Doc Savage - The Stone Man Part 4

Spad shook the arrowhead to draw her attention to it.

"I carry this talisman," he said. "And I have come out of the mists, as did you and your brother. I am a messenger. Now talk. Where is your brother?"

Moved by these magic words, in a low voice the girl described the exact location of her brother's room.

Spad Ames selected three men. "You guys come with me. Locatella, you keep the girl. We'll come back to this spot."

He vanished in the darkness with his men.

Locatella, who was as intrigued as a Fiji Islander who had just been shown a firecracker, got down beside the girl. He gave her his biggest smile, the one he gave his client just before he charged an outrageous fee.

"I'm your friend," he whispered to the girl. "That fellow who just left is a liar and a crook."

"Yes," the girl whispered back, calmly enough. "He is very bad."

"I want to help you, but I'm puzzled," Locatella said. "You tell me the truth, and I'll see what I can do.

What did the stuff about coming out of the mists mean? And what are the black arrowheads?"

"You are puzzled?"

"I'll tell the cross-eyed world. I can't make heads or tails out of this thing.""Swell."

"Huh?"

"You are as big a crook as your friend," said the strange white-haired girl. "And when your friend reaches my brother, he will die, and the secret will die with him. We had suspected your friend would come, my brother and I, and we have prepared."

"Spad Ames will be killed?"

"He will become as a rock which gives off mists, and any who touch him will suffer great pain."

HERMAN LOCATELLA straightened and did some fast thinking which led him to a conclusion. He couldn't understand the mystery, but he was convinced there was a great deal of profit involved somewhere. Spad Ames seemed to be the man with all the information. It wouldn't do to have Spad killed at present, although ordinarily the demise of Spad Ames would not have been much mourned by Locatella.

As a matter of fact, Locatella had made up his mind to double-cross Spad Ames at the first opportunity.

He suspected Spad had the same idea.

"Watch her!" Locatella snapped. "I'm going to warn Spad."

Locatella galloped away. He had heard Ruth Colorado direct Spad to Mark Colorado's room, so he knew where to find his compatriot. Spad and his three helpers were creeping down a hallway when Locatella overhauled them.

"What the h.e.l.l!" Spad Ames said unpleasantly. "You trying to watch every move I make?"

Whispering, Locatella told Spad what he had learned from the girl. The whisper was to prevent the three hired strong-arm men from overhearing.

Locatella finished his low-voiced information by suggesting: "Why don't we send one of the dopes in first? If anything happens to him-well, it'll be him it happens to."

"Remind me to keep an eye on you," Spad Ames said dryly. "You are becoming very smart."

They selected the most burly of the strong-arm men for their goat. They stood close to him and both of them patted his back.

"This Mark Colorado knows me by sight," Spad Ames said. "You barge in there and grab him, on account of if I went in, I wouldn't get to first base because he'd know me." Spad pa.s.sed the man a stout sock filled with sand. A stout sock full of sand was Spad's favorite blackjack; in an emergency, the sand could be emptied, and a policeman could hardly call a sock in a man's pocket a deadly weapon. "Bop him one with this," Spad advised. "Tell him you are the electrician inspecting the lights."

The man walked to Mark Colorado's door, knocked, and was admitted when he mumbled that he was the electrician.

He did not come back.

"That don't look so good," Spad muttered, after about five minutes.

"Does this Mark Colorado really know you by sight?" Locatella asked in a low voice."Not that I know of."

"Why don't we all barge in, then? One man can't lick all of us."

Waiting had made Spad Ames impatient. "Let's do that," he growled.

THEY walked to Mark Colorado's door and knocked. There was no response.

"It's the night watchman," Locatella called in a loud hearty voice intended to inspire confidence. "Have you seen anything of a man pretending to be an electrician?"

"That was a good lie," Spad whispered admiringly.

It got no answer from beyond the door, however. Spad then tried the door, which proved to be unlocked. It swung open easily.

It was quite dark within, so Spad and Locatella-they were taking no chances themselves-had one of their hired helpers reach in and turn on the lights. Nothing happened, so they entered.

They found themselves in a large, pleasant room with a carpet on the floor and comfortable furniture.

There were books on the table, a radio near the window. The window, Locatella noted, was locked on the inside, and there was only the one.

"Where is everybody?" a man muttered.

"Try the bathroom," Spad suggested.

The bathroom was in darkness also, so a man reached inside and snapped on the lights, after which there was some hesitancy about entering. Finally, Spad Ames got a hand mirror off the table where the books lay, and held it inside the bathroom, periscope fashion.

"Empty!" he said.

They examined the bathroom thoroughly. They examined the room. The one closet was empty, too, and there were no more doors. Locatella raked startled fingers through his hair.

"n.o.body in here, and no place they could have gone," he said, and stared at Spad Ames.

"Don't look at me," Spad muttered. "I can't explain-"

At this point, the corridor door slammed. All of them jumped wildly, then rushed for the door, the same one by which they had entered. They found it locked.

"We're fastened in here!" Spad barked.

Locatella whirled, ran to the window, flung it up, and put a leg through it, preparatory to jumping. He drew the leg back hastily.

"We're four floors up," he gasped. "I forgot that."

The lights went out suddenly, and he finished the statement in the dark. They stood there, surrounded by complete blackness, until one of the men, his lungs irritated by holding his breath too long, began coughing. Spad Ames swore at him.

"Kick the door down!" Locatella snarled. "Why did I ever get messed up in this thing in the first place?""We make a racket, and they'll call the cops," Spad warned. "We'll all wind up in the can."

In the blackness of the room, someone began shrieking as if trying to get his lungs out of his chest. It was a cry such as Spad Ames had heard before: on that night weeks ago, after the plane crash in the canyon, Waldo Berlitz had made such sounds as these.

Chapter VI. BLACKJACK FIGHT.

LIEUTENANT COLONEL ANDREW BLODGETT "MONK" MAYFAIR, the chemist who was a member of Doc Savage's group, was thinking of a great many things to say, and saying them as fast as his tongue could manage.

"It was all a gag, I tell you," he repeated at five-second intervals.

Big-fisted Renny Renwick, the engineer, was looking speechless and sheepish.

"All a gag," Monk insisted.

Doc Savage and the dapper Ham Brooks had finally revived. The gas that had overcome them was a type producing no harmless effects, although their period of unconsciousness had extended more than an hour.

"You two hooligans," Ham told Monk and Renny scathingly, "could walk under a caterpillar and not touch fuzz."

Monk wailed: "How was we to know Doc would be with you? It was a gag, I tell you. Renny and me got tired of that hands and-knees-and-bark business. We knew you had been eavesdropping on this Locatella, so we laid for you here on the roof. We didn't know Doc would be along."

"What were you clowns figuring on doing with me?"

Monk and Renny hesitated, then both suddenly burst into laughter.

"We were going to take your clothes and leave you to wake up on top of that statue of Columbus at the corner of Central Park," Monk chuckled.

"Take my clothes?" Ham yelled. "Leave me naked in that conspicuous spot!"

"Except for a fig leaf," Monk explained. "I had the fig leaf. Brother, if you think finding a fig leaf in this town is easy, you can guess again. Renny had the ladder-snagged it from a fire house."

Renny let out a pleased rumble. "Can you imagine what the newspapers would have said? America's best-dressed man introduces fig leaf as latest style! Or something like that."

"That was a low-down trick!" Ham snapped.

"It was no lower down than the way you crooked us on that Harvard bet," Renny rumbled.

Ham started. "You-er-found out about that?"

"Yes," Renny thumped, "we did. And I don't mind your roping Monk with your gags, but you don't need to include me."

Ham had been afraid they would find out the truth. Some days before, he had rigged a microphone onto a radio over which Monk and Ham had been listening to a broadcast of the Harvard game; cutting themike into circuit, Ham had described a different and entirely imaginary game wherein Harvard lost. Then he had walked in innocently, pretending not to know the game was over, and deliberately irritating Monk and Renny, had offered to bet Harvard would win. To his glee, they had taken him up-and had to pay off by kneeling and barking whenever they saw Ham.

"Well, it was good barking while it lasted," Ham said cheerfully.

They went on and climbed into the office in which Ham kept his eavesdropping apparatus. Ham put on the telephone headsets and listened.

"Locatella's office seems to be empty." Ham frowned accusingly at Monk and Renny. "You've ruined our plans. You delayed us, and the crooks got away."

Monk snorted. "Your recording device was working, wasn't it? All we've got to do is play it back."

THIRTY minutes or so later, as a result of listening to the conversation from Locatella's office which the recorder had repeated mechanically, Doc Savage brought his car to a halt at the edge of Phenix Academy campus. They had made very fast time, and the abruptness of their stop made the tires whistle.

They listened.

"Sounds like a war," Renny rumbled.

From around the Phenix Academy buildings were coming loud voices, a few shouts, and a series of irregularly s.p.a.ced shots. Two searchlights, so powerful that they threw beams which were like white rods, were fanning slowly over the buildings.

"Something goes on," Monk agreed.

Before they could get out of the machine, a man came dashing through the darkness to their car.

"Are you cops?" the man asked.

"No," Monk said. "We're just curious-"

"Not cops-that's nice." The man showed them a viciously waggling blackjack made of a sand-filled sock, and put the blinding beam of a flashlight in their eyes. "Unload, you yaps! Get out of there-quick!"

"Hey!" Monk exploded. "What's goin' on?"

"Out with you! We need this car."

Monk blurted: "He's only got a blackjack-"

"Easy does it," Doc Savage said quietly.

Doc opened the door and got out, and his three men followed him, Monk banging the car door angrily.

The bandit with the blackjack lifted his voice. "Come on, guys!" he barked. "Here's a heap we can use for a scram."

Spad Ames and Locatella scrambled out of the campus shrubbery. They were followed by one man carrying Ruth Colorado. Four more brought up the rear, holding the corners of a stout blanket in which lay the final member of the raiding party.

The man they carried was in a peculiar condition. He was doubled, as if in agony. His body-it wasobvious no life remained in him-was as rigid as stone. Also, it seemed to be steaming from head to foot.

The taxi headlights, helping out the fog-discouraged glow of a nearby street light, furnished fair illumination.

Doc Savage and his men gazed at the body, astounded by its strange condition.

The four who carried the form in the blanket did not seem very happy about it, either. In fact, they were sweating profusely, and their faces were lead-colored. They looked as if someone had taken the lid off things and let them see the works.