Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 106 - Peril in the North

VIP免费
2024-12-23 0 0 445.07KB 89 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
PERIL IN THE NORTH
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE BLUE DOG
? Chapter II. STRANGER’S WARNING
? Chapter III. THE ELUSIVE MR. LOGAN
? Chapter IV. THE WORRIED GIRL
? Chapter V. UNWILLING STOWAWAY
? Chapter VI. THE SIDETRACK
? Chapter VII. ACTION IN ARK STREET
? Chapter VIII. THE MAN IS MAD
? Chapter IX. PERILS NORTH
? Chapter X. RACE
? Chapter XI. ICE TRAP!
? Chapter XII. HOPE BLACKS OUT
? Chapter XIII. FEAR ON THE FLOES
? Chapter XIV. WHITE STRINGS TO DEATH
? Chapter XV. WHO WAS MUNGEN?
Chapter I. THE BLUE DOG
THE man was in a wild hurry. He came across the street with his head back and his feet pounding. A
taxicab nearly hit him.
He dived into the crowd in front of the Ritz-Astoria Hotel like a bowling ball going into a set-up of pins.
He elbowed the elegant doorman of the Ritz-Astoria in the stomach when that resplendent mass of gold
braid and brass buttons got in his way.
"Gosh!" he gasped. "Mr. Savage! Wait!"
Doc Savage was signing autograph books by the score as they were thrust in his face. The Ritz-Astoria
bellhops and assistant managers were indignantly trying to shove a swarm of other autograph hunters
aside and open a lane to the door.
"Mr. Savage!" panted the hurried man. "We’ve got rats!"
Doc Savage looked at him.
"Rats?" Doc said.
The man nodded. "Rats," he gasped. "Dozens of them."
The man was round, red-faced, perspiring. He trembled.
"What about these rats?" Doc Savage asked him.
The man pounded his chest to help get air into it.
"My pal is sitting there with a gun!" he exclaimed.
"With a gun?"
The panting man said, "He watches the rats."
Doc Savage considered the point.
"You mean," he said, "that your pal sits there with a gun and watches the rat holes for the rats to come
out?"
"Oh, no! That ain’t it." The man shook his head violently.
"How is it, then?"
"The rats are in glass bottles," the man explained.
Doc Savage said, "Why does your associate not pour water into the bottles and drown the rats, if he
wishes to be rid of them?"
"That ain’t it. You don’t get this right."
"No?"
"He’s afraid. My pal’s scared."
"Afraid of what?"
"I don’t know."
Doc Savage said, "You are not making this very clear. By any chance are you wasting my time? I am
sorry, but there is a reception for foreign notables and army commanders here at the hotel, and I am
supposed to be in the receiving line. If this is not important, I will have to ask you to excuse me."
"Oh, gosh!" the man gasped. "Wait!"
He jammed a hand into a pocket, fumbled and brought out a piece of paper, which he unfolded.
"Here!" He thrust the paper forward. "Maybe that will explain. My pal wrote it."
Typing on the paper read:
Have given my diabetic rats arteriosclerosis and returned them to normal several times. Now complications have come
up. Would you be interested?
Bill Browder
Doc Savage shoved the paper in his pocket. "Can you take me to this pal of yours?"
"Sure!"
"Do it, then," Doc Savage said. "And quick."
A gentleman in a full-dress suit with medals and a red ribbon across his chest wailed, "But, Mr. Savage,
you are supposed to help entertain! And we hoped for a speech. The ambassador wants—"
"I am sorry. This happens to be important," Doc Savage said.
THEY wedged through the crowd. Because the sidewalks were jammed, they took to the street.
The man glanced up at Doc Savage.
"Gosh!" he said.
His awe was understandable. Doc Savage was big, but it was only when you walked at his side or saw
him in a crowd that you realized his size. His development was remarkably symmetrical. His skin was
tanned by tropical suns a deep-bronze hue, and his hair was only slightly darker.
They ran to a car, climbed in and sped away. The big bronze man drove expertly.
Doc Savage said, "This pal of yours—what do you mean when you call him a pal?"
The man grinned. "He’s a swell guy. I’m janitor of the house where he lives. I keep his furnace going and
mow his lawns. He’s a great egg."
"Then you are not a business associate?"
"Me? Oh, no. Not so you would notice it. He don’t mow lawns and attend furnaces for his living."
"What does he do?"
"Them rats, mostly," the man said. "He puts in his attention on the rats."
"Where is he now?"
The man gave the address. It was beyond the city, in a suburb.
They whipped along in silence for a while. The man caught a glimpse of Doc Savage’s eyes, and he was
impressed. The bronze man’s eyes were probably his most remarkable characteristic. They were like
pools of flake gold, strangely stirred, as if by tiny winds.
The man said, "I’ve heard a lot about you, Dr. Savage."
The bronze man made no comment.
"I understand you’re a great scientist and a great doctor," the man said. "I’ve heard a lot about that. And
you help people out of trouble, don’t you? Guys who are in a mess, and the law don’t seem to be able to
help them—you pitch in for them, don’t you?"
Doc swung the car into a long, wide express highway.
"Sometimes," he said.
"I think Bill Browder and his rats are in trouble," the man said.
The city fled away behind them. Business buildings became smaller, turned to houses. The houses grew
scattered. There were no stoplights on the express road. Traffic did not interfere with them. Cars gave
them a wide berth.
"What makes the cars shy away from us?" the man asked. "I noticed, back there in town, everybody
gave us the right of way."
"Red police lights on the front of the car," Doc replied briefly.
"You a cop?"
"We have honorary commissions on the force," the bronze man said. "Both myself and my associates."
"I’ve heard about them helpers of yours," the man said. "Five of them, ain’t there? They’re quite some
guys, themselves."
Doc Savage did not answer. He was, as a rule, not exactly a fountain of information. In fact, he was not
free with words. He almost never conducted a conversation merely for the sake of carrying on one.
They rushed along for about five miles.
Doc abruptly asked a question. "How did you happen to be so out of breath when you reached me?"
"Oh, that?" The man grimaced. "Bill Browder told me you were going to be at that hotel. He said you
would get there a few minutes before nine o’clock, because the reception was due to start at nine. So I
rushed. I rushed like the devil. But I made it."
Doc Savage made no comment.
They turned in at a brick bungalow in a modest-home section that was near a more pretentious residential
district.
The man touched Doc’s arm. "Say, will you tell me something?"
"What?" Doc asked him.
"What is it them rats have got—arteriosclerosis? What is arteriosclerosis?"
Doc Savage said, "Scientists for a long time have been experimenting in giving arteriosclerosis to diabetic
rats, on the theory that a disturbance of fat metabolism allows plaques of fat to be deposited in the
arteries, thus causing one of the principal diseases of old age. If Bill Browder has given it to diabetic rats,
then cured them of it, and given it to them again, he has discovered what will be one of the great things of
this generation. He has discovered the thing so many medical scientists have been searching for."
The man looked baffled.
"I still don’t get what arteriosclerosis is," he said.
"Hardening of the arteries," Doc said.
"Oh!"
BILL BROWDER met them at the cottage door.
"Thanks, Snooker," he said to the man who had brought Doc.
Snooker went away, vanished in the night.
Bill Browder said, "Mr. Savage, I’m delighted and flattered."
Doc Savage said, "Where do you get your fat metabolism, Mr. Browder? Do you get it by retorting
quinine?"
Bill Browder hesitated.
"Why, yes, I use that method," he said. "It’s an old method, but I use lots of old ones."
Doc Savage’s flake-gold eyes became a little more animated.
"That method," he said, "would be a new one. It would be more than that. It would be amazing."
Bill Browder’s jaw fell. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that fat metabolism and retorting and quinine haven’t the slightest possible connection with each
other," Doc Savage told him. "Which would automatically prove that you know nothing whatever about
medical research. So you would not be able to tell whether a rat had arteriosclerosis. I doubt if you
would recognize a diabetic rat as such."
Bill Browder swallowed. "You didn’t take long to trick me," he said.
Doc Savage’s flake-gold eyes were intent on Browder.
"If you contemplate any ventures with that gun Snooker mentioned," he said, "you might give it a second
thought."
Browder licked his lips. "I was not thinking of that, I assure you."
Doc Savage said nothing.
Bill Browder blinked, changed his weight from one foot to another. He looked more and more
uncomfortable.
He took a gun out of his coat pocket and handed it to Doc Savage.
"Here," he said. "Take it. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. Now that you’re here, I’m
probably safe without a gun, anyway."
"What makes you think that?" Doc asked him.
Browder grinned slightly. "I’ve heard a little about you and that crew of men you work with."
"You know nothing of medicine?" Doc asked.
"Practically nothing."
"How did you learn about science experimenting with giving arteriosclerosis to diabetic rats?"
"Oh, I copied that out of a newspaper item," said Bill Browder. "I looked the word up in the dictionary.
You have no idea how hard it is to pronounce a word like that."
"The idea being to get me to come here?"
"Sure. I’d heard you were one of the world’s leading experimenters in medical research. I knew a thing
like that would bring you here in a hurry, particularly if it was connected with a little mystery."
"You are clever."
Bill Browder grinned briefly. "I haven’t been told that very often."
"How much of your story was genuine?"
"The mystery," Bill Browder said sincerely. "There’s plenty of that."
Browder was a young man who went to width rather than height. He was not fat. His hands were
knobby and strong. There were freckles on his nose. His eyes were blue, with crinkles at the corners,
and he had brown hair and rather large ears. But there was, as a whole, nothing freakish about him.
Doc Savage finished inspecting him more closely.
"No rats," the bronze man remarked.
"No, no rats," said Bill Browder.
"But there is a mystery?"
Browder was suddenly serious. "Plenty of that," he said.
"Suppose we hear about it," Doc said.
Browder rubbed his jaw uncomfortably. "You . . . er . . . are not angry with me? I mean, about getting
you out here with that gag about the funny rats?"
Doc Savage said, "I am not particularly amused by it. If it was justified—if there was a good reason for
what you did—that would be different."
"There’s this mystery."
"I have asked you to tell me about that."
Bill Browder grunted and wheeled. "Better than that, I’ll show it to you." He walked toward the rear of
the house. "It’s due around here about this time."
Doc Savage strode beside him. "What is due about this time?"
"The blue dog," explained Bill Browder.
Chapter II. STRANGER’S WARNING
DOC SAVAGE strode along with Bill Browder until he saw that the young man was going to leave the
house. Then the bronze man got in front of Browder and said, "I think you had better tell me more about
this right now."
Browder pointed at the back door. "The dog will be out there." He consulted a wrist watch. "Yes, it’s
almost ten o’clock. The dog comes around ten every night."
Doc stood aside. "A blue dog?"
Stepping to the door, Browder said, "Yes."
He opened the door. There was a brick stoop outside. It was very dark. Browder went out on the
porch.
Doc followed him. The bronze man was alert. "The dog is blue, you say. You mean that there is
something unusual about the color."
Browder closed the door behind them, and it was darker than ever. "I’ll say the dog is unusual."
Doc Savage stepped to one side. It was no accident that his back was against a brick wall. He gave his
opinion. "This has stopped sounding unusual and begins to sound silly."
"Wait until you see the dog. That’s the silliest thing of all." Browder fumbled around in the darkness.
"Here’s a chair. We might as well sit down. We may have to wait a few minutes. The dog doesn’t come
exactly at ten every—"
He stopped. "Sh-h-h-h!" he warned.
Doc already had heard the sound. It was out somewhere in the backyard. An animal. Judging from the
sound, the animal was exploring a garbage can.
Browder came swiftly to Doc’s side. "I’ve rigged up a homemade floodlight," he whispered. "That’s so
you can see the dog. I’ll turn it on."
"You think that is the dog?"
"Yes, it must be," Browder whispered. "Wait. Here’s the switch."
The next instant, light spouted over the scene. The backyard was a mediocre one with untrimmed
shrubbery and a lawn that needed mowing.
The dog was blue! There was no question about that. The color of the animal was distinctly azure.
Whirling, the dog showed teeth. It was a big animal, with almost the shoulder height of a great Dane, but
with more the aspect of a wolf. Reflected light came from its eyes redly, as if it had the orbs of a dragon.
The dog suddenly shot away into the darkness. Where another animal would normally bark, it did not
make a sound.
"You see!" breathed Bill Browder.
Doc dropped a hard grip on Browder’s arm. "What are you trying to pull? That dog is not remarkable. It
is simply a big police dog with freak coloration."
Browder moved in the direction the dog had taken. "Come on! You haven’t seen anything, yet."
He sounded so earnest that Doc went with him.
Then the dog barked at them. It was a low, rather fierce woofing sound.
"He’ll keep doing that," Browder whispered. "We can follow him by that noise." He opened a yard gate.
"You say that color is actually natural?"
They walked down an alley. The dog moved ahead of them. It was intensely dark.
Doc said, "A freak of nature. In the case of plants, they call a peculiarly colored specimen a sport."
Browder stumbled over a rut. The dog barked hoarsely again. "I’ve followed this dog before," Browder
said.
"You mean that you just saw it, became curious and followed it?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"The next day, someone tried to kill me," Bill Browder replied. "And they’ve tried twice since then to kill
me."
Doc Savage yanked to a stop. Not so much because of what Browder had said did he stop. There was
another reason, a reason who had popped up in their path with a gun! It was a girl.
THE girl had a small flashlight, the beam of which she turned on her gun long enough for them to notice
the weapon. The revolver was shiny and cheap.
"Please stand still," the girl said.
They stopped, because of the obvious fact that a cheap gun will shoot just as violently as an expensive
one.
She had come from behind a bush. She was tall, but the backlight from her flash had not disclosed much
about her face.
"Bill!" she gasped. "Bill, you can’t do this!"
"Huh!" exploded Bill Browder.
The girl blazed her flashlight in their eyes.
"Go back!" she urged. "Give this thing up, Bill. You’ve got to!"
"Great blazes!" said Bill Browder.
"Bill, you’ve got to stop," said the girl. "I don’t know who this man with you is, but you’re trying to get
him mixed up in things. You can’t do that. This has got to end, I tell you!"
There was deep, almost tearful vehemence in her speech. Completely serious.
She made one more statement.
"This is the last chance I’m giving you," she said. "You’d better stop, Bill, before it is too late."
Then she began backing away. She put her flashlight on her gun. While the weapon was in the light, she
cocked it, obviously so they would realize she meant business.
Her light went out. They could hear her running away.
Bill Browder let the air out of his lungs in a windy rush.
"Whew!"
he exclaimed.
"Who was she?" Doc Savage asked.
Browder snorted.
"I never saw that girl before in my life," he said. "Isn’t that the strangest thing?"
Doc said, "She called you by name."
Browder gulped. "That’s what makes it queer."
Doc said, "You stay here. Do not move from this spot, you understand."
Bill Browder grabbed Doc Savage’s arm and snapped, "Here, here! You can’t—"
Doc Savage took Bill Browder by the neck, and they struggled for a while. Doc gradually worked his
fingers around to the young man’s neck, and Browder, apparently realizing something drastic was about
to happen to him, struggled furiously. Doc located the nerve centers he was seeking, put pressure on
them and Browder became limp.
Doc put him on the ground. Browder was unconscious. The effect of the nerve pressure was about the
same as a knockout blow, although senselessness would grip him longer; and there would be no great
feeling of discomfort after he revived.
The bronze man followed the girl. He was not breathing hard. He was not excited; at least he showed no
signs of excitement.
DOC traveled fast. The lay of the ground was unfamiliar, but the girl was still within hearing, still running.
He pursued the sound.
They left the alley, went across an open lot which was studded with brush and trees. Doc heard limbs
crackling under the girl’s feet several times.
She reached a street. A car engine started. The motor came to life suddenly with an urgent roar, and
gears gnashed iron teeth.
Doc put on speed. He whipped out of the trees, felt a sidewalk underfoot and reached the street.
The car was plunging away. Its headlights were not on, but the machine was a dark shape like an
elephant with no legs against a distant street light.
Sprinting madly, Doc got his hands on the cold, slick metal back of the machine. There was no spare tire.
He located the gadget which held the license plate. It was fragile. But under that was the handle which
locked the turtleback, and the handle was stronger. And the bumpers projected some distance.
He got on the bumper. It was no small feat in gymnastics to do so. And he could not remain there long,
particularly if the driver went over rough streets.
He tugged out his handkerchief, swung down and jammed it into the end of the exhaust pipe. Almost at
once, the car began to slow as the exhaust gas crowded back into the machine and choked the motor.
Before the car had fully stopped, he was around to the front and had jerked open the door on the
driver’s side.
The fat girl glared at him.
"The very idea!" she said. "What is the idea, anyway?"
Doc Savage’s flake-gold eyes narrowed. This was not the girl he had started out to pursue. This one was
older, had a different voice, and there was certainly nothing comparable in their figures. This girl would
weigh considerably more than two hundred pounds.
Like all fat girls, she looked jolly. But there was nothing jolly about the swing she aimed at Doc’s jaw. He
barely got out of the way.
"You . . . you woman-frightener!" yelled the fat girl.
Doc said, "Stop that!"
She went silent. The bronze man’s voice had a way of conveying emphatic power, without rising in tone,
that was effective.
"Why were you in such a hurry?" he asked.
She stared at him. "I heard you running through the trees toward me," she said. "What girl wouldn’t get
scared?" Her voice grew indignant again. "Here I am walking home across that vacant lot from my
friend’s house, and—"
"Who is your friend?"
"Anna Stringer," snapped the fat girl. "She lives over there"—she pointed beyond the empty lot—"and
her brother is a policeman, in case that means anything to you."
"Your name?" Doc asked.
She scowled. "It’s none of your business."
Doc said, "Your name, please." He said it so she jumped.
"Er—Fern Reed," she said.
"Did you see anything of a girl with a gun?" Doc Savage asked.
She gaped at him. "Of course not!"
The bronze man nodded. "It is possible I made a mistake," he said.
The fat girl snorted. She pressed the starter button, and her car motor whirred.
Doc Savage fished in a pocket and drew out a glass vial holding not more than a large tablespoonful of
liquid. He stepped back, waited for the car motor to start.
When the engine began firing, Doc hurled the glass vial against the side of the car. It broke. The contents,
a liquid, splashed over the car.
Doc watched the car go away. He made a mental note of the rather strange point that the car had no
license plate on its holder.
BILL BROWDER sat up, took hold of his neck and groaned a groan which contained more
astonishment than anything else.
摘要：

PERILINTHENORTHADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THEBLUEDOG?ChapterII.STRANGER’SWARNING?ChapterIII.THEELUSIVEMR.LOGAN?ChapterIV.THEWORRIEDGIRL?ChapterV.UNWILLINGSTOWAWAY?ChapterVI.THESIDETRACK?ChapterVII.ACTIONINARKSTREET?Chapt...

展开>> 收起<<
Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 106 - Peril in the North.pdf

共89页,预览18页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：89 页 大小：445.07KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

高考理综 人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 89
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注