Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (48 page)

Renny volunteered, “Serves him right. Doc tried to rescue him and he bit at the hand that might have saved him.”

That, as much as anything, served as the epitaph for Cadwiller Olden.

Sharp-eyed Ham Brooks discovered his sword cane in the dirt and remarked, ”This would appear to settle everything.”

Monk added, “I’ll go round up some ponies. It’s a long hike back to our plane.”

AFTER they had gathered together a suitable number of horses, Doc Savage led them out to the smoldering plane wreckage where Renny Renwick had charge of the two prisoners.

“What are you going to do with these two?” Renny wanted to know.

Doc Savage replied immediately. It was obvious that he’d already given the matter some thought.

“Tamerlane is too dangerous to be allowed to remain at large,” supplied the bronze man. “We will remove him to our special institute, where the Ice Genius will live out the remainder of his days, which should not be all that long.”

All eyes went to Johnny Littlejohn, who had long favored such a plan.

Johnny said nothing, his thin lips bitterly sealed. The cadaverous-featured archaeologist seemed to possess no appetite for prying from the twice-thwarted conqueror of China the secrets of his life in antiquity.

Jerking a hirsute thumb at abashed Prince Satsu, Monk then asked, “What about this overdressed diplomat?”

“The best thing to do,” suggested Long Tom Roberts, “is to turn him over to the Chinese authorities.”

Ham Brooks pointed out, “If we do that, he will certainly be shot as a spy.”

Prince Satsu understood sufficient English to turn very pale of countenance. He cleared his throat and finally said thickly, “Savage-
san,
I much prefer to please remain your prisoner of war.”

Doc Savage’s animated eyes flickered. “Washington would be very interested in interrogating this man.”

Ham offered, “If we try to smuggle him out of the country, and the Chinese authorities catch us, we could be shot for aiding the escape of an enemy spy.”

That put the bronze man on the horns of a prickly dilemma. Even in wartime, he was loathe to permit death where more humane outcomes were available.

In the end, they decided to ride out to the plane while they gave the matter further consideration.

Tamerlane, after his strenuous and unsuccessful run, was having difficulty navigating, so Renny had to boost him into the saddle of a waiting pony.

Satsu was allowed to climb onto his own mount, and when everyone was firmly seated in their saddles, they rode off.

Now, it was late afternoon and the reddening sun was hanging low to the horizon.

It was a long trek to the plane, but it was through hills and shallows that were not heavily populated. By riding carefully, single file, they were able to avoid inhabited towns or wandering peasants.

It had now been several weeks since they had departed America on what been a peaceable scientific expedition. A great deal had changed in that time. They had fought many battles, and now that the final victory had been won, fatigue was beginning to set in.

Had they not been so exhausted, what next transpired might have been avoided.

A velvety darkness was settling in when Prince Satsu, who had been forced to ride with his hands tied before him so he could not escape, abruptly spoke up.

“Honorable Savage-
san,
” he inquired, “have you made a determination as to my fate?”

Doc Savage did not reply. Those who knew him understood that this was a quirk of his personality. When he did not wish to speak, he pretended not to hear a question.

In this case, the silence indicated that the bronze man still had the matter under consideration.

Prince Satsu did not understand this about the bronze giant. He took Doc’s silence as an indication of the worst outcome. Again, he imagined the gritty feel of a Chinese brick wall at his back. His expressionless features grew slack and lifeless.

In the center of the Prince’s formal cravat nestled a pearl stickpin. The Prince mumbled vaguely, then he dropped his chin, and managed to squirm his lips around the pearl jutting out.

Whispering what might an been an invocation to his ancestors, Satsu took this object into his mouth and began to chew, demonstrating that it was not actually a cultured pearl. The sound of crunching was momentarily lost in the noises of the horse’s unshod hooves on dirt and gravel. It was only when the Prince fell to coughing and choking and making strange strangling sounds that the attention of the others veered to him.

“What’s he saying?” wondered Renny.

“Tenno Heika Banzai,”
translated Johnny. “ ‘Long Live the Emperor.’ ”

Tea-colored features turning chalk white, Prince Satsu reeled from his saddle, then smashed into the ground. His horse stopped, flicking its tail.

Doc Savage bolted from his saddle, and reached the stricken man.

Prince Satsu lay on his back, his mouth open, his body shaking uncontrollably. A single syllable escaped his lips.
“Doku.”

Then, he collapsed like a deflated balloon. All life departed from him.

Monk Mayfair asked, “What’s
doku
mean?”

Doc Savage translated the word for everyone. “Poison.”

They buried Prince Satsu where he fell, as best they could. The soft yellowish loess turned easily. They made a cairn of heavy stones. By the time they were back in their saddles, night had fully fallen.

Nothing was said for a very long time until Monk Mayfair offered to no one in particular, “Things are kinda sortin’ out all by themselves.”

This comment brought no reply from the fatigued band.

They rode on. A half-moon showed itself in the sky, giving them a little light. That lunar lamp enabled them to locate their waiting plane, which sat quietly, amazingly unmolested, for they had camouflaged it imperfectly with the buff-colored loess.

Dismounting, they cast aside their saddles, released the horses into the wild and climbed aboard the
Brazen Devil.

While Renny planted Tamerlane in a folding seat in the bomb bay, Doc Savage took the controls. He knocked the engines into life, and ran them until he was satisfied with their performance.

Releasing the brakes, then advancing the throttle, Doc sent the big bronze bird barreling along until her tail lifted and the roaring engines struggled up into the night sky. Doc had to circle several times, spiraling for altitude, for the aging bomber was showing the strain of recent activity.

They were soon winging their way west.

In the co-pilot’s seat, Long Tom was communicating with the Generalissimo, conveying the news that the Iron Horde had been thoroughly smashed, and that Free China could in the near future expect a shipment of up-to-date bombers, courtesy of Doc Savage, in return for the permanent loan of the Heinkel.

“That satisfied him,” Monk reported to Doc, after the radio call was terminated. “He didn’t ask about Timur.”

The bronze man nodded. “The fate of Tamerlane is no one’s business but our own.”

In back, the subject of the discussion sat stiffly, his limbs occasionally shaking. Timur said nothing, but when anyone looked at him, he glared back with his disquieting yellow canine eyes that had first looked upon the world when their distant ancestors were still living.

Johnny Littlejohn was the one who looked at him least. The deflated archaeologist evidently lost all interest in interrogating the warrior from five centuries past.

Monk asked Doc Savage, “Where are we headin’?”

Doc replied, “We will refuel where we can, but my aim is to fly over the Himalayan Mountains to Calcutta, where there is no active war.”

Renny frowned. “Do you reckon this old crate will make it over the hump?”

Doc nodded. “If we nurse her along.”

MANY hours later, they were watching thick ice forming on the
Brazen Devil’s
brassy wings as great ice-capped mountain fangs sprawled beneath them. Ice forming on the spinners built up, was flung off to bang against the fuselage like buckshot. It was exceedingly cold in the cabin. The electrical heaters were not up to the task, but this was an expected hazard of flying sufficiently high to clear the towering peaks.

This had an unfortunate repercussion.

Seated by himself, Tamerlane had dozed off. The coldness creeping into the cabin found his limbs, and he commenced shaking vigorously.

At first, this was not noticed because the old Mongol had periodically exhibited such nervous reactions. After a time, his teeth began chattering, unlovely features showing signs of extreme agitation.

John Littlejohn noticed this and eyed the hideous face, which was trembling uncontrollably.

Rushing forward, he told Doc Savage, “The cold is getting to Tamerlane. He is in difficulties.”

Leaving the controls to Monk, the bronze man rushed back to attend to the aged Khan. He checked the wrist pulse, lifting eyelids and attempting to ascertain exactly what was causing the Mongol to convulse.

Doc Savage immediately saw that Tamerlane was in some sort of respiratory distress. Doc pressed a palm against his gullied forehead, detecting signs of a fever—perhaps a return of the ailment that had brought him to the edge of eternity five hundred long years ago.

In the middle of this examination, the grotesquely wrinkled features slowly shaded to blue. This was not the blue of extreme cold, but another blue. The bronze man recognized it at once.

“He is having a heart attack!” Doc reported.

He rushed to a receptacle where a first aid kit was stored. This he rummaged through, seeking something in particular. His eerie trilling filtered out, indicating his agitation. When it trailed off, rather suddenly, it became clear that the bronze man was not discovering what he sought.

Countenance grim, Doc returned to the stricken man.

He was just in time to watch one of the most famous and feared warlords in human history expire in his seat.

Once final time, Tamerlane spoke, his voice a rusty bullfrog croaking.

“Before Allah,” he gasped out. “I am not—a man of—blood…. All my wars—started by—others….”

It was a lie, of course. As death approached, some fragment of a conscience had evidently stirred in his demented mind, but too late to matter.

The canine yellow eyes rolled up in his head, and the hideously seamed features ceased their agitated trembling, then went slack.

Kneeling, Doc checked his vital signs. He found none.

In the end, there was nothing that Doc Savage could do. He had been seeking a vial of the heart stimulant called adrenaline with which to save the man. But the Chinese plane carried distressingly meager first aid equipment. There was no hope of inhibiting cardiac arrest.

Ham Brooks placed what remained of his ragged coat over the dead man’s grotesque, slumped-forward cranium.

More than two hours passed before anyone spoke. Doc Savage was too busy wrestling the
Brazen Devil
over the mountains. Winds were fierce and the aircraft dropped alarmingly, rising and falling in the perilous updrafts and downdrafts. Shards of built-up ice continued to fly off the spinners to rattle their strained nerves.

When they at last descended into warmer air, Doc Savage said, “We will find a place to set down and bury him in secret.”

It was done exactly as Doc Savage wished. Doc and Renny found the ground too hard to excavate very deeply, but they managed to dig a shallow trench, after which they stacked such stones as they could gather into a rude cairn.

After they had interred the cold corpse, Doc Savage presented Johnny Littlejohn with the Mongol’s peaked helmet and battle mask of meteoric iron.

“A souvenir of this undertaking.”

“Which I fervently wish I had never embarked upon,” Johnny said hoarsely.

“Do not berate yourself so. Events got out of control.” The bronze giant pondered a bit. “As the man who discovered the true tomb of Tamerlane, Johnny, it would be fitting if you said something over his grave.”

Johnny Littlejohn did not have to think very long about that. He walked over to the freshly turned earth and intoned solemnly,
“Igitur ualeas cum malis obruti.”

“Ain’t that Latin?” Monk muttered to Ham.

Ham translated. “Johnny said, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ ”

“You said it, brother,” grunted Renny.

To which Long Tom added, “Amen.”

Chapter LXXV

AFTERMATH

BY THE TIME they got back to New York City, the calendar said it was the day before Christmas, 1941.

Patricia Savage was waiting for them when they returned to their headquarters in the heart of Manhattan, bone weary. She was a vision in bronze, Doc’s energetic young cousin, and the owner of a successful beauty salon on Fifth Avenue.

Pretty Pat’s face was twisted in agony.

“Oh, Doc, it’s been perfectly awful while you were gone. I was so worried about you. Where on earth have you been, and what have you been up to?”

“We will relate that story at another time,” the bronze man said somberly.

Taken aback, Pat asked, “You
do
know we’re at war, don’t you?”

Renny grunted, “What do you think we’ve been doing these past weeks?”

“Yeah,” said Monk. “We already started payin’ Hirohito back for all the hell he stirred up.”

Pat’s clear golden eyes sparkled. “Well, count me in for the next secret mission.”

Normally, this offer to join in brought a ready argument from the others. For years, Pat had been trying to insinuate herself into Doc’s fighting band. Instead, the bronze man quietly went to his enormous desk and placed a long-distance telephone call to official Washington.

“Doc ain’t wastin’ any time, is he?” Monk said to Ham.

“He is anxious to get into the thick of it,” declared the decidedly undapper lawyer.

“Where were you boys?” whispered Pat.

Renny rumbled, “In the thick of it.”

Pat looked perplexed, but no one enlightened her.

THEY all repaired to the great library to give their bronze chief some privacy. Ham had carried his rather worn sword cane back from China and was examining the blade for nicks and other imperfections. The others roamed about, checking various devices designed to alert them to intrusions or other problems that might have cropped up during their extended absence.