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

around.”
    “Water?” Percival said.
    “If it falls into water—” the girl said, accepting the box.
    “—the world could come to an end,” finished the man. His voice did not sound facetious in any way. In fact, it had a grimly-worried timbre to it.
    This impressed Dang Mi. “Didn’t Pandora have a box like that, so the stories go?”
    “You’ll be able to reach Singapore in that dink,” the man-twin said as he took hold of the steering post of the motor. “Now give us a shove.”
    Dang and Percival fell to pushing on the dory’s prow. The boat backed into the water, became buoyant, and the man-twin sent it puttering around in a circle.
    They managed to complete the circle before the girl noticed the dory was filling with water.
    The girl gave a very creditable shriek. It would have peeled copra from a halved coconut.
    “We’re sinking!” she moaned. “Back to shore—quick!”
    “Keep the box shut!” the other howled, as he wrestled the steering post around.
    “Come on!” Percival shouted, whipping his long form for the beached dink. Dang pounded after him.
    “Petcock?” he puffed.
    “Opened it before I got out,” Percival gasped.
    They shoved off and were soon within grabbing distance of the returning dory.
    “Get out of the way!” the man-twin yelled. “We have to reach dry land!”
    “You’ll never make it,” Percival retorted. “Surrender the box!”
    “Never!” the girl-twin snapped.
    “Do you want to world to come to an end?” Percival shouted back.
    “What’re you tryin’ to pull?” Dang asked hoarsely.
    “String along,” Percival undertoned gruffly. “The box is as good as ours.”
    Dang shut up. The two boats were on a collision course. Disaster seemed inevitable. The water was sloshing about the dory’s interior noisily. It began to wallow.
    The Chans, their faces visible behind the clear ports of their protective hoods, wore expressions of utter terror. The girl clung to the blue box on her lap, leaning on the lid, as if she feared it as much as wanting to protect it from the rising waters.
    “You’ve only got seconds!” Poetical Percival warned. “Surrender the box or the worst happens!”
    The dory was dead in the water now. The only direction in which it was moving was down—straight down to the bottom.
    “Give them the box,” the man-twin said in hoarse agony.
    “But they’re—”
    “Do it!”
    The box was handed over. Dang took it. It did not weigh much, but it was not light, either. He set it carefully on his lap and placed his elbows on the lid to keep it down. His skin was beginning the crawl, and he wasn’t sure why. The box was cool to the touch—too cool.
    The twins were scrambling from the sinking dory now. It went down under them and they floated there, treading water.
    Poetical Percival produced a pistol and employed the business end to menace the almond-orbed twins. The latter held up their hands, and continued treading water.
    “Act in haste, repent in Hell,” warned Poetical Percival, indicating with a waggling of his gun that the pair were to come aboard the dink.
    The strangely-garbed twins clambered aboard and sat down meekly. They remained in that attitude until the dink was back on the beach and they were all standing on dry land once more.
    There, the pair were ordered out of their coverall suits. They complied in sullen, apprehensive silence. Their eyes were a little sick about the edges. They did not take them off the blue box.
    Once shed of their unusual garments, they stood clad in nothing more extraordinary than tropical cotton shirts with short khaki pants suitable for a jungle trek. Their skins were smooth and possessed a tint that was something like dusky ivory. Their matching eyes resembled ripe olives. Both sets of orbs regarded their captor with an identical narrow regard that was unnervingly catlike.
    “Now what—” began the man-twin.
    “—will you do with us?” continued the girl-twin.
    “As if we couldn’t