Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (37 page)

No one was in sight, and they shuffled hurriedly into concealing brush.

“Don’t go in this direction!” Spook gulped. “The rest of their layout is down there. Couple of bungalows and some shacks. A fake fishing camp. That’s where I was being held.”

They changed their course and traveled in silence, mounting a short distance, then descending the opposite side of the small island, and shortly they were on a beach, not a very wide beach, but one that was smoothly packed, level, and rather long.

“Their flying field,” Spook said, indicating the graded beach.

Gull was astonished. “What? They have a plane here?”

“Sure. Two. Down this way. I hope to tell you to Merlin, this thing isn’t small. I think they keep the planes for a getaway.”

“Any idea exactly what Cass is up to?”

“Not yet. But it must be profitable.”

Gull examined Spook Davis and he had the feeling that he was staring in a mirror at himself, because of their nearly identical features and physical build, and due also to the twin uneasiness which each of them was registering. Like Gull, Spook was pale, bruised, and carried strain on his features.

“Want to try something with the planes?”

“Guess so,” Spook quavered. “It’s about time we did something.”

THE PLANES were not hidden, but stood on the beach openly. A man on guard with a rifle loafed beside one of them, and Gulliver and Spook held a whispered conference in the nearby brush, while the fog rolled about them, and the wind shook the underbrush.

“Guns!” Spook muttered, squinting. “Here’s where I go back.”

Gull caught him. “Take it easy. I don’t like guns any better than you do.”

“You’ve been acting,” Spook accused, “as if you loved to be shot at. I personally am not an odds fighter. I will go farther and say I am no fighter at all.”

“Let it slide.” Gull suggested a plan, and ended, “…and it’s the old conjuror’s trick of misdirection. Want to take a chance?”

“No,” Spook said shakily. “But I will.”

Spook crept away. A few minutes later, he appeared in the lake, drawing near the shore where the plane stood; he waded in and held his hands high in the air. The guard, seeing him, raised his rifle. Spook stopped, paralyzed by fright. He was supposed—according to Gull’s plan—to walk on out of the water, keeping the guard’s attention while Gull crept up behind the fellow. Spook couldn’t. He stood and shook; the shaking grew violent, his knees began to hinge so that he rose up and down foolishly, hunkering, a little lower each time, nearing a collapse…. Then Gull got close enough to hit the guard with the hard butt of his captured shotgun.

Spook came out of the water.

“Kuk-kill him?” he asked, so weakly he could hardly be understood.

Gull checked, said, “Out cold,” tightly, and seized upon the fallen man’s rifle. “Here,” he added, and offered the rifle to Spook.

Spook took the gun, but immediately began to shake and grow pale. He handed it back wildly. “You carry it!” he gulped.

Gull kept the weapon, then ran to the planes. They were big crafts, with three motors apiece, he noted. The motors were canvassed against the fog. Gull got the covers off one craft’s engines, then climbed into the cabin.

Spook started to get in after him.

“No!” Gull said sharply.

“Huh?” Then Spook understood. “Holy Houdini! If you think—I’ve had enough of this! I’ve had enough before it ever started. I won’t—”

Gull said, “Save it!” and began starting the motors. They caught readily, to his immense relief.

Spook grew frantic.

“There’s over a hundred of Cass’ men here!” he screamed. “They’ve got machine guns—bloodhounds—poison gas! They’ll kill us! Murder us! We can’t do anything against them!” He got more desperate. “We can’t—it’s suicide—no!
No!”

Gull yanked the throttles wide. He’d already set the controls and wedged them somewhat with cushions. The rest would have to be luck. He dived out of the plane and fell hard, for it was already traveling fast.

Spook Davis was running after the plane, still yelling. He stopped disgustedly when he reached Gull.

“If I get killed, it’s your fault,” he groaned.

“It’s the brush for us,” Gull said.

They ran into the brush.

The plane went booming down the beach, dragging its tail, bouncing and swaying and changing its direction a little; it hit a larger bump, jumped into the air, did not come down—it had taken off, no hand at the controls.

“Darn!” Gull breathed, realizing the craft was climbing too fast. It was sure to get out over the lake, nose up into a stall and crash—which was exactly what it did. But by that time, Ivan Cass and his men were on the beach. They had not been there, though, when Spook Davis said they were.

Gull eyed Spook where they crouched.

“I’m suh-sorry,” Spook whispered contritely.

Gull Greene sighed like a black cat at Halloween.

“Let’s just hope that Pete’s eerie intuition was correct and by some miracle Doc Savage finds his way to this miserable rock before it’s too late for us,” he said.

“Amen to that,” chattered Spook Davis, nervously counting the assortment of revolvers and rifles gripped in the hands of Cass’ men.

Chapter XXVIII

FEAR FLIGHT

THEY REACHED THE Lake of the Ozarks shore without complication, other than the discouraging feeling that they were melting in the clammy rain.

Doc carried Cadwiller Olden under one arm, as if he were a limp bundle of clothes. His tiny pink tongue protruded like a viper’s organ of taste.

They found a canoe upended on the beach, and tipped it upright, whereupon it began filling with rainwater.

Reaching the empty plane was a matter of rapid paddling before the rain swamped them. It was a near thing, however. They had to do some bailing with Long Tom’s hat.

Doc got on the wing, accepted Olden from Long Tom, and they entered, examining the cabin with their eyes.

The controls had not been damaged. Indeed, the plane showed no sign of having been rifled, other than the fact that there were no spare drums for supermachine pistols. That by itself might or might not be significant. The others were in the habit of filling their pockets with extra ammunition.

Still, a thought troubled them. Long Tom put it into words.

“If Monk and the rest ran afoul of a spy ring, that means a bunch of our unique machine pistols might have fallen into unfriendly hands.”

“Dictators in certain foreign capitals,” Doc Savage said, “have told their spy chiefs that acquiring one would be their greatest dream.”

Doc dropped into the control bucket while Long Tom went in search of dry clothes. He returned a moment later, wearing spare stuff that belonged to Renny Renwick, which swam on his undersized frame.

“Just until my own duds dry,” Long Tom assured Doc, settling into the co-pilot seat.

There was only one problem. No Rat Island could be found on any map or marine chart of the Great Lakes.

Doc Savage was not greatly surprised, for his astonishing memory had offered up no such place. If it could be found on a map, the bronze man knew where it lay.

“Think the little gink was lying through his teeth?” wondered Long Tom, jerking a thumb back at the cabin where Cadwiller Olden slept in a seat too big for him.

“Doubtful. He was very frightened.”

Doc Savage got on the radio and began contacting the local aviation authorities. To Long Tom’s surprise, he described a large three-engine aircraft of European manufacture, a bird unlikely to be seen in American skies.

“I wish any and all reports of such a craft,” requested the bronze man as he engaged the electro-inertia starters. The motors crashed into life, exhausts coughing noisily.

“How do you know they’re flying one of those crates?” wondered Long Tom.

“Back at the hangar, I noted spare parts that could only fit a seaplane of that type.”

Doc Savage got their plane rushing across the water, and up on step. Getting off the lake was problematic. The combined wind and downpour tended to push the fuselage down. Then there was the problem of water suction holding the pontoons down.

They solved the latter by rocking in their seats, which broke the suction seal, freeing the craft for flight.

Finally, the bronze giant got her aloft. Motors bawling, the plane turned north.

They flew across the Missouri State line and into Illinois. The foul weather was falling behind them, but it was not exactly a night for smooth air.

Before long, they received the requested report.

“No such plane sighted,”
Doc was told.

“Any unusual aerial activities tonight?”

“Yes. A man and a woman rented a crop-dusting crate in Quincy.”

“Quincy, Missouri, or Quincy, Illinois?” asked Doc.

“They rented one plane in Quincy, Illinois, and in Chicago acquired a larger seaplane. Said they were flying up to the Great Lakes.”

“Their names?”

“The renter said she was Petella van Astor. The man gave the name of Rico Verde.”

Doc thanked the official and signed off.

“Who are they?” asked Long Tom.

“Unless I miss my guess,” returned Doc Savage, “that is the evangelist known as Saint Pete and the other is an alias of Gulliver Greene, otherwise The Great Gulliver.”

“How do you know so much about that guy?”

“I have been following The Great Gulliver’s career for some time,” replied Doc. “It seems very likely that they are also headed for Rat Island.”

Long Tom grunted. Turning to look back at Cadwiller Olden sprawled wet and bedraggled on a seat, he said, “What do you think he is doing way out here? Looking for more of that Repel stuff?”

“Possibly. But it may be that in his amnesiac state, Olden wandered back to Missouri because he still possessed a fragmentary memory of this location.”

“What about the new name?”

“That same disordered thinking could have dredged up the last name of Baldwin from his subconscious. I do not think Cadwiller Olden remembers anything of what happened before he was supposed to have expired.”

“They never found that big black bodyguard of his, either.”

“Nero undoubtedly perished, otherwise he would be at Olden’s side.”

Long Tom said, “I wouldn’t want to encounter him again. He was a devil. Say, do you suppose Nero’s other name was Monzingo?”

Doc Savage said nothing. After an hour, he turned the controls over to his aide. For Cadwiller Olden was stirring.

Doc checked the midget’s wound, saw that the dressing was intact, and brought out an ampule of the chemical stimulant that never failed to rouse a person to wakefulness, broke it under his tiny nostrils.

Olden snapped awake as if shot a second time.

“Where—where am I?”

“En route to Rat Island,” advised Doc.

The midget licked his pink cupid lips. His eyes narrowed. Olden bared tiny teeth in what passed for a wolfish smile. “You’ll never get there in time.”

“The exact location of the island, if you please.”

“You think I would tell you that? In a pig’s eye!”

“The lives of my friends are at stake,” Doc said firmly.

The other made a swift motion as if zipping his mouth shut. “My lips are sealed.”

“Last chance,” warned Doc.

Olden pushed out his petulant lower lip and crossed both arms before his chest in the manner of a sulky toddler in a high chair refusing his creamed spinach.

Calmly, Doc Savage picked him up and carried the tiny man over to the cabin door, which he threw open.

Slipstream began howling. Cadwiller Olden matched it in intensity. His eyes became like round marbles.

“What are you doing, you brass-faced galoot?”

“Disposing of a useless nuisance,” said Doc, thrusting the miniature man out the door.

Tiny fingers clutched and clawed air. Cadwiller Olden let out a screech longer than he.

“I’ll tell! I’ll tell!” he bleated.

“Thank you,” said Doc, retracting the flailing midget and closing the door against the wind scream.

“You were going to hurl me to my death,” the other accused after Doc had dropped him into his seat.

“Possibly,” admitted Doc, who had no such intention.

Taking a seat, Doc began interrogating the amazingly small man.

In very short order, Cadwiller Olden told of waking up all alone, having been washed up on a lonely Long Island beach, with no clear memory of who he was or what he was doing, many months ago.

“A lady took pity on me, took me in, fed me good,” he related. “As soon as I felt better, I robbed her and ran away.”

“How did you reach Lake of the Ozarks?” asked Doc.

Olden upended a minute thumb. “Hitchhiked, rode the rails, lived in hobo camps. Did anything I could.”

“Why Missouri?”

Olden made faces, as if struggling to cudgel memories out of his brain. “I remembered it for some reason. It seemed important. I think I might have grown up there.”

“You did not grow up in the Ozark Mountains,” corrected Doc Savage.

“No? Then why did I—”

“Continue with your account.”

“Got in a few scrapes with the law there,” Olden admitted. “Then I hooked up with the Silent Saints. They took me in. I sold pamphlets for a while.”

“Pocketing money on the side when you could,” suggested Doc.

“Say, are you a mind-reader, too?”

“Too?”

“Yeah. Some of the Saints can read minds. That’s where Ivan Cass came in. Cass was a local detective, strictly on the shady side of the street, you understand. He and I became pals. He caught me pilfering and decided I was a right guy. So he let me in on his racket.”

“Which was?” prompted Doc.

“Is,” corrected Olden. “Cass runs a high-class spy operation. We steal secrets, selling them to the highest bidder.”

“Doubtful,” countered Doc. “All signs indicate otherwise. Cass appeared to be in the pay of a certain foreign nation.”

“Well, he tells it different,” stated the midget.

“What do you know of a man going by the name of Christopher Columbus?”

The midget nodded. “They took him up to that island, too. Along with that fat fool, Harvell Braggs.”