Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

"No," Doc admitted.

The bearded man settled back and seemed relieved. He began eating again, glancing once at them curiously as if noting for the first time that they were consuming no food. He did not urge them to eat.

"I have need of your scientific abilities," said the count, casually. "I have tried the usual instruments for making subterranean surveys. They are not sufficiently sensitive. You can make more powerful ones, more delicate ones."

Doc Savage said sharply, "In order to properly design the instruments, it will be necessary to know what you want located."

"That is impossible," the other said abruptly.

"Then what you ask me to do is also impossible," Doc informed him.

The bearded man showed his teeth through his heavy whiskers.

"You have the reputation of a man who does the impossible," the Count said grimly. "You will manage to do it now … or take some very unpleasant consequences."

Doc Savage said nothing.

"With your exhaustive knowledge of geology and cartography, my dear Savage, it should not be too difficult for you to locate an object which I shall describe as having an atomic structure entirely different from the rest of the island," the whiskered man said.

The Count raised his napkin and blotted his thin lips. He blotted carefully. For a moment, the whole lower half of his face was concealed by the stiff damask.

The blue flames which leaped in the fireplace commenced promptly to shorten. They died down to half their height within the next few seconds.

Doc Savage spoke suddenly to Pat in strange language words composed largely of guttural — though curiously melodic — sounds. Doc was using the language of the ancient Mayans , the remarkable people whose civilization flourished in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico long before the Egyptian pyramids were built.

It is doubtful if more than a dozen persons in the so-called Civilized World were sufficiently conversant with the strangely syllabled speech to understand it.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Even as Doc talked, the blue flames shortened farther until they became little more than crawling stubs within the massive fireplace.

"What are you saying?" the Count demanded. His voice had a noticeable nasal quality now.

"Nothing," Pat answered, tensely. She sat back in her chair, breathing deeply as Doc — speaking in Mayan— had directed her to do.

"Fill your lungs with fresh air," Doc had said. "And if the blue flame goes out, do not take another breath until we can get outside."

To the Count Ramadanoff, Doc said in English: "Before I do anything about locating your Devil's Honeycomb , the release of my 2 men held prisoners in your iguana pit will be necessary."

"So?" the Count said, with nasal quality still predominantly in his voice. "You have finished with breakfast chatter? You prefer to deal in realities? Then listen to this! Not only do I refuseto release your two men, but I am also pleased to inform you that your other 3 aidesare prisoners of mine also — securely locked in that same garden shelter where you left them when you scaled my tower.

"This Palace, my dear Savage, is amply equipped with electrical safeguards much in the manner — I should judge — as your own skyscraper headquarters in New York is protected. Nothing can happen within these walls that I am not immediately informed about."

Turning his head, the Count summoned a slave by means of that odious hissing noise he made through compressed lips.

"Throw open the outside door," he ordered.

The slave — swarthy and of mixed blood — padded across the hall, swung wide the massive door, and started back toward the breakfast table. 30 feet from the door, his body was gripped with spasmodic convulsions. A chopped-off scream of agony passed his lips as his face contorted and his body, grotesquely knotted, thumped onto the floor. Early morning sunlight slanted through the open door, bathing his heaped body with funereal benediction.

The Count's eyes glittered.

"If you doubt he is dead, my dear Savage, you have my special permission to examine the body. And anyone else who approaches within that 30 foot area in front of the door will be similarly electrocuted . I arranged the exhibition to demonstrate to you the futility of attempting escape."

From the region of the fireplace sounded a metallic sigh as the blue flames flickered out. Out of the tail of her eye, Pat had been watching the flames. She held her breath. Doc did the same.

As Doc was aware, the failing of the blue flames signaled the flooding of the room with an anesthetizing — perhaps even a lethal — gas.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

As a flame in a gas stove burns blue — giving off virtually no illumination — so did the weird flames in the Count's fireplace burn blue and light-lessly. That they gave off no heat was accounted for by drafts mechanically arranged to conduct the heat up the chimney.

But the draft — controlled by a concealed floor button within reach of the Count's toe at the breakfast table — could be closed and the flames extinguished, throwing such a volume of unburned gas into the great hall that even with the outside door opened, a few whiffs would rob a person of consciousness.

Doc had been warned when his alert eyes had observed the Count pressing the napkin to his lips. Under cover of the napkin, the Count had no doubt inserted wads of chemically treated gauze into his nostrils so that he could breath for a short time with safety in the gas-laden atmosphere. It was this gauze that had given his voice its pronounced nasal quality.

Coincident with the failing of the blue flames , a loud crash sounded. It was the breakfast table going over, propelled by a forcible kick from Doc's feet.The table turned over in the direction of the Count with such appalling force that the Count — in his chair — went over also.

In the moment that the bearded man was clearing himself of the table wreckage, Doc grabbed Pat by the arm and propelled her violently across the room and up the sweeping flight of stone steps.

The Count was on his feet and running forward by the time Doc and Pat had reached the stair landing, hung with the velvet drapes. The Count looked very happy as he observed that the ruby-colored drapes had tangled themselves about the fugitives and must certainly trip them up.

But Doc and Pat were not tripped by the hangings. It was no accident that the drapes had become swathed about Doc's mounting figure. Doc was holding them in one metallic hand, carrying them upward with him.

Suddenly he stopped and faced around. "Hang onto my back," he said in Mayanto Pat. "And hold your breath."

Pat thrust arms about Doc's neck from behind. From high overhead, the brass hoops creaked on their rod and the ruby drapes became taut as a wind-bellied sail as Doc — lifting his feet and gripping the drape like a rope — swung downward in a wide arc.

Down he swung on that plunging curve, passing high over the astonished face of the Count and up … up … with Pat clinging tightly around his neck. At the very height of his swing, he was dangling at a fearful distance above the high-swung candelabra.

He let go his hold on the drape and hurtled forward and down, the wind a hard rush in his ears. His muscle-corded hand — outstretched — caught the candelabra, his momentum swinging it forward. Candles showered down, their flames whipping like tiny comets' tails.