Downtown Detroit was chaos.
The yellow-green fog from the river covered the central business district. throughout the area the sizzling, crackling screaming noise -- the trademark of a Steel Hammer attack -- reigned supreme. Citizens cowered inside buildings, pressing handkerchiefs and any piece of cloth they could find against the cracks around doorways and windows, hoping to keep out the dreaded poison gas.
Inside the Peninsula Bank, Seven-Eleven McSwain swaggered about with his trademark six-shooters in his hands, as his men emptied the vault.
“People, if you live through this, you need to tell them that they’d better pay up!” McSwain roared theatrically. “There’s no bank in the country that can stand up to the Steel Hammer!”
“Thirty seconds,” reported Nails.
Outside in the getaway car, Doc continued to try and raise his aides on the radio. Had they not been successful, there would once again be civilian casualties.
Doc hoped to keep up his disguise, and follow along with the Hammer gang. But if there were poison gas victims in Detroit, his oath as a physician would require that he break the disguise to rush to their aid.
Once more he tried the radio.
“That you, Doc?” came Monk’s small, squeaky voice.
IT HAD been a close shave.
Really, it was Johnny who had saved the day. Using a topographic map, his geologist’s eye had seen that the terrain of Wolverine Park had offered the best mortar firing position. Rushing there with carloads of Detroit police officers, they had arrived just in the nick of time. Hank Morgan had actually hesitated when he’d seen his sister, not for long, but for just enough time for Doc’s aides and Detroit’s finest to intervene.
Two of the mortar shells had never left the loaders’ hands. The final man had actually dropped his shell into the tube, but a flying kick from Monk had sent the mortar flying sideways. It never reached the firing pin at the bottom of the mortar tube.
“Whew!” exclaimed Monk, picking himself up off the ground. “They don’t get much closer than that!”
“You don’t understand,” Hank Morgan was saying to the police officers who were trying to slap him into handcuffs. “You’ve got to let us go! We work for Doc Savage, and we’ve got to save the city!”
“Hank, you poor simple lug,” said Sally, hugging her brother.
“Sis, you’ve got to listen to me. They’ve got to let us go.”
“No, Hank. You’ve got it wrong. You’ve been tricked.”
“Tricked? What do you mean?”
“I mean...” Sally Morgan stopped, for once at a loss for words. How could she explain to her brother that he had been tricked into causing the death of innocent Americans.
“What do you mean, Sally?” Hank asked.
Monk filled the silence. “She means we’ve got a lot of talking to do. See, I work for Doc and...”
“Me too,” interrupted Hank.
“That’s what they told you, and that’s what we’ve got to talk about,” Monk said. Monk suddenly became aware of a buzzing noise, coming from the area where he had fallen after kicking over the mortar. Looking, his saw that his miniature radio had fallen from his pocket, and was laying there on the ground buzzing. Rushing to it, moving fast and close to the earth like his simian namesake, he grabbed it and held it to his ear.
“That you, Doc?” he asked.
“Have you stopped the mortars?”
“Sure have, Doc.”
“Good. Can you keep what is going on there secret?”
“I believe so,” Johnny said over Monk’s shoulder. “I think we can convince the authorities to cooperate with us.”
“I’ll sweet talk’em,” added Sally Morgan.
Doc paused for a moment. He hadn’t expected to hear the girl’s voice. Obviously, she was still involved in the case, despite the best efforts of he and his aides.
“Keep things quiet. I’ll radio instructions shortly.” Doc turned the radio off.
INSIDE THE bank, Seven-Eleven McSwain was leaving his calling card. The small steel hammer made a ringing sound as it fell on the marble floor.
“Remember, tell’em to pay up, or else!” he threatened, as he followed his gang out of the bank’s door.
Out on the sidewalk he found a surprise.
Doc had taken out the tommy-gunner first, since they were the biggest threat. Getting out of the car, and moving through the yellow-green fog, he had stepped between two of them as they exited the bank. Simultaneously, using both hands, he had applied pressure to the nerve clusters in their necks, and they had fallen unconscious.
The third tommy-gunner had started to raise his weapon, only to find it town from his grasp. Doc grasped the man, and used him to knock over the three men carrying the loot. From there on, it was plain rough-and-tumble fighting, with Doc supplying the rough, and the Hammer gang doing the tumbling.
This was the surprise that awaited Seven-Eleven McSwain when he came out of the bank. Six of his gang lay prostrate on the sidewalk. The seventh man, Wheels, was standing there in front of him.
McSwain was quick.
He didn’t spend time talking. Taking the situation in at a glance, he aimed both his six-shooters right at Wheels.
Or rather, tried to aim them.
Both weapons were slapped from his hands before he could pull the triggers.
But McSwain was still quick. He managed to block Doc’s hand, reaching for his neck, and followed up by actually landing a punch to Doc’s head.
Doc followed with a single punch of his own.
McSwain flew backward through the air for twenty feet before hitting the sidewalk and skidding to a stop.
Doc loaded him and the other six members of the gang into the car and drove off. the screaming and crackling noises had stopped, and the yellow-green fog was beginning to drift away.
THE BORROWED Detroit policecar was headed toward the river. Margaret Adams was behind the wheel.
Doc had issued further orders. Johnny and Long Tom, together with Sally Morgan, her brother, and all the other mortarmen, were to go to an isolated Michigan farm, called Paulson Orchards. Doc provided directions. Monk was to take Margaret Adams to the airport, meet Ham, and follow his directions to locate Phil Adams and the crew of the miniature submarine.
Monk and Ham had begun quarreling before the propeller on Ham’s plan even stopped turning.
“Finally, the legal beagle turns up after the fun is over,” Monk stated as his greeting.
Ham ignored him, concentrating on Margaret Adams. “And you would be the Miss Adams that Doc Savage has been telling me about,” he said.
“He told you about me?” the girl asked.
From her tone of voice, Ham could see that this was obviously another girl with a crush on Doc. He answered her question indirectly. “Doc has let me know how important it is that we reach your brother. He thinks if you are with us, that your brother will be more apt to understand the situation. Your cooperation is vital”
“Pretty slick line, clotheshorse!” snorted Monk.
“You’ll excuse my colleague,” Ham said to Margaret. “His mother was an epileptic, and frequently dropped him on his head when he was a small child. No doubt he’s already regaled you with his ridiculous fantasy about my having a wife and thirteen children.
“A psychologist would call it ‘projection’, a delusion resulted from his inability to confront his feeling about Mrs. Mayfair and the thirteen simian off-spring swinging from the chandeliers at the Mayfair household.”
“That does it!” roared Monk. “I’m taking your head right off those shoulders!”
“Whenever you think you’re ready,” Ham replied, swordcane in hand.
“About my brother,” interjected Margaret Adams. “Can we get around to finding him?”
An ensuing argument about who should drive had only been settled by the trim brunette girl’s getting behind the wheel of the borrowed policecar and starting the engine. “Save the animal act for another time!” she said. “Let’s get my brother.”
Monk and Ham had piled in beside her, and the car left the airport at a high rate of speed.
Now, thirty minutes later, they were approaching the river. The site where the miniature submarine had entered the river was an abandoned fishing camp, right near a good hard-surfaced road.
As Margaret pulled up, the submarine, an ingenious craft only about twenty feet long, was being winched up out of the river onto wooden stay on the truckbed. Once on the truck, false walls would be erected around the undersea craft, and a tarpaulin draped over it, hiding it completely.
A dark-haired man wearing a mechanic’s coveralls came walking towards the police car. “Officers, just contact Doc Savage, he’ll explain every--”
He stopped suddenly when he saw Margaret Adams get out from behind the wheel. “Margaret, what are you doing here?”
“Oh, Phil,” said Margaret, and she ran and hugged her brother.
“Say, I recognize you,” said the driver of the truck to Monk. “You’re one of Doc’s top five aides, ain’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Monk replied.
“So does this mean we’re going to finally meet the big bronze guy himself?”
“Something like that,” said Monk.
“Hey, what are you crying for?” Phil Adams asked his sister.
“It’s a long story,” Ham said, “and we need to get you to where you can tell your side of it to Doc.”
Within fifteen minutes, the borrowed policecar and the truck loaded with the miniature submarine were headed north, bound for Paulson Orchards.