by DAVE TAGGART
CHAPTER 5: THE STEEL HAMMER DEMANDS
THE LOW, trilling noise that Doc had made at the hospital returned. It continued while Monk and Ham filled Doc on their investigations, including the story of Renny and the blonde girl.
“It’s dang strange, Doc,” said Monk. “It ain’t like the big galoot to get his head turned by a pretty face.
“You’re right,” said Ham. “That’s like something you’d do.”
“Why you --” Monk responded.
“Anything else?” Doc interrupted.
“Nothing, Doc,” Ham replied dejectedly. “The patrolman gave us a name, Sally Morgan, and a pretty fair description. He seemed to think that Renny thought she was somehow connected to the attacked. Something about her brother working for you and being involved in something big happening this week. But after they left him, nobody here’s seen them.”
“Nothing from me either, Doc,” added Monk. “Once Long Tom arrives with the tri-motor and we’ve got a lab, I’ll be able to analyze the air and liquid residue samples.”
“Long Tom should be here within the hour,” the Man of Bronze said. “Monk, I’ll want you to began chemical analysis as soon as he gets here.”
“Gotcha, Doc,” the burly chemist replied.
“There are very few known types of poison gas in the world,” the bronze man continued. “We must see if we are dealing with a stolen U. S. military gas, or if perhaps some foreign power is involved. Ham...”
“Yeah, Doc?”
“Get with police. Try to identify the exact locations where every poison gas fatality occurred. And see if they have any clues about the bank robbery. I can hardly think it was a coincidence.
“Will do, Doc.”
“I’m going to take the speed plane and try to find Renny.” With that, Doc Savage was gone.
THE CAR finally came to a stop. Renny could hear the girl get out, walk to the rear, and open the trunk. Suddenly a flashlight was blinding him full in the face.
“My turn to ask the questions now, big fella,” the girl said good-naturedly. “Don’t bother acting foolish when I take the gag out, because we’re miles from nowhere.”
The gag came out, and Renny whooshed in a big breath of air. The girl sat down on the car’s bumper. “Question number one,” she asked. “Where’s my brother Hank?”
“Go to blazes,” Renny snorted.
“Now that shows a very disrespectful attitude to a lady,” Sally Morgan replied. “I’d have thought my friend Mr. Lead Pipe had already taught you that lesson, but perhaps you are a slow learner and need to be reminded.” She began rummaging around in her purse.
“Whomp on me all you want,” snarled Renny. “But it won’t do you any good, Sally Morgan, if that is your real name.”
“It is!”
“Sure, just like you and old Pa were down on the farm waiting for brother Hank to come home. Tell me a better story, sister.”
“OK, how about this,” the girl said, her voice changing slightly. “There isn’t any farm. Dad lost it four years ago when the bank foreclosed. He died a year later. My bother Hank is the only relative I’ve got left.
“Hank’s -- well, he’s had a hard time since the war. He was with the Rainbow Division in France, and saw a lot of things in combat I don’t think he’s ever told anyone about.”
“Happened to a lot of good men,” Renny said instinctively.
“I guess so,” the girl said sadly. “Anyhow, since the war he hasn’t been able to keep hold of a job, even when there were jobs to keep hold of. And then suddenly I get a letter from him. He’s working for Doc Savage on some hush-hush project. He doesn’t say where he is, but the envelope is postmarked from Pittsburgh. There a twenty dollar bill in the envelope -- he writes that it’s my birthday present.”
“So you came to Pittsburgh to deliver your thanks in person?” Renny asked sarcastically.
“Huh?” the girl gulped.
“Let me get this straight, you dropped everything and rushed to your brother’s side in Pittsburgh. Why? What was urgent? Why did you come Pittsburgh to see the big, hush-hush thing your brother was supposedly working on with Doc Savage? Why are you so interested in Doc Savage? How are you involved in this?”
“Listen, buster, I ask the questions here, see?” the girl responded.
“Then do a better job of it,” Renny replied. “Cause I’ll give you the answers. Answer One: Doc Savage has never heard of your brother. Answer Two: Doc Savage didn’t hire your brother for a hush-hush project. Answer Three: Doc Savage is going to get to the bottom of this poison gas attack”
“How can you be so certain?” Sally Morgan asked.
“Doc doesn’t work that way,” Renny stated flatly. “Oh, he hires people all right. There are thousands of people in this country who have jobs working for Doc. But they don’t know it. Doc works behind the scenes. That way he avoids publicity and protects people.”
“Protects people?”
“Right. If crooks knew a business was run by Doc Savage, they could use it as a target, or as a way to try to get at him.”
“So if my brother wrote me that he’d been hired by Doc Savage?” the girl asked.
“Then it was just a lot of hot air,” Renny said.
“Take that back,” Sally demanded jumping to her feet.
“Sorry,” Renny said. “Face the facts. Doc doesn’t hire people like your brother said he was hired. So maybe he was making something up to impress his sister.” A thought suddenly struck Renny.
“Unless...”
“Unless what?” asked the girl.
Unless he was hired by someone pretending to be me,” said Doc Savage, coming out of the darkness.
“HOLY COW, Doc!” blasted Renny. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“You seem to have survived all right,” Doc said, taking a knife from his pocket and cutting through Renny’s bonds. The big engineer eased himself out of the car trunk and began stretching.
“You --- you’re Doc Savage,” Sally Morgan blurted. “You’re so big!” Most people were over-awed meeting the Man of Bronze for the first time.
“And you would be Miss Sally Morgan,” said Doc.
“Yes,” said Sally.
“Sally Morgan from Chicago,” Doc added.
“How did you know that?” Sally and Renny asked in unison.
Doc ignored the question. Instead, he answered, “Miss Morgan, I do not employ people directly. Your brother may have fallen in with a vicious criminal scheme. It would help if you could give us any and all details from his letter. He may be in grave danger.”
“There really weren’t many,” the girl said. “He said that your organization had hired him and other veterans, men who could be trusted, to work on one of your secret projects. I realize now that he wrote he was working for you, but he never came out and stated that he had actually met you.”
“Did he give any details about this project?” queried Doc.
“No, only that he expected something big to happen this week.”
“Anything else? Any names?”
“Nothing else. Oh, at the end of the letter he did mention a name.” Sally paused and then quoted,
“Got to go now, Sis. Old Swabbie Phil is trying to get up a card game.”
“Swabbie. A sailor of some sort,” said Renny.
“So it would seem,” said Doc.
“But I still have a question, missy,” said Renny, turning to the girl. “What was the big deal running to Pittsburgh once you got the letter?”
“And what makes you so sure I’m from Chicago?” Sally demanded of Doc.
“The Chicago ‘Inquirer’ newspaper publishes the column of a crime reporter named Sally Morgan,” explained Doc. “She employs unconventional methods of obtaining information. She is not above the ‘kidnapping’ of an occasional subject for interrogation, and is said to be much stronger than she looks. Her interest in this case would thus seem to be professional as well as sisterly.”
“I really am an old farm girl,” Sally said to Renny, flexing a bicep. To Doc she said, “I figured I could break a big scoop if I was already in Pittsburgh when the big, hush-hush event happened.”
“Yah,” sneered Renny.
“Tough enough to stuff you in a car trunk, big boy,” Sally Morgan said with a flourish. “Now, where did you come from?” she asked Doc Savage.
“There’s nothing more for us to learn here,” Doc said to Renny.
He turned and vanished into the darkness. Renny followed him.
“Wait a minute!” pleaded Sally. “Where did you come from, Doc Savage? How did you find me here? What kind of weird magic was this?”
But no answer came from the Pennsylvania night. Doc Savage was gone.
IT WAS not magic, of course, but rather Doc’s superior scientific skill that had brought about the rescue of Renny.
Built into the heel of Renny’s engineer boot was a tiny battery-powered radio transmitter of Doc’s own design. It sent out a Morse Code signal “R” on a special frequency every five seconds. Renny had activated the transmitter as soon as he woke up in the car trunk. From then on, he knew it was just a matter of time until rescue came.
Doc had taken off from the Allegheny River, and flown a loop around the city, with the radio receiver in his plane tuned to the frequency of Renny’s boot heel rescue radio. The signal was coming from somewhere southwest of Pittsburgh.
Fifteen minutes later he was circling over the signal’s source. The ultra-quiet modern aircraft motor made so little noise that Sally Morgan never heard it. Doc had slipped on his infra-red goggles, which turned night into day, in order to pick out a suitable landing site. He had put the speed ship down in a farmer’s hay field about half a mile away from the roadside spot where Renny was being interrogated, and slipped silently though the woods.
“That was dang dumb of me, Doc,” Renny muttered as he and the Man of Bronze went through the before take-off checks on the airplane. “No way I should have let that little news-hen put one over on me like that.”
“Let’s try the radio,” Doc suggested. “I left Monk and Ham investigating this thing in Pittsburgh, and Long Tom was to join them there with the tri-motor.”
“Roger that, Doc.” As they took off -- as neat of a short take-off over rough ground at night as you’d ever see -- Renny activated the plane’s radio.
“Doc, is that you?” came Monk’s squeaky voice in reply.
“It’s me,” Renny said. “We’re on our way back to Pittsburgh right now.”
“You got that cute little blonde with you?” Monk cackled.
Renny winced. He had not known that Doc’s other assistants knew the circumstances of his “kidnapping”. “We’re on our way,” he repeated dully. “Any news?”
“So what happened to the blonde?” asked Monk.
There was a scuffling noise, and then Doc and Renny could hear Ham’s voice in the background,
“Knock off the stuff about the blonde, and give Doc the news, you second cousin to a chimpanzee!”
There was the sound of more scuffling, and then the acerbic voice of Long Tom came over the radio, “Doc, Renny, we got a ransom demand.”
“What details do we have?” Doc asked.
“An envelope was left on the steps on the Fifteenth Police Precinct Station, addressed to the Mayor. He just provided us a copy of it.”
“Please read it,” said Doc.
Back in Pittsburgh, Long Tom stared down at the note in his hand, It was still to incredible to believe. The note read:
DEAR AMERICA,
I LEFT MY CALLING CARD AT THE BANK IN PITTSBURGH. YOU HAVE SEEN WHAT I CAN DO. PITTSBURGH WAS THE FIRST. OTHER CITIES WILL ALSO BE ATTACKED UNTIL I HAVE BEEN DELIVERED A RANSOM OF $100,000,000 IN GOLD. IGNORE THIS WARNING AT YOUR PERIL!
THE STEEL HAMMER
At the bottom of the note was a tiny drawing of a hammer.
