The Giggling Ghosts: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  A man muttered, “Ain’t Doc Savage liable to trace these two guys?”

  “We’re going to make some preparation for Doc Savage!” Batavia said.

  Batavia had a craggy face. All angles of his face were sharp; the nose was also, and so was his jaw; his eyes had a piercing intentness, and his ears were pointed. He was either darkly tanned, or of Latin extraction. Beside his fondness for grays in dress, he had one other principal character tag: This other was his cigars.

  Batavia’s cigars were thin, hardly half ordinary thickness, and about two inches longer than the usual cigar. The ends were equipped with cork tips.

  Batavia removed the Cellophane wrapping from one of his cigars, put it in his mouth and tried to light it with one of the modern flameless type of lighters designed for lighting cigarettes alone. The lighter didn’t fire the cigar immediately.

  “Damn this gadget!” Batavia complained.

  He finally got his cigar going. Then he took a five-yard roll of one-inch adhesive tape out of his slicker pocket. Strips of this tape, he crisscrossed over the mouths of Monk and Ham.

  “Adenoids!” Monk croaked wildly just before the tape was slapped on his lips.

  Bad adenoid cases will suffocate to death if gagged.

  Monk then pretended to be unable to breathe through his nostrils. He faked suffocation. He flounced around, made whistling noises through his nose, blew out his cheeks, did his best to make his face go purple.

  Batavia got behind Monk and slugged him with the heavy end of the fid. Monk fell his length on the floorboards, momentarily dazed, and began to breathe in a normal fashion.

  “That homely ape,” Batavia complained, “is full of tricks. What d’you think of that—tryin’ to get out of bein’ gagged?”

  The prisoners were prodded out of the hatch, goaded onto the dock, and led to the street.

  Batavia said, “We better get rid of their car.”

  Batavia went to the limousine which Monk and Ham had used. A couple of men went with him. He opened the door, started to get in, and was greeted by a belligerent grunt and an angry chattering noise. Batavia turned a flashlight beam into the rear seat. He was curious.

  The pig, Habeas, and the ape, Chemistry, batted their eyes in the flashlight glare.

  “A regular zoo!” Batavia grumbled. He got into the car. When the pets tried to escape, he slammed the door and kept them in the automobile.

  Batavia drove the car out on a dock, headed the machine toward the wharf end, and jumped out and slammed the door. The car ran to the end of the dock, nosed over, and entered the water with a whoosh! of a splash.

  “You left that pig an’ the ape in there!” a man muttered.

  Batavia stood at the dock edge and listened to big bubbles make glub! noises. He dashed his flashlight beam down briefly. The water was slick with oil, and bubbles kept bounding out of the water like frightened white animals.

  “You left that pig an’ ape in the car!” the man muttered again.

  Batavia said, “I didn’t like the way the danged things looked at me.”

  Batavia threw his cork-tipped cigar in the water, took a fresh cigar out of his clothing, removed the Cellophane band, threw it at the bubbles and put the cigar in his mouth. Then they led the prisoners to two cars parked in near-by side streets. The captives and half of Batavia’s men loaded in one machine.

  “You fellows take the prisoners to the boss’s place.”

  “What are you gonna do?” a man demanded.

  Batavia took his cork-tipped cigar out of his mouth and laughed grimly.

  “I’m gonna rig somethin’ for Doc Savage,” he said.

  The car pulled away with the captives. Batavia vanished in the darkness, headed back toward the little schooner. Half of his men followed him.

  Chapter VI

  HUNT FOR A WATCH

  Doc Savage had completed a thorough examination of the old bleak storehouse with the tin roof. But to all outward appearance, the search netted nothing.

  Birmingham Lawn seemed disappointed. The golf-hall protuberance that served Lawn as an Adam’s apple went up and down as he swallowed. He had whistled something from a tune, and the rest of the time he had giggled, or just watched.

  “I was hoping,” he said, “that you would solve the mystery.”

  Doc Savage did not comment.

  The policemen by now had tired of the mystery, and in addition, they held a suspicion that the whole business would not look so good in the newspapers.

  “The public will think the Jersey police are a lot of jackasses,” a cop muttered, “once the newspapers get hold of this.”

  “Then why notify the newspapers?” Doc asked. The bronze man didn’t like newspaper publicity.

  The policemen thought that was a swell idea.

  One cop said, “Furthermore, maybe there ain’t nothin’ to it. The girl admitted her whole story was a lie. She just made the thing up so she could meet Doc Savage.”

  Doc Savage neglected to remind the cops that an attempt with violence had been made to prevent the girl reaching him.

  Finally the cops took their departure.

  Doc Savage began loading his fingerprint paraphernalia in his car. Birmingham Lawn trailed the bronze man around.

  “Matters seem to have become quiet for the time being,” Doc Savage told Lawn. He extended a hand. “It’s pleasant to have met you, Mr. Lawn, and let us hope that your property is not molested again.”

  Birmingham Lawn made a big grin.

  “Could I make a request?” he asked.

  “Request?”

  “I haven’t the slightest doubt but that you are molested a great deal by pests,” Lawn said. His melon of a stomach shook as he chuckled. “But I should like very much to go along with you, providing you have any intention of continuing to investigate this—ah—mystery.”

  “Why do you wish to go along?”

  “Well, I’ve read a great deal about you.” Lawn squirmed and looked embarrassed. “Matter of fact, I’m a great admirer of yours. I’d give a lot to watch you work for a while.” He smiled fatuously. “I suppose it’s a form of hero worship, and I’m fully aware that you probably consider me a silly pest.”

  Doc Savage said, “It may be a little dangerous.”

  “In that case,” Lawn said, “you can depend on me to run. I am not a brave man.”

  Doc Savage got into his car.

  “My aids, Monk and Ham, are trailing that girl,” he explained.

  Taking for granted that he had permission to accompany the bronze man, Birmingham Lawn planted his long-limbed, loose-jointed frame on the car cushions and settled back, looking eager, and also nervous, like a man who has started out rabbit hunting with a shotgun and just remembered he is in bear country.

  Doc Savage worked with the radio.

  “Monk! Ham!” he said into the microphone.

  He said that several times, then remarked, “Probably they are away from the other transceiver.”

  Doc Savage drove away from the storehouse, turned right, and drove toward the spot from which Monk and Ham had last reported.

  Rain came down steadily, the drops swirling like snowflakes in the glare of the headlights. Several times Birmingham Lawn opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something, but was unable to think of anything to fit the occasion.

  “You have no idea,” he told Doc finally, “what a reputation you have.” He fell to whistling bars from a popular tune.

  When Doc Savage brought his car to a stop near the ramshackle boathouse, Monk and Ham’s car was nowhere in sight.

  Doc Savage listened to his radio. The transmitter in the other car was switched on; the transceivers were always kept ready for instant communication while Doc and his men were investigating.

  The carrier wave of the other transmitter sounded very close, which meant the car was not many yards away. But where was it? It wasn’t in sight.

  Doc Savage swung out and examined the car tracks. It was dark enough now so
that he had to use a flashlight. In the mud, he found car tracks with distinctive tread design used on the machine driven by Monk and Ham.

  It was obvious that Monk and Ham’s car had backed out into the street; but there, the rain had washed away any traces that might have been visible to the unaided eye.

  Doc Savage went back to his machine. From a compartment—all the spare room in the car was occupied by compartments—he got a device which resembled nothing so much as an old-fashioned magic lantern. This contrivance, however, had a lens which was almost jet-black.

  “What’s that?” Birmingham Lawn wanted to know.

  “Self-contained ultraviolet ray projector,” the bronze man explained.

  “Ultraviolet ray?”

  Doc Savage pointed the lantern lens at the tracks left by Monk and Ham’s car, switched the device on and, although it emitted no light visible to the eye, tiny flecklike spots glowed with greenish luminance on the pavement where the tires of Monk and Ham’s car had rolled.

  Birmingham Lawn proved to have enough scientific knowledge to solve this phenomenon. He said, “There are chemical substances which glow, or phosphoresce, when subjected to ultraviolet light. Some such chemical must have been incorporated as an ingredient in the tires of the car your two associates were driving. Am I right?”

  “That,” Doc Savage admitted, “is correct.”

  The bronze man followed the trail of Monk and Ham’s machine down the street, and out to the end of the dock; a splintered patch, where the bumper had dragged as the car went over, told him instantly what had happened.

  The bronze man shucked off his coat and dived off the dock edge. The water was cold and intensely black.

  The submerged car lay on its side with the doors closed and the thick bulletproof windows intact. Ordinarily, with the windows closed, the machine was airtight, this feature having been incorporated in its construction as a defense against gas. Like most of the cars used by Doc Savage and his men, this one was a rolling fortress.

  Doc wrenched, got the car door open. An air bubble a yard across leaped past him, and rushing water sucked him into the machine.

  Later, when he swam to the top, Doc had the two pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry. After handing the animals up to Birmingham Lawn, Doc climbed to the dock.

  “I don’t understand this!” Lawn gasped.

  Lawn sounded frightened, confused.

  Doc Savage took Lawn’s elbow and led him off the dock and to the car, Lawn all the while stuttering demands to know what it was all about. Doc put Lawn in the back seat of his car, placing Habeas Corpus and Chemistry in with him. The bronze man then slammed the car door shut, twisting the handle in a certain way that automatically closed all the other doors. Lawn tried the car handles, then beat on one of the bulletproof windows.

  “Hey!” he complained. “You locked me in here.”

  “Where you’ll be safe,” Doc Savage explained.

  “I’ve got enough of this!” Lawn howled. “I don’t like it. I want to go home. Let me out!”

  Doc Savage moved away. Lawn would be as safe in the machine as anywhere, and out of the way—if there was going to be trouble.

  Doc used his ultraviolet lantern. His aids, when operating alone, were under instructions to blaze their trail frequently, using a special chalk which each carried.

  This chalk resembled the septic pencils used to heal small cuts, and were made of a chemical composition and left a mark which was invisible to the naked eye, but which fluoresced when subjected to ultraviolet light. Doc found marks on a dock dolphin. Ham had printed:

  GIRL ON THIS SCHOONER

  An arrow indicated the schooner.

  The bronze man went to the boat. There was a light in the cabin. Doc craned his neck, saw no one, then swung quietly on to the schooner and put an ear to the cabin top.

  There was no sound to indicate life aboard the boat, and he moved toward the companionway.

  Blinding glare from a flashlight jumped over him.

  “Just keep the peace, friend!” a voice advised coolly.

  There was a man standing in a dinghy under the dock, holding a flashlight. The man shoved a gun out into the light, a gun that was a single-action six-shooter, looking big enough for elephants.

  “Lie down on the deck!” the man ordered.

  Doc lay down on the deck.

  The man pulled the dinghy to the rail and swung aboard the schooner. In the glow from his flashlight he was a large young man who seemed to be composed mostly of shoulders. He had black curly hair. His black slacks and dark polo shirt were drenched, the wet shirt sticking to his torso closely enough to show some unusual muscles.

  This burly fellow jabbed Doc with the gun and said, “Get down in the cabin!”

  They entered the cabin. The young man had blue eyes, a grim mouth.

  He growled, “There’s somethin’ familiar about you.”

  Doc Savage said, “Is there?”

  “I dunno what this is all about, but I’m gonna find out.” The young man cocked his single-action six-shooter. “I find my hooker has been searched. Then I see you monkeyin’ around. Now spill it! What’s the idea?”

  “Where is the girl?” Doc asked.

  “Eh?”

  “The girl who was aboard this schooner.”

  “I live on this hooker alone. There’s no woman around. I like boats. I don’t like women.”

  Doc Savage said, “Would you know anything about two men named Monk and Ham?”

  “No. Never heard of ’em.” The brawny young man squinted one eye thoughtfully. “I still think I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

  “What is your name?”

  “William Henry Hart,” the young man growled. “I ain’t ashamed of it.”

  “And your profession?”

  “Is none of your damn business!” the young man grunted. “However, I’m an inventor.”

  “Inventor?”

  “We won’t go into that,” the other growled. “I manufacture things, too. I’m not such a small-timer!” He waggled a thumb around at the boat. “Just because I live on this hooker, it don’t mean I can’t afford a penthouse.” He beetled his brows and added, “I don’t like women.”

  Doc Savage explained, “I’m looking for two friends of mine who were led here when they trailed a young woman who claimed she caught a strange giggling fit from a ghost.”

  “That sounds crackpot!” The young man shoved out his jaw and his gun. “Come across with a story that makes sense—or I’m gonna get tough!”

  He took a step forward, hooked his thumb over the hammer of his gun, so the gun would not discharge, used the big six-shooter as a club to strike at Doc Savage’s head.

  Several blurred things then happened. The gun clubbed the spot where Doc’s head should have been, but the bronze man had moved. The young man went off balance. Doc grasped his gun wrist.

  The young man started struggling—struggling confidently—but his confidence went out of him like air out of a split balloon. For the gun was yanked out of the young man’s hand; he was slapped down on the floor, held there, searched, and although all the while he struggled—he was a very strong young man—his muscles might have been as soft and unmanageable as a sack of mice.

  He peered dazedly at the bronze man.

  “Now I know why you seemed familiar!” he muttered. “You’re Doc Savage!”

  Doc Savage did not answer that. He was examining an interesting object yielded by the young man’s pockets: a woman’s wrist watch.

  Chapter VII

  ROAD TO DEATH

  Earlier that evening in the storehouse, Doc Savage had seen the wrist watch that Birmingham Lawn had handed to Miami Davis. Lawn had also described the watch in detail: small purple jewel in the stem, the two small diamonds, one at either end of the dial.

  This was undoubtedly the watch which had scared the girl into flight.

  And now it had been in William Henry Hart’s pocket.

  Doc Savage tossed the
burly young man’s big six-shooter overboard. Then he took a yachting book off a shelf and glanced at the flyleaf; the book was marked:

  PROPERTY OF WILLIAM HENRY HART

  “Do you know a girl named Miami Davis?” Doc asked.

  Effect of this on the brawny Hart was pronounced. He slapped both hands against his chest and gaped, his mouth very wide.

  “Who?” he exploded.

  “Her name,” Doc Savage said, “is Miami Davis. This is her watch, supposedly?”

  “I—uh—wuh——” The young man hauled himself up and sprawled on the transom seat. “She’s my secretary,” he said.

  Doc Savage pointed at the watch. “How did this watch get in your pocket?”

  “I found it lyin’ on the chart table when I came back,” Hart said.

  “That all you know about it?”

  “I gave the watch to Miss Davis as a Christmas bonus,” Hart said. “A couple of days ago, she said it had stopped runnin’. I told her I would get it fixed. She gave it to me, and I guess I put it on top of the chart table and forgot all about it.” He scowled. “Now what about it?”

  “For one thing,” Doc said promptly, “someone might have taken the watch and made her think you lost it in that storehouse.”

  “What storehouse?” The young man with the large shoulders looked puzzled.

  “Again, you might have lost it in the storehouse,” Doc said.

  The other glared. “What’s this storehouse talk?”

  “Is she in love with you?” Doc asked.

  “Love—who?”

  “Miami Davis—with you.”

  “How the hell would I know?” Hart yelled.

  Doc Savage opened a galley locker, took out a can of coffee and poured it on a galley table. He reached for the salt.

  “What in blazes you doin’?” Hart yelled.

  “Going to give your boat a thorough search,” Doc explained.

  “Over my dead body, you will!” the burly young man howled.

  The search proceeded over his bound and gagged body; during the incidental fighting and kicking, a locker door was caved in, the table kicked loose from its fastenings, and some dishes broken.