Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (8 page)

Long Tom could spy a castle on a knob of a hill. Tazan was a principality, and still
ruled by royalty. Black funeral flags chattered in the wind. All visible national
flags flew at half mast. The nation was still in mourning for their ruler, the former
playboy prince, who had perished in the Arctic during the grim affair orchestrated
by John Sunlight, whom Long Tom Roberts fervently wished moldered among the dead of
history.

When the gangplank was lowered, Long Tom stationed himself on the port rail where
he watched every passenger disembark. He counted them carefully, for he had a hunch.

As hunches went, it paid off beautifully—at first.

As the last group of passengers crowded the top of the gangplank, bundled up against
a biting winter wind, Long Tom counted and recounted their number. On the third recount,
he was certain of his findings.

The number of passengers who had left New York—including those who had either disembarked
or boarded at Southampton—was the same! In other words, there was no missing passenger—never
mind three!

Long Tom shoved forward, began searching the faces. Many men wore their hats with
the brims pulled down and not a few wore their overcoats with lapels lifted against
the coastal winds. Recognizing individual faces was not an easy thing.

But Long Tom had excellent eyes and soon spotted his man.

It was Emile Zirn! He was stepping onto the gangplank. Zirn wore a Borsalino hat,
wide brim pulled low. The generous collar of his camel hair overcoat stood up, not
quite concealing his close-shaven cheeks. He toted only one item of luggage. It resembled
a portable typewriter case, but was far bulkier in heft.

Pointing, Long Tom shouted, “Stop that man!”

Instead, two stewards rushed up to arrest Long Tom.

He got disentangled from them and produced a business card—his real one. This brought
forth apologies and offers of assistance.

By then, Emile Zirn—if that was the man’s true name—had been bustled into a waiting
sedan by two men who were there to meet him. One accepted the typewriter case and
there was a great deal of congratulatory handshaking. The sedan whined away, its tail
pipe expelling cold fumes.

Long Tom hailed a taxi and said, “Follow that sedan!”

The taxi man understood English. Some, at any rate.

“Which sedan?” he asked politely.

“Never mind,” said Long Tom, exiting the hack. “Shove over.”

The driver resisted Long Tom’s attempt to take the wheel from him, so the puny electrical
wizard gave him a quieting sock on the jaw, which had the added benefit of throwing
the hackie into the seat opposite.

Long Tom shut the driver’s door behind him, took the wheel. The cab surged out of
the waiting area, and away into busy traffic.

Long Tom had managed to keep the other sedan in sight and fell in behind it.

Traffic was a confused clot of machines. Many were older models. Most drove decorously,
owing to a recent dusting of snow which, under the steady pressure of tires, was turning
to a slippery brown slop.

Long Tom kept the sedan in sight as it wended its way through the picturesque city.
He passed three statues of the late king. All were draped in black crepe.

The sedan’s destination was not long in coming.

It was the Naxa—a new luxury hotel situated near the government zone.

“Luck for a change,” Long Tom muttered.

He didn’t think so when he barged into the modernistic reception area and confronted
the startled clerk.

“Three men just checked in, one named Emile Zirn. What room did they take?”

The clerk said stiffly, “No one by that name is registered in this hotel. And who
are you?”

Long Tom hesitated. He did not want the local press to know that he was in Tazan;
hotel staff are notorious tipsters.

“Walter Brunk,” he clipped out, producing his card. “Investigating an international
jewelry-smuggling ring. Now about the three men who just checked in—”

“Room 44. I can provide you with a spare key…?”

The man took the key off a brass hook and dangled it out of reach. Obviously, he was
angling for a tip.

Long Tom produced a five-dollar bill from his billfold and the frown that descended
upon the clerk’s long face exceeded his own. Long Tom switched to a ten, but this
produced no facial alterations.

Reluctantly, the electrical wizard parted with a twenty-dollar bill and the key found
its way into his outstretched palm.

After Long Tom disappeared from the lobby, the clerk picked up a telephone and asked
the switchboard to connect him with a certain room. When he had his connection, an
excited exchange commenced. Had Long Tom Roberts overheard it, and understood the
language being spoken, he might have reversed his course and hastily exited the Naxa.

For the conversation was couched, not in the language of Tazan, but rather in the
tongue of Tazan’s Balkan rival, Egallah!

Unsuspecting, Long Tom took the stairs to the fourth floor and crept along a well-carpeted
corridor redolent of some floral scent. He turned toward the battery of elevator shafts,
and halted sharply after a single step.

The stretch of corridor was dark. Illumination was furnished by indirect wall lights.
These were dark.

Reaching into a pocket, the slender electrical wizard produced a small flashlight.
This operated by a spring-generator, which required winding at intervals. Long Tom
had given the device a brisk wind before entering the hotel. He thumbed it on, raced
it around.

The carpet underfoot was a rich, expensive purple, with a nap that felt inches deep.

Long Tom stopped quickly, picked up the glittering object which had caught his eye.
He turned it curiously in his hand, tingling with sudden interest.

It was a penknife, the uselessly small gold-handled variety that snaps on the end
of a watch chain. It lay close beside the door through which Long Tom had just passed.
Anyone going up or down the corridor could have dropped it there accidentally.

But the single blade had been melted off for half its length. It was stained a metallic
blue as if it had been exposed to terrific heat.

Immediately above the spot where it had lain was a wall socket into which the hotel
chambermaid probably plugged the vacuum cleaner used to tidy up the corridor carpet.
The receptacle was burned about the edges.

Long Tom dropped the knife into his pocket. It was obvious that someone had thrust
the blade into the wall socket. That would blow out the fuses—and put out the lights.

Dousing his flash, Long Tom proceeded, displaying even more caution than previously.

Coming to Room 44, he halted, ears sharpening.

The unearthly music the slender electrical expert had twice heard aboard the
Transylvania
came floating out from behind the closed door!

Moving cautiously, Long Tom sidled up to the door, placed an oversized ear to the
panel.

Inside, a clattering came through the thick panel. It was mechanical and went on and
on, as a kind of counterpoint to the music, whose wavering strains suggested a dying
thing from another sphere. It brought the gooseflesh rising on Long Tom’s forearms
and prickled his scalp. He rubbed the back of his neck as he contemplated his next
move.

Long Tom’s ears were large enough to be serviceable. But the sounds emanating from
the hotel room occupied one ear entirely. The other one, he was not focusing on. His
weight lay against the panel, so eager was the electrical wizard to capture every
sound within.

Consequently, Long Tom failed to hear the panel directly behind him fall open, and
a shadowy figure begin creeping up behind him. The deep nap of the carpet absorbed
all footfalls. The absence of lights also aided the stealthy one.

Thus it was that when two hands seized him, Long Tom Roberts was caught entirely unawares.

“Hey!” he howled. “Wha—?”

Something made a swishing sound and Long Tom saw stars.
“Ahr-r-r!”

Dazed, Long Tom was hauled backwards, and snatched through the open door of the room
from which his attacker had stolen. The door clapped shut and many hands caught at
him, snatching and grabbing roughly.

THE room within was blacked out in some manner. It was a warm box of ink. A steam
radiator could be heard clanking. Long Tom plunged into it and the door clapped shut
behind him.

Scrambling to his feet, the electrical wizard was momentarily disoriented.

The sounds of the music and the accompanying clattering came, muffled and indistinct,
as if from far away. He peered about. Discerned nothing.

But Long Tom could sense that he was surrounded by shadowy figures. They pressed close.
There was something about them that evoked a palpable aura of malevolence.

Fishing into a pocket, he found his flashlight, drew it out. His thumb felt for the
button.

Abruptly, the flash was knocked from Long Tom’s hand!

Long Tom was no slouch in the pugilistic department. Even though he could not see,
he lashed out with a fist and connected to a jaw. It felt human enough, but there
was the strange sensation of his knuckles skidding off tough hide.

That foe fell backward, making a weird flapping pelican sort of sound.

Suddenly, Long Tom smelled leather. To his mind came the familiar aroma of old boxing
gloves.

Several figures closed in. Long Tom lashed out. This time his fists impacted things
that were not jaws. They, too, felt smooth and leathery.

The huddling things swallowed him in an embrace that felt like bundled wings. Great
leather wings.

Reaching for his supermachine pistol, Long Tom never got it out of its armpit holster.
Hands clutched at him. They felt like claws. They tore at his hat, his hair, seized
his arms and wrists. Before he knew it, Long Tom was being pushed to the carpet by
unseen horrors that flapped and breathed weirdly in their exertions.

In a normal fight, Long Tom could whip a half-dozen men before breakfast. A full dozen
after his morning eggs.

But under these circumstances and handicapped as he was, the weird things smothered
him into helplessness.

“What—are—you—birds!” he jerked out.

But the only reply was horrid, eerie music that penetrated his brain as if it, too,
were attacking him.

Something—it felt like a webbed hand—covered his mouth and nose, shutting off oxygen.

Long Tom fought back, wrestled hard, but there was something in the unhuman hand.
Something unpleasant. It filled his straining nostrils. Chloroform! He felt his last
senses ebbing, and the darkness that surrounded him soon became absolute.…

Weighted and pressed to the floor, Long Tom’s undersized form gave out a last spasmodic
jerk, then relaxed.

One by one, the leathery attackers climbed back to their feet.

In the darkness, a steamer trunk was produced and Long Tom was thrown into it. The
lid dropped over his slender form with the finality of a coffin closing.

By then, the faraway uncanny music had faded into silence.

A SILVER-COLORED aircraft dropped out of the sky over the upper Hudson River. Silent
as the wind, it skimmed over the rushing water rather low, then hiked around to drag
the river once more.

Finally it alighted, floats smashing water, motors reversing, and ran over to the
concrete ramp of a vault-like warehouse built on a pier on the Hudson side of Manhattan.

Engines revving anew, the pilot guided the craft up this ramp under power. Riverward
doors opened and the amphibian surged up into the confines of the long brick structure.

The door closed. On the side facing land was an old sign. It read:

HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY

When the amphibian came to a rest, a hatch popped and out shouldered Monk Mayfair,
followed by Ham Brooks. They were arguing, as usual.

Monk batted Ham’s cane out of his ribs.

“Did I poke you?” the dapper lawyer asked innocently.

“You sure did,” snarled Monk. “And I just want to tell you, I’ve been promising the
Devil a man a long time, and you certainly do resemble my promise.”

“I have always suspected you of being an overgrown imp from the lower regions,” sniffed
Ham.

Doc Savage emerged last.

“Want me to refuel this ark?” asked Monk.

The bronze man shook his head. “We will take the new transoceanic. Prepare it for
a hop to Europe, or any other spot on a moment’s notice,” he stated.

“Gotcha, Doc,” said Monk. He ambled off.

It could be seen that the vault-like interior housed an amazing array of ultra-modern
craft. There were other planes, ranging from a small racer that was all motor to a
big twin-engine flying boat. There was also a cabin autogyro, a strange-looking submarine
in a dry dock and, most amazing of all, a dirigible hung under the rafters. This was
Doc Savage’s fleet of globe-girdling craft.

Monk got to work on the big flying boat, which alone of the fleet was painted bronze.

Ham set to refreshing the stores of ammunition and other equipment that had been expended
during their last adventure. Boxes of supplies came out of a storage locker.

During this activity, an electric light began flashing and a shrill whining came from
a far corner.

“That’s the telephone,” Ham announced.

Doc Savage moved to the closest instrument, picked it up and said, “Hello, Pat.”

A surprised female voice exclaimed, “Have you added psychic to your list of talents?
How did you know it was me?”

“A new device I am testing,” explained Doc. “It is rigged so that when a known number
rings this line, the light flashes in a prearranged rhythm. This flashing is intermittent
and excitable, which told me it was you.”

“Are you implying that I am of the excitable persuasion?”

“At this moment, your voice is,” returned Doc dryly.

“It so happens that I have a mystery for you to solve. It landed on my doorstep.”