Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (46 page)

“Maybe you should get yourself a pair of crutches to go with that patch of ice you call your hair,” Monk jeered.

“Once we are back in New York,” Ham said waspishly, “I fully intend to whet my best blade against those hideous hog bristles sprouting from your simian skull!”

The apish chemist smoothed the top of his rusty head and remarked, “You’re just jealous because I still got the hair color I was born with.”

Ham sputtered, chiseled face turning a crimson that verged on purple. It was a hue the hairy chemist rarely roused in his nemesis, but one he relished.

They found Herman Bunderson puttering around the rambling old place, looking drawn and emaciated.

“I have been expecting you,” he said quietly.

“Have you looked into the bag left in your keeping?” asked Doc.

Bunderson nodded.

“What did you find?”

“The Fox tribe gold lost back in 1832. It’s all there.”

“All but the thousand dollars which I left behind to be found by the boys in 1870,” corrected Doc.

Bunderson managed a shaky grin. “My grandfather spent a lifetime looking for that trove.”

“If you wish, you may have it.”

Bunderson looked startled. His bobbing Adam’s apple seemed to rise with some unexpressed emotion.

“We desire to purchase this property,” added Doc.

“It’s worth more than that bag of gold, I would think.”

“The land you may keep. We only want the building. It’s too dangerous to be left in unscientific hands,” countered Doc. “And perhaps too dangerous to ever use again.”

Johnny Littlejohn had a question.

“Tell me, can the house travel into the future?”

Bunderson shook his head vigorously. “No. Not our future. Only the future of the past, once the house lands back in a previous era. Every time my grandfather attempted to progress forward in time, the house refused to budge from its foundation.”

“Intriguing,” remarked Ham Brooks.

Doc Savage said, “The house cannot leap into the future for a simple and logical reason.”

“Which is?”

“Such a future is simply not there, because it has not yet been created,” explained Doc. “Therefore, there is no solid reality for the house to alight on.”

It made sense after they reflected on the bronze man’s words.

Herman Bunderson had been considering Doc’s proposition.

“There are other treasures I might seek if I hold onto the old place,” he mused.

“You failed to find the one most close at hand,” Doc pointed out.

That decided the man. He said, “Have your attorney write up a bill of sale. There is no deed to the place.”

To his astonishment, Ham Brooks pulled out a bill of sale he had drawn up during the plane trip.

After Herman Bunderson got over his dumbfoundment, he signed the document and the bag of gold coins was ceremoniously handed over to him.

Doc Savage said, “As our first act as owner, we must return this unfortunate man to his rightful era.”

Christopher Columbus was brought forward for the first time. Renny packed Cadwiller Olden under one arm. The midget flailed a little, but became passive after the big engineer clamped a massive paw over his battered face, grunting, “Pipe down, peanut!”

Habeas Corpus leapt from Monk Mayfair’s apish arms, squealing with glee and frolicking about, happy to be on solid ground once more. After he had settled down, the shoat trained his beady eyes on Olden, who glared back with deep resentment.

Columbus studied the faded Victorian dwelling with troubled eyes.

“I rue the day I entered that temple of black sorcery,” he said thickly.

“I will need a few minutes alone with Don Christopher,” said Doc.

The others stayed put as the bronze man escorted the renowned Admiral of the Ocean Sea into the Victorian house. The door closed behind them.

In the octagonal parlor of thick walls, Doc faced Columbus.

“You cannot be restored to your own time with your memories intact,” Doc Savage explained quietly. He spoke Spanish, the tongue in which he had questioned Columbus during the flight, putting to him many inquiries, satisfying himself that this indeed was the historical Columbus.

A momentary start shook Christopher Columbus’ large frame.

Doc reassured him, “There are safe ways of seeing that you no longer remember any of the events experienced since you first entered this dwelling back in 1503.”

Christopher Columbus regarded the towering bronze man without words for a long interval.

At last, he bowed and said, “I am in your power.”

Doc sat the man down on the inner staircase. He took from his pocket vest a shiny coin. It was Monk Mayfair’s buffalo-head nickel. This the bronze man passed from hand to hand until the object had Columbus’ undivided attention. The latter started tracking it with his dark eyes.

Doc Savage began speaking in a steady tone and soon had the mesmeric effect he sought.

“I will count to ten. You will fall asleep when you hear the word ten. You will slumber peacefully. You are not to rise until an hour passes. Upon awakening, you will remember nothing of what has transpired in the last several months since you first entered this house. You will not remember anything of the Twentieth Century. Nor will you ever be able to summon up any names or faces belonging to our present time. Instead, you will awaken thinking you had fallen asleep in this house for only an hour or so. Then you will leave this house, not to return.”

Doc paused. “Do you understand?”

“I understand,” intoned Christopher Columbus. His voice was already drowsy, having succumbed to the bronze man’s hypnotic influence.

Doc began counting. As he began, Columbus’ dark orbs grew heavy of lid, and by the time the bronze man reached the number five, the Great Navigator could barely keep his eyes open.

At the sound of the word ten, he slumped forward, fast asleep.

Doc Savage caught him before Columbus landed on the floor.

Then the bronze man called in Herman Bunderson.

They conferred over the tower-room controls, consulting the notebook of hermit inventor Method Gibbs. After many minutes, they had the mechanical astrolabe set to what they fervently hoped was the original time-and-location the house had first visited back in 1503. The hour was set forward, of course, so that the house did not land upon itself with calamitous results.

That accomplished, they retreated from the weird dwelling. Doc Savage gave a last look at the slumbering form of the Discoverer of America. His normally expressionless face for once was very strange.

“Everything is set,” he told his men. Together, they retreated beyond the perimeter controlled by the electric eye and waited.

They did not have to wait very many minutes. The house simply winked out of existence. They stood firm against the sudden inrush of air created by the resulting vacuum.

“How long must we wait?” wondered Ham.

“Not long,” Doc told him.

The house returned within twenty minutes. Doc Savage mounted the porch and entered alone.

When he returned, his bronze features looked distinctly relieved.

“The house is empty.” That was all anyone said about it. Christopher Columbus had been returned to his proper place in the orderly history of the world.

There remained the matter of Cadwiller Olden, who did not seem very much of a threat tucked under Renny’s right arm, like a football equipped with arms and legs.

“What about him?” asked Long Tom, cocking a surreptitious thumb in the midget’s direction.

“Cadwiller Olden is a special case,” Doc avowed. “He must never be permitted his freedom under any circumstances. The same treatment I gave Columbus can be used to suppress recent memories.”

“Why not give him the full treatment?” rumbled Renny, referring to the delicate brain operation that wiped out all criminal memories.

“Too risky in his present mental condition,” said Doc. “Nor would I consider releasing him back into society. He will remain at the college to the end of his days.”

“Which I hope will be around Halloween,” grunted Monk. “That guy don’t belong with normal folks. Right, Habeas?”

The porker grunted as if in acquiescence.

Cadwiller Olden, entirely unaware that he was the subject of these discussions, at that point inserted himself into the conversation.

“That scrawny pig ain’t my conscience. He’s real! And never mind talking about other mugs, what about me?”

“You,” said Doc Savage, “are going for a ride on our dirigible, along with Harvell Braggs.”

The little man noticed the airship anchored to a nearby tree.

“I don’t want to,” Olden sulked.

“Pipe down,” said Monk, “or I’ll tie a balloon to you and pull you along like a kite.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Doc Savage instructed, “Long Tom, you and Renny will remain behind. You are to supervise the dismantling of this structure. Pack up all the electronic parts for transport to our headquarters. We will study them at a later time.”

Johnny regarded the faded structure wistfully, asked, “Think we might take her out for a spin some time?”

Doc Savage considered this at great length.

“It is very tempting. But also very doubtful. There is no telling what misfortune may occur while navigating blindly through time.”

THEY received a partial answer to that a few days later when Doc Savage was supervising the arrival of the sections of the Chronodomus that had been salvaged from the razed Victorian house. This work was being done in the impressive experimental laboratory that occupied the greater portion of the bronze man’s skyscraper headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

Johnny Littlejohn came bustling in from the vast library that adjoined the laboratory, flourishing a book.

“I have been going through every historical tome relating to the Big Neck Indian War I could find in our library,” he announced.

Doc Savage looked up from his work.

“According to every account,” continued Johnny, “Big Neck did not simply vanish, never to be heard of again. He was arrested, and tried, along with two others, Red Snake and another brave named Swift Turtle. All were acquitted.”

Doc Savage’s trilling piped up, very faint and fluid.

“You and I distinctly recall that these same books recorded a fate consistent with his vanishing from history,” concluded the long-worded archeologist.

Doc took the offered book and purused the open pages. His trilling sound, low and ethereal, wandered about the laboratory like a curious insect seeking understanding.

“This book,” he said slowly, “does not reflect the same history that it did before we set out on our investigation of the vanishing Victorian house.”

“In other words,” said Johnny, voice quivering with excitement, “when we returned Big Neck to his rightful era, we rewrote history.”

“So it would seem,” admitted Doc. “Have you looked into the record pertaining to Christopher Columbus?”

“I have. Nothing appears to have been changed. Columbus went to his grave never suspecting that he had discovered a new continent.”

“All the more reason never to employ this time-deflating device again,” Doc said gravely.

“It is a shame not to,” Johnny said wistfully.

“It would be a greater shame if we altered the trend of human events in a way that was irreconcilable with our present.”

Thoughtfully, Johnny put the book aside.

“There is another puzzle I have been wondering about.”

“Gulliver Greene?”

“Yes. Some of the others thought he looked familiar, but cannot place him.”

“That is not his original name,” stated Doc. “Do you recall the adventure in which we encountered the criminal master mind who called himself ‘The Crime Annihilist’?”
¹¹

“Vividly. We shipped a lot of people to the college at the conclusion of that affair.”

Johnny suddenly reached for his monocle. “Gulliver is a graduate!”

“A former pickpocket and confidence man, along with his brother, the man now known as Drury ‘Spook’ Davis.”

Johnny gave vent to a decidedly unscholarly whistle. “So they
were
brothers, after all….”

Doc nodded. “But they do not know that, thanks to the brain surgery that wiped out all recollection of their troubled pasts. In selecting a skill with which the two could make their way in society, the specialists at the college decided that they would make very good magicians, once they were taught the requisite skills. I placed them in the hands of a very famous illusionist, now retired, who was happy to coach them in his craft.”

“Remarkable! But how was he drawn into the affair in the first place?”

“Through his uncle, Box Daniels, another graduate,” related Doc. “Box was investigating reports that the Silent Saints were practicing a credible form of mind-reading. Since this is a subject that interested us, and we were too busy to look into it ourselves, I gave him that assignment. His instructions were to bring Gulliver Greene and his brother into it if he discovered anything useful.”

Johnny’s smooth brow puckered. “Why Greene?”

“Gulliver Greene was well versed in the ways of mentalists—fake mind-readers. If he looked into the matter and found the Silent Saints were merely clever fakers, there would be no need for our involvement.”

“I see. But the Christopher Columbus complication threw all that into a cocked chapeau.”

“It did not help matters that Box Daniels had a weakness for the bottle, which clouded his judgment,” Doc admitted. “He should have communicated with us once the matter promised to turn deadly. As it happened, we landed in the vicinity looking into the vanishing Victorian house. One thing led to another. But it has all worked out now.”

“This,” said Johnny ruminatively, “has to be one of the most complicated cases we have ever gotten embroiled in.”

“That,” admitted Doc Savage, “is putting it mildly.”

Johnny took out his monocle magnifier and began polishing it thoughtfully. He frowned.

“Something bothering you?” queried Doc.

“Indubitably. How is it that Christopher Columbus so closely resembled the portraits every school boy knows, when no one painted him when he was alive?”