Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 7

Doc's distant light vanished and the bronze man's car headlights retreated in the direction of the road.

Batavia laughed shortly.

"The next ten minutes makes or breaks the whole thing!" he said grimly. "If Savage crosses that bridge-"

The speedboat got broadside to the waves and began rocking violently, and Batavia growled an order to the man in the bow to put out a small anchor. Raindrops made a steady sobbing on the water.

William Henry Hart sat very still, scowled, did not say anything at all.

Birmingham Lawn squirmed and tried to say again that he was an innocent bystander, but someone got hold of his ear, twisted it, and snarled an order, and Lawn fell into silence.

"Hey!" Batavia hissed. "Stand by to signal!"

A car was approaching the bridge, headlights pus.h.i.+ng a great fog of luminance ahead of it. The bridge was of wood with plank banisters, and it appeared ancient. The car rolled out on the bridge.

"Put a light on the bridge!" Batavia barked.

The speedboat searchlight beam sprang at the bridge in a blinding white streak which landed on a car.

Batavia strained his eyes.

"It's Doc Savage's machine!" he yelled.

He whipped out a gun and fired twice at the water-the signal.

The bridge came apart under the car. Came apart with blue-white flash, ear-splitting roar. Parts of the bridge climbed up-up-fragments that swirled around the car.

The car, armor-plate though it was, split; opened like a tin can. Water under the bridge rushed back to leave a great hole. Scores of yards in all directions, concussion knocked trees flat.The glare of the explosion went away and left blackness, and for moments there was the sound of heavy things falling back and splas.h.i.+ng and cras.h.i.+ng.

"Whew!" a man in the launch muttered. "We danged near blew this neck of the woods off the map!"

"Pick up the man who fired the charge," Batavia ordered.

The launch angled over to a bank of the creek, where a man stood, the man pumping his ears with the palms of his hands to get rid of the effects of the explosion. At the man's feet lay a generator of the type used to detonate explosive.

The man got in the launch.

"That," he said, "was what I call blowin' your troubles away!"

Chapter VIII. THE EARTHQUAKE-MAKERS.

THE most placid hours of the day in New York City are probably those from three o'clock in the morning until dawn. The city does not quiet down much before three o'clock in the morning, even on rainy nights.

It was after three o'clock in the morning and very dark, when Batavia rolled a large sedan to the curb, near an array of imposing stone buildings in uptown New York. The buildings were very large. A name was chiseled on the facade of one of them. The name: METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY.

Batavia got out of the car, and three men followed him. All of them wore dark suits, dark-blue s.h.i.+rts, black hats and dark gloves.

Batavia said, "Don't waste any time!"

The men went directly to one of the larger buildings; they stopped at the steps leading up to the front door. One of the men lay down on the walk. A second man crouched beside him.

Batavia went up the steps, grabbed the door handle, began to shake the door and shout.

"Help!" he yelled. "Help!"

The remaining member of the party had eased back into the darkness, where he wasn't likely to be noticed.

Batavia continued to shake the door and shout until the watchman appeared, unlocked the door, and came out. The watchman splashed light on Batavia's face. Batavia then looked as scared as he could.

"He's had a heart attack, or something!" Batavia pointed at the man lying at the foot of the steps.

The watchman ran down the steps and stared at the p.r.o.ne man.

"I'll telephone for a doctor!" the watchman exclaimed.

"I'm a doctor," said the man kneeling beside the p.r.o.ne one.

"What do you want me to do?" the watchman asked wildly."Just wait a minute," said the man who claimed to be a doctor. "I'll see if we can bring this poor fellow out of it."

During the excitement, the fourth member of the party had left his concealment in the shadows, and had entered the building through the door which the watchman had unlocked and left open.

The man who entered the building seemed to have a very definite idea of where he was going, what he wanted to do. He galloped through the ma.s.sive halls-his rubber-soled shoes made little noise-until he came to a room which housed the scientific instruments.

This was the science hall of the university.

The man stopped before a seismograph, the complicated and highly sensitive device which registered, by recording microscopic earth convulsions, the occurrence of earthquakes.

The marauder put a flashlight on the seismograph recording apparatus. He removed the cover with skill and speed which showed he knew a great deal about seismographs, then studied the inked record. With infinite care, he reached into the seismograph.

He made the seismograph show an earthquake which had not occurred.

The prowler then replaced the cover, satisfied himself there was nothing to show the seismograph had been tampered with, and eased back to the door.

The watchman was standing, staring at the man lying at the foot of the stairs. He did not see the prowler quit the building. A few minutes later, when the man who had been lying on the sidewalk got up and vouchsafed, with a proper amount of shakiness, that he felt able to navigate, all the men went away.

The watchman returned to his duties, having no suspicion that anyone had gained entrance to the building by the use of an elaborate trick.

BATAVIA and his men got in their car and Batavia drove grimly, holding his mouth tight. Several times he grumbled about the long trip from the New Jersey bridge, where they had dynamited Doc Savage's car, to the city.

"The length of that trip delayed us," Batavia growled. "It made us get started at this business too late in the night!" He was full of complaints. Then he turned to the man who had entered into the science hall.

"You sure you fixed that seismograph?" he snarled.

"I know my business," said the man who had tampered with the seismograph.

"Them things show the direction of an earthquake, don't they?"

"Leave that part to me!" the other said ill-temperedly. "I know more about seismographs and earthquakes than you ever read. You do your part as well as I do mine, and we won't have any more hitches!"

"Who's caused hitches?" Batavia snarled.

"You have!" said the seismograph expert. "You tried to stop the girl from getting to Doc Savage in the first place, and got scared out of your wits!"

"For a little," Batavia grated, "I'd stop this car and knock that sa.s.s out of you!"Batavia speeded the car up, made a left turn, traveled a few blocks, took a right turn, and pulled up on the obscure side of the block of buildings on Central Park which housed the American Museum of Natural History.

"This one may be a little tougher," Batavia said.

"If we get one seismograph, we've got to get them all," the seismograph expert said.

"Oh, shut up!" Batavia growled.

There was no elaborate trickery about their method of gaining admission to the museum; their ruse was simplicity itself.

A man opened the door for them and greeted them impatiently; he was one of Batavia's men, and he had hidden himself in the museum before the closing hour. He had made sure no watchman was in that portion of the museum.

"You guys been taking in night clubs?" the man demanded. "You were due three hours ago!"

"Pipe down!" Batavia ordered. "We been busy."

They went to the room which contained the seismograph, and the others took up positions of lookout while the expert went to work on the instrument. When he had caused the university seismograph to record a fake earthquake, the expert had noted the time to the split part of a second-he wore a jeweled wrist watch with a large second hand for this purpose.

The expert then made a fake earthquake register on the Museum of Natural History's seismograph, made it show at the precise instant that he had recorded the one at the university.

"That fixes it," he said finally.

THEY left the museum the way they had come. The man who had hidden in the place to let them in, left with them. Batavia consulted his watch as he got into the car.

"We may make it," he admitted grudgingly.

They drove to the nearest hotel, and found a telephone booth. Batavia scowled at the seismograph expert.

"You call Was.h.i.+ngton," Batavia ordered.

The expert was in the booth several minutes, part of which time he spent ringing the bell with quarters, to pay the toll on his Was.h.i.+ngton call. When he came out, he looked pleased.

"Bub will call me back," he said.

"How long will it take?" Batavia demanded.

"An hour maybe."

"We'll wait."

They settled in the hotel lobby chairs, where it was murky and quiet. Street cars went clanging pastoccasionally, and now and then the exhaust of a bus made noise.

Batavia growled, "You sure the mug in Was.h.i.+ngton knows his business?"

"He's no mug. He's my brother." The seismograph expert scowled.

Batavia subsided. The hour dragged past, and still there was no call from Was.h.i.+ngton. Suddenly thunder gave a great whopping gobble outside, and it began to rain again. Finally the telephone rang; it was Was.h.i.+ngton.

The man who knew all about seismographs talked to his brother in Was.h.i.+ngton and laughed several times. He came out of the booth chuckling.

"Perfect!" he said.

"He have any trouble getting to the Was.h.i.+ngton seismograph?" Batavia demanded.

"Nope. He had keys to the place." The expert chuckled again. "He made the Was.h.i.+ngton instrument show a quake at the same place and time that we faked one on the two machines here. You know, I'm beginnin' to enjoy this gag."

"You're sure," Batavia asked, "that these seismographs are the only ones in this part of the United States?"

"The only ones in operation," the expert said.

"Then we got us an earthquake all fixed up," Batavia declared.

Chapter IX. THE GIGGLING PEOPLE.

THE next instance of a giggling ghost came to the public notice about nine o'clock the next night. The newspapers did not print the story of this giggling ghost that night; that came later.

No giggling ghost actually appeared this time.

A man just caught the giggles.

He was not a very happy man, which made his giggling all the more startling; startling at first, that was, before it began to be realized that being happy or sad had very little to do with the giggling.

This first victim was a grocer; he ran a store, which he kept open evenings. The store was close enough to his residence that he could go home for dinner, and he habitually took a short-cut across a vacant lot which was thickly overgrown with weeds.

On this night he took his usual short-cut. He was rather a bug on health, and he always walked with his chest out and head back, taking deep breaths.

He did not see a ghost.

He began to giggle shortly after he had crossed the weed-grown lot. He started with small snickers.