Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 115 - The Fiery Menace

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THE FIERY MENACE
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. THE MAN IN THE CHANDELIER
? Chapter II. ALL VERY FUNNY
? Chapter III. THE VAMPIRE LUNCH
? Chapter IV. ADVANCE OPERATION
? Chapter V. THE VAMPIRE
? Chapter VI. WARNING FOR FOUR
? Chapter VII. EYE WITNESS
? Chapter VIII. SLIPS THAT ARE 'TWIXT
? Chapter IX. THE SLIP THAT CUT A THROAT
? Chapter X. THE SCARED MAN
? Chapter XI. THE STAMPEDE
? Chapter XII. DEATH HAS MANY FINGERS
? Chapter XIII. HARBOR FOR TROUBLE
? Chapter XIV. WEALTH OF THE DOMINO
? Chapter XV. THE VAMPIRE'S BITE
Chapter I. THE MAN IN THE CHANDELIER
BETTY FREE, the stenographer for Best & Stone, the firm of architects on the forty-second floor, was
subject to morning headaches. So she had a little habit. The habit was this: On the mornings when she
had a headache she would buy an aspirin at the candy-cigar counter in the lobby and, at the same time,
smile the clerk out of a large gumdrop. She would bury the aspirin tablet in the gumdrop, open her mouth
wide, put her head back, pop the gumdrop in and swallow it. Aspirin seemed to be the only thing good
for her headaches, but she didn't like aspirin. So this was the way she took aspirin.
On Wednesday morning she had the usual headache, so she proceeded according to schedule. She got
along fine until she put her head back and opened her mouth to pop in the gumdrop.
Then Betty screamed. She almost tore the lining out of her throat. She had the most unearthly yip-yip-yip
way of screeching.
She then fainted.
There was a lot of excitement.
Someone trickled ice water on Betty Free; then she got up and went to work in a nervous condition,
made a mistake in typing a bid for her firm and was fired. So Betty married the boy she had been going
with. The boy quit his job in the city and they went back to their home town where the boy took a job in
the Farmers Exchange, and Betty made a great success of raising chickens and children, thereafter.
Therefore, Betty Free, the stenographer for Best & Stone, had no more than momentary-if
noisy-importance in the matter.
The man in the chandelier was a different proposition. Much different.
His feet and one hand were sticking out of the thing. The chandelier was one of a battery of the elaborate
affairs which supplied subdued light and decorative effect to the lobby of the building, which was the
largest lobby in the largest building in the midtown section of the city. The building was eighty-six floors
tall, with twenty-two elevators serving the tenants. Better than five thousand people worked in the
building, and many more than that number passed in and out of the lobby daily. Although the hour was
early, it was somewhat unusual that no one had happened to look up and see the two feet and the hand
sticking out of the chandelier bowl. Particularly since blood from the hand had flowed down and stained
the side of the bowl.
Someone called the building superintendent. The superintendent in a building of that size is a personage.
He gets a salary of ten thousand dollars a year and has a mahogany desk to sit behind. This
superintendent punched buttons, issued orders, and an extension ladder and a squad of agile janitors
appeared on the scene.
A janitor climbed the ladder, examined the hand that was sticking out of the chandelier, felt of it. He
climbed a step higher, looked into the bowl, did some poking around inside, then climbed down, looking
as if it were a question of whether or not he would keep his breakfast.
“Dead,” he reported.
“From what?”
“From a little hole in his head.”
Everyone took it for granted that the man meant a bullet hole, which was an error that was not
discovered immediately. There was an increase in the excitement, although now there was nothing to be
excited about. The man was dead, so that whatever had happened had already happened.
But the crowd gathered and the excitement spread because part of a dead man was sticking out of the
chandelier in the lobby of one of the half dozen largest buildings in the world. And a body in a chandelier
was unusual, to say the least. Too, there was bad management in keeping the crowd back, first on the
part of the superintendent and his janitors, and then on the part of the policemen who came sirening up to
take charge. There was an error of judgment on the part of one of the cops, for he became enthusiastic
and abusive and gave a citizen a shove. The citizen, being a free-born, profanity-speaking American,
applied his fist to the cop's nose, flattening that organ somewhat. This did not add to peace and
tranquillity.
Due to this boisterous foolishness, plus the failure of the janitor to elaborate on what he meant by a hole
in the head, further truth about the man in the chandelier was delayed some thirty minutes.
NEXT data on the man in the chandelier came from a lady. “Lady” was what the newspapers called her.
Some of the papers referred to her as “an old lady.” It was true-but it was not at all important in the
chandelier matter, because it had no bearing that the persons who saw the old lady's picture and
remembered her ten years back referred to her, most of them, in descriptive terms not ordinarily used in
drawing-room conversation. However, the old girl was too shopworn for further mischief and was
spending her days of decline as a scrubwoman in the skyscraper.
From the Morning Eagle:
HE WAS HUNTING VAMPIRE
Mrs. Lucille Murphy, who is employed nights in the building, shed the first light on the matter of the man
in the chandelier. Mrs. Murphy completed her work the previous night and, while leaving the building,
noticed a man apparently climbing into the chandelier. Thinking the man was an electrician, Mrs. Murphy
called a facetious remark to the man.
The exact wording of the remark Mrs. Murphy had called to the man climbing into the chandelier was not
given in any of the newspaper stories, but it was a ribald one. She told it to the newspaper reporters, and
they split their sides laughing. She was quite an old rip, that Mrs. Murphy.
The man in the chandelier called down to Mrs. Murphy that he was seeking a vampire, Mrs. Murphy
stated.
“I am sure that is what he said,” Mrs. Murphy declared, “because I hollered back and asked him if he
meant like Dracula, and he said that was the general idea.”
It was added by Mrs. Murphy that the man sounded serious, although this did not strike her at the time.
Mrs. Murphy states that she told the man she had a son-in-law who would fill the bill if he needed a
he-vampire. Then she went on home.
The fact that the newspapers printed Mrs. Murphy's remark about her son-in-law making a good
he-vampire indicated how the newspapers considered the matter. Not exactly as a joke, because murder
is not a joke except on the stage. But they did not take it seriously, and they were pixyish enough about it
to allow little notes like the crack about Mrs. Murphy's son-in-law to creep into the written versions.
This was not the first mistake American journalism had made. And time proved that it certainly was not
one of their smaller errors.
The crack about the lost vampire gave a certain touch to the thing.
The hole in the man's head gave another touch to it. First, it gave an assistant coroner an ill spell when he
saw it. It made the other coroners and hardened cops who handled dead bodies-fresh and not so fresh
and in various mangled conditions-stand there with their jaws hanging in amazement.
The body was not brought down immediately, though. First, a medical examiner made sure the body
actually had no life, then fingerprint men and photographers-police, of course-recorded the scene
thoroughly.
Finally they got around to noticing that the hole in the man's head was a very neat affair. Possibly “neat”
was not the word. It was a very precisely drilled thing.
“Made after death,” said the coroner in charge. He looked up at the chandelier. “Probably the work of
some mechanism that is part of the chandelier.”
A policeman pointed out that a drill was not part of a chandelier or any other lighting fixture that he had
ever heard of; then the officer climbed up to make sure that was also the case with this one.
“Mechanism nothing,” the officer reported. “There's nothing up there that would do that kind of thing.”
The coroner pondered and came up with, “Well, I'll make another examination.” He did so, then
straightened triumphantly. “The edges of the wound seem to be cauterized. No doubt, it was done by an
electric short circuit after the man died. Or, possibly, it was an accidental death, with the shock causing
the death and the cauterizing effect of the spark shutting off the flow of blood.”
It happened that the officer was no electrician, so he nodded. But they got an electrician on the job, and
he assured them they were drawing on their imaginations fruitlessly. There was not enough current in the
chandelier-one-hundred-and-ten-volt direct current was all that was in the circuit-to make such a burn,
and that such a burn was an impossibility, even with a powerhouse full of volts and amperes on the job.
“But there was no blood at the wound,” said the coroner.
“There was blood on his hand and running down the chandelier, wasn't there?” countered the angry
electrician. “Where'd that come from?”
The startled coroner made another investigation, in which he was joined by the police, and the net result
was totally confusing.
Where did the blood come from?
MILLIE GROSS was the woman who saw the vampire.
Millie Gross was another person of no importance in the affair, other than the passing one of contributing
a bit of information to the matter. The other two of none but passing importance, of course, being Betty
Free, who discovered the body, and Mrs. Murphy, who had been told by the man that he was hunting a
vampire.
Millie Gross really saw the vampire. But no one believed she had.
The disbelief hinged around the question of what a vampire looked like.
They dug up a dictionary and read the definition of a vampire, and the dictionary said that a vampire was
a bloodsucking ghost. This was a definition that was indefinite when applied to actual reality in the city of
New York, to say the least. The dictionary added that it was a reanimated body, believed to come from
the grave at night and wander around sucking the blood from persons asleep, causing their death. This
was not much help, because what Millie Gross saw was not a reanimated body.
Millie Gross was a “mux” operator by profession. She punched mux for an oil company that had offices
in the building, and she worked second. She gave it to the police that way. Translated into English, it
meant that she was an operator of one of those gadgets which sends printed messages over wires, and
she did this from four in the afternoon until midnight. When she was off duty at that time, she went
uptown to her room four nights a week, the other three nights going to meet her boy friend who was an
operator in a theater. She had been leaving the building a little after midnight when she saw the vampire.
Millie Gross hardly saw a reanimated body. It could have been a ghost she saw. Just possibly. And, if so,
it was a hell of a ghost-straight from Hades and still on fire.
She saw the story about the man in the chandelier in the early newspapers. The vampire she had seen
had preyed on her mind until she could not sleep. So she came to the police immediately, and the police
listened and were skeptical. They laughed only a little, although a little was enough to make Millie angry
at them-and at herself for being so gullible as to think she had seen a vampire.
“Fire, eh?” said a policeman.
Millie nodded uncomfortably. “Yes. Kind of a streamlined thing, all red.”
“Fire?”
“Yes.”
“It went floating across the lobby of this building, ducked down and out of the door, eh?” asked the
policeman.
“Yes.”
“Like a ball of fire, huh?”
“No, not like fire exactly. It was fire, and yet it wasn't. It was red and glowing, and not very bright. It was
red. Maybe it was red smoke or something; but, on second thought, I'm not so sure.”
“Right out of the door it went?”
“Yes.”
“The door,” pointed out the officer triumphantly, “is a revolving door. Did this fiery vampire of yours
revolve the door?”
“No,” said Millie, “I don't recall the door revolving. But there is a transom above the door, and I think
the thing went out through that.”
“It didn't get down on the floor and walk out, then?”
“It didn't walk. It floated.”
“How big was it?”
“That would be hard to say.”
“As big as a man?”
“Part of the time it was smaller than a man, and part of the time it was bigger, about the size of a horse.”
The officer thought it all over deeply and gave his conclusion.
“This is getting to be a most unusual matter,” he said.
Chapter II. ALL VERY FUNNY
DOC SAVAGE happened to occupy the same building.
He occupied the top floor, which was the eighty-sixth. For a long time there had been an effort to keep a
secret of this because of the plentiful assortment and, in some cases, the devilish cleverness of Doc
Savage's enemies. But for a period there had been no secret about the headquarters upstairs. In fact,
many of Doc Savage's clients had formed a habit of coming here with their troubles.
The troubles of his clients were actually Doc's troubles, because the business of the bronze man-as Doc
was called-was taking the weight off other people's shoulders when it came to dangers and difficulties.
This was the way a newspaper's feature writer had put it rather sarcastically. Doc Savage was not overly
popular with the press, although he was an excellent source of news; rather, his activities were. The
newspaper writer penned:
It is well known that Doc Savage makes a business of helping people out of trouble, provided the trouble
is so unusual that the police are non-functioning, or so big that the party cannot help himself. Or so they
report about Savage. They also report that he takes no pay; ever. Passing strange, to say the least.
Savage has five somewhat eccentric associates who are leaders in their fields. These men help him.
Together, they form a mysterious group-mysterious to this writer, at least. Danger is seemingly their only
business, and their pay is not profit.
The mention that some of Doc Savage's aids were “somewhat eccentric" applied to Lieutenant Colonel
Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. It applied to Monk Mayfair with bells on.
Monk Mayfair was about five feet two inches high and apparently about five feet nine inches wide. He
had a quantity of hair seemingly made of rusty shingle nails, most of it growing where hair should grow.
Inside his head, where apparently there was no room for anything, reposed as much knowledge about
chemistry as any man had yet been able to gather.
Monk had a runt hog called Habeas Corpus.
Monk and his hog rushed into the reception room of the eighty-six-floor skyscraper, and Monk said,
“Ham, is Doc in?” Monk wore a strange expression.
“Not right now,” Ham Brooks explained. “He is down in Washington again trying to persuade them that
we should be in the front lines, fighting. I bet he gets the same answer-that the country needs our brains
more than our brawn. He'll come back as mad as a hornet.”
“I wish he was here.” Monk rubbed his jaw. “A man was just found downstairs. You know those big
modernistic ceiling chandeliers that light the lobby? He was in one of those. He was dead.”
Ham stared at Monk. “Is that mentality of yours reflecting again? This sounds like one of its reflections.”
Monk scowled. “I wish that Doc was here.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Monk said, “that man in the chandelier climbed into the chandelier hunting a vampire. I think
Doc would be interested in a thing like that.”
“Yes?” said Ham, who was an eminent graduate of Harvard Law School.
“I think,” said Monk, “that the vampire hunter came here to see Doc Savage and something bad
happened to him just before he reached us. Things like that have happened to people who were coming
to see us on other occasions.”
Ham was interested. “What makes you think that?”
“I just got an idea in my head.”
“A very strange place for an idea, your head, and I've found only strange ideas get in it,” Ham told him.
Monk said, “Some day I'm going to get tired of being insulted and tie a knot in your tail right up next to
your ears. What do you say we go down and see what we can find out about the death of this man who
was hunting a vampire?”
“Is that the idea in your head?” Ham asked.
“Yeah.”
“It's a good one. I don't see how it got there.”
HAM BROOKS got his pet chimpanzee and they rode down in the elevator. As the elevator passed
lower floors it grew more crowded, and the passengers glanced at Monk and Ham with interest
and-those who did not know who they were-some amusement. The latter possibly mistook them for a
pair of down-at-the-heels vaudeville performers making the rounds with their trained animals. Monk, at
least, looked down-at-the-heels, although Ham Brooks was his usual sartorial perfection. Ham was
frequently listed as the best-dressed man in the city.
“Vampire, eh?” Ham pondered thoughtfully.
“Sure,” Monk agreed.
“There is no such thing.”
“No?”
“No. Vampires are just a superstition, old fellow,” Ham informed him.
The police were in the lobby, but they were not as co-operative as they would have been at another time.
Doc Savage and his associates had long held honorary commissions, high ones, on the metropolitan
police force. But last month an embarrassing affair had occurred where an enemy managed to point a
finger of guilt-a big finger, in the opinion of the police-at them. They had extricated themselves somewhat,
but the whole affair had been a fantastic one involving some allegedly wild men. So the police
co-operation was still lukewarm, although, officially, the bronze man and his associates had been
reinstated. (The Three Wild Men)
Monk and Ham asked a lot of questions. They got entirely civil answers and, although they were
skeptical on this point at the time, all the facts the police had unearthed.
Ham said, “Monk, the thing does look funny at that.”
Monk jerked his head. “Come over here in the corner.” They retired to the end of the lobby. Monk
glanced upward thoughtfully. “Can that what-is-it you call your chimpanzee climb?”
“Climb?” Ham said. “Sure, he can climb! Haven't you seen chimpanzees swing from tree to tree? They
even do it by their tails. The way your not-so-far-back ancestors did it.”
“Can he climb up into those chandeliers?”
“Sure. Why?”
“I was just thinking.”
Ham took another look at the chandeliers and said, “Wait a minute. Chemistry can climb into one of
those chandeliers-the one where they found the body. There is no way of reaching the others without a
ladder, unless you are a bird.”
“That,” Monk said, “is my point.”
“You better be a little clearer.”
“Suppose,” Monk said, “somebody tossed something up into one of those chandeliers to get rid of it in a
hurry; to hide it where it wouldn't be seen, but where he could come back and get it later.”
Ham narrowed one eye thoughtfully. “Could be. Could be, at that.”
“Would he be likely to toss it into the chandelier anybody could reach?”
“Not,” said Ham, “if he was a foresighted fellow.”
“But supposing,” said Monk, “you were another fellow, and you came to look for the thing that had been
tossed in one of the chandeliers, without knowing for sure which chandelier it was. Which one would you
look into first?”
Ham gave the lobby an examination. “I would look into the one I figured I could see into. Then I would
probably figure on coming back later with a ladder.”
Monk nodded emphatically.”
“There,” he said, “you are.”
“Where am I, exactly?”
“You are standing here,” Monk told him, “and you have just listened to the way a great deductive mind
works. I will deduct further. Suppose the someone, who knew the fellow was coming to look in the
chandeliers, wanted to get rid of this fellow. Think of what the someone would do. He would fix his death
trap in the chandelier that could be reached easily.”
Ham endeavored, without success, to find a hole in this logic.
“What,” he asked, “about the vampires?”
“There is no such thing as vampires,” Monk told him. “The thing we are going to do is get a long pole.”
THEY got a long pole finally. Getting a long pole in a hurry in downtown New York did not turn out to
be a simple matter. They compromised on three of the poles used to raise and lower transom windows
or high, sliding windows, which they located in an old-fashioned building in the neighborhood. They
lashed these together.
“Now,” Monk said, “your chimp can climb the pole, while we hold it. He can reach the chandelier. Send
Chemistry up and tell him to fetch what he finds.”
Ham looked uncomfortable. “You must think Chemistry is a porter.”
“I think he is worse than that,” Monk said. “I know you have taught him to go steal things for you, and
you did it so he would steal things from me. I lost my little book with the addresses of my girl friends in it,
and don't think I don't know where it went.”
“Oh, all right.” Ham grinned. “I'll return the little book. I haven't used it anyway.”
Monk said, “Somebody has been calling up my girls and telling them I am married. And don't think I
don't know who did that, either.”
They began sending Chemistry up the pole. They encountered some difficulty, because the chimp kept
bringing light bulbs down to them.
“It would have been a lot simpler for us to use a ladder ourselves,” Ham complained.
“Sure,” Monk said, “but it wouldn't have gotten into the newspapers.”
“Newspapers?”
“Sure,” Monk said. “That fellow over there is a reporter, and so are those two in the corner.” There was
a bright flash of light. “A photographer, too. We'll get our pictures in the papers.”
“And catch a fine what-was-the-idea lecture from Doc. You know he likes publicity about the way a fat
grasshopper likes a hen.”
“Not when he learns the reason.”
“Is
there a reason he can learn?”
“Oh, sure! Anybody connected with this thing-connected with it so they have something to fear, I
mean-will read about it and know we are on the job. That will scare them. Doc Savage has a reputation
that scares such people. And a scared person, particularly if he or she is a party of low character, is
much easier to catch. When he is scared, he is less likely to watch his hat and one thing and another.”
Ham was not convinced. “The strangest things crawl out of that brain of yours,” he complained.
The newspaper reporters gathered around and made themselves known, Monk and Ham were both
excellent copy. They were both famous men in their professions, having strong reputations. They were
also colorful. The pig and the chimp pets, Monk's what-a-thing-to-meet-in-the-dark appearance, and
Ham's fine clothing were riots in a photograph.
It was also true, as Ham muttered to Monk, that not many noted men went around making fools out of
themselves.
To their astonishment-Monk admitted later that he was as astonished as Ham-the chimpanzee called
Chemistry brought down a package which he found in the fourth chandelier from the west end of the
building.
It was a greasy-looking package that might have contained somebody's lunch, except that a lunch
probably would not be as hard as the contents of the package felt.
“Unless it might be a bride's biscuits,” Monk grunted.
Monk pocketed the package hastily.
Two policemen saw that they had found something and headed for them.
“Let's make some tracks,” Monk suggested.
They were called to, shouted at, then sworn at as they left. But they made it to an elevator, and the cage
headed upward. They changed to another elevator on the fortieth floor, rode down to the second floor
and left the building by another route which avoided the lobby.
“The police merely wanted us to co-operate with them,” Ham pointed out.
“I don't feel co-operative,” Monk explained, “after the unkind suspicions they entertained about us last
month.”
“Neither do I,” Ham agreed. “But I think this is another of those things of which Doc Savage will not
approve.”
“He won't say anything.”
“Probably not,” Ham agreed. “He almost never does. But sometimes I think I can see him suffering in
silence.”
“What do you suppose is in this package?” Monk asked.
“I do not know. I hope it is not some bridegroom's undesired lunch.”
“Speaking of lunch, let's find a restaurant and have ours while we open and examine this thing,” Monk
suggested. “On the way, though, we will stop at the office of a dentist friend of mine and have him try his
X-ray machine out on it, just on the chance that it is something we would not wish to open.”
Chapter III. THE VAMPIRE LUNCH
THE small man stepped up and showed Monk Mayfair a badge. It was totally unexpected. Monk gave
the shield a glance and thought it was the badge of a private detective.
The small man said, “I am a private shamus. Mickey Stool by name. I have accosted you because I wish
to discuss with you a matter of a man who was hunting a vampire. I have for you information of utmost
value concerning same.”
Monk scratched his head and examined the small man. The small man had bright eyes and large
buckteeth. All of his features seemed to recede from these, so that the first general impression his face
gave was that of a skeleton's head, with the bright little eyes substituted for empty sockets commonly
found in a skull.
“Concerning same, eh?” Monk said thoughtfully.
“Would you be interested?”
“Maybe.”
The small man shook his head. “Maybe is not enough. You should be positive. Believe me when I tell
you I am taking my life in my hands, or worse, just by standing here talking to you about it.”
Monk frowned. “All right, all right! Do we need to approach the subject as if we were going to sink a
battleship. Out with what you know, small fry, and let's get the kettle boiling.”
Once more the small man shook his head. “Do not treat this thing facetiously. My name is Mickey Stool,
and I am the same as a corpse complete with tombstone if I am seen standing here chinning with you. I
suggest we retire to more secretive surroundings.”
“Where,” Monk asked, “would be such a retiring spot?”
“My car.” The small man pointed with his head. “It's right down the street here. Come on.”
摘要：

THEFIERYMENACEADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.THEMANINTHECHANDELIER?ChapterII.ALLVERYFUNNY?ChapterIII.THEVAMPIRELUNCH?ChapterIV.ADVANCEOPERATION?ChapterV.THEVAMPIRE?ChapterVI.WARNINGFORFOUR?Chapt...

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