48

DOC SAVAGE

“Fools! It was as sensible as using a one behind him was Monk Mayfair. They barrel of gasoline to extinguish a match.”

came quietly, but full of purpose.

They seemed to agree with him.

I said loudly, “Well, besides Paula and Spatny levelled an arm at me.

myself, there’s four of us in here.” Then I

“This fellow! You perhaps thought he reached for a chair, got it, and made for was mine? He is not. He is merely an idiot McGraff.

with a long nose”—he glanced at Miss Feni-Old Spatny said, “Don’t shoot him. We song—”and an eye for a pretty girl.”

might have to explain a gunshot.”

“Augustino can remove him,” McGraff McGraff eyed me. He grinned. His con-said, dismissing me more casually than I fidence bubbled out under the lid. He tossed liked to be dismissed.

his gun on the table, came at me with that The old woman—she was obviously judo crouch that I had learned about.

the old giant’s wife, countess and all—

I threw the chair at the short Mac. It brought Paula into it. “This girl must be dis-seemed to pass through him. He just posed of also,” she said.

weaved, made a space for the chair to sail They shrugged. Evidently it was to be through, and was back in position and still Augustino again.

coming.

This time I was going to fight him a little different. If he got his hands on me, I was SPATNY—or Fleur—had left the labo-sunk, probably. I threw an ashtray at him. A ratory door open. I started through the door stool. A table lamp. He was as elusive as the into the laboratory with the kind of fixity that a fellow with his head through a canvas at a frozen man devotes to watching the snow carnival pitch-joint.

fall. It seemed to be a laboratory that special-This must have happened fast, be-ized on one thing, and it certainly lacked the cause Savage wasn’t in the room yet. Short completeness of Savage’s equipment. Be-Mac had me in a corner. I took a Joe Louis yond it there was a terrace garden, with ev-stance to fool him, and kicked instead. His ergreen stuff growing out of tubs or boxes, stomach was as compact as a sack of sand, and beyond that, speckled with a myriad of but he went down. He didn’t stay down. He lighted windows, was the bulk of the Park-got my arm, did one of his tricks on it, and side-Regent. The hotel was not more than a liquid fire went up the arm and flew out of my block distant. It didn’t take much adding of ears and toes. I shook him off.

two and two to realize that here was where Savage was in the room now. And the moonlight must have originated the first Monk Mayfair, and the latter began yelling—time. It was convenient to the hotel, which there were no special words to his yelling, explained why they had picked the banquet and he seemed to be doing it merely to show at the Parkside-Regent to introduce Doc how he felt. Apparently he loved it.

Savage to the affair.

There was a Scotch bottle, fifth-size, I looked fixedly at the terrace and my on a small table. I got the bottle by the neck, thinking began to fog. I was aware of Paula, rapped it on the table, and had a scary and I knew they had decided on death for weapon. Exactly—it suddenly developed—her, and knew they meant it. There was what I needed. McGraff’s eyes got wide with something as cold about these people as a horror. He backed away from me, and I quack surgeon’s knife. They would kill us, chased him.

that was sure, unless someone posed objec-I was chasing him when I forgot not to tions. . . .

breathe that anaesthetic gas that Savage There was someone on the terrace.

used.

This fact, only a little less important than the Second Coming, did not mean much. Not until I thought it out. Let’s see—one of the I TOOK a swing at someone, missed Macs had left. The old giant and his witch him—it was Ham Brooks, and he said, made two. That left—nobody. There wouldn’t “There’s been a recess. Take it easy.”

be anyone on the terrace.

I sat down again. I had been uncon-He was half-way across the laboratory scious. I remembered the trick gas. I was on before I saw that it was Savage. And another the terrace, and they had dragged one of the

NO LIGHT TO DIE BY