DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (14 page)

Doc did not disabuse the pirate of that deduction.

After a moment, Dang Mi set the camera down on a flat rock and got back to business.

“As I was sayin’, if I open this box, all hell’s gonna bust loose. And it won’t be pretty. No siree.”

Dang Mi retreated a few paces, picked up a knob-headed cudgel known locally as a ‘Penang lawyer,’ and stole up behind the box. He carefully tapped the lid with his shillelagh twice.

The sound brought forth was dull, hollow. It told Doc Savage nothing about the contents of the mystery box.

“If I use this to crack the lid,
bing!
You three will shrivel into mummies. What does that tell you?”

“Nothing,” Doc Savage admitted.

“It is the truth,” Mary Chan undertoned.

“The absolute truth,” echoed Mark. “If that lid is so much as raised a hair, we are all doomed to die an unnatural death.”

“A supernatural death,” insisted Mary.

“Or at least an agonizing one,” Doc Savage offered. “Whether or not it cannot be explained remains to be seen.”

Dang chortled, “Now you’re talkin’, Savage. You’re supposed to be the wizard to end all wizards. If I let you live, will you help me crack the secret of that dang box?”

Doc Savage seemed lost in thought. When he finally spoke, he said, “I cannot unravel the riddle of that box unless I have seen it in operation.”

“You want a demonstration, eh?”

“Yes. The properties ascribed to it do not make any sense. No known substance or material could leach the moisture out of a living thing in the way you describe.”

“That’s the first reasonable thing you have uttered,” Dang Mi said happily.

Doc came to a decision. “Very well. Hand me the box.”

“No tricks now!”

“I will not endeavor to open it,” Doc promised. “I merely wish to examine its construction.”

With evident reluctance, Dang Mi picked up the box and handed it over to the bronze man of few words.

Doc took it. Even manacled, his hands moved freely, so great was their innate strength.

First, he weighed it in one hand, transferring it to the other and hefting it again.

“Be careful!” Mark Chan gasped. “If it spills….”

Taking the container in both hands, Doc next felt of its construction. It seemed to be made of ordinary galvanized steel, but it was heavier than its apparent construction, as if what it housed was weighty beyond the size of the concealed contents.

Putting an ear to the box, the bronze man motioned for quiet. He listened for quite some time and when he stopped, it was evident that he was puzzled.

At last he admitted, “I have no idea what is held within this box.”

“You don’t, eh? Well, ain’t that too bad. Because now you’re gonna hafta open it.”

“No!” Mark Chan exploded. “To open—”

“—is to die!” echoed Mary, aghast.

Dang snorted. “Naw. I lifted it a crack, and I didn’t croak. But I was sure mighty thirsty afterward. You, Savage, will open it, taking care to look inside. If you fall down, my men will make sure the box gets shut tight and we’ll give you a man’s share of water to get over your thirst. For I promise you, it will be a right powerful thirst.”

Doc Savage seemed to consider this proposition for fully a minute. His golden eyes ranged over to the flat rock where sat the strange camera whose very dark lens was pointed toward the evening sky.

In reality, he was listening intently.

Finally, Doc spoke. But the words coming from his lips, while distinct enough to be discerned, were unintelligible.

Dang Mi blurted, “What?” blankly.

Doc Savage seemed to repeat his statement.

“I can’t make out a word you’re sayin’. What lingo is that? It’s not Malay. It—”

A hooting came from the jungle growth. Gun-muzzle flashes threw palm boles into sharp relief. Dropping their food, startled corsairs leaped to their feet.

Turning at the waist, Dang Mi grabbed for his holstered pistols.

Doc Savage took the uncanny box and leaped backward, at the same time, calling to the others. “Scatter!”

Mark and Mary Chan did not need any further encouragement. They broke in two directions.

Whirling back around, Dang Mi observed the Chans separate.

Of the bronze man, he saw nothing. It was as if Doc Savage had vanished. Utterly. His going smacked of the supernatural.

For a careful moment, the self-styled Scourge of the South China Sea was hesitant, not sure how best to react to the sudden melee.

First, he aimed at Mary Chan. Then, apparently deciding that his surviving chivalry prevented him from shooting a woman, shifted his aim toward her twin, Mark.

Feet flying, Mark Chan was in full retreat. Dang cocked his revolver with a deliberate thumb, laid the gun sight on his target, hesitated.

Evidently now Dang decided that he could not shoot a fleeing man in the back. That hesitation cost him his opportunity. With a series of crashing sounds, Mark Chan disappeared into the underbrush.

“Dang it all! Where’s Savage?” barked the buccaneer chief.

The pirate band was milling about, grabbing up knives, swords and assorted pistols. This took a few moments.

In those moments, three figures burst out of the underbrush.

They came on, firing. The blare of the pistols in their hands was awesome, almost deafening.

For they were firing Doc Savage’s supermachine pistols, the amazing weapons which discharged lead so fast that a sub-machine gun sounded slow and stuttering by comparison.

Corsairs fell, wailing. Others lit into the brush. They lost no time in doing so. One stumbled into the campfire and ran shrieking in circles, arms flailing, his clothing ablaze.

Seeing this, Dang Mi coolly took aim and shot the man through the skull, effectively quenching his misery.

Blowing powder smoke from the upraised barrel, Dang then went in search of Doc Savage.

He did not get far.

A tremendous maul of bone and gristle swung in his direction, knocking several teeth loose, and him flat.

LOOKING up, Dang saw towering over him a long countenance that was terrible in its forbidding wrath.

“Reckon you remember me,” rumbled Renny Renwick, the big-fisted engineer.

“How’d you get loose?” Dang gasped, feeling of his askew jaw. It already ached.

Renny reached down and gasped Dang by the collar, lifting him to his feet, then off his feet, which dangled in the air. Renny shook the pirate as a tomcat would shake a caught rat.

“Loose,” promised Renny, “is how your teeth are going to be after I get done with you.”

Mindful of his throbbing jaw, Dang Mi considered that threat, then said thickly, “I ain’t got my guns no more. They’re plumb in the dirt.”

The big engineer kicked the nearest six-shooter away with a great booted toe.

“So I see.”

Renny looked around. Not far away Monk and Ham were piling into an assortment of privateers, Asian variety.

Grinning broadly, Monk was employing his superfirer to mow them down like a thresher. They wilted in rows, like cane under scything corn knives.

Ham Brooks had his sword cane unsheathed and was engaged in a fencing duel with two Malays wielding broad-bladed
parangs
. He was a ludicrous sight in white cotton ducks and a pith helmet. But as he slashed and parried, his thinner blade drove back the two attackers. It was a dazzling display of sheer swordsmanship, an object lesson in the value of skill versus the brute force of the heavier blades.

Pinking one and then the other, Ham swiftly rendered them both unconscious.

Satisfied, the dapper lawyer went in search of another foe.

Momentarily distracted, Renny failed to notice Dang Mi shake a dagger from one blouse sleeve until a cool steel thorn was suddenly lying athwart his jugular vein.

Dang gritted, “I call this turnin’ the tables. What do you call it, Big Fists?”

Renny raised a bony globe of a free fist as if weighing his chances. Knuckles whitened tensely.

“I sliced more throats than Carter has little pills,” Dang warned.

Renny subsided. His fingers remained fisted, however.

Lifting his cavernous voice, he thumped, “Monk! Ham! Hold up a minute.”

“I’m just gettin’ warmed up,” Monk said with bloodthirsty enthusiasm. The air around him was a cloud of gray gunsmoke.

“If you don’t want to watch me turn into a human fountain, you listen to this cockeyed bucko here,” rumbled Renny.

Monk stopped shooting and took in the situation. He appraised it with a glance and began licking his lips the way a nervous dog does. His narrowing eyes showed that he had calculated the odds of interfering and decided the risk to Renny was too great.

Instead, he barked, “Ham! Hey, shyster, lay off!”

Ham Brooks punctured a lunging pirate in the arm and the latter seemed to fall into a swoon.

Turning, he, too, took in Renny’s imminent peril.

“Just drop your blasted pig-sticker and we’ll see where discretion takes us,” Dang Mi promised.

Monk and Ham laid down their arms. Reluctance was etched on their sweat-smeared faces.

Dang Mi beamed. “Fair start. Now call your leader back here.”

Monk and Ham began speaking at once. Ham’s cultured voice rang out with distinct clearness.

“Doc! Trouble!”

Monk’s squeaking voice overlapped the dapper lawyer’s shouting and was unintelligible.

Dang barked, “One at a time. And no tricks! I figure you got yourselves a lingo you use to talk back and forth in secret. That’s how Savage fetched you up, ain’t it?”

Both men went silent. Dang had hit the nail on the head.

Doc Savage emerged from the jungle foliage so silently and unexpectedly that even his men were caught off guard. Dang Mi was equally spooked by the bronze man’s sudden materialization. He started slightly, drawing a faint bit of blood from Renny Renwick’s throat.

“I surrender,” said Doc Savage. He was no longer clutching the crackle-finished strongbox.

DANG MI WAS pacing before a long log of hardwood on which sat Doc Savage, Monk, Ham, Renny and the Chans.

All were shackled now. The quantity of leg irons and associated chains required to bind the quartet had strained the reserves cached in the pirate camp, and a runner had to be sent to the black-hulled junk,
Devilfish
, anchored in a cove for more.

After the chains were made fast, Dang Mi confronted Doc Savage.

“Where,” he grunted, “is that dang-blasted box?”

“Safe,” replied Doc.

“That ain’t the answer I was askin’ for,” Dang growled.

“That is the answer you have,” returned the bronze giant. In the firelight, he looked utterly unafraid, even bound in heavy chains as he was. Noting Doc’s mighty musculature, Dang had employed a length of hawser chain to weigh down his legs. No human being could walk, much less run, weighted down by the rusty links as Doc was.

Dang abruptly holstered his six-gun and gathered up one of the supermachine pistols confiscated from Monk and Ham. He examined the mechanism.

“Nothing beats a good old-fashioned six-shooter,” he muttered. “But this do-jigger looks right handy.”

He trained the long barrel at Renny Renwick.

“You! Where you been hidin’ all this time? My men have been beatin’ the bushes for you. Thought the lagoon crocs had gobbled you up for sure.”

“Guess,” invited the big engineer.

“Tell me, or I blast you to perdition with this gimmicky gun.”

Renny’s puritanical lips compressed.

Seeing no evidence of forthrightness, Dang Mi began to pull back on the firing lever.

Then he hesitated. Noticing the big engineer’s boots, he decided that they looked water-logged and discolored. Curiosity aroused, he approached, bent over, and used his nose like a bloodhound. He recoiled from the odor.

“Smells like you’ve been in a bilge!” Dang howled. “You been stowin’ away in my junk, you big jugheaded lummox?”

“Seems that way,” Renny admitted. “Don’t it?”

Dang Mi appeared to take great offense by this. His features gathered up in a kind of convulsive snarl. Lips peeled back off teeth that showed deep staining of tobacco chewing mixed with betel nut.

“If I’d caught you on my junk,” he bellowed, “I would have made you walk the plank over a clutch of crocs! A man’s ship is his dang castle. And I ain’t just any man. I’m Dang Mi, Scourge of the South China Sea! You hear me?”

“I hear you,” replied Renny calmly. “Just not enthusiastic about your reputation.”

The boastful pirate looked for a moment as if he would blow the top of Renny’s head off, but a commotion behind him brought his head corkscrewing around, followed by his thick body.

“What’s the dang tribulation all about?” Dang demanded of his pirates.

A Dayak began gobbling in his native tongue. He was pointing excitedly at the body of a Malay who had been felled by a machine-pistol burst.

“What do you mean, he ain’t scragged?” Dang exploded. “He’s down and out, ain’t he?”

Storming over to the fallen buccaneer, Dang examined him critically. He grunted, “Still breathin’.” Ripping open the other man’s native shirt, Dang discovered a series of bruises flecked with scarlet. He touched these. Still wet.

“Unless he turned bulletproof,” muttered Dang, “somethin’ ain’t right here.”

Doc Savage explained the matter to him.

“Mercy bullets,” he stated.

Dang blinked. “Eh? Talk sense.”

Doc explained, “My men employ ammunition of a type that is not lethal. Your crew members will come to in about an hour.”

Dang looked at the complicated pistol in his hand. “So perforatin’ that grim galoot with the concrete fists wouldn’t do any good. Is that what you’re sayin’? He’d just wake up later.”

Doc nodded slightly. “The shells are hollow and filled with a chemical potion that produces near-simultaneous unconsciousness. Impact of the shell breaks it enough to cause a flesh wound, releasing the anesthetic into the bloodstream.”

Monk and Ham had been silent up until this point. Now the dapper lawyer spoke up. “The worthies I stuck with my sword cane will also revive.”

Dang grunted, “Not much on killin’, are you boys?”