Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (25 page)

“Sounds reasonable,” rumbled Renny, removing his heavy foot.

Monk employed his long arms to reach down for the bib of Pap Buzz. The hairy chemist made a fist and pulled upwards.

Pap Buzz was suddenly standing on his feet, a purple-green bruise slowly forming on his forehead.

“Bunderson is back at the house,” Monk informed him.

“My job and Wes’ was to keep folks away, not pry into Mr. Bunderson’s doings. If you say he’s back, he don’t need me barging in.”

Renny demanded, “Get many prowlers way out here?”

“Some,” Pap Buzz admitted. “We run a few off about a month or so back. They seemed to be looking for something special-like. Maybe they got wind of that ramshackle old house, I don’t know. But Mr. Bunderson was powerful concerned about it. Told us to shoot on sight, if folks didn’t skedaddle.”

“Wonder who they were?” muttered Monk.

Pap Buzz confessed that he did not know, nor did he care. He was just a hired hand. He spat out another stream of tobacco juice by way of ending the conversation.

With that, they let the man go, minus his revolver. His story had sounded reasonable and explained some of the actions of the previous night.

THEY trudged along the shoulder of the blacktop road in the direction of a faint glow which dashed whitely at regular intervals, until they came to a gravel way which arched from the highway, crossed a railroad track, then angled down to the emergency airport. The village of Millard—one store, one filling station, blacksmith shop—was beside the railway tracks only a short distance to the north.

Colored lights edging the government flying field became distinguishable. There were no hangars; only the radio operator’s little house and towers. A plane or two a year landed on the field as a rule.

The rotating beacon flung its stab of white periodically.

They claimed Renny’s plane. It was intact. They deactivated the alarms that kept it secure from theft, and boarded. They left the smaller aircraft Johnny and Long Tom had flown from Toronto for later recovery.

Ham Brooks got on the radio and began contacting the local authorities.

“I am seeking information on the present whereabouts of an individual named Harvell Braggs, a collector of historical antiquities,” he explained.

This led him to a local hotel in the town of La Plata. When he reached the front desk, via radio-telephone, he was told in no uncertain terms, “Mr. Braggs did not return last evening.”

“Did he check out?”

“He did not, and his bill remains unpaid,” the desk clerk said, with a trace of distaste.

“What does Braggs look like?” asked Ham.

“A pachyderm,” replied the other succinctly.

“Say that again,” requested Ham.

“Harvell Braggs,” clarified the desk clerk, “is the biggest, roundest, talkingest elephant of a human being you or I ever saw teetering on two legs.”

“That kinda narrows it down,” muttered Monk when Ham reported his findings.

“It does not!” flared Ham. “We have no idea where to find this person.”

Johnny Littlejohn was twirling his monocle magnifier by the black ribbon he used to keep it attached to his coat lapel.

“I believe that I have met this man Braggs. At one of my lectures, actually.”

“That still will not help us to find him,” fumed Ham. “The world is full of fat men.”

“Harvell Braggs is not merely fat,” retorted Johnny. “He is mountainous.”

Ham made flustered sounds of impotent rage. The absence of his sword cane was not helping his nerves, either.

For lack of a better plan, they called around to various State Highway Patrol barracks, asking if anyone had noticed a prodigiously fat man walking or driving around.

It had all the makings of a snipe hunt, but dogged persistence showed in the end that it was not.

“Such a man was seen driving through the rain down in Lake of the Ozarks, asking directions,” reported one barracks captain. “Know it?”

Ham said, “I have been to the locality. Thank you.”

Getting off the radio telephone, the dapper lawyer suggested, “We might as well fly as drive. It will be faster.”

“Fly where?” wondered Monk Mayfair.

“Lake of the Ozarks.”

Renny sprang into the control bucket and began warming up the engines.

“Lake of the Ozarks. Wasn’t that the spot where we—”

“Yes. And I hope that our troubles this time won’t be quite so cataclysmic,” complained Ham, racing Monk to one of the few seats the two-engine aircraft boasted. Monk lost. He had to sit on the floor.

By the time Renny had the booming plane in the air, Monk had idly picked apart the neat knots in Ham’s shoelaces without the dapper lawyer noticing. He kept a straight face all the way up to two thousand feet. It was not difficult. Awareness of the bronze man’s fantastic predicament made his thoughts oppressively morose. Monk and Ham had entertained themselves by bedeviling one another for as long as each had known the other. The going rarely got so tough that the pair forgot their perpetual quarrel. But now, neither had much heart for pranking.

The big pontoon craft did not circle for altitude, but roared away into the cloud-troubled sky, motors a-moan like a banshee in mourning.

Chapter XXV

PROMISED LAND

GULLIVER GREENE sank back on his heels, then swallowed and got his astonishment down. He called softly, and Spook, who was sharpening a butcher knife grimly, sprang to his side.

“He was drugged, all right,” Gull said. “He’s coming out of it.”

He kneaded Christopher Columbus’ wrists, then tried liquor from a square bottle, which was considerably more effective.

“Maybe I can move—in time,” Columbus said haltingly.

Spook Davis leaned close to the man. “Who are you? And look, if you say ‘Christopher Columbus,’ they’ll have to put me in the booby hatch.”

“I am Don Christopher Columbus,” the man said in a thick, slurred voice.

Spook said, “Oo-o-o!” and grabbed fistfuls of his own hair.

“Do not conceive the wrong idea,” Christopher Columbus said earnestly. “I am fifty-one years old, not four hundred. I have not been continuously alive since the time of my own era.”

“That makes as much sense as the moon being composed of green curd and starfish,” Gulliver pointed out.

“Mine is a strange story, I will admit,” said Columbus. “In the Year of Our Lord 1503, I was shipwrecked with my men on the island of Santiago, in the West Indies, when I chased a strange man into an even stranger house. The house had not been there the day before. While in this accursed dwelling, I was overcome by a sorcerous spell, which robbed me of my senses, and when it was over, I escaped the house, only to find myself, lost and wandering, in an unfamiliar forest. That forest is not far from here.”

“Strange,” said Gulliver, “hardly describes that unbelievable yarn.”

“It is the truth,” said Columbus stiffly. “I am again shipwrecked, but in another era.”

The idea made the muscles creep in Gulliver’s long arms.

Spook Davis released his hair. He pulled a folding chair over and sat down on it, braced against the trailer motion. He beat his knees several times with his fists, then said, “Boy! Boy, is this something! Is it! What a whopper! I could eat worms, I’m that impressed.”

Christopher Columbus cleared his throat several times, then tried moving his head in different positions. But when he spoke, his voice timbre was still thick and his enunciation difficult to follow.

“It was some kind of narcotic they used on me,” he mumbled. “It’s wearing off.”

“Why did they drug you?” Gull asked intently.

“My curiosity got me that.” Columbus rolled his head. “I was taken in by the founder of the Silent Saints—”

“Founder?”

Columbus seemed to try to nod, but couldn’t. “The founder started it several years ago, along with some like-minded brethren. It was a good idea. Ivan Cass came along with plenty of money. We expanded and started sending our apostles all over the country.”

He stopped and his eyes studied them steadily, “Know why I am telling you this?”

“Eh?” Gull said.

“You were involved in this by no wish of your own—but wait, I will tell you the rest. It is simple. I noticed old Box Daniels acting worried. I began checking up on him. I found he had discovered that Ivan Cass and a few others in the Silent Saints organization were engaged in some sinister activity. I confronted them and demanded they leave our brotherhood. Somehow, they divined who I was in actuality. They immediately seized me and drugged me, demanding answers to questions I did not possess. They might have done away with me, but old Box Daniels threatened to go to a nobleman named Doc Savage with the whole story. So they tried to kill old Box, and in desperation, he went to you, but they followed him, eventually murdering him.”

Gull leaned closer. “What’s Cass pulling?”

Columbus said, “I have not been able to find out. He has only a few men, a dozen or so, in the Silent Saints. They are the wrongdoers. All the other Silent Saints are true missionaries of the one true way of spiritual peace and tranquility.”

The trailer jumped about, evidently traversing a rough stretch of road. The boughs of trees began to scrape the roof and occasionally the sides. Spook Davis sprang to a window, looked out and said, “It’s about daylight and we’re going through a young jungle and a lot of hills.”

Gull nodded in the direction of the coupé. “Know this human whale, Harvell Braggs?”

Columbus shut his eyes wearily. “Never beheld the worthy before. And I cannot understand that fanciful story he told others about me stealing my own property from him.”

Gull sighed and stood up. He did not consider himself to be psychic, but something in the other man’s tone communicated the idea that he was speaking the truth. Gull had had that feeling all during his incredible account. It was preposterous—and deeply disturbing.

“Have you seen my adopted daughter, Petella?” Columbus asked suddenly.

“Who?” Gull demanded.

“Petella van Astor. Her public name is Saint Pete.”

SURPRISE and the lurching of the trailer almost took Gulliver Greene off his feet. He did sit down heavily on the twin locker benches which formed part of the table arrangement.

“Now,” he said, “we
are
getting places.”

Columbus repeated, “Have you seen her?”

“Was she mixed up in this?” Gull countered.

“She would try to find me. She probably would try to find me by trailing the mind-readers in Cass’ gang.”

Spook Davis said, “Then if she’s so nicey-nice, why did she refuse to tell us who you were or where you were—”

Gull got hold of him, shut him up, but it was too late. Columbus was staring, and just a little of the intense horror that must be within him showed on his face.

“Cass got hold of her,” Gull told Columbus. “He threatened to kill you if she talked. Anyhow, that’s the way it figures out. We saw her, but she wouldn’t talk to us.”

“Where is she?”

Gull said, “Cass has her,” and looked at the floor, the walls, at the tree branches scraping past the windows, anywhere to keep from watching the hurt expression on Columbus’ helpless face. The trailer rocked, jerking up on first one side then the other as the wheels ran over rocks. There was more light outside, the red of dawn in the east.

“You young men,” Christopher Columbus said slowly, “are taking your lives too cheaply. Cass is a bad man, a very bad man.”

Gull studied him. “What are you getting at?”

“A warning. Be careful.”

Gull nodded. “Any other advice?”

“If we get separated, go to the Promised Land. You may find Cass there. If not, there is one other place.”

“Cass has two hangouts, eh?”

Columbus said, “I am not sure. There is an island in the West Indies, near Hispaniola, which is now called Haiti. This isle is owned by Harvell Braggs. It goes by the name of Satan Cay, due to the treacherousness of its surrounding reefs. I have overheard Ivan Cass talk of visiting a certain island often. I presume that they are one and the same. But this may not be so.”

Gulliver rubbed arms and legs, and put Spook Davis at the same task. They fed Columbus more liquor. Gradually, the long-haired man seemed to be recovering the ability to use his limbs.

Outside the little window, the sun continued its rising until the surroundings were hazy with dawn light.

“How come you speak regular American?” demanded Spook.

“As I related, in my time of trial, I was taken in by the Silent Saints—a deserved name if there ever was one,” explained Columbus. “They taught me to speak the modern tongue, allowed me to live among them and be useful. My strange accent and manner of speaking was not so unusual around these Godly people. It was a blessing, for which I am, and will always remain, eternally grateful.”

As they heard him out, Gulliver and Spook noticed the way the long-haired man enunciated his words possessed an unusual flavor. His accent was peculiar, and the cadence of his delivery was off, in a manner consistent with one to whom English is not the tongue spoken since birth.

“Box Daniels was a mind-reader,” Gull said, getting at something that was bothering him.

“Not genuine,” Columbus said. “He did not have true extrasensory perception. He was the carnival type, a faker, if I may be excused for speaking the truth of the dead.”

Gull snorted. “All mind-readers are fakes!”

“It is a human tendency to consider impossible that which defeats understanding,” Columbus said quietly. “Some of Cass’ men are genuine mind-readers. Even my adopted daughter, Saint Pete, has the ability to some extent.”

Gull exploded. “Pete—a mind-reader!” His disbelief was in his frown.

“We will not go further into this,” Christopher Columbus said somewhat stiffly. “It would be impossible to convince you without a concrete demonstration.”

Gull opened his mouth to add that several concrete demonstrations would probably still find him unconvinced, unless he was badly mistaken. But the trailer stopped. Moving quickly, he lifted Columbus and allowed him to peer out of the window at their surroundings. He asked, “Recognize anything around here?”