Doc Savage - Terror and the Lonely Widow Part 4

A patrolman had taken the revolver from Doc Savage. He handed the weapon to McGinniss, who examined it, remarked, "Three cartridges fired. That's interesting." He raised his voice and said, "See thatthe homicide boys give Savage a paraffin test before he has a chance to wash his hands."

"Do you think you're going to hang this killing on me?" Doc demanded.

McGinniss said he didn't know. "I'm going to have fun trying, though." He told the homicide man, "Give the girl a paraffin test, too."

A policeman had been going through the rooming house. Now he appeared and reported. "There seems to be only one other guy in the house-a fat guy on the top floor. He says he imagines everybody is away at work...He says he heard three shots about half an hour ago, and rushed out in the hall and a woman told him to back in the room and stay there if he knew what was good for him."

"Bring him down here. Let's see if this is the girl," McGinniss said.

They brought the fat man in. He exclaimed excitedly, "Yes, that's her! That's the young lady who-" He had seen the body. Presently he made a sound like liquid being poured out of a bottle and piled down on the floor. He had fainted.

"Load him in and take him to the station. McGinniss directed.

"Do you mind if I make a remark?" Doc asked.

McGinniss said he didn't see why he should mind, and Doc asked, "What about the men who ran out of the house after the shooting? Aren't you interested in them?"

McGinniss scowled. "What are you trying to do, confuse me again?"

Doc said, "Ask the girl. She'll tell us."

The girl said, "No men-n.o.body-ran out of this house after the shooting."

McGinniss eyed Doc unsmilingly. "She told us," he said. "As I said before, I d like to see anybody, the government or anybody else, get you out of it this time." He spit on the floor. "That's the d.a.m.ndest thing I ever heard of. You kill a guy, then kill another one right after we turn you loose."

There was a noise at the front door. Someone called up, "There's a couple of newspaper guys down here. What about 'em?"

"Let 'em in," McGinniss said.

IF Lieutenant McGinniss, during the next forty-five minutes, didn't t believe Doc Savage was guilty of two murders, he gave an excellent imitation of a man who did. He was also very industrious about pus.h.i.+ng an investigation. He found the skylight with the missing pane of gla.s.s, and studied it thoughtfully, then had it photographed. He decided, though, that no one could have entered the house via that route. "They d have fallen down the stairs," he said.

Doc Savage had no trouble occupying his mind during the forty-five minutes. Monk, Ham and Renny had not appeared, but this did not alarm him. He supposed they were keeping out of sight, not wanting any trouble with the police. Probably they figured-wrongly-that as long as the police were on the scene, Doc was safe. He wished they would show up, preferably with Mr. Chapman, the federal man.

His thinking turned to the mystery, which he didn't understand fully. The thing he understood least was why the girl had remained in the room with the dead man for, according to what Ham had said, more than twenty minutes. She didn't seem to be suffering greatly from shock, and she certainly didn't appearto be a dumb girl. She must have known that eventually someone would summon the police, and she would be caught. Had she been waiting for the police? Did she want to be caught? That didn't seem very sensible.

Doc watched the police search the corpse and find a little less than nine hundred dollars in cash, but nothing to identify the fellow. They did, though, remove a vicious looking automatic pistol from the man's clothing. He had been carrying it in his hip pocket.

"I suppose it'll be a self-defense plea, now that he was armed," McGinniss complained.

Doc said, "Mind taking off his s.h.i.+rt?"

"Eh?"

"His s.h.i.+rt. Mind taking it off?"

"I heard you the first time, McGinniss said. "What the h.e.l.l?"

"Just an idea."

The Lieutenant scratched his head, scowled, finally said he guessed he would bite, and started removing the corpse s.h.i.+rt. When Doc Savage saw that the man was deeply tanned on chest and shoulders, he said, "That's enough. I wanted to know if he were tanned. He is. Thanks."

"Yeah?" The Lieutenant was puzzled. "What does that prove?"

"That he has been out in the sun a lot," Doc said. He sounded serious. ''

McGinniss was enraged. "I ask a sensible question and get a smart answer," he yelled. He said it was okay, he had asked for it. He had bitten. "Load 'em in a car and take 'em down and lock them up!" he ordered.

THEY rolled west a block, then the black police sedan turned southward. It was 5:30. The sun was now s.h.i.+ning into the street only at the intersections, but all along the street the tar that had bubbled up between the paving stones was soft and made sucking sounds against the tires. A squat detective drove. Dark hair grew down the back of his neck and under his collar. McGinniss rode on the rear seat with the girl, and Doc and another officer sat on the drop-seats. McGinniss wore a hard-jawed, aggravated expression.

Doc Savage had not seen any sign of Monk, Ham nor Renny, and he became vaguely alarmed.

At the corner of Seventy-seventh Street, a taxicab stopped suddenly ahead of them and the police sedan slammed into the taxi. There was quite a noise. More noise than damage. The taxi driver, a tall, darkly sunburned, long-faced man, came back angrily demanding, "Why don'tcha watch where ya goin'?"

"You got a left hand, haven t you?" said the squat detective driver of the police car. "I didn't see it giving any signal."

The tall sunburned man held his left hand, a fist, threateningly under the detective's nose. He said, "You mean this hand?

While he was saying this, he slid his other hand inside his coat, brought out an automatic pistol and shot the detective between the eyes. He shot the officer beside Doc Savage a moment later.

Doc Savage was rolling sidewise, reaching for the opposite door. The door opened without any of his doing. A man outside had opened it, another man who was in no way like the first one, except that he,too, was very heavily sunburned. He was fatter than the first man, wider, didn't seem to be the same nationality. Having opened the door, he hit Doc Savage over the head with a blackjack in his left hand.

He had a gun in his right hand, and he used that to shoot Lieutenant McGinniss. The bullet only shattered the Lieutenant's shoulder, stunning him, but the man seemed satisfied with that.

He bowed elaborately to the girl.

"Right this way, tutz," he said.

The girl stared at him in wordless horror.

The taxi driver who had shot two police officers was apprehensive.

"G.o.d bless us, hurry it up!" he urged.

"Don't you get the point, tutz?" the wide man asked. "This is all for you, baby. A reception in your honor.

Get a move on."

"You-you want me? the girl asked jerkily.

The man reached in, grasped her arm, jerked her flying out of the police car. He sent her whirling toward a second car, a family sedan, which had drawn alongside. "Climb in, baby," he said. The driver of the family car seized the girl and hurled her into the machine.

Doc Savage, on hands and knees in the street now, was dazed. He endeavored to rise, and was. .h.i.t again by the blackjack.

"Give me a hand with him," the wide man ordered.

The three men wrestled Doc into their car. But not without difficulties. They complained about Doc's weight. "He must be made of iron," one grumbled.

"Who is he?"

"How the h.e.l.l do I know? asked the wide man. "That reporter we talked to said he and the girl were charged by the police with murdering Davey. That's all I know about him."

STRONGLY, purposefully, the car bearing Doc Savage, who was barely conscious, the girl, and the three suntanned men, moved through streets. It made a few turns, stopped decorously for all the traffic lights. On One Hundred and Tenth Street, it drew to a stop alongside another car of a different make and color, and a transfer of everyone to this second machine was managed swiftly and without fuss.

"I'll park this one down the block," the driver said. "It'll be hot as h.e.l.l in a few minutes, soon as the cops get a description on the radio."

He returned presently.

The party now drove northward, crossed one of the bridges into the Bronx, the men alert, anxious, concerned while they traversed the bridge. Once across, they relaxed somewhat, and the wide man said, "Okay, it'll be dark enough."

Doc Savage aroused, stirred, started to sit up. He was instantly struck with the blackjack. He was not knocked out, but he fell back to the floorboards, feigning stupor. He was not quite sure whether he had been unconscious at any time. It was impossible to tell, his head ached so and his ears rang so intolerably. He was a battleground for doubts, wondering whether he should make a break now-hebelieved, weighing the chances, that he had a fair chance of escaping-or wait. Waiting would be fine if it led him to something. If, for instance, he was taken somewhere and could get his hands on somebody high enough in the thing to be able to answer the right questions . That would, indeed, be worth taking a chance for. He decided to wait.

The car was making its way leisurely through Bronx streets. The sun was down, the air was the color of bullet lead. Kids ran and yelled in the streets. They entered a street which was roped off for a play-street, and a cop waved them out of it. All the time they were turning, tension was like gla.s.s in the car, and Doc noticed that the wide man held a c.o.c.ked revolver where the girl could view its threat. They got out of the predicament all right. The driver chuckled. "That cop don't know what a narrow escape he had," he said.

Doc Savage went back to wondering. At least they were getting action, he reflected. That was something. It was more than Was.h.i.+ngton and all its resources had been able to do. It was not certain that there was fire as well as smoke. There was plenty of violence...Was.h.i.+ngton's worst fears, Doc decided, were probably justified. The thought made him s.h.i.+ver.

The s.h.i.+ver got him a kick in the ribs. He pretended to be unconscious: The driver looked around, asked, "How's he coming?"

"Fine and dandy," the wide man said. "Who do you suppose he is?"

"I got no idea. Probably a strong arm they had hired. Tutz might tell us." He nudged the girl. "Who's the boy friend, tutz?"

The girl said nothing.

"She ain't very talkative," said the driver.

"She will be, before we get through with her," the other prophesied.

THE car pulled into a driveway which had high concrete walls on either side and sloped down sharply to a garage under a two-and-a-half-story frame house. The house, if it were the same color as the garage doors, was gra.s.s-green. The driver got out to wrestle and curse with the garage doors. He finally hurled them open, came back and drove the car into the garage. He closed the doors behind them. He pointed at Doc Savage and said, "Somebody besides me has gotta wrestle him outa there, on accounta I think I strained something when we loaded him." He seized the girl's arm. "I'll take the little lady, here."

The men had seemed pretty relaxed in the car, Doc had thought. For that matter, they had seemed relaxed when wounding Lieutenant McGinniss. But evidently they hadn't been as fully relaxed as they had appeared to be, because now that they were home-if home it was-they began calling each other by name.

The wide man was Mr. Moore. Whenever the others addressed him, it was as Mr. Moore, and they called him that behind his back. He seemed to be in charge.

The taxi driver, who had shot the two policemen and killed them, was Skeeter. Evidently he was called this because he was rather thin and gangling. The other man, who had driven the pickup car and, later, the car to which they had changed, was called Rice. He was evidently the Casanova of the party. He put his arm around the girl and told her, "Loosen up, tutz. You're among friends, you know. A few moments later, she kicked him on the s.h.i.+n. It must have hurt because he hopped around on one foot, groaning.

They tied Doc Savage to a chair in an up- stairs bedroom. Skeeter had some doubts that the chair was strong enough. "What if he breaks loose?" he wanted to know. "I bet he could make us some trouble."Mr. Moore snorted. "Let him start something, he said. He sounded as if he would welcome some more action.

Rice came in with another chair. "W ill this one do for the dame?" he wanted to know.

Skeeter said it would do fine, and got a clothes line and tied the girl in the chair. He hauled off and kicked the girl's s.h.i.+ns when he had finished tying her. "That for what you handed me a minute ago," he said.

Mr. Moore told Rice and Skeeter, "Okay, now I guess I can handle them while you two go get fed.

Bring something back for me."

Skeeter and Rice moved toward the door. Rice paused to ask, "Maybe we oughta call him from a different phone. In that drugstore, they-"

"Shut up!" Mr. Moore said viciously. Yeah-use a different phone if you wanta."

Skeeter and Rice went out. Mr. Moore tested the bindings on the prisoners, and told the girl, "You start yelling, n.o.body'll hear you. Also I'll cut your throat." Then he also went out. He did not close the door.

They could hear him going down stairs. It sounded, presently, as if he were investigating the contents of an icebox. Ice clinked in a gla.s.s.

Doc Savage opened his eyes. He had been opening them surrept.i.tiously and had seen that the room was quite uninteresting, the only furniture a bed and a dresser. He looked at the girl.

"FBI?" he asked her.

She seemed startled.

"Or Chapman's department?" he added.

Still surprised, she demanded, "Are you all right? Not hurt? I was afraid they d fractured your skull."

"I'm fine," he said. "Answer my question. I know you've got to be some kind of federal agent."

She looked horrified and said, "Sh-h-h-h! They might overhear you! There may be a microphone hidden in here! They probably left us alone so we would talk and they could listen!"

Doc was angry.

"I don't give a whoop!" he said. "Which Was.h.i.+ngton outfit are you working for?"

"Mr. Chapman?" she asked. She added, "Sh-h-h-h!" She frowned and said, "I'm with the Office of Special Investigation...I don't believe I ever heard of Mr. Chapman."

Chapter VI.

DOWNSTAIRS Mr. Moore made a mouse-like squeaking noise pulling a cork out of a bottle. They could hear the liquid gurgle out of the bottle, hear another bottle being opened-this one had a cap-and more gurgling. A truck went past in the street outside the house, making so little noise that Doc understood why they had not been gagged. The house was so nearly soundproof that n.o.body was likely to hear them, no matter how loud they yelled. Downstairs, Mr. Moore smacked his lips loudly, and began to whistle Lullaby of Broadway. The tune, Doc reflected, was at least ten years old.

"That fellow is about as cold a customer as I ever saw," Doc said. "That goes for the other two, too.They're not amateurs."

The young woman shuddered. "They went after someone, didn't they? Their boss?"

"Acted as if they did," Doc admitted.

The young woman didn't seem to think he was acting sufficiently terrified. She frowned at him. "Don't you realize what this is all about?" she demanded nervously.

Doc shook his head. "If I did, I would have better foresight than to be put in a spot like this."

"They'll kill us! You know that!" she said sharply.

"Not," he corrected, "if we can talk them out of it."

"Talk them out...fat chance! A very fat chance!" She seemed to think this was ridiculous, and that it was horrible that he should be so naive. "You know why we were seized, don't you?"