Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (47 page)

“Not everyone saw it that way,” reminded Doc.

“The subjective nature of the human mind, plus faulty memory,” Johnny said loftily.

“Care to hear some conjecture?” asked the bronze man.

“Certainly.”

“Consider that Columbus’ fame was not achieved until long after his death. He thought he had found a new route to Cathay, instead of a hitherto-undiscovered New World.”

Johnny tapped the lens of his magnifier against his front teeth. “What does that have to do with the mystery?”

“Columbus had two sons, Diego and Fernando. Would it not be reasonable, once men began painting posthumous portraits of the Great Navigator, to have one of his own descendants sit for those portraits?”

Johnny brightened. “Producing a familial resemblance! Supermalagorgeous! I must write up that theory.” The gaunt geologist started. “Er-r-r, I cannot very well do that, now can I?”

“Not without revealing the unprovable story of your having met Columbus in the flesh,” reminded Doc.

Johnny’s frown grew deeper. “I take it back.”

“Take what back?”

“This was not the most complicated adventure we have ever had. It is the most confoundedly frustrating!”

With that, the lanky archeologist pocketed his magnifying monocle and stalked off, leaving Doc Savage immersed in his work.

Entering the library, Johnny noticed that the calendar read October 12, and that it was now officially Columbus Day—the day on which, over four hundred years ago, a new continent was discovered. The fact that it had been established to be the Great Navigator’s actual birthday, as confirmed by his very lips, was an historical truth Johnny Littlejohn would never breathe to a living soul—no matter how much it pained him to keep silent.

Footnotes

1. The “pull” is a device in common use by magicians. It consists of an elastic with a safety pin on one end, a tiny cup or a clamp on the other end. The safety pin is fastened to the vest in the back, up high. One of the magician’s hands draws the cup around secretly and it is held so the hand and arm conceal elastic and cup from the spectator. After the article is stuffed in the palmed cup, the device is released, permitting the elastic to yank cup and article under the coat. The device is used to vanish cigarettes, handkerchiefs, papers, etc., with weird effect. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

2. This trick, astounding to behold, is the signature of one world-famous illusionist. The author, himself an amateur magician, cannot state with certainty how this feat is accomplished. The gag or gimmick employed by The Great Gulliver may not be identical to the other. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

3. Extrasensory perception is the term applied by scientists to the human ability to fathom with uncanny precision what is in another person’s mind. Almost everyone has had the weird experience of writing a friend, and the next day receiving a letter which the friend wrote at the same time. This is extrasensory perception. Some people have only flashes of it; others have, or claim to have it all the time. Science has not yet explained what it is. Like gravity, it is still an enigma. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

4. The term, “Chinese Rope Trick” is general, and applied by magicians to knot tricks with ropes. Innumerable are these rope tricks, many revolving around a knot which appears to be solid, but isn’t. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

5. Magicians use many effects of chemical nature. Commonest of these probably, are the tricks where the magician takes a pitcher of water, and pours from it different colored drinks, various liquors, etc. The chemicals are usually concealed in the glasses or in pellets in the magician’s palm, or elsewhere. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

6. Christopher Columbus, discoverer of America, during later life was schemed against by jealous enemies. A particularly zealous schemer was the then governor of a Cuban colony, Francisco de Bobadilla. Word of his finagling got to the King and Queen of Spain, and they became a bit wrathy. They sent word for the governor of Cuba to come home and explain. Customs of the day being what they were, the governor had a hunch he would be minus one head upon reaching Spain, unless he had a good story. In order to appease them, Bobadilla had all the gold in sight cast into a gift in the form of a great table. A flotilla was organized, but Christopher Columbus somehow sensed an approaching storm. He was ignored. In the Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, a powerful hurricane descended upon the exposed ships, destroying all but one. The alleged gold table was either heaved over the side or went down with the galleon. Miraculously, the sole survivor was a small ship, said to be the weakest in the fleet, carrying Christopher Columbus’ personal fortune in gold. The Aguja weathered the gale and safely reached Spain. This astonishing fact, combined with the unheeded warning of an approaching blow, caused some to accuse the Great Navigator of being in league with the Devil. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

7. This “psychic” trick of reading messages inside sealed envelopes is one of the oldest tricks. The gag is this: The audience writes their questions and seals them. The envelopes are brought to the stage. The performer, without touching the basket containing the envelopes, dramatically recites a question aloud, then picks up an envelope at random, tears it open, drops the message on his table, then picks it up and passes it out to the audience that they may read it and see it is the message he just read. The trick is done thus: Actually, the performer has a stooge in the audience, and the stooge’s question is not in the basket, but is placed beforehand on the tabletop, which the audience cannot see. This is the first one read. The performer then takes a genuine message from the basket, tears it open, drops it on the table, picks up the one he just read—thus making a switch—and passes it out to the amazed audience. He simply repeats this operation from then on, but of course the switch has now put a genuine message in front of him, concealed on the tabletop. —KENNETH ROBESON.
back

8.
Repel.
back

9. During previous adventures, Doc Savage has come to grips with the eerie force called, variously, extrasensory perception, telepathy, along with similar strange mental powers, sometimes of a mechanical nature, but on other occasions naturally possessed by humans. While he has never unraveled its mysteries, the bronze man has acquired a healthy respect for the phenomenon—whatever it is. See
The Midas Man, The Mental Wizard
and
Ost.
—KENNETH ROBESON.
back

10. As a result of one of Doc Savage’s superfirers falling into criminal hands, the bronze man was forced to devise even more stringent safeguards against their misuse. See
Horror in Gold.
—KENNETH ROBESON.
back

11.
The Annihilist.
back

About the Author: Lester Dent

LESTER DENT was born in the tiny agricultural community of La Plata, Missouri, on October 12, 1904. His roots there were deep. The Dent farm had been in the family since before the Civil War. There is a Dent County in central Missouri.

Although Lester spent his formative years in Wyoming, Nebraska and Oklahoma, the family returned to La Plata, where his parents, Alice and Bernard, took over the family farm in 1918 upon the death of Bernard’s father. Lester began attending La Plata High School the following year. Upon graduation in 1923, he relocated to Oklahoma. After quitting his job as an Associated Press telegrapher in Tulsa to become a pulp writer for Dell Publications in 1930, it was to La Plata that Lester retreated when the Great Depression crushed Dell’s pulp line, and with it Dent’s first flyer at living in New York City.

After writing Doc Savage for two years, Lester and wife Norma began summering in La Plata in between periods in Manhattan and wintering in Miami on his schooner, the
Albatross.
There, he became involved in local affairs, lecturing on writing and showing home movies of his Caribbean treasure hunts, proceeds from which went to buying educational materials for needy school children. He also staged popular amateur boxing matches in the community. He did his writing in the local bank, from which he rented office space.

Tiring of the nomadic lifestyle, in 1939 the Dents relocated to La Plata year round, first renting a home, then finally building their famous House of Gadgets in 1942. There, Lester lived out the remainder of his days, writing Doc Savage, hardcover novels and making his first slick magazine sales. He became even more involved in community affairs, volunteering as a Boy Scout scoutmaster, and joining the Masons, eventually becoming a 32nd degree Mason of the Scottish Rite. During World War Two, Lester took up light-plane flying, becoming acting commander, Civil Air Patrol, Kirksville Squadron.

Lester Dent was given the Missouri Writers Guild Award in 1946. In 1948, he launched Airviews, an aerial photography service which grew so rapidly that he opened up a storefront photography studio in downtown La Plata, housing his fleet of five camera-equipped airplanes in the nearby Kirksville Municipal Airport.

With the death of his parents in the early 1950s, Lester reluctantly took over his father’s dairy farm and went into this full force, modernizing the operation. Dent brought Grade A milk to his part of Missouri for the first time, launched a successful fertilizer operation, The La Plata Chemical Company, and wrote the La Plata Centennial pageant program, “Centorama,” in 1955. That year, he also organized The La Plata Rural Fire Association to raise funds for a modern fire truck for the town. As a Ham radio operator, Lester became director of La Plata Civil Defense activities, participating in RACES—the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service. He was once asked to run for Mayor of La Plata, but declined the invitation.

When Lester Dent died in 1959, he was buried in the La Plata cemetery, where he rests today. His House of Gadgets was later placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1970s, the La Plata town government erected signs on the north and south approaches of  U.S. 63, proclaiming the tiny village of about 2,000 residents to be the birthplace of Lester Dent, Creator of Doc Savage. Although those signs were later removed, new ones were put in place in 2013, the eightieth anniversary year of the beginning of Doc Savage.

About the Author: Will Murray

WILL MURRAY was born in Massachusetts in 1953, and is the author of some sixty books, including forty novels in the Destroyer paperback series, thirteen Doc Savage novels, and a well-received history of the Western pulp magazines,
Wordslingers, An Epitaph for the Western.

Twenty years ago, Murray wrote the Doc Savage novels released during the 60th anniversary of the character’s beginnings. With the Man of Bronze turning 80 in 2013, he has again collaborated with the late Lester Dent to produce additional adventures in this legendary and influential pulp series.

Murray has visited Missouri only three times in his life, but each time was very special. On the first occasion, he attended Pulpcon in St. Louis. The year was 1977. Murray recalls dining in the hotel restaurant with Ryerson Johnson, one of Lester Dent’s best friends and ghostwriters, when Mrs. Lester Dent walked in. That was their first meeting.

Out of that wonderful weekend convention came the beginnings of a long-term working relationship. By the end of the convention, Norma Dent had decided to permit Murray to market the Lester Dent literary properties, which he does to this day.

A year later in October, 1978, Murray made the pilgrimage to La Plata, Missouri, where the entirety of Lester’s files, papers, and manuscripts were made available to him. There, he discovered the complete outline to “Python Isle,” which subsequently triggered his novel writing career when he was granted permission to transform the document into the first authorized Doc Savage adventure since the original series ended in 1949.

Two years later in June, 1980, Murray again returned to La Plata to do further work. By that time, he had written
Python Isle
and sitting in Lester Dent’s study, making notes on Lester’s typewriter, Murray felt very comfortable indeed.

Norma Dent passed away in 1995, and Will Murray has not been back to La Plata, Missouri, since. But he recalls it fondly as a magical place in which miracles happened. He is delighted to have co-authored
The Miracle Menace,
which evokes the La Plata of the mid-1930s.

About the Artist: Joe DeVito

OVER the past thirty years Joe DeVito has illustrated, sculpted and designed hundreds of book and magazine covers, posters, trading cards, collectibles, toys and just about everything else in a variety of genres. He is especially known for classic depictions in both painting and sculpture of many of Pop Culture’s most recognizable icons. These include King Kong, Tarzan, Doc Savage and super-heroes such as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-man, and
MAD
magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman (a super-hero to some). He sculpted the award trophy for the highly influential art annual
Spectrum
and his poster painting has become their logo.

Deeply rooted in the fine arts, he has sculpted two monumental statues of the Madonna and Child, one of which is placed in Domus Pacis at the Our Lady of Fatima Shrine, in Portugal. The other resides at the World Apostolate of Fatima Shrine in Washington, NJ, where several of his original Fatima-themed oil paintings hang in the shrine’s gallery. Joe also restores historic icons and statues, such as the Odessa Madonna, now in Kazan, Russia. Joe is usually working on several large painting and sculpting commissions in the fine arts concurrently with his illustration work.

An avid writer, Joe has co-authored (with Brad Strickland) and illustrated two novels. The first is
KONG: King of Skull Island
(DH Press, 2004). The second book,
Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong,
was published by St. Martin’s Griffin, in 2005. He has also written many essays and articles including
Do Android Artists Paint In Oils When They Dream?
for
Pixel or Paint: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art.
He has recently finished the screenplay for his “faction” world of truly epic proportions tentatively titled
The Primordials,
now in early movie development.