The Phantom City: A Doc Savage Adventure (Doc Savage #10) Read online

  One sought to flee, plunging blindly through the stacked boxes and machinery. He covered a score of yards, and began to entertain visions of safety. Then he was snatched up. A great arm banded his chest, tightened.

  Air went out of the Arab's lungs with a sound as of water pouring from an upset bucket. His ribs ground together.

  "O Allah, I am dying!" he gurgled.

  He was mistaken. His ribs did not break, although one or two cracked. Doc Savage, possessing a profound knowledge of human anatomy, knew about how much pressure they would stand.

  Doc carried his victim back to the other three. The one who had been dropped on his head was flippering his hands nervelessly with returning consciousness. The remaining two were too dazed for flight.

  Roughly, Doc slammed them against the mound of rope bales. Then he waited for them to recover.

  At first, the quartet showed more fight. Doc drove out bronze hands, open, and cuffed them back. The men shrank against the rope, shivering. They squirmed on the greasy boards.

  They peered at the metallic giant as if he were some incredible Titan from another existence. They numbered four, and they were fighting men. Yet their best efforts had seemed puny, childlike. He was something new in their experience, this big man of bronze.

  Doc produced a tiny flashlight. He gave the lense a twist, causing the beam to widen to a fat funnel, and placed it on the wharf boards. The glow sprayed over the four prisoners, and back-splashed on Doc himself.

  The Arabs continued to stare at Doc. One by one, their gaze rested upon his strange golden eyes—stayed there.

  "Wallah!" one repeated his earlier declaration. "He is not human!"

  Doc did not change expression. His lips did not move. He was waiting, knowing that the more the men thought of the recent fight, the more frightened they would become.

  Abruptly, the surrounding night seemed to give birth to an eerie sound. The note was trilling, mellow, low, like the song of some strange jungle bird, or the noise of wind filtering through a naked, cold jungle forest. It was melodious, but rose and fell without tune. It was not a whistle, and neither did it seem a product of vocal cords.

  The swarthy men squirmed and rolled their glances over the adjacent darkness. It seemed to come from everywhere, that sound. They looked at Doc, at his motionless lips, at the sinews that were like alloy steel bars on his neck.

  Probably not one of the four realized Doc was making the weird note. They had no way of knowing that the sound was part of this mighty bronze man—a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of utter concentration. It came when Doc was thinking, or when danger threatened; sometimes it precoursed a plan of sudden action. Just now, it meant merely that the bronze man was pondering what possible motive the Arabs could have for wanting the under-the-polar-ice submarine.

  Noting the fright which his tiny, unconscious trilling sound had caused, Doc decided to make his questioning as ghostly and fantastic as possible. These men, superstitious by nature, would be unusually susceptible to that sort of thing.

  A hollow, unearthly voice, apparently coming from the darkness overhead, demanded: "Why do you seek the submarine?"

  The four brown fellows gave tremendous starts. They shrank back; their eyes popped. It was evident they had never before encountered ventriloquism—at least, never the voice-throwing art handled with the uncanny facility which Doc possessed.

  They did not answer the question.

  "What use do you intend to make of the underseas boat?" the voice repeated.

  The swarthy quartet still made no reply. But their fear grew. Watching them closely, Doc became quite certain he could scare them into talking freely, given a little time. Like most barbaric people, they were easily terrified by something they did not understand.

  The questioning, however, came to a sudden end.

  There was a singular e-e-eek! of a noise. A vicious, brief combination of squeak and whistle. The ripping sound of it was almost against Doc's left ear.

  A round hole—it might have been made by a bullet—opened in the rope bale before his eyes.

  The bronze man whipped backward out of the flash glow. The best of gun silencers permitted some noise, he knew. There had been no such sound behind him. Yet the missile which had embedded in the rope had come with the velocity of a rifle slug.

  His strange golden eyes roved alertly. He was puzzled. The mysterious weapon which had hurled that missile was something new in his experience.

  E-e-eek! The short, ugly bleat was well to the right this time. It was the sound of some sort of slug passing through the air. The thing glanced off a lifting crane with a loud clang, and moaned away in the night, not unlike a ricocheting bullet.

  "Wallah!" gulped an Arab. They scrambled to their feet. Elation was on their faces.

  Doc Savage threw his voice at a bulking crate some yards away, ordering: "Ihda! Be quiet!"

  The dark-skinned quartet sank back to crouching positions. Simultaneously, another of the bizarre projectiles squeaked past, and sank deep into the big crate. It had been directed at Doc's voice.

  Gliding backward, Doc encountered more neatly stacked oil drums. He climbed silently atop them. There was a feline stealth and quiet about his movements. He even put his weight only on the rims of the barrels, lest the metal heads boom, drum fashion, under his great weight.

  He worked almost to the other side of the wharf, then veered shoreward. Over ropes, big-linked chain, shipping crates, machinery, he made almost no sound. A bystander a few feet away would have been ignorant of his passage.

  Not having heard the bronze giant depart, the four Arabs crouched immobile, afraid to flee.

  Near the shore end of the wharf, Doc paused briefly to listen. His hearing was in keeping with his other remarkable faculties—his aural organs had been developed from childhood by a system of intensive exercise, part of a two-hour routine which he took daily.

  Keen as his hearing was, he had detected no sound to show from whence the mystery missiles had come. But they must have emanated from this vicinity.

  He caught movement. The scrape of cloth against rusty iron. He whipped silently for the sound, gliding over the greasy wood.

  Out at the river end of the wharf, there were grunts, curses, and the rattle of running feet. The four Arabs had gotten up nerve enough to take flight.

  At that noise, the skulker in front of Doc stirred about, then headed shoreward. The grease squished softly under feet.

  Doc lunged. His metallic hands, sensitive for all of their indurate strength, encountered cloth. They gathered in great fistfuls of the fabric and the yielding flesh beneath.

  There was a gasp, a low bleat. A fist pecked twice at Doc's face. The tensile cushions of his cheek muscles absorbed the blows. Releasing his grip and clutching again with incredible speed, he captured his victim's hands. They were weaponless.

  There was a telltale slenderness about the hands.

  Doc moved to the right, where the beam of a distant street light glanced through the piled merchandise. Remaining in the shadows himself, he shoved his captive out into the dingy glow.

  He had rather expected what he saw. But the amazing beauty and exotic appearance of the girl all but caused him to loosen his grip. The slenderness of her hands had betrayed her sex.

  She had white hair—the whitest hair Doc had ever seen upon a human being. It was unshorn, slightly wavy, a dazzling wealth of it like loose snow.

  She came almost to Doc's shoulder, which made her very tall for a woman. Her features were regular, magnificent in their cameo perfection. There was color in her exquisite lips, in her entrancing eyes; but other than that, her face was pale. It was a paleness of terror.

  Her garb was unique, as astounding as her strange white hair and gorgeous beauty. She wore full, ankle-length pantaloons, after the Moslem fashion. Her blouse was of silk. Strange little slippers, silk-brocaded, shod her small feet.

  Doc glanced at her wrists. They were ringed with narrow purple m
arks. She had, he decided, been tied recently with ropes.

  She rocked her head back, and screamed. Her voice held a tearing fear.

  Her words—three of them repeated over and over—were of a tongue Doc had never before heard. He failed to understand them, yet they had a vague familiarity.

  He tried Arabic on her. "T'al, ta'al, la takun khauf! Come, come, don't be frightened!"

  She answered him with another yowl—the same three strange words.

  He mulled the words over, trying to place them in his memory, that he might address her in her own dialect.

  Suddenly, he flung her away. There had come a rush of feet in the murk to one side. He sought to whirl, got half around. Then the equivalent of two lions seemed to hit him.

  For one of the few times in his life, Doc was knocked down. The men who sprang upon him had the strength of monsters. His assailants were not the Arabs—all four of those could hardly have matched one of the pair who now held him. They swung fists which landed with the awful force of iron mauls.

  The white-haired girl ran away in the night.

  Faintly, over the sounds of his own fight, Doc could hear the four Arabs. They, too, were fleeing the vicinity of the pier.

  Doc found the neck of one of his foes, reasoned there must be a jaw immediately above it, and let fly a fist. The report as it landed was slightly less loud than a shot. The wharf planks whined as an enormous form fell down upon them.

  The second attacker stumbled over his toppled companion. Apparently he stooped and felt of me prone, senseless hulk.

  "Holy cow!" The fellow's voice had the booming quality of a big animal roaring in a cave. "Did this guy kayo you, Monk?"

  No answer from the fallen one.

  "Pinch him and see if he's playing possum," Doc suggested dryly.

  Chapter III

  THE ARAB PRINCE

  For fifteen or twenty seconds there was pin-drop silence. Sounds of the flight of the white-haired girl and the four Arabs had died away entirely.

  "Holy cow!" gulped Doc's assailant. "Did we pull a boner!"

  "Who'd you think I was?" Doc queried.

  "How was we to know? We heard the girl beller, and could tell somebody was holdin' her, but couldn't see who it was. We figured we'd find out. You spoke Arabic. That fooled us."

  "You had seen the girl before?"

  "Sure! We saw her as soon as we hit the street after hearin' you say four birds had stopped you. Say, how'd you manage to talk into the radio transmitter in the car without them guys gettin' wise?"

  "The windows of the limousine were closed."

  Doc's four late captors would have been astounded at this information. They were not aware of Doc's brief description of their first appearance, since he had spoken without moving his lips. Nor did they dream there was a short-wave transmitter in the big machine, sending on a meter length to which a receiver in Doc's skyscraper office was attuned.

  "You trailed the girl here?" Doc asked.

  "Yeah. She was followin' somebody—one man. We didn't get a good look at him. It was too dark. But I guess he was taggin' you and your four playmates."

  "We seem to have had quite a convention. Light a match and let's see if we can wake Monk up."

  The man with the roaring voice thumbed a match alight. The fitful glow revealed a remarkable personage. The fellow was a giant, yet he had fists so huge in proportion that the rest of him seemed undersized in comparison. Each was comprised of but slightly less than a gallon of rust-colored, case-hardened knuckles.

  His face was long, puritanical, his mouth thin and grim. His habitual expression was that of a man who found very little in the world to approve of.

  This was "Renny." Colonel John Renwick, the engineering profession knew him—a man among the three or four living greatest in that profession. He had made a goodly fortune at his trade. His sole diversion was a disquieting habit of knocking panels out of doors with his huge fists.

  Renny was one of a group of five men who had associated themselves with Doc Savage in the strange work for which he had been trained from the cradle. That work was to go to the ends of the world, punishing wrongdoers, helping those in need of help.

  A desire for excitement and adventure, and a profound admiration for the astounding bronze man who was their chief, held the little group together. Some men crave money, others works of art, and some go in for society—these five specialized in trouble. There was plenty of that around Doc; his path was always that of peril, of danger and thrilling adventure.

  A second member of the group reposed on the pier boards, snoring softly in unconsciousness.

  Hair, gristle, arms longer than his legs, a face that was incredibly homely—that was "Monk." He weighed all of two hundred and sixty pounds, and barely missed being as wide as he was tall.

  If appearance was a guide, there was room for possibly a spoonful of brains back of a pair of eyebrows which were like two shaggy mice. Actually, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair—he was announced thus at scientific gatherings, if at no other time—was known in informed circles as a chemist whose accomplishments were almost magic.

  "Sleeping beauty!" Renny snorted. "Isn't he a picture!"

  They revived Monk by the simple process of grasping his heels, dangling him over the wharf edge and dunking him in the chilly river. He came up groaning, holding his jaw with both furry hands.

  Wryly, he squinted at Doc.

  "You don't need to tell me!" he groaned. "It was you we jumped! We made a mistake!" His voice was mild, childlike.

  "Got flashlights?" Doc demanded.

  "Sure." Renny produced one. It was small, powerful. Current was not supplied by a battery, but by a tiny generator actuated by a spring motor which was wound by twisting the rear cap of the flash.

  Dizzily, Monk dug out an identical light. "When my next time comes to jump somebody in the dark, I'm gonna have a look at 'im first!" he muttered, pinching gingerly at his jaw.

  "We'll spread out," Doc directed. "Search this pier!"

  Renny rumbled: "But they all ran off!"

  "The girl and the four Arabs did," Doc told him. "There was another fellow around here. Maybe more than one! Let's have a look."

  They began at the shoreward end of the wharf, and worked outward.

  "If you hear a shrill squeak—duck!" Doc warned.

  "Say—we heard noises like that out at the end of the pier a little before we jumped you!" Monk grunted. "What was it?"

  "Some kind of missiles which were fired at me."

  "But we didn't hear shots!" Renny boomed. "No coughing of a silenced rifle, either!"

  "I know."

  "Then what fired the darn things? It couldn't have been an air rifle, because they make a noise."

  "A silenced air rifle!" Monk suggested in his small voice.

  "You hairy dope!" Renny rumbled. "You can't silence an air rifle until not a blame sound can be heard!"

  Doc put in: "When you birds finish your argument, we'll look around!"

  Renny popped his enormous fists together; the resulting sound was like two concrete blocks colliding. "O.K.! Let's go!"

  They looked behind every bale, under the covers over each piece of machinery, and tried the tops of all boxes to see that they were nailed solidly.

  "Well, we found what the little boy shot at," Monk grumbled when the search was over. "Where'd he go, d'you reckon?"

  "Whoever it was must have skipped out at the same time as the white-haired girl and the four Arabs," Doc concluded.

  "There wasn't a sign of an empty rifle cartridge lying around," Monk added, his small voice somewhat ludicrous for such a giant.

  "I think we'll find those things were not propelled by explosive powder," Doc advised.

  Renny rattled his hard knuckles together. "Say, I been thinkin'! I told you the girl was followin' somebody here when we trailed her! We only got a couple of glimpses of the fellow ahead of her, and neither of them were clear. But I think he was carryin' somethin'
about like a big fiddle case."

  "I'm pretty certain he was!" Monk echoed.

  "Then it is a safe bet that he launched those projectiles!" Doc decided.

  Searching, Doc speedily located the rope bale against which he had crowded the four Arabs, preparatory to questioning them. He plucked at the burlap covering, his powerful fingers tearing it off easily.

  The rope was two-inch stuff, very stiff. He worked the coils apart without great difficulty. Near the opposite side of the bale, he unearthed the missile which had made the squeaky whistle.

  Monk and Renny peered at it.

  "Holy cow!" exploded Renny. "First bullet I ever saw like that!"

  The slug resembled nothing so much as an elongated aërial bomb, half an inch thick by four inches long. It even had the metal guiding vanes on the tapering tail. It was solid steel.

  Monk picked up the strange projectile, sniffed of it, and shook his head. "No powder smell on it!"

  Doc nodded. He had already made certain of that fact.

  "Got any idea how it was launched?" Monk queried.

  "Nothing definite enough to mention," Doc told him.

  Monk and Renny swapped glances in the flashlight glow. To an outsider, Doc's reply might have conveyed the impression that he was utterly puzzled. To Monk and Renny, who knew this amazing bronze man and his remarkable ways as well as any did, the answer meant that Doc had a very good idea how the missile had been launched. Had he been baffled he would have said so.

  They did not press for information, knowing it would be useless. Doc always kept theories to himself until they were proven facts.

  Renny changed the subject. "Any idea why they wanted the submarine?"

  "None whatever," Doc assured him. "But it's pretty evident they want it badly."

  "Pretty!" Monk grinned. "Say, that kinda describes that white-haired girl, too! What I mean, she knocked a man's eyes out! A looker, huh?"

  "She was dressed like she'd just jumped out of some Turk's harem!" Renny said sourly.