Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (4 page)

Moving cautiously, Doc stepped out into the corridor and looked in the direction of the reception room door bearing his name. He saw the figure lying on the floor, smoke curling from a hot spot on the folded newspaper beside him, where the dropped cigarette had fallen.

Up the hallway, an elevator door was closing.

“Someone was in the hall!” barked Ham.

DOC SAVAGE was already moving. A bronze flash, he raced for the sliding door, and almost made it.

The door closed, and the elevator sank, according to the arrow on the wall indicator above the door.

Changing direction abruptly, the bronze man went to another elevator, this one a specially designed super-speed lift that was not available for public use. He stepped aboard it, ran the door closed, and sent the cage rushing downward.

This lift was designed for emergency use, among other things, and Doc’s feet all but left the floor with the momentum of its falling. There was no operator. The mechanism was entirely automatic.

When the cage reached the ground floor, Doc had to brace himself lest he crash to his knees. Opening the door, he stepped out into the lobby, knowing that the speed lift would have beaten the ordinary elevator to the ground by a fair amount.

Reaching the appropriate spot, the bronze man stationed himself before the shaft door, watching the arrow indicator reel off the floors as the cage sought the ground. The elevator did not stop along the way, indicating that it did not discharge any passengers on its way down.

When the cage finally came to a rest, the door opened. The elevator boy looked out and saw Doc Savage standing there. “Mr. Savage!”

Doc demanded, “Did you discharge a passenger on the way down, Jimmy?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“Did you take one down from the eighty-sixth floor?”

“No, but I received a call to go to eighty-six to pick up a passenger. But no one was there when I arrived. So I ran her back down.”

Jimmy the elevator boy had been an employee of the building for several years, and his reputation was above reproach. So Doc did not bother to question him any further. Instead, the bronze man returned to the super-speed lift, sending it whining back to the eighty-sixth floor.

Arriving there, he found Ham Brooks staring at a section of the corridor wall. Ham was one of Doc Savage’s aides, an attorney of considerable accomplishments and one of Harvard Law School’s most distinguished graduates. The wasp-waisted barrister was sharp of mind, feature and dress—often voted the best-dressed man in New York.

Ham said tightly, “Doc, you must take a look at this.”

The bronze man advanced, and when he spied the greenish-yellow blotch on the wall, a strange sound escaped his parted lips.

It was a trilling, tuneless, yet definitely melodious, a sound which ran up and down the musical scale, pursuing no tune, and seeming to come from no particular spot. There was no easy way to categorize it. A searching wind slipping serpentine over shifting sand dunes could conceivably produce such a susurration. A chorus of otherworldly avians calling from some distant beyond might also have voiced it.

This was Doc’s strange trilling, which only came when prompted by some unusual emotion. Here, a vague bafflement had brought it into existence, and the uncanny vocalization soon ebbed away to a nebulous nothing.

It looked as if a shadow had been cast upon the wall. But the shadow did not move. It was fixed. The shadow was no patch of grayness, but rather stood out an extremely bilious yellow-green, a hue that brought to mind a splash of vomit.

The figure depicted was on the shapeless side. Portions of the outline suggested a human being attired in a sack dress. The head of the thing, however, did not.

For it was a complicated mass of twisting forms.

Careful study caused both men to recognize the image depicted.

Ham remarked, “Jove! If I did not know better, I would venture to say that this outline was that of the Medusa.”

Doc said grimly, “It is exactly that, Ham. The outline suggests a snake-headed figure attired in a robed garment.”

Turning, Doc went over to the unfortunate caller sprawled before his door, knelt, and saw that Ham had already extinguished the cigarette, no doubt with his foot. Thus, no more smoke was wafting. The scorch mark in the fallen newspaper was relatively small.

Turning the man over, Doc studied his open-featured face, noted the absence of a hat and felt of the man’s scalp. It was unusually smooth to the touch.

“This man has had his head shaved within the last few hours,” he pronounced.

“Why would anyone do that?” wondered Ham, wringing his cane with both hands.

“No doubt to disguise himself from being followed,” said Doc, lifting one of the man’s coat sleeves to reveal unusually bright red hair.

Going through the man’s pockets, the bronze man discovered a billfold, opened it up and picked through the papers he found within. There was a driver’s license made out to Ned Gamble of Chicago, Illinois. A round-trip train ticket between Chicago and New York bearing a recent purchase date. Also, two brass hotel keys, along with receipts from two different hotels, both dated this afternoon.

Showing these to Ham, Doc said, “This man arrived on the Twentieth Century Limited and registered at separate hotels only an hour or so apart.”

Ham nodded. “Switched hotels. Evidently, he knew he was being followed—or suspected as much. Did you find the man who escaped in the elevator?”

“No one escaped in the elevator,” returned the bronze man. “The cage was empty except for Jimmy, who took no one up or down.”

Ham twirled his cane thoughtfully. “Then where could the fleeing man have gone?”

“We can neither assume there was anyone else present, nor that there was not,” commented Doc Savage, standing up.

He began to reconnoiter the corridor, looking for any signs of a lurker.

His investigations brought about nothing, for the eighty-sixth floor was entirely occupied by his own suite of offices. Going to a set of circular stairs, Doc climbed into the observation tower itself, but found no one hiding up there.

“If no one followed this man up,” mused Ham, “then who or what struck him down? And what made that devilish green glow?”

“Those questions remain to be answered,” said Doc Savage, returning to the body and taking it up in his great corded arms. The prodigious strength of the bronze giant became evident in the easy manner in which he toted the stricken Ned Gamble, who weighed approximately one hundred and seventy pounds.

They entered the reception room, passed through the great library, and into a scientific laboratory so large it seemed as if it filled the greatest portion of the eighty-sixth floor.

Laying the man on an examination table, Doc began checking vital signs. He found none. Nor did he expect to.

“Dead?” asked Ham.

Doc nodded. “This man is deceased.”

Doc Savage was renowned for his scientific wizardry and his deep fund of learning. But the greatest of the bronze man’s myriad accomplishments was as a physician and surgeon. Hence his nickname. He now began a thorough examination of the dead victim, attempting to ascertain the cause of his unexplained demise.

Much of this initially was routine.

While he worked, Ham fretted. “If I remember my Greek mythology, the Medusa was a fearful woman possessing living snakes for locks, whose fierce gaze was reputed to petrify a man in his tracks.”

“This man was dropped in his tracks, but he has not been petrified,” remarked Doc.

Lapsing into silence, the big bronze man continued his examination, and discovered nothing to explain the visitor’s inexplicable expiration.

Moving a great fluoroscope into position, Doc arranged the movable screen so that it hovered over the dead body. Switching on the device, the bronze man studied the greenish image thus displayed.

His trilling came again; this time it sounded weird in the extreme.

Drawing closer, Ham asked anxiously, “What is it?”

“Take a look.”

The dapper lawyer did. He perceived the shadowy internal organs, but nothing untoward leaped out at him immediately.

“Examine the head,” directed Doc.

Once Ham saw what the bronze man was indicating, his eyes grew worried and his mouth tightened.

“What is that mass in his skull?”

“It would appear to be in the man’s brain,” said Doc.

“And why is it so dark, like a stone?”

Instead of replying, the bronze man went to a tray of instruments, and lifted a surgical scalpel.

He employed this to lift, first one, then the other of the man’s eyelids, and showed that the glassy orbs had retreated into his skull, giving him something of the aspect of a death’s head still clothed in flesh, his smooth, hairless crown aiding in that resemblance greatly.

“Ghoulish touch,” murmured Ham. “But I fail to understand its significance.”

Then Doc Savage inserted the scalpel into one of the man’s nostrils, plunging it in deeply and working it around like a dentist probing a tooth cavity.

Ham Brooks winced as an unpleasant grating was produced.

“Good Grief! What is making that sound?”

“It is possible to insert a scalpel into a man’s nostrils and penetrate to the brain,“ said Doc. “Certain difficult brain surgeries are performed via this method, inasmuch as it is the only method of reaching the lower brain. The scalpel is grating against his frontal lobe.”

Ham looked flummoxed.

“This fellow’s brain,” explained the bronze man, “has seemingly turned to stone.”

Chapter IV

VOICE OF MEDUSA

HAM BROOKS WAS one of the most astute attorneys practicing modern law, and had won several landmark arguments before the Supreme Court. During the late world war, he had been a brigadier general, and his lightning wits preserved entire regiments from destruction. To say that he was quick-witted was to understate the matter.

When the dapper lawyer heard Doc Savage’s diagnosis, he became momentarily tongue-tied.

Ham still clutched his sword cane in one hand, and now he gripped it in both fists. He worried the thing, swapping it around, and acting like a befuddled elder gentleman, which he was most assuredly not, despite his carefully cut prematurely white hair.

Finally, the awestruck attorney got his tongue and his vocal chords untangled.

“But, how is that possible?” he blurted out. “This man was conversing with me only minutes ago.”

Doc Savage shook his head slowly. “It is baffling. The human brain is made of soft matter. In death it would typically liquefy, not harden. Yet the brain of this man appears to have achieved a consistency approximating granite.”

Placing one bronze hand at the back of the man’s head, Doc Savage lifted Ned Gamble’s bald skull experimentally.

“This man’s head weighs more than the volume of his brain should permit,” stated Doc. “This adds to the evidence of my nasal probe.”

“I fail to comprehend this,” murmured Ham. “It smacks of the supernatural.”

“Taken with the silhouette of Medusa outside on our corridor wall,” said Doc slowly, “your conjecture is not without foundation.”

“But Medusa was a mythological creature—wholly imaginary. Was she not?”

Doc returned Ned Gamble’s head to its resting place. “Where is the newspaper he carried?”

The dapper attorney had laid it on a telephone stand. Now he retrieved it.

Doc Savage took the sheet, unfolded it, and read the headline.

PROMINENT INVENTOR SUCCUMBS

TO MYSTERY MALADY

The news article was lengthy, but much of it was in the manner of an obituary. It told how Myer Sim had been struck down in his own home on the eve of attending a scientific conference in Chicago. Prior to this, Mr. Sim had intimated he was going to make an important announcement that would rock the medical world.

However, before he could attend, Sim was found slumped down on the desk of his home office in a suburb of Chicago.

A maid had heard him uttering sounds of distress, and when she went to check on him, Myer Sim was unable to speak intelligibly.

All that could be gleaned was that just before he expired, Sim appeared to be complaining of a ringing in his ears.

The rest of the article recounted how local doctors were flummoxed by the cause of death, and that an autopsy had been scheduled.

Ham had been reading over Doc Savage’s shoulder—or rather around it since the big bronze man towered over the elegant attorney by quite a bit.

“Doc!” he exclaimed. “Our visitor said something about a ringing before he succumbed. And his hands were going to his ears in a baffled way.”

Doc considered this. At length, he said, “If Ned Gamble’s brain was hardening while he was speaking to you, he might experience symptoms of tinnitus. Certainly, his brain would cease to function normally, and his articulation would also suffer.”

Ham began to pace in an agitated fashion. His sword cane commenced to twirl in his hand, making him look a bit like a drum majorette who was attired in diplomat garb.

“That could only mean that whatever force was acting upon him was doing so invisibly, and with great rapidity,” he declared.

“So it would seem,” replied Doc, putting the newspaper down and striding over to the telephone stand. “Long Tom is attending that conference, which starts today. I will endeavor to reach him. He may be able to assist us in this matter.”

Ham nodded. “Then there is no question in your mind that these two deaths are related?”

“None at all,” said the bronze man grimly, picking up the telephone.

In short order, Doc got the hotel in which the conference was taking place.

“This is Doc Savage speaking. It is imperative that I reach my associate, Thomas J. Roberts, who is attending the present conference.”

The speed with which Long Tom’s voice came on the line was a testament to the power of Doc Savage. Every bellhop in the establishment must have fanned out to seek Roberts.

“Long Tom speaking,” said a querulous voice.