DOC SAVAGE got her, hauled her out of the hall through the first door handy. Cooked food odors, roast beef, and the slickness of a linoleum floor indicated they were in a kitchen.
Upstairs, the men were howling and stamping around and shooting in a general fashion.
"Come on," Hannah said to Doc. "What are you waiting on?"
Doc kept his hold on her. "Are you bulletproof?" he asked.
She subsided somewhat. "I guess you"re right," she said.No one was coming down the stairs yet. Doc made a run, got Johnny"s unconscious, gangling length, and brought the burden into the kitchen. He felt around and found a broom closet. He stood Johnny up in that, and shut the door quickly. Johnny was so long that standing was the only position in which the closet would hold him.
Upstairs, the man with the loudest profanity was getting order out of chaos.
"Quiet! Quiet!" he screamed. "d.a.m.n you, listen to me!"
He got them to listen.
"The boss says take Major Lowell and get out of here!" he shrieked.
A man interrupted with a fit of coughing and shrieking. His yelling had a liquid quality that indicated a bullet in the chest. Apparently he knew who had shot him accidentally. He pleaded for a gun to get revenge.
There was a blow, and he was silent.
"Take Lowell and get out!" yelled the loud voice. "That"s orders, boss says. All of you!"
"But Savage is-"
"Of course he"s around here! Why the h.e.l.l do you think the boss wants us to leave." He swore violently.
"Push Lowell out the window. Quick!"
There was stamping around. Men grunted and swore as they made the long jump to the ground from the window.
Someone must have objected to the strategy, because the loud voice bellowed, "h.e.l.l, we only came here to get Lowell. He"s the guy we want. Take him and get out."
Doc Savage had found a pottery jar. Size and shape of the thing told him it was a Mexican piece. He put it on the end of a mop stick, and put it around the edge of the door. The dark-tan color of the bowl would make it look enough like his head.
There was a man at the head of the stairs. The fellow turned loose with some kind of light machine gun.
The pottery jar exploded in pieces.
The man with the machine gun kept shooting, sweeping the bullet stream along the wall. Doc jumped wildly backward, pursued by flying splinters. He got down, changed direction, scooped Hannah up bodily, headed for the other end of the kitchen with her.
"They are organized now," he said. "If they get away from us, we will be very lucky."
But he found a back door, opened it, and went outside.
DOC was now at the back of the house. There was a steady noise from the front. Not as much profanity now, and more words that made sense. From the orders, he could tell generally what they were doing.
They had Major Lowell on the ground, and all the wounded and unconscious men. They were taking these to a car somewhere near.
Doc had one explosive grenade, without gas, in his pockets. He short-fused it with the adjusting k.n.o.b,and gave it an Andy-over heave over the house.
The explosion broke window lights in the house, and shook the neighborhood. It started a neighbor yelling that there was an air raid, bombs, Germans and j.a.ps. The man sounded hysterical.
The blast also accelerated the retreat considerably. Doc had the disgusted suspicion that it accomplished nothing more.
He had three gas grenades. The anaesthetic gas. These were small gla.s.slike globules, and he threw them.
They did not make an explosion when they burst.
He started working his way around to the front of the house, to do whatever he could do.
There was shrubbery, big and thick and made of thorns. He got into the stuff, then backed out again, thwarted and scratched. He tried another route.
The men were still shouting to each other. They were more relieved now. They were more sure of escape.
He heard one yelled sentence that was interesting.
"Drive straight to the planes!" bellowed the loud voice. "Get Major Lowell aboard, take off, and head for the island. Head out to sea, so these d.a.m.ned aircraft listening posts along the coast won"t spot us!"
Plane-Major Lowell aboard-head out to sea-island! There were lots of islands in the world. The words stuck in Doc"s mind.
They were gone when he reached the front of the house. Three carloads of them, making much noise, plunging down a long driveway.
They reached the street. There were some shots. They kept going.
Suspecting the last shots had been directed at his car, Doc ran to the street. The tires, the two rear ones on his car, were flat from bullet holes.
He went back to the house. "It"s Doc," he called by way of precaution.
Hannah came out on the porch.
"They got their two men who were here in the door," she said. "The pair I landed on." She sounded disgusted.
Doc Savage went inside the house and located the fuse box. With lights in the house, he searched. There was no sign of the enemy. Not a single unconscious man. They had succeeded in removing everyone.
"Darn it!" Hannah said. "You let them all get away!"
DOC SAVAGE said nothing, uncomfortably. It was his private opinion that they had done well to survive the affair. Hannah seemed to think differently.
He examined Hannah when she was not looking. She had the appearance of being a very attractive young woman, brown and healthy, definitely not difficult on the eyes. She looked like any other nice, pretty girl. But she wasn"t like any other nice, pretty girl. That was obvious.Doc went downstairs to the broom closet in the kitchen.
Johnny was saying, "I"ll be superamalgamated!" over and over in the closet. He sounded confused.
Doc got him out of the closet.
Hannah looked at Johnny with no approval. "You were a great help," she said.
"You hit me," Johnny accused her. He was still dazed.
Hannah shrugged. "I kind of wish I had," she said. "You"re a bunch of false storms, if you ask me. Here I"ve been hearing for years about the great Doc Savage."
Johnny winced. He fell back on his big words and said, "A tramontanely amphigouristic misventure."
Hannah stared at him, and finally laughed. There was no anger, no dislike in her laughter by the time it ended.
"Maybe you"ll do better when you get warmed up," she said.
Most of the houses in the neighborhood were now lighted. The neighbors were shouting to each other, asking the questions they might be expected to ask after their sleep had been shattered by such a bedlam.
One man, in a loud, belligerent voice, was standing at the gate and shouting, "What"s wrong in there?
What happened?" He did not come closer, and kept repeating his inquiry. He was taking no chances.
Doc Savage asked, "Johnny, can you help us go over the house? We might do that and get away before the police come."
"You afraid of the police?" Hannah demanded.
Doc pretended not to hear the question.
Johnny, however, said indignantly, "We"re not afraid of the police. But the police expect you to answer questions, particularly when there"s a war going on. Before we get through the red tape, we might lose half the night."
"That sounds like sense," Hannah admitted.
"It sounds," said Johnny, "as if you"re afraid of the police."
Hannah looked at him strangely. And her reply was not happy.
"I don"t know whether I am or not," she said. "I wish I did know."
They found the leathery man in an upstairs clothes-closet. Doc found him.
Leathery was the word. The stuff they use to cover saddles-a thick, tough brown hide, with here and there chalk marks that were pale traces of old scars.
Not that he was a repellent man. He wasn"t. He was big, not nearly as large as Doc Savage nor as tall as the bony Johnny, but nevertheless large. About six feet, and not fat. His age was uncertain, something beyond forty, but not much more. His hair was very white at the temples, like cotton tufts over his ears at first glance.
He wore tight cowboy pants and riding boots. His coat and vest were the same material as the pants, butcut in suit style. It was an expensive tailoring job, a regular drape-suit model, except for the tight riding pants.
Some crimson had come out of his nostrils and pooled on the floor. Another string of it had left a cut in his forehead and crawled, because of the way he was lying in the closet, back into his hair.
He was breathing heavily, making harsh sounds.
Doc examined him, rolled back the lids from the eyes, felt pulse and tested reactions.
"Drugged," Doc said.
Hannah had been in another room. She came in. She stared at the unconscious man, her mouth widely open.
"Now we"re getting somewhere." She pointed at the man. "He"s the answer to it."
"You know him?" Doc asked.
"Stony Smith," she said. "Of course, I know the rascal!"
Chapter VI. PIRATES FOR ANCESTORS.
THEY left the house then, carrying Stony Smith between them. They went out the back way, reached a side street. But one of the neighbors saw them, and started following them, not coming close, but calling out suspicious questions. Hannah turned, took two steps toward the man who was following them, and fired a revolver into the ground. The gun was one she had picked up somewhere. The curious neighbor turned and bolted.
"You"ll get us all thrown in jail," Johnny complained. "He"ll swear to the police that you shot at him."
"That"ll be one of our lesser troubles, if you ask me," Hannah said.
They found, by good luck, a taxicab which was empty. They climbed inside, Hannah allaying the driver"s suspicions about the unconscious Stony Smith by saying, "You"d think a guy could carry his liquor better than that."
Doc gave the address of the small hotel which they normally used for headquarters.
He settled back and looked at Hannah. "Now, let"s have your story," he said.
"I"m mixed up," Hannah said. "I was sure you and Major Lowell were pulling a frame-up against me-"
"See if you can"t tell a clear story," Doc said. "Begin with you. Who are you?"
She frowned, then shrugged and said, "I guess that"s the way to do it. My last name is Hannah. Wiliia.
Wiliia Hannah. My dad wanted a boy, and he never got over my being a girl. I live on Geography Cay, an island in the Caribbean. Dad lived there. The Hannahs, all of them, for three hundred years, have lived on Geography Cay. They"re the kings of Geography Cay. The islands around Geography Cay have an economy that may strike you as strange. We own the islands, and yet we don"t own them. The islands belong to the natives, a kind of community ownership. But we Hannahs are kings over the natives. That should make us own the islands, but it doesn"t, if you get what I mean."She shrugged. "Enough for me. Oh, yes-my half-sister, T. Hannah. She is dad"s daughter by his first wife. His first wife left him, ran off. She couldn"t stand Geography Cay, and I don"t think she could stand dad. The island and my dad are like that. Either you can stand them or you can"t."
The taxicab crossed the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge over Rock Creek, leaving Georgetown and entering the city of Washington.
"That," said Hannah, "is enough background of me. But I should say one thing more about the island.
Geography Cay is located in a handy spot for two things. First, an air base there would enable planes to take a big part in defending the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Second, planes based there could do a lot toward hunting down submarines in the current war."
The taxi driver was showing no interest.
Hannah said, "But there isn"t a place on the island fit for a flying field."
She said it violently. She stared at them with an expression of rage.