Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 4

"Yes, Monk?" Doc's voice answered almost at once.

Monk advised the whereabouts of the spot to which they had trailed the girl.

"Look, Doc," the homely chemist added, "what's this all about?"

"There is no way of telling, just yet," the bronze man explained.

Monk was not entirely satisfied. He rubbed his jaw, scratched his nubbin of a head, and smoothed the bristling hair down on his nape.

"What do you want us to do?" he asked.

"Keep an eye on the girl," Doc Savage said. "And eavesdrop."

"Eavesdrop?""Try to find out why the fact that she found a wrist watch made her take flight," Doc explained. "In case you can't learn anything by eavesdropping, you might grab the girl."

Monk grinned.

"Grabbin' that girl would be a pleasure!" he chuckled. "She's a looker, what I mean!"

That ended the radio conference.

Chapter V. THE JAMEROO.

MONK closed the car doors, locked them, and went back to the dock where the schooner was tied up.

He walked out on the wharf confidently, came to a patch of gloom behind a piling, about where he had left Ham, and stopped.

"Ham," he said, "Doc says-"

The bunch of shadow that the chemist had thought was Ham straightened. Monk suddenly found a gun jammed into his middle. A gun snout that made a rasping noise as it hit his belt buckle.

"Pipe down!" said a strange voice.

Monk peered, trying to make out the features of the speaker. He got a slap in the face for his pains.

"Where's Ham?" Monk gulped.

Considering that during the last hour he had stated at least a dozen times that he intended to tear Ham limb from limb, Monk's anxiety was inconsistent.

"Shut up!" said the man with the gun.

Men appeared on the schooner. They had been hiding behind the deckhouse and dinghy. The men climbed onto the dock.

"Search this clunk!" ordered Monk's captor.

"Sure, Batavia," one man said.

Monk swelled indignantly as he was searched, but there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.

"Now," Batavia told Monk, "you get on the boat."

Monk climbed down on the boat and entered the cabin.

"Ham!" the homely chemist yelled.

Ham was lying on a bunk, motionless. Monk leaped to him, clutched the dapper lawyer's wrist, and was relieved to discover pulse. Ham was alive! More than that, he was in the act of regaining consciousness, it appeared, for he squirmed, blinked open his eyes and focused them on Monk. As soon as he had organized himself, Ham began to scowl.

"What's the idea," he snarled, "sneaking up behind and banging me on the head?"

"Listen, Blackstone," Monk said, "I didn't bang you-"Batavia came over, gouged Monk with the gun muzzle and said, "Sit down and shut up!"

Monk sat down on the transom seat near the girl.

Miami Davis was tied hand and foot. She was trembling, but she made no sound because of the adhesive tape which crisscrossed her lips.

Batavia moved toward the companionway, his slicker rustling.

"I'll see if I can get hold of the chief," he said to his men. "Gotta find out what to do with these three."

Batavia climbed the companionway and went out.

Monk said, "What I want to know is about them ghosts-"

A man came over and showed Monk another gun. "Listen, you gimlet-eyed baboon, you're on the spot!

Keep that ugly trap shut!"

Monk subsided.

Rain washed the cabin roof, sluiced along the decks, and the wind slapped the halliards against the mast.

Little waves gurgled like running water along the hull.

BATAVIA came back a little while later. He was scowling.

"We croak 'em later," he said. "I couldn't get hold of the chief."

Monk frowned at the girl, Miami Davis.

"When you talked to Doc," he accused, "you left out some stuff."

The young woman nodded. Her mouth seemed to be too tight with strain to let words come out.

Monk said, "That was a mistake. Now we're in a jameroo."

Batavia took a fid out of a rack. The fid was a steel rod a foot long, half an inch in diameter at one end and tapering to a needle point. The fid was used to separate the strands of rope while splicing.

Batavia waved the fid under Monk's nose. "Another blat out of you, and I'll peg your tongue down with this fid!"

"Why don'tcha let us loose?" Monk asked hopefully.

"Brother," Batavia said, "you've been unlucky. You got messin' around with somethin' too big for you."

"Too big?"

Batavia poked Monk in the chest with the sharp end of the fid.

"You're just a beetle," he said, "that got in front of the wrong steam roller."

Batavia then gave a number of orders.

"We'll get rid of their car first thing," he said.A man muttered, "Ain't Doc Savage liable to trace these two guys?"

"We're going to make some preparation for Doc Savage!" Batavia said.

Batavia had a craggy face. All angles of his face were sharp; the nose was also, and so was his jaw; his eyes had a piercing intentness, and his ears were pointed. He was either darkly tanned, or of Latin extraction. Beside his fondness for grays in dress, he had one other princ.i.p.al character tag: This other was his cigars.

Batavia's cigars were thin, hardly half ordinary thickness, and about two inches longer than the usual cigar. The ends were equipped with cork tips.

Batavia removed the Cellophane wrapping from one of his cigars, put it in his mouth and tried to light it with one of the modern flameless type of lighters designed for lighting cigarettes alone. The lighter didn't fire the cigar immediately.

"d.a.m.n this gadget!" Batavia complained.

He finally got his cigar going. Then he took a five-yard roll of one-inch adhesive tape out of his slicker pocket. Strips of this tape, he crisscrossed over the mouths of Monk and Ham.

"Adenoids!" Monk croaked wildly just before the tape was slapped on his lips.

Bad adenoid cases will suffocate to death if gagged.

Monk then pretended to be unable to breathe through his nostrils. He faked suffocation. He flounced around, made whistling noises through his nose, blew out his cheeks, did his best to make his face go purple.

Batavia got behind Monk and slugged him with the heavy end of the fid. Monk fell his length on the floorboards, momentarily dazed, and began to breathe in a normal fas.h.i.+on.

"That homely ape," Batavia complained, "is full of tricks. What d'you think of that-tryin' to get out of bein' gagged?"

The prisoners were prodded out of the hatch, goaded onto the dock, and led to the street.

Batavia said, "We better get rid of their car."

BATAVIA went to the limousine which Monk and Ham had used. A couple of men went with him. He opened the door, started to get in, and was greeted by a belligerent grunt and an angry chattering noise.

Batavia turned a flashlight beam into the rear seat. He was curious.

The pig, Habeas, and the ape, Chemistry, batted their eyes in the flashlight glare.

"A regular zoo!" Batavia grumbled. He got into the car. When the pets tried to escape, he slammed the door and kept them in the automobile.

Batavia drove the car out on a dock, headed the machine toward the wharf end, and jumped out and slammed the door. The car ran to the end of the dock, nosed over, and entered the water with a whoos.h.!.+ of a splash.

"You left that pig an' the ape in there!" a man muttered.Batavia stood at the dock edge and listened to big bubbles make glub! noises. He dashed his flashlight beam down briefly. The water was slick with oil, and bubbles kept bounding out of the water like frightened white animals.

"You left that pig an' ape in the car!" the man muttered again.

Batavia said, "I didn't like the way the danged things looked at me."

Batavia threw his cork-tipped cigar in the water, took a fresh cigar out of his clothing, removed the Cellophane band, threw it at the bubbles and put the cigar in his mouth. Then they led the prisoners to two cars parked in near-by side streets. The captives and half of Batavia's men loaded in one machine.

"You fellows take the prisoners to the boss's place."

"What are you gonna do?" a man demanded.

Batavia took his cork-tipped cigar out of his mouth and laughed grimly.

"I'm gonna rig somethin' for Doc Savage," he said.

The car pulled away with the captives. Batavia vanished in the darkness, headed back toward the little schooner. Half of his men followed him.

Chapter VI. HUNT FOR A WATCH.

DOC SAVAGE had completed a thorough examination of the old bleak storehouse with the tin roof. But to all outward appearance, the search netted nothing.

Birmingham Lawn seemed disappointed. The golf-ball protuberance that served Lawn as an Adam's apple went up and down as he swallowed. He had whistled something from a tune, and the rest of the time he had giggled, or just watched.

"I was hoping," he said, "that you would solve the mystery."

Doc Savage did not comment.

The policemen by now had tired of the mystery, and in addition, they held a suspicion that the whole business would not look so good in the newspapers.

"The public will think the Jersey police are a lot of jacka.s.ses," a cop muttered, "once the newspapers get hold of this."

"Then why notify the newspapers?" Doc asked. The bronze man didn't like newspaper publicity.