Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (33 page)

“A midget fitting that description was pulled over for—you won’t believe this—driving without a license over in Elmer. He gave a story and was released when a friend came and bailed him out. This midget skipped out on his bail and hasn’t been seen since.”

“What was this midget’s name?”

“Called himself Monzingo Baldwin. Think they are the same midget?”

“I know they are the same midget,” replied Doc.

“Bad actor?”

“The very worst,” said Long Tom, who now had a good idea who the murderous midget was.

Chapter XXXIII

THE SCARED SAINT

SOME TIME LATER, Gulliver Greene lowered Saint Pete beside a willow tree at the edge of the valley, then removed her gag. She told him that Spook Davis and Christopher Columbus were probably going to be taken away to a secret hideout by Cass’ men.

The remaining rain made some sound; the water running in a nearby ditch was more noisy. The thunder seemed very far away now, and no lightning of consequence had happened for some minutes.

They were hunkered down under a group of sheltering willows. Pete was still bound.

“You might free me,” the girl suggested.

Gull untied her. Her cinnamon-colored tresses were all fluffy, as naturally curling hair becomes when the weather is damp. They talked in low voices, pausing often to listen intently for danger, and Gull gave her a brief synopsis of what had happened, touching particularly on one point that mystified him—how had he been discovered?

Saint Pete clarified that.

“The Saint you tried to deceive at the speakers’ stand has extrasensory perception,” the girl said calmly.

Gull crouched on his heels, and his fingers found a blade of grass in the darkness and slowly picked it into pieces, rolled the fragments into little lumps and flipped them away. He ran his fingers through his hair, got them greasy with the mess of burnt cork and grease, wiped them thoughtfully on the grass, then shook his head. He was not going to surrender his convictions that there was no such thing as a genuine mind-reader.

The girl rested a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly. “I should have told you the truth, as much as I knew, when we met last night. But they had promised to kill Chris—my adopted father—if I went to the police, or talked to anyone about it.”

“What are Cass and his gang doing with these traveling units of the Silent Saints?” Gull asked quickly.

Pete said she did not know. The only information she had in addition to what Christopher Columbus had known was that one of the units had returned today, and one of the Cass men had brought a small package for his chief. She had no idea of the contents. This verified what Gull had surmised from observation during the day.

By now, the hubbub around the Promised Land had died down. Once, Gull heard a searching party go prowling near, but it was dark in the woods. And they were not found.

“They got away with Spook,” Gull said. There was not much of anything in his voice. “I looked over the crowd but Braggs—Spook—none of them were there.”

After that, Gull announced his determination to rescue Spook. Saint Pete thought Spook Davis and Christopher Columbus would be kept alive, although she was not sure. Her reason for thinking they might be was simply that Cass might try to use their safety as a threat to keep Gull and Pete from going to the police.

“Then we’ll go to the police right now!” Gull said abruptly.

Pete spoke softly, explaining something else. Cass had not been idle, but had perfected his murder frame against Gull—two of Cass’ men stood ready to take the witness stand and swear they had seen Gull knife the telegraph operator, and had heard him threaten to kill old Box Daniels.

Gull, thinking that over, decided to risk it. He planned at first to go alone, and try to free Spook and Columbus. Saint Pete dissented. They argued at some length, and the girl flatly refused to be left behind. She showed more determination than Gull cared for.

During their wait, the doors of the big white hangar opened, and out trundled a very large tri-motor seaplane, under power.

It slid into the water, pulled a wake behind it, and took to the sky, bawling over the steady rain.

“What do you want to bet that Spook and the others are on that thing?” gulped Gull.

“I know they are,” sobbed Saint Pete. “And I know where they are going.”

Gull could see from her wracking shoulders the truth of the girl’s words.

“I’ve been wrong before,” Gull said at last. “But I’m a hunch player. My hunch right now is that you are all right, but somebody happens to hold the means of making you do what they order.” He paused, then added more earnestly. “How about a little ball playing? I’ve got to find old Spook—if it isn’t too late.”

“Ball playing it is,” the girl said suddenly, wildly. Then both her small arms were fastened tightly upon his arm. “We’ve got to secure a plane, to get to where they’ll take our friends.”

“Plane?”

“I’ll explain while we’re flying. It will be a long trip.”

“Where can we get a plane?” asked Gull.

“You are wanted in Missouri, but they may not be looking for you over in Illinois. We might get one there.”

Gulliver eyed her. “But what will we use for money?”

“Dollars. They didn’t rob me.”

As proof, she produced a plump wad of greenbacks from somewhere in her coarse burlap frock.

Seeing this, Gull whistled low and slow.

THE MOON peeked a silver eye between two close-packed clouds. It was the first time Gulliver Greene had ever noticed any malevolent quality about the lunar sphere which is supposed to mean so much to lovers and superstitious farmers who plant their potatoes in its dark or its light.

They moved to the lake shore, discovered there was enough moonlight to make it impossible to escape the area unobserved, and waited, hoping the clouds would thicken. There was nothing else to do.

Eventually, a storm front rolled in and darkness swallowed everything.

They made one short foray and discovered a canoe in a rough boathouse, which belonged to the Promised Land property.

They used this to paddle away through the sprawl of water that was Lake of the Ozarks. They failed to see the abandoned amphibian plane that lay anchored some miles distant in another neck of water, never imagining a second plane being present, for the noise of its landing had been swallowed by the elemental storm.

Reaching land, they made their way to a small town, where they secured a lift to a larger town over in Illinois, where it was possible to rent a small plane. They did so.

There ensued a small argument over who would fly the plane. As it turned out, they were both licensed pilots, but Saint Pete had racked up more hours in the air, so that won her the argument. Gull had only fooled around with flying during his palmier days.

She sent the neat yellow crate scooting along the runway and into the air as sweet as any man.

Gull relaxed. After some time, he went into the mind-reading subject again. It bothered him. Being a professional magician who dealt in fakery, he could not credit mind-reading as being anything but fakery. As a matter of fact, he could do an excellent job of it himself, beginning with the old trick of divining questions which the audience wrote and sealed in envelopes.
⁷

He assured Pete as such, and reminded her that Christopher Columbus had stated she had extrasensory perception to some extent. She astonished him by quietly admitting that she did.

“Now listen,” Gull said doubtfully. “Are you trying to tell me you can sense what I am thinking?”

“To some extent. I haven’t the ability of some of Cass’ men.”

Gulliver fell silent.

There really isn’t any such thing as a genuine mind-reader, Gull assured himself. The next instant the doubt he had pushed out of his mind jumped back and slapped him with what had happened in the past, proving with almost undeniable certainty that this girl could tell exactly what he was thinking.

But I’m certainly wacky about her in spite of it all,
Gulliver thought.

“Oh!”
said Saint Pete.

Blast the luck,
Gull reflected.
She can tell what I’m thinking. Her tone when she said, “Oh,” showed she could.

“Hadn’t you better get your mind on our troubles?” Saint Pete suggested.

“Uh—maybe so,” Gull agreed sheepishly. “Say—
our
troubles! What do you mean—”

“Why do you think they were holding me a prisoner?” the young woman countered.

“That has me baffled, like a lot of things.”

They were out of the rain now, and effulgent moonlight turned the wings silver. It was still very dark. Neither of them seemed to have much appetite for conversation until Saint Pete began speaking.

“I founded the Silent Saints five years ago. I intended it to be a small group. But Cass joined. Ivan Cass—and he had plenty of money. He seemed sincere. We expanded. Now the Silent Saints are all over the country. And now—now they’re not—spreading our belief. I mean—that is not our real purpose.”

Gull watched her. She was speaking jerkily.

“Go on,” he said.

“Cass introduced many new Silent Saints. They are his men. I did not know what was going on. I never knew until—well—”

“Well? What went on until which happened?”

She skipped that. “Your Uncle Box Daniels worked for us,” she said. “He was in the tent business. We rented or bought our tents from him. Sometimes he traveled with us, for he dabbled in mind-reading. He found out, shortly after I myself learned of it.”

“Found out what?”

The plane sank on a down current, dipped a wing, and the girl moved the stick a little to level them out. The plane was a cabin job with a body like a barrel, low monoplane wing, and a big gas-eating motor. Pete did not answer Gull’s question directly.

“Poor Box Daniels was terrified,” she said. “He came to me. He wanted to go to Doc Savage.”

“Don’t mention that name to me,” muttered Gull, running agitated fingers through his greasy mess of hair.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“He’s the reason my hair turned white,” groused Gull.

Saint Pete stared at him, possibly searching for signs of insanity.

“Long story,” grumbled Gull. “Never mind.”

Saint Pete looked at him a long time as if trying to penetrate his thinking, then gave it up as a bad job. “I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let Box go to Doc Savage,” she continued quietly. “I couldn’t go to the police myself, for the same reason I couldn’t tell anyone. You think I’m crazy?”

“Sure,” Gull grinned. “Anybody does crazy things when they are made to do them against their will.”

She looked at him. “Thank you,” she said. And his heart turned over.

THEY gave attention to the compass and the dark earth below—it was still night. The line of beacons—the government lighted airline route between Chicago and Kansas City—became visible, and they followed these.

“Your Uncle Box thought of you,” Pete continued. “He had never met you, but he knew all about you. He said you were one of the cleverest living magicians. He’d heard others say that.”

She sighed. “Well, Box Daniels decided to come to you for help. He sent a telegram. But Cass overheard us. He must have had a dictograph planted—well, they stopped the telegram, killing the depot agent in doing so. Then they—murdered your uncle before he could talk to you. The telegram is destroyed by now, of course.”

Gulliver growled, “Cass showed me a telegram from Uncle Box, asking Cass to act as his bodyguard when he joined up with me in La Plata.”

“A fake, obviously. Designed to make you think Cass was a friend of your uncle.”

Gull made a face. “That means the anonymous note to Braggs was another fake, contrived to trick me into concluding that Uncle Box sent that one, too. They sure tried to surround me with hokum.”

“Evidently,” murmured Pete.

“I remember when I first met you,” Gull said, making it a question.

“I was trying to stop your Uncle Box Daniels from getting to you,” she explained. “I had to knock him out in the darkness in the filling station where you were working. You almost caught me then. Unfortunately, the little man who works with Cass took that opportunity to slay him.”

Gull nodded, for he had guessed that the midget was Cass’ main assassin. He asked, “What are the Silent Saints engaged in pulling?”

She only shook her head and after that remained silent, answering no more questions. But nearing Chicago, she said Ivan Cass wanted to take Christopher Columbus to a spot where he could be questioned at length, no doubt to the very spot for which she and Gull were headed. They would take Spook Davis there, too, from what she had heard.

“They’ll kill Spook,” Gull said with horrible conviction.

“No. Not as long as you are alive. After you told the police what had happened, they planned to threaten to kill Spook if you did not inform the police you had lied, and steer suspicion from the Silent Saints.”

“Oh,” Gull said, enlightened. “What about Harvell Braggs?”

“I never saw him until he turned up in La Plata. I don’t know much about him. But I can tell you that his story about Christopher Columbus stealing his property is a lie.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know it because the supposed theft occurred at Braggs’ island home in the Caribbean,” Pete said firmly. “And Christopher Columbus has not been in the Caribbean in a long time. A very, very long time,” she emphasized.

Gull looked at her, but her face was very vague in the tiny glow from the instruments. “That mind-reading of yours doesn’t hold all the way, does it?”

“Isn’t this what you mean—how did Cass deceive me?”

“Maybe.” He felt uncomfortable. But he wanted to know.

“It’s extrasensory perception, not mind-reading,” Saint Pete corrected.

“Oh. I thought they were the same thing.”

“They’re—not.” Gull was near enough to feel her shudder. She added, “Whatever ability I have is subconscious, beyond my control, and does not always work. It’s just that sometimes I seem to be able to tell exactly what people have on their minds.”