Johnny tossed out another flare, banked down and leveled off. There was some bouncing to his landing, but considering the landing speed of his ship, it was expert.
Long Tom had joined Doc. He watched Johnny get out of the plane.
"Johnny sure looks like the advance agent for a famine," the electrical wizard remarked.
This described Johnny"s appearance accurately. He was extremely tail, and thinner than it seemed possible for any man to be. Dangling by a ribbon from his left lapel was a monocle -- actually a powerful magnifier.
Griswold Rock scrambled out of the plane after the gaunt Johnny. Rock"s fatty face was white as dough, and was dripping perspiration. His hands trembled.
"I hate airplanes!" he wailed. "They always scare me."
So that only Doc could hear, Long Tom remarked, "Everything seems to scare that guy!" Renny now dropped his gyro lightly upon the field. Alighting, he fanned a huge fist in the general direction of the sky.
"Holy cow!" he rumbled. "How"re we going to trail "em?"
"I can help out," Long Tom said shortly. "I overheard them talking. They"ve got a hangout somewhere near Trapper Lake, Michigan. They were going to head for that spot."
Griswold Rock held up plump, soft hands in a gesture of incredulity.
"Surely you"re not going to follow them!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Don"t you see that they are too dangerous to monkey with?"
Big-fisted Renny answered this. "Cracking down on guys like them is what we do for a living."
GRISWOLD ROCK shuddered, and all of his fat jounced and shook.
"I"m a coward!" he wailed. "Don"t count on me. I wish I could go to South America or some place until this is all over."
Doc Savage began outlining his intended course of action.
"Renny," he addressed the big-fisted engineer, "your knowledge of engineering includes dope on excavating methods. You probably know where machinery and men can be gotten in a hurry."
Renny nodded and looked gloomy. The gloomy expression was deceptive. The more somber Renny looked the more he was probably enjoying himself.
"You will start excavation on the closed mine tunnel," Doc told him. "Dig in and see what the monster was."
"0. K.," Renny said.
Doc Savage now addressed Ham, whose specialty was law. "You go over the records and recent legal papers of Mr. Rock"s Timberland Line railway. See if you can unearth anything of value. Mr. Rock will want to know what kind of papers he has been forced to sign recently, anyway."
Fat Griswold Rock suddenly shook his fist violently at the sky where the plane of their enemies had lost itself. Color came into his flabby cheeks.
"You don"t need to look for the chief villain!" he yelled. "It"s that chemist, Pere Teston."
For the briefest moment it seemed that Doc Savage"s weird trilling note was audible. His five men showed marked interest, for the sound indicated that the big bronze man had just heard something which he considered important.
"Chemist!" Doc repeated. "You neglected to state that he was a chemist."
"Did I?" Griswold Rock clucked regretfully. "I was excited. I suppose I left out that detail. It"s not important, anyway. He was a half-baked chemist."
"Half-baked!"
"I mean he had crackpot ideas. He was a nut on scientific farming. He was always going around talking about increasing the efficiency of farm animals. He got so goofy about the idea that he was worthless tomy railroad as an employee, so we fired him."
"Along just what lines did he hope to increase the efficiency of farm animals?" Doc asked pointedly.
"I don"t know." The fat man shrugged. "I didn"t pay much attention to that. He was just another employee. Now, though, I wish I"d kept my eye on him."
Doc asked several other questions. These merely developed the fact that Griswold Rock had no more information of importance to divulge.
"I don"t want to go to Michigan with you!" said the fat man.
"We have no intention of forcing you into danger," Doc told him. "You can remain here in New York, if you prefer."
"The rest of us are going to Michigan?" Long Tom demanded.
"We are," Doc told him.
Chapter 14. NORTHWARD.
THE REMAINDER of the night, and part of the following day, was filled with fast, if unexciting, movement.
Big-fisted Renny, calling on engineering acquaintances and contractors, a.s.sembled steam shovels, a fleet of dump trucks, and workmen. He began operations on the caved-in mine, scooping his way in to ascertain the nature of the monster which Caldwell"s gang had buried.
"This job is apt to take some little time," he reported. Ham, the legal expert, set to work on the papers of the Timberland Line, Griswold Rock"s railroad. Although the little railway operated in Michigan, its main offices were in New York.
"I moved the headquarters down here," Griswold Rock explained. "I never did like northern Michigan. It gets too cold for me up there in the winter."
In his first few hours of searching, Ham unearthed several noteworthy morsels of information. First, Griswold Rock had signed numerous checks under duress. They were large checks -- they totaled nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Furthermore, it was evident that Pere Teston had been the recipient of all of these sums. At least, his name was on the face of the checks, and on the back in endors.e.m.e.nt.
Fat Griswold Rock did not seem greatly concerned over the huge inroad on his finances. Apparently he could stand monetary loss, but any threat of danger to his person drove him frantic.
"I got out of it lucky!" he said, and fingered his own fat bulges lovingly.
Another interesting detail turned up by Ham was the fact that the Timberland Line had recently bought tremendous quant.i.ties of food. This stuff Tanged from some hundreds of sacks of flour,. to several carloads of dressed beef. There were literally carloads of groceries.
"The purchase orders for that junk must have been among the papers I was forced to sign!" Griswold Rock declared. "This is the first time I"ve seen them. But they have my signature, all right."
Ham traced down these food supplies. He learned the material had been transferred to a barge in Lake Superior, near Trapper Lake. No one seemed to know what had happened after that. The barge hadsimply gone away late in the night, and had come back empty.
"Oh, gracious!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Griswold Rock. "They"ve bought enough food for an army! What can it mean?"
"It means that this is something gigantic and carefully planned," Ham decided.
All of Griswold Rock"s bulges shook as he shuddered.
"I have an awful feeling," he moaned. "It is that some gigantic, awful menace is hanging over us. I tell you these devils must contemplate something horrible. I"ve a notion to go to Europe until it"s over."
"Suit yourself!" snapped Ham, somewhat disgusted by the fat man"s manifestations of profound cowardice. "But before you sail, give me legal authorization to go through the records of your railroad up in Michigan. I want to do some more checking there."
"Very well," Griswold Rock agreed.
He signed an authorization which Ham drew up.
It was well past noon before Doc Savage took off in his largest speed plane for Michigan. With him went Ham, Monk, Johnny and Long Tom. Each man carried such mechanical devices and supplies as he believed he might need.
They left Renny behind, superintending the excavating of the buried monster.
"I"m going to Europe, or somewhere," said fat Griswold Rock, as he saw them off.
THE SPEED plane Doc was using for the Michigan trip, in addition to being his largest, was his newest.
It was a gigantic thing, built to the bronze man"s personally drawn specifications -- a ship which had created a small furor in the aeronautical world. It was nearly a hundred miles an hour faster than anything approaching it in size.
The fast craft was volleying over the Trapper Lake region of northern Michigan when sunset approached.
Doc was handling the controls. He had not slept the previous night nor that morning. Moreover, the giant bronze man had that morning taken the two-hour routine of exercises which he never neglected.
The exercises consisted of muscular exertions, performed so strenuously that they spread a sheen of perspiration over his great frame. A series of sound waves above and below those audible to a normal ear, he had employed to attune his hearing. He tested an a.s.sortment of odors, this sharpening his olfactory organs.
He read pages of Braille printing -- the writing of the blind which is a system of upraised dots on paper -- to make his sense of touch more acute.
There were scores of other angles to his routine, all intended to develop mental and physical perfection.
All of the exercises were scientific in nature, calculated to obtain the most p.r.o.nounced results.
Despite the exercises, intensive activity, and lack of sleep, Doc Savage showed no signs of fatigue. His companions did not regard this as unusual. They had become accustomed to Doc"s phenomenal powers.
The pig, Habeas Corpus, reposed On a Coat in the aisle. The air was cooler in these northern regions.
Ham, carefully attired in tailored outdoor garb, felt the chill and glanced about in search of his topcoat. He saw Habeas. His eyes popped. His neck became purple.
"Ow-w-w!" be shrieked. He made a pa.s.s at the pig with his cane.
Habeas sought shelter under Monk"s seat. Ham tried to reach him, but was fended off by Monk"s hairy hands. Ham promptly belted Monk over the head with his sword cane.
"You fuzzy baboon!" he gritted. "You put that pig up to eating a hole in my coat! He never chewed on things before!"
Monk looked at the overcoat on which Habeas had tried his teeth. It was a straw-colored garment, the latest in weave and cut. Monk lifted a scornful lip.
"if you"d wear clothes like other men wear, it wouldn"t have happened!" he snorted. "Habeas must"ve thought that funny-lookin" thing was a new kind of fodder!"
Ham"s swing with his sword cane missed as the plane heeled over on a wingtip, and he had to grab a seat to maintain his balance. Doc was circling Trapper Lake.
TRAPPER LAKE was considered something of a metropolis in this remote woods region. It boasted a population of nearly seven hundred. The largest building in town was the hotel, the Guide"s House. The sign on the Guide"s House stood up as the most prominent object in town.
The fact that many of the buildings were constructed of logs gave the town an aspect somewhat out of place in this modern age.
The Timberland Line railway depot was a squatty red structure.
No level ground suitable for a plane landing was discernible near town.
"We"ll go on and land on the lake near Carl MacBride"s cabin," Doc offered. "We"ll be on the spot then, ready to look things over, when daylight comes."
Bony Johnny looked surprised. "How we going to find the cabin?"
"That shouldn"t be hard," Doc told him. "The newspaper clipping gave its location in a general way."
From their alt.i.tude, the sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior was visible to the northward. Red lines, slanted across the lake by the setting sun, seemed to squirm with the undulations of the waves.
The few miles to the lake sh.o.r.e they covered in short order. Renny, peering over the side, slanted a quart of pointing knuckles.
"There it is," he rumbled.
He had discovered the wreck of Bruno Hen"s cabin. Brush and timber resembled a moss growth around the demolished structure. The fragments of the shack itself were not unlike a bunch of crushed and broken matches.
Doc"s plane was an amphibian, capable of alighting on water or land. The under-carriage wheels disappeared into wells.
The bronze man dropped the big ship expertly on the lake, then taxied insh.o.r.e.
He did not beach the craft. Instead, he pressed a lever and a light grappling anchor was loweredmechanically. This caught and held on the bottom. Collapsible boats came out of a locker and were planted on the water. They paddled ash.o.r.e.
A late-calling meadowlark made sound; a jaybird scolded them angrily. Along the lake, leaping fish made splashes. It was a peaceful scene.
They walked to the ruin of Bruno Hen"s cabin.
HAM, LEANING on his sword cane, studied the wreckage in the pale gray light which was all that remained of the day. The ruin had been yanked apart by curious individuals. These persons had tracked down whatever sign the surroundings might have held. In addition, there had been a heavy rain since the disaster.
"We"ll wait for daylight to hunt dews," Doc decided. They pitched their tents on a bit of high ground near the wreckage. While the others did the actual erecting of the shelters, Doc paddled out to the plane and made use of a powerful radio set which it held.
"Wonder what Doc"s doing?" Long Tom pondered, battening down a tent stake with a dead branch.
The question was answered when Doc rejoined them. "Caldwell"s plane actually flew to this vicinity,"
Doc announced. "Checking with the airports between here and New York disclosed one which saw the ship during the night. The plane circled, but the pilot was evidently afraid to land. He went on."
"How"d they come to notice it?" gaunt Johnny asked curiously.
"There was an alarm out for a ship carrying the license numerals which that one bore."
The men showed surprise. They had not known that Doc had spread an alarm for Caldwell"s ship.
"The license number should show who owned the craft," Johnny exclaimed.