Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace (5 page)

“Spook Davis is abused,” complained the young man.

Drury “Spook” Davis gathered himself and got carefully to his feet, not moving his head more than he had to. He observed for the first time the oil and broken glass on the floor and the other traces of recent activity.

“You have a spasm in here?” he wanted to know.

Gull passed on the question—it struck him now that Spook Davis’ voice did not sound as if he were inebriated.

“What happened to you?” Gull demanded sharply.

“Will you believe me?”

“If I’m having one of my gullible moments. Go ahead.”

Spook Davis drew in a breath, shut his eyes, then whistled painfully. “You know that patch of brush south of here in old Duzzit’s cow pasture?”

“Well?”

“You know the path through it, the short cut from here to town, or vice versa?”

“Hurry up! What happened to you?”

“Well, after the movie was over, I took that path to walk back here. Shorter. I was ambling along—”

“Sure you weren’t staggering?” intimated Gull.

“Ambling!” Spook fired back. “I’m not tight. I was ambling along and I heard—or rather, I bumped into—somebody. All unexpected, see. I bumped into this character, and the person drew back and there was kind of a hissing noise as if the party didn’t know what to think. Then there was a minute when nothing was said, so I thought I’d sort of break the conversational ice. I tried to think up something original, and I finally had it. But I guess it was the wrong thing.”

“What was it?”

“I said—‘Don’t be alarmed, it’s only Chris Columbus, looking forward to his new holiday.’ Then—
bop!
I got it. Right on the place where they tell me I do my thinking—
say! What ails you!”
This last was prompted by Gull’s stunned expression.

“You mentioned Christopher Columbus entirely by chance?”

“Sure.”

“Listen!” Gull then explained, in tense, clipped sentences, everything that had happened.

Spook Davis leaned back, supported only by his elbows, and his mouth fell open foolishly and remained that way. He became, after a while, as grim looking as Gull, and the two resembled each other more than ever in physical appearance, although the two were as apart as the poles in character. Gull was serious, ambitious, steady enough, although extravagant with money—however, of the latter he now considered himself well cured. On the other hand, Spook Davis was flighty and came about as near being what is slangily called a “screwball” as anyone could. At only one point, as Spook listened, did he really look frightened—when Gull mentioned the shotgun. Spook paled then. He had a horror of guns.

It was typical of Spook Davis that, even before Gull finished telling what had occurred, the stooge began to recover from his surprise, to dismiss the mystery, to disregard the seriousness of the hound-voiced midget’s murdering to get the telegram, as well as his statement that he would dispose of The Great Gulliver later. Spook Davis was like that—fluctuating.

“HONEST to Blackstone, it doesn’t make sense!” Spook grinned.

Gulliver did not return the grin. He said, “The Christopher Columbus angle is queer. First, part of the telegram said Christopher Columbus was alive. Then you were attacked when you wisecracked that you were Christopher Columbus looking forward to his new holiday.”

“Say, I remember something else!” Spook exploded.

“What?”

“After this unknown party I met hit me, I heard some gibberish about Columbus being alive.
‘Columbus alive—thinks he’s alive—sure he’s alive—hah, hah, hah!’
Crazy stuff like that. It must have been the guy who hit me gibbering. I’m sure I wasn’t doing anything but groaning. Whoo! My head!”

Gull said, “Hold still,” and examined Spook’s head. There was a bruise and a cut, neither likely to prove serious.

“I remember another thing,” Spook exclaimed. “Do you know two fellows named Harvell Braggs and Ivan Cass?”

Gull squinted thoughtfully, and couldn’t recall them. “No.”

Spook Davis elaborated, “This Harvell Braggs must be an awful fat guy, and the other one, Ivan Cass, kind of a grim bird.”

“What about them?”

“They were inquiring around town about you, somebody told me,” Spook explained. “I guess they’ll look you up later. That’s all I know. The feller in the restaurant just mentioned it.”

Gull probed his memory again, but concluded finally that he had never heard of the two gentlemen, although it was pleasantly possible that they might be theatrical men from New York who had come to sign him up on a new contract—he fervently hoped this to be the case.

“Say, I remember another thing!” Spook barked suddenly.

“Yes?”

“It was a bottle of whiskey that hit me. That’s where the smell of demon rum came from.”

THE GREAT GULLIVER now applied first-aid bandages and Mercurochrome—there was a kit in the filling station—to Spook’s head. It was while he was working on the small wound that his thoughts got into a new channel….

Spook Davis was a fellow who could get into a remarkable number of scrapes. Spook was blessed with what the Irish call the gift of gab. Given the choice of telling truth or falsehood, Spook invariably chose a middle course. He exaggerated, managing both in a convincing way. It was hard to separate fact from fiction in Spook’s windy yarning. For a long time, this failing of Spook Davis had puzzled Gull, but for some months he had known what was wrong with his stooge.

Spook Davis was a chronic Machiavelliast. There are people, psychological cases called kleptomaniacs, who cannot help stealing things. They may have plenty of money and not need the things they steal, but they cannot help taking them. With Spook, it wasn’t stealing. It was exaggerating.

Added complication was the fact that Spook Davis looked so very like Gull—when he was wearing a wig which he affected when working as an assistant to The Great Gulliver. However, Gull had hired Spook because of this very similarity in appearance. They utilized it in their work as magicians. When properly disguised, the striking resemblance allowed for the astonishing illusion that The Great Gulliver could be in two places at the same time.

They were dressed differently, now, of course, but when in the same attire, it would be almost impossible to tell them apart, a fact which they had used to advantage in performing magic tricks. Gull had but to get into a wooden box on the stage, which was made to appear empty by means of mirrors, and Spook then would appear immediately in the audience to create a striking piece of legerdemain.
²

Spook Davis’ exaggerating frequently stirred up trouble, from the results of which Gull, his double in appearance, often had to suffer.

Gull abruptly faced Spook Davis.

“So you said, ‘Chris Columbus taking a vacation,’ just by accident!” he growled.

“Huh? What— No, it was only that the new federal holiday was on my mind.”

Gulliver Greene looked blank for a moment.

“Columbus Day,” reminded Spook. “October twelfth. The President of the United States himself signed it into law.”

Gull made frowning faces, then the light dawned in his emerald green eyes.

“Forgot about that,” he mumbled. Then, shaking off his reverie, his ire returned.

“Blast your hide!” Gull grated. “If this mess is something your whoppers have stirred up—”

“Aw, now, Gull, hell! Really, I didn’t—honest—I—”

“Remember that blonde hussy down in Tulsa?” Gull rapped.

“I’m telling you I haven’t—”

“You promised to marry her! But it was me she sued for breach of promise, and her witnesses identified me as you! You told her you were young Rockefeller!”

Spook Davis wailed, “This is straight, Gull! Honest to Blackstone. It’s straight. I didn’t stir this up, and I don’t know what it’s all about!”

Gull stood back, not entirely convinced. Spook had his more skilled moments, when even Gull could not tell when he was expanding upon the facts. On the other hand—he might be telling the unvarnished truth. He did, occasionally.

“You stick here!” Gull said abruptly.

“I couldn’t move.”

GULLIVER took the flashlight and the telegram, left the station, crossed the road and swung over a barbed wire fence. He had decided to investigate the route through the brush patch, the short cut to town which Spook Davis had been following when assaulted. The assailant might have left tracks.

After he had reached the brush, Gull foresightedly refrained from showing the flashlight beam, on the long chance that the marauder might still be in the vicinity. He walked carefully, pausing to listen, holding the shotgun ready.

At first, he thought what he heard was a pig in the brush. This grunting sounded like that, a series of short
Unk! Unk!
noises. Gull halted, and was just beginning to recall that pigs usually slept at night when the grunting turned into a voice that said thickly, “Oh, don’t—don’t—
don’t!”

Gull spiked the flashlight beam through the brush in the direction of the voice sounds, left the illumination on only a moment, then extinguished it, whipped to one side and dropped flat—just in case there might be shooting.

It was very still, and the groaning continued.

Gull ran forward and turned the flashlight on the groaning. He found himself looking at an old man, a huge old moose who must clear nearly seven feet tall when erect and who was as bald as an egg if one discounted the tufts of very black hair which grew out of his ears.

The ancient’s wrists and ankles were tied securely with his own shirt.

Chapter IV

THE VANISHING VICTORIAN

THE MAN WHO stepped into view stood taller than any other in the room. He would have out-towered the Biblical giant, Samson, not to mention other fabulous personages noted for their imposing height and physical prowess.

He was Doc Savage. The Twentieth Century had not, and probably would not, produce another like him.

Six feet would catch his height at the eyes. And they were unique eyes. A metallic gold, filled with aureate flakes which caught the light and imparted the eerie sensation of gold dust swirling in suspension. His skin was sun-bronzed and wind-burned. A lifetime of adventuring had wrought that metallic alchemy. A helmet of hair lay close to his scalp, like super-fine coppery wire.

The entire effect of the man was a little unreal, as if an alchemist had wrought a vital human being out of impervious metals.

“It worked like a charm, Doc,” Monk said enthusiastically. “Ham here pretended to be an old geezer, and asked the crook to meet us at the new office.”

Ham Brooks took up the tale.

“I entered the office by the secret elevator so that the secretarial staff would not realize I was there. When I seized him, Monk came down to help carry our prisoner back to our headquarters.”

“No one suspected the subterfuge?”

“Everything transpired behind closed doors,” Ham assured him.

Doc nodded. “It was a good test. But we will not use that subterfuge often, lest the nature of the eighty-fifth floor operation become publicly known.”

“This idea of yours is a beaut, Doc,” Monk said, handing over the prisoner draped across his apish shoulder. The bronze man took the unconscious man in hand as if he weighed no more than a small child. “Scattering graduates of this place all over the country, where they can gather information and send it back to us for investigation, what I mean.”

“It is my hope that it will increase the efficiency of our little organization,” Doc stated.

The bronze giant was being characteristically modest when he called his organization little. True, there were only five men who worked closely with him. But this criminal-curing college employed guards and other staff, as did the anonymous office that went only by the plain name, Oddities.

The latter was run by the former head of a private detective agency Doc had hired at the beginning of the present business depression, just before it would surely have failed. Doc owned other enterprises, as well. Steamship companies. Passenger airlines. Railroads. Newspapers. Factories. The financial holdings of the amazing bronze man were immense.

This latest expansion, however, was a clandestine one. The general public would never hear of it. Not if Doc Savage could help it.

“Monk, the telegram, please,” requested Doc.

A hairy hand pulled out the night letter, proffered it. Doc accepted it with one hand, the other holding the prisoner steady.

Golden orbs scanned the typed letters pasted onto the yellow flimsy, absorbing the report of the mysteriously vanishing house in the Missouri woods.

“This bears investigation.”

“We’re gettin’ close to Halloween, Doc,” suggested Monk. “Could be a prank.”

Doc shook his head in a slow negative. “The person who sent this is a trusted graduate of this institution, and currently works as stringer for a newspaper in the city of Kirksville, not far from the site of this unusual dwelling. He would not report a prank.”

And on that sound judgment, the bronze giant decided to look into the mystery. For this was part of what he did—investigate the unusual.

“Is that why you wanted us to bring the small dirigible?” asked Ham.

Doc nodded. “It fit the circumstances described in the telegram and it was time the mooring experiment was concluded.”

They moved through the building as Doc conveyed the prisoner to a dormitory-style holding room where he could sleep off the effects of the spell Ham inflicted upon him.

They passed a gymnasium, then an empty cafeteria. What looked like a classroom where educational activities were taking place came into view. Every face in those classes could be found on post office walls, and in police mug books across the nation, if not the world. There were a few small-time dictators Doc had harvested in the course of his recent adventures. Everyone wore a crisp white uniform. The staff wore blue.

Everything in this and the other buildings was dedicated to the transformation of common criminals into upright citizens. No criminal who had ever been subjected to this regimen had ever escaped, or gone back to a life of criminality. It was the bronze man’s deepest hope that none ever would.