Doc Savage - The Monsters Part 3

CARL MACBRIDE was even more impressed by the big skysc.r.a.per which housed Doc Savage's office, when he alighted before it. Head back, mouth open, MacBride peered upward When he entered the lobby, the magnificence of the ornate place made him feel mouselike.

His amazement at sight of the great building accounted for the big man's failure to note a fellow with black hair and black mustache who carried a banjo and lurked in a corner of the lobby. MacBride lumbered into an elevator.

"Doc Savage's office," he said.

He was promptly rushed to the eighty-sixth floor. He found a door which bore, in very small bronze letters, the name: CLARK SAVAGE, JR.

There was a b.u.t.ton, but few persons had doorbells where Carl MacBride came from. He rapped the door with his knuckles in the good old-fas.h.i.+oned way.

The door opened.

The unusual voice over the telephone had partially prepared Carl MacBride for the sight of an unusual personage when he confronted Doc Savage. Even then, the bronze man was so far beyond expectations that MacBride gaped in amazement.

Doc Savage had evidently opened the door by some mechanical means. He stood, not near the panel, but some feet from it -- in the middle of a great office. This was fitted with a costly inlaid table, an enormous safe, and a number of comfortable chairs.

That the bronze man possessed amazing physical strength was evident from the enormous tendons which bundled his neck and cabled his hands. He was a giant; but his proportions were symmetrical, and standing in the ma.s.sively furnished office, he seemed little larger than an ordinary man.

The mighty bronze man's eyes held Carl MacBride's attention. They were strangely impressive, those eyes. They had the appearance of tiny pools of flake gold which eddied and whirled continuously.

The bronze of Doc Savage's hair was somewhat darker than the bronze of his skin. He was attired in quiet business garb.

"Doc Savage?" asked Carl MacBride, although he knew he was confronting the man he sought. "Right," confirmed the remarkable man of bronze. Carl MacBride took a step into the office.

An elevator door down the corridor opened. A man popped out He had a black mustache, dark hair, and carried a banjo. He raised the banjo to the level of his eyes and gave one of the strings a forcible pluck.

There was a chunging sound -- it might have been a man emitting one harsh cough. A tongue of flame leaped from an almost indistinguishable round hole in the side of the banjo.

Carl MacBride opened his mouth wide, and a crimson flood came out. His knees buckled. His hands clamped to the back of his neck, where a bullet from CaIdwell's deadly silenced gun had clubbed a hole.

He slammed face down upon the floor. MacBride felt no pain from the impact, for he was dead.

Chapter 5. THE CLIPPING.

CALDWELL, THE killer, was in a position where he could view Doc Savage's office. He saw the giant bronze man, got a most unnerving look at the weird golden eyes. He realized that Doc, having witnessed the killing, was a menace.

Caldwell darted his banjo weapon m Doc Savage's direction and plucked the trigger-string. The concealed gun lipped powder flame and slugs.

Caldwell's eyes threatened to jump from their sockets. A weird thing had happened to his bullet. It had disintegrated in a grayish lead puff in mid-air, some feet inside the door.

He fired the hidden gun until it was empty. He wrenched out his two automatics and squeezed the weapons at the office door. They convulsed thunderously, and spouted empty cartridges.

To all of the bullets the same fantastic thing happened. They splashed into innumerable fragments in mid-air or became shapeless blobs which fell back to the floor.

Caldwell spun and fled. He dived into an elevator, menaced the attendant with his gun and forced an instant descent.

As the cage sank, Caldwell heard a fragment of weird sound. The note was not loud, yet it penetrated to the descending elevator with remarkable clarity. It seemed without definite source; it might have been a product of the movement of the very air itself past the sinking cage. It was not a whistle, nor did it seem quite the emanation of vocal chords. A mellow trilling which defied description, the sound trickled up and down the musical scale.

Caldwell, unable to define the note, dismissed it as a freakish trick played by his own ears.

He was wrong. The strange, undulating note was the sound of Doc Savage. It was the small unconscious thing which the bronze man did in moments of stress -- when thinking, or surprised, or contemplating some unusual procedure.

AN ONLOOKER, knowing Doc Savage, and cognizant of the mighty bronze man's abilities, would have expected pursuit of Caldwell. At Doc Savage's disposal here on the eighty-sixth floor, was a high-speed elevator capable of dropping the bronze man to the lobby level before Caldwell could arrive.

Doc did not pursue the slayer. Instead, he moved into a room adjoining the office. The walls of this chamber were banked with book shelves. Ma.s.sive cases laden with ponderous tomes stood thickly on the floor. It was Doc Savage's library, and it held one of the most complete collections of scientific worksin existence.

The bronze man seemed to be moving without hurry, but his speed was surprising.

Beyond the library was another vast room. This held glittering arrays of bottled chemicals, banks of test tubes, retorts and filtering devices. Electric furnaces and costly metalworking tools occupied the floor s.p.a.ce.

In the center of the great workshop-laboratory Doc Savage halted. He stood before a paneled cabinet.

A microphone dangled in front of this. Inset in the cabinet was a square panel that resembled frosted gla.s.s.

Doc spoke into the microphone. "Did you see what just happened in the outer office?"

From a loud-speaker, the grilled throat of which was almost unnoticeable on the side of the cabinet, the reply came. It was couched in a tiny, almost babylike voice.

"We did," said the small voice. "Ham and me both saw it. And we're off."

Doc Savage reached over and flicked a switch. Upon the panel of frosted gla.s.s a picture appeared. It depicted cold concrete floors, wails, and an array of parked automobiles. There was a door in this pictured room. Two men were just diving through it, making a wild departure from the place.

Doc switched off the televisor-phone with which he had communicated with those two men. He returned to the outer office. Here also, but concealed cleverly in the wails, was another televisor-phone. This one had transmitted an image of what had occurred in the office to the two men to whom Doc had spoken.

Doc Savage and his five men were accustomed to keep each other in view with these devices whenever convenient. Thus they could witness danger which might threaten each other.

They had many enemies.

In approaching the lifeless body of Carl MacBride, Doc circled widely to avoid the agency which had caused Caldwell's bullets to mushroom so mysteriously in mid-air.

It was nothing more mysterious than an upright sheet of clear bullet-proof gla.s.s.

Due to the fact that he had many enemies, it was Doc's custom to first greet strangers from behind this unnoticeable s.h.i.+eld.

THE GIANT man of bronze closed his office door to avoid the notice of pa.s.sers-by in the corridor.

Then he examined the body of the unfortunate Carl MacBride.

The first thing Doc brought to light was that the enormous roll of bills which Bruno Hen had given the big woodsman. He. riffled through the money. In the act of doing this, his nostrils quivered slightly. He lifted the bundle of currency and gave it an olfactory test.

Doc Savage had a daily exercise routine of two hours which he had taken unfailingly from childhood. The exercises were scientifically designed to develop his every sense touch, hearing, sight, the sense of smell, and taste. His faculties were far beyond those of an ordinary man.

Doc identified the odor easily, faint though it was. The scent of musk! Continuing his examination, he brought out a newspaper clipping -- the one Carl MacBride had shown his plane acquaintance, Caldwell. After noting that it was from a Trapper Lake, Michigan, paper, Doc read it: TRAPPER LAKE MAN VICTIM OF WEIRD TORNADO.

Bruno Hen, trapper and fisherman residing near the lake sh.o.r.e five miles north of Trapper Lake, met death last night in what authorities have decided was a freak cyclone. Hen was found crushed to death in his demolished cabin by Carl MacBride, a neighbor.

MacBride, it is reported, heard sounds from the direction of Bruno Hen's cabin. Rus.h.i.+ng to the spot, he found his neighbor dead in the wreckage of his home.

MacBride reported that he saw no evidences of a tornado, and that it was a moonlight night.

The coroner and the sheriff, however, point out that a tornado is the only explanation for the demolished condition in which the cabin was found.

The tornado apparently dipped suddenly upon the exact spot where the cabin stood. After annihilating the building, the twister tore up brush and smashed down small trees over a narrow path to the lake's edge. The storm evidently progressed out over Lake Superior without doing more damage.

Bruno Hen, it will be remembered, a few months ago sold the largest collection of muskrat pelts trapped in this vicinity in a long time.

AFTER HE finished reading, Doc Savage's fantastic trilling sound came into being. So low as to be scarcely audible, it existed for three or four seconds, then ebbed away.

Bruno Hen had sold muskrat pelts. The scent on the roll of bills was musk, such as would be put there by the pawing of hands which had skinned muskrats.

Doc Savage carried the bills into the laboratory and used a finger-printing outfit upon them. He discovered a few of Carl MacBride's prints upon the bills, but the preponderance of handling had been by another set of fingers.

Having found musk odor on bills which Carl MacBride had hardly touched, and which were thick with the other finger prints, Doc felt there was a likelihood that the money had originally been the property of Bruno Hen.

The giant bronze man returned to his search of the body. The dated stub of an airways ticket showed that Carl MacBride had come to New York by plane; that day.

DOC BROUGHT out the newspaper which Carl MacBride had purchased in the filling station.

MacBride was a laborious reader, and in perusing the strange advertis.e.m.e.nt regarding the giants, had traced the words with a finger nail. The indentations were plainly discernible: WARNING! WATCH OUT FOR THE MONSTERS!.

Doc Savage studied this with no little interest. Then he went to the library, and came back bearing a tray.

This contained newspaper clippings.

One, from a Detroit paper, read: BEWARE! THE MONSTERS BRING DEATH AND DESTRUCTION! Another, from a Chicago paper, stated: TERROR! THAT IS WHAT THE MONSTERS BRING!.

There were numerous others, all in like vein. In no ease were the advertis.e.m.e.nts signed. They came from newspapers in Cleveland, St. Louis -- every city of consequence in the country.

Doc Savage sorted over these thoughtfully. His fingers, sensitive and possessed of a dazzling speed, for all their superhuman strength, turned to the clipping concerning the weird death of Bruno Hen.

The giant man of bronze made it his business to keep tab on all strange circ.u.mstances. Thus did he sometimes see danger before it struck.

He had collected these "monster" clippings because their very nature was sinister. Doc had newspaper connections.

Through them he had learned that no one actually knew what was behind the "monster" advertis.e.m.e.nts. It was no motion picture press agent's build-up.

The ads simply came in the mail, with money to pay for their insertion. And in each case, the ads had been mailed from Trapper Lake, Michigan.

Chapter 6. MYSTERY MANSE.

IT WAS more than an hour later when the telephone buzzer whined and Doc Savage picked up the instrument.

The tiny childlike voice which had spoken to him from the televisor-phone in the laboratory came over the wire.

"At the junction of Hill Road and the Hudson Turnpike, in New Jersey," said the small tones.

"Be right out"' Doc replied, and hung up.

The bronze man took his private high-speed elevator to the skysc.r.a.per bas.e.m.e.nt. This lift was the product of his inventive genius, and operated at hair-lifting speed.

Stepping from the elevator, Doc entered his bas.e.m.e.nt garage. This was the chamber with the array of parked cars which had appeared on the scanning Screen of the televisorphone.

For his immediate purpose Doc chose a long, somberly colored roadster. This machine, as he wheeled it up to the street, showed by its acceleration that the hood housed a powerful engine. Wending through traffic, it attracted no attention, due to its quiet hue.

Not so the bronze man. Scarcely a glance rested upon him that did not become a stare, so striking was the picture he presented.

The roadster swept over George Was.h.i.+ngton bridge, which connects Manhattan Island with New Jersey.

When traffic thinned, the machine increased speed. It traveled just within the bounds of safety.

Several times, traffic policemen sprang into startled life as the car moaned past; but they subsided upon observing the occupant. The greenest rookie knew there was an imperative order out to extend to this man of bronze. every possible co-operation.

Hill Road ran east and west, and the Hudson Turnpike was a north and south thoroughfare. The twointersected in a nest of filling stations and hot-dog stands.

Doc Savage pulled into a gasoline station at the intersection and ordered fuel.

A few yards distant, a crowd of excited children surrounded a man whose appearance was nothing if not startling. He came near bearing more resemblance to an ape than to a man. His furry hands dangled on beams of arms well below his knees. He had a little nubbin of a head. His hair grew back from his eyebrows. The huge simian fellow's face was likeable, although entirely homely.

This pleasantly ugly personage was amusing the kids by calmly folding pennies between a hairy thumb and forefinger. The feat of strength he performed without great exertion.

The gorilla of a man hardly glanced in Doc's direction. He ceased performing for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the children and entered a large sedan which stood near by. He drove westward along Hill Road.

Doc Savage, having paid for his tank of fuel, also rolled westward along Hill Road. He topped the first hill. In the valley beyond, the gorillalike man had stopped his car.

Doc came to a halt alongside the simian one. "Where's Ham, Monk?" he queried.

Monk grinned, showing a tremendous array of large white teeth. His head seemed to disappear entirely behind the grin; certainly, there did not seem to be room for much intelligence in his head.

His looks belied the truth, however. He was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, whose ability as an industrial chemist had brought him worldwide fame and a fortune in money.

MONK WAS one of a group of five who had a.s.sociated themselves with Doc Savage. These five men were all capable of commanding high monetary returns, had they chosen to exercise the professions at which they were skilled. But they loved adventure. Possessing ample wealth, they had thrown in with Doc Savage in his career of punis.h.i.+ng evildoers in the far corners of the earth.

Monk pointed down Hill Road. "We trailed the killer to a kind of a funny-lookin' country estate. Ham's watchin' the place. We better go on afoot."

Doc switched off the roadster motor. So silently had it operated at idling speed that cessation of movement of the ammeter needle was all that showed the cylinders had ceased firing.

The two men strode along Hill Road, leaving the cars drawn into weeds beside the highway.