Doc Savage: The Secret of Satan's Spine (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 15) (4 page)

“Well, you sure packed for the wild blue yonder.”

They climbed into the cab, the driver got his machine in gear and whined off into traffic. The hack had seen better days, but with the war the driver was having to make do with an older model. The engine knocked, and the exhaust disgorged enough smoke to rival the stacks of a steamship.

The ride was not far, and since it was a Saturday morning, there was not enough traffic to be bothered about.

Monk was dropped off in front of Pennsylvania Station and begrudgingly handed the cabbie his fare and a half-dollar tip. Monk didn’t mind paying the fare, but hated to part with that coin. He had been a lavish tipper in more flush days, and was not about to change. Old habits died hard with Monk Mayfair.

Lugging his baggage under his long arms, he toted them inside into the commodious granite cathedral that was Pennsylvania Station, ignoring all Red Caps. He was anxious to find his track, and meet his date.

The main concourse never failed to take his breath away. It was known for its vaulted ceiling and bustling energy. The place was packed, and the concentration of men in Army, Navy and other military uniforms attested to the preferential treatment accorded servicemen over civilians that had been the norm since Pearl Harbor.

By the time Monk made his ambling way down to the staircase leading to his track on the lower platform, he was early. He set down his baggage, and exchanged it with a porter who handed him his check stubs.

“I’ll get them right on board,” the porter said. “The train departs in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Monk, reluctantly parting with a dime.

While he waited for Davey Lee, the hairy chemist took an inventory of his wallet. He did not enjoy what he discovered.

“Well, maybe I should’ve bummed a few bucks off that shyster,” he muttered to himself. “Ham is always rollin’ in dough, just like a lawyer would.”

Although Ham Brooks devoted a great deal of his time to adventuring with Doc Savage in the odd quarters of the globe, he maintained a law practice and, while he was very selective about his clients, he made an annual fortune. Not so Monk Mayfair, who took on work when his bank balance kept him awake nights.

Monk swiveled his bullet-shaped head around anxiously, looking for signs of Davey Lee. He checked his watch several times, then one of the big wall clocks. According to the display board, the train was scheduled to leave at nine a.m. sharp, and as the big hands of the clocks inched inexorably closer to the digit 12, there was no sign of the flirtatious blonde.

Monk began to grow concerned. He knew the
Crescent
would depart with clock-like efficiency, with or without Davey Lee, for the railroad boasted of the train’s efficient forty-hour run.As he waited, wrinkles making his glowering brows resemble corrugated sheet steel, Monk suddenly remembered a dream he had had the previous night. The attractive blonde had to catch a train. Try as he might, Monk could not recall the dream in detail, which seemed to be a condition of dreams. But he recalled that the blonde woman had acted confused and possibly lost.

Since Davey was a stranger to New York, it made perfect sense. Monk once read that dreams were a product of daily anxiety. Probably this dream was a consequence of his fear that Miss Lee would be unable to reach Pennsylvania Station in time for the train departure. New York City being the overwhelming metropolis that it was, and women having a distressing tendency to arrive late even to important assignations.

As Monk’s worried eyes scanned the sea of faces around him, they fell upon a rather large mature individual with striking amber-colored eyes. The man’s hair was neither white nor gray, but some vague hue in between. He had very fine but full hair, and its fineness combined with its coloring reminded Monk Mayfair of cigarette smoke in suspension.

The mature man with the smoke-colored pompadour appeared to be aping Monk Mayfair in that he was also searching the milling crowd for an expected but overdue face. His own features were weathered to a hue resembling lightly creamed coffee, which contrasted sharply with his vaporously pale hair.

From time to time, the man’s gaze skated in Monk’s direction and when Monk looked back, the catlike eyes veered away. Monk suddenly thought that suspicious. For he wore the kind of face that made babies laugh or cry, depending on the disposition of the infant. People did not look at his wide, homely face with indifference ever. They were either fascinated, or repelled, according to their lights.

This man with the weird vaporous hair and the searching eyes seemed to go out of his way to avoid looking directly at Monk. That was strange. In between searching for the missing Davey Lee, Monk kept one eye on the man with the smoky pompadour.

Eventually, the mature man noticed a figure in the distance that he recognized. He took off like a shot, determination on his lined face.

After that, Monk stopped paying attention to him.

This inattention proved to be short-lived.

For suddenly, the cavernous hall that was Pennsylvania Station, which had been buzzing with the chatter of passengers, the clattering arrival of trains from far distances, and the incessant tramping of feet on flooring, was pierced by a feminine scream.

Monk Mayfair had not known Davey Lee long enough to recognize her individual scream. But something about the way the cry echoed made his heart jump up in his chest, and his entire body pivot in the direction of the sound.

He saw at once that the mature man with the smoky hair appeared to have discovered the person he was waiting for. It was a woman. He took hold of her roughly. She struggled.

And in struggling, a second scream erupted from her throat.

The distance was great, and it was blocked by a constant traffic of people. Monk Mayfair’s eyes popped and his jaw sagged as he recognized under a pert hat the distinctive blonde tresses of none other than Davey Lee!

“Daggone it!” howled Monk. He charged into the crowd, jostling packed people aside like a human battering ram. He tried to be gentle about it, but the scream made him fear for the worst. Pennsylvania Station in the early morning hustle and bustle was no place to commit a murder, but this was New York, where anything is possible.

“Get out of the way!” Monk yelled, shouldering between two men who had stopped to rubberneck in the direction of the screaming woman.

The hairy chemist made credible time, even with the human obstacles continually blocking him.

Unfortunately, the smoke-haired man made better time.

He could be heard to say, “You’re coming with me! And no backtalk!”

“No, no, I won’t!” This from Davey Lee in her recognizably syrupy but now fear-warped voice.

Monk pushed an obstructing soldier aside, weaved between two others, and managed to reach the spot where he had last seen the girl and the large man. By the time he reached that point, they were deeper in the crowd, and nowhere to be seen.Swiveling his almost neckless head around, Monk yelled out to no one in particular, “Dang it! Where the heck did they go?”Grabbing a porter at random, he practically tore off his red jacket, demanding, “Where did that gray-haired guy and the blonde gal go?”

The porter stabbed a finger in what appeared to be a random direction and said, “That away, suh.”

“Did you see them go that way or are you just making it up?” demanded Monk.

“Whatever suits you. Just let go of my jacket.”

Monk did and went charging into the milling crowd, flailing and floundering and calling out to the girl.

“Miss Lee! Where are you?”

“Over here!” shrilled the blonde.

Monk looked about wildly. “Where?”

“Here!
Oh!—
don’t let them take me!”

“Where is here?” bellowed Monk angrily. “I can’t see a dang thing!”

The answer that came started off strong and became muffled in the way that voices sound smothered when a hand compresses the person’s mouth.

“Cigarette—”

Monk took that to mean a cigarette vending machine, and went in search of one.

The first one he found offered no proximity to the missing Davey Lee.

By this time the homely chemist was beside himself and went charging around like a madman, calling her name over and over again.

This uproar brought a policeman charging up, looking very red in the face.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

Monk yelled, “A woman is being abducted! We gotta find her. Fast!”

“What woman? Where?”

Monk growled, “If I knew where she got to, I’d be right on her heels, wouldn’t I now?”

“Slow down, buddy,” said the cop, sticking the round end of his truncheon in the hairy chemist’s barrel chest. “Let’s hear your tale.”

Monk Mayfair was in no mood to slow down. He knew if he didn’t move fast, Davey Lee’s abductors would spirit her out of the station, or possibly onto a departing train.

Growling, “I’ll explain later,” Monk shoved the copper aside, whereupon the bluecoat lifted his truncheon and laid it against the back of Monk’s close-cropped skull with such force that the hairy chemist fell flat on his very flat face.

WHEN Monk woke up, there were three policemen standing over him, the one who had struck him down and two others who wore peculiar expressions. Behind them curious bystanders stared.

“Your identification says you’re Monk Mayfair. Is that right?” asked one of the officers, who wore sergeant stripes.

“Do I look like him?” demanded Monk, sitting up and rubbing the sensitive spot at the back of his blunt skull.

“That you do,” said the police sergeant. “You’re one of Doc Savage’s men. Mind explaining what’s going on here?”

Monk struggled to his feet, knees rubbery, his senses swimming in his skull.

“I was meetin’ a blonde babe, and we were goin’ out west on a trip. She got here late, and some overgrown fellow with smoky gray hair wrapped her up and took her off.”

“What are their names?”

“Davey Lee, and I don’t know the other one,” muttered Monk.

“And which one is Davey Lee?”

“That was the blonde. I don’t know the guy’s name.”

By now Monk was steady enough on his feet to start firing questions back.

“Didn’t anybody report a kidnapped blonde?”

The sergeant said, “There was a commotion that a lot of people saw and heard. A sailor accosted the two, and the big guy said he was the girl’s father and he was taking her home.”

Monk growled, “In a pig’s eye!”

“Witnesses said this gal was quite young, the man much older. It might be true, you know.”

Monk said, “He looked to be about fifty, and she was probably nineteen.”

“And you’re no spring chicken,” inserted another cop. “If you were running off with a girl that young, maybe her father did decide to take a hand in the matter.”

Monk growled, “Don’t start that masher stuff with me. She was from out of town. Didn’t say anything about her father bein’ in New York. I say it was a kidnapping. We gotta find her!”

“Since you’re with Doc Savage, and the big bronze guy has plenty of drag with the police commissioner,” allowed the sergeant, “we’ll put out a radio call to bring them in. In the meantime, you might as well get on your train or be on your way. This is not necessarily a police matter, given the lay of the land.”

Rubbing his head in annoyance, Monk said bitterly, “Thanks a million for all your help.”

To which the police sergeant returned, “In some places, you could get arrested for running off with a young woman probably half your age.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly get to run off with anyone, now did I?”

“Not
this
time,” agreed the sergeant.

The bluecoats bustled off to find police telephone boxes, leaving behind not so much as an apology for the bloody conk on the head inflicted upon Monk Mayfair.

Bustling out of the train station, Monk found the cab stand and began asking the drivers if they had seen anything of a smoky-haired man and a blonde girl who weren’t exactly friendly with one another.

One cabbie offered, “Yeah, the guy threw the gal into the back of a Blue Eagle cab and they took off.”

“Any idea where?”

“None whatsoever,” replied the cabbie. “It happened pretty fast.”

“Did you get a good look at the guy?” asked Monk.

“Which one?”

“The big guy with the smoky gray hair.”

“Of him, not so much. But I got a glimpse of the other man.”

“What other man?” asked Monk, surprised.

“The gray-headed man came out with the blonde babe, and met this other man. He was on the short side, kind of wiry. His hair was that color that you can’t tell is brown or red unless the sun is shining directly on it.”

This was the first Monk had heard of a second man, which tended to cast doubt on the police theory that this was a father-daughter misunderstanding.

“I sorta need to find out where they went,” Monk told the driver.

“You can call the cab company, but unless you’ve got a badge backing up your court request, you’re not gonna get very far.”

Monk muttered, “But he can’t have got very far yet, so I think that it won’t hurt to try.”

Monk made a call from a pay phone, got into a heated argument, and was told where he could go, and how quickly to be about it.

The hairy chemist would have hung up on the radio dispatcher, except the dispatcher hung up on him first.

“A fine day this has turned out to be!” fumed Monk. He grabbed the next taxi in line and barked, “Doc Savage headquarters.”

He did not have to give an address. Probably every cab driver from Albany to Newark and places in between knew that famous address.

The cab whirled Monk away from Pennsylvania Station, his luggage, and his improvised vacation.

“That Ham Brooks is gonna have the horse laugh on me when he hears about this!” mumbled Monk.

In the front of the machine, the cabbie asked, “Trouble?”

“Woman trouble,” replied Monk.

“That’s the worst kind of trouble there is,” sympathized the hackman.

Monk muttered, “Normally, woman trouble is my favorite kind of trouble. But not this day, or this woman, either.”