DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (31 page)

Instead, Doc let Datu off at the next habitable island to reconsider his attitude toward human life.

This was after the bronze man had transferred his men, the Chans and Startell Pompman over to the seaworthy pirate junk. Whereupon, Doc had ordered the vessel’s name changed in order to avoid unpleasant encounters with ocean-going authorities. This nearly occasioned a mutiny, it being thought evil luck to change a ship’s name. A compromise was soon reached, and the name
Cuttlefish
was brushed over that of
Devilfish
in bold Chinese characters. The difference was not considered significant enough to carry the argument forward.

Pompman had languished in chains for some of the time. That was for show, more than anything else. There was no place for the fat man to escape to, and Doc wanted the crew to understand that Pompman was a prisoner and not deserving of respect.

Once he was confined to his cabin, the chains were removed. There, Pompman took his meals and listened avidly to any and all sounds emerging from above deck.

It was during the melee in which “Sat Sung” had made an unsuccessful attempt to commandeer the junk of the Red Dragon that the crafty Pompman had contrived his escape.

He resorted to an old trick. It still worked in movies, but in real life it was unlikely to gull even the unwary.

It happened that the crewman who took Pompman his meals was not an avid moviegoer; possibly he had never been to a theater in his rough-and-tumble life.

Pompman simply lay in his bunk, gasping for air and seizing his own throat as if choking—or perhaps overcome by an incalculable thirst.

“Air!”
he gasped out in the Malay tongue, the word conversely meaning water.

The crewman, seeing this display, thought that the weird power was loose again.

“You alleesame thirsty?” the man demanded in Pidgin English.

“It must have gotten loose,” gasped Pompman with feigned difficulty. “Where is the box? It must have been jarred open.”

As it happened the crewman did not know exactly where the box was. But he had a fair idea. The only sensible place to look was in the captain’s cabin.

Doc Savage was busy with the battle and could not be consulted.

Dropping the prisoner’s bowl of rice and fish, the cook hastened to the captain’s cabin. He did not think to lock the door behind him.

ROLLING off his bunk, Startell Pompman hurried after him. His shoeless feet pattered along the planks with surprising softness.

It was while fighting with the door lock that the cook felt the belaying pin that cracked his skull open. He fell, his blue turban unraveling like a scarf.

Using the seaman’s tool as a pry bar, Startell Pompman made furiously short work of the padlock, splintering the door in the process.

He barged in. For all his girth, he was strong.

Rummaging about the cabin, Pompman’s efforts at first went unrewarded.

Then he spied the stratosphere suit that was hanging in a closet. It was the only garment ensconced therein.

Eyes gleaming behind his pince-nez nose glasses, Pompman reached into the suit’s open neck and began fishing. His questing fingers encountered a small metallic object. He brought this forth. It was a brass key.

A key meant a lock, and he naturally began a search of the cabin. The plump plutocrat examined the cabin’s inner walls and floor without profit. He frowned heavily.

Turning his attention to the captain’s bed, he discovered that it sat on a curtained hardwood platform. Bending awkwardly, Pompman flung the curtain aside, exposing a demon’s mouth whose recessed gullet proved to be the aperture of a lock.

Eagerly, he thrust the key within, gave it a turn. The demonic face opened in the fashion of a small door, revealing a stout safe with a modern dial combination lock.

By now, Startell Pompman was perched on the gently rocking floor. Rubbing his pudgy fingers together, he presently demonstrated that his education was not limited to affairs of ordinary commerce.

First he gave the dial a testing spin. Pressing an ear to the steel door, he moved the dial back and forth, while listening for the clicking of the tumblers.

It took some time, during which Pompman paused often to listen for warning sounds coming from the deck above. Satisfied, he resumed his furtive activity.

Perspiration crawled from every facial pore, so great was his concentration. Eventually, the tumbler mechanism surrendered. He yanked the porcelain handle. The door opened, disclosing a crackled-finished blue metal surface. Pompman suppressed a bubbly gasp of unbridled joy.

The sought-after box was enwrapped in a fat wad of oilskin—evidently a precaution should the rocking of waves disturb it.

“Zounds!” he breathed. “Pluto, Mercury and Mars.”

Carefully, Pompman began to excavate the stout steel strongbox. He set it on the floor. Next, he began assembling the suit about himself. It took considerable effort and time. More than once he began mouthing maledictions in his frustration.

Soon enough, Pompman scraped and wriggled his doughy bulk into the confining outfit like a pleased hippopotamus.

When he was firmly stuffed within, he placed the fishbowl-style helmet on a shelf and, by a clever manipulation which involved ducking under the globe and pulling it toward him with his flabby womanish hands, succeeded in getting it to drop over his head.

Bolting the flange to the metal cuirass on his shoulders was the most difficult part, but there were only two catches, one on each side his the neck, and at last he got this final bit of business done.

“Egad,” he puffed. “My stars!”

Picking up the box with supreme care, Startell Pompman strode out into the corridor, looking like a denizen from another realm navigating unfamiliar territory.

A profound change now settled over the wide features of the man of affairs. Hitherto, he had resembled a well-fed merchant. Now there was something stark and predatory in the lines of his bloated face. There was the proverbial blood in his fat-sheathed eyes.

This changed abruptly when he heard the first dull cough of a deck gun. A whistling sound approached. Although unversed in the arts of modern naval gunnery, Startell Pompman recognized the sound signals of an approaching shell.

He froze in his clumsy boots, waiting. There was no use running; the suit was not designed for flight. Nor did hiding appeal to him. The shell, when it landed, might strike and demolish any part of the vessel. No point in blundering into danger when standing still might be the safest course of action.

When the detonation came, the pirate junk did not respond, other than to roll slightly in the swells. Excited cries came from topside.

It soon became clear that the target was another vessel. Years spent as an Oriental importer had made Startell Pompman fluent in various dialects—Mandarin, Cantonese, even Annamese. He quickly gathered that it was another junk that had come under attack by a Japanese gunboat.

Other activities quickly followed. Abruptly, members of the pirate crew began tumbling down the hatch of the main cabin.

Startell Pompman sought shelter. He found it in the same place that Renny Renwick had earlier hidden during the mad affair—in the junk’s indescribably filthy bilge.

Here, in darkness, sounds were more muffled and it was difficult to make out snatches of frantic conversations. Too, many of the pirate crew spoke languages with which he was not familiar.

Startell Pompman waited, perspiration of impatience coursing down his fat features, soaking the clothes he wore under the bulky protective suit. It was very hot and he had to take care not to move about too much, for he feared tearing the suit, whose seams were greatly stretched in the effort to contain his voluminous bulk.

Eventually, a strange silence fell. The coughing and booming of bombardment eventually had ceased. The rattle of a machine gun came and went during this interval, too.

It sounded safe to emerge.

Then, and only then, did the bloodlust return to Startell Pompman’s eyes. Laboriously, he climbed out of the bilge and tramped his way to the companion which led topside.

DOC SAVAGE was making explanations to a skeptical and stiff-necked Captain Kensa Kan.

“Below in my quarters, there are protective suits,” he related. “These will enable a man to approach the dangerous device aboard the Red Dragon junk without risking harm.”

“What do you propose, Savage-
san?”

“Since you insist upon accompanying me to the foundering junk,” responded Doc, “we will each don one of these special outfits and enter the hold where the dangerous thing is.”

Captain Kan considered this for some moments.

Doc Savage showed a trace of impatience when he said, “The Chinese have a saying:
Ch’in-shu,
kuang yin ssu chien.
It means: ‘Kinsmen, time is like an arrow.’ ”

“Meaning that it flies,” said Kan.

“Exactly.”

“Produce these suits, then,” Kan demanded.

Doc sent Mark and Mary Chan to get the weird coverall suits that they had worn at the beginning of the chain of events that had brought them to this dangerous juncture.

Under armed escort, the Chandler twins found the black atmosphere suits that had been custom designed for their slender forms.

When they brought them topside, Captain Kan took one in hand and gave it a thorough examination. When he came upon the manufacturer’s label with words sewn in Russian, he turned red in the face and began sputtering.

“What is this? Russian!”

“The suits are versions of those worn by Soviet high-altitude balloonists. They offered the greatest protection possible,” explained the bronze man.

Kan said, “Either garment will fit me, but what about you?”

“A special suit of my own design is stored in my cabin. I will wear that one.”

“We will see,” said the captain. He gobbled out harsh orders and two Marines began assisting him into one of the black suits. Due to the airtight construction of the rubberized outfits, and the oxygen apparatus that had to be fitted, this was a task requiring more than one man. Even with help, it took some time to do it.

To an aide, Kan barked, “Yakamashi-
kun!
You will don the other one.”

Doc Savage objected, “Too many men will complicate the operation unnecessarily. And there is still the risk involved.”

“I will undertake any risk to obtain this weapon, Savage-
san,
” Captain Kan rapped out. “But I will decline the risk of falling into your capable hands, should I accompany you alone.”

That settled the argument. Doc Savage fell silent. His eyes were sweeping the junk’s deck, the surrounding seas. He chanced to look up. A low bank of storm clouds—thunderheads—were approaching from the south.

Monsoon season was near its end. That did not mean the threat of the violent summer rains that sweep this part of the world was entirely over.

“We had best get going,” Doc advised. “It appears that a line squall is approaching.”

“Ah, so it seems. Two of my men will accompany you as you retrieve your personal suit.” Kan gave the orders. Two stone-faced Marines stepped out of line and produced the lean-barreled automatics with which Japanese soldiers are equipped.

Under those converging muzzles, the bronze man was escorted to the main hatch.

Doc stepped around the ornate superstructure and wrenched to a halt.

For up from the interior, stomped an imposing and unexpected figure.

Doc’s trilling came, wild and excited. He was so startled he failed to realize he was making it and the exotic sound ran unchecked for some moments.

There stood his stratosphere suit, bulging at the seams—the bespectacled head of Startell Pompman encased in the transparent fishbowl helmet!

In his gloved hands, the plutocrat tightly grasped the blue strongbox with the crackle finish!

Pompman’s thick voice boomed through the loudspeaker apparatus.

“No one make any untoward moves, if you please. It appears that my stars are in the ascendancy!”

The strange outburst struck the ears of the main contingent of Marines, who were out of sight of the tableau. Captain Kan ordered three additional Marines to investigate.

They charged along the deck.

“Stop!”
Pompman warned. He repeated his cry in Cantonese, Mandarin and the Hakka dialect of South China. Evidently, he did not yet realize that the soldiers were Japanese.

“Again I say, halt, or I will open this damnable Pandora’s box!”
he bellowed.

Doc Savage rapped out swift words in the language of Japan. This had no effect on the charging Marines. They came on, bayonets fixed.

Realizing the danger, the bronze man gathered the heads of the two Marines guarding him in his great iron-fingered hands and brought them together with an audible
bonk!

They collapsed. Doc let them fall to the deck unceremoniously.

Seeing this, the charging Marines changed course and attempted to run the bronze man through.

What transpired next happened with the speed of streaking lightning.

Doc Savage’s great bronze fists lashed out. He blocked one stabbing steel bayonet with a wrist, removed the blade from its mounting and tossed it over the rail. Then he slapped the man so hard his helmet flew off, chin-strap parting.

This display of ferric strength and superior reflexes caused the remaining pair of Marines to switch tactics out of self-preservation.

They elevated bayonet-tipped rifle muzzles, fingers squeezing triggers. Gunsound came.

Doc dodged. Had there been only one man, conceivably Doc might have avoided injury. One bullet jerked splinters from the superstructure. The other burned along the bronze giant’s unprotected side. Reacting, he twisted, stumbled.

In the act of falling, he threw himself into the hatch. The sound of his bronze form careening down the companionway stairs came like a great commotion.

When Doc landed, all sound ceased.

In Japanese, the victorious Marine cried out, “Honorable captain! Doc Savage is dead!”

Cursing volubly, Captain Kan came running up. He was not happy.