Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (8 page)

This was a sound Doc Savage made when his emotions were jarred. Sometimes it denoted puzzlement, or surprise, or other strong feelings. Here, it marked a mix of fascinated wonder.

The sound soon ebbed into nothingness.

Ham looked intrigued. “What’s say, Doc?”

“This tomahawk is authentic.”

“So? A lot of Indian artifacts are.”

Doc said, “For this tomahawk to survive into the Twentieth Century in this condition would mean that shortly after manufacture it had been stored in a weatherproof place, unused, for over one hundred years.”

“I have never held a finer specimen,” inserted Johnny the archeologist. “But I, too, cannot account for its excellent condition.”

“Now what?” asked Monk, losing interest in the tomahawk.

“Investigate the vanishing Victorian,” replied Doc.

They started off, using their flashlights to illuminate the way. The myriad beams made weird shadows crawl in the underbrush, threw great trees into sharp relief, gave everything the uncanny illusion of moving, as if they were wending their way through an enchanted forest out of a storybook.

“Our lights make us fair targets for trouble,” Ham was saying.

Doc Savage offered no comment to that, but his flake-gold eyes roved the ever-shifting trees on either side of the well-worn path, apparently missing little, but also discovering nothing unusual.

When they approached the clearing, they were startled to see a black tower jutting over the treetops that had not been there moments before.

At first, they mistook it for a tall fir tree, silhouetted against the waning moon. But its edge had not the irregular look of an evergreen. And fir trees were not common in these Missouri woods.

“Hey!” shouted Monk. “That looks like that wizard’s hat of a roof tower Renny was talkin’ about!”

“That’s it!” Renny thumped. “Holy cow!”

They quickened their pace. The path was so narrow that in walking bunched together, their elbows kept brushing. Now they stretched out in single file, eager to get there as rapidly as possible.

Came an ear-splitting shriek.

Everyone reached into armpit holsters for their supermachine pistols, powerful yet compact weapons beyond anything in the hands of any nation. Little larger than an automatic, these packed the punch of a Tommy gun. They resembled one in miniature, down to the canister-like drums mounted ahead of the trigger guards. Each pistol was capable of unleashing a frightful storm of lead, but in fact were rarely charged with solid slugs. Instead, the drums contained so-called “mercy” bullets—hollow shells filled with a fast-acting anesthetic solution of the bronze man’s invention. He did not believe in slaying his enemies.

All brandished their superfirers, except Doc Savage, who rarely carried a weapon. He preferred not being dependent upon firearms.

As it happened, their attacker had selected Ham for his first victim.

He dropped down from a heavy bough and landed beside the dapper lawyer. The late arrival was compactly muscled, sinewy and wiry to a degree that comes from living out of doors, and off the land.

White rods of light picked him out. His face was a fierce, snarling animal-like thing, the sharp nose mashed where Renny’s iron knuckles had popped it. His skull was shaven after the fashion of the Mohawks, sunburned face smeared with thin, greenish lines. A single scalplock sprouted from the top of his head, to which stiff porcupine hair was affixed.

“Holy cow!” howled Renny. “The scalper!”

That was as much as anyone got out.

RENNY lunged forward, and received a faceful of dirt, flung unexpectedly. He brought his monster hands up and began pawing at his eyes.

Next, Ham Brooks yanked the narrow blade out of the barrel of his sword cane. Assuming a stance similar to a fencer, he lunged, inflicting upon the Indian’s bare shoulder a minor wound.

Withdrawing, the dapper attorney stood back, saying, “He will be insensate in a mere second or two.”

Instead, the brave made a rush for Ham, much to the latter’s consternation.

“Didn’t you wipe that sticky anesthetic off your blade?” yelled Monk.

“I forgot!” gulped Ham, defensively weaving the air before him with the flashing sword.

Long Tom Roberts slanted in, tripped the Indian, who somehow pulled the puny electrical wizard down with him. They ended up rolling in the dirt, clubbing and howling like two alley cats in a cartoon.

Long Tom managed to extricate himself, while the Indian bounced back on his moccasins.

So far, no one had gotten off a shot. Johnny Littlejohn stood rooted, as if dazed by the spectacle.

The redskin then turned to engage Doc Savage. He must not have realized the size of the mighty bronze man until he was next to him because a look of astonishment whipped across his twisted lineaments.

Doc then had a remarkable two or three minutes.

The arboreal attacker produced a knife of some kind. He ducked to one side, swept in and attempted to run its edge across the back of Doc’s right knee in an effort to hamstring him.

Doc Savage drifted out a hand and seized the wrist back of the knife. He twisted, and the blade spilled, struck earth.

The attacker gave out a wild screech, then tried to wrestle the bronze man.

Doc Savage invariably employed scientific methods in his fighting. This assailant did not. The sheer ferocity of his attack was enough to startle even the bronze giant.

The savage cry must have been part of it. He vented another wild war whoop that froze the blood, as it was no doubt intended to do.

For his part, Doc Savage appeared to take too long to size up his foe. Red hands reached for vital points in Doc’s anatomy.

Doc batted those hands away with casual slaps. The other again looked startled. Twisting, he next tried to get one foot hooked around one of Doc’s ankles in an attempt to throw him to the ground.

Doc disengaged, lifted his fists to block the Indian.

One secret of the bronze man’s success was that he never employed more effort than was necessary. Doc believed in expending the minimum force to achieve the maximum result.

That philosophy was being tested now.

Enervated by an almost animal-like reservoir of strength, the redskin assailant refused to go down. His will to win verged on the indomitable.

Doc tripped him. The man stumbled, bounced back on his feet.

Doc reached out and slapped his opponent off his moccasins once more.

The brave looked thoroughly shaken, but was erect before anyone could do anything about it.

It became apparent that the bronze giant was fascinated by his foe. Doc seemed to be holding back, as if he wished to observe the other in action, the better to understand him.

Doc moved in, had a little better luck with a Ju-Jitsu maneuver. The other hit the ground, and hard. He sprang back up, though, before Doc got hold of him again.

The Indian was good. He was better than anyone Doc had encountered for a long time. It was almost never that he had a physical encounter with a man who was his equal.

For the first few seconds, Doc got a pleasant thrill out of fighting the man. Then he began to get another feeling, which wasn’t a thrill. At least not a pleasant sort of a sensation.

The feeling that Doc got—and he wasn’t very proud of it—was the fear that he was going to get licked at something at which he was among the best.

The brave knew a species of rough Judo. He knew wrestling as per Frank Gotch, Strangler Lewis and the old-timers. He knew it according to the young grunt-and-groan school. He knew below-the-belt tactics.

Taking hold of him was like taking hold of bundles of steel-wire cables covered with a good grade of buckskin. Keeping hold of him was something like trying to hold down a couple of panthers.

Doc lost skin, some hair, nearly lost a tooth, and most of his dignity. He was glad to circle the other warily.

Monk’s bellowing voice spoke up and changed everything.

“Want me to hose him down with a few mercy bullets, Doc?” he asked.

The redskin spun toward that voice, startled.

His dark eyes fell upon the simian features of Monk Mayfair. They all but bugged out of his skull. He gave out a scream. Or was it a curse word? Then, somersaulting backward, he disappeared into the woods and their very deep night shadows.

Doc whipped out his own flashlight and, motioning for the others to remain on the dirt path, went off in pursuit.

The bronze man advanced a few paces, ears hunting sounds, and suddenly took to the trees. He raced along creaking and groaning boughs.

But no trace of the other could he find.

Doc used his nostrils, reasoning that the perspiration odors of a half-naked human being would lead him to his quarry. They got him only so far. Then he encountered a dead skunk, evidently freshly slain, and left there to overpower any such tracking.

DISCOURAGED, the bronze man returned to the others.

“You failed to best him,” said Ham, looking surprised.

“He is very wily,” admitted Doc.

“What did you make of him, Doc? He looked like the genuine article.”

“He spoke like one, too,” admitted Doc. “When he saw Monk he yelled a word that meant, roughly, ‘evil spirit.’ ”

The bronze man’s knowledge of language was so deep it included most Native American tongues still spoken to this day.

Ham almost doubled over with laughter. “You mean the sight of this homely ape’s ugly face frightened him away!”

“Maybe he saw my mitts and figgered I could pound him flat into his moccasins,” countered the hairy chemist.

“What do you make of it, Doc?” wondered Long Tom.

Before the bronze man could reply, Johnny Littlejohn gave out a bleat of surprise.

Pointing high with his flash beam, he said, “A phantasmagorical imponderability!”

All eyes followed his quivering beam.

The roof tower that so resembled a wizard’s cap of old was no longer there!

“Vanished!” Long Tom exploded.

They ran toward the sight.

This time they were not attacked.

Reaching the clearing, they came upon the area they had spotted from the air. There was a poured concrete foundation sitting in a cleared space. That was all.

No sign of any roof or house. Not a stick of wood or siding. The nearby trees were astir, as if shivering at what they alone had witnessed. No breeze troubled them. There was just a shivering and shaking amid the leaves.

Doc’s eerie trilling came anew—an uncanny accompaniment to the leafy orchestra. But he said nothing.

Using his pocket torch, which he widened to a ray by twisting the lens, the bronze giant made a reconnoiter of the foundation.

“Our moccasin-clad friend has been here. His tracks come and go.”

Renny remarked, “Looks like he’s been visiting this place pretty often. There are tracks over tracks.”

“Perhaps there is more than one Indian hereabouts,” Ham offered.

Doc Savage shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “The same man. The detailing and size of the moccasin prints make that clear.”

They rummaged around for almost an hour but discovered no further clue to what happened to the vanished house. Or, at least, to its roof. For that was all that anyone had seen of the supposed structure.

Deciding to return to their dirigible, they set off.

Not half a mile away, Monk Mayfair happened to look back, as if still trying to puzzle out the mystery.

“Blazes!” he exclaimed.

All heads turned.

There, clearly outlined in the spectral moonlight behind them, was the conical roof tower that was so evocative of a wizard’s cap. It looked as solid as a church steeple.

A wind seemed to have sprung up, for the leaves in the trees began rustling as if full of creeping vipers. Yet they felt no wind on their faces.

Chapter VII

COLUMBUS AND THE SAINTS

WHEN THE GREAT GULLIVER walked into the One-Stop-Duzzit filling station carrying the old Goliath with the hairy ears piggy-back, Spook Davis reared to his feet, made an awful face, grabbed his head with both hands and sat down again.

“Oo-o-o, my head!” he groaned. “Say, what’s that you’ve collected?”

At that point, the old one with the hirsute ears mumbled in his alcoholic sleep.

“Sha fact,” he hiccoughed. “Chris Columbus ish alive.”

Spook Davis yelped, rose out of his chair, cried out again terribly and fell back holding his head with one hand and stabbing the other in the direction of the old giant.

“That’s who hit me!” he yelled. “I know that voice!”

Gull said nothing, but carried the old man into the little room that held the air compressor and sat him on the concrete floor, after which he straightened and stretched until his arm and back muscles had relaxed somewhat from the strain of carrying the ancient giant. Then, searching the elderly titan, he collected the four whiskey bottles, but nothing else.

Spook Davis came shuffling into the compressor room carrying a tire-changing tool.

“I’m gonna wake that old moose up with this and ask him some questions!” Spook hefted the tire iron grimly. “I’ve been made a sucker out of and it gripes me.”

Gull said, “You’re not by yourself,” disgustedly.

“Eh? Who made a sucker out of you?”

“A woman.”

“That ain’t so bad. It’s the ordained province of woman to make a sucker out of man. Especially if she’s a pretty woman.”

“This one was divine!” Gull said feelingly.

“Eh?”

“She was glorious!”

Spook blinked. “Huh?”

“Darn her!” Gull exploded.

He told Spook Davis about her, doing very good justice to her physical charms. He added his conviction that the young woman had not been weak from her fall at all; she had pulled a fast one and sent him after the old man to give herself a chance to escape; he did not spare himself for his gullibility in being taken in, in fact he swore at some length about it.

They drew a bucketful of water—they had to get it from the pump outside—and poured it in varying quantities over the old giant with the result that, if anything, he slept the more soundly. Spook insisted on giving the hard, bare skull of the subject a few experimental raps with the tire tool, but that was no more effective than the water.