32

DOC SAVAGE

There was another one in the front doors of glass. He had gone through one of yard.

these French doors, or windows—just simply Two black scare-babies.

passed through it.

This second one was poppa. About I wished I had been with him.

sixty feet across and nearly as high. There And then I didn’t—for the it-couldn’t-be was a tall Australian pine tree out there that in the yard began chasing him. The it didn’t I’d noticed when we arrived that was all of move rapidly, not as fast as the old man was fifty feet, and it was hidden behind this thing.

moving—possibly nothing could have trav-

“Perhaps,” Savage said, “we best not eled quite that fast—and it took a rather er-go outside.”

ratic S-shaped route across the grounds. The It was all right with me. They couldn’t serpentine path was puzzling. . . . It was fol-have shot me out into the yard if they had lowing a sidewalk! That was the reason! It stuffed me in a cannon. I still wasn’t weighing seemed to have no liking for the grass, which a thing, and neither was my lovely burden, was a white carpet of frost where it was not and if I still had a heart I couldn’t find it.

glazed over with snow. It kept on the paved Savage said: “Has anyone got a gun?”

walks which snaked across the grounds in No one had a gun.

almost any direction one cared to take.

He went back after the little pea-Monk said: “I’m going to try some-shooter they had taken from the girl. I don’t thing.” He began working at a window, and think anyone liked his going; we didn’t want got it open. There was a storm sash and he to be left alone with the goblins.

threw that upward—he had one leg over the Old man Spatny made us a bitter sill when Savage came in, demanding, “What speech. “No guns!” he said. “Das ist zu arg!

are you doing?”

No guns! Of all the unequipped fools! When

“The old guy ran—”

there is such danger, not to have armed

“Stay in here,” Savage said. He yourselves—you are imbeciles! I was begin-seemed confident his instructions would be ning to admire your methods, but you have followed, because he went back to the other disappointed me grievously. No guns! Dis-part of the house, the part where he had gusting! Surely it should have occurred to been, and his little gun went pip! again. This you to—”

time there was a deep bass rejoinder—a rifle He stopped expressing my opinions had been fired at him, a rifle that was plenty and his, and took off. He just seemed to split of gun because we could hear plaster falling at the seams, and what came out was action.

off at least three walls that the bullet had He wanted to get away from there, and he gone through.

did. I was under the impression he went through doors without troubling to open them, but that must have been an illusion, because THE old giant screamed. Off there in there were no splinters in the air after he had the garish phony moonlight somewhere, he gone.

cried out. . . . I went big-game hunting in

“Catch him!” Monk yelled.

Wyoming one time—well, at least I was

“Catch him yourself,” Ham said. “I may there; I was the big-shot’s chauffeur—and follow his example.”

the coyotes occasionally howled around the We heard the little gun go pip! in an-camp in the night, and I think that coyote other part of the house. Savage had started howling is the most ghastly sound there is.

shooting. It was an utterly inadequate little This sound old Spatny made was something noise, it struck me.

similar. It made my teeth feel as if they were The old giant was crashing and bang-on a grindstone.

ing doors in the back of the mansion some-Five seconds, ten, after the old man ki-where. His flight had the sedateness of a bull yoodled, the black business was gone. It was in a crockery shop. The terminus of the up-out there in the trees and shrubbery; it got roar was a particularly loud jangling crash of smaller. It was like a black balloon with the glass—and I happened to be standing where air going out, except there was no noise. In a I could see what Spatny had done. The man-trifle of time, it was smaller than the trees and sion was T-shaped, and we were in the stem we couldn’t see it at all.

of the T, the old man had come into the left Monk said hoarsely, “The poor old arm of the T, where there were large French devil!” He wheeled and ran through rooms.

NO LIGHT TO DIE BY