Chapter 1 The Too-Realistic Statue

The statue was unusual in a number of ways. Its expression--one not normally found on statuary-- was one of surprise. Its stone brows rose, its mouth gaped. The face was almost comical, frozen as it was. The expression was one of those your mother warned you about--the kind your face might freeze in, if you're not careful. The pose, too, was unnatural. Rather, the pose was too natural, not a pose at all, not a pose in the sense of classical sculpture, anyway. The arms shielded the torso and face, as if to protect the statue. Normally, one would find the view of the face unobstructed, especially in a statue where the realism of expression and the attention to detail were so great, as in this case. The thing did not have a base, as was the usual custom in statuary. It was--no more and no less--a stone cast of a human figure. Another odd feature was the subject itself--an ordinary laborer of Spanish descent. The statue wore leather gloves, straw hat and flannel pants--made of stone, of course--and little else. A more ordinary laborer could not be imagined. But perhaps the most unusual thing about the statue was that it appeared to be made of a shiny mineral, somewhat like obsidian, not the customary marble used by virtually every sculptor and every culture. Obsidian--naturally occurring glass--is considered too-easily fractured to use in sculpting. Not that the workmen noticed any of these things. They dutifully went about their business of removing the remaining planking from the wooden packing crate, taking great care not to damage the unusual statue inside. A pile of wood planks and packing material accumulated beside the statue, cluttering the stone floor of the receiving room of the Colorado Museum of Natural History. One man oversaw the labor. His skin had the look--and likely the feel--of leather. It reflected a good deal of time spent outdoors, and appeared to be stretched over his bones with little to spare. But there was evidence of whipcord muscle beneath. Close-cropped white hair crowned his head. A homemade pipe would not have seemed out of place in his mouth, and in another setting, he could easily have been taken for a prospector of a century earlier. He could have been one of the original forty-niners. And, in point of fact, he had spent considerable time doing just that occupation. Seeing the statue, the grizzled old man hurried to it. "My God!" he exclaimed. "Where did this come from?" The straw boss of the workmen handed the accompanying documentation to the leathery-looking man, who quickly read it. The paperwork stated the statue had been shipped from Chile. Attached was a note, which read: Found this in Santiago. I've never seen anything like it. Have you? Kenny Moll The date on the message was weeks old. "Kenny," the old man exclaimed with affection. The straw boss interrupted his reverie, gesturing to the strange statue. "Where do you want this?" "What?" said the grizzled old man. "Oh. Follow me." Walking into a wide corridor adjoining the receiving room, he led the way through dimly lit halls to his office. The forty-year-old building was almost a maze. The cart, which had an iron railing to keep its cargo from falling off, came clanking along behind the leathery man. Painted on the glass of an open door was "James P. Lannon", with "Geology" limned below it. The office was a hodgepodge of books, papers and mineral samples, every nook and cranny seemingly crammed with some sort of reference material. Opened and unopened boxes cluttered the floor. Most of these were unlabelled. The room was virtually bare of furniture outside of a desk and chair, but the desktop showed it had been decorated by the same hand as the one which had done the room. Rock samples and books were the predominant objects there, along with a large magnifying glass on a hinged-arm device, which was attached to the edge of the desk. The arrangement hung over a mineral sample on the desktop. The telephone currently acted as a bookend on a shelf. Lannon hastily pushed boxes aside, clearing one corner of the office. "Put it there," he said distractedly, obviously still pondering the unusual glass-like statue. It took the brawn of the four burly workmen to unload the strange statue from the cart. They lowered it to the ground where it landed with an audible thump. "Careful," interjected Lannon, in the voice of a born worrier. He rushed forward to steady it. The statue seemed to be relatively stable, standing on its feet. Lannon inspected the thing, heedless of the laborers, who were waiting for a gratuity. He did not even notice them leave after a few moments of disgusted silence. A wheel needing attention on the cart squeaked noisily, fading into the distance. "Hmmm. Obviously a silicate," Lannon muttered. "Most unusual." Kenny--one of Lannon's geological colleagues--had agreed, explaining the delivery of the statue to Lannon. Statuary was the field of expertise of neither of the two, but minerals and geologic processes were. "Really most amazing," Lannon reiterated. He withdrew a hand from the statue in sudden pain, and examined it. A drop of blood oozed from a fingertip. The old man's face held a quizzical expression as he peered more closely at the arm of the statue, where his hand had been when he had first felt the pain. The arm was covered with small, almost-invisible glass-like hairs! Impossible, Lannon thought. No sculptor could--or would--give that attention to detail. He examined the rest of the statue, and found glassy "hairs" wherever they would occur on a human being. The grizzled geologist finally sat down at his desk, lost in thought. Absent-mindedly, Lannon removed a package of cigarettes from a breast pocket, took one out, lit it, and began smoking it. Long minutes passed. He presently retrieved the telephone from its position on the bookshelf, unleashing a cascade of falling texts. Unheeding, Lannon dialed a New York City telephone number. A bronze statue stood motionless in a sparsely but expensively decorated reception room where a telephone buzzed loudly. Oddly, the statue's great muscles writhed like bronze-colored snakes. Upon closer examination, the sculpture was bathed in sweat. It suddenly came to life, ceased its muscle-against-muscle exertion, and walked to the ringing telephone. The man seemed to be sculpted of bronze, so regular and perfect were his features. His hair, close-cropped, was a shade darker than the magnificent bronze tone of his skin. It almost seemed unnatural when he moved to pick up the telephone receiver. Only then, with that object in his hand, standing next to a large inlaid table where the telephone reposed, did his size become apparent. His height topped six feet, his weight more than two hundred and ten pounds. Yet his amazing musculature, so perfectly proportioned, gave him the appearance of an ordinary athlete when away from objects of known size. His muscles could have been piano wires that had been lacquered with liquid bronze. But his most outstanding feature was his eyes, which seemed to contain flakes of gold that were slowly being stirred. The effect of looking into them was somewhat hypnotic, as more than one person had learned in the past. "Doc Savage speaking." There was quiet power in his voice, like a well-tuned engine in a big automobile. "This is Little Jimmy calling". The voice came through clearly, its jovial--and nasal--quality intact. "Are you going to be at the Geology Conference dinner on the weekend?" "I will be there if I'm able," replied the bronze man. "Currently there is nothing to prevent me from attending." "It's important that I see you." Doc Savage considered this for a moment. In their thirty years of association, Lannon had never asked for help. The swirling effect of Doc's eyes seemed to increase in intensity. "Is something wrong?" "I'm not sure," answered Lannon, an obvious tension in his voice. "I can't talk about it yet. I need to do some more work. I'll be more sure of what's going on by the time I see you Saturday." After a pause, the geologist spoke again. "It may be nothing," he added, unconvincingly. "See you then." Doc heard the click of the line being disconnected, and hung up his receiver as well. Doc Savage considered the conversation. He had been raised to investigate peculiar situations, the kind Little Jimmy Lannon had implied he was in. Doc's father had gotten the notion--nobody quite knew where--that his son should go about the world, helping people in trouble--the kind of trouble the police couldn't or wouldn't address. To this end, the elder Savage spent all of his fortune--a considerable sum--on having Doc trained by scientists and experts in others areas which might benefit his son's career and longevity, such as tracking and deep sea diving, but medicine was Doc's first and best learned subject. He was rightly known worldwide as a brilliant surgeon. But that reputation was dwarfed by the one he had as a doer of good deeds, a rescuer of people in distress. Doc had been at this for a number of years and his reputation was that of some sort of modern Galahad. Which he was. But Doc preferred to think of himself as an excitement chaser. It was in his blood. He was assisted in his profession by five other excitement chasers, each an expert in his chosen field of endeavor. They included a lawyer, a chemist, an electrical physicist, a civil engineer and a geologist. It was with the geologist that Doc was attending the Geology Conference three days hence. Little Jimmy Lannon happened to be one of Doc's tutors, many years earlier. Lannon contemplated the statue. He found something disquieting about the realism of emotion on the face, the position of the limbs, almost as if a live man had been turned to stone. No, Lannon thought. As an eminent geologist, Dr. James P. Lannon knew this could not be the case. But he lit another cigarette, and quietly began to shake.

The Stone Death Written By: Jeff Deischer Dedicated to "Kenneth Robeson X" for his encouragement. The Stone Man is a work of fan fiction. Doc Savage is © Conde Nast Back to: Top of Page Index Page Home Page