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  Title: The Secret in the Sky

  Date of first publication: 1935

  Author: Lester Dent (as Kenneth Robeson) (1904-1959)

  Date first posted: Jan. 3, 2020

  Date last updated: Jan. 3, 2020

  Faded Page eBook #20200103

  This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

  DOC SAVAGE’S AMAZING CREW

  William Harper Littlejohn, the bespectacled scientist who was the world’s greatest living expert on geology and archæology.

  Colonel John Renwick, “Renny,” his favorite sport was pounding his massive fists through heavy, paneled doors.

  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, “Monk,” only a few inches over five feet tall, and yet over 260 pounds. His brutish exterior concealed the mind of a great scientist.

  Major Thomas J. Roberts, “Long Tom,” was the physical weakling of the crowd, but a genius at electricity.

  Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, slender and waspy, he was never without his ominous, black sword cane.

  WITH THEIR LEADER, THEY WOULD GO ANYWHERE, FIGHT ANYONE, DARE EVERYTHING—SEEKING EXCITEMENT AND PERILOUS ADVENTURE!

  Books by Kenneth Robeson

  THE MAN OF BRONZE

  THE THOUSAND-HEADED MAN

  METEOR MENACE

  THE POLAR TREASURE

  BRAND OF THE WEREWOLF

  THE LOST OASIS

  THE MONSTERS

  THE LAND OF TERROR

  THE MYSTIC MULLAH

  THE PHANTOM CITY

  FEAR CAY

  QUEST OF QUI

  LAND OF ALWAYS-NIGHT

  FANTASTIC ISLAND

  MURDER MELODY

  THE SPOOK LEGION

  THE RED SKULL

  THE SARGASSO OGRE

  PIRATE OF THE PACIFIC

  THE SECRET

  IN THE SKY

  A DOC SAVAGE ADVENTURE

  BY KENNETH ROBESON

  THE SECRET IN THE SKY

  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE May 1935

  Copyright 1935 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter Page

  1. The Friend Who Died 1

  2. The High-Pressure Ghouls 10

  3. The Man from Oklahoma 19

  4. Oklahoma Action 25

  5. Flame Thread 32

  6. Two Gentlemen of Tulsa 39

  7. Peril in Frisco 48

  8. The Dead Man’s Brother 53

  9. Murder Spree 60

  10. Death Zone 66

  11. The Farmer Gag 74

  12. Man in the Rubber Mask 82

  13. Sinister Organization 89

  14. Osage Rendezvous 98

  15. Plans Sinister 105

  16. Death Rode the Sky 109

  17. Holocaust 114

  Chapter 1

  THE FRIEND WHO DIED

  The matter of Willard Spanner was almost unbelievable. It was too preposterous. The newspapers publishing the story were certain a mistake had been made somewhere. True, this was the Twentieth Century, the age of marvels. But—then——

  At exactly noon, the telephone buzzer whirred in Doc Savage’s New York skyscraper headquarters. Noon, straight up, Eastern Standard Time.

  The buzzer whirred three times, with lengthy pauses between whirs, which allowed time for any one present to have answered. Then an automatic answering device, an ingenious arrangement of dictaphone voice recorder and phonographic speaker—a creation of Doc Savage’s scientific skill—was cut in automatically. The phonograph record turned under the needle and sent words over the telephone wire.

  “This is a mechanical robot speaking from Doc Savage’s headquarters and advising you that Doc Savage is not present, but that any message you care to speak will be recorded on a dictaphone and will come to Doc Savage’s attention later,” spoke the mechanical contrivance. “You may proceed with whatever you wish to say, if anything.”

  “Doc!” gasped a voice, which had that strange quality lent by long-distance telephonic amplifiers. “This is Willard Spanner! I am in San Francisco. I have just learned something too horrible for me to believe!”

  Several violent grunts came over the wire. There were thumps. Glass seemed to break at the San Francisco end. Then came silence, followed by a click as the receiver was placed on the hook at the San Francisco terminus of the wire.

  The mechanical device in Doc Savage’s New York office ran on for some moments, and a stamp clock automatically recorded the exact time of the message on a paper roll; then the apparatus stopped and set itself for another call, should one come.

  The time recorded was two minutes past twelve, noon.

  Thirty minutes later, approximately, the newspaper press association wires hummed with the story of the mysterious seizure of Willard Kipring Parker Spanner in San Francisco. Willard Kipring Parker Spanner was a nabob, a somebody, a big shot. Anything unusual that happened to him was big news.

  The newspapers did not know the half of it. The biggest was yet to come.

  Financially, Willard Kipring Parker Spanner did not amount to much. A post-mortem examination of his assets showed less than five thousand dollars, an insignificant sum for a man who was known over most of the world.

  Willard Kipring Parker Spanner called himself simply, “a guy who likes to fiddle around with microscopes.” It was said that he knew as much about disease germs, and methods of combating them, as any living man. He had won one Nobel prize. He was less than thirty years old. Scientists and physicians who knew him considered him a genius.

  When Willard Spanner was found dead, many a scientist and physician actually shed tears, realizing what the world had lost.

  When Willard Spanner was found dead, the newspapers began to have fits. And with good reason.

  For Willard Spanner’s body was found on a New York street—less than three hours after he had been seized in San Francisco! Seized in Frisco at noon, Eastern Standard Time. Dead in New York at ten minutes to three, Eastern Standard Time.

  * * *

  A newsboy with a freckled face was first to convey the news to Doc Savage. The newsboy was also cross-eyed. Neither the newsboy, nor his freckles, nor his crossed eyes had other connection with the affair, except that the lad’s reaction when he sighted Doc Savage was typical of the effect which the bronze man had on people.

  The boy’s mouth went roundly open with a kind of amazement when he first saw the bronze giant; then, as he sold the paper, his demeanor was awed and very near worshipful.

  “I know you, mister,” he said in a small voice. “You’re Doc Savage! I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers.”

  Doc Savage studied the boy as he paid for the paper. He seemed particularly interested in the crossed eyes.

  “Wear glasses?” he asked. He had a remarkable voice; it seemed filled with a grea
t, controlled power.

  “Sure,” said the newsboy, “They give me headaches.”

  Doc Savage produced a small business card. The card was not white, but bronze, and the printing—his name only was on it—was in a slightly darker bronze.

  “If I asked you to do something,” he queried, “would you do it?”

  “Betcha boots!” replied the newsboy.

  Doc Savage wrote a name and address on the card and said, “Go see that man,” then walked on, leaving the boy puzzled.

  The name and address the bronze man had written was that of an eye specialist whose particular forte was afflictions such as the boy had.

  More than one gaze followed Doc Savage along the street, for he was a giant of bronze with a face that was remarkable in its regularity of feature and a body that was a thing of incredible muscular development. His eyes attracted no little attention, too. They were like pools of flake-gold, stirred into continuous motion by some invisible force.

  He read the newspaper headlines, the galleys of type beneath, but there was nothing on his features to show that he was perusing anything of importance.

  The skyscraper which housed his headquarters was, in size and architecture, probably the most impressive in New York City. A private high-speed elevator lifted him to the eighty-sixth floor. He passed through a door that was plain, except for a name in small bronze letters:

  CLARK SAVAGE, Jr.

  The reception room inside had large windows, deep leather chairs, a strange and rich inlaid table of great size, and an impressive safe.

  An automatic pistol lay on the floor. A pig, a shote with long legs and ears like boat sails, walked around and around the gun, grunting in a displeased way.

  A man sat in a chair. He was a very short man and the chair was huge and high and faced away from the door, so that only red bristles which stuck up straight on top of the man’s head could be seen.

  The man in the chair said in a small, childlike voice, “Shoot off that gun, Habeas, or I’ll tie knots in all your legs.”

  With an uncanny intelligence, the pig sat down, inserted a hoof inside the trigger guard, and the gun went off with an ear-splitting report.

  “Swell!” said the man in the chair. “Only you better stand, Habeas. Next time, the gun might be pointed at your posterior and there might not be a blank in it.”

  Doc Savage said, “Monk.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the man in the chair. “Sure, Doc, what is it?”

  “Willard Spanner was a friend of mine.”

  * * *

  “Monk”—Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair—lifted out of the chair. He was not much over five feet tall. He was only slightly less broad than that, and he had a pair of arms which gave the grotesque impression of being nearly as long as he was tall. Red hairs, which looked coarse as match sticks, furred his leathery hide. His was the build of a gorilla.

  “I read about it in them blasted newspapers,” he said, and his small voice was doubly ridiculous, contrasted with his physique. “Willard Spanner was seized in Frisco at noon. He was found dead here in New York at ten minutes to three. Screw loose somewhere.”

  Monk wrinkled a fabulously homely face to show puzzlement. He looked amiable, stupid, when, in truth, he was one of the most clever industrial chemists alive.

  “Maybe the newspapers got balled up on the difference in time between San Francisco and New York,” he added.

  “All times given are New York time,” Doc Savage said.

  “Then the guy seized in San Francisco wasn’t Willard Spanner, or the one dead here in New York isn’t Spanner,” Monk declared. “The bird didn’t go from Frisco to New York in a little over two hours. It just isn’t being done yet.”

  Doc Savage asked, “Any messages?”

  “Ham phoned, and said he was coming up,” replied the homely chemist. “I haven’t been here long. Dunno what was recorded before I got here.”

  The bronze man went into the next room, which was a scientific laboratory, one of the most complete in existence, and crossed that to the vast, white-enameled room which held his laboratory of chemical, electrical and other devices. He lifted the cover on the telephone recorder robot, switched a loud-speaker and amplifier into circuit with the playback pickup, and started the mechanism.

  Monk came in and listened, slackjawed, as the device reproduced the call from San Francisco, complete to its violent termination. The pig, Habeas—Habeas Corpus was the shote’s full appendage—trailed at the homely chemist’s heels.

  Doc Savage examined the time stamped on the recording roll.

  “Two minutes past twelve,” he said.

  “Was that Willard Spanner’s voice, or would you know it?” Monk demanded.

  “I would know his voice,” Doc replied. “And that was, unquestionably, Willard Spanner.”

  “Speaking from San Francisco?” Monk grunted incredulously.

  “We will see.” Doc Savage made a call, checking with the telephone people, then hung up and advised, “The call came from San Francisco, all right. Willard Spanner appears to have been seized while he was in the booth making the call.”

  Monk picked the pig, Habeas, up by one oversize ear—a treatment the shote seemed not to mind.

  “Then the dead man here in New York is not Willard Spanner,” declared the simian chemist. “Nobody goes from Frisco to New York in not much more than two hours.”

  “We will see about that,” Doc told him.

  “How?”

  “By visiting the New York morgue where the dead man was taken.”

  Monk nodded. “How about Ham?”

  “We will leave him a note,” Doc said.

  * * *

  Apparently, it had not occurred to any one in authority on the New York civic scene that the surroundings of the dead were of æsthetic value, for the morgue building was a structure which nearly attained the ultimate in shoddiness.

  Its brick walls gave the appearance of having not been washed in generations, being almost black with soot and city grime. The steps were grooved deep by treading feet, and the stone paving of the entry into which the dead wagons ran was rutted by tires. Rusting iron bars, very heavy, were over the windows; for just what reason, no one probably could have told.

  “This joint gives me the creeps—and I don’t creep easy,” Monk imparted, as they got out of Doc Savage’s roadster before the morgue.

  The roadster was deceptively long. Its color was somber. The fact that its body was of armor plate, its windows—specially built in the roadster doors—of bulletproof glass, was not readily apparent.

  Monk carried Habeas Corpus by an ear and grumbled, “I wonder why anybody should kill Willard Spanner? Or grab him, either? Spanner was an all-right guy. He didn’t have any enemies.”

  Doc listened at the entrance. There was silence, and no attendant was behind the reception desk where one should have been. They stepped inside.

  “Hello, somebody!” Monk called.

  Silence answered.

  There was an odor in the air, a rather peculiar tang. Monk sniffed.

  “Say, I knew they used formaldehyde around these places,” he muttered. “But there’s something besides——”

  Doc Savage moved with such suddenness that he seemed to explode. But it was a silent explosion, and he was little more than a noiseless bronze blur as he crossed to the nearest door. He did not try to pass through the door, but flattened beside it.

  Monk, bewildered, began, “Say, what the blazes? First I smell——”

  A man came through the door, holding a big single-action six-gun. He said, “Start your settin’-up exercises, boys!” Then his eyes bulged, for he had apparently expected to see two men—and Doc Savage, beside the door, escaped his notice.

  The man with the six-shooter was bony and looked as if he had been under bright suns much of his life. He wore a new suit, but his shirt was a coarse blue work garment, faded from washing. The tie was blue and looked as if it had been put on and tak
en off many times, without untying the knot. The knot was a very long one.

  Doc Savage struck silently and with blinding speed. The gun wielder saw him, but could not move in time, and the bronze man’s fist took him on the temple. The six-gun evidently had a hair trigger. It went off. The bullet made a hole, round and neat, in the wall behind Monk.

  Monk began howling and charged for the door.

  “Now ain’t this somethin’!” he bellowed.

  * * *

  Doc Savage had gone on with a continuation of the dive which he had made at the six-gun wielder, and was already through the door. The room beyond was an office with four desks and four swivel chairs.

  Five persons were arrayed on the floor. The morgue attendants, obviously. They were neither bound nor gagged, but they lay very still. The odor of chloroform was heavy in the air.

  Two men were on their feet. One was tall, the other short, and the short one wore overall pants and his legs were bowed. Both were weather-beaten.

  The tall one held in one hand a blue revolver and in the other a bandanna handkerchief, which gave off chloroform stench. The short man had an automatic rifle from which barrel and stock had been bobbed off short.

  A bundle of clothing lay in the middle of the floor.

  The automatic rifle smacked loudly as Doc came through the door. But the marksman did not lead his target quite enough. He shot again. The cartridge stuck in the ejector.

  “Damn it!” the rifleman bawled.

  “Throw it away!” gritted the tall man. “I told you that gun wouldn’t work if you bobtailed it!”

  The tall man danced back as he spoke, seeming in no hurry to shoot. He waved his blue revolver, that Doc Savage might be sure to see it.

  “Don’t be a sucker!” the man suggested. “Behave yourself.”

  Doc Savage held his hands out even with his shoulders and came to a stop, but not until momentum had carried him to the center of the room.