Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 160 - Colors For Murder

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COLORS FOR MURDER
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
? Chapter XIV
Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine June 1946
Chapter I
DELLA NELSON leaned back in the plane seat, tied the fingers of both her hands together into a knot
as tight as her strength, shuddery and tremulous, would manage, and stared fixedly at the window. No
sense telling herself there was nothing to be upset about. There definitely was.
This feeling was different. It was not shock, excitement, alarm. She'd had all those emotions, and
violently, when the men had seized Walter, her brother. When that happened, she had been shocked,
more smashed by amazement than she had ever been before. Her stunned disbelief had been monumental
compared to any other feelings she'd ever had.
Why should she feel this now, when she herself seemed to be safe? Bodily safe, at least. What could
happen to her here on an airplane on the short hop from Boston to New York? Why this grinding reality?
She watched—it gave her a creepy sensation—the thin, nearly transparent form of a partly condensed
cumulous cloud float backward as the plane passed it. The cloud had hardly the body of cigarette smoke,
and, catching the afternoon sunlight, it had about the same ghostly blue-gray coloring. In its formless
presence, it was like the feeling that was crawling on her nerves. Farther down, about eight thousand feet
down, the earth was dark and vague and flat and, because she did not do much flying, looked completely
unnatural.
“Miss Nelson?” It was the stewardess.
“Yes.”
“Miss Della Nelson?”
“Yes.” She stared up at the stewardess in amazement. They took your name when you bought an airlines
ticket, of course, but she felt absurdly alarmed, and surprised.
“A call for you, Miss Nelson.”
“Call . . .”
“Radiophone,” the stewardess explained. “You can take it here.” She had a handset which she plugged
into a jack beside the seat. “You just start talking as you would over the telephone,” she said, and
handed over the instrument.
“Hello?”
She had never before heard the voice that now spoke to her. It came at her softly, greasily; it crawled
over her nerves. “Miss Nelson?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Della Nelson?”
“Yes. Who . . .?”
“The grey suit. The red handkerchief. You remember?” the voice said.
Remember? She shuddered violently. She couldn't help it. And when she tried to make a word, the word
wouldn't come, nothing would come, not sound nor anything.
The voice said: “I think I would drop the business deal you now have in mind. I think I would drop it by
all means. You will be much happier if you do, and you can understand that we will be happier ourselves.
We will be grateful as well, and so if you will call at the airlines reservations desk in New York, you will
find a round-trip reservation in your name to Cuba, and at the Pan-Arco Hotel in Havana you will find all
your expenses paid for a month. You will have a good time. You'll like it.”
She didn't say anything. Her lips felt numb, as if they had been slapped.
“Are you there, Miss Nelson?” the voice asked curiously.
She made some sort of a sound.
“Your brother is furnishing all this,” the voice said. Then it added, “Just a moment.” During the wait that
followed, some fifteen seconds, she managed to breathe inward and outward once, convulsively.
Walter's voice came to her, saying, “It's okay, Della. Its all right. You take the vacation, see. You take it.
It's on the up and up. They—I got the reservation, the hotel's taken care of. Its better you take this
vacation. You understand? You mustn't work too hard. You understand that, don't you? Goodbye,
Della. You take that vacation, Della.”
That was all. After that, the only sounds that came from the receiver were the sounds air and electricity
made.
PRESENTLY the stewardess took the instrument from her hand, pulled the plug out of the little hole
where she had punched it, then stood looking down at her anxiously, finally to ask, “Are you ill? Would
you like something, Miss Nelson?”
She said, “What?” and then, “I'm all right,” but the words were made mostly with her lips.
The stewardess, concerned, lingered to say, “If you have a headache . . . some aspirin?”
She managed to say, “I'll feel better presently.”
The stewardess went away.
Grey suit. Red handkerchief. Did she remember. Oh God, she would never forget it! He had been a man
of rather medium build, a man of such ordinary shape that she could recall nothing about him except that
his suit had been grey, some kind of tweed with a subdued pattern, and the red bandana handkerchief
which he had worn for a mask. She remembered the mask of course, for it had covered all of his face up
to the eyes, and might as well have covered the eyes, too, because she couldn't remember their color or
recall having seen them at all. A terrible grey man with an awful red face and a gun. It was the first time
she had ever looked into the muzzle of a gun. She knew a little about guns. No one grew up on a farm in
Iowa, even the girls, without learning about guns, at least learning they were dangerous. This one had, she
believed, been .38-calibre. A revolver.
There had been one other man, a larger man, who hadn't been masked, but who had simply kept his left
arm crooked across his face. She remembered he'd had weather-beaten red ears. And a completely ugly
voice which had said, “You want your insides shot out?” to Walter, and, “Don't make any noise, dear!”
to her. Then this man had walked around behind her and used something, perhaps another gun, but she
hadn't seen one, to club her on the back of the head.
Afterward she had figured out that she had been unconscious somewhere between five and ten minutes,
and she still believed that was right, but she had quickly revised her idea that it was a simple mugging and
holdup. It wasn't that.
Walter and the two men were gone when she sat up. She found herself lying on a lawn behind a bush
where they had dragged her and left her. It was in a little park. One of Boston's small public parks. Ten
o'clock in the morning. Five after ten, to be exact, and thirteen minutes after ten when she revived.
“Miss Nelson.”
It was the stewardess again, the stewardess with a tray on which there was a glass of water and two
white pills.
“No, thank you,” she said to the stewardess.
“It's aspirin. If you have a headache . . .” The stewardess poised the tray invitingly.
“No, thank you.”
“If there is anything . . .”
“No, there isn't. I'll be all right. But thank you.”
The stewardess smiled, moved away with the tray, the glass of water, the two tablets.
Three seats back, a fat male passenger with a soured, pained expression said, “Stewardess! Is that
something for a headache? I have a terrible headache!” He had been back in the men's room twice
already, ill. “Flying always makes me feel lousy,” he complained. “Why don't they build these damned
things so they don't jump around so much?”
The stewardess paused, masking dislike carefully. The fat man had been quarrelsome during the early
part of the trip, for he had come aboard drunk, which was against the rules, and it was probably alcohol
more than flying that was making him ill.
“That something for a headache you got there?” he demanded.
“Aspirin.”
“Gimme,” he said, and bolted the two tablets, drank the water.
He leaned back and, closing his eyes, breathed loudly and deeply for nearly five minutes. Then, suddenly
and blankly, his eyes came open and he made an effort, a terrible, straining effort, to raise his head from
its leaning-back position, to get the head upright on his shoulders. The attempt to accomplish this, despite
the awful concentration which he put into it, was a failure. His loud breathing, which had stopped, did not
resume. He was now dead.
THE two men took Walter with them, Della Nelson thought.
I was not surprised, she reflected. And I am not surprised now. Only very anxious, very unsure.
I knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, so nothing that happened could have been a surprise.
You cannot have a brother without knowing him quite well, knowing him in many respects, probably,
better than he knows himself. Walter's opinions, his desires, the ways he thought, were colored and
twisted by his ambitions, by the many little neurotic threads that all people have.
Walter, for instance, thought himself a good judge of character. He was not. He was, for one thing, too
trustful of others, the reason for this being, she was sure, simply that nothing had yet happened to him in
life to make him wary. Walter was so darned open-hearted and easy with his affections. He liked
everybody.
Something should have happened to Walter in early youth to give him one of those hidden fears the
psychiatrists talk about, something that would make him more cautious, less trustful. If it had, she was
sure Walter would have gone farther, been more successful. As it was, at twenty-eight, Walter was a
darned competent engineer, but he had been unable to advance any farther than field jobs, construction
foreman—little better than common labor. His employers quite frankly thought he was dumb. A big,
amiable, likable young guy who liked everybody, and who unfortunately would trust anyone. Too dumb,
though, for responsibility. It was too bad that a thing like that, the right thing not happening to you when
you were a kid, could thwart your career. For the lack of a kick in the nose when you were young and
tender, you were a big genial guy and they thought you were dumb.
Walter would actually have believed, and his naïveté made her shudder, that all she had to do was take
that Cuba vacation, expenses paid, and nothing would happen. They must have told Walter that would fix
everything. Keep the girl quiet, and everything will be all right. No more trouble, no more thorns, and
roses in the sky.
Sickened, she thought: they've used Walter, involved him until now I can't do anything normal about it.
Go to the police was the normal thing. But she couldn't. Walter, the big trustful mutt, had let himself be
too horribly involved. She understood Walter; she knew he was not, really, a participant. But the police,
she was sure, would not be very understanding about murder.
She had not, from the beginning, trusted Walter's new job, much of the apprehension springing from the
effect that Arthur Pogany had on her. Pogany somehow disturbed her. He was as appetizing, mentally, as
a snake. He was a long man and eccentric; Pogany wore tweeds and his hobby was whales, the kind of
whales that swam in the sea; and the way he looked and what he did somehow had a bad effect on her.
It was something she sensed underneath, and, when she had tried to tell Walter how she felt about
Pogany, Walter naturally laughed. Walter would, because Walter never looked inside people for things.
Arthur Pogany was Walter's employer. The work Walter was doing for Pogany, construction of some
kind, was a great secret; too great a secret for Della, because she doubted Walter's explanation that it
was a matter which must be kept from business competitors. She didn't doubt Walter's sincerity, only
believed that he had been deceived.
She had met Mr. Riis twice before he died; both times he had been with Walter, and Walter had liked
him. Mr. Riis was also working for Arthur Pogany on the same hush-hush job. Try as she would, she
could not remember his first name: perhaps she had not heard it. A nice little guy, somewhat like Walter
because he seemed to like people readily. A man with a little, squawky voice like a papa duck.
She remembered, and it made frightened, grabbing feelings inside her, how terror had rattled like rocks in
Mr. Riis' voice when he called on the phone, wanting Walter, who hadn't been there. Mr. Riis had
sounded as if he had also wanted his life, wanted the comforting hand of God. His voice, the awful quality
in it, had left her with the weirdest feeling after Mr. Riis had hung up.
The next morning, which was this morning, a newsboy delivering papers in a residential district had found
Mr. Riis' body lying on a vacant lot, and found Mr. Riis' head lying a few feet distant.
Della stared down at her hands.
“Stewardess!” she gasped.
But the stewardess was aft somewhere. Della half arose, then remembered there was a little button
beside the seat, and that you probably got the stewardess by pushing that. She pushed it. The stewardess
came.
“Yes, Miss Nelson?”
“That telephone—the radiophone, I mean. How do you place a call? I want to place one.”
“Just give me the number you wish called, and I'll take care of it . . . I'll bring the instrument when the call
is ready.”
“It's a man named Savage. Doc Savage. In New York. I don't know the number.”
“Very well.”
“I'm sorry, I don't have the number. My brother . . . but Mr. Savage is quite well known.”
“I've heard of him. I don't imagine a number will be necessary,” the stewardess said. She went away.
Della leaned back, feeling easier because her urgency had seized on something to do. She might, or might
not, be able to reach Doc Savage. She was going to him for help, because she'd heard wonderful and
amazing things about him. She did not know Savage, nor did Walter, but Walter had once worked with
an engineer named Renny Renwick. Renwick was, Della understood, one of a group of five specialists
associated closely with Doc Savage. Walter had raved enthusiastically about Savage and his ability, his
repute, and the strange profession he followed, which consisted, as nearly as Della could gather, of
investigating unusual crimes or crimes in which the police, for one reason or another, could not be
involved. It was a fantastic picture Walter had painted, but effective enough to stay with Della, and make
her think, in her present urgency, of Savage.
Turning her head, Della watched the stewardess coming toward her along the aisle. The stewardess had
the handset that looked like a telephone. The stewardess halted suddenly, wrenched up rigidly, eyes
growing round, mouth making a horrified shape.
The stewardess was looking at the fat man. She touched him. “Mr. Lubbock!” she said.
Mr. Lubbock did not respond and, presently when she shook him slightly, he tilted sidewise out of the
seat, all loose, like a sack filled with balloons. He fell to the aisle floor slowly, defeating, as if he were
alive, the efforts of the stewardess to do something about it, and the jolt of landing made some liquid,
darkly green, spurt from between his clenched teeth.
Chapter II
THE plane passenger who had given the name of South heard a commotion forward. He stood up, went
to see what it was about. Other passengers were doing the same thing.
The fuss was about the dead fat man, South saw.
He was not surprised. He didn't feel much emotion. He had seen the fat man seize the pills and water and
gulp them, so he had known the fat man was pretty sure to die. He, South, had substituted the pills,
which certainly weren't aspirin, without the stewardess' knowledge—a very neat trick, he had thought at
the time. Very neat.
“He looks,” remarked South, eyeing the body, “like a guy who deserved to die.”
A passenger overheard this and stared at him in horror, so he wished he hadn't said it. The statement was
made sincerely, because South didn't like fat men, and he didn't like drunks; too, he needed, and this was
important, to assure himself that there was a reason for what he did. The reason did not need to be large,
not anywhere near enough of a reason to justify the act before a jury of South's peers. But if there was a
reason for an act—any act, even murder—South could accept the reason as a good and sufficient one,
and feel justified. He could even feel quite holy about it, as if he'd done the world a favor.
He examined the fat man dispassionately. Would the stewardess remember the bolted aspirin pills and
the water? She probably would, and that would mean an autopsy, and so what?
There was nothing to worry about, probably. South shrugged vaguely, dismissing any doubts that might
be lurking about. There was even a little joker attached to the thing that would show up when they made
the autopsy, for the white pills really had been about forty per cent aspirin. The coating of acetylsalicylic
acid, which was plain old aspirin, was around the more lethal viscera of the pills. So the autopsy would
show aspirin, and the stewardess might think she hadn't unwittingly administered the poison. That was all
right with South. The stewardess was pretty.
South was not his name, but it was as good as any because for years he had not used his genuine name,
nor employed any one name for very long at a time. The airline trip was in a southerly direction, so he
had told them I. B. G. South. The I. B. G. part was for I Be Going. He was, in his skeleton-rattling way,
a humorist.
He was a rather lean man with a sweet face and large brown eyes and sensitive lips. He dressed very
carefully in a softly outdoorsy way, usually wearing autumnal hues. Of him, an average individual would
probably have said that he didn't look like a murderer. But a psychiatrist would have said quite the
contrary, that the man definitely had neurotic symptoms indicating he could be a murderer.
South glanced regretfully at Della Nelson. He would now have to figure out another way of killing her.
Chapter III
“MY telephone call,” said Della Nelson. “What about my telephone call? What happened to it?”
The First Officer had come back from the control compartment to investigate. He said, “I'm sorry, lady,”
and didn't seem to hear her. He was staring in horror at the body.
“I had a telephone—radiophone—call placed. To Doc Savage.”
“I'm sorry, lady,” the First Officer said. Jumping forward suddenly, he supported the stewardess with an
arm, demanding, “What's wrong?”
The stewardess, having suddenly remembered the aspirin incident, had lost much of her gay, healthy
color and some of her ability to hold herself upright. She was a registered nurse, as stewardesses on
many airlines still were, and she had realized she just possibly might be held responsible for administering
the aspirin. Or had it been aspirin? She didn't know why a suspicion that it hadn't been should hit her, but
it did, suddenly, horribly.
The First Officer said, “Take it easy, Anna,” and helped the stewardess aft, stepping over the mound of
fat body in the aisle. He came back presently and held the fat man's wrist, not happily, for a while.
“Dead,” he remarked loudly. “A heart attack, probably.” Twice when he was in the air force crewmen
had been killed in his bomber, and often he had helped take bodies out of other ships and so death, any
longer, did not touch him vitally. He addressed the passengers: “Will one of you men give me a hand?” A
man, or rather two men, did, and they took the body to the men's room, having approximately the
amount of trouble they would have had moving a piano.
Della Nelson waited. No one did anything about her radiophone call, apparently.
She was frightened, horribly frightened. The death of the fat man had made a large splash in the dark
pool of her fears. She did not at first realize why. Death was always shocking, but the effect of this was
more than it should have been.
The First Officer, the stewardess, and, once the pilot, passed and re-passed.
“Stewardess!” she said anxiously. “My radiophone call!”
The stewardess looked at her queerly, she thought. “I'm so sorry. We did overlook your call in the
excitement, didn't we, Miss Nelson? I'll see, but I doubt if we have time now. We're landing in a few
minutes, you know. It would be much more economical to use the telephone at the terminal.”
“I'll do that, then. Phone from the terminal.”
“Very well.”
“Was he . . .?”
“Dead? Yes, he was dead. It was a shock, so upsetting. Well, he had been drinking, of course. But—”
The stewardess stared fixedly forward toward the control compartment and did not finish.
“A heart attack? The co-pilot, or whatever you call him, seemed to think so.”
The stewardess continued to stare fixedly; her face was strange, particularly around the mouth and she
didn't say anything. She moved away.
My God, Della thought, she acted as if I was guilty! Why should she do that? I didn't even know the fat
man. I never saw him before, and I never spoke to him, and I never gave him any thought until he died. I
had no contact whatever with him, except that he snatched those aspirin tablets. She became very still.
Her pulse seemed to stop, her nerves to freeze, and her mind turned ringing and blank, like the interior of
a room after a large firecracker had exploded in it.
The aspirin tablets!
MR. SOUTH was third man out of the airliner after it stopped at the unloading ramp at La Guardia Field.
He carried a topcoat over his arm, and also had a light bag of the sort resembling a suitcase that can
contain nicely an extra shirt, socks, underwear, razor, the things a man needs for a short trip. There was
nothing suspicious in his baggage or on him. He had dumped the remainder of the “aspirin” pills in the
men's washroom on the plane. It made no difference if they were found there, since proving he put them
there would, he believed, be a hard thing to do.
Mr. South strolled, not too hastily, into the terminal.
He was hailed at once by a blue-jowled young man who cried enthusiastically, “Why, hello, Uncle John!
How are you, Uncle John! I'm delighted to see you!”
“For God's sake!” said Mr. South, genuinely amazed. “How did you get down here? How the hell?
Listen, I left you in Boston when I got on that plane!”
“Not exactly,” the other corrected.
“Eh?”
“They run two sections of that flight. Two planes take off about the same time. We got on the second
plane, and it musta passed yours enroute. Anyway, we got here first.”
“I'm glad to see you,” South declared. “Who else is with you?”
“Buck and Ed.”
“That's fine. We're going to need them.”
The young man glanced at South sharply, then asked, “Something making you unhappy?” He was
standing so he could look beyond South and watch the passengers filing in from the plane, and presently
he saw Della Nelson among the arrivals. His grunt was full of unpleasant understanding. “So you didn't
get her stopped?”
“No, I didn't.”
“Hell! All she's gotta do now is grab a cab, ride downtown and sell Doc Savage a bill of goods. With
those legs she's got, she'll probably get him sold fast. After that, things are liable to get a little cloudy.”
“You think it'll be that easy?” South asked.
“I hope not.”
“I do too,” South said. “You get Buck and Ed and we'll knock her off without any of this subtle stuff.”
“Right here?”
“Right here, or the first damned place that comes handy,” South said.
The younger man started to wheel away, but paused to gaze, quite surprised, at a group of four men in
white coats who were engaged in removing the body of the fat man from the plane. Indicating the body
more with voice tone than with eye gesture, he asked South, “Who's the guy they're packing out?”
“He,” South said, “is one of my few mistakes.”
DELLA NELSON stood in a telephone booth, feeling desperate and thwarted, and demanding, “Where
is Doc Savage? . . . Hello! Why don't you answer me? What's the matter with you, anyway?”
No answer came over the wire. But she was certain that a moment before a male voice had stated this
was Doc Savage's office and added something about stating her business. She hadn't understood all of it,
because the air terminal lobby outside was noisy.
She used another nickel, and dialed again. A voice over the wire said: “This is Doc Savage's office, but
Mr. Savage is not here. This is a recorded voice from a mechanical device, and any message you care to
speak will be recorded for Mr. Savage's later attention.” This was exactly what the voice must have said
before, she decided.
“Damn!” she said wildly.
She hung up—hung up violently, and with a helpless feeling of weakness that caused her to cling to the
receiver for a moment, supporting part of her weight on it. It was ridiculous to feel so thwarted by
encountering a silly mechanical device.
She shouldn't have been so shocked. Walter, she recalled, had told her that Savage was addicted to
mechanical gadgets, according to what Renny Renwick, the engineer, had told him. But she wanted the
man, not one of his gadgets.
Irritably, nervously, she flung out of the phone booth, and bumped headlong into a large young man who
was gawking at something overhead, evidently the mural paintings on the lobby ceiling.
“Oops! Beg pardon,” he said.
She said nothing. Awareness of the young man did not, actually, penetrate her distracted thinking; he was
just someone she bumped into, and she went on, walking rapidly. A taxi. She would take a taxi. Or a
bus, maybe a bus would be better.
When she had moved some distance, there was a delayed-action effect, and she realized that she had
bumped into a large young man. Very large, in a rangy, spring-muscled, impressive way. She glanced
back. She did not see him. There were several wide backs turned to her, but none of them exactly fell in
with her hazy recollections of the large young man.
She went on, her footsteps the quick clicking voice of panic. But not far. Because a man got in front of
her; when she stepped to the left, he stepped to the left too, then he said, “I am Mr. South, with the
airline.”
“Oh!”
“You are Miss Nelson? Miss Della Nelson?”
“What do you want?” she asked tightly.
He bowed slightly. He gave her his sweet-faced smile. “I am a vice-president of the airline, Miss
Nelson,” he said, telling lies with the soft sincerity of gospel truth. “There was, on the plane on which you
arrived, a passenger who died. We—ah—very unfortunate. There are certain aspects of the death we
feel we should investigate. So, if you will accompany me . . .?”
“Go with you? Where?”
“To the office in another building. It will only take a few moments.” His smile, like a kitten, showed again.
“If you have friends meeting you—” He paused invitingly. He wanted to know whether anyone was
meeting her. That was rather important, since he was preparing to kill her. But she did not answer, so he
added, “Otherwise we will gladly, at no cost, furnish a limousine to take you wherever you wish.”
She released her breath suddenly, wildly.
“Oh, yes!” she gasped. “Yes, I want to talk. You must help me, you must. I want to get hold of a man
named Doc Savage. Can you help me?”
“Help you? Certainly.” He took her arm. “We'll be glad to.” He tugged gently at her arm and got her
moving. “Savage, you say? I've heard of Mr. Savage.” Politely, he reached ahead of her and used his
hand to start a revolving door turning for her. “We have a very short walk,” he said. “Your baggage? If
you've any baggage, I should be glad to have someone take care of it.
“No baggage,” she said.
The smile came to his lips, his eyes. This was good. No baggage. And he was getting her outside. The
idea was to walk her past the parking lot, and Buck and Ed would appear to help. Buck and Ed already
had rented a car; there was an agency at the air terminal which did a car rental business, so it had not
been difficult. They'd already had the car rented when South's plane arrived, they'd explained.
The immediate plan was to kill her then and there, if necessary. Or, and this would be better, get her in
the car and take her somewhere else and do it.
摘要:

COLORSFORMURDERADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIII?ChapterXIVOriginallypublishedinDocSavageMagazineJune19...

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