16

DOC SAVAGE

“Son,” said the shorter Mac, “aren’t you THE room, a small one, not ten feet on the phony Mr. Wales?”

a side, ornate, completely without furniture “Wales is my name,” I said. “I’m not but with numerous mirrors, fooled me for a phony.”

while. It turned out to be the elevator, and it “Indeed?”

and not my head was doing the moving.

“That’s right,” I said.

“I haven’t any eyeballs left,” I said, “When,” asked the taller Mac, “did you when my teeth would stop gritting long become a waiter?”

enough to let words out.

“Tonight. But you mean a bus, not a “Pepper.”

waiter,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Are you being humorous?”

“One of them had the foresight to have We had the niche to ourselves, and it pepper under his fingernails,” Doc Savage was a little dark there, but a lot more lonely said. “A bit painful, I imagine.”

than dark.

“You cover a lot of ground with that “No,” I said. “I’m not being humorous.

word bit,” I said. “You mean I’ve got eyes Leggo my arms, do you mind?”

after all?”

“We’re intrigued,” the short Mac said, The elevator stopped. I was not yet “by the oddity of your presence, and the way feeling well enough to know, or care about you have been fanning out your large ears.

knowing, which way the cage had been trav-We’re rather puzzled, as a fact. Could we ask eling, but presumably it had gone down, be-you a question?”

cause I could hear muffled through the door “I’m good on questions,” I said. “How is the low cave-like sound that is in hotel lob-Mr. Spatny?”

bies.

“Who?” I asked.

I was sitting on the elevator floor. Then “Spatny.”

suddenly Doc Savage had a fistful of my coat “Don’t know him.”

front, and I was no longer sitting on the floor.

Short Mac looked past my chest at tall I was on my feet, or rather up in the air.

Mac and said: “He states he isn’t acquainted He said: “Now would be a good time with Spatny.”

for you to do a quick job with the truth.”

“That speaks well for his character,” tall The way he said it made me glad that I Mac said.

couldn’t see his face very well. I’m no Jack “Son, we’d like to have a long talk with Dempsey or Charlie Atlas, but neither do I you.”

have to be helped across streets, yet he was “Let’s not,” I said.

holding me up there against the elevator “Walk between us,” the short one said.

sidewall, and I was completely helpless. I felt “And wipe that my-pants-are-on-fire look off like an insect that a kid had just fastened to a your puss.”

plank with a pin.

“The hell I will,” I said.

“What do you want to know?” I gasped.

They did a quicker job on me than Al-

“Use your judgment,” he said. “As long berto Gross had done earlier with the ash-as it’s the truth.”

tray. The speed they got into it and the thorI didn’t stop to figure out why I sud-oughness was proof that it pays to organize, denly wanted to talk—it obviously wasn’t a to have a plan. Tall Mac jabbed two fingers time for pausing to figure out reasons. Not into my eyes, and then I couldn’t tell who was that he was exactly threatening me. He didn’t doing what as they kneed me, slammed my sound like one guy laying it down to another jaw, banged my nose, kicked my feet from on a street corner, not a lawyer bulldozing under me and stamped on my face. I fought the opposition witness, and least of all did he them like a bundle of wildcats. I swung blows sound like a ballplayer mistreating the ump.

that would have wrecked a house if they had He’d merely said I’d better talk, and I knew hit a house. They didn’t hit anything. But I did that was what I’d better do, if I didn’t want considerably better with my howling for help.

them collecting me off the sides of the eleva-Quite likely it wasn’t the hour or more tor with a putty scraper. I’d never had any-that it seemed before the Macs ran away body scare me so much so quick.

from me.

Doc Savage listened while I packed a couple of minutes full of words. . . . If I told NO LIGHT TO DIE BY