Brand of the Werewolf: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

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  Title: Brand of the Werewolf

  Date of first publication: 1933

  Author: Kenneth Robeson (pseudonym of Lester Dent) (1904-1959)

  Date first posted: Sep. 27, 2019

  Date last updated: Sep. 27, 2019

  Faded Page eBook #20190964

  This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

  DOC SAVAGE’S AMAZING CREW

  William Harper Littlejohn, the bespectacled scientist who was the world’s greatest living expert on geology and archæology.

  Colonel John Renwick, “Renny,” his favorite sport was pounding his massive fists through heavy, paneled doors.

  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, “Monk,” only a few inches over five feet tall, and yet over 260 pounds. His brutish exterior concealed the mind of a great scientist.

  Major Thomas J. Roberts, “Long Tom,” was the physical weakling of the crowd, but a genius at electricity.

  Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, slender and waspy, he was never without his ominous, black, sword cane.

  TOGETHER WITH THEIR LEADER, THEY WOULD GO ANYWHERE, FIGHT ANYONE, DARE EVERYTHING—SEEKING EXCITEMENT AND PERILOUS ADVENTURE!

  Books by Kenneth Robeson

  THE THOUSAND-HEADED MAN

  THE MAN OF BRONZE

  METEOR MENACE

  THE POLAR TREASURE

  THE LOST OASIS

  BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF

  BRAND OF THE

  WEREWOLF

  A DOC SAVAGE ADVENTURE

  by Kenneth Robeson

  BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF

  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE Magazine January 1934

  Copyright © 1933 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.

  Contents

  1 The Strange Message

  2 The Train Werewolf

  3 Warning of the Werewolf

  4 Dead Man

  5 The Werewolf Cries

  6 Square White Death

  7 Strange Attackers

  8 The Man in the White Hat

  9 The Ivory-cube Trail

  10 Cabin of Murder

  11 The Vanished Box

  12 The Hand that Beckoned

  13 An Offer

  14 The Trap in a Trap

  15 When Trouble Doubles

  16 Inside the Ivory Block

  17 Into the Earth

  18 The Skeleton Crew

  19 The Killing Dead

  BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF

  Chapter 1

  THE STRANGE MESSAGE

  It was a little way station on the transcontinental railroad in western Canada. Only one man worked there. He had what railroaders call an “OS” job. About all he had to do was “OS” trains—telegraph the dispatcher that they were passing his point.

  Usually, nothing much ever happened around there.

  Just now, however, the telegrapher looked as if things were happening—big things. His manner was as excited as that of a small boy about to see the circus.

  The thing which had flustered him was a telegram that he had just copied. It was addressed to a passenger on the fast express train which was due to arrive soon.

  The operator interrupted his routine work frequently to stare at the name of the individual to whom the message was going. He scratched his head.

  “If that man is the fellow I think he is—” He finished his remark with a low whistle of amazement.

  Some minutes later, the brass pounder gave a start as if he had just thought of something. He got up hastily and went to a row of shelves in the rear of the room. These held magazines. Due to the loneliness of his post, the operator was a heavy reader.

  He picked out and thumbed through several magazines which made a practice of publishing stories of famous men. The cover design of one of these consisted of a large bronze-colored question mark. Printed across this were the words:

  THE MAN OF MYSTERY

  (Story on page 9)

  The telegrapher opened the magazine to page nine. The story was what writers call a “fact article.” Every word was supposed to be the truth. More large black type asked:

  WHO IS PROBABLY THE MOST

  AMAZING OF LIVING MEN?

  The telegraph operator had read this story before. But now he started to peruse it again. He was interrupted.

  A train whistled in the distance, and its approaching roar was soon audible.

  It was the fast passenger. Smoke and steam rolling, air brakes shrieking, the engine and string of coaches came to a halt. A regular stop for water was made here.

  Wilkie came in. Wilkie was the conductor. He had a large head, and an extraordinarily prominent stomach. He looked like a pleasant little goblin in a uniform.

  “Hyah, brass mauler!” he greeted cheerfully.

  With a dramatic gesture, the operator passed over the telegram.

  “Message for one of the passengers, eh?” said Wilkie, and started to stuff the missive in a pocket.

  “Wait a minute!” ejaculated the telegrapher. “Look who that’s for!”

  Wilkie eyed the name on the telegram.

  “For the love of Mike!” he exclaimed.

  * * *

  “I knew you’d heard of him,” the operator said triumphantly.

  Wilkie absently removed the uniform cap from his enormous head. “Do you reckon this is the same man?”

  “I’m betting it is,” said the telegrapher. “He’s taking a vacation—him and the five men who help him. He has a relative up in the woods along the coast. He’s paying a visit there.”

  “How do you know that?” Wilkie demanded.

  The operator grinned. “It’s kinda lonesome here, and I kill time by listening to the messages that go back and forth over the wires. I heard the message he sent, saying he was coming with his five friends.”

  Wilkie hesitated, then read the message. As an employee of the company, he probably had a right to do this.

  “Whew!” he exclaimed. “If that chap was a relative of mine, I wouldn’t send him a telegram like this!”

  “Me either!” the operator replied. He secured the magazine which he had started to read. “Say, did you see the article in here about that fellow?”

  Wilkie glanced at the magazine. “Nope. I’d like to read it, too.”

  “Take it.” The operator passed the magazine over. “It’s sure worth reading. It tells some of the things he and his five men have done. I tell you, Wilkie, a lot of the things are hard to believe. This fellow must be a superman!”

  “Them writers sometimes exaggerate,” Wilkie said.

  “Not in this magazine,” the telegrapher assured him. “It’s got a reputation of sticking close to the truth.”

  The engine whistle moaned out. Echoes came slamming back from the timbered hills.

  “That’s the ol’ highball!” Wilkie wheeled. “Thanks for
the magazine. Be seeing you, brass pounder.”

  The train was moving. With a smoothness that came of long practice, Wilkie swung aboard. He headed for the cars which held drawing-rooms. He walked the swaying aisles with the proficiency of a sailor on a rolling deck of a storm-tossed ship.

  Opening the magazine at page nine, he stared at the article. The first paragraph gripped him. Absorbed in his reading, he nearly fell over a suitcase which some traveler had left protruding into the aisle.

  “What a man!” Wilkie ejaculated.

  The traveler who owned the suitcase, mistakenly thinking the remark was directed at himself, looked indignant.

  Wilkie reached the drawing-rooms, and found the porter. “I’m hunting for this man,” he said, and showed the name on the telegram.

  “Yassah!” gulped the porter. “Golly me! Dat’s de stranges’-lookin’ man Ah evah saw!”

  “What’s strange about him?”

  “Man, he am de bigges’ fella yo’ evah laid yo’ eyes on!” The porter gazed ecstatically ceilingward. “When he looks at yo’, yo’ jus’ kinda turns inside out. Ah seed him with his shirt off, takin’ some kinda exercises. Ah nevah seed such muscles befo’. Dey was like big ropes tied around him.”

  Wilkie nodded. He had come on duty at the last division point, and had not seen all the passengers. “In the observation car, eh? And I’ll know him when I see him?”

  “Yo’ cain’t miss him! He’s a great big bronze man!”

  Wilkie headed for the observation car.

  * * *

  Back in the tiny way station, the telegraph sounder was clicking noisily. The operator sat down at his typewriter to receive.

  He copied the incoming message number, the office of origin, and the address. The missive was destined for a passenger on another train.

  The telegrapher reached over to his key and “broke.”

  “Wrong number,” he transmitted.

  Telegrams were numbered in consecutive order. This was to prevent a telegrapher sending one “into the air”—transmitting a message which was not received at the other end.

  “It’s the right number,” the man at the distant key tapped.

  “You’re shy a number,” explained the station wireman. “You sent me a message half an hour ago.”

  “The last message we sent you was four hours ago,” rattled the sounder.

  The telegrapher shook his head in bewilderment. Getting out his carbon copy of the message which he had given to Wilkie, he “traced” it to the distant man—outlining its contents.

  “We sent no such message,” he was informed.

  “I received it,” the station operator clicked back. “There’s something strange about this. Do you think the wires were tapped?”

  “Search me.”

  The telegrapher sat and pondered. He reached a decision. Grasping the key, he transmitted: “I’m going to wire ahead to the next station, and let Wilkie know what happened.”

  “Why go to all that trouble?” the distant operator demanded.

  “Because both Wilkie and I thought the contents of that message were strange. We both remarked that it was an unusual communication for this man to receive.”

  “What do you know about the business of the man the message was going to?”

  “I’ve read of the fellow,” tapped the station operator. “I’ll tell you about him later. He’s worth hearing about. But I’m going to wire Wilkie now.”

  He began to maul out the call letters of a station at which Wilkie’s train would soon arrive.

  The station door opened furtively behind him. It made no noise. Two men crept in. They were clad in grease-spattered coveralls. Both had handkerchiefs tied over their faces, and both carried revolvers.

  The telegrapher, absorbed in calling, did not hear them. It was doubtful if he ever knew of their presence.

  One of the marauders jammed his revolver to the operator’s temple, and pulled the trigger. The report of the shot was deafening.

  The operator tumbled from his chair. He had died instantly.

  Reaching over, the murderer grasped the telegraph key.

  “Never mind that stuff about another message,” he transmitted. “I was mistaken.”

  “That lonesome place must be driving you nuts,” chided the distant telegrapher, thinking he was still talking to the station man.

  The killer gave an ugly laugh. He grabbed the key again.

  “Nuts, nuts! Ha, ha, ha!” he transmitted erratically. “King George couldn’t be crazy. Ha, ha! I’m King George——”

  For several minutes he sent crazily, in the manner of a demented man. Then he carefully wiped the finger prints off the murder revolver and placed it in the fingers of the lifeless station telegrapher.

  “That fixes it up,” he told his companion. “They’ll think he went mad and committed suicide. Nobody can trace my gun. The numbers are filed off.”

  “I don’t like this!” gulped the fellow’s companion.

  “We hadda keep ’em from findin’ out we tapped the wire and sent that message, didn’t we? C’mon! Let’s blow!”

  The pair departed. Some time later, a somber black monoplane lifted them from a level bit of grassland which lay about three miles from the tiny station.

  The plane moaned off in the eye of the evening sun. It was following the railroad westward, as if in pursuit of the passenger train.

  * * *

  Wilkie, the conductor, stood stock-still in the observation car and stared. The colored porter’s words, and what he had read of the article in the magazine, had prepared him to a degree for what he was seeing. Yet the personage before him was even more remarkable than he had expected.

  Had Wilkie not known better, he would have sworn the individual was a statue sculptured from solid bronze. The effect of the metallic figure was amazing.

  The man’s unusually high forehead, the muscular and strong mouth, the lean and corded cheeks, denoted a rare power of character. The bronze hair was a shade darker than the bronze skin. It lay straight and smooth.

  Only by comparing the bronze man’s size to that of the observation car chair in which he sat, were his gigantic proportions evident. The bulk of his great frame was lost in its perfect symmetry. No part of the man seemed overdeveloped.

  Wilkie snapped himself out of his trance and advanced.

  “Doc Savage?” he asked.

  The bronze man glanced up.

  Wilkie suddenly realized the most striking thing about the fellow was his eyes. They were like pools of flake gold glistening in the afternoon sunlight that reflected through the train windows. Their gaze possessed an almost hypnotic quality, a strange ability to literally convey the owner’s desires with their glance.

  Undeniably, here was an amazing man.

  “Doc Savage,” he said. “That is right.”

  The man’s voice impressed Wilkie as being very much in keeping with his appearance. It was vibrant with controlled power.

  “A wire came for you at the last station,” said Wilkie, and handed over the message. It was the first time in years that Wilkie had been awed in the presence of anybody.

  “Thank you,” said Doc Savage.

  Wilkie found himself retreating, although he had intended to hang around and strike up a conversation with this remarkable man. The tone of those two words had impelled him to depart. At the same time, he found himself feeling very friendly toward the metallic giant.

  It was eerie, the things the bronze man’s voice could do.

  Wilkie was almost out of the observation car when another weird thing happened. An uncanny sound reached his ears.

  He came to an abrupt stop. His face was blank. Absently, he felt of his ears. The sound was so curious that he half suspected it might be a product of his imagination. The note seemed to be coming from no particular spot, but from everywhere.

  It was low, mellow, and trilling, that sound—like the song of some strange feathered denizen of the jungle, or the sound of a wind c
rawling through a leafless wilderness. It ran up and down the musical scale, having no tune, yet melodious. Then it ended.

  Wilkie did not feel awed by the sound. Rather, there was something inspiring about it.

  As he went on, Wilkie felt as if he had just taken a drink of fine old liquor. The trilling sound had that kind of an effect.

  Chapter 2

  THE TRAIN WEREWOLF

  The sound Wilkie had heard was part of Doc Savage. It was a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of intense concentration, or when he was surprised. Often when Doc made the sound, he was unaware of doing so.

  Reading the text of the telegram had caused the tiny, weird note to come into being.

  Leaving his chair, Doc strode for the observation platform on the rear of the coach.

  There were other passengers. These were amazed by the bronze man’s appearance—so much so that they forgot their manners and frankly stared.

  A stout, elderly man with a slightly swarthy face gazed at the bronze giant’s hands. Enormous, supple tendons showed those hands contained incredible strength. The hands seemed to mesmerize the swarthy man.

  A ravishingly pretty dark-haired girl sat beside the elderly man. Her eyes were large and limpid, and her lips a most inviting rosebud. She looked very fresh and crisp, so impeccable, in fact, that it was obvious she had not been on the train long. Even the neatest of individuals soon show the effects of traveling.

  These two were clearly father and daughter.

  The attractive young woman seemed intrigued, not by the bronze man’s undeniable physical strength, but by the fact that he was one of the handsomest fellows she had ever seen.

  Doc Savage went on, seeming not to notice the pair.

  Frowning, the elderly man dropped a hand on his daughter’s arm.