Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (22 page)

“Joe! You gotta hear this!”

“What is it?”

“Duke Grogan. He’s back in town, and he pulled a funny move.”

Joe Shine all but jumped out of his seat, and demanded, “Is he trying to muscle in on the North Side again?”

“No, it’s not that. He and his boys just snatched two of Doc Savage’s men.”

“Doc Savage! I heard he was in town. Looking into some killings. But that doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

“Maybe it don’t,” said the other. “But all hell is going to rain down on this town after what Duke pulled. Doc Savage is poison to crooks like us. Everybody knows that.”

Joe Shine’s shoe-button eyes narrowed in thought. “What’s Duke mixed up in that he pulls a stunt like that?”

“I don’t know,” the lieutenant returned. “But Duke don’t mix into any business that he can’t chisel a few dollars out of it.”

Joe Shine scowled. “You don’t chisel Doc Savage. Can’t be done. I know that much.”

“I’ll say! I had a pal that went up against the bronze guy a few years back. He up and disappeared.” The man snapped his fingers adding, “Just like that. Like he popped out of existence. I’ve searched from Walla Walla to Sing Sing, and never found my pal what got nabbed by Doc Savage.”

“You say that it was Doc Savage’s men who got snatched, but not the bronze guy himself?”

“That’s right. And you know what
that
means.”

“Yeah,” grinned Shine. “Doc Savage is gonna go to town on Duke Grogan and his boys. He’ll be lucky to see the sunrise.”

Joe Shine was standing up now and inserting his arms into his velvet-collared overcoat.

“Let’s look into this. Maybe there’s something in it for us.”

The lieutenant looked blank of face and more than a little queasy about his immediate future. “Like what?”

“If I know Duke Grogan,” said Joe Shine, hard-heeling out of the restaurant, “he’s taken those two mugs for a ride. And I know where he likes to bump people off. Let’s see if we can head him off.”

Now the lieutenant looked truly uneasy.

“What are you thinking of doing?” he asked, following closely.

Settling a black Homburg atop his slicked-down hair, Shine growled. “I haven’t figured out that angle yet, but it’ll come to me. All I know is this: if Duke Grogan is muscling in on Doc Savage, I wanna know why, and I want my piece of the action.”

“I don’t know, Joe,” the other said vaguely, “any piece of the action involving Doc Savage is liable to get us a one-way ticket to nowhere, just like my pal.”

“Doc Savage,” bit out Joe Shine, “ain’t the king of the North Side of Chicago. Now get a move on. We got places to go and things to do.”

Chapter XXI

GANGNAPPED

TWO TOURING CARS rocked as they tore through the city streets.

In the back seat of the lead automobile, Monk, Ham and Janet Falcon shifted with each lurch of the swerving machine. Curtains were pulled so that they were not visible through the side windows.

That was not the only precaution taken. The abductors had driven to a dingy garage outside the city limits, where they ditched the kidnap cars, changing to fresh machines in order to foil police pursuit.

During the exchange, Duke Grogan had ordered the three prisoners into the back of one automobile, whose curtains were tightly drawn.

Two of the thugs doing the shoving were Blackie and Blue, but inasmuch as neither Monk nor Ham had previously laid eyes on the hard-faced duo, they failed to realize they were in the presence of the crooks responsible for Long Tom Roberts’ disappearance.

Swiftly, the autos melted into traffic, unsuspected.

Duke Grogan sat in front. He had collected Monk and Ham’s compact supermachine pistols during the initial abduction. The pair had blundered into the muzzle of a Tommy gun, and so had not gotten off a single shot, despite having their weapons out and ready for action.

Grogan was fiddling with one of the ingenious guns, saying, “Not bad, not bad at all. I could use a brace of these. How do you unlock the mechanism?”

Ham Brooks answered that. “Very carefully. For if you work the safety catches in the wrong order, a vial of acid breaks open and the weapon will sear the flesh off your finger bones.”

That casual warning sounded so intimidating that the gangster leader shoved both weapons into the glove box, saying, “You can show me later.”

A thudding rain had commenced. It produced a dismal tattoo on the canvas tonneau roof, and rapidly turned the slushy avenues into rivers.

Behind the wheel, the driver growled, “I wish this foul weather would make up its mind.”

Beside him, Duke turned in his seat and said, “We don’t have far to go now.”

“Is that so?” muttered Monk. “Where exactly are we headed?”

“Nowhere,” chuckled Duke. “Just plain nowhere. You fellows should have stayed back in New York, just like Ned Gamble should have never left this burg. Too late for him, and now it’s too late for you.”

“Is that a confession of murder?” chided Ham.

Beside the dapper lawyer, Janet Falcon was chewing at her ragged lower lip, and fighting back hot tears. But she said nothing.

Ham demanded, “Doc Savage knows you’re involved in this affair, Duke. Do you have any idea what he will do once he catches up to you and your gang?”

Duke Grogan let out a rough guffaw. “Doc Savage is yesterday’s news. This time he’s up against something that can’t be beat.”

“Are you referring to yourself?” Ham asked suspiciously.

The gang leader looked as if he was about to make a biting retort, but thought better of it. He licked his lips with a trace of nervousness.

“There is somebody bigger than Doc Savage now,” he boasted. “Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

The dapper lawyer ground out, “There is no one bigger than Doc Savage. Get that through your head.”

Grogan said nothing. The expression on his half-turned profile told that he was eager to boast, but thought better of it.

To the girl, Ham Brooks said, “It appears as if we are about to be put on the spot. Have you anything you’d like to tell us before that happens?”

Monk grunted, “Just like a lawyer to go cross-examining someone before they get killed.”

“Shut up!” Ham insisted. To Janet Falcon, he prodded, “Well?”

Janet Falcon chewed her lips in extreme distress. She was succeeding in holding back tears, but all her efforts seemed to go in that direction. Shaking her head, she refused to speak.

The touring car, followed by another, wended its way out of the city and began following a shore road that skirted Lake Michigan.

By this time, dusk had given way to darkness.

Seeing city lights reflected in the vast lake’s expanse, Monk muttered, “Somehow, I get the sinkin’ feeling we’re all goin’ for a swim.”

“Not all of us,” said Duke thinly. “The dame stays above water. For now.”

The driver laughed cruelly, inserting, “You can’t exactly swim when you’re wearing concrete overshoes.”

“We don’t have time for that, Patches,” snapped Duke.

“Well, there’s two of them. How the heck are we gonna weigh them down?”

“Snow chains, that’s how.”

“Well, that might work, at that,” Patches allowed.

Monk and Ham exchanged looks. Although no word passed between them, they seemed to arrive at a mutual understanding without need for conversation.

Their hands were tied behind them, but that did not inhibit their next move.

Leaning back into the seat cushions, they brought up their feet, set the soles of their feet against the backs of the front seats.

Exerting pressure in unison, they tested the seat backs.

Duke noticed this pressure, turned, and started to say, “What the—?”

Simultaneously, Monk and Ham reared back, then slammed their feet forward.

The maneuver sent Duke Grogan and his driver slamming forward violently.

The driver crashed into the steering column, breaking it. For his part, Duke’s skull bounced off the windscreen on his side of the automobile, knocking off his olive green hat.

Losing control, Patches began swerving madly, using the broken spokes of the wheel to steer.

The touring car swapped ends, slid around, and threw up great sheets of rain water mixed with slush on all sides.

It was still spinning when Monk Mayfair turned in his seat, and kicked the passenger door open on his side. It was not the most foresighted maneuver.

Centrifugal force sent him flying out of the careening car.

Ham bleated, “Monk!”

As Ham watched in horror, the hairy chemist went tumbling onto the shoulder of the road. Fortunately for Monk, it was a wet mass of soil and slush.

When the homely chemist ceased rolling, he sat up, and did something that most men could not imagine doing.

Monk’s gorilla-like arms were incredibly long, and by dint of strenuous effort, he was able to work his tied-together wrists down and around his folded legs, which were rather short in comparison, and bring his fists before him.

The ropes used to tie the wrists were not stout, but they were tightly woven.

The apish chemist brought his teeth to bear, and began chewing ferociously. Fibrous strands parted, popped. It was all Monk needed.

His neckless head hunkered down between his sloping shoulders, Monk Mayfair grated his teeth with the exertion, and snapped the rest of his bonds by main strength alone.

It was an impressive feat of muscular might, but there were no witnesses.

The touring car continued sliding and sloughing around, until the radiator collided with a tree. That brought the machine to a rather forceful dead halt.

The touring which was following careened up, braked hard, and men piled out of the jouncing automobile.

“Duke! Duke! Are you all right?”

Duke Grogan was dazed by the crack on his head. He did not respond.

The gunman called Patches was untangling himself from the broken pieces of the steering wheel. He had a bruise on his chest from the impact of his breastbone against the steering column that would not go away for weeks. He was also out of breath.

Climbing out of the machine, he said breathlessly, “We got to get Duke out of here. We don’t want the cops happenin’ along. This is a snatch, remember?”

“Sure, sure.” Gunmen began helping to assist Duke Grogan to exit the wrecked machine, half dragging him over to the other one.

“What about the ones in the back?”

“Grab the girl. Shoot the other one.”

“Happy to,” said one minion, bringing out a .38 caliber revolver, and striding over to the upright machine.

Pulling open the door, he reached in and hauled out the unresisting Janet Falcon.

When he had her entirely out of the machine, the gunman pointed his revolver in, and fired three times. Yellowish flashes illuminated the back of the machine, but that was all that was visible to witnesses.

Janet Falcon turned her head away, and fought back moaning words.

She was unceremoniously shoved into the back of the second touring car. Doors clapped shut and the machine took off, gathering speed in the growing darkness.

By the time it had departed, Monk Mayfair was on his bandy legs and charging toward the ruined touring car. He had not heard the verbal exchange that had taken place, but the sound of gunshots had given him renewed vigor.

Growling, the simian chemist sprang up on the running board, looked in, and saw Ham Brooks sprawled in the back, his eyes wide open and a thread of blood crawling down out of one corner of his mouth.

“Ham! What’d they do to you?”

The dapper lawyer did not reply. He did not move. He did not do anything. It was not even certain that he was still breathing.

Monk’s tiny eyes veered up to the road ahead. Through the pounding rain, he saw the departing tail-light of the touring car and knew he could never catch up to it.

Falling upon the machine in which Ham lay, Monk began disassembling it by brute strength. First, he pulled off the door. It had already been damaged. He flung this away. The hairy chemist seemed intent on tearing the car to pieces as a way of venting his rage and frustration.

He was well along when a blue limousine flashed by, slowed to a halt, and then began backing up with a grinding noise.

Coming to a halt, the driver of the limousine rolled down his window and asked, “What’s the problem, buddy?”

Monk was too busy taking out his frustrations on the wrecked touring car to reply.

Two doors popped open; the driver and his passenger stepped out.

The passenger wore a black pinstripe suit, a matching Homburg, and his shoes were incredibly shiny.

“If I believed in luck,” remarked Joe Shine, “I would say that Lady Luck has caught up with one of us.”

At those words, Monk Mayfair seemed to snap out of his spell of rage.

Turning, he calmly said, “Need to borrow your car. My friend’s been shot up. We gotta get him to a hospital.”

Joe Shine put a hand into his overcoat pocket, and taking it out, showed Monk Mayfair the destructive end of the heavy automatic pistol.

“We’ll give you a ride, all right. We’re going to give you the ride of your life.”

Monk’s sunken eyes narrowed, and his knees bent as if he were about to spring on the gunman.

Joe Shine took this all in, and decided in an instant what he must do.

Without a change of expression, he placed three shots in the center of Monk Mayfair’s barrel chest, striking the area over his beating heart.

The gorilla-like chemist actually turned a complete somersault from the impact of the slugs. Hammering lead drove him into the back seat of the wrecked touring car.

The driver was so taken aback, he said nothing for a full minute. When he got control of his tongue, he cried out, “Boss! We gotta lam outta here!”

“We will. But we’re takin’ them along.”

“But they’re dead.”

“Dead or alive,” said Joe Shine carefully, “they got to be worth something to Doc Savage.”

Chapter XXII

FURTIVE MOVEMENTS

THE EVENING WAS well along, and the hour one where honest folks were fast asleep in their beds. The thudding rain which had marked the transition from daylight to night had abated to a pattering that freckled the puddles that had collected in the gutters.