DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (8 page)

“Right,” said Monk, snapping off the instrument. He got up, saying, “Come on, grandma.”

Martha Holland stood up, clutching her flowered hat.

“That—that is all there is to it?” she blurted out.

“Heck,” said Monk. “Hardly anyone ever gets to meet Doc in person. But this is a special case.”

They went out through a side door and took an elevator to the sub-basement. The elevator dropped with such suddenness, Martha Holland had to be assisted out when the cage settled to a stop.

“Special lift,” Monk explained sheepishly.

The sub-basement was a garage. There was an assortment of vehicles, ranging from a milk truck to a sombre sedan streamlined to the ultimate degree.

Doc Savage awaited them at the sedan.

At first glance, he did not seem to be the giant he soon proved to be. He was tall, but so symmetrical was his muscular body that an illusion was created of a less towering individual.

Only after she was presented to the big bronze man did Martha Holland understand that Doc Savage was a veritable colossus.

The Biblical Samson shorn of his beard and cast in bronze might conceivably have resembled Doc Savage. He also brought to mind Hercules, if the latter could be transported forward in time, given a modern haircut and garbed in a quiet brown business suit. His skin had been kilned by tropical suns until it possessed the sheen of polished bronze. His hair was of a darker hue. It lay straight and fitted his head like a metal sheet.

Most arresting of all were the Man of Bronze’s eyes—Martha Holland understood now why they called Doc that—for they were a fascinating golden color. Eagles possessed such orbs. No eagle had eyes so vibrant, however. They were like pools of flake-gold held in suspension. They seemed to whirl hypnotically, but this had to be an optical illusion of some kind.

Monk spoke up. “Doc, meet Mrs. John Holland.”

“Can you do anything for my Billy?” the old woman asked in a quavering voice.

“We will see,” said Doc. His voice resonated with a quiet compelling power that made one come to full attention.

They got into the sedan. It came to life with hardly a rumble of engine. Doc wheeled it to a corrugated steel door. It was down. But as the nose of the sedan neared it, it hoisted up.

“Infra-red projectors in the hood trip a relay switch,” Monk explained.

The old woman looked impressed through her worry.

The car eased out into the street, merging smoothly with traffic.

The ride south was not long. Doc Savage asked Mrs. Holland a series of quiet, probing questions designed to elicit the most information via the fewest words.

By the time they pulled up before the Gotham hostelry, Doc had ceased his questioning, lapsing into a solemn silence that might have portended ill.

The Gotham was no fleabag, but neither was it one of the city’s finest hotels. Possibly in the gaslight era it had been an establishment of worth, but now it served as a residential hotel for those unable to afford typically exorbitant Manhattan apartment rentals.

The cramped old elevator creaked as it toiled upward.

Billy Holland greeted them at the door. Cheekbones stuck out of his pale, hollow face, but his eyes flew wide at the sight of the bronze giant stepping into the room.

“Gosh! I know you! You’re Doc Savage!”

Doc bestowed a rare smile on the young boy. “That’s right.”

The lad appeared to have trouble with his coordination. He staggered as he walked, and his breathing was not right.

“Billy, Mr. Savage is here to—to—” The old woman’s voice caught.

She was unable to get the words out, so overwhelmed was she by the prospect that her only relative would be cured.

Doc directed the boy to lie out on the bed. He had brought a traditional black doctor’s valise with him. Out of it came instruments no more sophisticated than the customary stethoscope and rubber hammer for testing patient reflexes. The bronze man used all of these, and checked the boy’s pulse in the customary manner.

Most often, however, Doc employed his metallic fingers to thump the weak boy’s chest.

When he was done, he asked a simple question of Martha Holland.

“Has this boy ever been exposed to tropical diseases?”

“No. He was born and raised in Indiana. But my late husband had a bout of malaria during the fuss in Cuba.” The elderly woman mustered up her best posture. “He was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.”

Doc Savage shook his head firmly. “Malaria can only be transmitted through the bite of infected mosquitoes,” he imparted. “It is impossible for the boy to become exposed to any such tropical disease merely through contact with an infected person.”

A relieved look touched Mrs. Holland’s care-worn features.

Doc raised the lad’s head and began searching his scalp with careful fingers. Very quickly, he discovered something. Metallic fingers took hold, came away with a fat black thing, which waved tiny legs.

“Wood tick,” Doc explained, disposing of the insect in a bottle of solution.

Mrs. Holland shrank. “Oh, no. Mercy!”

Doc cleaned and bandaged the small wound where the tick had taken hold with its stubborn jaws.

“If my diagnosis is correct, he is suffering from tick paralysis, as a result of a toxin carried by the creature. It is sometimes a fatal malady. At any rate, it has been caught in time.”

With that, Doc dug into his valise. He extracted a hypodermic needle, charging it with a clear liquid.

Monk asked, “What’s that, Doc?”

“Sedative,” said the bronze man, rolling up the young boy’s sleeve.

Doc cautioned the boy, “This may sting.”

“I’m not afraid.”

As it turned out, it was old Martha Holland who had to avert her eyes as Doc Savage administered the injection.

When he was done, the bronze man patted the boy on the head and addressed Billy’s shaken grandmother.

“You will see improvement in a few hours. He should recover fully in a week. Now that the toxin is no longer flowing into his bloodstream, there is nothing to worry about.”

The old woman appeared to be at a loss for words. Tears brimmed her soft eyes. She took Doc Savage’s hand in both of hers, wordlessly, unable to express a profound gratitude that had rendered her incapable of speech.

Then she rushed over to little Billy’s bedside.

“It’s a miracle,” the old woman sobbed.

With that, Doc Savage packed up his valise and motioned for Monk Mayfair to follow him quietly from the room. It was typical of the bronze man that he did not wish to remain after doing some good work for the betterment of the human race.

On the creaky ride down, the hardboiled Monk Mayfair took out a violent-colored handkerchief and gave his nose a vigorous honk.

“Cold coming on?” asked Doc.

“Nah,” sniffled Monk. “What you did back there just got to me, that’s all. Just don’t let that shyster Ham know I got busted up over a kid.”

The bronze man said nothing. His metallic features were inscrutable. But there were tiny lights in his ever-active flake-gold eyes. An observer intimately familiar with Doc Savage might have ascribed an emotion to those whirling flakes. But Doc Savage was not known to succumb to feelings.

They returned to the skyscraper aerie in a satisfied silence.

DANG MI WAS examining the steel strongbox with the air of a mongoose regarding a cobra. He ran fingers along its cool blue crackle finish, as if seeking some clue as to the nature of its contents.

“These Asian artisans have some mighty clever ways o’ riggin’ a trick box,” he muttered.

Beside him, Poetical Percival Perkins regarded Dang with an uneasy mien.

“Opening that box,” he said, “means you have rocks.”

Dang eyed him villainously. “Eh?”

“In the head, I mean.”

“I ain’t aimin’ to open it,” Dang said. “Yet.”

“Your face,” Perkins sniffed, “expresses a different trace.”

They were standing about the box, which had been taken from the
Devilfish’s
safe and deposited here away from the water, in a jungle clearing where stood a stone-ringed natural well. This well provided Dang and his cut-throat crew with drinking water whenever they were holed up on Pirate Island for extended periods of time.

“I’m thinkin’ we should know what we got here,” Dang was muttering.

“The book gave us a look,” Perkins reminded.

Dang looked up from the weird box that had been the center of so much turmoil and his eyes fell on one of his blue-turbaned Malays.

“We know what the dang thing is supposed to do. But we ain’t seen it in action yet.”

“I, for one, will shun,” said Perkins. “The privilege, that is,” he added.

“Well, Dang Mi, Scourge of the South China Sea, ain’t afraid o’ no box,” the former Hen Gooch announced, giving his colorful trousers a hitch.

Lapsing into the Malay tongue, he rapped out stiff orders.

The Malay on the receiving end of these orders actually flinched. He began backing away.

At a signal from Dang, his compatriots fell upon him. Subduing him, they stripped him of his ripple-edged
kris
and shoved him toward the box.

“Open it!” Dang rapped out in Malay. “But wait until we get clear.”

“Are you daft!” Perkins cried. “You don’t know what will come abaft!”

Dang took him aside.

“I figure it this way, see? He cracks open the box and the thing inside gets him before he can throw the lid all the way back. The lid falls and the thing is locked up tight again.”

“What if it doesn’t work out that way?” wondered Perkins.

“It will,” Dang said confidently.

“You don’t know that—any more than a rat.”

“Who gives the orders around here, me hearty?” Dang asked, one hand dropping to the butt of his holstered six-shooter.

Perkins showed himself uneager for a showdown. He took a step backward and, reverting to type, murmured, “You’re the boss, so it’s your loss.”

They retreated into the jungle, leaving the Malay pirate with the mysterious box. He hunkered over it, his half-naked body a-tremble.

Once they moved back a hundred yards or so, they took shelter behind an outcropping of rocks.

Dang unlimbered one of his six-shooters and then the other. With both hands he lined up on the tremulous Malay.

Lifting his voice, he bellowed, “Open that dang box!”

The quivering corsair hesitated.

Whereupon, Dang commenced shooting at his feet the way villains are wont to do in the Western movies.

Snapping and snarling, bullets kicked up sand and dirt dust around the Malay’s feet. He broke into a spasmodic jig.

While Dang was prodding him to obey with bullets, Poetical Percival Perkins happened to notice the footprint not three yards away.

It was a rather large footprint. It had sunk into the soft jungle loam fully an inch. That meant a heavy person. The size of the boot also suggested a giant.

Mouth dropping open, Perkins whirled and shook Dang Mi by the shoulder. It happened Dang was in the midst of loosing a shot. Perkins threw off Dang’s aim.

And a bullet meant to clip the naked heel of the pirate lackey ordered to open the mysterious box instead drilled clean through his head.

The unfortunate one flopped backward, falling to the ground. There he twitched in his pitiful death throes.

“Dang!” roared Dang Mi. “Why’d you up and go do that?”

Perkins laid a narrow finger against his thin lips and used the opposite finger to indicate the deep indentation in the shape of a large man’s foot.

Dang squinted at this footprint.

“Not many men have feet that size,” he muttered, looking about warily.

“If there aren’t two, then you know who,” Perkins breathed.

“THAT ungrinnin’ galoot, Renny, got loose and he’s around here somewheres,” muttered Dang.

“Indeed, and agreed.”

Dang made his eyes beady. He looked like an Asian version of a Western badman.

“Get the box,” he growled. “I’ll cover the fort.”

“You’re a sport,” Poetical Percival Perkins said dryly. But he did not hesitate. He came out from behind the cover of rock, his face wearing a relieved expression. It was evident he did not wish to see the blue container opened at all.

Picking his way down toward the well, he came to the box.

Kneeling, Perkins took hold of it in a firm grasp.

“Grant me the grip,” he muttered, “to make no slip.”

With infinite caution, he raised himself to his full height, the box balanced carefully in his nervous hands.

Like a man moving in a lead-weighted diving suit, he turned and began to tramping back to Dang Mi’s position.

He got no more than a dozen paces when a tower of gloom reared up from a brushy growth and laid heavy hands on his shoulders.

“I’ll take that,” a low deep rumbling voice said.

Poetical Percival Perkins froze in mid-tramp.

Then all hell broke loose.

FROM the rocks, Dang Mi let out a howl as he recognized the imposing form of Renny Renwick accosting his confederate.

The Malays emitted their own assorted screeches of surprise.

And Poetical Percival Perkins, shocked in spite of himself, happened to lose his grip on the box.

“Oh!” he gasped.

The world seemed to stop for a moment. If there was the breath of something living, that breath ceased.

The box slipped from Perkins’ shocked fingers. They fumbled. Some reflex kicked in and he made a grab for the falling hunk of metal.

Renny’s big hands lunged at the same time.

“No!”
cried Perkins.

Both men had hold of the box now. They tugged. Renny, being the stronger of the two, seemed the certain victor.

Then out from behind the outcropping of rock, poured Dang Mi and his piratical horde.

Dang fired in the air. Three shots. He knew that to bring down either struggling man was to unleash the unknown thing in the box.

At that point, Renny wrestled the object from Perkins’ long fingers, tucked it under his arm and plunged back into the jungle.

A chase ensued—wild, noisy, punctuated by shouts and shots.

Poetical Percival Perkins was the second one to blunder into the jungle, hot on Renny’s heels. What impelled the long, lathy swindler to such action was unclear. Perhaps he feared that the giant engineer, in his ignorance, would seek to open the box.