Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 143 - Violent Night

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VIOLENT NIGHT
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 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
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I
IT came as soon as he saw Lisbon. The feeling of being afraid. There had been fog, a slate-colored
depressing fog around the Clipper during the last five hundred miles of flying; and the plane popped out
of it suddenly into bright sunlight. And there directly below was their destination, Lisbon, the westernmost
of Europe's capitals. With its white houses and colored tile roofs and parks and gardens, fronting on the
Rada de Lisboa. With its eleven-by-seven mile lake made by the widening of the Tagus river.
He had expected to be afraid as soon as he saw Lisbon, and what he felt wasn't too bad, so he was
relieved. Not much relieved, though.
The plane began circling. He suspected something was wrong.
Looking down, he could see the Castello de San Jorge on its rocky hill in the Alfama district. And
suddenly he realized that he could recall with an unnatural clarity the exact appearance of the ancient
Castello de San Jorge. There was no reason for such an abrupt and striking memory, except nerves. He
frowned down at the old citadel, which dominated the Alfama section, containing one of the nastiest
slums in Europe. There was no use kidding himself. Nerves. He was having the jitters. As badly as he
had expected to have them.
The Clipper continued to circle. Then the control compartment door finally opened and the Captain—on
a land plane he would have been called the Pilot—came out with a worried expression.
“Mr. Savage,” the Captain said. “They won't let us land at the lower end.”
“What would happen if you went ahead and landed there anyway?”
“Their anti-aircraft batteries would fire on us.”
He held back his irritation with difficulty—he had a biting impulse to shout his anger. He had directed the
pilot to land on the remote end of the big, lake-like Rada de Lisboa, because he had hoped to get ashore
unobserved at that point. He was disappointed because the Portuguese officials wouldn't let the plane
land there. It was a small disruption of his plans, but it filled him with hot anger. Another sign of how
much he was on edge.
“Go ahead and make a normal landing,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the Captain said. “I'm sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. It's not your fault,” he said, and the words had a harshness he didn't intend
them to have. The Captain looked worried as he made his way back to the compartment. The
Portuguese officials were being cranky. They must have had enough tricks pulled on them in the course of
the war to make them impatient with everyone.
The Clipper shortly went into its procedure landing approach.
HIS ill luck continued when he stepped ashore. He turned up his coat collar and tried to hurry through
the bright modern new American trans-Atlantic terminal building. He was recognized, however.
He could hear the word going around while they examined his credentials: “Es la Señor Savage!” That
was in Spanish, but he heard it in Portuguese, also.
More attention, he thought sourly, than the leading bullfighter used to get before the war. But he was
flattered, and embarrassed, too.
He soon discovered that they were sending for a welcoming committee to be composed of persons of
local consequence. He hurried to put a stop to that.
He told them he was leaving immediately, that he couldn't linger in Lisbon to be entertained, that he was
most profoundly sorry, and knew they probably didn't believe him. But they were polite about it, and he
bowed out of their company, entering the airways terminal manager's office. He got from the office to the
street via a window.
He walked rapidly for two blocks, then hailed a taxicab, one of the type which manufactured its own
propelling gas in a furnace affair which rode on the rear bumper and which was as likely as not to cough
handfuls of sparks at the passengers.
“Drive to the Cidae Baixa,” he told the driver, then settled back to watch out for sparks, and to wonder
if there was a red-headed young man following him.
There was.
Not wishing to jump at conclusions—in his state of nerves, he could be imagining things—he had the
puffing, smelling, spark-belching cab take him around several streets in Cidae Baixa, the lower town. He
became certain the red-headed man was on his trail, and that the fellow was fairly adept at snooping.
He said, in Portuguese, “Driver, do you know the Hotel Giocare?”
The driver said he did.
He gave the driver an envelope and said, “I want you to take this to the Hotel Giocare. Drive with it to
the Hotel Giocare, and wait outside with it. Do not give it to the hotel clerk. Just wait outside. Across the
street from the Giocare is the Ciriegia Park, where you can wait. I will pay you.”
The driver turned the envelope in his hands and frowned at it. The envelope was sealed. As a matter of
fact, it contained Doc Savage's driving license, pilot certificate, a few courtesy cards, a commission in the
New York police department, and some other matter. He had emptied his billfold of the litter and put it in
the envelope for no other reason than that the billfold was getting stuffed. He had done this on the plane,
so the envelope still had been in his pocket.
“What will you pay me?” the driver asked.
Doc Savage named an amount equal to the fare. “No, it will cost you twice as much,” the driver insisted,
for evidently he had decided his passenger was one of the mysterious international gentlemen, secretive
about their business, who had been plentiful in neutral Lisbon for a couple of years.
“All right,” Doc said curtly. To punish the driver for being greedy, he carefully wrote down the man's
name and identification and description, letting the fellow see him do it.
They went on. The streets were narrow, the corners sharp. He picked a sharp corner, and after they
were around it, stepped hurriedly out of the car and ducked into the handiest doorway. His cab went on.
The other machine, the one occupied by the red-headed man, was out of sight when he quit his own cab,
but it popped into view a moment later, passing within hand-reach.
Doc got a thorough look at the red-headed man. The fellow was around forty, not large, but with an
intense animal expression. He was dapperly dressed, with tan gloves and a cane. He was leaning
forward, both gloved hands resting on the cane, staring at the cab he was following.
His hair was about the color of a freshly cut carrot. His lips had an expression that was not exactly a grin,
more of an I-like-this-sort-of-thing twist. He was a complete stranger.
Doc Savage began walking toward a hostelry called the Chiaro di Luna. He wondered about the
red-headed man as he walked, trying to figure out who the fellow might be, and frightening himself with
some of the possibilities.
The red-headed young man had seemed so vital and enthusiastic about doing his following job. He was
so damned hearty about it. Whoever and whatever he was, he liked his job, and a man with enthusiasm
for this kind of work was dangerous.
The Hotel Chiaro di Luna was a gaudy, noisy hostelry where you could go without attracting much
attention. The name meant, in Italian, moonlight, but something relative to a circus or carnival would have
been more appropriate.
“Mr. Carlos Napolena calling to see Mr. Scimmia,” Doc Savage told the clerk.
His name was not Carlos Napolena, and neither was Monk Mayfair named Mr. Scimmia. Monk Mayfair
was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, a chemist of great ability when he worked at it, which
wasn't very often because he liked excitement.
“By golly!” Monk said heartily. “By golly, I'm glad you showed up.”
Monk looked and acted as if he were mentally about ten years old, which was deceptive. It would also
have been entertaining, but he frequently overdid it. He was short, wide, homely, hairy; he had more than
a general resemblance to an amiable ape, and Doc Savage sometimes suspected he went out of his way
to cultivate the mannerisms of one.
Ham Brooks was with Monk. Ham was a lawyer. Calling Ham a lawyer was somewhat like calling
Buckingham Palace a house.
Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks were members of a group of five who had worked with Doc Savage for
a long time. They were his associates, his assistants.
He knew them quite well, and so he was immediately sure that something was bothering them. They were
hiding something from him, he decided.
HE was badly scared. Monk and Ham rarely deceived him, and never except for good and vital reason.
He tossed his hat on a table, trying to be casual, and wondered if there was someone hiding in the room
with trained and cocked pistols. A wild idea, of course. But he was sure something was amiss.
“You are doing all right by yourselves,” he said.
He meant the room. It was a rich place, although it ran a little more to red velvet than select taste
dictated.
Ham explained, “The snazzy jernt was Monk's idea. This suite until recently was occupied, we were told,
by the Sultan of something-or-other and ten of his favorite wives. The minute Monk heard that, nothing
would do but that we should put up here.”
Doc asked, “Who is paying for it?”
“Monk.”
Monk's financial condition was pretty continuously one of being strapped. At Lisbon prices, the suite was
rich for his purse.
“Paying with what?” Doc asked idly, still wondering what was wrong with Monk and Ham, puzzled
about their uneasiness.
Monk said quickly, “I'm two-bit rich for a change. I sold a chemical formula to a fellow.”
“A formula for making non-rubber baby pants,” Ham said.
Monk winced. “I don't think it's so funny. I got paid for it.”
Doc Savage took a deep breath and faced them.
“All right now,” he said. “What is worrying you two fellows?”
They looked at him too innocently.
Watching them, his own uneasiness crawled up like a nest of snakes and frightened him additionally. He
could not guess what might be wrong.
They had not, he was sure, been in Lisbon more than a day. When he had cabled them, they were in
London, and he was in New York. His cable had instructed them to go immediately to Lisbon, to the
Chiaro di Luna hotel, and wait for his appearance. That was all he had told them. He did not dare tell
them anything more, even in code. He couldn't take chances with this matter.
He began to get angry. It is always a short step from tight nerves to rage. He scowled at them.
“Stop it!” he said. “You're behaving like kids!”
Monk and Ham looked so uncomfortable that he was ashamed of his harshness. He watched them, and
he was sure that they were going to confess whatever was worrying them, but it would take a little time
for them to get around to it.
He waited, and he thought again of the red-headed stranger. The thought of the fellow made him jump
up, and on his feet he realized how jittery he was becoming. He went to the window and stared out,
seeing the people in the street, the hucksters, the country folk from Almada and Sixal, the fishermen from
Trafaria.
Monk finally spoke.
“Pat is here,” Monk said.
DOC SAVAGE wheeled. The news was so much different from anything he had expected. He almost
laughed, yet he wasn't pleased.
“Lord!” he said. “Oh, Lord!”
Explanations and alibis poured out of Monk and Ham. “She was in London,” Monk said. “She came
over on a war correspondent's clearance she had wangled out of some magazine. They wouldn't—the
military people wouldn't—let her go across and see action, so you can guess what Pat did. She told
everybody from Eisenhower on down what she thought of them. So they jerked her credentials, except
for a one-way pass back to New York. Pat refused to return to New York, so she was stranded in
London.”
Ham said, “We hid from her, Doc. Honest we did. But she vamped some somebody in the Intelligence
office into giving her our address. So she found us. She found us a few hours before we got your
message to come to Lisbon.”
Monk spread his hands. “You know what happened. She found out you had assigned us a job—and
came along.”
“Why did you tell her about the cablegram?” Doc demanded.
“We didn't. She found it out. She's a mind-reader.”
Ham said defensively, “She has never seen the cable. We destroyed it before she got her hands on it.”
Doc frowned at them. “How on earth did she get from England to Portugal in times like these when she
didn't have credentials.”
“I don't know, but I think she let them think she was returning to New York by plane, and got herself
routed through Lisbon.”
“Anyway, she's here?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I'll get her,” Monk said sheepishly. “She's got a room down the hall.”
“Wait a minute,” Doc said. He went into the bedroom of the suite, threw up a window he found there,
and examined a convenient fire escape. “Come on,” he said. “We're going to skip without seeing Pat.”
Monk grinned. “I wish I could be around to hear what she has to say about it.”
“Better get our clothes,” Ham said. “Or are we coming back here?”
“Grab what you'll need,” Doc said.
Ham and Monk did some hasty scooping of garments into a handbag, and Ham climbed out on the fire
escape. Monk followed him, then Doc.
They went down two floors and there was a clattering uproar and a crash as a champagne bottle fell off a
window sill, hit the areaway below and broke.
“Blazes!” Monk said. “Somebody had a thread stretched across—”
Pat Savage put her head out of a window above and said, “That's right, Monk. A thread. And guess who
put it there.”
Chapter II
MOST males would admit that looking at Patricia Savage was an experience. She was a cousin of Doc
Savage, a distant one, but she had some of the family characteristics which made Doc a striking figure.
She had his height, and his remarkable bronze hair, and she had—almost—the strange flake-gold eyes
which were Doc's outstanding peculiarity of appearance. She was something to be shown in
koda-chrome.
“I won't laugh at you,” she told them. “But it's an effort not to.”
Monk asked sourly, “How'd you know we would sneak out by the fire escape?”
“I figured that as soon as you told Doc I was here, he would get some such impulse,” she said. “What's
going on?”
“Going on?”
“Now, now, don't keep me in suspense,” Pat told him. “And don't beat around the bush. Why did you
rush to Lisbon? Why did Doc rush to Lisbon? What is it this time?”
“I don't know,” Monk said. “And that's the truth. Doc hasn't taken time to tell us anything.”
“But something is in the pot?”
“Of course.”
They had returned to the sinful-looking velvet interior of the suite which Monk and Ham occupied. Monk
and Ham skidded their handbags into the bedroom, and waited for Doc and Pat to have a row. Doc
would come out loser, they surmised, but it should be interesting to listen to.
Doc Savage lodged himself in a chair. He knew Monk and Ham expected to hear a row, and he knew
Pat expected him to start one, and he decided to fool them. He wouldn't have an argument with Pat.
He looked thoughtfully at the floor. And in a moment his fears and his nervousness wrapped around him
like a clammy blanket. His mood became like something from a grave.
Ten thousand curses, he thought gloomily, upon whatever it was that made Pat like dangerous
excitement. Pat was okay. She was lovely. She was so beautiful she made men foolish, and she had
brains. He wished to God she would marry some nice guy and mastermind him into becoming President,
or something.
If only she hadn't come to Lisbon. Her presence here horrified him, because he knew the extent of the
danger.
He was half tempted to tell her what she was getting into, just for the satisfaction of scaring the devil out
of her. He smothered the impulse, because it would do no good. It would scare Pat stiff, but she would
string along with the thing because of that crazy yen she had for dangerous excitement.
“I'm going to fool you,” he told her. “I'm going to let you in on our little party without an argument.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Don't you feel all right?” she asked. “I mean, this doesn't sound like
you.”
“Would you go back to New York if I asked you to?” he demanded.
“I would not!”
“All right, I won't argue,” he said. “I just give up. Stay if you want to.”
She stared at him intently, trying to read him. “You're scared,” she decided. “Doc, you're scared. This is,
I think, the first time I ever saw you plain out and out funked. You're just so plain darn terrified that you
don't feel like arguing with me.”
He nodded and said heavily, “That's right.”
He could tell that she was shocked, that she was beginning to get scared herself.
“Why are we in Lisbon?” she demanded. “What is this, anyhow?”
HE decided not to tell her now. There were several reasons for not doing so. There might be a
microphone in the room, for one thing. The main reason was that he had, actually, not the slightest
intention of letting Pat get involved in the affair. He couldn't think of a way now of bustling her off to New
York, but he hoped to. In the meantime, he would keep her from finding out anything.
He said, “The man is a little less than average size, ruddy complexion, a few freckles, a grin like a man
about to bite a baby. And red hair. The reddest hair you ever saw. Know him?”
“Not in my book,” Monk said.
“I don't recall such a person,” Ham said.
Pat looked interested. “Does he laugh a lot when he talks, and tell corny gags now and then? Seems to
have a fancy cane and gloves to match every suit he wears?”
“About his talk I couldn't say, but he had brown gloves and a cane,” Doc admitted. “He got on my trail
as soon as I stepped off the plane.”
Pat said, “He must be a fellow who has been popping his eyes at me. Didn't seem like a bad egg.”
“You met him?”
“He introduced himself.”
“What seemed to be his business?”
“Monkey business, the same as most guys who introduce themselves to me,” Pat said. “He didn't strike
me as a bad character, although he gets you down with his jokes, and you have the feeling that he has
more energy than he knows what to do with.”
“Know anything definite about him?”
“No, I don't.”
Doc frowned, and decided that they had better take a look at his red-headed man to make sure it was
the same one Pat knew. He told Monk, Ham and Pat how the carrot-top had followed him from the
Clipper base, and explained the trick he had used to mislead the fellow. “The theory of the trick was that
he will ask the cab driver where he left me, and the cab driver will sell him the information, then also sell
him the fact that he, the driver, has an envelope which he was to keep and deliver to me later. The
envelope isn't sealed, so they will immediately take a look at the contents, and find that the stuff seems
important. So the red-headed man, to get back on my trail, will be watching the waiting cab driver in
front of the Hotel Giocare.” He added dubiously, “If it all works out right.”
It did.
“THAT'S my red-headed man,” Pat said. “That's Full-of-jokes.”
The red-headed man was sprawled on the grass in Giriegia Park. He had spread newspapers out on the
grass and was lying on them, making a pretense of contemplating a statue of Pedro IV, emperor of
Portugal during the troublesome Miguelite war period.
The cab driver had parked at the curb about forty yards distant and was sitting on the runningboard of his
vehicle lunching on a bottle of wine and a long loaf of bread.
“I'm sure,” Pat said. “I'm positive that's the same red-headed fellow.”
“What would happen if you walked up to him?” Doc asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Are you on good terms? Have you slapped him, or anything, the way you've been known to do?”
“Not yet,” Pat said. “Although I've a hunch he's a fellow who could stand a little slapping. What have you
got on your mind?”
Doc explained, “We might as well rake that fellow in now and see what he can tell us.”
“Grab him, you mean?”
Doc nodded. “Walk up to him, Pat. Stroll him around the corner. We'll form a reception committee.”
She said, “I'll try it,” and went toward the red-headed man.
The red-headed man gave up contemplating the statue of Pedro IV and grinned at Pat. He sprang to his
feet and did a sweeping bow, talked for a while with Pat, then began shaking his head.
Pat turned and pointed at the waiting cab. The red-headed man looked at the cab, and while he was
doing that, Pat hit him over the head with an object which she took from her purse. The red-headed man
sprawled down in the grass.
Monk said, astonished, “She knocked him cold!”
“That's Pat,” Doc agreed. “As subtle as a ton of bricks.”
Monk and Ham hurried to join Pat. Doc detoured past the cab to get his envelope from the driver, and
to tell the driver, “You keep on doublecrossing people, and it will get you in trouble!” The driver looked
frightened, and lost no time getting into his machine and leaving.
Doc joined Pat. “Why did you hit him like that?”
“He wouldn't go for a walk,” Pat explained.
“Stretch him out and look concerned about him,” Doc said. “If he starts to wake up, belt him again. I'll
go find a cab.”
He had to walk three blocks before he found a cab. Returning with the machine, he discovered that a
small crowd of curious had gathered, including two policemen. “Our friend fainted,” Pat was telling the
cops blandly.
They carried the red-headed man to the cab, loaded him inside, and got in themselves. The onlookers
followed them, giving advice.
Doc was glad when the cab got moving. “What did you hit him with?” he asked Pat.
“My six-shooter,” she said.
“It's a wonder you didn't brain him. It was about as subtle as shooting a sparrow with a cannon.”
Pat wasn't impressed.
Monk jerked off the red-headed man's brown gloves. The fellow's hands were lean and strong, but there
was nothing unusual about them. Monk was disappointed. “Thought he might be wearing gloves to cover
up a scar or birthmark or something.”
Pat began going through the red-headed man's clothing. She found quite a lot of money—paper money
and metal, French, Swiss, Portuguese, Spanish and German—and that was all. There was nothing but
money in the man's pockets.
Pat looked for suit labels and found none. She pointed out that it was obviously a tailor-made suit, and
there should have been labels. She did not sound discouraged.
Monk fanned through the man's roll of money admiringly. “He sure goes well-heeled. Who do you
suppose he is?”
Pat looked at Doc Savage. “What I'm wondering is why we grabbed him. Doc, don't you think you'd
better tell us what this is all about?”
Doc told their driver in Portuguese, “Drive out through the Alcantara Valley.”
Pat continued to watch him. Finally she said, “Come on, Doc. Let's have some information.”
He said, “Now isn't the best time for that,” and glanced meaningly at the driver.
“Oh,” Pat said, and subsided.
Later he asked Pat, “Mind loaning me your gun?”
“What gun?”
He told her patiently, “That portable howitzer you carry in your handbag. I want to borrow it to influence
our friend here.”
Pat got the piece of artillery out of her handbag. “I can do without your wise sayings about this gun, this
once,” she said.
Doc said nothing, but Monk and Ham laughed. Pat's gun was an old-fashioned single-action six shooter
of Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickock vintage. It weighed more than four pounds, which was as much as
some hunting rifles. The blunderbuss was a family heirloom, and they had always wondered whether Pat
could hit anything with it.
Their driver got a glimpse of the gun. He became alarmed, judging from the way his color changed from
mahogany to slate.
Doc selected a side road at random, told the driver to take it, then in a stretch of woods which looked
lonesome, had the cab stop.
“Ham, you stay with the driver so he won't desert us,” Doc suggested.
He seized the red-headed man and carried him into the woods. The fellow was showing no signs of
consciousness.
“I didn't think I hit him that hard,” Pat said uneasily. “His skull isn't cracked, or anything, is it?”
“He will wake up eventually,” he told her.
This was not exactly true. The red-headed man was already awake. He had been conscious for about
fifteen minutes, but doing a good job of pretending he wasn't.
DOC lowered the red-headed man beside some bushes, indicated Monk and Pat should watch the
fellow, and said, “I'll look around to be sure we won't be bothered here.”
He walked a few yards into the brush, and unloaded Pat's overgrown gun, putting the shells in his pocket.
Then he went back.
摘要：

VIOLENTNIGHTADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIII?ChapterXIVScannedandProofedbyTomStephensChapterIITcameas...

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