Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (30 page)

The big flat feet of the two human steeds splattered through drying puddles left from the rain. The moon came out, and the dark shoulder of the Pagoda of the Great Buddha was limned against its silver fog. The moonlight pooled its deepest blue in Saxon’s eyes.

He thought of Anne Coffelt.

Thanks to what the Japanese were doing to foreign businesses—the New Order in Asia—the Coffelt purse had shrunk from twenty to less than ten. Millions, of course. Bill knew that the Coffelts were taking a beating. Her father was in Manila, the Philippines. Anne had remained behind in Hanoi, only because a guy named Bill Saxon was coming back there. Anne was her father’s business aide.

He opened his fist, looked at the little green matchbook from Sandakan. It advertised the New York Store, in Sandakan, North Borneo—a long way from here. A simple matchbook, like the ones they hand over the counter with a pack of cigarettes.

Out of his pocket, he extracted the one that had been waiting at his hotel when he had returned from the jungle.

They were identical. But one said, “Meet me at my hotel when you get this.”

It was not signed, but he had assumed it was from Anne. She liked to slip him notes in matchbooks such as this one.

Opening the new-found matchbook, he found another note. It read:

AC-TAY ATURAL-NAY

It was not signed, but the printing was identical to the other note. Suddenly, Bill began to doubt that Anne had written either. So who had?

Someone who knew American English well enough to write “Act Natural” in pig-Latin, obviously.

STEPPING off the jinrickshaw, he walked through the rain, eastward along the street in which the sidewalks are very narrow, hardly enough width for his striding form.

Drab Japanese army trucks moved past him in the somber, streaming darkness. The trucks rumbled unendingly one behind another, headed ominously northwestward toward the jungle jugular vein that was the Burma Road. In the bleak east, half a dozen anti-aircraft searchlights thrust stiff white fingers upward and begin to feel suspiciously of the flanks of the clouds. Saxon looked at the trucks, then stared up at the searchlights. Enough hard amber light came from a shop window to reveal the grim expression on his face.

Saxon returned to his hotel. He had taken the most expensive room in the place, and the decorations were as Oriental as a New York chop-suey joint. He stared at the place with grim disgust. His valet had put out his red silk pajamas. He threw these into a corner. Then, he lay on the bed with a lit cigarette and a glass of gin and tonic water.

His body felt stiff and sore. He was suddenly very, very tired. To reach Hanoi, he traveled hard for three days—donkey, dugout canoe, plane—almost without sleep. His eyes ached. Standing open, the window let in the coldly muddy night wind. Big raindrops dripping down on the sill made kissing sounds. The anti-aircraft searchlight beams were still waving stiffly in the night. He stared at them. He cursed the searchlights in a low voice. The light in the room hurt his eyes and finally he turned it out. He did not seem to be able to think….

His valet was shaking him. When he opened his eyes, grimy daylight streamed into them. The Filipino said, “A gentleman to see you, sir. A Japanese gentleman.”

He sat up disconsolately. “What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock, sir. The morning.”

He had slept, or been unconscious, almost ten hours. But he did not feel refreshed. “What did you say was wrong?” he asked stupidly.

“A Japanese gentleman. A General Miyagi. To see you, sir.”

“Oh.” He arose and shaved, showered, toweled himself. The valet tried helping him dress. He scowled irritably. “Get out of here, dammit,” he snarled. “Go fetch that Jap.”

GENERAL MIYAGI was quite bald. His eyes were somber, yet as vital as crouching black rabbits. His skin was well-worn buckskin; his medals waved when he bowed. Bill noticed that he carried a dark leather dispatch case which he immediately opened, taking out the folded bulk of the document which was ornamented with official seals.

Miyagi said, “The contract. I have brought it for you to sign. You will notice that it reads as between yourself and the Dutch company. A new Dutch company. That is for—shall we say—international harmony. But you, naturally, must understand that you will find oil for the Japanese government.”

He said this all in a rush, the way he probably—the Japanese were imitators—imagined that Yankees do business. Bill Saxon felt somewhat contemptuous.

“Got a pen?” Saxon asked shortly.

General Miyagi held out a fountain pen.

Bill Saxon took the pen, and the moment it was in his fingers, his brain missed a beat. He stared at the pen. It seemed to sting his fingers. Once he used it, and signed on the dotted line, he would be putting a lock on a gate.

Suddenly, he shoved the pen back. Lamely, he said, “Maybe I better read this over. Might save a misunderstanding later. Tell you what,” he added, “see me tomorrow morning, and we’ll settle the whole thing.”

General Miyagi looked disappointed, then suspicious. His eyes glittered with angry feeling. “The terms here are exactly those we discussed and agreed upon,” he said flatly.

Saxon studied him thoughtfully.

“You need me a lot, don’t you?” he said.

“You have a verbal agreement with us,” General Miyagi warned. “The Japanese government expects you to live up to it.” He did not add that there would be dire consequences otherwise, but his tone conveyed the idea.

“Don’t worry,” Bill said wearily. “It’s just that I always read the fine print in these things.”

Uneasily, he watched General Miyagi, now resigned and carefully polite, bow and say, “Until tomorrow, then.
Mata aimasho
.
Sayonara.”
And, as his eyes followed Miyagi out the room, he got a concretely harsh feeling that the man could be very ruthless.

Bill Saxon jammed his hands into his coat pockets, paced around the room, and finally went to the window and stared out. An armored car stood in front of the hotel, an olive-colored fortress with two Japanese flags on the radiator grille. General Miyagi came out of the hotel and got in the vehicle. Bill Saxon watched the machine go out of sight.

Now his strongest thoughts went to this predicament he was in. Nothing else had much importance. Turning his mind back to the past few weeks, Bill felt ashamed. Ashamed of being such a dupe. In the beginning, he did not know that the contract was with the Japanese. The simple fact was: he had been caught off guard. He did not like to admit it, but his pride, his fool pride, kept him from recognizing the truth. He could remember the way he got into this mess, like a prize jackass.

The offer had come to him after he had proved the efficiency of his new method of doodlebugging for oil. He had just located three oil fields with sensational success. Offers showered on him, and naturally he picked the one that offered the most money. The company with the proposition had a Dutch name, and Dutch—he thought—officials. It never occurred to him that the Dutchmen were Germans, and a false face for the Japanese. He found that out later, when it was too late. But by then he had given his promise. And anyone who did business with Bill Saxon could file his word with their Liberty Bonds. He kept his promises.

Well, he hoped it wasn’t too late to tell Anne all that.

After his valet had gone out to resupply the pantry, an insistent knocking disturbed his thoughts.

“Who is it?” he demanded.

“Friend of Monk’s,” came an unfamiliar voice.

“Monk who?”

“Monk from Tulsa.”

“Monk from—”

Saxon threw open the door and stared at his visitor standing in the hallway. He appeared to be an undersized Annamese man of indeterminate age.

“Who are you?”

“Monk wants to see you,” stated the man, ignoring the question.

For the first time, Bill Saxon put two and two together. The Annamese man was not speaking his own language, or Pidgin English. His English wasn’t the stilted speech that passed for formal English among the Annamese populace. He sounded American.

“That greasepaint on your puss?” he asked.

“Monk needs your help.”

“Tell him to come on up.”

“Monk can’t do that. Now are you coming or not?” asked the pseudo Oriental with irritation.

“Hold onto your shirt while I get my coat,” returned Bill Saxon with equal impatience.

Chapter XLI

HUNTED MEN

BILL SAXON HAD never been inside the Pagoda of the Great Buddha in the heart of Hanoi. But that was where the slender man who was not an Annamese gentleman took him. They did not go directly, but took a circuitous route, with the tight-lipped man looking about making sure they were not shadowed.

He did it so often that Bill started looking around, too.

Eventually, they came to the glorious grounds of the pagoda, and slipped in through the side gate, where they were met by a saffron-robed priest. Appropriate bows were exchanged. The abbot followed silently and waved them inside. There they passed through chambers that grew increasingly smaller until they came to one where Monk Mayfair was waiting.

A sitting Buddha-like image cast in black bronze brooded over the chamber, flanked by subordinate statues of a serpent and a turtle. The Buddha weighed four tons.

Monk was hardly recognizable, inasmuch as he was encased in a tent-like Mongolian caftan.

“Monk!” exploded Bill. “You old hound dog. It’s been ages since I’ve laid eyes on your ugly mug.”

The apish chemist’s grin was lopsided and sincere, but worry rode his homely features.

“Great to see you too, you horny-knuckled walkin’ derrick,” laughed Monk.

Bill got down to brass tacks. “What are you doing here? Who are you hiding from?”

“Who do you think?” barked Monk. “The dang Japs are tryin’ to hunt us down.”

Saxon looked perplexed. “What for?”

Now it was Monk’s turn to look puzzled.

Before either man could question the other, a slim figure came from the other room, wearing something dark, caught at the throat with the frozen fire of a diamond clip. A vision of loveliness with honey hair and dancing gray eyes. They were not dancing now. They were grave.

“Bill….”

Bill’s face froze. “Anne! What are you doing here with my old pal, Monk?”

“Knowing that we were friends, Monk came to me and I hid him here. You know I have connections to this temple.”

“What’s this all about?” Bill demanded. “Why all the subterfuge? Did somebody murder somebody?”

Anne looked at him steadily and asked, “Don’t you know what happened?”

“I’ve been in the jungle the last few weeks, remember?”

Monk asked, “Ain’t you seen a blasted newspaper since you got back?”

Bill shook his head firmly. “Too busy. Mostly I’ve been sleeping. Will somebody give with some facts?”

Monk and the Annamese man—who proved to be Long Tom Roberts in disguise—exchanged glances. Anne said, “The Japanese attacked an American naval base in Hawaii. We are at war with Japan.”

Bill Saxon blew out a long slow breath that, if it had turned into a whistle, would have been one of astonishment.

“That puts me in a spot,” he said in a low voice.

Monk said, “Not like the spot I’m in. We just escaped the Japs and ditched one of their planes out in the Gulf of Tong-king. We need to get out of here. But we can’t get near the airfield. They’re looking for us somethin’ fierce.”

“And I have a Japanese general on my back who wants me to sign a contract to help them drill for oil,” returned Bill miserably.

“Oh, Bill!” gasped Anne.

“You can’t do that!” Monk said sharply. “Them Japs are our enemies now.”

“I gave General Miyagi my word,” Bill growled stubbornly. “You know my word always sticks.”

No one said anything for a very long time.

FINALLY, Monk pointed out an indisputable fact. “Drillin’ oil for the enemy will make you a traitor.”

Anne cried out, “Why would you do such a thing, Bill? Why?”

“Because they bamboozled me,” snapped Bill hotly. And he told them the tale, concluding, “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t know at the time—”

Anne seized his words. “You didn’t know!” she accused with bitter force. “There was Manchuria—you knew about that. And Shanghai. Do you remember Shanghai? I do. I saw it. It was—not nice. Horror to turn your tears to dry dust. Then the Japanese army coming down the coast of China like a black leech on the map, to suck the life out of everything it touched. South China. Then this part of French Indo-China, like taking a bite out of a corpse.”

Strain drew her voice as thin as a silver bell. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before, Bill?”

“The deal wasn’t closed,” he said. “It’s been hanging fire several months. They propositioned me right after I made those first three big strikes, and got a name for myself as a doodlebug. I closed a verbal contract then, to take effect when they got leases on a big acreage in the Dutch Indies. They got the leases, and notified me by radio. I go to work right away.”

“No, Bill!” How strangely she said it, tone low and silvered, with an edge that cut him deeply. “You don’t want to do that, and you mustn’t!”

Bitter impulse drove him to say, “The Japanese have shaved about ten million off your family bankroll. That wouldn’t have anything to do with it?” Because he was hurt, he spoke angrily. “Are you telling me I should be careful not to find any oil for the Japanese,” he said contemptuously, “and do my bit as a missionary?”

“No, Bill. The only one who can tell you to do that is yourself.”

“For Heaven’s sake!” he ripped out. “Just because the Japs got your money—”

He had not meant to slap her with his words. But this was his way—the only way he knew—this two-fisted method of lashing out with full dynamite at trouble. He had been an oil field tool-dresser in younger days. You had to hit the best licks early to shape the red-hot drill bit before it cooled.

She stared at him, gray eyes dull.

“I got a contract,” Bill repeated stiffly.

“With a government whose word is worth nothing.” Anne added bitterly, “I should know. My family had contracts, too.”