By Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson
VIII -- Persistent Foes
The Sun was up, blazing with a wild revelry. Away inland, the jungle was lost in a horizon infinitely blue.
Doc slanted the big plane down and patted the pontoons against the small waves. Spray fanned up and roared against the idling propellers. He taxied in toward the mud beach.
Renny stretched and yawned. The yawn gave his extremely puritanical face a ludicrous aspect.
"I believe that in the old pirate days, they actually built a foundation for part of this town out of rum bottles," Renny offered. "Ain't that right, Johnny?"
"I believe so," Johnny corroborated from his wealth of historical lore.
Plink!
The sound was exactly like a boy shooting at a tin can with a small air rifle.
Plink! It came again.
Then bur-r-r-rip! One long roar!
"Well for …" Monk swallowed the rest and sat down heavily as Doc slammed the engine throttles wide open.
Engines thundering, props scooping up water and turning it into a great funnel of mist behind the tail, the plane lunged ahead straight for the mud beach.
"What happened?" demanded Ham.
"Machine gun putting bullets through our floats," Doc said in a low voice. "Watch the shore. See if you can get a glimpse of whoever it was."
"For the love of mud!" muttered Monk. "Ain't we never gonna get that red-fingered guy out of our hair?"
"No doubt he radioed ahead to someone he knows here," Doc offered.
Distinctly audible over the bawl of the motors came 2 more metallic plinks. Then a series of them. The unseen marksman was doing his best to perforate the pontoons and sink the craft.
All 5 of Doc's men were staring through the cabin windows, seeking trace of the one who was shooting.
Abruptly, bullets began to whiz through the plane fuselage itself. Renny clapped a hand to his monster left arm. But the wound was no more than a shallow scrape. Another blob of lead wrought minor havoc in the box that held Long Tom's electrical equipment.
It was Doc who saw the sniper ahead of all the others thanks to an eye of matchless keenness.
"Over behind that fallen palm!" he said.
Then the rest perceived. The sharpshooter's weapon projected over the bole of a fallen royal palm that was like a pillar of dull silver.
Rifles leaped magically into the hands of Doc's 5 men. A whistling salvo of lead pelted the palm log, preventing the sniper from releasing further shots.
The plane dug its pontoons into the mud beach at this point. It was not a moment too soon, either. They were filling rapidly with water because some of the bullets -- striking slantwise -- had opened sizable rips. Indeed, the floats were hopelessly ruined!
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Swiftly and grim with purpose, 3 men bounded out of the plane. They were Doc, Renny, and Monk. The other three -- Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham -- all excellent marksmen -- continued to put a barrage of rifle lead against the palm log.
The log lay on a finger of land which reached out toward a very small "cay" or island. Between cay and the land finger stretched about 50 yards of water.
The sniper tried to reach the mainland, only to shriek and drop flat as a bullet from the plane creased him. Meantime Doc, Renny, and Monk had floundered to solid ground and doubled down in the scrawny tropical growth. The smell of the beach was strong in their nostrils -- seawater, wet logs, soft-shell crabs, fish, kelp, and decaying vegetation making a conglomerate odor.
To the right of the friends lay Belize with scraggly narrow streets and romantic houses with protruding balconies, brightly painted doorways, and every window as becrossed with iron bars as if it were a jail.
The sniper knew they were coming upon him. He tried again to escape. But he had not reckoned with the kind of shooting that was coming from the plane. He couldn't make it to the mainland.
Desperately, the fellow worked out toward the end of the land finger. Stunted mangroves offered puny shelter there. The man shrieked again as he was creased.
In his circle of acquaintances, it must have been customary to shoot prisoners and give no quarter because he didn't offer to surrender. Evidently he was out of ammunition.
Wild with terror, he leaped up and plunged into the water. He was going to try to swim to the little island.
"Sharks!" grunted Renny. "These waters are full of the things!"
But Doc Savage was already a dozen yards ahead, leaping out on the land finger.
The sniper was a squat, dark-skinned fellow. But his features did not resemble those of the Mayan who had committed suicide in New York. He was a low specimen of the Central American half-breed.
He was not a good swimmer, either. He splashed a great deal. Suddenly he let out a piercing squawl of terror! He had seen a dark, sinister triangle of fin sizzling through the water toward him. He tried to turn and come back. But so frightened was he that he hardly moved for all his slamming of the water with his arms.
The shark was a gigantic man-eater! It came straight for its prospective meal, not even circling to investigate. The mouth of the monster thing was open, revealing the horrible array of teeth.
The unfortunate sniper let out a weak, ghastly bleat.
It seemed too late for anything to help the fellow. In discussing the affair later, Renny maintained Doc purposely waited until the last minute so that terror would teach the sniper a lesson, to show the man the fate of an evil-doer. If true, then Doc's lesson was mightily effective.
With a tremendous spring, Doc shot outward and cleaved head-first into the water.
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The dive was perfectly executed. Curving his powerful bronze body at the instant of impact with the water, Doc seemed to hardly sink beneath the surface.
It looked like an impossible thing to do. But Doc was beside the unfortunate man even as the big shark shot in with a last burst of speed. Doc put himself between the shark's teeth and the sniper!
But the bronzed, powerful body was not there when the needled teeth slashed. Doc was alongside the shark. His left arm flipped with electric speed around the head of the thing, securing what a wrestler would call a "strangle hold".
Doc's legs kicked powerfully. For a fractional moment, he was able to lift the shark's head out of the water. In that interval, his free right fist traveled a terrific arc and found the one spot where his vast knowledge told him it was possible to stun the man-eater.
The shark became slack as a kayoed boxer!
Doc shoved the sniper ashore. The breed's swarthy face was a study. He looked like someone had jerked the cover off Hell itself and let him see what awaited men of his ilk.
Now that the shark was atop the water where rifle bullets could reach it, Renny and Monk put the finishing touch to the ugly monster.
"Why did you fire upon us?" Doc asked the breed, couching the words in Spanish. Doc spoke Spanish fluently as he did many other tongues.
Almost eagerly -- so grateful was he for what Doc had done -- the breed made answer:
"I was hired to do it, Señor. Hired by a man in Blanco Grande, the capital of Hidalgo. This man rushed me here during the night in a blue airplane."
"What was your employer's name?" Doc questioned.
"That I do not know, Señor."
"Don't lie!"
"I am not lying to you, Señor! Not after what you did for me a while ago. Truly, I do not know this man." The breed squirmed uneasily. "I have been a low mozo, hiring out for evil work to whoever pays me and asking no questions. I shall now desert that manner of living. I can take you to the spot where the blue airplane is hidden."
"Do that!" Doc directed.
They started off and soon reached the outskirts of town. Doc prepared to hail a fotingo or dilapidated flivver taxi. Then he lifted his golden eyes to the heavens.
An airplane was droning in the hot copper sky. It came into view -- a brilliant blue, single-motor monoplane.
"That is the plane of the man who hired me to shoot at you!" gasped the breed prisoner.
The gaudy blue craft whipped overhead with its engine stacks bawling and sped directly for the mud beach.
Without a word, Doc spun and ran with tremendous speed for the beach where Johnny, Long Tom, and Ham waited with his own plane.
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Half-naked children gaped at the blur of bronze that Doc made in passing them. And women muffled in rebozos -- a combination shawl and scarf -- scampered out and yanked them clear of the thundering charge of Renny, Monk, and the prisoner coming in Doc's wake.
On the beach, a machine-gun suddenly cackled. Doc knew by the particularly rapid rate of its fire that it was one that he had brought along. His friends had set it up and were firing at the blue monoplane.
The blue plane dipped back of the tufted top of a royal palm, going down in a whistling dive. Then came a loud explosion. A bomb!
Up above the palm fronds, the blue plane climbed. It was behaving erratically now. The pilot -- or some part of his azure ship -- was hit!
Straight inland it flew. And it did not come back.
Reaching the beach, Doc Savage saw the bomb had been so badly aimed as to miss his plane fully 50 yards. His 3 men were sitting on the wing with the machine-gun, grinning widely.
"We sure knocked the feathers off that bluebird!" Long Tom chuckled.
"He won't be back!" Ham decided after squinting at the distant blue dot that was the receding aircraft. "Who was it?"
"Obviously one of the gang trying to prevent us reaching that land of mine in Hidalgo," Doc replied. "The member of the gang in New York radioed to Blanco Grande -- the capital of Hidalgo -- that we were coming by plane. Right here is the logical place for us to refuel after a flight across the Caribbean. So they set a trap here. They hired this breed to machine-gun us. And when that didn't work, the pilot tried to bomb us."
At that moment, Renny and Monk came up. They were both so Big that the breed looked like a little brown boy between them.
"What do we do with his nibs?" Monk asked, shaking the breed.
Doc replied without hesitation. "Free him."
The swarthy breed nearly broke down with gratitude. Tears stood in his eyes. He blubbered profuse thanks. And before he would depart, he came close to Doc and murmured an earnest question. The others could not hear the breed's words.
"What did he ask you?" Monk inquired after the breed had departed with a strange new confidence in his walk.
"Believe-it-or-not," Doc smiled, "he wanted to know how one went about entering a monastery. I think that is one chap who will walk the 'straight-and-narrow' in the future."
"We better catch a shark and take him along if just a close look at one reforms our enemies like that!" Monk laughed.
With ropes from a local warehouse and long, thin palms which Doc hired willing natives to cut, the plane was staked to dry land.
The news was bad. The floats were badly torn. They didn't have material for patching. Nor was there any in Belize. To save a great deal of work, Doc radioed to Miami for a fresh set. A transport plane brought the pontoons down.
Altogether, 4 days were lost before they got in shape for the air again.
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Not a morning did Doc miss his exercises. From his youth, he had not neglected the 2-hour routine a single time. He did them religiously although he might have been on the go for many hours previously.
His muscular exercises were similar to ordinary setting-up movements but infinitely harder and more violent. He took them without apparatus. For instance, he would make certain muscles attempt to lift his arm while the other muscles strove to hold it down. That way, he furthered not only muscular tissue but also control over individual muscles as well. Every part of his great, bronzed body he exercised in this manner.
From the case which held his equipment, Doc took a pad-and-pencil and wrote a number of several figures. Eyes closed, he extracted the square and cube root of this number in his head, carrying the figures to many decimal places. He multiplied, divided, and subtracted the number with various figures. Next he did the same thing with a number of an even dozen figures. This disciplined him in concentration.
Out of the case came an apparatus which made sound waves of all tones -- some of a wavelength so short or so long as to be inaudible to the normal ear. For several minutes, Doc strained to detect these waves inaudible to ordinary people. Years of this had enabled him to hear many of these customarily unheard sounds.
His eyes shut, Doc rapidly identified by the sense of smell several score of different odors, all very vague -- each contained in a small vial racked in the case.
The full 2 hours Doc worked at these -- and other more intricate -- exercises.
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The morning of the 5th day after arriving in Belize, they took the air for Blanco Grande, capital of Hidalgo.
It was jungle country they flew over. Luxuriant, unhealthily rank trees in near solid masses. Lianas and grotesque aerial roots tied these into a solid carpet.
Confident of his motors, Doc flew low enough that they could see tiny parakeets and pairs of yellow-headed parrots feeding off chichem berries that grew in abundance.
Some hours later, they were over the border of Hidalgo. It was a typical country of the Southern republics. Wedged in between 2 mighty mountains and traversed in its own right by a half-dozen smaller but even more rugged ranges, it was a perfect spot for those whose minds run to revolutions and banditry.
In such localities, governments are unstable not so much because of their own lack of equilibrium, but more because of the opportunities offered others to gather in revolt.
Half of the little valleys of Hidalgo were lost even to the bandits and revolutionists who were most familiar with the terrain. The interior was inhabited by fierce tribes -- remnants of once powerful nations, each still a power in its own right and often engaging in conflict with its neighbors. Woe betide the defenseless white man who found himself wandering about in the wilder part of Hidalgo!
The warlike tribes and the utter inaccessibility of some of the rocky fastnesses probably explained the large unexplored area that Renny had noted on the best maps of Hidalgo.
The capital city itself was a concoction of little crooked streets, balconied-and-barred houses, ramshackle mud huts, and myriads of colored tile roofs with the inevitable park for parading in the center of town.
In this case, the park was also occupied by the Presidential Palace and administration buildings. They were imposing structures which showed past governments had been free with the taxpayers' money.
There was a small, shallow lake to the North of town.
On this Doc Savage landed his plane.
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (part 7 of 22)
By Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson
VII -- Danger Trail
The rain had stopped.
A bilious dawn full of fog shot through with a chill wind and was crawling along the North shore of Long Island. The big hangars at North Beach airport -- just within the boundary line of New York City -- were like pale-gray, round-backed boxes in the mist. Electric lights made a futile effort to dispel the sodden gloom.
A giant tri-motored, all-metal plane stood on the tarmac of the flying field nearby. On the fuselage just back of the bow engine was emblazoned in firm black letters:
Clark Savage, Jr.
One of Doc's crates!
In uniforms made very untidy by mud, grease, and dampness, airport attendants were busy transferring boxes from a truck to the interior of the big plane. These boxes were of light-but-stout construction. And on each was imprinted -- after the manner of exploration expeditions -- the words:
Clark Savage, Jr. Hidalgo Expedition.
"What's a 'Hidalgo'?" a thick-necked mechanic wanted to know.
"Dunno. A country, I reckon," a companion greaseball told him.
The conversation was unimportant except that it showed what a little-known country Hidalgo was. Yet the Central American republic was of no inconsiderable size.
The last box was finally in the plane. An airport worker closed the plane door. Because of the murky dawn and moisture on the windows, it was impossible to see into the pilot's compartment of the great tri-motor plane.
A mechanic climbed atop the tin pants over the big wheels and --standing there -- cranked the inertia starter of first one motor, then the other. All 3 big radial engines thundered into life. More than 1,000 throbbing horsepower!
The big plane trembled to the tune of the hammering exhaust stacks. It was not an especially new ship, being about 5 years old.
Perhaps 1-or-2 attendants about the tarmac heard the sound of another plane which had arrived overhead. Looking up, maybe they saw a huge gray bat of a shape go slicing through the mist. But that was all. The noise of its great, muffled exhaust was hardly audible above the bawl of the stacks of the old-fashioned tri-motor.
The tri-motor was moving now. The tail was up, preliminary to taking off. Faster-and-faster it raced across the tarmac. It slowly took the air.
Without banking to either side and climbing gently, the big all-metal plane flew possibly a mile.
An astounding thing happened then.
The tri-motor ship seemed to turn instantaneously into a gigantic sheet of white-hot flame! This resolved into a monster ball of villainous smoke. Then ripped fragments of the plane and its contents rained downward upon the roofs of Jackson Heights -- a conservative residential suburb of New York City.
So terrific was the explosion that windows were broken in the houses underneath. Shingles even torn off roofs.
No piece more than a few yards in area remained of the great plane. Indeed, the authorities could never have identified it had not the airport men known it had just taken off from there.
No human life could have survived aboard the tri-motor aircraft.
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Doc Savage merely blinked his golden eyes once after the blinding flash which marked the blast that annihilated the tri-motor ship.
"That was what I was afraid of," he said dryly.
The rush of air thrown by the explosion caused his plane to reel. Doc stirred the controls expertly to right it.
For Doc and his men had not been in the ill-fated tri-motor plane. They were in the other craft which had flown over the airport a moment before the tri-motor took off. Indeed, Doc himself had maneuvered the take-off of the tri-motor using radio remote-control to direct it.
Doc's radio remote-control apparatus was exactly the same type used by the Army and Navy in extensive experiments, employing changing frequencies and sensitive relays for its operation.
Doc did not know how their mysterious enemy had managed to blow up the tri-motor. But thanks to his foresight, Doc's men had escaped the devilish blast. Doc had used the tri-motor plane for a decoy. It was one of his old ships -- almost ready to be discarded, anyway.
"They must have managed to slip high-explosive into one of our boxes," Doc concluded aloud. "It is too bad we lost the equipment in the destroyed plane. But we can get along without it."
"What dizzies me," Renny muttered, "is how they fixed their bomb to explode in the air and not on the ground."
Doc banked his plane and set a course directly for the city of Washington using not only the gyroscopic compass with which the craft was fitted but also calculating wind drift expertly.
"How they made the bomb explode in the air can be simply explained," he told Renny at last. "They probably put an altimeter or barometer in the bomb. The altimeter would register a change in height. All they had to do was fix an electrical contact to be closed at a given height and … bang!"
"'Bang' is right!" Monk put in, grinning.
Their plane flashed past the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty and sang its song of speed Southward over the Jersey marshes.
Unlike the tri-motor which had been destroyed, this plane was of the latest design. It was a tri-motor craft also. But the great engines were in eggs built directly into the wings. It was what pilots call a "low-wing job" with the wings attached well down on the fuselage instead of at the top. The landing gear was retractable -- folded up into the wings so as not to offer a trace of wind resistance.
It was the ultra in an airman's steed, this supercraft. And 200 mph was only its cruising speed.
No small point was the fact that the cabin was soundproof, enabling Doc and his friends to converse in ordinary tones.
The really essential portion of their equipment was loaded into the rear of the speed-ship cabin. Packed compactly in light metal containers -- an alloy metal that was lighter even than wood -- each carton was fitted with straps for carrying.
In a surprisingly short time, they picked up the clustered buildings of Philadelphia. Doc whipped the plane past a little East of city hall -- the center of the downtown business districts.
Onward they swept to zoom down on an airport at the outskirts of Washington.
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The landing Doc made was feather-light -- a sample of his wizardry with the controls. He tailed the plane about with sharp whirls of the nose motor and taxied for the little airport administration office.
In vain did he look about for his autogyro. Ham should have left the windmill plane here had he already arrived. But the whirligig ship was not in evidence.
An attendant -- a spick-and-span dude in a white uniform -- ran out to meet them.
"Didn't Ham show up here?" Monk demanded of the man.
"Who?"
"Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks!" Monk explained.
The airport attendant registered shock … then great embarrassment at the words. He opened his mouth to speak. But instead, excitement made him merely stutter.
"What has happened?" Doc asked in a gentle but powerful tone that compelled an instant answer.
"The airport manager is holding a man over in the field office who says his name is Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks," the attendant explained.
"Holding him … Why?"
"The manager is also a deputy sheriff. We got a call that this fellow had stolen an autogyro from a man named Clark Savage. So we arrested him."
Doc nodded absently. He was clever, this unknown enemy of theirs. He had decoyed Ham by a neat ruse.
"Where is the autogyro?" Doc asked.
"Why, this Clark Savage who telephoned the plane had been stolen asked us to send a man with it to bring him here and confront the thief."
Monk let out a loud snort. "You dumb dude! You're talkin' to Clark Savage!"
The attendant stuttered again. "I don't understand …"
"Someone foxed you," Doc said without noticeable malice. "The pilot who flew that plane to get the fake Clark Savage may be in danger. Do you know where he went?"
"The manager knows."
They hurried over to the administration building. They found a Ham Brooks who was burning up. Ham could ordinarily talk himself out of almost any situation, given a little time. But he hadn't made an impression on the blond, bullet-headed airport manager.
Doc handed Ham a phone. "Get the nearest Army flying field, Ham. See if you can raise me a pursuit ship fitted with machine-guns. It's against regulations, but …"
"Hang regulations!" Ham snapped and seized the instrument.
From the blond airport manager Doc learned where the autogyro had gone to meet the man who had put over the trick. The spot was in New Jersey.
Doc located it on the map. It was in the mountainous or, rather, the hilly western portion of Jersey.
Ham cracked the telephone receiver onto its hook. "They're warming up a pursuit job for you, Doc."
It required less than 10 minutes for Doc to ferry over to the Army drome … plug his powerful frame into a cockpit … saw the throttle back and take off. He had a regulation warplane now!
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Flying Northward, Doc had a fair idea of the purpose of their enemy in decoying the autogyro. The place was within motor distance of New York so the villainous unknown one would probably be on hand. He would destroy the autogyro, thus hampering Doc and his friends all possible.
"Whoever it is, they're willing to do anything to keep us from getting to that legacy of mine in Hidalgo," Doc concluded.
Over the Delaware River, Doc dived and tested his machine-guns by shooting at the shadow of his plane on the water.
Knobby green hills sprang up underneath. Doc used a pair of binoculars to scrutinize the terrain.
Farmhouses were scattering, ramshackle. Very few of the roads were paved.
Doc discovered his autogyro at last.
The windmill plane sat in a clearing. Nearby ran a paved road.
In the clearing with the plane were a green coupé and 2 men. One of the men was holding a gun upon the other.
The gun wielder -- Doc perceived when he came nearer -- was masked. The man discovered Doc's Army pursuit plane, diving with motor cans a-thunder. The fellow took flight.
Deserting the other man -- who must be the autogyro pilot -- the masked fellow raced to the windmill plane. The gun in his fist spat a bullet into the fuel tank of the plane. Gasoline ran out in 2 pale strings. The masked man struck a match and tossed it into the fuel. Instantly the autogyro was bundled in hot flame.
One thing Doc noted about the masked man. The fellow's fingers were a deep scarlet hue for an inch of their length!
The man was also squat and wide. He ran with short-legged, pegging steps for the green coupé, then dived into it. The green car ran out of the field like a frightened bug.
Doc's cowl machine-guns released a spray of lead that forked up dust behind the coupé. The car skewered onto the road and turned North.
Again Doc's Browning guns tore off their ripping cackle of death. After the Army fashion, every 5th bullet in the ammo cans was a phosphorous-filled tracer. These burst with hot red blots directly behind the green coupé.
Slowly … inexorably … the gray cobwebs of tracer smoke climbed into the rear of the automobile.
With a wild swing, the green car suddenly left the pavement. It vaulted a ditch -- miraculously remaining upright -- and skewered to a stop amid tall brush that practically hid it.
Doc distinctly saw the passenger quit the car and take to the concealment of the timber.
A couple of times, Doc dived and let the Browning guns spew their 1200 shots-a-minute into the timber. He did it more to give the masked man one last scare than from any hope of bagging the fellow. The timber offered perfect concealment.
Not a little disgusted, Doc landed and launched a hunt afoot for the masked man. But it was too late.
The airport attendant who had flown the autogyro here could give no worthwhile description of the masked man when Doc consulted him. The fellow had merely sprung out of the green car with a gun.
Doc telephoned the authorities and had a net spread for the masked man before he took off again for Washington. But he was pretty certain the fellow would evade the Jersey officers. The man was smart as well as very dangerous.
Doc took the chagrined airport attendant with him in the Army pursuit plane back to Washington.
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Ham and the others were waiting when Doc arrived after restoring the pursuit plane to the Army field.
"Have any trouble getting our papers up?" Doc asked.
Ham tightened his mobile, orator's mouth. "I did have a little trouble, Doc. It was strange, too. The Hidalgo consul seemed very reluctant to okay our papers. At first, he wasn't going to do it. In fact, I had to have our own Secretary-of-State make some things very clear to 'Mr. Consul' before he gave us the official high sign."
"What's your guess, Ham?" Doc asked. "Was the official directly interested in keeping us out of Hidalgo? Or had someone paid him money to make it tough for us?"
"He was paid!" Ham smiled tightly. "He gave himself away when I accused him of accepting money to refuse his okay on our papers. But I was not able to learn who had put the cash on the line."
"Somebody …" Renny rumbled, his puritanical face very long, "… somebody is taking a lot of trouble to keep us out of Hidalgo. Now I wonder why?"
"I have a hunch," Ham declared. "Doc's mysterious heritage must be of fabulous value! Men are not killed and diplomatic agents bribed without good reasons. That concession of several hundred square miles of mountainous territory in Hidalgo is the explanation, of course. Someone is trying to keep us away from it!"
"Does anybody know what they raise down in that neck-of-the-woods?" Monk inquired.
Long Tom hazarded a couple of guesses, "Bananas, chicle for making chewing gum …"
"No plantations in the region Doc seems to own," the geologist Johnny put in sharply. "I soaked up all I could find on the precise region. And you'd be surprised how little it was!"
"You mean there was not much information available about it?" Ham prompted.
"You said it! To be exact, the whole region is unexplored!"
"Unexplored?"
"Oh, the district is filled with mountains on most maps," Johnny explained. "But on the really accurate charts, the truth comes out. There's a considerable stretch of country that no white men have penetrated. And Doc's strange heritage is located slap-dab in the middle of it!"
"So we gotta play 'Columbus'!" Monk snorted.
"You'll think Columbus's trip across the briny was a pipe when you see this Hidalgo country!" Johnny informed him. "That region is unexplored for only one reason: white men can't get into it!"
Doc had been standing by during the exchange of words. But now his calm, powerful voice commanded quick attention.
"Is there any reason we can't be on our way?" he asked dryly.
They took off at once in the monster, low-wing speed plane. But before their departure, Doc telephoned long distance to Miami, Florida where he got in touch with an airplane-supplies concern. He ordered pontoons for his plane after determining the company kept them in stock.
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The approximately 900-mile flight to Miami they made in something more than 5 hours thanks to the tremendous cruising speed of Doc's superplane.
Working swiftly with lifting cranes, tools, and mechanics supplied by the plane-parts concern, they installed the pontoons before darkness flung its pall over the lower end of Florida.
Doc taxied the low-wing speed ship out over Biscayne Bay a short distance, making sure the pontoons were seaworthy. Back at the seaplane base, he took on fuel and oil from a seagoing filling station built on a barge.
To Cuba was not quite another 300 miles. They were circling over Havana before the night was many hours old. Another landing for fuel … and off again.
Doc flew. He was tireless. Renny -- huge and elephantine but without equal when it came to angles and maps and navigation -- checked their course periodically. Between times, he slept.
Long Tom, Johnny, Monk, and Ham were sleeping as soundly among the boxed supplies as they would have in sumptuous hotel beds. A faint grin was on every slumbering face. This was the sort of thing they considered real living. Action! Adventure!
Across the Caribbean to Belize -- their destination on the Central American mainland -- was somewhat over 500 miles. It was an all-water hop.
To avoid a head wind for a while, Doc flew quite near the sea -- low enough that at times he sighted barracudas and sharks. There was an island-or-two. Flat, white beaches bared to the lambent glory of a tropical Moon that was like a huge disk of rich platinum.
So stunningly beautiful was the Southern sea that he awoke the others to observe the play of phosphorescent fire and the manner in which the waves creamed in the moonlight or were blown into faintly-jeweled spindrift.
They thundered across Ambergris Cay at a thousand feet. And in no time at all, they were swinging wide over the flat, narrow streets of Belize.
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
VII -- Danger Trail
The rain had stopped.
A bilious dawn full of fog shot through with a chill wind and was crawling along the North shore of Long Island. The big hangars at North Beach airport -- just within the boundary line of New York City -- were like pale-gray, round-backed boxes in the mist. Electric lights made a futile effort to dispel the sodden gloom.
A giant tri-motored, all-metal plane stood on the tarmac of the flying field nearby. On the fuselage just back of the bow engine was emblazoned in firm black letters:
Clark Savage, Jr.
One of Doc's crates!
In uniforms made very untidy by mud, grease, and dampness, airport attendants were busy transferring boxes from a truck to the interior of the big plane. These boxes were of light-but-stout construction. And on each was imprinted -- after the manner of exploration expeditions -- the words:
Clark Savage, Jr. Hidalgo Expedition.
"What's a 'Hidalgo'?" a thick-necked mechanic wanted to know.
"Dunno. A country, I reckon," a companion greaseball told him.
The conversation was unimportant except that it showed what a little-known country Hidalgo was. Yet the Central American republic was of no inconsiderable size.
The last box was finally in the plane. An airport worker closed the plane door. Because of the murky dawn and moisture on the windows, it was impossible to see into the pilot's compartment of the great tri-motor plane.
A mechanic climbed atop the tin pants over the big wheels and --standing there -- cranked the inertia starter of first one motor, then the other. All 3 big radial engines thundered into life. More than 1,000 throbbing horsepower!
The big plane trembled to the tune of the hammering exhaust stacks. It was not an especially new ship, being about 5 years old.
Perhaps 1-or-2 attendants about the tarmac heard the sound of another plane which had arrived overhead. Looking up, maybe they saw a huge gray bat of a shape go slicing through the mist. But that was all. The noise of its great, muffled exhaust was hardly audible above the bawl of the stacks of the old-fashioned tri-motor.
The tri-motor was moving now. The tail was up, preliminary to taking off. Faster-and-faster it raced across the tarmac. It slowly took the air.
Without banking to either side and climbing gently, the big all-metal plane flew possibly a mile.
An astounding thing happened then.
The tri-motor ship seemed to turn instantaneously into a gigantic sheet of white-hot flame! This resolved into a monster ball of villainous smoke. Then ripped fragments of the plane and its contents rained downward upon the roofs of Jackson Heights -- a conservative residential suburb of New York City.
So terrific was the explosion that windows were broken in the houses underneath. Shingles even torn off roofs.
No piece more than a few yards in area remained of the great plane. Indeed, the authorities could never have identified it had not the airport men known it had just taken off from there.
No human life could have survived aboard the tri-motor aircraft.
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Doc Savage merely blinked his golden eyes once after the blinding flash which marked the blast that annihilated the tri-motor ship.
"That was what I was afraid of," he said dryly.
The rush of air thrown by the explosion caused his plane to reel. Doc stirred the controls expertly to right it.
For Doc and his men had not been in the ill-fated tri-motor plane. They were in the other craft which had flown over the airport a moment before the tri-motor took off. Indeed, Doc himself had maneuvered the take-off of the tri-motor using radio remote-control to direct it.
Doc's radio remote-control apparatus was exactly the same type used by the Army and Navy in extensive experiments, employing changing frequencies and sensitive relays for its operation.
Doc did not know how their mysterious enemy had managed to blow up the tri-motor. But thanks to his foresight, Doc's men had escaped the devilish blast. Doc had used the tri-motor plane for a decoy. It was one of his old ships -- almost ready to be discarded, anyway.
"They must have managed to slip high-explosive into one of our boxes," Doc concluded aloud. "It is too bad we lost the equipment in the destroyed plane. But we can get along without it."
"What dizzies me," Renny muttered, "is how they fixed their bomb to explode in the air and not on the ground."
Doc banked his plane and set a course directly for the city of Washington using not only the gyroscopic compass with which the craft was fitted but also calculating wind drift expertly.
"How they made the bomb explode in the air can be simply explained," he told Renny at last. "They probably put an altimeter or barometer in the bomb. The altimeter would register a change in height. All they had to do was fix an electrical contact to be closed at a given height and … bang!"
"'Bang' is right!" Monk put in, grinning.
Their plane flashed past the upraised arm of the Statue of Liberty and sang its song of speed Southward over the Jersey marshes.
Unlike the tri-motor which had been destroyed, this plane was of the latest design. It was a tri-motor craft also. But the great engines were in eggs built directly into the wings. It was what pilots call a "low-wing job" with the wings attached well down on the fuselage instead of at the top. The landing gear was retractable -- folded up into the wings so as not to offer a trace of wind resistance.
It was the ultra in an airman's steed, this supercraft. And 200 mph was only its cruising speed.
No small point was the fact that the cabin was soundproof, enabling Doc and his friends to converse in ordinary tones.
The really essential portion of their equipment was loaded into the rear of the speed-ship cabin. Packed compactly in light metal containers -- an alloy metal that was lighter even than wood -- each carton was fitted with straps for carrying.
In a surprisingly short time, they picked up the clustered buildings of Philadelphia. Doc whipped the plane past a little East of city hall -- the center of the downtown business districts.
Onward they swept to zoom down on an airport at the outskirts of Washington.
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The landing Doc made was feather-light -- a sample of his wizardry with the controls. He tailed the plane about with sharp whirls of the nose motor and taxied for the little airport administration office.
In vain did he look about for his autogyro. Ham should have left the windmill plane here had he already arrived. But the whirligig ship was not in evidence.
An attendant -- a spick-and-span dude in a white uniform -- ran out to meet them.
"Didn't Ham show up here?" Monk demanded of the man.
"Who?"
"Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks!" Monk explained.
The airport attendant registered shock … then great embarrassment at the words. He opened his mouth to speak. But instead, excitement made him merely stutter.
"What has happened?" Doc asked in a gentle but powerful tone that compelled an instant answer.
"The airport manager is holding a man over in the field office who says his name is Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks," the attendant explained.
"Holding him … Why?"
"The manager is also a deputy sheriff. We got a call that this fellow had stolen an autogyro from a man named Clark Savage. So we arrested him."
Doc nodded absently. He was clever, this unknown enemy of theirs. He had decoyed Ham by a neat ruse.
"Where is the autogyro?" Doc asked.
"Why, this Clark Savage who telephoned the plane had been stolen asked us to send a man with it to bring him here and confront the thief."
Monk let out a loud snort. "You dumb dude! You're talkin' to Clark Savage!"
The attendant stuttered again. "I don't understand …"
"Someone foxed you," Doc said without noticeable malice. "The pilot who flew that plane to get the fake Clark Savage may be in danger. Do you know where he went?"
"The manager knows."
They hurried over to the administration building. They found a Ham Brooks who was burning up. Ham could ordinarily talk himself out of almost any situation, given a little time. But he hadn't made an impression on the blond, bullet-headed airport manager.
Doc handed Ham a phone. "Get the nearest Army flying field, Ham. See if you can raise me a pursuit ship fitted with machine-guns. It's against regulations, but …"
"Hang regulations!" Ham snapped and seized the instrument.
From the blond airport manager Doc learned where the autogyro had gone to meet the man who had put over the trick. The spot was in New Jersey.
Doc located it on the map. It was in the mountainous or, rather, the hilly western portion of Jersey.
Ham cracked the telephone receiver onto its hook. "They're warming up a pursuit job for you, Doc."
It required less than 10 minutes for Doc to ferry over to the Army drome … plug his powerful frame into a cockpit … saw the throttle back and take off. He had a regulation warplane now!
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Flying Northward, Doc had a fair idea of the purpose of their enemy in decoying the autogyro. The place was within motor distance of New York so the villainous unknown one would probably be on hand. He would destroy the autogyro, thus hampering Doc and his friends all possible.
"Whoever it is, they're willing to do anything to keep us from getting to that legacy of mine in Hidalgo," Doc concluded.
Over the Delaware River, Doc dived and tested his machine-guns by shooting at the shadow of his plane on the water.
Knobby green hills sprang up underneath. Doc used a pair of binoculars to scrutinize the terrain.
Farmhouses were scattering, ramshackle. Very few of the roads were paved.
Doc discovered his autogyro at last.
The windmill plane sat in a clearing. Nearby ran a paved road.
In the clearing with the plane were a green coupé and 2 men. One of the men was holding a gun upon the other.
The gun wielder -- Doc perceived when he came nearer -- was masked. The man discovered Doc's Army pursuit plane, diving with motor cans a-thunder. The fellow took flight.
Deserting the other man -- who must be the autogyro pilot -- the masked fellow raced to the windmill plane. The gun in his fist spat a bullet into the fuel tank of the plane. Gasoline ran out in 2 pale strings. The masked man struck a match and tossed it into the fuel. Instantly the autogyro was bundled in hot flame.
One thing Doc noted about the masked man. The fellow's fingers were a deep scarlet hue for an inch of their length!
The man was also squat and wide. He ran with short-legged, pegging steps for the green coupé, then dived into it. The green car ran out of the field like a frightened bug.
Doc's cowl machine-guns released a spray of lead that forked up dust behind the coupé. The car skewered onto the road and turned North.
Again Doc's Browning guns tore off their ripping cackle of death. After the Army fashion, every 5th bullet in the ammo cans was a phosphorous-filled tracer. These burst with hot red blots directly behind the green coupé.
Slowly … inexorably … the gray cobwebs of tracer smoke climbed into the rear of the automobile.
With a wild swing, the green car suddenly left the pavement. It vaulted a ditch -- miraculously remaining upright -- and skewered to a stop amid tall brush that practically hid it.
Doc distinctly saw the passenger quit the car and take to the concealment of the timber.
A couple of times, Doc dived and let the Browning guns spew their 1200 shots-a-minute into the timber. He did it more to give the masked man one last scare than from any hope of bagging the fellow. The timber offered perfect concealment.
Not a little disgusted, Doc landed and launched a hunt afoot for the masked man. But it was too late.
The airport attendant who had flown the autogyro here could give no worthwhile description of the masked man when Doc consulted him. The fellow had merely sprung out of the green car with a gun.
Doc telephoned the authorities and had a net spread for the masked man before he took off again for Washington. But he was pretty certain the fellow would evade the Jersey officers. The man was smart as well as very dangerous.
Doc took the chagrined airport attendant with him in the Army pursuit plane back to Washington.
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Ham and the others were waiting when Doc arrived after restoring the pursuit plane to the Army field.
"Have any trouble getting our papers up?" Doc asked.
Ham tightened his mobile, orator's mouth. "I did have a little trouble, Doc. It was strange, too. The Hidalgo consul seemed very reluctant to okay our papers. At first, he wasn't going to do it. In fact, I had to have our own Secretary-of-State make some things very clear to 'Mr. Consul' before he gave us the official high sign."
"What's your guess, Ham?" Doc asked. "Was the official directly interested in keeping us out of Hidalgo? Or had someone paid him money to make it tough for us?"
"He was paid!" Ham smiled tightly. "He gave himself away when I accused him of accepting money to refuse his okay on our papers. But I was not able to learn who had put the cash on the line."
"Somebody …" Renny rumbled, his puritanical face very long, "… somebody is taking a lot of trouble to keep us out of Hidalgo. Now I wonder why?"
"I have a hunch," Ham declared. "Doc's mysterious heritage must be of fabulous value! Men are not killed and diplomatic agents bribed without good reasons. That concession of several hundred square miles of mountainous territory in Hidalgo is the explanation, of course. Someone is trying to keep us away from it!"
"Does anybody know what they raise down in that neck-of-the-woods?" Monk inquired.
Long Tom hazarded a couple of guesses, "Bananas, chicle for making chewing gum …"
"No plantations in the region Doc seems to own," the geologist Johnny put in sharply. "I soaked up all I could find on the precise region. And you'd be surprised how little it was!"
"You mean there was not much information available about it?" Ham prompted.
"You said it! To be exact, the whole region is unexplored!"
"Unexplored?"
"Oh, the district is filled with mountains on most maps," Johnny explained. "But on the really accurate charts, the truth comes out. There's a considerable stretch of country that no white men have penetrated. And Doc's strange heritage is located slap-dab in the middle of it!"
"So we gotta play 'Columbus'!" Monk snorted.
"You'll think Columbus's trip across the briny was a pipe when you see this Hidalgo country!" Johnny informed him. "That region is unexplored for only one reason: white men can't get into it!"
Doc had been standing by during the exchange of words. But now his calm, powerful voice commanded quick attention.
"Is there any reason we can't be on our way?" he asked dryly.
They took off at once in the monster, low-wing speed plane. But before their departure, Doc telephoned long distance to Miami, Florida where he got in touch with an airplane-supplies concern. He ordered pontoons for his plane after determining the company kept them in stock.
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The approximately 900-mile flight to Miami they made in something more than 5 hours thanks to the tremendous cruising speed of Doc's superplane.
Working swiftly with lifting cranes, tools, and mechanics supplied by the plane-parts concern, they installed the pontoons before darkness flung its pall over the lower end of Florida.
Doc taxied the low-wing speed ship out over Biscayne Bay a short distance, making sure the pontoons were seaworthy. Back at the seaplane base, he took on fuel and oil from a seagoing filling station built on a barge.
To Cuba was not quite another 300 miles. They were circling over Havana before the night was many hours old. Another landing for fuel … and off again.
Doc flew. He was tireless. Renny -- huge and elephantine but without equal when it came to angles and maps and navigation -- checked their course periodically. Between times, he slept.
Long Tom, Johnny, Monk, and Ham were sleeping as soundly among the boxed supplies as they would have in sumptuous hotel beds. A faint grin was on every slumbering face. This was the sort of thing they considered real living. Action! Adventure!
Across the Caribbean to Belize -- their destination on the Central American mainland -- was somewhat over 500 miles. It was an all-water hop.
To avoid a head wind for a while, Doc flew quite near the sea -- low enough that at times he sighted barracudas and sharks. There was an island-or-two. Flat, white beaches bared to the lambent glory of a tropical Moon that was like a huge disk of rich platinum.
So stunningly beautiful was the Southern sea that he awoke the others to observe the play of phosphorescent fire and the manner in which the waves creamed in the moonlight or were blown into faintly-jeweled spindrift.
They thundered across Ambergris Cay at a thousand feet. And in no time at all, they were swinging wide over the flat, narrow streets of Belize.
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (part 6 of 22)
By Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson
VI -- Working Plans
At no time had Doc Savage ever put his ability to think like chain lightning to better use than he did now. In the fractional split-of-time that it took his golden eyes to register the deadly menace of that knife, he formulated a plan of action.
He simply let go completely the silken cord!
This in spite of the sheer fall of more than 80 stories directly below him and with not a possible chance of saving himself by clutching a projecting piece of masonry. This building was of the modernistic architecture which does not go in for trick balconies and carved ledges.
But Doc knew what he was doing. And it was a thing that called for iron nerve and stupendous strength and quickness of movement!
The silken cord -- going abruptly slack before the chair the man above pushed against it -- nearly caused the would-be murderer to pitch headlong out of the window. The fellow dropped both the chair and his knife and -- by a wild grab -- saved himself from the fall he had meant for Doc.
With a maneuver little short of marvelous, Doc caught the end of the silken cord as it snaked past. A drop of a few feet -- which his remarkable arm muscles easily cushioned -- and he was swinging close to a windowsill, none-the-worse for his narrow escape.
Doc stepped easily to the window ledge.
And not a moment too soon, either! The man above had recovered and -- desperate! -- had employed a small penknife to cut the silken line. It slithered down past Doc, writhing and twisting into fantastic shapes as it dropped those 80 stories to the street.
The window on the ledge of which Doc found himself was locked. He popped the pane inward and sprang into the office. He lunged across the room.
The door literally jumped out of its casing -- lock and all -- when he took hold of it! He halted in the corridor, stumped.
His attuned ear could detect the windy noise of an elevator dropping downward. He knew it was his quarry in flight.
A couple of floors above, Renny was yelling, his voice more than ever like thunder deep in a cave. "Doc! What's become of you?"
Doc paid no attention. He ran across the corridor to the elevator doors. So quickly that he seemed to spring directly to it! He found the cage shaft that was in operation. His fist came back, then jumped forward so swiftly as to defy the eye!
The sound as Doc's knuckles hit the sheet-steel elevator door was like the boom of a hard-swung sledge. An onlooker would have sworn the blow would shatter every bone in his fist. But Doc had learned how to tighten the muscles and tendons in his hands until they were like cushioned steel, capable of withstanding the most violent shock.
As a matter of fact, it was part of Doc's daily 2-hour routine of exercises to subject all parts of his great body to terrific blows in order that he might be able always to steel himself against them.
The sheet-metal elevator door caved in like a kicked tin can. In a moment, Doc had thrown the safety switch which the door -- when closing -- ordinarily operated. Such safety switches are a part of all elevator doors so the cage cannot move up-or-down and leave a door open for some child or careless person to fall through into the shaft. They controlled the motor current.
Many floors below, the elevator car halted with its motor circuit broken.
Doc thrust his head in and looked down the shaft. He was disappointed. The elevator car was nearly at the street level.
5 minutes elapsed before the lackadaisical elevator operator got a cage up and ferried Doc and his friends down to the street.
By that time, their quarry was hopelessly gone.
The indifferent elevator chauffeur could not even give them a description of the would-be killer who had fled the building.
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There was considerable uproar around to the side of the skyscraper when a sleepy pedestrian got the shock of his life by falling over the body of the Mayan who had jumped from the window.
Doc Savage told a straightforward story to the police, explaining exactly how the Mayan had come to his death. And such was the power of Doc -- and the esteem in which his departed father was held -- that the New York Police Commissioner gave instant orders that Doc be not molested and, moreover, that his connection with the suicide not be revealed to the newspapers.
Doc was thus left free to depart for the Central American republic of Hidalgo to investigate the mysterious legacy his father had left him.
Back up in the 86th-floor lair, Doc made plans and gave orders looking to their execution.
To waspish, quick-thinking Ham, he gave certain of the papers which had been under the brick in the Laboratory.
"Your career as a lawyer has given you a wide acquaintance in Washington, Ham," Doc told him. "You're intimate with all the high government officials. So you take care of the legal angle of our trip to Hidalgo."
Ham picked back a cuff to look at an expensive platinum wristwatch. "A passenger plane leaves New York for Washington in 4 hours. I'll be on it." He twirled his black, innocent-looking sword cane.
"Too long to wait," Doc told him. "Take my autogyro. Fly it down yourself. We'll join you at about 9:00 this morning."
Ham nodded. He was an expert airplane pilot. And so were Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk. Doc Savage had taught them, managing to imbue them with some of his own genius at the controls.
"Where is your autogyro?" Ham inquired.
"At North Beach airport out on Long Island," Doc retorted.
Ham whipped out in a hurry to get his share done.
"Renny," Doc directed, "whatever instruments you need, take them. Dig up maps. You're our navigator. We are going to fly down, of course."
"Right-o, Doc," said Renny, his utterly somber, puritanical look showing just how pleased he was.
For this thing promised action. Excitement and adventure aplenty! And how these remarkable men were enamored of that!
"Long Tom," said Doc Savage, "yours is the electrical end. You know what we might need."
"Sure!" Long Tom's pale face was flaming red with excitement.
Long Tom wasn't as unhealthy as he looked. None of the others could remember his suffering a day of illness. Unless the periodic rages -- the wild tantrums of temper into which he flew -- could be called "illness". Long Tom sometimes went months without a flare-up. But when he did explode, he certainly made up for lost time!
His unhealthy look probably came from the gloomy laboratory in which he conducted his endless electrical experiments. The enormous gold tooth he sported directly in front helped too.
Long Tom -- like Ham -- had earned his nickname in France. In a certain French village, there had been ensconced in the town park an old-fashioned "long tom" cannon of the type used centuries ago by rovers of the Spanish Main. In the heat of an enemy attack, Major Thomas J. Roberts had loaded this ancient relic with a sackful of kitchen cutlery and broken wine bottles. And it wrought genuine havoc. From that day, he was "Long Tom" Roberts.
"Chemicals," Doc told Monk.
"Oke!" grinned Monk. He sidled out. It was remarkable that a man so homely could be one of the World's leading chemists. But it was true. Monk had a great chemical laboratory of his own in a penthouse atop an office building far downtown only a short distance from Wall Street. He was headed there now.
Only Johnny -- the geologist-archaeologist -- remained with Doc.
"Johnny, your work is possibly the most important." Doc's golden eyes were thoughtful as he looked out the window. "Dig into your library for dope on Hidalgo. Also on the ancient Mayan race."
"You think the Mayan angle is important, Doc?"
"I sure do, Johnny."
The telephone bell jangled.
"That's my long-distance call to England," Doc guessed. "They took their time getting it through!"
Lifting the phone, he spoke … got an answer … then rapidly gave the model of the double-barreled elephant rifle and the number of the weapon.
"Who was it sold to?" he asked.
In a few minutes, he got his answer.
Doc rung off. His bronze face was inscrutable; golden gleamings were in his eyes.
"The English factory says they sold that gun to the government of Hidalgo," Doc said thoughtfully. "It was a part of a large lot of weapons sold to Hidalgo some months ago."
Johnny adjusted his glasses which had the magnifying lens.
"We've got to be careful, Doc," he said. "If this enemy of ours persists in making trouble, he may try to tamper with our plane."
"I have a scheme that will prevent danger from that angle," Doc assured him.
Johnny blinked, then started to ask what the scheme was. But he was too slow. Doc had already quitted the office.
With a grin, Johnny went about his own part of the preparations. He felt supreme confidence in Doc Savage.
Whatever villainous moves the enemy made against them, Doc was capable of check-mating. Already Doc was undoubtedly putting into operation some plan which would guarantee them safety in their flight Southward.
The plan to protect their plane would be one worthy of Doc's vast ingenuity.
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
VI -- Working Plans
At no time had Doc Savage ever put his ability to think like chain lightning to better use than he did now. In the fractional split-of-time that it took his golden eyes to register the deadly menace of that knife, he formulated a plan of action.
He simply let go completely the silken cord!
This in spite of the sheer fall of more than 80 stories directly below him and with not a possible chance of saving himself by clutching a projecting piece of masonry. This building was of the modernistic architecture which does not go in for trick balconies and carved ledges.
But Doc knew what he was doing. And it was a thing that called for iron nerve and stupendous strength and quickness of movement!
The silken cord -- going abruptly slack before the chair the man above pushed against it -- nearly caused the would-be murderer to pitch headlong out of the window. The fellow dropped both the chair and his knife and -- by a wild grab -- saved himself from the fall he had meant for Doc.
With a maneuver little short of marvelous, Doc caught the end of the silken cord as it snaked past. A drop of a few feet -- which his remarkable arm muscles easily cushioned -- and he was swinging close to a windowsill, none-the-worse for his narrow escape.
Doc stepped easily to the window ledge.
And not a moment too soon, either! The man above had recovered and -- desperate! -- had employed a small penknife to cut the silken line. It slithered down past Doc, writhing and twisting into fantastic shapes as it dropped those 80 stories to the street.
The window on the ledge of which Doc found himself was locked. He popped the pane inward and sprang into the office. He lunged across the room.
The door literally jumped out of its casing -- lock and all -- when he took hold of it! He halted in the corridor, stumped.
His attuned ear could detect the windy noise of an elevator dropping downward. He knew it was his quarry in flight.
A couple of floors above, Renny was yelling, his voice more than ever like thunder deep in a cave. "Doc! What's become of you?"
Doc paid no attention. He ran across the corridor to the elevator doors. So quickly that he seemed to spring directly to it! He found the cage shaft that was in operation. His fist came back, then jumped forward so swiftly as to defy the eye!
The sound as Doc's knuckles hit the sheet-steel elevator door was like the boom of a hard-swung sledge. An onlooker would have sworn the blow would shatter every bone in his fist. But Doc had learned how to tighten the muscles and tendons in his hands until they were like cushioned steel, capable of withstanding the most violent shock.
As a matter of fact, it was part of Doc's daily 2-hour routine of exercises to subject all parts of his great body to terrific blows in order that he might be able always to steel himself against them.
The sheet-metal elevator door caved in like a kicked tin can. In a moment, Doc had thrown the safety switch which the door -- when closing -- ordinarily operated. Such safety switches are a part of all elevator doors so the cage cannot move up-or-down and leave a door open for some child or careless person to fall through into the shaft. They controlled the motor current.
Many floors below, the elevator car halted with its motor circuit broken.
Doc thrust his head in and looked down the shaft. He was disappointed. The elevator car was nearly at the street level.
5 minutes elapsed before the lackadaisical elevator operator got a cage up and ferried Doc and his friends down to the street.
By that time, their quarry was hopelessly gone.
The indifferent elevator chauffeur could not even give them a description of the would-be killer who had fled the building.
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There was considerable uproar around to the side of the skyscraper when a sleepy pedestrian got the shock of his life by falling over the body of the Mayan who had jumped from the window.
Doc Savage told a straightforward story to the police, explaining exactly how the Mayan had come to his death. And such was the power of Doc -- and the esteem in which his departed father was held -- that the New York Police Commissioner gave instant orders that Doc be not molested and, moreover, that his connection with the suicide not be revealed to the newspapers.
Doc was thus left free to depart for the Central American republic of Hidalgo to investigate the mysterious legacy his father had left him.
Back up in the 86th-floor lair, Doc made plans and gave orders looking to their execution.
To waspish, quick-thinking Ham, he gave certain of the papers which had been under the brick in the Laboratory.
"Your career as a lawyer has given you a wide acquaintance in Washington, Ham," Doc told him. "You're intimate with all the high government officials. So you take care of the legal angle of our trip to Hidalgo."
Ham picked back a cuff to look at an expensive platinum wristwatch. "A passenger plane leaves New York for Washington in 4 hours. I'll be on it." He twirled his black, innocent-looking sword cane.
"Too long to wait," Doc told him. "Take my autogyro. Fly it down yourself. We'll join you at about 9:00 this morning."
Ham nodded. He was an expert airplane pilot. And so were Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk. Doc Savage had taught them, managing to imbue them with some of his own genius at the controls.
"Where is your autogyro?" Ham inquired.
"At North Beach airport out on Long Island," Doc retorted.
Ham whipped out in a hurry to get his share done.
"Renny," Doc directed, "whatever instruments you need, take them. Dig up maps. You're our navigator. We are going to fly down, of course."
"Right-o, Doc," said Renny, his utterly somber, puritanical look showing just how pleased he was.
For this thing promised action. Excitement and adventure aplenty! And how these remarkable men were enamored of that!
"Long Tom," said Doc Savage, "yours is the electrical end. You know what we might need."
"Sure!" Long Tom's pale face was flaming red with excitement.
Long Tom wasn't as unhealthy as he looked. None of the others could remember his suffering a day of illness. Unless the periodic rages -- the wild tantrums of temper into which he flew -- could be called "illness". Long Tom sometimes went months without a flare-up. But when he did explode, he certainly made up for lost time!
His unhealthy look probably came from the gloomy laboratory in which he conducted his endless electrical experiments. The enormous gold tooth he sported directly in front helped too.
Long Tom -- like Ham -- had earned his nickname in France. In a certain French village, there had been ensconced in the town park an old-fashioned "long tom" cannon of the type used centuries ago by rovers of the Spanish Main. In the heat of an enemy attack, Major Thomas J. Roberts had loaded this ancient relic with a sackful of kitchen cutlery and broken wine bottles. And it wrought genuine havoc. From that day, he was "Long Tom" Roberts.
"Chemicals," Doc told Monk.
"Oke!" grinned Monk. He sidled out. It was remarkable that a man so homely could be one of the World's leading chemists. But it was true. Monk had a great chemical laboratory of his own in a penthouse atop an office building far downtown only a short distance from Wall Street. He was headed there now.
Only Johnny -- the geologist-archaeologist -- remained with Doc.
"Johnny, your work is possibly the most important." Doc's golden eyes were thoughtful as he looked out the window. "Dig into your library for dope on Hidalgo. Also on the ancient Mayan race."
"You think the Mayan angle is important, Doc?"
"I sure do, Johnny."
The telephone bell jangled.
"That's my long-distance call to England," Doc guessed. "They took their time getting it through!"
Lifting the phone, he spoke … got an answer … then rapidly gave the model of the double-barreled elephant rifle and the number of the weapon.
"Who was it sold to?" he asked.
In a few minutes, he got his answer.
Doc rung off. His bronze face was inscrutable; golden gleamings were in his eyes.
"The English factory says they sold that gun to the government of Hidalgo," Doc said thoughtfully. "It was a part of a large lot of weapons sold to Hidalgo some months ago."
Johnny adjusted his glasses which had the magnifying lens.
"We've got to be careful, Doc," he said. "If this enemy of ours persists in making trouble, he may try to tamper with our plane."
"I have a scheme that will prevent danger from that angle," Doc assured him.
Johnny blinked, then started to ask what the scheme was. But he was too slow. Doc had already quitted the office.
With a grin, Johnny went about his own part of the preparations. He felt supreme confidence in Doc Savage.
Whatever villainous moves the enemy made against them, Doc was capable of check-mating. Already Doc was undoubtedly putting into operation some plan which would guarantee them safety in their flight Southward.
The plan to protect their plane would be one worthy of Doc's vast ingenuity.
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (part 5 of 22)
By Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson
V -- The Fly That Jumped
Astounded silence gripped the group.
"You mea …" Johnny muttered, blinking through his glasses, "You mean this fellow really speaks the tongue of ancient Maya?"
Doc nodded. "He sure does."
"It's fantastic!" Johnny grumbled. "Those people vanished hundreds of years ago. At least, all those that comprised the highest civilization did. A few ignorant peons were probably left. Even those survive to this day. But as for the higher-class Mayan" -- he made a gesture of something disappearing -- "Poof! Nobody knows for sure what became of them."
"They were a wonderful people," Doc said thoughtfully. "They had a civilization that probably surpassed ancient Egypt."
"Ask him why he paints his fingers red?" Monk requested, unfazed by talk of lost civilizations.
Doc put the query in the tongue-flapping Mayan tongue.
The stocky man gave a surly answer.
"He says he's one of the warrior sect," Doc translated. "Only members of the warrior sect sport red fingertips."
"Well, I'll be dag-gone!" Monk snorted.
"He won't talk any more," Doc advised. Then he added grimly, "We'll take him down to the office and see if he won't change his mind."
Searching the prisoner, Doc dug up a remarkable knife. It had a blade of obsidian -- a darksome, glass-like volcanic rock -- and the edge rivaled a razor in cutting qualities. The handle was simply a leather thong wrapped around and around the upper end of the obsidian shaft.
This knife Doc appropriated. He picked up the prisoner's double-barreled elephant rifle. The marvelous weapon was manufactured by the Webley & Scott firm of England.
Monk eagerly took charge of the captive, booting him ungently out to the street and to their taxi.
Swishing downtown through the rain and speaking through the taxi window, Doc tried again to persuade the stocky prisoner to talk.
The fellow disclosed only one fact. And Doc had already guessed that.
"He says he's really a Mayan," Doc translated for the others.
"Tell him I'll pull his ears off an' feed 'em to him if he don't come clean!" Monk suggested.
Anxious himself to note the effect of torture threats on the Mayan, Doc repeated Monk's remarks.
The Mayan shrugged and clucked in his native tongue.
"He says," Doc explained, "that the trees in his country are full of them like you. Only smaller. He means monkeys."
Ham let out a howl of laughter at that … and Monk subsided.
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Rain was threshing down less vigorously when they pulled up before the gleaming office building that spiked up nearly a hundred stories. Entering, they rode the elevator to the 86th floor.
The Mayan again refused to talk.
"If we just had some truth serum," suggested Long Tom, running pale fingers through his blond, Nordic hair.
Renny held up a monster fist. "This is all the truth serum we need. I'll show you how it works!"
Big -- with sloping mountains of gristle for shoulders and long kegs of bone and tendon for arms -- Renny slid over to the Library door. His fist came up.
Wham! Completely through the stout panel Renny's fist pistoned! It seemed more than bone and tendon could stand. But when Renny drew his knuckles out of the wreckage and blew off the splinters, they were unmarked.
Having demonstrated what he could do, Renny came back and towered threateningly over their captive.
"Talk to him in that gobble he calls a 'language', Doc. Tell him he's in for the same thing that door got if he don't tell us whether your father was murdered. And if he was, who did it? And we want to now why he tried to shoot us!"
The prisoner only sat in stoical silence. He was scared but determined to suffer any violence rather than talk.
"Wait, Renny," Doc suggested. "Let's try something more subtle."
"For instance?" Renny inquired.
"Hypnotism," said Doc. "If this man is of a savage race, his mind is probably susceptible to hypnotic influence. It's no secret that many savages hypnotize themselves to such an extent that they think they see their pagan gods come and talk to them."
Positioned directly before the stocky Mayan, Doc began to exert the power of his amazing golden eyes. They seemed to turn into shifting, gleaming piles of the flaked yellow metal, holding the prisoner's gaze inexorably and exerting a compelling, authoritative influence.
For a minute, the squat Mayan was quiet except for his bulging eyes. He swayed a little in his chair. Then with a piercing yell in his native tongue, the prisoner lunged backward out of his chair.
The Mayan's plunge carried him toward Renny. But the big-fisted giant had been watching Doc so intently he must have been a little hypnotized himself. He was slow breaking the spell. Reaching for the Mayan, he missed.
Straight to the window, the squat Mayan sped. A wild jump and he shot head-first through it … to his death!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Awed silence was in the room for a while.
"He realized that he was going to be made to talk," Ham clipped, whipping his waspish frame over to the window to look callously down. "So he killed himself."
"Wonder what can be behind all this?" Long Tom puzzled, absently inspecting his unhealthy-looking features as reflected by the polished table-top.
"Let's see if the message my father left written on the window won't help," Doc suggested.
They followed Doc to the Library in a group. "Important papers back of the red brick …" read the message in invisible ink which could only be detected by ultraviolet light. They were all curious to know where the papers were and anxious to see that they were intact. Above all, they wanted to know the nature of these "important papers".
Doc had the box which manufactured ultraviolet rays under his arm. On into the Laboratory, he led the cavalcade.
Every one noticed instantly that the Laboratory floor was of brick with a rubber matting scattered here-and-there.
Monk looked like he understood … then his jaw fell. "Huh?"
The floor bricks were all red!
Doc plugged the ultraviolet apparatus into a light socket. He switched off the Laboratory lights. Deliberately, he played the black-light rays across the brick floor. The darkness was intense.
And suddenly one brick was shining with an unholy red luminance. The brick was the lid of a secret little cavity in the floor. The elder Savage had treated it with some substance that had the property of glowing red under the black-light beams.
From the secret cavity, Doc lifted a packet of papers wrapped securely in an oilskin cloth that looked like a fragment of slicker. Ham clicked on the lights. They gathered around, eagerly waiting.
Doc opened the papers. They were very official looking, replete with gaudy seals. And they were printed in Spanish.
One-at-a-time as he finished glancing over them, Doc passed the papers to Ham. The astute lawyer studied them with great interest. At last Doc was completely through the papers. He looked at Ham.
"These papers are a concession from the government of Hidalgo," Ham declared. "They give to you several hundred square miles of land in Hidalgo, providing you pay the government of Hidalgo $100,000 yearly and 1/5th of everything you remove from this land. And the concession holds for a period of 99 years."
Doc nodded. "Notice something else, Ham? Those papers are made out to me. Me, mind you! Yet they were executed 20 years ago. I was only a kid then."
"You know what I think?" Ham demanded.
"Same thing I do, I'll bet," Doc replied. "These papers are the title to the Legacy that my father left me. The legacy is something that he discovered 20 years ago."
"But what is the legacy?" Monk wanted to know.
Doc shrugged. "I haven't the slightest idea, brothers. But you can bet it's something well worthwhile! My father was never mixed up in piker deals. I have heard him treat a million-dollar transaction as casually as though he were buying a cigar."
Pausing, Doc looked steadily at each of his men in turn. The flaky-gold of his eyes shimmered strange lights. He seemed to read the thoughts of each.
"I'm going after this heritage my father left," he said at length. "I don't need to ask … You fellows are with me?"
"And how!" grinned Renny. And the others echoed his sentiment.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Planting the papers securely in a chamois money belt about his powerful waist, Doc walked back into the Library and then into the other room.
"Did the Mayan race hang out in Hidalgo?" Renny asked abruptly, eyeing his enormous fist.
Fiddling with his glasses that had the magnifying lens , Johnny took it upon himself to answer.
"The Mayans were scattered over a large part of Central America," he said. "But the Itzans -- the clan whose dialect our late prisoner spoke -- were situated in Yucatan during the height of their civilization. However, the republic of Hidalgo is not far away, being situated among the rugged mountains farther inland."
"I'm betting this Mayan and Doc's heritage are tied up somewhere," declared Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
Doc stood facing the window. With his back to the light, his strong bronze face was not sharply outlined except when he turned slightly to the right-or-left to speak. Then the light play seemed to accentuate its remarkable qualities of character.
"The thing for us to do now is corner the man who was giving the Mayan orders," he said slowly.
"Huh? You think there's more of your enemies?" Renny demanded.
"The Mayan showed no signs of understanding the English language," Doc elaborated. "Whoever left the warning in this room wrote it in English and was educated enough to understand the ultraviolet apparatus. That man was in the building when the shot was fired because the elevator operator said no one came in between the time we left and got back. Yes, brothers, I don't think we're out-of-the-woods yet!"
Doc went over to the double-barreled elephant rifle which had been in possession of the Mayan. He inspected the manufacturer's number. He grasped the telephone.
"Get me the firearms manufacturing firm of Webley & Scott in Birmingham, England," he told the phone operator. "Yes, of course -- England! Where the Prince of Wales lives."
To his friends, Doc explained: "Perhaps the firm that made the rifle will know to whom they sold it."
"Somebody will cuss over in England when he's called out of bed by long-distance phone from America," Renny chuckled.
"You forget the 5 hours' time difference," clipped waspish Ham. "It is now early morning in England. They'll just be getting up."
Doc was facing the window again, apparently lost in thought. Actually -- while standing there a moment before -- he had felt vaguely that something was out-of-place about the window.
Then he got it! The mortar at one end of the granite slab which formed the windowsill was fresher than on the other side. The strip of mortar was no wider than a pencil mark. Yet Doc noticed it. He leaned out the window.
A fine wire -- escaping from the room through the mortared crack -- ran downward! It entered a window below.
Doc flashed back into the room. His supple, sensitive but steel-strong hands explored. He brought to light a tiny microphone of the type radio announcers call lapel mikes.
"Somebody has been listening!" His powerful voice throbbed through the room. "In the room below! Let's look into that!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No puff of wind could have gone out of the room and down the stairs more speedily than Doc made it. The distance was 60 feet. Doc had covered it all before his men were out of the upstairs room. And they had moved as quickly as they could.
Whipping over where the wall could shelter him from ordinary bullets, Doc tried the doorknob. Locked! He exerted what for him was only a mild pressure. Wood splintered, brass mechanism of the lock gritted and tore … and the door hopped ajar.
A pistol crashed in the room! The bullet came close enough to Doc's bronzed features that he felt the cold stir of air. A second lead missile followed. The powder noise was a great bawl of sound. Both bullets chopped plaster off the elaborately decorated corridor wall.
Within the room, a door slammed.
Doc instantly slid inside. Sure enough, his quarry had retreated to a connecting office.
All this had taken flash parts-of-a-second. Doc's men were only now clamoring at the door.
"Keep back!" Doc directed. He liked to fight his own battles. And there seemed to be only one man opposing him.
Doc crossed the office, treading new-looking cheap carpet. He circled a second-hand oak desk with edges blackened where cigarette stubs had been placed carelessly. He tried the connecting door.
It was also locked. But it gave like wet cardboard before his powerful shove. Alert and almost certain a bullet would meet him, he doubled down close to the floor. He knew he could bob into view and back before the man inside could pull trigger.
But the place was empty!
Once … twice … three times … Doc counted his own heartbeats. Then he saw the explanation.
A stout silken cord -- with hardwood rods about the size of fountain pens tied every foot-or-so for handholds -- draped out of the open window. The end of the cord was tied to a stout radiator leg. And a tense jerking showed a man was going down it.
With a single leap, Doc was at the window. He looked down.
Of the man descending the cord, little could be told. In the streaming darkness, he was no more than a black lump.
Doc drew back and whipped out his flashlight. When he played it down the cord, the man was gone!
The fellow had ducked into a window.
The flash went into Doc's pocket. Doc himself clambered over the windowsill. Grasping the silken cord, he descended. Thanks to the coordination of his great muscles, Doc negotiated the cord just about as fast as a man could run.
He passed the first window. It was closed. The office beyond it was dark and deserted-looking.
Doc went on down. He had not seen what window the quarry had disappeared into. The second window was also closed. And the third! Doc knew then that he had passed the right window. The man could not have gone this far down the cord.
It was typical of Doc that he did not give even a glance to what was below -- a sheer fall of hundreds-of-feet. So far downward did the brick-and-glass wall extend that it seemed to narrow with distance until it was only a yard-or-so across. And the street was wedge-shaped at the bottom as though cut with a great, sharp knife.
Doc had climbed a yard upward when the silk cord gave a violent jerk. He looked up.
A window had opened. A man had shoved a chair through it and was pushing on the cord so as to swing Doc out away from the building. The murk of the night hid the man's face. But it was obvious that he was Doc's quarry.
Like a rock on the end of the silken rope, Doc was swung out several feet from the building. He would have to chance to grab a windowsill.
The man above flashed a hand for the cord. A long knife glistened in the hand!
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
V -- The Fly That Jumped
Astounded silence gripped the group.
"You mea …" Johnny muttered, blinking through his glasses, "You mean this fellow really speaks the tongue of ancient Maya?"
Doc nodded. "He sure does."
"It's fantastic!" Johnny grumbled. "Those people vanished hundreds of years ago. At least, all those that comprised the highest civilization did. A few ignorant peons were probably left. Even those survive to this day. But as for the higher-class Mayan" -- he made a gesture of something disappearing -- "Poof! Nobody knows for sure what became of them."
"They were a wonderful people," Doc said thoughtfully. "They had a civilization that probably surpassed ancient Egypt."
"Ask him why he paints his fingers red?" Monk requested, unfazed by talk of lost civilizations.
Doc put the query in the tongue-flapping Mayan tongue.
The stocky man gave a surly answer.
"He says he's one of the warrior sect," Doc translated. "Only members of the warrior sect sport red fingertips."
"Well, I'll be dag-gone!" Monk snorted.
"He won't talk any more," Doc advised. Then he added grimly, "We'll take him down to the office and see if he won't change his mind."
Searching the prisoner, Doc dug up a remarkable knife. It had a blade of obsidian -- a darksome, glass-like volcanic rock -- and the edge rivaled a razor in cutting qualities. The handle was simply a leather thong wrapped around and around the upper end of the obsidian shaft.
This knife Doc appropriated. He picked up the prisoner's double-barreled elephant rifle. The marvelous weapon was manufactured by the Webley & Scott firm of England.
Monk eagerly took charge of the captive, booting him ungently out to the street and to their taxi.
Swishing downtown through the rain and speaking through the taxi window, Doc tried again to persuade the stocky prisoner to talk.
The fellow disclosed only one fact. And Doc had already guessed that.
"He says he's really a Mayan," Doc translated for the others.
"Tell him I'll pull his ears off an' feed 'em to him if he don't come clean!" Monk suggested.
Anxious himself to note the effect of torture threats on the Mayan, Doc repeated Monk's remarks.
The Mayan shrugged and clucked in his native tongue.
"He says," Doc explained, "that the trees in his country are full of them like you. Only smaller. He means monkeys."
Ham let out a howl of laughter at that … and Monk subsided.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rain was threshing down less vigorously when they pulled up before the gleaming office building that spiked up nearly a hundred stories. Entering, they rode the elevator to the 86th floor.
The Mayan again refused to talk.
"If we just had some truth serum," suggested Long Tom, running pale fingers through his blond, Nordic hair.
Renny held up a monster fist. "This is all the truth serum we need. I'll show you how it works!"
Big -- with sloping mountains of gristle for shoulders and long kegs of bone and tendon for arms -- Renny slid over to the Library door. His fist came up.
Wham! Completely through the stout panel Renny's fist pistoned! It seemed more than bone and tendon could stand. But when Renny drew his knuckles out of the wreckage and blew off the splinters, they were unmarked.
Having demonstrated what he could do, Renny came back and towered threateningly over their captive.
"Talk to him in that gobble he calls a 'language', Doc. Tell him he's in for the same thing that door got if he don't tell us whether your father was murdered. And if he was, who did it? And we want to now why he tried to shoot us!"
The prisoner only sat in stoical silence. He was scared but determined to suffer any violence rather than talk.
"Wait, Renny," Doc suggested. "Let's try something more subtle."
"For instance?" Renny inquired.
"Hypnotism," said Doc. "If this man is of a savage race, his mind is probably susceptible to hypnotic influence. It's no secret that many savages hypnotize themselves to such an extent that they think they see their pagan gods come and talk to them."
Positioned directly before the stocky Mayan, Doc began to exert the power of his amazing golden eyes. They seemed to turn into shifting, gleaming piles of the flaked yellow metal, holding the prisoner's gaze inexorably and exerting a compelling, authoritative influence.
For a minute, the squat Mayan was quiet except for his bulging eyes. He swayed a little in his chair. Then with a piercing yell in his native tongue, the prisoner lunged backward out of his chair.
The Mayan's plunge carried him toward Renny. But the big-fisted giant had been watching Doc so intently he must have been a little hypnotized himself. He was slow breaking the spell. Reaching for the Mayan, he missed.
Straight to the window, the squat Mayan sped. A wild jump and he shot head-first through it … to his death!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Awed silence was in the room for a while.
"He realized that he was going to be made to talk," Ham clipped, whipping his waspish frame over to the window to look callously down. "So he killed himself."
"Wonder what can be behind all this?" Long Tom puzzled, absently inspecting his unhealthy-looking features as reflected by the polished table-top.
"Let's see if the message my father left written on the window won't help," Doc suggested.
They followed Doc to the Library in a group. "Important papers back of the red brick …" read the message in invisible ink which could only be detected by ultraviolet light. They were all curious to know where the papers were and anxious to see that they were intact. Above all, they wanted to know the nature of these "important papers".
Doc had the box which manufactured ultraviolet rays under his arm. On into the Laboratory, he led the cavalcade.
Every one noticed instantly that the Laboratory floor was of brick with a rubber matting scattered here-and-there.
Monk looked like he understood … then his jaw fell. "Huh?"
The floor bricks were all red!
Doc plugged the ultraviolet apparatus into a light socket. He switched off the Laboratory lights. Deliberately, he played the black-light rays across the brick floor. The darkness was intense.
And suddenly one brick was shining with an unholy red luminance. The brick was the lid of a secret little cavity in the floor. The elder Savage had treated it with some substance that had the property of glowing red under the black-light beams.
From the secret cavity, Doc lifted a packet of papers wrapped securely in an oilskin cloth that looked like a fragment of slicker. Ham clicked on the lights. They gathered around, eagerly waiting.
Doc opened the papers. They were very official looking, replete with gaudy seals. And they were printed in Spanish.
One-at-a-time as he finished glancing over them, Doc passed the papers to Ham. The astute lawyer studied them with great interest. At last Doc was completely through the papers. He looked at Ham.
"These papers are a concession from the government of Hidalgo," Ham declared. "They give to you several hundred square miles of land in Hidalgo, providing you pay the government of Hidalgo $100,000 yearly and 1/5th of everything you remove from this land. And the concession holds for a period of 99 years."
Doc nodded. "Notice something else, Ham? Those papers are made out to me. Me, mind you! Yet they were executed 20 years ago. I was only a kid then."
"You know what I think?" Ham demanded.
"Same thing I do, I'll bet," Doc replied. "These papers are the title to the Legacy that my father left me. The legacy is something that he discovered 20 years ago."
"But what is the legacy?" Monk wanted to know.
Doc shrugged. "I haven't the slightest idea, brothers. But you can bet it's something well worthwhile! My father was never mixed up in piker deals. I have heard him treat a million-dollar transaction as casually as though he were buying a cigar."
Pausing, Doc looked steadily at each of his men in turn. The flaky-gold of his eyes shimmered strange lights. He seemed to read the thoughts of each.
"I'm going after this heritage my father left," he said at length. "I don't need to ask … You fellows are with me?"
"And how!" grinned Renny. And the others echoed his sentiment.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Planting the papers securely in a chamois money belt about his powerful waist, Doc walked back into the Library and then into the other room.
"Did the Mayan race hang out in Hidalgo?" Renny asked abruptly, eyeing his enormous fist.
Fiddling with his glasses that had the magnifying lens , Johnny took it upon himself to answer.
"The Mayans were scattered over a large part of Central America," he said. "But the Itzans -- the clan whose dialect our late prisoner spoke -- were situated in Yucatan during the height of their civilization. However, the republic of Hidalgo is not far away, being situated among the rugged mountains farther inland."
"I'm betting this Mayan and Doc's heritage are tied up somewhere," declared Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
Doc stood facing the window. With his back to the light, his strong bronze face was not sharply outlined except when he turned slightly to the right-or-left to speak. Then the light play seemed to accentuate its remarkable qualities of character.
"The thing for us to do now is corner the man who was giving the Mayan orders," he said slowly.
"Huh? You think there's more of your enemies?" Renny demanded.
"The Mayan showed no signs of understanding the English language," Doc elaborated. "Whoever left the warning in this room wrote it in English and was educated enough to understand the ultraviolet apparatus. That man was in the building when the shot was fired because the elevator operator said no one came in between the time we left and got back. Yes, brothers, I don't think we're out-of-the-woods yet!"
Doc went over to the double-barreled elephant rifle which had been in possession of the Mayan. He inspected the manufacturer's number. He grasped the telephone.
"Get me the firearms manufacturing firm of Webley & Scott in Birmingham, England," he told the phone operator. "Yes, of course -- England! Where the Prince of Wales lives."
To his friends, Doc explained: "Perhaps the firm that made the rifle will know to whom they sold it."
"Somebody will cuss over in England when he's called out of bed by long-distance phone from America," Renny chuckled.
"You forget the 5 hours' time difference," clipped waspish Ham. "It is now early morning in England. They'll just be getting up."
Doc was facing the window again, apparently lost in thought. Actually -- while standing there a moment before -- he had felt vaguely that something was out-of-place about the window.
Then he got it! The mortar at one end of the granite slab which formed the windowsill was fresher than on the other side. The strip of mortar was no wider than a pencil mark. Yet Doc noticed it. He leaned out the window.
A fine wire -- escaping from the room through the mortared crack -- ran downward! It entered a window below.
Doc flashed back into the room. His supple, sensitive but steel-strong hands explored. He brought to light a tiny microphone of the type radio announcers call lapel mikes.
"Somebody has been listening!" His powerful voice throbbed through the room. "In the room below! Let's look into that!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No puff of wind could have gone out of the room and down the stairs more speedily than Doc made it. The distance was 60 feet. Doc had covered it all before his men were out of the upstairs room. And they had moved as quickly as they could.
Whipping over where the wall could shelter him from ordinary bullets, Doc tried the doorknob. Locked! He exerted what for him was only a mild pressure. Wood splintered, brass mechanism of the lock gritted and tore … and the door hopped ajar.
A pistol crashed in the room! The bullet came close enough to Doc's bronzed features that he felt the cold stir of air. A second lead missile followed. The powder noise was a great bawl of sound. Both bullets chopped plaster off the elaborately decorated corridor wall.
Within the room, a door slammed.
Doc instantly slid inside. Sure enough, his quarry had retreated to a connecting office.
All this had taken flash parts-of-a-second. Doc's men were only now clamoring at the door.
"Keep back!" Doc directed. He liked to fight his own battles. And there seemed to be only one man opposing him.
Doc crossed the office, treading new-looking cheap carpet. He circled a second-hand oak desk with edges blackened where cigarette stubs had been placed carelessly. He tried the connecting door.
It was also locked. But it gave like wet cardboard before his powerful shove. Alert and almost certain a bullet would meet him, he doubled down close to the floor. He knew he could bob into view and back before the man inside could pull trigger.
But the place was empty!
Once … twice … three times … Doc counted his own heartbeats. Then he saw the explanation.
A stout silken cord -- with hardwood rods about the size of fountain pens tied every foot-or-so for handholds -- draped out of the open window. The end of the cord was tied to a stout radiator leg. And a tense jerking showed a man was going down it.
With a single leap, Doc was at the window. He looked down.
Of the man descending the cord, little could be told. In the streaming darkness, he was no more than a black lump.
Doc drew back and whipped out his flashlight. When he played it down the cord, the man was gone!
The fellow had ducked into a window.
The flash went into Doc's pocket. Doc himself clambered over the windowsill. Grasping the silken cord, he descended. Thanks to the coordination of his great muscles, Doc negotiated the cord just about as fast as a man could run.
He passed the first window. It was closed. The office beyond it was dark and deserted-looking.
Doc went on down. He had not seen what window the quarry had disappeared into. The second window was also closed. And the third! Doc knew then that he had passed the right window. The man could not have gone this far down the cord.
It was typical of Doc that he did not give even a glance to what was below -- a sheer fall of hundreds-of-feet. So far downward did the brick-and-glass wall extend that it seemed to narrow with distance until it was only a yard-or-so across. And the street was wedge-shaped at the bottom as though cut with a great, sharp knife.
Doc had climbed a yard upward when the silk cord gave a violent jerk. He looked up.
A window had opened. A man had shoved a chair through it and was pushing on the cord so as to swing Doc out away from the building. The murk of the night hid the man's face. But it was obvious that he was Doc's quarry.
Like a rock on the end of the silken rope, Doc was swung out several feet from the building. He would have to chance to grab a windowsill.
The man above flashed a hand for the cord. A long knife glistened in the hand!
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (part 4 of 22)
By Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson
IV -- The Red Death Promise
An interval of a dozen seconds, Doc waited.
"Let's go!" he breathed then. "You fellows make for that room quick!"
The 5 men spun and began descending from the platform as swiftly as they dared. But it would take them minutes in the darkness and the jumble of girders to reach the spot where the elevators could carry them on.
"Where's Doc?" Monk rumbled when they were down a couple of stories.
Doc was not with them, they now noted.
"He stayed behind!" snapped waspish Ham. Then as Monk accidentally nudged him in the dangerous murk, "Listen, Monk! Do you want me to kick you off here?"
Doc, however, had not exactly remained behind. With the uncanny nimbleness of a forest-dwelling monkey, he had flashed across a precarious path of girders until he reached the supply elevators, erected by the workmen on the outside of the building for fetching up materials.
The cages were hundreds-of-feet below on the ground. And there was no one to operate the controls. But Doc knew that.
On the lip of the elevator shaft -- balanced by the grip of his powerful knees -- he shucked off his coat. He made it into a bundle in his hands.
The stout wire cables which lifted the elevator cab were barely discernible. A full 8 feet out over space they hung. But with a gentle leap, Doc launched out and seized them. Using his coat to protect his palms from the friction heat sure to be generated, he let himself slide down the cables.
Air swished past his ears and plucked at his trouser legs and shirtsleeves. The coat smoked and began to leave a trail of sparks. Halfway down, Doc braked to a stop by tightening his powerful hands and changed to a fresh spot in the coat.
So it was that Doc had already reached the street even while thin waspish Ham was threatening to kick the gigantic Monk off the girder if Monk shoved him again.
It was imperative to get to the office before the departure of the prowler who had lighted the match! Doc plunged into the taxi he had left standing in front and rapped an order.
Doc's voice had a magical quality of compelling sudden obedience to an order. With a squawl of clashing gears and a whine of spinning tires, the taxi doubled around in the street. It covered the several blocks in a fraction-of-a-minute.
A bronze streak, Doc was out of the cab and in the skyscraper lobby. He confronted the elevator operator.
"What sort of a looking man did you take up to '86' a few minutes ago?"
"There ain't a soul come in this building since you left!" said the elevator operator positively.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Doc's brain fought the problem an instant. He had naturally supposed the sniper had invaded the room above. But it seemed not.
"Get this!" he clipped at the operator. "You wait here and be ready to sic my 5 men on anybody who comes out of this building. They will be here in a minute. I'm taking your cage up."
In the cage with the last word, Doc sent it sighing upward a couple of city blocks. He stopped it one floor below the 86th … quitted it there … and crept furtively up the stairs and to the suite of offices which had been his father's but which was now Doc's own.
The suite door gaped ajar. Inside was sepia blackness that might hold anything.
Doc popped the corridor lights off as a matter of safety. He feared no encounter in the dark. He had trained his ears by a system of scientific sound exercises which was a part of the 2 hours of intensive physical and mental drill Doc gave himself daily. So powerful and sensitive had his hearing become that he could detect sounds absolutely inaudible to other people. And ears were all-important in a scrimmage in the dark!
But a quick round of the 3 rooms -- a moment of listening in each -- convinced Doc the quarry had fled.
His men arrived in the corridor with a great deal of racket. Doc lighted the offices and watched them come in. Monk was absent.
"Monk remained downstairs on guard," Renny explained.
Doc nodded, his golden eyes flickering at the table. On that table -- where none had been before -- was propped a blood-red envelope!
Crossing over quickly, Doc picked up a book, opened it, and used it like pincers to pick up the strange scarlet missive. He carried it into the Laboratory and dunked it in a bath of concentrated disinfectant fluid -- stuff calculated to destroy every possible germ.
"I've heard of murderers leaving their victims an envelope full of the germs of some rare disease," he told the others dryly. "And remember, it was a strange malady that seized my father."
Carefully, he picked the crimson envelope apart until he had disclosed the missive it held. Words were lettered on scarlet paper with an odious black ink. They read:
Savage:
Turn back from your quest lest the Red Death strike once again.
There was no signature.
A silent group, they went back to the room where they had found the vermilion missive.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was Long Tom who gave voice to a new discovery. He leveled a rather pale hand at the box which held the ultraviolet light apparatus.
"That isn't sitting where we left it!" he declared.
Doc nodded. He had already noticed that, but he did not say so. He made it a policy never to disillusion one of his men who thought he had been first to notice something or get an idea although Doc himself might have discovered it far earlier. It was this modesty of Doc's which helped endear him to everybody he was associated with.
"The prowler who came in and left the red note used the black-light apparatus," he told Long Tom. "It's a safe guess that he inspected the window Johnny put together."
"Then he read the invisible writing on the glass!" Renny rumbled.
"Very likely."
"Could he make heads-or-tails of it?"
"I hope he could," Doc said mysteriously.
They all betrayed surprise at that. But Doc -- turning away -- indicated he wasn't ready to amplify on his strange statement. Doc borrowed the magnifying glass that Johnny wore in his left spectacle lens and inspected the door for fingerprints.
"We'll get whoever it was," Ham decided. The waspish lawyer made a wry smile. "One look at Monk's ugly phiz and nobody would try to get out of here!"
But at that instant, the elevator doors rolled back out in the corridor.
Monk waddled from the lift like a huge anthropoid.
"What d'you want?" he asked them.
They stared at him, puzzled.
Monk's big mouth crooked a gigantic scowl. "Didn't one of you phone downstairs for me to come right up?"
Doc shook his bronze head slowly. "No."
Monk let out a bellow that would have shamed the beast he resembled! He stamped up-and-down. He waved his huge corded arms that were inches longer than his legs.
"Somebody run a whizzer on me!" he howled. "Whoever if was, I'll wring his neck! I'll pull off his ears! I'll give …"
"You'll be in a cage at the zoo if you don't learn the manners of a man," waspish Ham said bitingly.
Monk promptly stopped his ape-like prancing and bellowing. He looked steadily at Ham -- starting with Ham's distinguished shock of prematurely gray hair and running his little eyes slowly down Ham's well-cared-for face, perfect business suit, and small shoes.
Suddenly Monk began to laugh! His mirth was a loud, hearty roar.
At the gusty laughter, Ham stiffened. His face became very red with embarrassment.
For all Monk had to do to get Ham's goat was laugh at him. It had all started back in the War when "Ham" was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. The brigadier general had been the moving spirit in a little scheme to teach Monk certain French words which had a meaning entirely different than Monk thought. As a result, Monk had spent a session in the guardhouse for some things he had innocently called a French general.
A few days after that, though, Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks was suddenly hauled up before a court-martial, accused of stealing hams. And convicted! Somebody had expertly planted plenty of evidence.
"Ham" got his nickname right there. And to this day, he had not been able to prove it was the homely Monk who framed him. That rankled Ham's lawyer soul.
Unnoticed, Doc Savage had reached over and turned on the ultraviolet-light apparatus. He focused it on the pieced-together window and then called to the others: "Take a look!"
The message on the glass had been changed!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There now glowed with an eerie blue luminance exactly 8 more words than had been in the original message. The communication now read:
Important papers back of the red brick house at corner of Mountainair and Farmwell Streets
"Hey!" exploded the giant Renny. "How …"
With a lifted hand and a nod at the door, Doc silenced Renny and sent them all piling into the corridor.
As the elevator rushed them downward, Doc explained. "Somebody decoyed you upstairs so they could get away, Monk."
"Don't I know it!" Monk mumbled. "But what I can't savvy is who added words to that message?"
"That was my doing," Doc admitted. "I had a hunch the sniper might have seen us working with the ultraviolet-light apparatus. And he would be smart enough to see what it was. I hoped he'd try to read the message. So I changed it to lead him into a trap."
Monk popped the knuckles in hands that were near as big as gallon pails. "Trap is right! Wait'll I get my lunch shovels on that guy!"
Their taxi was still waiting outside. The driver began a wailing, "Say! When am I gonna get paid? You gotta pay for the time I been waitin' …"
Doc handed the man a bill that not only silenced him but also nearly made his eyes jump out!
North on Fifth Avenue, the taxi raced. Water whipped the windshield and washed the windows. Doc and Renny -- riding outside once more -- were pelted with the moisture drops. Renny bent his face away from the stinging drops. But Doc seemed no more affected than had he really been of bronze. His hair and skin showed not the least wetness.
"This red brick house at the corner of Mountainair and Farmwell Streets is deserted," Doc called once. "That's why I gave that address in the addition to the note."
Inside the cab, Monk rumbled about what he would do to whoever had tricked him.
A motorcycle cop fell in behind them, opened his siren, and came up rapidly. But when he caught sight of Doc -- like a striking figure of bronze on the side of the taxi -- the officer waved his hand respectfully. Doc didn't even know the man. The officer must have been one who knew and revered the elder Savage.
The cab reeled into a less frequented street, slanting around corners. Rows of unlighted houses made the thoroughfare like a black, ominous tunnel.
"Here we are," Doc told their driver at last.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Ghostly" described the neighborhood. The streets were narrow and the sidewalks narrower. The cement of both was cracked and rutted and gone entirely in places. Chugholes filled with water reached half to their knees.
"You each have one of Monk's gas bombs?" Doc asked, just to be sure.
They had.
Doc breathed terse orders of campaign. "Monk in front, Long Tom and Johnny on the right, Renny on the left. I'll take the back. Ham, you stay off to one side as a sort of reserve if some quick-thinking and moving has to be done."
Doc gave them half-a-minute to place themselves. Not long. But all the time they needed. He went forward himself.
The red brick house on the corner had 2 ramshackle stories. It had been deserted a long time. 2 of the 3 porch posts canted crazily. Shingles still clung to the roof only in scabs. The windows were planked up solid. And the brick looked rotten and soft.
The streetlamp at the corner cast light so pale as to be near nonexistent.
Doc encountered brush and eased into it with a peculiar twisting, worming movement of his powerful, supple frame. He had seen great jungle cats slide through dense leafage in that strangely noiseless fashion and had copied it himself. He made absolutely no sound.
And in a moment, he had raised his quarry.
The man was at the rear of the house, going over the back yard a foot-at-a-time, lighting matches in succession.
He was short but perfectly formed with a smooth yellow skin and a seeming plumpness that probably meant great muscular development. His nose was curving, slightly hooked; his lips full; and his chin not particularly large. A man of a strange race.
The ends of his fingers were dyed a brilliant scarlet.
Doc did not reveal himself at once but watched curiously.
The stocky, golden-skinned man seemed very puzzled. As indeed he had reason to be for what he sought was not there. He muttered disgustedly in some strange clucking language.
When he heard the words, Doc held back even longer. He was astounded! He had never expected to hear a man speaking that language as though it were his native tongue.
For it was the lingo of a lost civilization!
The stocky man showed signs of giving up his search. He lit one more match, putting his box away as though he didn't intend to ignite more. Then he stiffened.
Into the soaking night had permeated a low, mellow, trilling sound like the song of some exotic bird. It seemed to emanate from underfoot, overhead, to the sides, everywhere … and nowhere. The stocky man was bewildered. The sound was startling, but not awesome.
Doc was telling his men to beware. There might be more of the enemy about than this one fellow.
The stocky man half-turned, searching the darkness. He took a step toward a big, double-barreled elephant rifle that leaned against a pile of scrap wood near him. It was of huge caliber that rifle, fitted with telescopic sights. The man's hand started to close over the gun …
… and Doc had him!
Doc's leap was more expert even than the lunge of a jungle prowler. For the victim gave not even a single bleat before he was pinned, helpless in arms that banded him like steel and a hand that cut off his wind as though his throat had been poured full of lead!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Swiftly, the others came up. They had found no one else about.
"I'd be glad to hold him for you!" Monk suggested hopefully to Doc. His furry fingers opened and shut.
Doc shook his head and released the prisoner. The man instantly started to run. But Doc's hand -- floating out with incredible speed -- stopped the man with a snap that made his teeth pop together like clapped hands!
"Why did you shoot at us?" Doc demanded in English.
The stocky man spewed clucking gutturals, highly excited.
Doc looked swiftly aside at Johnny.
The gaunt archaeologist -- who knew a great deal about ancient races -- was scratching his head with thick fingers. He took off the glasses with the magnifying lens on the left side … then nervously put them back on again.
"It's incredible!" he muttered. "The language that fellow speaks … I think it is ancient Mayan. The lingo of the tribe that built the great pyramids at Chichen Itza -- then vanished. I probably know as much about that language as anybody on Earth. Wait a minute and I'll think of a few words."
But Doc was not waiting. To the squat man, he spoke in ancient Mayan! Slowly … halting … having difficulty with the syllables, it was true … but he spoke nevertheless understandably.
And the squat man -- more excited than ever -- spouted more gutturals.
Doc asked a question.
The man made a stubborn answer.
"He won't talk," Doc complained. "All he will say is a lot of stuff about having to kill me to save his people from something he calls the Red Death!"
To Be Continued...Now!
IV -- The Red Death Promise
An interval of a dozen seconds, Doc waited.
"Let's go!" he breathed then. "You fellows make for that room quick!"
The 5 men spun and began descending from the platform as swiftly as they dared. But it would take them minutes in the darkness and the jumble of girders to reach the spot where the elevators could carry them on.
"Where's Doc?" Monk rumbled when they were down a couple of stories.
Doc was not with them, they now noted.
"He stayed behind!" snapped waspish Ham. Then as Monk accidentally nudged him in the dangerous murk, "Listen, Monk! Do you want me to kick you off here?"
Doc, however, had not exactly remained behind. With the uncanny nimbleness of a forest-dwelling monkey, he had flashed across a precarious path of girders until he reached the supply elevators, erected by the workmen on the outside of the building for fetching up materials.
The cages were hundreds-of-feet below on the ground. And there was no one to operate the controls. But Doc knew that.
On the lip of the elevator shaft -- balanced by the grip of his powerful knees -- he shucked off his coat. He made it into a bundle in his hands.
The stout wire cables which lifted the elevator cab were barely discernible. A full 8 feet out over space they hung. But with a gentle leap, Doc launched out and seized them. Using his coat to protect his palms from the friction heat sure to be generated, he let himself slide down the cables.
Air swished past his ears and plucked at his trouser legs and shirtsleeves. The coat smoked and began to leave a trail of sparks. Halfway down, Doc braked to a stop by tightening his powerful hands and changed to a fresh spot in the coat.
So it was that Doc had already reached the street even while thin waspish Ham was threatening to kick the gigantic Monk off the girder if Monk shoved him again.
It was imperative to get to the office before the departure of the prowler who had lighted the match! Doc plunged into the taxi he had left standing in front and rapped an order.
Doc's voice had a magical quality of compelling sudden obedience to an order. With a squawl of clashing gears and a whine of spinning tires, the taxi doubled around in the street. It covered the several blocks in a fraction-of-a-minute.
A bronze streak, Doc was out of the cab and in the skyscraper lobby. He confronted the elevator operator.
"What sort of a looking man did you take up to '86' a few minutes ago?"
"There ain't a soul come in this building since you left!" said the elevator operator positively.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Doc's brain fought the problem an instant. He had naturally supposed the sniper had invaded the room above. But it seemed not.
"Get this!" he clipped at the operator. "You wait here and be ready to sic my 5 men on anybody who comes out of this building. They will be here in a minute. I'm taking your cage up."
In the cage with the last word, Doc sent it sighing upward a couple of city blocks. He stopped it one floor below the 86th … quitted it there … and crept furtively up the stairs and to the suite of offices which had been his father's but which was now Doc's own.
The suite door gaped ajar. Inside was sepia blackness that might hold anything.
Doc popped the corridor lights off as a matter of safety. He feared no encounter in the dark. He had trained his ears by a system of scientific sound exercises which was a part of the 2 hours of intensive physical and mental drill Doc gave himself daily. So powerful and sensitive had his hearing become that he could detect sounds absolutely inaudible to other people. And ears were all-important in a scrimmage in the dark!
But a quick round of the 3 rooms -- a moment of listening in each -- convinced Doc the quarry had fled.
His men arrived in the corridor with a great deal of racket. Doc lighted the offices and watched them come in. Monk was absent.
"Monk remained downstairs on guard," Renny explained.
Doc nodded, his golden eyes flickering at the table. On that table -- where none had been before -- was propped a blood-red envelope!
Crossing over quickly, Doc picked up a book, opened it, and used it like pincers to pick up the strange scarlet missive. He carried it into the Laboratory and dunked it in a bath of concentrated disinfectant fluid -- stuff calculated to destroy every possible germ.
"I've heard of murderers leaving their victims an envelope full of the germs of some rare disease," he told the others dryly. "And remember, it was a strange malady that seized my father."
Carefully, he picked the crimson envelope apart until he had disclosed the missive it held. Words were lettered on scarlet paper with an odious black ink. They read:
Savage:
Turn back from your quest lest the Red Death strike once again.
There was no signature.
A silent group, they went back to the room where they had found the vermilion missive.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was Long Tom who gave voice to a new discovery. He leveled a rather pale hand at the box which held the ultraviolet light apparatus.
"That isn't sitting where we left it!" he declared.
Doc nodded. He had already noticed that, but he did not say so. He made it a policy never to disillusion one of his men who thought he had been first to notice something or get an idea although Doc himself might have discovered it far earlier. It was this modesty of Doc's which helped endear him to everybody he was associated with.
"The prowler who came in and left the red note used the black-light apparatus," he told Long Tom. "It's a safe guess that he inspected the window Johnny put together."
"Then he read the invisible writing on the glass!" Renny rumbled.
"Very likely."
"Could he make heads-or-tails of it?"
"I hope he could," Doc said mysteriously.
They all betrayed surprise at that. But Doc -- turning away -- indicated he wasn't ready to amplify on his strange statement. Doc borrowed the magnifying glass that Johnny wore in his left spectacle lens and inspected the door for fingerprints.
"We'll get whoever it was," Ham decided. The waspish lawyer made a wry smile. "One look at Monk's ugly phiz and nobody would try to get out of here!"
But at that instant, the elevator doors rolled back out in the corridor.
Monk waddled from the lift like a huge anthropoid.
"What d'you want?" he asked them.
They stared at him, puzzled.
Monk's big mouth crooked a gigantic scowl. "Didn't one of you phone downstairs for me to come right up?"
Doc shook his bronze head slowly. "No."
Monk let out a bellow that would have shamed the beast he resembled! He stamped up-and-down. He waved his huge corded arms that were inches longer than his legs.
"Somebody run a whizzer on me!" he howled. "Whoever if was, I'll wring his neck! I'll pull off his ears! I'll give …"
"You'll be in a cage at the zoo if you don't learn the manners of a man," waspish Ham said bitingly.
Monk promptly stopped his ape-like prancing and bellowing. He looked steadily at Ham -- starting with Ham's distinguished shock of prematurely gray hair and running his little eyes slowly down Ham's well-cared-for face, perfect business suit, and small shoes.
Suddenly Monk began to laugh! His mirth was a loud, hearty roar.
At the gusty laughter, Ham stiffened. His face became very red with embarrassment.
For all Monk had to do to get Ham's goat was laugh at him. It had all started back in the War when "Ham" was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. The brigadier general had been the moving spirit in a little scheme to teach Monk certain French words which had a meaning entirely different than Monk thought. As a result, Monk had spent a session in the guardhouse for some things he had innocently called a French general.
A few days after that, though, Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks was suddenly hauled up before a court-martial, accused of stealing hams. And convicted! Somebody had expertly planted plenty of evidence.
"Ham" got his nickname right there. And to this day, he had not been able to prove it was the homely Monk who framed him. That rankled Ham's lawyer soul.
Unnoticed, Doc Savage had reached over and turned on the ultraviolet-light apparatus. He focused it on the pieced-together window and then called to the others: "Take a look!"
The message on the glass had been changed!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There now glowed with an eerie blue luminance exactly 8 more words than had been in the original message. The communication now read:
Important papers back of the red brick house at corner of Mountainair and Farmwell Streets
"Hey!" exploded the giant Renny. "How …"
With a lifted hand and a nod at the door, Doc silenced Renny and sent them all piling into the corridor.
As the elevator rushed them downward, Doc explained. "Somebody decoyed you upstairs so they could get away, Monk."
"Don't I know it!" Monk mumbled. "But what I can't savvy is who added words to that message?"
"That was my doing," Doc admitted. "I had a hunch the sniper might have seen us working with the ultraviolet-light apparatus. And he would be smart enough to see what it was. I hoped he'd try to read the message. So I changed it to lead him into a trap."
Monk popped the knuckles in hands that were near as big as gallon pails. "Trap is right! Wait'll I get my lunch shovels on that guy!"
Their taxi was still waiting outside. The driver began a wailing, "Say! When am I gonna get paid? You gotta pay for the time I been waitin' …"
Doc handed the man a bill that not only silenced him but also nearly made his eyes jump out!
North on Fifth Avenue, the taxi raced. Water whipped the windshield and washed the windows. Doc and Renny -- riding outside once more -- were pelted with the moisture drops. Renny bent his face away from the stinging drops. But Doc seemed no more affected than had he really been of bronze. His hair and skin showed not the least wetness.
"This red brick house at the corner of Mountainair and Farmwell Streets is deserted," Doc called once. "That's why I gave that address in the addition to the note."
Inside the cab, Monk rumbled about what he would do to whoever had tricked him.
A motorcycle cop fell in behind them, opened his siren, and came up rapidly. But when he caught sight of Doc -- like a striking figure of bronze on the side of the taxi -- the officer waved his hand respectfully. Doc didn't even know the man. The officer must have been one who knew and revered the elder Savage.
The cab reeled into a less frequented street, slanting around corners. Rows of unlighted houses made the thoroughfare like a black, ominous tunnel.
"Here we are," Doc told their driver at last.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Ghostly" described the neighborhood. The streets were narrow and the sidewalks narrower. The cement of both was cracked and rutted and gone entirely in places. Chugholes filled with water reached half to their knees.
"You each have one of Monk's gas bombs?" Doc asked, just to be sure.
They had.
Doc breathed terse orders of campaign. "Monk in front, Long Tom and Johnny on the right, Renny on the left. I'll take the back. Ham, you stay off to one side as a sort of reserve if some quick-thinking and moving has to be done."
Doc gave them half-a-minute to place themselves. Not long. But all the time they needed. He went forward himself.
The red brick house on the corner had 2 ramshackle stories. It had been deserted a long time. 2 of the 3 porch posts canted crazily. Shingles still clung to the roof only in scabs. The windows were planked up solid. And the brick looked rotten and soft.
The streetlamp at the corner cast light so pale as to be near nonexistent.
Doc encountered brush and eased into it with a peculiar twisting, worming movement of his powerful, supple frame. He had seen great jungle cats slide through dense leafage in that strangely noiseless fashion and had copied it himself. He made absolutely no sound.
And in a moment, he had raised his quarry.
The man was at the rear of the house, going over the back yard a foot-at-a-time, lighting matches in succession.
He was short but perfectly formed with a smooth yellow skin and a seeming plumpness that probably meant great muscular development. His nose was curving, slightly hooked; his lips full; and his chin not particularly large. A man of a strange race.
The ends of his fingers were dyed a brilliant scarlet.
Doc did not reveal himself at once but watched curiously.
The stocky, golden-skinned man seemed very puzzled. As indeed he had reason to be for what he sought was not there. He muttered disgustedly in some strange clucking language.
When he heard the words, Doc held back even longer. He was astounded! He had never expected to hear a man speaking that language as though it were his native tongue.
For it was the lingo of a lost civilization!
The stocky man showed signs of giving up his search. He lit one more match, putting his box away as though he didn't intend to ignite more. Then he stiffened.
Into the soaking night had permeated a low, mellow, trilling sound like the song of some exotic bird. It seemed to emanate from underfoot, overhead, to the sides, everywhere … and nowhere. The stocky man was bewildered. The sound was startling, but not awesome.
Doc was telling his men to beware. There might be more of the enemy about than this one fellow.
The stocky man half-turned, searching the darkness. He took a step toward a big, double-barreled elephant rifle that leaned against a pile of scrap wood near him. It was of huge caliber that rifle, fitted with telescopic sights. The man's hand started to close over the gun …
… and Doc had him!
Doc's leap was more expert even than the lunge of a jungle prowler. For the victim gave not even a single bleat before he was pinned, helpless in arms that banded him like steel and a hand that cut off his wind as though his throat had been poured full of lead!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Swiftly, the others came up. They had found no one else about.
"I'd be glad to hold him for you!" Monk suggested hopefully to Doc. His furry fingers opened and shut.
Doc shook his head and released the prisoner. The man instantly started to run. But Doc's hand -- floating out with incredible speed -- stopped the man with a snap that made his teeth pop together like clapped hands!
"Why did you shoot at us?" Doc demanded in English.
The stocky man spewed clucking gutturals, highly excited.
Doc looked swiftly aside at Johnny.
The gaunt archaeologist -- who knew a great deal about ancient races -- was scratching his head with thick fingers. He took off the glasses with the magnifying lens on the left side … then nervously put them back on again.
"It's incredible!" he muttered. "The language that fellow speaks … I think it is ancient Mayan. The lingo of the tribe that built the great pyramids at Chichen Itza -- then vanished. I probably know as much about that language as anybody on Earth. Wait a minute and I'll think of a few words."
But Doc was not waiting. To the squat man, he spoke in ancient Mayan! Slowly … halting … having difficulty with the syllables, it was true … but he spoke nevertheless understandably.
And the squat man -- more excited than ever -- spouted more gutturals.
Doc asked a question.
The man made a stubborn answer.
"He won't talk," Doc complained. "All he will say is a lot of stuff about having to kill me to save his people from something he calls the Red Death!"
To Be Continued...Now!
Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (part 3 of 22)
III -- The Enemy
Doc Savage was the last of the six to enter the adjoining room. But he was inside the room in less than 10 seconds! They moved with amazing speed, these men!
Doc flashed across the big Library. The speed with which he traversed the darkness -- never disturbing an article of furniture! -- showed the marvelous development of his senses. No jungle cat could have done better.
Expensive binoculars reposed in a desk drawer. A high-power hunting rifle was in a corner cabinet. In splits-of-seconds, Doc had these and was at the window.
He watched … waited.
No more shots followed the first two.
4 minutes … 5 minutes … Doc bored into the night with the binoculars. He peered into every office window within range. There were hundreds. He scrutinized the spidery framework of the observation tower atop the skyscraper under construction. Darkness packed the labyrinth of girders, and he could discern no trace of the bushwhacker.
"He's gone," Doc concluded aloud.
No sound of movement followed his words. Then the window shade ran down loudly in the room where they had been shot at. The 5 men stiffened … then relaxed at Doc's low call. Doc had moved soundlessly to the shade and drawn it.
Doc was beside the safe and the lights were turned on when they entered.
The window glass had been clouted completely out of the sash. It lay in glistening chunks and spears on the luxuriant carpet.
The glowing message which had been on it seemed destroyed forever.
"Somebody was laying for me outside," Doc said with no worry at all in his well-developed voice. "They evidently couldn't get just the aim they wanted at me through the window. When we turned out the light to look at the writing on the window, they thought we were leaving the building. So they took a couple of shots for wild luck."
"Next time, Doc, suppose we have bulletproof glass in these windows?" Renny suggested, the humor in his voice belying his dour look.
"Sure," said Doc dryly. "Next time! We're on the 86th floor and it's quite common to be shot at here."
Ham interposed a sarcastic snort. He bounced over -- waspish, quick-moving -- and nearly managed to thrust his slender arm through the hole the bullet had tunneled in the brick wall.
"Even if you put in bulletproof windows, you'd have to be blame careful to set in front of them!" he clipped dryly.
Doc was studying the hole in the safe door, noting particularly the angle at which the powerful bullet had entered. He opened the safe. The big bullet -- almost intact -- was embedded in the safe rear wall.
Renny ran a great arm into the safe and grasped the bullet with his fingers. His giant arm muscles corded as he tried to pull it out. The fist that could drive bodily through inch-thick planking with perfect ease was defied by the embedded metal slug.
"Whew!" snorted Renny. "That's a job for a drill and cold chisels."
Saying nothing -- merely as if he wanted to see if the bullet was stuck as tightly as Renny said -- Doc reached into the safe.
Great muscles popped up along his arm suddenly split his coat sleeve wide open. He glanced at the ruined sleeve ruefully … and brought his arm out of the safe.
The bullet lay loosely in his palm!
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Renny could not have looked more astounded had a spike-tailed Devil hopped out of the safe! The expression on his puritanical face was ludicrous.
Doc weighed the bullet in his palm. The lids were drawn over his golden eyes. He seemed to be giving his marvelous brain every chance to work. And he was! He was guessing the weight of that bullet within a few grains almost as accurately as a chemist's scale could weigh it.
"750 grains," he decided. "That makes it a .577 caliber Nitro-Express rifle. Probably the gun that fired that shot was a double-barreled rifle."
"How d'you figure that?" asked Ham. Possibly the most astute of Doc's five friends, Doc's reasoning nevertheless got away from even Ham.
"There were only 2 shots," Doc clarified. "Also, cartridges of this tremendous size are usually fired from double-barreled elephant rifles."
"Let's do somethin' about this!" boomed Monk. "The bushwhacker may get away while we're jawin'!"
"He's probably fled already since I could locate no trace of him with the binoculars," Doc replied. "But we'll do something about it right enough!"
With exactly 4 terse sentences -- one each directed at Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk -- Doc gave all the orders he needed to. He did not explain in detail what they were to do. That wasn't necessary. He merely gave them the idea of what he wanted … and they set to work and got it in short order. They were clever, these men of Doc's.
Renny, the engineer, picked a slide rule from the drawer of a desk, a pair of dividers, some paper, and a length of string. He probed the angle at which the bullet had passed through the inner safe door, and calculated expertly the slight amount the window had probably deflected it. In less than a minute, he had his string aligned from the safe to a spot midway in the window and was sighting down it.
"Snap out of it, Long Tom!" he called impatiently.
"Just keep your shirt on!" Long Tom complained. He was doing his own share as rapidly as the engineer.
Long Tom had made a swift swing into the Library and Laboratory collecting odds-and-ends of electrical material. With a couple of powerful light bulbs he unscrewed from sockets, some tin, and a pocket mirror he borrowed from -- of all people! -- Monk, Long Tom rigged an apparatus to project a thin, extremely powerful beam of light. He added a flashlight lens and borrowed the magnifying half of Johnny's glasses before he got just the effect he desired.
Long Tom sighted his light beam down Renny's string, thus locating precisely -- in the gloomy mass of skyscrapers -- the spot from whence the shots had come.
In the meantime, Johnny -- with fingers and eye made expert by years of assembling bits of pottery from ancient ruins and the bones of prehistoric monsters -- was fitting the shattered windowpane together. A task that would have taken a layman hours, Johnny accomplished in minutes.
Johnny turned the black-light apparatus on the glass. The message in glowing blue sprang out. Intact!
Monk came waddling in from the Laboratory. In the big furry hands that swung below his knees, he carried several bottles, tightly corked. They held a fluid of villainous color.
From the wealth of chemical formulas within his head, Monk had compounded a gas with which to fight their opponents should they succeed in cornering whoever had fired that shot. It was a gas that would instantly paralyze any one who inhaled it. But the effects were only temporary and not harmful.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
They all gathered around the table on which Johnny had assembled the fragments of glass. All but Renny who was still calculating his angles. And as Doc flashed the light upon the glass, they read the message written there:
Important papers back of the red brick …
Before the message could mean anything to their minds, Renny shouted his discovery.
"It's from the observation tower on that unfinished skyscraper!" he cried. "That's where the shot came from … and the sharpshooter must still be somewhere up there!"
"Let's go!" Doc ordered. And the men surged out into the massive, shining corridor of the building straight to the battery of elevators.
If they noticed that Doc tarried behind several seconds, none of them remarked the fact. Doc was always doing little things like that. Little things that often turned out to have amazing consequences later.
The men piled into the opened elevator with a suddenness that startled the dozing operator. He wouldn't be able to sleep on the job the rest of the night!
With a whine like a lost pup, the cage sank.
Grimly silent, Doc and his 5 friends were a remarkable collection of men. They so impressed the elevator operator that he would have shot the lift past the 1st floor into the basement had Doc not dropped a bronze, long-fingered hand on the control.
Doc led out through the lobby at a trot. A taxi was cocked in at the curb, its driver dreaming over the wheel. 4 of the 6 men piled into the machine. Doc and Renny rode the running board.
"Do a 'Barney Oldfield'!" Doc directed the cab driver.
The hack jumped away from the curb as if stung.
Rain sheeted against Doc's strong, bronzed face and his straight, close-lying bronze hair. An unusual fact was at once evident. Doc's bronze skin and hair had the strange quality of seeming impervious to water. They didn't get appreciably wet. He shed water like the proverbial duck's back!
The streets were virtually deserted in this shopping region. Over toward the theater district, perhaps, there would be a crowd.
Brakes giving one long squawk, the taxi skidded sidewise to the curb and stopped. Doc and Renny were instantly running for the entrance of the new skyscraper. The 4 passengers came out of the cab door as if blown out. Ham still carried his plain black cane.
"My pay!" howled the taxi driver.
"Wait for us!" Doc flung back at him.
In the recently finished building lobby, Doc yelled for the watchman. He got no answer. He was puzzled. There should be one around.
They entered an elevator and sent it upward to the topmost floor. Still no watchman! They sprang up a staircase to where all construction but steel work ceased. There they found the watchmen.
The man -- a big Irishman with cheeks so plump and red they looked like the halves of Christmas apples -- was bound and gagged! He was indeed grateful when Doc turned him loose. But quite astounded! For Doc -- not bothering with the knots -- simply freed the Irishman by snapping the stout ropes with his fingers as easily as he would cords.
"Begorra, man!" muttered the Irishman. "'Tis not human yez can be with a strength like that!"
"Who tied you up?" Doc asked compellingly. "What did he look like?"
"Faith, I dunno!" declared the son of Erin. "'Twas not a single look or a smell I got of him. Except for one thing. The fingers of the man were red on the ends. Like he had dipped 'em in blood!"
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On up into the wilderness of steel girders, the 6 men climbed. They left the Irishman behind. He was rubbing spots where the ropes had hurt him and mumbling to himself about a man who broke ropes with his fingers and another man who had red fingertips.
"This is about the right height," said the gaunt Johnny, bounding at Doc's heels. "He was shooting from about here."
Johnny was hardly breathing rapidly. A tall, poorly looking man, Johnny nevertheless exceeded all the others -- excepting Doc -- in endurance. He had been known to go for 3 days and 3 nights steadily with only a slice of bread and a canteen of water.
Doc veered right. He had taken a flashlight from an inside pocket.
It was not like other flashlights, that one of Doc's. It employed no battery. A tiny, powerful generator -- built into the handle and driven by a stout spring and clockwork -- supplied the current. One twist of the flash handle would wind the spring and furnish light current for some minutes. A special receptacle held spare bulbs. There was not much chance of Doc's light playing out.
The flash spiked a white rod of luminance ahead. It picked up a workman's platform of heavy planks.
"The shot came from there!" Doc vouchsafed.
A steel girder -- a few inches wide, slippery with moisture -- offered a short cut to the platform. Doc ran along it as surefooted as a bronze spider on a web thread. His 5 men -- knowing they would be flirting with death among the steel beams hundreds of feet below -- decided to go around. And they did it very carefully.
Doc had picked 2 empty cartridges off the platform and was scrutinizing them when his 5 friends put relieved feet on the planks.
"A cannon!" Monk gulped after one look at the great size of the cartridges.
"Not quite," Doc replied. "They are cartridges for the elephant rifle that I told you about. And it was a double-barreled rifle the sniper used."
"What makes you so sure, Doc?" asked big, sober-faced Renny.
Doc pointed at the plank surface of the platform. Barely visible were 2 tiny marks side-by-side. Now that Doc had called their attention to the marks, the others knew they had been made by the muzzle of a double-barreled elephant rifle rested for a moment on the boards.
"He was a short man," Doc added. "Shorter even than Long Tom here. And much wider."
"Huh?" This was beyond even quick-thinking Ham.
Seemingly unaware of their great height and the certain death the slightest misstep would bring, Doc swung around the group and back the easy route they had come. He pointed to a girder which -- because of the roof effect of another girder above -- was dry on one side. But there was a damp smear on the dry steel.
"The sniper rubbed it with his shoulder in passing," Doc explained. "That shows how tall he is. It also shows he has wide shoulders because only a wide-shouldered man would rub the girder. Now …"
Doc fell suddenly silent. As rigid as if he were the hard bronze he so resembled, he poised against the girder. His glittering golden eyes seemed to grow luminous in the darkness.
"What is it, Doc?" asked Renny.
"Someone just struck a match … up there in the room where we were shot at." He interrupted himself with an explosive sound. "There! He's lighted another!"
Doc instantly whipped the binoculars -- he had brought them along from the office -- from his pocket. He aimed them at the window.
He got but a fragmentary glimpse. The match was about burned out. Only the tips of the prowler's fingers were clearly lighted.
"His fingers … the ends are red!" Doc voiced what he had seen.
To Be Continued...Now!
Doc Savage was the last of the six to enter the adjoining room. But he was inside the room in less than 10 seconds! They moved with amazing speed, these men!
Doc flashed across the big Library. The speed with which he traversed the darkness -- never disturbing an article of furniture! -- showed the marvelous development of his senses. No jungle cat could have done better.
Expensive binoculars reposed in a desk drawer. A high-power hunting rifle was in a corner cabinet. In splits-of-seconds, Doc had these and was at the window.
He watched … waited.
No more shots followed the first two.
4 minutes … 5 minutes … Doc bored into the night with the binoculars. He peered into every office window within range. There were hundreds. He scrutinized the spidery framework of the observation tower atop the skyscraper under construction. Darkness packed the labyrinth of girders, and he could discern no trace of the bushwhacker.
"He's gone," Doc concluded aloud.
No sound of movement followed his words. Then the window shade ran down loudly in the room where they had been shot at. The 5 men stiffened … then relaxed at Doc's low call. Doc had moved soundlessly to the shade and drawn it.
Doc was beside the safe and the lights were turned on when they entered.
The window glass had been clouted completely out of the sash. It lay in glistening chunks and spears on the luxuriant carpet.
The glowing message which had been on it seemed destroyed forever.
"Somebody was laying for me outside," Doc said with no worry at all in his well-developed voice. "They evidently couldn't get just the aim they wanted at me through the window. When we turned out the light to look at the writing on the window, they thought we were leaving the building. So they took a couple of shots for wild luck."
"Next time, Doc, suppose we have bulletproof glass in these windows?" Renny suggested, the humor in his voice belying his dour look.
"Sure," said Doc dryly. "Next time! We're on the 86th floor and it's quite common to be shot at here."
Ham interposed a sarcastic snort. He bounced over -- waspish, quick-moving -- and nearly managed to thrust his slender arm through the hole the bullet had tunneled in the brick wall.
"Even if you put in bulletproof windows, you'd have to be blame careful to set in front of them!" he clipped dryly.
Doc was studying the hole in the safe door, noting particularly the angle at which the powerful bullet had entered. He opened the safe. The big bullet -- almost intact -- was embedded in the safe rear wall.
Renny ran a great arm into the safe and grasped the bullet with his fingers. His giant arm muscles corded as he tried to pull it out. The fist that could drive bodily through inch-thick planking with perfect ease was defied by the embedded metal slug.
"Whew!" snorted Renny. "That's a job for a drill and cold chisels."
Saying nothing -- merely as if he wanted to see if the bullet was stuck as tightly as Renny said -- Doc reached into the safe.
Great muscles popped up along his arm suddenly split his coat sleeve wide open. He glanced at the ruined sleeve ruefully … and brought his arm out of the safe.
The bullet lay loosely in his palm!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Renny could not have looked more astounded had a spike-tailed Devil hopped out of the safe! The expression on his puritanical face was ludicrous.
Doc weighed the bullet in his palm. The lids were drawn over his golden eyes. He seemed to be giving his marvelous brain every chance to work. And he was! He was guessing the weight of that bullet within a few grains almost as accurately as a chemist's scale could weigh it.
"750 grains," he decided. "That makes it a .577 caliber Nitro-Express rifle. Probably the gun that fired that shot was a double-barreled rifle."
"How d'you figure that?" asked Ham. Possibly the most astute of Doc's five friends, Doc's reasoning nevertheless got away from even Ham.
"There were only 2 shots," Doc clarified. "Also, cartridges of this tremendous size are usually fired from double-barreled elephant rifles."
"Let's do somethin' about this!" boomed Monk. "The bushwhacker may get away while we're jawin'!"
"He's probably fled already since I could locate no trace of him with the binoculars," Doc replied. "But we'll do something about it right enough!"
With exactly 4 terse sentences -- one each directed at Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk -- Doc gave all the orders he needed to. He did not explain in detail what they were to do. That wasn't necessary. He merely gave them the idea of what he wanted … and they set to work and got it in short order. They were clever, these men of Doc's.
Renny, the engineer, picked a slide rule from the drawer of a desk, a pair of dividers, some paper, and a length of string. He probed the angle at which the bullet had passed through the inner safe door, and calculated expertly the slight amount the window had probably deflected it. In less than a minute, he had his string aligned from the safe to a spot midway in the window and was sighting down it.
"Snap out of it, Long Tom!" he called impatiently.
"Just keep your shirt on!" Long Tom complained. He was doing his own share as rapidly as the engineer.
Long Tom had made a swift swing into the Library and Laboratory collecting odds-and-ends of electrical material. With a couple of powerful light bulbs he unscrewed from sockets, some tin, and a pocket mirror he borrowed from -- of all people! -- Monk, Long Tom rigged an apparatus to project a thin, extremely powerful beam of light. He added a flashlight lens and borrowed the magnifying half of Johnny's glasses before he got just the effect he desired.
Long Tom sighted his light beam down Renny's string, thus locating precisely -- in the gloomy mass of skyscrapers -- the spot from whence the shots had come.
In the meantime, Johnny -- with fingers and eye made expert by years of assembling bits of pottery from ancient ruins and the bones of prehistoric monsters -- was fitting the shattered windowpane together. A task that would have taken a layman hours, Johnny accomplished in minutes.
Johnny turned the black-light apparatus on the glass. The message in glowing blue sprang out. Intact!
Monk came waddling in from the Laboratory. In the big furry hands that swung below his knees, he carried several bottles, tightly corked. They held a fluid of villainous color.
From the wealth of chemical formulas within his head, Monk had compounded a gas with which to fight their opponents should they succeed in cornering whoever had fired that shot. It was a gas that would instantly paralyze any one who inhaled it. But the effects were only temporary and not harmful.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
They all gathered around the table on which Johnny had assembled the fragments of glass. All but Renny who was still calculating his angles. And as Doc flashed the light upon the glass, they read the message written there:
Important papers back of the red brick …
Before the message could mean anything to their minds, Renny shouted his discovery.
"It's from the observation tower on that unfinished skyscraper!" he cried. "That's where the shot came from … and the sharpshooter must still be somewhere up there!"
"Let's go!" Doc ordered. And the men surged out into the massive, shining corridor of the building straight to the battery of elevators.
If they noticed that Doc tarried behind several seconds, none of them remarked the fact. Doc was always doing little things like that. Little things that often turned out to have amazing consequences later.
The men piled into the opened elevator with a suddenness that startled the dozing operator. He wouldn't be able to sleep on the job the rest of the night!
With a whine like a lost pup, the cage sank.
Grimly silent, Doc and his 5 friends were a remarkable collection of men. They so impressed the elevator operator that he would have shot the lift past the 1st floor into the basement had Doc not dropped a bronze, long-fingered hand on the control.
Doc led out through the lobby at a trot. A taxi was cocked in at the curb, its driver dreaming over the wheel. 4 of the 6 men piled into the machine. Doc and Renny rode the running board.
"Do a 'Barney Oldfield'!" Doc directed the cab driver.
The hack jumped away from the curb as if stung.
Rain sheeted against Doc's strong, bronzed face and his straight, close-lying bronze hair. An unusual fact was at once evident. Doc's bronze skin and hair had the strange quality of seeming impervious to water. They didn't get appreciably wet. He shed water like the proverbial duck's back!
The streets were virtually deserted in this shopping region. Over toward the theater district, perhaps, there would be a crowd.
Brakes giving one long squawk, the taxi skidded sidewise to the curb and stopped. Doc and Renny were instantly running for the entrance of the new skyscraper. The 4 passengers came out of the cab door as if blown out. Ham still carried his plain black cane.
"My pay!" howled the taxi driver.
"Wait for us!" Doc flung back at him.
In the recently finished building lobby, Doc yelled for the watchman. He got no answer. He was puzzled. There should be one around.
They entered an elevator and sent it upward to the topmost floor. Still no watchman! They sprang up a staircase to where all construction but steel work ceased. There they found the watchmen.
The man -- a big Irishman with cheeks so plump and red they looked like the halves of Christmas apples -- was bound and gagged! He was indeed grateful when Doc turned him loose. But quite astounded! For Doc -- not bothering with the knots -- simply freed the Irishman by snapping the stout ropes with his fingers as easily as he would cords.
"Begorra, man!" muttered the Irishman. "'Tis not human yez can be with a strength like that!"
"Who tied you up?" Doc asked compellingly. "What did he look like?"
"Faith, I dunno!" declared the son of Erin. "'Twas not a single look or a smell I got of him. Except for one thing. The fingers of the man were red on the ends. Like he had dipped 'em in blood!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On up into the wilderness of steel girders, the 6 men climbed. They left the Irishman behind. He was rubbing spots where the ropes had hurt him and mumbling to himself about a man who broke ropes with his fingers and another man who had red fingertips.
"This is about the right height," said the gaunt Johnny, bounding at Doc's heels. "He was shooting from about here."
Johnny was hardly breathing rapidly. A tall, poorly looking man, Johnny nevertheless exceeded all the others -- excepting Doc -- in endurance. He had been known to go for 3 days and 3 nights steadily with only a slice of bread and a canteen of water.
Doc veered right. He had taken a flashlight from an inside pocket.
It was not like other flashlights, that one of Doc's. It employed no battery. A tiny, powerful generator -- built into the handle and driven by a stout spring and clockwork -- supplied the current. One twist of the flash handle would wind the spring and furnish light current for some minutes. A special receptacle held spare bulbs. There was not much chance of Doc's light playing out.
The flash spiked a white rod of luminance ahead. It picked up a workman's platform of heavy planks.
"The shot came from there!" Doc vouchsafed.
A steel girder -- a few inches wide, slippery with moisture -- offered a short cut to the platform. Doc ran along it as surefooted as a bronze spider on a web thread. His 5 men -- knowing they would be flirting with death among the steel beams hundreds of feet below -- decided to go around. And they did it very carefully.
Doc had picked 2 empty cartridges off the platform and was scrutinizing them when his 5 friends put relieved feet on the planks.
"A cannon!" Monk gulped after one look at the great size of the cartridges.
"Not quite," Doc replied. "They are cartridges for the elephant rifle that I told you about. And it was a double-barreled rifle the sniper used."
"What makes you so sure, Doc?" asked big, sober-faced Renny.
Doc pointed at the plank surface of the platform. Barely visible were 2 tiny marks side-by-side. Now that Doc had called their attention to the marks, the others knew they had been made by the muzzle of a double-barreled elephant rifle rested for a moment on the boards.
"He was a short man," Doc added. "Shorter even than Long Tom here. And much wider."
"Huh?" This was beyond even quick-thinking Ham.
Seemingly unaware of their great height and the certain death the slightest misstep would bring, Doc swung around the group and back the easy route they had come. He pointed to a girder which -- because of the roof effect of another girder above -- was dry on one side. But there was a damp smear on the dry steel.
"The sniper rubbed it with his shoulder in passing," Doc explained. "That shows how tall he is. It also shows he has wide shoulders because only a wide-shouldered man would rub the girder. Now …"
Doc fell suddenly silent. As rigid as if he were the hard bronze he so resembled, he poised against the girder. His glittering golden eyes seemed to grow luminous in the darkness.
"What is it, Doc?" asked Renny.
"Someone just struck a match … up there in the room where we were shot at." He interrupted himself with an explosive sound. "There! He's lighted another!"
Doc instantly whipped the binoculars -- he had brought them along from the office -- from his pocket. He aimed them at the window.
He got but a fragmentary glimpse. The match was about burned out. Only the tips of the prowler's fingers were clearly lighted.
"His fingers … the ends are red!" Doc voiced what he had seen.
To Be Continued...Now!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (part 2 of 22)
II -- A Message from the Dead
Falling rain strewed the outer side of the windowpane with water. Far below -- very pallid in the soaking murk -- were streetlights. Over on the Hudson River, a steamer was tooting a foghorn. The frightened, mooing horn was hardly audible inside the room.
Some blocks away, the skyscraper under construction loomed a darksome pile, crowned with a spidery labyrinth of steel girders. Only the vaguest outlines of it were discernible.
Impossible, of course, to glimpse the strange crimson-fingered servant of death in that wilderness of metal!
Doc Savage said slowly, "I was far away when my father died."
He did not explain where he had been -- did not mention his "Fortress of Solitude", his rendezvous built on a rocky island deep in the Arctic regions. He had been there.
It was to this spot that Doc retired periodically to brush up on the newest developments in Science, Psychology, Medicine, Engineering. This was the secret of his universal knowledge, for his periods of concentration there were long and intense.
The "Fortress of Solitude" had been his father's recommendation. And no one on Earth knew the location of the retreat. Once there, nothing could interrupt Doc's studies and experiments.
Without taking his golden eyes from the wet window, Doc asked, "Was there anything strange about my father's death?"
"We're not certain," Renny muttered and set his thin lips in an expression of ominousness.
"I, for one, am certain!" snapped Littlejohn. He settled more firmly on his nose the glasses which had the extremely thick left lens.
"What do you mean, Johnny?" Doc Savage asked.
"I am positive your father was murdered!" Johnny's gauntness and his studious scientist look gave him a profoundly serious expression.
Doc Savage swung slowly from the window. His bronze face had not changed expression. But under his brown business coat, tensing muscles had made his arms inches farther around!
"Why do you say that, Johnny?"
Johnny hesitated. His right eye narrowed, the left remained wide and a little blank behind the thick spectacle lens. He shrugged.
"Only a hunch," he admitted … then added, almost shouting: "But I'm right about it! I know I am!"
That was Johnny's way. He had absolute faith in what he called his "hunches". And nearly always he was right. But on occasions when he was wrong, though, he was very wrong indeed.
"Exactly what did the doctors say caused death?" Doc asked. Doc's voice was low and pleasant. But it was a voice capable of great volume and changing tone.
Renny answered that. Renny's voice was like thunder gobbling out of a cave. "The doctors didn't know. It was a new one on them. Your father broke out with queer circular red patches on his neck. And he lasted only a couple of days."
"I ran all kinds of chemical tests trying to find if it was poison or germs or what it was caused the red spots," Monk interposed, slowly opening-and-closing his huge red-furred fists. "I never found out a thing!"
Monk's looks were deceiving. His low forehead apparently didn't contain room for a spoonful of brains. Actually, Monk was in a way of being the most widely-known chemist in America. He was a Houdini of the test tubes!
"We have no facts upon which to base suspicion," clipped Ham, the waspish Harvard lawyer whose quick thinking had earned him a brigadier generalship in the World War. "But we're suspicious anyway."
Doc Savage moved abruptly across the room to a steel safe. The safe was huge, reaching above his shoulders. He swung it open.
It was instantly evident that explosive had torn the lock out of the safe door!
A long, surprised gasp swished around the room.
"I found it broken into when I came back," Doc explained. "Maybe that has a connection with my father's death. Maybe not."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Doc's movements were rhythmic as he swung over and perched on a corner of the big, inlaid table before the window. His eyes roved slowly over the beautifully furnished office. There was another office adjoining the Reception room. It was larger and contained a Library of technical books that was priceless because of its completeness.
And adjoining that was the vast Laboratory room, replete with apparatus for chemical and electrical experiments.
This was about all the worldly goods the elder Savage had left behind.
"What's eating you, Doc?" asked the giant Renny. "We all got the word from you to show up here tonight. Why?"
Doc Savage's strange golden eyes roved over the assembled men. From Renny, whose knowledge of engineering in all its branches was profound … to Long Tom, who was an electrical wizard … to Johnny, whose fund of information on the structure of the Earth and ancient races which had inhabited it was extremely vast … to Ham, the clever Harvard lawyer and quick thinker … and finally to Monk, who in spite of his resemblance to a gorilla was a great chemist.
In these 5 men, Doc knew he had five of the greatest brains ever to assemble in one group. Each was surpassed in his field by only one human being -- Doc Savage himself!
"I think you can guess why you are here," Doc said.
Monk rubbed his hairy hands together. Of the 6 men present, Monk's skin alone bore scars. The skin of the others held no marks of their adventurous past, thanks to Doc's uncanny skill in causing wounds to heal without leaving scars.
But not Monk. His tough, rusty iron hide was so marked with gray scars that it looked as if a flock of chickens with gray-chalk feet had paraded on him. This was because Monk refused to let Doc treat him. Monk gloried in his tough looks.
"Our big job is about to start, huh?" said Monk, vast satisfaction in his mild voice.
Doc nodded. "The work to which we shall devote the rest of our lives."
At that statement, great satisfaction appeared upon the face of every man present. They showed eagerness for what was to come.
Doc dangled a leg from the corner of the table. Unwittingly -- for he knew nothing of the red-fingered killer lurking in the distant skyscraper that was under construction -- Doc had placed his back out of line with the window. In fact, since the men had entered, he had not once been aligned with the window.
"We first got together back in the War," he told the five slowly. "We all liked the big scrap. It got into our blood. When we came back, the hum-drum life of an ordinary man was not suited to our natures. So we sought something else."
Doc held their absolute attention as if he had them hypnotized. Undeniably this golden-eyed man was the leader of the group as well as leader of anything he undertook. His very being denoted a calm knowledge of all things and an ability to handle himself under any conditions.
"Moved by mutual admiration for my father," Doc continued, "we decided to take up his work of good wherever he was forced to leave off. We at once began training ourselves for that purpose. It is the cause for which I had been reared from the cradle. But you fellows -- because of a love of excitement and adventure -- wish to join me."
Doc Savage paused. He looked over his companions one-by-one in the soft light of the well-furnished office -- one of the few remaining evidences of the wealth that once belonged to his father.
"Tonight," he went on soberly, "we begin carrying out the ideals of my father: To go here-and-there, from one end of the World to the other, looking for excitement and adventure, striving to help those who need help … and punishing those who deserve it!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There was a somber silence after that immense pronunciation.
It was Monk -- matter-of-fact person that he was -- who shattered the quiet.
"What flubdubs me is who broke into that safe? And why?" he grumbled. "Doc, could it have any connection with your father's death?"
"It could, of course," Doc explained. "The contents of the safe had been rifled. I do not know whether my father had anything of importance in it. But I suspect there was."
Doc drew a folded paper from inside his coat. The lower half of the paper had been burned away. That was evident from the charred edges. Doc continued speaking.
"Finding this in a corner of the safe leads me to that belief. The explosion which opened the safe obviously destroyed the lower part of the paper. And the robber probably overlooked the rest. Here … read it."
He passed it to the 5 men. The paper was covered with the fine -- almost engraving-perfect -- writing of Doc's father. They all recognized the penmanship instantly. They read:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Clark:
I have many things to tell you. In your whole lifetime, there never was an occasion when I desired you here so much as I do now. I need you, Son, because many things have happened which indicate to me that my last journey is at hand. You will find that I have nothing much to leave you in the way of tangible wealth.
I have, however, the satisfaction of knowing that in you I shall live.
I have developed you from boyhood into the sort of man you have become. And I have spared no time or expense to make you just what I think you should be.
Everything I have done for you has been with the purpose that you should find yourself capable of carrying on the work which hopefully started and which -- in these last few years -- has been almost impossible to carry on.
If I do not see you again before this letter is in your hands, I want to assure you that I appreciate the fact that you have lacked nothing in the way of filial devotion. That you have been absent so much of the time has been a secret source of gratification to me. For your absence has, I know, made you self-reliant and able. It was all that I hoped for you.
Now, as to the heritage which I am about to leave you:
What I am passing along to you may be a doubtful heritage. It may be a heritage of woe. It may even be a heritage of destruction to you if you attempt to capitalize on it. On the other hand, it may enable you to do many things for those who are not so fortunate as you yourself and will -- in that way -- be a boon for you in carrying on your work of doing good to all.
Here is the general information concerning it:
Some 20 years ago -- in company with Hubert Robertson -- I went on an expedition to Hidalgo in Central America to investigate the report of a prehistoric …
There the missive ended. Flames had consumed the rest.
"The thing to do is get hold of Hubert Robertson!" clipped the quick-thinking Ham. Waspish and rapid-moving, he swung over to the telephone an scooped it up. "I know Hubert Robertson's phone number. He is connected with the Museum of Natural History."
"You won't get him," Doc said dryly.
"Why not?"
Doc got off the table and stood beside the giant Renny. It was only then that one realized what a BIG man Doc was. Alongside Renny, Doc was like dynamite alongside gunpowder!
"Hubert Robertson is dead," Doc explained. "He died from the same thing that killed my father -- a weird malady that started with a breaking out of red spots. And he died at about the same time as my father."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Renny's thin mouth pinched even tighter at that. Gloom seemed to settle on his long face. He looked like a man disgusted enough with the evils of the World to cry.
Strangely enough, that somber look denoted that Renny was beginning to take interest. The tougher the going got, the better Renny functioned and the more puritanical he looked.
"That flooeys our chances of finding out more about this heritage your father left you!" he rumbled.
"Not entirely," Doc corrected. "Wait here a moment."
He stepped through another door and crossed the room banked with the volumes of his father's great technical Library. Through a second door … and he was in the Laboratory.
Cases laden with chemicals stood thick as forest trees on the floor. There were electrical coils, vacuum tubes, ray apparatus, microscopes, retorts, electric furnaces -- everything that could go into such a laboratory.
From a cabinet, Doc lifted a metal box closely resembling an old-fashioned "magic lantern". The lens -- instead of being ordinary optical glass -- was a very dark purple, almost black. There was a cord for plugging into an electric-light socket.
Doc carried this into the room where his 5 men waited. He placed it on a stand, aimed the lens at the window, and plugged the cord into an electric outlet.
Before putting the thing in operation, he lifted the metal lid and beckoned to Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
"Know what this is?"
"Of course." Long Tom pulled absently at an ear that was too big, too thin, and too pale. "That is a lamp for making ultraviolet rays -- or what is commonly called 'black light'. The rays are invisible to the human eye since they are shorter than ordinary light. But many substances when placed in the black light will glow or fluoresce after the fashion of luminous paint on a watch dial. Examples of such substances are ordinary vaseline, quinine …"
"That's plenty," interposed Doc. "Look at the window I've pointed this at. See anything unusual about it?"
Johnny -- the gaunt archaeologist-geologist -- advanced to the window and removing his glasses as he went. He held the thick-lensed left glass before his right eye, inspecting the window.
In reality, the left side of Johnny's glasses was an extremely powerful magnifying lens. His work often required a magnifier. So he wore one over his left eye which was virtually useless because of an injury received in the World War.
"I can find nothing," Johnny declared. "There's nothing unusual about the window."
"I hope you're wrong," Doc said with sobriety in his wondrously modulated voice. "But you could not see the writing on that window, should there be any. The substance my father perfected for leaving secret messages was absolutely invisible. But it glows under ultraviolet light."
"You mean …" hairy Monk rumbled.
"… that my father and I often left each other notes written on that window," Doc explained. "Watch!"
Doc crossed the room -- a big, dynamic man, light on his feet as a kitten for all his size -- and turned out the lights. He came back to the black-light box. His hand -- supple despite its enormous tendons -- clicked the switch that shot current into the apparatus.
Instantly written words sprang out on the darkened windowpane! Glowing with a dazzling electric blue, the effect of their sudden appearance was uncanny.
A split-second later came a terrific report! A bullet knocked the glass into hundreds of fragments, wiping out the sparkling blue message before they could read it. The bullet passed entirely through the steel-plate inner door of the safe. It embedded in the safe back.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The room reeked silence. One second … then two … Nobody had moved.
And then a new sound was heard. It was a low, mellow, trilling sound. Like the song of some strange bird of the jungle. Or the sound of the wind filtering through a jungled forest. It was melodious, though it had no tune. It was inspiring, though it was not awesome.
The amazing sound had the peculiar quality of seeming to come from everywhere within the room rather than from a definite spot as though permeated with an eerie essence of ventriloquism.
A purposeful calm settled over Doc Savage's 5 men as they heard that sound. Their breathing became less rapid; their brains more alert.
For this weird sound was part of Doc -- a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of utter concentration. To his friends it was both the cry of battle and the song of triumph. It would come upon his lips when a plan of action was being arranged, precoursing a master stroke which made all things certain.
It would come again in the midst of some struggle when the odds were all against his men, when everything seemed lost. And with the sound, new strength would come to all … and the tide would always turn.
And again, it might come when some beleaguered member of the group -- alone and attacked -- had almost given up all hope of survival. Then that sound would filter through some way … and the victim knew that help was at hand.
The whistling sound was a sign of Doc. Of safety. And of Victory!
"Who got it?" asked Johnny. He could be heard settling his glasses more firmly on his bony nose.
"No one," said Doc. "Let us crawl, brothers … crawl! That was no ordinary rifle bullet from the sound of it!"
At that instant, a second bullet crashed into the room! It came not through the window but through some inches of brick and mortar which comprised the wall. Plaster sprayed across the thick carpet!
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
Falling rain strewed the outer side of the windowpane with water. Far below -- very pallid in the soaking murk -- were streetlights. Over on the Hudson River, a steamer was tooting a foghorn. The frightened, mooing horn was hardly audible inside the room.
Some blocks away, the skyscraper under construction loomed a darksome pile, crowned with a spidery labyrinth of steel girders. Only the vaguest outlines of it were discernible.
Impossible, of course, to glimpse the strange crimson-fingered servant of death in that wilderness of metal!
Doc Savage said slowly, "I was far away when my father died."
He did not explain where he had been -- did not mention his "Fortress of Solitude", his rendezvous built on a rocky island deep in the Arctic regions. He had been there.
It was to this spot that Doc retired periodically to brush up on the newest developments in Science, Psychology, Medicine, Engineering. This was the secret of his universal knowledge, for his periods of concentration there were long and intense.
The "Fortress of Solitude" had been his father's recommendation. And no one on Earth knew the location of the retreat. Once there, nothing could interrupt Doc's studies and experiments.
Without taking his golden eyes from the wet window, Doc asked, "Was there anything strange about my father's death?"
"We're not certain," Renny muttered and set his thin lips in an expression of ominousness.
"I, for one, am certain!" snapped Littlejohn. He settled more firmly on his nose the glasses which had the extremely thick left lens.
"What do you mean, Johnny?" Doc Savage asked.
"I am positive your father was murdered!" Johnny's gauntness and his studious scientist look gave him a profoundly serious expression.
Doc Savage swung slowly from the window. His bronze face had not changed expression. But under his brown business coat, tensing muscles had made his arms inches farther around!
"Why do you say that, Johnny?"
Johnny hesitated. His right eye narrowed, the left remained wide and a little blank behind the thick spectacle lens. He shrugged.
"Only a hunch," he admitted … then added, almost shouting: "But I'm right about it! I know I am!"
That was Johnny's way. He had absolute faith in what he called his "hunches". And nearly always he was right. But on occasions when he was wrong, though, he was very wrong indeed.
"Exactly what did the doctors say caused death?" Doc asked. Doc's voice was low and pleasant. But it was a voice capable of great volume and changing tone.
Renny answered that. Renny's voice was like thunder gobbling out of a cave. "The doctors didn't know. It was a new one on them. Your father broke out with queer circular red patches on his neck. And he lasted only a couple of days."
"I ran all kinds of chemical tests trying to find if it was poison or germs or what it was caused the red spots," Monk interposed, slowly opening-and-closing his huge red-furred fists. "I never found out a thing!"
Monk's looks were deceiving. His low forehead apparently didn't contain room for a spoonful of brains. Actually, Monk was in a way of being the most widely-known chemist in America. He was a Houdini of the test tubes!
"We have no facts upon which to base suspicion," clipped Ham, the waspish Harvard lawyer whose quick thinking had earned him a brigadier generalship in the World War. "But we're suspicious anyway."
Doc Savage moved abruptly across the room to a steel safe. The safe was huge, reaching above his shoulders. He swung it open.
It was instantly evident that explosive had torn the lock out of the safe door!
A long, surprised gasp swished around the room.
"I found it broken into when I came back," Doc explained. "Maybe that has a connection with my father's death. Maybe not."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Doc's movements were rhythmic as he swung over and perched on a corner of the big, inlaid table before the window. His eyes roved slowly over the beautifully furnished office. There was another office adjoining the Reception room. It was larger and contained a Library of technical books that was priceless because of its completeness.
And adjoining that was the vast Laboratory room, replete with apparatus for chemical and electrical experiments.
This was about all the worldly goods the elder Savage had left behind.
"What's eating you, Doc?" asked the giant Renny. "We all got the word from you to show up here tonight. Why?"
Doc Savage's strange golden eyes roved over the assembled men. From Renny, whose knowledge of engineering in all its branches was profound … to Long Tom, who was an electrical wizard … to Johnny, whose fund of information on the structure of the Earth and ancient races which had inhabited it was extremely vast … to Ham, the clever Harvard lawyer and quick thinker … and finally to Monk, who in spite of his resemblance to a gorilla was a great chemist.
In these 5 men, Doc knew he had five of the greatest brains ever to assemble in one group. Each was surpassed in his field by only one human being -- Doc Savage himself!
"I think you can guess why you are here," Doc said.
Monk rubbed his hairy hands together. Of the 6 men present, Monk's skin alone bore scars. The skin of the others held no marks of their adventurous past, thanks to Doc's uncanny skill in causing wounds to heal without leaving scars.
But not Monk. His tough, rusty iron hide was so marked with gray scars that it looked as if a flock of chickens with gray-chalk feet had paraded on him. This was because Monk refused to let Doc treat him. Monk gloried in his tough looks.
"Our big job is about to start, huh?" said Monk, vast satisfaction in his mild voice.
Doc nodded. "The work to which we shall devote the rest of our lives."
At that statement, great satisfaction appeared upon the face of every man present. They showed eagerness for what was to come.
Doc dangled a leg from the corner of the table. Unwittingly -- for he knew nothing of the red-fingered killer lurking in the distant skyscraper that was under construction -- Doc had placed his back out of line with the window. In fact, since the men had entered, he had not once been aligned with the window.
"We first got together back in the War," he told the five slowly. "We all liked the big scrap. It got into our blood. When we came back, the hum-drum life of an ordinary man was not suited to our natures. So we sought something else."
Doc held their absolute attention as if he had them hypnotized. Undeniably this golden-eyed man was the leader of the group as well as leader of anything he undertook. His very being denoted a calm knowledge of all things and an ability to handle himself under any conditions.
"Moved by mutual admiration for my father," Doc continued, "we decided to take up his work of good wherever he was forced to leave off. We at once began training ourselves for that purpose. It is the cause for which I had been reared from the cradle. But you fellows -- because of a love of excitement and adventure -- wish to join me."
Doc Savage paused. He looked over his companions one-by-one in the soft light of the well-furnished office -- one of the few remaining evidences of the wealth that once belonged to his father.
"Tonight," he went on soberly, "we begin carrying out the ideals of my father: To go here-and-there, from one end of the World to the other, looking for excitement and adventure, striving to help those who need help … and punishing those who deserve it!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There was a somber silence after that immense pronunciation.
It was Monk -- matter-of-fact person that he was -- who shattered the quiet.
"What flubdubs me is who broke into that safe? And why?" he grumbled. "Doc, could it have any connection with your father's death?"
"It could, of course," Doc explained. "The contents of the safe had been rifled. I do not know whether my father had anything of importance in it. But I suspect there was."
Doc drew a folded paper from inside his coat. The lower half of the paper had been burned away. That was evident from the charred edges. Doc continued speaking.
"Finding this in a corner of the safe leads me to that belief. The explosion which opened the safe obviously destroyed the lower part of the paper. And the robber probably overlooked the rest. Here … read it."
He passed it to the 5 men. The paper was covered with the fine -- almost engraving-perfect -- writing of Doc's father. They all recognized the penmanship instantly. They read:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Clark:
I have many things to tell you. In your whole lifetime, there never was an occasion when I desired you here so much as I do now. I need you, Son, because many things have happened which indicate to me that my last journey is at hand. You will find that I have nothing much to leave you in the way of tangible wealth.
I have, however, the satisfaction of knowing that in you I shall live.
I have developed you from boyhood into the sort of man you have become. And I have spared no time or expense to make you just what I think you should be.
Everything I have done for you has been with the purpose that you should find yourself capable of carrying on the work which hopefully started and which -- in these last few years -- has been almost impossible to carry on.
If I do not see you again before this letter is in your hands, I want to assure you that I appreciate the fact that you have lacked nothing in the way of filial devotion. That you have been absent so much of the time has been a secret source of gratification to me. For your absence has, I know, made you self-reliant and able. It was all that I hoped for you.
Now, as to the heritage which I am about to leave you:
What I am passing along to you may be a doubtful heritage. It may be a heritage of woe. It may even be a heritage of destruction to you if you attempt to capitalize on it. On the other hand, it may enable you to do many things for those who are not so fortunate as you yourself and will -- in that way -- be a boon for you in carrying on your work of doing good to all.
Here is the general information concerning it:
Some 20 years ago -- in company with Hubert Robertson -- I went on an expedition to Hidalgo in Central America to investigate the report of a prehistoric …
There the missive ended. Flames had consumed the rest.
"The thing to do is get hold of Hubert Robertson!" clipped the quick-thinking Ham. Waspish and rapid-moving, he swung over to the telephone an scooped it up. "I know Hubert Robertson's phone number. He is connected with the Museum of Natural History."
"You won't get him," Doc said dryly.
"Why not?"
Doc got off the table and stood beside the giant Renny. It was only then that one realized what a BIG man Doc was. Alongside Renny, Doc was like dynamite alongside gunpowder!
"Hubert Robertson is dead," Doc explained. "He died from the same thing that killed my father -- a weird malady that started with a breaking out of red spots. And he died at about the same time as my father."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Renny's thin mouth pinched even tighter at that. Gloom seemed to settle on his long face. He looked like a man disgusted enough with the evils of the World to cry.
Strangely enough, that somber look denoted that Renny was beginning to take interest. The tougher the going got, the better Renny functioned and the more puritanical he looked.
"That flooeys our chances of finding out more about this heritage your father left you!" he rumbled.
"Not entirely," Doc corrected. "Wait here a moment."
He stepped through another door and crossed the room banked with the volumes of his father's great technical Library. Through a second door … and he was in the Laboratory.
Cases laden with chemicals stood thick as forest trees on the floor. There were electrical coils, vacuum tubes, ray apparatus, microscopes, retorts, electric furnaces -- everything that could go into such a laboratory.
From a cabinet, Doc lifted a metal box closely resembling an old-fashioned "magic lantern". The lens -- instead of being ordinary optical glass -- was a very dark purple, almost black. There was a cord for plugging into an electric-light socket.
Doc carried this into the room where his 5 men waited. He placed it on a stand, aimed the lens at the window, and plugged the cord into an electric outlet.
Before putting the thing in operation, he lifted the metal lid and beckoned to Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
"Know what this is?"
"Of course." Long Tom pulled absently at an ear that was too big, too thin, and too pale. "That is a lamp for making ultraviolet rays -- or what is commonly called 'black light'. The rays are invisible to the human eye since they are shorter than ordinary light. But many substances when placed in the black light will glow or fluoresce after the fashion of luminous paint on a watch dial. Examples of such substances are ordinary vaseline, quinine …"
"That's plenty," interposed Doc. "Look at the window I've pointed this at. See anything unusual about it?"
Johnny -- the gaunt archaeologist-geologist -- advanced to the window and removing his glasses as he went. He held the thick-lensed left glass before his right eye, inspecting the window.
In reality, the left side of Johnny's glasses was an extremely powerful magnifying lens. His work often required a magnifier. So he wore one over his left eye which was virtually useless because of an injury received in the World War.
"I can find nothing," Johnny declared. "There's nothing unusual about the window."
"I hope you're wrong," Doc said with sobriety in his wondrously modulated voice. "But you could not see the writing on that window, should there be any. The substance my father perfected for leaving secret messages was absolutely invisible. But it glows under ultraviolet light."
"You mean …" hairy Monk rumbled.
"… that my father and I often left each other notes written on that window," Doc explained. "Watch!"
Doc crossed the room -- a big, dynamic man, light on his feet as a kitten for all his size -- and turned out the lights. He came back to the black-light box. His hand -- supple despite its enormous tendons -- clicked the switch that shot current into the apparatus.
Instantly written words sprang out on the darkened windowpane! Glowing with a dazzling electric blue, the effect of their sudden appearance was uncanny.
A split-second later came a terrific report! A bullet knocked the glass into hundreds of fragments, wiping out the sparkling blue message before they could read it. The bullet passed entirely through the steel-plate inner door of the safe. It embedded in the safe back.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The room reeked silence. One second … then two … Nobody had moved.
And then a new sound was heard. It was a low, mellow, trilling sound. Like the song of some strange bird of the jungle. Or the sound of the wind filtering through a jungled forest. It was melodious, though it had no tune. It was inspiring, though it was not awesome.
The amazing sound had the peculiar quality of seeming to come from everywhere within the room rather than from a definite spot as though permeated with an eerie essence of ventriloquism.
A purposeful calm settled over Doc Savage's 5 men as they heard that sound. Their breathing became less rapid; their brains more alert.
For this weird sound was part of Doc -- a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of utter concentration. To his friends it was both the cry of battle and the song of triumph. It would come upon his lips when a plan of action was being arranged, precoursing a master stroke which made all things certain.
It would come again in the midst of some struggle when the odds were all against his men, when everything seemed lost. And with the sound, new strength would come to all … and the tide would always turn.
And again, it might come when some beleaguered member of the group -- alone and attacked -- had almost given up all hope of survival. Then that sound would filter through some way … and the victim knew that help was at hand.
The whistling sound was a sign of Doc. Of safety. And of Victory!
"Who got it?" asked Johnny. He could be heard settling his glasses more firmly on his bony nose.
"No one," said Doc. "Let us crawl, brothers … crawl! That was no ordinary rifle bullet from the sound of it!"
At that instant, a second bullet crashed into the room! It came not through the window but through some inches of brick and mortar which comprised the wall. Plaster sprayed across the thick carpet!
To Be Continued...Tomorrow!
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