Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

The crimson was not the most alarming thing. Scattered over the floor were the crushed bodies of fully a dozen centipedes! Hairy legs on some of the broken segments were still writhing.

While Doc's flashlight poked its white beam around the shambles of the room, there came a sound from the hall of a floorboard creaking . Doc whirled crouching a little, the light from his flash snuffing out.

He glided to the wall and waited, frozen close. The creaking from outside the door sounded louder. It paused … started up again … then paused a second time within the doorway. Doc could hear the cautious breathing of the stalker.

The unknown took a wide step to clear the bare floor and land soundlessly on his feet on the carpet. He got his foot on the carpet, all right …Then his whole body left the floor. With his feet as high as his head, he fell heavily on his back.

Doc had taken advantage of opportunity — when the stalker took his wide step — to pull the carpet from under him.

The man's trigger finger started jerking spasmodically. Plaster showered and the room rocked to gun thunder as orange flame stabbed the gray light. Suddenly, the echoing uproar stopped. There was a metallic clatter and a hollow thump. With one leap, Doc had landed in the middle of the room, knocked the gun to the floor with one hand, and whacked the man's head down with the other.

He looked at the man he had knocked unconscious. There was enough light to reveal features. The man was no one Doc had seen before.

But the next moment, Doc was looking upon a face which he had seen before. It was one of the few times in Doc's life that an enemy succeeded in actually surprising him.

A floorboard creaked in the doorway. Doc looked up to find himself covered at deadly range with a submachine-gun. The gunner had been able to advance without being heard because of the uproar the pistol shots had made.

The smooth skin of the man behind the submachine-gun gleamed with pale menace in the half light. The wide mouth opened. Thin lips writhed in triumphant grimace.

The gunner who stood there threatening quick death was Jans Bergman — the man with the close-cropped hair whom Doc had left on 97 thStreet, Manhattan in an apartment with a squad car of the police department closing.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

"There is only one way you could have gotten here so soon," Doc said quietly.

"One way," Bergman agreed with his heavy foreign accent. "In the luggage compartment of your coupe."

"You are clever," Doc said.

"You had a lot on your mind," Bergman said grimly. "That helped. Stowed away in that compartment, I heard the radio 'SOS' that came through from here."

"How did you leave everybody on 97 thStreet?"

"Pretty badly shot up. It was a nice trick — the smoke. But your last trick, I think."

Doc straightened.

"Hold your hands high!" Bergman slashed. "Keep them wide apart! Even the fingers — keep them open."

Doc complied.

"And the feet — step them wide apart."

Doc moved to stand wide-legged.

"That's better," Bergman said. "You don't trick me this time."

Doc stared with a certain grimness into the slitted eyes of his enemy. He spoke what he was thinking.

"But few men have opposed me before and risked another meeting."

"I," Bergman bragged, "am a bold man."

"Perhaps only foolhardy."

"You are the foolhardy one if you think you can outsmart Jans Bergman. Maybe you're wearing bulletproof clothes. Don't depend upon them. My machine-gun lead will push your face out the back of your skull."

Doc shrugged and asked evenly, "Now that you have the bear by the tail, what do you propose to do?"

Bergman stared, slitted eyes glittering. "I'll keep holding the bear by the tail until … until a very few moments. Do you hear what I hear?"

Outside the house, an auto was droning up the driveway. The sound throbbed close, then died. Car doors slammed. Feet scraped across the wooden porch, entered the house.

Bergman yelled, "This way, you guys!"

Foot scufflings, muttered curses sounded closer.

"Inside here," Bergman ordered. "Get a line on him from 4 angles. If he moves a finger a quarter-of-an-inch, let him have it … in the face!"

4 men — black shadows in the gray gloom — eased inside the room and took positions within a yard of Doc, machine-guns poking for his face.

Bergman bent, placed his rapid-firer on the floor, and approached Doc with handcuffs in one hand and an automatic in the other.

He said hoarsely, to cover his nervousness. "Now you will see how we treat the 'bear' we have caught 'by the tail'."

Something happened then. Jans Bergman was jolted by surprise greater than any which had come to him in his active life.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Doc Savage did not move his feet. He did not move his hands. He did not even move his fingers. But suddenly! there was a sound that might have been explosion in slow motion.

There was super-white light , too. It was an undertone of blue. And looking at it was something like looking at the arc of an electric welding operation. It did things to the eye. In fact, it brought blindnessthat was momentarily complete.

Doc Savage had his own eyes closed tightly and thus escaped the blinding effect of the flash to a great degree. He ducked for safety as lead spurted with ear-shattering clatter.

Jans Bergman began bellowing for his men to quit their suicidal shooting. More than any of them, Bergman came near understanding what had happened. He had caught the flash of Doc's wristwatch an instant before the flash came. He had realized the bronze man had expanded wrist muscles so as to split the case and release the contents.

Jans Bergman, of course, knew nothing of the chemical composition of the powder which had been in the watch and — when released into the air — had ignited instantly by spontaneous combustion. Nor did he know that the powder was one which, when burning — it burned like ordinary flash light powder — gave off those rays of light most destructive over a temporary period to the delicate nerve mechanism of the human eye.

While his enemies were milling about cursing, shooting, gradually getting vision back into their eyes, Doc Savage plunged out into the hall. He slammed the door behind him, streaked through the shadowed house, and went outside into the sea fog which still rolled in from the Sound.

The bronze man made for his coupe in the driveway and got there in time to hear Renny's frantic voice trying to raise Doc through the loudspeaker. There was no way of telling how long Renny had been calling.

"Doc!" Renny was rumbling urgently. "Calling Doc Savage! Important!"

Doc grasped the microphone and said into the apparatus. "Listening."

"Doc," Renny thumped, "I am shoving off in my car … gonna join you. I've learned something. Boris Ramadanoff! Holy cow … he … "

A grinding crash blasted from the microphone.

It was a noise such as might have been made by 2 cars crashing together at high speed.

"Renny," Doc called in alarm, "are you all right?"

"All … right … Doc," sounded Renny's voice, faintly.

"Quick! What did you find out?"

A new voice jumped from the microphone, harsh and mocking.

"The same thing you'll find out, Savage. After it's too late!"

Doc trod the starter of his car. But the great motor under its long hood did not throb into life. It remained as cold and unresponsive as the water-dripping trees which loomed through the fog.