TEXT:  
   
  THE FLYING GOBLIN 
  A  Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE Magazine July 1940 
   
   
  A Complete Book-length Novel 
   
  by KENNETH ROBESON 
   
  A  fanatic stood ready to kill  thousands  in  order  to  ac- 
  complish his purpose! But Doc Savage stood in his path! 
   
  Chapter I 
  BIRMINGHAM JONES 
   
  THE long, many-windowed building 
  was located in almost primeval wilderness. 
  The somber-looking mountains of up-state 
  New York rose around it, gauntlike in the 
  night gloom. The building looked like a 
  modern city institution transplanted to a 
  quiet spot, where, especially at this hour of 
  the night, nothing could possibly ever 
  happen. 
  There were the soft night sounds of 
  little animals in the surrounding woods. A 
  solitary dim light burned in what was 
  perhaps an office of the hospital-type 
  edifice. There was deep silence, an air of 
  calmness everywhere. A rabbit scurried 
  silently across the single dusty road that 
  wound up to the place. 
  
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  2 
  It looked as though nothing of 
  importance could ever happen in such a 
  wilderness setting. 
  But 
  because 
  a 
  man 
  named 
  Birmingham Jones was housed within the 
  walls of the building, a whole lot of trouble 
  was going to take place. At least, this 
  seemed to be the opinion of the two 
  shadowy men who crouched in deep 
  shrubs bordering a flat expanse of smooth 
  lawn behind the building. 
  Both men wore clothes that looked 
  as though they had been ripped and frayed 
  by passing through assorted thorns and 
  brush. Both had faces that might have been 
  bruised in the same manner—only the 
  scars were old and had been collected over 
  a long period of years, obviously. 
  Both kept watching the walls of the 
  building that loomed so close to them. 
  Windows in those straight walls were 
  barred with heavy iron. 
  One man whispered to his partner, 
  “It’s the fourth window from the left-hand 
  wall angle. Third floor.”  
  “You’re sure about that, Pinky?” 
  “Damn right. You ever hear of the 
  boss making mistakes?” 
  Apparently the other had not. “No, 
  but I wanna make sure you’re correct. Hell, 
  if we ever make a mistake—” 
  “There ain’t no mistake about this,” 
  said the one named Pinky. “Here.” 
  He passed his hard-looking partner 
  something white, wrapped around a stone. 
  He motioned to the window not far away. 
  “The boss,” Pinky said, “picked you 
  for this job special, because you’ve thrown 
  enough bombs in your day to be good. That 
  note’s got to land in Birmingham’s room. 
  The lower sash is raised. See it? Now, get 
  going!”  
  The other paused a moment. 
  “Look, you sure this note tells 
  Birmingham Jones everything he’s to do?” 
  Pinky nodded impatiently. “Yeah, 
  sure. In five minutes, he gets out. He gets 
  sprung. Right through that building corner 
  that ain’t gonna be any more!” 
  Both men, at the words, consulted 
  their watches. “Four minutes and a half,” 
  snapped Pinky worriedly. “You better 
  hurry.” 
  His partner drifted silently toward 
  the base of the building wall. A dozen feet 
  away, he took careful aim, threw the paper-
  wrapped missile in an overhand swing. 
  The object passed neatly between 
  the iron bars of the window that Pinky had 
  shortly before indicated. From the room 
  beyond, there was the faintest of thumps 
  audible out here in the peaceful, warm 
  night. 
  The man faded back toward the 
  bushes where Pinky was waiting. 
  “Look!” Pinky said suddenly. 
  Both men saw the brief wave of a 
  hand from the second-floor room. They 
  turned 
  and 
  ducked 
  beneath 
  the 
  enshrouding trees. A half moment later they 
  reached the dusty, narrow roadway and 
  took out for points distant as though the 
  very devil were after them. 
  And three and a half moments later, 
  the devil did seem to appear. 
  First, there was the peculiar whining 
  sound, like wind blowing through guide 
  wires 
  on 
  a 
  towering 
  wireless-station 
  antenna. 
  The hobgoblin of a thing that 
  followed the whining sound streaked down 
  out of the night sky with the wild speed of a 
  diving pursuit plane. Only no plane had 
  ever traveled as fast as the peculiar-shaped 
  object. 
  It might have been a long, lean 
  barrel. Astride it was a vague form that 
  appeared like a scarecrow with flapping 
  arms. 
  One moment the flying apparition 
  was a quarter of a mile away. The next it 
  clipped the corner of the building wall that 
  had been indicated by Pinky. 
  It sounded as though a part of the 
  war in Europe had suddenly been moved to 
  the wilderness of up-state New York. At 
  least, that’s the noise the flying thing made 
  as it struck the building corner. That part of 
  the place started falling down. 
   
   
  FAR down the dusty road, from 
  where 
  their 
  car 
  was 
  protected 
  and 
  concealed 
  beneath 
  low-hanging 
  trees, 
  Pinky grabbed the thick arm of his partner 
  and grinned. He looked happy at the sound 
  of the explosions that were coming from 
  back up the road. 
  “Right on the nose,” he remarked, 
  consulting his watch. “The boss sure don’t 
  miss on timing.” 
  
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  3 
  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
  DOC SAVAGE AND HIS PALS 
   
        Beyond any doubt, you'll never again meet a group like Doc Savage and his five 
  companions. Doc—Clark Savage, Jr.—travels from one end of the earth to the other, righting 
  wrongs, helping the oppressed, giving good guys the break, always, and often punishing 
  evildoers, but never taking a life, if there's any other way out. Doc's "college," for instance, is 
  a scientific institution in upper New York where he sends all captured crooks, who, through 
  expert treatment, and sometimes involved operations—for Doc Savage is one of the world's 
  most skilled surgeons—are made to forget all their vicious past and start life anew as useful 
  and decent citizens. 
   
        Doc's companions couldn't he better if they'd been made to order. HAM—Brigadier 
  General Theodore Marley Brooks, the shrewdest lawyer Harvard ever turned out, a faultless 
  dresser, and an efficient fighter with his unusual drug-tipped sword cane. MONK—
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of the world's foremost chemists, and 
  tougher than tough in a scrap. RENNY—Colonel John Renwick, at the top of the engineering 
  profession. LONG TOM—Major Thomas J. Roberts, a veritable wizard in the field of 
  electricity. JOHNNY—William Harper Littlejohn, renowned geologist and archaeologist. 
   
  They're the perfect group of altruistic adventurers. You'll never meet their like, ever again! 
   
  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
  His partner looked less confident. 
  “Maybe that thing killed Birmingham!” 
  Pinky shook his head. “Naw. Bet 
  you he’ll be along in a couple minutes—if 
  he reads that message right.”  
  His thickset partner gave him a 
  questioning look. “You mean Birmingham’s 
  still foggy?” 
  Pinky nodded. 
  “That tricky brain operation which 
  that Doc Savage guy uses on crooks at his 
  college 
  didn’t 
  quite 
  come 
  off 
  in 
  Birmingham’s case. Sure, he’s forgotten all 
  about what he ever did in the past; but 
  that’s all. We’re springing him right at a time 
  when he’ll make a swell front for the boss. I 
  understand he’s just like a trained seal. 
  He’ll do anything you tell him—and no 
  questions asked.” 
  Both men had climbed out of the car 
  and were now watching back down the 
  seldom-used road. 
  “But,” objected Pinky’s partner, “I 
  understood that when Doc Savage got 
  through with these patients of his that they 
  stopped being crooks?” 
  Pinky laughed harshly. 
  “Sure, they do. But they weren’t 
  through with Birmingham Jones yet. And 
  there’s something else.”  
  “Else?” 
  Pinky nodded. “Birmingham got 
  conked on the head by one of Dillinger’s 
  boys some years back. Seems, therefore, 
  this Doc Savage outfit couldn’t quite cure 
  Birmingham of being a crook. Also, he still 
  likes to kill people. That’s how Doc Savage 
  first happened to send him up to his 
  college.” 
  The other man whistled. 
  The “college” referred to was an 
  institution established by Doc Savage—
  known as the Man of Bronze—where 
  crooks caught by the bronze man and his 
  aids were sent to undergo delicate brain 
  operations devised by Doc Savage himself. 
  The operations, in most cases, 
  wiped out all memories of the patients’ 
  past. They were then fitted for worth-while 
  work in a social world that would again 
  accept them. 
  But in the case of Birmingham 
  Jones, apparently, only about half of the 
  experiment had been successful, according 
  to Pinky’s remarks. 
  He started to say, “If everything’s 
  gone O. K., Birmingham Jones should  
  be—” 
  He clamped his jaw shut, stared 
  narrowly at the tall, well-dressed man who 
  
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  4 
  stepped out of the woods almost directly in 
  his path. 
  Both Pinky and his partner went for 
  their shoulder holsters. 
  And both paused, gawking at the 
  automatic which appeared miraculously—
  and swiftly—in the hands of the tall, dark-
  haired man. 
  The stranger had smooth features, a 
  fairly large mouth and eyes that were gray. 
  They were peculiar eyes. Peculiar in the 
  fact that, when you met their unblinking 
  regard, you felt a funny feeling along your 
  spine. 
  “I like to kill people,” said the 
  stranger. “I get a kick out of it. I’d just as 
  well kill you two punks. But the note said 
  you were to take me to Valentine.” 
  Pinky gulped. His partner jumped. 
  “Gosh blazes!” said Pinky. “Are you 
  Birmingham Jones?” 
  The 
  tall, 
  dark 
  man’s 
  features 
  showed no expression. “So they inform 
  me,” he said. “And the note that came 
  through the window was addressed to me. 
  So I escaped when the explosion came. I 
  was to come here. Where’s this guy 
  Valentine?” 
  Pinky was suddenly gripping the tall 
  man’s arm, hurrying him toward the car. 
  “Brother,” he said happily, “for a guy 
  who forgets all about the past, you sure 
  follow orders nicely! You’re gonna get along 
  with Valentine O. K.” 
  Birmingham Jones put his automatic 
  away, climbed into the back seat of the 
  waiting 
  sedan 
  and 
  remarked, 
  “Who’s 
  Valentine?” 
  Pinky 
  sighed, 
  pausing 
  in 
  his 
  movement at climbing behind the wheel of 
  the car. 
  “Look,” he explained, “you got the 
  first letter we smuggled into that college to 
  you?” 
  Tall Birmingham Jones nodded. 
  “And you want to work for a guy 
  who’s got plenty of chips?” 
  “Naturally.” 
  “Well, Valentine’s the gent who’s 
  arranged all this for you. You can be a big 
  shot now. You’re gonna be bigger than 
  Pretty Boy Floyd, or Scarface Nelson, or—” 
  Pinky had finally started up, his 
  partner seated beside him. 
  “Who 
  were 
  they?” 
  asked 
  Birmingham Jones. 
  Pinky swallowed hard. “Hell!” he 
  gasped. “You rubbed out about three guys 
  when you were a member of one of them 
  mobs!” 
  “How nice,” remarked Birmingham 
  casually. “Who do I rub out now?” 
  Pinky 
  nudged 
  his 
  partner, 
  whispering beneath the motor hum of the 
  moving car, “Foggy. He’s still foggy.”  
  And to the man in the rear seat, in a 
  loud voice. “Brother, maybe there’ll be 
  plenty for you to take care of. The boss has 
  a lot on the fire. Big stuff. He—” 
  Pinky turned around a second, 
  frowned when he saw that Birmingham 
  Jones was not apparently listening. Instead, 
  the well-dressed man was grinning about 
  something as he examined the gun which 
  he again held in his hands. 
  “What you smiling about?” Pinky 
  asked cautiously.  
  “I was just thinking about that 
  explosion back there at the college. It was 
  good. Three guards were still under the 
  smashed brick wall when I walked out. I got 
  this gat from one of them.” 
  He put the gun away again, asked, 
  “Well, what’s my first job? What does this 
  Valentine want me to do first?” 
  The grin returned to Pinky’s hard 
  face.  
  “Birmingham,” he said, “it’s a swell 
  assignment. First, you gotta grab the girl.” 
  “What girl?” 
  “The girl that saw Oscar.”  
  “Oscar who?” 
  Pinky laughed hard. “Oscar’s the 
  fellow who helped you get out of the 
  college, brother.” His face sobered again. 
  “And this girl, this Honey Sanders, she saw 
  Oscar. Also, the boss figures maybe she 
  got some clue to him. So now you gotta 
  grab this person named Honey Sanders.” 
  “Where?” 
  “Down near New York, a place 
  called Sleepy Hollow. That’s where that 
  Ichabod Crane, the headless horseman, 
  used to hang out. Remember him?” 
  Birmingham Jones shook his head. 
  “Never 
  heard 
  of 
  him,” 
  he 
  remarked 
  absently. “Thought they gave them the 
  chair in New York State. How’d the guy 
  lose his head?” 
  Pinky howled, almost doubling up 
  with laughter over the steering wheel. 
  
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  5 
  “Maybe,” he said finally, “Honey 
  Sanders can answer that one for you.” 
   
   
  Chapter II 
  GOBLIN IN SLEEPY HOLLOW 
   
  APPROXIMATELY 
  two 
  hundred 
  miles south of where Birmingham Jones 
  was riding with his two rescuers, two other 
  men were driving in an open car. It was 
  fifteen minutes past midnight, just a quarter 
  of an hour since the strange explosion had 
  taken place at the “college” of Doc Savage, 
  up-state. 
  Neither of these two, naturally, knew 
  about 
  the 
  weird 
  occurrence 
  at 
  Doc 
  Savage’s institution. But they did seem to 
  know something about a girl named Honey 
  Sanders. 
  The man who was not driving—a 
  lean-waisted, nattily dressed fellow with 
  fairly 
  good-looking 
  features—held 
  a 
  newspaper spread across his knees. He 
  was reading the paper by aid of the 
  dashboard light in the roadster. 
  “It says,” he said, “that this girl 
  Honey Sanders lives here in Sleepy Hollow 
  Manor, near Tarrytown. And the guy back 
  there at the last gas station informed us to 
  take the first left turn-off from the Post 
  Road. So this must be right.” 
  “If it is, I still won’t believe it!” said 
  the one behind the wheel. “Just because 
  you said so, I won’t believe it!” 
  The speaker had shoulders half the 
  width of the car seat, a flat head that 
  squatted, seemingly, right atop those 
  shoulders, and a scarred face made to 
  frighten old ladies. Oddly, he looked like an 
  ape; an ape in a human’s clothing. 
  The fashionably dressed man kept 
  addressing him as Monk. 
  “Listen,” the one named Monk 
  added, “read them headlines over again. If 
  you’ve made a mistake, I’m gonna whack 
  you so hard on the head that you’ll have 
  these cushion springs for curls.” 
  The dapper-looking man with the 
  paper on his knees merely glared at the 
  driver. Then he started reading from the 
  headlines. He said: 
  “This Honey Sanders, it appears, 
  saw the apparition last night, here in Sleepy 
  Hollow. She was walking down near the 
  river when something passed over her 
  head. As she told reporters, the only thing 
  she could think of was the headless 
  horseman—that guy made famous in 
  Irving’s ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’” 
   
   
   
  Monk squinted at his companion. 
  “You mean that Ichabod What’s-his-name?” 
  “Ichabod 
  Crane, 
  you 
  dope!” 
  snapped the well-dressed man. 
  “And so?” prodded Monk, the driver 
  of the car. 
  “It seems she was frightened terribly 
  as she told reporters about the strange 
  thing flying through the air. And now, today, 
  the paper goes on to say that she has 
  mysteriously disappeared.” 
  Monk snorted. “Look, Ham, you 
  shyster, I already know all that. What I 
  wanna know is: What was that address of 
  Honey Sanders’? You sure this is the right 
  place?” 
  The man called Ham sighed. 
   
   
   
  “Yes,” he said crisply. “It’s right 
  here—Shady 
  Lane, in Sleepy 
  Hollow 
  Manor. And this is the right road. It’s 
  supposed to be a little cottage down at the 
  end of this winding lane.” 
  
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  6 
  Ham settled back, watching the 
  shaded lane the car was traversing. They 
  had passed no houses since leaving the 
  well-traveled Post Road. 
  The lane dropped down through a 
  hollow damp with the nearness of a 
  stagnant-looking pond. A bullfrog croaked 
  somewhere out on the water. Thick silence 
  otherwise pressed down over the lonely 
  spot. 
  Hairy Monk asked, “This where that 
  headless horseman guy used to hang out?” 
  Ham nodded. “Yes. This is Sleepy 
  Hollow.”  
  Swinging abruptly away from the 
  wheel, disregarding the narrow roadway 
  ahead, Monk started to say something. 
  “Blazes—” 
  But he broke off, his little eyes 
  jerking to the sky overhead. The car stalled 
  as Monk’s foot smashed down on the 
  brake. 
  From out of the night sky, a weird, 
  thin whining sound had come. It increased 
  swiftly, developing within seconds into a 
  keening 
  shrill 
  whistle 
  that 
  hurt 
  the 
  eardrums. 
  Monk, staring out of popping eyes, 
  demanded loudly, “Goshamighty, what was 
  that?” 
  In the next second, something 
  ripped furiously through the trees overhead. 
  A breeze swooped down and fanned the 
  two 
  men’s 
  heads. 
  Loosened 
  leaves 
  cascaded around them like falling snow 
  during a blizzard. The shrill whining sound 
  faded. 
  Monk and Ham were both staring, 
  wide-eyed, at the great swath cut through 
  the tops of the trees. It was as though a 
  giant scythe might have neatly cut a 
  pathway a yard wide through the treetops. 
  Somehow, Monk got the car started, 
  slammed through the speeds, swung the 
  machine around in the narrow roadway and 
  headed, recklessly, back toward the Post 
  Road 
  which 
  passed 
  through 
  nearby 
  Tarrytown. 
  Ham, the well-dressed one, yelled 
  above the motor roar, “What’s wrong with 
  you, ape?” 
  “Blasted spook, that’s what it was!” 
  Monk piped. “Didn’t you see it?” 
  “See what?” 
  Monk’s small eyes were centered on 
  the winding road. He was sending the car 
  hurtling along at close to sixty. 
  “The danged hobgoblin riding the 
  barrel 
  that 
  shot 
  through 
  the 
  trees!” 
  Suddenly Monk’s massive hand cracked 
  down on the wheel and he let out a whoop. 
  “That’s who it was! Ichabod—the guy 
  without a head. Saw him plain as day riding 
  that thing through the sky!” 
  Ham was frowning. “Now listen—” 
  he started, and got no further. 
  For at the tremendous speed at 
  which they were traveling, they had quickly 
  reached the main highway again. Without 
  even letting up on the gas, Monk wheeled 
  the car out onto the wide Post Road, cut 
  south, opened up on the throttle. 
  Luckily at the moment and because 
  of the hour, there was no traffic. A good 
  mile stretch of open highway opened up 
  before them. Monk was driving like a 
  demon. 
  The weird whining sound came 
  down out of the sky again. 
  Ham, clinging to his hat, rose 
  halfway out of the seat and stared, goggle-
  eyed, into the heavens. The thing, which 
  moved with the speed of a flashing comet, 
  dropped down low over the racing car. Ham 
  had a glimpse of something that looked like 
  a long, thin barrel with a vague form sitting 
  astride it. 
  Before he could study the uncanny-
  looking object closer, he threw himself low 
  in the seat and yelled, “Look out!” 
  The thin whining sound was next a 
  screech directly over their heads. There 
  was something like a terrific blast of air, 
  wind striking them with the force of a tri-
  motored plane’s slipstream. 
  Monk flung his hairy hands about 
  his homely face. His companion reached 
  for the door handle of the car. 
  Neither, apparently, remembered 
  exactly how the car got piled up in the gas-
  station driveway. 
   
   
  BUT the station owner—who had 
  been preparing to close up for the night—
  was jumping up and down and making 
  noises, when Monk finally crawled out of 
  the partially demolished machine. 
  Ham, unhurt, but his immaculate 
  clothes mussed, followed. 
  
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  7 
  The service-station owner was a 
  long man in overalls. He was gesticulating 
  wildly toward a gas pump. The pump 
  looked like a candle that had stood in a 
  warm room; it was leaning over at a 
  cockeyed angle. 
  “Gah . . . ga . . .” the owner tried to 
  get words out, and his face became 
  crimson as he choked with rage. His hands 
  grasped Monk’s coat collar and yanked him 
  clear of the wrecked car. 
  “Drunk!” the station owner finally 
  exploded. “Look what you’ve done! Guys 
  like you—” 
  The man got his first good look at 
  Monk, who, so far, had been weaving 
  around still in a daze. 
  Jerking his gaze to Ham, the man 
  frowned and said, “He looks like something 
  that’s escaped from an organ grinder!” 
  Ham let out a howl at that. 
  “He did!” Ham announced. “Only he 
  lost his tin cup in this smashup!” 
  The words must have penetrated 
  Monk’s dazed thoughts. He gave a snort of 
  rage and grabbed the station owner by the 
  neck. 
  “I’m gonna rattle your teeth loose for 
  that crack!” he roared. 
  The gas-station owner broke free, 
  leaped inside the small building and picked 
  up a heavy wrench. Monk followed. Ham 
  gave a worried cry and tried to separate the 
  two. 
  When the State trooper on the 
  motorcycle drove into the station driveway, 
  some more wreckage had been created. 
  Quart bottles of oil with spouts on them had 
  been knocked from a rack and smashed. 
  Monk and the tall station owner were 
  smeared from head to foot with sticky, dark 
  oil. Windows in the building were broken. 
  Ham was attempting to help out—trying, at 
  the same time, to avoid stepping into the 
  slippery oil. 
  The six-foot-two trooper joined the 
  mêlée. 
  Later, three police officers from the 
  nearby town arrived. Even with their help, it 
  was another fifteen minutes before Monk 
  was finally subdued. 
  The subduing included tying Monk 
  up with ropes, wire and two skid chains 
  found in the service station. Ham rode 
  along as Monk was carried off to the local 
  jail, a mile down the highway. 
  The place consisted of a large room 
  that was a littered office, beyond this a 
  smaller room at the rear of which were two 
  barred cells. Monk was unbound and 
  thrown into one of the cells. Ham was not 
  locked up, but the three officers and the 
  trooper looked at him suspiciously. They 
  indicated a chair for Ham and they all sat 
  down, outside the cells. 
  “What are we waiting for?” Ham 
  demanded.  
  One of the local cops said, “Sandy 
  Gower.”  
  “Who 
  is 
  Sandy 
  Gower?” 
  Ham 
  prodded.  
  “The constable.” 
  Ham, watching Monk’s homely, 
  bruised face stuck between two of the cell 
  bars, gave a broad grin. “This is going to be 
  good,” he remarked. 
  Monk, by this time, had cooled off 
  somewhat. He said worriedly, “Listen, you 
  chumps, I saw it, I tell you. I saw the 
  danged thing right over my head!” 
  “Saw what?” one of the cops 
  demanded.  
  “That 
  gollywockus. 
  That 
  spook. 
  Ichabod!” 
  The State trooper gave his law 
  companions a significant look. 
  “Good thing we caught him in time,” 
  he said quietly. 
  Monk grasped the bars. “Blast it!” he 
  said. “I’m telling you! It was flying right over 
  my head, an’ it had flapping arms and a 
  long skinny body. The danged thing—” 
  The trooper spoke to one of the 
  local officers. “You’d better call up Hudson 
  State.” 
  Monk banged his huge fists on the 
  cell bars.  
  “What’s that?” he demanded. 
  “The nuthouse!” 
  “Hey!” Monk squalled. “You blasted 
  fools. If I don’t get outa here—” 
  They were all interrupted by the 
  short, stocky man who entered the outer 
  office. Ham, in particular, gave a start. 
   
   
  THE arrival wore a loud tweed suit. 
  His hat was green. The necktie was 
  exceptionally loud. 
  Ham, 
  a 
  meticulous 
  dresser, 
  shuddered at sight of the solid little man’s 
  clothes. 
  
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  8 
   
  The big trooper joined the fight—but Monk still kept going! 
   
  
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  9 
  “That’s Sandy Gower,” offered the 
  trooper. 
  The constable had short, stubby hair 
  like pale straw-ends, little sharp eyes that 
  were as gray as ice. As he stepped toward 
  the call room, he paused at a battered 
  desk, picked up an ash tray and brought it 
  along with him. 
  He gave Ham a brief, quizzical look, 
  then sat down in one of the chairs and 
  carefully balanced the ash tray on his 
  knees. He took a large pipe from his 
  pocket, and next started splitting open the 
  paper on cigarette butts that were in the 
  ash tray. He packed the released tobacco 
  into his pipe. 
  If he had noted Monk, behind the 
  bars nearby, he paid no attention to the 
  fact. It took Sandy Gower several minutes 
  to get the pipe fixed. Then he looked up at 
  Ham and asked: 
  “Got a match?” 
  Holding a light for the stocky little 
  constable, Ham said, “Perhaps I should 
  introduce myself. The name is Brigadier 
  General Theodore Marley Brooks. I happen 
  to be an attorney. Perhaps something can 
  be done about—” 
  From the cell, Monk remarked, “An’ 
  he’s still a ham!” 
  The constable, Sandy Gower, was 
  apparently paying no attention. He was 
  more interested in getting his pipe started. 
  Finally, he indicated Monk, took in 
  Ham’s mussed clothes, asked, “What goes 
  on?” 
  Ham tried to explain about the 
  accident at the gas station. He talked 
  swiftly, convincingly, and—oddly—did not 
  try to lay the blame on Monk. 
  As he said, “His name is Lieutenant 
  Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, though 
  for obvious reasons—we call him Monk. 
  Believe it or not, he is a well known 
  chemist. If there’s anything I can do for 
  him—” 
  Sandy Gower stopped puffing on 
  the evil-smelling pipe and frowned. His 
  ruddy face wrinkled up.  
  “Nope!” he said flatly. “We’ll have to 
  hold him for a hearing before the judge in 
  the morning.” 
  Ham talked some more, using his 
  best courtroom manner. For Ham was a 
  Harvard graduate, a renowned scholar from 
  the law school there. More than once he 
  had swayed frozen-faced juries. 
  But as he talked, Sandy Gower kept 
  shaking his head. “Nope,” he repeated, 
  taking a good look at Monk, behind the 
  bars. “I ain’t a-gonna do it.” He stared at 
  Monk. “That bird don’t look human. Better 
  keep him locked up.” 
  Monk roared with rage. “Say, you 
  danged overdressed signboard!” he said to 
  the stocky constable. “If Doc Savage—” 
  Sandy Gower jumped. He jerked 
  around to stare at well-dressed Ham, and 
  he forgot to puff on his pipe.  
  “Did 
  that 
  monkey 
  say 
  ‘Doc 
  Savage’?” he demanded.  
  Ham had not wanted to mention the 
  bronze man’s name. But now he nodded. 
  “Yes. We are both members of the 
  organization of Doc Savage. As I was 
  telling you about this accident—”  
  Sandy Gower looked as though he 
  was about to swallow his pipe. Still staring 
  at Ham, he said politely, “Well, hell, that’s 
  different! We will not have to hold you. I am 
  very 
  sorry 
  you 
  were 
  put 
  to 
  this 
  inconvenience.” 
  He paused, turned again to stare 
  questioningly at Monk. “But I’m afraid I can 
  do nothing—yet—about this one. That 
  young man who runs the gas station is a 
  personal friend. He phoned me just a little 
  while ago, and he’s going to sign a 
  complaint 
  against 
  your 
  partner. 
  Otherwise—” 
  Ham smiled broadly. “Perhaps,” he 
  said, casting a sidelong grin at Monk, “it will 
  do him good to cool off for the remainder of 
  the night.” 
  He started out, the solidly built 
  constable with him. Behind them, Monk set 
  up a roar of protest. 
  “Why, you blasted shyster—” 
  But outside, Ham was saying, 
  “There’s a girl named Honey Sanders for 
  whom we’ve been looking. It seems—” 
  Sandy Gower drew up short outside 
  the jail. “You know about her?” he 
  exclaimed. 
  Ham mentioned the newspaper 
  story about the girl who had apparently 
  been frightened to death by some strange 
  hobgoblin of a thing which she had seen in 
  this vicinity. 
  The constable was puffing quite 
  furiously on his pipe now. “Yes. Yes, I 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  10 
  know,” he said. “When last seen, Honey 
  Sanders 
  was 
  hysterical. 
  Then 
  she 
  disappeared, and we’ve been looking for 
  her for the past twenty-four hours.” 
  “Then you know her?” 
  Sandy Gower jerked his head. “I’ve 
  known the poor child for some time. If 
  there’s anything I can do to help—” 
  He led the way toward an old flivver 
  parked nearby.  
  “I’ll show you where she lives,” the 
  loudly dressed constable offered. 
   
   
  Chapter III 
  THE SIX WHO KNEW OSCAR 
   
  THE cottage was white, with blue 
  shutters, and must have contained about 
  three rooms. 
  Ham, studying it, thought it just 
  about suited a girl with the name Honey. He 
  was getting more and more anxious to 
  meet the girl. 
  Ham and Sandy Gower, the hard-
  boiled constable, were standing in the 
  pathway that led in from the road. Beyond 
  the 
  cottage, 
  down 
  below 
  a 
  steep 
  embankment, lay the Hudson River. In a 
  cut at the bottom of the high bank there 
  were the smooth rails of a railroad. 
  Sandy Gower was saying, “She 
  lived alone down here. Her mother and 
  father are dead. She paints.”  
  “You’ve 
  searched 
  through 
  the 
  house?” Ham asked.  
  The 
  stocky 
  constable 
  nodded. 
  “There isn’t a trace of Honey Sanders,” he 
  explained. 
  Ham was thinking quickly. He, too, 
  would like to have a look inside the girl’s 
  neat little cottage. And yet he did not wish 
  to involve Doc Savage in this thing—and 
  that would be necessary if he gave this law 
  official the idea that it was too urgent to see 
  the girl. 
  For Doc Savage knew nothing about 
  a girl named Honey Sanders. The bronze 
  man had been away from New York when 
  Monk and Ham had seen the newspaper 
  article about the terrified girl. Out of idle 
  curiosity, they had taken a run up here 
  tonight. 
  So, on a sudden pretense, Ham 
  exclaimed 
  suddenly, 
  “Gosh, 
  I 
  just 
  remembered!” 
  Sandy Gower removed the pipe 
  from his mouth. “Remembered what?” 
  “Monk—that fellow you still have in 
  jail—and I were driving down this lane 
  earlier. We didn’t get quite this far, though. 
  But at the time, when Monk got excited 
  about seeing some sort of flying apparition, 
  I dropped a small camera we had brought 
  along. Maybe I can find it up the lane.” 
  Ham indicated the curving roadway 
  that emerged from the woods, near the 
  cottage. 
  “But,” he added worriedly, “I really 
  ought to see that gas-station fellow first. 
  About the damage we did there, and about 
  our car. Perhaps he can repair it, or—” 
  Sandy Gower took the bait nicely. 
  “Look,” he offered, “I’ll be glad to run 
  back there for you while you’re looking 
  around for that camera. If there’s anything I 
  can do—” 
  Ham gave his broadest smile. 
  “Swell!” he said. “And here—” 
  He took a roll of bills from his 
  pocket, removed several and handed them 
  over to the constable. “Fix things up with 
  the chap, will you? Tell him I’ll pay extra for 
  any work done on the car before morning. 
  He can name his own price.” 
  Sandy Gower nodded, pocketing the 
  money and moving toward his dilapidated-
  looking car. Ham’s smooth talk had 
  convinced the lawman that he was doing a 
  favor for someone of importance. 
  A moment after Sandy Gower’s car 
  chugged away down the lane, Ham was 
  seeking entry to the girl’s modest cottage. 
  After trying several windows, he learned 
  that entry to the place was simple. The rear 
  door was unlocked. 
  Inside, he passed through a neat 
  little kitchen done in white with red 
  decorations. He passed on to the living 
  room, using a small pocket flash to look 
  over the interior of the house. 
  The living room was across a 
  hallway from what was apparently a 
  combination 
  studio-and-sleeping 
  room. 
  There was more space than Ham had 
  imagined from outside the small cottage. 
  He looked at paintings hanging from 
  the walls, leaning against furniture. There 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  11 
  was 
  one 
  on 
  an 
  easel. 
  They 
  were 
  landscapes, and not bad at all. 
  Moonlight came out from behind a 
  cloud over the house and sprayed into the 
  studio room. Ham snapped off the flash. He 
  was able to see without it, and it was best 
  that he take no chances on anyone spotting 
  him in the girl’s home. 
  The full-length portrait that stood in 
  a corner of the room wasn’t bad, either. In 
  fact, it was quite lovely.  
  Against the white background of the 
  canvas, it showed a slender, daintily built 
  girl with hair the color of honey and features 
  that were smooth and fine. The eyes were 
  done so well that Ham was certain they 
  were deep blue. 
  He stood gazing at the painting, 
  wondering if it was only in pictures that you 
  saw a young girl as pretty as this. He 
  moved forward to get a better view of the 
  thing.  
  The image moved! 
  Ham gulped. He saw the small, 
  efficient-looking gun that was covering him. 
  The girl’s taut voice said, “If you 
  come a step closer, I’ll shoot you!” 
   
   
  IT took five minutes of lawyer Ham’s 
  cleverest talking to convince the girl that he 
  shouldn’t be shot as a trespasser. 
  She was the girl he and Monk had 
  been seeking—Honey Sanders. 
  Finally, she was convinced. Her 
  nicely curved lower lip trembled slightly. 
  The gun lowered in her hand and she 
  stepped away from the easel that contained 
  the large, blank canvas behind her. It was 
  this that had given the painting effect as the 
  girl stood before it. Ham had been correct; 
  her eyes were the deepest blue. 
  Honey Sanders said, “I believe what 
  you say. I’ve heard of Doc Savage. I’ve 
  heard of you, too. You’re the one who has 
  leading tailors follow him around in order to 
  observe the very latest in men’s fashions.” 
  Ham stammered something. Yet he 
  was pleased.  
  “Then perhaps I can help you,” Ham 
  suggested. “What was this terrible thing you 
  saw? What is it all about?” 
  “I don’t know!” Honey Sanders 
  announced surprisingly. 
  “You don’t know?” Ham stared. 
  “But—” 
  “What I mean is, I don’t know what 
  the flying thing is. But I can tell you this: It 
  comes from some place out on the river. 
  I’m certain of that.” 
  Ham frowned. “But the newspaper 
  reports stated that, when you were last 
  seen, you were terrified about something.” 
  Honey Sanders jerked her pretty 
  head. “Yes. Because of the men.” 
  “What men?” 
  The girl reached out a shapely 
  hand, touched the smartly dressed lawyer’s 
  arm. 
  “If you’ll come with me,” she 
  suggested, “I can show you where I first 
  overheard the men talking. They were 
  planning 
  something—something 
  tremendous. That’s why I have been so 
  terrified. I think they have some connection 
  with that . . . that thing that flew over my 
  house.” 
  “But why—“ 
  “You 
  see,” 
  continued 
  Honey 
  Sanders, her blue eyes wide, “one of them 
  followed me. I’m certain he was going to kill 
  me. I’ve been hiding.” 
   
   
  HAM followed the girl from the 
  house, watched her lock the kitchen door. 
  The route she indicated led down a path 
  cutting through tall grass toward the river 
  and the railroad tracks. The girl took the 
  lead. Moonlight bathed her soft-gold hair, 
  the smooth manner in which she walked. 
  Over her shoulder, Honey Sanders 
  said, “There’s something odd about a little 
  building up here about a quarter of a mile, 
  on the bank above the railroad tracks. I’ve 
  tried to get into it, but it’s locked up.” 
  Ham asked: “What has that got to 
  do with a man who followed you or with 
  something you saw flying around Sleepy 
  Hollow?” 
  It was a moment before the girl 
  answered. 
  “Well,” 
  she 
  finally 
  said, 
  “they 
  seemed to be planning a meeting at this 
  stone building when I overheard them. But I 
  stepped on something in the dark, and one 
  of them almost found me when I hid in the 
  woods.” 
  Ham made no comment. 
  So far, this whole business did not 
  seem quite to mystify him as it had 
  apparently affected others. Perhaps this girl 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  12 
  Honey Sanders was working some publicity 
  stunt just to get her name in the papers. 
  Less attractive girls had pulled similar gags. 
  And yet there was the thing that 
  Monk had described zooming through the 
  night. 
  True, 
  Monk 
  had 
  plenty 
  of 
  imagination. Ham himself had looked just a 
  second too late to be certain as to what, 
  exactly, the thing was. 
  But there had been something, and 
  it had left a small hurricane closing in 
  behind it because of its tremendous speed. 
  The girl had paused. She took 
  Ham’s arm, said quietly, “There! Just ahead 
  of us. That small stone building that looks 
  like an old blockhouse. I’m certain those 
  men were planning a meeting there!” 
  Ham moved quietly ahead, the girl 
  close to his side, her head barely reaching 
  to his shoulders. 
  They came up to the dark, drab-
  looking building. It was about twelve feet 
  high and twice that many square. There 
  were no windows, strangely. And no doors, 
  either! 
  Ham shrugged. “Must be some old 
  place left from the Revolution, and it’s been 
  cemented up,” was his observation. 
  Honey Sanders pointed off toward 
  the wide Hudson. “And out there, about in 
  the middle of the river,” she said, “was 
  where that terrible flying thing disappeared 
  the other night.” 
  The tall lawyer followed the girl’s 
  slim, pointing finger. 
  Out on the calm water, a tug was 
  towing barges upstream. There must have 
  been five barges in tow, for Ham counted 
  five white lights on a mast sticking up from 
  the tugboat. He saw nothing else. 
  He looked back at Honey Sanders. 
  She was a pretty girl. She had a direct 
  manner and frank, clear eyes. Thus he 
  didn’t want to believe what was in his mind.  
  And yet he was convinced suddenly, 
  that he was getting some sort of runaround. 
  Ham started to say, “Now let’s get 
  this straight—”  
  “Listen!” the girl gasped, and clung 
  to Ham’s arm.  
  The faint humming was about as 
  loud as the sound a bee makes. 
   
   
  A MOMENT later, the sound had 
  increased to a high, shrill whine. 
  Honey 
  Sanders 
  trembled 
  with 
  sudden terror, close to Ham. She gasped, 
  “Th . . . that’s it! That’s the thing!” 
  The girl’s fear-filled eyes were 
  probing the sky overhead. 
  Clouds scudded past the moon. 
  There were a few stars. Though he heard 
  the increasing, weird whining, Ham saw 
  nothing. 
  And then he did! 
  Not a cloud in front of the moon, but 
  something 
  that 
  moved 
  with 
  flashing, 
  deceiving speed. It seemed to leap into 
  larger proportions in the very second he 
  spotted it. But a drifting cloud as abruptly 
  cut off sight of the strange object. 
  The whistling sound was almost a 
  roar now in Ham’s ears. With sudden 
  concern, Ham was grabbing the girl’s trim 
  figure and pulling her down toward the 
  ground. For he abruptly realized that he 
  had been deceived. The flying object was 
  almost on top of them! 
  Ham and the girl pressed close to 
  the earth. A blast of driven air came down 
  and flattened out the tall grass around 
  them. Dust and small pebbles spattered 
  their faces and hands. They were both 
  momentarily deafened by the shrill screech 
  above them. 
  Then 
  the 
  strange 
  object 
  had 
  passed. 
  Ham was on his feet, as was the 
  girl. She pointed excitedly toward the river 
  again. 
  “You see!” she cried. “That’s where 
  it disappeared to the last time—out there on 
  the river some place!”  
  Ham squinted into the night. Far 
  across the river there were enough small 
  hills to cast shadows out upon the water on 
  that side. Impossible to tell whether 
  anything was there on the water close to 
  the far shore. 
  He looked down across the railroad 
  tracks, saw some small boats tied up at the 
  nearby shore. “Come on!” he snapped. 
  A block-signal tower a little way up 
  the tracks suddenly showed two green 
  lights. 
  Ham said, “We’d better wait before 
  crossing. A train’s coming.” 
  It was a long freight, and Ham 
  cursed his luck as the seemingly endless 
  line of cars rattled past. They waited all of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  13 
  five minutes until the caboose rolled into 
  sight. 
  “All right,” Ham said, taking the girl’s 
  hand as the last car was next to them. 
  They started across the four sets of 
  rails. 
  The 
  half-dozen 
  gunmen 
  stood 
  facing them. They had been hidden by the 
  passing freight. 
   
   
  HAM 
  made 
  an 
  unconscious 
  movement with his right arm, as though 
  raising something. And, then he muttered a 
  soft, “Damn!” 
  He 
  was 
  without 
  his 
  cane, 
  remembering that it was back in the car at 
  the gas station. And that cane sheathed a 
  finely tempered steel blade that, more than 
  once, had saved the astute lawyer’s life. Its 
  tip 
  was 
  treated 
  with 
  a 
  quick-acting 
  anaesthetic! 
  The six men with guns had by this 
  time closed in around Ham and the girl. 
  One man growled, “All right. Get 
  back up that path you just climbed down! 
  Step on it!” 
  Honey Sanders was directed to go 
  first. Ham followed. Just as they started up 
  the steep incline of the embankment, the 
  lawyer’s hand darted beneath his coat and 
  toward a shoulder holster. The gunmen 
  were behind him. 
  But something smacked against the 
  back of his head. He was knocked to his 
  face. Three of the thugs leaped upon Ham 
  and removed the oddly shaped gun from 
  the special holster beneath his coat. 
  It was one of the machine pistols 
  that all the aids of Doc Savage carried. 
  A gunman who appeared to be the 
  leader of the mob—he was tall and solid-
  looking and grim—said, “I told you birds to 
  be careful. These Doc Savage guys are 
  dynamite. Now, watch it!” 
  Someone asked: “Doc Savage? Is 
  this fellow one of Doc’s men?” 
  “Boy!” added another. “We really got 
  something, then!” 
  “What the hell you think we laid for 
  this guy for?” demanded the big leader of 
  the six thugs. “This’ll kind of cool Doc 
  Savage off when he hears about his 
  college.” 
  Ham stiffened. He was immediately 
  prodded along, a gun stuck into his spine. 
  “What 
  about 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  college?” the lawyer demanded as they 
  reached the top of the bank. 
  Someone laughed. “He wants to 
  know about the college!” 
  “Shuddup!” 
  Ham was given no information. 
  Instead, he and Honey Sanders 
  were shoved along toward the woods which 
  grew up close to the railroad cut. Someone 
  used a flashlight, and the men were careful 
  to see that the lawyer made no further fast 
  moves. 
  After a while they came to a little 
  shack located deep in the trees. It looked 
  like an old structure used for the storing of 
  tools. The single door of the structure was 
  not even locked. 
  Inside the shack a lot of junk was 
  piled around. The floor was of dirt. 
  Two of the gunmen started scuffing 
  the dirt back with their feet, and shortly they 
  were raising a trapdoor. 
  One man remarked, “Leaving this 
  old dump unlocked like this has fooled 
  others, too!” 
  Ham and the honey-haired girl were 
  motioned 
  toward 
  the 
  steps 
  that 
  led 
  downward beneath the trap opening. 
  The passageway was damp and 
  narrow. It finally ended in another flight of 
  stairs leading upward. The big leader of the 
  mob leaped ahead of Ham and the girl, 
  went up the steps, grunted as he raised 
  what must have been a heavy door. A 
  length of iron chain jangled.  
  “All right; up!” he rapped from a 
  room above. 
  The two captives were prodded up 
  the steps and into a room about two dozen 
  feet square. The walls of the place were 
  solid-looking and of stone. There were no 
  windows. There was no sign of a door. 
  The girl’s frightened gaze flicked to 
  Ham’s. Understanding was mirrored in 
  Honey Sander’s deep-blue eyes. Ham 
  knew what she was thinking. 
  This, 
  obviously, 
  was 
  the 
  impenetrable-looking stone house which 
  they had looked over just a short while ago! 
  The leader stepped close to Ham 
  and grinned. His jaw looked like something 
  made carelessly out of cement. 
  “Brother,” he said, “you got one out. 
  You can pitch in with us and give us some 
  information. Where’s Doc Savage?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  14 
  Perhaps none saw the expression 
  that came into the lean-waisted lawyer’s 
  eyes. For any mention of hobnobbing with 
  crooks caused Ham to see red. He 
  exploded into action. 
  His 
  trained, 
  fast-moving 
  fists 
  knocked two men to the ground before they 
  knew what hit them. A third followed. The 
  other three piled on Ham and drove him 
  back against one stone wall of the veritable 
  prison. A gun butt crashed against his 
  cheek, struck again at his jaw. He fell down 
  in a dazed heap. 
  Honey Sanders screamed. 
  “O. K., bud,” the leader snapped. 
  “You can stay here and rot! Sooner or later, 
  Oscar’s goin’ to get Doc Savage anyway!” 
  The big fellow nodded to his 
  companions and they started back down 
  through the trap entranceway. He followed, 
  and light went out of the room as the 
  flashlight glow disappeared and the heavy 
  trapdoor—it must have been made of 
  steel—clanked down into place. Beneath it, 
  a chain rattled as a padlock was fastened.  
  Ham got groggily to his feet. He 
  heard the girl sobbing. 
  He realized suddenly that he had 
  been mistaken in thinking this attractive girl 
  was a phony. He said musingly, into the 
  darkness that smashed all around them: 
  “I wonder who this guy Oscar is—
  the one they’re going to put on Doc’s trail?” 
  The girl was close to him, because 
  Ham heard the startled intake of her breath. 
  “Oscar,” she gasped, “is . . . is that 
  flying thing!” 
   
   
  Chapter IV 
  LANTERNS IN THE NIGHT 
   
  DOC SAVAGE had his first contact 
  with “Oscar” at a point approximately six 
  thousand feet over western New Jersey. 
  But first, something else occurred before 
  the bronze man got involved with the 
  mysterious flying menace. 
  The bronze giant had been piloting 
  the plane alone. Small mountains sprawled 
  like bumps on a molehill far below him. 
  There was no wind, and the night was good 
  for flying. 
  Relaxed, 
  his 
  metallic 
  features 
  appearing like something made out of pure 
  bronze, Doc had set the automatic robot 
  pilot and the ship was flying itself. The 
  course was set to follow a radio beam 
  which would bring him into New York in 
  about half an hour. 
   
   
   
  The 
  short-wave 
  loud-speaker—
  which the bronze giant had kept turned on, 
  just in case there should be any routine call 
  from any of his five aides—suddenly 
  crackled. 
  Doc Savage turned a dial, asked 
  quietly, “Yes?”  
  “Calling Doc Savage!” an excited 
  man’s voice said. “Urgent message for Doc 
  Savage!” 
  The tone of the man’s voice brought 
  Doc up tensely in the cockpit seat. 
  “Doc Savage speaking,” he said into 
  a microphone. “Proceed.” 
  “This is Dr. Nelson, Mr. Savage,” the 
  voice continued swiftly. “I’m speaking from 
  the college. Something’s happened here 
  that you ought to know!” 
  If the bronze man was upset by the 
  announcement, the fact was not expressed 
  on his features. But there was one slight 
  indication showing that his remarkable 
  brain had sharpened—Doc’s unusual eyes 
  brightened imperceptibly. 
  Those eyes were striking because 
  of their strange coloring. Like pools of rich 
  flake-gold, they stirred continuously, as 
  though affected by soft winds. 
  Likewise, the bronze giant’s features 
  and hair were of this unusual metallic hue, 
  the hair being slightly darker than the skin 
  of Doc’s face. The hands that gripped the 
  microphone 
  were 
  also 
  bronze-colored; 
  large, sinewy hands that revealed an inner 
  strength far beyond the ordinary. 
  “You might explain,” Doc told the 
  medical man of his “college” in up-state 
  New York. For Doctor Nelson was one of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  15 
  the staff of trained surgeons that the bronze 
  man kept at his remarkable institution. 
  “There was an explosion,” the man 
  went on rapidly. “We have not been able to 
  learn what caused it. One corner of the 
  main building has been demolished!” 
  “Any casualties?” Doc said. 
  “Yes. One. An attendant who was 
  down at the end of the hall. And two other 
  attendants were hurt, Mr. Savage. Luckily, 
  though, there were no patients in the corner 
  rooms where the explosion occurred. But 
  there—” 
  There was something in the last 
  word that held Doc’s attention. As it trailed 
  off, the bronze man said quickly, “Yes? 
  What else?” 
  “One of the patients has escaped,” 
  continued the doctor worriedly. “A man 
  named Birmingham Jones. Perhaps you 
  recall his history—” 
  “Yes,” the bronze man put in. “Go 
  on.” 
   
   
  IT was not necessary for Dr. Nelson 
  to repeat pertinent facts about the patient 
  named Birmingham Jones.”  
  In his remarkable memory, Doc 
  Savage carried a case history of every 
  crook who had ever been sent to his 
  “college.” He recalled now that Birmingham 
  Jones had been a gangster, outlaw, 
  murderer—a former member of notorious 
  gangs that had roamed the Middle West. 
  Only 
  recently 
  had 
  Birmingham 
  Jones been caught by Doc himself, and 
  sent to the institution to undergo the bronze 
  man’s 
  delicate 
  brain 
  treatments—
  operations that removed all memory of a 
  criminal past, and that fitted crooks for 
  worthwhile, honest careers in society. 
  But in the case of Birmingham 
  Jones, 
  Doc 
  remembered 
  that 
  the 
  dangerous crook had hardly had time to 
  undergo the full course of treatments! 
  “He escaped?” Doc rapped. 
  “As clean as a whistle!” said the 
  voice on the air. “Our guards have scoured 
  the woods and every inch of ground. We 
  are now convinced that he was met by 
  someone with a car. But there is no trace of 
  them.” 
  “Anything else?” Doc prodded. 
  “No, sir. We have everything under 
  control here now. But I wanted you to know 
  about this man Birmingham Jones.” 
  Doc listened a moment longer, then 
  ended this conversation with the doctor. At 
  the moment, he was not needed at his 
  “college.” Of more importance, was to learn 
  the whereabouts of one Birmingham Jones! 
  He quickly tuned in on his New York 
  headquarters, where his five aides should 
  be. 
  And static abruptly filled the short-
  wave set and made contact impossible. 
  Doc’s eyes narrowed, for the night was 
  clear enough that reception should be 
  perfect. 
  He checked the radio beam on 
  which the plane was flying. He was right on 
  the beam into New York, but— 
  But 
  something 
  else 
  was 
  also 
  interfering with that beam, destroying any 
  chance of getting a radio call through! 
  Doc frowned slightly, and his gaze 
  happened to flick ahead through the cockpit 
  windows. He saw the object streaking down 
  the sky directly in his path! 
  For 
  a 
  scant 
  instant, 
  slight 
  puzzlement was mirrored in the bronze 
  man’s flake-gold eyes. For he knew that 
  any commercial plane flying west—in the 
  opposite direction to his own—should either 
  be two thousand feet above or below him. 
  That was aviation law. 
  And yet— 
  The other ship was hurtling right at 
  his ship, unswerving, making no slightest 
  attempt to avoid a smashup! 
  When it seemed that a collision was 
  a certainty, Doc Savage put his own fast 
  plane into a wing turnover, side slipped, 
  then sent his craft plunging downward in a 
  furious power dive. 
  The object that streaked overhead 
  made a peculiar shrill whistling sound in the 
  night. 
   
   
  AND 
  as 
  it 
  passed, 
  Doc 
  had 
  straightened out of the fast dive and was 
  zooming for altitude again. With the nose of 
  his streamlined ship pointing upward, his 
  intent gaze tried to make out the design of 
  the thing that had almost crashed into him. 
  Far off in the night sky, he had a 
  vague glimpse of the speeding object 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  16 
  turning, of seeing it return on the course 
  that the bronze man had been following. 
  It was traveling faster than the 
  fastest plane made! Within seconds, it 
  seemed, it had disappeared again into the 
  east. 
  The bronze giant reached a hand 
  toward the control panels as he leveled the 
  ship off and headed eastward himself. He 
  was adjusting a radio direction-finder. 
  In a moment, he picked up the 
  sound of the rocket of a thing that had 
  disappeared. Keeping the sound carefully 
  tuned in, Doc followed the same course. 
  And he understood now why he had 
  been unable to contact his New York 
  headquarters. The thing that had almost 
  struck his own plane had interfered with 
  that contact, had created the static. 
  Also, if anyone human had been 
  flying the rocketing object, he must be 
  completely crazy. Thus the bronze man 
  decided to investigate—if only to save other 
  plane pilots from destruction! 
  The trail—Doc was still using the 
  direction-finder and managing to keep the 
  escaping thing somehow charted—ended 
  over the Hudson River. 
  The exact vicinity was near a wide 
  expanse of the river near Tarrytown. Old 
  legends came to the bronze man’s mind. 
  Legends of Sleepy Hollow and the 
  headless horseman! 
  It was just over the peaceful-looking, 
  slumbering communities strung along the 
  river shore below, that Doc Savage lost all 
  trail of the thing he had been following. 
   
   
  ALL sound in the direction-finder 
  device had abruptly stopped. It meant only 
  one thing. 
  The bronze man must have flown 
  into the “dead” spot that would be directly 
  over where the other flying machine had 
  disappeared. And this meant—the river 
  itself. 
  Doc Savage immediately cut his 
  motors, started circling downward in long 
  spirals. He carried no riding lights now. 
  With the motors idling, the bronze man 
  heard no other sound in the vast solitude of 
  the night. 
  But as he dropped closer to the dark 
  waters of the river, he saw the cluster of 
  lights along the east bank. Not lights of 
  houses—for the few that he observed were 
  in darkness—but bobbing fireflies that 
  would indicate moving lanterns. 
  Closer now, Doc saw that men were 
  carrying the lanterns and apparently looking 
  for something near the river’s edge. 
  He 
  set 
  the 
  amphibian 
  plane 
  smoothly down on the water and taxied 
  toward shore, at a point some distance 
  above where the group of men were 
  moving about mysteriously in the night. 
  Doc brought the amphibian as close 
  to shore as was possible, and then dropped 
  an anchor mooring into the shallow water. 
  But before leaving the plane, he 
  took 
  certain 
  small 
  gadgets 
  from 
  an 
  equipment case stored in the cabin, placed 
  these in a special vest that he wore 
  beneath his suit coat. 
  The vest—it was one containing a 
  number of pockets—was an equipment 
  vest that the bronze man was seldom 
  without. 
  He 
  walked 
  through 
  knee-deep 
  water, climbed over rocks that formed the 
  roadbed of the railroad and started back to 
  where he had last seen the men with the 
  lanterns. 
  The bronze man did not seem to 
  hurry, and yet he covered ground at 
  amazing speed. He followed, silently, a 
  cinder pathway that bordered the smooth 
  rails. 
  His idea was to take by surprise 
  those who had been acting so strangely 
  near the river bank. 
  That must have been the general 
  idea of the men with the lanterns. They 
  piled on Doc Savage as he passed over a 
  small trestle that spanned a tiny creek 
  leading into the river. 
   
   
  Chapter V 
  TRAP 
   
  THE group of husky-looking fellows, 
  minus their lanterns, had been waiting, 
  crouched down, beside a pathway that led 
  down beneath the low trestle. Assorted 
  hands grabbed hold of the bronze man. 
  Someone said, “This is the guy, like 
  I told you! He came down in that plane!” 
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  17 
   
  The bronze man threw the attackers off so fast it was  
  hard to tell just how he accomplished it! 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  18 
  That seemed to be sufficient to start 
  the battle. With grunts and curses, the 
  group smashed into Doc. 
  One man took hold of the bronze 
  man’s right arm and attempted to twist it up 
  in a hammer lock. He stopped abruptly, as 
  though he might have run up against a 
  stone 
  wall. 
  Amazement 
  made 
  small 
  saucers of his popping eyes. 
  He found the bronze man’s right 
  arm a piece of immovable cement beneath 
  his powerful grip. He landed flat on his back 
  as a flick of that same arm threw him clear. 
  The same thing happened to a man 
  who attempted to seize the bronze giant’s 
  left arm. 
  Two others leaped at Doc Savage’s 
  legs. A third climbed on his back. 
  Incredible, 
  blurred 
  movement 
  followed. 
  The 
  newcomer 
  threw 
  the 
  attackers off so fast that it was hard to tell 
  just how he had accomplished it. But within 
  seconds, five figures lay on the ground 
  beside the railroad ties and gasped for 
  breath. 
  The sixth man—he had remained 
  clear—walked up to the big fellow, sprayed 
  the glow of a flashlight over the bronze 
  man’s features, and exclaimed, “Oh, blow 
  me down for a fool. There’s been an awful 
  mistake. You’re Doc Savage!” 
  “It appears that there has been an 
  error,” said the bronze man quietly, and he 
  stood unmoving as the other men picked 
  themselves up lamely and grouped around 
  the short, stockily built man who had just 
  spoken. 
  The stocky man wore tweeds that 
  were in outrageous contrast to his I am-
  going-to-a-fire necktie. 
  He had short-
  clipped hair like bristly wheat straw, and 
  there was an evil-smelling pipe stuck into 
  his ruddy face. 
  “Yes,” 
  he 
  repeated 
  worriedly, 
  “there’s been an awful mistake. We thought 
  you were one of them. You see”—he 
  waved a hand to indicate those with him—
  ”these chaps are deputized lawmen. They 
  are part of the posse.” 
  “Posse?” The bronze giant’s face 
  was without changeable expression. 
  And as the various men picked 
  themselves up and stared in awe at the 
  metallic 
  figure, 
  their 
  eyes 
  widened. 
  Because, standing apart from others, Doc 
  Savage’s physique did not seem unusual. 
  This was because of the perfect symmetry 
  of his muscular development. 
   
   
  THE ruddy-faced man with the foul 
  pipe was continuing excitedly. “Yes, posse,” 
  he said. He explained about the girl who 
  had disappeared—Honey Sanders. He 
  introduced himself. 
  “Me, 
  I’m 
  Sandy 
  Gower. 
  I’m 
  constable in these here parts, Mr. Savage.” 
  The stocky, important lawman’s chest 
  seemed to stick out farther. “I left that fellow 
  waiting while I went back to see about his 
  damaged car. And now he’s gone! I don’t 
  know what we’ll do about that battling 
  partner of his, that Monk or whatever they 
  call him. He’s—” 
  The 
  bronze 
  figure’s 
  eyes 
  sharpened. 
  “You said Monk?” Doc demanded 
  quickly.  
  “Yep. A bad egg.” 
  Briefly, Sandy Gower explained 
  about the smashup and how Monk had 
  landed behind bars of the local jail. He 
  added little further to enlighten Doc Savage 
  as to why Monk and Ham Brooks had been 
  up here in Sleepy Hollow, save to interview 
  a girl named Honey Sanders. 
  Doc 
  listened 
  quietly, 
  then 
  he 
  announced, “The one called Ham, who you 
  say has disappeared, is one of my aides. 
  As is the one you say is now in jail.” 
  The red-faced constable’s eyes 
  bulged. 
  “Oh, my gosh!” he cried. And then, 
  “Say, Doc Savage, I didn’t know that fellow 
  Monk was in your organization, or I 
  wouldn’t have—” 
  “Monk,” 
  Doc 
  said 
  quietly, 
  “sometimes runs into difficulties. Perhaps 
  we should see him.” 
  Sandy Gower almost fell over 
  himself trying to be accommodating. He led 
  the way back to his dilapidated flivver, after 
  assigning his deputized men to continue 
  the search for either Honey Sanders or the 
  Doc Savage aide named Ham Brooks. 
  Perhaps the constable knew—since 
  he was a small-town law officer himself—
  that the bronze man held an honorary 
  commission on the New York police force. 
  In that city, Doc Savage had the authority of 
  any police official. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  19 
  At the jail, Doc Savage offered to 
  pay Monk’s bail. But Constable Sandy 
  Gower would not hear of it.  
  He explained how Ham Brooks had 
  already, through him, paid for any damages 
  caused at the oil station; and that the 
  garageman had stated he could have the 
  car in running condition before dawn. 
  Because he had been more than well paid 
  for any damages, he had been willing to 
  work the remainder of the night on the car. 
  Monk, a grin threatening to dislodge 
  his ears, came out of the open cell and let 
  out a whoop at sight of Doc. 
  “How did you know—” he started in 
  his childlike, piping voice. 
  “That will take some explaining—
  later,” Doc Savage said as he started to 
  lead the way out. 
  “But where’s Ham?” Monk wanted to 
  know.  
  “We will try to find him.” 
  Sandy 
  Gower, 
  the 
  constable, 
  interjected, “Hell’s bells! I figured this Monk 
  and the one called Ham for deadly 
  enemies!” 
  “As a matter of fact,” the bronze 
  man said, “they are the best of friends.” 
  But Monk was glaring at the rotund, 
  stocky constable. 
  “Lookit, you overstuffed kewpie!” he 
  said belligerently. “When I find that shyster 
  Ham, I’m gonna twist off his ears!” 
  Sandy Gower stared after hairy 
  Monk as, with a waddling, gorilla-like gait, 
  he followed the bronze man out. The 
  constable was flabbergasted at hearing that 
  those two strange fellows, Monk and Ham, 
  could possibly be friends. 
  But he might have changed his 
  opinion could he have seen Monk half an 
  hour later. 
   
   
  WITH 
  Doc 
  Savage, 
  the 
  hairy 
  chemist was intent on scouring the vicinity 
  not far from the white cottage of Honey 
  Sanders, in Sleepy Hollow. So far, there 
  had been no trace of the girl or the lawyer, 
  Ham. 
  Monk, 
  in 
  the 
  meantime, 
  had 
  informed the bronze man about their trip up 
  here; of seeing the strange hobgoblin of a 
  thing that had zoomed so close over their 
  car. 
  As Monk explained, his little eyes 
  popping in his incredibly homely face, 
  “Blazes, Doc, the danged thing must ‘a’ 
  been that headless horseman. Only he was 
  ridin’ some kind of a barrel—a long skinny 
  barrel with wings—” 
  They had been proceeding along 
  the river bank, not far from a small stone 
  building that had no visible means of 
  entrance. The bronze man was using a 
  device that he had removed from one of his 
  coat pockets. 
  Shaped like a very small, boxlike 
  lantern, the device used an infrared ray 
  principle in revealing footprints in the 
  darkness. 
  The moon had slid down in the 
  west, and it was the dark hour before dawn. 
  Chill dampness floated in from the nearby 
  Hudson River. 
  The bronze man was bent over as 
  he walked carefully, examining the ground. 
  Abruptly he paused, leaned closer to the 
  earth and said quietly, “The girl was with 
  him.” 
  “With who?” Monk asked. 
  “Ham.” 
  Doc 
  was 
  making 
  measurements with his fingers. “They are 
  Ham’s shoes. The width and the length are 
  exactly the same.” 
  “The blasted shyster!” Monk piped. 
  “That’s why he left me there in jail—so he 
  could meet that girl alone!”  
  The pair of footprints—fresh in the 
  dew-wet grass of night—did not lead past 
  the blockhouse-type, small stone building. 
  They seemed to come from the woods 
  beyond, skirted the small structure and 
  continued down the embankment at some 
  distance away from what was a frequently 
  used dirt path. 
  Doc Savage followed, using the 
  infrared device. At the crushed-stone 
  roadbed 
  of 
  the 
  railroad, 
  the 
  prints 
  disappeared, but the bronze man picked 
  them up again across the tracks. They led 
  right down to the water’s edge. 
  There was a bit of sandy beach 
  close to the rock fill beneath the railroad 
  bed. A mark in the damp sand showed that 
  a rowboat had recently been tied up here. 
  There was another rowboat nearby, turned 
  upside down with its bow resting on a 
  boulder. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  20 
  Doc Savage looked at the flat, 
  exposed bottom of the rowboat and a 
  strange sound came from his lips.  
  It could be best described as a 
  trilling, soft and musical; low, mellow, it was 
  like the rare song of some bird of the 
  jungle. 
  The sound was one that Doc had 
  made in moments of startling discovery or 
  danger. 
   
   
  MONK tensed. “What is it, Doc?” 
  “A message from Ham,” said Doc 
  Savage. “It was left for you.” 
  The bronze giant was studying what 
  was apparently invisible writing made with 
  some sort of special crayon. The device 
  which he held in his hand apparently made 
  the words visible. 
  “Ham,” Doc went on, “has rowed out 
  to what he states is a boat moored across 
  the river. He says the mystery of the flying 
  thing has something to do with that boat. 
  You were to follow if you found his 
  message.” 
  Monk was standing, staring out over 
  the water. His small eyes appeared to be 
  closed in his scarred features as he 
  squinted into the gloom. 
  “Don’t see no boat,” announced 
  Monk. 
  Doc Savage, too, was looking. He 
  remained motionless for several moments, 
  his attention on the river.  
  Finally he said, “It’s not exactly a 
  boat, but rather a barge, lying low in the 
  water. It’s very close to the far shore. We 
  had better investigate.” 
  But first, the bronze man led the 
  way upriver to where his amphibian plane 
  was moored. It was not more than half a 
  mile away. 
  They waded out to the ship, climbed 
  aboard. 
  Doc directed, “Cast off. We will taxi 
  quietly upstream and across to a point 
  above the barge. Then we can approach 
  the barge by drifting silently down with the 
  outgoing tide.” 
  The dampness of the small strip of 
  sandy beach back by the rowboat had 
  informed Doc that the tide was still running 
  out. 
  Ten minutes later, they were close 
  to the opposite banks of the Hudson. Doc 
  Savage killed the softly humming engines. 
  Like a phantom of the night, the plane 
  drifted 
  downstream 
  under 
  cover 
  of 
  darkness. 
  Shortly, Monk saw the outlines of 
  the barge directly ahead. Carrying no lights, 
  it lay well out of the regular river channels, 
  close to steep, wooded banks that rose up 
  from the shore. 
  Getting up from the cockpit seat, 
  Doc motioned Monk into his place. 
  He ordered, “Wait ten minutes, or 
  until you see a flashlight signal, then taxi 
  the plane up to the barge. In the meantime, 
  keep quiet.” 
  “What’re you gonna do?” Monk 
  wanted to know. 
  But in the next moment, Doc’s 
  appearance supplied the answer to Monk’s 
  worried question. 
  For the bronze man had put on a 
  helmet-type thing that looked like an 
  inverted, large fish bowl. The device was 
  fitted with a small oxygen tank that 
  strapped across the shoulders, and with a 
  mouth-breathing tube. 
  The 
  plane 
  was 
  perhaps 
  four 
  hundred yards from the barge when Doc 
  Savage stepped overside and disappeared 
  beneath the surface of the river. 
  Monk waited anxiously. He knew 
  that the bronze giant was swimming below 
  the surface, in a cautious approach to the 
  mysterious, unlighted barge. 
  What would he find there? Ham? 
  The girl?  
  Restless, 
  Monk 
  waited. 
  Five 
  minutes. Ten. 
  To himself, he murmured, “Doggone 
  it, Doc should ‘a’ been there five minutes 
  ago!” 
  Abruptly, Monk stiffened at the 
  sound of the high, shrill whine that came 
  out of the night. His mouth fell open. His 
  little eyes popped. For he recognized the 
  familiar shriek of the hobgoblin flying thing! 
  Then the flash of light came. 
  But it was not the beam of a 
  flashlight that Monk had been waiting for. 
  Instead, a sheet of red brilliance 
  spurted upward for a hundred feet into the 
  sky. It made red lava color of the river 
  surface and illuminated the shore for a half 
  mile either way. 
  It was followed by the terrific 
  detonation that almost flung Monk out of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  21 
  the plane cockpit seat. He saw the planking 
  and débris that was thrown up into the air. 
  The barge, blown into thousands of 
  flying pieces, was no more. 
   
   
  Chapter VI 
  MESSAGE FROM HAM 
   
  A FEW seconds later, wreckage 
  started raining down on the plane in which 
  Monk was seated. Since the outer skin of 
  the ship was of a new-type metal alloy, no 
  damage was done. 
  The only trouble was that the 
  dropping planks and parts of the exploded 
  barge kept Monk from getting immediately 
  out of the cabin. 
  Monk stalked up and down the small 
  space, his hairy hands balled in tight knots, 
  his eyes filled with something that was 
  almost grief. 
  “Blazes!” he moaned. “They must ‘a’ 
  tricked Doc!”  
  Timber kept thumping down on the 
  cabin’s metal roof. But after a while it 
  stopped, and the chemist leaped to the 
  door. As he swung it open, he heard the 
  whine of the flying hobgoblin of a thing. He 
  jerked back with a start. 
  And then Monk saw that he had 
  been mistaken. What had made the roar 
  was 
  an 
  inboard 
  speedboat 
  with 
  a 
  streamlined 
  hull. 
  The 
  boat 
  was 
  just 
  swinging up beside the amphibian plane 
  bobbing gently around on the water. 
  Three men were in the cockpit of the 
  speed craft, and obviously—figuring that 
  Doc Savage must have arrived alone in his 
  plane, and was now dead—they had come 
  out to take over. 
  With a howl of rage, Monk leaped 
  clear of the plane and landed in the bottom 
  of the speedboat. The three men were not 
  carrying guns in their hands; they had not 
  expected to meet anyone aboard the 
  drifting plane. 
  Burly fingers fell on the stocky 
  chemist. Someone kicked Monk in the face. 
  Monk let out a bull-like roar and 
  grabbed two heads. He started shaking the 
  two fellows as though they might have been 
  sawdust-filled rag dolls. 
  Soon, 
  completely 
  dazed, 
  they 
  staggered around in the cockpit of the boat. 
  Monk cocked a fist, slammed it into the 
  third man’s face and watched him flop back 
  into a leather-cushioned seat. 
  The other two had lost enough of 
  their dizziness to leap in at Monk once 
  again. 
  Monk tapped one of the men on the 
  chin. The man fell on his back, sprawled 
  across 
  the 
  one 
  who 
  was 
  already 
  unconscious on the leather seat. The 
  chemist’s powerful hands quickly scooped 
  down and dragged the fellow up by the 
  collar. 
  But the man’s eyes were still closed. 
  There was no fight left in him. 
  Monk swore. Unable to restrain his 
  impulsiveness, he hit the big guy again just 
  for good luck. Monk was like that. He 
  always believed in doing a good job. 
  He was aware that the third man 
  had been trying to climb on his neck, from 
  somewhere behind him. Monk whirled, 
  letting go with a terrific haymaker. 
  But he missed. 
  He missed because the third man 
  had leaped clear, was swinging a long boat 
  hook at the same instant the chemist let 
  drive the roundhouse swing. 
  Monk lost his balance, the heavy 
  boat hook caught him behind the ear, and 
  he tumbled overboard into the river. 
  The man in the boat dropped his 
  weapon, leaped to the wheel of the craft 
  and gunned the motor. He looked back, 
  grinning as he saw the spot where the 
  black 
  river 
  had 
  closed 
  over 
  Monk’s 
  disappearing head. 
  “That’s that!” he snarled, and the 
  craft beneath him streaked downstream. 
   
   
  IT took more than a bop on the head 
  to knock out the scrappy chemist, however. 
  His brain cleared the moment he 
  struck the cool water. Monk remembered to 
  hold his breath as he went below the 
  surface. From the drumming sound that 
  was in his eardrums, he realized that the 
  speedboat had already made an escape. 
  And so he held his breath as long as 
  he could, hanging just beneath the surface. 
  Monk had an idea—since the crooks had 
  escaped anyway—that it might be a good 
  thing to let them think he was drowned. No 
  telling when he would meet up with them 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  22 
  again—and Monk was already planning a 
  little surprise reception. 
  He broke surface sputtering, his 
  bright, small eyes peering around him. The 
  speedboat was nowhere visible, but from a 
  distance came the powerful, slowly fading 
  purr of the speed craft. 
  Monk struck out for the plane and a 
  few moments later was climbing aboard. He 
  was thinking of Doc Savage, of the fact that 
  the bronze man must have been blown to 
  bits 
  in 
  the 
  barge 
  explosion. 
  Monk’s 
  shoulders sagged hopelessly as he swung 
  open the door to the cabin of the ship. 
  Doc Savage said quietly, “I could 
  have fired some shots at that speedboat, 
  but there was too much danger of hitting 
  you.” 
  Monk stared, then he let out a whoop 
  of joy. 
  “Doc! Goshamighty, I thought you 
  was blasted to hell an’ gone when that 
  barge let go!” 
  Doc Savage had just taken off the 
  glass-bowl diving helmet and was storing it 
  away in a case, along with the breathing 
  apparatus that went with the device. 
  He straightened, and said, “It was 
  obvious that the barge might be some sort 
  of trap.” 
  And then the bronze man explained 
  that he had not proceeded directly to the 
  barge. Instead, he had swum underwater 
  and reached the rocky shore at a point 
  some distance north of the darkened boat. 
  There, he had waited, hidden in darkness, 
  suspecting that he might have been seen 
  as he dropped overside from his plane. 
  Monk 
  gulped. 
  “Goshamighty!” 
  he 
  piped. “Somebody expected you to appear 
  on the barge, an’ they had that reception 
  waiting for you!” 
  Doc nodded. “It appears so.” 
  The bronze man, his clothing still 
  soaking wet, stepped toward the cockpit. “It 
  might be best to return to headquarters,” he 
  said. “There is no trace of Ham or the girl 
  here. But Ham might have escaped and 
  returned to New York. Later, someone can 
  drive your car down from that gas station.” 
  Monk, seated beside the bronze man 
  as the plane took off, looked worried. His 
  eyes were solemn. 
  “You think,” he prodded, “Ham might 
  have been on that barge, Doc?” 
  Doc Savage was silent a moment, 
  busy with the controls. 
  Then he said quietly, “It is doubtful. If 
  Ham is a captive, he is probably being held 
  somewhere else. The barge was not blown 
  up by anyone near it.” 
  “But how—” the chemist started. 
  He paused, seeing that Doc was 
  thinking of something else. Also, it was a 
  habit of the bronze giant not to make 
  explanations until he had the complete 
  solution to a problem. 
  He said now, “We might be able to 
  locate the men in the speedboat. They are 
  obviously connected with the mystery.” 
  Thoughts of catching up with the 
  three crooks again brought a new gleam to 
  Monk’s little eyes. 
  “Yeah,” he rapped. “Let’s find’em.” 
  But they found no trace of the fast 
  speedboat, though Doc Savage even flew 
  close to the water and covered both shore 
  lines of the Hudson. 
  And as they neared New York, the 
  towns 
  along 
  the 
  shore 
  grew 
  more 
  numerous. There were dozens of boat 
  landings where the fast craft might have put 
  in. Also, they flew over at least half a dozen 
  yacht clubs, where scores of small boats 
  were tied up in the water near shore. The 
  speedboat 
  could 
  easily 
  have 
  been 
  concealed among others of like design. 
  Doc continued toward Manhattan. 
  Dawn was making striking silhouettes 
  of New York’s skyline when the bronze man 
  finally set the amphibian down and taxied 
  toward his water-front hangar. 
   
   
  THE skyscraper headquarters of Doc 
  Savage was located on the eighty-sixth 
  floor of a downtown office building. A 
  private, high-speed elevator whisked Doc 
  and Monk swiftly to the topmost floor of the 
  building. 
  The headquarters consisted of three 
  rooms. Few persons had even been farther 
  than the first—the reception room. This was 
  fairly small, and contained a large safe, 
  comfortable chairs and a huge inlaid table. 
  The other two rooms were much larger. 
  One was a library, its walls lined with 
  scientific volumes covering anything that 
  had ever been accomplished in science 
  and medicine. 
  
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  23 
  The third immense room was Doc 
  Savage’s private laboratory. It was the envy 
  of the few great scientists who had ever 
  been privileged to see it. 
  The unhealthy-looking fellow who 
  arose, stifling a yawn, from a deep chair in 
  the reception room, appeared like a 
  prospect for an embalming school. 
  His skin was sallow, his long bony 
  body looked as though a stiff wind would 
  put kinks in it. He had thin blond hair and 
  pale-blue eyes. His forehead, however, was 
  tremendous. 
  He said, “Golly, Doc, there’s been 
  the devil to pay! I’ve been waiting for you!” 
  Monk had flopped into a chair. He 
  squinted at the skinny man and asked, 
  “Hey, Long Tom, you heard anything from 
  Ham?” 
  The skinny one turned his attention 
  to the hairy chemist and gave a snort of 
  disgust. “When you two left here last night, I 
  figured you would probably run into trouble. 
  What’s happened now?” 
  Monk gave a sour grimace. “That 
  shyster Ham,” he said, “has gone and got 
  himself involved with a girl—”  
  Doc Savage interrupted quietly, 
  “You were going to tell us something, Long 
  Tom?” 
  The skinny man’s eyes looked 
  worried as he turned his attention from 
  Monk. 
  “Yes,” he said swiftly. “It’s about 
  something that happened at the college up-
  state.” And he related what Doc Savage 
  had already heard in the radio message to 
  his plane. 
  Long Tom was another of the 
  bronze man’s aides. His full title was Major 
  Thomas J. Roberts. He was the electrical 
  wizard in the bronze giant’s remarkable 
  group of worldwide adventurers. 
  And strangely, for all his unhealthy 
  appearance, he was a wiry bundle of piano-
  wire muscles and speed. When aroused, 
  he could fight like a demon. He had never 
  known a sick day in all his life. 
  Monk was suddenly out of the chair, 
  listening to Long Tom’s story of the 
  mysterious explosion at Doc’s college. He 
  heard about the escape of a former criminal 
  named Birmingham Jones. 
  Long Tom added: “I’ve been in 
  contact 
  with 
  the 
  college 
  all 
  night. 
  Birmingham Jones has not been found.” 
  Doc told, briefly, of what had 
  happened up the Hudson near Sleepy 
  Hollow. He mentioned the barge explosion. 
  It was Monk, suddenly excited, who 
  put in, “Say, that’s funny! Two explosions—
  a couple hundred miles apart! Maybe—” 
  But Long Tom was busy adding 
  another detail of the college explosion for 
  Doc’s benefit. 
  “There was something else,” the 
  electrical wizard was saying. “A peculiar, 
  shrill whistling sound just before the 
  explosion 
  happened. 
  They 
  have 
  not 
  discovered what it was, Doc.” 
  The 
  bronze 
  man’s 
  eyes 
  were 
  thoughtful. “Whistling sound?” 
  “Yes. It—” 
  Monk let out a yell. “Doc! That’s the 
  noise that blasted goblin of a flyin’ thing 
  made over Sleepy Hollow. An’ I betcha it 
  was the same thing I heard just before that 
  danged barge went sky-high!” 
   
   
  DOC 
  SAVAGE 
  nodded 
  without 
  speaking. He said nothing about the 
  mysterious object that had almost crashed 
  into his plane as he had been flying toward 
  New York. 
  Instead, he queried, “This girl Honey 
  Sanders that you mentioned, Monk? There 
  was something about her seeing some sort 
  of flying apparition near Sleepy Hollow, of 
  her being hysterical and badly frightened?” 
  Monk jerked his head. He started to 
  reach in his pocket, then swore. “Blast it!” 
  he rapped. “Ham’s got her picture. It was in 
  the papers last night!” 
  Doc suggested, “It might be a good 
  idea to buy another paper, Monk.” 
  The chemist started for the door, to 
  go down to the street. He returned five 
  minutes later with a morning edition. He 
  was excited. Not because he had found 
  anything about Honey Sanders—the story, 
  apparently, 
  had 
  been 
  dropped—but 
  because of the headlines that were on the 
  first page. 
  Monk pointed at the heavy black 
  type, and said tensely, “Blazes, Doc! Lookit 
  this!” 
  The item read: 
   
  MYSTERY 
  SURROUNDS PLANT 
  EXPLOSION IN NEW JERSEY 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  24 
   
  Early this morning, a mysterious 
  blast rocked a part of the vast cellulose 
  plant located at Mayville, in the New Jersey 
  meadows a few miles out of New York City. 
  Police say that it was only through 
  an act of Providence that the terrific 
  explosion took place a scant hour before 
  five hundred men would have been at work 
  in the building which was demolished. 
  Sabotage has been hinted, but 
  officials of the industrial concern deny all 
  such possibilities. But it has been noted 
  that the cellulose concern manufactures a 
  product used in war, and now residents are 
  recalling the Black Tom explosions that 
  occurred in the vicinity during the last World 
  War. 
  Cornelia 
  Duval, 
  millionaire 
  industrialist and director of the firm, could 
  not be located at an early hour this 
  morning. It was thought that he might have 
  a statement to make. 
   
  And further on, near the bottom of 
  the long news account, was a brief 
  paragraph which said: 
   
  Jules Smith, watchman at the plant, 
  who was fortunate to be making his rounds 
  at some distance from where the actual 
  explosion took place, and who was not hurt, 
  told of a peculiar shrill whistling sound that 
  he heard just before the blast. He was 
  unable to say exactly what the sound was, 
  though he was positive that it came from 
  the sky. 
   
  Monk, who had been reading over 
  Long Tom’s shoulder, let out a squeal. 
  “Golly!” he exploded. “Maybe this 
  has got something to do with that explosion 
  up the river, Doc! Maybe—” 
  “Or,” the bronze man put in, “it might 
  be pure coincidence. That watchman was 
  more than likely excited by the explosion, 
  and he might have imagined things.” 
  “But—” the chemist started, and the 
  ringing of the phone interrupted him. 
  Doc Savage picked up the receiver. 
  A second later, he said swiftly, “Yes, Ham?” 
  Monk, listening, jumped up and 
  down happily. “Then that shyster’s O. K.?” 
  he asked. 
  Doc, listening at the phone, nodded. 
  He listened attentively, finally said, “It 
  should take us about thirty minutes to get 
  there,” and then hung up. 
  “Get where, Doc?” Monk asked 
  anxiously. 
  “It seems,” stated Doc Savage, “that 
  Ham and the girl—Honey Sanders—are 
  safe.” There was a certain brightness to the 
  bronze giant’s flake-gold, magnetic eyes. 
  “Ham has a lead to the flying thing. He is 
  waiting for us now.” 
  As Doc Savage started toward the 
  door, it was Long Tom who asked, “Waiting 
  where?” 
  “At a spot just a half mile from 
  where the explosion has occurred at the 
  Duval plant in New Jersey!” 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  GUY WITH A GUN 
   
  THE 
  quarter-mile-long 
  manufacturing plant of Cornelius Duval, 
  millionaire industrialist, was located in what 
  had once been Jersey swamps along the 
  old highway route to Newark. In recent 
  years the lowlands had been filled in and 
  numerous factories had been built in the 
  area. 
  Cornelius Duval and his associates 
  probably owned at least half of the 
  industries located in the district. 
  The building of this particular unit, 
  which had been half demolished, was a 
  processing shop located far down near one 
  corner of the string of shops. Motorcycle 
  police patrolled the roadway just outside 
  the high wire fence now, and no one had 
  been permitted entrance except a few plant 
  officials. 
  The place where Ham Brooks had 
  asked Doc Savage to meet him was at a 
  road-stand place at some distance from the 
  damaged shop. The construction of a new 
  highway had long since put the small eating 
  place out of business. It was deserted. 
  Ham and the girl were seated on the 
  rear steps of the old wooden building when 
  Doc Savage and the others arrived in the 
  bronze man’s limousine. Outwardly, the 
  somber appearance of the machine would 
  hardly indicate that it was armor-proof, or 
  that the windows would resist machine-gun 
  bullets. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  25 
  Doc and skinny Long Tom were 
  introduced to the girl by Ham, who told 
  briefly of what had happened since he had 
  met pretty Honey Sanders. 
  It appeared that after they had been 
  seized by the six gunmen in Sleepy Hollow, 
  and left locked in the stone-walled prison, a 
  man had been sent back to question the girl 
  about 
  her 
  interview 
  with 
  newspaper 
  reporters. 
  Ham had managed to knock the 
  fellow out, and he and Honey Sanders had 
  escaped, to later follow the other gunmen in 
  the night and overhear a conversation that 
  involved Doc Savage. 
  As Ham now started to exclaim, “It 
  was about your college up-state, Doc. 
  There was an explosion, and somehow 
  those birds knew about it. They said—” 
  The bronze man nodded. “Yes. We 
  have already learned about the trouble up 
  there,” he said quietly. 
  Ham went on worriedly. “But that 
  isn’t all. A guy named Birmingham Jones 
  escaped from the college. It seems he was 
  to grab Honey Sanders”—Ham smiled at 
  the girl—“but then these guys decided this 
  Birmingham Jones was to have a different 
  assignment, seeing as they already had the 
  girl.” 
  “Different?” asked Doc Savage. 
  “What do you mean?” 
  “Birmingham Jones was to be sent 
  over here to Jersey, to this very plant where 
  the explosion happened early this morning!” 
  announced the lawyer. “We managed to 
  follow them toward a spot where they were 
  to meet this Birmingham Jones, but later 
  we lost the trail. So we came over here, 
  seeing as Honey Sanders, here, knows 
  something about a man named Patrick 
  Valentine.” 
  Monk was suddenly excited. “Golly, 
  Doc!” he piped in his shrill voice. “I’ll bet 
  that Birmingham Jones was the one blew 
  up this place!” 
  But the bronze man shook his head. 
  “Hardly that,” he said, but he did not 
  explain this remark. Instead, he looked at 
  the slender, pretty girl.  
  “You said something about a man 
  named Patrick Valentine?” 
  The girl shook her head swiftly, her 
  blue eyes wide. “Yes. That’s what they call 
  him, but I have an idea the name is a fake.” 
  “Fake?” 
  “I mean, one used to shield his real 
  identity. He must be a devil!” 
  The bronze man’s eyebrows raised 
  slightly. “Why do you say that?” 
  “Because 
  Patrick 
  Valentine—
  whoever he is—is behind all this trouble. 
  I’ve overheard enough to know this is true. 
  Patrick Valentine is planning something that 
  is going to shock half the world. What, I 
  don’t know. But it is something big!” 
  For a moment, Doc Savage was 
  thoughtful. Then he indicated the limousine, 
  which he had parked well behind the road 
  stand while Monk had first been arguing 
  with Ham. 
  “Monk can stay here with the girl,” 
  Doc directed. “It might be a good idea for 
  the rest of us to try to learn just what 
  Birmingham Jones was doing at the Duval 
  plant.” 
  The bronze man looked at the 
  unhealthy-appearing 
  electrical 
  wizard. 
  “Long Tom, you and Ham might try to get 
  into 
  that 
  shop 
  where 
  the 
  explosion 
  occurred. Find out what took place.” 
  Long Tom asked, “Doc, about that 
  phone call you stopped off to make on the 
  way over here? Has it anything to do  
  with—” 
  “The call was to Cornelius Duval,” 
  explained the bronze man. “He has an 
  appointment with me at the plant in ten 
  minutes.” 
  Doc consulted his watch. “Meet 
  back here at the car in an hour.” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  then 
  disappeared 
  toward 
  the 
  plant 
  of 
  the 
  millionaire 
  manufacturer. 
  Ham 
  and 
  Long 
  Tom 
  followed. 
   
   
  SOMEONE had once said that Ham 
  Brooks should have been an orator. He 
  could talk. And his legal training made his 
  arguments convincing, when he wished 
  them to be. 
  His words convinced the watchman 
  stationed at one of the Duval plant gates. 
  “No one gets inside the grounds!” 
  the 
  watchman 
  had 
  insisted. 
  “Them’s 
  orders!” 
  But now the man was saying, “Well, 
  if 
  you 
  two 
  are 
  insurance-company 
  examiners, like you say, I guess I’ll have to 
  let you. But you be careful. Part of that 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  26 
  building hasn’t collapsed yet—but it’s liable 
  to!” 
  Ham and Long Tom entered the 
  grounds inside the high wire fence. 
  The 
  building 
  they 
  shortly 
  approached lay, mostly a pile of bricks, on 
  the ground. At least, half of it did. 
  The remainder—a structure several 
  stories high—showed one slightly bulging 
  wall. 
  In a large storage yard off to the left, 
  outside the part of the shop that had 
  collapsed, was the remains of what had 
  been a huge vat of some type. There was 
  an odor of chemicals in the air. 
  Long Tom said, “That tank must 
  have been knocked right through the walls 
  of the building. Funny! The products they 
  manufacture here are not explosive.” 
  They moved on, located a small exit 
  door in the wall of the part of the shop still 
  standing. Long Tom led the way inside. 
  They saw machines and equipment 
  that had been smashed to pieces. The 
  smell of spilled chemicals in here was 
  stronger, causing the two men to cough 
  occasionally. 
  Ham 
  remarked, 
  “Lucky 
  these 
  employees had not yet come to work. 
  Otherwise, hundreds of them would have 
  been killed.” 
  Long Tom nodded, saying nothing. 
  He had been sniffing the air as they walked 
  through the shop, past various vats and 
  beneath massive overhead pipes that were 
  obviously used as liquid conveyers. 
  “Can’t quite place it,” Long Tom 
  remarked, his thin, sensitive nose screwed 
  up as he still sniffed. 
  “Place what?” Ham asked. 
  “The odor. Like burned ozone. It’s 
  something that was hardly caused by the 
  chemicals which they use here.” 
  Ham said, “If only some of those 
  employees were here, perhaps they could 
  give us an idea what it might be.” 
  From above the slender lawyer’s 
  head, the grating voice rapped, “Brother, 
  maybe we can help you!” 
  Ham jerked back, staring upward at 
  the big pipe lines that ran overhead through 
  the shop. 
  Assorted forms came tumbling down 
  on him and Long Tom. 
   
   
  THE assailants wore dungarees and 
  workmen’s caps. But their faces were the 
  kind that are found in rogues’ galleries. 
  Long Tom and Ham were seized 
  and carried by sheer weight of falling 
  bodies to the floor of the shop. One of the 
  attackers remarked confidently, “Who said 
  these Doc Savage mugs are tough? Why, 
  hell, they’re just set-ups—” 
  The one speaking was on top of 
  bony Long Tom. He never finished the 
  sentence; perhaps never exactly knew what 
  happened in the next split second. 
  He was thrown a dozen feet clear of 
  the skinny electrical wizard’s figure. Long 
  Tom himself came off the floor like a piece 
  of released spring steel. His pale eyes were 
  glittering. 
  He grabbed another thug and began 
  flattening the man’s ears. 
  He knocked the second assailant 
  flat. A third leaped on him. 
  Ham was holding his own with three 
  more who had also come down off the 
  overhead pipes. The well-dressed lawyer 
  used no rough-house tactics. His fists 
  merely appeared to flick out lightly. 
  But each blow was well aimed, 
  deadly in its rapierlike suddenness. 
  Men fell down. Ham was soon 
  dusting off his clothes and turning his 
  attention to Long Tom, who had not done 
  so badly himself. The electrical expert was 
  just straightening from pounding the last 
  thug senseless against the hard floor. 
  Ham started to comment, “Monk is 
  going to feel hurt when he learns about this. 
  Too bad he—” 
  The two men standing behind Long 
  Tom and Ham laughed. They both held 
  guns. 
  One 
  said, 
  “We 
  kinda 
  thought 
  planting that phony watchman at the gate 
  was a good idea.” 
  He pulled the trigger of the gun in 
  his hand. 
  Lead did not spurt from the weapon, 
  but the liquid did, and it got into Ham’s and 
  Long Tom’s eyes and they groped around 
  blindly. The stuff had them momentarily 
  helpless. 
  And while they were thus staggering 
  about, the man with the liquid ammonia gun 
  stepped forward, let a blackjack slide from 
  his coat sleeve and started swinging. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  27 
  The two Doc Savage aides were 
  soon lying motionless on the floor. 
  The blackjack wielder said, “Soon 
  as we can get enough of our punks awake 
  to take care of these two, we’ll go after Doc 
  Savage.” 
   
   
  Chapter VIII 
  ONE MAN WANTED 
   
  IN the reception room outside the 
  private office and conference chambers of 
  Cornelius Duval, the cute little drugstore 
  blonde sat at her switchboard and stared 
  hopefully toward the bronze man seated 
  across the small room. For ten minutes, the 
  girl had been giving hopeful sighs as she 
  gazed at Doc Savage. 
  Upon entering, Doc Savage had 
  been informed by the girl that Cornelius 
  Duval would see him in a few minutes. It 
  appeared that a board meeting had been 
  hurriedly ordered. Doc would be admitted to 
  the conference room. 
  The 
  blond 
  receptionist 
  was 
  attractive enough to have to continually 
  ward off passes made at her by every man 
  who visited the general offices of Duval 
  Industries. 
  But this giant bronze fellow had 
  been one exception. He had hardly glanced 
  at her. The girl was slightly deflated. 
  Three times, in the past five 
  minutes, she had made remarks intended 
  to draw the stranger into conversation. But 
  Doc had merely nodded, continuing to 
  apparently 
  stare 
  at 
  the 
  walls. 
  The 
  receptionist could hardly know that the 
  bronze fellow’s expressionless features 
  concealed the fact that his remarkable brain 
  was intent on a problem. 
  For Doc was connecting various 
  incidents that had happened throughout the 
  night. He was thinking of a former crook 
  and murderer named Birmingham Jones. 
  Birmingham Jones, obviously, was 
  tied in with a mystery that was yet subtly 
  hidden. Birmingham Jones, according to 
  Ham’s observations, had last headed 
  toward the Duval plant. 
  That 
  fact 
  was 
  puzzling. 
  For 
  Cornelius Duval, millionaire industrialist, 
  was not the type of person to hobnob with 
  crooks. One of the wealthiest men in 
  America, Duval had developed many 
  scientific products that had been useful to 
  mankind. His record was one which leading 
  citizens envied. 
  A buzzer sounded on the blond girl’s 
  switchboard. She plugged in one of the 
  switchboard cords, murmured sweetly, “Ye-
  es?” 
  She listened a moment, then said, 
  “He was here about half an hour ago. He 
  has already seen Mr. Duval and has 
  departed. . . . You’re welcome.” 
  The girl broke the connection. 
  Doc Savage was abruptly on his 
  feet. The movement was casual, but the girl 
  gave a start when she saw the giant bronze 
  man standing near her desk. She had not 
  heard Doc Savage move. 
  “Someone else has already seen 
  Mr. Duval?” Doc queried. 
  The girl nodded. She was not 
  supposed to give out such information. She 
  merely smiled sweetly. 
  Doc Savage said, “Who was it? Can 
  you recall the name?” 
  Something about the bronze figure’s 
  compelling eyes made the girl forget 
  everything about rules and regulations. At 
  that instant, she would even have gladly 
  revealed her correct age. 
  She consulted a note pad on the 
  switchboard. “It was a Mr. Birmingham 
  Jones,” she said sweetly. 
   
   
  IF the information startled Doc 
  Savage, his face showed no indication of 
  the fact. 
  He merely said quietly, “Thank you,” 
  and started to move away from the 
  receptionist’s desk. 
  Her 
  buzzer, 
  at 
  that 
  moment, 
  sounded again; and then she was saying, 
  “You may go in now.” 
  A middle-aged, businesslike woman 
  met Doc Savage in the open doorway of a 
  huge, expensively furnished office, nodded, 
  led him through the room and into a 
  chamber beyond. 
  A dozen men were seated around a 
  long conference table. It was obvious that 
  they had been talking excitedly in the 
  moment just before the bronze man’s 
  entrance. Their faces were flushed; they 
  looked warm. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  28 
  The big man at the head of the table 
  arose quickly, came forward and said 
  pleasantly, “It’s a pleasure to have this 
  honor, Doc Savage.” He shook hands. 
  Cornelius Duval had the aggressive 
  manner of a man who has accomplished 
  big things. He had steel-gray hair, a healthy 
  outdoors look, and a handshake that 
  befitted his rugged appearance. 
  Doc came swiftly to the point, 
  outlining briefly the incident that happened 
  at his “college” in up-state New York. He 
  referred casually to the crook named 
  Birmingham Jones, spoke of the mysterious 
  explosion that had taken place here at 
  Duval’s plant early this morning. 
  “Obviously,” finished Doc Savage, 
  “there is a connection between these 
  unusual 
  happenings—a 
  connection 
  involving one Birmingham Jones. Perhaps 
  you are willing now to reveal information 
  you 
  hesitated 
  to 
  give 
  out 
  to 
  the 
  newspapers?” 
  Cornelius Duval, for a long moment, 
  looked at the bronze man. 
  Then 
  the 
  heavy-set 
  millionaire 
  walked back to his place at the head of the 
  board table. He remained standing, and his 
  alert gray eyes flicked briefly over the group 
  of men seated at the table. No one spoke. 
  Duval looked back at Doc Savage 
  and said with emphasis, “The explosion at 
  one of our shops this morning was an 
  accident, Doc Savage. It was a thing that 
  could happen in any industrial concern. It is 
  nothing of great importance.” 
  Something flickered in the bronze 
  giant’s eyes. 
  “And 
  Birmingham 
  Jones?” 
  Doc 
  Savage added quietly. 
  “I’ve never heard of the man,” said 
  Cornelius Duval, and there was something 
  almost defiant in the millionaire’s voice. 
  Doc’s 
  flake-gold 
  eyes 
  stirred 
  restlessly. He nodded briefly, said, “Thank 
  you,” and moved toward the door. 
  Behind him, there was strained 
  silence as he went out by way of Duval’s 
  private office. 
  Duval was obviously lying. Why? 
  The blond receptionist had informed Doc 
  Savage that a man named Birmingham 
  Jones had seen the millionaire shortly 
  before Doc himself. In that case— 
  On the way out through the outer 
  office, Doc glanced toward the blond girl’s 
  desk. She was gone. 
   
   
  DOC rode an elevator down to the 
  main-floor lobby of the building. There was 
  a policeman standing just outside the 
  elevator cab when the doors slid oven. 
  He stared quickly at the bronze 
  man, asked, “You’re Doc Savage, aren’t 
  you?” 
  The cop was big, with a red face 
  and thick-soled, large shoes. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  nodded, 
  glancing 
  around the lobby of the building. At the 
  moment, it was deserted. 
  “What is it?” Doc asked. 
  For Doc Savage at all times tried to 
  avoid undue publicity. Naturally, in his 
  dangerous career of righting wrongs and 
  punishing evildoers, he was bound to draw 
  public attention and acclaim. And yet he 
  generally managed to remain in the 
  background 
  when 
  newspaper 
  publicity 
  covered himself. 
  The policeman was quickly leading 
  the way to where a prowl car was parked at 
  the curb. His partner, a tall thin fellow in 
  uniform, was waiting at the wheel of the 
  car. The engine was running. 
  “Some of your men are in trouble!” 
  informed the officer who had been waiting 
  in the lobby. “It seems they tangled with 
  some fake workmen who were planted in 
  that exploded building of Duval’s.” 
  Doc listened, his eyes thoughtful. 
  “And we trailed the gang to a hide-
  out about a mile from here,” went on the 
  policeman. “One of your men got away 
  from them, and told us to get you. I think his 
  name was Monk.” 
  The bronze man nodded, swung 
  into the police car between the two officers. 
  The tall driver immediately started up, 
  wheeled the car around in the street and 
  sent it streaking out of the small business-
  section which surrounded the factory main 
  office. 
  Outside the town, they followed a 
  rough road that had been the main highway 
  in years past. But now the pavement was 
  full of holes. 
  Houses dropped behind them; they 
  came to a dismal section of low-lying marsh 
  land and dumps. What had once been a 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  29 
  huge gas-storage tank was located off to 
  the right of the old road, set back in what 
  was now a dumping grounds. 
  The driver swung the car in there, 
  maneuvered the machine over a rutted 
  roadway. 
  The gas-storage tank had long since 
  been emptied of gas. Only one of its great 
  circular sections rose up from the ground. 
  The remainder of the tank had probably 
  been dismantled. 
  The police car was parked nearby 
  and the two officers jumped out, leading the 
  way. 
  One said, “These birds must have 
  fixed this tank up for a regular hide-out. 
  Clever, eh?” 
  Doc agreed that it was. 
  They moved toward a heavy steel 
  doorway built near the base of the old, 
  rusted, drum-shaped tank. Nearing it, one 
  of the policemen, said, “Listen!” 
  From inside the great tank, muffled 
  but still audible, came sounds of what must 
  be a terrific battle. One voice rose 
  somewhat above the others—Monk’s voice. 
   
   
  ONE of the cops said tensely, “That 
  sounds like the fellow who called himself 
  Monk!” 
  Doc nodded, standing aside as the 
  heavier-set cop reached for a dog-arm latch 
  that held the heavy door closed from the 
  outside. 
  “We locked ‘em in until we could get 
  your help,” said the officer, swinging open 
  the door. “Come on—and be ready for a 
  fight!” 
  As Doc hurried with the two men 
  inside the tank, his right hand flicked to his 
  vest, concealed beneath his coat. 
  When the door slammed behind 
  them, and blinding light struck the bronze 
  man’s eyes, he flung out his arm as though 
  to ward off the brilliant glow. 
  At the same time, the bronze giant 
  gave a peculiar yell. The words were not 
  understandable. 
  From beyond the blinding light, and 
  magnified a hundred times by the vast 
  emptiness inside the huge steel chamber, 
  came an assortment of yells. The voices of 
  Monk, Ham and skinny Long Tom! 
  But 
  the 
  aides 
  stopped 
  yelling 
  abruptly. Strangely, they remained quiet. 
  But others in the circular, huge room 
  did not. They kept fighting. 
  For they had not known that Doc 
  Savage had spoken in an ancient Mayan 
  tongue, which only he and his aides knew. 
  What Doc had called was, “Hold your 
  breaths!” 
  At the same moment, he seized the 
  heavy-set cop next to him. With deceiving, 
  smooth speed, the bronze giant hurled the 
  big fellow to the ground, knocking him 
  breathless. 
  Doc strained, to make a grab for the 
  policeman’s tall, slender partner. 
  But in the second that Doc Savage 
  had made that peculiar outcry, and when 
  his hands had flicked something into the 
  air, the other cop had leaped back to the 
  heavy entrance door. 
  It slammed even as Doc Savage 
  turned, and the dog-arm handle twisted into 
  place—from outside the tank. 
  Doc Savage stood still, apparently 
  holding his breath, as he had been doing 
  for a full moment. 
  After a moment, he relaxed and 
  called out, “Careful! We can’t be certain just 
  how effective these anaesthetic gas bombs 
  are in such a large space!” 
  From somewhere on the far side of 
  the tank, from the darkness beyond the 
  blinding light, came an explosive sigh as a 
  man let out his breath. Monk’s voice 
  followed. 
  “Yeo-o-ow!” 
  the 
  hairy 
  chemist 
  squalled. “Look at ‘em!” 
  Doc had moved swiftly toward the 
  blinding light, learned that it was a 300-watt 
  bulb placed in a movable stand. He now 
  swung the light around to shine across the 
  big enclosed space of the old tank. 
   
   
  MONK, grinning, was sitting astride 
  a heap of limp figures. Some of those who 
  were unconscious wore dungarees. They 
  were the ones from the partially demolished 
  factory building. 
  Ham and anaemic-looking Long 
  Tom were standing guard over figures lying 
  on the floor. Captives a moment ago, they 
  were now in control. 
  The girl, attractive Honey Sanders, 
  was lying down with her head resting on an 
  outflung arm, as though peacefully asleep. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  30 
   
  Doc moved swiftly toward the blinding light and swung it around! 
   
  For what the bronze man had used 
  upon entering the hide-out was a form of 
  small gas bomb of his own invention. The 
  vials had been broken when Doc hurled 
  them against the earth. The gas otherwise 
  harmless, had the power to put people to 
  sleep in the first moment that it mixed with 
  the air. 
  Thus Doc had shouted the warning 
  in Mayan, telling his aides to hold their 
  breaths. Usually, the gas contained only 
  knockout properties during the first moment 
  or so. 
  The crooks sprawled out on the floor 
  were already showing signs of returning 
  consciousness. 
  Doc said, “Use their belts to tie them 
  up.” 
  Doc helped with the tying. He said, 
  “We will question them later. But I doubt if 
  they know much. They were probably just 
  hired for this job by the man we want, and 
  he has escaped.” 
  Ham stared, “Escaped?” 
  Before Doc Savage could reply, 
  Honey Sanders let out a long sigh and sat 
  up. 
  She saw Doc Savage, and the 
  expression of fear that had started to leap 
  into her eyes disappeared. 
  Ham, 
  always 
  gallant, 
  stepped 
  forward swiftly to help the girl to her feet. 
  Monk glared. 
  Honey Sanders said, “We thought 
  they were policemen, and they grabbed 
  Monk and then me. The real policemen, I 
  heard them say, are tied up back there in 
  the woods where your car is parked, Doc 
  Savage!” 
  The bronze man nodded. 
  It was Long Tom who asked 
  curiously, “But, Doc, how come those 
  phony cops didn’t fool you like they did 
  Monk and the girl?” 
  “Because,” offered the bronze giant, 
  “one of the two was the man we want. 
  There was something familiar about his 
  face right from the first. He is the one who 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  31 
  managed to leap back outside this place 
  and escape.” He moved toward the heavy 
  door that had been bolted from the outside. 
  “It might be some time before we get out of 
  here,” the bronze man added. 
  “But who was it?” asked Ham, 
  puzzled. 
  Doc announced: “That slender one 
  who drove the stolen police car was 
  Birmingham Jones!” 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  “I KNOW VALENTINE!” 
   
  GETTING information out of hard-
  boiled thugs was often one of the bronze 
  man’s problems. He had various scientific 
  ways of doing this, when necessary. But a 
  more simplified method—the one that 
  usually got quick results—was Monk. 
  Monk didn’t use much science. He 
  employed his fists and a lot of fancy cuss 
  words. 
  While Doc, Long Tom and Ham 
  moved across the large tank room to see 
  what they could do about opening the 
  locked door, Monk was assigned to work 
  over a few of the captives to see what 
  information could be obtained from them. 
  Doc suggested that it might be a 
  good idea if the girl, Honey Sanders, 
  stepped across the room with them also. 
  Shortly, hearing the racket behind her, she 
  was glad she did so. 
  Fifteen minutes later—Long Tom 
  and Ham were still working at the heavy 
  steel door—Monk called out to Doc 
  Savage. The bronze giant stepped back 
  across the huge circular space. 
  Monk was standing with his hands 
  on his hips, looking disgusted. 
  The captives were lined up along 
  the inside of the tank wall, looking as 
  though nothing else could ever possibly 
  happen to them. 
  Monk growled, “What the heck! 
  They’re just a bunch of dumb roughnecks. 
  Birmingham Jones hired them at twenty 
  bucks a day to do some of his dirty work. 
  They don’t even know what this mystery is 
  all about!” 
  Doc 
  questioned 
  some 
  of 
  the 
  captives. The bronze man seemed more 
  interested in learning about the mythical 
  person who had been referred to by the girl 
  as Patrick Valentine. Each of the battered-
  looking thugs was willing to talk. 
  “He’s the big boss,” said one. 
  “Birmingham works for that guy,” put 
  in another.  
  “Who is he?” demanded Doc. 
  They all shrugged. One remarked, 
  “Damned if we know. But that’s what they 
  call him—Patrick Valentine.” 
  Doc was thoughtful for a moment. 
  Monk stalked up and down before 
  the bedraggled-looking line-up. His big fists 
  were clenched at his sides. 
  “You birds gonna tell all you know, 
  or do I go to work on you again?” he asked. 
  Each man cringed. Each had had 
  sufficient samples of the hairy chemist’s 
  ability at getting information.  
  “That’s all we know!” one captive 
  offered. “Birmingham Jones was hired by 
  this Patrick Valentine to handle some big 
  deal. For all we know, Valentine could be 
  anybody!” 
  Doc nodded to Monk. “They appear 
  to be stating the truth,” he said. “Tie them 
  up again.” 
  Long Tom and Ham had been 
  unable to force the heavy steel door, the 
  only escape from the tank room.  
  Honey Sanders’ blue eyes were 
  wide enough to show that she was scared. 
  “What shall we do?” she asked, staring at 
  Doc. 
  The bronze man ordered, “Everyone 
  stand back.”  
  Doc took something from the pocket 
  of the special vest that he wore beneath his 
  clothing. Next, he appeared to be sprinkling 
  a form of powder along cracks of the two-
  inch-thick steel door. He bent down, using a 
  small lighter that he held in his hand. 
  Doc’s lithe spring took him well 
  away from the door before the intense, 
  white-hot heat started snaking along the 
  door edges. Metal melted before the girl’s 
  wide-eyed gaze; the massive door abruptly 
  sagged on its heavy hinges. 
  “Thermite,” Ham explained to Honey 
  Sanders. 
  “Hottest 
  burning 
  substance 
  known. Come on.”  
  Leaving the captives bound and 
  gagged, they returned to the road stand 
  where Doc’s limousine had first been 
  parked. Monk and the girl located the two 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  32 
  real policemen who had been tied up and 
  left in the woods. 
  Doc drove them to their local 
  headquarters, explaining about the captives 
  back at the gas tank. The bronze man was 
  assured that plenty of officers would be 
  sent out to take care of the crooks. 
  Doc made arrangements by which, 
  later, the captives would be sent to his 
  special “college”—to the very institution 
  from which their boss, Birmingham Jones, 
  had escaped. 
  Doc and his aides, with the girl, 
  drove back to New York. Late afternoon 
  papers were on the streets, and there 
  seemed to be some extras. 
  Monk got out of the car to buy a 
  paper, stared at the heavy type and quickly 
  brought the paper back to Doc Savage. 
  “Blazes!” Monk piped. “Just lookit 
  that!”  
  The item read: 
   
  EXPLOSION ROCKS 
  LONG ISLAND TOWN 
   
  SECOND MYSTERIOUS 
  BLAST TODAY 
   
  Bulletin 
  At a few moments before noon 
  today, at one of the plants of Modern 
  Paints, Inc., located in Long Island City, a 
  terrific blast tore down a section of buildings 
  where hundreds of employees were just 
  ready to leave for their noon lunch hour. 
  It is believed that the number of 
  dead and missing will reach at least twenty-
  four people. But at this writing—scarcely a 
  half hour since the accident occurred—it is 
  impossible to say just how many have been 
  killed and seriously injured. 
  Plant officials cannot explain the 
  mysterious blast. And police have been 
  unable to yet investigate because of fire 
  that has broken out in store rooms 
  adjoining the demolished section of the 
  plant. 
  Cornelius Duval, millionaire owner 
  of Modern Paints, Inc., refused to talk with 
  reporters. Earlier today, at another of the 
  wealthy manufacturer’s plants in New 
  Jersey, 
  another 
  mysterious 
  explosion 
  occurred. 
   
  It was not necessary for Doc or the 
  others to read further. Ham whistled. 
  Long Tom said, “Doc, what do you 
  figure is behind this?” 
  The bronze man had started the car 
  again, was sending it smoothly and swiftly 
  downtown through late afternoon traffic. For 
  several moments he did not answer the 
  question. 
  Then he said briefly, “Possibly we 
  have overlooked some angle that involves 
  the section called Sleepy Hollow.” 
  Monk, in the rear seat, jumped. 
  “Golly, Doc!” he exclaimed. “You 
  mean something about that blasted goblin 
  thing that Honey, here, and I saw?” 
  Honey 
  Sanders 
  looked 
  questioningly at Doc Savage. The bronze 
  man had been talking to her quietly all 
  during the drive back from New Jersey. His 
  questions had seemed casual; a number of 
  them had pertained to her home life in the 
  region known as Sleepy Hollow. 
  The girl had thought the questions 
  merely part of an idle conversation. But 
  now she suddenly understood that she had 
  been mistaken. 
  There was nothing ever casual 
  about this remarkable bronze fellow. There 
  had been a purpose behind his questioning, 
  she abruptly realized. 
  And this was evident in Doc’s next 
  comments. 
  He said, “Long Tom, you and Monk 
  might go out there to that paint plant and 
  investigate. Ham can wait at headquarters 
  with the girl. If anything develops at Sleepy 
  Hollow, you will hear from me.” 
  A few moments later, he dropped 
  the others off before the skyscraper 
  building containing his eighty-sixth floor 
  headquarters. 
  Dusk 
  was 
  settling 
  over 
  the 
  Westchester hills when Doc finally left 
  Manhattan behind him and sped along the 
  wide parkway that led toward Tarrytown 
  and the region of Sleepy Hollow. 
   
   
  IT was also dark enough that 
  driveway lights should have been turned on 
  in the service station where the long, 
  serious-looking mechanic worked alone. 
  The man was the same fellow who 
  had tangled with Monk when the scrappy 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  33 
  chemist had piled up his car in the service-
  station driveway. 
  But 
  the 
  man 
  had 
  apparently 
  forgotten all about turning on lights now. He 
  was strangely excited about something. He 
  raced inside the small building that served 
  as office and service station. He leaped 
  toward a wall phone as though his life 
  depended on it. 
  A second later he was excitedly 
  talking to the operator. 
  “Look, get me Doc Savage, in New 
  York! Get me long distance! I’ve got 
  something to tell Doc Savage! I’ve got 
  something 
  to 
  tell 
  him 
  about 
  Patrick 
  Valentine—” 
  The long-looking, serious station 
  owner paused, stammering, “Oh, sure. I 
  forgot! Get me Doc Savage and I’ll tell him 
  that!” 
  He 
  waited. 
  Long 
  distance, 
  apparently, knew the number he sought, for 
  shortly a connection was made and a 
  piping voice was saying: 
  “Hello? This is the headquarters of 
  Doc Savage.”  
  The station man was so excited that 
  words got stuck in his throat for a moment. 
  “Listen!” he finally got out. “It’s about 
  Patrick Valentine! Get me Doc Savage! 
  Hurry! I just learned—” 
  Whatever the long man had learned 
  would forever remain a mystery. And all 
  because, 
  in 
  his 
  excitement, 
  he 
  had 
  forgotten to turn on the station lights. 
  The darkly clad figure had taken 
  advantage of that gloom created by the 
  absence of lights. He slipped into the 
  building on soft-soled shoes, moved up 
  behind the tall man talking excitedly at the 
  phone. The knife which he used made a 
  slight crunching sound as it slid between 
  ribs in the station owner’s back. 
  The shadowy figure stepped back, 
  the knife still gripped firmly in his hand. He 
  watched the tall fellow fall, kick a few times, 
  and then lay still. 
  Then the prowler moved to a 
  workbench, wiped the knife blade off on a 
  greasy piece of waste. 
  A sputtering, firecracker sound was 
  coming from the dangling receiver of the 
  wall phone. The killer stepped back, 
  replaced the receiver on the hook. It was 
  impossible to see the man’s face in the 
  darkness. 
  But 
  he 
  seemed 
  sure 
  of 
  his 
  movements. He appeared not to hurry. 
  Before leaving, he stepped to a desk that 
  was obviously the only “office” the station 
  boasted. He fumbled around with papers on 
  the desk. 
  Going out, he closed the doors 
  behind him. The doors contained spring 
  locks, and now, to all appearances—seeing 
  that no lights had been turned on—the 
  place was closed up. 
  The prowler slipped off into the 
  night. 
  On the nearby Post Road, a car 
  passed occasionally. It was the time of 
  night when most nearby residents were at 
  dinner. 
  Crickets started their night chatter in 
  the adjacent woods behind the darkened 
  building. 
   
   
  THE 
  long, 
  expensive-looking 
  limousine rolled into the station about 
  twenty minutes later. The driver did not get 
  out of the car. But his sharp eyes took in 
  the racks of oil still placed on the gas-pump 
  “island” outside the station. 
  He saw other indications which 
  made it seem queer the place should be 
  locked up for the night—while supplies still 
  remained outside. 
  The man at the wheel of the big car 
  was Doc Savage. 
  Doc did not climb out of the car. 
  Instead, he started up, rolled out of the 
  station and, a few moments later, sent the 
  car down through one of the many shaded 
  lanes that were a part of peaceful-looking 
  Sleepy Hollow. 
  Ten minutes later, none would have 
  recognized the bronze man as he returned, 
  on foot, to the darkened service station. 
  For Doc walked with a stoop. His 
  clothes 
  were ragged. 
  His remarkable 
  bronze features and hair were concealed 
  by a grimy-looking make-up substance that 
  gave him the appearance of a hobo just off 
  a freight train. His hair and skin were now 
  dark. 
  Doc 
  gained 
  admittance 
  to 
  the 
  station through a rear window. Seconds 
  later, he was examining the stabbed man. 
  The bronze man used a small 
  flashlight which he carefully shielded with 
  his hands. He looked for signs of prints that 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  34 
  might have been left by the murderer. 
  There were none. 
  Doc noted the dead man’s position 
  by the wall telephone. He lifted the receiver, 
  got the operator, then was asking quietly, 
  “What was the last call made from this 
  number?” 
  “Just a moment, please,” said the 
  girl. 
  Then Doc was informed that a call 
  had been put through to New York. His own 
  headquarters phone number was repeated. 
  If the bronze man was surprised, the 
  fact was not expressed in his voice. 
  “Please get that number again,” he 
  requested.  
  Monk answered the call. 
  “Doc!” the chemist exclaimed when 
  he heard the bronze man’s voice. “Look, 
  Doc, some fella just called you a little while 
  ago. He was all het up about this man 
  named Patrick Valentine. I sorta figure he 
  knew where we might locate Valentine—” 
  “Then,” Doc put it, “that explains 
  why this man here was killed.” 
  “Killed? Who?” Monk wanted to 
  know. 
  Briefly, Doc told about the dead 
  service-station operator; that he was calling 
  from near Sleepy Hollow.  
  Monk got excited. “That explains 
  why he was cut off, Doc! That’s all he had 
  time to say—somethin’ about knowing this 
  Valentine 
  guy. 
  He 
  must 
  ‘a’ 
  learned 
  something.” 
  “Yes,” Doc Savage said. “Perhaps, 
  by morning, we will know the answer. If you 
  do not hear from me by then, you’d better 
  investigate.” 
  The bronze man hung up. 
  He spent a few more moments 
  going carefully over the inside of the 
  building. On top of some scattered papers 
  on the desk, he saw the penciled circle 
  drawn around the brief news item. 
  The paper was one published 
  locally, and the item was just another bit of 
  gossip in a column devoted to local chatter.  
  It read: 
   
  The 
  Nancy 
  Lee, 
  former 
  river 
  showboat that has been tied up at Kelly’s 
  Landing for the past two years, is reported 
  sold to an out-of-town junk dealer. Report is 
  that the decaying old schooner will shortly 
  be towed away. 
   
  A frown momentarily touched the 
  bronze man’s brow as he swiftly read the 
  item by aid of the shielded flashlight ray. 
  Odd that a garage man would be interested 
  in such news! 
  And stranger still that the words 
  “Doc Savage” should be scrawled across 
  the page, just beneath the news item! 
  There was enough indication of 
  greasy finger marks around the scrawled 
  notation to show that the dead service-
  station man had written Doc’s name. 
  Before slipping out the rear window, 
  Doc Savage called the operator again and 
  said, “Send the police at once to the 
  Highway Service Station on the Albany 
  Post Road.” 
  Under the covering gloom of night, 
  he returned quickly to his car. 
   
   
  THE Nancy Lee sat low enough in 
  the water to suggest that her seams were 
  cracking open and that her hold must be 
  half filled with water. Her rigging had long 
  since been removed. 
  Doc Savage had had no trouble in 
  locating the old showboat. Up until two 
  years ago, on summer nights, a New York 
  boat line had featured nightly trips up the 
  river to where the Nancy Lee was 
  anchored. A stock company had put on 
  popular old revivals aboard the schooner. 
  Since the fad had died out, the 
  schooner had been tied up long enough 
  along the river front to make it almost a 
  landmark. 
  The long wharf was as aged-looking 
  as the boat itself. Decayed planking sagged 
  beneath the bronze man’s shoes as he 
  made his way along the stringpiece. 
  At the end of the wharf, in the 
  deceptive darkness, he located a battered 
  gangplank that led up to the bulking sides 
  of the clumsy-looking craft. 
  He went aboard. 
  On deck, Doc stood listening. Then, 
  carefully, he made his way along the deck. 
  Silence lay heavy everywhere. The 
  moon had not yet come up, and the night 
  was dark. 
  But the bronze man had no trouble 
  finding his way about. His remarkable 
  eyesight guided him accurately. There was 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  35 
  no indication that this old tub had been 
  used in months. 
  He 
  went 
  below, 
  located 
  a 
  passageway that led forward. It was 
  necessary to use a flashlight down here. A 
  coal-black cat scurried up a companionway 
  ahead. 
  Doc 
  paused 
  before 
  an 
  open 
  doorway, looked into what had once been 
  the skipper’s cabin. 
  Dishes with scraps of food upon 
  them were set upon a table in the room! 
  Cautiously, Doc Savage moved 
  inside the room.  
  Something slammed above him, out 
  in the passageway. It was followed by 
  another thumping sound farther aft. It was 
  abruptly darker outside the room. 
  Only 
  one 
  thing 
  could 
  have 
  happened. 
  Hatches 
  above 
  had 
  been 
  slammed shut! 
  Doc Savage whirled, to leap outside 
  the room. 
  But the door jerked shut, men 
  tumbled out of dark corners all around him. 
  A light flashed on in the room the ray of a 
  powerful hand-flash. 
  Guns and faces that were not 
  pleasant hemmed in the bronze giant. 
  A 
  harsh 
  voice 
  said, 
  “Wait’ll 
  Birmingham Jones hears what we got for 
  him!” 
   
   
  Chapter X 
  THE NANCY LEE 
   
  THE man who spoke made one 
  mistake when he addressed Doc Savage. 
  He came a step within the circle of grim-
  jawed gunmen. 
  The bronze man moved. 
  Or rather—to those who were 
  momentarily amazed—there was a flash of 
  blurred motion and the crook who had 
  spoken was down on the cabin deck. He 
  had been knocked senseless. 
  Holding their fire for fear of hitting 
  their own men, the mob closed in on the 
  bronze giant. 
  They 
  were 
  thrown 
  aside 
  like 
  bouncing tenpins. Heads cracked the cabin 
  walls. There was suddenly a great deal of 
  swearing and struggling and confusion. 
  Doc Savage managed to knock half 
  a dozen big thugs into unconscious heaps 
  before, through sheer force of numbers, he 
  was dragged to the deck. 
  For at sounds of the battle, other 
  tough-looking hombres had come running 
  into the cabin. The jam got so thick that 
  they were hitting each other. There must 
  have been two dozen assailants now in the 
  room. 
  They got the bronze fellow tied up. 
  As though this wasn’t enough, someone 
  carried in two blankets and the heavy 
  material was ripped into long strips. 
  Around the ropes that already held 
  the bronze man motionless, the strips of 
  blanket were wound until Doc looked like a 
  helpless mummy. Only his face was 
  revealed. 
  Even then, the men stood well back 
  from where Doc was laid out, like a long 
  round log, on the deck. 
  One individual—a swarthy fellow 
  with features ugly with old scars—said 
  warningly, “Keep your eyes on him! I 
  wouldn’t feel safe near this Doc Savage 
  guy even if he was tied with anchor chain!” 
  “O. K., Pinky,” someone said to the 
  man with the scarred face. 
  For Pinky was one of the two men 
  who had been at the “college” up-state. He 
  stood back now, watching the bronze 
  giant’s prone figure carefully, and he 
  seemed to be waiting for something. 
  Most of the group fell silent, except 
  for those who were picking themselves up 
  from the deck, rubbing bruised jaws as they 
  did so. 
  A thug asked, “What next, Pinky?” 
  “Keep your shirt on,” said Pinky. 
  “He’ll be here soon. But you don’t think he’s 
  dumb enough to come aboard while we’re 
  tied up here, do you? He’ll meet us out in 
  the river.” 
  Even as Pinky spoke, there was a 
  slight motion of the old schooner. Not the 
  motion caused by the throb or pumping of 
  engines, but a smooth gliding sensation as 
  though the craft was being towed. 
  The 
  gliding 
  feel 
  of 
  the 
  boat 
  continued for about half an hour. Then it 
  stopped. There was a clattering racket as, 
  apparently, an anchor was lowered. 
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  36 
  DOC SAVAGE had not moved. Only 
  his eyes remained stirring and restless, as 
  they touched upon individuals grouped 
  above him. Something about those unusual 
  flake-gold eyes caused the others to remain 
  clear—though it was obvious that the 
  bronze figure could not move an inch. 
  There came the sounds of feet 
  moving on the deck above, and then men 
  were pounding down the companion and 
  along the passageway outside the room. 
  Two burly men barged into the 
  room. They stepped aside and the man 
  they had preceded was revealed.  
  He was well dressed, tall, slender 
  and dark. He hardly looked like a gangster 
  or crook. 
  But his eyes were a deadly gray. 
  Also, they had sort of a vacant stare. 
  He indicated the trussed-up figure of 
  the bronze man and asked, “Who’s the 
  mug?” 
  “That’s 
  Doc 
  Savage,” 
  informed 
  Pinky.  
  “Who?” 
  “Look, 
  Birmingham,” 
  Pinky 
  explained carefully, “Doc Savage is the guy 
  the big boy 
  wanted us to capture, 
  remember? Doc Savage and any of his 
  assistants who are working with him.” 
  “Oh!” said dark-haired Birmingham 
  Jones, but he did not seem unduly 
  impressed. 
  Pinky 
  explained 
  further. 
  “Look, 
  Birmingham, Doc Savage”—he jabbed a 
  finger at the form tied up on the floor—”this 
  guy is the mug who had you sent to that 
  place up-state. To the college, remember?” 
  It seemed to take a moment for that 
  to sink into Birmingham Jones’ brain. Then 
  he stiffened. A peculiar glint came into his 
  fishy eyes. His hand moved beneath his 
  coat. 
  “Then I’ll kill him!” said Birmingham 
  Jones flatly. 
   
   
  ONLY for the fact that quick-moving 
  Pinky seized the well-dressed man’s hand, 
  was Doc Savage saved from a speedy 
  death. 
  Exasperated, Pinky tried to explain 
  to Birmingham Jones. 
  “Now listen,” he rapped. “You’ve 
  been doing all right. The boss thinks you’re 
  good. But we’re not to rub out the bronze 
  guy—yet!” 
  Birmingham Jones shrugged. “Why 
  not?” 
  “Because we gotta use him to get 
  those assistants of his here, too—aboard 
  the boat. We’re shoving out at midnight, 
  and the big boy has ideas how he’s gonna 
  wipe out this Doc Savage crowd all at once. 
  At sea!” 
  “Oh!” said Birmingham Jones again 
  absently, and Pinky gave the man a frown. 
  Then, after a moment, Birmingham 
  Jones asked, “But how you gonna get them 
  guys up here?” 
  “Watch!” said Pinky, and he made a 
  motion to the waiting mob. “Bring along the 
  bronze guy!” 
  It took six men to pick up the bronze 
  man. 
  He 
  was 
  carried 
  through 
  a 
  passageway for about half the length of the 
  old schooner. There was some trouble in 
  getting him down a narrow ladder to 
  another deck below. 
  Then Doc was carried into a long, 
  brilliantly lighted room that was like nothing 
  that had ever been on a rotting sailing ship. 
  The 
  room 
  was 
  obviously 
  a 
  laboratory. There was the soft hum of a 
  power unit that was apparently used to 
  develop electricity. Devices, machinery 
  installed in the room, said that someone 
  here knew a whole lot about science. 
  Scar-faced 
  Pinky 
  caught 
  the 
  thoughtful regard in the bronze man’s eyes 
  and grinned. 
  “Some set-up, eh, guy?” he queried. 
  “A whole lot of people around Sleepy 
  Hollow would lose their uppers if they ever 
  guessed about this Nancy Lee tub!” 
  Doc’s eyes flickered. 
  A rack of huge cylinders at one side 
  of the long room caught his eye. His glance 
  touched the objects so briefly that none had 
  seen the recognition which was mirrored in 
  the bronze figure’s eyes. 
  Doc was suddenly being lifted and 
  carried again. Pinky directed the group 
  toward 
  a 
  table 
  where 
  various 
  radio 
  equipment was set up. 
  Birmingham Jones came along also, 
  and it was notable that everyone paid him 
  the deepest respect. For though they were 
  hardened crooks, each man appeared to 
  have a slight fear of this tall, pale-eyed, 
  well-dressed man. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  37 
  “Oh, I get it!” Birmingham Jones 
  suddenly put in. “Valentine said we could 
  force Doc Savage to lead his other men up 
  here. You’re going to use the radio?” 
  Pinky paused, turning away from the 
  dials which he had been manipulating. 
  “Birmingham,” 
  he 
  said, 
  “you’re 
  improving! You just keep remembering the 
  boss’ orders, and you’ll be the biggest 
  public enemy in the world today!” 
   
   
  DOC had been placed on his feet, 
  his handlers granting as they held his great 
  figure upright. The bronze man’s sharp 
  eyes caught the wave-length at which Pinky 
  had set the short-wave set. 
  It was a wave-length used by Doc 
  and his men whenever they wished to 
  communicate with each other.  
  Pinky, at a nod from Birmingham 
  Jones, was suddenly directing, “O. K., 
  Savage. You’d better make it good. 
  Whoever answers from your New York 
  headquarters, 
  you 
  tell 
  ‘em 
  you 
  got 
  everything figured out up here at Sleepy 
  Hollow. Tell ‘em all to get up here right 
  away. Tell those birds you’ll meet them at 
  the bridge on the Post Road, just a mile 
  south of that service station where you 
  were tonight.” 
  The short-wave set was already 
  humming. In a moment, contact would be 
  made with the bronze man’s headquarters. 
  For the first time, Doc Savage 
  spoke. 
  He said quietly, “It’s too bad you 
  have gone to this useless trouble.” 
  Pinky’s lips twisted into a snarl. 
  “Talk to them, damn you!” he 
  snapped. 
  The 
  bronze 
  giant’s 
  lips 
  were 
  clamped shut. His eyes were steady and 
  burning. 
  Birmingham Jones stepped forward. 
  “Allow me, gentlemen,” he said. 
  The gun appeared miraculously in 
  his hand and its barrel raked down across 
  the bronze man’s metallic features. 
  Later, after using the gun barrel 
  several more times, even Birmingham 
  Jones stared. Everyone looked at the 
  mummified figure. 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  features, 
  his 
  expression was as inscrutable as an image 
  made of bronze. 
  But he started to sweat. The blanket 
  strips 
  wound 
  securely 
  around 
  his 
  remarkable body became wet. Beads of 
  perspiration rolled off Doc’s high forehead. 
  Those holding the wrapped figure upright 
  found 
  their 
  hands 
  slippery 
  with 
  the 
  moisture. 
  Pinky, 
  though, 
  was 
  paying 
  no 
  attention. He suddenly exclaimed as he 
  tuned in the transmitting set, “Hell with him! 
  Watch this!” 
  He made a motion indicating that 
  Doc Savage was to be removed out of 
  speaking distance of the transmitter. The 
  hum of the short-wave set became louder, 
  and then Pinky was abruptly saying into a 
  microphone: 
  “Hello, Monk. This is Doc Savage 
  speaking—”  
  Pinky’s voice was remarkably like 
  the bronze man’s own. 
   
   
  Chapter XI 
  TIP-OFF! 
   
  THE scene was the reception room 
  of Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters. 
  Outside the windows, far below, the million 
  and one lights of Manhattan at night shone 
  like bright small stars. 
  Monk came through a doorway. His 
  face split in a broad smile at the vision of 
  loveliness 
  in 
  the 
  person 
  of 
  slender, 
  attractive Honey Sanders. But he glared at 
  Ham, clad in a new suit, and carrying on an 
  easy conversation with the girl. There might 
  have been a fight between the pals right 
  then, but at the moment Long Tom entered 
  Doc’s 
  headquarters 
  from 
  the 
  outside 
  entrance hallway. He looked excited. 
  Ham asked, “What did you find out 
  about Cornelius Duval? Did you manage to 
  see that millionaire yet?” 
  Long Tom shook his head. “No. But 
  I found out something else.” 
  “What?” 
  “That Duval has a private estate up 
  there in the Westchester hills behind 
  Sleepy Hollow. Seeing as how a whole lot 
  of the trouble started there, bet you he’s 
  mixed up in this thing!” 
  The girl’s deep-blue eyes widened. 
  “I never heard of Mr. Duval living anywhere 
  around Sleepy Hollow,” she put in. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  38 
  Long Tom nodded. “He didn’t. 
  Seems he’s just bought this estate lately. 
  Hardly anyone knows about it yet. One of 
  his secretaries told me about it.” 
  The girl said, “But why, if Duval is 
  involved in this mystery, would he have 
  some of his own plants blown up?” 
  Ham had a ready answer for that 
  one. “Smoke screen,” he offered. “To throw 
  suspicion off himself.”  
  The flickering of a small red bulb 
  high on a wall in the room drew everyone’s 
  attention. It was Long Tom who stepped 
  quickly toward the laboratory doorway, to 
  enter 
  that 
  part 
  of 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  headquarters which contained much of his 
  delicate and intricate electrical and radio 
  equipment. 
  A moment later he called out to the 
  others, “It’s the short-wave. Maybe a 
  message from Doc!” 
  Ham and Monk, with the girl, moved 
  quickly toward the lab. 
  A section of the huge room was 
  given over to radio apparatus that would 
  have 
  brought 
  words 
  of 
  praise 
  from 
  broadcasting and control-room engineers. 
  Long Tom was manipulating the 
  various dials on a huge receiving unit. A 
  moment later, the voice of Doc Savage 
  came from a loud-speaker overhead. 
  It was the message that the scarred-
  faced crook called Pinky, imitating Doc’s 
  voice from the old showboat up the 
  Hudson, was putting on the air. 
  They all heard the urgent words, 
  listened to the directions ordering them to 
  meet the bronze man at the bridge on the 
  Post Road near Sleepy Hollow. 
  Monk looked delighted. “Blazes! 
  Let’s get going!” he said. 
  Doc Savage was just signing off. It 
  was 
  Ham 
  who 
  suddenly 
  exclaimed, 
  “Listen!” 
  They 
  all 
  heard 
  the 
  soft, 
  unmistakable trilling sound of the bronze 
  man while Doc was still talking. 
  Long 
  Tom 
  stared. 
  “Trick!” 
  the 
  electrical expert rapped. 
  Ham nodded. “Doc couldn’t make 
  the sound and talk, too! Someone else was 
  talking in his place—but Doc must ‘a’ been 
  somewhere near there and made the 
  trilling, so we’d know!” 
  The trilling sound of the bronze man 
  was a form of ventriloquism. It could be 
  created by Doc Savage without anyone 
  close by being aware of its source. 
  Monk summed up the situation. 
  “Daggonit!” he exploded. “Doc’s in 
  trouble!” 
  It was decided to leave Long Tom 
  with the girl, at headquarters. The electrical 
  expert had one word of caution to give, 
  however, before Ham and Monk, this time 
  accompanied by the pets, departed. 
  “It appears,” said Long Tom, “that 
  the message came from some boat located 
  up the river. That part about meeting Doc at 
  the highway bridge was probably a trap. 
  You might watch for a boat somewhere in 
  the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow.” 
  Long Tom’s deductions were more 
  than likely fairly accurate, for he had 
  carefully charted, using a direction-finder 
  that was ultrasensitive up to a radius of fifty 
  miles, the source of the radio waves. Using 
  intricate charts devised by the bronze man 
  himself, Long Tom was thus able to give 
  the two aides a lead. 
  Fifteen minutes later, Ham and 
  Monk were taking off from Doc Savage’s 
  water-front hangar in one of the fast speed 
  planes. 
   
   
  THE thing floating in the water 
  looked like a matchstick that bulged slightly 
  in the middle. 
  That is, from their position several 
  thousand feet above, it looked so. But Ham 
  knew it must be the schooner they sought, 
  for it was the only craft visible for miles in 
  the now moonlight night. 
  Monk, at the controls, had been 
  flying the fast plane so high that no sound 
  of its motors could possibly reach anyone 
  who might be watching from the river. 
  “All right,” Ham directed, “cut the 
  engines and go down. Better land close in 
  to shore. We can swim out, and that way 
  we won’t be spotted.” 
  Monk, worried about Doc Savage, 
  and anxious to get to his aid, stuck the 
  nose of the plane down and let the ship 
  dive. 
  Ham let out a yell. 
  “Fool!” Ham rapped. “You want to 
  yank the wings off this ship?” 
  Monk pulled out of the steep dive, 
  threw the plane into a more smooth spiral. 
  He said calmly, “I’m in a hurry.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  39 
  They landed without mishap, much 
  to the dapper lawyer’s amazement. 
  Monk made use of the river current 
  to let the small amphibian drift in beneath 
  tree branches that overshadowed the river 
  bank. Making the plane secure, Monk 
  yanked off his coat and climbed out on a 
  wing. 
  “Let’s get going!” he squeaked 
  impatiently. 
  Ham didn’t like the idea of soaking 
  his newest suit, but approach to the old 
  schooner lying out in the river must be 
  made in this manner. 
  The two aides slid into the warm 
  water and struck out for the darkened ship. 
  Once, Monk commented, “Betcha 
  we’ve made a mistake. That old tub looks 
  like she’s gonna sink any minute.” 
  “Keep quiet!” Ham snapped. 
  For the bulky lines of the old sailing 
  ship were not far ahead, and sound 
  traveled easily across the calm water in the 
  quiet night. 
  Ten minutes later Ham and Monk 
  were swimming silently beneath the scabby 
  sides of the schooner. They worked their 
  way toward the bow, where there was 
  some amount of shadow. 
  Monk, with the agility of an ape, 
  went hand over hand up the taut anchor 
  chain. Ham followed. Silently, both men 
  swung up on deck. 
  Not a dozen feet from them, the 
  man was seated on the coil of heavy rope. 
  His chin kept going down and touching his 
  chest. He was apparently asleep. 
  Monk moved quietly toward a rack 
  where old belaying pins were still in place. 
  He removed one, came back to Ham, 
  grinned, then swung the heavy object. 
  The man—he had obviously been 
  stationed here to do guard duty—went into 
  a more sound sleep. 
  Monk hefted the belaying pin. 
  “Maybe we’ll find some more of these 
  mugs,” he said hopefully. 
  “Quiet!” Ham rapped. He led the 
  way forward. 
  They covered the entire deck, 
  located no more lookouts. They started 
  below, through the only hatch opening that 
  they could find unlocked. 
  Monk whispered in his squeaky 
  voice, “Blazes! Maybe that guy back there 
  only lives alone on this tub. Bet Long Tom 
  was wrong about it being a boat where they 
  got Doc—” 
  Ham hissed, “Shut up! This might be 
  a trap—”  
  It was! 
  Men boiled out of assorted hiding 
  places and slammed into Ham and Monk, 
  in the dark, narrow passageway below 
  decks. 
   
   
  MONK bellowed, using the belaying 
  pin in the close, shadowy quarters. Ham 
  was using his quick-moving fists. 
  The 
  fight, 
  a 
  tangled, 
  snarling, 
  cursing knot, swayed up and down the 
  passage. 
  Monk wasn’t particular how he used 
  the heavy weapon which he gripped in a 
  hairy fist. Men went down like slugged 
  cattle. Others climbed over their fallen 
  comrades and tried to reach the battling 
  chemist. Ham picked others off with his deft 
  blows. 
  But the two aides were slowly 
  backed toward the open, lighted doorway. It 
  was the well-equipped laboratory that had 
  been 
  installed 
  below 
  decks 
  in 
  the 
  apparently worthless schooner. 
  Monk backed into the room, grinning 
  when he saw that there was more space in 
  which he could now swing the club. 
  “Yeo-o-ow!” the chemist bawled. 
  “Now bring ‘em on!” 
  Behind Monk and his partner, a cool 
  voice said, “That’s about enough of that!” 
  Monk and Ham spun around to 
  stare at the automatics held in the scar-
  faced man’s steady fists. 
  Pinky, the one holding the guns, 
  grinned. “We kinda had a hunch the bronze 
  guy tipped you punks off!” he said. 
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  CROOKS MOVE OUT! 
   
  WHILE Pinky kept the two Doc 
  Savage men covered, they were swiftly 
  grabbed from behind and tied with heavy, 
  stout cords. 
  It was then that Monk saw the 
  bronze man.  
  “Doc!” he cried worriedly. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  40 
  Ham, too, from his helpless position 
  on the floor, stared. 
  Both aides saw the mummylike 
  figure propped up against a bulkhead. 
  Doc Savage’s metallic features—the 
  only part of him visible above the tightly 
  wrapped bindings—showed the streaks of 
  redness where a gun barrel had left its 
  wicked marks. 
  Across Doc’s lips had been placed 
  adhesive tape, so that he had been unable 
  to warn Monk and Ham. 
  Pinky put away his automatics and 
  nodded approvingly to his assistants. 
  “We didn’t get all of Doc Savage’s 
  men, but this helps. There’s one still down 
  in New York with the girl. The other two 
  aides, we’ve heard, are somewhere in 
  Europe. I think Birmingham’s planning on 
  taking care of the girl and the one they call 
  Long Tom on the way through New York 
  tonight.” 
  At the question in Ham’s sharp 
  eyes, Pinky grinned and went on: 
  “Too bad we can’t stay around to 
  see the fun, guy. But we’re shovin’ off. See 
  you all in hell some day!”  
  Scar-faced Pinky looked back at his 
  henchmen. “You sure you got everything off 
  this tub that was needed? Valentine’ll raise 
  plenty of hell if you didn’t. An’ we can’t 
  come back.” 
  One of the burly thugs nodded. 
  “Yeah. We got it all.” He grinned as he 
  stared 
  at 
  the 
  helpless 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  captives. “Damn right we won’t be back. 
  Back to what?” 
  The others laughed also. It seemed 
  to be a huge joke.  
  Still grinning at Monk and Ham, 
  lying helplessly trussed up on the floor, the 
  men started filing out of the laboratory 
  room. Pinky flung a last glance at Doc 
  Savage, propped up against the bulkhead. 
  “Yeah,” he repeated, “see you all in 
  hell!” 
  He, too, went out; and a moment 
  later the faint sound of feet tramping across 
  the decks above could be heard. Silence 
  shortly dropped down, down like a wraith 
  over the schooner. 
   
   
  MONK tried to twist around. He saw 
  Doc Savage, as helpless as a wrapped-up 
  mummy. He twisted far enough to stare at 
  Ham, likewise unable to move. 
  Monk said, “What the blazes did 
  those guys mean about seein’ us in hell?” 
  Ham looked worried. “I’m trying not 
  to think about it,” he said, twisting and 
  squirming in a hopeless attempt to get free 
  of the ropes. 
  Both looked up at Doc Savage. Both 
  saw the perspiration-soaked cloth strips 
  that were wrapped securely around the 
  bronze man. Doc was moist enough to 
  have been dipped in water. 
  And both aides started when those 
  wet bindings suddenly split wide apart and 
  Doc Savage, as remarkably alert as ever, 
  stepped free of them. 
  It was as though acid had eaten 
  through ropes and blanket strips, rotting 
  them as though they might have been 
  tissue paper. 
  Doc quickly yanked the adhesive 
  from his mouth and said, “They have 
  probably gone far enough now that we can 
  trail them without being seen.” 
  Doc turned to his two aides, started 
  on the ropes the held them. Within seconds 
  Monk and Ham were on their feet, with the 
  hairy chemist asking questions. 
  “Doc, 
  what 
  happened—” 
  Monk 
  started. 
  “No time for explanations,” Doc 
  Savage rapped swiftly. “Thing is to get off 
  this boat. Hurry!” 
  The bronze man motioned them 
  toward the passageway, urged them to 
  hurry as they headed for the upper deck. 
  The upper deck was deserted. Monk 
  stared around.  
  “They must ‘a’ got away in a boat,” 
  he piped. He started looking around to see 
  if there was a boat they themselves could 
  use. 
  But Doc said tensely, “No time for 
  that. Overside! Quick!” 
  Ham paused only long enough to 
  indicate, approximately, where the plane 
  was hidden along the shore, then leaped 
  overside with Monk and Doc. 
  A couple of moments later, Monk 
  was gasping as a result of the terrific speed 
  the bronze man was setting with his 
  powerful overhand strokes through the 
  water.  
  “Blazes, 
  Doc!” 
  Monk 
  howled. 
  “What’s the rush?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  41 
  Doc did not let up in his pace. His 
  voice came clear over his shoulder. 
  “You have,” he warned, “just about 
  two more minutes to save yourself from 
  death.” 
  That was enough to make Monk 
  splash through the water like an Ohio River 
  side-wheeler. Ham followed suit.  
  Even as, half winded, both aides 
  were dragging themselves up on shore, 
  they heard the peculiar, shrill whistling 
  sound out over the river. 
  Monk 
  stood 
  up, 
  yelled, 
  “Goshamighty! There it is! That flying 
  hobgoblin of a thing. Lookit, will ya! It’s 
  gonna—” 
  Doc snapped, “Down! Down on your 
  stomachs!”  
  The terrific concussion came a split 
  second later. The blast was enough to 
  spray sand from the small strip of beach 
  over the three prone figures. 
  Out in the river, the old schooner—
  the Nancy Lee—went up in the air as 
  though it might have been a toy jerked by a 
  string. 
   
   
  LATER, in the plane, and as they 
  scoured the river front for moving small 
  boats, and the nearby side roads for any 
  signs of fast-moving cars, Doc made brief 
  explanations. 
  First, he explained his own delay at 
  releasing himself from the mummylike 
  bindings. 
  “It was uncertain for a while whether 
  Birmingham Jones would return to the 
  schooner or not. There is a probability that 
  he went to meet the one known as 
  Valentine.” 
  Ham understood. “And you hoped, 
  by pretending you were still helpless, to see 
  the guy who is really behind the mystery?” 
  The bronze man, at the controls of 
  the plane, nodded. 
  Monk interjected, “But goshamighty, 
  Doc? How did you loosen those blasted 
  ropes and things?” 
  Doc indicated his still moist hands. 
  “A penetrating fluid which was in a vial in 
  my coat pocket. It eats into anything except 
  human flesh. Managed to squeeze the vial 
  and break it while they were tying me up. 
  The stuff spreads like kerosene.” 
  “Then,” Monk said, “you were just 
  fooling those mugs so you could get a line 
  on the real Valentine?”  
  Doc was flying low now, intently 
  scanning the shore line beneath them. He 
  swung the plane and returned upriver 
  again. 
  “Yes,” he admitted in response to 
  Monk’s question. “But they changed their 
  plans after Birmingham Jones got in touch 
  with them by radio.” 
  “What do you mean?” Ham queried. 
  “Valentine, wherever he was, had 
  ordered 
  the 
  schooner 
  destroyed. 
  He 
  needed it no longer.” 
  Monk stared. “You mean that flying 
  whatchacallit thing destroyed it, Doc?” 
  “Apparently.” 
  “But heck! If this guy Valentine 
  wasn’t even there, then how could he—” 
  Doc said, “That’s only one of our 
  problems. The question is: Where is 
  Valentine and what is he really trying to 
  do?” 
  “Yeah,” agreed the hairy chemist. 
  So far, they had found no trace of 
  those who had escaped from the schooner. 
  And so Doc Savage put the plane 
  down at a point near where he had left his 
  car hidden on the east shore of the 
  Hudson. Monk was directed to drive the car 
  back to headquarters and to meet Doc and 
  Ham there. 
  On the flight downriver again, Ham 
  asked the bronze man, “That laboratory 
  aboard 
  the 
  schooner, 
  Doc—it 
  had 
  something to do with Valentine and what he 
  is up to?” 
  “Yes. But now he is through with it. 
  Obviously, it was only an experimental 
  workshop. That’s why the schooner was 
  blown up. Valentine is making a quick move 
  to some other point. It looks as though he is 
  now ready for some grand coup.” 
  Doc’s unusual eyes were thoughtful. 
  “It might,” he added, “be a good idea 
  to see Long Tom. He started to say 
  something this afternoon about a thing he 
  noticed at the Duval plant in New Jersey. 
  But there has been no time yet to question 
  him.” 
  And so Doc Savage was silent 
  during the remainder of the short flight into 
  New York. 
  They 
  arrived 
  back 
  at 
  Doc’s 
  skyscraper headquarters about midnight. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  42 
  Ham hurried ahead into the reception room, 
  anxious about Honey Sanders. 
  Doc Savage was more interested, at 
  the moment, in talking to Long Tom. 
  But Ham and the bronze giant were 
  not going to talk to anyone. 
  The electrical wizard and the girl 
  were not in the library, reception room or 
  lab. 
  They had vanished. 
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  DEATH FLIES HIGH 
   
  AT one that morning, there had still 
  been no word from Long Tom or the girl. 
  At one thirty, Monk returned from 
  Sleepy Hollow with the bronze man’s car. 
  The chemist hurried into headquarters with 
  excitement in his little eyes. 
  “You know what?” he piped. 
  Ham gave his partner a sour look. “I 
  suppose you’ve got into a jam again!” he 
  suggested coolly. 
  “Listen!” Monk hurried on, ignoring 
  the dapper lawyer’s remark. “I did a little 
  investigatin’ up there at Sleepy Hollow 
  before starting back. And I found out 
  something.” 
  “Well, 
  what, 
  stupid?” 
  Ham 
  demanded. 
  “That Duval millionaire guy has 
  pulled a sneak,” informed Monk. “He’s 
  flown the coop, walked out!” 
  Doc Savage looked interested. “Just 
  what do you mean?” he prodded. 
  Monk exploded, “Blazes, Doc, Duval 
  has gone to Europe! Took a Clipper plane! 
  Now why do you suppose he’s gone and 
  done that?” 
  The bronze man said nothing for a 
  moment. Then he remarked, “Possibly 
  Duval’s departure explains the sudden 
  disappearance of Birmingham Jones and 
  the others.” 
  Monk immediately jumped to a 
  conclusion. 
  “You mean, Doc,” he queried, 
  “Duval is behind this danged mystery?” 
  Doc Savage was moving toward the 
  phone. “Not exactly,” he said. “But it might 
  be interesting to learn about other plane 
  movements tonight.” 
  Monk looked puzzled. Ham was 
  intently listening as the bronze man started 
  making phone calls and asking pertinent 
  questions. 
  It appeared that Doc was calling the 
  leading airports around greater New York. 
  He was questioning officials about any 
  planes that had departed for Europe or 
  South American countries. 
  Doc 
  spent 
  considerable 
  time 
  covering every known flying field and sea 
  base. 
  Finally he hung up and said quietly, 
  “Three Clipper planes left for Europe 
  tonight. 
  Each 
  was 
  crowded 
  with 
  passengers, and none of them were 
  women. It might be interesting to know who 
  were aboard those planes.” 
  “Did you get any names?” Monk 
  asked. 
  “Yes, 
  but 
  they 
  could 
  be 
  pseudonyms.” Doc mentioned the name of 
  an airport that ran regular flights abroad. 
  “The dispatcher there said it was the largest 
  order they’d ever filled for passage to 
  Europe.” 
  “What do you make of it, Doc?” Ham 
  wanted to know. 
  “Wait,” the bronze man said, and 
  stepped toward his laboratory. 
   
   
  HAM and Monk followed. Doc was 
  manipulating the dials of a powerful radio 
  transmitting set. 
  He explained, “Renny and Johnny 
  are in Paris. They were to stand by for a 
  message from headquarters at seven this 
  morning. It is just about that over there 
  now.” 
  For some time, the bronze man 
  worked with the dials of the powerful set. 
  When tubes were warmed up and things 
  seemed to be adjusted to his satisfaction, 
  he said into a microphone: 
  “Doc Savage calling Colonel John 
  Renwick—”  
  The bronze man repeated the words 
  several times.  
  Finally, an answer came over the 
  loud-speaker located over the apparatus-
  filled table. 
  “Renny speaking,” a booming voice 
  said. “Is that you, Doc?” 
  Doc Savage started to explain about 
  the series of mysterious circumstances that 
  
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  43 
  had occurred near New York. He told about 
  Duval, and of the man named Birmingham 
  Jones. 
  Doc 
  said, 
  “Birmingham 
  Jones, 
  apparently, is working for someone with a 
  diabolical scheme to create destruction and 
  horror, Renny.” 
  “What does Doc mean?” Monk said 
  to Ham, as both aides listened. 
  “Keep quiet,” the lawyer rapped. 
  Doc was saying, “Are you still tuned 
  in, Renny?”  
  There was an abrupt, slight frown on 
  the bronze man’s usually placid features. 
  He twisted the dials quickly, spoke again. 
  A peculiar crackling sound came 
  from the loudspeaker, and behind the 
  sound Renny’s booming was heard to 
  gradually fade. 
  Doc looked tense about something. 
  The static sound increased, grew louder in 
  the set. 
  Abruptly he whirled away from the 
  radio apparatus, ordered, “Ham! Get on 
  that direction-finder unit. Hurry! And Monk! 
  Turn on the sound-detector!” 
  The 
  stocky 
  chemist, 
  puzzled, 
  jumped to obey. 
  Doc Savage called out positions to 
  which the apparatus was to be set. Both 
  units, he requested, were to be trained on 
  locations that would indicate the Atlantic! 
  The static sound in the loud-speaker 
  was getting worse. There was no trace of 
  Renny’s voice at all. 
  Doc suddenly turned off the short-
  wave, moved swiftly to the instruments that 
  Ham and Monk were adjusting. Doc took 
  charge. 
  For several moments, he made fine 
  adjustments with the sensitized, delicate 
  devices. Once he commented, “It appears 
  to be closer now.” 
  Ham, watching and listening to 
  noises that came from the sound detector, 
  asked, “What’s coming closer—a plane, 
  Doc?” 
  “No, the flying thing.” 
   
   
  MONK jumped. 
  The chemist saw that the bronze 
  giant 
  was 
  using 
  several 
  delicate 
  instruments now. Some of them of Doc 
  Savage’s own invention, Monk knew that 
  these detectors were uncanny in their 
  accuracy. They could tell exact location of 
  anything in the air up to a radius of several 
  hundred miles. 
  Doc had suddenly spun away from 
  the detector devices. 
  “Quick!” 
  he 
  ordered. 
  “The 
  ray 
  machine. Set it in position!” 
  Monk, the chemist in the bronze 
  man’s organization, was beginning to gain 
  an inkling of the truth. 
  “Doc!” he howled. “You mean some 
  sort of thing is gonna attack us—here?” 
  The bronze giant nodded briefly. 
  “The 
  position 
  of 
  the 
  thing 
  is 
  approximately fifty miles out to sea. It will 
  reach here within moments now.”  
  “Within moments?” Monk gulped, 
  completely flabbergasted. 
  But 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  was 
  already 
  flinging open especially constructed, huge 
  windows in one wall of the big laboratory. 
  The space opened to the night was all of a 
  dozen feet wide, and gave a panoramic 
  view of lower New York Bay, a part of Long 
  Island. Beyond, was the Atlantic. 
  Doc whirled back to help Ham wheel 
  a huge machine toward the wall opening. 
  The thing looked like the kind of powerful 
  searchlight used by army engineers in 
  aërial bombardment maneuvers. 
  But when Doc Savage turned on the 
  machine, no light came from its front. The 
  machine was an invisible-ray device made 
  to repel certain kinds of forces. 
  The bronze man made certain other 
  adjustments, stepped back to the direction-
  finder. 
  He said tensely, “The ray should hit 
  the flying thing within the next moment. If it 
  doesn’t—” 
  Doc let the words trail off, moved to 
  a position where he could watch through 
  the window opening. 
  The tone of his voice had indicated 
  that if his calculations were wrong, then 
  they were all doomed for some kind of 
  destruction. 
  It 
  was 
  Monk 
  who 
  suddenly 
  squealed, “Look!” 
  The 
  best 
  description 
  of 
  the 
  phenomenon might be to state that a comet 
  had exploded. There was a trail of sparks 
  through the night sky as something 
  smashed to fiery bits high in the air. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  44 
  And as the weird, distant explosion 
  took place, the bronze man seemed to 
  relax slightly. 
  “Another moment,” he commented, 
  “and it would have been here.” There was 
  perspiration standing out on the bronze 
  giant’s metallic features. 
  “But, Doc—” Monk started, full of 
  questions. 
  The ringing of the phone in the 
  library interrupted them. Ham hurried to 
  answer it. 
  He was back almost instantly, his 
  face strained and tense. 
  “It was the girl—Honey Sanders!” he 
  exclaimed. “And—” 
  “She ask for me?” Monk got in, 
  hopefully.  
  “—and it’s about Long Tom!” Ham 
  finished. 
  “Long 
  Tom?” 
  Doc 
  caught 
  the 
  urgency in Ham’s words. 
  “Long Tom is at our water-front 
  hangar. He’s trying to hold off the guys who 
  are trying to destroy our equipment and 
  planes stored there!” 
  Monk let out a yell of rage. He was 
  already leaping toward the door. Ham 
  hesitated only long enough to hear the 
  bronze man’s comment: 
  “Leave the ray machine turned on. It 
  is hardly probable that there will be another 
  aërial attack, but it might be wise to guard 
  against one.” 
  Doc hurried with his two aides 
  toward an express elevator that would drop 
  them swiftly to the basement of the 
  skyscraper. 
   
   
  THE “flea run” was the name Monk 
  had 
  once 
  given 
  to 
  the 
  high-speed, 
  pneumatic-tube device that was almost an 
  instantaneous method of transportation 
  from Doc’s headquarters to the water-front 
  hangar. 
  A small, compact cage carried the 
  three men underground through a specially 
  constructed tube. A cushion of air finally 
  stopped the hurtling car with breathtaking 
  suddenness. 
  Monk gasped, “Some day this 
  blasted thing is gonna yank my head right 
  off my shoulders!” 
  Climbing 
  out, 
  Ham 
  said 
  sarcastically, “That’ll be the day!” 
  Doc Savage said, “It looks like we’re 
  too late.” 
  They were in a huge, vaulted space 
  that contained several planes. These 
  ranged from a vast, tri-motored ship to 
  various types of small speed planes and 
  autogyros. Every ship was an amphibian—
  capable of descending on land or water. 
  The 
  warehouse 
  floor 
  sloped 
  downward—to a wide apron of cement that 
  dropped 
  off 
  into 
  the 
  Hudson 
  River, 
  adjacent. The hangar doors were open and 
  there seemed to be a whole lot of 
  excitement going on outside. 
  Doc, Monk and Ham raced across 
  the vast hangar floor. But even as they ran, 
  they heard the powerful roar of a ship that 
  was taking off from the river. The mammoth 
  plane rose into the air, circled, started 
  picking up altitude. There came a rattle like 
  the sound of hard peas striking the hangar 
  roof. 
  Monk leaped to a spot of safety, 
  followed by Ham.  
  The 
  chemist 
  yelled, 
  “Blazes! 
  Someone’s shootin’ from that damned 
  plane!” 
  Doc, meanwhile, had reached the 
  side of skinny Long Tom, crouched down in 
  a grease pit off to the side of the hangar 
  runways. 
  The electrical wizard had been 
  pumping away with one of the machine 
  pistols that Doc’s men always carried. But 
  he straightened now, swore, and started 
  climbing out of the pit. 
  “Damn!” 
  Long 
  Tom 
  snorted. 
  “They’ve got away.” He looked back into 
  the pit, added, “All right, you two guys. It’s 
  safe to climb out now.” 
  Monk stared as the first man came 
  up out of the pit.  
  It was the stocky, ruddy-faced little 
  constable—Sandy Gower. The evil-smelling 
  pipe was clenched between his teeth, but 
  he was so upset that it had gone out. 
  “Tarnation!” Sandy Gower fumed. 
  “Paid twenty-five cents for this necktie, and 
  now look at it!” 
  The flame-orange-colored necktie 
  was grease-spotted as a result of his being 
  in the pit. 
  Monk stared as he recognized the 
  one who had ordered him temporarily held 
  in jail. He gave Sandy Gower a sour 
  grimace. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  45 
  “You got stuck nineteen cents then,” 
  Monk piped, frowning at the sight of the 
  loud necktie. 
  Another man came out of the 
  grease pit. He was young, red-haired, not 
  bad-looking. He stared around worriedly. 
  “Where’s Honey?” the young man 
  asked.  
  It was Long Tom who made 
  explanations. 
  “This,” he said, indicating the red-
  haired young man, “is Tod Smith, friend of 
  the girl’s.” The electrical wizard jerked a 
  skinny thumb at Sandy Gower. “So is the 
  constable, 
  here. 
  They 
  came 
  to 
  headquarters looking for her tonight after 
  you left.” 
  “Where’s Honey?” repeated Tod 
  Smith worriedly.  
  Long Tom said, “In the office, where 
  she went to call Doc, here, and the others.” 
  Tod Smith hurried over toward a 
  small office that was in a corner of the large 
  hangar building. 
  Monk looked after the red-headed 
  young man quizzically. Ham caught the 
  worried regard. 
  “That,” the lawyer stated, “let’s you 
  out!” 
  It appeared that young Tod Smith 
  was the girl’s boyfriend. 
  As Sandy Gower explained, “We’ve 
  both known Honey for some time. And, me, 
  I’m down here and I’m gonna stick with 
  her—to be her bodyguard from now on!” 
  Monk 
  suddenly 
  snorted. 
  “Bodyguard? Damned lot of good you were 
  doin’ Long Tom by hiding down in that pit 
  when he was tryin’ to wing that escaping 
  plane!” 
  Sandy Gower came over to Monk 
  and said loudly, “Listen, here, ape! I still got 
  that jail upriver!” 
  Monk’s fists knotted. “Wanna make 
  something of it?” the chemist demanded. 
  Doc Savage’s voice put a temporary 
  halt to the impending battle. 
  “What 
  happened?” 
  he 
  asked, 
  looking at Long Tom. 
  The skinny aide said worriedly, “We 
  were up to headquarters when that black-
  light burglar alarm set off the signal at the 
  lab. We hustled down here and surprised 
  these mugs, who were all ready to bust up 
  a lot of our equipment.” 
  “But the blasted crooks got away!” 
  Long Tom continued. “And you know, Doc, 
  they had 
  one of those big Clipper 
  transatlantic planes. The pilot, radioman 
  and navigation officer on that plane were 
  being forced to fly the thing by those 
  jaspers!” 
  Doc prodded quietly, “You have any 
  idea who was in charge of the mob?” 
  Long Tom nodded, his pale eyes 
  bright. “Yes. They called him Birmingham 
  Jones!” 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  MYSTERY AT SEA 
   
  AT noon that same day, the fastest 
  transatlantic vessel afloat moved slowly out 
  of New York harbor and down through the 
  Narrows, out toward the open sea. 
  Doc Savage’s aides—Monk, Ham 
  and Long Tom—were aboard. As were 
  Honey, Sandy Gower and red-headed Tod 
  Smith. 
  Honey Sanders insisted that, since 
  she was mixed up in this mystery, she was 
  going to see it through.  
  Young Tod Smith stated that he was 
  not going to let the girl out of his sight. Thus 
  he went along. 
  And 
  Sandy 
  Gower, 
  grimly 
  determined, went also, to watch over them 
  both—though 
  he 
  bought 
  a 
  ticket 
  in 
  steerage. 
  Things 
  had 
  developed 
  rapidly 
  through the night, and when Doc Savage 
  had mentioned that the strange menace 
  had moved across the Atlantic, it was 
  Sandy Gower who pointed out that a liner 
  was due to sail that day. 
  Because of a war situation abroad, 
  liners were only sailing about once a week 
  now. 
  First, there had been the message 
  from Renny. Contact had finally been made 
  with 
  the 
  engineer 
  in 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  organization. 
  Renny told of a strange thing that 
  had occurred early that day in Paris. Some 
  weird sort of explosion had destroyed one 
  of the city’s greatest cathedrals. 
  “Bomb?” Renny had been asked by 
  radio. 
  
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  46 
  “Well, no—not exactly,” the engineer 
  had explained. “More like one of those 75 
  millimeter shells they used during the World 
  War. Only there was something damned 
  funny about it.” 
  “Funny?” Doc had queried. 
  “Yes. A whole lot of people heard it 
  pass over Paris and the suburbs. A funny, 
  whining sort of thing in the sky. And it didn’t 
  come from any war area, Doc! From all 
  reports, it came from the Atlantic Ocean!” 
  It was shortly after receiving this 
  startling information, and after Doc had 
  absented himself from headquarters for 
  several hours, that the bronze man made 
  his announcement. 
  “The mystery will be solved in 
  Europe,” he had said surprisingly. 
  “But how?” Ham had asked. And 
  then his eyes brightened. “You mean, Doc, 
  because that millionaire, Duval, 
  went 
  there?” 
  The bronze giant’s reply was, at 
  first, puzzling.  
  “Duval is involved in this thing,” he 
  said. “But he is not the villain we are after. 
  And yet it will be necessary to proceed to 
  Europe before we clean up everything.”  
  The truth suddenly became clear to 
  Long Tom, listening intently. He recalled 
  pertinent questions that Doc Savage had 
  asked him. 
  Long Tom suddenly realized that 
  Doc Savage had the mystery figured out! 
  He was planning this last, strategic move! 
   
   
  DOC accompanied the others as far 
  as Ambrose Light, where he departed from 
  the ocean liner along with the harbor pilot. 
  The bronze man had directed, “You 
  will wait for me at the hotel in Paris which I 
  have named—the one where Renny and 
  Johnny are now stopping.” 
  It was Monk who said, “You’re 
  gonna follow in the plane, Doc?” 
  Doc Savage nodded. “It will take our 
  largest plane and all available space for 
  necessary equipment,” he said. “That’s why 
  the rest of you must go on this liner. Also, 
  there is something to be attended to here.” 
  Doc had told Ham and Long Tom 
  something about what he intended doing 
  before leaving for abroad. It seemed there 
  was some sort of urgent appointment in 
  Washington. 
  Doc departed, stating that he would 
  meet the others in about four days in Paris. 
  Two days later, in New York, the 
  bronze man heard the startling information. 
  There had been a mystery at sea. 
  Newspapers were full of black headlines. 
  Cable companies had been first to reveal 
  the puzzling circumstance. 
  They had been unable to reach the 
  Sea Queen with routine cablegrams. Other 
  agencies 
  reported 
  similar 
  trouble. 
  Government 
  departments 
  verified 
  the 
  comments. 
  The Sea Queen, greatest liner 
  afloat, apparently had disappeared from the 
  high seas. It was impossible to contact the 
  famous vessel. Neither had any word been 
  received from her in the past twenty-four 
  hours. 
  The Sea Queen was the liner on 
  which Monk, Ham, Long Tom and the 
  others had taken passage! 
   
   
  WITHIN two hours after learning 
  about the mystery of the Sea Queen, Doc 
  Savage was in the great tri-motored, 
  streamlined plane, headed out over the 
  Atlantic. 
  Most of the special equipment had 
  already been stored aboard the plane, and 
  the bronze man had spent nearly all of 
  those two hours in making a double check 
  on the news reports of the liner’s strange 
  silence. 
  For almost half an hour, he talked 
  on the telephone with certain navy officials 
  in 
  Washington. 
  Whatever 
  he 
  learned 
  appeared to throw no light on the mystery 
  of the ocean liner. 
  Because when the bronze man 
  started his long flight, his metallic features 
  were grimly taut. 
  Sometime during that night, midway 
  in the Atlantic, and flying at tremendous 
  speed, Doc Savage heard the first of the S 
  O S messages. 
  He made notations of the S O S 
  calls each time they came through the 
  ether. They probably lasted for well over an 
  hour, and in the meantime, the bronze 
  giant’s ship had covered hundreds of miles. 
  All attempts by Doc to get in touch 
  with the Sea Queen were useless. There 
  were no replies to his urgent queries. 
  
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  47 
  At four a.m., the S O S signals 
  stopped, and there was complete silence 
  after that. The bronze man’s eyes held a 
  question as his great plane droned on 
  throughout the long night. 
  Using the automatic pilot, Doc 
  Savage was able to take short naps. He 
  showed little signs of fatigue, and this was 
  perhaps explained by his remarkable 
  physique, the constant and rigid training 
  which he followed to keep himself in 
  condition. 
  Late that afternoon, Doc circled the 
  huge plane over famous Le Bourget Field. 
  He had already radioed a message ahead 
  to have Renny and Johnny meet him here 
  at the airfield. 
  The bronze man set the plane down 
  as though it might have been a light glider. 
  The first to rush up to the plane when it 
  rolled to a stop were the two aides. 
  One of the two was a giant of a 
  fellow; the other tall and gaunt and looking 
  like the advance agent for a funeral. 
  The giant-size one was Colonel 
  John Renwick—better known as Renny—
  an engineer of repute. 
  The other man was William Harper 
  Littlejohn. Everyone called him Johnny. He 
  was as thin as a straw and wore glasses 
  that contained thick lenses. He was 
  perhaps one of the world’s greatest 
  archaeologists. 
  Renny boomed. “Doc! Didn’t think 
  you’d make it so quick. We just arrived here 
  in time!” 
  The big engineer never talked in 
  anything less than a bull roar. He and 
  gaunt-looking Johnny were in the cabin 
  doorway the moment the bronze man 
  swung it open. 
  Sightseers had come running up, 
  pushing close to the mammoth ship. 
  The gaunt archaeologist, Johnny, 
  paused in the cabin doorway, stared at the 
  crowd and said studiously, “Illustrate some 
  manifestation of migration!” 
  The Frenchmen grouped about, 
  stared. 
  “He 
  means,” 
  Renny 
  boomed, 
  “scram! Allez! Vite!” 
  Renny’s lionlike roar made the 
  crowd withdraw.  
  Johnny was inside the plane, his 
  face very sober.  
  “Doc!” he said. “We heard about that 
  liner—the one you said Ham, Monk and the 
  others were coming across on! Do you 
  think they—” 
  Johnny let the words trail off, but 
  what he meant was significant. The 
  archaeologist forgot to use big words 
  whenever he talked with Doc Savage. 
  Renny added: “Doc, do you think 
  they . . . they’re really lost at sea, I mean—
  dead?” 
  Renny’s gloomy look was sadder 
  than ever. 
  Before replying, the bronze man led 
  the two aides to the cockpit of the plane, 
  indicated a chart which he had used on the 
  ocean hop. At various points on the chart, 
  there were notations and marks. Strung out 
  in a line, each mark was connected by 
  straight lines to a single circle at some point 
  distant. 
  Doc Savage said quietly, “The 
  marks indicate bearings taken on the S O S 
  calls from the Sea Queen.”  
  Renny nodded quickly. “Sure, the 
  papers here were full of it. And then those 
  S O S calls finally stopped, didn’t they, 
  Doc?” 
  The bronze man agreed. “But,” he 
  went on, “by taking the readings from the 
  plane, flying at hundreds of miles per hour, 
  it was possible to get angles and to figure 
  distance to the source of those messages. 
  They were faked.” 
  Both aides stared. “Faked?” 
  Doc Savage indicated, with his 
  finger, the single circle on the chart to 
  which all the straight lines ran. 
  “The S O S signals from the Sea 
  Queen came from that point,” he said. “And 
  that circle indicates a small island two 
  hundred miles off the coast of France, in 
  the Atlantic.” 
   
   
  LATER, Doc Savage turned plane 
  and equipment over to the care of the two 
  aides. At the airport, arrangements were 
  made for the bronze man to use a fast, 
  smaller ship, which he leased from one of 
  the local airlines. 
  First, however, the bronze man sent 
  Renny and Johnny on a quest for some 
  special devices that he wanted to use in the 
  rented plane. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  48 
  Doc managed to get an hour of rest 
  before setting out at dawn for the island off 
  the seacoast. As he explained to the two 
  aides: 
  “Stand ready to hear from me at 
  your hotel. Also, one of you might check on 
  all plane arrivals here and at other airports. 
  Learn what you can about a man named 
  Birmingham Jones.” 
  Doc described Birmingham Jones in 
  detail. “It is important that we find him.” 
  Renny frowned. “But in your last 
  message from New York, you said that the 
  man 
  behind 
  this 
  thing 
  was 
  called 
  Valentine.” 
  The bronze man nodded. “True. But 
  Valentine, the real villain, has not yet 
  revealed himself. He is working through this 
  front, this Birmingham Jones.” 
  Doc then added a detail that 
  seemed to have no bearing on a man 
  named Valentine. He mentioned the names 
  of two countries that were at war, at the 
  moment, in Europe. He said: 
  “You might check closely on any 
  new developments in the situation between 
  those two countries. Our embassy here will 
  perhaps coöperate.” 
  Soon, Doc Savage was putting the 
  small, fast ship in the air. He took off as 
  smoothly as though he had been flying the 
  strange plane all his life. 
  And an hour later, the sun was 
  getting warm in the sky when he picked out 
  the hazy outline of the island far out to sea. 
  Moments later, Doc Savage was 
  circling the isolated bit of land. 
  The size of the island would be, 
  apparently, about four miles long and two 
  wide. Hills rose up steeply from the rocky 
  shore line at the southern end of the place. 
  To the north, in what must have been a 
  deep bay, the liner was tied up. 
  Doc dropped down lower in order to 
  get a better view of the wooded isle. 
  The shrill, whistling whine came so 
  abruptly that Doc Savage only had an 
  instant’s glimpse of the thing plunging 
  upward through the slight ground haze. 
  Then there was the burst of smoke 
  from the bronze man’s plane and he was 
  abruptly tumbling in the crazy spiral toward 
  the southern tip of the island. 
  The smoke enveloped the entire 
  plane, forming a black ball, and within that 
  dark core the plane motor sputtered and 
  choked and then roared. 
  Swaying back and forth crazily, the 
  plane continued its wild plunge toward the 
  bit of land. 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  RESCUE 
   
  SOMEWHERE near the southern tip 
  of the island, from atop a wooded hill, a 
  tattered-looking group of men watched the 
  plunge of the bronze man’s plane. 
  Those who stared skyward, their 
  eyes wide, were Ham, Monk, Long Tom, 
  and the girl—Honey Sanders—and her red-
  headed boy friend, Tod Smith. 
  Their clothing was torn and ragged, 
  a result of pushing through the thick 
  undergrowth that was almost everywhere, 
  Monk’s already homely face was scratched 
  and blood-flecked. He looked like an ape 
  with measles. 
  Even Ham’s dapper attire was half 
  in 
  shreds. 
  His 
  appearance 
  looked 
  incongruous 
  when 
  compared 
  to 
  the 
  slender, polished black cane that he was 
  carrying. The cane was one that had been 
  returned to Doc’s headquarters from the 
  damaged car left near Sleepy Hollow. Ham 
  had brought the sword-cane with him on 
  the voyage. 
  Ham, watching as the falling plane 
  vanished beyond the crest of a hill to the 
  south, let out a moan. 
  “I have a hunch,” he said tensely. 
  Monk gave his partner a dirty look. 
  “Hunch 
  about 
  what, 
  shyster?” 
  he 
  demanded. 
  “That Doc might have been in that 
  ship!” 
  Everyone stared. It was the girl, 
  Honey, who looked thoughtfully at Ham. 
  She came over to his side, making a 
  hopeless attempt to fold her torn skirt 
  around her shapely, slender legs. 
  “Why do you say that?” Honey 
  asked. Sunlight touched her soft golden 
  hair, and she was beautiful.  
  “Because,” 
  said 
  Ham, 
  “they 
  released one of those flying things from the 
  liner, and brought the plane down. It must 
  have been Doc!” 
  
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  49 
  Monk started jumping up and down. 
  “Blast their hides!” he piped shrilly. “How’re 
  we gonna get back on that ship in order to 
  get at ‘em?” 
  Young Tod Smith spoke up. “With 
  machine guns trained on us from the decks, 
  how do you expect to get back?” he 
  demanded. 
  Monk scratched his head. “Must be 
  some way!” he insisted. 
  They were interrupted by a crashing 
  through the underbrush near the clearing in 
  which they stood. All recognized the girl’s 
  self-appointed bodyguard—Sandy Gower. 
  The round-looking little constable’s 
  green tweed suit was almost in ribbons. His 
  flame-orange necktie looked like lengths of 
  shoestrings tied around his neck. But his 
  pipe was still stuck in his mouth. 
  Panting, he came running up to the 
  group. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” he 
  demanded breathlessly. “Gosh!” 
  Monk said sourly, “Some cop!” And 
  then, “Brother, we were lookin’ out for 
  ourselves!” 
  The girl asked, “Sandy, how did you 
  manage to escape?” 
  Sandy Gower gasped, “Heard those 
  crooks talking—I was hiding down in one of 
  the cargo holds—and they said something 
  about you jumping overboard and escaping 
  here in the woods. I tried the same.” 
  The stocky constable indicated a 
  blood-red crease across his right arm. 
  “They saw me—and almost winged me with 
  one of them machine guns they got on 
  deck! Whew!” 
  Long Tom had been saying nothing. 
  He appeared to be listening intently, his 
  pale eyes unusually bright. His sudden 
  announcement drew the others up alert. 
  “You know,” Long Tom said sharply, 
  “I don’t think that plane crashed. I’m gonna 
  take a look!” 
  The skinny electrical wizard started 
  toward the crest of the wooded hill. The 
  others plunged through the tangle of 
  junglelike growth, behind him. 
  A little later they managed to force 
  their way down the far side of the hill; 
  reached, finally, a strip of beach that was 
  the southern tip of the island. 
  Doc Savage was just climbing out of 
  the plane that had been landed there. 
   
   
  FOR moments, everyone except the 
  bronze man was talking at once. Then, 
  finally, Doc made brief explanations. 
  “Renny and Johnny obtained the 
  smoke-screen chemical for the plane 
  exhaust. It was quite possible, after the 
  liner’s location had been learned, that they 
  would try to ward off any approach to the 
  vessel.” 
  Doc’s 
  aides 
  immediately 
  understood. The bronze man, avoiding the 
  flying death that had been released from 
  the liner, had wrapped the diving plane in a 
  chemical smoke screen to give the idea 
  that it had caught fire and crashed. 
  Doc said, “It is quite clear that 
  Valentine’s gang took over the liner at 
  sea?” The sentence was both a question 
  and statement of fact. 
  Ham nodded. “They’ve got the crew 
  in their power,” the lawyer explained. 
  “There weren’t many passengers, as you 
  recall, and nearly all of them are Valentine’s 
  henchmen. Some of the others went to 
  Europe on those Clipper planes.” 
  Monk added, “Yeah. And, Doc, they 
  got a couple of big-shot European army 
  guys that were sailing too. They’re holding 
  those army experts for somethin’!” 
  Doc appeared to be interested in the 
  remark. He said, “Renny will be trying to 
  contact us soon. Is the radio aboard the 
  liner in working order?” 
  “Sure!” Monk exclaimed. “But what 
  the heck, Doc? How you gonna use it? 
  Those birds have machine guns on deck, 
  and plenty of ammunition. We ain’t got a 
  chance!” 
  Doc had suddenly stepped to the 
  nearby small plane. He returned quickly 
  with several of his machine pistols. He 
  passed these to his three aides, who had 
  been relieved of any weapons while aboard 
  the liner at sea. 
  Doc said quickly, “There is only 
  room for one extra with me in the plane. 
  Ham will be that passenger. The rest of you 
  return to the liner—but stay well clear of it 
  for at least half an hour. You should be able 
  to board it then.” 
  Ruddy-faced Sandy Gower stared. 
  “But how—” he started. 
  Doc and Ham were already headed 
  back to the plane. A moment later the 
  bronze man took off and put the fast little 
  ship swiftly into the sky. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  50 
  Doc flew low, so that he could not 
  be seen by anyone at the northern part of 
  the island, where he had observed the 
  ocean liner tied up in the bay. 
  Even Ham was puzzled. Seated 
  beside the bronze giant in the plane’s small 
  cockpit, he asked, “How do you expect to 
  ever get aboard that boat, Doc?” 
  Doc Savage indicated a drum of 
  some kind of chemical that was in the 
  cockpit. A connecting, tubular line ran from 
  the drum to the hookup with the engine 
  exhaust. 
  “When we drop down over the liner,” 
  Doc directed, “open the petcock on that 
  drum.” 
  A moment later, the liner leaped into 
  sight beyond the trees. Doc was putting the 
  fast-moving ship down in a low, flat plunge, 
  and shortly they were close over the ship. 
  As Ham turned the petcock on the 
  drum of fluid, a thick, whitish smoke poured 
  out behind the plane. Heavier than air, it 
  dropped like a huge blanket, to slowly 
  envelop the massive vessel tied up below. 
  Smoke coming from the ship’s 
  funnels indicated that it had been about 
  ready to leave the island. 
  Doc turned the plane around, came 
  back above the whitish screen that was 
  flattening out below. He directed Ham to lay 
  down more of the peculiar smoky stuff. 
  As 
  Doc 
  explained, 
  “Form 
  of 
  anaesthetic gas. Drawn in through the 
  vessel’s 
  ventilators, 
  it 
  should 
  knock 
  everyone out in a matter of moments. It will 
  dissipate rapidly.” 
  After that, they kept flying around for 
  about fifteen minutes. The whitish smoke 
  screen had slowly cleared. Again the liner 
  was visible below them as they flew close. 
  Men lay sprawled on her decks. 
  There appeared to be no sign of life aboard 
  whatsoever. 
  Doc Savage set the plane down in a 
  clearing near the bay, and shortly he and 
  Ham were approaching the huge liner. 
  At sometime in the past, the 
  northern end of the island around the bay 
  must have been inhabited. There were 
  some tumble-down fishing shacks and 
  sagging wharfs. In deep water, the liner had 
  been anchored nearby, out in the bay. 
  Doc and Ham found a leaky old 
  rowboat and got out to the vessel. The only 
  way of getting aboard the towering liner 
  was by climbing the chain leading up from 
  her anchor. 
  A strange sight met their eyes on 
  the upper decks.  
  The crooks who had taken over the 
  boat were piled around like flies. They all 
  appeared to be sleeping. The members of 
  the crew were found in similar attitudes. 
  And below decks, in cabins and 
  staterooms and through every part of the 
  great ship, more sleeping people were 
  found. 
  Monk and the others arrived while 
  Doc was making the inspection. As Doc 
  commented, “The effects of the anaesthetic 
  gas will keep them like this several more 
  hours. We will have to hurry.” 
  “What are you gonna do with this 
  mob?” Monk asked. “I mean, all those that 
  belong to Birmingham’s crowd?” 
  Doc directed, “Swing out one of the 
  largest lifeboats. Sandy Gower and young 
  Tod Smith can help.” 
  In the next quarter of an hour, the 
  bronze man’s plan became evident. 
  First, he located all officers of the 
  liner. 
  The 
  skipper 
  was 
  found, 
  also 
  unconscious, tied up in his stateroom near 
  the bridge. 
  Doc used a hypodermic needle and 
  a stimulant taken from his equipment vest. 
  Shortly he had all the officers awake and on 
  their feet. 
  It was only natural that, recognizing 
  Doc Savage, they immediately pitched in to 
  help. 
  It appeared that there had been one 
  of Birmingham Jones’ thugs for every 
  officer aboard the ship. This went for the 
  crew, also. Practically the entire passenger 
  list 
  had 
  been 
  composed 
  of 
  crooks 
  employed by the wily Birmingham Jones. 
  Thus, movement of the liner had 
  been completely in the crooks’ hands. 
  But now they were lowered in the 
  lifeboat, taken ashore, and laid out like a 
  long line of corpses on one of the old piers. 
  The job took two or three hours, and Doc 
  Savage urged haste. 
  Birmingham Jones, along with scar-
  faced Pinky, was located in one of the best 
  suites 
  aboard. 
  They, 
  too, 
  were 
  unconscious, 
  having 
  breathed 
  of 
  the 
  gassed air coming through the efficient 
  ventilating system! 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  51 
  But the bronze man did not put 
  Birmingham Jones and Pinky ashore with 
  the others. He gave them each a treatment 
  with the hypo needle. 
  Awake, 
  seeing 
  the 
  situation, 
  realizing the efficiency of this remarkable 
  bronze fellow, Birmingham Jones suddenly 
  decided that perhaps he had been working 
  for the wrong crowd. 
  “Got an idea,” he suggested, in his 
  smooth manner.  
  Monk looked over the tall, well-
  dressed Birmingham carefully. 
  “Yeah,” he remarked. “You got 
  some swell ideas. Like killing people, 
  maybe!” 
  But Birmingham Jones shook his 
  dark head. “Look,” he said, “you think I’m 
  kidding, don’t you?” 
  “You guessed it!” rapped Monk. 
  “Well, I’ll show you. I’ll take you to 
  that Valentine fella.” 
  Pinky offered to pitch in with Doc’s 
  crowd, too. 
  Doc Savage was listening quietly. 
  “You know where Patrick Valentine is?” 
  Doc put in. 
  Birmingham Jones nodded. “He’s 
  got most of those flying things at a base 
  near the Swiss border. He’s planning, right 
  at this moment, the grandest wholesale 
  murder you ever heard of, partner!” 
  “And the others—some of those 
  who went on the Clipper planes?” Doc 
  prodded. 
  “We were aboard one of them 
  ships,” Birmingham said. “But we changed 
  over to the liner. The other guys are already 
  at Valentine’s base there near Switzerland.” 
  The bronze man said, “Perhaps we 
  can check on that,” and disappeared in the 
  direction of the liner’s radio room. 
  He was gone for some time. In the 
  meantime, the remainder of the crooks 
  aboard ship—all the unconscious ones—
  were put ashore on the isolated, small 
  island. 
  Doc returned. “Renny and Johnny 
  have been doing some checking up,” he 
  announced. “What Birmingham Jones says 
  is correct. We will pick up Renny and 
  Johnny at this place Birmingham has 
  mentioned.” 
  Just before Doc gave orders to pull 
  up the anchor, Sandy Gower exclaimed 
  worriedly, “You going to let those fellows on 
  the island starve, Doc Savage? After all, it 
  might be some time before you get back 
  here to pick them up!” 
  The bronze man explained quietly, 
  “Cases of beans and hardtack have been 
  left for them. Also water.” 
  A moment later, under the skipper’s 
  close eye, the great vessel eased out of the 
  harbor and headed toward France. 
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  BREAKNECK PASS 
   
  TWO persons aboard ship seemed 
  especially interested in that short voyage to 
  the mainland. 
  One of the two was well-dressed, 
  tall Birmingham Jones; the other, the crook 
  with the battered features—Pinky. 
  Birmingham 
  Jones 
  had 
  been 
  assigned a cabin aboard the liner. And it 
  was Pinky who, acting furtively, had slipped 
  into Birmingham’s room and locked the 
  door behind him. 
  Pinky grinned, commented, “You 
  sure fooled that Doc Savage crowd, 
  brother. Nice going!” 
  Birmingham Jones was seated in a 
  chair and polishing his fingernails. An 
  automatic lay within reach on a table beside 
  him. 
  “I guess so,” he remarked absently. 
  Then, “What do you want? Thought I told 
  you to be careful?” 
  Pinky’s scarred features sobered. 
  “Look,” he said. “What did Doc Savage 
  want with you and that slick-looking gent 
  named Ham? Saw the three of you headed 
  up to the bridge a while ago.” 
  Birmingham 
  Jones 
  continued 
  polishing his nails.  
  “They were talking to that fella they 
  called Renny. Using the radio.” 
  The smartly dressed Birmingham 
  abruptly frowned. The sort of vacant stare 
  that frequently came into his pale eyes, was 
  there now. 
  “Say,” he asked, “I almost forgot the 
  name of that place where Valentine said to 
  send Doc and his bunch. Hope I got it right. 
  What was it again?” 
  Pinky 
  shook 
  his 
  head, 
  sighed 
  wearily. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  52 
  “Lookit,” he said grimly. “They call it 
  Breakneck Pass.” He mentioned the name 
  of a small village near the Swiss border, in 
  the foothills of the Alps. “I hope you got it 
  right.” 
  Birmingham Jones nodded. “I got it 
  right. I remember it now.” 
  Pinky looked relieved. “You sure act 
  foggy sometimes, Birmingham!” 
  Birmingham Jones picked up the 
  automatic. “Who’s foggy?” he demanded 
  quietly. 
  Pinky jumped. 
  “All 
  right! 
  All 
  right!” 
  he 
  said 
  soothingly. “Skip it. But—” 
  “But what?” 
  “You sure you told them where to go 
  there near the base of that Breakneck 
  pass—to the place where Valentine has the 
  trap all set for them?” 
  Birmingham 
  nodded 
  confidently. 
  “Hell, yes! This time tomorrow, Doc Savage 
  and his crowd will be blown to hell and 
  gone!” 
  Pinky 
  grinned. 
  “Valentine 
  sure 
  fooled that bunch, didn’t he?” 
  “Yeah.” 
  Birmingham 
  Jones 
  abruptly 
  indicated the door. “Now scram!” he 
  rapped. “I gotta see Doc Savage in a few 
  minutes. We’ll be docking in a little while. 
  You stay with them and pretend to be ready 
  with any information they want.” 
  Pinky nodded and went out. On the 
  deck where Doc Savage and the others 
  had staterooms, he found that something 
  was apparently wrong. One of the bronze 
  man’s aides was creating a lot of noise. 
  It was hairy Monk, and the chemist 
  was yelling worriedly, “He’s gone. Looked 
  over the whole danged ship for him—an’ 
  he’s gone!” 
  Everyone 
  was 
  grouped 
  around 
  Monk. There was the bronze man and 
  skinny Long Tom, and with them the girl 
  and her boy friend Tod Smith. 
  Frowning, stocky little Sandy Gower 
  pushed his red face into the group circled 
  about the hairy chemist.  
  “Who’s 
  gone?” 
  Sandy 
  Gower 
  demanded. Back on the ship again, he had 
  obtained a change of clothing. His newest 
  suit and necktie were even more atrocious-
  looking than those he had worn previously. 
  Monk squalled, “Ham’s gone, that’s 
  who!”  
  “Ham’s gone where?” Sandy Gower 
  prodded.  
  It was Doc Savage who spoke up 
  quietly: 
  “It appears,” he said, “that Ham 
  Brooks has vanished from this boat.” 
   
   
  AND Ham was still missing when 
  the liner finally docked and everyone had 
  been put aboard the boat train for Paris. 
  Every part of the great ship had 
  been searched. Monk even went down into 
  the holds and through the very bilges of the 
  ship. He had returned appearing as though 
  he had crawled through sewers. 
  But no trace had been found of the 
  lawyer, Ham. 
  To Monk’s dismay, Doc Savage said 
  they would have to go on without Ham. 
  There was little time to lose. Some of the 
  others could not understand the bronze 
  man’s attitude. But no one questioned Doc 
  Savage’s verdict. 
  In Paris, Doc Savage did another 
  strange thing. He did not try to contact his 
  other two aides, Renny and Johnny 
  Littlejohn. Instead, the bronze man made 
  arrangements for the rental of two large 
  touring cars. 
  Monk, puzzled, asked, “Why aren’t 
  we taking them with us, Doc? Thought you 
  left a whole lot of our equipment with them 
  in the big plane you flew to France?” 
  The bronze man nodded. “The 
  equipment has already been moved to that 
  location which Birmingham Jones has given 
  us. We will get in touch with Renny and 
  Johnny later.” 
  And later, riding in the big touring 
  cars through the night, on the fast trip 
  toward the Swiss frontier, it was scar-faced 
  Pinky who managed to get a chance to 
  whisper to Birmingham Jones. 
  “Sweet hell!” Pinky said. “This is 
  gonna be good! We even got that bronze 
  man’s stuff placed where Valentine can 
  wipe it out along with Doc Savage’s crowd!” 
  Birmingham Jones nodded. His pale 
  eyes were bleak and cold. 
  Sometime early that morning, the 
  cars crawled slowly up into the foothills. 
  Pretty Honey Sanders and the others had 
  managed to take cat naps throughout the 
  night. But Doc, Long Tom and Monk had 
  taken turns driving during the long hours 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  53 
  before dawn. These amazing worldwide 
  adventurers never seemed to tire. 
  In the last village, they had picked 
  up papers. Monk managed to get one that 
  was printed in English, and seated beside 
  Doc Savage—who was at the wheel of the 
  first car—Monk was reading headlines. 
  “It 
  says 
  here,” 
  the 
  chemist 
  exclaimed, “that those two nations that are 
  havin’ a war are sure raisin’ plenty of hell!” 
  From the rear seat, Honey Sanders 
  said, “It’s terrible. All Europe will be 
  involved shortly!” 
  Sandy Gower was seated with the 
  girl. Young Tod Smith was riding in the 
  trailing car, with Pinky, Birmingham Jones 
  and Long Tom. 
  The constable put in, “War ought to 
  be stopped. It ain’t right to have wars.” 
  Quietly, 
  the 
  bronze 
  man 
  commented, “It looks like this war will be 
  over shortly—if thousands of men continue 
  to be killed wantonly as they have been in 
  the past few days.” 
  Monk had been reading some more. 
  “Yeah, Doc,” he commented. “Says 
  here that one of them countries has a 
  secret kind of gun that is wiping the other 
  nation’s men out like ants!” 
  “Did you read all of that article?” 
  Doc prodded. 
  Monk read, and shortly he frowned. 
  “Say!” he piped. “It says here that 
  both those danged countries are accusing 
  the other of having a secret war machine.” 
  “Exactly,” added Doc Savage, and 
  there was something about the bronze 
  man’s tone that caused Monk to stare at 
  him questioningly. 
   
   
  USUALLY, the hairy chemist could 
  appear pretty dumb. And yet, for all his 
  homely looks and crazy actions, Monk had 
  a good brain. Frequently, the chemist’s acts 
  were merely put on to get Ham’s goat. 
  But now there was a mystery 
  concerning Ham’s disappearance, and 
  Monk was worried. Oddly, these two 
  strange fellows thought a lot of each 
  other—despite the fact that they always 
  seemed ready to murder one another when 
  together. 
  Monk was thinking about what the 
  bronze man had just said, and was making 
  no comments. He sat with his chin in his big 
  hand, his brow wrinkled. 
  Doc Savage drove in silence, and 
  the road got narrower and steeper. It was 
  getting cold. Rising up like grim, sky-
  reaching sentinels around them, were the 
  peaks of the Alps, snow visible seemingly 
  only a few hundred feet above. 
  Doc had been following a route 
  outlined by Birmingham when they had left 
  the last village. But even small farmhouses 
  were left behind now. The valley through 
  which they had climbed grew slowly 
  narrower, seemed to wall them in like the 
  sides of a canyon that had no summit. 
  The road forked, and Doc Savage 
  took the right turn-off. He forced the car 
  ahead for several more miles—when 
  abruptly those in this first machine heard 
  the others yelling at them from behind. 
  Doc stopped. 
  Tod Smith, Birmingham Jones and 
  Pinky came running up to them. Long Tom 
  remained at the wheel of the second car. 
  Birmingham 
  Jones 
  exclaimed, 
  “Pinky, here, just reminded me that we took 
  the wrong turn-off. Should have followed 
  that other road back there!” 
  But Doc Savage made no attempt to 
  turn the car around. Instead, he said, “It is 
  quite possible this road will meet the other 
  again.” 
  Pinky frowned. “But if we’re gonna 
  get to that Breakneck Pass hide-out—” he 
  started. 
  “We will continue on this road,” 
  stated the bronze man quietly. 
  Everyone 
  was 
  puzzled 
  by 
  the 
  bronze man’s actions, but they continued. 
  A half mile farther on, where the 
  route passed directly beneath sheer cliffs 
  that poked up on either side of them, the 
  sound 
  like 
  distant 
  thunder 
  suddenly 
  reached their ears. 
  Doc drew the car up, stared toward 
  the snow-covered mountainsides. 
  The others stared, too, toward a 
  point not more than a quarter of a mile 
  behind them. They saw the phenomenon 
  that appeared like a white Niagara plunging 
  down directly over the narrow roadway. 
  Monk 
  let 
  out 
  a 
  howl. 
  “We’re 
  trapped!” he piped shrilly. “Lookit, will ya? 
  Avalanche!” 
  And the avalanche came down and 
  made a small white mountain on that part of 
  
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  54 
  the road which they had, a moment before, 
  passed over. 
   
   
  Chapter XVII 
  DEATH TORPEDO 
   
  EVERYONE stood there, staring as 
  the snow piled up like a glacier behind 
  them, down the narrow road, and it was 
  scar-faced Pinky who started yelling. 
  “Whatta 
  we 
  gonna 
  do?” 
  he 
  demanded. “This is the wrong road, and 
  now we won’t get to that Valentine hide-
  out.” 
  Doc Savage ordered, “Back into the 
  cars. We will continue just the same.” 
  No one saw the worried glance that 
  flashed from Pinky to Birmingham Jones. 
  The glance practically said, “Something’s 
  got to be done! Savage has pulled a fast 
  one on us!” 
  But with the road blocked behind 
  them, there was nothing that the two could 
  do about it—if Birmingham was planning a 
  double cross. 
  They drove another hour, and 
  abruptly the route—surprisingly—fell away 
  from the encircling mountains and they 
  were at the approach to a wide, endless-
  looking plateau. Also, they had come to the 
  junction of another road. 
  Doc Savage stopped the cars and 
  said, “We have arrived at Breakneck Pass 
  from an opposite direction.”  
  All followed his indicating hand. 
  Off to the left, a short way back from 
  the road which they had just intercepted, 
  rose the straight, steep walls of a cut 
  through the mountains. From where they 
  stood, it appeared impossible that a road 
  could ever find its way through such a 
  narrow space. 
  Everyone was standing, looking at 
  what Doc Savage indicated. 
  At the bronze man’s next words, 
  various things suddenly happened with 
  amazing speed. 
  Doc said: “It was a clever way to 
  lead us to death. But now we will take them 
  by surprise, by coming into the Pass from 
  this opposite direction.” 
  Tough-looking Pinky suddenly had a 
  gun in his fists. He was backing toward one 
  of the emptied cars. 
  “Not me!” Pinky rapped. “Stand 
  back—everybody!” He kept them covered 
  with the gun, clipped out an order. 
  “C’mon, Birmingham! We’re getting 
  the hell outta here!” 
  Nattily dressed Birmingham Jones 
  leaped after his partner. As did stocky 
  Sandy Gower, the girl’s self-appointed 
  bodyguard. 
  “Me, too!” Sandy Gower yelled 
  worriedly. “I’m getting outta here!” 
  Under cover of Pinky’s menacing 
  gun, the other two piled into the big car. 
  Birmingham Jones drove, wheeling the car 
  around recklessly in the roadway. 
  Monk howled, “Doc! You gonna let 
  them get away with that?” 
  Oddly, the bronze man had not 
  moved.  
  Now he said swiftly, “Let them go.” 
  Monk and Long Tom were all for 
  leaping in the other car and following, but at 
  the bronze man’s command they hesitated. 
  Young, red-haired Tom Smith was 
  puzzled, too. He said, “I’ve never trusted 
  those other two, but I thought Sandy Gower 
  had some guts!” 
  The car was already rocketing down 
  the road, toward the long plateau that 
  stretched out endlessly in the opposite 
  direction. 
  Doc Savage whipped into sudden 
  action then. He jumped behind the wheel of 
  the second car, ordered the others inside. 
  Then he was sending the car down the 
  road, not after the men who had ran out on 
  them—but into Breakneck Pass. 
  Monk piped worriedly, “Blazes, Doc! 
  You’re running right into that trap Valentine 
  has set for us. That Birmingham was 
  kidding us all the time!” 
  Skinny Long Tom added: “Yeah, 
  Doc, maybe you’ve made a mistake!” 
  “There’s no mistake,” announced 
  the bronze man grimly, and he kept driving. 
  The road narrowed, started into the 
  crevice between the sheer rock walls of 
  Breakneck Pass. 
  The men stepped out ahead of them 
  and started firing at the car. 
   
   
  DOC’S swift order sent everyone 
  piling out of the machine the moment he 
  had flung it around so that it rested 
  crosswise in the road. Doc and the others 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  55 
  were momentarily protected on the far side 
  of the big car. 
  Long Tom and Monk were quickly 
  using the machine pistols. The weapons 
  sent bullfiddle roars shivering up and down 
  the canyon walls. Men some distance 
  beyond the other side of the blocking car 
  started falling down. 
  But their injuries would not be 
  permanent. For the special guns that Doc’s 
  aides used were firing a form of “mercy” 
  bullet of Doc’s own invention. The bullets, 
  aimed at the attackers’ legs, inflicted only 
  temporary paralysis. 
  But more men came out of the 
  Pass, along the narrow roadway, and 
  opened up fire with guns that contained real 
  slugs. 
  Abruptly, from high overhead, came 
  a roar as something came swooping down 
  out of the sky, to flatten out and zoom 
  overhead where the canyon walls widened 
  out high above. 
  Monk howled with fear. “The flying 
  thing!” he started to say. “We’re gonna be 
  blasted to hell an’—”  
  But above Monk’s outburst, Doc 
  said quietly, “That should be Renny and 
  Johnny in the plane.” 
  Monk, crouched down behind the 
  car, stared upward, squinting. 
  And he saw Doc’s tri-motored, 
  streamlined ship—the one that the bronze 
  man had left at the Paris airport. 
  Monk started jumping up and down 
  and waving his arms at the plane. A slug 
  whined by his head. 
  Long Tom reached up and yanked 
  the excited chemist down beside the 
  others. “You want to get killed, you dunce!” 
  the electrical wizard snorted. 
  Doc Savage said, “Hold your fire. 
  Watch!” 
  The big plane came down so low 
  between the canyon walls that it seemed a 
  certainty the ship’s wings would be ripped 
  asunder against the rock walls. 
  But they cleared, and then the 
  sound like the rattle of a machine gun 
  reached the ears of those with Doc Savage. 
  Something like rain spattered the dust in 
  the roadway ahead. The pellets also hit the 
  small mob of attackers crouched there, and 
  they started lying down on their stomachs 
  and dropping their weapons. 
  They didn’t get up again. No 
  reinforcements joined them.  
  The 
  tri-motored 
  ship 
  zoomed 
  skyward, circled when it was safely clear of 
  the Pass, and disappeared. 
  Doc Savage said, “It is safe to 
  proceed now.” 
   
   
  PRETTY Honey Sanders stared at 
  the unconscious assailants piled up in the 
  roadway just ahead. She looked at Doc 
  Savage. She was beginning to understand 
  some of the remarkable ingenuity of this big 
  bronze fellow. 
  The girl said, “You knew about this 
  trap all the time, didn’t you? You had plans 
  made for those two you call Renny and 
  Johnny to meet you here?” 
  Doc said quietly, “Renny had orders 
  to pick up our trail into the mountains today. 
  He has been flying above us for the past 
  hour, high enough so that the plane was 
  not heard by anyone in the cars.” 
  Young Tod Smith gave Doc Savage 
  a steady regard. He, too, had been puzzled 
  by some of the bronze giant’s apparently 
  questionable 
  movements. 
  Now 
  he 
  understood. 
  Monk was all for going ahead and 
  waking up some of the sleeping thugs and 
  bashing in a few heads. 
  But Doc rapped, “Hurry! It will only 
  be a matter of moments now!” 
  “Moments until what?” Long Tom 
  wanted to know.  
  But the bronze man did not explain. 
  Instead, he led the way along the road. 
  They saw that it curved sharply, right in the 
  heart of the mountain pass. Beyond, where 
  a little clump of woods grew in close 
  between steep walls and roadway, Doc 
  pointed and said, “It should be in there.” 
  Monk and Long Tom were still 
  puzzled. “What is it?” Monk asked. 
  Doc did not answer. Instead, he 
  pushed into the enshrouding trees, with the 
  others close behind him.  
  The girl’s deep-blue eyes were wide 
  with excitement. She exclaimed, “This is 
  the best time I ever had in my life.” 
  Tod Smith winced and commented, 
  “Hope you get over it before many years!” 
  Doc said significantly, “What they 
  have in store for us yet will not be very 
  pleasant!” 
  
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  56 
  And as if to lend emphasis to the 
  statement, the high, shrill whining sound 
  came down off the canyon walls. It became 
  a sharp screech that almost pierced the 
  eardrums. 
  Monk started to say, “Betcha that’s 
  Renny and Johnny again—” 
  And then he let out a howl and 
  stared. 
  The flying thing was high enough 
  that a clear view of it was vague. And yet 
  the hairy chemist saw enough of it to be 
  apparently sure of his deductions. 
  “Doc!” he squalled. “It’s that flying 
  hobgoblin of a thing from Sleepy Hollow. 
  One of them blasted things that wrecked 
  the schooner and—” 
  “Yes,” said Doc Savage. “It is the 
  aërial torpedo.”  
  “What—” the girl started to ask. 
  Before Doc could reply, the thing 
  that flew with the speed of a comet had 
  passed far overhead. A split second later, 
  there came the terrific blast. For a moment, 
  it felt as if the mountains would shatter all 
  around them. 
  Doc ripped out, “They’ll have the 
  range shortly. Help me with this thing.” 
   
   
  DOC had reached what looked like 
  an old, long farm wagon loaded with 
  strange-looking scientific apparatus. With 
  Monk’s and Long Tom’s aid, he quickly 
  pushed the strange unit onto the roadway. 
  Instantly, Doc Savage was up in the 
  big wagon, manipulating gadgets that were 
  on 
  the 
  heavy 
  instrument-cases 
  and 
  equipment. 
  Long 
  Tom 
  seemed 
  to 
  gather 
  immediately what the equipment was for, 
  because he leaped to assist the bronze 
  man. 
  Shortly, everyone heard the hum of 
  powerful radio tubes. 
  Doc whipped a covering from one 
  particularly large case. Compact storage 
  batteries were revealed. The bronze man, 
  his metallic fingers moving with skilled 
  speed, was making various hook-ups. 
  Without 
  pausing 
  in 
  his 
  swift 
  movements, he directed, “Long Tom, the 
  ray machine is covered up there at the 
  other end of the wagon. Uncover it!” 
  The machine was the one Doc 
  Savage had used back at his New York 
  headquarters. Apparently he had brought it 
  aboard in his big plane. Renny, though, had 
  flown the equipment here. 
  Shortly, Doc had a short-wave 
  transmitting set in readiness. Then he was 
  speaking into a microphone:  
  “Ham?” he asked. “Is everyone clear 
  of the aërial torpedoes?” 
  The others stared at Doc’s mention 
  of Ham. 
  A reply came back through a 
  portable 
  loud-speaker 
  that 
  had 
  been 
  hooked up. Ham said tensely: 
  “Yes, Doc. All except Valentine. I’m 
  with Renny and Johnny in the plane. But, 
  Doc—” 
  “Yes?” 
  “Valentine’s releasing those things. 
  You’d better clear out! Valentine managed 
  to elude us the moment we got here, and 
  he’s in his place now—alone!” 
  “Then stay clear,” finished the 
  bronze man, and cut Ham off. 
  Monk, wide-eyed, piped, “I don’t get 
  this, Doc? Where the blazes is that 
  shyster—” 
  But Doc Savage was manipulating 
  another set of radio-control dials. His face 
  was tense, his flake-gold eyes revealing 
  that his brain was working furiously. 
  He started to say, “If we can pick up 
  the range of the next one—” 
  The screaming, high-pitched sound 
  came down out of the sky again—and this 
  time the flying thing of death was very 
  close. 
  It was so close over their heads that 
  there was a peculiar burned-ozone smell in 
  the air. 
   
   
  Chapter XVIII 
  FAREWELL TO DEATH 
   
  SO close that they saw the long, 
  cylindricallike object. Those with 
  Doc 
  Savage stared at the hurtling torpedo as it 
  ripped through the mountain pass. It could 
  not have been more than a hundred feet 
  above their heads. The thing appeared to 
  have fins, and a taillike structure. 
  It did not explode, but disappeared 
  swiftly. 
  Long Tom was frantically adjusting 
  the ray machine, directing the machine 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  57 
  after the flying object that had already 
  disappeared. 
  “Too late,” commented Doc, from 
  where he was at the radio controls. “Wait!” 
  His fingers moved deftly. Various 
  delicate 
  instruments 
  that 
  he 
  watched 
  closely seemed to tell the bronze man 
  some fact. 
  For he said to the skinny electrical 
  wizard, “If this doesn’t work, then we are 
  done for!” 
  He pressed a small button on the 
  radio-control set.  
  Somewhere—it was impossible to 
  tell the distance—there was a violent blast, 
  as though tons of dynamite might have 
  been set off somewhere out of their sight. 
  The bronze man’s unusual eyes 
  flickered. Not taking his hands from the 
  radio dials, he said, “Monk, hurry back and 
  get the car.” 
  Monk was gone about ten minutes. 
  Upon his return with the big touring car, he 
  said, “Had to move some of them sleeping 
  mugs outta the way, or run over them!” 
  Abruptly there was a crackling in the 
  loud-speaker unit which Doc Savage had 
  set up. Into the microphone, he said, “Yes?” 
  “Doc?” It was Renny’s booming 
  voice this time, obviously coming from the 
  plane that was flying at some point distant. 
  “What is it?” prodded Doc Savage.  
  “You all right?” 
  The bronze man assured Renny 
  that they were all still alive. He told briefly of 
  the aërial torpedo appearance, added, “It 
  looks like we have just brought the last one 
  down. At least, the thing exploded a 
  moment ago.” 
  Renny’s voice got worried. “Listen, 
  Doc, Valentine’s gone completely nuts. We 
  can’t get at him, because of the danger of 
  one of those things hitting the plane. But 
  he’s ready to release more of them!” 
  “We have figured on that,” said the 
  bronze man. “Stand by while we close in. 
  What 
  is 
  the 
  distance 
  to 
  Valentine’s 
  headquarters?” 
  “Exactly three miles,” came Renny’s 
  answer. 
  Doc 
  swung 
  away 
  from 
  the 
  transmitter, gave brief orders. 
  “Load this radio equipment in the 
  rear of the car,” he directed. “Fast!” 
  With the storage batteries that were 
  needed for operation of the radio-control 
  apparatus, the rear seat of the car was 
  jammed. Long Tom, however, managed to 
  squeeze his skinny frame in. Monk hung 
  onto the running board while the girl and 
  Tod Smith climbed in the front seat with the 
  bronze man. 
  As Doc drove, he gave explicit 
  directions to Long Tom. 
  The electrical wizard apparently 
  understood Doc’s purpose, for once he 
  said, “Nothing yet, Doc.” 
  Doc Savage sent the machine 
  racing down the narrow road, back the way 
  they had come. They passed the point 
  where Monk had piled the unconscious 
  assailants alongside the road. Later, they 
  passed the junction where Sandy Gower, 
  Birmingham Jones and Pinky had run out 
  on them. 
  Two miles beyond this, where the 
  roadway bordered the plateau of a place 
  they had seen earlier, they saw the long, 
  low metal building far out in a field. 
  Doc said, “That’s it. That’s the place 
  Valentine’s 
  set 
  here 
  in 
  this 
  isolated 
  section.” 
  High above them, circling like a lazy 
  bird in the clear sky, was a plane. It was 
  Doc’s tri-motored ship.  
  The girl suddenly cried, “Listen!” 
  But everyone had heard the sound. 
   
   
  IT started as a low moan, and 
  quickly seemed to get shriller and higher in 
  tone. 
  Doc rasped out: “O. K., Long Tom. 
  Get it!” 
  As Doc Savage had done a while 
  ago, so did Long Tom depress a button on 
  the radio-control set. 
  At the same moment, the building 
  off in the flat field appeared to disintegrate. 
  It went up in the air, and a terrific explosion 
  followed. 
  The silence of the lonesome spot 
  was shattered by the explosions that 
  followed during the next fifteen minutes. 
  Doc held the car clear, and after 
  waiting another fifteen minutes—after the 
  explosions had stopped—he rolled the 
  machine slowly down the road in the 
  direction of what had once been a building. 
  Only a pile of débris now remained. 
  Renny set the big plane down in the 
  field alongside them. He and gaunt Johnny 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  58 
  Littlejohn, the archaeologist, piled out and 
  ran up to Doc and the others. 
  Birmingham Jones came running 
  along behind them. 
  Monk stared. The girl’s fingers flew 
  to her mouth. Tod Smith and Long Tom 
  looked quickly at the bronze man. 
  But 
  Monk 
  said, 
  “Blazes, 
  Doc! 
  Thought 
  that 
  Birmingham 
  Jones 
  was  
  with—” 
  The tall, nattily attired Birmingham 
  Jones had reached the group. He looked at 
  Monk and said coolly: 
  “Listen, ape, who ever gave you the 
  right to think, anyway?” 
  Monk almost jumped out of his 
  shoes.  
  “Ham!” he yelled. 
  Doc Savage explained, “Ham and 
  Birmingham Jones were about the same 
  height and build. It was only necessary for 
  Ham to use the glass eyeshells to make his 
  eyes look like Birmingham’s.” 
  Ham, grinning at bewildered Monk, 
  was removing the paper-thin shells from his 
  eyes. Transparent, the tiny objects were a 
  product that could be bought in any high-
  class optical shop. 
  Honey Sanders exclaimed, “But if 
  this was Ham all the time, then where is the 
  real Birmingham Jones?”  
  Doc 
  Savage 
  said, 
  “Birmingham 
  Jones was put back on the island with the 
  rest of the prisoners there. Ham was 
  planted with the one named Pinky in order 
  to learn Valentine’s plans and the exact 
  location of this aërial torpedo base.” 
  All were staring at the demolished 
  building. The biting odor of burned ozone 
  was in the air. 
  Young Tod Smith asked, “You 
  mean, 
  Valentine 
  was 
  sending 
  those 
  torpedo things out from there?” 
  Doc nodded. 
  “But how—” Tod Smith started. 
  “Valentine,” Doc went on, “was 
  using a type of perpetual-motion machine 
  employing 
  an 
  atomic 
  or 
  perhaps 
  a 
  molecular 
  force. 
  Once 
  started, 
  the 
  torpedoes traveled faster and farther than 
  any known speed ship. They were operated 
  by remote radio control. They could be 
  exploded in like manner, at any point where 
  Valentine wished them to do so.” 
  Tod Smith’s eyes brightened. “I get 
  it!” he said. “That’s why you were using this 
  remote-control radio set of your own! You 
  set off the torpedo that Valentine was ready 
  to launch!” 
  Doc said quietly, “Yes. It is too bad 
  that Pinky had to die along with him, there 
  in the building. But it was either that or 
  perhaps death for thousands.” 
  The girl, Honey, was staring. 
  “Pinky?” she gasped. “But he was 
  with Sandy Gower. Where is Sandy Gower 
  now?” 
  What was evident to the others, had 
  been overlooked by the girl. 
  Doc moved across to where she 
  was standing, said gently, “Sandy Gower 
  was Valentine.” 
   
   
  IT was two days later, again aboard 
  the liner, that Doc Savage and the others 
  prepared to sail for the island where the 
  rest of the prisoners would be picked up. 
  Newspapers, that morning, were full 
  of 
  headlines. 
  Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  were 
  commenting about them. 
  “See where those two countries that 
  were fighting have signed a truce,” Monk 
  said. “Both of them figured the other had a 
  new gun that was wiping out their troops by 
  the thousands. Both decided to quit!” 
  Ham looked at the bronze man. 
  “And that was Valentine’s—Sandy 
  Gower’s—idea, wasn’t it Doc?” he asked. 
  Doc nodded. 
  “Sandy. Gower had an idea that he 
  was going to stop all wars. He became a 
  fanatic on the idea, standing ready to kill 
  thousands in order to accomplish his 
  purpose. He perfected his aërial torpedo 
  there in the schooner workshop near 
  Sleepy Hollow. Then he was shipping them 
  to that mountain hide-out over here.” 
  Doc 
  looked 
  at 
  pretty 
  Honey 
  Sanders. 
  “You 
  knew 
  Sandy 
  Gower. 
  Inadvertently, you almost discovered that 
  he was Valentine—though you did not 
  realize it.” 
  The girl was getting over her first 
  shock at learning Sandy Gower had been 
  the villain all along. 
  “I remember now,” she explained, 
  “how Sandy used to talk to dad by the hour 
  about war, and that it should be stopped. 
  Father was somewhat of a scientist, you 
  know.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FLYING GOBLIN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  59 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  nodded 
  understandingly. 
  “But, Doc,” Monk put in, “what about 
  that rich guy, Duval? I figured he was mixed 
  up in this thing? Where’s he now?” 
  “Safely in New York,” Doc said. “He 
  never left the country. You see, Sandy 
  Gower needed plenty of money to finance 
  his crazy scheme. And so he sent 
  Birmingham Jones to Duval, asking for that 
  help. Naturally, Duval refused.” 
  Monk shook his head quickly. “I get 
  it. And so they used a little persuasion on 
  Duval. Knocked down a couple of his shops 
  with that flying Oscar thing, and made him 
  kick through—or else!” 
  “That,” 
  Doc 
  agreed, 
  “was 
  the 
  general idea.”  
  Renny had a word to say. 
  “We learned about that cathedral 
  explosion in Paris, too,” he offered. “Holy 
  cow! It was caused by one of those 
  torpedoes that Sandy Gower sent aboard. 
  He shipped some of them that way, 
  because the darned things could keep 
  going almost forever. Only he miscalculated 
  on that one, and it went through the 
  cathedral!” 
  Ham’s face was thoughtful. He 
  looked at Doc Savage. 
  “Funny,” he remarked, “about those 
  two army men who were seized aboard this 
  same ship by Birmingham Jones. We never 
  did find those two men when we first 
  searched this boat, Doc!” 
   
  Doc’s face was just a trifle grim. 
  “That,” he said, “has been explained while 
  we were after Sandy Gower.”  
  “Explained?” 
  “A crew member,” said Doc, “was 
  too frightened to reveal it at first. He has 
  now talked. The two army officials—after all 
  war information had been extracted from 
  them 
  by 
  Birmingham 
  Jones—were 
  murdered and dropped at sea. Birmingham 
  Jones, when picked up at the island, will 
  probably never be sent back to the college. 
  He likes too well to kill people.” 
  All understood what the bronze man 
  meant. 
   
   
  HAIRY MONK was abruptly staring 
  around. He looked at Ham. 
  “Where’s Honey?” he demanded, 
  his eyes brightening hopefully. 
  Ham, strangely, looked somewhat 
  downcast. 
   “Over there,” he indicated, pointing. 
  Pretty Honey Sanders was over at 
  the ship’s rail, standing close to Tod Smith. 
  The red-haired young man’s arm was 
  around the girl’s shoulders. Her golden-rich 
  hair brushed his cheek. 
  “That,” said Ham, “let’s you out, 
  ape!” 
  Monk grinned at his dapper partner. 
  “At least,” he piped, “neither of us have a 
  chance, so I ain’t gonna feel so bad!” 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
  Men who risk their lives daily in a tremendous battle with nature: 
  "hardrock" men who know what it is to go down into the bowels of 
  the earth to face death every day; meet a new danger, more 
  menacing than any nature offers, because it is man made. It's 
   
  TUNNEL TERROR 
   
  that threatens them; and it takes Doc Savage and his scrappy 
  gang to battle this new menace. It's complete in the nest issue of 
   
   
   
  10 Cents—Every Month 
   
  
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  60 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
                            
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/089 The Flying Goblin.pdf