The little gas grenade which Doc Savage had put on the skylight before he made his presence known finally got around to exploding.

Chapter IV. MAJOR TROUBLE.

THE blast was loud. The grenade was one of a new type, its function being to scatter an anaesthetic gas suddenly over a considerable area. Such abrupt dispersion required considerable explosive force.

Wood and splinters and a cloud of gla.s.s sprayed the boat cabin. Doc had maneuvered both himself and the girl into a spot where they would not be cut, prior to the blast.

Hannah neither screamed, fainted nor ran. She gave quite a jump of surprise, though. No one could have helped doing that.

Doc went forward while the gla.s.s was still flying and the cabin was still red with the grenade flash.

He got hold of Hannah's gun, then had a little trouble possessing it. The young woman was strong.

She was more than strong, too. First, as they struggled for the gun, she pushed the little gadget which let the cylinder flop out. It hinged out. The cartridges rolled across the floor, jarred out of the gun by the struggle.

Hannah stopped trying to get the gun then. She locked both hands in Doc's hair and gave his head a pull and a twist. She knew muscles and nerve co-ordination. He felt as if he had been beheaded for amoment.

He reached to free her hands from his hair. She got one of his fingers, and did things to it. Never in his life had he felt quite as much pain from one spot as she made come from the finger. He got her loose from the finger.

He finally got her against a wall and helpless, but he was not especially proud of himself.

"You show just a little more efficiency," he said grimly, "and I'll have to treat you like a man, and plant one on your jaw."

"Try it!" she invited irately. "Just try it!"

They stared at each other, each trying to browbeat the other.

Then her eyes closed slowly, her knees buckled, arms loosened, and she would have fallen. Doc held her up. To all appearances, she had gone suddenly to sleep.

It was the gas, the anaesthetic gas which had been in the grenade. The skylight gla.s.s had kept the stuff from scattering over the cabin as it normally would have, and it had filled the place a little tardily. Not very tardily, at that. Not more than thirty seconds after the blast. It had seemed a longer fight than thirty seconds.

Doc was holding his breath. Except for that once, when he had spoken to her, he had been holding his breath. The gas had to be inhaled to be effective, so that if you held your breath you would escape it.

In not much more than a minute, the stuff would mix with the air and neutralize itself. After that, it was safe, to breathe.

Doc lowered her to the cabin floor and began a search of the boat interior.

HE used a flashlight and searched rapidly. There was plenty of evidence that the boat had been here for some time, probably tied up here for the winter. The motor, not a bad motor, was coated with grease, and there was no starting battery. Standing rigging was greased, and running rigging had been made up in coils and hung in the fo'c's'le. The shipmate stove was greased.

To the main hatch, where he had not noticed it before, there was a tacked notice: THIS BOAT FOR SALE.

ABNEY & GALE, YACHT BROKERS.

The boat, then, might belong to anyone. Hannah probably had just taken it over for the night's work.

This type of anaesthetic gas produced an effect that did not last much longer than fifteen minutes. Doc made himself comfortable, after going through Hannah's purse, and finding nothing that told him anything.

The young woman revived eventually. She seemed surprised that Doc was alone.

"n.o.body with you?" she said. "Who threw that bomb?"

"It was a time gas grenade," Doc explained. "I simply set the time mechanism for five minutes, put it on the skylight, then came inside."She pondered that. "Gas," she said. "I've been out for a while. I suppose that was the gas?"

"Right." Doc indicated the boat with a general wave of a hand. "You just borrow this?"

She hesitated, then nodded. "That's right."

"Why did you happen to pick a boat?"

"Why, it was a natural thought because-" She stopped, bit her lip. "I better not tell you too much," she said.

Doc asked, "Do you mind going with me to call on Major Lowell?"

"I expected that," she said.

He thought her face got a little white. He asked her if she was afraid to go and see Major Lowell, and she did not answer. She made it plain that she was not going to answer any more of his questions.

He took her by the arm. She did not fight him.

He led her out on deck, closing the door behind him, and pulled on the springlines until the boat was close to the dock. He jumped ash.o.r.e keeping hold of the girl's arm.

Two shadows arose from the blacker shadows of boxes on the dock. Both shadows were very tall, and one was quite wide, the other one unbelievably thin.

"Going somewhere?" asked the bigger shadow in a rumbling voice.

"Take is easy, Renny," Doc said.

The thinner shadow said, "I'll be superamalgamated."

The two were Renny Renwick and Johnny Littlejohn, the other two aids who had been instructed to meet Doc in Washington.

"How did you happen to come down here?" Doc asked.

Renny said, "We got hold of Monk and Ham. They told us you had come down here alone to meet Major Lowell. So we barged down just to keep an eye on things."

Doc nodded. "How are Monk and Ham coming in the parrot matter?"

"They've got quite a stir-up," Renny said. "We heard the radio broadcast coming down in the plane."

"You flew one of our planes?"

"Yes." Renny cleared his throat. "What's this all about, anyway? Who's the girl?"

"Hannah," Doc said, "these are two of my a.s.sociates, Renny Renwick and Johnny Littlejohn."

Hannah said nothing.

"She's mad at me," Doc explained. "She could probably explain a great deal if she would, but she has the idea we are plotting against her."

Renny gave the girl only a critical inspection. He was not very susceptible to feminine charms."Renny," Doc said, "this girl pretended to be T. Hannah, who is a private detective. She says her name is Hannah, and that T. Hannah is her half-sister. I want you to check on that. And find out what you can about this girl."

"Get the low-down on her? Right," Renny said.

He wasted no more words, left, striding through the darkness. His fists, very big, looked as if he had his hands shoved in gallon pails.

DOC SAVAGE had rented a car for the trip down to the boat earlier in the evening. It was a small sedan. Doc drove, the girl beside him, and Johnny rode in the back.

Johnny said not a word during the ride. When he spoke, he liked to use big words, enormous words of which almost no one knew the meaning. The words were his bad habit. He used them the way some men become addicted to tobacco or liquor. He never used his big words on Doc, however, because for some reason or other it made him feel like a kid showing off, although he never had the sensation with anyone else. So now he was silent.

Doc parked near one of the war department buildings. Althought it was near midnight, the place seemed in full activity.

"Watch her," Doc said. "I'm going to find out where we can locate Major Lowell."

The bronze man entered the lighted building.

Johnny settled back and watched the girl. He watched her for some time, and then he said, "Stultiloquence is nugasitatious, conceivably."

Hannah stared at him.

"Could you do that again?" she asked.

Johnny did it again, but with smaller words. "Absurdity is childish, conceivably."

"I still don't get you."

"The parrot and its nest."

"Oh," Hannah said.

"The thing is silly," Johnny said.

Hannah compressed her lips. "If you think it's silly, you're crazy."

"Then Doc is right. It's important?"

"You'll find out," Hannah said.

And she would say no more.

Doc Savage came out of the war department building in about half an hour. He got behind the wheel and headed the car toward the Georgetown section.

"Major Lowell seems to be home," he explained."You talk to him?" Johnny asked.

"No. Persuaded one of the clerks to call him and ask him a casual business question, to make sure he was there."

Hannah seemed puzzled. She watched the bronze man, as if suspecting that the conversation was intended to mislead her.

The car had a radio. Doc switched it on, and it played softly for a while. Then the announcer came on and said, "This is a paid announcement. Will anyone knowing the whereabouts of the parrot and its nest, and the full story concerning the same, make contact with Room 7, the Riverside Building.

Call in person. Do not telephone."

Hannah stared at Doc Savage again, more puzzled than before.

"Look," she said unexpectedly. "You want a piece of advice?"

"Of what nature?"

"If you're innocent as you claim you are," she told Doc, "better drop it. Drop the whole thing."

"Why?"

"The kind of woods you're getting into," she said, "is no place to be walking around blind."

"Care to elaborate on that?"

She shook her head. "It's your funeral. And don't think there won't be one."

MAJOR LOWELL seemed to live in a boxlike house that stood in a great deal of shrubbery.

Georgetown, now a part of Washington, was a town long before the city of Washington was even a dream. In the early days, it offered a much more sedate and satisfactory homesite than Washington, so that it became the section of aristocracy, of First Families. This house was one of the old, fine ones.

"A real precisianimistic abode," Johnny remarked.

Hannah said, "Such words!" disgustedly.

Doc Savage parked the car, and got out. He reached in for Hannah. She seemed surprised.

"You know," she said, "you act as if you really had no idea what this is all about."

Doc made no comment. They followed a curving walk of old brick, a walk bordered by a neatly trimmed hedge of box and many roses.

Doc Savage stopped suddenly and listened. He tested the air with his nostrils. Then, swiftly, he pushed the other two off the path and down into the black night shadow.

"What is it?" Johnny breathed.

"Odor of chloroform," Doc said. "Do you get it?"