Doc Savage: The Ice Genius (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 12) (3 page)

“Whatcha mean?” Monk growled. “Insomnia means you can’t sleep.”

“That coat hasn’t had a nap for years,” Ham said. “That’s what I meant.”

“Don’t ride me, shyster. I ain’t in the mood,” growled Monk.

Turning, Monk told the porker, “Habeas, fetch me that missin’ wristwatch of mine.”

The homely pig obediently rooted around the floor with his long, inquiring snout.

“That infernal hog thinks it is a dog,” Ham said unkindly. “But he will never find that watch.”

“You watch, shyster.”

After a single trotting turn about the room, Habeas went rooting under the cushions of a leather sofa with his inquisitive snout. He emerged bearing an expensive wristwatch in his tusk-like teeth. This he deposited into Monk’s outstretched paw.

Donning the timepiece, Monk beamed proudly. “He’s as handy to have around as a pot hound.”

Ham sneered acidly, “Bacon is the only thing that pest is good for.” He gave his dark cane a twist. It separated, disclosing it to be in reality a sword cane forged of excellent steel. He eyed the ungainly shoat as if contemplating a dissection. This seemed to bother the hairy chemist not at all, as his next words indicated.

“You call Long Tom and I’ll try an’ hunt up Renny,” Monk suggested.

MAJOR THOMAS J. ROBERTS was nothing much to contemplate. He was called Long Tom by his friends, a nickname that hardly described him. He was on the short side of average height, wore his sallow skin as if it were loose, and evinced a perpetually pinched expression, when it wasn’t sour.

Long Tom possessed three distinctions. As an electrical engineer he was destined for the hall of fame. Few were his equal in his chosen field. As an fighter, he could lick just about any man he met, and then whip his three brothers to add insult to injury. This despite looking as sickly and frail as if he were a chest cold away from a hospital stay. Lastly, he was an associate of the renowned Doc Savage, which was a distinction that sometimes outweighed the other two.

Long Tom was puttering around his personal cave of a cellar workshop. The place was a cluttered electrical experimental laboratory that in the days before Repeal had served as a dank maze of wine cellars. Long Tom had acquired it very cheaply, which was another of his dominant traits. The puny electrical wizard was exceedingly tight-fisted.

A phone rang and Long Tom ignored it, so deeply was he engrossed in the device he was working on, changing out minute vacuum tubes. It continued ringing. Finally, he scrounged around for the receiver. The instrument was buried amid apparatus.

“What is it?” Long Tom snapped. He had a temper.

“Busy?” asked Ham Brooks.

“I am engaged in an important new experiment in television.”

“Then I take it you are not interested in a trip to Mongolia?” drawled Ham.

Long Tom straightened up on his stool. “What’s in Mongolia?”

“Doc did not say, but we leave within the hour.”

“Do not leave without me,” Long Tom said sharply, and flung down the receiver.

NOT many minutes later, a number of vehicles converged on a sprawling brick warehouse situated on a Hudson River pier. The warehouse had a general air of age and disuse. There was a sign at the pier end. It read:

HIDALGO TRADING CO.

The concern existed only as a sign. In reality, the warehouse was a gigantic aircraft hangar and boathouse, which became apparent whenever one of the arriving cars pulled up to the landward doors, which rolled open, disclosing its cavernous interior and the armada of ultra-modern aircraft reposing within.

Doc Savage was there to meet them. The press had hung many names on this awesome individual over the course of his astonishing career—the Man of Mystery, the Mental Marvel and other superlatives. The one that stuck was the Man of Bronze.

Beholding Doc Savage, one could fully understand why. If future scientists ever discover a process to transform cold metal into a living simulacrum of life, the product might very much resemble Doc. He was a powerful example of manhood, standing considerably over six feet in stature, and possessed a fabulous set of muscles that were not much concealed by the clothing he wore.

His fine-textured skin was the hue of bronze. The hair on his head was a darker continuation of that skin, and resembled a metallic skullcap. Most arresting of all, however, were the bronze man’s eyes. Perhaps no one in human history ever owned such optics. Not bronze, but a more precious metal seemed to inhabit those orbs. Gold flakes swirled continuously in their aureate depths, as if tiny winds continually stirred them.

The entire effect was that of a man created by some alchemical spell. But the truth was far stranger. Doc Savage was a scientific product. When very young, his father had placed him in the hands of a seemingly unlimited procession of scientists, physical culture experts and other notables. They reared Doc into the man he was now. The entire audacious experiment was designed to fit the bronze giant for the work he did. It had more than succeeded.

“We will depart very soon,” Doc told them in a voice vibrant with restrained power.

Toting a large case that normally contained a wonderfully compact portable chemical laboratory, homely Monk asked, “What’s up, Doc?”

“Johnny has uncovered something of interest in Mongolia,” the bronze man explained. That was all he would say. But that was enough for the four adventurers. If Johnny found something which Doc considered interesting, then it was nothing for them to circumnavigate the globe to see how interesting it might be.

Doc selected the largest aerial conveyance in the combination boathouse-hangar, a four-engine flying boat, capable of crossing the Pacific in one hop. It was very similar to the big Pacific clippers presently carrying passengers to the Orient.

Settling into the pilot’s seat, Doc took the control wheel. His hands were long, bronze, perfectly shaped—but they looked hard as alloy steel. The visible tendons were like cables of piano wire.

Once under power, the big bird eased down the ramp into the Hudson’s choppy grayness. It moved up river, turned into the wind, and Doc opened the throttles.

The gigantic aircraft took to the sky with a thunder that scattered pigeons off Jersey rooftops and brought heads turning as far away as Staten Island as it sought high altitude.

In the electrically-warmed cabin, Monk Mayfair was heard to say, “Sure hope this is worth my time. I was all set for a night at the opera before this shindig came along.”

Ham looked puzzled. “Opera? You?”

“Sure. Lova is an opera buff.”

Ham moaned. “Lova? Not my Lova? What are you doing with my girl?”

Monk grinned his widest. “I think she got tired of you.”

Chapter III

STOPOVER

FLYING from New York to Mongolia in the heart of Asia was not something undertaken lightly, under ordinary circumstances. With the world consumed by spreading war, it was decidedly more difficult an undertaking than it would have been just a few short years before.

Transiting the Atlantic Ocean and overflying Europe was out of the question. Likewise, crossing the vast Pacific Ocean direct route to Asia—although perfectly practical in the big flying boat—was not wise. The growing Japanese influence in Asia made that flight plan a risky proposition.

This unhappy reality was uppermost in the minds of Doc Savage’s men as the big bird volleyed north.

Homely Monk voiced the question on everyone’s mind. “Say, Doc, how are we gettin’ to Mongolia?”

“There is no safe route,” admitted the bronze man. “Obtaining permission to overfly most nations in that part of the world would be difficult, if not impossible, at best.”

Ham murmured, “I fail to see how we can get around the problem.”

Doc explained, “I have received late word from Renny Renwick, who is going to meet us at the College.”

“What’s he doin’ there?” wondered Monk.

Doc replied, “Renny was investigating a rather shady group of war-profiteers. He managed to capture them all, and transported them to the College for processing.”

This “College” was an unusual institution which the bronze man maintained in the wilderness section of upstate New York. In the course of his adventures, Doc often came into possession of individuals whose crimes either could not be prosecuted by duly constituted authorities, or whose trespasses against society were so hideous they would earn the death penalty in a court of law. Doc did not believe in prisons or killing. So he devised a curious method of dealing with wrongdoers who constituted a menace to society. They were spirited away to his private sanitorium, where they were made to forget their crooked pasts through delicate brain surgery, and then reeducated for a new life in society, after being taught to hate crime.

This was a facility known only to the bronze man’s inner circle. No doubt had this place become public, there would ensue cries to abolish the institution and turn over its graduates to the proper authorities. In Doc’s mind, the rehabilitation and return to society of formerly crooked men justified this radical approach to the problem of crime.

Long Tom said, “I didn’t realize that Renny was doing any undercover work.”

“This was something Renny stumbled upon on his own,” explained Doc.

In considerably less than an hour they landed at the secret institution, which was a cluster of low buildings surrounded by several fences and made to look to the outside world as if this was a private sanitarium. Few ventured into this rugged, out-of-the-way place, so its secrets had remained uncovered for many years now.

The airfield which serviced the institution had not been built for aircraft as large as the four-motored flying boat. Yet Doc Savage slanted the lumbering leviathan in for a landing as if the runway was long enough to accommodate the mighty ship.

Dropping the flaps, Doc slammed the big plane down as quickly as he could, and through an ingenious breaking mechanism brought the plane to a shuddering halt.

When the props ceased their spinning, Monk flung open the plane door and everyone piled out, Doc Savage emerging last.

A strange figure stepped out of a small building to greet them.

Hardly more than four feet tall, it proved to be a perfect little gem of a man. At the sight of Doc Savage stepping off the plane, the minute individual broke out into a great big grin. He hurried forward.

When the small person saw the bronze giant, he all but saluted him.

“Everything’s shipshape,” reported the little man in a voice that made one think of a happy hound dog.

Doc Savage was not one for smiling without good reason. His training had given him a poker face. But the bronze man bestowed upon the little man a pleasant smile.

“How are you, Monzingo?”

“Spiffy,” said the agreeable little man. “Staying long?”

“Just a stopover,” replied Doc.

Together, they walked toward the main building. Doc’s men acknowledged the tiny Monzingo with stiff gestures and half-hearted smiles.

Doc Savage rarely made idle conversation, but in this case he made a point of it.

“You seem to have adjusted remarkably well to your new life.”

The little fellow beamed. “I like it just fine here. They feed me good. And the people are nice.” A bit of a catch came into the small man’s hound voice.

“You seem hesitant,” prompted Doc.

The man screwed up his tiny face, and admitted reluctantly, “I make a lot of friends here, but after a while they always move on.”

“That is the nature of this hospital,” reassured Doc. “The men who come here do so to be cured of their ills. Once they are cured, they are free to go.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” the midget said hurriedly. “The staff treat me just great. But sometimes I would like my friends to stay here.”

“That is understandable,” said Doc quietly.

Doc Savage’s men were silent during this exchange, but they glanced at one another uneasily.

For the little man who was barely four feet tall was not originally known as Monzingo Baldwin—the name by which he currently went. In years gone by, he had been one of their most dangerous foes, a wealthy schemer named Cadwiller Olden. Olden had seemingly perished during the course of their first encounter, but as they discovered to their surprise a year or so after that, he had survived, but with the loss of his memory.

Having come into possession of the murderous mite a second time, Doc Savage decided that it would be best to place him in the College. Due to his memory loss, and the diminutive size of his brain, it was considered unwise to perform the delicate brain surgery that would wipe his memory clean. So Doc attempted to erase his tragic past through clinical hypnosis. This had seemingly worked, and the former Cadwiller Olden had become a trustee in the secret College, and its only permanent resident.

While this had temporarily solved the problem of what to do with the minute man, it had not led to a permanent solution. Doc Savage was wary of releasing Olden back into society, without assurances that his memory might not return. So instead he remained.

Reaching the main entrance, Doc entered first, and soon found Renny.

Colonel John Renwick was a raw tower of humanity. He was also one of the foremost civil engineers in the world today. A severe countenance and a formidable pair of fists that could hardly fit into maple syrup pails were his outstanding physical characteristics.

The big-fisted engineer looked miserable. He wore rather a gloomy expression that lent itself to the profession of funeral mourner, had there been such a thing. Conversely, this meant that Renny was well pleased with life.

Frowning deeply, Renny strode up to Doc and boomed out in a bull-like voice, “What’s this about trouble for us?”

“Trouble may not be the correct word for it,” Doc returned. “This is more in the nature of scientific expedition. We are going to Mongolia. Do you wish to come along?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in China,” thumped Renny. “You could throw in all the coffee in Java, too.”

Monk offered, “Johnny found somethin’ out there. Somethin’ mighty interestin’.”