On the road, the automobile engine could be heard. It speeded up, gears clashed, and the car moved off.
When she last heard it, the car was making sound indicating high speed.
Vida Carlaw continued to listen. A few insects made a racket, but there was nothing else. The birds in the woodland must have been frightened into silence by the descending parachutes, since birds fear anything large in the air.
Then the bronze man appeared in a near-by glade, coming from the direction of the road.
Vida Carlaw reflected that he did not look nearly as large as he had in the plane. One really had to be close to him to appreciate his size, a phenomenon, she decided, which was due to a remarkable symmetrical muscular development. He did not have the pachyderm shape which usually marks very strong men.
Vida Carlaw demanded, "Just who are you anyway?"
The bronze giant looked at the strikingly pretty woman, without being visibly impressed.
"Clark Savage, Jr.," he said. "Sometimes called Doc Savage."
Chapter IV. DEATH WITHOUT REASON.
VIDA CARLAW"S mind promptly became involved with a number of thoughts. She was astonished to learn that this remarkable fellow was the man she was flying to New York to meet, Doc Savage. And the high points of the parachute jump-her first-ran through her mind. Nor was she in the habit of having men try to kidnap her.
Besides all this, Vida Carlaw was an exquisite young lady who was accustomed to having members of the opposite s.e.x show marked admiration when they were in her neighborhood. She was accustomed to takingtheir breath away. But this fellow appeared no more moved than if he were looking at a tree.
"What happened to the man who crowned me?" Vida asked, sharply.
"He got away."
Vida Carlaw mused that she had really never seen a more handsome man than this one.
"How did he do it?" she asked.
"Stopped a motorist. Pointed a gun at the driver, probably."
Vida Carlaw decided she liked the bronze"s man"s voice, just as well as his looks. That voice properly belonged to an opera singer.
"I was coming to New York to see you," she said. "A fellow named Monk, who said he was one of your a.s.sistants, told me you were away at some place he called a Fortress of Solitude."
"My return occurred sooner than expected. Monk mentioned your telephone call-hence my being aboard the plane."
Vida Carlaw, being as inconsistent as any young woman with her looks might be expected to be, decided that this bronze fellow was short on chivalry. He hadn"t even asked her how she felt after her first parachute jump. She decided to give him some frost.
"Why didn"t you make yourself known in the plane?" she snapped.
"My life"s work is the rather strange one, of helping those who are in trouble, and doing a bit toward dealing with those who are beyond the law. Enemies are the result. Their attacks come in queer ways. Safety demands caution in the case of a summons such as yours."
Vida Carlaw decided to feel insulted.
"I see! You thought I was a crook!"
"One cannot always tell."
Vida Carlaw felt herself getting angrier. Some thought might have convinced her that she was not getting anywhere. But this young bronze fellow-he was obviously young-was not acting as a young man should in the presence of a very pretty girl.
"So you think I"m a crook?" she snapped.
He did not help matters by inquiring, "Just what are you?"
"I"m an Oklahoma oil producer and wildcatter! My home is in Tulsa, and I"m putting down a wildcat well with two partners, Sam Sands and Reservoir Hill. Something has happened to our driller, and to Sam Sands!"
With the story all out, she waited to see what he would say.
"Give more details," he requested.
The bronze man"s voice had not changed, but Vida Carlaw got the feeling that he was interested in the mystery-if not in herself.
The young woman told him what had happened; she even included the Indian legend which Reservoir Hill had told her about the papoose who had dug a hole in the tepee floor, only to have the spirit of an earth devil come up through the hole and consume him, all but his grease.
At the end, Doc Savage asked, "Have you any enemies?"
"Why, no!" The young woman registered surprise. "Then how do you explain the attempt to kill you on the plane?"
Vida Carlaw studied a speck far away in the sky. It had not been there a moment before.
"I can"t imagine! The whole thing completely mystifies me!"
There was silence for a few moments. The young woman became conscious of the droning noise, and decided the speck, now larger, was making it.
"A plane!" she said.
"Yes," Doc Savage said. "Probably a ship carrying some of my aids."
THE bronze man inserted a hand inside his shirt and brought out a round black bottle. Apparently he wore next to his skin some kind of a vest with pockets. He threw the round, black thing into near-by brush. It immediately gave off a prodigious quant.i.ty of smoke of strikingly brilliant, yellow hue. Such smoke would attract attention for miles.
The newcomer plane drew closer, proving to be no ordinary type of ship, but a gyro, a plane with the usual fuselage, but with whirling wings like big windmill blades. The craft demonstrated its ability to land in restricted areas by coming down on the near-by concrete highway.
The first man to alight was the answer to a tailor"s dream. Sartorial perfection itself! Slender, with a wasp waist and good shoulders, he had the figure for wearing clothing, and he was togged out in correct afternoon dress from striped trousers to cutaway, tall silk hat and a slender black cane.
This man removed his topper and executed a smart bow. His not unhandsome face was characterized by the large, mobile mouth of an orator.
"This is Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks," Doc Savage explained to Vida Carlaw. "His friends call him "Ham.""
"And I hope I may include you instantly among those thus favored," "Ham" said, gallantly. "And especially do I pray you to accept my services at any time needed in a protective sense. There is, unfortunately, a low fellow with us who may annoy you, but I beg of you to overlook him, since the poor chap is actually believed not to be entirely-"
"Tellin" lies about me already, huh!" piped a squeaky, almost childlike voice from the plane.
The owner of the voice appeared-an individual who would block traffic almost anywhere. He nearly missed being as wide as tall, and his hands dangled well below his knees.
He had an incredibly homely face, and his hair, rusty upstanding bristles, was not confined alone to his head, but was distributed over his visible anatomy. General effect was that of an amiable gorilla.
"This is the man to whom you talked on the telephone," Doc Savage told Vida Carlaw. "Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, better known as "Monk.""
"Monk" gave the attractive young woman a grin which threatened to dislodge his ears. He pointed at the well-dressed man.
"Don"t believe what this shyster, Ham, says," he advised. "Sometimes I wonder if that wife and thirteen children haven"t kinda unhinged his mind."
The dapper gentleman in afternoon dress looked as if he were about to explode.
"I"m not married!" he yelled.
"Tsk,tsk!"
Monk clucked. "These two are really friends," Doc Savage told Vida Carlaw.
"Friends?" Monk sneered. "I"ll tie knots in his neck!"
"You missing link!" Ham gritted. "I"ll cut so many holes in you that they"ll think the moths have been in a bearskin rug!"
THE hilly, wooded country was not thickly settled; this concrete road was the only one for miles, and other roads being mere trails. Automobiles were not thick.
There was still another man in the plane, doing the flying. This individual was extremely tall, and so thin that it often made people nervous to look at him. He had a tremendous forehead. His suit did not fit him, and from the coat lapel, by a ribbon, dangled a monocle which seemed to have an unusually thick lens.
"William Harper Littlejohn," Doc Savage said, presenting this other man to Vida Carlaw.
An hedonistic tympanum of concinnity," said "Johnny."
The girl looked stunned. "Johnny really knows little words," Monk explained, "but he saves "em for birthdays!"
"Johnny said it was a pleasure to meet such a charming beauty," offered dapper Ham.
"We want to find a sedan," the bronze man explained. "Baby blue color faded out, model three years old, had a red-and-blue cover on spare advertising a swimming pool."
They took to the air in the gyro.
A bit later, Monk, in between staring at the ground, in search of the car, advised the young woman that Johnny was really one of the world"s leading experts of geology and archaeology and that the monocle which dangled from Johnny"s coat lapel was not a monocle at all, but a powerful magnifying gla.s.s.
He himself, Monk admitted, was a chemist whom every one but a few jealous contemporaries admitted was one of the greatest in the world.
Ham, the young woman pried out of Monk with difficulty, was a lawyer. "But he don"t amount to anything in the opinion of anybody except Harvard Law School!" Monk added.
Five minutes later Doc Savage said, sharply, "There is a town ahead! It has a flying field! The sedan we are hunting appears to be parked on the field!"
Vida Carlaw strained her eyes in the direction of the town. She could see the town, and an open field which was probably the airport. How Doc Savage was able to spot the car was beyond her. He was not using binoculars, either!
And it was the car! They landed and inquired.
"There was a little, lean fellow came running in here and hired my pard and our plane to fly him to New York,"
explained a shabby fellow on the field.
"Give me the description and the numbers on the plane, and the name and description of your partner," Doc requested.
Once he had the information, Doc Savage returned to the gyro, and they took off. The craft was equipped with radio. The bronze man got in touch with the authorities in metropolitan areas, giving a description of the plane, the pilot, and the wiry man, and conveyed information that the latter was wanted for attempted kidnapping.
AS darkness fell that night, Doc Savage, his three aids and Vida Carlaw were seated in the field office at Newark airport, questioning the pilot of the rented plane.
"I ain"t done nothin"!" the pilot protested. "I don"t know what"s wrong! I land my plane at the field here, and a bunch of cops grab me! What"s it for?"
"We are tracing your pa.s.senger," he was told.
"Oh, that skinny squirt with the tan? Say-I thought there was somethin" screwy "bout him! He wanted to be put down in a pasture anywhere on Long Island near New York City. He gave me twenty dollars extra for that.
After I parked him in a farmer"s cow pasture, I flew over here; then these cops-"
"Can you point out that pasture on a map?"
The pilot could and did.
The farmer"s field was near Jamaica. The farmer who owned it had seen the plane alight, and was mad about it scaring his cows. He had seen the man who got out of the plane. The fellow had walked down a near-by highway, trying to thumb a ride toward New York, until lost to sight. Thousands of cars used that highway each day.
"We ain"t got a chance in a million of finding that guy now!" Monk grumbled.
Doc Savage said, "With a little luck, it shouldn"t be so hard."
"Huh?"
Doc Savage lifted from a pocket several fragments of broken gla.s.s. When he turned his flashlight on them, they glittered.
"This," he said, "is our cue."
EXISTENCE of Doc Savage"s establishment on the eighty-sixth floor of one of the most prominent buildings in the city was not unknown to the general public. Very few persons, however, actually knew a great deal about the place.
No newspaper had ever been able to secure actual photographs, although many had tried, and there was a handsome standing bonus for any staff photographer who could succeed. Some artists" drawings, rank guesswork, had been published, but these were nowhere near correct.
Doc Savage"s headquarters consisted of three rooms. One, the reception room, was small, and furnished with little more than a huge safe, some comfortable chairs, and a fabulous-looking inlaid table. The other two rooms were immense.
One room was a library of scientific tomes, almost unequaled in the world for completeness, and the other was a laboratory which was the envy of the few great scientists who had seen it.