Doc Savage: The Miracle Menace by Kenneth Robeson, Lester Dent, Will Murray Read Free Book Online

of the present business depression, just before it would surely have failed. Doc owned other enterprises, as well. Steamship companies. Passenger airlines. Railroads. Newspapers. Factories. The financial holdings of the amazing bronze man were immense.
    This latest expansion, however, was a clandestine one. The general public would never hear of it. Not if Doc Savage could help it.
    “Monk, the telegram, please,” requested Doc.
    A hairy hand pulled out the night letter, proffered it. Doc accepted it with one hand, the other holding the prisoner steady.
    Golden orbs scanned the typed letters pasted onto the yellow flimsy, absorbing the report of the mysteriously vanishing house in the Missouri woods.
    “This bears investigation.”
    “We’re gettin’ close to Halloween, Doc,” suggested Monk. “Could be a prank.”
    Doc shook his head in a slow negative. “The person who sent this is a trusted graduate of this institution, and currently works as stringer for a newspaper in the city of Kirksville, not far from the site of this unusual dwelling. He would not report a prank.”
    And on that sound judgment, the bronze giant decided to look into the mystery. For this was part of what he did—investigate the unusual.
    “Is that why you wanted us to bring the small dirigible?” asked Ham.
    Doc nodded. “It fit the circumstances described in the telegram and it was time the mooring experiment was concluded.”
    They moved through the building as Doc conveyed the prisoner to a dormitory-style holding room where he could sleep off the effects of the spell Ham inflicted upon him.
    They passed a gymnasium, then an empty cafeteria. What looked like a classroom where educational activities were taking place came into view. Every face in those classes could be found on post office walls, and in police mug books across the nation, if not the world. There were a few small-time dictators Doc had harvested in the course of his recent adventures. Everyone wore a crisp white uniform. The staff wore blue.
    Everything in this and the other buildings was dedicated to the transformation of common criminals into upright citizens. No criminal who had ever been subjected to this regimen had ever escaped, or gone back to a life of criminality. It was the bronze man’s deepest hope that none ever would.
    Now the facility was dedicated to turning out future operatives of the bronze man’s new information-gathering organization. It was another reason for the expansion of the crime-curing college to several open-air structures. The former mountainside chambers were still in use, but not so much as before, and now only after dark, where such activity would not be noticed. Passing airplanes might observe hidden stone doors rolling open in the gray hillside and this would attract curiosity that a germ research complex would not.
    A great deal of thought had been given to the expansion of the Crime College.
    Doc Savage conferred with a man who headed the surgical wing of the operation. He gave swift instructions for the new inmate, and with that accomplished, rejoined Monk and Ham.
    “Everything is set,” he said. “Six months from now our newest student should be fit for release, ready to take his place in decent society.”
    Ham nodded soberly. “Some such scheme as this should be substituted for our penitentiaries. Why don’t you take it up with our government?”
    “Our esteemed and opinionated senators would not touch it,” Doc explained patiently. “The idea of catching a criminal, cutting his head open and doing something to his brain that he does not wish to be done is entirely too hard-boiled. The editorial writers and the women’s clubs would be up in arms.”
    There was no denying the bronze man’s words. Doc knew prisons actually breed crime. But this institution cured it!
    “We will head for the Missouri woods in the dirigible,” he announced. “Let’s roll, brothers.”
    THERE was a weather front forming over the