"That is all," Doc said.

Monk and Ham moved toward the door.

Chet Farmer said, "Boy, this should be good!" and started to go with them.Doc stopped him. "You stay here, Farmer."

"But-"

"Sit down."

Chet Farmer wavered, finally sank in a chair. Obviously disgusted, he watched Monk and Ham depart.

"I thought I was in this thing," he muttered.

"Only as long as you follow orders," Doc said quietly.

The young man shrugged. "You're the boss. But where in the h.e.l.l did you find a third pink person?"

Doc said, "That will all be perfectly clear in time."

"But I didn't dream there was a third one."

"Neither," agreed Doc Savage dryly, "did a lot of people."

Chapter V. THE SLIP-UP.

THE first editions of the evening newspapers-the street sale editions which came out at ten o'clock in the morning-had a front-page story, with photographs, that astounded Chet Farmer. The papers came up through a private mail tube with the ink still damp. Chet read one, let out a yell.

"Hey!" he howled. "Look at this! They got him!"

He meant Monk and Ham and a pink man. It was a picture of action, showing Monk and Ham grappling with the pink man. The photograph had been taken by flashgun. Caption underneath read: Graphic scene as noted lawyer and chemist grapple with mysterious pink man they found hiding in a Wall Street office.

Accompanying this was a news story to the effect that Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, noted chemist and attorney respectively, had become the center of a mystery during the night when they had seized a pink man, ident.i.ty unknown, whom they had found lurking in an office in the Wall Street sector. Police, arriving at the scene after the seizure had been perpetrated, had been mystified, but had put forward the theory that the seizure might be connected in some way with the fantastic case of the burning to death of a pink girl at the Hotel Troy earlier in the night.

The news story did not intimate what had become of Monk and Ham and their pink captive.

"Look at this!" Chet Farmer yelled wrathfully. "Do you approve of this?"

He meant a paragraph that read: News Photographer Ed Bost got the above action picture after he was tipped off by Chemist Monk Mayfair that an interesting news story would break at the spot. Because he got no more details, Photographer Bost is wondering just what he did photograph.

Chet Farmer said, "I thought you were against publicity."

Doc Savage, his metallic features expressionless, said, "Monk has the privilege of handling an a.s.signment to suit himself. That is the way we work. And Monk happens to like publicity.""Where have they taken their pink man?"

Doc shrugged. "They were to report here as soon as they completed their job."

"But we haven't heard a bleat out of them. And here it comes out in the newspaper!"

Doc said, "This will probably work out. Monk and Ham are efficient."

"Yes, but the way it's happening, I don't understand it. Take this pink man-how did you know where to locate him? Who is he? What's his name?"

"That will come out."

"When?"

"Either Monk or Ham," Doc Savage said quietly, "should show up here before long to report where the pink man is being held." The bronze man consulted his wrist watch. "Would you care for some breakfast?

There is a restaurant on the ground floor of this building."

Chet Farmer shook his head. "I'll stay here. I ain't hungry. And Monk or Ham may show up."

Doc Savage nodded agreeably, and went out.

MONK arrived at a quarter past eleven. There was a smirk on his homely face, and triumph in his walk.

He said, "I came to get my pet hog." He grimaced. "The only fly in the ointment is that I gotta bring Ham's pet chimp, too. We matched to see whether I would bring the chimp, and I lost."

Doc Savage-he had just returned from breakfast-asked, "How did it go?"

Monk grinned. "Hunky-dory."

"Everything is going all right?"

"Our part of it is."

Monk asked, "Is anybody watching this place?"

"At least three men," Doc Savage agreed. "They just showed up on the job. One of them seems to be selling umbrellas, another peddling papers, and a third is driving a laundry truck."

Monk's grin got wider. "I might as well leave then, huh?"

Doc nodded.

Monk turned and went out.

Chet Farmer was staring unbelievingly. He made flabbergasted gestures with his hands. "You . . . you . . .

what is this?"

Doc Savage had followed Monk to the door. He watched the homely chemist get into one of the regular elevators. Just before the cage started down, Monk turned to ask, "You need any extra time, Doc? Want me to wait a while before I leave the building?"

"About five minutes," Doc said.Chet Farmer grabbed Doc's arm in his excitement and demanded, "What are the five minutes for?"

"To give us time to prepare to follow these strangers when they trail Monk?"

"Oh!" The young man put out his jaw in a determined fashion. "If you think I'm not going along on this, you're mistaken."

Doc said, "You can come."

The bronze man hastily entered the laboratory and removed his coat. He donned a vest of unusual type, one that contained numerous pockets holding gadgets. He beckoned to Chet Farmer. They took Doc's private elevator, one that operated at great speed, and it sank them to the bas.e.m.e.nt so suddenly that Chet was forced to his knees as the cage halted. They got out.

They were in a large garage which contained an a.s.sortment of machines ranging from a roadster that obviously had a racing motor, coupes, sedans, and a variety of trucks.

"All of these belong to you?" Chet Farmer demanded.

"Some of them belong to Monk and Ham and the others." Doc selected a delivery truck emblazoned with the name of a fict.i.tious tailoring establishment. It was a light machine, far faster than it looked, one in which they could carry prisoners without attracting notice.

An electric-eye device opened the garage doors automatically, and closed them again when they were outside.

Chet Farmer was impressed. "This is some layout you've got."

Doc made no comment.

"It must have cost a lot of dough," the young man ventured.

Doc sent the car in to the curb and parked, wheels angled out for a quick getaway. Half a block ahead was the laundry truck which he suspected, and he could see both the man selling newspapers and the one vending umbrellas. He waited for Monk to appear.

Chet said, "How do you get the dough to support a place like this?"

Doc seemed not to hear. Seeming not to hear was a convenient habit which he had. The source of his money was a secret known to no one but himself and his five aids-deep in the mountain jungles of a Central American republic was a lost valley populated by descendants of ancient Maya, and these people, in return for a favor Doc Savage and his men had once done them in the course of a hazardous adventure, kept the bronze man supplied with gold from a great lode in the valley.

Monk came out of the skysc.r.a.per, the top floor of which housed Doc's headquarters. He entered a taxicab casually.

The laundry truck pulled out. The paper vender and the seller of umbrellas climbed in. The truck followed Monk's cab.

Doc trailed along in his own machine.

The bronze man actually kept on the trail, however, for only a dozen blocks, after which he turned off and took an express highway that led directly out of the city. "Monk will lead them to the hide-out," he said."But do you know where that is?"

Doc said, "It was part of the typewritten instructions."

"You mean the instructions you gave Monk and Ham before they started out to hunt the pink man?"

"Yes."

"Then you must have antic.i.p.ated that these men would try to trail Monk or Ham to the pink man!" Chet Farmer exclaimed.

"It was an eventuality we hoped for."

"Then that's why Monk called in the newspapermen?"

"Yes."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned!" Chet Farmer said. "The way you fellows work beats me. Don't your schemes ever slip?"

"More frequently than we care for," Doc admitted.

"From what I've heard about you, they say you don't slip very often." The young man leaned back and grinned. "You know, I think this working with you, and seeing the way you do things, is an experience I'm going to remember for a long time."

Doc Savage made no comment. He drove silently, keeping to the fast lanes. And after a time, he turned off into hill country, following a little-used road that was full of narrow spots and sharp turns, in spots a tunnel through arched leaf.a.ge, where vines hung down and raked the car top.

Wheeling the machine around behind a small cabin which suddenly appeared, Doc got out.

Instantly, a man appeared. The man was almost as large as Doc Savage, and he had a face with a long going-to-a-funeral expression, and a pair of fists, neither of which could have been accommodated by a quart pail.

"Holy cow!" the newcomer exclaimed. "You here already?"

Doc said, "This is Renny Renwick, one of our a.s.sociates. Renny, this is Chet Farmer. Did Monk and Ham give you the story?"

Big-fisted Renny nodded. "About the girl who was pink, who was the subject of a fake burning last night, while she was trying to get to you. Yes, they gave us that yarn." The engineer squinted at his huge fists.

"What's the real lowdown, Doc?"

"What do you mean-real low-down?"

"A story about a pink girl, and a pink man, is too big to swallow," Renny explained. "What's the real story? What actually happened?"

Doc Savage said. "The girl was pink. So was the man."

Renny grinned rather foolishly.

Doc said, "We have some fish following the bait we threw out. They are trailing Monk, who is leadingthem here. They will be here before very long."

Renny said, "All right. We have a trap set."

THE trap functioned wonderfully. First, Monk came along in the taxicab, moving fast. A few minutes later, the laundry truck arrived, moving more cautiously. One man was standing on the running board, and the bulk of the topcoat which he was wearing indicated it covered a bulletproof vest. He had one hand in a pocket of the topcoat.

In Doc's ear, Chet Farmer whispered, "That's one of the men who staged the burning of that girl last night. He's wearing the same pair of pants he wore then."

The laundry truck hit a wire. It was a green wire, green to look like the gra.s.s, and the driver did not see it. The wire was alloy steel, the stuff airplane controls are made from. Both front tires of the truck blew out. The man standing on the running board turned half a somersault and landed on his back. The driver came against the steering wheel and broke it with his stomach, then hung there with his mouth making distorted shapes.

In the back of the truck, where at least three more men rode, judging from the sounds, there was strangled profanity.

Renny with a machine pistol-a weapon resembling an oversize automatic which could discharge lead as a hose shoots out water-fired a tentative burst at the side of the laundry truck. The bullets, not extremely powerful, flattened and fell off. The truck was steel.

"Oh, oh!" Renny said. "They ain't as helpless as they seem."

The driver got air back in his lungs. Two spokes were left in the wheel, and he used those and the gear-shift lever, the accelerator, and sent the laundry truck racing backward. It did not go far. Monk had pulled up another wire and tightened it around a tree. The truck hit that, and there was more cat-and-dog-fight profanity from the inside of the body.