The Laugh of Death: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

“No.”

  “That ain’t gonna make anybody happy,” the driver said.

  “Did you see what happened?”

  “The big bronze guy? This Doc Savage? The one that scares everybody so bad?

  “Yes.”

  The cab driver laughed. “He damned near got you, didn’t he?”

  He was cursed for his levity and ordered to get going. He drove discreetly as to speed, but with a skill that covered ground. He was a good driver in an unobtrusive way that was almost sinister.

  The conference took place in a trailer park in New Jersey on the other side of the George Washington Bridge and north a short distance. There seemed to be six men, and they occupied three trailers. The three trailers were good ones, the class selling for above three thousand dollars, but they were not parked near each other. The conference took place in the trailer that was green.

  The six men in the trailer camp and the two footpads made eight.

  The taxi driver did not participate. He delivered his passengers and said, “My orders are to go back into the city and drive the streets.” He touched the radio in the cab. “I get my calls on this—a little transceiver working on the short-wave band. Doesn’t look it, does it?” He drove away.

  The conference atmosphere was coldly efficient. There was no profanity, no drinking and no tough talk. They seated themselves, and one of the men passed cigars around.

  One man, who was thin-faced and dark-eyed, neatly dapper in a gray pin-striped business suit, seemed to be in charge.

  “Let’s have the story,” he said, “and I will pass it on to headquarters.”

  The two footpads told what had happened, telling it as it had occurred and much as an observer would have told it. One of them did most of the talking, but the other helped him out.

  After the report, and following a period of silence in which each man seemed engaged with his own thoughts, the footpad who had done the least talking made a statement.

  “I don’t like crossing that George Washington Bridge,” he said. “There’re always cops there. And the tunnels aren’t any better, because there’re always cops there, too. The ferry’s the same.”

  “Do you think the police have your description and are looking for you?”

  “No, I don’t. But I don’t think it is smart going back and forth across that river.”

  The other man nodded. “You are right. But don’t worry about it. We will not have to do it any more.”

  “Savage is on Manhattan Island, and if—”

  “Headquarters has moved another group to Manhattan,” the other explained. “It is established now; so we will not operate in the city ourselves from now on.”

  The footpad was relieved. “How come we got sent out on this job if—”

  “The other group had not yet established itself in the city.”

  “Oh!”

  “I just got word about the other a few minutes ago by radio.”

  “I see.”

  The other man got up abruptly, went to the trailer door, opened it. As soon as the door was open, the sound of an airplane came into the trailer with enough volume for all of them to notice it. The man stepped outside, looked upward for a few moments, then came back into the trailer hurriedly and turned up the volume of a small radio receiver. He listened to the receiver until a series of dots—not letters, but dots spaced in an irregular but studied pattern—came out of the loudspeaker. The sound was like the wing-buzzing of a trapped housefly.

  “That’s our plane,” he said. “He’s going to land in the field half a mile south of here. That’s why we were assigned to this trailer camp; it is close to the highways and to that flying field.”

  One footpad looked alarmed. “Do we have to try that Washington thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great grief!”

  The second footpad also looked alarmed.

  The man in the pin-striped suit said, “Charlie, Dan, Briggs, Phillips and myself will go to Washington.” He reached for his hat and an already-packed handbag. “Come on!”

  Briggs and Phillips were the two footpads. They rapidly became too scared for conversation.

  Chapter IV

  DEATH SITTING UP

  A battalion of cavalry out of a New Jersey training center had been part of the Washington defenses for less than a week. They were billeted in what had been a warehouse not far from the navy yard, just off M Street, in the city of Washington. The billets were comfortable enough, but the battalion had not been there long enough to get the lay of the ground. Furthermore, it was an experimental group, so it was being somewhat kicked around.

  The battalion was not cavalry at all, nor even a mechanized force, although it was sufficiently motorized. It was really a battalion receiving advanced training in demolition. It was an outfit destined to be assigned the job of seeing that there was a “scorched earth” for the enemy in case of strategic retreat.

  Its equipment was fast motorized transport and every conceivable gadget of destruction—explosives, drills, cutting torches—every tool necessary to destroy machinery and property.

  It was taking it easy in billets when the loudspeaker arrangement that functioned from the office made a statement.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Stravers from headquarters will select a squad for special duty,” the loud speaker said. “Lieutenant Maxson, you will cooperate and assist.”

  Shortly, a lean, brown, hard-jawed officer stalked into the billet. He had the silver oak leaf of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulder loops. He returned the general salute briskly, and snapped, “At ease.” Then his eyes roved and he demanded, “Lieutenant Maxson?”

  Maxson presented himself. “I am Maxson, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Stravers, here to get a special detail,” said the hard-jawed man. “Here are my travel papers, and a written order.”

  Lieutenant Maxson examined the documents, saw that they seemed in order, and remarked, “This seems urgent.”

  “It is urgent!” snapped the other. “I want a squad of about eight men. Two trucks. Cutting torches for steel. Power drills, if you have them. Thermite compound for cutting may be necessary. And some TNT. Fast!”

  Lieutenant Maxson looked puzzled, but passed on the orders and got a squad and the materials together. In the back of his mind was the idea that this might be some kind of a test maneuver to see how the men would respond to the unexpected.

  He learned differently when he was charging through traffic in a jeep, trailed by a multi-wheeled military transport containing the other men and the unusual equipment.

  “This is an unusual job, lieutenant,” said the lieutenant colonel. “It is dangerous, and there is no time to lose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They stopped before a building in the outer business district. It was an old structure, and not as neat as it could have been.

  “Lieutenant, place guards at the doors. Do not allow anyone to enter the building. Anyone who wants to leave should be permitted to leave, however. There is to be as little excitement as possible.”

  “Colonel, are you able to explain to—”

  “Certainly, Lieutenant. I will tell you. A damned fool in the Office of Mechanical Investigation made the incredibly stupid mistake of locking up his time vault for the day with a delayed-action bomb in the vault. It is a very large bomb, a new type which will blow this whole building higher than the war debt. The time mechanism is operating, so the bomb is due to go up any time. The fool remembered what he had done, called headquarters, then left town in terror.”

  The lieutenant moistened his dry lips. “I see,” he said. “Very well. We will do our best.”

  The office was on the sixth floor. The hard-jawed man with the lieutenant colonel’s silver leaves strode to the door, tried it and seemed surprised. He searched through his pockets vainly.

  “Break down the door,” he said. “I seem to have misplaced the key.” He grimaced. “I guess I am getting nervous. Damn a nervous man!”

&nbsp
; They smashed in the door with efficiency.

  The office inside was a large one, and neat. The hard-jawed man crossed it, yanked open a pair of large double doors, disclosing the door of a substantial built-in vault.

  Lieutenant Maxson said, “That is a very good vault.” He turned to his squad. “All right, men, get to work on it.”

  The squad began working efficiently.

  The hard-jawed man consulted his watch, and snapped, “Hurry it! In five minutes we will have to start getting everyone out of the building and out of the neighborhood.”

  Lieutenant Maxson nodded. His face was tight. “How come the person who made the mistake knew at what time the mechanism was set to explode?”

  “General rule. Mechanisms under examination and inspection for acceptance for manufacture for the army, as this one was, are set at the same hour so as to avoid errors.”

  “I see.”

  They had trouble with the vault. Cutting torches went through an outside layer of vault steel, but it developed that there was then another layer of some substance which was very tough and also contained asbestos or something similar, which made it impervious to fire.

  “Blast!” ordered the hard-jawed man.

  “That will damage the vault walls. This way, by only ruining the door of—”

  “Blast, Lieutenant!” snapped the other. “Do you want to delay us until this building is blown up, and ourselves with it?”

  They set the explosive. The operation was good. While a few windows were broken in the neighborhood, there were not many. When they walked back into the office they found that the vault door had been split sufficiently for them to enter. Rather, for one man to enter.

  “I will go in, Lieutenant,” said the hard-jawed man. “There is no sense in your submitting yourself to danger. You will take your men and retire to the street.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” said the lieutenant.

  But Lieutenant Maxson said it strangely and he did not follow the order. He went as far as the hall, and commanded his men to go downstairs; then he returned, walking on tiptoes to the office.

  He peered furtively into the vault.

  The hard-jawed man was searching the vault, but he was not searching for any bomb. There seemed to be nothing but documents inside.

  The hard-jawed man spent twenty minutes hunting. He began to sweat with nervousness, and he glanced often at the mouth of the vault. Lieutenant Maxson had stepped to one side, out of view.

  Finally the hard-jawed man rushed out of the vault. He was empty-handed.

  Lieutenant Maxson presented the destructive end of a service pistol for inspection. “Sorry I let it go this far,” he said.

  An officer of the general staff corps conducted the preliminary examination in the matter. He heard Lieutenant Maxson’s story. “What made me suspicious,” said Maxson, “was the whole thing, I think. And then, after I looked in the vault and saw there was no bomb, I knew he was an impostor.”

  The examining officer wheeled on the hard-jawed man who had said he was a lieutenant colonel. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  The man said a grim nothing.

  An intelligence man came in. “He’s a fake, all right,” he said. “Near as we can tell, the communicator line to the barracks was even tapped. His uniform and insignia, of course, have been stolen or were purchased from a civilian-supply house with faked credentials.”

  The man from general staff closed his fists angrily, went over and scowled into the face of the man who had tried to trick them.

  “What did you want in that vault?” he demanded.

  The man kept silent.

  “You wanted something!” the other snapped. “What was it?”

  Silence.

  “You knew how tough that vault would be to blow,” said the staff officer, “so you tricked some soldiers into doing the job for you. You look as if you had sense, and it would take brains to work out a thing like that, so you evidently knew what you were doing. You would know how dangerous it was, and what the penalty would be if you got caught.”

  The man kept his silence.

  The staff officer wheeled on the intelligence man. “You fellows find out who uses that office?”

  The intelligence man looked uncomfortable. “No.”

  “You mean you can’t tell us whose safe was blown?” yelled the other.

  “No.”

  “Well, what was in the vault? I mean, what did this fellow find in it, which obviously wasn’t what he was looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” said the intelligence man.

  “Hell and little rabbits! Didn’t you send a man to look?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he find?”

  “He found nothing. Everything in the vault was gone. It had been cleaned out.”

  “Who did that?”

  “Nobody knows.” The intelligence officer became irritated. “Why didn’t you fellows have a guard put over the place at once?”

  The staff man shrugged. “Listen—we’ve got to get information out of the prisoner,” he said. “Get hold of your commanding officer and have him assign us a physician experienced in administering truth serum. We’ll give this fellow some of it, and he’ll talk, all right.” The officer looked around, puzzled. “What’s that noise?” he asked.

  “Sounds like somebody laughing,” said the intelligence man. He was silent a moment. “Blazes! Oh, blazes!” he said in growing horror.

  The laughing—and it was not laughing, but was like sound as stupendous as a cannon cracking—seemed to begin in a distance and come closer very fast.

  The intelligence man dashed for the door, slammed it shut. Apparently, it was his idea that something was coming toward them, possibly through the hall.

  The hard-jawed man, the one who had tricked the army into opening the vault for him, sank to his knees. He began yelling. If his yell was words, they were not intelligible.

  The staff man gaped at him.

  A soldier who had been standing in the back of the room suddenly shouted—sound only, not words to his shout, also—and dashed for the door.

  A sentry at the door clubbed the soldier down with a rifle, then looked at the fallen man dumbly, as if he did not understand why the soldier had run, or why he had hit him.

  Somewhere, a dog began howling. It was a fast, frenzied howl. The office where the questioning was being conducted was on the ground floor of a building, and the windows were open. The dog was close, and its howling was unnerving.

  The bombardment of noise rose and rose, seemingly not so much in volume as in force, until it was not bearable. It was like pain, awful agony, that each moment seemed to have reached a point where it could not get any worse! And yet, each pulsation was more horrendous.

  The intelligence officer began to beat his palms slowly against his head. He looked as if he were going mad, as if his skull were going to explode.

  And when it stopped, which it did suddenly, it was as if it had not stopped at all.

  Twenty minutes later, a medical officer came out of the room, shaking his head and wearing a stunned expression.

  “What was going on in there?” he demanded. “What were they doing?”

  “They caught some fake officer who tricked a squad of soldiers into blowing a vault for him,” a soldier explained. “They were questioning the man.”

  “I see.”

  “Are they all right?”

  “One of them isn’t. The others will recover.”

  “That thing, that sound, killed one of them, eh?”

  “No. A bullet did that!”

  “Bullet?”

  “Between the eyes.”

  “Which one was it?” asked the soldier.

  “The fellow they were questioning,” the doctor explained. He frowned. “Did they make that noise themselves?”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  The doctor shrugged. “I never heard anything like the thing before. I thought maybe they were using some
new kind of a device to make the prisoner talk.”

  “I don’t know who, or what, made the noise,” the soldier said. “And, somehow, I don’t think it was a noise.”

  “The first part of your statement is probably right,” the doctor said. “I wouldn’t know about the other.”

  Chapter V

  THE WILD GOOSE

  The man who had shot the fake lieutenant colonel got rid of his rifle rather elaborately. First, he removed the telescopic sight, which was expensive, and which he saw no sense in throwing away. Then he drove his car—it was a small rented machine—to a drugstore and parked. He purchased a small bottle of sulphuric acid and two rubber corks.

  He consigned the rifle, the barrel corked full of acid, to a canal. He knew what ballistic experts could do with rifle barrels and bullets taken from murdered men.

  He drove north, then west, and stopped at a small flying field where his companions and a plane waited.

  The man in the pin-striped suit said soberly, “What did you do with the rifle, Dan?”

  “Put it in a canal, the bore full of sulphuric.”

  “Good.” The other indicated the plane. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “How did you know about what I had to do to Charlie?” Dan asked.

  The man in the pin-striped suit eyed him sharply. “Don’t get too curious.”

  “Hell, I just wondered. Ain’t a man supposed to have any curiosity?”

  They climbed into the plane. The pilot had one arm and a distinctly evil appearance, which made him by far the most villainous-looking member of the group, whereas he was actually the least reprehensible.

  The plane taxied across the field with its tail in the air and got over a telephone line. There was a woods beyond, with rough air above it, and the ship bounced from one thermal current to another.

  Grudgingly, the man in the pin-striped suit said, “Dan, we got it by radio, if you have to know.”

  “Oh!” Dan said. “I wish to blazes I knew more about this thing. This is worse than the army for not knowing where you are going or what you are doing. All I know is that I had orders to follow Charlie and, if those soldiers got wise to the trick he was pulling on them, to stick around but not let myself be noticed. Then, when they got curious, to shoot him.” He compressed his lips. “That’s a hell of a thing. Charlie wasn’t a bad guy.”