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He weaved among the gangsters. He seemed very unsteady on his feet. To remain erect, he clutched the persons of such men as he passed. Always, his finger tips touched some portion of bare skin.
He came in contact with six men on his way across the room. The six sat in their chairs with a strange rigidity after he had passed.
The gangster who served as straw boss watched. Curiosity rippled over his face. Then came ugly suspicion.
He shucked two big automatics out of his clothing. He covered the reeling driver.
"Stick 'em up!" he snarled.
There was nothing the driver could do but obey. Up went his arms.
At this point, the six gangsters he had touched fell out of their chairs. They made a succession of thumps on the floor. They were unconscious.
"Whew!" gritted the gunman. "Keep dem hands up!"
He advanced gingerly. With a quick move, he plucked the mask off the driver.
"I t'ought so!" he hissed.
The features revealed were not those of Honkey, the driver.
They were the bronze lineaments of Doc Savage!
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
He came in contact with six men on his way across the room. The six sat in their chairs with a strange rigidity after he had passed.
The gangster who served as straw boss watched. Curiosity rippled over his face. Then came ugly suspicion.
He shucked two big automatics out of his clothing. He covered the reeling driver.
"Stick 'em up!" he snarled.
There was nothing the driver could do but obey. Up went his arms.
At this point, the six gangsters he had touched fell out of their chairs. They made a succession of thumps on the floor. They were unconscious.
"Whew!" gritted the gunman. "Keep dem hands up!"
He advanced gingerly. With a quick move, he plucked the mask off the driver.
"I t'ought so!" he hissed.
The features revealed were not those of Honkey, the driver.
They were the bronze lineaments of Doc Savage!
Chapter 4
THE BLIND-MAN HUNT
BEWILDERMENT GRIPPED the assembled thugs. They could not comprehend that the bronze man had taken the place of Honkey, back at the uptown skyscraper. It was too much for them to believe that any one could be such a master of voice imitation as to fool them by emulating Honkey's hoarse growl.
They looked at the six of their comrades huddled senseless on the floor. A near-terror distorted their ugly faces.
The bronze man slowly pushed Honkey's cap off his head. The cap was none too clean. It was as though he didn't wish to wear it longer than was necessary.
For a brief instant. his finger tips probed in the bronze hair that lay down like a metal skullcap.
"Keep clawin' fer the ceilin'!" snarled the gang chief.
Doc's arms lifted obediently. His hands nearly touched the ceiling, indicating what a really large man he was.
"Search 'im!" ordered the leader.
Gingerly, four of the thugs advanced. They frisked Doc with practiced fingers. They found some silver coins and a few bills which had belonged to Honkey. These they appropriated. But they unearthed no weapon.
"De umpcha ain't got a rod!" they muttered. The fact that Doc wasn't armed seemed to stun them.
Their leader eyed the six limp hulks on the floor. He moved to the bedroom door. He whitened perceptibly when he saw the two sprawled on the bed.
"I don't savvy dis!" he shivered. "What messed dem guys up like dat?"
Suddenly his mean eyes narrowed.
"Hunt in his sleeves!" he commanded his men.
They did so — and brought to light a small hypodermic needle.
The leader grasped the needle fearfully between thumb and forefinger. He inspected it.
"So dis is what laid 'em out!" he leered.
The other villains stirred uneasily. They didn't fancy weapons such as this. A gun was more their style.
"Croak 'im!" they suggested.
But their boss shook his head violently.
"Ixnay!" he snapped. "Dis guy is just de umpcha we need. We're gonna make 'im tell us where old Victor Vail is!"
A marked interest now registered on Doc Savage's bronze features. He was obviously surprised.
"You mean to say you haven't got Victor Vail?" he asked.
The remarkable power of his great voice held the gangsters speechless for a moment. Then their leader spoke sneeringly.
"D'you t'ink we'd be askin' where de guy is if we had 'im?" he demanded. He scowled blackly. "Say, whatcha drivin at — askin' us if we got 'im?"
"Victor Vail was seized," Doc replied. "I naturally supposed you fellows had him. That is why I am here."
The thugs exchanged angry glares.
"Dat damn Keelhaul de Rosa crowd got 'im first, after all!" one grated.
This morsel was very interesting to Doc Savage. "You mean to say your outfit and Keelhaul de Rosa's outfit were both after Victor Vail?" he asked.
"Button de lip!" rasped the leader of the thugs. "I t'ink yer lyin' ter me about anybody gettin' Victor Vail!"
"Den why would he come here?" put in another fellow. "Don't be a nut! Dat's what the shootin' upstairs was. Yer remember we heard a typewriter turn loose. Dat's what scared us off."
Doc Savage gave the tiniest of nods. He understood now why the five captured by Monk and Ham had come dashing out of the elevators with their guns in hand. They had heard the machine-gun fire upstairs, and had become terrified.
"I wonder how Keelhaul de Rosa got ahead of us at de skyscraper?" mumbled the leader.
"He tried to grab de blind guy from under our snozzles at de concert hall, didn't he?" asked the other thug. "He drove off mighty fast in dat taxi, but he could've circled back an' followed de blind guy to dat skyscraper just de same as we did, couldn't he?"
Doc listened with interest to all this. These fellows must have arrived at the concert hall in time to witness the street fight. And they had been cunning enough to keep out of sight.
The leader swore loudly. "Cripes! Yer remember dat guy in a cab who had a trick mustache? De one dat was puffin' a cigar? He followed de roadster to de skyscraper, den went in right after dis bronze guy an' old Victor Vail. I'll bet dat was Keelhaul de Rosa!"
"What we gonna do?" growled a man. The leader shrugged. "Ben O'Gard will wanta know about dis. I'll go an' have a talk wit' 'im!"
This apprised Doc of another fact. These men were hirelings of Ben O'Gard!
Victor Vail had mentioned a strange feud between Ben O'Gard and "Keelhaul" de Rosa on the arctic ice pack. It was evident that this old feud still continued.
But what was back of it? Did Victor Vail's unconsciousness at the time of the disaster to the liner Oceanic, and his awakening with a queer smarting in his back, have anything to do with this mystery?
The leader of the thugs came over and confronted Doc. He looked small and unhealthy before the mighty bronze man. He held up the hypodermic needle.
"What's in dis?" he questioned.
"Water," Doc said dryly.
"Yeah?" sneered the man. He eyed the unmoving forms of his fellows on the floor, shuddered violently, then got hold of himself. "Yer a liar!"
"There's really nothing but water in it," Doc persisted.
The thug leered. His hand darted like a striking serpent. The hypo needle was embedded in Doc's corded neck. The implement discharged its contents into his veins.
Without a sound, the giant bronze man caved down to the floor.
"So it was only water in dat t'ing!" snorted the gangster straw boss. "Dat needle is what got our pals!"
He gave orders. The big bronze man was turned over, kicked a few times, and soundly belabored. He showed no signs of consciousness.
"Dat guy is harder'n brass!" muttered a thug, blowing feverishly on a fist with which he had taken an overly hard swing at the limp, metallic form.
"Watch 'im close!" commanded the leader. Then he pointed at a telephone on a stand against one wall. "I'm goin' to talk wit' Ben O'Gard in person. I'll either give you mugs a ring about what to do wit' the bronze guy, or come back myself an' tell yer."
The man now departed.
The other gangsters expended some minutes in seeking to revive their unconscious fellows. However, they had no luck.
They smoked. They muttered to each other, and one of their number took a post outside in the hallway as lookout.
Suddenly a shrill voice came from the room where the two thugs lay senseless on the bed.
"C'mere, quick!" it piped. "I got somethin' important!"
A number of gangsters rushed into the room. Others crowded about the door.
For a moment, not an eye watched the bronze figure of Doc Savage!
"Dat's funny!" declared a man, examining the pair on the bed. "He must've gone back to sleep! They're both out like a light now!"
"I never heard either one of dem guys talk in a shrill voice like dat," another fellow said wonderingly.
They came out of the bedroom, a puzzled group of villains.
Not one of them glanced at the telephone. So none noticed that a match had been jammed under the receiver hook, holding it in a lifted position!
The strong lips of Doc Savage began to writhe. Sounds came from them. Clucking, gobbling sounds, they were absolutely meaningless to the listening thugs. The sounds were very loud.
"What kinda language is dat?" growled a man.
"Dat ain't no language!" snorted another. "De guy is jest delirious an' ravin'!"
The gangster was wrong. For Doc Savage was speaking one of the least-known languages in existence. The tongue of the ancient Mayan civilization which centuries ago flourished in Central America! And his words were going into the telephone!
When all the gangsters looked in the bedroom, they had given Doc sufficient time to call Monk at his skyscraper office. The thugs had been too excited to hear him whisper the phone number.
Doc was a ventriloquist of ability. He had thrown his voice into the bedroom to get the attention of his captors.
It would have surprised the absent leader of the thugs to know the hypodermic needle he had used on Doc had actually contained nothing more harmful than water! Doc had chanced to have the needle on his person. And he had slipped it up his sleeve for the purpose of deceiving the villains.
It was not the needle with which Doc made his enemies unconscious so mysteriously.
To homely Monk in the uptown skyscraper, however, it carried a lot of meaning. All of Doc's men could speak Mayan. They used it when they wanted to converse without being understood by bystanders.
"Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny should be there by now," Doc told Monk in the strange language.
The three men he had named were the remaining members of his group of five adventuresome aids!
"Tell Johnny to get the contents of Drawer No. 13 in the laboratory," Doc continued. "The contents will be a bottle of bilious-looking paint, a brush, arid a mechanism like an overgrown field glass. Tell Johnny to bring the paint and brush here."
Doc gave the address of the dive where he was being held.
"There are two sedans parked outside," the bronze man went on in the gobbling dialect. 'Tell Johnny to paint a cross on the top of each one. He is to bring his car which is equipped with radio. He is to wait in a street near by when he has finished the painting.
"Long Tom and Renny are to take the overgrown field glasses and race to the airport. They're to circle over the city in my plane, Renny doing the flying, while Long Tom watches with the overgrown glasses. The glasses will make the paint Johnny will put on the sedan tops show up a distinctive luminous color. Long Tom is to radio the course of the sedans to Johnny, who will follow them.
The gangsters were listening to the clucking words. Evil grins wreathed their pinched faces. They didn't dream the gobble could have a meaning!
"You, Monk, will visit the police station where the thugs who attacked Victor Vail and myself outside the concert hall were taken." Doc said. "Question them and seek to learn where a sailor called Keelhaul de Rosa would be likely to take Victor Vail.
"Ham is to remain in the office and question the rat you found unconscious in the laboratory, also seeking to find Keelhaul de Rosa and Victor Vail.
"If you understand these instructions, snap your fingers twice in the telephone transmitter."
Two low snaps promptly came from the wedged-up telephone receiver. They were not loud. Not a thug in the room noticed them.
"Reckon he's kicked the pail?" a crook muttered.
Another man made a brief examination.
"Naw. His pump is still goin'."
After this, time dragged. The guard outside the door could be heard. Once he struck a match. Twice he coughed hackingly.
A gangster produced two red dice. The men made a pretense at a crap game, but they were too nervous to make a success of it. Seating themselves in the scant supply of chairs, or hunkering down on the filthy floor, they waited.
Doc Savage Was giving his men time to get on the job. Johnny would have to daub the luminous paint on the sedans. Renny and Long Tom would have to arrive over the city in the plane. Twenty minutes should be sufficient time.
He gave them half an hour, to be sure. Indeed, his keen ears finally detected a series of low drones which meant the plane was above. Doc's plane had mufflers on the exhaust pipes. Renny was evidently cutting the mufflers off at short intervals to signal his presence to his pals.
Doc rolled over. He did it slowly, like a sleepy man. He now faced the hallway door.
The thugs tensed. They drew their pistols. They were as jittery as a flock of wild rabbits.
Doc imitated the raucous voice of the guard. He threw it against the hall door.
"Help!" the voice yelled. "Cripes! Help!"
The guard outside heard. He might have recognized his own tone. Maybe he didn't. He wrenched the door open, at any rate.
The instant his ugly face shoved inside, Doc threw words into his mouth. The guard was too astonished to say a word of his own.
"De cops!" were the words. "Dey're on de stairs! Lam, youse guys!"
Pandemonium fell upon the gangsters. They rasped excited orders. They actually squealed as though they were already caught.
One man saw the giant bronze figure of Doc Savage heave up from the floor. He fired his pistol. But he was a little slow. Doc evaded the bullets. He reached the light switch, punched it.
Darkness clapped down upon the room.
"De cops are inside!" Doc yelled in the guard's voice. "We gotta lam, quick!"
To make sure they fled in the right direction, Doc glided over and kicked the glass out of the window.
"Dis way out!" he barked.
A thug sprang through the window. Another followed. Then a succession of them.
Standing near by, Doc darted his hands against such faces as he could find in the black void. Three men he touched in this manner. Each of the three instantly dropped unconscious.
The others escaped from the room in a surprisingly short space of time.
Doc listened. He heard both sedan engines roar into life. The cars streaked away like noisy comets.
This sound had the peculiar quality of seeming to arise from everywhere within the shabby room, rather than from a definite spot.
This trilling note was part of Doc — a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of emotion. It would come from his lips as some plan of action was being arranged. Sometimes it precoursed a master stroke which made all things certain. Or it might sound to bring hope to some beleaguered member of Doc's adventuresome group.
Once in a while it came when Doc was a bit pleased with himself. That was the reason for it sounding now.
Doc turned on the lights. He lined up the thugs he had made unconscious.
Eleven of them! It was not a bad haul.
Doc used the phone to call Ham at the scraper aerie uptown.
"You might bring your sedan down here," Doc requested. Ten minutes later, Ham came up the rickety stairs, twiddling his sword cane. Ham's perfection of attire was made more pronounced by the blowsy surroundings. He saw the pile of sleeping prisoners.
"I see you've been collecting!" he chuckled.
"Did you get anything out of Keelhaul de Rosa's man?" Doc asked.
"I scared him into talking," Ham said grimly, "but the fellow was just a hired gunman, Doc. He and his gang were hired to get Victor Vail. They were to deliver the blind violinist to Keelhaul de Rosa, right enough. But the delivery was to be made on the street. The man had no idea where Keelhaul de Rosa hangs out."
"That's too bad," Doc replied. "There's a chance one of the crew who attacked Victor Vail outside the concert hall will know where the sailorman hangs out. If they do, Monk'll make them cough up."
The unconscious thugs were now loaded into Ham's limousine. This car of Ham's was one of the most elaborate and costly in the city. Ham went in for the finest in automobiles, just as he did in clothes.
Ham did not ask Doc what they were going to do with the prisoners. He already knew. The senseless criminals would be taken to Doc's skyscraper office. In a day or so, men would call for them, and take them to a mysterious institution hidden away in the mountains of upstate New York. There they would undergo a treatment which would turn them into honest, upright citizens.
This treatment consisted of a delicate brain operation which wiped out all knowledge of their past. Then the men would be taught like children, with an emphasis on honesty and good citizenship. They would learn a trade. Turned out into the world again, they were highly desirable citizens — for they knew of their own past, and had been taught to hate criminality.
The mysterious institution where this good, if somewhat unconventional, work went forward, was supported by Doc Savage. The great surgeons and psychologists who ran it had been trained by Doc.
Ham drove his limousine to the skyscraper which held Doc's headquarters. The unconscious thugs were loaded in Doc's special elevator. The cage raced them up at terrific speed to the eighty-sixth floor.
Dragging along several of his unconscious prisoners, Ham behind him, Doc entered his office.
Surprise brought him up short.
Blind Victor Vail sat in the office!
They looked at the six of their comrades huddled senseless on the floor. A near-terror distorted their ugly faces.
The bronze man slowly pushed Honkey's cap off his head. The cap was none too clean. It was as though he didn't wish to wear it longer than was necessary.
For a brief instant. his finger tips probed in the bronze hair that lay down like a metal skullcap.
"Keep clawin' fer the ceilin'!" snarled the gang chief.
Doc's arms lifted obediently. His hands nearly touched the ceiling, indicating what a really large man he was.
"Search 'im!" ordered the leader.
Gingerly, four of the thugs advanced. They frisked Doc with practiced fingers. They found some silver coins and a few bills which had belonged to Honkey. These they appropriated. But they unearthed no weapon.
"De umpcha ain't got a rod!" they muttered. The fact that Doc wasn't armed seemed to stun them.
Their leader eyed the six limp hulks on the floor. He moved to the bedroom door. He whitened perceptibly when he saw the two sprawled on the bed.
"I don't savvy dis!" he shivered. "What messed dem guys up like dat?"
Suddenly his mean eyes narrowed.
"Hunt in his sleeves!" he commanded his men.
They did so — and brought to light a small hypodermic needle.
The leader grasped the needle fearfully between thumb and forefinger. He inspected it.
"So dis is what laid 'em out!" he leered.
The other villains stirred uneasily. They didn't fancy weapons such as this. A gun was more their style.
"Croak 'im!" they suggested.
But their boss shook his head violently.
"Ixnay!" he snapped. "Dis guy is just de umpcha we need. We're gonna make 'im tell us where old Victor Vail is!"
A marked interest now registered on Doc Savage's bronze features. He was obviously surprised.
"You mean to say you haven't got Victor Vail?" he asked.
The remarkable power of his great voice held the gangsters speechless for a moment. Then their leader spoke sneeringly.
"D'you t'ink we'd be askin' where de guy is if we had 'im?" he demanded. He scowled blackly. "Say, whatcha drivin at — askin' us if we got 'im?"
"Victor Vail was seized," Doc replied. "I naturally supposed you fellows had him. That is why I am here."
The thugs exchanged angry glares.
"Dat damn Keelhaul de Rosa crowd got 'im first, after all!" one grated.
This morsel was very interesting to Doc Savage. "You mean to say your outfit and Keelhaul de Rosa's outfit were both after Victor Vail?" he asked.
"Button de lip!" rasped the leader of the thugs. "I t'ink yer lyin' ter me about anybody gettin' Victor Vail!"
"Den why would he come here?" put in another fellow. "Don't be a nut! Dat's what the shootin' upstairs was. Yer remember we heard a typewriter turn loose. Dat's what scared us off."
Doc Savage gave the tiniest of nods. He understood now why the five captured by Monk and Ham had come dashing out of the elevators with their guns in hand. They had heard the machine-gun fire upstairs, and had become terrified.
"I wonder how Keelhaul de Rosa got ahead of us at de skyscraper?" mumbled the leader.
"He tried to grab de blind guy from under our snozzles at de concert hall, didn't he?" asked the other thug. "He drove off mighty fast in dat taxi, but he could've circled back an' followed de blind guy to dat skyscraper just de same as we did, couldn't he?"
Doc listened with interest to all this. These fellows must have arrived at the concert hall in time to witness the street fight. And they had been cunning enough to keep out of sight.
The leader swore loudly. "Cripes! Yer remember dat guy in a cab who had a trick mustache? De one dat was puffin' a cigar? He followed de roadster to de skyscraper, den went in right after dis bronze guy an' old Victor Vail. I'll bet dat was Keelhaul de Rosa!"
"What we gonna do?" growled a man. The leader shrugged. "Ben O'Gard will wanta know about dis. I'll go an' have a talk wit' 'im!"
This apprised Doc of another fact. These men were hirelings of Ben O'Gard!
Victor Vail had mentioned a strange feud between Ben O'Gard and "Keelhaul" de Rosa on the arctic ice pack. It was evident that this old feud still continued.
But what was back of it? Did Victor Vail's unconsciousness at the time of the disaster to the liner Oceanic, and his awakening with a queer smarting in his back, have anything to do with this mystery?
The leader of the thugs came over and confronted Doc. He looked small and unhealthy before the mighty bronze man. He held up the hypodermic needle.
"What's in dis?" he questioned.
"Water," Doc said dryly.
"Yeah?" sneered the man. He eyed the unmoving forms of his fellows on the floor, shuddered violently, then got hold of himself. "Yer a liar!"
"There's really nothing but water in it," Doc persisted.
The thug leered. His hand darted like a striking serpent. The hypo needle was embedded in Doc's corded neck. The implement discharged its contents into his veins.
Without a sound, the giant bronze man caved down to the floor.
"So it was only water in dat t'ing!" snorted the gangster straw boss. "Dat needle is what got our pals!"
He gave orders. The big bronze man was turned over, kicked a few times, and soundly belabored. He showed no signs of consciousness.
"Dat guy is harder'n brass!" muttered a thug, blowing feverishly on a fist with which he had taken an overly hard swing at the limp, metallic form.
"Watch 'im close!" commanded the leader. Then he pointed at a telephone on a stand against one wall. "I'm goin' to talk wit' Ben O'Gard in person. I'll either give you mugs a ring about what to do wit' the bronze guy, or come back myself an' tell yer."
The man now departed.
The other gangsters expended some minutes in seeking to revive their unconscious fellows. However, they had no luck.
They smoked. They muttered to each other, and one of their number took a post outside in the hallway as lookout.
Suddenly a shrill voice came from the room where the two thugs lay senseless on the bed.
"C'mere, quick!" it piped. "I got somethin' important!"
A number of gangsters rushed into the room. Others crowded about the door.
For a moment, not an eye watched the bronze figure of Doc Savage!
"Dat's funny!" declared a man, examining the pair on the bed. "He must've gone back to sleep! They're both out like a light now!"
"I never heard either one of dem guys talk in a shrill voice like dat," another fellow said wonderingly.
They came out of the bedroom, a puzzled group of villains.
Not one of them glanced at the telephone. So none noticed that a match had been jammed under the receiver hook, holding it in a lifted position!
The strong lips of Doc Savage began to writhe. Sounds came from them. Clucking, gobbling sounds, they were absolutely meaningless to the listening thugs. The sounds were very loud.
"What kinda language is dat?" growled a man.
"Dat ain't no language!" snorted another. "De guy is jest delirious an' ravin'!"
The gangster was wrong. For Doc Savage was speaking one of the least-known languages in existence. The tongue of the ancient Mayan civilization which centuries ago flourished in Central America! And his words were going into the telephone!
When all the gangsters looked in the bedroom, they had given Doc sufficient time to call Monk at his skyscraper office. The thugs had been too excited to hear him whisper the phone number.
Doc was a ventriloquist of ability. He had thrown his voice into the bedroom to get the attention of his captors.
It would have surprised the absent leader of the thugs to know the hypodermic needle he had used on Doc had actually contained nothing more harmful than water! Doc had chanced to have the needle on his person. And he had slipped it up his sleeve for the purpose of deceiving the villains.
It was not the needle with which Doc made his enemies unconscious so mysteriously.
* * *
DOC SAVAGE continued to speak Mayan. The lingo sounded like gibberish to the listeners in the shabby room.To homely Monk in the uptown skyscraper, however, it carried a lot of meaning. All of Doc's men could speak Mayan. They used it when they wanted to converse without being understood by bystanders.
"Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny should be there by now," Doc told Monk in the strange language.
The three men he had named were the remaining members of his group of five adventuresome aids!
"Tell Johnny to get the contents of Drawer No. 13 in the laboratory," Doc continued. "The contents will be a bottle of bilious-looking paint, a brush, arid a mechanism like an overgrown field glass. Tell Johnny to bring the paint and brush here."
Doc gave the address of the dive where he was being held.
"There are two sedans parked outside," the bronze man went on in the gobbling dialect. 'Tell Johnny to paint a cross on the top of each one. He is to bring his car which is equipped with radio. He is to wait in a street near by when he has finished the painting.
"Long Tom and Renny are to take the overgrown field glasses and race to the airport. They're to circle over the city in my plane, Renny doing the flying, while Long Tom watches with the overgrown glasses. The glasses will make the paint Johnny will put on the sedan tops show up a distinctive luminous color. Long Tom is to radio the course of the sedans to Johnny, who will follow them.
The gangsters were listening to the clucking words. Evil grins wreathed their pinched faces. They didn't dream the gobble could have a meaning!
"You, Monk, will visit the police station where the thugs who attacked Victor Vail and myself outside the concert hall were taken." Doc said. "Question them and seek to learn where a sailor called Keelhaul de Rosa would be likely to take Victor Vail.
"Ham is to remain in the office and question the rat you found unconscious in the laboratory, also seeking to find Keelhaul de Rosa and Victor Vail.
"If you understand these instructions, snap your fingers twice in the telephone transmitter."
Two low snaps promptly came from the wedged-up telephone receiver. They were not loud. Not a thug in the room noticed them.
* * *
DOC SAVAGE now became silent. He lay as though life had departed from his giant form."Reckon he's kicked the pail?" a crook muttered.
Another man made a brief examination.
"Naw. His pump is still goin'."
After this, time dragged. The guard outside the door could be heard. Once he struck a match. Twice he coughed hackingly.
A gangster produced two red dice. The men made a pretense at a crap game, but they were too nervous to make a success of it. Seating themselves in the scant supply of chairs, or hunkering down on the filthy floor, they waited.
Doc Savage Was giving his men time to get on the job. Johnny would have to daub the luminous paint on the sedans. Renny and Long Tom would have to arrive over the city in the plane. Twenty minutes should be sufficient time.
He gave them half an hour, to be sure. Indeed, his keen ears finally detected a series of low drones which meant the plane was above. Doc's plane had mufflers on the exhaust pipes. Renny was evidently cutting the mufflers off at short intervals to signal his presence to his pals.
Doc rolled over. He did it slowly, like a sleepy man. He now faced the hallway door.
The thugs tensed. They drew their pistols. They were as jittery as a flock of wild rabbits.
Doc imitated the raucous voice of the guard. He threw it against the hall door.
"Help!" the voice yelled. "Cripes! Help!"
The guard outside heard. He might have recognized his own tone. Maybe he didn't. He wrenched the door open, at any rate.
The instant his ugly face shoved inside, Doc threw words into his mouth. The guard was too astonished to say a word of his own.
"De cops!" were the words. "Dey're on de stairs! Lam, youse guys!"
Pandemonium fell upon the gangsters. They rasped excited orders. They actually squealed as though they were already caught.
One man saw the giant bronze figure of Doc Savage heave up from the floor. He fired his pistol. But he was a little slow. Doc evaded the bullets. He reached the light switch, punched it.
Darkness clapped down upon the room.
"De cops are inside!" Doc yelled in the guard's voice. "We gotta lam, quick!"
To make sure they fled in the right direction, Doc glided over and kicked the glass out of the window.
"Dis way out!" he barked.
A thug sprang through the window. Another followed. Then a succession of them.
Standing near by, Doc darted his hands against such faces as he could find in the black void. Three men he touched in this manner. Each of the three instantly dropped unconscious.
The others escaped from the room in a surprisingly short space of time.
Doc listened. He heard both sedan engines roar into life. The cars streaked away like noisy comets.
* * *
INTO THE room where Doc Savage stood there now penetrated a weird sound. It was low, mellow, trilling. It was exotic enough to be the song of some strange bird of the jungle, or the eerie note of wind filtering through a jungled forest. It was melodious, though it had no tune; it was inspiring, without being awesome.This sound had the peculiar quality of seeming to arise from everywhere within the shabby room, rather than from a definite spot.
This trilling note was part of Doc — a small, unconscious thing which he did in moments of emotion. It would come from his lips as some plan of action was being arranged. Sometimes it precoursed a master stroke which made all things certain. Or it might sound to bring hope to some beleaguered member of Doc's adventuresome group.
Once in a while it came when Doc was a bit pleased with himself. That was the reason for it sounding now.
Doc turned on the lights. He lined up the thugs he had made unconscious.
Eleven of them! It was not a bad haul.
Doc used the phone to call Ham at the scraper aerie uptown.
"You might bring your sedan down here," Doc requested. Ten minutes later, Ham came up the rickety stairs, twiddling his sword cane. Ham's perfection of attire was made more pronounced by the blowsy surroundings. He saw the pile of sleeping prisoners.
"I see you've been collecting!" he chuckled.
"Did you get anything out of Keelhaul de Rosa's man?" Doc asked.
"I scared him into talking," Ham said grimly, "but the fellow was just a hired gunman, Doc. He and his gang were hired to get Victor Vail. They were to deliver the blind violinist to Keelhaul de Rosa, right enough. But the delivery was to be made on the street. The man had no idea where Keelhaul de Rosa hangs out."
"That's too bad," Doc replied. "There's a chance one of the crew who attacked Victor Vail outside the concert hall will know where the sailorman hangs out. If they do, Monk'll make them cough up."
The unconscious thugs were now loaded into Ham's limousine. This car of Ham's was one of the most elaborate and costly in the city. Ham went in for the finest in automobiles, just as he did in clothes.
Ham did not ask Doc what they were going to do with the prisoners. He already knew. The senseless criminals would be taken to Doc's skyscraper office. In a day or so, men would call for them, and take them to a mysterious institution hidden away in the mountains of upstate New York. There they would undergo a treatment which would turn them into honest, upright citizens.
This treatment consisted of a delicate brain operation which wiped out all knowledge of their past. Then the men would be taught like children, with an emphasis on honesty and good citizenship. They would learn a trade. Turned out into the world again, they were highly desirable citizens — for they knew of their own past, and had been taught to hate criminality.
The mysterious institution where this good, if somewhat unconventional, work went forward, was supported by Doc Savage. The great surgeons and psychologists who ran it had been trained by Doc.
Ham drove his limousine to the skyscraper which held Doc's headquarters. The unconscious thugs were loaded in Doc's special elevator. The cage raced them up at terrific speed to the eighty-sixth floor.
Dragging along several of his unconscious prisoners, Ham behind him, Doc entered his office.
Surprise brought him up short.
Blind Victor Vail sat in the office!
Chapter 5
GONE AGAIN
DOC SAVAGE instantly noted a slight reek of chloroform about the sightless musician.
Otherwise, Victor Vail seemed undamaged.
"I am glad you are here, Mr. Savage," he said eagerly.
Like many blind men, it was obvious Victor Vail could identify individuals by their footsteps. Doc's firm tread was quite distinctive.
"What on earth happened to you?" Doc demanded.
"I was seized by thugs in the employ of Keelhaul de Rosa."
"I knew that," Doc explained. "What I mean is — how do you happen to be back here, alive and unharmed?"
Victor Vail touched his white hair with long, sensitive hands. His intelligent face registered great bewilderment.
"That is a mystery I do not understand myself," he murmured. "I was chloroformed. I must have been unconscious a considerable time. When I awakened, I was lying upon the sidewalk far uptown. I had a passer-by hail a taxi, and came here."
"You don't know what happened to you beyond that?"
"No. Except that my undershirt was missing."
"What?"
"My undershirt was gone. Why any one should want to steal it, I cannot imagine."
Doc considered.
"Possibly your captors removed your clothing to get a look at your back, and forgot the undershirt when they dressed you again."
"But why would they look at my back?"
"I was thinking of the incident you mentioned as occurring more than fifteen years ago," Doc replied. '"When you awakened after the alleged destruction of the liner Oceanic in the arctic regions, you said there was a strange smarting in your back."
Victor Vail stirred his white hair with big fingers. "I must say I am baffled. But why do you say alleged destruction of the Oceanic?"
"Because there is no proof it was destroyed, beyond Ben O'Gard's unsupported word."
The blind violinist bristled slightly. "I trust Ben O'Gard! He saved my life!"
"I have nothing but admiration for your faith in O'Gard," Doc replied sincerely. "We will say no more about that angle. But I want to inspect your back."
Obediently, Victor Vail peeled off his upper garments.
Doc examined the blind man's well-muscled back intently. He even used a powerful magnifying glass. But he found nothing suspicious.
"This is very puzzling," he conceded, turning to Ham.
"You don't think, Doc, that Keelhaul de Rosa seized Mr. Vail just to get a look at his back?" Ham questioned.
"I think just that," Doc replied. "And another thing that puzzles me is why Keelhaul de Rosa turned Mr. Vail loose, once he had him."
"That mystifies me, also," Victor Vail put in. "The man is a murdering devil. I felt sure he would slay me."
There came soft sound of elevator doors opening out in the corridor.
Monk waddled in. He was smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself. The stub was no more than an inch long, and stuck to the end of his tongue.
Monk drew in his tongue, and the cigarette went with it, disappearing completely in his cavernous mouth. His mouth closed. Smoke dribbled out of his nostrils.
Throughout the performance, Monk's little eyes had remained fixed on the sartorially perfect Ham. This bit of foolishness was just Monk's latest method of annoying Ham.
For Monk was the one person alive who could get Ham's goat thoroughly. It had all started back in the War, when Ham was known only as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. He 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 had framed him. This rankled Ham's lawyer soul.
"They're gonna clap you in the zoo one of these days!" Ham sneered at his tormentor.
The cigarette came out of monk's mouth, together with a cloud of smoke. From his lips burst a hoinck-hoinck sound — a perfect imitation of a pig grunting.
The next instant he dodged with a speed astounding for one of his great bulk. Ham's whistling sword cane just missed delivering a resounding whack on his bullet head. Ham was touchy about any reference to pigs, especially when made by Monk.
Monk would probably have continued his goading of Ham for an hour, but Doc interrupted his fun.
"What did you learn from Keelhaul de Rosa's men being held at the police station?" Doc inquired.
"Nothin'." grinned Monk. "They was just a bunch of hired lice. They don't even know where Keelhaul de Rosa hangs out."
Doc nodded. He had half expected that.
"Ham," he said, "your legal work has given you connections with prominent government men in America and England. I want you to go at once and find out what you can about the liner Oceanic. Learn all possible of the crew, the cargo, and anything else of interest."
Ham nodded, sneered elaborately at Monk, and went out.
Johnny's voice was that of a lecturer. He chose his words precisely, after the fashion of a college professor. As a matter of fact, Johnny had been both in his time. William Harper Littlejohn — for that was what his mother had named him — stood high on the roster of an international society of archaeologists. Few men knew more about the world and its inhabitants, past and present, than Johnny.
"I have your men located, Doc," said Johnny. "They halted their sedans before a low-class rooming house. Renny and Long Tom radioed me the location from the plane, where they were watching, and I arrived in time to see the men enter."
Johnny added an address on New York's lower east side. It was not far from Chinatown.
"Be right with you!" Doc replied, and hung up.
Monk was already half through the door.
"'Hey!" Doc called. "You're staying here."
"Aw!" Monk looked like a big, amiable pup who had been booted in the ribs. He was disappointed. He did love action!
"Some one has to guard Victor Vail," Doc pointed out.
Monk nodded meekly, pulled out his makings, and started a cigarette as Doc went out.
A dozen blocks from his destination, he slowed. The wailing siren died. Like a gray ghost, Doc's car slipped through the tenement district.
He pulled up around the corner from the address Johnny had given.
A tall man was selling newspapers on the corner. The fellow was very thin. His shoulders looked like a coat-hanger under his plain blue suit. The rest of him was in proportion, incredibly skinny.
He wore glasses. The right lens of these spectacles was much thicker than the left. A close observer might have noted that this left lens was in reality a powerful magnifying glass. For the wearer of the unusual spectacles had virtually lost the use of his left eye in the World War. He needed a powerful magnifier in his business, so he carried it in his glasses for handiness.
The newspaper vender saw Doc. He came over. As bony as he was, it was a wonder he didn't rattle when he walked.
"They're still in the room," he said. "Third floor, first door to your right."
"Good work, Johnny," Doc replied. "You armed?"
Johnny opened his bundle of papers like a book. This disclosed a small, pistollike weapon which had a large cartridge magazine affixed to the grip. A more compact and deadly killing machine than this instrument would be difficult to find. It was a special machine gun of Doc Savage's own invention.
"Fine," Doc breathed. "Wait on the street. I'm going up to that room."
He took the second flight in the same manner, not troubling to see if those steps squeaked also. By using the banister, he avoided any electrical alarms which might have been under the steps.
A white rod of light lying close to the floor marked the bottom of the door he was interested in. He listened. His keen ears detected men breathing. One grunted a demand for a cigarette.
Doc Savage lurked outside the door perhaps two minutes. His mighty bronze hands were busy. They dipped into his pockets often. Then he turned and started up another flight of steps in the fashion of the first two.
The structure had five floors. A creaking hatch let Doc out on a tarred roof. He moved over to a spot directly above the window of the room in which his quarry waited.
A silken line came out of his clothing. It was thin, strong. One end he looped securely about a chimney.
Like a spider on a string, Doc went down the cord. His sinewy hands gripped the line securely. He reached the window.
Hanging by one thewed fist, he dropped the other hand into a coat pocket. He boldly kicked the window inward. Through the aperture his foot made, he threw the objects he had taken from the pocket. A roar of excitement seized the room interior.
Back up the silken cord, Doc climbed. He 'had no more trouble with the small line than he would have with a set of stairs. At the top, he replaced it inside his clothing. He seemed in no hurry.
Below him in the room, the excitement had died a mysterious death.
Doc ambled to the front of the building and seated himself on the parapet. Below, he could see the gaunt Johnny with his papers.
"Poi-p-e-r-s!" Johnny was bawling lustily. "W-u-xtra! Latest poi-p-e-r-s!"
No one would have dreamed Johnny was actually doing all the bellowing to cover any sounds from within the building.
Nearly ten minutes elapsed before Doc Savage went down to the third-floor room.
On the hallway carpet lay many colorless glass bulbs about the size of grapes. Doc had spread these there. Men charging out of the room had trampled many of them, crushing them. This had released the powerful anaesthetic they held. Any one near, and not equipped with a gas mask, was certain to become unconscious.
The hallway floor, and the room itself, were littered with senseless men.
Doc stepped in, avoiding the unbroken bulbs of thin glass.
His bronze hand made a disgusted gesture.
Ben O'Gard was not among the vanquished!
Ben O'Gard was certainly not present. These were merely the gang Doc's men had trailed here.
"Bag anybody of any importance?" Johnny asked from the doorway. He had thrown his bundle of papers away.
"Not to us," Doc admitted. "We'll send these gentlemen upstate for our usual treatment, though. I imagine every one of them has a police record."
Johnny inspected the unconscious villains judiciously. "I'll at least bet our treatment can't hurt them any. But what about the chief devil, Ben 0'Gard?"
"He simply wasn't among those present."
Doc and Johnny now loaded the prisoners aboard their cars. Doc's roadster held several.
Johnny's machine was a large touring car of a model at least ten years old. The thing looked like a wreck. A used-car dealer, if asked what he would give for it, would probably have taken one glance and said: "Twenty dollars! And I'm robbing myself at that!" Yet within less than a year, Johnny had paid three thousand dollars for the special engine in it. On a straightaway, the old wreck might do a hundred and fifty an hour without unduly straining itself.
They got their prizes in both cars and drove uptown. They parked before the white spike of a skyscraper housing Doc's office. Loading the captives into the elevators, they took them up to Doc's headquarters.
Gales of derisive laughter met them as they unloaded in the corridor. It was Ham laughing.
Doc stepped into the office.
Homely, hairy, gorillalilte Monk sprawled in a chair. He held his bullet of a head in both furry hands. He rocked from side to side. His doleful groans made a somber orchestration for Ham's uproarious mirth.
A trickle of crimson wriggled through Monk's fingers.
Doc thought for an instant that Monk had been goading Ham again, and for once had been too slow in dodging the whack with the sword cane which Ham inevitably aimed at him.
Then Doc saw the implement which had struck Monk. This was a heavy metal paper weight. It lay on the rug. A twist or two of Monk's coarse, rust-colored hair still stuck to it.
Doc noted something else.
Victor Vail was gone!
Otherwise, Victor Vail seemed undamaged.
"I am glad you are here, Mr. Savage," he said eagerly.
Like many blind men, it was obvious Victor Vail could identify individuals by their footsteps. Doc's firm tread was quite distinctive.
"What on earth happened to you?" Doc demanded.
"I was seized by thugs in the employ of Keelhaul de Rosa."
"I knew that," Doc explained. "What I mean is — how do you happen to be back here, alive and unharmed?"
Victor Vail touched his white hair with long, sensitive hands. His intelligent face registered great bewilderment.
"That is a mystery I do not understand myself," he murmured. "I was chloroformed. I must have been unconscious a considerable time. When I awakened, I was lying upon the sidewalk far uptown. I had a passer-by hail a taxi, and came here."
"You don't know what happened to you beyond that?"
"No. Except that my undershirt was missing."
"What?"
"My undershirt was gone. Why any one should want to steal it, I cannot imagine."
Doc considered.
"Possibly your captors removed your clothing to get a look at your back, and forgot the undershirt when they dressed you again."
"But why would they look at my back?"
"I was thinking of the incident you mentioned as occurring more than fifteen years ago," Doc replied. '"When you awakened after the alleged destruction of the liner Oceanic in the arctic regions, you said there was a strange smarting in your back."
Victor Vail stirred his white hair with big fingers. "I must say I am baffled. But why do you say alleged destruction of the Oceanic?"
"Because there is no proof it was destroyed, beyond Ben O'Gard's unsupported word."
The blind violinist bristled slightly. "I trust Ben O'Gard! He saved my life!"
"I have nothing but admiration for your faith in O'Gard," Doc replied sincerely. "We will say no more about that angle. But I want to inspect your back."
Obediently, Victor Vail peeled off his upper garments.
Doc examined the blind man's well-muscled back intently. He even used a powerful magnifying glass. But he found nothing suspicious.
"This is very puzzling," he conceded, turning to Ham.
"You don't think, Doc, that Keelhaul de Rosa seized Mr. Vail just to get a look at his back?" Ham questioned.
"I think just that," Doc replied. "And another thing that puzzles me is why Keelhaul de Rosa turned Mr. Vail loose, once he had him."
"That mystifies me, also," Victor Vail put in. "The man is a murdering devil. I felt sure he would slay me."
* * *
SWINGING OVER to the window, Doc Savage stood looking out. The street was so far below that automobiles on it looked like chubby bugs. Street lamps were pin points of light.There came soft sound of elevator doors opening out in the corridor.
Monk waddled in. He was smoking a cigarette he had rolled himself. The stub was no more than an inch long, and stuck to the end of his tongue.
Monk drew in his tongue, and the cigarette went with it, disappearing completely in his cavernous mouth. His mouth closed. Smoke dribbled out of his nostrils.
Throughout the performance, Monk's little eyes had remained fixed on the sartorially perfect Ham. This bit of foolishness was just Monk's latest method of annoying Ham.
For Monk was the one person alive who could get Ham's goat thoroughly. It had all started back in the War, when Ham was known only as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks. He 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 had framed him. This rankled Ham's lawyer soul.
"They're gonna clap you in the zoo one of these days!" Ham sneered at his tormentor.
The cigarette came out of monk's mouth, together with a cloud of smoke. From his lips burst a hoinck-hoinck sound — a perfect imitation of a pig grunting.
The next instant he dodged with a speed astounding for one of his great bulk. Ham's whistling sword cane just missed delivering a resounding whack on his bullet head. Ham was touchy about any reference to pigs, especially when made by Monk.
Monk would probably have continued his goading of Ham for an hour, but Doc interrupted his fun.
"What did you learn from Keelhaul de Rosa's men being held at the police station?" Doc inquired.
"Nothin'." grinned Monk. "They was just a bunch of hired lice. They don't even know where Keelhaul de Rosa hangs out."
Doc nodded. He had half expected that.
"Ham," he said, "your legal work has given you connections with prominent government men in America and England. I want you to go at once and find out what you can about the liner Oceanic. Learn all possible of the crew, the cargo, and anything else of interest."
Ham nodded, sneered elaborately at Monk, and went out.
* * *
HE HAD hardly gone when the phone rang. It was "Johnny."Johnny's voice was that of a lecturer. He chose his words precisely, after the fashion of a college professor. As a matter of fact, Johnny had been both in his time. William Harper Littlejohn — for that was what his mother had named him — stood high on the roster of an international society of archaeologists. Few men knew more about the world and its inhabitants, past and present, than Johnny.
"I have your men located, Doc," said Johnny. "They halted their sedans before a low-class rooming house. Renny and Long Tom radioed me the location from the plane, where they were watching, and I arrived in time to see the men enter."
Johnny added an address on New York's lower east side. It was not far from Chinatown.
"Be right with you!" Doc replied, and hung up.
Monk was already half through the door.
"'Hey!" Doc called. "You're staying here."
"Aw!" Monk looked like a big, amiable pup who had been booted in the ribs. He was disappointed. He did love action!
"Some one has to guard Victor Vail," Doc pointed out.
Monk nodded meekly, pulled out his makings, and started a cigarette as Doc went out.
* * *
DOC SAVAGE'S gray roadster was equipped with a regulation police siren. He had authority to use it. His careening car touched eighty several times.A dozen blocks from his destination, he slowed. The wailing siren died. Like a gray ghost, Doc's car slipped through the tenement district.
He pulled up around the corner from the address Johnny had given.
A tall man was selling newspapers on the corner. The fellow was very thin. His shoulders looked like a coat-hanger under his plain blue suit. The rest of him was in proportion, incredibly skinny.
He wore glasses. The right lens of these spectacles was much thicker than the left. A close observer might have noted that this left lens was in reality a powerful magnifying glass. For the wearer of the unusual spectacles had virtually lost the use of his left eye in the World War. He needed a powerful magnifier in his business, so he carried it in his glasses for handiness.
The newspaper vender saw Doc. He came over. As bony as he was, it was a wonder he didn't rattle when he walked.
"They're still in the room," he said. "Third floor, first door to your right."
"Good work, Johnny," Doc replied. "You armed?"
Johnny opened his bundle of papers like a book. This disclosed a small, pistollike weapon which had a large cartridge magazine affixed to the grip. A more compact and deadly killing machine than this instrument would be difficult to find. It was a special machine gun of Doc Savage's own invention.
"Fine," Doc breathed. "Wait on the street. I'm going up to that room."
* * *
THE STEPS whined under the giant bronze man's considerable weight. To avoid the noise, he leaped lightly to the banister. Like a tight-rope walker, he ran up the slanted railing.He took the second flight in the same manner, not troubling to see if those steps squeaked also. By using the banister, he avoided any electrical alarms which might have been under the steps.
A white rod of light lying close to the floor marked the bottom of the door he was interested in. He listened. His keen ears detected men breathing. One grunted a demand for a cigarette.
Doc Savage lurked outside the door perhaps two minutes. His mighty bronze hands were busy. They dipped into his pockets often. Then he turned and started up another flight of steps in the fashion of the first two.
The structure had five floors. A creaking hatch let Doc out on a tarred roof. He moved over to a spot directly above the window of the room in which his quarry waited.
A silken line came out of his clothing. It was thin, strong. One end he looped securely about a chimney.
Like a spider on a string, Doc went down the cord. His sinewy hands gripped the line securely. He reached the window.
Hanging by one thewed fist, he dropped the other hand into a coat pocket. He boldly kicked the window inward. Through the aperture his foot made, he threw the objects he had taken from the pocket. A roar of excitement seized the room interior.
Back up the silken cord, Doc climbed. He 'had no more trouble with the small line than he would have with a set of stairs. At the top, he replaced it inside his clothing. He seemed in no hurry.
Below him in the room, the excitement had died a mysterious death.
Doc ambled to the front of the building and seated himself on the parapet. Below, he could see the gaunt Johnny with his papers.
"Poi-p-e-r-s!" Johnny was bawling lustily. "W-u-xtra! Latest poi-p-e-r-s!"
No one would have dreamed Johnny was actually doing all the bellowing to cover any sounds from within the building.
Nearly ten minutes elapsed before Doc Savage went down to the third-floor room.
On the hallway carpet lay many colorless glass bulbs about the size of grapes. Doc had spread these there. Men charging out of the room had trampled many of them, crushing them. This had released the powerful anaesthetic they held. Any one near, and not equipped with a gas mask, was certain to become unconscious.
The hallway floor, and the room itself, were littered with senseless men.
Doc stepped in, avoiding the unbroken bulbs of thin glass.
His bronze hand made a disgusted gesture.
Ben O'Gard was not among the vanquished!
* * *
DOC SAVAGE let his eyes range the room again, making sure. He noted that all the glass balls of anaesthetic which he had tossed through the broken window had been shattered. None of the gaslike stuff remained in the room or corridor — Doc had waited on the roof long enough for it to be dispelled.Ben O'Gard was certainly not present. These were merely the gang Doc's men had trailed here.
"Bag anybody of any importance?" Johnny asked from the doorway. He had thrown his bundle of papers away.
"Not to us," Doc admitted. "We'll send these gentlemen upstate for our usual treatment, though. I imagine every one of them has a police record."
Johnny inspected the unconscious villains judiciously. "I'll at least bet our treatment can't hurt them any. But what about the chief devil, Ben 0'Gard?"
"He simply wasn't among those present."
Doc and Johnny now loaded the prisoners aboard their cars. Doc's roadster held several.
Johnny's machine was a large touring car of a model at least ten years old. The thing looked like a wreck. A used-car dealer, if asked what he would give for it, would probably have taken one glance and said: "Twenty dollars! And I'm robbing myself at that!" Yet within less than a year, Johnny had paid three thousand dollars for the special engine in it. On a straightaway, the old wreck might do a hundred and fifty an hour without unduly straining itself.
They got their prizes in both cars and drove uptown. They parked before the white spike of a skyscraper housing Doc's office. Loading the captives into the elevators, they took them up to Doc's headquarters.
Gales of derisive laughter met them as they unloaded in the corridor. It was Ham laughing.
Doc stepped into the office.
Homely, hairy, gorillalilte Monk sprawled in a chair. He held his bullet of a head in both furry hands. He rocked from side to side. His doleful groans made a somber orchestration for Ham's uproarious mirth.
A trickle of crimson wriggled through Monk's fingers.
Doc thought for an instant that Monk had been goading Ham again, and for once had been too slow in dodging the whack with the sword cane which Ham inevitably aimed at him.
Then Doc saw the implement which had struck Monk. This was a heavy metal paper weight. It lay on the rug. A twist or two of Monk's coarse, rust-colored hair still stuck to it.
Doc noted something else.
Victor Vail was gone!
Chapter 6
HANGING MEN
"WHAT HAPPENED?" Doc Savage demanded.
Ham tried twice before he choked down his mirth.
"I thought for a minute I'd die laughing!" he gulped hilariously. "The blind man said he wanted to feel the bumps on that wart Monk calls a head. Our fuzzy missing link of a pal let him.
"He got a telephone call first," Monk put in sourly.
"Who did?" Doc inquired.
"Victor Vail," Monk grumbled. "The phone rang. Some guy asked to talk to Victor Vail. I put the blind man on the wire. He didn't say much to the guy who had called. But he listened a lot. Then he hung up. After a bit, we got to arguin' about tellin' fortunes by the knots on people's heads. He claimed there was somethin' to it, an' offered to feel my conk an' tell me plenty about myself."
"And you fell for it!" Ham screamed mirthfully. "And he kissed the top of your noggin with that paper weight! Then he beat it!"
"You weren't here?" Doc asked Ham.
"No," Ham laughed. "I came in just as Monk woke up talking to himself."
"Aw — how was I to know the blind guy was gonna hang one on my nob?" Monk demanded.
"You have no idea why he did it?" Doc questioned seriously.
"None a-tall," declared Monk. "Unless he got the notion from that telephone talk."
"You don't know who called?"
"He said his name was Smath. But it might've been a fake name that he gimmy."
Monk took his hands away from his head. A nesting goose would have been proud of such an egg as now decorated the top of his cranium.
"That's one bump it'd be easy to tell your fortune from!" Ham jeered, his hilarity unabated. "It shows you are an easy mark for blind guys with paper weights!"
Doc Savage swung into the laboratory. The prisoners were lined up there. Each man snored slightly. They would sleep thus until the administration of a chemical which was capable of reviving them from the thing which had made them unconscious.
Doc ignored them. He lifted from the heavily laden shelves of equipment an apparatus which resembled nothing so much as the portable sprayers used to treat apple trees.
He carried this into the outer office.
Monk and Ham eyed the contrivance with surprise. The thing was a new one on them.
Monk asked: "What is — "
He never finished the query. Sounds of distant shots came to their ears.
The noise was coming from the street below. Doc whipped to the window. He looked out and down.
An extremely flashy car, streamlined almost as beautifully as the world's record-holding racer, was canted up askew of the curb. Two machine guns stabbed red flame from the racer — flame that looked like licking snake tongues.
Across the street, other guns spat fire back at them.
"It's Long Tom and Renny!" Doc rapped.
The superspeed elevator sank them. Both Johnny and Ham, unable to withstand the force of the car halting, landed on the floor on their stomachs.
"Whee!" grinned Monk. "I always get a wallop out of ridin' this thing!"
Indeed, Monk had almost worn out the superspeed elevator the first week after Doc had it installed, riding it up and down for the kick it gave him.
Doc and his men surged for the street. A stream of lead clouted glass out of the doors.
Monk, Johnny, and Ham drew the compact little machine guns which were Doc's own invention. The weapons released streams of reports so closely spaced they sounded like tough cloth ripping.
Doc himself doubled back through the skyscraper. He left by the freight entrance, furtively, almost before his friends realized he was not with them. He glided down the side street, haunting the deepest shadows.
Reaching the main thoroughfare, he saw the fight still waged about as he had seen it from above. A lot of lead was flying. But nobody had been hurt. Renny and Long Tom were sheltered by the flashy racer — it was Long Tom's car. Their opponents were barricaded behind the corner of a building across the street.
Somebody had shot out the street lights at either end of
the block. The resulting gloom probably explained the lack of casualties.
Doc's bronze form flashed across the street. A bullet whizzed past, missing by ten feet. He was a nearly impossible target in the murk.
"It's de bronze swab!" howled one of the enemy. "Keelhaul me!"
The words were all that was needed to break up the fight. The gunmen fled. The had a car parked around the corner, engine running. Into this they leaped. It whisked them away.
A diminutive figure popped out from behind the racer. The small man sprinted wrathfully after the fleeing gunmen. His pistollike machine gun released spiteful gobbles of sound.
"Hey!" Doc called. "You're wasting your time, Long Tom!"
The small man came stamping back. Besides being short, he was slender. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a complexion that looked none too healthy.
Only his extremely large head hinted that he was no ordinary man. "Long Tom," formally known as Major Thomas J. Roberts, was an electrical wizard who had worked with foremost men in the electrical world. Nor was he the physical weakling he appeared.
"The rats shot my car full of holes!" he howled irately.
The flashy racing car was the pride of Long Tom's heart. He had equipped it with about every conceivable electrical contrivance, from a television set to a newly perfected gadget projecting rays of an extremely short wave length which were capable of killing mosquitoes and other insects that might annoy the driver.
This latter device, worked out with some aid from Doc Savage, was probably destined to bring Long Tom worldwide fame. Farmers could use it to destroy insect pests. It was worth billions to the cotton growers alone!
As they approached Long Tom's racer, a mountain heaved up from behind it.
Six feet four would have been a close guess at his height. The fact that he looked nearly as wide was partially an optical illusion. He weighed only about two hundred and fifty pounds. On the ends of arms thick as telegraph poles, he carried a couple of kegs of bone and gristle which he called hands.
Renny was noted for two things. First, many countries knew him as an engineer little short of a genius. Second, there was no wooden door built with a panel so stout, Renny could not knock it out with one of his huge fists.
"How'd you birds start that fight?" Doc demanded.
Renny and Long Tom exchanged guilty looks.
"We drove up here as innocent as could be," Renny protested in a voice which resembled a very big bullfrog in a barrel. "Them guys ran out in the street and pointed a machine gun at us. Evidently we weren' t the birds they were expecting, because they lowered their guns and turned back. But we figured if they was huntin' trouble, we'd accommodate 'em. So we started a little good-natured lead slingin'!"
Doc smiled slightly.
"If the fight did nothing else, it cleared up something that has been puzzling me." he said.
"Huh?" Renny and Long Tom chorused, while Doc's other pals came up to listen. No one of the group had been injured.
"Until a moment ago, it was a puzzle to me why Keelhaul de Rosa turned Victor Vail loose," Doc explained. "But now I see the reason. Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard are fighting each other. Just why, is still a mystery. Both were after Victor Vail.
"The reason for that is another mystery. But Keelhaul de Rosa got Victor Vail, and I be!ieve he got whatever he wanted from the blind man — something which required removal of the clothes from Vail's upper body. Then the violinist was turned loose as a bait to draw Ben O'Gard into the hands of Keelhaul de Rosa's gunmen. It was that crowd we just mixed with, because Keelhaul was along. They thought you birds were Ben O'Gard's men."
The moment he finished speaking, Doc beckoned Renny. The two of them entered the skyscraper.
The others, Monk, Ham, Long Tom, and Johnny, remained outside. They would have to explain the shooting to the police. Radio-squad cars laden with officers were booting up from all directions.
There would be no trouble explaining. Each of Doc's five men bore the honorary rank of captain on the New York police force.
'What's that doofunny?" Renny inquired. He, too, had never seen the sprayer of a contrivance before.
"I'll show you." Doc indicated a sticky material on the corridor floor outside his office door. This resembled extremely pale molasses. The color blended with the floor tiles so as to be hardly noticeable. "See that?"
"Sure," Renny replied. "But I wouldn't have, if you hadn't pointed it out."
"I chanced to have the foresight to spread that stuff outside the door when I left Monk here with Victor Vail," Doc explained.
"What is it?"
"I'm showing you. Take off your shoes."
Bewildered, Renny kicked off his footgear. Doc did likewise.
Doc now pointed the nozzle of his sprayer down the corridor — away from the pale molasses material. A shrill fizzing sounded. A cloud of pale vapor came out of the nozzle.
"Smell anything?"
"Not a thing," Renny declared.
Doc aimed a puff of the strange vapor at the molasses stuff.
"Smell anything now?"
"Ph-e-w!" choked Renny. "Holy cow! A whole regiment of skunks couldn't make a worse
Doc hauled Renny into the elevator.
"The stuff in this sprayer and the sticky material on the floor form a terrible odor when they come together, even in the tiniest quantities," Doc explained as the cage raced them down. "So powerful are these chemicals that any one walking through the stuff in front of the door will leave a trail which can be detected for some hours. That's why we took off our shoes. We had walked through it."
"But I don't see — "
"We're going to trail Victor Vail," Doc explained. "But cross your fingers and hope he didn't take a taxi, Renny. If he did, we've got to think up another bright way of finding him."
But Victor Vail hadn't taken a taxi. He had walked to the nearest subway, and entered the side which admitted passengers to uptown trains, feeling his way along the building.walls.
"We're sunk!" Renny muttered.
"Far from it," Doc retorted. "We merely drive uptown and throw our vapor in each subway exit until we find the odor which will result from its contact with Victor Vail's tracks."
Renny laughed noisily. "Ain't we the original bloodhounds. though!"
They tried the exits of seven stations. At the eighth, Doc's remarkable vapor, a chemical compound of his own making, combined with the other chemical left by Victor Vail's shoe soles, and gave them the nauseating odor.
"It goes down this side street!" declared Renny.
There were few pedestrians on the street at this late hour. Even these, however, promptly stopped to gawk at Doc and Renny. It might have been the fact that Doc and Renny were without shoes, and going through the apparently idiotic process of spraying an awful perfume on the sidewalk.
More likely, it was Doc's mighty bronze form which caught their eye. Doc was a sensation whenever he appeared in public.
"What puzzles me is how the blind guy got around like this," Renny offered.
"Simply by asking help of those near him," Doc retorted. "Every one is glad to aid a blind man."
Renny got tired of the crowd of curious persons trailing them.
"Scat!" he told the rubberneckers violently. "Ain't you folks got a home you can go to?"
Renny had a most forbidding face. It was long. thinlipped, serious, and grim. Meekly, awed by that puritanical countenance, the crowd melted away.
Five minutes later, Doc and Renny halted before a door on which a plain gilt sign said:
DENTIST.
"He went in there, Doc," said Renny.
"Wait here," Doc directed. Doc was always leaving his men behind while he went alone into danger. Long ago, they had become resigned to this, much as it irked them to stand back when excitement offered. They literally lived for adventure.
But no one could cope with danger quite as Doc could. He had an uncanny way of avoiding, or escaping from, what for another man would be a death trap.
Ham tried twice before he choked down his mirth.
"I thought for a minute I'd die laughing!" he gulped hilariously. "The blind man said he wanted to feel the bumps on that wart Monk calls a head. Our fuzzy missing link of a pal let him.
"He got a telephone call first," Monk put in sourly.
"Who did?" Doc inquired.
"Victor Vail," Monk grumbled. "The phone rang. Some guy asked to talk to Victor Vail. I put the blind man on the wire. He didn't say much to the guy who had called. But he listened a lot. Then he hung up. After a bit, we got to arguin' about tellin' fortunes by the knots on people's heads. He claimed there was somethin' to it, an' offered to feel my conk an' tell me plenty about myself."
"And you fell for it!" Ham screamed mirthfully. "And he kissed the top of your noggin with that paper weight! Then he beat it!"
"You weren't here?" Doc asked Ham.
"No," Ham laughed. "I came in just as Monk woke up talking to himself."
"Aw — how was I to know the blind guy was gonna hang one on my nob?" Monk demanded.
"You have no idea why he did it?" Doc questioned seriously.
"None a-tall," declared Monk. "Unless he got the notion from that telephone talk."
"You don't know who called?"
"He said his name was Smath. But it might've been a fake name that he gimmy."
Monk took his hands away from his head. A nesting goose would have been proud of such an egg as now decorated the top of his cranium.
"That's one bump it'd be easy to tell your fortune from!" Ham jeered, his hilarity unabated. "It shows you are an easy mark for blind guys with paper weights!"
Doc Savage swung into the laboratory. The prisoners were lined up there. Each man snored slightly. They would sleep thus until the administration of a chemical which was capable of reviving them from the thing which had made them unconscious.
Doc ignored them. He lifted from the heavily laden shelves of equipment an apparatus which resembled nothing so much as the portable sprayers used to treat apple trees.
He carried this into the outer office.
Monk and Ham eyed the contrivance with surprise. The thing was a new one on them.
Monk asked: "What is — "
He never finished the query. Sounds of distant shots came to their ears.
The noise was coming from the street below. Doc whipped to the window. He looked out and down.
An extremely flashy car, streamlined almost as beautifully as the world's record-holding racer, was canted up askew of the curb. Two machine guns stabbed red flame from the racer — flame that looked like licking snake tongues.
Across the street, other guns spat fire back at them.
"It's Long Tom and Renny!" Doc rapped.
* * *
THE GIANT bronze man was whipping into the corridor with the last word. Johnny, Monk, and Ham followed. Monk had forgotten his cracked head with surprising suddenness.The superspeed elevator sank them. Both Johnny and Ham, unable to withstand the force of the car halting, landed on the floor on their stomachs.
"Whee!" grinned Monk. "I always get a wallop out of ridin' this thing!"
Indeed, Monk had almost worn out the superspeed elevator the first week after Doc had it installed, riding it up and down for the kick it gave him.
Doc and his men surged for the street. A stream of lead clouted glass out of the doors.
Monk, Johnny, and Ham drew the compact little machine guns which were Doc's own invention. The weapons released streams of reports so closely spaced they sounded like tough cloth ripping.
Doc himself doubled back through the skyscraper. He left by the freight entrance, furtively, almost before his friends realized he was not with them. He glided down the side street, haunting the deepest shadows.
Reaching the main thoroughfare, he saw the fight still waged about as he had seen it from above. A lot of lead was flying. But nobody had been hurt. Renny and Long Tom were sheltered by the flashy racer — it was Long Tom's car. Their opponents were barricaded behind the corner of a building across the street.
Somebody had shot out the street lights at either end of
the block. The resulting gloom probably explained the lack of casualties.
Doc's bronze form flashed across the street. A bullet whizzed past, missing by ten feet. He was a nearly impossible target in the murk.
"It's de bronze swab!" howled one of the enemy. "Keelhaul me!"
The words were all that was needed to break up the fight. The gunmen fled. The had a car parked around the corner, engine running. Into this they leaped. It whisked them away.
A diminutive figure popped out from behind the racer. The small man sprinted wrathfully after the fleeing gunmen. His pistollike machine gun released spiteful gobbles of sound.
"Hey!" Doc called. "You're wasting your time, Long Tom!"
The small man came stamping back. Besides being short, he was slender. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a complexion that looked none too healthy.
Only his extremely large head hinted that he was no ordinary man. "Long Tom," formally known as Major Thomas J. Roberts, was an electrical wizard who had worked with foremost men in the electrical world. Nor was he the physical weakling he appeared.
"The rats shot my car full of holes!" he howled irately.
The flashy racing car was the pride of Long Tom's heart. He had equipped it with about every conceivable electrical contrivance, from a television set to a newly perfected gadget projecting rays of an extremely short wave length which were capable of killing mosquitoes and other insects that might annoy the driver.
This latter device, worked out with some aid from Doc Savage, was probably destined to bring Long Tom worldwide fame. Farmers could use it to destroy insect pests. It was worth billions to the cotton growers alone!
As they approached Long Tom's racer, a mountain heaved up from behind it.
* * *
THE MOUNTAIN was Renny.Six feet four would have been a close guess at his height. The fact that he looked nearly as wide was partially an optical illusion. He weighed only about two hundred and fifty pounds. On the ends of arms thick as telegraph poles, he carried a couple of kegs of bone and gristle which he called hands.
Renny was noted for two things. First, many countries knew him as an engineer little short of a genius. Second, there was no wooden door built with a panel so stout, Renny could not knock it out with one of his huge fists.
"How'd you birds start that fight?" Doc demanded.
Renny and Long Tom exchanged guilty looks.
"We drove up here as innocent as could be," Renny protested in a voice which resembled a very big bullfrog in a barrel. "Them guys ran out in the street and pointed a machine gun at us. Evidently we weren' t the birds they were expecting, because they lowered their guns and turned back. But we figured if they was huntin' trouble, we'd accommodate 'em. So we started a little good-natured lead slingin'!"
Doc smiled slightly.
"If the fight did nothing else, it cleared up something that has been puzzling me." he said.
"Huh?" Renny and Long Tom chorused, while Doc's other pals came up to listen. No one of the group had been injured.
"Until a moment ago, it was a puzzle to me why Keelhaul de Rosa turned Victor Vail loose," Doc explained. "But now I see the reason. Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard are fighting each other. Just why, is still a mystery. Both were after Victor Vail.
"The reason for that is another mystery. But Keelhaul de Rosa got Victor Vail, and I be!ieve he got whatever he wanted from the blind man — something which required removal of the clothes from Vail's upper body. Then the violinist was turned loose as a bait to draw Ben O'Gard into the hands of Keelhaul de Rosa's gunmen. It was that crowd we just mixed with, because Keelhaul was along. They thought you birds were Ben O'Gard's men."
The moment he finished speaking, Doc beckoned Renny. The two of them entered the skyscraper.
The others, Monk, Ham, Long Tom, and Johnny, remained outside. They would have to explain the shooting to the police. Radio-squad cars laden with officers were booting up from all directions.
There would be no trouble explaining. Each of Doc's five men bore the honorary rank of captain on the New York police force.
* * *
ENTERING HIS eighty-sixth-floor office, Doc secured the sprayerlike contraption which he had abandoned at the start of the fight down in the street.'What's that doofunny?" Renny inquired. He, too, had never seen the sprayer of a contrivance before.
"I'll show you." Doc indicated a sticky material on the corridor floor outside his office door. This resembled extremely pale molasses. The color blended with the floor tiles so as to be hardly noticeable. "See that?"
"Sure," Renny replied. "But I wouldn't have, if you hadn't pointed it out."
"I chanced to have the foresight to spread that stuff outside the door when I left Monk here with Victor Vail," Doc explained.
"What is it?"
"I'm showing you. Take off your shoes."
Bewildered, Renny kicked off his footgear. Doc did likewise.
Doc now pointed the nozzle of his sprayer down the corridor — away from the pale molasses material. A shrill fizzing sounded. A cloud of pale vapor came out of the nozzle.
"Smell anything?"
"Not a thing," Renny declared.
Doc aimed a puff of the strange vapor at the molasses stuff.
"Smell anything now?"
"Ph-e-w!" choked Renny. "Holy cow! A whole regiment of skunks couldn't make a worse
Doc hauled Renny into the elevator.
"The stuff in this sprayer and the sticky material on the floor form a terrible odor when they come together, even in the tiniest quantities," Doc explained as the cage raced them down. "So powerful are these chemicals that any one walking through the stuff in front of the door will leave a trail which can be detected for some hours. That's why we took off our shoes. We had walked through it."
"But I don't see — "
"We're going to trail Victor Vail," Doc explained. "But cross your fingers and hope he didn't take a taxi, Renny. If he did, we've got to think up another bright way of finding him."
But Victor Vail hadn't taken a taxi. He had walked to the nearest subway, and entered the side which admitted passengers to uptown trains, feeling his way along the building.walls.
"We're sunk!" Renny muttered.
"Far from it," Doc retorted. "We merely drive uptown and throw our vapor in each subway exit until we find the odor which will result from its contact with Victor Vail's tracks."
Renny laughed noisily. "Ain't we the original bloodhounds. though!"
They tried the exits of seven stations. At the eighth, Doc's remarkable vapor, a chemical compound of his own making, combined with the other chemical left by Victor Vail's shoe soles, and gave them the nauseating odor.
"It goes down this side street!" declared Renny.
There were few pedestrians on the street at this late hour. Even these, however, promptly stopped to gawk at Doc and Renny. It might have been the fact that Doc and Renny were without shoes, and going through the apparently idiotic process of spraying an awful perfume on the sidewalk.
More likely, it was Doc's mighty bronze form which caught their eye. Doc was a sensation whenever he appeared in public.
"What puzzles me is how the blind guy got around like this," Renny offered.
"Simply by asking help of those near him," Doc retorted. "Every one is glad to aid a blind man."
Renny got tired of the crowd of curious persons trailing them.
"Scat!" he told the rubberneckers violently. "Ain't you folks got a home you can go to?"
Renny had a most forbidding face. It was long. thinlipped, serious, and grim. Meekly, awed by that puritanical countenance, the crowd melted away.
Five minutes later, Doc and Renny halted before a door on which a plain gilt sign said:
DENTIST.
"He went in there, Doc," said Renny.
* * *
LIKE TWO dark cotton balls before a breeze, Doc and Renny drifted into the shadows. This district was a moderate residential section. The buildings were neat, but rather old, and not showy."Wait here," Doc directed. Doc was always leaving his men behind while he went alone into danger. Long ago, they had become resigned to this, much as it irked them to stand back when excitement offered. They literally lived for adventure.
But no one could cope with danger quite as Doc could. He had an uncanny way of avoiding, or escaping from, what for another man would be a death trap.