DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (35 page)

As those plain words soaked into their brains, the rains gradually eased off to a gentle pelting. The practical sense of Doc’s speech was undeniable. There was no more discussion.

After a while, Wah Chan wondered, “What are you going to do with the Buddha’s Toe?”

Ham Brooks said, “Doc has a special place for dangerous discoveries like that.”

“Nix, shyster,” hissed Monk, elbowing the dapper lawyer in the ribs. “Keep our secrets secret.”

The apish chemist was referring to Doc’s Fortress of Solitude, in the Arctic, where he maintained a vault of deadly devices confiscated from enemies, devices that were too dangerous for further development and experimentation.

Ham rapped Monk smartly on the head, saying, “Be thankful I don’t run you through, you grotesque baboon.”

Monk batted the offending cane away. “Tap me again like that and I’ll shuck an arm off you!” he growled.

Doc Savage offered, “The Buddha’s Toe is clearly unfit to be studied in any locality, no matter how remote.”

Wah Chan did not dispute that. “So what are you going to do? Drop it in the South China Sea and let it go the way of its bigger brother?”

“Sound reasoning,” Ham offered.

“A less risky idea would be preferable,” returned Doc.

BUT they could not get it out of him until they reached Pirate Island two days later, to reclaim possession of their tri-motored plane and let off the surviving corsairs, with pointed reminders of past promises to abandon their former piratical ways.

Doc led them into the jungle.

“We encountered this spot during an earlier foray on this isle,” he explained.

They came to what at first appeared to be a jungle pool, except that it was very black and still. Insects drowsed lazily over it.

Ham unsheathed his sword cane and probed its placid surface with the tip.

“Jove!” he exclaimed. “The tar pit!”

“I believe it to be the safest repository for the Buddha’s Toe,” said Doc.

The bronze man had rigged the crackle-finish container with a silk line that he had attached by spirit gum to the lid.

Cautiously, he set the container onto the viscous asphalt surface, and stepped back to observe what happened.

Slowly, the box sank from sight in the inky stuff. No one looked sorry to see it go. With infinite care, metallic fingers paid out the line.

After considerable minutes had passed, Doc gave the silk cord a sharp tug. They knew the box lid came ajar when the tar made a noise like the cracking of a tree split by Arctic cold. The oily surface suddenly became a dry black cake.

“I’ll be damned,” exclaimed Wah Chan. “It sucked all the moisture from the tar!”

Doc nodded. “No one will ever be able to extract it, probably.”

“Well,” grunted Renny. “That’s that. Guess I can get back to that rubber plantation job now.” He suddenly eyed the three Chans—or Chandlers as they were calling themselves now. “What do we do with you folks?”

Wash Chandler had evidently been giving this some thought.

He jerked a thumb at his broad chest. “Me, I’m retiring. I’ve been through the Chinese civil war, the invasion of Manchuria and a damn rebellion in the south. I have had enough of being a Chink freedom fighter. Let the Chinese fight their own ragtag battles. I’m taking my kids back to America to settle down. I stashed a lot of loot back there, and I think I’ll set them up in business. They should do right fine. Regular breed of the Red Dragon, both of  ’em!”

That seemed to satisfy Doc Savage, for he made no objection. Whatever Washington Chandler’s past deeds had been, he had ended his career as Wah Chan fighting to prevent China from becoming a Japanese puppet state.

That night, as Doc and his men readied their tri-motor for departure, there was a final ceremony of farewell.

The erstwhile pirates of the former hellship
Devilfish
gathered on the beach to watch them take their leave.

Doc repeated his lecture about staying on the straight and narrow. After all that they had been through, the corsairs seemed to have taken it to heart once more. A few volunteered to join Doc’s band of altruistic adventurers, but the bronze man politely but firmly dissuaded them from that notion.

One enterprising buccaneer reminded Doc of his promise to reward them all richly.

Doc informed them that, by radio, he had set in motion pardons for their piratical pasts from the British government, and that henceforth none of them need fear the hangman’s noose. Provided that they abandon all banditry.

After some discussion, the crew agreed that their lives were reward rich enough for any retired freebooter.

And so it was agreed. They assisted in ferrying the Chans to the waiting plane.

As Doc’s tri-motor smashed along the swells and took to the air, the former cut-throat crew rushed to the blade-and-bullet-chewed foredeck of the renamed
Cuttlefish.

One final time, they lifted their bright blades in salute. A yellow moon looked down upon them like a blandly benevolent deity.

“Doc Savage!” they hailed. “Doc Savage!
Doc Savage—Scourge of the South China Sea!”

LESTER DENT’S ancestry was Scots-Irish, his people having migrated to Missouri by way of Bullitt County, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. It is said that there were Dents at Jamestown, during the early days of that Virginia colony. Coincidentally or not, there were Savages numbered among the founders of Jamestown, too.

Lester came into the world on October 12, 1904—one year and one day after the October 11, 1903 demise of Richard Henry Savage, the American war hero who would later inspire the creation of Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze. Born in La Plata, Missouri, Lester was the offspring of pioneer stock, his father, Bernard, having owned ranches in Oklahoma and Wyoming and Nebraska, one situated near Savageton, Wyoming. His mother’s people were Norfolks, of Missouri. Dent Family members were said to have served their country in the Revolutionary War, and took up arms on both sides of the Civil War. But the record shows that Lester’s paternal grandfather, Marquis Lafayette “Marcus” Dent, fought for Missouri on the Union side. Lester’s maternal grandfather, John Thomas Norfolk, also wore Union blue. He hailed from Ohio.

Lester once joked, “My grandfather was a pot-washer in the Civil War, and his grandfather was a pot-washer in the Revolutionary War. I’m probably in the wrong business.” Bernard Dent was a member of the notorious Pot Gang, whose wild exploits in northeast Missouri have passed out of memory and into legend.

As a boy growing up in the half-tamed West, Lester spent a lot of time around cowboys, soon discovering that their bunkhouses were brimming with exciting pulp magazines. And so he encountered the heroes of his day. Dent never lost his taste for pulp fiction and when he drifted into that field in 1929, Lester claimed that he was in it for the money, but people who knew him best, knew different. Dent went on to create a raft of memorable pulp heroes, but none as great or as enduring as Doc Savage, who was said to be a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan of the Apes, and Jesus Christ—and who had more than a little Dent blood in him.

WILL MURRAY was born on April 28, 1953—exactly fifty years to the day after the birth of his namesake paternal grandfather. His synchronistic arrival set the tone for a life as unusual as might be expected. His maternal ancestors were undiluted Irish—his mother’s people having tended their turf fires on the same patch of County Kerry for some 2,000 years, while his paternal bloodline—improved according to legend by contact with the Spanish Armada—included Maurice Bransfield, a Civil War-era Indian scout who participated in Seige of Atlanta, and his son, William, a barber infamous for braining a contingent of British soldiers who invaded his shop during the Troubles and living to tell of it. Corkmen, they were. The Murray branch hailed from Roscommon.

With ancestors such as those, perhaps it is no wonder the 1953 edition Will Murray took to heroes at an early age, discovering Superman, Batman and others at the age of eight. This was back in the Christmas vacation week of 1961, when comic books cost twelve cents. Although he participated in no American rebellions, Murray did contribute to the Marvel Comics renaissance of 1961-69, purchasing the earliest issues of
The Fantastic Four, The Amazing Spider-Man
and
The Incredible Hulk,
thus insuring that the multi-billion dollar Marvel Entertainment Group had a long and prosperous future ahead of it. This also ignited his imagination and inspired his creative drive.

Doc Savage came into his life when Murray was 15—the precise target age for Doc readers established back in 1933—when, enthralled by James Bama’s arresting cover to
Dust of Death,
he purchased his first adventure of the Man of Bronze. This January, 1969 encounter signaled that Murray was moving on from comic books to real literature. Now he writes Doc Savage, collaborating posthumously with Lester Dent, the writer who first breathed vibrant life into Street & Smith’s seminal superman—who may or may not have been Irish, but sure handles himself like a true son of Erin.

JOE DeVITO was born on March 16, 1957 in New York City’s famed—or infamous—Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. Family legend has it that due to an impending blizzard, 1957 was the only year New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade was held on the 16th rather than the 17th. His mother held him up to watch the parade, and he has had the “Luck of the Irish” ever since. As part of a large Sicilian family living in a predominantly Irish neighborhood, this was a good thing to have.

Coming from an artistic family did not hurt either. DeVito’s mother could have been a professional artist had she not chosen to have six kids. Being the fifth of six children, Joe is eternally grateful for her decision. His mother’s brother, Joe (after whom the artist was named), was both a priest and a very talented oil painter. But it was primarily Joe’s older bother, Vito DeVito—also a professional painter and sculptor—who ultimately influenced him most.

Vito, seven year older, first introduced Joe to comic books and super heroes,
Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine, all the great monster movies, and most important of all, the original 1933 movie,
King Kong.
Already a certified dinosaur fanatic who knew how to spell “Tyrannosaurus” before he could spell his own name, Joe DeVito’s first viewing of
King Kong
changed the highly impressionable four year old’s life forever. The sense of atmosphere, wonder, adventure and danger, combined with his natural love of dinosaurs and fascination with monsters, was irresistible.

It is no wonder that, in a mind so prepared, Doc Savage found a very welcome home several years later, after Joe’s family had moved to Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. Upon graduating from Parsons School of Design and getting an apartment in Hoboken, Joe stumbled upon a used bookstore that had the entire run of Doc Savage paperbacks for 25 cents each. He was instantly attracted to the James Bama covers and bought them all. Later, Joe found out that it was Bama who painted the box art for all of the Aurora monster models he bought as a boy, King Kong in particular. In just a few short years, Joe found himself painting the covers for the new Doc Savage novels written by a guy named Will Murray. Life had come full circle. Is it fate, or the Luck of the Irish?