The Giggling Ghosts: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  Miami Davis heard an electric bell buzzing steadily somewhere. Probably that was the alarm which the bronze man had said rang when something went wrong in the elevators.

  “There was a man in here.” She pointed at the roof of the cage. “He climbed out. I think he jumped to a cage in another shaft.”

  From below came shot sounds: two reports; a pause about long enough for the man to have reloaded the derringer followed; then came two more reports.

  A man screeched. The screech was faint, with an eerie quality lent by the great distance it traveled up through the elevator shaft.

  “You see!” the girl gasped. “He’s down below! Shooting!”

  Miami Davis then stepped out of the elevator, advanced—brought up with a gasp. She had walked into something she couldn’t see! She explored with her hands. Bulletproof glass, she decided. It must be that.

  She fumbled for a way around. The panel was like a fence in front of the elevator door. No wonder the bronze man had felt so safe!

  The bronze giant moved to a second elevator, entered, and sent the cage down. This was a private lift, and it sank with almost the same speed with which it would have fallen free, then brought up at the first floor with enough force to cause the bronze man to brace himself. He got out.

  People were running around in the lobby, and the proprietor of the cigar stand was under the counter for safety. Out on the street, a cop was blowing his whistle furiously.

  “Anyone hurt?” the bronze man asked.

  “Something queer just happened, Mr. Savage. A man rode down on top of one of the cages. We started to ask him questions. He fought his way out.”

  “He shoot anybody?”

  “No, Mr. Savage. He had a derringer, and you can’t hit much with one of them things.”

  The bronze man went out to the street.

  A cop said, “He got away, Mr. Savage. A guy in a car picked him up.”

  When Doc Savage returned to the eighty-sixth floor, Miami Davis had given up trying to get past the bulletproof glass around the elevator door.

  She had discovered the panel did not quite reach to the ceiling, and that accounted for her having been able to speak to the bronze man. She didn’t feel like trying to climb over the top.

  Doc Savage went to a wall panel in the corridor, opened it, and disclosed a recess containing small levers. He moved a lever and an electric motor whirred and the glass panel sank into the floor, its edge then forming part of the modernistic design of the floor. Miami Davis looked at the bronze man.

  “What I read about you in the newspapers must’ve been straight stuff,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I read you were a remarkable guy with a lot of scientific gimmicks.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I was told that your business is helping people out of trouble. Is that right?”

  “It isn’t far from the truth,” the bronze man admitted.

  “I’ve got trouble. That’s why I am here.” Miami Davis made a grim mouth. “More trouble than I thought, it begins to seem.”

  Doc Savage led the way into a reception room which was furnished with a huge safe, an exquisitely inlaid table, a deep rug and comfortable chairs.

  The window afforded a startling view of Manhattan spires, and an open door gave a glimpse of another room—a great paneled room, where all available floor space was occupied by bookcases.

  “Have a chair, please.”

  The girl sat down weakly.

  “Now, suppose you give me some idea about this trouble of yours,” Doc Savage suggested.

  “That man on the elevator tried to stop me from coming here——”

  “Go back to the beginning.”

  “Oh—well—” Miami Davis took a moment to assemble her information. “It began this afternoon when I saw the ghost sneaking into a water-front storehouse and I followed it.”

  “Ghost?”

  “Well—I thought so.”

  The girl giggled a little, helplessly.

  “You were curious and followed a ghost into a storehouse,” Doc Savage said. “So far, it’s—well, unusual. But go on.”

  “Then I began to giggle,” the girl said. She shuddered.

  “You what?”

  “Giggled.”

  “I see.”

  Miami Davis knotted and unknotted her hands. “It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, at least extraordinary,” the bronze man admitted.

  “It was horrible! Something just—just came over me. I seemed to go all to pieces. It frightened me. So I fled from the storehouse.”

  “And after you fled from the storehouse, then what?”

  Miami Davis did not look at Doc Savage. “A policeman told me about you. It just occurred to him you might be interested. So I came here.”

  Doc Savage’s metallic features gave no indication of what he might be thinking.

  “Let us hope,” he said unexpectedly, “that you are telling the whole story.”

  “Oh, but I am.”

  Chapter III

  THE MAN WHO OWNED A STOREHOUSE

  Without speaking, the bronze man took the young woman by the elbow, guided her into a vast room which contained a great deal of laboratory equipment, seated her in a modernistic metal chair and did several things: first, he had her inhale and exhale several times through a tube which led to a complicated-looking contraption; then he examined the young woman, giving particular attention to her eyes. When he finished, he seemed slightly puzzled.

  “You’re not intoxicated, apparently,” he said.

  “I like that!” the girl gasped.

  “Your eyes indicate that you are not a drug addict, and you seem earnest, although excited.”

  “Maybe I’m crazy,” Miami Davis said dryly.

  “We might have a look,” Doc Savage said, “at the storehouse where you trailed the giggling ghost.”

  “Please,” the girl said earnestly. “Let’s do that.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Doc Savage went into the library, picked up the telephone, and spoke for some minutes. The telephone was fitted into a boxlike device which, when pressed against the face, made it possible to use the instrument without being overheard by anyone in the room; the girl did not catch anything that the bronze man said. Doc put down the telephone.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll go now.”

  Rain had started to leak out of a sky that was grimy-looking, when Doc Savage, driving one of his cars, headed into the street. The rain came in drops as fine as fog, so it would probably continue for some time. It was rain that obscured vision, and most cars had their headlights turned on.

  Doc Savage’s car was a coupé, long, heavy, of expensive make, but with a subdued paint job that did not attract attention. There was little outward indication that the machine was armor-plated and equipped with bulletproof glass. Doc used his car in preference to that of the girl’s, which he placed in his garage that lay under the towering skyscraper.

  Finally the bronze man said, “This seems to be it,” and pulled up before the old brick storehouse with the tin roof.

  “You still think I’m a phony?” Miami Davis demanded.

  “I still think it is unusual for a woman to follow a ghost.”

  “Well, I——” The girl giggled, although she tried not to do so.

  Doc asked, “What did it look like—this ghost?”

  “I—it was just a shadowy figure.”

  “Did it make a noise walking?”

  “I didn’t hear any noise.”

  “If you would tell the truth——”

  The girl put up her chin indignantly. “I told you everything that happened!”

  Without commenting on that, the bronze man wheeled his car over the curb and up to the side door of the storehouse.

  When the bronze man went to the storehouse door, he carried a piece of apparatus which he had taken from a compartment in the car.

  This device had
three principal parts: The first part, which he fastened to the storehouse door with suction cups, was small, and insulated wires ran from this to an electrical amplifier; and from the amplifier other wires ran to a telephonic headset which the bronze man donned. He switched on the contrivance and listened.

  The device was a high-powered sonic amplifier which took the smallest sound and increased its volume several hundred thousand times.

  Somewhere in the storehouse a rat ran and squealed, and in the amplifier headset it sounded as if an elephant had galloped over a wooden bridge and trumpeted. The girl came close and listened, too.

  They had not listened long before they heard the giggling.

  The giggling was inside the storehouse. Three or four gigglings, all going at once, judging from the sounds.

  It was fantastic. No other sound—just a concert of giggling inside the storehouse.

  “Now,” the girl said, “what did I tell you?”

  “You think that is your giggling ghost?”

  “It sounds like more than one.”

  Doc Savage took the listening device back to the car and replaced it in its compartment.

  The bronze man returned to the storehouse carrying a small cylindrical metal container holding anesthetic gas under pressure. The container was equipped with a nozzle and valve. He inserted the nozzle in a crack at the bottom of the storehouse door and turned the valve.

  With a hiss, gas rushed out of the container into the storehouse. Doc waited, depending on the sound of rain on the tin storehouse roof to keep the “ghosts” inside from hearing the gas. Evidently the rain on the roof was the reason they had not heard his car coming.

  The girl pointed at the cylinder. “I don’t get this.”

  “Gas. Anesthetic. Practically no odor or color. There are men inside the storehouse, and the gas will make them unconscious without doing them any lasting harm.”

  “Oh.”

  Eventually the bronze man tried the storehouse door. It wasn’t fastened; it came open at his shove. Inside, there was a cavern of gloom inhabited by the strange crouching shadow monsters that were the machinery. The place was full of the sound of the rain on the roof.

  Doc Savage waited until the gas lost its potency—it underwent a chemical reaction with the oxygen of the air and became impotent usually in about a minute—then went into the storehouse. The flashlight which he used—he had taken it from a door pocket—threw a beam that was like one long white finger.

  There were four unconscious men in the storehouse.

  One man was very long, with a body which gave the impression of being a tube filled with round things. He had an Adam’s apple like a golf ball, a large melon for a stomach, but not much of anything for a chest. His eyes were closed in senselessness, but it was evident that they must be very large. His nose, his mouth, his ears, were also large. His face had a benevolent expression.

  The other three men were policemen in blue uniforms.

  All three policemen were slumped in the cab of the steam shovel. The long-looking loose-limbed man was lying beside the caterpillar tread of the shovel.

  Doc Savage went out and got the girl and took her in to look at the men.

  “You recognize any of these?” he asked.

  Miami Davis shook her head while examining the policemen, but frowned when she came to the loose-jointed man. She seemed a bit doubtful about him.

  “This one”—she pointed at the long-looking man vaguely—“sure needs some exercise.”

  “You know him?”

  “I thought for a minute I had seen him somewhere. I guess I was wrong.”

  Doc Savage was a scientific product. He had undergone specialized training from childhood to fit him for the unusual work which he was doing. Surgery had been his first training and his most specialized; but through patient effort he had managed to acquire an amazing amount of knowledge concerning geology, chemistry, electricity and other sciences.

  This anesthetic gas was a product of the bronze man’s chemical skill. He had managed to keep the composition of the stuff a secret. Victims of the gas, however, could be revived by the administration of a proper stimulant made up in the form of tablets, pills that were large and a deep-blue color.

  After Doc Savage administered stimulant pills to the men he had made unconscious—the tablets came from his carryall vest he wore—it took about fifteen minutes for the victims to revive.

  The cops came out of it first, and squirmed around, got their eyes open, then sat up, one at a time, acting like men who had been in a sound sleep.

  Doc Savage and the girl were both keeping out of sight behind the steam shovel. Doc wanted to listen.

  The cops looked at each other for several moments before they spoke. Finally one giggled, then asked, “What the blazes happened?”

  The trio scratched their heads, rubbed jaws, and giggled.

  “It seemed,” one said, “like we got the giggles, then went to sleep.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  The other pointed at the loose-jointed man, who was snoring softly.

  “Birmingham Lawn looks like he is asleep, don’t he?” he demanded by way of proof.

  The first policeman scrambled over to the long-looking man.

  “I hope he’s all right,” the cop said. “He’s a swell old guy. Funny-looking, but swell. Always whistling.”

  “Whistling?”

  “Sure. Whistles all the time.”

  “You’re sure he ain’t a giggling ghost, then?”

  “Ghosts—hell! Don’t let’s start believing such lop-eared stuff. I’ve known Birmingham Lawn for years. I bought my little home through the real estate firm he runs.” The officer went over and shook the long-looking, loose-limbed man. “Wake up, Lawn! Wake up, dang it!”

  Birmingham Lawn opened one eye, then closed it. He licked his large lips, then opened both eyes, and worked his face around in puzzled shapes. He sat up and felt of himself, then started giggling a little.

  Apparently in an effort to stop giggling, he whistled, pursed his lips and whistled a bar or two from a popular song.

  “You feel all right, Mister Lawn?” asked the policeman who knew him.

  “I do not feel,” Birmingham Lawn said, “in the least like giggling. And yet I cannot help giggling.”

  Doc Savage came from behind the steam shovel and asked, “Did you gentlemen follow a giggling ghost here, too?”

  The cops stared at the bronze man; then they gave him a brisk salute. They had recognized him and remembered that he held a high honarary commission on both the New York and New Jersey police forces.

  Birmingham Lawn stared, looking puzzled, then amazed, then delighted. He giggled.

  “Look here!” he exploded. “Aren’t you Doc Savage?”

  Doc admitted it, and Birmingham Lawn became as excited as a movie fan meeting a picture star. He bounced up, rubbed his hands together and glowed.

  “Marvelous!” Lawn exclaimed. “I am delighted! I have read about you and I have heard about you. I have certainly wanted to meet you. This”—he was very earnest—“is a high point in my life.”

  Doc Savage looked uncomfortable. Being the focus of admiration was something he found embarrassing, which was one of the reasons he kept out of the public eye as much as possible.

  In a calm voice, Doc began telling the policeman and Birmingham Lawn what had happened.

  “I thought from the giggling I overheard,” Doc explained, “that the—er—ghost the girl followed was still here.”

  “That checks exactly!” Lawn ejaculated.

  “Checks with what?” Doc asked.

  “I own this storehouse,” Lawn said. “This is my construction equipment here. I heard about the girl having caught the giggles when she followed a ghost to the storehouse, so I got these policemen and came to investigate. We were here only a few minutes when we—well, we got the giggles, too.”

  Doc Savage asked the policemen, “You searched the place?”

  The cop
s said they had, and that they had found nothing. They added that they didn’t believe in ghosts, giggling or otherwise.

  “Mind if I look around?” Doc asked.

  They didn’t mind.

  The bronze man moved around, pointing his flashlight at different objects. After a while, he went to the car, came back with his fingerprint paraphernalia. Birmingham Lawn trailed Doc closely, watching every move the bronze man made with hero-worshipping earnestness. Judging from his expression, Lawn expected to see a procession of miracles performed. Doc was busy trying to find prints.

  At last Lawn looked disappointed when nothing startling occurred. He began to poke around for himself, ambled about aimlessly. He was drawing near the girl, Miami Davis, when he doubled over abruptly, then straightened.

  “Huh!” he grunted. “Here’s something!”

  Miami Davis came over and looked at it.

  She emitted a strangled gasp. “Oh!” she choked. “I—dropped that!”

  “But——”

  “It’s mine!” The girl snatched the object.

  Lawn shrugged, looked puzzled. He walked back and devoted his energies to watching Doc Savage.

  Miami Davis went to the bronze man. She had a pale, desperate expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I lied to you.”

  Doc looked at her.

  “You what?” he asked.

  “I lied to you,” the girl said. “I wasn’t even in this storehouse. I didn’t have any giggling fit. It’s all a lie. A big lie.”

  Chapter IV

  WAR OVER A WATCH

  The men gathered around the girl and stared at her in astonishment. The cops frowned, Birmingham Lawn looked amazed, and Doc Savage’s metallic features remained composed.

  The girl looked at them wildly.

  “Don’t you understand?” she gasped. “I didn’t tell you the truth! Nothing that I told you was the truth!”

  A cop shook his head skeptically.

  “Then how come you went to Doc Savage with the yarn?” he asked.

  The girl laughed; she seemed to get the laugh out with the greatest difficulty.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to see Doc Savage?” she demanded. “He’s famous. I’ve read about him. I just—well, I wanted to see him. That’s all.”