Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 157 - Terror and the Lonely Widow

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Terror And The Lonely Widow
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
Additional proofing by Moe the Cat
Chapter I
THE man stumbled backward wildly, upsetting two chairs and a water carafe, colliding with a waiter,
sending the waiter staggering, and ending up against the brick wall of the Park-Ritz. He hit the wall quite
hard. He pressed against the wall tightly, as if trying to distribute himself into the joints between the
bricks. His hands came up, instinctively, to his face, and remained clamped there. The color of his face
changed progressively from sunburned toast-brown to hazel to fawn to buff to straw-yellow. The
straw-yellow was about as near corpse-gray as his very tanned skin could turn.
Still holding his hands on his face, he looked upward. His eyes searched the tall front facade of the hotel
... Presently he began brushing his face and the front of his suit with both hands, brushing off the earth that
had been in the flower box. A bit of the earth had lodged in the corner of his mouth and it dissolved and
made a small taste of mud.
After the flower-box fell, for a few jolted seconds, the crowded sidewalk cafe was unbelievably silent.
The waiter caught himself and froze, eyes fixed on the table.
The flower box, before it had split on impact, had been about four feet long, eighteen inches wide and
twelve inches deep. Filled with earth and plants petunias, wandering-jew it had weighed about three
hundred pounds. Enough to cave a skull. It had come down without the slightest warning. It had split, and
in turn split the table. It had scattered earth, silverware, dish fragments, scrambled eggs, coffee
indiscriminately. It had missed the man by about three feet, in fact, crashing into the table and into the
breakfast he was eating.
The man he was still brushing earth off himself was about five feet ten, angular, hard-boiled. Around
forty. There was a full ridged muscularity around his mouth which had the effect from a distance of giving
him very thick lips, although actually his lips were as thin as a dog's lips. There was the same muscularity
around the eyes, and the eyes were very pale blue, just enough blue in them to show coloring. His blue
pin-stripe suit was new and expensive, and he wore it with the air of one to whom such splendor was
unaccustomed.
The waiter unhooked himself from his shocked fright. He asked, “Are you hurt, sir?”
The man did not answer. He looked up at the hotel front again. Without speaking, without troubling to
pick up his hat, which still stood on the chair beside the shattered table where he had placed it before
three hundred pounds of flower-box fell, the man walked away. He left the hat there, some loose dirt
sprinkled on brim and crown.
He crossed the street, turned and stood looking for some time at the hotel front.
“Damn them!” he said bitterly.
He went at once to his hotel, where he packed a blond leather suitcase, also new, with the sort of
belongings that men buy when they visit the city after a long absence. A new very expensive electric
razor, for example. The sort an out-of-the-way place wouldn't t be likely to stock. He wore a grim
expression throughout his packing.
He didn't check out after all. He scowled at the telephone, and went over and scowled out of the
window, and turned his displeasure again on the telephone. But he did not check out.
He seemed to have decided that the flower- box might, after all, have been an accident.
He went out to get a second breakfast. He hadn't had a chance to eat the first one.
He turned south on Seventh Avenue and walked about sixty yards and a taxicab turned in
from the street, hurdled the curbing and missed—by about a foot— plastering him against the wall of a
building. The cab hit quite hard, but in a calculated sort of way hard enough to have killed him (squashing
him from the waist down) but not hard enough to injure the driver so that he could not run. In fact, the
driver was instantly out of the cab and running. The driver's collar was turned up, his hat was low, and
apparently he had smeared grease or burned cork on his face to soil it and was holding something about
the size of small potatoes in his cheeks to distort his features into unrecognizability. The driver popped
around the corner.
Now there was no doubt about it.
The man didn't bother about his breakfast after all. He went back to the hotel. He got on the telephone.
“This is Mr. Worrik, in Room 1204,” he explained. “I'm checking out. Will you send the porter?”
He didn't really need the porter, but he knew it was customary to have one when you checked out—the
hotel, he suspected, liked to make sure you weren't packing the thing off with you. Moreover he wanted
the porter to bear witness that he had taken a cab to Grand Central.
To make sure of the porter as a witness, he said, “Will you get me a taxi to Grand Central Station?”
He did not leave any more of a trail than that. He was sure it wasn't necessary. Whoever was shadowing
him was doing it adeptly—he had not, at any time, seen anyone suspicious. Except, of course, the running
cab driver.
He let the taxi roll several blocks south and east, then paid the driver suddenly, alighted and doubled into
a subway. He rode, successively, that subway, another one uptown, a street-car, a cab, another subway,
a bus. His last subway trip took him uptown to the section of middle-class hotels west of Central Park.
He registered in one of these.
He wanted to use the telephone. He debated using it for some time. Finally, he didn't. Too risky. He
didn't think anyone could possibly have traced him during the last hour, but he didn't dare take the
chance. He began sweating it out.
THE room was not very neat. Outwardly the hotel had a certain crispness, and certainly it did not look
shabby, but the rooms were not well-kept. The best explanation was that the management didn't know
the war was over. They were trying to cash in, get by on the skimpy service of wartime. The man sat on
the bed for a while and contemplated the threadbare carpet. He realized he was perspiring. He washed
his hands and face in the bathroom.
“Cut it out, stop being nervous,” he said to himself. “Nobody could have followed you here.”
The argument did not have much effect. He tried a drink, with no better results. Not too stiff a drink,
because he was afraid of impairing his wits, every bit of which he might need.
He remembered, with horror, that he had forgotten to register under an assumed name. He had signed,
Farrar Worrik. Without thinking. Not once, after taking all those elaborate precautions, had it entered his
head to use a phony name. He shivered violently. The oversight frightened him.
He did not, he realized, even have the initials FW on his bag or on anything else. The error, the more he
thought of it, became the source of considerable horror. He wondered how many Worriks there were in
New York City, and got out the telephone directory—his room only had the Manhattan volume and the
red book—to see. The Worriks were few enough to worry him...Suddenly he tried to figure out why the
scant number of Worriks in the phone directory should worry him, and couldn't see any good reason.
The jitters.
“Boy, I've got them,” he grumbled.
He stood up and went to the window to stare out sourly.
The bullet came in a moment later. It hit a trifle a foot, perhaps over his head and a bit to the right. It
made a considerable racket. A small teaspoonful of glass sprayed out and two tiny cuts appeared
magically on his face, and two large healthy red drops of blood, like fine rubies, gathered quickly. Across
the room, a little plaster trickled down the wall from the spot where the bullet had hit. A moment later,
the bullet itself fell to the floor, went thud-thud-thud lightly across the carpet. It had hardly penetrated the
plaster, which was remarkable.
The man had never been shot at before.
But he knew what to do. Drop.
THE rifle was a calibre .220 Swift, bolt action, with a side-mounted scope. Doc Savage kept it cradled
to his cheek for some moments after he had fired, not because he expected to shoot again, but because
the telescopic sight gave him a better view of the hotel room window. It was about a block distant.
Presently Monk Mayfair said, “He dropped awful quick.”
“He took his time,” Ham Brooks said. It was Ham's policy to disagree with almost anything Monk said
and condemn almost anything Monk did.
Doc Savage made no comment. But he did take his eye away from the scope and lower the rifle. He
moved a little back into the room, confident that this would make him unnoticeable to the man in the
distant hotel room.
“Doc,” Monk said.
“Yes?”
“You think he'll make a break right away?”
“There's a chance he might, although he has been rather methodical in his other actions. Seems to take
time to think out each move. However, he might make a fast break this time. You and Ham had better
get on the job.”
“You think he's ripe to pick?”
“I don't know. We'll have to take him now, though. If we try to keep this up, we re sure to lose him.”
“Grab him, then?”
“Yes.”
Monk said to Ham Brooks, “Come on, you well-dressed shyster,” and went out. Ham followed him.
Doc Savage continued to watch the distant window, but cased the rifle while he was doing this. He was a
very large man, but not in an obese sense; there was a fluid tenseness about his movements that fitted a
much smaller man, or a quick animal. He was a remarkably impressive figure, handsome without
prettiness, darkly bronzed skin, and eyes that were like pools of flake gold always stirred by tiny winds.
The rifle case was black leather, plush-lined, and had compartments for scope, cleaning tools, cartridges.
He placed the rifle in the case with care. It was his favorite rifle.
He placed the case at his feet, glanced at the telephone, returned his gaze to the distant window. He had
seen nothing. No movement.
His manner was sober, intent, serious. This wasn't just his manner of the moment. It was his habitual tone.
Something of a sobersides.
But the power—vitality, force, a hypnotic personal magnetism—of the man was an over-whelming thing
to strangers. And not only strangers; his aides, the men who had worked closely with him for some years,
like Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, had never outgrown the same feeling of omnipotence which the big
bronze man gave them. There was nothing phony about this hypnotic effect he produced. It was quite a
real effect, and did not advertise anything he could not deliver. There was very little of the average about
his appearance. There was very little that was average, Monk and Ham would have readily testified,
about the man.
Monk and Ham considered Doc Savage a freak. It was entirely unnatural for one man to be such a
combination of mental genius, physical might and scientific wizard. It was quite unreasonable. They
accepted it, though, and understood it, because they knew his background, knew about the completely
abnormal, but scientific, training he had undergone from the cradle to early manhood. They even
suspected that Doc's father—his mother had died very early must have had a screw-loose to conceive
and execute such an up bringing. As a whole, in the opinion of his aides, the bronze man had survived his
upbringing fairly well. That is, he was a human as they could reasonably expect. He was a little too moral
for their comfort sometimes. He did not go in very heavily for humor, but he tolerated it. He was, they
suspected, scared of women. They knew he was utterly convinced that he couldn't tell with the slightest
shade of accuracy what a female mind was thinking, or what it would do next.
His aides were probably the best advertisement of his amazing ability to grip people and hold them to
him. The aides, five of them, were a collection of genius themselves. They were also, to various shades,
screwballs. Genius is supposed to be eccentric, and they were that. They would have driven an average
intelligence mad, but no average intelligence could have held them together in the sort of association they
had—devoted to the Galahadian theme of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of
the earth. This was, really, their profession. Their other professions—lawyer, chemist, archaeologist,
engineer, electrical researchist—had become sidelines long ago. This was all unorthodox, unusual. But it
had a simple explanation.
Adventure.
They liked excitement. Excitement was the thread, together with Doc Savage's amazing qualities, which
had tied them together in a unit which didn't always function in expected ways, but functioned well.
Doc Savage, still watching the window, was worried. There was a chance his bullet had actually hit the
man. He had seen the hole in the window, exactly where he aimed to frighten the man. But there was the
chance that some freak accident could have occurred. He shivered. The consequences of such an
accident—the death of the man—would be blood-curdling. The least consequence of all would be the
death of the man itself.
He wrenched upright when the telephone rang.
It was Monk.
“We got him,” Monk said.
“Where?”
“On the fire escape. You know them fire hoses they have rolled up in boxes in hotel hallways? He had
one of the hoses and was trying to lasso a chimney on the next building so he could get away across the
rooftops. He might have made it, too.”
“How scared is he?”
“I'd call his condition satisfactory.”
“Does he suspect we dropped the flowerbox?”
“He ain't said so.”
“Is Ham there?”
“Yeah.”
“With him?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Better have Ham get out of sight. He may recognize Ham as the fellow who was driving the taxi which
he thinks—we hope—almost got him.”
“Okay.”
“You think the fellow is scared?”
“If he isn't,” Monk said, “I'll never see a better imitation.”
“What floor are you on?”
“Seventh.”
“I'll be over.”
Chapter II
THE hotel hall carpet was thin and the color of a mouse and the flooring felt hard under it. Doc Savage
reached it in an elevator that whimpered like a puppy, and walked toward the silhouettes of two men,
Monk and the other man, who were cut cleanly against the window at the end of the hall.
Monk grinned amiably and said, “I had him roll up the fire hose and put it back. Might hurt the hotel
people's feelings if he left their hose scattered over the floor.”
The other man shuddered violently, as if the remark had terrified him. Which it probably had. Monk
Mayfair was a short, wide man whose arms were somewhat longer than his legs, whose looks were
baby-frightening, who was covered with reddish bristling hair, and who would not have to be
encountered in a very dark spot to be mistaken for a dwarf edition of King Kong. Monk normally looked
quite pleasant. But when he wished, he could put on an expression that would crack rocks.
Doc Savage addressed the prisoner. “You are Worrik?”
The man hesitated, thought it over, decided not to answer.
“Do you know who we are?” Doc asked.
No answer.
Monk said, “I don't think he knows us.”
“No, probably not,” Doc agreed. “There is no reason why he should, not having seen us before, and
having had no idea, quite possibly, that we were involved in the matter.”
The man was watching Doc. The lumpy muscularity around the man's mouth had the effect of enabling
him to look about twice as frightened, or twice as angry, or about twice any other emotion, as he was.
He licked his lips with a quick, terrified whip of his tongue.
“I think I got you placed,” he said.
Monk asked, “Who?”
“Not you.” The man nodded at Doc Savage. “Him. I figured him out now. Name's Savage, isn't it?”
Doc admitted it was. He was studying the at man, trying to measure the degree of the fellow's fright. A
great deal depended on how scared the man was; or could be made. His face, instead of being
inscrutable, was too expressive. Difficult to gauge.
Monk was looking fierce. “How d you know that?” he demanded.
“Know what?”
“Who Doc is.”
The man—his name was really Farrar Worrik, as far as they knew— explained readily enough. He said,
“I have a brother, Carl Worrik...Kansas City. He works for an airline. He once described to me a
man—Doc Savage, here—who owns a large share of the line. I happened to remember. My brother was
quite impressed.”
Monk was not satisfied. He said, “You're a smooth liar, aren't you?”
The man shrugged. “You can check on it, if you want to take the trouble.”
“We already have. The brother part, at least. You've got the brother, all right. He hasn't seen you in ten
years.”
“I've got a good memory, and my brother knew about him,” Worrik said.
Doc Savage spoke quietly.
“Ten years ago, I didn't own any part of that airline,” he said.
Worrik winced.
MONK grinned with the fierce amiability of a fox about to kill a rabbit. “Now we know we got a liar on
our hands.”
Doc Savage was watching Worrik's eyes. They seemed the least expressive feature in his
over-expressive face, therefore the most reliable indicator. Worrik was, Doc believed, trying to figure out
who they were, what their purpose was. Trying to weigh them, so as to guard himself. He must not, Doc
Savage reflected, suspect our purpose. He shouldn't suspect. Our purpose should not look logical to him.
Their purpose, actually, was to throw the man into a mental turmoil —to heckle, goad, and frighten him
until his orderly thought processes became confused. To get him, generally, in a state of mind in which he
would betray himself—if there was anything to betray. They did not know whether he had anything to
betray. They really didn't. No one seemed to know. The bright young men from Washington—the FBI,
the Intelligence men of the treasury, the Army, the Navy, even the Civil Service snoopers—didn't really
know. All they had were rumors and very vague rumors at that. The police didn't know. And the whole
thing was so terrifying in its possibilities that quite a bit of hair was being turned gray.
Doc asked abruptly, “What are you scared of?”
“Scared?...Me? What gave you that idea?” Worrik was defensive.
Doc shrugged. “Why were you trying to lasso that chimney with a fire hose? Playing?”
“That's it,” Worrik said. “I was a little high. I was having myself some fun.”
“High? There is no liquor on your breath.”
“Who said anything about liquor? I smoked a couple of ju-jus,” Worrik said. He sneered. “There's a law
against that, I suppose.”
Doc Savage said nothing. He frowned. Talk like this suddenly seemed cheap, trivial, inane, in the face of
such an incredible danger. Really it was of no consequence at all whether this man had been smoking
marihuana, which he hadn't been, for he had none of the physical symptoms. Of no importance at all. The
man himself was of no great importance. He was a life, that was all. A life, and a life was nothing, in the
face of so much. And that, Doc reflected, is a bitterly cold, and maybe a little distorted, way of thinking
about it. But true.
The man Worrik was pushing his jaw out at them. “Whasa big idea?” he demanded. “You guys cops?
Where's your licenses to grab a citizen like you've grabbed me?”
Doc said, “Monk.”
“Yeah?”
“Watch him,” Doc directed. “I'm going to report by telephone that we've got him, and see what the big
shot wants to do with him.”
HAM BROOKS was waiting in the hotel flower shop, from the door of which he could keep an eye on
the lobby. Ham had bought a gardenia for his lapel, being quite critical so that it would take plenty of
time. Then he got into an argument with the proprietor about gardenias to stretch it out. He was glad to
see Doc Savage in the lobby. He made sure Doc was alone before he came out.
“I was looking for you,” Doc said.
“I figured you were. How is that guy doing? Has he spilled anything yet?”
Doc shook his head. “He won't either. He isn't the type. He's made of sinews and iron, mentally and
physically.”
Ham frowned. “You mean we wasted our time dropping flower boxes, charging at him with taxis and
sharp shooting? Can t he be scared enough to break?”
Doc said he doubted it. “But our efforts weren't wasted,” he added. “The fellow is upset. He's frightened.
Scared enough, I believe, to perhaps make a move without giving it too much thought...In other words,
he's been very careful so far not to contact whoever he's working with—if anyone. But I think, if we hand
him one more shock, he might do it.”
“How you gonna jolt him any more than we have? After three—he thinks—attempts on his life, he's
probably fairly calloused.”
“Here's what we'll try: Make him think we've been hired to do a job on him and his group.”
“That,” said Ham, “might not scare him any worse than he is already. Those guys already know they're
bucking the police and every agency of the government. That means they've accepted those risks.”
“That isn't the point.”
“Eh?”
“We'll make him think we re working for a gang of crooks, not the law.”
“What gang of crooks?”
“Imaginary ones, but he won't know that.”
Ham thought for a moment, nodded appreciatively, said, “That should be quite a blast at him...I see your
point. That would be important. He'd want to get the news to the rest of his outfit in a hurry.”
“Exactly.”
“What's the plan?”
“Your part is to stage an attempt to arrest us,” Doc explained. “During it, we'll see that he escapes. Then
your job is to follow him. We'll help him with the last, of course...Try something like this: Plant a car near
where you try the arrest, and in the car have a radio transmitter, in operation, hidden somewhere. We
can keep track of the car with a loop, that way—if he takes it for flight. And, if it is planted right, he
should.”
“Okay,” Ham said. “Who do I run in on this for help? What about the FBI? Or some of those wise
I-boys?”
“Keep it in the company,” Doc advised. “Get hold of Renny, Johnny and Long Tom.”
“This guy Worrik may know them by sight. He may know they're your assistants.”
“Tell them to change their looks as much as they can. We'll have to take the chance. The thing will
happen fast, and Worrik can probably be fooled.”
Ham was dubious. “If we could use some government agents—”
“That's out! Definitely out!” Doc said, frowning. He added, “I had quite a row with them about that point.
They—all the federal agencies involved—started out by suggesting we work for them. We never work
for anybody. When I explained that, it didn't set so well. The talk wound up being the next thing to
nasty.”
“What if it's too big a thing for us?” Ham wished to know.
“Then we'll get licked. But we'll know who got licked us. If we worked with those fellows and lost out,
they d pass the buck to us, claim it was our fault. I know how they perform ... Anyway, they were
already licked, or they wouldn't have called us in.”
Ham grimaced. “We're like an emergency hospital—we don't get the patients until they're about dead.”
“Exactly.”
“I'll get hold of Renny, Long Tom and Johnny,” Ham said. How much time have we got?”
“Is half an hour enough?”
“Better make it an hour.”
Doc nodded. “I suppose Monk and I can spend that much time questioning Worrik.”
AT the end of the hour, Farrar Worrik had practiced using his sneer until it turned on automatically at
each question they asked. They would start speaking. The sneer would come on. “Why doncha guys call
the cops?” he demanded. “If you think I'm a crook, call a cop. Whatsa matter? You afraid to?”
Monk said he felt they should kick Worrik's teeth inward. “That one in front, the gold one, looks like it
might be worth five dollars,” Monk said. “And he won't be needing it where he's going.”
On came the sneer. “Who you guys kidding? I know all about your reputation.”
“What rep?” Monk wanted to know.
“You never knock anybody off. I hear it's kinda bad luck to buck you, but nobody gets knocked off by
you.”
“That's fine. That's very convenient,” Monk assured him. It's going to be a shock to you, the surprise you
got coming.”
The sneer was a little loose around the edges. “Whatcha mean by that?”
Monk said, “You'll find out.” He turned to Doc, asked. “You say we were to keep him here an hour,
then bring him over? The hour's about up, ain't it?”
“We might as well get going,” Doc agreed.
They had been asking Mr. Worrik questions and getting unsatisfactory answers — in the man's own
room in the hotel. Now they escorted him out into the hall and to the elevator.
“You raise a fuss, and I'll step on your face,” Monk warned him.
The elevator came. The operator was a round-faced boy with pop-eyes like a frog.
“Help!” Worrik said to the boy loudly. “Get the police! These men—”
Monk hit him below the temple with a fist. Immediately after striking the blow, Monk acquired a look of
astonishment and grabbed his fist with his other hand. “I broke a knuckle!” he gasped. He put his face
close to the elevator boy's face and asked, “Son, did you hear this guy say anything?”
Frightened, the boy said, “No, sir! No, I — he's a little tight, huh?”
Monk nodded. So did Doc, who was supporting Worrik. Monk said, “That's right sonny.”
The elevator let them out in the lobby. They walked across the lobby to the street door, one on each side
of Worrik, supporting the man.
“That hotel's a dump,” Monk decided. “You could pack a body out of here, and nobody would care.”
Doc wasn't so sure. He looked over his shoulder. The elevator boy wasn't in sight, although his empty
cage was standing there. “I think the boy went to call the police, maybe,” Doc said.
“We better beat it,” Monk said.
Monk had parked his car in front of a delicatessen halfway in the block. They had almost reached the
machine when there was a strange sound. It was a violent kind of a sound, as though someone had
popped a small whip close to their . Doc stopped. Monk swung half around clumsily, because they were
both hauling the limp Mr. Worrik along.
Monk croaked, “Was that — what was that noise?”
Mr. Worrik was no heavier than he had been, and no more noisy. But presently they heard a pattering
sound, rather soft, and looking down, saw that the noise was made by a leakage of red fluid from the
center of Worrik's forehead.
摘要：

TerrorAndTheLonelyWidowADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIII?ChapterXIVAdditionalproofingbyMoetheCatChapter...

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