Part 3 (1/2)
CARL MACBRIDE was even more impressed by the big skysc.r.a.per which housed Doc Savage's office, when he alighted before it. Head back, mouth open, MacBride peered upward When he entered the lobby, the magnificence of the ornate place made him feel mouselike.
His amazement at sight of the great building accounted for the big man's failure to note a fellow with black hair and black mustache who carried a banjo and lurked in a corner of the lobby. MacBride lumbered into an elevator.
”Doc Savage's office,” he said.
He was promptly rushed to the eighty-sixth floor. He found a door which bore, in very small bronze letters, the name: CLARK SAVAGE, JR.
There was a b.u.t.ton, but few persons had doorbells where Carl MacBride came from. He rapped the door with his knuckles in the good old-fas.h.i.+oned way.
The door opened.
The unusual voice over the telephone had partially prepared Carl MacBride for the sight of an unusual personage when he confronted Doc Savage. Even then, the bronze man was so far beyond expectations that MacBride gaped in amazement.
Doc Savage had evidently opened the door by some mechanical means. He stood, not near the panel, but some feet from it -- in the middle of a great office. This was fitted with a costly inlaid table, an enormous safe, and a number of comfortable chairs.
That the bronze man possessed amazing physical strength was evident from the enormous tendons which bundled his neck and cabled his hands. He was a giant; but his proportions were symmetrical, and standing in the ma.s.sively furnished office, he seemed little larger than an ordinary man.
The mighty bronze man's eyes held Carl MacBride's attention. They were strangely impressive, those eyes. They had the appearance of tiny pools of flake gold which eddied and whirled continuously.
The bronze of Doc Savage's hair was somewhat darker than the bronze of his skin. He was attired in quiet business garb.
”Doc Savage?” asked Carl MacBride, although he knew he was confronting the man he sought. ”Right,” confirmed the remarkable man of bronze. Carl MacBride took a step into the office.
An elevator door down the corridor opened. A man popped out He had a black mustache, dark hair, and carried a banjo. He raised the banjo to the level of his eyes and gave one of the strings a forcible pluck.
There was a chunging sound -- it might have been a man emitting one harsh cough. A tongue of flame leaped from an almost indistinguishable round hole in the side of the banjo.
Carl MacBride opened his mouth wide, and a crimson flood came out. His knees buckled. His hands clamped to the back of his neck, where a bullet from CaIdwell's deadly silenced gun had clubbed a hole.
He slammed face down upon the floor. MacBride felt no pain from the impact, for he was dead.
Chapter 5. THE CLIPPING.
CALDWELL, THE killer, was in a position where he could view Doc Savage's office. He saw the giant bronze man, got a most unnerving look at the weird golden eyes. He realized that Doc, having witnessed the killing, was a menace.
Caldwell darted his banjo weapon m Doc Savage's direction and plucked the trigger-string. The concealed gun lipped powder flame and slugs.
Caldwell's eyes threatened to jump from their sockets. A weird thing had happened to his bullet. It had disintegrated in a grayish lead puff in mid-air, some feet inside the door.
He fired the hidden gun until it was empty. He wrenched out his two automatics and squeezed the weapons at the office door. They convulsed thunderously, and spouted empty cartridges.
To all of the bullets the same fantastic thing happened. They splashed into innumerable fragments in mid-air or became shapeless blobs which fell back to the floor.
Caldwell spun and fled. He dived into an elevator, menaced the attendant with his gun and forced an instant descent.
As the cage sank, Caldwell heard a fragment of weird sound. The note was not loud, yet it penetrated to the descending elevator with remarkable clarity. It seemed without definite source; it might have been a product of the movement of the very air itself past the sinking cage. It was not a whistle, nor did it seem quite the emanation of vocal chords. A mellow trilling which defied description, the sound trickled up and down the musical scale.
Caldwell, unable to define the note, dismissed it as a freakish trick played by his own ears.
He was wrong. The strange, undulating note was the sound of Doc Savage. It was the small unconscious thing which the bronze man did in moments of stress -- when thinking, or surprised, or contemplating some unusual procedure.
AN ONLOOKER, knowing Doc Savage, and cognizant of the mighty bronze man's abilities, would have expected pursuit of Caldwell. At Doc Savage's disposal here on the eighty-sixth floor, was a high-speed elevator capable of dropping the bronze man to the lobby level before Caldwell could arrive.
Doc did not pursue the slayer. Instead, he moved into a room adjoining the office. The walls of this chamber were banked with book shelves. Ma.s.sive cases laden with ponderous tomes stood thickly on the floor. It was Doc Savage's library, and it held one of the most complete collections of scientific worksin existence.
The bronze man seemed to be moving without hurry, but his speed was surprising.
Beyond the library was another vast room. This held glittering arrays of bottled chemicals, banks of test tubes, retorts and filtering devices. Electric furnaces and costly metalworking tools occupied the floor s.p.a.ce.
In the center of the great workshop-laboratory Doc Savage halted. He stood before a paneled cabinet.
A microphone dangled in front of this. Inset in the cabinet was a square panel that resembled frosted gla.s.s.
Doc spoke into the microphone. ”Did you see what just happened in the outer office?”
From a loud-speaker, the grilled throat of which was almost unnoticeable on the side of the cabinet, the reply came. It was couched in a tiny, almost babylike voice.
”We did,” said the small voice. ”Ham and me both saw it. And we're off.”
Doc Savage reached over and flicked a switch. Upon the panel of frosted gla.s.s a picture appeared. It depicted cold concrete floors, wails, and an array of parked automobiles. There was a door in this pictured room. Two men were just diving through it, making a wild departure from the place.
Doc switched off the televisor-phone with which he had communicated with those two men. He returned to the outer office. Here also, but concealed cleverly in the wails, was another televisor-phone. This one had transmitted an image of what had occurred in the office to the two men to whom Doc had spoken.
Doc Savage and his five men were accustomed to keep each other in view with these devices whenever convenient. Thus they could witness danger which might threaten each other.
They had many enemies.
In approaching the lifeless body of Carl MacBride, Doc circled widely to avoid the agency which had caused Caldwell's bullets to mushroom so mysteriously in mid-air.
It was nothing more mysterious than an upright sheet of clear bullet-proof gla.s.s.
Due to the fact that he had many enemies, it was Doc's custom to first greet strangers from behind this unnoticeable s.h.i.+eld.
THE GIANT man of bronze closed his office door to avoid the notice of pa.s.sers-by in the corridor.
Then he examined the body of the unfortunate Carl MacBride.
The first thing Doc brought to light was that the enormous roll of bills which Bruno Hen had given the big woodsman. He. riffled through the money. In the act of doing this, his nostrils quivered slightly. He lifted the bundle of currency and gave it an olfactory test.
Doc Savage had a daily exercise routine of two hours which he had taken unfailingly from childhood. The exercises were scientifically designed to develop his every sense touch, hearing, sight, the sense of smell, and taste. His faculties were far beyond those of an ordinary man.
Doc identified the odor easily, faint though it was. The scent of musk! Continuing his examination, he brought out a newspaper clipping -- the one Carl MacBride had shown his plane acquaintance, Caldwell. After noting that it was from a Trapper Lake, Michigan, paper, Doc read it: TRAPPER LAKE MAN VICTIM OF WEIRD TORNADO.
Bruno Hen, trapper and fisherman residing near the lake sh.o.r.e five miles north of Trapper Lake, met death last night in what authorities have decided was a freak cyclone. Hen was found crushed to death in his demolished cabin by Carl MacBride, a neighbor.