Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 123 - The Talking Devil

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THE TALKING DEVIL
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE DEVIL AND COMPANY
? Chapter II. THE GREAT MISTAKE
? Chapter III. A PLAN ROLLING
? Chapter IV. THE INDIGNANT MAN
? Chapter V. MURDER AND KANSAS CITY
? Chapter VI. DEATH IN THE SKY
? Chapter VII. MIDWEST TRAIL
? Chapter VIII. MAN LOST
? Chapter IX. RIVER FIGHT
? Chapter X. THE DEMENTED TRAIL
? Chapter XI. THE DEVIL'S WORK
? Chapter XII. MAN-THEFT
? Chapter XIII. KILL ORDER
? Chapter XIV. KING AND JOKER
? Chapter XV. SATAN'S RANCH
? Chapter XVI. TRUTH AND VARNISH
? THE END
Scanned and Proofed by
Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE DEVIL AND COMPANY
Renny Renwick, the engineer, and Long Tom Roberts, the electrical expert, were on hand to meet Doc
Savage when he brought his plane down on the Hudson River. Doc taxied the craft, managing it expertly
on the wind-whipped river surface, into the big hangar which was disguised as a warehouse on the river
front, almost in the shadow of New York's midtown skyscrapers. Renny and Long Tom were a little
breathless as they met Doc Savage.
“It's a devil,” said Renny.
“It talks,” said Long Tom.
“A little statuette of a satan, or a devil, not much more than a foot high,” Renny said. “It is made out of
bronze or brass or some similar metal.”
“It has a deep voice,” Long Tom said.
“But only one man hears it talk.”
“One man. Nobody else.”
“His name is Joseph. Sam Joseph.”
“The man who hears it, we mean,” Long Tom explained.
Doc Savage listened to them patiently. Patience was one of Doc Savage's accomplishments, being one of
the things that had been hammered into him as a part of the strange training which he had received in his
youth-when, at diaper age, he had been placed in the hands of scientists to be subjected, over a course
of almost twenty years, to an intensive program which was intended to fit him for one specific and rather
strange career. Unlike many persons given an arbitrary training before they were old enough to know
what it was all about, or speak for themselves, he had elected to follow the career for which he had been
trained. It was an unusual career. It consisted, literally, of making other people's business his own. Or at
least their troubles.
For some time now, Doc Savage had been taking it on himself to right wrongs and punish evildoers,
traveling to the far corners of the earth to do so. He had five associates who worked with him. Renny
Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were two members of this group of five.
“A devil,” Doc Savage said, getting it straight. “And it talks. But only one man can hear it.”
“That's right,” Long Tom said. “Sam Joseph.”
“There are more details,” Renny said.
“But they won't make it sound less silly,” Long Tom declared.
Renny took Doc's arm. “Come on,” he said. “We will take you to talk to Montague Ogden.”
“Who is Montague Ogden?”
“He hasn't any connection at all with the devil, or so he claims,” said Renny Renwick. “But he is the
employer of Sam Joseph, the man who has been hearing the devil speak.”
THE impressive Ogden building was new, just barely prewar, and the lobby was all black and gold and
apparently designed by an architect who had fallen on his head when small. But it was utterly expensive.
The elevators were gold and black and also utterly expensive, and the elevator operators were girls with
shapes that also looked expensive.
“I would like to have the money it cost to think about building this place,” said Renny Renwick, who was
an engineer and knew what it had cost.
“I would rather have the elevator operators,” said Monk Mayfair. Monk was a remarkably homely
fellow with a remarkable eye for a well-turned ankle.
The elevator let them out in a corridor which was ankle-deep in rich carpet. Office building halls are
ordinarily not even carpeted.
“What kind of a place is this?” remarked Monk.
“Wait,” said Renny Renwick, “until you see the master of the establishment.”
They walked into a reception room that might have been lifted from a spectacular motion picture. The
carpet was even deeper, the colors even richer, the furniture more extreme. The blonde at the desk
looked as if she had been manufactured with a magazine cover in mind.
“Mr. Ogden,” she told them, bells in her voice, “is expecting you.”
Then they walked into a log cabin. Or so it would have seemed, had not the big glass windows offered
views of some of the financial district's more impressive buildings. Everything was rustic, extremely rustic,
even to the logs blazing in the fieldstone fireplace and the two large dogs lying on the hearth. The dogs
lifted their heads and barked.
“I am Montague Ogden,” the man behind the desk said. He sounded as if he was accustomed to the
name meaning something.
He was smooth. That was the first impression you got of him. As smooth as a polished rock. He was
forty-five or fifty years old, well-preserved, and he was dressed in country tweeds and moccasins, so
that he blended with his log-cabin inner office.
The general effect of Montague Ogden was a little ridiculous. Unless, of course, you were impressed by
the obvious evidences of money.
There were conversational preliminaries, introductions mostly.
Then Montague Ogden got around to making what he evidently intended to be the outstanding statement
of the conference.
“I am a very wealthy man,” he said.
DOC SAVAGE, with just a trace of the general feeling of distaste that the overly flamboyant office
building, this office suite and the spectacle effect of the man himself had aroused, said, “At the moment
we are more interested in a man named Sam Joseph, who is said to be hearing a small statue of the devil
speak aloud to him.”
“Exactly,” said Montague Ogden. “Exactly.”
“I understand you can supply details.”
“Exactly,” said Montague Ogden. “I am a very wealthy man, and I want nothing spared to straighten out
poor Sam. Poor Sam is my office manager, my trusted employee. He is even, I may say, more than that.
He is the real working head, the manager, of my rather wide enterprises. I owe Sam a great deal. Sam is
paid an excellent salary, it is true, but his value to me extends far beyond that. Sam is . . . is-” He groped
for words, found them. “Sam is like a part of my own heart,” he finished.
Doc Savage asked quietly, “What do you mean by straightening out poor Sam?”
Montague Ogden blinked. He had blue eyes, very pale-blue eyes.
“Why, find out his trouble,” he said.
“Just what has happened?” Doc Savage asked patiently.
Ogden spread his hands with the palms up. “Poor Sam has this statue of a devil-”
“Where did he get it?”
“I gave it to him,” Montague Ogden said. “I frankly admit that.”
“Where did you get the statue?” Doc asked.
“From a Chinaman,” Ogden explained. “From an old Chinaman named Chi Sui. Poor Chi Sui was a very
elderly Oriental who for a long time had operated a shop in Mott Street dealing in knickknacks, the trash
that tourists buy in Chinatown. But old Chi Sui wanted to close up his business and go to China to help
Chiang against the Japanese, and he had very little money, but he did have this statue, which was realistic.
I bought it from Chi Sui-ah-in spite of the rather hair-lifting story he told me about it.”
Doc said, “So the former owner of the devil statue had a story to tell about it?”
“Yes.”
“What was the nature of the story?”
Montague Ogden blinked, smiled sheepishly, said, “A ridiculous story, of course. One in which I placed
no stock. Not a bit of belief, not for a minute.”
“Suppose you tell it to us, anyway,” Doc invited.
Ogden nodded. “It was a rather simple story. It seems that this Chinese statue was molded by Co Suan,
a friend of the original Buddha, and that the spirit of Buddha captured a portion of the spirit of the King
of Evil, and imprisoned it in this statuette. That was to give the little statue life, because Co Suan, the
sculptor, was a great friend of Buddha, and the All-Mighty One wished to give his friend fame and
fortune deserving of such a kind and goodly fellow. Therefore Buddha imprisoned the spirit of the devil in
the statue in order to give the little thing of brass a life and realism which no other sculptor could ever
equal.”
“That is all of the story?”
“Yes. It's ridiculous, of course.” Montague Ogden smiled at them. “I want you to understand, of course,
that I do not credit for a minute the belief that the statue is actually talking to poor Sam Joseph.”
“You have not heard the statue speak?” Doc asked.
“No.”
“Anyone but Sam Joseph heard it?”
“No.”
“What else do you know?” Doc Savage asked.
“Nothing. Nothing more.”
“In that case,” Doc Savage said, “we had better see Sam Joseph.”
THEY surrounded Sam Joseph where he lay on a bed, a great chromium-and-green bed, in the
penthouse on top of the flamboyant Ogden building. The decorating theme of the penthouse was
chromium and other colors, broken up with large and vital flowers of bright coloration. The penthouse
was not in quite as bad taste as the rest of the building.
“My personal apartment,” said Montague Ogden of the penthouse layout. “I had poor Sam brought
here.”
Sam Joseph was obviously not himself. He was a man large enough to make quite a hump on the bed,
under the silken covers. He had gray hair, a not inconsiderable shock of it, and an angelic, peaceful,
completely honest-looking face.
Sam Joseph had the kind of a face you would expect a man-angel to have. It was so entirely benign and
innocent.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. “Or, rather, good afternoon. It is afternoon, isn't it?”
“Don't you know whether or not it is afternoon?” Doc Savage asked.
Sam Joseph seemed somewhat confused. “I guess so,” he said. “That is, I was watching the snow, and
the bluebirds singing in the snow. It only snows in the afternoon, does it not, or is it only on Wednesday,
the first of June?”
Doc Savage asked Montague Ogden, “How long has he been talking like that?”
“Gracious, I never heard him speak like that before,” Montague Ogden said. “I really haven't.”
“His conversation hitherto has been rational?”
“Oh, yes. It really has.”
Sam Joseph said, “I came out of the hill and it was very dark, but there was the fish in the sand, with the
ice all around it. We sat down there, the fish and I, and we had fine steaks and caviar, but the fish
wouldn't eat the caviar because he was not a cannibal, he told me. When the fish said he was not a
cannibal he had a very deep voice.”
Monk Mayfair, Doc Savage's assistant, looked at Doc thoughtfully. Monk put the end of a forefinger
against his own right temple and made a motion as if he was winding up something.
“Like the things you pull corks with,” Monk said.
Doc Savage studied Sam Joseph for a while. The man was smiling, but it was a vacantly empty smile, a
smile without intelligence or even much feeling behind it.
Doc turned back to Montague Ogden again.
“The devil statue,” Doc said. “Where is it?”
Montague Ogden seemed startled. “Oh, the devil. It is around somewhere, I suppose.”
“Get it.”
“But now you can see that poor Sam Joseph is-”
“The devil,” Doc said. “The devil that talked. We want to see it.”
Montague Ogden now seemed distressed, and also his brow wrinkled as if he was trying to think where
the statue was, and he scratched his head.
“Oh, how silly of me,” he said. “How really silly. Of course, I remember now. In my den. I'll get it. I
placed the statue in my den and I will get it now.”
He turned away.
Doc said, “Monk, go with him.”
“Me?” Monk was surprised.
“Yes, you,” Doc said.
“But-”
Monk stopped, and turned and followed Montague Ogden. Monk had remembered that when you
argued with Doc you usually found yourself exceedingly in the wrong.
THEY walked down corridors, Monk and Montague Ogden. And Ogden examined Monk out of the
corner of his eye, as if amazed at Monk's homeliness, and amused by it.
Monk's homeliness had amazed and amused many people, but he was not ashamed of it. There was a
pleasantness about his homeliness and a fascination. Monk would not have to be seen in a very thick fog
to be mistaken for something just out of the ape house in the zoo. His arms were as long as his legs, and
he was coated with reddish hair that was close cousin to rusted shingle nails. Monk was even rather
pleased with his clock-stopping looks because he had found that they exerted a hypnotic power over
girls, and the prettier the girl, the greater the hypnotic capacity.
Montague Ogden opened a door, said, “This is my den, Mr. Mayfair.”
The den was inhabited by the stuffed heads of animals, at least half a hundred of them, which hung on the
walls and leered, stared, snarled, or showed gap-fanged jaws at anyone in the den.
There was a man already in the den.
“Aren't you afraid of staying in here?” Monk asked the man.
He was a timid-looking young man, quite pale and lean and soft. The very picture of a timid soul.
“Beg pardon?” the man said. He sounded frightened, nervous, embarrassed.
“This is Butch,” said Montague Ogden.
“Butch, eh?” Monk said, and tried not to grin at the timid soul.
Montague Ogden remarked, “Butch, we have come after the devil statue.”
“Oh,” Butch said. He looked scared. “Oh! I haven't-that is-well, it's over there, but-”
“Never mind,” Montague Ogden told him. “We'll take it with us. You can go ahead with your work,
Butch.”
Montague Ogden picked up the devil statue.
The statue was about what Monk expected to see, being not much over a foot high, rather fat, and made
of brass that was tarnished, or bronze, wearing some sort of ceremonial robe, and holding a sword in one
hand. This devil had a pronounced Chinese cast on his evil little face.
“I'll carry it,” Monk said.
“But-”
“I'll carry it,” Monk repeated.
Montague Ogden smiled and his, “Very well, if you wish,” was the soul of politeness.
They left the den and Monk was glad to get out of sight of all the leering, staring or snarling stuffed
animals. He wondered how Butch managed to stand it in there with all those man-hungry-looking
trophies, and he wondered if that was what was making Butch look frightened.
“Who's Butch?” Monk asked. “What's he do, I mean?”
“His work?”
“Yes.”
“Butch is my big-game hunting guide and my jujitsu instructor,” Montague Ogden explained. “He also
teaches me wrestling and the art of knife-throwing, in. which I am interested as a hobby.”
Monk laughed. He thought he was being kidded.
They went down a hall that was majestic in a futuristic modern fashion, with high walls and great pictures
in gaunt plain frames, and lighting that was so subdued that it was difficult to tell from where it came.
Monk walked along thinking of the timid soul who was named Butch, and how funny it was that Ogden
had jokingly said Butch was his hunting guide and instructor in the more robust manly arts. Ordinarily that
would not have been funny, but after you had seen Butch it was quite humorous.
“We can go through this way,” Montague Ogden said. “It is shorter.”
He turned to the left and opened a door and went through it.
Monk was following behind Ogden and watching Ogden's back when something hit Monk's head. It hit
hard, whatever it was, and there was only a slight sound, a slight grinding, just before the impact landed.
It took Monk on top of the head, slightly to the right-hand side, so that there was the grisly sensation of
the blow sliding down toward the right ear and taking off the whole side of his head as it went. In the
middle of this awful feeling it got very black and remained that way.
Chapter II. THE GREAT MISTAKE
MONK accomplished the feat of opening his eyes, but did it with some difficulty, after which he stared at
Montague Ogden. Monk had the feeling that some time had passed, and did not dare move his body for
fear his head would fall off it. There was a gouging pain in the small of his back.
Soon his ears recovered their ability to hear.
“That nasty picture!” Montague Ogden was saying. “Oh, that nasty picture! I told the interior decorator
when he hung it over the door that something like this would happen! I told him it would be just my luck
to have the picture fall down and brain somebody sometime.”
Monk tried out his voice with a groan and found his vocal chords satisfactory. “I'm brained, all right,” he
said.
“Oh!” gasped Ogden. “He's conscious! He has recovered!”
Monk felt a hell of a long way from complete recovery and said so. “What hit me?” he demanded.
“A picture hanging over the door fell down as you went through,” explained Montague Ogden. “It was
one of those freak accidents.”
Monk grimaced at Ogden.
“It's a good thing you were walking ahead of me when it happened,” Monk said. “Or I would have
thought you beaned me.”
Montague Ogden laughed deprecatingly. Doc Savage, Renny Renwick and Long Tom Roberts were
standing around Monk, looking relieved that he had recovered. Monk wondered if he had recovered, or
if there was going to be complications.
The gouging pain in the small of his back was awful. He investigated and found it to be the devil statuette.
“I must have fallen on the thing,” Monk complained. “I wonder how many ribs it broke.”
“That the devil statue which speaks?” Doc Savage asked.
“That's it,” Monk said.
Montague Ogden said uncomfortably, “Of course, you gentlemen do not for a minute believe that the
statue can speak?”
Doc Savage made no comment. He suggested that Renny Renwick find the building superintendent, and
obtain a hacksaw and a cold chisel and hammer, in order that they might perform a dissection on the
brass devil.
Fifteen minutes later they had the devil lying in half a dozen pieces on a table, and there was obviously
nothing inside it but brass.
“That is that,” Doc admitted. “The thing hardly seemed to have a conversational nature.”
“Of course you knew it hadn't,” Montague Ogden said.
Monk Mayfair explained to Ogden, “When you've been in the kind of a business we're in for a while, you
get so you don't go around taking things at face value.”
Doc Savage said, “We will examine Sam Joseph now.”
The bronze man spent nearly an hour with Sam Joseph, doing the things a doctor does.
“According to all indications,” Doc said, “the man has an advanced cerebral fibroma.”
The bronze man then asked Monk to telephone the hospital and arrange for reception of the patient.
Doc told Montague Ogden, “I am going to call in other brain specialists for consultation. Do you have
any particular doctors you would like to have pass an opinion?”
Ogden stared.
“I thought you were supposed to be the world's leading brain surgeon,” he said.
Doc passed up the compliment, explained, “In a matter as serious as this we prefer to have a consensus
of opinion.”
(It is a well-known fact that in cases of serious illnesses, even the most skillful surgeons and physicians in
the world will usually call in other specialists for their opinion on diagnosis and treatment.)
Montague Ogden nodded. He seemed to be surprised, but to consider the matter reasonable now that he
thought of it.
“Could I bring in Dr. Nedden?” he asked. “He is my private surgeon.”
Doc Savage nodded. He had not heard of Dr. Nedden, but that did not mean the man could not be
good.
“Certainly,” the bronze man said. “Call Dr. Nedden.”
THEY transferred Sam Joseph to the hospital, a small but wonderfully equipped hospital uptown, which
specialized in brain cases, and which was largely supported by Doc Savage. He did most of his work
there. Doc did not, as a matter of fact, do a great deal of surgery for surgery's sake, his specialty being
stubborn and unusual cases upon which he could apply new and experimental technique.
Dr. Nedden appeared. He was a stocky man, face reddened by the outdoors sun, clothes immaculate,
who seemed to know what he was doing.
“I have examined the patient previously,” he explained. “The unusual cerebropsychosis aroused my
interest, and I was fairly sure it was cerebral fibroma. I made a thorough examination with a
cerebroscope and found nothing to support any other diagnosis.”
Doc Savage called in two more specialists, and their diagnosis was the same.
“Cerebral fibroma.”
Monk asked, “What the heck's a cerebral fibroma, anyway?”
“A brain tumor. A fibrous type. That makes it very difficult to remove,” Doc Savage explained.
“Why don't doctors use words you can understand?” Monk wanted to know.
“For the same reason that chemists do not use small ones,” Doc told him.
Monk had to grin at that. There was nothing more incomprehensible to a layman than a chemical formula,
even when you simplified it and used the symbols. But if you took one of those chemicals and tried to
explain what it was by using small words, it would run into an afternoon's work.
Doc Savage found Montague Ogden.
“Your office manager, Sam Joseph, has a brain tumor,” Doc told Ogden. “An operation is the only
answer.”
“He will not die?”
“There is no such thing as a minor or a completely safe operation,” Doc told him frankly. “But he should
pull through.”
“Oh, I want him to. Sam means a lot to me. He has always practically run everything for me.”
Doc said, “Dr. C. B. Sticken would be a good man to do the surgery.”
“Yes, I-” Ogden's eyes flew wide. “What did you say?”
“I recommend C. B. Sticken for the surgery.”
Montague Ogden looked as if he was going to faint.
“But you must do it!” he gasped.
Doc Savage explained patiently, “This is not a sufficiently unusual or difficult case to warrant my doing the
surgery, and, furthermore, Dr. Sticken is fully qualified.”
Montague Ogden seemed horrified at the idea.
“I insist on you doing it!” he cried. “Why, I wouldn't think of anyone else! I'll pay any fee.”
“It just happens,” Doc Savage said, “that I do not work for a fee.”
“What? Oh, yes, I remember. You get your funds from some unknown source. Well, then, I'll donate any
sum you name to any organization you wish if you will do the operation.”
(Doc Savage's mysterious source of fabulous wealth is located in a remote lost valley in Central America,
an enormous golden treasure guarded over by a clan of descendants of ancient Maya.)
“That will not be necessary. Dr. Sticken is capable-”
“I'll donate a hundred thousand dollars,” said Montague Ogden, “if you will do this operation.”
Doc Savage studied the man. “That is not necessary.”
“I mean it. A hundred thousand, Mr. Savage. To any charity, or army or navy relief group you care to
name.” The man was so earnest he was pale.
“All right,” Doc Savage said finally.
DOC SAVAGE did the operation in the special amphitheater pit at the brain clinic. It was a cup-shaped
arena surrounded by the most transparent type of glass. Beyond the glass were seats for witnessing
surgeons. The lighting was fluorescent and brilliant.
As was always the case when Doc Savage was operating, the amphitheater was crowded. There were
very few students among the witnesses, the majority being brain surgeons of established name and
reputation, some of them men who had hurriedly caught airplanes and flown halfway across the continent
in order to watch a master at work.
Doc Savage made the scalp incision, laid back the scalp, then used a special electrical bone knife of his
own invention, a device which would cut without shock, having the property of rendering bone and nerve
more insensible to shock in the area near the cutting head.
The operation progressed with brilliance up to the point where Doc reached the spot where the tumor
should be.
There was no tumor.
摘要：

THETALKINGDEVILADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEDEVILANDCOMPANY?ChapterII.THEGREATMISTAKE?ChapterIII.APLANROLLING?ChapterIV.THEINDIGNANTMAN?ChapterV.MURDERANDKANSASCITY?ChapterVI.DEATHINTHESKY?ChapterVII.MIDWESTTRAIL?Chapte...

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