14

DOC SAVAGE

THE Parkside-Regent probably had its more of your thought about Eber, but we’d own yardstick of snobbery. A gathering of better go in, hadn’t we?”

mere artists and writers would no doubt rate He bowed politely, took her arm, and no better than the basement banquet room, they went back inside.

while diplomats might rank the Imperial There were plenty of stars overhead.

Room that opened off the mezzanine. The There wasn’t any moon.

doings tonight, obviously extraordinary, rated Alfred Gross strode out of the dark-the Starlight Room on the roof. It was only a ness. He said, “McGraff!” sharply. The tall few steps outside to the terrace, a wondrous red-faced Mac appeared. Alfred Gross called place well-equipped with potted greenery.

him a long breathful of names, none compli-There was some kind of a hitch. The mentary, and finished with: “Why did you give Mac suddenly reappeared with another kind a false alarm, you dumb boob?”

of signal, a go-back one made with down-McGraff made a sickly upward gesture hooked mouth corners and a head-shake.

with his thumb. “I thought I saw it begin.”

Something that was supposed to come off on Gross threw a glance at the sky.

the terrace wasn’t going to come off, his “There’s no sign of it,” he said. “And it isn’t high-sign said.

time yet by twenty minutes or so.”

It seemed to be too late for Miss Feni-

“I can’t help it,” McGraff said.

song to stop the trip to the terrace with Doc A waiter captain came up to me and Savage, so she went through with it. She did said, “Get to work, bud!” I had to go back to and said things that weren’t what she had the tables, where service was beginning.

planned to do and say was my guess.

She had done a fairly smooth job of She said: “I wanted to ask you about handling Doc Savage on the terrace mix-up, the Eber idea of starting with a preliminary and it had not entered my mind that the big lunar theory solution in which the orbit is bronze man suspected anything. He looked supposed to lie in the ecliptic and to have no dignified, bored, and harassed by being eccentricity, then finding the additional terms stared at by so many people, the way a con-which depend on the first power of the ec-vention of misers would look at the stuff in centricities and of the inclination.”

the Fort Knox vaults. Obviously he was That sounded familiar. . . . Why, sure.

aware of Miss Fenisong, but he seemed to She had used the same words on me. Hear-be in the indecisive stage about her, like a ing it twice made it sound as if it was some-fox eyeing a bait of a sort that had poisoned thing she had memorized out of the encyclo-him previously.

pedia.

Suddenly Doc Savage arose, excused Doc Savage looked mildly surprised. I himself to lovely-voice, and moved around didn’t know whether she had fooled him or the table to where Albert Gross sat. He laid a not. The surprised look didn’t mean a thing.

hand on Gross’s shoulder, said something, Words like that from such a beautiful girl and Gross was dumfounded.

would surprise anybody, like hearing a ca-Gross, besides being too wide for his nary sing bass.

suits, had a jaw like a mule’s hoof. The jaw “Quite logical,” he said vaguely.

fell.

“Then you agree?”

“Nice work with the place-cards,” Doc “With what?”

Savage said.

“With Eber’s hypothesis.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“I—ah—wouldn’t quarrel with Eber,” he

“I don’t mind.” Doc Savage patted the said.

man’s thick-looking shoulder. “The scenery at “Oh, I’m glad,” she said.

the new location is quite interesting.”

She didn’t seem very glad to me. It was Gross registered the expressions of a hard for me to distinguish fright amid such man who had unexpectedly found a hundred beauty, but I thought I could see it. They al-and ten volts of electricity in the seat of his ways have one of those phony palms on a chair, but he didn’t say anything.

hotel roof terrace, and I and the ice bucket Doc Savage rejoined Miss Fenisong.

were behind it. . . . Yeah, she was scared.

He hadn’t missed anything, it ap-She added, “Look, they’re starting to peared.

take seats for the banquet. I’d love to get NO LIGHT TO DIE BY