Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (13 page)

Cass shrugged his crow-like shoulders. He pointed at Gull. “Saw him bury it.”

By now Gull knew he’d done a foolish thing when he removed the shoe and wiped off the fingerprints. Whew! That girl had certainly had an effect on him! He stood for a moment, conscious of the grimness of the police, trying to sell himself on the idea that the girl after all might have slain old Box Daniels. No dice, though; she wasn’t that kind. And he felt better.

Just then a Highway Patrolman yelled. He was pointing his flashlight up in a maple tree. He climbed the tree. When he came down, he held a knife which had been sticking in a limb up in the leafy crown. He examined it.

“It’s the knife that murdered the depot agent!” he barked.

“Sure?” yelled the other officer.

“Look at this tri-cornered blade! The depot agent’s wound showed he’d been stabbed with this kind of a blade. And these kind of knives aren’t plentiful. This is the first one I ever saw.”

Ivan Cass, a few moments later, made profane mention of the feminine fingerprints which had disappeared from the knife hilt.

Gull gulped. He believed he had every reason to gulp, and he became sure of it when one officer reached out abruptly and said, “Shake hands, pal.”

Gulliver knew the gag, but if he did not fall for it, they might get rough. So he shook hands, and the patrolman jerked him off balance and briskly snapped something cold and metallic back of his hands.

The handcuffs on Gulliver’s wrists looked rather new.

“Now look here!” Gull exploded feebly.

“That’s what we’re going to do,” returned the officer. “We are going to look into everything thoroughly—including you.”

“Am I arrested?”

“Just anchored for the time being.”

Chapter XII

MEN IN THE DAWN

DAWN HAD FULLY arrived by the time the unlovely Victorian house hove into view. The sky was full of fleeing crows, and there were clouds on the horizon. Heavy, lead-colored ones. Such air as came into the cabin through ventilation inlets possessed that clammy sensation of impending rain.

They were free-ballooning now, Doc Savage having throttled the two engines back to stillness.

“This overgrown blimp sure handles sweet, don’t it, Doc?” suggested Monk.

The bronze man seemed preoccupied. It was his habit not to answer questions he did not wish to, but in this instance he seemed oblivious to anything other than the task at hand.

Once more Doc had his binoculars out and was scrutinizing the forest below. He searched intently, seemed to find nothing of interest, and addressed Monk, “Climb down to the ground and walk toward the house by the approach path,” he directed.

“You want to see if it up and disappears? Is that it?”

“Exactly,” said Doc.

The hairy chemist popped the hatch and swung out in a fashion that might do credit to an ape man, if such a fanciful creature ever existed in real life.

“He belongs in a jungle picture,” sniffed Ham. At the same time, his sharp gaze tracked the homely chemist all the way to the ground.

Monk accomplished this with simian ease. As if out for a Sunday stroll, he ambled up the dirt path in the direction of the uncanny dwelling.

Doc Savage kept his intent eyes upon the ornately ugly dwelling. All of them did.

It fascinated. In the rising sun, it seemed to smolder rather redly. The black gingerbread hung from its roof and porch eaves like funeral crepe. Whoever painted it originally, had very dubious taste.

When Monk was within sight of the roof, the house evaporated.

There was no transition between the sight of the apparent solid structure and its vanishment. It simply ceased to occupy its former spot. All that remained was the bare slab foundation.

Monk’s excited
“Ye-e-eow!”
came clearly to their ears.

Doc reached for the radio microphone and raised Monk on the latter’s pocket transceiver.

“Monk. Remain where you are. I will join you directly.”

Renny took the controls this time and Doc Savage slid down the rope, knot by knot. He didn’t need them for purchase, so great was the corded power of his metallic digits. But to slide down would be impossible, with the handholds in the way.

Ham came scampering down, uninvited. His curiosity had evidently been aroused.

Doc joined Monk at the spot on the narrow woodland trail where he had last seen the hideous house standing there.

“It’s gone,” gulped Monk. The look on his face was priceless. Perplexity seemed to crawl up it and then down again, like a nervous spider.

Doc Savage abruptly left the trail, began beating the woods, eyes ranging alertly. Monk followed. Ham soon joined them, using his cane to bat aside blocking foliage.

“What are we searching for?” he asked Monk.

“Beats me,” admitted the homely chemist. His twinkling eyes, so deeply sunk into the pits of gristle that marked them, were scouring the woods.

Doc Savage found what he sought, and stopped.

Monk and Ham came up and their questing gaze went to the spot where Doc was silently pointing.

A small device was attached to a tree, low to the ground. In the black housing was installed a lens. It was pointing toward the Victorian home of uncanny and almost sentient behavior.

“Photo-electric eye!” breathed Monk.

Ham said, “Jove! What is it doing out here?”

“Designed to actuate a relay whenever an approaching intruder intercepted the beam of light falling on the photocell,” explained Doc Savage.

Ham frowned. “But what does it do?”

“Don’t you get it?” Monk said suddenly. “It makes the house disappear!”

“Don’t be absurd, you hairy mistake,” fumed Ham. “How could an electric relay cause an entire house to vanish into thin air?”

“We all saw the house vanish, didn’t we?” returned Monk, “Well, something had to cause that, didn’t it?”

Ham had no reply to that. Not because he wasn’t considering one. Waspish retorts were his stock in trade. But whatever stinging barb his agile brain was in the act of formulating was forever lost because a man stepped out of the woods and pointed a double-barrel shotgun at them. The ends looked big enough to jump into.

Doc detected the stranger’s approach. Normally, he would have become aware of this before anyone could get the proverbial drop on him, but his state of mind still seemed queer. He was plainly not quite himself.

“This is private property,” the man ground out.

They heard him before they got a clear look at him.

The shotgun-wielder was an average man in every way a man could be average except one. His hands and face were coated with a white confection that looked like someone had smeared his skin with greasepaint and then applied ordinary baking powder.

“I say,” drawled Ham. “Rather early for Halloween.”

“What is your business here?” the man demanded, pointing the immensely black barrels at them.

“We might ask the same of you,” flung back Ham, pointing with his cane.

“I own this patch of land, if you must know. I intend to build a house out here.”

“On that slab yonder?” inquired Doc.

The man started slightly. He restrained himself. “Sure,” he admitted. “What of it? It’s private property, which makes it my private business. Now clear out!”

The shotgun man waited to see the reaction his harsh threat would produce. His fingers were held carefully outside of the trigger guard. Evidently, they were hair triggers.

Doc Savage noticed this. His arresting golden eyes flicked upward, seized the other man’s gaze, and held it.

“I possess credentials you might be interested to see,” Doc offered evenly.

“I don’t care if you—”

The shotgun man never finished his sentence.

Weirdly, those compelling orbs seemed to swallow his attention. He never saw the bronze giant move. There was only a puff of air that stirred his unruly hair.

Stepping back suddenly, the man became aware that his hands were stinging. He directed his attention at his smarting fingers.

What he beheld caused him to blink dumbly. For his hands were numb claws that no longer held his weapon.

The stunned assailant started. His shotgun was now in Doc Savage’s metallic hands. The big bronze man had captured it before the flour-faced one could comprehend what was happening.

The other blinked like a camera shutter that couldn’t quit. His jaw slowly sagged until its point touched the knot of his simple tie. He had been disarmed by a man to whom the menace of a double-barreled shotgun was a negligible thing!

DOC SAVAGE, having retreated to his original position, calmly broke open the double-barreled weapon and removed the shells. He pocketed both, then gave a casual upward toss that caused the shotgun to leap into a nearby oak tree and lodge high up amid its branches. It would take some considerable effort to retrieve it.

Doc eyed the flummoxed man.

“How is it you are planning to build a cabin on a slab already occupied by a Victorian house?” he inquired.

Again the man started. He tried to cover it up.

“What house?” he asked belligerently.

“The one that was there a few moments ago,” Doc supplied.

“Mister, I poured that slab of concrete with my bare hands. There won’t be anything gonna sit on it until I plant it there.”

“I see,” said Doc Savage, aureate eyes whirling steadily.

Hairy Monk started walking around the man, looking him up and down.

“What’s with the Halloween getup?” he asked at last.

“I sunburn easily,” sneered the man.

“Rather late in the year to worry about that,” Ham offered.

The man’s manner became testy. “First you tell me I’m too early for Halloween. Now it’s too late to burn. You birds give me a sharp pain. And I repeat that you are standing on private property, sticking your citified noses into business that is not yours.”

“What is your name?” asked Doc.

The other hesitated.

“If this is your property, as you claim,” pressed Doc Savage, “then there is no reason to not identify yourself.”

“Wes Snow,” said the man at last.

“Live around here?” asked Doc.

“In these general parts,” the other admitted.

“Your trade?”

“What’s my work got to do with anything? Who are you birds anyhow?”

Ham said coolly, “You are speaking to Doc Savage, fellow.”

“Doc Savage!” the man squawked. He gave the impression of going pale under his greasepaint and flour mask.

“Heard of him, ain’t you?” taunted Monk.

The man who called himself Wes Snow nodded vigorously. “Big city trouble-buster,” he said thickly. “They call you the Man of Bronze. And I plainly can see why.”

Suddenly Snow lifted his voice, “Hey, Pap! Zeke! That’s Doc Savage’s blimp over yonder!”

Monk and Ham cranked their faces around, attempting to learn to whom the man named Wes Snow was directing his call.

There was no answered response—at least, not in words.

A shotgun whanged once and then again, and a spurt of flame and gunsmoke seemed to go straight up not far away.

It must have been filled with buckshot because it peppered one side of the gasbag of the small dirigible so thoroughly that immediately it began deflating.

Doc Savage had taken the precaution of armoring the control gondola as much as would permit the airship to navigate. But the gasbag was another matter. Its lightweight skin could not be protected from small-arms fire without compromising its ability to remain aloft under differing atmospheric conditions.

“Blazes!” Monk bellowed. “He got our airship!”

Doc Savage lunged forward in the middle of the thundering of the shotgun. Sensing his chance, Wes Snow attempted to bolt. Ham’s fist clipped out, connected, dropped the disarmed man. The latter collapsed on his feet—knocked out.

“Watch him,” Doc instructed Ham.

With Monk following hard on his heels, the bronze giant pitched in the direction of the echoing shotgun blasts.

Doc’s sense of hearing verged on being unerring. He flashed through the trees, came upon the shotgun man as he was in the act of reloading. Those tiny sounds had drawn Doc.

The shotgun was of the hinged type. The shotgun man got one firecracker-red shell into the breech, saw the bronze giant descending upon him, and hastily snapped his weapon back into a unit.

Raising the muzzles, he took hasty aim.

Doc Savage wore a bulletproof undervest. In fact, he was mailed from neck to knees with a kind of union suit of light flexible chainmesh alloy.

But his head was not protected. Throwing up his hands to protect his features would have resulted in the destruction of his fingers, at best, and might not have preserved his life.

When the shotgun man squeezed down on one trigger, Doc Savage pitched to one side.

Monk Mayfair, following directly behind, was not so fortunate.

The man unloaded one barrel at the hairy chemist, putting the shot charge in Monk’s middle, just under the ribcage.

Monk wrapped long hairy arms over his stomach area and tilted forward and backward, but did not go off his feet. He swayed there, face almost buried in his chest. A long groan emerged from someplace deep inside of him.

Doc Savage went against the man with the shotgun. Doc got hold of him by the front of his flannel hunting jacket and knocked him against a tree so hard that the man bounced off it in a weirdly rubbery way, falling to the forest floor.

Monk’s loud groan was a deep, horrible thing and it brought Ham Brooks running from his guard post, waving his sword cane in one lifted hand.

“Monk! Monk!”

He came upon Monk, who was almost doubled over, and clutching his middle.

“You’re shot!” Ham screeched. He moved toward the hairy chemist solicitously.

Monk groaned again, “Get away from me, you!”

Ham stopped, stared. “You’re
not
shot?”

“Sure I’m shot.” Monk fell to coughing. “I’m shot right in the belly—and my bulletproof vest doesn’t have the stiffening ribs under it. I left the stiff undervest off. I think all my ribs are broke, blast you!”

Ham looked relieved. He glanced at the fellow who had shot Monk.