Somebody had shot out the street lights at either end of
the block. The resulting gloom probably explained the lack of casualties.
Doc's bronze form flashed across the street. A bullet whizzed past, missing by ten feet. He was a nearly impossible target in the murk.
'It's de bronze swab!' howled one of the enemy. 'Keelhaul me!'
The words were all that was needed to break up the fight. The gunmen fled. The had a car parked around the corner, engine running. Into this they leaped. It whisked them away.
A diminutive figure popped out from behind the racer. The small man sprinted wrathfully after the fleeing gunmen. His pistollike machine gun released spiteful gobbles of sound.
'Hey!' Doc called. 'You're wasting your time, Long Tom!'
The small man came stamping back. Besides being short, he was slender. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a complexion that looked none too healthy.
Only his extremely large head hinted that he was no ordinary man. 'Long Tom,' formally known as Major Thomas J. Roberts, was an electrical wizard who had worked with foremost men in the electrical world. Nor was he the physical weakling he appeared.
'The rats shot my car full of holes!' he howled irately.
The flashy racing car was the pride of Long Tom's heart. He had equipped it with about every conceivable electrical contrivance, from a television set to a newly perfected gadget projecting rays of an extremely short wave length which were capable of killing mosquitoes and other insects that might annoy the driver.
This latter device, worked out with some aid from Doc Savage, was probably destined to bring Long Tom worldwide fame. Farmers could use it to destroy insect pests. It was worth billions to the cotton growers alone!
As they approached Long Tom's racer, a mountain heaved up from behind it.
THE MOUNTAIN was Renny.
Six feet four would have been a close guess at his height. The fact that he looked nearly as wide was partially an optical illusion. He weighed only about two hundred and fifty pounds. On the ends of arms thick as telegraph poles, he carried a couple of kegs of bone and gristle which he called hands.
Renny was noted for two things. First, many countries knew him as an engineer little short of a genius. Second, there was no wooden door built with a panel so stout, Renny could not knock it out with one of his huge fists.
'How'd you birds start that fight?' Doc demanded.
Renny and Long Tom exchanged guilty looks.
'We drove up here as innocent as could be,' Renny protested in a voice which resembled a very big bullfrog in a barrel. 'Them guys ran out in the street and pointed a machine gun at us. Evidently we weren' t the birds they were expecting, because they lowered their guns and turned back. But we figured if they was huntin' trouble, we'd accommodate 'em. So we started a little good-natured lead slingin'!'
Doc smiled slightly.
'If the fight did nothing else, it cleared up something that has been puzzling me.' he said.
'Huh?' Renny and Long Tom chorused, while Doc's other pals came up to listen. No one of the group had been injured.
'Until a moment ago, it was a puzzle to me why Keelhaul de Rosa turned Victor Vail loose,' Doc explained. 'But now I see the reason. Keelhaul de Rosa and Ben O'Gard are fighting each other. Just why, is still a mystery. Both were after Victor Vail.
'The reason for that is another mystery. But Keelhaul de Rosa got Victor Vail, and I be!ieve he got whatever he wanted from the blind man — something which required removal of the clothes from Vail's upper body. Then the violinist was turned loose as a bait to draw Ben O'Gard into the hands of Keelhaul de Rosa's gunmen. It was that crowd we just mixed with, because Keelhaul was along. They thought you birds were Ben O'Gard's men.'
The moment he finished speaking, Doc beckoned Renny. The two of them entered the skyscraper.
The others, Monk, Ham, Long Tom, and Johnny, remained outside. They would have to explain the shooting to the police. Radio-squad cars laden with officers were booting up from all directions.
There would be no trouble explaining. Each of Doc's five men bore the honorary rank of captain on the New York police force.
ENTERING HIS eighty-sixth-floor office, Doc secured the sprayerlike contraption which he had abandoned at the start of the fight down in the street.
'What's that doofunny?' Renny inquired. He, too, had never seen the sprayer of a contrivance before.
'I'll show you.' Doc indicated a sticky material on the corridor floor outside his office door. This resembled extremely pale molasses. The color blended with the floor tiles so as to be hardly noticeable. 'See that?'
'Sure,' Renny replied. 'But I wouldn't have, if you hadn't pointed it out.'
'I chanced to have the foresight to spread that stuff outside the door when I left Monk here with Victor Vail,' Doc explained.
'What is it?'
'I'm showing you. Take off your shoes.'
Bewildered, Renny kicked off his footgear. Doc did likewise.
Doc now pointed the nozzle of his sprayer down the corridor — away from the pale molasses material. A shrill fizzing sounded. A cloud of pale vapor came out of the nozzle.
'Smell anything?'
'Not a thing,' Renny declared.
Doc aimed a puff of the strange vapor at the molasses stuff.
'Smell anything now?'
'Ph-e-w!' choked Renny. 'Holy cow! A whole regiment of skunks couldn't make a worse
Doc hauled Renny into the elevator.
'The stuff in this sprayer and the sticky material on the floor form a terrible odor when they come together, even in the tiniest quantities,' Doc explained as the cage raced them down. 'So powerful are these chemicals that any one walking through the stuff in front of the door will leave a trail which can be detected for some hours. That's why we took off our shoes. We had walked through it.'
'But I don't see — '
'We're going to trail Victor Vail,' Doc explained. 'But cross your fingers and hope he didn't take a taxi, Renny. If he did, we've got to think up another bright way of finding him.'
But Victor Vail hadn't taken a taxi. He had walked to the nearest subway, and entered the side which admitted passengers to uptown trains, feeling his way along the building.walls.
'We're sunk!' Renny muttered.
'Far from it,' Doc retorted. 'We merely drive uptown and throw our vapor in each subway exit until we find the odor which will result from its contact with Victor Vail's tracks.'
Renny laughed noisily. 'Ain't we the original bloodhounds. though!'
They tried the exits of seven stations. At the eighth, Doc's remarkable vapor, a chemical compound of his own making, combined with the other chemical left by Victor Vail's shoe soles, and gave them the nauseating odor.
'It goes down this side street!' declared Renny.
There were few pedestrians on the street at this late hour. Even these, however, promptly stopped to gawk at Doc and Renny. It might have been the fact that Doc and Renny were without shoes, and going through the apparently idiotic process of spraying an awful perfume on the sidewalk.
More likely, it was Doc's mighty bronze form which caught their eye. Doc was a sensation whenever he appeared in public.
'What puzzles me is how the blind guy got around like this,' Renny offered.
'Simply by asking help of those near him,' Doc retorted. 'Every one is glad to aid a blind man.'
Renny got tired of the crowd of curious persons trailing them.
