THE PINK LADY.

A Doc Savage Adventure.

By Kenneth Robeson.

Chapter I. A PINK LADY, ACTUALLY.

IT was raining hard-the water seemed to be coming down out of a silver-fox-black sky in oyster-colored ropes an inch thick-and this explained why no one was on the streets who did not have to be there.

The traffic cop was standing in his black rain cape and gum boots on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Troy. But he had his head pulled down in his coat, and he was cussing his job. He did not notice the pink girl.

Inside the Hotel Troy lobby, a few guests were sitting around in a damp lethargy. Not until the girl said loudly, "Will someone get hold of Ten West Street for me-please," was anyone aware of her presence.

By this time, of course, the girl was inside the lobby of the Hotel Troy. They stared at her.

She was a girl, nicely long and nicely rounded, in a pale-blue frock, sheer hose, dark-blue pumps, and with a gray shawl held over her head and, except for her eyes-her eyes had a flashing, haunted look, someone said later-over and concealing her face. Not bad for shape. Not bad.

Her blue frock was perfectly dry. It was a shade of blue which would have shown water spots instantly.

The frock was not perfectly dry, of course. There were a few water spots, but only those which had gotten on the girl while she had crossed from cab to hotel, and she had made that crossing fast.

Her hose and shoes were wet. Sopping. Water did not exactly squish out of her shoes, but she did leave large moist footprints on the lobby carpet.All of these facts were noted to some extent.

But the really surprising fact was that the girl was pink.

THE fact that the girl was pink came out when she stumbled, tripping over a high seam in the rug that the management had been intending to fix, and the doorman-he had been flirting with the proprietress of the cigar counter while it rained-who had heard the racket and was running toward the door, grasped in an effort to steady the young woman. The doorman missed his clutch to some extent and got hold of the gray shawl which the girl was holding over her face, and pulled it away. The girl was pink.

She was very pink.

It was an unusual shade of pink. Not a fleshy pink. Not a salmon shade. Not any skin shade of pink. Not the pink of a spanked baby. This was an utterly glaring, unreal, impossible shade of pink. A clown pink.

She said, "Get hold of Ten West Street!"

Her voice was charged with an utterly desperate note.

The doorman and everyone else had their mouths open, and there was small indication that astonishment was going to subside enough for the mouths to be closed.

The girl's voice got wilder.

"Ten West Street!" she cried. "Get hold of it for me!"

Her voice was a good one, and if there had not been creeping devils of fear in it, it would have been modulated and pleasantly toned. But now the voice was like gla.s.s breaking, only more so.

The doorman still held his mouth open, so she kicked him on the shin.

"Ouch!" he gasped, and stood on one leg. "Whatcha think you're doin'?"

"Ten West Street!" the girl said for the third time. "Get it on the telephone for me! Quick!"

It probably never entered the doorman's head to comply, for he was too completely dumfounded by the unusual pink coloration of the girl-he could see that her face, even to her eyes, and both her hands, had the color. He wondered about her teeth. Women's teeth are always white. Well, more or less. Were hers white?

Her teeth were pink, too.

The doorman saw this when the girl opened her mouth to scream. The scream, when she let it out, was something to make the chairs come off the floor. It upset everybody in the Hotel Troy Lobby.

The men who came in with gas masks, pistols and bulletproof vests did no further good to anybody's peace of mind, either. The bulletproof vests gave them odd shapes, and the gas masks gave them horrendous faces. They stalked in out of the rain.

"What's this?" a man asked foolishly. "What's this?"

He was a middle-aged man with a pot-shaped stomach. He stood there stupidly. His emotions showed plainly on his face. He didn't know what this was-but it was too wildly crackpot to be happening.Suddenly he realized it was happening. He wanted to get out of there. Quick. Right now.

The man turned and started to run and one of the guns went off and the man fell on his round stomach.

This put an entirely different complexion on the whole thing. A gun and a noise and a bullet made a combination everyone could understand. There was a general uplifting of hands.

At this point, and before anything else could happen, there was a minor interruption.

A man entered the hotel lobby. He came galloping in, fleeing the rain that poured down outdoors. In his haste, he failed to notice that there was something unusual in progress in the lobby.

He was a l.u.s.ty young man with a pug nose and an otherwise not unhandsome face, a ruddy glow of health, muscles that carried him like a bouncing spring, clothes that were more for a golf course than for a city street at night during a drowning rainstorm.

He b.u.mped into one of the masked, bulletproof-vested men.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, peering at the gas-masked face. "You advertising something?"

The man with the mask hit him over the head with a gun and he fell. After he was on the floor, he did not change color nor seem badly hurt, but he did not move. His coat had fallen open and the force of his landing on the floor had caused a small black bank book to drop into view. The bankbook cover had a little rectangular opening through which his name could be read.

The name: Chet Farmer.

THE pink girl was, after her one scream, silent. She had crammed fingertips of both hands into her mouth. Her head was turning from side to side, searching frantically. There were three routes of flight-front door, elevators, a door leading to a dining room-but the men with the masks and bulletproof vests had blocked all of them.

The gas-masked, man who had struck down Chet Farmer, approached the hotel-desk clerk.

"Has she said anything?" he asked.

The clerk gave back pop-eyed, tongue-tied silence.

"I mean her." The man pointed at the pink girl. "Has she said anything?"

A few words escaped the clerk.

"What makes her pink?" he asked.

Probably that was not what he had intended to say.

"Suppose you make up your mind not to worry about that, friend," the masked man said. Then he reached forward suddenly and smacked the clerk's nose with the gun. "I asked you a question.

Remember?"

A red string ran out of the clerk's nostrils and down his white-shirt front.

He muttered painfully. "She wanted us to get Ten West Street.""Get it? What the h.e.l.l do you mean?"

"On the telephone, I guess."

"Ten West Street," said the man with the mask. "I wonder what the h.e.l.l that is."

Another of the gas-masked men came over and put the nozzle of his mask-the construction of their masks was such that they could carry on conversations without removing the face coverings-close to the other's ear and said something in a tone so low that no one but the pair of them knew what was said.

"Oh, that's what Ten West Street is!" said the first man. He looked-or his actions and tone gave the impression-startled and scared. "It's a good thing we caught her!" he added.

He made some gestures. Evidently they had a prearranged plan of action. Because one man dipped into his pockets and brought out two bottles.

"These are full of poison gas," he said. He shook the bottles. "I break one of these," he added, "and it won't be funny. It's mustard gas."

He added that everybody had better stand still if they knew what was best.

A second man strode over to the pink girl and said, "Turn your back to me, Lada Harland."

It was obvious from the way he spoke the name "Lada Harland" that he wanted it overheard. His enunciation of the name was clear and emphatic, as emphatic as if he had spelled it. L-a-d-a H-a-r-l-a-n-d.

When she turned her back, he instantly seized her and bore her to the floor. Simultaneously, he dragged a handkerchief out of his coat pocket.

This handkerchief was sealed in a cellophane wrapper, and he tore off the covering. The handkerchief was damp. It gave off a pungent odor.

He clapped the handkerchief over the pink girl's nostrils and held it there. She became unconscious.

A THIRD man turned around and left the hotel. A moment after he departed into the sloshing rain, there was a yell outdoors. A shot. Another shot. A blow. A body falling. It was like listening to a radio play.

Another of the gas-masked men jumped out into the pouring night, his gun ready.

His voice came to those in the lobby: "What happened?"

"The cop."

"Where'd he come from?"

"That corner up yonder, I guess. He must've heard our shot."

"Did you shoot him?"

"Naw. He shot me. Then I bopped him over the head. These are sure first-cla.s.s bulletproof vests we've got." "Leave the cop lay where he is. And let's get this thing over with before more law shows up."

Like a radio drama, their voices came in on the background of the rain.

The two men re-entered. One of them carried a pair of large packages wrapped in coa.r.s.e brown paper.

He held the packages in his arms and looked around, puzzled, scrutinizing the hotel lobby.

"In here?" he asked.

"Sure," said his companion, who seemed to be in charge of their expedition.

The pink girl, unconscious from the stuff she had been forced to breathe off the damp handkerchief, was dragged to a corner of the lobby, near the dining-room door. She was placed on the floor.

One of the packages was placed on the girl's body, and the other on the floor. One of the men struck a match. It now developed that a fuse protruded from the smaller package on the floor. The match was applied to this; the fuse fizzed, threw out sparks and gave off smoke."

"Don't n.o.body run!" a man yelled. "This ain't no bomb."

The fuse burned into the package, and there was a hissing that was so loud that it was almost a whistle, and a blinding light from the package. At first, the light was no larger than an arc from an electric welding torch, and utterly blinding; then it was larger, and, if possible, more blinding.

Not only could no one in the room see anything, but it developed that the burning stuff in the package was mixed with tear gas, or some similar vapor, which was further blinding.

In the blinding white, eye-stinging glare, a man's voice yelled, "Did the second package catch fire?"

"Yeah; it's goin'," someone told him.

"Let's get out of here, then."

Footsteps ran away.

Chapter II. THE DETERMINED MR. FARMER.

SOME confusion surrounded the exact sequence of what now happened. Some witnesses-all those who were in the Hotel Troy lobby were witnesses by ear, not by sight, because the incredible white light burning in the lobby corner still blinded them-claimed that the gas-masked raiders left in a pa.s.senger car. A different version said a taxicab. Another a truck.

One thing was certain. Chet Farmer, the young man who had been knocked senseless, was apparently revived by the heat. He got up off the floor and staggered to a fire-alarm box, then to a telephone to call the police.

The street outside got full of fire trucks, firemen, police and curious people who didn't mind the rain.

Later, there were newspaper reporters.