Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 6

Doc Savage pointed at the watch. "How did this watch get in your pocket?"

"I found it lyin' on the chart table when I came back," Hart said.

"That all you know about it?"

"I gave the watch to Miss Davis as a Christmas bonus," Hart said. "A couple of days ago, she said it had stopped runnin'. I told her I would get it fixed. She gave it to me, and I guess I put it on top of the chart table and forgot all about it." He scowled. "Now what about it?"

"For one thing," Doc said promptly, "someone might have taken the watch and made her think you lost it in that storehouse."

"What storehouse?" The young man with the large shoulders looked puzzled.

"Again, you might have lost it in the storehouse," Doc said.

The other glared. "What's this storehouse talk?"

"Is she in love with you?" Doc asked."Love-who?"

"Miami Davis-with you."

"How the h.e.l.l would I know?" Hart yelled.

Doc Savage opened a galley locker, took out a can of coffee and poured it on a galley table. He reached for the salt.

"What in blazes you doin'?" Hart yelled.

"Going to give your boat a thorough search," Doc explained.

"Over my dead body, you will!" the burly young man howled.

The search proceeded over his bound and gagged body; during the incidental fighting and kicking, a locker door was caved in, the table kicked loose from its fastenings, and some dishes broken.

The note had been jammed hastily into the mouth of a bra.s.s chart case.

It was a plain white envelope with Hart's name on the outside. Its content was a single sheet of white paper. Printed on this: Hart: The two Doc Savage men and the girl have been taken out to Beach Road.

Doc Savage held the note in front of Hart's eyes. Doc removed Hart's gag.

"What do you say to this?" the bronze man demanded.

"I've been framed!" Hart yelled.

"That is hardly original," Doc said.

BIRMINGHAM LAWN was beating on the car window, trying to break them, when Doc Savage returned to the machine. Doc unlocked the doors.

"This is no way to treat an innocent bystander," Lawn said indignantly. "Locking me in the car!" Lawn pointed at Hart. "Who's this fellow?"

"Ever see him before?" Doc asked.

"No-never."

Doc Savage explained. "Monk, Ham and Miami Davis have been seized and carried off. I intend hunting for them."

"You can take me home," Lawn said sourly. "I've got enough of this mess!"

Doc Savage's patience was about exhausted, but his words, rather than his tone, betrayed the fact.

"There is no time to chauffeur you home," he said. "Either you walk, or you go with me."Birmingham Lawn peered around at the drizzling darkness long enough to lose his taste for a walk in the rain. He licked his lips, changed feet, then whistled a bar.

"If your car is as hard to get into as it is to get out of," he muttered, "I'll probably be safe."

He got into the rear seat with Hart, whose ankles and wrists Doc had bound.

Doc put the car in motion.

"Where we going?" Lawn wanted to know.

"A note said they had taken the prisoners out Beach Road," Doc explained.

Beach Road was the name applied to a rough, winding thoroughfare along the sh.o.r.e of New Jersey. The sh.o.r.e was a marshy district, with many shoal bays and inlets. The road pa.s.sed through dune sections, where sand had drifted like dirty snow across the rutted blacktop pavement. Bridges were frequent.

Doc's car traveled fast, bucking in ruts, sloughing when it hit sand. The rain washed down steadily, and there was fog.

They had covered all of a dozen miles down the Jersey coast when Birmingham Lawn screamed.

LAWN'S yell was strangled, agonized. Simultaneously, the rear door of the car flew open-Doc hadn't locked the doors this time-and Hart's burly form shot out of the speeding machine.

Doc stamped the brakes; the car skidded, went broadside, straightened, turned broadside the other way, then stopped. Lawn was making barking noises of fear on the back seat.

"You hurt?" Doc rapped.

"He kicked me!" Lawn howled. Lawn held his melon of a stomach. His squalling could have been heard a mile away. A man badly hurt could not yell like that, so Doc left him.

Doc Savage ran to the spot where Hart had jumped, flashlight in hand. Rain beat against the bronze man's face; his feet knocked up water. Hart wasn't where he had landed.

Doc dashed the flashlight beam about searchingly. He saw wet, disturbed sand where Hart had landed, but no tracks led into the dunes which shoved up drably on either side of the road; so the escaping prisoner must have gone down the road.

Doc turned the flashlight beam down the road, and it picked up nothing. The bronze man ran down the road, using the flash continually, and still found no footprints.

He was hunting when the rifle report smashed out.

The bullet cut the air close to Doc's head, its sound like a big fiddle string breaking. Possibly it missed the bronze man only because he was holding the flashlight so as to give a wrong impression of where his body was-a habitual bit of caution. Doc extinguished the light. He doubled down, whipped to one side.

The rifle began slamming again; it was an automatic gun, and put out a dozen bullets in the time it would take a man to swallow. Then somebody cursed somebody else for shooting too quick. Feet retreated.

There were evidently two men with the rifle.Doc set out after the fleeing gunmen. He did not catch the retreating riflemen because they had a motorcycle hidden in the dunes. The cycle engine started, as noisy as an angry bulldog; its headlight jumped whitely; the cycle wallowed in the sand.

The two gunners, straddling it, kept it upright with their legs. The motorcycle reached the road and went away like a scared rocket.

Doc Savage reached the spot where the motorcycle had been, and found a greasy canvas cover which had been over the machine to keep off the rain. Doc examined the cover and the sand around about. The cover was just dirty canvas, and the sand was too sloppy to retain footprints.

But he found two soggy cigar stubs, cork-tipped cigars, discarded on the sand.

The bronze man stood, listening, and the rain reached through his clothing with cold fingers. Then suddenly he spun and raced back to the car and whipped behind the wheel.

"Hang on!" he ordered.

An utter silence in the back seat caused Doc to look around. Now Birmingham Lawn was gone.

Birmingham Lawn must have been frightened-he had said he was a very timid man-so it was logical to think of him leaving the car and fleeing into the sand dunes, frightened by the rifle fire.

Doc splashed flashlight glow on the sand beside the road. Yes; there was a man's tracks, leading into the dunes.

There was no time to follow Lawn.

Doc started the car motor, maneuvered the machine around, and set out after the riflemen on the motorcycle. Fifty miles an hour was as high as he dared send the car over this crooked, rutted, sand-drifted, rain-flogged road.

When Doc had covered four miles, he knew that the motorcycle had turned off somewhere, and that the riflemen stood a good chance of escaping.

THE two riflemen on the motorcycle were reaching the same conclusion; they thought they were going to escape, too. They had turned off about two miles back, and had ridden to an abandoned summer bungalow. Paint was scabbing off the sides of the bungalow, and the roof was leaking strings of water into the rooms.

One of the riflemen was Batavia. Batavia stood shaking sand off his trousers with one hand-the front wheel of the motorcycle had plastered him with the wet stuff-and with his other hand, he held a telephone receiver.

He kept saying, "h.e.l.lo, dammit!" into the telephone. Finally he got an answer.

"Look," Batavia said, "did you get Monk, Ham, and the girl hidden?"

"Did you get Doc Savage?" the telephone voice wanted to know.

"I asked you," Batavia yelled, "if you got the prisoners hidden!"

"Yes, yes-keep your s.h.i.+rt on! Did you get Doc Savage?""Not yet," Batavia explained. "Savage hasn't crossed the bridge yet. Hart escaped from Savage's car just this side of the bridge; we knew from Lawn's yell that Hart had got away. Then Doc Savage came huntin' Hart, and we cut loose with a rifle. We figured if we didn't get Savage, we'd at least give Hart a chance to vamoose."

"Did Hart get away?"

"I don't know yet."

"You sound excited," the other said.

"Excited-h.e.l.l!" Batavia barked. "If you had been ridin' a d.a.m.n motorcycle with Doc Savage after you, you'd be excited, too!"

"How you gonna know if Hart got away?"

"Some of my boys are waitin' at the bridge with a speedboat," Batavia explained. "They'll pick up Hart."

"And Savage will-"

"He'll probably go on across that bridge," Batavia said.

"When he does, we're rid of him."

This terminated the telephone conversation. Batavia went outdoors to stand in the rain and listen for some sign of Doc Savage. Then he took the motorcycle around to the back, where there was a small wharf; he wheeled the cycle out on the wharf, and toppled it into the water.

"No use leavin' evidence around," he muttered.

The man who had been with Batavia was a squat fellow who wore the coat half of a suit of oilskins. He was stamping his feet and grunting, trying to get a grain of sand out of his eye.

Suddenly there was noise of a boat, and a light out on the water. The bungalow stood beside one of the sea-water tidal creeks which indented the sh.o.r.e of New Jersey.

The boat came to the dock off which Batavia had toppled the motorcycle.

"That you, Batavia?" a voice asked.

"Did you find Hart?" Batavia demanded.

"Yep." The fellow jerked a thumb at Hart, who stared angrily from his seat in the boat.

Batavia said, "We gotta blow from here in a hurry." He dropped down into the boat. Batavia's companion on the motorcycle ride also got in the boat.

Batavia exclaimed aloud, pointed at a strange figure in the boat. "Who's this?" he barked.

Birmingham Lawn, who sat with a gun jammed into his back, said peevishly, "I am Birmingham Lawn, and an innocent bystander in this whole disagreeable matter."

"He's the lunk who owned that storehouse," a man said. "How he got messed up in this, I don't know."

"I am an absolutely innocent bystander," Lawn insisted.Batavia dropped on a seat in the speedboat.

"Pull her ears down!" he said.

The man running the craft pulled the gas lever down and the speedboat went away from there at a great speed.

A FEW minutes later, Batavia ordered the boat stopped, directed that the bow searchlight be extinguished. The boat then floated silently on black water with rain slopping down. A man bailed occasionally with a tomato can.

From this spot, they could watch the location of both the bungalow and bridge-a bridge where the road spanned the tidal creek. It was too dark to actually see much more than their hands before their faces.

The bungalow was in the distance. The bridge was closer at hand.

Suddenly a light appeared at the bungalow. It went off and on repeatedly, and disappeared inside the house, came out, then progressed out on the dock.

"That'll be Doc Savage." Batavia muttered. "He's lookin' around. Fat lot of good it'll do him!"