed.
Under the silken, metallic tunic he had touched a dozen or more compact devices. These were so made as
to fit the contour of the dead man's ribs. Not the slightest bulge appeared. But one of these devices Doc had
instantly identified as a new form of radio communication diaphragm.
The other devices would have to await closer examination. They were constructed mostly in the forms of coils
wound like springs of watches.
"But how did you know it was not this man playing that thing?" questioned Johnny. "It seems as if it might
have made that sort of weird music."
Johnny's scholarly interest had been aroused. He had placed a monocle in his eye and was bending close to
examine the texture of the dead man's tunic.
Johnny's monocle was in reality a powerful magnifying glass.
Doc replied to Johnny's question.
"This man was seeking us. He died too quickly to have been playing this instrument. He could not have
replaced it in his belt. The metal shows no trace of moist lips having touched it. The surface still retains a
recent polish."
Johnny arose from examining the metallic tunic.
"This is also a new alloy, but it is different," he said. "But both have a strange, almost unbelievable,
carboniferous texture. Look, Doc, here is blood on the man's neck. It must have come from his ears."
"So I had observed," Doc smiled. "You may have noticed something peculiar about these glassy buttons."
He cast the ray of his flashlight upon the tunic close to the dead man's belt. One bronze hand touched one of
the buttons experimentally.
Johnny was standing beside the bronze man. Monk was peering between them.
Doc's metal flashlight was apparently snatched from his hand. He had been holding it loosely. Monk emitted
a squawking grunt. He had been carrying one of Doc's supermachine automatic pistols loosely in his side
pocket, hoping for trouble.
The pistol flew through the air. Monk's frantic grab for the weapon missed it altogether.
Johnny's monocle with its metal rim suddenly started dancing at the end of its cord. Only this prevented him
from losing the glass.
"Holy calamities!" howled Monk. "The corpse has grabbed my gun! I'll—"
THE pistol and Doc's flashlight plunked against the belted section of the dead man's tunic. They remained
suspended there. Monk caught the pistol with one hand. His effort only pulled the corpse toward him, almost
upsetting it onto the gravel.
Doc again touched the button which had caused the seeming magic. He caught his flashlight as it fell.
Monk's pistol came free so suddenly the big chemist tottered backward on his heels. His lower jaw dropped
loosely. He looked more than ever like some ancestral ape man.
Johnny's monocle ceased to snap on its cord.
"I've never before heard of a magnet like that, without tremendous electrical force back of it," said Johnny.
"I've sometimes believed this might be done," stated Doc, unperturbed. "Tons of steel are lifted by such force
as you mention."
His bronze hands rippled lightly over the other buttons on the tunic. He turned one slightly. Monk was
standing beside the corpse. He had pushed one hairy hand against the dead man's shoulder.
As Doc turned the second button, Monk sprang back, staring at his hand. He had hardly more than flicked
his thumb. The body had left the bench. But it had not fallen to the ground.
Instead, the corpse seemed suddenly to become weightless. It was as light as a child's toy balloon. The
dead man was floating clear of the ground, the head bobbing with ghastly nods on the raglike neck.
Doc was still close enough to reverse the turn on the button he had touched. The dead man instantly
plumped back onto the bench.
"I've thought some day there might be something would overcome all specific gravity—" Johnny was saying.
A blinding light shot from among the trees. Johnny stopped speaking as the wide ray enveloped them,
throwing their figures into relief against the shadowy background of the bushes.
Three men stepped quickly into view. One man, a little ahead of the others, was operating a flashlight which
seemed to play from the front of his body rather than his hand. The other two men had slender metal flutes
like that on the body of the corpse.
Doc's own flashlight whipped across the three faces. The men's skin was of the same silvery color as the
dead man's.
THE leader operating the light spoke quickly, but in a controlled tone of voice. It was much the same as the
bronze man's own voice, having a carrying, penetrating quality without the speaker making extra effort.
"You are the great Doc Savage," stated this leader. "We have come for you. You will do as I command and
no harm will come to you. Make any resistance and you shall hear the death song."
Doc's pencil light played over the ears of the three men. He noted these were filled with thick blobs of yellow
wax. The men were of normal size. Raincoats swathed their forms, but through the folds gleamed metallic
garments close to their bodies.
In the direct light, the men's eyes showed a curious black-and-white quality, as if the pupils were greatly
enlarged.
"And who do you fellas think you are?" squealed Monk. "Doc, will I take them and their little tin flutes apart
an' see what it's all about?"
Doc glanced swiftly sidewise at the face of the dead man. The blood from the corpse's ears had formed
distinct scarlet threads along the silvery skin of his throat. There was no other evidence of violence which
might have been responsible for death.
"Perhaps we should obey, brothers," Doc remarked calmly.
One of his hands was touching the roll of gold leaf he had taken from the dead man's mouth. The movement
with which he sent it into the mat of bushes behind him was too fast for the human eye.
The three men twisted their heads, glancing at each other with startled question. Perhaps each thought one
of the others had started playing his instrument. For all around them was weird melody.
The exotic, vibrant music touched the notes of the scale. Yet it was something like a wind wailing in the
distance through the trees of a leafless forest.
Johnny and Monk knew what it was. Doc's face was in plain view of his three threatening foes. They could
see that his lips were not moving. But Johnny and Monk knew the sound came from Doc. They were fully
aware what he meant.
Again Doc's hand had moved. There was a faint tinkling on the gravel trail.
"You think then to trick us?" said the man with the light. "I have warned you—"
The three men started toward Doc and his companions. One man lifted his flute. It touched his lips, but no
sound came. This man's eyes suddenly became dull, as if he were seeing nothing.
The leader hesitated. He spoke a few words with an apparent great effort. They were in a tongue which neither
Doc nor his men had ever before heard. This was surprising. For Doc could understand nearly all of the
world's languages.
In fact, when Doc and his men wanted to converse in the presence of others, they employed a language that
once was believed to have been lost with an ancient Mayan people. However, the survivors of this lost race
had been discovered by the bronze man and his companions.
But Doc and his two men were instantly aware this language spoken by their three assailants was unknown
to them. They had little time to study the words or phrases. The leader's warning was cut off.
MONK and Johnny were holding their breaths. Doc also had ceased to breathe. The tinkle on the gravel had
been the shattering of capsules containing a powerful anaesthetic gas. It would clear away in less than a
minute, but during that space of seconds, any one breathing it would be overcome. The victim would remain
unconscious for more than an hour.
Doc was instantly aware the three attackers were no ordinary persons. The leader especially was smart.
Somehow, he had seen or sensed what was happening. He had breathed less than his two men. The pair
holding flutes were toppling forward. They were in the throes of being overcome.
The leader was between them. With an effort he got a hand on the tunic of each man. He himself was
staggering, but he had pulled at two buttons. Then his hands fell away and he fumbled at a button attached to
his own belt.
The men had given themselves a final push with their toes as they were falling. From across the Bay of
Georgia a stiff wind had sprung up. It had seemed to come as an aftermath of the mysterious shakings of the
earth. Now it was whining through the needles of the spruce and firs in the park. It lifted the three men into
the air.
Johnny sprang ahead, closely followed by Monk. Monk had drawn his mercy pistol
"Lemme at 'em!" he squealed. "I don't know what it is, but they can't pull any fast one like that!"
Doc's fingers clamped firmly on Monk's wrist.
"You cannot bring them back with bullets," said the bronze man. "It is just as well. Soon we shall follow
them."
Monk stared at Doc.
"Dag-gonit! Follow them!"
The apelike chemist saw no possibility of doing as the bronze man had so calmly suggested. His open
mouth indicated he had no such inclination, even if it had been possible.
THERE was no doubt but that their three late attackers were unconscious now. Doc's pencil light followed
their floating bodies. One man was blocked for a few seconds by the gaunt limb of a fir, but the wind caught
him and his figure floated away. All three disappeared, dancing and bobbing with the vagaries of the wind.
The stiff breeze was carrying them in the night out over The Narrows. This dangerous bottle-neck of water
connected the harbor of Vancouver and nearly a hundred miles of deep tidal waters in the mountains with the
outside Bay of Georgia.
Except at full flood or lowest ebb, the rush of the sea through The Narrows made it one of the most perilous
spots on the coast for shipping of all classes. Doc judged if anything happened to restore the three bodies to
the force of gravity, the men were in an extremely ticklish position.
Monk was still muttering.
"I didn't see it, for it couldn't happen," were his words.
Johnny turned his monocle reflectively between his long fingers. His long, scholarly countenance indicated he
was seeking the proper words in which to couch his opinion. He never used a short word where a longer one
would serve.
He said solemnly, "We have witnessed a manifestation of practical ethereality, or the dissociation of
gravitational impulse from the humanized inert mass."
"That ain't so!" howled Monk, who, with Doc's direction, had composed the gas of which the stupefying
capsules were made. "There ain't any ether in that anaesthetic because I helped make it myself!"
Doc had returned to the side of the corpse.
"All three were unconscious before they departed, or immediately thereafter," he reflected aloud.
He retrieved the roll of gold leaf from the bushes. Johnny and Monk stared at it. They had not even seen Doc
take it from the dead man's mouth.
When it was unrolled, the gold leaf bore the same silvery writing as the message that had summoned Doc
Savage to the coast:
Be on Canadian Pacific dock at foot of Georgia Street in Vancouver at 5 a. m. today. I but follow Lanta's
instructions in event I am pursued. Lanta has matter of vital importance to confide. Tell Lanta I hear the
music of death. Watch Aleutians.
The message bore a signature. It was in beautiful, perfect English script of the old style. The name was
"Turlos."
"So he knew he was being murdered and he carried out the order he had been given," said the bronze man.
He studied the gold leaf more closely.
"Perhaps this is a trap," he said. "It may have been intended the messenger should die in this manner.
Johnny, the perfection of styloscript is amazing. We are opposed by individuals of exceedingly advanced
development. Perhaps it is best we should know much more before the police authorities discover too much."
摘要：

MURDERMELODYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?Chapter1.DEADMAN'SMESSAGE?Chapter2.THEFLYINGCORPSE?Chapter3.LANTAISSEIZED?Chapter4.THEGREATDIAMOND?Chapter5.SNATCHEDINTOSPACE?Chapter6.THEGIRLONTHEICE?Chapter7.THEBEWITCHEDSHIP?Chapter8.PRIS...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：95 页 大小：254.24KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

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