Doc Savage - 013 - Land of Always-Night Read online

  Doc said, "All right."

  He, as well as Monk and Ham, breathed deeply; it became apparent that from the time Doc had uttered the words in Mayan, they had all three been holding their breath.

  As a matter of fact, Doc's words had been a warning to Monk and Ham that he was going to break a tiny glass anaesthetic bomb on the floor. The anaesthetic was one developed by Monk, disseminating almost instantaneously into the air, and powerful enough to produce unconsciousness at the first whiff.

  The gas became ineffective after mixing with fresh air, but the effect upon one who had already breathed it would not wear off for some time.

  "Well, that's that," Ham said. He adjusted his necktie and brushed his trousers which had collected dust when he rolled on the floor to elude Ool's weird right hand.

  Monk pawed his own jaw. "The guy sure wanted that black goggle doo-dad. He had a chance to get away, but he wouldn't leave without 'em."

  Doc walked across and stood looking down at Ool's prostrate form. Monk and Ham pressed close at his side.

  Ham remarked, in a voice heavy with disbelief: "Yes, sir, he's even uglier than you are, Monk. I don't know how it's possible, but he is!"

  "You clothesrack!" Monk growled. "You don't know masculine beauty when you see some. I exude virility, I do! I'm an example of the dominant male."

  As Doc leaned over Ool, that apparently senseless individual became charged with appalling vigor. Ool's knees doubled under him and he sprang furiously to his feet. At the same split-second his deadly right hand moccasined out toward Doc.

  It was something absolutely new to the experience of Doc Savage and his aides. Never had a man who had gone down under the spell of the anaesthetic bombs, risen so soon.

  A bronze flash, Doc backed to avoid the mysterious touch of Ool's mother-of-pearl fingers. He succeeded in hurtling clear, and in doing so, his corded arms, sweeping out, thrust Monk and Ham behind him to temporary safety.

  "Get in the other room," Doc ordered Monk and Ham, his flake-gold eyes remaining fixed on the crouching Ool.

  "Aw, Doc--" Monk started a protest.

  "Get in there and shut the door," Doc repeated; and when his aides did not move fast enough, he lunged, using both mighty arms to shove them through into the next room.

  He tossed Ool's strange goggles in after them. Then he slammed the door behind them.

  INSIDE the other room, cut off from Doc, Ham and Monk reared to their feet and tried the door. The force of their combined body-jolts shuddered, but did not open the chromium-ribbed door in its steel frame.

  "He's locked us in here!" Monk bellowed. "Hey, Doc!"

  He banged his gnarled fists against the unyielding door.

  "He's in there alone!" Ham shouted.

  "That white-skinned, mouse-haired guy ain't human!" Monk roared. "The anaesthetic gas never even fazed him!"

  From the outer room, Ool's flat voice came clearly.

  "One man already to-night I have killed for these goggles," he intoned. "Now I kill another."

  Ham and Monk quit pounding, numbed momentarily by a flesh-crawling dread.

  Following Ool's pronuncement, muffled sounds came under the door. Feet padded. A body thudded. A chair overturned. Then there was a chilling sound, unnamable a dry clacking more than anything else.

  Ham clutched Monk by the arm. "That sound--It's that--that ghoul--laughing!"

  "Yeah," Monk said thickly. "Yeah."

  The eerie clacking laugh faded away. Feet pattered. The patterings grew quickly fainter. The hall door slammed.

  Ham and Monk commenced furious fist-batterings against their own door.

  "Doc!" Their voices crashed together. "Doc! Are you there?"

  The only sound now was the interminable police broadcast coming in over the short-wave set. The announcer was repeating an earlier broadcast.

  "--Dimiter Daikoff, murderer, escaped from Chicago jail, believed to be in hiding in Manhattan. His description: A big man, walks with a limp, a sear slanting downward across his neck from the lobe of his right ear--"

  The radio voice crackled on and on, while Monk and Ham endeavored to get out of the room.

  V

  THE MYSTERIOUS MURDERER

  SIXTH AVENUE by day is a working man's street. The children who scamper there between the wheels of automobile traffic, the men and women who swarm over its grimy sidewalks, give it a degree of friendly warmth.

  But late at night, denuded of its human adornments, the avenue lies stark and ugly. Occasional rats haunt its sidewalk garbage cans. And another breed of rodent, more vicious, comes to life in curtain-drawn back rooms.

  Ool was the only human figure in sight on the dim street. A lean cat, dirty-furred, claw-scarred and with most of one ear missing, leaped down to the sidewalk from a sour smelling garbage can and slunk into shadows at Ool's approach.

  The cat was hardly more sinister thin Ool as the whitefaced assassin moved along through the night with his characteristic animal prowl, gaunt head hunched far forward, spidery arms dangling.

  He slowed his pace as he came to a spot where a sickly glow of light seeped over the sidewalk from the half curtained windows of a barroom. Dingy yellow lettering on the window glass proclaimed the place to be "Bill Noonan's Tavern." Ool paused long enough at the door to flash covert glances in both directions, then entered, scuffed through gray sawdust covering the floor and approached the bar.

  A fat Negro, his head seemingly a hall perched on his multiplicity of chins, dozed on a stool near the cash register. He opened one red-rimmed eye as 001 approached.

  "Are you Ham-hock Piney?" Ool questioned.

  The Negro betrayed no surprise at Ool's appearance or voice.

  "Dat's right, boss," he said. "Ham-hock Piney, dat's me."

  "I want to see Watches Bowen," Ool stated.

  The Negro yawned cavernously, said nothing.

  "Did you understand me?" Ool snapped.

  "Cou'se I understan'," the Negro grinned. "What you want me to do about it-put a fly in your beer?"

  Ool expressed quick anger. As though propelled without volition, his right hand started drifting about.

  The Negro laughed sleepily, said softly, "All right. Ah see yo' knows de pass sign. Yo' can go on up. Take dat door in de back. Go up de only steps yo'll see."

  A MINUTE later, facing Watches Bowen in the mobster's top-floor hideout, Ool said, "You had better give your watchdogs more explicit instructions concerning me."

  "Ham-hock?" Watches laughed, and his thick hand hovered near the gold watch chain which sprawled across his vest. "He's all right. Slicker than you'd think."

  A man hunched in a near-by chair, rattled the pages of a racing form which draped across his lap. He was a mouse of a man, small. He seemed intent on doping out a possible track winner, when, in reality, his ferret eyes never left Ool. Concealed by the form sheet, his right hand gripped a flat automatic.

  At an oilcloth-covered table on the opposite side of the room, three men killed time with cards. Occasionally, they flashed curious glances at Ool and Watches. These men were all young, sleek, barber-shop groomed. Each smoked, and there was a hard calmness in their manner.

  Watches jerked his head at Ool. "Let's talk private," he said.

  The suave mobster moved to the far corner of the room, Ool following closely.

  Ool questioned blankly, "Are you not afraid he might miss me at this distance?"

  "Who?"

  "The little man in the chair."

  Watches' bleak eyes slitted, and his hand swerved instinctively back to his watch chain.

  "You don't miss much, do you?" he grunted.

  "Not much," Ool said. "You do not trust me?"

  "It's not that," Watches said. "We were afraid a cop might tag you in. I don't take chances."

  "Who is the man with the racing form and the gun?" Ool asked.

  "Honey Hamilton," Watches said proudly. "He can shoot fly specks off a hundred-watt bulb."

  "That is an exaggeration?"

  "A little, maybe." Watches grinned. "What've you been up to?"

  "I have," said Ool, "suffered a misfortune."

  "Didn't I tell you not to monkey with Doc Savage." Watches unclipped a timepiece and fumbled it. "Just how had is the situation?"

  Ool began to speak. His voice was like the intonation of a phonograph which possessed no qualities of tone whatever; his words were so flat that at times they were hardly understandable. He told of his going to the water-front warehouse-hanger, of his capture, of exactly what had happened thereafter.

  "This Doc Savage locked his two men in an inner room in his headquarters," he finished. "The bronze man and I fought. For a time, he evaded my right hand. He pursued me down to the street. His speed is almost unbelievable."

  "You sure? You'd have to be good to shake those men who work with Savage."

  From the hall, behind the closed door, sounded the scrape of numerous feet. A single fist pounded heavily on the door.

  "Open up!" a voice bawled. Honey Hamilton had been stationed at a cleverly concealed loophole in the wall. The loophole looked out upon the hallway and was of a size to permit insertion of a gun snout.

  The mouselike little man cupped his hand to his mouth and hissed back to Watches, "It's coppers!"

  "JOHN LAWS!" Watches mumbled incredulously, then wheeled upon Ool. "This is your doing! They've got you tagged for the Beery Hosner job! You let them see you come in here!"

  Ool shrugged. "That is impossible."

  "Then some stool tipped them." Watches shook his head violently. "Nix. No pigeons get a line on me. I'm careful about that. How in the devil did they know you're here?"

  The pounding on the door continued. The hollow, metallic quality of the sounds was an indication that the door was in reality an armored panel.

  "Let's blow," Honey Hamilton suggested uneasily. Watches nodded, and leaped to a side door. This gave into a narrow hall which in turn led to a flight of steps angling downward. They started to descend these steps.

  "Shure; and you can come r-right down," said a strong Irish voice from below. "But it'd be healthiest if you'd throw your guns down first."

  "Damn!" Watches gritted. "They've got the back way blocked. Now we are in a jam!"

  The men retreated to the room and closed both doors. Honey Hamilton pried up a cleverly hinged floor board and lifted out a submachine gun. He posted himself at the loophole.

  Watches ran over to the window and looked out. There was another building some thirty feet distant. There were windows in the wall. But no man could jump that distance.

  Then Watches snapped back hastily. He had glimpsed a uniformed policeman in the court below. The officer was looking up, balancing a heavy service revolver suggestively in one hand.

  "You birds had better get wise to yourselves," the cop called. "We've got you surrounded!"

  Watches looked at Ool speculatively. "Then I touched him and he staggered back and collapsed. I came here."

  Watches swallowed twice. "Doc Savage is dead?"

  "He is," Ool said, emphatically.

  WATCHES seemed to be thinking deeply. His breathing was heavy. He polished the watches on both ends of the chain, then compared their time with that shown by his two wrist watches, found one of the wrist watches a few seconds off, and made a correction.

  "What was the idea of the song and dance about the Lenderthorn Expedition?" he asked.

  Ool shrugged. "It is part of my plan."

  Watches put out a disgusted jaw. "Your plan! Say, don't I rate on this? You go ahead with a scheme that's as wild as hell, and you don't give me a gander at it. I don't like it! Who's running this, anyway?"

  "You," said Ool, "and I."

  Watches put the timepieces back in his pockets and began to curse. He swore in a low voice, but venomously and without repeating himself.

  "What a sweet mess," he finished. "Doc Savage has those goggles?"

  Ool began, "I have a plan--"

  Somewhere in the room a buzzer whizzed twice, loudly and 'jarringly.

  Watches stiffened. The three men playing cards pushed back from the table with such quick violence that the stacked chips washed over the oilcloth and spilled on the floor. Even mouselike "Honey" Hamilton snapped from his tilted chair, forgetting to keep his gun concealed beneath the form sheet.

  Ool, alone, showed no perturbation.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "That buzzer's never been rung before," Watches clipped. "It's an emergency--worked from a button behind the bar where Ham-hock can reach it with his toe."

  "Maybe," Ool ventu red, "Ham-hock went to sleep and kicked it accidentally."

  "Not a chance! That fat devil is never sleepy, and not as harmless as he looks."

  Then color faded out of Watches' florid face.

  "What is the matter?" Ool asked. "You look sick."

  "Listen," Watches Bowen demanded hoarsely, "did you go dumb and leave Doc Savage's men trail you down here?"

  "I did not. I was careful to come in a roundabout way."

  Ool seemed to read his mind.

  "You can turn me over to the police," he said slowly. "No doubt they will then hold you on no charge more serious than that of possessing weapons."

  Watches shook his head. "I'm not that kind of a guy. Anyhow, think I wanta lose my cut in a few millions?"

  Ool shrugged. "It seems there is nothing for us to do but fight."

  Honey Hamilton said nervously, "They're gonna use torches on that door, Watches."

  Watches yelled, "Well, are you gonna stand there and let them?"

  Honey Hamilton spread a benign look over his face as he shoved the submachine gun snout through the loophole and his finger sought the trigger. But he never discharged bullets.

  There was an ear-splitting crack. Steel splinters flew like shrapnel over the room. A screaming fragment crashed a bottle of whisky, went entirely through the tabletop and sank into the floor. Another ripped Watches' coat sleeve from wrist to elbow.

  Honey Hamilton tumbled backward off his chair; blood began to well from gashes on his face and shoulders. He lay prone, pawing at his bloody face.

  Watches squawled at him, "What happened?"

  "They cut loose at the loophole from outside!" Honey gulped. "A bullet must have walked into the muzzle of my typewriter. Jammed in the barrel. Blew the breech all to hell!"

  He slumped down on the floor. Watches let him lie, and glared wildly at the loophole. Then he scuttled to one side. One of the policemen in the hall had thrust a gun barrel through the loophole from the outside. He could not fire and do any damage, because the angle was not right, but the loophole was effectively plugged.

  Watches pulled helplessly at his gold vest chain. "What a lulu we're in," he groaned.

  They stood there, nerve-taut, anxious. Outside in the hall, a soft roaring began and grew louder, and after a bit, the inside of the door started smoking. The police were using a cutting torch on the armor plate panel.

  Watches groaned, "We ain't got a chance to fight--"

  "Hey, there!" called an entirely new voice.

  FOR a moment, they could not locate the voice; then they spun, and after that they stared unbelievingly.

  Across the thirty-foot space between the two buildings, a window was open. A man leaned from that window. He was a dark-skinned man, very big, smooth-shaven, with very dark eyes, black hair and a scar which started at the lobe of his right ear and slanted down across his neck. His appearance was utterly villainous.

  In his hands, the man held a coil of fire hose of the type often affixed to reels inside office buildings.

  Watches ran to the window, looked out and down cautiously. He could see the policeman in the alley below. The bluecoat was sprawled out, motionless on the grimy concrete.

  "Get a move on, you birds," snapped the big, scarred man across the alley. "Or are you interested?"

  "Hell, yes!" Watches exploded. "Toss us the end of that hose!"

  The big man hurled the hose, missed the first time, but on the second try, Watches seized it, drew it inside and knotted it to a radiator.

  Hand over hand, the men started coming across. They were not interrupted. The policeman below in the alley did not stir. The large, dark man with the scar voiced only a single word.

  "Hurry," he said, and led the flight. The swarthy fellow had a pronounced limp.

  Like rats deserting a sinking ship, Watches Bowen's gang swung gingerly across the hose span and through the window. Honey Hamilton, the last to attempt the crossing, suddenly discovered that, due to his wounds, he was incapable of making it.

  "Go on," he growled. "I'll keep the cops entertained."

  "Don't be a fool!" snapped the big, dark man.

  He swung out over the span, grunting and straining with the effort, and got his legs around Honey Hamilton. Then began the return journey.

  It was a remarkable feat, for the dark man held Honey gripped in his legs, suspended in the air above the alley. The hose sagged and groaned as, hand over hand, the dark man pitted his gigantic strength against the swaying. But slowly, like a cable car over a quarry, he finally made the other side with his wounded burden.

  Honey Hamilton, weak with relief now that the trip was over, made a wry grin. "Thanks, guy. Remind me, if I should happen to forget that sometime."

  AN hour or more later, Watches Bowen was relaxing in another of his numerous hangouts-a fifty-foot cabin cruiser tied up at a City Island dock. A bottle of Watches' eighty-year-old Napoleon brandy contributed substantially to his relaxing; by the time he had drained a third glass, he had recovered much of his old suave manner.

  Slumped near Watches, on an over-stuffed berth, the three sleek, hard, young gunmen were engaged with a fresh deck of cards.

  In the same room, the big, dark stranger who had come so mysteriously to their rescue was doing an excellent job of bandaging Honey Hamilton's wounds.

  Ool sat on another berth, as motionless as if he were dead, except for an occasional twitch from his weird right hand.