Over by the Phenix Academy buildings, there was another spattering burst of shots, and the searchlight beams waggled around like the antennae of fantastically enlarged insects.
Spad Ames laughed.
"They still think we"re on the roof, where we went after we broke out of the room," he said.
"We"d be there, too, if I hadn"t found a freight elevator," reminded a man who evidently wanted to call attention to his own merits.
"You"re so d.a.m.n perfect," Spad Ames said unkindly, "you should have found Mark Colorado for us."
At this point, Herman Locatella emitted a horrified squawk. Locatella carried a flashlight, and it had occurred to him to turn the beam on Doc Savage and his men, who were standing with their arms lifted.
The others had not recognized Doc Savage, but Locatella knew Doc instantly, and let out the noise, a wordless kind of squawk.
The four sweating pallbearers hanging to the blanket corners, shocked by Locatella"s noise, let go the blanket. It dropped. The body it contained hit the sidewalk, making a sound exactly as if a stone statue had been dropped, and one of the doubled-up legs broke of cleanly.
Locatella got words coming.
"This guy you"ve held up is Doc Savage!" he screeched.
SPAD AMES wheeled, his mouth becoming perfectly round with astonishment. "What-what-"
"Doc Savage!" Locatella jabbed both arms at Doc. "The Man of Bronze-"
Spad understood, and must have remembered some of the things he had heard about Doc Savage. His blackjack was in his coat pocket. He drove a hand for it.
"Watch out there!" Ham yelled. He lunged for Spad Ames, but someone whacked him over the head with a blackjack, and Ham sank and began crawling around foolishly on the ground.
Fortunately, Doc Savage pitched for Spad also. Spad, who was fast on his feet, twisted to get clear. He didn"t quite succeed. Doc got hold of his coat, wrenched, and the coat came to pieces. Doc got the part of the coat containing the blackjack.
Monk had been ogling the body in the blanket, and his small eyes had been almost hanging out since he had seen the leg break off when the body was dropped. Monk came out of his trance and plunged into the fight.
Herman Locatella drew a small automatic; he shot Doc Savage six times in the chest and stomach-thebullets seemed to have no effect-before he realized Doc must be wearing some kind of bullet-proof undergarment. His gun-the only gun in the crowd, incidentally-was now empty. Locatella whirled and ran to the car, dived in behind the wheel, and stamped the starter pedal in a frenzy.
Doc Savage, whose movement always had method, worked straight to the bound figure of Ruth Colorado. He scooped up the white-haired girl, carried her into the nearest shrubbery, left her there, and raced back to the fight.
Monk had two men down. He was thumping them and howling. Monk liked his fights noisy.
The melee so far had been as confused as the first seconds of a cat-and-dog fight. Now it straightened out.
Locatella got the car engine started. Spad Ames lunged clear of the sc.r.a.p, and grasping the blanket, he gathered it up, body and all, and jammed it into the car.
While Spad Ames was working with the body, big-fisted Renny had s.n.a.t.c.hed up the part of Spad Ames"
coat which had been torn off earlier in the fight. He had felt in the pockets, and found no arrowhead.
Renny was very interested in the black arrowhead. Rushing up behind Spad Ames, Renny seized his trousers pockets and tore them bodily out of Spad Ames" pants.
Spad howled and began fighting Renny.
Four of the hired thugs, suddenly deserting the fray, jumped for the car. Two of them struck Renny on the head with sand-filled socks, and Renny folded down. Spad Ames tried to get the arrowhead out of Renny"s hand, but the engineer"s big fist refused to open.
"Gimme a hand!" Spad rapped, and they heaved the dazed Renny bodily into the car, where two men sat upon him and clubbed him methodically.
Spad Ames grasped the blanket, gathered it up and jammed blanket and body into the car.
The cab rolled.
Monk roared: "They"re all getting away!" and raced vainly after the fleeing cab.
But Spad Ames, Locatella, the four hired thugs, and the fantastically rock-hard body of their companion, all vanished into the fog and darkness with the taxicab. They took Renny with them.
MONK stopped and stamped his feet and shook both fists to express his feelings.
"Just like a rusty ape," Ham said unkindly.
Monk came back, found a flashlight in his clothing, and switched the beam over the surroundings. It was darker, now that the headlights of the taxicab were gone. Monk discovered that two members of the Spad Ames-Locatella gang were spread out, senseless.
"Well, we bagged a couple, anyway," Monk said.
"Whew!" groaned Ham. "Did we get away from them?"
"Yes, we got away-wait a minute!" Monk turned his flashlight on Ham. "Ain"t you a little mixed up, shyster? They got away from us."
"Was there a fight?""Was there-say, where have you been?"
Ham felt of his head. "Somebody kissed me. I think he used a blackjack."
"They got Renny."
"Great grief!" Ham gasped.
Doc Savage went into the shrubbery, then came out again carrying Ruth Colorado over his shoulder.
There was enough noise in the campus shrubbery to indicate the police were approaching to investigate.
"Here, take the girl," Doc Savage said quickly. "Also pick up the two men on the ground. Get them away from here before the police come."
"I"ll carry the girl," Ham said, beating Monk to that job by a small margin.
Monk asked disgustedly: "Where"ll we meet you, Doc?"
"At your laboratory," Doc said.
Ham carried the girl. Monk gathered up the two senseless Spad Ames" men easily. They vanished into the night fog.
Within a few moments, several policemen arrived on the spot. They recognized Doc Savage at one, possibly because he happened to hold a high honorary commission in the department; or more probably because he had addressed a ma.s.s meeting of police the week before on crime-prevention methods, and his big bronze figure was easily remembered.
"What happened?" an officer asked. "We heard a young riot over this way."
"Some strangers seized the car in which I was riding and also seized Renny Renwick, one of my-ah-a.s.sociates." He described Spad Ames, Locatella and the others, explained that the car was a cab, gave its license number, and finished, "They had the body of a man with them."
He started to say that the body of the man seemed to be smoking, and when dropped, had made a sound as if it was rock and one of the limbs had broken off. He changed his mind. They wouldn"t believe him.
Not that he would have blamed them for not believing.
"What is going on?" he asked.
"There you"ve got us," said the policeman. "About half an hour ago, an uproar broke out in the room of a student named Mark Colorado. The night watchman came to investigate, and got slugged on the head for his pains. There was a bunch of men in the room, and they rushed out. The watchman could use his gun, and he drove them onto the roof. The cops were called. We thought the gang was still on the roof. I guess they got off."
"They used a freight elevator," Doc advised, repeating what he had heard one of the raiders say.
The policeman"s expression became peculiar. "I don"t believe this, but here"s what somebody said," he muttered. "They said these guys were carrying a life-sized statue in a blanket, and the statue was giving off smoke. I guess it was only the body they saw.""Possibly," Doc said.
"What gave them the idea the body was smoking, though?" pondered the officer, puzzled.
Doc asked: "What about Mark Colorado?"
"Someone saw him during the hoopla, but now we can"t find him."
"Suppose," Doc suggested, "we take a look at the room where all this started."
Chapter VII. DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE.
ANOTHER of the strange things about the mysterious Colorados was the fact that they had seemed to have plenty of money, and one of the Phenix faculty mentioned this to explain the rather pleasant room which Mark Colorado occupied. Doc Savage said, "Thank you," and looked around.
The radio had been knocked to the floor and stepped on, two chairs were upset and the bedclothing had been scattered, doubtless when Spad Ames seized the blanket in which to carry away his unlucky hired thug. Struggling feet had goosed the rug out of shape.
Doc paused and tested the air noticeably with his nostrils.
"You"re right-there was a queer odor in here," a policeman said. "It was stronger, but the window has been open." The officer hesitated. "There was something else, too."
"What?"
"When I first came into the room, the place seemed-er-well, like a tomb. It was chilly in here, it seemed to me. The cold and that odor sort of gave me the creeps. Ah-I hope you don"t think I"m being silly. But I distinctly got a creepy feeling."
Doc Savage"s flake-gold eyes roved. He had trained his faculties of observation with exercises included in the daily two-hour routine which he took. Having gone over the room, bath and closet, he did something which Spad Ames and Locatella, in their hurried dash into the room, had not thought-he examined the ceiling.
Doc slid the table into the center of the room and climbed upon it. The ceiling, instead of being plastered, was paneled with a sound absorbent material in areas about two feet square. Doc shoved against one of these which was somewhat soiled along one edge-the soiled edge had drawn his attention to the thing.
The panel hinged upward, leaving an opening sufficiently large to permit the pa.s.sage of a man.
"What is on the floor above?" Doc asked.
"The student labs," a faculty member explained. "Each Phenix student is encouraged to rent and equip a private laboratory if he is sufficiently scientifically inclined. The labs are small rooms on the top floor, and are completely private. We have had instances of students using them to-ah-distill their own gin. But usually they do worthwhile work."
"Who used this?" he asked.
"Mark Colorado. I remember, now, that he was insistent on having this laboratory."
In one corner of the lab was a pile of excelsior and the remains of a wooden packing case. The case had been sent to Mark Colorado by express. Doc made particular note of where it had come from.The case had been shipped from Flagstaff, Arizona.
Neither case nor packing gave any indication of what its contents might have been.
Doc Savage completed a thorough investigation of the lab, and another inspection of Mark Colorado"s living quarters below, in the course of which he brought out a number of fingerprints, using print powder borrowed from a police identification bureau man who had arrived. He studied the prints closely, fixing their primary type in his mind sufficiently that he could, by calling upon his remarkably developed memory, probably recognize them if he saw them again.
Meantime, no trace had been found of Mark Colorado.
"What do you make of this thing?" a policeman asked.
"It seems rather mysterious so far," Doc Savage admitted, and leaving the college, took a cab to Monk"s laboratory. He would have preferred the subway, which was faster, but he was continually being recognized and embarra.s.sed by stares and autograph hunters.
Then, too, he had noticed another cab following him, and he did not want to make the trailing too difficult.
MONK MAYFAIR maintained a penthouse atop one of the giant needle-thin buildings in the Wall Street district, where he had a breathtaking view of the lower city and the harbor. Monk liked to lean on the penthouse balcony railing for hours at a time, and watch the patterns of steamship lights on the harbor water, for Monk, himself as pleasantly homely as a Texas horned toad, was a great admirer of beauty.
The type of beauty he admired most was in pretty girls.
In addition to a laboratory which was almost as complete as Doc Savage"s amazing establishment at headquarters, Monk maintained rather fantastic modernistic living quarters in this penthouse. One of the features was a suite he had rigged up for his pet pig, an animal he had named Habeas Corpus in order to irritate Ham. There was a mud bath for Habeas" exclusive use, and the mud was special radio-active mud imported from Claremore, Oklahoma, and delicately perfumed.
Doc Savage alighted from his taxicab, and entered the building, then angled over to a corner of the lobby, taking up a position behind, a pillar to wait.
Mark Colorado came in almost at once. Doc had not seen him before, but he recognized the young man, although Mark Colorado wore a dark hat yanked down over his white hair. Mark Colorado, then, must have been the occupant of the trailing taxicab.
Mark Colorado was being cautious. He glanced about, then went directly to the elevator, the only one in operation at this time of night, and rang. The elevator arrived.
"This the only elevator running?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Where did you let Doc Savage off?"
"I haven"t, seen Doc Savage," the operator said.
Mark Colorado did not argue about it. He took the fellow by the throat with his left hand and hit the man"s jaw with his right hand, then placed the limp operator in a corner. He closed the door and ran the elevator up himself.Doc Savage raced to the elevator bank. The remaining cages stood at the lobby level, but the sliding doors were closed. They could be opened by key, and Doc knew where an emergency key was kept hanging on an obscure hook. He got it, piloted a cage upward, and was careful about stepping out into the penthouse vestibule, which was dark, and moving to an open door.
Mark Colorado was flourishing a large hand grenade. He had plucked the key out of this, and was holding the lever down with his thumb.
"You can put your hands up or keep them down," he said. "But if one of you jumps me, I"ll let go this thing."
Monk and Ham gave the grenade wide-eyed looks. If Mark Colorado took his thumb off the firing lever, nothing on earth would prevent that grenade exploding within five seconds or so, and it would probably demolish most of the penthouse, for it was a large grenade.
Ruth Colorado, freed of the cords with which Spad Ames had bound her, was sitting in a chair. There was a radiant pleasure on her face as she looked at her brother, although she was not smiling. She seemed to approve of what he was doing with the grenade.