IN Doc Savage"s skysc.r.a.per headquarters in New York stood the man who came near holding two world records-that of being the homeliest human and the greatest chemist. This was Monk. He stared from the eighty-sixth-floor window.
"Golly, but it"s cold this morning!" he complained.
The blizzard of the night before had subsided. In the street, snow lay more than a foot deep. In places were drifts a dozen feet deep. Men were loading it into trucks. Snowplows grunted and snorted.
Ham said bitingly: "You should never have left your native tropical jungle."
"Can"t you think up a fresh joke?" Monk growled.
Monk had recently hit upon a scheme to plague Ham afresh. He had adopted a pet pig named Habeas Corpus.
Habeas now came from under the richly inlaid table. Habeas was as remarkable a specimen of the porker family as Monk was of the human race. He had legs like a dog, and ears big enough to be wings.
A remarkable thing happened. The pig eyed Ham-then seemed to speak aloud!
"Shyster lawyers always did give me a pain!" An onlooker would have sworn the voice came from Habeas.
This was Monk"s latest. He had learned ventriloquism. Using it to put remarks in the pig"s mouth, he was able to drive Ham into a howling rage.
"Who gave the newspapers the story?" Long Tom asked.
"A rookie policeman," boomed Renny. "Guess there was no harm done. Doc told the cops not to mention his connection with the kidnaping and murder. They didn"t."
DOC SAVAGE was in the laboratory. He was taking the remarkable two-hour routine of exercises which was responsible for his fabulous physical strength and the alertness of his faculties.
They were unlike anything else in the world. Doc had taken them daily from the cradle. He made his muscles work against each other, straining until perspiration filmed his mighty bronze body. He juggled a number of a dozen figures in his head, multiplying, dividing, extracting square and cube roots.
He had an apparatus for creating sound waves of frequencies so high and low the ordinary ear could not detect them. Through a lifetime of practice, Doc had perfected his ears to a point where the sounds registered. He named several score of different odors after a quick olfactory test of small vials racked in a case which held his exercising apparatus.
He read pages of Braille printing, the writing for the blind conveyed by upraised dots, to attune his sense of touch.He had many other varied parts to the routine. They filled the two hours with feverish effort. It was doubtful if a man of average ability could have withstood more than five minutes of the grueling process.
THE door from the outer corridor opened. The four men in the anteroom stared at the individual who strode in the room.
"The bag of bones himself!" Renny boomed.
"The old one-eyed Cyclops!" Monk grinned.
"He"s got both his eyes now, though," said Ham. "Bet he"s seeing double."
Had some of the learned colleagues of the man in the door heard the greetings he was receiving, they would probably have frowned, considering them below the dignity of William Harper Littlejohn.
For he was a widely known expert on archaeology and geology, and recognized as such by the leaders of his profession.
Johnny was nearly six feet tall, and as thin as he could safely be. Until today, he had habitually worn spectacles, in the left lens of which was a magnifying gla.s.s. Johnny had lost the use of his left eye in the War, and needing a magnifier in his business, had carried it over the worthless optic.
Doc Savage, with the magic of his surgery, had restored use of the eye.
Johnny had a newspaper tucked under one arm.
"I thought you had orders to stay in bed for a few days?" Long Tom said.
Johnny grinned. "For why?"
"That eye operation-"
"It"s O.K.! I feel swell! The operation was delicate, but there wasn"t a lot of cuts and stuff. There"s not much to heal up. It"s largely a matter of nerves. You see, the retina had lost the functioning of the rod-and-cone structure, and-"
Ham held up his sword cane in horror.
"Brothers, it"s awful! We"re going to have to listen to him tell about his operation for years."
The bony Johnny snorted, ignored the sharp-tongued lawyer, and popped open the newspaper under his arm.
"What really got me out of bed was something I read in this paper," he said. "I wanted to show it to Doc."
"What is it?" Monk asked.
"An earthquake on a certain part of the South American coast," Johnny explained.
"Yeah?" Monk grunted, suddenly interested.
"It is very strange that a quake should occur there," Johnny announced. "That particular stretch of coast is not considered earthquake country. I happen to be acquainted with the subterranean rock formations. I consider an earthquake there an impossibility."
Renny was shuffling through his own paper. "I don"t see nothing about the quake in here."
"It"s in only the very latest editions," Johnny explained. "The quake occurred hardly more than two hours ago.
The news has just reached New York."
Doc Savage, towering man of bronze, came out of the laboratory. He glanced at Johnny"s eye, seemedsatisfied with what he saw, and inspected the newspaper Johnny offered. He spread it on the inlaid table. He had read only a few sentences when he pointed to a paragraph well down in the story. It read: At the height of the mysterious earthquake, a Chilean destroyer sank with all hands. Aboard the warship, according to a report issued by the Chilean government, was John Acre, head of the Federal secret police.
John Acre!" Renny thumped. "But that guy was murdered right here in New York, last night!"
Doc"s five aids exchanged puzzled looks.
"What do you think about this, Doc?" Renny asked.
"I think we had better get in touch with Chile," Doc told
DOC SAVAGE led the way into his laboratory. In the cold, brilliant winter sunlight, the room took on vast proportions. Apparatus glittered. There was equipment for research in chemistry, electricity, bacteriology-all branches of science, in fact.
Along one outer wall, several small chambers were in-closed in gla.s.s. Doc went to one of these. It held extremely powerful radio equipment.
The radio transmitter, scientifically designed, probably had as great a range as any in the country. The receiver was superbly sensitive.
Within a few minutes Doc was in communication with a short-wave radio station at Santiago, capital of Chile.
He sent a brief message, requesting that some one in touch with late events should come to the station.
There ensued a wait of perhaps five minutes, evidently while they did telephoning down in Chile.
"The presidential secretary will be out to the station very shortly," Doc was informed through some thousands of miles of s.p.a.ce.
Doc Savage remained at the powerful radio outfit. He addressed Ham.
"Newspapers usually keep pictures and short biographies of high officials of foreign countries in their files,"
Doc said. "The information is then handy when the individuals turn up in the news. Will you scout around and dig up a picture of this John Acre, and some of his life history."
"Righto," said Ham, and departed.
Doc Savage waited. Despite the bitter cold outside, it was comfortably warm in the laboratory. The interior of the vast room, in fact, was air-conditioned-the same temperature being maintained night and day. This was necessary in order that heat and cold should not affect the delicate experiments which Doc continually had under way.
"The presidential secretary is here," reported the far-away Chilean radio station.
"Why was John Acre aboard the destroyer which perished in the earthquake?" Doc questioned through the medium of the ether.
"There is no longer a need of keeping that secret," came the reply through the ether. "John Acre was going to New York to employ you, Doc Savage. No one was supposed to know he was aboard the destroyer."
"For what purpose was I to be employed?" Doc Savage questioned.
"There has been a mysterious procession of earthquakes down here," the other replied. "In each quake, some prominent nitrate man has been killed."
"Are you sure the man aboard the destroyer was the real John Acre?" Doc questioned."Yes."
"What makes you certain?"
"When he asked that the destroyer be placed at his disposal, he did so in a message couched in a secret government code."
"Code books have been stolen," Doc transmitted.
Several seconds elapsed before a reply came through the coils and vacuum tubes. The Chilean radio operator, of course, was transmitting the replies of the presidential secretary.
"It might have been a false John Acre on the destroyer," the distant man admitted.
DOC SAVAGE soon ended his radio hookup. He had no more than done so when Ham returned. Ham executed a triumphant gesture with his sword cane.
"More mystery, Doc," he said.
From a pocket he drew a sheaf of newspaper clippings and pictures. He spread these on a gla.s.s-topped apparatus table. The men crowded around. Their attention was closely centered on the photographs.
"Holy cowl" Renny e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "That is the same guy who was croaked here in New York last night!"
"These pictures are of the genuine John Acre," Ham reminded. "That one was supposed to have perished when the tidal wave sank the destroyer."
The pictures were not actual portrait photos, but clippings of published pictures. For that reason, they were not as clear as was desirable.
"These are very good likenesses of the first John Acre," Doc said.
"By the first John Acre you mean the man who came to New York on the Junio?" Ham asked.
"That"s it," Doc told him. "We"ll designate the one on the destroyer as the second John Acre-until we secure proof otherwise."
Doc now gave his attention to the clippings which accompanied the pictures. His five aids also read them through.
"Golly," said Monk. "John Acre was a tough hombre. In the course of his career as head of the secret police, he has killed any number of men!"
"I don"t think I"d like that guy very well," Renny offered in his great voice.
"Which guy don"t you like?" Monk demanded. "The first or the second John Acre?"
"The real John Acre, whichever one that is," Renny retorted. "The guy with the record of kills."
At one side of the room a red light appeared. It glowed for a moment, then went out. It glowed again.
"Telephone," Doc said, and took up an extension instrument.
"Long distance calling by radio and land-line telephone from Antof.a.gasta, Chile," said a phone girl"s voice.
"The call is for Doc Savage."
"Let"s go," Doc said.
From the receiver came clickings, humming, and a sound like some one falling down a stairway with an armload of tin cans. Then the wire noises cleared up."Doc Savage?" asked a voice which could hardly have been fainter had it been coming from Mars. "This is Dido Galligan, speaking from Antof.a.gasta, Chile."
"Are you any relation to Tip Galligan?" Doc demanded.
"I"m her brother! What do you know about Tip! Talk fast! This is costing me fifteen dollars a minute."
Doc used about ten dollars" worth of time in giving the distant Dido a sketchy idea of what had happened in New York.
"My sister is a famous spy and a clever detective," said Galligan. "These devils were afraid she would get the goods on them. That"s why they seized her."
"Do you know John Acre?" Doc asked.
Dido Galligan either did not hear the question or ignored it.