Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 20

New York City's latest world's fair was being advertised as an exposition to top all expositions, a mammoth undertaking; a phantasmagoria beside which the recent international show in Paris or the Century of Progress in Chicago, would be rather ordinary.

For more than two years, work on the exposition grounds, buildings, and exhibits had been in progress.

The fair would not open for some months, but many of the exhibits were already complete.

Doc Savage was driving his car into the exposition grounds. The bronze man pulled to the side of a street, stopped the car, and worked with the dials of a portable radio direction-finder.Doc Savage's face was grim. Back at the old house of cement blocks, his men had been whisked away before he could do anything to stop it . Doc had been inside the old cement house with Lawn. There had been no enemies inside the house. They were all outside, seizing Monk and Ham and Miami Davis.

Doc had been unable to follow the men who had seized Monk and Ham. Unable to follow them at once.

The reason was very simple.

Doc's car had been stolen. So had Lawn's machine. Batavia and his men had taken both machines.

Now Doc was taking up the chase, almost an hour late. He had been forced to go to the bas.e.m.e.nt of his skysc.r.a.per headquarters and get another car.

Lawn stared at Doc. Lawn was puzzled. For Doc Savage seemed to be trailing the prisoners. Trailing them-but how? Lawn was wondering.

He got it.

"Oh!" Lawn pointed at the direction finder. "That is a radio direction finder! But what is it locating?

Where is the other transmitter?"

"In my car," Doc said.

"You mean the car they took when they grabbed Monk and Ham?"

"Exactly."

"I see. But why haven't they noticed the transmitter?"

"It is concealed in the body of the car," Doc explained. "Unless they knew it was there, they would not find it. It is just another of the gadgets we keep in operation, to help us get out of trouble."

Doc Savage put his car in motion again. They pa.s.sed huge trucks loaded with strange items-whole trees, a small airplane, a Venetian gondola, a meteorite as large as a room. Construction in the fair grounds was proceeding on a day-and-night basis.

Lights blazed everywhere, and truck drivers yelled; hoist engines clattered, and welding torches sent lightninglike glare over the confused scene. The unfinished buildings were fantastic shapes.

When Doc Savage stopped, it was beside a huge structure, a building that was like a gigantic half a muskmelon. It was about the color of a muskmelon. Inside, it must be as large as Madison Square Garden.

Birmingham Lawn doubled over his stomach to look at the vast dome. "Goodness! What a huge thing!"

"The dinosaur exhibit," Doc said.

"Dinosaur?"

"A name designating prehistoric monsters," Doc said. "This building contains an exhibit constructed for the fair. It is supposed to be remarkable."

"I see," Lawn said vaguely.

"The prisoners are in there, apparently," Doc said.

THE bronze man seemed in no hurry to leave his car. Instead, he leaned back, and there was a trace of a frown on his metallic features. "I think," he said, "that we're very near the end of this thing."

Lawn looked startled. "I-why-I hope so," he gulped.

"For the sake of clarity," Doc said, "we might gather factors together and array them. There has been some confusion. It should be straightened out."

"I-yes," Lawn said. "Straighten out the confusion. Yes indeed."

"Several months ago," Doc Savage said, "a new vehicular tunnel was completed, from Manhattan under the Hudson River to that part of New Jersey directly opposite thickly populated New York City. For the first time in years, a particular section of Jersey then became easily accessible. At a stroke, as it were, part of Jersey was placed at the front door of Manhattan."

"What has that to do with this?" Lawn asked.

"That part of Jersey near the tunnel became suitable for residential apartments," Doc said. "If any one could get a large block of the section, it could be turned into a profitable apartment development."

"Why-that is true," Lawn admitted.

"But it was hard to buy land in the section. The people did not want to sell their homes cheaply. So someone thought up a hideous scheme of forcing the land on the market, and buying it up for almost nothing."

Lawn stared at Doc blankly, said nothing.

Doc said, "The giggling ghosts rumor was an accident. It was not intentional."

"Ghosts-accident?" Lawn said foolishly.

"The giggling ghosts," Doc said, "were men who were preparing to perpetrate the gas hoax. Some of those men, in handling the gas, got dosed with the stuff. Not seriously. But enough to give them the giggles occasionally. We know that the gas takes effect to varying degrees. These men moved about furtively as they got ready to perpetrate the gas hoax.

"These men who perpetrated the gas hoax," Doc continued, "were seen moving about furtively, and their giggling was heard, hence the stories about giggling ghosts."

"Hoax?" Lawn said stupidly. "The giggling horror was a hoax? And the giggling ghosts were men who whiffed a little of the gas while planting it?"

DOC SAVAGE nodded. "All a hoax," the bronze man agreed. "Seismograph records were faked to make it seem cracks had opened through which the gas might come. The ground in that part of New Jersey was impregnated with chemicals. Then the gas was distributed by means of smoke-digester-air-purifiers which William Henry Hart had manufactured."

Lawn grew suddenly excited.

"Hart! Then the gas came from Hart's smoke-digesters! William Henry Hart is guilty-""Hart is the goat," Doc said. "All along, Hart has been framed. Many of the hired thugs were led to actually think a man named Hart employed them. Hart was to be the victim. Probably they were going to conveniently 'discover' that the gas really came from smoke-digesters." The bronze man paused. "Of course, once it was learned gas was not coming from the earth, the land would become valuable again,"

Doc added.

"I-I-" Lawn swallowed. "Incredible!"

"A. King Christophe, the geologist, is a crook hired by the crooks to pose as the real Christophe, who, at present, is away on a trip for his health," Doc went on. "They may have gotten the fake Christophe out of the way, because we were getting hot on his trail. They also kidnaped Hart, because we were too close to learning that Hart was innocent. And they grabbed my men, of course, because we were fighting them."

Lawn gulped, "What about the S.R.G.V.-the Society for the Relief of Gas Victims?"

"That," Doc Savage said, "is the medium through which Jersey land was to be bought cheaply."

Lawn said, "But the girl-"

"The girl was only a bystander-in love with Hart. That is all. She saw some strange-acting men watching Hart, and followed them. It was Batavia and his gang. They went to a storehouse, when they saw the girl following, and tried out the gas on her, before they released it on the Jersey district. She got scared and came to me."

Lawn mumbled, "You-er-have you found out-"

"Yes," Doc Savage said, "we have a good idea who is behind the whole thing."

"You know the leader?"

"His ident.i.ty should come out in a few minutes," Doc said.

Lawn said, "It will come out before that!"

Lawn then took a gun out of his coat pocket, jammed the muzzle against the bronze man's chest.

Lawn said, "Now you know I'm the man behind the gun-all the way."

DOC SAVAGE sat very still and watched Lawn back away an inch at a time, until he sat at the far side of the seat.

"Make one move," Lawn said, "and I'll kill you!"

The bronze man's face remained fixed.

Lawn said, "Drive up to the main door of the dinosaur exhibit! Honk your horn. Honk it three times long, twice short!"

Doc Savage did that. He was careful to make no quick moves, for Lawn's gun hand was nervous. There was a wait after the bronze man honked the signal in front of the door.

Doc said, "It was difficult to understand why the prisoners should be brought here. It seems strange. Thereason must be that the chemists you hired to concoct the giggling gas must be working on this exhibit."

"Shut up!" Hart said.

Doc, apparently not hearing, said, "The dinosaur exhibit is supposed to be a scientifically exact reproduction of the world as it was millions of years ago. Strange vapors and volcanic gases rise from fissures in the earth in lifelike fas.h.i.+on. The chemists called in to create the vapors must have made your gas, too."

"You sure figured it out!" Lawn said.

"We-"

"Shut up!" Lawn meant it this time.

The dinosaur exhibit door opened a crack. It did not open wider for some moments, evidently while the men inside were making sure that it was safe. Then the big panels rolled ajar.

"Drive in!" Lawn told Doc.

Doc drove in. The car rolled across a concrete floor, stopped on the fringe of modern man's idea of a prehistoric jungle.

Lawn ordered Doc Savage out, and the bronze man left the car. Lawn followed him, holding the gun ready. Men gathered around. The men seemed to be excited.

"What is wrong?" Lawn demanded.

"That d.a.m.n Monk and Ham!" Batavia explained. "They picked the lock and got away. That is, they got to wanderin' around in the exhibit."

"Where are they now?" Lawn snarled.

"We got 'em cornered. I think the boys have grabbed 'em."

This proved to be true, because shortly a group of men approached, dragging a crestfallen Monk and Ham. Monk and Ham exchanged uncomplimentary remarks, each accusing the other of not having sense enough to know that the monsters they had seen were not real ones.

They fell gloomily silent when they saw Doc Savage.

One of the captors doubled over with laughter.

"Haw, haw!" he whooped. "Oh, golly! Haw, haw!"

Monk glared at him.

"Funniest thing I ever saw!" the tickled man chortled. "These two gooks"-he indicated Monk and Ham-"thought them was real monsters. They was scared green."

Monk and Ham said nothing. Privately, they suspected it would be a long time before they lived this down, providing they had an opportunity to live it down.

LAWN asked, "Have we got all of them?""The girl and Hart are over here." The man pointed. "The other three-Johnny, Long Tom and Renny-are with them."

"Then we'll finish this up right now!" Lawn said.

Some of the men apparently had never seen Lawn before, and wondered how he came to be giving orders.

"Who's this big mouth?" A man jerked his thumb at Lawn.

"Shut up!" Batavia told the man. "That's Lawn-the chief!"

"But I thought the boss was a guy named Hart-"

"Hart is the goat, you fool!" Batavia snapped. "Hart is one of the prisoners we've got here!"

"But that Hart ain't the one you showed us in the old cement block house that night-"

"That was just a guy who pretended he was Hart," Batavia said. "We had it fixed so everybody would think Hart was the guy running this."

Lawn said, "Get the prisoners all together. We'll knock 'em in the head, then throw them in one of the volcanic cones and run in that cement you are going to use for fake lava."

A. King Christophe arrived, shoving out his jaw and looking important. He saluted Lawn airily.

"What about the Jersey land, chief?" he asked.

"My S.R.G.V. bought up a lot of it," Lawn said. "And I've got my people in the Doc Savage Relief Agency office. We'll grab what land Savage bought, too."