THEY shoved past a bewildered doorman. The foyer was decorated elaborately. Deep carpet swathed the floor. It seemed quite a high-class establishment.
Doc described to the doorman the location of the apartment they suspected.
'Who lives there?' he asked.
'No one, yet,' replied the doorman. 'It was rented some time ago, but the tenant has not yet moved in.'
Doc, Monk, Ham, Long Tom and Oliver Wording Bittman hurried up the stairs. Luxurious carpet made their footsteps noiseless. They reached the suspicious apartment.
Halting the others with an uplifted arm, some yards from the door, Doc advanced alone. He did not want them near enough that the sound of their breathing would interfere with his listening. For Doc’s ears were keen enough that he could detect the faintest respiration noises of men within the apartment.
He listened. Lowering close to the threshold, where there gaped a small crack, he used his nostrils. The olfactory senses of the average man are underdeveloped through insufficient use. He has no need for a super-keen organ of smell. Indeed, city life is more comfortable if the multitude of odors present go unnoticed. But Doc Savage, through unremitting, scientific exercise, had developed an olfactory sense far beyond the common.
Doc’s ears and nostrils told him no one occupied the apartment. He tried the door. Locked! He exerted what for his great muscles was moderate pressure. The door swished inward, lock torn out.
Not only was the place untenanted, but it held no furniture. The bare, varnished floor glistened faintly in the light of approaching evening.
Doc glided to the window. He waved at Renny and Johnny in the brick-sided pit of a courtyard below. His gesture advised them to stay where they were.
Back to the door, Doc whipped. His movements seemed effortless for all their speed.
Although there was no sign of a wire by which the secret phone line had been tapped, Doc was not satisfied. His trained brain told him where to look.
He tugged at the corridor carpet immediately outside the door. It came up readily.
The ends of two fine wires were revealed.
'They used a splice long enough to reach from these through the window!' Doc told the others.
Wrenching up the carpet, he followed the wires down the corridor.
Oliver Wording Bittman was white-faced. The flesh on his big jaw looked hard as rock. But he was not trembling.
'I am unarmed,' he said jerkily. 'C-can one of you loan me a gun? One of those c-compact machine guns! I want to do my part to wipe out those fiends!'
Doc reached a quick decision. It was his duty to take care of Bittman’s life, a repayment for the man’s service to his father.
'We neglected to bring along an extra gun,' he said. 'If you wish to help, you might hurry down and call the police.'
Bittman smiled. 'I see through your ruse to get me out of harm’s way. But, of course, I will call the officers.'
He retreated down the wide stairway.
Doc continued to follow the wire. It terminated at a door of a front apartment.
Hardly had he determined that fact when a storm of bullets crashed through the door.
ONLY Doc’s instinct for caution, which had urged him to keep clear of the door, saved his life.
'They’re inside!' Monk howled. 'Now for a rat killin’!'
Monk’s compact machine gun coughed a blatting roar of sound. He literally cut the door off its hinges. It fell inward.
More lead came out of the apartment of the besieged. The slugs hit nobody. But they gouged plaster off the walls. The plaster dust became a blinding cloud. A machine gun equipped with a silencer was doing most of the shooting from within the apartment.
'That sounds like Kar’s typewriter!' Monk bellowed. 'He’s in there!'
Doc abruptly backed from the door.
'You handle this end!' he directed.
He glided down the stairs to the foyer.
Oliver Wording Bittman stood in a telephone booth, speaking rapidly into the instrument.
'Yes! Send a riot squad!' he was saying.
Doc’s bronze form slid outside. Excitement had gripped the street. A cop was coming from the corner, tweedling vigorously on his whistle. Upon the thoroughfare, the shots within the apartment building sounded like clamoring thunder.
To the apartment window, Doc’s golden eyes flashed. What they saw was about the most disappointing thing possible.
A rope made of knotted bedclothing dangled from the open window! This makeshift cord hung to within ten feet of the walk.
Doc’s gaze raked right and left. They ranged far up and down Riverside Drive. Nowhere did they detect trace of any one who might have escaped down that rope.
Running lightly and leaping, Doc grasped the rope end. Powerful fingers clamped an ornamental fresco and helped the bedclothing support his weight. He went up rapidly.
An ugly face poked out of the window. A pipestem arm brought an automatic pistol into view. But before the weapon had a chance to discharge, an incredible vise of bronze fingers clamped the killer’s scrawny neck. They jerked.
The man came out of the window with a snap. Screeching, he fell to his death far out in the street.
An instant later, Monk, Long Tom and Ham charged the room. Their compact guns stuttered briefly. Two of Kar’s men collapsed. They had been among those assembled by Squint. One fell and leaked crimson over the muffled machine gun which had been used by Kar at the pirate ship,
Of Kar, there was no sign.
'He got away — down the rope of bedclothing,' Ham declared regretfully. 'Although it is possible he was never in the room!'
A brief examination showed the secret phone line terminated in the apartment of death. Glancing from the window, Doc also ascertained another thing.
'You can see the
DOC returned with his friends to his skyscraper office downtown.
The police received from Doc Savage an account of what was happening. Doc, however, withheld all reference to the plan to steal the gold destined for the Chicago banks.
This puzzled Ham.
'We’ll stop that robbery ourselves,' Doc explained. 'Kar will use his infernal Smoke of Eternity. The police have no defense against it. Many of them would be killed.'
'Well, won’t Kar use it on us, too?' Monk snorted.
'If he applies it to you, I want to be watching!' the sharp-tongued Ham told Monk. 'I’ll bet the cloud of smoke it turns you into will have a spike tail, horns and pitchfork!'
'Maybe. But it won’t make a noise like this!' And Monk gave a boisterous imitation of a pig grunting.
Ham reddened and shut up. All Monk had to do to get Ham’s goat was make some reference to a porker. Monk often made those piggy, grunting noises just to see Ham swell up with rage.
Long Tom suddenly emitted a howl of surprise. Wandering about the office nervously, he had chanced to look behind the safe.
A large hole gaped there! The solid steel had simply been wiped away!
Doc hurriedly opened the safe.
The rock specimens from Thunder Island were gone!
'Kar, or one of his men, opened a hole in the rear of the safe with that Smoke of Eternity, and got the
