35

Chapter VIII

Savage had no comment. Miss Fenisong had entered, a part of the lie-detector THE next five hours were productive of hanging to her arm, to watch. I felt about as nothing. The police came to the Long Island heroic as some of those guys we saw after estate, listened to the facts, which they natu-we got into Germany.

rally didn’t believe, and were polite about it “You two had better shake hands,”

all.

Ham Brooks suggested.

McGraff and McCutcheon seemed sur-

“And get my arm torn off?” I said. “Not prisingly willing to be locked up if the police me.”

wanted it that way. When Doc Savage said that he would like to have them along so they could be asked more questions, they were THAT happened about nine o’clock, agreeable to that also. But no more agree-and by ten I wouldn’t have bid high on the able than they were to being in jail.

chances of finding any more answers than I said: “I don’t make them two guys we already had. The latter, everyone seemed out.”

to feel, were negligible.

“They’re scared stiff, you dope,” Monk Miss Fenisong came through the lie-said. “They want protectors. Either us or the detector with flying colors. She was most police will do.”

coöperative, even letting Monk Mayfair ask This did seem logical.

her a few personal questions which had no We all went—excepting the police, of bearing on the mystery, but were questions I course—to Doc Savage’s headquarters on wanted answered too.

the eighty-sixth floor of that midtown building.

“Okay,” I said, getting Monk into a cor-While they had Miss Fenisong in the library, ner afterward. “Is she fancy free?”

fitting the lie detector to her, I got myself He said: “You’re out of luck. She’s mar-alone in the reception room with tall Mac. I hit ried to a guy named Culpepper, an engineer him. I began with a light chair, figuring it who is in South America building a banana would soften him up.

plantation.”

Maybe a heavier chair would have

“That’s oil from some of his bananas been a better idea. Perhaps not. From the you’re giving me,” I said. I had seen him look-unhampered quality of his reactions, a six-ing at the wiggly mark the lie detector had teen pound sledge would hardly have been made, and grinning.

adequate. He was all over me. I was on the Doc Savage had been tinkering with floor. The best I could do was keep him on the lie detector. He was frowning. “Ham,” he the floor with me.

called, “have we an extra third stage bypass Monk Mayfair came in. All he did was electronic tube? This one has been getting watch admiringly. All he said was: “I’ve paid weaker and weaker, and seems to have ten bucks ringside, and seen less.”

given out.”

Ham Brooks came in too, and his atti-Ham Brooks said: “I don’t know of a tude was about the same. A bit more clinical, way of getting one of that special type short perhaps, because he remarked: “The tech-of Pittsburgh, where they’re made.”

nique is certainly original Bushido judo.”

Savage got on the telephone and or-I was too busy to even ask for help, al-dered one from Pittsburgh, directing it be air-though I outweighed the tall Mac at least mailed.

thirty pounds. Most of what he was doing to “They can’t get it here before late af-me he did with the tips of his fingers, the ternoon,” he reported. Turning to the Macs, edge of his hand, and a lot of the time he he added, “We intend, of course, to give you handled me so that I seemed to be doing it to two gentlemen a lie-detector test. I gather myself.

you have no objections. Unfortunately, our It was certainly a relief to have Savage apparatus is out of commission, and we’ll come in and detach my intended victim from have to postpone it until this evening.”

me.

The Macs didn’t seem at all unhappy.

My excuse was: “That guy started the “The police use them things, don’t beating I got at the hotel by sticking his fin-they?” I demanded. “Why not borrow one?”

gers in my eyes. He had pepper on his fin-Savage shook his head. “I’m inclined to gers, remember?”

distrust the accuracy of the type they have.”