Initial Investigations
More Questions
"Ohh, my dark amazon," Ham whispered.
Someone smacked his face. The lawyer shook his head, and his vision cleared. Instead of Black Cat Jackson, a police officer kneeled over him and peered into his face.
"What's this stuff about the amazin' dark, buddy?" the cop asked.
"Nothing, nothing, officer," Ham said. The lawyer delicately touched a goose egg on his head as he sat up. "Just kinda fuzzy as I came to." He saw Monk stretched out on the floor by the desk, another policeman standing beside him.
"Monk!" Ham scrambled over to the chemist. He was concerned about his friend, but he was pleased that his simian pal wasn't awake to hear Ham mistake the cop for Cat Jackson.
Monk groaned and slowly sat up. He leaned against the desk. "Where's Cat? Where are those thugs?" He finally noticed the two cops. "And who are you guys?"
The cop who had smacked Ham spoke up. "You musta got popped pretty good if you can't recognize a couple of New York's Finest. I'm Officer Welch. My partner there is Officer Cranford."
"Okay, okay, I know cops when I see 'em," Monk said.
"I think Monk means to ask how you knew to come here," Ham explained.
"Headquarters sent us," Officer Cranford answered. "Our chiefs got buzzed from some Navy bigwig in Washington. We got the call to check up here at Doc Savage's headquarters - apparently your boss found out you guys had been in a dust up."
"That's what happened, officer," said a voice from the door. Just entering the penthouse office was a walking cadaver carrying a metal box. Actually, this man was Thomas J. Roberts, another Doc Savage associate, dubbed Long Tom by his friends. He appeared to be a physical weakling - thin, not very tall, and with a pale, unhealthy complexion. But despite his appearance, Long Tom could be a wildcat in a fight. He had put down for the count many a foe who had been surprised by the vitality of this seeming weakling.
"When Doc heard the tussle you boys got into, he had the Norfolk admiral put in a call for someone to check on you guys," Long Tom explained. "He knew I was in town for a brief stay, so he followed up with a call to me. I got here just as these stalwarts from the NYPD showed up."
Long Tom looked from Monk to Ham. "So what happened to you two?"
Ham quickly related the story of meeting Black Cat Jackson and the violent arrival of the gang of strangers.
Officers Welch and Cranford nodded to one another. "Sounds like an ugly crowd of desperadoes, all right," the latter noted.
Monk, still rubbing his aches and pains, asked, "Now what?"
"Now we take a look at this gang who visited," Long Tom answered.
Officer Welch piped up. "How's that?"
"Doc set up a gadget in the elevator. If more than four people at a time travel down from our floor without disabling the device, it kicks on some motion picture cameras aimed at the building exits. The cameras capture anybody leaving within the next fifteen minutes." Long Tom lifted the metal box he still carried. "I have the film here."
The puny-looking fellow was a wizard with electricity and electrical gadgets. He had installed the elevator device at Doc's direction. During most of the war, Long Tom had worked on a variety of military projects to develop secret weapons for use against the Axis powers.
Followed by Monk, Ham and the two policemen, Long Tom entered the laboratory, where he ran the special film through a quick developing and printing process. Next, he loaded the print into a viewer that projected the activity at each exit simultaneously onto a single screen, each scene stacked over another. The action zipped along at an accelerated pace, until Monk spotted Black Cat Jackson and yelled, "That's her!"
Long Tom punched a button and all the scenes stopped, with each person frozen onscreen in a moment of recorded time.
"Wow," breathed Officer Welch.
"She's a looker, all right," said Officer Cranford.
"I think we can rely on you men to provide an accurate description for the rest of the city's police force," Long Tom said. His wry tone drew no remark; nor, perhaps, notice. "I'm sure we'll hear a report if someone spots this young lady."
"Oh, absolutely," Officer Cranford said.
"Let's take a look at the goons who stole her away," Monk prodded.
Long Tom flicked a switch, then began advancing the film more slowly by manually turning a crank.
"Looks like ten or eleven of them," Ham remarked.
The group on the screen spewed out from the doorway onto the sidewalk and surrounded Cat Jackson, who was almost entirely obscured by the men. Four men and the woman piled into an older model sedan parked at the curb. The rest hailed two cabs and rode off screen.
Long Tom played the scene backward and forward a few more times, but the assembled viewers learned nothing new.
Ham posed a question. "Was Miss Jackson going willingly, do you think, or was she coerced?"
Monk snorted. "Why, it's clear as the nose on your face! Didn't you see that gang surround Cat? She was forced to go with 'em."
"Surround her?" Ham's brow wrinkled with thought. "That may merely be an appearance, thanks to the camera angle."
"Aw, that's shyster talk!" Monk thumped the table with his fist. "You got bopped on the noggin as soon as those guys busted in here. You didn't see her fighting off those rats. Man, whatta right cross she's got, too!"
Ham glared at Monk. "The protestations of a simple mind, easily swayed by great beauty."
"Hah!" yelled Monk, and even the tough New York cops winced. "You're just jealous 'cause she obviously favored me over your bumbling attempts at suavity-ness. I'm right, and you know it."
The attorney advanced toward the hairy chemist. "Listen, you anthropomorphic excuse for a sentient being -"
"Stop!" shouted Long Tom, halting both in their tracks.
He drew a long breath in the welcome silence. "You both may be right. It'll take more than this film to determine."
The electrical wizard glanced at the policemen. "Meanwhile, you two have enough info to put out a bulletin about this Catherine Jackson. If she knows something about the tanker explosion in Boston, we need to find her."
The cops agreed. Apparently the perils of policing the city were preferable to witnessing an argument between Monk and Ham, for they left in a hurry.
Long Tom turned back to Monk and Ham. "You two seem none the worse for wear after your scrap in the study with the lovely Miss Jackson and the Forty Thieves."
Ham sniffed. Monk gingerly investigated a bump on his head.
"Let's call Doc and report," Long Tom continued. "Then my nursemaid duties are done. I'm scheduled to fly back out . . . to my work."
"Whatcha workin' on, Long Tom?" Monk asked.
The electrical genius led the way into the study to the phone on the large desk. "I'm working on a project for Uncle Sam, and Uncle is very particular about his secrets."
When calling Long Tom, Doc had given him the number for the direct line to Admiral Ryan's office in Norfolk.
There, Doc listened to each of the three associates give his report. Ham was the last on the phone.
"Do you know this Catherine Jackson, Doc?" he asked.
"No, we've never met," Doc answered, looking at the flimsy of the telegram the admiral had given him.
"She claims you two know each other - so she is a phony!"
"Perhaps," Doc admitted. "She may have claimed an acquaintance in the hopes that doing so would improve her chances of meeting me. As for the purpose of that . . . there could be any number of reasons."
Doc then explained what he and Renny had learned from Admiral Ryan. He described the telegram supposedly signed by Black Cat Jackson.
"I don't need lawyer's instincts to say that something's fishy somewhere with that young lady," Ham stated.
Doc quickly instructed Ham to undertake an investigation: "Check out the shipping company and owners of the tanker that blew in Boston - Whithers and McCarthy Shipping Company. Perhaps some of their dealings made them a target of this attack."
To Monk, Doc directed a different task: "View the exit film again. See if you can spot a hack number on the cabs the gang used. You can probably learn from the cab company where the drivers delivered their fares."
"Will do, Doc," squeaked the hairy chemist.
After ringing off, Long Tom prepared to depart. "You know, Ham," he said at the door, "after hearing some of those insults you sent Monk's way, I'd say you've picked up a few bad habits from Johnny."
Johnny was William Harper Littlejohn, another associate in Doc's group of scrappy adventurers. Johnny, a specialist in archeology and geology, was noted for his enthusiastic and eloquent volubility with polysyllabic utterances. His present whereabouts were unknown to the trio in Doc's penthouse headquarters, but given the group's various involvements with the war effort, each associate assumed Johnny was working somewhere for the U.S. government.
All Ham could mutter was, "Good grief."
While Monk and Ham began their assignments in New York, Doc and Renny studied charts in an office provided by Admiral Ryan.
The charts displayed details of the Port of Boston and the Charlestown Navy Yards.
"It's pretty much as I remembered," Renny's voiced rumbled within the office. "The depth there isn't great enough for a submarine to sneak into the harbor. And check the layout of the place - a sub wouldn't have a straight shot from outside the port to the tanker's location, so a torpedo is out of the question."
"So whatever destroyed the tanker was in the immediate vicinity," Doc noted.
"Unless the sun melted the ship, like Monk said," Renny pointed out.
Doc Savage made no response.
There was a knock at the door, and Lt. Sherman entered. "At Admiral Ryan's orders, a plane is scheduled to leave with Dr. Savage for New York in the morning. Take off will be at 0500 hours."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Doc replied before returning his attention to the charts.
"Holy cow, Doc! What if somebody's figured out how to focus the rays of the sun on a specific target - like cooking bugs with a magnifying glass." Renny's grim expression turned even gloomier. "How do we fight the sun?"
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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