Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 178 - The Swooning Lady

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The Swooning Lady
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine October 1948
Chapter I
SHE used a way of walking, arms held rigidly down and a little out from her body, shoulder-blades
twisted back, that made it seem she might be impaled on something. Impaled, meaning the way a
butterfly would be on the point of a needle.
Nice-looking. Undeniably nice-looking, not flashily dressed and not cheaply either. A trifle over average
height, generally sweet honey in coloring, and, as to figure, the very best of everything in the right places.
She walked like that for a few yards, then went a little faster and got up on tiptoes in an unsteady way,
and it seemed a very fortunate thing the lamp-post stood just there, where she needed it.
Mr. Monk Mayfair's interest was, by this time, well stirred.
A fine morning for it, too. At this late June season, springtime was very full-bosomed in New York's
Central Park. And this morning hour of ten o'clock was filled with splintering sunshine and the singing of
birds. Mr. Mayfair's headache, a trivial affair that had resulted from absentmindedly sniffing the wrong
test tube in the laboratory yesterday, was more irksome to him because it carried no pleasant memories
of a night out on the town, than for any other reason.
He noted the way her fingers were biting at the shiny green metal of the lamp-post.
“Lady,” he said. “Lady, may I be of assistance?”
She looked at him. Lovely eyes. Beautiful distressed eyes. His toes tried out the tips of his shoes for
room.
“I'm afraid—I don't—oh, thank you—” A special voice, too. The sound of a harp over a lake. Then she
added, “Why, aren't you Roxy?”
“Who?” Monk said. “Me? Roxy?”
She looked at him. She seemed to get stronger. “Aren't you Mr. Roxborough?”
“Me?” said Monk. “Well, I'm afraid not—”
She got a lot stronger indeed. “You're not?”
“Well, no—”
“Pass on, you baboon,” she said. “Take a walk. Scram. Make tracks.”
“But I—”
“Just charge it up to experience,” she said. The voice was still nice, but she was putting something in it
that could be used for varnish-remover. “Get along, little missing-link. Beat it.”
“I resent the little part,” Monk said. “I weigh two hundred and thirteen pounds without my fountain pen.
What if I am five foot five? You think it worries me?”
“Go away.”
“You,” Monk said, “made a damned quick recovery.”
“Are you leaving?”
“Not until I—hey! Ouch! Awk!” He was wearing his usual ghastly yellow necktie. She jerked this tight,
flipped a knot into it—he couldn't breathe. He was wearing his favorite hat, the one which looked as if it
had been used frequently to fight bumblebees.
She yanked this down over his eyes. Presently he recovered from everything except indignation. But by
that time, she was nowhere to be seen.
IN order to ease the strain on his dignity—Central Park on a ten o'clock June morning with the sun
shining is invariably a populous place, so several spectators were staring, and some of them were
laughing—Mr. Mayfair took himself away from there. He walked rapidly, turned left, walked rapidly a bit
farther, turned off on the turf with a scowl at a KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign, and climbed up an easy
slope of rocks. Here there were no gigglers, grinners or laughers. Monk sat down.
“Sir Galahad,” he said wryly, “you shoulda stood on your horse.”
He noted that by accident he had chosen a cooling-off spot from which he could look out across some
shrubbery and over the path which had been the scene of his recent embarrassment. It did not seem
important at the moment. The path at that point was near an entrance to the park from Central Park
West, which was an avenue walled with apartment houses where the rent for two rooms was five
hundred dollars a month and up.
Mr. Mayfair tried laughing. He managed, but not happily. The sound was a little chipmunkish, he
decided. He swore, and this at least had fervor.
“Of all the damn things!” he remarked. And presently he tempered this with, “Not a bad-looking babe,
either. Spirited, too.”
This about concluded the talking-to-himself stage of his emotional subsidence, and it was followed by a
thought not related at all to the swoon-and-quick-recovery damosel. I'm eternally damned glad Doc
Savage and Ham Brooks, and in particular Ham Brooks, didn't see that little happening, he thought
fervently.
He could produce in his mind a clear picture of what Doc Savage's reaction would have been, in view of
a recent warning by Doc that he, Monk, was a pushover for almost anything in skirts that was blonde and
glittered, and while there might be enjoyable things to be said about being a pushover, it could be
overdone. This speech, one of the sort Doc Savage did not make often, had followed an episode in
which such a blonde had nearly been the finish of all of them.
Monk clearly recalled what he had said. “I've learned. I am going to be very hard to get,” he had said. “I
understand that your unusual occupation, which is righting wrongs and punishing evildoers who are
outside the law in the far corners of the earth, in which I am associated with you, becomes dangerous at
times. I shall henceforth treat all blondes with disdain.”
“Disdain?” Doc said.
“Exactly.”
“Never mind attempting the impossible,” Doc said dryly. “And our profession sounds a little corny, the
way you just stated it.”
Monk looked out across the park and shuddered. Then he stared. Disbelieving, he shaded his eyes with
a hand. He was inspecting the part of the path where he had recently received discomfiture.
“For God's sake,” he muttered. “She's at it again.”
DOC SAVAGE headquartered on the eighty-sixth floor of a midtown Manhattan skyscraper. He owned
the building, but inhabited only the spacious eighty-sixth floor with an arrangement of laboratory, library
and reception room, and maintained also a smaller suite of two rooms on a lower floor, the latter
occupied by a private detective agency which did nothing but screen would-be visitors, weeding out the
cranks and curiosity-lookers. The sleuth agency was one of the lesser expenses of fame.
Monk Mayfair entered the reception room which contained comfortable chairs, an odd and wondrous
inlaid Oriental table, a huge and ugly safe, and Brigadier General Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks, an
attorney.
“Good morning, stupid,” said Ham Brooks.
“How did you know, you shyster?” Monk asked sourly.
Ham laughed. “That's a nice knot you've got in your necktie.”
“This?” Monk glared and fingered the knot, which he'd been able to loosen somewhat, but not untie. “A
dame tried to choke me.”
“An improvement over the knots you usually tie—” Ham paused, looking interested. “What was that? A
dame tried to—”
“Never mind.”
“It looks as if you finally met an intelligent lady, I would say,” said Ham cheerfully. “Sought to strangle
you, eh? Quite a worthy project.”
“Nuts to you, Blackstone. Is Doc around here?”
Ham tilted his head toward the laboratory. “How did this happen? This garroting—”
Monk walked into the laboratory. Doc Savage was working with a wire recorder, doing voice imitations,
running scales, imitating sounds, then playing the exercises back and listening to them disapprovingly.
Monk listened for a few moments. The range, power and flexibility of Doc's voice was still a source of
astonishment to Monk, although he had been associated with the giant bronze man for several years, and
was fully acquainted with the freakish background that had made Doc Savage into the package of
marvels—physical, mental, and scientific—that Doc was.
Doc Savage was living proof of the argument that if you begin early enough, and train hard enough, you
can do almost anything. Monk knew that Doc Savage had been placed, at cradle age, in the hands of a
succession of scientists, physical culture fiends, psychologists—even a genuine Yogi or two—and had
received a training which probably no other human being had ever undergone. The result was more than
just a giant bronzed man with visual signs of unusual strength, a man with hair a little darker bronze than
his skin, and rather hypnotic flake gold eyes—the result was Doc Savage, physical marvel, mental
wizard, scientific genius, and withal not quite as freakish as he could have been.
“Doc, I had a funny thing happen to me,” Monk said. “I mean, I don't think it was so funny, so I guess it
was funny.”
Doc Savage shut off the recorder. “Not another blonde already?”
“That won't pass as mind-reading, but I resent it anyway,” Monk said. He grinned. “But this is an odd
one. A babe is swooning for guys in brown tweed suits up in Central Park.”
“Let's do that slowly again,” Doc suggested. “A babe is—”
“A beautiful honey-colored young lady. Gorgeous. I tell you, such a charm bundle I haven't seen in—”
“Swooning?”
“In Central Park. About Seventy-second Street where that path turns south—”
“And for . . . ?”
“Guys in brown tweed suits. Beat-up grey hats, too. Here's how I know—I watched her. She did it
twice. Each time it was for a good-sized man in a brown tweed suit and a grey hat, and that's how I
figured out why I got the treatment. I'm wearing a brown tweed suit and grey hat.”
Ham Brooks had come in to listen, and he remarked, “You flatter that burlap bag you're wearing by
calling it a tweed suit. You say this swooner is a dish?”
“I say you can keep out of this, you disaster-to-the-law-profession,” Monk snapped.
Doc looked pained. “Let's not start that now,” he said. “Monk, what do you think this girl is trying to
do?”
Monk shrugged. “Swoon for Roxy, I guess.”
“Who?”
“Roxy. Or Roxborough.” Monk frowned, and added, “The way it looked to me, she lost interest in me
when she found out I wasn't named Roxborough.”
Doc looked at Monk thoughtfully. “I take it you wish to investigate this swooning lady further,” he said.
“But what gets me is this: What on earth has happened to you to make you come around asking
permission to get embroiled with a blonde?”
“I've reformed,” Monk explained proudly.
“And he wanted to come in and shave and fix his necktie before resuming operations,” Ham said.
“Yeah. I wanted to spruce up—why, I never said any such thing,” Monk declared indignantly.
Doc asked, “But you would like to investigate further?”
Monk nodded. “But only because of the mysterious and inexplicable behavior of this babe.”
“Oh, then blonde-chasing is farthest from your mind?” Doc inquired.
“The very farthest.”
“Good,” Doc said. “But you had better take Ham Brooks along for a chaperon.”
Monk staggered. “That,” he yelled indignantly, “is the dirtiest trick this day will see.”
Chapter II
THE balmy June day, as such June days will be, had turned into a stinker. Up out of the southwest,
pushing against the soft warmth, a thunderstorm came whooping and gobbling and gnashing fangs of
lightning. It fell upon Central Park with a rush of wind, flying leaves, swirling dust that was nasty in the
way that only New York dust can be, and then came a pelting rain.
The swooning lady was fortunate. Rescue in the shape of a taxicab was managed, but Monk Mayfair,
watching from his vantage point on top of the rocky knoll, was not as lucky. By the time he reached his
car where it was parked, he was soaked. He climbed in, blew the rain off the end of his nose, switched
on the radio and as soon as it was warm, demanded of the microphone, “All right, fancy-pants, did you
lose her?”
There was no answer.
“Don't be coy, Ham,” Monk said. “Did you or didn't you see her hop into a cab when it began to rain?”
The radio receiver returned a hissing silence for a few seconds, and then a voice, Doc Savage's
pleasantly timbrous tone, saying, “Ham probably finds it awkward to report to you just now, Monk.”
“If he lost her, I'll make him awk-ward—”
“Ham is driving the cab in which she is riding.”
“Oh!” Monk said, and presently added, “The doublecrosser!” This last was quite bitter.
“What do you mean?”
“We matched,” said Monk, “to see who would get to strike up an acquaintance with her when it came
time for that, and Ham lost.” He glared at the microphone.
“She will think Ham only a cab driver. You can hardly call that an acquaintance.”
“You're talking to a guy who knows Ham Brooks. . . . And by the way, where in the heck are you,
Doc.”
“Riding along about two blocks behind Ham's cab.”
“Huh? You're uptown here?” Monk was dumbfounded. “What's the idea?”
“Things were slow, and this seemed interesting,” Doc explained.
“Oh, you got a look at the babe too, did you?”
Doc said dryly, “We're turning east on Fifty-ninth Street, if you care to join the procession.
THE girl told her cab driver to drop her off at the Park Regis Hotel, and Ham Brooks thought she
sounded a little angry. He also reflected that, if she was an inhabitant of the Park Regis, she was well
supplied with green material. It required plenty of greeners to put up at the Park Regis. The minimum rate
was around twenty a day, Ham understood. Ham, having been too busy for some time associating
himself with the adventures of Doc Savage, and neglecting the law business as a consequence, was short
enough of funds to be money-conscious.
“The Park Regis, Miss,” he said, swinging the cab to the curb, “is about half a block down the street.”
“Thank you. What is the fare? Wait, you say half a block—”
“Meter reads sixty-five, Miss,” Ham said, smiling apologetically. “Yes, half a block. I'm awfully sorry. I
have a flat tire. Too bad, raining like it is.”
“All right, I suppose you can't help a flat tire,” she said curtly. She paid him, and added a quarter tip. She
prepared to alight.
“Here, Miss, take this umbrella,” Ham said.
She hesitated. The rain was pelting down. She eyed the umbrella, a rather ample one with a heavy and
ornate handle. “You're offering me an umbrella?”
“Sure, why not,” Ham said offhandedly. “Some guy left it in the hack a couple of hours ago.”
“Aren't you supposed to turn in lost property?”
“Yep, and I will, too. I'll just come by and pick it up when you're through with it. You live at the Park
Regis? Okay, I'll stop in for it.”
She nodded. “Well, thanks. I'll leave it with the doorman.”
Ham found the answer not entirely satisfactory; part of this finagling was designed to learn whether she
resided at the hotel, and the reply left him in doubt. Ask her again if she was a guest there? Better not.
“Huh? What's that?” he said.
It was another half-dollar for his kindness with the umbrella. He grinned foolishly and guiltily.
He did notice, though, that she glanced at the tires when she was on the sidewalk. She needn't have
bothered; that was all taken care of. One tire was flat. This taxicab was part of Doc Savage's working
equipment, and a very special job. You could punch a button and flatten a tire any old time—inflate it
almost as quickly, if that was necessary.
Ham watched the way her legs swung. He whistled silently. Very nice. He shut off the engine, leaned
back and turned up the volume on their U.H.F. radio frequency.
With interest, Ham listened to the sounds that now came from the radio, these consisting of swishings,
clickings, bangings, crashings, and once a thunderous female voice saying, “Damn the rain, and damn
several other things!” Ham laughed; he liked a lady with spirit. He switched on the windshield wiper and
through the space that was cleared saw the young lady take a seat at one of the small tables under the
awning of the Park Regis' nationally known sidewalk café. At that point, Doc Savage and Monk Mayfair
climbed into the cab with him.
“Judas!” Monk said, looking at Ham.
Ham turned up the radio volume a bit more. They listened to the sounds, which were now of different
quality, less violent, the scuffings and thumpings somewhat different, and presently there was a measured
series of loud bumps, then a voice, clearly a waiter's voice, saying, “You wish to order, Mademoiselle?”
And a girl's voice, the swooner's voice, replying, “Yes, thanks. Bring me a shrimp cocktail, the soup, the
Kansas City steak, the gooey dessert I like, and coffee.”
“Nice appetite,” Ham remarked.
“She's hungry,” Monk muttered. “She's had a hard day swooning.”
“She called for the dessert she likes,” Doc Savage remarked. “That means she eats there regularly. Does
she live there?”
“You couldn't prove it by me,” Ham admitted. “I didn't put that one over.”
Monk pointed at the radio. “You got the gain turned up too high on that transmitter in the umbrella
handle. Don't need that much pickup.”
“How did I know,” Ham retorted, “that she wouldn't stand the umbrella in a corner or in a closet
somewhere? And the extra pickup will do no harm.”
THEY were two gentle-looking men. Brothers, it could be, except for the difference in their voices, but
even that was a negative quality, the lack of something that you reasonably expected. The lack of any
difference, really. They were two peas in a pod. One took the stage, spoke; the other supplanted him,
and there was little to tell which was one and which was the other.
“Good afternoon,” the voice of one said.
“Good afternoon,” the other said. And then he added, “Miss Morgan.”
“Miss Dannie Morgan,” added the first.
Miss Dannie Morgan looked at them. She was well into the Kansas City steak, and she chewed and
swallowed the piece she was currently working on. She did it gracefully, and it was done along with
some rage, so it was doubly graceful.
“The little Sir Echo brothers,” she said unpleasantly. “Sit down, boys. Get ready for some bad news.”
They stared at her, their polite small smiles slightly shaken.
She gestured impatiently. “Pull up chairs, Juan, Jolla. I think I'm going to tender my resignation.”
They gasped in astonishment, together. They whipped out chairs and sat down. They began to talk. Each
one would take a deep breath and expend it all in a spurt of words; the other would be ready when he
ran down. The gist of it was that they couldn't understand what possessed her—wasn't it congenial
employment, and at good wages too, forty dollars a day, and didn't she enjoy being an actress? After
they had said that three or four times in three or four different ways, Dannie Morgan broke in and told
them what she thought of it. It wasn't much.
In the meantime Ham Brooks, in the taxicab with Doc Savage and Monk Mayfair, burst out laughing.
“You know what they remind me of?” Ham said. “Two brown seals balancing balls of butter on their
noses. Don't ask me why.”
“Forty bucks a day,” Monk said. Monk's financial status was currently similar to that of Ham, so forty a
day impressed him. “The swooning business is profitable.”
Doc Savage listened to the radio, picking up from the little transmitter in the umbrella handle. One of the
polite men—he had not yet distinguished Juan from Jolla—was saying that it was of course only a joke
they were preparing to perpetrate on their friend Mr. Roxborough, but they had gone this far and spent
so much money, a hundred and twenty dollars including today, that it would be a shame to disappoint
them now, wouldn't it?
Doc Savage frowned.
“Joke?” he said, giving his opinion. “At forty dollars a day? Three days, a hundred and twenty dollars? I
doubt it.”
Miss Morgan had the same feeling.
“You boys,” she told the pair, “are a couple of suckers, but you seem to be nice boys—polite ones
anyway—and I do feel a little guilty about letting you down.”
“You mustn't,” Jolla said.
“Mustn't let us down now, that is,” said Juan.
There was more argument in which she said they were wasting their money, and they assured her they
should be the judge of that; it was a wonderful joke, very wonderful indeed, that they were trying to play
on Mr. Roxborough.
“All right, all right,” said Miss Morgan impatiently, surrendering. “But on one condition. I'm getting tired
of swooning for wrong men. Either produce a better description of Roxborough, or I do quit.”
The two men glowed. “Better than a description,” one said, and the other said, “We have a picture.
Finally we have a picture.”
Doc Savage whipped up, stared in the direction of the sidewalk café, not too distinguishable through the
rain. He decided that Miss Morgan was holding the photograph, a small affair about three by four inches,
and examining it.
“Get us a shot of that picture if you can, Ham,” he said quickly. He whipped open the dash compartment.
“Where is the miniature camera that's supposed to be in here? I hope—here it is.”
Ham said, “I hope this works,” took the camera, and got out into the rain. He trotted toward the café.
“WHAT,” demanded Monk Mayfair, “will he use for an excuse? If he says he came back for the
umbrella, that's not going to be so hot.”
Doc was bothered about that too. “Better she kept the umbrella than we get a copy of the photograph,”
he agreed. “But Ham may work out a quickie.”
Ham did. He approached the table under the canopy. Because of the sound of rain on the canvas, and
her interest in the picture, Miss Morgan did not immediately note his arrival.
“Oh! The nice cab driver!” She looked up, placing the photograph on the table. “You came back for
your umbrella?” she asked.
“No, not for the umbrella, Miss.” Ham dangled a five-dollar bill before her. “Did you lose this, Miss? I
found it in my cab.”
Miss Morgan eyed the greenback speculatively, then shook her head.
“Well, I found it and thought maybe it was yours,” Ham said. He grinned. “You seem to be an honest
customer, Miss. You'd be surprised how few of them I meet . . . I keep a file of unusual or interesting
customers.” Ham whipped out the camera. “Could I have your photograph?”
He had evidently pre-focused the lens by guess, because he lost very little time. There was a wink of
white light as the flashbulb went.
“Por Dios!” gasped one polite man.
“By God!” said the other, as if the exclamation needed translating.
“Thank you, Miss. Thank you very much,” Ham said, pocketing the camera again. “Thanks for the
picture. And you just keep the umbrella and use it until you are through with it.”
Ham backed away rapidly. The girl called something and it was not understandable because she was
moving the umbrella around the table at the time, the resultant jarring of the microphone drowning her
words. If it was an offer to return the umbrella to Ham right now, which was probable, Ham pretended
not to understand. He waved. A few moments later, and he was approaching the cab.
“Thank heavens,” Monk remarked, “for New York being full of cab drivers who are characters. Any
place else, it would look screwy—”
Doc lifted a hand for silence. He was listening to the radio. The two amiable men were discussing, in
rapid Spanish, this precise point: a moment later they reached Monk's conclusion—there were a lot of
uninhibited hack drivers in New York. Who could tell what those guys would do?
Ham climbed in with them. “If there was film in the camera, and if the usual twenty other things didn't go
wrong, I got a picture.”
“What did the man in the photograph—Roxborough—look like?” Doc demanded.
“I didn't have much of a chance for a close look. Just a big rugged intelligent-looking guy.”
“But you got the photograph in the picture you took?”
“Yes.”
“What about the two polite caballeros?”
“Them, too,” Ham said. “They may be a little out of focus, although I had the lens stopped down as much
as I dared to get depth of field.”
Doc held out a hand for the camera. “I'll develop and enlarge the shot, and see what can be done with it.
Monk, you might try trailing the two men when they leave her.”
Monk nodded, but pointed at the radio speaker. Miss Morgan's nice voice, diverting for peals of
laughter, was telling about her experiences swooning for men in brown tweed suits and grey hats. “But
the funniest one of all,” she said presently, “was a short homely fellow who looked like the brother, or the
first cousin at least, of a baboon. You should have seen his face!” Her mirth became uncontrollable.
“At least,” Monk said bitterly, “I made an impression.”
DOC SAVAGE put the film through a fine-grain development at headquarters, fixed and dried it, then
clipped it into an enlarger and made a print, blowing it up to the greatest dimensions possible without too
much loss of detail.
Examining the result, he found that as Ham had said, Roxborough seemed to be a burly Anglo-Saxon
type. In the photograph, Roxborough was looking directly at the camera, and wore a small but distinctive
one-sided smile. Taking into consideration the facial characteristics, Doc decided the man's hair was
rather sandy, the eyes a dark blue, the complexion suntanned. There was one gold tooth shown by the
small smile.
Making four more copies of the print and drying them, Doc dropped in at the nearest precinct police
station and instituted a routine gallery check to see whether any of the four individuals shown had a police
record. Since he frequently worked with the police, too many explanations were not demanded of him.
Enroute back to headquarters, he used the radio to learn what progress Monk and Ham were making.
Ham Brooks said, “The conference broke up without anything more being said that was interesting. I'd
say it was this way: This girl is someone the two men hired for the swooning job. An actress, probably.”
“Is she staying at the Park Regis?”
“Yes. Registered under the name they called her, except that her first name is Daniella. Daniella Morgan.”
“That hotel,” Doc suggested, “charges stiff rates. Rather high living for an actress who would be needy
enough to accept employment as queer as this.”
Ham probably winced over that. At least there was a pause before he said, “Acting is a little like cab
driving—you don't have to be screwy to do the job, but it helps.”
“Well, don't enthrone the young lady too firmly until you know a little more about what goes on,” Doc
摘要:

TheSwooningLadyADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterXOriginallypublishedinDocSavageMagazineOctober1948  ChapterISHEusedawayofwalking,armsheld...

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