Doc Savage - The Pink Lady Part 10

"If you look close," declared the dapper lawyer, "you can see where Doc straightened up the weeds and gra.s.s that the car mashed down when he drove it in here. That shows Doc was hiding the machine."

Monk frowned. "You sure Doc did the hiding?"

"Look." Ham indicated a small mark beside one of the tires. It was a rather shapeless mark that might have been made by a weed, or could have been the distorted track of some animal. In fact, it was a mark that had no meaning other than that it was one which Doc Savage used when necessary to indicate that he had been in the vicinity.

"Since he hid the car," Monk declared, "it's a safe bet that he was going to scout around something in the neighborhood." "But what?"

The answer was simple. The abandoned s.h.i.+pyard was the only likely spot in the vicinity. Monk, Ham and the State police circled the old s.h.i.+pyard cautiously.

Monk said, "Come here, Habeas," to his pet pig. He pointed the animal toward the s.h.i.+pyard. "Go take a look," he requested.

The pig ambled off. After a while, the animal came back. It did not seem alarmed.

"There's n.o.body there!" Monk exclaimed triumphantly. "I trained him to do that."

"That's a smart hog," an officer agreed.

Ham snorted.

THEY found no human life in the old s.h.i.+pyard. They did find marks made by the feet of men running, and here and there an empty cartridge that had jumped out of a gun ejector.

"Looks like they had a fight," Monk said grimly.

It was Monk, too, who decided what the collapsed condition of the old wharf meant. He examined the ground, the boards, and found enough marks to be sure.

"Car went off this thing!" he barked. He began taking off his clothes.

Monk, stripped, was a remarkably apelike figure. His muscles stood out in cables and bars on his arms, in rugged ledges across his chest. He balanced over the water, expanding his chest with a deep breath, then cut the surface cleanly.

"Marvelous physique," an officer commented.

Ham said, "Enough hair on him to stuff a sofa, too." But he was too concerned over what they might find under the surface of the water to sound very enthusiastic.

Monk was down more than a minute. Toward the last, he let air out of his lungs, the bubbles rising slowly. Then he broke surface.

"Doc's truck down there," he said grimly. "The one marked with a tailoring company sign."

Instantly, Ham had his own clothing off. He dived, came up, dived again. "The doors are all locked," he reported. "They're jimmied, or something, and don't seem to want to open."

It was fully five minutes before both men climbed out of the water.

"No body," Monk said.

They stood for a long time and scrutinized the unpleasant looking surface of the bay, but without results.

Until finally, far out in the water, Ham saw something. He plunged in and swam to the object, towed it back.

It was Doc Savage's coat. When they looked at the rip up the back, it was a little sickening.

Later, Monk found a mark on the floor of a ramshackle shed. He called Ham's attention to it, and Hamunderstood immediately what it meant.

It was a zigzag mark of the type commonly used in drawings to indicate electricity or lightning. It was Long Tom's brand, one he used on a small cow ranch which he owned in the Jackson Hole country of Wyoming.

"Long Tom was here."

"I hope," Monk muttered, "that they hadn't found out that he wasn't a genuine pink man."

"n.o.body knew it," Ham pointed out.

"No, not even that Chet Farmer," Monk agreed. "Incidentally, I wonder what has happened to Renny and Johnny and Farmer." Still muttering, Monk went to their car. He came back with a device which resembled somewhat a magic lantern of the old-fas.h.i.+oned type used to project postcard pictures.

The police had moved away, and Monk seemed glad of that.

"Long Tom has used that brand before to indicate he was leaving a message," Monk explained. "I don't see any around in plain sight. Maybe he used Doc's invisible chalk."

He switched on his lantern device. It gave out no visible light, although it was functioning. It was a projector of ultraviolet light, rays outside the visible spectrum.

"Make a tent with your coat to kind of shut out the light," Monk suggested. "This thing works better in the dark."

As a matter of fact, the invisible chalk, a chemical which glowed, became fluorescent when exposed to ultraviolet light-in the same fas.h.i.+on that vaseline, aspirin and other common substances fluoresce when exposed to such light-could hardly be distinguished in daylight.

The message was not far from where Long Tom had scratched his brand. It read: Truck is to be robbed after five o'clock this afternoon at stop light, fifteen miles out from Holland Tunnel on main road. Cop there will be phony. Truck leaves Atlantic & Hudson warehouse on Eleventh Avenue at five o'clock.

I have them fooled so far.

Drag off end of collapsed dock for Doc's body.

White-faced, Monk went to the police. "Have a squad start dragging around for a body," he said.

"Whose body?"

Monk tried to speak twice and finally managed to say, "Doc Savage's."

The officer's face became blank, and he went away quickly.

An hour and some odd minutes later, Monk and Ham turned into Eleventh Avenue, headed south. There were heavy trucks on the street; ahead they were thicker.

Ham said into the radio transmitter repeatedly, "Renny-Renny, give us an answer.

Renny-Renny-Johnny-Johnny." He listened intently."I'll leave the radio switched on and tuned to the wave length of their transmitter," he muttered. "I wonder what has happened to them."

"Nothing good, I'll bet," Monk said.

"What makes you say that?"

"Chet Farmer."

"Don't be foolish," Ham said disparagingly. "Just because he happened to be a handsome young man, you didn't like him."

Monk fell silent, stared at a large building emblazoned Atlantic & Hudson, Machine Supplies. "That must be the place," he said. "I was sort of thinking it would be a trucking concern. Don't know what gave me that idea."

Ham pulled on an old hat and turned up his coat collar. "You scoot down in the seat out of sight, and let me drive," he said. "I'm not as conspicuous."

Monk agreed. They changed seats. After Ham had circled the block, he said, "There's only one truck loading. It's a Diesel job labeled the Intra-union Trucking Co. That must be the one."

"Do we follow it?"

"Might be more sensible to pick it up at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel."

"Might be."

They made a quick trip south, drove for a while inside the roaring entrail of the vehicular tunnel, then popped out into bright sunlight and air that seemed doubly clean after the monoxide-laden tunnel interior.

They parked in an obscure spot where they could watch the tunnel mouth.

"Machine Supplies," Monk muttered. "What the heck?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Got any idea what's in the truck? What would a machine-supply company be s.h.i.+pping that is worth a highjacking?"

Ham shook his head. He was equally puzzled.

They had not been there long when Monk grunted, said, "There we go."

The truck they had spotted uptown lumbered out of the vehicular tunnel, gears grinding, climbed the grade, and gathered speed. Monk shook his head quickly when Ham made a move to start their car.

"Wait a minute," said the homely chemist. "Let's see if anybody is following the thing."

Pleasure cars, half a dozen or so, popped out of the tunnel like black cannonb.a.l.l.s. None of these seemed to be trailing the truck.

Ham said, "We better not wait any longer." He put their car into motion.

Before long, the truck and pa.s.senger car roads split, the latter taking the high-speed skyway. Ham kept to the truck lanes. The road was rather rough, and monotonous. They had plenty of time to talk.Ham declared, "I don't get the connection here, at all. A pink girl runs into a hotel at night, and some men grab her and stage a lot of fake rigamarole to make it seem that she is dead. We trace the girl down, and find she hasn't been out of her home for a week previously. And one of the neighbors saw a pink man dash out of the place, but some other men chased him and caught him. The girl's house is empty when we get there. And everything in one room of the bas.e.m.e.nt has been loaded into a truck and taken away.

And stuff has been burned in the furnace-hey, by the way! Did Doc ever a.n.a.lyze that stuff?"

"What stuff?"

"The ashes from the furnace in Lada Harland's house."

"I did," Monk said. "The stuff that had been burned in the furnace was mostly cloth. Cloth of different colors."

"Different colors?"

"Yeah. Greens and blues and reds, and some pastel shades."

"Any pinks?"

Monk stared at Ham sourly. "Don't be funny."

"Well, was there?"

"No."

THE robbery was a very efficient affair. In fact, it was unexpectedly efficient.

There was another difficulty, too. The robbery did not take place on the spot scheduled. It occurred much earlier, and while the truck was rolling. And there were other complications.

A smaller truck, rolling at high speed, but looking entirely innocent, pa.s.sed the car in which Monk and Ham were riding. It was followed by a second small truck. Both these vehicles were rather new, and neither bore distinguis.h.i.+ng marks.

One of the small trucks got ahead of the Intra-union machine. It flashed a red light, indicating it was about to stop. Then it slowed. The Intra-union driver blew his horn and hand-signaled for a left-hand pullout around the slowing machine. He was blocked. The second small truck blocked him. All three machines stopped.

"Blazes!" Monk gasped. "I thought they were gonna use a stop light gag-"

He did not finish. Actually, he was all but knocked unconscious. Ham had been slowing their machine. A truck hit them from behind. A truck they had not noticed. It did not stop when it smacked into them. It ground in low gear, jammed their machine forward rapidly.

Before Ham could do anything, they were jammed between the truck ahead and the one behind. The headlights broke, the radiator caved in, and there was grinding-metal noise.

Men piled out of the small trucks. At least a dozen men. All armed.

Monk yelled, "We better stay in here! This car is armor-plated-"The men in the truck behind evidently knew that, too. They seemed to know also that a cras.h.i.+ng impact from behind will burst open the doors of almost any car, even an armored one. Because the truck driver behind backed up a few feet, put on speed, and smacked them. The doors flew open.

The men dived in from both sides and laid hold of Monk and Ham. Monk howled, dived for his foes.

Monk liked a fight. He liked to make a noise when he fought. He kicked, jackknifed a man. He got another by the arm and did his best to tear the arm off.

Ham was hauled out the other side of the car and landed on the pavement with four men on top of him.

He tried to use his sword-cane-evidently they knew what it was, because they stamped on his hands and he lost it.

A man ripped open a cellophane packet which contained a cloth damp with drugs. It was the same kind of a pre-prepared pad of anaesthetic which Ham recalled the eyewitnesses saying had been used on the girl at the Hotel Troy. The damp pad was jammed to Ham's nostrils. He held his breath, convulsed in an abortive effort to free himself.

On the other side of the car, they had another of the anaesthetic pads to Monk's nostrils.

The driver of the Intra-union truck, and his relief, had not received any such kind treatment. They had been hauled out of their machine, blackjacked, and let fall to the pavement.

HAM BROOKS insisted thereafter, whenever the subject came up, that he had never been more delighted to see Doc Savage. First, there had been obvious indications that the bronze man had died at the s.h.i.+pyard. And secondly, Ham was needing help about as badly as he ever needed it.

Doc Savage came up in another car. It was an ordinary black machine, one he had rented somewhere, so it had no special equipment. He slammed on the emergency brake, and while the wheels still seemed to be sliding, dived out.

He dropped two smoke grenades as he came, and these popped like firecrackers almost instantly. Then he was upon Ham's a.s.sailants, fighting. He used a fist twice, then struck away the drug-laden pad, got Ham's left arm and jerked him out from under the foes.