Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (32 page)

His clutching hands liked what they encountered, so he pulled what he fervently hoped was Saint Pete from the vehicle and bore her away as fast as his soggy feet could carry him.

Behind him, a rumbling commenced like a bowling ball careening down the road until a barrage of thundercracks remindful of monster tenpins scattering noisily smashed against his eardrums. He could not tell over the atmospheric detonations if Spook was following behind….

Chapter XXXII

TINY TRAIL

DOC SAVAGE EXAMINED the complicated gyroscopic astrolabe mechanism in the tower room of the strange old Victorian house in the Missouri wilderness.

“You did a credible job of restoring this,” he told Long Tom.

“It was mostly a rewiring job.” The puny electrical wizard kept staring at the bronze giant. He was garbed like an Indian, and his bronze hair, normally laying across his scalp like a skullcap, was longer than normal, showing signs of having been cut with a sharp tool by hand. But it was the beard that kept holding Long Tom’s gaze. He had seen Doc Savage unshaven before, but never with such a luxurious growth of beard. It was disconcerting.

Doc asked, “Are you certain that the temporal device will take us back to 1937?”

“The timer was engaged to land six months after our last visit, but there’s no telling about the return.”

Doc nodded. “We will chance it,” he said.

They called Herman Bunderson up to the tower. Doc conferred with the man, and the temporal return mechanism was reset and activated.

They waited. The mechanism kicked in and the familiar if distressing sensations of dislocation and visual impairment returned.

When their senses cleared up, an intense darkness filled the space—so black they might have landed in a void, and the fear that they had not returned to their rightful time fell over them like a frost.

Doc hurried down and stepped out onto the porch, seemed satisfied by what he beheld.

Long Tom joined him, and let out a sigh of relief. The familiar Missouri wilderness surrounded them. The air was cool, but not cold. The absence of snow was a welcome sight.

The moon-dusted sides of Doc Savage’s small airship tethered to a tree was the most welcome sight of all.

Doc said to Long Tom, “The others?”

“Gone searching for Christopher Columbus.”

Doc turned to Herman Bunderson. “Details, please.”

Bunderson again unburdened himself of the story he had earlier told Doc’s men. He included everything, from the accidental and unfortunate relocation of Christopher Columbus to the present, and the vain search for the missing discoverer of America.

At the end of it, Doc Savage was very quiet.

“Our problems seem to have multiplied,” he offered at last.

“We have to fetch Columbus back to his own time,” Long Tom stated.

“Without delay,” agreed Doc.

Doc gathered up the two things he had carried back from the year 1830, Habeas Corpus and the rough sack of heavy items.

“Take care of this until our return,” he instructed, handing the sack to Herman Bunderson.

The man blinked. “What is in this?”

“You might call it a downpayment of sorts.”

Bunderson looked momentarily blank. Doc Savage left him without elaborating.

“The gasbag looks to be in airworthy shape,” Long Tom remarked.

“What we need is an automobile,” said Doc.

After replenishing their supplies from the dirigible’s stores, Doc and Long Tom started off into the woods, seeking a way to reach the outside world, Habeas Corpus trotting happily after them.

Eventually, he found U.S. Highway 63, and for lack of a better plan, Doc Savage attempted to interest a motorist in picking them up.

However, the sight of his great buckskin-clad form and hirsute face caused all passersby to press harder on their gas pedals and accelerate away with alacrity.

“Maybe I had better stick my thumb out while you go hide behind something,” suggested Long Tom.

“Good thinking.” Doc slipped behind a shagbark hickory tree.

“What happened to your clothes?” asked Long Tom, as he listened for approaching traffic.

“Burned them, along with everything else. I lived off the land and stayed strictly away from people so as not to contaminate the era with my presence.”

“Makes sense,” grunted Long Tom, as a sedan blew by without stopping. “Ham found the message you carved in the rock.”

“I did that only last week, when I concluded that rescue was unlikely,” related the bronze man without emotion.

“That was why I had the timer set for January of 1830. I figured that was the safest way to go about it since your message said you’d already passed so much time in 1829.”

“There is no telling what would have resulted had you arrived before I carved that message,” Doc said quietly.

As luck would have it, the next vehicle to speed into view was a Missouri State Highway Patrol car.

Long Tom retracted his thumb and waved his thin arms wildly.

The car pulled over and a uniformed officer stepped out.

“What’s the matter, buddy?”

“I’m Long Tom Roberts, and this is Doc Savage. We need a lift, pronto.”

The bronze man stepped from behind his tree, looking like a forest wild man, Habeas the pig cradled in one mighty arm.

The uncouth sight caused the trooper to instinctively grab for his service pistol.

“It’s O.K.,” Long Tom interjected. “That is Doc. He’s been out camping.” Which was no lie—if one left out the year.

“Since when—January?” barked the trooper.

Long Tom produced his driver’s license, which settled part of it. Doc had no identity cards, but the trooper agreed to transport them to his barracks.

There, Doc Savage was fingerprinted and given use of a shower and a shaving kit while his prints were wirefotoed to Washington, D.C.

When he re-emerged, refreshed and close-shaven, wearing clothes Long Tom had gotten from a hunting store, he looked like Doc Savage once again.

The attitudes of the local minions of the law underwent a remarkable transformation. They all but asked the bronze man for his autograph.

“Anything we can do for you?” asked the Macon patrol officer in charge of the barracks. He had introduced himself as Captain Chase.

“The use of an automobile to start with.”

“Done. You know, we’ve been trying to reach you since the other day. There’s a body in the morgue that has a medallion on it, giving your name and telephone number. We left a telephone message on some funny contraption at your headquarters, in New York.”

“Who is the deceased?” asked Doc, interested.

“Box Daniels. Know him?”

“Yes. What happened to Box?”

“Someone bludgeoned him to death with a heavy shoe. We thought it was the handiwork of a woman known as Saint Pete, but as it turned out the finger of suspicion pointed to an out-of-work magician named Gulliver Greene, also called The Great Gulliver. I don’t suppose you know him as well?”

Doc Savage did not reply to that directly. Instead, he asked, “Have there been any other unusual events recently?”

The captain did not have to think long about that one.

“As a matter of fact, there is an unsolved killing in La Plata. The railroad depot telegraph operator up there was stabbed. We kinda have Gulliver figured for that as well.”

“Let’s start there.”

SOON, Doc Savage was at the scene of the first crime, the telegraph office in La Plata’s rail station. Fat Smith, now in charge of the railroad depot, told his side of the story, which amounted to less than nothing. He had missed the killer by several minutes.

The bronze man examined the tiger-cage office where the poor telegrapher had been working when stabbed to death.

Doc put his first question to Fat Smith.

“Was anything different when you returned that night of the slaying?”

“Yeah, poor Les was lying there with a knife wound in his ticker.”

“Beside that.”

Fat considered.

“Yeah. That stool over there was here instead.”

“Was it the operator’s habit to move the stool about?” asked Doc.

“It was nobody’s habit. I put it back to where it belonged.”

Those who worked with Doc Savage grew accustomed to the bronze man pulling any number of unexpected items from his equipment vest. These ranged from a fingerprint kit to a surgeon’s scalpel. The contents of this vest were often changed, depending upon the circumstances Doc expected to encounter. As it happened, he was temporarily embarrassed. He packed no fingerprint kit.

Doc took a mechanical pencil from a holder, removed the thin lead, and crushed it to a powder on the counter. Scooping up the resultant dust onto a sheet of paper, the bronze man sprinkled these grains over the stool. Then he blew away the powder, leaving a grayish residue.

The Highway Patrol captain peered down at two blurry marks.

“Looks as if a child stood there,” he commented.

“We don’t allow no children into the place,” insisted Fat Smith.

Captain Chase inserted, “There was talk of a dwarf mixed up in it somehow. But we never found any dwarf, so we figured it was a story made up to throw us off the scent.”

“Was any motive for the killing established?” asked Doc Savage.

“This is where the two killings seem to tie in together,” reported the captain. “A telegram addressed to this Gulliver Greene went missing. It was from Box Daniels, who is supposed to be Greene’s uncle.”

“Was the telegram recovered?” asked Doc.

“Not that we ever heard. This Gulliver claimed that he saw part of it, but that it didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Seems the wire contained some wild talk about Christopher Columbus still being alive and kicking.”

Doc Savage got his trilling under control before much sound escaped his firm lips, but it was a near thing. Long Tom made a growling noise, which he covered by patting his stomach, as if famished.

“We figured that was a story the killer concocted on the fly,” continued Captain Chase. “Nervous crooks often grab at the first thing that comes into their mind, and with the new federal holiday and all just around the corner— Well, it made him sound guilty as hell.”

Doc regarded the State Highway Patrol officer steadily. “I would like to see the bodies.”

“Of course, Mr. Savage.”

THE COUNTY MORTUARY in Macon was not a cheery place. Too, it smelled of sanitized death. They rolled out the body of old Box Daniels first, which rested on a porcelain drawer. Doc examined the head wound and found nothing of special interest.

Next, the steel-faced drawer housing the late telegraph operator came sliding out, revealing the man’s still, pale features.

Doc stripped open the corpse’s shirt and examined the wound carefully.

“A three-cornered knife did this.”

The captain nodded. “Yeah. We have the knife. That Gulliver tried to hide it in a tree by the gas station where he worked, but one of my men discovered it. Had his fingerprints on it.”

“The angle of the entry wound is unusual.”

“Unusual how?”

“An average-sized man will bring a knife downward or plunge it straight into the heart. This wound shows an upward thrust.”

“Meaning what?”

“A very small man committed this murder.”

“You saying this Greene fellow is innocent?”

“From what I know of Gulliver Greene,” insisted Doc, “he could not have possibly committed this or any other crime.”

The captain went out and made a telephone call. Coming back, he said, “Fingerprint expert tells me that they found a few prints that they figured came off a child, so these were ignored.”

“Those prints unquestionably belonged to the killer. Let me examine them.”

This took them to another place, and the prints—which had been lifted using graphite fingerprint powder and tape—were laid before Doc Savage.

His golden eyes came to rest on them. They had been very still up to this point. Now they began to whirl strangely.

From his parted lips came the trilling sound that marked his emotional state when agitated, or interested, or fascinated by something.

Doc was all three now.

Long Tom alone understood the significance of that sound.

“What did you learn, Doc?”

“The identity of the killer.”

AN urgency seized Doc Savage then. Turning to Long Tom, he said, “Many things are tied together that did not seem so when we first came to Missouri.”

“Right,” said Long Tom, who didn’t actually follow the bronze man’s trend of thought at all.

Addressing the captain, Doc asked, “Know anything of a midget in these parts? I do not mean a dwarf, but a true midget—a miniature man standing about three feet tall.”

Rubbing his jaw, Captain Chase considered.

“About a year ago, we picked up a petty thief going by the name of Daniel Dill. We thought the name was funny.”

“How so?”

“Well, he was so small he reminded us of a dill pickle. That was the joke we all told.”

“This is no joke,” said Doc grimly. “Where is Dill now?”

“Served thirty days in the county cooler for lifting Judge Lambert’s wallet, then released. Haven’t seen or heard of him since.”

“We must find Daniel Dill,” Doc told Long Tom.

Bafflement twisted Long Tom’s features. “What about the other fellow—you know, that missing seaman we’ve been hearing stories about?” he asked, picking his words carefully.

Some of his natural bronze coloring seemed to have gone out of the bronze man’s rugged features. It could not be said that Doc grew pale, but the loss of healthy hue was noticeable.

“It is difficult,” he said, “to tell which trail is more urgent.”

A slow light of understanding came into Long Tom’s pale eyes. He started to whistle, low and amazed, but at a sharp look from Doc, he cut himself off. Obviously, Doc did not wish to rouse Captain Chase’s curiosity in the matter of the missing Christopher Columbus.

Doc addressed Captain Chase, “Flash the surrounding towns,” he instructed. “See if you can find any record of Daniel Dill, or someone matching his description.”

The captain all but saluted. He came back with a simple typed report.