Doc Savage - The Freckled Shark Part 3

"I hope," Rhoda Haven said, "that you're not Doc Savage!"

"An apocryphal hermeneutic," said the long string of bones.

"Eh?"

"A corrigendum."

Rhoda Haven narrowed one eye.

"I must have got off on the wrong floor," she said. "I wasn't looking for a walking dictionary."

With some evidence of reluctance, the string of bones lapsed into ordinary words.

"I am trying to explain that you have made a mistake," he said. "I am not Doc Savage. I am William Harper Littlejohn."

"And what else," Rhoda Haven inquired, "might you be?"

"One of Doc Savage's a.s.sociates, or a.s.sistants, or whatever you would call the five of us who work with the bronze man."

WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN stood back politely for the young woman to enter, and she did so. The room into which she came was equipped with a large inlaid table, a very big safe, and a scattering of comfortable leather-upholstered furniture. It appeared to be a reception room.

The room was not as interesting as the man who had opened the door. Rhoda Haven stared at him.

"Revelatory peroration is ultrapropitious," he stated.

Rhoda Haven blinked.

"When they made you," she said, "they must not have had any materials left but bones and big words."

"A deleterious-"

"Whoa!" said Rhoda Haven. "What do I do to persuade you to use little words?"

"You just explain who you are," William Harper Littlejohn said, again reluctantly using small words, "and state your business.""My name is Mary Morse," said Rhoda Haven.

"And-"

"I came here to see Doc Savage."

"Why?"

"That," the girl said, "is something I will only tell to Doc Savage."

"I see. Well, good-by."

"What do you mean-good-by?"

"Doc Savage isn't available. He is missing. He frequently becomes missing, and none of us know where he is. It happens often enough that we do not get alarmed. Furthermore, when he isn't here, he just isn't here; and we have no way of getting in touch with him."

Having ridded himself of this explanation with an air of injury at having to use such small words, William Harper Littlejohn turned to the inlaid table and picked up a ma.s.sive book t.i.tled, "Influence of Lepidoptera on Ancient Decorative Design," which he appeared to have been reading.

Rhoda Haven said, "I need help."

"Eh?"

"My life is in danger."

William Harper Littlejohn put down the large book.

"Why didn't you," he said, "say so in the first place?" He took the girl's arm, led her to a chair. It was a very ma.s.sive chair, and apparently extremely heavy. At least, it would not budge when the girl hitched at the chair to move it. She let the chair remain where it was.

"What is the trouble?" asked William Harper Littlejohn.

"Some men are trying to kill me and my father," Rhoda Haven said.

"Why?"

"We don't know."

"Who are the men who want you dead?"

"We don't have any idea," Rhoda Haven said, and looked as if she were telling the truth.

William Harper Littlejohn wore, attached to his coat lapel by a dark ribbon, a monocle. He never put this in his eye, and a second glance would disclose that the monocle was really a strong magnifying gla.s.s. Now he absent-mindedly whirled the monocle around by its ribbon.

"Just a moment," he said.

He pa.s.sed through another door. This admitted him to the Doc Savage library, a large room crowded with cases that were in turn jammed with books, most of them scientific tomes.

William Harper Littlejohn made sure the girl was remaining behind. Then he went close to a large bookcase, which was really a panel that could be swung outward and reveal a niche in which a man might remain comfortably seated without his presence being suspected by anyone who might pa.s.s through the library.

"Doc?" said William Harper Littlejohn in a low voice.

THE voice which answered from inside the hidden niche was deep, and although controlled down to a whisper, it gave an impression of remarkable power."Yes, Johnny," it said.

Johnny used small words-he always used small ones when talking to Doc Savage, for some reason or other-and asked, "I had our visitor sit down in the chair that's wired up with our new lie detector. Is the gadget working all right?

You're watching the various indicator dials in there, aren't you?"

"It seems to be working," replied the striking voice of the man inside the niche.

"Has the girl told the truth?"

"Only once," Doc Savage said. "And that was when she said some men were trying to kill herself and her father."

"Do you want to go in and talk to her, Doc?"

"No. You do that."

"But-"

"And if she thinks she needs help, you might as well help her."

Johnny asked, "Shall I call in Monk and Ham? They're the only two members of our gang that are in town. Renny and Long Tom are in Czechoslovakia trying to build a dam and electrify it."

"Monk and Ham would want you to call them."

"I'll say they would. But I hate to think about the way they'll squabble. This girl is pretty. Every time she smiles at Monk, he'll have to fight Ham, and vice versa"

"Call them, anyway."

"All right," Johnny said. "But what are you going to be doing?"

"I will try," Doc Savage explained, "to think of something."

WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN rejoined Rhoda Haven in the reception room with a big smile and the request, "Call me Johnny. Everyone does."

"I will," the girl said, "if you promise to use small words."

"Now just what has happened to make you think your life is in danger?"

"Some men," Rhoda Haven explained, "attacked us in our rooms at the Tower Apartments. We escaped down the fire escape. There was a shooting affray in the garden where they tried to head us off, but we got away."

"I'm superamalgamated if I-I mean, I don't see why you didn't go to the police."

Rhoda Haven knotted and unknotted her handkerchief, and worked her mouth, looking very scared. For a girl who had behaved in her calm fas.h.i.+on during the gun fight, she looked very frightened indeed.

"I'm afraid," she said, "that one or more of our attackers were killed in the garden."

"They were?"

"Yes. The police would put us in jail for it, we were afraid."

"And you don't deserve to go to jail?"

"Oh, no indeed."

"In that case," Johnny said, "I'll have to help you."

He got up-he had been in s.h.i.+rt sleeves-and put on his coat, which fit him with about the same effect as a flag draped about the top of a flagpole on a windless day. He looked almost completely like a scarecrow. Certainly he didnot resemble one of the most eminent living authorities on the subjects of archaeology and geology. He gave his monocle-magnifier a flourish, bowed low-pretty girls were not without their effect upon him-to Rhoda Haven, and escorted the young lady to the street.

"Primigenously, we colligate ancillary-"

"You promised," Rhoda Haven said, "to stop using such words."

Johnny nodded reluctantly.

"First," he said, "we collect help in the shape of Monk and Ham."

"I never heard of Monk and Ham."

"Most people," Johnny said, "have trouble keeping from hearing them."

They got into a taxicab and drove off.

A man who had been standing on the sidewalk, taking candid-camera shots of pedestrians and pa.s.sing out coupons which ent.i.tled the receiver to a picture providing the coupon and twenty-five cents were mailed in, came to sudden life.

He was a short, swarthy man, rather well-dressed for an itinerant photographer.

He ran to a parked car which had another dark man at the wheel.

"Follow that cab!" he barked.

"The girl-"

"She went to Doc Savage. Horst must be a mind reader."

The car-it was a rent-a-car sedan-snooped downtown after the cab, and the two swarthy occupants of the machine watched William Harper Littlejohn and Rhoda Haven enter a tall office building near the Wall Street district.

"Better call Horst," one said.

The other man got out of the car, hurried to a telephone. He said, "Horst, what in the devil ever made you suspect the Haven girl would go to Doc Savage?"

Horst swore. "Did she?"

"Nothing else but."

Horst swore some more, said, "I figured old Tex Haven was fox enough to try to sick somebody else's dog onto us.

And this Doc Savage was the logical dog. For a long time, we've been afraid someone would set him on us."

"You mean this Doc Savage is tough?"

"Haven't you heard of him, you fool?"

"I . . . uh-"

"Where is the girl now?"

"She came out of the building with the longest and skinniest guy you ever saw-"

"That one is Johnny Littlejohn, who is famous for archaeology, geology and big words."