Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 126 - The Mental Monster

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THE MENTAL MONSTER
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE WHITE BIRD
? Chapter II. TROUBLE IS A WHITE BIRD
? Chapter III. THE SECOND ACCIDENT
? Chapter IV. THE GIRL AND THE BIRD
? Chapter V. THE BIRDS IN HAND
? Chapter VI. NORTH PRINCE, 708
? Chapter VII. THE RACE
? Chapter VIII. THE MENTAL MYSTERY
? Chapter IX. TRUTH AND THE TRAP
? Chapter X. FLIGHT WEST
? Chapter XI. WATCHER
? Chapter XII. MOUNTAIN TROUBLE
? Chapter XIII. FLIGHT OF THE BIRDS
? Chapter XIV. THE DEVILS DRUM
? Chapter XV. THE MIND READER
? Chapter XVI. SALT ON THEIR TAILS
Scanned and proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE WHITE BIRD
HIS name was Bill Keeley. William Jerome Keeley, if it was necessary to give his full name, he said.
He had quite a bit of trouble getting to see Doc Savage. Probably trouble was not the right word.
Difficulty would be a better word. There really wasn't any trouble just then.
He began by not wanting to see Doc Savage.
“I want to see Renny Renwick,” he explained. “Renny Renwick is an old pal of mine. We built a dam
together in Africa before the world got so crazy.”
He told this to a receptionist, to another receptionist, to a couple of guards, and finally to another guy
who didn't seem to have much authority either.
“Now look here!” said Bill Keeley. “I'm not here to pick old Renny's pocket or sell him any insurance. If
the big-fisted bull-voiced lug don't want to see me, let him say so, and it'll be O. K. It'll be O. K. I'll kick
his teeth in the next time I run across the big palooka. But it'll be O. K.”
“Mr. Renwick,” said the superreceptionist, “is out of the city. He is, to tell the truth, out of the country.”
“Where is he?”
“That,” said the superoffice boy, “is something I can't tell you. The man is building a highway for the U. S.
army in an unnamed place, and that's more than I'm really supposed to tell you.”
“Well,” said Bill Keeley, “why the hell didn't somebody say so before this?”
Bill Keeley was an ample young man who somehow looked as if he would be more at home pushing a
wheelbarrow of concrete up a ramp and dumping it into a power dam in some jungle. The suns had
burned him and things had scarred his fists, and he had the mellow ease of a young man who had been
around. He had the air, too, of a young man who wasn't accustomed to being thrown out of places.
This last air, the atmosphere of being at home in good intelligent surroundings, told something else about
Bill Keeley. He was a young man who accomplished things. He wasn't a tough. There might be scars and
horns on his fists, and his hide might be thick, but his mind was light and agile, like a bounding fawn. It
was the kind of mind that traveled fast, his conversation indicated. As fast as a deer, to make a
comparison.
The superreceptionist said, “I am supposed to ask a routine question. Renny Renwick is an associate of
Doc Savage, and they work closely together. Is your business with Renwick anything which Doc Savage
could handle?”
Bill Keeley opened his mouth; obviously he was about to make an answer. But he didn't speak. Instead,
he thought deeply for a while.
“What's the chance,” he asked, “of my having lunch with Doc Savage?”
“I'll see.”
The other went away and came back later and said it was arranged, that Doc Savage would have lunch
with Bill Keeley in twenty minutes in a restaurant in the neighborhood.
The restaurant didn't sound like one in which there would be a mysterious white bird.
BILL KEELEY didn't pay much attention to the restaurant as they went in, because he was too
interested in Doc Savage. Bill was embarrassed, and he apologized immediately.
“This comes under the heading of a danged imposition, Mr. Savage,” he said. “You see, I don't know
you, and you don't know me. But when I found Renny wasn't here, it was just an impulse that led me to
ask you to have lunch with me.”
“Did the impulse have any connection with business?” Doc asked.
“Yes, it did,” said Bill Keeley.
Doc Savage had impressed Bill Keeley a great deal, now that he was looking at the so-called Man of
Bronze at close range. Bill had heard stories of Doc Savage all over the world, and Renny Renwick had
told him some very graphic and hair-raising ones. Doc Savage was supposed to be strictly a scientific
product, the result of a completely unnatural youth and early manhood, for his father had placed him in
the hands of scientists for training from babyhood. As a result, Doc Savage was supposed to be a
somewhat freakish combination of mental genius, muscular marvel and scientific wizard.
Doc Savage, it was known, followed the unusual career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers who
were outside the law, often carrying his profession to the remote corners of the earth. How Doc Savage
made such a bizarre career profitable, Bill Keeley didn't know. He understood, though, that Doc had a
source of secret wealth somewhere. Renny had mentioned this once.
(This source of gold is a lost valley in a little-known Central American republic. The place is far from the
usual air lanes and almost unexplored. The valley is watched over by descendants of ancient Maya, and
Doc has but to broadcast a request at a certain hour any seventh day to have a pack train load of gold
come out of the mountain fastnesses. This was the scene of Doc Savage's first adventure, The Man of
Bronze.)
“Business,” Doc Savage said. “You mean your own business.”
“No,” said Bill Keeley. “Your kind of business.”
The restaurant was a pleasant place done in dark-stained wood. There was no music and no loud
conversation. The silver seemed unusually bright and the linen remarkably crisp. Doc Savage was known
in the place. They were taken to a secluded table, one which the bronze man evidently used regularly.
Bill Keeley noticed that, as Doc Savage sat, he could not be recognized by the other diners, but he could
keep an eye on what went on in the restaurant by watching a mirror.
“You know,” Bill said, “I'm a little stricken by awe.”
Doc Savage's metallic features had been rather expressionless. But now he smiled. “Nonsense,” he said.
“Be sure and order the corn bread. It is very good here.”
Bill laughed. “Liking corn bread makes you home folks, as far as I'm concerned.”
He was more at ease. He studied Doc Savage a moment, thinking that, at close range, the man certainly
looked the part of his reputation. Savage did not seem such a giant when you were a few yards away
from him, but when you stood close, the remarkable size of the man was evident, as was the evidence of
fabulous strength in the play of sinews in his neck and on the backs of his hands. The bronze man's
strange golden eyes, like pools of flake gold always stirred by tiny winds, were impressive also.
“What did you mean—my kind of business?” Doc asked.
Bill Keeley moved a little in his chair. He took a drink of water. He was uncomfortable, it was plain. And
he was uneasy.
“I'm Bill Keeley, engineer,” he said. “I'm connected with the Black Pagoda Co., one of the big concerns
which is making rubber out of alcohol and other things. They claim that makes me indispensable. They
wouldn't let me join the army. Now ain't that a hell of a note?”
“They said,” Doc suggested, “that you were more valuable to the war effort doing what you were
doing?”
“That's right. I don't agree. Say, how can I get around those brass hats and get where there's some
fighting?”
Doc Savage looked rather strange for a moment.
“If you find a way,” he said, “let me know.”
Bill Keeley grinned at him. “Hey, you don't mean they pulled the same gag on you? Told you to keep on
with the same work you were doing?”
“That is right,” Doc admitted.
“I'll be damned!” Bill said. “Well, I can see how you do more good doing the kind of work you do. But
you take me, I'm just an engineer.”
“This the business you wanted to talk about?”
“No.”
“And it is the kind of business in which I would be interested?”
“Very.”
“That means,” said Doc Savage, “that it should be something too unusual for the police to handle, and
something involving a great deal of trouble.”
“Yes,” said Bill Keeley. “It's about a strange white bird.”
BILL KEELEY was a very scared man.
Doc Savage realized that suddenly, about the same time that it dawned on him that Bill Keeley was an
excellent actor. Any man who could hide his feelings so well was an actor of ability. The young man was
in a state of terror. But he had been carrying on with what even Doc had thought was a casual air.
The young man had a tight hold on his fear. He was holding it between his teeth, almost, judging from the
way he clenched his teeth whenever he was not speaking. And when his hands were still, they were
always still on a chair or holding arm, a knife or a fork, or something else they could clench in
desperation. The way he was feeling was showing in these and other ways.
“Did you say white bird?” Doc Savage asked.
Bill Keeley breathed inward deeply, as if he was afraid he wouldn't get to take another breath.
“Hold it,” he said. “Let me tell you more about Bill Keeley. It'll help you get the picture.”
“Go ahead.”
“I meant to tell you about Carole,” said Bill Keeley. “Carole is my girl. We're engaged. And I'm not just
bragging about a girl either. Carole is a very special girl, but then every guy who has a girl he's gone on
thinks she's very special, and there's none other like her. So I'm not telling you about her because she is
so special.”
“The girl,” suggested Doc Savage, “has something to do with the business you think I'd be interested in?”
“That's it, I'm afraid.”
“And with the white bird?”
Bill Keeley jumped, much as if he'd been slapped. Then he looked uncomfortable. “I guess it's got my
goat,” he said. “I jump even when I hear it mentioned.”
Doc Savage studied the young man closely. The waiter was bringing the appetizer, oysters on the half
shell, and they were both silent.
“You have had a few adventures in your life,” Doc Savage suggested.
“I've made a few mistakes,” Bill Keeley admitted. “That's what adventures are, aren't they? Mistakes?”
“That has always been my definition,” Doc agreed.
“Well, I've had a few.”
“What about this white bird?”
“Well,” Bill Keeley said, “it's not very large, and—”
He became silent. He didn't just stop speaking. The words froze in his throat, his speech muscles holding
them in a cramp. He lost color, a great deal of color for so ruddy an outdoor-looking man.
“There.” He pointed. “I won't have to describe it now.”
THE white bird was fluttering around the restaurant. It circled slowly, and it flew like any other small bird,
but it was white.
The head waiter of the restaurant was looking at the bird indignantly, for the restaurant was proud of its
calm elite atmosphere. This bird certainly didn't fit in with the dignity of the place. It was not a very
clean-looking bird, either.
Suddenly the head waiter stuck a finger in the air. This was to summon other waiters. There was nothing
so undignified as handclapping in this restaurant.
Other waiters came, and they began a discreet pursuit of the bird.
They didn't have much luck.
“Oh my!” gasped Bill Keeley. “Oh, murder!”
Doc Savage examined the young man. Bill Keeley had lost still more color. He looked even more
horrified.
“Murder?” Doc said. “You mean literally?”
Bill Keeley looked at Doc. He actually tried twice to speak before he managed it.
He said: “A friend of mine, named Franklin, died. I think he died violently, although the coroner said it
was natural. Just before it happened, he saw one of those birds.”
There was more to it than that. There was obviously a great deal more to it. But Bill Keeley wasn't in any
mental state to tell it coherently.
Bill Keeley stood up.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Watch that bird. Watch it, while I go somewhere and get something to catch it. I
think there is a dry goods store next door. Sure there is. I'll get a few yards of cheesecloth, and we'll net
the bird.”
Bill Keeley left the restaurant, walking rapidly.
The waiters chased the white bird into a window. Some of the less blasé of the diners giggled at the
performance. The head waiter's neck was red. The waiters grabbed here and there, trying to catch the
white bird.
Doc Savage got up suddenly. He went out into the street.
He went into the dry goods store.
Bill Keeley was not there.
Doc approached the restaurant doorman. “Did you notice the young man who came here with me?” he
asked.
“Yes, Mr. Savage,” the doorman said. “He left a few moments ago.”
“Where did he go? Did you notice?”
“He ran like the dickens,” the doorman said. “He got a taxicab. The number of the cab was 343-607.”
He pulled out a notebook in which evidently he had written the cab number. “Yes, 343-607 is right,” he
said.
“Good work,” Doc told the doorman.
“Thank you, sir,” the doorman said. He was tickled pink. “I had hoped to some day be of some slight
service to you, sir.”
Chapter II. TROUBLE IS A WHITE BIRD
IN the restaurant, they had caught the bird. The head waiter had wrapped a napkin around the bird, and
the expression on the head waiter's face promised no good for the bird. He was going to wring the bird's
neck as soon as he could get in the kitchen.
Doc Savage extended a hand. “Do you mind?” Doc said.
“Oh.” The head waiter knew the bronze man. “You wish the bird? Of course. Certainly.”
Doc took the bird. He went to the table, sat down, and told the waiter, “Telephone.”
New York restaurants which are snazzy, and high-priced, have a system of plugging a telephone in at
your table. This one was no exception.
Doc Savage called Johnny Littlejohn. Johnny Littlejohn was actually William Harper Littlejohn, the
eminent archaeologist and geologist, and noted user of big words. Johnny, however, never used any of
his big words on Doc.
“Johnny,” Doc said. “Can you get hold of Long Tom?”
“Long Tom is right here,” Johnny said.
Long Tom was Major Thomas J. Roberts, who looked so unhealthy that undertakers always eyed him
speculatively, and who was one of the world's leading electrical experts.
“Here,” Doc said, “is what I want you to do. First, check up on a company called the Black Pagoda
Co.”
“What do you want to know about the concern? Anything in particular?”
“Find out anything and everything about the concern that you can dig up without taking too much time.”
“Where is the Black Pagoda Co. located?”
“You will have to find that out. But it is a concern that is making rubber out of alcohol products. Probably
one of the new war-time concerns.”
“Right.”
“Second,” said Doc, “find out all you can about a young man named William Jerome Keeley, an engineer
in the employ of the Black Pagoda Co.”
“You want to know all about Bill Keeley?”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
“Bill Keeley,” Doc said, “has a girl friend named Carole. Find out all about her, too.”
“Yes.”
“And about a man named Franklin. Franklin was a friend of Bill Keeley's. Find out when Franklin died,
and from what cause, and if there was anything suspicious about the death.”
“Right,” said Johnny Littlejohn. “Is that all? It sounds as if you had a line on something. How does it
look? Does it seem interesting?”
“There is just one more thing that makes it interesting,” Doc told him. “It is a white bird. And while you
are doing your investigating, you might ask about the white bird.”
“Who do you think we had better ask about the white bird?”
“Ask everybody you talk to.”
Johnny Littlejohn was puzzled.
“What kind of a white bird,” he inquired, “do I ask them about?”
“Just a small white bird,” Doc told him, “about the size of a sparrow.”
THE head waiter came to the table. He looked apologetic, and he had a glass jar with a perforated lid.
“For the bird,” he explained.
“Thank you,” Doc said.
He put the bird in the jar, which served as well as a cage.
The bird had obviously been handled a great deal. It was, in fact, a somewhat tame bird. It fluttered
around for a while, indignant, then settled in the bottom of the jar. It straightened out its feathers.
It was a sparrow.
There was no doubt about it being a sparrow, and it had been dyed white. Doc Savage examined it
closely, but that was about all that he learned. As nearly as he could tell, the dyeing had been done two
or three weeks ago, judging from the way the dye had worn out, and the feathers had grown. The dye
had stained the beak of the bird, but had rubbed off somewhat.
Doc Savage studied the bird for a while. Then he sat back and considered.
There was no point, actually, from which to start thinking. The bird was just a sparrow, and it had been
dyed white, and the sight of it had scared the blood out of Bill Keeley's face. It had, in fact, scared Bill
Keeley into taking flight.
Those were, briefly, the facts. And there was no sense to it, and nowhere to start thinking. To form a
theory, you had to have a sensible fact or two, and there was nothing sensible about this.
Doc Savage surveyed the restaurant thoughtfully.
The bird, it was obvious, had come from somewhere in the restaurant. Someone had released it. Who?
There was no way of telling.
But none of the diners had left the restaurant, as Doc Savage had noticed. He had kept his eye on the
door, and Bill Keeley and Doc himself were the only persons who had left. That proved one thing.
Whoever had released the sparrow was still here.
Doc Savage stood up. He spoke loudly, addressing the head waiter.
“Did you ever hear how easy it is to bring out latent fingerprints on the feathers of a bird such as this?” he
asked. “Will you bring me a cloth to wrap around the glass jar, so that I can carry the sparrow without
attracting too much attention?”
The statement about attracting attention was almost ridiculous. He had spoken so loudly that everyone in
the restaurant had heard. There was, however, a quality of subdued power in the bronze man's voice that
made his tone seem natural. He did not seem to have raised his voice when he spoke.
“Yes, sir,” the head waiter said, and galloped off for a large napkin.
Doc did not leave immediately. Instead, he consumed his dinner, ordered a dessert, and took his time
with that.
“Tell me,” he requested of the head waiter, “who asks for the telephone.”
Three men used the telephone during the interval, as the head waiter pointed out discreetly. One of these
received an incoming call, and was known to the restaurant. The other two were outgoing calls, and one
caller was a well-known banker.
The third man who used the telephone was a stranger, a tall man with a darkly sunburned face and the
most remarkably blue eyes.
Doc paid his bill, got up, took his hat and walked to the man's table.
“Do you want the bird back?” Doc asked.
The man was good. He did not look ruffled.
“I didn't think you saw me turn it loose,” he said.
THE man sat there at the restaurant table. Probably he was worried, certainly he must have been
surprised. Despite his not seeming ruffled, he had been jarred enough to admit releasing the bird. His face
showed that.
“Would you sit down a moment?” the man said.
“Why?”
The bluntness of Doc's question made the man look uncomfortable.
“I want to know why you think I turned the bird loose,” he said.
He was old enough to miss the draft, not much older probably, although his hair was salted with gray at
the temples. The tan on his skin had a soft look, as if it had been put there with sun lamps, or by sports
that kept him in the sun. It was not the kind of tan that a man got working in the sun.
“Want to walk down the street with me?” Doc asked.
“Why?”
“Because you are being invited.”
The man looked up. Strain was beginning to show around his lips. “I don't know why you think I let that
bird loose,” he said. “I can't understand that. I don't understand why you are standing here, threatening
me.”
“Threatening you?”
“You are, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Doc said. “Are you going to walk down the street with me willingly, or are you just going?”
“I'm a perfect stranger,” the man said.
“A stranger.”
“Meaning I'm not perfect, eh?”
Doc Savage said, “When a thing is a settled fact, there is not much sense arguing about it, is there?”
The man got up meekly enough. They went out into the street.
The man kept saying: “I don't know anything about it.”
BECAUSE Doc Savage's profession was actually nothing less than continually meddling in the other
fellow's business, he had enemies. The business in which he meddled was invariably crooked business,
which meant the enemies were usually violent fellows. It was a path of danger which Doc Savage
walked, with his five associates.
The five men were specialists in various professions—Ham Brooks was a lawyer, Monk Mayfair a
chemist, Johnny Littlejohn an archaeologist-geologist, and Long Tom Roberts an electrical expert—but it
was not their professions which held them to Doc Savage. The member of the group who was now in
Africa, Renny Renwick, was an engineer.
Because the five of them were always in danger, they took precautions. They had learned the habit of
precautions from Doc Savage, who was inclined to overdo it. The extent to which the bronze man went
to meet trouble was fantastic. The pains he took often looked ridiculous, particularly when an interval
went past without any of them being necessary. Monk and Johnny and the others often said that it was
impossible to catch Doc flat-footed, without being prepared with a gadget or a trick. This was, of course,
ridiculous. But at times it did seem a truth.
“You have a name?” Doc Savage asked the stranger.
“If I told you my name, you wouldn't believe it,” the man said. “So phooey.”
Doc made no other comment. He walked silently beside the stranger.
The stranger was silent, too. And his mind was not easy. His remarkably blue eyes kept shifting, traveling
here and there, not seeking anything in particular but just too nervous to look at any one thing very long at
a time. His eyes were the color of a winter sky.
“Who did you telephone?” Doc asked.
“So that's it! That's how the hell you got wise to me!” The blue-eyed man straightened up, acting as if that
was all that had been worrying him, and now that he knew the answer, he felt fine. “Well, I don't feel so
bad. I thought maybe I had made a real mistake.”
“You did,” Doc said.
“What kind of a mistake?”
“Just be patient.”
Doc Savage carried the white bird in the glass jar. They went around the corner, and passed the front
entrance of the skyscraper which housed Doc Savage's headquarters. It was one of the tallest buildings in
midtown Manhattan.
“Hey,” said the blue-eyed man. “Ain't you going upstairs?”
“So you know who I am?”
“Sure. You're Doc Savage, and you scare hell out of me.” He looked sidewise at Doc. “I mean, you
really do. But I'm kind of glad to get this chance.”
They turned a corner into the side street.
“What are you glad about?” Doc asked. “What chance?”
“That I got a chance to kill you right away,” the blue-eyed man said. “I didn't have to fool around.”
The blue-eyed man lifted his voice.
“Jerry, Frenchy, Tim!” he screamed. “What the hell you waiting on? Hang it on this guy, and get the
damned bird!”
摘要：

THEMENTALMONSTERADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEWHITEBIRD?ChapterII.TROUBLEISAWHITEBIRD?ChapterIII.THESECONDACCIDENT?ChapterIV.THEGIRLANDTHEBIRD?ChapterV.THEBIRDSINHAND?ChapterVI.NORTHPRINCE,708?ChapterVII.THERACE?ChapterV...

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