Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 065 - The Giggling Ghosts

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THE GIGGLING GHOSTS
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. GIGGLING GIRL
? Chapter II. CHANGED MINDS
? Chapter III. THE MAN WHO OWNED A STOREHOUSE
? Chapter IV. WAR OVER A WATCH
? Chapter V. THE JAMEROO
? Chapter VI. HUNT FOR A WATCH
? Chapter VII. ROAD TO DEATH
? Chapter VIII. THE EARTHQUAKE-MAKERS
? Chapter IX. THE GIGGLING PEOPLE
? Chapter X. FAKE QUAKE
? Chapter XI. NO MEDDLERS
? Chapter XII. THE RESCUED
? Chapter XIII. ACCIDENT
? Chapter XIV. NO QUAKES
? Chapter XV. HIGH TROUBLE
? Chapter XVI. THE GOOD MAN
? Chapter XVII. GUILT
? Chapter XVIII. THE MESOZOIC AGE
? Chapter XIX. THE BLOW-BACK
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. GIGGLING GIRL
THE dictionary says:
GIGGLE: To laugh with short catches of the breath and voice; to laugh in an affected or a silly manner or
with an attempt at repression.
That is the definition of a giggle as given in the dictionary.
There is nothing extraordinary about giggling. Most persons giggle a little at one time or another. The
psychologists claim that it is a form of laughter, and therefore good for you.
But when ghosts giggle, it is different.
The giggling these ghosts did was not good for anybody, it developed.
Like many unpleasant and momentous events, the existence of the giggling ghosts began as rumors. There
was nothing very definite. Just stories.
A small boy came tearing home one night and told his mother he’d heard a ghost giggling in a brush
patch. Now most ghosts are seen by small boys, and so the story was pleasantly smiled upon. No one
thought anything about it. Naturally it didn’t get in the newspapers.
A New Jersey politician—the giggling ghosts seemed to haunt only New Jersey—was the next man to
see a ghost. His constituents had long ago stopped believing anything the politician said about lowering
taxes, so they treated his story dubiously.
He’d been taking an evening walk in a Jersey City park, and he’d heard a giggling ghost, and caught a
glimpse of it. This little item got in the newspapers, and quite a number of people humorously remarked
that more politicians should be haunted.
Two or three other giggling ghost stories got around, and at this point a bad mistake was made: Too
many people thought the stories were being imagined. This was the Twentieth Century, the age of realism
in thought and action. There were no such thing as ghosts.
Particularly, there could be no such thing as giggling ghosts.
A girl was the first one to make the awful discovery that the ghosts’ giggling was catching.
"MIAMI" DAVIS was the girl’s name. She had been standing with her head shoved through a hole
where a pane had been broken out of a window of an old storehouse just across the Hudson River from
New York City.
She had heard a giggling ghost. She was trying to see it.
She had been trying to see the ghost for about three minutes when she caught the giggling.
The giggling of girls is usually pleasant enough to listen to. Girls will giggle if you tickle their necks, and
when you tell them nice little lies.
The giggling of Miami Davis was not pleasant to listen to. Not in the least. It was terrible.
Her sounds were made with short catches of the breath; there was certainly an attempt at repression; she
did not want to make the noises. She was giggling, according to the literal word of the dictionary
definition.
The girl grabbed her mouth with her right hand, her nose with her left, and tried to stop the sounds
coming out. She had no luck. Then she tried to gag herself with a mouthful of her own coat collar. That
failed.
She ended up by fleeing wildly from the storehouse.
The storehouse was made of brick, had a tin roof. It looked as if the Bureau of Public Safety should have
ordered it torn down about ten years ago. The storehouse was full of steam shovels, dump trucks,
excavators and other construction equipment.
At one end of the storehouse was the Hudson River. Past the other end ran a typical water-front street:
rutted, dirty, haunted by smells.
The sky was a dome of gloom in the late dusk, crowded with clouds, promising rain. It had showered
about an hour ago, just enough so that the marks were visible where rain drops had splattered the dust
on the pavement.
The girl got in the middle of the street and ran. Ran as if something were after her. She covered about a
block and reached a car—a small convertible coupé, new and neat—and pitched into it.
The girl was frightened. She jabbed at the rear-view mirror, knocking it around until she could see herself
in it. She saw a pert, dynamic small girl with an unusual quantity of copper-colored hair, large blue eyes,
inviting lips, and a face that was distinctly fascinating in a bright way.
Suddenly she giggled. Convulsively. She couldn’t help it. And complete terror came on her own face.
She started the car motor and drove away speedily.
FIFTEEN minutes later, some policemen listened to the girl—and smiled. She was an easy girl to smile
at. Also, her story was ridiculous, and that encouraged them to smile.
"How did you happen to be looking into a storehouse for a giggling ghost?" a cop asked skeptically.
Miami Davis giggled hysterically.
"I followed the ghost there," she said.
"Oh, you followed it. Well, well!"
"I was working late," the girt said. "When I left the office—it’s in a factory not far from this storehouse—I
saw a shadowy figure. It was a ghostly figure." She looked at them, giggled, then screamed wildly, "A
ghost figure, you hear? I followed it. It giggled! That’s why I followed it. I had been hearing those
stories about giggling ghosts."
"Was it a male or a female ghost?" a cop inquired.
The girl giggled angrily.
"You don’t believe me!" she said, between giggles.
"There have been some yarns about giggling ghosts floating around," one policeman admitted.
The captain of police came in, then, and heard the story. He did not believe it. Not a word of it.
"Go home; go to bed and call a doctor," he ordered.
The girl stamped an irate foot, giggled wrathfully at him, and flounced out.
A cop followed her, and stopped her when she reached her coupé.
"Look," the cop said, "why not go to Doc Savage?"
This apparently failed to mean much to the girl.
"Doc—who?" she asked.
"Doc Savage."
The girl frowned, trying to remember, then said, "There was a story in the newspapers a while back
about a man named Doc Savage who had discovered something new about atoms or molecules or some
such thing. But why should—or do you mean he treats—crazy people? Well, I’m not crazy!"
The cop waited until she stopped giggling.
"You’ve got me wrong," the officer said. "This guy’s a scientist, but that ain’t his main racket. He puts in
most of his time going around helping people out of trouble. And the more unusual the trouble they’re in,
the better he likes it."
"I don’t understand," the girl said.
"It’s his hobby, or something. Helping people. I know it sounds crazy, but this Doc Savage is a good
man to see about this giggling ghost business."
The girl giggled while she thought that over.
"It won’t be much trouble," the girl said, "to see this Doc Savage."
"No," the cop said, "it won’t be much trouble."
They were both wrong.
THE girl drove across the George Washington Bridge into New York City, guided her car to the uptown
business district, and parked her car near a very tall building.
The elevator starter in the big building said, "So you want to see Doc Savage?"
The girl nodded, and she was ushered to an express elevator.
A man hurried and got in the elevator with her.
The man was tall, thick-bodied, and wore an expensive gray hat with a snap brim, fuzzy gray sports
oxfords, and gray gloves of high quality. He also wore a yellow slicker.
Miami Davis—she was not giggling as much now—noticed what the man wore. She did not see the
man’s face, because he kept it averted.
The elevator climbed up its shaft.
Suddenly the man in the slicker yelled, "Operator! The girl is gonna hit you—"
Then the man himself hit the operator. He knocked the fellow senseless with a blow from behind, a skull
blow with a blackjack which he had whipped from a pocket. The operator could not have seen who had
hit him.
Because of what the man had yelled, the operator would think that the girl had struck him.
The man who had slugged the operator showed cigarette-stained teeth in a vicious grin.
"He’ll think you slugged ‘im," he told the girl. "That won’t do you any good."
He bent over, lifted one of his trousers legs, and removed a double barreled derringer from a clip holster
fastened, garterlike, below his knee. He pointed the derringer at the girl.
"This wouldn’t do you any good, either!" he said.
Chapter II. CHANGED MINDS
THE GIRL stared at the derringer.
The gun was not much longer than the middle finger of the man who held it, and the barrels were one
above the other so that looking into their maws was like looking at a fat black colon. She could have
inserted her little fingers in either barrel without much difficulty. She could see the bullets, like
lead-colored bald heads.
"This thing"—the man moved the derringer—"will do as much damage as any other gun."
The girl moved, pressed herself into a corner of the elevator, and went through swallowing motions
several times.
The man said, "When we get back to the lobby, we say the elevator operator fainted, see? Then you
walk out with me." He gestured again with the gun. "Make any cracks, sis, and they’ll be your epitaph!"
The girl tried to swallow again.
The man folded his newspaper carefully and tucked it in a pocket so it wouldn’t be left lying around for
fingerprints. He stepped to the elevator controls. When the operator had dropped after being slugged, he
had instinctively shifted the control lever to the center, so that the cage had come to a stop.
The man set the control at, "Down." He seemed confident. He leaned against the side of the cage,
cocking an eye on the girl, whistling idly as he waited. Abruptly his confidence got a puncture.
"What the devil?" he gulped.
The elevator was not going down. It was going up. Up! The man doubled over, stared at the controls.
The handle was on "Down." But the cage was going up.
The man yanked at the handle, thinking control markings might be reversed—but the cage kept going up.
The controls now seemed to have absolutely no effect on the elevator.
The man’s mind leaped instantly to the conclusion that he was in a fantastic trap. He made snarling
noises, even fired his derringer at the elevator controls, but accomplished nothing except to deafen
himself and the girl.
His eyes, searching for escape, found the safety escape hatch in the top of the cage. He jumped at that
until he got it open. With a great deal of grunting, kicking and snarling, he managed to pull himself through
the hatch at the top of the slowly rising cage.
The girl let him go.
The man crouched on top of the cage; there was no stable footing. He clutched at a cable to steady
himself, but the cable was moving, and he cursed.
The elevator was rising very slowly, although it was an express lift, and expresses in this building normally
traveled at high speed. Obviously there was some kind of emergency mechanism in operation.
The skyscraper was served by a battery of elevators, all operating side by side. There was no division
between the shafts—only the vertical steel tracks on which the cages operated.
The man peered upward, saw another cage descending in the adjacent shaft. He made a lightning
decision to take a long chance; he jumped for the top of the other cage as it passed. And he made it!
THE elevator in which Miami Davis was left alone with the senseless operator continued its snail-like
progress upward.
The girl stood with her back against the cage, palms pressing against the side panels. When the elevator
stopped, the girl took hold of her lower lip with her teeth and giggled a little.
For a moment there was silence.
Then, outside, a voice spoke. An unusual voice. It was a calm voice, with a remarkable tonal inflection, a
quality of repressed power.
"The door will be opened in a moment," the unusual voice said. "The best thing you can do is to come out
peacefully."
A moment later, the elevator door did open, and Miami Davis saw a giant bronze man.
The bronze man was so remarkable that she knew instinctively that his was the voice which had spoken a
moment before. It had been a striking voice, and this bronze giant was striking.
There was a symmetry about his physical development which took away from his apparent size, until he
was viewed at close range. He seemed normally built at a distance. His features were regular, his skin
was an unusual bronze hue, and he had eyes that were like pools of flake gold being stirred by tiny winds.
The bronze man stood not more than a pace in front of the elevator door—where, Miami Davis thought
suddenly, he could have been shot down by any gunman inside the elevator.
The bronze man was so close that he saw the elevator was empty, except for Miami Davis and the
unconscious operator.
"You slug the operator?" the bronze man demanded.
Miami Davis shook her head and giggled. "No, I—"
"There has been trouble before in elevators that lead up here," the bronze man said. "We installed a
mechanical device, that, if the operator doesn’t hold the control in a certain fashion, causes the cage to
rise slowly to this floor. Also, an alarm bell rings. Now what happened?"
Miami Davis heard an electric bell buzzing steadily somewhere. Probably that was the alarm which the
bronze man had said rang when something went wrong in the elevators.
"There was a man in here." She pointed at the roof of the cage. "He climbed out. I think he jumped to a
cage in another shaft."
From below came shot sounds: two reports; a pause about long enough for the man to have reloaded the
derringer followed; then came two more reports.
A man screeched. The screech was faint, with an eerie quality lent by the great distance it traveled up
through the elevator shaft.
"You see!" the girl gasped. "He’s down below! Shooting!"
Miami Davis then stepped out of the elevator, advanced—brought up with a gasp. She had walked into
something she couldn’t see! She explored with her hands. Bulletproof glass, she decided. It must be that.
She fumbled for a way around. The panel was like a fence in front of the elevator door. No wonder the
bronze man had felt so safe!
The bronze giant moved to a second elevator, entered, and sent the cage down. This was a private lift,
and it sank with almost the same speed with which it would have fallen free, then brought up at the first
floor with enough force to cause the bronze man to brace himself. He got out.
People were running around in the lobby, and the proprietor of the cigar stand was under the counter for
safety. Out on the street, a cop was blowing his whistle furiously.
"Anyone hurt?" the bronze man asked.
"Something queer just happened, Mr. Savage. A man rode down on top of one of the cages. We started
to ask him questions. He fought his way out."
"He shoot anybody?"
"No, Mr. Savage. He had a derringer, and you can’t hit much with one of them things."
The bronze man went out to the street.
A cop said, "He got away, Mr. Savage. A guy in a car picked him up."
WHEN Doc Savage returned to the eighty-sixth floor, Miami Davis had given up trying to get past the
bullet-proof glass around the elevator door.
She had discovered the panel did not quite reach to the ceiling, and that accounted for her having been
able to speak to the bronze man. She didn’t feel like trying to climb over the top.
Doc Savage went to a wall panel in the corridor, opened it, and disclosed a recess containing small
levers. He moved a lever and an electric motor whirred and the glass panel sank into the floor, its edge
then forming part of the modernistic design of the floor. Miami Davis looked at the bronze man.
"What I read about you in the newspapers must’ve been straight stuff," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I read you were a remarkable guy with a lot of scientific gimmicks."
"Oh."
"And I was told that your business is helping people out of trouble. Is that right?"
"It isn’t far from the truth," the bronze man admitted.
"I’ve got trouble. That’s why I am here." Miami Davis made a grim mouth. "More trouble than I thought,
it begins to seem."
Doc Savage led the way into a reception room which was furnished with a huge safe, an exquisitely inlaid
table, a deep rug and comfortable chairs.
The window afforded a startling view of Manhattan spires, and an open door gave a glimpse of another
room—a great paneled room, where all available floor space was occupied by bookcases.
"Have a chair, please."
The girl sat down weakly.
"Now, suppose you give me some idea about this trouble of yours," Doc Savage suggested.
"That man on the elevator tried to stop me from coming here—"
"Go back to the beginning."
"Oh—well—" Miami Davis took a moment to assemble her information. "It began this afternoon when I
saw the ghost sneaking into a water-front storehouse and I followed it."
"Ghost?"
"Well—I thought so."
The girl giggled a little, helplessly.
"You were curious and followed a ghost into a storehouse," Doc Savage said. "So far, it’s—well,
unusual. But go on."
"Then I began to giggle," the girl said. She shuddered.
"You what?"
"Giggled."
"I see."
Miami Davis knotted and unknotted her hands. "It sounds silly, doesn’t it?"
"Well, at least extraordinary," the bronze man admitted.
"It was horrible! Something just—just came over me. I seemed to go all to pieces. It frightened me. So I
fled from the storehouse."
"And after you fled from the storehouse, then what?"
Miami Davis did not look at Doc Savage. "A policeman told me about you. It just occurred to him you,
might be interested. So I came here."
Doc Savage’s metallic features gave no indication of what he might be thinking.
"Let us hope," he said unexpectedly, "that you are telling the whole story."
"Oh, but I am."
Chapter III. THE MAN WHO OWNED A STOREHOUSE
WITHOUT speaking, the bronze man took the young woman by the elbow, guided her into a vast room
which contained a great deal of laboratory equipment, seated her in a modernistic metal chair and did
several things: first, he had her inhale and exhale several times through a tube which led to a
complicated-looking contraption; then he examined the young woman, giving particular attention to her
eyes. When he finished, he seemed slightly puzzled.
"You’re not intoxicated, apparently," he said.
"I like that!" the girl gasped.
"Your eyes indicate that you are not a drug addict, and you seem earnest, although excited."
"Maybe I’m crazy," Miami Davis said dryly.
"We might have a look," Doc Savage said, "at the storehouse where you trailed the giggling ghost."
"Please," the girl said earnestly. "Let’s do that."
"Just a moment."
Doc Savage went into the library, picked up the telephone, and spoke for some minutes. The telephone
was fitted into a boxlike device which, when pressed against the face, made it possible to use the
instrument without being overheard by anyone in the room; the girl did not catch anything that the bronze
man said. Doc put down the telephone.
"All right," he said. "We’ll go now."
Rain had started to leak out of a sky that was grimy-looking, when Doc Savage, driving one of his cars,
headed into the street. The rain came in drops as fine as fog, so it would probably continue for some
time. It was rain that obscured vision, and most cars had their headlights turned on.
Doc Savage’s car was a coupé, long, heavy, of expensive make, but with a subdued paint job that did
not attract attention. There was little outward indication that the machine was armor-plated and equipped
with bulletproof glass. Doc used his car in preference to that of the girl’s, which he placed in his garage
that lay under the towering skyscraper.
Finally the bronze man said, "This seems to be it," and pulled up before the old brick storehouse with the
tin roof.
"You still think I’m a phony?" Miami Davis demanded.
"I still think it is unusual for a woman to follow a ghost."
"Well, I—" The girl giggled, although she tried not to do so.
Doc asked, "What did it look like—this ghost?"
"I—it was just a shadowy figure."
"Did it make a noise walking?"
"I didn’t hear any noise."
"If you would tell the truth—"
The girl put up her chin indignantly. "I told you everything that happened!"
Without commenting on that, the bronze man wheeled his car over the curb and up to the side door of
the storehouse.
When the bronze man went to the storehouse door, he carried a piece of apparatus which he had taken
from a compartment in the car.
This device had three principal parts: The first part, which he fastened to the storehouse door with suction
cups, was small, and insulated wires ran from this to an electrical amplifier; and from the amplifier other
wires ran to a telephonic headset which the bronze man donned. He switched on the contrivance and
listened.
The device was a high-powered sonic amplifier which took the smallest sound and increased its volume
several hundred thousand times.
Somewhere in the storehouse a rat ran and squealed, and in the amplifier headset it sounded as if an
elephant had galloped over a wooden bridge and trumpeted. The girl came close and listened, too.
They had not listened long before they heard the giggling.
THE giggling was inside the storehouse. Three or four gigglings, all going at once, judging from the
sounds.
It was fantastic. No other sound—just a concert of giggling inside the storehouse.
"Now," the girl said, "what did I tell you?"
"You think that is your giggling ghost?"
"It sounds like more than one."
Doc Savage took the listening device back to the car and replaced it in its compartment.
The bronze man returned to the storehouse carrying a small cylindrical metal container holding anaesthetic
gas under pressure. The container was equipped with a nozzle and valve. He inserted the nozzle in a
crack at the bottom of the storehouse door and turned the valve.
With a hiss, gas rushed out of the container into the storehouse. Doc waited, depending on the sound of
rain on the tin storehouse roof to keep the "ghosts" inside from hearing the gas. Evidently the rain on the
roof was the reason they had not heard his car coming.
The girl pointed at the cylinder. "I don’t get this."
"Gas. Anaesthetic. Practically no odor or color. There are men inside the storehouse, and the gas will
make them unconscious without doing them any lasting harm."
"Oh."
Eventually the bronze man tried the storehouse door. It wasn’t fastened; it came open at his shove.
Inside, there was a cavern of gloom inhabited by the strange crouching shadow monsters that were the
machinery. The place was full of the sound of the rain on the roof.
摘要：

THEGIGGLINGGHOSTSADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.GIGGLINGGIRL?ChapterII.CHANGEDMINDS?ChapterIII.THEMANWHOOWNEDASTOREHOUSE?ChapterIV.WAROVERAWATCH?ChapterV.THEJAMEROO?ChapterVI.HUNTFORAWATCH?ChapterVII.ROADTODEATH?ChapterVIII....

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