Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (12 page)

Doc simply picked up the insensate Indian and handed him over to Renny, who had climbed into the gondola hatch.

They got aboard and cast off. The airship rose sluggishly, now weighed down by a seventh passenger. But before very many minutes passed, it had achieved a comfortable altitude.

Reclaiming the control station, Doc Savage powered up and booted the rudder about until the airship was droning on a dead reckoning course for the Victorian dwelling that possessed all the proper properties of a traditional haunted house.

“I don’t like the fact that we’re headed back to that spook house,” Monk Mayfair ventured.

The facial expressions of some of the others suggested that this was no minority opinion.

Curiously, Johnny Littlejohn wore an intrigued, if not excited, expression on his scholarly mien. He was not much of a man for smiling, but his lean mouth was fighting a grin of anticipation. He appeared quite eager to investigate the curious old dwelling.

Chapter XI

THE CURIOUS CASS

GULLIVER GREENE threw his arms across the door leading to the back room of the filling station, blocking the door, keeping the other three—Spook Davis, Harvell Braggs and Ivan Cass—from entering the room where the murdered old man sprawled.

“What the dickens!” Spook Davis yelled indignantly. “You gone wacky?”

“Leave it for the police!” Gull said tightly.

“Is he dead?” Spook blurted. “We hardly got a look!”

Gull seemed a little taller, and his muscles, never especially bulky, were tight and stood out with the prominence of wires in his neck and wrists. Some of the hearty color had faded under his tan, but the absolute snow whiteness of his hair still made it contrast almost weirdly with his piercing green eyes. The approaching rainstorm thumped and rumbled in the western night, and he listened to it, thinking how appropriate the sound was, then turned his head to look at old Box Daniels.

Dead old Box Daniels wore a pair of enormous old-fashioned button shoes, cheap trousers, a cotton undershirt. He lay on his side with his bald head far back and his mouth and eyes straining open wider than it seemed possible they could have become. The blow which crushed his temple had also mangled the tip of his large ear on that side and the crimson leakage had filled the ear, turned his bald head all red, and puddled on the floor. Saint Pete’s plain, brass-reinforced shoe lay in the red lake.

“Look for whoever killed him!” Gulliver barked suddenly.

He wrenched the door shut, ran outside with the others. He had the flashlight in his hip pocket, and he poked its white beam into the darkness. Harvell Braggs, the enormously fat man, had a flashlight in his car, and he got it, and the hard-faced Ivan Cass produced an unexpected gun—a compact dark revolver—from a hideout under his armpit.

“The murderer has gotta be close!” Spook Davis wailed. “The old man was alive when I came out to tell you he was ready to tell us his story.”

Spook Davis, pale and shaking, ogled Ivan Cass’ gun with fixated horror—more shaken by sight of the gun than by the bald old man’s unexpected murder. Spook had a helpless fear of guns.

Gull got the double-barreled shotgun which was kept at the filling station as bandit protection, and joined the others in searching the surrounding night. The thunder kept whooping in the west, and there was beginning to be a little lightning, although the night remained unnaturally still, as it does before storms in Missouri. Behind the filling station was a pasture thick with clumps of buckbrush, a few small red oak trees, and in front of the filling station ran U.S. Highway 63, a concrete slab, but no cars had passed for some time. Across the road was a cornfield, the corn just about high enough to hide anyone who ran doubled over. The lightning got brighter and brighter and thunder louder as they hunted.

They returned to the filling station finally, defeated.

IVAN CASS started to go into the back room where the body lay. Gull got in front of him, blocking him, and said grimly, “The police won’t like having their clues messed up.”

Cass put out his jaw and tightened his lips; his crow-black eyes smoldered.

“I’m a private detective!” he said. “Read this.”

He drew a telegram from a coat pocket and held it so Gulliver could read:

IVANHOE CASS

CASS DETECTIVE AGENCY

ST. LOUIS

IN A JAM STOP LEARNED SOMETHING BY ACCIDENT AND IT MAY BE THE DEATH OF ME STOP AM GOING TO SEE MY NEPHEW THE GREAT GULLIVER AT LA PLATA MISSOURI STOP MEET ME THERE ACT AS BODYGUARD.

BOX DANIELS

Ivan Cass said, “That’s why I’m here. Why was old Box Daniels coming to see you?”

Gull said grimly, “It’s a mystery to me.”

Gull watched Cass fold the telegram and put it back in his pocket, but the rock-hard face of the man was inscrutable and told him nothing, gave no indication of whether Cass believed Gulliver was entirely mystified by all that had happened. Gull slowly strained his ivory hair with his fingers, then wheeled and stared at Harvell Braggs with questioning intentness.

Harvell Braggs said hastily, “Young man, I hope you don’t retain for a moment the misapprehension that I—”

“I wonder what the police will think of your story about how you came to be here,” Gulliver put in grimly.

Braggs’ shrug pushed his many chins up almost around his full-lipped cherubic mouth which contained a cigar.

“Fantastic or not, young man, it is my story, and I stick to it, and I repeat now that I am simply a collector of Christopher Columbus antiques whose collection was stolen by a strange being who looked like he was Columbus and who insisted he was the genuine Columbus, and I will also add that I am going to tell the police that I am here because of an anonymous note which said—”

“Where’s the note?” demanded Gull.

Evidently, this was Harvell Bragg’s usual bombastic method of speech—he liked to use sentences as big as he was.

Braggs peered at Gull, absently removed his chewed cigar, tossed it away, and drew another one out of a pocket and stuck it in his mouth. Then, without speaking, he produced a scrap of paper.

BRAGGS:

SEE GULLIVER GREENE, WHO IS ALSO KNOWN AS THE GREAT GULLIVER, ABOUT YOUR COLUMBUS STUFF THAT WAS TAKEN.

This was printed in pencil, rather expertly, although the letters were very small. He did not recognize the handwriting, but that meant nothing. He had never received a note from his Uncle Box before this day.

“Satisfied?” Braggs asked, speaking a short sentence for once.

Gull walked out slowly and stood for a bit under the lighted marquee, then began to work the iron lever which pumped pink gasoline up into the glass bowls of the station pumps. He watched, without really perceiving it, the gasoline surge and bubble behind the glass.

The world had turned black; lightning cracked and gushed split seconds of red noonday.

Despite this impressive display, not a drop of rain had yet fallen.

Some aspects of this thing were clear—poor old Box Daniels, the relative whom Gull had never seen before tonight, had learned something that endangered his life, and had tried to reach Gull for help, but had been killed. But why hadn’t Box Daniels gone to the police? He’d sent Gull the telegram, which must have been important, because the small man with the hound-voice had seized it, even killed the local telegraph operator to keep its contents unknown. It followed, Gull decided, that the devilish midget had also slain old Box here a few minutes ago and, being small, had escaped in the night…. But Saint Pete’s shoe lay in there by the body, the murder weapon, obviously.

Gull moistened his lips; they had become suddenly dry. He felt heavy, compressed inside. For the exquisite girl, Saint Pete, had not impressed him anything but favorably during his few moments with her after he had found her trying to seize old Box—as she had said, so that she might make him tell her what he knew. Gull made an abrupt, grim mouth. In all this puzzled mess, it stood out in his mind that the girl had been frightened, anxious, and honest in her desire to question Box Daniels. He’d believed her. True, she’d fled, but that was understandable because she had been frightened….

“Look here!” Cass yelled.

He’d evidently found a knife behind the filling station safe, a long knife with a three-edged blade.

“It’s got a woman’s fingerprints on it!” Cass shouted.

GULLIVER GREENE looked at the knife with rigid intentness—it was the blade wielded by the small man with the hound-dog vocal cords, the weapon which had probably slain the telegraph operator. How had it gotten behind the safe? Planted, of course. And with a woman’s tapered fingerprints on it….

Nature squirted the heavens full of lightning flare and cataclysmic noise, showing all their strained faces, quaking the air about them, beating against their eardrums. Gull, when his lungs began feeling very strange, realized he had stopped breathing, and he drew in breath with a slow, determined rush.

They paid him no attention when he sauntered back outside. He whipped around to the murder room window. He reached in, got Saint Pete’s heavy, brass-bound shoe, the armored heel of which had caved in Box Daniels’ temple.

He ran a few yards, bounded across the grader ditch, crossed the highway, and was in the cornfield, dusted off his hands, and hurried back to the filling station. He entered casually.

“I think something just happened outside,” he said.

Harvell Braggs and Ivan Cass sprang out under the marquee. Spook Davis did not go with him, but stood staring at Gull Greene.

Gull picked up the knife with the triangular blade and carefully wiped all fingerprints off the hilt, then pitched the knife out the office window, where it made a soft sound striking wood. He looked at Spook Davis.

“Mum’s the word,” he said.

“She must be quite a number,” Spook Davis said dryly.

“Who?”

“Don’t kid me, old socks. I think you’re ertsnay to cover up for her. But I’ll also say that sink or swim, in the clink or out, I still follow Thursday as far as you’re concerned. I’m your man Friday, in other words.”

Gull did not say anything, did not show any emotion except by a slight loosening of the muscle knots at the rear of the jaws, and a small upward warp of the ends of his mouth.

A FEW minutes later, two Missouri State Highway Patrolmen got out of their car and came into the station. They were neat, brown-clad, their leather polished, their metal shiny, and they strode in at once to look at the body.

“No murder weapon,” one said, after a preliminary look around.

“The hell—!” Cass closed his thin lips on his bark of surprise.

Gull, in the background, waited tensely, but Ivan Cass did not say anything more, and Gull felt more disturbed than if Cass had spoken, knowing that Cass had seen Saint Pete’s shoe lying there beside the body. Then he caught a slight nod from Cass. They drew outside.

“My impulsive young friend,” Cass grated, “do you want some advice?”

“No,” Gulliver said frankly.

“Murder is murder and nothing to be to trifled around with,” Cass said harshly. “You’re sticking your nose into something you don’t know anything about. If you did know what it is, you’d probably start running and wouldn’t stop. Now the best thing you can do is sit on your hands, keep that blab of yours shut, and hope you won’t wind up getting hung for two murders.”

He sounded deadly serious.

Cass wheeled. Gull grabbed for him. Cass twisted away and walked off. Gull, aching to take his neck and wring some information out of him, was deterred by the presence of the two Highway Patrolmen, and also by the fact that his worst fears had turned out to be well grounded—Cass knew he had hidden that shoe.

Ivan Cass and Harvell Braggs went and sat in the latter’s sleek, expensive limousine. Gull aimed his ears in their direction, and soon realized they were talking heatedly. The two Patrolmen continued their investigation; with their powerful flashlights they began examining the filling station surroundings.

“It looks like you’re sliding into the wildcat nest,” Spook Davis said, drifting past Gulliver.

Gull didn’t care for it. To Spook, he hissed, “Don’t worry, You’ll be in it with me before long.”

“How come?”

“You’ll start lying to these cops. They’ll get you.”

Gulliver said this to scare Spook. His stooge hadn’t done anything—yet. Gull hoped the scare would deter him. Heaven knows, they had enough trouble already.

Spook Davis had a frothy temperament, and he also had the flexibility of a grass blade—when the sun shone, he erected and waved happily, but when storm winds came, he flattened readily into the mud of despair. Just now, he was waving; no wind happened to be blowing, and because the clouds of menace were not touching him, he was a little too careless of their presence.

When the police began questioning Gull, it actually relieved his mind, the mental activity of answering their questions drawing his thoughts from speculation about what Cass intended to do. Gull had no idea of withdrawing from the affair—although he still couldn’t see where there was anything to withdraw from. Cass must know that; the question was, what course would he take? This ran through Gull’s mind as he told the fantastic story of the night’s happenings to the two officers, who, as they listened, became more and more doubtful, more and more bewildered.

“Christopher Columbus!” one cop said, and snorted skeptically. “Buddy, this is too wonderful! Maybe there’s truth here somewhere that ain’t out.”

Cass—he had left Braggs—came to the door, looked at Gull malevolently, then said, “Cops, I’ll show you things.”

He did. He showed them Saint Pete’s shoe which Gulliver had buried with the impulsive idea of keeping suspicion from the entrancing girl. A long stick had been shoved down in the soft cornfield earth to pry up the shoe.

“Blood on it,” an officer said. “It’s the murder—” he scowled at Cass. “How’d you find it?”