Doc Savage - The Monsters Part 16

After reading that, the Detroit mayor tilted back in his chair and had a good laugh.

Then he sent out for the late newspapers and reread the Trapper Lake story. When he finished, he was not laughing. The story had made detailed reference to the crushed condition of the Trapper Lake victims. The mayor called several leading bank presidents and showed them the letter.

"What is the police force for?" asked the bankers.

So the mayor called the police chief, and the chief, in turn, had his men oil their machine guns and break out fresh gas bombs. Radio squad cars were set to prowling roads around the city. Police boats covered the lake front.

In Cleveland, New York, and Chicago, the reaction was about the same, except that in New York City, naval destroyers quietly took up positions around Manhattan Island. They knew Doc Savage's reputation in New York, knew his name had been in the past a.s.sociated with the combating of perils before which police departments were helpless. If Doc Savage was involved in the matter of the giants, the thing was no laughing affair.

Newspapers ate up this newest development. sheets that had red ink ran it in their biggest headlines.

Here was the newspaper story of the year.

Pere Teston was investigated, and the facts unearthed added to the general excitement.

It was found that Pere Teston was a man who had dabbled in chemical experiments since childhood. But he had not made chemistry his profession -- it had been a hobby.

Pere Teston, railroad men who had known him revealed, had for years maintained that it was possible to develop compounds to increase the size of living beings. The friends had laughed; they thought this was just another crazy idea.

That day, several of Pere Teston's former acquaintances collected large sums of money for telling theirstory to the newspapermen. Pere Teston, these men declared, had talked much of developing giant cows, who would give great quant.i.ties of milk. He had spoken of huge draft horses, which would be a boon to the farmer.

No one could recall his having spoken of an army of giant men to terrorize the world.

"Probably he thought of that later," said one man who had known Pere Teston.

"When did he disappear?" asked a reporter.

"A year or two ago, maybe," was the reply. The truth was that no one seemed to be just Certain when Pere Teston had dropped from sight.

Before nightfall, almost five hundred more planes were enroute for Trapper Lake, bearing correspondents and photographers.

BEFORE NIGHTFALL, too, Doc Savage and his men took off on a prowl of their own. Doc entertained an idea.

"Everything points to these giants having their headquarters somewhere in the lake," he pointed out.

"Their food supplies, brought in on the Timberland Line, were transferred to barges on the lake."

"But where can their hangout be?" pondered big-fisted Renny.

"We got a line on their retreat last night," Doc said. " The gyro fuel tanks were filled to the slosh-over point with fuel smuggled out of Trapper Lake. They headed out into the lake.

Half an hour's flying put them over an island. It was covered with brush and rock, and certainly harbored no giants. Doc continued onward.

The previous night had been cloudy, extremely dark. This one promised to be gloriously moonlit. They flew high, dropping down when they sighted islands.

An hour pa.s.sed; another. The fuel was holding out well. The gyro, thanks to its hovering ability, enabled them to scrutinize closely such islands as they viewed.

A half dozen specks of rock and soil they sighted without discerning a sign of the giants.

Another and somewhat larger island appeared.

Ham eyed his watch. "Ten o'clock and all's well," he stated.

He was wrong. Up from the isle ahead a plane came boring.

When it was still some three hundred yards away, machine-gun muzzles flamed like tiny red eyes from its cowl. Tracer bullets, climbing past Doc's gyro, might have been red sparks.

The attacking ship was a low-wing bus, very fast. "That's the crate in which Caldwell and his gang hopped from New York."' Long Tom yelled.

Doc climbed the gyro, jockeying to one side, then the other, avoiding the machine-gun slugs. As the attacking ship slid past, Doc heaved the gyro over on its side and flicked the landing-light switch.

The illumination disclosed a face in the control c.o.c.kpit of the other plane. It was the steel-haired girl -- the ex-lion tamer, Jean Morris.

Chapter 21. THE SWIMMING GIANTS.

LIKE A thing frightened by the glare of the landing lights, the other plane scudded away. It banked and came back. Again the cowl-mounted rapid-firers opened red eyes.

Doc Savage hung the gyro motionless in the night sky and watched the thread of tracer bullets warily, prepared to maneuver the gyro clear if it came too close.

The sight of the steel-haired girl in the other plane had kept Doc from driving bullets into the engine of the enemy ship while the pilot was blinded by the floodlight.

"The hussy," Monk complained. "Who'd have thought this of her?"

"You were making calf eyes at her in New York," Ham snorted.

Monk grinned sheepishly. "I'd probably do it again, too. She's a looker."

The tracer bullets drew too near. Doc dropped the gyro straight down. The move was so abrupt that the men grabbed at their chairs.

Tracers ran strings of phosphorus fire through the s.p.a.ce they had vacated.

"What are we gonna do about this?" Monk pondered.

Doc sank the gyro rapidly. The other ship followed them down in a tight spiral. Doc flattened some fifty feet above the lake surface. Advancing the accelerator, he streaked along above the lake.

It looked as if he had generously helped himself to suicide, for the other plane swooped down upon their tail, its two cowl guns lipping flame.

The lake surface was fairly calm, and the small geysers knocked up by the bullets were visible ahead of Doc's windmill. The tracers, as they ricocheted, seemed to be sparks bouncing from the water.

Doc waltzed the gyro right, then left. The other ship, attempting to follow these maneuvers with its sight rings, merely succeeded in firing wide of the target.

Renny used his enormous hands to mop perspiration off his forehead. He knew the danger they were in.

Even Doc's consummate skill could not avoid the pursuing bullets for long.

Abruptly, for no visible reason, the plane behind gave up the attack. It wobbled off to one side, careening in the sky.

The pilot seemed to control his craft with the greatest difficulty. Trying to fishtail to reduce speed, the ship nearly went into a spin. Then it sought to land.

"Bet the gal don't know what happened to hen" Monk howled gleefully.

IF THE steel-haired girl was mystified, she was not the only one. The dapper Ham was also puzzled.

"What did happen?"

Monk slapped his bulging chest with a furry fist' "Give me credit for that."

"I didn't see you do anything," Ham sneered.

"Doc turned the stuff loose, of course," Monk admitted. "But I mixed it before we took the air. it's gas.The stuff is in a tank in the back of the bus. Doc simply pulled a valve cord and released some of it. In the moonlight, our steel-haired lady friend didn't notice it."

Ham glanced at the other ship. "You can have the credit!"

"Huh?"

"The gas doesn't seem to have worked!"

To their astonishment, they saw that the other craft had straightened out and was climbing into the air.

"The gla.s.s enclosed cabin of the crate!" Doc said. "Just enough of the gas got in to. cause temporary dizziness.'t The bronze man hurled the gyro toward the other ship.

His metallic features were expressionless. He reached a corded hand back into the cabin.

"Your rapid-firer," he requested of Long Tom.

The slender, unhealthy-looking electrical wizard pa.s.sed over his compact little supermachine pistol.

"Every third slug in the ammo drum is a tracer," he vouchsafed.

The other ship, instead of turning back to give battle, was flying a straight course not far above the water.

"Givin' her head a chance to clear!" Renny boomed. Conversation was possible inside the gyro because of the unusual efficiency of the silencer on the engine. The rotating wings had also been designed to create a minimum of wind-whistle.

Doc Savage drove after the other ship. It was flying slowly; he overhauled it rapidly.

"This is gonna be simple, after all," Monk said optimistically.

The fight had drifted through the sky until they were now hardly more than a mile from the island which they had intended to investigate.

The isle seemed to be nothing more than an expanse of rock, spotted here and there with stunted, wind-twisted trees. There were many large boulders on it.

Doc Savage opened the cabin window. Air rushed in, together with the loud hiss of the silenced motor.

He aimed with his machine pistol.

But before he could fire, a tiny rip appeared in the fuselage of the other plane. This had apparently been made by a knife or an ax.

The muzzle of a machine gun poked through the opening, its snout slavering flame. The shooting was more accurate than previously.

Clattering, gnashing, lead chopped at the underside of the gyro. Long rips opened in the fuselage.

Monk's pig, Habeas, squealed in alarm.

Doc juggled the controls with a dazzling speed to get away from the deadly leaden hail eating at the fuselage. He succeeded; then the lead storm found them again. This time, the slugs snapped in the region of the gas tank. They chattered with an appalling noise.

Again Doc maneuvered clear.

"Holy cowl" Renny thundered. "That last burst opened the fuel tank!"

An instant later, colorless gasoline washed over the floorboards. It reeked in the cabin.

The other pilot had been more fortunate than he knew. The fuel tank of the gyro was coated thickly with a fire-proofing and extinguishing compound -- it was practically impossible for it to be fired by incendiary bullets. A burst must have struck, opening a leak through the spongy protective coating.

A stark grimness had settled on the faces of Doc's men. The sky brawl had progressed to a point where chivalry had somewhat lost its appeal.

The gyro flung in alongside the enemy ship. They made a discovery which was nothing if not interesting.

"Hey!" Monk howled. "The girl ain't flying that bus!"

THE STEEL-HAIRED GIRL was lashed in one of the bucket seats in the pilot's c.o.c.kpit. They could see that now, because she was pitching about madly, and apparently was on the point of freeing herself.

"I knew she was all right," Monk chortled.

The actual pilot of the other plane was a squat fellow in a tan blazer. Due to the shadows inside the plane, they could not tell much about him.

"He ducked out of sight and flew blind whenever he was close to us!" Monk decided, his usually small voice a great yell. "That's why we couldn't see him!"

The other pilot discovered that the girl had loosened her bindings. He flung himself toward her. Using the machine gun, he clubbed at the girl.

The young woman threw herself from under the descending weapon, then clutched its fluted barrel with both hands.

Pitching about in the fight that followed, one or the other disturbed the controls. The plane reeled over on a wing tip, motor bawling.

The squat pilot saw his danger. He released the steel' haired girl. Wildly, he battled the controls. But there was insufficient time.

The girl took one look at the water, then covered her head with her hands to break the force of the crash.

A wing tip knifed the water first. The wing crumpled. The plane hit the water and jumped end over end.

The other wing left the fuselage as if sliced off by an invisible razor. The battered hulk wallowed a few yards and came to a stop. It began to sink.

DOC SAVAGE drove the gyro toward the wreck. The windmill plane could land with equal facility on earth or water. Doc, however, did not intend to land. He hovered over the wrecked and sinking plane, the water some ten feet below. He turned the controls over to big-fisted Renny.