Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (21 page)

Chapter XX

THE HOUSE TERROR

DURING THE DIFFICULT march, Johnny Littlejohn was interrogating the ransomed white man.

“What is your name, fellow?”

“Herman. Herman Bunderson.”

“You are the inventor of the—”

The man shook his head violently. “No. I am not. I merely inherited the house. My grandfather, Method Gibbs, built the Time House, built it in the solitude of the forest and let the woods grow up around it so that civilization would not disturb it. He was a kind of a hermit. He died before he could finish experimenting with it.”

“Where do you fit into this picture?” asked Doc.

“I inherited the house, as I said. And with it my grandfather’s papers and complete instructions for the operation of the mechanism. I soon realized its potential and decided to use it to turn a profit.”

“A reasonable expectation,” mused Johnny.

By now Habeas’ squawling had abated. Or was the frightened shoat simply too far back in the woods to be heard?

“What if they slaughter him?” asked Johnny of Doc.

“They have just eaten breakfast. Habeas will no doubt be saved for a feast.”

“He’s on the lean side,” Johnny pointed out. “Not much meat to go around.”

“Big Neck has been reunited with his warriors,” added Doc. “They will have a feast. That gives us a few hours to work things out.”

“What happened to him?” Herman Bunderson asked of Doc Savage, indicating insensate Monk Mayfair, draped over one brawny bronze shoulder.

“Anesthetic gas. He will come around soon enough.”

Bunderson swallowed, making his prominent Adam’s apple bob. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

“It was the sensible thing to do,” said Doc casually, as if it were a small favor. “Continue with your story.”

“It is incredible,” warned Bunderson. “You may not believe much of it.”

“We are Twentieth Century men walking through Nineteenth Century Missouri,” reminded Johnny. “Of course we will believe you.”

“There is more to this story than Big Neck. Much more.”

“We are very interested in hearing it,” encouraged Doc.

Herman Bunderson was silent for a very long time. Then he spoke.

“What if I told you that Christopher Columbus was alive in our time?”

Doc Savage halted. His trilling began, subtle at first, but rising in cadence like agitated cicadas stirring to life. The low, indefinable sound caused Herman Bunderson to inspect his gangling person for inquisitive bees.

Setting down Monk Mayfair, Doc faced Bunderson, his golden eyes becoming very animated.

“Speak plainly,” he suggested. His voice was strange, metallic, almost brittle.

“Big Neck was not the first person conveyed from the historic past to the Twentieth Century,” Bunderson said flatly.

Johnny Littlejohn became strangely excited, so much so he forgot to formulate any of his amazing jawbreaker words. “Do you mean to tell us that the discoverer of America is alive in our era?”

“I am saying exactly that. I can’t prove that the man I speak of is actually Columbus, but I am convinced that he is the famous historical figure.”

Turning to Doc, Johnny said, “We must return to our time as quickly as possible. I must meet this man. There are so many unanswered questions—”

Doc Savage cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“There is still the matter of Monk and Habeas.”

Johnny got himself composed with difficulty. “Of course. What is your plan?”

“I would awaken Monk, but he would be difficult to control. You remain here, guarding him.”

Addressing Herman Bunderson, Doc asked, “How long until the house returns to its own time?”

“When did you arrive?”

Doc glanced at the position of the rising sun. “Two hours ago.”

“In that case, you have fifty minutes.”

A flicker of concern touched Doc’s metallic features.

“Then there is no time to waste,” he rapped. “Johnny, if I do not return in time, revive Monk with this”—the bronze man pressed into Johnny’s long-fingered hand a vial of his powerful chemical restorative—“then enter the house.”

“What about you?”

“Send the house back again,” continued Doc, “and I will catch it the next time it appears in this year.” He was so matter-of-fact about it that the bronze giant might have been talking about catching a later train.

Johnny nodded. He appeared fidgety—a certain sign that he was uncomfortable with the bronze man’s plan. But he said nothing. He trusted Doc Savage implicitly.

Doc then left the forest path and began moving from tree to tree in a manner that brought to mind a stalking woodland animal. He was soon obscured by the close-packed arboreal trunks.

After Doc was lost from sight, Johnny faced Herman Bunderson. “Tell me more about the man you believe to be Christopher Columbus….”

DOC SAVAGE filtered through the woods on bare feet. He had unlaced his shoes and hung them about his neck by tying the shoelaces together, preferring to move with the greatest stealth.

He found the river and waded in. This way, he left no track.

Wise in the ways of the Iowan tribe—at least, as its lore had come down to the Twentieth Century—the bronze man knew that after breakfast, they would bathe in the nearest body of water.

There were several hereabouts. Bear Creek. Titus Creek. The Chariton River. The latter seemed to be the most profitable place to start.

Wading for a time, Doc scanned the surroundings, sniffing the air constantly. He was as likely to scent a body of Big Necks as spot them from a distance, and he had no appetite to face Iowan arrows.

The bronze man’s first surmise proved to be inaccurate. Nowhere along the banks of the creek did he come upon bathing Indians.

When he reached a point upwind of the Big Neck camp, Doc left the water and began moving through the forest. Here hickory and walnut trees seemed most plentiful. They were full of bushy-tailed squirrels, busy making nests.

A few scolded the big bronze man as he passed in their midst, but there was no helping that. Nor much harm in it, either. Squirrels would scold a beaver as readily as a foraging bear. The ruckus would not alarm the camp.

Finally, Doc reached the encampment. He watched from concealment of a clump of thick buckbrush.

Had this been an Iowan homestead, women would have been left behind to guard the food stores, but Big Neck had led a small hunting party into Missouri, far from their home preserves. So there were no women.

The camp appeared deserted.

Doc stole up, his shoes knocking softly about his neck.

The pig, Habeas, had a distinct odor all his own. Monk the chemist kept him in a mud wallow back in his Wall Street penthouse. The wallow was scented, the better to make Habeas fit for human company.

Doc’s sensitive nostrils picked up Habeas’ perfumed odor. He moved in that direction, soon came upon the ungainly shoat.

Habeas had been staked to the ground, a rawhide thong looped about one rear leg. He was attempting to chew through it.

Stealing up behind the busy porker, the bronze giant clamped a cabled hand over the porker’s long snout to shut off any outcry of surprise.

“Hush, Habeas,” he whispered.

Overcome, the pig subsided.

Doc produced his knife, thus freeing the pig.

Cradling Habeas in both arms, Doc retreated to the river.

It had been surprisingly easy to recover the pig. But it was a long swing back to the strange house that moved through time.

Once in the water, Doc surged downstream, his muscular legs churning. The water slowed him down, but he did not wish to risk discovery.

Nor did he have to worry about that.

Far downstream, the bronze man caught the smell of something burning.

Golden eyes sweeping the tree tops, he sought its origin.

Burning wood produces distinctive odors. Dried oak smells a certain way, wet timber another. The smell of a burning house generates an unmistakable tang, partly because along with the wood burns paint, plaster and other man-made substances.

Acrid smoke reaching his lungs was unquestionably that of a burning domicile.

Wasting no time, Doc Savage plunged for the embankment and, pig tucked under one massive arm, raced for the weird old Victorian house.

To his alert ears came war whoops and the sounds of men in contention.

Fixing those sounds, Doc charged in that direction. He broke out of the trees to spy a party of Big Necks sending a sparkling cloud of arrows into the roof and outer walls of the overly ornate dwelling.

On the porch hunkered Johnny, the temporal experimenter, Herman Bunderson, and the unconscious Monk.

Big Neck himself was leading the war party, his scalplock jumping about his shaven skull like an excited thing.

Pointing in the direction of Doc Savage, he let out a howl, followed by a ripping string of words.

Translated, they meant that he had been justified in leading his scout party back to watch the white men depart. Their bronze chief had not been among them. This meant treachery.

The kicking pig in the bronze giant’s arms was proof of that charge.

There was no use arguing the point, Doc realized. He had been caught red-handed.

Doc came lunging out of the woods and the Big Necks turned, began loosing ordinary arrows in his specific direction.

Dodging and weaving, Doc Savage avoided the first wave of flint-tipped missiles.

He was forced to retreat a ways, then sweep around, using the more substantial tree trunks for shields. They began collecting quivering arrows. The repetitive sound of their thudding was unpleasant.

The open space between himself and the looming house was deep. It would be difficult to cross safely under fire, Doc judged.

From the porch, Johnny was calling, “Doc—hurry!”

The bronze man’s eyes went to the morning sky. He saw the position of the sun, and instantly calculated the time.

The house was scheduled to lurch forward to the Twentieth Century any moment now.

Big Neck wasn’t waiting for that. He had fashioned a firebrand out of a bough of hickory and a bunch of dried grass. With a flint striker, he got it blazing.

Using this, the Iowa chief was lighting the back of the house where those waiting on the porch could not see him.

Doc called out, “Behind you! Torch!”

Hearing this, Johnny looked stricken. His eyes widened. He was frantically waving Doc to come ahead.

Then the burning beet-colored domicile vanished from sight—leaving only a sharp spiral of smoke that behaved as if alive in the inrushing breeze that sought to fill a sudden vacuum.

Soon enough, the curl of smoke melted away like a gray ghost dissolving into eternity.

Chapter XXI

FRIGHTENED FAT MAN

THUNDER GRUNTED WEAKLY in the distance and the last leakage of the rainstorm came splashing down on Gulliver Greene as he stood outside the trailer door, listening and staring toward the nearest houses of the small northeast Missouri farm town of La Plata.

“I tell you we’ve got that long-haired zombie!” Spook Davis yelled excitedly inside the trailer.

The stormy night held no trace of Ivan Cass or his mind-readers—if they really were mind-readers—led by the little fellow with the big voice. They must have left town, taking Saint Pete, the puzzling redheaded girl who was afraid to tell anything. The little Missouri town slept peacefully in the wet night.

“It’s Christopher Columbus, all right!” Spook whooped. “He’s sure a zombie, if you ask me.”

Gulliver said, “I don’t feel ripe for any more crazy stuff.”

He was not, for some reason, particularly anxious to climb into the trailer and look. He felt confused by things happening which were apparently impossible. Cass’ men seemingly were mind-readers, for it was their mind-reading that had been partially responsible for Gulliver’s disaster when he tried to capture them. Gull did not believe in mind-readers. Gulliver Greene—stage name The Great Gulliver—did not believe in mediums, clairvoyants, or crystal gazers; he took no stock at all in numerology, astrology, or palmistry. He was convinced he could duplicate anything they could do with cleverness, just as he made the impossible happen with magical trickery. Anyone who believed such pap was weak in the head.

But Cass’ mind-readers had baffled him. And there was Christopher Columbus. Harvell Braggs, the bombastic fat man, insisted his Columbus artifacts had been stolen by a man who was the genuine Christopher Columbus who discovered America. Saint Pete had said likewise. Such stuff was harder to credit than the belief that there might be genuine mind-readers.

Confusing also was his inability as yet to find out just what Ivan Cass and his mind-readers were doing that was so big and profitable that they had slain old Box Daniels to keep him from divulging its nature. Tried to kill Gulliver and Spook, too, merely because they were trying to ferret out the truth. And baffling likewise were the Silent Saints, their so-called Promised Land, and their connection with the affair. The Promised Land was situated near Lake of the Ozarks, in south Missouri. He knew that much, at least, because it said so in poor Box Daniels’ telegram which Gulliver had in his pocket.

Gulliver shook his head and said, “Maybe you should be cutting paper dolls, Greene.” He got into the trailer, and was tall enough that he had to duck as he did so.

“Meet Christopher Columbus,” Spook Davis said dryly.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS lay on the floor. He was dressed in plain coarse dark burlap cloth, and the suit had black buttons and was too big for him. He was a long thing with lots of bones, a thinly ascetic face, a high forehead, a lean and firm mouth. His wealth of brown hair lent a queer quality of antiquity to his quaint appearance. The eyes were brown. Open, fixed and staring. They were weird eyes, or rather, they were in a glassy condition. The entire visage of the man was unpleasantly bloodless, as were his long-fingered hands.

“Uh—hello,” Gulliver said tentatively.

The pale man on the floor did not respond with movement or sound. Except for the stirring of his chest, he looked dead.