Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 145 - The Ten Ton Snakes

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THE TEN TON SNAKES
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIV
Chapter I
YOU ought to know about ribbons. The yellow one with the two red stripes is for China Service. The
red ribbon with the pair of triple white stripe,—good conduct. Purple with white ends, Purple Heart.
Blue, red and white stripes, Distinguished Service Cross. Blue, yellow and red bands, the Yangtze
Medal.
The years and the terrors of a man's life worn over his heart.
This boy had all of these ribbons. Except the good-conduct one. He didn't have that one.
He was wearing them, too. They looked like a flag on his chest. Normally he didn't wear them; he carried
them in his pocket, in a little teakwood velvet-lined case wonderfully made for him by a Karen in Burma.
The boy felt very deeply about them, but he wouldn't have admitted it for anything. However, he wasn't
exactly a boy.
He was over twenty-eight. Not old enough for that gray to belong in his hair. He was leathery and rangy
and long-nosed and blue-eyed and he looked at you as if he owned you. That is a thing American
soldiers are beginning to do, look at you as if they own you. And they do, in a way.
He had a callous like a corn on a finger of his left hand, his 50-calibre trigger finger.
And now they were trying to kill him.
He was walking down Fifth Avenue. Looking. Looking at everything gladly and hungrily, as if he wanted
to eat it. Looking at the legs of the girls walking on Fifth Avenue. Ogling the plaster-of-paris legs of the
mannikins in the store windows. Going “woo-woo” at the girls walking by him on the street. He wanted
to jump over the buildings, you could tell. He would get up on his toes and dance a step or two, and
whirl completely around. Like a ballet dancer. As if God had given him wings.
MURDER.
It was a very carefully planned thing, this project of sudden death. It was getting the care that a murder
deserves. The boy with the ribbons, the boy who was so glad that he was almost sick at his stomach,
was going to be slain in cold blood. Cold blood—if anyone knows why they call it that.
It was hard to be sure how many men were going to help do it to him. Thousands of people were on
Fifth Avenue, probably no more nor less than are there any days. The murderers were of the crowd, and
like the crowd. Pointing them out would have been as difficult as picking four maggots who had had
catfish for dinner from a basketful of other maggots who had had sunfish for dinner. Very difficult. They
weren't doing anything to get fingers pointed at them.
Keeping track of the boy, was all. Waiting. But waiting has its end. Suspense can draw out just about so
far, and then something must happen.
So one of the men walked up behind the boy with a long knife and started to put the blade in between
the boy's third and fourth ribs where it would reach the boy's happy heart.
IT was a walk-up-and-stab murder, but the sun was shining gaily, making shadows. The sun made the
shadow of the man with the knife on the sidewalk, and it looked like exactly what it was, a man with a
knife. This the soldier saw.
The soldier did more than dodge. The army had spent a lot in time and patience teaching him what to do
when someone tried to shoot, club or stab him. He did it. He did it so fast you could hardly see it.
Slam, slam. Too fast to follow, but the knife was spinning in the air and he who'd held it was on his back
with teeth loose in his mouth and an awful feeling where he'd been kicked in the belly. It was an army
bellykick, Commando stuff, intended to gut a man if possible. It was no fooling.
The man fell on the sidewalk. He might as well have been dead. He was noisy and he was hurting, but
otherwise he might as well have been dead.
The boy looked at the man.
“You blank blank,” he said. “I think I know you.”
He circled, looking at the man on the sidewalk.
“Why God bless you, I do know you,” the soldier said. “What do you know about that. Doggone!”
And he began being un-nice to the man on the sidewalk. What the soldier proceeded to do was
sickening, but it didn't sicken. He had been dealing with Japs, and the only safe Jap was one who
couldn't be anything else.
He kicked in some of the man's ribs. The man was long and skinny, like a wolf with the sickness wolves
get from eating too much carrion, so his ribs were close to the hide and broke easily. The soldier jumped
on to the man's belly with both feet. This was guaranteed to rupture, to burst the bladder, etc.
The soldier got off the man's belly and leaned over the man's face and said, “Listen, bub, to what I'm
asking you. Is Tucker French, my brother, all right? Is he going to be all right? What do you
such-and-such plan to do to Tucker?”
The man on the sidewalk gargled his blood and teeth and pain.
“Come on, boy,” the soldier said. “Let's have an answer. Don't be bashful.”
No answer.
“Come, come, boy,” the soldier said. “What about Tucker? You're not going to hurt Tucker, are you?”
No answer.
“Oh yes, I nearly forgot,” the soldier said. “What about the heavy stuff? You boys fixing to do something
bad with the heavy stuff?”
The man on the sidewalk finally got his throat sufficiently clear of blood and teeth to form some
semi-coherent words. When he spoke, he was down to greatest fundamental of all, the thing than which
there is nothing much more important. He said, “Please don't kill me.”
He said not to kill him in Spanish, because Spanish and not English was his mother tongue.
As if answering his prayer, his friends came to his aid.
THE soldier was fooled this time. There were no shadows to warn him. There was only a mild looking
man in a blue serge suit who sidled up to the scene with one hand over his mouth as if he was showing
horror the way a woman shows it. When he was close enough to the soldier, he slugged the soldier on
the side of the face.
The soldier wasn't greatly damaged. He began to fight. He wanted to fight anyway.
Two other men drifted out of the crowd and took a hand, beginning beating the soldier.
“Hey, this guy tried to knife me,” the soldier cried. “Cut it out! Call a cop, if you want to help.”
This was what he said before he understood that they were part of an organized attempt on his life. When
he did realize what they were, he stopped talking. He did everything with his fists and feet that he could.
The men, finding the soldier was extremely tough, began producing knives. These knives did not
resemble the knife the first man had tried to use, except in one particular. They were individualized
knives. That is, each one was a knife which its owner liked. Which meant that they were men who
carried their knives as a habit.
Such men would know how to use knives, so the soldier got away from them as fast as he could.
He escaped by running. He didn't make the mistake of going in either direction along the sidewalk.
Instead, he popped into the nearest doorway.
They shot at him. The bullet went past his head and buried itself somewhere in the upper part of the
luggage shop in which he found himself.
The soldier was afraid the place wouldn't have a back door. He was right. But it had a basement and a
second floor. He took the stairs to the second floor.
There was a bank of elevators and he got in one of them and rode down to the basement, which was
also a part of the leathergoods store. He waited around there for a while, looking at suitcases. He had the
clerk show him a tan leather case, and faced the stairs and the elevators while he examined it. He saw
nor heard nothing alarming. He asked the clerk if there was a back door, and the clerk got such a funny
look that the soldier walked off and left him.
The soldier walked out of the front door.
The man who had tried to knife him was no longer on the sidewalk. The man was nowhere in sight. None
of the other knife-wielders were to be seen. Nobody recognized the soldier as a participant in the action
of a few minutes before. The soldier didn't stick around long enough to give them much chance.
He went to a bar. He had three snorts of rye. He burst out in a sweat and he became sick with the feeling
that nerves give to a man's stomach. He was plain scared.
After he felt that he was able to walk down the street without falling on his face (and it took him some
time to get back that much control) he got moving.
He went to a phone booth and looked in the phone book for a name: Renwick, John, civil engr.
JOHN Renwick, civil engineer, had an office in a ponderous building two blocks from Grand Central
station on Fortieth Street. The office was not quite seedy, but it had no floss. The furniture was old, of
walnut, and the middle-aged office girl also looked as if she were made of walnut. She listened to the
soldier state that he wanted to see Renwick if Renwick was in town.
“He's in town,” the office girl said. “Wait a minute.”
She went into the inner office, closed the door and put her back against the door.
“A soldier to see you,” she said. “Gives his name as Bob French. Says he met you at Yung-shun,
wherever that is.”
“Yung-shun,” Renny Renwick said, “is in China.”
You first noticed Renny Renwick's fists. They were too big. He was a big man, more than six feet, more
than two hundred pounds, but the fists were still too big.
The fists, as a matter of fact, were the index to the man. They were capable hands, almost ridiculously
strong, hands that were not made for soft work or for softness of any kind. Gentleness, yes. But not
softness. There were scars on the fists where they had hit things, and the hide was leathery where the sun
had beat them, and the palms calloused from handling heavy things.
“Hunan province in China,” he said. “That's where we built that intermediate field for the B-29's. Holy
cow, was that a place for you! Shoot this soldier in here.”
The middle-aged office girl opened the door and told the soldier, “Shoot you in, he says.”
The soldier came in holding out his hand and saying, “You remember me?”
Renwick jumped to his feet and roared.
“Hell, yes! Holy cow!” he roared. “What are you doing here? Did they run out of rice whiskey in China?
You're the last man I expected to see.”
“My time was up and they shipped me home,” the soldier said.
“When was that?”
“A week ago.”
“Only a week? What are you doing sober? Sit down. What became of Sleepy Wilson? And what about
what's-his-name, the flop-eared guy we stole the jeep from that night?”
The soldier didn't answer the questions. He started to, but his words stubbed their toes on his fears and
fell flat on their faces.
What he did say was, “Look, I'm in trouble.”
Renwick grinned and roared, “Borrowing money from me is getting blood from a turnip. But not for a
man from Yung-shun. How much do you need?”
“I don't need money.”
“No? You've come to the wrong man, then. I don't know anything about women.”
“This isn't a girl.”
Renwick examined the soldier intently.
“What's your name?” he asked. “I never did know it, I don't think.”
“Bob French.”
“All right, Bob French, sit down and see if you can't talk that scared look off your face.”
Bob French sat down. “It's a story that has its goofy aspects.”
“Shoot.”
Chapter II
RENNY Renwick's voice was a great tumbling thing developed by bawling at steeljacks on towering
skyscraper frameworks and bawling above the clatter of riveting guns. The voice had been rattling the
windows, almost. Now that he was silent, listening for the soldier's story, there seemed almost too much
stillness in the office.
“It's a shame to drag this in on you,” Bob French said. “But you're the only man I could think of that I
knew in New York. And I'm scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
“Here's the story. I got a brother, see. His name is Tucker. He is younger than me, and he's in South
America. Colombia, back in the jungles. He's in the mining business in a small way.”
“American citizen?”
Bob French took his eyes off Renwick and put them on the floor and didn't say anything for a moment.
“Yes. I don't know why the draft missed him.”
“Okay.”
Bob French shoved his jaw out and said, “Okay or not, I don't give a damn. I've done enough fighting for
all of our family, and I'm glad Tucker kept out of it and I hope to God he continues keeping out of it.”
He sounded violent, as if he were taking something out of his heart.
Renny laughed. “Was I picking a fight with you?”
The soldier licked his lips. He looked at the floor some more.
“I got a cable from my brother. That was two days ago. I had cabled Tucker I was back in the States
and had a twenty-one-day furlough that was just starting, so that's how he knew I was back and where
to find me.
“This cable was funny. It said for me to go see a man named Sir Roger Powell, who would be at the
Westland. It said for me to ask Powell about the heavy stuff. I was to ask Powell what the situation was
on the heavy stuff. It said,—the cable said—to try to form a judgment about Powell. Well, I did and—”
“What,” Renny interrupted, “did the cable mean by asking you to form a judgment?”
“Decide about Powell.”
“Decide what?”
“Whether he was a crook or not, I guess.”
“What is the heavy stuff?”
“That's all the cable said—heavy stuff.”
“You mean it just said to ask about the heavy stuff, and that was all the description it gave?”
“Yes.”
“And from that, what did you gather the heavy stuff was?”
“I couldn't figure it out.”
“What's your guess?”
“I haven't got any guess.”
“Then you have no idea what the heavy stuff could be?”
“None,” the soldier said. “I told you this thing had goofy aspects. That's one of them.”
“Mind letting me see this cablegram?”
“I'd be glad to show it to you, only I haven't got it.”
“What became of it?”
“I destroyed it.”
“Why?”
“Habit. I have the habit of destroying all the letters and telegrams I receive when they're not something I
have to keep. I've done that for years, I guess.”
“What did you do after you got the cablegram from your brother?” Renny asked, settling back to listen
again.
Bob French seemed to require a moment to get his mind back on the telling of his story. Then he said, “I
went to see Sir Roger Powell. I found him at the hotel, as Tucker's cablegram had said I would. I sent
my name up to his room, and he returned word for me to come right up.
“Well, that name of Sir Roger Powell had sure fooled me,” the soldier continued. “I expected an old
geezer with a monocle and a white goatee. Sir Roger Powell wasn't anything like that. He could have
been an insurance agent in Kansas City, for all you could tell.”
“Is he a genuine title?” Renny asked.
“Search me. If you're a genuine Sir, don't you have to sit in the House of Lords or in Parliament or
something?”
“Search me,” Renny said. “I wouldn't know.”
“Anyway, Powell didn't admit knowing anything about any heavy stuff. He knew my brother. That was all
he would admit.”
“You think, then, that he lied to you?” Renny asked.
“Everything he said might not be lies. But he sure lied about the heavy stuff, whatever it is.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell when a man lies to me.”
“Always?”
“I could tell this time,” Bob French said. “He was lying, all right. There was another guy in the room with
him. I didn't like the fellow's looks either. Well, I talked to this Powell fellow, asking him about the heavy
stuff, and I didn't get a thing out of him. He just said he knew nothing about any such thing, and that he
was very sorry. But I got the feeling he wasn't sorry, and that he knew plenty about the heavy stuff,
whatever it is, and that the only thing he was sorry about was seeing me. My showing up that way
worried him, all right. Well, I left.”
The soldier scowled at the floor for a moment.
“I cabled my brother the results of the interview,” he said. “I asked him what he wanted me to do.”
“Have you had an answer?”
“Not yet.”
Renny said, “You said you were scared. I don't see any reason for your being scared.”
“Wait a minute, I haven't told you what happened just before I came up here.”
Renny waited patiently. He was interested in the story. He was excited about it, too, and his eyes were
bright and intent.
“They tried to kill me on the street,” the soldier said. “First, a man tried to knife me. I knocked him
down. I was pretty rough. Some other men piled in to help. Too many for me, I figured. So I cut and ran,
and here I am.”
“How,” Renny asked, “did you connect this attack with Sir Roger Powell, the man your brother cabled
you to interview about the heavy stuff?”
“This guy with the knife was with Powell when we had our talk.”
Renny raised his eyebrows over this piece of information. “That would be a connection, all right. But I
don't exactly see what you want me to do.”
“Look, you're the only man in New York I know,” Bob French said. “I've got some funny trouble on my
hands, as you can see. I'm scared. I've had practice in being scared, because I've killed Japs and had
Japs trying to kill me, and I've been scared for a week at a time. And I can still get scared, like when
those guys tried to kill me. Right on the street like that, they tried to kill me. I tell you, I never heard of
such a damned thing.”
“So that's why you came to me?” Renny said.
“That's right,” the soldier said. “I got to know you in China, and I figured you would be the man to help
me or advise me.” The soldier hesitated, then added sheepishly, “Don't get me wrong. I don't expect you
to drop your business and grab a gun and rush out to fight my battles for me. Just kick in with some
advice, that's what I want. When a man is scared, it helps to have someone around who understands.”
“You didn't,” Renny said, “come to me because you knew I was associated with Doc Savage?”
“Eh? You're what with who?”
“Associated with Doc Savage.”
“Who's he?” Bob French asked.
Renny thought over the answer for a moment, then he laughed. “That's fresh,” he said. “That's
wonderful.”
“WHAT are you laughing at?” Bob French demanded.
Renny chuckled over it for a while. “The idea of you not having heard of Doc Savage, coupled with the
coincidence of your popping up with a piece of mysterious trouble like this, strikes me as funny,” he
explained.
“Who's this Savage?”
“A friend with whom I frequently work,” Renny said. Then he frowned, and shook his head quickly.
“No, that isn't the way to put it. Let's change that, and say that several years ago I met the most
remarkable man I have ever seen. A man with so much ability that it sounds silly when you start telling the
truth about him. I'll explain what I mean by silly by saying that his profession is other people's troubles,
righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of the earth. See how wild that sounds? Like
something out of a book about knighthood. It gives you an idea.”
“You work for this fellow, that it?” Bob French demanded.
“I work with him, not for him,” Renny corrected. “There are five of us who do that. I'm an engineer. I'm
the engineering specialist. The others are also specialists. One is an electrician, one a chemist, one a
geologist and archaeologist, and the other a lawyer.” Renny was silent a moment, grinning. “Here's
something else unusual about it. None of us get paid for it.”
Bob French stared fixedly at Renny. “When I knew you in China, I figured you were a pretty levelheaded
guy.”
“And now you don't think so?”
“I don't know what to think. This sure sounds pixyish.”
Renny chuckled. “You'll understand it when you meet Doc Savage, the 'man of bronze,' as they call him
sometimes.”
Bob French gave a visible jump, and said, “The 'man of—'“ and didn't finish.
“The newspapers call Doc the 'man of bronze' now and then,” Renny said. “Have you heard of him under
that description?”
“I guess I have,” the soldier said.
Renny watched the soldier curiously. Bob French wasn't a fellow who hid his feelings very well. Renny
could tell what was going through French's mind. First, French mentally reviewed what he had heard
about Doc Savage. This review, for some reason or other, made French apprehensive. French suddenly
decided that he didn't want Doc Savage involved in the affair.
“If you don't mind,” French said, “let's you and I work out this thing ourselves.”
“You mean you don't want Doc to know about this?”
“I'd rather not.”
“Why?”
Bob French didn't reply immediately. He was becoming cautious, stopping to plan his words. “This isn't a
very important affair, and Savage is a man who is accustomed to large matters, if what I recall about him
is right. I don't think we should bother him with this.”
“Didn't someone try to murder you?” Renny demanded.
“Yes, but—”
“Isn't that important?”
“Well—”
“A murder is always important,” Renny said. “We'll go to Doc with this thing. Wait'll I get my hat and
coat.”
RENNY went into an adjoining room which, Bob French decided, must serve the big-fisted engineer as
living quarters. At least French got a glimpse of a cot and a dresser through the open door.
Now that Renny was out of sight, some of the emotion inside French suddenly appeared on his face. The
emotion, a sick apprehension, got the best of him for a moment.
He went to the door leading into the reception room and opened it, not as a man who was in flight, but as
a man who was so worried that he felt the need of moving about.
It was when he made the unexpected discovery that the middle-aged office girl was not in the outer office
that French's frightened brain hatched a quick plan.
The key in the partition door was on the inside. He had already noticed that. He seized the key and
changed it to the other side of the door, stepped through, closed the door quietly, and locked it.
He lifted his voice, yelled, “Renny! Watch out! For God's sake!” He screamed the last part.
He snatched up the office girl's chair and broke it over her desk. He hurled the fragments against the
connecting door. He emitted a series of loud grunts and gasps, and shoved the office girl's desk around.
Renny hit the other side of the partition door, rattling the locked doorknob.
“French, what's happening?” Renny yelled.
“They've jumped me!” the soldier howled.
He stamped and slapped the desk. He seized his blouse, deliberately tore it half in two up the back,
wrenched off the blouse-half including the sleeve, and threw it on the floor.
Then he ran out into the corridor. He had been afraid someone would have heard the uproar and come
into the corridor to investigate. But no one had.
Bob French ran to the door at the end of the corridor which was marked EXIT. This led to the stairs. He
went down the stairs in clattering haste.
Chapter III
HALF an hour later, Renny Renwick was saying to Doc Savage, “He got a cable from his brother to ask
a man named Powell about something called the heavy stuff.”
Renny went on with the story, and Doc listened.
Doc Savage was a taller man than Renny Renwick, and probably as heavy, but it was only when he was
near Renwick that this was apparent. Standing apart, Doc seemed of slighter stature. Most muscular men
and most big men look muscular or big. Doc didn't.
There were two or three startling things about his appearance. His hair was bronze-colored, and only
slightly darker than the sun had made his skin. He had golden eyes that were unusual, almost weird.
Otherwise he was not particularly handsome. He dressed with an obvious effort to make himself
inconspicuous, but with little success. He was a man who would be conspicuous anywhere.
He had received an excited telephone call from Renny. He had hurried to Renwick's office, and now he
listened to the story of Bob French's visit.
“They grabbed him,” Renny concluded, “when I was in the other room getting my hat and coat. They
must have jerked him into the reception room and locked the door between the two offices before he
began to fight. The fight must have been a beaut. It only lasted a couple of seconds, because it was over,
and everybody was gone, by the time I could find something heavy enough to break down the door.”
摘要：

THETENTONSNAKESADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIVChapterIYOUoughttoknowaboutribbons.TheyellowonewiththetworedstripesisforChi...

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