DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (6 page)

And suddenly, off the port bow, he could see it. A low lump of a thing, lazy with palms. It was an eerie sight because it was ablaze with a kind of grayish light. The island might have been a black and white photographic image projected on the water with an old fashioned magic lantern, except that the palms swayed.

“I set projectors around the beach,” boasted Dang Mi. “My Malays turn ’em on every night so’s I can find my way home if necessary.”

Percival surrendered the glasses.

“Slick trick,” he said admiringly.

“I ain’t the Scourge of the South China Sea for nothing, my fine friend.”

THERE was a small cove and the
Devilfish
put into it.

Chinese junks are ingenious craft. Constructed without a keel, they instead come equipped with a removable daggerboard. This was lifted out of its slot on the foredeck, back of the foremast, and carried to the bows.

At a guttural order from Dang Mi, the helmsman beached the craft, which had become as flat-bottomed as a lowly sampan. The bow grated on fine, granular sand for a third of its length, stopped.

The pirate crew dropped anchor without so much as a rattle, thanks to care and a lining of rubber around the hawse hole. It was a medieval stone anchor, perfect for anchoring on sand. Sails were struck smartly.

One end of the daggerboard was affixed to the crosspiece set between the projecting catheads at the bow, and the other dropped to the beach, forming an efficient gangplank.

Finally, they began putting off crew and prisoners. A narrow rowboat of a type known as a
kolek
was also carried off, evidently for safekeeping
.

The prisoners came willingly enough, inasmuch as people with their hands and feet shackled are more likely to feel better on dry land than on a ship, which after all could sink without warning. Being shackled to a sinking ship was not a position to inspire optimism. So they went willingly, even the big engineer, Renny Renwick.

He stepped onto the beach, his face as pleased as could be. Seeing this, Dang Mi muttered, “Watch that one. He’s got something up his sleeve, he has.”

Poetical Percival, regarding the giant engineer’s fists unhappily, blinked and said, “If he does, it must be titanic.”

Neither man understood that his pleased expression, conversely, was an indication of Renny Renwick’s unhappiness with his present situation.

The prisoners were guided at the points of
krises
through a riot of tropical trees. Swaying coconut palms predominated. Their feathery crowns shivered in the breeze. Bougainvillea flowers on their vines made splashes of scarlet, pink and magenta. Pineapples and bananas were plentiful, as were the prickly green jackfruit so remindful of bloated cactus pads. Trembling spider orchids grew in profusion, seeming poised to pounce upon the unwary. The ground was moist and muddy from the recent monsoon rains, and their feet—both bare and booted—made unpleasant sucking sounds as they progressed.

Eventually, the march ended at a cluster of longhouses well inland.

“Put ’em in the guest house,” Dang ordered his Malays, pointing to a seedy structure a few rods apart from the rest.

“What about the blue strongbox?” asked Poetical, nodding in the direction of the beached junk.

“We’ll move the box when them three are safely ensconced in the guest house,” decided Dang.

The guest house was a typical longhouse, a thing like a elongated cabin set on stilts to protect the inhabitants from snakes and other crawling perils of the jungle, with a thatched roof of dried palm fronds.

Rude steps led to the single floor and they were marched up these. Renny, coming last, put his weight on the first step. It groaned. The second step, accepting his weight, creaked loudly.

It was the third step that surrendered to the giant engineer’s massive bulk. It splintered, precipitating the monster-fisted engineer into a littered pile of kindling.

“Holy cow!”

Krises
came out. Blowpipes, as big around as a man’s forearm, were brought to parched lips. Sudden death impended.

A hissed word from Dang Mi staved off disaster.

“Let ’im be!”

“Why not give him what for?” Poetical wondered. “He doesn’t know anything about the Buddha.”

“I have plans for that human rhinoceros,” Dang undertoned, as Renny clambered to his feet.

“Plans?”

“Later, me hearty.”

There being no other way to accomplish it, Renny was allowed to employ his gargantuan hands to hoist himself up to the longhouse. There was no door. The steps, a ruin now, were hacked to flinders under wavy-bladed swords.

“That oughta hold them,” Dang said, pleased with himself.

“I frown,” Percival said laconically. “They could jump down.”

“And they’d be jumping into a hornet’s nest of blowpipe darts,” said Dang in a voice loud enough to be plainly heard by his captives. “Each one poisoned to a fare-thee-well.”

The prisoners found grass mats on the rude floor and settled into unhappy attitudes.

Satisfied, Dang motioned for his new accomplices in knavery to follow him back to the cove.

THEIR foot sounds were a brushy rustle for a time, then the cacophony of the jungle reasserted itself. Background sounds of waves creaming on a beach made a continual, lulling murmur.

After a time, Renny spoke.

“Who is he?” he asked Mary Chan. Renny jerked an enormous thumb in the direction of the rather subdued young Eurasian man.

“My twin,” Mary Chan said. “His name is Mark. I’m Mary— Mary Chan.”

Mark Chan looked disconsolate. Shame weighed down his battered head. His lips were a crushed ruin.

“I’m afraid they beat him,” explained Mary Chan. “But it’s nothing compared with what will happen to the human race should that devil Dang Mi gets his way.”

“You might,” Renny suggested, “begin at the beginning.”

Mary Chan looked to her brother. Mark Chan swallowed hard and nodded uncomfortable assent.

“I sought you out to ask your help in finding my brother,” Mary supplied. “I had hopes that through you I could be put in touch with Doc Savage.”

“You know Doc?”

“Actually, I never heard of him before to-day. But I chanced to read of him in a Singapore newspaper after I escaped Dang Mi’s boat.”

Renny had been rather sanguine about his predicament until now. Startlement registered on his long gloomy visage.

“Holy cow! Never heard of Doc! Where were you raised—on the moon?”

Neither Chan seemed to find amusement in the comment.

Mary said, “We grew up in a remote part of China, with our mother. Our father was rarely home. We were en route by private airplane to seek help when we ditched off the Malay coast. That is how Dang Mi got us. He shot us down.”

“Ransom deal?” asked Renny.

Mary Chan shook her head. “No. We were bringing the box out of China. Dang Mi and his men discovered it. One opened it.”

Mary Chan actually shuddered at this juncture. Mark Chan simply closed his pained almond orbs.

Renny eyed them and asked a natural question.

“What,” he wondered, “is in the box?”

As if linked by a common brain, Mark and Mary Chan averted their eyes. Mark moistened bruised lips. Mary bit into her own red lips.

It became plain that neither was inclined to answer the big-fisted engineer’s question.

Renny tried again. “I’m in this fix because you barged in on me,” he reminded Mary Chan.

Mary made assorted thoughtful faces. They seemed to become her. She possessed an intelligent countenance and the notches created by her knitting brows and the grim twists of her mouth only added to her exotic comeliness.

Renny noted that her speech, which before contained the flavor of modernity, seemed, as the unpleasant reality of captivity sank in, to more and more revert to a formal brand of English. This suggested that she was raised speaking Mandarin, or some other Chinese dialect.

Mark Chan caught her eye and a look passed between them that Renny could not read.

“Did you,” Mary asked at length, “ever hear of Pandora’s box?”

“Sure,” Renny grunted.

“The world’s evils were imprisoned in a box that a Greek maiden named Pandora was forbidden to open. But her curiosity got the best of her and she stole a peek. After she lifted the lid, all manner of imprisoned evils escaped and have ever since plagued mankind.”

“That is a myth,” Renny snorted. “Pure hokum.”

“True. But the box Dang Mi now controls contains a thing infinitely worse than the horrid evils supposedly imprisoned in Pandora’s box.”

“Infinitely,” Mark Chan chorused.

“If mankind is to survive,” Mary asserted, “that box must be wrested back from Dang Mi before he unleashes it.”

“Holy cow,” Renny thumped, impressed in spite of a natural tendency toward skepticism. In his long association with Doc Savage, he had come into contact with many strange and uncanny things. But the rough shape of the mystery outlined by Mary Chan’s words threatened to top them all.

Up until now, Renny had been content to sit and listen to the Chans’ unnerving recital. Now he sprang into action. He had been shackled wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle. A heavy span of sea-rusted links connected the two lengths of chain. Renny gathered up the leg chain at the point it connected with the vertical chain. They were heavy. Links clattered in his gargantuan hands, whose freakish size made them seem less ponderous than they were. This was in the nature of an optical illusion. The links were exceedingly stout.

“What are you doing?” Mary Chan hissed.

Renny’s reply was only a grunt. Conceivably, it was not even meant as a reply. With no warning whatsoever, he separated his giant fistic blocks.

The chain snapped tight between them. Renny repeated the operation, further along the links. Again, he snapped chain.

It soon became clear that the big engineer was testing each link for weakness. A sudden frown suggested Renny had encountered defeat.

Actually, it meant the opposite. Seizing a connecting ring on one end of a link, Renny held it to a stray moonbeam coming in through a chink in the longhouse wall. The maul-fisted engineer gave a protracted strenuous tug.

His long face reddened from exertion. The tendons at his neck grew thick. Veins bulged along his forehead. Muscles egged in front of his ears.

Their own eyes bugging, the Chans watched this operation.

The ring was not weak. It was merely less strong than the surrounding links. Perhaps the weld was not perfect. Or possibly Renny’s muscular exertion was more than forged iron could withstand.

Whatever the truth, the ring of iron gave a sudden, tortured creak, and separated. Renny redoubled his efforts. The ring opened up further.

In a moment, there was sufficient space to allow the connecting links to slip off.

“You are still shackled hand and foot,” Mary Chan pointed out in a pent but impressed voice.

Renny proceeded to remedy that situation. His legs irons were stout and very tight on him. There would be no removing those, except with heavy tools.

But the connecting chain offered hope. Wrapping the dangling chain end around the links that were stapled to his right leg iron, the big engineer began to haul with both hands while simultaneously stretching his leg out as far as he could.

Once again, Renny’s muscles, tendons and veins showed evidence of inhuman strain. This went on for some minutes to no effect. Perspiration popped from every visible pore.

With a snap and rattle, the leg chain finally surrendered. Renny recoiled from the loosened links. Lashing backward, they narrowly missed his long face.

Shifting on the floor, the giant engineer went to work on the other. Since the leg links now hung loose, Renny dispensed with the chain used to exert force and simply applied the considerable might of his thews to the leg chain itself.

Looping three twists of linkage about his oversized hands, Renny pulled until globules of salty sweat stood out on his strained features.

The Chans, watching this intently, began to perspire in sympathy.

With a brittle sound, the leg chain snapped off the left leg iron. Evidently Renny sensed the moment of surrender. He yanked his head out of the way of the flailing chain. It made a dent in the bamboo flooring. He flung the useless links aside.

Renny sat there a moment in the semi-gloom, catching his breath. His lungs sounded like tired bellows working.

For his part, Mark Chan stared with unbelieving eyes.

Hoisting himself to his feet, Renny rumbled, “Wait here.”

Mary Chan gasped. “But—where are you going?” she asked.

“To find that durn box for myself.”

“You cannot conceive of the danger it represents.”

Renny said nothing. He was a tower of elephantine muscle in the jungle dark. His hands were still linked by chain, but he could use them in a limited way. Walking was no longer an impediment.

Carefully, he lowered himself to the ground, paused, then started off. Evidently, Dang Mi’s warning of poisoned blowpipe darts was so much jungle gas.

Mary Chan called urgently after him.

“Whatever happens, do not open that box! If the thing inside gets out,
the world will start to end!
Do you understand? Once it begins, there will be no stopping it!”

If this rather fantastic warning made any impression on the hulking engineer, it did not show in his manner.

Renny was soon lost in the undergrowth. The lapping of waves resumed and the jungle seemed to slumber uneasily.

The Chans waited in the darkness, eyes wide, ears alert. They wore the expressions of persons suffering under a death sentence.

NEW YORK IS a metropolis mixing affluence and poverty. Great apartment houses exist shoulder-to-shoulder with the seediest slums. Common citizens take the subway, while others are chauffeured around in the swankiest of limousines.

One such machine hurtled through the canyons of  Manhattan as the day was drawing to a close. Its size and appointments indicated that it belonged to a person of means. In the driver’s compartment, the chauffeur wore the crisp gray of his rank. A voice in his ear bellowed out: