Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace

The Miracle Menace

A Doc Savage Adventure

by Will Murray & Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson

cover by Joe DeVito

Altus Press • 2013

The Miracle Menace copyright © 2013 by Will Murray and the Heirs of Norma Dent.

Doc Savage copyright © 2013 Advance Magazine Publishers Inc./Condé Nast. “Doc Savage” is a registered trademark of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc., d/b/a/ Condé Nast. Used with permission.

Front cover image copyright © 2013 Joe DeVito. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Designed by Matthew Moring/
Altus Press

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The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage

Special Thanks to James Bama, Jerry Birenz, Condé Nast, Jeff Deischer, Norma Dent, Carol Diaz-Granados of Washington University, St. Louis, Dafydd Neal Dyar, Elizabeth Engel of The State Historical Society of Missouri, Bob Gasparini, Mark O. Lambert, Dave McDonnell, Matthew Moring, Ray Riethmeier, Howard Wright, and last but not least, the Heirs of Norma Dent—James Valbracht, John Valbracht, Wayne Valbracht, Shirley Dungan and Doris Leinkuehler.

Cover illustration commissioned by Bob Gasparini

Dedication

For Leonard Leone, Bantam Books art director

The man who created the Doc Savage banner logo, gave the Man of Bronze his widow’s peak, and who posed for Ham Brooks on the back covers of countless paperbacks—and for the front cover of this novel.

Prologue

DARKNESS WAS JUST falling when the combination depot-agent-and-telegrapher at the northeast Missouri farming town of La Plata heard his call on the telegraph wire. It was a message. He answered the wire and went ahead and copied it, using his private hunt-and-punch system on the typewriter.

But by the time the agent-telegrapher had translated the message entirely to the yellow blank, a distinctly strange expression came to his features. He leaned back and stared at the missive. He thoughtfully cleaned his front teeth with a fingernail.

“Fat!” he called suddenly.

Fat was the flunky around the railroad station. Fat Smith.

“This is rich, Fat,” the agent shouted. “Here’s the craziest dang thing you ever heard.”

But Fat was not around the depot. He was uptown getting a coke at the place where his girl worked.

The depot telegrapher stuck the carbon copy of the telegram on his filing spindle, which was the usual procedure, since copies of all messages were kept. In this case, it was to have a horrible result.

Then the agent read the telegram again and its contents, which had earlier amazed him, now caused him to laugh. He chortled. “Haw, haw, haw! The daggone thing had me going for a minute! Haw, haw, hee!”

The laugh was not very hearty. It was the kind of a laugh some people gave the Wright brothers when they said they could fly, and also it was a little like the laugh others give when they are alone and have to pass a cemetery at night.

THE GREAT GULLIVER

LA PLATA, MISSOURI

That was the address on the telegram.

The telegrapher studied the name, scratched his head, got down the thin telephone book, looked into it, then shook his head. “Maybe it’s that Gulliver Greene who went to work out at old Duzzit’s filling station,” he suggested aloud to himself.

He carried the telegram to the telephone, laid hold of the instrument.

“I’m sorry, but something happened to the line out toward the One-Stop-Duzzit filling station,” the telephone operator said. “The wire failed about an hour ago. We think it is broken or something.”

The agent hung up, stared again at the telegram, then took a lot of air into his lungs slowly and let it out so swiftly that his lips fluttered. He stood there for some time, probably much stiller than he had stood in a long time.

“Aw, shoot!” he said at last. “Aw, shoot! Such a thing couldn’t be true. It’s a rib somebody is pulling.”

He sealed the telegram in an envelope and carried it out to a taxi driver to deliver. When a telegram could not be telephoned, it was the custom to deliver it by taxi.

“Try that Gulliver feller at old Duzzit’s station,” he directed. “Though durned if I ever heard him called The Great Gulliver.”

The taxi driver departed. This left no one but the agent-telegrapher in the depot, or near it. The agent went back to the delivery window. The queer expression, the funny look, was back on his face. He had no hunch that the incredible was imminent, being no clairvoyant.

The agent, some five minutes later, was called to the delivery window by a very deep voice. He went over and saw no one standing there. He blinked.

“I’m expecting a telegram for The Great Gulliver,” a seemingly disembodied voice said.

The agent looked downward through the glass and spied the shortest man he had ever beheld.

Recovering his composure, he said, “Heh? Why, I just sent Bill to deliver that telegram to the One-Stop-Duzzit Filling Station and Auto Camp, on the edge of town.”

The short individual scowled. “Do you remember what the message said?”

The station agent’s nod was vehement. “Do I! It said that Christopher Columbus is—” He fell silent, swallowed, then added, “I’ll get the carbon copy.”

The stunted stranger walked swiftly to the left, opened a door, and entered the room with the telegrapher.

Without asking permission, the miniature man got up on a vacant stool. “I reckon you would remember the names mentioned in that?” he asked in his deep-in-a-barrel voice.

“Why, sure I do—”

The knife which the man put in the depot-telegrapher’s heart was long and enough like a needle to go in easily. The telegrapher looked down foolishly, his face twisting, his mouth opening. The man reached up, seized the open mouth, crushing the lips in a bunch with his fingers, keeping back all but some small gurgling sounds which nobody heard, until the telegrapher was dead.

The slayer took the carbon copy of the telegram and left.

FAT, the depot flunky, came ambling back a while later from seeing his girl and having a coke. Fat’s face was mostly grin and he was whistling, for he had fixed it up for later in the night. Fat entered the station.

But Fat was not in the depot very long. Just long enough to let out one horror-struck bleat. Then he shot out of the door and ran, pale, mouth gaping, throat making small gurgling sounds which he probably did not realize he was making.

He had not noticed that the copy of the strange telegram was missing, too.

Chapter I

THE GREAT GULLIVER

IT WAS
NOT
a good night for a mystery. The contrary, quite, for it was a crisp October evening, cool, bright, with stars, moon and no clouds—a night that was an ideal setting for peace and lovers. Which indicated how deceptive a setting can be.

The tall young man with the cotton-colored hair leaned over a battered desk in the One-Stop-Duzzit filling station, which was a rather unprofitable place of business located near the small town of La Plata in northeast Missouri.

The young man had a pleasant face equipped with myriad freckles, and rather striking green eyes. He also had a mouth that was grimmer than necessary, and just now he was using the mouth to make a series of the vulgar noises often aptly called Bronx cheers.

Object of the freckled young man’s scorn was a book, a large black scrapbook of the type in which newspaper clippings are pasted; this lay open on the battered desk.

THE GREAT GULLIVER

!! WORLD’S MOST AMAZING MAGICIAN !!

This declaration was set forth in elegant engraving on a discreet, expensive folder. This folder was of the variety used as programs by the very highest paid artists and entertainers who charge exorbitant sums for private performances on the yachts and in the mansions of the extremely wealthy.

“The Great Gulliver!” the young man said derisively, eyeing the sample of high class advertising. “The palooka!”

He turned a page of the scrapbook, using a hand which was distinctive, not only because of the wiry muscular development. While none of the hand sinews had the heroic proportions of steel bars, they did strikingly resemble wires.

The next page of the scrapbook held a clipping.

HE REALLY IS, TOO!

The newest Amazer on Broadway, a long, lean piece of abracadabra calling himself The Great Gulliver—really is. No kidding, he’s swell. From now hence, he’s our pet. And mind you, we’ve never had a crush on magicians. Moreover, this Great Gulliver—we repeat he is that word—is said to be dragging down three grand a week for his Houdini-work.

Which proves us right, or does it?

The publication in which this item had appeared,
Stagechat,
happened to have a very painful reputation among ham actors and vaudeville performers. It was, in the vernacular, a tough baby. Its columns were unusually free with such opinions as bums, lousy and stinko.
Stagechat’s
reviewer had once breezily suggested that a nationally known actor, who had just opened a show, should be given a curtain call and permitted to cackle over the egg he had laid.

Having glanced at the
Stagechat
item, the young man in the filling station absently scratched in his ivory hair. Then he reached down and his remarkable looking hand apparently took two copper pennies out of what seemed to be the solid, scarred wood of an old desk. He tossed the two cents on the printed squib about The Great Gulliver.

“Sold, and no bargain at that price, either!” he said critically.

He turned another scrapbook page, uncovering a second bit from
Stagechat.
This said:

OUR HONEY WON’T!

He’s a be-panted (long pants) gold digger. That’s what! They don’t want to pay The Great Gulliver five grand a week on his new contract, and he, the coy fellow, won’t take less. Isn’t he Great?

The Great Gulliver is a holdout, and won’t be seen in the nicer ($ $ $) places until they pay his price. What’s more, he has gone off somewhere while they think it over. He’s disappeared—isn’t he Great?

We really hope he is that great. We miss our pet.

The ivory-haired young man retrieved the pennies he had produced from the desk top and dropped them into a pocket of his coveralls which also held four paper dollars. This was Saturday, therefore pay day. The four dollars happened to be the young man’s total wages for the week, his worldly cash wealth. This was also the first week he had served for this remuneration. These circumstances accounted for the caustic inventory of his own value, cash and otherwise, which he had been taking.

“You hunted for two weeks before you found this—er—position,” he reminded himself soothingly. “Whoever said there was plenty of room at the bottom of the ladder never tried to get a job down there.”