Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (24 page)

The five Doc Savage assistants swapped strange glances. No word was spoken. None needed to be. All understood what the bronze man who had led them into countless battles would wish them to do in the present circumstances.

Long Tom spoke up. “I’d better stay here and tinker with the confounded time contraption while the rest of you run down Christopher Columbus.”

They began laying plans for their first campaign without Doc Savage. It produced in them a very hollow feeling.

Chapter XXIII

LUCK, AND LEGERDEMAIN

GULLIVER PICKED UP the rope, a part of which he had used to tie Christopher Columbus. No one said anything. Gull handled the rope slowly—it was a heavy rope, evidently kept in the trailer for towing purposes. He tied a knot in the end, then made a noose, which he ran out cowboy fashion.

He flipped the noose over Harvell Braggs’ plump pink hands and jerked it tight, holding the lardy man’s arms to his sides.

Braggs yelled, “What—you can’t—what—?”

“I’m kind of losing my temper,” gritted Gull.

“You—you’re insane!” Braggs howled.

“I’m afraid of that, too,” admitted Gull, “if this keeps up.”

Braggs began to struggle. Gull threw extra loops about him. Spook Davis helped. They all fell to the floor and ruined a camp chair, but Braggs was finally tied.

Braggs’ flabby suet seemed about to burst out of his skin, “Young man, I’m determined to recover my Columbus collection. Such foolishness as this will not deter me!”

“At least it will keep you from telling the police where they can find me,” Gull suggested.

Braggs roared, “Do you two scamps know where my relics can be found?”

“Bang! G-r-r-r! Boo!” barked Spook Davis.

Braggs gulped. “I say now, what provoked—”

“That’s all we know about anything,” Spook told him. “I could use more words, but it wouldn’t make it any clearer.”

Gull lifted Harvell Braggs, grunting, deciding the man must weigh well over three hundred pounds. The fellow felt soft all the way through. He stretched him out on the bunk, then straightened his own dark clothing, which fitted about as well as a gunnysack would have fitted.

Spook squinted at Gull. “Shall we search this bombastic behemoth?”

They searched him. There was a billfold containing currency, which Spook Davis examined with the appreciative remark that here was sure, “folding money, as the feller says.” The bills were large. In the pocketbook also were a number of cards from antique dealers in various parts of the United States and one from Madrid, two from Genoa, Italy, which they recalled was the birthplace of Christopher Columbus.

There was also a note, reading:

BRAGGS:

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

Harvell Braggs had shown this unsigned missive to Gull earlier in the night, explaining that it accounted for his coming to see The Great Gulliver. Why the man should get such a note, Gull couldn’t understand.

“As usual, we’ve learned nothing,” Spook complained. “What do we do next?”

Gull studied Spook Davis. “Want to give this mess up and clear out of the country?”

“Now you’re talking sense, boss!” Spook declared heartily. “I’m no hero.”

He sounded proud of it, rather than ashamed. Gull, recognizing some hardheaded common sense in Spook’s behavior, was himself generally cautious about thrusting himself into danger.

“I’m kind of mad,” Gull admitted at last.

“Eh?”

“Running wouldn’t clear that murder charge against us.”

Spook rubbed his jaw. “They couldn’t make that stick.”

Gull said, “We’re going to hunt up the Promised Land of these Silent Saints and see what hatches out.”

Spook groaned, “Aw—Holy Joe Dunninger, Gull—”

“You stay back here and watch our bulbous friend and this fellow who discovered America. I’ll drive.”

Spook Davis lifted his shoulders, and let them fall. “Why the hell don’t you tell the truth, Gull?”

“Truth?”

“It’s that girl!”

“You guess.”

“Ah, rats on this mystery business! Say, are we leaving here, or—”

Gull said grimly, “You ride in here and watch our sleeping prize.”

“Me ride—hey! Hey, we’re not taking this trailer.”

“We’ll have to have some way to move the sleeper, so we might as well take trailer, coupé and everything.”

“Will wonders never cease,” Spook opined.

THE COUPÉ was black, new and efficient. It needed most of the efficiency in getting out of the muddy vacant lot. Gull turned south, drove a while, then hunted for road maps, found one, and from it learned that Lake of the Ozarks was close to a hundred and fifty miles almost directly south.

He felt no great certainty that he was making the right move. Old Box Daniels’ telegram had advised that Doc Savage be asked to investigate the Silent Saints and their Promised Land located near Lake of the Ozarks, which indicated something worth looking into. Furthermore, the police were hunting for Gull and Spook in this part of Missouri. And finally, all visible leads in this direction had evaporated with the flight of Cass and his men with the girl.

Gull watched the speedometer absently. Spook Davis had hit the truth in thinking Saint Pete was the real magnet drawing Gull into the affair. The girl was in difficulties. Gull sighed, recalling some of the exquisite features of the young woman. She was, he decided several times over, something worth going to a lot of trouble for.

The trailer rumbled along behind the coupé.

The gasoline gauge showed a tank nearly full, which was just as well, or they would have to draw on Harvell Braggs’ large bankroll. Gull and Spook Davis were flatly broke, for the police had taken their slender stake.

The coupé and trailer approached a brightly lighted highway intersection outside the town of Macon, but got through without anything happening. It was still raining a little.

There was a dash clock on the coupé. It said the hour was well past midnight.

Exactly one more hour had elapsed when Gull heard Harvell Braggs’s voice bawling from the trailer. He stopped and looked back. It was very dark.

“He fell out!” Bragg’s voice roared from the trailer window.

“What—?”

“Spook—fell out of the trailer!”

Apprehension crowded a mass into Gull’s throat. He’d been driving fast—anyone who fell out at that speed could hardly escape injury. He pitched out of the cab, ran for the trailer.

He ran into the hard muzzle of the shotgun in the fat hands of Harvell Braggs, who stood in the night beside the trailer.

“Just act sensibly,” the huge man advised.

“But Spook—”

“Spook thought I fainted and untied me so I could knock him senseless,” said Harvell Braggs happily. “He’s still in the trailer.”

NOT because it was what he ached to do, but because it seemed the best idea at the moment, Gull lifted his hands. He would have brought a very low price if he sold at his present estimation of himself.

“With Cass’ gang, eh?” he accused.

“Not at all,” Harvell Braggs corrected hastily. “I have no interest in anything whatever except my precious Columbus items which were stolen.”

“Why this act, then?”

“Since you showed no interest in recovering my antiques, I must proceed along those lines myself. I am capturing you, simply because it is necessary. The one I want is Christopher Columbus. I am going to make him tell me where the artifacts are, once he can talk.”

Gull said, “So you know he is drugged.”

“On the contrary, I do not know anything, but I did surmise as much.”

Braggs reached out cautiously, then slapped vigorously at armpits and belt line to make sure no weapons were hidden on Gull’s wiry person.

“I must say you are a solidly muscled young man,” he stated. “And now if you will kindly lie down—”

Gull lay down. Harvell Braggs reached into the trailer for the rope. By that time, Spook Davis was groaning inside the trailer.

“Get your friend out,” Braggs directed. “And tie him securely.”

Gull did this, working in silence. Spook Davis awakened in the midst of the binding operation, emitted an ear-splitting yell, which got him an admonishing kick in the ribs from Harvell Braggs. Spook became pale and silent, staring at the huge man’s shotgun.

Harvell Braggs himself tied Gull, then tested all the lashings. He picked up Gull and Spook and heaved them into the trailer, showing no great strength despite his enormous size.

“You whalephant!” Spook grated, mixing up his beasts.

Braggs gagged them both, saying, “Politeness is a quality which can be taught by force.”

He yanked up his trousers, bent to inspect Christopher Columbus, and slapped Columbus very hard several times with no results. Then, holding onto his belt, he got out of the trailer sidewise and closed the door. He locked the door. A moment later, the trailer was in motion.

Gull rolled over. He could roll. He butted Spook Davis with his head. Spook then took his hands out of the ropes which secured them, doing it as easily as if the ropes had not been tied. He wrenched his gag out, plucked away Gull’s gag, and began untying Gull’s wrists.

“Good thing that hippowalrus is ignorant of Chinese rope tricks,” Spook snorted.
⁴

He untied Gull, chuckling over the break the rotund man had given them in forcing Gull to tie Spook first, giving Gull a chance to employ the trick knot which Spook had freed so easily.

Gull said, “We just lay low now and see where our elephantine friend is going. He locked the door, anyhow, so we couldn’t get out without a rumpus.”

Gull and Spook Davis had plenty of time to exchange opinions in the three hours of steady driving which followed. About the only thing they decided upon for a certainty was that Harvell Braggs was going on to Lake of the Ozarks. They could tell that by looking out the windows.

Throughout the long drive, Christopher Columbus lay on the floor, moving only when the motion of the trailer threw him about. They untied him, and put a pillow under his head for greater comfort. The lurching of the trailer moved him off the pillow and Gull went over to replace the cushion.

“Gracias,”
Christopher Columbus said feebly.

Chapter XXIV

TRAIL TO TROUBLE

THEY LEFT DOC SAVAGE’S pocket dirigible tethered to a tree, should the bronze man return and have need of it, and trudged toward the emergency landing field where Renny’s plane was hangared.

During this woodland trek, they encountered a man.

The man was what might have been, in his younger days, styled an “elm peeler” or an “apple knocker.” The local term was Chariton tiger—a hillbilly, to most people born outside of Missouri. He was a knobby fellow with the rangy look of a dirt farmer.

He wore a frayed straw hat, farmer’s denim overalls and had a sprig of wheat clamped between his pinched lips. One cheek bulged from a plug of tobacco tucked behind it.

“Reckon you-all fellers are out for a stroll,” he remarked casually.

“Reckon we are,” returned Renny politely.

The man tipped his straw hat in passing and they continued on their way.

Monk happened to glance behind him after the old elm peeler.

The old man was in the process of pulling a long-barreled revolver out of the bib of his overalls.

“Ye-e-ow!”
Monk warned, yanking his supermachine pistol from its underarm holster.

The oldster spat a chew of tobacco from his mouth and redoubled his efforts to extract his weapon.

Ham waved his arms wildly. He was lost without his sword cane.

Casually, Johnny Littlejohn reached down and retrieved a sizable stone. He wound up and gave it an overhand pitch.

The stone smacked the old man in the forehead and down he went.

Monk growled, “I could have potted him before he got that thing loose.”

“An unnecessary expenditure of ordnance,” insisted Johnny, rushing to the fallen figure.

“Huh?” squeaked Monk, following him.

Renny thumped, “Johnny said that it would have been a waste of bullets.”

The straw-hatted one was not out cold, merely stunned.

Renny placed an oversized boot on the man’s scrawny chest and asked a question.

“Name?”

The man merely grunted. So Monk Mayfair reached down and took hold of a sunburned ear. He gave it a twist.

“I’ve seen Renny reduce a man’s ribs to kindling, just by shifting his weight,” he said.

The oldster spat out a brown stream of tobacco juice. With it came words.

“Buzz Harlan. They call me Pap—Pappy Buzz.”

“Pap!” exploded Monk. “Wasn’t that one of the names that flour-faced Wes Snow called before Big Neck scalped his friend?”

“The other was named Zeke,” supplied Ham.

“Zeke was a friend of mine,” muttered the oldster. “He worked for Mr. Bunderson, along with Wes and me.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Guarding his property. Keeping city slickers and outlanders clear of it.”

Johnny asked, “Did Bunderson explain why?”

“No. Why should he? He inherited the place and it needed looking after whenever he was away.”

Johnny frowned. “He was away—or the house was away?”

“House? That house has stood on that spot when most of the trees hereabouts were saplings.”

The man sounded insincere, so Renny pressed his Brobdingnagian foot onto the other’s sternum by way of expressing his displeasure. Cartilage crackled.

“That Wes Snow told us he poured the foundation only a few months back,” Renny remarked.

“Yeah,” chimed in Monk. “And when he told us that, the house wasn’t there.”

“We observed this with our own optics,” Johnny added.

The jig was up, so Pap Buzz decided to come clean.

“I don’t understand it all, but Mr. Bunderson was working on experiments in that house. Secret experiments. He didn’t tell us no more, except that we was to lie our heads off whenever anyone came around asking fool questions.”