The Metal Master: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  Doc Savage walked to the corner. He did not step out on Drive Street, however. He removed an object which might have been a slim pencil from inside his clothing. He telescoped this out. It was a periscope, a tiny thing which would hardly be observed. He proceeded to scrutinize Drive Street without showing himself.

  At first, Drive Street looked entirely deserted. But no! In a doorway in the middle of the block, a man lurked.

  He was leaning against the side of the door, almost concealed.

  Doc Savage watched for some time. The man did not move. He was most certainly upon guard.

  The house bore the number listed as being the residence of Gorham Gage Gettian.

  A block away, traffic occasionally whizzed on Riverside Drive.

  The lookout remained at his post. He was not especially alert, although great alertness was not necessary. Had not his chief, Napoleon Murphy Decitez, explained that Doc Savage was safely a prisoner in Greenwich Village? Decitez had acted very sure of himself when he said that.

  Decitez was still acting sure of himself. He had his gun in his hand and the muzzle of the weapon was against the top of a shiny bald head.

  “I think I’ll kill you now, Gettian,” Decitez was saying calmly.

  Chapter X

  THE PUZZLED MAN

  Napoleon Murphy Decitez was not a dramatic man by nature. But Tops’l Hertz, who was a genuine devil, was a dramatic man, and he was also the idol of Decitez. So Decitez, who liked to ape what he considered his betters, liked to indulge in gestures. Just now, he was imitating Tops’l, doing as he felt Tops’l would do.

  Decitez had no intention of killing Gettian. He was just throwing a bluff, to make it easier to get Gettian away.

  “The shot probably won’t be heard,” Decitez snarled. “This house of yours has thick stone walls.”

  He ground the gun snout a little more fiercely against the bald head of Gettian. The head was slick, like a doctor’s specimen skull that had been waxed. One almost expected to see the little lines of cracks in it. It was the color of a skull now, too, for Gettian was scared.

  “Wait a minute!” Gettian gasped. “You must be making some mistake!”

  “Your name is Gorham Gage Gettian, ain’t it?” asked Decitez.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Then I ain’t makin’ no mistake,” said Decitez. He jammed the automatic muzzle harder against Gettian’s bald head.

  There were more bald things about Gettian than his head. He was completely hairless. No eyebrows. No beard. It made him look older than he probably was. He looked sixty. He was probably forty.

  He had nerve.

  He looked at Decitez and said, “Most men would like to know why they are going to be murdered. I would.”

  Decitez scowled.

  “It’s because of what you know about the Metal Master,” he snapped.

  “The what?” said Gettian, looking puzzled.

  Decitez leaned down. He put his jaw out, as he had seen Tops’l Hertz do.

  “Look here,” he said. “You tell me all you know about the Metal Master. If you can clear up enough of the mystery, tell me enough things, it won’t be necessary to croak you.”

  That was the tip-off. Napoleon Murphy Decitez, foxy rogue, was trying to gather information. Evidently he did not know himself, any too much about the Metal Master.

  Gettian shook his skull.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “You don’t need to lie to me,” said Decitez sharply. “I know a bit already.”

  “What?”

  “I know that this Metal Master thing is big,” said Decitez. “It’s so big that the right group of men, under the right leader, could take over the world!”

  If that was intended to affect Gettian, it did. But not in the way Decitez probably had expected. Gettian leaned back. His voice became soothing.

  “Of course it could,” he said gently. “But I haven’t got it. However, I will be glad to take you to a place where a nice man will show you how it works.”

  Decitez looked very interested. But only for an instant. Then he got the drift.

  “Hell’s bells!” he snarled. “You think I’m nuts! A nice man! You mean an attendant in a boobyhatch! Listen, I’m not lying to you! And I’m not crazy!”

  “You must be,” said Gettian. “Nobody but an insane man would talk as you are. And I never heard of anything called the Metal Master.”

  Decitez gritted, “Listen, you! I’m going to kill you for not talking!”

  Decitez was probably bluffing, although it was never proved. It did not matter, for a hard-thrown vase of brass came hurtling from the murk of a door on the opposite side of the room. It hit Decitez’s gun hand. He lost the gun.

  * * *

  Things happened. A man was in the door through which the vase had come. One of Decitez’s men, on guard. Startled, he ducked. He spun. He wanted to see from whence the missile came.

  But he never saw. Chug! A sound like a circus maul against a tent peg. It seemed impossible for a striking fist to make such a sound, but it had. The guard fell half across the room. He was senseless on his feet.

  Gorham Gage Gettian gave a great leap. His white skin made him look soft; his baldness made him look old. But a college grid star could not have jumped farther, faster.

  He reached the handiest door, yanked it open, popped through. He yanked the door shut behind him.

  Decitez was screaming by now. He had caught sight of the bronze giant who had thrown the vase. It was a sight to make Decitez scream. But he ran at the same time, bent low.

  “Shoot, you fool!” he squawled.

  That was for another guard. This one stood in another door. His gun was ready. He turned loose. The weapon filled the room with lusty thunder.

  Doc Savage was again wearing his undergarment of light alloy. It would stop even a rifle slug. But this gunman must have known of the mail armor, for he aimed at Doc’s head.

  The bronze man weaved. To continue the charge would mean suicide. He doubled back, ducking away through the door. The bullets scooped plaster, splintered the door, and one painfully spanked his chain armor.

  “Run!” yelled Decitez.

  He and his man ran. Slamming the door behind them, they clattered down a stairway. It was dark there. A little globe glowed in the entry. There, they met the man who had been on lookout at the door.

  “Run!” yelled Decitez. “Doc Savage!”

  “Where’s the other guy?” barked the guard.

  “Savage knocked him out!”

  The guard grabbed Decitez. He looked ugly.

  “Say, whatcha gonna do about my pal that was knocked out?” he growled.

  “The devil with him!” screamed Decitez. “Leggo me!”

  But the other man had ideas of loyalty.

  “The devil with you!” he snarled. “Leave our buddy for the cops, or worse? Not me! How many guys are upstairs?”

  “One!”

  “Is that all? And you’re running away?”

  “That one is Doc Savage!” gritted Decitez.

  The full significance of this soaked in on the guard. He changed his mind about the rescue.

  “Maybe we better blow!” he gulped.

  The argument had delayed them too long, however. It was dark in the house, and an ideal field for Doc Savage’s operations. The bronze man was a master of stealth.

  The fugitives had taken scarcely a pace in their resumed flight when lightning struck. Decitez was first to feel it. The base of his brain hurt suddenly, terribly. Then there was dullness. He seemed to go to sleep all over. He knew that he fell. Weirdly, though, when he hit the floor, he did not feel anything.

  He did not realize that he was a victim of a kind of weird paralysis which Doc Savage could inflict by pressure on the spinal and cerebral nerve centers.

  * * *

  The other two men stumbled back, amazed, stunned. They could see Doc Savage in the vague light of the entry. The sight caused the
m to decide to keep going. Out of the door, they charged. One fell down the steps, but landed, luckily, on his feet. They started to run.

  “We’re gonna make it!” one gulped.

  “Yeah!” gasped the other. “Have we got luck?”

  “You ain’t all that’s got it,” remarked a new voice—one that might have belonged to a small child.

  The shadows beside the stoop coughed out two newcomers. One of these would weigh in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds and was about tall enough to look at an average man’s top vest button. He had a lot of rusty hair all over his person.

  The other man was a lean wasp of a man, with wonderful clothes and an innocent-looking black cane.

  What followed was soon over. The hairy fellow harvested one runner in a pair of arms that might have doubled as bridge girders. He squeezed. He hooked a fist. His victim went senseless.

  The waspish fashion plate did something with his harmless-looking black cane. It became a sword cane. The tip of its slender blade was coated with a sticky-looking substance.

  The tip of the sword cane pricked the arm of the other runner lightly. The fellow yelped. He ran a dozen paces. Then his muscles lost their spring and he rolled over and over on the pavement. He did not move, except to breathe, after he stopped rolling.

  “Need any help, you missing link?” asked the dapper man with the sword cane.

  “Don’t insult me, you shyster!” growled the one who resembled a gorilla. “When I need help, you better bring an army!”

  Doc Savage appeared in the doorway.

  “Bring them inside,” he said.

  The two carried their captives up the steps and into Gorham Gage Gettian’s house.

  “Monk,” Doc Savage said, “weren’t you and Ham supposed to go down to Greenwich Village and start four prisoners for our up-State place?”

  “Yep,” admitted the homely anthropoid of a fellow, with a grin that threatened his ears. “We did. Then we turned on the radio direction-finder and located your car, and hurried here as fast as we could. We heard the fracas and sort of investigated.”

  “What happened to you?” asked the dapperly dressed man of Doc.

  “Some more having to do with the Metal Master mystery, Ham,” explained Doc Savage.

  The bronze man gave a terse account of what had occurred, concluding with the explanation of how he had gone to the rear, mounted a fire escape, and found a roof hatch open. This had admitted him to Gorham Gage Gettian’s mansion.

  “Any word of where Renny is being held?” Ham asked.

  “On a schooner named the Innocent, somewhere off Cuba,” Doc explained.

  “Any trace of the girl, Nan Tester?” asked the homely Monk.

  “No,” Doc Savage said.

  The dapper Ham snapped, “Depend on Monk to be in a dither about any female who happened to be around!”

  Monk glowered at Ham.

  “You’re gonna be in a dither,” he gritted, “when I get around to you!”

  “Threats of physical violence are the resort of a person with a small mind, you baboon,” Ham said caustically.

  Doc Savage indicated the upper region of the house.

  “Let us find Gorham Gage Gettian,” he suggested.

  Monk and Ham shouldered the prisoners, scowling at each other the while. A bystander would have sworn that they were on the point of committing mutual murder.

  Monk and Ham were two more of Doc Savage’s group of five aids. Renny and Long Tom Roberts were two more. The fifth member of the strange association, William Harper Littlejohn, nicknamed “Johnny,” eminent archæologist and geologist, was too far away to appear in the present excitement, being in Europe, excavating a cave in which a farmer had found the fossil of a prehistoric man.

  They entered the room where the first fight had occurred. A series of loud, thumping noises greeted their ears.

  “Somebody is behind that door,” said Monk, pointing at the door through which Gorham Gage Gettian had ducked.

  Doc Savage opened the door. It admitted to a closet. Bald-headed Gorham Gage Gettian stepped out of the closet.

  “The infernal door has a spring lock,” he complained. “I had no key; so when I jumped in there, I locked myself in.”

  Gettian was a vastly different-looking man, now. He was smiling. He rubbed his hands together, came over and pumped Doc Savage’s hand heartily, then insisted on shaking hands with Monk and Ham.

  “I owe you an everlasting thanks,” he declared. “You saved my life! Yes, indeed! And I value my life.”

  “Why were they trying to kill you?” asked Monk, who did not believe in beating about the bush.

  Gettian looked like a startled, bald pink Buddha.

  “I cannot imagine,” he said.

  Ham snapped, “I would advise you not to start beating about the bush with us, Gettian. This is a serious matter, which has already resulted in the death by murder of at least one person.”

  “Shut up!” Monk told the dapper Ham. “I’m asking the questions.”

  Monk and Ham fell to staring at each other with throat-cutting intentness.

  Doc Savage took up the questioning.

  “Do you know anything about a thing called the Metal Master?” he asked.

  “No,” Gettian said promptly.

  “How about an elderly man named Seevers?”

  “Never heard of him,” said Gettian.

  “Or a man named Louis Tester?” Doc persisted.

  “Is he mixed up in this?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Then maybe that explains it!” Gettian snapped.

  “You know Louis Tester?”

  “Know him? I should say I do!” Gettian frowned. Since he had no eyebrows, his frown looked rather peculiar. “Louis Tester has one of the greatest scientific minds of any man alive to-day!”

  Chapter XI

  THE DEATH ARRANGEMENT

  At Gettian’s statement about Louis Tester being a great scientific mind, Monk and Ham stopped glaring as if they were about to bite each other. Both snorted.

  “If Louis Tester was a great scientist, Doc would know him,” Monk said. “Or, at least, Doc would know of him. Doc keeps up on that stuff.”

  “Louis Tester is a rather reticent young man,” said Gettian. “He has not sought publicity.”

  Doc Savage asked, “Could your knowing Louis Tester involve you in this affair?”

  “I doubt it,” said Gettian. “I think it is the little metal cash box that Louis Tester left with me that had involved me.”

  “Holy cow!—as Renny would say!” exploded Monk. “Now I think we’re getting somewhere!”

  “What about this cash box?” Doc Savage asked.

  Gettian spoke with entire freedom.

  “I know Louis Tester very well, and have loaned him a little money from time to time, not asking security,” he said. “A few months ago, Louis brought me a little metal box and asked me to keep it. He said it held certain valuable scientific records, which he wanted in a safe place. So I put it in my safe. That is all I know about it.”

  Doc Savage asked quietly, “Would you mind showing me that box and permitting me to examine its contents.”

  “I should dislike doing so,” said Gettian.

  “Louis Tester’s life seems to be in danger,” Doc Savage explained. “We are trying to aid him, as well as his sister; also one of my associates, Colonel Renwick.”

  “Gracious!” said Gettian, making that mild exclamation sound like a much more violent one. “Is Nan in danger?”

  “She is,” Doc said. “In fact, she may have been murdered already.”

  “I will show you the box and let you examine it,” declared Gettian. “I did not know things were so serious.”

  He led the way through rooms. It became apparent that Gorham Gage Gettian was a very rich man. There were priceless rugs on the floor and old masters on the walls. Much of the furniture was genuinely antique.

  Gettian reached what was evidently his stud
y. The comfortable furniture had seen much use, but its quality was so excellent that the fittings had only improved with service.

  Going to the gas-burning fireplace, Gettian touched something. The entire fireplace rolled out, swung aside, and disclosed the combination knob of a large safe. He bent and manipulated this knob. The door came open. His hand started in confidently, then jerked to a stop.

  “It’s gone!” Gettian gasped.

  “Gone?” asked Monk.

  “It is,” said Gettian. “And that is very strange indeed, because I am the only living man who knows this combination.”

  Gettian riffled through the safe contents, which seemed to consist of some jewels, many papers, and several bundles of greenbacks of large denomination. Gettian shook his head, stood back and examined the safe door. He found it bore no marks of having been forced, closed the safe, and shrugged resignedly.

  “Some one who was indeed an expert, must have gotten into that safe,” he said.

  They had left the prisoners in the other room. All of these were at present unconscious, but some would be reviving soon.

  “We will question them,” Doc Savage said. “That man Decitez should at least be able to tell us something.”

  They walked out.

  Down in the street door vestibule, a woman screamed. It was a terrified shriek.

  “Mr. Gettian!” the voice shrilled. “They are going to kill you!”

  Doc Savage whipped toward the sound.

  “It’s Nan Tester!” the bronze man clipped over his shoulder.

  * * *

  Doc Savage took the stairs in a series of leaps, until he reached a landing. This was halfway down. From then on, he rode the bannister. The bannister riding was not for spectacular effect. It was safer. If they shot from below, they would shoot up the steps.

  But they did not shoot. They seemed bent on getting the girl out. They were struggling with her. Her gasps could be heard. Blows.

  “Brain her!” a man gritted.

  “Where’s a gun?” another snarled. “Give her the works for that trick!”