Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

Through the weighting blackness came sounds of breaths, jerkily taken. Plainly, Doc was sharing this room with some person attempting to conceal the noise of his breathing.

Holding his breath and moving with the utter silence of a jungle denizen, Doc eased toward the source of those bated breathing sounds. His body was crouched, his hand outstretched, cabled fingers tensed to grip and choke.

Then he stood stock still, his sensitive nostrils flaring. A subtle odor — a faint and familiar perfume — wafted to him. The tension went out of his clawed fingers and he straightened, groping in front of him gently.

"Pat," he whispered.

From out of the darkness sounded a smothered gasp and feminine hands grasped for him.

"Oh, Doc!" breathed Pat.

Pat Savage was trembling. But with Doc's presence, strength seemed to come back to her. She stopped shaking, sighed, and looked up, trying to see the bronze man's face. She shuddered. "Another hour would have been too late. Renny and Long Tom were to be given to the … thing … at daybreak."

"You mean the monster in the court?"

"Yes," Pat said, grimly. "The Count locked me in here to watch the … the 'feeding'. He says I'll be the next one." Her voice became more grim. "He's been trying to scare me into agreeing to stay on the island. He says he'll make me a 'queen'. Imagine! Queen of the honeycomb pits. He's not human. He's a fiend !He's more of a monster than that … that thing in the courtyard!"

Then Pat went silent as the fateful piano music flooded the room and bombarding their ears with weird vibrations. The notes seemed to roll through the darkness with lethal menace.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

As suddenly as it had begun, the music stopped though — as always before — a ominous pulsing hung in the air.

"Someone is going to die!" Pat gasped.

"Why do you say that?" Doc asked sharply.

"The Count plays on his piano … and someone always dies!" Pat said, rapidly. "I know it sounds mad. But it is true. Usually, it is the thumb-hole death . A hole appears in your temple — about the size you could press your thumb into!"

Concealed lights flashed on then, bathing the bare rockgirt room with white brilliance . Doc and Pat to accustom their eyes to the sudden glare. Pat gasped at what she saw in the light, shuddered. Doc was equally surprised. But his bronze features remained impassive.

Standing there — so close Doc could reach him with a leap — was the Count Ramadanoff.

In black evening clothes, he loomed tall and sinister. His Czar-of-Russia beard was an inky-black against his long white face. Broader than his brother Boris and nearly 2 feet taller, he was in other respects identical in appearance, even to the rings on his tapering fingers — a rubyand an emerald, each as big as the end of a man's thumb.

Doc watched the Count's eyes. They were as hard and glittering as the gems on his fingers. Doc had power that but few men had succeeded in developing down through the ages. He could use his gold-flake eyes upon another, often to hypnotize against the other's will.

But with the Count, Doc got nowhere. The brittle, gem-like eyes glared back as though they did not see at all. The Count's lips twitched slightly. He made a low and courtly bow. His white hand waved out, the jewels flashing.

He spoke suavely: "If you will be so gracious as to escort the lady, early morning breakfast is served in the Great Hall."

Pat said with her lips only, "He does the queerest things. This is some kind of trap."

Doc nodded without speaking, rested his fingers against Pat's elbow, and guided her through the opened door and down the winding stone steps. The Count followed closely as they pushed through the hanging drapes of ruby velvet on the stair landing and entered the cavernous maw which was the hall.

Before the huge fireplace where the blue flames danced without sound — without heat and appreciable light — a breakfast table was set for three.

"You see, I have prepared for you," the Count said, nodding them to chairs.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

With its crisp damask and softly glowing silver service, the breakfast table was the only fresh touch in the high-raftered hall. All else remained the same. The grand piano swathed in sea otter; the swinging candelabra burning in hundreds of flames; and the regal collection of samovars, sending off dull metal glitters from velvet-draped recesses.

While slaves served the food, the Count leaned forward and said in a confiding manner:

"You are a Man of the World enough to know that things are not always as they appear."

"And so?" Doc said, noncommittally.

"It would appear that I have treated your aides badly," the other murmured. "But such is not the case.

"I consigned three of your men to my pits," the Count continued. "Strange as it may seem, I did it to protect them from an island horror."

"The thumb-hole death ?" Doc suggested.

The bearded giant murmured, "Ah, you know of it?"

"I had occasion to observe its deadly effect in New York."

The Count's eyes glittered.

"It has long hovered over brother Boris."

"And what have you to say regarding my other 2 men?" Doc questioned dryly.

Their host drawled, "My dear fellow, they are at this minute leading a searching party to recover your body, supposedly mangled by sharks."

Pat interposed hotly, "If that is true, why was I locked in the tower room and told to watch their executions?"

"A proceeding later to be illumined," the Count said precisely. "The intended executions — a myth."

"There was no myth about that … that monster I saw in the courtyard!" Pat insisted. She was not eating.

The Count helped himself to food. He leaned toward Doc. "You have seen my pet?"

"The 'creature' in the courtyard?" Doc questioned. "The iguana ?"

The Count's breath drew in raspingly . "So you were able to identify it!" He shrugged. "Identifying it, you must have been all the more impressed by its formidable size. A Galapagos or seagoing lizard — attaining the length of 6 feet — would normally be considered a 'monster'. You saw my pet in the courtyard. How long would you estimate him to be?"

"It appeared," Doc admitted, "many times that size."

"But how is it possible?" Pat protested.

She was not eating. She had no taste for food served in the sinister environment of the Palace. The blue flames in the fireplace — instead of lighting up her lovely face — threw it in ghastly, bluishshadow.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Pat shrank back as the count's tapering fingers reached out to touch her arm.

"On this island are undreamed horrors ," he murmured.

"And something else," Doc put in. "Something you wish found."

For the first time, something other than sinister evil seemed to come over the man before them. He straightened visibly in his chair and put down his eating implements.

"You have learned of that?" he asked.

"It has become evident," Doc Savage told him.

The big man leaned forward, smiling eagerly in his black beard. "You know what it is?"

"The name? — Yes," the bronze man admitted. "The Devil's Honeycomb ."

"You don't know more than that?" the other demanded.