DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (7 page)

“Faster, Maitland! Time is of the essence.”

“Yes, sir.”

The chauffeur poured on speed and took corners with utter unconcern for pedestrians. He ran lights, horn blaring. Taxi cabs darted out his way. Trolley cars braked to a halt to avoid him.

Bowling through a busy intersection, he blew past the traffic cop with such haste that the officer’s cap was knocked off. By the time the officer had recovered his headgear, the limousine was out of sight.

The officer thought better of calling headquarters. No telling how high up the occupant of the limousine rated. Returning his whistle to his mouth, he resumed directing traffic.

“Some of these swells think they own the town,” he grumbled.

The limousine lurched onto Fifth Avenue, and began barreling toward a skyscraper that among those crowding mid-town, towered over all others. Over a hundred stories high it reared, its spire catching the fading afternoon light.

“There!” cried the limousine owner. “That is the building. Snappy!”

The chauffeur bore down on the gas pedal. An intersection lay ahead. This time the traffic cop stationed there was not looking the other way. He saw the big black car exceeding the speed limit and blew a blast on his whistle. He stepped into the path of the limousine and lifted a white-gloved hand.

“Go around him, Maitland.”

But it was too late for that. Traffic was closely packed. There was no turning.

The chauffeur depressed the brake. In the rear compartment, the owner was thrown forward in the seat cushions. This did not improve his temper.

The cop approached the driver, saw that he was only a uniformed flunky and held his tongue. With his nightstick, he tapped on the back window until it rolled down.

“We got a speed limit in this town,” he announced to the occupant within.

“I am in a great hurry, my man.”

“I could see that. Give me your name.”

“I am on a life or death mission.”

“So they all say,” growled the unimpressed officer. “Now what was that name?”

“I have urgent business with Doc Savage.”

The cop looked up from his notepad.

“Doc Savage, you say?”

“Yes, he is expecting me. And if he learns that you are interfering with our business, there is no telling what he will do!”

The cop was a savvy specimen. He knew the reputation of Doc Savage, knew also that he did not throw his weight around.

“Tell you what. I’ll write up your ticket, and if Doc Savage says it’s O.K., the commissioner will tear it up. They’re good pals, from what I hear.”

From the rear compartment, the limousine owner gave vent to a string of inarticulate noises. It was evident that this was a man who did not like to be kept waiting.

Patiently, the cop wrote the ticket, tore it off his pad and presented it to the fuming occupant.

“Any kick, take it up with the police commissioner. He’s a good egg.”

The limousine got under way once more. This time it proceeded at a more decorous pace.

From the rear, the owner voiced his opinion of the minions of the law in general and one officer in particular. He was not kind in his choice of words.

NOT many city blocks from this scene, an old woman was making her way through the maze that was Manhattan.

She was a frail thing. She craned her head upward often, her faded eyes seeking the imposing pinnacles of the great metropolis. A flowered hat shaded her fading eyes.

Sometimes, she would catch the eye of a passerby, and offer a friendly, “Hello.” This marked her as a newcomer to Gotham. Such pleasantries did not pass between strangers in New York City. Each time, she was coolly rebuffed.

When she came to a street crossing, the old woman seemed to find the speedy traffic daunting. Since she walked with painful slowness, this was understandable.

She waited a long time for the traffic to thin before venturing to cross.

Half the length of the block there was a store given over to the handling of camping equipment for boys, and in the window display was a pup tent, various kinds of packsacks, camp cook kits, and scouting uniforms. And the elderly woman discovered this window, stumbled over to it, and stood with her nose pressed to the window.

Her manner was pathetic, and her thin lips rolled in as if to keep back an emotion, and a trace of moisture came into her faded eyes. Her lips moved, but what she said was audible to no one but herself. “Poor Billy,” she was mumbling. “He liked to camp out.”

Finally, she dragged a handkerchief across her eyes and went on.

Soon she came upon a cop, big, hearty, and Black Irish to the bone. The cop’s name was Finnerty. He was the traffic cop who had had his uniform cap knocked off by the speeding limousine. The old woman did not know this; only that the cop looked friendly.

“Excuse me, sir,” quavered the old woman in a voice that had the flat twang of the far west. “I have lost my way to a doctor’s office.”

“Now, what’s his address?” the cop demanded in a bluff voice that made the old woman wince.

“I’m not certain,” said the old woman. “Savage is his name.”

“Doc Savage!” the officer exploded.

“Yes,” said the old woman, recoiling a little from the violence of the officer’s ejaculation.

“So that’s the fellow you’re hunting? Well, that makes a difference.”

Snatching his whistle, he blew a terrific blast, causing the halting of traffic. Motorists screeched to a stop. One was a little slow with his foot and slid into the intersection, interfering with crosstown traffic. Horns blared.

Red-faced, the traffic cop got in the middle of the tangle and undid the knot. After he had accomplished this—and incidentally bawled out the slow-to-react driver—the officer came back to the old woman.

“Let me walk you across the street, mother,” he said in a suddenly solicitous voice.

The old woman, blinking at the sight of both flows of busy Manhattan traffic standing still so she could cross safely, allowed the cop to pilot her to the other side.

“That kind of gives you an idea of how important the big bronze guy is,” the cop declared. “Even the mention of his name causes things to happen.”

“You—mean—”

“Sure, Ma’am; Doc Savage. The Man of Bronze. Clark Savage, Jr. No matter what name he goes by, everybody in this burg knows who Doc Savage is. Maybe everybody in the whole world, too.”

The old woman seemed not to know what to say to that.

Finnerty lifted a wind-reddened finger and aimed it between rows of buildings to one spire in particular.

“See that building there? It’s the tallest in the world.”

The old woman squinted hard into the snappish wind. “Yes.”

“That’s where you can find Doc Savage. Way up on the eighty-sixth floor.”

“It looks like a long walk,” the old woman said in a pathetic murmur.

“Take the trolley. Here comes one now.”

The cop lifted an arm and flagged down an approaching trolley car. He escorted the old woman inside and, wonder of wonders, dropped a nickel into the box for her.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Any friend of Doc Savage is a friend of the law’s,” called the cop as, with a clanging, the trolley resumed its route.

The conductor was also very helpful. He stopped the trolley, not at a posted stop, but at the corner nearest to the spire in which Doc Savage, whom everyone seemed to know, held forth.

From there it was a short walk.

THERE was a doorman, who very courteously held a door open for the elderly woman, and a cigar stand clerk who pointed to an elevator that was off in a corner, away from the banks of lifts that seemed to fill the modernistic marble-and-brass lobby. The elevator whisked the old woman upward with such speed she all but lost her breath. It deposited her on a lower floor.

There was a door from which bright light seeped through a pane of ground glass. There was no name on the glass, only a number.

The old woman approached, her chin trembling with anticipation. There was a bell-push and she pressed it. The buzzer was not loud, but the door instantly opened.

A wasp-waisted man with the handsome chiseled features of a stage actor and dark, penetrating eyes greeted her.

“Are—are you Doc Savage?” the old woman asked.

“My good woman, I am merely one of his associates, Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks.”

The old woman blinked, impressed. Doc Savage must be an important personage indeed if a brigadier general considered himself merely a subordinate.

“Take a seat, if you please,” invited Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks.

The old woman entered. There was an anteroom, of good size, and beyond it, visible through an open door, a man sat at a desk. He resembled, to the crone’s age-weakened eyes, a bull gorilla in a very disreputable suit.

She took the nearest seat. It was one of the few vacant chairs in the anteroom. The others were occupied.

The man who had greeted her conducted each person in his or her turn to the adjoining room where the homely gorilla dealt with them. Most persons were disposed of with alacrity. Others remained with him behind the closed door for long minutes.

No one, so far as the old woman could determine, were granted an audience with Doc Savage.

It soon came to her ears that the handsome man was known familiarly as “Ham.”  When he was called Ham, the handsome one frowned severely, as though that was something he would permit only with intimate friends. This waspish man, touchy about his name, was especially notable because of his attire. He was dressed in the absolute height of fashion, complete with morning coat, striped trousers, spats and a neat dark cane, which he kept tucked under his arm.

He looked very injured of dignity when the homely fellow at the desk hailed him as “Hey, you overdressed shyster lawyer!” He favored the homely individual with a dark frown.

And a bit later, when the homely man at the desk, in a moment of relaxation between interviews, picked up a shiny nickel and turned it in his fingers and chanced to remark that the five cent piece was bright enough to see his own reflection in, the dapper one advised unkindly, “That’s not your reflection. That’s the buffalo.”

The pair evidently did not get along sociably, and the homely fellow was either called Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, or “Monk,” a nickname which certainly fitted him. He was an industrial chemist of note—one of the best, despite his unlovely looks. Ham—otherwise Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks—probably had the most astute legal mind ever produced by Harvard Law School.

The old woman, to bide the time while she waited, took stock of those who had arrived before her.

Many seemed to be cut from the same worried cloth as herself. They looked ordinary in their manner, dress and appearance—except each carried with them some burden of the soul. They waited with studied patience.

Some of the visitors were of a different class. One of these made a particularly overbearing display.

The gentleman was paunchy of waist, ruddy of face, and wore pince-nez nose glasses to which were attached a dark ribbon. He had a pompous manner about him, and seemed to be accompanied by his chauffeur. He did not wait his turn, but strode over and whacked the desk in front of the homely fellow with a domineering fist.

“My man, I am not accustomed to being kept waiting,” he said importantly. “I must see Doc Savage immediately. There happens to be a matter of millions of dollars involved.”

“Yeah?” Monk said, blinking tiny eyes. “Millions, huh?”

“Exactly.” The other put out his chest until it was nearly as prominent as his stomach. “I are prepared to pay up to—ah, one quarter million dollars for Doc’s services, in the position I intend to offer him as head of a syndicate.”

The rotund gentleman seemed fully aware of how important such money sounded, and he stood waiting for the homely Monk to turn meek.

“Get the devil back in line and take your turn!” Monk said in a small, unimpressed squeak. “Money don’t talk around here. It whispers. Generally, we can’t even hear it.” Then, as the demanding fellow seemed about to explode, he roared,
“Get back in line, I said!”

THE blustery one was so taken aback he was at a momentary loss for words. Stiffly, he said, “You are obviously busy. I shall return on another occasion. But mark me. Doc Savage will hear of your lack of cooperation.”

With that, he departed in a huff, liveried chauffeur in tow.

The interviewing proceeded, finally coming to the patient old woman’s turn. Called into a private office by the homely ape of a fellow, she was invited to sit down.

“My name is Martha Holland,” began the old woman. “Mrs. John Holland. I am Billy’s grandmother. His mother and father have passed away, and I—”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Monk Mayfair asked by way of opening the interview.

“Why, it’s my little Billy—”  The old woman suddenly choked up. She dabbed at one eye. “He—he is not—well.”

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Monk.

“The doctors do not know. He suffers from spells.”

“Spells, eh? Where is Billy now?”

“At my hotel. The Gotham. He is resting. He—Billy appears to be… failing.” The old woman’s voice choked at the last.

Monk leaned back in his desk and a procession of expressions walked across his unlovely visage. They made him resemble a gorilla contemplating an impassable river. His eyes, sunk deep in pits of gristle, lost their humorous twinkle. His generous mouth warped. At one point, he tugged at an ear that had once been perforated by a bullet.

Observing these facial contortions, Martha Holland felt an overwhelming urge to flee the room.

At length, Monk’s thought processes settled down and he keyed a desk annunciator.

“Doc? It’s Monk. I got a nice old lady here who claims her grandson’s been suffering seizures. Says the doctors can’t do anything for him. It all sounds legit to me, which is why I’m callin’.”

The loudspeaker reproduced a voice that, while not loud, conveyed a sense of restrained power.

“Where is the boy now?” asked the unmistakable voice of Doc Savage.

“Hotel Gotham.”

“We will go there directly,” said Doc Savage.