Doc Savage - Devils Of The Deep Part 6

Stevens rose to the bait. He flared angrily, his three chins doing the minuet. "Naturally," he snapped. "I intend to put the plans in the hands of Mr. Savage at once."

He half-rose from his chair.

That was when the girl knocked at the door.

Ham didn't know she was the girl then. In fact, his disgusted comment was, "Saved by the bell," as Roland Stevens changed his mind about immediately producing the plans of his mysterious invention.

Then Ham got a look at the newcomer. He whistled softly to show his admiration. Monk, always a sucker for a pretty face, was practically speechless.Neither Monk nor Ham had seen Alice Dawn when she was acting as Jerome Gadberry's secretary. If they had, it is doubtful if they would have recognized her. She had changed her appearance greatly, but only as a movie star changes one type of beauty for another.

No longer was her hair dark. Now it was a flaming and attractive red. The large brown eyes were changed, also. Colored gla.s.s lenses made them just as large and just as seductive a blue. Properly applied make-up broadened her cheekbones, narrowed her chin.

But the result was still perfection.

"May I speak to you privately for a moment, Mr. Stevens?" she asked. Her voice was low and husky.

Stevens bounded to his feet surprisingly swiftly for his three hundred-odd pounds. He tried to smile charmingly as he led the way to a far corner of the room.

The girl spoke to him in a low tone of voice, too low to be overheard by others in the room. Her back was turned toward Doc. There was no chance of reading her lips.

Stevens' smile vanished. His chins came down almost to his chest. He appeared to have difficulty swallowing.

Doc spoke briefly to Monk. There seemed no danger of their being overheard, but even if they were, it would have made little difference. The bronze man spoke in a language few outside his aids understood.

He gave the hairy chemist instructions in ancient Mayan.

Monk grinned broadly. Ham groaned in mock disgust.

"Some descendants of apes were born with luck," he said.

Monk's grin grew even wider. "Apes could win more beauty prizes than pigs," he retorted. "This is my kind of a job."

The homely chemist eased quietly toward the door.

When the girl ended her conversation with Stevens a few moments later, Monk had already disappeared.

AFTERWARD Monk was to blame himself for not stopping what came next. But then Monk always had to come in direct contact with danger, and physical danger at that, before he'd believe it. And this time he hadn't-so far.

He saw the man outside the laboratory. But he thought the man was a gardener.

The man's actions gave that impression. He was around at the far side of the laboratory when Monk came out the front door.

The one brief glance Monk gave him left the impression only of a tall, rather unusually erect man, spraying vines on the walls of the building.

Had Monk looked more closely, he might have thought it strange the man was protecting his nose and mouth with gauze. He also might have seen that the "spray" was being directed not at the vines but at a window, open scarcely more than an inch, directly above the vines.

The tall man saw Monk as the homely chemist raced toward an auto parked in front of the laboratory.

He smiled, but entirely without humor.After a few more strokes with the spray gun he closed the window. Then he vanished in nearby shrubbery where he could see without being seen.

Some minutes later, Alice Dawn emerged from the laboratory. She looked about her uncertainly for a few moments, then went to a smart-looking roadster.

Again she hesitated, but only for an instant before stepping down on the starter. She drove away rapidly.

As her car turned a corner, Monk's homely features bobbed up from the floor of Doc's car where he had been hidden. He took out in pursuit.

The tall man with the unusually erect back grinned slightly. He turned his attention back to the laboratory.

In particular, he watched the window where he had been using the spray gun.

He watched it for quite a while before anything happened.

That was because of Roland Stevens.

After the girl left, the heavyweight scientist became very reluctant to produce the plans he had promised.

It took an implied threat by Ham that he would have Stevens arrested for ma.s.s murder to get action.

Stevens' att.i.tude had changed completely. Where, before, he had seemed to want to talk, now he acted like a Republican at a Democratic convention.

But he finally gave in.

"I've got the plans in a safe at the back of the building," he said wearily. "Walk to the end of the corridor and turn to your right. I will join you in a moment."

If Doc saw anything strange in the request, he said nothing. The bronze man, in fact, led the way toward the designated room.

It was the room that had occupied the attention of the "gardener" with the spray gun.

Doc opened the door, Ham at his heels.

It was then the explosion came.

The blast was terrific. Walls popped out, windows were shattered. The door through which Doc and Ham had entered was thrown fifty feet back down the corridor.

A heavy pall of smoke spread swiftly.

Roland Stevens pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped a river of perspiration from his triple chins.

He made no attempt to investigate the blast.

Instead, he left the laboratory. He left it rapidly and by a side door, running with the curious jolting motion of the ultra-fat.

He was joined by the tall man with the ramrod back.

"They're dead," Stevens gasped. "L-let's get away from here in a hurry."

They did.

Chapter IX. SPIES CLOSE IN.

MONK was in a hurry, also. But he was having a good time. There could be no better a.s.signment, he decided, than trailing a pretty girl.

And of all the pretty girls he had ever seen, he put the one he was chasing now at the top. The only trouble was that she drove so fast.

Not that the hairy chemist minded driving fast himself, but he was afraid the girl would notice that another car was trailing her.

There seemed no question but that she was heading back toward New York and probably would go through the Holland Tunnel. Had he been sure of catching her at the other end, Monk might have dropped back a ways.

But he wasn't. And once she arrived on the other side of the river, it was imperative that he saw where she went and the person or persons she talked with.

Those had been the instructions he had received from Doc Savage.

Then traffic increased and Monk's job became easier. He was only two cars behind the girl when they went through the tunnel.

Soon after they reached the New York side, he was glad he had been that close. Otherwise he might not have realized what happened.

A second car drew alongside the roadster the girl was in. The second car was a sedan. Neither car stopped. But one moment the girl was driving the roadster. The next, and a man was at the wheel.

Monk was probably the only one who saw the rapid shift that had been made. The girl had transferred into the sedan and in the same instant the roadster whipped around a corner one way while the sedan went another.

The homely chemist smiled slightly. The trick was a good one. It would have fooled the average trailer.

Monk permitted himself a slight glow of pride. He forgot what usually follows pride.

The sedan, with the girl hidden in the back seat, proceeded uptown at a more leisurely pace. Monk dropped back.

When the sedan parked near an apartment house in the Seventies, however, he was close enough to see the girl get out while the sedan drove away.

Monk parked, and followed. Entirely unsuspecting, he approached the lobby of the apartment house.

He was just in time to see the girl open the outer door with a key. Monk thought the girl had never seen him. He stepped forward, held the door for her.

"A pleasant day," he said politely.

"Not for you," the girl replied surprisingly. She caught hold of Monk's arm, yanked him into the apartment lobby with her. Then she screamed.

"Masher! Masher! This man is annoying me!" she cried.

Monk thought he had never seen so many men arrive at one spot so fast in his life. They appeared soswiftly it might have seemed they were waiting for him.

He never got a chance to explain. He was landed on from all sides.

Monk liked to sc.r.a.p. Usually he was at his best in a rough-and-tumble. But not this time. He had never been accused of being a masher before. It upset him.

He knocked out only three of his attackers before they got him down and went to work on him. He didn't even resent the arrival of a patrolman who broke up the sc.r.a.p.

And that was unusual, also.

ANOTHER strange thing was going on at almost the same moment. But it didn't become known until long afterward. Had the public learned of it at once, the already increasing panic on the Atlantic seaboard would have been even greater.

The "sea serpent"-or octopus-appeared again!

This time it claimed a government boat.

The boat was one of the first of the newly ordered "mosquito fleet" of the United States. Of all-metal construction, it had tremendous speed. It was armed with machine guns, torpedo tubes and depth-bomb charges.

It had been a.s.signed to help run down the mysterious raider.

The "mosquito" boat was cruising off the Florida coast, not far from where the wreckage of the British freighter had been found. It was a clear afternoon, with practically no seas running.

The crew was quite proud of the ship. They wanted action.

It was quite by accident that they spotted the dim object far below the surface. What happened after that wasn't an accident.

One of the crew was using a new type of under-water gla.s.ses when he saw what might be a submarine.

A shouted order was given by the commander. The "mosquito" boat slammed into motion at high speed.

Directly over the dim object under the sea a depth bomb was dropped.

It was then the unbelievable happened.

There was a tremendous flurry beneath the water. A long, slinking tentacle appeared to flash upward through the sea. It wrapped about the depth bomb, held it motionless.

The bomb, designed to explode only when it was one hundred feet down, did not go off.

The crew of the "mosquito" boat did not get another chance. Two other "tentacles" shot upward.

One fastened on the bow of the speeding boat. The second caught about the stern. The boat halted as if it had hit a breakwater.

Spray shot high in the air. When it landed, the sea was bare. The "mosquito" boat had disappeared beneath the surface, pulled there by the giant "tentacles." The crew of the boat never had a chance.

Some time later there was a tremendous explosion. That was when the depth bomb was discharged. But.i.t did no damage then. There was nothing in the vicinity to kill except fish.

NOT even fish had been killed by the explosion in Roland Stevens' laboratory.

Doc Savage had seen to that.

Ham was confident that Doc, like himself, had suspected a trap when Stevens sent them ahead of him.

But the bronze man never mentioned it.

Doc did, however, take precautions.