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

look touched Mrs. Holland’s care-worn features.
    Doc raised the lad’s head and began searching his scalp with careful fingers. Very quickly, he discovered something. Metallic fingers took hold, came away with a fat black thing, which waved tiny legs.
    “Wood tick,” Doc explained, disposing of the insect in a bottle of solution.
    Mrs. Holland shrank. “Oh, no. Mercy!”
    Doc cleaned and bandaged the small wound where the tick had taken hold with its stubborn jaws.
    “If my diagnosis is correct, he is suffering from tick paralysis, as a result of a toxin carried by the creature. It is sometimes a fatal malady. At any rate, it has been caught in time.”
    With that, Doc dug into his valise. He extracted a hypodermic needle, charging it with a clear liquid.
    Monk asked, “What’s that, Doc?”
    “Sedative,” said the bronze man, rolling up the young boy’s sleeve.
    Doc cautioned the boy, “This may sting.”
    “I’m not afraid.”
    As it turned out, it was old Martha Holland who had to avert her eyes as Doc Savage administered the injection.
    When he was done, the bronze man patted the boy on the head and addressed Billy’s shaken grandmother.
    “You will see improvement in a few hours. He should recover fully in a week. Now that the toxin is no longer flowing into his bloodstream, there is nothing to worry about.”
    The old woman appeared to be at a loss for words. Tears brimmed her soft eyes. She took Doc Savage’s hand in both of hers, wordlessly, unable to express a profound gratitude that had rendered her incapable of speech.
    Then she rushed over to little Billy’s bedside.
    “It’s a miracle,” the old woman sobbed.
    With that, Doc Savage packed up his valise and motioned for Monk Mayfair to follow him quietly from the room. It was typical of the bronze man that he did not wish to remain after doing some good work for the betterment of the human race.
    On the creaky ride down, the hardboiled Monk Mayfair took out a violent-colored handkerchief and gave his nose a vigorous honk.
    “Cold coming on?” asked Doc.
    “Nah,” sniffled Monk. “What you did back there just got to me, that’s all. Just don’t let that shyster Ham know I got busted up over a kid.”
    The bronze man said nothing. His metallic features were inscrutable. But there were tiny lights in his ever-active flake-gold eyes. An observer intimately familiar with Doc Savage might have ascribed an emotion to those whirling flakes. But Doc Savage was not known to succumb to feelings.
    They returned to the skyscraper aerie in a satisfied silence.

Chapter 7
The Magic Mummy
    DANG MI WAS examining the steel strongbox with the air of a mongoose regarding a cobra. He ran fingers along its cool blue crackle finish, as if seeking some clue as to the nature of its contents.
    “These Asian artisans have some mighty clever ways o’ riggin’ a trick box,” he muttered.
    Beside him, Poetical Percival Perkins regarded Dang with an uneasy mien.
    “Opening that box,” he said, “means you have rocks.”
    Dang eyed him villainously. “Eh?”
    “In the head, I mean.”
    “I ain’t aimin’ to open it,” Dang said. “Yet.”
    “Your face,” Perkins sniffed, “expresses a different trace.”
    They were standing about the box, which had been taken from the Devilfish’s safe and deposited here away from the water, in a jungle clearing where stood a stone-ringed natural well. This well provided Dang and his cut-throat crew with drinking water whenever they were holed up on Pirate Island for extended periods of time.
    “I’m thinkin’ we should know what we got here,” Dang was muttering.
    “The book gave us a look,” Perkins reminded.
    Dang looked up from the weird box that had been the center of so much turmoil and his eyes fell on one of his blue-turbaned Malays.
    “We know what the dang thing is supposed to do. But we ain’t seen it in action yet.”
    “I, for one, will shun,” said Perkins. “The privilege, that is,” he