Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 113 - The Man Who Fell Up

VIP免费
2024-12-23 0 0 436.64KB 88 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
THE MAN WHO FELL UP
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
? Chapter I. THE ONE WHO FELL
? Chapter II. IN A GREEN FOG
? Chapter III. ANOTHER WHO FELL UP
? Chapter IV. FAINTING SPELL
? Chapter V. HAM'S NECK
? Chapter VI. MONK VS. MONK
? Chapter VII. PLOT LABYRINTH
? Chapter VIII. FEAR IS A GOATHERD
? Chapter IX. SYZYGY WAS NO GOOD
? Chapter X. THE MONK COMPOUND
? Chapter XI. THE UNDERCOVER AGENT
? Chapter XII. THE FLYING MAN
? Chapter XIII. DECEIT
? Chapter XIV. BATTLE STATIONS SUBMERGED
? Chapter XV. THE WARSHIP
? Chapter XVI. THE FRIEND
Chapter I. THE ONE WHO FELL
THE word “concerned,” says the dictionary, means to be affected, disturbed, troubled or anxious.
One of the men was concerned.
The other man was just grim. So grim that his cheek muscles stood out in hard knots in front of his ears,
making him look like a large gopher with two walnuts in its mouth.
They stood on a street corner. The city was New York. There was nothing distinguished about the street,
except that George Washington had once stayed in a house in the next block. The street looked as if
nothing in the way of upkeep had been done to it since.
The green building had been built since the days of George Washington, of course, because it was a
skyscraper of sorts. Sixteen stories and a water-tank high. It still had most of its windows, except for the
first three floors above the ground. Three stories was about as high as the brats in the neighborhood
could pitch a stone. They were not very strong brats in this neighborhood. A surprising percentage of
them ended up in tuberculosis sanitariums, and some of the survivors graduated to the stone walls at
Dannemora or Sing Sing. One had even gotten as far as the little island in San Francisco Bay. It was
neither a healthy nor a wealthy neighborhood.
The concerned man and the grim man were gazing at the tall green building.
“You will go to your death!” said the concerned man.
The concerned man had lean strength and power and range. Timbre in his voice. Character in his face.
Muscles on the backs of his hands and in his neck. His suit was blue and good, and his face was shaved,
his hair cut.
There was, however, something hard and sharp about him. Not a criminal look. Just hard and sharp.
Like a gleaming knife that had cut, and could cut again, and still be polished.
“I cannot help it, Strand,” said the grim man. “There is nothing else to do. Nothing.”
The grim man was small and compact with the look of a bull pup. And his attitude toward the other was
somehow that of a well-trained bull pup toward its master. Master and servant, perhaps. Certainly, at
least, employer and servant.
“There may be some other way, Rod,” said Strand.
“Name it.”
Strand could not name it. He was silent, baffled, uncomfortable and worried.
“I'm going in there,” Rod said.
Strand pulled a deep breath. “I order you not to,” he said.
Rod looked at him strangely. Rod was thinking of something to say and wondering whether he should say
it. Finally he did say it.
“You are not in the army now, Strand,” he said.
Strand got very white, like a man who had taken a needle through his stomach in a way that would make
a man very sick. He did not say anything.
“You will be going to your death,” Strand repeated.
Rod swallowed. The trouble he had with his swallow showed he was scared as well as grim.
“It's the only thing left to do,” he said. “Shake hands, Strand.” He took Strand's hand and shook it
gravely. “I'm going in. If it is to death, that is the way it will have to be.”
And with that, Rod walked into the green skyscraper, walked in to his death as he had been warned!
DEATH, however, came to Rod Bentley in a fashion which was not immediate but which was startling.
Several things happened first, but one of these things was more important than the others, as is often the
case with incidents.
The important thing was Tottingham Strand's inability to get into the green building. He tried. He stood
there for a few seconds, fighting his impulse to save his friend or at least share his friend's danger, until he
lost the battle. Then he rushed forward to the door through which Rod had gone. The door was locked.
Strand wrenched savagely at the knob. He was incredulous; he stepped back, scowled. He leaped
forward and kicked the door.
“Open up!” he bellowed.
Echoes of his kick on the door and his shout came back from inside the building with about the sound a
pebble makes when dropped in a large cavern. He tried it again.
Strand's anxiety became a kind of frenzy. Sweat stood like hot grease on his forehead. He ran back from
the door. He stood and stared up at the building, and the building was like an old green skeleton. Nothing
moved. There was no life anywhere.
The sweat kept coming out on his forehead. He started trembling, the calves of his legs first, then his
knees. And finally, when he tried to wipe the perspiration off his face, it was as if his hand were patting
against the skin.
He stood there for minutes. Then he began running along the side of the building, leaping to get at the
windows. There were boards nailed inside the windows. The glass was broken out almost everywhere.
But the boards were too solid for him to burst inside.
He ran back in desperation to look again at the building, and it was then that he saw the man on the
ledge.
The ledge was high up, one floor down from the roof. It was not wide, probably two or three feet.
The man there was Rod Bentley. There was no doubt of that. He was backing away along the ledge. He
had gone out on the ledge, fleeing from something.
There were shots, then! Two rapping reports. Then three more. Rod Bentley slumped down as if hit!
In order to see better, Strand wheeled, raced back to the opposite side of the street, then stopped and
stared upward.
Down the street, a couple had stepped out of a doorway to stare. A man and a wife, probably. They had
heard the shots. The woman leveled an arm at the high ledge and began screaming. She screamed twice,
with a quick intake of breath between. Then she stopped shrieking with her mouth roundly open, a cavity
of surprise.
Strand became rigid, as if all his muscles were tight strings.
The figure above had fallen off the ledge. Possibly, the term “fallen” was not applicable, because the
figure, although coming off the ledge, was going upward! It fell up! It fell up and up until it was small in
the sky, finally a dot, eventually nothing that was visible. The form that had been on the window ledge
became, in plain, unvarnished fact, if evidence of the eyes was to be believed—and there was no reason
to disbelieve them—an upward-falling object that fell out into space.
This, of course, was not easy to believe, even if seeing is believing. The two people, the man and wife
who had come out on their doorstep to see what the shooting was about, stood there gap-jawed for
something like five minutes before they thought of anything to say to each other.
Strand had started running and had run out of sight by that time.
Chapter II. IN A GREEN FOG
TOTTINGHAM STRAND did a hard job of thinking. He walked streets. He got in a subway and rode
to the end of the line and back again. He stood at the stone wall near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument
on Riverside Drive and looked at the placid Hudson. He stood there for a long time.
While he stood there, Strand saw a man snatch a woman's purse. Actually, the man eased the purse off
the bench where the woman had placed it at her side. The fellow zipped open the purse, made a scoop
at the contents and put them in his pocket, then returned the purse to the bench. The man arose idly and
strolled away from the bench, then stopped abruptly near Strand and stood looking out over the river.
The reason for the man halting, Strand saw, was the approach of a blue-coated policeman.
An impulse hit Strand. He thought it was a rather silly idea. But something impelled him to go through
with it.
Strand arose, approached the man, spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Savage is after you,” Strand
said.
“Huh?”
“Doc Savage,” said Strand, wondering why he was doing a silly thing like this, “is on your trail.”
The sneak thief turned completely white except for shades of green around his mouth. For a stark minute,
he said nothing. Then he vaulted the stone wall, dropped a wild fifteen feet or so down the slope on the
other side and lit running.
Strand watched him disappear. Then Strand climbed on a downtown bus, rode it to the midtown district,
got off and entered the tallest building. He was calling on Doc Savage. The thing he had done on impulse
to the sneak thief had decided him. He could not have explained exactly why, unless it was because there
was suddenly no doubt in his mind but that Doc Savage was a nemesis of evil.
He did not meet Doc Savage, however.
He met two other fellows, and they were in a fight when he found them. Or practically. One of them was
a dapper man with splendid shoulders, was smartly dressed, and was holding an innocent-looking black
cane. The other was a wide, short man with a coating of hair that resembled rusty shingle nails and a face
that was something to stop clocks.
Tottingham Strand stepped forward. He cleared his throat to get attention.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Could you tell me where I can find Doc Savage?”
Neither Monk nor Ham paid him any attention. The two had been having an argument. Monk stood
glaring at Ham.
“Ham, where do the flies go in the winter?”
“Search me!” Ham snapped.
“Oh, I won't bother,” Monk said smugly. “I was just wondering.”
Ham glowered and lifted the black cane.
“Gentlemen!” Strand said sharply. “Please, may I have a minute?”
Monk turned his head. He saw the tight glacial expression on Strand's face, and forgot their quarrel.
“You can't see Doc,” Monk said. “It is impossible!”
Strand wet his lips. “It is important. Very important.”
Monk shrugged. “I can't help that,” he said. “You can talk to us.”
“Who are you?” Strand inquired.
“We help Doc,” Monk explained. “I'm Monk Mayfair. This guy with the fancy clothes here is Ham
Brooks.”
Strand thought for a while. The desperation in his mind moved across his face like grim reflections in a
mirror. “I . . . I would like to talk to you, then,” he said.
MONK and Ham conducted Strand to an elevator. They had met in a small office in a lower floor of the
building, an office which the elevator starter had informed Strand was used to interview persons who
wished to see Doc Savage. They rode to the eighty-sixth floor. They crossed a corridor, opened a plain
bronze door which bore the name “Clark Savage, Jr.,” in small print.
Strand found himself in a reception room furnished with a few comfortable chairs, a safe big enough for a
bank and an inlaid table that was really an unusual piece. He was shown a seat.
“What's got you looking like that?” Monk asked.
“I . . . looking like what?” asked Strand, surprised.
“As if the Indians were coming.”
Strand tried to be nonchalant and lighted a cigarette. His first impression of Monk and Ham had been
that they were a pair who had some bolts loose. But now he was not so sure. They were as direct, now,
as two roosters after a worm.
Ham said, “What is worrying you? What is this trouble you want Doc Savage to help you out of?”
Strand, startled, said, “I have not mentioned any trouble.”
“Sure,” Ham said. “But you would not be coming in here with that look on your face unless that was it.”
“I see,” Strand said. “You are accustomed to this sort of thing?”
“Somewhat.”
“I see.”
Monk, who was no diplomat and had never yearned to be one, said, “What you had better see is that we
haven't got all day to sit around and listen to you stall. Did you come up here with something to say?”
Strand frowned. “If you wish me to be blunt, I will be that,” he said. “I want help. I want you to get
something. It is very valuable.”
“Does this thing,” asked Monk, “belong to you?”
“It certainly does.”
“Where is it?”
“Some men have it.”
“Where are they?”
“I can show you where they are,” said Strand.
“What is this thing?”
“I'll show you.”
“What shape is it?”
“We can handle it all right, once we get our hands on it,” Strand said.
Monk pointed a finger at him.
“Friend, you'd better be more definite than that,” Monk said, “if you want us to show much interest.”
Strand began talking then. His voice was deep and smooth, his delivery faultless, and his words seemed
to have power and persuasiveness. Monk and Ham, who were skeptical fellows, found themselves
listening and nodding thoughtfully. Monk, in particular, drank it in, while Ham was a little more slow on
the upbeat. Ham was a persuasive orator himself, but he was up against such a master in the person of
Tottingham Strand that it did not occur to him that he was being talked into something.
Strand told them that he had a friend named Montgomery and that the friend had left a chest with him.
Strand did not know what the chest contained, but it must be of valuable content, because Montgomery
had been very concerned over its safety. Then—as Strand explained it—strange things had started
happening: People watching him, an attempt to burglarize his house, and, finally, the chest had been
stolen.
“It happened an hour ago,” finished Strand, “and I came straight to you for help.”
Ham nodded. He was to find out later that he had just listened to as smooth a cloth of lies as anyone had
ever woven before his face. But he now thought every word that had been told him was the truth. He had
been taken in!
Ham said, “Really, the thing to do is call the police. You can tell them the story, and they can do more
than we can. Monk, telephone the police.”
In alarm, Strand held up a hand.
“No,” he said. “Unfortunately, my friend Montgomery said I must not, under any circumstances, involve
the police with the box.”
Ham frowned. “We want nothing to do with anything crooked,” he said sharply.
Strand smiled grimly.
“Neither do I,” he said. “Suppose we do it this way: You help me. I let you look at the contents of the
chest, whatever they may be. If you think the police should be informed, we will do so, and they can
arrest Montgomery.”
“You would double-cross your friend?” Monk asked.
“That,” said Strand, “would not be double-crossing. If the man involved me in something criminal in
giving me the chest, he is no friend, and deserves none of the treatment of one.”
That appealed to Ham.
“We'll help you,” he declared. “Just a minute, until we get our equipment together.”
BY equipment, Ham meant some of the gadgets which Doc Savage had developed. The bronze man's
inventive genius had turned out numerous unusual—“unusual” was a mild word for some of
them—devices for use in their profession. The gadgets were unorthodox. The bulletproof undergarments,
made of a chain-mesh alloy that was not much heavier than a suit of long, winter red flannels, was an
example, and probably the most commonplace of the devices they were in the habit of using.
Monk said, “You know something?”
“Where flies go in the wintertime?” Ham sneered.
“No. No, I'm not kidding,” Monk insisted. “You know what? I think that guy talked us into something.”
“He told a very convincing story.”
“He sure did,” Monk said strangely.
Ham scowled. “You mean he sucked me in? Ridiculous. Listen, I have heard experts put out a line of
talk, and I've done it myself more than once.”
“All right, smart boy,” Monk said. “I bet you we find out, and don't say I didn't tell you so.”
Strand looked at them anxiously when they came back out of the laboratory with their equipment. He
asked, “Are you sure you can handle this? It is dangerous.”
“We're as sure we can handle it as we can be,” said Monk, “without knowing what it is.”
“Couldn't you get more help?”
“Not right away,” Monk said.
“Why can't we get hold of Doc Savage?” Strand asked. “You have not explained that.”
Monk and Ham saw no reason why they should not tell him the reason.
“Doc,” Monk said, “is at an uptown hospital, performing an operation.”
“We can stop for him,” Strand suggested. “We will telephone ahead, and they can get someone else to
perform the operation. I'll pay whatever fee Savage was to get for the operation, so he won't lose
anything.”
“They can't get anybody else for this operation,” Monk told him bluntly, “because nobody else is able to
do it. And you want some advice?”
“Advice?” said Strand, puzzled.
“Don't mention money around Doc,” Monk advised. “I mean, don't give him the idea you think money
can buy any of Doc's services.”
“That seems rather strange advice.”
“Doc doesn't work for money.”
“I don't believe I understand,” Strand said.
Monk said nothing, but he wished he hadn't brought up the subject. Doc Savage had as good an idea of
the value of money as the next man. But Doc was fortunate in having a source of wealth which he could
tap at will, a secret hoard in a lost Central American jungle valley, a place presided over by descendants
of an ancient Mayan civilization. The source of wealth was a result of one of their earlier adventures. It
was also a secret.
“Doc doesn't do anything in which he is not interested,” Monk said, and let it go at that.
Which was not exactly true. What Monk meant was that Doc could not be hired. That the bronze man
was sole judge of what needed doing, and that his payment for the job was that same knowledge that it
needed doing. Monk had heard Johnny Littlejohn explain it that way once, and the explanation had
confused Monk until he thought about it. Johnny Littlejohn had a habit of expressing his statements in
abstruse phrases, or of using words so big that no one could understand them.
Thinking of Johnny Littlejohn led Monk to mention a fact.
“There are three more members of Doc's group,” he said. “There is Renny Renwick, the engineer; Long
Tom Roberts, the electrical expert, and Johnny Littlejohn, the archaeologist and geologist. All three of
them are down in Washington at a defense-board meeting, so they are not available to help us.”
Tottingham Strand nodded. “I wish we had more help,” he said.
Monk's feeling that Strand was shystering them grew stronger and stronger.
THEIR distrust of Strand was actually responsible for what happened to them, which was embarrassing.
Usually, distrust kept them out of trouble. This time, it got them into it.
It happened in an involved way.
First, Strand took them into an old building on a side street in a squalid part of town. He climbed stairs.
They followed, full of caution. They clambered out on the roof.
“Keep down,” urged Strand in a tense voice.
He meant keep down behind the brick walls around the roof. They did so. They got roof tar on their
knees, got skinned with gravel and collected dust.
Eventually, Strand indicated an old dilapidated hulk of an office building which was colored green.
“In there,” he said.
“That green building?” asked Monk, surprised.
Strand nodded. “In there, somewhere. That is where the thieves took it.”
“It's a big place,” Monk pointed out suspiciously.
“It seems to be abandoned,” Strand explained. “I think they may have rented it, or maybe they moved in
without any authority to do so. Anyway, that is where they went.”
“You sure they're there, now?”
“That,” said Strand grimly, “I wouldn't swear to. They were there three hours ago. They may have left.
We can move across this roof and get into one of the windows of the green building.”
Three hours ago? This guy had said his chest had been stolen only an hour ago. Now, he said three
hours. Monk glanced at Ham to see if the dapper lawyer had noticed the slip, and Ham had. They
exchanged meaning looks.
“Strand,” Monk said. “By the way, you said your name was Strand, didn't you?”
“Yes. Tottingham Strand.”
“All right, Strand—what does this mysterious chest look like?”
“It is green,” Strand said. “You'll know it when you see it. Green, and longer than a man, but not as wide.
Thicker, though.” He indicated the building. “Tell you what: I will crawl inside and make an investigation.
If the coast is clear, I will come back and tip you fellows. If it isn't clear, use your own judgment.”
He crawled away.
Monk and Ham proceeded to make their mistake. They did not have to hold a conference over it. They
just looked at each other, and Ham said, “It smells to me as if he was going in there to tip his friends to
be ready for us, then plans to come back and get us.”
Monk was silent,
They crawled forward after Tottingham Strand. They climbed in the same window through which Strand
had eased himself. Then people began shooting at them!
THERE was not much shooting. Two bullets. Both were purposefully aimed to one side.
A voice, evidently belonging to the one who had caused the bullets, said, “Stand still, you two.”
Monk and Ham stood still.
The voice said, “That's fine. Now, listen. We haven't any great wish to drum up business for the
undertakers. Suppose you two wandering Willies go away from here and have a forgetting spell.”
Monk said, “Ham, I never heard that voice before.”
“I, either,” Ham said, precisely. When Ham became precise in speech, it meant he was very angry.
The voice said, “Did you come with Strand?”
Monk and Ham looked at each other.
“Who's Strand?” Monk asked.
The voice laughed grimly. “Humorists, eh? We saw you with him. Incidentally, we have him with us
now.”
Monk lifted his arms slowly to the level of his shoulders. Then he flexed them at the elbows and clasped
his hands over his head.
“You don't need to put your hands up,” the voice said. “We could shoot you dead before you could do
anything.”
Monk said nothing. He flexed his biceps. He made the muscle get very big, so that it pressed against a
brittle container in his sleeve and broke it. When he felt it break, he winked at Ham, and began holding
his breath, Ham also held his breath.
Monk lowered his arms slowly so that the gas he had released could get out of his sleeve and spread
through the room.
The voice said, “Maybe you would feel better if Strand told you to go away. Boys, get Strand. Tell him
to advise his two pups to go away. We don't want any more trouble than—”
The man stopped.
There was a sound like a sack, loosely filled with potatoes, being dumped on the floor.
“What the hell!” said the voice.
The voice was speaking to them through a crack in the door on the other side of the room.
“Gas!” a voice screamed. It was a new voice. “They let loose some kinda gas!”
“SOME kinda gas” might have been one description for it. Explicitly, the stuff was an odorless and
colorless anaesthetic of great power and quick effect, one which became quite worthless, however, after
it had mingled with atmosphere for from a minute to a minute and a half. Doc Savage and his associates
used it as a regular weapon.
“Gas, gas!” the man kept bellowing.
Monk moved fast, got down, went to the right, out of range of the door. Ham also moved, dipped a
hand into a pocket, brought out a small grenade, and put it hard against the door. It was the type that
would explode on contact when the pin was out. It made splinters and flame out of the door.
Monk roared. He liked to roar when he was fighting. He plunged into the débris that the door had
become.
He saw a man picking himself off the floor twenty feet down a corridor. The man had been tumbled that
distance by the blast, but not stunned. The fellow ran. Monk got another grenade, heaved it. It did not
explode. Either the grenade was defective, or Monk had not released the firing pin properly. At least, the
quarry got away up a stairs.
There were two men spread out on the floor, and neither of them was Tottingham Strand. There was
only the runner, the one who had escaped up the stairs. Monk chased him.
“Be careful!” Ham yelled warningly.
Care was something Monk never knew in a fight. He hit the door. Someone was trying to hold it on the
other side long enough for someone else to fasten a lock. Monk yanked. There was a short struggle of
muscles. Monk could straighten horseshoes with his unaided hands. He got the door open, got a man by
摘要:

THEMANWHOFELLUPADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.THEONEWHOFELL?ChapterII.INAGREENFOG?ChapterIII.ANOTHERWHOFELLUP?ChapterIV.FAINTINGSPELL?ChapterV.HAM'SNECK?ChapterVI.MONKVS.MONK?ChapterVII.PLOTLABY...

展开>> 收起<<
Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 113 - The Man Who Fell Up.pdf

共88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

分类:外语学习 价格:5.9玖币 属性:88 页 大小:436.64KB 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
/ 88
客服
关注