Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 21

Several men went away, came back dragging Long Tom, Renny, Johnny, Miami Davis and William Henry Hart.

The girl, Miami Davis, stared at Monk and Ham, and bit her lips.

"I'm-sorry-sorry-I pointed that gun at you," she said jerkily. "I thought-I was afraid-you were going to grab Hart."

Monk peered at her. "You didn't know Lawn's men were around that old cement block house?"

The girl shook her head. "No."

"Cut that out!" Batavia ordered.

"Take 'em to the volcanic cone," Lawn commanded.

"Just a minute," Doc Savage said.

The bronze man had been standing motionless, watching Birmingham Lawn's gun. The muzzle of Lawn's weapon had not moved for an instant from Doc's chest, and the bronze man had waited, seeming to do only one thing: his lips had moved at intervals. Moved as if he was calculating the pa.s.sage of a certain interval of time.

The men stared at Doc Savage."d.a.m.n you!" Lawn snarled. "If you pull-"

"It has already been pulled," Doc said.

"Huh?"

"In the car." The bronze man moved his head slightly. "A bomb! Under the car frame, wired to a clockwork device. The clockwork staits when a little switch is thrown under the dash. I threw the switch."

Lawn yelled at Batavia. "Go see-"

The command was never executed. There was a slamming explosion-not so much a detonation as a great whoos.h.!.+

Whoos.h.!.+ It came from under the car, out in all directions. With the noise, there leaped black smoke.

Intensely black smoke that shot a score of yards in every direction in the bat of an eye.

DOC SAVAGE was already moving. He went into the smoke, eyes shut, holding his breath. The containers under the car were loaded with smoke-bomb chemical impregnated with tear gas.

Doc reached the car, flung inside, got a pocketknife out of a door compartment. There were also airtight goggles, a breath filter, and he put those on.

There was yelling now, and shooting. Men slugging at each other. Monk, Ham and the others were tied with ropes, and Doc sought them, holding the knife ready to free them.

A man staggered against him. Doc grabbed the fellow, tried to learn if he was one of the prisoners by feeling whether the man's hands were tied. While Doc was doing that, another man stumbled into him from behind. The newcomer slugged, asking no question.

They fell down, Doc and the two men. Neither man was a Doc aid. They flopped around, and Doc lost his knife. Then he got an arm around the neck of each man, and brought their heads together, not with skull-crus.h.i.+ng force, but hard enough, and they collapsed. Doc got down on all fours and lost time seeking the knife.

Someone fell over him and said, "Holy cow!"

"Renny, here!" Doc cut the big-fisted engineer loose.

Lawn was screaming in agony.

"Somebody shot me!" he bawled.

Batavia barked, "Don't use those guns, you fools! We'll kill each other!"

After that, shooting stopped.

Doc yelled, "Get in the car!" He yelled it in ancient Mayan, a practically unknown tongue which he and his men spoke fluently, and used when they did not want to be understood by outsiders.

"Take Hart!" Doc called in Mayan. "And the girl, too!"A phantom in the black smoke, the bronze man whipped in search of the other prisoners; he found Monk and Ham, cut Monk loose, and ordered the chemist in Mayan to carry Ham to the car.

Renny bellowed in Mayan that he had found William Henry Hart and was taking him to the car.

Doc located Johnny. Johnny and Long Tom were working on each other's rope, trying to get free. Doc slashed Johnny loose, and Johnny carried Long Tom toward the machine.

"Miss Davis!" Doc barked in English.

"Here!" cried the girl's voice.

Doc lunged, got her, swept her away, just as two men charged for her voice. Doc carried her to the car, and heaved her unceremoniously into the back seat, which seemed to be full of squirming forms.

Doc then got in the front seat.

"All in?"

"Think so," Monk gurgled.

Doc tried to slam the doors, and got all of them shut but one; there was somebody's leg hanging out of that one, and whoever it belonged to was too excited to move it. Doc started the car motor, meshed gears, backed blindly, feeding the machine gas.

The car got headway. It was heavy, tons heavy, and when it hit the door, which had been closed, there was an earthquake crash and a rending ripping, and the door caved. The car went out.

Doc kept on backing. Wind whipped in the open door, made the black smoke vapor boil around and leave the car. Then the bronze man could see a little.

He drove down the street a short distance, stopped the car.

Police were running toward them.

In the back seat Monk suddenly yelled, "That danged Lawn got in here by accident!"

"Hold 'im!" Renny rumbled. "I'll pop 'im!"

There was a long moment of quiet, then Monk made a muttering noise.

"You wouldn't want to hit a corpse!" the homely chemist mumbled.

THE verdict of the coroner's jury: In the case of Birmingham Lawn, death came about accidentally as the result of a bullet fired by a malefactor employed by the deceased.

"That's a long-winded way of sayin'," Monk explained, "that he got in front of one of them bullets the gang was throwin' around so free."

Said the police chief: "We are satisfied, gentlemen of the press, that with the aid of Doc Savage, we have every crook in this case in custody."

"He means all Lawn's gang are in the calaboose," Monk explained.Said a tabloid newspaper: DOC SAVAGE EXPOSES GIGGLING GHOSTS.

AS HORRIBLE HOAX.

"And that means," Monk explained, "that we'll have to hide out to keep newspaper guys from runnin' us ragged, wantin' to know details."

Monk was wrong about that, though. This time Doc Savage did not run from the glare of newspaper publicity. He did not exactly seek it, but he did not disappear. Doc stuck it out so he could work in the hospitals.

Every day the bronze man made rounds of hospitals where gas victims were confined, helping with the treatments, studying them. Largely as a result of Doc Savage's tremendous medical knowledge, the victims eventually recovered.

The families of those who had died sued the estate of Birmingham Lawn, and got enormous cash settlements. Ham, the lawyer, saw to that.

Ham and Doc Savage also saw that the land bought up by the S.R.G.V. was returned to the former owners. The land bought by the Doc Savage Relief Agency was also returned. Too, heirs of Birmingham Lawn were persuaded to turn over Lawn's estate to recompense gas victims, and it was to be suspected that Ham had a good deal to do with that, also.

"It begins to look," Monk explained, "like everything ain't gonna be so bad."

Monk also had a complaint to make. A disgusted one.

"When we get this giggling ghost mess straightened up," he grumbled, "I guess we gotta go to a wedding."

He meant the wedding of William Henry Hart and Miami Davis.

THE END.