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upon the facts. On the other hand—he might be telling the unvarnished truth. He did, occasionally.
    “You stick here!” Gull said abruptly.
    “I couldn’t move.”
    GULLIVER took the flashlight and the telegram, left the station, crossed the road and swung over a barbed wire fence. He had decided to investigate the route through the brush patch, the short cut to town which Spook Davis had been following when assaulted. The assailant might have left tracks.
    After he had reached the brush, Gull foresightedly refrained from showing the flashlight beam, on the long chance that the marauder might still be in the vicinity. He walked carefully, pausing to listen, holding the shotgun ready.
    At first, he thought what he heard was a pig in the brush. This grunting sounded like that, a series of short Unk! Unk! noises. Gull halted, and was just beginning to recall that pigs usually slept at night when the grunting turned into a voice that said thickly, “Oh, don’t—don’t— don’t!”
    Gull spiked the flashlight beam through the brush in the direction of the voice sounds, left the illumination on only a moment, then extinguished it, whipped to one side and dropped flat—just in case there might be shooting.
    It was very still, and the groaning continued.
    Gull ran forward and turned the flashlight on the groaning. He found himself looking at an old man, a huge old moose who must clear nearly seven feet tall when erect and who was as bald as an egg if one discounted the tufts of very black hair which grew out of his ears.
    The ancient’s wrists and ankles were tied securely with his own shirt.

Chapter IV
    THE VANISHING VICTORIAN
    THE MAN WHO stepped into view stood taller than any other in the room. He would have out-towered the Biblical giant, Samson, not to mention other fabulous personages noted for their imposing height and physical prowess.
    He was Doc Savage. The Twentieth Century had not, and probably would not, produce another like him.
    Six feet would catch his height at the eyes. And they were unique eyes. A metallic gold, filled with aureate flakes which caught the light and imparted the eerie sensation of gold dust swirling in suspension. His skin was sun-bronzed and wind-burned. A lifetime of adventuring had wrought that metallic alchemy. A helmet of hair lay close to his scalp, like super-fine coppery wire.
    The entire effect of the man was a little unreal, as if an alchemist had wrought a vital human being out of impervious metals.
    “It worked like a charm, Doc,” Monk said enthusiastically. “Ham here pretended to be an old geezer, and asked the crook to meet us at the new office.”
    Ham Brooks took up the tale.
    “I entered the office by the secret elevator so that the secretarial staff would not realize I was there. When I seized him, Monk came down to help carry our prisoner back to our headquarters.”
    “No one suspected the subterfuge?”
    “Everything transpired behind closed doors,” Ham assured him.
    Doc nodded. “It was a good test. But we will not use that subterfuge often, lest the nature of the eighty-fifth floor operation become publicly known.”
    “This idea of yours is a beaut, Doc,” Monk said, handing over the prisoner draped across his apish shoulder. The bronze man took the unconscious man in hand as if he weighed no more than a small child. “Scattering graduates of this place all over the country, where they can gather information and send it back to us for investigation, what I mean.”
    “It is my hope that it will increase the efficiency of our little organization,” Doc stated.
    The bronze giant was being characteristically modest when he called his organization little. True, there were only five men who worked closely with him. But this criminal-curing college employed guards and other staff, as did the anonymous office that went only by the plain name, Oddities.
    The latter was run by the former head of a private detective agency Doc had hired at the beginning