Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 170 - No Light to Die By

VIP免费
2024-12-23 0 0 371.55KB 71 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
NO LIGHT TO DIE BY
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CABLEGRAM
? STATEMENT BY DOC SAVAGE
? THE SAMMY WALES MANUSCRIPT
•Chapter I
•Chapter II
•Chapter III
•Chapter IV
•Chapter V
•Chapter VI
•Chapter VII
•Chapter VIII
•Chapter IX
•Chapter X
NO LIGHT TO DIE BY
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine June 1947
CABLEGRAM
ROBESON, NEW YORK
DISAPPROVE OF THE IDEA. SORRY.
SAVAGE
CABLEGRAM
SAVAGE, LONDON
SAMMY IS BULLHEADED ABOUT THIS. HE IS GOING TO PUBLISH MANUSCRIPT.
WON'T LISTEN TO ME. SAYS HE NEEDS THE MONEY.
ROBESON.
ROBESON, NEW YORK
BUY THE MANUSCRIPT OFF HIM. BURN IT.
SAVAGE.
SAVAGE, LONDON
SAMMY WONT SELL. SAYS THE PUBLIC SHOULD KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT DOC
SAVAGE.
ROBESON.
ROBESON, NEW YORK
THAT'S WHAT I WAS AFRAID OF. I'LL WRITE SAMMY.
SAVAGE.
MEMO FROM THE DESK OF DOC SAVAGE:
To: Sammy Wales.
Mr. Kenneth Robeson, the author, advises me that you have written a first-person account of a recent
adventure which brought you in contact with myself and my group of aides. He states that you intend
seeking a publisher for this manuscript, and that you have refused to sell it to him. I disapprove of this. It
is true that Kenneth Robeson has written a hundred and sixty-eight novels around the adventures of our
group, but these were fictionized versions and in no way hampered our work. It is not satisfactory to me
to permit publication of an account written by an unskilled outsider. I hope you will drop the matter.
SAVAGE.
RADIOGRAM
SAVAGE, PARIS
WHO'S UNSKILLED? AND WHO IS AN OUTSIDER? I WAS THERE WASN'T I? THIS GUY
ROBESON IS A FICTION WRITER ALL RIGHT. I HAVE READ SOME OF HIS STUFF AND
HE SOFT-PEDALS TOO MANY FACTS. I THINK WHAT I'VE WRITTEN SHOULD BE
PRINTED.
SAMMY WALES.
RADIOGRAM
WALES, NEW YORK
HOW DID YOU KNOW I WAS IN PARIS?
SAVAGE
SAVAGE, CAIRO
A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME.
SAMMY WALES
MONK MAYFAIR, NEW YORK
IF YOU ARE THE BIRD TELLING SAMMY WALES THINGS, CUT IT OUT.
SAVAGE
SAVAGE, BOMBAY
SO THAT'S WHY THAT PRETTY FIANCEE OF HIS GAVE ME A DATE.
MONK MAYFAIR
CABLEGRAM
ROBESON, NEW YORK
DO NOT UNDERSTAND SAMMY WALES ATTITUDE. WILL YOU ASCERTAIN HIS TRUE
REASONS FOR WISHING MATERIAL PUBLISHED. CABLE ME SHANGHAI.
SAVAGE.
RADIOGRAM
SAVAGE, SHANGHAI
SAMMY FEELS TRUTH ABOUT YOU SHOULD RE KNOWN. SEEMS SINCERE. SAYS IT
WILL SCARE SOME PEOPLE WHO NEED SCARING.
ROBESON.
RADIOGRAM
ROBESON, NEW YORK
IT SCARES ME ANYWAY. WHAT IS YOUR OPINION OF SAMMY'S MANUSCRIPT?
SAVAGE.
SAVAGE, SHANGHAI
I THINK SAMMY AS A WRITER IS NO SHAKESPEARE. BUT HIS INTENTIONS GOOD.
CAN MAKE DEAL TO PUBLISH MANUSCRIPT IN MAGAZINE. SUGGEST DO SO.
SUGGEST YOU BREAK ALL PRECEDENT AND GIVE PERSONAL STATEMENT TO BE
PUBLISHED. THIS IS ONLY OUT I SEE.
ROBESON.
CABLEGRAM
ROBESON, NEW YORK
HAVE READ SAMMY WALES MANUSCRIPT. SHAKESPEARE WILL SPIN IN GRAVE. SO
WILL I IF I EVER REMEMBER THIS. STATEMENT FOR PUBLICATION FOLLOWS
AIRMAIL.
SAVAGE.
STATEMENT BY DOC SAVAGE
YOU are about to read a manuscript written by a young man named Sammy Wales. Quite probably you
have never heard of Mr. Wales. I certainly had not heard of him until quite recently when the incidents
described in his writings occurred. Sammy seems to feel what happened was extremely fantastic and
exciting. It was.
But Sammy Wales has made a mistake—he has told about what happened, and neglected why it
happened. Perhaps that is not Sammy's fault. He knows me only from what he saw me do. He knows the
whole world, really, only from what he has seen it do to him and to others. You'll have to look deep into
Sammy to see it, but I think Sammy has a universal fear.
Who can blame Sammy Wales for being afraid? These are the days when all brave men tremble a little
for the future of humanity. And no wonder! There has just swept over the world an epidemic of
unworkable schemes derived from Hitler, Mussolini, a poison gas thrown into our minds by theorists and
demagogues, by tyrants and rascals. Wasn't it Doctor Johnson who wrote, “Patriotism is the last refuge
of a scoundrel.” Thirty years ago they were beginning a great war to save liberty. We have just finished
another. And yet I dare you to show me a square foot on the earth's surface where liberty is safe today.
Don't misunderstand me! I have faith. I think I know why we are afraid, too. I think it is change that has
terrified us. Changes always breed fear, and that is good, because a change is a dangerous thing, not to
be avoided, but to be approached warily. And any kind of changing that destroys is particularly vicious.
Destruction, like death, is so permanent. And the professional wreckers of houses are almost never the
men who build homes.
Have you heard anybody, when speaking of crime, of deplorable government, say: But what can just
one guy do? Certainly you've heard that. You've heard it many times. And each time it was the voice of
cowardice that spoke. Speak out, my friend, and speak out firmly, and you will find that you are the
multitude. When you let a bad thing happen to you, you have it coming to you.
One thing I can say for Sammy Wales—he speaks and acts with the courage of his convictions. I admire
that in him, although Sammy has certain other deplorable traits.
Sammy Wales, as you will see, is perfectly willing to fight single-handed against anything he dislikes, or
for anything he likes.
That has been my creed, too. I had the fortune, or misfortune, to receive an odd training as a youth. My
father, victimized by criminals, imagined that he could turn me into a sort of modern Galahad who would
sally out against all wrongdoers who were outside the law, and who would aid the oppressed. My father,
before his death, outlined a stringent course of training in which I was placed in the hands of a series of
scientists, criminologists, physical culture experts, psychiatrists—I won't bore you with an endless list of
these experts, but they had me in their hands from the time I was fourteen months old until I was twenty
years old—so that I might be fitted for this career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers. I chose
medicine and surgery for specializing, largely because the understanding of human beings that a doctor
has fitted in with the other, and because I liked it. This training, foresight of my father's imagination,
equipped me with many skills, mental, physical and scientific. There is no point in being modest about
that. If you study and practice many things, you become adept at many things. The only remarkable thing
about me is that I have worked like the dickens to master some skills. You'll be surprised at what patient
and continual trying can accomplish.
You see, I believe in trying.
There is where Sammy Wales missed the boat in this account he has written. He has not painted me as
an individual who has earned whatever abilities he has the hard way—and there is no other way—by
repeatedly trying. Sammy seems to frankly believe that the strong things in life are passed out
ready-made, instead of being created by the individual within himself.
Sammy should have told more about why things happened. Sammy himself is a changed man—not yet
changed as much as might be desirable, however. He hardly mentions this change in himself, possibly
because he does not fully grasp it—yet surely he could understand such an important thing as a man
acquiring a purpose in life, when the man is himself. But Sammy glides over this; he is too much interested
in the action of events, rather than their causes.
He should at least have stated the philosophy that society prepares the crime and the criminals only
commit it, and that each individual is a part of society, and indeed he is that society. . . .
CLARK SAVAGE, JR.
THE SAMMY WALES MANUSCRIPT
Chapter I
THE telephone had a voice like a truckload of coal banging down a tin chute, straight into my ear. My
head felt just about big enough to hold a truckload of coal, too.
It was probably a beautiful morning outdoors, for the sunlight stood through the hotel room window in
bright hard bars and dust mice rode up and down them. I rolled over and took hold of the telephone very
gently, before it killed me, and answered. The voice that came out of the receiver was as sweet as honey
on ice cream. It said: “I want the moonlight man.”
“Who?”
There was some kind of a conference at the other end of the wire. I thought that a male voice addressed
lovely-voice sharply. Then lovely-voice said, “Hello?”
“Yeah?”
“Is this Mr. Samuel Wales speaking?”
“Who wants to know?”
She did not have to confer about that, but it stopped her short for a moment and put a bit of vinegar in
her honey voice. About a drop of vinegar to a barrelful of nectar. She said: “This is Miss Fenisong
speaking. Is Mr. Wales there?”
“Partly so, I would say,” I said.
I didn't know any Miss Fenisongs yet.
“May I speak to Mr. Wales?” she said.
“You are.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, indeed! . . . You are Mr. Wales, the expert on moonlight?”
“Expert on what?”
“Moonlight.”
That sort of had me going. It couldn't be a gag because I wasn't aware that I knew anyone in New York
City. To a lovely voice like that and to such a question, what was there to say?
“It could be, Miss Fenisong. It could be.”
“Are you free this afternoon, Mr. Wales?”
“Is there a moon in the afternoon?”
She laughed heh-heh to show that she didn't think I was very funny, but she was willing to be agreeable.
“Say about three, then. Is that satisfactory?”
“Why not lunch? Why wait?”
“Well . . .”
While she was considering, I saw my pants hanging over the back of a chair, the right hip pocket
weighted down by a big fat billfold that was stuffed, as my billfolds usually are, with everything but
money. There were nine one-dollar bills in it, and there weren't any more in the world, I was beginning to
figure.
“Maybe we'd better skip the lunch,” I said.
“Very well,” she said. “Three o'clock, then.”
“What address?”
“The Parkside-Regent,” she said. “Goodbye.”
I PUT the telephone on its cradle and laid my headache back on the pillow as gently as possible. The
headache was a dog. It was one of those things where your temples bulge out about a foot each time
your heart beats. But it wasn't an entirely unforeseen headache, because missing three meals in a row
invariably produces such an effect on me. The trouble was, the cheapest meal I had seen on a menu last
night was a dollar forty. With only nine paper dollars between me and poverty, I wasn't shooting any
dollar forty on dinner.
So now I was an expert on moonlight. . . . This very unusual fact wouldn't let me sleep again. I tried going
into the bathroom and getting a drink of water that tasted from standing in pipes, then sitting on the edge
of the bed and holding my face with both hands. It didn't help. No good. I would have to eat.
The telephone operator was coöperative when I got hold of her a minute later. She said: “Mr. Samuel
Wales is in four-twelve. Oh! . . . Oh, that's you, isn't it?”
“What about another Mr. Samuel Wales? Have you got another one of us?”
After she had probably consulted whatever it is that operators in big hotels use to keep track of the
guests, she said, “A Mr. Samuel Wickert Wales is registered in sixteen-forty.”
“Will you ring him?”
“Yes, Mr. Wales. I'll ring the other Mr. Wales.”
He didn't answer.
So that was that. There had been an error. The expert on moonlight wasn't the Sammy Wales who had a
headache from hunger. I would have called lovely-voice and told her about it, but that would have cost a
nickel. A dime, probably.
I should have let it go at that. I thought I had.
Putting on two suits of clothes, I went out to look for a cheap breakfast. Wearing the two suits was a
precaution, because it looked as if I was going to have to beat that hotel bill.
In Grand Central Station, in the men's room, I took off both suits, put the one that was not wrinkled back
on, and made a bundle of the other one and gave it to one of those locker contraptions that keep your
stuff twenty-four hours for a dime. I had an old slot-machine slug that would exactly fit.
A cheap breakfast in New York wasn't easy to find. I didn't know the town, and must have walked the
wrong directions, because I did not come upon any part of the town that looked cheap. I finally
compromised on an Automat. There at least you get a preview of the size of the portions your money is
going to buy. The girl who skillfully slung out nickels and dimes for one of my dollars said, “Thank you,”
in a voice that reminded me of Miss Fenisong, who wanted a man who knew about moonlight.
I sat there at the little marble-topped table with its puddle of coffee that another diner's cup had left and
its bread-crust crumbs and ate my thirty cents worth with great care. Then I sat there some more. I
hadn't had spaghetti, but there was a spaghetti worm about an inch long lying on the table. I didn't know
why I was sitting there until it dawned on me that I was listening to the voices from the other tables, just
to see whether there was another voice that sounded as nice as lovely-voice.
Three employment agencies took my name, two employers expressed no interest in hiring me, and at
three o'clock I turned up at the Parkside-Regent to find out what went with that voice.
It was easy to see what went with the Parkside-Regent Hotel. Probably a minimum bill of fifteen bucks
a day.
SHE invited me into her sitting-room. She said: “Come in, Mr. Wales. I'm awfully glad you're here.”
So was I glad. This might be a very temporary visit, but already it was definitely a pay-off. I had known
there were people like her, because I go to the movies. I had supposed there might be hotel suites as
fancy as this one was, for the same reason.
“You don't need a moon,” I said.
She didn't warm up very well to that. I was sorry about this, because I was doing my awed best to pay
tribute to a masterpiece. It wasn't just that she was tall, blonde, peach-colored, although even that was a
little like describing a mansion by saying it was a house. It was the plus details that were important; an air
of quietly drawn reserve, for example, that probably indicated no great emotional need of being
surrounded by others, which might mean a little inhibition. But who wanted to be psychological about
Miss Fenisong. With that figure!
A trim, dark-haired man sat in a chair holding a cigarette in a holder that was long and as white as a
tooth. He looked a little too wide for his suit.
“Mr. Albert Gross,” she said.
We didn't shake hands. I wondered if we took such a sudden dislike to each other for the same reason.
“So you're Samuel Wales, the moon expert,” he said.
“My name is Wales,” I said. “But it so happens—”
“Make it snappy, will you,” he said sharply. “We haven't got much time.”
摘要：

NOLIGHTTODIEBYADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CABLEGRAM?STATEMENTBYDOCSAVAGE?THESAMMYWALESMANUSCRIPT·ChapterI·ChapterII·ChapterIII·ChapterIV·ChapterV·ChapterVI·ChapterVII·ChapterVIII·ChapterIX·ChapterXNOLIGHTTODIEBYOriginallypublishedi...

展开>> 收起<<
Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 170 - No Light to Die By.pdf

共71页,预览15页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：71 页 大小：371.55KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 71
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注