Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 124 - The Running Skeletons

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THE RUNNING SKELETONS
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. DARK AND SCARED
? Chapter II. ABOUT A BRONZE MAN
? Chapter III. THE INDIGNANT MAN
? Chapter IV. TROUBLE HERE AND THERE
? Chapter V. WHITE RAINCOAT
? Chapter VI. SHE WASN'T FOOLING
? Chapter VII. WHO HAS THE DOG?
? Chapter VIII. THE MUMBLING MAN
? Chapter IX. THE FRIGHTFUL DOG
? Chapter X. THE RUSH WEST
? Chapter XI. SETUP
? Chapter XII. SAVING MONK
? Chapter XIII. SKELETONS
? Chapter XIV. IMMEDIATE PROBLEM
? Chapter XV. THE SKELETON TREATMENT
? Chapter XVI. FROM BEHIND SILK
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. DARK AND SCARED
LINCOLN WILSON WASHINGTON SMITH was an amiable colored gentleman who was baggage
attendant and porter on a passenger train running from Chicago to New York.
He had a kind heart.
He liked dogs.
He didn't scare easy, this last being a part of his character which contributed no little to the subsequent
mystery which came out of the first-of-the-week run of the limited train.
The train was one that left Chicago late in the evening and got into New York City the following
afternoon, making about a twenty-hour schedule, which was good time. The train carried two lounge
cars, coaches, sleepers, drawing-room cars, baggage coaches—and Lincoln Wilson Washington Smith,
who was porter.
Duty of the porter was to put bags aboard, generally “butter up” the passengers so they felt good toward
the railroad and shelled out fancy tips, and kid along with the soldiers who were crowding the trains these
days, as well as occasionally rescue a girl passenger from a sailor.
Feeding dogs was not among his duties.
He put the dog-carrying case aboard, himself, in Chicago, and he noticed it particularly at the time
because carrying large animals, even in cases, was against the rules in the coaches.
A dollar fixed up everything, though, as far as getting the dog-carrying case aboard the train. The young
man who had brought the case contributed the dollar, together with a wink, and that fixed that. Anyway,
the young man had a drawing room ticket, and drawing-room passengers get a little extra consideration.
There was a dog in the case—at least there was a dog's weight in the case, and a couple of disgruntled
dog barks.
The case was about Airedale-dog size. It was covered with black leatherette and had ventilation
apertures covered with black wire screen. The construction of the dog-carrying case was such that it was
impossible to tell anything much about what kind of an animal was inside, even by putting an eye to the
ventilating grills.
The case was not locked.
The young man carrying the case was a tall young man with a tan overcoat and tan hat, the latter yanked
down over his eyes. The porter accidentally rubbed against him and felt something hard in the young
man's pocket which he—the porter—took to be a flask or a pint; but this proved to be a bad guess as to
the nature of the hard object, as was afterward evident.
For a young man who was as terrified and puzzled as he later proved to be, he showed very little of the
emotion which was lashing him.
The young man sat, white-faced, in his compartment for some time, then got up and went back to the
bar. But he stopped and spoke to the porter.
“Porter,” he said. “Porter, for five dollars could you start watching something and not stop watching it?”
“For how long, suh?”
“For long enough for me to go to the bar and get to the stage where I can flap my wings.”
“I sho' could,” said the porter.
So Lincoln Wilson Washington Smith sat in the compartment and began to feel sorry for the dog in the
case.
THE unseen dog in the case, from the beginning, had shown signs of uneasiness and discomfort, stirring
around a great deal and giving small, complaining barks now and then. Now that the man was gone this
grew worse.
The dog jumped about, barked, whined, made plaintive noises, pitiful noises. Noises that soon began to
wring the heart of Smith, the porter.
This went on for some time. “Nice doggie,” Smith said, and wondered if the dog wanted water, and
looked around for a dish in which to give him some water, but there was none.
The train had been booming along on its way for some time now and it had reached the first of the
infrequent stops which it made between Chicago and New York.
“A hamburger!” yelled Smith, the porter.
That was the answer. The dog was hungry, and a hamburger would shut him up, and there was a lunch
“quickie” near the railroad platform in the next town, where the porter could dash over and get a hot one.
After all he'd have to pay for the hamburger, of course; but then he was making five dollars out of this
deal and he couldn't stand the whining and carrying-on the dog was doing.
Lincoln Wilson Washington Smith got off and secured the hamburger without incident, except that he got
stuck fifteen cents for it, and he did some squawking about that.
He made a quick trip and got back in the car before the train began moving again. The train started just
as he was entering the compartment and, taking the dog case off the floor, where it had been resting, and
placing it on one of the seats.
He opened the dog case.
His idea was to stick the hamburger inside with a quick gesture. One could never tell when a dog might
bite, particularly a discontented pooch, and this one certainly sounded discontented.
But there was a little accident—the engineer goosed the throttle and gave the train a hell of a yank at just
that point—and the case toppled off the seat, the lid fell open, and the dog tumbled out.
Or what had been in the case making the sounds and movements, and having the weight of a dog—it
tumbled out.
THE scream of Lincoln Wilson Washington Smith was heard all through the car, where it made everyone
jump and started three babies to bawling. Heads turned toward that end of the car. Due to the
construction of the car, only a few passengers saw Smith break out of the room. The compartments were
at the far end of the car, with an aisle on what happened to be the north side of the car, the direction the
train was traveling.
Those passengers who saw could tell that Smith had had a little accident.
Smith had tried to leave the compartment like a bullet, his coat pocket had got caught on the door
handle, it had yanked the door shut, and the closing door had pinched Smith's coat and held him hung. It
didn't hold him long. He tore half the tail out of his coat and took wings.
No movie director staging a comedy exit of a scared man out of a graveyard ever got more action. If
Smith's feet touched the car floor at all they didn't remain there long enough to be visible.
He reached the car door and left the train with a blind, flying leap.
The train was traveling fairly fast now, and Smith hit the roadbed hard and broke a leg and was knocked
senseless.
Chapter II. ABOUT A BRONZE MAN
IN stopping the train to pick up Smith, the engineer did the halting job with another of those terrific
examples of slam-bang carelessness which had started the whole thing. The train halted as if it had run
into something as solid as Gibraltar.
The young man who had brought the dog-carrying case aboard was sitting in the bar, at a round table
only slightly larger than his hat, and the shock dumped his Scotch and soda in his lap.
He stood up and cursed the engineer, the railroad and Scotch whiskey. Everyone else was cursing, so his
maledictions got no special attention. He sat down again.
Some of the passengers climbed off the train to see what had happened.
The young man remained where he was.
There was some shouting, then those who had got off jumped back on. The engineer got the train started
again, trying to break everybody's necks in the act.
A passenger who had got off sat down beside the young man.
“What,” asked the young man, “was it? An earthquake?”
“A man.”
“He must have been braced to stop the train like that.”
“It didn't hit him.”
“No?”
“He jumped off.”
“Remembered he'd forgot something, I suppose?”
“He was the porter.” The passenger scratched his head. “Poor devil has a broken leg and a fractured
skull, or something. Anyway, he was incoherent. Kept muttering about a dog—”
The young man jumped. He looked as if he'd found he was sitting in some water. “Dog?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And it was a porter off this train?”
“That's right He—”
“A tall, kind of hungry-looking porter?”
“That's him. He—”
“Excuse me,” the young man said, and got up and headed for the compartment where the dog-carrying
case had been placed.
THE young man was wearing composure on his face like a mask, just as he had been wearing it all along,
to hide inner terror; but now the mask was made of thinner stuff and a little of what he felt showed
through.
He took a gun out of his pocket. The gun was the object the porter had thought was a flask or a pint. He
carried the gun under his hat, and held his hat close to his chest. He walked with care and tried to look all
directions at once.
Without trouble he reached the compartment. The porter's coat tail was wedged in the door and he had a
little trouble forcing the door open for that reason. People in the car stared at him curiously—those who
knew the porter had popped out of this compartment—but no one did anything.
The young man got into the compartment in a hurry, quickly, ducking inside.
He was there three or four minutes.
Coming out, he was carrying the dog case, holding it down at arm-length, casually. A coat was over his
other arm, covering the gun that was still in his hand.
He worked his way forward slowly and carefully until he came to the office car.
The office car was a special idea on the limited, one of the reasons the railroad soaked you twenty
dollars extra fare for riding the train from Chicago to New York. Here, for the use of passengers, there
were desks, typewriters and stenographers, all free. There was an information clerk, a young woman, to
give you data on time tables, hotels, plane reservations, shows and so on.
The young man with the dog-carrying case went on through the car. At the opposite end he encountered
a locked door.
“Mail coach and baggage cars ahead,” said the young woman information clerk.
The young man nodded.
He looked as if he were ill.
Plainly, because he could not think of anything else to do, he sank in the chair beside the information girl's
desk.
“Look,” he said. “Look, I've got to get to a man named Doc Savage.”
THERE was interest and curiosity in the reception girl's eyes. She was not a fool; she could see there
was something amiss. And she began to realize, slowly, that the young man was full of writhing terror.
Fear was in him like snakes.
“In New York,” the girl said. “Yes, his address is in New York City. The tallest building in the midtown
section. The eighty-sixth floor.”
The young man looked at her. He wet his lips. “You don't know me. My name is Tom Lewis—Thomas
Maurice Lewis, and I'm a traveling salesman for the Admiration Radio Cabinet Co., manufacturers of
snazzy cabinets for radios. Around the Admiration Radio Cabinet Co. office they would tell you I'm the
office humorist, and very funny.”
“Tom Lewis,” the girl said. “Yes?”
Tom Lewis licked his lips grimly. “Funny man, that's me. Fired five times by old Walt Buxton because of
my practical jokes, and then hired back because I'm a good salesman.” He showed his teeth fiercely. “A
good, loud-mouthed salesman, that's me. But don't forget that name—Tom Lewis. And the
company—Admiration Radio Cabinets.”
“Chicago?”
“Gosh, no! Way south of there in the Ozarks. Sort of an unusual factory out in the country with a little
town of its own called Admiration City.”
He went silent. The words seemed to have stuck in his throat.
The girl, to break him loose from his tension, pointed at the dog-carrying case and said, “Is that one of
your samples?”
Tom Lewis seemed to shake a little at all his joints.
“What do you know about Doc Savage?” he asked.
The girl watched him intently. “So you're in trouble?”
“I—”
“Don't,” said the girl, “start telling me about it. I don't want to hear it because I've got troubles of my own
dealing with the pot-stomached Romeos and big butter-and-egg men who seem to think a train secretary
should swoon on their necks.”
Tom Lewis complained, “All I wanted was to ask you about Savage.”
“O. K. Ask!”
“You know him?”
“Of course not!”
“You knew where he could be found?”
“I didn't say he could be found there. That was the location of his headquarters that I gave you. A lot of
people know that. It's part of my business to know such things.”
Tom Lewis sat biting his lips for a while. “Look, you seem to have sense,” he said. “What do you know
about Savage?”
“I saw him once from a distance,” the girl said. “I dreamed about him for about a week after that. He
affects you that way.”
“I don't care if he is a woman-killer. I want to know—”
“You've got the wrong idea—at least, partly wrong. I understand the girls have to take it out in looking.”
“I want to know—”
“You want to know whether his business is righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in the far corners of
the earth? Correct; that's what they say. It sounds screwy, and probably it is screwy, or maybe it just
sounds crazy when you call it a business. Anyway, that's right.”
Tom Lewis bit his lips some more. “How do you contact him?”
“Just contact him,” the girl said. “That's all I know.”
For a moment Tom Lewis looked down at the dog-carrying case.
“I want you,” he said, “to fix up a shipping tag I can put on this case.”
“Who to?”
“I want this case to get into the hands of Doc Savage,” Tom Lewis explained.
The girl riffled through the contents of her desk and came up with a regulation shipping tag which she
filled out. She started to tie it to the case, but Tom Lewis hurriedly picked it from her fingers and tied it
on himself. The girl undoubtedly realized he didn't want her to touch the case, but she made no comment.
She leaned back and watched the young man curiously. Tom Lewis wasn't hard to look at, but the terror
so obviously within him made him a little repellent, as if he had warts.
Because she was watching him she saw his reaction when the red-headed man went past.
The red-haired man was well-dressed, but not sufficiently overdressed to be conspicuous. His hair was
not a spectacular red, his suit was a discreet dark-blue, his tie and shirt subdued. He was not
outstanding.
The red-headed man walked past without apparently noticing Tom Lewis.
Without moving a muscle, without stirring anything but his eyes, and those only slightly, Tom Lewis
managed to look as if he had been stabbed dead.
The red-headed man came to the locked door, tried it, looked disappointed, said, “Where is the dining
car, please?”
“The other direction,” the girl said. “Seven cars back.”
The red-headed man went away. Tom Lewis sat there more dead than alive from terror.
The train secretary-information clerk tried to think of something. She was getting a little scared herself.
She didn't know what was afoot, but she wanted no part of it.
“Look,” she said, “why don't you telephone him?”
Tom Lewis stared at her wordlessly.
“Telephone Doc Savage from the train,” the girl explained patiently. “You can do that, you know.”
Four or five times Tom Lewis moved his lips soundlessly, then he managed to ask, “How?”
“Radio,” the girl said. “Radio and telephone. Regular service.”
Tom Lewis, shaking a little, said thickly, “Get Doc Savage on the telephone for me, and quick, because I
don't think I'm going to be alive ten minutes from now.”
Chapter III. THE INDIGNANT MAN
THE radio contact from train to land-line station, and thence by regulation long distance to New York
City, was made, and the telephone rang in the eighty-sixth-floor Doc Savage headquarters.
Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett—Monk—Mayfair took the call.
There were two outstanding things about Monk Mayfair. First, he was one of the world's industrial
chemists, although his head did not look as if it contained room enough for a spoonful of brains; and he
was also a man who would be a sure bet in any homely-man contest.
Second, today Monk Mayfair was very indignant.
“Yah?” he said into the telephone. “What you bothering us for?”
“This,” said a distant voice, “is a limited en route from Chicago to New York, and we have a call from a
passenger to Doc Savage.”
The voice was feminine, and ordinarily Monk was a push-over for anything in skirts. But today his
temper was very bad.
“Yah?” he said. “Can'tcha call some other time?”
“This,” said the girl on the train, “is important.”
“Yah.”
The girl on the train now became indignant herself and shouted, “Yah, you little shrimp! Yah, yah, yah, it's
important! Now get a civil tongue in your head and put Doc Savage on the wire.”
Startled, Monk stared at the telephone. He hadn't been called a little shrimp before. He'd been called
many things, but not that. Although not a tall man, Monk was a very big one, being almost as tall as he
was wide. His small, childlike voice had doubtless led the girl to deduce he was a little shrimp.
“I'll take the call,” Monk growled.
“We want Mr. Savage—”
“I'll take the call!”
said Monk in a voice that must have scared the birds off the telephone wires. “Now put your party on.”
“Who are you?”
“I'm the guy who is talking—”
“Listen, simple-wits, if you—”
“O. K.,” Monk said. “O. K., sister. I'm one of Doc Savage's associates and my name is Monk Mayfair.
Now, if—”
“Hold the wire, please,” said the girl. She evidently consulted Tom Lewis, because he took over the
other end of the conversation.
He got to the point.
“My name,” he said, “is Tom Lewis, and I'm in trouble. I want to talk to Doc Savage.”
“Everybody is in trouble. I've got plenty of my own,” said Monk disagreeably. “And why don't you talk
to the police? They get paid nice fat salaries for taking care of the citizens. Why not let them earn it?”
“This,” said Tom Lewis, “is a little beyond the police.”
The grimness, the terror in Tom Lewis' voice took some of the acid out of Monk.
“What's the hitch?” Monk asked.
“I must talk to Mr. Savage—”
In a much more patient and reasonable tone, Monk said, “That is out of the question right at this point, I
am afraid. Doc is working in his laboratory on some special government stuff and can't be interrupted.
The experiments he's doing will go to pot if he's interrupted in the next hour, and the president himself
couldn't get a telephone connection. I'm one of his assistants. You'll have to talk to me or make an
appointment for later—and then you'll have to talk to me, anyway because I'm the guy who decides who
shall talk to Doc.”
“All right,” Tom Lewis said. “Listen!”
APPARENTLY he did not quite have his words organized, or wanted to hold back some—and wished
to decide what to hold back—because he was talking to a subordinate of Doc Savage rather than Doc
himself.
“I'm coming to New York right now,” Tom Lewis said, “to see Doc Savage.”
“Yes?”
“But,” said Lewis, “they've followed me.”
“Who followed you?”
“I don't know their names. But they are the men who are after the dog.”
“What dog?”
“The dog in the carrying case I have with me.”
“This is making sense,” Monk told him, “about as fast as a woodpecker drills a hole through a rock.”
“The men,” said Tom Lewis, “are trying to keep me from reaching Savage.”
“Why?”
“Because the dog is—well, rather incredible.”
“What do you mean, incredible?”
“The porter on the train just took a look at him and was so horrified he leaped off the moving train. That's
how incredible the dog is.”
Monk eyed the telephone sourly. “Say, you! Is this a gag?”
“It certainly is not.”
“Then make sense out of it.”
“I'll make sense when I see you,” Tom Lewis said. “Now, listen to this: I will meet you at the station
exactly ten hours from now.” He named one of the terminals in New York. “I will be wearing a white
raincoat. Understand, a white raincoat.”
“A white raincoat,” Monk said. “O. K.”
“And the dog-carrying case will be with me if I can manage. But if it isn't, don't get alarmed. I'm a tall
man and I'll have a tan hat and tan gloves. I'm wearing a tan overcoat now, but I'll put on the white
raincoat I have in my suitcase.”
“What,” asked Monk, “does this dog-carrying case look like?”
“A black case, leatherette-covered, with ventilating holes covered with black wire screen. You've seen a
hundred like it. It's just a carrying case for travelers to use when they take their dogs with them. This one
would hold a shepherd or an Airedale dog.”
“What kind of a dog is in it?”
“The damnedest dog you ever saw,” said Tom Lewis. “I'll be seeing you in ten hours, exactly!”
THIS ended the conversation. Monk's bad humor came back because he had started getting interested.
“Always something!” he snarled.
He turned around and for once in his life spoke a civil and polite sentence to Brigadier General Theodore
Marley—Ham—Brooks.
“What do you think of that call, Ham?” he asked.
Ordinarily, Monk would also never have asked Ham's opinion on anything.
Ham Brooks had picked up the receiver on the extension telephone as a matter of course, and had made
shorthand notes of the conversation. This was a regular procedure on a call of the sort.
Ham Brooks was a lean, dapper man with a thin waist and the wide, flexible mouth of a man who made
his living by talking. He was a lawyer, and Harvard Law School considered him its leading product. He
was wonderfully dressed and was always immaculately dressed, being as famous for his clothing as he
was for his legal ability. He carried, as he habitually did, an innocent-looking black cane that was a sword
cane.
“Well, Ham,” said Monk, “what did you think of the call?”
“There might be something to it,” Ham admitted. “And again it might be some feather-wits with some
new breed of dog, or a dog with two tails, or something like that.”
Monk nodded. “Yeah, you can't tell. People's idea of the importance of things varies a little.”
“It certainly does. He may have a dog he's taught a few tricks, and think he's got something
world-shaking.”
“He might have.”
“We better see him when he comes in, though.”
“Yes, we'd better.”
This was probably the longest harmonious conversation that Monk and Ham had conducted in years.
Anyone knowing them well would have known something was stridently wrong.
They sat in silence for a while.
Then Ham absently fished in his coat pocket for a handkerchief with which to wipe his perspiring palms.
摘要：

THERUNNINGSKELETONSADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.DARKANDSCARED?ChapterII.ABOUTABRONZEMAN?ChapterIII.THEINDIGNANTMAN?ChapterIV.TROUBLEHEREANDTHERE?ChapterV.WHITERAINCOAT?ChapterVI.SHEWASN'TFOOLING?ChapterVII.WHOHASTHEDOG??Ch...

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