Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (2 page)

“We can build something!” he exclaimed.

“We can try,” Doc said. “But time is of the essence. The authorities have requested that we complete the job as soon as humanly possible.”

Rolling up his flannel sleeves, Renny boomed, “I’m game to start right away! We can roll him down to the Hudson River and load him on a barge. Drop him in the Atlantic.”

Doc shook his head. “I have just made arrangements to buy a pier warehouse on the river, where we can store the body temporarily.”

Renny demanded, “Why not just float him out into the ocean and give him a sea burial?”

“Perhaps. But while I was up north in my Fortress of Solitude, I realized that if we are to continue our work following in my father’s footsteps, we will need a more handy place to store our airplanes. Driving all the way out to the airport in Queens every time we need to reach a distant destination will cost us valuable time.”

Monk beamed. “I get it. A kind of boathouse-seaplane hangar combination.”

“Precisely,” said Doc. “There is one that is not in use. I purchased it at a good price. We will relocate the remains to that space. There I can study the creature until we arrive at a solution for appropriate disposal of the remains.”

“I say we cremate it!” Monk exclaimed.

Separating his cane into two sections—the hollow barrel and the hidden sword blade of Damascus steel—Ham added, “Perhaps rendering the brute would present the best solution. Cut him up into sections, like a horse in a glue factory.”

Doc Savage silenced them with a golden glance. There was frost in the big bronze man’s eyes and a smoldering something that might have been repressed anger.

“Ham, locate the person who brought the creature to the city. I assume he is known.”

Ham laughed. “Is he? The police are hunting him right now. He’s a showman and film director named Carl Denham!”

“Find Denham.”

“Righto, Doc.” Clicking his cane back together, Ham exited the room.

Doc Savage addressed Monk.

“Organize control of the crowds.”

“Got it,” said Monk.

Lastly, the bronze man turned to Renny Renwick.

“Hauling logs into the city on short notice would be impractical,” said Doc. “Telephone poles should work just as well.”

Reaching for a desk telephone Renny rumbled, “Let me make some calls.”

BY noon a line of tractors had been assembled on Fifth Avenue. The police were pressing the Sunday crowd back with raised nightsticks. No blows had to be struck, however. Monk went among the crowd and made his most ferocious faces, frightening away a good portion of onlookers and rubberneckers. Many who had heard of the monster ape mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that the dead creature had come back to life.

Overhead, three Navy dirigibles were hovering silently.

Monk Mayfair craned his bullet head upward.

“Where’d the gasbags come from?”

“I requested them,” supplied Doc Savage.

The dirigibles began to valve gas, dropping down between Manhattan towers. It was a risky maneuver, so they performed it one at a time. Soon, they were floating serenely overhead, their steady shadows filling the street.

Mooring lines were dropped and Doc’s men—all handy around airships—rushed to gather them up.

“Tie them to the creature’s wrists,” directed Doc Savage.

“I’m already beginning to see the light,” marveled Ham.

This was done. Great chromium steel shackles had been affixed to the brute’s wrists and ankles—a sad remnant of its captivity. Only one had survived his midtown rampage in sound shape. The other three were scavenged and welded into place. There were eyelets built into these bonds for the restraining ropes and slave chains.

Once every line was tight, the airships dropped water ballast, causing them to lift anew.

A grisly spectacle took place on Fifth Avenue as they watched.

One by one, the creature’s hands and feet began to rise, as if the great dumb brute were coming back to macabre life. But this was not the case. The eyes remained closed in the battered face.

Rising, the monstrous limbs looked puffy and bloated, like hairy boneless balloons, giving the unreal situation an added dose of unreality.

Arms and legs lifted sufficiently for Renny to order the first telephone poles to be rolled into place. These had been trucked in from a telephone company storage yard in Brooklyn. One was set under the primate’s lifted skull, the other under his hairy haunches. Then the inert limbs were lowered.

Doc Savage called from his car radio, “Release all lines.”

The lines dropped, landing with dull, whip-like thuds. Men rushed to collect them. They dragged these ropes toward the tractors, fixed them to reinforced tackle hitches.

The tractor engines started up next. Renny directed these machines.

Grunting and spilling malodorous exhaust fumes, the tractors inched forward. They sounded like a team of mechanical horses struggling with a load too great to be pulled. It was tough going. Teamster drivers began to curse and groan inarticulately.

But slowly, relentlessly, the hairy corpse began to move. The hands swung up over his shoulders, arms following.

The leading telephone pole positioned under the bloody skull began to roll. Another one stood ahead of it. With agonizing slowness, the head of the creature rolled onto the fresh log. Now the head and shoulders bumped up onto the first pole that had been laid.

“It’s working,” Renny boomed. His face was one long horse-frown. That meant he was delighted. Renny was funny that way. The happier he was, the longer his face became.

It took all afternoon and the first part of the evening, but between the tugging tractors and with a construction crane brought in to lift the stubborn portions, they got the titanic loose-limbed creature onto a set of rolling logs.

Pulling the black-haired corpse toward the Hudson River after that was a mere matter of removing the rollers after the feet fell off them, and relocating them by crane to the head. Homes are moved in this fashion. But houses are built on wood-beam sills, designed to support walls. There was nothing supporting this massive burden.

The work continued to midnight. The body undulated along on its rollers, broken bones making grisly grinding noises as it progressed.

A brilliant crescent moon was up and made the scene unreal. By this time they had the great ape positioned so that its tapered skull was pointed toward the gaping doors to the great warehouse erected on a long pier facing New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson.

“We can park a lot of planes in this barn,” Monk said, giving the interior a once-over. “But how are we going to keep it a secret?”

“I have invented an imaginary import-export concern for that purpose,” said Doc Savage. “When this operation is complete, I will have a sign put up, suitably aged and faded, as if an existing company had relocated to this spot.”

“Yeah? What are you gonna call it?”

“The Hidalgo Trading Company.”

Monk grinned broadly. “Nifty name.”

Turning the body had been the most difficult part. Now they had to do it again. Here the dirigibles again came into play. This time they settled very close to the street.

Again the lines were transferred from tractors to the dirigibles and when they engaged their engines, the airships were practically dragging the corpse at a jog designed to execute a rude turn.

Once the body was in position, the tractors took over once more. Pulling the body into the gloomy warehouse interior was just a matter of Diesel fuel and man sweat.

A hastily constructed wheeled platform had been set there to receive the body. Renny had organized a work gang for that task. They had assembled the thing from ordinary building materials and truck tires, then departed, taking their carpentry tools with them. Only scatterings of sawdust remained.

When the massive doors closed on the great brute, it marked the last time ordinary eyes rested upon the creature that had once been called “King” Kong.

Chapter II

ELECTRIC LIGHTS BURNED long into the night on the eighty-sixth floor headquarters of Doc Savage. Outside, a cloudbank extending for many miles concealed the moon and stars from the sight of man. Rain was a promise that hung in the night air. The cool smell of it was leaking through the bullet cracks in the row of high windows running along the western wall. Temporary patches had sealed most of these, if imperfectly, until the bulletproof panes could be replaced. They had not been designed to stand up to military machine-guns.

The Man of Bronze was busy assembling cases of test equipment from the vast laboratory that occupied most of the floor. To these, Doc added books on zoology taken from the massive bookshelves of the adjoining library.

Monk Mayfair ambled in from the reception room, where he had been making telephone calls to the newspapers.

“Doc, I dug up the name of the girl who was carried up here by that overgrown gorilla. Called herself Ann Darrow. At least, that was the name she gave when they hauled her off the ledge outside. But no one’s seen her since.”

“She may no longer be important,” commented Doc.

“Funny thing is, they say that Kong carried her all the way up here and after he was shot by those Navy warbirds, he set her down, gentle as can be. Sounds kinda human, huh?”

“Very human,” admitted Doc, returning to his work.

Deep into the late evening hours, Ham Brooks came charging into the reception room. He was dragging a round-faced man along by the scruff of his rumpled coat collar. The new arrival was unshaven and unbalanced of eye. A battered hat sat comically askew on his head.

“Doc, permit me to introduce Carl Denham. He appears to be a little under the weather.”

Monk squinted skeptically. “Looks drunk as a boiled owl to me.”

“Drunken owls,” said Carl Denham, exhaling fumes of alcohol, “are shining saints next to me.”

Doc Savage appraised the man in silence.

“Your story would be appreciated.”

“It’s in all the papers. Read it for yourself.” One bright brown eye squeezed shut. “You know, you look kinda like that Doc Savage fella.”

“That is my name.”

“Can’t be. Doc Savage is almost ten feet tall. A regular Paul Bunyan. He’s got eyes that shoot thunderbolts and everything he touches turns to pure eighteen-karat gold.” A flicker of pain touched his weathered features. “Unlike yours truly.”

“Exaggeration,” said Doc.

“Damned Ninth Wonder of the World. Right behind ol’ Kong.”

“How did you find him in the first place?” asked Doc.

“Map. Curse it. A map got me there. Got it off a Norwegian ship’s captain—damn the day I ever met him.”

“I see,” said Doc. “Now you find yourself in a lot of legal hot water.”

Ham interposed, “I agreed to represent him in court, Doc.”

“There might be a better approach to this tangle,” suggested Doc. “Sit down, Denham.”

Denham sat. He neglected to look behind him to see if a chair was handy, so he landed on the seat of his pants, on the carpet. He seemed not to notice.

Looking up at Doc Savage, he barked, “For the luvva Mike, but you are tall. Almost as tall as….”

Monk suddenly asked, “What happened to the blonde girl, Ann Darrow?”

“She and my first mate Jack Driscoll eloped, or something.” He pulled his trouser pockets inside out. Nothing came out. Denham frowned. “I gave them my last dollar to do it with, too.”

Denham’s bleary bloodshot eyes seemed to go farther out of focus.

“Where is it?” he asked thickly.

“The body, you mean?”

Denham hitched up his trousers belligerently. “Damn right I do!”

“Housed in a safe place,” related Doc. “How did you get Kong to the city, Denham?”

“Tramp freighter.”

“The skipper’s name?”

Denham tried to say the name, but his alcoholic tongue got tangled in his mouth. The name came out sounding something like “Oglethorpe.”

“Englehorn,” supplied Ham Brooks. “The freighter
Wanderer
is still docked on the Hudson. Hasn’t left yet.”

Doc directed, “Contact the harbor master. Have it detained.”

“Oglethorpe’s innocent, I tell you,” roared Denham. “It was all my doing!”

“We are not interested in pressing charges against the freighter captain,” advised Doc.

Denham said nothing to that. He seemed to become lost in his thoughts.

“He’s supposed to take her back,” he mumbled finally.

Interest flickered in Doc Savage’s metallic mask of a face. “Her?”

“Penjaga. A native wise woman. You wouldn’t understand.”

Urgency crept into the bronze man’s well-modulated tones.

“Where is she?”

“Put her on the
Wanderer.
After the big monkey… fell.”

Doc said sharply, “Denham, you will remain here. Ham, watch this man. Monk, come with me.”

Doc Savage left, Monk Mayfair ambling in his wake.

THE
Wanderer
lay at anchor, a dark hulk that showed seaworthy lines. Doc Savage judged her to be capable of doing fourteen knots at her best clip.

A watchman stood at the bottom on the galvanized iron stairway, looking uneasy.

“Permission to come on board,” requested Doc.

“Who’s asking?”

“Doc Savage.”

“Heard of you.” He stepped aside. “All right, go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

Doc mounted the gangway. With the unerring instincts of a man who had sailed on many kinds of ships over the seven seas, he made his way below, finding the captain’s rough quarters.

He knocked once, then threw open the door.

A middle-aged man with a graying mustache sat behind a desk, fiddling with an open pouch of tobacco. He looked up with sharp eyes black as buttons.

Doc asked, “Captain Englehorn?”

The skipper shot to his feet, slamming his palms on his desktop. “Who are you to come barging in?”

“Denham directed us to you,” explained Doc.

Englehorn grunted. “Denham. They arrested him, have they?”

“No, but he is in protective custody for the moment.”

Englehorn rolled a plug of chew in one cheek, began masticating it with the placid deliberation of a narrow-skulled cow.