Chapter 10. HOT PURSUIT
'
KAR must have had an automobile waitin’ here on the Drive,' guessed Monk. 'Did you get a look at his face, Doc?'
'No,' Doc replied slowly. 'He was quite thoroughly masked. Whoever he is, he is taking pains that his face does not become known.'
Monk and Doc soon found themselves the object of many eyes. A crowd began to gather.
Monk’s clothing was still wet and clung to his great, beam-like limbs, making their anthropoid nature more prominent. He looked like a monster gorilla beside Doc.
Doc Savage had not donned the garments he had removed to dive from the
That giant, metallic figure was a sensation. A passing motorist sighted the bronze man and was so held that he forgot his driving and let his car jam into another.
'We better clear out before we start a panic,' Monk snorted.
Hailing a taxi, they got inside. Doc directed the chauffeur to turn into the street which held the row of houses, each of which was so closely like all the others.
Doc entered the tenth house quickly. He soon found Long Tom’s electrical apparatus which put the high- frequency current on the secret telephone line.
Glancing from the rear window at which he had listened, Doc discovered Long Tom working along the back of the houses with his sensitive electrical 'ear' mechanism.
Doc tarried to note that the body of Squint had not been removed from the room. Evidently the other rooms in the house were untenanted.
Then Doc slid through the window, descended the wall as easily as a fly, and consulted with Long Tom.
'There is a telephone line from a tanklike submersible sunken near that old pirate exhibition vessel,' he explained. 'The line enters the pirate ship, then leaves inside a mooring cable. When you trace this line down, you might trace that one also.'
'O. K.,' said Long Tom.
'And watch out for Kar. The man is a devil.'
Long Tom nodded and drew back his coat to show that he had donned a bulletproof vest. Belted to his middle, he also wore a singular pistol. This gun was fitted with a cartridge magazine of extra capacity, curled like a ram horn for compactness. The weapon was one of Doc’s invention. In operation, it was what is known as continuously automatic — actually an extremely small machine gun.
'I’m prepared,' Long Tom said, his rather unhealthy looking face set grimly.
Retracing his steps to the taxi, Doc directed the machine to his skyscraper headquarters downtown. He and Monk went inside in haste to avoid attracting undue attention. An elevator wafted them up to the eighty-sixth floor.
They entered Doc’s office. Surprise stopped them.
Oliver Wording Bittman, the taxidermist, sat waiting!
AROUND and around his forefinger, the taxidermist was spinning the skinning scalpel which he wore on his watch chain. He leaped erect. A strange, worried light filled his dark, determined eyes. His rough, weather-darkened skin seemed a little pale. His large jaw had a desperate tightness.
'I am paying my visit to you rather sooner than expected,' he said. He tried to smile. The smile didn’t quite jell.
Doc knew there was something behind the perturbation of this man who had saved his father’s life.
'You are in trouble?' he inquired curiously.
Bittman nodded violently.
'I certainly am!' He unbuttoned his vest and shirt with thin fingers. He lifted a bandage below.
There was a shallow scrape of a wound across the man’s ribs. It resembled the mark of a bullet.
'I was shot at,' Bittman explained. 'You can see how narrowly the bullet missed being my finish. This occurred only a few minutes after you left my apartment.'
'Did you see who fired?'
'It was Yuder!'
'Gabe Yuder?'
'It was!' Bittman said fiercely. 'He escaped in an automobile. But not before I saw his face. The man you call Kar is Gabe Yuder!'
Violent flickerings were in Doc’s flaky eyes as he spoke to Bittman.
'In some mysterious manner, Kar learned I visited you, Bittman. One of his men, piloting a seaplane, made an unsuccessful attempt on my life soon after I left your apartment.'
'This means Kar has marked me for death,' muttered Oliver Wording Bittman. He juggled the watch-chain scalpel nervously. 'I — I wonder — if — could I — join you for my own protection? To be frank, I do not believe the police would be equal to a thing such as this.'
Doc Savage hesitated not at all. Although he and his five remarkable men worked best alone, unimpeded by the presence of one of lesser ability, he could not refuse Bittman. The man had done Doc’s father a supreme favor, as evidenced by the picture and the letter Bittman possessed.
'Of course you can join us,' Doc replied generously. 'But perhaps I had better warn you that being with us will not be exactly safe. We seem to draw death and violence like honey draws bees. You might be more secure from danger if you went into hiding somewhere.'
Bittman’s large jaw set firmly. 'I am not a coward who runs to a hiding place! I wish to assist you in my feeble way. Jerome Coffern was a friend of mine! I beg you to permit me to do my bit to bring the man who murdered him to justice! That is all I ask. Will you not grant it?'
This speech moved Doc Savage. Bittman had voiced Doc’s own motives in pursuing the devilish Kar.
'You shall become one of us,' Doc declared.
He knew, however, that in accepting Bittman’s presence, he was taking on added responsibilities. Bittman’s life would have to be guarded.
JOHNNY, the elongated, gaunt geologist and archaeologist, now appeared. He came in bearing a sizable box. It seemed quite heavy.
'The rock specimens from Thunder Island,' he announced. 'There’s a lot of them. Jerome Coffern’s made a complete collection.'
Doc Savage gave the specimens a swift inspection. But he did not put them under a microscope or start analyzing them.
'No time right now to examine them intensively,' he explained. 'That can come later.'
He locked the specimens in a safe which stood in the outer office. This safe was rather large. In height, it came above Doc’s shoulder.
Taking fresh clothing from the concealed locker, Doc put it on.
He got from the laboratory a large sheet of cardboard such as artists use to make drawings upon. A cabinet yielded pencils.
'If you’ll just lend me some assistance,' he requested Oliver Wording Bittman, 'I am going to make a sketch of Gabe Yuder, as you described him. I want you to watch me and point out any differences between my sketch and Yuder’s features.'
Doc’s steady, sensitive bronze fingers moved with a rapidity that defied the eye. On the cardboard took form, as though by magic, the features of a man.
'A little fuller in the cheeks,' said Bittman, 'and a smaller jaw.'
The work came to an end.
'That is a remarkable likeness!' said Bittman.
