Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace Read Online Free PDF Page B

we want to question you. And by the way, here’s something you might tell me now—your part of the telegram just says that Christopher Columbus is alive?”
    “Right.”
    “That means the discoverer of America?”
    Gull frowned, put his mouth close to the transmitter and said, “This doesn’t seem to me like a joking matter.”
    “No? Who said it was? Listen, you stay there. We want to talk to you about this Christopher Columbus, whether he’s the discoverer of America or not.”
    Gull replaced the receiver, nibbled his lower lip, then walked into the other room, muttering vaguely to himself, “Why do things have to happen to me?”
    THE NEIGHBOR, the man whose telephone Gull was using, heard this remark but got nothing out of it but puzzlement. Anyway, he had something else on his mind, it appeared, for he shifted his cud of tobacco to one side and aimed expertly at a can half full of ashes which stood beside the heating stove in lieu of a goboon. He cleaned his chin with a hooked finger.
    “Me an’ the woman been sorta talking,” he got around to advising.
    Gull nodded, occupied with other thoughts.
    “We calculate you’re around thirty years old.”
    “Close,” Gull said vaguely.
    “Beats all how some gets white-haired a-fore their time, don’t it?”
    “What? Oh, my hair. Yeah, I got old kind of early.” Gull started for the door.
    The elderly farmer said quickly, “That Spook is a funny feller, ain’t he?”
    Gull halted reluctantly. “You mean Drury Davis?”
    “Yep. Spook Davis looks just like you, don’t he?”
    “Just exactly,” Gull agreed, trying, out of common courtesy, not to seem too undesirous of talking.
    “But for his carroty hair, he might be your twin.”
    “He isn’t,” Gull said hastily. “No relative at all. He’s just a stooge.”
    “Stooge. What’s a stooge?”
    “A stage assistant.”
    “Drury Davis passed here going to La Plata to the movie earlier tonight, and we talked a while.” The old farmer shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue.
    “That Spook is sure a liar, ain’t he?” he added.
    Saying heartily, “He certainly is!” Gull managed to escape outside into the darkness.
    The Great Gulliver stood for a while in the night, thinking, and the farmer’s pothound came and snuffled at his heels, after which a chicken in the hen house made one of the noises a chicken makes on a roost when another fowl pushes it. A few clouds were overheard and more clouds crowded in the east, in front of the moon. It was somewhat darker than it had been.
    Gull walked back to the filling station, closed the door to keep out the bugs, and because there seemed nothing else to do, began cleaning up the mess on the floor.
    The futile efforts of his mind to create some reason for what had happened caused him to become rather preoccupied; sufficiently so that he did not at once realize a sound he had heard was something clumping against the door.
    A disheveled and gory young man pitched in on the floor when the door opened.
    THE young man’s hair was as red as a burning brick. The remarkable thing about him—in almost every other particular, he looked exactly like Gulliver Greene.
    A gash on the newcomer’s head had leaked a quantity of crimson and he reeked of whiskey smell. He blinked painfully at Gull.
    “It’s a lie!” he said distinctly enough.
    “Drunk!” Gull said grimly.
    “That’s what I meant. That’s the lie.” The prostrate young man groaned deeply. “What you smell is one thing, and what you are looking at is an entirely different matter. What you see is the result of a young man being original.”
    “Polluted!” Gull stated decisively. “Full to the gills!”
    The young man on the floor felt of his head, gasped and relaxed.
    “Have you a Bible?” he asked.
    “No. I still would not believe you, no matter what oath you took.”
    “Spook Davis is abused,” complained the young man.
    Drury “Spook” Davis gathered himself and got