Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (44 page)

Hanging up, Doc Savage called in his aides, saying, “It appears that the Medusa has struck again. This time at the home of a gangster of seemingly little importance.”

“Events are accelerating toward an unknown goal,” Ham mused, polishing the head of his cane.

Monk grunted, “Somebody is sure cleanin’ house. But why?”

They exited the suite.

“Any word from that Linden?” asked Long Tom when they moved together through the corridor.

Doc shook his head. “No telephone call was received overnight. We will look into that later.”

Soon, they were pulling up before the Bender residence, and Doc Savage’s uncanny trilling was briefly audible when he spied a sprinkling of dead birds on the lawn.

The Superintendent had not yet arrived at the murder scene, but a police officer standing guard had evidently been alerted by radio to expect the bronze man’s arrival, for he walked up briskly, saying, “If it wasn’t for the fact that the corpses aren’t red, the medical examiner says he would take this as carbon monoxide poisoning. We shut down the furnace anyway.”

Doc asked, “Was the home heated by coal?”

“It was. Why do you ask?”

“It may be relevant,” said Doc, moving toward the front door.

Behind the bronze giant, Monk, Ham and Long Tom walked along in single file. Monk muttered, “Coal is poppin’ up all over this crazy business.”

Inside, Doc found the detective in charge of the case, who remarked, “We haven’t turned anything up of interest, Mr. Savage. The neighbors didn’t notice anything unusual until daybreak, when all those dead birds turned up on the lawn.”

“Were any other homes affected?” queried the bronze man.

The detective shook his head firmly. “Just this one. And both victims died in their parlor. Imagine that? A couple tough customers like Big Spots Bender and his bodyguard. Men of his ilk don’t usually go out in easy chairs.”

Monk bustled up, toting his portable chemical laboratory.

“Want I should take samples of the air and residue on the walls?” he asked Doc.

“If that is all right with the investigating detective,” said Doc.

“Be my guest,” said the plain-clothes sleuth. “But the air seems to have cleared out when we opened the windows.”

Doc Savage’s nostrils dilated as he sampled the air.

There was a faint charred smell, as of burnt charcoal. But nothing else out of the ordinary.

Monk got to work, the bronze man went from room to room. His flake-gold eyes seemed to miss nothing, but neither did he touch or disturb anything in the crime scene.

Turning to the police detective, Doc requested, “I would like to examine the coal furnace.”

The detective seemed a little puzzled by his expression, but he led the bronze man into the cellar, which was nothing remarkable. Cobwebs clung to a cluster of rusting garden tools, indicating disuse.

The coal furnace was modern, a great black monster of a thing with several fat ducts reaching out of its top in the manner of an octopus, each duct feeding air to a separate room of the dwelling above through forced-air registers.

The feed door on the bulky furnace yawned open, and the bronze man trickled the beam of his spring-generator flashlight on the interior fire pit and saw the grayish lumps of combustible coal cooling down in the grate.

“We tossed water onto the coal bed,” explained the detective, “to put out the fire.”

“It might have been better if water had not been used on these coals,” Doc remarked without emotion.

The detective shrugged. “We had to, in case it was generating poison gas.”

Doc found the coal bin. It was a pen situated in a dim corner of the cellar which had been walled off with unpainted board. There was a simple door mounted on hinges. Doc opened this. The interior proved to be heaped high with coal. Not a single lump looked out of the ordinary.

Shutting the bin door, Doc found a dustpan and whisk broom and returned to the furnace. He collected samples of the burnt coal first. Kneeling, the bronze man then opened the ash pit door at the furnace’s base and collected a sufficient sample of ashes which had sifted down. These he took upstairs to Monk Mayfair.

“Residue from the coal furnace,” Doc informed Monk. “Place it in a container for later analysis.”

“You think somebody put somethin’ in the coal?” asked the homely chemist, taking the dust pan.

Doc nodded wordlessly.

The detective volunteered, “There’s a reporter outside. He told a funny story about that.”

Turning, Doc asked, “About what?”

“He swung by last night, purely to get a comment from Big Spots about this Medusa murder spree,” related the detective. “And while he was talking to them, Spats made a comment that the driver delivering coal seemed to have come early.”

“Early?”

“In the season, I mean. Seems Bender took a coal delivery just two weeks ago.”

Doc Savage’s trilling came, sounding like an avian air. The seemingly sourceless sound surrounded those assembled, owing to its uncanny ventriloquial nature.

Looking to the window, the detective remarked, “Sounds like the healthy birds are back.”

Doc asked, “What concern delivered the coal?”

“I didn’t ask him that. Didn’t seem important. I thought it was funny because the reporter asked Big Spots about Joe Shine’s passing, and hours later Big Spots is put on the spot. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?”

The bronze man declined to reply. Instead, he moved into the kitchen, and looked around until he found a business card among others. This was a file of local establishments Big Spots Bender did business with. Among them was a card for a coal delivery company.

Going to the telephone, Doc Savage put in a call to the delivery company. He spoke for a few minutes, and then hung up, saying, “Thank you.”

Addressing the detective, Doc said, “The coal concern did not make a delivery yesterday. The truck was a fake.”

The detective tilted back his hat and whistled in mild astonishment. “That cinches it! The coal must’ve been phony, too. Big Spots was assassinated by a lump of coal. Won’t that make for an interesting obituary?”

Doc pointed out, “It will make more interesting headlines if it gets out.”

“What do you mean?”

Ham Brooks had been listening to all this and volunteered a response.

“What Doc Savage means is no one in this city is safe who burns coal in his furnace and has a criminal record.”

“That takes in a lot of territory,” the detective said, pulling at his lower lip. “A hell of a lot of territory.”

“I would like to speak with that reporter,” said Doc.

The detective laughed shortly. “I’m sure he would love to speak with you. In fact, most of the so-called journalists in this town would love to pelt you with a bunch of questions.”

“What I have in mind,” stated Doc Savage firmly, “is the opposite. I intend to press this reporter with several questions. What is his name?”

“Jack Swangle. He’s with the
Tribunal
.”

Long Tom made a distasteful face, and said, “Wasn’t that the wiseacre we ran into twice before?”

“The very same,” said Ham suspiciously.

“Lead us to him,” requested Doc.

ALL WENT outside, and moved toward a gaggle of reporters who were being held two houses away by the police, who did not wish their investigation interfered with.

As they walked to that group, the Superintendent of Chicago Police pulled up in his official car. He stepped out, and asked, “Have you learned anything new?”

Doc Savage said, “It appears that a full supply of coal was delivered last night and the combustion of one or more lumps released the deadly gas.”

“Murder by coal!” gasped the Superintendent.

“Don’t that beat all!” chimed in the detective, who added, “Everything Mr. Savage says fits the facts in the case. We’ve got to warn the populace to check their coal supply.”

Doc said. “A reporter witnessed the coal being delivered. He may have seen the face of the deliveryman.”

As a group, they all moved up the street, but as they were doing so, a low-slung touring car screeched up, slewed to a halt, and the door popped out.

Out stepped a man who looked gaunt in the extreme. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow, and his lips were shreds of gristle from having been habitually chewed. He wore a wide-brimmed fedora pulled low over his head, but now he tipped it back to reveal haggard features.

From under his overcoat, he yanked out a Tommy gun, and addressed Doc Savage, who was walking in a group of police several yards distant.

“You’re the mug behind all these crook killings!” he roared. “First you greased Duke Grogan and Joe Shine, now Big Spots is in the dead box. Well, damned if you’re gonna get me. I’m gettin’ you first. Take this, bronze guy! Take it and like it!”

The bronze man had been known in the past to dodge a bullet or two, but there were limits to even his seemingly superhuman skill and reflexes. Doc stood in a crowd, and the entire group was menaced by the impending bullet storm. Too, neighbors had gathered about, watching anxiously. He could not move without drawing lead in his direction and that lead would massacre those around him—many of them unprotected.

BEFORE the bronze man could move, Monk, Ham and Long Tom whipped out their assorted personal arsenals and opened up in unison.

A fusillade of mercy bullets and hypodermic slugs struck the fellow in arms, legs and elsewhere. His hat went flying.

These bullets were low caliber, so even their combined mass and energy did not knock him backward.

As such, the assassin managed to squeeze off a brief burst.

Pushing the nearest persons aside and out of harm’s way, Doc Savage set himself to take the first blast in the chest.

The metallic giant was struck, forced backward. Astoundingly, he held his feet for a few seconds, then was forced to the ground, the punishing power of the stream of .45 caliber slugs proving greater than his muscular resistance.

At that point, the bluecoats had drawn their service revolvers and began blazing away.

The gunman wilted before he could squeeze off another burst. He had one foot on his running board and one elbow on the sill of the open door window. Thus it was that when he crumpled, he got hung up on the door, which fell further open, causing him to slide to the ground in a heap of worsted woolen coat and scuffed shoe leather. Crimson began dyeing his winter coat.

Jaw sagging alarmingly, Monk Mayfair turned to Doc Savage, his supermachine pistol still smoking. “Doc, Doc! Talk to me, will ya!”

The bronze man lay on his back, the glittering flake-gold of his eyes nearly still, as if they had been stunned in their incessant circular motion.

Doc took a deep breath, and levered himself to his feet—much to the astonishment of Monk and the others.

Doc took a few seconds to compose himself, but it was evident that his bulletproof vest had spared him from death, even if it had not been sufficient to keep him from being seriously bruised.

Long Tom said, “My hypodermic needle bullets sure did the trick.”

Ham said, “On the contrary. I struck him with at least a dozen mercy bullets.”

“What makes you think my dope didn’t work first?” Long Tom snapped back.

“There is more anesthetic in a mercy slug than one of your needle bullets.”

An argument seemed ready to ensue, when both men realized that Monk’s own supermachine pistol had also been in operation.

Ham asked, “What sort of ammunition did you use, you slope-skulled gorilla?”

Monk shrugged carelessly, saying, “I was so busy shootin’ I didn’t stop to think.” He detached the small ammunition drum from in front of the trigger guard, looked at the array of bullets rattling within, and said, “Dang! These are scintillator bullets.”

Both Ham and Long Tom looked at him doubtfully.

Monk explained, “They’re designed to frighten an enemy. Since they’re basically a chemical explosion that’s harmless.”

“I did not see any such pyrotechnics,” Ham remarked.

“They work better at night, I guess,” mumbled Monk in a disappointed tone.

Long Tom waved a dismissive hand in the hairy chemist’s direction, saying, “He’s just an also-ran in this game. Those bullets didn’t count.”

The detective in charge interrupted. “None of your fancy ammunition counted in the end. Didn’t you hear those Police Positives barking? They bit deep. This mug is a goner.”

He was kneeling at the body of the machine gunner, and found on the back seat of his machine a folded newspaper. Harvesting it, he opened up the sheet, read the front page, and said, “Looks like ‘Shivering’ Ellis had shivered his last. Seems as if the tabloids got him all riled up.”

The detective brought the newspaper over and passed it around. It was an extra. Fully half of the front page was headline. It read:

SUSPICION DOC SAVAGE

BEHIND MEDUSA MURDERS!

This left not much room for the story to go with the headline, and not very much story at that.

The article referenced the events in New York City the previous month in which numerous individuals had been killed by a mysterious pop-eyed malady. Suspicion had pointed in the direction of Doc Savage. Although the bronze man had been exonerated, the article writer brought forth new suspicions with a leading question that was unsupported by any known facts:

Has Doc Savage imported his war against crime to Chicago? And is there nothing he will stop at?

There followed a series of quotes given in response to reportorial questions by local notables, including amateur criminologists, college professors and others who might be counted on to give an opinion even if that opinion was not supported by facts.

The account also reported growing rumors—at presstime unconfirmed—that the infamous Duke Grogan and his gang had vanished from their usual haunts and were presumed deceased.

The Superintendent of Police read the article in his turn and burst out, “This is outrageous! There is not a shred of truth in this pile of malarkey.”

“It is enough to create problems for the investigation,” said Doc Savage.