THE MONKEY SUIT.

A Doc Savage Adventure.

by Kenneth Robeson.

Chapter I.

THIS one was an old-school-pal-wants-a-favor case.

"Henry, you're my G.o.dsend!" he kept howling throw the telephone. "I'll be right over! You're a G.o.dsend, my reliable old pal! I'll be right there!"

Probably he was Dido Alstrong. He sounded the way Dido Alstrong would sound after these few years, if Dido was scared.

The Alstrongs had been a prosperous, grasping sort a family, well-established for a couple of generations in the middle-sized Missouri town of Kirksville where I grew up. Dido was doubtless born short, chubby, eager, pushy, with a round face and a full-lipped mouth. I'm not too positive how he looked at birth, because he was a year older than I-and he kept these features. By the time he attained eighteen, Dido had indicated he was of Alstrong pattern-he definitely preferred grabbing to earning, bluff to earnest effort.

At eighteen, when they graduated him from high school to get rid of him, old man Alstrong was getting worried about the kid. I was already in my fourth year at Missouri University, and old Alstrong told me-he didn't ask-that he was depending on me to be Dido's shining light. Dido took to that. He signed up for the courses I was taking when he could, mooched off my examination papers, cheated when he dared, and surprisingly enough, got by. I was specializing in electronics and chemistry, so he did that too.

He got me in bad odor a few times with his grabbing at my brains, and when I got out of M. U. and went to Cal Tech to specialize, I was glad to be rid of him. I hadn't seen Dido since.

But this had been Dido Alstrong on the phone. Mouthy, with a high-pitched squeal of a voice, a way of using the squeal as if he were having trouble with another pig.I wondered what he thought I had that he wanted. He must have wanted it badly, the way he had sounded.

The lab clock said ten-forty. Dido Alstrong had stated he was calling from a drug store on Fifth Avenue.

He had also said-five times, at least-that he'd be right up. New York City transportation being good, and Dido a quick one on the grab, he would doubtless be here soon.

I hoped so. I had a luncheon appointment with an eminent chemist, a Mr. Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and it was important to me. This Mayfair had developed a solvent for light-transmitting plastics that was out of this world. I needed the use-rights on that formula.

The Mayfair fellow, as everyone knew, was affiliated with Doc Savage, whom I had never met but of whom I had certainly heard. Mayfair, an excellent chemist, preferred adventuring with Savage to working at his profession, so he was constantly in financial straits. Usually broke. I hoped to lease use-rights on the solvent formula from him for the modest sum I could afford.

The thing that bothered me about this Mayfair person was an att.i.tude he had manifested toward me. He had inferred, if that is the word, that I was a stuffed shirt, and that I fancied myself as a boy-wonder.

Mr. Mayfair seemed rather an oaf.

But I would try being more polite to him than I intended being to Dido Alstrong.

HE hadn't changed. He was an Alstrong, with that acquisitive mouth and the pushing ways.

"H'ar yuh, Henry, you mental wizard!" he came in squealing. "H'ar yuh, old school pal!"

"Good morning, Alstrong," I said stiffly.

"Henry, you haven't changed a bit!"

"Nor have you, Mr. Alstrong," I replied. He hadn't either, except to become a bit more repulsive.

"Where 'ja get that Mr. Alstrong stuff?" he howled. "Henry, old pal!"

My reserved smile was intended to be a warning. I didn't intend to start calling him Dido, and the old pal stuff was quite repellant.

Dido didn't press for intimacy. He glanced about my laboratory, then burst forth in boisterous admiration.

"Some diggings, Henry!" he shouted. "By G.o.d, this is about as snitzy a layout of laboratory equipment as I've run across. Who you working for here?"

The inference was plain. He considered me to be so mouse-like that I would be forever working for the other fellow.

"I'm self-employed." My tone was stiff. "This happens to be my own establishment."

"The h.e.l.l you say!" Dido roared. "Say, now, that's something! Looks as if you're doing all right for yourself, boy, old pal."

"I'm fumbling along."He was shaking his head wonderingly. "Doing research for yourself, eh? Now that sure surprises me."

His greedy little eyes appraised me thoughtfully. "Maybe you have changed, at that."

"In what way?"

He roared at this. "Man, I figured you would always be the unsung genius, without enough push to capitalize on your own brains. Maybe I was wrong."

He wasn't wrong, and I did a burn. I recognize my shortcomings, and they are painful to me.

"Genius," I said rigidly, "comes from the Latin gignere, and means a demon, a peculiar character, an elemental spirit of fire or water, a guide, a G.o.dling dwelling in a place, as well as uncommon native intellectual power."

Dido let out a whoop. "By golly! By golly, you still say things like that, don't you? You haven't changed so much!"

THE fellow was upsetting me. He always did. But the irritation wasn't extensive enough to dull my wits, and I could see that he was quite frightened about something. I was remembering back to our university days-Dido always had a whooping, boisterous, overbearing manner, but it was particularly accented when he was in a sc.r.a.pe. I determined not to let him roil me excessively.

I consulted the clock elaborately and remarked, "It's been interesting meeting you, Mr. Alstrong. But unfortunately you have caught me at a rather busy time."

He ignored this hint for him to go. He would. "You're a sight for these sore old eyes, Henry! By G.o.d, I've often thought of you. Do you remember the time at the university that I was out with that blonde, and I told her I was you, and she was just tight enough not to know the difference, and the next day-"

"Really!" I said sharply. "I'm afraid I haven't the time to listen to you-er-reminisce. Some other occasion, perhaps."

"You mean you got an appointment?" he demanded.

"Well-yes."

"When? What time?"

"Noon," I was forced to confess. "But I must prepare my arguments thoroughly so that-"

"h.e.l.l, you got over an hour!" Dido bellowed. "This won't take that long."

"Well, I-"

"That's great!" he shouted-ignoring my reluctance, and giving the impression I had consented when nothing of the sort had happened. "I knew you would," he added.

"Would what?" I asked bitterly.

"Help me out."

"I-ah-believe you did mention a favor," I ventured. And then I added pointedly, "A trifling favor."Dido nodded, his round little chin disappearing into his roundish neck as he did so. "That's it, Henry," he said. "Just a trifling favor. No trouble at all. But it means a lot to me."

His tone, coupled with what I knew of his ways, warned me that it wasn't anything trivial at all.

"If it's money-" I began coldly.

He let go another whoop at that. And he yelled, "Pal you haven't changed. I'll bet you are as big a skinflint with a dollar as you ever were!"

"I'm no skinflint!" I snapped. "You always did confuse sensible economy with penuriousness."

"Henry," he said, "who are you kidding? Getting a nickel out of you was always just about as easy as taking the skin off a flint rock. What does skinflint mean?"

Somewhat relieved, but quite disgusted with him, I asked, "It isn't money you want?"

"Money?" He pushed out his lips like a baby spitting out its milk. "Henry, I've got a big deal on. In a few days, I'll be in a position to loan you money. You and J. P. Morgan. Right now, I've got all the dough I need, too."

"Well!" I said. This was the first time I'd ever heard Dido Alstrong intimate that he didn't need money. I was indeed relieved.

"Get your hat!" Dido said, suddenly taking advantage of the momentary magnanimity I felt upon discovering this was not a case of the bite. "We'll have this over with in a jiffy."

"Oh, now! I haven't time-"

"Look, Henry, all we do is walk downstairs and take a cab a couple of blocks. That's all. Your arm isn't going to drop off or anything, and it won't cost you. I'll even pay the cab fare."

"In that case," I advised him unwillingly, "I can spare not more than ten minutes."

Dido Alstrong seemed quite satisfied. It had always been his way, once he had achieved a point, to be a little nasty about what had led up to it, and he was so now. He said, "Henry, don't you ever want to have a friend?"

"I have friends," I said sharply.

He shot a glance at me. "Name one!"

He had the worst way of discomfiting a person. I had friends, several very nice ones, scientific people of high caliber. But for the life of me, at the moment I couldn't think of the name of one.

"Don't be ridiculous," I parried coolly. "What are you getting at?"

He shrugged. "Skip it." What he had been getting at, of course, was to indicate that he was aware of my dislike, and had some preposterous notion of intimating that this was my shortcoming, not his.

He clapped his hat, a garish tweed-felt affair with a yellow feather c.o.c.ked in the band, on his head. I got my own dark Homburg, and advised Miss Lucy Jenkins, my lab a.s.sistant, that I was stepping out for a bit.

Dido Alstrong seemed amused by Miss Lucy Jenkins-as amused as his undercurrent of fright wouldpermit. While Lucy may be forty-five, and not a beauty, she is certainly precise and efficient.

"That babe's as homely as a mud fence, Henry," Dido remarked when we were in the hall. "Doesn't having scenery like that around depress you?"

"Certainly not!"

He punched the elevator call-b.u.t.ton, looked at me speculatively, and said, "I guess not. I guess you wouldn't even know when you were depressed."

"What are you doing with yourself these days, Dido?" I inquired. "You didn't follow up chemistry, of course."

"I sure did," he replied. "I'm laboratory chief for Farrar Products."

"I don't believe I have heard of the firm," I said.

"You should get around more, Henry. Farrar Products is on the way up. We're in the plastic packaging field, and doing well."

My slightly superior smile suddenly folded up-I had remembered that I had heard of Farrar Products and the concern was, as Dido said, an up-and-comer. Really, nothing occurred to me to say as we got into the elevator. That this bombastic goof could have achieved the post of laboratory chief for such a concern was incredible.

We were jostled out of the elevator into the lobby by the other pa.s.sengers, or at least I was jostled, although Dido held his own.

It was raining outside. A slight, depressing sort of rain, it came down in soiled strings. We stood under the shelter of the awning of a shop, along with others, and Dido searched eagerly for a taxi.

Something rather odd happened.

A portly gentleman, standing a bit behind Dido and myself, and just out of line with Dido, gave out a sound. It was a sound like a boot being pulled out of mud. There was also another sound, rather as if one of the strings on a musical instrument had broken. And the stout man flung himself backward, or at least toppled back, against the shop window. The window broke. There was a considerable jangling of falling gla.s.s. All of this occurred rapidly, so that it was almost one thing, without exactly being so.

The effect on Dido Alstrong was remarkable. He turned the color of a much-used dish-rag.

Chapter II.

"OH, G.o.d!" Dido Alstrong croaked. He gripped my arm. "Back inside!"

"Back-" I said uncertainly. "But we were going somewhere. You wanted a cab. Yonder seems to be an empty taxi-"

Dido seized me in the most unceremonious manner. He bustled me back into the office building. I abhor rough physical contacts, and I resisted. But there was more strength in Dido Alstrong's soft-looking porcine body than one would think. That, and also frenzy.

The other people standing there under the awning were staring in confused fashion at the portly man, whonow lay on the sidewalk. The portly man was squirming about, and his mouth was making shapes, but no sounds.

"What-" I tried to a.s.semble composure. "What happened to that chap?"

There were beads of sweat on Dido Alstrong's aggressive face. "That guy . . . ?" He hesitated. "He probably had a heart attack, or something," Dido said.

"Really? It seemed very sudden-"