Doc Savage - The Giggling Ghosts Part 12

DOC SAVAGE removed from his coat pocket three small metallic disks. These appeared to be made of stainless steel and were the size of English pennies-about twice as large as American one-cent pieces.

Each disk bore an address.

Doc Savage indicated these medallions.

"These," he said, "are keys."

He gave one of the metal disks to William Henry Hart, and another one to Birmingham Lawn.

Doc put the third disk back in his pocket.

Lawn and Hart eyed their disks, puzzled.

"Keys?" Hart muttered.

"On each disk," Doc Savage said, "there is an address."

Hart eyed his disk. "A street name, a house number, and a room number," he said."Exactly," Doc Savage agreed. "Go there if you wish to get in touch with me."

"Where does the key part come in?"

"On the door will be a small black spot," Doc said. "Press your disk against this spot, and the door will open. It's a magnetic lock. Those disks are magnetized."

"Then this address is where you're hiding out?" Hart demanded.

Doc Savage nodded.

The bronze man then picked up the two prisoners, handling them both without apparent difficulty, and prepared to leave.

"Wait, Doc!" Johnny gasped. "I've got questions! A lot of questions! What's this all about?"

"What do you think?" Doc Savage countered.

"Well," Johnny said, "I-we-you see-well-"

"It's got us superamalgamated!" Long Tom said.

"It would superamalgamate anybody," Doc told him.

Doc Savage went out carrying the prisoners.

"I'll get in touch with you," he said.

DOC SAVAGE kept under cover of one of the hedges and carried his prisoners to the road, then down the road some distance to a spot where an inconspicuous coupe was parked. Doc put the captives in a rear compartment of the coupe and locked the lid. Then he got behind the coupe wheel and drove.

Reaching the nearest boulevard, the bronze man turned toward the city. In a short time he was pa.s.sing through the new vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River, the coupe running quietly, and the gleaming white sides of the tunnel flas.h.i.+ng past. Despite the length of this new tunnel, the air was clean and pure.

This was the tunnel that had recently been completed, with its New Jersey mouth near the sector affected by the gas.

Doc Savage ignored the skysc.r.a.per which housed his headquarters, and drove to the Hudson River water front; he came to a stop before a huge, somber brick building. This structure had a weather-beaten sign which said: HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY.

This was Doc Savage's water-front hangar and boathouse. The doors opened automatically as his coupe approached, a matter accomplished by a radio device, an apparatus similar to the type which anyone interested in gadgets can buy on the market. Doc drove into the great vault of gloom that was the warehouse interior.

He removed the prisoners from the rear compartment. They glared at him, buzzed around their gags; he had also tied their wrists and ankles.

The warehouse hangar had for a long time been a secret establishment, but now the bronze mansuspected that quite a number of persons knew of its existence.

Doc Savage looked at the prisoners. "I have to hide you here," he said. "And still your friends may know about the place."

They glared at him.

Doc Savage dragged the pair to the other end of the building. Here, among a ma.s.s of paraphernalia stood a diving bell-a type of contrivance sometimes called a bathosphere, and used for diving to great depths.

The bell was of thick steel; there was a ring in the top for a cable, also a hatch for entrance and exit.

"You can avoid trouble," Doc advised the prisoners, "by telling all you know. Begin with the rumors about the giggling ghosts."

He removed their gags.

"Blazes with you!" one man snarled.

The other man was more detailed about where the bronze man could go.

Two or three times, Doc tried to get information out of them, but with no success.

"Unfortunately," Doc said, "there is no time to go through a process of extracting information."

Doc then put the men inside the diving bell. They fought as best they could, being bound. Doc closed the diving bell lid on the pair.

IN order to prevent the lid being opened from the inside, Doc wired the patent dogs with which the lid was secured. Inside the bell the men kicked angrily and screamed. Then, with a jerk, the prisoners felt the bell rise off the floor.

They gave each other terrified looks. They felt the bell swing slowly. There was clanking, as a hydraulic lift lowered them. There was a gurgle as water closed about the bell. Finally the bell settled on the bottom with a thump.

The men squirmed around, managed to roll together, worked on each other's knots. They got free. They threw the ropes aside.

One man kicked the interior of the diving bell angrily.

"Sank us in the water!" he snarled.

The other growled agreement.

"Maybe we can get out, though."

They worked with the hatch fastenings until their fingers began leaving crimson smears. Having failed to budge the lid, they looked at each other uneasily.

"Not a chance," one croaked, "of gettin' out."

The men sat there, swearing until they ran out of breath. Then they noticed something else-somethingthat horrified them. It was a buzzing sound, a tiny buzzing sound such as water makes coming through a small hole.

"A leak!" one yelled.

They sprang up wildly and tried to find the leak. They succeeded. The leak was under the floor grille, and when they tried to wrench up the grille, they could not, for the grille was riveted down.

One got down on his knees, shoved his fingers as far as he could through the grille. He jerked the fingers out as if they had been bitten.

"Water!" he gasped. "I feel the water!"

It was intensely dark, and the men fumbled through their clothing for matches, finally found one, and struck it, then crouched close to the grille, popping their eyes at the water which they could see coming in a thin needle stream, bubbling and buzzing.

The match went out; the man dropped it, and the end sizzled in the water under the floor grille.

Horror held the men speechless. Then, suddenly, as if both had the same mad hope at the same instant, they began to scream.

They squalled, "Help!" and, "We're drowning!" until the lining almost came out of their throats. After that, they lay panting and speechless, listening for an answer that did not come.

Chapter XIV. NO QUAKES.

DOC SAVAGE stood at the far end of the warehouse, where there was no possibility of hearing sounds that might be made by the two men in the diving bell.

Doc was disguising himself. He pulled a wig over his head, rubbed bleaching compound on his bronze skin, fitted faintly colored gla.s.s cups over his eyeb.a.l.l.s to change his eye color.

He began chewing a chemical substance which would stain his teeth, and give them a poorly tended look.

Lastly, he put on a rather loud suit and began carrying a cane.

Doc Savage got in the coupe, left the warehouse, and drove to a neighborhood drugstore. From a telephone booth inside this store, he got in touch with a newspaper which, he happened to know, employed a reporter named Bill Sykes. Doc got the city editor on the wire.

"Bill Sykes," he said, using Bill Sykes's tones as nearly as he recalled them. "What's the address of this geologist named A. King Christophe?"

"The Twentieth Avenue Hotel," the editor said. "Say-what the h.e.l.l? Here's Bill Sykes sitting at his desk!"

Doc hung up and drove to the Twentieth Avenue Hotel, which proved to be a hostelry located on upper Broadway above the theatrical district. It was an imposing edifice, as far as size, but not too high in quality.

It had, for instance, a doorman who needed his shoes s.h.i.+ned and his bra.s.s b.u.t.tons polished; and the lobby floor could have stood a scrubbing. The clerk behind the desk also had no business smoking acigar while on duty. It was that kind of hotel.

Doc Savage said, "A. King Christophe-what room?"

"He's not in his room," the clerk said. "He's over in Jersey, where they're havin' that giggling ghost trouble."

"Exactly where?"

The clerk gave the address.

DOC SAVAGE left the hotel, drove to Jersey, to the address the hotel clerk had given him. He put on a gas mask, which he took from the car.

A. King Christophe was crouching on a vacant lot, working with some apparatus. He wore a gas mask, one of a type which, like the one Doc was using, permitted the wearer to talk. A telephone headset was clamped to his ears.

"I'm very busy," he said impatiently. "Go away!"

Doc Savage saw that the contraption with which Christophe was working was a sonic device for exploring the subterranean strata of the earth. Geologists use similar devices to locate formations favorable to oil.

Doc Savage bent close to Christophe's ear.

"Keep this a secret," the bronze man whispered, so no one else could hear. "I am Doc Savage."

A. King Christophe made a gulping noise inside his gas mask and sprang to his feet.

He said, "I-what-who-Doc Savage?"

Then, because Doc wore a disguise, the stubby geologist concluded there was a mistake. A hoax. He puffed out his cheeks fiercely.

"You are not look like Doc Savage!" he snapped.

"Disguise," Doc explained.

"But why-"

"I'm supposed to be dead," Doc warned. "Do not tell anyone differently."

"What do you want with me?" Christophe demanded.

"There is a question of an earthquake," Doc reminded him, "between yourself and an a.s.sociate of mine, William Harper Littlejohn."

A. King Christophe blew out his cheeks to the fullest.

"Littlejohn-that skinny bluffer!" he exclaimed. "He try to claim that are no earthquake. Pah! All seismographs are show one. Still he claim there are no earthquake! Pah!"

The stubby little man said, "Pah!" several times, and ended with an expressive, "Phooey!"Doc Savage pointed at the sonic apparatus for exploring the depths of the earth by the use of sound waves.

"What are you doing with that?"

"I try to locate fissure that gas come through."

"I see," Doc said. "Will you be kind enough to give me any information you may secure?"