Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 114 - The Three Wild Men

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THE THREE WILD MEN
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. HONEY FOR BAIT
? Chapter II. THE SECOND FIDDLE
? Chapter III. TUNE ON THE FIDDLE
? Chapter IV. THE WILD MEN
? Chapter V. GENUINELY WILD
? Chapter VI. HELP FOR FRIENDS
? Chapter VII. THE EPIDEMIC
? Chapter VIII. ONE TOO MANY SHIRTEE
? Chapter IX. QUESTION OF GUILT
? Chapter X. TOP WEST
? Chapter XI. THE HERRING
? Chapter XII. THE TERRIBLE THING
? Chapter XIII. THE TALKING HOG
? Chapter XIV. SINISTER IS A SWAMP
? Chapter XV. MAN OF DESTINY
? Chapter XVI. THE WILDEST MAN
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stepens
Chapter I. HONEY FOR BAIT
THE bright-eyed girl left the Fifth Avenue bus at Thirtieth Street and walked north one block and west
one block. By that time three gentlemen, and they were really gentlemen, were trailing her hopefully, not
because she looked like a girl who could be picked up, but because she really was such a
wonderful-looking thing.
She sat at a table in a restaurant which served a three-dollar luncheon.
Eventually, the head waiter approached and asked her, “Miss Cushing?”
She nodded.
“A call for you,” said the head waiter. He carried a telephone which he plugged in at her table. Having
done that, he bowed with the extra flourish that he reserved for customers like this one and departed.
“Yes,” the girl said into the telephone.
“Boy, oh, boy!” said a brash male voice in the receiver. “Cut off my tail and call me beautiful! Where did
they dig up a gorgeous butterfly like you?”
The girl asked coolly, “Who is this, please?”
“This? Oh, this is poor, down-trodden Mr. Adam.”
“Adam looking for his Eve, I presume.”
“This Adam,” said the brash voice dryly, “happens to be looking for three wild men.”
The girl tightened noticeably. “Oh!” she said. Then: “You were to meet me here.”
“Sure. I'm meeting you now. This is it.”
The girl's eyebrows drew together slightly. “You mean that you are not going to join me?”
“Butterfly, joining you is what I'd like nothing better to do. But it might not be smart under the
circumstances.”
“Are you sitting where you can see me?”
“Sure.”
The girl put the telephone down and casually lighted a cigarette. She turned slightly to the right to shake
out the match and turned a little to the left to blow out smoke. She removed a fleck of tobacco from her
lip with a fingernail, then picked up the receiver.
“Nice job of looking around,” said the brash man's voice. “But you didn't see me, did you? So now let's
get down to business.”
The girl was slightly irritated. “First,” she said, “let's have an understanding.”
“With you, butterfly, I would like nothing better.”
“That,” the girl interrupted, “is exactly the point. I do not like you. I have not seen you, and I have no
desire to do so, and I am sure I dislike you. I have no doubt, in view of what you are doing now, that you
are a completely contemptible individual with no moral, social or other virtues.”
“Ouch!” said the voice.
“I, on the other hand, endeavor to be a lady,” the girl continued dryly. “Suppose we put it on that basis.”
The man's voice became a little ugly.
“Sure, I'm the stableboy. You're the queen,” he said. “But today, you take orders from me. You got that
through your pretty noggin?”
“If I did not have it in my pretty noggin,” the girl snapped, “would I be here?”
“All right, all right. Have you ever met this guy you are to horn-swoggle?”
“Doc Savage?”
“Yeah. Clark Savage, Jr., or Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, whatever you wanta call him. Ever met
him?”
“No.”
“You got your work cut out for you, butterfly. You sure have.”
SUDDENLY, the brash male voice stopped being brash and was coldly emotionless, dictating details
and instructions like a machine. The switch in manner of the man revealed something of his character. He
had some qualities besides being a hand with the ladies. His impudent approach to the girl, for example,
had some of the qualities of an animal playing with a mouse, as a cat would give a mouse a bat or two
with its paw before getting down to serious business.
He said, “Savage is in town. My part of this job was to find that out. All right, he's here. If you've heard
anything much about him, you know he has five men who are friends and assistants. I think the five are in
town, too. You hearing me?”
“I'm hearing you,” the girl said.
“Doc Savage and one of the assistants, named Monk Mayfair, are having lunch in the Restaurant Manor,
two doors west of here. They are lunching with a Turk named Mustaphet Kemel. Mustaphet is supposed
to sell Turkish tobacco to American manufacturers, and he has occasion to travel around over the world
a lot, selling tobacco, of course. But Mustaphet is also secret agent of the Turkish government-the
Turkish government thinks. The Russians also think Mustaphet is their agent. So do the French. So do
some others. Only Mustaphet isn't the pup of any of them. He's Doc Savage's pup, and nobody else's.”
The brash man chuckled.
“That has no bearing on our day's work,” he added. “It just goes to show you that Savage is not a
minnow. He has lots of pups like Mustaphet. How many, nobody knows. Incidentally, he is no spy and
no international schemer.”
“I know what Doc Savage is,” the girl snapped.
“All right, all right. I've told you where he is in the restaurant two doors from here. Go in and take him.
He's a big bronze man, very handsome, who doesn't look so big until you get close-”
“I know what he looks like.”
“Hm-m-m!
I presume you also know what you are to do?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The girl's face got suddenly white.
“It isn't good,” she said. “Are they going to kill him?”
The brash voice laughed, and there was something so fierce in the mirth that it sounded a little
unbalanced. “Three wild men,” he said. “It's all very remarkable, wouldn't you say?” And he laughed
again like a skeleton rattling.
MUSTAPHET KEMEL was an innocent-looking piece of chocolate, as innocent in appearance as was,
probably, the boy in the fable who rubbed the lamp and caused the jinni to pop out of nowhere. He was
eating peas with his knife like a cowboy.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Monk Mayfair was the fellow in the red shirt. Monk was a
remarkable fellow who was half a man high and two men wide, with rusty-red hair that made his wrists
look as if they had been sprinkled with shingle nails. His forehead did not appear high enough to contain
one of the most complete assortments of knowledge about chemicals in the world. He was eating his
third steak, to the horror of the waiter.
Doc Savage had not spoken a dozen words the past hour and had done it in a way that dominated the
conversation entirely. He had, although he was not trying to exercise it, that power. It was a carefully
developed power. He was a man, a giant bronze man, about whom almost everything was carefully
developed. He was younger than either Monk Mayfair or Mustaphet.
The restaurant was a little like Doc Savage, very famous but making no show about it. It was on a street
of notable and subdued restaurants.
Paul Wock was the head waiter. He was a good head waiter and had a knack of attracting large tips.
Still and all, fifty dollars was a large tip, even for Paul.
Fifty dollars was what the girl handed him. Five tens, crisply new.
She said, “Look, Paul, this is for not seeing me. I want to run to Mr. Savage's table. You are not to
notice me in time to stop me. It is a joke. You understand, Paul. A gag. I am to throw my arms around
Mr. Savage and kiss him. Embarrass him, you see.”
Paul tried to recall having seen her before. “I see,” he said, not seeing anything but the fifty. “Oh, yes, a
gag, I'm sure. Yes, indeed, I'm sure.”
“You understand. All you have to do is not stop me until I kiss him,” the girl said.
The fifty was hypnotizing Paul. “I'm sure,” he said. “Yes, indeed, to be sure.”
“Then it's O. K.?”
Paul made the bills disappear with a neatness that only head waiters seem to master. “To be sure, Miss .
. . Miss-”
“Smythe,” the girl said. “Johanna Smythe, to be sure.”
“To be sure,” Paul agreed.
So the very pretty girl whose name was not Johanna Smythe, or Joan Smith either, went to Doc Savage's
table without being molested. She walked to the table quickly but not rapidly enough to draw the
attention of Doc Savage and his party, who were engrossed in conversation.
Only she did not kiss Doc Savage.
She jabbed him with a hypodermic needle! She had carried the needle completely concealed in a small,
flexible purse, and she simply jammed the purse against Doc Savage and squeezed. The jamming was
done against his back, on the left side below the shoulder blade.
Doc Savage gave a normal start and looked up. His flake-gold eyes-one of his unusual features, his eyes
were like pools of loose flake gold, always stirred by tiny winds-were rather wide.
The girl calmly opened her purse, removed the emptied hypo needle and placed it on the table in front of
Doc Savage.
“You would naturally know what that is,” she said. “However, it might make it a trifle more interesting if I
told you that the needle was just filled with germs.”
Chapter II. THE SECOND FIDDLE
IT was dramatic. Probably, “melodramatic” was the word, and enough to be on the silly side. It made
Mustaphet Kemel laugh. He threw back his head and smacked his knees and sounded like one of the
donkeys the tourists used to ride out to see the Pyramids.
“You must be an Oriental,” he told the girl. “The women of the Orient are like that. Dramatic. Bizarre.
Even a trifle ridiculous.”
She did not like that. She did not like Mustaphet.
She examined Mustaphet's ears. “If they were a little longer, you would look like a jackass, too,” she
advised him.
Mustaphet's grin hung on his face like a dead duck.
Doc Savage had been contemplating the hypodermic needle with, considering the circumstances, a
noteworthy lack of excitement. However, he was looking a little like a machine-if a man could look like
one-which was the way he looked when he had gotten into trouble.
He also did another thing-a thing which only Monk Mayfair, who knew Doc better than Mustaphet,
knew that Doc had done. It was a trilling sound. A low, exotic note, hardly noticeable, with an eerie
quality of seeming to come from everywhere rather than from any particular spot. It was a thing that Doc
Savage did absent-mindedly when under mental stress, so Monk knew that Doc was not quite as
unconcerned as he looked.
“Germs?” Doc Savage remarked.
“That's right,” the girl said.
Doc considered her statement. “What is right about it?”
“Eh?”
It was evident that she had expected more of a reaction out of this. His unconcern was getting her rattled.
“Germs,” she snapped, “are what make people ill. Or did you know?” She told Doc Savage, “The germs
in that hypodermic needle were a very special germ. They are now in your body. By now they are
circulating all through your body, so it is too late to do anything about that part of it.”
“Then I am to assume,” said Doc Savage, “that there is another part of it?”
“Right as rain,” said the girl.
“What is the other part?”
“The part,” she told him, “where you find out how to kill the germs.”
“Why kill them?”
“Because it's a case of kill or cure. You want to cure yourself, don't you?”
Monk whistled. “Brothers, this rates a brass medal or something. She shot a bunch of germs into Doc so
he will have to find the cure to save himself.”
Doc Savage contemplated the girl, who was extremely easy contemplating.
“Is that the general idea?” he asked.
She nodded. “It's the specific idea. It's the nail hit right on the head. Your assumption is correct.”
“What,” he asked, “do I do about it?”
“You get busy finding the cure,” she advised, “if you know what is good for you. In about three days you
will be very ill. In about another three days there will be slow music and flowers which you will not
smell-unless you get busy.”
Doc Savage looked faintly pensive. “Three days is not much time to work on a thing like this. Finding
cures is something doctors spend years doing.”
She compressed her lips.
“You better do it in three days,” she advised.
Doc Savage shook his head. “I might prefer the preventative,” he said.
“Preventative?” She frowned. “You mean a vaccine? There isn't any.” She shook her head. “Anyway,
you couldn't vaccinate yourself because you've already got the germs.”
She took a deep breath and a step forward.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” she added. “I'll take you to a place where you can see more of the germs.
Maybe that will help.”
“Take me where?”
“I'll show you.”
“Is it near, this place where we can see the germs?”
“I'll show you,” she said.
Doc Savage shook his head again. “No, thanks. I prefer the preventative.”
“Preventative?”
Doc Savage unbuttoned coat, vest, shirt, and showed her what was underneath-a bulletproof vest with a
mesh fine enough that the needle could not have penetrated.
“A nice preventative, wouldn't you say?” he suggested.
The girl then turned and ran.
MONK MAYFAIR popped his eyes at the girl.
Mustaphet Kemel, on the other hand, popped his eyes at the bulletproof vest. They had been discussing
the subject of such vests when the girl interrupted them. Mustaphet was reporting to Doc Savage that a
certain extremely competent and unscrupulous scientist in a Baltic country had developed a bulletproof
fabric. Mustaphet had wanted to ascertain if Doc would be interested if he, Mustaphet, should produce,
say in a convenient interval of two months or so, a sample of the new alloy fabric and the formula for its
production. Mustaphet's business was supplying such items; it was his real business, that is. But it was not
a question of money for Mustaphet when he was dealing with Doc Savage. Mustaphet owed Doc
Savage a great many things, including his life, which he would repay if necessity required. Also, he owed
to Doc the life of his small son, which was the greater debt by far of the two. Mustaphet felt that even a
lifetime of little services-such as this one about the Baltic scientist's bulletproof vest-would be but a small
down payment.
Mustaphet had not known that Doc Savage had already developed such a bulletproof fabric.
Monk Mayfair stood up. Monk did not have bulletproof vests on his mind. He was thinking about a
pretty girl.
“You going to let her run off like that?” he asked Doc.
“With pleasure,” Doc Savage admitted.
“There's no pleasure in that for me,” Monk announced. “Anybody object to my catching up with her and
sort of broadening our acquaintance?”
“You'll be sorry,” Mustaphet predicted.
“A girl as pretty as that one. Sorry?” Monk snorted.
“No objections,” Doc Savage said.
Monk was off. He was full of enthusiasm.
Mustaphet watched Monk depart, and sighed. “Shake a skirt in front of Monk, and he is off.”
“A pretty skirt,” Doc corrected.
Mustaphet chuckled. “And if the skirt contains danger, it is further to Monk's liking.” He laughed. “What
a combination, that Monk. As homely as a mud fence around an African cannibal village; yet women are
fascinated by his ugliness. A forehead that does not look as if it could contain a spoonful of brains; yet
great chemists all over the world consider him a genius. A paradox, that fellow. And when he has his pet
pig with him, he becomes something of a circus side show. Monk and his pig named Habeas Corpus.
What a pair!”
Doc Savage made no comment.
Mustaphet changed the subject, asked, “What about that bulletproof vest I mentioned? The one that
Baltic fellow has developed?” Mustaphet leaned forward. “You want a sample of the mesh and the
formula?”
Doc Savage nodded slightly. “Get it.”
“It might not be superior to your own,” Mustaphet pointed out.
“True. But again it might, and that would be unfortunate. The Baltic fellow, as you call him, happens to be
a genius of an ilk, and he is tied up with a war-mongering clique. If he has something definitely superior, it
will do no one any good.”
Mustaphet nodded. “And if he does have something, you will then take measures to see that the secret
does not reach the wrong hands?” he hazarded.
“Right.”
Mustaphet leaned back. He studied Doc Savage, then shook his head slowly, approvingly. “They call
you the world's trouble-shooter, the man who rights wrongs and punishes evildoers in the far corners of
the world. That is, those who know you well call you that. But they are somewhat wrong. You prevent a
great many unpleasant things before they happen. I doubt if you get proper credit for that.”
“Credit,” Doc Savage said quietly, “is not important. I do not run an advertising agency.”
“Just what it is that you do run,” muttered Mustaphet, “is a thing that puzzles a lot of people.” He
beckoned the waiter and called for the check. “In six weeks, not more than two months, you will see me
again, and I will have visited the Baltic fellow,” he said.
“I would not like it,” Doc Savage said slowly, “if you should accidentally happen to kill the fellow.”
Mustaphet smiled slightly. “Do not worry. I know your rules against such things.”
MONK MAYFAIR caught the girl as she was walking south on Fifth Avenue. Monk overhauled her and
touched her arm. She whirled nervously, her lips parted slightly and she seemed undecided whether to
run or scream.
“With your mouth open like that,” Monk told her with all the gallantry of Sir Galahad on a Sunday, “you
are the most beautiful of all.”
From rage and fright the girl began to look as if she wanted to screech with mirth. This was one of
Monk's secrets in his way with women.
Monk affected them the way finding a toad in their slipper would affect them. First impulse was a howl of
fright; second one was mirth. The next stage was amused and interested toleration, like keeping a toad
around to study such a homely thing. From this stage, Monk had others which he developed, the success
of which invariably amazed the beholders.
“You're not angry?” the girl asked incredulously.
“Me? Why should I be?” Monk chuckled expansively. “This is a great day for my tribe. It's the day I met
you, in case I'm too subtle for you.”
“You didn't come to take me back to Doc Savage?” the girl demanded.
“Of course not,” said Monk gallantly.
“Then,” said the girl, “why did you follow me?”
Monk looked as if she was very obtuse, indeed. “Haven't you been followed before?”
She studied him, trying to decide just where to peg him. “Not,” she said, “by one of the world's leading
chemists.”
“Ah, you've heard of me.” Monk was pleased.
“Yes, and I've heard you have quite a touch for female hearts,” she informed him.
“It's a lie!” said Monk. “It sounds like that low-life, Ham Brooks, the lawyer. You don't, by chance,
know him?”
“No.”
“Good,” said Monk. “Not knowing him, you rank that much higher in my estimation. Were there really
germs in that hypodermic needle?”
“Germs?” For a moment the girl did not seem to know what he was talking about. “Oh, germs. To be
sure, the germs.”
“Were there?”
“Were there what?”
“In the hypo needle. Germs. Like you said.”
She looked confused.
“No, there were no germs,” she admitted. “That was just a lie. A trick.”
Monk gazed at her approvingly. “That is just what I would have told Doc,” he said, “if there had been
time.”
LATER they were in a shooting gallery, shooting at little white ducks, and the girl seemed puzzled as to
just how she had gotten there. Puzzled, but more at ease. That was Monk's technique. Put them at ease.
Monk said, examining a rifle, “I knew the minute I saw you, and heard you say, 'That needle is filled with
germs,' or whatever it was you said-I knew right then that you were all right. I knew the wolf wasn't a
wolf at all.”
“How did you know that?”
Monk aimed at a duck. “You see that little white duck. It is moving, and it is one of a chain of little white
ducks. As sure as you see that little duck, you know another one will pop up. And just as sure as you see
a girl like you, you know she is all right.”
The girl touched Monk's arm. “Thank you,” she said.
“She may be as unexpected as fleas,” Monk added, “and she may blow your hat off. But she will be all
right.”
The girl picked up one of the small-caliber rifles. She aimed casually and knocked over a duck. She
shifted to a smaller duck, and knocked that one over. Monk's eyes got round. She was a good shot.
She asked, “What do you know about Doc Savage?”
Monk shrugged. “As much as anyone, I guess. He is a man you think you know well; yet you never do
know him.”
“How do you explain that?”
“The way he was developed, I guess. You know his dad put him in the hands of scientists about the time
he outgrew his three-cornered underwear. From then on, the best scientific minds did their best to make
him a prodigy.”
“From what I hear, they succeeded,” the girl suggested.
“Yeah. He's human enough, though.”
The girl shot some more small ducks. There was only one smaller target, and that was a row of matches.
The girl fired three times with measured precision, and three matches burst alight.
“Annie Oakley!” Monk exclaimed admiringly.
“Just Dead-eye Dick's daughter,” she corrected. “Look, I wanted help.”
“Help?”
“When I pulled that thing about the germs. It was silly, wasn't it? Melodramatic.”
“You made it convincing enough for me. My hair is still on end,” Monk told her gallantly. “What kind of
help?”
“Some people are in trouble. Very serious trouble.”
“Doc's your man.”
“Oh, but I couldn't go back to him after that trick I pulled.”
Monk brightened noticeably.
“Why not,” he offered hopefully, “let me offer my assistance?”
“You wouldn't mind playing second fiddle?”
“Second fiddle,” Monk said, “is the instrument I play loudest.”
THE girl was very slick in the next thing she did. It was executed casually and simply. Monk did not
notice the part of it where she rubbed her fingers on the ejector mechanism of the rifle and got grease on
her fingers.
She turned to Monk and showed him her hand. “Oh, the darned gun had grease on it!” she said. “I had
better go wash my hands. I don't want to ruin my gloves. I just bought them today.”
“Sure,” Monk said. “Then you can tell me what all this mystery is about, and what kind of help it is you
need.”
“Of course,” she said quickly.
This was a large shooting gallery, an emporium somewhat more elaborate than the usual run. There were
other items of amusement other than the shooting gallery, and there were telephones in the ladies'
washrooms. The girl used one of these. She dialed a number.
摘要：

THETHREEWILDMENADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.HONEYFORBAIT?ChapterII.THESECONDFIDDLE?ChapterIII.TUNEONTHEFIDDLE?ChapterIV.THEWILDMEN?ChapterV.GENUINELYWILD?ChapterVI.HELPFORFRIENDS?ChapterVII.THEEPIDEMIC?ChapterVIII.ONETOOMA...

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