Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) Read Online Free PDF

garment.”
    Turning, Doc went over to the unfortunate caller sprawled before his door, knelt, and saw that Ham had already extinguished the cigarette, no doubt with his foot. Thus, no more smoke was wafting. The scorch mark in the fallen newspaper was relatively small.
    Turning the man over, Doc studied his open-featured face, noted the absence of a hat and felt of the man’s scalp. It was unusually smooth to the touch.
    “This man has had his head shaved within the last few hours,” he pronounced.
    “Why would anyone do that?” wondered Ham, wringing his cane with both hands.
    “No doubt to disguise himself from being followed,” said Doc, lifting one of the man’s coat sleeves to reveal unusually bright red hair.
    Going through the man’s pockets, the bronze man discovered a billfold, opened it up and picked through the papers he found within. There was a driver’s license made out to Ned Gamble of Chicago, Illinois. A round-trip train ticket between Chicago and New York bearing a recent purchase date. Also, two brass hotel keys, along with receipts from two different hotels, both dated this afternoon.
    Showing these to Ham, Doc said, “This man arrived on the Twentieth Century Limited and registered at separate hotels only an hour or so apart.”
    Ham nodded. “Switched hotels. Evidently, he knew he was being followed—or suspected as much. Did you find the man who escaped in the elevator?”
    “No one escaped in the elevator,” returned the bronze man. “The cage was empty except for Jimmy, who took no one up or down.”
    Ham twirled his cane thoughtfully. “Then where could the fleeing man have gone?”
    “We can neither assume there was anyone else present, nor that there was not,” commented Doc Savage, standing up.
    He began to reconnoiter the corridor, looking for any signs of a lurker.
    His investigations brought about nothing, for the eighty-sixth floor was entirely occupied by his own suite of offices. Going to a set of circular stairs, Doc climbed into the observation tower itself, but found no one hiding up there.
    “If no one followed this man up,” mused Ham, “then who or what struck him down? And what made that devilish green glow?”
    “Those questions remain to be answered,” said Doc Savage, returning to the body and taking it up in his great corded arms. The prodigious strength of the bronze giant became evident in the easy manner in which he toted the stricken Ned Gamble, who weighed approximately one hundred and seventy pounds.
    They entered the reception room, passed through the great library, and into a scientific laboratory so large it seemed as if it filled the greatest portion of the eighty-sixth floor.
    Laying the man on an examination table, Doc began checking vital signs. He found none. Nor did he expect to.
    “Dead?” asked Ham.
    Doc nodded. “This man is deceased.”
    Doc Savage was renowned for his scientific wizardry and his deep fund of learning. But the greatest of the bronze man’s myriad accomplishments was as a physician and surgeon. Hence his nickname. He now began a thorough examination of the dead victim, attempting to ascertain the cause of his unexplained demise.
    Much of this initially was routine.
    While he worked, Ham fretted. “If I remember my Greek mythology, the Medusa was a fearful woman possessing living snakes for locks, whose fierce gaze was reputed to petrify a man in his tracks.”
    “This man was dropped in his tracks, but he has not been petrified,” remarked Doc.
    Lapsing into silence, the big bronze man continued his examination, and discovered nothing to explain the visitor’s inexplicable expiration.
    Moving a great fluoroscope into position, Doc arranged the movable screen so that it hovered over the dead body. Switching on the device, the bronze man studied the greenish image thus displayed.
    His trilling came again; this time it sounded weird in the extreme.
    Drawing closer, Ham asked anxiously, “What is it?”
    “Take a