Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 132 - Death Had Yellow Eyes

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DEATH HAD YELLOW EYES
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
Out of the darkness, yellow and bodiless eyes peer into the faces of Doc
Savage and his crew. And when Monk vanishes inside a locked room, Doc
leaps to the rescue—plunging straight into a vicious international
maelstrom that could change the course of history!
Chapter I
THERE was nothing under the overstuffed chair by the window, nothing behind the sofa. The grandfather
clock in the corner ran noisily with a rickety-rickety-rickety sound. Probably the uproar the old clock
made was the reason that no one ever stayed in the north parlor any longer than they had to. The front of
the clock was glass and offered no concealment.
Monk Mayfair continued searching.
The window was closed and locked. Both doors were shut. There was an old-fashioned brass screen in
front of the fireplace, so that even a bird couldn't have gone up the chimney. The ancient, rich draperies
hung gracefully at the window with nothing behind them. Into the ancient, dignified parlor came a trace of
the traffic rumbling on Park Avenue. Even the traffic noise was dignified here in the room.
From a great painting in a gilt frame on the north wall, a Brooks ancestor looked down sourly. He looked
down coolly enough to be standing on the North Pole, or on a mountain of gold. As a matter of
fact—and this made Monk Mayfair grin—the old scamp in the picture was Colonel Blackstone Brooks,
a lawyer who had never in his life rubbed much more than two dollars together in his pocket. But the old
phony had had an eye for a nice ankle, from what Monk had heard.
There was nothing behind the Colonel's picture, either.
Monk sank into a chair, sat there with his eyes alert. He moved nothing but his eyes, and being a very
homely man, he could look remarkably alarmed.
There was none of his usual pleasant impishness on his face now. The glee had fled. His short body and
long arms—he looked like an ape out of somebody's funny-book—were normally as relaxed as an old
sock. But he was tight now. Tight and uneasy. One got the impression that all of his rusty looking hair
was wanting to stand on end.
The grandfather clock went rickety-rickety for some time.
Then Ham Brooks, the attorney, came in.
“Hello, nature's accident,” said Ham.
Ham Brooks had the wide mobile mouth of an orator, a thin waist, and the attire of an ambassador. Ham
always dressed rigidly for the occasion and time of day. This was morning, so he had a frock coat, fawn
vest and morning trousers. He carried a thin black cane which didn't quite fit with the rest.
“Cat got your tongue?” Ham asked.
Monk shook his head. His eyes were moving over the room again.
“Maybe,” said Ham, “you've decided to just say what you think. In which case you'd be permanently
speechless.”
“Cut it out,” Monk muttered. “Lay off the gags.”
“What's wrong with you?”
Monk indicated the room with an uneasy movement of his hand.
“What are you keeping in here?” he demanded.
Ham frowned. “Are you kidding?”
“I never felt less funny in my life,” Monk said.
HAM BROOKS was puzzled. He glanced around the parlor, then fell to examining Monk narrowly.
Ham began to suspect an elaborate gag. He and Monk were the best of friends, but they never
conducted themselves as if they were. Over a period of years, Ham could not recall having exchanged a
really civil word with Monk. If he had spoken amiably to Monk, it was a mistake, and he hoped it
wouldn't happen again. They got a lot of boot out of their squabbling.
“If I didn't know you,” Ham said grimly, “I'd say you just had your pants scared off. But knowing you, I
suspect a gag.”
“No gag.”
“Well, stop looking like that, you homely missing link!”
Monk indicated the door. “I came in there a minute ago without knocking.”
“All right, you came in the door,” Ham said sharply. “So what? You've come through that door before.
This isn't the first time you've been here.”
“Stop fussing at me. I'm serious.”
“What about?”
“There was something in this room when I came in,” Monk said flatly.
Ham glanced about. “I don't see anything.”
Monk pointed at the gloomy south end of the room. “Down there.”
“Well, there's nothing there. Or did it fly out of the window?”
“The windows,” Monk said, “were closed, and so was the door, and that screen in front of the fireplace
would keep anything from going up the chimney.”
Ham stared at Monk in astonishment. “Say, you sound serious.”
“I am.”
“Just exactly what did you see?”
Monk stared thoughtfully at the south end of the room. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. He
shuddered.
“Two spots,” he said.
“Two spots?”
“Two yellow spots,” said Monk. He held a hand about shoulder high to a man. “They were about this
high off the floor. They weren't bright spots, and they weren't very yellow, but they were more yellow
than any other color. About the size of a dime.”
“Two dimes, you mean,” Ham said gleefully. “If there were two of them, it would be two dimes—”
“Listen, you shyster lawyer,” said Monk wearily. “I only came here because you invited me. Doc Savage
didn't think he would need us today, so you said come up, and we would go down to Washington and
take another crack at getting active service in the army. For once in my life, I came up here in full
seriousness. Now stop boshing me. What were those yellow spots?”
“Why so serious about it?”
Monk grimaced. “I can't tell you exactly. I kind of got the creeps.”
Ham laughed heartily.
“So you saw spots in front of your eyes? Yellow, eh?” said Ham. “Probably your conscience going by
with one of your blondes.”
Monk scowled. He was uneasy. Ham's levity wasn't making him feel better.
“Why do you live in a tomb like this?” he demanded.
“The place has dignity. You wouldn't understand.”
“You could have some light in here, anyway.”
“Turn on the floor lamp, then.”
MONK growled, “Don't think I won't!” and turned on the ornate old floor lamp. The next five seconds
were remarkable.
Blue electric fire, quite a ball of it, came out of the lamp near where Monk had hold of it. Monk howled.
He went a couple of feet in the air, spread out in midair like a frog, and to all appearances howled again
while hanging there. He hit the floor again. Another spark came out of the lamp. The light hadn't come on.
Ham looked astonished, then his cheeks blew out with mirth. He couldn't hold it in, and howled with
laughter.
“Blast you!” yelled Monk. “I knew it was a gag!”
“Oh, Lord!” Ham gasped. “Did you look funny spraddled out in the air like that!”
Monk waved both arms furiously.
“Doc told us to cut down on this horseplay!” Monk shouted. “And what do you do the first thing! Rig up
a lamp so I get shocked!”
“I didn't rig any lamp,” gasped Ham, between bursts of mirth.
Monk seized the floor lamp indignantly, snatched off the shade and dug into the entrails of the thing. He
snorted in triumph.
“What do you call this, then?” he yelled. “You stuck a paper clip up in one of the lamp sockets!”
“Paper clip!” Ham said. “I didn't put any paper clip in the lamp socket.” He came over suspiciously. “I
don't believe there is one. Let me see it.”
“There!”
“That's funny!”
“Sure, funny for you,” Monk said indignantly. “I could see that.”
“I didn't—”
“Sure, sure, you never do!” Monk bellowed. “You never admitted pulling a gag on me yet. Well, let me
tell you something, you overdressed legal wit! You started this!”
“Started what?”
Monk looked at him ominously. “Doc Savage kindly requested us to cut out the pranking. He said our
gagging around would take our minds off our business, or take somebody else's mind off his, and
somebody would make a bad mistake. Okay, that was reasonable. So I cut it out. I figured you were
gentleman enough—I should have known better—to cut it out too. But you weren't. You've started it
again!”
“I never—”
Monk leveled an indignant finger at Ham's nose. “From now on,” he howled, “I'll see that you get plenty
of jokes!”
And Monk stamped out of the apartment.
THE shop was on Broadway below Forty-second Street and it was as untidy as a cat's nest. It sold
sheet music, phonograph records, souvenirs, cards with dirty verses, puzzles, magic and jokes. The jokes
were the kind you used to embarrass a fellow. Itch powder, exploding matches, hot-dogs that would
squawk when you bit into them, water glasses that leaked down your chin. It was a fine place to go when
you wanted to lose your friends.
“I want this,” said Monk Mayfair. “And this, this, and this!” He heaped joke stuff on the counter.
“All that!” gasped the proprietor.
“What else you got?”
“Brother, that's all.”
“Then wrap it up. And tell me where there's another store where I can get some more.”
“I've got the largest assortment in town. You won't find a different gag anywhere else, if you look all
day.”
“Shucks.”
At this point, Monk observed the red-headed girl. Observed probably wasn't the word. Earthquake was
a better one. She was a smallish dish with plenty of everything in the right places.
What really counted, she happened to be looking at Monk with some interest.
She went out of the joke shop.
“Tsk, tsk,” Monk said, grabbing up his package of jokes and following.
He was making knots to overtake the young woman when the two blond young men got in Monk's path.
They were lean young men with a bit of a commando look about them, even if they did wear civilian
clothes.
“Wait a minute, Handsome,” one growled. “You bothering Doris?”
“Not yet,” said Monk, grinning. “But I had hopes. That is, if the red-headed number is Doris.”
The two blond boys weren't humorously impressed. “He's a wise guy, Nat,” one said to the other.
“That's right, Jay,” agreed the other blond boy. “Shall we dust off his jaw.”
Monk said, “Now wait a minute—”
“Getting so a girl can't walk down the street,” said Jay.
“That's right,” said Nat. “A damned shame.”
They looked remarkably alike without having the least bit of the similarity of twins.
“Brothers,” Monk said, “I claim I was obeying the instinctive promptings of nature, although maybe a
little abruptly. What's the harm in that?”
“Let's smear the big goon, Jay.”
“Let's.”
Alarmed, Monk said, “Hey, hold on! I never even spoke to the gal!”
“You were going to.”
“Sure,” said Monk frankly.
The red-head had gone on down the street as if nothing at all had happened, as if she didn't know that
anything was occurring.
“You cad!” said Jay.
Monk began to get mad. “I'll apologize to the girl, but not to you guys,” he said. “And in about ten
seconds, I am going to start operations on you two birds!” He put his package down.
Nat and Jay thought this over.
“You lay off Doris,” Jay said.
He and Nat walked off.
Monk stood there, feeling he had just experienced one of the less notable experiences of his career.
Monk rubbed his jaw uncomfortably. With a gloomy expression, he picked up the package of joke stuff.
“Maybe Doc was right about us cutting down on the horseplay,” he said.
HAM BROOKS opened the apartment door for Monk Mayfair, watched Monk walk into the gloomy,
dignified parlor, then closed the door slowly. Ham wasn't grinning. Monk stalked over and sat in a chair,
his homely face wearing a rather sour smirk, and leaned back. His eyes traveled over the room, moving
from object to object rather sulkily. He did not condescend to speak to Ham or even acknowledge his
presence.
“So you got over your tizzy,” Ham said.
Monk pretended the room was empty.
Ham nibbled his lips in exasperation, apparently on the horns of a dilemma. His inclination was to follow
his usual procedure, and dish out a few genial insults. But he had something else on his mind, something
that was puzzling him, and also beginning to bother him, the more he thought of it.
“Paper clips,” Ham said tentatively, “are getting scarce. They're so scarce in fact, because of the war
shortage, that you practically keep track of each one you have.”
Monk ignored this also.
Ham continued, “I took another look at what was left of the paper clip that was in the light socket. It had
an unusual shape, and I happened to remember there should be such a clip holding together some papers
on my desk in the next room, so I went in there and looked. But that paper clip was gone.”
Monk was motionless, silent, and unresponsive.
Ham lost his temper.
“You homely gossoon!” he yelled. “I'm trying to tell you that somebody stole that paper clip off my desk
and stuck it in the lamp.”
“Somebody!” Monk shouted. “The somebody was you!”
“I did not!”
“It was a kid gag. That is all I can say. A half-witted three-year-old would pull about such a trick.”
“I tell you—”
“Honk, honk, honk!” said Monk. “That's the way you laughed, like a jackass braying.”
Ham waved his arms wildly, while six or seven insulting retorts piled up on his tongue. He got control of
himself. He smoothed down his hair with his hands, then made a pleading gesture.
“Look, Monk,” Ham said. “Lord knows, I might have short-circuited that lamp to shock and startle you
if I had thought of it. But it happens I didn't. And it happens that I got a funny feeling sitting in the room
here thinking about it after you left.”
“It couldn't be your conscience bothering you,” Monk said. “That fellow turned up his toes a long time
ago.”
Ham continued patiently, “I had the impression, sitting here in the room, that there was another presence
here in the room with me.”
“Now I suppose you got a ghost gag,” Monk growled.
“Wait a minute. It wasn't a ghostly feeling. I mean, it wasn't imagination. You know how, when a dog or
a cat or another animal or a human being is in the same room with you, you know it by the small sounds
they make, the stirrings and breathings and—well—nothing that lives is still for very long, as a usual thing.
It was sounds like those that I got the idea I was hearing. I wouldn't call them ghostly sounds.”
“But the room was empty?”
“Yes.”
“Honk, honk, honk!” Monk jeered, “Laugh some more, you clothesrack.”
Ham glared. “You want me to tell you what is keeping me from kissing you gently over the head with the
handiest chair?”
“A slight idea of the consequences of such an act,” said Monk grimly. “If you ever—”
“No,” Ham said. “The lights won't go on.”
“Eh?”
“None of the lights in the apartment will light.”
MONK was not greatly impressed. He said, “The paper clip made a short-circuit in the socket and
caused the fuse to blow. Just put in a new fuse—”
“I did.”
“And no lights?”
“No lights.”
“As dumb as you are about electricity, you probably stuck the fuse in the hole where the rubber plug
goes in the bathtub.”
“Now you're being childish.”
“Honk, honk, honk!” Monk said.
“Oh, stop that! Somebody has tampered with the wiring in the apartment. The wires are cut. I called the
building superintendent, and the current isn't off in the building. Just in this apartment.”
“Now I suppose you're getting ready to say you saw two yellow spots the size of dimes about five feet
off the floor?”
“No, I didn't. But as a matter of fact, I sat in here thinking about what you had said all the time that I had
that feeling I mentioned—the impression that I was hearing sounds that a live pet or a person would
make if they were in the same room with you. I tell you, Monk, it wasn't imagination and there wasn't
anything ghostly about it. There was something in here.”
Monk contemplated Ham suspiciously for a while. “Get a flashlight.”
“Why?”
“Let's take a look at this room.”
“But what's wrong with the light from the window? The window opens on a court, I know, but there is
light enough to read a newspaper. Plenty of light to see—”
“Get a flashlight,” said Monk. “All this place needs is a coffin and a corpse to make it my idea of a tomb.
And don't tell me again about dignified surroundings. Get a flashlight.”
Ham thought of some things he could say about Monk's ultra-modernistic penthouse in the Wall Street
neighborhood. The penthouse was Ham's idea of a futuristic nightmare. However, he held it back.
As soon as he was in the hall, he heard the door locked behind him.
“What's the idea of locking the door?” he called.
“I'm locking both doors,” Monk said. “If there's anything in here, I'll keep it here.”
Ham frowned at the door, strangely disturbed. Then he went to find a flashlight. He caught
himself—several times—twisting his head quickly to look over his shoulder, and the fact that he would be
doing such a thing bothered him. It was an unconscious act, the kind of a thing a man does when the
sense of danger is heavy on his mind. Now what's the matter with me? Ham thought: I shouldn't be easily
jittered, because I've been around danger often enough, Heaven knows. But I'm acting genuinely scared.
The idea of his fear preyed on him as he hunted for the flashlight. He had forgotten where he had put the
flash—or it wasn't where it should be, although it was ridiculous to think that the flash could have been
taken. It was, when you came to that, also ridiculous to think that the light wires had been cut. The whole
thing was improbable, and yet he could not push away an impression of danger which weighed heavily on
his consciousness.
The sound, when he heard it, was not very loud. It was a single thudding jar. But for all the commonness
of the sound, it whipped across Ham's nerves, and he raced headlong for the north parlor.
The parlor door, when he reached it, was closed and locked. He hammered the door with his fists,
shouted, “Monk! Monk!” And his grim certainty was justified when he got no answer. He threw his
weight against the door. It wasn't strong, and burst open.
“Monk!” he said to the empty room.
Standing there, listening, getting no answer, Ham knew that none of his sensations of fear, and none of
the same feelings which Monk had admitted having, were as senseless and unmotivated as they had
seemed.
The other door was locked. So was the window.
“Monk!” Ham yelled. “What happened? Where are you?”
Monk's voice, answering him, was not speech or words or even outcry. It was a sound that Ham would
hear in nightmares for a long time. It was a gurgling from a throat through which life seemed to be trying
to escape. It came, Ham believed, from outside, in the hall.
“Monk!” Ham shouted. “My God!”
Chapter II
DOC SAVAGE, arriving at Ham Brooks' apartment on Park Avenue, wore a pin-stripe blue suit and an
inconspicuous gray hat. But the taxi driver knew him, and an autograph collector recognized him and
nearly got run down in the traffic trying to reach his car.
Doc Savage pretended to take the recognition casually, politely, but he was embarrassed. It was an old
story, the way he attracted attention in public, yet it still made him feel uncomfortable. Secretly, he had
always considered his reputation overdone, a thing taller than he was.
His spectacular physical appearance, of course, accounted for most of the notice. He was a giant bronze
man with straight hair of bronze only slightly darker than his skin, and with unusual flake gold eyes. His
size was the main thing. His proportions were symmetrical enough that he did not seem large when he
stood by himself, but in a taxicab, or with other people, or anywhere that his size could be compared to
ordinary objects, he was an outstanding figure.
His work naturally attracted attention, too. It was work that reeked of adventure, of mystery, or
strangeness, so naturally people were interested. The very idea that a man's profession was
trouble-shooting other people's troubles was enough to arouse interest.
Ham Brooks' didn't have a natural color.
“I'm glad you could come right away, Doc.” Ham said.
Doc studied him a moment. “You look about as bad as you sounded over the telephone.”
“The thing got my goat,” Ham admitted.
“Any trace of Monk?”
Ham shook his head. “Come in here. I'll show you where it happened.”
The austere north parlor had a cool, rigid dignity, a gloomy unresponsiveness. Doc Savage had just come
in from the bright sunlight of the street, so the place seemed especially dim.
Ham said, suddenly hating the room, “Monk kept talking about the place being a tomb. Now it seems
like that to me. I'm going to brighten up the place.”
“Both doors were locked?”
“Yes.”
“Where were the keys?”
“On the inside. The window was fastened on the inside too.”
“What about the fireplace?”
“The screen was still in place.”
Doc Savage went over to the fireplace, saw that the logs and firebrick were neat, that there had never
been a fire in the fireplace. So if anyone had been in the chimney, there would be no soot.
He put a hand up the chimney and rubbed, bringing down crumbles of mortar. There were no particles of
mortar in the fireplace, other than those he had brought down.
“No one climbed the chimney.”
“No.”
“What about trick panels in the walls or floor?”
“Not a chance,” Ham said.
“The light wires?”
Ham showed the bronze man where they were cut. The job had been done at the fuse-box, the cut end
of the cable then jammed back into the conduit which led to the fuse-box. The fuse-box was in the
kitchen which Ham, being a bachelor, didn't use much.
“It took an electrician's cutting pliers to do that,” Doc said. “Whoever was here came prepared.”
Ham nodded soberly. “When Monk turned on the floor lamp, earlier in the morning, there was current.
That means the cable was cut between the time Monk left and came back.”
“Were you here all that time?”
“Yes.”
Hear anything?”
摘要：

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

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