Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 169 - Danger Lies East

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DANGER LIES EAST
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page formatted 2004 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I
? Chapter II
? Chapter III
? Chapter IV
? Chapter V
? Chapter VI
? Chapter VII
? Chapter VIII
? Chapter IX
? Chapter X
? Chapter XI
? Chapter XII
? Chapter XIII
Chapter I
AT three o'clock he was dead.
But five hours earlier, when he was quite alive and alert, he sauntered from the doorway of the Blair
House. The Blair House was a rather good hotel on Park Avenue in New York City, and he had been
waiting” loitering, if one was frank about it—in the lobby of the place. He did not live there. Outdoors it
was chilly and the sidewalks were wet and the air felt damp, although there were no visible raindrops.
He took a cab to the airport. He took a plane to Washington.
Airline passengers are expected to give their names, and he gave one. He gave a name. It was Alexander
Trussman. It was not his name. As a matter of fact, no one ever did learn his name. The name of
Alexander Trussman fitted him in a way, and in another way it did not. If the name of Alexander
Trussman sounds foreign to you, it fitted him. He was young, tall, dark-haired, dark- eyed, dark-skinned.
When a dumb-looking lout of a news- boy tried to force a newspaper on him outside the Blair House, he
refused the super- salesmanship rather angrily, snapping, Im shi!” This word imshi, meaning to be
gone, or scram, was of a language spoken pretty generally in the Near East. The term Near East being
applied broadly to that part of the world between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, the Caspian
Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Mr. Alexander Trussman, to give him the name he had given himself, looked
sorry that he had used the word.
At noon, three hours before he was dead, he ate the lunch the airline served its passengers.
In Washington, he took a taxi to the Houghton Hotel, but did not register. He loafed in the lobby. He did
not have luggage of any sort. A few minutes past two, he left the Houghton, and was walking on
Pennsylvania Avenue when he began showing signs of distress.
First, he perspired freely. It was cold in Washington, a city which seems always to be too hot or too
cold, too dry or too wet. He burst out into a sweat, then a chill, and displayed all the symptoms of a man
suffering from an attack of violent illness. He also showed signs of being a man who wanted desperately
to go ahead with what he was doing. Being ill mustn't interfere. It mustn't. He fought his nausea and
weakness, but it did no good. Finally he knew he could not go on.
He had been following a man. He gave that up suddenly. He wheeled from the sidewalk, entered a drug
store, got two ten-dollar bills changed into quarters and dimes—this took a long time and his skin was
lead-gray before it was done—and he carried the money toward a telephone booth. But he collapsed
before he reached the booth.
Presently there was a group of curious spectators around the sprawled man. One of the spectators, who
had conveniently entered the drug store a moment before, pushed forward and took charge.
He was not a doctor, but he said, loudly, “I'm a doctor. Let's see what goes on here.”
This man, who was thick and wide and homely and hairy, did some pulse-feeling, tongue-examining and
eyeball-inspecting. Mostly it was mumbo-jumbo.
“Mild heart attack,” he announced. “I—ll take him to a hospital.”
The manager, who was a little nervous about such things happening in his drug store, asked the name of
the man who had collapsed.
“How the hell do I know?” asked the “doctor.”
The manager wanted to know the doctor's name.
“Doctor Doesmith,” said the “doctor.”
“Shall I,” asked the anxious manager, “make a report of this to the police?”
“I'll make all the reports that are necessary,” said the phony medico. “Chances are there won't be any.
This guy has a chronic ticker difficulty, and the probability is that he will live to be a hundred. Now and
then he will cave in like this, is all.”
The manager was completely fooled, and he let the hairy ape carry Mr. Alexander Trussman outside and
put him in a sedan which was rather too conveniently waiting.
The “doctor” took his victim to a hotel. It was a good hotel, one that didn't have to worry about its
reputation, consequently a man with moxie could get away with stuff that would have gotten him thrown
out of a lower- grade place. By dint of pouring some whiskey from a bottle on Mr. Alexander Trussman,
the apish man got him upstairs to a room, leaving everyone with the conviction that he was just bringing
his drunken pal home.
It was then two-forty.
The hairy ape put his burden on the bed. He punched Mr. Trussman in the belly a few times and said,
“Wake up, you so-andso.” But this did not get results.
The hairy ape's name was Mayfair. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, to give him his full title.
He was one of the world's outstanding industrial chemists, and had so been recognized for a number of
years. It was generally agreed that he was too contrary and lazy to work at his profession except when
he was broke or when he had strained his credit with his friends to its utmost. His friends were wise to
him, so his credit didn't stretch far. The thing he preferred to do, and which he did most of the time, was
pursue excitement.
It was inevitable that Mr. Mayfair should be called Monk. And he was. He did not mind.
Monk did some more belly-punching of his victim and said, “Come on, wake up, chump!” Still there
were no results.
Going to the telephone, Monk gave a number and asked, “Ham? . . . Well, what are you waiting on? . . .
Sure I got him. Like a sitting duck. He's here in the hotel room now. Notify Doc, and then come on up. .
. . No, he hasn't talked yet. He thinks he's pretty sick. Okay. Fifteen minutes.”
Monk concluded the conversation, turned, and discovered he had been careless. His victim, Alexander
Trussman, had slid silently off the bed and was slipping out through the door into the hall.
“Here!” Monk yelled. He dived for the door. He had started too late. Mr. Trussman, forcing activity over
his sickness, slid through the door and, taking the key along, got it closed and locked on the outside.
Monk did some roaring. He roared very well, sounding like he looked, a bull ape. The door was too
stout for mere twisting and wrenching, and he drew back with some idea of caving in a panel with his
shoulder. At that point, he remembered there was another room, a connecting door, and the second
room had a door into the hall.
“Dumb cluck!” said Monk with feeling. He meant himself.
He bolted into the adjoining room, knocking over furniture without noticing or caring what he was
knocking over, and plunged out into the hall.
“Oh, oh!” he said, greatly pleased.
Mr. Trussman had collapsed in the hall. He had made about twenty feet, which had taken him almost to
the door with the little light above it that said EXIT in red, and which would have admitted him to the
stairway. “Crockett!” gasped Trussman. “Tell Crockett—”
Monk ran to Mr. Trussman, stood over him and blew vigorously on his fist. He was tempted to see
whether Mr. Trussman would appreciate the feel of the fist. What stayed him was the conclusion which
he drew—a wrong one, but he didn't know it—that Mr. Trussman had fainted.
Monk carried the man back in the room and dumped him on the bed. After that Monk didn't turn his
back and do any telephoning. It was an unnecessary precaution, though, because the man was now
dead. It was three o'clock.
HAM was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, and he preferred that no one call him Ham,
including his friends. Everyone called him Ham whenever possible. . . . Ham was a lean, dapper man, an
authority on clothes, and an example always of what to wear for the occasion. He was an eminent
lawyer, often mentioned as one of Harvard's most brilliant alumni, but his attitude toward the practice of
law was much the same as Monk's toward the practice of chemical engineering. Ham preferred
excitement. He had better judgment than Monk with money, however, and was usually broke no more
than once a year. He was also Monk's friend, in an evil-eyed sort of way.
Ham Brooks came into the hotel room dawdling a cane and told Monk, “God, you look awful.”
“I look like I always do,” Monk said, surprised.
“That's what I mean,” said Ham. “Cut it out,” said Monk. “There's our friend.” He pointed at the
motionless figure on the bed and added, “Resting quietly.”
Ham examined the man. “He's not very active, is he? . . . Is there any doubt but that he was following
Doc?”
“Not,” said Monk, “a bit. He trailed Doc to his hotel, the Blair House, in New York, and then followed
him on the plane to Washington, and was following him around Washington when fate caught up with
him.”
“What fate?” Ham asked.
“Me.”
“Go ahead, be funny. Make like a clown, with a dead man lying on your bed.”
“He isn't dead,” said Monk smugly. “What's wrong with him then?”
“He ate lunch on the plane,” Monk said. “And I put some stuff in his soup and he ate it. I was afraid there
for a while that he wouldn't like soup, but he did. He ate every drop.”
“What did you put in it?”
“A small diabolical concoction of my own which won't hurt him a bit,” said Monk. “It made him as sick
as a dog. The effects should be wearing off by now, though.”
Ham frowned. “What was the idea of giving him this mickey of yours?”
“To scare the hell out of him and soften him up for questions.”
“Have you asked him any questions yet?”
“He didn't answer them.”
“Oh, then you—ve got nothing out of him,” Ham said, using a tone that cast doubt on Monk's ability.
“Crockett.”
“What?”
“Crockett . . . Tell Crockett—” said Monk. “That's all that's come out of him.”
“What made him say that?”
Monk decided not to tell Ham that, due to a momentary lapse into stupidity on his part, Trussman had
nearly escaped, but had collapsed in the hall, and at that time had mumbled the words: Crockett. . . . Tell
Crockett—
“Danged if I know why he said it,” Monk remarked.
Ham eyed Monk intently. “What's the reason for all this?”
Monk shook his head. “Search me.”
“You don't know?”
“Nope.”
Ham said suspiciously, “You're lying.”
“A lawyer! Accusing somebody of lying!” Monk sneered. “What do you know about that! The pot calls
the kettle black.”
HAM BROOKS, puzzled, but not entirely disbelieving, although he knew Monk would rather tell him an
untruth than a fact, said, “Naturally I know you would tell me exactly why we are here and what we are
doing and what Doc Savage is doing that caused this fellow here to follow him. I'm sure you would tell
me—if it was choked out of you. But for your information, I don't know why I am in Washington. How
did you get here?”
Monk said, “Doc calls me in New York. He describes this guy. He says he thinks this guy is following
him. He says for me to make sure, then grab the guy. Doc says that if the guy is following him, let the
following proceed to Washington before I grab him, and then take him to the Rimes Hotel, which is this
hotel, where a room will be reserved in my name, or two rooms in fact. I am to bring my captive here,
and telephone you at a number Doc gave me, and you will know where to find Doc. That is the
prescription I get. I follow it. Here I am. Now is that frank and honest, or isn't it?”
Ham thought it was the truth, so he said, “I think you're lying. . . . However, my experience was
something similar, except that Doc telephoned me to grab the first plane to Washington, rent these two
rooms for you, rent one at another hotel for myself, wait there, and if you call me, and say that everything
has gone well, I am to telephone Doc at one of two places. . . .” Ham glanced at Alexander Trussman. “I
wonder if he can hear us?”
“Him?” Monk grinned at Trussman. “Maybe we'd better ask.”
Ham went over and punched Trussman. He didn't like the reaction, and looked, somewhat horrified, at
his finger. With great revulsion and difficulty, Ham Brooks forced himself to make one of the most
positive tests for learning whether life is extinct. He touched one of the man's eyeballs. There was no
sensitivity.
Hoarsely, Ham said, “Was it your idea, giving him the drug?”
“Sure,” Monk said. “Why?”
“It'll probably get you electrocuted, or whatever they do to you for murder in the District of Columbia,”
Ham said.
“Huh?”
“Your friend,” Ham explained, “is slightly dead.”
Chapter II
CLARK SAVAGE had always considered it a great misfortune that he was a big bronzed man who was
as conspicuous in a crowd as—Monk had once put it this way—the fig leaf on a fan dancer. His
noticeable physical size and muscularity had on more than one occasion nearly been the end of him. In
another profession, it would perhaps have been an asset, but he could well do without it, and he made a
practice of dressing as quietly as possible, in plain suits, and using a low voice and an unobtrusive sort of
politeness. Too often, this was mistaken for spectacular modesty, and did no good at all.
Doc was also hampered by a reputation. He did not like publicity, and discouraged it whenever possible,
with the unfortunate result that he was considered somewhat of a man of mystery. Consequently he was
pointed at, whispered about, discussed at cocktail parties. And there was another end result of being
thought of as a genius—when he was handed a job to do, it was usually something that everyone else had
gagged on. He did not mind this. Trouble was his business. Trouble and excitement.
He was not a detective, although frequently his work was something that a high- grade detective would
have done. He was a trouble-shooter and, regardless of whether it sounded corny or not, his usual object
was to right wrongs and punish evildoers who were outside the law. This was a rather Galahadian
motivation for what he did, and he usually denied such high ideals if they were mentioned to him, and
certainly never expressed it that way himself. He had been trained for the work by his father, who had
possibly been a little cracked on the subject of crooks, particularly of the international sort. Doc as a
child had been handed over to a succession of specialists and scientists for training, and his youth had not
been at all normal. But the results were remarkable, in that they had produced Doc Savage, who was
supposed to be able to do anything.
Walking into Monk Mayfair's room in the Rimes Hotel in Washington, Doc felt anything but a superman.
His general impression was that someone was making an ape out of him.
“Hello, Monk—Ham,” he said. Then he saw their facial expressions. “What is wrong?”
“We got a little complication,” Monk said uneasily.
“Yes?”
“It's there on the bed,” said Monk. Ham Brooks explained, “I think what Monk means is that the man is
dead.”
“And did you hear any sound from the corridor during that time? Any sound through the door?”
Monk tried to remember. “I guess maybe anything I heard I would have thought was the guy beating it. .
. . No, I didn't get any noises.”
“Any voices?”
“The guy wouldn't be talking to himself, would he?”
“No voices?” Doc asked patiently. “No.” Monk was puzzled.
“And when you went around through the other room into the hall,” Doc said, “did you see anyone when
you came into the corridor?”
“This guy here.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Was the man on the floor?”
“Yes,” Monk said. “I ran to him, and it was then that he said, “Crockett. . . . Tell Crockett—” That was
all he said.”
“Was it spoken distinctly?”
“Yes. . . . Slow, though. Like he was forcing it out, and concentrating on it while he did so.”
“Did you,” Doc asked, “get the feeling that he was telling you, or trying to tell you, something about
someone or something named Crockett?”
Monk considered this point. “No. I think he didn't know what he was doing. I think this was just in his
mind—telling Crockett, whoever, Crockett is—and he concentrated on it and said the words without
knowing what it was all about. . . . Say, when he went into the drug store before I caught him, maybe he
was going to telephone this Crockett.”
Doc asked, “How much change did you say he got?”
“Change?”
“Didn't you say he got two ten-dollar bills changed into quarters and dimes in the drug store?”
“Say, that was a hell of a lot of change, wasn't it?” Monk said. “I wonder where he was going to
telephone to? The moon? Let's see . . . twenty bucks! Why, you could telephone practically anywhere
for that.”
Doc got back to the line his questioning had been following.
He said, “You're positive you didn't see anyone else in the hall?”
“Just this guy here.”
“Where was the stairway door?”
“What!” Shocked, Doc Savage went to the bed.
Monk blurted, “For God's sake, Doc, is he dead? Tell us?”
Doc made an examination and stood back.
“Dead,” he said.
Monk retreated behind a chair as if to take refuge from this fact. “But he can't be, Doc. He just can't be.”
“What did you do to him?” Doc Savage asked.
“I didn't kill him.”
Ham said, “All he did was give him poison in some soup on the airliner.”
Monk was upset. He said, “Cut it out, Ham. Rib me some other time. I tell you, he couldn't have died
from that stuff I gave him. It would only have made him sick.”
Doc Savage frowned. “Let's have a full story of what happened,” he said.
MONK did not leave out anything. He related the most trivial incidents. One got a strong impression that
Monk felt that, while he was a noted chemist, it wouldn't do him much good in case he went on trial for
murder. Monk covered everything that had happened, and threw in the part that he had not intended to
tell Ham, the bit of action when, as Monk was telephoning, Alexander Trussman, to use the name the
man had given the airline people, had slipped out of the room and locked the door. But, Monk explained,
he had found the man collapsed in the hall, so it had turned out all right after all.
“How long,” asked Doc Savage, “would you say the man was out of your sight?”
“You mean after he got through the door and locked it?” Monk said.
“Yes, between then and the time you first saw him lying in the hall.”
“Only a jiffy,” Monk said. “Can you be more specific than that?” Monk scratched his fingers
uncomfortably in his bristling reddish hair. “Well, to tell the truth, it didn't seem like more than four or five
seconds,” he said. “But it might have been longer, because I was plenty in an uproar. Time kind of fools
you when you're excited.”
“How long, at the longest?”
“Sixty seconds,” Monk decided. “A minute.”
“About ten feet from where he was lying.”
“Was the door open?”
“Closed.”
“And you didn't hear anyone on the stairs going up or down?”
“Nope. I take it you think somebody else was out there in the hall?”
Doc spoke grimly. He said, “That would help explain how this penknife blade got into his spinal cord.”
THE blade from the knife—it had been broken off—was not very long. It did not need to be. Not more
than an inch and a half, which was ample, for Alexander Trussman was a thin and bony young man
without much padding of flesh over his spinal column.
Monk was relieved. He was so relieved he was shaking. “To kill a man like that, and quick,” he said,
“you'd have to know how to do it, wouldn't you? I mean that it isn't an ordinary way to use a knife.”
Ham Brooks said, “I don't see what you've got to be happy about. He's still dead. And the police are still
going to feel it was odd he died on your hands.”
Monk said he wasn't scared of the police. Well, maybe moderately scared. In a week or two he might be
able to sleep nights. “But the point is,” he added, “that I know now that stuff I fed him in the soup didn't
kill him. Somebody was waiting in the hall, and did it to him when he tore out of here.”
Doc Savage said, “We had better make some inquiries.”
Their inquiring was complicated by the fact that Doc Savage said they wouldn't notify the police about
the murder yet. The total result of the questioning of a few bellhops, two cleaning women and some
maids was nothing. No one had seen anyone who could be immediately identified as the murderer.
“Why not notify the police?” Ham Brooks asked Doc Savage.
“You think it will get us in trouble?”
“I know blamed well it will, and so do you,” Ham said. “As an attorney giving you advice, which you
didn't ask for, I can assure you they can and probably will lock us all up.”
Monk was also perturbed. “Doc, just what's the idea of taking this chance?”
Doc Savage explained when they were back in the hall upstairs, but not in the room with the body,
where, he said, it was just possible a microphone might have been planted for eavesdropping.
“Microphone!” Ham gasped. “For crying out loud! What are we mixed up in, anyway?”
He did not know, Doc said. He explained that he had received a telephone call from a Mr. Lawrence
Morand, of the State Department. Did they know Mr. Morand?
“I've heard of Morand in the State Department,” Ham Brooks admitted, “in about the same way that you
hear of Paul Revere in connection with the Revolutionary War. He's sort of an expert giver-of-alarms,
isn't he?”
“That,” Doc said, “is about as good a description of Morand's position in the State Department as I have
ever heard.”
“What did Morand want with you?” Doc shook his head. “I do not know. Morand was very secretive,
over the telephone. He asked me to come to Washington, using the utmost care to avoid being
conspicuous, and said he had a job for me that he thought was along my line. I wasn't too hot about the
secrecy, and I had some experiments under way in the laboratory in New York, but when I tried to talk
my way out of this job, Morand got pretty emphatic. So I gather it is something big.”
Ham scratched his head and said, “If Morand is in it, it's something to do with foreign relations, isn't it?”
“Probably. Morand's department is foreign relations.”
Ham indicated the body on the bed. “He's a foreigner of some sort, judging from his appearance. Do you
suppose he was connected with this call from Morand?”
“What other guess is there?” Doc asked.
“Then you're not going to notify the police about the body until you talk to Morand?” Monk asked.
Doc said he thought Morand would appreciate doing it that way.
“Morand sounded,” Doc said, “as if the world had started to fall over and he was holding it up with one
hand and fighting bumblebees with the other.”
Chapter III
THE HONORABLE LAWRENCE MORAND was an erect, white-haired man of much dignity and
about sixty years, nearly forty of them spent in the devious jungles of international diplomacy. Many men
look disconcertingly unlike the parts they occupy in affairs, a fact that is sometimes a little jarring to
confidence. But Morand was reassuringly the picture of a career diplomat. One knew he could lift a
teacup, flatter a politico's mistress, bribe a government functionary, and possibly order a genteel
throat-cutting, all with equal aplomb and ability.
Coming forward behind outstretched hand, Morand said, “How are you, Doc? I haven't seen you since
London in “45. You're looking fine. How are the rest of your organization? Monk and Ham still
conducting that interminable quarrel?”
Doc said things had been fine up until that telephone call from Morand, but since then . . .
Morand held up a manicured hand. “Do a favor for me, eh? You know the statue of the three monkeys.
Say nothing, hear nothing, see nothing? If you don't mind, I am going to occupy the position of the three
monkeys with regard to you.”
Doc said, “It is evil, isn't it, that the monkeys do not see, hear nor speak?”
“Could be. Anyway, I have not seen you, I have not heard from you and I shall not speak of you. Is that
confusing?”
“A little,” Doc said.
Morand indicated a chair. “Sit down. I'm a little embarrassed about this. You see, I need your help.
More properly, we needed your help some weeks ago, and didn't have sense enough to realize it.”
Doc said, “This isn't beginning to sound good.”
“I'm afraid it isn't.”
“No?”
Morand grimaced. “I don't think you're going to be happy, but I don't think you will be surprised either.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I guess I'm apologizing,” Morand said. “And trying to say that I imagine you are accustomed to being
called on when things are in such a mess that nobody else can handle it. In other words, when the potato
gets too hot, they hand it to you.”
Doc Savage said that he began to get the idea, and he had been afraid it would be something like this.
“The question in your mind,” he said, “is, will I take the potato? Right?”
“Will you?”
“Let's see the potato first.” Morand nodded and said, “I don't expect any blanket promises out of you. . .
. Have you been following the political situation in the Near East? Oh hell, I know you have. The
newspapers have been full of it for that matter. . . . What is your general impression of it?”
Doc said, “Everyone mad at everyone else. The Arabs are mad at the English, the Americans, the
Palestine Jews, and they distrust the Russians. The Egyptians are irritated with the English, they think the
Americans have no business monkeying around, and ditto for the Russians. In India, one religious sect is
ready to fly at the throat of the other, and both of them are drooling for an English throat. . . . You know
I've been out of touch with the situation over there. What are you asking me for?”
Morand grinned with no humor. “Your picture isn't so far from the truth. Let me give you some inside
stuff.” Morand talked, and Doc listened, and much of what he heard he had already known, as far as the
general picture in the eastern Mediterranean area was concerned. He had known, without being exactly
sure of the facts, that most of the dissension had fairly well settled down to a question of whether or not
there would be an armed uprising.
“The dissatisfied factions,” Morand explained, “have rather generally coagulated, undergone a clotting
process which has placed them, not exactly under one leadership, but ready to follow that leader if he
gives the word. In other words, it has gotten to the point where one man, their religious symbol, can
make it war or a peaceful settlement, as he wishes. And if it turns out to be fighting, it'll be war, and I
mean a real war. I'm afraid—and don't think I'm being a wild- eyed old maid when I say this—as bad as
the one we finished a few months ago.”
DOC SAVAGE made no comment. An international crisis was usually dry stuff to discuss, unless one
knew the problems posed and the personalities and intricacies involved. It only stopped being dry when
摘要:

DANGERLIESEASTADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispageformatted2004BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI?ChapterII?ChapterIII?ChapterIV?ChapterV?ChapterVI?ChapterVII?ChapterVIII?ChapterIX?ChapterX?ChapterXI?ChapterXII?ChapterXIIIChapterIATthreeo'clockhewasdead.Butfivehoursearlier,when...

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