Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 102 - Mystery Island

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MYSTERY ISLAND
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? CHAPTER I. THE MEN WHO WATCHED
? CHAPTER II. MONK PLANS A DATE
? CHAPTER III. THE BARKING DOGS
? CHAPTER IV. A SWAP
? CHAPTER V. "PROTECTION" FOR JOHNNY
? CHAPTER VI. THE NOISE
? CHAPTER VII. THE TERROR
? CHAPTER VIII. HESTER
? CHAPTER IX. THE PILOT
? CHAPTER X. TROUBLE SAILS WITH A WOMAN
? CHAPTER XI. THE SEA TRAP
? CHAPTER XII. MUDDY WATER
? CHAPTER XIII. DARK ISLAND
? CHAPTER XIV. LOSER’S CHOICE
? CHAPTER XV. THE RAIDERS
? CHAPTER XVI. SCHEME
? CHAPTER XVII. THE QUESTION
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
CHAPTER I. THE MEN WHO WATCHED
ONE thing could be said about the conversation. It was monotonous. And it had been going on for some
time.
"You missing link!"
"Yeah?"
"Nature sure had an accident when she made you."
"Oh, yeah?"
And so on, and on, and on. For the last two hours.
This conversation was taking place in a hotel lobby, the two participants occupying chairs that were there
for the guests. Directly above the speakers was a mezzanine balcony. And two men were working at
desks on this balcony.
The man at one of the desks on the balcony suddenly threw down his pencil and made choking noises.
He was a large man, and the biggest thing about him was his fists. They would just about fill quart pails,
his fists would.
"Holy cow!" he said.
He strode over to the balcony rail and looked down at the two fellows carrying on the conversation
below. He could hear them much too plainly—the way you can hear two tomcats on a fence at midnight.
One said, "When you get in a taxi, they leave the ‘Vacant’ sign up."
The other said, "Oh, yeah?"
The man with the fists tried to pull out some of his hair. He walked over to the man who was working at
the other desk on the balcony.
"Doc," he said.
"Yes, Renny." The other man did not look up. There were unusual points about this man, the first being
his size. However, his Herculean build was so symmetrical that it was apparent only when compared to
an object of ordinary size, the desk at which he sat, for instance. His skin was deeply bronzed by sun,
and his hair was a shade of bronze only slightly darker than his skin. To look at him was to know
immediately that you were looking at a person of dynamic power and extreme ability. There was that
quality about him. "What is it, Renny?" he asked.
Renny—with the big fists—groaned.
"Doesn’t that gabble downstairs bother you?" he asked wildly. "It’s about to run me up a tree."
"Not particularly." The bronze man lifted his head to listen. His eyes were noticeable now—his most
unusual feature. The eyes were strangely like pools of flake gold being always stirred by tiny winds. He
said, "Let me hear what they are saying."
From below, the bickering voices came up.
One said, "With those ears, you look like a loving cup from the back."
The other said, "Oh, yeah?"
The bronze man remarked quietly, "Monk seems to be short on repartee. His principal part in the
conversation seems to be, ‘Oh, yeah?’ It does sound a bit tiresome. What are they squabbling about?"
"Search me. Do they need a reason? I’ve heard them carry on for days without any reason." Renny
frowned. "Monk’s pet pig may have given fleas to Ham’s pet chimp, or something. I don’t know what it
is about. How can I lay out emplacements for coast artillery with that racket going on? The answer is—I
can’t. I can’t concentrate."
"No one has ever been able to stop Monk and Ham from quarreling," the bronze man said.
Big-fisted Renny turned his eyes upward, apparently in a desperate appeal for some kind of celestial
deliverance. His gaze lit on the electric-light fixtures. One eye narrowed.
"I think," he said, "that I’ll punctuate this quarrel."
He unscrewed two large electric-light bulbs from a fixture. He winked at Doc. "This will cost me fifteen
cents apiece for the bulbs," he said, "but it’ll be worth it. When these things break, they sound like shots.
Watch."
Renny moved to the rail with the two bulbs.
"Monk and Ham will think they’re shot," he said, chuckling.
He tossed both bulbs over the balcony railing.
Two loud reports came from below. Then there were three more reports, even louder.
Renny’s jaw fell. "How’d I get so much noise out of two bulbs?" he gasped.
In the lobby below, someone emptied five bullets out of a six-shooter. Judging from the noise, it was a
big six-shooter. A man howled in terror. Things upset violently. There were some back-alley words.
"Holy cow!" said Renny.
IT was some time before the sedate hotel lobby recovered from the effects of what happened during the
next few minutes. The room clerk at the desk never did fully recuperate. He was a sleek clerk, rather a
panty-waist, and inclined to be supercilious to such of the customers as he did not think were millionaires.
Really, the first thing he knew about the uproar was when a bullet parted his hair. It was sort of a
cross-part, beginning at the left and running back to the right, and it just mowed off the hair and creased
the scalp. Actually, that was all of the fray the clerk saw, because he sat down behind the big mahogany
desk and began to call loudly for the manager, the police and his mother.
Fortunately, the hotel lobby had been almost empty at the time. This was lucky, because the place was
rapidly filling with bullets, burned powder fumes, such pieces of furniture as could be thrown, and men
who were trying to go places in a hurry, or disappear under such items as seat cushions.
It was all very confused. None of the eyewitnesses could give a coherent story. The participants, of
course, had a vague idea of what was occurring.
Monk and Ham were two of the participants. Monk was behind a pillar that supported the balcony. The
pillar was thin, and Monk was short and wide and hairy, so that part of him stuck out on each side of the
column, even though he stood edgewise. Ham was in a large overstuffed divan. Ham was a slender man,
dressed like a fashion advertisement, and he carried a black cane. The divan was amply large for him.
Unfortunately, though, it was not bulletproof.
Monk and Ham’s two pets were in the fray. That is, in it as much as their masters. Monk’s pet was a
long-legged, wing-eared runt pig, Habeas Corpus by name. Habeas had lined out across the lobby,
squeaking at every jump. Ham’s pet was an animal that was not exactly a monkey, or yet a chimpanzee,
nor yet a scrub ape—science disagreed as to just what he was. His name was Chemistry. He resembled
Monk somewhat, or would have, if he’d been wearing a baggy brown suit that needed pressing. If
Chemistry had been clad, however, it was doubtful if he could have made the mighty leap that had put
him on a chandelier, where he was now.
As nearly as Monk and Ham could figure, what had happened was this:
First, they had been conducting their usual quarrel. There had been two loud reports behind them.
Three perfect strangers had thereupon jumped up out of chairs in the hotel lobby and started shooting.
These three strange gentlemen completed the list of participants. They were average-looking fellows,
nothing outstanding about them, or there hadn’t been until they went into action. Now their hands were
full of spouting steel, and to judge from their behavior, their minds were full of two ideas—first, to make
corpses out of Monk and Ham; second, to get out of there in a hurry.
"Ham!" Monk squalled.
"What?" yelled Ham.
"Haven’t you got a gun, or something?"
"No gun. I’ve got some tear gas."
"Well, use it, you overdressed shyster!" Monk howled.
Ham’s tear gas was in a small grenade. He jerked this out of his pocket, flicked the firing lever, and
tossed the thing out to let it hatch in the middle of the lobby. It made the sound of an elderly firecracker,
and tear gas spouted to all four walls of the lobby.
The three strange gentlemen with too-ready guns began to have their troubles. Gas masks was an item
with which they were not equipped.
"Gaa op gaten!"
one of them shouted.
Whatever this was, it opened the gate. The three strangers charged for the street door.
Something now occurred to Monk. He pulled a glass bottle out of his coat. He looked at the bottle; he
had forgotten he had it.
Monk stepped out from behind the pillar, drew back his arm, and threw the bottle at one of the men. It
was a good pitch. A big-leaguer could not have done better. The bottle hit the target in the middle of the
back. It was a thin bottle; it was thrown hard; it broke. The contents, a liquid, spread over the man’s
back, and some of it splashed on his two companions.
They went on, dashing outdoors.
MONK, now that nobody was shooting at him, was belligerent. He raced across the lobby in pursuit.
His mouth and eyes were both wide open as he charged, so he got a natural amount of the tear gas. By
the time Monk reached the door, he was not seeing so well.
In front of the hotel, leading from the door down to the street, was a long flight of steps. Monk did not
see these stairs, and under the stress of the moment, he forgot all about their being there.
He went down the steps the hard way.
The three strangers with the quick guns dashed up the street. There was a car waiting, a fourth stranger
driving it. This machine and all four of the gentlemen left with all the haste possible.
Inside the hotel lobby, a dead quiet fell.
"Monk!" Ham called cautiously. Ham was still ensconced in the divan. He listened, heard no answer.
"Monk?" he called again. "Monk, Monk!"
Silence.
"Oh, great grief!" Ham said wildly, anxiously. "Did they shoot you, Monk?"
Considering the things that Ham had been calling Monk a bit previously, his present concern over
Monk’s welfare was incongruous.
From the balcony above, the bronze man’s voice came. It was calm, remarkably composed considering
the young war which had just occurred.
The bronze man said quietly, "Monk followed them outdoors. I think he fell down the steps."
"Is Monk hurt?"
"I cannot tell," said the bronze man. "You feel your way out onto the street. Renny is up here with me.
We will work around and out of the hotel the back way, to avoid the tear gas. We will meet you in front."
"Right-o," Ham said. "Who were those guys?"
"Didn’t you know them?" the bronze man asked.
"I never saw them before."
"Meet us in front of the hotel. We will talk it over there."
The bronze giant and the one with the big fists, Renny, moved down the balcony, closing their eyes
against the tear gas, and feeling their way, until they found a door which admitted them to the inclosed
stairway. They descended the steps.
Renny said, "Ham didn’t seem to know what happened."
"No, he did not," Doc agreed.
"I sure set off a Fourth of July with those two light bulbs," Renny said.
They reached an alley, walked through it, and moved around to the front of the hotel. They stopped at
the foot of the flight of steps.
Monk was picking himself up, making faces and saying things. Ham stood over him solicitously.
Ham asked, "Did you miss the steps, Monk?"
"I missed the first one," Monk said, glaring, "but that was the only one I missed."
CHAPTER II. MONK PLANS A DATE
THE police were understandably perturbed over the situation. The sergeant in charge was a fellow who
filled Size 12 shoes and a Size 48 suit very full of brawn and reddish hide, plus an aroused temper.
"What the blazes happened here?" he yelled. "Who turned that tear gas loose?"
Someone pointed out Ham, and said, "That fellow, I think."
"Hey, you!" The sergeant stalked over and gave Ham’s shoulder a tap. "You let loose that tear gas?"
"Why, yes," Ham admitted.
"Well, well, well!" The officer put his fists on his hips and gave Ham the eyes. "And just how did you
happen to be carrying tear gas around, do you mind tellin’ me?"
"Tear gas isn’t a deadly weapon."
"It’s a mighty funny weapon to have in your pocket," said the policeman. "Are you going to give me an
argument, so I have to take you down to the station?"
"Look, officer," Ham said patiently. "I don’t know who those three strangers were. I don’t know why
they started shooting. I never saw them before, and neither did Monk, Renny, or Doc. I tell you, it’s as
much a mystery to us as it is to you."
"Is how the tear gas was in your pocket a mystery, too?" the officer inquired.
Ham said, "Why, I was caught unarmed. I generally pack plenty of weapons. But this time, I only had my
sword-cane and that stray tear-gas grenade. As a matter of fact, all of the men associated with Doc
Savage generally find it best to have a little protection."
"Who?"
"Who—what do you mean?"
"Who did you say?"
"Doc Savage, you mean. I’m one of Doc’s associates. He has five of them, four besides myself. Renny
and Monk are two. The other two, Johnny Littlejohn and Long Tom Roberts, are out making an
inspection trip."
"Oh," said the officer. The name of Doc Savage obviously meant something to him. His eyes moved
around, located Doc, and he went over to the big bronze man. "Mr. Savage?" he asked.
"Yes," the bronze man said quietly.
"I just found out who you were," the policeman explained. "Do you want the police to go ahead with this,
or would you prefer to take care of it yourself?"
Doc Savage shook the officer’s hand. He explained, "Why, there was shooting, so it is work for the
police, naturally. And if we can be of any help to you, we will be glad to co-operate."
"You can count on us doing the same thing, Mr. Savage," the officer said.
"It is a rather strange business," Doc told him. "Three strangers were sitting in the hotel lobby near two of
my men. My two associates were carrying on an argument which disturbed a third associate, who was
working up on the balcony. Hoping to stop the argument, this third associate—Renny Renwick, the
noted engineer—unscrewed two light bulbs and dropped them over the railing. It was a joke. But the
three strangers thought they were being shot at, evidently, so they unlimbered guns and started shooting
at my friends. Then they fled."
Doc Savage then gave a description of the three strangers. He described details, tiny particulars about
their skin, hair and dress, a picture so complete that he might have been looking at photographs of the
trio.
HAVING completed the preliminary investigation, the police sergeant took his men out of the hotel, got
them together, and gave them a little lecture.
"You fellows had better prove you are cops," he said. "Do you know who that big bronze fellow is?"
"They were calling him Doc Savage," a patrolman said.
"Is that all you know about him?"
"Yes."
"You’re pretty dumb," said the sergeant. "This Doc Savage’s full name is Clark Savage, Jr., and you will
never meet a more unusual man. You got a look at his build? Well, he’s stronger than he looks,
according to what I’ve heard. But he’s no muscle guy, I want to make that clear. He’s a scientist. One of
the greatest. They claim his ability as a surgeon is just about without equal.
"I got all this from the chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for this district, who knows Doc
Savage," the officer continued. "It seems that Savage was trained from childhood by scientists and
physical-culture experts and guys like that, the idea being to make a kind of physical and mental marvel
out of him, so that he could follow a career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers outside the law, or
‘way off in the out-of-the-way parts of the earth where there ain’t no law."
"What is Savage doing down here?" asked the patrolman who had never heard of Doc Savage.
"He’s serving in a consulting capacity with the government engineers for that new fortified zone they’re
laying out around Charleston," the sergeant replied. "Savage and his five associates are here on that job."
"Why this lecture, sergeant?"
"I wanted you to know just how important this Doc Savage is. The man is quiet, and he don’t blow his
own horn. But they don’t come much bigger than he is, I’m telling you."
"What are we supposed to do?" inquired the patrolman, rather lightly.
"You are supposed to talk less and use your head more," advised the sergeant. "Here’s the reason I’m
telling you this stuff: Doc Savage gets the co-operation of this police force, understand. He happens to be
a man on the side of law and order, and those are the kind of fellows we will work with. Anyway, he’s
got government commissions that entitle him to our assistance, even if we didn’t want to extend it."
"I see."
"The point I’m making," said the officer, "is that this Doc Savage is important people, and don’t ever
think different!"
BACK at the hotel, the excitement had died down, and Doc Savage had assembled his associates for a
conference.
"Let us get the straight of what happened," the bronze man said.
There was no excitement in his manner, no evidence of agitation. Downstairs in the lobby, they had
already counted seventeen bullet holes in the walls and furniture. But for all evidence of disturbance the
bronze man gave, there had been nothing but a tea party. Anyone not knowing of the rigorous training he
had undergone since childhood would have suspected there was something seriously wrong with his
mind. But Monk and Ham and Renny knew that he merely had a superb self-control.
Monk and Ham had gotten rid of the effects of the tear gas, and had retrieved their pets, Habeas Corpus
and Chemistry.
Monk—full name Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair: reputation, one of the world’s greatest
industrial chemists—had repaired the damage done by the tumble down the steps. He was pretty well
masked with court plasters.
Ham—full name Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, pride of the Harvard law alumni—had lost
his concern about Monk. He had returned to the opposite extreme.
"You look," Ham informed Monk, "like a guy who got out of his grave to haunt a house, and couldn’t
find his way back again. But that’s your normal looks."
"Yeah?" Monk said.
Renny, who was Colonel John Renwick, noted engineer, was not taking much part in the conversation. In
fact, Renny was looking a little sheepish. His little joke had touched off the fireworks.
They got together in the parlor of the suite of rooms which they had at the hotel.
Doc Savage asked, "Does anyone know what the uproar was all about?"
No one did.
"Have you," Doc asked, "noticed those three strangers before today?"
Ham said, "I think I have. I saw one of them yesterday, and maybe before that, once or twice."
Renny said, "I saw them before, too. During the last few days. Since we came to Charleston."
"As for me," said Monk, "if I see ‘em again, it’s gonna be too bad for somebody!"
Doc Savage explained, "I have noticed two of the men previously. One of them I saw yesterday. One of
them the day before. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that they have been shadowing us."
"Shadowing us? Why?" Renny scratched his head.
That happened to be the thing they were all wondering about.
Doc Savage got up and paced around the room. It was not much of a manifestation of emotion, but for
the bronze man, it was considerable. He was censuring himself.
"We made the mistake," he said grimly, "of not keeping our eyes open. I should have realized that those
strangers have been watching us for at least two days."
"Three strangers watching us," said Renny, "and we have no idea why."
"Three nervous strangers," Ham corrected. "Mighty nervous, too. When you dropped the light bulbs,
they thought we’d started shooting."
"The worst part," Renny complained, "we got no way of tracing them."
Monk emitted a snort. A gleeful snort.
"There you’re wrong," the homely chemist said. "Me, I pulled that bacon out of the fire."
Monk went to the telephone, said, "Operator, I want the police department. And right after I’m through
with them, I want all the telegraph companies that hire messengers, then I want all the taxicab companies
in town, the milk companies that have drivers on the streets, and the bus company. Oh, yes, and all the
department stores that hire delivery men."
Renny stared at Monk and said, "What the blazes?"
Ham shook his head hopelessly. "Come loose," Ham said. "I always knew he would."
Monk said, "Hello, police? Listen, this is Monk Mayfair, right-hand man to Doc Savage. I am offering a
reward for barking dogs. Not a reward for the dogs. The reward is for any information leading to a spot
where a dog, or dogs, is barking mysteriously. The reward is twenty dollars, cash."
The telephone receiver made rasping noises.
"What do I mean by mysteriously barking dogs?" Monk demanded. "Why, just that. There must be
something mysterious about the dogs barking. They must bark for no reason, see. . . . Oh, they always
seem to bark without a reason, you say? Listen, wise guy, I don’t care whether you think my bearings
are loose or not. I’ve got cash money, and that talks. Twenty bucks for any information leading to dogs
that are barking strangely. They may be barking at a house, a car, a guy walking on the street, or
anything. You pass the word along to your patrolmen and detectives. . . . Never mind what you think
about the idea."
Ham said, "You see, the police think he’s crazy, too."
Monk ignored all comments. He said, "All right, operator. Gimme the telegraph companies. I’ve got the
same speech for them. And, operator, if you see a mysterious barking dog, you tell me about it, and you
will win a reward of twenty dollars, all for yourself. . . . How mysterious, you say? Well, I’ll be the judge
of that, angel." He covered the mouthpiece with a hand, winked and said, "I wonder if she’s as
good-lookin’ as she sounds."
"And I wonder," Ham said, "where we can get a strait jacket for you."
"Get outta here, so I can talk!" Monk yelled. "Say, operator, you wouldn’t happen to be a married lady?
You aren’t. Say, I’ll bet you would like to see my pet pig named Habeas Corpus."
Monk spent the next half-hour calling up people and offering twenty-dollar rewards for mysteriously
barking dogs, making it clear that he was not interested in the dogs, but in the spot at which they did their
barking. By the time he finished, it was evident that he was getting news of his reward to persons who
were moving about the streets a great deal of the time. There was that much method to his madness.
"Her name is Hester," Monk announced finally.
"Who?" asked Renny.
"The telephone operator."
"Listen, do we bat you over the head," Renny demanded, "or do you make sense out of what you’re
doing?"
"He can’t do it," Ham said. "It wont make sense."
"What’ll you bet," Monk demanded, "that when we find the mysteriously barking dog, or dogs, we’ll find
our late visitors?"
"What?" Ham yelled. "How’ll you do that?"
"That’s my little secret," Monk assured him. "I think I’ll make a date with Hester."
CHAPTER III. THE BARKING DOGS
IT was dark in Charleston, South Carolina, the night being touched with a certain balmy quality that did
not have the cool harshness of Northern nights, nor yet the sticky lethargy of tropical nighttime farther
south. A nice kind of darkness.
"This is interfering with my date with Hester," Monk declared.
He got down flat on his stomach in the dust. Doc Savage, Ham and Renny did likewise. So did Long
Tom Roberts and Johnny Littlejohn, the two of Doc’s group of associates who had missed the tiff at the
hotel. Long Tom and Johnny had since joined Doc’s group, having returned from their daytime duty of
selecting suitable locations for a string of land mines calculated to discourage an enemy from making a
landing near Charleston, should that eventuality ever occur. Long Tom was an electrical wizard of note,
and Johnny, being a geologist, probably one of the best there was, knew all about what was inside the
earth. These two qualities fitted in nicely with the job of mining the terrain along the Carolina coast.
"Let me get this straight," said Long Tom, who was a scrawny fellow who looked as if he had matured in
a mushroom cellar. "Some guys cut loose shooting this afternoon. And we want to know why."
"Yes," Doc said.
"And Monk thinks these fellows will be found around some mysteriously barking dogs?"
"Yes."
"An anomalistic equiparability, I’ll be superamalgamated," remarked Johnny Littlejohn. He was a man as
long as his words, and only somewhat thicker than a rake handle.
"Eh?" said Monk.
"He says the idea is nuts," said Ham. "Which is what I’ve been saying."
Monk snorted. "I found a case of mysteriously barking dogs, didn’t I? And you said I wouldn’t."
"Well—"
"They were barking at that boat, weren’t they?" Monk demanded. He pointed. "That boat over there."
The craft which the chemist indicated was a type often seen along the Atlantic coast, but most frequently
found in the Chesapeake Bay section. It looked like an old-time clipper ship, except that it was flatter,
and the two masts slanted back rakishly, while the sails were fore-and-aft rigged, which meant they were
roughly triangular in shape. It was a Chesapeake Bay bugeye type, a boat that was unusual in design
because of its flat-bottomed construction, enabling it to sail in very shallow water. Originally they were
developed for oyster fishing in the Chesapeake, and the bottom was made out of solid logs drifted
together with Swedish iron rods.
This bugeye was spick-and-span, all brass and varnish. No workboat, obviously.
"A yacht," Renny said.
摘要：

MYSTERYISLANDADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?CHAPTERI.THEMENWHOWATCHED?CHAPTERII.MONKPLANSADATE?CHAPTERIII.THEBARKINGDOGS?CHAPTERIV.ASWAP?CHAPTERV."PROTECTION"FORJOHNNY?CHAPTERVI.THENOISE?CHAPTERVII.THETERROR?CHAPTERVIII.HESTER?CHAPTE...

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