DEAD MAN
“The window!” ejaculated rock-fisted Renny. “It’s open!”
“Take a look!” Doc rapped. “Whoever did this may have jumped out as the train slowed down.”
Doc was already bending over the two forms on the bed. The garroting straps were strong, yet they broke under Doc’s sinewy fingers like cardboard strips.
The girl’s wrist in one hand, the man’s in the other, Doc explored for pulse.
Both were still alive; pulse was strong, respiration firm.
“This didn’t happen more than a few moments ago,” Doc told Renny. “The would-be killers must have escaped through the window.”
Renny, his head thrust outside, boomed: “I don’t see anybody!”
“They had time to duck.”
“Yeah,” Renny agreed. He lifted his gaze skyward. “Holy cow! That thing is almost an omen!”
“What is?”
“An airplane flying overhead!” Renny rumbled. “The thing is black—looks kinda like a buzzard.”
Doc stepped to the window and studied the plane. His sharp eye noted something Renny had missed.
“That plane has no identification numeral!” he said sharply.
Renny made a silent whistle. “In view of what’s happening on this train, that’s more than passing strange, eh? Planes on lawful business usually have identification numbers.”
Like a somber vulture, the black monoplane dipped off to the westward, and was soon lost to sight.
Doc twisted a faucet at the washbowl, caught cold water in a palm, carried it over and dashed it on the faces of Señor Corto Oveja and his daughter. He waited expectantly, but they did not stir.
“They should be coming out of it!” Doc said in a vaguely puzzled tone.
He tested pulse and respiration. Then, for the briefest moment, the bronze man’s weird trilling note was audible. It trailed softly up and down the musical scale, and abruptly was gone.
Turning to Renny, Doc said: “It looks as if, in addition to being choked, they got a dose of the same thing our four friends got—that weird unconsciousness.”
Renny was staring fixedly at the door. There was an expression of bewilderment on his long, puritanical face.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Look, Doc!”
His huge hand indicated the inner side of the door panel which he had damaged.
The sheet metal bore an eerie smudge. It had the likeness of a wolf head—a wolf with horribly human features.
“I saw it earlier,” Doc explained.
“You did!” Renny gulped. He had not seen Doc show any surprise, whenever it was that he had made the discovery.
“That same mark was on the other door,” Doc Savage said. He stepped close to the hideous smear. His eyes measured it “It’s exactly the same size, too.”
Renny nodded. He could not tell, himself, that this mark was the same size as the other. He knew Doc Savage could judge the relative sizes within fractions of an inch.
“Two men have been accompanying this girl about,” Renny rumbled. “I wonder where the other one is.”
With a rather unpleasant jerk, the train got into motion.
“We’ll revive this man and the girl,” Doc declared. “Then we’ll hunt the other one.”
“Yeah!” Renny boomed. “We’ll get that gink!”
Outside in the passage, a man yelled shrilly. “Help! Help! They’re going to kill me!”
* * * *
Renny and Doc bounded to the door. They expected to see a murder scene—or at least a fight. They got a shock.
The swarthy, girl-faced man stood in the corridor. He leveled an arm at Doc and Renny.
“You heard them!” he bellowed. “They said they would get me. Sabe! That means they plan to kill me!”
Wilkie, the conductor, stood just behind the girl-faced man. Wilkie looked flabbergasted.
“Now, now, mister,” Wilkie said soothingly. “There’s some mistake here.”
“It is no mistake!” wailed the dark man. “Look quickly! They must have killed my friends, Señor and Señorita Oveja!”
Wilkie advanced. He mumbled apologetically to Doc: “I sure don’t know what this is all about.”
The swarthy man yelled: “I know what it’s all about, señor! This bronze man is trying to kill my friends and myself.”
He came to the door and looked in. “Eo es terrible! It is terrible! What did I tell you? They are murderers!”
Renny made big square blocks of his fists. “You’d better dry up, girl-face!”
At this point, Señor Corto Oveja and his daughter showed signs of reviving. Doc splashed more water on them. They stirred about, and finally opened their eyes.
Señor Oveja pointed weakly at Doc.
“Seize that caballero!” he cried feebly. “It was he who attacked us.”
Renny was perfectly familiar with Doc’s ability to control his emotions. Yet, watching the bronze man now, he had to marvel; Doc showed by not the remotest sign that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
“You,” Doc said, “are mistaken!”
“It is true!” Señor Oveja shrieked weakly.
“Si, si!” echoed his pretty daughter. “This man Savage is the one who assaulted us. We became strangely drowsy as we sat here in our room. Before complete unconsciousness overcame us, men entered and began tying straps around our necks. One of them addressed the other as Señor Savage.”
“Did he say Señor Savage?” Doc asked pointedly.
The girl shut her eyes. Apparently she was thinking. “Yes. He used the word ‘señor.’”
Doc glanced at Renny.
The big-fisted engineer was staring at the leather straps which had been around the necks of Señor Oveja and the girl, choking them to death. From the expression on his somber face, he might have been looking at a pair of poisonous serpents.
“I thought you’d notice those straps,” Doc told him quietly. “They’re carrying-straps from a piece of my luggage.”
The man with the womanish face bellowed triumphantly: “Bueno! This proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Savage tried to do murder! Conductor, arrest him!”
Wilkie shifted from one foot to the other. Little bubbles of perspiration stood on his large forehead. He made a bewildered gesture.
“What is your name?” he asked the girl-faced man.
“El Rabanos,” the fellow replied.
“What is the motive?” Wilkie demanded. “Why should Doc Savage try to kill you?”
El Rabanos hesitated. A strange expression flickered about his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
Wilkie scowled. “Did you think previously that you were in danger from Doc Savage?”
“Yes,” El Rabanos admitted reluctantly.
“For what reason?” Wilkie cracked back.
El Rabanos said angrily: “You arrest this man! Turn him over to the Mounted Police. I’ll give them my full story.”
Wilkie eyed Doc. “I don’t want to arrest you, Mr. Savage, but I may have to. Something strange and horrible is going on around here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the death of that poor telegraph operator hasn’t got something to do with it.”
“What telegraph operator?” Doc queried sharply.
“The fellow who copied the message that I gave you,” Wilkie explained.
* * * *
Once more Doc Savage received surprising information without an appreciable show of emotion. Doc was not callous. He simply had his nerves under such control that they behaved as he wished.
“Was the telegrapher murdered?” he queried.
“Not according to a report I got at our last stop,” Wilkie replied. “A section worker found the body. He claimed it looked like suicide. But I knew that operator. He wasn’t the kind to take his own life.”
Doc’s hand described a gesture which took in Señor Oveja, his daughter, and El Rabanos.
“I should like very much to hear these three explain why they fear me,” he said.
All Doc received was a hateful stare from each of the trio. The girl’s look was the least malicious. In fact, her expression portrayed rather plainly that she regretted that this handsome bronze man was an enemy.
“It don’t seem like they’re gonna talk,” Wilkie muttered.
Doc Savage swung over to the door. He closed it so that the rear of the panel was visible, and indicated the smear which resembled a grisly, human-faced wolf.
“Maybe you can explain this!” His powerful voice crashed.
The girl’s eyes flew wide as she saw the smudge. She screamed with a sort of exhausted horror. Then she clamped palms over her eyes.
Señor Oveja and El Rabanos reacted almost as sharply. Their eyes protruded; their jaws fell.
“The werewolf!” choked Señor Oveja.
“What does it mean?” Doc questioned.
Pretty Señorita Oveja laughed hysterically. “Why should you be asking us? You know very well what it means!”
“You three are under some misapprehension,” Doc told them. “This is all a mystery to me.”
“Que!” El Rabanos ejaculated sarcastically. “What! Did not your uncle Alex Savage take you into his confidence?”
“So Alex Savage is mixed up in this,” Doc said dryly.
“Mixed is a very mild word for it, Señor Savage,” El Rabanos sneered.
Ignoring the girl-faced man, Doc Savage turned to Wilkie. “One of the gang who assaulted Señor Oveja and his daughter called the other by the name of Señor Savage. Obviously they were trying to frame me. But use of the Spanish word ‘señor’ was a slip. I believe you said there were other swarthy-skinned men on this train.”
“Right!” exclaimed Wilkie. “I’m going to check up on them right now.”
The goblinlike little conductor hurried off.
* * * *
Doc paid a visit to his four friends who had been victims of the weird sleep. There was no danger of any one escaping from the speeding train.
When he entered the drawing-room, Monk and Ham were scowling blackly at each other. This was a good sign. It indicated Monk and Ham were back to their normal quarreling state.
Johnny and Long Tom also seemed fairly chipper.
“The effects of the stuff wear off quickly,” said gaunt Johnny, polishing his spectacles which had the magnifying left lens. “What’s new, Doc?”
“We’re in the thick of a mess,” Doc announced.
Instead of looking gloomy or apprehensive at this, all four men grinned. They were a strange bunch. Peril and excitement were the things for which they lived.
Speaking rapidly, Doc told them what had happened when he went to investigate Señor Oveja, the daughter, and El Rabanos.
“They seem to think I’m some kind of a bogy man,” he finished.
“Do they really think that, or are they pretending?” questioned apish Monk, scratching the airplane-wing ears of his pig, Habeas Corpus.
“I’m not sure yet,” Doc replied.
The train whistle moaned. Its sound was a banshee wail over the noisy progress of the coaches.
Doc glanced through the window. It was only a road crossing for which the train had whistled.
A porter ran past the drawing-room door, crying in a horror-stricken voice: “Lawsy me! Lawsy me!”
Doc collared him. “What is it?” he demanded of the porter.
“It am de conductor, Mistah Wilkie,” the colored man moaned.
“What about him?”
“He done been stuck!”
“Show me where he is!” Doc commanded.
Wilkie lay in the washroom of a Pullman car—lay in a wet lake of crimson which had leaked from his own body. He had been knifed numerous times in the chest.
Doc Savage was skilled in many things—but in surgery and medicine above all others. A glance convinced him that Wilkie was dead.
“Anybody see anything?” Doc asked the porter.
“No sah!” said the porter. “Not that Ah knows of.”
Doc Savage stood like an image graven in the metal he resembled.
On the washroom door, he had discovered another of the hideous smears—a human-faced wolf. The mark of death!
Standing there, the bronze man was so quiet as to seem without life. An unseen monster of horror and death was slowly wreathing its tentacles about him. Why, he did not know. But it must be something that concerned his uncle, Alex Savage, or his uncle’s daughter, Patricia.
Absently, Doc’s golden eyes roved to the north and west. In that direction lay the estate of Alex Savage. And there, it was possible, lay also the explanation of the mystery.