Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (9 page)

A touch of concern entered the bronze man’s well-modulated voice. “Say again?”

“Someone sent me a package. I imagine they thought it would get to you through me
faster than if it was expressed to your headquarters.”

A repressed urgency threaded the big bronze man’s tone. “What type of package?”

“Oh, it was a steamer trunk. The usual thing. It landed at my beauty salon—”

“No, what was in the package?”

“A raccoon coat.”

“That is all?” queried Doc.

“No, sitting on it was Eloise.”

“Eloise?”

“I think,” Pat suggested, “you ought to swing by and see Eloise for yourself.”

“We will be right there. In the meantime, don’t touch anything!”

“Too late.”

“I mean it, Pat.”

But Pat Savage had already hung up. She was Doc Savage’s cousin, and a frequent horner-in
on his adventures, much to the bronze man’s unalloyed displeasure.

Doc Savage called to the others. “Monk. Ham. There may be trouble at Pat’s place.”

“What kind of trouble?” inquired Ham, giving his slim dark cane a spin.

“Package from an unknown party.”

Monk growled, “We’d better haul our freight over there.”

Doc Savage went to a gunmetal gray sedan with a long nose and a generous wheelbase.
He climbed behind the wheel, Monk and Ham jumping aboard as Doc got the car in motion.
The bronze man was wasting no time.

The doors facing the street rolled up as if by magic, and the sedan slid into traffic.
A radio signal from the vehicle had actuated a mechanism, which impelled the electric
doors to open. All of Doc’s machines were thus equipped.

PATRICIA, INCORPORATED, was an establishment off Park Avenue catering to the upper
crust of Manhattan womanhood. It was a combination beauty salon and gymnasium. There,
a woman of means could have her hair coiffed, her face encased in a mudpack and unwanted
pounds taken off with various machines designed for that exact purpose. It was all
very high-brow.

Doc Savage pushed into the modernistic lobby and a polished blonde receptionist stood
up, her mouth dropping open.

“M-Mr. Savage! Wh-what are you doing here?” she blurted out. “I mean, I will fetch
Miss Savage.”

Although it was no secret that Patricia, Incorporated, was owned by Doc Savage’s cousin,
the bronze man was not known to enter the establishment, as a rule. So his arrival
occasioned quite a flurry and fluttering among staff and customers both.

Doc followed the receptionist to Patricia’s private office.

A bronze-haired girl with a coat of tan to match stood up from her desk and beamed
perfect teeth. Her eyes sparkled with a golden glint that caught the attention. This
was Patricia Savage. Her beauty made all others resemble wilted flowers.

“Doc!” she hailed. “Meet Eloise!”

Sitting on the desk was a hairy creature which regarded them with gimlet eyes.

“Hey, it’s a monkey!” howled Monk.

The monkey took one look at the apish chemist and placed both hands atop her head
as if encountering a long-lost relative. She gave out a sharp squeak and dived under
the desk.

Pat reached down and pulled Eloise out by her tail, which nature had decorated with
raccoon-like rings.

“Pat,” Doc said sternly. “Set the monkey down.”

Pretty Pat made a face. “Why, Eloise doesn’t bite. Or at least she hasn’t yet.” Doc
Savage removed his coat and used it to gather up the monkey.

Eloise was not happy. She struggled, but the bronze man made his metallic hands into
a vise to keep her from escaping.

Ham Brooks moved in and scrutinized the struggling creature.

“Reminds me of my pet ape, Chemistry,” he sniffed.

“Maybe you can marry them off and I’ll get some peace,” grunted Monk.

“You nitwit! At least I possess a pet suitable for a gentleman. Not a pig.”

The dapper lawyer was not calling the apish chemist a pig. Rather, Monk had a pet
porker. He carried it everywhere he went.

“What are you looking for?” Pat was asking Doc Savage.

Doc said nothing. His face had fallen into lines of vague concern—vague because emotion
was something he was schooled to suppress. Doc rarely displayed outward feeling. He
was showing a little now and to those who knew him well, it was as if a siren was
going off.

Doc reminded, “You mentioned a raccoon coat.”

Pat went to a closet and produced the coat. It was a long thing of the species college
students had been wearing a few years ago, but the fad had abated and now they were
rarely seen.

“It doesn’t fit me, and raccoon is passé, anyway. I wouldn’t be caught dead in such
a fur. Notice that it’s ringed like Eloise’s tail. I deduced there must be a connection.
Why else would they be sent together?”

“Was there a return address?” asked Doc, golden eyes steady.

“No, only this.” From a desk drawer, pretty Pat produced a folded sheet of paper.
She unfolded it and showed it to Doc, who never released his grip on the squirming
ring-tailed monkey.

The note read:

THESE TWO ITEMS, IF UNDERSTOOD PROPERLY, WILL REVEAL A RIDDLE AS OLD AS TIME.

It was unsigned.

A trilling emerged from Doc’s parted lips. It careened, displaying a wondering quality,
then keyed up into a sound resembling apprehension.

“Pat,” Doc said gravely, “place the note on the desk and please wash your hands thoroughly.”

Pat frowned. “Why?”

“Germs.”

Pat made a face. “That monkey doesn’t look very germy to me. In fact, I think you
should apologize to Eloise for insulting her that way.”

“Pat,” said Doc sternly.

“Oh, all right.” Pat went to a washroom and the sounds of rushing water came.

“I think it would be advisable if we all took a ride,” Doc announced upon her return.

“Where to?” asked Pat, growing suspicious.

“It would be best not to say.”

Doc spoke to Ham in Mayan, the language they used to converse with one another, but
which Pat did not know.

Frowning darkly, Ham availed himself of a telephone and placed a call.

“Are we all going to the circus?” Pat wanted to know. When no one smiled, she added,
“That was my idea of a joke.”

“This is no joke, Pat,” Doc told her in a grave voice.

“I am,” she returned seriously, “beginning to believe you.”

Pat Savage wore an astonished look on her face when a private ambulance pulled up
to the curb and two white-coated attendants were inviting her onto a gurney.

“What is this!” she said huffily. “I am not ill!”

Doc advised, “You can go under your own power. But you are going, young lady.”

“My fair foot!”

Ham interjected, “Do you fail to realize how many people have mailed bombs or death
devices to Doc’s headquarters, only to be intercepted before they can do harm?”

Pat eyed them skeptically. “A raccoon coat and a ring-tailed monkey? The worst that
could come of this is a dose of fleas.”

Doc grasped her arm, said quietly, “Better to take precautions now than to have regrets
later on.”

“Oh, all right.”

Pat walked out to the ambulance and got onto the gurney of her own free will. With
grim efficiency, the internes strapped her onto the thing. This was shoved into the
back. The door slammed shut and the machine pulled away, its gong clanging disconsolately
through mid-town traffic.

Doc followed in his gunmetal sedan. Once out of Manhattan, the ambulance driver shut
off his gong and settled down for what proved to be a protracted drive north.

THE trip took two hours. During the long drive, Pat Savage craned her face so that
it became visible at the rear window and, knowing that Doc Savage was an expert lip
reader, mouthed the words, “Am I being kidnapped?”

Behind the wheel, Doc Savage shook his head in the negative. He was an expert lip-reader.

Into the trunk, Doc had placed the raccoon coat and the ring-tailed monkey. He hadn’t
liked doing that, but it was necessary. Eloise finally quieted down after some twenty
minutes.

It was dusk when they pulled into a gated fence surrounding a cluster of gray stone
buildings huddled under the shadow of an immense rocky hill.

This was Doc Savage’s “crime college.” Nestled in the foothills of a wilderness mountain
range, this facility was a secret just as great as Doc’s Arctic sanctuary. Here, criminals
captured by the bronze man were spirited, to be reeducated and taught a new trade.

Heart of this complex was a hospital, where the unique brain surgeries were performed
by a team of specialists in Doc’s employ. These delicate operations removed any criminal
proclivities by correcting a malfunctioning gland the bronze man had determined governed
bad behavior.

Three men stood waiting for them at the hospital portion of the institution. They
were garbed in green surgical gowns and caps, swatches of cloth pulled tightly over
their lower faces. With only their eyes showing, they looked forbidding.

“We’ll take her from here, sir,” they told Doc Savage as Pat Savage was rolled out.
She jumped to her feet, having undone her straps along the way.

Pat demanded, “Doc, what’s going on here! Who are these Dr. Frankensteins?”

Doc said, “Pat, go with them.”

Pat stamped her foot. “Not until I know more.”

“This is in the nature of a private hospital,” explained the bronze man. “You will
be subjected to tests to determine whether or not you need to be quarantined.”

Pat placed brown fists on hips with stubborn resolve. “I get it now!” she flashed.
“You want to hog this mystery all for yourself. Well, I won’t stand for it!”

“It is nothing of the sort,” returned Doc, with just a touch of indignation. Pat was
always accusing him of not wanting her involved in his affairs. It was the truth.
But the bronze man rarely resorted to subterfuges—and then only when he believed Pat’s
life was at risk. She was his only living relative.

“Is that so?” countered Pat. “What about the time that you—”

Pat let out a gentle sigh and her eyes began fluttering. For, unbeknownst to her,
one of the surgeons had inserted the needle of a syringe into her shoulder. Surreptitiously,
Doc had signaled for the action to be taken.

Pat’s knees buckled. To her credit, she swayed, out on her feet, somehow managing
not to fall.

Doc caught her gently, and bore her into the grim gray building.

An examination room had been prepared, and Pat was laid out on a table.

Swiftly, the bronze man donned surgical mask, gown and gloves. He ignored his cousin
and immediately opened the case in which Eloise the ring-tailed monkey had been carried.
Monk had toted it from the car.

Doc Savage took his time. Using gloved fingers, he spread the monkey’s fur, exposing
the pale skin and examining carefully. When he was done with the tiny scalp, he moved
down the body, finally scrutinizing the ringed tail.

His trilling piped up, profoundly disturbed. With a glass pipette, he took a sample
of what he found and bottled it.

Next, he turned his attention to the raccoon coat. This received the same kind of
examination. Once again, Doc found something of interest and removed a particle of
matter with a pipette. It resembled a tiny white snowflake.

“This coat is too dangerous to keep as evidence,” Doc told one surgeon. “Burn this
in the incinerator.”

“At once, Dr. Savage.”

The coat was returned to its box and carried away.

DOC turned his attention to a microscope of good quality. This reposed on a work table.
He placed a sample from one pipette onto a slide and examined this.

His trilling started, stopped, started again, as if the bronze man were attempting
to throttle it, but his mind would not stay on the task.

The second sample was examined next, then Doc turned to the attending doctor.

“I am afraid that this monkey must be destroyed.”

“I will attend to it,” said the surgeon, placing the limp form in the valise and bearing
it away.

Doc had changed gloves each time—and now he was donning new ones.

He checked Pat Savage’s scalp, found nothing, and turned his attention to her arms,
rolling up both sleeves and examining the skin. Finding nothing remarkable, he removed
her shoes and checked her feet.

The big bronze man was tense as he did so, but as his examination progressed, he seemed
to relax slightly, in stages, while still remaining intent upon his work.

A few moments later, Doc stripped off his mask and gown, placed them in a laundry
bag—gloves last—and emerged.

“Burn this bag,” he told an orderly.

Monk and Ham rushed up, faces worried.

“What’s the word, Doc?” asked Ham.

“Pat will have to be quarantined for a week,” Doc directed. “It will be wise to keep
her under observation for an additional two months to be certain that she is not infected.”

“What’s she got?” Monk muttered.

“Let us hope,” the bronze man said, “that she will develop no symptoms of what she
was exposed to. For it is invariably fatal.”

Monk and Ham raced one another to turn as pale as shocked ghosts.

The dapper lawyer found his tongue first.

“Were there germs on the coat or the monkey?”

Doc nodded. “I found specimens of the agent of death on both.”

“Blazes!” gulped Monk.

Ham wrung the barrel of his cane in gloved fingers. “I am thinking that this was not
an attempt on Pat’s life,” he ventured.

“Precisely,” said Doc Savage. “Someone wished to assassinate me and, knowing the kind
of precautions I normally take, employed a more circuitous route.”

Smacking one furry fist into an open palm as big as a catcher’s mitt, Monk growled,
“And, mystery-hound that she is, Pat fell for it like a ton of bricks! I’d like to
get my hooks on the necks of them that perpetrated this scheme.”

Ham worried his stick distractedly. “Doc,” he said, “do you think this could be the
handiwork of….”

“It is diabolical enough to be John Sunlight’s doing,” admitted Doc. “All available
evidence was that he was consumed by a marauding polar bear up in the Arctic. But
we cannot afford to ignore any possibility, or fail to follow any trail.”