Five fathoms dead, p.1
Five Fathoms Dead, page 1
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Title: Five Fathoms Dead
Date of first publication: 1946
Author: Lester Dent (as Kenneth Robeson) (1904-1959)
Date first posted: June 23, 2019
Date last updated: June 23, 2019
Faded Page eBook #20190641
This eBook was produced by: Al Haines & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
WHO IS
DOC SAVAGE
The bronze giant, who with his five aides became world famous, whose name was as well known in the far regions of China and the jungles of Africa as in the skyscrapers of New York.
There were stories of Doc Savage's almost incredible strength; of his amazing scientific discoveries of strange weapons and dangerous exploits.
Doc had dedicated his life to aiding those faced by dangers with which they could not cope.
His name brought fear to those who sought to prey upon the unsuspecting. His name was praised by thousands he had saved.
DOC SAVAGE'S AMAZING CREW
"Ham," Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, was never without his ominous, black sword cane.
"Monk," Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, just over five feet tall, yet over 260 pounds. His brutish exterior concealed the mind of a great scientist.
"Renny," Colonel John Renwick, his favorite sport was pounding his massive fists through heavy, paneled doors.
"Long Tom," Major Thomas J. Roberts, was the physical weakling of the crowd, but a genius at electricity.
"Johnny," William Harper Littlejohn, the scientist and greatest living expert on geology and archaeology.
WITH THEIR LEADER, THEY WOULD
GO ANYWHERE, FIGHT ANYONE,
DARE EVERYTHING—SEEKING EXCITEMENT
AND PERILOUS ADVENTURE!
Omnibus #1 THE ALL-WHITE ELF, THE RUNNING SKELETONS, THE ANGRY CANARY, and THE SWOONING LADY
Omnibus #2 THE MINDLESS MONSTERS, THE RUSTLING DEATH, KIND JOE CAY, and THE THING THAT PURSUED
Omnibus #3 THE SPOOK OF GRANDPA EBEN, MEASURES FOR A COFFIN, THE THREE DEVILS, and STRANGE FISH
Omnibus #4 MYSTERY ISLAND, ROCK SINISTER, MEN OF FEAR, and THE PURE EVIL
Omnibus #5 NO LIGHT TO DIE BY, THE MONKEY SUIT, LET'S KILL AMES, ONCE OVER LIGHTLY, and I DIED YESTERDAY
Omnibus #6 THE AWFUL DYNASTY, THE DISAPPEARING LADY, FIRE AND ICE, and THE MAGIC FOREST
Omnibus #7 THE MEN VANISHED, FIVE FATHOMS DEAD, THE TERRIBLE STORK, and DANGER LIES EAST
DOC SAVAGE
FIVE FATHOMS DEAD
Kenneth Robeson
FIVE FATHOMS DEAD.
PRINTING HISTORY
Five Fathoms Dead was originally published in Doc Savage magazine, April 1946. Copyright 1946 by Street and Smith Publications, Inc.
DOC SAVAGE
FIVE FATHOMS DEAD
I
The telescope was of the type known as a spotting 'scope. They are manufactured for use on rifle ranges to locate the holes the bullets make in the targets. This one had a magnification factor of 40X. Powerful. Usually they have a power of about 20X.
For fifteen minutes, now, the man they were calling Whitey had been using the telescope. He used it patiently, intently, his lips wearing the fierce twist of a lynx waiting for a rabbit to venture within springing reach. With a telescope so powerful, any motion is a serious matter, for the objective will quickly jump out of the field of view; hence he'd made a rest for the telescope out of two bricks and a bit of fieldstone.
Presently the bushes parted nearby, a white face protruded, and said, "There's a cop coming."
"How close?"
"Pretty damn close!"
"He pay particular attention to you?"
"No. No, I don't think so."
"It's a wonder he didn't," the big man they called Whitey said bitterly. "You couldn't look more scared if you were playing in a Boris Karloff movie. Wipe that wild look off your puss. Here, have a sandwich."
Ostensibly, and for the benefit of anybody whose curiosity might be easy on the trigger, they were picnicking. This was March, late March, actually a bit early for a picnic. But today the sun was out brightly, spraying the green grass and the trees, which hadn't leafed out yet to any extent, with plenty of warm glory.
Here on the hill, the highest hill around about, it was balmy and bright, and there was just enough breeze to kick away the smell of the seashore, which was a mudflat below them. The place and the weather were all right for a picnic. The picnic baskets looked all right, and there was a raincoat in case it rained and a blanket for them to sit on.
The man they knew as Whitey handed the other man a ham sandwich, then he tossed the raincoat over the telescope, leaned back casually and selected a sandwich for himself.
The cop, old, grizzled, apple-cheeked, looked in on them. "Nice day, huh?" he said. He whacked the bushes with his stick.
"Sure."
"Enjoying yourselves?"
"Sure."
The cop's eyes were moving continually, touching everything. Old, wise, farmed out on this placid park beat the way an old horse is put out to grass, he was alert, hoped he would see some situation that needed a policeman, just so he could defeat boredom. He was not suspicious particularly. He was just looking around.
"They don't like it if you scatter a lot of papers around," he said.
"We won't."
"Seen anything of a dog? Little girl lost one."
"What kind of a dog?"
"Black one, short legs, long hair. Scotty, I reckon."
"Haven't seen it."
"Let me know if you do."
"Sure."
"So long." The old cop hit the bushes with his nightstick again. He went away.
The man known as Whitey grinned sardonically. He popped the rest of the ham sandwich in his mouth, chewed slowly. He was very big, but the middle of him looked flabby and his shoulders slouched, and he carried his mouth loosely. His skin was just skin color, neither dark nor light, and his hair was just hair, also neither dark nor light. His eyes were the only really unusual thing about him, and they were rather shocking, for they were a pale gray—bone-colored—and he seemed to keep them closed or partly closed a good deal of the time. He wore brown sport clothes.
The other man gasped, "You think he's wise?"
The other man was named Eli Stanley. He was medium-sized and dressed in grays and would have been colorless except for a violent green necktie.
Whitey laughed. "Don't be silly." His laugh was as hard as two stones knocking together.
"Why'd he poke his nose in here?"
"Because he's a cop."
"Well, I dunno—"
"Because he's also an old cop and nothing ever happens on his beat and he wishes it would."
"But—"
"Forget it. Wipe that look off your face. Have a pickle." Whitey lifted the raincoat with which he had covered the telescope. The telescope had shifted its position slightly and, lying down to look again, he carefully changed it until it again pointed at the submarine in the anchorage westward of the cluster of brick buildings of the base. He eyed the submarine for some time.
"They're fueling," he remarked, "for the whole trip."
"How can you tell?"
He looked annoyed. "The size of the fuel lines, the length of time since a man turned on the valves. It's very simple." He frowned at the other man, added, "Eli, I hope you prove to be a better man on assaying gold and evaluating jewels than I begin to suspect."
Eli scowled. "Have I said I knew anything about a submarine? If I did, I wouldn't know anything about an ex-Nazi submarine." Eli had his jaw shoved out. But he pulled it in presently, and then he looked a little frightened for his safety. "Not that I'm squawking, you understand," he said. He was afraid of this man Whitey.
Whitey acknowledged the other's nervousness with a slight, and fierce grin. He said, "Let's go. I've learned what I wanted to know about the submarine—they're putting to sea with full fuel tanks." He began packing the telescope in the picnic basket.
Eli watched him. They are all, Eli was thinking, wary of this Whitey.
They went to one of the better hotels in town. The National Household Specialties Company had a branch office on the fifth floor, a bedroom, two sitting rooms, one of which had formerly been a bedroom, and an inner office for private business. The National Household Specialties Company was Whitey, plus eleven men. They were selling household electrical appliances—vacuum cleaners, electric mixers, refrigerators, home deep-freeze units, irons, anything electrical—door to door. They had paid their license fees. They were perfectly legal. If anyone should care to investigate the concern a bit farther, they would find that the home office in New York occupied a fairly impressive, but not too expensive, suite of offices in a midtown building, and, although the firm was expand ing since the war it was not a mushroom affair. Nor was the firm a new one. It had been in existence some twenty-five years. It would have taken more digging, however, to unearth the fact that not more than a month ago the concern had changed hands.
The business of specialty selling from house to house was one which gave the salesman a logical excuse for getting around almost anywhere.
Colton, a short fat man, sold deep-freeze units, home size. He looked like a salesman; they all looked like salesmen.
Colton came in about four o'clock. He reported in the inner room. He smelled of liquor and his eyes were too bright.
He said, "This kid Flinch, this kid in the Navy—I got him a little tight. Nothing in the way of equipment has been taken off the sub. The sub put in to a South American port after the war ended, and the crew, the Nazi crew, was interned right aboard. They've been aboard most of the time since, except that they're interned ashore in barracks when the sub is in port. There was some delay because of the diplomatic red tape before the U-boat was turned over to the U.S. Navy, and the Nazi crew was still kept aboard. The idea is that the Nazi crew is to teach U.S. Navy specialists anything new they know about submarine warfare—if anything."
Colton sounded like a salesman of the door-to-door species, as well as looking the part. As a matter of fact, he had received intensive training in the art for two weeks.
Colton continued, "The sub is going to be taken around through the Canal to the West Coast. To one of the sub bases on the West Coast. There, the Nazi crew is going to teach the Navy specialists what they know, before they're shipped back to Germany."
Whitey, listening to this, could have been asleep. The lids were lowered over his strangely bone-colored eyes.
"Original equipment is all aboard?"
"Yes."
"Never been touched?"
"Untouched."
"What about torpedoes?"
"Still aboard."
"Shells for the guns?"
"On board, too."
"What about the airplanes?"
"Two airplanes," Colton corrected. "They're both on board in flyable condition."
"Okay. That's all." Whitey didn't seem to awaken.
Colton went out. He met Eli Stanley in the outer room, and they went downstairs and had a drink. "Sell any vacuum cleaners?" Colton asked ironically when they were riding down in the elevators. "Three," Eli said. "Then me and the boss went on a picnic in the park. Not a bad guy, the boss."
Colton laughed. Eli didn't mean it about the boss being a great guy, and Colton didn't mean the laugh. Over whiskies in the hotel bar, they agreed that Whitey was a so-and-so, and hell on wheels.
"But, as long as we're tying into a thing like this, I'm glad he is," Eli said.
Whitey transacted more business. He took reports from Hiller and Ward. Hiller sold, ostensibly, vacuum cleaners, as did Eli. Hiller grinned slyly and said, "Mrs. Goss is talkative. Her husband, Ensign Goss, is sailing at eight o'clock tonight, she tells me."
Whitey scowled. "You make a date?"
"Certainly not."
"Why not?"
"I make a date. I don't show up. The submarine her husband's on disappears. Okay, she's liable to think of the two in connection, give it to the cops, and there you are."
Whitey's nod was barely perceptible, but approving. "That's using your head," he said. "So the sub sails at eight tonight. Okay. Get an early dinner. Be ready to move about six-thirty."
"The crew going to move out of town?"
"Certainly the crew isn't going to move out of town. Not for a few days."
Ward was a sleepy southerner with a voice which sounded as if there was sand in his throat. He was chewing on a long, almost-black cigar which was unlighted. He said, "I don't like that damned Colorado Jones. I not only don't like him; I can't take much more of him."
"Yeah?"
"I don't take that stuff, I tell you—"
"What about the supplies?"
"They're all right."
"Aboard the Dancing Lady?"
"That's right. And that Colorado Jones, I can't take. So help me, I'm gonna smear him."
"Never mind Colorado Jones. I'll handle Colorado Jones. Is there plenty of fuel aboard? How about the guns? How about the gas?"
"All taken care of."
"Good. Eat an early dinner. We go aboard about six-thirty. Pass the word along. Six-thirty."
Ward nodded. He said, somewhat maliciously, "I don't notice that Colorado Jones jumping when you speak to him, either."
Whitey's eyes seemed to close completely, his voice grew lazy, and he asked, "Think I'm not able to handle the situation?"
Ward thought about it for a moment. He looked at Whitey, considered Whitey's tone, the lazy way he had spoken. Ward began to get pale.
"I never said that," he muttered, and fled.
II
The yacht Dancing Lady was a yacht by conversion rather than birth, having been constructed as a PT boat during the war, later sold as surplus, and converted into a fairly comfortable, and certainly speedy, private craft. In her vitals still reposed the original PT boat power-plant, a gas-devouring set of monsters which few private owners could afford to keep operating. But she was yachty-looking. She had a coat of glistening white, some mahogany and chrome had been applied here and there, and the interior was done in fairly luxurious shades of blue. At six o'clock, two men came aboard with a few cases of beer. They remained aboard. Presently others came with some food, some fishing equipment. Everyone remained aboard. Some came empty-handed, and didn't leave.
Whitey, the last to arrive, tilted a satisfied eye at the descending sun.
"Nice," he remarked. He indicated clouds which were gathering in the sky. "Going to be dark enough to satisfy everybody."
He went into the cabin. He told Colorado Jones, "Cast off. Let's get going."
"Got some drinks to mix," Colorado Jones said briefly, and moved on.
The man they called Whitey—he signed the name of Clarence Spencer to the company payroll checks, but that, everyone felt sure, probably wasn't his name—moved sleepily, but snakily, and was suddenly standing in front of Colorado Jones.
"Beg pardon?" he said.
"Huh?"
"Beg pardon; I didn't understand you—or did I?"
Colorado Jones rolled his lips inward slightly. He was big, six feet four, and built wide where giants are built wide. His fists were enormous, and scarred as if they had hit things. After his lips had rolled in, his shoulders crawled up a little and bunched, as if getting ready to jump, and he said, "I said I had some drinks to—"
The end of his speech was a report, dull and full of force. Whitey had hit him. Colorado Jones walked backward a few feet and lay down, rather awkwardly, on the cabin floor. He said, "Why, you hit me!" His speech was perfectly clear and lucid. He got up, addressed the other with his fists, a boxer's stance. There was some movement, a little fast for the eye, and Colorado Jones lay down again, the full length of him this time. The whites of his eyes showed, and all of his teeth that would show from drawn-back lips.
Tense, silent, swift, the way people come to a fight, heads appeared in the doors, faces at the windows. Not a word was said. But they were interested; each face was as intent in expression as the face of a surgeon making first cut.
"That's twice," said Colorado Jones. His voice was a trifle thick. "Let's see if it's a habit." His words stuck together.
He started to get up. Whitey kicked him in the face. The kick was not gentle, sporting, nor did it seem necessary. Whitey lifted a foot casually and stamped down on Colorado Jones' stomach. He stamped again twice more, then watched the victim roll over and, bowing his back like an ill dog, become sick.
He said, when the other was silent, sweating and gasping, "I think the drinks can wait, don't you?"
Colorado Jones didn't say anything.
"Get us under way," Whitey said. "Then clean up your mess."
Jones didn't speak and didn't move.
Whitey kicked him where his pants were tight, hard enough to roll him half over, asked, "Something wrong with your ears?"
Colorado Jones crawled toward the deck. Hoarsely, he said, "Get the engine going. Cast off the spring-lines."
