The Laugh of Death: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  “He,” said the man in the pin-striped suit, “made a fizzle out of what he was doing.”

  Dan watched the earth below with tight, frightened intensity. “Meaning that if I make a mistake sometime the same thing might happen to me?”

  The other shrugged. “Look at it this way: You killed Charlie; if you had been caught you would have been electrocuted.”

  “That’s different. I knew what I was doing.”

  “Charlie knew what he was doing, too. He got caught, and it was no different than it would have been if you had gotten caught. They would have stood Charlie before a military firing squad, and don’t think they wouldn’t have. You just beat the firing squad to it, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dan said doubtfully. There were wet beads on his forehead.

  They assembled at the trailer camp in New Jersey, across the river from New York City. They were the same group who had met there earlier, except for the man Charlie, who was dead in Washington.

  Almost immediately the small radio-transceiver loudspeaker said, “Are you all there?”

  “Yes,” said the man in the pin-striped suit.

  “Coast clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Post a guard,” ordered the radio, “and stand by the receiving set. Don’t hesitate to warn me if there is a chance of anyone overhearing.”

  “Right.”

  “Good,” said the radio. “Now, send a man out to the highway. Have him walk east about a hundred yards to a large birch tree growing out of the fence row. In the ditch near the tree he will find a package. Have him bring it back. You will know what to do with the contents. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And do not try to contact me by radio. We are operating these short-wave sets illegally, and too much of it is sure to get the government men down on our necks. That is all.”

  The man called Dan stared at the radio. Nervous perspiration had made his shirt soaking wet, and he was changing it for a dry garment. He muttered, “There’s a guy who sure is not taking any of the chances.”

  The other snapped, “Well, he’s paying out enough money that he shouldn’t. Stop squawking. Suppose you go look around that birch tree.”

  Dan left quickly. He was in a state of mind where he welcomed physical motion. But, when he reached the highway where traffic whipped past, he experienced all the sensations of a rabbit in the vicinity of a pack of hounds. By the time he reached the birch tree he was half running.

  The package was a cardboard box—flat, eighteen inches square, three inches or so thick.

  He carried it back to the trailer, tore the paper off, removed a quantity of cotton padding, and the black acetate recording disk which it contained.

  The man in charge of the group examined one surface of the disk, then the other. “Recorded on both sides,” he said. “He must have a lot to say.”

  They put the disk on a portable phonograph and it said:

  “Here are your orders. Doc Savage has not gotten out of that bank vault yet; but he will before long, and he will immediately start out to learn what happened to his aides and the girl. We cannot have that. He has to be put out of the way.”

  Dan and the others looked startled. This voice was a different one, not the one they had been hearing over the small radio. An effort had been made to disguise both voices, but they did not belong to the same individual. There was not the slightest doubt of that.

  Dan blurted, “Hell, that other guy ain’t the head of it! What do you know about that? He’s sure covering himself—”

  “Shut up!” he was ordered.

  The phonographic recording continued:

  “One way to get rid of Savage is to try to kill him. That is the way we will not use. It has been tried before and failed. It is what he will expect. He will be on guard against a murder attempt. So we will dispose of him with guile, which he will not be expecting and which therefore will stand a better chance of succeeding.

  “Our method will be to send Savage off on a wild-goose chase. The first step has already been laid. As soon as he gets out of the vault he will hear about what has happened in Washington. He will naturally go there.

  “The plan will be to arrange a logical succession of clues for him to follow. We will make them interesting enough to arouse his interest and make him sure he is on a hot trail.

  “To insure his going to Washington, a tip has been telephoned to the Washington police officials that Doc Savage was responsible for the murder of Charlie Graffner. The tip was made boldly, and pains were taken to allow it to be traced.

  “The man who made the call will go to a Washington airport, leaving a plain trail, but acting as if he is trying not to leave one. He will take a plane to the South; and to be sure that the plane departure is noticed, there will be a fight preceding it. The other party in the fight will be the aggressor and will be arrested, naturally. The man who is to be arrested has been hired for the part and has no idea whatever of what it is all about.

  “The man on the plane to the South will continue to leave a trail by conducting himself in a conspicuous fashion. He will make all haste to South America, where he will end his trip—or the plane part of it—at Cartagena. From there he will plunge into the back-country jungle, the jungle inhabited by the Mogoloni Indians.”

  The speaker who had made the transcription now had trouble with his fake voice. Trying to speak in the disguised fashion caused his throat to rasp. He had a spell of coughing, and cursed twice in what was a more natural fashion.

  In the faked voice, he continued:

  “Doc Savage will waste days and possibly weeks in pursuing our man through the South American jungle. If he does happen to catch the man after a few days, he will be no better off, because the man does not know anything that will be of value to Doc Savage. He has been merely hired for the part he is playing.”

  The voice broke again and there was more coughing.

  “I am telling you this,” it finished, “because it is essential to the smooth working of an organization such as this that the members have a general idea of what is going on. There is also another fact. I have noticed a growing fear of this man Doc Savage and what he may do. Therefore, I wanted you to know that measures, and rather clever measures, even if I do say so, are being taken to rid us of his menace. The measures will result in no dangerous repercussions to ourselves. So you can forget Doc Savage and whatever menace his name implies to you. I can assure you that Savage will be misled completely away from us. I can assure you this because I understand psychology, and particularly the psychology of a man such as Savage.”

  There was a brief pause in which the record scratched.

  “This is all,” the voice said. “All members of the organization have received copies of this recording. You may now destroy the record. Be sure you do so.”

  The man called Dan got up quickly. He was a changed man; it was as if a door had been opened in his brain to let in the bright sunlight. He broke the record in small pieces, then put a frying pan on the bottled-gas trailer stove. He dropped the wax-record fragments in the pan and put it over the flame which he started. The fragments started to melt.

  The man in the pin-striped business suit watched him with half a grin and half a leer. “Relieved, Dan?”

  “You don’t know how much,” Dan said. “I ain’t kidding nobody. When anybody says this Doc Savage to me, the icicles come out of my boots.”

  Chapter VI

  THE GOOSE HUNTER

  A Hindu Yogi in India had taught Doc Savage the art of emotional control early in life. The board of scientists who had charge of training Doc did not have much faith in Yoga as a philosophy leading to higher things. But they did know that a Yogi could school his emotions until he could undergo the most extreme pain, mental and physical, with apparent tranquillity. Young Savage had been an apt student, and of all his strangely acquired facilities, none had been better mastered or more improved with practice.

  So Doc’s current
behavior was hardly in keeping.

  He had knocked a toe out of joint in kicking the vault door in a rage. He had yanked out loose strong boxes and hurled them against the walls. He had yelled things into the telephone that connected the telephone in the vault with the exterior. He had threatened to buy the bank and fire everybody in it. He had threatened to kick certain parts of the pompous bank president’s anatomy up around his ears.

  None of which had gotten him out of the vault.

  The bank did not want their vault ruined.

  It seemed that a new vault cost thirteen-odd thousand dollars. Furthermore, what with shortages of certain types of steel and things, a new one was hardly obtainable. Destruction of the vault with cutting torches would mean the bank would practically have to suspend business. So, nothing doing.

  Time approached for the time clock in the natural course of events to open the vault door.

  The door opened, and Doc Savage walked out. He said not a word to anyone, but strode to the street. The bank employees looked apprehensive, because all of them, by now, had been fully informed of Doc’s importance, and the bank president even started after Doc with a hand outstretched hopefully. Doc climbed into a cab.

  “Uptown, fast!” he growled.

  As the cab rolled north he broke into an uncomfortable perspiration. He had not stalked out of the bank because of temper; he had been over that. He was ashamed of it, and hadn’t been able to face the bank employees whom he had abused from within the vault.

  It was hard to lose many hours while something obviously terrible had happened to his aides and Pat. But losing his temper had not helped. It never helps.

  He did not go to his own headquarters or to the apartments or offices of his assistants. Instead, he ended in a small and grimy hole in a not-too-reputable office building off Times Square, where the streets are crowded twenty-four hours a day. He kept the place for emergencies, and there was nothing there but emergency equipment, part of it in the way of make-up.

  An hour later he walked out of the place as a large and dumb-looking, but flashily dressed Negro gentleman.

  He went back to the street near the bank where the unpleasantness had befallen him and searched. It was late for a hunt, and he found nothing that another man would have considered of value.

  There were four dead pigeons on the ledge that ran around the bank building up near the roof.

  There were no other pigeons in the neighborhood.

  He got into an open-air cab—the type with an open window in the top—and leaned back to look upward as he rode uptown.

  He rode nearly nine blocks before he saw any pigeons.

  “Turn around and drive back past that bank and keep going in a straight line,” he told the driver.

  It was nine blocks beyond the bank before he saw more pigeons.

  He bought all the late newspapers.

  They contained a story to the effect that a weirdly fantastic and horrible laughing phenomena had occurred in Washington, similar to the one near the bank in New York, and also to one reported to have happened in the suburb of Jamaica.

  Doc telephoned Washington.

  “Oh, yes—that thing,” said the army intelligence official to whom he spoke. “It was an attempt by an unidentified man to get into the vault of an office. The man was killed during that laughing, obviously to silence him before we got a chance to use truth serum on him.”

  “The vault was in whose office?” Doc asked.

  “That,” said the intelligence man, “is the strangest thing.”

  “Strange how?”

  “We have not been able to find out who occupies the office.”

  Doc Savage said nothing for a while. “You are not withholding information?”

  Completely earnest, the intelligence man said, “We have orders not to withhold even confidential information from you.”

  “I am sorry. Thank you.”

  The intelligence man said, “Wait a minute. There is another thing—a telephone tip. It was to the effect that you were connected with that laughing thing.”

  “I see. Was the call traced?”

  “It was.”

  “Who made it?”

  “A man. A man who immediately got a cab and hurried to the airport. At the airport he had a fight with the cab driver over the fare and slugged him. Then the man bought a ticket and left on a plane for Miami, Florida.”

  “The plane has not had time to reach Florida,” Doc remarked.

  “No. The plane is in the air with the man aboard right now. Shall we have him picked up?”

  Doc Savage was silent, considering.

  The intelligence man added, “We can have one of our operatives pick up the man in Miami.”

  “What is the man’s name?”

  “Carl Cave was the name he bought the ticket under.”

  “Hold it a bit,” Doc Savage said. “I will call you back.”

  The bronze man’s next call was long distance to the Pan American ticket office in Miami. He got a ticket agent on the wire and identified himself.

  He asked, “Do you by any chance have a ticket reservation for a man named Carl Cave?”

  A note of indignation came into the ticket agent’s voice. He said, “I have personal knowledge of that guy. He called up—long distance from Washington, mind you—and reserved a seat on the plane to Trinidad, then to Cartagena, South America. Then for five minutes, and for no reason—on the long-distance telephone from Washington, mind you—he abused me. Had a grudge against the airline, I gathered.”

  “Thank you,” Doc Savage said, and hung up.

  Again he had a silent spell. Then he did something that was rare for him. He talked to himself.

  “That looks just a little thick,” he remarked.

  He called back to the intelligence man in Washington and said, “This is Doc Savage again. About that fellow headed for Miami—just let him continue on his way, will you?”

  “You want him shadowed?”

  “If it can be done conveniently. But he is not to be picked up under any circumstances.”

  “As you wish.”

  Once again the bronze man used the telephone, this time to an agency which supplied theatrical talent.

  “Some time ago, I arranged with you to obtain, and keep on tap, an actor or actors who could double for me or my associates,” he said. “I need one who can double for myself.”

  “We have one man,” the agency said.

  “Does he understand that there may be danger?”

  The agency clerk laughed. “Sure. He also understands the fee he is to get. He’s satisfied.”

  “How soon can he be at this address?” Doc asked, and gave the address of the Times Square office.

  The agency man said to hold the phone. He apparently used another telephone to contact the actor, then said, “In about two hours.”

  “Good. Get him there.”

  The actor bore a rather startling resemblance to Doc Savage in body and facial contour. His coloring—hair, skin, eyes—was quite different, however, and the actor seemed uncertain about this point.

  He said, “At the agency they told me that you could use skin dye, hair dye, and colored eye caps for my eyes—the kind they call invisible glasses—and make me pass.”

  Doc Savage nodded. He was satisfied except on one point.

  He asked the actor, “Did they make it quite clear to you that this probably would be dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very dangerous?”

  “Listen,” said the actor, demonstrating that he could do a fairly passable imitation of the bronze man’s normal speaking tone, “they also told me what the salary would be. That makes it all right with me.”

  “How are you up against trouble?”

  “Not too hot. Not like you, anyway. But I used to be a stunt man and I’ll try to get by.”

  The agency was a good one, and it had been asked to make sure that the man they picked was an individual of courage and some reso
urcefulness.

  “You want this job, then?”

  The man nodded. “I am playing the supporting role in a Broadway hit,” he said. “Would I be here if I didn’t want the job?”

  “Good.”

  “The agency gave me recordings of your voice, and I have been practicing imitating it,” the actor explained. “Now, what do I do?”

  “A man using the name of Carl Cave is on a plane bound for Miami, Florida, and has purchased plane passage to Cartagena, in South America. You will follow him. He will not be hard to follow, apparently.”

  “That is all I’m to know about it?”

  “It is all I know, practically. But here is something that may help you: In case you lose the man, or need help, get in touch with the army intelligence in Washington—a man named Steffan—and ask for what you want. Arrangements will be made to furnish you with what assistance can be given. When you contact Steffan, tell him who you are and just what you are doing.”

  “Right. What do I do after I catch this Carl Cave?”

  “You do not catch him.”

  “All right.”

  “Another thing,” Doc said. “Do not be too inconspicuous.”

  “What would you call not inconspicuous? I gather you don’t mean conspicuous, exactly.”

  “Not exactly. Let yourself be seen. Act as if you are being furtive, but let yourself be seen. Just do not overdo it.”

  The actor seemed competent and pleased. “Sure. I hope I can do this well enough to satisfy you.” He rubbed his jaw. “I don’t understand it, of course.”

  “You,” Doc Savage told him, “are a man following a wild goose.”

  “I see.” The actor had discernment. “You might call me a decoy.”

  “We do not want to call you a dead duck,” Doc said, “so be careful.”

  Chapter VII

  WHILE THE GOOSE FLEW

  Doc Savage’s next move seemed somewhat aimless and appeared to bear no outward resemblance to the matter at hand. It certainly had no relation to rescuing his five assistants and Patricia Savage, if they were still in a condition where rescuing would do them any good.