Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (10 page)

The bronze man’s words were cold, resolute. It was clear that this attempt on his
life, through the agency of infecting his cousin, had shocked him to his core.

“So what type of germ was employed?” asked Ham worriedly.

“No germ. A spore.”

“Spore!” Monk exclaimed.

“A bacteria spore,” said Doc Savage. “Anthrax was the agent of murder.”

THE TIME WAS three days later.

Doc Savage entered the quarantine room to which Pat Savage had been removed. She sat
up in bed, looking frosty of eye. Her color was healthy, Doc saw.

Doc smiled. “How are you feeling, Pat?”

“Madder than a mud hen!” flared Pat.

Doc consulted a chart at the foot of her bed. “I see that your appetite is good.”

“I have had,” Pat rejoined, “better food in one of those joints where I had to put
a nickel into a slot in order to get my apple pie.”

“The food here is nutritious,” Doc pointed out.

“And that’s another thing. Where exactly
is
here?”

“Upstate.”

The bronze-haired beauty eyed Doc. “I know that. I could see the evergreens flying
past during the ambulance ride. Is this one of those charity hospitals you run on
the sly?”

“That is a very good guess, Pat.”

“Fibber!”

“What makes you say that?” Doc asked, shining a penlight into her clear golden eyes.

“The orderly who served me my breakfast.”

Doc turned off the light. “What about him?”

“I recognized him from last year’s news reels. He was wanted for bank robbery in five
Midwestern states. The police never caught him. But there he was, dishing up eggs
and ham, content as can be.”

“You may be mistaken.”

Pat said archly, “I noticed you said, ‘may.’ Not ‘are.’ Having trouble with your fibbing?”

“Let me see your tongue, Pat,” invited Doc.

“I am beginning to suspect that I have been consigned to that special ‘university’
you run for crooks. The one that you made me swear never to breathe a word about.”

“Your tongue.”

Pat obliged by sticking out her tongue and making it vibrate in the style of a tart
Bronx cheer. When she ran out of steam, Doc employed a tongue depressor and examined
the extended organ carefully.

“No coat.”

“That reminds me,” Pat said around the wood tool. “What happened to my raccoon coat?”

“Burned,” said Doc.

“Just like that. No ‘by your leave?’ ”

“It was dusted with anthrax spores,” Doc Savage said gently.

Pat retracted her tongue and absorbed this information. Her eyes got rounder than
usual. She folded her arms.

“Now I’m afraid to ask after Eloise.”

Doc disposed of the tongue depressor. “Best you forget Eloise.”

Pat heaved a forlorn sigh. “So that note was a lie, after all. The one about revealing
the greatest riddle.”

Doc Savage regarded her with steady gaze. “No, in a sense, it told the truth. Had
you become infected, you would have seen revealed the great riddle of life.”

“You mean what is back of beyond?”

Doc nodded soberly. “One way of putting it.”

Pat let her bronze-haired head drop back on the pillow, laid a shapely forearm athwart
her brow and asked in a mock-fatigued voice, “How long have I got?”

“About a week.”

Pat snapped erect. Horror twisted her lovely features. “You mean to tell me—?”

Doc shook his head. “No, you will need to remain here another week, just in case.
But I am certain that you have passed the point where symptoms would have appeared,
had you become infected by the spores.”

“If I remember my youthful days in the great out of doors, breathing problems and
black spots on the skin are the first signs of anthrax.”

“You have neither of those,” the bronze man assured her.

“That’s a relief.” Her voice became conspiratorial. “So who is gunning for you this
time, cousin?”

“That remains to be seen,” replied Doc. “But we are endeavoring to discover the assassin’s
name and motives.”

Pat bent a level eye on Doc Savage. “I suppose it would be asking too much to be let
in on the action.”

“By the time you are released,” Doc told her, “we will have left the country.”

Pat brightened. “International intrigue! My favorite flavor.”

Doc shook his head gravely. “Too dangerous for a woman.”

“And me, who nearly succumbed to the anthrax meant for you.”

“Your death was not the objective, you know. The assassin hoped that you would expose
me indirectly.”

Pat shuddered deliciously. “Murder by blood relative….”

MONK MAYFAIR poked his bullet head in, gave Pat a grin that would have frightened
a bulldog, and addressed Doc Savage.

“Doc! A radio-telegram came to our headquarters! From Long Tom. Ham just brought it.”

“Excuse us,” Doc told Pat and exited, shutting the door behind him.

Doc accepted the radiogram. It had come from the
S.S. Transylvania.
It read:

COUNTESS OLGA TURNED INTO COAL GHOST. HER SMOKE EVAPORATED. ONLY WITNESS EMILE ZIRN
REPORTEDLY DID SAME. NEXT WITNESS VANISHED. BIG BLACK MYSTERY. TRYING TO GET TO THE
BOTTOM.

Monk whistled. “More than ten words. Must be big to get him to spring for the extra
dough.”

Ham interposed, “Doc, he is describing the effect of the electron-stopper John Sunlight
stole from your Fortress, the diabolic device which freezes atomic motion, with the
end result that the victim dissolves into a cloud of hideous black smoke.”

“Yeah,” agreed Monk. “But you destroyed it up there. Didn’t you?”

“I did destroy the device,” confirmed Doc.

“Could someone have built a new one?” wondered Ham.

“Not without first disassembling the original and memorizing its inner construction,”
advised Doc. “A possibility, if remote.”

“So what’s the explanation?”

“I do not yet know,” Doc Savage admitted. And the lines into which his bronze features
fell bespoke of the gravity with which the metallic Hercules viewed this latest development.

DOC SAVAGE went to his private office and began making transatlantic telephone calls.
In short order, he learned that the radio-telegram had come from the liner
Transylvania
just before it docked in Southampton. It was sent by Walter Brunk, an alias Long
Tom sometimes used. “Brunk” had abruptly disembarked at Southampton, despite having
purchased a ticket to Pristav, Tazan.

Doc contacted the private detective agency for whom the fictitious Walter Brunk purportedly
worked. They scoured the seaport city, and made inquiries in London and elsewhere.

No sign of “Brunk” or Long Tom turned up.

Doc asked Ham to contact the steamship company who owned the liner and to get passenger
lists.

Ham was busy with calls for nearly an hour.

“Copies are being expressed to our headquarters and will be there when we return,”
he reported.

“Better I take them by phone,” said Doc.

Ham extended the telephone receiver. After some preliminaries, the bronze man fell
silent as he listened to the passenger lists being read off to him. Doc took no notes.
None were necessary. His amazingly retentive mind was absorbing the names, and if
a year from now—had the necessity arose—he could recite them back without missing
one.

Doc thanked the other and hung up. He continued with his open line of investigation.

After several more hours were consumed, receivers were replaced upon cradles and Doc
stood up.

“We will return to headquarters,” announced Doc.

“What about Pat?” asked Monk.

“If we take the time to say our farewells, she will no doubt badger us with entreaties
to join in this affair. It is far too dangerous. We came close to losing her. Besides,
she is in good hands here.”

“And out of the way, too,” Monk grinned. “I get it.”

Doc’s tone and manner were so grim, neither aide took up an opposing point of view.

They left the secret institution by sedan and blended with the sparse traffic of the
mountainous region.

On the long drive cityward, Monk and Ham took turns puzzling out the matter.

“It is obvious that the secret message Long Tom left at our headquarters about the
missing reporter, Simon Page, ties into this new mystery,” announced Ham.

“Sure,” agreed Monk. “But how?”

“There is no question that Long Tom believed that the disappearance of an American
in the region where John Sunlight attempted to foment a war was justification enough
to set off for the Balkans,” mused Ham. “But it appears that he encountered unexpected
trouble before he reached his destination.”

“Three passengers go missing in the middle of the Atlantic,” grumbled Monk. “Wonder
why the papers ain’t reported any of that?”

“You homely gossoon!” Ham flared. “They always hush up these things if they can. It’s
bad for business, murder on a transatlantic liner.”

Monk eyed the bronze man. “What do you think, Doc?”

Doc Savage usually kept his opinions to himself, but the strain of the last few days,
coming on the heels of the terrible events up in the Arctic Circle, had caused his
habitual self-possession to become slightly unglued.

“No Countess Olga was listed on the passenger manifest,” he stated. “Although she
was seen by many prior to her vanishing. Emile Zirn disappeared before docking, and
the unnamed witness to his demise has never turned up. I have all this from the captain
of the liner, to whom I spoke.”

Ham frowned. “So what does it all mean?”

“It means that it would be advisable to reach Pristav as soon as possible,” said the
bronze man.

“What about John Sunlight?” pressed Ham.

“We have our worldwide detective agency searching for him. The matter of the darkness
machine now in the possession of Baron Karl’s country, Egallah, is our other priority.”

Monk piped up, “What do you suppose got into Long Tom?”

“No doubt Long Tom arrived in Tazan. One of the passengers who boarded in Southampton
was Ned Foy. This is another alias of Long Tom’s.”

“You’d have thought he’d telegraph us when he arrived,” said Monk, scratching one
rusty wrist.

“That is the disturbing part of this extended mystery,” agreed Doc. “Long Tom has
been in Pristav for three days and a checkup of every hostelry in the city shows that
he never registered at any establishment under any of his known aliases.”

“He mighta thought up a new one,” suggested Monk.

Doc shook his head. “Long Tom knows our standard procedures—to check into foreign
hotels under false names known to all of us, so as to leave a trail easy to follow.”

“I admit that it does not sound good for Long Tom,” Ham said slowly.

Doc Savage fell silent and compelled the sedan to break speed limits all the way to
the city. He employed a siren to force traffic to make way. There was a great urgency
in his driving.

TAZAN, IN THE Balkans, is no pleasure hop. Reaching it meant crossing the Atlantic
Ocean to the British Isles to take on aviation fuel, before proceeding across Western
Europe to the Balkans.

Doc Savage took the most direct route. Most transatlantic aviators fly north to Nova
Scotia and take on fuel there, before embarking upon the arduous voyage over the waves,
the distance between Nova Scotia and the British Isles being the shortest direct route.
But Doc decided against that. He made no stops for gasoline after he topped off the
tanks in New York. The bronze man kept the two throttles controlling the engines of
his big speed plane against the open-pins most of the time.

Doc’s giant amphibian was a high-wing job. From boat-shaped hull to motor cowls and
exhaust stacks, it was streamlined to the finest degree. The ship was fitted with
wheels for landing on earth. These cranked entirely out of sight.

The remarkable plane had a cruising speed in excess of two hundred and seventy five
miles an hour. But stubborn headwinds retarded its progress significantly.

This was a larger craft than the one Doc had flown from the Arctic. It was his latest
ship, and came equipped with features he had lately developed. From streamlined nose
to stabilizer, it was painted a distinctive bronze color.

Below, the heaving Atlantic Ocean became a monotonous corrugated field which heaved
and wrinkled at intervals, like the jeweled hide of some sparkling blue dragon. High
above, clouds galloped along in magnificent herds.

“We are running low on fuel,” Doc Savage announced, his eyes flicking to the fuel
gauges.

“We can try refueling in Ireland,” Ham suggested.

Doc nodded. “Monk, get on the radio and see if you can locate the closest fueling
depot.”

“Gotcha, Doc.” Monk leaped for the short-wave, began fiddling with the dials.

After several minutes of this, he let out a howl.

“Blazes!”

Ham glowered. “What is it, you ape?”

“I was fishin’ around the radio broadcasts from the Balkans, and picked up something
strange. Doc, listen to this.”

Monk unplugged the telephonic headset, allowing the transmission to come out the cabin
loudspeaker.

It was a kind of music. Low, unreal, it wavered weirdly, seemingly being the product
of musical instruments not found upon the earth. An eerie wandering thing, the melody—if
such an utterance could be so described—plunged and climbed, thrilling the nerves.

“What is that?” Ham wondered.

Doc Savage listened for some time, face expressionless.

“Did I pick up a transmission from the moon?” Monk muttered uneasily. He liked his
music loud and brassy. This was patently not of that order.

“What station is broadcasting that?” asked Doc.

“One of the Tazan commercial stations,” supplied the hairy chemist.

They listened for a time and the weird strains trailed off, to be replaced by ordinary
band music.

“Monk,” said Doc at length. “Find us fuel.”