41

what you would see would be blackness building block. I kicked the thing automati-blacker than a charcoal factory. Here was cally, so probably I wasn’t going to die after such. Maybe there were accompanying phe-all.

nomena, but I wasn’t aware of them.

Presently we were going someplace in the car with the thick glass. Savage and myself.

IN a voice much too unconcerned, “Where are Ham Brooks and Monk Savage was saying, “You obviously have no Mayfair—not that I can’t do without the lat-cardiac decomposition, so an extra heavy ter?”

dose of aspirin won’t hurt you. And the head “Trailing the Macs and Miss Fenisong.”

will appreciate it.”

“Yeah, but where?”

I heard myself asking something. It “We’ll know soon.”

was: “Where am I?” Presently it seemed an He turned on the radio in the car, said extraordinarily stupid remark, even for me.

into the microphone: “Monk?”

He said: “Alive. Fortunately.”

“Yeah?” was the homely chemist’s re-

“Want to bet on it?” My eyes were old sponse from the loudspeaker. “You want to rocks, my skin was used sandpaper and my know where they are? Take the Tri-Borough tongue was a tired gopher. I moved my head Bridge, then keep on the parkway. I’m about a trifle, enough to cause it to come loose and half a mile behind them, I’d judge.”

roll across the floor and I up the wall. There “Don’t get any closer than that.”

was a picture of Doc Savage’s father—he “Roger.”

didn’t look too much like Doc—on the wall, Savage said: “Ham?”

and my head circled that a couple of times Hams voice said: “I’m on the parkway before it came back. I didn’t like the returned about the middle of the island, in case they head; it surely couldn’t be mine.

turn south. This way, I’m able to get a cross-

“Notice which one hit you?”

bearing. Okay?”

“Was I hit?”

“Okay,” Savage said.

“Apparently.”

“What with? A truck?”

“Dictionary. Hold still.” He did some-THE night had settled down darkly, and thing to my skull with his fingers, asked, there was some rain, thin stuff that fell “Does that hurt?”

through the headlight beams like dying gnats.

“Damn! Yes!” I yelled.

There were no pools of water on the pave-

“You’re in fine shape,” he said. “One of ment yet, only a continuous wet steaming the Macs struck you down—I doubt that it sound from the microphone—it was attached was Miss Fenisong—and they have gone.

to a reel that withdrew the cord from sight.

They took the gadget I demonstrated ear-He glanced at the speedometer needle. It lier—the thing I called a neutralizer, the one was swaying around sixty, as troubled as a in the suitcase. You get that? McGraff, politician’s conscience.

McCutcheon and Miss Fenisong have de-I said: “So you set a basket for them, parted, taking the device. This happened all and they fell into it.”

of forty minutes ago, probably. So we’d better “Something like that,” Savage admit-be following them. Come on.”

ted.

“I can’t walk,” I said, stating what “You sent Monk and Ham out—but not seemed to be a conclusive fact. “I’ll come to to scare up some food. You got yourself pieces. I won’t be able to get within fifty feet out—the phone call was from Monk or Ham of my head.”

instead of a cop. Is that good guessing?”

He shrugged, began putting some He nodded. “It goes back farther than gadgets in a ditty bag, and preparing to that.”

leave. It came to me that things were moving, “How far?”

that this might be the home stretch, and it “This morning,” he said. “Why do you was not too hard for me to stand up and think we stayed in one spot all day? It was to move after all—as long as there was some-get McGraff and McCutcheon impatient. If thing for both hands to hang to.

anything would make them nervous, being The dictionary they had used on me lay exposed to us all day would do it.”

there on the floor, as thick as a concrete 42

DOC SAVAGE

“That’s true. I could see their hair get “How do you reason that way?”

gray.”

“They took the gadget in the suitcase.”

He nodded again. “It was encouraging “They took—that’s right, you said they to watch them grow a crop of nerves. Any-did. . . . But I don’t see—or maybe I do. You way, we decided to try this.”

mean that they figure that with the gadget to “We?”

use, they can clean up on the fellow who “Monk, Ham and myself.”

makes moonlight?”

“So I’m an orphan?”

“Yes,” he said. “But there’s more than He didn’t say what I was, because a one fellow, I suspect.”

police prowl came up beside us as slyly as a “Did you show them the gadget so they schoolgirl, and cut loose a howl from its si-would get the notion of borrowing it?”

ren. A red-faced cop stuck out his mouth and “Yes.”

demanded where in hell and three blanks did “For crying out loud!”

we imagine the conflagration was? Savage We had crossed a long bridge now, rolled down the inch-thick window and said: and were running through heavier rain past “Good evening, Morneci—those new ser-naked trees and wet shiny scabs of snow by geant’s stripes look nice on you.”

the roadside. The radio spoke Monk’s voice; Officer Morneci said: “The hell!” Then it told us to make the right turn and go past he asked: “Do you want us to run ahead of the old Century of Progress fairgrounds.

you, Mr. Savage?”

Monk said it was raining harder where he “Thanks, no, Morneci. And don’t say was.

anything on the radio about seeing me. The Savage told

me:

“McGraff and

people we’re having some trouble with are a McCutcheon had to be encouraged to strike scientific sort—they just might keep a radio out on their own.”

tuned in on the police frequency.”

“So they would lead you to—I may not The prowl car let itself get swallowed in pronounce this right—Mr. Chromospheric the night behind.

Eruptions?”

“That’s right.”

One of those involved parkway cross-I THOUGHT about the thing. I picked overs appeared in front of us, an arrange-out the points that puzzled me. There were ment of overpasses and turn-offs intended to enough of these to make them easy to find, simplify things for the motorist, but looking but I fished out one that was particularly baf-about as uninvolved as six gray snakes in a fling.

wrestling match. We made the correct turns “Mind telling me how you knew the with no slackening of speed.

Macs and Miss Fenisong would make a “You mean the thing had you so break if given the chance?”

stumped you had to pull something like this?”

“Didn’t you think they were scared?”

I asked.

Savage asked.

“That’s about it.”

“Sure, but what made that a novelty? I “Why not just try that lie detector thing was scared too, and so were Monk and on them?”

Ham—even old Doctor Hodges, the stron-

“Oh, that? It’s a lie detector, not a truth tium isotopist. I think you were, too.”

extractor. I was already fairly sure they were “I still am,” he said.

lying, so it wouldn’t have helped us much, That called for at least an inner shud-probably.”

der, and no words. Of course the only man “I’m full of questions—do you mind tell-who is never afraid is the one without enough ing me how you knew they were lying?”

sense for it. But it wasn’t comforting to hear a He put the car around another motorist man like Savage say he was afraid.

who was driving blissfully in the middle of the He added: “I’m not a mind-reader. I twin-lane parkway.

didn’t know they would make a break. I “Just a hunch I had,” he said.

merely tried out the chance that they would—The answer was nice. He hadn’t had and it seems they have.”

any more to go on than I had, and I’d figured “Where are they going?”

the Macs for black-faced prevaricators, too. It “To get rid of the people they’re afraid made me feel that I was one of the boys.

of. . . . That is a guess, mind you.”

NO LIGHT TO DIE BY