Doc Savage - 013 - Land of Always-Night, page 8
The bronze man drove a hand under the instrument panel and touched one of an array of switches concealed there. Then he wrenched out large, somewhat clumsy eyepieces. He peered through one of these.
A fantastic change was wrought. A weird light seemed to have suffused the pall of black smoke. To a layman, it would have smacked of black magic, but an electrical engineer would not have been more than surprised at the efficiency of the apparatus for projecting invisible infra-red light rays, which have the faculty of penetrating smoke and fog to a great degree.
The eyepieces, highly ingenious, for making the infra-light visible would have been even more interesting to an electrical expert.
"Watch out!" Renny shouted suddenly.
Directly ahead, crosswise of the street, loomed an abandoned truck. Some one, working in collusion with the driver of the green coupe, had driven the truck out of a side street and left it, anticipating that Doc would crash into it, head on, in the smoke.
Tires squalled on pavement as Doc swerved the sedan in an attempt to clear the obstruction. No ordinary car could have made it.
There was a sickening skid. They vaulted the curb. Metal crashed, rasped. They had glanced off a wall. Brick dust cascaded. The machine rocked, nearly went over. Then it jarred back on the street, beyond the truck.
"Holy cow!" Renny gasped.
Long-winded Johnny blinked his eyes. "I vouchsafe a kindred articulation!"
The speeding ears were beyond the region of traffic lights now and streaking on open boulevards. Doc's sedan crawled up immediately behind the other ear. At their terrific speed, telephone poles were almost like pickets in a fence. The green coupe lurched a good deal, but Doc's scientifically weighted ear held the road smoothly.
Doc's cabled bronze hands eased the wheel over. The ear swung around the green coupe, came up abreast. Plainly, Doc meant to wedge the other car in, force it to stop.
A submachine gun nosed out of the green coupe and a burst of bullets flattened harmlessly against the steel plating and bulletproofed glass of Doc's vehicle.
With the speeding cars side by side, Doc and his men could get a look at their adversaries in the coupe.
"Hey, that's not Ool!" Long Tom said tersely. "They've chalked somebody's face up to make him look like Ool!"
"Ool would hardly risk his neck with a driver like that one," Doc said.
"Well then, what--" Long Tom never finished his sentence.
THERE was a bump, a terrifying swerve, a crash, a crazy sword-slashing of lights in the night as the two cars collided and one of them turned up end for end and rolled like a barrel off the road, over a ditch, through a hedge of trees and far into a plowed field.
The insanely reckless driver of the green coupe had tried to shove the other car off the road.
The trick backfired. The other driver had not calculated on Doc's reinforced fenders. It was his own ear which went over.
Doc's machine held the road. It weaved, but not dangerously. Doc eased down on the brakes, cut the lights, and brought the car to an abrupt stop.
What he did then was a surprise.
"Slide over here in the driver's seat, Ham," he directed. "Take the ear hack to town. You will hear from me at the office."
He opened the door, swung out, glided across the road and disappeared in the shadow of a high hedge.
Ham hesitated, then drove away, carrying with him a puzzled and disgusted Long Tomn, Johnny, and Renny.
At the scene of the disaster, Doc Savage ascertained that both the driver and gunner were dead, killed instantly.
He was examining the bodies, when a peculiar rhythmic drone of a sound assailed his ears. Doc looked up.
Clearly against the star-lit sky he could see a huge shape poised against the night, resembling, at first, a bird with grotesquely whirling wings. Even as he looked, the object settled lower. It was a plane, an autogyro.
Doc exploded in a burst of furious energy, and barely reached the shadows of a grove of trees as a sharp clatter sounded from above and machine gun bullets rapped the ground.
Doc was not carrying one of the machine pistols so much relied upon by his men; he preferred to depend for defense on ingenuity and various scientific devices carried in pockets of specially constructed vest.
Since the autogyro was not flying low enough for him to take any effective measures against it, he contented himself with outguessing the machine gun bursts. Repeatedly, bullets snarled through the massed leaves, tracing patterns of death. But the bronze man kept clear.
After a few minutes of ineffectual firing, the autogyro lifted and skimmed away to the west, still flying low.
Not more than two minutes later, Doc saw it poise, then drop lazily to the earth in almost vertical decent.
Leaving his evergreen shelter, Doc ran for the spot where the autogyro had landed. The distance was not great and, eventually, he located the windmill plane.
The craft had settled in a farm lot, in a shallow valley not far off the road. There was a house close by. Doc approached cautiously. The moon added to the brilliance of the stars.
He heard a man curse, then heard his own name spoken---"Doc Savage!"--in evident alarm. A window went black in the farmhouse. A man ran out and was joined by another outside. The two started racing across the farm lot in the direction of the autogyro.
Then one of them stopped, caught the other by the arm and pulled him in the opposite direction.
"Nix!" The arm-puller's words wafted clearly to Doc. "We can't land in the gyro where we wanta go! The hell with it! We'll take the car!"
THE men ran, stumbling, to the road. Doc following them, heard the whine of a starter, then the silence-wrecking roar of a motor and a clashing of gears as a car got under way.
The headlights switched on. Doc was able to recognize the two men. Ool and Watches Bowen!
The car droned away, blurring into black distance.
After satisfying himself that he was alone, Doc Savage ran toward the autogyro. He examined it carefully. He devoted particular attention to the controls.
He found a bomb attached to the starter in such a way that it would have exploded at the first revolution. The bomb explained the "act" which Watches Bowen and Ool had put on in the farm lot. The performance had been calculated to decoy the bronze man into following the fleeing car with the autogyro. It was just one more murder attempt.
Doc Savage entered the house and began a searching examination of the rooms. It seemed to be a small tenant farmer's house, deserted now, used, judging from the litter about, as an occasional hide-out by Watches Bowen.
The white beam of his flashlight poked everywhere. In the room where he had seen the light go out, papers on the floor and more papers on a time-scarred desk made it look as if the criminals, in their haste to clear out, had been forced to leave documents behind.
Doc picked one of the papers from the floor. Light from the hand flash washed over it, revealing a maze of handwriting and figures apparently some of Watches Bowen's calculations.
Doc gathered all papers on the floor and carried them to the desk. There was a lamp on the desk, with an electric bulb in it. Evidently there was an electric plant on the farm.
For greater convenience, Doc laid down his flash and turned on the electric light. It was a dim bulb, heavily frosted.
Doc bent close to the light while sorting over the papers. So intent was he upon the documents that he did not see the faint vapor which crept out from the frosted bulb as it warmed.
He did notice it, finally. His arm slashed out. He smashed the bulb in his bare hand. But the vapor was already in the air.
The bronze man took two staggering steps, then keeled over, to lie inert on the floor.
X
THE PATRIOT UNMASKED
OOL and Watches Bowen did not drive into town when they fled the farmhouse, but turned into a near-by side road, from where, after parking their machine, they circled back to the farmhouse on foot, arriving in time to watch from a distance as Doc Savage turned on the lamp at the desk.
When they heard the solid thump of his body as it struck the floor, they came charging in. They stared triumphantly at the bronze man's prostrate form.
"The second of the twin sisters got him," Ool spoke tonelessly.
Watches' voice had a rasp in it. "After this, Ool, I vote for you and your fancy poisons every time. When that fool coupe driver got himself wrecked, I was ready to quit."
Watches collected his personal papers which had formed the fire. Then he approached the body of Doc Savage.
"Let's lug it out to the car," he suggested.
Tot ether the two bent over Doc's heavy frame.
What happened next neither Ool nor Watches could have correctly detailed. There was a nightmare sensation, as though the roof had fallen on them and a tornado had funneled its way into the room.
Vaguely, of course, they knew that Doc Savage was not dead. The corded muscles of the bronze man, which had been slacked in apparent helplessness as he lay upon the floor, had suddenly become galvanized with uncalculable force.
Both Ool and Watches Bowen were strong men. But they were helpless the instant a metallic hand closed over the throat of each. Their blood seemed to turn to water, their muscles got limp as rags, their eyes bulged in purpling faces, their tongues ran out.
Doc, with an unexpected movement, cracked their heads together. They lost consciousness.
Searching the pair, Doc relieved them of weapons. Then he devoted much time to an examination of Ool's right hand, the hand which the thin, strangely white-skinned man seemed never to keep still.
He found nothing peculiar about the hand.
The bronze man dragged the two senseless forms to the autogyro and calmly detached the bomb from the starting mechanism.
He flew his two captives back to the city, landing in a vacant lot conveniently near his own water-front warehouse hangar. He took a closed car from the big building and loaded the captives aboard.
IN the skyscraper headquarters, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny stared as Doc issued from his private elevator with his two prisoners in tow. Doc slumped the pair of limp forms on the floor.
Long Tom, the electrical wizard, was first to speak. "You sure did a heavy night's work, Doc," he said.
"Let us hope it is all over but the questioning," Doc said.
Big-fisted Renny handed over a sheaf of radiograms.
"These came in answer to the radiograms you sent up North," he told the bronze man. "They give us something to go on when we start questioning these two."
The messages were all very long, and all alike in one respect--they all conveyed the information that no expedition other than the Lenderthorn party had left the Arctic-American coast in recent months.
One message carried a surprise. It described the members of the Lenderthorn party. The descriptions were unmistakable.
Lenderthorn, the explorer, had been no other person than Watches Bowen himself. Assisting him had been a lieutenant who resembled Ool to perfection.
The expedition had taken off by plane and had not been heard from since, the message stated.
One radiogram, from Point Barrow, on the north Alaskan coast, contained additional information regarding Ool.
The weirdly white-skinned man, so the radiogram informed, had arrived myseriously into the settlement some months ago.
Ool had carried a strange pair of black goggles. He had been acting strangely seeming to have not the slightest idea of what modern life was like, and being unable to speak any intelligible language. But during the short time he had remained there, he had learned language and customs with amazing rapidity.
He had refused to divulge much information about himself except to infer vaguely that he had come from off the Arctic ice pack, which obviously was a lie, it being regarded as an impossibility. He had disappeared from the settlement as mysteriously as he had come.
Several strange deaths among the Eskimo population had been credited by them to Ool, but this was thought to be superstitious fancy on their part, since no direct evidence of Ool's guilt could be obtained and fatalities in each case having been attended by severe local inflammation and swelling, and no autopsies having been performed, death had been credited by settlement authorities to pernicious infection, or simple blood poisoning.
Renny jarred his huge fists together restlessly. "What say we take a trip, Doc, over--"
"--over the Arctic ice pack," Long Tom supplied. "We can use--
"--the new dirigible." Ham added.
"For the specific purposes," Johnny finished grandly, "of investigating the mysterious origin of one malicious malefactor having golden hirsute adornment, not to mention delving into the mystery of a certain pair of goggles--and alleged mysterious things."
"HAM--jump!" Doc's voice was a crash of sound.
Ham jumped, suddenly, without question. The dapper lawyer leaped a yard in the air.
Ool clutched his ankle at about the half-yard level.
Ham fell violently, sprawling his full length on the floor, his sword cane clattering out of his hand. He kicked, but he could not shake Ool's relentless grip from his ankle.
"Hold it, Ham!" Doc rasped. "Do not move!"
Ham lay still.
Ool spoke.
"You have done well to order him to lie still," he droned. "Now listen to me. You have witnessed my strength. I did not stay long unconscious, like this other one." He indicated Watches Bowen's limp form.
"I could give you," he continued, speaking with his sepulchral lack of tone, "a more deadly exhibition of my powers. If I had reached for your man with my right hand, instead of my left, he would now be dead. So try no tricks on me, bronze man. You could kill me-yes; but not before I could kill this man of yours."
"What do you want?" Doc asked quietly.
"First, the goggles."
Without further argument, Doc went into the laboratory and returned with the goggles. He tossed them to Ool.
"You have discrimination," Ool said, flatly. "I could wish I had you for a partner instead of Watches Bowen."
"What else do you want?"
"Escape--that is all." Ool spoke like an inefficient phonograph. "I am not greedy. I might bargain with you for your dirigible. But that would incur complications. I prefer to consolidate my gains, and strike another time."
"You propose to do what now?" Doc asked.
"I am going to move back and enter your elevator," Ool said. "I shall drag Watches Bowen, and I shall drag your man also. My right hand is death. Understand! But you have my word that it will function only if you interfere with my escape."
"What do you intend doing with Ham?" Doc demanded.
"I do not want him. Nor do I wish to encourage reprisals from you by killing him. If you do not interfere with my escape, I shall leave him at the bottom of the elevator shaft unhurt. Is it agreed?"
Above everything else, Doc Savage was solicitous about the safety of his aides.
"It is agreed," he said.
Without further words, Ool backed out of the door with his human burdens, entered an elevator, and sank the eighty-six stories to the ground.
Eventually the elevator came back to the eighty-sixth floor. Ham was in it, lashed with his back to the handrail.
"Let's go after that scut!" Renny roared, crowding into the elevator.
Doc vetoed the proposal. "Not now. I have other plans. You men wait."
The bronze man got them out, then went down alone in the cage.
Doc's aides crowded about Ham, firing queries.
"That while-faced, death-fingered fellow isn't human!" Ham shuddered.
ABOARD Watches Bowen's moored yacht, Dimiter Daikoff, the big, dark, scarred patriot, moved swiftly to bring out more eighty-year-old brandy as Watches Bowen and Ool tramped aboard and shoved noisily through the door.
Watches was in a savage mood. His neck was swelling from Doc Savage's choking, and his head felt like a thousand steel mallets were knocking on it. He gulped the brandy greedily.
"Some stuff, them twin sisters of yours," he snarled at Ool.
"There is no known poison in your world more deadly than the twin sisters," Ool replied.
"Then how conic Savage snapped out of it so quick?" Watches demanded.
"He did not come out of it."
"What do you mean?"
"He never was under the influence of it. No man can embrace either of the twin sisters and live."
"You mean he faked it--pretended to be knocked out in order to get us in there and nab us?"
"Obviously."
"Then something's gone screwy as hell!" Watches snarled. "There's a leak somewhere. Savage has been tipped off to every plan we've made." The mob leader's hand clawed at the front of his vest, jerked fiercely at his gold watch chain.
Dimiter Daikoff came forward silently, proffering cigarettes, but Watches knocked the package out of his hand.
"You're beginning to get under my skin!" he rasped.
"Hold onto your nerves," Ool cautioned. He produced the goggles from his pocket. "We have these--that is one important thing."
Watches continued to stare malevolently at Dimiter Daikoff, at the scar on his neck, the tragically-glowing dark eyes, the high cheek bones, hollow cheeks, the superb muscular power that even the swarthy man's ill-fitting suit could not hide.
Shortly afterward, Dimiter Daikoff found occasion to leave the cabin.
Watches Bowen jerked a thumb after him.
"Savage knows too much; he evidently finds out our plans," he said. "I wonder if the leak could be that damned patriot?"
Ool showed no emotion, but asked, "Need we take chances?"
"Hell, no!" Watches growled.
"I will shake hands with him when he returns," Ool said emotionlessly. "I will use my right hand."
Dimiter Daikoff came back after a time and Ool stood up.
"I wish to compliment you on the excellent serving of the brandy," he said. "Shake hands with me, if you will."
Dimiter Daikoff was standing very close. He reached out readily to take Ool's proffered hand.
But at the last instant the big patriot's forward-reaching hand swerved, but down toward the goggles in Ool's left hand. His flashing grab was accurately directed. He got the goggles.
