The Red Skull

VII — Nick Clipton

Monk’s homely face set in a rock-like mask. His big, amiable mouth warped a grim scowl.

“But she was left behind when they took me away!” he muttered. “Buttons knocked her out. He didn’t hit her hard enough to do any serious damage, though.”

Doc wheeled back into the building, saying, “We’ll go up and look again for her.”

A red flush of sunlight suffused the penthouse which contained Monk’s laboratory although the street below was still somewhat gloomy. Sunbeams sloping into the workroom itself were reflected dazzlingly from the myriads of glass test tubes, bottles, pestles, and from metallic stands of mechanisms. It was as though the room were heaped with scintillating jewelry.

Monk’s sharp eyes detected several stands of apparatus lying upon the floor. Stands which had been upright when his captors forced him from the laboratory.

“Did you fellows upset those?” he asked, indicating the fallen apparatus on the floor.

“No,” Doc assured him.

Monk groaned. “Then they have been upset since I was taken away! It looks like there was another fight in here.”

“You say it was a light blow which knocked Lea Aster unconscious?”

“Yes. She must have come to.” Monk shook a fist angrily. “It looks like Buttons and his gang rushed back here after I got away from them and grabbed my secretary. Don’t you think that’s what happened, Doc”

“Apparently,” Doc admitted.

Monk now hurried to the apparatus cabinet behind which Lea Aster had concealed something. He searched but found nothing.

“If the girl actually did slip the documents from Buttons’s pocket and hide them here, they’ve been taken,” he said thoughtfully. “It is possible Miss Aster regained consciousness, secured the papers, and had them when Buttons returned.”

Ham had been standing quietly to one side, slowly tapping an immaculate shoe toe with the tip of his sword cane. His high, intelligent forehead was wrinkled from hard thinking.

“What I cannot understand is why they came back for the young woman,” he declared. “Granting that they’re trying to send us up North on a wild-goose chase, it seems to me they should be satisfied that they have us bluffed. The elaborate scheming they’re doing to get us out of town shows they know that we’re bad fellows to monkey with. Why should they draw our vengeance further by seizing the girl?”

“I have a surmise that explains both questions,” Doc told him. “Buttons realized he must have lost the papers in this laboratory. He came back for them and discovered Lea Aster reading them. He was forced to take the young woman because she had learned the contents of the documents.”

Doc and his men now questioned the single elevator operator on duty in the building at this early hour in an effort to verify the correctness of their reasoning. But that individual had seen no one leave with Monk’s secretary in tow.

“They could have come-and-gone by the stairs without being observed. They had enough time,” Doc pointed out.

Back in the laboratory, they continued their consultation.

“We’re sure of one thing”, Renny rumbled in a voice that threatened to shake apparatus off stands. “The fact that they’re trying to decoy us into Canada.”

“Well, they won’t have any luck at that!” Ham snapped.

The words were hardly off his lips when he started violently.

Doc’s strange trilling note had sounded unexpectedly. It came into being, seemingly from nowhere. Awesome, melodious, its eerie nature defying description, it rose and fell. Only a moment did it last… then it trailed away.

“What is it, Doc?” Ham barked out quickly.

Doc did not reply with words. He leveled an arm at the city telephone which stood on a table near them. The receiver was off the hook and resting on the tabletop.

Moving to the instrument swiftly, Doc pressed the receiver to his ear. He heard sounds of a man breathing. These persisted several seconds.

Long Tom sprinted out of the laboratory, intent on getting to another phone and having the connection to this instrument traced. He was not successful in that, however.

Buttons Zortell was the man at the other end of the phone wire.

Something of the sudden tension which had seized the laboratory was transmitted to him. He became alarmed. Hanging up quickly, he quitted the booth from which he had been listening and hurried outside.

The booth was in a drugstore less than a block from the building which supported Monk’s penthouse. Buttons joined his men, who were waiting in their parked car in a side-street.

“What’d you learn, Buttons?” quizzed one of the men.

“Plenty!” their leader snarled. “Them hombres are wise that the Radium mine in Canada is all a fake. I don’t savvy how they got next to our scheme. I figured we’d put it over plumb slick!”

“Blazes! Have they found out why we want ‘em out of New York?”

“Not yet,” Buttons muttered uneasily.

The flyer with the white mustache and eyebrows took the wheel. The car moved off. The men sat back pretending nonchalance but keeping wary eyes on each policeman they passed.

They were nervous because Lea Aster — securely bound-and-gagged — was on the floor of the car.

And none were less settled of mind than Buttons Zortell.

“This Doc Savage and his men are a sharp bunch!” he growled. “Listenin’ at the phone, I could hear pretty much all they said. It was a darn good phone and they musta been standin’ close to it. They stood there and reasoned out exactly what happened when we came back huntin’ them papers. They even figured that we’d grabbed the mohairrie because she’d read the papers!”

“That’s sure what happened,” a man agreed.

“Go to our hotel,” Buttons commanded the driver. “I’ve gotta get in touch with the Boss. This thing is gettin’ too much for me.”

The men reached their hotel without incident.

Leaving the others to wait in the car, Buttons entered the hostelry and hurried to his room. He lost no time putting in a long-distance telephone call to Arizona. The wire connections he obtained were excellent. The conversation passed back-and-forth clearly.

Buttons recited all that had occurred. He sought to color the story in a fashion which made his accomplishments sound sizable and his mistakes unimportant.

“I figure I’ve done a pretty good job, Boss!” he finished.

“The hell you have!” gritted the distant mastermind. “You’ve bungled right and left! Where are you talking from?”

“My hotel,” Buttons said sourly.

“Of all the nitwits! Didn’t you ever hear of telephone operators listenin’ in?”

“That won’t hurt nothin’!”

“Maybe not. But it would have had you called me under my right name instead of ‘Nick Clipton’. From now on, never get in touch with me except by the name of ‘Nick Clipton’. Savvy?”

“I gotcha.”

“Furthermore, check out of that hotel the instant you hang up! Make sure nobody can trace you!”

“All right,” Buttons promised sheepishly.

“And you’re leaving New York right away! You’re not needed there any more!”

“What about the mohairrie?”

“The girl? Tie a rock to her neck and throw her in the river!”

Buttons swallowed. Callous as he was, this talk of outright murder of a woman shocked him.

“You say I ain’t needed in New York any more?” he questioned nervously. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve taken care of everything from this end!” snapped the distant man masquerading under the name of ‘Nick Clipton’. “The rest of the boys have been workin’ under my orders. The thing for you to do is get back here and forget Doc Savage!”

“The trouble is he ain’t gonna forget us!” Buttons muttered.

“You think he suspects the Western angle?”

“I ain’t sure. It wouldn’t surprise me none.”

The long phone circuit rattled the distant man’s profane exclamation!

“Then maybe we’d better put Savage and his gang out of the way.”

“That won’t be easy to do.”

“Dry up. Let me think for a minute.”

Buttons could hear his own watch noisily in the silence which followed. In the street below, cars honked. The morning Sun had already made the hotel room warm, stuffy.

“Have you still got the various devices I gave you?” asked the man in Arizona.

“All but the poison fangs for the dog and the poison that’ll kill you if you touch it. I used them two on Bandy Stevens. They were Numbers ‘1’ and ‘2’ on the list.”

“Have you got No. 3?”

“Sure.”

“Find a suitable place and use it. You can figure out the details, can’t you?”

“Yeah,” Buttons replied uneasily.

“All right. That will dispose of Doc Savage. It can’t fail.”

“Um-m!” said Buttons doubtfully. “And you want me to scrag the mohairrie, huh?”

“Exactly.”

“Listen, Boss. Supposin’ we just hold her until Doc Savage is out of the way? If somethin’ should go wrong and we didn’t get rid of ‘im, we might keep ‘im off our necks by threatenin’ to croak her.”

The distant man considered this at length.

“Do it that way then,” he agreed finally. “Keep her alive. And let’s end this talk. It has probably cost me 50 bucks already! Are you sure you can lead Doc Savage into a trap?”

“Plump positive I can!” Buttons declared. “I already got a swell scheme in mind.”

“Good. If it works, get rid of the girl and come on back to Arizona. If it don’t work, come on back anyhow but fetch the girl alive. When you get here, hole up in the Red Skull hangout.”

“Shall we come by plane?”

“Of course.”

“But Whitey’s sky chariot was burned…”

“Buy another. Steal a plane if you have to.”

“Whitey don’t know the location of the Red Skull joint.”

“You sap! You can tell ‘im where it is, can’t you? And we’ve done enough lallygaggin’! So long!”

This terminated the conversation.

Striding to an assortment of baggage at one side of the hotel room, Buttons selected a huge Gladstone. He carried this piece of luggage with him as he left the hostelry.

His men greeted him with anxious queries. “What’s the Boss say, Buttons?”

“Don’t ask so blasted many questions!” he snarled peevishly. “I’ll tell you when the time comes. We got a job ahead of us that’s gonna take some expert handlin’!”

Buttons wanted peace in which to mull over his evil plan. It would take careful preparation and execution. But the scheme was diabolical in its cleverness. Buttons began to experience a glow of satisfaction. The more he thought about it, the less possibility could he see of the plot failing.

Doc Savage and his 5 men were finally to be disposed of, Buttons felt positive.

The thought made him smirk with satisfaction.