Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (54 page)

“Low and getting lower by the minute,” admitted Ham. “And the way out is blocked. With that insidious brain-petrifying gas filling the escape tunnel, we are in a predicament.”

“What about your ammunition?” asked the bronze man.

“I’m the only one with any left,” said Monk. “I’ve got one drum, but I’m not even sure what’s in it.”

“This might,” suggested Doc, “be the correct time to discover.”

Monk yanked free the drum, examined it and grunted, “Looks like a mixture.”

“Mixture of what?” asked the bronze man.

“Charlie horse rounds, scintillators, rock-salt slugs, probably some other stuff, like drying-agent bullets.”

“Can you isolate the latter?”

“Sure, every slug has a different color dye on it for easy identification.”

From a pocket, Doc Savage removed a heavy-duty gas mask, and said, “Each of you take turns with this while Monk works.”

No one accepted the offered protection. Long Tom said, “I can still breathe. We better save that thing for when things get really tight.”

Doc held onto the mask as Monk emptied out the assortment of bullets, and reloaded the drum with only drying-agent slugs.

“About twenty of these,” the hairy chemist muttered.

“Let us hope it is sufficient for the job at hand,” said Doc, taking the supermachine pistol.

Seizing the lid, he dropped down the ladder, rushed along the tunnel until he encountered the oily smoke. At this juncture, Doc donned his gas mask for extra protection, and opened up with the superfiring pistol, which shuttled and blared briefly, discharging its rounds.

The results were remarkable. The roiling oily smoke seemed to collapse in on itself, swiftly neutralized by the drying agent.

Doc called back, “It should be safe now. Follow me.” The bronze man did not wait for his friends, but plunged ahead, bringing his infra-red flashlight to bear, the goggles which had been pushed up onto his forehead now back in place.

DOC SAVAGE raced perhaps one hundred yards when he encountered the obstructing form lying in the narrow tunnel.

It was the Medusa. The human monster had fallen on its face, and several of the colorful serpent locks had broken off. They were still. There was no blood.

Doc approached with caution, knelt, and carefully picked up one of the severed serpents.

This proved to be fashioned from segments of vulcanized rubber, and enameled in livid greens and reds. Feeling the ophidian thing, he discovered it was jointed. Giving it a shake caused the sinuous length to move in a lifelike fashion. But it had never been alive.

Doc was rolling the body over when Monk, Ham and Long Tom arrived, their flashlights blazing.

His goggles coming off now that they were no longer necessary, Doc Savage said, “As I feared would happen, the Medusa fell victim to his own deadly device.”

To the astonishment of his men, Doc Savage wrenched at the hideous head of the thing. The scaly mass came away, showing it to be an artificial contrivance consisting of multiple jointed serpent heads affixed to an oversized mask that covered the entire cranium.

The face beneath was human. The craggy features were familiar to them all. They were still in death, and eyes that had stared unnervingly in life now glared glassily in death. As they watched, the dead man’s eyes seemed to be retreating into his skull.

Ham was the first to speak the master brain’s name. “Rockwell!”

Doc Savage was examining the helmet of the monstrosity that was fashioned to form the frozen-featured face of the Medusa of legend.

“What happened to him?” burst out Monk. “He was alive just a few minutes ago.”

Doc Savage explained, “In exiting the mine, Dr. Rockwell encountered me in the tunnel, and attempted to inflict his petrifying smoke, not realizing I was wearing chemical nostril filters designed to prevent deadly vapors from infiltrating my sinus passages and thus my brain. Hearing that you men were approaching, and knowing what might transpire if you blundered into the cloud, I pretended to be stricken so that he would not turn on you, but flee past instead.

The bronze man regarded the dead man without expression. “It appears that in his haste to depart, Rockwell tripped and broke the protective mask that was designed to shield him from the combustible substance that produced the petrifying effect. He succumbed before he could climb back to his feet.”

Monk suddenly looked peculiar. “Earlier, I dropped a rock on his skull. It mighta weakened the shell.”

“Conceivably,” said Doc. “I came upon an automobile parked a little ways off. No doubt it was Rockwell’s machine, for it contained a doctor’s valise. I disabled the coupe to prevent his escape, for it would have been preferable to take Rockwell alive and hear his story from his own lips.”

“It was self-defense,” Monk said quickly, knowing the bronze man’s preference for capturing foes alive.

“No blame belongs to you, Monk,” Doc told him. “Warner Rockwell was the cause of his own destruction.”

“But Rockwell of all people?” Ham said wonderingly. “What possible motive could he harbor for all the slayings?”

“A motive as ancient as the legend of the Medusa herself,” intoned Doc.

Everyone looked at him questioningly.

“Envy,” said the bronze man. “Common green-eyed jealousy.”

Doc passed the broken helmet to Monk, and he and Long Tom pored over it. The thing was ingeniously contrived, boasting vents for breathing that could be sealed by hand in order to make it temporarily airtight in order to block harmful fumes from penetrating. One of those vents had been jarred loose.

There were other features of interest.

“The snakes are pneumatic,” Long Tom said. “I don’t see how they operated, but somehow he forced air into them so that they squirmed as if alive.”

Doc was back beside the body and pulled back one of the long white sleeves, revealing a rubber tube that ended in a bulb resting in the palm of the dead man’s hand, which was covered by a scaled glove.

He explained, “A rubber bladder held in each hand. When squeezed forcibly, they produced sufficient air to pump the serpents so they seemed to writhe with sinuous life.”

Monk grunted, “How about that? Rockwell turned out to be the third Gorgon.”

“And you, you clumsy ape, turned into a modern Perseus,” grumbled Long Tom.

Monk looked momentarily blank.

Doc explained, “Perseus was the Greek hero who slew the Gorgon Medusa by cutting off her head with a sword, rendering her forever harmless.”

Ham groaned. “And Monk decapitated this modern monster by dumb luck—which is the only kind he ever has.”

The homely chemist grinned his widest. “Guess this wraps everything up, don’t it?”

Doc Savage stood up. His flake-gold eyes were bleak. “All except for the explanations.”

Chapter LI

THE BRAIN BEHIND ALL

EXPLANATIONS HAD TO wait until Doc Savage formally surrendered himself to the Chicago City Police.

This was done after the bronze man landed his speed plane at the municipal airport. By this time, morning had chased away the darkness of night.

A contingent of police officials were waiting for him there, having been alerted by short-wave radio of the bronze man’s impending arrival. As Doc Savage’s attorney, Ham performed that duty, making all arrangements.

The Superintendent of Police personally did the honors. Doc Savage was not handcuffed, but he and his men were allowed to follow a convoy of official police vehicles. A curtained hearse took the body of Dr. Warner Rockwell to the morgue.

Doc Savage remained tight-lipped during the ride to police headquarters.

Doc was escorted to the Superintendent’s private office, but he was neither fingerprinted nor formally arraigned. His men joined him there.

The Superintendent began the proceedings by declaring, “Based on what your attorney told me by radio, I am going to defer the decision on the disposition of your case, pending your full explanation.”

Doc nodded. From an inner pocket, he removed the envelope containing Janet Falcon’s final written testimony.

“This letter,” he imparted, “tells Miss Falcon’s side of the story. It is, as far as can be ascertained, entirely truthful. For reasons of her own, she had not always been so. Furthermore, there were many things she did not know.”

The police official accepted the letter, and began reading silently. Behind him, the skies had clouded up and a light snow was falling. As he perused the pages, the flurry turned to sleet, which began pelting insistently at his window pane.

When the Superintendent was done, he said slowly, “According to this, the entire fantastic chain of events had its start in the Ryerson Coal Mine explosion down in Vermilion County a few years back.”

Doc said, “Many perished, but none were fully autopsied. The actual cause of death was not discovered until mineralogist Ned Gamble, working with chemist Malcolm McLean, decided to open up the workings, to see if it could be restarted. During the course of that investigation, they discovered a hitherto-unknown form of amorphous carbon which was similar to coal in that it was highly combustible. Unlike coal, however, its fumes produced a peculiar effect upon the human brain when inhaled, essentially calcifying it upon contact. After performing tests on live animals, they dubbed the substance Gorgonite, inspired by the mythological sisters reputed to turn men to stone.”

“This is fantastic!”

“Certainly,” chimed in Ham Brooks. “But the fact that a brain-petrifying substance exists is not.”

“No, it is not,” the official said heavily. “Please continue.”

Doc went on. “The two soon realized that the mine could never be reopened safely and began considering how to exploit the seam of Gorgonite. However, commercial applications of the strange substance did not present themselves. The pair went first to the inventor, Myer Sim who, while willing, was no great help. Sim, however, was friendly with both Marvin Lucian Linden and Dr. Warner Rockwell, who were separately consulted.

“While the original trio of conspirators—Rockwell, McLean and Linden—all knew one another, they had something in common they had previously not recognized. For one reason or another, all three were jealous of myself or one of my assistants. Linden, for example, had been working on an insect exterminator operating upon ultra-sonic principles similar to one pursued by my aide, Long Tom Roberts. Linden feared Long Tom would perfect his device before Linden’s own could be finished. Dr. Rockwell had already discovered that a brain surgery technique he had been exploring had been achieved by myself. Malcolm McLean, although a chemist, suffered from an inferiority complex because he had never made a name for himself.”

“Jealousy was the motive!” sputtered the Superintendent of Police.

Doc nodded. “When I last spoke with him, Dr. Rockwell put envy forward as an explanation for the actions of the other conspirators,” stated Doc Savage firmly. “What he did not realize at the time was that I suspected him of being equally complicit.”

“On what basis?”

“Initially, on his claim that he had restored Malcolm McLean to life after his brain had been calcified by the purported Medusa. When McLean’s cousin Doane was stricken, Rockwell was the one who pronounced him dead, taking custody of the corpse, which he falsely certified was McLean. Furthermore, Doane McLean evinced symptoms no other victim of the Medusa had shown either before or since.”

“What was that?”

“In addition to his brain having been petrified, his eyeballs had also taken on a stony aspect. This was a clever artifice designed to allay any suspicions that Malcolm McLean had, in truth, not been struck down by the mysterious force. The eye lenses were simply oyster shells ground down and fitted so that when the body was found, there would be no question that Malcolm McLean was the victim. The reasons for this were clever: Rockwell needed to conceal something that might have given his subterfuge away. While the cousins both possessed gray eyes, their irises were not absolutely identical. In fact, the human eye is as individual as fingerprints—a fact that may prove useful to forensic science in the future.”

The Superintendent of Police absorbed this explanation with a troubled brow. He did not offer further comment, so the bronze man went on with his narrative.

“Going back to the beginning,” said Doc, “the conspirators planned a calculated reign of terror designed to elevate their status. At that point, only two were invited into the terror trust masquerading as a living Gorgon. Those were Dr. Warner Rockwell, the master brain, and Malcolm McLean. They initially approached Myer Sim, who turned them down flat. Sim confided in Ned Gamble, who became concerned that once Rockwell’s grand scene was set into motion, Gamble himself would be implicated through his involvement with Malcolm McLean in the discovery of Gorgonite.”

The police official tapped the letter on his desk, saying, “According to Miss Falcon, she was the one who sent her fiancé to New York.”

“Although she knew about the discovery of Gorgonite and its terrible properties, Janet Falcon was unaware that the growing conspiracy focused on attempting to outdo the work of my associates and myself, but she had read of my work aiding those in trouble and, since Gamble was reticent to go to the authorities, he seized upon his fiancée’s suggestion, and agreed that I should be immediately apprised. Gamble also feared for Myer Sim’s life, since he was the only outsider with direct knowledge of the plot.

“By this point, Rockwell had already worked out his plan of action. McLean the chemist had invented a photosensitive process that allowed them to imprint the silhouette of the Medusa on the scenes of the killings, a process, incidentally, that had led to his unpleasant skin condition, since it involved experimenting with nitrate of silver. Marvin Lucian Linden had perfected a version of the photophone that could be used to transmit the Gorgon’s voice to add to the atmosphere of impending horror, as well as becoming a terror device to warn off any threats.”

The Superintendent rubbed the nape of his neck. “I see. Sim was slain to silence him, as was Gamble. But why was Janet Falcon spared?”