Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 135 - The Three Devils

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THE THREE DEVILS
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
? Chapter I. THE DEVIL'S TOWN
? Chapter II. DEATH RODE HIGH
? Chapter III. BEAR!
? Chapter IV. SAMARITAN
? Chapter V. HELL ALOFT
? Chapter VI. OMINOUS NIGHT
? Chapter VII. DEVIL'S PLAN
? Chapter VIII. TROUBLE AT THREE DEVILS
? Chapter IX. THE PHANTOM
? Chapter X. BAIT
? Chapter XI. DEATH AND A STORY
? Chapter XII. DECOY
? Chapter XIII. BAD SIGNS
? Chapter XIV. POT LUCK
Chapter I. THE DEVIL'S TOWN
THE plane carrying Doc Savage and four of his aides arrived at Mock Lake, which was about two
hundred miles northwest of Vancouver, Canada, at two o'clock in the spring afternoon.
The skulker on the lake shore read the numbers on the approaching plane through binoculars. He hastily
consulted a number contained in the text of a radiogram he dug out of a pocket, thereby assuring himself
the plane was Doc Savage's.
The hiding skulker, a thin man with wheat-colored hair, was as nervous as a cat in a tree. He took a
bottle out of a pocket; about the tenth time in the last hour he'd done that. He looked at the bottle—the
liquid in it resembled thin molasses—shuddered, then put the bottle back.
Concealing himself more thoroughly, the skulker waited.
With roars of her two big motors, the amphibian slid over the lake surface and gently planted her nose on
the shore.
A giant man of bronze, Doc Savage, climbed out on the wing and looked at the handful of rugged
buildings that was the community of Mock Lake.
“There is a restaurant here,” he told those in the plane.
“Darn good thing,” said a homely man, hastily scrambling out of the cabin. “I'm hungry enough to eat a
tree, like a beaver.”
Five men disembarked from the plane. In addition to Doc Savage, there were four of his aides, a group
of five specialists who had been associated for a long time.
They were obviously tired from traveling, but there were evidences of tension, of subdued excitement.
Such signs as the way they looked first at Mock Lake, at such people as were in sight. The normal
reaction of a first-time visitor would be to gape at the marvelous scenery, rather than the drab town.
Doc warned quietly, “Monk, your gun is bulging your coat. And don't act as if you expected a snake
behind every bush. Show some interest in the scenery.”
“When I expect trouble,” Monk muttered, “I always look like I expected trouble. I can't help it.”
“At least point at the mountains, and say, 'Oh!' and Ah!',” Doc suggested.
Obediently, Monk turned slowly, staring at the surrounding country. “Whew! It is impressive, at that.”
Mock Lake itself, the lake and not the town, was an azure jewel in a setting of mighty, primeval
timberland and breathlessly upthrust mountains. Snow crested most of the mountains with white dunce
caps which seemed to emphasize their inscrutable silence. The glistening argyle whiteness of the snow,
the intense emerald green of the timberland, the almost abnormal blueness of the lake, made a play of
color that was something nearly fabulous.
When they had looked at the primitive vastness for a while, it impressed Doc Savage and the other four
the way it always impressed everyone. William Harper Littlejohn, the archaeologist and geologist, a man
whose profession touched time and the past, unthinkingly removed his hat.
“Supermalagorgeous,” he muttered.
They walked slowly up the short distance from the lake shore toward the settlement of Mock Lake.
The skulker watched them. He was sitting behind a big spruce. Cold sweat stood out on his face.
The skulker had cocked the bolt-action hunting rifle he was holding.
DOC SAVAGE'S eyes, an unusual flake gold color, probed and searched everywhere as the party
walked. But his manner was casual enough, outwardly.
On the lake shore was a rickety dock. Discarded on the beach, lay a couple of rotting boats, two shiny
canoes rested, bottoms up, on pole-horses. Near the canoes was a shed; on the platform in front were
stacked about a hundred five-gallon gasoline cans labelled as containing aviation gas.
Doc Savage's voice was grim, as he said, “This is a subdued welcome we are getting.”
Renny Renwick, the engineer, moved his big fists uneasily.
“Holy cow! Not a soul has showed himself,” he rumbled.
The silence hit all of them now. Because of the excitement of arriving, they hadn't noticed it before.
Monk Mayfair, the chemist, indicated a wisp of blue curling from a chimney.
“There's smoke from a house,” he said. “Somebody is home, anyway.”
“This looks strange,” Doc said quietly. “Come on. Keep your eyes open.”
Mock Lake, the settlement, was a town of one street and one street only. The street was dried mud, with
ruts in it two feet deep. Ruts, anyone could see, made by heavy machinery, by bulldozers, half-track
trucks and giant cat tractors. None of the machinery, it was evident, had gone through recently.
Every structure in town was made of logs or rough lumber. There were a few business buildings first, then
the houses. A good baseball pitcher could nearly have thrown a ball from one end of town to the other.
And almost anyone could have thrown one across town.
Their feet made a rumble on the board sidewalk when they reached it. There was a boardwalk on each
side of the weirdly rutted street.
They came to a building with the inevitable sign that said, TRADING POST.
They stopped. The ending of the noise of their feet on the wooden walk jarred them. It was as if they
were in a tomb. A somehow frightening tomb, even if it was full of diamond-like sunlight and green forest
and blue lake and mountains spear-pointed with snow. The bright wildness of the surroundings made the
stillness more threatening.
“What the devil!” Monk muttered. “Why is everybody hiding?”
Monk's voice unconsciously became big when he was excited, although his normal tone was a kiddish
squeak. His words seemed to echo in the silence.
A chill came over their nerves. This was strange. It was weird. This was the Canadian timber country, the
land of loneliness, of quick friendship, eager hospitality. A stranger entering Mock Lake should have
been surrounded in a moment by friendly, lonely local people.
Renny, the greatest voice among them, gave a great bellow.
“Hey, town!” he shouted. “Where is everybody?”
His mighty shout whooped through the town, rolled as a matter of fact for a mile into the surrounding
death-still timber.
The skulker's nerves were upset by the yell. He began to shake, and he trembled until he had to put
down the cocked rifle. He quaked as if he had the ague, but it wasn't the ague—it was fear, plain wild
limitless fear that was tying the skulker's guts in knots.
RENNY'S thunder brought no response. It didn't even scare up birds from the surrounding woods, and
to Doc Savage that was very strange.
Suddenly Doc went up the steps of the building that was the trading post.
“Hello, inside!” He pounded on the door.
There was no answer. No action, either, except that the door swung open. It was neither latched nor
locked.
Doc called, “Hello, inside!” again, then entered.
He stood in the middle of one great room, looking at the merchandise on shelves, counters, hanging from
the ceiling. Mackinaws and corduroys and flannel underwear. Blankets and tarps, snowshoes and
steel-traps. Three canoes, paddles, fish spears. Axes, saws, pike-pole heads, calked shoes. Typical
trading-post stuff for this country—and not a soul in sight.
Doc went to a door in the rear. It gave into living quarters, one room for cooking, the other for sleeping,
and both were empty. He put a hand on the cookstove. It seemed warm.
“Ham!” Doc said.
“Yes?” said a lean-waisted man who looked dandified because he wore a Fifth Avenue sportsman's idea
of what a man going into the woods should wear.
“Look for guns,” Doc said.
Ham Brooks, who was a lawyer by specialty, began hunting for firearms. For a fellow who looked like a
city slicker, he was remarkably practical.
A moment later, he straightened behind a counter. “What do you think of this, Doc?”
Ham meant the wrappings, oiled paper and labels, on the floor behind a counter.
“Wrappings off the new rifles they had in stock,” Ham said. “All the cartridges are gone, too.”
Wooden cartridge boxes were open and empty on the floor back of the counter. Doc examined them.
Shotgun shells, pistol ammunition. Most of the rifle ammunition had been 30-30, the calibre almost
standard in the Canadian woods, but there were a few 30-06.
Doc went outdoors.
“Search the houses,” he said grimly.
His four associates did the job rapidly, first knocking on doors, then opening them, or if the doors were
locked, raising windows. In this country, it was a rare thing to lock a house.
“Not a soul anywhere,” reported Johnny Littlejohn, the tall and gaunt archaeologist-geologist, “I'll be
superamalgamated!”
“Doc!” Monk shouted excitedly.
Monk was yelling from the door of the house with the chimney from which smoke came. Doc went over.
Monk led him into the kitchen.
“They sure left in a hurry,” Monk said, and pointed.
The last coals of a fire were in the stove. On the stove was a frying pan containing four fish, trout, which
had overcooked brown and hard. There was coffee on the stove, and beans in a kettle.
Monk opened the oven door. “Even biscuits in the oven.” The biscuits were overcooked as black as
chunks of coal.
“How about firearms in the houses?” Doc asked.
There hadn't been a gun anywhere, they said.
WEIRD? There was no question about it. At first it hadn't really hit them, because they'd just gotten off
the plane after a non-stop flight from New York, and people after a long trip are more or less excited
and do not grasp things as deeply. Maybe that was it. Or maybe they'd just been expecting trouble, but
certainly nothing mysterious like this, and it was slow soaking in.
But now it was getting to them. A whole town deserted as strangely as this was hair-ending. Ham Brooks
kept moving his orator's mouth around as if getting ready to make a speech, the way he did when he was
nervous. Renny Renwick, the engineer, had his fist blocked out. Renny's fists were enormous—he
couldn't get them into half-gallon pails—and the way they acted was the barometer of his feelings. When
he was worried, they got big and hard. They were hard now.
Johnny Littlejohn crossed the street, muttering that he'd passed up one locked room into which he hadn't
looked, but now he might as well investigate that, too.
Doc and the others stood there listening, hearing nothing anywhere, no kind of life. Not even birds. There
should have been loons crying over the lake. The stillness was ghoulish, a quiet that was mystery and
menace, inexplicable and frightening.
“Yeo-o-o-w!” Johnny Littlejohn's voice squalled. And Johnny burst out of the building into which he'd
gone. “Come here and look!”
Johnny, who didn't astonish easily, sounded so appalled that Doc and the others just stood stock still and
looked at each other.
“I never heard Johnny sound like that before,” Monk muttered.
“Come here, darn it!” Johnny shouted. “Hurry up!”
That jarred them loose from astonishment. They ran toward the building and Johnny. A sign over the
building said:
HURRAH LUMBER AND PULP
COMPANY
They followed Johnny into the building.
The skulker watched them go, from where he crouched behind the tortured spruce tree. So he stood up.
He looked at his rifle, and went though torture about whether to take it or leave it. Finally he took it.
He got the bottle of syrupy looking stuff out of a pocket. Obviously he was afraid of the bottle. He began
creeping forward keeping hidden, biting his teeth together to stop their chattering.
DOC SAVAGE stared at the smashed mess that was the radio station. One leg was off the apparatus
table, transmitter and receiver were on the floor in pieces, hopelessly mangled. The generator was torn
loose, the connecting wires broken. Cartons containing spare transmitter tubes had been squashed.
Nor was—strangely—the damage alone to the radio apparatus. The furniture was broken, a chair in bits.
A bearskin rug had been on the floor, and this had received particular fury, being literally ripped to
shreds.
Grooves, deep splinter-edged gullies, were scraped all about without sense or plan. There was even a set
of them on the ceiling.
Monk stared at the grooves.
“What would make scratches like that?” he muttered uneasily.
Ham picked up a bear-paw which had been torn off the particularly damaged rug piece. He distended
the claws on the paw, and compared them to the grooves. There was the same number of grooves as
claws on the paw—but the grooves were much wider, much deeper. That paw could never have made
them.
“Holy cow!” Renny rumbled. “What you trying to do, Ham? Scare us?”
“He's being silly,” Monk suggested.
“I merely noticed the likeness,” Ham said.
Monk said, “The bear hasn't been made that would claw such a mark.”
“A Kodiak might,” Ham said.
“Yeah? Bosh! Kodiaks are big, I've heard, but not that big.”
“You fellows talking about a Kodiak bear?” Renny asked.
Ham nodded. “They're the largest meat-eating animal in the world, I think.”
Renny turned to Doc Savage. “Doc, what about it? Could a Kodiak bear make such a mark?”
Doc Savage spanned the grooves they were arguing about, discovering his two outstretched hands
wouldn't cover them.
“Not,” he said, “unless the bear was considerably bigger than any Kodiak on record.”
Monk snorted loudly.
“The bear is entirely too big!” he said. “It's getting silly.”
Ham complained, “I didn't say it was a bear. I just pointed out the resemblance.”
Renny, disturbed, took to prowling the room, giving attention to the smashed radio. “Still speaking of
bears, notice how the set is wrecked. It's smashed and clawed. Not chopped or hammered, the way it
would be if a man wrecked it.”
“Oh, goony feathers!” Monk complained.
Irritated, Ham demanded, “Then where did everybody in town go?”
“Go? Go?” Monk shouted. “What's a bear got to do with where they went?”
“I'm just asking you.”
“I don't know, dang you.”
“Well, it's a mystery.”
“Maybe this mythical bear ate everybody,” Monk said violently. “Say, who's kidding who, anyway? You
guys ain't for a minute serious about this super-bear, I hope?”
No one said anything for a while.
Finally Renny laid a finger in a groove in a solid birch log.
“Something
scratches a heck of a track, is all I've got to say,” the big-fisted engineer rumbled.
Doc Savage had been hunting through the wreckage. Now he straightened, his hands full of wrinkled
papers. “This seems to be the sent-message file,” he said.
Doc divided the messages among his aides.
“Look through them and see if you can find a copy of the radio message which called us up here,” he
said.
Chapter II. DEATH RODE HIGH
THE radiogram, printed neatly in pencil, was in Ham's stack.
It said:
DOC SAVAGE
NEW YORK
PLEASE TELL HAM BROOKS THAT AUNT JEMIMA FLAPPED HER WINGS AND ASK HIM
WHAT IT MEANS THEN FOR GOD'S SAKE ACT QUICK IMPERATIVE YOU HAVE NO
IDEA HOW IMPORTANT MEET YOU MOCK LAKE UTMOST SECRECY
CARL JOHN GRUNOW
Doc Savage produced the radiogram they had received in New York and it was identical except that a
radio operator had spelled imperative with an “I” where there should be an “A.”
Monk indicated the file copy. “Did this Carl John Grunow write that excited outburst, Ham?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Well, if you aren't who can be? He's your friend.”
“Don't start getting fresh, you homely missing link,” Ham said. “The file copy is printed. Even the
signature is printed. How can you be sure. But wait, let me think.”
Ham scowled thoughtfully at the message for a while.
“Come to think of it, Carl John Grunow studied mechanical drawing before he came to attend Harvard
University,” he said thoughtfully. “He studied under an old uncle, and the uncle used a kind of backhand
lettering. Carl John got the same habit of lettering.” Ham tapped the radiogram file copy. “Notice this
lettering. Backhanded a little. And whoever printed it had obviously had mechanical-drawing lettering. I
would say indications are that Carl John Grunow wrote it. And he was excited, as the text of the message
shows.”
Doc Savage asked, “Ham, how well did you know Carl John Grunow?”
“Oh, we roomed together at Harvard.” Ham's voice had the timber of pride that came into it whenever
he spoke of Harvard, the law school of which considered him its most distinguished product. “We were
very close friends. Unfortunately, I haven't seen Carl John for about five years.”
“Why the break in association?”
“That? It was natural. Carl John became an engineer, specializing in lumber and pulp. I'm a lawyer. Carl
John went where the lumber and pulp business was, Canada. I stayed in New York.”
“I have asked this before”—Doc Savage's voice was earnest—“but I'll ask it again: Are you sure that
cryptic reference in the message about Aunt Jemima meant that Carl John Grunow needed help badly?”
Ham's answer was instant.
“Positive!” He nodded violently. “The incident he is referring to happened at college. As a prank, we
were dropping paper sacks of pancake flour out of a second-story window on the heads of some of the
fellows. A practical joke. Well, we dropped one and it lit on the head of the dean himself. I dropped the
flour, rather. But the dean caught Carl John and accused him of it. Carl John was innocent, but he got
excited, and he looked at me, and for some reason, he said, 'Aunt Jemima flapped her wings.' I think he
said Aunt Jemima because that was the brand of flour we were using, and the dean was waving his arms
until it looked like he was flapping his wings. Anyway, as soon as Carl said that, I came to his rescue and
confessed I was guilty.”
Monk said, “I'll bet that's the only time in your life you admitted being guilty of anything.”
Ignoring Monk, Ham finished, “Always after that, when either Carl John or I was in trouble, the one in
difficulties would say, 'Aunt Jemima flapped her wings,' and that was the signal that he needed help.”
“Kid stuff,” Monk said.
Ham shook his file-copy of the radiogram angrily. “This isn't kid stuff! This is infernally serious!”
“Why did this Carl John want help?”
“We don't know that!” Ham yelled. “And you blamed well know we don't know why!”
Doc Savage looked somewhat pained. “I wish we could be spared the dubious pleasure of hearing a
Monk and Ham quarrel for as long as an hour, sometime.”
“He irritates me!” Ham shouted.
“I irritate you!” Monk howled. “You're no soothing-syrup to me, dang it!”
Ham flourished both arms. He screamed, “Why do you think all these people disappeared? Why do you
think the radio station is smashed? Hasn't it occurred it could be part of the trouble Carl John Grunow
radioed about, you drumhead?”
THE skulker had reached the plane. He came to it through the water, crawling, just his head out, and the
fact that he crawled on knees and one hand—he used the other hand to hold the bottle aloft—made him
awkward.
He knew about planes. He didn't waste time. He picked the critical spots. First, where the wings were
joined to the fuselage. Not just the general joint. He got inside, to the main fastenings. He poured the stuff
from the bottle carefully.
The liquid sizzled. It also smoked a little, which worried the skulker.
He put more of the acid on the critical control cables. His job was through. In another hour, the plane
would literally fall to pieces.
The skulker eased back into the water. Then, alarmed, he looked at the muddy trail he had made while
crawling along the shallow water just offshore.
Instead of going back the way he had come, he went on down the shore.
“Beaver,” he muttered, meaning he was sure they would think, if they saw the roiled trail, that a beaver
had gone past dragging a stick that had stirred up the mud.
The skulker hauled himself up on the shore, and eased into the undergrowth.
DOC SAVAGE, coming down to the plane with his men, said, “Renny, you guard the plane.”
“Sure,” Renny agreed. He added knowingly, “So you figure we've run smack-dab into that trouble Carl
John Grunow radioed us about?”
“Too much looks strange,” Doc admitted. “Monk, you and Ham circle the town to the right. Johnny and
I will go around from the left. Look for tracks, any kind of tracks, that tell a story.”
Monk grinned, said, “I hope I don't meet that bear, boy howdy!”
“You potface!” Ham told him. “You still think this is all a false alarm!”
“Shucks, maybe there was an accident in the woods and everybody rushed out to help. It could be that
simple, you know.”
“Yes, and maybe somebody's tomcat scratched up the radio station and wrecked it!”
Doc Savage was watching the water. His intent manner got the attention of the others, and they saw the
muddy trail which Doc Savage had discovered.
“Beaver,” Monk said, airily. “They swim around dragging sticks in this country.”
“Beaver!” Doc said, so loudly they jumped. “Of course beavers swim and drag sticks.”
Monk and Ham got going on their right-hand arc around the village. They were swapping more insults, as
a matter of habit. Nobody who knew them could recall their having exchanged a civil word, except by
accident.
Johnny muttered, “When we start Monk and Ham off together, I always wonder if they're going to do
anything except argue.”
“They manage to do rather well, usually,” Doc said.
“I know it,” Johnny complained. “That's what always surprises me.”
Doc and Johnny started off together, and Johnny was immediately puzzled to note that Doc was
following the lake shore instead of starting to half-circle the town. He was further mystified when Doc
sidled into a bush and stopped.
“You go on around the town,” Doc said. “Make enough noise for two people. Speak occasionally, then
answer yourself, imitating my voice.”
“You mean make it sound like two of us?”
“Yes.”
“I don't get it!”
“That was no beaver.”
“No!”
“Beavers invariably swim in their runways when they are in weedy shallow water. This one ignored
everything that even looked like a runway.”
THE skulker tried to grin. It didn't jell. He was not made any easier of mind by his inability to be
nonchalant, and he nervously wrung out his shirt and put it back on. He'd previously wrung out his
trousers and emptied the water from his shoes.
The reason he should be able to grin, he was telling himself, was that he had heard Doc Savage say
loudly, “Beaver!” If Doc Savage said beaver, that meant he was fooled. If he was fooled, the skulker
was safe. It was therefore something to grin about. But the skulker's face felt ice-coated when he tried to
grin and it wasn't because the water had been cold. The lake had been cold, but not that cold.
The man knew the stiffness on his face was fear. No one could be as scared as he was, and not know it.
And like all men when they are cravenly afraid, and alone, he was not ashamed of it. Had there been
others around, he would have been ashamed of their seeing he was scared. As it was, he wasn't
ashamed, only busy trying to think up mental devices to make himself less scared. He liked to think of
himself as the mental type.
His rifle. He needed his rifle, which he had left behind when he entered the water. A gun in his hand was
often the same thing as courage.
He circled, drew near the log against which he had leaned the rifle. Then a voice spoke to him.
“Hello, beaver,” the voice said.
The skulker was so startled his arms and legs flew out straight and he slapped down on his face,
foolishly. He rolled over on his back quickly.
“Oh God!” he said.
He tried to get away. For a man stretched out on the ground, he made a fast start.
Doc Savage landed on him, yanked his shirt over his head, searched him, got a knife, a waterlogged
pistol, binoculars, all seemingly with one movement.
“Who are you?” Doc asked.
摘要：

THETHREEDEVILSADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2003BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.THEDEVIL'STOWN?ChapterII.DEATHRODEHIGH?ChapterIII.BEAR!?ChapterIV.SAMARITAN?ChapterV.HELLALOFT?ChapterVI.OMINOUSNIGHT?ChapterVII.DEVIL'SPLAN?ChapterV...

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