Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (23 page)

In the suburb of Cicero, only streetlamps glowed. The occasional nighthawk taxi splashed light about as it prowled the rain-washed thoroughfares.

In one modest house, however, lights still showed. These lights were in the basement. And from time to time, shadowy forms moved, interrupting the light as seen through the narrow casement windows in the granite foundation.

Two o’clock had come and gone when finally these lights were doused. After a short interval, one of the casement windows cracked open. It was of the type that lifted upward, and out of this narrow aperture crawled what appeared to be a man.

The man was black from head to toe. Every inch of him. All that could be discerned of this darksome figure was that he was slender enough to squeeze out of the open casement window—a feat that would have defied a man of average height and build.

By wiggling his narrow-hipped body, the fellow managed to pull his legs free, and finally stand erect.

The nearest streetlight was not close, and its light showed rather feebly.

The figure who stood up in the cloud-smeared night was not black in the manner of a gentleman of color. His blackness was flat and powdery, as if he had spent the night sleeping in a coal bin, and accumulated a residue of anthracite.

Conceivably, that is exactly what must have taken place. For the narrow window was situated next to the household coal-delivery chute. Then the man looked at his sooty hands, and instead of holding them up to the drizzle, he smeared his face and hair liberally, further darkening them.

A furtive shadow, he wandered the streets until he came to a public telephone. Entering the booth, he dropped a nickel in the slot, and asked the operator for a local taxicab concern.

When his party came on the line, he began speaking in a peevish tone, saying, “I’m stranded in Cicero. I need a ride. Tell the driver to look for me on the corner of Atlas and Canberra. And tell him to hurry it up. It’s pouring out here.”

A few minutes later, a taxicab came scooting along, its tires throwing up sheets of spray whenever it rolled over chug holes filled with dancing rain water.

The driver watched the way ahead intently. The dispatcher had told him to pick up a passenger who would be waiting on the corner directly ahead. If the passenger was not there, the dispatcher had directed the taxi driver to go on about his usual business. Late-night passengers were often impatient. Rather than wait in the rain for the summoned cab, they were as apt to hail any passing hack, leaving the original driver to wander the streets in vain for his vanished fare.

The taxi neared the corner where the fare was to be waiting. The driver slowed a bit, although he could see no one. His perspective passenger was not in sight.

Grumbling, he decided to circle the block. This produced no tangible results, so the increasingly irate cabbie returned to the designated corner and parked.

He craned his head all around, but saw no one. A leafless tree planted on the sidewalk creaked and groaned unpleasantly in the wind-whipped rain, but no one appeared to be standing beneath it. The bare branches offered little shelter from the midnight tempest, anyway.

Finding a call box, the hack driver called his dispatcher and reported, “Looks like a bum fare. Got anything else for me?”

“Not a thing,” he was told through a line crackling with static created by rain falling on old telephone wires. “Slow night.”

Muttering choice words, the driver hung up and returned to his machine. Crowding behind the wheel, he engaged his motor. It was noisy. Carbon knock was distinctly detectable. This covered the slight noises made by the furtive ebon figure who detached himself from the groaning tree and, crouching so as not to be seen, settled onto the broad running board.

The individual was such a bantam that the cab did not rock from his added weight. Nor was he visible as he cracked the door open, for he was as black as a living lump of coal.

Slipping in, the stealthy one laid down on the cushions, the better to remain invisible.

As he left the curbing, the driver did not notice that he had acquired a passenger. The incessant drumming of rain on his roof saw to that.

The cabbie rolled around, hunting fares. But it was hopeless. Sensible citizens were in their beds. Few automobiles were seen on the streets.

“Maybe I’ll call it a night,” he grumbled to himself as he halted at a stop light.

A moment later, the sound of a powerful motor muttered up, causing his head to turn.

For beside him had appeared a long touring car, its curtains open.

It was an expensive machine.

The dash light showed one man seated in the driver’s compartment. The man behind the wheel was not visible. But a passenger in the rear was.

The passenger was hunkered down in his seat, applying a handkerchief to his battered features. They were impossible not to recognize.

“Duke Grogan!” gasped the cabbie. “And he looks like he just went fifteen rounds with Max Baer!”

Beside the gangster, only half visible in the shadows, sat a long-haired woman. She looked over toward the idling taxi, and her pale face was painted by a streetlamp’s muted glow, causing the emerald glint of her eyes to shine eerily. Her expression was strained, expressing a pleading fear.

“Wonder who the dame is?” muttered the cabbie.

In the rear seat behind him, a low voice husked out two words: “Janet Falcon!”

Duke Grogan could not have heard those whispered words any more than the cab driver did, but his eyes snapped around, alighted on the shocked cabbie, and went brittle as quartz.

The notorious gangster drew a forefinger sharply across his own throat in warning. The meaning was clear. The hack driver contemplated it as the light changed and the touring car powered off.

“When the Duke is out so late, it can’t be good news for someone,” he breathed.

Regaining his composure, the cabbie watched the dwindling tail-light fade off into the dismal curtain of rain, then abruptly wheeled his machine into a side street, not wanting to encounter the sinister touring again.

Slowing to negotiate a turn, the man started violently. “What the heck!”

A rear door of his car had apparently slammed shut!

He twisted in his seat. It sounded like somebody had left his machine, although the driver had thought he was carrying no one.

The rear seat was empty. It was smeared with coal dust, but from the vantage point of the front seat, that was not apparent. The cabbie peered around the street, seeing nothing but the shadows of the night. They were dark shadows. Some of them seemed to sway and change in shape.

“Now that was queer!” The driver scratched his head in a puzzled manner. Then he grinned, convinced he was imagining things. The sound must have been a rock the wheels had thrown against the under part of the car, instead of the door closing.

But the driver was not entirely convinced. His encounter with the Duke Grogan machine had spooked his nerves, as had the fruitless run out to this deserted side of town.

At the corner, the hackie turned his machine in the street and ran back. In passing the spot where he thought the door had slammed, he stared intently at the shadows he had noted before.

He saw nothing particularly strange about them.

“Sure, it was my imagination!” he declared.

The taxi was hardly out of sight, however, when one of the strange shadows moved.

It was the sooty-looking individual. The dreary drizzle had not cleansed him appreciably. Where he stood, black water was pooling.

In furtive silence, the ambulatory shadow left the vicinity, making grayish-black tracks. After he had walked some distance, a cruising cab drew near. Hailing it, he got in. He gave an address of a residential home in the neighborhood. Huddling in a corner of the vehicle, the damp passenger did not make a perceptible movement en route.

The driver was a curious sort. He called back, “What happened to you?”

“Mind your damn business!” gritted the passenger.

“Happy to. Only you look like you went tumbling into a coal scuttle.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” snapped the darksome fare.

Shrugging, the hack conveyed his passenger to an address on Atlas Street. The house was dark.

Half a block up the street, lights were coming on in another residence. This was the home from which the dusky passenger had recently crawled. But the cabbie could not know this. A garage door was being closed on a recently arrived touring car. It was the machine that had carried Duke Grogan through the night.

The driver could not know that, either. He waited patiently as his fare paid him carefully out of a coin purse, adding nothing to the amount registered on the taxi meter.

Shutting the coin purse, the darkly damp passenger dismissed the cab.

“Cheapskate!” hissed the cab driver after him.

Working his way through monotonously falling rain, the inky one made his way back to the still-open basement window, loitering there as if considering wriggling through the narrow slit once more.

Examining his streaked and smeared appendages, he evidently decided against this course of action. Heaving a resigned sigh, the dark one commenced creeping around to the front of the dwelling, from which low voices were emanating.

During this prowl, a wan shine emanating from a streetlight fell upon the stealthy creeper, bringing his narrow features to light, and disclosing eyes so pale they were almost colorless. A golden glint showed between thin lips, indicating that the mouth concealed a gold tooth.

Despite his inky aspect, the face of the man could be recognized. It was one that would be familiar to many who followed the amazing career Doc Savage. Indeed, the fellow was famous in his own right.

For the sooty individual was none other that the renowned wizard of the juice, Long Tom Roberts!

Presumed dead, the puny electrician had escaped captivity only to reverse course once he discovered that the gangster behind his misfortunes, Duke Grogan, was returning to his Cicero hideout with the missing Janet Falcon.

The hardness of Long Tom’s fists predicted a determined effort to settle the score in that regard.

Chapter XXIII

DUKE BOWS OUT

LONG TOM ROBERTS took shelter in some ornamental bushes.

Nothing happened for perhaps ten minutes. During that interval, he crept closer to the house into which the touring car had gone. Lights appeared behind a bank of windows. Once he saw the slender form of a long-haired young woman silhouetted in shadow. Janet Falcon, no doubt.

“Never mind crying, sister!” a voice growled loudly.

“I don’t like your manners,” the woman snapped.

“You’re going to find a lot of things you don’t like besides manners if you get funny with me,” the tough one promised in a most ominous tone.

The woman’s sobbing could be heard, choking and anxious.

Another tough voice asked. “Want me to hold her down, Boss?”

“No, I want no witnesses. Take the car, Patches. Go get yourself some smokes. Come back in an hour. Get me?”

“I got you, Duke. Catch you around, girlie.”

All but invisible in the streaky shadow of a tall privet hedge, the prowling electrical engineer considered this development. It did not bode well for Janet Falcon.

A minute later, the touring car left the garage, disappearing into the damp night.

Long Tom wriggled closer to the entrance and investigated. The front door had not closed forcibly enough to actuate the spring lock. It stood slightly ajar. He crawled onto the stone-paved stoop and strained his ears.

The voices Long Tom heard were faint, evidently coming from an inner room. An inch at a time, he shoved back the front door, then got to his feet and stepped inside. The entrance hall was deserted, and the voices grew louder.

Stealthily, the slender electrical wizard stepped across thick rugs into another room, which was unlighted. Then he whirled, scuttling wildly into the shelter of a ponderous, tapestry-upholstered divan, and listened. Long Tom was blessed with big ears. They caught everything.

Lights sprang out in the room. The tough-talking voice and the girl had entered.

“So you won’t spill, sister?” the male voice demanded harshly.

“I told you I have no idea what you’re talking about!” the woman retorted. Her voice was frightened, laden with wracking sobs.

“You’re a liar! Maybe this will change your mind! What happened to your boyfriend could easily happen to you. Don’t think it can’t.”

“Oh! So it was you who murdered Ned!”

“I ain’t owning up to nothing,” the tough talker chuckled harshly. “Especially not a murder rap.”

“I don’t understand what you are driving at!” the woman wailed.

“You want my proposition?”

“I don’t care to have anything to do with you, Mr. Grogan. Please let me go!”

Duke Grogan laughed unpleasantly. Unseen, the smoky eavesdropper heard scratching sounds as if the gangster thumbed his cigarette lighter.

“Get me straight, sister,” he barked. “I’ve been chasing you all around town. But you kept getting away. Until now.”

“Doc Savage stopped you, didn’t he?”

“That high and mighty meddler!” he snarled. “By now he’s cooling his heels on a slab in the morgue, so I guess we’re even.”

The woman gasped. “He—he is dead then?”

“Doc Savage,” rasped the other, “is as defunct as Old Man Prohibition.”

“Will you let me go, please! I don’t care to listen to you.”

“I don’t please, lady. Paste that in your bonnet! I want to know all you know about what Myer Sim spilled to you. And you’re going to tell me.”

The girl remained silent.

“Aw, don’t be a dumb dame, honey,” Grogan suddenly continued in a wheedling, suggestive tone. “I could hit it off with a classy dame like you. Me and you can go ahead with this thing together.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just this: I got the word not to rough you up too much. Get me? The big brain back of this don’t want you hurt. To me, that means you’re up to your neck in it. Maybe more….”

“Just what sort of theories have you?” the woman asked with chilly curiosity.