“So what?”
“So what d’you think? My secretary has got ‘em upstairs.”
A hot, startled light came into Doc’s golden eyes! His men swapped ‘blank’ looks.
“We misunderstood you, Monk,” Doc said steadily. “When you said everything was ‘all right’, we took it to mean both you and your secretary were safe.”
Monk seemed about to choke.
“What d’you mean?”
“Lea Aster is not in your laboratory!”
VII — Nick Clipton
Monk’s homely face set in a rock-like mask. His big, amiable mouth warped a grim scowl.
“But she was left behind when they took me away!” he muttered. “Buttons knocked her out. He didn’t hit her hard enough to do any serious damage, though.”
Doc wheeled back into the building, saying, “We’ll go up and look again for her.”
A red flush of sunlight suffused the penthouse which contained Monk’s laboratory although the street below was still somewhat gloomy. Sunbeams sloping into the workroom itself were reflected dazzlingly from the myriads of glass test tubes, bottles, pestles, and from metallic stands of mechanisms. It was as though the room were heaped with scintillating jewelry.
Monk’s sharp eyes detected several stands of apparatus lying upon the floor. Stands which had been upright when his captors forced him from the laboratory.
“Did you fellows upset those?” he asked, indicating the fallen apparatus on the floor.
“No,” Doc assured him.
Monk groaned. “Then they have been upset since I was taken away! It looks like there was another fight in here.”
“You say it was a light blow which knocked Lea Aster unconscious?”
“Yes. She must have come to.” Monk shook a fist angrily. “It looks like Buttons and his gang rushed back here after I got away from them and grabbed my secretary. Don’t you think that’s what happened, Doc”
“Apparently,” Doc admitted.
Monk now hurried to the apparatus cabinet behind which Lea Aster had concealed something. He searched but found nothing.
“If the girl actually did slip the documents from Buttons’s pocket and hide them here, they’ve been taken,” he said thoughtfully. “It is possible Miss Aster regained consciousness, secured the papers, and had them when Buttons returned.”
Ham had been standing quietly to one side, slowly tapping an immaculate shoe toe with the tip of his sword cane. His high, intelligent forehead was wrinkled from hard thinking.
“What I cannot understand is why they came back for the young woman,” he declared. “Granting that they’re trying to send us up North on a wild-goose chase, it seems to me they should be satisfied that they have us bluffed. The elaborate scheming they’re doing to get us out of town shows they know that we’re bad fellows to monkey with. Why should they draw our vengeance further by seizing the girl?”
“I have a surmise that explains both questions,” Doc told him. “Buttons realized he must have lost the papers in this laboratory. He came back for them and discovered Lea Aster reading them. He was forced to take the young woman because she had learned the contents of the documents.”
Doc and his men now questioned the single elevator operator on duty in the building at this early hour in an effort to verify the correctness of their reasoning. But that individual had seen no one leave with Monk’s secretary in tow.
“They could have come-and-gone by the stairs without being observed. They had enough time,” Doc pointed out.
Back in the laboratory, they continued their consultation.
“We’re sure of one thing”, Renny rumbled in a voice that threatened to shake apparatus off stands. “The fact that they’re trying to decoy us into Canada.”
“Well, they won’t have any luck at that!” Ham snapped.
The words were hardly off his lips when he started violently.
Doc’s strange trilling note had sounded unexpectedly. It came into being, seemingly from nowhere. Awesome, melodious, its eerie nature defying description, it rose and fell. Only a moment did it last… then it trailed away.
“What is it, Doc?” Ham barked out quickly.
Doc did not reply with words. He leveled an arm at the city telephone which stood on a table near them. The receiver was off the hook and resting on the tabletop.
Moving to the instrument swiftly, Doc pressed the receiver to his ear. He heard sounds of a man breathing. These persisted several seconds.
Long Tom sprinted out of the laboratory, intent on getting to another phone and having the connection to this instrument traced. He was not successful in that, however.
Buttons Zortell was the man at the other end of the phone wire.
Something of the sudden tension which had seized the laboratory was transmitted to him. He became alarmed. Hanging up quickly, he quitted the booth from which he had been listening and hurried outside.
The booth was in a drugstore less than a block from the building which supported Monk’s penthouse. Buttons joined his men, who were waiting in their parked car in a side-street.
“What’d you learn, Buttons?” quizzed one of the men.
“Plenty!” their leader snarled. “Them hombres are wise that the Radium mine in Canada is all a fake. I don’t savvy how they got next to our scheme. I figured we’d put it over plumb slick!”
“Blazes! Have they found out why we want ‘em out of New York?”
“Not yet,” Buttons muttered uneasily.
The flyer with the white mustache and eyebrows took the wheel. The car moved off. The men sat back pretending nonchalance but keeping wary eyes on each policeman they passed.
They were nervous because Lea Aster — securely bound-and-gagged — was on the floor of the car.
And none were less settled of mind than Buttons Zortell.
“This Doc Savage and his men are a sharp bunch!” he growled. “Listenin’ at the phone, I could hear pretty much all they said. It was a darn good phone and they musta been standin’ close to it. They stood there and reasoned out exactly what happened when we came back huntin’ them papers. They even figured that we’d grabbed the mohairrie because she’d read the papers!”
“That’s sure what happened,” a man agreed.
“Go to our hotel,” Buttons commanded the driver. “I’ve gotta get in touch with the Boss. This thing is gettin’ too much for me.”
The men reached their hotel without incident.
Leaving the others to wait in the car, Buttons entered the hostelry and hurried to his room. He lost no time putting in a long-distance telephone call to Arizona. The wire connections he obtained were excellent. The conversation passed back-and-forth clearly.
Buttons recited all that had occurred. He sought to color the story in a fashion which made his accomplishments sound sizable and his mistakes unimportant.
“I figure I’ve done a pretty good job, Boss!” he finished.
“The hell you have!” gritted the distant mastermind. “You’ve bungled right and left! Where are you talking from?”
“My hotel,” Buttons said sourly.
“Of all the nitwits! Didn’t you ever hear of telephone operators listenin’ in?”
“That won’t hurt nothin’!”
“Maybe not. But it would have had you called me under my right name instead of ‘Nick Clipton’. From now on, never get in touch with me except by the name of ‘Nick Clipton’. Savvy?”
“I gotcha.”
“Furthermore, check out of that hotel the instant you hang up! Make sure nobody can trace you!”
“All right,” Buttons promised sheepishly.
“And you’re leaving New York right away! You’re not needed there any more!”