Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 164 - Death in Little Houses

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DEATH IN LITTLE HOUSES
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
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine September 1946
Chapter I
IT was mid-afternoon, a July afternoon, the hour when the bright sun hammered down and the air hung
motionless and still as if the whole universe were suspended in a sort of quiet interlude.
The lake was an endless expanse of tinted greens, like plate glass painted with an artist's brush and then
laid out in the warm sunshine to dry. Surface of the water was as smooth as a bowl of lime-colored
gelatin. Against the horizon, far off, a triangular wedge of white sail stood motionless against the water as
if it were a tiny flag marker pinned into a huge map.
The lake—Michigan—was what you always remembered about Chicago more than anything else.
Driving northward from the famous Loop, the lake accompanied you like a beautiful girl with a warm,
bright smile lighting her glowing features. Where busy Michigan Avenue swings into the Outer Drive, at
the Drake, she is there to greet one, curving and graceful, waiting quietly beyond a sweep of
crescent-shaped beach.
On the left, the expensive apartment dwellings of Chicago's Gold Coast drop behind, to be replaced,
farther inshore beyond the Outer Drive, by green-lawned parks and smaller, cheaper apartment
buildings.
Again she beckons to you from a placid, motionless land-locked boat harbor. The highway rolls on,
curving away from the lake, coming back again. The wide pavement of the sprawling express highway
swings into Sheridan Road. Big substantial houses crowd in closer, then thin out again as the suburbs of
the North Shore drop behind.
The lake coyly slips behind a screen of trees, a forested estate, then makes a breathtaking, stately
entrance in even greater majesty. The city and the larger suburbs are left behind now. The highway dips
up hill and down, follows a flat bluff overlooking the endless stretch of peaceful, motionless, tremendous
expanse of water.
A solitary cloud drifts across the sky. Beneath it, where sunshine is momentarily screened off, there is no
longer bright, shining emerald tints. That part of Lake Michigan turns gray, dull, leaden, a blotch upon the
clean blue-green that shimmers and sparkles as far as the eye can see. Like a quick, momentary frown
upon her otherwise serene and lovely face.
A frown, perhaps, that gives the vaguest hint of the various strange emotions lying deep beneath.
But today, this particular afternoon, Michigan was a lovely lady, her face as tranquil and serene as if she
were taking a siesta in the sunshine.
AN occasional car rolled along the North Shore highway, tires making slight gummy sounds on the hot
pavement as the machines whipped past, soon disappearing beyond some tree-canopied curve of road.
The cab driver said: “Nothing was wrong, was there, skipper?”
His passenger did not immediately answer.
He was a blond young man, the cab driver. But his face was not young. Prize fighting had aged it
somewhat. The nose was broad and flat, the cheek bones flat and wide, the lips fairly thick and heavy.
He was a stocky young man without much education, but intelligent enough that he had given up boxing
before his brain had been dulled by years of being knocked around in the prize ring.
Two things he was proud of. He owned his own hack, a presentable-looking black limousine. The other
was that he always gave his customers a little extra service. He was not just another dumb jitney driver.
You give the customer a little attention and he remembers it. With a good tip, usually.
The blond cab driver kept his eyes on the road ahead and said further: “I've been out to this Jamison
place once or twice before. We swing off just past Highland Park. That Daniel Jamison is pretty well
known, that's for sure.”
Still no answer from the rear seat. Sometimes it was hard to get them to talk, until the passengers saw
you were really trying to help them.
He pushed his cap back on his blond head. It was even warm driving. “The reason I wonder, mister,” he
continued, “is you ask me to drive you over there to Northwestern University when I pick you up at the
station in Evanston. Already I take some people over there to the lecture hall this afternoon. It's in the
papers about Daniel Jamison lecturing over there, that's how I know. They say engineers and scientists
are here from all over the country to hear him. He's some kind of authority—”
“Electronics engineer,” said his passenger.
“Yeah. That's it. Well, like I say, I wonder. I know you're on your way there to hear him because you go
to that same lecture hall. I'm sitting there waiting for a fare maybe back to the station when you come
right out again. First, you have me drive you to a drugstore where there's a phone booth. Now you are
going out here to where Daniel Jamison lives.”
His quick blue eyes went to the rear-view mirror and he grinned. “To be honest about it, skipper, you
stay in that drugstore so long I thought maybe you are cuffing me for the fare. Some guys do. So I stroll
inside and have a coke, because it's hot anyway. I hear you talking to somebody about Jamison and
trying to find out where he is. You know him pretty well, mister?”
“Yes.”
“Frankly, skipper, I also hear you call his place in Highland Park and get no answer. Then you call some
hotel downtown and I guess he ain't there either. As I say, I figure something must be wrong. Jamison
was supposed to talk at two o'clock, wasn't he?”
“That's correct.”
“And it's after three now.”
“Quarter after.”
“Everybody's waiting there for him, huh?”
“The program committee is somewhat embarrassed,” said the passenger.
“It's funny he can't be located,” mused the driver. He wished he could get more information out of the
guy in the back seat. He'd like to know who he was, too. Somebody pretty important, more than likely.
At least he looked important.
An unusual bronze sort of man, too. Even his eyes held a goldish tint. His features also. A big fellow.
Probably make a whale of a boxer. Fast, you could tell from his strange, alert eyes. That's what made a
fighter—quick, fast eyes. Only trouble was the guy wouldn't talk much. Usually, by this time, they were
telling you about the wife and kids, or maybe their ulcers.
They passed through the village of Highland Park, a clean, well-kept, very expensive small town nestled
in low wooded hills alongside the Lake. “About three minutes now,” said the blond driver.
He remembered the private road that cut off from Sheridan. It dropped downgrade through a shaded
small forest area. You could feel a change in the air from the nearby lake. It was cooler.
Estates lay half hidden beyond the heavy stand of tall trees.
“It's the next lane, I believe,” said the passenger.
The blond driver's eyes jumped to the mirror. “I guess you've been out here before. Yeah, the next one
on the left.”
The narrow lane tunneled through bordering trees and finally emerged on a low flat bluff. The lake was
there before them again, tremendous, an inland ocean with only the horizon and blue sky beyond it.
On the left of the roadway there was nothing but woods now. On the lake side, a sort of grove, the trim
low cottage poking its green slanted roof above a high box hedge. The thick tall hedge seemed to wall in
the house completely. There seemed to be no walk or driveway.
The car stopped and the driver climbed out. He took off his cap and wiped the back of his hand across
his sweaty forehead.
“I guess there's no driveway,” he commented.
The bronze-skinned man swung out of the rear seat. He motioned along the lane that passed for a road.
“There's an entrance farther along, I believe. But this is all right.”
“You want I should wait?”
The big man nodded.
“That's perfectly all right with me, skipper,” said the driver. “I say Johnny Lewis is always at your service.
I'll catch me a little shut-eye.”
He climbed back into the front seat, loosened his tie and opened his collar. The curly hair on his chest
was the color of straw. Almost immediately he went to sleep.
THE tall thick box hedge extended for some distance along the shaded lane. It shut off view of the lake
and the cottage. No other residences seemed to be nearby. Somewhere in the trees a bird, disturbed,
chirped once, then dozed off again. The warm air hung motionless. Silence everywhere.
Doc Savage, the passenger, paused, his gold-flecked eyes searching down the length of the solid hedge.
It was several years since he had last visited his good friend Daniel Jamison. He seemed to recall an
opening somewhere along the hedge that led to a path into the cottage.
Beyond the hedge, he thought he observed some kind of movement. He tried to peer through the heavy
maze, but it was like attempting to view something through several layers of fine-meshed screen.
“Hello, there?” he called out, awaiting a reply.
No answer. His words went searching off into the nearby woods and lost themselves in silence.
Doc finally located the gap in the hedge and went through to the wide sweep of green lawn beyond. He
saw no one. A dog would have barked or come searching for him. He supposed he had been mistaken
about seeing movement on this side of the hedge.
The house was comfortable looking, sturdy, white-painted horizontal siding with the low sloping green
roof. A man's house. Jamison was a bachelor.
A few high trees screened it partially from the hot sun. The lawn swept off to the left, and some distance
away there was a combination garage and garden house. The garage doors were closed. It was back
there where the driveway cut in from the road. There was a long flagged walk from the garage up to the
house.
Everywhere else, as far as the eye could see, was the lake.
Doc Savage walked across the lawn, circled the cottage, reached a back porch and went up to try the
door. He was not surprised when he found it unlocked. It was that kind of exclusive residential
community. There was not another house nearby.
Doc stepped inside. The kitchen was cool. Shades were drawn part-way. He called out Jamison's name,
and his voice bounded through the quiet house, up and down the stairs, and came back to him empty
handed.
Doc passed through a small pantry into a front hall. On the right he found the living room. Behind this, a
small study lined with bookcases. There was a dinette that connected with the kitchen again.
Next, Doc Savage went upstairs and looked around. There was a bathroom, two bedrooms, and
another room that had been converted into a workshop. Everything, the entire house, was in order. He
found a handwritten note propped up against the dresser mirror in one of the bedrooms. It read:
MR. JAMISON:
AS LONG AS YOU ARE STAYING IN THE CITY AT THE HOTEL, DURING THE LECTURE
SERIES, I AM TAKING A FEW DAYS OFF. I'LL LOCK UP THE HOUSE BEFORE I GO.
HILDA
Hilda, he recalled, was a Swedish woman who had been Jamison's housekeeper for quite a few years.
He returned to the study, sat down at the big flat oak desk and put through a call to the University, in
Evanston. He was connected, after some delay, with the committee member he had talked to less than
thirty minutes ago. He identified himself.
No, he was informed, there was still no word from the well-known electronics engineer. Hundreds of
people were sitting there in the lecture hall impatiently waiting to hear him.
“You tried the hotel again?” asked Doc Savage. He named a world-famous hotel that faced on Michigan
Avenue.
“Several times,” Doc was told. “He is checked in there for a few days, but there is no answer from his
room. We can't locate him any place. It's very strange.”
Just before Doc hung up, he became aware that a man was quietly watching him from the doorway of the
living room. He was an odd-looking character.
Nearly all his face was covered with a shaggy dark beard. His hair was long, falling to the shoulders of
his light-weight coverall jacket. The beard also grew from his upper lip and forehead, long and scraggly,
so that his mouth and eyes were almost completely hidden, like those of a Scottie dog.
He was a big man, at least six feet, but not as tall as Doc Savage when the bronze-skinned man stood up
and came around the desk. The bearded man's eyes sparkled like two black marbles buried in a bear
rug.
“You arrived by gas vehicle, kinsman?”
Doc Savage considered the question, its quaint phraseology, and the shaggy man himself. He nodded.
“Fellow Jamison is not here.”
Again Doc nodded.
“You are perhaps a friend of his, kinsman?”
“I have known Jamison for ten years,” said Doc Savage. “Can you tell me where he is?”
The bearded man's black eyes stared steadily out of the heavy beard, moved to the telephone, then back
to Doc Savage's face.
Finally he said: “Fellow Jamison has not been here. The pursuits of modern mankind are difficult to
comprehend, kinsman. I believe he goes to the big city where men dash around endlessly like mice in a
cage. Shameful.”
“You haven't seen him, then?”
The man shook his head slowly.
Doc had observed the big straw hat which the man held in his right hand. The coverall work-jacket
looked dusty and worn.
“Gardener?” he asked.
The big man sighed. “I believe that is your modern term for it.” He put on the big sun hat. Doc was
interested in the man's hands. “I must return to my children.”
“Children?”
“Nature's children—the flowers.”
Doc let that one pass without comment.
The tall bearded man turned, moved as soundlessly as a kitten through the living room and disappeared
toward the hallway. It struck Doc Savage that the strange character had never questioned his presence in
the house.
Shrugging his shoulders slightly, Doc lifted the receiver again and called the downtown hotel in Chicago.
His eyes, thoughtful and slanted downward, retraced the invisible path left by the bearded man as he had
left the study.
“Mr. Daniel Jamison's room, please,” said Doc Savage when the hotel operator answered.
He waited. He was aware of a sound from the kitchen, but did not hear the back door open.
“I'm sorry—” the operator started to say.
“Keep ringing,” asked Doc.
The kitchen door closed and he heard the slight creak of a rear porch step.
One of the study windows faced north toward the garage-garden shed. He saw the huge bearded man
come into view lumbering slowly along the flagged path that led to the garage. The man was carrying a
rake on his shoulder.
He skirted the garage, disappeared toward woods that bordered the end of the property. He went into
the woods and was lost.
The hotel operator said, “They do not answer.”
“Thank you,” said Doc, and hung up.
He thought the most unusual thing about the bearded heavy-set man was the hands. They were neither
gnarled, cracked, rough or soiled. They were not the hands of one who tended the soil. The fingernails
had been immaculate.
Doc tried the phone again, this time speaking directly to the local operator when she asked for Number,
please. The community was small enough that she no doubt knew many of the residents.
He asked about Hilda, the housekeeper who worked here at the Jamison place. Yes, this was a personal
friend of Mr. Jamison's and he'd like to get in touch with the woman. It was rather important.
“Oh,” said the girl helpfully, “that would be Mrs. Ericsen. A widow, you know . . . lives over beyond the
. . .”
“Could you call her for me?” asked Doc politely. At this hour the local operator probably had little else
to do but pass the time of day.
In a moment he was talking to Hilda Ericsen. He identified himself as a personal friend of Jamison's. “I'd
like, if you don't mind, Mrs. Ericsen, to ask a question about the gardener who works for Mr. Jamison?”
“Gardener?” Her voice was puzzled. She spoke good English.
“The big fellow with the beard . . . like Rip Van Winkle, only it's a black beard. Sort of a quaint
character. You know, one who is somewhat behind the times . . .”
“Never heard of him!” said the woman's voice.
“You mean—”
“He's no gardener from Mr. Jamison's place, mister. We use a landscaping service. They come around in
a truck, once a week, and they're young fellows who used to be in service now running their own
business . . .”
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Ericsen,” said Doc quickly and he hung up.
IT was so quiet within the house Doc could hear a fly buzzing over near the north window of the study.
The buzz quickly became a bumble-bee sound and he knew it was an automobile engine, outside,
growing swiftly deeper and louder in its throbbing.
He tried to look from the window, but the high box-hedge blocked his view. That lane beyond the hedge
was hardly more than sidewalk width and the car, approaching from somewhere north of here, was
roaring down the road as if it were a Mack truck.
Johnny Lewis, the blond taxicab driver, was asleep out there behind the wheel of his own car!
Doc ran to the kitchen, shut and latched the door behind him, and was skirting the cottage when the
hidden car rocketed past. He couldn't see, but dust skirled up in clouds that drifted on the air. Fenders
raked against underbrush. Pebbles rattled like buckshot against a tin roof. Sound of the roaring engine
was gobbled up swiftly by the screen of woods beyond the small estate.
When Doc reached the roadway his stocky blond driver was standing out there flat-footed, putting
one-syllable words together end-to-end with a grinding of his teeth.
Seeing Doc, he spat and said, “The damn fool! He almost came head on!”
“It must have been close.”
“Crazy, he was!” He swore and spat again. “I heard him coming and piled out on the far side—”
Doc motioned the blond driver behind the wheel as he himself climbed into the car, in the front seat now.
He started to say, “Would you know him if—”
“You bet I'd know him!” snapped Johnny Lewis. “That beard—”
“The kind of a beard a hermit might wear?” suggested the bronze man.
“Yeah! You tagged it, skipper!” The blond driver already had the limousine in motion, swerved in at the
driveway to the Jamison garage, backed and cut the wheels again, then sent the heavy car trailing the dust
cloud that still hung suspended like train smoke in the air.
Doc was saying thoughtfully, “He had his gas vehicle hidden up there in the woods, I suppose.”
Johnny Lewis shot Doc Savage a slanted, curious glance along his eyes. “If you mean that V-12 job he
was driving—”
“A quaint fellow,” said Doc.
“That ain't the word I got for him, skipper!” Johnny Lewis swung the limousine into the uphill climb that
led back to the main road. “This is the only way he can go. Other way ends at the lake. But I know a
cutoff where maybe we can head him off on Sheridan Road. That guy'll kill somebody!”
“How soon,” asked the bronze man, “can we reach the city?”
“You mean the Loop?”
“Yes.”
Blond Johnny Lewis had the limousine in second gear and they were doing fifty up the steep incline. He
said, “An hour if we don't overdo it and get picked up on the Outer Drive or Sheridan Road.”
Doc named the well-known hotel on Michigan Avenue.
“Get me there as soon as you can without picking up a police escort en route,” he said.
Johnny Lewis dropped the gear deftly back in high and they shot ahead at the top of the grade. “But I
thought maybe you were interested in this crazy bearded guy—”
“I am,” said Doc Savage. “I have a feeling we're going to meet again.”
His unusual gold-flecked eyes stared out over Lake Michigan, visible for a moment through a break in
the trees. The bright intensity of sunlight on water was not unlike the determined glow that flickered in his
eyes.
Chapter II
THE room was big and tinted nile-green. There was furniture covered with bright flowered chintz. It was
the kind of hotel room offered to guests who need reception space for visitors. Polished mirrors and
colorful prints hung from the walls. The bedroom was reached through a wide archway.
It was a cool, pleasant room. Long windows faced toward Grant Park and Michigan Avenue, fifteen
floors below. There was the famous Art Institute, and farther back in the park a great fountain that sent
columns of water cascading in geometric pattern high into the air. There was a boat harbor and a
breakwater and out beyond, the clean smooth blue expanse of the lake.
It was a room in which to be comfortably cool on a mid-summer day.
There was a man in the room, pacing up and down, up and down. Sweat stood out on his smooth,
well-formed cheekbones. His eyes, cobalt blue, held dark shadows in what was ordinarily healthy,
glowing skin beneath. The shadows filled the eyes, dulling them, haunting them.
He was not a big man. He was slender, medium-built, and he gave the impression of height in the straight
alert way he held his shoulders and back, and moved about.
His thin, straight lips were trembling. Fists clenched at his sides as he continued walking back and forth.
He seemed to be a man striving to get a grip on himself. Men heading for a nervous breakdown act the
way he was acting.
Drawing in his breath and letting it out in a great sigh, he paused by the windows, staring out toward the
lake. Usually he found peace and comfort in the lake. Its greatness, its endless horizon, held a bigness
that made one forget the smaller everyday irritations of life.
The lake had oftentimes soothed him on a calm still night when his mind was disturbed with problems. It
had stimulated him with its vigor when, frequently, high winds brought its tremendous white-capped
waves rolling and crashing against the North Shore. In a storm, its fury had oftentimes fascinated him.
But always he went back to the lake for assurance and strength.
Now it failed him. He was a man afraid.
The telephone rang again.
He had been expecting it. It had rung before. Yet a startled small sound came from his throat and he
whirled toward the writing desk on which it stood, near the open window, facing the lake. He stood
frozen in the center of the big room, watching it, eyes focusing on the instrument in a hypnotic stare.
An hour now it had been ringing intermittently. Again he tried to ignore it. He started around the room
again, tried the double latch on the corridor door, to make certain it was locked securely, as he already
knew it was. His dark-shadowed eyes jumped to the other door, the one connecting with another suite
that could be connected with this one if a guest preferred. He had tried that door several times. It was
locked from the other side by the hotel. Sweat continued to roll down his face.
Staring at the ringing phone again, then ripping his gaze away, pacing the room he tried to concentrate on
the street sounds from far below. They carried up clearly on the afternoon air. Bus horns. Cabs. Even the
voices of people, a sort of hushed murmur created by hundreds of shoppers passing by.
He closed his eyes and his head bent back, fists still clenched. Once again he tried mightily to gain control
of himself.
Down Michigan Avenue an ambulance siren keened against his eardrums. It grew louder and shriller and
shattered his nerves completely. With a final small cry of despair, he lunged to the writing desk and lifted
the receiver.
“Yes?” His voice shook. “Yes?”
“Mr. Daniel Jamison?”
There was nothing distinct or familiar or businesslike about the voice. It seemed to speak from behind a
heavy curtain.
“Yes? Yes?” he repeated nervously.
“Just a moment, please . . .”
He waited. The pause became a frightening eternity. There was still a connection and he wondered . . .
“Hello?” he demanded. Now that he was going through with it, he felt some returning strength. “Hello . .
.”
And the door, the locked door to the adjoining suite, clicked behind him. He spun. Only, the door was
no longer locked and it was open.
He dropped the receiver on the cradle and leaped toward the doorway. He saw a dark rectangle, no
light from beyond. The shades in there must be drawn. He checked himself . . .
The two shots blasted out of the shadows and killed him.
On Michigan Avenue the traffic murmur from below remained after the two flat gun-cracks had buried
themselves, absorbed by carpet, drapes, walls, furnishings.
The ambulance siren faded off in the distance.
Chapter III
IT was ten after five and office workers were still pouring out of Loop buildings, rushing along
well-defined routes to their own suburban stations and bus terminals. Some rain arrived with a sudden
shift of wind from the lake. Dark clouds flung themselves across the hot sky, forewarning of a typical
Chicago summer storm.
Within moments the splashing big drops changed to a downpour. A gray, leaden curtain of driving rain
swept across the streets, down the sidewalks and drove people into doorways. Building entrances and
arcades blocked up as more and more express elevators unloaded.
The electric service company showrooms were directly across Clark Street from one of the Loop's
major office buildings. Lighted windows of the showrooms featured Chicago's latest postwar attraction.
The model homes exhibit.
Crowds had been milling through the huge exhibit all afternoon. Now it was worse, for office workers
decided the exhibit was a good place to kill time until the sudden storm blew over.
There were Cape Cod model houses. Contemporary Georgians. Ranch types. Moderns. The models,
built exactly to scale, contained everything from miniature bookcases, filled with books, to tiny
refrigerators. One, a three-level modern built to perch on a little hillside, was labeled: “Dream Home for a
摘要：

DEATHINLITTLEHOUSESADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIIIOriginallypublishedinDocSavageMagazineSeptember1946...

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