"No."
"You"re awfully dumb," she said.
He discovered that his feelings were ruffled. He said, "If you are planning to give yourself a buildup by letting it be known that you"re here because you planned it that way, save your breath. I already knew it."
She was startled. "You-how did you know that?"
"It finally soaked in," he said. He frowned and added, "A bunch of you federal agents closed in on the man in the rooming house after he had shot Worrik, didn"t you? You were going to arrest him, and he resisted arrest, and had to be shot. That was quite a calamity-your outfit had killed the only source of information. So you got the bright idea of making everybody, including the city police, think that the man-Davey, these fellows called him, so we"ll call him that-had been killed by his girl friend. You took the part of the girl friend. Your fellow agents stood by while you scared the fat man, the only witness in the house, into keeping quiet. They then got out of the house, one of them tipped the police off with the false information that you had killed Davey, and you waited with the body for the police to arrive. That will make the police very happy when they find it out-particularly since it got two men killed and one wounded for them."
She said bitterly, "You had to turn up and spoil things!"
"I?...What did I spoil?"
"Everything!" she snapped. "My fellow agents were to follow me and watch me every minute."
Doc registered surprise. "It wasn"t very nice of them to stand by and let two policemen get killed and one wounded, was it?"
"They weren"t following us then, and you know it!"
"Why not?"
She hesitated, decided not to answer.
Doc shrugged. "They made a mistake in figuring they could wait and pick up your trail at the police station or wherever they were going to pick it up."She snapped, "They didn"t think the gang would dare attack the police."
"That"s exactly what I mean. They didn"t think." Doc nodded as if something had been proved.
He listened to Mr. Moore downstairs. Mr. Moore was opening a can of something; presently the odor of sardines drifted up to them. A large, green housefly entered the room and began to do spirals and climbing turns around the light bulb which was suspended from the ceiling by a faded green cord. The fly sounded like a small plane with a perfectly functioning engine.
The girl said grimly, "Your guessing is good, anyway. We hoped they would think I was Davey"s girlfriend, and become terrified that I might know something that would be dangerous to them, and so would try to contact me. That would put us in touch with the gang."
Doc asked, "How did you happen to track down Davey in that rooming house?"
"You led us to him."
"I?".
"Your friends did-Renny Renwick and Ham Brooks. We had agents trailing them, and when Davey killed Worrik, and they trailed Davey, we simply followed them."
Doc Savage closed his eyes. He said bitterly, "That was a fine dirty trick-I root out an important suspect, and you try to steal him from me!"
THE housefly backed away from the light bulb in a long medium climb, did a banking turn, squared off and went into a dive, steeper and steeper, buzzing louder and louder, until he had up full speed. He smacked headlong into the light bulb, making quite a loud click, as if someone had snapped a thumbnail against the bulb. The fly bounced and began falling.
"My name," said the young woman, "is Berthena Gilroy. Usually I"m called Bert. There is no need of us calling each other you. I know who you are. You"re Doc Savage."
Doc Savage watched the fly sourly. The fly had regained flight control a few inches from the floor, come out of his tailspin and got his landing gear down before he hit the floor. He somersaulted several times, stopped on his back, legs up thrust and waving.
"Bert, do you want to go on fighting?" Doc asked.
She lowered her eyes. "Quarreling, you mean?"
"That"s what I mean."
"No, I don"t," she said. She shivered. "If you want to know the truth, I"m scared stiff."
Doc wished to know who wouldn"t be. He added, "Someone is going to get his tail eaten out for putting a woman in the spot where they put you. Whose idea was that? Chapman"s?"
"Who is Chapman?" she countered.
Doc Savage named Mr. Chapman"s department. He remembered this from the credentials Mr. Chapman had presented at the police station. He very conveniently turned up at the police station and helped persuade the police to let us go after they d arrested Monk and me for, they wrongly thought, killing Worrik. I say helped-I could have gotten Lieutenant McGinniss to turn us loose without Chapman"s a.s.sistance. In fact, McGinniss didn"t turn us loose because of Chapman. McGinniss already saw he hadmade a mistake, by then. He had found the room the shot had been fired from. That let Monk and me out, and he knew it. So he used Chapman"s request as an excuse to turn us loose. He wanted an excuse." Doc smiled reminiscently. The Lieutenant should have been a little more subtle. He should at least have pretended that it was important whether or not Chapman was really a G-man, and whether he had authority to go around telling New York City police to turn prisoners loose. As a matter of fact, n.o.body has that kind of authority."
The fly gave a sudden, violent buzz, turned a flipflop and landed on his feet.
THE young woman, Bert, followed Doc"s eyes to learn what he was watching. She found out that it was the fly, and didn"t seem to think this was very important. She said, "Well, I don"t know Chapman. I never heard of him. But that doesn"t prove anything, because I don"t know everybody in Washington."
"And everybody in Washington is probably working on this case," Doc added in an aggravated tone.
"Oh, no! It"s awfully secret. Awfully important, and awfully secret!"
Doc demanded, "Do you know the circ.u.mstances under which I was brought into it?"
She nodded. "The order to turn it over to you came from higher up-very much higher up," she said.
"Didn"t the same order tell you to lay off, once I took hold?" he demanded.
She hesitated, looked uncomfortable. "Yes, but-"
"Shush!" Doc said. "Here comes Mr. Moore."
Mr. Moore sauntered in carrying a tall gla.s.s which contained, to Doc"s surprise, a chocolate milk mixture.
Mr. Moore strolled to the middle of the room. The fly, almost too late, crawled with astonishing alacrity across the floor and escaped disaster under one of Mr. Moore"s feet.
"How you doing?" Mr. Moore asked, after he had checked the bindings which held them to the chairs.
They didn"t answer him. He grinned. "Sorry the reception committee is a little late," he said. "But they"ll be here. Just wait in peace."
He drank from his gla.s.s, and went out. He descended the stairs and they could hear him raiding the refrigerator again.
"You started to say?" Doc asked Bert.
She looked at him anxiously. "You"re pretty angry, aren"t you?"
"I don"t see much reason to be anything else," he said.
"I think you"re wrong," she said. "You"re angry because other government agents are working on it, aren"t you?"
"Messing it up, you mean."
"But you should see that it is so important it couldn"t be turned over to one man." She sounded patient, like a school ma"am trying to point out to a blockheaded soph.o.m.ore that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. "One man really shouldn"t have such terrible responsibility. It"s unthinkable. It-It"s not safe."Doc said, "When you have fifty keys to a door, but only one that will unlock it, you might as well put the other forty-nine back in your pocket."
He thought this was a convincing statement and quite intelligent. He also saw that it had no effect.
"You," she informed him, "might not be the key."
THIS comprised the conversation for a while. Mr. Moore was still busy in the kitchen, and it sounded as if he was making himself a salad. They could hear him strip the leaves off, then slice, a head of lettuce.
Doc Savage lapsed into thought. He had given the bindings on his wrists some attention and had concluded that it was just possible that he could, in an emergency, break the cords with main strength.
Between that probability, and the likelihood that he could tear the chair apart by force. He imagined he could free himself if an extreme emergency presented.
He was tempted to try to free himself and seize Mr. Moore, who would probably be able to give some interesting information if it could be extracted from him. He decided in favor of waiting for whomever they had gone after. Their boss, Doc imagined...But which boss? There were two factions involved-he was now sure there were two. The rumors, which up until the killing of Worrik had been merely rumors, stood as proven fact, Doc felt. The killing of Worrik proved there were two factions. Worrik was in one outfit, and the other group had killed him. That bore out the rumors. The two factions were supposed to be fighting.
Bert said, "Mr. Savage."
He glanced at her. "Yes?"
"I wonder if you have uncovered any facts we don"t know?" she said.
"I have no idea how much you know, or think you know," he hedged.
He had no intention of telling her anything. He had more than one reason for this, but the big one was that he hadn"t seen any proof that she was a government agent. It still seemed rather incredible to him that anybody would allow a woman to become involved in such a grim thing.
"I can tell you what we know," she said. "That is, if you think they won"t overhear. If you think there isn"t a microphone."
"There may be a microphone. But it wouldn"t make much difference, would it? They would already know, from the way we"re bungling around, that we"re feeling in the dark."
"W ell, do you think it safe for me to talk?" She had put it up to him.
"Use your own judgment," he said. He really wished to hear what she knew because the amount of information she possessed would prove whether or not she was a government agent. If she knew as little as he knew, she probably was what she said she was. On the other hand, there might be an eavesdropping microphone somewhere in the room. He looked at the possible places where one might be hidden, knowing very well it was possible to hide one so that no visual inspection alone would disclose it.
The fly suddenly got up off the floor and made a short test flight to Doc"s knee. After a good landing, the fly sat there doing a pre-flight check, testing legs, first one wing then the other, giving his eyes a swipe with his forelegs for better vision."YOU know, of course," the girl said unexpectedly, that nothing might have been known about this-until too late-if the rascals hadn"t started fighting among themselves and thus drawn attention."
Doc nodded. He wondered if she were fishing for information .. She was a very pretty girl, but he supposed you shouldn"t trust a pretty girl any quicker than you would a homely one. He supposed they were like men in that their looks didn"t make a bit of difference in their honesty. He wished he knew about this.
She said, "There were eight men on the Lonely Widow. They took off on what was to be the second atomic bombing of j.a.pan. Major Bill Burton, the navigator, reported they caught a flak burst over Osaka. They must have been hit again immediately-at least one of the two escort planes reported they were. The B29 escorts Janie and New Orleans Gal, closed in, and, by exchanging blinker signals, learned the radios were out. Both blind flight groups on the instrument panel were functioning, but the compa.s.ses, both magnetic and gyro, were out. The co-pilot had been killed. The escorting B29s started guiding the cripple back."
Doc made no comment. He already knew this. He even knew a little more. He knew the names of the crew of the damaged-and since missing-B29. He also knew they had all been investigated from A to Izzard before the flight, and had been almost continually during the several months since.
Bert said, "Weather closed in on them. The other two B29s lost the Lonely Widow. Flying blind, the Lonely Widow pa.s.sed through a terrible thunderhead, and such awful weather conditions were encountered that the two B29s even lost their radar contact with the crippled ship. They had radioed the situation to their base, of course, and the navy helped. They kept the Lonely Widow on their radar screens for quite a while. They could tell the ship was lost. They kept trace of the Lonely Widow for nearly three thousand miles-the plane was west of 150 degrees longitude and far south when they lost it. All that was left then was hope-either that the ship would be found, or that it had crashed into the sea and sunk where no one would ever be able to lay hands on the secret it carried."
Doc said, "They may have gotten rid of the bomb."
"Weren"t you told about that? The flak hit jammed the dropping mechanism. They couldn"t get rid of it.
Anyway, what happened since-what is happening now-proves they didn"t."
Doc reflected that he could point out that so far there hadn"t been a speck of proof that an atomic bomb was involved in these goings-on. He kept still.
MR. MOORE was frying eggs. They could hear him cracking the eggs, and heard the surprised sizzle of hot grease as each egg landed in the frying pan. The housefly launched into flight, lost alt.i.tude until he gained flying speed, then rose swiftly and began reconnoitering the light bulb once more. Mr. Moore exploded into curses; he had broken a bad egg into his pan.
The girl was looking at Doc Savage suspiciously. "You know all this, don"t you?"
He shrugged, "For a federal agent, you"re giving away secrets freely," he remarked.
"It doesn"t make any difference!" Bert said angrily. "Don"t tell me what to do!" She eyed him with increased suspicion. "I bet this is all news to you."
Doc decided he might as well soothe her suspicions and urge her to talk and see if she knew anything he didn"t. She hadn"t, so far.
He said, "Wilbur Rigg was killed in the Bronx, wasn"t he?"Her eyes flew wide. "So you do know the story. Yes, in the Bronx. He was shot. The police talked to his sister, and she said that her brother, who was an ex-convict, had talked about some men who had come from a South Seas island who had an atomic bomb for sale to the highest bidder...The police immediately notified the FBI, because nothing, nothing at all, is being overlooked in this bomb business...But the sister didn"t know much more. She didn"t know who the men were who had the bomb for sale, or where they could be found. She did know, though, that they hadn"t brought the bomb with them. It was on the island in the Pacific. They had offered it for sale, and a fight had broken out between them and one of their prospective customers. The customer was trying to steal the thing."
Doc said, "This fellow who was killed-Rigg-seemed to be one of the gang who was trying to take the bomb away from the men from the South Seas...You aren"t giving me anything new...Worrik was connected with Rigg because the sister said Rigg had mentioned Worrik as a pal, and probably a co-conspirator. So the FBI and everybody else got busy on Worrik, but could turn up nothing definite enough to act on. All they got were enough hints to alarm them. All of it was vague, and would have been dropped as improbable and unproven and silly if the atomic thing hadn"t been involved."
Bert looked at him intently and, he was forced to conclude, disapprovingly. "I don"t think you are properly imbued with the seriousness of this affair," she said.
"You don"t," Bert continued, "seem to realize what a bunch of crooks could accomplish with one of the bombs. Over a hundred thousand people, remember, were killed in j.a.pan by the things. Think, for instance, what the threat of releasing one on Manhattan Island would mean. Think what a threat for an extortion deal it would be."
Doc decided the girl was intensely frightened. Doc saw this suddenly, and felt quite a lot better. It cleared up the mystery of why she was being so testy.
Mr. Moore was eating his eggs. The fly made a pa.s.s close to the light bulb, backed off as if to charge against it, changed his mind and flew out of the room and down the stairs. Presently Mr. Moore banged the table loudly and swore. The fly was bedeviling him.
Chapter VII.
HE was a roundish sort of man who was rounded the way a steel ball-bearing is rounded-nothing in his roundness implied softness. He was not a very large man. About forty. Yellow-haired the way an old broom becomes yellow. He had a gold upper tooth in front and, next to it, a cavity where another tooth should have been. The missing tooth made him swish a little when he talked.
After Rice and Skeeter had arrived with him, and after Mr. Moore had greeted him heartily with, "Boss, I was afraid you weren"t gonna show up!" they all came clumping up the stairs.
"I"m Cavendish," the rounded man said. "I"m-" He didn"t finish.
His mouth opened, remained roundly open for a while. He was staring at Doc Savage.
Presently he turned to Mr. Moore, Skeeter and Rice. "You guys," he said, "are three smart cookies. I suppose, if you had found a man-eating tiger, you woulda brought it home with you."
Mr. Moore, Rice and Skeeter stared in astonishment. They were being chastised, but they didn"t know what for.
"Don"t you know who this man is?" demanded Mr. Cavendish.
"Some toughie they had hired to-""Oh, h.e.l.l!" Cavendish cut off Mr. Moore. "This man is about as dangerous a customer as you could have laid your hands on. I don"t understand how you caught him. I can hardly believe it. Personally, I would not have come within a thou- sand miles of here if I d known he was here. He"s Doc Savage."
Doc appeared to be embarra.s.sed by his fame, but it was not necessary. Skeeter and Rice apparently had never heard of him, and Mr. Moore had heard of him only vaguely.
"Of all the dumbbells!" said Cavendish explosively. "Of all the stupid-well, It"s too late now. You"ve got him here. We"ve gotta make the best of it."