Doc Savage - The Monsters Part 4

"We had the televisor from your office to the bas.e.m.e.nt garage turned on while we were working on a car," Monk said. "We thought you might want us or something. It was lucky we did. We saw the killing, and got a good look at the guy who did it. We caught sight of him as he left the building."

Doc nodded. "I figured you would have the televisor-phone turned on."

Monk was puzzled. He scratched his k.n.o.b of a head and eyed the giant bronze man curiously. "Wonder why that guy.was killed," he offered.

"To shut his mouth, obviously," Doc Savage replied. "The killer may have been a hired slayer. That's why I allowed him to escape -- so you fellows could trail him to the man who hired him, if any."

Monk nodded as he waddled along. His legs were so bowed that his gait was grotesque; he seemed momentarily on the verge of taking to all fours.

"Any idea what's behind it?" "Remember the mysterious advertis.e.m.e.nts which have been appearing in newspapers recently?" Doc queried.

"You mean that 'Beware the Monsters!' stuff?"

"That's it. Those ads were mailed to newspapers all over the country. They were postmarked, every one of them, as being mailed from Trapper Lake, Michigan."

MONK SQUINTED his small eyes. He had known of the "monster" advertis.e.m.e.nts, but had not been aware that they had been mailed from Trapper Lake. Doc, he realized, had unearthed this fact in the course of his usual checking on things which 'night be of sinister nature.

"Why'd the murdered man want to see you, Doc?"

"Possibly concerning the mysterious death of a trapper named Bruno Hen, near Trapper Lake," Doc replied. "He had a clipping concerning the Bruno Hen death in his pocket."

"What about Bruno Hen's death?"

"'He perished, according to the report of the local officers, in a mysterious tornado which struck on a moonlight night, and did nothing but demolish Bruno Hen's shack and tear a path to the nearby lake."

"Queer tornado!" Monk grunted.

"A neighbor claimed there was no tornado. His name was Carl MacBride -- the man who was killed at our office door."

"Huh! If not a tornado, what did he claim it was?"

"The clipping didn't say."

Monk squinted ahead. His small eyes in repose were nearly invisible so deeply were they sunk in their pits of gristle.

Hill Road at this point was seldom traveled, due probably to the fact that its macadam surface was uncomfortably roughened by the weather. Untended brush made a wall on either side.

"That shyster lawyer, Ham, should be waiting along here somewhere," Monk declared, his small voice pitched even lower than usual.

The gentleman to whom Monk referred in such undignified terms promptly stepped out of the brush. He was Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, one of the most astute lawyers ever to be graduated from Harvard.

"You homely missing link!" Ham whispered irately at Monk. "One of these days I'm going to skin you and make a red fur rug!"

Ham was slender, slim-waisted, quick-moving. His clothing was absolute sartorial perfection. He was a tailor's dream.

In his right hand Ham carried a black cane. Ham was rarely seen without this.

The unlovely Monk turned an innocent look on the enraged Ham.

"Always threatenin' me!" he complained in low tones. "What's on your mind now?" Ham shook his cane in the air and turned purple. He was not, however, making undue noise with his dramatics.

"You left that infernal pig behind and had him follow me around!"

Monk seemed grieved.

"Habeas Corpus must be takin' a fancy to you," he groaned. "I never thought that pig would stoop so low as to a.s.sociate with a shyster lawyer."

At this point, Habeas Corpus walked out of the brush. A more astounding-looking specimen of the pig family than Habeas would be difficult to find. The pig was under-sized, razor-backed. He had the legs of a dog and ears so large as to resemble wings.

Habeas eyed the dapper Ham, emitted a friendly grunt and ambled toward the lawyer. Ham launched a spiteful toe at the pig. In dodging this, Habeas displayed an agility as surprising as his appearance.

Habeas was Monk's pet. The homely chemist had trained the pig until the porker seemed to possess a near-human intelligence.

Doc, low-voiced, interrupted what amounted to a perpetual quarrel. "Where's the killer, Ham?" he asked.

"He went into a funny-looking place over the hill." Doc noted the appellation, "funny-looking." Both Monk and Ham had used it.

"What do you mean -- funny-looking?"

Ham, like many orators, had a habit of making gestures when he spoke. He gestured now, although his words were whispered.

"We're in the country," he said. "There's no reason for anybody having a high wall around his place. But there's one around this joint. It's at least forty feet high."

"Forty!"

"Every inch of that." Monk entered the conversation with his small voice. "I ask you, Doc -- what does any one want with a forty-foot wall out here in the country?"

"I walked around the place," Ham said, scowling at Habeas Corpus. "There's only one entrance. That's secured by the strongest steel gate I have ever seen."

Doc Savage did not comment on the somewhat startling revelations. He went forward.

Monk and Ham trailed him. They exchanged throat-cutting looks. Actually, either of them would have sacrificed his life for the safety of the other, should necessity for such an act materialize.

The pig, flopping big ears at Monk's heels, grunted contentedly.

"Put on the m.u.f.fler, Habeas," Monk directed.

Obediently, the pig fell silent.

Chapter 7. THE ELECTRIFIED NETAS.

DOC and his two aids topped the hill, the mysterious wall came into view.

"Some joint, eh?" Ham suggested.

The wall was so high as to conceal whatever lay behind it. A somber barrier of gray, it was altogether forbidding.

"Concrete," Ham offered softly.

They left the road. The brush was high: it grew thickly. They eased through the leafy maze with little sound, and came to the gate in the wall -- the only gap, according to Monk and Ham.

This gate was notable for its size, being fully fifteen feet Wide and equally as high.

Monk breathed, "Look at the size of the bars."

Monk possessed furry wrists almost twice as thick as those of an ordinary man. The gate bars were of a diameter about equal to his wrists. The gigantic gate was supported by a multiple array of ponderous hinges. Apparently, it opened and closed through the medium of machinery.

"They wouldn't need bars a fraction of that size to hold elephants," Ham said. He ran a finger thoughtfully up and down the glistening black length of his cane.

Doc Savage listened for a time, but detected no sound. He moved along the wall, eyes ranging its towering height. When he had circled the place completely, he had proven Monk and Ham's declaration that there was only one entrance.

The wall did not enclose much of an area.

Doc Savage withdrew with his two men to a point remote from the gate of giant bars.

From within his clothing the bronze man produced a collapsible metal grapple hook. To the shank of this was secured a long silk cord. He sprung the book open, then tossed it upward expertly. The grapple fastened itself somewhere on the opposite side of the wall.

Doc mounted the thin cord with an amazing ease and speed.

Nearing the crest, he slackened his pace. From a pocket came a tiny periscopic device. This instrument he had put to frequent use in the past. Its barrel was little larger than a match; the average eye would fail to detect its projecting above the wall. Its tiny lenses were finely ground; its functioning was almost equal to that of a larger instrument.

Doc jutted the periscope above the wail, not showing himself.

What he saw brought forth the weird trilling note which was characteristic of the bronze man.

He swung atop the wall. Crouching there, he gestured to Monk and Ham, directing them to ascend the cord.

Monk grasped the thin thread. The hairy chemist had bent copper pennies quite easily for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the children. Great as was his strength, however, he could barely cope with the task of mounting the silk thread -- a feat which Doc had accomplished with ease. Monk was perspiring prodigiously from the effort when he reached the top.

Monk had b.u.t.toned the pig, Habeas Corpus, inside his coat. Ham struggled valiantly to mount the silk line. But his most Herculean efforts got him less than ten feet from the ground. His hands became sweated and he slipped back.

Doc made gestures indicating that the lawyer should tie the cord under his arms. This done, Doc hauled him upward.

The three men surveyed the enclosure.

"For the love of mud!" Monk gulped. "What kind of place is this, anyway?"

STRETCHED OVER the walled area was a huge, crisscrossed net of copper cables. The cables were nearly three inches in thickness. Their mesh measured nearly a yard.

"I don't 'understand this!" Ham muttered. The lawyer had retained a grip on his cane as he was hauled up: Now he gave the cane handle a twist, and withdrew a long, slender blade of steel.

Ham's innocent-looking black stick was a sword cane.

"Notice that the cables are insulated from each other," Doc said.

These insulators were substantial affairs of a brown dielectric composition.

"The cables are built to carry a high-voltage electric current," Monk decided.

"Don't touch them," Doc warned. "They may be charged."

"What gets me, is the solidness of the construction," Ham mused.

From the gigantic net, they dropped their attention to what lay below.

Beneath the net stood a house of native stone. It was vast; undoubtedly old. Its state of repair was good.

It was two stories in height, the roof top aimost reaching the thick cables.

"I'll bet that place has fifty or sixty rooms," Monk muttered, and held Habeas by an ear to keep him away from the insulated copper hawsers.

Untended shrubbery surrounded the house. It was carelessly crushed down at some points. Nowhere was there sign of life.

"We make swell targets up here," Ham said grimly.

The grapple had hooked on the wall lip. Dangling it by the silk cord, which was not a conductor of electricity, Doc used the hook to short-circuit two of the crisscrossing cables.

There was a crackle and a blue-hot spark. The big net was electrified!

"Enough of a current to kill a man, if you ask me!" Monk grunted.

"You fellows keep an eye on the place," Doc suggested. Monk and Ham nodded. From their clothing they drew weapons which resembled slightly oversize automatic pistols. They were fitted with drum magazines, and the mechanism looked somewhat intricate.

These were superfiring machine guns perfected by Doc. Their rate of fire was so rapid that their roar was like the hoa.r.s.e song of a gigantic ba.s.s fiddle. In addition, the slugs which they discharged did not produce fatal wounds, being "mercy bullets" charged with a drug which brought only unconsciousness. Doc Savage calculated briefly, then sprang outward upon the spreading copper net. He went forward in a series of agile leaps, maintaining perfect balance.

His position was dangerous. Should he touch two of the metal hawsers simultaneously, death by electrocution would be almost certain. He was safe as long as he poised on only one conductor at a time, just as a bird can perch, unharmed, on a high tension power line.

Soon he was over the house roof. The net mesh was amply large to permit him to drop through. He did so, executing the move with a batlike quietness. The roof shingles were very old.

The bronze man listened for a time. His ears, attuned to the keenness of a wild animal's, detected vague stirrings. There was also an odor -- a beasty odor.

Doc worked down the steep slope of the roof. From eaves to ground was an appalling drop. He took it with the casual ease of a great, tawny cat. Leaves fluttered slightly as he landed in the shrubbery.

Doc's two men still crouched on the wall, alert. Monk shook his small head, indicating he had seen no danger astir.

The shrubbery, unclipped for months, was over Doc's head at points.

From the wall crest, Monk howled, '"Look -- "

A rifle sounded from a window of the house.

To his remarkable vision, developed and kept sharp by scientific methods, Doc owed his life. He saw the rifle barrel even before Monk perceived it and started his yell of warning.