Part 14 (1/2)

”Will you hunt my sister?” he asked over the thousands of miles of radio and land line. ”I've heard you don't work for money, but if you'll find Tip I'll contribute every cent I've got to any charity you name.”

”We are already hunting her,” Doc said.

”By George, that's great! What I said about giving to charity still goes.”

”Do you know John Acre?” Doc repeated.

”Yes,” replied Dido Galligan's faint voice. ”I saw him and talked to him here in Antof.a.gasta last night.”

”Are you sure he was the real John Acre?”

”I'm going to tell you something in confidence,” Dido Galligan declared. ”A friend of mine, Whistler Wheeler, and myself followed John Acre last night. We were suspicious of him. We learned-”

Ping!

went the telephone receiver. A complete silence followed.

Doc Savage slapped the lifeless telephone on its stand.

”Wires have been cut,” he rapped. ”It was done in this building!”

A BRONZE flash, Doc whipped to a large chest, and threw it open. It held numerous cylinders. These were as thick as tomato cans, and perhaps two feet long. The coverings resembled cardboard. From each protruded a length of fuse.

Working rapidly, Doc pa.s.sed an armload of these to each of his men.

”How do you know the wires were cut in this building?” asked Monk as Doc worked.

”From the sound,” Doc said. ”There was absolutely no noise after the cut. This building has an individual exchange, and if the circuit had been broken beyond the exchange, I could have raised the operator. I couldn't, so they were cut in the building.”

Doc pa.s.sed out the last of the cylinders.

”Get to the windows on all four sides of the building,” he directed. ”Light the fuse on these things, and toss them out.”

The order was hardly issued when Doc was gone.

His five men lost no time finding windows on four sides of the skysc.r.a.per. They touched matches to thefuses. Then they flung them out into the cold winter air.

After he had hurled all of his burden, big-fisted Renny leaned out to see what would happen.

He had gotten rid of the cylinders with great speed. The first of them had not yet hit the street, eighty-six stories below.

”Holy cow!” Renny muttered. ”I hope they don't smack anybody on the skull. They're pretty heavy.”

Renny's apprehensions were needless. Some distance above the street, the first cylinder turned into a ball of grayish vapor. In swift succession the same thing happened to the others. Each composition container was consumed completely in a small flash of greenish flame.

There was nothing left to fall on the heads of pedestrians. The gray vapor billowed and swelled. It was much heavier than the air. It sank rapidly.

Within a few seconds, the stuff lay in the street like a fog. Office employees and business executives on their way to work stopped s.h.i.+vering in the cold, and gaped at the mysterious vapor.

They sniffed. The strange haze had a very slight odor, not unpleasant.

”A funny kind of smoke,” a stenographer commented aloud.

New Yorkers are people who like to stand around and gawk at anything unusual. Ordinarily the sidewalks would have been jammed with rubberneckers eyeing the vapor. But this morning was too cold. Pedestrians resumed their way; most of them ran in their haste to get out of the chill.

Some of those who entered the great skysc.r.a.per were witnesses to a bit of drama.

On one side of the lobby was a stairway which led to the bas.e.m.e.nt regions. Two men dashed up this.

One fellow was handsome in a vaguely evil way, and he wore evening clothes. The evening garb was enough to attract attention, since it was now daylight. The other man was big, with a scar across his face, and a nose which was two fuzz-rimmed holes.

The doorman saw the pair. Their running gait aroused his suspicions.

”Hey!” he yelled. ”What's the idea?”

Scarcely pausing in his stride, the burly man with the hideous face swung a fist. The doorman went down, knocked senseless.

The two runners sprinted outside. They dived across the walk, raced down the middle of the street, and bounded into a car.

If they noted that a fantastic gray vapor filled the street, they ignored the fact in their excitement.

The automobile into which the pair leaped was a touring car. The side curtains were up. The engine of this machine was running. The man in evening clothes took the wheel, and the touring car leaped away.

THE car was pointed in such a direction that it had to pa.s.s in front of the skysc.r.a.per. Excited yells went up from the walk. Several persons had seen the doorman knocked unconscious, and had rushed outside to shout for a policeman.

There seemed to be no cop in the neighborhood. The crowd could only stand helpless and watch the machine bearing Velvet and Biff go thundering past.

They were not silent, however. They yelled l.u.s.tily, trying to give an alarm.

Three shots roared from the touring car. The sound was brittle thunder in the cold morning air. One bulletbroke a window; another pitted a brick wall; the third knocked a snow shovel out of the hands of a man two blocks distant.

Biff was doing the shooting.

”You scar-faced fool!” Velvet screamed, and knocked Biff's gun down. ”You dope! You dumb-bell!”

”Aw, I thought I'd scare 'em,” snarled Biff. ”Make 'em forget what we look like.”

”Forget!” gritted Velvet. ”You made 'em remember us. Haven't you any brains at all? Why'd you cut that phone wire?”

”Dido Galligan was fixin' to spill somethin' about John Acre,” said Biff. ”I wanted to stop that.”

”You goop!” groaned Velvet. ”Doc Savage will merely get another phone connection. You didn't do any good by cuttin' the wire. All you done was show Savage that we were listenin' in the conversation!”