Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (25 page)

But the dapper lawyer got it shut. The air was very cold. It was winter, after all.
Even if the early snows had yet to arrive.

Everyone settled down. The fact that their bronze leader had elected to go it alone
was no surprise.

“He is a very foolhardy man, the bronze one is,” intoned Fiana Drost, apparently unmoved
by the display of courage Doc Savage had shown. “It is a shame that he is now doomed.”

“If you keep up that funeral talk,” Long Tom said sourly, “I am going to march back
there and plug your tonsils with a vacuum tube.”

Fiana looked indignant, but kept silent. Long Tom was no special gentleman when it
came to difficult and possibly unsavory women. Such as Fiana Drost.

That caused the electrical expert to remember his shipboard encounter with the mystery
woman.

“Know anything of a Countess Olga?” he asked Fiana.

Fiana Drost showed her first warm-blooded reaction.

“Who—what did you say?” she stuttered.

“You heard me. She called herself Countess Olga. The more I see of you, the more you
remind me of her.”

“You are not accusing me of being the notorious
Contesa
Olga Davour, are you?”

“You don’t look much like her,” admitted Long Tom.

“I thank you for the inadvertent compliment,” said Fiana Drost coolly. “And to answer
your question, Countess Olga is well-known in the upper circles of the Tazan leadership.
One might venture to say that she is a personal pet of General Consadinos.”

“Another spy, eh?”

Her voice became thin. “Possibly. One never knows about such persons.”

“Well, she’s dead anyway. Say, does the name Emile Zirn ring a bell?”

“It is a common name in my country, nothing more. Rather like Bill Smith or John Jones.”

“Never mind,” said Long Tom. “I didn’t think you knew anything.”

At that implied slight, Fiana Drost folded her arms and looked once again indignant.
She took to staring out the window, as if wishing that she were anywhere other than
in an aircraft hurtling over the grim desolation that was Ultra-Stygia.

DOC SAVAGE landed in the solitude of a copse of broken trees. These showed signs of
having been shattered by a shell long ago, during the Great War, and left to be gnawed
by insects. There were signs of frost heaves, which warped the landscape as if an
earthquake had struck.

Shedding his parachute and pack, Doc made a bundle of both and shoved them into the
dead part of a hollow tree, where they would be unlikely to be discovered.

There was no telling whether he had been spotted in his descent. His parachute was
a neutral gray color designed to be visible in daylight, but less detectable at night.
So the odds were in his favor.

Still, the bronze man dared not remain in one spot for very long.

Doc moved toward the cluster of caves into which the evil-looking black harpies had
disappeared so incredibly.

He carried no weapon in the conventional sense, preferring to rely on his wits and
the special equipment he toted in his carry-all inner vest which was filled with devices
and implements sure to come in handy in a variety of circumstances.

Despite the fact that Doc had invented the supermachine pistols and was proficient
in their use, it was not something he normally carried on his person. Long ago he
had learned that a man with a weapon was easily disarmed and that weapon just as easily
trained on the former owner.

So the bronze man went bare-handed.

By this time, there was an ivory moon hanging high in the sky. This washed a startling
effulgence over everything, throwing deep shadows that were like inky pools in which
dark devils might dwell.

From one of these to another, the bronze man made his stealthy way. He had learned
the art of stalking from a number of experts, ranging from an Apache warrior to a
Zulu tribesman. All of them had to be adept in negotiating their home turf. But Doc
Savage’s work took him to all parts of the globe and he needed to be prepared for
outdoor activities from the Arctic to the Equator. So in combining these skills, the
bronze man had become the greatest woodsman of them all.

Although the woods hereabouts left a lot to be desired in terms of concealing properties,
and nothing existed to permit the bronze man to leap from tree to tree as he liked
to do, jungle-style, Doc made his silent way to a mouth of one of the caves.

Entering said cave might be another matter entirely.

Hunkering down behind a boulder that was balanced in an unnatural way, Doc studied
the mouth of the place. It looked natural enough. It was stony, which suggested that
these hills were more rock than soil.

The thought passed through the bronze man’s mind that such a network of caves, whether
connected or not, might have been worked as mines in the past. Sometimes even exhausted
mines could be reopened to advantage.

He searched his retentive memory for what metals were common in this part of the Balkans,
or had been in historic times. Gold and silver, certainly. But Ultra-Stygia had never
been a gold field of any consequence. Other metals, of course, possessed commercial
value, copper for example. Platinum was possible, too. Coal was common as well.

Dismissing that subject from his consciousness, Doc began creeping up on the yawning
cave.

He decided that the best approach was to climb the overhanging hill to a point just
above the cavern mouth and peer down from safety.

He did so.

Ironically, this put him in the position of hanging with his head down, rather like
a bat. Bats prefer to sleep in an upside-down position, hanging by their feet, head
downward, wings tucked in.

Lowering his head, Doc peered into the cave.

All was dark. The smell coming from the opening was earthy, unpleasant. It smelled
like the den of something. He saw nothing. From his equipment vest came his spring-generator
flashlight. He dared a quick flash ray.

It disclosed nothing more interesting than the interior gullet of a cave.

Rolling down from his perch, Doc became suspended by his fingers. He let drop to the
earth and began inching forward, using his flashbeam sparingly, turning it on and
off, giving the generator a wind now and then.

The earthen floor became moist and slippery the farther in Doc went. Directing the
ray to his feet, he noticed a coating of slime. Grayish stuff. Splashing the ray along
the walls, Doc saw more of the same. Some of it had hardened to a grayish-white crust,
like dried toadstools.

This was the source of the earthy smell the bronze man had first detected.

Proceeding cautiously lest he slip, Doc Savage worked deeper into the cave.

It had some qualities of a mine, but of an older sort, hewn from rock long before
modern equipment was devised. Nothing he saw gave any hint as to what had been mined
here in olden days.

After a while, Doc detected a familiar sound.

It was the mad funeral melody again!

He paused, attempting to find the insane sound with his acute ears. It was definitely
coming from within the deeper recesses of the cave, or mine, as it were.

From a pocket, Doc extracted two objects. One looked like a camera, but with a dark
lens. The other was a pair of thick goggles. He put on the goggles and pressed a switch
on the camera-like device. The thick-lensed goggles operated on a principle similar
to that of a fluoroscope.

This was a more compact and correspondingly less powerful edition of his big ultra-violet
projector. Good for only a few rods. The goggles translated the invisible “black-light”
ray into visual images. This was done electrically. These goggles were more compact
than the binoculars, and again were less acute. The pictures tended toward distortion.

Still, this allowed Doc to move ahead without betraying his presence by employing
any detectable light sources.

UP ahead, the cave entrance split into two forks, a greater and a lesser. The unearthly
music appeared to be coming from the lesser. That was the fork Doc Savage chose.

Proceeding down this, he entered an area of hideous stalactites and stalagmites. Like
closing fangs, these grew in great stony profusion. Under the shifting black light,
they were shadowy and stark.

In the interstices between these, hung limp membranous forms.
Bats!

These were the normal-sized variety. Evidently, they did not see him, for they slumbered
on undisturbed, huddled in their enwrapping wings.

After a bit, Doc Savage grew curious. The bats should have stirred by now. And since
they are creatures whose eyes are not very good, they should have smelled him. Their
lack of stirring was also unusual.

So Doc took a chance and pegged a small stone in the direction of one cluster.

He managed to strike a bat in its brown-furred body. It fell from its perch, landing
on its head. It did not rise or otherwise flap its folded wings.

Going to the thing, Doc nudged it with a toe. The curled-up bat did not respond. It
had been alive once, but was now dead. Examining the claws, the bronze man saw signs
where glue had been used to affix the animal to its anchorage. There were clear signs
that this had once been a live specimen that had been stuffed by a taxidermist.

Doc’s trilling coursed briefly, but he got hold of it. Evidently, these bats were
affixed to the cavern walls to discourage exploration.

Moving along, Doc came to an area that was widening and heard something that sounded
like footsteps, accompanied by a leathery rustling and flapping. These were no natural
sounds, so Doc Savage prudently hung back in concealing shadows.

Voices began speaking. They were excited. He could not distinguish individual words,
and the accents were strange. But this was a land of unusual accents, at least to
American ears.

Pressing his great body between two stout stalagmites, Doc made himself immobile.

The excited chattering continued. Intermixed with it was a noisy clattering, as of
a typewriter. Remembering Long Tom’s description of a monotonous typewriting sound
in cabin B-12 of the liner
Transylvania,
Doc listened carefully.

He could make little of the sounds, which might have been produced by a very skilled
typist working an electric typewriter with smooth, steady precision.

At length, the clicking paused. A hurried series of movements suggested bodies racing
about with urgent alacrity.

Doc waited. The mad footsteps were rushing his way.

Remaining immobile in the clotted darkness, Doc watched unseen as a cluster of upright
beings charged by.

They looked leathery, their heads furred, black eyes goggling in a strange way. Arms
pumping as they ran flapped grotesquely, due to membranes stretched between them and
their unwholesome-looking bodies.

They resembled upright human bats racing by!

Doc allowed them to pass. Then he eased out of concealment, making his way toward
the source of the music, which continued uninterrupted, accompanied by the robot-like
clicking of keys.

As it happened, a straggler came into view.

He—or it—spotted Doc Savage. Atop its head, pointed devil ears seemed to become erect.
Heels going into a skid, the creature gave out a very bat-like squeak. Arms to which
were attached membranous wings flapped, windmilling frantically.

It appeared that the thing wanted to take flight. A moment later, it became obvious
that it was only trying to regain its awkward balance.

This failed. The thing landed on its leathery tail.

Doc Savage pounced, found the thing’s furry jaw, and stunned it with one bronze-knuckled
fist.

The human harpy subsided; its smoky black eyes remained open and staring, however.

Giving it very little attention, Doc Savage moved to the source of the disturbing
sounds.

He discovered a room carved out of the stone of the hill. A wooden door hung ajar.
Doc opened this further, entered.

A droplight illuminated a small desk surface. There were chairs. Ordinary wooden chairs,
as might be purchased in any furniture store.

Doc doused his black-light projector and doffed the fluoroscopic goggles.

In one corner sat a console radio receiver, no different from any that might dominate
a living room in Manhattan or Pristav. The glow of the dial told Doc Savage that it
was tuned to a commercial radio station.

ON the table reposed a machine which resembled an electric typewriter, except that
it was mounted on a very thick base. Otherwise, it appeared to be an ordinary typewriter.

The keys were clicking busily. But there was no person seated in the chair, and no
fingers typing away! Just the phantom action of the keys.

A continuous sheet of paper rolled up from a cardboard box into the platen of the
device as the keys continued typing uninterrupted words onto the moving roll.

Doc Savage examined these lines as they were typed. The language employed was the
national tongue of Egallah. The words were crisp, and efficiently composed. They had
the quality of a military directive.

Reading along, Doc comprehended a great deal after very little effort. He transferred
his scrutiny to the device itself, attempting to understand the nature and construction
of the thing.

After a bit, he walked over to the radio and shut it off. The weird music instantly
ceased. The miniature teletype machine—for that was what it appeared to be—also stopped
working.

Doc turned on the radio set once more. Music again poured forth from the speaker grille.
The typewriter keys resumed clacking away.

When Doc returned to read more, he noticed that a sentence or two was missing from
the trend of the report.

Another paragraph of this intent perusal and Doc Savage was suddenly plunging out
of the room and down the corridor.

The bronze man moved with the blinding speed for which he was famed. But the slippery
floor defeated him somewhat.