Doc Savage - The Pink Lady Part 8

The wharf collapsed then. It went down gently, and the truck slid off into deep water. Leaping, Doc barely got clear.

He went down in the same great splash with the truck.

He did not come up again.

The men reached the dock.

Cy said, "Spread out, you guys. He's in the water. He's got to come up. Shoot at the slightest sign of motion."

The men fanned out, eyes and guns alert. Two of them moved as far along the dock as the remains of the thing permitted. Another pair scrambled up on the ridge of a shaky building and crouched there. One of these had a pair of binoculars. The others spread right and left.

It must have been five minutes later when a man, the one with the binoculars, called, "Pssst!"

Cy demanded, "What is it?"

The man slid down off the roof, cursed when he twisted his ankle slightly. He said, "I got him located."

"Where?"

"You see the board floating out there, just to the left of that oily place?"

"Yes."

"All right. Look right over the board, and tell me what you see."

Cy stared. "There's a thin metal tube stickin' up out of the water," he decided. "It ain't much bigger than a pencil."

"That's it. That's what he's using to breathe through."

Cy snarled, "Gimme that rifle with the telescope sight. I'll d.a.m.ned soon fix this.""Wait a minute. Why don't you pitch about three grenades out there at once? When they explode, they'll smash him."

Cy blinked. Then a grin came on his face. It was fiendish with approval. He punched the other man in the back. "Boy, that's good! You're gonna get a bonus for that idea."

They collected the grenades, three of them, and three men took up a position; then, at a given word hurled the steel eggs. Their aim was good; all three grenades landed in an area a dozen feet across.

One exploded first, then two, and there was no more than a second interval between, so that the mound of foam and flame and water and mud that climbed up from the surface like a large grime-smeared cauliflower might have been driven by one blast. The cauliflower climbed high, then split, and spikes of water shot up from it, three of them, one for each iron egg, to a height of thirty feet or more.

The whole thing subsided, and mud and water boiled up.

The men watched. They saw nothing. Then a man fired a revolver, but it was only the piece of wood; the fragment of wood jumped into the air and splashed down again. They kept watching. But there was nothing.

A man said, "I thought an explosion would knock the air out of a man's body so it would float."

Another snorted. "The air would make it float anyway. It's something else that busts. Maybe the body has to be in the water long enough to get kind of soft before it'll bust, whatever it is."

Cy said, "I think we got him."

They kept watching.

After a time, a man, a stranger, came and knocked noisily on the gate of the old s.h.i.+pyard, and wanted to know what was going on. He lived down the road a piece, he said. He'd thought this place was deserted.

Cy was polite to him. "That old dock was getting shaky and dangerous," he lied. "We just put some dynamite under the thing and blasted it down so that it wouldn't fall on anybody."

The curious man was satisfied and went way.

Cy came back. His men had been watching all the while with their rifles.

"See anything?" Cy asked.

They hadn't.

"We got him, all right," Cy decided. "It's a d.a.m.ned good thing, too, because now we can go ahead and knock off that truck the way we had it scheduled."

Chapter VIII. LIKE A FOX.

IT was past noon when Chet Farmer rushed into Doc Savage's headquarters. He was excited. He shouted, "Hey, listen, I've found-" and went silent.

His eyes got wide with surprise. "Who're you?" he demanded.

The individual in the reception room was very tall, and thinner than it seemed any man could naturally be.

His clothes fit him like a loose tent around a pole. Attached to his lapel by a ribbon was a magnifying gla.s.s in the shape of a monocle.

"A logogriphical tramontanosity," he remarked.

Chet's eyebrows lifted.

"So you're Johnny," he said. "I've heard them talking about you and your words."

"Mind a hermeneutical avouchment?"

"Eh? Come again?"

With obvious reluctance, Johnny Littlejohn resorted to small words.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Chet told him. Chet's excitement returned. He demanded, "Where's the others? Renny, Monk, and Ham?"

"In the laboratory."

Chet rushed into the huge laboratory. He found Monk and Ham in an argument over their pets, with Renny a mildly amused listener.

Ham said indignantly, "Whatcha mean, I haven't got any friends? The last time I left town, there was dozens of people down to the train to see me off."

"Did you pay any of 'em?" Monk asked.

Renny grinned and waved at the belligerents and explained, "It all started when Ham wanted Monk to do a friendly good turn and cash a check for him."

"I wouldn't cash a check for my own brother," Monk growled.

"You know your own family better than I do," Ham informed him.

Chet Farmer broke into the exchange of insults. He said excitedly, "I've learned something. I've got an idea."

"An idea?" Monk peered at him. "It's in a strange place. Treat it gently."

"This isn't any time for kidding," Chet said grimly. "I'm serious."

Monk stared at him. "I believe you are, at that. What's wrong?"

Chet Farmer drew himself up dramatically.

"There's a man watching this place!" he declared.

"What, again?" Monk scratched his head. "I thought we cured them of that."

"That isn't all," Chet said rapidly. "This fellow is sitting in a parked car across the street. A while ago, hegot out and went into a drugstore and used the telephone. I followed him, and it was so I could get in the next booth and hear what he said. He telephoned somebody named Bodine. I think this Bodine is the boss he's working for. The first thing he asked was: Should he stay on the job. I think he was told, yes, he should."

"Bodine, eh?" Ham picked up an innocent black cane which he habitually carried, and fingered it thoughtfully. "Bodine . . . I don't think I've heard that name before. Who do you reckon he is?"

"That isn't all," Chet said dramatically. "I heard something else, something a lot more terrible."

Ham frowned at him. "Well?"

"Doc Savage is dead." Chet looked at them, each in turn, and made a wild gesture with his hands. "They trapped Doc. He was drowned trying to escape. I think they blew his body to pieces with grenades, or something."

SILENCE in the room was lead-heavy and cold. No one said anything for a while. Renny was breathing through his teeth. The afternoon breeze from the south came in through one of the open windows and picked up loose brown powder from an open dish and carried it across a table top, a few flakes at a time. The pig, Habeas Corpus, got up off the floor and turned around twice and lay down again, farther away from the chimp, Chemistry.

Renny voiced the first reaction. "Holy cow!" he said. "I don't believe it!"

The fact of Doc Savage's death was a thing they could not accept. They had been a.s.sociated for too long a time, and too closely. Their group without Doc Savage was like daylight without a sun-it was impossible. Yet, as they knew, constant a.s.sociation with danger and peril made such a possibility always very near.

Renny had been sitting. He heaved erect. "We've got to check on this."

Chet Farmer held up a hand. "There's just one way to check on it-because we don't know where the murder occurred."

Renny's fists blocked out hard cubes of sinew and bone. "Let me get hold of that bird watching this place, and we'll soon know where it happened."

"No," Chet said. "That's the wrong way."

Renny's long, puritanical face was a mask. "How do you figure?"

"Wherever the murder occurred, the men who did it won't hang around the spot," Chet Farmer explained. "But there's another way of doing it-a way that will lead us to this Bodine, or whatever the name of the boss is."

"Yeah?"

"Scare this man downstairs," Chet said quickly. "Frighten him off the job. Then follow him without letting him know we're doing it. That way, he will lead us to his boss."

Renny considered the point, said finally, "That sounds smart. I guess it's the way Doc would do it."

Chet whirled for the door. "Come on, then. All of you." Monk, Ham, Johnny, all started for the door. But Renny rumbled, "Wait a minute-orders were to wait here for instructions."

"What's the sense of that?" Chet Farmer stared at him. "Doc Savage is dead . . . or if he's not, he's in very serious trouble."

Ham said, "Renny's right."

"But if he's in trouble," Chet snapped, "the thing for all of us to do is pitch in and help him out."

Monk, who had never liked the young man, growled, "Two of us stay here. Doc may have got a message out. It may have been delayed."

"But-" Chet started to protest. Then he looked at their faces, saw the determination there, and shrugged. "Oh, all right," he muttered.

Monk, Ham, Johnny and Renny all produced coins. Renny rumbled, "Holy cow, we better match as teams. Monk and Ham work best together. Johnny and I can double up. Put away your money, two of you guys."

They spun, rang on the floor. They looked at them. Renny and Johnny grinned.

"Heck," Monk said. "Ham, I guess we stay."

Renny, Johnny and Chet Farmer left the eighty-sixth floor headquarters.

THEY rode downstairs in silence. In the lobby, Chet Farmer said, "I got an idea. Suppose I scare him-you follow him."

"He may not know you're helping us," Renny suggested.

"Sure. He probably don't. That'll make it better." Chet grinned slightly. "I'll go up to this egg, and I'll say to him: Listen, pal, you wouldn't be watching Doc Savage's place, would you? It ain't none of my business, but I'd like to know. Then, when he denies it, I'll say that I think I'll call Doc Savage and let him see what he thinks. Then I'll tell the bird to stay there, and walk off. He won't stay there."

Renny glanced at Johnny. "What you think?"

"Supermalagorgeous," Johnny said.

Chet asked, "Does that mean good?"

"That's what it means," Renny told him. "Go ahead with your rat killing."

Chet Farmer waited until they got two small roadsters from the garage. The machines were radio-equipped so that the occupants could keep in touch with each other. Renny took up a position facing north, and Johnny headed his car south and parked it. That way they were ready, regardless of what direction their quarry took.

Renny put one of his big hands out of the car and opened and shut it as a highball signal.