Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (24 page)

“It ain’t theory. It’s fact. Myer Sim and this Gamble bird were all set to blow the whistle on something big. Gamble went to see Doc Savage, to put him in the know. But somebody got wise and sent a certain someone to bump Myer Sim. That certain someone got your fiancé, too, but you outsmarted him. That leaves you without a partner. I’m thinking of taking the job.”

“You’re insane!” snapped the girl.

Long Tom heard the woman move swiftly across the floor. The telephone receiver rattled.

“You don’t call anyone, I said!” Grogan snarled.

A feminine scream was choked off in its inception. A chair upset.

Peering furtively from behind the big divan, Long Tom saw Duke Grogan jerk the young woman away from the telephone. One hand enveloping her mouth, he replaced the receiver, then flung her into a chair and pounced.

“Working on a cute trick like you is going to be a pleasure!” he rumbled. “You and me have got all night to get acquainted, baby!”

He seized one of the girl’s wrists and twisted her arm cruelly at her back.

“Talk, you miserable wren!” he snarled.

Janet Falcon squirmed and tried to kick him. Her efforts were futile against the gangster’s bulk.

Long Tom had heard all he expected to. He gathered his feet beneath him and leaped from the concealment of the divan. His hands closed over the first weapon handy—a heavy floor lamp. He swung it over his head as he sprang forward.

He wasted no words, knowing that Duke Grogan would probably shoot him on sight.

The cord attached to the floor lamp spoiled the effectiveness of his swing. Although the cord broke, the weighty lamp thumped off Duke Grogan’s skull with no more force than if it had fallen a few inches.

The gangster staggered back, pawing for the long-barreled revolver holstered in his armpit.

“You punk!” sneered Duke. “I’ll fix you!”

There was no time for another blow. Long Tom pitched himself upon the gangster, pinioning the fellow’s arms. They thumped to the thick carpet.

DUKE GROGAN saw his unexpected nemesis looming. His strength was impotent against the wiry muscles of his undersized opponent. But Duke already had a hand on his gun.

Janet Falcon sprang out of the chair. Her hands clasped at her open mouth. She did not scream. Nor did she help Long Tom. Instead, she whirled and fled through the door.

Duke Grogan wrenched his pistol free.

“You lousy crumb!” he barked. “I’ll croak you good.”

He swung the barrel of his weapon against the side of the puny prowler’s skull. His head swimming in a Milky Way of colored sparks, Long Tom Roberts felt his muscles grow watery and useless. He toppled off the gangster. He was not completely unconscious, only stunned.

The finishing shot he expected did not come. Duke Grogan leaped to his feet and plunged into the open doorway through which the girl had vanished.

Long Tom heard the girl scream once, piercingly.

Four shots blasted out so swiftly that they were a roll of deafening sound.

Duke Grogan backed into the room. He was doubled over, both arms clamped across his stomach. The long-barreled revolver dropped from his limp fingers. Another shot roared.

That slug struck Duke Grogan between the eyes. He folded to the floor.

Long Tom floundered groggily to his hands and knees. The shatter of breaking glass penetrated the ringing in his ears.

Crawling on all fours, the slim electrical wizard got the gangster’s pistol. Cautiously, he crept into the room from which the shots had come. It was empty. The glass was smashed from a window in the front door. It had been slammed shut.

Long Tom clutched a chair and hoisted himself erect. He peered about. Duke Grogan was dead.

Janet Falcon’s purse lay on the table. Long Tom scooped up the handbag. Then he dashed out of the house.

There was no sign of the woman. The undersized electrical genius searched the ground for female footprints, but saw nothing that told him in which direction the woman had fled.

Five smoking cartridges lay in the slush. Evidently, this was the spot from which the fatal shots were fired. The ground was a tangle of slushy indentations which led nowhere.

Stooping, Long Tom snatched up the spent shells.

“Whoo!” he exclaimed, for they were yet hot to the touch. Bouncing them in one palm, he saw that they were .22 caliber rounds, from a small gun such as a woman might employ.

Standing up, he again peered about. No sign of Janet Falcon.

Had Long Tom possessed sufficient presence of mind to go to the open cellar window from which he had earlier escaped, he might have detected signs that a slim form had slipped silently into the dim coal bin. Emerald green eyes hung back in the inky dark, regarding him like a silent cat.

As it happened, a taxicab was passing by. It was the nighthawk machine Long Tom had earlier commandeered.

Turning a corner, it was rapidly gathering speed, the driver hunched fearfully over the wheel. Long Tom sprinted madly into the street and flung himself upon the running board.

Reaching out through the open window, the driver tried to knock him off. Long Tom flourished Duke Grogan’s smoking revolver.

“Stop!” he shouted.

The driver snarled an oath and subsided. Opening the rear door, Long Tom scrambled into the back cushions.

“Get away from here as quick as you can!” he ordered.

“I ain’t getting mixed up in a croaking party,” growled the driver. “How many did you bump? I heard four shots.”

“Don’t talk! Drive! We’ve got to clear out of here.”

“You can bet I’ll clear out!” grumbled the other. “I’ve got three convictions on my record. One more and I’ll get the book. Why didn’t you—”

“Shut up!”

The driver shut up. Long Tom’s voice sounded desperate enough to convince the man he was hauling sudden death.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Back to the city,” Long Tom told him.

“You got it.”

As the taxicab rolled along, Long Tom went through the girl’s handbag. He found lipstick, a powder compact, a handkerchief and a tiny platinum wristwatch set with diamonds. He vented a grunt of surprise when he discovered a key stamped with the name of the Hotel Chicago. It was the same hotel where he was staying.

Using a compact mirror, Long Tom discovered a trickle of blood had run from the spot on his scalp where Duke Grogan’s revolver barrel had struck and dried on the side of his face. He moistened a frilly handkerchief and erased the gore.

Eventually, the taxi rolled into the city. Long Tom halted the machine and gave the driver a ten dollar bill from the purse.

“You better forget this,” he warned.

“You said it!” the man snarled. “And I hope I never see you again.”

As he watched the machine roll out of sight, Long Tom waved vehemently at another cab.

The driver almost failed to spot him, a slender shadow in the darkness of night. Then his brakes squealed to a stop.

“Take me to the Hotel Chicago,” he told the pilot of that conveyance.

“Good luck walkin’ into the lobby in the middle of the night, lookin’ the way you do,” the hackman commented.

“Who asked your opinion?”

“I know the doorman. He’s tough as they come. He’ll kick you around like an empty tin can.”

“Well, I’m tougher,” snarled Long Tom.

“Think I’ll stick around after we get there,” remarked the driver. “I’m figurin’ I might see a free show.”

“You might, at that. But I’ll write the ending.”

Chapter XXIV

SNATCH

AFTER A DRIVE of nearly an hour along the shore of Lake Michigan, the swanky blue limousine carrying Joe Shine and the unconscious Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks approached a dockage.

Here was tied up a solitary lake freighter. The laker was distinguished by having a forecastle rammed up at the bow and a bulky doghouse at the stern containing extra cabins. The center of the ship was flat. Only open decking and closed hatches showed there.

Except for periods when the Great Lakes were frozen over in the winter months, these freighters carried ore and other commercial cargo from mines and ports all over the region.

This particular laker was tied up and, from the way her rusty hull listed in the water, it was evident that she was barely seaworthy.

“Pull in here,” directed Joe Shine to his driver, a man named Rollo Wheels. That was not his real name, any more than Joe Shine’s was authentic, but it suited Chicago.

Two automobiles sat in darkness in the lee of the long laker and, as the approaching sedan headlights washed their rounded shapes, doors opened and hard-faced men emerged, their blocky jaws unshaven.

These were some of Joe Shine’s men, who had been summoned to the spot. Rollo the driver had pulled over en route, and made a telephone call from an all-night drugstore, summoning them.

“What’s up, Boss?” asked one from the side of his mouth.

“That crazy Duke Grogan put the snatch on Doc Savage’s men.” Joe Shine cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s them in back there.”

The assembled gunmen looked properly impressed.

One asked, “If Duke grabbed them off, how did you end up with ’em?”

Joe Shine beamed, showing ivory teeth whitened by moonlight.

“Why, I snatched ’em away from Duke.”

Frowning eyebrows shot up. Men took drags on glowing cigarettes.

“Duke dead?” one grunted.

“I didn’t stick around long enough to find out,” said Joe Shine casually.

Another gunman evinced a cruel smile. “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight if Grogan’s in a pine box.”

“We’ll worry about that in the morning,” snapped Shine. “Right now, we’re holding these Doc Savage henchmen until we figure out what Duke wanted with them.”

One man paled in the moonlight. “You ain’t thinkin’ of askin’ Doc Savage for ransom?”

Joe Shine looked down and admired the way his polished shoes reflected moonlight. He teetered back on his heels. “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Let’s get them aboard the scow and work them over until they open up. Once I know the score, we can plan our day.”

These hired men went to the back of the blue limousine, yanked open one door, and pulled Ham Brooks out first.

The well-dressed attorney looked less than elegant. It would have distressed him to see how disheveled his appearance had become. But Ham was entirely dead to the world. Two men took hold of his shoulders and hauled him out while a third grabbed up his limp legs.

While they were carrying Ham up the rickety gangplank, another group attempted to do the same with Monk Mayfair.

This proved to be more than they could easily handle. The gorilla-like chemist weighed no less than two hundred and sixty pounds. Most of that was tough muscle and gristle coated in rusty hair.

They attempted to pull out Monk by his feet; it took two men each grabbing one bowed leg to get the homely chemist off the cushions and onto the ground.

Monk landed heavily on the seat of his pants, and then seemed to do something unexpected.

One of Monk’s eyeballs opened a sliver. Unnoticed, the piglike orb shifted back and forth, taking in his surroundings. He did not otherwise move, or betray the fact that he had returned to consciousness.

Monk threw a swift glance at each of his captors. Both had their eyes on his stubby legs. One was smoking a fat cigar.

Monk slapped a hairy hand against the lighted cigar in the fellow’s mouth. Heedless of the blistering of his palm, he knocked the glowing end up and rubbed the fiery particles into the gunman’s eyes. With the other hand, he shoved a fist into the unprepared man’s midriff.

The rodman howled, pawing at his eyes with both hands, completely forgetting his burden.

Meanwhile, the other one drove a hand into his overcoat and brought forth a dull blue automatic. It was equipped with a tubular extension—obviously a silencer.

Monk lunged and clamped both hands upon the man’s gun wrist. He gave a frenzied shove and turned the muzzle aside a fraction of a second before it exploded. The silencer was not in place properly, and the apish chemist had further jarred it out of plumb, with the immediate result that instead of silencing the report, it completely blocked the passage of the escaping bullet. The back-pressure blew the breach mechanism of the gun to bits.

Monk scrambled to his feet and flung himself clear of the vehicle. He rolled like a football. This enabled him to escape the descending gun barrel wielded by the third gunman. Monk was fortunate enough to throw an elbow in front of his face as he rolled, saving his homely features from being battered.

The simian chemist came to a halt on all fours, dizzy and bruised. He bared his teeth and growled with a primitive ferocity. Standing erect, Monk resembled a slovenly dressed ape. Crouching on all floors, he was a sight to behold.

The man with the intact revolver hesitated, the hackles on the back of his neck rising in fear.

Monk saw his chance. Scrambling to his feet, he sprinted for a shack. It was perhaps ten yards away. He leapt and sprang high, throwing himself over the structure. A gun barked at his back and the bullet made a loud hiss passing perilously close to one deformed ear.

This brought him to the wharf. More bullets whined, splitting the night. Legs churning, Monk raced along the ramshackle dock. One foot stubbed a loose board, and he went down, momentum causing him to tumble head over heels, yelling, “Daggone it!”

Lead gouged the weathered wood all about him. One bullet mashed itself into a shiny lump close to one hirsute hand.

“Ye-e-o-o-w!”
squawled Monk, scrambling to his feet. The apish chemist made a flying jump and went over the dock. There was no splash. Instead, the nimble Monk had managed to catch the rungs of the rickety ladder dropping into the water. There he clung, his bandy legs poised to propel him away if slugs started nipping at him.

Joe Shine had been an angry witness to all this.

“Don’t let him get away!” he yelled out. “We need them both.”

“Alive or dead?” a rodman demanded loudly.

Joe Shine had to think about that a moment. “Alive! But dead if you have to.”