Part 2 (2/2)
”They were trying to make Jep tell them where they could find us,” the girl said.
”I'd smack the same guess,” old Tex Haven stated mildly.
Tex dragged several seething, acid-tinted puffs of smoke from his pipe, then took the corncob out of his teeth and contemplated it lovingly.
”Such industry needs reward, strikes me,” he said.
His daughter eyed him sharply. ”What do you mean?”
”Ever hear of Doc Savage?”
Doc Savage?”
Yep.
RHODA HAVEN took hold of her lower lip with neat white teeth. She got up, went to the window, pa.s.sed a hand over her forehead, then came back. Her mouth was grim.
”Look,” she said, ”when you defied the j.a.panese army and they chased us all over Manchuria, I didn't object.”
”Come to think of it,” old Tex Haven admitted mildly, ”you didn't.”
”And when you dared the German and Italian navy and landed a s.h.i.+pload of guns in Spain, I still didn't object.”
”There for a while, I was kinda wis.h.i.+n' you had.”
”The point,” the girl said, ”is that you could arrange for us to stage a single-handed duel with the U. S. marines and I would string along with you.”
”You're tryin' to say-””Haven't you ever heard about this Doc Savage?”
”In certain circles,” Tex Haven said dryly, ”more people've heard of Doc Savage than know about Mussolini and Hitler.”
”I don't doubt it.”
”Strikes me,” Tex Haven said, ”that in two hundred years from now, there'll be more in the school books about Doc Savage than there'll be about Mussolini and Hitler.”
”Maybe.”
”Will, if civilization advances any. Times I doubt if it's gonna.”
Rhoda Haven stamped a foot.
”Quit beating around the bush,” she snapped, ”and tell me what you've got up your sleeve.”
”We're going,” Tex Haven said, ”to do Horst and Senor Steel a dirty trick.”
”Dirty trick?”
”We're going to sick Doc Savage onto 'em. Give 'em somethin' to do besides devil us.” Old Tex Haven looked at his daughter and a.s.sumed the expression of a gaunt tomcat surrounded by canary feathers. ”Right pert idea, don't you think?”
”Which one of us is going to sick Doc Savage onto Horst and Senor Steel?” Rhoda Haven demanded.
”You, I reckon. Deceivin' a man is a woman's work.”
Rhoda Haven frowned. ”If I tell Doc Savage the truth, he will be likely to cut loose on us, instead of Horst and Steel.”
Old Tex Haven grinned.
”There won't,” he said, ”be a splinter of truth in anything you tell Doc Savage.”
Chapter IV. THE MISSING MAN.
ABOUT an hour later, Rhoda Haven stood on the sidewalk in front of one of New York's highest buildings. By tilting her head back and straining her eyes, she could just discern the topmost-the eighty-sixth floor-windows, partially enveloped in a low-hanging cloud. Quite a number of people, she imagined, knew that behind those windows was Doc Savage's headquarters. She, herself, had known the fact for some months.
She knew that Doc Savage was an unusual man whose occupation was righting wrongs and punis.h.i.+ng evildoers, frequently traveling to the world's far places to do so. She had heard that Doc Savage, sometimes called the ”Man of Bronze,” had been trained scientifically from childhood for his career, trained so successfully that he was an almost superhuman combination of inventive genius, mental wizard and physical giant.
Personally, Rhoda Haven doubted a great many things she had heard about Doc Savage. He seemed too perfect, too much of a superman. She suspected a good deal of that was hok.u.m.
It was also reported that Doc Savage took no pay for punis.h.i.+ng the evildoers and righting the wrongs, and Rhoda Haven doubted that, too. It did not seem sensible. It was all right for men named Galahad and Lancelot to ride around in medieval literature doing such things, because they possibly never did actually exist. In real life, people expected to get paid for what they did.
Rhoda Haven compressed her lips.
”Still,” she remarked, ”where there is smoke, you generally find a fire.”
By smoke, she meant the reputation of this Doc Savage, a reputation that gave nightmares to crooks, international or otherwise, whenever the name of the Man of Bronze was mentioned. She knew that mention of Doc Savage reallyscared certain kinds of people. She had seen it happen.
Rhoda Haven entered the skysc.r.a.per lobby, which was as vast as the interior of some cathedrals, and took an elevator that traveled upward so swiftly that she had to swallow wildly to equalize the pressure against her eardrums. She found herself standing in a corridor which had one door, an un.o.btrusive, bronze-colored panel lettered simply: CLARK SAVAGE, Jr.
At least,” Rhoda Haven said with some approval, ”he doesn't put on much of a show.”
As a matter of fact, she had heard that Doc Savage dodged newspaper publicity so a.s.siduously that it was almost impossible for a reporter to get an interview with him.
”I wonder,” she added, ”if he believes female lies?”
She knocked on the door.
The door was opened by a man who bore a striking likeness to an extremely long skeleton coated with some sunburned hide.
”Consociative accolades,” he remarked.
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