Doc Savage - The Pure Evil Part 10

Munroe conferred with his two a.s.sociates. Then wanted to know the answer to a question. "But what is the idea of soaking us such a big fee?"

"You three have been spending your money on a completely worthless cause-ghost-laying," Doc told them. "You haven't done much, probably, except get this mess stirred up. So it's not out of order for you to donate to a needy cause for a change."

They put their heads together again, and came up with, "All right, Savage. It's a deal."

J. C. Ziff complained loudly a moment later, "Dammit! It strikes me we just made a deal to donate twenty thousand to get Savage to do something he was already doing."

"That," Doc said, "is about it. Good evening, gentlemen."

Chapter X.

HE was a big man with a lonely face, and both these features were extreme. Actually, he was near seven feet and actually he could have been attending a perpetual funeral. He dressed well, but had used his clothes hard. He had dark sad eyes and good teeth-you couldn't tell which were the ones that had been knocked out in the past. His sadness had a permanent quality, ingrained, malingering, if one was to believe his appearance. The latter was a little deceitful. He looked saddest when best pleased with what the world was doing to him, or the other way around.

He had stood behind the hotel room door when Doc came in. Now he closed the door, and looked down at the table-lamp in his hand. Just the heavy iron stem and base of the lamp. It turned a handspring in his palm, and looked small there, not because it was a small lamp, but because his hand was big out of all proportion even to a man nearly seven feet from the floor and made of gristle and ox bones.

"Holy cow!" he complained. "Wondered if you'd ever show up."

Things in the room seemed to shake a little when his voice went rumbling past.

Besides having size, unnatural fists, that voice, and a sadness you couldn't believe, he was: One of the men rated highest in the world as a civil engineer. A Doc Savage aide. Named Colonel John Renwick.

And called Renny.

"You could have used pocket radio," Doc. said.

"Afraid to," Renny said.

Doc looked as if he believed this, although feeling that Renny was afraid of nothing.

"Why?"

"Those guys do a little with U.H.F. wavelengths themselves," Renny explained. "They got a pretty good lab. I had a peek at it. I know a couple of magicians who would like to have it."

Doc looked at Renny sharply. "That's what it is?"

"Uh-huh."

"You're sure? Nothing there for genuine research into the supernatural, so-called?"

Renny laughed. Out of his sourly sad countenance, the mirth was preposterous. "You haven't been believing any of that stuff?"

Doc shook his head. "They've put on some life-like demonstrations, is all."

"Sure. They got the tools to make the equipment to do it with, and the know-how."

Doc said, "Suppose you rough in the whole story of your part?"

Renny nodded. "I'll make it short and sweet. I saw the deal that made Morand vanish in the air terminal in New York-and slick doings that, too. . . . Well, after that, they didn't stick around. They were afraid of you, I guess. Anyway, they hauled their freight out of there and to the other airport, where they got a plane to Washington, and changed to another airliner bound here."

"With you trailing them?"

"Just like a spirit." Renny grinned. "No trouble. They didn't even come close to noticing me.""And when you got here?"

"They holed up p.r.o.nto. Lit out for the laboratory or workshop or whatever you call it where they have been making this stuff they've used."

"What was the purpose of that?"

"A conference."

"At which they discussed?"

"You, mostly," Renny explained. "They know what they're up against now, those babies. They're not dumb, and they haven't any scruples. . . . It was to keep the girl from reaching you that they tried to murder her on the plane. But that didn't work, and you're in it, and they're sweating ice-water."

"You picked up a lot."

"I planted a microphone in their joint, and listened."

"Oh. That's great going, Renny. . . . Any idea why they killed the girl's brother?"

"I got that."

"What."

"The kid was a weak character. They didn't trust him to keep his lip b.u.t.toned."

Doc shook his head regretfully. "So he was working for them. . . . I won't enjoy telling his sister that.

She's all right, the sister is."

"Well, the brother was probably just weak," Renny said. "They'd hired him to put on the act at the radar scope. Act scared. Act as if he'd seen a devil in the scope. Go to a church for safety."

"And the idea of that?"

"To sell Gibble the notion that there was really a penetralia mentis, as Morand called it, loose and raising cain."

"Young Dan Adams put the act across rather well, I gathered."

Renny nodded. "And then they knocked him off. Did it so as to enhance their scheme's effectiveness. . . .

That was a vicious thing. But they didn't dare trust young Adams. He'd already spilled something of the plan to a friend."

"Dan had talked to the wire-chief, Cooper?" Doc demanded.

"That's the one. Cooper. And Cooper had tried to argue Dan out of staging his act. Cooper was going to throw a monkey-wrench in the works."

"They should have bought Cooper."

"I think they tried it," Renny said. "And Cooper wouldn't buy. Cooper was upset. He thought a lot of the radar station and the work they were doing there, and he didn't want it dirtied up with crooked horseplay. Anyway, Cooper cut the moving-picture camera monitor in on the scope Dan was going to pull his trick with, and he got the dope on Dan-proof Dan hadn't seen anything in the scope. Coopertook the film home with him for safekeeping. But I think they got it and burned it, when they killed Cooper."

"Yes, they burned it."

"They're rough, those guys. They're meaner than these penetralia mentis they've cooked up with imagination and some clever gadgeteering."

"And you have them spotted?" Doc asked grimly.

"Nailed down."

Doc strode to an a.s.sortment of metal equipment cases-he'd brought these along from New York in the plane, and had them delivered from the airport to this room which he'd reserved in advance, last night, by phone-and got out what stuff he thought he'd need. His metallic features were set in flat planes of anger and determination. He said, "We'd better take those fellows at once. They're too vicious to take chances with. And we have the general picture now."

"That's what I think," Renny agreed. "Of course, we haven't anything but circ.u.mstantial evidence against them, which isn't good."

Doc said coldly, "The lie detector and truth serum will loosen them up. We'll work on them ourselves, and be sure we have the goods on them before we turn them over to the police."

"Monk and Ham might come in handy."

Doc said, "I sent them out to keep an eye on Miss Adams. We'll pick them up."

They left the room, and there was a man with a dufflebag in the hall. The dufflebag was canvas and to be fastened with a zipper, but the zipper wasn't closed, so that both his hands went in easily. He showed them what the bag contained, said, "You know what this is?"

The man said, "Benny!"

From down the hall, the fire-escape door, two more men came into view. They were similarly armed with submachine guns and one of them was the man who had tried to kill Gail Adams on the New York bound plane. He seemed to be Benny.

Benny said, "We thought of all kinds of trick methods of grabbing you guys." He waggled his weapon nervously. "We finally decided to be direct about it."

The other man who was with Benny did not come close. He remained well back.

Benny told Doc, "We hear somewhere you got a trick gas with no color and smell that knocks 'em out quick." He swung his jaw at the fellow farther away. "You try to use it on us, he'll cut you down."

"What do you want?" Doc asked.

"Your company," Benny said. "You're going to walk down the stairs and out the side door. And be nice, will you."

Chapter XI.

THEY could see the sea from where they sat. Through a window, with waves endless to the horizon in a calm pattern like pale blue corduroy cloth, and with the evening sun upon it so that here and there reflection cast a lance of enfeebled sunlight.

Renny was doing most of his looking at the ceiling. "What gets me is that I must have been c.o.c.ky.

Careless."

There were sand dunes nearer at hand, here and there a tuft of salt gra.s.s standing like tough whiskers on an old man's sand-yellow face. The house-it was three bedrooms, living-room, kitchen-stood among the dunes. To reach it, they had traveled the last half mile of a lonely road on which the two automobiles had had some trouble with soft going.

Renny groaned. "Holy cow! I guess I wasn't careless, and they outfoxed me. That hurts me worse."

Doc listened to the man outside the window strike a match. Cigarette smoke drifted past the window a moment later. He knew another guard was outside the door. He glanced at Renny.

"We must be funny-looking, sitting here in our underwear," he said gloomily.

"They don't seem amused."

"I'm not either."

"Neither am I. . . . I wonder what the h.e.l.l they're waiting for? . . . Well, we'll find out, I guess. While we're waiting for it, why don't you brief me on a couple of points I haven't picked up yet?"

Doc leaned back, seemingly well composed, and inquired, "For instance?"

Renny said: "The general picture was this: Three rich men playing at ghost-smashing for a hobby. Morand decided to sucker them out of a reward they'd offered for a genuine 'spirit.' Morand put on his show for them, and they wouldn't pay off. That it?"

Doc nodded. "That seems to be the way it started."

"Then what developed?"

"Morand," Doc explained, "didn't give up. He concluded to try again, more elaborately. He hired Dan Adams to put on a show of having seen a penetralia mentis in the radar scope. That got a hitch in it when Cooper found out, so both Dan Adams and Cooper were killed. But Dan Adams' sister took it up from there, and she came to New York to see me. They tried to kill her enroute."

"How'd they work it on the plane?" Renny asked.

"It was a good act," Doc said grimly. "I had the pilot search the plane. That was after the stewardess had said that she hadn't seen Miss Adams' a.s.sailant pa.s.s her to get to the rear of the plane-the only place he could have gone."

Renny frowned. "Had the stewardess bought, did they?"

Doc nodded. "She lied, all right. So did the pilot-when he searched the plane. The stewardess had removed some sheet-metal screws and let the fellow into the back of the plane, then replaced the panel.

The pilot released the fellow later-it was that man Benny-and then came to the terminal and lied to me, saying he hadn't found the man."

"How'd you catch all that?""Ham. . . . Ham watched the pilot free the man."

"The d.i.c.kens he did! But wait! How'd you know you should have Ham watch the pilot?"

"That one," Doc explained, "goes back a bit further to when we intercepted the plane on which Miss Adams was a pa.s.senger. We saw Morand talk to the pilot and stewardess and hand them money. Quite a bit of money. Too much to be involved in any honest deal."

"And Ham reported he'd seen the pilot free the guy who hid in the plane?"

"Yes. In the terminal office. He used Mayan. And I told him, also in Mayan, to have you watch Morand in case he tried to get away from us-which he did."

Renny glanced uneasily at the door, rubbed his jaw, wondered bitterly what the delay was about, and shrugged violently. He said to Doc, "I heard the business of Morand vanishing from the room at the airport was pretty good."