Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (28 page)

The disposition of the Joe Shine mob was only a little complicated.

Doc Savage had arrived in his speed plane, which breasted down onto Lake Michigan a fair distance away, alighting on silenced engines. The silencers had been of the bronze man’s own invention. They were remarkably efficient, producing only a steady hissing that might have been the wind whipping across the lake.

Doc had launched a collapsible dory, and brought it into the stern of the lake freighter.

Climbing the anchor chain was a job for a circus acrobat, but Doc Savage had surmounted the obstacle with speed and silence, easily locating the glowing portholes, then freeing Ham Brooks without being detected.

Getting the Joe Shine group back to the speed plane for conveying to the airport was a cumbersome operation, requiring that they be ferried over to the aircraft two at a time. Not possessing the impressive muscular strength of his comrades, Ham Brooks stood guard over those who remained on deck.

They made quite a collection, but soon the mob was lying in a disorderly pile in the rear of the plane.

Had these activities transpired in New York City, it would have been necessary only for Doc to summon a private ambulance to whisk the captured ones upstate, as they had with the ill-fortuned Ed Waco at Grand Central Station. Here in Chicago they had no such resources.

Looking over the unconscious group, Monk muttered, “What are we gonna do with these clowns?”

“Dose them with anesthetic and leave them in the plane hangar until they can be collected,” replied the bronze man.

“Think they’ll keep?”

“For their own sakes, they had better,” said Doc ominously.

Chapter XXVII

RUN AROUND

THE DOORMAN STATIONED before the Hotel Chicago thought he was tough.

When he spotted a soot-black figure step from a taxicab and attempt to gain entrance to the hotel lobby, the uniformed fellow blocked his way.

“Where do you think you’re going, shorty?” he challenged.

“To my room,” said Long Tom peevishly. “Now step aside before I knock you flat on your can.”

The puny electrical wizard was in no mood for ceremonies or civilities. He wanted to take a hot bath.

The doorman took Long Tom not as a guest in good standing, but as a gentleman of color who had wandered over from Bronzeville. Long Tom was coated in soot, and although the rain had caused the stuff to run, he was still dark of hue. Furthermore, although the electric lights outside the hotel showed good illumination, it was still drizzling, inhibiting vision. Hence, the doorman’s blunder.

“My name is Long Tom Roberts and I’m registered at this hotel.”

“If that’s so, you’ll have a key. Show it.”

Long Tom turned his pants pockets inside out and complained, “Some lug lifted my wallet, not to mention my key.”

“In that case,” returned the doorman distastefully. “Kindly beat it.”

From the time that he had been waylaid at Janet Falcon’s apartment, and held captive at Duke Grogan’s Cicero hideout, Long Tom Roberts had had a tough time of it. He had grown sullen and ill-tempered, and dangerously in need of a bath. Moreover, he had had enough of the doorman’s guff.

“Watch me beat
you
!” Long Tom barked.

The doorman had his beefy fists set on his uniformed hips, and stood before the revolving door like a brick wall. He did not think much of the little man confronting him with ill-disguised hostility.

So the functionary was not prepared when Long Tom hauled off, and connected with his compact but powerful fist.

The doorman landed on the seat of his pants and Long Tom Roberts walked across the brass buttons of the flunky’s resplendent coat, scuffing the braid of his uniform as if the man were a ceremonial red carpet. His uniform happened to be crimson.

Barging into the lobby, Long Tom stormed up to the front desk. The clerk almost jumped out of his skin, thinking that the intruder was someone who had been caught up in a particularly smoky fire.

The clerk did his best to smile and inquired, “How may I help you, sir?”

“Thomas J. Roberts. Lost my key. Need the spare.”

The desk clerk squinted as he peered at the sooty features and said, “I will need to see some identification.”

“Don’t make me bust you in the snoot, too,” warned Long Tom. “Just hand over that room key.”

There was a hotel detective seated nearby, a new one. He could be forgiven for not having recognized Long Tom, either.

Putting down a magazine, he sprang from a lobby chair, and made his way over, his truculent features reddening.

“Haven’t we had enough trouble in this establishment?” he challenged.

Long Tom turned, said, “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you read the papers? There was a big shootout right here in this lobby a few hours back. A woman was kidnapped and Doc Savage got on her trail.”

“I’m one of Doc Savage’s assistants,” Long Tom returned. “Has Doc come back yet?”

“Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of the big bronze fellow. The police are keeping a lookout for him, though.”

“What about my pals, Monk and Ham?”

“There is talk that Duke Grogan kidnapped them. Cops are looking for them, too. Now are you going to scram, or am I going to have to get muscular?”

“Duke Grogan could never grab off Monk and Ham.”

“And why not?”

“Because Duke put the snatch on me, but I got away.”

The hotel detective cracked a derisive grin, and his belly shook with barely-repressed laughter.

“A little runt like you? That’ll be the day!”

At that point, the doorman shook his head violently and clambered to his feet, pushing angrily into the lobby.

“Let me at that little squirt! I’ll give him a paste in the snoot.”

Waving a hand magnanimously, the hotel detective stepped aside and invited, “Be my guest.”

At which, Long Tom hauled off again and repeated the operation that slammed the doorman flat on his back. The hotel dick flopped down and neglected to rise.

Witnessing this, the doorman decided he was urgently needed out on the sidewalk.

Turning back to the desk clerk, Long Tom drawled, “When he stops hearing little birdies, tell him he owes me an apology for trying to keep me out of my own lodgings. Now hunt up that key.”

The desk clerk had been grinning up to that point, but now he had discovered a newfound respect for the sooty claimant. A worried eye shot to the hotel dick, who had been favorably impressed by Long Tom’s lightning right hook, inasmuch as he seemed in no hurry to stand again on his feet.

“What did you say your room number was?”

“I didn’t, but it was 308.”

The hotel detective looked to the desk clerk and gave him the high sign. The clerk consulted the register and reported, “It says here that Thomas J. Roberts has 308.”

“That you?” asked the detective, groping the carpet in search of his hat.

“None other,” returned Long Tom. “Now do I get my key?”

They seemed to be at an impasse when Doc Savage, followed by Monk and Ham, entered the lobby from the street.

Monk and Ham did not immediately recognize the slender electrical wizard, but Doc Savage did.

“Long Tom,” he said. The bronze man did not sound surprised.

Monk and Ham’s eyes grew wide. They charged up, and got on either side of Long Tom. They looked as though they wanted to hug him, but his sooty appearance gave them pause.

“What have you been rolling in?” exploded Monk. “Mud?”

“I got tossed into a cellar coal bin by Duke Grogan and his boys. Managed to escape through a basement window. I would have been here hours ago, except Grogan rolled up with Janet Falcon. So I doubled back to rescue her.”

“Where is she?” asked Doc Savage.

“She got away from us both—after shooting Grogan down.”

Doc Savage’s trilling piped up, low and wondering, and then shaded into an alarmed note.

“Did you witness this with your own eyes?” asked the bronze man.

“I saw Janet Falcon flee the hideout house, Grogan pounding hard after her. Five bullets cut him down, four to the stomach and one square between the eyes. He’s dead as a doornail.”

Ham Brooks interjected, “We went to Janet Falcon’s apartment looking for her and you. We found a pile of grit and in it was a petrified hand. The thumb bore your fingerprint.”

Long Tom looked as if he did not know what to say to that.

Monk inserted, “We kinda thought you’d been turned to stone and then pulverized by hammers.”

Long Tom eyed the hairy chemist skeptically. “Why would you think a fool thing like that?”

“Because people all over town have had their brains turned to stone and we thought maybe your whole body got the same treatment.”

A memory seemed to creep into the electrical expert’s mind. “When I was trapped in the dark, I remember my right hand felt heavy, like it was turning to stone. I could hardly lift it. In the dark, I couldn’t see what was going on, and I lost consciousness after that.”

Long Tom lifted the specified hand and flexed his fingers. “Seems all right now,” he muttered.

Ham Books had been listening intently, his lawyerly mind sifting through facts.

“It is obvious what transpired,” he declared.

“Not to me,” grunted Monk.

Pointing at the dark right hand of Long Tom, Ham said, “Duke Grogan’s boys simply inserted Long Tom’s hand into a tub of wet concrete and made a cast of it, later creating a lifelike copy, which they planted to make us believe that you were no more.”

“Makes sense,” admitted Monk. “Grogan would have the ingredients for concrete on hand, since guys like him like to stick guys’ feet into tubs of dryin’ cement and drop them in the lake.”

Doc Savage interjected, “Have you any idea where Janet Falcon went?”

Long Tom shook his head violently. “By the time I found a taxi, there was no sign of her.”

Ham went over to the desk clerk, asked, “Has Jane York been seen? Her room number is 612.”

“Not that I am aware. But I can have the bell captain check her room.”

“That will not be necessary. We will do that.”

Doc led the way to the bank of elevators, and the starter waved them aboard the next available cage.

AS THEY rode the lift upward, Long Tom commented sourly to Monk and Ham, “You two don’t look so happy to see me, considering you thought I was defunct.”

Monk grinned. “We’re still not sure it’s you. You look like something the cat drug through a charcoal pit and then set on fire.”

The puny electrical wizard eyed Monk’s shiner, and assorted cuts, abrasions and bruises. He shot back, “You don’t look so hot yourself!”

Monk’s grin got a little lopsided. “We had a run-in with Duke Grogan and then another fracas with Joe Shine.”

Long Tom commented, “Isn’t he another gangster?”

Monk waited until the elevator let them off on the sixth floor and had closed behind them before saying, “
Was
a gangster. We mopped up on his entire mob. They’re all at the airport, sleepin’ off a dose of mercy-bullet dope. We gotta figure a way to get them to the college before they wake up.”

Long Tom offered what conceivably might have been an understatement when he remarked, “It sounds like we’ve all had a busy night.”

By this time, they had rolled up to Janet Falcon’s hotel room. The bullet-shattered panel had been replaced. Doc Savage did the knocking. There was no answer.

Going to a house phone, the bronze man requested the front desk ring the room. This was done. They could hear the ringing, muffled by the door, going on and on.

“No one could sleep through that,” remarked Ham impatiently.

Doc told the desk man, “Never mind. It appears that Miss York is not in her room.”

Going to their own suite of rooms, Doc Savage consulted a telephone book and found Janet Falcon’s apartment number. He put in a call.

The telephone was picked up on the second ring and a voice that did not sound so much sleepy as it did nervous asked, “Yes? Who is it?”

Strangely, Doc Savage did not reply. He merely tapped the switch hook several times, breaking the connection. Dropping the receiver onto its cradle, he picked it up again, this time requesting the police.

“This is Doc Savage. Please send a squad car to the following address and pick up a woman named Janet Falcon. Do not take her to the local police station. Instead, bring her to the Hotel Chicago. I wish to question her myself.”

“At once, Mr. Savage,” said the crisp voice at the other end of the line.

Terminating the conversation, Doc Savage said, “Janet Falcon will be delivered here shortly. In the meantime, we need to make ourselves presentable.” The bronze man’s golden eyes went to Monk and Long Tom, in particular—although Ham Brooks looked as if he could have stood a change into fresh clothes as well.

While his men were climbing out of their rags and into proper attire, Doc Savage said, “This affair has taken a turn that was not expected.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ham from another room in the suite.

“Our arrival in Chicago appears to have aroused half of the underworld. Yet Joe Shine insisted that he knew little about the happenings in New York, or their continuation here.”

The sound of running water indicated that Long Tom Roberts was drawing a bath. Soon, he was splashing away.

Through the closed wash room door, he called out, “For some reason, Duke Grogan’s men are interested in Janet Falcon. But I couldn’t make out why. In fact, I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. Where does Joe Shine fit into this?”

Ham answered that. “Shine is a rival of Grogan’s. It appears that the events of the last twenty-four hours stirred up that rivalry. Shine thought he could muscle in on whatever Grogan’s racket was.”

“Well, what
was
it?”

“We do not know,” advised Doc.

“There’s another skunk in the woodpile,” said Long Tom, stepping out of the bathroom, looking human once more. His pale hair was still streaked with gray grime, and a bath towel was tied around his waist to ensure modesty.

Doc Savage eyed him. “Yes?” he prompted.