Chapter 8 Clues

A mad hurricane of gold flakes raged in Doc Savage's eyes as he fought the urge to rush forward. There was nothing he could do for Johnny Littlejohn now. The man of bronze took a small glass phial from his vest and opened the screw-top. After it filled with air from the room, he re-capped it, returned it to its place in his metal mesh garment. Doc hoped the air retained something of the process which turned men to stone, something which would tell him what the transforming mechanism was. Without knowing what the process was, there could be no hope of reversing it. The bronze man moved in closer to the glass-like men. He did not examine the gunmen, but went straight to his stone aide, bound to a stone chair with stone rope. Doc's trilling sprang into being, filling the clearing between crates, which were now glassy. It ran the scale without melody. The man in the chair was not Johnny Littlejohn! They had substituted a double. He had the bony geologist's build but lacked his height. His posture in the chair had helped disguise this fact. After a moment of elation at finding his aide was turned to stone, and therefore probably still alive somewhere, Doc Savage felt a moment of foolishness and self-reproachment--if Doc had taken the time earlier to observe the unmoving figure for more than a moment, he would have realized that the man was not his geologist aide. The double had probably feigned unconsciousness so as to avoid having to fake Johnny's voice as well, if Doc attempted to speak with him. Doc Savage conducted a search of the place and found it contained exactly what it had seemed to--left over and dismantled pieces of the Exposition. There were no clues to the man behind this horror, or how or why he had done what he had. This room had been specifically prepared as a trap for Doc, and had no other use to the fiendish mastermind who had sacrificed his own men in an attempt to kill the man of bronze. Crates and wooden placards near the clearing in the center of the room had been turned to stone, Doc observed. The planner of the trap had considered that Doc might not be in the clearing when the "thing" went off, whatever it was. A large area had been transformed. Metal poles and signs in the same area--and even the submachine guns and metal in the men's clothing--were unaffected. Lucky Loo had the opinion that the man leaving the big plane belonged in a circus, with his freakishly-large hands and long, horse-like face. Children would probably be entertained by his appearance, Lucky concluded, but the giant looked as though he had just received the news that his best friend had died. "I'm Lucky Loo," the worthy offered, stepping forward to meet the dour Renwick. "Doc Savage sent me." The giant extended a huge, bony hand which Lucky took cautiously. His hand disappeared inside Renwick's. "Renny Renwick," the giant's voice boomed. Lucky Loo thought he sounded like a big bear in a big cave who had been woken up from his winter sleep a little too early, and was annoyed by the fact. Loud and deep, the voice was. The apparent emotional content was probably a result of these other two qualities, Lucky decided. Or, at least, he hoped. Renwick released Lucky's hand and the worthy seemed surprised to get it back intact. He examined the hand for damage. Finding none, he repeated to big-fisted Renny what Doc Savage had told him. "Holy Cow!" exclaimed the engineer, using his pet phrase, when Lucky Loo had finished his report. "Let's get back to the hotel." "Is that thunder in the distance?" Lucky mumbled facetiously, leading the way to his colorful taxi cab. Renny picked up a valise, his hand swallowing the handle, and he followed Lucky Loo to the waiting vehicle. "So you're a hack." Lucky nodded in assent and climbed into the cab, leaving the giant Renwick to fend for himself, with regard to his luggage. The tall engineer hauled the valise to the top of the automobile as if it were filled with feathers, and secured it there. Renny squeezed his large frame into the front seat beside Lucky. Lucky Loo started the engine, and wheeled the cab onto the street. After a few minutes of silence, the big engineer said, "I haven't been in your city for a while. Last time I was here, Doc and the rest of us were after a guy who had an oxygen-destroying gadget. The chase ended over there," said Renny, indicating the Golden Gate bridge, to the north. "That wasn't long after the bridge had been completed." The big engineer looked at the massive bridge admiringly. The sight of the awesome constructs of Man always filled him with pride. Nature as the servant of Man, with Technology as its wrangler, was Renny's philosophy. "Did you know the people of six counties put up their houses as bond to fund the bridge?" said Lucky Loo, interrupting Renny's reverie. The big engineer nodded. There was probably not a detail of the bridge's construction he did not know about, including where the money to build it had come from. After a pause, the worthy added, "San Francisco is a nice place. I've lived in here for as long as I can remember." That fact did not surprise Renny Renwick. After their rehabilitation, Doc Savage's graduates were relocated to a city where they previuosly had not been. For Lucky Loo, the city had been San Francisco. The idea was to keep the graduates from being recognized--and tempted--by former criminal acquaintances. This reduced the likelihood of the graduate falling back into his criminal lifestyle. Thus far, in the college's dozen-year history, not a single graduate had reverted to a life of crime. Detective Chester Bester took stock of the situation with a glance: Doc Savage had discovered the hide-out of the stone-death mastermind and had not contacted the police until everybody had left or been turned to stone. The frown upon the detective's face told the man of bronze what was on his mind. "There was not time to telephone you, Detective," Doc said pre-emptorily. "My associate Johnny Littlejohn seemed to be in imminent danger." Chester Bester's frown deepened. He had been told plenty of lines before, and knew one when he heard it. "Oh?" "The desk clerk at my hotel will confirm that a person identifying himself as my associate called and left an urgent message for me which indicated he was in trouble," Doc explained. The bronze man's tone gave no hint that he had not been entirely convinced the message had indeed been from Johnny. The scrawl on the ground beside the telephone booth suggested to him that the lanky geologist had left no other message. "If you choose to contact the clerk." "You bet I will," replied Chester Bester, his voice somewhat softer than it could have been. His face relaxed--just a bit, but the frown, now milder, remained. "What happened here?" Doc Savage, in a few words, explained fully what had transpired. He ended the description with the fact that the man in the chair was not his missing aide, Johnny Littlejohn. "That's pretty clever," observed the detective, "using a double like that." "The ruse can be quite effective," Doc Savage agreed. Came a crash, the sound of glass shattering--a stone man had been knocked over by one of the uniformed policemen. It--he--lay in pieces on the ground. "Be careful," exclaimed Chester Bester, forgetting his row with the man of bronze. "That's a man, for God's sake." The detective hurried to the broken figure, with Doc Savage close behind. The uniformed officers backed away from the glassy stone men, showing the ranking policeman deference. The detective, a softness around his eyes, looked at Doc Savage. "It is a man, isn't it?" he asked quietly. "I'm afraid so," replied the bronze man. "I probably came as close to witnessing the transformation as possible without being affected." Doc Savage knelt, examined the ground. It was wet. "Keep away from this liquid," Doc said suddenly, perhaps a little brusquely. There was no room for disobedience in his tone. Chester Bester stepped back suddenly, reflexively, impelled by the power in the bronze man's voice, and saw Doc remove something from inside his clothing. The man of bronze scooped up some of the liquid with a eyedropper-type glass tube, open at one narrow end with a simple rubber suction cap at the other. He then extruded the substance into a stoppered phial and returned both to his vest. "What is that stuff?" asked Detective Bester, bending down beside the bronze man. "I'm not sure," Doc replied honestly, a hint of puzzlement in his voice. "I will have to analyze it to be certain." He began examining the shards of the broken stone man. "It is probably not dangerous, Detective." The bronze man pocketed the glassy hand of the broken stone man, and a few of the larger shards that came from the arm, which had been broken off in the fall. The rest of the body was mostly intact, the shattered arm having cushioned the impact. Doc rose, regained his feet. "If you have no objection," he told Detective Bester, who now rose to his full height, as well, "these men can be put with the five from yesterday." "I don't have any objection to that," said Chester Bester amicably. "I wouldn't know what to do with them otherwise." Doc Savage gave him the address of the warehouse where the other figures reposed. "Take care not to disturb the equipment there," he added. Chester Bester turned to leave. As the man of bronze supervised the packing of the stone men, Doc heard the detective's fingers snap, and Chester Bester returned. "I almost forgot," he explained. "I have that information you suggested we get, about where the other geologists were staying. We couldn't find any of them, as you suspected." He recited briefly what he had learned about their whereabouts. Doc's trilling sound permeated the vast room. "What's that?" asked Detective Bester, glancing about himself. Standing only a few feet from Doc Savage, he did not realize the bronze man was the source of the unusual sound. "Go outside and see if someone tripped their siren," Chester Bester instructed one of the patrolmen. His face wore a puzzled frown. "Doesn't really sound like a siren, though," he said to himself. The uniformed police officers searched for the source of the sound, but did not locate it. The trilling stopped as abruptly as it begun, and Doc said nothing to enlighten Detective Chester Bester.

The Stone Death Written By: Jeff Deischer Dedicated to "Kenneth Robeson X" for his encouragement. The Stone Man is a work of fan fiction. Doc Savage is © Conde Nast Back to: Top of Page Index Page Home Page