Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 116 - The Laugh of Death

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THE LAUGH OF DEATH

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

http://www.blackmask.com

? Chapter I. MAN IN SOLITUDE

? Chapter II. A SECRET AND A VAULT

? Chapter III. AFFAIR IN WASHINGTON

? Chapter IV. DEATH SITTING UP

? Chapter V. THE WILD GOOSE

? Chapter VI. THE GOOSE HUNTER

? Chapter VII. WHILE THE GOOSE FLEW

? Chapter VIII. A STICKING OF PINS

? Chapter IX. MARTIN

? Chapter X. ASBESTOS SUIT

? Chapter XI. THE UNEXPECTED

? Chapter XII. THE OPERATION

? Chapter XIII. MANFRED MATHIS

? Chapter XIV. THE SECRET

? Chapter XV. THE CREEPER

? Chapter XVI. TWENTY-FOUR CARAT

? Chapter XVII. THE LAUGHING MATTER

? Chapter XVIII. LAST LAUGH

Scanned and Proofed

by Tom Stephens

Chapter I. MAN IN SOLITUDE

Doc Savage had stepped out into the night to look at the thermometer. The mercury had sunk a little

below the sixty mark. That was sixty below zero. The sky was clear and a very deep blue, almost black,

and all the stars were crisp and bright. For two months, since the coming of the complete night, there had

been no storm of consequence, and that was remarkable. But it had been intensely cold, terribly cold

even for this spot south of the pole. All points are south of the north pole, but this one was south in the

direction of Beaufort Sea, into which the Mackenzie River of Canada empties. Not far south, however.

Doc stretched his arms and clapped his hands and began to jump around in the snow.

He was, at first glance, quite naked. He was also a giant among men, larger than almost any man in

height, and with a physique equally as unusual. His muscles and sinews, as he leaped and skipped and

turned handsprings on the snow in the sixty-below cold of the arctic night, bunched and coiled

monstrously. His obvious strength, nakedly displayed that way, was a little frightening. Men should not

really have such strength. It was as if he had spent a lifetime of doing nothing except putting strength in his

body. He hadn't put in a lifetime doing this, however—only part of it.

His face was a handsome face with no prettiness—firm lips, straight nose, chin square but not jaw heavy.

The jumping around in the snow made him sweat, and this sweat gathered between his skins.

This was a literal fact, not a fantasy, for he did have two skins. One of them was his own deeply bronzed

hide, and the other one, the outer one covering his body, was made of a transparent plastic in which he

had dunked himself from head to toes. The plastic was a special one, and only he himself knew how he

had concocted it. There was nothing else like it on earth. And yet he was not satisfied.

He was, in fact, far from satisfied, because after he had bounced around in the cold, then stood

motionless until the stuff cooled off, then bounced around some more, the plastic began to crack. It

would not stand the combination of cold, perspiration and flexing. Something was wrong.

He stood there in his disgust, the cold through the cracks that had opened in the plastic cutting at him like

knives. It was not perfect, and he was disappointed. Everything had been going so well.

America had raw material to make the plastic in large quantities; it was harmless to the skin; it could be

applied to the body with a brush, or a man could merely jump into a vat of it, and it would coat his body

and harden at once; it could be removed almost instantaneously and harmlessly with another chemical

application. All of this he had worked out. But now it was cracking.

The acids or salines in body perspiration might have something to do with the failure, he reflected.

The plastic had one other quality: it was almost a complete insulator against heat or cold. Soldiers in

tanks and pilots in fighting planes need have no fear of fire if he could perfect the stuff. The plastic would

not wear well and he knew it could never be made to wear well enough to make suits of it, hence the

idea of coating the skin with it. These coatings could be renewed either on garments or on the skin. The

United States fighting forces needed such a thing.

He turned and walked back to his Fortress of Solitude, intent on continuing the experiments.

HE had lately changed the outside appearance of his Fortress of Solitude, somewhat. The place, in the

beginning, had been a dome affair, like an igloo, but of enormous size. Now, since the change, it was

more rugged and completely resembled a chunk of ice protruding from the arctic ice pack, there not even

being a sign that it actually stood on an island. The change was one he had considered necessary because

of the increased number of planes flying over what had hitherto been unexplored waste.

The Fortress of Solitude was a secret from the world.

Not, in the strict sense, from the world. There were the Eskimos whom he had trained, and who had

done the original construction and recently the remodeling. They lived here and took care of the place

during his long periods of absence. He had trained the Eskimos and knew he could completely trust

them, which was something he could say of only five other men and one woman in the civilized world.

The Eskimos were gone now. They never remained here while he was working. They took their hunting

trips then.

He entered the Fortress. There were three doors for strength and insulation against the terrific outer cold.

Inside, one could look up and see the stars at many points, because the dome was of a plastic material so

polarized that it would pass light in only one direction, a substance that was not a secret.

(The peculiar association of light and plastic materials has probably been called to the attention of almost

everyone. There is, for instance, the plastic material of transparent type through rods of which light can be

piped, around corners, much as water is conducted through a pipe.)

Inside, there was his equipment, the rare and complex scientific apparatus he had brought here or had

created himself. Here he conducted his experiments, experiments so advanced and complicated that he

had to have complete solitude.

“Conversation enriches the understanding,

But solitude is the school of genius.”

—GIBBON.

That quotation had been put before him by his father, and it was one of the first things he could remember

of his father. He could not remember his mother at all except as a vague pleasure out of forgetfulness. But

the quotation was like his father, who had been a genius in his way, too, and a strange man.

He had been told that his father was a queer man, but he did not accept that, although more than one of

the scientists who had trained him at his father's request had obviously been convinced of the older man's

queerness. Not queer and maybe not strange. Rather, a man with a grim resolve and a knowledge of

what scientific training begun at childhood and continued until early manhood, with no pause and no time

out, could accomplish.

At any rate the son had been made into a scientific product who was an amazing combination of physical

strength, mental genius and encyclopedic knowledge.

NOT one of the five associates with whom he worked knew where he was, although they had come to

realize that the times that he left them, most likely he went into seclusion in his Fortress of Solitude, the

one place where he insisted on being undisturbed. Only once had his men come anywhere near it, and

that was long ago. (Fortress of Solitude)

However, he kept track of them each day.

They did not know this.

There were five assistants: Monk, Ham, Long Tom, Johnny and Renny. These names were their

nicknames only, and their full names together with their degrees and their accomplishments take too much

time in the telling. Each was a very famous man in his field.

There was also Patricia Savage, who was Doc Savage's cousin, and who operated one of those beauty

salons on Park Avenue which are robbers' roosts of the first order, although they rob only those who are

actually so rich they need to be. Pat liked excitement the way a church mouse likes cheese; she gobbled

it up, and she did not believe she got enough of it.

Daily reports were made in this fashion: Ham or Renny or Patricia—whoever happened to be

reporting—merely took down a telephone and dialed or called an unlisted number, whereupon a

mechanical recording contrivance came on the wire and took down whatever the assistant had to say.

That was all there was to it, for all the group knew. What they did not know was that an automatic

gadget promptly, at the hours of noon and midnight, put the reports on a radio transmitter, beam type.

The beam of this transmitter was aimed at Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude in the arctic.

The secrecy surrounding the reports, as far as their getting to him was concerned, was simple

psychology. He did not want his associates faking some alarming incident in order to draw him back to

civilization to attend to some situation which they—not he—had decided needed his attention. He

preferred to pick out his own cases, particularly now that there was the war.

Patricia Savage had only lately taken to making daily reports. It had been necessary to insist that she do

this, for she scoffed at the idea that any of Doc Savage's enemies would strike at him through her, and

even seemed to slyly welcome the exciting idea that they might.

The reports were most satisfactory, and they had come in regularly until the last two days.

For two days now there had been no reports from his assistants, and Doc Savage, here in his strangely

unbelievable Fortress of Solitude, was disturbed.

Doc Savage glanced at the clock and saw that it was midnight. Midnight here was nothing but an hour on

the clock, but it was time for the New York transmitter to come through with any reports made during

the day.

This time there was a report.

There was also the sound that could have been a laughing.

Only one report came through, and Patricia Savage made it. It was not completed. Rather, the laughing

completed it.

Pat sounded breathless but not terrified.

“Pat reporting,” she said—as brought to Doc Savage by the distant radio transmitter. “No reports for

two days because of something that happened to me. A man in a green hat came to me. This was two

days ago. The man with the green hat came to my Park Avenue place and asked to see me, and I had

my secretary let him in after he insisted he was not a salesman. I was glad I did, because he told me an

incredibly fantastic story. He was in a greatly worried state, and sat there twisting his green hat in his

hands as he talked—”

That was all of the words Pat spoke, but it was not the last sound she made. However, the laughing came

first and grew loud and inexplicable.

It was certainly not human, and it did not seem animal, so maybe “laughing” was not the word for it. It

was a completely unexplainable sound, one that Doc Savage had never heard before and would not mind

not hearing again. It had a macabre, chilling quality.

And yet it was not like Pat to scream because of a sound. But she did scream, and it was a sudden

ripping sound that seemed to break off as if it were made of glass.

That was all from Pat, but the laughing continued for a long time, an interminably long time, at least ten

minutes. Then there were voices away from the telephone receiver, one of them saying, “What the hell?

Here's a telephone receiver off the hook.” Then the voice said into the telephone, “Hello! Hello! This is

the police. Who are you?” The voice said that again, then complained, “Hell, whoever it was hung up.”

And that was all.

Chapter II. A SECRET AND A VAULT

IT was a hot summer afternoon when Doc Savage put his plane down on a military airport in a restricted

area near New York City. The heat was bringing the soft black asphalt up from the expansion joints in

the concrete runway and the tires made a rrrrap-rap-rap sound as he landed. Army fliers came out of

the hangars to stare in amazement at his plane, which was a strictly experimental model and as

strange-looking as a prehistoric pterodactyl in a rookery of modern eagles. There was an outlandish

arrangement of wing flaps which would land her at forty miles an hour, then give her nearly a

three-hundred-mile-an-hour speed in the air. There were other points that made her an oddity, too.

Doc Savage used the telephone at once.

He was not able to raise Monk, Ham, Long Tom, Johnny or Renny.

He did not get Pat.

The police said, “No, there hasn't been any reports of anything having happened to them.”

Doc explained about the interrupted telephone call made by Patricia Savage, and the officer wanted to

know from what precinct the call had been made. New York is a very large city, and a matter such as a

disturbance over a telephone might be a small one which would not reach the central office. Doc said he

did not know where the telephone call had been made from, and the officer said then that they would

have to make a general check over the teletype and that this would take time.

Doc Savage went at once to his headquarters on the eighty-sixth floor of a prominent midtown building.

He could hear the telephone ringing before he opened the door. He opened the door and entered, then

stared in astonishment.

The place was a wreck. It looked as if a woodpecker had been at work.

He went to the telephone and said, “Yes?”

It was the police officer. “The telephone call you were asking about might have come from Jamaica. I

think it did, because of something you mentioned about a laughing.”

The officer's voice had a queer note, and Doc asked, “Is there something peculiar about the matter?”

“Yes, something strange as hell,” said the officer. “The precinct station suddenly got a flock of calls from

people who were hearing this laughing and who were scared stiff. So we, or, rather, the precinct, sent a

prowl car around to see. And sure enough, there was a whole neighborhood so scared it was about to

pop its suspenders. Everybody had heard this laughing.”

“Did any of them describe this laughing?” Doc asked.

“They all described it. Everyone described it differently. It was a lot of laughing, though, to scare

everybody as bad as they seemed to be scared. It was so bad that the cops in the prowl car thought

somebody was pulling a gag on them. They still aren't sure.”

“What about the telephone?”

“They just reported finding the receiver off a telephone in a booth in a drugstore. They never got any

description of anybody who had been using the telephone because they thought somebody had just

dashed off and left the receiver hanging, because of the excitement.”

“Can you get a description of anyone who might have used the telephone?”

“Can try. Don't know, though. It's a cold trail.”

“Will you try, then call me?”

“Sure!”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you,” said the policeman, “and don't forget that you recently promised to keep the police

department notified of these things you get mixed up in. For a couple of months we had a lot of trouble,

and some people got suspicious of you. It got so bad we had to lock you up. I hope you haven't

forgotten that.”

Doc said pleasantly that he had not forgotten, and that he would make full reports, as opportunity

presented.

He hung up and began examining the holes in his office. The holes were about a quarter of an inch in

diameter. It did not require more than a second look to conclude that they had been made with a drill

bit—probably the work of an electric drill, and a very good one.

There seemed to be a hole in everything in headquarters that was larger than a sparrow.

Nothing else in the way of damage—though this was damage enough to many objects—had been

committed. However, the big safe in the reception room had been neatly and thoroughly blown. This was

not much of a feat because it was a quite elderly safe which had belonged to Doc Savage's father.

The headquarters consisted of three rooms: the smaller outer reception room in which the safe stood, a

much larger library filled with scientific books, and a still greater expanse of laboratory crowded with

scientific paraphernalia. Everything in the three rooms had been drilled full of holes. Doc measured some

of the holes and found them all the same size. A steel bit with a diamond point had been used, because he

found one that had been badly worn and tossed into a wastebasket.

THE gentleman attired in the green hat now arrived.

He arrived politely. He even telephoned in advance for an appointment, explaining, “I do wish you would

see me, and I think it is to your interest to do so. It concerns a matter of something that has happened to

your assistants.”

“Do come up,” Doc Savage said warmly.

Besides the green hat the man had a round barrel of a chest that was probably full of endurance, with

attachments of long legs and arms, a rectangular face that was about as weak as a piece of armor steel

and an affable manner. He also had a way of saying and acting everything as if he did not mean what he

was saying or doing, so it was almost impossible to catch him in a lie.

He held his hat in his hand and made a little speech.

“I do not wish to be asked questions,” he said. “You will doubtlessly not obey this wish. Therefore I shall

ignore all questions. I want the object which was placed in the secret safe. You do not need to give me

the object; you have merely to produce it. Once you have produced it and we have examined it, I will be

able to tell you what has become of your friends and associates. You will then be able to act

accordingly.”

Doc Savage said nothing. This seemed to surprise the man. It was placidly still in the reception room. The

office was high enough above the street that the traffic noise was more like the sound of a sea than the

noise of vehicles. Several pigeons were having a halfhearted quarrel on the window sill.

The man repeated part of his speech, changing it a little.

“Get the object from the secret safe and I will be able to tell you what happened to your friends. What

could be more fair than that? However, if you do not do as I suggest, I am afraid you will not see your

friends again. No one will see them. This is unfortunate, but true.”

Doc continued to say nothing.

“Are you deaf?” the man asked.

“Yes—to talk like you are making,” Doc said.

“I am sorry”

“Sorry about what?”

“That I cannot say more than I have said. Sorry that you do not have a higher opinion of your

friends—more of a desire to save them.”

There had been no expression on Doc Savage's metallic-looking features to this point, but now there was

a flicker of emotion. He thought a great deal of his aides and of Pat. He had risked his life for them so

many times that he had stopped counting. And they had done—if anything, more often—the same thing

for him.

But there was no secret vault.

He asked, “How much of an opinion have you of my veracity?”

“Veracity? You mean truth? If you told me something, would I believe it? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is that I would believe you.”

The telephone rang and Doc picked up the instrument. He noted that the visitor quickly put on his green

hat, but showed no other emotion. “Yes?” Doc said into the telephone.

It was the police officer, and he said, “I have that information you wanted about who talked over that

telephone—the one the patrolman found with the receiver off the hook. It was a girl. Five feet seven,

slender, nice form, tan, golden eyes, hair sort of like dark copper. The fellow who got the description

noticed her hair particularly. That help you any?”

“It settles a point,” Doc said.

“Don't you have a cousin, Patricia Savage, who runs a beauty place on Park Avenue, and who answers a

description something like that?” asked the officer.

“Yes,” Doc said.

“Anything else we can do for you?”

“Not right now.”

“Holler if there is,” the officer said, and hung up.

Doc Savage slowly replaced the receiver on the cradle. He seemed lost in thought. The pigeons on the

window sill had stopped scrapping and were all cooing at each other like doves.

The man took off his green hat again, said, “We were discussing truth.”

“Yes,” Doc admitted, “we were.”

“Was it some truth you intended to tell me?” asked the man.

“There is no secret vault.”

“That is the truth?”

“Yes.”

THE man turned his green hat so that Doc could see inside the crown. There was a metal object the size

of a small woman's fist fastened in there with adhesive tape. A short string with a loop on the end dangled

from this, and the man had a finger in the loop.

He made another of his speeches.

He said, “This is an old, old trick, of course. It is a hand grenade in the hat. One tug of my finger pulls the

pin, and the explosion will be almost instantaneous. I pull the string if you try to stop my leaving this

place.”

Doc Savage examined the man's fluidly dramatic face that made everything he did or said seem a

pretense, without in any way revealing what he would do or wouldn't do, actually.

“If you are familiar with grenades,” Doc said quietly, “you will know that the grenade will probably kill

you, but only wound me.”

The other nodded.

“Are you familiar with strychnine? You would be, of course, for I understand you are a surgeon and

physician. Well, this grenade is well coated with a sticky paste containing concentrated strychnine.

Should a fragment of this grenade penetrate your body, you would, within perhaps twenty minutes, begin

with convulsions and other difficulties, death occurring within a short time.”

“Drastic!” Doc Savage said.

“I am in a drastic mood,” the man said. “You will stand still. I am leaving.”

He took slow, cautious backward steps toward the door.

Doc said, “There are other hiding places besides a secret vault.”

The man stopped. He stood there. Then, without saying anything, he continued backing to the door. He

had all he wanted of the place. For the first time Doc Savage knew that he was scared, and that the man

must have been driven by a great emotion to come here as he had. Whatever the emotion

was—suffering, greed, revenge, hate, or what it might be—it was powerful, stronger than fear and

caution.

Doc stood still and let the man go.

The elevator door slid shut behind the man. There was a sighing sound as the elevator sank. Doc Savage

whirled instantly, raced into the laboratory, yanked back a concealed panel, jumped through it, ran

across a hall and worked with a square pillar which looked solid, as if it supported much of the roof.

There was a small private lift inside the pillar. The device was a recent installation for emergencies such as

this. The bronze man jumped inside, punched buttons, and seemed to start falling, such was the

descending speed of the lift.

He hit the street level and took a side door to the sidewalk. He was sitting in a cab when the man came

out on the street.

The man walked away and Doc followed him in the cab. The green hat was distinctive enough so that

keeping track of it was a simple matter.

Doc wondered again if it was the green hat which Pat had mentioned in her interrupted telephone report.

The man walked rapidly two blocks north, a block west, a block north, one south, one west, another

south, and went into a large restaurant which had a front and a side door. He had an order of beans and

milk and rye bread, the beans Boston style.

While he was eating, two other men came into the cafeteria and took the adjoining table. There was no

indication that they knew the first man or that he knew them. They were two young men who were alike

enough to be fraternity brothers out of the same college, if the college was pretty tough. They had coffee

and rolls.

The man with the green hat left.

The other two men left.

Doc Savage entered the restaurant and made off with the glass which the man with the green hat had

drunk his milk out of, and the water glasses of the other two men, having noted that both of the latter had

tasted their water. No one witnessed Doc committing this thievery, and he wasted little enough time at it.

He was able to get back on the trail of his quarry without trouble.

The man with the green hat, having tarried at the restaurant to satisfy himself that Doc Savage was not

following him, walked three blocks straight south.

The two men came up behind him quickly. One of them hit him on the back of the head, using an object

he brought out of a pocket. The blow knocked the green hat flying.

The heaviness with which the green hat hit and rolled aroused the interest of one of the footpads, and he

picked it up.

“

Ye-e-e-e!” he yelled, and almost fainted.

The second man was searching the owner of the green hat. He said, “Help me do this!” angrily to the first

man. They both searched.

During most of the search the man they had struck down squirmed and made mumblings, but they did not

hit him again.

They seemed disgusted with the results. They looked at each other, then simultaneously shrugged and

spread empty hands, palms uppermost.

“He didn't get it,” one of them said.

“There is no use standing around here until we turn to stone,” the other one said.

They sauntered away. Because it was a deserted street, their performance had not been noticed by

anyone.

DOC SAVAGE, having witnessed the meeting, and having gotten a general idea of what had been said

by lip-reading—at which he had put in hundreds of hours of very painstaking practice—decided to grab

both the owner of the green hat and the other two men.

The other alternative was to keep tracing them and hope they would lead him to Monk, Ham and his

other associates. The latter system was not very dependable.

Doc wore a bulletproof vest. He also had a helmet affair which was made of transparent plastic and was

impervious to bullets that would be likely to come from any gun the footpads would be carrying in their

pockets. Doc's pockets contained grenades—gas, smoke, demolition—which would serve any

emergency.

So he took the bold course and rushed the men as they were parting. He was not far from them when he

popped into view, and he ran swiftly.

He called, “Stop! Stand where you are! And stand still.”

He hauled out the helmet of plastic—the plastic had basic similarities with the plastic on which he had

been conducting experiments in the arctic—and hauled it down over his eyes.

The two footpads whirled. They drew guns. That was to be expected.

The man who owned the green hat sat up on the sidewalk. He made a vague, meaningless gesture with

both arms, as if he was trying to get hold of a dizzy world as it went past.

The two men who held their guns lifted them.

Doc stopped running, not suddenly, but slackening his pace slowly until he was at a halt, as if his interest

in the men had been supplanted by a much greater interest.

The two men lowered their guns, then dropped them. They seemed to have had previous experience with

the laughing.

The laughing had come, and there was nothing to show from where. But it was horrible, and not loud at

first; then it was loud, suddenly and violently!

It was not a rapid thing like a giggle, but more of a fully rounded and extended thing. Each peal of it, each

note of it, began to bring you up on your toes. Then it started lifting your hair. Then it made something

explode inside your head!

The cycle of the thing, from its gentle beginning to its awful blood-curdling climax, was fast. There was

not much more than enough time to recognize the changing cadence, volume, character and effect of the

phenomenon. Then the brain went into a blackout. Rather, it went into a hell torment of agony.

The effect on the brain was like nothing Doc Savage had ever experienced. It was like a horrendous pain

which flooded and drowned every other sensation and experience, drove away desire to act, cramped

and paralyzed capacity to act.

Wheeling and running away from the spot was one of the hardest things Doc Savage ever had done. Not

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THELAUGHOFDEATHADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.MANINSOLITUDE?ChapterII.ASECRETANDAVAULT?ChapterIII.AFFAIRINWASHINGTON?ChapterIV.DEATHSITTINGUP?ChapterV.THEWILDGOOSE?ChapterVI.THEGOOSEHUNTER?ChapterVII.WHILETHEGOOSEFLEW?Chapte...

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Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 116 - The Laugh of Death

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