Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 15

They dived through the shrubbery, turned right, were in a kind of flower garden. The flowers, fortunately, were tall; there were entwining vines on trellises overhead. Good concealment.

Bedlam was all through the penthouse. Batavia's men seemed convinced the roof was bathed with poison gas. Evidently they had no masks, for none came out to investigate.

They did not hesitate, however, to shoot through the windows at every object that might conceal an attacker. The bullets, all from high-powered rifles, were not pleasant things.

Doc Savage crawled to the roof edge. Here, there was a blind spot, one point which could not be covered by gunfire from any of the penthouse windows.

Doc took from his clothing a thin silk cord that was long, and to one end of the cord was affixed a light, collapsible grapple. This cord was little larger than twine.

"Let me tie this around your waist," Doc told the girl.

She stared at the thin cord.

"What-"

"We'll lower you to a window," Doc said. "You break the window, then climb in."

The thinness of the cord horrified the girl.

"On that-" She stabbed a finger at the cord. "We're twenty floors up!"

Then the girl closed her eyes and dropped, completely slack, to the rooftop.

Ham said, "She fainted-"

Then he, too, fell over.

"Blazes!" Monk said. "Ham fainted, too-"

And then Monk went down.The gas which had been in the aerial bombs was not exactly like that used in the little pocket grenades that the bronze man carried. This gas did not lose its strength so soon after it became mixed with the air.

Doc had broken a couple in one hand and held his breath.

MIAMI DAVIS would have been really frightened if she could have seen what happened next, if she had seen Doc Savage gather the three of them together-Monk, Ham and herself-and lash them all in a cl.u.s.ter on the end of the silk cord. Then he lowered them over the roof edge.

There was not enough cord to reach twenty floors, of course. Doc lowered the burden to the first window, then tied the line to a steel pipe, part of the trellis supporting the vines.

The silken cord was equipped with knots-bulky knots for climbing purposes-and the bronze man went down after the captives, apparently unaffected by twenty floors of s.p.a.ce below.

He had overguessed the distance to the window a little; that was not as bad as an underguess. He broke the window with a quick kick, driving the gla.s.s inward.

Reaching in, Doc turned the lock, after which he raised the sash. A step in through the window, a little more trouble hauling the ga.s.sed victims inside, and it was all over.

They were now in an apartment, modernistically furnished, with bright-colored walls, gaudy rugs, furniture all straight lines. Apparently no one was home.

Doc went out into the hallway and began trying to cut off electric current to the elevator that ran to the penthouse. Without power, the elevator could not move; flight from the penthouse would be cut off.

But he was too late. The elevator had already been used in flight.

There was a crash of shots, a slamming volley of them like buckshot on a tin roof, in the street. Doc caught the regular pa.s.senger elevator downstairs.

He was in time to see two policemen come flying in the door, one of them reeling, holding an arm which was leaking blood. Both cops had been tear-ga.s.sed.

Doc Savage made for the door, but stopped when tear-gas fumes bit his eyes. He retreated, got his own mask back on. Then he went out into the street.

The street was full of tear gas and excitement. Came an explosion, sudden, terrific, jarring the earth.

Doc's big armor-plated limousine-the car which Johnny, Long Tom and Renny should have been occupying-turned half a flipflop, lit on its back. A high-explosive grenade had gone off under the machine.

At the far end of the street were two cars, going fast. They rocketed around the corner, and were out of sight.

"RENNY!" Doc called.

No answer.

"Long Tom! Johnny!" Doc shouted.The bronze man's voice was a great anxious crash in the street.

There was no trace of Doc's three aids.

Doc Savage whipped back to the front of the hotel. A police squad car stood there, motor running. Doc dived into the machine.

"Around the corner!" he said. "We've got to chase! Quick!"

The cop driving the machine looked at him.

"Who-who the blazes are you?"

"Doc Savage," Doc explained.

The cop snorted, "Listen, I know what Savage looks like and you're not kiddin'-"

Doc lost time explaining there was such a thing as a disguise. By the time they set out in pursuit of the fleeing cars, none of the machines were in sight. There was nothing, no trace, to show where they had gone.

The private elevator from the penthouse was down and empty. There was no sign of the guard, no trace of anyone in the elevator. Doc rode up to the penthouse, accompanied by policemen. There was not a soul to be found.

"They got away with Renny, Long Tom and Johnny," Doc decided grimly.

Chapter XVI. THE GOOD MAN.

THE excitement at the penthouse on Riverside Drive got considerable publicity in the newspapers.

Doc Savage, however, managed to keep his connection with the affair unknown, and as a result, most newspapers attributed the fracas to a dispute of gangland. It was a good story because of the unusual fact that a gyro had been used.

The giggling ghosts still monopolized the newspapers, however.

The giggling mystery received a new impetus. A fresh angle entered the situation. The fresh angle was the S.R.G.V.

The S.R.G.V. was the abbreviation the newspapers used. The letters stood for, "The Society for the Relief of Gas Victims."

There is almost always a mushroom growth of relief and aid agencies after a disaster, most of them well-intentioned. These new chicks rarely get much attention, the old agencies such as the Red Cross being the ones depended upon.

The S.R.G.V. was different. It hit the public prints with a bang, and for a sound reason. The S.R.G.V.

was going to do a great good; it was going to buy up the homes of the giggling victims. It was going to see that no one was impoverished by the disaster.

That is, if its money held out the S.R.G.V. was going to do all that. It was rumored a group of wealthy philanthropists was behind the S.R.G.V., men who didn't want their names to be known.The S.R.G.V. began to buy homes, paying, it was explained, all that it was possible to pay. Payment, in a great many instances, was not nearly what owners thought they should get. But the S.R.G.V. said it didn't have all the money in the world to spend, that the whole thing was philanthropic, and that it was impossible to pay pre-disaster prices. No one, the society added, was being forced to sell.

The gas scare got fresh impetus when sonic devices for exploring the subterranean strata of the earth indicated the presence of faults. This bore out the theory that gas came from some pocket deep in the earth, where it had lain unsuspected for no telling how many centuries.

Apparently it did not occur to anyone that the faults might have been in the strata for ages, too, and might have nothing whatever to do with gas.

However, there was one rumor that ghosts with the giggling disease might have come out of the cracks. It was laughed down, of course.

It began to be suspected that people could never again live in the area. In view of that, it was considered kind of the S.R.G.V. to take property off people's hands.

As Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair said, "Human nature is sure a great thing."

"What's great about it?" Ham asked him.

"Well, you overdressed shyster, you take this S.R.G.V.," Monk pointed out. "Look how they're helpin'

out them poor gas victims. That's wonderful, that is."

MONK and Ham had recovered from the effects of Doc's anaesthetic gas. So had the young woman, Miami Davis. The three of them were now at Doc Savage's skysc.r.a.per headquarters, in the great library.

Doc hadn't explained why he'd used the anaesthetic gas on them, but Monk and Ham suspected he'd done so in order that he could work alone to find a way out and attempt to capture some prisoners.

Later on, after the disappearance of Long Tom, Johnny and Renny, Doc had returned and brought them to headquarters, where he had revived them.

Doc Savage was in the reception room now, seeing some policemen.

Later, when Doc Savage rejoined them, the bronze man seemed pleased.

"The police," Doc explained, "are going to keep the newspapers from learning that we had anything to do with the fight at the penthouse."

The homely Monk frowned. "As I understand it, Doc, you are still supposed to be dead. Is that right?"

"That's it," Doc told him. "That is, if we can fool anybody into thinking so."

"But why? What's the idea?"

"No one hunts buffalo any more."

"Huh?"

"Because everyone knows there are no buffaloes to hunt."

"Oh. I see.""For the first time since the penthouse business, we have time to talk. What did you learn while you were prisoners?"

"They just kept us tied up," Monk said.

Ham nodded.

"Can you add anything to that? Surely you learned something."

"How long did they hold us?" Monk countered.

"About three days," Doc told him.

"Well," Monk said, "I never learned less during three days in my life!"

"It would help," Doc said, "if you got some idea about the reason behind this whole grim mess."

Monk said, "We didn't get a smear of an idea."

"I hate to agree with hairy ignatz"-Ham jerked a thumb at Monk-"but he's right. We didn't learn a thing."

"Not even about who their leader is?"

"The leader," Monk said, "seems to be a guy named William Henry Hart. But you musta knowed that.

You found us in his penthouse."

"This Hart is an inventor," Ham said. "He has a factory manufacturing a smoke-digester."

"How did you find out that?" Doc asked.

"Oh, we heard our captors talking," Monk explained. "I guess they figured we'd be unable to repeat what we heard."

"What I don't understand," Ham said, "is why they kept us alive."

Monk peered at the bronze man. "Doc, can you explain why they didn't kill us?"

Doc said, "Perhaps because they wanted someone around to overhear what they had to say."

"Huh?"