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

laid heavy hands on his shoulders.
    “I’ll take that,” a low deep rumbling voice said.
    Poetical Percival Perkins froze in mid-tramp.
    Then all hell broke loose.
    FROM the rocks, Dang Mi let out a howl as he recognized the imposing form of Renny Renwick accosting his confederate.
    The Malays emitted their own assorted screeches of surprise.
    And Poetical Percival Perkins, shocked in spite of himself, happened to lose his grip on the box.
    “Oh!” he gasped.
    The world seemed to stop for a moment. If there was the breath of something living, that breath ceased.
    The box slipped from Perkins’ shocked fingers. They fumbled. Some reflex kicked in and he made a grab for the falling hunk of metal.
    Renny’s big hands lunged at the same time.
    “No!” cried Perkins.
    Both men had hold of the box now. They tugged. Renny, being the stronger of the two, seemed the certain victor.
    Then out from behind the outcropping of rock, poured Dang Mi and his piratical horde.
    Dang fired in the air. Three shots. He knew that to bring down either struggling man was to unleash the unknown thing in the box.
    At that point, Renny wrestled the object from Perkins’ long fingers, tucked it under his arm and plunged back into the jungle.
    A chase ensued—wild, noisy, punctuated by shouts and shots.
    Poetical Percival Perkins was the second one to blunder into the jungle, hot on Renny’s heels. What impelled the long, lathy swindler to such action was unclear. Perhaps he feared that the giant engineer, in his ignorance, would seek to open the box.
    In any case, by the time Dang Mi and his excited crew reached the jungle, there was no sign of Renny Renwick, Percival Perkins or most importantly, the mysterious blue container.
    That did not stop them from searching.
    “Fan out!” Dang cried in Malay. “Find them! Find that dang box! Dang your hides, don’t fail me if you value your worthless brown skins!”
    The pirate band broke in all directions. There was no system to their search. They thrashed about, beat the bush and tripped over gnarled roots, accomplishing little.
    One pirate, thinking he was sneaking up on a skulking foe, slashed down with his straight-bladed parang and took off a fellow corsair’s hand.
    Much bleeding and screaming resulted until Dang trooped up and straightened things out by shooting the maimed pirate dead.
    Calmly, Dang Mi broke the action of each pistol in turn, reloading from his well-worn cartridge belt.
    When the dying one had settled down, they heard the unnerving cry.
    It started off as one of those long, extended screams. The kind of screech a man makes when he sees death beating down on him. Only this scream was cut short before it could achieve its promised volume.
    The outcry did not choke off so much as it died. It started off with building volume, cracked, became a parched croak, then trailed off like a fading ghost’s cry for life.
    There was the hint in the air that the scream continued in a much reduced fashion after it failed to register on their sharpened ears. Possibly this was an aural illusion.
    Fixing the sound’s location, Dang started toward it.
    He ran, plunging through bramble and brush, six-guns waving wildly.
    Then he saw the fog and jerked to a stop.
    Behind him, his Malays did likewise.
    “I feel thirsty,” he muttered.
    Carefully, the pirate chieftain advanced.
    “Dang!” he muttered. “I hope the thing didn’t get out of the gol-dang box.”
    But it seemed that way.
    Ahead, there was a ball of fog—the white ghostly fog that had previously attended the opening of the mystiferous box. But it was thinner this time.
    Swallowing twice, Dang wavered between curiosity and abject flight. In the end, curiosity won. For a pirate, Dang Mi did not lack intestinal fortitude.
    Dang sent a corsair ahead. The worthy hesitated, too. Dang impelled him along by sniping at the heels of his bare feet.
    The Malay came back a moment later, babbling excitedly. But he was healthy, so Dang