Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 17

"I call that accomplishin' a lot!"

Monk got up, took two or three turns around the room, stamping, gnawing his lip. "But about Renny, Long Tom and Johnny," he growled. "I-we-well, we haven't accomplished a thing toward helping them. And Hart-what about him? Hart is the guy behind this, you know."

"Hart is innocent," Doc said.

"What?"

Doc nodded.

"In fact," the bronze man said, "we had better pick Hart up and keep him out of sight for his own protection."

DOC and Monk drove to William Henry Hart's little boat, tied up to the wharf at Sheepshead Bay, where he lived.

He was not aboard.

"He's probably at his factory," Monk said.

They drove to the factory. The moment they turned into the street before the little manufacturing structure, they knew something was wrong. The crowd! Half the crowd was police. There were two ambulances, white-clad internes, and stretchers on which men lay.

Doc Savage swerved to the curb and he and Monk sprang out.

"Kidnaping," a cop explained grimly.

"Kidnaping?""They got William Henry Hart a few minutes ago," the cop said. "We don't know who it was. They were a tough-looking bunch of mugs. There was shooting. The plant foreman tried to stop them, and he got shot, and a workman got shot, then Hart was carried off."

Doc Savage asked, "Any description of the raiders?"

There was description enough to identify one of the s.n.a.t.c.hers as a tall man who wore grays. Later, Doc found, discarded on the scene, the stub of a cigar which had a cork tip.

"Batavia!" Monk exclaimed.

"Yes," Doc agreed. "Batavia undoubtedly seized Hart."

Chapter XVII. GUILT.

INVESTIGATION convinced Doc Savage there was no way of tracing William Henry Hart and his kidnapers. The bronze man got in the car, with Monk, and they drove away.

"Maybe the s.n.a.t.c.h was a fake anyway," Monk said. "Maybe he staged this kidnaping to make himself look innocent."

Monk had expected Doc Savage to drive back to the high headquarters building, but the bronze man did not do this. Instead he headed toward the East Side of Manhattan, and stopped in a section of brownstone fronts, second-rate rooming houses.

"What's this?" Monk demanded.

Doc Savage said, "You remember those metal medallions?"

"Metal-"

"The three metal disks about the size of an English penny," Doc Savage said. "On each was an address."

"Oh, I remember," Monk said. "You told me about that. You gave one disk to William Henry Hart, one to Birmingham Lawn, and one to A. King Christophe."

Monk looked startled. "I been wondering why you did that."

"There was a very good reason," Doc told him.

The bronze man got out of the car, went up the steps of the old brownstone house and examined the door. At the top of the panel, where it would not have been noticed, there was a seal which looked exactly like a spider web-a seal Doc had placed there to show whether the door had been opened.

From his pocket, Doc Savage took out a small device which resembled a diminutive box camera, except that it had a dark-blue lens. In reality, it was a tiny projector of ultra-violet light.

Making an impromptu dark room with his coat, Doc turned the device on, focused the rays on the seal.

The seal glowed blue.

"First blank," Doc said.

"I don't get this!" Monk complained.They got in the car again and Doc Savage drove to another address, this one on the West Side. It was an old building, a walk-up apartment. They went in, climbed steps, and once more the bronze man examined a door and found the seal unbroken, found it glowed blue under the ultra-violet light.

"Second blank," he said.

By now Monk was bewildered. He planted himself in Doc Savage's path. "Explain this chasin' around, Doc!" he grumbled.

"We have a number of suspects in the gas mystery, Monk."

"One suspect as far as I'm concerned-and it's Hart."

"Each of the medallions had a different address," Doc explained.

"But I don't see-"

Instead of going into explanations, Doc Savage visited the third address. This one was a private house, across the river in New Jersey. A house that stood alone, windows bolted, rear door planked shut. The only ready entrance was through the front door, which Doc examined.

THE seal this time was a piece of chewing gum, and it was apparently intact. But when Doc Savage put the ultra-violet light rays upon it, this one glowed distinctly yellowish-not blue.

"This is it!" the bronze man said.

"It?" Monk said, puzzled.

"The door is not sealed with the gum I used. My gum would fluoresce blue."

"Oh! Then somebody's been here!" Monk grew excited. "Who had the key with this address?"

Doc Savage apparently did not hear the question; the bronze man had a habit of appearing not to hear a query when he did not wish to answer. Monk was accustomed to this trait, but he looked disappointed.

"We going in?" the homely chemist demanded.

"Not through the front door," Doc said.

The bronze man went around to the rear, where there was a dilapidated coal shed. He got on the shed, then to the roof of the house. He tore off a patch of shingles, wrenched up sheathing, and made a hole large enough to pa.s.s his bronze frame. It was fortunate Doc entered the house in that fashion.

The house was mined. There was almost five hundred pounds of high explosive in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The TNT was wired to windows and doors, so that it would explode the instant anyone tried to gain admission by that route.

Doc Savage rendered the gigantic bomb harmless.

Then he went out, got Monk, and showed him what was in the house.

"Blazes!" Monk showed an immediate desire to leave.

"The person who had the disk with this address," Doc Savage said, "planted this death trap."Monk shuddered.

"Who was it?"

"Birmingham Lawn," Doc said.

DOC SAVAGE was grim as they drove back, as grim as he ever became, although he rarely showed emotion.

The car pulled up before the Doc Savage Relief Agency office. Ham sat at a large desk-he had a liking for big desks-contemplating the bareness of the office. The place was practically empty of customers.

"It's been that way all afternoon," Ham complained. "Say, did you read that tabloid newspaper story? A bunch of dirty insinuations, and thinly veiled hints that we're crooks stealing this land."

Doc Savage asked, "Where's Birmingham Lawn?"

Ham brightened. "Now, there's a swell guy! Letting him help us out was a good idea. He brought his real estate men, who are trained in this line."

"Where is he?" Doc repeated.

Ham pointed, "In the back room."

Monk scowled at Ham. "Your swell guy is just the devil behind this giggling business!"

"What?"

Ham gasped.

"You heard me!" Monk gritted.

"But-but-"

"Lawn's medallion," Doc Savage explained, "was used to open a bungalow where we found a death trap set for me."

Ham made croaking noises, looked bewildered.

"But Lawn has been helping us; he put his own money into this thing of buying property-" Ham stopped stuttering and pondered. "Ah-h-h-I get it. The man is going to falsify our records! He is going to change the deeds so he can take over the property we buy!"

"After he gets rid of us!" Monk agreed.

The homely chemist appeared angry enough to bite heads off spikes.

"Wipe that man-eating look off your face," Doc told Monk.

"Why not just go in and bat 'im one?" Monk snarled.

"We can use further proof," Doc said. "So far, the only thing we have against him is that disk that we connected with the death trap."

Monk subsided reluctantly; Monk was seldom in favor of cautious tactics. He preferred slap-bangdrag-out. When the homely chemist had his face straightened, he and Doc entered the rear room.

Monk's utter homeliness gave him one advantage: it was impossible to tell, from looking at him, what emotion he was experiencing.

Birmingham Lawn greeted them. Doc returned his handshake cordially. Lawn shook hands with Monk.

Monk, however, could not make his own hairy paw seem like anything but a dead fish.

Birmingham Lawn seemed worried. He motioned, indicating he desired they should all get in a corner of the room where they could be alone. And when they were all in the corner, Lawn stood staring at them, and abstractedly whistled a few bars from something that sounded like a funeral march.

"I have had a strange thing happen to me!" he said hollowly.

MONK barely refrained from saying that a lot of things were going to happen to Lawn.

"What do you mean, Lawn?" Doc asked.

"That metal coin you gave me," Lawn explained.

"What about your disk?" Doc asked.

"A man came to me," Lawn said, "and offered me five thousand dollars to trade disks with me."

"Five thousand!" Monk exploded. "Offered you-"

Lawn swallowed, making his golf ball Adam's apple go up and down in his neck.

"It happened last night," he said. "I-well, I didn't know what to do. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. The only condition of the bargain was that I should never tell you about the trade."

"You made the trade?" Doc asked.

"I did," Lawn said. "I traded. The man gave me five thousand dollars and his medallion, and I gave him my medallion."