DOC SAVAGE: THE INFERNAL BUDDHA (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) by Kenneth Robeson, Lester Dent, Will Murray Read Free Book Online Page B

continual, lulling murmur.
    After a time, Renny spoke.
    “Who is he?” he asked Mary Chan. Renny jerked an enormous thumb in the direction of the rather subdued young Eurasian man.
    “My twin,” Mary Chan said. “His name is Mark. I’m Mary— Mary Chan.”
    Mark Chan looked disconsolate. Shame weighed down his battered head. His lips were a crushed ruin.
    “I’m afraid they beat him,” explained Mary Chan. “But it’s nothing compared with what will happen to the human race should that devil Dang Mi gets his way.”
    “You might,” Renny suggested, “begin at the beginning.”
    Mary Chan looked to her brother. Mark Chan swallowed hard and nodded uncomfortable assent.
    “I sought you out to ask your help in finding my brother,” Mary supplied. “I had hopes that through you I could be put in touch with Doc Savage.”
    “You know Doc?”
    “Actually, I never heard of him before to-day. But I chanced to read of him in a Singapore newspaper after I escaped Dang Mi’s boat.”
    Renny had been rather sanguine about his predicament until now. Startlement registered on his long gloomy visage.
    “Holy cow! Never heard of Doc! Where were you raised—on the moon?”
    Neither Chan seemed to find amusement in the comment.
    Mary said, “We grew up in a remote part of China, with our mother. Our father was rarely home. We were en route by private airplane to seek help when we ditched off the Malay coast. That is how Dang Mi got us. He shot us down.”
    “Ransom deal?” asked Renny.
    Mary Chan shook her head. “No. We were bringing the box out of China. Dang Mi and his men discovered it. One opened it.”
    Mary Chan actually shuddered at this juncture. Mark Chan simply closed his pained almond orbs.
    Renny eyed them and asked a natural question.
    “What,” he wondered, “is in the box?”
    As if linked by a common brain, Mark and Mary Chan averted their eyes. Mark moistened bruised lips. Mary bit into her own red lips.
    It became plain that neither was inclined to answer the big-fisted engineer’s question.
    Renny tried again. “I’m in this fix because you barged in on me,” he reminded Mary Chan.
    Mary made assorted thoughtful faces. They seemed to become her. She possessed an intelligent countenance and the notches created by her knitting brows and the grim twists of her mouth only added to her exotic comeliness.
    Renny noted that her speech, which before contained the flavor of modernity, seemed, as the unpleasant reality of captivity sank in, to more and more revert to a formal brand of English. This suggested that she was raised speaking Mandarin, or some other Chinese dialect.
    Mark Chan caught her eye and a look passed between them that Renny could not read.
    “Did you,” Mary asked at length, “ever hear of Pandora’s box?”
    “Sure,” Renny grunted.
    “The world’s evils were imprisoned in a box that a Greek maiden named Pandora was forbidden to open. But her curiosity got the best of her and she stole a peek. After she lifted the lid, all manner of imprisoned evils escaped and have ever since plagued mankind.”
    “That is a myth,” Renny snorted. “Pure hokum.”
    “True. But the box Dang Mi now controls contains a thing infinitely worse than the horrid evils supposedly imprisoned in Pandora’s box.”
    “Infinitely,” Mark Chan chorused.
    “If mankind is to survive,” Mary asserted, “that box must be wrested back from Dang Mi before he unleashes it.”
    “Holy cow,” Renny thumped, impressed in spite of a natural tendency toward skepticism. In his long association with Doc Savage, he had come into contact with many strange and uncanny things. But the rough shape of the mystery outlined by Mary Chan’s words threatened to top them all.
    Up until now, Renny had been content to sit and listen to the Chans’ unnerving recital. Now he sprang into action. He had been shackled wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle. A heavy span of sea-rusted links connected the two lengths of chain.