Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 2

"Viddy!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "What crazy thing you gonna do?"

"It has suddenly dawned on me that this mystery is serious!" the girl said, grimly. "I am going to get it solved!"

"Wait a minute!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "I don't think-"

"I want to talk to Doc Savage," the girl said into the telephone.

She listened for a time, then said, "That's unfortunate. I'm coming to New York. I have to see Doc Savage.

You try to find him in the meantime."

She hung up.

"Well?" asked Reservoir Hill.

"I TALKED to a man named Monk, who said he was one of Doc Savage's a.s.sistants," the girl explained. "He said Doc Savage was not in New York, that he was off at some place called a 'Fortress of Solitude.'"

"That," grunted Reservoir Hill, "let's Doc Savage out!"

"It does nothing of the kind!" said the girl, firmly. "I'll stop off and tell Andershott and Cugg that I'm on my way to New York to get Doc Savage. It may make them more comfortable if they know that."

"But why the heck go all the way to New York yourself? Telephoning will do just as good!"

"There's another reason."

"Huh?"

"Money."

"Oh!" Reservoir Hill pursed his lips out in the manner of a man who understands perfectly.

The girl said, "We're drilling this wildcat well on borrowed money. It's been an expensive well. We've already sunk over fifty thousand dollars. Our oil properties here in the Indian Dome Field are mortgaged heavily.

Unless we can borrow more money on them, we may be sunk before long."

"Don't tell me about it!" groaned Reservoir. "I recite it in my sleep!"

"There's money in New York," said the girl. "I'm going after it! And after Doc Savage!"

Chapter III. MURDER IN THE AIR.

THE plane was a big, low-winged cabin job, and probably one of the fastest and most comfortable commercial types of airliner in the world. It was one of hundreds of such planes flying regular schedules on Uncle Sam's air lines.

The plane was an hour out of Cleveland, Ohio, bound eastward, and flying high. Pilot and co-pilot were taking it easy. The hostess, having noted that it appeared no one was going to be sick on this flight, had stopped to talk to the fellow who wore pince-nez gla.s.ses.

The fellow was a wiry chap with a plain blue suit and a bright necktie. His face had a deep tan, and it was this tan which had moved the hostess to stop and talk to him, to permit herself to be talked to was more like it.

The man looked like a city grifter, except for the deep tan. Tans like that did not come from sunlamps. The pince-nez gla.s.ses made him look more gentlemanly, too.

The man had been trying outrageously to flirt with the hostess, and she had ignored him until this point.

As she halted beside his seat, the hostess noticed that the fellow wore plain black gloves of a very rich-looking leather.

Privately, the hostess wondered why the fellow had not tried to flirt with the girl in the adjacent compartment.

This girl was as pretty as any young woman the hostess had ever seen on a plane. That was something, because chorus girls and millionaire's cuties are frequent travelers by plane. The girl in the next compartment was preoccupied, as if she had something on her mind.

The hostess happened to know that this pretty girl was down on the pa.s.senger list as Vida Carlaw, of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The hostess immediately wished she hadn't stopped to let the wiry fellow with the black gloves speak to her.

"Listen, baby," said the man. "How about you and me going places and doing things after this magic carpet parks us in little old New York?"

The hostess didn't like the dead look in the man's eyes. Anyway, it was the crudest kind of approach.

"I beg pardon!" she said frigidly.

"Listen, sweetie pie," said the black-gloved man. "I'm the little airplane girl's friend. I like your type. You've got me all up in the air-"

"Then stay there!" suggested the hostess, and walked to her seat in the rear of the plane.

The hostess was angry as she plumped down on the cus.h.i.+ons. Perhaps the anger dulled her wits. She did not dream at the moment that she had been deliberately insulted. The wiry man had purposefully made her so angry that she would flounce back to her compartment and not show herself for a while.

The hostess remembered that another queer customer had come aboard the plane at Cleveland, too. This individual was big and wore a light gray-belted combination topcoat and a large gray hat, with the brim yanked down.

He had, the hostess also recalled, worn gloves, but she couldn't remember their color. This man had kept his chin in his collar when he came aboard, and had been wearing large horn-rimmed gla.s.ses, such as the movie stars affected when they wanted to disguise themselves.

The hostess was so wrapped in her thoughts that she failed to witness what was happening forward in the cabin. It was just as well, for it probably saved her from having nightmares.

THE plane was of the most modern type, which meant, of course, that it did not have the old-fas.h.i.+oned line of wicker seats down each side. Instead, there was a succession of boxlike compartments which could be made up into upper and lower berths. These compartments gave comparative privacy.

The wiry man with the black gloves suddenly whipped over into the seat beside Vida Carlaw, who had picked up a magazine and was reading it.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Say, what do you think you're doing, anyway?"

The wiry man did not answer. He was looking at the magazine. It was open at a picture of a remarkably even-featured bronze man's face. The bronze man's hair was only slightly darker than his skin, and his eyes were a flake gold tint, and strange, even in the picture. The caption beneath read: DOC SAVAGE.

A Rare Picture of the Man of Mystery The wiry man stared at the picture. He wet his lips. He reached over and put a finger on the picture.

"What's the idea of gandering at that?" he demanded.

Vida Carlaw retorted, "And why should I tell you anything?"

"Suppose I tell you, then," said the wiry man. "'You're going to see this Doc Savage. That won't do, see!"

"And I presume you think you can do something about it?"

"I hope I can," the man said, calmly. "Because, if I don't get away with it, they'll probably hang me."

The girl's eyes mirrored her changing thoughts. At first, she didn't believe the man. Then she doubted.

Suddenly, she knew he did mean it, and she was scared. She tried to get to her feet.

The man was carrying a blackjack up his sleeve, the thong around his wrist. He struck her over the head so hard that his gla.s.ses fell off. She collapsed, not all at once, but slowly, with every muscle rigid, her eyelids doing a fast flutter.

The man leaned across her, grasped the window and raised it. The window was large enough to jump out of.

The wiry man replaced his gla.s.ses on his nose, then crossed to his own compartment and got a big bundle.

Two parachutes! He put one on the girl, the other on himself, and cinched the harness tight.

He scooped up the girl and it was plain what he intended to do-jump with her, and open her 'chute, then his own.

An unbroken fastness of wooded hills lay below, offering no landing place for the plane.

The man picked up the girl. Her eyes had opened.

"Tough, ain't you?" the man snorted, and raised his blackjack.

Instead of striking, the wiry man emitted a scream so full of agony that it made every occupant in the plane jerk erect. His gla.s.ses fell off again.

A NEWCOMER had seized the wiry fellow. The appearance of this new arrival was striking. He might have been sculptured out of hard bronze. The contour of his features, his mobile and muscular mouth, his ample forehead, his lean cheeks denoted a power of character beyond the ordinary.

The bronze of his hair was a little darker than the bronze of his features. The hair was straight and fitted so close as to give the appearance of a metal skullcap.Perhaps the most striking aspect of all was the bronze man's eyes-like pools of flake gold, glittering when reflected light reached them, so that they seemed to exert a hypnotic influence.

The wiry man struggled with the bronze giant. He had no luck at all, for his Herculean captor demonstrated strength far beyond the ordinary. Muscles in the bronze hands, the forearms, and up and down the metallic neck, were like bundles of piano wire. The spectacles were stepped on and broken.

Vida Carlaw, conscious but weak, endeavored to maintain her balance as the plane gave a lurch, the pilot's attention having been distracted by the fight.

Confusion now seized the plane. Screams of the wiry man had been so agonizing as to arouse pity. Several pa.s.sengers rushed to his aid.

The co-pilot charged to help. He saw the giant holding the smaller man, and made a mistake. It was natural that, not knowing the facts, his sympathy should be with the little fellow.

The co-pilot drew a revolver which regulations prescribed that he carry, and jabbed it against the giant's back.

"Get your hands off that man!"

The giant freed the wiry man. The fellow scampered toward the rear of the plane, parachute flopping against his shanks.

The co-pilot started to give the bronze giant his fiercest stare. Then he got a look at the big fellow, and his jaw sagged; his eyes popped, and he dropped his gun.

"Oh, slay me for an idiot!" he gulped. "Honest, I didn't know who it was! Didn't recognize-"

The bronze giant ignored the co-pilot's apologies, and sprang toward the rear of the plane. The baggage hatch door was open to the sky.

The wiry man was floating under an open parachute behind the pa.s.senger airliner.

The bronze giant seemed capable of instantaneous decisions. He rushed back to Vida Carlaw.

"Equal to a parachute jump?"

Vida Carlaw made a smile with an effort.

"Anything," she said, "to escape this ringing in my head!"

The bronze man nodded, then stooped, scooped tiny particles which glittered on the floor and dropped them into a pocket. The girl watched his actions without saying a word.

THE bronze man now whipped to the seat which he had been occupying and yanked open a bag. It held a parachute.

At this point the plane's hostess suddenly realized this metallic giant was the mysterious fellow who had gotten aboard at Cleveland wearing tan combination coat, horn-rimmed gla.s.ses, and hat with brim yanked down.

The bronze man began donning his parachute.

"Bring your plane as close as you can to where that man's parachute is going to land!" He did not shout, but he seemed to have a voice with some unusual tonal quality which caused it to carry over the confusion inside the plane.

Somewhat surprisingly, the pilot obeyed the command, the reason being that he had gotten a good look at the big bronze fellow. Recognition had swept over the pilot's face like a shock.If five minutes ago any one would have tried to tell Vida Carlaw that she would allow a strange man to persuade her to make a parachute jump out of a plane some thousands of feet up in the air, she would have denied the remotest possibility of any such thing.

"Count ten, then jerk the ripcord ring," she heard herself directed.

Then she jumped.

The parachute opened. Vida Carlaw did not feel as much of a shock as she had expected. She looked downward; the world seemed to be rocking-first it would be high up on the right, then on the left. She decided the parachute was swinging.

The earth began to get bigger. What had resembled bushes swelled into trees; cracks became deep gullies, and a winding gray string turned into a concrete road.

Vida Carlaw observed a car was parked on the road not far from where they were going to land, a man standing close to the car.

Her late a.s.sailant!

The giant, who looked as if he were made of metal, seemed to be trying to guide his 'chute toward the road, by spilling air from one side. Entire success did not attend this. He landed in some brush.

The young woman landed easier than she had expected, picked herself up and called, "Hope this isn't a sample of what the rest of my life will be like!"

GETTING no answer, she craned her neck. The big metallic man was gone! He must have twisted out of the parachute harness and vanished into the brush with incredible abruptness. Vida Carlaw listened, and thought she heard him over toward the road. She was not certain.