Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 099 - The Pink Lady

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THE PINK LADY
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. A PINK LADY, ACTUALLY
? Chapter II. THE DETERMINED MR. FARMER
? Chapter III. ANOTHER ONE PINK
? Chapter IV. THE TRICK
? Chapter V. THE SLIP-UP
? Chapter VI. THE PLAN
? Chapter VII. THE DEATH
? Chapter VIII. LIKE A FOX
? Chapter IX. THE TOOLS
? Chapter X. THE BROTHER
? Chapter XI. PINK FOR PUTRID
? Chapter XII. THE GRAB-FEST
? Chapter XIII. TRACER
? Chapter XIV. SMALL GULL
Scanned and proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. A PINK LADY, ACTUALLY
IT was raining hard—the water seemed to be coming down out of a silver-fox-black sky in
oyster-colored ropes an inch thick—and this explained why no one was on the streets who did not have
to be there.
The traffic cop was standing in his black rain cape and gum boots on a corner two blocks from the Hotel
Troy. But he had his head pulled down in his coat, and he was cussing his job. He did not notice the pink
girl.
Inside the Hotel Troy lobby, a few guests were sitting around in a damp lethargy. Not until the girl said
loudly, "Will someone get hold of Ten West Street for me—please," was anyone aware of her presence.
By this time, of course, the girl was inside the lobby of the Hotel Troy. They stared at her.
She was a girl, nicely long and nicely rounded, in a pale-blue frock, sheer hose, dark-blue pumps, and
with a gray shawl held over her head and, except for her eyes—her eyes had a flashing, haunted look,
someone said later—over and concealing her face. Not bad for shape. Not bad.
Her blue frock was perfectly dry. It was a shade of blue which would have shown water spots instantly.
The frock was not perfectly dry, of course. There were a few water spots, but only those which had
gotten on the girl while she had crossed from cab to hotel, and she had made that crossing fast.
Her hose and shoes were wet. Sopping. Water did not exactly squish out of her shoes, but she did leave
large moist footprints on the lobby carpet.
All of these facts were noted to some extent.
But the really surprising fact was that the girl was pink.
THE fact that the girl was pink came out when she stumbled, tripping over a high seam in the rug that the
management had been intending to fix, and the doorman—he had been flirting with the proprietress of the
cigar counter while it rained—who had heard the racket and was running toward the door, grasped in an
effort to steady the young woman. The doorman missed his clutch to some extent and got hold of the
gray shawl which the girl was holding over her face, and pulled it away. The girl was pink.
She was very pink.
It was an unusual shade of pink. Not a fleshy pink. Not a salmon shade. Not any skin shade of pink. Not
the pink of a spanked baby. This was an utterly glaring, unreal, impossible shade of pink. A clown pink.
She said, "Get hold of Ten West Street!"
Her voice was charged with an utterly desperate note.
The doorman and everyone else had their mouths open, and there was small indication that astonishment
was going to subside enough for the mouths to be closed.
The girl’s voice got wilder.
"Ten West Street!" she cried. "Get hold of it for me!"
Her voice was a good one, and if there had not been creeping devils of fear in it, it would have been
modulated and pleasantly toned. But now the voice was like glass breaking, only more so.
The doorman still held his mouth open, so she kicked him on the shin.
"Ouch!" he gasped, and stood on one leg. "Whatcha think you’re doin’?"
"Ten West Street!" the girl said for the third time. "Get it on the telephone for me! Quick!"
It probably never entered the doorman’s head to comply, for he was too completely dumfounded by the
unusual pink coloration of the girl—he could see that her face, even to her eyes, and both her hands, had
the color. He wondered about her teeth. Women’s teeth are always white. Well, more or less. Were hers
white?
Her teeth were pink, too.
The doorman saw this when the girl opened her mouth to scream. The scream, when she let it out, was
something to make the chairs come off the floor. It upset everybody in the Hotel Troy Lobby.
The men who came in with gas masks, pistols and bulletproof vests did no further good to anybody’s
peace of mind, either. The bulletproof vests gave them odd shapes, and the gas masks gave them
horrendous faces. They stalked in out of the rain.
"What’s this?" a man asked foolishly. "What’s this?"
He was a middle-aged man with a pot-shaped stomach. He stood there stupidly. His emotions showed
plainly on his face. He didn’t know what this was—but it was too wildly crackpot to be happening.
Suddenly he realized it was happening. He wanted to get out of there. Quick. Right now.
The man turned and started to run and one of the guns went off and the man fell on his round stomach.
This put an entirely different complexion on the whole thing. A gun and a noise and a bullet made a
combination everyone could understand. There was a general uplifting of hands.
At this point, and before anything else could happen, there was a minor interruption.
A man entered the hotel lobby. He came galloping in, fleeing the rain that poured down outdoors. In his
haste, he failed to notice that there was something unusual in progress in the lobby.
He was a lusty young man with a pug nose and an otherwise not unhandsome face, a ruddy glow of
health, muscles that carried him like a bouncing spring, clothes that were more for a golf course than for a
city street at night during a drowning rainstorm.
He bumped into one of the masked, bulletproof-vested men.
"Hey!" he exclaimed, peering at the gas-masked face. "You advertising something?"
The man with the mask hit him over the head with a gun and he fell. After he was on the floor, he did not
change color nor seem badly hurt, but he did not move. His coat had fallen open and the force of his
landing on the floor had caused a small black bank book to drop into view. The bankbook cover had a
little rectangular opening through which his name could be read.
The name: Chet Farmer.
THE pink girl was, after her one scream, silent. She had crammed fingertips of both hands into her
mouth. Her head was turning from side to side, searching frantically. There were three routes of
flight—front door, elevators, a door leading to a dining room—but the men with the masks and
bulletproof vests had blocked all of them.
The gas-masked, man who had struck down Chet Farmer, approached the hotel-desk clerk.
"Has she said anything?" he asked.
The clerk gave back pop-eyed, tongue-tied silence.
"I mean her." The man pointed at the pink girl. "Has she said anything?"
A few words escaped the clerk.
"What makes her pink?" he asked.
Probably that was not what he had intended to say.
"Suppose you make up your mind not to worry about that, friend," the masked man said. Then he
reached forward suddenly and smacked the clerk’s nose with the gun. "I asked you a question.
Remember?"
A red string ran out of the clerk’s nostrils and down his white-shirt front.
He muttered painfully. "She wanted us to get Ten West Street."
"Get it? What the hell do you mean?"
"On the telephone, I guess."
"Ten West Street," said the man with the mask. "I wonder what the hell that is."
Another of the gas-masked men came over and put the nozzle of his mask—the construction of their
masks was such that they could carry on conversations without removing the face coverings—close to
the other’s ear and said something in a tone so low that no one but the pair of them knew what was said.
"Oh, that’s what Ten West Street is!" said the first man. He looked—or his actions and tone gave the
impression—startled and scared. "It’s a good thing we caught her!" he added.
He made some gestures. Evidently they had a prearranged plan of action. Because one man dipped into
his pockets and brought out two bottles.
"These are full of poison gas," he said. He shook the bottles. "I break one of these," he added, "and it
won’t be funny. It’s mustard gas."
He added that everybody had better stand still if they knew what was best.
A second man strode over to the pink girl and said, "Turn your back to me, Lada Harland."
It was obvious from the way he spoke the name "Lada Harland" that he wanted it overheard. His
enunciation of the name was clear and emphatic, as emphatic as if he had spelled it. L-a-d-a
H-a-r-l-a-n-d.
When she turned her back, he instantly seized her and bore her to the floor. Simultaneously, he dragged a
handkerchief out of his coat pocket.
This handkerchief was sealed in a cellophane wrapper, and he tore off the covering. The handkerchief
was damp. It gave off a pungent odor.
He clapped the handkerchief over the pink girl’s nostrils and held it there. She became unconscious.
A THIRD man turned around and left the hotel. A moment after he departed into the sloshing rain, there
was a yell outdoors. A shot. Another shot. A blow. A body falling. It was like listening to a radio play.
Another of the gas-masked men jumped out into the pouring night, his gun ready.
His voice came to those in the lobby:
"What happened?"
"The cop."
"Where’d he come from?"
"That corner up yonder, I guess. He must’ve heard our shot."
"Did you shoot him?"
"Naw. He shot me. Then I bopped him over the head. These are sure first-class bulletproof vests we’ve
got."
"Leave the cop lay where he is. And let’s get this thing over with before more law shows up."
Like a radio drama, their voices came in on the background of the rain.
The two men re-entered. One of them carried a pair of large packages wrapped in coarse brown paper.
He held the packages in his arms and looked around, puzzled, scrutinizing the hotel lobby.
"In here?" he asked.
"Sure," said his companion, who seemed to be in charge of their expedition.
The pink girl, unconscious from the stuff she had been forced to breathe off the damp handkerchief, was
dragged to a corner of the lobby, near the dining-room door. She was placed on the floor.
One of the packages was placed on the girl’s body, and the other on the floor. One of the men struck a
match. It now developed that a fuse protruded from the smaller package on the floor. The match was
applied to this; the fuse fizzed, threw out sparks and gave off smoke."
"Don’t nobody run!" a man yelled. "This ain’t no bomb."
The fuse burned into the package, and there was a hissing that was so loud that it was almost a whistle,
and a blinding light from the package. At first, the light was no larger than an arc from an electric welding
torch, and utterly blinding; then it was larger, and, if possible, more blinding.
Not only could no one in the room see anything, but it developed that the burning stuff in the package
was mixed with tear gas, or some similar vapor, which was further blinding.
In the blinding white, eye-stinging glare, a man’s voice yelled, "Did the second package catch fire?"
"Yeah; it’s goin’," someone told him.
"Let’s get out of here, then."
Footsteps ran away.
Chapter II. THE DETERMINED MR. FARMER
SOME confusion surrounded the exact sequence of what now happened. Some witnesses—all those
who were in the Hotel Troy lobby were witnesses by ear, not by sight, because the incredible white light
burning in the lobby corner still blinded them—claimed that the gas-masked raiders left in a passenger
car. A different version said a taxicab. Another a truck.
One thing was certain. Chet Farmer, the young man who had been knocked senseless, was apparently
revived by the heat. He got up off the floor and staggered to a fire-alarm box, then to a telephone to call
the police.
The street outside got full of fire trucks, firemen, police and curious people who didn’t mind the rain.
Later, there were newspaper reporters.
A girl had been burned up. The up was very definite. There was nothing left of the pink girl. They found a
scorched compact, a heat-misshapen handbag frame, some droplets of metal that they decided had been
buttons. Nothing else.
Chet Farmer was a pale onlooker. Fright did not cause his paleness, but rage. He was utterly angry.
Particularly was he miffed at the police, who seemed to be making no headway.
"A girl got murdered!" he yelled. "Do something!"
"Keep your shirt on," a policeman suggested. "They wore gas masks that covered their faces up so
nobody could identify them. Furthermore, there is nothing to show what the motive was, or why the
crime was pulled off in such a peculiar fashion."
"Why don’t you call in a chemist and start him analyzing to see what it was they used to burn the body?
Why don’t you go at this scientific?"
"We are doing our best," the officer said.
Chet Farmer snorted. "I don’t see any signs of it."
"What do you suggest, then?" the policeman asked with ill-tempered abruptness.
"I suggest," growled Chet Farmer, "that I think you’re damned inefficient."
The officer scowled and clutched Chet Farmer’s arm. "I think we’ll show some efficiency on you."
"Eh?"
"Who are you? What were you doing here? How did you happen to show up at the crucial moment?"
The young man glared. "Listen, what is—"
The cop shoved him. He beckoned two other policemen. He said, "We got a wise guy here. He has been
making unpleasant noises with his mouth."
Blue uniforms and grim official expressions made Chet Farmer explain indignantly, "I am a taxpayer and a
citizen and I’m law-abiding. I live at the River Road Club for Young Men, and I sell stocks and bonds
for a living. You can find that is the truth by checking on it. I just happened to be passing here, and ran in
to get out of the rain. And if you birds try to push me around, you’re going to regret it, brass buttons or
no brass buttons!"
A policeman went away to a telephone to check on Chet Farmer. Eventually he returned. "He seems to
be what he says he is," he reported.
Chet Farmer jerked away from the policemen. He moved over and stood with the other people who had
been in the lobby, and some newspapermen who had joined the group.
"These cops," he said, "should go to school."
A voice at Chet Farmer’s elbow suggested quietly, "Sometimes still rivers run deep."
Chet Farmer turned around to look at the speaker and was greatly impressed.
THE man who had made the remark about still rivers was a large individual, although the fact that he was
swathed in a tan raincoat made it difficult to tell much about his shape. Nor could much more be told
about his face, because a large pair of colored glasses obscured his eyes. His nose was straight and his
lips firmly chiseled.
However—this was surprising, too—there was some kind of power about the man. Something
compelling. It was a quality of force that caused Chet Farmer to examine the big man intently, and then,
feeling ill at ease and not knowing why, to move away.
Chet asked a policeman, "Who is that big guy over there?"
The cop said, "Go away and don’t bother me."
Chet tried a newspaper reporter with a question. "I don’t know," the reporter said.
Chet explained, "There’s something about him. I don’t know what it is. He gives you a funny feeling. If
you ever stood on the edge of a tall building and looked down, you know what I mean."
"Yeah." The reporter was not interested in casual strangers who could make people feel uneasy. "Say,
you’re the young guy who got bumped on the noggin, ain’t you? How about an exclusive picture for my
paper?" To his cameraman, he yelled, "Hey, Pete!"
Chet was not interested in publicity, and he said so in terms that left no doubts, adding his personal
opinion of what would be a good place for the newspaperman to go. He ended, "And I hope they have a
special devil to stoke the fire."
He stalked off. Chet Farmer was angry. He went to the telephone book, and frowned at it thoughtfully. It
would take hours to hunt through a book of that size. An idea hit him, and he used the telephone.
"This is the detective bureau," he said calmly. "I want to know who lives at the address at Ten West
Street."
There was a delay.
"No one lives there," the voice said. "It is the Museum of Advanced Science."
"Which?"
"The Museum of Advanced Science."
"Is that a regular museum?"
"I wouldn’t know," said the other. "You’re a detective. Suppose you find out."
Chet Farmer grinned thinly, rattled the receiver hook so it would make a loud noise in the other’s ear,
and went back to the telephone book. He found the Museum of Advanced Science had a phone listing,
and he called the number. He got an answer. A man.
"Who is this?" Chet asked.
"The building superintendent."
"You mean the janitor?"
"If you want to be brutally frank, yes," the other said.
"I like to call a spade a spade," Chet advised. "Now, I want some information out of you. I want to know
why someone would be wildly anxious to get to the museum about an hour and a half ago. Can you
answer me that?"
"It might," said the janitor, "have been somebody who wanted to see Doc Savage."
"Who?"
"Doc Savage, or the Man of Bronze, as they call him."
"Hm-m-m," said Chet Farmer. "I seem to have heard that name."
"That sounds like a mild understatement."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," said the janitor, "that he’s well known."
"What was he doing there tonight?"
"Giving a demonstration to a bunch of world-famous scientists. Don’t ask me what kind of a
demonstration. I heard the talk, but after they got past the first ten words, I was lost. By the way, who
are you?"
"A detective," said Chet Farmer. He neglected to add that he was a self-elected detective, one without
portfolio, as it were.
"You a friend," asked the janitor, "of the detective who called up here about an hour ago, and asked the
same questions you’re asking, practically?"
"What was his name?"
"Sergeant Merkel."
"No, thanks," Chet Farmer said. He hung up. He went over and talked to the policeman with whom he’d
had his verbal brush. He asked, "Is your name Sergeant Merkel?"
"Uh-huh," agreed the officer. "Why?"
"All right," Chet told him. "I apologize."
"What for?"
"I stood around here an hour before I thought of checking to see what Ten West Street was."
The officer frowned. "So you’ve turned detective?"
"Yes, sir. I have."
"Why?"
"I didn’t like the way those fellows burned that girl to death."
"That is commendable. But you’ll just be in our way."
"DO you think that pink girl was trying to reach Doc Savage?" Chet Farmer asked the policeman
curiously.
The cop studied his questioner. "What do you think?"
"I don’t know. I have just barely heard of Doc Savage. Why would a pink girl be trying to get to him?"
"You trying to be funny?"
"No, no, not at all. The girl was pink. I know it sounds crazy when you say it. But she was pink."
The policeman said, "Doc Savage is a remarkable individual who is sometimes called a man of mystery
because he does not like publicity. His business is righting wrongs and punishing evildoers, and he does
not get paid for it—which does not sound sensible either, but that’s what he does. Savage is—well,
remarkable is a mild word. He has five assistants, all tops in their respective professions. But to get back
to what I said at first: Doc Savage’s business is righting wrongs and helping people out of trouble. He
helps anybody who shows up with an unusual piece of trouble. Does that answer your question?"
"Meaning," said Chet, "that the pink girl was in an unusual piece of trouble."
"Yes."
"That answers my question," Chet said.
The police officer seemed to have something on his mind. The official photographers and the newspaper
cameramen had taken numbers of pictures of the hotel, the lobby, and the corner of the lobby where the
girl had vanished in blinding flame. They had shot close-ups of the scorched compact, the handbag frame,
the droplets of metal. They had made negatives of the burned corner of the hotel.
With polite firmness, the police officers now cleared the reporters and spectators out of the place. Other
than those who had witnessed the crime, only one man remained—the big individual swathed in the tan
raincoat and colored glasses.
Then Sergeant Merkel decided to let Chet Farmer remain. "I want you to meet somebody you are
interested in," the sergeant said.
He led Chet Farmer over to the big man in the tan coat and colored glasses, and said, "Mr. Savage, here
is a young man you can start on. His name is Chet Farmer. He saw most of what happened."
Chet Farmer’s eyes went round. "Wait a minute! This is Doc Savage? How’d he get here?"
Sergeant Merkel said, "We found out he was at Ten West Street tonight, and we told him about it. He
thought he had better investigate."
CHET FARMER shook Doc Savage’s hand and said, "The police seem to think it strange that I am so
interested in this, and I want to explain that. It happens that I heard this girl’s voice and saw how terrified
she was, and I—well, it touched something in me. And when she was burned to death, it did something
hideous inside me." He clenched a fist, and his expression was ferocious as he shook the fist. "I’m willing
to do anything to bring those devils to justice—anything—and I’m going to do it."
Doc Savage asked, "Do you actually know anything about this case?"
"Actually—nothing." Chet Farmer returned his stare intently. "I just took a notion I wanted to help that
girl."
"Do you think she was trying to get to Ten West Street to see me?"
"It looks like it, don’t it?"
Doc Savage made no comment. The newspapermen and spectators were all out of the hotel, so he
removed the tan raincoat and colored glasses. He had worn the disguise because he genuinely detested
publicity, the dislike springing out of a natural modesty, and the fact that publicity was apt to put enemies
on his trail.
His eyes were probably his most remarkable feature, being strangely compelling, like pools of flake-gold
stirred by tiny winds. His skin had a bronzed tint that had come from exposure to tropical suns.
Doc got a small handbag which he had placed in the background. He opened this, and it held chemicals
and tubes of an analytical kit.
He scrutinized the metal fragments which had been found—the compact, the handbag frame, the
distorted buttons. He examined them under a microscope, then made chemical tests.
Next, he made chemical tests of ashes which he selected from several points. The process required some
time.
Finally, "A simply concocted incendiary compound," he said.
"What do you mean?" Chet Farmer asked.
Doc said. "My understanding is that the raiders carried in two packages of compound which they
burned."
"Yes."
"The substance in the packages," Doc explained, "was a mixture of magnesium and the highly inflammable
compound of powdered aluminum known as thermite, to which had been added chemicals which, when
burned, give off a form of tear gas. Or so an analysis indicated."
Chet Farmer nodded. "I figured it had to be something like that."
Doc Savage turned back to the heat-distorted bits of metal.
"However," he said, "these were melted and burned with the heat of an acetylene torch."
"I wonder when—" Chet Farmer stopped and stared at the bronze man. "What did you say?"
"The handbag frame, compact and buttons were melted out of shape by acetylene."
Chet pulled in a strange breath. "But they weren’t carrying any torch."
"Exactly."
"Then," Chet muttered, "they must have fixed those things up before they came in here."
Doc Savage nodded slightly, said nothing.
"You mean," Chet demanded, "that the thing was staged."
"Planned, we might say."
摘要：

THEPINKLADYADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.APINKLADY,ACTUALLY?ChapterII.THEDETERMINEDMR.FARMER?ChapterIII.ANOTHERONEPINK?ChapterIV.THETRICK?ChapterV.THESLIP-UP?ChapterVI.THEPLAN?ChapterVII.THEDEATH?ChapterVIII.LIKEAFOX?Chapte...

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