Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (30 page)

To which Long Tom added, “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack in a fog.”

Perhaps it was the mention of the needle that prompted Doc Savage to abruptly pull hard on the steering wheel and reverse course, causing the rubber of his automobile tires to smoke and burn.

“Where are we going?” wondered Ham.

“Airport,” said Doc. “We are unlikely to make any progress here that the Chicago police cannot achieve on their own.”

It did not seem to be much in the way of a direct answer, so Ham followed up with the question. “Do you intend to conduct a search by air?”

Doc shook his head slowly. “It may be that Joe Shine possesses information as to where Grogan’s gang take bodies to be disposed of. Rival criminals often know such things, inasmuch as they prey on one another as much as they do the general public.”

Doc Savage’s mention of bodies made them all fret that Janet Falcon was by now deceased. It was a reasonable assumption, for it appeared by all evidence that the distraught woman had slain the gangster leader, and now his surviving hoods were taking her on a one-way ride to oblivion.

Monk grunted explosively, “Dang! It’s not a bad idea, at that. I’ll be happy to wring that hood’s neck until he coughs up whatever he’s got.”

Doc said nothing. But the bleakness in the bronze man’s eyes told that he did not hold out much hope for the missing woman.

Arriving at the private hangar where Doc Savage’s speed plane was temporarily housed, Doc and his men jumped out of their machine, and entered the corrugated steel barn.

Unlocking the hatch to the airplane, they found Joe Shine and his men sleeping off the anesthetic doses they had been given. There was a fair amount of twitching and snoring going on, but otherwise the Joe Shine mob was oblivious to their surroundings.

Doc Savage fell upon the crime lord, lifted him up as if he were but a child, and placed Shine in one of the plane seats.

From his gadget vest, the bronze man extracted a flat black case which contained a syringe and small vial of restorative solution. Doc’s men recognized the stuff. It was a concoction designed to bring a person out of the anesthetic rapidly without harming him.

Rolling up one of Joe Shine’s sleeves, Doc administered the stuff, and stepped back, pocketing the case and its contents.

Shine’s shoe-button eyes snapped and fluttered, and suddenly he jerked erect.

Looking about wildly, he demanded, “Where am I?”

“In trouble,” advised Ham. The dapper lawyer had exposed the blade of his sword cane, and the tip was now hovering beneath Joe Shine’s slack jaw.

The elegant attorney transferred the point from Shine’s Adam’s apple to the tip of his nose. This did not do the awakening mobster’s state of mind any benefit.

Joe Shine got right to the point. “What’s goin’ on?”

Doc Savage told him, “A woman has been kidnapped by Duke Grogan’s gang. The city police are searching for her, as are we.”

Shine blinked. “What’s that got to do with me, if anything?”

“No doubt some of Duke Grogan’s rivals have been disposed of secretly. Where would Grogan’s men take someone they intended to kill?”

As the question sank in, Joe Shine’s black eyes glittered with an avid light. He took his time answering, letting his brain clear. It cleared rapidly.

“What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

At that point, Monk Mayfair stepped in. His hairy paws seized the racket chief. One hand went around Shine’s throat, while the other clamped down on the top of his head. In prehistoric times no doubt cavemen possessed hands such as this, heavy and hirsute as a gorilla’s.

Shine struggled, but all that happened was that Monk pointed the criminal’s face upward so that the simian chemist’s fierce visage loomed over him.

Now Shine found himself caught between Ham’s wicked-looking blade and Monk’s muscular manhandling.

Monk growled, “If I start twistin’, I’ll bet I can unscrew your head like the cork on a wine bottle.”

Joe Shine’s head was suddenly jerked to the left, and hot lights danced in his eyeballs.

“There is a place!” he screeched. “It’s where Grogan dumps the stiffs he bumps off. It’s a mine south of here. A coal mine.”

“What is the name of this coal mine?” asked Doc Savage.

“I don’t know the name! It was closed down years ago, after a big gas explosion. I just know where it is.”

“Where?”

“Near a town called Ryerson. Due south. Down in Vermilion County.”

The mob leader was so frightened that every word rang true.

“Monk,” said Doc. The bronze man did not need to elaborate, for Monk took his hands away and warned, “You better be tellin’ the truth, guy.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die in bed,” vowed Joe Shine sincerely.

Doc Savage said, “Ryerson is too far to drive. We will have to fly there.”

Waving his blade, Ham asked, “What about these scoundrels? We can’t leave them behind. If they are found in the hangar, difficult questions will be asked.”

Doc Savage seemed to have already given the matter sufficient thought, for he replied, “We will have to haul them with us.”

Joe Shine heard this and said, “I ain’t much for flying. I get air sick, as a matter of fact.”

To which Long Tom commented, “Who said you’re going all the way?”

“Yes,” seconded Ham. “We might just drop you and your boys in a nice lake we happen to pass over.”

“There ain’t any lakes between here and Ryerson,” Shine pointed out.

“It don’t matter,” shrugged Monk casually. “From that height, hittin’ a wet lake and hard ground amounts to the same thing. Splat!”

Everyone began claiming their seats and preparing to take off. Doc Savage started the three big radial engines.

“Bet you never thought you’d be taken for a ride in an airplane,” added Monk with bloodthirsty relish.

Joe’s Shine’s dark orbs widened in horror. “You wouldn’t kill me!” the mobster gulped.

“No, we wouldn’t,” assured Ham Brooks smoothly. “In actual fact, hard ground will cause your demise.”

Joe Shine’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a technicality.”

Ham said carelessly, “I happen to be an attorney. I trade in technicalities.”

“You sound like my mouthpiece,” Shine said bitterly.

“I am not your lawyer,” returned Ham stiffly, inserting the tip of his blade into Joe Shine’s right cheek. The point went in and out so quickly that at first the nervous gangster did not realize he had been stung.

By the time awareness of the puncture dawned on the criminal, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he slumped into a seat, once more stupified.

Restoring the blade to the barrel of the cane, Ham Brooks took a seat as the big aircraft started rolling forward.

Long Tom got out and opened the great hangar doors, then hopped back aboard while Doc Savage ran the tri-motored aircraft out onto the tarmac.

THEY were soon in the air, and Doc pointed the moaning nose due south.

The flight was brief, for Doc opened up all three engines, inducing the greatest speed possible.

Finding the town of Ryerson at night would have been a challenge for a seasoned airline pilot. Doc Savage was no ordinary aviator. He knew all the tricks.

First, he found a set of railroad tracks that led in the general direction of Vermilion County, and followed those as far as he needed, then changed course, going southeast, until he announced, “We are approaching Ryerson.”

Monk Mayfair, sprawled in the co-pilot’s bucket, was duly impressed. The urgency of the situation was still grave.

Doc flew low and cut the floodlamps that he was using to illuminate the ground, not wishing to alarm his quarry—if in fact Joe Shine’s information proved reliable. There was no doubting the gang chief’s sincerity, but neither was there certainty that his information fit the present situation.

Every reason existed to believe that Janet Falcon had been marked for death, but no assurance that she had not been already murdered, and her body dumped into Lake Michigan.

This weighed on all of their minds. They barely knew the woman, who had not been cooperative. Indeed, her behavior had been inexplicable, given the fate of her fiancé, Ned Gamble.

But she was a woman, and Doc Savage and his men were determined to rescue her—if this were possible at this belated hour.

In the cockpit, Doc Savage donned infra-red goggles, and Monk did the same. The bronze man now illuminated infra-ray lamps set in the nose of the aircraft. These lights could not be seen from the ground, but anyone wearing the goggles could perceive what went on below—although everything would be akin to watching a grainy black-and-white film.

Monk said suddenly, “I spy the mine! The big coal-washin’ house is up ahead.”

Doc Savage nodded silently. He had spotted the bulky structure first; his ever-active eyes were taking in all the details.

The coal mine appeared to have been abandoned sometime back, no doubt for good. The operational structures had been allowed to go to seed, much the way barns in the Middle West are sometimes permitted to sag and fall into ruin by the relentless action of wind and the elements, rather than the owners spending the funds to raze them.

Doc flew on, passing over the coal bed, and his remarkable memory told him that there was no landing field within reasonable driving distance.

“Monk, take the controls,” directed Doc. “I will have to parachute down in the darkness.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Doc shook his head firmly. “No. If there is any chance of surprising the gang, utmost stealth will be necessary. I will go alone.”

That settled the argument. ”Want me to land this bus on the highway nearby?” asked Monk.

“Do so unobtrusively,” Doc told him. “Park the plane out of sight.” Then he vaulted out of his seat.

At the rear of the plane, Doc removed his coat and shoes.

Almost from the beginning of his remarkable career, the bronze man had taken the sensible precaution of going about wearing a bulletproof vest of chain mail. Over time, he had found it necessary to expand this protective garment so that it covered his arms and legs under his shirt. Gunmen often aimed for the chest or arms, rarely for the head, and less often for the legs.

However, Doc Savage had been struck or nicked by a fair amount of slugs in recent months. So by this time, he had taken to wearing what amounted to a union suit of chain mail under his street clothes. Wading into a nest of hardened gunmen such as the Grogan gang, this would not be sufficient.

For this reason, the bronze giant took the precaution of donning a remarkable suit of jointed stainless steel armor, which he extracted from a numbered case in the cargo area at the tail of the night-winging plane.

This consisted of a flexible helmet of chain mail, which draped over his head and permitted vision through a pair of eyeholes which he then covered over with a pair of goggles designed to work with an infra-red headlamp mounted over the lenses.

Gloves and boots of flexible steel were added to this ensemble.

When the bronze giant had finished, he looked like an ultra-modern knight in armor. He carried no weapons, other than his many-pocketed vest, which was stuffed with handy gadgets of all varieties.

Lastly, Doc Savage shouldered into a canvas parachute pack.

“Let me know when we are near the coal mine,” he called forward to Monk.

“Want me to drop you smack in the middle?”

“No,” returned Doc. “Put me on the lee side of the big coal-washing plant. I wish to approach from the southwest.”

“Gotcha!” enthused Monk. “Comin’ right up.”

The simian chemist banked the big plane and banked it again, bringing it around. The hissing of its silenced motors could not be heard in the soundproofed cabin. Nor was it likely to be detected from the ground.

Doc Savage went to the hatch, and flung it open. Cold slipstream ripped into the interior of the plane, causing the hats and neckties of the unconscious Joe Shine mob to fly about wildly.

One hat flew out the open door. Doc attempted to intercept it, but he was encumbered by the cumbersome armor, and the hat went flying outward.

“Get ready,” warned Monk.

Doc stepped to the edge of the open hatch, and held himself in place with his metallic fingers.

“Go ahead and jump!” yelled Monk.

The bronze man disappeared from view, and Ham Brooks scrambled to pull the door shut by using the gold knob of his cane to hook the door latch. He almost fell out attempting this, but managed to get the door closed with a little help from Monk, who, without warning, stood the plane on its right wing, causing the door to clap shut, and the flailing attorney to slam across the cabin and into the opposite bulkhead.

When Monk righted the plane, Ham jumped to his feet and squawked, “Remind me to brain you when you are not flying this plane!”

Monk yelled back in an injured tone, “You would’ve fallen out if I hadn’t pulled that stunt.”

“I almost had a heart attack!”

“Next time, try to succeed,” snorted Monk, slanting the plane in the direction of the nearest country road.

They did not attempt to follow Doc Savage’s progress to the ground, for the bronze man had donned a parachute that was as black as octopus ink, which could not be seen from the ground or from the air.

Clouds had obscured a fingernail moon, which would minimize the chances of the chain-mail armor being picked out by moonlight. There was no guarantee that Doc Savage might not be spotted as he neared the ground, assuming that guards were picketed below on watch.

The unpleasant thought was on all of their minds and caused Long Tom to snap, “Plant this crate on the ground, fast. If Doc needs help, we’ve got to be Johnny on the spot.”

“Hold your horses,” retorted Monk. “I gotta find a stretch of road that’s sheltered so the landin’ lights don’t show.”

“Just get this thing on the ground,” groused Long Tom. “I’m looking forward to trying my magnetic gun on these mobsters.”

“Wait’ll you see the new bullets I’m packin’, Long Tom,” Monk chortled. “Some of them are doozies.”

“Doozies is right,” sniffed Ham. “I hope you can live down those Charlie horse misfires before this night is over.”