DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (5 page)

There was a key in the keyhole. Renny turned it. Fists and shoulders began pummeling the door. It groaned and warped on its brass hinges.

The panel was stronger than the outer door, because the Hotel Raffles had remodeled its suites internally of late, using new doors. Despite the energy the raiders put into breaking it down, it held.

Renny laid the girl down on a bed, and went in search of his supermachine pistol, a weapon he normally wore in an armpit holster for convenience. Inasmuch as he was dressed for bed, the big-fisted engineer had laid it aside for the evening.

Renny wrenched the drawer of a night stand open and pulled out the weapon. It was charged with a drum filled with mercy bullets, which had the benefit of rendering a foe unconscious while not permanently injuring him. The tiny weapon had proven very effective in the past, especially for taking prisoners for later interrogation.

This was not one of those times.

Bullets—leaden ones—began chewing through the stout panel. They buzzed about the room like vicious wasps.

Renny, knowing that his mercy shells, which were hollow and filled with a quick-acting anesthetic, were insufficient for returning fire through a shut door, fumbled in the pocket of his closet-hung coat for a drum containing penetration shells.

But the lead storm grew more furious. Holes appeared in the plaster of the walls. A wood chip was shot off the bed post. A pillow kicked, expelling goose feathers.

“Holy cow!” Renny thumped, and saw that the area around the door knob was coming apart under the concentrated hammering of bullets. The key, mangled, shot out of the lock and across the room. It landed very close to the unmoving head of Mary Chan, there in the bed.

Renny may not have been a ladies’ man, but he was not one to let a woman lie helpless as bullets ricocheted about her head. Still holding his supermachine pistol in one monster fist, he threw his imposing bulk between the door and the bed.

He was affixing the new drum to the intricate weapon when the panel crashed down. Renny looked up.

In came Dang Mi and his confederates, guns held high.

Dang’s guns roared alternately. Bullets slammed into the big-fisted engineer’s chest. In response to the leaden storm, Renny twisted, long face writhing in pain.

“Why won’t he go down?” Dang howled, redoubling his shooting. “He ain’t all that big!”

Then Renny collapsed forward. He struck the bed, rolled off, and came to rest with his head under the bed. Out of his mouth came the most unearthly coughings, wracking his great body.

“He’s dying!” Poetical Percival croaked, evidently aghast at the idea.

“Let him die!” Dang roared, sending another slug into Renny’s twitching torso. “Get the wench. We’ll take her back to Pirate Island.”

They got her, carried her down the stairs, and out.

Soon, she was under a blanket on the floorboards of a fleeing sedan, unkind feet holding her down until her squirming abated. The sedan careened through the narrow streets of Singapore, driven by a blue-turbaned Malay with a reckless confidence in the Oriental belief in predestination. Evidently, it was not the ordained day for anyone to be run down, because no one was. Although there were numerous close scrapes.

“Good thing I have me an auto in every port,” Dang Mi remarked. “We’ll be at the dang dory in jig time.”

Poetical Percival Perkins, riding beside Dang, leaned back, but not in a comfortable manner.

“Don’t give out a whoop,” he remarked, “but we’re in the soup.”

Dang grunted, “How do you figure?”

“That brick-fisted lad was one of Doc Savage’s crew. Doc Savage will gallop down here hell-for-leather to do things about it.”

“An’ so what?”

“It’s a sure sign that we’ll have a savage
time,” said Poetical Percival, oblivious to his own pun.

Dang Mi made a jaw. He was trying to act as if he didn’t give a damn. He did not do a very good job of it.

“We ain’t left no bloody danged trail,” he said. “Doc Savage can’t find us.”

Poetical Percival shook his head. For the moment, his poetic ways seem to have been jarred out of him. “This Doc Savage is something different. Remarkable chap. The outside world don’t seem to know much about him.”

“He goes ’round stickin’ his nose into what don’t concern him,” growled Dang Mi.

“Righting wrongs and punishing evildoers,” agreed Poetical Percival somberly. “A modern Sir Galahad, or something of the like. He’s bad medicine. I’ve heard plenty about him. This Savage is a man known all over the world as the one to go to if you’ve got big trouble. When I was in Africa doing a job, I heard them talk of Doc Savage. Believe it or not, the guy is as well-known there as he is over here.”

“Dry up!” Dang said suddenly.

Poetical Percival Perkins squinted at the other. Dang, he could see, was a concerned man, despite his disclaimer of any apprehension concerning Doc Savage. Not that he was to be blamed. Percival was a bit on the pins and needles side himself. Doc Savage, Man of Bronze, had a reputation as a miracle worker—and he specialized in unsavory gentry such as Dang Mi and Percival Perkins.

Abruptly Poetical Percival thought of something.

“Wait a minute,” he barked.

“Huh?” growled Dang.

“Maybe this Renny Renwick ain’t dead,” essayed Percival. “We had better keep an eye on the situation until we’re sure.”

COLONEL JOHN “RENNY” RENWICK was not only not dead; he was far from being fatally injured. For days, his ribs would hurt him when he moved, but not excessively.

Doc Savage’s aides lived always in the shadow of danger, and they had to take precautions. Chain mesh undergarments, made of an alloy metal developed by Doc himself, which they wore almost always, were a part of the precautions. The mesh would stop all ordinary bullets. The one Renny wore—even to bed—had halted the slugs which Dang Mi had fired at his chest.

Impact of the missiles, however, had knocked the breath out of Renny, stunned him. Too, he had not known at what instant during the excitement his attackemrs might start shooting at his head, so he had taken care to fall with his head in the shelter of the bed.

The interval during which the girl had been carried out, Renny had employed in yanking on trousers and shirt and descending the fire escape.

The big engineer paused only to make slashing marks on a long wall mirror with a stick of chalk taken from his coat pocket.

Curiously, the chalk left no visible mark.

The rubber plantation which was employing Renny was furnishing him with a car, a small, fast American coupé—one of thousands of used machines shipped to the Orient every year. He kept it parked in a court back of the hotel. Descending the fire escape, he was almost beside it.

He got out in the street in time to get on the trail of Dang Mi and his cut-throats. Dang’s crowd now drove slowly and carefully, for they did not want to interest a policeman. Their machines wound through the native quarter for a time. The motors made sufficient noise to scatter the coolies out of the way.

Renny kept on their trail and, in doing so, exercised a simple precaution or so.

Once he had the opportunity to stop, he sprang out and hastily disconnected one headlight, making his machine one-eyed, and thus changing its character.

Later, he connected the light again, and proceeded normally.

The trail ended on the waterfront, or rather, the automobile portion of it did. It continued across the bay in a motor dory. The dory was one from Dang Mi’s pirate junk, the
Devilfish.

Renny was close enough to make sure that the girl was still in the hands of the gang. He cast about hurriedly for a means of following.

The hour was late, and there was only a single motorized water taxi ferrying passengers across the bay. Several conical-hatted coolies were idling on its seats, playing a card game called fan-tan. To all appearances, the boat was loaded and about to start across the bay.

Renny clambered aboard.

“I will pay fifty cents extra if you take me across immediately,” said Renny, who did not want to lose sight of the boat containing his quarry.

“As you wish,
tuan,”
agreed the pilot, employing the Malay honorific meaning “sir.”

Renny selected a seat. The pilot took up a long bamboo pole and shoved off. The others continued their card game, unconcerned.

After the motor started kicking, Renny said, “There’s a twenty in it if you keep that dory in sight without being obvious about it. Savvy?”

“Yes,
tuan
,” replied the pilot.

Renny sat slumped in his hard seat, knowing that a white man of his bulk would be noticeable even on a night as dark as this. His eyes remained fixed on the motor dory. The bay was crowded with sampans and water taxis, so the ferry should not stand out especially.

He paid little attention to the card game in progress, and none whatsoever to the pilot in the rear of the boat. This proved to be unfortunate, because the card game suddenly broke up amid a cackling of Malay profanity that threatened to carry clear across the bay.

“Pipe down, you three,” Renny rumbled, and so did not hear the swish of the bamboo pole as the pilot swept it around in a circle until it connected with the giant engineer’s head with an audible
bonk!

Renny slumped to the floor of the ferry, out of sight, and the crew fell upon him with hardwood clubs, raining further blows intended to prolong unconsciousness.

If any passing seafarers noted what had happened, they betook themselves discreetly away and kept quiet about it. That was an Oriental characteristic, too.

RENNY RENWICK awakened with the feeling that a number of things had happened to him while he was senseless. He peered around, and was sure of it.

He was surrounded—and no longer on the ferry, but on the deck of a sailing vessel of some sort. He lay on his back and his big arms were tucked up behind him. He could barely feel them, owing to the fact that his great bulk had been pressing down on them for as long as he had been insensate. He was undoubtedly bound, he concluded. He couldn’t feel the bindings, either.

Among the shadowy figures peering down on his helpless form, was one he recognized. It was the leader of the abductors, he saw.

Renny shut his eyes. “Of late, I’ve suspected I’m getting old. I’m sure of it now.”

“Not a bit of it, mate. You were right smart. You just came alongside of someone who was a mite smarter. I have friends all along the waterfront, I do.”

Renny levered his upper body into a sitting position. For an ordinary man, it would have been impossible. But the gargantuan-fisted engineer was no ordinary man. He blew impatient air from his nostrils and his grunting would have done credit to a bull elephant, but he accomplished it.

Instinctively, the hovering Malay crew took a cautious step backward.

“You won’t find those bindings so easy to negotiate,” he was warned.

“What’s this all about, anyway?” Renny demanded.

“ ’Tis very simple,” the other grinned easily. “I happened to learn how me an’ my blokes can get our hands on about the most valuable thing in the perishin’ world. A pair o’ half-caste twins can show us how to get it. One of  ’em got away and got to you and talked, so now we gotta take care o’ you.”

Renny frowned. He did not like the sound of that.

“The almond-eyed white girl didn’t tell me anything that amounted to much,” he said.

“You’d lie to me anyway,” snorted the man. “Right now, we’re headed for Pirate Island.”

“Holy cow, why?”

“ ’Cause, me hearty, we just happen to be bloody piratical! They call me Dang Mi, the Scourge of the South China Sea.”

“Never heard of you.”

“And that’s the way I like it,” chortled Dang Mi. “This way, no one will be looking for me special-like if I end up feedin’ you to a nice, grinnin’ mako shark.”

“Holy cow,” Renny said again, unhappily.

PIRATE ISLAND, as it turned out, lay near Chinese waters.

These days, Chinese waters were nervous waters. The Japanese were in Manchuria and the British were unhappy about it. In the middle were the Chinese. They were the least happy of all.

Poetical Percival Perkins stood watch in the bow of the
Devilfish
as she ran under sail in the direction of Pirate Island, a good British Army rifle nestled in the crook of one arm. He scanned the dark waters for trouble. The rhyming swindler had been at this post all day and it was deep into the night now.

Various cut-throats had been sent to relieve him. Poetical Percival had sent them away with a surly verse during the day and vicious kicks after the sun had set. He was on edge. There was good reason for it, too.

Poetical Percival Perkins wanted no part of China, because the authorities were interested in standing him before a stone wall and shooting him by way of proving that it is not wise to murder Chinese silver prospectors for their pokes. This was trackless water, and there were no Chinese authorities here. But they were near the coast. The silver markets were also on the coast. It was to flee China that Poetical Percival had booked passage on the
Devilfish.
Not that he had so much silver to market. The real reason was painfully simple. He wanted to get his life to a safe place.

Somewhere in the middle part of the night the Diesel engine kicked into life. Thinking it meant trouble, Poetical Percival ducked low and scuttled back to the poop deck, clutching his sturdy automatic rifle.

“Trouble?” he demanded of Dang Mi, who sprawled on a throne-like chair set atop the high poop. Despite the late hour, he was wearing a tropical pith helmet that shone in the moonlight.

“Naw,” snorted Dang. “We’re just home, is all.”

Poetical Percival looked about the night. He made faces. It was plain he could see nothing but murk.

“So? How do you know?” he asked.

“Ever hear of black light?”

“Every night is black,” muttered Percival.

“I said, ‘light’ not ‘night.’ Black light is another name for what they call ultra-violet light. You can’t see it except with special filters. Here.”

A pair of what appeared to be smoked glasses were handed to Percival. He put them on.