The Secret in the Sky: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  Monk lumbered through the door. He stopped, looked closely at the blue gun as if it were some strange animal, then put up his stub-fingered hands.

  “That’s bein’ sensible,” said the tall man. “I can bust poker chips in the air with this here hogleg. Stunted, there, is a good shot, too, only he thought he knew more about that auto rifle than the gent who made her.”

  “Stunted,” the short man, was peering into the innards of his doctored rifle.

  “Aw-w,” he mumbled. “I took too much tension off the spring.”

  Monk grunted, “What’s the idea, you guys?”

  “We like to look at dead people,” the tall man said dryly. “We’re strange that way.”

  Doc Savage was standing with his toes almost against the bundle of clothing. The bundle was snug, being strapped around tightly with a belt.

  Doc hooked a toe under the bundle and kicked with great force.

  * * *

  The human nervous system is capable of registering impressions only so fast. The tall man undoubtedly knew the missile was coming, but could do nothing. When it hit him, he recoiled instinctively.

  The next instant, he was flat on his face, held there by one foot which Doc Savage jammed down on his neck.

  Monk whooped loudly, rushed Stunted. Monk’s fights were always noisy.

  Stunted clung like a zealot to his bobtailed auto rifle, trying to get it in operation. He failed. He tried to club with the gun. Monk jerked it out of his hands as if he were taking a lollypop from a child, then dropped it.

  Monk picked the short man up bodily, turned him over and dropped him on his head. He accomplished the motion with such speed that the short man was helpless. Stunted did not move after he fell on his head.

  Monk blinked small eyes at his victim.

  “Gosh,” he said. “I wonder if that hurt him?”

  The tall man on the floor snarled, “What in blue blazes kind of a circus is this, anyhow?”

  Monk felt of Stunted’s head, found it intact, then twisted one of the short man’s rather oversize ears, but got no response. The homely chemist turned on the tall man.

  “So it’s a circus, huh?” he grunted. “I wondered.”

  “Aw, hell!” gritted the other.

  Monk came over and sat on the lean prisoner. Doc Savage removed his foot from the man’s neck. Monk grabbed the fellow’s ears and pulled them. He seemed fascinated by the rubbery manner in which they stretched out from the man’s head.

  “They’d make swell souvenirs,” Monk grunted.

  “Cut it out!” the tall man howled. “What’re you gonna do with me?”

  “I’m gonna ask you questions,” Monk told him. “And I’m gonna be awful mad if you don’t answer ’em.”

  “Nuts!” said the captive.

  “Has this raid, or whatever it was, got anything to do with Willard Spanner?” Monk asked.

  “What do you think?” the other snapped.

  Monk pulled the ears. Tears came to the man’s eyes. He cursed, and his voice was a shrill whine of agony.

  “I’ll kill you for that!” he promised. “Damn me, if I don’t!”

  Monk shuddered elaborately, grinned and said, “If I had on boots, I’d shake in ’em. What did you come here for?”

  A new voice said, “You gentlemen seem to be humorists.”

  * * *

  Monk started violently and twisted his head toward the door. He gulped, “Blazes!” and got hastily to his feet.

  The man in the door was solid, athletic-looking, and he held a revolver with familiar ease. He was in his socks. That probably explained how he had come in from the outside so silently: that, and the faint mumble of city traffic, which was always present.

  “Get up!” he told the tall man. “Wipe your eyes. Then grab that bunch of clothes. This is sure something to write home about!”

  “I’ll kill this ape!” bawled the tall man.

  “Some other time,” the rescuer suggested. “Get the clothes. Say, just who is this big bronze guy and the monkey, anyhow?”

  “How would I know?” snarled the man whom Monk had been badgering. He picked up the bundle of clothing and started for the door.

  “You wouldn’t leave Stunted, would you?” asked the first.

  Without a word, the tall man picked up the short fellow and made his way, not without difficulty, out through the door.

  The gun wielder looked on benignly. He had one stark peculiarity. His eyes were blue. And something was wrong with them. They crossed at intervals, pupils turning in toward the nose. Then they straightened out. The owner seemed to do the straightening with visible effort.

  Monk demanded, “Who did them clothes belong to?”

  The man said, “They’ll answer a lot of questions where you’re going.”

  Monk did not get a clear impression of what happened next. Things moved too fast. Doc Savage must have read the intention of the man with the queer eyes. Doc lunged.

  The gun went off. But the man with the eyes had tried to shift from Monk to Doc for a target and had not quite made it. His bullet pocked the wall. Then Doc had a grip on the revolver.

  The man let go of the revolver. He bounced back, fast on his feet, reached the door and sloped through. He was yelling now. His yells caused noise of other feet in the next room. There were evidently more men.

  Doc grasped Monk and propelled him backward. They got into a rear room and slammed the door. Doc shot the bolt.

  Revolver bullets chopped around the lock. Wood splintered. The lock held. A man kicked the door. Monk roared a threat.

  There was no more kicking, no more shooting. Silence fell, except for the traffic noises.

  Monk looked at Doc.

  “That guy with the performing eyes was gonna kill us both,” he mumbled.

  Doc Savage did not comment. He listened, then unlocked the door. The room beyond was empty. He advanced. In the next room, one of the chloroformed morgue attendants was sitting up and acting sick.

  The street outside held no sign of the violent raiders. There was no trace of the bundle of clothing.

  The reviving morgue attendant began to mumble.

  “They wanted clothes off a corpse,” he muttered. “Whatcha know about that?”

  “Off what corpse?” Doc asked him.

  “Off Willard Spanner,” said the attendant.

  Chapter 2

  THE HIGH-PRESSURE GHOULS

  Doc Savage exited to the street and made inquiries, finding that the men had gone away in two cars. Persons questioned named four different makes of cars, in each instance insisting that their information was correct.

  “They’re all wrong, probably,” Monk grumbled.

  Pursuit was patently hopeless, although Monk cast a number of expectant glances in Doc Savage’s direction. The bronze man had a way of pulling rabbits out of hats in affairs such as this. But Doc only reëntered the morgue. None of those who had been chloroformed were in immediate danger.

  “We came here to see the body of Willard Spanner,” Doc told the attendant who had revived.

  “Sort of a coincidence,” said the attendant, and managed a sickly grin which typified a peculiarity of human behavior—the fact that persons who work regularly in close proximity to death are inclined to arm themselves with a wise-cracking veneer.

  The bodies were stored in bins not unlike huge filing boxes. The marble slabs on which they lay slid into the bins on rollers. The attendant was still too groggy to bring the Willard Spanner slide out after he had found the identifying card, and Monk helped him.

  Doc Savage looked at the body for a long time.

  “This is Willard Spanner,” he said finally.

  They went out.

  Monk scratched his head, then said, “But the man seized in San Francisco—that couldn’t have been Willard Spanner.”

  “The voice on the phone recorder,” Doc reminded.

  “You said it was Willard Spanner’s voice.” Monk found his pig, Habeas, and picked h
im up by an ear. “Could you have been mistaken about that voice?”

  “I think not,” Doc Savage said slowly.

  They examined those who were still senseless from the chloroform, gave a description of the morgue raiders to police officers who had arrived, then walked out to the roadster.

  Monk seemed to be thinking deeply. He snapped his fingers.

  “That bundle of Willard Spanner’s clothing!” he grumbled. “Now what in the dickens did they want with that? The police had searched the pockets and had found nothing.”

  “It must have been something important,” Doc told him. “They wanted the garments badly enough to make quite a disturbance in getting them.”

  A policeman came to the morgue door and called, “You are wanted on the phone.”

  Doc and Monk went back, and Doc picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?” inquiringly.

  A clipped, melodious voice spoke rapidly. It was the voice of an orator, and it carried the accent which is commonly associated with Harvard.

  “I got to the morgue in time to observe that something was badly wrong,” advised the speaker. “I followed the chaps outside when they left in such a hurry. They are now at Albemarle Avenue and Frame Street. I will meet you at the corner.”

  Doc Savage said, “In ten minutes,” and hung up.

  Monk, making for the street in a series of ungainly bounds, demanded, “Who was it?”

  “Ham,” Doc replied.

  “The shyster!” Monk growled, and there was infinite contempt in his tone.

  * * *

  Albemarle Avenue was a twin groove through marsh mud on the outskirts of New York City. Frame Street seemed to be a sign, scabby and ancient, which stuck out of the salt grass. If there ever had been a Frame Street, it had long ago given up to the swamp.

  Darkness was coming on when Doc Savage and Monk arrived in the roadster.

  “There’s Ham,” Monk said.

  “Ham” was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, Park Avenue fashion plate, and a lawyer, the pride of Harvard law school. He was a slender man with the manner of a wasp and a tongue as sharp as the fine Damascus sword blade concealed in the innocent-looking black cane which he carried.

  He came out of the marsh grass, stepping gingerly to avoid soiling his natty afternoon garb, the sword cane tucked under an arm.

  “Hy-ah, you fashion plate,” Monk growled.

  “Hello, stupid,” Ham retorted insultingly.

  The two glared at each other. A stranger would have thought fisticuffs imminent. As a matter of fact, each of these two had time and again risked his life to save the other, although no one had ever heard one of them address a civil word to the other.

  Ham opened the roadster door on Doc Savage’s side, and said, “I got the note you left at headquarters, telling me you had gone to the morgue. I went to the morgue. As I said over the phone—those chaps were clowning around, so I followed them.”

  “Where are they?” Doc asked.

  Ham pointed across the swamp. “An oyster plant over there.”

  “Oyster plant?” Monk grunted.

  “They probably use it as a blind for whatever they are doing,” Ham offered. “And, incidentally, just what is behind this?”

  “It’s all screwy, so far,” Monk snorted. “Willard Spanner is reported grabbed in Frisco at noon, and is found dead in New York before three o’clock. Then a gang of birds raid the morgue and steal his clothing. That’s all we know.”

  Ham said, “I’ll show you where they went. They had that bundle of clothing, too.”

  There were a few comparatively firm spots in the marsh. The rest of the terrain was covered with water which ranged in depth from an inch to two feet, with spots which were deeper, as Monk promptly proved by going in above the waist.

  A cloud bank in the west shortened the period of twilight. They were soon in complete darkness. Using flashlights would have given away their position. Making any speed through the coarse grass, without noise, was almost impossible.

  “You fellows take it easy,” Doc directed. “Do not try to get too close.”

  Monk began, “But what’re you— —” and did not finish. The bronze man had vanished in the darkness.

  Monk listened, then shook his head. It was difficult to conceive of any one moving with such silence.

  It was no casual trait, this ability of Doc Savage’s to stalk quietly. He had practiced a great deal, had studied the masters of the art: the carnivorous beasts of the jungle.

  The bronze man had covered not more than a hundred yards when something happened—something that was, later, to take on great significance and a terrible importance.

  He heard a peculiar crashing sound. That described it more accurately than anything else. It was not a series of crashes, but one long, brittle report. It started faintly and attained, in the span of two seconds or so, a surprising loudness.

  Doc glanced up. Hanging in the sky was what appeared to be a taut rope of liquid fire. This faded in a moment. It was an uncanny phenomena.

  * * *

  Doc Savage crouched for some time, listening, flake-gold eyes on the sky. But there was nothing more. He went on toward the oyster plant.

  The odor of the place was evident long before the low, rambling processing building showed up. It was built on the beach, with a wharf shoving out porch fashion to one side. A channel had evidently been dredged for the oyster boats. The plant was used for the sorting and opening of oysters.

  Mounds of oyster shells were pyramided here and there, and were thick on the ground. They made walking difficult. Wash of waves on the near-by beach covered up lesser sounds.

  Several times Doc Savage stooped and brushed away oyster shells, that he might step on the bare ground. The brittle shells would break with loud reports. The side of the building which he approached was dark. He worked around. Lighted windows appeared.

  Smell of oysters was strong. Two small schooners were tied up at a wharf. The cabin portholes of one of these were lighted. An instant later, the light went out, and three men came up the companion. They stepped to the wharf. One used a flashlight, and this illuminated them.

  One was Stunted. His companions were the tall man and the one with the peculiar crossing and uncrossing eyes. One carried a bundle which resembled clothing.

  Stunted said, “Danged if I don’t still maintain that an automatic rifle can be bobbed and still——”

  “Aw, hell!” The tall man spat disgustedly. “Here we really got things to worry about, and you go on and on about that gun. Man, don’t the fact that that bronze guy was Doc Savage impress you none a-tall?”

  Stunted stopped suddenly.

  “Look, you gents,” he said. “You been cackling around like two old hens since you learned that bird was Doc Savage. Now I want you to tell me something.”

  “Yeah?” said the tall man.

  “Ain’t it a fact that with what we got, we don’t need to be afraid of anybody?” demanded Stunted.

  “You mean——”

  “You know what I mean. You saw that streak in the sky and heard that crack of a noise, a while ago, didn’t you? Now answer my question.”

  “Aw-w-w!” The tall man spat again. “We ain’t exactly afraid of him. Only it might’ve been more convenient if he hadn’t turned up on the spot. That Savage is nobody’s cinch, and don’t forget that.”

  “I ain’t forgettin’ it,” said Stunted. “And quit squawkin’, you hombres. We’re settin’ pretty. Doc Savage ain’t got a line on us. And didn’t we get Willard Spanner’s clothing. And ain’t the rest gonna be taken care of?”

  The tall man burst into sudden laughter.

  “Now what?” Stunted growled.

  “Just thinkin’,” the other chuckled. “People are gonna wonder how Willard Spanner was in Frisco at noon and dead here in New York at three o’clock the same afternoon.”

  * * *

  Doc Savage was close to them. He could have reached out and tripped any one of the
trio as they filed past.

  The silent man of the three, the one with the unnaturally roving eyes, brought up the rear. Doc Savage had been crouching. He stood erect. His fist made a sound like a loud finger snap on the man’s jaw. The man fell. The bundle of clothing flew to one side.

  A number of surprising things happened. The surrounding darkness erupted human beings. At least a dozen men appeared with magical effect. Each had a flashlight, a gun.

  “Take ’im alive?” one shouted questioningly.

  “Not much!” squawled another, evidently the chief.

  Doc started for the clothing bundle. A man was leaping over it, coming toward him, gun spouting flame and thunder. Doc sloped aside. He twisted. Lead slammed past.

  Doc hit the ground and rolled. Tall marsh grass took him in. He burrowed a dozen feet, veered left. Slugs tore through the grass. They made hoarse snarls.

  A pile of oyster shells jutted out of the darkness in front of him. The bronze man got behind it. He ran a score of paces, went down in a hollow where there was soft mud, but no water, and waited, listening.

  Stunted was yelling, “He’s behind that shell pile! If I had an auto rifle, it would put a pill right through that stuff!”

  “Suppose you use your legs more and your mouth less!” some one suggested.

  The men scattered, hunting. They were in pairs, a neat precaution. The couples did not walk close enough together that both could be surprised at once, yet nothing could happen to one without the other knowing it.

  Stunted shouted, “You jaspers knew he was around here! How in thunder did you know that?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” a voice told him.

  Stunted swore at the speaker. “C’mon, feller, how’d you know it?”

  “There’s a bank of alarm wires strung around here,” said the voice.

  “Nuts!” Stunted told him. “I haven’t seen any wires.”

  “They’re underground,” the other snapped. “Just barely covered. Any one walking over them changes the capacity of a high-frequency electric field enough to show on a recording device inside.”