"065 (B056) - The Giggling Ghosts (1938-07) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

BY now there were almost fifty giggling victims in the hospitals. Each one of these had come from one small section of Jersey. Only this area was affected. Police had roped off streets leading to the district, and were keeping back the spectators. Some of the curious were idiots enough to want to venture into the affected zone and take chances with the gas, solely to see what was going on, or look for giggling ghosts, if there really were any.
Evacuation was commencing. Just as river bottoms menaced by flood waters are cleared of inhabitants, so was the gas area to be cleared. Huge moving vans, piloted by policemen wearing gas masks, moved in and out, carrying household goods.
The evacuation was a pitiful spectacle. The section was one of small homes. The homes were unpretentious, often shabby, but nevertheless homes in the real sense, because the homes were owned by those who lived in them.
These people were stubborn. They did not understand. They could not see the gas, not actually see it, and many of them were inclined to be suspicious of the attempt to get them out of their homes.
The fact that the gas did not completely blanket the district made the exodus more difficult to arrange. The gas appeared only in spots; whole blocks were not affected.
A company of national guardsmen were sent to the scene to assist.
Meanwhile, geologists and scientists went around, wearing gas masks, trying to figure out some way of blocking off the gas. Many possibilities were suggested; one possibility was that deep wells might be drilled, the gas drawn off through these, and piped out to sea.
Army engineers came to investigate the chances of compressing the gas and storing it in containers, to use in the next war.
THAT night, in the vicinity of all this confusion, a sinister meeting was held.
It was held in a very large, very old house. This house stood alone in the center of a vast lot that was jungled with shrubbery. The house was made of concrete blocks, and it had four entrances, one on each side.
Batavia was first to arrive at the house, and he bustled around, unlocking all the doors, making ready for the meeting. To-night Batavia wore a different assortment of gray clothes, and he chewed a cork-tipped cigar.
He did not seem happy.
Men who arrived for the conference came furtively. They entered the house by different doors, coat collars turned up, hats yanked down, handkerchiefs held to their faces. Two or three, apparently not caring, made no effort to conceal their visages; one of the latter was the man who had fired the blast under the bridge as Doc Savage's car was crossing.
The interior of the house was kept dark. Each man had to give a password. Beyond that, little talking was done, and this was confined to grunts.
Several times, however, there were outbursts of giggling.
When more than a dozen men were present, Batavia called order by clearing his throat loudly. Then he turned a flashlight on his own face and let all the men see him.
"I am Batavia," he explained. "Some of you already know me."
His audience was silent, except for one man, who couldn't help giggling.
"I am the man who hired all of you," Batavia said. "Your orders came through me."
He paused to let that sink in.
"There is another over me," he said. "I am not the real leader."
This got two or three surprise grunts from the assemblage. The men squirmed uneasily, for the spooky atmosphere in the old house had their nerves on edge.
Batavia said, "Progress has been satisfactory. The public is being fooled into believing gas from the earth is causing the giggling. No one now believes there were any giggling ghosts."
Batavia threw his cigar on the floor and put a fresh one in his mouth.
"It's a good thing for us," he said, "that we got that ghost story stopped."
He added, "Doc Savage was disposed of. That was good work, too."
Someone in the audience started giggling, and Batavia waited until the man could control himself.
"Some more trouble has developed," Batavia said. "One of Doc Savage's aids, a man named Johnny Littlejohn, is causing the trouble. This Littlejohn is going around claiming there wasn't any earthquake. We can't have that!"
Batavia now called out four numbers; evidently the men in the organization answered to numbers rather than names.
"I want you four men," Batavia said, "to go with me, to-night. We're going to get rid of this Johnny Littlejohn as fast as we got rid of Doc Savage!"
A man in the background muttered, "What about this guy named Birmingham Lawn?"
Batavia laughed harshly. "Don't worry about Lawn!"
"And that geologist, A. King Christophe?"
"Christophe is harmless," Batavia said. "Forget him."
Batavia extinguished the flashlight which had been glowing on his features.
Then he did something dramatic.
"Gentlemen," he announced, "I have a surprise."
Tense silence dropped over the room.
Batavia said, "I told you a moment ago that another man was the real leader of this. That man is here now. He wants you to see his face, wants you to know him, so that, when he gives you an order, you will know who he is."
Batavia pointed his flashlight at an open door.
The light struck full on the face of a man standing there.
At least one of the group knew the face by sight, because this individual emitted an exclamation.
"William Henry Hart!" he ejaculated. "The inventor!"
Batavia laughed.
"Yes," he said. "The boss is William Henry Hart."
GEOLOGIST WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN habitually drove an old goblin of a car that appeared as incapable of efficiency as its owner, but which was just as deceptive in appearance. Johnny had been known to go at top speed for an astonishing length of time without sleep or food, and his old car had like qualities, except that it never fasted; it drank prodigious amounts of gas.
It was midnight—an hour after the meeting in the old cement block house—when Johnny, driving his ancient chariot, drew up beside the waterfront curb.
A man came out of the darkness and got in the car.
The new arrival, besides being big, was distinctive for two features: he had a long going-to-a-funeral face, and his fists were nearly the size of quart pails. This man was Major John "Renny" Renwick, engineer, fist-smasher of door panels, and a Doc Savage aid.
"Holy cow!" Renny said, trying to find a soft place in the car cushions. "That Hart sure led us a chase."