THE TALKER
Doc Savage was reconnoitering No. 13 Old Crossing Lane. The Lane was a thoroughfare of decadent business houses and rambling warehouses which, during the day, teemed with activity, but which were quiet at this hour, with virtually no one afoot.
As for No. 13 itself, that proved to be a clock repair shop, on the front of which a large timepiece was mounted as an advertisement. The hands of this clock registered the correct time, but the striking arrangement was not correct.
The clock was striking an hour behind time. While Sen Gat was telephoning to Doc Savage, a clock had struck; and the bronze man, after counting the strokes, had enlisted the aid of Scotland Yard in locating a clock which was an hour tardy.
Sen Gat, he was fairly certain, had phoned from the neighborhood; but there was the chance, of course, that the fellow had merely stopped off in the vicinity to make his call.
Doc did not show himself as he scrutinized near-by windows, seeking one which was open. In the distance, Big Ben struck the hour, its deep-throated reverberations tumbling hollowly across the sleeping city. An instant later the timepiece on the clock store began to gong. It fell one stroke short of the correct time.
Most of the windows in the neighborhood—grime-smeared panes—were closed, but here and there one was partially raised, and Doc studied these intently. Light glowed behind only one.
The bronze man moved to the door of that building, listened for only a short time, and became convinced—due to small sounds—that there was a man on the other side—a lookout.
He knocked on the door. There was no answer.
Doc Savage spoke numerous languages with the fluency of a native. He used the Malayan tongue now.
“A message, thou dog!” he said, low-voiced. “Open up!”
There ensued a long pause. Then, from the other side of the door: “A message for whom?”
“For Sen Gat.”
“Sen Gat is not here,” imparted the guard.
“Open the door, offspring of a worm! I was told to come here.”
The fact that Doc spoke flawless Malayan probably did more than anything else to allay the suspicions of the watchman. The door opened. The lookout had a gun in his hand, but never got the chance to use it.
A noiseless storm of bronze seemed to drift through the opening. The gun was grasped, a metallic thumb preventing the fall of the hammer, and the weapon was twisted away. Doc’s fingers found the lookout’s neck and exerted pressure.
The man was a thin, hatchet-faced fellow. He subsided soundlessly. Doc, with his extensive knowledge of human anatomy, had found and squeezed certain nerve centers, inducing quick unconsciousness.
Lowering the gun, Doc mounted the stairs.
The wooden steps were bare of covering. They squeaked despite all Doc could do. He carried the guard’s gun in a hand, gripped by the barrel.
A door above opened and a head shoved out. It was the blue-jowled Indigo.
“You, fella—what b’long that noise!” he demanded.
Doc threw the gun. It struck Indigo on the jaw. He was knocked back through the door and made a loud sound falling to the floor.
Doc Savage hurtled upstairs. Gaining the top, he veered into the room. Two orientals were present.
Doc’s five men were also there—bound and gagged.
A slant-eyed man lifted a gun, aimed. Monk and Ham, flouncing simultaneously, kicked the fellow’s shins. That disturbed his aim. He stumbled, did not shoot but tried to correct his aim. The next instant, he collapsed under Doc’s malleting fist.
The bronze man moved with incredible speed. He lunged for the second yellow man. This one held a crooked creese.
The creese stabbed, sliced and gouged. But ft only found thin air. The wielder cackled maledictions in his native tongue, appalled at the way his slashes were evaded by the bronze giant.
Doc, diving in, let the blade pass over a shoulder—the same shoulder which had been grooved by a bullet earlier in the night. He grasped the man’s ankles, yanked. The fellow laid himself down heavily on the floor.
Doc knocked the creese aside, grasped a wrist and twisted. The creese hiphopped across the floor. A blow quieted the knifeman.
Securing the creese, Doc slashed his men free, noting that they had been tied with painful tightness.
The homely, apelike Monk was the first liberated. He got to his feet, waving arms and stamping feet to restore circulation; and the others followed his example.
Doc glanced at the open window. A telephone occupied a stand beside it, and directly across the narrow street was the clock shop. Making use of the telephone, Doc got the Piccadilly House and asked for his own suite.
The operator rang several times, then reported, “No answer.”
“That’s strange,” Doc said thoughtfully. “Lucile Copeland and Maples were to wait there.”
“Sen Gat!” Monk grunted.
“What about him?”
“If you ask me, he was up to somethin’ when he left here.”
“How soon did he leave—after he phoned me?”
“Right away.”
Doc went down to the doorman, carried him upstairs easily under an arm, dumped him beside the one who had wielded the creese, then made it a threesome by adding Indigo.
The phone rang.
Doc went to the instrument, lifted the receiver, debated a moment, then spoke, using a voice which was a fairly exact imitation of Indigo’s Kanaka dialect.
“Ee-yess.”
“The trade is no longer necessary,” said Sen Gat’s voice. “Do you understand what that means?”
“Mebbeso. You fella mean five piecee Doc Savage fliend we all same no need. Lightee?”
“Exactly. Get rid of them. Knives first, then the Thames. Understand?”
Doc returned to his normal voice. “You want all five murdered, eh?”
Shocked silence came over the wire, then Sen Gat breathed, “Doc Savage!”
The receiver at the other end clicked up. Sen Gat had probably received a number of surprises in his checkered career, but it was likely that this one would rank among the outstanding.
Turning from the instrument, Doc advised his five aides, “Sen Gat just ordered your death.”
Renny opened and shut his enormous fists. “That means the guy has pulled some kind of a fast one.”
Doc nodded slowly. “I wonder what he has done.”
“He made off with my pig, Habeas Corpus,” Monk growled. “Maybe that’s got somethin’ to do with it.”
Long Tom, the electrical wizard, pointed a pallid finger at Indigo. “Suppose we put the pump on these babies.”
“An idea,” Doc agreed.
With various expert strokings of experienced fingers, Doc brought the blue-jowled Indigo back to consciousness. The thrown gun had loosened a few of the man’s teeth. He was in great pain.
Huge fists hopefully ready, Renny sank to a knee in front of Indigo. “How about bangin’ him around a little, Doc?”
Indigo looked at the fists, then rolled his eyes. “You fella lemme go. Savvy!”
“Sure!” Monk leered. “We’re likely to do that!”
The obtaining of information from unwilling subjects Doc Savage had long ago found to be vitally important, and he had, accordingly, mastered numerous ways of doing it—employing truth serums, hypnotism, and other systems. He knew much of the psychology of fear and how it could be applied to a man’s brain to bring out facts, like a fire set to a jungle covert to frighten forth the game within.
Doc Savage performed upon Indigo’s joints and nerve centers, bringing excruciating but harmless pain. The others stood around and talked—their manner, their words, indicating that Indigo’s prospects of remaining among the living were slender.
By its very nature, the human mentality is flexible, capable of adapting itself to changed circumstances, so it was not long before Indigo had a strong conviction that he actually was near death. Terror seized him. He groped for methods of avoiding his fate, and before long he was talking.
“What you fella likee know?” he groaned. “Mebbeso me talk-talk—if you no kill.”
“What has Sen Gat got up his sleeve?” Doc demanded.
“Sen Gat fella send Missy Lucile Copeland an’ Maples alongside fly ship b’long Indo-China.”
“Holy cow!” exploded Renny. “Sent Lucile Copeland and Maples to Indo-China by plane! How’d he do it?”
Indigo answered that. “Fake bobby fella take pig. All same say him fella b’long name Monk.”
“Blazes!” Monk grated. “One of Sen Gat’s gang is pretendin’ to be me! That’s why they made off with Habeas Corpus.”
Indigo was questioned further, and the whole story came out. Sen Gat’s scheme was simple, but highly efficient if it worked. Lucile Copeland and Maples would innocently conduct Sen Gat’s men to Indo-China to the city of The Thousand-headed Man.
Doc Savage hurriedly set his men to checking, by telephone, airports adjacent to London. Of each flying field they inquired if an apish-looking individual and persons answering the description of Lucile Copeland and Maples had taken off in a plane.
Within a few minutes they learned that the tri-motored low-wing ship had departed with their quarry. It was Monk who elicited the information, and he made inquiries about the speed of the plane.
“Blazes!” he groaned, hanging up. “Their bus is mighty fast.”
“How fast?”
“Cruises at well over two hundred miles an hour!”
Doc was silent a moment. “That makes their plane just about as fast as the one we have. We’re going to have trouble catching them, men.”
The bronze man now put more questions to Indigo. “You killed the three men at Lucile Copeland’s house, didn’t you?”
Indigo naturally denied that. “No, no! You fellas b’long bad idea!”
“Then who killed them? The job was done with your creese.”
Indigo did some desperate thinking, and with some hazy idea of passing the buck indicated his companion. “This fella, him glab my knife to stick ’em.”
“Velly big lie!” howled the oriental.
The prisoners burst out in a fierce exchange of accusations.
Indigo, finding himself outnumbered, became more terrified and tried to make it up by more vehemently asserting his partners were the real murderers.
When Doc Savage turned them over to the police they were still swapping accusations. That alone was sufficient to clear Doc of the murder charge cunningly lodged by Sen Gat. Doc was, however, forced to confer with the police officials for some hours before things were satisfactorily explained.
The London police spread a net for Sen Gat, but Doc Savage credited it with scant chance of apprehending the master schemer, since Sen Gat could be expected to take great precautions now that some of his own schemes had been unbalanced and were collapsing about his ears.
As it developed, the London officers found no trace of Sen Gat. In some respects, the oriental section of the city was like an inscrutable mask; Sen Gat betook himself behind it, and no sign of him could be found.
Doc Savage and his five men lost no time in shifting to the airport—Croydon Field—where they had left their plane. They loaded equipment aboard, attended to fuel and oil, and took the air.
They were nearly ten hours behind the fake Monk, Lucile Copeland and Maples, as they took off for Indo-China.