Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 133 - The Derelict of Skull Shoal

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THE DERELICT OF SKULL SHOAL
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
Aboard a doomed ship in the Caribbean, Doc Savage hunts the evil
perpetrators of the mysterious disappearance of cargo ships. Ships
abandoned under sail after a torpedo attack vanish without a trace.
Chapter I
THE dog howled at three o'clock in the morning. It was a strange thing to happen. In fact, apparently an
impossible thing, because the howl—low, quavering, as ghastly as a moan in a hospital at night—seemed
to come from the sea, from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
The converted liner, the Farland, running blacked out, was making sixteen knots under a cloud-packed
sky. Farland wasn't her peacetime name. The Navy had named her that after taking her over. Once she
had made luxury cruises around the world. Now she was the Farland, carrying whatever the Army or
the Navy wanted her to carry, and hauling it wherever the war was being fought.
Somehow the ship had missed her convoy. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, but it was
strange. Whatever had happened, it was being hushed up. Wartime secrecy.
The vessel was ploughing across the Atlantic alone. She wouldn't be doing that unless she had missed her
convoy. No one seemed to know anything more than that.
But the Atlantic these days was no place for a ship alone, not a converted liner with two three-inch guns
and a half dozen Brownings in steel tubs, and no other armament.
Doc Savage heard the dog-howl. Doc was doing deck patrol at the time, pacing what had been the
promenade deck, his duty being to make sure no lights showed from that part of the ship. The rest of the
time he was to watch the sea.
He wasn't down on the crew-list as Doc Savage, or even as Clark Savage, Jr., his full name. He was Bill
Doyle. He had papers to prove he had been a seaman, able bodied, for ten years. But there wasn't a
word of truth in them.
His bronze-colored hair was dyed black and gray and his bronze skin was dyed a weathered, ruddy hue.
Tinted optical glass—“contact" lenses—made his eyes a dull brown instead of their natural and rather
unusual flake gold. The only thing he could do about his great size was slouch and limp slightly. The
disguise seemed to be all right. Nobody had questioned his being Bill Doyle, A. B. Actually, there was no
Bill Doyle.
The dog-howl somehow set him on edge.
He swerved over to the rail, stood there listening, straining to look into the blackness of the night.
The wind pushed warm and clammy against his face. The Farland was a few hundred miles south and
east of Bermuda, ploughing through the warm Gulf Stream. Somewhat of a sea was running, white caps
feathered the sea. It was too dark to see this, but he could tell from the soft rushing sounds as waves
broke.
He saw nothing. Somehow he was not reassured in the least. The feeling of uneasiness was hard to
understand, there being no solid reason for it.
A dog had howled, or seemed to howl, in the middle of the Atlantic. It was queer. That was all. It might
have a completely logical explanation, something as simple as a passing vessel with a dog aboard. Only
this had been a howl, not a bark.
But he was getting the strangest feeling about it. A sensation of hideous waiting, condemned man awaiting
the verdict.
Something about to happen.
A MAN amidships began screaming. He yelled, “Torpedo! Off the port beam! Torpedo! Oh my God!”
The man's voice started low and climbed high, the way fear makes a voice behave, almost grotesque,
overdone. Not quite natural.
From the crow's nest: “Torpedo-wake to port!”
From the forward well-deck: “Torpedo! Look out!”
Doc Savage, leaning far over the rail, strained his eyes to see. He saw nothing but blackness, only a soot
darkness, not even the water. No sky, no clouds, no waves, nothing but the spongy night.
From the crow's nest again: “Torpedo to port!”
From the stern: “It's gonna hit amidships!”
Why couldn't he see this torpedo-wake?
He couldn't see a thing, and he thought for a moment that something could have happened to his eyes, so
he brought his hands up close before his face. He could see them, their dark outline. Then he thought it
could be the “contact” eyeglasses of tinted glass which he was wearing to disguise the distinctive color of
his eyes. He got the little case out of his pocket, and used the suction-cup gadget to remove one of them.
He peered about. It made no difference. He still couldn't see anything.
From the crow's nest again: “It's gonna hit! Watch it!”
From somewhere not more than thirty feet from where Doc stood: “It's hitting amidships!”
Doc Savage, harried by the strangeness of it all, made for that nearest voice. He tiptoed so as not to be
noisy.
Then the explosion came. It wasn't amidships, quite, but more forward. A bit to the fore of the bridge.
An eye-aching salmon flash. The stricken wrench of the whole ship as it hit. The deck seemed to jump, to
flinch like a stricken animal. The noise of the explosion wasn't much, a dull thud.
Doc Savage was knocked off his feet on the deck. The explosion was that strong. He picked himself up.
He'd lost the little vacuum cup remover gadget for the “contact” eye glass, and the tinted eye-glass which
it was holding. He explored about for the thing, but found neither it nor the eyeglass. That meant he
would have no disguise for his right eye. It was questionable whether that would be important, now. But
it bothered him.
HELL let loose through the ship. Afterward they could cite psychological reasons for it happening that
way. Everyone on the ship had half-expected the terror of a submarine attack to come out of the black of
night ever since they had sailed.
The Farland rolled slowly, like a great log, from the force of the blast on her forward port quarter. It
seemed she would never stop listing, although it was no more than thirty degrees. She would roll more
than that in a sharp turn, or in a storm.
She had not straightened herself when there was a blast somewhere down in the hold. A sound like a
cough, with more jolting shock. A cough like that meant a lot of damage down in the steel guts of the
ship.
Doc Savage ran for the bridge. The bridge was the nerve-center of the ship. It was the best
listening-post.
The siren cut loose, a god-awful moaning that would take the hat right off a man's head. But it stopped
short.
Scrambling up the bridge steps, Doc could hear Captain Winston Davis of the Farland cursing in a shrill
voice. Swearing at an officer for sounding the siren.
“Keep your blankety-blank head, mister,” Captain Davis was saying.
Already, Doc thought grimly, there was a trace of fear-hysteria in the skipper's voice. He had better keep
his own blankety-blank head.
A sailor blocked Doc's way to the bridge.
“Who're you?” the sailor demanded.
“Bill Doyle, A. B. I want to—”
“Get back to your post and stand by for orders!” snapped the guard.
“But—”
“Get back!” There was a metal-against-leather sound as the man drew his service revolver.
Doc withdrew. The sailor was young and frightened and might shoot first and ask questions later. They
had orders to do that in an emergency, anyway.
Doc stood in the darkness, frowning, half-tempted to disclose his identity. If they knew who he was,
they'd let him on the bridge. They'd have to. If it became necessary, they would have to turn over entire
command of the ship to him.
The Farland had sailed under sealed orders. Captain Davis had the envelope in his possession, with
orders to open it only if he was confronted by a man who gave him the code words three blind mice.
Once he opened them, he would find the man with the code was Doc Savage, whom he was to accept
as his superior officer.
Doc smothered the temptation to reveal his identity. This might be the time for that, or it might not. He
could not tell. He had to be sure.
He remained where he was, because he could hear most of what occurred on the bridge.
They had switched on the intercommunicator, the public address system that extended to all parts of the
ship. Over the apparatus, the bridge could speak to any part of the ship, and receive information as well.
THE third explosion came now. This was another one deep in the innards of the vessel. The same shock
as before, the same dull horrible force.
The interphone loudspeaker said: “Forward hold reporting. About seven feet of water already. Coming in
fast.”
Captain Davis asked: “Where was that last explosion?”
“Engine room.”
“What the hell was it?”
“The shock must have weakened one of the boilers. It let go.”
“Any men killed?”
“No. Some scalded. The damned steam is going to drive us out.”
Suddenly the sound of screams came from below. Someone somewhere had opened a hatch so that the
noise could come up. The shrieking was muffled.
In one of the machine-gun tubs, a signal gun popped, spouting fire. A moment later, a parachute flare
blossomed and grew and threw down a wide cone of light. But there was nothing under the light but the
wind-troubled sea. No submarine.
Doc Savage searched the sea as far as the light extended. The dog howl had come from somewhere out
there, and it didn't seem possible that another ship could have gotten out of sight in such a short time.
Still, if the animal had been on a submarine—but they didn't keep dogs on submarines, did they?
From the forecastle deck: “Fire! Fire!”
From the bridge: “Look, Captain Davis! There! The explosion split open that hatch!”
Doc caught the smell of the smoke. A trace at first, then rapidly becoming stronger, now he could see it,
yellowish, sulphur-yellow. Ominous-looking stuff. Stinking of chemicals.
“My God, that forward hold is full of T. N. T.!” Captain Davis shouted.
The skipper sounded terrified, as if his nerves were at loose ends.
Doc Savage had almost got to the bridge to take charge, to tell them to examine their sealed orders.
He didn't. Somehow he had a vague idea it wasn't the thing to do.
From the loudspeaker: “After-deck calling bridge. Hello bridge!”
“Go ahead.”
“There's a fire back here. A hell of a fire. It's got in some kind of chemicals.”
Doc turned his head. He could see the fire, or rather its smoke. Black smoke this time.
Another explosion thumped below.
“A second torpedo!” Captain Davis said hysterically.
But it wasn't another torpedo. It was an explosion of some kind.
“Abandon ship!” Captain Davis ordered.
DOC SAVAGE tried to reach the bridge then. The guard got in his way, gun drawn, and said get the hell
back to his station and do it quick.
“Captain Davis!” Doc shouted.
The skipper came to the bridge rail. “What the devil do you want?”
“You are abandoning ship too soon,” Doc said. “Wait until you are sure you can't control the fires.”
“Listen,” said Captain Davis angrily, “this ship is packed with hell. There probably isn't a packing-case
aboard that wouldn't blow up a ship twice this size by itself. Don't tell me what to do!”
“Get hold of yourself, captain!”
“Get hold of nothing! I had this happen to me on the Murmansk run. Out of a crew of forty, how many
do you think got off alive? Three. The hell with staying with this ship. America has more ships than good
sailors these days.”
Doc said, “Three blind mice?”
“Eh? What's that?”
“Three blind mice.”
The code identification didn't click. The skipper was evidently too upset.
Captain Davis told the guard, “Keep that man away from here. He's crazy.”
The guard said, “You hear that? Scram. Better get to your lifeboat station.”
Doc Savage withdrew. The flare sank into the sea, and black darkness came again. Doc stood thinking
for a moment, then wheeled and ran along the deck.
Confusion had spread over the ship. The order to abandon ship had been given over the talker, so
everyone had heard it and had caught the fear in Captain Davis' voice. It had been contagious, but no
panic. Nobody was letting any grass grow under his feet getting to the boats.
Men bumped into Doc Savage as they scurried along the decks. Now and then somebody fell over
something and cursed. The smoke became thicker, lung stinging.
The talker said: “No lights. Show no lights. We don't want that damned submarine shelling us.”
There were encased gliders in huge crates along the promenade deck, and Doc Savage slammed into
one. It irritated him, because he had walked that deck at fifteen-minute intervals every watch since the
Farland had sailed from Charleston harbor, and he should have known where all the crates were
located.
The loudspeaker again blared: “No lights. No lights. Keep the submarine from shelling us.”
That was good sense.
As Doc was passing the midship companionway, a man burst out on deck yelling with terror. He
screeched, “That fire's getting at the explosives! We'll all go to hell any minute!”
“Shut up, you yellow-livered so-and-so,” someone told him.
The man paid no attention. He went down the deck howling in fright.
He came toward Doc Savage. Doc stopped, turned, moved to meet him. The man lunged into him, and
Doc brought a left jab to the fellow's jaw. Doc hit it, but not too hard. Just enough to make the man as
loose as a rag for a few seconds.
Someone, one of the crew, who heard the blow, said, “Good for you, whoever you are. Paste the yellow
so-and-so one for me.”
Doc said, “The one he got should hold him.”
The man who had been hit was limp in Doc's arms for a while. Then he began squirming, and Doc shook
him, said, “Now behave yourself.”
“You slugged me, you blankety-blank!” the man whimpered.
“Stop yelling, then. We have enough trouble without a panic.”
The man seemed to think it over. “You're that big guy, Doyle, ain't you?”
“That makes no difference,” Doc said. “You had better get hold of yourself. Keep squalling, and one of
the officers will put a bullet in you and be justified in doing it.”
“Listen, if you was down there and seen the fire eating into that explosive—”
“Stop it!”
The man struggled. “All right,” he said, his voice more natural. “You're right. Thanks.”
Doc released the man. The fellow moved away.
Doc moved down the deck, listening and watching, prodding the confusion with his interest and attention.
Things seemed to be going smoothly enough. Order out of chaos.
But Doc was not satisfied. There was something here that he couldn't put his finger on, something sinister.
Something wrong about it all.
THE dog howled again about three minutes later.
Doc stopped short, listening to the trailing, mournful sound. It was the same as it had been before, a howl
with an unnatural, a grisly quality. The thing was unreality itself.
One thing, though, the sound came from the ship, not the surrounding sea. The earlier impression that it
had come from the sea was a mistake. The howl, heard in the darkness like this, was hard to spot as to
source. But it was surely on the ship.
Doc stood frozen. The howl came just once. He was puzzled at his own reaction to the thing. Surprised
that it should put nerve-tightness into his throat muscles the way it did. He wondered why? It wasn't like
him to be affected that way.
He stepped back against the deckhouse, stood there feeling that his alarm was senseless, yet making no
attempt to put away the alarm because it was so genuinely real.
Then, with no warning whatever, he was struck down. There was just the whizzing hiss that ended in a
sound that was jarring to his toes, followed instantaneously by an effect like a large firecracker exploding
inside his skull. He didn't t really know where he was hit, or by what, or even if he was hit. He was,
though, conscious of beginning to fall, but all sensibility left him shortly after he began to fall, and there
was nothing but the abysmal and black.
Chapter II
SOMEWHERE a ship's clock struck two bells into the darkness. The gong was muffled, because all ship
clocks were muffled for an ocean crossing in wartime. The sound was dead, flat, disconsolate.
Then it began to rain. The clouds that had packed the sky for days, promising rain, now opened up and
the rain came. It arrived in the arms of a gusty rush of wind, a small howling hurricane that raged up and
down the decks and picked up discarded lifeboat covers and slapped them against the deckhouse or
sent them tumbling down the decks so that they sounded like unnatural things running.
The wind carried the rain in through the open door and far enough down the passage that it began to
soak Doc Savage where he lay.
Doc was first conscious of the rain beating down on his face. It was cold. He tried to move his head, and
there was enough wham-bang that he didn't try it again at once.
He kept his eyes open, though, and watched lightning pop and whizz and crash outside. Nor did this do
his head any good, although the turmoil in the outer world reflected his own condition.
For a while he couldn't think, it being as if his mind process was stuck on a high center. Then he
remembered where he was; he was on a ship at sea. That got the thought wheels rolling, and he
remembered. Everything came to him in a rush, so swiftly that he became confused. He lay there
organizing his thoughts.
There was some other sound, too, duller and lower, audible only between the loud angry noises of the
storm in the sky. As his head cleared, he realized what this other sound was. The interphone.
The mechanical interphone talker that ran all through the ship, and it was saying, “Bill Doyle! Bill Doyle!
Bill, where are you?”
Bill Doyle? Who on earth was Bill Doyle?
Then Doc Savage realized it was himself, the name he had taken, and he felt quite foolish. He must be
hurt badly to be so stupid. He became alarmed about his condition.
The skin on his head was broken in two or three places. From the solid feeling of the blood which had
matted in his hair, he knew he had been unconscious some time. The size of the welts on his head
worried him.
He lay there thinking over the various symptoms indicating a fractured skull and comparing them to his
own pains. The result was not cheering. Anyway, he was not dead.
“Bill Doyle,” the talker said monotonously. “Bill Doyle. Bill Doyle, where are you?”
Doc Savage rolled over. The head injury was terrific, and he remained on hands and knees for a while.
Finally, mostly by the grit of his teeth, he got to his feet.
It took him about a minute to get out on deck.
The rain pounded on him, the wind seized him. He was washed and pummeled about on deck, but his
head cleared somewhat.
Slowly he moved toward the bridge. The lightning kept coming in flash after flash, one streak of electric
flame stacked on another in the sky. By the weird flashing light he could see the littered deck, the boat
covers, the slatting falls, the empty davits and empty lifeboat cradles.
There was one man on the bridge, a very short, very wide man with an extremely homely face and a
remarkable growth of stubbled red hair. He had been speaking into the talker. He stared at Doc Savage
unbelievingly.
“Doc!” he yelled. Delight made his voice go shrill. Into the talker, he said, “Ham, Renny, here he is, all
okay. Come to the bridge!”
THE homely man then stared more closely at Doc Savage and blurted, “Great grief, are you okay?”
Doc took hold of a stanchion and lowered himself to the deck. “Just a minute, Monk,” he said.
Monk Mayfair, the homely man, jumped to his side. “What happened to you? Good God, your head!”
“The head can't possibly look half as bad as it feels,” Doc said grimly.
“Something fall on you?” Monk demanded.
“Yes, in a manner of speaking,” Doc said. “Did I hear you say something to Ham and Renny over the
interphone? Are they aboard?”
Monk said, “They're hunting for you.”
Ham was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, who had a world-wide reputation as a lawyer,
and as a well-dressed man. He had sailed on the Farland, however, as Henri Gatley, cook's helper,
disguised as a slightly comic opera Frenchman, accent and all.
Renny was Colonel John Renwick, as well known as an engineer as Ham was as a lawyer. He was on
the Farland as George Washington Wilson Smith, a colored gentleman, oiler in the engine room.
Both Ham and Renny were, like Monk Mayfair, members of a group of five specialists who had worked
with Doc Savage for years.
Doc Savage had been using his eyes and ears. Some of the ringing had cleared out of his ears. He asked,
“Where is everyone?”
“The crew of the ship, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“In the lifeboats.”
“They abandoned the ship after all?” Doc asked.
“That's right. As far as I know, we're the only three aboard the vessel.”
“How did you happen to stay aboard?”
“We checked the lifeboats and couldn't find you,” Monk explained. “So we knew you had to be aboard.
We figured you might have been hurt in one of the explosions, so we stayed to hunt you.” Monk
chuckled grimly. “There was a little argument about my staying aboard. Ham and Renny just didn't get in
their lifeboat. But that bullnecked bo'sun tried to throw me on a liferaft, so I hung one on his kisser,
something I'd been itching to do. The guy had been riding me.”
Monk had also sailed on the Farland as an able-bodied seaman with an assumed name.
“Doc, what happened to you?” Monk continued. “Why didn't you make it into the lifeboats?”
Doc started to answer, then clamped back the words. The talker had gone dead. The instrument speaker
had been making a low noise—the sound of flames somewhere, and the humming of the instrument
itself—but this had stopped.
“The talker,” Doc said. “Dead.”
Monk went to the instrument. He fooled with the volume knob, punched the selector buttons.
“Dead as a doorknob,” he admitted. “Oh, well, the fire must have got to the wiring.”
“Where,” asked Doc, “were Ham and Renny hunting?”
“The forward hold. Where the torpedo hit.”
“That isn't far from here.”
“Not very.”
“They should be here by now, shouldn't they?” Doc asked.
“I should think so,” Monk said.
THEY waited in the darkness. This part of the bridge was glassed-in, and they could see, when the
lightning blazed, the rainwater sheeting across the glass. The sky fire was reflected from the shining brass
of the wheel, the telegraph, the binnacle, the multitude of gadgets to be found on the bridge of a modern
ship.
Doc asked, “How long since the ship was abandoned?”
“About an hour.”
“Where are the boats?”
“Standing by out there somewhere, I guess,” Monk muttered. “They won't show any lights, because they
figure that submarine might machine-gun the boats.”
Doc listened to the wind. He made an effort, and got to his feet, and stood with his face pressed to the
bridge glass. By the lightning glare, he saw how high the sea was running.
“The boats,” he said, “will have trouble sticking together.”
“That's what I been thinking,” Monk confessed. “It won't be any picnic in the boats, that's sure. But it's
better than staying on board and getting blown higher than a kite when the fire gets to that ammunition.”
Nervousness and impatience had come grinding into Monk's small and rather squeaky voice. He paced
to the talker and fooled with it again, gave that up, and stood listening at the companionway.
“Ham!” he yelled. “Renny! Get a move on!”
His voice sounded puny in the storm. There was no answer.
Monk growled, “I wish they'd show up. There are at least two fires aboard, and the boat's down by the
head. She's liable to go any minute.”
He threw open a glass panel toward the bow. Smoke swirled in, stinking smoke that bit their eyes like
acid and put a stinging in their nostrils and sinuses. Monk slammed the glass shut with panicky haste.
“What's keeping Ham and Renny, blast it!” he gasped.
Doc said, “Monk?”
摘要：

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

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