Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 154 - The Screaming Man

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THE SCREAMING MAN
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 December1945
Chapter I
IT was, unfortunately, not humility, nor anything remotely related to modesty, which caused Annie
Flinders to call herself Annie Flinders. Her true and full name was Miss Angelica Carstair-Flinders,
Rhinemoor Manor, Rhinecliff-on-the-Hudson, Duchess County, N.Y., and modesty had little to do with
the change. There were not two spoonfuls of modesty in Annie Flinders, even measuring her on one of
her sweet days.
Annie's sweet days, always few, had lately become as scarce as diamonds for sale at ten cents in
ten-cent stores. Unhappy, if we put it conservatively, was Annie Flinders. She had brought this sadness
on herself—by wangling the credentials and transportation necessary to become a lady Economic
Planning Representative in the Pacific Area.
Now the truth was that Annie was no more fitted to be an Economic Planning Representative in the
Pacific Area than she was to be a ditch-digger. She was rigged for it about the way a butterfly is
equipped to shovel coal. Annie was artistic. Annie was, exactly speaking, an artiste. An artiste, says
Webster, is a performer whose work shows unusual aesthetic qualities. That was Annie, and certainly she
could never really have, in her heart, given a damn whether the United Household Appliance Company
could sell more of its super-duper refrigerators in the Philippines, or whether it should stick to pots and
pans and whisk-brooms—which was partially what an Economic Planning Representative in the Pacific
Area was supposed to find out.
Actually, Annie's Uncle Jessup, her money-making uncle, was president of United Household Appliance,
and Annie had hit him up for a job that would take her somewhere where there was, or lately had been, a
war. She didn't at the moment have the Pacific in mind, although she had been agreeable when it was
mentioned, overlooking the proportions of the Pacific Ocean, and the fact that the war had not exactly
stood still. The Pacific? Oh, goody! Marines, sailors, soldiers, excitement!
In due course of time, Annie found that the Philippines, as a war theater, had become well-fizzled. This
would have delighted a true Economic Planning Representative, but for Annie, it was hell.
Annie had even shortened her name from Miss Angelica Carstair-Flinders to plain Annie Flinders to
make people think she was vigorous and two-fisted and entitled to get around and see a war. She could
have saved this psychological touch. The war, the Philippine part of it, was a strangled duck.
This was very discouraging, because Annie had been trying since Pearl Harbor to see a war. On
December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor, she joined the Red Cross. She was assigned to Iceland. She
got out of Iceland finally, joined the WACS, and was assigned a desk job in St. Joseph, Missouri. It had
taken her the intervening two years to persuade them the war was near enough over that they could
afford to discharge her from the WAC.
All of this is by way of explaining that Annie Flinders was in the Philippines, was an artiste, was a
thwarted excitement-lover, and hence the sort of a person who would become quite excited when she
saw Clark Savage, Jr., who was also known as Doc Savage.
Also Annie was a delicious-looking package herself. Marines whistled loudly when she passed.
Sometimes they stood on their hands.
WHEN Annie Flinders first saw Doc Savage—technically, it was the second time she'd seen him—she
grabbed the arm of the Lieutenant, j.g., who was escorting her, and spoke with unsubdued excitement:
“Am I,” said Annie, “dreaming? Or is that Clark Savage? I'm dreaming, aren't I? Luck can't have caught
up with me this late in life.”
The Lieutenant, j.g., looked at the hand she had clamped on his arm, and considered grabbing the hand's
owner right then and there. The j.g. had been under the impression he was in love with a carrot-haired
girl in Gillette, Wyoming, until that afternoon, when he'd met Annie.
“Forget Clark Gable,” he said, sounding a little as if he were panting.
“Not Gable. Savage. Clark Savage.” Annie sounded a bit short of normal breath herself.
“Good,” said the j.g.
“Surely,” said Annie, “I'm not mistaken.”
“Hey.”
“It is Doc Savage,” said Annie.
“Hey!” said the j.g.
Annie went into a conference with herself, saying, “I am sure it must be. I saw him once before, in New
York, when a friend of mine who was a surgeon took me to hear him lecture. Mr. Savage gave a
wonderful lecture. I didn't understand practically one single word of what he was talking about. But it
must have been super, because all the famous surgeons sat there with their mouths open.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” said the j.g. urgently.
“I wonder,” pondered Annie, “what Doc Savage is doing in the Philippine Islands?”
“Remember me, lady?” the j.g. asked. “I'm the guy you picked up at the canteen two hours ago.”
“What? Oh, of course, Bill.”
The Lieutenant became somewhat bitter. “My name's Arthur.”
“Oh, of course. So nice to have met you, Arthur.” Annie extended a hand, adding vaguely, “By all means
do that, Arthur.”
“Do what?” growled Arthur.
“Whatever we were talking about,” said Annie, still more vaguely. “By all means. Goodbye, Bill.”
This completed the acquaintanceship of Annie and the Lieutenant, junior grade, who at once entered a
convenient bar to obtain, as he expressed it, several hookers of bourbon for a fellow who had just come
unhooked.
Annie had already taken up the business of observing Doc Savage. In a serious way, and carefully.
FOR twenty-four hours thereafter, Annie Flinders kept close tab on Doc Savage. She followed Doc
Savage to Alamosa, where he visited a war-prisoner camp containing Japs. She shadowed him to Los
Antiniso, where Doc Savage visited a war-prisoner camp containing Nazis. And to Calmeda, where he
visited one containing both Japs and Nazis.
It was not very satisfactory because Annie was unable to find out what Doc Savage was talking to the
war prisoners about.
She tried. She tried to vamp a Staff Sergeant named Coons into telling her what Doc Savage wanted
with the prisoners.
The Staff Sergeant had her thrown in jail.
It was not a comfortable jail, and Annie was made to realize that her first weeks at the WAC training
center in Des Moines hadn't been nearly as tough as she had thought.
She occupied the calaboose forty-eight hours, long enough for a Colonel somebody to cable the F.B.I.,
the police chief of Rhinecliff-on-the-Hudson, Uncle Jessup, and somebody in Washington, and even then
the Colonel was not entirely reassured.
“Young lady, I am going to turn you loose,” said the Colonel finally. “Providing you will make me a
promise.”
“Why,” demanded Annie, “was I tossed in your bastille?”
“That,” replied the Colonel, “brings us to the promise. To wit, you are to say nothing to anyone, and are
to put nothing in writing in any form, hinting or indicating in any way that you have seen Doc Savage or
have any idea what he is doing.”
“But I don't know what he is doing. That's what I want to know.”
“How did you like our jail?”
“Ugh!”
“Then say nothing and write nothing.”
“I promise to say nothing and write nothing,” Annie promised, showing the Colonel she didn't have her
fingers crossed.
“Good day,” said the Colonel.
“Goodbye, I hope,” said Annie.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” called the Colonel. “I have here a cablegram which came for you an hour or so
ago.”
The cable message was from Annie's employer, her Uncle Jessup, and it contained four words: You're
fired. Come home.
FREED of the tentacles of military law, Annie Flinders sped at once to the Hotel Northern, which had
been destroyed by the Japs and already rebuilt by the industrious Filipinos, and where, in the course of
her shadowing, she had learned Doc Savage was staying.
She was delighted to discover Doc Savage in the dining room, having fried chicken Mindoro style.
“This,” said Annie to herself, “is proving to be even better than I expected.”
Conceivably this remark, with the pleased enthusiasm the young lady put into it, would have interested a
psychiatrist. Because Annie was not the victim of any sort of bobby-sox feeling toward Doc Savage,
who was manly enough to have inspired it. Passion was consuming Annie, but passion of a different sort.
The psychiatrist, if there had been one, and if he had diagnosed correctly, would have said that Annie
Flinders was the victim of a frustration which gradually became deeply seated in the bones of a lot of
American citizens who didn't get to take a shot at a Nazi or a Jap. This yen to take a whack at the rats,
meeting the obstacle of not being able to, did some unpleasant complexing to lots of people. It made
perfect strangers take pokes at each other in bars, made teen-agers run wild, and did lots of other things
which were blamed on bad tempers, carelessness and moral decline. Annie's complex was very strongly
developed. She'd spent the war trying to get into the war, the frustration was all corked up inside her,
and the cork just had to blow. Excitement would pull the cork. Ergo, she had to have some excitement.
She got it when she went to her room. She had, during her trailing activity, transferred her residence to
the hotel for convenience.
There was a young man waiting in the hall outside her door. He was leaning against the wall. He had
small eyes, a scar on his chin, and a strangely large knot which his hand and something else made in his
coat pocket.
“Hello, Annie,” he said.
ANNIE examined him. “I don't believe I know you.”
“Good,” said the young man, unveiling the mystery of what made his hand in his pocket so large. It was a
gun. “Let us step inside, baby, and converse,” he added.
Annie thought of several things, all of them different ways of yelling for help. She was scared.
“Open up,” ordered the young man.
“I—I haven't got a key!”
“Then I'll use mine, tutz.” He employed a key with which he was provided, flung open the door, assured
Annie she wouldn't make a lovely corpse, and followed her inside, closing the door.
“W-what—”
“I'll make all the words necessary,” said the unpleasant young man. “Listen carefully, baby. Because if
you don't hear me the first time, and abide thereby, you'll be nice and dead damned quick. There is a
steamship named the Empress Margaret which is sailing for San Francisco tomorrow morning, which is
about eighteen hours from now, giving you plenty of time to be aboard. You will find the Empress
Margaret quite comfortable, since it is a former luxury trans-Pacific liner converted to war use, but not
converted as much as you'd think. I think you will find it suitable. Much preferable, I will add, to a cold,
cold grave here in the Philippines.”
“You're ordering me to leave on a boat!” Annie gasped.
“I told you to listen,” said the young man. “I will now give you rough ideas of what will transpire if you
don't.”
With horrifying suddenness, he cocked his gun and jammed it against Annie's temple. While she waited,
eyes closed in terror, for her brains to be blown out, he hit her on the jaw. The blow wasn't light. Things
were black as road tar for a moment. When Annie's head cleared, she was on the floor, a hard braided
noose of some sort was around her neck, and she was unable to obtain air. She was being strangled. The
strangling continued until more blackness, shot with red flashes, came.
The thug permitted her to resume breathing.
“Just samples, tutz,” he explained. “Too bad I cannot demonstrate what would then happen to your
body, but I do not have with me any deep, slimy pools of swamp mud, nor any sharks hungry for pretty
human flesh, nor even any dark alleys all ready and waiting for a female corpse. However, I trust that
your imagination can supply these missing ingredients.”
“It can,” Annie admitted tremulously.
“We have then,” said the young man, “only one more thing to discuss.”
Annie didn't feel like asking questions. She waited.
“You keep your trap shut about this!” said the young man ominously. “Get me?”
“I—I—y-yes.” Annie had great difficulty with words.
“Goodbye, I hope,” said the young man.
He made his departure.
Chapter II
DOC SAVAGE was lingering with pleasure over the empty dish which had contained his chicken
Mindoro when he observed a feminine vision enter the dining room. He was not, however, possessed of
any yen to meet her. Quite the contrary. He wished nothing whatever of the sort, because he was already
equipped with troubles.
None of this showed in his manner or on his person. Doc Savage was a very large young man who was,
fortunately, developed in a symmetrical fashion which made him seem not so startlingly like a giant. He
had deeply bronzed skin, hair a little darker shade of bronze, and flake gold eyes which were so unusual
that people were always staring at them, and getting funny hypnotized feelings. Although he made genuine
efforts to seem a commonplace individual, strangers always ogled him, and sensed that Savage was a
physical marvel, a mental wizard, and very important. Which he frequently doubted he was.
The lovely young woman came directly to his table, seated herself, and informed him that he was an
unsanitary rodent.
“You're a dirty rat,” she said.
Doc Savage said nothing, in quite a startled way.
Annie Flinders added, “Having your Sergeant throw me in jail and your Colonel bulldoze me was bad
enough.”
This statement led Doc Savage to reflect that he might know who she was.
“But you needn't,” Annie continued angrily, “have sent a thug to scare the skirts off me!”
“I beg pardon,” Doc remarked politely.
“I should think you would!”
“I mean—I don't believe I know your name,” Doc explained carefully.
“Annie Flinders.”
“I see,” Doc said, and he did. For he had recalled that Colonel Madden of Army Intelligence had
advised him that a mysterious young woman had been caught asking suspicious questions, and had been
instantly incarcerated pending investigation. Annie Flinders was the name this female had given.
Annie was surveying him with the expression she probably reserved for snakes.
“I should think you'd be ashamed,” she said.
“I? Of what?”
“A man with your gallant, romantic reputation, behaving the way you have!” explained Annie bitterly.
“You're a fraud, that's what. You're a rat.”
“Thank you,” Doc Savage said pleasantly.
“I'm not complimenting you, so why thank me?” demanded Annie.
“The speaking of truth should always be complimented,” said Doc.
Annie frowned. “Who's complimenting who, anyway?”
“I don't know. Do you?”
Annie examined him wrathfully.
“Listen, wise-guy, you're trying to dance out of this with dizzy words,” she said. “Well, you won't get
away with it. You're going to listen to what I think of you. I think what you did to me was dirty. You
didn't need to”—she indicated her temple where the young thug had jammed his gun muzzle—“have a
loaded gun presented to my head! Nor have me hit on the jaw.” She exhibited the bruise on her chin.
“Nor have me choked half to death with a garrote cord.” She displayed the grim mark on her neck.
Doc Savage, examining the charms of the chin and neck she had indicated, was momentarily stricken into
forgetfulness. Then he jumped violently.
“I didn't have any of those things done to you!” he exploded.
DISBELIEVING, Annie eyed him for a moment, then stated, “Besides a rat, now you're a liar.”
By lifting a finger at a hovering waiter, and asking for the check, Doc Savage obtained some time in
which he assembled his thoughts, not too successfully. The young lady had been gun-scared, choked,
then biffed, and this was not in the program.
“You,” Doc said when the waiter went away with his ten-dollar bill, “were found on investigation to be a
foolish but presumably harmless young woman with a wealthy Uncle Jessup. It was then decided to
release you upon your promise to forgive and forget, and your Uncle Jessup was further persuaded to
fire you and order you home in the hope that you would have gumption enough to obey.”
“I wondered who got Uncle Jessup to fire me!” Annie said ominously. “That's another black mark after
your name.”
“There,” Doc said, “is where I stopped.”
“Oh, no you didn't!”
“But I did!”
“What,” asked Annie grimly, “about the hard-as-nails young pug-ugly with the gun, fist and
throat-string?”
Doc Savage plunged into serious thought, endeavoring however to keep the full scope of his seriousness
from showing in his expression.
“I wonder if that could have been something Colonel Madden could have tossed in on his own hook,” he
remarked presently.
“You're not kidding me for a minute,” Annie said.
“I think I'd better make a telephone call.”
Colonel Madden, when his ear was eventually obtained over the repaired telephone system of the city of
Manila, spoke with positive certainty. The pug-ugly was not his.
Annie wasn't quite convinced.
“You probably had it fixed with the Colonel to whitewash you with innocence,” she said.
Doc said thoughtfully, “The Colonel wants to arrest you again and throw you in jail where you will be
safe and out of our way.”
“You can't scare me, you rat!” Annie eyed him with alarm. “You mean I've really been threatened? Oh,
great grief!”
“Where,” Doc asked, “did this thug do his impressing of you?”
“Here at the hotel. My room.”
Doc seized her arm and started for the elevator, then thought of another thing, and stopped to ask,
“When did it happen?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” Annie explained.
“First, we'll look around and see if you notice the fellow,” Doc said. “He may have lingered in the
neighborhood, but it's doubtful.”
WHILE they were visiting the public rooms of the hotel, Doc Savage decided that he liked the way
Annie walked, but didn't care for her calmness. She wasn't entirely calm by a long shot, but neither was
she as terrified as he knew she was justified in being. He was, as a matter of fact, surprised that she was
still breathing. He told her so. “I'm surprised that you're still alive,” he said.
Annie sniffed. “I half-way think you're still trying to scare me,” she said.
“Do you see any sign of the pug?”
“No. You must have told him not to hang around.”
“He knew that without being told,” Doc said grimly. “Let's have a look at the exact spot where he
accosted you.”
They went upstairs, and Annie experienced a shiver when she looked at the places where the hard young
man had stood. She pointed out the different places, and said, “Here is where he choked me on the
floor.” The spot where she had been throttled was significant to Annie, but Doc Savage didn't seem
interested.
“You say he had a key?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Doc examined the door lock, and remarked, “Probably nothing in that. The lock has numbers on it, and a
good locksmith can make a key to fit it from the numbers if he has them. It's a system the hotels
sometimes use so they won't have too much trouble when guests carry off keys.”
“There isn't a clue, really,” Annie said.
Doc was contemplating marks on the rug, noticing that there was one fairly clear masculine footprint. It
might belong to a bellhop, however.
“I'm surprised,” added Annie, “that you believe there really was a pug.”
“Oh, our reports on you indicated that veracity was one of your rather scattered good qualities,” Doc
told her. “So I believe you, temporarily.”
“They're not as scattered as you think.” Annie was a trifle injured. “Why do you think it happened?”
Doc noted that the baggage in the room, while expensive, was in good taste and not too bountiful. It had
been his experience that personable young women usually traveled with five times as much baggage as
they needed.
“It happened because you stuck your nose in where it didn't belong,” he explained.
“I mean,” Annie explained, “why did the pug toss in his two bits worth? I had already been jailed and
bamboozled.”
“Evidently he, or his boss, had a low opinion of our bamboozling ability.”
A MAID appeared in the hall with a broom. Doc went out and spoke with her a while, learning that she
had observed a young man in the hall about fifteen minutes ago. The fellow answered the description of
Annie's pug. The maid thought she would know him if she saw him again, but she hadn't seen him before.
“Annie,” Doc said, “I think you'd better take their advice.”
“You mean leave?”
“Yes. Sail on that ship. What was its name?”
“The Empress Margaret.”
“That is a nice ship, a liner. You will be comfortable aboard.”
Annie examined him with marked suspicion. “You are giving me the same advice that Jack the Ripper
gave me. That's funny.”
“Not funny. Sensible.” Doc moved to the door. “You had better think it over.”
“I'll think it over,” Annie promised. “Say, where are you going?”
“I'm leaving you,” Doc explained. “Things to do.”
Annie got in his way. “Hold on here, bub. I want to know what is happening.” She put a hand on his arm
and urged, “Come on, tell me. After all, I've been the whipping post for enough projects around here that
I think I've earned some information.”
Doc shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“Sorry, nothing doing.”
Annie did some things with her fingers on his arm and turned loose her special man-cracking smile. “Oh,
come on, please,” she urged.
Doc straightened out his toes with some difficulty, counted his pulse by fives for a moment, and shook his
head firmly.
“Too secret. Too hush-hush,” he said. “Well, goodbye now.”
“You're still a rat,” Annie said.
DOWNSTAIRS in the lobby, Doc Savage approached a young man in a sailor suit. The young man was
long and amiable looking and gave the appearance of being about ten years younger than he was and a
great deal more innocent.
“Seen anything, Carter?” Doc asked.
Carter rolled a roguish eye. “I saw you pass through here with the gorgeous sunset, the flowers that
bloom in the spring, on your arm.”
“That was Miss Annie Flinders.”
“She should change that name,” Carter said emphatically. “It doesn't rhyme.”
“I want you to keep an eye on Miss Flinders,” Doc said.
“That will not be too hard to do.”
“And protect her.”
“Excellent!” said Carter enthusiastically.
“From a distance,” Doc added.
Carter winced.
“Oh, hell now, does there have to be a catch in it?” he asked. “I do my best protecting at short range. In
fact, I'm known as Short-range Carter, the nonpareil, the fellow who—”
“Keep an open eye and mind,” Doc advised. “Or you may be Carter, the fellow they ordered a
tombstone for.”
Carter sobered. Doc Savage described the young man to whom Annie had referred as the thug, and
摘要：

THESCREAMINGMANADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIIIOriginallypublishedinDocSavageMagazineDecember1945     ...

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