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  Title: Cold Death

  Date of first publication: 1936

  Author: Lawrence Donovan (as Kenneth Robeson) (1885-1948)

  Date first posted: Jan. 5, 2020

  Date last updated: Jan. 5, 2020

  Faded Page eBook #20200110

  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.

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

  Books by Kenneth Robeson

  THE MAN OF BRONZE

  THE THOUSAND-HEADED MAN

  METEOR MENACE

  THE POLAR TREASURE

  BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF

  THE LOST OASIS

  THE MONSTERS

  THE LAND OF TERROR

  THE MYSTIC MULLAH

  THE PHANTOM CITY

  FEAR CAY

  QUEST OF QUI

  LAND OF ALWAYS-NIGHT

  FANTASTIC ISLAND

  MURDER MELODY

  THE SPOOK LEGION

  THE RED SKULL

  THE SARGASSO OGRE

  PIRATE OF THE PACIFIC

  THE SECRET IN THE SKY

  COLD DEATH

  A DOC SAVAGE ADVENTURE

  BY KENNETH ROBESON

  COLD DEATH

  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE September 1936

  Copyright © 1936 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter Page

  1. Hand in a Crowd 1

  2. The House in a Marsh 5

  3. The Canal of Death 7

  4. Ghost Voice Again 12

  5. Monk is Silenced 16

  6. Cold Light Strikes 20

  7. Monk Sneezes 25

  8. Trail of a Shadow 30

  9. Monk’s Sweet Tooth 35

  10. Ham’s in a Jam 38

  11. Var Blinds his Trail 45

  12. Death Over Manhattan 52

  13. Monk Bails Out 55

  14. A Girl Seeks Scraggs 60

  15. The Magnetic Wall 67

  16. The Dive of Death 70

  17. Scraggs Joins Doc 73

  18. Ham Gets Poison 76

  19. Plotted Poison 81

  20. The Walls of Life 87

  21. The Woman in It 92

  22. Shadow of Death 98

  23. Death Threatens Doc 103

  24. Three Visitors 109

  25. The Runaway Plane 116

  Chapter 1

  HAND IN A CROWD

  Doc Savage knew a hand had touched his pocket. There was a swift, wraithlike movement of fingers. Then the hand was gone.

  The touch was fleeting enough, but Doc Savage knew it had not been for the purpose of robbery. The fingers had not been explorative. They had merely deposited something in Doc’s pocket.

  Doc Savage did not pause. Nor did he make any effort to apprehend the man who had touched him. It would have been simple to have laid hands upon him, corded bronze hands; to have trapped him.

  Doc knew the man was not a thief. He was aware nothing had been removed. Doc pressed the back of a hand on the outside of the pocket and felt a square white card.

  The man who had placed it there had slipped aside in the crowd. No doubt, he believed he had succeeded in delivering his message without being detected. If he had known Doc Savage better he would have known this to be an impossible feat.

  It was Doc’s principle to avoid public encounter unless the circumstance was compelling. He contented himself with a second’s glimpse of the man who had touched him. He saw the back of a head.

  The hair was scraggly, unshorn. This strung from under the frayed brim of a disreputable hat. The neck was scrawny. Little more than a bony upper spine with skin wrapped around it.

  Doc Savage removed the card from his pocket. He did not slacken his speed. He had been moving through the Wall Street crowd with the easy movement of a jungle animal. Though there was a press on the sidewalk, it being five o’clock, it was amazing how this bronze-skinned man avoided contact with others.

  Doc was careful to hold the card by its edges. The hands of the scraggly man had been bare. There should be fingerprints.

  Doc cupped the card. His eyes flicked across it. Doc’s eyes were like flaky gold with stirring whirlwinds in their depths. The whirlwinds seemed to move more rapidly now.

  For a few seconds there was a haunting, trilling note. Those who might have been watching the smooth, bronze face of Doc would have detected no movement of his lips. There were many thus watching, for the man of bronze was a marked figure.

  The trilling seemed to emanate from all of his huge, symmetrical body. It was a sound of which Doc himself was hardly conscious. It might presage danger, or that the man of bronze was upon the eve of a discovery.

  The message on the card in his hand was brief, but explicit:

  TO CLARK SAVAGE, JR:—IF YOU WOULD PREVENT DEATH, DANGER TO THOUSANDS, CALL UNION 0-1214 TO-NIGHT AT EIGHT.

  The words had been printed with a leaky pen. There was no signature. But the back of a man’s head was all the signature Doc would need. Intuitively, he knew he would see the man again. Perhaps many times.

  * * *

  Doc Savage continued through the Wall Street crowd. Now he moved with greater speed, but still he touched no one.

  The man of bronze had an errand in Wall Street. He completed his brief business before returning to his headquarters. But his mind was busy with the problem the card in his pocket might represent.

  Because of his amazing adventures, his world-wide assistance to those in trouble and his punishment of crooks, Doc Savage was always besieged with appeals. A few merited his attention.

  And he was likewise a target for many who feared him. Even this small card in his pocket might be the bait for a trap.

  When he had returned to his laboratory, Doc set about reading what he considered vastly more important than the mere printed words on the white card. This laboratory, on the eighty-sixth floor of Manhattan’s most impressive skyscraper, was most amazing in its equipment.

  Not even the latest equipment of the police or the Federal department of justice equalled the means here for scientific investigation. In addition,
as the man of bronze had entered, the doors of smooth, chrome steel closed him in. No locks appeared on these doors. But their electroscopic fastenings made them possible of opening only to Doc and his five companions in adventure.

  Doc first dusted the card bearing the mysterious message. The distinct imprints of a thumb and forefinger appeared. The card was a trifle grimy. The hand delivering it had been that of a man who worked. The soiled spots had a brownish tinge.

  The bronze man dropped a colorless liquid upon these spots. The reagent brought out a definite greenish color.

  For the time, Doc made no further tests. He had arrived at one conclusion which was significant. The hands placing the card in his pocket had been those of a working chemist.

  * * *

  The bronze man placed the card carefully in a glass case. The voice of a man was speaking from the library adjoining the laboratory. It was fretful and complaining.

  “You danged shyster! I waited where you said, but you didn’t show up! Daggonit, you won’t get the chance to stand me up again!”

  The speaker was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. His voice was shrill and childlike. But his appearance was that of an ungainly ape covered with reddish-brown hair. Because of this, he was known as “Monk.” He was one of the world’s leading industrial chemists.

  Monk had been speaking into the telephone. The man he had called a shyster was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, otherwise known as “Ham.” He was the legal luminary of Doc Savage’s group.

  Hearing Monk’s voice, Doc Savage removed the card from the glass case. He came into the library and laid the card on the table before Monk.

  “I received this about three hours ago,” Doc stated. “Those greenish spots were brown.”

  Monk touched the edge of the card.

  “The No. 7 reagent brought out the green.”

  Then he named a little-known chemical which had an acid reaction.

  “That is correct, Monk,” the bronze man approved. “The card was placed in my pocket.”

  A huge man with a melancholy face peered at the card and frowned solemnly. He was Colonel John Renwick, the engineer of the group. The hand “Renny” extended toward the card lacked little being the size of a ham. He read the words gloomily.

  “Union Exchange, huh?”

  The third man in the library said, “That’s over in Jersey. And every time we have business with Jersey there is trouble.”

  This man had an unhealthy pallor. He was small, compared to the others. But many larger men had been sharply surprised by his strength and fighting ability.

  He was Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard. His appearance had given him the name of “Long Tom.”

  * * *

  As Long Tom finished speaking, a clock started chiming with musical notes.

  Doc Savage crossed to the desk and picked up the telephone. The clock chimes touched the final stroke of eight o’clock with a harmonious lingering.

  “Union 0-1214,” said Doc, when he had the New Jersey connection.

  A voice started to speak from the other end.

  Without preliminaries, the voice said. “You’re Doc Sav——”

  Then it seemed as if the receiver had exploded. The voice was sliced off. No reverberation followed. There was no lingering roll of sound, such as could have been expected if the instrument had remained even for a few seconds in service.

  “That was a powerful blast,” Doc said. “The phone was torn out. The man who tried to talk was an old man.”

  Doc didn’t explain further. He didn’t waste more time in speech. He had thumbed the receiver bar. Two minutes later, he was given a trace-back on the Jersey call.

  “Blind number,” he said to the others. “It’s off the Newark-Trenton highway in a marshy strip.”

  Doc moved ahead through the outer door. His three companions paused only to make a swift collection of a few special devices they might need. The bronze man did not seem hurried, but the others were compelled to move fast.

  Doc’s special elevator dropped with the speed of a rocket. It slowed with a cushiony rebound, when it reached the bronze man’s private garage in the basement. Doc’s long low car, with its extra-powerful motor under the long hood and its windows of bulletproof glass set in armor steel, glided toward the Holland Tunnel.

  Chapter 2

  THE HOUSE IN THE MARSH

  Shortly before the eight o’clock telephone call made by Doc Savage, a battered old roadster turned off a paved New Jersey highway. Headlight beams laid ghostly fingers across a foggy strip of marshland.

  When he was perhaps a mile and a half from the main highway, the driver abruptly switched off the lights. He parked the little car in concealment of bushes beside a crooked lane.

  Climbing from the car, the driver walked cautiously ahead. Dim lights made a blur in the fog. They indicated some habitation.

  Close up, this might have been seen to be an old log house. It appeared to squat gloomily in the murky depths of the Jersey marsh. The bulk of its presence was marked only by faint illumination from an upper window and one slanting finger of dancing, vari-colored light emanating from what seemed a mere slit at ground level.

  From the basement, or some underground chamber, came a low throbbing. A trained observer would have said delicate machinery of some sort was being operated. Apparently, there was but one outside watcher. And his figure was only a furtive shadow among other sinister shadows cast by this strange, penetrating light.

  At times, the escaping light gave forth a rainbow glow.

  A rutty, obscure road that was little more than a twisting trail through overgrowths of waving swamp grass apparently was the only traffic communication between the old house and the highway of civilization, some two miles distant.

  Across the swamp a pair of telephone wires had been strung along available trees, most of them gaunt-limbed and dead.

  In the upper story of the old house there was no movement. Except for the faint light at the one window, there was no evidence the structure was then occupied by a living person.

  * * *

  The man from the roadster apparently feared something or some one within the old log house. As he walked, it might have been observed he was a vague, catlike figure. He kept to the tall marsh grass beside the road, pausing every few yards to listen intently.

  In the swamp at a point off the road, some considerable distance from the old house, was a single glowing eye of fire. The man hissed an oath under his breath. He crossed the soggy, yielding ground with such quick lightness his feet seemed to leave no imprints.

  Before he reached the spot, the red eye of fire winked out.

  “Hunter maybe,” the man murmured. “Well, he’s picked a poor spot for a camp.”

  As if the possible presence of another human no longer interested him, the luminous-eyed man retraced his steps. He glanced at the radium hands of a wrist watch.

  “The time is near,” he mumbled, “if old Jackson hasn’t been having hallucinations.”

  Picking out a slightly higher, dry spot some two hundred yards to one side of the house, the thin figure became a motionless part of the deeper marsh shadows. His thin lips continued to emit whispered words.

  “The great Doc Savage will be calling at eight o’clock, or old Jackson has guessed him wrong.”

  Again he glanced at his watch. It lacked five minutes to eight o’clock. There was no doubt but he had some objective which was closely related with the phone call Doc Savage had been requested to make from Manhattan.

  “It won’t work out,” he muttered suddenly through gritted teeth. “And Doc Savage saw me. I could feel him looking at the back of my head. I never really touched him, but somehow I believe he knew I was there.”

  The radium hands of the wrist watch showed two minutes to eight o’clock. To the watcher’s apparently raw-nerved senses, the lonely marsh had become alive with voices. His teeth chewed nervously at his lower lip.

  He glanced
at a dead-armed tree. It seemed almost as if he were waiting to read the message that might go out over the wires he knew were strung there. The thin threads of communication between this eerie desolation and the teeming modern heart of Manhattan.

  One minute to eight o’clock. The spear of multi-colored light piercing the slit of the underground window of the squatting old house winked out. The wind moaned a little, as if the withdrawal of the rainbow gleam were a signal.

  The catlike man became rigid. He glanced over his shoulder. The red eyes of fire deeper in the marsh had not reappeared. Perhaps this unexpected camper was no longer in the swamp.

  Eight o’clock.

  From the heart of the marsh, from no definite direction, came a low whirring sound, vicious as the warning of a poisonous rattler.

  The cat-eyed watcher had reared to his feet. He had turned and was running away. The soggy ground of the swamp rocked and swayed. The earth heaved with a convulsive, shuddering blast.

  * * *

  The explosion started at the place of the old house. A knife of giant flame shot upward and moved with ripping effect across the marsh.

  The fleeing man was twice hurled from his feet. Each time, his face and clothing were befouled by the ooze in which he fell.

  The man staggered at last to the side road. The slicing destruction that had seemed almost to be racing with him, had died as swiftly as it had come. The blast had been accompanied by an expanding phosphorescent glowing of steely blue light.

  As the fugitive from his own apparent terror reached the spot where he had concealed his roadster, darkness again had enwrapped the silence that was of itself, by contrast, terrific. Over all of the marsh, the air had taken on an icy chill.

  The dank, sulphuric odor of death permeated the country for many miles. Shuddering, the man leaped into the roadster. He glanced only once at the place where the old log house had squatted evilly in the marsh.