DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (9 page)

In any case, by the time Dang Mi and his excited crew reached the jungle, there was no sign of Renny Renwick, Percival Perkins or most importantly, the mysterious blue container.

That did not stop them from searching.

“Fan out!” Dang cried in Malay. “Find them! Find that dang box! Dang your hides, don’t fail me if you value your worthless brown skins!”

The pirate band broke in all directions. There was no system to their search. They thrashed about, beat the bush and tripped over gnarled roots, accomplishing little.

One pirate, thinking he was sneaking up on a skulking foe, slashed down with his straight-bladed
parang
and took off a fellow corsair’s hand.

Much bleeding and screaming resulted until Dang trooped up and straightened things out by shooting the maimed pirate dead.

Calmly, Dang Mi broke the action of each pistol in turn, reloading from his well-worn cartridge belt.

When the dying one had settled down, they heard the unnerving cry.

It started off as one of those long, extended screams. The kind of screech a man makes when he sees death beating down on him. Only this scream was cut short before it could achieve its promised volume.

The outcry did not choke off so much as it died. It started off with building volume, cracked, became a parched croak, then trailed off like a fading ghost’s cry for life.

There was the hint in the air that the scream continued in a much reduced fashion after it failed to register on their sharpened ears. Possibly this was an aural illusion.

Fixing the sound’s location, Dang started toward it.

He ran, plunging through bramble and brush, six-guns waving wildly.

Then he saw the fog and jerked to a stop.

Behind him, his Malays did likewise.

“I feel thirsty,” he muttered.

Carefully, the pirate chieftain advanced.

“Dang!” he muttered. “I hope the thing didn’t get out of the gol-dang box.”

But it seemed that way.

Ahead, there was a ball of fog—the white ghostly fog that had previously attended the opening of the mystiferous box. But it was thinner this time.

Swallowing twice, Dang wavered between curiosity and abject flight. In the end, curiosity won. For a pirate, Dang Mi did not lack intestinal fortitude.

Dang sent a corsair ahead. The worthy hesitated, too. Dang impelled him along by sniping at the heels of his bare feet.

The Malay came back a moment later, babbling excitedly. But he was healthy, so Dang plunged ahead.

In time, they came to a place where there was more dirt than there was jungle—strangely dry soil, given the recent monsoon rains.

And there they found the box. It sat on the hard ground. The crackle-finished lid was shut. Possibly it had been opened and had fallen back of its own accord.

It certainly seemed that way from the attitude of the body lying before it.

It was a long body. A man. Or something that once had been a man. It lay face down. It was impossible to see exactly who that man had been. But through his clothes, it was immediately clear that whoever the unfortunate one had been, he was no more than a lifeless husk now.

The clothing hung on him as if on a scarecrow. The back of the neck was exposed and below the nape of the neck tendons stood out. Not in exertion, for the body was lax, but because all muscle and moisture had departed the tissues beneath the skin.

The skin too was an unhealthy gray tone. It looked dry, old. In places it had cracked in a manner suggesting alligator hide, or half-shed snakeskin.

The wrists projecting from the shirt sleeves were mere bone over which dead dry skin lay stretched as tightly as a drum.

Above the wrists, the hands were clenched tight. They were bony and all out of proportion to the wrists below.

Seeing this, Dang Mi let out a whoop and a holler.

“He’s dead! That coconut-fisted son of a sea cook has gotten himself salivated! Curiosity killed the cat for us!”

Dang fired two jubilant shots into the air by way of celebrating.

Striding up to the mummy of a man, Dang Mi gave it a generous kick. The ribcage actually crackled like a dry woodpile.

“Our troubles are over! Renny Renwick is as dead as an old-time Egyptian pharaoh.” Turning to his gawking Malays, Dang Mi added, “And if you blokes know what’s good for you, you’ll watch your step, else I might turn you all into mummies, too.”

With that, Dang holstered his six-shooters and reclaimed the box containing the unknown thing that had, apparently, reached out of its box to turn a living man into a desiccated, be-wrinkled corpse.

His pirates followed him at a respectful distance, their eyes peeled for the still-missing Poetical Percival Perkins.

THE TIME WAS several days later. Autumn had settled in.

A brisk wind howled around the spires of the city. It whined past the cornices and setbacks of the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan like a prowling banshee in search of souls to torment.

And in the offices where those who desired to lay their troubles before Doc Savage were interviewed, Monk Mayfair was speaking.

“I don’t give a whoop if you’re the owner of the whole country!” Monk yelled. “I told you before that you’d take your turn seeing Doc. And that still goes!”

The homely Monk was addressing the portly fellow who, purely by chance, had been present the day when the old woman, Martha Holland, had paid her visit. The man of affairs had returned to attempt to bluster his way to Doc Savage. The fellow was becoming angry, apparently thinking he was being made sport of.

“You must think I’m the biggest fool on earth!” he yelled.

“Nonsense,” Monk replied shortly, “You’re only of medium size, ain’t you?”

This being a sample of why fellows who thought they were important often had compound spasms after trying to get past Monk to see Doc Savage about some trifling matter. Not that Monk did not use good judgment. The resolution of the matter of Martha Holland and her afflicted grandson, Billy, demonstrated otherwise.

The overbearing fellow glared indignantly through his pince-nez spectacles.

“I,” he said, “am C. Startell Pompman.”

“So you’ve said several times,” Monk snorted.

“I am—”

“I know,” grunted Monk. “The cemeteries are chock full of guys who figured the world couldn’t get along without them.”

“I have a matter of utmost urgency for Doc Savage,” C. Startell Pompman insisted.

“That so?” the homely chemist said skeptically.

“I am prepared to offer a significant sum to engage the bronze man’s services.”

Monk bellowed, “I told you before, Doc ain’t for hire!”

“This is profoundly important. Supremely so. It—”

At that moment Ham Brooks, who had the interviewing trick for the day, poked his head out of the interview office.

“Next!” he announced.

Blustery C. Startell Pompman bowled past Monk Mayfair and accosted Ham Brooks at the door.

“I, sir, am next—and it is high time that I was seen!”

“We’re very democratic here,” Ham retorted, ushering the rotund businessman in. Ham was in the act of shutting the door behind him when Monk Mayfair laid a huge paw—the word fit—against the door and barged in, saying, “I wanna hear what this noisy windbag has on his mind that’s so all-fired important.”

Coloring crimson, Startell Pompman took his seat. “You look to be a man of means, Mr. Brooks.” He offered a business card. “I am in the import-export business, specializing in the Orient.”

“Go on,” invited Ham.

“Recently, I chanced to purchase a remarkable—ah—curio in China. I believe it to be very valuable. Very. Regrettably, it was stolen from me under circumstances that point the finger of suspicion at two individuals I foolishly took into my confidence.”

“So far,” Monk said, “this ain’t very interesting.”

Ham glared at Monk. “Hush, you tree-ape.”

Monk glowered back.

C. Startell Pompman cleared his throat.

“What is this curio?” Ham inquired smoothly.

“Ah, I would rather not say.”

“Why not?”

“Because of the danger this curio presents to the world.”

Monk snorted derisively. Ham made a prim mouth.

Startell Pompman filled the skeptical absence of conversation with sheepish words.

“I realize how melodramatic this sounds, but the entire world is in peril if this—object—is not swiftly recovered.”

“I am sorry, but without more to go on, I cannot bring this matter to Doc Savage,” said Ham. His dark eyes appraised the blustery plutocrat silently.

Startell Pompman had been deferential in a reticent way when addressing Ham. Now he reverted to type. His pink-flushed face purpled. One plump hand came smashing down on the desk. An inkwell jumped in response.

“I demand to be heard by Doc Savage!” he roared. “This is important! It is vitally important! And I will not be denied!”

“That does it!” said Monk. “Out, damned spot!”

The homely chemist bent down and picked up the chair Startell Pompman had been sitting in. Chair and occupant came off the floor. Monk showed that this feat of strength strained his apish musculature only by the grunt he gave as he bore the belligerent businessman to the exit door.

At that moment, the outer door buzzed and Ham came out of his chair to see who it was.

An express delivery agent stood there with a steamer trunk. It was a very long trunk. The labels and customs stamps plastered all over it told of its travels.

It was addressed to
Doc Savage, New York City
. Such was the fame of the bronze man that the steamer trunk reached its destination with no more elaborate address than that.

Seeing the trunk, Monk set the chair containing a frightened Startell Pompman on the floor with a jar.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It came express,” explained Ham.

“We expectin’ anythin’?”

“I will ask Doc.”

Picking up a telephone, Ham dialed the bronze man.

“Doc, a steamer trunk just arrived for you,” the dapper lawyer reported.

“I will be right down.”

The sound of the bronze man’s voice caused Startell Pompman to climb to his feet and retreat to the inner office. As Monk showed the waiting supplicants to the power of Doc Savage from the room, this action was not noticed.

“We’re closing early,” he announced. “Come back to-morrow.”

When some objected, Monk said, “Doc has a lot of enemies. Bad ones. Some of them like to mail us bombs. This could be one of them times.”

This sent everyone scurrying. Monk closed the door on the last malingerer.

DOC SAVAGE arrived moments later. He examined the box briefly and said, “No return address.”

“Could be anythin’,” Monk opined.

“We will subject it to the usual tests,” decided Doc.

Monk wheeled out a portable fluoroscopic device. The trunk was upended and placed behind the screen. It was very light, weighing, it seemed, hardly more than an empty steamer trunk. But a dry rattling told that the trunk was not empty.

Normally, when fluoroscopic devices are employed, they are used to expose the innards and bones of a living human being. In this case, the bronze man and his aides were checking to see whether or not the trunk housed an infernal device.

Taking turns, each man applied his eyes to the viewing port.

They were more than a little startled when the rib cage of a human being showed in stark black-and-white on the ground-glass screen.

“Jove!” Ham gasped.

Monk pushed him aside, leaned in, peered. “Blazes!” he squeaked.

Doc went next. The bronze man reacted in no outward manner. He had been schooled to control his emotions. Nothing registered on his metallic face, but the air was instantly permeated with a weird sound. A low, exotic trilling note.

Difficult of description, it had a definite musical quality, although it followed no tune, and was as unnerving as the sound of the winds coursing through the spires of Manhattan, although infinitely more unreal. The eerie evanescence finally trailed away to nothingness. Throughout, it had possessed a peculiar quality of seeming to come from everywhere rather than from any particular spot.

A bystander would not be entirely sure the bronze man had authored it. But he had. It was a small unconscious habit the bronze man exhibited during moments of mental stress.

Doc manipulated the fluoroscope and determined for himself that all the trunk contained was a human being, presumably dead, and some packing material. Satisfied, he switched off the device and tipped the trunk onto the floor.

From a pocket of his vest, he produced a steel pick. After first checking for the telltale wires of a booby-trap, and finding none, Doc went to work on the lock. It surrendered so quickly to the bronze man’s manipulations, he might have been employing a key.

Crouched beside the trunk, Doc threw open the lid.

The body had been cushioned in common excelsior. Even so, it was not sufficient to preserve it from damage. The head lolled to one side on an obviously broken neck. Fingers had come off one hand. They were very long fingers.

It was clear than the man had been dead a very long time. His skin was dark and shriveled. Ancient dead men pulled from moldering tombs have this grisly aspect, where all moisture has leached from the rigid body, leaving only leathery skin over hollow bone.

There was no telling who the dead man might have been from scrutiny of the face. It was a leathery mask of jerked beef. The eye sockets were dry holes. The teeth were all that looked new. They gleamed like dice. One tooth showed the glint of gold wire.

“Who would express us a mummy?” wondered Ham.

Doc said nothing. He was examining the cadaver’s clothes. They were rugged, of modern manufacture. The pants were duck, the shirt a light cotton drill reserved for tropical climates.

Monk, monkeylike curiosity on his apish face, eyed the mummy from different angles.

“You know, that mummy has mighty big mitts.”

Contrarily, Ham said, “They appear of normal size to me.”

“Look how big they are hanging at the ends of those skinny wrists,” Monk pointed out.