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

Adirondack Mountains when Doc Savage got the small airship turned around and pointed west.
    The front consisted largely of angry clouds and a stiff wind. This retarded their forward progress some.
    Doc Savage had the controls. The compact size of the airship required that it be piloted from a command chair, rather than a standing position, as would be the case on a full-sized commercial dirigible.
    Progress was rapid, given the atmospheric conditions. But the airship was no airborne goliath boasting multiple motors. Two were sufficient to push it along, and so the passage took some time. Dusk began falling.
    It was a boring succession of hours.
    Monk Mayfair passed the time by scrutinizing the ground passing below through a great luminous quartz lens that had been installed in the floor of the gondola. This was on the order of a giant magnifying glass. Combined with an infra-red projecto-receptor searchlight set in the lower hull, it caused the ground to stand out in sharp relief, darkness notwithstanding.
    In the aft portion of the gondola, Ham Brooks was perched on a stack of equipment cases, carefully honing the razor sharp edge of his sword cane. From the tip of the blade he had wiped off the sticky brown compound adhering to it. This was a drug, the presence of a slight quantity of which in an open wound would produce instant unconsciousness. Ham’s sword cane had merely to inflict a tiny scratch on a foe to drop him senseless.
    This explained the fate of the captive back in Doc’s headquarters library.
    A slight noise drew Ham’s eye. Howling rage, he bounded erect.
    “You bobtailed baboon!” he bellowed. “You beetle-browed misfit! You hairy mishap of evolution!”
    Ham usually addressed Monk in this vein when aroused. Yet Monk was nowhere in sight.
    Ham flourished his sword cane and glowered at the creature which had inflamed his rage. This was a pig.
    This pig was unique—a homelier specimen of the porker family was probably never created. The animal had a lean body, razor back, and legs as long as a dog’s. His ears were phenomenal. They looked big enough to serve as wings.
    Just now, the comical aspect of the pig was enhanced by the addition of the white whiskers which Ham had lately worn. The shoat was walking on his rear legs. Wedged between the toes of one forefoot was a small black cane.
    Someone had made the pig up as a caricature of Ham in his disguise.
    Ham had no trouble guessing who had done it—Monk. The pig, who was called Habeas Corpus, was Monk’s pet.
    Habeas Corpus eyed the perturbed Ham. What happened next would have been quite a shock to a superstitious person.
    The pig seemed to begin to speak—with a Harvard accent, such as Ham sometimes affected.
    “Jolly good detectives old Harvard turns out, eh, topper?” the pig apparently queried.
    Ham squawked, and made a wrathy rush for Habeas. The pig had obviously experienced these attacks before. He bounded away with startling agility, losing the white whiskers and the black stick in the process. He darted under a shelf containing ammunition boxes.
    Glaring indignantly, Ham looked around for Monk. He knew that Monk was a ventriloquist, and had put the words in the homely porker’s mouth.
    A squeaky peal of laughter came from behind the door to the washroom. Monk had been unable to contain his mirth any longer.
    Ham started purposefully for the source of the glee.
    Doc Savage, gigantic man of bronze, turned and said, “Renny should have reported by now.”
    The bronze man’s voice was quiet enough, but Ham came to a sharp halt. Doc was not in the habit of showing excitement. His simple statement portended trouble.
    Monk jutted his simian head out of the washroom, saw that Ham was no longer violent, and ambled out, impossibly long arms swinging.
    “Let me try and raise the big-fisted freak,” he volunteered.
    “You should talk!” Ham snapped. “About freaks, that is!”
    Renny was Colonel John Renwick, the civil engineer of Doc’s