TEXT:  WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson......................................................................................1
  Chapter I. THE MEN THE GOBLIN GOT.............................................................................................1
  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL...................................................................................................................6
  Chapter III. GOBLIN.............................................................................................................................11
  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF..........................................................................................16
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR....................................................................................................22
  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES................................................................................................27
  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES..................................................................................32
  Chapter VIII. LONESOME...................................................................................................................37
  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL..............................................................................................................41
  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC..............................................................................................46
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES..............................................................................................................51
  Chapter XII. ONE−WAY EXIT............................................................................................................56
  Chapter XIII. ADAM ASH IS MISSING..............................................................................................60
  Chapter XIV. STORM CLOUDS GATHERING..................................................................................65
  Chapter XV. STAIRWAY TO DOOM.................................................................................................71
  Chapter XVI. MAD MENACE..............................................................................................................75
  Chapter XVII. THE GENERATOR STARTS.......................................................................................78
  Chapter XVIII. UNMASKED FIEND...................................................................................................82
  Chapter XIX. DEATH STRIKES HIGH UP.........................................................................................86
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
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  WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. THE MEN THE GOBLIN GOT
  • 
  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL
  • 
  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  • 
  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  • 
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  • 
  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  • 
  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  • 
  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  • 
  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  • 
  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  • 
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  • 
  Chapter XII. ONE−WAY EXIT
  • 
  Chapter XIII. ADAM ASH IS MISSING
  • 
  Chapter XIV. STORM CLOUDS GATHERING
  • 
  Chapter XV. STAIRWAY TO DOOM
  • 
  Chapter XVI. MAD MENACE
  • 
  Chapter XVII. THE GENERATOR STARTS
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. UNMASKED FIEND
  • 
  Chapter XIX. DEATH STRIKES HIGH UP
  • 
  Chapter I. THE MEN THE GOBLIN GOT
  MAYBE there is nothing to superstition. Maybe it  just happened to be the thirteenth day of the World’s Fair
  in  New York City. The Fair management spent hundreds of thousands of  dollars for publicity to let the
  universe know that this World’s Fair  was big, bigger, biggest. It covered more acres of ground, offered more
  means of amusement, had more scientific exhibits. It was worthy of that  worn−out word�colossal.
  To give some idea:
  Doc Savage�scientific man of mystery, muscular marvel, also reported  to be an amazing person in other
  ways�was to give a series of  demonstrations of ultramodern surgical skill. Ordinarily, such an event  would
  have been printed on the front pages of the newspapers in the  United States, and cabled abroad. But this time,
  it was just a part of the World’s Fair daily program.
  Incidentally, Doc Savage’s first surgical demonstration by mere  chance happened to be scheduled for the
  thirteenth day after the  opening of the Fair, which was the day the goblin walked.
  Additionally, the Doc Savage demonstration was given before a  convention of surgeons and doctors
  WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
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  exclusively, which disappointed a  lot of people who had heard that the lifework of Doc Savage was really
  righting wrongs and punishing evildoers in various parts of the earth,  a career that had led the Man of Bronze,
  as he was sometimes called,  into some fantastic adventures.
  The public had heard that Doc Savage did fantastic things, and it  would have liked to see a demonstration of
  some fantastic feats. But  Doc Savage had a great dislike for publicity, and he never cut capers  for the public’s
  entertainment.
  However, the goblin getting loose was not the first mysterious thing  that happened.
  Two men had disappeared. That was the initial mystery.
  On another day prior to this thirteenth day after the opening of the  World’s Fair, two hundred thousand
  visitors paid admission. Exactly two  hundred thousand. And exactly two less than that came out.
  They had automatic mechanical checking turnstiles at all the gates,  and a head gatekeeper whose job was
  collecting the figures. The head  gatekeeper saw from the readings that two less people came out than  went in.
  He decided one of the mechanical contraptions had made a  mistake. He was wrong.
  Two people went into the Fair grounds and never came out�and it  wasn’t any mistake of any mechanical
  contraption.
  The goblin got them.
  THE white−haired man in the long rubber apron, when he appeared,  acted as if the goblins were after him,
  too.
  The white−haired man was Professor Martin Uppercue, reported to be  one of the world’s greatest scientists.
  His specialty was  electrotherapeutics�he had discovered some remarkable things about how  diseases of the
  human body would react to electrical treatment.
  He was a small man, thin, with thick white hair on top of a large  head. He made you think of the type of
  musician slangily called a  "long−haired boy."
  There was nothing long−haired or old−fashioned about his scientific  discoveries. He was fifty years ahead of
  his time, maybe a hundred. Men  of science knew Uppercue as a quiet−mannered, soft−voiced person with
  keenly bright−blue eyes and a sedate deportment. Especially sedate. He  was always dignified.
  There was nothing sedate about the way Professor Martin Uppercue  came out of his laboratory. Nor
  dignified, either.
  Professor Uppercue’s laboratory was situated near the center of the  Fair Grounds close to the huge ball of a
  structure called the  Perisphere. It was only a few yards from the laboratory to the  landscaped gardens along
  the Court of Communications. Professor  Uppercue dashed wildly into this garden, which was crowded with
  people.
  The natural first thought was that Professor Uppercue was chasing  something.
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  As soon as they saw his face, they knew he was not chasing anything.  His face showed terror. His eyes
  popped until they looked like small  saucers stuck, bottoms out, on his face.
  He ran headlong, knocking astounded people out of his way. There was  blood on his face, quite a bit of it. His
  mouth was also open, open  like the mouth of a dog that has been backed into a corner and is being  whipped.
  Professor Uppercue wheeled his head in different directions as he  ran. He seemed to be looking everywhere,
  hoping, it was suddenly  apparent, for a place to which to flee. He was carrying two articles.
  One object that he carried seemed to be his laboratory apron. It was  a long rubber apron and he had it in his
  left hand.
  The second item was carried in his right hand, and it was more  unusual. It was a cylinder, apparently made of
  aluminum. It was about  three inches in diameter and as long as an average man’s arm, and  capped at each end.
  He kept running, and glaring about in search of some place to run to.
  There did not seem to be anything chasing him.
  The crowd made the natural mistake. They decided that Professor  Martin Uppercue had gone insane. So an
  effort was commenced to seize  the madman.
  The attempt to seize Professor Uppercue failed, but it did  accomplish two things.
  A man snatched Professor Uppercue’s rubber apron, and kept it, and  later turned it over to the proper
  authorities, and it proved very  important.
  Secondly, they learned something about that aluminumlike cylinder  that Professor Uppercue carried. He
  whacked different people over the  head with it�the thing was light, and did not greatly damage the  recipients
  of the blows. But several persons were able to testify that  a whispering sound came from inside the cylinder.
  The sound from inside the cylinder was generally described as a  whisper. One man testified it was more like
  the scuffling of a shoe  across a bare floor.
  Professor Uppercue got away and ran. He clutched the mysterious  aluminumlike tube with both arms.
  THE flamboyant heart of the Fair Grounds had been called the Theme  Center. Here was locked the great
  spherical Perisphere that was like a  mammoth white tennis ball two hundred feet in diameter, from around its
  base shooting upward great sprays of water that made it appear the huge  ball of steel was floating on a
  fountain, and circling these fountains  was a white, circular promenade bordered by heavy shrubs and foliage.
  Professor Uppercue dived into this expensively landscaped brush  patch.
  There were two impressive structures in this Theme Center. One, of  course, was the globular Perisphere�the
  two−hundred−foot white tennis  ball of a thing. The other impressive item was the Trylon, a spike of  steel
  seven hundred feet high coming to a needle point at the top. The  minds that conceived the theme of the Fair
  had been unable to imagine  anything more modernistic than this ball−shaped Perisphere and the
  needle−shaped Trylon, and the two were connected by a rising ramp�a  wide sidewalk that spiraled up under
  the base of the massive ball of  steel.
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  When Professor Uppercue next was seen, he was streaking along this  ramp.
  He now seemed hardly able to run. He was an elderly man, unused to  much physical activity, and the wild
  running already had him near  exhaustion. Once he banked into the side banister of the rising ramp,  but he
  kept going. He was headed for the point where the elevated  structure entered one side of the towering Trylon.
  The Fair police�the Fair cops wore neat uniforms similar to the New  York State troopers�and members of
  the crowd now set out in pursuit of  Professor Uppercue. The crazed scientist�and the impression that
  everyone now held was that the scientist was insane�had a head start.
  A number of people distinctly saw Professor Uppercue disappear into  the Trylon.
  A few moments later the police and more fleet−footed members of the  crowd arrived at the Trylon. Everyone
  was wheezing from the terrific  race up the incline. Puffing pursuers crowded into the Trylon.
  There was gloom about them, strange modernistic semitwilight.  Stretching upward until it disappeared in the
  needle point several  hundred feet above their heads, was the silent network of steel girders  which supported
  the great Trylon. The spot where the pursuers stood was  a platform built approximately a hundred feet above
  the spire’s  three−sided base.
  "Where’d he go?" a man yelled.
  They had all become aware of a strange sound�noise as if several  carpenters had gone to work
  simultaneously sawing boards.
  "Where’d he go!"
  The words literally crashed back at them. Everyone jumped, shocked  by the increased volume, the impact of
  the sound. 
  "Great grief!" a man muttered. "Some echoes."
  The sound illusion of carpenters sawing wood, they realized now, was  the noise of their own breathing that
  had traveled upward into the  space, and sounded back greatly magnified by the unusual acoustics of  the
  Trylon.
  A cop explained, "It’s the way the place is built, I guess. But  where’d that nut go to?"
  "Search me!" grumbled another cop.
  They did not search him, but they did search the Trylon�those parts  of it where it seemed conceivable that a
  man might be hidden�and then  went over the surrounding grounds.
  There was no trace of Professor Martin Uppercue or his aluminumlike  cylinder.
  THEN the goblin walked.
  It happened not over fifteen minutes later. Immediately surrounding  the Theme Center of the Fair�the huge
  ball of the Perisphere and spike  of the Trylon�were the most important buildings, which housed exhibits
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  having to do with branches of modern science. These structures were  large and, of course, modernistic. They
  were brilliantly colored, for  color was the theme of this vast World’s Fair, if one was to believe  the words of
  the men who had conceived the thing.
  Prominent among the centrally located Fair buildings was the Hall of  Mines.
  It was inside the Hall of Mines that the goblin walked.
  Men and women spectators began to come out of the Hall of Mines,  yelping at every jump. They were
  frightened. Not as scared as Professor  Martin Uppercue had been, but almost.
  A Fair cop grabbed one of the runners. "What’s gone wrong now?"
  The man jerked a thumb at the Hall of Mines. "Dud−dud−dud−damnedest  thing in there!"
  The cop ran in to see. The Hall of Mines was an enormous structure,  well−lighted; it contained exhibits
  intended to depict the progress of  mining and metallurgy from the beginning of things down to the present.
  There were hundreds of exhibits and as many scared people. A great deal  of confusion, in fact.
  The cop jumped on top of an ore−processing mill where he could be  seen.
  "What’s going on here?" he yelled.
  "Over here," voices told him. "In the mine!"
  The mine they referred to was a reproduction of one of the famous  gold shafts of the old West. It had been a
  popular spot, for the  artists who had created it had done a very lifelike job. The shaft  sloped into an
  embankment and disappeared into the depths of the earth.  There were shovels and picks stacked about.
  If the mine shaft had unexpectedly turned into a tiger den, the  vicinity could not have been more deserted.
  The cop planted himself in front of the shaft. He did not know what  to think.
  "It come out," someone yelled for his information. "Then it went  back in again."
  "What did?"
  "It looked like a hobgoblin."
  "A what?"
  "You get a look at the thing," the informant told the cop, "and  you’ll understand."
  At this point, the cop heard the sound�and the short hairs on the  back of his neck began to want to get up on
  end. The noise came from  the mine shaft. It was a whimpering, a hoarse throat−tearing whimper.
  The cop rubbed a hand over his head to make his hair lie down again.
  "Hell, that’s a dog!" he said. "There’s just a stray dog in there."
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  The cop got a flashlight and a gun and three other cops and went  into the shaft. It was very dark. At various
  points in the old mine,  there stood wax figures of miners and these wax men were equipped with  miners’ caps
  which bore lights�electric lights that imitated the  old−time miner’s kerosene lamp. It was observed that none
  of these  lamps were lighted; and the current seemed to be off.
  "It was a dog, of course," the cop said, although they had not seen  any.
  "The people who saw it don’t describe any dog," another cop told him.
  "Listen, I’ll show you. I’ll call the dog. Here, doggie�here,  doggie�"
  That cop never called another dog again. As long as he lived, his  vocal chords would freeze when he started
  to call a dog�because he  could not help remembering what he got when he called this dog.
  It was probably eight feet high. It was not that wide. It had arms,  legs, body. It had eyes that were great and
  awful, and it had strength  that was the most awful of all.
  They saw it only an instant, not very clearly at that, for it hurled  rocks at them, boulders as large as barrels.
  The policemen fled around the corner.
  When the policemen had gathered their courage�and ten more cops and  four submachine guns, riot
  equipment and tear gas�they advanced. They  found nothing.
  No goblin, no way the goblin could have gotten out. No nothing.
  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL
  RUNNING north and east from the Theme Center of the Fair�the spot  where the Perisphere and Trylon were
  located�were broad avenues and  malls branching out like the spokes of a wheel.
  The Hall of Medicine was on one of these spokes. It was a long,  yellow−colored structure just north of the
  circular walk bordering the  mammoth Perisphere. Inside was the operating amphitheater, built like a  small
  theater, with circular tiers of seats forming an observers’  balcony. Seated tense and silent, white masks over
  their own faces,  visiting medical men watched in awe. They were seeing one of the most  amazing things of
  their lives.
  Other than the weird panting sounds that came from a mechanical  device that looked similar to a punching
  bag, located near the head of  the operating table, there was no other sound. That bag pulsated as  oxygen
  mixed with anesthesia was fed to a small, still form on the  white operating table�the figure of a boy from the
  slums of New York.
  A tumor was being removed from the boy’s brain. It was a type of  operation never done before.
  Motion−picture cameras whirred, recording the procedure.
  Above that still form only the surgeon’s eyes were visible. Amazing  eyes. The eyes were magnetic, and like
  restless pools of rich flake  gold. Set well apart, they were compelling and clear, holding the  attention of each
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  6
  
  assistant. No words were spoken. Instead, those eyes  directed, gave almost a sharp command when a nurse
  was a fraction of a  second too slow. There was need for swift, sure speed. Remainder of his  face was hidden
  behind a mask of white.
  In the observers’ balcony, a doctor whispered to a colleague.
  "This particular penetration of the ethmoid cribriform has never  been accomplished to date. Bet you he don’t
  make it!"
  The second doctor said softly, "But that surgeon is Doc Savage!"
  "Sure, but the boy’s been on the table a half hour now."
  It did not seem to those seated above in the tiers that the figure  of Doc Savage was unusually large. Standing
  alone, the bronze man’s  size was deceptive, which was perhaps caused by the symmetry of his  physical
  development�so well proportioned that he seemed no taller than  an average six−foot man. But whenever a
  nurse, who was tall herself,  came close, his unusual size was evident. Doc Savage was a physical  giant.
  Close over Doc Savage’s head, a cluster of round operating−room  lights sent down powerful light.
  A doctor seated in the topmost tier whispered, "Listen!"
  Everyone could hear the commotion. An excited man had stopped to  yell at the doorman, probably not
  realizing what a serious thing was  going on inside.
  "A scientist named Uppercue went crazy, and they’re huntin’ ‘im!"  the man yelled. "And they saw some kind
  of a goblin in the Hall of  Mines!"
  The skeptical doctors in the tiers breathed, "Good Lord. He’ll never  pull that lad through now. That’ll distract
  him."
  At the operating table, the nurses jerked worried glances toward Doc  Savage. But apparently the bronze man
  had not heard a sound. His  capable fingers moved swiftly. His hypnotic gaze flicked to the tiny  instruments in
  the nurses’ hands, indicating them as he needed them.  For the first time, he made a direct statement.
  "Almost through," he said.
  But then the cluster of brilliant operating table lights overhead  went out.
  ONE nurse could not suppress her cry of horror as the big operating  amphitheater with only small windows
  high above, was thrown into gloom  down where Doc Savage was working. The bronze man was ready to
  suture�sew up�the incision close to the boy’s brain. One slip now� 
  A nurse leaped to a wall phone, frantically called the engineer’s  room in the basement of the Hall of
  Medicine, announced, "Something  mysterious caused the transformers to burn out."
  Doc Savage ordered quietly, "Watch the oxygen closely." He stepped  swiftly from the room. He always tried
  to foresee emergencies; there  was a flashlight in his equipment case outside in the sterilizing room.  He came
  back in a moment and passed the light to the assistant.
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  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL
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  "Hold it steady."
  Doc Savage’s flake−gold eyes never left the small incision that  meant life or death to the small boy on the
  table; his swift hands made  delicate movements, until finally he straightened, said quietly, "See  that he has
  absolute quiet. I shall see him later."
  Not until the table with the still form was wheeled from the  darkened room, did the famous specialists and
  surgeons applaud the  bronze man’s work. The applause was a roar. Only the greatest of them  really knew
  what an amazing feat they had witnessed.
  Doc Savage, unmoved by the applause, was taking off the operating  gown, white skull cap and facial mask.
  Most of the visiting medical men had never seen Doc Savage before he  appeared in the room. They stared,
  for this Doc Savage was a man of  amazing physical appearance.
  His bronze hair was a shade darker than the bronze man’s skin, and  it lay flat and smooth, while his mouth
  was muscular and strong without  being severe. Strong facial lines showed power of character.
  Doc Savage said, "What was that interruption�about Uppercue?"
  The bronze man’s voice�calm, yet with a repressed power and tonal  inflection that were remarkable�held the
  attention of everyone, though  Doc was only addressing the assistant doctor at his side.
  The assistant had unmasked also. It could be seen that the assistant  was a young, good−looking man with
  slender height and delicate  features. His hair was straw−blond.
  The assistant was Dr. Alexis Mandroff�in charge of the clinic  here�and he had willingly offered his services
  to Doc Savage in  performing this operation to demonstrate a method that would save  thousands of lives in the
  future.
  Dr. Mandroff replied, "It must be something terrible, sir."
  An attendant put in, "I just phoned to find out. They say Professor  Uppercue is in trouble or something.
  They’re trying to catch him�"
  "Catch him?" Doc asked.
  "They say he was acting insane."
  There were gasps of dismay, for many of these men knew the famous  scientist, Uppercue.
  To Dr. Mandroff, Doc said, "See that the printed booklet of the  operation procedure is distributed. Also see
  that each person gets a  copy of the motion−picture film."
  Dr. Mandroff nodded. "Da," he said. He meant, "Yes." 
  The bronze giant moved toward the exit. A nurse handed him his coat.  As he stood in the doorway, his
  shoulders almost filled the space.
  Dr. Mandroff hurried after the bronze man.
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  "You were wonderful, sir," he exclaimed. "I’ve done some work along  that line myself, but never anything
  like you accomplished just now."
  If Doc Savage was flattered, he showed no outward indication.  Instead, he said, "Any written questions they
  submit will be answered."
  "Perhaps I should go with you," Dr. Mandroff offered. "Professor  Uppercue is a friend of mine�"
  Doc shook his head. "You stay with the patient, doctor." 
  The bronze man showed respect for the young, handsome Dr. Mandroff,  who had recently arrived from
  Russia, and was said to be an amazingly  clever surgeon who was at the World’s Fair to study newest
  developments  in medical science.
  DOC SAVAGE went to investigate the mystery of what had happened to  Uppercue.
  After a few brief questions, Doc knew all that had happened. He  learned about the peculiar metal cylinder.
  The Fair police gave him  Uppercue’s lab apron, said, "A lot of help this thing is."
  They did not realize that the apron was the one clue to Professor  Uppercue’s trail.
  "What about this aluminum cylinder?" Doc asked.
  "It made whispering sounds."
  "What?"
  "Well, that’s just what somebody said."
  The Fair cops now came from the mine tunnel to tell of the goblin.
  "You’re crazy!" they were told.
  "Maybe it sounds like that. But half a dozen of us saw that thing."
  "What you saw were shadows from your flashlights."
  "I suppose shadows can throw rocks that weigh two hundred pounds?"
  Doc Savage decided to look in the one place that seemed to have been  passed up�Professor Uppercue’s
  laboratory, the spot from whence  Uppercue had started on his wild flight. Looking at the rubber apron in  his
  hands, the bronze man had noted something.
  Blood smears, and long hairs stuck to the inner side of the lab  apron.
  It seemed sensible to learn the cause of Uppercue’s flight.
  The door at the top of the steps down which Uppercue had plunged  from his laboratory was still open. Inside,
  more steel steps led  downward in a steep flight, ending in a long, narrow corridor with only  a single dim light
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  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL
  9
  
  at the far end�a passageway that was all of a  hundred feet in length.
  Moving through the underground passage, Doc Savage�his sense of  direction was well−developed�knew
  that he must be somewhere beneath the  huge Perisphere. The corridor ended at a heavy−paneled door, and
  this  was also open. The bronze man had to duck as he entered the room beyond.
  He was now in a modern laboratory, well−lighted, and containing many  of the newest scientific inventions.
  Doc Savage recognized gadgets that  were still supposed to be in experimental state. A scientist himself,  he
  appreciated these machines that Uppercue had designed.
  On a workbench nearby was a small model of a generator, and  something familiar about the machine held the
  bronze man’s attention  for a moment. Then, his observing eyes moved to other objects in the  room.
  It was blood on the floor that suddenly absorbed his attention. He  bent down. His eyes always sought things
  easily overlooked, such as  long reddish hairs that were stuck in these bloodstains. They were the  same kind of
  hairs that had been caught on the rubber lab apron.
  The red smears led to another, smaller doorway across the room, an  opening that was like the heavy steel
  entrance to a vault. There was a  lever that worked massive lock tumblers. The door was open. Light came
  from somewhere beyond.
  Doc Savage moved forward, and was surprised when he saw what lay  past that vault door. Another
  laboratory. Even greater than the first  one. There was a high−domed ceiling, and heavy pieces of machinery
  made  the place look like an electrical powerhouse. Nothing was in operation,  though the place was fully
  lighted. The blood trail stopped at the  threshold to this larger room�as though someone had been dragged as
  far  as the doorway and then picked up.
  A small sound now came from the Man of Bronze, a sound that was a  thrilling, low, exotic, as soft as a
  tropical wind filtering through  jungle growth at night; it seemed to emanate from everywhere, yet  nowhere,
  although actually it came from the bronze man’s throat, and  was a sound he unconsciously made in moments
  of mental excitement.
  It was very strange that Professor Uppercue should have such  elaborate laboratories here at the Fair�but
  Doc’s trailing was not the  result of that. Nor of seeing the blood trail. Instead, he felt the  presence of someone
  watching him. A slight sound, probably. He stood  very still, listening. Then he moved toward a massive
  machine, located  in one darkened corner.
  Someone�something�had moved behind that towering piece of steel and  gears. The bronze man’s footsteps
  were soundless as he reached the spot  and worked his way carefully along one side of the machine.
  He heard a faint swishing sound. It could have been the noise a huge  person makes when trying to move a
  foot cautiously. The floor here was  cement, and the touch of a heavy foot�no matter how careful�would
  make  such a sound.
  Doc Savage was inches away from the rear of the machine now. There  was concealing space back there
  between the wall and the object he was  circling.
  In one final movement, his muscles, like steel cables, sent him  around to the rear of the machine. He got a
  grip and dragged the  skulker out.
  It was a small blue−eyed girl who cried, "Wait! Wait!"
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  Chapter II. HIDDEN TRAIL
  10
  
  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  SUCH a small and delicate girl�nicely curved, though�might be  expected to be frightened and helpless,
  especially when swooped down  upon by such a giant as Doc Savage. But this one wasn’t. She had a  small
  oval face, perky chin, the kind of blue eyes that brought  thoughts of the sea at dusk. The eyes were bright and
  alert, for she  was mad.
  She kicked, clawed with one hand, stamped at Doc’s feet with pointed  heels.
  "Let me go!"
  Her right hand was behind her, as though clutching for support to  something at the rear of the machine.
  Doc asked, "What are you hiding behind you?"
  The girl with the wide blue eyes fought harder for a moment, then  stopped suddenly, defeated by the bronze
  man’s strength. She stamped  her small foot again.
  "I suppose," she snapped, "that if you want to make love to me, I  can’t help it!"
  Doc jumped and released her. He got a little red.
  Her soft hair was blond and somewhat curly above her pretty face.
  Doc Savage stepped back and waited for the blond−haired girl to come  farther out into the room where he
  could get a better look at her. But  she merely stood her ground, while one arm was still pushed behind her.
  "Get out of here!" she flared. "Get out of here before I call the�"
  Doc said earnestly, "Perhaps you have seen Professor Martin  Uppercue? Something has happened to him
  and�"
  He saw that the girl’s features tightened. She began looking at him  queerly. She was suddenly frightened,
  Doc decided. Yet her chin  remained firm.
  She kept her right hand behind her back.
  Doc said, "You know Professor Uppercue, do you not? This is his  laboratory."
  Caution slowly crept into the girl’s blue eyes. She stared up at  Doc, began to move carefully around him, one
  hand still behind her. She  started to say, "I don’t know you�"
  Doc Savage had already surmised that. Many people had never seen the  Man of Bronze, though they had read
  about him in the papers. He was  rather pleased. He did not like publicity, and if no one knew him by  sight, it
  would have been better.
  And though Doc had never met the girl before, he began to deduce  certain things. He had talked with
  Professor Martin Uppercue several  times. Once would have been sufficient for him to have remembered the
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  11
  
  little scientist’s features. This blond girl’s blue eyes, the shape of  her small face, the way she carried her chin
  so proudly�there was a  resemblance here to the missing scientist, Uppercue.
  Doc suggested, "We might stop bluffing."
  "I don’t know what you mean."
  "You might accept my help in finding your father."
  "I�"
  Swiftly, the wary look came back in the blue eyes.
  The girl blurted, "Father? I don’t know what you’re talking  about. I’m going to call the police!"
  She started backing toward the shadowy corner behind the huge  machine again, her right hand still behind her
  as though feeling the  way.
  Doc said, "What have you in your right hand?" and moved after her.
  The girl cried out, "Get out of here!" She turned to race around to  the other side of the obstruction and toward
  the vaultilke door, and  Doc saw the object in her right hand.
  It was a metal cylinder such as the bowlegged man on the Trylon ramp  had described�the strange tube that
  Professor Uppercue had been  gripping to his chest the last time anyone had seen him. Doc got one  view of
  this, then the girl was through the doorway into the smaller  lab.
  The girl screamed, "Help me! Put out the lights!"
  Then it was suddenly very dark.
  REACHING the other room a split second ahead of the bronze man, the  blond girl had evidently seen
  someone whom she expected to help her,  and one of them had leaped to a wall switch, plunged the room in
  darkness.
  The person whom the girl had seen must be someone friendly, for a  man came leaping at Doc in the darkness.
  This person landed on the  bronze giant’s broad back, and began to act somewhat like a wiry, long  wild cat.
  Doc Savage’s powerful hands got fistfuls of legs that felt as if  they were coated with piano wire. He yanked
  the man off his back. The  man twisted, squirmed, fought in a way that didn’t seem possible of one  so fragile
  in size. The unseen attacker was underdeveloped, but he  could scrap.
  In the blackness, the girl cried, "Now that you’ve got him, I’ll  turn on the lights!"
  She switched on the lab lights.
  The attacker was an anaemic−looking man. Pale hair dangled about a  head that was oversize, and he had
  bright, pale−blue eyes. From his  upside−down position, the thin man looked up at Doc Savage.
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  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  12
  
  "Doc!" he exploded.
  Doc Savage seldom showed surprise; in fact he was hardly surprised  now, for just before the girl had turned
  on the lights the bronze man  had suspected the identity of the wiry hell−fighter.
  Doc Savage, in the strange career of righting wrongs and punishing  evildoers which was his real life work,
  had five assistants. The five  were men who loved adventure, as did the Man of Bronze; also the five  were,
  each of them, masters of some science or profession.
  This one happened to be the electrical expert of Doc Savage’s  organization.
  He was Major Thomas J. Roberts, better known as Long Tom, a man  sometimes called the "wizard of the
  juice," since he was an electrical  genius comparable to Steinmetz and Edison.
  Doc released Long Tom. The girl rushed forward.
  "You know him?" she demanded.
  Long Tom said, "Know him? This is Doc Savage!"
  "Oh!"
  The girl’s blue eyes widened.
  Long Tom explained, "I had an appointment here with Professor  Uppercue, Doc. I was late, and�"
  Doc interjected, "You haven’t heard about Uppercue behaving queerly,  then vanishing?"
  As the bronze man spoke, his magnetic eyes shifted to the girl. She  stood stiffly, chewing on her lip, saying
  nothing.
  Long Tom noted the girl’s suspicious attitude.
  "I hadn’t heard," he said. "I just drove out here from headquarters."
  BRIEFLY, Doc Savage explained to his aid all he knew about the  scientist’s strange disappearance. As he
  talked, Doc noticed that the  girl backed toward the wall again. There was an expression of fear, of  something
  else in her deep blue eyes.
  Long Tom’s unhealthy−looking face looked tense. He said worriedly,  "Doc, that’s funny. Professor Uppercue
  is one of the finest scientists  living. He sent a request asking me if I wouldn’t come out here for  consultation
  on some new, important thing he was about to create. I was  to meet him here in his laboratory. But now�"
  Long Tom’s sharp gaze, too, had gone to the girl, who was acting  strangely.
  She was staring toward the floor, the slender steel cylinder still  clutched in her hand. Suddenly she bent
  down, picked up something long  and very thin. She cringed away from the blood that had been on the  floor.
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  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  13
  
  The blond−haired girl was holding one of the red, long hairs that  Doc Savage had seen stuck in the
  bloodstains.
  Long Tom saw the thing, asked, "What is it? Who�where�"
  "Perhaps the young lady can tell us," Doc offered. "Where is that  hair from, miss?"
  The girl looked scared for a moment. Then her sharp chin came up and  she snapped, "I don’t know what it is."
  Doc’s flake−gold eyes were moving restlessly. Apparently this girl  was more involved in the mystery than
  she wanted Doc or Long Tom to  believe. She was holding back something.
  Doc said quietly, "You’re Uppercue’s daughter, aren’t you? There’s  something you’re afraid of. Why not tell
  us what it is?"
  Long Tom’s pallid face brightened. "Sure!" he cried. "That’s  her�Uppercue’s daughter! I saw a picture of her
  once in the newsreels,  and she�"
  The metal cylinder now thrust out of sight behind her back, the  girl’s eyes sparkled and she cried, "I never
  saw Professor Uppercue in  my life!"
  "Then how did you get that metal tube?" Doc asked suddenly.
  Doc recalled what the bowlegged man had told him on the Perisphere  ramp. Doc Savage, of course, did not
  know about the soft scraping sound  that had been heard inside Uppercue’s queer metal cylinder.
  But the bronze man put out his hand and prompted, "Let us see that  thing you are holding behind you."
  At first, the girl tried to duck away toward the door. Then meeting  the compelling, hypnotic look in the
  bronze man’s eyes, she stopped.  She handed the cylinder over quietly.
  Both ends of the unusually light object were inclosed with metal  caps that were threaded. The whole thing
  looked heavy, yet was as light  as a feather.
  Doc unscrewed one of the caps, turned the open side of the long tube  downward and waited to see what
  would fall out.
  Nothing happened.
  He unscrewed the other end and peered through the thing.
  It was absolutely empty.
  LONG TOM was staring at both the girl and Doc.
  "What the devil is this all about?" he queried.
  "That," Doc said, "remains to be seen."
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  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  14
  
  He turned toward the passageway that led back to the steep flight of  stairs to aboveground. "The first thing to
  do," the bronze man added,  "is find Uppercue."
  "But how�" the girl started to ask, and then clamped her softly  curved lips tight. She looked wary.
  Long Tom put in, "When I was talking to the professor on the phone,  he said that if I missed him here I might
  catch him over at the Hall of  Mines. He also said�"
  There was a small, sharp cry from the blond girl. She said suddenly,  "May I go with you?"
  The electrical wizard remarked, "I thought you said�"
  Doc said, "Perhaps it would be a good idea."
  He gave no further indication of what were his thoughts in regard to  the girl.
  They went out.
  Outside in the Fair Grounds, the excitement had died down. There  were too many thousands of people here,
  anyway, for the news of  Uppercue’s odd disappearance to have reached the ears of more than a  few hundred.
  World’s Fair police had quickly suppressed the rumor of some strange  Thing�the goblin, a cop had called
  it�being seen in one of the  exhibition buildings. No one really believed the tale, anyhow. Also,  Uppercue’s
  disappearance was considered to be the result of the  scientist having mental trouble.
  No one connected Professor Uppercue’s vanishing with the goblin  walking, which was unfortunate.
  Few people noticed the arrival of Doc Savage, Long Tom and the girl  at the Hall of Mines, for visitors were
  again occupied with staring and  gawking at the thousand and one marvels of the Fair.
  Inside the long building containing the realistic mine diggings, a  lecturer was giving a talk on metallurgy.
  The crowd was over there,  leaving the yawning mouth of the mine shaft deserted.
  Long Tom said, "So this is where they saw the goblin?"
  "Yes."
  "Reckon there’s any connection between Professor Uppercue and the  so−called goblin?"
  The girl jumped forward, gripped the skinny electrical expert’s arm.
  "No!" she cried. "Wait. I�"
  Long Tom and Doc Savage exchanged queer looks. Then they walked into  the mine shaft where the goblin
  had been seen.
  AFTER they had gone a few paces, it was very dark and still. Doc  Savage’s hearing was probably developed
  beyond that of an ordinary  man�he had spent almost two hours daily in regular exercise routine  since
  childhood, which was to a large extent responsible for his  unusual physique.
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  Chapter III. GOBLIN
  15
  
  The bronze man still had the flashlight that he had used to complete  the brain operation in the hospital
  amphitheater. He used this light  now, and its beam ran over the rock walls like a gray ghost.
  When the girl screamed, it startled them both. There seemed no  reason for it. They had seen nothing.
  "Maximus!"
  the girl shrieked. 
  She would have run, but Doc Savage caught her. She struggled, trying  to get away.
  "What the blazes ails her?" Long Tom exploded.
  Doc Savage did not know. He was puzzled. He held the girl and asked  her, two or three times, what was
  wrong, but got no answer.
  Long Tom said, "You hold her. Maybe she saw something deeper in the  mine. I’ll look."
  The girl must have been so busy struggling with Doc Savage that she  did not hear what the electrical wizard
  said, nor notice what he was  doing. But when Long Tom had progressed some distance down the shaft,  she
  understood.
  "Wait!" she shrieked. "Stop!"
  She was a little too late with her warning, for at that moment Long  Tom let out a howl of astonishment, a
  howl so astounded that Doc Savage  released the girl and raced for the electrical wizard’s voice.
  The earlier descriptions of the goblin had not been exaggerated. It  was, as the cops had said, all of eight feet
  tall, hunched in stature,  and it had arms and legs. It gripped Long Tom closely, and the  electrical expert
  struggled and shouted.
  The thing was fleeing down the tunnel and this, coupled with the  fact that it struggled with Long Tom and
  stirred up a cloud of dust,  prevented Doc Savage from getting a clear view.
  Fast as the bronze man was on his feet, the thing had gained. It  rounded a corner. Immediately there was a
  terrific crash, a sound that  turned into a roar.
  The roof of the mine shaft had come down. Apparently the goblin, or  whatever it was, had jerked loose the
  supporting timbers and let the  roof collapse. Doc Savage waded into the dust and explored with his  hands.
  Further pursuit of Long Tom and the thing that had seized him was  blocked in that direction.
  The girl, Professor Uppercue’s daughter, was gone when Doc Savage  ran back to the spot where he had left
  her.
  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  IT was now that time of the day when late afternoon was giving way  to dusk, and a lull seemed to settle,
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  16
  
  bringing peace for a few moments  to a busy world. The wide shrubbery−bordered walks were less crowded,
  for most Fair visitors were eating at Fair restaurants throughout the  grounds or leaving for home. In the Court
  of Power, a landscaped  parklike inclosure located near the Theme Center of the Fair, it was  particularly quiet.
  Two people were walking across the Court of Power, a man and a girl.  The man was waspish, smartly
  dressed�in fact, he was probably the  best−dressed man on the Fair Grounds that day�and he carried an
  innocent−looking black cane. His companion was almost as tall as  himself.
  The very correctly dressed man was making threats.
  "If I ever get my hands on Monk," he threatened, "I’ll make the  hairy ape wish he was back in a nice safe
  jungle!"
  The girl was tall. Her hair was an unusual bronze hue and her eyes  an even more remarkable flake−gold tint.
  She was strikingly beautiful.  She laughed softly.
  "Ham, you’re a clever lawyer," she said, "but you certainly let Monk  take you in."
  "Gr−r−r!" said the dapper Ham.
  "Letting them use you to demonstrate a new man−beautifying machine  at Cosmetics Hall!" The girl almost
  doubled over laughing. "How did you  come to volunteer?"
  Ham snarled. "I thought it was an invention of yours. There was a  sign on it that said so."
  "Monk must have printed the sign," the girl said.
  Ham said a number of things about the ancestry of a man named Monk,  none of them complimentary.
  "Monk must have hired the operators of the machine to persuade me to  take a trim," he gritted. "The
  operators were pretty girls. Monk knew I  would be susceptible."
  The girl laughed again.
  She was Pat Savage, the lovely cousin of Doc Savage, as evidenced by  her having the same unusual,
  flake−gold eyes and bronze hair as the Man  of Bronze. Owner of an exclusive beauty shop on Park Avenue,
  Pat’s  clients were of the Four Hundred. Today she had come to the Fair to see  the latest inventions of the
  how−to−look−beautiful trade.
  Her companion was Brigadier General Theodore Marley (Ham) Brooks,  the lawyer of Doc Savage’s group of
  five adventurous associates. Ham’s  weakness was sartorial splendor, and his hobby was quarreling with
  Monk  Mayfair, who was another of the Doc Savage group of associates. The gag  that had just been played on
  Ham was one that would take a long time  for him to live down.
  Ham had been given a marcel by Monk Mayfair!
  Monk was the clever chemist in Doc’s group. Deceived by some pretty  girl operators�hired by Monk�that
  the new marcel machine was a  beautifying aid invented by Pat Savage, the lawyer had submitted to a
  treatment. He had little realized that for some time he would be going  around with a very neat "finger wave"
  in his dark hair!
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  17
  
  This explained why Ham’s hat was now pulled down tightly over his  head; also why he was looking for
  Monk.
  "I’ll assassinate that Monk!" Ham snarled. 
  Pat pointed at the Hall of Mines.
  "Excitement."
  "Eh?"
  "Over at the Hall of Mines."
  They could see milling excitement. Then they suddenly glimpsed a  giant bronze figure.
  "That’s Doc!" Pat said.
  Ham was suddenly moving forward. "You’d better wait here, Pat," he  advised. "Looks like trouble."
  But Pat Savage hurried after the tall lawyer. Ever since she could  remember, she had wanted to be a member
  of the bronze man’s group. But  because of the great danger of their work, Doc seldom permitted Pat to
  accompany them.
  "You don’t keep me out of this!" Pat told the dapper lawyer.
  Ham looked displeased, but it was no use to argue with a girl as  beautiful as Pat.
  "This," he murmured softly as he ran into the Hall of Mines, "looks  interesting."
  DOC SAVAGE was giving building attendants quiet, but imperative  orders.
  "Shovels! Picks!" Doc directed. "They may be trapped beneath the  fallen stone. Get more men!"
  A few moments later, when workmen came running with shovels, Doc  grabbed one and went to work. At
  least twenty men took turns, shoveled  as furiously as they could.
  Ham grabbed a shovel and joined in.
  "What’s up, Doc?"
  "Long Tom is in there�and the goblin."
  "What?"
  Doc explained the somewhat unbelievable series of events.
  "Say!" Ham said. "It looks like the beginning of a darned queer  mystery."
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  18
  
  The slide was slowly cleared away, disclosing beneath it the solid  floor of the tunnel. Beyond this cleared
  space was a rectangular  opening in the tunnel floor. An opening which should not have been  there. Everyone
  moved close. It appeared to be a deep pit in the floor.
  A search showed no trace of Long Tom or the goblin in the mine. The  searchers came back to the pit in the
  floor.
  The black hole, they could see, was slowly filling up with water  that came up from somewhere below. Along
  with the rising water there  was the rock and gravel that had, through power of gravity, slid down  into the
  opening. The whole mess was bubbling and gurgling.
  It might have been that this shaft had been caved in by the shock of  the tunnel roof collapse.
  "No human," Doc said, quietly, "could live in that."
  Ham and Pat were silent. As they had worked, the bronze man had  briefly explained about what had
  happened at Uppercue’s laboratory; of  Long Tom’s suggestion that they come here to perhaps find the
  missing  scientist, or Long Tom’s strange attacker in the mine shaft.
  "Where did Uppercue’s daughter go?" Ham asked.
  "No telling. She simply fled."
  "And you have no idea of what is back of this?"
  "None," Doc admitted.
  At this point, a man came running into the mine tunnel.
  "Something else has happened!" the newcomer barked.
  "What?"
  "There’s some kind of a creature loose on top of the Motors  Building. There’s a crowd over there waiting for
  it to come down�"
  Ham said, "Motors Building?"
  "Yes."
  Ham looked uncomfortable. "This may be my fault. I better  investigate."
  "I’ll go with you," Pat said. "I don’t want to miss anything."
  WHEN Ham and Pat Savage reached the Motors Building, a modernistic  structure that housed every possible
  device connected with the  automobile industry, they saw a staring throng at one end of the  building.
  It was night now, and the Fair Grounds were bathed with myriads of  brilliantly colored lights. Groups of
  buildings each had color schemes  of their own, and taken all together, the yellows, blues, bright greens  and a
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  19
  
  dozen other shades combined in a lighting effect that was  breath−taking.
  An apelike figure was moving around in a spotlight ray that was  directed at a cornice of the Motors Building.
  Pat Savage stared upward.
  "Good Heaven!" Pat exclaimed. "That’s Monk, not an animal!"
  Ham snorted. "No one could ever tell the difference."
  "Let’s go to the roof," Pat said, "and see what that crazy chemist  is doing."
  "I think I know!" Ham muttered under his breath.
  It was ten minutes before they could find their way to the roof−top.  The building was sleek−sided, and built
  like a huge letter T. The  section where Monk prowled was near a tower at one end of the  structure. There was
  no way up from the outside.
  In the building, Ham caught an elevator and rose to the top floor.  From there, he ran up a narrow iron
  stairway to the penthouse. Hurrying  out onto the roof, he was momentarily blinded by the floodlights which
  illuminated the building walls from the ground.
  Then he saw Monk, who looked like a burly ape climbing out along the  roof edge to a slim ledge that was
  high above the staring crowd below.
  Ham yelled, "Come back here, you hairy misfit, before you break your  neck!"
  Monk turned and glared. Ham returned the glare. These two liked  nothing better than an argument.
  Monk was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, chemist of  Doc’s group. Constructed almost as
  broad as he was tall, and covered  with red hairs that bristled like dyed steel wool, Monk looked not  unlike a
  stuffed ape out of a museum jungle exhibit. In strange  contrast to his massive body, however, Monk’s voice
  was a thin squeak.
  "Come over here, you shyster," he invited. "There’s something you’re  gonna explain!"
  The skilled chemist indicated an object out near the edge of the  precarious ledge. Cautiously, Ham moved
  over to the roof edge and  peered.
  "I don’t see anything at all, you flat−head�"
  THEN Ham saw what Monk meant. The object was a grotesquely carved  gargoyle, one of the weird−looking
  figures placed on the upper part of  many buildings. In this case, a sculptor had let his thoughts run  rampant in
  designing the homely figure�and, strangely, the head of the  gargoyle had an uncanny resemblance to Monk’s
  face.
  Ham began laughing.
  "A perfect example of prehistoric workmanship," he gurgled unkindly.  "In fact�"
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  20
  
  Monk’s face was red with rage.
  "Listen, you marcelled clotheshorse," he piped. "You had  something to do with this! I’m gonna find the guy
  that made this thing  and ask him where he got the model�"
  Ham, as a matter of fact, was responsible for the statue resembling  Monk. The well−dressed lawyer laughed
  until he had to hold his sides.
  "So you climbed up here to see yourself?"
  Monk stalked to Ham, made a grab for the dapper lawyer’s hat, and  said, "Wait until you try to wash the
  curly−girly out of your hair,  shyster!"
  That silenced Ham.
  With a growl of disgust Monk swung and started across the long  roof−top.
  "Where you going?" Pat called.
  "Where they fumigate for lawyers," Monk snapped.
  "Wait," Pat said. "Did you know that Professor Uppercue�"
  "Let the big clown go!" Ham snapped.
  Monk disappeared into the deep gloom toward the center of the wide  roof. The building extended for a length
  of several city blocks, and  away from the edges where floodlights played their streamers up from  the ground,
  the place was in stygian darkness.
  Ham, still chuckling to himself, started to leave the roof. Far  below on the grounds, he noticed two great
  circular pools that were  part of the decorative scheme, and he stopped to admire the effect of  colored lights
  upon the water.
  Ahead, in the darkness, there was a shrill yell.
  "Ham!" Come here! There’s somethin’�"
  Monk’s voice! It suddenly broke off in a choking gasp.
  Ham’s first thought was that it was a trick. But no. No, it was no  trick. Suddenly worried, Ham started
  running. There had been a note in  Monk’s voice that the lawyer had never heard before. Terror, he  believed.
  Utter terror, too.
  And the hairy Monk wasn’t afraid of Satan himself. Yet the tone had  distinctly been of awe�and fear.
  Ham banged into an obstruction in the darkness, circled it, then  drew up with an open−mouthed gasp. Just
  ahead, limned on the raised  wall along the roof edge, a figure stood. It was vaguely human in form,  but of
  superhuman size. Ham was too far away to see the Thing’s face, but he was aware of its weird, booming
  chuckle. That sound was  like nothing human. It was hard to think of it even as a voice.
  Ham thought of the goblin as described by those who had seen it.
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  Chapter IV. GARGOYLE ON THE ROOF
  21
  
  As he stared in bewilderment, the Thing leaped outward into  space.
  And it was holding Monk as it leaped.
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  DOC SAVAGE had returned to the laboratory of Martin Uppercue. After  Ham and Pat Savage had left to
  investigate the trouble on the roof, the  bronze man had spent a little time looking for the small blond girl. He
  had not found her.
  Doc had then gone back to his car, near the Hall of Medicine, and  from an equipment case taken a special
  ultraviolet light used to  penetrate fog or water. He had used the light on the rectangular pit  that had been
  found beneath the mine tunnel heap.
  Strangely, when Doc Savage had left the Hall of Mines, he did not  seem greatly upset about Long Tom’s
  watery grave demise.
  The small door at the top of the steps outside Uppercue’s laboratory  was locked. Doc had closed it when they
  all had left here a little  while ago.
  From his pocket he got a key that would open almost any type of  lock. A Fair cop, in his natty uniform, was
  going by and came up the  steps to greet the bronze man.
  "I understand," he said, "that you are Doc Savage. I’ve been  instructed to give you any possible aid. Can I do
  anything?"
  Doc nodded, told the officer that Ham and Pat Savage might be  looking for him. They were to be permitted to
  enter the laboratory.
  Neither Doc Savage nor the officer had heard about the excitement  atop the Motors Building.
  The cop said, "Say, Mr. Savage, there sure is queer things goin’ on  around here. Like Uppercue’s
  disappearance. You know, I have a hunch  that guy was up to something. I�"
  "Has any trace been found of him?" the bronze man Interjected.
  "Naw. Say, I hope you can find him, though. They say you’re good at  stuff like that, and�"
  "That," Doc finished, "is what we hope to do."
  He went inside, down the steep steps and along the narrow corridor  to the laboratory. The rubber apron, the
  empty metal cylinder that the  small blond girl had carried, were on a workbench where the bronze man  had
  left them.
  He disregarded these now and moved to the table where the model  spherical generator was set up. Doc
  Savage seemed especially interested  in the generator.
  He noted that it was put together in units that could be quickly  dismantled. Soon he had the model apart and
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  22
  
  was busy examining each  part. His metallic features were thoughtful.
  Doc Savage had discovered something.
  The running feet in the corridor behind him made sharp sounds that  knocked about the laboratory walls. Doc
  Savage turned to face the girl  who came dashing breathlessly into the room.
  It was the nicely put−together small blond girl, and she cried, "May  I stay with you?"
  Doc Savage said, "You seem to be a person who changes her mind  often. A little while ago you disappeared.
  You’ve refused to be at all  helpful."
  "It was the man." Her eyes were big and round.
  "What man?"
  "The one with the scar. I saw him staring at me over there at the  Hall of Mines. That’s why I ducked out. He
  was following me now when I  came this way. I . . . I’m afraid."
  "It could not have been that�goblin�that scared you?"
  "I . . . yes . . . that scared me, too. But it was the man with the  scar that caused me to flee."
  "What is that ‘goblin’?"
  The girl said nothing.
  "You know what it is," Doc said. "That was obvious. Now, what is it?"
  "I won’t tell you!" the girl said.
  Ham and Pat Savage came back then with the news of Monk’s seizure.
  PAT SAVAGE’S eyes were bright, and a flush of excitement had climbed  into her cheeks.
  "Doc," she exclaimed, "That . . . that Thing I saw grab Monk  was incredible. You should have seen its size. I
  was standing there on  the roof when�"
  Ham cut in with, "And it jumped right off the roof with Monk gripped  in its arms, Doc! I heard Monk yell,
  and tried to reach him�"
  "Jumped?"
  Doc Savage was at alert attention.
  Obviously the bronze giant was thinking of the height of the Motors  Building; that death could be the only
  end for anyone leaping from its  roof.
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  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  23
  
  But Pat quickly put in, "They landed in one of those two big pools  beside the building. You know, those
  pools around on the side. There’s  a lot of shrubbery and gardens surrounding the spot, and by the time I  got
  there that Thing had disappeared."
  "And Monk?" Doc queried.
  "Gone, too," Ham said. He explained. "The spot that Thing jumped from was directly over one of the pools.
  By the time I got down  there�by the time anyone could get there, both Monk and the  Thing were gone. You
  could see the wet tracks where the Thing had pulled Monk out of the water."
  For once, the smooth−talking, dapper lawyer was upset. He was deeply  worried about Monk. Though the
  hairy chemist and Ham liked nothing  better than an argument or fight, either would have gladly forfeited  his
  life for the other in time of danger.
  Doc Savage was thoughtful for a moment, saying nothing.
  Then with a brief, "Wait here," he went out to where he had left the  Fair cop at the outer door.
  Doc Savage questioned the man about the blond girl arriving here.
  "She was followed," the cop said.
  "Followed?"
  "I saw the mug who was trailin’ her. I started for him. He ran."
  "Can you describe him?"
  "Well, now"�the officer was thoughtful�"Yes and no. He had some sort  of scar on his face. And the bloke
  was grinning like he was happy as  hell about something."
  Doc Savage said, "Thanks," and went back to the laboratory.
  Someone was really trailing the girl. Doc had thought she was lying  about that.
  As Doc looked at the girl’s small oval face, back in Uppercue’s  laboratory, he was certain that she was
  terrified. It was in her blue  eyes. She sat in a chair near the workbench, her small hands twisting a  lace
  handkerchief in her lap.
  Pat Savage moved around to the blond girl’s side, placed an arm  around her shoulder and said, "I wish you
  would let us help."
  The girl began shaking. "Just get . . . get me to some place where  I’ll be . . . safe. That’s all you can do."
  Doc Savage said, "We’ll take you to a safe place. Ham, escort both  girls over to that small building near
  where my car is parked. They’ll  be safe there."
  Pat would have objected, but Doc got her aside and said, "Gives you  a chance to question her."
  Pat was satisfied.
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  24
  
  Later, Doc said something in an aside to the well−dressed lawyer,  and Ham smiled. The place the bronze man
  had referred to was a small  lockup�a jail on the grounds used in case of emergency. Doc Savage knew  that a
  guard was on constant duty there. Thus the girls would be safe.
  When Ham had gone out with the girls, Doc Savage stepped through the  vaultlike door into the large
  laboratory, the room with all the  machinery that obviously was in readiness to operate something above.
  The bronze man stared upward. Across the room, iron steps like those  in a ship’s engine room, led to a
  catwalk near the high dome of the  room. From there, still another iron ladder led to an opening in the  ceiling,
  a trapdoor of some sort.
  Power lines, cables, different kinds of wiring also led up to  somewhere above. Doc decided that he would
  later go up and investigate.
  The tall dark man who stepped out from behind the vaultlike door Doc  had just cleared, said quietly, "Maybe
  you better stay right here,  mister."
  There was a lot of gun in the man’s fist.
  DOC SAVAGE’S right hand was in his coat pocket. He didn’t move, but  looked quietly at the tall young man
  who moved around to a position in  front of him.
  About thirty would catch his age, and he had pleasant brown eyes,  darker brown hair, and was wearing
  pin−striped trousers and a dark,  semiformal coat. He reminded one of the alert young men who were
  members of the diplomatic service in Washington. An embassy attaché.
  He looked nothing like a gunman; yet the heavy automatic in his hand  was steady on Doc’s chest, and the
  young man’s face was quite grim.
  The stranger said, "You aren’t fooling me. What’s the idea of  sending that nice kid to jail? I heard what you
  said�and don’t act like  a toad, either!"
  This last was an exasperated command when the stranger saw what Doc  was doing.
  The bronze man had taken a deep breath, like a person who is going  to be obstinate. Doc was holding his
  breath and moving slowly back from  the black hole of the gun barrel.
  The tall man stepped forward, his face flushed with anger as he  glared at Doc Savage. "See here," he shouted,
  "you either start talking  or this gun starts blasting!"
  Ordinarily, the bronze man would have been wearing a bulletproof  vest. He had left it off because of the
  operation he had been asked to  perform this afternoon. If that gun went off, nothing would stop the  heavy
  slugs.
  And the young man holding it looked mad enough to fire at any second.
  Doc had been holding his breath for fully two minutes. He had backed  away from the spot where he first
  stood.
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  25
  
  The brown−eyed man reached that spot now, choked, started to yank at  his collar, and suddenly collapsed.
  His fingers went slack around the  gun butt.
  Doc Savage caught the man as he fell, picked up the gun, dropped it  into his pocket and, lifting the tall man
  easily into his arms, hurried  him out of the room. On the way out, the bronze man reached back with  one
  hand to close the heavy vault door behind him.
  Then Doc let out his breath.
  He propped the man in a chair and in a few moments the brown eyes  opened.
  "I�ugh� Say, what the�" the man started to bluster. He climbed to  his feet, swung a steaming right fist at the
  bronze man’s head.
  Doc Savage, in a swift movement, caught that fist in his right hand  and the young man stopped in his forward
  plunge as though he had run  into a brick wall. His eyes looked startled.
  Doc said quietly, "Now let’s be sensible? That harmless gas has made  you light−headed. It will pass in a
  moment."
  WHILE the bronze man’s hand had been in his right pocket, he had  broken a small bulb that contained a
  quick−acting anaesthetic gas. Doc  had held his breath, thus inhaling none of the colorless, odorless gas.  The
  effectiveness of the gas wore off in a few moments. But as a matter  of precaution, Doc Savage had closed the
  door behind him.
  Doc explained about Professor Uppercue; about how he had placed the  blond girl with his cousin Pat in a
  place where they would be safe for  the moment. He asked:
  "You were upset about Uppercue’s daughter, weren’t you?" 
  The young man’s face had flushed when he learned that the speaker  was Doc Savage. He talked.
  He was Adam Ash, a public relations consul at the World’s Fair. His  job was that of diplomat dealing with
  various representatives of  foreign powers with buildings at the Fair. Doc was impressed by Adam  Ash’s
  background, his training.
  He queried, "Then this girl is Uppercue’s daughter? What is she  afraid of?"
  Adam Ash’s brown eyes looked worried. "Uppercue was readying some  great experiment," he said.
  "Publicity on the thing was being kept from  the newspapers until everything was all set."
  "What kind of an experiment?"
  "I don’t know. But something terrific."
  "There is some connection between Uppercue’s disappearance and this  so−called goblin that has been seen,
  and has seized two of my men. Any  idea what the connection might be?"
  "No."
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  Chapter V. MAN WITH THE SCAR
  26
  
  The bronze man did not comment further. Often when Doc Savage did  not wish to explain an idea that was
  shaping up in his mind, he  maintained silence.
  Unexpectedly, he asked, "Who has charge of the attendance records  here at the Fair?"
  Ash mentioned an official’s name, told where he could be located.
  Seeing that Adam Ash�who was apparently quite fond of Uppercue’s  daughter, Kay�was willing to help, the
  bronze man suggested that he go  over and see that the girls were all right. Ash agreed, and then  departed.
  Doc Savage went to the Administration Building, learned from the  gate−keeper about the actual figures on
  the attendance record sheets.
  The masses of figures did not interest Doc Savage, but what did  particularly interest him was the
  two−less−went−out−than−came−in angle.
  "Oh, we noticed that," they told him. "But one of the machines must  have made a mistake."
  As Doc left the official’s office, he paused in the open doorway a  moment as the gatekeeper again repeated
  the information. The bronze  man’s eyes were thoughtful, and he did not see the figure of a man  lurking in an
  L of the corridor.
  Doc was thinking as he left the building and walked through a  darkened area where cars were parked. The
  bronze man disliked  publicity, and he was taking a route that was away from the wide,  well−lighted malls.
  Again he did not see the man who was following him, the corridor  lurker�an individual with a peculiar scar
  on his face.
  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  DOC SAVAGE’S route took him back toward the Court of Communications.  This consisted of the broad
  twin malls that paralleled a landscaped  green built between. Evening World’s Fair visitors jammed the walks
  now  and it was impossible for the bronze man to avoid the crowds at this  point.
  Yet there was little possibility of recognition, for everyone was  dazzled by the splendor of the long,
  varicolor−lighted promenade walk.  There were too many things for people to stare at.
  The crowd was unusually close−packed down near the huge Perisphere.  The great white−covered ball looked
  like a giant round egg in the  powerful floodlights.
  Someone tugged at the bronze man’s arm as he quietly made his way  through the crush of human beings. Doc
  turned.
  And just as he did so, Doc Savage felt another jerk at his coat  sleeve, near the shoulder.
  But it was no one trying to gain his attention.
  Instead, Doc Savage had a brief glimpse of a man whirling away from  him, of a face that seemed to be drawn
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  27
  
  into a hell−let’s−have−some−fun  sort of grin and beaded eyes that were as cold as death. The man  elbowed
  his way swiftly through the crowd.
  Doc Savage saw his own torn coat sleeve, and something else.
  The object was a long, nickel−plated instrument that was in the  man’s hand; it gleamed for a brief second in
  the light. Then the man  had ducked through the crowd.
  The bronze man did not have to examine his torn coat to know what  that tug had meant. The grinning man
  with the scar near his mouth had  tried to jab him with some sort of hypodermic needle.
  Doc took out after him.
  This wasn’t too difficult, for even on the jammed walks, the man’s  high silk hat bobbed up above heads
  frequently. The assailant’s attire  was hardly in keeping with the hard, icy stare in his piglike eyes.  For,
  wearing "tails" and the high silk hat, he appeared, at a brief  glance, like one of the many visiting foreign
  diplomats!
  THE chase continued across the wide mall, through the throngs and to  a bypath that wound beneath thick
  foliage near bordering trees. It was  not the sort of chase that draws attention, for there were too many  people
  to make running possible.
  It was really a case of quick footwork in slipping in and out of  holes in the jam of people. The man with the
  grinning face proved to be  quite adept at moving swiftly without drawing any attention.
  But when he got away from the walks and beneath the enshrouding  trees, he got his legs pumping and looked
  like an open−field runner  going places.
  Doc Savage ran just as swiftly, but with no apparent effort. 
  Doc knew that the running man must have trailed him from the  Administration Building. For some reason,
  the stranger had followed him  there, must have overheard the questions Doc had asked of the  gatekeeper.
  The chase was leading toward the spot where Doc’s big sedan was  parked near the Hall of Medicine. The
  man in the silk hat reached  another crowded mall again�one of the streets that led toward the Theme  Center
  like the spoke of a wheel�slowed his steps, got into the crowd  and disappeared momentarily.
  But his high hat bobbed up again over near the long yellow−walled  building; he cut around toward the rear.
  Doc decided that this had lasted long enough and quickened his  stride. Obviously, the stranger ahead could
  answer important questions.  He was involved in this mystery somehow; otherwise, why the attack?
  Beneath the bronze man’s coat was one of the special machine pistols  that he had picked up when he went
  back to his car. Like an oversized  automatic, the pistol could fire the "mercy" bullets that Doc’s aids  used.
  The bullets could bring down a crook, make him unconscious  without doing any specific harm.
  But there was a possibility of the bullets traveling beyond the  darkened parking space back here and striking
  one of the Fair visitors.  Doc Savage figured it would be just as easy to catch the man by hand.
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  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  28
  
  They were now running close to the high walls behind the Hall of  Medicine. It was dark back here, after the
  brilliant lights of the mall  behind. But in the gloom, the bronze man’s unusual gold eyes held to  the streaking
  figure ahead.
  Doc Savage closed in. In three more strides he would be able to  bring the stranger down in a flying tackle.
  The bronze man’s powerful  legs started to close that gap� 
  And a man who came out of the rear exit of the Hall of Medicine at  that moment opened the door outward
  right in Doc Savage’s path.
  THE heavy door was ripped half from its hinges as the bronze giant’s  form plowed into it. Doc went down.
  He was on his feet in a fraction of a second. Doc Savage’s quick  mind had prepared his trained body for that
  crash in the heartbeat of  time before he had hit the opening door. Muscles had set for the  impact. He was
  unhurt.
  But the tall man who gasped with dismay, and who moved forward  quickly to aid Doc Savage, said, "I say,
  but I’m sorry! Da. I  had no idea anyone was so near this door�"
  And then he paused, peered at the bronze man’s face and exclaimed,  "Doc Savage! What�what’s wrong?
  May I help?"
  It was good−looking Dr. Alexis Mandroff, the personable young doctor  who had assisted Doc Savage in the
  brain operation this very afternoon.
  It was not necessary for Doc to explain. Ahead, the running man had  skidded to a halt in the gravel. His path
  had taken him toward the huge  Perisphere, and he perhaps surmised that there he might be trapped. It  would
  be difficult to circle the mammoth globe with its throng−packed  walks. 
  The grinning man cut across the parking lot, ducked behind a line of  machines on the far side of the yard. He
  was out of sight, but there  was the sound of his feet kicking up cinders.
  Doc Savage said, "I’m trying to catch him."
  Doctor Mandroff, hatless, his straw−blond hair rumpling as he  dropped his black medical bag and started
  running, yelled, "Come on,  then! Between us, we’ll fool him!"
  He went to the left; while the bronze man cut off to the right of  their trapped mouse. The victim was
  somewhere behind the parked  machines.
  But fifteen minutes later, it was tall Dr. Mandroff who panted, "I  guess we’ve lost him. Da?"
  "Yes," Doc agreed.
  They went back to the bronze man’s car.
  Doc Savage unlocked the door, leaned inside the car and turned on a  switch on his short−wave radio. He
  waited a moment until the set warmed  up, then said quietly, "Ham, you might come over to the Hall of
  Medicine. Bring the man named Adam Ash who was sent to meet you."
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  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  29
  
  Dr. Mandroff, leaning over to stare at the radio inside the bronze  giant’s sedan said "How in the world�" His
  gray eyes were wide.
  "That," Doc said, "is quite a simple device. My men all carry small,  portable earphones with them. We use a
  special wave length and Ham is  expecting to hear from me. You know him, I believe."
  Dr. Mandroff nodded, suggested that they wait inside in his office,  which he had just left.
  Mandroff again made apologies for opening the door so quickly in the  bronze man’s path. "I’m so sorry, but
  it was an accident that could not  be helped," he said miserably.
  Inside the building, Mandroff moved on ahead, and flicked on a light  in a modernistically furnished office
  that was more of a consultation  room than anything else. An open doorway on the far side of the room
  showed a more practical, white case−lined office beyond.
  A few moments later cane−swinging Ham arrived with Adam Ash. It  seemed that Ash was already
  acquainted with Dr. Mandroff.
  It was Adam Ash who said: "I think this is entirely concerned with  his mysterious experiment that Uppercue
  planned. The thing he was  keeping secret."
  THEY were all seated in Mandroff’s consultation room.
  Ham, the smooth−talking lawyer, put in, "But I saw the  Thing�this�whatever it was. I saw it grab Monk and
  leap from the  Motors Building!" Ham’s grip was white−knuckled on the handle of his  innocent−looking
  cane�it was really a sword cane.
  The lawyer’s voice lowered and trembled slightly. "And it got Long  Tom, another of our associates."
  "How do you account for the seizure of Monk and Long Tom?" Dr.  Mandroff asked curiously. "What was the
  motive?"
  "They were investigating Professor Uppercue’s disappearance.  Somebody didn’t want that."
  "That might be," Dr. Mandroff said thoughtfully.
  Doc said, "Two other persons have disappeared on these Fair Grounds,  too."
  "Who?"
  "As yet unidentified. Attendance records merely show two persons  came in and didn’t leave."
  "That," Dr. Mandroff said gravely, "is mysterious."
  "Apparently as important as the disappearance of Professor Uppercue,  also."
  "Eh?"
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  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  30
  
  "An attempt was made to kill me after I found out that two of the  crowd apparently had never left the Fair
  Grounds."
  Ham thought about it for a moment, then rubbed his forehead in an  exasperated way.
  "The girls are safe, anyway," he said.
  "You’re sure?" Doc said grimly.
  The well−dressed lawyer nodded. "Safe in the Fair jail, with a guard  outside the door. Pat is fit to be tied."
  Doc Savage looked at Adam Ash. "You look as if something was on your  mind."
  The pleasant−faced public relations consul nodded.
  "I just thought of something that might be important."
  "Let us have it."
  "It strikes me that part of this mystery has to do with a special  metal cylinder that Professor Uppercue was
  always closely guarding. In  it, he had something that he once told me meant the success or failure  of an
  experiment greater than any known invention."
  Doc mentioned the cylinder he had opened in Uppercue’s laboratory,  the tube he had found empty.
  "If it was empty, that wasn’t the one," Adam Ash said. "He had  several other fake ones in case someone tried
  to steal the real  cylinder. Precaution, I guess. He was almost nuts about the whole  business."
  For several moments, everyone in the room was silent. Through the  open windows came the constant soft
  hum of voices of thousands of  people on the Fair Grounds. Each man was thinking to himself that any  one of
  those innocent persons might be seized by the weird creature  that was the goblin.
  It was stiffly quiet inside the room, until Ham said, "Doc, I called  the headquarters of the Fair police. Told
  them to tell any excited  visitors that the leap of Monk and that�that Thing from the  Motors Building roof was
  a publicity stunt or something. Otherwise,  there might be a panic."
  Doc nodded. "That was an excellent idea," he said.
  The bronze man stood up, indicating that the talk was finished.
  From outside, on the warm night air, came a sound that held every  other occupant of the room rigid. A sound
  like nothing human.
  It was a guttural chuckling, and the volume of the sound was enough  to vibrate through the whole room.
  Ham yelled, "That�that� It’s the same sound I heard that goblin of a  Thing make!"
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  Chapter VI. THE THING CHUCKLES
  31
  
  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  OUTSIDE, they found no one. Whatever strange being had been out in  the darkness behind the building, had
  disappeared as easily as its  weird throat sound had come through the window.
  Ham said, "It might have been a trick."
  "Trick?"
  "To get us all steamed up on the mysterious monster theory."
  Doc Savage did not comment. The bronze man removed some gadgets from  special compartments built into
  the inside of his big sedan, and these  he tucked away in a vest he wore beneath his coat. He also thought it
  wise to put on one of his bulletproof vests.
  Ham asked one more question.
  "Doc�about Long Tom? Is he really�"
  The lawyer couldn’t get the word out. He had been going to say  "dead."
  But Doc Savage shook his head. He told about the trouble at the mine  exhibit. "We examined that pit beneath
  the mine cave−in. There was  water and fallen earth. But no sign of Long Tom."
  "Then how in the devil�" Ham started to ask.
  "Perhaps we’ll have that answer shortly," Doc finished and left.
  A few moments later the bronze man was passing over the Bridge of  Wheels, a futuristic structure that
  crossed a busy Long Island parkway  separating part of the World’s Fair Grounds from the central portion
  where the Theme Center was located. 
  Over here was the Motors Building and the two big pools into one of  which the Thing had plunged with
  Monk in its huge arms.
  The pools were surrounded by landscaped gardens, and what Doc Savage  next did was unobserved. He took
  from his special vest a queer−looking  object. It looked like an old−fashioned lantern.
  Then he carefully circled one of the pools.
  The water marks that the Thing had left when it dragged Monk  from a pool had disappeared now, yet in a few
  moments the bronze man  had picked up the trail. The lantern device Doc carried employed an  ultraviolet
  light, but it would have been useless for trailing  purposes, except for one thing�the chemicals which Monk
  always carried  about his person.
  If Monk was conscious, it was a good bet that he had managed to open  one of these bottles of chemicals and
  pour the contents on his captor,  where the chemical would mingle with water that dripped�and leave a  trail.
  Sure enough, there were footprints which fluoresced�glowed as do  aspirin and vaseline and other
  substances�when exposed to an  ultraviolet light.
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  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  32
  
  The prints of huge feet glowed with an uncanny luminance at the pool  edge. They led off across a sweep of
  green lawn, cut behind Fair  buildings and down a long slope toward an artificial lake that had been  especially
  constructed at the Fair.
  The lake looked like any real lake, and was over a mile in length.
  The tracks swerved away from the lake and avoided any buildings. Doc  Savage finally found himself in a
  field that was a leftover part of the  vast Flushing Meadows, on which the World’s Fair had been erected.
  The big prints ended at an iron manhole cover in the center of the  field.
  The ultraviolet lantern showed something else now. Hand prints on  the manhole cover. Big prints that no
  ordinary man could make. They  were smudged, useless as a clue�but Doc Savage realized that the  creature
  must have gone below ground here.
  The bronze man lifted the heavy iron cover�it was all of four feet  in diameter and two inches thick�raised it
  as easily as though it were  a pot lid.
  Inside, an iron ladder led downward into a damp−smelling cavern.  Heat, a steaming odor floated up and
  struck Doc Savage’s metallic  features.
  The place was obviously an opening to the underground pipe lines  that carried steam from a central heating
  plant to the various Fair  buildings. Electrical conduits were probably under here also, since  there was no
  wiring visible anywhere about the modern grounds.
  Deep down in the black pit a squeaky voice grumbled, "Goshamighty!  How am I gonna get outta this danged
  Turkish bath?"
  IT was Monk.
  Doc Savage removed a powerful flashlight from his pocket and went  down the iron ladder swiftly. The ladder
  ended in a small circular room  whose walls were a maze of valves and skinny and fat pipes. The pipes  were
  insulated, but still the thick, choking heat caused by steam made  the place like an oven.
  Monk was banging his hairy bulk about the place, trying to find a  way out. The apelike chemist looked as
  though he had tangled with a  dozen wild cats.
  "Doc!" Monk squealed delightedly. "Blazes! I thought I was a gonner  sure! I been tryin’ to get outta this
  damned place for half an hour!"
  Monk’s little eyes were red and inflamed in his homely face. He  squinted at Doc Savage through the glare of
  the flashlight ray. He  asked seriously, "Look, Doc, this ain’t one of them short−cuts to hell,  is it?"
  The bronze man’s eyes looked slightly worried at the sight of Monk’s  condition.
  Clothes had been half torn from the hairy chemist’s powerful torso.  He was bruised and scratched. Monk
  liked nothing better than a good  fight, but this time it looked as though he had been set upon by half a  dozen
  thugs.
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  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  33
  
  Fighting his way blindly through the underground pipe lines with  their intense, choking heat, it was quite
  obvious that Monk was almost  done for.
  Doc said, "We’d better get out of here."
  He gave the chemist a boost up the ladder, and a moment later they  were out in the fresh night air again. In
  the distance, the pink−red  glow of the many Fair buildings made the heavens bright as day.
  Monk straightened out rapidly. The fresh air soon cleared his fogged  brain, and Doc Savage had made his aid
  take a special capsule that  quickly brought back renewed strength, after which Monk seemed all  right.
  Briefly, he told the bronze man what had happened. 
  "Doc!" the burly chemist piped. "You oughta see that Thing! It’s at least eight feet tall and strong as a bull.
  We landed in that  danged pool and I tried to drown the Thing, but it rapped me  over the head and I woke up
  down there some place."
  Monk indicated the manhole which Doc now had covered again.
  "Does it have red hair?" Doc Savage asked quietly.
  Monk almost jumped. "Then, you . . . you’ve seen it, too?"
  Doc Savage shook his head.
  He said, "But we found some of the hairs mixed with bloodstains in  Uppercue’s laboratory."
  "Uppercue!" Monk got the name out in a surprised squeak. "You mean,  it . . . that Thing has Uppercue?"
  "And Long Tom," the bronze man added.
  The broad−bodied chemist was suddenly trembling with fury. "Doc," he  exclaimed, "there’s somethin’ I
  should remember! I got a hazy  recollection of comin’ to for a couple moments down there."
  To help him, Doc Savage said, "The Thing had red hair, and  was over eight feet high. What else?"
  "It’s got the funniest face, Doc. Like a guy who can’t think. The  eyes look right through you, as though they
  don’t even see you."
  Monk shuddered. "And it’s dressed in some kind of a cheap gray suit  like a . . . well, like a convict."
  "And the features?" the bronze man prodded. 
  Both men were walking back toward the Fair buildings now.
  Monk’s forehead wrinkled as he tried to remember through the  nightmare. "Well, Doc, you just can’t
  describe them. They . . . they’re  blank, is all. And there’s something else. It seems there should be  somethin’ I
  should remember. I�"
  Monk’s words trailed off, as though he were slipping back into the  fog again.
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  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  34
  
  "Yes?" Doc prompted.
  Suddenly the hairy chemist gave a whoop and started jumping up and  down.
  "Doc, we’ve got to hurry!" he piped.
  "Hurry?"
  Monk looked as though he had swallowed a grapefruit whole. Startled.
  "I remember a little now," Monk raced on. "Someone was talking to  this Thing�this what−you−call−it. You
  know, like a person trying  to tell a dog to do something. He was saying it over and over, and�"
  "Saying what?" Doc Savage prodded patiently.
  "It was something about that Thing was to go and kidnap  the two girls!"
  THE point at which Doc Savage had located Monk was a good two miles  from where the bronze man had left
  his car. But Doc and his assistant  had now reached one of the express highways that circled the World’s  Fair
  Grounds.
  These roads were also used by the special Fair police in patrolling  the various routes that skirted the fringe of
  the many buildings and  smaller crossroads.
  Doc hailed a cruising radio car, spoke to the man in trooper’s  uniform at the wheel. The driver was one of the
  regular Fair police.
  The bronze man identified himself, then asked, "Is this a two−way  radio, officer?" Doc indicated a box
  beneath the dashboard and a  microphone hanging from a hook nearby.
  The man in the patrol car nodded. The car was painted the color of  an army car, and the top was lowered.
  Doc asked, "Then call your headquarters and have someone find out if  the two girls who were left guarded in
  that small holdover tank are all  right."
  While the officer contacted his dispatcher, Doc Savage explained to  Monk about Pat Savage and the blond
  girl.
  In a moment the loud−speaker in the police car crackled, and then a  voice said, "Car 15 . . . Calling car 15 . .
  . We’ve phoned the  officer on guard at the place you mentioned and he informs us that the  two young ladies
  are O. K. That is all�"
  Monk let out his breath.
  "Whew!" he sighed. "If anything ever happened to Pat�"
  His tone said that Pat Savage was just about the grandest girl  living. Monk liked all the girls, but the bronze
  man’s cousin rated far  above anyone the homely chemist had ever met.
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  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  35
  
  The police car had been cruising the Fair highway while the call had  been made to headquarters. Doc thanked
  the officer, directed, "Drop us  here."
  The spot at which they left the patrol car was not far from where  Doc’s own sedan was parked. It was not
  very late in the evening, and  there were still throngs of Fair visitors on the grounds. Cars were not  permitted
  to use the roads inside, in the more congested part of the  Fair, while so many people were everywhere.
  Avoiding the main thoroughfares, Doc again questioned Monk as they  headed toward the medical building
  parking lot. Doc Savage had told  Monk about leaving Ham there with good−looking Adam Ash and Dr.
  Mandroff.
  "Try to remember something else about that place where the Thing took you," the bronze man suggested.
  Monk’s scarred face was thoughtful. "I’ve tried to, Doc," he said  apologetically, "but I only came to for a few
  seconds and everything  was blurry. But I’m gonna find my way back to that damned steam−hole  an’�"
  "You didn’t see the speaker�the one who gave the Thing the  orders?" the bronze man prodded.
  "No," Monk stated in his squeaky voice. "It was dark down there, and  the place they dumped me must have
  been off from some kind of larger  room. I just heard the voice�"
  Monk stopped in his rolling stride. His massive arms, which trailed  to his knees at times, came up to clutch
  the bronze man’s own. His face  was worried again.
  "Doc!" Monk exclaimed. "That voice!"
  "What voice?"
  "The dispatcher’s voice just now on the police short wave.  The guy that said Pat and that other dame was O.
  K. It�"
  "Well?"
  "Blazes!" Monk squealed in his childlike tone. "It just came to me.  It sounded like the voice that told that
  goblin�or whatever it is�to  grab the girls!"
  Doc Savage had continued forward swiftly at Monk’s startling  announcement. They had been close to Doc’s
  big car. In a moment, the  bronze man was working with the short−wave radio, a two−way set itself.  He got
  the wave length of the Fair police.
  "Hello?" the bronze man said.
  An excited voice replied. "Hello? Who is it?"
  Doc Savage identified himself.
  And the voice�a different one than they had heard over the police  car radio�said breathlessly, "There’s been
  trouble over here, Mr.  Savage. We found our regular dispatcher knocked out a few moments ago!  He is still
  unconscious and we can’t learn what the trouble was�"
  Doc interrupted with, "Can you contact the small jail where the two  girls are being guarded?"
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  Chapter VII. MONK’S MEMORY IMPROVES
  36
  
  The voice answered: "Just a moment. We have an  intercommunications system here. I’ll get the guard�"
  The radio in Doc Savage’s car hummed for a few moments. Then the  voice came back, and it was excited.
  "We can’t get any reply from that place!"
  the police dispatcher said. 
  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  WHEN Doc Savage had left his very attractive cousin, Pat, along with  the equally as pretty blond−haired girl,
  Kay Uppercue, Pat had at first  been furious.
  She had figured that for at least once in her life, she was going to  be right in the midst of trouble.
  But the bronze man had decided differently.
  Pat Savage, her unusual gold eyes flaming, had sat stiffly on the  edge of an iron cot within the single cell and
  glared. After a while  she became aware of the tenseness of the slender, blue−eyed girl beside  her.
  Pat’s inquisitive nature got to work.
  "You are Kay Uppercue, aren’t you?" Doc’s attractive cousin  asked.
  The small girl seated so rigidly beside Pat Savage nodded. She  looked too frightened to do otherwise.
  "Yes," she said tremulously.
  "Then why not tell me what this is all about?" Pat suggested.
  "I . . . that is . . . ah�" the girl stammered. Pat’s arm went  around the small blond girl’s shoulders.
  "Please let me help," Pat offered.
  The girl looked up at Pat Savage, at the frankness in lovely eyes  that were like Doc Savage’s own. She
  murmured, "I really ought to. But  I . . . I’m terrified! If that . . . that Thing ever catches me�"
  Pat indicated the heavy bars of their solitary cell. She pointed to  the policeman who was on guard in the
  doorway of the small building.  The cop was working on his teeth with a toothpick.
  "Doc Savage certainly couldn’t have left us in a safer place," Pat  said cheerfully.
  "Well, maybe I’d better tell you," Kay Uppercue finally admitted  with a sigh.
  But just then they were interrupted by the arrival of someone at the  outer door, where the guard was seated.
  The man who stepped inside the small jail room just outside the  girls’ cell door, looked like someone of
  importance. Pat could not get  a good look at the arrival, for his back was partly toward them as he  talked to
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  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  37
  
  the guard.
  But she heard the man say, "It ees quite important, monsieur. Le Docteur Savage has send these message to
  his cousin. It ees  ver−ry important, non!"
  The broad−faced guard looked quizzical for a moment, cocking an eye  at the man who was talking to him.
  Then he shrugged. Perhaps he was  afraid to offend this messenger from Doc Savage, who wore a high silk
  hat and tails. These Frenchmen were pretty touchy, the guard knew.
  He shuffled across the room, unlocked the heavy iron−barred door  that protected Pat and the blond girl, and
  said, "O. K., mister. Talk  to ‘em. But make it snappy."
  The guard started to go back to his post.
  The visiting "diplomat" pulled a long−barreled gun from beneath his  coat, stuck it against the guard’s back,
  and snarled, "O. K., copper,  push your face inside this cage and don’t try tricks!"
  The long gun dug into the guard’s back. The cop raised his hands. As  he moved past the gunman, the stranger
  quickly lifted the guard’s  service gun from a hip pocket. Then he brought his own gun barrel down  on the
  policeman’s skull.
  The guard tumbled face−first into the small cell.
  Kay Uppercue leaped to her feet and started to scream.
  But Pat Savage put in swiftly, "Stop it! I don’t think this guy is  fooling!"
  For Pat had seen the odd look on the arrival’s peculiar face. There  was an old scar near the mouth, and it
  twisted the whole face out of  shape, so that the gunman seemed to be grinning happily about  something. But
  the small, fishy eyes were as cold as death itself.
  Over his shoulder, the gunman called, "All right, you guys�come and  get ‘em!" The grinning−faced man then
  took an apple from his pocket,  polished it on his sleeve, and calmly took a bite.
  Six more "diplomats" jumped into the cell room from just outside the  doorway. Like their leader, they were
  arrayed in tails and high silk  hats. They could have been easily mistaken in a crowd for a committee  of
  visiting representatives of a foreign power.
  Close to, they had faces that would have terrified babies.
  The men grabbed Pat Savage and the girl with her, quickly placed  gags in the girls’ mouths, and pushed them
  ungently toward the door.  One thug asked, "Take them to the regular place, Lonesome?"
  "Yeah," said the leader, pausing a moment in his apple chewing, and  the girls were bundled into a car parked
  just around the corner of the  building.
  Lonesome followed, after locking the cell door on the unconscious  guard.
  Lonesome was the leader whose twisted mouth made him appear like he  was tickled pink about something.
  But there was nothing cheerful about  his harsh voice.
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  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  38
  
  "This," he said flatly, "will sure get Doc Savage’s goat."
  He took another bite of the apple.
  THE bronze man and Monk were still standing near Doc’s short−wave  car radio when the police emergency
  dispatcher made his startling  announcement.
  The apelike chemist got excited. "I’m goin’ over there, Doc!" he  yelled in his squeaky voice. "Maybe that
  dame has played a trick on  Pat�"
  "Wait!" the bronze man said swiftly.
  There was a buzzing in the loudspeaker; the police announcer’s voice  came on the air again.
  "Mr. Savage,"
  the voice said, "we have the intercommunications system  switched onto that jail lockup. We should have the
  guard in a moment .  . . We’re sending a man over there to investigate�"
  Just then another sound faded in behind the announcer’s voice. Doc  Savage surmised that it was coming from
  the communications speaker,  most likely on the dispatcher’s desk.
  The sound was Kay Uppercue’s screams as the apple−eating kidnap  leader named Lonesome knocked out the
  guard. 
  The announcer’s voice got excited as he started to repeat the  information for the bronze man’s benefit.
  But Doc had heard enough. He flicked off the radio in his sedan.  Voices spoke excitedly behind him.
  Ham and young Adam Ash had returned, and both had heard the  startling news. Monk was almost going
  crazy.
  He leaped at the fastidiously−dressed lawyer and squealed. "You  blasted shyster! Doc says you were gonna
  watch the girls. I  ought to bounce you so hard on that thing you call a head that it’ll  take�"
  Well−dressed Ham drew himself up stiffly. His eyes gleamed.
  "Listen, you hairy gossoon," he snapped. "If it hadn’t been for you  going native and starting to climb on
  roofs, we wouldn’t have had this  trouble. Doc should be looking for Uppercue and Long Tom, but he had to
  get you out of a jam first. Furthermore�"
  The battle got off to a nice start.
  Quietly, Doc Savage said, "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you  tried to find the girls."
  That settled that.
  Ham and Monk took out in a hurry in the direction of the building  where the girls had been left under guard.
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  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  39
  
  Doc started to turn toward Adam Ash, and he saw then that the  brown−eyed tall man’s eyes were blazing.
  Adam Ash said stiffly, "I don’t like to be hasty, Mr. Savage, but I  must say I’m disappointed in you. You said
  the girls would be all  right. And now"�the young public relations consul’s usually pleasant  voice rose
  shrilly�"well, I think I’d better handle this in my own way!"
  Adam Ash stalked off furiously.
  For a long moment the bronze man merely stood and watched Adam Ash  disappear in the gloom behind the
  Hall of Medicine. Doc’s metallic  features were thoughtful.
  Something in Adam Ash’s words had not rung quite true.
  Doc Savage decided to follow Ash, for he wondered if the dark−haired  young man’s feelings for Uppercue’s
  pretty daughter were as sincere as  Ash had pretended.
  IT was getting late now, and the extensive World’s Fair Grounds were  practically empty of weary visitors.
  Display floodlights had been  switched off. Many of the brightly−painted exhibit buildings were  darkened.
  The glamour, the thousand−and−one sights that held a staring  visitor’s attention, were now gloomy−looking
  structures in the quiet  night.
  Across the sweeping Flushing Meadows, a chill, dank mist was rolling  in from nearby Long Island Sound.
  Curiously, Adam Ash’s steps took him in a direction away from those  of Doc Savage’s wrangling aids. Ash
  seemed to be headed for the Lagoon  of Nations, the entrance point to building colonies of foreign  countries.
  It was like being carried on a magic carpet to far−off lands.
  Doc Savage found himself trailing along a narrow, cobbled street in  the French Quarter. Building doorways
  were dark now; the vague form of  Adam Ash, some distance ahead, was like that of a Dr. Jekyll stalking  the
  Paris underworld.
  Adam Ash made no stops. He seemed to have a definite goal in view.  He left the French quarter, crossed a
  white bridge that led across a  creek into the more sedate section that was Great Britain’s exhibit.
  The bronze man’s steps were soundless as he followed. He was fairly  close behind Adam Ash, yet so quietly
  could Doc Savage move his  powerful form, that not the barest foot scuff could be heard.
  Ash swung around a corner and disappeared.
  Doc Savage moved silently up to the building corner and stood  listening. His trained ears told him that Adam
  Ash had paused.
  Then there was a new sound: the click of a car door being unlocked  and opened. A moment later a car motor
  sputtered into life, gears  clashed and Adam Ash took off as though the devil himself were after  him.
  Hearing the motor, the bronze man had leaped silently forward,  planning to swing onto a rear bumper of
  Adam Ash’s car. But the young  man’s actions had been too surprising. The car got away before Doc  reached
  the spot where it had been parked.
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  Chapter VIII. LONESOME
  40
  
  The public relations consul’s car reached one of the express  highways that circled the Fair Grounds, and Doc
  Savage knew that there  was no exit from that highway until one reached the far side of the  Fair.
  Behind Doc, some place, another car was moving in the quiet night.
  Doc hastened back to the corner in time to see one of the World’s  Fair police prowl cars cruising toward him.
  An officer in the  regulation trooperlike uniform was at the wheel.
  The car was the open model, two−seated type of khaki color.
  The bronze man hailed the driver, identified himself and indicated  Adam Ash’s coupé in the distance. Doc
  said, "If you go straight back  this road, we can intercept that other car halfway around the bordering  highway.
  Hurry."
  Doc Savage climbed in the front seat, the driver got the car in gear  again and almost pulled the wheels off
  getting away from there like mad.
  Doc looked suddenly cautious. "This is the wrong way�"he  started to protest.
  The man beside him raised his right hand higher, to show the gun in  his steady fist, and said, "But this roscoe
  shoots one way, bronze guy!"
  Two heads rose up from the rear compartment�the men had obviously  been hunkered down there out of
  sight�and one of the two snarled,  "These gats work the same way, too, friend!"
  His gunman partner chuckled. "Now we’re gonna learn about that metal  cylinder!"
  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  MONK and Ham were standing outside the small lockup where the girls  had been kidnaped. Other police
  officers had arrived now, and were  inside questioning the dazed guard. Doc Savage’s two aids had remained
  long enough to hear a vague description of the crook leader with the  grinning face. Then they had hurried out.
  Monk’s keg−sized arms hung dejectedly at his sides. His little eyes  in their pits of gristle were dull.
  The hairy chemist looked at waspish Ham and said, "The only reason I  don’t tear you apart for letting this
  happen, is on account of the  testimonial."
  "The testimonial?"
  The quick−thinking lawyer was wary.
  "Yep. I’ve sent a testimonial to the company that makes that marcel  machine, sayin’ how well you liked your
  permanent. They might want a  picture of you!"
  Ham snorted, and his fists knotted.
  The astute lawyer had a thick shock of dark hair, and was proud of  it�but furious at the very pretty wave that
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  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  41
  
  was in that hair now.
  "You hairy oaf!" he said. He looked at Monk’s tattered figure and  sniffed. "At least, I’m an attraction to the
  ladies. But you look like  something out of a lost civilization!"
  The endless bickering that was forever taking place between the two,  got under way again.
  But the weird sound that came out of the night cut the near−brawl  short.
  It seemed to come from nearby, and yet the only things in the  vicinity of Monk and Ham were the deserted
  streets that bordered the  long, rectangular Administration Building, a parking lot that was now  empty of cars,
  and vacant rest benches that were placed about for weary  sightseers.
  The lawyer lowered his sword cane, which had been raised over the  hairy chemist’s head, and looked startled.
  "What was that?" he asked cautiously.
  The night air was again stiffly silent.
  But Monk was leaning forward strangely, his bulletlike head  straining outward. "It sounds like�" he started to
  say, and then the  sound came again.
  IT was a throaty chuckling, and it came from a bridge some distance  away from them. The bridge was a walk
  for visitors going from the  Administration Building to the Annex, behind, and it was shaped not  unlike a
  yacht’s sleek hull.
  The chuckling came from up there on the bridge. It was an uncanny  thing, deep, far−reaching. Any other
  person would have been frozen in  tense horror.
  But hairy Monk suddenly let out a howl and leaped forward. "That’s  it!" he squealed. "What I’m gonna do to
  that Thing this time  is tragic!"
  It was said that Monk would probably fight a gorilla, given the  chance.
  But Ham’s black, alert eyes had seen the vague figure on the bridge.  It was a hulking form that loomed
  massively in the dark night.  Forgotten was the argument. Crazy Monk was headed right for  destruction, and it
  was the lawyer’s job to stop him. For when Death  stepped close, Ham would have gladly laid down his life to
  protect the  man with whom he argued so frequently.
  Calling, "Wait, you missing link!" Ham took out after his partner.
  The Thing on the bridge turned, swung into a long−strided  gait and disappeared toward the wide, darkened
  Court of Communications.  Its chilling throat sound floated back on the damp air.
  The chase continued some distance down the wide mall, and then Monk  swerved to the left as the huge figure
  ducked beneath shrubs nearby.
  By the time Ham came running up, Monk was tearing his way recklessly  through thorn bushes and rare,
  imported plants.
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  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  42
  
  "Lost it!" he said grimly.
  Ham’s face was thoughtful.
  Then he asked abruptly, "Listen, where did we leave Habeas and  Chemistry this afternoon? We parked the
  car some place�"
  Monk let out a whoop.
  "Blazes!" he squealed. "I forgot about poor Habeas. They’re locked  in our car back at that Cosmetics Hall.
  Say! Maybe Habeas could pick up  the�"
  "�scent of this�this goblin," Ham finished. "That’s why I asked  about the pets. Only, that scrawny pig
  couldn’t smell its own dinner. I  meant Chemistry!"
  Monk scowled.
  They hurried back to where their limousine had been left early this  afternoon. The two pets�after Ham
  unlocked the car�leaped out in joyful  glee at the sight of their masters.
  Then they backed off suddenly and glared at one another. Like Monk  and Ham, the pets, too, enjoyed a fight.
  THE two pets were remarkable−looking creatures. Habeas Corpus, the  pig, had long ears like a jackass,
  stiltlike legs, and a snout made for  boring into gopher holes. Chemistry was a pint−sized model of an ape  and,
  strangely, looked greatly like hairy Monk. The pig belonged to  Monk; Chemistry to the dapper lawyer.
  Sarcastic remarks by either of  Doc Savage’s aids toward the other’s pet were sufficient to start a  small war.
  The pets were quickly separated before a fight started and taken  back to where Monk had lost the dim trail of
  the man−creature Thing . Surprisingly, both Chemistry and Habeas Corpus picked up the trail  about the same
  instant.
  The pig scrambled off with its long snout to the ground; Chemistry  went bouncing along on hands and feet.
  The two aids of the bronze man raced after them.
  The chase led far across the World’s Fair Grounds, back to a spot  somewhat near the lake where Doc Savage
  had found Monk in the manhole.  The pets cut across to a landscaped stretch of gardens that curved down  to a
  huge, semicircular building.
  Ham recognized the structure as the great Marine Amphitheater, built  at one end of the long, artificial lake.
  The side of the white building  they were approaching looked like the high wall of a stadium, and on  the
  ground level were entrances leading to the tiers of seats above.
  The two pets went scrambling into an open gate, and were heard  prancing up steps to balconies overhead.
  Monk and Ham were close behind.
  Suddenly, as both aids emerged at the head of a long aisle that led  downward between the tiers of seats, they
  saw the pets stopped tensely  some rows ahead.
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  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  43
  
  Monk and Ham were in a balcony high above the lake. Like a playhouse  theater built on a mammoth scale,
  the amphitheater faced a huge,  circular stage, constructed right out in the lake. The aisle at which  they had
  emerged led downward to shadowy gloom. But the pets were close  enough ahead to be seen. They had not
  moved.
  Chemistry was chattering like an excited monkey. The pig snorted.
  Monk whispered in his squeaky voice, "They’ve found it, Ham!"
  He started down the steps.
  "Careful!" Ham warned.
  There was a figure down there, vague in the night light. It was  seated in a balcony seat close to the aisle.
  Monk again whispered. "You got a flashlight, Ham?"
  The lawyer nodded.
  "Flick it on the minute I get close to that Thing."
  Monk kept moving cautiously forward.
  But Ham slipped Monk a machine pistol. He rapped softly, "Use this,  stupid�and if you can’t stop it, I’ve got
  my sword ready."
  They stalked forward, stealthily approached the seated figure. Then  Monk said, "Now!"
  The little, loudly−dressed man who leaped to his feet as the light  ray hit him, exclaimed, "Douse that light
  you fools! You’re going to  spoil everything. I’m telling you!"
  The small man was holding binoculars in his hands.
  MONK slowly lowered the machine pistol in his hand and stared at  what he had expected to be the terrible
  Thing.
  He piped, "I . . . ah . . . that is�Goshamighty, who in blazes are  you?"
  Habeas the pig bristled his back and gawked likewise.
  The man they had pounced upon was no taller than the thickset Monk,  and thin. His clothes were so loud they
  almost shrieked. He had bright,  dark eyes, white hair and eyebrows that were black. Gold rings with  large
  stones flashed on several of his fingers.
  The stranger drew himself up haughtily and asked, "I don’t believe I  know you two, either, friends. But never
  let it he said that Shill  Burns was one to be highbrow. You gentlemen are now talking to the one  and only
  Burns, who knows everybody and has seen everything. Why, like  I always say, gentlemen, like I always
  say�when better shills are born,  Shill Burns will first have to be consulted. Ha!"
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  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  44
  
  The man laughed at his own remark.
  Ham said coolly, "He sounds like a side−show spieler�"
  "Ah!" cut in the flashy little man. "My friend, you have hit on only  one of the accomplishments of the great
  Shill Burns. But now I have  been called to this mammoth, gigantic, stupendous World’s Fair as a  special
  consultant. Like I’m telling you, friends, like I’m telling  you. There is nothing�do you hear?�nothing that the
  great Shill Burns  does not know�"
  "Maybe this mug knows about goblins," Monk said. 
  At the remark, the voluble little man went tense. His voice dropped  to a stage whisper.
  "Say!" he said cautiously. "You gentlemen look somehow familiar!  Would it be possible that you are two of
  the well−known assistants of  the bronze man known as Doc Savage�"
  "That about hits it," Ham said.
  "Ah!"
  Little Shill Burns was suddenly passing the binoculars to Ham.
  "Then I can help you," he announced with confidence. "Consider it  fate that has brought you two friends to
  me."
  Shill Burns indicated the huge stage out in the lake.
  "Look!" he directed.
  Ham peered through the binoculars. He saw a dark hole that was the  stage proper. It was too dark to make out
  anything else.
  He passed back the glasses and said frostily, "I don’t see a thing."
  Monk took the glasses and squinted his apelike eyes. Habeas and  Chemistry climbed up on the back of two
  seats and gawked also.
  "Blazes!" Monk ejaculated. "What is this?"
  Shill Burns took the glasses from Monk and also looked.
  He announced, "It’s gone!"
  He swung to look at Ham. "But it’s there. It’s out there on the big  stage. Fate has brought you two gentlemen
  to me. Come!"
  Flashy little Shill Burns started down the balcony toward a stairway  that led to the lake edge.
  Monk gave the lawyer a sidelong look.
  "I can’t savvy that mug, Ham. I wonder�"
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  Chapter IX. CURTAIN CALL
  45
  
  The two aids of Doc Savage were trailing along.
  "He knows something," said Ham.
  "But�"
  "He’s a shrewd cuss. Perhaps he can help us."
  Hairy Monk relaxed a little. "Yep. As much as I hate to admit it, I  think you’re right. Now maybe we’ll find
  that Uppercue and Long Tom.  Daggonit, Ham, this mystery is gettin’ me."
  For once, Ham was quiet and thoughtful.
  At the lake edge, they climbed into a rowboat. The pets tumbled in  after them.
  Shill Burns wrinkled his nose at the sight of Habeas and Chemistry.  He started to pick up the oars, but Monk
  took the rower’s seat and went  to work with bulging muscles.
  Once Ham commented, "Those oars bend, useless!"
  But they safely reached a landing ladder for the great stage,  climbed to the footlights, stared at the vastness of
  the structure, and  started moving toward the background of scenery.
  Monk grumbled, "Dang it! I don’t see no signs of anyone, or any  goblin�"
  Curtains parted backstage and six men with submachine guns cradled  in their arms covered Monk and the
  lawyer.
  The grinning−faced leader said sadly, "Here’s one play that closes  before the curtain goes up, dopes!"
  Then he calmly went on taking bites at the apple which he held in  his left hand.
  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  THE dapper lawyer and Monk were caught off guard. 
  There had been no one on the stage upon their arrival. Both aids of  Doc Savage had been staring at the
  magnitude of this unusual large  stage built right out in the lake, and at the looming vastness of the  circular
  amphitheater across the water.
  The six ugly black mouths of the machine−gun barrels took their  minds off anything theatrical.
  Monk exploded, "Say!"
  He then jerked his little head around to ask Shill Burns what this  was all about. "You dang well better explain
  this, you double−crosser�"  the hairy chemist started to exclaim. But he stopped, stared.
  Shill Burns had vanished.
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  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  46
  
  At some point where the three of them had climbed up to the stage  proper, Monk and Ham in the lead with
  the two pets, the overdressed  Shill Burns had taken a silent departure.
  Ham stared at the menacing gun barrels and commented, "Neat trick,  wasn’t it?"
  Monk grumbled, "Ah!" and started to bellow.
  Monk was ready to fight, guns or not. The apelike chemist liked to  fight, and when he got into a scrap his
  squeaky voice always changed to  a bull roar and he howled and bellowed.
  He was getting worked up to a fight now.
  Ham advised quietly, "That won’t help any, you dunce. Those guns  will rip you apart."
  But Monk howled, "Dang it�them Tommies are fakes!" and dived  forward.
  When the Tommy guns did not start their chatter of death, the  thin−waisted lawyer leaped forward, too. The
  six gunmen dropped their  weapons, grinned out of evil faces and started slugging at the two Doc  Savage men.
  One thug commented, "Hell, a lotta damage these two birds can do  against six!"
  The speaker was in error.
  Like a cyclone released without warning, the hairy chemist grabbed  two of the men, banged their tough heads
  together three times in quick  succession and dropped the dazed figures to the floor. He reached for  two more
  figures.
  Ham had whipped his sword from his black cane handle and was using  it deftly. That sword point contained a
  mild anaesthetic drug that,  when the point flicked an opponent’s body, quickly put him to sleep.
  The dapper lawyer put two more of the thugs to sleep.
  The "guns" that had been dropped to the stage floor, were merely  show "props," and were wooden. Monk had
  seen this in the moment before  he had barged into the mêlée.
  But Lonesome, the leader of the gang, had leaped clear at the first  signs of Monk’s fury. He had discarded the
  apple. He came up behind the  two scrapping aids now and snarled, "This one isn’t a fake!"
  There was a roar, and lead slugs tore holes through the flooring at  Monk’s feet.
  The heavy weapon in the grinning−faced leader’s big hands was a riot  gun of latest design.
  Monk and his smooth−looking partner decided that maybe the leader  meant business. They drew up short.
  The long−eared pig and Chemistry had been scurrying around taking  nips out of some of the prone gunmen.
  But now they, too, sensed danger  for their masters. They likewise halted stiffly.
  Monk scooped up Habeas and stood squinting at the crook leader’s  oddly−grinning face. He said blandly,
  "For a guy that looks like he’s  gonna bust out laughing, you sure sound gloomy."
  Lonesome, the leader, said, "This face fooled the others, too."
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  47
  
  "What others?"
  "The ones that croaked."
  "But who�"
  "You two guys won’t like the pit either," said Lonesome sadly.
  A LITTLE later, the two aids learned what Lonesome had meant when he  had spoken about the "pit."
  The five dazed thugs were on their feet again�each was that degree  of toughness that he had only been
  knocked out for a moment or two�and  now they were in charge of Ham and the hairy−fisted chemist. Real
  guns  taken from shoulder holsters covered Monk and Ham now.
  The cut lips and swollen knobs on the heads of the five added none  to their hard features. Expressions in the
  men’s fishy eyes said that  it was going to be fun rubbing out the two Doc Savage men.
  Ham, trailed by Monk with Habeas held in his arms, was pushed down a  flight of stairs backstage. There
  were numerous dressing rooms beneath  the large circular stage; but Monk and the lawyer were directed away
  from these.
  One captor said, "You guys get a special room."
  The tone of the man’s words caused Ham to give his partner a  guarded, sidelong look.
  But Monk was calmly scratching the porker’s back, and looking as  unconcerned as a toastmaster being
  escorted into another banquet room.
  The route ended at a small trapdoor built into a wall. Monk had a  time squeezing his broad form through the
  opening.
  He put down Habeas, said something in a mumble to the pig and  finally got his squat figure through. Ham
  followed with Chemistry at  his heels.
  Lonesome’s men came in and grinned.
  The place was a deep pit�an orchestra pit that was now far below the  stage above. The lawyer had seen such
  places before.
  Built along modern lines, the pit was really like a long, narrow  room that could be lowered out of sight when
  the orchestra was not  needed. All musical equipment had been removed from the orchestra pit,  and now the
  space reminded Ham of a sleek−sided bear pit at a zoo.
  It was fifteen feet up the smooth walls to the stage above, and  there was not a single thing that could have
  been used as a foothold to  climb those walls.
  One gunman said, "Lie down on your backs."
  Monk and Ham lay down.
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  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  48
  
  Another of Lonesome’s men said, "That’s the right position to die in  anyway!"
  He backed out of the wall trap opening, which was of heavy steel,  and the others backed out one at a time
  also. Their leader, Lonesome,  had not come down here with his henchmen.
  Monk heard the door slam; then some sort of heavy bolt was shot  home. Though the muscular chemist could
  look over his head and see  night sky high above, he knew that they were just as effectively  trapped as though
  they had been in a black dungeon.
  Monk grinned, "They think they got us fooled!"
  Ham looked at his partner sharply, scowled. "Listen, chump, just  what else would you call it?"
  The lawyer had walked around the room once, inspecting the trap  briefly. He figured that these orchestra pits
  were raised by hydraulic  water pressure. When he saw something�a small round opening�at one end  of the
  room, his face looked worried.
  Ham walked back and faced Monk. The hairy chemist was grinning  cheerfully. He added to his statement.
  "Yep," Monk said. "Those guys sure were dumb. I worked it right  under their noses."
  "Worked what, you missing link?"
  "I wasn’t scratching Habeas’ back," continued Monk. "I was writing  the words."
  Ham scowled. "What words?"
  "The message to Doc," grinned Monk. "I told him just where we were  and to hurry over here. I whispered to
  Habeas to hurry back and find  Doc. He’ll use that powder on the pig’s back, and my writing will  fl�flour�"
  "You mean fluoresce," explained the dapper lawyer.
  "Yep. That’s it. And now Doc will see the message and get us out of  here!"
  Ham looked relieved. "Sometimes," he said, "I think you’re almost  intelligent. You know what?"
  Ham was indicating an opening, a small pipelike opening in one wall.
  "What?" Monk queried.
  "This platform is lifted by hydraulic water pressure," the lawyer  explained. "Only now I have a hunch they’ve
  connected a water supply to  this inlet here. Lonesome and his men plan to flood this pit and watch  us drown
  like rats."
  Monk looked undisturbed. "I sure was smart to send Habeas with that  message then, wasn’t I?" he said loftily.
  Before Ham could reply, the bolt slid back in the wall trapdoor, and  the grinning−faced Lonesome stuck his
  head inside for just an instant.
  Lonesome’s brief words were in strange contrast to his  gosh−but−I’m−happy features. He spoke gloomily.
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  49
  
  "Sending that message to Doc Savage was a dumb idea," Lonesome said.  Then he slammed and bolted the
  heavy steel door.
  He had been holding the pig, Habeas, in his arms.
  LONESOME locked the hound−eared pig in a small room beneath the  stage and proceeded to another, larger
  room where his men were waiting.  It looked like a miniature League of Nations meeting with the gunmen in
  their frock−tailed coats and stovepipe hats.
  But the circle of grim, bruised faces seemed more like those of a  conference of thugs after a prison break.
  One man grinned, "Well, chief, that takes care of Doc Savage’s  crowd. Now we can go ahead, eh?"
  The grinning Lonesome said harshly, "How about those dames? Are they  still where we left them?"
  A second gunman spoke, "Sure, Lonesome. Gagged, too. I gotta hand it  to you for efficiency, chief. I�"
  "And that skinny bird called Long Tom?" went on Lonesome.
  A third henchman grinned. "He’s with the . . . the goblin  boss. And they’re takin’ them over to that room
  where the brains wants  Doc Savage brought."
  One of the five men facing Lonesome laughed loudly. "Nicky sure  fooled that Doc Savage!" he said. "Can
  you imagine a hood like Nicky  posin’ as one of them radio−car cops? He even�"
  "Don’t kid yourself about this bronze guy," Lonesome said icily.  "You’re never sure when you got him. Has
  anyone checked to make sure  Doc Savage is in the operating room?"
  The others shrugged. Apparently, no one had.
  Lonesome growled a curse and stepped to a wall phone. He dialed a  number and waited some time before
  there was an answer.
  Then an obviously disguised voice said, "Yes?"
  "Lonesome speaking," the happy−looking but grim crook said. "We got  that Monk and Ham in the orchestra
  pit."
  "Good!" the voice exclaimed. "That about makes it perfect."
  "Then you got Doc Savage?"
  A nasty laugh floated from the mouthpiece of the telephone. "I’ll  say we have. Right here in the operating
  room. The secret one. Those  dumb doctors’ll never find this place!"
  "And Uppercue?" Lonesome continued.
  There was a short, tense silence.
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  Chapter X. DEATH WITHOUT MUSIC
  50
  
  Then: "Never you mind about him any more. I’m taking care of  that angle."
  A second later the voice added: "Don’t forget to fasten that big  tarpaulin cover over the orchestra pit. That
  will trap that lawyer and  Monk Mayfair when you fill the pit. Those birds can probably swim."
  Lonesome asked, "Then we better drown ‘em now, hunh?"
  "You better wait a little," the man giving orders over the wire  directed. "We want to make sure this operation
  works."
  That ended the telephone conversation.
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  THE last thing Doc Savage recalled before being brought into the  formidable−looking room he was in now,
  was something about an assailant  saying, "Now we’re gonna find out about that steel cylinder!"
  After that, a sharp instrument had jabbed his back and he had  remembered nothing. This had taken place in
  the police car driven by  the phony Fair cop.
  The bronze man’s power of resistance to any kind of sleep−producing  drug was unusual. Perhaps his great
  vitality accounted for this.
  Thus he had soon thrown off the drowsiness, and now his senses were  already alert as he was carried onto
  some kind of movable platform. The  platform started rising in an eccentric arc. Doc Savage had the  sensation
  of floating in endless space.
  He tried to move, to stare about. But he was bound securely hand and  foot. His eyes were covered with tape.
  The thing he had been placed upon evidently was moving upward as  near as Doc could deduce, and from
  unusual sounds that the bronze man  caught with his sharp hearing, he knew that the platform was climbing
  inside some huge place.
  It was a peculiar sensation.
  The thing finally came to a stop, and Doc Savage recognized one of  his captors’ voices as the man said,
  "Carry the bronze guy into the  secret room."
  Doc Savage was lifted�it took all three men�and he caught the  assorted odors of a hospital operating room.
  He felt himself dumped  heavily on a long table. Immediately rough hands were fastening heavy  straps about
  the bronze man’s powerful legs and arms. Then the adhesive  was yanked from Doc Savage’s eyes.
  For a moment, the intense light that struck Doc’s unusual gold eyes  was blinding. But slowly he managed to
  adjust his vision to that  brilliant glare. Doc turned his head.
  The room where he had been carried was some sort of laboratory. Doc  saw racks of test tubes, retorts, dozens
  of shelves with bottles  containing various drugs and chemicals. Directly over his head was a  huge, convex
  window that now revealed the dark night above. The window  was about twelve feet square and constructed of
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  51
  
  opaque block glass. But  right now a cluster of blue−white colored lights were turned on beneath  it, and it was
  this glare that had struck the bronze man’s eyes.
  Doc shifted his head again.
  In one corner of the laboratory was a strange−appearing machine into  which ran all sorts of wiring. The
  machine was built around a long  operating−type table of white. Above the operating table were suspended
  big glass containers filled with odd−colored liquids. Rubber tubing  went from the containers to
  massive−sized gadgets beside the table.  These looked like giant hypodermic needles.
  All this weird apparatus surrounded the thin, anaemic−looking figure  strapped down on the tabletop.
  Doc Savage’s eyes widened. The bronze man seldom revealed his  emotions, but his metallic features were
  tense now.
  For the helpless figure bound to the operating table was that of the  electrical wizard, Long Tom!
  A DOOR opened across the room and a figure in white walked in.
  Immediately, the three men close to the table where Doc Savage was  held captive snapped to alert attention.
  These three were the two  roughly dressed men from the police car rear seat, and the car driver  himself�the
  one posing as a Fair prowl cop. All, from their talk,  worked for the grinning−faced Lonesome.
  The strong straps were holding the bronze giant across his chest,  waist and ankles. But Doc could still lift his
  head a few inches from  the table. He raised it now as one of his captors said, "Well, here’s  that Doc guy,
  professor. I guess gettin’ him about cleans up the job,  eh?"
  The figure in white stood silently just inside the doorway. The  effect was disturbing.
  For the figure was clothed from head to foot in the garb of a  surgeon ready to undertake an operation. There
  was the close−fitting  white skull cap, a mask that covered the face, all but the eyes, and  the white hospital
  gown tied in the back. From the elbows down, the  arms were covered with long rubber gloves.
  The eyes were the most chilling thing about the figure. This was  because heavy goggles fitted close above the
  face mask, and behind the  thick−lensed glasses the eyes appeared large and distorted.
  Doc knew that the eyes could possibly be small. It was the goggles  that gave the enlarged effect.
  The figure spoke, "Yes, as far as you men are concerned, the job is  about done. But mine has just started.
  Release the bronze man!"
  One guard looked scared. "But, boss! This guy’s dynamite! Better we  should keep him tied�"
  The figure in white showed a large gun that he had been holding  concealed in his folded arms. The gun was a
  big .45 automatic, and now  it aimed directly at the bronze giant’s prone figure.
  "Release him," the masked one rapped. "I’ve got to use him."
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  52
  
  Doc had been straining his ears to catch every tonal inflection of  the speaker’s voice. It was a voice that held
  the first rather shrill,  falsetto pitch of a person with a twisted mind.
  Doc Savage had made an intense study of the human mind. So he knew  that the way this person spoke, the
  somewhat nervous, shrill pitch, was  indicative of near−madness.
  Either that, or�another, more startling thought hit the bronze  man�the figure could be that of a woman!
  Doc was untied.
  THE guards moved back swiftly, cautiously, as the man of bronze  swung his feet to the tile floor. Doc flexed
  his cablelike muscles. In  doing so, the insides of his arms felt for the special vest that he  wore beneath his
  coat. The equipment vest with the secreted gadgets.
  It was still there.
  Apparently in their quick search of him for a gun, the guards had  overlooked the vest. One thug was holding
  Doc’s special machine pistol.
  His gaze went to the strange eyes behind the goggles again. The  figure was watching him closely, the .45
  now shifted to train on Doc’s  head. The masked one addressed as "Professor," said, "I happen to know  you
  use a bulletproof vest. But there isn’t anything stopping a slug  from entering your brain. So be careful!"
  The speaker jerked his head toward another, smaller doorway across  the room, and the three guards hurried
  out. A moment later Doc Savage  heard the strange whirring sound of the movable platform. It seemed to  be
  dropping away into a bottomless pit.
  Across the room on the weird−looking operating table, Long Tom’s  thin figure moved.
  The masked one laughed.
  "Your electrical wizard is drugged," the shrill voice said. "He  hardly knows what this is about. That,
  however, makes it all the better  for the experiment."
  The bronze man’s eyes were wary. The gun had not wavered a fraction  of an inch from his head.
  "What experiment?" Doc asked.
  "The Man of Tomorrow experiment," the masked surgeon said.
  Doc immediately thought of the huge−sized, awesome figure�the  goblin�that had seized Monk. His eyes
  narrowed imperceptibly, and then  his gaze flicked to Long Tom, stirring restlessly on the operating  table.
  Long Tom seemed to be slowly coming out of some sort of stupor.  He was mumbling.
  Doc asked of the masked figure, "You mean�the goblin?"
  "That," said the one behind the magnifying goggles, "is the general  idea."
  Doc Savage could not help but give a slight start.
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  53
  
  The figure in white continued, "The goblin is called Maximus. But  Maximus is a fool. He has no brain. The
  experiment ruined that. Maximus  can only follow childlike directions. But�"
  The shrill voice got thinner, more sharp. "But your electrical  expert has a trained mind. His brain is far
  superior to most men’s. It  should withstand the terrific shock of the Man of Tomorrow power  generation."
  "Power?" Doc Savage asked vaguely.
  The bronze man asked the question haltingly, as though slow to grasp  what the other meant. But in reality,
  Doc’s mind had never been more  alert.
  "Yes, power!" the masked speaker said. "Long Tom’s brain in a body  of giant size will produce the greatest
  man living�the Man of Tomorrow.  I need one thing: the secret of producing a certain type of
  electricity�something that I’ll call animal electricity, which  is probably a by−product of processing
  tremendous voltages. This  animal electricity will bring life into body cells of my giant man."
  At the statement, Doc’s lips showed the faintest trace of a smile.  "And that’s what has you stumped?" he said.
  But the other shook his head.
  "Scientist Martin Uppercue knows that secret," the garbed person  jerked out shrilly.
  "And Uppercue has disappeared," Doc finished.
  The bronze giant sensed a feeling of relief. Perhaps, then, there  was still a chance for Long Tom and� 
  Doc’s guard laughed oddly. "No, Uppercue is not missing. I have him  right here in the next room. I’ll say this
  for him: he has a great  scientific mind that cannot be swayed. He has refused to reveal that  secret."
  Dog Savage nodded. Relaxing slightly, he said, "And so you’re  stumped. Without that secret, you cannot�"
  The figure in white started shaking its head slowly. The eyes looked  strangely mad behind the magnifying
  goggles.
  "No," the masked surgeon said slowly. "I was in that audience that  watched you and Dr. Mandroff operate
  this afternoon. I understand your  unusual powers, Doc Savage. So I know Martin Uppercue is going to  reveal
  his secret!"
  "Reveal�" Doc started to query.
  The masked one held the .45 steady and motioned toward the doorway  through which he had entered.
  "Yes," he finished. "Because you’re going to make him reveal it!"
  THE power of Doc Savage’s unusual eyes was not a mystery to many men  of science. Those eyes had been
  known to hypnotize a man within a few  seconds. The scientifically trained mind behind Doc’s eyes held an
  amazing control over men of average intelligence.
  If necessary, the bronze man could even sway the minds of men of  almost equal intelligence to himself.
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  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  54
  
  That seemed to be the white−garbed surgeon’s idea in regard to  Uppercue.
  Doc was at last facing the missing scientist who had disappeared  under such queer circumstances.
  Small, white−haired Martin Uppercue was tied in a straight−back  chair in the room adjoining the laboratory.
  His birdlike, wiry figure  was no longer tense and active; instead, something of the brilliant  man’s intense
  energy had gone from his slumped figure.
  "Uppercue!" the white−garbed figure rapped. "This is Doc Savage,  remember? Look at him."
  Martin Uppercue looked like a person who had been beaten until life  was uninteresting to him further. He
  raised his white head slowly and  stared at the bronze man out of bleak eyes. For a moment, there was no
  recognition.
  The man in surgeon’s garb was standing to one side of Doc, the gun  still trained on the bronze giant’s head.
  He said now, "You’re going to  talk, Uppercue. You’re going to tell about that steel cylinder. Where  is it?
  What is in that tube?"
  At the words, Martin Uppercue stiffened.
  His marvelous brain, the one part of him that had not been conquered  by terror or threats, again rebelled.
  "I’ll never . . . talk!" Martin Uppercue managed to get out. He  looked more directly at Doc Savage now. The
  eyes had lost a little of  their dullness. It was possible that the little scientist recognized  the bronze figure,
  though he said nothing to indicate it.
  To one side of Doc, the masked figure snapped, "All right, hypnotize  him. Make him talk. If you don’t�"
  The man broke off and waggled the .45 significantly.
  Doc asked, "Have you got some bright object?"
  In hypnotism, it is usually helpful to have the subject center his  gaze upon some bright and shiny object.
  Acting carefully, keeping well out of the bronze man’s reach as he  held the gun steady in one hand, the figure
  in the mask tossed over a  ring taken from beneath the surgeon’s gown. It was a small ring with a  bright, clear
  stone, that held and reflected the light from a bulb  overhead.
  Doc noticed that the fingers of the masked figure, though  rubber−gloved, were long and slim like a woman’s.
  Doc took the ring, glanced at it, rubbed it on his sleeve.
  "Careful!" his captor warned.
  Doc’s hands had been close to his coat. The white−garbed one was  taking no chances on the physical giant’s
  unusual capabilities.
  Then Doc Savage started talking, holding the bright−stoned ring  before Martin Uppercue’s gaze. The bronze
  man’s words were soft−spoken,  low, yet the tonal inflection of those words held a strange vibrancy.  They
  were compelling, fascinating, gripping.
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  Chapter XI. STRANGE EYES
  55
  
  Slowly, the little scientist’s eyes went to the ring and his gaze  held there. This was the first step in hypnotism.
  As Doc talked, and without an apparent movement of his head, he  managed a sidelong glance at the masked
  figure, to one side of him.
  Behind the disguising goggles, the strange eyes were shifting back  and forth between Doc and the ring.
  The bronze man talked on in a vibrant monotone.
  Without a single pause, steadily, like the certain, throbbing beat  of a jungle drum, Doc Savage’s voice
  intoned words that would weaken  Uppercue’s resistance.
  Once, the thin scientist shot a swift glance to the bronze man’s  flake−gold eyes. As though he read a message
  there, his gaze went back  to the ring and its compelling attraction.
  Doc was saying, "You are going to tell me of the metal cylinder,  Martin Uppercue. Remember? The cylinder
  that you were carrying when you  ran from your laboratory. Think. Think hard! What is the secret of that  tube,
  Martin Uppercue? What is�"
  As he spoke, Doc sent a quick glance from the corner of his eyes.  The masked one’s own gaze was intent
  upon the ring.
  Doc said without a break in his vibrant flow of words, "Drop that  gun!"
  The deadly .45 in the hand of the surgeon slipped to the floor.
  Martin Uppercue strained against his bindings, his words hardly  those of a hypnotized man.
  "You did it, Doc Savage!" Uppercue shouted. "You’ve hypnotized  him!"
  Chapter XII. ONE−WAY EXIT
  MARTIN UPPERCUE’S exclamation was correct. For Doc Savage, instead  of hypnotizing the helpless
  scientist himself, had been cleverly  drawing the masked figure’s eyes to the ring. The figure in white had,
  unknowingly, centered his gaze upon the bright stone.
  The bronze man had not tried to hypnotize Martin Uppercue. Doc had  revealed this in a quick, appealing
  message to the little scientist as  he talked. The masked person had not perceived that glance.
  But Uppercue had made one mistake. He had shouted. That was  sufficient to break the spell the moment the
  white−gowned surgeon  dropped the deadly .45.
  Understanding of his error immediately leaped into the eyes behind  the goggles. The masked one moved.
  There was no chance to retrieve the fallen gun. Doc Savage was  already leaping forward.
  So the figure in white twisted, plunged toward a cabinet standing  against one wall of the room.
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  Chapter XII. ONE−WAY EXIT
  56
  
  The cabinet contained many sharp−bladed operating instruments. The  masked man’s rubber−gloved hand
  plunged through glass door and all,  then the figure whirled with a deadly−looking knife in his hand, leaped
  toward Doc.
  Doc Savage had lost the machine pistol to one of the guards who had  helped bring him here. To pause and
  pick up the masked man’s fallen  .45, would have been fatal. And Uppercue was tied helplessly in the  chair.
  Doc’s agile fingers had gone beneath his coat.
  They came out with a small object taken from his special equipment  vest. Doc hurled the vial.
  The thing struck the masked figure’s knife hand, burst, and a  quick−acting anaesthetic gas enveloped the
  masked surgeon’s face. The  gas was a type that should easily penetrate the gauze mask that hid the  figure’s
  face.
  Doc’s assailant staggered, brushing at the air before his goggled  eyes. He backed against a far wall, swayed
  there for an instant, and  then started slowly collapsing to the floor.
  The bronze man spun toward helpless Martin Uppercue. The scientist’s  small eyes were bright. "Gracious,
  now we’ll find out who that devil  is!" he exclaimed.
  Doc quickly untied straps holding the scientist’s wrists to the  chair arms. He spoke rapidly, briefly.
  "You can loosen your own ankles," Doc said. "Try to hold your  breath. That gas will float over here shortly.
  It is harmless. I’ve got  to�"
  Doc Savage heard the humming sound of the movable platform. Outside  the adjoining room, he could hear
  the strange object lifting again,  coming up from some mysterious depth.
  The guards were returning!
  The bronze giant whirled toward the operating room and reached Long  Tom’s prone figure. The electrical
  expert’s eyes were open, staring at  Doc; but there was a vacant, stupefied look in their depths.
  Doc Savage quickly loosened the table straps, then reached inside  his coat. His bronzed hand came out with a
  shining hypodermic needle.  He swiftly jabbed the hypo into Long Tom’s arm.
  Almost immediately, the aid started reacting to the injection. The  hypo was a powerful stimulant that would
  counteract the drug in Long  Tom’s system. And though frail−looking, with a pallid color that made  him look
  anaemic, Long Tom had never known a sick day in his life. His  little skinny form was tough, hard�whipcord
  and muscle.
  Long Tom jerked up on the table and exclaimed, "Doc!"
  The Man of Bronze nodded toward the door through which he’d been  brought into the room, said, "Gunmen
  are on the way."
  The hum of the strangely rising platform was quite loud now.
  Long Tom had stooped, to remove something strapped inside his  trousers leg. It was one of the special
  machine pistols that all the  bronze man’s aids carried.
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  "Cover the door," Doc directed, as he whipped back toward the  adjacent small room. He had to tie up the
  masked figure, help Uppercue,  return and aid Long Tom before the gunmen arrived.
  As Doc neared the doorway, he tossed a small lozenge into his mouth.  The lozenge contained a form of
  concentrated oxygen that would  counteract the effects of the gas Doc had thrown in the vial. He took  out
  another capsule to give Martin Uppercue. The gas might have reached  the scientist�
  Across the threshold, Doc Savage drew up with a jerk. His metallic  features went grim. More than the gas
  had reached the slender little  scientist.
  Both Martin Uppercue and the masked figure had disappeared.
  DOC peered swiftly around.
  The only exit from this smaller room was the entranceway back into  the operating room. There were no
  closets; nothing save a couple of  chairs, a table and the broken glass instrument case. There was a  telephone
  on the table.
  There was a similar opaque glass skylight in the ceiling, as in the  adjoining, larger room. Doc had noted a
  queer thing about those  ceilings; they were convex and low.
  The only manner in which the masked figure and Martin Uppercue could  have escaped would be through a
  secret panel. Obviously, thought the  bronze man, the goggled surgeon had not been completely knocked out
  by  the gas. The gauze face mask must have saved him. Thus he had regained  his strength long enough to
  seize Uppercue and escape.
  There was no time to search, for at that moment a bull−fiddle roar  cut loose back in the operating room.
  Doc Savage hurried that way.
  The door leading to the floating platform thing had crashed open and  one roughly dressed man had leaped in
  with a gun in his hand.
  But Long Tom had been ready. Mercy bullets from the special pistol  in the electrical wizard’s hand had
  caught the first arrival in the  legs. The man went down mouthing oaths.
  He would not die.
  Doc Savage and his men never took a life needlessly. They preferred,  when possible, to use gadgets that
  made a fight bloodless. And Long Tom  realized that Doc wanted to capture these men now, to question them.
  A second gunman�the fake Fair trooper�swung into the room. His gun  was blasting even before he saw the
  bronze man. The thug was aiming at  skinny Long Tom.
  The third guard was jumping into the room behind his fake cop  partner and, with a snarl, he also yanked out a
  gun.
  Long Tom’s queer−looking pistol cut down the second thug. Again the  mercy bullets had struck in the legs,
  and the man would recover, to  talk. The special bullets only caused temporary unconsciousness.
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  But the twisted expression on the third gunman’s face said that he  would not go down until he had brought
  death to at least Doc or his  assistant.
  So the bronze man hurled the powder that brought temporary blindness  to anyone in its path.
  The gunman choked, batted at his eyes, started triggering his gun  recklessly. But he was shooting too high,
  through the enveloping powder  that brought the blindness.
  Doc Savage called to Long Tom, "Hold it."
  The aid of Doc Savage had been ready to bring down the third and  last arrival. But Doc did not want the
  sound of Long Tom’s pistol to  draw the blinded thug’s fire.
  The man fired his last shot through the opaque glass skylight above.  A pane of glass crashed downward; a
  gust of night air came into the  room�and blew the powder directly into the faces of the bronze man and  his
  assistant!
  They staggered about blindly.
  Doc called, "Careful, Long Tom! That gunman is over toward that  entrance door."
  Doc Savage, even with his unusual eyes temporarily blinded, had an  uncanny sense of direction. He headed
  toward the thug.
  Doc heard the door slam and a second later the whirring sound of the  movable platform motor.
  Doc announced grimly, "He’s escaped. Can you see, Long Tom?"
  The aid was making growling sounds somewhere nearby.
  Both men were so blinded that they seemed to be fumbling around in  pitch−black night, though lights were
  still on in the room.
  Long Tom said, "Blazes! I’m kinda mixed up!"
  The telephone in the adjoining smaller room started ringing.
  MOVING carefully, hands stretched out before him, Doc reached the  inner room and the phone. Lifting the
  receiver, the bronze man imitated  the missing masked surgeon’s voice.
  It was a call from Lonesome, beneath the amphitheater stage. The  grinning henchman of the masked surgeon
  thought he was talking to his  chief. He had called again to ask a question about Monk and the dapper  lawyer.
  Doc Savage thought quickly. He knew now where his two assistants  were held captives. Lonesome also
  spoke vaguely about the girls being  safely tied up in some other place.
  Lonesome was taking it for granted that his chief knew the location  of that hide−out. It would not be wise for
  Doc to ask questions about  it. Better to hold Lonesome and his killers off until he and Long Tom  could get to
  the amphitheater stage.
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  Thus, Doc Savage directed, in the masked figure’s voice, that Monk  and Ham be kept alive until they were
  certain the operation on Long Tom  was a success.
  Lonesome believed these were orders from his chief, the masked one.
  Still moving in blind darkness. Doc Savage hung up the receiver.  Somewhere behind him, Long Tom
  exclaimed:
  "Say, Doc! I’ve found it!"
  "Found what?"
  "A way outa this danged place!"
  Doc Savage moved cautiously forward, toward the source of Long Tom’s  voice. Doc knew that, in a few
  moments, the temporary blindness would  wear off.
  He said, "But there’s no door."
  "It’s a panel," said Long Tom. "And it opens outward. I can feel it.  Wish I could see, dang it! It swings
  outward and there’s some sort of  space behind�"
  Suddenly, there was a sharp cry from Doc’s assistant. Long Tom  started to shout, "Hey, Doc! I’m falling�"
  And the words died away as though the thin electrical expert had  dropped like a plummet into a bottomless
  pit.
  In his worry for Long Tom, perhaps Doc Savage moved a little too  swiftly. Also, he had not realized he was
  so near the secret panel.  Furthermore, the panel had swung open, and remained that way, thus  leaving no wall
  for Doc’s sensitive fingers to touch.
  Doc stepped through the opening before he realized he had gained the  wall.
  He went plunging downward.
  Chapter XIII. ADAM ASH IS MISSING
  BECAUSE Doc Savage was a physical phenomenon who was practically  fearless, and who had faced death
  in many forms, he did not cry out  when he plunged into space. The sensation was doubly awful when it is
  considered that the bronze man was still blinded from the powder.
  But in that brief second before Doc’s shoulders hit a slick surface  and he went skidding downward at a
  furious pace, he had realized that  the secret panel could not possibly lead to death.
  For certainly the masked surgeon and Professor Uppercue must have  used this exit.
  Doc knew that he was hurtling down a long, steep slide, much like  the chutes used in a fun house at Coney
  Island. Only this particular  slide must have started at a great height, for the plunge downward was
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  breath−taking, and at train speed.
  Finally, Doc felt a slackening in his terrific rush; the chute was  flattening out. Built like a highly polished and
  waxed semishell, there  was not a single thing to grasp.
  But slowly the bronze man’s form was coming to a stop.
  Ahead some place, Doc Savage heard a commotion. It was Long Tom, his  aid, and he was growling oaths.
  A moment later, Doc dropped down beside the thin electrical expert.  The slide had ended, to dump the bronze
  giant man off its end and into  some sort of small room. Doc Savage felt his body hit double trapdoors  that
  swung quickly downward. They whipped back into place again as he  cleared them.
  His large form brushed Long Tom’s, and the aid exclaimed, "Whew! I  sure thought I was a goner that time,
  Doc!"
  Doc Savage asked, "Can you see yet?"
  "I dunno," Long Tom said curiously. "Either I can’t see, or this  hole we’re in is black as night."
  Doc said, "Wait."
  He took a flashlight from his special vest and flicked it on. Doc  could see nothing.
  To Long Tom, he said, "How about you?"
  "How about me, what?"
  "I have a light turned on," stated Doc.
  "Then I’m still blind," announced the electrical wizard.
  DOC removed a small vial containing a solution from his inner vest.  He broke the vial, reached for his aid’s
  hands in the dark and  directed, "Here, rub some of this on your eyes."
  Both men wiped their eyes with the solution, and almost immediately  they were able to see again. The liquid
  was a special preparation of  the bronze man’s invention, made by Doc to counteract the effects of  the
  temporary blinding eye powder.
  They stared around as Doc Savage directed the flashlight ray.
  Long Tom said, "It’s some sort of tunnel. There’s pipes and all."
  Doc nodded. He was directing the light overhead, pointing it at a  thin, almost invisible line where the double
  trapdoors had swung back  together. The spot was about eight feet over his head.
  "That," Doc said, indicating the closed doors, "makes it impossible  to ever reach the secret laboratory again.
  No one could possibly climb  that steep slide. It must have been over two hundred feet long."
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  "Do you remember how you got into that room where they had me?" Long  Tom asked.
  Doc shook his head. "They used drugs. But there was the odd  sensation of the way that platform moved. It
  didn’t go straight up."
  "Yet that room was at some high point," the electrical expert  offered. "Remember that funny ceiling
  skylight?"
  Doc nodded.
  "What was that masked devil goin’ to do to me, Doc?"
  The bronze man did not answer. Often, when Doc Savage had hit upon  some idea, some explanation of a
  mystery, he preferred to unravel the  whole case before stating his findings. He was turning a clue over in  his
  mind now, and a part of the conclusion he had reached was startling.
  Doc said, "For the present, it will be impossible to know where we  were just now. Uppercue knows the
  answers to this mystery. And so does  that masked surgeon�or, at least, part of the solution. He is holding
  Uppercue until he learns more."
  "Then we better trail them," suggested Long Tom. He was indicating  tracks in the dust at their feet.
  Apparently the tunnel was one seldom  used, and there were scuff marks in the dust.
  But Doc Savage shook his head.
  "If we don’t hurry and find our way out of this place," he went on,  "it might be too late to save Monk and
  Ham."
  Long Tom started to say, "Then we better�"
  The startling, guttural chuckling of the thing they knew as the  "goblin"�the creature called Maximus�came
  from somewhere ahead in the  underground cavern.
  USING the light, Doc Savage plunged ahead through the dank tunnel.  As Doc explained hastily to Long
  Tom, "I want to meet this Maximus. I  want to see him."
  Running at Doc’s heels, the electrical expert shuddered.
  "Maybe you better not, Doc. That guy, that goblin’s got the strength  of ten men. Just lookin’ at him almost
  scared me to death�like back  there in the mine shaft."
  Briefly Long Tom explained about that.
  It seemed there had been a way into a basement cavern through the  flooring beneath the mine. Maximus, the
  electrical expert said, had  pulled a supporting timber loose inside the tunnel, then leaped with  Long Tom into
  the trap opening.
  Long Tom remembered, vaguely, of passing downward and into some  underground room. There a masked
  man had met them and said something  about turning on a water−main valve.
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  Prodded by Doc for further information, Long Tom stated that he had  been knocked out by Maximus, and
  could recall nothing further until he  came to on the operating table.
  "Was it a place like this?" Doc asked.
  Both men were still running through what seemed to be an endless  maze of pipes. They had found no trace of
  the weird thing that had made  the chuckling sound.
  "Ye−es," Long Tom said thoughtfully. "It was like this."
  "Then," Doc snapped, "that explains it."
  "Explains what?"
  Doc told about finding Monk in the manhole opening. 
  He continued: "There are fifteen miles of water mains, thirteen  miles of gas mains, and another fifteen miles
  of electrical conduits  beneath these grounds, besides thirty miles of sewers."
  Long Tom whistled. "An army could hide down here, then."
  "Or be hidden," Doc Savage put in significantly.
  And he added: "Many of those ducts�like this one�will probably never  be used. Thus it is simple for the
  villain to duck out of sight easily  and appear elsewhere on the Fair Grounds."
  The electric expert looked puzzled. "But how are we goin’ to  get out of this danged place, Doc?"
  The bronze man had paused, to study a section they had just entered.  They had been running stooped over.
  This part they were now in was  higher, though, and was joined by a line coming in at right angles.
  "This," Doc indicated, "looks like a way out."
  It was.
  There was a narrow steel ladder, leading to above.
  Since they had found no trace of the goblin, Doc reminded his  assistant of the predicament of Monk and
  Ham. Doc hurried up the  ladder, Doc in the lead.
  It took a man of the bronze man’s great strength to raise the  massive iron cover that sealed them below
  ground.
  Then they were out in the night again. Both men stared silently  around.
  Suddenly, Long Tom said, "Listen, Doc!"
  Voices were talking. One was sharp and clear. The speaker was  rapping:
  "Look, you hairy baboon, try to raise this side!"
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  Doc said, "That’s Ham."
  "And he could only be talking to one person that way!" Long Tom  added.
  Yet the only thing close by was the huge, deserted amphitheater and  the lake, calm and fog−shrouded in the
  night.
  THE bronze man and Long Tom had moved around to a point directly in  front of the great amphitheater.
  They were standing near the lake edge.
  Though the massive, open−air theater was apparently deserted, the  squabbling voices of Monk and Ham
  sounded clearly. It seemed they were  somewhere above, in one of the balconies.
  Long Tom asked curiously, "Doc, what could those two guys be tryin’  to escape from up there?"
  There had been something about, "Trying to raise this danged covert"  Monk’s words echoed clearly in the
  night.
  "Acoustics," the bronze man stated. He added: "But Monk and Ham  aren’t here."
  "But where�"
  "The amphitheater acts like a great sounding board for any speech  out there on the island stage. The voices of
  Monk and Ham are carrying  from there. We need a boat."
  Long Tom looked puzzled, but quickly followed Doc as the bronze man  moved toward a small dock at the
  lake side.
  Soon they were silently rowing toward the dark stage.
  When Doc and his assistant had, a few moments later, climbed the  steps to the broad stage, they heard the
  splashing�a commotion beneath  a heavy tarpaulin cover across the orchestra pit.
  Monk was heard to squeal, "Hey, shyster! Get this danged Chemistry  off my back! He’s pullin’ me under!"
  Doc moved swiftly to the edge of the stage, at a point directly  above the disappearing orchestra pit. Beside
  him, Long Tom could see  where the heavy canvas cover was securely tied down. Apparently, Monk  and Ham
  had no knives to slash the tough material, and water that was  slowly filling the pit was trapping them like rats.
  From his equipment vest, Doc quickly got a sharp−edged instrument.  He worked fast with long, sweeping
  movements. A section of canvas was  opened up.
  Doc directed, "Over here, Monk."
  The bronze man directed the flashlight ray downward.
  Shortly, the hairy chemist, with the pet ape clinging to his back,  climbed out, helped by Doc Savage. Ham
  followed. Both aids looked half  drowned.
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  Monk squealed, "Goshamighty, Doc! They filled that place with water,  an’ it was almost to the top!"
  "You mean�Lonesome?" Doc asked.
  Monk glared. "Yep. And that grinning devil has Habeas! I’m gonna�"
  "Perhaps," Doc warned, "we might use a little caution. We might be  able to trap Lonesome and his mob." The
  bronze man looked at Ham, who  seemed to be the less excited. "You know where they are, Ham?"
  The lawyer, looking much distraught, because of his wet, expensively  tailored clothes, said, "We can reach
  their hideout from backstage."
  He led the way.
  But just as they reached the rear of the wide stage, Doc suddenly  paused and raised his hand for silence. He
  said quietly, "Listen!"
  The others stood silently.
  Behind them, from out on the water, there was the sound of oars,  squeaking in oarlocks. And voices. Voices
  that carried plainly between  the massive backgrounds of stage and amphitheater.
  Doc Savage recognized Lonesome’s voice, and the grinning−faced thug  was saying:
  "So we gotta find him. The chief says he must have the accumulator,  and that’s the one gadget stoppin’ the
  experiment, now."
  A second harsh voice floated across through the foggy night.
  "What’s an accumulator, Lonesome?"
  "It’s about the size of a suitcase, and if you birds find it, you  better be careful how you handle it. The chief
  says that dingus could  stop the Niagara Falls power plant itself!"
  "But�"
  The voices were fading. The boat was heard to scrape the side of a  dock near the amphitheater. Doc Savage’s
  aids could hear nothing else.
  But the bronze man’s unusual hearing detected still further  conversation.
  The last words he caught were:
  "So you guys look for Adam Ash!"
  Chapter XIV. STORM CLOUDS GATHERING
  APPARENTLY Lonesome’s men had known of the arrival of Doc Savage and  Long Tom at the island stage.
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  Besides, the gunmen had left by some rear  exit and their boat had not passed the front of the stage proper.
  Monk was all for taking right out after Lonesome’s gang in order to  get Habeas. And another thought hit him.
  "The girls, Doc!" Monk piped. "Daggonit, they’ve got Pat and that  nifty little blonde hidden some place, and
  maybe�"
  Ham said significantly, "The only reason that hairy mistake was  worrying about being drowned just now, was
  because he hasn’t had a  chance to date that Kay Uppercue."
  Monk grumbled, "There’s somethin’ subtle about that crack, shyster.  I�"
  Doc said, "Temporarily, I believe the girls�wherever they are�are  safe. That masked surgeon figures Kay
  Uppercue knows something. He  doesn’t dare harm her. And Pat can take care of herself."
  "But�" Monk started to query.
  "Lonesome is perhaps on his way to meet the masked man and Uppercue."
  Doc Savage looked at his aids, gave brief orders. 
  "Long Tom will look for the girls. Ham, you and Monk follow Lonesome  and try to learn the way into that
  secret operating room. Uppercue will  most likely be taken back there. Get equipment from my car and keep
  in  touch with me."
  Ham looked worried. "But Doc, whatever this experiment those guys  are planning is�what if they start it�"
  Doc and his aids had climbed down from the stage again and were  preparing to shove off in the rowboat.
  The bronze man interrupted the lawyer’s query.
  "Apparently they’re stalemated," Doc said. "Because of one thing.  Something called an accumulator. And the
  person who has that is  missing."
  Hairy Monk suddenly remembered the trick played upon him by the  little, flashy Shill Burns. He told briefly
  of the voluble man who had  brought them there, and ended with, "Dang it, Doc, I’m gonna find that  guy.
  He’s mixed up in this mystery some place!"
  "It might be a good idea," offered Doc.
  Back at the shore of the amphitheater, Doc Savage questioned Long  Tom quietly. He mentioned the small
  model generator he had seen in  Uppercue’s laboratory. The electrical wizard’s eyes widened, and he  said:
  "Doc, Uppercue was secretive about that. I don’t think it had  anything to do with this Man of Tomorrow
  experiment on which the Fair  people were getting ready to release publicity. It was something else."
  "Correct," Doc said. "And in that generator model there was a tiny  part missing. Enlarged from scale, that
  unit would be about the size of  a suitcase. Did you ever hear of an atomic accumulator, Long Tom?"
  The electrical expert’s eyes went wide, and perhaps a little  horrified. "Big electric companies have
  experimented with those  accumulators!" he exclaimed. "Given perfect insulation, an atomic  accumulator
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  could store energy equaling millions of volts. Enough for  that thing to drain the power of the largest electrical
  distributing  plants. Why, it would even wreck�"
  Doc nodded.
  "That," the bronze man said, "is the general idea. And the missing  metal cylinder that Uppercue was first
  carrying has something to do  with it, also."
  Long Tom was abruptly tense. He gripped the bronze man’s arm. The  electrical expert’s scientific brain was
  swiftly fitting pieces of a  gigantic idea together. He gasped:
  "Doc, that place where we were taken, that trick, movable platform�I  was thinking of that little model you
  saw in Uppercue’s lab. Good Lord,  could they be planning�"
  The bronze man interrupted quietly, though he, too, was tense.  "You’re on the right track," he stated. "So,
  hurry. In the meantime I’m  going to locate the man who seems to be holding the key to the whole  thing."
  "You mean�"
  "That person seems to be Adam Ash," Doc finished.
  Shortly after this conversation with Long Tom, Doc disappeared on a  mission of his own.
  BUT by the following night, the mystery still had not been solved.
  And a new mystery had developed at the great Perisphere. All during  the day, visitors had been refused
  admittance to the giant globe of  steel. The news spread; one stranger told another:
  "They won’t allow you in the Perisphere!"
  "Why?"
  "I dunno. But I heard some fellow talking about a goblin."
  "What’s a goblin�can it hurt you?"
  "Danged if I know. But I’d sure like to know what is wrong in there!"
  And so it continued. One telling another. People jamming up along  the circular mall encircling the Perisphere
  and causing no end of  trouble for the Fair cops. There was confusion, questions, wonderment.
  The excitement increased throughout the day. There were two persons,  though, who were unaffected by it.
  Monk and Ham had followed seemingly endless miles of the tunnellike  pipe line conduits that honeycombed
  the vast grounds. Lonesome and his  men had completely eluded them.
  From their car, they had obtained a sound−detector device to use in  locating any secret byways in the
  underground mains. They were also  carrying a portable short−wave transmitter and receiver with which to
  keep in touch with Doc Savage.
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  Both aids were grimy and tired from their trek through the gloomy,  stuffy, narrow tunnels. But Monk never
  slackened in his rolling stride,  as he said:
  "They got Habeas. And that runt pig is smart. Maybe if Lonesome goes  to where the girls are hidden, Habeas
  will get back with a message,  somehow."
  Ham snorted. Chemistry, the ape, trailing along at his side, the  pet’s face dust−smeared from peering into
  dark places, bristled, too.
  "That fool pig couldn’t find his own way home," the lawyer said  unkindly. "And all that’s bothering you is
  shining up to that blonde,  Kay Uppercue. I’ll take Pat any day."
  "I’ll take ‘em both," Monk said.
  The bickering continued throughout the day.
  IN the meantime, Long Tom was on a similar hunt. He had gone back to  the manhole where he and the
  bronze man had left the underground pipe  lines, traced his way back to where he and Doc had landed in a
  heap  after tumbling down the long slide.
  There seemed to be no way whatever of getting back up above, to the  strange operating room where the
  masked one had held him captive.
  The electrical wizard took time out to make careful calculations. He  worked his way slowly back to an exit
  and as he did so, jotted down  figures on a piece of paper.
  He had also been using a compass.
  When Long Tom was outside in the crowded Fair Grounds again�it was  late in the afternoon now�he plotted
  his way back to a spot that should  be almost over the point where he and Doc had piled up in a heap
  underground.
  The electrical expert stared. Slowly, Doc’s comments of the night  before took on great significance in this
  active mind.
  Before Long Tom loomed the massive, round bulk of the Perisphere. He  saw the excited crowds and elbowed
  his way through.
  Tense with excitement, Long Tom hurried up to an entranceway to the  huge sphere. He had to get inside now,
  had to�
  A uniformed Fair policeman stopped the electrical genius at the door  and said, "Sorry, sir, but the Perisphere
  is closed to all visitors."
  "Closed?" skinny Long Tom said.
  "There seems to be something out of order. No more visitors will be  allowed inside."
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  The anaemic−looking aid of Doc Savage turned hurriedly away. Perhaps  he could locate the bronze man back
  at Doc’s car, still in the parking  lot behind the Hall of Medicine. Something told Long Tom that there was
  need for haste. The Perisphere was closed! Closed because� 
  Long Tom started running through the crowds, he had to find Doc  Savage!
  UNLUCKILY, the bronze man had left his parked sedan only a few  moments before Long Tom’s arrival.
  Doc had spent the whole day trailing  Adam Ash, the young public relations consul. The last clue had led back
  here to the Hall of Medicine. There, the trail ended.
  Doc tried to raise Monk and Ham on the short−wave set in his car,  and receiving no reply, took a few
  moments’ time to visit the youngster  he had operated on in the Hall of Medicine.
  The boy was in a special hospital room that the bronze man had  ordered for him. None would ever know that
  Doc Savage was paying all  the lad’s expenses here.
  Doc found Dr. Alexis Mandroff in the private room with the patient.  Mandroff reported cheerfully:
  "He’s doing fine, Mr. Savage. But he just dropped off to sleep. Too  bad you can’t talk to him."
  Doc gazed at the small, calm face in the white bed. Color had  already returned to the thin features. Gone was
  the expression of pain  and fear that had been on the lad’s face such a short time ago.
  Beside the bronze man, Dr. Mandroff said, "The nurse says he is  picking up rapidly. Da�yes, you certainly
  performed a marvelous  feat, sir."
  They moved quietly outside to a corridor.
  The bronze man told Dr. Mandroff that he was seeking Adam Ash. Doc  did not state his purpose, but merely
  mentioned that the young public  relations consul could not be located.
  The tall doctor with the straw−blond hair was smoothing fawn−colored  gloves over his hands. He picked up a
  medical bag from a nearby table,  looked at Doc Savage out of keenly sharp eyes. "That’s odd," Mandroff
  said. "I don’t know why he should be keeping out of the way. He was  here only a few moments ago, and said
  that he was going over to watch  that moon−rocket experiment tonight as soon as it gets dark."
  Both men were approaching an exit from the building.
  Dr. Mandroff asked about the missing scientist, Professor Uppercue,  about the mysterious way in which
  Uppercue had disappeared.
  But Doc Savage did not mention the experience in the hidden  operating room. He merely said, "The scientist
  cannot be found. I think  it is more important to first locate Adam Ash."
  Dr. Mandroff offered brief apologies for leaving.
  "I wish I could help," he said. "But I have an urgent call into the  city. Perhaps I could meet you tonight�"
  Doc Savage nodded.
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  "I’ll be looking for Adam Ash over by that moon−rocket tryout," he  finished.
  Mandroff shook hands and left.
  But by nine that night, though the bronze man scrutinized hundreds  of faces in the great crowd waiting to
  view the moon−rocket sensation,  he had not located Adam Ash.
  DR. MANDROFF had been correct in stating that Adam Ash was going to  watch the moon−rocket
  experiment. Adam Ash was observing the fantastic  event now. But he was not in the jam−packed crowds
  around the tower  where the rocket was to be released.
  Adam Ash was seated in his small coupé in a landscaped small lane  some distance away.
  There was a strained look on the slender, brown−eyed man’s  good−looking features. The place where he had
  chosen to park was well  away from the Fair crowds. Adam Ash seemed greatly worried about  something.
  Once, he got out of the car to walk around to the rear and unlock  the rumble seat. He peered inside. Looking
  reassured, he closed the  rumble lid and relocked it.
  The object he had checked upon was a flat, long case of suitcase  size.
  Some distance ahead, where practically every visitor at the World’s  Fair was gathered, a great roar suddenly
  went up.
  They were releasing the rocket.
  The moon rocket contained no human beings. It was merely a test  flight of a torpedo−shaped, huge object of
  silver color. Inside the  rocket had been placed the newest scientific devices for recording the  moon rocket’s
  flight. If the rocket ever returned to be gripped by the  earth’s pull of gravity, special radio−controlled
  machines would guide  it to a landing. 
  The strange thing left the Fair Grounds with a shrill whistling  sound that could be heard for miles. 
  There was merely a silver streak�though huge floodlights had been  rigged up to illuminate the rocket�and
  then floating down from the  heavens came a stream of sparks, cascading like some multicolored comet.
  Adam Ash stood beside his coupé, his head strained backward, and  watched those trailing sparks with tense
  fascination. Almost at the  same moment thunder rumbled far off, and a flash of lightning cut  through the sky.
  The grumble of the thunder perhaps covered the heavy step that  sounded behind Adam Ash.
  Too late, the public relations consul sensed the feeling of some  bulky object close to him, and whirled.
  The thing was a towering giant of man size, and its hair was red.  The facial features were set in a blank,
  chilling stare, the wide eyes  apparently fastened on some distant object.
  Adam Ash attempted to leap clear.
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  But powerful arms seized the young man’s slender form, whirled him  off his feet; from the giant’s throat
  there came a guttural, weird  chuckling.
  Adam Ash choked out, "Maximus�the goblin!" 
  Overhead, as though angered by the invasion of the manmade rocket,  the heavens loosened a thunderclap that
  drowned out Adam Ash’s frantic  cry.
  Chapter XV. STAIRWAY TO DOOM
  ANOTHER man had observed the trail of sparks from the moon rocket.  And then, later, he again peered
  heavenward as the storm gave muttering  warning of its approach.
  Doc Savage was that observer, but he was no longer near the crowds  gathered to watch the rocket’s fantastic
  flight.
  The bronze man had returned to his big sedan. He was able to contact  Monk and Ham with the short−wave
  radio this time, and shortly they put  in a bedraggled appearance. For once, the usually sartorially perfect
  lawyer was dust−smeared and grimy. Even the high polish of Ham’s sword  cane was dulled.
  Chemistry, the ape, looked moth−eaten.
  Monk reported complete failure in their search for Lonesome and his  men. He spoke sadly about Habeas, still
  missing.
  Doc told about trailing young Adam Ash.
  "You found that crook, then?" Monk asked.
  The bronze man shook his head. "No," he said. "And it seems apparent  that he is not a crook, Monk."
  "But�"
  "I’ve been checking up on him," Doc went on quietly. "Adam Ash is  Kay Uppercue’s fiancé. He is a close
  friend of Professor Uppercue.  Along with his public relations work here at the Fair, young Adam Ash  has
  been helping Martin Uppercue in his experiments at night. Ash is  somewhat of a scientist himself."
  Monk got his scarred face screwed up in a knot. He looked puzzled.
  "But Doc," he said, "I can’t savvy why this Adam Ash is hiding out�"
  "Because," the bronze man continued, "he was given something by  Martin Uppercue to protect. Uppercue
  was taking no chances. The metal  cylinder, which has strangely disappeared, was part of the mystery.
  Something that resembles a suitcase is another part. I believe Adam Ash  has it."
  Weary−looking Ham put in suddenly, "Here he comes now!"
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  ADAM ASH, tall and smartly dressed in his pin−striped trousers and  morning coat, walked up to Doc and his
  aids as though just meeting them  casually while out for a walk. He hardly looked like a person who had  been
  attempting to hide from some vague menace.
  Adam Ash said quite calmly, "I was looking for you, Mr. Savage."
  Doc Savage said nothing for a moment. But his flake−gold eyes were  unusually sharp. Some slightest change
  in the good−looking public  relations consul’s voice had been only noticeable to the bronze man.  That voice
  seemed just a trifle shrill.
  Doc finally said, "I missed you at the moon rocket send−off. Dr.  Mandroff told me you would be over there."
  Adam Ash nodded. "That’s right. I was watching that trail of sparks  behind it. Did you ever see anything
  quite so marvelous?"
  Doc Savage admitted that he had watched the show.
  Monk, listening curiously, had to get out a question that was  bothering him. Out it came with a rush.
  "Say, Ash," Monk piped shrilly, "you sure been actin’ funny. What’s  the idea?"
  The calmness dropped from Adam Ash’s dapper slender figure. He  looked worried.
  "I’m convinced I can trust you men," he said confidentially. "I have  learned of Doc Savage’s worth−while
  work since I first met you. Yes,  I’ve been keeping under cover. But now I think I need your help�your
  assistance to help save Martin Uppercue from something terrible about  to happen."
  "Yes?" prompted Doc Savage quietly.
  Adam Ash cast a worried look at the dark sky overhead. The thunder  was growing nearer. He said tensely, "If
  this storm breaks, the person  behind this mystery will do everything in his power to work the test  tonight."
  "What test?" Ham prodded.
  "The experiment in the Perisphere!" Adam Ash blurted fearfully. "But  first, they’ll need the metal cylinder.
  They’ve already stolen another  necessary unit from my coupé. If we could get into the Perisphere,  perhaps�"
  The bronze man appeared uneasy. He said, "Monk, try to contact Long  Tom from the car."
  The hairy chemist leaped to obey Doc’s order.
  A second later, he returned, to report, "Long Tom’s down in  Uppercue’s laboratory, Doc. Says he’s located
  that real metal cylinder.  Says to send somebody over there quick�"
  Adam Ash seemed to reach a sudden conclusion. He addressed Doc  Savage.
  "I know a way into the Perisphere, even though it’s closed," he put  in quickly. "Monk and Ham, here, can go
  and meet your man named Long  Tom. But right now, we’ve got to stop a fiend up there in the  Perisphere!"
  Doc Savage prepared to leave with Adam Ash. "You mean," he asked,  "the Perisphere is the location of that
  secret operating room?"
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  Ash nodded jerkily. "And more!" he cried. "Tonight, if the storm  breaks, a new Man of Tomorrow will be
  created!"
  A moment later the bronze man was hurrying toward the huge, looming  Perisphere with Adam Ash. Monk
  and Ham had gone partway, to circle the  globe in an opposite direction and enter Uppercue’s laboratory near
  its  base.
  Neither Doc nor his assistants could have known of the appearance of  Maximus, the goblin, as Adam Ash
  watched the moon rocket’s blazing  trail!
  IT had started to rain. With the occasional flashes of lightning,  the threat of the coming storm, the night Fair
  visitors were rapidly  leaving the grounds. Besides, it was getting late now, and it appeared  that the storm was
  going to be a bad one.
  Doc Savage and trim−looking Adam Ash passed an entrance to the  globular Perisphere that was guarded by a
  uniformed Fair officer. This  was at the same door that Long Tom had tried to enter earlier today.
  But now Adam Ash walked up to the man in uniform, spoke a few words,  and the cop turned to unlock a
  heavy entrance door. He gave a friendly  smile as Doc and the public relations consul stepped inside the
  mammoth  globe.
  They seemed to be in some sort of walled shell, much like the inner  "skin" of a great ocean liner’s hold.
  Within this double−walled shell  was a curving ladder that snaked upward into gloom.
  Adam Ash abruptly indicated the ladder and said sharply, "You won’t  walk up that, bronze guy. You’ll be
  carried up!"
  He stepped aside and a half a dozen assorted gunmen leaped from dark  corners of the arc−shaped room. The
  leader was the man of the beady  eyes and the hell−let’s−go−out−and−ring−doorbells grinning face.
  Lonesome! His voice was a harsh snarl.
  Lonesome said, "Watch out this bronze mug doesn’t go for one of his  trick gadgets! Close in on him careful,
  you birds!" Then he continued  eating the apple which he held in his hand.
  Six menacing automatics cautiously closed in on Doc Savage. The  weapons were in the steady hands of the
  hardfaced men.
  Doc was ordered to put his hands behind his back.
  Strangely, the bronze man offered no resistance. And right beneath  Doc’s armpits, if he moved his arms in a
  certain way, were hidden small  containers that would have sprayed an enveloping black gas into the  faces of
  all.
  But Doc Savage allowed himself to be tied hand and foot.
  "Get Maximus!" Adam Ash ordered sharply. He referred to the goblin.
  A moment later, the huge, shambling thing with the red hair came  through a nearby door. It stood before tall
  Adam Ash, its staring,  blank eyes fastened on the public relations consul in a fixed manner.
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  With a soothing, strange tone, Adam Ash directed, "Maximus, you are  going to carry the bronze man to the
  operating room on top of the  Perisphere. Understand?"
  The giant creature made a queer throat sound. It moved close to Doc  Savage.
  DOC was tense, unmoving. His metallic features showed no expression,  no indication of his thoughts as he
  studied the goblin known as  Maximus. He saw the bloodshot eyes of the thing, the broad, vacant  stare of the
  set face, the drab−gray, loose clothing that covered the  massive body.
  Doc was lifted into the huge man−creature’s arms. Slowly,  monotonously, Maximus started the long climb up
  the curving ladder.
  The bronze man knew that they were mounting the great arc of the  Perisphere shell, going higher and higher
  toward that strange operating  room in the very top of the globe. Outside, rain hammered down and beat
  against the sides of steel. The rumble of thunder increased, and the  huge ball seemed to tremble.
  Somewhere behind the bronze man, the voice of Adam Ash queried, "All  exit doors are locked and barred?"
  The gloomy voice of Lonesome replied, "The devil himself couldn’t  get in, boss. The only escape now is
  down the chute."
  Adam Ash’s voice seemed to be dropping back.
  He said, "Then we’ll go to meet that Long Tom and the others. We  sent Monk and the lawyer to meet him."
  There was a shrill laugh, a  satisfied sound from Adam Ash.
  Someone said, "Jeez, boss, are you goin’ to start the thing?"
  "That," came Adam Ash’s voice faintly, "is the main idea."
  And high up on the upper half of the great globe, still gripped in  the arms of the goblin as the creature
  climbed, Doc Savage recalled  that small generator model in the laboratory of Martin Uppercue,  beneath this
  very giant sphere.
  The model represented a type of spherical generator which had been  developed on a huge scale by various
  electric manufacturing companies.  Its design was known to be more efficient than any other type. Millions  of
  volts had been generated in tests with various ones built.
  And now� 
  Doc Savage’s thoughts leaped to different parts of the table model  he had inspected briefly. Yet that
  inspection had been sufficient for  the bronze man to retain an exact picture of the whole unit itself.
  Martin Uppercue’s spherical generator was an exact reproduction  of the giant Perisphere!
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  Chapter XVI. MAD MENACE
  ONE of the reasons for the success of Doc Savage’s constant fight  against evil−doers throughout the world,
  was the close unity between  the Man of Bronze and his aids.
  A spoken word from the giant bronze man, and any one of Doc’s  assistants could be depended upon to follow
  through with some  particular assignment.
  Doc Savage had mentioned to Long Tom, the electrical expert,  something about the small model generator in
  Martin Uppercue’s  laboratory. Immediately the unhealthy−looking aid’s quick mind had  followed the bronze
  man’s trend of thoughts.
  As soon as possible, Long Tom had therefore returned to Uppercue’s  laboratory, somewhere beneath the
  great Perisphere.
  It was here that he had contacted Monk, at the short−wave set in  Dock’s car, announcing that he had located
  the odd metal cylinder.
  Long Tom had found the thin tube hidden in a cabinet near a  workbench where the model generator was set
  up.
  Placing the cylinder to one side, the quick hands of Long Tom had  gone to work on the model itself. It was
  quickly dismantled. The  electrical wizard’s sharp eyes widened as he worked swiftly.
  He located the small missing part and, from quick calculations, saw  that the unit which was needed fitted in at
  the very top of the  spherical motor. In actual size, it would be the shape of a long  suitcase.
  Long Tom remembered the "accumulator" that the bronze man had  mentioned.
  Recently, Long Tom had lectured before a group of famous engineers  on the possibilities of such an
  accumulator. The atomic machine was a  unit capable of storing unlimited power. Hooked into a power
  transmission line, an accumulator would be capable of draining the  current and putting out all lights in a
  large−sized city.
  One thing had halted the perfection of such an invention. A perfect  insulator was needed with which to
  protect the suitcase−sized unit,  when in operation in connection with a huge, spherical generator.
  Long Tom was intently studying the one tiny part of the model that  was missing. He knew now that Martin
  Uppercue, fearful lest someone  should steal his secret, had left something out of that small−scale  model. He
  had also� 
  Abruptly, there was a commotion behind the electrical wizard. He  whirled to face those who had come into
  the passageway from outside.
  It was the waspish−looking Ham, arguing with hairy Monk as they  hurried into the laboratory. Behind them
  trailed Chemistry, the small  chimp.
  Monk squealed excitedly, "Long Tom, look! That guy Adam Ash is with  Doc, an’ he had a clue to somethin’.
  We’re all to hurry and meet them.  Maybe we’ll find the girls there, too; and like I was tellin’ Ham�"
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  Ham managed a pained sneer. "Wait till that Adam Ash learns you’re  on the make for his girl, you missing
  link! There’s going to be trouble  starting�"
  From the vaultilke door leading to the larger laboratory beyond,  well−dressed Adam Ash said coldly:
  "Trouble has already started, friends!"
  TALL Adam Ash stepped into the room with an object in his hand that  had been taken from Doc Savage
  when he was brought, drugged, to the  secret operating room. It was the machine pistol, a deadly weapon
  when  the regular high−powered explosive bullets were used.
  Long Tom saw, with a start, that the drum attached to the weapon was  loaded.
  Hairy Monk’s small eyes had blinked rapidly at the sight of Adam  Ash. He let out a bull roar.
  "You tricked Doc!" the powerful chemist yelled. "You�"
  Monk suddenly whipped a pistol from his torn clothing and started  blazing away.
  But Adam Ash had acted a split second before the gun cut loose. He  had leaped back through the protecting,
  heavy vault door, to take up a  position behind the steel casement.
  From somewhere deeper in that room, came a shattering roar as one of  the gunmen with Adam Ash loosened
  a hail of machine−gun lead.
  Pellets spattered the walls near the heads of Monk and Ham. Long Tom  had leaped for a corner of the room
  and switched off the ceiling lights.
  Adam Ash was shouting orders above the roar of gunfire. Another  death gun took up its nerve−racking
  chatter.
  And then, from the only other passageway leading out of this  underground room, Lonesome’s sad−sounding
  voice yelled, "I’m lockin’  the door, boss. Give ‘em the gas!"
  The door slammed to the passageway that could have been the only  possible exit for the three aids of Doc
  Savage.
  Immediately from the vaultlike opening through which an orange−red  stream of gunfire was coming, there
  was the sinister hiss of gas.
  Chemistry was squealing.
  Monk howled, "Blast ‘em! I’m goin’ through that door and get that  traitor Adam Ash! I’m gonna�"
  "Wait, you fool!" Ham snapped in the darkness. "I’ve got something  that will knock those devils out of their
  shoes. Here, give me a hand."
  Monk located the lawyer’s voice. Ham was crouched in a corner of the  darkened room, out of range of the
  deadly machine−gun fire.
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  As Monk crept up to his side, Ham said, "I’ve got a hand grenade.  Picked it up from Doc’s car before we
  came over here. But the pin’s  stuck. Here, take a hold."
  Monk reached out to help, bellowing happily, "For once, shyster, I  got to admit you’re smart. Wait’ll we toss
  this pineapple at those  birds�"
  The chemist struggled with the jammed pin in the hand grenade.  Luckily, it did not release.
  For the knockout−gas fumes that enveloped the three aids and the  pet, Chemistry, within the next two
  seconds put them swiftly to sleep.
  DAPPER Adam Ash gave terse orders a few moments later as Monk, Ham,  Long Tom and the pet were
  carried from Uppercue’s laboratory.
  An exhaust fan�located in one wall of the lab�had been turned on and  the room quickly cleared of the gas
  fumes.
  The public relations consul’s eyes were cold, and there was a smirk  on his thin lips. "This," he said to the
  grinning−faced thug beside  him, "takes care of Doc Savage’s crowd. Take them up to the operating  room,
  Lonesome."
  Lonesome looked incongruous with the heavy machine gun cradled in  his arm. For he was still wearing the
  high silk hat and "tails." The  fixed grin of his mouth hardly went with the menacing Tommy. "Hell,  chief,
  let’s give it to them right here."
  The eyes of Adam Ash snapped. "You’re forgetting the experiment, you  fool. Take them above�up the
  catwalk." The queer, shrill tone that Doc  Savage had noted, was now back in Adam’s Ash’s voice.
  The three aids and the pet were carried through the big motor room  where Doc had first found Kay Uppercue.
  The catwalk took the men high  above the electrical equipment of massive size. Somewhere in the long,
  high−ceilinged room, there was the soft, steady purr of a small booster  dynamo running.
  Gunmen reached the small opening in the ceiling, a direct opening  into the huge Perisphere above. Iron steps
  led upward.
  Adam Ash paused to see that everyone was out of the big motor room  below. Then, with a twisted grin on his
  lips, he stepped to a heavily  insulated control panel built near the catwalk.
  Large contact switches of varying sizes were at his fingertips. Adam  Ash started slapping the switches
  home�closing the electric circuits.
  Immediately, the motor hum in the power room increased. 
  Like the shrill "winding up" of a big transport plane inertia  starter, the motor hum increased to an
  ear−splitting howl.
  Adam Ash laughed with almost insane glee. "And now," he grinned,  "the real generator starts!"
  Above him, waiting in the entranceway to the huge Perisphere, the  grinning−faced Lonesome commented:
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  "That little dude, Shill Burns, didn’t do bad when he led those guys  our way, boss!"
  They moved on into the place above.
  THIS was the vast, awe−inspiring interior of the Perisphere itself.  But now a strange transformation was
  taking place. Levers that Adam Ash  had thrown had started a movement of giant−sized units in the
  two−hundred−foot−high globe.
  Sections of a massive machine were swinging out into position  overhead. The men carrying Doc’s aids
  paused a moment and stared in  wide−eyed wonder. One thug shivered slightly.
  "Hell, boss," he gasped, "if this thing ever gets out of control�"
  Adam Ash snapped an order. "Move!" he said shrilly. "Take those  fools up the curved ladder. The movable
  platform has been dismantled.  Others are guarding Doc Savage and the rest, above."
  Lonesome, his own voice a trifle awed, remained behind, to query,  "Say, chief, that storm is sure goin’ to be a
  corker!"
  Outside the great steel ball, the fury of the universe seemed to  have been unleashed against the Perisphere.
  Thunder cracked ominously;  a steady trembling took place beneath the sphere’s very foundation.
  Adam Ash laughed queerly.
  Sounds of the storm seemed to remind him of one more thing to be  done. He stepped toward a barred exit
  doorway near the base of the  Perisphere.
  Loosening a heavy steel bar, he opened the door to let in a burst of  wind and rain. A lightning flash revealed
  his satanic face for an  instant.
  Adam Ash said, "I’ll get back through the laboratory entrance. Bar  this last exit. There’s one thing I must do."
  Lonesome stood there grinning, his voice gloomy. "But, chief, you  better not�"
  "That fool, Shill Burns, must be located," finished Ash. "He’s just  dumb enough to stumble onto something.
  I’ve got to get him also."
  The queer laugh that Adam Ash gave as he disappeared into the night  sent a chilly feather of ice racing down
  his henchman, Lonesome’s,  spine.
  Lonesome had been standing polishing an apple on his sleeve. Ready  to take a bite, he lowered the apple and
  stood with his mouth half open.
  Chapter XVII. THE GENERATOR STARTS
  SHILL BURNS was not a brave man. But the flashily dressed little  talker was an opportunist. Any little
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  racket in which he could collect  his own ten cents’ worth�while still keeping within the law�appealed to  the
  gum−chewing little sharpshooter.
  Burns had seen a chance to cash in on the Martin Uppercue  disappearance, and the night he had followed the
  strange figure of the  goblin�Maximus�−to the Marine Amphitheater on the lake, he had really  been sincere
  when directing Monk and Ham to the stage. Shill Burns had  hoped for a nice retainer.
  When Lonesome and his men had struck, Shill Burns got scared and ran  for cover. He had hidden out
  throughout that night and the next day.
  But now, moving like a little wet terrier in the rain and scary  claps of thunder, he was stalking the deserted
  Fair Grounds, trying to  bring himself to call the police. He knew, somehow, that Doc Savage was  in trouble.
  Yet Shill Burns was afraid to contact the law. He had been  mixed in shady dealings in the past.
  Shill Burns spent an hour trying to make up his mind.
  He went back to his little concession office with the determination  that he would put through the phone call.
  And tall, gray−eyed Dr.  Alexis Mandroff was there waiting for him.
  Shill Burns had seen the doctor several times, knew him by  reputation. He was surprised at this
  complimentary visit.
  Dr. Mandroff smiled and asked, "You’re Shill Burns, da?"
  Shill’s chest expanded.
  "No other, friend, no other. To whom am I obligated for this�"
  Dr. Alexis Mandroff’s light features grew suddenly serious.
  "Doc Savage, a friend of mine, once mentioned you," Mandroff hurried  on. "Now he and some of his aids are
  missing. I thought you might be  able to help me locate them. I’m afraid something has happened�"
  Shill Burns suddenly decided that he had kept still long enough.
  "My friend," he said confidentially, getting his gum out of the way,  "that thought is mutual. I’m telling you,
  it’s something beyond our  grasp. And yet I have an idea�yes, an idea�"
  "What?" interrupted Dr. Mandroff, trying not to appear impatient.
  "Now you take that Perisphere," said Shill Burns. "There’s something  damned mysterious going on there�"
  "Then we should investigate," suggested Mandroff. He was carrying a  cane, and wearing the expensive
  fawn−colored gloves. He stepped toward  the door. The doctor was also wearing a cape against the downpour
  outside.
  Shill Burns grabbed a coat and quickly followed. He said worriedly,  "Friend, I gotta hunch Doc Savage is
  somewhere in that damned  globe."
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  WHEN Doc Savage was carried into the weird operating room atop the  Perisphere globe, and untied to be
  guarded by the ponderous, red−haired  Maximus, he had made no attempt to escape.
  For the bronze man had permitted himself to be brought here. It was  in this place that he had hoped to find
  the others�Martin Uppercue and  the two girls.
  For the bronze giant had suspected Adam Ash’s trickery! 
  Martin Uppercue was there, tied again in a chair, and close by were  also the bound, shapely figures of lovely
  Pat Savage and the pretty Kay  Uppercue. The girls’ faces were pallid, drawn from their dire  experience, and
  yet Pat Savage managed a smile.
  Doc, after being searched to make certain he was unarmed, had been  permitted freedom by gunmen who
  stood guard in the room. Besides, the  brute−sized Maximus stood towering nearby.
  Doc had thought first of the girls.
  They were all in the smaller room adjoining the operating room.
  Pat Savage said cheerfully, "for once, my dear cousin, I looked for  trouble and found it! Are you angry?"
  The bronze man was silent. For Doc knew that only one ending awaited  all of them now: death!
  He turned to little white−haired Martin Uppercue.
  The scientist said, "Thanks, Doc Savage, for almost rescuing me once  before in this room. But I’m afraid
  there will be no chance at a rescue  again." Uppercue looked significantly at the menacing guns in the hands
  of the guards close by.
  His voice was weary, though no fear showed in the little bright−eyed  man’s face.
  "You know what’s in there?" Uppercue asked, nodding toward the  adjoining, larger room.
  Grinning, the gunmen permitted Doc Savage to look.
  The bronze man saw more bound figures laid out on tables near the  weird operating platform. Above the
  heads of the stupefied victims,  rain slashed the opaque glass of the convex skylight. Lightning seemed  to leap
  right out of the heavens above and smash against the glass  covering. The broken pane had been patched.
  Doc returned and spoke to the scientist. "Those are the missing Fair  visitors who were jabbed with
  hypodermic needles in the crowds. I  almost got the same treatment from Lonesome, myself. They were to be
  used to fake the Man of Tomorrow publicity surrounding your own  experiment."
  Uppercue nodded his bushy white head.
  "Correct," he said. "No man can create a man. That poor devil,  Maximus, was a Fair visitor himself, once. He
  was given injections of  thyroxine and adrenalin�and changed rapidly into a pituitary giant.  But, in the
  experiment, his will power was destroyed. Now he only  follows the directions of that masked devil who has
  him hypnotized."
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  Doc mentioned that he was aware of the method used. He had figured  something like this when he had
  checked with the gatekeeper about the  missing persons, and when an attempt had been made to jab himself
  with  a hypo near the Hall of Medicine.
  He said, "The Man of Tomorrow stuff was merely publicity to draw the  Fair crowds�and a shield to cover
  your own experiments. But the masked  surgeon cashed in on it. Obviously he is mad enough to really believe
  a  superman can be created."
  Across the room, small Kay Uppercue and Pat Savage were staring in  open−mouthed horror.
  Doc’s metallic features were tense. "Given the proper voltage, life  might possibly be brought to body cells,"
  he continued. "That is  something of this masked one’s idea, I believe."
  Just then there was a disturbance at the door.
  HAM and Monk, along with Long Tom and the pet ape, were carried into  the room. The three aids had
  started to regain consciousness. Monk was  struggling like a bull ape to break loose from several scar−faced
  captors.
  Monk saw the two girls and let out a roar of protest.
  "What the hell do you mean, tyin’ them girls up like that?" he  bellowed.
  In the doorway behind them, Lonesome said gloomily, "I’m going to  take pleasure in rubbing out that
  dish−faced guy!"
  Before Monk could think of a suitable retort, everyone was held  tense by the strange vibration that began to
  fill the room.
  The bronze man’s gaze flicked to the scientist, Uppercue, and he saw  the look of utter horror in the little
  man’s eyes.
  Professor Uppercue stammered, "My God! He . . . he’s started the  Perisphere generator!"
  The hum of some massive motor was slowly, inexorably increasing into  a deep−throbbed whine.
  Even several of Lonesome’s gunmen looked nervous.
  One said, "Say, Lonesome, where’s the chief? I don’t think it’s  goin’ to be so damned healthy hangin’ around
  here much longer!" The  gunman was jittery about the electrical whine below them.
  Lonesome rapped, "Shut up!"
  As everyone listened in awe to the weird, slowly increasing speed of  the mammoth generator in the massive
  ball beneath them, a guard  suddenly appeared and shoved two more figures into the room. He said to
  Lonesome:
  "I caught these two guys snoopin’ around!" 
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  The two newest captives were the loudly dressed Shill Burns and tall  Dr. Alexis Mandroff.
  Chapter XVIII. UNMASKED FIEND
  EVERYONE stared at the last two captives brought in.
  Shill Burns, protesting volubly, clutched regal−looking Dr. Alexis  Mandroff’s arm and cried:
  "Like I said, Doc, you’re important! You got connections here at the  Fair. Tell ‘em they can’t get away with
  this�"
  The blond−haired, tall doctor shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.
  "It looks," he said quietly, "as though you and I have nothing to  say about that."
  The masked fiend, through his chief henchman, Lonesome, now had  captured everyone who might frustrate
  his plans.
  It was hairy Monk, kicking up a fuss as he tried to wriggle out of  his bonds, who croaked hollowly, "All
  right, where is he? Where’s that  yahoo behind all this trouble�that Adam Ash?"
  Petite Kay Uppercue, hearing Monk’s words, stared out of  horror−filled eyes. She stammered: "You . . . you
  said . . . Adam Ash�"
  Doc Savage knew that the small blond girl had been engaged to the  good−looking public relations consul,
  Adam Ash.
  Monk realized his error. The way in which he looked at Kay Uppercue  said that he thought she was swell,
  and now to have blurted that Adam  Ash was the real fiend� 
  It was Dr. Mandroff who interjected with: "Do you mean to say that  young Adam Ash is the one behind all
  this? Why, I never dreamed�" His  voice broke off shrilly.
  The well−known doctor looked at the bronze man, at others in the  room.
  Kay Uppercue was crying softly.
  Pat Savage, stiffly erect in the chair in which she was tied, looked  at Doc Savage.
  Like Monk, Dr. Mandroff realized his error.
  He said thoughtfully, "I’m sorry, Miss Uppercue. I . . . I didn’t  understand."
  Only the bronze man himself had been acting strangely.
  DOC SAVAGE appeared not to have heard the others. Instead, he had  been intently regarding the massive
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  figure of Maximus stationed near  himself to act as guard.
  Doc had caught the huge giant’s stary eyes, was looking into their  depths peculiarly with his own. The bronze
  man’s compelling eyes were  like unwavering, accusing pools of restless gold.
  Everyone stiffened as the bronze man spoke.
  With great tonal inflection, Doc Savage ordered: "Maximus! You are  listening to me now, understand? You
  are to obey me."
  The increasing generator vibration that gripped the whole Perisphere  seemed to lend power to the bronze
  man’s words.
  "Maximus�bring us Adam Ash!" rapped Doc Savage. 
  Slowly, eyes fixed ahead as though in a trance, huge Maximus  shuffled step by step to the center of the room.
  Fascinated, Lonesome’s accomplices stepped aside, held spellbound.  The gunmen had seemed to forget that
  the bronze man was unguarded, now  that Maximus had moved away from his side.
  In the middle of the room, Maximus paused. Close above his towering  form, the smaller glass skylight of this
  inner room was within reach.  The giant figure reached up, released a catch and slid the panel back  on a
  groove.
  Even Pat Savage shuddered slightly as the fury of the storm lashed  into the room. Thunder rolled in great
  waves; jagged streaks of white  lightning seemed to leap to the very opening above.
  The huge hands of Maximus reached outward into the storm�and dragged  from the roof of the massive steel
  ball a soaked, limp form.
  The half−conscious figure of Adam Ash was dragged to the bronze  man’s feet!
  Pat Savage gasped.
  Kay Uppercue crowded her small knuckles against her teeth and tried  to stifle a scream.
  Monk’s eyes almost bulged in their pits of gristle. He piped, "Now,  how in hell�"
  Maximus stood dumbly by, awaiting the bronze man’s next order.
  The mind of Doc Savage, his great will power, had conquered another  sinister brain that controlled the one of
  the dumb brute!
  LONG TOM had been roughly dumped in a corner of the room when  dragged into the strange Perisphere
  hide−out. But he had twisted to one  elbow now. He asked of Doc: "But . . . but if Adam Ash wasn’t the
  masked man, then who�"
  Others, too, were asking that question silently. Even the hard−faced  thugs of Lonesome were staring at Doc
  Savage. Apparently none had ever  known the true identity of the masked director of crime, and now� 
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  One thug asked, "Then where is the masked guy?"
  Through the room, even above the ever−increasing moan of the  monstrous generator in this sphere
  underneath them, an exotic trilling  note floated. It was the identifying sound the Man of Bronze made in
  moments of mental stress�or perhaps approach to near danger.
  And covered by the generator whine, no one had heard the stifled  exclamation, the intake of breath of another
  person in that room.
  Yet Doc Savage had heard�because he had been listening for that very  thing.
  It was Martin Uppercue who cried, "But the accumulator! It is  priceless! Where is it, Doc Savage?"
  Again the bronze man looked at Maximus. He said firmly, steadily, in  that strangely compelling tone:
  "Maximus, now get the accumulator."
  The huge man−monster again moved toward the middle of the room,  leaned one hand on the table and
  reached upward with the other into the  rain that was hammering into the room.
  The hand of Maximus paused. He turned uncertainly, his staring−eyed  gaze going to Doc Savage, and then
  shifting away, as though pulled by  some other force.
  Doc Savage said tensely, "One man in this room has controlled  Maximus. He is trying to overcome my power
  over this dumb servant now.  Because that person also needs the metal cylinder�and someone in  this room
  has it!"
  The bronze man’s words must have proved a startling shock to the  real villain. For the moment, his control
  over Maximus was lost. The  huge giant again looked at Doc Savage, seemed to nod in agreement�and
  reached again toward the roof opening.
  There was a shrill cry of anger from a person near Doc Savage. A man  plunged toward the table directly
  beneath the open roof skylight.
  The well−tailored form of Dr. Alexis Mandroff, his wet cape  billowing out behind him, mounted the table in
  a single swift bound.  Agile, slender hands clawed the roof opening and the blond−haired man  raised himself
  swiftly out of sight.
  Alexis Mandroff’s face had been twisted with maniacal fury.
  DOC SAVAGE fired orders.
  "Maximus! Help the hairy one. And the man with the sword cane by his  side. Untie them. Hurry!"
  Spellbound by the sudden exposure of a man they did not even know  had employed them, the bulging−eyed
  gunmen were slow to move. The ropes  were yanked from Monk Mayfair’s wrists by Maximus, with one
  powerful  twist, and the release of Ham followed.
  The hairy chemist dived headfirst into a slow−moving thug, grabbed a  gun and let out a whoop.
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  "I’m sure gonna raise havoc now!" Monk bawled.
  Monk blasted away with the gun.
  A thug returned the fire, but his aim was wild. Perhaps he, too, had  been startled by the form of Dr. Mandroff
  leaping out onto the very top  of the globe of steel.
  Uppercue was screaming, "The accumulator! He’s after the  accumulator, Doc Savage."
  But the bronze man had swung with powerful, cabled arms out to the  slippery, rain−swept roof. Two hundred
  feet below lay the  lightning−illuminated Fair Grounds. More than a dozen steps either way  from that small
  opening atop the Perisphere, and the bronze man’s form  would skid to swift doom on the curved, slick
  surfaces of the sphere.
  And towering over all, seemingly only a few feet away, rose the  three−sided spire that was the Trylon. It
  lofted still another half  thousand feet above the globe of steel�and from its sides now bombarded  flashes of
  light.
  The Trylon, during a storm, was constantly struck by lightning which  harmlessly followed its tapered length
  into the earth.
  Doctor Mandroff had whirled back toward the bronze man with an  object in his hand. It was a long case,
  approximately the size of a  large suitcase. He snarled shrilly:
  "Even you cannot stop me now, Doc Savage. I’m going back down there  into the room!"
  With his free hand, he fired the .45 automatic.
  Doc Savage had been in the act of hurtling at Alexis Mandroff.  Weight had been thrown forward on the balls
  of the bronze man’s feet.  The heavy .45 slug caught him in the chest, and he pitched sideward, to  roll toward
  the curve of the roof that dropped off sharply to the wide  circular mall far below.
  OUT here in the storm−lashed night, the weird roar of the Perisphere  generator was a thing that penetrated
  far. It was like the combined  bumblebee hum of a thousand bombing planes. It was not a deafening  sound,
  but rather a vibration that sent a strange chill through all.
  It was too late for Fair visitors now�yet many had gathered far  below the spot where Doc Savage and
  Mandroff were fighting.
  Those persons were the Fair police, attracted by the uncanny sound  of the giant generator, and hundreds of
  late workers and exhibitors who  had been on their way home for the night.
  Prowl car sirens screamed like insignificant play horns, against the  greater noise enveloping all. Armed
  coppers battered against the heavy,  steel−barred doors that had been closed at the Perisphere base. No one
  could find a way inside.
  And as Doc Savage was seen by Mandroff to slip toward a plunge of  death, the mad−eyed doctor leaped back
  into the roof room with the  precious accumulator case in his hand.
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  But Mandroff had not figured on the trained hands, the fingers of  Doc Savage. Daily, the bronze man
  exercised various parts of his  marvelous body. Those bronze−colored hands contained a grip of steel.
  Doc’s fingers had splayed as he struck the curved roof. Fingertips  had flattened mightily against the wet steel
  surface. Like a vacuum−cup  tire grips a slippery pavement, Doc’s fingertips had stopped his slide.
  Slowly, he pulled himself back to the roof opening. He had not been  injured by the .45 slug. Doc’s
  bulletproof vest had stopped that bullet.
  But the force of the shot, catching the bronze man partially off  balance as it did, had been enough to make
  him slip back on the  sleek−surfaced globe.
  Doc Savage leaped back toward the Perisphere room.
  Chapter XIX. DEATH STRIKES HIGH UP
  A TERRIFIC battle was taking place within the room of the Perisphere.
  Hairy Monk had taken time out between pile−driver swings, at  Lonesome’s men, to leap to Long Tom’s side.
  The skinny−looking  electrical expert had been lying helplessly in the same corner of the  room. Monk swiftly
  unbound his wrists.
  Yet Long Tom made no attempt to get up and join the mêlée. One leg  remained stiffly straight before him on
  the floor, as though broken.
  But Long Tom picked up a crook’s fallen gun and bopped heads as Monk  and Ham sent dizzy victims flying
  his way.
  And huge Maximus, apparently still obeying the will of the great  bronze man, joined in to help Doc’s aids.
  One of Lonesome’s henchmen saw the twisted face and figure of Dr.  Mandroff plunge back into the room
  from the roof opening. He took one  glimpse at the hurtling Mandroff, and bawled, "Me, I’m gettin’ outa  here!
  This damned Perisphere is goin’ to shake itself apart any minute!"
  The thug went diving through the secret panel wall opening that Doc  and Long Tom had once before used.
  Another gunman followed, yelling in  fear. The great sphere of steel was actually vibrating on its base. It
  appeared that over a hundred thousand tons of metal threatened to  collapse at any second.
  Monk let out a yell and raced to the wall opening where the thug had  disappeared down the chute. He was
  holding something solid in his hairy  fist, jerking at the object with his other hand.
  Then Monk bellowed, "I got it, Ham. I got that danged pin outa the  grenade. Lookit this, will ya!" He tossed
  the bomb, and a second later  there was a tremendous roar somewhere below in the escape chute that  led to the
  underground pipe lines.
  It was Long Tom who cried shrilly, "Fool! That’s the only way out of  here. We’re all doomed now!"
  Monk looked startled.
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  In the excitement, they saw Mandroff for the first time.
  The doctor, with the heavy suitcase−shaped accumulator in his hand,  had leaped past the fight to reach an
  outer wall of the room. This roof  prison was built between two outer layers of the steel Perisphere, and  in that
  outer wall was another four−foot−wide partition of thin steel.
  MANDROFF had pushed a wall lever to raise a partition of that outer  narrow room. He plunged inside and
  yanked something downward with his  hand.
  He turned, his eyes wild, his face contorted.
  "Fools! No one can reach me now. There’s an escape ladder in here.  As soon as I charge this thing, I’ll send
  you all to doom beneath tons  of crushed steel�by letting the Perisphere generator run wild and tear  itself
  loose!"
  Monk and Ham drew up short, to stare. Apparently nothing separated  them from the wild−eyed doctor.
  Doc Savage came hurtling into the room from just above as Monk, with  a howl, dived toward nearby Alexis
  Mandroff. 
  Monk said, "I’ll get that guy�"
  And then he gave a yip of pain. The hairy chemist had cracked his  head against something that appeared to be
  only empty space between him  and the doctor.
  From where he was still tied, Professor Uppercue exclaimed, "It’s a  sheet of shatterproof, invisible glass. You
  can’t reach him�"
  The little scientist’s alert eyes suddenly popped like round  saucers. "Look! He’s putting the accumulator into
  the slot! My God,  we’ll all be�"
  The bronze man’s brain had remembered the model generator  construction in that fleeting, precious instant.
  He said, "But he needs  the insulator�the steel cylinder."
  Abruptly Doc went into whirlwind action. He started shoving everyone  toward the adjoining operating room.
  He slammed orders at Monk and Ham.
  "Get everyone out of here!" yelled Doc. "There’s no time to untie  anyone. Take them, chairs and all. Hurry!"
  The bronze giant had already swung helpless Pat Savage and Kay  Uppercue up by a chair in each arm. He
  plunged through the doorway.
  The room was cleared in seconds. The bronze man was the only one to  see the crazed Alexis Mandroff’s last
  movements.
  Behind the glass screen, the doctor had finally worked the heavy  accumulator into a special groove made for
  it somewhere in the  Perisphere generator outer wall.
  There was a sudden peculiar humming. And then the ozone smell that  electricity makes when burning.
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  Doc Savage himself moved back into the room with the others.
  But from the large glass skylight of this larger room, everyone saw  the weird arc of flaming lightning that
  came from the very heavens  above, from the top−most point of the skyscraper−high Trylon that  adjoined the
  great ball.
  There was a horrible crash, and the Perisphere seemed to rock and  sway. In the outer shell room where Alexis
  Mandroff was crouched,  liquid fire split the thin steel wall at his back. Steel melted around  that spot, melted
  like a thin scrap of tin caught in thousands of  degrees heat. Molten steel splashed off the side of the
  Perisphere at  that one concentrated point.
  There was a single scream of horror from the doctor.
  Then there was only the stench of flesh and the ozone smell.
  Alexis Mandroff had died the death of white−hot fire.
  BREATHLESS seconds passed. No one moved in the outer room that had  been protected by the second inner
  wall of the great sphere.
  Professor Martin Uppercue breathed finally, "We . . . we’d better  not let the girls look!"
  Doc Savage had gone into the small room close to the shell partition  where Mandroff had sealed himself in.
  The bronze man said quietly,  "There’s nothing to see. Only dust!"
  Dust was all that remained of the fiend who had been Mandroff.
  Suddenly, Monk yelled, "Hey, Doc! The blasted thing’s stoppin’.  Listen! The Perisphere generator’s dyin’
  down!"
  It was true. The whine that had accompanied the awful trembling of  the massive sphere was fading. Vibration
  slackened.
  Doc said, "Perhaps Martin Uppercue can tell you the explanation of  that�and of Mandroff’s death."
  The bronze man had released the small, bright−eyed scientist.
  Uppercue said shakily: "The accumulator is my invention. It might be  compared to a storage battery. Only it
  stores power�thousands and  thousands of volts of energy. The Perisphere generator�the largest  spherical
  generator ever designed�was needed to charge the  accumulator. It would only take the massive generator
  below a matter of  seconds to completely charge it."
  "But how�" Ham started to ask curiously.
  Uppercue went on swiftly, his keen eyes bright. "Mandroff had been  to my laboratory often. He had seen that
  model of the Perisphere  generator. I told him, and others, in order to cover my real work, that  we were
  planning a Man of Tomorrow experiment and thus needed greater  electrical generation than had ever before
  been produced."
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  Ham had to get the question out. "But why was he killed?"
  Doc Savage answered the query.
  "Because Mandroff failed to use the one thing needed to make the  accumulator a success," he explained.
  "That is the insulator, which  Uppercue, here, had in the metal cylinder�the cylinder he tried so  valiantly to
  protect, and which Long Tom found hidden back in his  laboratory. The insulator was needed while charging
  the accumulator,  and to protect it after receiving that charge. Without it�"
  The bronze man indicated the space where Dr. Alexis Mandroff had  only a few moments before been.
  "Instead," Doc went on, "when no insulation was there to hold that  terrific Perisphere charge within the
  accumulator, the great voltage  kicked back and drew the bolt of lightning from the Trylon�and at  the same
  time, shorted the Perisphere generator and perhaps saved us  all."
  Uppercue nodded, said in an awed voice, "Yes. The generator below  us, tons of steel and power, would have
  probably run wild and torn the  Perisphere to pieces."
  For once in his scrappy life, hairy Monk was silent for two full  moments. Then he blurted, "Say�gosh!"
  DOC SAVAGE interrupted the questions to take care of Adam Ash. The  young public relations consul was
  still dazed, and there might be a  brain concussion. The bronze man showed Ham and Monk how to get back
  to  the narrow steel ladder inside the Perisphere "skin." Unarmed thugs  guarded by Monk and Ham were put
  to work carrying Adam Ash below.
  Soon coppers who had been battering at the lower Perisphere locked  exits had been admitted and were
  climbing up here to the secret room.  It was not until much later that morning, in Uppercue’s own laboratory,
  that Doc finished with explanations.
  Someone had asked about the missing metal cylinder, the tubelike  thing that had caused pretty Kay Uppercue
  to act so suspiciously�as  well as good−looking Adam Ash.
  The scientist’s daughter was there in the lab now, after learning  from the hospital that her fiancé would be all
  right in a day or so.  Her brilliant father gave her a warm smile.
  "Tell them, Kay," Professor Uppercue said.
  "That tube," the small blond girl said, "contained a monatomic film  that was to have insulated the
  accumulator. It was thinner than the  thinnest paper. I found the real tube, brought it back here to the lab�"
  Ham asked, smiling fondly at the blue−eyed daughter of the  scientist, "But where is it now?"
  Long Tom looked sheepish. His anaemic features, for once, flushed  slightly as he looked at the girl. "I found
  it�before that Lonesome and  his mob knocked out Monk and Ham and me, down here! Dang it, I had it
  hidden in my pants leg, but Monk got it up there in the Perisphere  fight�"
  Doc interrupted quietly with, "Well, where is it, Monk?"
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  Monk stammered, coughed, then got words out. "Goshamighty!" he  piped. "That Lonesome had Habeas
  locked in a closet up there. So I took  a swing at that grinning ranny with that tube thing. I guess�well,  hell! I
  guess I busted it all to bits!"
  Uppercue sighed. "It is just as well," he said. "I’m afraid the  accumulator’s possibilities were too great�and
  also too dangerous. With  its unlimited, stored power, it would have always been a treasure  sought by men
  like Mandroff."
  Pat Savage was slightly holding well−dressed Ham’s arm. She still  looked a trifle frightened, though her
  lovely gold eyes were bright.
  She queried, "But the Man of Tomorrow�what about him?"
  Doc explained, "It was merely publicity to cover Professor  Uppercue’s work." The bronze man looked at the
  white−haired scientist  and received a nod of agreement.
  "Of course, that publicity would have helped the World’s Fair.  Later, it could have been announced that
  something went wrong. But  Mandroff, having access to persons stricken on the grounds by the heat  and so
  on, made a pituitary giant out of one man, to scare off everyone  and cover his own search for Uppercue’s
  invention, and to throw  suspicion on kidnaped Professor Uppercue. Those other victims were  being held in
  readiness should Maximus be killed�to make it appear  Maximus was indestructible."
  "And Mandroff even tried to get you!" Pat Savage said.
  The bronze man smiled. "I suspected him first when he barged right  out of the Hall of Medicine side door
  when I was chasing Lonesome, the  man who tried to jab me with a needle. Mandroff’s door−swinging was
  too  nicely timed to be an accident. And further, up there in the secret  room, and when he was masked,
  Mandroff cut his hand when he grabbed a  scalpel from a glass case. I saw the cut on his right hand when he
  tried to quickly slip his gloves on at the hospital yesterday."
  Queried about Maximus, Doc explained that he had given the giant man  the first of treatments that would
  gradually bring him back to normal.  Maximus would forever be of huge size, but in time�after a delicate
  brain operation�the man would forget his terrible experience and be a  normal human.
  The other captives, missing Fair visitors, had been given similar  treatment by the bronze man at the hospital
  early this morning.
  Doc also produced a set of paper−thin eye shells of brown shade. He  told how Alexis Mandroff had disguised
  himself as young Adam Ash, using  the eye caps to cover his own gray eyes. Mandroff had known about
  Adam  Ash going to watch the moon−rocket show, and had quickly disguised  himself and taken the public
  relations consul’s place�after having Ash  grabbed by Maximus. It was Mandroff who had appeared after the
  moon−rocket show, instead of Adam Ash.
  It was Mandroff’s shrill voice that Monk had recognized on the  police radio when, disguised, Mandroff had
  knocked out the dispatcher  and taken his place.
  Doc produced the ring that had been used to make him try and  hypnotize Martin Uppercue. The ring, Doc
  told, fitted Mandroff’s thin,  womanish finger exactly.
  Behind the group, a familiar voice spoke.
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  A voice that said, "Well, well, well! I’m telling you, friends, it  is a pleasure to be back with you again. As I
  told them over there at  the hospital, I got in a little mess trying to help the famous bronze  man. But it was
  worth it. Oh, yes, indeed, it was worth it! I�"
  SHILL BURNS, in a new, screaming checkered suit and a patch over one  eye, came like a little gamecock
  into the room with the long−eared pig,  Habeas, and the runt ape trailing along behind.
  The voluble, former side−show spieler turned to Monk and Ham, and  said with an expansive smile, "Friends,
  consider yourselves lucky to  have ever met the great Shill Burns. I have just this past hour  completed
  arrangements for an exhibit of the two most famous pets in  the world�Habeas and Chemistry. Like I always
  say�"
  Hairy Monk let out a howl of rage. He leaped toward Shill Burns,  who, suddenly wide−eyed, backed swiftly
  toward the passageway exit.
  Monk yelled, "Exhibit Habeas, will you? Listen, you over−dressed  wart�"
  Ham, too, had leaped after Shill Burns. But the fast−talking and  fast−moving little opportunist had evaded
  both aids, to disappear madly  through the corridor.
  Monk and Ham hit the narrow doorway at the same time, and jammed  there shoulder to shoulder and face to
  face.
  Monk gave a big−mouthed grin, raised a hairy hand and lifted the hat  that had been jammed over Ham’s head
  ever since the hair−waving trick  he, himself, had maneuvered.
  The lawyer’s nicely waved, dark hair was revealed. 
  Ham strived furiously to bring up his sword cane with which to bat  Monk.
  The hairy chemist called to demure Kay Uppercue, "What do you think  of a guy that waves his hair, Blue
  Eyes?"
  Small, shapely Kay Uppercue moved close to the two aids of Doc  Savage. She smiled at both.
  "Well, I�"
  Monk was beaming, stepping aside at last to face the girl. 
  "Now if you weren’t engaged to that handsome Adam Ash�" Monk started  in his childish voice.
  "Oh, that doesn’t matter!" said Kay. "Adam told me not to be blue  while he’s laid up. He even suggested that
  I go to dinner and a show  occasionally."
  Monk was ready to start at once. He reached for blonde Kay’s arm,  his eyes as hopeful as a young calf’s.
  "That’s fine!" he piped. "Too bad about Ham, here. Before he can  have any dates, he’ll have to grow out that
  wave�"
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter XIX. DEATH STRIKES HIGH UP
  91
  
  "Oh!" Kay said. "But you didn’t understand. I have a date  with Ham already. You know, Ham is so
  mature−looking; thus people are  less apt to talk about an engaged woman."
  Monk deflated. His shoulders slumped.
  Ham called back, "How about that testimonial, sweetheart?"
  THE END
   WORLD’S FAIR GOBLIN
  Chapter XIX. DEATH STRIKES HIGH UP
  92
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/074 World's Fair Goblin.pdf