Part 4 (2/2)
Doc Savage returned to his companions, who were waiting in a car down the street. The machine, a long, discreetly dark sedan, had little outward appearance of armor plate and bulletproof gla.s.s construction.
”I take it our man is going to show up here,” Vida Carlaw said. ”But how did you find it out?””Remember his gla.s.ses?”
”Of course. They were broken when you saved me.”
”I picked up the pieces,” Doc explained. ”Examination showed the man would be very far-sighted without the gla.s.ses. In fact, he would just about have to have new gla.s.ses at once. Naturally, he would get them as soon as possible.”
Monk squeaked, ”So you phoned optical concerns, offering a reward to be tipped off when anybody had such a prescription for gla.s.ses filled!”
The street was full of noisy cars carrying people to work and newsboys calling morning editions. One newsboy came along the street, howling a headline.
”Oklahoma outlaw escapes!” the boy squawled. ”Tomahawk Tant evades airplanes and posses!”
Monk said to the young woman, ”Your native land seems to have made the headlines this morning.”
”Tomahawk Tant!” The girl sniffed. ”They won't catch him!”
”No?” Monk grinned at her. ”The outlaw has never lived who beat the law for long. Look at them. Al Spencer, Matt Kimes, Pretty Boy Floyd-all bad ones. And they all got licked.”
Doc put in casually, ”What about Tomahawk Tant? Not much about him has reached the East.”
”He's one of the old-time types of outlaw out there,” Vida explained. ”One of the cleverest. No one really knows much about him.”
Monk began, ”Well the law will get him-”
”Down!” Doc Savaged rapped. ”Here comes our man!”
THE wiry man appeared, walking, wearing a dark-blue topcoat, which he must have purchased somewhere, and a dark hat. His black gloves appeared to be the same ones he had worn in the plane. He entered the optical concern.
Five minutes later, the man came out, stood and beckoned for a taxicab. One drew up and he stepped in.
”The usual method for trailing him!” Doc Savage directed his aids.
The trailing method was not Doc's invention. Monk, Ham and Johnny each got a taxi, and they took turns, one on the trail, while the other got ahead. By switching about casually, they made it almost impossible for the man in the taxi to learn he was being trailed.
The quarry went to an obscure hotel in the theatrical district. He had his cab wait, and entered.
A moment later, Doc eased into the hotel and noted several innocent-looking loafers in the lobby. The bronze man purchased a newspaper, seated himself, and held the paper so it concealed his face. He kept watch through peepholes in the paper.
On Doc's lap lay a black instrument which might have been mistaken by a photographer for a light meter or photometer.
In a few moments, the wiry man came down in an elevator, carrying a small, new briefcase. He pa.s.sed Doc Savage without his slightest suspicions being aroused, and left the hotel.
Doc was watching the unusual instrument on his lap. As the man pa.s.sed-the indicator needle crept up on the scale, then came back again when he had gone.
The instrument was a compact, suspersensitive device which registered the presence of any magneticmetal-steel, iron, etc.-in the immediate neighborhood. Surge of the needle probably had been caused by a quant.i.ty of steel in the briefcase. Guns?
Doc Savage went to the hotel clerk, made his ident.i.ty known, exhibited some money, and received a volley of information. The wiry man had registered the previous evening-but there was a surprising angle to this.
The fellow had not been alone! Nearly a dozen men had registered with him! All of these men had been sunburned. None of them were now at the hotel.
Doc Savage returned to his car, where Vida Carlaw waited. Since the bronze man had now lost track of the quarry, and his own aids, he drove toward his headquarters. Any report would come there, as Doc's men trailed their quarry.
”I have been trying to figure out why I was attacked in the plane,” Vida Carlaw said. ”It has me baffled.”
”The idea was to stop you soliciting the aid of my men and myself.”
”But why?”
Doc did not answer that one.
THEY had not been in Doc's skysc.r.a.per headquarters reception room for long when incredibly bony Johnny put in an appearance. He fiddled with his monocle.
”A superabundant expenditure of indefatigation,” he said.
Vida Carlaw blinked. ”Would somebody translate that?”
”He says we have been wasting our time,” Doc explained.
”Yes,” added bony Johnny. ”The wiry man and his pals are watching this very building!”
Johnny replied, continuing to use small words. ”They don't want us to investigate this mystery of the red things out of the ground.”
Doc Savage directed Vida Carlaw, ”You stay here.”
”Alone?” She looked uneasy. ”They tried to kill me once, and maybe-”
”This place,” Doc Savage told her, ”is practically impossible for an outsider to enter.”
The girl studied the bronze man.
”Right,” she agreed.
Long ago, Doc Savage had installed in the building a private high-speed elevator which admitted directly to his personal garage in the bas.e.m.e.nt. So far as was possible, existence of both elevator and garage were secret.
The elevator deposited Doc and Johnny in the bas.e.m.e.nt garage.
They followed a pa.s.sage which admitted to a near-by subway tunnel, down which they ran, avoiding the electrified third rail, and crouching close to the sides of the tunnel to let trains go past with a deafening uproar. They came to the surface some blocks distant.
It was late enough in the morning that the streets were full of sunlight. Doc had a knowledge of the vicinity, so he and Johnny did not take to the sidewalks, but kept inside stores and business establishments, working from one to the other, sometimes going to the roofs to accomplish this.
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