Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (35 page)

Saint Pete seemed to be reading his thoughts again.

“You do not entirely approve of the work that we do, do you?”

Gull assembled his words carefully.

“Preachers come in all varieties, I guess. Nine out of ten are earnest and really pay their way by persuading people not to be so danged ornery. But the tenth, a fake, comes along claiming to be God or somebody, makes a lot of susceptible people believe him, then takes advantage of them.”

“The Silent Saints are a good, wholesome organization,” Pete insisted. “Or they were until Ivan Cass came along.”

A thought struck Gull. He put it into words.

“Why do you call yourselves the Silent Saints?”

“We believe in a time to come where men and women will communicate without sinful words, as we do. By telepathy.”

Gull frowned. “What’s so sinful about words?”

“Words can be used to hurt, confuse and deceive,” Pete said firmly. “Thought is pure. Silence is golden. We are the Silent Saints who embody the Golden Rule.”

Gull didn’t know what to make of all that, so he fell into a pensive silence.

Completing a second pass, Gulliver saw that the lake chop remained rugged—too rugged for any but a powered landing.

“We’ll have to chance they don’t hear our motor,” he said at last.

The girl nodded. Her knuckles were turning white.

Gull shut off the plane motor and turned the craft into the wind. He pulled two life preservers out of their clips and had the girl put one on, donned one himself. His lips were thin. He didn’t like a landing on the lake; it would be rough, judging from the way the wind was rolling the fog along. But their safest procedure was to land two or three miles to the windward side of the island and let the wind blow them down silently to it in the fog. Uneasy, he worked the self-starter, thankful the motor had one, and got the propeller turning over slowly. The advantage of the motor power was worth the small chance that the noise of the exhaust might be heard. They were in the fog now. He set himself. His teeth felt like steel ball bearings against each other. If they cracked up in the waves….

They didn’t.

GULLIVER shut off the motor and they removed the life preservers when Saint Pete told him quietly that she could swim. The girl was sober, thoughtful. He thought she was getting scared.

“It could get pretty rough,” he said. “Maybe I better land you on the Canada shore and come back alone.”

She looked at him, then away, and her small white teeth worried at her lips. “That isn’t it. I was just thinking how low I have been.”

“Low?”

The waves tossed the plane, making them sway and hang onto things.

“Of course,” Pete said. “You trusted me, and I have not trusted you, nor given any definite explanations of why I am acting this way.”

Gull suggested, “What you are trying to say is that I’m a sap for going it blind, for trusting you.”

“Something like that.” She was not looking at him. “I do not understand it.”

“Want me to explain?” he asked.

“I wish you would explain,” she said.

He took her in his arms then. He thought he would do it quickly, confidently, but found himself doing it slowly. She did not pull away, nor did her lips. The results were startling and wonderful….

The pitching of the plane unbalanced them in time, and Gull braced himself with his feet, held her more tightly.

“That’s the explanation,” he said huskily. “I wish you had asked for it a long time ago.”

“Dear… I’ve been reading your thoughts all night….”

Gull, after he had sampled her delicious lips a second time, murmured, “This mind-reading is really something….”

Waves smashing on the plane’s pontoons tore him out of his pink cloud. Gull hurriedly opened the plane door, got out on the wing. If it was a stony shore, they had an anchor—and it was. Working with frenzied haste, he rigged the tiny anchor. It seemed inadequate, but when he got it over the side, it dragged only a short distance—over rock, he could tell by the feel—then caught and held securely.

Gull paid out the line until the tail of the plane was only a few yards from shore, then made it fast to a pontoon strut.

Listening, he heard nothing. The water was no more than waist deep, he found, and they waded cautiously ashore. The stone was rat-colored, the rocks the same hue. Surf piling in made a great deal of noise, but he still heard nothing—at least no sound of danger.

The island lunged up steeply and was a labyrinth of brush and trees, with frequently a jutting rock ledge or a boulder as large as a house. A wild place, Gull reflected, but excellent concealment.

Still, its sheer desolation made him wonder if Pete could have made a mistake.

As if in answer to his doubts, Saint Pete suddenly said, “This is the place. I am certain of it.”

“Want to stay in the plane?” he asked.

“I want to go with you,” Pete said gently.

Gull started to climb, but the going was so awkward that he concluded to follow the beach around. If there was anything here, they would find signs of it near the water.

As they walked along, Gulliver decided to test the girl’s extrasensory faculties.

“Tell me what I am thinking about right now,” asked Gulliver firmly, mentally picturing a juicy orange.

The girl closed her eyes. Her pretty brow furrowed.

“I am seeing a color,” she began.

Gull said nothing. He did not wish to provide her help in any way. He knew that mentalists employed subtle clues to gain knowledge in situations such as this, often producing astounding, even uncanny, results.

Saint Pete’s next measured words stripped the composed look off Gull’s regular features and made the short hairs at the back of his neck stand up.

“You are thinking of a tangerine.”

Gull swallowed his exclamation of surprise. Taking hold of himself, he said flatly, “Wrong.”

The girl looked honestly chagrined. “I am sometimes wrong. Especially when I am nervous. Like now.”

“Well, you were completely wrong this time,” he said curtly.

“Let me try again,” Pete implored.

“Don’t bother. We have more serious stuff in front of us.”

“Well,
I
like that!” she huffed.

Taking her firmly in hand, Gulliver led Saint Pete into the underbrush. His palms were moist with perspiration and his mouth felt dry. It was not only the peril of the situation that made them so, he reflected. The girl had been half correct. It had rattled him. Contrarily, he did not want her to try again. What if she perceived completely correctly this time? A tangerine is not an orange, but it was uncomfortably close to one.

Inching forward, they moved along, eyes searching, heads swiveling in all directions, lest they be ambushed.

So when a pair of long gun barrels poked blunt snouts out of the brush at them from opposite directions, they were caught entirely unaware. Gull found himself looking at the cold dark eye of a Winchester rifle. Pointing at Saint Pete was a double-barreled shotgun.

“No movements, please,” a voice warned. “You are prisoners.”

“Can I say something?” Gulliver asked.

“Speak!”

Turning to Saint Pete, Gulliver demanded, “What happened to your extrasensory perception?”

Petella van Astor turned a shade of crimson and her blue eyes darted away, refusing his gaze.

“I was not in a receptive frame of mind,” she murmured defensively. “It doesn’t always work.”

“Excuses,” snapped Gulliver as he began to march toward the inland direction the two men were pointing out with their weapons.

Chapter XXXVI

AMNESIA

THE MISSOURI NIGHT sky looked like an avalanche as Doc Savage wheeled into the picturesque Ozark leg of the sprawling dragon of water created by the damming of the Osage River, known as Lake of the Ozarks.

Colossal storm clouds paraded across the sky like boulders cascading along in defiance of gravity. Blinding sheets of rain drummed across the roof and hood of the borrowed State Police machine. Windshield wipers worked valiantly, but visibility was a humorless jest.

Doc Savage had recovered his many-pocketed gadget vest back at the strange Victorian house and Long Tom took out his compact but complicated supermachine pistol to check the magazine indicator. Both men were reviewing their store of gadgets and ammunition.

Plainly, they believed a fight was in the offing.

Forked lightning bolts made a hot glare against the sky, died away, leaving only a reverberant rumble. Then the long stretch of thunder and lightning finally abated. This caused Habeas Corpus to climb out from under the back seat, where he had been hiding. His long ears were very sensitive, and loud noises naturally bothered him.

Doc climbed out of the vehicle, was immediately drenched, but had time to employ a collapsible monocular of his own devising. He trained the tiny telescope-like instrument upon the pontoon plane resting on the rain-worried water.

Doc sank back behind the wheel. “Renny’s plane,” he said.

“Any sign of our group?” asked Long Tom.

“None. And the door is ajar.”

“Renny and the others would never leave the door open—not in rain or any other kind of weather. That means they didn’t leave under their own power.”

“Precisely,” said Doc Savage.

“Secure the plane first?”

Doc considered. “No. It would give away our presence. We will attempt to infiltrate the Silent Saints. There is an excellent chance that our friends are being held captive there.”

“But where? Looks like it’s a regular circus campground.”

“That long structure has the look of an airplane hangar,” indicated Doc. “We will begin our reconnoiter there.”

The pounding, driving, slashing rain made it easier than it should have been. Easier from a standpoint of stealth, of course. Creeping into the encampment was simply a matter of braving the elements. All sensible inhabitants were indoors.

On the other hand, by the time Doc and Long Tom reached the hangar, their clothes were plastered to their bodies and they could barely see. Both men had whipped out protective gas-proof goggles to spare their eyes from the merciless precipitation, but the lenses had become so coated with water, visibility was difficult at best.

Reaching the door, Doc Savage paused.

He was an excellent reader of sign, but such clues required a better working environment than they had. Doc had looked for indications of men entering and leaving the hangar in recent hours, but the puddling rain defeated his scrutiny.

At the side door, he paused and sniffed at the air.

Even Long Tom smelled it.

“Airplane engine exhaust,” muttered Long Tom. “A plane took off from here in the last hour or so.”

Doc nodded. He had already spotted what appeared to be big hangar-type doors at the seaward end, cleverly constructed so as not to be detectable except under close inspection. The bronze man had his monocular out and manipulated the instrument until it was in the form of a small black periscope. This he used to peer into the hangar confines through a small crack in big lake-facing door.

“Empty,” he said.

They went in.

Lights were on—what few existed.

Doc moved around the interior, golden eyes roving, seeking all, missing nothing.

He stopped in a spot where the floor was spotted with machine oil.

There lay a silk handkerchief. Doc picked it up. It was monogrammed in fine stitching,
T.M.B.

“Theodore Marley Brooks,” Long Tom breathed, giving Ham Brooks’ full name.

Doc nodded. “No doubt Ham and the others were held here for a time, before being flown to another location.”

“But where?” asked Long Tom, looking around.

“We will endeavor to locate someone who knows,” Doc said grimly.

They pushed out into the rain. Lightning popped very close; they could almost hear its eerie sizzle, as if a bullwhip had coiled past and cracked.

It was very late and few lights were showing among the trailers and tents. No doubt the inhabitants of the evangelical group had turned in for the night, there being nothing better for them to do on such an elemental evening.

One rain-smothered light did call out to them.

It was a gray trailer parked a ways from the rest, unhitched from an automobile. They made a beeline for that, which exposed them to danger, but since no shelter existed in the sodden pasture, there was no avoiding it.

Stealing up on the metallic rump of the trailer, Doc got his periscope out again and used it to check the interior, moving from window to window.

There appeared to be no one inside, but it was difficult to be certain. The interior was broken into compartments, at least one portion of which had curtains drawn over its window.

Going to the door, Doc tested the latch. It surrendered. Long Tom thumbed off the safety of his supermachine pistol.

Easing the door open, Doc let Long Tom go first, since he could more effectively confront danger with his tiny rapid-firing pistol.

The puny electrical expert crept in, then looked around. Light showed camera equipment and other paraphernalia.

Doc was soon beside him. Employing the special finger sign language they all knew, they conversed.

E-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e s-t-u-f-f, signed Long Tom.

T-h-e-r-e i-s m-o-r-e h-e-r-e t-h-a-n m-e-e-t-s t-h-e e-y-e, returned Doc.

A wooden box invited their inspection. Doc lifted the lid, and for the briefest moment his eerie trilling was an ethereal sound under the sound of drumming rain.

M-u-r-d-e-r! Long Tom signaled.

Doc glanced around, indicated the camera and transit equipment. S-p-y r-i-n-g.

M-y i-d-e-a t-o-o.

They were still taking it all in when from behind them a deep croaking voice warned:

“This cannon is full of bullets and if you don’t freeze in your tracks, you will be, too.”

They turned only their heads, so as not to invite any lead.

Doc’s trilling became a wild thing then.

For standing in the doorway to what appeared to be a small compartment—they could now see had a tiny cot—stood a most remarkable man.