27

He put one word after another like a Suddenly there was more noise in the mason fitting a row of stones in a wall. Each car than anybody wanted. The old man’s gun word was finely chiseled. English wasn’t the was speaking. It spoke twice. Both bullets hit language he’d heard in the cradle; I had been the left-hand window, flattened and fell away, introduced to the detective business tonight, and so help me the window merely had two so I deduced this with confidence.

small splattered places where a couple of “We’d like to see Mr. Gross,” Savage hard-flying and well-fed bugs might have hit.

said.

Then old hard-as-nails no longer had It would be quite something if we did, I the mortar, and I didn’t have it either. Savage thought.

had taken it away from both of us.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Gross is not here,” said The old man drew back. He didn’t run, the old tower of bones.

but merely waited.

“Mr. McGraff?”

Monk Mayfair spoke to me. He spoke “I’m sorry.”

fluently for more than a minute, giving his “Mr. McCutcheon?”

opinion of my impulsiveness, not one word fit “Indeed I’m sorry,” said the old man.

to print.

“Mr. Gross, Mr. McGraff and Mr. McCutcheon “You’re a fool,” Doc Savage told me.

left for the city early this morning—yesterday “Listen, guns make me jumpy,” I said.

morning, I mean—and have not returned.”

“Where’d the old boy get it from, anyway?

Doc Savage asked. “And Miss Feni-One moment he was bare-handed, and the song?”

next one he was loaded for bear.”

“Again I’m sorry. Miss Fenisong, I “The car,” Doc Savage told me, “is know, is an acquaintance of Mr. Gross—equipped with a device which discharges an perhaps his niece, although I am not sure—odorless, colorless anaesthetic gas. He could but she does not live here, and is rather sel-have been overcome without all the wild-dom a visitor. I regret being so disappoint-west.”

ing.”

“The gas would have got us, too,” I Monk took it up. “We’d compromise for said.

Mr. Spatny,” he said.

“No. We merely hold our breath, and in “Who?”

about forty seconds the gas undergoes a “Don’t you know Spatny?”

chemical reaction with the air and becomes “I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir.” Old ineffective.”

rack-of-bones shrugged. There was a gun in “You couldn’t have told me to hold my his hand, a gun that was big the way he was breath without him hearing,” I said. “You’d big. “Unless, of course, you prove to be have gassed me, too, I suppose.”

friends of mine,” he added.

Monk Mayfair said: “I’m in favor of doing that anyway! It would be a good idea. I vote for it.”

HE put the cavernous mouth of his firearm into the car window and let it look at us. Savage had rolled down the window in WE got out of the car. It was cold here order to talk with him.

in the country. The old man’s breath came I don’t know what got into me. Maybe I from his leathery lips as if he was blowing had just seen too much preposterous magic cotton. He said: “It’s warmer in the gate-for one night, and this was the last straw. It house, if you would care to converse there.”

wasn’t heroism. I was scared cold as a kid “We prefer the car,” Savage said.

who’d broke his first window. The first thing I “Climb in.”

knew, I had hold of the gun with both hands.

The old man limped slightly in his left The second I matched strength with leg as he moved. He got in the back seat the old man, I knew I was going to need my with me, and I would have as soon welcomed rabbit-foot. He was tough like a thirty-cent a man-eating tiger. Monk Mayfair came steak. Trying to twist his arm was like trying around and got in with us, searched the old to do the same thing to the leg of a mule. He giant, and looked over what he had found—a used his free hand on me and gave me a wallet, a dun from the light company, a worse headache than I’d had that morning.

crested gold cigarette lighter, and more than a dozen big fat walnut-colored cigars.