But not Monk. His tough, rusty iron hide was so marked with gray scars that it looked as if a flock of chickens with gray-chalk feet had paraded on him. This was because Monk refused to let Doc treat him. Monk gloried in his tough looks.
"Our big job is about to start, huh?" said Monk, vast satisfaction in his mild voice.
Doc nodded. "The work to which we shall devote the rest of our lives."
At that statement, great satisfaction appeared upon the face of every man present They showed eagerness for what was to come.
Doc dangled a leg from the corner of the table. Unwittingly — for he knew nothing of the red-fingered killer lurking in the distant skyscraper that was under construction — Doc had placed his back out of line with the window. In fact, since the men had entered, he had not once been aligned with the window.
"We first got together back in the War," he told the five slowly. "We all liked the big scrap. It got into our blood. When we came back, the humdrum life of an ordinary man was not suited to our natures. So we sought something else."
Doc held their absolute attention, as if he had been hypnotized. Undeniably this golden-eyed man was the leader of the group, as well as leader of anything he undertook. His very being denoted a calm knowledge of all things, and an ability to handle himself under any conditions.
"Moved by mutual admiration for my father," Doc continued, "we decided to take up his work of good wherever he was forced to leave off. We at once began training ourselves for that purpose. It is the cause for which I had been reared from the cradle, but you fellows, because of a love of excitement and adventure, wish to join me."
Doc Savage paused. He looked over his companions. One by one, in the soft light of the well-furnished office, one of the few remaining evidences of the wealth that once belonged to his father.
"Tonight," he went on soberly, "we begin carrying out the ideals of my father — to go here and there, from one end of the world to the other, looking for excitement and adventure, striving to help those who need help, and punishing those who deserve it."
There was a somber silence after that immense pronunciation.
It was Monk, matter-of-fact person that he was, who shattered the quiet.
"What flubdubs me is who broke into that safe, and why?" he grumbled. "Doc, could it have any connection with your father's death?"
"It could, of course," Doc explained. "The contents of the safe had been rifled. I do not know whether my father had anything of importance in it. But I suspect there was."
Doc drew a folded paper from inside his coat. The lower half of the paper had been burned away, it was evident from the charred edges. Doc continued speaking.
"Finding this in a corner of the safe leads me to that belief. The explosion which opened the safe obviously destroyed the lower part of the paper. And the robber probably overlooked the rest. Here, read it!"
He passed it to the five men. The paper was covered with the fine, almost engraving-perfect writing of Doc's father. They all recognized the penmanship instantly. They read:
CLARK: I have many things to tell you. In your whole lifetime, there never was an occasion when I desired you here so much as I do now. I need you, son, because many things have happened which indicate to me that my last journey is at hand. You will find that I have nothing much to leave you in the way of tangible wealth.
I have, however. the satisfaction of knowing that in you I shall live.
I have developed you from boyhood into the sort of man you have become, and I have spared no time or expense to make you just what I think you should be.
Everything I have done for you has been with the purpose that you should find yourself capable of carrying on the work which hopefully started, and which, in these last few years, has been almost impossible to carry on.
If I do not see you again before this letter is in your hands, I want to assure you that I appreciate the fact that you have lacked nothing in the way of filial devotion. That you have been absent so much of the time has been a secret source of gratification to me, for your absence has, I know, made you self-reliant and able. It was all that I hoped for you.
Now, as to the heritage which I am about to leave you:
What I am passing along to you may be a doubtful heritage. It may be a heritage of woe. It may even be a heritage of destruction to you if you attempt to capitalize on it. On the other hand, it may enable you to do many things for those who are not so fortunate as you yourself, and will, in that way, be a boon for you in carrying on your work of doing good to all.
Here is the general information concerning it:
Some twenty years ago, in company with Hubert Robertson, I went on an expedition to Hidalgo, in Central America, to investigate the report of a prehistoric — "
There the missive ended. Flames had consumed the rest.
"The thing to do is get hold of Hubert Robertson!" clipped the quick-thinking Ham. Waspish, rapid-moving, he swung over to the telephone, scooped it up. "I know Hubert Robertson's phone number. He is connected with the Museum of Natural History."
"You won't get him!" Doc said dryly.
"Why not?"
Doc got off the table and stood beside the giant Renny. It was only then that one realized what a big man Doc was. Alongside Renny, Doc was like dynamite alongside gunpowder.
"Hubert Robertson is dead," Doc explained. "He died from the same thing that killed my father — a weird malady that started with a breaking out of red spots. And he died at about the same time as my father."
Renny's thin mouth pinched even tighter at that. Gloom seemed to settle on his long face. He looked like a man disgusted enough with the evils of the world to cry.
Strangely enough, that somber look denoted that Renny was beginning to take interest. The tougher the going got, the better Renny functioned and the more puritanical he looked.
"That flooeys our chances of finding out more about this heritage your father left you!" he rumbled.
"Not entirely," Doc corrected. "Wait here a moment!" He stepped through another door, crossed the room banked with the volumes of his father's great technical library. Through a second door, and he was in the laboratory. Cases laden with chemicals stood thick as forest trees on the floor. There were electrical coils, vacuum tubes, ray apparatus, microscopes, retorts, electric furnaces, everything that could go into such a laboratory.
From a cabinet Doc lifted a metal box closely resembling an old-fashioned magic lantern. The lens, instead of being ordinary optical glass, as a very dark purple, almost black. There was a cord for plugging into an electric-light socket.
Doc carried this into the room where his five men waited, placed it on a stand, aiming the lens at the window. He plugged the cord into an electric outlet. Before putting the thing in operation, he lifted the metal lid and beckoned to Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
"Know what this is?"
"Of course." Long Tom pulled absently at an ear that was too big, too thin and too pale. "That is a lamp for making ultra-violet rays, or what is commonly called black light. The rays are invisible to the human eye, since they are shorter than ordinary light, but many substances when placed in the black light will glow, or fluoresce after the fashion of luminous paint on a watch dial. Examples of such substances are ordinary vaseline, guinine — "