Doc Savage - The Man Who Shook The Earth Part 5

"Head north, toward Westchester County," their pa.s.senger directed. "I know of a vacant house up there. It's just the place to keep you two funny-looking fellows in."

"Yeah?" muttered Long Tom.

"I'm going to hold you until Doc Savage releases John Acre," said the girl in gold.

"Who is John Acre?" Long Tom questioned.

"The man who just landed from South America."

"And you think Doc Savage got him?" Long Tom persisted.

"Somebody grabbed him," said the girl. "Who else could it have been? John Acre called me and said that no one but Doc Savage knew he was in New York. He asked me not to tell anybody. I didn't. John Acre was seized in front of the Midas Club. If Doc Savage didn't get him, who did?"

Long Tom permitted himself a slight smile. Doc had wanted them to get information from this girl.

"But why should Doc want John Acre?" he questioned.

Tip perched on the edge of the rear seat cushion. Long Tom, watching in the rear-vision mirror, marveled that her tight gown permitted her to be seated at all.

"Doc Savage would seize John Acre for the Little White Brother," the girl said bitterly.

Long Tom's somewhat unhealthy face acquired a puzzled expression. Renny peered absently at his huge fists.

"Little White Brother?" Long Tom e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"You're not fooling me by acting surprised," said the young woman with the gun. "Doc Savage kidnaped John Acre. Only one person would have hired him to do so-the Little White Brother."

"Listen," Long Tom said angrily.

" n.o.body ever hires Doc"

The gilded girl seemed about to make a sarcastic retort. Instead, she jerked up rigidly on the seat. Horror overspread her attractive features.

She crouched there like a gorgeous, golden bird which had suddenly seen a hungry snake.

ONLY one thing could have caused the girl's fright-a great hollow salvo of sound which had coughed out over to the right of the sedan.

It made the earth tremble, this sound; it rumbled and thumped. Its ramifications seemed to gorge the night with dull thunder. Then the rumbling died away, as it had arisen, with swiftness.

Both Long Tom and Renny turned their heads to eye the girl. Both distinctly caught the stifled words which came from her lips. "That shaking-the Little White Brother-" Her voice trailed off.

Long Tom and Renny shook their heads solemnly at each other. The girl's behavior had them baffled.

"Why did that sound of blasting scare you so?" Renny boomed.

"Blasting?" the girl gulped.

Renny waved a hand nearly large enough to envelop a football. He indicated a cl.u.s.ter of lights off to their right.

It was now snowing briskly. The lights were barely discernible through the maze of falling flakes.

"They're doing some excavating over there," he said. "They do their blasting late at night when there's no spectators around to get hurt."

The sigh of relief which the girl in gold heaved was audible to both men.

"Am I relieved!" she exclaimed.

"You haven't answered my question," Renny reminded her. "Why did the sound frighten you?"

The young woman stared at him intently. Obviously, she was considering an answer to the question. She decided not to give it.

"I'm through talking," she said shortly.

She seemed to mean it, too. Long Tom and Renny both tried to question her. All they got were caustic retorts.

"Shut up and keep driving!" the girl directed.

By now, snowflakes were spread like whitewash. Strangely, although snow literally poured against the windshield of the sedan, none of it stuck there. The gla.s.s was covered by a preparation perfected by the chemist, Monk. This concoction alone had made Monk a fortune.

It was biting cold outside. In the sedan the temperature was comfortable, due to a combination air-conditioner and heater.

A great a.s.sortment of k.n.o.bs and meters decorated the instrument board. Long Tom reached up and adjusted some of these.

"What are you doing?" rapped the young woman.

"I don't need to be told how to drive this car," Long Tom replied brusquely.

The sedan rolled northward. By now they had left the limits of New York City. Snow fell faster. A strengthening wind shoveled the flakes about.

"Turn left at the next corner," the gilded girl advised.

Long Tom obeyed. A few rods farther on, in compliance with a second order, he wheeled the sedan into a large yard.

The headlights picked out a house. It was a frame building. Missing patches of shingles made the roof looklike a mangy dog. Windows were boarded up. Numerous evergreen shrubs were blackish humps in the blizzard.

Long Tom stopped the sedan.

"Get out," said the girl, "and open the door. We are- Oh! Oh!"

The adjacent evergreen bushes seemed to hatch the leaping figures of men. An ominous ring, they converged on the car. They were heavily armed.

"The Little White Brother!" shrilled the girl.

TWO men, widely different in appearance, led the gang. One of these was natty in evening garb, and handsome in an evil way. The second man was big, slovenly. His nostrils were a pair of fuzz-rimmed holes. A deep scar slanting across his face gave him an appearance utterly villainous.

Long Tom and Renny were not acquainted with these two unsavory gentlemen. They did not know the pair were Velvet and Biff.

Velvet took charge of the affair.

"Drop your gun!" he snapped at the girl.

The young woman had been taken by surprise. At the moment, her weapon was pointed at Long Tom and Renny. She tried to swing it toward Velvet.

Velvet leaped. He was carrying an automatic in his hand. He threw it. The heavy weapon struck the girl's arm, knocked it aside.

Velvet, diving like a football tackler, wrapped his arms around the girl in gold. The momentum of his leap carried both him and the girl to the sedan floor boards. His legs, however, still projected outside.

Renny, sitting in the front seat, tried to close the bulletproof doors of the sedan. Velvet's legs prevented that.

Renny reached down to jerk Velvet inside.

Two revolver snouts were thrust through the door.

"One jump and you'll get croaked!" two harsh voices chorused.

Renny looked at the lowering visages behind the weapon. On other occasions he had seen the will to do murder on men's faces. He saw it again now.

With an abrupt meekness, Renny lifted his tremendous hands.

"Go easy," he advised Long Tom from the side of his grim mouth. "These palookas look like poison."

Long Tom jutted his own arms above his head.

The gunmen converged on the sedan. Long Tom and Renny were searched. Their captors seemed surprised when no weapons came to life. They did not search the girl in gold. They merely looked her over.

"She isn't hiding anything under that gown," Velvet decided.

The young woman seemed stunned by this new development. When she glanced at Long Tom and Renny, a great doubt was discernible in her eyes.

"I hope you realize what you've done," Renny told her. He was still smarting from the crack she had made about taking poison if she were his daughter.

"Get out and go into the house!" Velvet commanded. He frowned darkly at the young woman. "We beenwatching you for weeks, Miss Tip Galligan. We know you own this old ruin of a house. We saw you hold up these two men in front of the Midas Club. It was easy to guess that you'd bring 'em here."

Renny glowered, and knocked his enormous fists together. The sound this made was a good imitation of two concrete blocks colliding.

"What's behind all this foolishness?" he demanded.

"Take a cork!" Velvet snapped.

"What?"

"Pipe down! Go mum!" Velvet grated. "We only wanted the girl. But now that we've got you two guys, we'll keep you. Then, in case this Doc Savage gets funny with us, we'll do things to you."

Renny considered this. A change flickered across his puritanical face.

"Do you work for the Little White Brother?" he rumbled.

Velvet started violently, then glared.

"No more out of you, big-fist!" he barked.

Renny subsided. The man's manner had showed plainly that he was a minion of the mysterious Little White Brother.

Chapter V. THE EARTH-SHAKER'S TRAIL.

THE homely Monk was saying in a loud, astonished voice: "Well, I'm a son of a gun!"

"You're worse than that," the dapper Ham informed him waspishly. "But I'm not going to lapse into profanity to explain just what you are."

Doc Savage said nothing. His eyes were on what he was doing. The strange flake-gold of them seemed more alive than usual.

They were no longer in the Midas Club. They had repaired to Doc's skysc.r.a.per headquarters.

Had they glanced through the window, it would have seemed they were immersed in a sea of milk. Snow was falling so thickly as to shut off the view of near-by buildings, even those which had lighted windows this late at night. Outside the window, eighty-six stories above the street, the wind was howling like cold-tortured wolves.

The three men were paying no attention to the storm, however. Their attention was focused on a large black box which had a square window in the top. At first glance, this window might have been mistaken for a framed picture. Actually it was the scanning screen of a television receiver.

The picture on the screen was the interior of Doc's sedan from which Long Tom and Renny had just been seized. Concealed in the sedan was an amazingly powerful and compact television projector.

This apparatus owed its remarkable efficiency to the fact that it did not utilize the old-fashioned mechanical scanning disk. Its heart was a cathode-ray tube which functioned in a fashion very similar to the retina of a human eye. A ponderous scientific treatise could be written on how the tube functioned. Doc had perfected the thing.

From his office, Doc could not only witness the kidnaping, but had heard Long Tom and Renny question the girl in gold, since the microphone also concealed in the sedan worked in conjunction with the televisor.

Monk and Ham were almost dancing in impatience. Their eyes sought the door.

"What are we waiting on?" Ham demanded.Fully a minute elapsed before Doc shut off the apparatus, however. He had waited in hope of garnering further threats of information. He saw that nothing more would be forthcoming.

The room which held the television receiver was a vast one. In it stood scores of stands laden with scientific apparatus. There were machines as ponderous as trucks, but with mechanisms as fine as those of a watch.

This was Doc Savage's experimental laboratory.

Scientists had come from foreign countries for the sole purpose of seeing this laboratory. They went away, saying it was the most complete on earth.

Doc, however, knew otherwise. There was another laboratory even more perfect. Doc Savage alone knew its whereabouts.

The laboratory was at a remote spot in the arctic regions-at a place which Doc called his Fortress of Solitude.

At intervals, Doc Savage became mysteriously lost to the world. During such periods no one could find him or get in touch with him-not even his five aids.

At these times Doc Savage repaired to his Fortress of Solitude. There he concentrated on study and experiment. The existence of this Fortress of Solitude, with its highly developed equipment, was to a great degree responsible for Doc Savage's remarkable mental powers.