Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 142 - The Lost Giant

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THE LOST GIANT
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 VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I
HE had gone to much trouble to get where he was going. He had used great care, and some of the things
he had done were peculiar.
The theater ticket, for instance. It was a single ticket to the play Oklahoma, the hit play; and times were
so screwball that it was known to be a major venture into diplomacy to try for a ticket to Oklahoma.
But he had gotten one, and then he hadn't used it. That is, he hadn't used it to see the show. He had used
it for the purposes for which he had bought it: to create a commotion buying the ticket, making it appear
certain that he was going to attend the show. Too, to make anyone who might be following him think that
he was in the show from curtain rise, eight-forty, until after eleven.
There was no certainty in his mind that anyone was following him, but he was not taking chances. It was
important not to be followed. So vital, in fact, that merely thinking about it during the afternoon had made
him physically ill. He had not even dared make the usual moves to find out whether he was being
watched.
He entered the theater. He was recognized, although he would rather not have been. Being recognized
was something that could not be helped, because of his conspicuous size and his reputation; and he sat
there patiently in the seat he had made such a point of getting, knowing he was being stared at and
whispered about. He kept a sour expression on his face—that was easy since he was so worried—and
this probably discouraged anyone from trying to talk to him. At least no one did.
Fortunately a war hero came in, almost stoop-shouldered under the weight of his medals and looking self
conscious about it, and distracted some of the attention. The war hero was a nice-looking young guy.
The Army was using him in bond drives, but apparently he would have been happier flying the P38 with
which he'd downed so many Fritzes.
The lights went down before the curtain rise. Instantly, he was out of his seat. It was a side seat, close to
the side hallway, and he was in the hallway in two steps.
“All right, take my seat,” he told the man waiting there.
“I don't look too much like you,” the man said.
He didn't, either. He was as wide, but not as tall. And he was homely. But he was wearing the same kind
of a suit, had deeply tanned makeup on his face, and had worked a bronze hue into his hair with dye. But
he was shorter, very much shorter. The first man was a lithe giant, naturally proportioned so that he
seemed only about five feet ten and of normal build until one got close to him and realized his bigness.
“You bring a cushion to sit on, Monk?” the big man asked.
“Sure,” said the one who had waited in the side hall. “It'll raise me up. But what about intermissions?”
“Get your face in a program, and keep it there. You can handle it all right.”
“Okay,” Monk said. “Seen any sign of anybody trailing you?”
“No.”
“Good luck.”
“The same to you, Monk.”
Monk said, “I'm not the one who needs it,” and meant it.
HE got out of the theater by way of a rear door, not the stage entrance but a door that was less likely to
be watched, as unobtrusively as possible. He took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and got a very
light-colored felt hat out of his pocket and straightened it out and yanked its shapeless brim over his eyes.
Going down the side street, he looked very different.
He rode a cab uptown. He changed and rode a cab downtown. He went across town on one subway
train and came back on another and used all the tricks he knew. He walked down a long dark street,
down a series of long dark streets, and finally it seemed impossible that he could be followed. So he went
to an apartment on Fifty-fifth Street east of Madison Avenue.
He rang an apartment bell. A pleasant lady answered. He said, “I have an appointment to see Mr.
House.”
“Are you Mr. Seems?”
“I used that name.”
“Will you come this way. Mr. House is waiting. I am Mrs. House.” Then she looked at him intently for a
moment. “Your name isn't Seems, is it?”
“No.”
“Aren't you—”
“Mr. Seems, if you please,” he said, and smiled. His smile was amiable, confidence-winning, and one
would have to know him well to realize how much tension was behind it.
The pleasant lady suddenly looked a little frightened. “My husband is waiting,” she repeated hastily.
House was a small man like a mouse. A man with a little voice, as smooth as culture could make it and
very gentle. His eyes were large, his mouth large, his forehead oversize, and one got the impression that
the rest of his face was nothing much.
He became bug-eyed with astonishment.
“Good God!” he said. “I was expecting somebody named Grimes or Chimes or Seems or something.”
“How are you?” the big bronze man said. He extended a cordial hand, then wondered if he was going to
be able to keep the hand from trembling while he shook hands with House. “I am sorry about the
misleading names. It was better not to use my own name to make the appointment with you.”
“Oh now, that's all right,” House said. “Just ease my curiosity by explaining why I am honored, and I'll be
very happy.”
“You already know why I came.”
“I do?”
“You were told when the appointment was made.”
“Oh, you—” House blinked, and for a few seconds was silently, mentally chewing on his thoughts. He
asked, “You really came here to consult me about changing your appearance?”
“Yes.”
House stared at the big bronze man, and he started laughing, his laugh large, hearty, full of
this-is-ridiculous robustness. “You!” he said. “You coming to me for such a job. You, with your ability
along those lines.”
The bronze man's composure slipped for a moment, his quiet smile going, and a little of his inner tension
rising to twist and draw his face muscles. It was as if a fierce, tormented animal had come out of a cave.
“I'M sorry,” House said. “I am very sorry. I don't know why I laughed when you said you had come to
me to have your appearance changed. I guess maybe I was very flattered. Maybe that is why I laughed.”
“Can we go to work right now?”
“Oh. You are in a hurry?”
“Very.”
“What is—”
“You are not to ask questions.”
“I don't understand?”
“It is very simple. No questions. Or, at least, don't expect answers.”
House frowned. He was Jonas House, and he was very good in spite of his modesty a minute ago. There
might have been greater masters of make-up than Jonas House, but they were neither known nor
recognized as such.
Jonas House was of Hollywood, naturally. Make-up exists as an advanced art practically nowhere else,
if one excludes the cosmeticians' branch of it. Certainly without Hollywood, a man like Jonas House
couldn't have developed. He was in New York for the winter, and currently making one of his sporadic
efforts to retire from the picture business. In a few months, by spring at the latest, he would be back on
the coast. He always went back.
The man was not to be taken lightly. He didn't just smear on greasepaints and apply hair dyes and make
rubber fillers for the cheeks, although he could do that sort of thing, too.
House had been examining the bronze man thoughtfully. He shook his head suddenly.
“Look,” he said. “To do a job on you, I've got to know things. I've got to know such facts as whether
you're going to be out in the weather, on a boat at sea, or in a coal mine. For instance, salt from sea
water will bleach out some dyes, and in a coal mine you've got the chemicals in the coal and the soap you
wash the coal grime off with.”
“I'll give you enough information.”
“For example?”
“Snow, wind, cold. Probably more than forty below zero. Out in the snow quite a lot. Then exposure to
warmth of open fireplaces. In contact with the hands such things as skiing wax, campfire smoke, ice
water, and possibly a sled dog might be licking my hand. That help?”
“It's a start.”
“It's about all you're going to get.”
House nodded soberly. He didn't insist. “This is important, isn't it?” he said knowingly, bluntly.
“More than you probably imagine.”
House smiled a thin smile and said, “Having heard of you by reputation, my imagination is probably much
more active than you think.”
“Can you get going?”
“How much time have you?”
“None at all.”
“This will take two days.”
“More than four hours is absolutely impossible,” the bronze man said.
“My God!” House walked to the door and opened it. “Momma! Momma! You better help me on this
job,” he called. “Hurry.”
HE was big and blond. He was still big, because even Jonas House couldn't shrink a man. But now he
looked soft. Before there had been a corded litheness in his every movement, the tight spring and the
corded smoothness of a man who had abnormal strength. Now he looked soft and lazy and comfortable.
He was no longer a panther walking, he was a lazy, well-fed young fellow at whom people would look
and wonder, why isn't that bird in the army?
The miraculous thing about the change in him was that no part of him was actually changed to any extent.
Slight changes here and there, but no effort anywhere to alter him completely.
“That's the best I can do on short notice,” Jonas House said.
They shook hands in the hall.
He left the House apartment, and standing in the elevator riding down to the lobby, he examined himself
intently in the mirror.
Looking at himself, he got a queer feeling and a creepy one; for a moment he was positive he wasn't
himself. He was very pleased, but shocked also, because it was unnerving to discover that another man
could work such wizardry with you. These were strange feelings for him to be having. I'm upset, he
thought, and that isn't good.
He left the apartment house, and two nice-looking young men came out of the shadows and joined him.
They didn't say anything, but they walked beside him.
He stopped. He mentally seized all his fears and anxiety and shoved them back into his mind where they
wouldn't interfere. At least, he thought, gratefully, I am still able to do that.
“All right,” he said. “What is this?”
“Do you have a cigarette?” one of the young men asked.
He said, “Never mind playing around with words. Who are you? What do you want?”
He was tense, clear-headed, and already he had decided just where he would hit these young men with
his fists and how, if it was necessary. He didn't think it would be needed. He thought he knew who they
were.
“We got off a northbound train,” one of the young men said.
“Train?”
“Bus, I mean,” the young man said. “And I'm afraid we're lost.”
“You are not lost.”
The young men were relieved. They hadn't seemed too tense, but they must have been, because they
acted as if an electric current had been going through their bodies, and now it had been shut off.
“Jonathan Wister is waiting around the corner,” one said. “He wishes to speak to you.”
He went with the two young men.
HE was startled at the change in Jonathan Wister, at the way terror had laid hold of Wister.
It shocked him especially because he had known Jonathan Wister a long time and had genuine respect
for the man's judgment, calmness and directness of thinking. He had believed that nothing was big enough
to shock Wister the way he was shocked now, to drive him into a tailspin of terror.
Jonathan Wister was entirely unknown to at least a hundred million citizens of the United States. Yet his
picture had appeared in the newspapers often, in a semi-anonymous way, in pictures where Wister was
one of a photographed group of the internationally notable, groups with the President, the Prime Minister,
Stalin. Wister was the man in the background, the man whose name wasn't in the cutlines printed with the
picture.
Wister was a career diplomat. The head of his department took the credit for Wister's good work, and
took the blame for Wister's mistakes. Wister made mistakes. And his kind of mistakes could cost lives,
maybe many lives, because they could start wars.
Wister was a good man. The State Department handed him their delicate negotiating, their egg-handling.
They gave him their tense, terrible jobs that scared the hell out of everybody in Washington who knew
what was going on.
Wister said, “Is this a northbound street, or is it even a one-way street?”
“Street?”
“Avenue, I mean.”
“You're all right.”
Wister said, and his nerves crawled out and got in his voice, “What are you doing? My God, what are
you doing?”
He got in the car with Wister. He was angry, startled, impatient. He said to Wister, “Look here, Wister. I
told you fellows to drop me, to stay away from me entirely, not to interfere or try to help me in any way.”
“We're not,” Wister said.
“How did you find me here?”
“My men learned it. They have your telephone tapped and have covered you completely.”
“What do you call that?”
“Which? Why, efficient work by my agents, I suppose. They are good men.”
“I don't mean that.”
Wister hesitated, then complained, “Oh, I suppose you are complaining that we are hampering you.”
“I told you to leave me alone. You're not doing it.”
“No, no, you misunderstand. This is a protective cover we have placed around you, a guarantee of your
personal safety and—”
“Take them off.”
“Eh?”
“Call them off. Every last man of them.”
“Oh.”
He waited for Wister to think it over. He had expected this trouble with Wister. Wister was accustomed
to working with a large and complicated organization, and the man thought in such terms. Wister was
certain to feel a little the way the operator of a thundering pile-driver might feel about seeing another man
tackle a baffling job with no tool but a tack hammer.
He told Wister, “Get away from me—all of you, every last one.”
He made his voice heavy with firmness, solid with conviction, and gave it a little bite of anger, or rather he
could not keep the anger out.
Wister moved uncomfortably. “All the help possible—”
“Will make as much commotion as a herd of stampeding elephants,” he told Wister. “I am going to do
this my own way. That was the understanding.”
“But it's so big—” Wister suddenly sounded sick.
“Want some advice?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Go home and sleep. Relax.”
“Sleep, my God!” Wister muttered. “Since this broke, I haven't even been able to feel the ground under
my feet, and I can't taste my food.”
HE was silent, scowling, because Wister's terrorized anxiety was taking hold of him also. Something like
that, he knew, would wreck him. When terror laid hold of you, you could do just one thing—fight like a
wildcat. You couldn't plot, connive, check move with counter-move, scheme and devise. You could
strike blows and take blows, was all.
He told Wister again, violently, “Take your agents off me! I've got to work alone!”
Wister shivered.
“All right,” Wister agreed. “Whatever you say.”
“Fair enough,” he told Wister. “Now, what about this girl?”
“Didn't your man Ham Brooks tell you she was taking the Lake Placid train?”
“So your agents are around her like a swarm of locusts, too?”
“Well, we—”
“You were supposed to leave me alone, and leave her alone.”
“We—”
“Wister,” he said quietly, “I appreciate the strain you are under, but on the other hand I assure you that it
is grinding me down also. But you must leave this thing alone. Take your hands off.”
Wister gave way, saying in a low, wild voice, “I wish they'd never put such an incredibly vital job in the
hands of one man!”
“I wish they hadn't either,” he told Wister, and he sounded a little ill himself.
He got out of the car.
Chapter II
HAM BROOKS met him at Grand Central Station.
“She's in a Pullman,” Ham said. He passed over an envelope. “Your reservation is in the same section.
You have the upper, she has the lower.”
“Good work.”
Ham Brooks smirked. “She's a dish.”
Alarmed, he demanded, “You haven't been talking to her?”
“No, but it took will power.”
He imagined it had, because Ham Brooks had a weakness for blondes. Ham Brooks was Brigadier
General Theodore Marley Brooks, and a General was supposed to have some dignity, even when he
was on the inactive list, as Ham—against his wishes—was. Ham was also an eminent lawyer. But he was
still like an eighteen-year-old sailor when a pretty girl went by.
“Has she noticed you by any chance?” he asked anxiously.
“Nope.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
“All right. You and Monk stick at headquarters and wait for orders. Better sleep by the telephone.”
Ham said, “With a thing like this, I don't feel much like sleeping.”
He left Ham and walked down the long sloping ramp to the train, carrying his skiis, and wondering if
Ham had really kept out of the girl's sight. Ham was one of his assistants. Monk, who had taken his place
in the theater seat, was another associate. But both of them had an eye for an ankle, and he had learned
not to depend implicitly on them where legs were involved.
This girl surely had ankles. She was showing one of them, and very much something it was, as he came
down the aisle, seat check in one hand, suitcase in the other.
He consulted his seat check, put his hat on the seat, then walked to the other end of the car and stowed
his skiis in the space which was used for that purpose.
He got, at the mirror in the end of the car, another start, because for a moment he did not recognize the
lazy looking, soft young man as himself. Walking back to his seat, he was fully appreciative of the job
Jonas House had done with his appearance.
With the picture of how he looked fresh in his mind, he conducted himself as he thought such a fellow
would behave.
“My name is Joe Powell,” he said. “I hope you don't mind getting acquainted.”
“I'm Doris,” she said.
Which wasn't the truth. Her name was Edith Halcyon. He didn't know much else about her, but he knew
that.
“I'm an orchestra leader,” he said.
“That sounds quite essential,” she said.
“Meaning why I am not in the army?”
“That's right.”
“Since you want to know, I'll tell you.”
“I don't.”
He said, “I don't think we're going to get along very well together, Doris.”
“You caught on quickly,” she said, and picked up a book and began looking at it.
HE laughed and stretched out and hoped he looked quite comfortable. He felt silly, sitting there wearing
ski pants and a loud woolly sweater and a trick ski jacket and big ski boots. There were others on the
train dressed the same way, it was true, but he was not comfortable. This was not a snow train; the
railroads weren't operating snow trains any more. But a lot of skiiers still used the trains wearing their ski
clothes, even if there was a war and death and fright and destruction around the world.
Frequently in times like these, he thought, it is embarrassing to wear civilian clothes. And to be on a train
dressed for frivolity in a ski outfit was, it struck him suddenly, something to be ashamed of.
Suddenly he looked at the girl. Why, darn him if she hadn't gotten under his skin about that being the
army crack. That was why he'd started being ashamed of being in ski clothes.
He watched the girl, wondering what such a young no-good as he was pretending to be, would do to
reopen the conversation. He couldn't think of anything, which must be evidence that he was
inexperienced, or possibly that she had upset him. He realized that the train was moving, having started
with hardly a perceptible jolt.
He said, “It's what you deserve, getting it flattened.”
He thought she wasn't going to answer, but she was only keeping her eyes on the book while she tried to
puzzle out what he meant.
“What?” she asked, curiosity getting the best of her.
“Your nose is little and kind of flat on the end,” he explained. “It probably got that way from people
pushing against it to keep it out of their business.”
“Whose nose in what business?” she demanded.
“Yours into mine, in this case.”
“You must have misunderstood me. I don't care in the least whether you have fur or feathers.”
He said, “Then why jerk open the door of my hidden room? Meaning my room where I keep the secret
of why I'm not in the army?”
“I like,” she said, “to kick tin cans when I pass them.”
“You could scuff your shoe.”
“They clank and make hollow, empty noises. The cans, I mean.”
He grinned, and eyed her speculatively. She wasn't a show girl, probably, because she didn't have quite
something that show girls usually have. Something in manner, in attitude, voice. She didn't have that. But
she had the looks.
She was tall and quite blonde and on the spectacular side. The sailor across the aisle was looking at her a
great deal, and a soldier and a fat man had both had three drinks apiece at the near-by water cooler.
He sneered at her. “You're going to cause a traffic problem.”
“I hope you get trampled in the rush,” she said.
“If you keep on showing such a bawdy amount of leg,” he said, “I might.”
She looked uncomfortable.
THE train was out of the tunnel and around the curve at Kill Van Kull, and rolling northward toward
Harmon, where the electric locomotive would be taken off and the steam one put on. Their seat was on
the left side of the train. They could look out over the Hudson, partly visible in the evening murk.
A little snow lay in the sheltered places, thin and granular. But the river was not frozen over, and there
was not much float ice.
He was thinking about the girl, drawing conclusions and making guesses. He wished he knew more about
her, as did various other people. In that category one would include the American, British, Russian and
Chinese governments, and perhaps some others. He reflected that it sounded pretty dramatic when you
thought of it that way, but it still seemed like an understatement. If ever big events hung by a thin thread,
they were hanging from one now, and this girl was the thread.
She could have looked more like a Mata Hari, he thought. She could at least have been hard. He would
have felt more at ease if he could get the conviction he was dealing with a bad lot.
This lovely, though, was the wrong type. A very pretty blonde who was a little sassy and probably
somewhat spoiled because she was so pretty. He wasn't sure about the spoiled part, either. She had
chopped away at him pretty sharply, but then he had put his neck a long way out, asking for it.
And he liked the way she had blushed when he mentioned her leg.
摘要：

THELOSTGIANTADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIIIScannedandProofedbyTomStephens ChapterIHEhadgonetomuchtroubletoget...

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