Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 103 - The Mindless Monsters

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THE MINDLESS MONSTERS
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2002 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter I. THE SKINNY STRANGER
? Chapter II. TALE OF A PIG
? Chapter III. THE AGED CORPSE
? Chapter IV. INGRID ON GUARD
? Chapter V. RUTLEDGE DISAPPEARS
? Chapter VI. DOC IS ATTACKED
? Chapter VII. RUTLEDGE REAPPEARS
? Chapter VIII. UNDER THE BAY
? Chapter IX. DOC IS CAPTURED
? Chapter X. THE SUNKEN FOREST
? Chapter XI. THE BRONZE MONSTER
? Chapter XII. MONK ESCAPES
? Chapter XIII. A POSSE FOR DOC
? Chapter XIV. UNDERGROUND VIGIL
? Chapter XV. SHOOT TO KILL
? Chapter XVI. MIXTURE FOR MONK
? Chapter XVII. END OF THE MONSTERS
Scanned and Proofed
by Tom Stephens
Chapter I. THE SKINNY STRANGER
THE man was a good eight inches under six feet. He was so gaunt his bones seemed trying to poke
through his skin. But there was something about him that made the noonday crowd split, leaving a path in
which none touched him.
The scrawny one moved with machinelike precision. He gave the impression that he had been wound up
by some gigantic mechanical spring. That in itself was somewhat queer. But it was the eyes that made
people shudder as they stepped from his path.
They were pale, colorless. They did not seem to focus on any given point, but looked through other
pedestrians, rather than at them. Across the street from the bank, he turned methodically, as if some
unseen hand guided his steps. His own skinny hands clenched and unclenched as if some Herculean task
lay before them.
The bank was a modest one. It was on a busy street of Long Island City, which is in Queens, one of the
five boroughs of New York City. In front of it a barrel-chested Irishman held a small audience of street
urchins entranced. The man wore the uniform of a bank guard.
"‘Tis no lie that me ancestors helped the good St. Patrick chase the snakes out of Ireland," he boasted.
"The O’Hallahans have been a great race of men."
It was true that Flatfoot O’Hallahan could whip any man he’d met who was not more than half again his
own weight. Thus, the skinny man with the flat, lusterless eyes seemed to present no problem at all.
O’Hallahan thought that perhaps he was ill from the appearance of him. He seemed to stagger slightly as
he stepped to the curb. O’Hallahan moved toward him, placed a hand on his arm.
"Is it you’re drunk, man?" he inquired.
What happened then made newspaper headlines in big type. It also started a weird chain of events that
brought gray hairs to quite a few people and death to some more.
The skinny stranger gripped the O’Hallahan windpipe with one hand. There was no expression whatever
on his face. He did not seem angry with the bank guard. O’Hallahan merely impeded his progress. The
barrell-chested Irishman found himself suspended in the air by one hand of a man six inches shorter than
himself!
O’Hallahan’s tongue protruded from his mouth. His face turned first red and then purple. His body went
limp. The scrawny man let him fall to the sidewalk. Then he swung slowly toward the children who made
up O’Hallahan’s audience. Fear rooted the youngsters to the sidewalk. Perhaps it was just as well that
they did not scream or try to run. The lusterless eyes of the man did not seem to see them at all.
Like a mechanical robot, he swiveled, plodded up the marble steps into the bank.
The teller in the first cage looked up at the pinched face through the bars. The light in the bank was dim.
The teller couldn’t see the strange, dead lack of expression in the skinny man’s eyes. But he could see
the terrible strength displayed by hands that were merely emaciated talons of flesh.
Thin fingers gripped the marble slabs that made up the lower half of the cage. They peeled off hunks of
the stuff as if it were cheese. Then the stout bars above the marble parted like splinters of some rubbery
wood.
The teller began to yell. He jammed his foot on an alarm button, sent a siren wailing from the alarm box
outside. With one fist, he whipped up a gun, began to blast lead at the unbelievable figure crowding in
upon him.
Slugs tore through the shoulders and arms of the skinny monster. The teller’s lips trembled. His hand
shook slightly. None of his bullets struck a vital spot on the thin man’s body. But the impact of the slugs
that did plow through his flesh seemed to cause him no pain whatever. Nor did it seem to diminish his
terrible strength. The talonlike hands seized the now frantic teller by the shoulders. With incredible force,
the fingers twisted the shoulders back until the vertebrae cracked with a dull, snapping sound. The teller
screamed once, then fell limp to the floor.
The bank was in a turmoil. Customers milled about, got in the way of other bank employees who were
trying to shoot down the intruder. As calmly as if it were all part of a day’s work, the skinny man
scooped up the entire cash contents of the teller’s cage, stuffed it into a leather pouch that he carried.
Then he turned and walked out of the bank.
It had all happened so quickly, so completely without warning, that the undersized Sampson reached the
street before anyone moved to apprehend him. Dripping a trail of blood, he padded to the curb. A sleek
black coupé glided to a stop beside him. Without a word, the skinny one opened a door and climbed in.
The coupé roared around the corner and out of sight.
FLATFOOT O’HALLAHAN was struggling back to his feet as the car turned the corner. He was
almost knocked down again by the jumble of depositors and employees that poured out of the bank.
O’Hallahan was immediately on the defensive.
"The man was as big as a house. He was ten times as strong as Doc Savage," he yelled.
One of the depositors had more practical things in mind than O’Hallahan’s public opinions. The depositor
was a blond giant of a man wearing a gray suit, gray fedora and black shoes. The bank book he shoved
hurriedly into his pocket bore the name, "Merwin Malo, developer of Rex Superol, to banish headaches."
The young man’s sharp blue eyes rested briefly on O’Hallahan.
"That’s impossible. No one could be ten times as strong as Doc Savage. Which way did the man go?"
O’Hallahan jerked one thumb toward the corner. Police sirens were beginning to wail in the distance. But
to await their arrival would mean much delay. The blond depositor moved toward the curb.
"My car!" he rasped. "Let’s go after him."
He crowded into the machine, a light, fast sedan. O’Hallahan got in with him. So did a portly, thin-haired
man with shell-rimmed nose glasses. This was the president of the bank. His name was Jacob Ringle. He
mumbled vaguely as the car jolted into motion. What he had seen had set his mind whirling.
"We may need Doc Savage at that," Ringle observed. "Nothing like this ever happened before."
O’Hallahan wailed his agreement.
"‘Tis my oath that only the likes o’ the man of bronze could help us against this fellow."
The full truth of his words was then unknown to the bank guard. He did know that Doc Savage was
credited with the strength of the bull of Bashan; that his amazing brain was more fitted to deal with
criminals than any other mind that was known. He knew that Doc devoted all his amazing physical and
mental energies toward righting wrongs and the punishment of evildoers.
He did not know that the undersized monster of incredible strength was but one of many to follow. Nor
could he have known the strange manner in which Doc ultimately became connected with the case.
The blond driver, whose name was apparently Merwin Malo, uttered words of surprise. Ahead of them,
in a side street that was almost deserted, a sleek, black coupé began to slow. O’Hallahan brightened.
"Sure, that’s the wan!" he exclaimed. "The man’s getting out."
The coupé was still half a block ahead. It pulled to the curb beside a vacant lot. The only pedestrian there
was a wisp of a man who looked like a tramp. He glanced at the slowing sedan with little interest.
Then he suddenly hurled himself flat on the ground. The skinny robot of a man climbed out of the sedan.
Another larger figure followed him. A strange tableau took place. The skinny one handed over the pouch
containing the money. Then, with a gesture as natural and smooth as shaking hands in bidding good-by to
a friend, the larger man raised a revolver. There was a bellowing report as a bullet tore into the skinny
man’s skull, removing most of the face as it did.
O’Hallahan began to yell. That brought the big murderer swiveling around. Before the bank guard and his
two companions had a chance to get much of a look at him, the gun began to talk again. Lead smashed
the right-hand side of the windshield, narrowly missing O’Hallahan. A second shot crumpled a front tire.
The sedan wobbled, warped into the curb. Then the big gunman stepped calmly into his machine and
once more roared away out of sight.
THE blond driver of the sedan clambered out. He rushed over to the vacant lot, leaned over the skinny
corpse. There wasn’t enough face left to identify him. The wisp of a man who lay on the ground near the
corpse began to moan. The blond depositor from the sedan turned to him.
"Are you hurt, Ding Ding?" he asked.
The tramplike figure stopped shivering and looked up. He had a pointed nose, a small round mouth and
not enough chin to be worth mentioning. Also, it seemed, he stuttered.
"N-n-n-no, Mr. Malo," he squeaked in a voice that sounded as if it needed oiling. I-I-I-I g-g-guess not."
O’Hallahan and Jacob Ringle, the bank president, stood behind Malo. The portly bank executive pointed
a well-manicured finger at the trembling man on the ground. "Who’s he?"
"Name’s Corvestan," Malo told him. "They call him Ding Ding because he was once a trolley-car
motorman. Hangs around my store quite a bit."
Ding Ding Corvestan struggled to his feet. His small mouth worked strangely. Tiny, snapping black eyes
darted glances of fear about him.
"T-t-terrible!" he groaned. "It w-w-was awful!"
Ding Ding was unable to give any adequate description of the big man who had escaped in the coupé. He
reported only two peculiar items concerning the killer.
"H-he had a kind of a big snake ring with red eyes on his left hand," Ding Ding offered. "B-b-but his
f-f-face was funny. It didn’t seem to have any expression at all."
The bank president paled. The skinny corpse had displayed that same curious lack of expression.
O’Hallahan had mentioned it.
"Golly, I need an aspirin," Ringle muttered. "There must be a gang of them." Then he smacked his hands
together. "I am going to call Doc Savage."
Merwin Malo brightened at that suggestion. He jerked a thumb toward a decrepit building across the
street.
"Phone in my store," he suggested.
The sign above the store said, "Merwin Malo. Apothecary Shop. It was an ancient, dingy affair that
apparently belonged to a generation gone by. It still had the old fashioned red-and-blue liquid-filled
globes in the window. There wasn’t even a soda fountain.
Malo escorted the bank president into the store. Then he returned to the other two men who were gaping
at the faceless corpse. At that moment, the police arrived at the scene. A burly headquarters detective
leaped from a prowl car. He thrust himself past Malo, O’Hallahan and Ding Ding Corvestan. Shifting an
unlighted cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, he glared belligerently at the three men.
"Who’s the stiff?" he demanded.
The three explained, of course, that they didn’t have any idea. The detective turned to other cops who
had come up behind him.
"Fingerprints," he snapped. "Check ‘em right away. The guy probably has a record."
Then he turned back to Merwin Malo.
"Where’s Ringle, the bank president? I understand he went off with you."
Malo gulped. His face got a bit red. Apparently he didn’t feel he deserved such blunt questioning. He
pointed toward his drugstore.
"He’s phoning Doc Savage. In my store."
The detective’s eyes hardened.
"Interfering with police business," he growled. "That won’t get him anywhere. Come on."
The big cop plodded across the street with the others in his wake. He thrust open the door and stepped
into the dimly lighted apothecary shop. The single phone booth was empty. Jacob Ringle was nowhere to
be seen.
Merwin Malo’s mouth dropped open. An expression of incredulity spread over his face.
"W-w-what—" he began.
A youthful clerk bobbed up from behind the counter.
"Funniest thing," he said. "The guy went into the phone booth and dialed a number. Then, without even
saying a word, he hung up and went out the back door."
The big detective’s eyes narrowed. He chewed hard on his cigar.
"All you guys stay where I can get you," he rasped. "I’m going back to headquarters and find out whose
fingerprints we get off that corpse."
But, in that, the detective was decidedly mistaken. If it had not been for an enterprising newspaper
reporter, the scrawny monster might never have been identified.
Chapter II. TALE OF A PIG
LATER investigation proved that an uncompleted phone call had been made to the office of Doc Savage
at the time Merwin Malo’s clerk had indicated. The offices occupied the entire eighty-sixth floor of New
York’s tallest skyscraper.
The man who lifted the French-type phone from the cradle in the outer reception room was a tall,
immaculately clad individual. At the moment, he wore gray spats, striped morning trousers, a cutaway
coat and winged collar. A silk topper rested on the big desk.
"Theodore Brooks speaking," he said into the phone. Then he frowned slightly. There was a click,
followed only by the dial hum. Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks—to give his full
name—cradled the phone.
"Must have been a mistake," he muttered. Then he sighed, apparently resumed a conversation that had
been interrupted. "Now, if you take a full-grown pig and apply the proper pressure in the proper
manner—"
Howls that might have come from a pack of enraged wolves issued from another part of the room. There
was a pounding and a thumping, as if half a dozen heavyweights were engaged in a
last-man-on-his-feet-wins free-for-all.
"Daggonit, Ham!" a shrill, childish voice threatened. "If you touch a bristle on Habeas’ back, I’ll
compress you into a single volume book on what ought to happen to all lawyers!"
The tall, sartorially perfect man was a lawyer. In fact, it was generally conceded that he was one of the
most brilliant attorneys ever to have been graduated from Harvard. He was also called Ham by persons
who knew him extremely well, could outrun him, or were not afraid to tackle him. Not many persons
called him Ham.
At the moment, he ignored the shrill protests. He leaned toward a complicated panel of switches, dials
and multicolored lights. Then he extended slender fingers toward one of the most unlovely-looking
porkers that ever rooted in a garbage heap.
The shoat had a long nose made for digging, ears as long as a good-sized donkey, legs like a tall dog and
a skinny body. His name was Habeas Corpus, and he had been so named to irritate Ham. His owner,
who had named him, was responsible for the rumpus that filled the big reception room. As Ham picked
up the pig by his long ears, the howls and thumping noises reached a new crescendo.
Both the man who made the noises and his antics were worthy of note. An anthropologist would
probably have been interested in the individual, and anyone would have stopped to look twice at what he
was doing.
He had a nubbin of a head, a homely face, long arms and a chest like a gorilla.
Monk—as the simian fellow was aptly called by his friends—crouched in the center of the room. Again
and again he rushed toward Ham and the porker. Each time he fetched up against some invisible barrier
and was hurled to the floor. Actually, Ham had set up a polarized electrical field which Doc Savage had
installed. Actuated by a tremendously high-frequency current, the field created an almost impenetrable
invisible wall that halted impromptu visitors who had lethal designs.
Ham shoved Habeas Corpus into a small trap in the elaborate cabinet that sported the dials and gadgets.
"Stop it, you shyster," Monk yelled, "or I’ll put you in that gadget and you’ll come out a size to match
your brains!"
Ham appeared to be completely engrossed in his "experiment." He had assured Monk that his "reducer,"
as he called it, would compress any living thing to a fourth its normal size. He twisted dials and turned
knobs. There was a swishing sound as compressed gases of some type rushed through high-pressure
nozzles. A pressure-indicator dial shot up to the top calibration and shattered.
Squealing grunts came from inside of the tanklike cabinet. Monk leaned wearily against the
high-frequency field and groaned. Then he about went berserk as the tall lawyer shut off the machine and
took out the pig. Habeas Corpus, as nearly as Monk could tell from where he was, emerged just about
one fourth of the size he had been when he went into the compressor.
Monk plunged again into the electrical field as Doc Savage entered the reception room from a private
door behind him. Ham was facing Doc as the bronze man entered. Instantly, the dapper lawyer moved
toward a switch, shut off the high-frequency field. Doc’s smooth features almost never showed worry.
But a slight frown of concentration told Ham that something was wrong.
He forgot to warn Monk. And Monk—whose full handle was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett
Mayfair, one of the world’s greatest industrial chemists—plunged again at the barrier he thought was still
there. It wasn’t. Monk fell flat on his face with a grunt of surprise.
"What’s the matter, Doc?" Ham managed.
Doc Savage did not answer immediately. He loomed for a moment in the doorway, a giant of bronze. As
he left the door and stepped out into the room, he seemed to grow smaller in stature. This was because
of the symmetry of his development; his size was only fully realized by comparison with other known
objects. Doc’s corded muscles meshed under his skin in a manner which made their tremendous size
scarcely noticeable. His hair was like a bronze metallic cap, just a shade darker than his skin.
But the most compelling thing about the bronze man was his eyes. They were strange eyes, flake-gold
whirlpools that might have been wind-shifting desert sands under the sunlight. The weird life of the eyes
had a compellingly hypnotic quality.
Doc carried a late-edition afternoon paper. He spread it out on the big flat-topped desk while he made
some quick preparations. He removed a device that looked somewhat like an old-fashioned stereopticon
from a cabinet, set it up on a pedestal base.
"Newsprint is not a perfect medium for the recording of fingerprints," Doc Savage said.
Monk and Ham rushed to the big desk, stared at the newspaper. The headlines were in exceptionally big
type. The story was quite sensational. The reporter had capitalized on the lack of reason and emotion
displayed by the man who had killed the Long island bank teller:
MINDLESS MONSTER
KILLS BANK TELLER
_______
Uses Only Bare Hands—
Slain by Confederate
After Robbery
The story told of the incidents of the skinny man of super strength pretty much as O’Hallahan, Malo and
Ding Ding Corvestan had seen them. Jacob Ringle’s opinions that the two killers had been members of a
larger gang were mentioned, even though Ringle had not been contacted. Ringle’s disappearance was not
overemphasized. There was no clear indication that he might have been kidnaped. And his standing in the
community was such that it was not wise to point suspicion at the bank president.
One curious angle was that the fingerprints of the corpse of the skinny man indicated that he had never
been arrested. At least his prints were not on file. A reproduction of the prints appeared as an illustration
with the story. The caption said, "If any reader of the Classic should be able to recognize these
fingerprints, this paper will offer a suitable reward for identification."
The editor had felt pretty safe, of course, in making such an offer. If the fingerprints were not listed in
New York headquarters, or Washington, it was most unlikely that they would be recorded anywhere.
Or at least the editor thought.
DOC SAVAGE tore the illustration from the paper, inserted it into the stereopticon, which was
somewhat like the postcard projecting type popular a few years ago. The fingerprints sprang to life with
enlarged brilliance, projected against the smooth white wall of the office. The bronze man walked close
to the wall, studied the whorls closely.
Doc Savage had trained his remarkable memory in the matter of fingerprints. The bronze man could
study a set of prints and remember their convolutions years later. And it happened that he had particular
reason to remember these prints.
"Those are the prints of Rocky Emben," Doc said simply.
Ham gasped. "Why, Emben was graduated from the college last year."
The "college" was a remarkable curative and surgical institution that Doc Savage maintained in upstate
New York. Doc seldom took a life, even of criminal opponents, when it could possibly be avoided.
Criminals who were captured were usually sent to the college. There, delicate brain operations erased all
memory of their criminal pasts. They also erased any tendency toward crime. As mentally new-born
citizens, they were returned to jobs and useful lives. Rocky Ember had fallen afoul of Doc before his
criminal career had advanced enough for him to have been convicted and fingerprinted.
Monk Mayfair scratched his bullet head. His eyes, sunk in deep pits of gristle, were troubled. Monk was
remembering everything he could about Rocky Emben.
"But, Doc," he protested. "Emben’s cure was a complete success. I remember it. He wouldn’t have gone
back to crime. Besides, he didn’t have enough strength to bust up a watermelon!"
Tiny whirlpools stirred weird life in Doc’s gold-flaked eyes as he sat on the edge of the desk. Certain
details in the newspaper story had aroused peculiar interest in Doc’s agile brain. They were details
indicating that a master criminal, so far a bit unsure of himself, was preparing a tremendous onslaught of
violence. The criminal probably had not known Rocky Emben’s background. None of Doc’s "graduates"
knew of their own backgrounds.
Doc picked up the phone, put in a call for the institution. As he did, Monk’s eyes strayed toward the
diminutive hog. It was scratching its back on Ham’s elaborate "reducer." Monk grunted and started
toward Ham. There was both mayhem and murder in his glare. No high-frequency field separated him
from the dapper lawyer now.
"Bring that hog back to his natural size, shyster," he growled. "Or we’ll find out how many paragraphs the
editors think your obituary is worth."
Ham moved nervously, reached one hand behind him. It came up with a shiny cane. Ham unsheathed it,
revealing the case to be a mere cover for a slender sword. The tip of the sword was covered with a
sticky chemical. Monk knew that the sticky chemical was one that brought instant unconsciousness to
anyone who was stabbed by it.
"Come on, you hairy mistake," Ham snapped. "I’ll make a jack o’ lantern of your head and a red fur rug
out of the rest of you."
He flicked the sword-cane at the hairy chemist. Monk grinned and kept boring in like an avenging
juggernaut.
"I figured out an antidote for that danged poison of yours, shyster," he rumbled. "And now, I’m going to
take you apart, piece by piece."
Ham kept jabbing with the sword-cane and Monk kept coming in. Just how it might have turned out is a
matter of conjecture. The running quarrel between these two aids of Doc had been going on for years.
And Habeas Corpus, the pig, was one of two influences that caused the greatest amount of turmoil in
their relationship.
The squeals of the pig now halted what looked like the permanent finish of a beautiful friendship. The
squeals distracted Monk. They also set Ham to laughing. The long snout of Monk’s pet protruded from a
hole in the "reducer." The porker nosed up a sliding door and ran out into the room.
The smaller pig still scratched his back on the other side of the machine. Monk knew instantly that he’d
been taken; that the smaller pig was a pygmy hog that looked just like a miniature Habeas. Monk was all
mixed up. He was immensely relieved to discover that Ham’s "reducer" was a fake. He was incensed to
realize he’d fallen for such a fraud.
He rushed to Habeas and glared at Ham at the same time. He tried to tell the pig how glad he was to find
he was all right and give Ham a verbal opinion of the dapper lawyer in the same breath.
It was difficult. It also made it difficult for Doc Savage to carry on a conversation over the phone. Doc
motioned for silence and got it. He talked for quite a few moments. Then he cradled the phone.
"Rocky Emben’s last probationary report was ten days ago," he informed his aids. "At that time he was
quite normal mentally and no stronger than usual. He displayed neither recollection of the past nor any
tendency toward crime."
"You mean a guy can grow from an innocent weakling to a criminal monster that can tear up slabs of
marble like paper in ten days?" Monk asked.
Doc Savage stood erect.
"I am afraid that is the inescapable conclusion. However, you will note three significant aspects to the
news story. The vacant, glassy stare of both Emben and the other killer whom we do not yet know; the
fact that Emben was killed immediately after the crime was committed and the relatively small amount of
cash taken in the robbery of the bank. There was only about two thousand dollars in the cage at the
time."
Monk scratched his head. He didn’t get it.
"Emben had apparently become a mindless automaton controlled by some other force," Doc explained.
"The master mind was not sure how Emben’s mind would react when the force was removed, so he had
him killed. And Emben’s crime was an experimental beginning. Had it been an end in itself, a more
lucrative job would have been performed."
Monk gasped.
"You two will remain here," Doc directed. "Long Tom is on his way in. I am going to check up on the
neighborhood in Queens."
Doc Savage left the office.
MONK and Ham were silent for a moment after Doc went out. Monk spoke first.
"Golly, if a guy as skinny as Rocky Emben can be made to bust up marble slabs an’ steel bars with his
hands, a flock of guys like that could—"
A red warning light began flashing on and off in the ceiling. It indicated that someone was approaching the
office by the route from the regular service elevators of the building.
"Long Tom," Ham suggested. "Probably came in from the street instead of through the garage."
A strident, buzzing sound brought Monk erect. Both men whirled to a flat, rectangular screen against one
wall. A greenish fluorescent light wavered there for a moment. Then the outline of an automatic pistol
could be seen. The device was an automatic X-ray televisor which rang the buzzer and flashed the
reproduction of any metal object larger than a small suit button that a visitor might carry. When Doc and
his aids passed the device, they used a hidden button to turn it off momentarily.
Monk and Ham each reached into a cabinet and removed queer, oversized pistols. The weapons were
fitted with drum magazines, and the mechanism looked somewhat intricate. These were superfiring
machine pistols perfected by Doc. Their rate of fire was so rapid that their roar was like the hoarse song
of a gigantic bass fiddle. The slugs in the drums at present were "mercy bullets," which scarcely broke the
skin, but produced instant unconsciousness.
The hairy chemist and the lawyer were all set for trouble when the outer door was thrust open. Monk’s
mouth dropped open so wide it is doubtful if the visitor could see anything of his head except the ears.
There was nothing sinister about the visitor’s appearance. She was only two or three inches over five
feet. Her curves did things to a fall tweed suit that would have filled the manufacturer’s heart with joy.
Her hair was a tawny blond, with red glints. It reminded one of a lion, a golden field of grain and a sunset,
all at the same time.
The twin expressions of astonishment on the faces of the two men seemed to puzzle her. Her deep-blue
eyes clouded in a frown.
"I am Ingrid Nordstrom," she said in a rich contralto. Apparently she expected that her self-identification
should explain something.
Monk gave her a wide smile and tried to hide the superfiring machine pistol behind his back. He hadn’t
any idea who Ingrid Nordstrom might be. But he was quite willing to find out. Monk could scarcely be
called a woman hater.
Ham bowed deeply and got in front of Monk. Ham was no woman hater, either, and Monk’s
competition annoyed him.
"Ahem," he began in his best courtroom manner.
Ingrid Nordstrom looked uncertainly from one man to the other. Once, her hand seemed to stray toward
the large handbag she carried. The automatic revealed by the X-ray televisor was probably in that. But
the girl changed her mind.
"I came about the mindless monsters," she said simply.
Ham shut his mouth with a snap. He was instantly all business. He seated the girl on a chair beside the
desk. Monk rushed out to an anteroom and came back with a glass of water for Ingrid Nordstrom. She
hadn’t asked for any. But Monk hoped Ham would make himself so obnoxious asking questions that
摘要：

THEMINDLESSMONSTERSADocSavageAdventureByKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2002BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?ChapterI.THESKINNYSTRANGER?ChapterII.TALEOFAPIG?ChapterIII.THEAGEDCORPSE?ChapterIV.INGRIDONGUARD?ChapterV.RUTLEDGEDISAPPEARS?ChapterVI.DOCISATTACKED?ChapterVII.RUTLEDGEREAPPEARS?Chapt...

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