THE WEREWOLF CRIES
Doc Savage was a man of profound accomplishments. But he was no clairvoyant with a gift of transporting his vision. So he was unaware that mystery and horror also stalked the domain of Alex Savage.
There, too, the werewolf was spreading its uncanny violence.
The estate of Alex Savage was no mere backwoods homestead. It was true that forty years ago Alex Savage had homesteaded it. But now it had grown, until the estate spanned up and down the coast for miles, and reached no little distance inland.
Scattered over other parts of Canada, Alex Savage had wheat ranches, mines, and an industrial plant or two. He was considered a business success.
The estate at the edge of the sea was in the nature of a hunting preserve. Within its bounds was some of the roughest land in Canada. The shore was a ragged stone wall which shot up out of the water. The coast was fanged with reefs and tiny islands.
The estate itself was a collection of pinnacle and canyons, boulders and brush. Alex Savage boasted freely that there were parts of his estate upon which he had never set eyes. Moreover, he claimed there were spots which no one had ever explored. This was possible, since there were places to which none could climb.
In this labyrinth of stone and brush, Alex Savage had erected a log cabin. In it, he spent part of each summer, and all of the hunting seasons. The cabin had several rooms. It was fitted with electric lights, electric refrigeration, radio, and even air-conditioning apparatus, although there was seldom need for the latter. The rugs were rich. Any one who sat in one of the luxurious chairs was in danger of sinking from sight. The place was no backwoodsman’s hut.
From the wide veranda of the cabin, an excellent view could be had of the sea. Monster boulders and tall trees towered around the place; thick underbrush made these surroundings almost a jungle. Twilight came to the brush almost an hour before the sun actually set.
The birds usually made a good deal of noise settling for the night.
It was twilight now, but the birds were making no noise. The feathered songsters had been chilled into silence by an eerie sound.
This noise pealed out erratically. At times, there was five minutes of dead silence. Then weird, unearthly cries would shiver out, a babbling volley of them. They had a human quality, those cries. They were tremulous with an incoherent horror.
The bird life could not have been more silent had death been astalk.
The latest outburst of the banshee cries was somewhat more human than before. They sounded very like some one in frightful agony.
Inside the Alex Savage cabin, a feminine voice called sharply: “Boat Face! Haven’t you got that rifle fixed yet?”
There was no answer.
“Boat Face!” the girl called again angrily.
There was a moment of silence. Then a squaw shuffled out of the kitchen region. She was very fat, very brown, and wore enough clothes to garb several of her white-skinned sisters. She looked as competent as the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Boat Face, him in kitchen, Miss Patricia,” she said calmly. “Him scared out of skin.”
“Boat Face won’t go out and investigate those cries?” the girl asked.
“Him heap big coward,” said the squaw.
The girl stepped back from a window. She had a wealth of bronze hair—hair very closely akin in hue to that of Doc Savage. She had been watching the brush that circled like a wall.
She was tall; her form was molded along lines that left nothing to be desired. Her features were as perfect as though a magazine-cover artist had designed them.
She wore high-laced boots, breeches, and a serviceable gray shirt.
A cartridge belt was draped about her waist. From it dangled a heavy Frontier Single Action six-shooter—freely admitted by those who know to be one of the most reliable guns ever made. In the crook of her right arm lay a very modern automatic big-game rifle.
“I’ll talk to him, Tiny,” said the girl.
“O. K., Miss Patricia,” said Tiny. “It do no good. That damn half-breed husband of mine plenty afraid.”
Tiny was the cook. Boat Face was man-of-all-work around the place. These two were the only servants.
Patricia’s heels tapped angrily into the kitchen.
Boat Face was a squarish, copper-colored man, who sat in a corner, holding a rifle. His squaw, Tiny, had called him a breed, but he looked pure Indian. Just what had given him the name of Boat Face was a mystery only an Indian could fathom. His beady black eyes refused sullenly to meet Patricia’s gaze.
Patricia started to speak—then held back her words.
The eerie, banshee cries once more babbled from the gloomy brush outside the cabin. They were unmistakably human now, appealing for succor.
Boat Face’s ink-black eyes wavered. He took a firmer grasp on a rifle which lay across his knees.
“I no go out,” he muttered. “Rifle broke.”
Patricia Savage suddenly seized Boat Face’s rifle. She examined the mechanism, threw it to her shoulder, and snapped it.
“You’re lying!” she cried. “There’s nothing wrong with this gun!”
“He heap big piker,” grunted Tiny.
Boat Face’s eyes rolled nervously.
“That noise—him werewolf,” he mumbled.
“Nonsense!” Patricia said sharply. “There is no such animal!”
Boat Face did not seem convinced. “Your pa—if him alive, him no ask me go and see what make that noise.”
The words seemed to wash Patricia’s rage away. She paled visibly. Even the fingers which held the rifle tensed to whiteness.
“These sounds have something to do with the murder of my father!” she said shrilly.
“Me no go outdoors,” Boat Face mumbled. “You tie can on me, if you like. Me no go, anyway.”
“I won’t discharge you,” Patricia told him in a weary voice. “After all, I won’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. You can stay here. I’ll go out and investigate.”
Tiny waddled over to a corner. She came back with a double-barrel shotgun and said stoically: “Me go, too!”
“Thanks, Tiny,” Patricia said gratefully. “But you and Boat Face stay here on guard.”
Tiny nodded reluctantly. Boat Face looked much relieved.
* * * *
Patricia moved into the cabin’s large living-room, and drew the shades carefully. Then she indicated one of the uprights which formed a rustic support for the ceiling. This was a log over a foot thick, still covered with natural bark.
“Guard that, especially,” she said meaningly.
Tiny and Boat Face showed no surprise—they seemed to comprehend fully what she meant.
Patricia pocketed several extra ammunition clips for her automatic rifle. Then she opened the door and stepped swiftly outside.
Tiny watched her go with evident concern. Boat Face’s aboriginal features were inscrutable.
Sunlight still penetrated to the clearing immediately adjacent to the cabin. Gloom lurked in the tangle of rocks and brush beyond. Walking away from the cabin was like leaving a lantern and going into the night.
Patricia walked warily, rifle alert. She kept fingers on safety and trigger. Her ears strained to catch the next outburst of the unearthly cries.
Off to her right, the noise arose. It was low, sinister; a horrible bleating. It persisted only a moment, then whimpered itself into nothingness.
Patricia shivered. She tripped the rifle safety. This time the cry had not sounded so human. Indeed, it seemed to have taken on a repulsive, animallike quality.
The sound had come from inland. From, perhaps, a hundred yards away—maybe more! The girl could not tell.
She went toward the noise, her pretty face so set it was almost a mask. When she was near the spot from which the sound had seemed to come, she searched for tracks. The terrain was not the sort to show a trail; it was too rocky.
Patricia heard the cries again. They now wailed from a little farther on. She advanced—again she found nothing.
A bit later, the sounds came once more. They had moved on ahead. Patricia shuddered. It seemed the eerie crying thing was trying to decoy her away.
Patricia suddenly gave it up as a bad job. She went back toward the cabin, steps hurried, eyes roving uneasily.
She was baffled, and more than a little terrified, and drew a sigh of relief when the cabin came in sight.
“Tiny! Boat Face!” she called. “It’s me!”
She did not want the sullen Boat Face or the competent Tiny taking a shot at her by mistake.
Patricia reached the cabin and shoved the door open. She went in—and jerked to a stop. Her pretty features became blankly startled.
The cabin interior looked as if the proverbial cyclone had hit it.
Patricia’s eyes wandered. Then she saw something which caused her to cry out shrilly in horror.
Tiny and Boat Face were brown, unmoving forms on the floor!
* * * *
Stuffing was ripped from rich chairs. Rugs had been plucked up and flung aside. Drawers had been emptied on the floor. Everywhere signs showed the cabin had been searched wildly.
Patricia ran to the voluminous, copper-hued Tiny, and felt anxiously for pulse.
“They’re dead!” she wailed miserably.
Within a moment, however, she realized this was a mistake. There was a heartbeat—very faint.
Getting ice cubes from the electric refrigerator, Patricia Savage rubbed them over the faces of Boat Face and Tiny.
Pulse strengthened slowly under the copper skins.
Confident both servants would recover, Patricia ran through the cabin. Everywhere, there was wild upheaval and destruction. From attic down, the search had missed little. The covered motor of the electric refrigerator was even torn open.
There was no trace of the men—certainly it seemed the work of more than one—who had ransacked the place. They must have come in through the rear door, or an unlocked window.
Something like twenty minutes elapsed before Tiny and Boat Face were revived enough to speak coherently.
“What on earth occurred?” Patricia demanded.
The two servants exchanged blank looks.
“Dunno,” Boat Face mumbled. “Me and squaw just go to sleep.”
Patricia snapped: “That’s ridiculous!”
“Boat Face tell truth,” said the ample Tiny, with a roll of jet eyes. “We get heap much sleepy and fall over.”
Patricia stared fixedly at the floor near where the two servants had been lying. She had discovered something she had not observed before. The sight of the thing had a striking effect. She stood erect, tense, gripping her rifle.
It was a weird, blackish smudge—more than a foot high and half as wide. The thing had the contour of a wolf’s head. The features were grotesquely human.
“It’s the werewolf’s head again!” Patricia said shrilly. “It’s the same mark which we began seeing shortly before my father’s death—and which we have seen since!”
Boat Face mumbled. “Werewolf! Indian know them. They devil-man with body of wolf. They prowl in woods and eat plenty hunter and trapper.”
“Camp-fire ghost tales!” Patricia snapped. “There are no such creatures! This particular werewolf is very human, Boat Face. You and Tiny both know what he is after.”
Patricia went to the large bark-covered timber which supported the living-room ceiling. It was this timber which she had asked Tiny and Boat Face to guard.
It had not been disturbed, although the search had missed little else.
Patricia pressed certain projections on the bark. A concealed door flew open. She withdrew from within what looked like a solid block of ivory. The white cube was perhaps two inches square.
“They’re after this,” Patricia said grimly.