Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 121 - The Black, Black Witch

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THE BLACK, BLACK WITCH
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
? Chapter I. STRANGE CALL
? Chapter II. INTEREST IN A WITCH
? Chapter III. TRICKERY TRAIL
? Chapter IV. THIS WITCH HAD A MOTORCYCLE
? Chapter V. TOMB FOR THREE
? Chapter VI. THE MAN FLEEING
? Chapter VII. THE FIRST TERRIFIED MAN
? Chapter VIII. THE FRIGHTENING FUTURE
? Chapter IX. ONE WASN'T SCARED
? Chapter X. DEATH AND THE BRAVE
? Chapter XI. PHANTOM
? Chapter XII. BAIT
? Chapter XIII. CENTURIES
? Chapter XIV. DEATH BY PREDICTION
? Chapter XV. MONK'S FUTURE
Chapter I. STRANGE CALL
The plane was an HE 111K. Which meant that it had two Junkers Jumo twelve-hundred-horsepower
engines and could do maybe three hundred miles an hour at an altitude of twenty thousand feet. A crew
of four and a machine gun for each man. Bomb load: Four thousand pounds. Designed as far back as
1935—when it masqueraded as a twelve-seater airliner—this was the plane that became the key
machine on which the Luftwaffe was built up.
Heinkel bomber.
A bad kind of wolf to have chasing you.
Monk Mayfair, who was as homely as a noteworthy mud fence, spoke to a boy from Kansas who was
the pilot of their plane. “Why don't you do something?” Monk asked.
The Kansas boy nodded toward the pursuing Heinkel. “You mean about old apple strudel back there?”
“Sure.”
The Kansas boy gave the throttles a comfortable bump or two with the palm of his hand. The throttles
already were open as far as they would go. “We're outrunning him,” he said, “the way a Kansas cyclone
outruns a mule.”
When Monk Mayfair was excited, he had the habit of bellowing, and now his bellow was special.
“That's the trouble!” he yelled. “Why outrun him? Why not turn around and knock some feathers off?
Why run?”
The pilot was about twenty-two. He was one of the best bomber pilots in the American air force. He
grinned. “Orders,” he said.
“Orders?”
“Instructions are to get you and Mr. Savage over a certain spot in Occupied France as near the hour of
midnight as possible. That's my job. Now stop bothering me. Go sit down.”
“You ain't gonna fight that Heinkel?”
“No.”
“A fine war.”
“A fine lot of hell I'd catch if I didn't follow orders,” the pilot said. “Go sit down. Your face is ruining my
digestion.”
Monk grinned. “Look,” he said. “Answer me a question, huh?”
“Just one question,” the pilot agreed. “Then go sit down.”
“Sure. What's the black, black witch?”
“What's what?”
“The black, black witch.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I was,” said Monk patiently, “asking you a question. What is the black, black witch?”
The pilot looked at Monk disagreeably. “If you're trying to be funny, you ain't. If you're trying to bother
me, you are. Do you know how many gadgets there are on this instrument panel? Over a hundred. I'm
supposed to watch some of them. You and your black, black witches. Get 'em out of here!”
“You never heard of a black, black witch?”
“Hell, no!”
MONK MAYFAIR gave up and went back and sat on a canvas fatigue bunk under the navigator's
“astro” dome. The place was cramped for space. The complicated rumps of machine guns projected into
the cabin and a collection of half-ton bombs took up space in the bomb bay underfoot.
“Why were you bothering the pilot?” Doc Savage asked.
“I thought I'd talk him into taking a shot at that Heinkel,” Monk explained. “But he's a very serious pilot.
He don't fool around with little things like Heinkels.”
“They probably told him not to.”
“Probably,” Monk agreed.
Doc Savage stood up then and began adjusting the fit of his parachute harness, so Monk judged that it
would soon be time for them to jump.
Doc Savage seemed a big man, a giant of a man, in the plane cabin. In the crowded cabin space you got
an idea of his amazing physical build. On the street, or when he was not close to things to which his size
could be compared, he did not look such a giant. The unusual things about his appearance were more
noticeable now, too. The metallic bronze which tropical sun had given his skin. His rather startling gold
eyes were like tiny pools of flake gold always stirred and in motion. And the controlled power of his
voice.
It was more than his reputation, Monk reflected, that had caused the bomber crew to spend their spare
time looking at Doc curiously.
Monk said, “He's never heard of the black, black witch.”
“Who has not?”
“The pilot.”
“That,” Doc Savage said, “makes us even. We had never heard of it either.”
“The thing I want to do is hear more about this black, black witch,” Monk said.
The plane tipped its nose down. It dived into the clouds. For hours the clouds had been below them like
a vast ethereal earth covered with gray snow.
The night became very dark in the clouds.
The navigator touched Doc's arm. “Time to jump,” he said. “That is—in forty seconds.”
They threw open the escape hatch in the plane hull.
They waited, eyes on the navigator.
The navigator grinned, threw up his arm and brought it down.
Doc Savage and Monk Mayfair tumbled out into space that was cold, black, damp.
AIR roared in their ears as they fell. Altitude of the plane had been eleven thousand. It was good sense to
open the parachutes while they were still in the clouds, for that would be less conspicuous in case anyone
had heard the plane and happened to be looking up. “Pull, Monk!” Doc yelled. He yanked the rip cord
out of its metal sleeve and set his muscles and took the shock of the parachute opening.
It was black and still after the parachute opened. But immediately a nightingale called out nearby in the
night sky. Doc answered the bird call, imitating another nightingale. Then he dragged down the shrouds
on one side, causing the chute to slide a little in the sky, slide toward the sound of the other nightingale.
He deliberately did not think of landing. A parachute landing in strange country on a night as dark as this
was something better not thought about. The 'chute was a big, silent one, made for the army for this sort
of thing.
The landing wasn't bad. It did sprawl him out on flat ground, in a grasslike crop that was too tall and rank
for grass. He felt bearded heads on the stems and knew the crop was wheat. He had landed in a
wheat-stubble field.
The bomb navigator had done a wonderful job—they were actually supposed to land in a wheat-stubble
field. Flying a few hundred miles, blind most of the time, and dropping a parachutist in a designated wheat
field—that was navigating.
Doc got out of the parachute harness. He gathered the 'chute together and tied it in a bundle with the
harness.
He imitated the call of a nightingale again. The nightingale was one of the few European birds which
exercises its vocal powers at all hours of the day and night, so its sound wouldn't be suspicious. Another
nightingale answered from close by.
“Are you all right?” Doc asked.
“You'd think,” said Monk, “that as many parachute jumps as I've made, I could do one right.”
“Something wrong?”
“Heck, I threw away the rip cord,” Monk said sheepishly. “In the army they laugh at you and then fine
you five dollars for doing that.”
“If someone should happen to find that rip cord, they would know a parachutist had landed.”
“Yeah. I remembered that too late. Depend on me to step on the cat's tail, first thing.”
Doc opened the lid of a pocket compass and consulted the luminous dial. “There should be a road west
of this field.”
“I'm r'aring to go,” Monk said. “So far, this whole thing has been as queer as a hog with wings. I hope it
starts making sense.”
THEY found and followed the road. The road was not paved, and it climbed a hill, then went down to a
stone bridge, which was what it should do according to a map which Doc Savage had memorized in
England.
“Mind me talking about this?” Monk asked.
“No.”
“This the road?”
“Apparently.”
“Three miles south, there should be a farmhouse with Joan of Arc in the window. In that farmhouse,
Harve MacChesney is supposed to be waiting. Waiting for us with some stupendous secret about a
black, black witch.”
“Yes.”
“Do you,” Monk asked, “mind a candid question?”
“Go ahead.”
“What,” said Monk, “do you suppose it's all about?”
“Harve MacChesney,” Doc said, “is not the kind of a man to yell wolf when he sees a mouse.”
“So it's important, whatever it is?”
“Harve MacChesney said it was in his note.”
Monk scratched his head. “Personally, all I know about Harve MacChesney is what I remember reading
in the newspapers. 'Harve MacChesney, of the United States diplomatic staff in Berlin, said this
morning—' Stuff like that. And as I remember, he never had anything very important to say. He isn't a big
shot, is he?”
“He is a war prisoner,” Doc said. “He has been one for months. It is hard to be a war prisoner and a big
shot at the same time. It usually isn't done.”
“Forgotten man, huh?”
“You might call him that. He is one of the American diplomatic officials who has not been sent to the
United States in exchange for German diplomats.”
“He wouldn't,” said Monk, “be crazy?”
“He never has been.”
“If he wasn't crazy,” asked Monk, “why'd he put in that stuff about a black, black witch?”
“Probably because he had good reasons.”
“Do you,” Monk inquired, “know what a black, black witch is?”
“Once upon a time,” Doc told him, “a black, black witch lived in this part of France.”
“When was that?”
“In 1555.”
“The sixteenth century, you mean?'
“Yes.”
“That was three hundred and eighty-eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Could it be the same witch?”
“How long do you think witches live?”
“I don't think they live at all,” Monk said. “I think there ain't no such thing as witches.”
“Scientists,” Doc said, “will agree with you.”
Monk scratched his head. “What about this sixteenth-century witch? You've got my curiosity aroused.”
“I think,” Doc said, “we are getting close to the farmhouse.”
ANOTHER road had joined the road they were following, and there was pavement of asphalt that had
been pitted by weather and not properly maintained. The clouds thinned somewhat, enough to let
moonlight down, and they could see that great, dignified trees bordered the road. And they saw lights in
two or three farmhouses and passed others that were dark at this late hour.
“Look,” Monk whispered.
A farmhouse had in a front window two candles which shed light on a white plaster image of Joan of Are
standing with uplifted sword.
“Looks like it,” Monk said.
They stood in front of the farmhouse and listened, but there was no alarming sound. Doc Savage then
circled the house.
It was a typical peasant French farm home, low and gray, with plenty of shrubbery and the usual manure
pile in the yard.
He rejoined Monk.
Monk said, “I took a peep in the window. Funny little old lady in there.”
Doc went to the window. He saw a room with a low-beamed ceiling, old-fashioned stove, cupboards,
knicknacks.
The old lady sat sewing in a rocking chair. She wore a shapeless peasant dress and a shawl over her
head, and had white hair and a square face with an ageless tranquillity in its wrinkles. She seemed to be
fashioning a bit of lace. She and the room looked peaceful.
Doc knocked on the door. The old lady opened it for them.
“Bonsoir, monsieurs,”
she said. “Que voulez-vous?”
“Do you speak English?” Doc asked, although he could speak a considerably better brand of French
than the crone had used.
“A leettle,” she replied.
“We wish to see Harve MacChesney,” Doc said. “Is he here?”
She did not reply with words, but nodded and stepped back and held the door open. Doc entered and
Monk followed.
The crone closed the door. “You are Monsieur Savage. I have seen a picture of you.” She turned to
Monk. “And this gentleman is—”
“Monk Mayfair, my associate,” Doc told her.
The old lady then took a gun out of her clothing and pointed it at them.
“I guess,” she said, “we've hit the jackpot.”
Out of different places, from under a sofa, a trapdoor in the ceiling, a chest, a curtained cupboard in a
corner, crawled, dropped and climbed men wearing German army uniforms and carrying German military
pistols.
One of the soldiers, a colonel from his uniform, took charge.
“Jackpot,” he said in good English, “is the word for it. It's too bad Mr. MacChesney isn't here to greet
you. As soon as we found out that he planned to escape and have a rendezvous at this farmhouse with
you, we had to take stern measures. He is back at the Chateau Medille, only a few miles from here. We
know how to take care of men like him.”
Chapter II. INTEREST IN A WITCH
SOLDIERS kept appearing until the place swarmed with them. Every soldier had a gun which he kept
ready for action, and none of them took their eyes off Monk and Doc more than was necessary.
Several armored cars arrived, and Doc and Monk were placed in one of these. They were rushed
several miles to a stone building which probably was large, although the night was too dark for them to
tell what kind of a structure it was. Armed soldiers lined the halls along which they were conducted to a
cell that looked strong enough to hold an earthquake.
Doc and Monk were placed in the same cell.
The German officer who wore the uniform markings of a colonel addressed them.
“You will be questioned in the morning, Herr Savage,” he said. “Officials are coming from Berlin to do
that.”
Monk Mayfair, who could tell wonderful lies with a straight face, said, “Savage? This man's name isn't
Savage. His name is Jon Verdeck. He was born in Munich, and now lives on the Friedrichstrasse, in
Berlin. His house number is Friedrichstrasse, No. 138. My name is Jon, too. Jon Protest, and I live near
Potsdam.”
Monk's perfectly spoken German startled the colonel.
“Ja?”
the officer said.
“Ja,”
Monk lied. “That is right.”
The German finally smiled fiercely. “You are a good liar.”
Monk shrugged. He hadn't fooled the man.
The German colonel clicked off a bow to Doc Savage, said, “I trust it will not insult you to say I am
proud to have met you, Mr. Savage. You are a man of great accomplishment.”
Doc made no comment.
“Good night,” the German said.
He went out. He closed and locked the cell door. After that there was the regular pacing of sentries in the
corridor outside.
“Doc,” Monk whispered.
“Yes?”
“They sure planned this thing. You notice how many soldiers they had? Two or three hundred. All picked
men, too, from their looks.”
Doc was silent.
“They were tipped off about us,” Monk said.
“Obviously.”
“MacChesney,” said Monk, “is the only guy who could've tipped 'em.”
Doc said nothing.
“We're likely,” Monk said, “to find ourselves looking up at six feet of earth.”
“How do you figure that?”
“We were caught in enemy territory in civilian clothes, carrying American army parachutes. Technically,
that makes us spies. So they'll shoot us.”
“Maybe not.”
“Since when,” asked Monk, “did they stop shooting spies?”
Footsteps approached hurriedly in the corridor outside. The door was thrown back. The German colonel
came in. He frowned at the prisoners.
“The things I have heard about the ability of Mr. Savage alarms me. I shall take your clothing. You may
have chemicals concealed in the cloth. Disrobe, please.”
While Doc Savage and Monk removed their clothing, the officer stood by, alert. He examined the
garments one at a time and returned none of them. The German made no comment until they had been
relieved of everything, including socks.
“Their mouths,” he told one of his men. “Examine their mouths. Comb their hair. Inspect their ears.”
The officer then faced Doc and Monk. He said, “Gentlemen! I have orders to ask you a question.”
Doc and Monk waited.
The German demanded, “Where is the black, black witch? You are ordered to answer that, please. You
came to Germany to get it. We know that.”
Doc Savage did not reply.
Monk, when he had swallowed his astonishment, laughed and said, “Believe it or not, we came to
Germany to get a new and rare species of macrocephalus.”
The officer scowled. “There are no new and rare wart hogs in Germany.”
Then he went out, slamming the door angrily.
Monk frowned, somewhat disappointed that the officer had known a macrocephalus was a wart hog.
Monk had happened to know what a macrocephalus was by accident, because he owned a pet pig, and
so was an authority on such things.
THERE was one electric bulb in the cell, and the light from it showed four stone walls and a floor and
ceiling of the same material. The excuse for a window was not much more than a foot square, and
obstructed by a pair of bars as thick as one of Monk's by no means fragile thumbs.
“Doc,” Monk whispered.
“Yes?”
“What the hell's this witch stuff? It must be something important, the way it's got these Germans excited.
What was that story about a black, black witch in the year 1555? What did—”
Doc stopped Monk by lifting a hand. The bronze man then moved to the center of the cell and indicated
the fixture from which the single electric-light bulb dangled. He beckoned Monk, who came close, and
saw what Doc meant.
There was a microphone rather cleverly concealed in the light fixture. It was there, of course, to pick up
anything they said and relay it to a listening ear somewhere else in the building.
Monk nodded to show that he understood they were being eavesdropped upon.
“Since we have no idea what this is all about,” Monk said with elaborate sleepiness in his voice, “we
might as well turn in and get some sleep.”
“That,” Doc said, “is a good idea.”
There were two mattresses and plenty of blankets and pillows on the floor. Doc stretched out on one
bed and closed his eyes.
Monk made a couple of rounds of their cell, giving a lusty yank at the window bars, just to be sure they
were as solid as they looked, and finding them more solid, if anything. Escape seemed out of the
question.
“Naked as a jaybird,” he complained. “A fine hell of a note!”
“Go to sleep,” Doc said.
Monk flopped on one of the mattresses. He didn't sleep. He thought about Harve MacChesney.
MacChesney's strange call for help had come to them in New York. Monk at once had investigated
MacChesney. Doc Savage knew MacChesney personally, but Monk did not. Doc was rather inclined to
take for granted that MacChesney was an honest man. However, it was Monk's secret hope to some
day catch Doc making a mistake, so Monk had investigated MacChesney most thoroughly.
Monk turned up nothing to indicate Harve MacChesney was anything but what Doc had said he was.
MacChesney was a career diplomat of the old, dignified school. Born in Boston of a distinguished family
that traced its ancestry to the Mayflower, MacChesney had commenced, at least as early as at the age of
six months, doing exactly the correct things.
Having completed an education in the correct schools, MacChesney had followed family tradition and
become a diplomat—every third MacChesney male became a diplomat, it seemed. MacChesney had
served in various foreign countries, functioning for America with dignity and efficiency.
His diplomatic career had made MacChesney into a sober gentleman, of the sort who always wore a
striped-pants morning suit in the daytime. It had made him studious, serious, dignified. In fact, it had
made him too much the dignitary. Harve MacChesney had become stodgy. A droop was the slang word.
The newer-crop diplomats—fellows with wild economic theories and no dignity—had run away from
MacChesney, dashed off and left him. Probably there was not a more competent United States diplomat,
and certainly there wasn't a more dignified one, but Harve MacChesney wasn't prominent. He was one
of the workhorses. The younger men, the prancers out in front, got the public attention.
On the day when Germany declared war on the United States, the American diplomats, naturally, had
been taken into custody. Many of the men since had been swapped to the United States in return for
German diplomats. Harve MacChesney, however, for some strange reason, was one of those who had
not been exchanged.
MacChesney still was in a chateau in Occupied France, where he had been incarcerated by the
Germans. Monk had learned something of the chateau. The chateau was very old, one of those historic
relics which abound in France. It had been built by Catherine de Medici in 1550 for the use of herself
and her favorites.
That was MacChesney.
It hadn't seemed very suspicious.
But the message from MacChesney was almost weird.
IT was astonishing that MacChesney's message could have come out of Occupied France. The Germans
were supposed to have things well under control there.
Monk had found out, however, that United States diplomats had certain secret channels for getting
messages to America. Such methods were not being advertised.
What had actually happened was that a military-intelligence agent had walked into Doc Savage's office in
New York and handed them a pair of spectacles. He told them what to look for on the glasses.
“Spectacles,” the agent pointed out, “are not usually taken from a man.”
Monk's impulse had been to look for engraving on the temple bars of the spectacles. He'd been
wrong—it was on the lens.
“Special glass, chemicals—invisible ink,” the intelligence man explained. He demonstrated how one
brought out the message by using chemical baths. “Exposure to infrared and ultraviolet light won't
disclose this stuff,” he said.
(The non-appearance of “invisible” writing when exposed to ultraviolet and infrared light treatment has
become an important requisite of modern secret inks. Making invisible inks, which possibly began by
using milk on ordinary white paper—heating the paper until the milk stain turns brown brings this
out—has become a complicated chemical science.—THE AUTHOR.)
摘要：

THEBLACK,BLACKWITCHADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.STRANGECALL?ChapterII.INTERESTINAWITCH?ChapterIII.TRICKERYTRAIL?ChapterIV.THISWITCHHADAMOTORCYCLE?ChapterV.TOMBFORTHREE?ChapterVI.THEMANFLEEING?...

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