THE BOBBY TRICK
Sen Gat’s house in Shoreditch was dark. No orientals trod the streets in front, for the hour was getting late.
At the corner—a block distant—a stooped, wrinkled celestial crouched beside a tray which held sweetmeats and nuts. Buyers for the miserly wares could hardly be expected at this hour, but the wrinkled one sat patiently, head bowed, as if hoping ancestral spirits would take pity on him and send a customer along.
His eyes were sharp under his faded, flopping hat. They watched the door of Sen Gat’s house, and seldom wavered.
A taxi rolled up before Sen Gat’s abode, halted, and three men got out. One was tall and unbelievably thin, the second a giant with vast fists, and the third a lumbering ape of a fellow at whose heels a homely pig trotted.
Johnny, Renny and Monk stamped noisily up the steps and into Sen Gat’s house. Their hands were inside their coats however, resting upon weapons which resembled over-size automatics, but which were actually supermachine pistols capable of discharging bullets faster than a military machine gun.
The supermachine pistols were an invention of Doc Savage; their cartridges were not conventional lead slugs, but mercy bullets which inflicted a sudden unconsciousness instead of fatality.
“Watch it!” Monk said in his small voice.
Ham and Long Tom, the other two of Doc’s five aides, were at the rear door.
Monk and the two with him neglected to pay the old celestial peddler on the corner the attention he deserved.
The street hawker abruptly gathered up his wares and scuttled away.
“Where’d Doc say Sen Gat and the others were?” rumbled big-fisted Renny.
“Didn’t say.” Monk produced a flashlight. “Doc seemed kinda rushed. Wonder if he was in a jam?”
“He’ll get out of it, if he was,” Renny surmised.
They began to search, and came soon to the windowless cubicle in which Doc had left Sen Gat and the others. It was untenanted now. The tyings which Doc had applied to the truth-serum-dazed captives reposed on the floor. Monk examined them.
“Been cut!”
“Then somebody beat us here!” Renny boomed.
“Circumstantial evidence substantiates that assertion,” agreed the bony Johnny, who had a horror of small words when he could think of big ones.
Ham, with Long Tom, came in from the rear. Immediately he and Monk fell to scowling at each other.
“You should not drag that infernal pig around with you,” Ham offered.
“Yeah?” Monk leered. “He comes in handy sometimes.”
“Pipe down,” Renny grumbled. “I don’t like this. Let’s look the dump over and see what dirt we can turn up on this thing.”
They scattered and gave Sen Gat’s establishment a searching which a Scotland Yard investigator would have envied. Then they assembled to exchange notes.
“Papers in a desk show this Sen Gat is an importer,” offered Long Tom. “Trades in merchandise from Indo-China.”
“Keeps quite a gang around here, from the looks of sleeping accommodations,” added Renny.
“Warlike personalities, if the profusion of firearms and ammunition is a substantial basis for conjecture,” said big-worded Johnny.
“But nothing about any thousand-headed man, or three black sticks which are keys,” complained Ham.
“Say, you guys—lookit!” Monk exhibited a newspaper clipping which he had unearthed.
They gathered around and read:
EXPLORING PARTY LOST
Some anxiety is being felt over the safety of Calvin Copeland, who, with his wife and daughter, departed some months ago on an expedition into the interior jungles of Indo-China.
The only white man accompanying the Copelands was Rex Maples, an Englishman familiar with the Indo-China jungle.
The fact that the Copelands gave no information about their destination, keeping it a mystery, is a fact which makes a search for them almost hopeless.
The item bore a date four months old, and had been clipped from a London paper.
“What’s this all ab——” Monk swallowed the rest as he looked toward the door.
Several men came stamping in from the street.
The newcomers wore the uniforms of London policemen. They were burly men with jaws out-thrust. One fellow, evidently the one in command, strode in front.
This latter individual was extremely large. His arms were crooked beams, his head a hammered-down lump, with no appreciable length of neck below it. Gnarled fists, misshapen ears, a flat nose, indicated an earlier career not devoid of physical combat.
The homely giant bore a surprising general resemblance to Monk, except in one particular: he did not have Monk’s coat of fur. He was fully as large and possibly as strong as Monk.
“Doc Savage’s men?” asked the homely cop.
“Yeah,” Monk admitted.
“Name’s Sergeant Evall.” The apish officer thumbed his own chest. “Doc Savage told us we’d find you here.”
Monk blinked. “Doc sentcha?”
“Righto,” said Evall. “The big bronze fellow is in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Girl by name o’ Lucile Copeland accuses him o’ knifin’ three blokes in her house. We arrested the bronze one. ’E says as how you five chappies can give ’im an alibi, tellin’ where ‘e was durin’ the time o’ the murder.”
Monk scratched the stubble atop his nubbin of a head. “When’d the knifin’ take place?” he queried.
Evall shrugged. “Sorry gov’nor. You’d better go to the station house with us and explain at what hours tonight you’ve been wit’ the bronze bloke. If you accounts for the time o’ the killin’s, fine and dandy, and we’ll let ’im go. If not, we’ll bloomin’ well have to hold Doc Savage.”
“Sure,” Monk said eagerly. “We’ll go.”
Doc’s other four men nodded agreement and prepared to accompany the uniformed men.
“You’ve got Doc now?” Renny demanded.
“Oh, yes,” said Evall. “He surrendered quite peaceably at the scene of the killing.”
The party now left Sen Gat’s house. The uniformed men distributed themselves, one alongside each of Doc’s five aides. It was very much as if they were under a polite form of arrest. The street outside was infested with gloom and Shoreditch smells. A breeze had sprung up. Fog tendrils swept in front of the street lamps like marching phalanxes of transparent ghosts.
The street hawker, with his miserable tray of nuts and sweetmeats, was missing from the corner.
The fog had moistened the cobbles of the pavement, soaking the street filth and making a slime.
Johnny, the gaunt geologist, eyed the corner where the street peddler had been. He absently fingered the monocle magnifier which dangled from his lapel.
“Wait,” he said, and stopped suddenly.
“Well?” demanded Evall.
“We didn’t lock the doors,” Johnny stated. “I’m goin’ back and do that.”
Signs of tension came upon the faces of Doc’s other four men. Johnny had made a simple statement—but he had forgotten to use his usual big words. The skeleton-thin geologist never did that unless he was excited.
Johnny started back.
“I’ll go along, bloke,” muttered a uniformed man. He legged after Johnny.
The geologist entered Sen Gat’s house, said, “I’d better secure the rear door and windows,” and walked toward the back. A hand drifted inside his coat. Doc’s men had not been relieved of their supermachine pistols. Johnny’s fingers closed over the grip of his weapon.
Johnny was no mental sluggard. He had abruptly remembered the presence of the street hawker who was now gone. The detail, slight as it was, had made Johnny suspicious. He had been in trouble often enough not to overlook points like this.
Angling sidewise, Johnny picked up a telephone. His thin forefinger jiggled the hook until the operator was aroused.
“Police!” Johnny said.
The uniformed fellow who had accompanied the geologist shifted from foot to foot. His fists knotted, unknotted. His expression was that of a man in a dilemma.
He began, “Hey, bloke, what——”
“At what police station are they holding Doc Savage?” queried Johnny, keeping a clutch on his machine pistol.
“He’s——” the uniformed one floundered.
Johnny knew then that his suspicions were justified. He wrenched the superfirer from under his coat.
Simultaneously, the fake bobby went for a gun. He got his weapon out—not a service revolver, but a big blue automatic of American manufacture. The ugly twist of his lips showed that he intended to shoot.
Johnny’s superfirer made a weird, deafening moan. It was as if the bass string of a gigantic bull-fiddle had been stroked briefly. Empty cartridges spurted in a brassy procession from the ejector mechanism.
The false officer shuddered violently. Some of the mercy bullets had hit his legs. His arms extended rigidly, his knees buckled. He folded down on the floor, already unconscious.
An uproar came from the street outside. Revolvers banged; superfire pistols hooted; men shrieked. Curses volleyed in Malayan.
Renny and Monk thundered demands for a surrender. Johnny sprinted through the rooms, dived out of the front door and saw the fray was over. It had been surprisingly brief. Two of the spurious bobbies were down, overcome by the mercy slugs. The others had dropped their weapons and elevated hands.
The bobby trick had failed.
Monk grinned widely at the gangling Johnny as the latter approached.
“Daggone!” he chuckled. “What put you wise?”
“The celestial purveyor of dubious delectables had migrated,” Johnny imparted, returning to his large words.
“You think the slant-eyed peddler was a spy?” Monk questioned.
“A not unwarranted conjecture.”
“Blazes!” Renny thumped. “Then these mugs must be some of Sen Gat’s gang.”
“A scheme to grab us,” Long Tom surmised.
The fight had been anything but silent. No curious persons had appeared in the street, however, and no windows had lighted up. The orientals who dwelled here in Shoreditch evidently were no different from those in other parts of the globe. An inscrutable race, they believed in keeping clear of the other man’s troubles.
Monk collared the fake officer who bore a vague likeness to himself. “You workin’ for Sen Gat?”
The other glowered. “Take your dukes off me, bloke, or I’ll bust your face in!”
Monk flexed his arms. Some of the muscles which bulged up might conceivably have served as footballs, if detached. “Whenever you’re ready, cull!” he growled.
“Cut it out!” Renny rumbled.
“Let ’em fight,” Ham suggested hopefully. “Monk might get his block knocked off. It would teach him a lesson.”
“Nix!” Renny insisted. “We’ll take ’em back to Sen Gat’s house. We want to know what became of Sen Gat.”
“And there’s the little question of a thousand-headed man and three black keys,” Long Tom added.
“To say nothing of explorers named Copeland and a man called Maples,” furthered Renny.
They started back for Sen Gat’s habitation; but there was an interruption. Feet pounded the fog-smeared cobbles. A running figure plunged out of the mist, a grotesque shape in the nebulous void of vapor. It was a man in the uniform of a bobby.
“He heard the shots,” Monk hazarded.
The newcomer tilted his helmet back on his head. “I say, what’s goin’ on here?” he asked.
“A surprise party,” Renny boomed. “It goes like this—they surprise us, then we surprise them.”
The late arrival peered intently at the prisoners. His mouth came open and round. His eyes flew wide.
“Jove!” he exploded. “These chappies are bad ’uns! Scotland Yard has been wantin’ to see ’em for some time. I’ll call help.”
He clamped the whistle between his lips and blew shrilly.
That move completely allayed the suspicions of Doc’s men. They thought the newcomer was summoning other bobbies.
The next instant the fellow had snaked a revolver from inside his uniform coat and was menacing them.
“Up high!” he grated.
There was shocked silence for a second. Then Monk and the others slowly elevated their arms. They were not fools. Only one gun threatened them, but it held five cartridges; and to resist meant that some one would get shot.
The clatter of feet came from the near-by darkness. Men appeared, running, weapons in hand.
Sen Gat, nursing his protected finger nails, led the group. Indigo, blue-jowled, ferocious, was at his side. The others were Sen Gat’s men—all of oriental extraction.
Sen Gat and those of his satellites who had been victims had recovered fully from the effects of Doc’s truth serum.
“Excellent work!” Sen Gat told the last fake bobby.
Cars now rolled down the street, large, closed machines. Doc’s five men were forced to enter; then all of the captor gang loaded aboard.
The machines lost no time leaving the vicinity.