Doc Savage - The Monsters Part 7

"Sure. Right beside me."

The men named were the other three members of Doc's group. The bronze man issued rapid orders to the men.

"I want to locate a large van-bodied truck," he said. "It's painted red."

"There's only about a thousand red vans in New York," said the lion-voiced "Renny."

"Use the planes," Doc directed. "Fly over Hill Road, and over the Hudson Turnpike. Look for red vans, large ones. When you find them, size them up with ultra-violet light and fluoroscopic spectacles."

"I get you," said Renny.

Doc switched off the apparatus and returned to the spot where he had left Monk and Ham.

Great clouds of smoke were climbing above the high concrete wall. Doc found the pleasantly ugly chemist and the sword-cane-carrying lawyer eying plump Griswold Rock.

The fat man was holding his head. From time to time, his fingers explored in his hair.

"Has he talked?" Doc asked, indicating Griswold Rock.

Ham shook his head.

"They made me drink something," Griswold Rock muttered. "That was right after they saw you fellows on the wall. I no more than drank the stuff, then I pa.s.sed out."

"Where were you when that happened?"

"Upstairs."

Monk nodded, as if a point had been clarified. "They carried you down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and Habeas Corpus followed. That explains how Habeas got locked up with you." "I don't remember what happened," Griswold Rock mumbled.

Monk waved a hand at the concrete-walled enclosure, from which smoke poured as from a t.i.tanic chimney.

"Is that your place?" he asked.

The fat man nodded gloomily. "Yep. But it isn't like it used to be. They made me build the wall."

"Made you?" Ham asked.

"Exactly," said Griswold Rock. "I've been held a prisoner for almost a year. To preserve my life, I had to do what I was told."

"Who were your captors?"

"Pere Teston was the head of the gang."

"Pere Teston?"

"He's a former employee of my railroad," explained the fat man. "He worked in a Michigan division point.

He was discharged because he failed to show much interest in his work."

GRISWOLD ROCK poked a soft arm angrily at concrete wall and the gate of metal bars.

"They made me transact all my business by letter or telegraph, and sometimes by telephone. One of stood at my side with a gun," he grated.

"You don't know the purpose of the wall and the electrified net of copper cables?" Doc asked.

"No. They made me buy motor-generators to electrify the net. I don't know why."

"Ever see any kind of a monster around?"

"Monster!" muttered Griswold Rock. He shuddered. "Maybe that explains the sounds I occasionally heard."

"What sort of noises?"

"It's hard to describe them. Pere Teston kept me in a windowless room in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but sometimes I could hear things walking about. Huge things!"

"Ever hear anything about advertis.e.m.e.nts in newspapers?"

Griswold Rock nodded vehemently. "Yes -- I did. They were inserting ads in every paper in the country.

I don't know what kind -- or why."

"Was Pere Teston a slender man with freckles and a mustache?" Doc asked.

The plump railroad magnate shook his head violently.

"No. Pere Teston is a shriveled runt. The skin on his face is white, dead-looking. Once you see him, you'll never forget his skin"'

The fire had progressed rapidly. A house wall collapsed, slapping a great cloud of sparks above the concrete enclosure. In the distance a fire engine moaned. Some one had evidently telephoned an alarm tothe nearest suburban station.

Doc Savage went to the gate. From the recesses of his clothing came an unbreakable tube. The powder this contained, he sprinkled upon the gate bars. Finger prints became visible.

Doc Savage made no effort to photograph them. He merely studied them, fixing the whorls indelibly in his mind. Months could elapse before the bronze man glimpsed like prints, yet he would still recall their configuration, to such retentiveness had he attuned his memory.

Upon one particular set of prints, Doc bestowed a great deal of attention. Then he joined the others.

Griswold Rock was saying, "I am not a brave man. They kept me terrified."

"Didn't you make an effort to escape?" Monk queried.

The fat man nodded. "Oh, yes -- several times. But I do not seem to be very ingenious. My attempts always failed. Only yesterday, I managed to get as far as the gate. I'd have gotten away, too, I believe, but the mechanical fastener defied me. I could not discover how it operated, although I fumbled all over the gate."

Doc Savage reached out abruptly and grasped Griswold Rock's fat wrist. He turned the hands palm up so as to inspect the finger tips. His experienced eye appraised the whorls and rings.

"You left your finger prints on the gate," he said dryly.

Griswold Rock raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"I just found the prints," Doc explained "We'd better clear out of here now. Hear that fire apparatus?"

Griswold Rock was eying Doc. He emitted a loud e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"I know who you are!" he exclaimed. "You're Doc Savage, the fellow who has become so famous as a trouble-buster."

Doc waved the party in the direction of the car. Doc entered his roadster. Monk, Ham, and Griswold Rock and the pig got in the other car.

With its siren moaning, the fire engine approached on Hilt Road.

Doc's party took the opposite direction. They got away without being seen, thereby avoiding the necessity of answering the questions of curious firemen.

NOR WAS the presence of Doc Savage ever connected with the mysterious walled mansion which the fire fighters found aflame. Never afterward in public did Doc mention the place. He told no one, outside of his five aids and the others immediately concerned, of what had occurred at the fantastic spot. He did not tell that he had discovered the enclosure to be a prison for the retention of some species of fantastic monster.

The monster angle, however, was unearthed by an aggressive newspaper reporter who turned up on the scene. This news hawk possessed an imagination. He was employed by a tabloid which was not averse to coloring its news with a little invention.

This journalist of wit, after studying the high concrete enclosure with its over-flung net of copper cables, played havoc with the speed laws in getting to the nearest telephone. The next edition of his paper appeared with tremendous black headlines. LAIR OF MONSTERS FOUND! MYSTERY MANSE GOES UP IN FLAMES.

The story below was vague as to detail, but it made interesting reading. It stated that the property was owned by a railroad man named Griswold Rock, and added further that Griswold Rock had not been in evidence at his New York club during recent months.

It suggested that the police conduct a search for Griswold Rock; and, climaxing the yarn, was a suggestion that the mysterious "monster" advertis.e.m.e.nts, which had been appearing in newspapers throughout the United States, were connected with the unusual establishment which had been found in flames.

It happened that this tabloid newspaper was noted for the scatter-brained quality of the reports it published, and as a consequence, its deductions were not taken seriously.

Some of the more sedate metropolitan journals dispatched reporters to the fire, and these later turned in stories which were carried on inside pages in small type.

To the very fact that the tabloid newspaper first connected the mystery mansion with the "monster"

advertis.e.m.e.nts, could be attributed the small amount of real notice which the affair received. n.o.body took the tabloid seriously.

Since the newspapers never connected the walled estate of Griswold Rock with the hideous menace of the monsters which was soon to cast its grisly spell over the cities of the United States, they remained blissfully unaware that, in turning up their noses at the flamboyant tabloid, they had pa.s.sed up what might easily have been the front-page story of all time.

Furthermore, the tabloid itself failed to profit as much as it might have, for its reporter lacked the detective ability to follow up the possibilities which his imagination had suggested; or maybe the reporter did not believe what he wrote. He might merely have come uncannily near the truth in conjuring an interesting yarn out of his fertile brain.

At any rate, no one connected Doc Savage with the fire, least of all the fire fighters who arrived too late to witness the bronze's man departure. While they were playing the first streams from their chemical extinguishers on the blaze, Doc Savage rolled along the deserted road perhaps two miles distant.

Chapter 11. THE ULTRA-VIOLET TRAIL.

DOC SAVAGE switched on the radio telephone. There came immediately from the loud-speaker the sound of static and, intermingling with these cracklings, a many-throated drone.

The droning, sent from other transmitters, was the sound of plane motors.

"You fellows sighted anything?" Doc asked.

Out of the loud-speaker came a well-modulated, cultured voice. This belonged to "Johnny," who was known to his learned a.s.sociates as William Harper Littlejohn. He had once been the head of the natural science research department of a famous university.

"No," said Johnny. "Not a sign of them yet."

Doc lifted his gaze. Flying low and to the southward, he could see a plane.

"Roll your bus, Johnny," he suggested. The distant ship spun over slowly in the sky.

"0. K.," Doc said. "I've got you spotted."

The bronze man halted his roadster. Monk was driving the other machine. The pig, Habeas Corpus, was perched on his lap. He drew to a stop alongside Doc's car. The three men and the pig piled out.

For the benefit of Griswold Rock, and for his men, who had not heard the entire story, Doc Savage gave a brief synopsis of all that had occurred. While doing this, he spoke close to the microphone which fed the radio telephone transmitter, so that his men in the distant plane would get the story clearly.

Monk showed particular interest in the newspaper clipping concerning the death of the half-breed woodsman, Bruno Hen.

"Tornado -- nothing!" he snorted. "I'll bet it was the monsters -- whatever they are -- that wrecked the cabin."

Griswold Rock shuddered violently. "The more I think of my last months, the more terrible they become,"

he moaned. "My captors forced me to sign so much stuff that they wouldn't let me read!"

Doc Savage studied Griswold Rock. The plump fellow certainly had not taken much exercise recently.

He was carrying some of the flabbiest fat the bronze man had ever seen.

"The Timberland is the name of your railroad, isn't it?" Doc asked.

Griswold Rock's fat jowls went through a convulsion which was evidently a nod. "That is right."

"And you direct the destinies of the railroad absolutely?"

"Yes. I am not only president, but I also own much of the stock -- that is, providing I didn't sign it away with some of those papers they made me put my John Henry on without reading."

"Is the town of Trapper Lake on the Timberland Line?"

"We have a station there. Not a very profitable one."

THE SOUND of the plane became audible in the sky to the east; a moment later the ship appeared. The craft was of a type as yet rarely seen in the air lanes. Its shape bore faint resemblance to the popular autogyro. Actually, it was a true gyro, another product of Doc fabulous inventive skill. In making a take-off, the ship was capable of rising vertically.

The ship became stationary less than fifty feet above their heads. The door of the closed c.o.c.kpit opened; a hand appeared.

It was an enormous hand -- fully a quart of bone and gristle encased in a skin which resembled rhinoceros hide. The owner of the big hand thrust his head out. He had a long, horselike face which bore an expression of utter gloom.

With his other hand, he threw a lever which turned the motor exhaust into a m.u.f.fler. The engine a.s.sumed a surprising quietness.

"We ain't having any luck yet," he called. His voice resembled the roaring of a disturbed lion.

This was Renny -- Colonel John Renwick. The engineering profession used his name in terms of highest respect. His engineering feats had given him a world-wide reputation and earned him a fortune. Renny permitted himself only one form of amus.e.m.e.nt. When the opportunity offered, he liked to demonstrate his ability to knock the panel out of the strongest wooden door with one blow of his enormous fists.

"Long Tom is further west," Renny advised. "Guess you saw Johnny's bus."