Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (16 page)

“Sh-h-h,” said the voice. “I’d just as soon the whole town didn’t know I was in here with you.”

Lightning flared and thunder grumbled, disclosing that Spook was not alone.

“Gull!” Spook choked. “Whew! Gull! Why—what—Shades of Houdini!”

“This seemed a good place to hide out,” Gull explained from a corner of the tiny space. “And the cops couldn’t see the open door from where they were talking to you.”

Spook Davis, trying to recover his wits, made sounds similar to those of an old hen trying to assemble her chicks, but finally got himself together.

“A fine idea!” he sneered. “You saved them all the trouble of catching you. We’re locked in here.”

The Great Gulliver found himself suppressing an urge to strangle his startled stooge.

“Of all the times to pick to tell one of your lies!” Gull gritted.

“Aw—I was tryin’ to help you,” Spook mumbled downheartedly. “How’d I know they’d arrest me as a material witness. I thought they’d turn you loose and all would be very spiffy.”

“That was your own wig you gave them!” Gull groaned. “That wig we use so that people will not know you look almost exactly like me.”

“I know. The wig cost us forty dollars when we bought it.”

“The whole story about a green-haired man was a lie!”

“It was a good one, though.” Spook sighed disgustedly. “But not quite good enough.”

Gulliver said grimly, “We’re going to be the worms that turned. So far, everybody and his dog has pushed us around. We’re going to change that.”

“The idea is that we are now going to push people around?”

“To the best of our ability.”

Spook Davis groaned, “At least we’ve got an opportunity to start off in a big way—all we have to do is get out of this jail.”

“Easy.”

“Oh, sure!”

“I’ve got the key,” Gulliver explained.

REACHING through the bars, fitting the key in the lock did not prove difficult, after which they looked around cautiously for anyone who might observe them, and seeing no one, Spook mumbled that it was a good thing they rolled up the sidewalks here at eight o’clock, sounding as he made the remark as if his mind was very much on other things. The sky roared and glared above, and in the darkness that followed, they dashed across the street and into an alley beside the local telephone office.

“How’d you get that key?” Spook breathed.

“Hocus-pocus,” Gulliver said. “Be quiet.”

“Be nice—how come the key?”

“Two weeks ago, a fellow got to bragging how Houdini could escape from jails,” Gull explained. “Just so Houdini wouldn’t have anything on me, I immediately filched the jail key, made a duplicate and hid it in the jail. The idea was to inveigle that Houdini fan into a bet sometime and make us some easy money.”

Which was perfectly clear, and quite sensible in view of the fact that The Great Gulliver made his livelihood with just such legerdemain, as Spook freely admitted. “But who are we gonna push around first?”

“Ivan Cass,” Gull said.

“But we haven’t got him.”

“We’ll have to remedy that.”

They repaired, with fitting caution, down an alley and through back yards, in a rough circle. End of their nocturnal progress found them posted a few blocks up from the jail. The sky roared and glared above them.

“You seem a lot more cheerful,” Spook observed. “What in thunder in this mess can you see to be cheerful about?”

“Sh-h-h,” Gull breathed. “We’re waiting for Cass. I’ve finally hit a line on this thing.”

“You know what it’s all about?”

“Not by a long shot. But I know that Box Daniels found out something, was shut up by being killed. I know Saint Pete is a prisoner of Cass and that hound-voiced runt. And I have good reason to believe that Christopher Columbus is the key to it all.”

Gulliver continued, whispering, until he had made Spook Davis acquainted with how he had fled straight from the filling station to watch the arrival of Harvell Braggs and Cass, a simple act because it was a small town. Watching Cass’ hotel, Gulliver had seen the man leave, followed him to the trailer. Gull showed an excellent memory in repeating almost verbatim to Spook what had been said inside the trailer.

“You think they’re mixed up in this?” Spook asked.

“Cass admitted as much,” Gull growled. “He gave the idea the thing back of this mystery is pretty big.”

“What about the loquacious leviathan?”

“Harvell Braggs? How he fits in I can’t fathom.”

“Which puts him even with us,” Spook lamented.

An alley-prowling dog approached them and sniffed, but fled when Gulliver hissed, after which they moved over and crawled under an elderly telephone lineman’s truck which was parked in the alley; from this point they could watch the vicinity of the jail across the street.

“We take Cass,” Gulliver explained. “My guess is he can tell us the whereabouts of Saint Pete and Christopher Columbus, and maybe more.”

Ivan Cass appeared, striding down the street with long confident steps, and turned in at the jail, where he was lost to sight. When he reappeared, very shortly afterward, he was in a stone-faced hurry.

Gulliver heard a clicking sound beside him—Spook Davis’s teeth chattering, which was probably the result of it having occurred to Spook that he had missed death at the hands of Cass by a narrow margin. He was terrified; a moment before he had been elated. Gull gripped Spook’s arm, put on pressure, twisted, and the teeth-clicking stopped.

Cass got well up the street. They followed him, decided he was heading toward the gray trailer. Gull had been afraid he would hunt up the police to learn why Spook Davis was not in jail. Gull veered left, running, urging Spook along; they would circle and arrive at the trailer ahead of Cass, he whispered hastily.

Lightning went
rr-r-rip!
and added,
whoom!
The bolt split a tree in the little La Plata park, and they heard the parts of the tree come crashing down. In the west, there was abrupt tumult as if many cattle ran through a brush patch.

“Suh-sounds like a gosling drowner!” Spook Davis puffed as he ran.

IN front of the beer place down by the theatre, a man was cranking up an awning in expectation of the coming storm. The streets looked very wide, very empty, and on the south side of the square which contained the town park, they were building a new post office with WPA money; the piles of bricks and the cement mixers stood out irregularly in the sky glow. Gull swung in that direction, stuck a brick in each trouser pocket, carried two more in his hands, and Spook Davis did the same, muttering that he preferred these Irish daisies to guns any day of the week.

They ran six blocks more, and Gulliver got behind a large maple tree.

“We drop anchor here,” he said.

“Eh?”

“The vacant lot and trailer are just down the street. Cass will pass here.”

Spook hefted his brick. “Let me have the first kiss, huh?”

The cattle-through-the-brush sound came out of the west and upon the town, a breath at first, rather warm. The trees fluffed themselves, branches swaying, and a few loose leaves began to run across lawns and sidewalks and collide gently with their ankles.

“He oughta be coming along by now,” Spook complained.

Wind pushed against their faces, mussed their hair—they wore no hats—and shook their clothing and got into their mouths. The wind was still unnaturally warm. Gulliver waited, brick ready, watching the street, mentally voting thanks to the local city fathers who had a squabble with the public utility supplying electricity to the town, and in retaliation, had discontinued all streetlights. It was very dark between lightning flashes.

“What’s keeping him?” Spook muttered.

Dust was boiling like fog in the light from the window of a home far down the street. Then, so abruptly that they almost shivered, the wind became cold, and stronger.

“There!” Gull said suddenly. “Two of them!”

Spook murmured, “Stopped and picked up one of his pals, probably.”

Gulliver, waiting, grew gradually more aware of the brick in his hands, of its smooth hard weight, of its sharp edges. His thoughts, leaping, recognized the murderous possibilities of this thing as a weapon with which to strike a man’s skull. He began to feel doubt, a chilly kind of doubt, brought on by the knowledge that he had never knocked a man senseless, had no idea how hard one must hit to get results and not kill….

“Take the one on the inside,” he breathed tardily.

Feet scuffed the walk over the wind, and there was no lightning flash as two figures came even with the trees and passed, after which Gulliver Greene and Spook Davis stepped out with the bricks.

Gull struck first. It was about like hitting a stump with a brick, he decided. He caught his senseless victim, not to break the fall—to hit again if necessary. But the victim—it must be Ivan Cass—went slack.

“Wands of Thurston! I can’t find the other one!”

That was Spook Davis’ horrified explosion. The sky rumbled contrarily but did not make lightning. Gulliver remained perfectly still, waiting for an aerial flash. Spook must be doing the same, for there was no sound but the wind and the trees and the convulsing leaves.

Then a small, scared voice gasped a hesitating question.

“What—who—who is it?”

Gull reached out quickly, grabbed feminine garments, jerked, and Saint Pete came toppling down upon him. She made no sound, but struck at him and he seized her hands, which seemed to be bound together at the wrists with a small rope.

Chapter XVI

THE WIZARD’S TOWER

PACKING THE UNCONSCIOUS Big Neck over one shoulder—the one that did not ache—Doc Savage led his men through the Missouri woods back to the rambling and grotesquely garish Victorian dwelling.

The light hitting it made it look a little ethereal, but as they neared it, its innate substantialness became apparent. It was constructed along the lines of the old Queen Anne style, which meant a steeply pitched roof, many angular gables, and a lot of unnecessary ornamentation. The siding appeared to be cedar shakes, arranged in irregular patterns and smeared with a dark maroon paint reminiscent of beet juice. The unusual color scheme was of the type that caused houses like this to be dubbed “painted ladies.”

Abruptly, Doc halted, signaling for the others to do the same.

“We do not want it to disappear again,” he explained.

Setting Big Neck on the ground, the bronze man looked about. He spied a tree that he seemed to favor and said, “Wait here. Do not approach.”

Moving quietly, Doc went to the tree and began climbing. He employed a method he had learned during the portion of his youth spent in the South Seas. Removing his belt, the bronze man wrapped it around the smooth bole. Using this as a brace, he walked up the trunk in stages, shifting the belt upward every few feet.

Soon Doc was in the branches, moving along them with the agility of a russet squirrel, if such rodents weighed in excess of two hundred pounds.

One stout bough brought him to an adjoining tree. Doc launched himself out into space, and landed in the crown of this second tree. Both were maples. Working along, the bronze man got into a position where he could clear the intervening space between his perch and the gabled roof top.

“Tarzan couldn’t have done any better,” remarked Monk.

Landing on the slate roof, Doc found the cap-like tower and attempted entry. The single window would not open, so he employed the ornate carvings to clamber down, finally reaching the porch, which was also maroon, but appeared festooned with geometrical spiderwebs thanks to the ebony gingerbread ornamentation which hung all around the porch roof.

Going to the front door, Doc tried it cautiously—giving it a push, hesitating momentarily, as if chary of reentering the grotesque and demonstrably unpredictable domicile.

Then Doc entered, vanishing from view.

It was some minutes before he returned to wave his waiting men to come ahead.

“I don’t like this,” Renny grunted dubiously.

“Yeah, what if—” Long Tom started to say.

“You mean, what if once we’re inside the house up and vanishes again?” Monk squeaked.

“That was my drift, yeah,” admitted the pale electrical wizard.

“Doc would not call for us unless he had first defeated that problem,” snapped Ham Brooks.

Nevertheless, they approached with caution, such as would men infiltrating an enemy fortification.

By the time the group reached the wraparound porch, Doc had withdrawn deep into the interior of the gloomy dwelling.

Not shy around danger, Monk barged in first.

“Hey!” he said, catching himself on the threshold of the entry.

“Watch the step,” came the vibrant voice of Doc Savage.

Turning, Monk warned, “You have to step up into this joint.”

Renny came next and found that this was true. The entryway was elevated—raised one step.

They shouldered through an unnecessarily narrow foyer and then walked into an octagonal room meant for parlor furnishings.

The room was strange. For one thing, it seemed smaller than it should be. They experienced a distinct claustrophobic sensation. The wallpaper was antiquated, colors faded and yellow as old cotton. There was a decorative strip of floral wallpaper running along the top of the wall, all the way around, of a different pattern than the main wall covering.

After a while, Renny, who understood architecture, boomed, “These durn walls are built too thick.”

“What do you mean—too thick?” challenged Monk. “They’re just walls, right?”

Johnny Littlejohn had extracted his monocle magnifier and was examining the pattern of the ancient yellowing wallpaper and added, “A thickness of utmost extremity.”

“Whatcha mean?” asked Monk.

“Johnny means,” inserted Doc Savage, “that the walls are built to the specifications of a concrete blockhouse—nearly two feet deep.”

“What the heck for?” wondered Long Tom.

The question hung in the air unanswered.

There were no furnishings. Not a stick of furniture stood anywhere. Victorian homes of that era were usually populated by overstuffed chairs and other heavy appointments. Highboys, china cabinets and the like. This parlor area had none of those. The polished pine floor was scratched and dusty.