'This is for the police,' Doc told him. 'We will have them put out an alarm for Gabe Yuder. If we get him — we will — '
'We will have Kar!' Bittman said fiercely.
Calling a messenger, Doc dispatched the drawing to the nearest police station.
Soon after, the voices of Renny and Ham were heard in the corridor.
'Poor Monk!' Renny’s voice rambled. 'We found nothing but a bootblack who saw Monk forced into a car. That means those devils took him for a ride. He’s done for!'
There was the trace of a sob in Ham’s reply.
'I’m afraid you’re right, Renny. It’s a terrible thing. Monk was one of the finest men who ever lived. I actually loved Monk!'
Monk heard this. Devilment danced in his little, starry eyes. He looked like he was going to explode with mirth.
For Ham, the waspish, quick-thinking lawyer, had never before expressed such sweet sentiments. He was wont to call Monk the 'missing link' and other things even less complimentary. To hear the sharp-tongued Ham talk, one would think nothing would give him more pleasure than to stick his sword cane in Monk’s anthropoid form.
This peeve of Ham’s dated back to the Great War, to the incident which had given Ham his nickname. As a joke, Ham had taught Monk some French words which were highly insulting, telling Monk they were the proper things to flatter a Frenchman with. Monk had addressed the words to a French general, and that worthy promptly had Monk clapped in the guardhouse for several days.
But within the week after Monk’s release, Ham was hailed upon a charge of stealing hams. Somebody had planted the evidence. Ham had never been able to prove it was Monk who framed him, and it still irked him to think of it. He blamed Monk for the nickname of Ham, which he didn’t particularly care for.
HAM and Renny entered. They saw Monk.
'Haw, haw, haw!' Monk let out a tornado of laughter. 'So you love me, eh?'
Ham carefully wiped from his face the first flash of joy at seeing Monk.
'I’d love to cut your hairy throat!' he snapped angrily.
Doc advised Ham and Renny what had happened to Monk. As he finished, the telephone rang. Long Tom’s voice came over the wire.
'I’ve traced the phone wire from that tenth house,' he advised. 'And also the one from the
'We’ll be right up!' Doc declared.
Monk, Renny, Ham and Johnny were plunging through the door as Doc hung up. They had buckled on bulletproof vests. They had seized the small, deadly machine guns which were Doc’s invention.
Oliver Wording Bittman seemed dazed by the suddenness with which these men went into action. Swallowing his astonishment, he dived in their wake.
Doc summoned an elevator.
'Better take two taxicabs!' he advised when they were on the street. 'If Kar should turn that Smoke of Eternity on one carload, it wouldn’t get us all.'
'Pleasant thought!' Monk grinned.
The two cabs wheeled up Fifth Avenue. Doc rode the runningboard of the foremost machine. He habitually did this, for his very presence was a charm which magically gave him right of way through all traffic. New York City’s traffic policemen had been instructed by their chiefs to give every assistance to this remarkable man of bronze.
Too, Doc preferred to be outside where his keen eyes missed nothing. For this reason also, Doc’s personal cars were always roadsters or convertibles, the tops of which could be lowered.
The trip uptown turned out to be uneventful.
Long Tom, thin and sallow and looking like an invalid, but in reality as tough as any of Doc’s entourage, stood at a corner on Riverside Drive. His two boxes of apparatus were at his feet.
Doc had his cab pull up beside Long Tom.
'Where’d the wires go?' he asked.
Long Tom made a wry face. 'I’m afraid we’re out of luck. The wires led from that tenth house, along the rear of other houses and went under Riverside Drive through a culvert. From there, they led underground down to that pirate ship, the
'To the tanklike submersible!' Doc said disgustedly. 'So the wires in the room and on the boat were one circuit!'
'That’s it,' Long Tom agreed.
DOC SAVAGE now shook his bronze head. 'This is strange, Long Tom! When Kar talked to Monk, the fellow would hardly have been reckless enough to have done so from that room. He knew I had discovered the place.'
'The secret phone circuit didn’t branch off anywhere,' Long Tom said with certainty. He pointed at his instruments. 'My thingamajig would have shown it if the wires were tapped anywhere.'
Doc’s golden eyes ranged along the landward side of Riverside Drive. Apartment houses fronting the Drive were new and tall, although those on the side streets were not nearly so opulent. The Drive apartments commanded a view of the Hudson. They brought neat rentals.
Doc’s low, strange, trilling sound abruptly came from his lips. It was hardly audible now. Probably no one but Long Tom heard it. And Long Tom grinned. He knew this sound presaged some remarkable feat of Doc’s, for it came at the bronze man’s moments of greatest concentration. The sound with the weird, melodious quality of some weird jungle bird always precursed a master stroke.
'Let us do some investigating, brothers,' Doc said softly.
He led them into the tenth house from the corner, which held in an upstairs room the end of the secret phone line. But Doc did not go upstairs. He guided the group out through a rear door.
Here was a long, narrow court. The place was untidy. Rickety old wooden fences marked off backyards hardly larger than good-sized bedspreads. Rusty clotheslines draped like old cobwebs.
The court resembled little else than a brick-walled pit. At the Riverside Drive end, the rear wall of a great apartment house towered many stories. At the opposite end was a lesser building. And on either side, the shabby sterns of old tenements buttressed each other solidly.
Evening was near. The hulking buildings threw shadows into the pit of a court.
Doc moved along the court, toward Riverside Drive. His sharp eyes soon located the secret phone wires. These followed the chinks between bricks for the most part. They had been coated with a paint the exact color of the brickwork.
They reached the wall of the immensely larger building which fronted Riverside Drive. Turning here, the thin, hardly visible strands traced along the rear of the structure.
At one point, a loop abruptly dangled out — a very small loop.
Doc pointed at this. 'Notice anything peculiar about that?'
Long Tom stared.
'The insulation is gone at that point!' he ejaculated. 'The naked copper of the wires shows!'
'Exactly. Note also that there are many windows directly above the spot.'
'You mean Kar tapped them there and — '
'By reaching down and clipping the ends of other wires to them,' Doc replied. 'That means he did it from the window immediately above! Those loops are too small to be fished for from a greater distance.'
To Renny and Johnny, Doc breathed a command. 'You two stay here. Watch that window. Shoot at the slightest hostile move.
'The rest of you come with me!'
He led them swiftly around to the front of the apartment building which overlooked Riverside Drive.
