Author: Kenneth Robeson
Date: 2009-09-15 04:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Intl Business Pubns USA

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine August 1946

2

DOC SAVAGE

Chapter I
like rocks. He touched on most of the intimate details of Petey’s ancestry. Then he cautiously SAM CLARK was crawling on the floor lifted one arm to see if it was still shaking, and looking for the paper clip when—without a it wasn’t. He said, “Why didn’t you telephone knock, without the least warning—the hotel the room, or knock?”

room door burst open. Sam was frightened

“Why, you told me not to telephone—it until he had to jam both fists hard on the floor might set off the rifle,” said Petey.

to keep his arms from trembling.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Sam muttered, and,

“Petey!” he gulped, identifying the arrival.

embarrassed by having been so frightened, Petey came in saying, “You know what—
went to looking for the paper clip again.

I saw the best-looking blonde babe just now . .

Sam had a headlong, athletic look about

.” He stopped and stared. “What’s the matter, him, and this air—alert, active, devilish—gave Sam? Did you lay an egg?”

him an appearance of being larger than he Sam cursed him bitterly and in detail, his was, which was two inches under six feet and deep and rather hard tones knocking together twenty pounds lighter than the two hundred he THREE TIMES A CORPSE

3
seemed. A collegiate way of dressing helped

“Dammit, we just bought the gun new out this sprightliness. He was twenty-five and this afternoon.”

looked thirty-five or even forty, due to the kind

“You gonna take the word of the guy of treatment his face had received as a result sold us the thing?”

of pushing it into the kind of places where he

“Help me find this paper clip!”

had pushed it. He looked—and was—the kind

“I wouldn’t take the word—”

of guy who was living in a century that was too

“I drove out in the country and shot it,”

peaceable, a fellow who should have lived Sam said patiently. “It targets in good enough back when there were more new frontiers to to suit me.”

explore, and kingdoms to be won, fair damsels

“Whatcha want the paper clip for?”

in distress, and buccaneers sailing the seas.

He got no answer, so he scrambled

“You told me,” said Petey again, “not to around on hands and knees helping Sam, and telephone the room on account of it might set presently they found the paper clip.

off the gun.”

Petey then watched with interest as Sam Sam grunted and hunted the paper clip.

arranged a trigger-tripping gadget that was Petey was a wiry little man of uncertain rather elaborate. A string ran from the clapper nationality—he was Polynesian, he claimed on the telephone bell—Sam had removed the frequently, supposedly from an island called cover from the ringer—to the tongue of a trip, Oh Hah, in the group north of Tahiti. On the home-made, of the sort boys call a figure-4
other hand, he sometimes said he was a trap and set for rabbits. Ringing of the tele-Limehouse boy from London, a Sands Street phone would trip the figure-4 gimmick, a book boy from Brooklyn, or assorted other places—would then fall off the table, a string tied to the he could, rather remarkably, look and act each book would yank the rifle trigger.

of these nationalities. He, like Sam, was an

“That gonna work?”

adventurer at heart, and he adored Sam, took

“Sure it’ll work.”

Sam’s word as law, and seemed very grateful Petey looked at the name of the book to Sam for tolerating him. He was outspoken that was going to pull the rifle trigger. It was a with Sam, which seemed to bother Sam not at copy of How to Win Friends and Influence all.

People. Petey thought this was funny.

Petey went over and examined the rifle.

“Did you think that up yourself, or was it

“This is a hell of a contraption,” he said.

an accident?” He indicated the book.

“You think it’s gonna work?”

Sam said modestly that he had thought it

“Sure it’ll work,” Sam said.

up himself. “A touch of the unique,” he ex-

“What if it shoots the wrong guy?”

plained.

“Yeah, a touch that is gonna make him think you’re touched,” Petey said. “You know THE rifle, a 30-06 U.S. Army issue this is a smart guy you’re fooling with. He is weapon which they had bought that afternoon liable to look at the place where you stood and at a sporting goods house, had been lashed in read your mind. What if something like that a substantial manner on top of the hotel room book should tip him it was a shenanygin?”

dresser, which was in turn wired securely to

“Nobody,” said Sam, “thinks a rifle bullet the radiator below the window. Two telephone through the table in front of him is a shenany-directories, the classified and the Manhattan gin.”

directory, had been used for wedging pur-

“What time does this come off?”

poses.

“What time is it now?”

Petey sighted down the barrel. There

“Six thirty-eight,” Petey said without look-was a restaurant in the building across the ing at his watch. He had, and was proud of, a street, on the second floor, and there was one rather uncanny facility for telling the exact time table in a sort of windowed alcove which of-at any given moment.

fered a view of the street, and made an excel-

“He eats at seven,” Sam Clark said.

lent target. The table was quite large. The rifle Petey scratched his head and wished to was sighted directly in the center of it, at an know how the hell Sam had found out that Doc elaborate centerpiece of floral design.

Savage dined at seven. “I phoned the restau-

“You sure this gun is sighted in?”

rant,” Sam explained. “I said I was supposed to

“Yeah,” Sam Clark said.

join Savage for a business conference at din-

“How you know?”

ner, and what time did he eat, and did he have 4

DOC SAVAGE
a regular time. They said as regular as clock-

“Six forty-seven.”

work, and it was seven o’clock.”

“Better light out for the railway station. I

“What if he don’t?”

don’t want you around here when the shot

“Well, what if he don’t?” Sam snapped.

goes off.”

“And what if he don’t take that table?”

“Where you going?”

“The guy in the restaurant says he al-

“When Savage gets to the table, I’ll be in ways uses that table, because it’s private.”

the restaurant, and I’ll use the telephone there

“What if the telephone rings here at the to call this room, and discharge the rifle.” Sam wrong time?”

grinned. “Pretty slick, don’t you think.”

“Listen, I’m gonna ask some questions,”

“Very slippery,” Petey agreed. “I hope Sam said sharply. “First, did you buy the our feet don’t slide out from under us on this ticket?”

deal, is all.”

“No. I had the guy downstairs, the porter, buy the ticket for me. It’s on the eight o’clock train to St. Louis.”

SAM CLARK had not previously seen

“The ticket read only St. Louis?”

Doc Savage, but had heard vaguely of Savage

“Nah. To Butte, Montana. That’s where on a number of different occasions and—and you said, wasn’t it?”

this had surprised him—in widely separated

“I said any place in Montana. Butte is as parts of the world, so evidently Savage, who good as anywhere. . . . You sure the porter will was called the bronze man, or the man of remember you buying the ticket and what train bronze, had a rather widespread reputation.

it was on?”

Sam did not believe what he had heard about

“He oughta, after the argument we had.”

Doc Savage, because it did not seem quite

“What kind of an argument? We don’t logical, particularly the part about the bronze want this too obvious.”

man’s reputation, which was supposed to be

“It wasn’t exactly an argument. I just re-righting wrongs which were, for one reason or cited him a poem. ‘There was a young lady another, outside the ability of the regular law from Butte, Who went on a terrible toot—’“
enforcement mediums. This sounded too much

“Never mind your poem,” Sam said hast-like Galahad stuff to Sam, and he could not ily. “The thing we want is a clear trail leading to see where there would be any profit in it, other the eight o’clock train out of Miami, and I hope than satisfaction, and it was difficult to make a that’ll do it. But you be sure to get on that train, meal from satisfaction. He had heard that Doc or at least go through the gate. Make some Savage had considerable financial means, kind of commotion when you get aboard, so which Sam figured further disproved the Gala-the guy at the gate will remember you. Not too had theory, which had gone out of style along obvious. Something like misplacing your ticket, with tin pants, and going to a blacksmith when and looking scared, and having a little argu-you wanted your coat patched. But he was ment.”

quite interested in seeing what sort Doc Sav-

“Sure. I got that all figured out.”

age really was.

“But don’t get on the train, actually.”

He was not disappointed.

“Not me.”

He said, “Whoeeee!” softly.

Sam did some pondering, then an-Any doubts about his being able to rec-nounced, “You might do it like this—walk ognize Savage vanished, for the man was through the gate and down the ramp with the physically as noticeable as a neon sign. He rest of the passengers, but instead—”

was a man with a remarkable personality that

“They got a long platform, not a ramp.

did not come entirely from the deeply sun-This ain’t New York—”

bronzed hue of his skin and the slightly darker

“Down the platform, dope! But don’t get bronze of his hair and a somewhat unusual on any of the coaches. Keep going, and walk flake gold coloration of his eyes—not brown, around the front of the engine, acting like you and not citrine either. They were striking eyes.

were on business, maybe a guy working for Savage’s size was also striking, Sam suddenly the railroad. Anyway, keep out of the conduc-realized, when he noticed the comparison be-tor’s sight, and let the train get out of town tween the bronze man and the headwaiter in without you.”

the restaurant, who was not a midget.

“Okay.”

Impressed, alarmed, Sam Clark watched

“What time is it now?”

Doc Savage being conducted to the table in THREE TIMES A CORPSE

5
the windowed alcove, where the bronze man re-enforced concrete covered with some sort seated himself and began inspecting a menu.

of tiling, got under the tiling and came across Quite a number of thoughts dashed through the room leaving a track, under the tiling, that Sam’s mind, most of them having to do with might have been made by a small speedy whether or not he might have made a mistake mole.

somewhere. It was not Sam’s nature to be-Then silence. It was almost as brittle as come alarmed readily—the fact that sudden the breaking glass.

unexpected events could startle him and make Doc Savage had hardly moved. Sam him as shaky as the devil for a few moments Clark, at this point, made a rather shocking had nothing to do with a state of protracted discovery—he realized that Doc Savage, in alarm; he was of a jumpy nature, that was all—seating himself at the table, had occupied such but he was concerned now. Maybe, he a position that a part of the building, brick sev-thought, this is once I should have looked eral inches thick, had shielded him from the more closely before I took a bite.

hotel window across the street. There was not Bosh! What was there to be afraid of?

much time for this to more than come to Sam’s His plan was nicely laid. The shot would attention.

arouse in Savage a wish to catch whoever had Arising, Doc Savage crossed the restau-fired on him, and the trail that had been laid rant, not seeming in any particular hurry. It ap-was a plain one. The rifle bullet, for instance, peared to Sam that Savage was heading for would smash the hotel room window through the exit, which proved to be a wide error of which it passed, which would be clue enough judgment on Sam’s part.

as to the source. The railway ticket Petey had Suddenly Sam found himself seized.

bought would lead straight to the St. Louis He said, “Here! Dammit! What’s the train, and even a slight inquiry would indicate idea?” He did not sound as innocently indig-Petey had boarded the train. Petey was sup-nant as he sought to sound.

posed to be the only one occupying the hotel

“The idea,” Doc Savage said, “is purely room, so actually he, Sam, was in the clear.

your own. Or is it?”

Having re-assured himself, he touched He had a powerful voice with qualities of his lips with his napkin—he had ordered pom-tone and training and power.

pano, had taken a few hearty bites before Doc

“Leggo me!” Sam said.

Savage had appeared and impaired his appe-Doc Savage did not say anything and did tite—and arose. The telephone was conven-not let go, and Sam, whose idea of a fight was ient; he had made sure of that. He dropped in to get it over with quick, and anything would his nickel, got the operator.

go, made an ambitious attempt to kick Doc in

“Adair Hotel,” he asked. He turned his the stomach. Doc moved just enough so that head, made sure that the rifle bullet, if it hit the kick missed. He hooked an arm under where aimed, would not strike Doc Savage.

Sam’s leg and jerked, and Sam came down on

“Room 308,” he said.

the floor, hard. He was fortunate enough to The rifle bullet came into the restaurant keep his head from cracking the floor more and made all the commotion he had hoped for.

than enough to daze him momentarily. Doc leaned down and planted a fist on Sam’s third vest button, not appearing to hit very hard. But Chapter II the result stopped Sam’s breathing, and most of his other functions, for a few moments.

VIOLENTLY, crash—jangle, the vase in Sam was dragged toward the door.

which the table centerpiece was arranged The restaurant proprietor, who was also sprang to bits and scattered over the room, or the headwaiter, bounced nervously alongside, at least over the alcove and the area immedi-wishing to know, “Is there anything—anything ately adjacent, along with the window, all the at all—”

glass of which—a pane about four by seven

“No. No, we’ll take it from here.” Doc feet—seemed to split into a thousand bits and Savage’s voice, manner, were friendly. He fall into the room. The table top—it was mod-added, “I want to tell you again that I appreci-ernistic black glass, something Sam Clark ate your telling me there had been someone hadn’t noted previously—also burst into sec-telephoning and showing curiosity about ex-tions when the bullet passed through; after-actly what time I ate here, and what table I ward the bullet, hitting the floor, which was of used.”

6

DOC SAVAGE

“Glad to do it,” said the restaurant owner.

He was pleased.

“Well, you did us a great favor, and we appreciate it. If we could make some kind of financial remuneration—”

The restaurant man wouldn’t hear of that; hell, don’t be ridiculous, he said; after all, his brother, Frederick, wouldn’t be the suc-cessful surgeon he now was if it hadn’t been for the study foundation which Doc Savage had established so that fellows like Frederick, who had talent but not money, could take specialized study.

Sam Clark revived enough to swear bitterly. “So this restaurant monkey tipped you off!” he complained.

DOC SAVAGE took Sam Clark across the street to the Adair Hotel.

“So you got them!” said the pleased manager of the hotel.

“That’s one of them,” said the hotel porter, looking at Sam.

“The other’n is upstairs,” said the elevator operator.

Sam asked bitterly, “Is there anybody in Miami who doesn’t know all about this?”

Petey was waiting, or being detained, in their room. Petey, skinned and bruised in several places, eyed Sam gloomily and said, “I thought you had such a slick plan!”

Sam, in no mood for conversation, inspected Petey’s captors. There were two of these, and they looked nothing alike, seemed to have nothing in common, not even much fondness for each other. He recognized them, after a moment’s thought, as being Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, two of a group of five specialists who were supposed to be associated with Doc Savage in most of his activities.

Ham Brooks looked somewhat more the Monk Mayfair was a squat, four-by-part. He was a wide-mouthed, wide-shoulder, fourish sort of an individual with a startlingly rather handsome man with the wiry air of a fox-homely face, a considerable growth of wiry red terrier, and the cultured and unconsciously hair that was as thick elsewhere on him, projected voice of an orator of the spellbinder namely his forearms, as it was on his bullet school. His clothing was expensive, immacu-head. Apparently he had gone to considerable late, and a compromise between Bond Street trouble to dress as sloppily, and also as loudly, and Hollywood, impressive without being loud.

as possible. Sam, remembering Monk Mayfair Brooks, Sam reflected, at least looked like the was reputedly one of the world’s great indus-noted attorney he was reputed to be.

trial chemists, was startled.

Petey cleared his throat.

“They musta been smarter than somebody figured,” he ventured.

“So was the restaurant guy,” Sam agreed gloomily.

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

7

Sam snorted. He was still not breathing normally as a result of the punch Doc Savage had given him in the midsection.

Monk and Ham tossed the contents of Sam and Petey’s pockets on the bedspread as they unearthed them, and Doc Savage, sitting on the edge of the bed, went through the stuff.

Petey’s pockets contained two dozen slot machine slugs and another dozen slugs for illegal use in pay telephones, four dog-track bet ticket stubs, several more pari-mutuel bet tickets from Hialeah track, a half-eaten candy bar, and a total of eighty-seven cents.

From Sam’s pockets came a pair of brass knucks, a roll of nickels that would also serve well in a fight, a receipt for a fine paid in court, ten dollars, a short newspaper item about the fight—the same one, evidently which had drawn the fine—which said that one Sam Clark, a vagrant, had badly beaten a night club bouncer and two socialites in a fracas over a blonde. There was also a brand-new billfold in the two-dollar price range which contained two hundred dollars, in fives and tens, neatly fas-tened together with a paper clip.

Doc Savage fanned through Sam’s two hundred.

“All of the pay-off, or part of it?” he asked Sam. “You ain’t gonna take that dough?” Sam demanded, alarmed.

The greenbacks made a fluttering sound as Doc fanned through them again. “You work cheap.”

“Huh?”

“Not enough.”

Sam said indignantly. “Two hundred is a DOC SAVAGE examined the rifle, men-lotta dough.”

tioned that it showed a certain ingenuity, then

“You think so?”

began going over the room, finding nothing in

“Why not?”

the way of baggage except a cheap new suit-

“I think I know some individuals who case, thoughtfully loaded with bricks so the would go a little higher, say around fifty thou-bellhop wouldn’t think it contained no baggage.

sand dollars, for somebody to take a shot at In a wastebasket was heavy wrapping paper, me,” Doc said dryly. “They would expect a grease-stained, which had obviously been somewhat more skillful job, though.”

around the rifle.

Petey showed interest. “Would you mind

“Nothing to identify them,” Doc an-giving me the names of them guys?” he asked.

nounced. “Let’s see what they have on them.”

“Shut up!” Sam snapped.

Sam objected indignantly to being Monk Mayfair gave his slacks, which searched. “This is illegal!” he yelled.

seemed in perpetual danger of sliding off his

“As illegal as anything,” agreed Ham hips, a hitch. “So you guys were hired.”

Brooks, the lawyer. “Stand still, brother, or

“Mind-readers!” Petey said.

some more illegalities will happen to you!”

“Shut up!” Sam ordered Petey.

Petey said hopefully, “Sam, I think you Doc Savage scraped the belongings to-can lick them. Are you gonna stand for this?”

gether on the bed, and remarked, “No weapons. That speaks a word in your behalf.” He 8

DOC SAVAGE
leaned back, relaxed and not seeming upset—
them two hundred—the two hundred may have alarmingly calm, in Sam’s opinion—and exam-been a down payment only—to fire a shot into ined the two prisoners speculatively. He se-the restaurant table where I was eating. I was lected Petey for his next questions, asking, then supposed to investigate, find a trail which “Who hired you two fellows to put that on me, they’d arranged for me, and follow the trail to and why?”

Butte, Montana, I think it was. The deal Petey registered blankness. “Sam told stubbed its toe when the owner of the restau-me to shut up,” he explained.

rant across the street, Mr. Domani, became suspicious of a telephone caller who wished exact details about when I ate dinner, and THAT, after five minutes, was the sum what table I used. Mr. Domani notified me, and total of information that Petey and Sam were Monk and Ham here did some investigating—willing to divulge.

with a pair of binoculars, they discovered a The questioning was interrupted—not as man rigging a rifle behind the window in this permanently as Sam hoped; he was beginning room, and so we took measures to apprehend to be quite alarmed by Doc Savage—by the this pair”—he nodded at Sam, Petey—”and I ringing of the telephone, and the information, was careful not to show myself within range of from downstairs, that the police were there to the rifle, in case it was an attempt on my life.

see what had happened.

Apparently it wasn’t such an attempt, because

“Send the officers up,” Doc directed.

Sam Clark, in the restaurant, where I seized Sam was upset by this. “You ain’t got him a few moments later, did not seem sur-nothing on me!” he said hastily.

prised when the bullet only went through the

“Only enough to get you about twenty table.”

years for attempted homicide,” Ham Brooks, Sam Clark’s jaw had loosened, his ex-the attorney, informed him.

pression had become blankly foolish; he swal-

“It was a gag!”

lowed twice, with difficulty, and blurted, “How,

“What was?”

by God, did you figure that all out?”

“The whole thing!”

Lieutenant Avery said, “Restaurant man

“How do you know?”

tipped you, eh? Sure he wasn’t in on it?”

“That’s what the guy told me.”

“Mr. Domani!” Doc seemed surprised.

“What guy?”

“Oh, Domani—sure, he’s all right. I know Sam considered this. “I guess I can’t Domani. Nice guy.” The lieutenant scowled at say. I told the guy I wouldn’t,” he muttered.

Sam and Petey. “You want us to fan these There were two policemen, a lieutenant guys into the bastille for you?”

named Avery and a patrolman in uniform

“I’d like to look a bit further into it.”

named, or called, Gilly. Lieutenant Avery had a

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. You long mule-shaped face which, when he saw want us to help?”

Doc Savage, lighted up in a grin as if he were

“If it’s not breaking any rules, we’d like to preparing to bray. “Well, for God’s sake, it’s tackle it ourselves,” Doc explained.

Mr. Savage!” he said explosively. “Say, maybe Lieutenant Avery grinned. “It’s breaking you don’t remember me—Avery, Theodore rules, all right, but that’s what rules are for. If Avery—but I was in the FBI police school a you need any little service we can give, holler.”

couple of years ago when you lectured on the

“We will.”

Keeler polygraph for recording psychogalvanic reflexes.”

Doc Savage said that of course he re-TO Sam Clark’s horror, and Petey’s con-membered the lieutenant, and added, “Have fessed disbelief, the two policemen now de-you still got the party fishing boat for a side-parted. Petey, after his eyes had protruded, line?”

demanded of Sam, “What’s got into them

“Sure, I still got the boat. I want to take cops? They go off and leave civilians to inves-you out in the Gulf Stream for a day’s fishing tigate their own shooting scrape! Who ever while you’re here,” said the lieutenant. “Uh—hearda sucha thing!”

this is Patrolman Gilly. Gilly put in a call; said

“We got influence,” Monk Mayfair told there was a shooting.”

him grimly.

“There was.” Doc indicated Sam Clark Doc Savage, having accompanied the and Petey. “A gag, they say. Someone paid two policemen to the elevator, returned and THREE TIMES A CORPSE

9
closed and locked the door, then went over should, as a chemist, point out that the hyos-and looked Sam coldly in the eye.

cine manufactured under these post-war con-

“Just before the officers arrived,” Doc ditions isn’t too reliable. If you want to murder said, “you started to tell a story. You got as far this guy, I’d say go ahead, use it. Otherwise, I as saying it was all a gag, and someone had think he would be better off if we beat it out of told you it was a gag. Do you want to go on him.”

from there?”

Having offered this he, Monk, looked as

“Go on?”

solemn as possible.

“The rest of the story.”

Sam Clark felt he was being kidded, but Sam was impressed, but not sufficiently he wasn’t too sure. He fitted two or three ex-impressed to talk.

pressions on his face—sneer, scowl, bravado,

“I got nothin’ to say.” He put his jaw out.

a second scowl that was thoughtful, a what-

“Why not?”

the-hell look of resignation—which apparently

“I choose not to discuss it,” Sam said.

mirrored the state of his mind. “Okay, but Monk suggested, “Maybe he chooses to there’s one thing you gotta let me do,” he said.

lose his teeth instead.” Monk went over and Doc waited questioningly.

showed Sam a block of fist which appeared Clark said, “Put that money in an enve-capable of smashing bricks, and looked, from lope—one of the hotel envelopes will do—and the scars on it, as if it might have been em-stamp it. Then write a name and address on it ployed for some similar purpose in the past.

that I’ll give you, and drop it in the mailbox.”

“You think your nose is harder than this?”

“What’s the idea?”

Monk waggled the fist.

“Simple. I didn’t deliver on the job. So Doc Savage made a restraining gesture.

the guy gets back his cash.”

“I think there is a less messy way.” The remark Monk, astonished, examined Sam Clark, gave him Sam’s alarmed attention, and Doc concluded Sam was being honest, and said, added, “Sam—if that is your name—have you “Danged if I don’t think you mean it!”

ever heard of hyoscine?”

“Why not?”

Sam batted his eyes, “Which?”

“It is,” Doc explained, “nearly identical with scopolamine in its effects. It is adminis-THE name Sam Clark wrote on the entered hypodermically in repeated doses until a velope was Mr. Parker Snelling. The address stage of mild delirium is induced, and at a cer-was 1766 Riviera Point, Miami Beach. He tain stage the victim is afflicted with a peculiar showed it to them.

forgetfulness which seems to cover any alibi

“A pal of yours, you see,” he said.

he may have figured out for himself as security Doc Savage had never heard of a Mr.

against being accused of a crime, and likewise Parker Snelling, and he glanced questioningly he usually forgets that he does not want to tell at Monk.

the truth. In such a state, he implicates himself

“Not me,” Monk said hastily.

readily if guilty.”

“Nor me,” Ham said.

“Hah!” said Sam explosively. Just what Sam Clark scowled. “What are you giv-he meant by the exclamation, the tone did not ing me? Don’t you know the guy?”

say. Mostly it was alarmed.

“No,” Doc said. “Mail that money to him,

“Unfortunately,” added Doc Savage, and then let’s talk it over.” Doc had a book of

“there is a large element of danger connected three-cent stamps in his billfold, and they with the stuff. It is so dangerous, in fact, that its guessed off the weight of the envelope con-use in connection with twilight sleep for child-taining the currency, added an extra three-cent birth in hospitals has been discontinued. . . .

stamp for luck, and consigned it to the mail Death indications, in the course of an autopsy, chute at the end of the hall, Clark not looking are generally the same as those of asphyxia-too happy when the money disappeared.

tion, which is equivalent to drowning or chok-

“Maybe I’m a sucker,” he muttered.

ing to death, and is probably not a very pleas-

“You won’t be the first of the species,”

ant way to die.”

Doc advised.

Monk, realizing what Doc Savage was They returned to the room. Petey was trying to do—induce a state of alarm—
disgusted and told Clark so. “All that dough, us pretended some concern of his own. “Doc, not broke, and you mail it back to the guy!” Petey that I give a damn about this guy, but I feel I complained. “Godamighty, now we can’t even 10

DOC SAVAGE
hire a lawyer. You’re a fine so-and-so. I got a The upshot of the good fellowship was notion to find me another friend.”

that Parker Snelling had come around to stat-Sam Clark took a chair. He was de-ing that he had a little job, a kind of practical jected. He indicated the clipping about the joke of a rather unusual sort which he wished fight, asked, “You saw that? Our last ten bucks perpetrated, and he had outlined the matter, goes on that fine. I don’t tell the law it’s our last explaining that it might be better for two men to ten, or we would have been run out of town as handle it.

vagrants—which is what we are. We’re broke,

“So I introduce him to Sammy,” Petey see.” He indicated Petey. “Petey runs on to said.

this guy, or the guy runs on to Petey, I don’t Sam Clark cleared his throat. “Parker know which. He’s a nice-looking guy who Snelling is about six feet, not heavy, and, as seems to be in the chips. He’s plenty good-Petey says, a nice dresser and nice-humored, see. Laughs a lot. And he has a mannered. He plays the races, not heavily, but proposition.” He paused and scowled at Petey.

carefully. He is, I gathered from his talk, taking

“Tell ‘em how you met the guy, Petey.”

an extended vacation after having served in

“You’re doing the talking,” Petey said.

the Merchant Marine during the war, in the

“Tell ‘em!”

course of which he was on a torpedoed ship,

“I don’t want no part—”

and was marooned on an island for some time.

“Tell ‘em!” Sam said grimly. “Tell ‘em, or

. . . You mean to tell me you don’t know him?”

I’ll take you by the ears, put a foot in your

“Never heard of him,” Doc Savage said.

mouth and pull you on like a boot.” He did not

“What about Lucky?”

sound as if he was fooling.

“Lucky who?”

“You don’t know her, either!”

“No.”

THIS guy Snelling, Petey said, was a

“Well, for cryin’ out loud!”

racing bloke, see, a lad with right fancy clob-

“Somebody has been told some lies,”

ber, a real bonzer. Not a bit mingy, but no Petey said. “I think it was us.”

mark either. A democratic sort, no end. He’d

“What about Lucky? A woman, you shouted Petey a drink right off.

say?”

Petey paused to see how his Australian

“Uh-huh. Very delicious, I heard. . . . And dialect was getting over, seemed disappointed you don’t know her?”

that they weren’t impressed, and continued,

“No.”

“We drop into a pub for a cupper, and the lad’s

“That’s damned strange,” Sam Clark no larrikin. He’s whacko, acts like a cobber—”

said. “Because this Snelling told us he wanted

“Just a minute,” Ham interrupted. “Does you decoyed off to Montana to keep you out of a translation go with this?”

her clutches. That was the words he used—out Petey was injured. “I’m telling you—”

of her clutches. But I gathered he figured you

“You spoke Brooklynese a minute ago,”

were beating his time with her. . . . But you Ham said. “Go back to it.”

don’t know her! I’ll be damned!”

Petey said he was telling this, damned if Monk showed considerable interest. “If he wasn’t, and Monk inquired how he liked his we’re going to conduct further investigation,”

teeth, the way they were, or on the floor. Petey he suggested, “it would be my idea to start with considered this, and decided to give them a this Miss Lucky.”

translation.

He had met Parker Snelling at the race track, and Snelling was a fancy dresser, a Chapter III
great guy, not a bit stingy, and they had had a drink, although Snelling certainly wasn’t a THE clerk of the Silver Beech grinned at roughneck, although he had been quite them and said, “Miss Jones? Ah . . . Miss friendly, almost a pal.

Jones!” He acted and sounded as if they had Petey interpolated at this point, in Brook-rung sleigh-bells.

lyn English: “I’m not wise right off, but I figure The Silver Beech was one of the better the guy has heard about me from somebody, small residential hotels on Miami Beach, and about Sammy, here, too. But I don’t catch probably not having more than thirty rooms or on to that until later.”

suites, and probably none of these renting for less than fifteen dollars a day.

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

11

“What’s so amazing about that?” Ham said—in slightly more pointed language—to asked the desk clerk sharply.

send the bums up.”

“Ah, Miss Jones, yes indeed. . . . Are you On the stairs—the place was a bit too from the police, by any chance?”

elegant for an elevator—Monk grinned appre-Doc Savage looked interested. “Why the ciatively. “An impulsive gamblin’ beauty with a police?”

Cadillac!” He raked his fingers through his hair Doc had not particularly favored begin-to make it stand up straight, and adjusted his ning their further investigation with Lucky—necktie.

who seemed also to be Miss Jones—but he had acceded to the obvious wishes of Monk and Ham to begin with the young lady, not be-MISS LUCKY Jones seemed surprised, cause he wanted them to start making fools but not nonplussed, when she saw them.

out of themselves, which was what he ex-

“What kind of a delegation are you, any-pected, but because the Silver Beech, where way?” she demanded.

Miss Jones lived, according to Sam Clark, was Ham managed to kick Monk’s shin as on their route out to 1766 Riviera Point, where Monk was on the point of wolf-whistling, Parker Snelling lived, and it was about five thereby turning the whistle into a twitter of ag-miles nearer than Snelling’s home.

ony.

“Why the police?” Doc repeated.

Doc Savage had the feeling that the oth-The clerk studied them. “You don’t look ers, like himself, were getting what they ex-like the constabulary, I must say.”

pected, only more so. She wasn’t a blonde. He

“Come on, out with it.”

had thought she would be—recalled suddenly The expression that now came to the that no one had said she was a blonde. He clerk’s face indicated he was going to tell them thought immediately of her hair as being Pom-to go to hell, either in those words, or more peiian red, probably because Pompeii was a politely.

volcano, and it was no mystery why Monk had

“Don’t say it,” Monk advised him. He had tried to whistle; it was probably fortunate the evidently sized up the clerk’s character better whistle hadn’t come off, Doc reflected, be-than Doc had supposed because he added, cause Miss Lucky would probably have made “And how would you like for a nice noisy am-Monk sorry. She wore as spectacular, and as bulance to pull up in front of this hostelry and skimpy a sun suit as he recalled having seen, take you off to a hospital to get an arm put and fitted it the way the designer probably had back on you?”

dreamed.

The results, probably from Monk’s I’d-as-She pointed a finger at Petey, at Sam.

soon-mangle-you-as-not appearance rather

“You two,” she said in a voice that was than the words, were satisfactory.

deep and musical, “I have seen. Around the

“Miss Lucky,” he explained, “has had a tracks.” She indicated Petey a second time.

bit of difficulty with a betting gentleman. I am

“You’re a two-bit gambler.”

not fully familiar with the details, but it seems Petey disclaimed this. “To be a gambler, he was either unable or would not, pay off a you gotta win sometimes.”

bet he lost to her on a horse race. Miss Lucky Miss Lucky inspected all of them as a took his Cadillac, striking him, in the process, a group, then demanded, “Can you think of a rather painful blow with a”—the clerk indicated reason why I should invite you in?”

several extremely modernistic goldfish bowls They were somewhat confused. Entirely which were part of the lobby’s decorations—aside from her appearance, Miss Lucky had

”with one of those. The gentleman left issuing qualities of a firecracker sort which were a threats of arrest.”

menace to any sort of dignity, Ham Brooks

“Is she in?”

endeavored to solve the situation by explain-

“I can find out.”

ing, “This is Doc Savage,” and indicating Doc.

“Do that.”

Lucky examined Doc.

“Whom shall I announce?”

“If I needed a doctor, I might be inter-

“Tell her,” Doc said, “that the delegation ested,” she stated. Then, with eyes narrowed, is here about Mr. Parker Snelling’s practical she added, “Listen, if that welching cheapskate joke.”

bookie sent you around to pull some kind of a Presently, having spoken into the house razzle-dazzle on me, you can just scram while phone, the clerk informed them, “Miss Lucky you’re able to do it under your own power. And

12

DOC SAVAGE
tell him that, next time, I’ll feed him to those Ham’s mouth remained open, as if he goldfish!”

were startled at finding someone who had not heard of Doc Savage, but more probably because looking at Miss Lucky made his mouth want to stay open.

Doc cleared his throat self-consciously.

“Are you acquainted with a Mr. Parker Snelling?” “That stuffy goat!”

“You know him, then?”

Miss Lucky made a lazy movement with one hand, which immediately held a small .25-calibre automatic that was either solid gold or gold-plated and had, unless appearances were very deceiving, several fair-sized diamonds set in the grip. The gun lay flat on her hand for a moment, so they could see what it was, then her fingers wrapped around it with impressive skill. She slipped the safety off.

“If you’ve got something to sell, show the merchandise,” she said.

“It seems that Snelling claims you are a menace to me, and he felt he should save me,”

Doc explained. “The method he took was to hire a man to shoot at me, so I would chase the man off to Montana, thereby removing myself from your sphere of influence.”

Lucky considered this. “Either you’re crazy, or you’ve got something entertaining.”

She stepped back. “Come on in.”

THE apartment was probably the best one in the hotel, but it did not surprise them at all. Sam Clark, apparently not accustomed to such flash, was diverted from his own troubles long enough to stare at the chocolate walls with touches of cream in picture frames and shelves—his eye lingering appreciatively on one large painting that was unusually inde-cent—and the milky carpeting, the heavy func-tional modern furniture in yellows and grass greens, and a cream and chrome trick bar in a corner.

Lucky indicated the bar. “Would you call yourselves friends? I usually offer my friends a drink.” “We should be able to find that out in a hurry,” Doc said.

“Right down to business, eh?”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” Lucky frowned at Monk, who had become quite interested in her long, well-shaped legs, and Monk hastily averted his gaze. “It’s a wild story,” Doc explained.

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

13

“It is! I like wild stories,” Lucky said. “Is there any truth in this one?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” Doc admitted. He gestured at Sam Clark, explaining,

“Most of it came from him, and part of it is his doing, and how much is lies and how much is not is what we’re here to find out. . . . I take it that you know a man named Parker Snelling.”

“I know one who calls himself that,”

Lucky admitted.

“You think it might be a phony name?”

Lucky perched on a table near where Ham had taken a seat, swung her long legs for a moment, then used a toe to nudge Ham’s knee. “You look like a bartender, handsome-and-well-dressed,” she said. “How about mix-ing us a drink.” Ham flushed with rage, and Monk laughed.

“Want to answer that?” Doc asked.

“You’re making noises like cops,” Lucky announced. “What’s the score? What is this, anyway?”

“Here’s the whole story. Listen.” He gave her the entire picture, skipping details where they were not pertinent, putting them in where they were necessary to paint essential actions and motives, managing to get, without much conscious effort, apparently, a story that was complete and sounded, in the telling, considerably more concise and logical and clear than the events themselves had been. When he finished, he had managed to leave, poised before them like a huge question mark, the mystery of: why had Parker Snelling tried an elaborate, unorthodox scheme to save Doc from the wiles of Miss Lucky Jones when Doc was not personally acquainted with either Snelling or Lucky. “Mix that drink, well-dressed,” Lucky told Ham.

SAM CLARK and Petey said they would take bourbon and they sounded as if they needed it; Doc declined, and Ham said he would prefer a glass of sherry. Monk came up with a gallant, “Just having you around is intoxicating enough for me.” Lucky was pleased, or put enough amiability on top of her worry to seem pleased, and asked him, “What’s your name and racket, big-and-primitive?”

Lucky gave a visible jump. “Oh, for cry-

“Monk Mayfair—Lieutenant Colonel Aning out loud!” She seemed astonished. “I’ve drew Blodgett Mayfair,” Monk explained. “I’m a just figured out who you fellows must be!”

chemist.”

She slid off the table, went into another room, and Doc moved hastily until he could see that it was a bedroom, and that she was at 14

DOC SAVAGE
the dressing table, evidently getting a jar of tionally known make and, if the advertising in cosmetic. Presently she returned and tossed the magazines could be believed, of utterly the cosmetic to Doc.

ambrosial qualities that would create genteel

“Right?” she demanded.

good-fellowship between jungle tigers, was The preparation was one that had been more than half full. Doc spread a drop of the developed and marketed by Doc’s cousin, contents on a fingertip, tasted, wiped his Patricia Savage, who operated an extremely tongue with a handkerchief.

ritzy beautician’s establishment in New York,

“Monk,” he said.

charging, in Doc’s opinion, about twenty times Ham said, “I don’t know what made me as much as the products and the service were think of trying it, just a general suspicious na-worth.

ture.”

“Right,” he agreed.

Monk tasted. He said, “For God’s sake!”

“Somebody,” said Lucky, “has pulled He added, “If we had some kind of a frog, we something on you.”

could be sure in a hurry.”

“You know anything about it?”

Doc swung on Lucky. “What did you

“It’s all news to me.”

want to drink?”

“Any ideas?”

“Bourbon.” She gazed at them blankly.

“I wouldn’t,” said Lucky instantly, “care to

“What’s got into you? What’s the stuff about a make any guesses I wouldn’t lay a bet on.”

frog’s skin?”

“Any ideas you might have would be Monk explained it to her. “Just a dry frog.

guesses?”

When a few drops of a solution containing that

“That’s right.”

stuff is applied to it, very marked tetanic con-

“What sort is Parker Snelling?”

vulsions will follow. It was just something silly Her head inclined toward Sam Clark.

that popped in my mind.” Monk looked, and

“Didn’t the bouncing ball here give you a de-sounded, horrified.

scription of him?”

“You don’t sound as if it were so silly,”

Doc nodded. “But the feminine viewpoint Lucky said quickly. “What—what are you talk-on him might be helpful.”

ing about?”

“The feminine viewpoint is a good way to

“Strychnine in the bourbon.”

get into trouble,” Lucky said dryly.

Lucky paled. “That—that stuff kills you, Ham was serving as bartender, doing a don’t it?”

rather officious job of rattling glasses and in-

“Usually, with a fair dosage, in fifteen specting labels, measuring and sniffing, and minutes or so.”

otherwise trying to cover up the fact that he

“In my bourbon?”

didn’t know what he was doing.

“Yes.”

Doc watched Lucky intently. “I rather

“Oh, my God!” Lucky said. She seemed gather that you feel there is some trouble com-horrified, and went quickly to the bar, picked ing up and would so state?”

up another bottle—gin—started to pour, then

“If I could so state without so stating, you looked still more horrified, and slammed the might have something,” Lucky said. “Listen, I bottle down hastily. “Somebody tried to kill think I was just roped into something by a guy I me!” she screamed.

hardly know—Snelling—merely because I happened to be handy and ornamental. I hate to disappoint you, but I have lived twenty-six Chapter IV
rather eventful years, and for fully twenty of them I have known enough to keep my nose LUCKY JONES found a chair and out of the other fellow’s monkey-business.”

flopped into it. She had lost some of her Monk reflected that he would bet Miss peaches-and-cream coloring, but she did not Lucky Jones’ years had been eventful, all right.

seem much less alert, and did not look any Ham, at the bar, grunted loudly. The less alluring. She got out a cigarette, a long grunt had a sick sound.

black one, Monk lighted it for her, and she

“Doc, will you come here!” Ham said.

smoked in rapid puffs. The smoke was faintly perfumed.

Doc asked, “Who had the last drink out THE bottle, which contained, if the label of that bottle?”

was telling the truth, a bonded bourbon of na-She shuddered. “Me.”

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

15

“When?”

“Just before dinner. I ate early. About THE man had been of medium height, six.”

drawing his thin appearance from a near-

“No ill effects?”

skeletal emaciation rather than extraordinary

“No . . . Godamighty! Maybe I’m poi-height. He was blue-eyed, had a rather large soned!” She bolted upright in the chair. “Do mouth, a dark gray tropical worsted suit—mud-you suppose . . . ?”

colored, Lucky called the suit—and black-and-Doc Savage said that it was very white shoes of obvious quality, but rather worn.

unlikely, that as a usual thing one who had His voice was either naturally deep and tim-taken strychnine could be considered fairly brous, or he had made it so; she was inclined safe if they had survived two hours or so.

to believe it was naturally so.

“Whoeeee! It was more than two hours

“Oh, yes, he called ‘first’ feers, and ‘ex-ago that I had the drink!”

cuse’ he called askoos. He had some kind of

“Did you lock your door when you went dialect, not much but a little. What would that out to dinner?”

be?”

“I didn’t go out.”

“Possibly Spanish.”

“No?”

“He didn’t look Spanish.”

“I had dinner served here. I was tired. I

“Which wouldn’t necessarily mean he had been out to the track and I intended to go wasn’t.”

to the fights later tonight—I have a little bet

“Well, he’s my bet for the strychnine. He down on Kid Wilson in the main go.”

said Hutch had sent him over with the tip

“Did the regular waiter serve you?”

sheets, and Hutch didn’t. So there you are.”

“Yes. Tony.”

“You still have the tip sheets?”

Doc Savage frowned thoughtfully.

“Sure. I haven’t looked at them.”

Monk asked, “If it was the waiter,

“Was he wearing gloves?”

wouldn’t he have put the stuff in the food?”

“Gloves—say, I remember now, he was!”

“Not necessarily, because that certainly Doc said there probably wouldn’t be any would have drawn suspicion to himself.

of the man’s fingerprints on the tip sheets, but Strychnine in the food would call police atten-they would look at them anyway and, by trying tion to those who prepared and served it. The to trace them from their source, possibly get a liquor would have been a better bet. But you’d line on something.

better talk to this Tony.”

“Who,” Doc added, “would be in a posi-Lucky waved her cigarette impatiently.

tion to know you were in the habit of receiving

“Wait a minute—Tony is a nice little guy with tip sheets from Hutch?”

two kids. I’d hate to see him lose his job. I

“I haven’t.”

don’t think it was Tony. . . . If you ask me, the

“Haven’t what?”

guy that delivered the tip sheets would be a

“Gotten any tips from him. But it was better bet. . . . Say! Wait a minute! I got an logical. I know Hutch—he’s a betting commis-idea!”

sioner over on Biscayne Boulevard and a She went to the telephone, dialed a sharp one at that—and he’s a nice guy who number rapidly—Doc tried to tell what number would pass along a tip.”

it was from the dial-travel, and failed—and

“Who knew that you were acquainted presently she said, “Hello—Hutch? . . . Lucky.

with Hutch?”

Thanks for the tip sheets. Why, the ones the

“For God’s sake!” said Miss Lucky. “The skinny fellow brought about six-thirty. . . . Oh, army and navy and the marines, as far as I you didn’t? Well, he said you did. . . . Oh, know. All my friends, I suppose, and that could about fifty, gray hair, real skinny, and with sort easily include somebody who wasn’t a pal.”

of a genteel air about him, as if he might be a Doc said, “Monk, why don’t you do a little broken-down actor. . . . You don’t know him, checking downstairs.”

eh? Well, thanks, Hutch. . . . Glad Eye in the While Monk was gone, Doc went over third, you think? I’ll take a G on the nose.

the room casually, as to manner, but with Thanks again.”

pretty sharp attention to details that might or She hung up.

might not mean anything. It was difficult in the

“The skinny man was a phony!” she ex-beginning to accept the gambling-lady picture claimed.

Lucky Jones painted herself, but he was beginning to believe that it was genuine. He was 16

DOC SAVAGE
fairly sure of it after she showed him the con-Monk glanced at the list, Ham examined tents of the room safe. It was a surprisingly it also, and Monk said, “What the—” and Ham serviceable safe, a part of the service of the interrupted, “How are we going to take finger-hotel; it was even concealed behind a picture prints without a fingerprint kit? You want us to in the traditional way. “Goldilocks, the hotel call that cop, Lieutenant Avery, and have his manager downstairs, told me they change the department give it a going over?”

combination for each tenant,” Lucky explained.

“That would be the easiest way.”

“I hope he wasn’t woofin’.”

Lucky said uneasily, “Cops? Do cops Doc could see why she would hope that.

have to be rung in on this?”

There was at least fifty thousand dollars in

“Why not?” Doc asked her.

many forms of value—cash, war bonds, indus-

“Oh, I guess it’s okay. I pay enough trial bonds, stock certificates, liquor warehouse taxes to be entitled to some service, I sup-receipts, were a few he noticed.

pose.”

“Would Snelling know Hutch might send Mention of the police had alarmed Sam you the tip sheets?” Doc demanded suddenly.

Clark, and he displayed a sudden eagerness

“Sure.”

to get going. He offered Lucky his arm, and

“Mind going with us to talk to him?”

said gallantly, “You certainly add an ornamen-Miss Lucky headed for the bedroom and tal touch to our little procession, Miss Jones.”

her hat. “Try and keep me away! And if you This got him a scowl from both Monk want to see a first-class job of eating a guy out, and Ham, and Monk said loudly, “You better watch me work on him.”

keep an eye on that cheap crook, Doc!”

Petey became angry and yelled, “I’m the cheap crook, wise-guy! Sam has morals!”

MONK came upstairs and reported, “The Doc said, “Let us take our morals to Mr.

waiter seems all right, and the desk clerk and Snelling.”

the doorman both remember the thin guy, who seems to have been around here before, or at least they think tonight wasn’t the first time IT was now quite dark. The air smelled they saw him.”

faintly of semitropical flowers and sea-water,

“Tonight was the first time I ever saw and seemed to have the effect of greasing and him,” Lucky declared.

smoothing their progress over the boulevards.

Doc had been sitting at the writing desk, Doc Savage was driving a rented car, and, for penning words on paper with a room pen the first time that evening, was rather pleased which he realized, to his astonishment, was of with the world.

solid gold.

Doc had been in Miami, actually, for a He said, “How would you two like to do a vacation, and for no other reason; he was quite service for Miss Jones?”

sure he needed a rest, and he had resented Monk and Ham were amenable to the having plans upset by the restaurant incident idea.

and the mystery that had followed. He had,

“That’s awfully sweet of you,” said Lucky.

when the thing began, no wish whatever for She had come out of the bedroom, having excitement, which was a rather unusual state added a wrap-around skirt affair to her scan-of mind for him; he had been thinking about it, dalous play suit, and tossed a white camel-hair and bothered somewhat, wondering if he might topcoat over her shoulders.

not be losing a zest for excitement which had Doc told Monk and Ham, “An attempt keynoted most of his existence. So it was was made to murder Miss Jones, and that’s pleasant to decide now that he was interested bad business. I want you two to investigate in what was happening, what might happen, things around here while I go have a talk with and in Miss Jones, although he rather sus-Snelling. I’ll take Sam Clark, Petey and Miss pected he would be better off not to get inter-Jones with me, since they’re all involved in the ested in Miss Jones.

Snelling episode.”

The vacation, he suddenly decided, had He handed Monk the paper he had been been a bust, and it was not the first one that writing on.

had bored him. For some reason, he seemed

“Here is a list of things you might check,”

constitutionally unable to take a vacation and he said.

enjoy it the way, he imagined, other people did. Monk and Ham were not so affected; they THREE TIMES A CORPSE

17
could drop the serious side of life at any given

“Certainly,” Doc said.

instant, and start quarreling over a female or Monk and Ham Brooks, who had been some other object and be perfectly relaxed.

bending over the victim, now approached car-But not Doc.

rying a long thin man. They put him, not overly Doc frowned. He supposed the cock-gently, in the car.

eyed kind of a youth he had lived was respon-Lucky became pop-eyed. “The—that’s sible for some things he found in himself that the guy who brought me the tip sheets!” she he didn’t particularly like, and which certainly exclaimed.

kept him from having a normal life. He had been placed, by his father, in the hands of specialists for training from cradle age, and all Chapter V
his recollections were of dead-pan, too-serious mental marvels trying to cram what they knew HE answered in every detail the descrip-into his head by one method or another. The tion given previously by Lucky, and in addition result had been to give him remarkable abili-his pockets yielded up stuff that said his name ties—he appreciated this, but felt people over-was Lon Sur Mesana, that he was forty-nine estimated him most of the time—but had also years old and a member in good standing of rendered him psychologically unable to be just the merchant seaman’s union. This, if he had plain susceptible.

his way, seemed to be all they were going to He wondered what effect Lucky would get out of him.

have on his psychosis. Something explosive,

“Any doubt but what he is the one who he’d bet.

brought you the tip sheets?” Doc asked.

Petey grunted impatiently. “Say, aincha

“He’s the one,” Lucky said positively.

takin’ a long way about to get out there to

“You admit that?” Doc asked the man.

Snelling’s place?”

He said he would admit nothing because

“You know where it is, then?”

there was nothing to admit and they had made

“I know where Riviera Point is and I a mistake. He called “mistake” meestheck, and know how far out that number would be,”

otherwise had a Spanish accent, which was Petey said. “And this ain’t the direct . . . hey!

the accent Lucky had described him as having.

Listen!” He wheeled his head about suddenly, Lucky demanded, “How on earth did you stared, and demanded, “What’s going on be-catch him?”

hind us?”

“Monk and Ham did some investigating Doc said, “We’d better look into this.”

to see whether anyone followed us when we He turned the car, by swinging into a left the hotel, and I guess this fellow did,” Doc side street then backing out in a quick arc, and explained.

drove three blocks rapidly, then slowed pace to

“When did you cook up that idea?”

approach two cars, one of them resting across Monk grinned and asked, “You remem-the curbing with its nose against a palm tree.

ber the list of things to do that Doc handed The other car, which had edged the first one us?”

into the tree, was comparatively undamaged.

He showed her what was written on the The racket of the collision—it was this paper, which was: Stick with me but keep out sound which Petey had heard—had aroused of sight and see if we are followed.

the neighborhood, and, since the hour was as Sam Clark looked over her shoulder, yet not very late at night, a curious crowd was read this, and told his partner indignantly, beginning to collect.

“Petey, they think we’re crooks! They weren’t

“There’s Monk Mayfair!” Sam Clark willing to tell us they thought we might be gasped.

trailed. They think we’re goldanged crooks.”

Monk was telling the curiosity-mongers:

“Why not?” Petey was not much worried.

“Just a little accident. The chap sideswiped us.

“I don’t care what you think I am,” Miss He’s unconscious. But I don’t think he’s hurt Lucky Jones said. “But I’m sure glad you bad.”

caught the gift-bearer here. What are you go-Monk came over to Doc Savage’s car, ing to do with him?”

pretended not to know Doc, and said loudly,

“Get some words out of him,” Ham said.

“Mister, we got a fellow here who is hurt. Could

“What if he doesn’t want to give up any?”

we persuade you to haul him to the hospital for Monk nudged the prisoner, Mesana, with us?”

his elbow, asked, “What about that, Señor?”

18

DOC SAVAGE

The man grunted loudly. “I am as inno-a foot above Doc’s head and watched it with a cent as the dew that falls by accident on the fixed intentness.

poison-ivy flower,” he declared.

“Can you prove that?” Monk demanded.

The purity of innocence was its own proof, the man said.

Monk thought this was funny. “Brother, you’re a character,” he said. “You try to give the lady strychnine, and you’re as innocent as the falling dew. That is very interesting and it will be particularly interesting to the judge and jury who hang you.”

Doc Savage applied the brakes. His head was out of the window, and he was inspecting such house numbers as were illumi-nated. “I think this is where Snelling lives,” he said. “It’s the address, anyway.”

THE car followed a wide coral drive that took them in a lazy curve to the porte-cochere of a coral mansion. They got out in an orderly thicket of flame vines, palms, hibiscus and bougainvilleas, and Monk hammered his fist on a carved door. “Betcha the butler wears striped pants,” he said.

A tall man, rangy with a weatherbeaten look that did not quite go with his silk sport shirt, pongee suit, jeweled wrist-watch, brace-let, two rings, one of them a diamond of at least two carats. He was quite shocked to see them. There was no doubt about that.

“Hello, Snelling,” Lucky said.

His mouth fell open. He said, “I—” and,

“Uh—” vaguely and bogged down on that.

“This,” announced Lucky, “is the enig-matic Mr. Parker Snelling, who had you shot at in order to save you from me.”

Snelling seemed pained.

Doc, intending to startle and upset Snelling if it was possible, thrust the would-be poisoner, Mesana, in front of the man and said,

“Here’s a friend of yours!”

Doc asked Mesana, “This man hire you Snelling either did not know Mesana or to plant the strychnine?”

did not take the bait.

Mesana said a wooden nothing.

He looked straight at Mesana. “I don’t Snelling seemed to become more know you.”

stunned; his lips parted, forming the first sylla-Mesana didn’t say anything.

ble of the word strychnine, but he did not finish Doc asked, “Snelling?”

the word, and his lips remained motionless

“Yes?”

holding the “strych” shape.

“Do you know me?”

Sam Clark said noisily, with a lot of rum-A wooden expression settled on Snel-ble, “Well, he’s the bird who hired me!”

ling’s face and he said, “I have never met you Snelling stared at Clark.

before. . . . I know who you are—from descrip-tions.” He kept his eyes on an imaginary point

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

19

“I never saw you before in my life,” he was no such dermal test for strychnine so far said.

as anybody knew.

Ham helped the deceit along. Ham said,

“You’ve all heard of the paraffin test, the dermal nitrate test, it’s called, where paraffin is applied to the hand to collect residues from discharged firearms, then applying a reagent to show whether there are nitrate—or burned powder—stains present. You all know about that? It’s common police practice. Well, this Richards-Neville test is similar in results, although somewhat different in execution.”

Mesana began turning a little green.

DOC SAVAGE remarked that, while Monk was gone, he would examine Snelling’s house. The declaration upset Snelling. He said, “I’m damned if you do—without a search warrant!”

Ham laughed without humor. “Brother, you put us to the trouble of getting a warrant—
and we can get one, all right—and we’ll swear out a complaint of attempted homicide!”

“You can’t,” Snelling grated, “make that stick.” “Want to bet?”

“Sam Clark was specifically ordered not to fire at you!”

“Thought you didn’t know Clark?”

Snelling showed his teeth angrily. “You know what you know, and I know what I know!”

he snarled.

“How about putting the two together?”

“Not,” Snelling snapped, “while I’m in my right mind.”

Ham Brooks said disgustedly, “We’re DOC SAVAGE, in going over the house, making a lot of progress. Nobody knows any-reached several conclusions—that the man-thing until it’s tramped out of him!”

sion was rented, that Snelling had occupied it Doc swung on Monk. “Monk, I think I no-no more than two months, that Snelling had ticed a drugstore about four blocks south. Will paid one month’s rental in advance and paid you drive down there and get the chemicals none since, and that he hadn’t been paying the necessary to make the Richards-Neville der-tradespeople. There were bills, and in some mal strychnine test. The chemicals necessary cases threatening letters from collection attor-for the reagent that will show whether anyone neys, from grocers, tailor, garage, two liquor has handled strychnine during the past several stores, various establishments handling things hours are common enough that the drugstore a man might give women—perfume shops, should carry them in stock. Get them, will you?

florists, hat shops, and one bill for a fur coat.

And better mix them at the drugstore.”

Monk returned and made a quick im-With a straight face, Monk said, “Sure.”

pressive show of trapping Mesana.

He left.

“First I spray on this chemical.” Monk Doc remarked casually, “He won’t be exhibited a dime store atomizer. “Then I spray gone long.” His tone, manner, were casual; he a little of this on, and if there is any strychnine gave no sign nor indication whatever that there present, there will be purple tints produced.”

20

DOC SAVAGE

He indicated a second atomizer, added, for

“He oughta be easy to find,” Mesana effect, that, “This test is something like the said, “because he’s hunting for you.”

original one of dissolving strychnine in sul-

“Eh?”

phuric acid, which causes no change, but, on Mesana said, “He’s hunt—” and didn’t the addition of a bit of potassium dichromate, finish it. He said, instead, hoarsely, “This—tints variously blue, violet, and even red are this—” and looked fixedly at the cigarette he produced. The test is very effective.” He an-had been smoking. Then he pitched forward nounced all this with a straight face.

loosely on the floor.

Mesana watched—not willingly—as his Parker Snelling broke the brittle silence hands and wrists were sprayed, then sprayed that followed bellowing loudly, “He’s shot!

again.

Someone shot him!”

When bluish stains appeared here and there, he became almost the same cyanosed blue color himself.

Chapter VI

“There!” said Monk. “You can see the evidence right in front of your eyes.”

SNELLING’S intimation that Mesana Sam Clark was impressed. “You mean to was shot produced assorted effects. Sam tell me that the staining shows he handled Clark snorted and said, “Hell, there wasn’t any strychnine?”

shot!”

Monk said, “What’s so mysterious about Snelling, lunging forward, reached Me-it? Strychnine is an alkaloid, and can you sana. The man’s body was squirming in agony, name me anything easier than an alkaloid to the lips becoming bluish and tight.

track down?”

“Look!” Snelling had driven a hand under Sam, who evidently was not sure Mesana, bringing into view a small object whether he knew an alkaloid from a rabbit, which he exhibited. “Look at this! Don’t tell me made no comment, but looked enough im-he wasn’t shot!” The object in his palm some-pressed to help along the deception. He told what resembled half a darning needle, the Mesana, “Brother, they got you quicker than point of which was coated with a chemical. To they got me. If you can sell out cheap, you bet-the other end of the steel dart a bit of yarn, a ter do it.”

streamer about an inch and a half long, was Mesana’s eyes had grown moist and attached, evidently with glue.

shiny with terror, and he mumbled, “Sell out!”

“Where did that come from?” Monk and then made a sucking noise of air indrawn yelled.

through his teeth. He said, “Sell out? What the

“Window, I think!” Snelling exclaimed.

hell have I got to sell out?”

Mesana was unquestionably dying. His Sam looked surprised; Petey said hast-hands were clenched, the feet were inverting, ily, “Look, Mesana, or whatever the name—the toes drawing visibly inside the man’s you got information to trade, see. These guys shoes, the abdomen distending and arching don’t know from nothing. You make a deal, with the spasmodic effort.

see—Sam and me, here, and you—we all get The cigarette the man had been smoking a clean slate, see. We walk out. In return, you was smouldering on the rug. Doc laid it on a give them all the dope you know.”

smoking stand without removing his gaze from

“Well, for God’s sake!” Monk Mayfair ex-the dying man.

claimed. He came over and clouted Petey on

“A dart!” Snelling bawled. “My God, a the head. “You got a nerve, trying to talk him poison dart!” He lunged to his feet, pounded into buying you out of the mess!”

across the room to the light switch, and Petey yelled, clutched his bruised head.

plunged the room into darkness. The resulting Mesana wheeled on Doc Savage and blackness was astonishing.

said loudly, angrily, “You’re being taken for a

“Get those lights on!” Doc Savage said sucker! The thing for you to do is stop barking sharply.

at stumps and find Barnes.”

“I’m damned if I do!” Snelling was obsti-Doc, without blinking, demanded, “Who nate. “That dart came from outside. We’re all is Barnes?”

targets if—if—” He swore at someone and be-

“Chandler Barnes of Warner & Barnes.”

gan struggling. The other party in the scuffle

“Where is he?”

proved to be Ham Brooks; in a moment, the lights came on, but Snelling, enraged, ran to a

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

21
floor lamp, drew his pocket knife, and proceeded to saw into the cord, got a hellish display of electric fire, and renewed darkness, after he blew a fuse. “Maybe you want to stand in here and let somebody potshoot at you with a blowgun! I don’t!” Snelling yelled.

It was intensely dark in the room. There seemed to be quite a lot of moving around.

Doc heard the door open, moved over there hurriedly, and discovered it was Monk.

Monk explained, “I’m going out and look.”

“Take Ham with you, and be careful,”

Doc said.

WHEN Monk and Ham had gone out, Doc withdrew into the room, closed the door and asked, “Is everyone here? You had better call off. Snelling, what about you?”

Snelling said, “Here—over in the corner, on the floor. And I’d advise the rest of you to get out of range of that window.”

Sam Clark and Petey admitted presence.

Lucky Jones said, “I’m here. This is getting a little wild for my buttons. Did somebody really shoot that fellow with a poisoned dart?”

Doc said, “We’ll try to find out. Everyone stay where they are.”

Presently he heard Monk and Ham moving around outside. They said they’d found nothing, and wanted to know about a flashlight.

“I’ll get them a flashlight,” Snelling explained hastily. He had two, both of them five-cell affairs which gave almost as much light as an automobile headlamp.

While Monk and Ham poked around cautiously outdoors, Snelling found the fuse-box, and they re-set the circuit breaker which served in lieu of a fuse. A moment after the lights came on, Miss Lucky screamed in the other part of the house. “He’s dead!” she shrieked.

She meant the man named Mesana. He was now quite rigid and lifeless.

Doc Savage, suddenly grim-faced—
inwardly he was a great deal more shocked than he was showing—began working on the body. He was under the impression that the man could not yet be dead. There had not, it seemed to him, been time for death to occur.

But Mesana was dead, too far gone for any attempt at revival.

He held up for display several steel nee-Monk, calling from outside the window, dles which were daubed with chemical and said, “Don’t find anybody, Doc. But take a look equipped with cemented-on bits of yarn. “More at these!”

22

DOC SAVAGE
darts. They were lying here on the sidewalk alarmed. “What’re you implying?” Monk and in the grass.”

sounded as if a mortal crime had been commit-Ham Brooks was on his knees search-ted—a doubt cast at Miss Jones.

ing; he said, “Here’s one more.” He straight-

“All I need now,” Doc said bitterly, “is for ened. “I think that’s about all of them.”

you to go gallant on me. You and Ham.”

The spot where they had found the

“Me?”

things was in front of, and about ten feet from

“The trouble is, he could have died three the window of the room where Mesana had times.” Doc sounded disgusted.

died.

“Three—what are you talking about?”

“Come on inside,” Doc said grimly. He Doc said, “Mesana was smoking a ciga-swung on Snelling to demand, “When did you rette when he dropped. If you’ll check the end notice the first dart?”

of that cigarette, the end that was in his mouth, Snelling jumped nervously. “Notice—Oh, you’ll find an almond odor, and, if you care to the dart! Why, when Mesana started collaps-taste, which I didn’t, probably an acrid taste. It ing. I thought I caught a flash of a bit of metal.”

is possible to get enough cyanide off the end

“You see it in the air?”

of a cigarette to kill, although it is not a very

“I—no, I’m afraid I didn’t. I just—well—
practical matter. Probably the stuff was in the the flash of it.”

salt form, although I didn’t check on that.”

“Where?”

Monk spoke. He sounded horrified, and

“Where? I don’t believe I—”

also physically shocked, as if he had been hit

“Where did you see it strike him?”

on the head with a hammer. “He borrowed that

“His chest. But I didn’t see it strike him, cigarette from Lucky,” Monk said.

actually. And as a matter of fact, I don’t think it

“My God, that’s right!” Ham Brooks said penetrated his skin.”

softly. “I remember now. He borrowed the ciga-

“Then,” Doc said, “the dart didn’t kill rette from her a few minutes before he went him?”

down.”

Snelling scowled. “How would I know?”

“Don’t get too alarmed about it,” Doc

“The way you were shouting right after it suggested, dryly. “After all, neither of you happened, you seemed positive about it.”

smoke. . . . And that isn’t what killed him. It Snelling shrugged. “I can show you might have, but it didn’t. If it had, it would have where I found the dart clinging to his clothing—taken several minutes, whereas he died in less if there is a wound at that point, it would mean than a minute as it was—probably in a matter the dart killed him, wouldn’t it?”

of ten seconds or so after the needle was put

“We could look,” Doc said.

into his brain.”

There was a wound there, but Doc did

“Needle?”

not seem very impressed.

“One of the darts,” Doc explained. “It went into the back of his head—whether forced in, or fired from some sort of an airgun, would LATER, Doc drew Monk and Ham aside.

be difficult to tell.”

Lucky, Snelling, Sam Clark and Petey were in Ham said, “Whoeeee! They wanted that another room, visible through a French door, guy dead and they weren’t taking any chances but unable to overhear. “Keep your voices on it!”

down,” Doc said. “I want to know if you noticed anything when the lights went out?”

“There was a lot of gallivanting around in MISS LUCKY JONES’ voice reached the dark,” Monk said.

them, saying, “Why don’t you call off that con-

“You do any of it?”

ference or whatever? I think friend Snelling is

“Some.”

about to pop with words.”

“Did Snelling?”

They went into the other room hastily.

“Probably.”

Snelling scowled at them uncomfortably.

“Did he go to the dying man?”

“Go on,” Lucky urged Snelling. “Get it off Monk said he couldn’t tell about that.

your chest.”

“What about Lucky? Did she go to him?”

Snelling squirmed, pulled at his jaw, Doc asked.

rubbed his hands together and otherwise reg-

“Hell—I don’t know!” Monk exclaimed.

istered uncertainty.

“Why would she do that? Did she?” Monk was THREE TIMES A CORPSE

23

“I guess he’s off the nest again,” Lucky though the explanation did seem logical said disgustedly. “A minute ago, he blurted out enough since”—He glanced at Lucky—”I had a that he was going to spill everything.”

slight acquaintance with Miss Jones.”

Presently Snelling went through the mo-Sam Clark snorted loudly. “You mean tions of a man swallowing a large, distasteful you hired me to pull that decoy-him-to-lump, then turned his hands palms-up and Montana stuff on Doc Savage because an old said, “Murder makes it too much—I didn’t plan guy named Barnes asked you to do so?”

on murder, and nobody said there would be

“Yes.”

such a thing involved. So that lets me out, the Sam spit on the floor. “The cat has got a way I look at it.”

new tail. When do we twist it?”

“I wouldn’t say murder let anybody out of Doc asked Snelling, “You willing to take anything,” Lucky said.

us to Barnes?”

Snelling scowled at her. “It’s all your

“I’m not eager. I will.”

fault!”

Lucky’s eyes widened incredulously.

“What? What’s that? What do you mean?”

LIEUTENANT

AVERY
was
embar-

“I don’t know what you did to Chan Barrassed. “A body, eh?” he said. “That was what nes, but it must have been plenty!” Snelling’s I was afraid there would be, a body. I had that voice lifted with excitement. “I must say that feeling downtown, after they took that potshot you look the part he ascribed to you, too!”

at you in the restaurant. A body, I thought, will

“What part was that?”

make this very complicated and embarrassing

“A siren and a harpy without any princi-for Lieutenant Avery.”

ples at all!”

Doc Savage explained that he had called Miss Jones was not impressed. “Well, the lieutenant as a matter of friendship and what do you know! Somebody who doesn’t coöperation, and also in full confidence that even know me knows all about me!”

the lieutenant would not, being a stable man, Doc asked, “You’re not acquainted with get to feeling that the police should become a Chandler Barnes?”

the exclusive proprietors of the trouble.

“Not by that name,” Lucky said. She

“That sounds as if you’re asking me to swung on Snelling and demanded, “What does extend my neck a bit farther,” the lieutenant this character reference of mine look like?”

said gloomily.

Snelling scowled, hesitated, nibbled his

“Exactly.”

lower lip, then described a prosperous-looking The lieutenant said he hadn’t made up fat man of about fifty, somewhat red-faced and his mind yet. He leaned down to look at Me-partly bald, a man who had—and looked it—sana again. “I think this guy is a sailor. He’s spent his youth and early manhood on hard got the look of a sailor about him. The salt wa-physical labor and later struck it rich, or at least ter and the sun does something to their hair, become modestly wealthy, but too late in life to and further than that he’s wearing a marine get rid of certain crudities of speech and man-union ring. What else do you know about him?”

ner. But a fine gentleman. “A very fine gentle-Doc gave the complete story—how and man,” Snelling insisted.

why they had visited Miss Lucky Jones be-Lucky shook her head. “I don’t know him.

cause she was supposed to be the menace Now, what am I supposed to do?”

which Sam Clark and Petey had been preserv-

“Permit me to finish!” Snelling urged.

ing Doc Savage against. “I was under the im-

“The statement I’m trying to make is this: I pression I didn’t know Miss Jones, and this have known Mr. Barnes well for a number of proved to be correct,” Doc explained. “While years. He is, by profession, a metal salesman, we were there, we found strychnine in one of and we have, from time to time, done a slight Miss Jones’ whiskey bottles, and she felt that a amount of business together. Our mutual re-fellow of Mesana’s description could have spect for each other has always been rather been the one who put the strychnine in the great, with perhaps more of it on my part than liquor.” Nodding, the lieutenant listened to the on his, the point being that, two days ago, story of the discovery of Mesana trailing Doc’s when he asked me to do him a rather odd fa-party, Mesana’s capture, and his subsequent vor, I was glad to agree.” Snelling hesitated, death.

eyed them sheepishly, then continued. “I con-

“That’s fine.” The lieutenant nodded so-fess the oddness of the favor floored me, al-berly. “Now, did he plant the strychnine?”

24

DOC SAVAGE

“I would say that he did—and was killed PRESENTLY the homicide men arrived, so he couldn’t tell who engaged him to do it.”

disturbing the neighborhood with their sirens,

“That’s fine, too.” The lieutenant didn’t then filling the house with heavy-footed confu-look as if he thought anything was fine.

sion, most of which was very purposeful and

“There’s God knows how many of you in the scientific. Doc and his party were pushed off to room”—he paused and counted them with a one side where they wouldn’t interfere with the pointing finger—”or, let’s say, seven of you in measuring and fingerprinting and photograph-here with him, and he dies in the midst of you, ing. Lieutenant Avery watched a little man blow and you don’t know who did it.”

through a rubber tube he held in his mouth,

“There was some confusion,” Doc said.

and send iodine vapor hissing out the other

“There must have been. There still is.

end of a glass contraption of double contain-Personally, I’m quite confused. Do you mind if I ers; another man followed this one, pouncing just call a few more cops, and see what they on fingerprints with silver transfer sheets to lift think?”

them before they faded. Iodine vapor began to give the air a stinging sharpness.

“Lieutenant Avery,” Doc said. “We DOC SAVAGE did not think much of the should like to continue our investigation.”

idea of more policemen, but he did not feel an

“Alone, you mean? Without my kindly argument would have a pleasant effect on eye?” Avery asked dubiously.

Lieutenant Avery, who was being some thing

“With only your blessings.”

more than mildly sarcastic. The advent of a The lieutenant was doubtful. “I am no murder had warped Lieutenant Avery’s admira-longer stud duck in this thing. I’ll consult the tion for Doc Savage, and Doc was wishing powers and see what they say.”

they had neglected to call the lieutenant about He held a consultation with two men, the murder. At this point, Lieutenant Avery one of them an Acting Chief of Police named herded them into a room which had one door Driscoll, the other an Assistant District Attorney that he could watch from the telephone.

Walter Bridges, and the conference concluded

“That cop,” Monk complained, “is losing with a shaking of heads.

his girlish friendship.”

Avery reported sadly, “They feel the

“There’s nothing like a nice murder to cops should take charge. It’s not my idea, you remove the blush from a cop’s friendship,” said understand. Mostly it’s that pup of a D. A., Miss Jones. She consulted a jeweled wrist-Bridges. You know what he said? He said, watch and wondered if there was any law ‘The duly elected officials of the city should against a murder suspect using the telephone.

have complete supervision in all situations

“I want to call a newspaper,” she told the lieu-constituted of violence.’ That’s what he said.”

tenant.

Ham Brooks said, “He read that in a

“Newspaper reporters are all I need and lawbook somewhere.”

I’ll have fits,” the lieutenant advised. He had Assistant District Attorney Bridges was a used the telephone himself and told someone, straight-backed young man who seemed to evidently homicide, to get out here, “with all devote much of his unoccupied time to practic-your bells on.”

ing holding his jaw just so, lips with just the Lucky explained, “All I want to know is right portrayal of firmness. Mr. Bridges came what round the champ won in at Chicago to-over to them, the jaw out and squared. He night. It should be over by now.”

said, “Lieutenant Avery informs me you wish to Lieutenant Avery adjusted his necktie conduct your own personal investigation. That knot thoughtfully with two fingers, then picked is preposterous! You will confine all your activi-up the phone, gave a number and asked, ties to coöperation with the police!”

“News? . . . How’d the fight come out? . . .

“There! See!” said Avery.

What round? Thanks.” He hung up and asked,

“Are we arrested?” Doc demanded.

“What round did you have, baby?”

“Not technically, but it might be ar-

“Sixth.”

ranged,” said Mr. Bridges.

The lieutenant whistled. “It was the sixth.

Doc Savage called Ham Brooks over.

Are you always that good at guessing?”

“Ham is our legal blade,” he advised Bridges.

Lucky shrugged. “Who said anything

“Ham, will you see if you can give Mr. Bridges about guessing? It’s done with science.”

food for thought, preferably the sort that will give him indigestion.”

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

25

Ham said he damned well would, and

“Me? I’m an engineer, specializing in did Bridges know that Doc Savage held certain metals. A metallurgist.”

commissions with the federal government au-

“Research?”

thorizing him as an investigator, and should

“No. Sales.” Snelling didn’t seem too they go into the matter of the relationship of anxious to discuss his business. “My business local and federal government in such cases.

is supplying metal to industrial plants. If an air-Mr. Bridges adjusted his jaw and said they craft plant, for instance, needed a quantity of goddamned well would, that he, Bridges, had beryllium, I might be approached to find and worked in Washington himself and he wasn’t purchase it on a commission or a flat sum ba-even a little bit scared of Washington.

sis.”

Doc Savage unobtrusively maneuvered

“Where is your office?”

Lucky and Parker Snelling into the front hall.

Snelling hesitated. “To tell the truth, I ha-

“Get your hat,” he told Snelling.

ven’t re-established one yet. I was in the Mer-

“But—”

chant Marine during the war, and was torpe-

“Get your hat. We’re going to have a talk doed and made a prisoner. As a result, it was with Barnes. Can you find him for us?”

several months following the end of the war

“I—uh—can take you to Barnes’ boat,”

before I got back to the states. I have been Snelling admitted.

back, as a matter of fact, about two months, and haven’t really started operations again, other than that I have made some contacts.”

Chapter VII

“Was Warner and Barnes such a contact?”

DOC SAVAGE escorted Lucky and Snel-

“Yes. I have known them—Barnes, at ling out of the house without being hailed by least—for a number of years. I knew Barnes any policemen, and they climbed, all three of before he became associated with Warner. He them, into the front seat of Doc’s car. Doc got was a nice old guy who began as a puddler in the engine going with as little fuss as possible a steel mill, and worked up. I don’t think he and, with only the parking lights on, pulled out ever really made much money until the war on to the palm-lined pavement. When they had came along, although he may have done bet-traveled two blocks, he released his breath. “I ter than I thought he did.”

never expected to walk out on them that eas-

“You don’t know why he wanted me ily,” he said.

saved from Miss Jones, here?”

“That Bridges,” Lucky predicted, “is go-

“He said he was a friend of yours.”

ing to scream like a panther.”

“I’m sure I don’t know him,” Doc said. He Doc didn’t think so. He thought Ham glanced at Lucky. “How about you?”

Brooks would probably wrap Mr. Bridges up in

“I never heard of the old gaffer before,”

legal phrases until he resembled a package of Lucky said vehemently.

confused silence. He pulled on the switch, brightening the headlights. “Boat? You say Barnes is on a boat?”

DOC drove past the bayfront park, Snelling nodded. “A yacht.”

turned right off Biscayne Boulevard, then

“Where?”

swung left again and parked on a side street

“In the Miami River, near that place they not far from the river. Twenty yards or so away call, or used to call the Roval Palm dock.”

there was an all-night lunch stand with a bat-Snelling pondered. “It’s a schooner, two-tery of slot machines, two clerks and half a masted. The Virginia Dare. About sixty feet on dozen customers, two of them taxi drivers.

the waterline.”

Snelling pointed beyond the hamburger Doc decided that Snelling was familiar stand. “Boat’s yonder. You can see the masts.”

with small boats—it was possible to tell some-Doc knocked open the car door. “Let’s thing like that from a few words of a man’s loaf around a few minutes and look over the conversation about boats, more from the tone place.”

and the ease of the words themselves than

“That,” said Lucky, “is an idea. Every from anything else.

time we’ve gone to a new place, poison and

“What is your profession?” Doc asked violence has been a little too prevalent.”

Snelling suddenly.

They had coffee at the stand, and Lucky and Doc matched for the check, and Doc lost.

26

DOC SAVAGE

Lucky had used a silver quarter for the match-ing. She chucked the coin into a slot machine, yanked the handle and said, before any of the fruit, bells or bars stopped moving, “Hold your hat under the thing.” Snelling snorted, said, “Nobody ever beats those things. They’re gaffed so that—” He stopped and held his mouth open while three bars lined up, the machine gave a distressed cough, and silver quarters cascaded out of the cup and rolled around over the sidewalk. The customers were amazed. A fat man remarked, “For God’s sake, I been feeding that thing all evening!”

A slender man with a dark hard face gazed at Lucky and said, “So you’re back again?”

Lucky frowned. “Where do you get that

‘back’ stuff.” She was piling quarters on the counter for the clerk to change into currency.

“I’ve seen you around before,” the man said. “Not me,” Lucky said sharply.

The clerk counted the quarters. “Fourteen dollars and fifty cents,” he announced admiringly. “That’s the first time I ever saw anyone nick that machine.”

Doc inclined his head, indicating they might as well go aboard the Barnes schooner.

He had seen nothing alarming.

“I think that contraption gypped me,”

Lucky complained. “Who ever heard of only a fourteen-dollar jackpot from a quarter machine!”

“Are you always that lucky?”

“Lucky! The gadget gypped me, didn’t it?

. . . Say, did you hear that little dark guy try to say I had been around here? I wonder what was his idea?”

“He was wrong?”

“Certainly he was wrong!”

“Well, he might have been mistaken.”

“It was a funny kind of mistake to make.”

There were clumps of tropical shrubs about, and Doc turned aside into the shadow of one of these. “Lucky, you and Mr. Snelling wait here. I’m going to take a closer look at the schooner, and some other things around here.

It shouldn’t take long.”

IT did not take long. Long enough for Doc Savage to circle back to the lunch stand, observe that the dark hard-looking man was still loitering there—he was now standing dock level—and approach the man and take where he could watch the portion of the his elbow. The man said, “What the hell!” and schooner Virginia Dare that was visible above seemed to lift off the ground. Doc said, “I don’t THREE TIMES A CORPSE

27
know who gave you your orders, but some-second blow to his jaw, and the man went si-body has things balled up.” The man did not lent.

say anything, but he walked when Doc tugged Doc listened for a moment, decided they at his elbow. The fellow was several shades had not made enough rumpus to draw atten-paler before they were out of the large sponge tion, and shouldered the man and carried him of yellow light that surrounded the lunch stand.

to Lucky and Parker Snelling, who displayed

“How long will it take you to get this suitable surprise.

straightened out?” Doc demanded.

“What’s the idea of collecting him?”

“Por que? Como se dice eso?” the man Lucky demanded.

said in Spanish, then added, “What straight-Doc imitated Sam Clark’s voice and said, ened out?”

“Can you guess who I am?”

“That thing you pulled on the girl wasn’t

“You’re pretty good. Did he?” Lucky was so good. Didn’t he tell you about that?”

puzzled.

The
man’s
expression
remained

“Yes, he did. He made two guesses, first woodenly fixed. His, “Hell, are you crazy?”

that I was Sam Clark, whom he addressed as could have come out of a stump.

a pal, and a second guess that was more ac-He took his elbow out of Doc’s finger grip curate. Right after that, he endeavored to put a with a twisting motion. He walked away, taking knife in me.”

long steps but not hurried ones, and throwing

“That was a mistake,” Lucky decided.

alarmed glances back over first one shoulder then the other.

Doc moved himself—back a few yards to THE schooner Virginia Dare looked a lit-a path—and followed the man. The fellow was tle larger than Snelling had said it would be.

on a path that trailed the edge of the park, and Doc recalled that Snelling had said it was it was a simple matter, by running hard and about fifty or sixty feet; it was actually nearer silently, to presently get ahead of him and be-eighty on the waterline, which made it quite a side a bush near the path.

lot of boat. It was not as yachty as he had When the man was quite close, Doc been led to believe, either, although it wasn’t a used Sam Clark’s voice—as near an imitation workboat entirely—about half workboat and of it as he could manage—and said, “Psssst!

half yacht, which was rather puzzling. The de-You know who that was?”

sign was the one called Chesapeake Bay The man stopped. “Huh?”

bugeye, which meant that she had a flat bot-

“That was Doc Savage.”

tom, a centerboard, a rakish clipper bow, and

“Yeah,” the man said. “I thought you was the masts slanted back at a dashing angle.

gonna get him outa the country, Sam?” The They were excellent shoal water boats, and fellow’s voice now had very little of its previous the design had been developed originally for Spanish accent.

the oyster business in the Chesapeake Bay Doc Savage tried Sam Clark’s voice section.

again and demanded, “Where did the boss That’s right pretty,” Lucky said. “It looks go?”

like a sailboat should look.”

The man considered this, and reached

“They’re fair sea boats, but they have a an unfavorable conclusion. He growled, tendency to go hog-backed under abuse.” Doc

“What’re you trying to pull?” and started into put the unconscious man on the dock and the bush to investigate. Doc came through the walked the length of the dock, looking for shrub to meet him, saying pleasantly, “Take it lighted portholes, listening for signs of life.

easy until you know what—” At which point the

“Ahoy the Virginia Dane!” he called.

man endeavored to get a knife into his body.

There was no answer.

The knife had a blade about eight inches long, Lucky demanded, “Are we going to stand and they fought over it vigorously, the fight on formality? Or do we go aboard?”

ending when they had fallen to the ground and

“We go aboard.” Doc put a foot on a the blade was broken off against the sidewalk.

springline, settled enough weight on it to haul Doc hit the man; he intended to strike the fel-the stem of the bugeye in close to the dock. He low’s jaw, but the blow slid off and landed on swung aboard, went to a hatch, did some the man’s shoulder, and the fellow croaked, hammering, and
demanded,

“Anybody

“Don’t! Oh my God, don’t—” Doc attached the aboard?” He slid back the hatch cover, explored, found a switch which brought a flood of 28

DOC SAVAGE
light into a cabin. “Ever been aboard the boat?”

a cabin carling, the equivalent of a ceiling joist, he asked Snelling.

had evidently been cut from a topsail halyard,

“Only in the cabin,” Snelling said. In ad-because it was about that size of line.

dition to his long weatherbeaten look, he was

“Barnes!” Snelling said.

beginning to seem dry-skinned and gaunt, as if He said this loudly and suddenly, with the events of the night were dehydrating him.

great feeling, after which he wheeled and ran

“Only in the cabin. . . . What do we do with and they could hear him yanking open doors this—this chap you collected?”

until he found the head, where he made ill Doc said they would bring him below, sounds.

and they did, hauling the man down the com-Doc made quick tests—the eyeballs panion steps. There was, about the large lacked luster and had a dull appearance be-mainmast, a stout circular table, and Doc cause of the evaporation of their moisture; the spread the unconscious man on this for a pupils differed in size and were not round.

search. He was amazed at the number of These were the best signs of death. He exam-weapons produced—three revolvers, a flat pis-ined wrists, lifted the trouser legs to inspect tol and two knives. There was in addition about ankles, and found quite a bit of post-mortem a hundred dollars in cash, a maritime union lividity, caused by settling of the blood by grav-membership card made out to Gus Slocico, a ity. Rigor mortis, which develops first in the package of Mexican cigarettes, and a small head area, had not progressed fully.

whetstone, probably for the knives.

More than six, and probably less than

“Gus Slocico?” Doc glanced at Lucky.

ten hours, he reflected.

“I don’t know him,” she said. “I never saw He went back into the other room. “Want him before.” She eyed Mr. Slocico with dislike.

to see if you know him?” he asked Lucky.

“I know the big bum put on an act that he had

“No. thanks.” She shuddered. “I saw him seen me around here before. He hadn’t.”

anyway. I don’t know him.” Her eyes rolled, Doc found a ball of Italian marlin, and showed some whites, and she added, “I don’t used the very tough tarry thread to tie Mr.

feel good.”

Slocico’s ankles and wrists.

Neither did Snelling feel good, judging

“Hah!” said Snelling violently. “Now we’ll from the sounds. “Snelling said he was Bar-look over the boat.”

nes, one of the two partners,” Doc remarked.

He yanked open a door in a bulkhead

“He could be,” Lucky said weakly. “For and walked through. He backed out a moment God’s sake—this makes two murders.” She later, looking foolish. “A lazaret,” he explained.

showed alarm. “Let’s get out of here!”

Lucky said, “I’ll try one.” She opened a

“Murder? How do you know?” He eyed door and stepped through it—and was back in Lucky.

the cabin again considerably quicker than She shuddered more violently than be-Snelling had made it. Her face lost color. Her fore. “Listen, I don’t know a thing about him lips, throat, formed words, but the words had except he looked dead, and don’t try any third no sound.

degree methods on me, or you know what I’ll

“What did you find?” Doc demanded.

do? I’ll faint, that’s what. . . . Aren’t you going She turned horror-glazed eyes. “The to cut him down?”

jackpot,” she said, and took two backward Parker Snelling reappeared. His face steps and sank into a chair. Her hands fas-was the color of dough and sweating profusely.

tened tightly to the chair arms.

He wanted to know the same thing. “You—

you’re not letting him hang there?”

“The police,” Doc explained, “are going HE had been a prosperous-looking fat to be very unhappy about our finding the body, man of about fifty, partly bald and possibly with but not as displeased as they would be if we a red face—the face was congested now—and moved it. The first rule for winning a homicide there was about him an air, evident even in his detective’s favor is: Don’t move the body.”

present condition, that he had been a man who Snelling made an ill gesture. “It’s Bar-had spent most of his early life in hard physical nes.”

labor, toil that had given his shoulders and hands and arms a gnarled quality that they had never lost, and had not even lost now that he THEY found Sam Clark’s photograph in was dead. The rope around his neck and up to the forward starboard stateroom, which was THREE TIMES A CORPSE

29
evidently the owner’s cabin. There were really Doc suggested, “We had better see how three photographs there, the other two being of many more bodies are aboard, then call the Barnes and a lady of about his own age, Bar-police.” The remark caused Lucky to jump vio-nes and a younger woman. Barnes was also in lently. Before she could comment, Snelling the photograph with Sam Clark—Barnes and called, “Look here!” excitedly. He had found a Clark in the picture together.

cigar box containing a number of snapshots.

“For crying out loud!” Snelling seemed

“Here’s a bunch of pictures. . . . Yeah, here’s completely dumfounded. “Clark knew Barnes!”

John Warner!”

Snelling’s voice was queerly inflected, and his They looked at a photograph of a long-face changed from perspiring pallid to perspir-legged, barrel-bodied elderly man with a large ing flushed. “Sam Clark was acquainted with mouth and large eyes, a man who looked like Barnes!” he repeated. “I’ll be damned!”

no one they had seen before.

“Wasn’t that supposed to be?” Lucky asked.

“Apparently not,” Doc said.

Chapter VIII

“You know something? I mean—want to hear a guess?”

THE Virginia Dare had a Diesel engine

“Go ahead.”

of somewhat more power than Doc Savage

“That Sam Clark,” Lucky said, “has been had expected in a schooner her size. There acting like a dope.”

were also two smaller Diesels operating gen-

“True.”

erators of greater KW capacity than seemed

“He isn’t.”

necessary.

“What,” Doc asked, “makes you think

“This boat,” Parker Snelling remarked, not?”

“seems to be a little more than a yacht.”

“The light in the guy’s eye, and I’m not That was the understatement of the eve-trying to be a crystal-gazer. I’ve seen guys us-ning, because forward of the main cabin, the ing the stick at crooked dice tables, and they schooner was no yacht at all below decks.

got a look like I’m talking about. Sam Clark’s There was an amidships hold, accessible by look.”

large deck hatches, which contained as effi-Doc indicated the picture. “Well, at least cient a looking small collection of deep-water he has done some lying to us. He said he diving gear as Doc Savage recalled having didn’t know Barnes, and there is his picture in seen. There were four complete diving suits, Barnes’ private collection.”

and a small diving bell capable of operating at

“Didn’t this Barnes have a partner?”

great depth. There were compressors, hose, Lucky demanded.

lines, oxygen apparatus, cutting torches.

“Did he?”

Doc glanced at Snelling. “Barnes and

“Stop trying to trip me. Isn’t that what Warner were in the metal supply business, Snelling said? What about it, Snelling?”

eh?”

Parker Snelling said, “I was certainly un-Snelling scratched his head. “The diving der the impression he had a partner, yes.”

business, too, it looks as if.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Recently, maybe.”

Snelling looked uncomfortable. “I—

“Eh?”

well—don’t know. I never saw him.”

“Notice that most of this stuff is new?

Lucky made a skeptical noise. “You Very little of it has ever been used.”

didn’t see the partner—but you and Barnes

“What would that mean?”

were old pals?”

“That they had just entered, or were

“They—well, they were never together about to enter, the diving business,” Doc said when I was around,” Snelling said briefly.

dryly. “Which might also mean . . .”

“However, I once saw a photograph of the A sound had come from aft. Somebody partner, Warner.”

had moved.

“What was Warner’s first name?”

“Our guest,” said Lucky, “must have

“John . . . John Warner.” Parker Snelling awakened!”

suddenly began going through drawers, peer-Doc said, “Stay here!” He wheeled and ing into boxes and recesses. “Maybe I can find went aft, toward the sound. . . . If their guest—a picture of the fellow he said was John War-Gus Slocico, if that was his name—had made ner.”

the sound, he was loose, and that didn’t seem 30

DOC SAVAGE
likely, the way they had tied him. This noise sounds, excited voices, but more running had been made by someone executing a con-sounds than words.

siderable movement, a little jump and two or Bill had propped his flashlight on a box three steps, it had appeared to be. Doc in-so that the beam sprayed across Doc Sav-tended to slow his pace and be very careful age’s body.

when he was near the cabin—which was a A rather small man in a sand-colored good idea, but he put it in operation a little too linen suit came running from the bow. He said, late. Or did not put it in operation at all, actu-

“That damned girl got out on deck!”

ally, before—six or eight feet in front of him—a

“What about Snelling?”

flashlight beam blazed and impaled him.

“We got him, all right.” The man ran on The light held him, blinded him.

aft, through the cabin, and climbed out on A voice back of it said, “Damn!” explo-deck. He was breathing hard.

sively.

Bill found a chunk of ballast—a rusty From the muzzle of a gun about even length of steel machine axle. He used a length with and a trifle to the left of the flashlight came of line to tie this to Doc Savage’s feet.

powder flame and noise. Two shots.

“Somebody gimme a hand!” he yelled.

Doc went down loosely, arms out-Two men came below to help him. “The thrown, colliding with the man who had fired girl got on shore,” one of them explained.

and with the floorboards at about the same

“Man, she moved like a streak!”

time. The man with the gun was knocked off Bill cursed violently. “If she gets a cop . .

his feet, came down also, and floundered

.”

around, but did not fire again. Instead, he got

“Yeah, we thought of that.” They worked hold of Doc Savage with one hand and held on frantically, seizing Doc Savage by arms and tightly, rigidly, waiting.

legs and dragging him across the cabin and up Someone farther aft called, “Bill!”

the companionway to the deck. Someone said,

“Yeah?” The man gripping Doc Savage

“The coast is clear?”

seemed to be trying to hold his breath and lis-

“Where’s the girl?”

ten.

“She got in the park. They’re looking for

“Who was it?”

her. Here, I’ll give you a hand.”

“Savage.”

They lugged Doc Savage’s heavy body

“You hit him?”

across the deck to the rail.

“I hit him, all right,” Bill said. “I put two in Bill demanded, “What about the other his heart. He ain’t moved since he went down.”

body? Barnes?”

“We’ll get rid of it the same way.”

They swung Doc Savage’s legs over the MORE men came from the cabin, four or rail, and, grunting instructions at each other, five of them, apparently, although it was diffi-held his arms and lowered him toward the wa-cult to tell about that in the darkness. The man ter. They let him go. There was not much who had spoken to Bill had a heavy, urgent splash as he disappeared.

voice, and he used it to order, “Get going toward the bow. Get the other two! And don’t do any shooting out on deck. Too noisy.”

THE water was not cold, but it was mov-Bill began, “You want me to—”

ing rapidly, for the tide was going out, and Doc

“Stay with him. You’re sure it’s Savage?”

had the feeling he was being turned as he

“Look.” Bill thumbed on his flashlight sank. That wasn’t good, for it befuddled his beam again. Doc Savage was lying face-down sense of direction. Too, when he hit bottom—on the floor, head twisted slightly. “That’s him, the depth was about fifteen feet—the heavy ain’t it?”

steel axle at once embedded in the bottom, The other man muttered, “God almighty!”

and the water leaned him over, threw him out hoarsely, deep in his throat. Then he added, flat on the bottom, complicating the business of “Get a weight, something heavy, and tie it to getting loose.

his legs. Get the body over the side.”

They had not searched him, so he still

“Okay,” Bill said.

had his pocket knife. Nor had they tied his Toward the bow, there was a shot. A hands. He got the knife out and went to work single report, no more, and it had been fired on the ropes.

inside the schooner. There were running THREE TIMES A CORPSE

31

Later, when they happened to notice care, he swam up, broke the surface, and saw there were no bloodstains, there might be he had not drifted nearly as far as he had sup-some curiosity about just what effects the two posed. He was in the triangle of black shadow bullets had on him. He had, as Bill had said, between the schooner bow and the river re-been shot twice in the heart area. Or the bul-taining wall. The heavy chain bobstay of the lets had headed for the heart area, and been schooner was close enough to reach. He laid stopped by the very good bulletproof vest he hold of it.

was wearing.

He had put on the bulletproof vest early that day, as soon as the restaurant proprietor BREATHING—breathing silently—was had warned him that suspicious inquiries were suddenly extremely difficult. He fought an being made. He would not, as a matter of fact, overpowering urge to cough and make gag-have ventured to wait in the restaurant, or go ging sounds. Forward somewhere, which near the place, without the insurance of the would be toward the stern of the schooner, he alloy mesh undergarment.

heard a splash. There was no other sound for Desperately, he sawed at the ankle a while, then a voice demanded, “You get Bar-ropes with the knife. He had anticipated less nes overboard?”

difficulty getting loose than he was having.

“Bill’s voice responded, “Yeah. . . .

There was not enough air in his lungs, and he Where’s the girl?”

had, furthermore a grim suspicion that one or

“She scrammed.”

more ribs might have been cracked by the im-Horror came into Bill’s throat. “What are pact of the bullets against the vest. The vest we gonna do?”

was supposed to give protection against such

“Cast off the springlines. Get the motor an eventuality, but the blows of the two slugs going.”

had been tremendous; he had, for a few sec-

“Hell, we gonna take the boat?”

onds, been practically knocked out, in much

“Sure. We gotta.”

the same condition of a boxer who had taken a

“The cops will pick us up!” Bill remon-hard blow over the heart. That was one of the strated.

reasons he had not continued the fight. Other

“Not if we get outside before the girl gets reasons were: he might have been shot in the them stirred up—if she does. . . . Hey, Jake, head if he had continued; he was outnum-get the others aboard.” Jake grunted, and bered; he wanted information. There were sprang ashore. Other men were loosening the plenty of good reasons for taking this out.

springlines which held the schooner to the He got free of the weighting steel after shore.

what seemed years. The vest had enough bal-Bill demanded, “Whatcha mean—if she last to keep him on the river bottom, and the does?”

tide proceeded to tumble him end over end. He

“That girl,” the other told him, “has run let nature take its course for a while, not fight-into plenty of hell tonight. She’s a gal who ing back, concentrating on keeping air in his takes care of herself. There’s a good chance lungs, waiting to be carried clear of the schoo-she may just say the hell with it, and take a ner.

little trip to Cuba or somewhere for things to He had, blackly, dizzily, the awful feeling cool off.”

of being completely lost underwater. Then it That struck Bill as logical, and he said occurred to him how simple it was to tell direc-so. It didn’t hit Doc Savage as logical. He was tions—the river flowed west at this point, the examining the bank, calculating his chances of tide was flowing out, therefore he was being getting ashore without being discovered. The carried west. He faced the current, which was chances did not seem inviting.

all right as long as his feet were dragging the The bobstay chain, running from a point bottom and he could tell which way the current at the end of the bowsprit down to the bow, moved. He stroked for the surface, swimming terminated about two feet above the waterline.

diagonally to the right. The idea was to come Very carefully, Doc hooked a leg over the up close to the concrete bulkhead that con-chain and, gripping the chain with his right fined the river here.

hand, the stempiece with his left hand, he Presently he was against a hard surface heaved himself out of the water. Presently he coated with barnacles that felt like broken sat on the bobstay chain. He let both legs dan-glass, and would cut flesh as easily. With great

32

DOC SAVAGE
gle in the water, so the wetness from his cloth-Jake came back from the park. With him ing would drain off silently.

were three or four other men—Doc was not exactly sure how many. He could not see them, and there was confusion on the bank.

Bill, sounding hollow as if he had his head down the hatch, asked someone, “What the hell’s holding you up?” For reply, the Diesel engine coughed three times, then stopped. It sounded angry.

Doc shifted his position slightly, and flat-tened close to the bow, straddling the stem.

Overhead, he could see the neat criss-crossed pattern of footropes and jib nettings under the long wooden finger of the bowsprit. He weighed, with considerable concern, his chances of being discovered.

The Diesel barked some more, hesitated, then resumed activity. It was going to run. “Cast off!”

He heard lines land on deck with slatting sounds, heard men jump aboard. Lazily, the schooner swung away from the embankment; it took on a definite feeling of life as the prop began turning.

“Get up in the bow,” somebody ordered,

“and light the running lights. We’ll douse them after we get past the breakwater.”

Doc concluded, from the breakwater being mentioned, that they were going outside through the ship channel. It was the quickest route, although it would carry them along par-allel with the causeway for almost a mile. The other channel, southward through Biscayne Bay and around Cape Florida, was longer and, if one was in a hurry at night, dangerous for a boat this size.

There was some tramping around in the bow. “Running lights are burning,” someone reported.

“Okay, get back here to the cockpit,” Bill ordered.

THE schooner was fast under power, and Doc was not surprised. Bugeyes, because of the flat bottoms and the use of a centerboard instead of a keel to kill leeway, were usually fairly fast under power.

Doc shifted a little, reached up, gripped the basket, and changed his position so that his feet were out of the water. On the left now were the lights of the City Yacht Basin piers, music from a juke box, from an orchestra on a moonlight cruise party boat. These slipped rapidly past.

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

33

Swinging sharply to starboard, the boat he saw who was in the cab, hastily seized the lined out down the steamer channel. On the door handle to prevent the door opening. He left, automobile headlights moved rapidly on leaned down and told Lucky Jones, who was in the Miami Beach causeway.

the cab, “You got company, Miss.”

Doc reach up, seized the jib basket lines.

“Cops?” Lucky demanded.

He hauled himself up, very carefully, until his

“Sure. Two of them, one in the lobby and eyes were above the level of the deck. There one in your room.”

seemed to be no one in the bow, and he lifted Lucky frowned. “I wonder what’s the himself a bit more, rolled over into the basket idea?”

of lines. He lay there listening, watching. . . .

“I wouldn’t know. They say a guy named He decided that someone had opened the Bridges put them on the job.”

forecastle hatch; he could see the upended Lucky had difficulty thinking who Bridges shape of the hatch cover.

could be, then remembered that he must be With infinite care, he crawled over the the officious Assistant District Attorney who bow, wriggled past the large iron hump of the had appeared in the case. The driver of the hand anchor winch, and thrust his head down taxi put his head out of the window and said, the forecastle hatch. There was no sound.

“Hello, Ikey. . . . Am I getting into anything, They would be on deck, aft around the cockpit, hauling the little lady around?”

and tensely watching the shore. The deck-

“That’s a crazy question,” the doorman house, the lumpish shapes of furled sails, of told him. “Since when did my friends get you in two dinks lashed on deck, concealed him from trouble?” He returned his attention to Lucky them.

and explained, “If it wasn’t for one cop being in He eased down into the forecastle. He the lobby, we could fix you up with another began exploring with his hands. There seemed room. But the way it is—well—this is a kind of to be a bank of four bunks on each side. The a wide-eyed john in the lobby.”

sail lockers were what he wanted. They would

“Is he a friend of yours?” Lucky de-be forward here. They always were. And pres-manded. “Could you get some information out ently he found them—not lockers actually, but of him?”

open basketwork bins in which the sails could The doorman was doubtful. “Might de-be stored with the least likelihood of mildewing.

pend on the information.”

He kept searching until he found the bin

“You remember the gang who was here which contained the light sails—the fisher-earlier in the evening? Doc Savage and four man’s staysail, the balloon jib. These were other men?”

light sails which they would not be likely to use

“Uh-huh.”

outside tonight, because there was too much

“I want,” Lucky explained, “to find the wind blowing. The breeze, while not a gale by men who were with Doc Savage. Specifically, I any means, was too brisk for the use of the want to find Ham Brooks and Monk Mayfair, big, gossamer balloon jib.

and in a hurry.”

He crawled into the jib bin, worked well

“Think this cop would know?”

into the back and down behind the sail, then

“He might. His boss, Bridges, would be pulled the folds of canvas over him. He was, sure to know. I don’t know how you would get he believed, in the spot least likely to be dis-the information out of him without an excuse.”

turbed.

The doorman rubbed his jaw. “I’ll try to Later he could hear them stumbling think of something. You want to wait around around on deck, taking the stops off the work-the corner? The cop might come gawking ing sails, preparatory to hoisting them. The around out here.”

schooner began to climb long swells, groaning

“Are they really looking for me?” Lucky a little. They were outside in the open sea.

demanded.

“Said they were.” The doorman saun-tered off into the hotel.

Chapter IX

The taxi driver scratched the back of his neck for a while, glanced around dubiously at THE doorman of the Silver Beech Hotel, Lucky, and said flatly, “If it wasn’t for Ikey’s an Irishman named—he claimed—Israel Ma-okay, lady, I’d throw you out of here on your cIsaac, crossed the sidewalk to a cab that had ear!” He started the engine, drove around the just pulled up before the marquee and, when 34

DOC SAVAGE
corner and parked. “Who’d you flim-flam, Lucky went into the building. The lobby lady?” he wished to know.

was full of white light and the odor of scrub-

“It’s a matter of a couple of people I water. She found Assistant District Attorney murdered,” Lucky said dryly.

Walter Bridges on the directory. She had to The driver thought she was kidding and wait for the elevator.

looked quite relieved. He opened a tabloid pa-Going down the tenth floor corridor, she per, flipped to the racing section—and emitted heard a loud angry voice. It was Bridges. He an astonished grunt. Amazed, he compared was saying, “I’m telling you, either pick them Lucky’s face with a photograph in the newspa-up or get ready to sweat. They’re material wit-per. “For cripes sake!” he blurted. “It says here: nesses in a murder case, and they walk out on ‘Lucky Jones wins daily double third time in us, and if you think I’ll stand for that, you’re season.’”

crazy.” He was saying this into a telephone. He

“It’s a poor picture,” Lucky decided, after looked over the telephone at Lucky, then bel-glancing over his shoulder.

lowed, “Wait a minute!” into the instrument. At

“You mean that’s really you, lady?”

Lucky, he yelled, “Where’s the other two?

The doorman returned at this point. He Where’s Savage and Snelling?”

looked pleased with himself. “This cop proves Lucky went to Monk and Ham. “We went to be very gullible. I find that when I tell him a to Barnes’ schooner. Snelling knew where it lie about Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks wish-was. Barnes was hanging in a stateroom. He ing to reserve rooms here earlier tonight, and was dead. While we were looking around, what does he know about their characters that some men came aboard. They shot and killed the hotel ought to know, he informs me that a Doc Savage, and maybe Snelling.”

Lieutenant Avery and some other cops con-Assistant District Attorney Bridges said, sider them very high grade magnets for trou-

“Never mind!” into the telephone. He hung up.

ble, but that an Assistant District Attorney Wal-Lieutenant Avery asked, “How long ago ter Bridges feels they are crooks of dark color.

was this?”

So then I tell him the hotel will get hold of Ham

“Half an hour, about.”

Brooks and Monk Mayfair and be very sorry

“Half an hour!” Bridges yelled. “Where in there is no room available, he says they are at the hell have you been in the meantime?”

Mr. Bridges’ office in the county building,

“Looking for you, you dope,” Lucky said probably catching hell.”

sharply. “And listen, don’t start using my

“Thank you,” Lucky said. “If you want to nerves for a race-track! I’m not in the mood.”

make a couple of dollars for yourself, drop in at Lieutenant Avery had his hat. “How quick the C-Club after you get off and play the same can you show us where that boat is?”

numbers on the wheel that a white-haired oil

“As fast as you can get there.”

man named Grabow will play. They’re going to Avery indicated Monk, Ham, Sam Clark let him win tonight, and clean him tomorrow and Petey. “You guys come on. You’re all in night.”

this, and I want your company.”

“I don’t get off until two. That too late?”

“Stop!” Bridges struck an attitude with

“It should be about right.”

jaw and chest. “What idiocy is this? What do you plan to do with these prisoners?”

“Prisoners, hell!” the lieutenant said. He THE revolving beacon on top of the spoke bitterly. He flung the door open. “Out-county building was a tapering blade like an side, everybody!”

ice pick sweeping through thick fog when When they reached the street, Bridges Lucky’s taxi came to a stop at the curb. There was with them and spluttering rage. Avery ran was no fog on the street level as yet but, to a police department car, got behind the where there were no streetlights, it was very wheel, and while the others were climbing dark. Lucky thought how dark it would be out aboard, thrust his face at Bridges and yelled, at sea. She shuddered. She paid off the taxi “If anybody told you you were a cop, I’d like to driver and said, “You keep away from the C-know who the hell it was? I was getting along Club. Or if you can’t do that, give Ikey twenty fine until you showed up and got Doc Savage dollars and see what he can do for you.”

out of the notion of coöperating with the police!

The driver was pleased. “I was thinking Now look at the mess things are in. Sit down about that,” he said.

and shut up!”

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

35

Bridges blew out his cheeks, worked his We haven’t much time. It’s across the cause-jaw in and out, blurted, “I’ll be damned!” His way to Miami Beach, and fast.”

tone intimated they would settle this later.

The police car made a short, hard run to the riverfront, using the siren only the first THE boat was a cabin cruiser about three blocks.

forty-eight feet on the waterline. It made no

“It’s gone!” Lucky gasped. “The boat is pretense at being anything except a yacht.

gone.”

Comfortable, powerful, it was seaworthy Mr. Bridges said, “Hah!” explosively.

enough for outside cruising, and probably quite

“The boat probably was never here!”

fast.

“But that’s not the Virginia Dare!” Lucky said suspiciously.

THEY listened with satisfaction to what

“Who said it was?” Sam Clark gestured.

Lucky thought of to say to Mr. Bridges at this

“Come on. Let’s get a move on.”

point. She used words from the dictionary, but Monk and Ham exchanged glances.

she made them do things that Webster never Sam Clark had undergone a transformation.

expected of them. A complete silence followed, Instead of being sloppy and treating everything and Mr. Bridges used it to get out and walk with a who-the-hell-cares manner, he had meekly to the hamburger stand—following one turned crisp and aggressive. Even his speech of a number of suggestions Lucky had made to had altered.

him—and inquire whether a schooner named

“That guy Clark,” Monk whispered, “has the Virginia Dare had lately been tied in the taken off his lamb’s clothing.”

river nearby. He was informed it had been, and Ham Brooks nodded. “Or the other way had cast off about half an hour ago, heading around. He’s been sucking us in.”

out toward the harbor. Bridges brought the in-When they were approaching the power formation back to the car.

boat, Monk jabbed Petey in the ribs. “Could be

“We must get the harbor police boat you would turn out to be a college professor?”

hunting them,” he said.

“Coeeeee!” Petey said. “Don’t be a

“Yeah, and the coast guard,” Lieutenant mark.”

Avery growled.

Monk dropped back and had Ham trans-Sam Clark gave a bitter grunt. It was late that for him. “He said don’t be a dope,”

practically the only noise he had made for an Ham explained.

hour.

Sam Clark seized a springline, heaved,

“Harbor police, coast guard, army, navy, and drew the cabin cruiser near enough the marines!” he said sourly. “All the king’s men dock for them to step aboard. “Deckhouse is won’t put humpty-dumpty together again. Does unlocked,” he said. “Go right aboard.”

anybody want to know what I think?”

Assistant District Attorney Bridges stared Mr. Bridges said no one did.

about at the deckhouse interior when the lights Lucky frowned. “Wait a minute.” She were switched on. He was impressed. “I trust,”

eyed Sam Clark narrowly. “I think you might he said ominously, “that we are not trespass-have some interesting thoughts, Mr. . . . Mr. . .

ing?”

. What is your name supposed to be?”

“I invited you, didn’t I?” Sam Clark de-

“Sam Clark.” Sam Clark looked startled.

manded.

“All right, Mr. Sam Clark, I’m interested

“You mean this craft is yours?”

in what you think.”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” Sam Clark said. “What I think is Lucky whispered to Monk, “I’ve got a this: I think you better let ol’ massa Sam rake rough idea of what these boats cost, because the chestnuts out of the fire.”

I’ve been pricing them. You can’t lay a hand on

“Meaning?”

one like this for less than fifty thousand dollars.

“I can take you to where they’re going.”

They’re not playthings for bums”—she indi-Monk had been holding his feelings cated Sam Clark—”who are so hard up they tightly. Now a little of the control collapsed. He have to take jobs shooting at people to decoy gripped Clark’s arm tightly, said, “Brother, if them into wild goose chases to Montana.”

you’re pulling something . . .”

Monk nodded. “Friend Clark isn’t what

“I’m pulling something, and I know what he has seemed.”

I’m doing,” Sam Clark said. “Let’s get rolling.

36

DOC SAVAGE

Lucky said she could contribute another Petey was careful. He collected what piece of information. “On the Barnes schooner, weapons he could find and stuffed them into the Virginia Dare, Doc Savage and I found a different parts of their clothing. “Bulletproof photograph of Clark standing with Barnes. . . .

jackets,” he reported. “Monk and Ham are Haven’t I heard Clark say he didn’t know Bar-wearing them under their shirts.”

nes?”

“I’m sorry about this.” Sam Clark

“I heard him say that,” Monk said grimly.

sounded as if he was more angry and deter-

“I’m going to consult with him about it.” He mined than sorry. “But I couldn’t think of any swung on Sam Clark, and his voice was loud.

other quick way.” He swung on one of the men

“Clark! I thought you didn’t know Barnes!”

with the light machine guns. “Get the rest of Sam Clark scowled. “Sure I knew Bar-the boys, cast off, and put out to sea. You got nes!”

plenty of fuel aboard?”

“Then what . . . ?”

“Plenty of fuel.”

“You can forget most of what I’ve said in

“What about grub?”

the past,” Sam Clark informed him. “But pay

“Enough for a week for this crowd, I close attention to what I say from now on.”

guess.”

“This guy,” Monk told Ham, “is making

“That’s plenty.” Clark raised his voice.

different noises. What are we going to do

“Dick, Bob, Carlos! Let’s get going.”

about it?”

Monk discovered there were other men Lieutenant Avery swore violently. “I’ll do outside, some of them with rifles, some with the doing!” He swung on Clark. “But, you’re in pistols. He had no idea where they had come the fold. You’re arrested. If you can talk your from. They must have been posted in the way out of it, fine. But—”

neighborhood.

“No talk.” Sam Clark lifted his voice.

They cast off the lines. A man stepped to

“Okay, boys. Come on out and argue with the controls, twisted the fuel shut-off value, them!”

threw switches and poked a starter button. The There were two doors leading out of the result was an astonishing rumbling below deckhouse into bow and stern of the cabin decks, a series of explosions from exhaust cruiser. Both these doors opened simultane-stacks, and eventually about the same deep-ously. A man and a gun came out of each one.

throated sound that a four-engine bomber The guns were light machine guns. The men makes.

were large amiable fellows who weren’t looking The boat hiked up its stern, backed away amiable at the moment.

from the pier, went into forward speed before it

“I think all of you,” Sam Clark said, “can could bang into the other bank of the canal, reach the ceiling with your hands. It isn’t very and began moving forward.

high. Those little rafters that go across are The fog, Monk saw, was settling. It was called carlings. Let’s see each of you grab now like a ceiling a few dozen feet off the sur-one.”

face, dark gray and weirdly like the underbelly Assistant District Attorney Bridges’ jaw of a monster when the beam of the cabin went forward. “Is this a holdup?”

cruiser searchlight touched its shaggy mass in Sam Clark grinned. “Petey, do you see prowling from one side of the canal to another.

that jaw?”

Sam Clark, talking rapidly, told his men Petey said the jaw was not only visible, who were in earshot what had happened. He but interesting. He used a Cockney dialect. He used few words. He said, “They killed Mr. Bar-came over, and with blinding suddenness, hit nes, the dirty so-and-sos.” He did not say so-the end of Mr. Bridges’ jaw with his fist.

and-sos, and glanced guiltily at Lucky after-Bridges fell down.

ward. She shrugged. He added to his men,

“They took the Virginia Dare and went to sea after they had killed Doc Savage.” He eyed LIEUTENANT AVERY tried to look in-them thinly, added, “They got Snelling aboard, dignant over what had happened to Assistant probably took him along.”

District Attorney Bridges, but did not succeed The men, Monk realized, were extremely very well.

shocked by news of Barnes’ death.

“Petey, frisk them,” Sam Clark ordered.

Sam Clark confronted Monk and Ham,

“And don’t clown around with that Monk and included Lieutenant Avery in his scowl, and Ham, or they’ll make a mess out of you.”

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

37
said, “In this fog, you can guess what chances They were under sail, and the Diesel we got of finding the schooner. Pretty slim.”

was still running. They were, he was sure, Avery said, “Pretty damn slim—if you making good time. He judged roughly that really want to catch them.”

about five hours had passed when the boat

“Don’t let your wrong ideas get so big changed course. In a moment, the mainsail you can’t see over them, copper.” Sam Clark jibed, swinging from starboard to port with a jerked his head toward the bow. The boat was wrench that nearly took the mast out. He could turning into the steamship channel that led to hear profanity, could feel the boat changing the open sea. “We know something they don’t course again. When the commotion subsided, know we know—we know where they’re going.

they were lined out on a slightly different So we’re gonna be there when they get there, course, and the water had changed—the if we can.”

waves were steeper, more violent, but there

“Then what?” Avery demanded.

was no longer a long mountainous deep-sea

“Then it’s likely to get rough.”

swell. They had crossed the Gulf Stream, passed through the reefs that edged the great Bahama Bank, and were now headed—south, Chapter X
he believed, but possibly still east, for there might have been a wind shift—across the THE Gulf Stream, where it passed be-Banks, an area of hundreds of square miles of tween the Bahamas Islands and the Florida shoal water which was hardly more than three coast, was about fifty miles wide, a mile deep or four fathoms in depth anywhere. . . .

and, under the right conditions, could be as He became rigid, stopped breathing.

nasty a stretch of water as there was in the Two men had come into the forecastle from world. The right condition was a northerly wind aft.

meeting the stream which in turn flowed north,

“Hell, where’d all this water come from?”

in places faster than a man could conveniently one of them complained.

walk. The chop that resulted, short, vicious, A flashlight beam, jumping about, made was enough to loosen the teeth of the occu-the thin sailcloth glow cream-white before pants of small boats.

Doc’s eyes.

Doc Savage, lying in the sail locker on

“Hatch was open a while,” the other man the port side, was far enough forward to be said.

over the overhang. The result, every time the

“Oh. . . . You see anything looks like Virginia Dare hit a wave, which was at twenty-grub around here?”

second intervals, was something like having a

“Nah. . . . Unless it’s under some of bull crash into the planks beside him. The sea these sails.” The man began to jerk the sails was rough, the wind strong enough to make about in the lockers, punch them with his violin noises in the rigging, and the boat was hands. A moment later, he gave Doc Savage a being driven hard.

hard blow in the stomach with his fist and, im-It was cold, too. He had not expected it mediately afterward, a second blow on the to get cold, but it was. They had closed the broken ribs.

forecastle hatch, but not before a half dozen barrelfuls of water had poured inside and soaked the sail locker, the sails and Doc. He DOC was sure he yelled in agony. He was hungry, his nerves were far from being at could not, he felt, have repressed an outcry.

rest, and his ribs where the two bullets had He was also quite certain he blacked out for a struck the bulletproof vest were hurting. He few moments from the effects of the blow. But had made several examinations of the ribs, when reality—sounds, the clammy feel of sail-and believed one of them was cracked. A cloth against his face—took tangible being cracked rib was not supposed to be a vital in-again, nothing more had happened. The jury, but it wasn’t pleasant.

schooner must have been pounding into a It was dark. The schooner pitched and wave when he was punched, and the puncher rolled. It climbed for a long time up long swells must have mistaken his body for a bundled and all the time it was pounded by the short sail.

waves, then it would plunge downward for a

“No grub!” the man said disgustedly.

long time, pounded harder.

“You know, we haven’t any too much food aboard.”

38

DOC SAVAGE

“It oughta be enough. What does he ex-Sam Clark, Petey, Lucky, Snelling, involved?

pect to do—spend a couple of months diving?”

There were at least ten men on the schooner,

“He’s not sure how long it will take to he suspected, and why were they involved?

open up the steamer’s hold and get at the Why had Barnes and the man named Mesana shipment.”

been murdered, and who had done it?

“If the ship’s lying in water as shallow as There were plenty of questions. He lay he says, one day might do it. Ten fathoms, he back and considered them, and hoped that the says. So shallow she wouldn’t be covered if wind would not lay to a point where they would she wasn’t on her side. If that’s right, five or six be tempted to put light sails on the schooner, days should see enough of the cargo out to which would include the balloon jib under load us down.”

which he was lying.

“This is a damned small boat for a sal-He was, he reflected, probably very vage job.”

close to death.

“I guess that stuff he’s after isn’t so bulky. . . . And he figures on making more than one trip, didn’t he say?”

SHORTLY after daylight, they passed

“Uh-huh.”

through an opening in a reef into a lagoon.

“Should be a pretty good job for us be-There was no doubt about what they were do-fore it’s over with.” The speaker didn’t sound ing, because a man on the mainmast cross-as if he was so sure it was a good job.

trees conned them in through the foul water,

“Yeah, if it paid anything,” the other man twice nearly piling them on coral heads, and said. He didn’t sound satisfied either. “What do being cursed as a dunce and a striped ape you think about what we were talking about each time.

this morning?”

Bill—the one who probably still thought

“Bouncing him for more dough, you he had killed Doc Savage—did most of the mean?”

cursing. He yelled, “You see that mangrove

“Yeah.”

creek?”

“I’m kinda in favor of it, to tell the truth.”

And the man on the mast shouted,

“The job is worth more now than it was

“Yeah, a little to starboard and straight ahead.”

this morning. That killing business sort of

“Okay. Watch out for shoals.”

raised its price as far as I am concerned. . . .

They evidently had no difficulty working Thing is, though, I’m not sure it would be safe the schooner into the mangrove creek, be-to bounce him for more dough now. He’s a guy cause presently, after some jumping around that’s kinda quick with the dead stuff.”

and more shouting, the boat seemed to be tied

“Afraid of him?”

to the mangroves with lines.

“You’re damned right I’m afraid of him!”

“You guys in the first watch get busy col-The other man laughed, and it was an lecting palm fronds to cover the deck,” Bill or-unamused sound. “I don’t think he’d knock off dered. “Use the leaves of them little runty pal-his two divers, but you never can tell about mettos. Cover the sails and deck and every-guys like him. I think he’s a crackpot.”

thing.”

“He’s smart as a whip.”

There was more scuffling around.

“That’s the way you can tell crackpots

“The second watch,” Bill yelled, “will sometimes.”

break out the paint brushes and that paint.

“We’ll wait until he’s in a better humor, Paint the hull white. Never mind a fancy job.

then bring up the money thing. How’s that?”

Do it quick.”

Doc Savage did not hear how it struck Doc Savage listened with alarm. Evi-the other man, because the two left the fore-dently they were going to change the color of castle. . . . So there was a sunken steamer, a the vessel for purposes of disguise. But a paint cargo to be salvaged, the two men were di-job wouldn’t make a very effective change in a vers, and the schooner was to be used for the boat of such distinctive shape as a bugeye. His salvaging. . . . Doc frowned, irritated by the concern was presently justified when Bill, intrusion of what struck him as a very simple standing in the bow, said, “I don’t know what explanation for things happening. His second the hell we’ll do about this clipper bow. Short-thought that it wasn’t any too simple, when ening the bowsprit will help. And we’ll have to questions were asked. What was the cargo?

change the mast-stepping so that the masts How come it was there? How and why were stand up straight. Have to make the foremast THREE TIMES A CORPSE

39
into the mainmast, and cut the main down until cruiser would do thirty knots to our ten,” Bill it will pass for a jigger. That’ll turn her into a advised him angrily.

ketch.”

Later, Bill departed in the dinghy, to Somebody said, “Damned if I want to sail which they had attached an outboard motor. It back into Miami on her, no matter how much was now getting hot in the forecastle, and Doc she’s changed.”

waited uncomfortably. He could hear paint

“Who said anything about Miami? We’ll brushes making licking sounds against the try Neuvitas or some other Cuban port.”

hull, and hear palm fronds being arranged to

“There’s an American consul at Neuvi-cover the deck. He was plagued by grim tas, ain’t there?”

thoughts about the likelihood that they would

“We’ll sweat that out later.” Bill sounded take the sails out of the forecastle to dry them, angry. “Let’s get the paint . . .” He was silent a which would mean his certain discovery. . . . In moment, then raised his voice, bellowed, which case there would be almost no chance “What’s that? Where?”

of his escaping alive, the water in these man-One of the crew, some distance away, grove creeks in the islands usually being called, “Just north of the island.”

nearly as clear as glass, and the mangroves Bill swore. “Everybody outa sight!” he offering little protection from bullets.

yelled.

Bill returned in a better humor. From Doc decided that he then went up the some distance away, he called, “Boss, I don’t ratline ladder to the mainmast hounds. The think they saw the masts. They’re not as tall as mast squeaked slightly in its step because of the palms in the background, and the sun Bill’s weight.

gives your eyes hell. A plane might spot us, For ten minutes, there was the most but I don’t see how they could have.”

complete and alarming kind of a silence.

Doc tried to identify the voice that answered. But it was hard to get anything out of a grunt.

WHEN Bill came down the ratlines, he was swearing bitterly. Somebody asked him a question Doc did not get. “I don’t know, damn IT was, Doc believed, close to four it!” Bill snarled. “She was a cabin cruiser, and o’clock in the afternoon when they dumped the the same type that John Warner owns. The deck covering of palm fronds on the shore, Warner boat has been laying at a hotel dock in cast off the mooring lines and backed out of Miami Beach.”

the mangrove creek, going aground once, but

“If it was Warner’s boat, why’d they go getting off immediately. The tide, he surmised, on? Why didn’t they turn in?”

was close to low slack, which was evidently

“Would they come in if they saw us?”

what they had been waiting for. The wait for

“Hell, they couldn’t have seen us. We’re slack tide indicated the steamer they were go-hull down behind the mangroves, and those ing to try to reach by diving must lie in or near palm trees in the background would have hid-the gap in the reef where, during the incoming den the masts. Anyway, the sun was in their and outgoing tide, there would be strong cur-eyes.”

rents.

Bill was not satisfied. “As soon as they’re They began getting diving equipment on out of sight, I’m gonna put a dink in the water deck. A man came into the forecastle and gave and run out there where they were and see if him a grisly five minutes or so poking about in it’s likely they spotted us.”

search of a coil of light line. The fellow did not, Somebody said, “Through the binocu-however, bother the light sail locker, although lars, it looked like they were fishing. The outhe shouted to someone on deck, “The sails in riggers were out. Would they be fishing if it here are soaking wet. Won’t they mildew if we was Warner’s boat?”

don’t dry ‘em?”

“If it was Warner’s boat, anything could

“Let ‘em rot,” someone said. They were happen,” Bill said bitterly. “You guys all keep excited about the diving.

your guns handy.”

It was evident from the yelling that at Somebody made the suggestion that least two men had been left ashore to sight they might pursue the cabin cruiser they’d bearings and direct the schooner by arm ges-seen and catch it. He was sworn at. “That tures. In all, about twenty minutes elapsed before the anchor chain poured out of the locker,

40

DOC SAVAGE
located almost against Doc’s head, with a frightening roar.

After that, he lay in the stifling heat and listened to the diving operation. One man was evidently going down. Two other men, one in the foremast hounds, the other in the mainmast hounds, were placed, one with instructions to watch for sharks, the other to scan the horizon for approaching vessels.

The compressor engine started. The diver complained that, by God, they would have to rig a diving stage if they expected him to do this day after day. Presently he was lowered over the side, but was hoisted up again when the telephone wouldn’t work. They re-paired that. He went down again.

Doc Savage, badly gnawed by curiosity, his nerves on edge, dragged the sail back cautiously from his eyes, and considered taking a chance on a look outside. The forecastle hatch was now invitingly open. He moved his head somewhat and froze. A man had leaned down, thrust his head into the forecastle, and looked directly at him!

There followed ten or twelve of the long-est seconds Doc Savage had ever experienced. Then the man, still looking directly at him, bellowed, “It’s wetter than a dishpan down here. If anybody expects me to bunk in here, they’re crazy. I’ll sleep on deck, first. I think that’s what I’ll do anyway.”

The man withdrew his head and went away. Due to the intense sunlight outside, the shadow in the forecastle, he had not seen Doc.

THE diver was down about two hours, and it seemed longer. There was, toward the end, quite a bit of excited yelling when he called for a line to be sent down. Somebody said they were messing up the wet paint on the hull. He was laughed at for being concerned

“
about the hull paint.

Progress?” The diver sounded a little re-They hauled the diver out. He did not, luctant. “Well, not bad. But it’ll be rougher later when they uncapped him, sound tired.

on. . . . As a matter of fact, the hatch is blown

“This isn’t any snap,” he announced off the main hold. The air pressure must have loudly. “The tide gives you hell. I ran across done that when she went down.”

“
three moray eels in there, and they’re big Cripes, you got into the hold?”

“
ones, big enough to bite through a man’s div-Yeah.”

“
ing suit. They’re deadly poison.”

What about the cargo?”

“

Bill snorted, said, “Don’t kid me about Haul away on the line,” the diver said.

“
eels—they’re infectious is all. Place where they Let’s see what I got.”

bite gets sore as hell. . . . How much progress There was some brisk heaving, shouted did you make?”

orders, the sounds that went with raising some kind of a burden, not too heavy, and hoisting it aboard. When the thing came down on deck, it

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

41
into the forecastle earlier had actually seen him, and they were springing a trap.

To the tune of unconcerned swearing—
they were in high spirits—they decided to cut the anchor loose, using the anchor chain to hold a marker buoy, which they proceeded to fashion out of half a dozen life preservers lashed together and wrapped in a sail. This done, they headed back into the lagoon, maneuvered into the mangrove creek again, and put out mooring lines.

They were, apparently, going to settle down for the night. Aft, some sort of an argument broke out over sleeping accommoda-tions, complicated by the fact that it was cloudy in the south and might rain during the night.

There was not enough bunk space aft; somebody would have to take the forecastle, wet or not.

Doc became alarmed.

PRESENTLY, two men stumbled into the forecastle, coming through the bulkhead door from the amidships hold where the diving equipment was stored. They made loud angry noises back in the hold, but once in the forecastle, one of them broke into giggling. “Shut up, dope!” his companion urged. “They’ll get wise!” “Wise, hell! Nobody had spotted it, had they? Here, give me a hand with it.”

“Where will we put it?”

“What’s the matter with under the sails?”

“Sails are wet. We gotta toss them out anyway. Let’s get the wet sails out now.”

was obviously metal. Someone said, “Let’s Doc Savage had barely time to get set—
have a knife and scrape away some of the mentally; there was not much he could do mess. . . . Will salt water hurt the stuff?”

physically—for trouble when the balloon jib

“What I want to know,” another dewas yanked out of the locker, exposing him.

manded, “is whether there’s enough to pay off.”

The diver snorted. “The hold is half full of Chapter XI
it. Several hundred tons.”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Several hun-SURPRISE was on his side. He was dred—by God! That’s more than a half million glad of that. He had wondered if it would be.

bucks worth!”

His feet were free first, and he used the right

“Even at market prices now,” Bill said. “It one to kick the nearest man, having marvelous was worth more than that when the ship sank.”

luck and hitting the man on the point of the This seemed to end the work on the an-jaw. The fellow walked backward against the chor. The anchor, it developed, had stuck, evi-second man, who was facing the other direc-dently lodged on the sunken steamer. In the tion, doubled over, wedging something in a course of the commotion, a man fell down the box under the berths.

forecastle hatch, alarming Doc Savage in-The second man said, “Watch where tensely—he thought the man who had looked you’re—” and saw Doc Savage. His eyes rounded like portholes, he made two or three 42

DOC SAVAGE
clucking sounds, like a turkey tom getting CARRYING through on the good luck, ready to gobble. Before he could make any the bottles were screw-capped instead of noise that was coherent, or very loud, Doc hit corked. He ran a fingernail around the seal, him. The blow, a fine hook to the jaw, seemed unscrewed a cap, adjusted one of the uncon-to have absolutely no effect. Doc put a left in scious men’s head so that it was in the best his stomach, came up with a right as the man funnel position, and began forcing whiskey folded over, and got results.

down the fellow’s throat. He spilled very little.

At this point, the first man hit the floor, His training as a doctor helped out.

making the loudest sound that had been made.

How much whiskey at once would kill a Doc caught the second man and eased him man was a complicated question, including the down.

factors of tolerance, or ability of the victim’s Since he did not have a gun, his hands body to oxidize it, the victim’s size, the amount made a quick search and came up with three, of food in his stomach. He decided to go two revolvers and an automatic. He did not, as heavy, and gave each man something less a usual thing, carry a gun, nor did he like to than a quart. There was a definite possibility employ one. Long ago he had formed a con-that a full quart would be fatal.

viction that if a man started packing a gun, he He slammed each man on the jaw again would just naturally put more and more de-to give the liquor time to take effect, then rolled pendence in the thing, and, caught in a jam the victims in the bunks. He collected another without it sometime, be absolutely helpless.

gun and two boxes of cartridges.

In the meantime, he listened for a noise, One at a time, he dropped the cartridges or lack of it, from aft that would indicate an from one box into an empty bottle, which he alarm. There was none. Life, as nearly as he shook as nearly dry as possible. Then he put could tell, was going on as usual.

the screw cap on the bottle, and shoved it in Two unconscious men, he reflected, are his trouser pocket. It made a very tight fit, but going to be hard to dispose of. His immediate he did not care to take chances on ammunition plan was to get off the boat, which he thought getting wet. The effect of immersing shells in he might be able to do, taking advantage of the water was always doubtful.

darkness. But he couldn’t leave two uncon-Very carefully, he raised his head scious men behind—they would revive even-through the hatch. It was rather dark, the is-tually. He did not have the necessary amount land looked about as he had expected it to of cold blood to fix them so they wouldn’t re-look—low, coral and sand, mangroves and vive.

lignum-vitae and a very few tall palms on The island—if he got on it—would be a slightly higher ground nearby. A cloud bank in small one, he surmised. Probably no more the east and south was nearer than he had than a cay, a handful of sand, coral, man-expected, and lightning occasionally crawled groves and a few palm trees, and obviously about high up in the clouds. There was no au-uninhabited. He had not seen the island, but it dible thunder.

did not take much guesswork to decide what Withdrawing his head, he listened to the kind of a place it was. The men had shown no sounds aft. Apparently they were cooking, and apprehension at all about anyone on the island part of them lounging in the cockpit where discovering them, therefore the island was not there were cushions.

inhabited.

He had already worked out a plan for He had no liking for being chased about putting the schooner at a disadvantage, and he on a small cay by ten or a dozen armed men concluded to go ahead with it. He would need who already had killed two, which was what line, probably fifty feet of it. There was always would happen once the two prisoners awak-plenty of rope around a sailing vessel, and he ened and gave an alarm.

located the line locker, port side, ahead of the The problem solved itself quite nicely.

bunks, and selected a length. He coiled it very He leaned down to see what kind of box the carefully, shaking out the kinks, then swung it men had brought into the forecastle. He was over his shoulder and head, under one arm.

so relieved he all but fell on his face. Whiskey!

Going out on deck, he moved casually, A case of whiskey. Old Jug Bourbon Whiskey, but kept low, the way he had come aboard. He was stencilled on the case.

went down into the water the same way, hanging to the jib basket, then the bobstay, then lowering himself an inch at a time. The water THREE TIMES A CORPSE

43
was warm, and there was a slight current into HE did not linger around the creek and the mangrove creek, which meant he would the schooner, because he wanted a general have to go against the current in swimming aft.

idea of the shape of the island, and the light-He took a deep breath, sank, and swam ning that was jabbing white-tongues out of the toward the stern. Presently he bumped into the front and base of the oncoming thundersquall centerboard, which was down, but not hard was the best source of light he would have, enough, he hoped, to be heard on the schoo-probably, for several hours.

ner. He went on, began to need air, finally The palm trees, some of them probably coming up under the stern overhang. He lis-close to a hundred feet in height, would give a tened for a while. So far, it seemed to be work-good vantage point—if he could climb them ing.

without being discovered. But he watched the Removing the hank of line, he uncoiled it palm trees, boles silver-white, standing out in carefully, letting the current carry the rope each distant lightning flash, and decided it was away, stringing it out so that it would not tan-too risky. The palm trunks were too conspicu-gle. Then he sank, found the propeller, and ous.

began making repeated turns around propeller He moved instead in a wide circle to the and shaft. The shaft, he discovered, ran beach. Coral islands usually had a beach, al-through a bearing strut after it left the shaft log.

though it wasn’t necessarily of sand, nor He took fifteen or twenty turns around propeller smooth. This one in particular was not smooth: and strut in the course of three submersions.

it was of honeycomb coral, about as easy There was some line left. He decided to walking, if he had not been wise enough not to jam the rudder, which would prevent them us-remove his shoes, as so much broken glass.

ing sail until they had unfouled it. The rudder He kept close to the jungle until he had was centered, and he dared not try to move it, rounded a point and was where lightning because that would—if he did manage to move flashes would not reveal him to a lookout if it—spin the steering wheel in the cockpit. He there was one near the schooner.

made three loops from the rudder, wedging the The cay was about one half a mile in line in between gudgeons and pins, and car-length, a couple of hundred yards wide at the ried it over to the propeller and lashing the broadest part, and there was shoal water on end.

the west side, which was the side opposite the A man underwater with a sharp knife lagoon. He could not tell much about the reef could eventually remove the impediment, but, formation, but if it ran according to pattern, once the propeller had further fouled itself by there would be a pocket of deep water inside a endeavoring to turn, it would be a brisk half reef that would not necessarily be exposed hour job. He hoped.

even at low tide, but which would be effective He swam back underwater to the bow of protection.

the schooner. The ticklish job, getting away He kept going. He was thinking of the from the schooner, was ahead of him. He cabin cruiser they’d sighted earlier in the day. .

watched
the
water,
disturbed
about

. . If the cruiser was going to approach the is-phosphorescence. There were fish in the land, the logical time to do it would be in the creek, he knew, and there should be wake of the thunderstorm—far enough back to phosphorescence when they moved—if this be out of the line squall that would precede the was one of the nights when there was a lot of storm, but also close enough to take advan-the sea fire. There was more of the stuff some tage of the uproar of the storm.

nights than others. He decided finally that it The squall was approaching, he decided, was safe enough.

at about twenty miles an hour, which was a He drew in a deep breath, sank, and good speed, but one which a capable ocean-swam with the current. The guns, the bottle going express cruiser could handle.

filled with cartridges, helped keep him down.

He kept going until he reached the east-He veered a little to the right, intent on coming ern side of the island, then, on a smooth to the surface under the overhanging man-stretch of sand, lay down to wait, to watch the groves when he ran out of breath.

play of lightning, gauge the storm and try, in Thunder was whooping discontentedly in particular, to learn whether the cabin cruiser the distance when he crawled out among the was running along on the outskirts of the mangroves.

squall. He did not see it.

44

DOC SAVAGE

The air became hot, still, for a few moments. Then he began to hear the hissing of the squall line between the licking of lightning, the crash and rumble of thunder. Quickly, then, the wind came.

HARD coral sand hit his hands and face, feeling, when there was darkness, like hard raindrops. There wasn’t much darkness now; the lightning was an almost continuous blaze.

There was not more than a minute and a half of wind, then the rain came marching in a tor-tured wall, and hit him solidly, like a living, angry animal. It was not a large nor violent rain squall as tropical squalls went, but for a few moments it seemed utterly fierce and violent.

The rain, after three or four minutes of rushing fury, slackened to an even downpour which would, he surmised, last another fifteen minutes or so. He gave his attention to the sea now. . . .

The dinghy came in rapidly, without lights. He heard the motor, and the motor stopped, long before he saw the small boat.

But presently he knew from what direction it was coming.

He waited for a lightning flash to come, blaze, die. Then he sprinted across the beach, went into the water as silently as possible, and, when the surf was considerably less than knee deep, went flat. After that, he crawled—so that other lightning flashes would not silhouette him—out into neckdeep water.

It was more difficult now to keep track of the incoming small boat. He spotted it twice more by sound, then by sight as lightning flick-ered distantly. He heard someone curse the lightning softly.

Sam Clark’s voice said, “Never mind the lightning. If they see us, it might be just as well.”

There was surf coming in, but it was not high. The waves, even close in and breaking, were not more than three feet. The squall had been too fast-moving and brief to kick up much of a surf.

Doc, moving without splashing, got directly in front of the dinghy. He did most of his breathing in the wave troughs, let the crests pass over his head by diving through them.

When the boat was quite close, he sank,

“Don’t start shooting,” he said.

let it pass overhead, located it with his hands, The oars—two men were rowing—
came up swiftly behind it and hooked a hand stopped.

over the stern. He swung a revolver over the stern with his right hand.

THREE TIMES A CORPSE

45

“Clark,” Doc said. “Better tell them not to

“You’re probably not giving up anything, start shooting. . . . You’ll want to know what Petey. Put them down. I don’t know how the you’re getting into.”

hell he got here alive—unless that girl lied to The silence continued. Doc didn’t like it.

us—but he’s probably got some interesting They were, he surmised, armed like comman-words for us.”

dos.

Doc said, “That should go both ways.”

Petey said, “God bless us—a ghost!” For In a moment, when the lightning came once he did not use Cockney, Australian, again, he saw that their hands no longer held Brooklyn or any other dialect. He sounded like guns. Whether they had pocketed them, or put a Boston gentleman in church.

them in the bottom of the boat, he had no idea.

Clark said, “Savage. . . . Doc Savage?”

“Where are Monk Mayfair and Ham

“We’re going to turn a light on you.”

Brooks?” Doc demanded.

“Wait for a lightning flash.”

“On the cruiser.”

“Well . . . okay. . . . Anybody with you?”

“Very far out?”

“No.”

“Half a mile.”

The lightning took its time about coming,

“Two of you row back out there and get and when a long spark of it did race across the them,” Doc said. “The rest of us will wait on streaming rump of the thunderstorm, it showed shore.”

five men and the muzzles of five guns intently Sam Clark took a long time—probably a interested and waiting.

minute, but it seemed longer—to think that over.

“You heard the pronouncement, boys,”

DOC moved hastily when darkness he said.

came. He got to one side of the dinghy stern and as far from it as he could get and still keep one hand on it.

Chapter XII

Sam Clark said, “I thought you never used a gun.”

THE dinghy swung about after all but the

“I don’t like to.” He hoped the location of two oarsmen had unloaded, and headed back his voice would not be too definite.

out to sea. Because it was still raining, the

“This could get messy.”

small boat was quickly lost to sight and hear-

“It could.”

ing.

Clark said finally, “Hold it, boys. It’s Sav-Sam Clark cleared his throat quietly. “If age, all right.”

this is a trick to get us ashore into the hands of

“He’s supposed to be dead,” Petey said.

them guys—”

“Well, he’s not.”

“It’s not,” Doc said.

“Yeah, and it’s kinda funny, ain’t it?

Clark hesitated. “Damned good thing I Kinda mysterious. Maybe somebody didn’t kinda got acquainted with you,” he said finally.

want him dead after all.”

“All right, boys, wade ashore.”

Sam Clark made a vague noise. “Shut Doc followed behind them. He knew that up,” he said.

they half suspected they were walking into an Doc asked, “How are we going to work ambush. He made no comment, except to say, this out?”

“Keep down and crawl. And when you reach

“You mean—who’s going to get shot?”

the beach, don’t be too prominent strolling

“We can start with that.”

across it. Nor too slow.”

“I always hate to think in a hurry,” Sam Each man crossed the beach in sprinting Clark sounded worried. “Make a lot of mistakes haste. There was no incident, except that that way.”

Petey ran headlong into some kind of a tropical Doc, sounding as ominous and threaten-cactus, and expressed his feelings in a ing as he could, said, “Let’s begin by putting hoarsely agonized whisper.

those guns down. We’re getting nowhere this Sam Clark cleared his throat. “Miss way.”

Jones said you were dead. Shot.”

There was a silence.

“Bulletproof vest,” Doc explained. “They

“Put ‘em down boys,” Sam Clark said.

heaved me overboard in too much of a hurry Petey swore bitterly. “Are we gonna give afterward. The one who shot me—they call up?”

46

DOC SAVAGE
him Bill—was sure two bullets where he had Doc said, “I got off the schooner less put those had killed me. Which was logical.”

than an hour ago. Two of them jerked the sail

“Which shows how logic can foul up a off me, but I managed to lay them out. They situation,” Sam Clark muttered. “Bill . . . That had sneaked a case of bourbon whiskey, into must be Bill Lonnie. He’s second boy to the the forecastle. I poured nearly a quart down stud duck. He’s the right hand that does the each one.”

work. I hope I get a shot at him, I sure do.

“You used more restraint than I would,”

What about Barnes?”

Petey said suddenly. Petey still had a Bosto-

“Barnes was dead when Lucky and I nian sound.

came aboard with Snelling. They hanged him.”

Doc asked, “What are you, an actor?”

“What did they do with Barnes’ body?”

“Me?” Petey sounded surprised. “How’d Sam Clark was suddenly hoarse with emotion.

you know?”

He added, “The dirty so-and-sos.”

“He’s no actor,” Sam Clark said. “He’s

“I think,” Doc said, “that they dumped my private secretary. . . . I’m not kidding.”

Barnes’ body in the river after mine. There was

“I don’t think you’re kidding,” Doc said.

some talk about it before they threw me in. I’m

“When did you figure it out?” Sam Clark not sure that’s what happened, but it probably asked suddenly.

did.”

“When that fellow Mesana was mur-

“The dirty so-and-sos,” Sam Clark said.

dered, some of it,” Doc said. “I figured out who He used the words so-and-sos, giving them a killed him, and then I made a bad mistake—I meaning, with his tone and delivery, that was let it go on cooking to see what would boil to agonized, bitter, completely malevolent.

the surface. That was an error.”

Doc added, “They tied a weight to my Sam Clark grunted. “Maybe it wasn’t.

feet. I got it loose, swam to the bow, climbed Not a mistake, I mean.”

up the bobstay and jib basket, got into the

“No?”

forecastle, got under a light sail because I fig-

“I was in a little different frame of mind ured there was enough wind they wouldn’t use then,” Clark said grimly. “I was pretty greedy the light sails. It was a balloon jib. It proved to right then. I was greedy up to the point where I be lucky figuring. They didn’t bother the sail.”

found out from Lucky Jones that Barnes had

“Brainy thinking, not luck,” Sam Clark been knocked off. . . . That girl’s unusual.

said. “You’ve got more damned guts than I She’s got more nerve than a politician.”

have, and I’m not supposed to be exactly Doc was silent. He watched the sea.

empty.”

Usually he could keep fairly close track of time, Doc said, “They sailed her hard and put but now he was confused, and could not tell in the lagoon about daylight. They were lying whether the dinghy had had time to go half a up the mangrove creek when you passed this mile and return. It was important.

morning. Did you see them?”

“You got the rest of it doped out?” Sam

“We saw the topmast. We’ve got Clark demanded suddenly.

damned good binoculars aboard.”

“Most of it, probably. . . . I don’t know

“They were suspicious, but not too sus-what kind of cargo the steamer had, for one picious.”

thing. Metal. But what kind?”

“That’s a damned bad mistake they

“It’s metal, all right.”

made.” Sam Clark sounded guttural, tense.

“What kind?”

Presently he added, “That, and killing poor old Sam Clark sighed. “Beryllium. It’s no Barnes, the dirty so-and-sos.”

wonder metal, but they worked out a way of refining it and alloying it with aluminum, and using it in aircraft. It’s pretty good, that alloy.

THE rain, slackening suddenly, fell only On a B19 plane, for instance, using the alloy in a thin mist. To the south and west, the direc-saves enough weight to let the ship carry tion from which the thunderstorm had come, about nine tons extra load.”

the sea took on a pale silver tint which was Doc said, “A shipment from South Amer-evidently from moonlight. The sky, following ica, eh?”

the storm, was going to clear.

“You hear them say that?”

From the sea in the direction the dinghy

“No. But lots of it comes from South had gone, there was silence and darkness.

America. The Nazis got about two thousand tons out of South America in 1941, before we THREE TIMES A CORPSE

47
got into the war and put a stop to it. They had, Lieutenant Avery said, “Sure, there’s one incidentally, worked out ways of alloying it with guy on the boat. She’s just contrary. She other metals to make machine parts—wanted to get her head shot off.”

principally springs that never get tired.”

They carried the dinghy across the sand

“Hell, you must be a metallurgist!”

and planted it in some brush, then whittled

“Not especially.” Doc turned his attention some fronds off palmetto shrubs and covered to the sea again. “I think the dinghy is coming,”

it.

he said.

“DOES everyone understand what is go-THE dinghy came in cautiously. It was a ing on here?” Doc asked.

ghostly presence, only faintly heard, for the

“We’ve got some ideas,” Ham said.

lightning had almost ceased.

“Sam Clark will give us a brief review,”

“That cop and that assistant district at-Doc said. “I think we have time for that.”

torney are aboard, and the girl,” Sam Clark Clark hesitated, then said gloomily, said. “I forgot to tell you that.”

“There was a steamer loaded with beryllium, a

“They come along willingly?”

metal that’s used in airplanes and alloys. It

“Not exactly.”

was bound from South America to Norfolk. It Doc did not press for details. “We’d bet-got a torpedo about a hundred miles from ter drag the dinghy, or carry it, rather, across here—this was during the war—and started to the beach and hide it.”

sink. The crew abandoned ship in a hell of a They walked across the beach, entered hurry, but they left one guy aboard. He was the surf, and crouched there, lest there be an-knocked out by the explosion and they didn’t other lightning flash that might disclose their happen to notice him. Well, it was a rough presence.

night, dark and stormy, and the torpedoed

“What about Snelling?” Sam Clark de-steamer got separated from the lifeboats. It manded suddenly.

didn’t sink. The guy who was knocked out

“I don’t know.”

wakes up, and he was able to get a little way

“Hell—isn’t he on the schooner?”

on the ship. He was one of the engineers, so

“I didn’t see him or hear his voice.”

he could do that. He saw this little island, and

“That’s queer.”

tried to put in here, but the steamer didn’t

“I thought so.”

make it. It sank just outside the channel into Clark swore softly. “He’s gotta be the lagoon. The guy got ashore. A few days aboard—if they didn’t tie a rock to his feet and later, he was picked up. He didn’t tell anybody drop him overboard too. I wouldn’t put it past that he knew where the steamer sank, and that them.”

it was in shoal water. He kept his mouth shut Doc said nothing.

until the war was over. Then he approached Out in the surf, someone called uneasily, Barnes and Warner. His proposition was that “Is it okay?”

they finance him to salvage the beryllium, and

“Come on in, Monk,” Doc said.

he would sell it to them at a sacrifice. . . . Well, Monk gasped, “It’s true! You’re alive, Barnes and Warner, I’m sorry to say, got some Doc! Ham and I—we’ve been worried sick—we crooked ideas of their own.”

thought—” He choked down, too affected by Doc said, “Why don’t you call a spade a relief to make words fit together.

spade?”

The dinghy came in, and the occupants

“Eh?”

climbed out in knee-deep water. They identi-

“You’re Warner.”

fied themselves as Ham, Police Lieutenant Sam Clark breathed inward and outward Avery and Assistant District Attorney Bridges.

deeply. “Yeah, I’m John Warner. How’d you Lucky was the last one out.

figure it out?”

Doc said, “You shouldn’t have brought Lucky said, “I figured it out, too. The pho-the girl. There is going to be shooting and—”

tographs on the Virginia Dare, a picture of you

“If you think I was going to stay on that and Barnes together, old pals stuff. I decided boat alone, you’re crazy!” Lucky declared.

you were Warner right then.”

“Alone! Isn’t there anyone on the boat?”

“I’m Warner,” Clark admitted. “Here’s what happened: This guy approached Barnes, my partner. He had never seen me, so we—”

48

DOC SAVAGE

In the distance, two shots sounded. They water in front of the swimmer’s face, and the came from the direction of the Virginia Dare, fellow reversed and swam the other direction.

lying in the mangrove creek. Another shot fol-Petey aimed at him again.

lowed. A pause. A yell. Three more shots.

Doc knocked the gun up, and said, Petey blurted, “My God, they didn’t wait!”

“That’s cold blooded murder. Stop it!”

“Who didn’t wait?” Doc demanded.

Petey said, “Sure, they treated Mr. Bar-

“The rest of my crew,” Sam Clark nes with great courtesy, didn’t they!” But he gasped. “They were in the other dinghy. They didn’t fire again, and the swimmer, reaching were to circle the island and come in on the shallow water, stood with both arms upraised.

schooner from the other direction.”

Doc, lifting his voice, roared, “Let them Doc said, “Come on.”

surrender! Give them a chance to surrender!”

The result of his warning was not good.

Two men were promptly shot down on the THEY ran, keeping in a compact group, schooner deck.

and following the beach. Doc, from time to

“Clark, they know your voice—tell them time, gave instructions about where the easy to take prisoners!”

going would lie.

Sam Clark—or Warner—said, “This

“How many in the other dinghy?”

breaks my heart, but okay.” He raised his own

“Five,” Sam Clark said. “There are voice and bellowed, “Doc Savage is with us.

eleven of us, all told. One on the cruiser, five He says take prisoners. Better do it, or we’ll here, five in the other dinghy.”

get mixed up in a murder trial! If they want to

“Didn’t you have a signal?”

surrender, let them. Take prisoners.”

“Yes. A shot. One of the guys on the The shooting stopped while he was bel-schooner must have fired on them, and set lowing. The fire still burned noisily; it reached things off.”

the fuel tanks of the schooner, and there was a

“Look!” Lieutenant Avery barked.

hollow explosion, a fountain-like climbing of They had rounded a headland, the man-flames, burning fragments, sparks above the grove creek in which the schooner lay was not schooner.

more than two hundred yards distant, and they Someone on the opposite side of the could see that the schooner was on fire.

creek asked loudly, “What prisoners?”

Flames, orange-colored, bundled most of the

“Blazes!” Monk was horrified. “Have they cockpit area, and dark smoke was crawling killed them all?”

upward.

“How did that happen?” Doc demanded.

“I would be surprised as anything if it NOT all, it developed. Only four. Three hadn’t happened,” Sam Clark said. “We spent more were badly wounded, two were standing all day making up home-made incendiary with their hands up, one was swimming in the bombs. Burn them out, we figured, was the creek, and one, it seemed, was still in ambush best way to upset them.”

in the burning schooner.

Petey said, “Give us a little light for Doc Savage said hoarsely, “The two in shooting, too.”

the forecastle—” He ran to the mooring line, The shooting commenced again. This went out hand over hand, and reached the time it was a light machine gun, and it loos-forecastle deck. Shouting down the hatch, he ened long bursts. Rifles joined in.

said, “Snelling—Snelling, are you safe? I was Doc said, “If they are using that machine worried.”

gun—”

Snelling’s voice—after the man had time

“We’re the ones with the machine gun,”

to think—said, “Is that—what are you—”

Sam Clark said.

“I came aboard to save you. Come on!

They drew near the burning schooner.

Hurry, man! The boat is going to pieces in a Figures were moving in the firelight, both on minute!”

the schooner and on the shore. The guns con-Coughing, gasping, Snelling came out of tinued whacking. The sub-machine gun emp-the smoke-filled after section of the boat. He tied one drum of ammunition, and started spit-said, “I don’t—they’ve had me prisoner—what ting a second. Petey unlimbered a revolver, has happened!”

aimed at a man swimming in the mangrove creek, and fired. The bullet dug up a gout of THREE TIMES A CORPSE

49

“We caught up with them. Give me a

“He didn’t know you were Warner, of the hand. Let’s get these two unconscious men two partners, Barnes and Warner?”

ashore.”

“Never.”

Getting the two intoxicated men, alive

“How come?”

but quite helpless, out of the forecastle bunks

“He just never saw me. I struck up an and on deck was a muscle-wrenching job.

acquaintance with him as Sam Clark. Petey Smoke and heat did not make it easier. Doc, helped me. We gave him the idea we were a on deck, managed to heave them as far as pair of no-goods. The idea was that he might shallow water, where Lieutenant Avery and hire us for his salvage gang, and we would find Monk could get hold of them and drag them to out where the steamer lay—then take it over safety.

on a regular salvage deal that would have Doc hauled Snelling out of the forecas-given us fifty per cent of the cargo, a better tle.

deal than we were getting from him.”

“Come on!”

“Hell!” Lieutenant Avery said. “That Snelling discovered the men on shore.

wasn’t a crooked deal on your part!” He

“Who—there’s Sam Clark!” His voice was sounded disappointed. “You mean you were strained, wild. Snelling plunged into the water, going to notify the regular owners and insur-paddled ashore, crawled out on dry land. He ance company and collect salvage?”

stumbled toward Sam Clark, wailed, “Sam! Oh,

“Yeah.”

thank God, Sam, you could come—”

Doc Savage said, “Let’s have the rest of Sam Clark hit him a terrific blow in the the background.”

face with his fist. Snelling fell loosely, and Sam Clark nodded. “Not much to it.

Clark, suddenly over him, lifted a foot to stamp Snelling became suspicious of Barnes, and down on Snelling’s face. Doc, reaching them, Barnes, for his own protection, told Snelling he shoved Clark aside.

was going to ask you for help if Snelling got

“Let the law do it,” Doc said.

funny. So Snelling cooked up that crackpot Sam Clark seemed dazed. “Why the idea of having Petey and me shoot at you, devil did he come at me like that, whining and then decoy you off to Montana. That way, Bar-fawning?”

nes couldn’t appeal to you for help. . . . I guess Doc shrugged. “He thought we didn’t Snelling had Mesana try to kill Lucky because know he was the sailor who was left on the she knew Snelling and might point a bit of sus-steamer after it was torpedoed. I suppose I picion at him, and then, after you caught Me-gave him that idea. It seemed the best way of sana, Snelling killed him there in the hotel getting him out of the boat without more shoot-room. I don’t know how.”

ing—make him think we didn’t know he was

“Cyanide in a cigarette,” Doc said. “Then their leader.”

Snelling pulled fake stuff with the darts, which Petey swore. “He didn’t know you were he must have had ready to use if necessary or John Warner, Sam. Can you beat that?”

he got a chance—he had probably been ex-perimenting with them and found out they wouldn’t really kill a man effectively. Part of the THEY herded the surviving prisoners on fakery was claiming someone was outside, to the beach and searched them. Monk and and had fired the darts.”

Ham tried without success to build a fire from

“I guess so,” Clark said gloomily. “Then the soaked jungle wood, gave it up when they Snelling had his men kill Barnes, because they discovered some of the prisoners carried flash-were so stirred up by then that Barnes had to lights which were serviceable.

be killed before he could talk to you. After they Lieutenant Avery searched Snelling. “So had killed you—they thought—they knew they this bird was the dark horse?”

had better clear out, so they took Barnes’ boat,

“He was the sailor left on the torpedoed and did so.”

steamer,” Sam Clark explained. “Like I told

“How,” Doc demanded, “did you know you, he got the steamer this far and it sank where the island was?”

outside the lagoon, and he was picked up and

“Oh, I had found that out from talking kept his mouth shut about the whereabouts of with the divers Snelling had hired. You see, the ship. After the war, he approached us, and they had made another trip over here to look we decided to doublecross him.”

over the lay of the ship and decide how much the salvage job would take. . . . That was so 50

DOC SAVAGE
they could talk business with Barnes. Barnes Avery laughed. “With your gambling demanded exact figures and an estimate from luck—no.”

an experienced diver. It was the diver I pumped.”

Lieutenant Avery was looking around cu-THAT was where they found him.

riously. “Where the devil,” he demanded, “is our bright young legal light, Assistant District Attorney Bridges?”

THE END

No one, it developed, could recall having seen Mr. Bridges since the fighting started.

Lucky made an offer.

“Does anyone want to bet me,” she suggested, “that we don’t find Mr. Bridges well hidden in the top of a palm tree?”

DON’T MISS

. . . T H E E X P L O D I N G L A K E,

in the September issue of DOC SAVAGE,

on sale July 26.

Table of Contents

- Chapter I
- Chapter VI
- Chapter VII
- Chapter VIII
- Chapter IX
- Chapter XII