Лестер Дент - The Fantastic Island

Count Ramadanoff indicated ornately gilded, ruby-plush chairs. "Sit there before the fire," he invited, "while your chambers are being prepared."

In the light, the Count was revealed as a magnificently proportioned man — broad-shouldered, muscled, and well over 6 feet in height. He was dressed in black-black riding boots, black breeches, black coat, black satin string tie. His 'Czar-of-Russia' beard was black, too. And his black eyes smoldered with a sinister light which it was impossible for him to conceal.

Pat sat on the edge of her high-backed chair and mentally chewed her fingernails. There had been no opportunity for her to divulge to Monk or Ham the information she had learned regarding the New York address of the Count's brother.

Monk pawed at his barge-like jaw. "Where's all the other 'guests' you mentioned?"

"Where's Johnny?" Ham rapped.

Pat also spilled questions. "What is the location of this island? How did you know us? Whydid you wreck us? Whatare those horrible pits for?"

The Count stood with his back to the fireplace, his fingers writhing before the blue flames which strangely gave off little light and almost no heat.

"Answering your questions in order," he said in his suave, precise voice, "you would not enjoy seeing the guests."

"Why?" Monk demanded.

"Because, my dear Colonel Mayfair, most of them are in various stages of decomposition."

"Huh?" Monk grunted.

"The mortality rateamong my guests has been regrettably high."

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Monk went directly to the point. "You mean you kill 'em?"

"Nothing so crude as that," the Count denied. There was a quality about the Count's voice which gave a menacing, blood-crawling emphasis to his most casual words.

"What then?" Ham demanded.

"They were, shall we say, 'liquidated'."

"Sent to the pits?"

"Many of them, yes."

"Why?"

Fires flared deep in the Count's fanaticeyes.

"Some of them for trying to escape. Some for becoming too curious."

The man's cruel, glinting eyes fastened upon Pat.

"For becoming too curious," he repeated. "That — I think, my dear young lady — answers all four of your questions."

Pat's breath drew in sharply. She glanced nervously around the oppressive room. "That's a beautiful piano," she said.

"It is indeed," the Count agreed. "4 men were killed taking it off the boat. Do you play?"

"No," said Pat. "Won't you play something?"

Count Ramadanoff nodded. "I regret to say that … Later, I most likely shall."

"You 'regret'?"

"Yes. When I play, it is always a prelude of unpleasantnessfor somebody. Savages in the jungle are aroused to an animal frenzy through the beat of their own tom-toms. In similar fashion, I am impelled to unspeakable decisions when my fingers wander over the keys."

Playing a waiting game, Monk and Ham said nothing. Count Ramadanoff spoke again. "I have now met all except two of Doc Savage's world-famed specialists. It would give me the utmost pleasure to match wits — and strength — with this almost fabulous personage Doc Savagehimself."

"Perhaps," murmured Pat enigmatically, "you shall."

A dark-skinned man approached on soundless feet, bowed low before Count Ramadanoff, and motioned toward the broad stone steps disappearing upward in a sweeping spiral into a region of shadows and ruby-colored velvet drapes.

The thin, cruel line of the Count's mouth seemed not to move. But an abrupt hissing noise escaped his lips. It seemed to be a signal of dismissal for the slave turned and padded swiftly up the stairway.

"Follow him," the Count said, shortly. "He will conduct you to your chambers."

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Upstairs, the three were shown to separate rooms.

Ham had not been alone for more than 40 seconds before he saw his door latch lift noiselessly. He crouched, the fingers of his right hand involuntarily clenched as though he gripped his deadly sword cane.

But the cane would have been of no use to him. It was only Pat who opened the door and eased into his room. In a rush of whispered words, she told him of her conversation with the pit guard who had been with Johnny's expedition.

"The logical place for the radio room is in the top of the tower," Ham said excitedly.

"But there's a steel door barring the stairway to the tower!"

"Let us go talk to Monk," Ham suggested.

When he heard the news, Monk — characteristically — was all for immediate action.

"We won't get a better chance than now!" he declared.

Ham was inclined to agree.

"But that steel door!" Pat protested.

"Come on. We'll go look at it."

Monk eased out into the gloomy hall. For all his simian bulk, he moved with surprising agility on catlike feet. Pat and Ham followed.

"An army tank couldn't push it in," Monk muttered.

Monk reached the door and felt over the steel panels with his powerful hands. The door was tight in its frame.

Pat reached up and touched the latch. The door swung open soundlessly.

"Unlocked!" Monk blurted. "Well, I'm a bush ape!"

"Didn't I always say so?" Ham accorded readily.

"You tailor's dummy!" Monk retorted.

"Sh-s-sh," Pat cautioned. "We may never get another chance at this. Come on."

The steps coiled upward like a circular stairway in a lighthouse. They were fashioned out of blocks of untrimmed stone. There was no railing, no light. A single misstep on the narrow flight would plunge a person down to unknown depths.

Closing and bolting the door of ponderous steel behind them, they mounted single file in the pitch blackness, feeling with their hands, hugging the damp side wall.

They came out at the top in the tower room without mishap. A single alcohol lamp, set in a wall niche, burned with a small straight flame casting a glow over the rock-girt room. The floor was constructed of steel plates. This room was as weirdly unreal as the rest of the place.

But there was nothing unreal about the banked instrumentwhich glinted softly in the light. Ham and Monk pressed forward, their hands touching familiarly the tubes, condensers, and wire-wound induction coils of a radio sending set as modern as any they had ever seen.

They switched on the juice and started tapping out Doc Savage's call letters. Violet light flashed weirdly from the tubes.

Pat's face shone pale in the glare. "Won't they hear this noise downstairs?" she questioned.

"Not a chance," Ham said.

"Couldn't hear a cannon through these walls," Monk confirmed.

- — — — — — — — — — — — —

Ham sent the key dancing under his sensitive fingers as he spelled out the words of the message. The message read.

PRISONERS ON FANTASTIC ISLAND IN GALAPAGOS GROUP STOP CONTACT BORIS RAMADANOFF 33 REDBEACH ROAD LONG ISLAND STOP GRAVE DANGER …

Unexpectedly, the harsh transmitter whining ceased. The key continued its frantic dance under Ham's deft fingers. But the electrical power had been cut off. No further radio words were flung to the air.

And now a new sound flooded the room. The sound came from everywhere … yet from nowhere definitely. It crept and crawled and writhed — never loud but clear, insidiously penetrating, eerie , freighted with menace and unseen death, causing hair to tug at its roots and goose flesh to prickle out with a shuddering chill.

This sound which wafted with such horrible portent through the high tower room was music. Piano music!