Doc Savage - The Man Who Shook The Earth Part 11

The three men left the room together. John Acre returned his poncho to one of the nails in the outer room.

Then they all quitted the house and started down the street.

They had not covered fifty feet when Whistler Wheeler emitted a loud yell.

"Look at the street lights in the main part of town!" he howled.

The lights were going strangely dim.

JOHN ACRE and his two companions moved with great speed. A tiny open square lay at the end of the street in which they stood. They sprinted for it. Their wild rush down the street did not stop until they stood in the small plaza.

Here, falling walls of buildings would not endanger them.

There was a sound like thunder in the far distance. The uncouth mumbling became louder. It drew closer, as though a howling mob were approaching far in the depths of the earth.

The ground began to tremble. Near by, a chimney upset. Bricks and unsound masonry tumbled off houses.

Everywhere windows were splintering and breaking.

It was as if the earth had been seized with a chill.

The shaking was not excessively violent, however. John Acre and his companions were able to keep their feet.

"It is not a big shake," said John Acre. "The main force seems to be centralized well to our left."

Hardly were the words off his lips when the pulsations ceased.

"Let's see who got it this time," Whistler Wheeler rasped.

The three men plunged to the right.

Because of the lateness of the hour the streets had been deserted, and silent. Now they were a-swarm with people. Excited mothers were shoving their children through narrow s.p.a.ces between window bars. One man with a mustache like bicycle handlebars had his head caught, and was screaming l.u.s.tily.

A hill jutted up in front of the running men. It was a very steep hill, its sides in places almost clifflike. A road curled around its base. The heart of the quake had been at the hill. Great ma.s.ses of stone had been shaken across the road. Men were already tearing at this debris at one point.

It became apparent that an automobile had been caught in the rock slide.

John Acre, Dido Galligan, and Whistler Wheeler added their help. One man was in the trapped car.

Extricating him required fully five minutes. The fellow was dead. His features were barely recognizable.

Dios, mia!"

John Acre gritted in Spanish. "This is one of the men from our meeting."

Dido Galligan peered at the corpse. "I recognize him now. He was the owner of one of the largest nitrate plants in the country."

John Acre nodded slowly. "It is very strange. Each man to die has been the owner of a nitrate property."A few minutes after he had drawn attention to this fact, John Acre slipped away from the vicinity. His going was furtive. Few noted his departure.

John Acre made his way to the radio station. The radio corporation had offices uptown, from which communications were ordinarily filed and delivered.

John Acre, however, never sent his radiograms through the usual channels. Too many eyes saw them.

He habitually gave his messages to the operator at the radio station itself. To deliver such a missive was the object of his present visit.

The structure which housed the radio apparatus was not an imposing building. A light glowed behind its one window. Voices came from within.

John Acre was a cautious soul. Had he not been, he would have come to a violent end long ago. He approached the radio shack quietly, his ears sharpened. He heard something which gave him a shock.

"John Acre thinks his messages have been going out," said the operator within the radio house. "He would have thirteen kinds of a fit if he knew what has actually happened."

Chapter IX. MOVER OF MOUNTAINS.

INSTEAD of entering as he had intended, John Acre lurked outside the radio house, and did some very close listening.

"You are taking a great chance in holding up old Hawk Nose's messages," said the radio operator's companion.

John Acre could not remember having heard this voice.

"I'm getting well paid for what I'm doing," answered the radio man.

The other laughed softly. "I do not know that I blame you for merely failing to send messages which are handed you-that is an easy way of earning money."

"I do slightly more than that," corrected the key tapper. "I also make up fake messages which are given to John Acre."

"Who pays you?"

"That, my friend, I dare not tell you."

John Acre made a snarling mouth under his hooked nose. His hand whipped inside his coat, and came out with a revolver. This weapon had been altered to what firearm experts call a belly-buster. The barrel had been cut off until there was hardly a barrel at all. Because of this, the slugs were as likely as not to strike sidewise.

Belly-buster guns are noted for the frightful wounds they inflict.

On the point of entering, John Acre heard more words. He waited. These were choice morsels which he was overhearing.

"Do not get the idea I have not earned this money," the radio operator was saying. "I have held up messages from John Acre. But that is not all. I make a copy of every message which pa.s.ses through this station. These copies are turned over to the one who hires me."

The second man in the radio shack laughed softly. "You do not need to tell me the name of your employer, my dear friend," he said. "I know it already."

"Yeah?" The operator sounded surprised."Exactly," laughed the other. "You are paid by a follower of the Little White Brother. We both serve the same master."

This was all John Acre could stand listening to. His sawed-off gun in his fist, he shouldered into the office.

"Lift your hands!" he snapped.

The radio operator and his visitor stared at John Acre. The radio man's friend, he saw, was one of the town's chief crooks.

The two men recognized John Acre's beaked, ominous features. Terror seized them. They knew the reputation of this man. He was a frightful foe.

Both men reached the same decision simultaneously. They concluded to fight their way out of the mess.

Both dived hands for concealed weapons.

John Acre's gun roared! A second explosion seemed to blend in the crash of the first!

The radio operator and his visitor slammed down on the floor. One of them had succeeded in drawing his gun.

It discharged as he fell. The bullet dug into an apparatus panel, causing a short-circuit, which flashed a blinding blue, and showered sparks.

John Acre leaped forward to examine the pair. He had hoped to seize them alive.

Both men were dead. The belly-buster slugs had torn tremendous wounds.

JOHN ACRE began to swear in Spanish. In a low, guttural voice he poured out profanity. He called himself every choice name that came to his agile tongue.

The head of the secret police was not condemning himself for killing the two men. He had taken lives before.

The fact that he had let himself become excited enough to kill the two before he could ask questions, was what angered him.

John Acre searched the pair. On each body he found a considerable sum of money. He grinned sourly and pocketed these bank rolls.

There was no clew to the ident.i.ty of the mysterious employer of whom the two had been speaking a moment before their death.

John Acre scowled at the powerful radio apparatus. He was not an operator himself. If he got a message through to Doc Savage now, it would have to be via the land-telegraph wires. This was slower and less reliable than the ether.

The telegraph office was downtown. Quitting the radio station, John Acre headed for it. He walked swiftly.

As was his habit, John Acre kept a close watch on the darkness about him. This was a custom which he was careful never to neglect. He was a wily man, and he led a dangerous life.

Within two hundred yards, John Acre realized he was being followed. Nothing so simple as a careless footstep or a crackling twig told him this. Whenever he went about at night, John Acre carried a bag of popcorn. He did not eat popcorn. He detested the stuff.

The popcorn, however, was very crisp. When spread upon the ground, it would crunch if stepped on. The crunch was not loud enough to excite the stepper, but it was sufficient to warn John Acre.

It was with this popcorn that John Acre learned he was being followed by some one.

Drawing his belly-buster, John Acre stepped into a murky recess and waited. His lips were tight and fierce under his beak of a nose.Two men came creeping down the street. They were peering ahead anxiously.

"He has disappeared somewhere," growled one.

"Danged if he ain't," agreed the other. "He's slicked us."

"Yes, gentlemen, he did," said John Acre, and stepped out of hiding.

The men who were following him were Dido Galligan and Whistler Wheeler. Both American nitrate superintendents made gestures toward their hip pockets.

"Careful!" warned John Acre. "This gun of mine does not shoot beans!"

"We know what it shoots," said Dido Galligan grimly. His gold b.u.t.tons flickered faintly in the luminance of a distant street light.

"So you saw what happened at the radio station?" John Acre snapped.

WHISTLER WHEELER had not been whistling as he followed John Acre. He resumed his tiny tuneful habit now. For a moment his whistle trilled softly.

"We saw it," he said. "Looked to us kinda like murder!"

"Did you hear the conversation between the operator and the other man, which prefaced the killing?" John Acre demanded.

"We weren't close enough." Wheeler seemed hardly to pause in his whistling as he answered.

John Acre scowled blackly. "Why were you following me?"

Both Dido Galligan and Whistler Wheeler had just seen the hawk-nosed man before them kill two men. Yet they showed no fear at his display of anger.

"We were just checking up," Dido Galligan said. He started to finger one of his gold coat b.u.t.tons, but desisted when he sensed that John Acre might think he was reaching for a weapon.

"Checking on me?" rapped the head of the secret police. "And why, might I ask?"

"We got to thinkin' about that guy who was killed in the earthquake after the meetin'," Dido Galligan said frankly. "You, John Acre, are the only man who knew he was to be present at that meeting. Yet the fellow the quake got was obviously spotted there."

"You are presuming, of course, that the quake was made by human hands?" John Acre asked.

"Sure!" said Dido Galligan. "And we were wondering if it could be that you tipped the fellow who made it to the fact that the victim would be at the meeting."

As he thought this over, John Acre seemed to grow an inch in stature. His features were not as dark as those of the usual man of his country. Rage, however, blackened them. He shoved his belly-buster out.

For a moment, he seemed on the point of killing both his accusers. Instead, he smiled fiercely and made an angry gnashing sound with his teeth. He holstered his gun with an irate force.

"You gentlemen can think what you d.a.m.n please," he said. "It is immaterial to me. But I tell you one thing in all frankness-you will get your heads blown off if you keep on following me."

The two Americans held their ground.

"Now, don't get up on your high horse, Acre," Dido Galligan growled. "We were just trying to find out what devilish thing is going on in this country. The owners of nitrate concerns are being murdered. That concernsus. We're nitrate men."

"You said it," echoed Whistler Wheeler. "We were checking up on you, Acre, and we'll keep on checking on you till we're satisfied. If it comes to making threats, we may blow a head off ourselves."

John Acre suddenly showed his teeth in a smile which looked genuine.