Part 8 (1/2)
Monk turned around and glared.
”Stop talkin' that foreign language!” he shouted.
”That's English,” Johnny explained with dignity. ”Anyway, what are you so touchy about?”
”Ham.” Monk took his bullet-shaped head in his hands. ”For hours now, we haven't heard from Ham.”
”Ham is all right.”
”How do we know he's all right?” Monk groaned.
”Well, he is trailing the Horst gang. We figured one man could trail them with less chance of being noticed, and we matched for the job, and Ham won.”
”I'm worried,” Monk muttered.
His homely face was a battleground for various kinds of concern.
Johnny snorted. ”Earlier in the day, I heard you promise to knock all of Ham's teeth out and use them for marbles. Now you're worried.”
”Ham is the best friend I've got in the world,” Monk said emphatically.
Johnny, having opened the newly arrived letter, emitted a startled grunt. He held the fragment of freckled shark skin up for inspection.”An acromatical involucrum,” he muttered.
”Eh?”
”A puzzling piece of hide,” Johnny said, using small words.
Monk examined the shark skin. ”What makes you think it's hide?”
”Ratiocination.”
”Eh?”
”A little common sense.”
”If you don't stop using them words on me when I'm worried, I'm going to make you into something longer and thinner than you are,” Monk said disagreeably. ”Probably I'll just strew you out.”
The homely chemist picked up the sheet of paper which had accompanied the shark skin fragment in the letter. There were words on the paper, saying: THIS PIECE OF SHARK SKIN SEEMS TO BE THE KEY TO THE WHOLE MYSTERY, SEE IF YOU CAN SOLVE IT.
There was no signature on the note.
”Heck, you read this first, and that's how you knew it was a piece of hide,” Monk complained. ”What are these spots on it?”
”Look like freckles.”
”There ain't no such thing as a freckled shark,” Monk pointed out.
THE question of whether or not there was such a thing as a freckled shark had gotten to the stage of consulting the encyclopedia when a green light flashed.
”Probably Ham!” Monk exploded.
The green light was attached to a short-wave radio receiving set-hooked up through a sensitive relay which operated when a certain combination of clicking noises were received-and announced that they were being called by another radio. The green light served the same purpose as the bell on a telephone. To make it function, the operator of a sending set merely switched on his apparatus and, with his fingers close to the microphone, made the proper combination of snapping noises.
Monk reached the radio and cut in the loud-speaker.
Ham's voice said, ” Boy, you better move fast! They're headed somewhere.”
” Why didn't you tell us where you had been, you rattle-brained shyster!” Monk yelled indignantly.
” You oaf! Don't start yelling at me.” Ham said over the radio. ”I was busy trailing that Horst gang. They're out on Long Island.”
” Where on Long Island?”
” The airport. The one that last transatlantic flier crashed on. Remember?”
” What are they doing?”
” Hear that plane motor warming up? They're getting in it.”
” In ten minutes,” Monk said, ”we'll be out there.” The congested city location of Doc Savage's skysc.r.a.per headquarters had its inconveniences. One drawback was the fact that traffic made it difficult to leave the city quickly in an emergency. However, Doc Savage had largely overcome that handicap by installing what Monk called the ”flea run.”
Monk and Johnny got into the bullet-shaped cartridge of the flea run. Monk had grabbed Habeas by one wing-sized ear, his habitual manner of carrying the pig. He also made a grab for Chemistry, the ape, but the latter dodged away distrustfully. At the last minute, Chemistry ran and jumped into the cartridge.
Monk jerked a lever. There was a sound as if an elephant had coughed through his trunk, and the cartridge gave a terrific jump. The bullet-shaped car, which was so small that even two of them crowded it, traveled through a metal tube at a speed of considerably over a hundred miles an hour, driven by pneumatic pressure. It swayed, shook, and the noise was deafening. When it stopped at the other end, the shock rendered the occupants breathless.
”That blasted thing,” Monk complained, ”is worse than a mole's nightmare!”
They were now in Doc Savage's water-front hangar-a huge, grimy brick building with a sign across the front that said ”HIDALCO TRADING COMPANY”-where the bronze man kept his planes and such boats as he had occasion to use.
They took a plane that had practically no wings and twice the usual amount of motor.
The s.h.i.+p was a seaplane equipped with retractable landing gear for use on land. The wheels up, the craft lunged across the surface of the Hudson, and climbed like a big b.u.mblebee into the sky.
DOC SAVAGE and his a.s.sociates used a short-wave radio habitually. All their planes were equipped with transmitters and receivers. Monk switched on the one in the speed s.h.i.+p.
”We're on our way,” Monk said.
Ham said, ” I see that the sky looks kind of funny over in that direction.”
” That,” Monk said, ”isn't a good gag.”
The plane bored on up into the sky and dived into low-hanging clouds.
So fast was the s.h.i.+p that almost at once it was circling toward the airport, but at some distance.
Ham's voice came over the radio again.