Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (3 page)

She decided to say nothing about it—was willing to drop the whole thing. As soon as it seemed prudent to do so, she intended to give her formal notice. There was something highly irregular about this nameless clipping service whose only formal name was Oddities.

She moved on to the next clipping. It was considerably less unnerving than the other, merely being a report of a collector living in the Bahamas, who specialized in relics pertaining to the life of the Discoverer of America, Christopher Columbus. Someone had stolen some of these priceless artifacts. The only peculiar aspect of this theft was that the thief was described as bearing a striking resemblance to the Great Navigator himself, who was long in his grave.

If the curious stenographer possessed optics capable of seeing through the ceiling in the fashion of an X-ray machine, she would have had her curiosity partly satisfied. But she would have been even more astounded than she presently was.

FOR directly above, stood the eighty-sixth floor of the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan. It was a place where few ever ventured. This was the headquarters of the fabulous being known to the world as Doc Savage.

The stenographer knew who Doc Savage was. Few in the civilized world did not. Doc was the stuff of hot newspaper copy.

But Doc Savage was not there now. Instead, two men were muscling the late visitor to the Oddities office out of a small secret elevator that connected the lower office with a vast laboratory on the top floor.

This was Doc Savage’s scientific laboratory. It was said by learned men to be unique in all the world. That it was probably the most well-equipped experimental laboratory imaginable was evident in its profusion of up-to-date equipment, ranging from glittering chemical apparatus to an industrial furnace.

The two men were a study in contrasts, both physical and sartorial.

One looked as if he had stepped from a fashionable Fifth Avenue men’s clothier window display and came to life. His hair was white as snow, as was the long trailing beard that hung loosely from his face.

The other possessed all the outward earmarks of a longshoreman or dock walloper. He was an astonishing individual to whom a capricious mother nature had bequeathed the pleasantly homely face and brutish build of a gorilla. His loud clothes were rumpled and fit him rather badly.

“Unhand me!” the individual they were manhandling shouted. His voice was identical to that of the shouting man formerly trapped within the Oddities office. The one who had tried and failed to call the police.

“Not a chance,” said the gorilla-like man in a squeaky voice.

“You are our prisoner,” declared the fashionable gent.

“The prisoner of Doc Savage, you mean!”

“Precisely,” said he of the white beard.

“I recognize you now. You are the noted lawyer, Ham Brooks.”

“That does not matter now, my good man,” said Ham Brooks, removing his white beard. It was an articial one. “I only wore this to lull you into a false sense of safety.”

“Your accomplice I recognized right off,” huffed the other.

“Disguising my anthropoid friend, Monk here, is a waste of time,” drawled Ham. “Now, are you coming along voluntarily, or not?”

“Not!”

Powerful hands seized the reluctant one by the shoulders, spun him around. The captive found himself looking into the simian features of the apish one named Monk.

“I can bend crowbars with these mitts,” Monk growled. “Imagine how I’d mangle your skinny shoulders.”

Monk dug in a thumb that felt like a blunt railroad spike. The other winced painfully.

Ham put in, “Monk, Doc wants him delivered intact.”

“Listen, shyster, this fine, upstandin’ citizen has been fleecin’ widows and orphans out of their life savings and Doc wants it to stop pronto.”

“I am guilty of no such thing!” the other said in an injured voice. “This is a canard.”

“Doc personally asked us to grab you up,” continued Monk. “So you couldn’t do any more harm to honest folks just trying to get along in life.”

The accused took umbrage. “You cannot prove your charges!”

“Perhaps not in a court of law,” admitted Ham the attorney. “But we are not about to turn you over to the authorities.”

“Then what—”

“Doc has a special place for people like you,” Ham said flatly. “We call it the ‘college’.”

“I am a graduate of one of the finest institutions for learning in New England! I need no further education from the likes of you two!”

Monk inserted, “Doc says otherwise.”

“That’s why we lured you to the Oddities office on the pretext that we wished to invest in your worthless holding company,” added Ham.

“I am not going anywhere with either of you!” the indignant man insisted.

“I thought you might take that attitude,” snapped Ham.

While Monk held the struggling swindler in place, Ham Brooks popped the face of his gold wrist watch and exposed a reservoir of a sticky brown substance resembling common molasses.

He separated his elegant dark cane, revealing it to be a sword cane. The empty barrel he tossed onto a leather chair. Dipping the tip of the lean blade into the exposed reservoir, Ham coated it with the stuff.

Then he placed the tip of it to the right cheek of the protesting prisoner. The man flinched, struggled vainly in Monk’s hairy grasp.

Ham flexed one wrist, made a slight nick in the exposed cheek.

Not three seconds passed before the other became a limp burden in Monk’s arms.

“We will convey him to our warehouse hangar,” said Ham, restoring watch and cane to their original conditions. “Then we will fly to the college with this worthless scoundrel.”

Monk shook his head.

“Doc told me to take the new short-range dirigible.”

“Won’t that be cumbersome?” Ham protested.

“Doc wants the dirigible. It might have something to do with this.”

From a pocket of his dilapidated coat, the hairy one pulled a telegram.

“This came to the office downstairs.”

Ham read it:

HAVE MYSTERY WORTHY OF YOUR ABILITIES STOP THERE IS A STRANGE HOUSE IN THE MISSOURI WOODS WEST OF LA PLATA STOP WHEN APPROACHED, IT VANISHES STOP ALWAYS TO REAPPEAR LATER STOP NO ONE CAN GET TO IT STOP HOUSE FORMERLY BELONGED TO DECEASED SCIENTIST.

033

“Who sent this?”

“One of our graduates,” said Monk. “He lives out Missouri way.”

“Doc’s new setup is sure harvesting fruit,” Ham declared. “First this scoundrel walks into the eighty-fifth floor information clearing house, now this lead comes from one of the college graduates Doc rehabilitated.”

“Let’s get him up there, so he can join the cause,” said Monk, grinning from ear to ear. His grin almost split his head in two like a melon. Monk had a big mouth.

They left the suite of offices through a reception room that consisted of an inlaid desk of Oriental workmanship, a huge safe built in the last century, and several comfortable leather chairs. This was Doc Savage’s formal reception room.

Exiting to the corridor, Monk and Ham—the former carried the insensate captive over one sloping shoulder like a sack of oats—ignored the elevators and instead found a locked door, which they unlocked.

Entering, they accessed a winding staircase and emerged in a round chamber that had been designed for the novel purpose of allowing commercial dirigibles to dock and discharge passengers.

Previous attempts to perfect this maneuver had been disastrous. But Doc Savage, with his unbounded faith in scientific progress, had lately invented a small dirigible which could be docked here. It would never equal—much less rival—the great trans-Atlantic passenger airships, but for exploratory purposes, it nicely suited their needs.

Moreover, it was small enough that should high winds rock it on its mooring, it could withstand considerable midair buffeting.

Coming to the great gallery, Monk deployed a covered gangway. This extended outward accordion fashion, and made contact with the small gondola of the bobbing airship.

Ham went first, balancing carefully. A fearful fall awaited should he pitch out through the lightweight silk sides.

Monk followed, handing the prisoner up. Ham pulled him along by grasping his hair with his hand, while Monk pushed. They were not gentle about it.

When the prisoner had been taken on board, Monk ambled after him, then released the gangplank, which withdrew mechanically.

For a moment, Monk stared out through the open dirigible door.

The massive spire of the great skyline—the tallest in Manhattan—lay beneath them. It was a long drop down.

“Will you kindly close that hatch!” Ham complained.

“I happen to favor the view,” Monk returned. “In case I ever get the urge to pitch an ambulance-chasin’ shyster down, I want to know how long it will take him to fall.”

Ham fumed, went to the controls, which were deceptively simple. There were control wheels and the expected dials and gauges, which allowed instantaneous monitoring of yaw, pitch and altitude.

“I am about to cast off, ready or not,” Ham called out.

With a last look, Monk shut the hatch.

Ham had by that time engaged the engines. There were but two. He pulled a lever and an ingenious mechanical claw of a hook—the only thing tethering the small airship to the mooring mast—let go. Its tines were electrically controlled and snapped open in order to release its steel-clawed grasp.

Engines in reverse, the dirigible backed away from the mooring mast. There was little wind, which was a hazard that defeated all past docking attempts.

When they were clear, Ham advanced the throttle and the little airship gave a jump and began bumping along in a northerly direction. It ran very quietly, owing to interior soundproofing.

In very quick order, the upper regions of Manhattan began unreeling beneath them. The sharp splinters of midtown skyscrapers gave way to blocky apartment houses and other less imposing buildings.

Ham Brooks addressed Monk haughtily.

“At least you had the good sense to leave that blasted pig behind this time!” he uttered.

The hairy chemist was studying the forest of buildings below, apparently unhearing. He began whistling a gaudy show tune.

From the rear of the tiny gondola, a familiar squealing came.

Ham started. Looking behind him he expected a certain porker to come bounding into view. None came.

Ham whirled, demanded, “Was that you making that wretched squeal?”

Monk did his level best to look injured. “Do I look like a pig to you?”

“Of course not! But I
do
know you fancy yourself a ventriloquist.”

Monk said nothing. His twinkling eyes sought the ceiling. An expression of innocence roosted upon his pleasantly homely features.

Reluctantly, Ham returned to the controls.

Again the piggy squeal came forth.

Snapping his head around, Ham Brooks eyed Monk and the gondola interior by turns.

“That was you! I knew it!”

Monk continued looking innocent. Anyone knowing him well would conclude it masked the guilty expression of a practical-joking ventriloquist.

Monk was one of a group of six remarkable men. Monk and four of the others were specialists in some particular line. One was an engineer; another a geologist; another a lawyer; and one an electrical wizard. Throughout the world, few could have been found to excel these five individuals in their chosen professions. Incredible enough, however, there was one man who was a greater chemist, a more accomplished engineer, a more learned lawyer, a more renowned geologist and skilled electrical expert than any of the five men. Furthermore, this fabulous personage was just as proficient at countless other professions. So vast was his fund of knowledge that even those associated closely with this astounding man were continually awed by his tremendous feats.

That unique individual was the leader of the group to which Monk belonged—Doc Savage. Man of Miracles, archangel of science, Doc was a being about whom much was written, much more was rumored, but little was definitely known.

Imaginative newspapermen had taken to regaling readers with the notion that Doc was a spiritual descendant of Sir Galahad, the knight who went around rescuing persons in distress. There was something to be said for that analogy. For the Man of Bronze, as he was most often called, subscribed to the theory that when a good deed needed doing, and wickedness punished, it was best to right the wrong rather than to wait to see how it all came out—which is how the average citizen often regarded trouble not his or her own.

Doc Savage came fully equipped to right wrongs and punish evildoers. He had been raised from the cradle for such a noble purpose.

TWO hours later, they came to the wilderness section of upstate New York. The area was utterly devoid of habitation for miles around.

Below, they spied a cluster of grim graystone buildings set at the base of a mountainous area. This was surrounded by several zones bounded by high woven-wire fences. The outer fence was topped by razor wire. Six feet separated it from the next fence in the concentrated series of fences. There were traps in these zones. The final fence, the innermost one, was electrified.

The traps and the electricity were controlled by persons in a hunting-style log lodge which sat off in one corner.

There were other defenses. Sections of earthen loam were mounted on rolling tracks. When withdrawn, they disclosed concrete pits housing anti-aircraft batteries.

The public knew nothing of these devices. No one was able to enter who was not authorized to do so. The place was a secret.

Any hunter who chanced to stray close to the arrangement of buildings would understand why it was so well-protected. For on the outer fence were posted large signs, several facing each point of the compass. These read:

WARNING

GERM RESEARCH INSTITUTION

—YOU MAY CATCH A DISEASE—

KEEP OUT

The signs looked new and freshly painted. They were. All of the institution was. For this was Doc Savage’s Crime College. Although it had been in operation for several years now, formerly it had been concealed behind the false front of the hillside, and was entirely a subterranean affair.