Doc Savage - The Stone Man Part 8

Doc Savage had been considering that angle, and it was one he did not like. He wanted to get Renny out of the hands of the Spad Ames' crew as soon as possible. He much preferred immediate action.

"We will hurry them a little," the bronze man said.

Doc went back to the cabin, placed his men behind trees, gave instructions, then drew a small high-explosive grenade, not much larger than a bantam egg, from a pocket, and hurled it. The earth quaked, the big cabin slid a foot on its foundations, and smashed boards climbed up in the air. A great gobble of echoes came back from surrounding woods and hills.

Doc Savage lifted his voice.

"You're under arrest, all of you!" His words were a great cras.h.i.+ng that everyone in the cabin must have heard. "Come out with your hands up!"

He did not expect them to obey, and they didn't. An automatic shotgun ripped out a three-sh.e.l.l burst, and tore bark off the tree behind which Doc Savage had flattened.

The bronze man threw another grenade, a smaller one, tossing it so it would drop on the roof. In the flash, a cloud of swirling s.h.i.+ngles was visible.

Men piled out of the cabin. They were armed, mostly with automatic rifles, and they turned loose a deafening roar of fire.

Spad Ames shouted: "Get to the planes, you fools!"

He got his gang organized, and they retreated rapidly through the woods.

Doc, altering his voice until it did not sound like his own, called: "Be careful, men! There are more of them than we thought."

Monk, fooled by the changed voice, growled: "Hey, somebody else is helpin' us!"

"That's Doc, you homely dope!" Ham enlightened him.

The engines of Locatella's big planes began roaring, and both craft shortly moaned up into the black leaking night sky.

"I hope," Monk said cheerfully, "that we scared 'em so bad they'll head straight for the west."

IN addition to the establishment on the eighty-sixth floor of the midtown building, and the bas.e.m.e.nt garage which housed their collection of cars, Doc Savage maintained a hangar and boathouse on theHudson River water front, only a few blocks distant. This structure was ostensibly an ancient warehouse that was not being used; the painted sign across the front had peeled in the weather until its legend, "Hidalgo Trading Company," could hardly be read, and the walls gave little outward sign of being as thick as those of an ancient fortress.

Inside was an a.s.sortment of fast planes, a true gyroplane which could arise and descend vertically, and various experimental craft. There was also a small yacht, very fast, a schooner which Doc Savage was storing there for his cousin, pretty Patricia Savage. Pat joined the bronze man sometimes in adventuring, when he did not manage to stop her, for she loved adventure. Other craft included speedboats and a highly advanced experimental submarine which Doc had constructed for subseas exploration and a trip under the polar ice cap.

They selected their fastest plane, a craft that could pound out of its two huge motors more speed than any military pursuit craft, and which was equipped for landing upon earth or water.

Doc had lately installed a large vault which held an a.s.sortment of the scientific devices which he used, these being packed in cases ready for quick transportation. The cases were numbered, and Doc, who knew their contents, checked off more than a dozen, which were loaded aboard.

Early daylight was whitening the skull-colored strings of rain as they taxied out on the Hudson. Because visibility was no more than a hundred yards, even with the powerful floods spouting white light, Doc taxied downriver with the wind, then turned the plane-simply cranking up the landing gear converted it into a seaplane-and took the air.

"I'll get on the radio," Long Tom said. He adjusted the dials, worked with the direction finder, then grinned. "They're heading west, all right."

The two pets, Habeas and Chemistry, were aboard; Monk and Ham never left them behind, possibly because, when no other excuse for wrangling could be found, they could squabble over the animals.

Monk said: "How about catching the morning news? I'd like to know who is laying down an ultimatum to whom in Europe this morning."

There was no object in operating the direction finder steadily, so Long Tom tuned in a news broadcast.

They learned about the state of affairs in Europe and in China, heard of another politician being kicked out of Kansas City, a murder in Texas, a bank robbery in Florida, after which they got a shock.

"When a man bites a dog, it's news, and when a man steals an airplane, it should be something or other,"

the radio commentator said. "But in this case, a man and a woman stole the plane. Both of them had snow-white hair, the snowy-white hair being news because the pilot whose airplane was stolen said both thieves could hardly have been more than twenty years old. The plane was stolen in Newark, and the thieves took off in the face of weather conditions that had grounded all regular pa.s.senger planes. It is believed they flew west."

The news commentator was followed by an asininely cheerful fellow who wanted all the little early birds to look in the mirror and smile, smile, smile.

"Did you hear that news item?" Monk yelled.

"White-haired girl and boy sound like Ruth and Mark Colorado," Ham said.

"The Colorados seem to be heading west, too," Long Tom suggested.

Chapter X. CAPTURE.

THEY flew out of the rain into bright sunlight two hours later. In a place or two over the mountains in Pennsylvania, they saw traces of snow, so it was probably cold outside. The cabin was heated.

Monk dropped into the extra seat in the pilot's compartment. Doc was handling the controls.

"I been trying to figure something, Doc," the homely chemist said. "Back there last night, when you jumped the Colorados in my place you had something in a bottle. You splashed the stuff over them. I thought at first it was acid or gas or something, but it didn't seem to have any effect on them."

"It would not harm them," Doc said.

"What was it?"

"You remember the experiments we were making with a method that banks and armored trucks could use on bandits?"

"Oh!" Monk grinned. "So that's what it was!"

Monk went back into the cabin, and Ham, who was interested in knowing what he had learned, asked: "What was the liquid?"

"It's sure h.e.l.l, ain't it?" Monk muttered.

"What?"

"The place where the bad people go."

"I hope you don't think that was funny," Ham said sourly, and added several choice opinions of the Mayfair ancestry, including the variety of trees they had probably swung in.

Monk was irritating Ham deliberately, and Ham was entirely willing, so the quarrel lasted across Ohio, Illinois and Missouri.

Over Kansas, Monk ran dry, and sat peering glumly at the vast expanse of flat wheat fields until he was moved to remark: "Brothers, there is sure a lot of land down there."

"And just think," Ham said dryly, "you can only see what is on top."

"I think that was some kind of an insult!" Monk yelled. "Some day, I'm going to-"

Whatever he was going to do to Ham remained untold, because Doc Savage called a sharp summons from the c.o.c.kpit. The bronze man thought they would be interested in what the radio was saying.

"This is a general message to all planes in the air," Doc said. "A broadcast in co-operation with the police."

"A plane stolen by a young man and a young woman, both of whom had remarkable white hair, has landed on a field at Millard, Missouri,"

the radio voice said. "The occupants of the plane forced a tank-wagon driver to refuel the craft, then took off again. All pilots are requested to report any trace of the plane, a yellow Airpex monoplane, Department of Commerce Number NC973-645. A yellow Airpex monoplane, number N-as-in-Norma, C-as-in-Charles, nine hundred seventy three thousand, six hundred forty-five." Long Tom said: "Mark and Ruth Colorado again. They aren't making such good time."

Doc Savage flattened a chart out on the map board, and noted the line which they had flown, trailing the radio transmitters concealed in Spad Ames' two s.h.i.+ps. The line was almost straight. He extended it and noted that it pa.s.sed over a part of the Grand Canyon country that he happened to know was virtually unexplored.

"The Millard, Missouri, airport," Doc Savage said slowly, "is located only a few miles from the Santa Fe Railway. The railway, running in a fairly direct line to California, and pa.s.sing near the Grand Canyon, is a logical trail for planes to follow."

Doc swung southward fifty miles or so, and landed on a remote piece of prairie near the Santa Fe Railway.

"We can afford to waste an hour or two," the bronze man said, "on the chance the Colorados will fly overhead."

IT was near noon when Doc Savage, using strong binoculars, discovered a yellow monoplane approaching. Immediately, he boarded his own s.h.i.+p with Monk, Ham and Long Tom, and they climbed up in the sky. They got close enough to the other plane to identify the numbers.

"That's it," Monk said.

Mark Colorado was flying the stolen craft. He banked away, tried flight. But he lacked the speed-his plane was nearly a hundred miles slower-to escape.

Doc flew alongside, gestured orders to land. He was ignored.

Yanking the control wheel, Doc brought his plane up to a point where it flew directly ahead of the Colorado s.h.i.+p, and perhaps two hundred feet distant. He flew in that position, and jerked a lever on the control panel.

The gas which poured out of tanks mounted in the fuselage of Doc's s.h.i.+p was one of the secrets which would probably save America from foreign air raids, if the war need ever arose. It was colorless. It spread quickly. It retained its effectiveness. And when a plane motor sucked the stuff into its carburetor, the gas made fuel vapor noninflammable. The gas would instantly stop any airplane motor of internal combustion type-and no plane today has a motor of any other type.

They saw both Mark and Ruth Colorado start up in alarm as the engine of the plane died.

Mark Colorado managed a safe landing in a wheat field. He climbed out with a rifle; his sister also was armed. They raced to a small ditch nearby.

Doc dived his big s.h.i.+p at them. Rifle slugs smacked against the fuselage, but did not penetrate the double layer of alloy metal skin armor.

"Gas them," Doc directed. "Use anaesthetic."

Monk dropped the anaesthetic gas containers, and these burst around the ditch in which the Colorados crouched. Instantly, both Colorados tried to return to their plane. Mark covered about thirty feet; the girl almost made it.

Doc landed near their unconscious forms."Load them aboard," he directed, and climbed into the plane the Colorados had stolen. He did not find any trace of a chart with a destination marked upon it; in fact, there was no chart at all in the craft.

"No wonder they were following the railroad," Monk remarked.

Doc Savage took his own plane off, the slipstream stirring up a cloud of dust that swirled over the yellow craft the Colorados had been flying. Using the radio, he advised the nearest government airways station where the stolen plane could be found.

"Will you take the controls?" Doc requested of Monk, and the homely chemist nodded.

Doc searched the Colorados, Mark in particular. He found a notebook containing notations probably made during lectures at Phenix Academy, a pocket knife, cartridges for the rifle, some silver coins and nearly a thousand dollars in currency.

"With that roll, I would think he'd have hired a plane," Long Tom said, after he had counted the money and whistled.

He removed the thin stainless steel chain from Mark Colorado's neck, and examined the black arrowhead on the end. The arrowhead had not been drilled; it was fastened to the chain by a band which encircled the part that was ordinarily bound to the arrow.

"Is it like the one the girl carried?" Ham inquired.

"Not identical. But apparently made of the same material."

The bronze man stood for some time studying the faces of Mark and Ruth Colorado. Once, he moved Mark Colorado's head in order to get a better view of the man's facial contour.

Ham said: "Their faces look strange, don't they? I can't guess their nationality."

A BIT later, "Locate a wireless station that has a radio compa.s.s," Doc Savage suggested to Long Tom.

"Preferably one along the Mexican border. We need a cross bearing on the Spad Ames' crowd, which will show us how far ahead they are."

Long Tom worked over the radio controls. What he wanted done was a little complicated when it came to explaining it to distant operators, but finally he had copied compa.s.s bearings, and drawn on his own chart the bearing line taken by the distant direction finder-he had located one in El Paso, Texas-so that this line, where it intersected the projected line of their own bearing, gave a fairly accurate guide to the location of Spad Ames' planes.

"About a hundred miles ahead," Long Tom said. "Less than half an hour's flying time."

"We should overhaul them about the time they reach the Grand Canyon country," Doc decided.

Ham lashed the ankles of Mark and Ruth Colorado.

Normal interval of unconsciousness produced by the anaesthetic gas was forty-five minutes. Mark and Ruth Colorado revived somewhat quicker than that. They were very stoical. They merely looked around, then the girl smiled slightly without humor.

"You had plenty of money," Doc said. "Why did you steal a plane instead of hiring one?"

"We wanted Spad Ames to know we were going west," the girl answered immediately. "We did not know where to find him. So we stole the plane to get ourselves in the newspapers."Doc was impressed again with the strange accent which rather pleasantly fuzzed her words.

"What nationality are you?" he asked.

She only smiled.

Doc said: "By any chance, did you, too, come out of the mists?"

She nodded, but said nothing.

"What does that mean?"

She gave him a rather strange answer.

"A few white men have learned the truth," she said. "But only one has carried his knowledge back to the world-that one being Spad Ames."

Her lips became thin and compressed, and after that she did nothing but watch the two pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry.

Monk raised his voice in a yell. He had been peering through binoculars while he flew. Now he lifted his freak voice.

"Three planes dead ahead," he shouted. "Think they're Spad Ames' s.h.i.+ps."