Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 071 - Mad Mesa

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MAD MESA

A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson

http://www.blackmask.com

Scanned and Proofed by

Tom Stephens

? Chapter I. HONDO WEATHERBEE

? Chapter II. THE BLACK-GLOVED MAN

? Chapter III. THE FINGERPRINTS

? Chapter IV. THE MYSTERIOUS PILOT

? Chapter V. THE DUMB WAITRESS

? Chapter VI. HELL IN OHIO

? Chapter VII. TWO TRAILS TO TROUBLE

? Chapter VIII. SKOOKUM’S IDEA

? Chapter IX. LIFER

? Chapter X. SUITCASE TRICK

? Chapter XI. PHANTOM FREIGHT

? Chapter XII. DEATH IN THE SOLITARY BLOCK

? Chapter XIII. MÊLÉE IN A PENITENTIARY

? Chapter XIV. SAGEBRUSH TRAIL

? Chapter XV. TROUBLE, GENERAL DELIVERY

? Chapter XVI. WEED CLUE

? Chapter XVII. MADNESS ON THE MESA

? Chapter XVIII. THE DOUBLE-CROSSED MAN

? Chapter XIX. MÊLÉE ON MAD MESA

? Chapter XX. DAM DEATH

Chapter I. HONDO WEATHERBEE

THE life of Thomas Idle had been an ordinary one. Nothing fantastic had ever happened to him.

Nor, unfortunately was Tom Idle a well-known young man. Had he been a person of importance, the newspapers might

have blazed up about his disappearance, and perhaps this would have focused attention on the utterly incredible thing

that happened to him.

Still, the thing was so strange that no one might have believed it, even if it had happened to Hitler, or Mussolini, or

someone equally well known. No one believed Tom Idle. No one believed him in time, that is, to stop the baby monster

of horror which began to grow when it took its first bite and swallowed Tom Idle.

Tom Idle was born on a Missouri farm, soon orphaned, went to high school, then worked on a farm as a hired man. A

few weeks ago, he had become tired of farming, and, seeking greener fields, had vagabonded westward on freight

trains and by hitchhiking.

Now he was trying to find a job in Salt Lake City, Utah.

So far, the nearest he had come to an adventure was the time old Jinn, the farm mule, kicked him; but old Jinn kicked

him on the leg, not the head, so the incident in no way explained what occurred in Salt Lake City.

Tom Idle was using the city park for his hotel.

He awakened on the same park bench he had occupied three nights running. He carefully folded the newspapers he

had used to keep the dew off, and placed them in a trash can—he had learned that the park cop, Officer Sam Stevens,

did not mind you using the place for a hotel, but resented having the grass littered.

Officer Sam Stevens passed. Tom Idle gave him a grin, and the policeman grinned back.

"Today’s a lucky day, kid," Officer Stevens said. "I been feelin’ it all mornin’. Today, you find that job."

"Thanks!" Tom Idle said.

The officer’s hunch made him feel better. He was no clairvoyant, so he could not know what a phantasm the near

future held.

Morning air was bracing, the sunshine was bright, and the sky had that remarkably healthful clarity peculiar to Salt

Lake City. It did look like a lucky day, at that. Tom Idle went to Skookum’s lunchroom.

"Sinkers and java, Skookum." He deposited his last nickel on the white counter.

He tried not to remember this was the third day he’d subsisted on coffee and doughnuts.

Skookum said, "This monotony’ll get you down, chief."

"It’ll have to, then," Tom Idle answered wryly, "because I’m broke."

Skookum’s name wasn’t Skookum; it was something which nobody but a Greek could pronounce. Everyone called him

Skookum because he was always using slangy Indian expressions when he talked. Skookum was liked.

A few moments later, Skookum unexpectedly put a plate of ham and eggs in front of Tom Idle.

"I can’t pay for that," Tom Idle said.

"Pay when you land job, chief."

"What makes you think I’ll land one?"

"Don’t kid yourself. Heap plenty job. You catch."

Tom Idle’s eyes became suddenly damp with gratitude.

"Thanks, Skookum," he mumbled.

Physically fortified with Skookum’s unexpected ham and eggs, and mentally perked up by Officer Sam Stevens’

statement that this was a lucky day, Tom Idle did his best—but did not find work that day. He visited all the

employment agencies, and even solicited from door to door; but as one man put it, "Jobs are as scarce as hen’s teeth!"

Tom Idle slept that night on his usual bench in the park.

Ever afterward, it seemed to him that this was the last really normal day that he ever spent.

THE next morning, a strangled rasping sound caused Tom Idle to awaken. He jerked erect, scattering his newspaper

blankets. Because he had really starved for several days, he at once felt nervous and shaky.

He batted his eyes in the morning sun, looking around.

He saw the horrified man immediately.

The man stood beside the park bench. He was past middle age, looked seedy, might have been a professional bum.

There was much of the furtiveness and insolence of a confirmed hobo in his face.

The man had obviously made the strangled sound which had aroused Tom Idle. There was utter horror on the man’s

face.

Hondo Weatherbee!"

What?" Tom Idle said. "What’d you say?"

"Hondo!"

Tom Idle looked blankly at the man’s shocked, terrified expression, and came to the conclusion that the fellow was a

drunk. He was some souse who’d mistaken Tom Idle for someone named Hondo Weatherbee. That must be it.

"Better sit down," he suggested soothingly, "and get your eyes uncrossed."

The horrified man acted as if the devil had asked him to come down and sample the warmth. He started back. Whirled.

Fled. He ran wildly away, not looking back.

"I’ll be darned!" Tom Idle said.

He gazed after the fleeing man—the fellow looked so comically ridiculous in his flight. But Tom Idle somehow could

not smile, because there was something unnerving about the whole thing. He had a creepy feeling.

"Snap out of it, guy," he told himself. "The bum was only plastered to the gills."

Trying to get rid of the creeps, Tom Idle made an elaborate business of stretching and scratching himself, then of

retying his shoestrings and necktie, for loosening shoestrings and necktie were about the only bedtime preparations

he’d made since a park bench was his hotel.

Again this morning, the world was full of beautiful sunshine, with birds singing in the park trees, and the air pleasant

with the fruity odor of the orchards surrounding oasislike Salt Lake City, while a few clouds were sitting like big white

rabbits on top of the black mountains to the eastward.

But Tom Idle was in no frame of mind to enjoy a balmy morning.

He was looking at his shoes.

They were not his shoes!

They were gaudy yellow shoes—his shoes had been black and scuffed. He dropped his eyes and stared at

the necktie he was wearing, and it was not his necktie; it was flashy green and yellow in color, whereas his

necktie had been a subdued brown. Nor was the shirt his, nor the suit. All the clothes he was wearing were

different.

He stared in horror at his hands—for they were not his hands either, it seemed; they looked pale, and on one finger

was a ring he had never seen before, a big, ugly, yellow gold ring with the top carved in the shape of a skull.

Tom Idle stood up, feeling like a man having a bad dream, and walked out of the park.

He did not see Officer Sam Stevens just then.

Since the incredible thing had already started to happen to Tom Idle, it was doubtful if it would have made any

difference had he seen the cop at this juncture.

Tom Idle was partially rid of most of his creeps by the time he entered Skookum’s lunchroom.

But he got them again when Skookum grabbed a gun and began shooting at him.

THERE were some brief preliminaries.

First, Skookum saw Tom Idle and jumped up. Skookum was eating his own breakfast, and he knocked his cup of coffee

to the floor.

"Hondo Weatherbee!" Skookum yelled.

Tom Idle began to think this was all some kind of a gag. They must be having some fun with him.

"Hey, cut it out!" he said. "Heap much is enough."

But Skookum stood so rigidly and stared with such ghastly fixity, that Tom Idle suddenly saw that it could not be

acting. Skookum was not that good an actor.

"Cut it," Tom Idle muttered. "You know me. I’m Tom Idle, the guy you staked to ham and eggs yesterday. Some darn

fool swapped clothes on me."

Skookum licked his lips.

"Who you trying to kid, Hondo?" he snarled. "I know that nice kid. You’re not him."

Tom Idle then did something which he habitually did when he was ill at ease; he put his hands in his coat pockets. In

thinking it all over later, he realized that Skookum might have thought he was reaching for a gun.

Skookum made a wild dive, got down behind the counter, came up with a sawed-off shotgun. He blazed away.

Gun roar was ear-splitting. The blast blew a hole in the lunchroom wall so close to Tom Idle’s head that he could have

put his arm through it.

There was no joke about this. That shotgun was real, and Skookum was trying to kill him.

Tom Idle wheeled, ducked, dived out of the lunchroom. He ran. It was only a short distance to the park. He turned into

the park. Behind, the shotgun slammed again. Shot cut leaves off the trees, and frightened birds flew up all over the

park.

The Officer Sam Stevens met Tom Idle for the first time that morning.

Officer Stevens was a tall young man, a year or two older than Tom Idle. He came racing through the park to see what

all the shooting was about, rounded a clump of bushes, and almost bumped into Tom Idle. Tom Idle never forgot that

meeting.

"Hey help me!" Tom Idle panted. "That fool, Skookum, is trying to kill me!"

Officer Stevens stared at Tom Idle.

"Damn!" he barked. "It’s Hondo Weatherbee!"

He struck with his club, swung a blow at Tom Idle’s head. Tom Idle’s reaction was instinctive. He dodged, and the

club hit his head a glancing blow; he grabbed the club and they fought over it. Idle got the officer’s billy.

Then the cop reached for his revolver.

Tom Idle struck the officer down with his own club. There was nothing else he could do. Something fantastic had

happened, and he wasn’t a young man named Tom Idle in search of a job; he was a sallow-skinned, garishly dressed

man named Hondo Weatherbee, and everyone was either afraid of him or wanted to kill him. He could not understand

it.

Officer Sam Stevens fell senseless.

Tom Idle dropped the club, whirled and ran. He did not know how long Officer Stevens would remain unconscious,

and he had no idea at what instant Skookum might haul into view with his shotgun.

"The thing is to get out of here!" he thought.

Professional humorists claim that anything so unbelievable that it is preposterous constitutes a joke. Tom Idle was

bewildered, frightened, horror-stricken; but one thing he did know—that no part of the last few minutes had been a

joke. Everybody had been in dead earnest, from the seedy bum whose gasp had awakened him on the park bench, to

Skookum and his shotgun and Officer Stevens and his pistol.

Probably the most incredible thing of all to Tom Idle was that he had gone to sleep wearing black shoes and a neat, if

worn, blue suit—and had awakened with strange yellow shoes and a gaudy suit. And his skin! His tanned brown skin!

It had become pale! He was completely bewildered.

The appearance of the black-gloved man did not clarify the situation, either.

Chapter II. THE BLACK-GLOVED MAN

THE black-gloved man was in a car, and the machine apparently had been cruising around and around the park in

search of Tom Idle. The car was a touring model, the top down. The black-gloved man drove, and he was craning his

neck as though hunting someone. Apparently, it was Tom Idle he sought, because he sent the car to Idle’s side.

"Hondo!" he yelled. "Get in!"

Tom Idle did not like the looks of the man. Probably he would never have gotten in the car, except for the fact that

Skookum appeared in the distance, fired a shotgun blast, and two or three shot stung Tom Idle’s skin. He decided to

get in the car after all. The stranger at least looked friendly.

The moment Tom Idle landed in the car, the vehicle leaped into motion. Within two minutes, it was breaking the speed

limit; and in five minutes, it was going faster than Tom Idle had ever before ridden in a car.

"What in the hell happened?" asked the black-gloved man.

"I don’t know," Tom Idle said truthfully.

"You went in the park with that bottle of stuff," the stranger snapped. "That was over two hours ago. You told me to

cruise around and be ready to pick you up. While I’m doing that, I see Seedy Smith come tearing out of the park as if a

devil were after him."

Tom Idle stared blankly. Here was another man who thought he was someone else.

"Who—who is Seedy Smith?" he asked uncertainly.

"Why, Seedy used to belong to your gang, Hondo. Don’t you remember? He double-crossed you, and you’ve been

promising to croak him when you saw him."

Tom Idle swallowed.

"Croak him? You mean kill him?"

"Sure," said the black-gloved man calmly.

"Am I—am I the kind of a man who would kill Seedy Smith?" Tom Idle asked, feeling strange.

The black-gloved man laughed harshly.

"You’re Hondo Weatherbee," he said. "You’d do anything!"

TOM IDLE looked at the speedometer, and got such a shock that he decided not to do it again. The needle was kicking

close to a hundred. The car felt as if it were a skyrocket, running on the earth only part of the time. They had left the

city behind and were now climbing mountains, traversing the first of what promised to be a series of dizzy curves from

which sheer precipices fell hundreds, in some places thousands, of feet.

"Not so fast!" Tom Idle said hoarsely.

The black-gloved man stared at him in surprise.

"What the hell, Hondo? It ain’t like you to be made jittery by a little speed."

Tom Idle didn’t think it safe to startle the man by saying he was not Hondo Weatherbee. Not at the speed they were

traveling, and on a road like this.

Clutching the door of the speeding car, Tom Idle examined his companion. The fellow had a long, well-stuffed body

that was remindful of a number of large sausages. His face was distinctly uninviting. It was evil. The mouth was

vicious, the nose thin, the ears pointed, the eyes small and discolored, like bird eggs that hadn’t hatched. He wore his

black gloves, on both hands.

This unsavory personage was in turn eying Tom Idle at such times as he was not busy wheeling the thunderbolt of a

car around awful mountain curves.

"There’s something strange about you, Hondo," he said.

Tom Idle thought of a way in which he might perhaps get a clue to what had happened to him without startling this

stranger.

"I must have got a bump on the head," Tom Idle said, untruthfully.

"So that was it!"

Deciding the man seemed satisfied with the explanation, Tom Idle ventured, "You say I went into that park two hours

ago with a bottle?"

"Sure," the black-gloved man said. "Don’t you remember that."

"I don’t recall it. What was in the bottle?"

"The stuff you got from a nut chemist."

"What kind of stuff?"

"You didn’t tell me, Hondo."

"Who was the chemist I got the bottle from?"

"Well—hell, you never told me that, neither. It was a big secret."

Tom Idle felt defeated and desperate. More and more he was being gripped by the feeling that something frightful, and

something he couldn’t possibly prevent, was happening to him.

"Didn’t I tell you anything at all?" he asked wildly.

The black-gloved man grimaced in a puzzled way. "You talked like you were drunk."

"What did I say?"

"Something about if you could only find a bum asleep in the park, your troubles would be over." The man gave Tom

Idle a blank look and added, "Damn it, Hondo, I’ll never forget your exact words, just before you walked into that park

with the bottle."

Tom Idle shuddered. "What were they?"

"‘If I can find a bum asleep in the park, the cops will never get their hands on the brain of Hondo Weatherbee!’ That’s

exactly what you said, Hondo."

THE touring car continued its headlong speed. The engine must have special power, because the steep grades did not

seem to bother it. They had climbed so high now that the air was already much cooler, and the clouds, the great clouds

that seemed like white rabbits, were close overhead.

Tom Idle sat so tensely that every muscle in his body seemed to ache. He was trying to make his mind grasp the

situation. It was his mind. But his body—and his clothing—were the property of an outlaw named Hondo

Weatherbee. His black-gloved companion apparently belonged to a bandit gang ruled by Hondo Weatherbee. And the

bum, Seedy Smith, had been a man whom Hondo Weatherbee had promised to kill. And Skookum, the lunchroom man,

and Officer Sam Stevens, had both known Hondo Weatherbee by sight, and had tried to capture him. Tom Idle took

his head in his hands. It was too impossible to believe!

A violent start by his companion aroused him. Tom Idle realized the car had slowed, and that they were traversing a

series of terrible curves.

The black-gloved man wiped his forehead.

"That one was close!" he croaked.

"What’s wrong?" Tom Idle gasped.

"Cops!"

"Huh?"

"They’re after us. Whatcha think we been drivin’ like a bat for? They’ve got high-powered rifles. They’re shooting at

us."

"Police shooting at us?"

"Look back, if you don’t believe me!"

Tom Idle was turning to look back when the inside of his head seemed to explode in a flood of blackness—and the

blackness, spreading, washed completely through his body until all of him, mind and flesh alike, was composed of

nothing but darkness, empty and still.

Chapter III. THE FINGERPRINTS

THE penitentiary had high stone walls, and they were gray. The summer sun beat down on the place; hot desert winds

blew across it and heated the interior like a furnace. In the winter, the same winds were as cold as solid ice, and

refrigerated the place thoroughly. The penitentiary had a reputation as being a place of which to steer clear—the kind

of a reputation a penitentiary should have—in spite of the fact that it was modern, and had a warden who was

perfectly fair to every inmate.

There was a cell block to itself where the desperate criminals were confined. This was isolated. The cells were bare. No

luxuries were allowed. There were no windows, but plenty of light came through the cell doors. There were great

frosted windows across the corridor, and light from these fell through the cell doors and cast bar-checked shadows

across the cell floors.

It was the shadows of these steel bars which Tom Idle saw when he regained consciousness.

He had the sensation of something being wrong about the way he regained consciousness. Back in Missouri, he had

once fallen out of a tree while trying to twist an opossum out of a hole with a forked stick, and it had knocked him

senseless. He recalled how he had felt when he regained consciousness. This awakening was different. He felt as

though he had been ill for a long time. But then, everything that had happened had been different.

He stared at the bar shadows on the cell floor until his eyes hurt.

"Hey!" a voice said. "Wake up!"

Tom Idle turned his head to look at the speaker.

The man was big; he was incredibly huge—and as long as Tom Idle knew him afterward, the man appeared to get each

day a little bigger. Maybe it was the increasing evil of the man that made it seem so. Each day that you knew him, you

realized he was a little more vicious than you had thought he possibly could be.

"Who . . . who are you?" Tom Idle stuttered.

"Big Eva," the man growled. "Who’d you think it’d be, Hondo?"

There was nothing distorted about Big Eva’s size; he was not puffy, he did not seem to have a thick neck—just big.

He was about seven feet tall.

"Where am I?" Tom Idle demanded.

Big Eva chuckled. "If it’s not the Utah State Penitentiary, I’ve wasted three years in the wrong place."

"How long have I been here?" Tom Idle asked.

"Eleven years and three days." Big Eva showed large snaggle teeth in a grin. "Mean to say you don’t remember?"

Tom Idle was stupefied.

"I’ve been in here eleven years?" he croaked.

Big Eva pointed at the cell wall beside Idle’s bunk. On the wall was a series of marks made with a pencil, marks in

groups of seven, as if they represented days and weeks.

"Count it up on your calendar, if you don’t believe me," the giant convict said.

Tom Idle gripped the rail of his bunk. His head ached, felt as if shingle nails were being driven into his skull. His

self-control slipped, and suddenly he was on his feet, gripping the barred cell door, rattling it madly.

"The warden!" he screamed. "I want to talk to the warden!"

A burly man in uniform appeared before the door. A penitentiary guard, Tom Idle presumed.

"How’d you like solitary confinement?" the guard asked harshly.

Then Big Eva had Tom Idle by the elbow and was pulling him back.

"I dunno what’s got into you, Hondo," Big Eva growled. "You’re startin’ the day wrong."

THAT day was a nightmare for Tom Idle, and it was the first of a series. Because there seemed nothing else to do, he

went to breakfast with the rest of the convicts, and later to work in the overall shop. As Hondo Weatherbee, it

developed that he was supposed to know all about operating one of the sewing machines; but since he knew nothing

about the device, he at once got the thread snarled, then accidentally did something which broke the machine. For this,

he was put in solitary confinement the rest of the day, the guards thinking he had broken the machine maliciously.

He took off a shoe and beat the steel door of the cell. He also kept up a steady shouting, demanding to see the warden.

Later in the afternoon, they took him to the warden’s office.

The instant he entered the warden’s room, Tom Idle yanked to a stop and stared.

There was a huge mirror on the wall. Tom Idle was seeing himself for the first time since things had started to happen

to him.

His face was different—and yet, not completely. It was sallow. The cheeks seemed lumpy. He brought his hands to his

face and explored, discovered that there were indeed lumps in his cheeks that felt as though they might be old scar

tissue. But his eyes were the same. Bloodshot with strain, it was true; but still his eyes.

"Ahem," said a voice.

Tom Idle realized he must seem a lunatic, staring at the mirror in that fashion.

"Are you the warden?" he asked.

"Yes."

The warden was a lean, weatherbeaten man who resembled the movie version of a cowboy sheriff. The squint that

came from looking at far places was in his eyes, and he had a jaw built like the device they once put on the front of

railway locomotives to knock cows off the tracks.

To this quiet, determined man, Tom Idle told his whole story exactly as it had happened, from his awakening in the Salt

Lake City park to his becoming unconscious, presumably from the effects of a bullet, on the mountain road.

To all this, the penitentiary warden listened with intent interest.

"Let’s feel the top of your head," he said.

Tom Idle let the warden’s fingers explore in his hair.

"This where the bullet hit you?" the warden asked.

"Well, it hit me on the head."

"There’s no scar there," the warden said.

"But something hit me!"

The warden’s voice had turned cold, and now he got to his feet, put his capable hands on his lean hips, and looked

Tom Idle up and down without sympathy.

"I don’t know what your game is, Hondo Weatherbee. But you’d better not try to put anything over."

"I’ve told you the truth!" Tom Idle said desperately.

The warden snorted. "Do you remember how you were captured eleven years ago?"

"No! Of course not!"

"You were found asleep on a Salt Lake City park bench, and you were pursued by a policeman and a lunchroom man,

and you were captured fleeing up the mountains in a car driven by an accomplice."

"I . . . but—"

"In other words," the warden snapped, "you’ve just been telling me the story of how you were captured eleven years

ago. Only you trimmed the story up a bit."

Tom Idle was stunned.

"What date is this?" he wanted to know. "What day and year?"

The warden told him.

Tom Idle repeated the date under his breath. Five days had elapsed, somehow, into blankness. Only five days. Five

days ago he had been in that Salt Lake City park, and he couldn’t remember anything about how the ensuing interval

had gone; that was just more of the incredible mystery.

"But I’m Tom Idle!" he said wildly.

The warden sighed. "I’m a patient man, Hondo, and a fair one. Nobody can say different and talk truth. What do you

want me to do? What will satisfy you?"

"Have you got Hondo Weatherbee’s fingerprints here?" Tom Idle asked.

"Yes."

"Compare them with mine."

The warden had Hondo Weatherbee’s fingerprint card brought from the files, and he inked Tom Idle’s prints onto a

white paper and put it side by side with the fingerprints of the outlaw.

Even Tom Idle could see that his fingerprints and Hondo Weatherbee’s were the same.

If it were possible, Tom Idle was more stunned.

BEING a young man with a perfectly normal mentality, Tom Idle realized that the best thing for him to do now was to

settle back and get himself accustomed to the position in which he found himself. Rushing around screaming that he

was Tom Idle, a Missouri farm boy, would not help. The mental agitation might even drive him insane.

He behaved, kept his eyes open, and tried to work out some way of helping himself.

He learned that Big Eva was afraid of him. So were most of the other convicts. Or rather, they were afraid of the man

they thought was Hondo Weatherbee, which gave an idea of the kind of reprobate Hondo Weatherbee must have

been. There were some tough jailbirds in that penitentiary.

He obtained but slight information about Hondo Weatherbee. The man had been a prospector at odd times when he

was not in assorted penitentiaries. Eleven years ago, he had stood trial for murdering his partner, and received a life

sentence.

It was a tribute to Tom Idle’s character that he did not sink into a black abyss of despair. He could not, no matter how

much he thought about it, understand how he had become another man serving a life sentence in a penitentiary, and

the desperation of that situation might have broken his will. But Tom Idle bore up.

He took to reading a great deal.

That was how he happened to learn about Doc Savage.

TOM IDLE started reading the magazine feature about Doc Savage without much interest. But halfway through the

article, he became so excited he had to stop and let off steam.

"Say!" he said. "Say, boy!"

He was seeing the first ray of hope that had come his way for days.

When he had calmed himself, he continued reading about Doc Savage.

The article stated that Doc Savage was a man who had one of the most remarkable scientific minds of the day. The item

added that Doc Savage made a business of solving unusual mysteries—but he did this, it was stated, only if a wrong

was righted or someone was helped as a result.

Since a career of righting wrongs was an unusual one for a man to follow, the author of the magazine story went to

lengths to explain that this was Savage’s most spectacular activity, hence got the most attention, but that his real

career was that of a scientist.

The author of the magazine article waxed enthusiastic about the "Man of Bronze," as he called Doc Savage; he wrote

that the Man of Bronze was really a man of mystery, because he avoided publicity, and very little information

concerning him came to the attention of the public.

Tom Idle realized that here was exactly the kind of man he needed to help him. But the author of the article made Doc

Savage out to be such a combination of scientific genius, mental marvel and physical giant that Tom Idle was skeptical

about such a super-person existing. The magazine item said that the name of Doc Savage was enough to strike terror

into the heart of the most hardened crook.

Tom Idle decided to test this out. He made his experiment on Big Eva, who was a hardened crook if there ever were

one.

"Doc Savage!" Tom Idle said unexpectedly.

The effect on Big Eva was impressive.

He dropped the pencil with which he was marking up the day on his own wall calendar across the cell. He whirled. His

expression was stark.

"What about Doc Savage?" Big Eva snarled.

" Is he mixing in this—" The huge, bestial crook swallowed two or three times. "But hell, he couldn’t have

gotten wise. There’s no way—"

At this point, Big Eva appeared to realize he was saying too much.

"What about Doc Savage?" he growled.

"I was just reading about him in this magazine," Tom Idle explained.

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MADMESAADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.comScannedandProofedbyTomStephens?ChapterI.HONDOWEATHERBEE?ChapterII.THEBLACK-GLOVEDMAN?ChapterIII.THEFINGERPRINTS?ChapterIV.THEMYSTERIOUSPILOT?ChapterV.THEDUMBWAITRESS?ChapterVI.HELLINOHIO?ChapterVI...

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