Читать книгу The Giggling Ghosts: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 7

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The men gathered around the girl and stared at her in astonishment. The cops frowned, Birmingham Lawn looked amazed, and Doc Savage’s metallic features remained composed.

The girl looked at them wildly.

“Don’t you understand?” she gasped. “I didn’t tell you the truth! Nothing that I told you was the truth!”

A cop shook his head skeptically.

“Then how come you went to Doc Savage with the yarn?” he asked.

The girl laughed; she seemed to get the laugh out with the greatest difficulty.

“Why wouldn’t I want to see Doc Savage?” she demanded. “He’s famous. I’ve read about him. I just—well, I wanted to see him. That’s all.”

The cop began, “Now, look——”

The girl whirled and raced wildly to the storehouse door and flung through the drizzling rain, not looking back, flight her only object.

As the girl fled, she held, clenched in her right hand, the object which she had taken from Birmingham Lawn.

The policemen started to chase the girl.

“Let her go!” Doc Savage said.

“But——”

“Let her go,” the bronze man repeated, but didn’t elaborate his instructions.

The cops stared at Doc, apparently wondering what his object might be.

The bronze man turned to Birmingham Lawn. “You gave the girl something?” he asked Lawn.

“You—you saw it?” Lawn seemed startled.

“Yes.”

“I—it was a small article I found,” Lawn explained.

“What was it?”

“It was a girl’s wrist watch. I picked it up off the floor.”

“Woman’s watch?”

Lawn nodded. “It was back there in the corner where someone must have dropped it.”

“And it excited the young woman?” Doc demanded.

“It did seem to,” Lawn admitted.

“What do you make of it?” Doc asked him.

“Me? I—I—why—why should I make anything of it?”

The bronze man did not comment, and this seemed to confuse Birmingham Lawn.

A policeman jammed his clenched fists on his hips angrily. “That girl was lyin’!” the cop said. “She was lyin’ like nobody’s business!”

“Obviously,” Doc agreed.

“Somebody tried to stop her gettin’ to you, remember? When she changed her story, she forgot that!”

Doc Savage went out to his car, got in and switched on the radio. It was not an ordinary radio; it was a short-wave transceiver. He picked up the microphone.

“Monk!” he said into the mike.

A small, squeaky voice answered. “Yes, Doc?” it said.

“You are following the girl who just fled from the storehouse?” the bronze man asked.

“We sure are,” said the squeaky voice. “Me and Ham both.”

“Keep on her trail,” Doc Savage directed. “Let me know where she goes.”

“What’s up, Doc?” the squeaky voice asked.

“We’re not sure yet, Monk,” Doc explained. “But it is something strange. This girl was frightened into flight by the fact that a woman’s wrist watch was found in the storehouse.”

That ended the radio conversation.

“Monk,” known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and Brigadier General Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks were two gentlemen so remarkable that people frequently followed them on the streets to stare at them.

The two were alike in only one way: both were associates of Doc Savage, assistants to the bronze man. They differed in every other particular.

Monk Mayfair came near being as wide as he was tall, had arms longer than his legs, and he was covered with a prodigious quantity of rusty-looking hair; he resembled, in fact, an ape. But despite his looks, Monk was one of the world’s leading chemists. People did not follow Monk down the street to admire his erudition: they followed him because he was as funny-looking as a baboon.

Ham Brooks, on the other hand, was lean and dapper, and when people gaped at him, it was because Ham was living up to his reputation of being one of the world’s best-dressed men. Ham changed his clothes at least three times daily, always carried a slim black sword cane, and was admitted to be one of the most astute lawyers Harvard had ever turned out.

Monk and Ham were riding in a large limousine, with Monk driving. Ahead of them was a taxicab which the girl, Miami Davis, had hailed.

While they trailed the girl, Monk and Ham diverted themselves by quarreling. They could quarrel on any subject. Now there were squabbling about marriage, both of them having barely escaped getting married in the course of a recent adventure.

Monk leaned back, gullied his homely face with a big grin, and announced, “The only reason I ain’t never got married is because I don’t believe in likes marryin’ likes. Now, if I could find a girl the exact opposite of me, I’d marry her in a minute.”

Ham said, “Surely you could find an honest, beautiful girl of high character?”

Monk said, “No, I don’t——” Then he got the dirty dig and glared at Ham. “Hey, that was a crack!” he squealed.

“Merely a statement of fact, you hairy oaf!” Ham said.

Monk looked indignant.

“You—you seed!” he bellowed. “I could eat you alive, you overdressed runt—and you’d probably taste like a scallion!”

Ham snorted.

“In that case you’d have more brains in your belly than you’ll ever have in your head!”

While Doc’s aids drove along in the wake of the girl’s cab, the two continued this type of discussion, doing so with a loudness and violence that was deceptive; for it seemed that they were continually on the point of stopping the car and trying to murder each other, whereas they were actually the best of friends. There had been a time or two when each had actually risked his life to save the other.

In the back seat of the car, a minor edition of the Monk-and-Ham bickering flared up occasionally between their two pets. Two pets named Habeas Corpus and Chemistry. Habeas Corpus was a remarkable-looking pig. The pig had long legs, winglike ears, a snout built for inquiring into holes. Chemistry was a freak edition of an ape. Chemistry looked rather remarkably like the homely Monk.

Habeas Corpus, the pig, belonged to Monk.

Chemistry, the ape, belonged to Ham.

The car made very little noise. The swick-swack of the windshield wiper was louder than the motor or the rain. Occasionally they crossed low places in the pavement, and the wheels sent water sheeting outward. It was beginning to get dark.

Monk stopped squabbling to remark, “The girl seems to know where she’s goin’.”

“Apparently she’s going toward Sheepshead Bay,” Ham admitted.

“Yep, as much as I hate to admit you’re right about anything,” Monk grumbled.

Later, the girl’s taxicab swerved over to the curb and stopped.

Monk promptly turned off the street to get out of sight. They were a block behind the girl. Their car jumped over the curb and stopped behind a rattletrap building bearing a sign which said:

FRESH BAIT

Monk squinted at the sign.

“I hope that ain’t an omen,” he muttered.

Ham pointed suddenly. “Hey! Who’s that?”

Monk squinted in the direction Ham was pointing and saw nothing but some old rain-drenched buildings and growing gloom.

“Who’s what?” he asked.

Ham explained, “I thought I saw a man start toward us, then jump back out of sight after he got a better look at us.”

“Maybe we’d better go see about that,” suggested Monk.

Monk was happiest when he was in trouble.

Ham had actually seen a man. The man had come out of a long, narrow, discouraged-looking building of planks. He had fled back into the same building. This structure had no windows, and one whole end was open. The building was a place where small boats had once been built, and what was left of a marine railway sloped from the open end down to the bay water.

The mysterious man was the same individual who had attacked Miami Davis in Doc’s headquarters.

The man watched Monk and Ham through a crack in the planks. He wore his yellow slicker, gray hat, gray gloves, gray suit and gray sport shoes, all rather soggy with the rain.

When he saw Monk and Ham coming toward the building—the pets had been left in the car—he gave a disgusted grunt and plucked his silk handkerchief from a pocket and held it ready to hide his face if necessary.

The man then ran to the open end of the building and made a quick survey of the marine railway. It was obvious that he could get on all fours, crawl down the bed of the abandoned railway, and get to the edge of the water. So he did this.

There was a retaining wall of piling and timbers along the shore, and many ramshackle wharves. The man found cracks which gave purchase for his toes and hands, and worked along until he reached a dock to which several fishing boats were moored. He crept out under the dock, clambering from one stringer to another, until he reached a fishing boat.

This fishing boat differed very little from several others. It was a party boat of the kind which, for a dollar and a half, took you out to sea a few miles, furnished your dinner and a hook and line, and you could fish over the side.

The man crept down a companionway into the lighted cabin of the fishing boat.

Three men in the boat cabin looked relieved when they recognized him, but when they saw the grimness on his face, they grew uneasy again.

“Somethin’ wrong, Batavia?” one asked.

Batavia nodded.

“The girl showed up, like we figured she would,” he said. “She’s probably on Hart’s boat now.”

“That’s hunky-dory, then.”

“It’s a hunk of trouble!” Batavia growled.

“Huh?”

“Two guys named Monk and Ham showed up right behind the girl,” Batavia said.

The other man scratched his head. “Who’re they?”

Batavia looked disgusted. “Two of Doc Savage’s men; that’s who they are!” he snapped.

“I don’t see anythin’ to get in a sweat about.” The other man shrugged. “I think you and the boss, and everybody else, are gettin’ steamed up too much about this Doc Savage.”

Batavia put his fists on his hips and looked utterly disgusted.

“Those have been the last words of more than one smart cluck,” he growled. “This Savage is worse than lightnin’; you can generally tell by lookin’ at the sky when there’s any chance of lightnin’ strikin’.”

The other subsided.

Batavia said, “We gotta get the girl!”

“What about this Monk and Ham?”

“We’ll tie a rock to ’em, and drop ’em in the bay!” Batavia said.

While the other men got guns and flashlights, Batavia pulled up his left trousers leg and examined a skinned area on his shin. The damage had been done when he had leaped from one elevator to another in the skyscraper which housed Doc Savage’s headquarters.

Monk and Ham had poked around in the ramshackle boathouse and found nothing.

So they stood for a few moments and abused each other.

“You and your imagination!” Monk piped disgustedly. “Saw a man, did you?”

“You dish-faced ape,” Ham said, “I did see someone!”

They went back to their car, and peered around the corner of the building which bore the sign “Live Bait.”

The girl’s taxicab was driving away.

Miami Davis went down a rickety dock and stopped beside a small schooner which was held alongside the dock by springlines. She picked up an oar and whacked the deck of the schooner.

“Hey, on board!” she called.

The schooner was about fifty feet long, two-masted, a pleasure type of craft. It was gaff-rigged. Also, it was elderly, but well kept. There were patched canvas covers over the furled sails to keep out the rain, and a cockpit awning that was also patched.

The girl gave the deck another whack.

“Hart!” she cried. “Are you aboard?”

Miami Davis got on the schooner. She was evidently accustomed to boats, because she used care that her high heels did not cut the deck. She went to the cabin hatch, opened it and entered. The cabin of the schooner was neat, and arranged in a way which showed the boat-owner was no landlubber.

The girl searched the boat. She looked in a little stateroom aft, in the galley, the forecastle; then she came back and slumped down on a transom seat in the cabin.

There was no one aboard the boat.

Miami Davis had turned on the electric lights in the craft. She let these burn.

Monk and Ham had followed the girl to the boat by now. Also, they had been able to tell, from the way lights had gone on in the boat, that the girl had searched the craft.

Standing on the dock, they could see her crouched tensely on the transom seat. The two aids retired to the shore end of the dock for a conference.

“This is a goofy business!” Monk complained.

“How do you mean?” Ham asked.

“It don’t make sense. Ghosts that giggle. Is that sense?”

“We haven’t dug into it yet, stupid!”

Monk said, “One of us better report to Doc. He said he wanted to know where the girl went.”

“Go ahead, dunce,” Ham directed. “It will be a pleasure to get you out of sight.”

Monk walked away, rather resembling an ambling wart in the murk. He grinned as he moved along; he was always happy when involved in some kind of mysterious excitement. To be sure, Monk didn’t know what they were mixed up in. That bothered him.

When Monk reached the car, he switched on the radio receiver with which the car was equipped.

“Doc!” he said into the microphone.

“Yes, Monk?” Doc’s voice answered almost at once.

Monk advised the whereabouts of the spot to which they had trailed the girl.

“Look, Doc,” the homely chemist added, “what’s this all about?”

“There is no way of telling, just yet,” the bronze man explained.

Monk was not entirely satisfied. He rubbed his jaw, scratched his nubbin of a head, and smoothed the bristling hair down on his nape.

“What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“Keep an eye on the girl,” Doc Savage said. “And eavesdrop.”

“Eavesdrop?”

“Try to find out why the fact that she found a wrist watch made her take flight,” Doc explained. “In case you can’t learn anything by eavesdropping, you might grab the girl.”

Monk grinned.

“Grabbin’ that girl would be a pleasure!” he chuckled. “She’s a looker, what I mean!”

That ended the radio conference.