Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

"Precisely what do you want of me?"

"I want you to go with me to that island in the Galapagos and help free scores of poor devils — shipwrecked seamen — digging their way to death in the honeycomb pits."

"Purely an appeal in the name of humanity?"

"Yes. Although in freeing those others, you may also be in time to save one of your own men — Professor William Harper Littlejohn, who is also a shipwreck victim of my mysterious brother."

The little man had meant this to be a smashing climax to his appeal. But if he expected Doc to show surprise over the information, he was disappointed.

Doc said merely, "How do you know about this?"

"I was on the island at the time my brother caused your aid's boat to be wrecked. Since then, I escaped."

"You have come directly to me?"

"Yes. And thereby saved my life!"

"How do you explain the Redbeach ambush?"

"I arranged for the house some time ago without seeing it, expecting eventually to make it my permanent New York address."

The little man's eyes closed weakly. A shudder coursed over him, tremoring the very tip of his beard.

"My fiendish brother anticipates every move I make! His hand is long and ruthless. He caused the trap to be set for me at Redbeach Road. He caused the centipede trap to be set for me here, thus bringing tragedy to those two — the policeman and the elevator starter."

Doc put another question to Boris Ramadanoff. "You have charts which will enable us to fly directly to the island?"

"But yes. They are at your disposal."

"How soon can we see them?"

"At your convenience. Immediately, if you wish."

"The sooner, the better," Doc said.

Ramadanoff bowed. "My thought exactly. Perhaps you will be moved to accompany me now to my hotel apartment? We will go over the charts — perhaps plan a course of action — while we have tea."

Doc assented. As he and Ramadanoff were leaving, the bronze man advised Renny: "Best stay where you can keep in touch with Long Tom and myself."

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

In Ramadanoff's apartment — the apartment was like a thousand others in the metropolis — Doc sat studying charts while Boris Ramadanoff brewed tea in the next room.

Soon the little man came out smiling. "The day for me is not complete without my tea. You will join me, no?"

Doc nodded shortly and fired questions relative to directional bearings on the unknown island. The other answered concisely. Then excusing himself, he left the room and returned with a silver tray bearing 2 crystal glasses two-thirds filled with pale tea and a steaming china-lined silver pot.

"Please," he said, holding the tray before Doc.

Doc took one of the glasses and touched his lips to it. There were 2 reasons why he did not drink more. One reason was that he did not commonly indulge in stimulants of any kind, reserving them only for their proper emergency use. The other reason was that his acutely developed taste warned him of a foreign substance in the tea.

"You do not care for it?" Ramadanoff asked solicitously. "It is made in my own samovar which I carry with me always. But perhaps you do not like the flavor of the Galapagos herbs which I add to the tea to give it its unusual tang?"

Doc's gold-flecked eyes bored steadily at Ramadanoff.

"It is not the herbs to which I object. It is the poison ."

"What?" The little man's hands, holding the tray, started shaking so that tea splashed from the spout of the silver pot.

"Poison," Doc repeated.

" Poison?" Ramadanoff gasped incredulously.

He sat the tray on a low table and reached out for Doc's glass. "Allow me," he murmured.

He raised the glass to his nose, sniffed cautiously. His face went white to the roots of his beard. The glass slipped from his trembling hand and crashed on the floor.

He slumped in a chair, then roused himself to lean forward and sniff at his own glass. He slumped back again, weakly.

"They are … indeed … poisoned!" he said hoarsely. "We have, Sir, very narrowly escaped death."

"Do you recognize the active agent?" Doc asked, quietly.

"Yes, since you have called my attention to it."

"What is it?"

"A vegetable poison known, to the best of my belief, only to that Galapagos madman — my brother!"

Doc Savage continued to hide his reactions behind a mask of bronze immobility. "You can explain?" he asked.

Ramadanoff covered his face with trembling hands. 2 gems on finger rings flashed a weird menace against his white hands. One of the gems was an emerald, thicker than a man's thumb. The other was a rubyof equal size and fineness.

"No," the little man moaned. "I cannot explain. As you yourself are aware, I left the room where I was preparing the tea for only a moment."

A new voice sounded — mockingly — in the still room. "The moment was ample!"

At sound of the voice, Ramadanoff stiffened in his chair as though an electric current had jolted through his body. He jerked his head from side-to-side, peering — with a groan — through spread fingers. He saw nothing to explain the mocking voice.

His writhing lips wrenched words.

"It is our doom — the Devil's Honeycomb !" He husked the meaningless phrase again: "The Devil's Honeycomb … " His tortured voice trailed into silence.

Only his long, tapered fingers moved, digging in agony into the flesh of his face. And the gems on his fingers protruded from the whiteness of hands like baleful eyes.

When that mocking voice filled the room, Doc's action was in marked contradiction to Ramadanoff's. The bronze man sat perfectly still, relaxed.

Out of the dead hush, his voice sounded. It was controlled and compelling.

"Come and join our tea party," he suggested.

Another crawling hush followed Doc Savage's calm pronouncement. Then the closet door burst open. A man shouldered out, cuddling a submachine-gun. The man was the same bullet-headed, hair-clipped individual who had posed as Boris Ramadanoff at 33 Redbeach Road.

While he kept Doc under the machine-gun muzzle, the man's gutteral voice chopped orders. 2 men armed with automatics sidled in from the next room. And 2 more machine-gunners came in through the French windows from the fire escape.

The 5 guns covered Doc and Ramadanoff in a close, deadly ring.

The bullet-headed man's blond face was a fiery red from the excitement of his triumph. His blue eyes glittered with cold malignity as he looked at Doc.

"I promised you," he gloated, voice thick with his foreign accent, "that the next time, we would use more than our fists. And I promise you now that at the slightest sign of resistance, you will eat lead from 5 guns!"

"Interesting," Doc said quietly, remaining relaxed in the chair. "What do you want of me?"

The man with the close-cropped hair scowled. "I'll do the questioning. You figured we were here, didn't you?"

Doc nodded. "You made some slight sounds. And there was your bodily odor, which carefully trained nostrils could detect."

The other snarled nervously, "Why didn't you do something about it if you knew you were on a spot?"

Doc started stretching his arms leisurely. "I intend to."

"The Devil you do!" The machine-gun jerked. The bullet head jerked, too. The thin lips barked an order. "Rats, the handcuffs! Get the big one first!"

A thin man with ratty eyes — one of those carrying an automatic — wrestled handcuffs from his pocket and approached Doc. He walked warily, his swarthy face apprehensive.

Sitting in his chair, Doc continued his leisurely stretching until his arms were straightened out from his body in the form of a cross. The rat-eyed man with the handcuffs stared helplessly with panic gripping him as he found himself so close to those great, cabled fists.