Doc Savage: Death's Dark Domain (6 page)

This verged on the miraculous, given the long hours that Long Tom spent in his private
experimental electrical laboratory, an elaborate wine cellar he had snapped up very
cheaply just before Prohibition had been repealed. The dank place, typically strewn
with transformers, capacitors, and other apparatus of his profession, no doubt contributed
to Long Tom’s mushroom pallor. He was considered a magician of the juice who would
one day rank with Edison and Steinmetz.

Long Tom had participated in the terrible ordeal in the North Pole involving John
Sunlight. At the end of it, Doc Savage had come into possession of a number of individuals
who had escaped with John Sunlight out of the Siberian prison camp, and who, for reasons
of their own, had thrown in their lot with the vile monster in human form.

They were not evil. Not all of them. Some were simply weak-minded, and others easily
led. Still, they had participated in the deviltry of John Sunlight and deserved punishment.

It was not the way of Doc Savage to turn over to lawful authorities those transgressors
who had fallen into his hands. He did not personally believe in the punishment of
prison or electric chairs or gas chambers or gallows. In fact, he was against killing,
except in self-defense.

Doc Savage had years ago created a place where the wicked could be sent for rehabilitation.
It was a secret place. Doc knew that society would not understand his methods, so
far advanced were they.

It was to this unknown institution in the wilds of upstate New York that Long Tom
Roberts had ferried his charges. There, they were turned over to surgeons Doc himself
had trained, to undergo delicate operations on their brains. Their memories were wiped
as clean as a blackboard is cleaned of chalk with a wet rag. They would know nothing
of their vicious pasts, be reeducated, taught a useful trade and finally returned
to society with sufficient funds to launch them on a new start in life.

Countless miscreants had been put through Doc Savage’s “crime college.” All had been
successfully returned to society. None, so far, had ever gone back to crime.

The underlings of John Sunlight were now in the early stages of their rehabilitation.

Long Tom had returned to Doc Savage’s headquarters in the tallest skyscraper in the
heart of Manhattan after discharging his responsibility. He was there now, orchestrating
the worldwide search for John Sunlight, who was widely presumed to be dead. But Doc
Savage left nothing to chance and so Long Tom was very active by transatlantic telephone.

He was on the instrument when a call came in. There were many telephones scattered
about the headquarters, each with their own line. Long Tom ignored the insistent buzz
while he completed his own call. He knew if it were his bronze chief reaching out
from the Fortress of Solitude, Doc would not—could not—employ a telephone, there being
no telephone cable going to the North Pole, communicating instead by short-wave radio.
So Long Tom completed his call.

Among his responsibilities was the monitoring of the difficulties in the Balkans.
John Sunlight had been actively selling devices appropriated from Doc Savage’s Fortress
of Solitude to both sides of one of the simmering Balkan feuds that threatened every
so often to boil over in armed conflict.

In this case, a scientific weapon had been sold to a representative of the bellicose
nation called Egallah, upsetting a balance of power that had existed since the end
of the Great War. The representative was a smooth snake popularly known as Baron Karl—actually
Baron Sig Karlis—who enjoyed the confidence of his prime minister and functioned as
a sort of high-profile spy. He had no sooner returned to his homeland with the pilfered
device than John Sunlight had summoned the ruler of Tazan—Egallah’s chief Balkan rival.

The “playboy prince” they called him. He was by reputation a gay fellow, but he did
not smile when he received the news from John Sunlight that his rival now possessed
a terrible war weapon. John Sunlight offered a comparable weapon to the playboy prince.
The prince—king, really—had no choice but to purchase the offering, a death device
infinitely more awful than the one sold to Egallah.

Unfortunately for the playboy prince and his now-helpless nation, neither he nor his
purchase survived their encounter with Doc Savage. Turning over the mangled remains
of their departed ruler to the Tazan embassy in New York had been one of Long Tom’s
responsibilities.

So now Tazan, bereft of its ruler—not that anyone missed the jolly rogue—lay helpless
before the new power of the Balkans, Egallah.

The long-simmering situation had not come to a full boil as yet. But it was expected.
This was the war the world fretted its collective fingernails over.

Invasion might be a better term for it, as Long Tom was learning.

“You say your agents understand that Egallan military forces are poised to grab up
a hunk of Ultra-Stygia?”

“Da,”
said the thick voice over the transatlantic line. He was a high-ranking official
of the Soviet. His government was very grateful to Doc Savage for his quashing of
the John Sunlight threat. Sunlight had employed one of his death machines—now smashed,
miraculously enough—to assassinate the Soviet official who had sent John Sunlight
to Siberia in the first place.

“It is understood by our operatives in Pristav, the Tazan capital, that Ultra-Stygia
will be overrun soon. The Minister of War in Tazan, who is named General Consadinos,
now runs the country. He will no doubt send his forces to counter-attack.”

“This is bad,” Long Tom muttered.

“It is not good,” the Soviet official admitted. Then, in a voice that was pitched
low with disquiet, he asked, “Has the body of the black devil Sunlight been discovered
yet?”

“No,” said Long Tom. “And if a polar bear did eat him, there won’t be anything to
discover. Not recognizable, anyway.”

The presumed fate of John Sunlight was too grim to offer much relief. It was believed
that he was consumed while helpless and still living.

“Have you dug up any more dope on Sunlight?” Long Tom wondered.

“The files on this man were in the prison camp that was burned to the ground when
the terrible Sunlight escaped,” the official related. “It is not known what his true
name is, even.”

“John Sunlight was not his true name?”

“Nyet. Nyet.
He is—was—called ‘Sunlight’ because of the terrible black moods into which he would
fly. It is a humor,
da?”

“A joke, you mean.”

“Da.
A joke. But it was no joke the day John Sunlight was born into this world.”

“Right,” said Long Tom, and disconnected.

Long Tom got out of the chair in which he sat and walked along a forest of test tubes
and electrical equipment comprising one of the greatest experimental laboratories
in existence, out a door, and passed through the remarkable library crammed with ponderous
tomes until he reached the reception room which housed Doc’s ingenious message recorder.

Long Tom played the record back.

It was a grisly recording, with his long pauses and fight sounds. But what seemed
to electrify the slender wizard of the juice was the mention of Tazan.

Long Tom immediately put through a call to the Cateral Inn in Tazan. While he waited
for the connection to be established, he attempted to raise Doc Savage at his Fortress
of Solitude by short-wave. There was no answer. Clearly Doc had departed the Fortress.

There was fierce static to boot. So when the phone rang with his overseas connection,
Long Tom snapped off the short-wave set.

In swift order, Long Tom Roberts established that the caller, Simon Page, had mysteriously
disappeared from his hotel room after placing a call to New York City. That was all
the long-distance operator could offer.

“I am on my way to Tazan,” Long Tom snapped.

He tried once more to raise Doc Savage on the latter’s aircraft set, failed, and went
to a window, where he wrote on the glass with what appeared to be a piece of chalk.
The chalk, oddly enough, left no discernible mark. Long Tom seemed unperturbed by
that, and hastily quitted the eighty-sixth floor by elevator.

He was en route to the world’s latest place of discord. And there, he would find trouble—a
carload of it.

THE ATLANTIC PASSENGER liner
Transylvania
was casting off its lines when Long Tom Roberts piled out of a taxicab at the South
Street seaport docks. He looked very little like the world-famous electrical expert.
He stood fully an inch taller than normal, thanks to special built-up shoes, and his
pallid epidermis had been reddened by an astringent solution, calculated to mask his
mushroom complexion.

He tipped the cabby only a nickel, thus establishing his identity to anyone familiar
with the penurious Long Tom of old.

Carrying his luggage under each arm, Long Tom hiked to the gangplank just as they
were getting ready to raise it.

“Walter Brunk,” he announced to the purser.

The worthy took his ticket, which Long Tom had carried in his teeth. His gold front
teeth, of the buck variety, were masked by porcelain shells.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” he was told.

Long Tom climbed the gangway just as the great funnels began belching smoke.

Tugboats nosed in, pushed the liner out to open water.

By that time, Long Tom had been shown to his berth, which was on a middle deck and
of moderate price. Unpacking revealed that he had brought along only such clothes
as were necessary for the crossing. The rest was in the nature of electrical equipment,
along with one of the supermachine pistols with which all of Doc Savage’s men were
equipped. These were intricate mechanisms, the product of the bronze man’s inventive
skill, capable of unleashing a variety of shells with blinding speed. Several drums
of ammunition, looking like small canisters of home-movie film, were packed with the
unusual weapon.

Night fell. Long Tom dined late. Taking an after-dinner tour of the promenade deck,
he stopped to look at the stars, which were out in full force. It was then that he
began having the unsettling feeling that he was being watched.

It struck him as preposterous. His disguise was clever, and there was no reason for
anyone to think that Long Tom Roberts was on this vessel. He had told no one, leaving
only a message for Doc Savage on a headquarters window, which could be brought out
by application of ultra-violet light. And his disguise was good enough to pass muster.
Long Tom had resorted to it not because he was concerned about being shadowed, but
because his fame was such that ordinary passengers, had they recognized him, would
no doubt pester him with questions about his work with the world-renowned Doc Savage.

Still, the feeling persisted. It added to the chill of the evening.

Pretending not to notice, Long Tom sauntered about the after deck, keeping his eyes
peeled.

It was during this circuit that he laid eyes on the striking woman with the very pale
skin.

She was as tall as any man, but carried herself with a kind of spectral elegance.
Long Tom was no connoisseur of femininity, but this specimen caused him to stop dead
in his tracks. She wore a slinky evening gown that shimmered, and a chic turban the
hue of polished emerald. Not a tendril of hair coiled out from its tight confines.
Nor were the color of her eyes discernible at a distance. The length and thickness
of her eyelashes accounted for that.

In spite of himself, Long Tom drew near her. There was something eerie about her,
lounging at the rail, that seemed to invite attention.

Other men were eyeing her, as if considering whether to make an approach. Long Tom
gave that no consideration. He merely observed the woman.

Then she sidled up to him and started a conversation.

“Good evening,” she said coolly.

“Nice night,” Long Tom returned vaguely.

“It is very cold out here. In the Atlantic.” Her voice had a touch of accent Long
Tom could not place. “Cold as the grave.” She shivered in her sleek gown.

Long Tom couldn’t think of a suitable reply, so he volunteered, “Name’s Walter Brunk.”

“I am Countess Olga. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Valter Brunk. Vat is your
destination?”

“Southampton,” Long Tom said cagily. It was no lie. The liner docked at Southampton
before going on to the Continent.

Countess Olga nodded. “It is good that you are disembarking at Southampton. Europe
is not a pleasant place these days. There are troubles brewing. You can read it in
the clouds. They remind one of var clouds. It is better to disembark at Southampton,
than it is to travel on to unpleasant places such as…Ultra-Stygia.”

Under the constant rushing of water against the hull, Long Tom swallowed his surprise.

Ultra-Stygia was the strip of disputed land between the kingdom of Tazan and neighboring
Egallah. Both nations claimed it as their sovereign territory.

“Ultra-Stygia,” said Long Tom in his Walter Brunk voice, “is probably the last place
I would want to visit.”

“That is very vise,” replied Countess Olga. “For many who go to Ultra-Stygia are buried
there. You have been varned.”

“Warned! See here—”

But Countess Olga began to drift away like a languid specter of womanhood.

Long Tom let her go. But he watched closely as she departed. Then, deciding that there
was more here than met the eye, he attempted to follow the unusual woman.

His puny size made Long Tom an excellent shadower of men. He could duck out of sight
or behind the trumpet-mouthed ventilators easier than a larger man might. His light
weight made it a simple matter to muffle the sound of his footsteps.

Still, Countess Olga managed to elude him.

It was very strange, the manner in which Countess Olga evaded Long Tom Roberts. He
had been stalking her along B Deck, staying well behind and otherwise acting nonchalant.