Читать книгу The Vanisher: A Doc Savage Adventure - Lester Bernard Dent - Страница 6

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The warden blinked stupidly, spat on the concrete underfoot, and smeared the wet spot with his foot.

“If it ain’t one thing——” He charged away. “Hell! They couldn’t!”

They had. The twenty men had been confined in the warden’s house, which was against one wall of the prison, not in the true confines of the institution, but inside the outer wall. No vicious prisoners were ever kept in this outer compound.

The twenty men had been convicted of no crime. It was, of course, strange that they had been found where they had. Nor had their story been any too believable.

The men had been confined to the warden’s house under the eyes of two guards.

Both guards had been found senseless. Bars were ripped out of a window in the rear wall. Through this opening, the prisoners had departed.

Word went out to hunt for the twenty men.

They were not found. They had disappeared as completely as if gobbled up by the earth.

Reviving, the two guards explained vaguely that some one had spoken to one of the twenty men from outside the prison, but that the words had not been overheard. Nor had the speaker been seen closely.

One guard, however, believed that the twenty men had been given instructions, as a result of which they had unexpectedly set upon the guards, knocked them senseless, and made good their escape.

Doc Savage was more of an onlooker than a partaker in the excitement which followed the discovery of the escape. He requested and received a list of the names of the twenty men. He got also a set of photographs and finger prints of each man. Each of the twenty had been photographed, as a matter of course, when discovered occupying cells which had lately been tenanted by others.

Doc, after a time, resumed his inspection of the box car near where guard John Winer had been shot.

The young woman reporter had been keeping in the background, making herself inconspicuous. But she chanced to attract the attention of two newspapermen.

“Who is that dame?” one asked.

“Search me. But it strikes me we should know her, don’t you think?”

“Let’s get a chance and strike up a conversation.”

“An idea.”

The two journalists began to maneuver for a position close to the young woman where they could make a remark and thus break into a conversation with her.

The other newspapermen gave a great deal of attention to what Doc Savage was doing as he went through the cell house. The bronze man’s actions were puzzling to most of the scribes.

Doc had gotten a metal case from the car which had brought him. This held a number of devices, one of which was what looked as if it might be an ordinary hand spray.

Doc sprayed a film of chemical from this at various points over the cell house floor and on the locks and cell bars. The stuff seemed to harden instantly. He poured other chemicals onto the film, and these hardened, and he peeled the whole thing off. He put the sheets in the metal case.

“What’s he doing?” a reporter wanted to know.

“The chemical is picking up microscopic evidence from the floor,” explained a reporter who was familiar with such procedure. “He will analyze the stuff later and find out a lot.”

Doc sprayed a different type of chemical on the lever which controlled the locks of the cell blocks. It caused the oily deposit left by human fingers to change color, and shortly he had brought out a set of varied finger prints. He examined these, and gave close attention, through a powerful magnifier, to certain smudges.

“The rescuer wore gloves,” he decided.

At the guard tower, he found the magazine with the pages open to the story concerning himself. He drew the correct conclusions from this.

“The guard had been reading the story,” he said. “In his dying muttering, he repeated the name suggested by the story.”

The warden looked as if he had some doubts on that point.

The woman reporter was crowding into an obscure corner and attempting to use the object she was carrying. The two young men journalists were watching her curiously and keeping close to her, hoping to find something to make a remark about and break the conversational ice.

Doc Savage went to the freight car. He was careful not to touch the liquid on the glass bottom of the car, but thrust his head into the gondola and roved the beam of a flashlight. The flashlight was one of his own development, and operated from a spring generator instead of a battery, giving a narrow, intensely white beam of light which could be fanned out widely when desired.

Having examined the interior of the freight car, Doc went over the outside.

“It is a regulation freight car,” he said. “But it has been rebuilt inside to the extent that the glass covering was put on the floor.”

“But why the glass covering?” the warden demanded.

“The contents of the car and the news of what had happened inside was evidently intended to remain a secret for a longer time than it did,” the bronze man replied.

The warden hesitated, as if not wanting to seem too dumb; then curiosity got the best of him.

“I still don’t see why the glass bottom!” he said, sharply.

“To hold the acid,” Doc explained.

“Acid?”

“A mixture of acids rather,” the bronze man elaborated. “The blending was done cleverly, and shows an enormous knowledge of chemistry. The mixture secured will destroy most metals and other solids in a surprisingly short space of time.”

The warden scratched his head. He started violently.

“How terrible!” he gasped.

“What was, warden?” barked a newspaperman.

“We know the convicts went into that freight car!” gasped the warden. “We know that the car held an acid which would literally consume them alive!”

“The car was supposed to hold a pipe organ,” a man pointed out.

“Yes, but——”

“Is anybody sure it did hold a pipe organ?”

“It held big boxes which were presumed to contain the pipe organ,” the warden explained. “It was searched, of course, when the car was switched into the prison yards yesterday.”

“Who sent the pipe organ, if any?”

“A man named Sigmund Hoppel.”

“Who’s he?”

“We’re going to find out.”

The warden shook his head forlornly and added the conclusion which he had reached.

“Some one took those convicts to their death,” he said. “Some one came into the prison, freed the crooks, and led them into that car filled with acid, where they were eaten alive.”

“Looks as if somebody would’ve heard ’em yell,” said a guard who had heard one of the burned guards yell.

Every one concentrated over the mystery, the newspapermen included, with one exception.

The exception was the young woman who showed traces of such remarkable beauty. She withdrew to the outskirts of the group and maneuvered herself until she had a clear view of Doc Savage. She lifted to her eyes the thing which she had been carrying in her hands.

It was a miniature camera.

She focused the tiny camera on Doc Savage, getting the crossed sighting wires squarely on the bronze man’s chest so that she would get a perfect full-length picture. She pressed the shutter trip.

The bang! of a gunshot came from the tiny camera.