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

knock. He was a towering hulk of a man who had to look down to see who had come calling.
    “Hello, Renny,” said Mary Chan, walking in and shutting the door.
    Colonel Renwick was surprised. Speechless at first. Then he got suspicious.
    “Holy cow!” he said. “What’s your game? I never saw you before.”
    He had a rumbling voice that brought to mind something in a cave, and a long puritanical face that appeared constructed for the express purpose of attending funerals.
    “Have a seat,” said Mary Chan, taking one herself.
    Renny pulled his dressing gown more securely about him.
    “I,” he said, “am not a ladies’ man. I’m going to throw you out of here on your ear.”
    “Would a million dollars interest you?” asked Mary Chan.
    “No,” said Renny. “I’ve got a million dollars. After you get it, it sort of loses its kick.”
    It was the truth. About the million, that is.
    “It’s my million,” said Mary Chan. “My brother’s and mine. They are trying to take it away from us. I think a good many people are going to get killed. My brother first, then others.”
    “Holy cow!” rumbled Renny again. It was Renny’s pet ejaculation, and he applied it to anything that disturbed him.
    “The thing involved is—”
    Mary Chan stopped. She had glimpsed Renny’s hands. Those hands frequently rendered people speechless. They were fantastic fists, being composed of fully a quart of hard bone and gristle. The Cardiff Giant, probably, had possessed such hands.
    “Uh-h-h-h,” said Mary Chan, clearing her throat. “I—ah, well, I need Doc Savage’s help. He can save lives, my brother’s for one. And he can give to the world something that, if it gets in the wrong hands, might conceivably change the whole course of civilization. It could incite wars, cause calamities. The possibilities for trouble are practically unlimited.”
    Renny stared at her. Closely, critically. He shook his long-faced head slowly.
    “I guess you’re not,” he said.
    “Not what?”
    “Nuts. You sound like it. But you better line your story up so it makes sense, or I’ll be inclined to decide you’re an imbecile.”
    Mary Chan snapped, “It’s big. It’s bad.”
    It was. Renny learned that an instant later, when, with a startling crash, the door fell down. The door was rickety, anyway, and three men had hit it with their shoulders, simultaneously.
    The trio shoved in. One was a squat Malay wearing a blue muslin turban and a dirty loincloth whose waistband bristled with numerous saw-tooth knives. Another was tall, thin and very white.
    But it was the third of the trio whose appearance captured Renny’s immediate attention. He was a rather round fellow, evidently white, but possessing the white-brown skin of inhabitants of this corner of Asia, with a pair of very Western six-shooters jutting incongruously from his calloused fists.
    The words tumbling from his lips were not in keeping with his exotic appearance, either.
    “Have a care, Big Fists. We come for the girl, and there’ll be no trouble from the likes o’ you.”
    Renny blocked and unblocked his huge fists. It was typical of the big-fisted engineer that he was going to tackle the trio with his bare hands. He had unbounded confidence in those gargantuan fists, and not without reason. It was Renny’s boast that no wooden door had a panel so stout that he could not wreck it with one blow from either fist.
    MARY CHAN had been a little soldier up to this point. No tears. No hysterics. But now something went snap, and she let out a shriek and dived for the window. Anyone could see that she was wild for the moment, and was going to jump through the window. It was on the third story, with hard cobbled street below. It might kill her.
    So Renny tripped her. She fell, hit a chair, and writhed on the floor, stunned.
    In the time it took for Dang Mi to cock his six-guns, Renny reached down and gathered up the Eurasian girl. Sheltering her in his great arms, the big engineer