Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 131 - Plan of a One-Eyed Mystic

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ACCORDING TO PLAN OF A ONE-EYED
MYSTIC
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
He had a queer little face, the face of an imp. He was a small man, built like a mosquito. Fragile limbs and
a fragile body. His skin was about the same color as the brown-leather suitcase he carried. He was one
of the passengers in the air line's limousine in which Renny Renwick rode from the Grand Central Air
Lines ticket office out to LaGuardia Field. But in the beginning Renny Renwick paid no attention to the
small brown fellow, for Renny had other things on his mind.
Renny was taking a vacation. For two weeks or so, he was going to stop being Colonel John Renwick,
the eminent engineer and member of Doc Savage's group of five aids. Renny was going to fish.
He held his hands apart as far as he could, illustrating the size of the fish he was going to snag.
“That big,” he said.
Doc Savage was riding out to the airport to see Renny off on the vacation. So were Monk Mayfair and
Ham Brooks, the latter pair being two more of the group of five assistants.
Doc said, “This will be the first vacation you have had, Renny.”
“Yes. I'm slipping in my old age,” Renny said, grinning.
There was no truth in the statement, and they both knew it. Renny, with his great size, big fists, homely
face, and his exclamation of, “Holy cow!” for every unusual situation, wasn't slipping. Not at all. The thing
he still liked most was excitement.
But things were slow enough for a little vacation. Things did not often get that slow, so Renny was taking
advantage of it.
“If something comes up that looks good,” Renny said, “be sure and let me know about it.”
“Of course,” Doc Savage assured him.
Doc Savage was a giant bronze man whose appearance was almost as astonishing as his reputation. His
bronze hair was only a little darker than his skin, and his eyes, one of his most spectacular features, were
like pools of flake gold always stirred by tiny winds. He was obviously a man of great physical strength.
They were known all over the world—Doc Savage and his group—for their rather fantastic profession of
pursuing fantastic adventure, of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers who seemed to be outside the
reach of the law.
Renny rubbed his hands together.
“Fish this long.” He illustrated again, exaggerating. “And Norman Monaghan's camp cooking—yum,
yum! Brother, I'm going to have me a couple of weeks of peace and plenty.”
The limousine, a sleek streamlined affair, rushed along in luxury and silence. It was a fall day, crisp and
bright.
Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks got into a fuss. It began mildly over Monk's pet pig or Ham's pet
chimpanzee whichever had chewed up one of Ham's dress gloves. From a mild start, in a couple of
minutes, Monk and Ham were threatening to tear each other's heads off.
The row didn't mean anything except that Monk and Ham were feeling good.
The queer little brown imp of a man showed no interest in them, except once, when he glanced at
them—and Renny realized the little imp had one eye.
The little brown man was wearing a brown patch over his left eye.
AT the airport, Renny shook hands around, said good-bys, took some good-natured ribbing about the
microscopic size of the fish he'd probably catch, and prepared to board the plane.
“You say this Norman Monaghan is a good cook?” asked Monk.
“Swell. A fine woods cook. It's his hobby. That, and fishing,” Renny said enthusiastically.
“I hope he's got patience enough to put up with you for two weeks,” said Monk, chuckling.
“Monaghan is a nice guy. I met him when I designed the building for the bank of which he's a vice
president. We've been fishing a couple of times together. He's great. I hope you can meet him sometime.”
“Sure. Get us a picture of the fish.”
Ham said, “If he does that, he'd better take along a camera with a magnifying lens.”
Renny got on the plane.
He found that he shared his seat with the little brown one-eyed imp.
The plane rolled to the other end of the runway, the pilot tested the motors, then they took off. Renny
was an expert pilot, with several hundred hours in heavy transport ships, and he liked the way the pilot
handled this craft. The pilot was good.
Renny settled back to relax. The plane climbed, then flew westward smoothly.
The performance of the plane was soothing. Renny, having nothing else to do, decided to practice a
method of relaxing which he had seen Doc Savage use. Renny wasn't sure of the exact procedure, but it
seemed to consist of consciously relaxing each part of the body, then keeping the mind on something
soothing and sleepy so that the muscles wouldn't tighten up again. He tried it for a while. By gosh, it
seemed to work!
THE one-eyed little imp now spoke.
“Stupid,” he said.
“Eh?” said Renny, opening one eye.
“Is that yoga you are trying?”
“I don't know what it is,” Renny said. “Why?”
“You do it stupidly.”
“Nobody asked you for advice,” Renny said, and closed his eyes and prepared to resume his relaxing.
But the little imp wasn't discouraged. In fact, he was indignant. He seemed to be insulted. Renny had
intended to offend him just enough—if the fellow wanted to be offended—that the man would shut up.
But the little man was too insulted to become silent.
“You stupid idiot!” he said to Renny.
“That,” said Renny, “is three times you've flipped that word stupid around. The fourth time might get you
a skinned nose.”
The little man pointed a finger at Renny with great indignation. “You are attempting the diversion of the
senses from the external world and the concentration of thought within.”
“Eh?”
“You,” said the little imp, “are as clumsy as a cow at it.”
“Yeah? Maybe you could do better!”
The small man gave Renny a look of frightful injury. “You are being sarcastic, of course. That is because
you do not know who I am.”
“That's right. Who are you?”
“You would not realize if I told you!”
Renny's impulse was to grin. The little brown fellow was so cocky, so indignantly serious, and making his
pronouncements with such a profound significance, as if each one of them was going to stop the world,
that he was funny.
“All right, tell me who you are,” said Renny. “Let's see if I know.”
That made the small man more angry. He slapped his chest. “It is wasting the essence of inner dynamic
fluidity to talk this way to you. You are nothing. You are bones and some meat. That thing you think is
your mind is a rusted, worthless tool. A sponge too dried out to soak up anything.”
“Dumb, in other words,” said Renny.
“Exactly.” The little man leaned forward. “Do you really want to know who I am?”
“Frankly, I don't give the least part of a damn,” said Renny.
The one-eyed imp slapped his chest again. It sounded as if he had hit a small drum.
“I,” he said, “am Cici, the omnipotent. In the Central Council of the Fartherest Inward, I am the most
completely self-equipped.”
“I hope you know you're not making sense,” Renny said.
“I am Cici, of Kukilcuaca,” the imp said. “You do not know where Kukilcuaca is, doubtless. It is in
Mexico, a very remote part of Mexico. Have you ever been in Mexico?”
Renny said, “I've been in Mexico, and I never heard of—”
“Kukilcuaca is in the part of Mexico where you weren't,” said the indignant small brown man. “No one,
no one of your kind I mean, has seen it. Few have seen it. But I, Cici, am the most honored there. I am
the mystic. There has been, in twenty generations, no other great enough to be the mystic.”
He leaned back and sneered at Renny.
“That,” he concluded, “is who I am.”
Renny's grin loosened, and finally faded. The little goof was making him uncomfortable. The imp was
some kind of a nut, of course, and like anybody else Renny was never very comfortable in the presence
of an eccentric.
“O. K.,” said Renny sourly. “Now that we've settled that, how about some peace and quiet?”
The one-eyed mystic gave Renny a look which contained much more hate than the situation seemed to
warrant.
“You,” he told Renny, “have offended me grievously. I do not let such offenses go unpunished.”
Renny got a little indignant himself.
“You keep fooling with me and you'll get your behind paddled,” Renny said.
Then he leaned back and closed his eyes, ignoring the other.
Later, Renny realized that it was somewhat strange that he should go to sleep almost immediately.
A HAND, shaking his shoulder, aroused Renny, although the awakening was slow. He tried to speak, to
say that he was awake, but the words sounded thick and strange.
“Wake up, Palsy,” a voice said. “Snap out of it. You're almost home.”
Renny said, “Sure, sure,” and it was another mumble.
Getting his eyes open was a job which he finally managed. He was, he decided, in a taxicab.
The cab driver, a thick-necked individual with a pocked face that would look better behind jail bars, was
leaning back over the seat.
“Wake up, Palsy,” he said.
“I'm awake,” Renny managed to say fairly distinctly.
“O. K. Then I'll take you on to the hotel.” The cab driver leered. “Thought you might want to be awake
when you got there, in case there might be somebody unfriendly around.”
Renny muttered, “Who do you mean?”
The cabby winked. “I don't know nothing, Palsy.”
“Stop calling me pal!” Renny said.
The driver shrugged. He sank back behind the wheel, and the taxi resumed progress.
“What the devil's the matter with me?”—Renny wondered. “Why does my brain feel so foggy? What—”
“Holy cow!” Renny gasped.
Where was the plane? Why wasn't he in it? What on earth had happened to him?
He leaned forward, took his head in both hands, and squeezed his temples. They ached. He managed to
straighten out his thoughts—and he was quite positive that he should be in a plane en route from New
York to Kansas City.
Why wasn't he in the plane? What place was this? Where was he now?
“Driver!” Renny said. “What town is this?”
He was amazed at how hoarse and thick his voice sounded.
The driver glanced around. “Who you kidding, Palsy?”
“Never mind,” Renny said.
Renny had gotten a look at his hands. They were pale, unhealthy-looking. They should have been
healthily tanned. Renny's fists were—or should have been—enormous things, neither of which would
have gone into a quart pail. But the hands looked smaller, and they felt drawn, as if they were trying to
pucker themselves to become even smaller. The fingernails, Renny realized with loathing, seemed to be
tinted like a girl's.
“Holy cow!” he muttered.
THE taxicab stopped in front of a cheap-looking hotel, the driver saying, “Here you are, Palsy.”
Renny looked around instinctively for his traveling bag, his bait box, and the case containing his fishing
rods. There was no such equipment in the cab.
“Where . . . where's my fishing stuff?” he asked.
The cab driver laughed. “You're a great kidder, Palsy.”
Renny wanted to ask a lot of questions. But he didn't like the driver, and he didn't feel up to talking now,
anyway. His head was too thick. He felt dazed.
The meter said fifty cents. Renny gave the driver the fare, and a quarter tip, out of habit.
Sounding dissatisfied, the driver said, “Palsy, you generally give me five bucks for hauling you.”
Renny, dazed and out of patience, muttered, “I'll give you a knot on the head if you start anything.”
The driver grinned somewhat fawningly. “Now you sound more like yourself, Palsy.”
Renny entered the hotel, and he was not surprised to discover that he had no recollection of having been
in the place before. It was a strange hotel.
Not knowing what else to do, Renny approached the room clerk's desk.
The clerk, a thin fellow with a dough sack for a face, tossed a key down in front of Renny, saying, “There
you are, Mr. Gerson.”
Renny picked up the key. Seven-fourteen. He considered, for a moment, giving the clerk an argument
and asking some of the questions that were beginning to swarm up in the fog that filled his brain. But he
was in no mental condition to talk intelligently.
He rode to the seventh floor in an elevator that had an odor. The key let him into seven-fourteen.
The room, not in the least like the rest of the hotel in appearance, was extremely flashy. The furniture was
elaborate, but very cheap. There were pillows everywhere, on the floor, in the chairs. The place smelled
strongly of cheap incense.
Renny could see nothing anywhere that he recognized as belonging to him.
He stood there, peering about from aching eyes, and finally said, “Holy cow!” again, explosively.
He stumbled to the writing desk, pawed open a drawer, and found the hotel stationery:
HOTEL PRINCE ROYAL
KANSAS CITY, MO.
Well, at least he was in Kansas City.
He made for the bathroom, where there would be a mirror. Because he had seen his hands earlier, he
was somewhat prepared for what he saw when he looked into the mirror. But he gave a horrified croak
at the sight.
Chapter II
THE face in the mirror was somewhat the size and shape of the countenance Renny had been
accustomed to shaving mornings. But that was about as far as the resemblance went. The visage which
confronted him in the mirror was undeniably evil, dissipated, unpleasant. The complexion was pasty—as
bad as the coloring of the clerk downstairs—and the eyebrows were a rusty red, as was the hair. Renny
didn't have red hair. The face wasn't his.
Scowling at the face, Renny said, “I'll take another look at you later.”
He stumbled back into the living room. He was very tired. I feel, he thought, like the morning after a
tough night.
He sank down in a chair, rested his head against the back, and endeavored to get his brain to do
something that bore some resemblance to thinking. The effort was not very successful. He could
recollect, with a hazy unreality, what had happened since he had awakened a few minutes ago in the
taxicab. But before that—back to the time he had leaned back in his seat in the plane and gone to
sleep—there was a gap.
He could recall the little brown one-eyed imp who had said he was a mystic, whatever that was. Renny
grimaced. The mystic was certainly a nut. Renny couldn't recall having disliked anyone so intensely on
such a short acquaintance.
He did get one foggy idea, which led him to pick up the telephone, and, when the girl's voice
sounded—the telephone operator at the hotel, probably—he asked, “What date is this? What day of the
month?”
“Why, Friday, Mr. Gerson,” said the operator.
Friday! Renny had left New York on Thursday.
“Friday, the first week in October?” Renny asked.
“Yes.”
At least, there was only one day gap in his life.
“O. K.,” Renny said. “Thanks.”
“Mr. Gerson,” said the operator.
“Eh?”
“I heard from the hospital. You just broke Betty's arm, that was all.”
Renny jumped. “I— Holy cow! I broke a girl's arm! When?”
“Oh, Mr. Gerson, you say the cutest things,” the operator simpered. “It was last night. Don't you
remember?”
“No! I don't remember!”
The operator said, still simpering, “It's all right, Palsy. You scared Betty good, and she won't dare say
anything to a cop.”
Renny blinked. “I scared her good, eh?”
“You sure did. Betty is deathly afraid of a knife.”
Renny's eyes went to the chest of drawers, and he mumbled, “Thanks,” and hung up. He went to the
chest of drawers, stood ogling the knife lying there.
The knife was about the most vicious-looking thing Renny had seen in the way of knives. He bent close,
eyeing it. And the short hairs on the back of his neck got on end. For there were, unless he was badly
mistaken, dried bloodstains on the knife blade.
He tried to say, “Holy cow!” and didn't say anything.
HE sank in the chair again, making another attempt to remember something about what could have
happened to him. His thinking efforts got him nothing but a foggy aching. He got out and prowled.
He prowled the clothes closet. None of the clothing there was at all familiar. And the gaudy suits with a
zoot cut were things he wouldn't have been seen dead in. Alarmed by the zoot suits, he went into the
bathroom for another look at that sinful face—and the suit he was wearing. It was a zooter, all right.
He was startled enough to go a foot off the floor when the door opened and a girl came in.
She wasn't a bad-looking girl, was his first thought.
“Hy'ah, Palsy,” she said.
No, not at all hard on the eyes.
“Good afternoon,” Renny said uncomfortably.
“My, my, how formal,” said the girl. “What's cookin', snookins?” She threw herself into a chair and got
out a cigarette. “Got a light, blight?”
There was nothing which nauseated Renny quite like the clang-slang which swing addicts affected. But,
this was one of the smallest of his worries at the present moment. He fumbled instinctively in a pocket
and found an awful lighter of onyx and chrome which he had never seen before, as far as he recalled. He
furnished a light.
The girl—she looked O. K. at close range, too—blew smoke in Renny's face. “Thanks, tank,” she said.
Renny took a deep breath.
“Would you mind telling me just who you are?” he inquired.
The girl waved her cigarette.
“That's a new one on Dolly,” she said. “What's the rib, Palsy?”
“I merely wish to ascertain your identity.”
Still more astonished, the girl said, “Me? I'm Dolly. I'm the spare rib. I'm the girl friend.”
“You're my girl friend!” Renny squawked.
She scowled at him suspiciously.
“Say, you're talkin' funny, Palsy. What is this? What goes, boze? Is this a new kind of brush-off?” She
pointed her cigarette at Renny. Her voice rose in anger. “Say, if you're trying to air me—”
“You misunderstand entirely,” Renny said. But she looked so angry that he was moved to try a little clang
talk on her to bring peace. “It's still love, dove. Put out the fire. All is slick, chick.”
Dolly relaxed.
“That's more like,” she said. “For a minute, you were sounding like a dictionary. It had me guessing.”
Renny was silent. Confused was a mild word to explain the way he felt.
Dolly was watching him. She pointed her cigarette at him. “Where were you last night, Palsy?”
“Last night?”
“We had a date. Why'd you give me the stand-up?”
“Uh . . . did I?” said Renny.
“I didn't like that, rat. You better explain. Trot out your reasons.”
Renny was in no mood for a scrap with a strange female who seemed to have a claim on him.
“I . . . uh . . . had business,” he muttered.
He thought it was a bum excuse, but surprisingly, it did the job. Dolly nodded.
“I get it,” she said. “You want me to say we were together anyway? If so, where'd we go?”
Renny had his mouth open trying to think what on earth he would say to that, when the telephone rang.
The hotel phone operator's voice told him, “Some gentlemen to see you. Spike and Steve and Bernie and
Lucky. They're on their way up.”
Renny replaced the receiver.
“Who was that?” asked Dolly.
Renny said, “Four gentlemen named Spike, Steve, Bernie and Lucky are on their way up here.”
“Oh, gosh, bosh!” Dolly jumped to her feet. “I'm going to blow. Those guys give me the chills, honey. Be
seeing you. Now I fly; good-by.”
She opened the door and left.
Renny stood in the middle of the floor and thought: Wow! From what I've seen of this face of mine, it
should give anybody the chills. But she said these four fellows who are coming up gave her the chills.
Holy cow! I wonder what they'll be like? Clock-stoppers, doubtless.
The four arrivals were up to expectations.
THE quartet came sliding into the room as if they were afraid there was something behind them. A
policeman, probably.
Renny looked them over, and he thought, “What do you know! They look worse than I do!”
“Hy'ah, Palsy,” they said.
By now Renny had gathered that his identity was supposed to be someone named Palsy Gerson, a fellow
who broke girls' arms, frightened them with knives, gave five-dollar tips to lug taxi drivers, and no telling
what else.
Renny looked them over.
“Look at me,” he said.
They examined him.
“Am I Palsy Gerson?” Renny asked.
They seemed to consider this a strange remark, judging from the startled glances they exchanged.
“What's the matter, Palsy?” one asked. “Hangover?”
Renny shrugged.
It now occurred to Renny that the four visitors looked determined in a grimly unpleasant way. He began
to wonder what business had brought them. And how was he going to get the information? Maybe he
had summoned them, and was supposed to get the ball rolling? He wished his head was clearer.
They solved the problem.
They unbuttoned their coats and vests and held them open. All of them did this simultaneously. Evidently
they wanted to demonstrate that there were no guns in underarm holsters. They also slapped their
pockets expressively.
“We're clean, Palsy,” the spokesman, who had a bad squint, said. “This is a peace talk.”
“Yeah?” Renny said.
The spokesman said, “We been pals, ain't we, Palsy? We been working together for a long time. We
been like that.” He held up crossed fingers to show how they had been. “Ain't that right.”
“So what?” said Renny, fishing for information. “Get at what you've got to say.”
The spokesman's eyes moved shiftily.
“We ain't rats,” he said. “We never ratted on you, not even when you knocked off that pin-ball machine
collector just because he cussed you, Palsy.”
Renny felt the most unpleasant of chills. Knocked off? That was talk that meant murder. Was he a killer?
“Holy cow!” he said.
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” Renny said hastily. “Go ahead and talk.”
摘要：

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

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