DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) Read Online Free Page A

Chans looked at each other, their heads swiveling around as if working off one mechanism. They tried to swap grins. These didn’t quite come off.
    “So you’re wise,” growled the man-twin.
    “We hope so,” said Poetical Percival.
    “What are you going to do about it?” the girl-twin asked calmly.
    “All we can,” said Dang Mi.
    There was no more to the conversation. The Chans were hauled forward to a cubicle which was normally a cargo hold, for cargo of a nature that was best locked up, lest the crew drink too much of it. This room, in the present situation, doubled excellently as a prison.
    “What’ll we do with ’em?”  Poetical Percival wanted to know.
    He and Dang Mi had formed a partnership. No words had been exchanged to that effect. It was simply understood.
    “Keep ’em until we get our hands on this blasted Buddha business,” said Dang.
    “This thing is big.”
    “This thing,” echoed Dang Mi, “is dang sure to get even bigger.”
    “Do we open the box?”
    Dang shook his head. “Not until we know exactly what it is we’re loosing on this poor world.” He clutched his throat. “I don’t want what happened to me to happen again.”
    And Dang Mi let his soft body shudder like blood pudding in an earthquake.
    IN the cubicle below, the Chans listened to the sounds coming from deck. Noises of a ship being readied to depart. A protracted clanking, grinding noise reverberated. They could feel it from the soles of their feet to their back teeth. The Devilfish was weighing anchor.
    The busy padding of feet on deck soon abated, and was replaced by the rushing gurgle of water against the junk’s awkward hull. The engine voiced a constant, monotonous thrum.
    “The captain of this ark is no Samaritan, Mary,” said the almond-eyed man-twin.
    “What a break for us, Mark,” said the girl-twin, wryly.
    “They’re wise.”
    “Of course.”
    “An unscrupulous devil like this could make millions out of it.”
    The girl nodded. “It’s sort of out of the pan and into the fire for us.”
    “Now, Mary,” muttered Mark Chan. “You’re hinting again that Startell Pompman intends to freeze us out. I wish you would stop these insinuations.”
    The girl sniffed.
    “I’ll stop insinuating,” she said flatly. “From now on, I’m going to state it as a fact. Startell Pompman is as big a crook as any man on this boat. When we picked him for a backer, we certainly reached out and got a lemon.”
    “You can’t prove that.”
    “True, brother, true indeed. But you wouldn’t call my suspicions anything less than profound.”
    Sounds continued filtering down from above. Bare feet slapped and whetted the deck as the crew went about the task of managing the great sepia sails. Commands ripped out in assorted tongues.
    At length, the Devilfish was under weigh.
    “Dammit,” said Mark Chan forlornly. “I wish we hadn’t got lost in that fog and started to land by this old junk to find out where we were and where Singapore was.”
    “Echo,” agreed Mary Chan.
    They sat in silence and gloom for a while. It was hot. The place smelled. They were miserable.
    “Whoops!” said the girl-twin unexpectedly. “Cheers and jubilation.”
    “Eh?”
    “I have an idea,” said Mary Chan. “Listen.”
    Mark Chan listened, and heard his twin lay down a neat little scheme—neat if it worked—which was to lead them to Colonel John “Renny” Renwick, and through him to that fabulous person, Doc Savage, although the two prisoners had no inkling that it was going to turn out this way.
    THERE was a guard stationed outside the cabin. He was unarmed, there being no need for firearms in order to guard two prisoners. He did have a belaying pin stuffed into the elastic waistband of his loose coolie trousers. It was hidden from sight due to the Chinese habit of wearing the shirt tails untucked.
    The Chinese passed his time masticating gum-blackening betel nut, and squirting red streams of juice from between the gap in