Chapter VI

THE GHOSTLY DEATH

RENNY cracked his big fists together and rumbled: “What a break for us!”

“They hired you?” Doc demanded of the man.

The driver nodded uneasily. “They gave me five dollars. I got to wondering why they didn’t take a taxi, and so, after I dropped ‘em, I drove back here to see if there was anything funny about them. If there was, I was gonna tell a policeman where I took ‘em!”

Doc swung near the touring car. “Can you take us to the place?”

The man hesitated. His lower lip jerked, rabbit fashion. He seemed scared.

He mumbled: “I don’t know about this - “

“Ask a policeman, if you’re in doubt,” Doc suggested. The man wiped his wet eyes. “I guess it’ll be all right, mister.”

Doc stood on the running board, as was his fashion. His five friends loaded inside. The car rolled ahead.

Their course was southward and eastward, into an even shabbier section of the city. Here the poorer element lived. It was a district where two and three families in a room were not uncommon.

The fine rain frosted the windows in the touring-car curtains. There was no windshield wiper, and the driver reached out from time to time to swipe a puffy palm over the glass. The car top, old and porous, was soaked.

Doc Savage, seemingly as impervious to moisture as a statue of the metal he resembled, kept an alert watch. He saw nothing alarming.

The meek fat man stopped the touring car by putting on both foot and emergency brakes. He pointed. “There’s where they went!”

The house was an old brownstone, with unwashed windows. It was narrow, two stories in height. There was no light in it.

Doc dropped off the running board and glided close. The windows were lidded on the inside by drawn curtains. They were very dirty, except for a square patch in the middle of one pane.

He went back to the car and asked the driver: “Did you see a cardboard ‘for-rent’ sign stuck on the window when you brought them here?”

The man was slow with his reply. “No, I don’t think I did.”

“Did they walk right in like they had a key?”

“They sure did.”

Doc went back. Bending close, he used his flashlight on the door lock. The plate which held the keyhole was scratched. Bright metal showed in the scratches.

Even a novice would have recognized the signs. The lock had been picked recently with a sharp instrument.

Doc glanced up. The cracks between the stone blocks offered easy climbing to any one at all skilled in the trade of the so-called human fly. Few individuals plying the trade of human fly ever possessed quite the agility and strength of this mighty man of bronze.

Doc drew himself up the wail as readily as another would surmount a ladder.

Those in the touring car saw him attain the roof. After that, he was lost in the darkness and rain.

ABOARD a ship moored on the near-by water front, a bell began striking ship’s time. Before it ended, more bells took up the clanging chorus. Fog whistles hooted softly, mournfully.

In the houses, radios jangled. A baby cried somewhere. On the elevated, a train slammed south. Rivulets of rain water sobbed in the gutters. Minute after minute dragged past.

Renny boomed softly: “I don’t like this!”

He got out of the touring car. The others followed, except for the driver, who humped close to his wheel, a bit white-faced.

Doc did not appear. The clanging of ships’ bells had ceased. The radio jangle ended suddenly as it was switched off.

Monk looked at an expensive wrist watch almost lost in the coarse red fur matting his skin.

“Five minutes!” he grunted. “I’ll wait a minute more, then I’m goin’ in!”

Southward in the harbor, the horn of a liner set up an awful, prolonged moanlng, a dread dirge like the pain cries of a stricken thing.

Doc appeared on the house roof. He descended as rapidly, as surely, as he had gone up, and came to the car.

“I could hear no one at the rear,” he said softly. “We’ll pick the lock and go in the front way.”

The car driver said nothing. He might not have heard. Producing a small, curved bit of steel from within his clothing, Doc seemed only to insert it in the lock, and the tumblers clicked. The panel swung open. It creaked once, a mousy sound.

“All right,” Doc said, his voice reaching only his five friends. “We’ll ail go in at once.

They entered, feeling their way down a passage which was very dark and full of plaster and rat smells.

E-e-eek! The hideous squeak came without warning. It was followed by others, a procession so swift that their combined note was one fearsome scream, with only the faintest of stutters to mark the interval between them.

Slender, tapering steel projectiles wiped plaster off the walls. A few screeched into the street.

Out of the black, screaming hallway came startled cries, grunts, moans - and, finally, silence.

The hideous wailing from the mysterious weapon continued a time. It was evidently oscillating back and forth, for again the missiles launched out into the street.

One projectile glanced from a building in such a fashion that it whirled back and landed in the headlight glare of the touring car.

Leaning forward, the driver stared at the snout of the slender bit of metal. It held a foul smear - poison.

THE driver laughed; the sound was a nervous gobble in his throat. He let in the clutch and drove away. At the corner, he looked back.

The awesome whistling of the missiles had ceased. In the old brownstone house, a dead silence had fallen.

“It worked!” the driver gurgled. “A slick scheme! It got ‘em!”

He turned the dilapidated car around a corner and onward. He kept only a mild pressure on the accelerator. He had had dealings with the police, this fellow, and he knew that a speeding car might easily excite suspicion.

Going westward to Broadway, he turned north. He followed the angling course of the street until he was in the brilliant glare of the theatrical district around Times Square.

He veered into a dingy little street just above Times Square, and pulled in to the curb before a small hotel. He started to get out.

A dark-skinned man had been waiting in the hotel door. He stepped out swiftly into the rain. It was Mohallet.

Seeing him, the driver sank back behind the wheel. The swarthy man got in.

“How did it go?” he asked, taking pains with his English.

“Great!” leered the driver. “They never suspected a thing! Walked right into it!”

“It is well,” said Mohallet.

“I pulled it neat!” bragged the driver.

Mohallet nodded. “It was indeed a wise move when I got hold of you, and held you ready for just such an emergency. My own men could never have managed the deception.”

“Now I get paid, huh?” suggested the other.

“You do. But first, draw up the street a few yards and park. It is best that no one should see me giving you money at this spot.”

Obediently, the touring car pulled ahead half the length of the block, and nosed in to the curb.

Mohallet reached into a pocket - the one next the driver. He fumbled.

The driver gave a violent start.

“You stuck me with somethin’!” he gulped.

“A thousand pardons!” Mohallet murmured, and sidled away slightly. “It must he a pin in my clothin’!”

The driver sat perfectly still for a moment. Then, wildly, he sought to move his limbs. They seemed paralyzed. His face was turning a weird, mottled scarlet hue. His lips opened, writhed in distorted fashion. No words came out.

The man continued his grisly struggles for possibly thirty seconds. Then he slumped over, motionless.

Mohallet felt of the fellow’s wrist.

“Good!” he jeered. “You have collected your pay from me, my friend.”

The man was dead.

Mohallet removed a long, sharp needle from his pocket, which had been next the driver. The tip was poison-smeared. He inserted it in a screw-cap, metal pipe case intended to hold it.

He glanced cautiously out of the car, to see if he had been noticed.

What he saw caused him to start violently, to emit a horrified squawk.

IN the old brownstone house in the slum district, Doc Savage and his five men examined an interesting piece of apparatus.

The thing was not unlike a machine gun with a greatly distorted barrel. Mounted on an efficient stand, it was equipped with a geared device which caused it to sweep from side to side. There was a trigger.

To the trigger was attached a cord which ran through eyelets and was stretched across the hall. Upon entering, they had hit this.

“A trap!” Doc explained. “I entered through a rear window and found it. I simply set the thing so it would fire over our heads. That was to fool the driver.”

“He was one of ‘em?” Monk asked in his mild voice, surprised.

“At least hired by them. It’s a safe bet that he’ll get in touch with them to report that we are done for.”

“But how’ll we know where he goes?” Monk wailed.

“I called the police and asked them to send a car to shadow the fellow,” Doc explained. “I allowed time for the car to reach this vicinity. That’s why I was gone so long.”

Monk, remembering the anxious wait in the street, grinned widely.

Long Tom had been examining the unusual weapon on the floor. He showed the natural interest of an electrical expert in touch with something new in his profession.

“Dang me!” he exploded. “You know what this thing is?”

Doc nodded. “But you tell the rest of ‘em!”

“It’s a magnetic gun!” Long Tom explained. “I’ve experimented with models of small power, but never with one as strong as this. There’s a powerful set of batteries, not unlike flashlight cells, wired to an electromagnet. The steel slugs are fed from a magazine, and by a system of contacts, magnetism is employed to set them in violent motion in the barrel. The current shuts off at the proper instant, and lets them fly out.”

“That’s the general idea,” Doc agreed. “The thing is the only type of gun which can be considered truly silent in operation.”

Long Tom fingered the magnetic gun eagerly.

“Watch it!” Doc warned. “Those slugs are poisoned!”

Long Tom shouldered the strange weapon. “I’m going to add this to my museum.”

Of late, the electrical wizard had taken to collecting unusual objects which they encountered in their adventures. He had equipped a private museum at his bachelor quarters in a high-class club. His assortment already contained some interesting articles.

Doc started for the door. “Let’s get in touch with the police.”

“Aren’t you gonna search this place?” Monk demanded.

“I did that on the first visit,” Doc explained. “There’s nothing here. They just broke into an empty house and set their trap.”

Three blocks away, they found an open-all-night drug store. Doc got a phone circuit to police headquarters, and held the wire.

Several minutes later a police voice rattled in the receiver.

Doc hung up swiftly.

“We got a bad break!” he told his friends.

HE whipped for the door, the others close on his heels. There was a taxi stand at the corner. They raced for that.

“What d’you mean - bad break?” rumbled big-voiced Renny.

“The police car followed the driver, all right,” Doc threw over his shoulder. “Mohallet joined the fellow, and killed him. The cops saw that. They rushed Mohallet.”

“And he got away?” Renny howled.

“Not exactly. But he got to his hotel. The police have him besieged there now. There’s a young war going on around the hotel!”

They piled into a cab; Doc took the running board. Horn blaring steadily, accelerator on the floor boards, the machine rooted up Broadway.

A fire engine could not have made better progress through the desultory traffic. Policemen far ahead reared on tiptoe, saw the giant bronze form of Doc Savage clinging to the outside of the taxi, and tweeted their whistles madly, opening a lane.

Around the little hotel in the Times Square district, there was pandemonium. Police had roped off the street facing the hostelry. Radio patrol cars, big detective phaetons, motor cycles with bulletproof shields on the fronts, swarmed about.

Shots banged. Men ran around yelling, guns in hand. Ambulances stood, engines panting.

Monk piled Out of the car, homely face all agrin. This was the sort of thing he loved. Excitement! The others trod his heels. They breasted the police lines.

“Here - you can’t get through!” a burly sergeant began. Then, catching sight of Doc, he gulped and turned red.

“If you need any weapons, sir, we have ‘em!” he offered, anxious to atone for his mistake.

“No, thanks,” Doc said. “We have enough.”

This, despite the fact that Doc had no firearm. He rarely carried a gun, aithough his ability as a marksman was in keeping with his other accomplishments. Doc depended on his wits, on his unusual scientific devices.

Too, Doc never took human life if it could be avoided. His enemies, however, had a distressing habit of coming to an untimely but deserved end in traps they had themselves set for the bronze man.

His five aids carried an unusual type of firearm. They drew them now. The guns resembled oversized automatics, fitted with curled magazines. These were machine guns of Doc’s own invention. They fired even more rapidly than the latest type aircraft weapons, the shots coming so swiftly that the average human ear could not distinguish the interval between them.

They used these guns more for the fear their terrific rate of fire instilled than for lethal effect. For, like their bronze chief, the five used every precaution to avoid taking life.

In his clothing, each man carried ammo drums for the rapid-firers, charged with what big-game hunters term mercy bullets. These, striking a man, would not penetrate deeply enough to produce death.

They caused an unconsciousness which lasted for less than an hour.