Doc Savage - The Pink Lady Part 9

Chet Farmer sauntered down the street with an a.s.sumed air of idleness. He stopped and looked in show windows, stood and gazed at the crowd, at the street. There was not much traffic on the streets, butplenty of pedestrian movement on the sidewalks, for it was the hour when the big buildings in the neighborhood had emptied for lunch.

The man in the parked car was young, lean, and was making a business of reading a book. Eventually, he noticed Chet Farmer. Chet sauntered over.

"Kind of taken root here, ain't you?" Chet asked.

The young man did not answer for a while.

"What's it to you?" he asked finally.

"Got any good reason for hanging around the neighborhood?" Chet demanded.

"If I had a reason, it would be my own. I might want to keep it private."

Chet scowled so elaborately that Renny, watching from up the street, could see the grimace.

He said, "Wouldn't be watching Doc Savage's place, would you?"

The young man stared at him wordlessly.

Chet added, "You wait here, buddy. I'm gonna call Savage down. He'll want to talk to you."

When Chet had moved away and entered a building, the young man lost no time whatever in leaving the curb. That was as planned. Chet dashed out on to the sidewalk, discovered Renny's car approaching, and-he first threw a glance northward to make sure their quarry's vehicle had turned a corner and was out of sight-climbed in with the big-fisted engineer.

Instantly, Renny increased speed. He took the corner, and discovered their objective ahead. The young man's car-the machine was a low-priced sedan-was rolling rapidly, but observing speed limits.

Renny said, "Scootch down in the seat. Don't let him see you if he looks back."

Renny himself put on large colored gla.s.ses, a phony mustache which would not stand close examination but that was effective from a distance.

He picked up the radio microphone and switched on the apparatus.

"Johnny?" he asked.

"I'll be superamalgamated," Johnny remarked. "It seems to be working."

We are going north on Park Avenue," Renny said.

THEY went north on Park and north on other streets, then east over a long bridge and east on a road for a long time. There was steadily roaring traffic on the road. Later there was no traffic at all after they turned off a highway onto a side road, then into a lane that was not paved, but sandy and rough and surrounded by uninhabited waste.

Renny drove carefully. He heard the car ahead stop. It was over a hill. He halted his own machine, got out, and saw the sedan they had been following. It stood in the lane. The young man was walking away, pushing his way through brush up a small hill.Johnny arrived, coasting down a hill so that his machine made little noise. He got out. Their surroundings puzzled him, so that he used small words.

"What made him come out here?" he pondered. "There's nothing in this neck of the woods."

Chet Farmer laughed. There was an unpleasant quality to his laugh.

He said, "That's what you think!"

"Eh?" Johnny stared at him.

Renny also peered at Chet Farmer. "Holy cow!" said the big-fisted engineer. "What's happened to you?"

Chet Farmer said, "It ain't me that it's happening to." He stared at them steadily. He seemed to be waiting for something. Finally, in exasperation, he shouted, "Come on! What are you waiting on! What's holding you?"

A bush shook on the right of the path, and another shook on the left. A man came from behind each bush. One man was younger than the other, and one was more shabby than the other, but their guns were alike. They did not say anything, although one did c.o.c.k his gun noisily.

Chet Farmer said, "Renny, Johnny-take a piece of advice. Don't try anything. I told them about the bulletproof undergarments you wear. They've got orders to shoot at heads."

The young man they had trailed to the spot came back. He was holding a gun, a flat blue one of the army type.

"Part of the time I wasn't sure they were following me," he said.

"They're smooth." Chet Farmer showed his teeth. "They, and that boss of theirs, are the slickest numbers I've ever seen. They're worse than lightning for giving no sign of where they're gonna strike next."

Renny found his voice. Renny had a very big voice, a voice that was likened frequently to a large animal in a deep cave.

"What's this?" he rumbled.

"It's what it looks like," Chet Farmer said.

"I mean-"

"I know what you mean. Shut up."

THEY were searched. Then they were stripped. The young man in the sedan had four pairs of coveralls thoughtfully provided for the purpose, and he brought these. Chet Farmer sorted out the two biggest and longest suits, and eyed the other two suits disgustedly.

"I figured," he said, "that all four of you would come on this wild-goose chase when I staged it." He balled up the two suits and tossed them back to the young man. "Here, keep these. We'll get Monk and Ham later."

Chet Farmer then shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked back and forth nervously on the sand until Renny and Johnny had donned the coveralls, and the clothing they had been wearing had, upon beingsearched, disgorged nothing that proved to be of interest.

Chet came over and punched Renny in the chest with a forefinger. It was a hard brown forefinger, purposeful.

"We'll all be a lot happier in the end," Chet said, "if you two guys will bust loose and tell me what you know."

"About what?"

"About Lada Harland and her brother. About the pink people. About what's behind it."

Renny scowled. "We don't know anything."

Chet Farmer made a clucking noise of disapproval and said, "I don't believe you understand my position in this."

Renny snorted. "Monk had your position pegged from the first. You're a crook."

Chet grinned thinly. "Not from the first, I wasn't. At first, I was just a smart boy Bodine called in when he was hiring his gang. We couldn't get together, Bodine and I. He seemed to think I was crazy to want a fifty-fifty split. He said so, and he said some other things." Chet Farmer showed his teeth in a way that was completely nasty. "He said things that'll cost him all of it."

"All of what?" Renny asked.

Chet leered at him. "d.a.m.ned innocent, aren't you?"

"You got an exaggerated idea of how much we found out," Renny said.

Chet shrugged. "We'll see. We'll see."

Renny was puzzled.

"Just why," asked the big-fisted engineer, "did you join up with us? You knew that would be dangerous."

Chet cursed. "If that d.a.m.ned Bodine had told me the story, I wouldn't have," he snarled. "But Bodine was cunning. He always has been, the two-faced fraud. He told me he had a gag where there was millions to be made, but he let it go at that. I was trailing his men when they caught that girl in the Hotel Troy. I hung around there. Your gang turned up. Thinks I-this Savage has the reputation of getting to the bottom of things fast. I'll just stick around."

Thinking of his difficulties seemed to make him more and more angry. Suddenly his right hand, striking like a fast snake, made a loud smack of a sound against Renny's cheek, and he snarled. "Now you're claiming you don't know-"

Renny hit him. Renny's blow was as quick, but it was louder, heavier. There was as much difference between the blows as between the smack of a fly swatter and the thump of a sledge on a circus-tent stake. Chet Farmer fell sidewise, burying his arms half to the elbows in the sand and not moving afterward.

The three young men with the guns stared at Chet Farmer.

Renny said, "You better see if I broke his neck.""You better hope you broke his neck," one of the young men said. "Because when he comes out of it, if he does, he won't be happy."

THEY produced ropes, and bound the arms of Renny and Johnny. Renny had done all the talking; Johnny had said almost nothing. Neither of them looked at all pleased with the situation.

One of the young men waggled his gun. "Walk," he said. "We'll show you where."

There was a sand dune, one on which a great deal of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s grew. Beyond, a great distance away, the sea could be heard. The waves were coming in, one at a time, and each was falling apart on a beach with a sound somewhat like the one made when a foot is jammed down in a basket of wastepaper.

Then there was a salt-water creek, marshy and not pleasant of odor. And a boat. A scaly old remains of a thirty-foot sloop with a decked-over cabin and a centerboard.

Renny stared at their captors. "Is Doc Savage really dead?" he asked.

One of the young men nodded. "Bodine thinks so. We hope so."

"How do you know?"

The young men looked at each other questioningly. Chet Farmer was still unconscious from Renny's blow. Finally one of the young men shrugged. He said, "It might soften them up if they know the truth."

Another nodded. He said, "You tell 'em."

The informant faced Renny and Johnny. "It's this way: There really was a guy watching your place. Chet really found him, like he said he did-but he grabbed the guy, called us, and we put on the screws. And he learned-well, the whole story."

Renny's jaw sagged. "And this genuine eavesdropper said Doc Savage had been killed?"

The other grinned. "You can ask him for yourself."

Renny and Johnny were boosted aboard the old sloop, not without considerable difficulty. The cabin was tiny, and damp bilge sc.u.m coated the sides to half their height. The odor was nauseating.

The man in the cabin might have been tall or short-it was hard to tell because of his agony-contorted posture-but he was not fat. His color was uncertain, too. Now he was mostly the color of dried blood.

When Renny sank down at his side, the man opened the one eye that he could open. "Yeah?" he said thickly.

"Is Doc Savage dead?" Renny asked. His voice, which he tried to keep firm, was a strangled rumble.

The nod of the man who had been beaten was listless. "Drowned," he said. "They blew his body to pieces with grenades. He was in the water."

He closed his eye again.

Outside, on the deck of the little boat, there was an angry outburst, weak at first, then gathering strength and utter rage and complete hate. It was Chet Farmer. He had regained consciousness."Where's Renny and Johnny?" he snarled.

"Down in the cabin."

"Give me a knife, somebody," Chet Farmer said with awful purpose. "I'm gonna fix their clocks!"

Chapter IX. THE TOOLS.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ANDREW BLODGETT MONK MAYFAIR, when the telephone rang in Doc Savage's skysc.r.a.per headquarters, made a frantic grab at the instrument and bellowed, "h.e.l.lo!

h.e.l.lo!" Then his face settled into an intent expression and he said, "Yeah . . . Is that so? . . . Where was that? . . . Hey, wait-was it empty?" The rest of his conversation consisted of yesses and noes.

Ham Brooks was in the adjoining library, scratching his head over the intricate text of a scientific tome having to do with the science of color, and he heard Monk's low-voiced commentary over the telephone, and sensed a growing excitement in it.

Ham reached the door just as Monk was hanging up.

"Who was it?" Ham demanded.

"The State police," Monk said. "They've found Doc's car-the one we left at my shack on the Hudson River where we let that gang take the pink man away from us. Doc was probably using that car."

"Where is it?"

Monk gave the location. Ham consulted a map of the metropolitan vicinity, then raced for the door.

"Probably take us about twenty minutes to get there," he said.

He was wrong-it took thirty-seven minutes, and it would have taken longer if their car had not been equipped with red auxiliary lights and a police siren with a caterwauling outcry that frightened all traffic out of their path.

The State police had not moved the car. It was in the brush where Doc Savage had left it.

"Kid hunting rabbits found it," an officer explained.

Monk and Ham went over the machine, but found nothing that indicated what had become of the bronze man. Ham examined the weeds and brush between car and road.