Part 7 (1/2)
Long Tom's device indicated answers to all four of these questions to be the truth.
”Do you have criminal records?” Doc asked.
”No.”
They were both liars there, however, according to the detector.
”We'll take them downstairs,” Doc said, ”and take a cab to headquarters.”
THE trip uptown was uneventful, and so was the ride up in the private elevator to the eighty-sixth floor; but when they approached the door, they saw an envelope that had been stuck to the panel with a bit of chewing gum.
”Now what's this?” Monk grumbled, and opened the envelope. Printed lettering on the one sheet inside said: HOW DOES THIS STRIKE YOU FOR A TRADE? YOUR FRIEND RENNY IN EXCHANGE.
FOR MARK AND RUTH COLORADO.
WE TRIED TO BORROW YOUR CAR. REMEMBER?.
”Spad Ames wants the two Colorados mighty bad,” Monk muttered. ”I wonder why?”
No one told him why. Doc Savage went into the laboratory, returned with a hypodermic needle, and used the contents to put both of their captives to sleep.
”Bring them along,” the bronze man said.
They used another car from the private garage, this machine a dark sedan that had size, power and the impregnability of a battles.h.i.+p turret without being conspicuous, and drove to a small private hospital on the West Side, where they unloaded the two sleeping prisoners.
The hospital, although no one but the managing director knew the fact, was maintained by Doc Savage as a completely charitable inst.i.tution for the nearby slum sections. The two captives would be held there until called for.
”These will go to college,” Doc told the hospital director, indicating the two senseless ex-members of Spad Ames' gang.
These cryptic instructions would result in an ambulance calling for the pair before many hours had pa.s.sed, and taking them to a unique inst.i.tution for curing criminals which Doc Savage maintained in a remote, mountainous and almost uninhabited section of up-state New York. At this inst.i.tution, surgeons trained by Doc Savage would perform delicate brain operations which would wipe out all memory of the past. The pair would receive training in some trade, would be taught to hate crime and criminals, afterwhich they would be released to become citizens of some value. No crook-once having matriculated in this unusual ”college”-ever returned to crime.
Existence of this ”college” was kept from the public for various reasons, one being that the place was a little unorthodox; and this method of curing criminals, while it was one that Doc felt would eventually be used widely, was somewhat too fantastic for public acceptance.
”Now,” Monk said grimly, ”if we just had a way of locating Renny.”
”We have,” Doc said.
”Huh?”
The bronze man switched on the radio which, instead of being located under the dash, was clamped against the car top, just back of the winds.h.i.+eld. It was a compact set, both transmitter and receiver, as well as convertible into a direction finder. Doc made the conversion by throwing switches, and stopping the car and fitting a small collapsible loop aerial into the weatherproof socket on top.
Monk suddenly remembered the perfectly obvious fact that all of Doc Savage's private machines were equipped with two-way radio apparatus.
”Doc!” he exploded. ”In that taxicab Spad Ames took from us-you didn't leave the radio, on, by any chance?”
”I left the transmitter switched on,” Doc admitted.
Monk emitted a pleased whoop. ”Then it's probably still on, because the transmitter don't make any noise, so they wouldn't notice it.”
Long Tom said: ”Then we can locate the car simply by taking bearings on the transmitter carrier wave with our finder.”
Doc nodded; he was busy with the direction-finder.
Chapter IX. TRAILS WEST.
BY three o'clock in the morning, the fog had turned to thin rain that poured down in long strings and made sheets on the winds.h.i.+eld wherever it was not knocked away by the wipers. The big car ran silently, the tires making, as they threw water, more noise than the engine of the machine.
The road was rough-it was well north of the city-and the car bucked enough to keep them hanging to the support straps. Monk, Ham and Long Tom would have been uneasy had any one of them been driving at such speed, but their confidence in Doc's tooling of the machine was complete, so they were relaxing as much as they could.
”Naturally, they would go north,” Ham said grimly. ”That way, they would not have to use bridges, ferries or tunnels over the East River or Hudson that are easily watched.”
Long Tom emitted a sharp noise.
”Hep!” said Long Tom. ”We've pa.s.sed it up.”
He had been manipulating the direction finder steadily; the loop had swung around sharply, following the signal, until it was at right angles to the car.”We just pa.s.sed a side road,” Ham said.
Doc continued driving. ”We will go on a bit, in case they should be watching the road,” he explained.
Half a mile beyond, after they had rounded a curve, the bronze man wheeled their machine off the rough blacktop pavement and stopped.
Ham opened the door, grumbled: ”Have we got to get out and swim in this?”
”Too bad about them clothes of yours,” Monk said.
Doc took the radio along. It could be made portable by loosening thumb screws, an emergency set of batteries being self-contained.
The rain poured down, brush beat their faces and their feet sank in a lot of wet leaves. Trees thickened, and the branches lacked a canopy that shut out any light there might have been.
There was a thump, and Monk croaked, ”Oaf! I mashed my face flat against a tree!”
”Probably improved it,” Ham said cheerfully.
Doc Savage suggested: ”Use the scanners.”
The ”scanner” was a device perfected by Doc Savage, and so complicated that only Monk and the missing Renny had any accurate idea of how it functioned. There was a projector that put out ”black”
light, or light with a wavelength near the infrared spectrum, and which was called ”black” because it was invisible to the unaided human eye. The goggles which enabled the wearer to see by ”black” light had lenses resembling condensed-milk cans, and functioned through the medium of rotating screens coated with a substance which briefly retained a ”picture” formed by the infrared light.
They donned the scanner. Seen through the devices, their surroundings were a vague, unreal panorama of bone-colored objects and intensely black shadows. But it was literally seeing in the dark; no one unequipped with the scanners would realize there was any light at all. Doc Savage had used the devices before; they gave a tremendous advantage in any fight in darkness.
They made good time for twenty minutes through the rain.
”This looks like it,” Monk said, and they had been walking in such an unreal world, as seen through the scanner goggles, that his voice caused all the others to jump.
THE cabin was not constructed of genuine logs, but of sawed imitations nailed on over a framework of ordinary lumber, although in spite of that it would be an attractive place seen in better weather. There was a wide porch, and on this stood two men with shotguns.