Страница:
"I guess it's just some plane making a night flight—"
Ham never completed his statement.
With an abrupt dive, the other plane flashed in front of Doc's craft. At the same instant it released a tremendous gush of vile greenish vapor. The stuff spread rapidly.
"Poison gas!" bellowed the quick-thinking Ham.
Doc's speed plane could not swerve aside in time to avoid hitting the gas cloud. It had been released almost against the trio of flashing propellers.
Comely Edna Danielsen went white, and spread her hands over her face. Big Eric, a quick thinker himself, sucked in air to fill his lungs before the poisonous fumes came. The prisoner sat still, as unconcerned as a machine—for he couldn't think enough to realize there was danger.
The plane popped into the gas cloud. It came out. One minute passed. Two. The gas cloud was left nearly five miles behind.
Nothing had happened.
Doc banked the plane swiftly. He flung it for the craft which had tried to gas them.
"Hey!" puffed Big Eric, unable to hold his breath longer. "Ain't that gas gonna—"
"The plane cabin is airtight," Doc Savage pointed out. "Haven't you noticed you have experienced no difficulty in breathing during the flight, although we flew above twenty thousand feet much of the time? That was because the cabin is air-conditioned—furnished with oxygen stored in a special supply tank."
The gas plane was striving frantically for altitude, after the manner of combat craft. But it was like a clumsy buzzard fleeing from a speedy hawk. Doc's great racer came alongside. He saw the other pilot was wearing radio earphones.
"Land—immediately!" Doc's powerful voice boomed into his own radio transmitter.
The excited actions of the other flier showed he was tuned in on Doc's wave length. He had located Doc's plane by radio!
The burst stopped short—for Doc's sky streak had flipped far to one side with a lightninglike maneuver.
Then the entire forward edge of the wing of Doc's ship seemed suddenly outlined in terrible little red electric bulbs. An awesome vibration swept the craft. For there was no less than ten Browning guns installed in the wings of the plane!
The other craft, able to fly but a little more than half as fast, and with only one rapid-firer, was helpless before this ultramodern sky terror. The Gray Spider pilot knew he had caught a Tartar. He shrieked and put his hands over his face as lead popped and tore and screamed about his ears.
The metal storm ceased.
Fearfully, the pilot peered up. He jumped as a commanding voice crashed in his radio ear phones.
"You have one more chance to land!"
Such a fearsome quality did that great voice hold, even though distorted by the metal telephone diaphragms, that the vicious pilot put the nose of his plane down as though his very life depended on reaching the ground in less than nothing flat.
The fellow was such a nervous wreck that he washed out his plane in landing. Coming down too heavy, the landing gear was wiped off, the propeller beat itself into a ravel of metal, and both wings were knocked askew.
Unhurt, the pilot bounded out. He looked up. Doc's plane was flashing in like a great bat. The would-be killer ran. The nearest brush was but a few rods distant.
But long before he reached it, a giant of bronze overhauled him. Arms that could be compared only to steel trapped him. He thought for an instant that the awful strength of the grip was going to crush his life away.
That did not happen. He was carried to the speed plane. He tried to struggle, but the sinewy bronze hands tightened and hurt him so he could only tremble and scream.
A small needle gouged the man, and suddenly the man ceased all action. He was the second victim to undergo an injection of Doc's special serum.
"Get in the plane!" came Doc's commanding voice.
The pilot got in the plane. He couldn't think of anything else to do.
Doc Savage entered also. In a moment, the remarkable air vehicle took off.
Big Eric looked at his watch.
"Golly!" he gasped his pet expression. "It ain't much past midnight!"
Then Big Eric's eyes popped as a black limousine purred out on the field and the driver threw open the door and said: "The car you ordered to meet you, sir!"
"I used the radio in the plane to summon the machine," Doc told the surprised lumberman.
"Things have got a habit of happening smooth and fast around Doc," grinned Ham, twiddling his indispensable sword cane.
Big Eric was a man who worked swiftly. He wouldn't have been a multimillionaire otherwise. But the speed with which Doc Savage was doing things had him a little dazed.
Accompanying the mighty bronze man was something like going around in the middle of a whirlwind. It was hard to keep track of things. Two of the Gray Spider's men captured, and two attempts on their own lives thwarted. A hop from New York to New Orleans! And the night was young!
The limousine rushed them to Big Eric's palatial home in a swanky district.
Doc carried his two prisoners inside.
"Sit down!" he told them.
They sat meekly in chairs. It was an awesome thing to see such vicious devils obey as though they were machines actuated by jabbing a button.
"I shall leave for a while," Doc told his three companions. "It is essential that I do certain work."
He did not explain that this work was to leave a message in the invisible ink which could only be brought out by ultraviolet rays. This message would be written on the front door of the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern's office. Doc knew that his other four men, Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny, might arrive before the night was over. They were no slouches themselves, when it came to fast moving.
Doc kept silent about the message for the simple reason that the two prisoners, although unable to think, would remember everything that had happened to them, once they awakened from their strange trance. He did not want them to overhear.
Doc took his departure. The driver of the limousine was astounded when his giant bronze passenger rode outside the running board, although the tonneau was empty. But Doc Savage habitually did that when danger was aprowl. He liked to see what went on about him.
From the door, Big Eric watched Doc go.
"A remarkable man," he declared. "You know, I already feel as though I had nothing more to fear from the Gray Spider!"
Hardly were these words off his lips, when he gave a sharp start. A dazed expression came into his eyes. He fumbled at his chest.
He fell with a loud crash to the floor. His massive frame lay limply.
Beautiful Edna Danielsen shrieked. She sprang toward her father. She, too, started violently. She seemed bewildered. Then she collapsed.
Ham whirled. His sword cane was unsheathed. But he saw no enemy. He leaped wildly for a door, to escape. Then he twitched, became vacant of expression, and himself tumbled down alongside the others.
The three forms were motionless.
Big Eric had spoken too soon. For the hand of the Gray Spider had stricken down every one in the room!
Chapter IV. TWO DEAD MEN
Chapter V. THE BRONZE RESCUER
Chapter VI. DEATH-END TRAIL
Ham never completed his statement.
With an abrupt dive, the other plane flashed in front of Doc's craft. At the same instant it released a tremendous gush of vile greenish vapor. The stuff spread rapidly.
"Poison gas!" bellowed the quick-thinking Ham.
Doc's speed plane could not swerve aside in time to avoid hitting the gas cloud. It had been released almost against the trio of flashing propellers.
Comely Edna Danielsen went white, and spread her hands over her face. Big Eric, a quick thinker himself, sucked in air to fill his lungs before the poisonous fumes came. The prisoner sat still, as unconcerned as a machine—for he couldn't think enough to realize there was danger.
The plane popped into the gas cloud. It came out. One minute passed. Two. The gas cloud was left nearly five miles behind.
Nothing had happened.
Doc banked the plane swiftly. He flung it for the craft which had tried to gas them.
"Hey!" puffed Big Eric, unable to hold his breath longer. "Ain't that gas gonna—"
"The plane cabin is airtight," Doc Savage pointed out. "Haven't you noticed you have experienced no difficulty in breathing during the flight, although we flew above twenty thousand feet much of the time? That was because the cabin is air-conditioned—furnished with oxygen stored in a special supply tank."
The gas plane was striving frantically for altitude, after the manner of combat craft. But it was like a clumsy buzzard fleeing from a speedy hawk. Doc's great racer came alongside. He saw the other pilot was wearing radio earphones.
"Land—immediately!" Doc's powerful voice boomed into his own radio transmitter.
The excited actions of the other flier showed he was tuned in on Doc's wave length. He had located Doc's plane by radio!
* * *
INSTEAD of landing, the pilot banked swiftly. A machine gun, synchronized to shoot through his propeller, mouthed nasty red tongues.The burst stopped short—for Doc's sky streak had flipped far to one side with a lightninglike maneuver.
Then the entire forward edge of the wing of Doc's ship seemed suddenly outlined in terrible little red electric bulbs. An awesome vibration swept the craft. For there was no less than ten Browning guns installed in the wings of the plane!
The other craft, able to fly but a little more than half as fast, and with only one rapid-firer, was helpless before this ultramodern sky terror. The Gray Spider pilot knew he had caught a Tartar. He shrieked and put his hands over his face as lead popped and tore and screamed about his ears.
The metal storm ceased.
Fearfully, the pilot peered up. He jumped as a commanding voice crashed in his radio ear phones.
"You have one more chance to land!"
Such a fearsome quality did that great voice hold, even though distorted by the metal telephone diaphragms, that the vicious pilot put the nose of his plane down as though his very life depended on reaching the ground in less than nothing flat.
The fellow was such a nervous wreck that he washed out his plane in landing. Coming down too heavy, the landing gear was wiped off, the propeller beat itself into a ravel of metal, and both wings were knocked askew.
Unhurt, the pilot bounded out. He looked up. Doc's plane was flashing in like a great bat. The would-be killer ran. The nearest brush was but a few rods distant.
But long before he reached it, a giant of bronze overhauled him. Arms that could be compared only to steel trapped him. He thought for an instant that the awful strength of the grip was going to crush his life away.
That did not happen. He was carried to the speed plane. He tried to struggle, but the sinewy bronze hands tightened and hurt him so he could only tremble and scream.
A small needle gouged the man, and suddenly the man ceased all action. He was the second victim to undergo an injection of Doc's special serum.
"Get in the plane!" came Doc's commanding voice.
The pilot got in the plane. He couldn't think of anything else to do.
Doc Savage entered also. In a moment, the remarkable air vehicle took off.
* * *
SOON they circled a New Orleans airport. Concealed lids on the undersides of the wings slid back, revealing the lenses of powerful landing lights. These sprayed luminance. The ship landed.Big Eric looked at his watch.
"Golly!" he gasped his pet expression. "It ain't much past midnight!"
Then Big Eric's eyes popped as a black limousine purred out on the field and the driver threw open the door and said: "The car you ordered to meet you, sir!"
"I used the radio in the plane to summon the machine," Doc told the surprised lumberman.
"Things have got a habit of happening smooth and fast around Doc," grinned Ham, twiddling his indispensable sword cane.
Big Eric was a man who worked swiftly. He wouldn't have been a multimillionaire otherwise. But the speed with which Doc Savage was doing things had him a little dazed.
Accompanying the mighty bronze man was something like going around in the middle of a whirlwind. It was hard to keep track of things. Two of the Gray Spider's men captured, and two attempts on their own lives thwarted. A hop from New York to New Orleans! And the night was young!
The limousine rushed them to Big Eric's palatial home in a swanky district.
Doc carried his two prisoners inside.
"Sit down!" he told them.
They sat meekly in chairs. It was an awesome thing to see such vicious devils obey as though they were machines actuated by jabbing a button.
"I shall leave for a while," Doc told his three companions. "It is essential that I do certain work."
He did not explain that this work was to leave a message in the invisible ink which could only be brought out by ultraviolet rays. This message would be written on the front door of the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern's office. Doc knew that his other four men, Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny, might arrive before the night was over. They were no slouches themselves, when it came to fast moving.
Doc kept silent about the message for the simple reason that the two prisoners, although unable to think, would remember everything that had happened to them, once they awakened from their strange trance. He did not want them to overhear.
Doc took his departure. The driver of the limousine was astounded when his giant bronze passenger rode outside the running board, although the tonneau was empty. But Doc Savage habitually did that when danger was aprowl. He liked to see what went on about him.
From the door, Big Eric watched Doc go.
"A remarkable man," he declared. "You know, I already feel as though I had nothing more to fear from the Gray Spider!"
Hardly were these words off his lips, when he gave a sharp start. A dazed expression came into his eyes. He fumbled at his chest.
He fell with a loud crash to the floor. His massive frame lay limply.
Beautiful Edna Danielsen shrieked. She sprang toward her father. She, too, started violently. She seemed bewildered. Then she collapsed.
Ham whirled. His sword cane was unsheathed. But he saw no enemy. He leaped wildly for a door, to escape. Then he twitched, became vacant of expression, and himself tumbled down alongside the others.
The three forms were motionless.
Big Eric had spoken too soon. For the hand of the Gray Spider had stricken down every one in the room!
* * *
Chapter IV. TWO DEAD MEN
AN ominous silence gripped the room where the three limp, unmoving forms lay. The slow tick-tock of a wooden clock in another part of the mansion was a sound like the bony footsteps of death. The motor of an electric refrigerator ran softly back in the kitchen regions.
From the Mississippi River in the distance came the forlorn toot of a packet boat. A radio played through an open window in the more immediate neighborhood. There was a party where the radio played. Glasses clinked. Giddy laughter cackled.
A voice said: "Me guess coast ees clear!"
Two queer-looking men stepped out of a closet.
They were undersized. Their skins had an unusual yellowish-brown color. Their features were pinched.
They looked like nothing so much as big, hairless monkeys, whose tails had been cut off.
Dungaree pants bobbed above the knees. Ragged, filthy shirts comprised their only other attire. They were barefooted.
Each man carried a long, slim tube.
They bent over the unconscious forms of Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. Their clumsy, foul fingers picked from each prostrate body a tiny dart. These they replaced in small leather sacks.
It was these blowgun darts which had brought disaster to Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. They had been propelled expertly through a keyhole. The long, slim tubes were the blowguns.
The two men now went to the door. They made a queer, snakelike hissing note.
In answer to that signal, several more men appeared. They looked enough like the first pair to be their brothers.
It was as though the big monkeys with bobbed tails and hair singed off were having a convention.
Big Eric stirred slightly. He was reviving!
The monkey men hastily bound him, as well as Edna and Ham. The fellows spoke a fair grade of English to each other at times, but on other occasions they lapsed into an amazing lingo. This jabber was a combination of French, English, bush African, and Spanish, all intermingled so as to be unrecognizable.
The ugly little men seemed to be as polyglot a breed as their lingo.
An expert on languages would have explained that they were a strange and little-known class of humans who have come into existence deep within the Southern swamps. For the most part, they were offsprings of criminals who had fled to the swamps for safety, down through the scores of years. From such breeding, they could hardly be less than degenerates. As a class, they were shunned by the more respectable swamp dwellers.
It was among these ignorant, vicious people that the sinister and oftentimes bloodcurdling rites of voodooism were known to be practiced. Awful things were continually happening in the fastnesses of the vast swamps, grapevine rumors had it. But officers of the law dispatched into the labyrinths of the great morasses never came back with anything definite enough to prove the tales were aught else than the imaginings of some one who had walked past a graveyard at night.
The leader of the monkey men strode over to the slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane.
"What ees wrong with yo’?"
The two men made a meaningless gibberish in reply. Their words expressed no coherent thought.
"Sacrй!"
rasped the monkey man. "Yo' answer me!"
The fellow slapped the faces of the two he was questioning. They merely swayed in their chairs. They did not strike back. The monkey man's little eyes began to protrude.
"Heem hexed!" he muttered.
The ignorant fellow thought a voodoo spell had been laid upon the pair!
"Yo' bat!" gulped another. "Ol' hex got heem both, sure!"
The evil crew stood about. They shifted from one bare foot to another. Sweat, like hot paraffin, came to their foreheads. They looked at the slick-haired man and the pilot as though the pair were particularly undesirable ghosts.
"What yo' want do?" one asked the leader.
The man considered. Then he grinned fiercely, as though pleased with the idea his weak brain had evolved.
"Bien!"
he ejaculated. "Keel heem both! That ees make heem all O.K."
But a couple of the others doubted whether the two should be murdered.
"Yo' reckon Gray Spider like that?" one inquired.
"Mebbe so—sure!" growled the leader. "Thees feller make beeg flop at job Gray Spider ees geeve heem! Yo' know what that ees always mean!"
"Death!" muttered the other.
"Sure teeng!"
"Maybe we better take heem along anyhow."
"Non, non!"
leered the leader. "Eet ees too much trouble. Me—I feex heem!"
With that, the evil fellow flashed a knife from inside his shirt.
He stabbed twice. Both the slick-haired man and the pilot fell out of their chairs after the blade sank into their bodies.
"That way to knockum dead, huh?" chuckled the killer. "Both plenty feenished!"
Pretty Edna Danielsen, now recovered, brought herself to realize cold murder had really been committed before her eyes. She parted her lips and screamed as loud as she could.
The leader of the monkey men struck her cruelly, knocking her senseless.
As the foul fist fell upon his daughter, a frenzy seized Big Eric. Rage made him a maniac. It gave him a maniac's wild strength. He lunged against his bonds.
Big Eric was a product of the old lumberman's school, where an employer was expected to be able to lick every man he had working for him. The massive lumberman was very strong. The ropes snapped off his wrists.
In flash seconds, Big Eric had his feet free. He leaped up.
The leader of the monkey men flung his knife.
Seizing a chair, Big Eric caught the blade on its bottom in the same manner his ancestors had probably caught tossed spears on their war shields. He wrenched the knife out and started to slice Ham's bindings. But there was no time. The vile little men rushed him.
The chair met a skull, and broke it as though a baseball bat had hit an egg. A pistol flamed. The lead missed. Before the gun could fire again, the whirling chair downed the man who held it.
"Sacrй—hees fight lak debbil!" wailed a monkey man.
Ham flounced to the knife Big Eric had dropped. He reached it. But brownish-yellow men piled atop him. The little fiends were tough. Laying hold of one of them was like grabbing a weasel. They held Ham helpless.
Ham saw the odds were overwhelming.
"Beat it!" he yelled at Big Eric. "Take Edna and high-tail it out of here!"
Much as he hated to leave Ham, Big Eric knew this was the best advice. The safety of Edna came first. And the odds were too great to hope for victory.
A monkey man, racing to the senseless form of Edna, would have slain the young woman with his knife.
"Non, non!"
shrieked the leader. "Gray Spider ees want either gal or Beeg Eric alive! Hees want 'em both alive eef can do! Eet be better eef they sign some papers!"
Big Eric digested this as he fought. It proved what he had already suspected. The Gray Spider was after the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern. Whatever hold the fiend expected to get on the company would be strengthened if he had papers signed by Big Eric and Edna to back his claims.
Reaching Edna's limp form, Big Eric scooped it up with his left arm. With his right arm, he flailed the chair.
Two men went down, neither hurt badly. Big Eric got his back to a door. He twisted the knob.
It was locked. One of the monkey men had turned the key, hoping to keep him from escaping the room.
The heavy chair swung, driven by the old lumberman's muscular arms. The door caved outward. It was as though a mule had kicked a banana crate.
Big Eric waded through the wreckage. The moist night breeze from the Gulf washed against his flushed face. He raced down the walk. He quickly outdistanced his short-legged pursuers.
He neared the street.
Two men suddenly leaped out of the high shrubbery that bordered the walk. Both held cold blue revolvers.
Big Eric still grasped what was left of the chair. He lifted it threateningly. But he didn't strike. A loud bark of delight came from his lungs.
These men worked for him! They were "Lefty" Shea and "Bugs" Ballard. They were special policemen for the lumber firm of Danielsen & Haas. It was their duty to run down timber poachers and ferret out professional radicals who might be causing labor troubles in the sawmill and lumber camps.
Big Eric didn't stop to reflect that it was strange these men should be here. They were his employees. They were here. That was enough.
"The Gray Spider's men!" Big Eric bellowed. "Lefty! Bugs! Come on! We’ll make the pack of rats hard to catch!"
"Lead us to 'em" boomed Lefty.
Both lumber detectives were burly fellows. They had hard features and a tough manner.
Big Eric whirled to lead the way.
He had been stricken down by one of his own employees.
The vicious little monkey men ran up, greeting Lefty and Bugs as friends!
"Bien!
Yo' gat heem, huh?" ejaculated the leader of the gang.
"Yeah, an' blasted lucky for you that we did!" sneered Lefty. "It looks like he blamed near smeared the whole mess of you swamp snipes!"
The monkey man showed his teeth in a weasellike snarl. He did not like the razzing that Lefty was handing him. However, he knew there was no time to argue about it.
"Yo' stow the sass!" he growled. "Yo' stay here. Beeg bronze man ees come back. Get heem. Me—I leeve four my boys so yo' have plenty men fo' job."
"Take your four men along!" Lefty snorted. "Me and Bugs don't need any help to croak one man!"
The leader of the monkey men leered knowingly. He had seen Doc Savage. And he was not too ignorant to know a Hercules of a fighting man when he saw one. He had an idea it would be the finish of Lefty and Bugs if they jumped the bronze giant without re-enforcements.
The monkey man rather fancied the thought of Lefty and Bugs meeting disaster. But should he fail to leave some of his men, he feared the wrath of the Gray Spider. And that wrath was a terrible thing.
"Me—I leeve my four boys, anyhow," he grumbled.
"Sure," chuckled Lefty. "They can stand around and watch two good men work!"
The insult was carefully ignored. Ham, Big Eric, and Edna were picked up bodily.
The corpses of the dead men were callously left lying inside the mansion. The mouth of one gaped open widely—showing the hideous moccasin tatooed inside.
After all but four of the monkey men had departed with the prisoners, Lefty and Bugs took up a position in the shrubbery beside the house. The unsavory pair fell to whispering.
"As long as these four swamp snipes are here, why take any risk ourselves?" Lefty inquired. "Let's let 'em grab the bronze guy. If they should get hurt, it ain't no skin off us."
"An idea, pal!" chuckled Bugs. "We'll do just that!"
They proceeded to maneuver the four monkey men inside the house, where they would be in a position to drive blowgun darts at Doc Savage about the same moment he discovered the bodies.
Lefty and Bugs waited outside.
The single shot which had come during Big Eric's valiant fight had evidently passed as an automobile backfire, for it had attracted no attention. Edna's scream had escaped notice, too, probably because the Big Eric Danielsen mansion was set in elaborately landscaped grounds that were as large as a city park.
"Here he comes, I'll bet!" breathed Lefty.
They waited. There was no sound. They held their breath, but they still could hear nothing. No feet slapped the walk. No leaves or branches stirred.
It was as if the car had paused only to let a ghost enter the estate. Lefty and Bugs were puzzled.
Then their hair stood on end.
A mighty bronze man had appeared in the room that held the bodies.
His coming had been silent, as though suddenly projected there by an invisible motion-picture machine.
His golden eyes surveyed the scene. The slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane lay beside their chairs. They had fallen there after being stabbed, and had not moved since. The one monkey man Big Eric had slain in his fight also reposed on the floor.
The latter's jaws were agape. The tatooed serpent was visible on his mouth roof.
Even Lefty and Bugs, crouched outside, could see the strange flickerings in the golden eyes of the bronze giant. Those weird gleamings conveyed something terrible to the two villains. Just looking at them seemed to suck the courage out of their stocky bodies.
They were so awed that they hardly dared breathe.
A blowgun tube was projecting from a keyhole. Lefty and Bugs could see it. They were glad it was behind the bronze man. If he just wouldn't turn! And he was giving no sign of wheeling.
One second—two—and death would strike at Doc Savage's back.
But Doc suddenly went to the pilot of the gas plane, moving out of range of the blowgun. He bent over the man.
He had noticed the fellow breathing! The knife stroke had not been fatal!
Swiftly, Doc administered some of the compound which annulled the effects of the weird drug which the pilot had been given.
Outside the window, Bugs and Lefty were on the horns of a dilemma. They didn't want to shoot the bronze man, for fear the shot, fired outdoors, might attract attention. Too, they were downright afraid to start trouble. So they waited for the blowgun to do its grisly work.
Lefty and Bugs knew there was a poison dart in the blowgun now. It would bring instant death!
"The devils!" gritted the pilot. "The dirty, double-crossing swamp snipes!"
The fellow could remember all that had happened while he was helpless! He knew his own gang had tried to murder him. And it might be that they would succeed. The pilot was very far gone from his stab wound.
"Where is Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room. The power of it made Lefty and Bugs shiver outside the window.
A fit of coughing seized the pilot as he tried to reply. Crimson frothed his lips.
Working rapidly, Doc gave the man some relief from his wound. He did this by sinking his fingers into certain nerve centers, massaging them so as to produce a paralysis that deadened pain somewhat. It was in the realm of surgery that Doc Savage was most proficient, and osteopathy, chiropractic, and other similar fields were a part of his training.
When Doc finished, the pilot could speak.
"Look out!" he choked. "Behind the door across the room! They're hiding there with a blowgun!"
He had warned Doc!
The big bronze man spoke softly. No one but the dying pilot—Doc knew now that the fellow could not live—heard the words.
"I knew they were there!" Doc said.
The pilot couldn't understand it. "But how—"
"They're in need of a bath," Doc replied. "I could smell them. I also saw their blowgun project from a keyhole. I am out of range here."
But Doc did not know the two devils, Lefty and Bugs, lurked outside with revolvers in hand and a mixture of fear and murder in their hearts!
The pilot had not been able to note any unusual odors in the room. It was incredible to him that the bronze giant could not only detect a foreign smell, but locate its source—all without seeming to.
But the pilot had no way of knowing Doc exercised his olefactory senses intensively each day through his life. He knew nothing of the two-hour routine of high-pressure exercises which this bronze man put himself through each morning. An exercise routine which had made him the superman he was!
"The Cult of the Moccasin got the others," breathed the pilot. "The devils also left me for dead!"
"Do you know where they took the prisoners?" Doc inquired swiftly.
Outside the window, Lefty and Bugs were shivering in their excitement. Why didn't the monkey men go into action? They began to raise their own pistols.
"Yes," gulped the dying pilot. "I know where the captives were to be taken. It is a spot at which they will be held for a time. Then other members of the Cult of the Moccasin will come and take them to the Castle of the Moccasin. Only the Gray Spider and a few others know where the Castle of the Moccasin is."
"Where can I find them?" Doc interrupted. "You can tell me the rest later!"
The pilot drew in breath to answer. But the answer did not come.
The monkey men leaped out of the adjoining room. They rushed to the attack. One lifted the blowgun to his lips. He discharged it.
But big bronze Doc moved so quickly that he seemed to vanish completely, to reappear several feet to one side.
The blowgun dart missed by a yard. It plinked into the wall and stuck by its needlelike point.
Before the four monkey men could realize what had happened, there towered among them a Nemesis which might have been made out of metal.
The four clutched their sharp knives. They were at least not cravens. They would fight to the death!
One monkey man launched a stab he felt certain would end the fray. It was aimed directly for the bronze giant's heart. But the monkey man felt a terrible paralysis seize his wrist and arm. He did not have time to realize a steel-thewed hand had grasped his darting knife fist and turned it toward his own vitals—the blade was in his heart before he could realize that fact.
The wounded pilot of the plane put forth a terrific effort and hauled himself across the room. He took refuge in a closet, laboriously pulling the door shut after him.
Another monkey man struck at Doc with a razor-sharp stiletto. He, too, believed his stroke would go home. But by some miracle the bronze man moved a trifle. The blade only sheared open his coat and shirt.
"Sacrй—"
The beginning of the oath was the fellow's last word. He tried to strike again. There was a hollow snap. He collapsed. Great hands had broken his neck.
Lefty and Bugs, outside the window, leaped out, fearful of throwing themselves into the fray. They hoped the swamp men would soon overpower Doc.
Suddenly the bronze man strode across the floor. He held the surviving two monkey men, one in each hand. The swamp rats squirmed. They tried feebly to knife the giant. But such was the agony of the hold upon them that they could not.
A pair of mighty arms propelled them for the window. They flew through the air. Their spinning bodies wiped the glass out of the window.
Both fell at the feet of Lefty and Bugs. This fact led the two crooked lumber detectives to think they had been discovered.
They were cowards. Terror seized them. Although they could have shot at the bronze man, they spun and fled instead. The threshing of the two dazed monkey men who had been hurled through the window covered the sound of their flight.
Doc Savage lunged to the side of the dying pilot. It was important that he get an answer to his question—where had the men of the Cult of the Moccasin taken Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?
But the man was dead!
From his stiffening lips would never come word of where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been taken!
From the Mississippi River in the distance came the forlorn toot of a packet boat. A radio played through an open window in the more immediate neighborhood. There was a party where the radio played. Glasses clinked. Giddy laughter cackled.
A voice said: "Me guess coast ees clear!"
Two queer-looking men stepped out of a closet.
They were undersized. Their skins had an unusual yellowish-brown color. Their features were pinched.
They looked like nothing so much as big, hairless monkeys, whose tails had been cut off.
Dungaree pants bobbed above the knees. Ragged, filthy shirts comprised their only other attire. They were barefooted.
Each man carried a long, slim tube.
They bent over the unconscious forms of Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. Their clumsy, foul fingers picked from each prostrate body a tiny dart. These they replaced in small leather sacks.
It was these blowgun darts which had brought disaster to Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. They had been propelled expertly through a keyhole. The long, slim tubes were the blowguns.
The two men now went to the door. They made a queer, snakelike hissing note.
In answer to that signal, several more men appeared. They looked enough like the first pair to be their brothers.
It was as though the big monkeys with bobbed tails and hair singed off were having a convention.
Big Eric stirred slightly. He was reviving!
The monkey men hastily bound him, as well as Edna and Ham. The fellows spoke a fair grade of English to each other at times, but on other occasions they lapsed into an amazing lingo. This jabber was a combination of French, English, bush African, and Spanish, all intermingled so as to be unrecognizable.
The ugly little men seemed to be as polyglot a breed as their lingo.
An expert on languages would have explained that they were a strange and little-known class of humans who have come into existence deep within the Southern swamps. For the most part, they were offsprings of criminals who had fled to the swamps for safety, down through the scores of years. From such breeding, they could hardly be less than degenerates. As a class, they were shunned by the more respectable swamp dwellers.
It was among these ignorant, vicious people that the sinister and oftentimes bloodcurdling rites of voodooism were known to be practiced. Awful things were continually happening in the fastnesses of the vast swamps, grapevine rumors had it. But officers of the law dispatched into the labyrinths of the great morasses never came back with anything definite enough to prove the tales were aught else than the imaginings of some one who had walked past a graveyard at night.
* * *
BUT it was widely known that voodooism did exist.The leader of the monkey men strode over to the slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane.
"What ees wrong with yo’?"
The two men made a meaningless gibberish in reply. Their words expressed no coherent thought.
"Sacrй!"
rasped the monkey man. "Yo' answer me!"
The fellow slapped the faces of the two he was questioning. They merely swayed in their chairs. They did not strike back. The monkey man's little eyes began to protrude.
"Heem hexed!" he muttered.
The ignorant fellow thought a voodoo spell had been laid upon the pair!
"Yo' bat!" gulped another. "Ol' hex got heem both, sure!"
The evil crew stood about. They shifted from one bare foot to another. Sweat, like hot paraffin, came to their foreheads. They looked at the slick-haired man and the pilot as though the pair were particularly undesirable ghosts.
"What yo' want do?" one asked the leader.
The man considered. Then he grinned fiercely, as though pleased with the idea his weak brain had evolved.
"Bien!"
he ejaculated. "Keel heem both! That ees make heem all O.K."
But a couple of the others doubted whether the two should be murdered.
"Yo' reckon Gray Spider like that?" one inquired.
"Mebbe so—sure!" growled the leader. "Thees feller make beeg flop at job Gray Spider ees geeve heem! Yo' know what that ees always mean!"
"Death!" muttered the other.
"Sure teeng!"
"Maybe we better take heem along anyhow."
"Non, non!"
leered the leader. "Eet ees too much trouble. Me—I feex heem!"
With that, the evil fellow flashed a knife from inside his shirt.
He stabbed twice. Both the slick-haired man and the pilot fell out of their chairs after the blade sank into their bodies.
"That way to knockum dead, huh?" chuckled the killer. "Both plenty feenished!"
Pretty Edna Danielsen, now recovered, brought herself to realize cold murder had really been committed before her eyes. She parted her lips and screamed as loud as she could.
The leader of the monkey men struck her cruelly, knocking her senseless.
As the foul fist fell upon his daughter, a frenzy seized Big Eric. Rage made him a maniac. It gave him a maniac's wild strength. He lunged against his bonds.
Big Eric was a product of the old lumberman's school, where an employer was expected to be able to lick every man he had working for him. The massive lumberman was very strong. The ropes snapped off his wrists.
In flash seconds, Big Eric had his feet free. He leaped up.
The leader of the monkey men flung his knife.
Seizing a chair, Big Eric caught the blade on its bottom in the same manner his ancestors had probably caught tossed spears on their war shields. He wrenched the knife out and started to slice Ham's bindings. But there was no time. The vile little men rushed him.
* * *
THE heavy chair whistled around Big Eric's head. No whiskered Norseman fighting overwhelming hordes of Britons ever stood more staunchly.The chair met a skull, and broke it as though a baseball bat had hit an egg. A pistol flamed. The lead missed. Before the gun could fire again, the whirling chair downed the man who held it.
"Sacrй—hees fight lak debbil!" wailed a monkey man.
Ham flounced to the knife Big Eric had dropped. He reached it. But brownish-yellow men piled atop him. The little fiends were tough. Laying hold of one of them was like grabbing a weasel. They held Ham helpless.
Ham saw the odds were overwhelming.
"Beat it!" he yelled at Big Eric. "Take Edna and high-tail it out of here!"
Much as he hated to leave Ham, Big Eric knew this was the best advice. The safety of Edna came first. And the odds were too great to hope for victory.
A monkey man, racing to the senseless form of Edna, would have slain the young woman with his knife.
"Non, non!"
shrieked the leader. "Gray Spider ees want either gal or Beeg Eric alive! Hees want 'em both alive eef can do! Eet be better eef they sign some papers!"
Big Eric digested this as he fought. It proved what he had already suspected. The Gray Spider was after the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern. Whatever hold the fiend expected to get on the company would be strengthened if he had papers signed by Big Eric and Edna to back his claims.
Reaching Edna's limp form, Big Eric scooped it up with his left arm. With his right arm, he flailed the chair.
Two men went down, neither hurt badly. Big Eric got his back to a door. He twisted the knob.
It was locked. One of the monkey men had turned the key, hoping to keep him from escaping the room.
The heavy chair swung, driven by the old lumberman's muscular arms. The door caved outward. It was as though a mule had kicked a banana crate.
Big Eric waded through the wreckage. The moist night breeze from the Gulf washed against his flushed face. He raced down the walk. He quickly outdistanced his short-legged pursuers.
He neared the street.
Two men suddenly leaped out of the high shrubbery that bordered the walk. Both held cold blue revolvers.
Big Eric still grasped what was left of the chair. He lifted it threateningly. But he didn't strike. A loud bark of delight came from his lungs.
These men worked for him! They were "Lefty" Shea and "Bugs" Ballard. They were special policemen for the lumber firm of Danielsen & Haas. It was their duty to run down timber poachers and ferret out professional radicals who might be causing labor troubles in the sawmill and lumber camps.
Big Eric didn't stop to reflect that it was strange these men should be here. They were his employees. They were here. That was enough.
"The Gray Spider's men!" Big Eric bellowed. "Lefty! Bugs! Come on! We’ll make the pack of rats hard to catch!"
"Lead us to 'em" boomed Lefty.
Both lumber detectives were burly fellows. They had hard features and a tough manner.
Big Eric whirled to lead the way.
* * *
THE moment Big Eric's back was turned, Lefty struck heavily with his revolver barrel. The weapon parted the lumber king's thatch of blond hair. He fell heavily with his unconscious daughter.He had been stricken down by one of his own employees.
The vicious little monkey men ran up, greeting Lefty and Bugs as friends!
"Bien!
Yo' gat heem, huh?" ejaculated the leader of the gang.
"Yeah, an' blasted lucky for you that we did!" sneered Lefty. "It looks like he blamed near smeared the whole mess of you swamp snipes!"
The monkey man showed his teeth in a weasellike snarl. He did not like the razzing that Lefty was handing him. However, he knew there was no time to argue about it.
"Yo' stow the sass!" he growled. "Yo' stay here. Beeg bronze man ees come back. Get heem. Me—I leeve four my boys so yo' have plenty men fo' job."
"Take your four men along!" Lefty snorted. "Me and Bugs don't need any help to croak one man!"
The leader of the monkey men leered knowingly. He had seen Doc Savage. And he was not too ignorant to know a Hercules of a fighting man when he saw one. He had an idea it would be the finish of Lefty and Bugs if they jumped the bronze giant without re-enforcements.
The monkey man rather fancied the thought of Lefty and Bugs meeting disaster. But should he fail to leave some of his men, he feared the wrath of the Gray Spider. And that wrath was a terrible thing.
"Me—I leeve my four boys, anyhow," he grumbled.
"Sure," chuckled Lefty. "They can stand around and watch two good men work!"
The insult was carefully ignored. Ham, Big Eric, and Edna were picked up bodily.
The corpses of the dead men were callously left lying inside the mansion. The mouth of one gaped open widely—showing the hideous moccasin tatooed inside.
After all but four of the monkey men had departed with the prisoners, Lefty and Bugs took up a position in the shrubbery beside the house. The unsavory pair fell to whispering.
"As long as these four swamp snipes are here, why take any risk ourselves?" Lefty inquired. "Let's let 'em grab the bronze guy. If they should get hurt, it ain't no skin off us."
"An idea, pal!" chuckled Bugs. "We'll do just that!"
They proceeded to maneuver the four monkey men inside the house, where they would be in a position to drive blowgun darts at Doc Savage about the same moment he discovered the bodies.
Lefty and Bugs waited outside.
The single shot which had come during Big Eric's valiant fight had evidently passed as an automobile backfire, for it had attracted no attention. Edna's scream had escaped notice, too, probably because the Big Eric Danielsen mansion was set in elaborately landscaped grounds that were as large as a city park.
* * *
BEFORE long, a car halted in front of the estate. It did not enter the grounds. After loitering a moment, as though to permit a passenger to alight, it drove on."Here he comes, I'll bet!" breathed Lefty.
They waited. There was no sound. They held their breath, but they still could hear nothing. No feet slapped the walk. No leaves or branches stirred.
It was as if the car had paused only to let a ghost enter the estate. Lefty and Bugs were puzzled.
Then their hair stood on end.
A mighty bronze man had appeared in the room that held the bodies.
His coming had been silent, as though suddenly projected there by an invisible motion-picture machine.
His golden eyes surveyed the scene. The slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane lay beside their chairs. They had fallen there after being stabbed, and had not moved since. The one monkey man Big Eric had slain in his fight also reposed on the floor.
The latter's jaws were agape. The tatooed serpent was visible on his mouth roof.
Even Lefty and Bugs, crouched outside, could see the strange flickerings in the golden eyes of the bronze giant. Those weird gleamings conveyed something terrible to the two villains. Just looking at them seemed to suck the courage out of their stocky bodies.
They were so awed that they hardly dared breathe.
A blowgun tube was projecting from a keyhole. Lefty and Bugs could see it. They were glad it was behind the bronze man. If he just wouldn't turn! And he was giving no sign of wheeling.
One second—two—and death would strike at Doc Savage's back.
But Doc suddenly went to the pilot of the gas plane, moving out of range of the blowgun. He bent over the man.
He had noticed the fellow breathing! The knife stroke had not been fatal!
Swiftly, Doc administered some of the compound which annulled the effects of the weird drug which the pilot had been given.
Outside the window, Bugs and Lefty were on the horns of a dilemma. They didn't want to shoot the bronze man, for fear the shot, fired outdoors, might attract attention. Too, they were downright afraid to start trouble. So they waited for the blowgun to do its grisly work.
Lefty and Bugs knew there was a poison dart in the blowgun now. It would bring instant death!
* * *
THE pilot of the gas plane stirred feebly. Control of his faculties had returned."The devils!" gritted the pilot. "The dirty, double-crossing swamp snipes!"
The fellow could remember all that had happened while he was helpless! He knew his own gang had tried to murder him. And it might be that they would succeed. The pilot was very far gone from his stab wound.
"Where is Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room. The power of it made Lefty and Bugs shiver outside the window.
A fit of coughing seized the pilot as he tried to reply. Crimson frothed his lips.
Working rapidly, Doc gave the man some relief from his wound. He did this by sinking his fingers into certain nerve centers, massaging them so as to produce a paralysis that deadened pain somewhat. It was in the realm of surgery that Doc Savage was most proficient, and osteopathy, chiropractic, and other similar fields were a part of his training.
When Doc finished, the pilot could speak.
"Look out!" he choked. "Behind the door across the room! They're hiding there with a blowgun!"
He had warned Doc!
The big bronze man spoke softly. No one but the dying pilot—Doc knew now that the fellow could not live—heard the words.
"I knew they were there!" Doc said.
The pilot couldn't understand it. "But how—"
"They're in need of a bath," Doc replied. "I could smell them. I also saw their blowgun project from a keyhole. I am out of range here."
But Doc did not know the two devils, Lefty and Bugs, lurked outside with revolvers in hand and a mixture of fear and murder in their hearts!
The pilot had not been able to note any unusual odors in the room. It was incredible to him that the bronze giant could not only detect a foreign smell, but locate its source—all without seeming to.
But the pilot had no way of knowing Doc exercised his olefactory senses intensively each day through his life. He knew nothing of the two-hour routine of high-pressure exercises which this bronze man put himself through each morning. An exercise routine which had made him the superman he was!
"The Cult of the Moccasin got the others," breathed the pilot. "The devils also left me for dead!"
"Do you know where they took the prisoners?" Doc inquired swiftly.
Outside the window, Lefty and Bugs were shivering in their excitement. Why didn't the monkey men go into action? They began to raise their own pistols.
"Yes," gulped the dying pilot. "I know where the captives were to be taken. It is a spot at which they will be held for a time. Then other members of the Cult of the Moccasin will come and take them to the Castle of the Moccasin. Only the Gray Spider and a few others know where the Castle of the Moccasin is."
"Where can I find them?" Doc interrupted. "You can tell me the rest later!"
The pilot drew in breath to answer. But the answer did not come.
The monkey men leaped out of the adjoining room. They rushed to the attack. One lifted the blowgun to his lips. He discharged it.
But big bronze Doc moved so quickly that he seemed to vanish completely, to reappear several feet to one side.
The blowgun dart missed by a yard. It plinked into the wall and stuck by its needlelike point.
Before the four monkey men could realize what had happened, there towered among them a Nemesis which might have been made out of metal.
The four clutched their sharp knives. They were at least not cravens. They would fight to the death!
* * *
TO the death it was! And it came more swiftly than they had dreamed possible.One monkey man launched a stab he felt certain would end the fray. It was aimed directly for the bronze giant's heart. But the monkey man felt a terrible paralysis seize his wrist and arm. He did not have time to realize a steel-thewed hand had grasped his darting knife fist and turned it toward his own vitals—the blade was in his heart before he could realize that fact.
The wounded pilot of the plane put forth a terrific effort and hauled himself across the room. He took refuge in a closet, laboriously pulling the door shut after him.
Another monkey man struck at Doc with a razor-sharp stiletto. He, too, believed his stroke would go home. But by some miracle the bronze man moved a trifle. The blade only sheared open his coat and shirt.
"Sacrй—"
The beginning of the oath was the fellow's last word. He tried to strike again. There was a hollow snap. He collapsed. Great hands had broken his neck.
Lefty and Bugs, outside the window, leaped out, fearful of throwing themselves into the fray. They hoped the swamp men would soon overpower Doc.
Suddenly the bronze man strode across the floor. He held the surviving two monkey men, one in each hand. The swamp rats squirmed. They tried feebly to knife the giant. But such was the agony of the hold upon them that they could not.
A pair of mighty arms propelled them for the window. They flew through the air. Their spinning bodies wiped the glass out of the window.
Both fell at the feet of Lefty and Bugs. This fact led the two crooked lumber detectives to think they had been discovered.
They were cowards. Terror seized them. Although they could have shot at the bronze man, they spun and fled instead. The threshing of the two dazed monkey men who had been hurled through the window covered the sound of their flight.
Doc Savage lunged to the side of the dying pilot. It was important that he get an answer to his question—where had the men of the Cult of the Moccasin taken Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?
But the man was dead!
From his stiffening lips would never come word of where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been taken!
* * *
Chapter V. THE BRONZE RESCUER
THE giant bronze form of Doc Savage moved to the window. He did not see Lefty and Bugs, because they were already out of sight.
Dropping lightly through the window, Doc searched the two dazed monkey men. He threw their weapons away. They seemed to grow light in his powerful grasp, and sailed through the window into the house. They tumbled end over end across the floor, such was the momentum with which they had been tossed.
Doc did not bother to tie them. When one tried to flee, he was knocked flat on his back before he had taken a single step. They had no more chance of escaping Doc than a captured mouse has of evading the cat that caught it.
"Where are the people who were taken away?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room.
"No savvy what yo' talk about!" muttered one of the vile swamp denizens.
"Have you any idea what will happen to you if you don't talk?"
The pair were scared. But it was not a drooling, cowardly fear. They were determined not to talk.
"Yo' nevair geet one single word from us!"
Doc was convinced they were right. He knew men. He felt these half-savage swampers could be tortured to death without a word escaping their lips.
Standing erect, Doc strode over to the lifeless body of the pilot. Then his gaze went to a cheap ring on a finger of the dead man.
The pilot had used the upraised setting of his ring to scratch three letters and a number in the wall plaster:
W.W.S.3.
Doc Savage's eyes ranged over the sprawling inscription. He examined the pilot's ring and made sure traces of plaster still clung in the setting. The pilot had undoubtedly scrawled the cipher.
Perhaps a minute, Doc remained motionless. Then he nodded slightly, as if to himself. He had solved the puzzle of those letters. There was a telephone in the adjacent room.
The two evil little swampmen found themselves batted head over heels into the next room. They wound up in a corner, dazed, aching. It was not pleasant treatment they were receiving.
Standing with one golden eye on the unsavory pair, Doc picked up the phone. He was connected with the leading morning newspaper in New Orleans.
"I would like to get the location of Worldwide Sawmills No. 3 plant," he requested.
This, Doc had decided, was the meaning of the "W. W. S. 3" scratched in the closet plaster.
In a moment, the information came rattling over the phone wire.
"Thank you." Doc hung up.
The two swamp rats squirmed uneasily, expecting the worst. Their captor seemed to have no more regard for their kind than a lion has for a jackal. And he handled them in about the same fashion.
"Come on, come on!" Doc told them. "We're leaving here!"
Half an hour later, the two swampmen were sleeping in a hotel room. Their sleep was caused by a drug, the effects of which would not wear off for weeks. The two would not be disturbed by the hotel attendants.
In a day or so, a mysterious stranger would arrive. He would take the two men to an amazing institution in the northern part of New York State. This place was run by one of the greatest experts on psychology and criminal minds alive. This wizard made a business of curing men of their criminal tendencies, whether they wanted to be cured or not. No one released from his institution as cured had ever been known to go back to his former life of crime!
This remarkable place was supported by Doc Savage's fabulous wealth. Doc Savage never sent a villain who opposed him to a prison. The police never got them. Instead, they went to this weird establishment to be renovated into decent citizens.
Doc telegraphed the man at the institution to send for the two swamp natives. Then he selected a small garage that seemed to need business and bought a good used roadster for cash.
The car carried him rapidly out of New Orleans. He was headed for the No. 3 plant of Worldwide Sawmills concern.
Night wind whipped his bronze face and deeper bronze hair, but with no more effect than had he been a man of metal. Tires whined on the concrete. The speedometer flirted with seventy.
A floating sawmill was on the bayou. It consisted of a head saw, edger, trimmer, and cut-off saws mounted on a big scow. It was shut down for the night, but a tendril of smoke strung from the boiler stack. A fireman was puttering about, preparing to get up steam for the new day's work.
Doc turned off the roadster headlights. The windshield had become splattered with night moths, and he had turned it down. His eyes roved alertly. It was only a few miles more.
Great branches overhung the road. Tendrils of moss draped low enough to whip his face occasionally. It was a somber, macabre region.
Kicking the gears into neutral, Doc switched off the motor. The machine, going seventy, would roll a mile on this road. After the engine died, the call of night birds was audible. The tires buzzed on the pavement.
Before his momentum was gone, Doc wheeled off the road into a brushy lane. He left the car masked by a thicket of swamp maples.
Out on the bayou, a tug whistle honked stentoriously. Through the trees, Doc saw the tug was escorting a raft of logs fully half a mile long. Evidently they were being rushed to some mill in time for the day's work.
But they were not headed for Worldwide Sawmills No. 3! The plant was shut down!
A soundless wraith in the roadside brush, Doc reconnoitered.
Judging from appearance, the sawmill had been shut down about a month. It was an expensive plant, too. The capacity must have been nearly a hundred thousand board feet. Storage sheds for dry lumber were large enough to hold supplies of twenty million or so board feet.
It was obvious these sheds were nearly empty! That explained it! The Gray Spider's men were selling off the lumber from the dry sheds.
The plant was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence of surprising height. The steel poles extended twenty feet above the ground.
Doc started to run lightly up the fence. Halfway to the top, he suddenly released his grip and dropped to the ground.
"A narrow squeak!" he told himself sagely.
Finding a wet limb, he tossed it against the upper part of the fence. The twig came in contact with two of the barbed strands.
There was a sputtering burst of unholy green fire. Smoking, the twig fell to earth.
The fence carried a high-voltage electric current!
Only the sharpness of Doc's eyes in noting that the wires ran through insulators at the steel posts had saved him from death by electrocution!
A great leap launched Doc's powerful form several feet up the tree. He ran on up as easily as a squirrel. He worked out on the branch, balancing like a tight-rope walker.
It was a full thirty feet to the ground. Yet great muscles cushioned his drop until it seemed he had hardly more than stepped off a chair.
Doc's golden eyes were alert. He knew this was the most dangerous moment of his entrance. If there was a guard, it was likely the fellow would see him.
He was right.
An eye of flame batted from behind a dry kiln. It licked so rapidly it was an ugly glow. Bullets passing Doc's head made a ringing sound like a nail tapping against a bottle. Then came the tumbling gobble of a machine gun.
Doc flattened against the ground. He moved with a bewildering speed. His bronze skin and dark clothing blended surprisingly with the earth.
The gunner stopped firing. He had completely lost track of his target He stepped out into the moonlight He held his weapon ready. It was not one of the submachine or "Tommy" guns firing .45-caliber pistol cartridges, but a regulation aircraft type gun shooting the big cartridges. It was harnessed to a wide leather belt about the guard's middle so he could handle the powerful recoil.
"Eet's de bronze guy!" bellowed the fellow. "Hee's over de fence!"
"Non, non!"
called another monkeylike member of the Cult of the Moccasin. "Hees could nevair find dis place!"
"Mebbe so—but he done be in here right now!"
The second man came running. He vaulted a row of live rollers, a conveyor formerly used to move sawed lumber to the kilns.
A mighty bronze arm flashed up from the shadowy side of the conveyor. It pulled the man down. A piercing scream tore from his lips.
The gunner, hearing that scream, but not seeing what had happened because he was looking elsewhere at the instant, ran over. He took one look on the other side of the conveyor.
He turned pale as though his heart had started pumping whitewash.
His companion lay there, crimson spilling slowly from the corners of his open mouth. The man was only unconscious, but the gunner took it for granted he was dead.
He let out a howl that rivaled the one he had just heard. He tore full speed for one of the storage sheds which still held dry lumber. He considered it impossible that anything of flesh and blood could have moved from the spot under the tree to the conveyor with such swiftness. And without being seen?
He couldn't fight a bronze ghost!
He thought he heard a noise behind. He whirled wildly with his gun. But he saw nothing to alarm.
"Vat's wrong weeth yo'?" came a harsh whisper.
The gunner gulped his relief. This was the voice of one of his own evil kind.
"A debbil!" he gulped. "A bronze debbil man! Heem move like cloud that ees tie to rabbit's tail!"
"A debbil?" The other voice was muffled.
"Yo' bat!" The gunner shuddered.
It was darker than the inside of an owl here in the rough-dry shed.
"Me—I don' hear nottin'!" declared the other man.
The gunner licked his lips. He couldn't hear anything, either.
"Yo' don' nevair hear dat debbil man!" he muttered. "Say, vat yo' out here for? Boss ees say fo' ever'body stay outta sight, except for us two on guard!"
"Me—I come out get drink," said the other shortly. "I'm dang if l can find way back."
"Ho, yo' lost?"
"Oui!
I tell yo' I'm dang if I can find way back, ain't I?"
The gunner gave a harsh snort.
"Ho, de place ees in middle of de pile right yere!"
"De one yo' leanin' on?"
"Oui!
Dat ees right!"
The next instant, a lumber pile seemed to fall on the gunner—except that it was bronze in hue and delivered paralyzing blows with great, powerful fists.
Just before the gunner went down, senseless, he realized what had befallen him.
He hadn't been talking to one of his fellows. He had been conversing with the bronze "debbil!"
Doc had simply imitated the swampman's dialect in order to learn where the kidnaped victims were being held. The spot was inside one of the great lumber piles!
Doc released the firing lever.
"Got heem!" he yelled, imitating the polyglot, of the swamp speech.
A soaring leap took him up some feet on the sheer side of a lumber stack. He clung there to a board that projected hardly more than a quarter of an inch.
Below him, the apparently solid side of the lumber pile opened outward. Sounds told him what had happened. It was too dark to see anything.
"Vat ees eet?" called a voice. "Who ees yo' got?"
It was right under Doc! The speaker had thrust his head out of the lumber pile.
One of Doc's mighty hands floated down. It fished. It found a head.
The victim emitted one faint, low sound like a chicken that had been stepped on. Then his head collided with the side of the lumber pile, and he hung loose and unconscious.
Doc let him fall. He whipped inside the lumber pile.
A flashing from within spiked a narrow beam. The glare found Doc. It lost him as he moved swiftly. The man with the light fired a revolver, then gritted curses because he had missed the mark.
There seemed to be a large room inside the lumber pile. The walls were built like those of a refrigerator—with an air space between inner and outer planking. No doubt the secret chamber was virtually soundproof.
A blood-curdling shriek rang inside the room. A body threshed. A gun exploded. Silence followed.
The man with the flashlight had felt the mighty hand of Doc Savage! He was now senseless on the floor.
The interior of the lumber pile held the quiet of a tomb of ancient Egypt. But a watch ticked somewhere in the black abyss. It ran rapidly. It sounded like a woman's watch.
"Doc!" called Ham's voice softly. "There was only four of them here."
"Then the roost is cleaned!" chuckled Doc. He lit a match.
Big Eric, Edna, Ham—all three were safe on the floor. Their arms were a bit purple because of the tight ropes that bound them. But such trifles could be soon forgotten.
"I thought we were as good as dead!" Big Eric muttered. "They were going to send us to their chief hide-out, the place they called the Castle of the Moccasin. There, the Gray Spider would have tried to force us to sign papers declaring we had suddenly decided to take a long vacation. Then we would have been killed, I suspect."
"The Castle of the Moccasin!" Doc said dryly. "The thing for us to do is to persuade our prisoners to tell us where the place is! We may be able to get the Gray Spider there!"
"I hate to hang crepe, Doc," Ham offered, "but you're out of luck!"
"Eh?"
"None of these fellows know where the Castle of the Moccasin is, unless I'm mistaken. From their talk, I gathered that it is sort of sacred high temple of their voodoo cult. Only the high-muck-amucks are permitted to visit it. Regular barbarian taboo stuff."
"Why are you so sure, Ham?" Doc asked.
"Because I overheard a talk they were having. They didn't think we'd ever escape. There was no reason for them to deceive us."
"Then we'll have to fall back on my original plan," Doc said steadily.
He departed to turn the deadly high-voltage current off the barbed-wire fence, and to get his roadster.
He walked swiftly, for he was in a hurry to get back to New Orleans and place his four additional prisoners with the two in a drugged sleep in the hotel room. There would be six of them to go to his amazing criminal-reforming institution in up-State New York.
No doubt more than six would be resting in the room before this affair was settled. For Doc Savage had as yet hardly started to fight the Gray Spider!
Dropping lightly through the window, Doc searched the two dazed monkey men. He threw their weapons away. They seemed to grow light in his powerful grasp, and sailed through the window into the house. They tumbled end over end across the floor, such was the momentum with which they had been tossed.
Doc did not bother to tie them. When one tried to flee, he was knocked flat on his back before he had taken a single step. They had no more chance of escaping Doc than a captured mouse has of evading the cat that caught it.
"Where are the people who were taken away?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room.
"No savvy what yo' talk about!" muttered one of the vile swamp denizens.
"Have you any idea what will happen to you if you don't talk?"
The pair were scared. But it was not a drooling, cowardly fear. They were determined not to talk.
"Yo' nevair geet one single word from us!"
Doc was convinced they were right. He knew men. He felt these half-savage swampers could be tortured to death without a word escaping their lips.
Standing erect, Doc strode over to the lifeless body of the pilot. Then his gaze went to a cheap ring on a finger of the dead man.
The pilot had used the upraised setting of his ring to scratch three letters and a number in the wall plaster:
W.W.S.3.
Doc Savage's eyes ranged over the sprawling inscription. He examined the pilot's ring and made sure traces of plaster still clung in the setting. The pilot had undoubtedly scrawled the cipher.
Perhaps a minute, Doc remained motionless. Then he nodded slightly, as if to himself. He had solved the puzzle of those letters. There was a telephone in the adjacent room.
The two evil little swampmen found themselves batted head over heels into the next room. They wound up in a corner, dazed, aching. It was not pleasant treatment they were receiving.
Standing with one golden eye on the unsavory pair, Doc picked up the phone. He was connected with the leading morning newspaper in New Orleans.
"I would like to get the location of Worldwide Sawmills No. 3 plant," he requested.
This, Doc had decided, was the meaning of the "W. W. S. 3" scratched in the closet plaster.
In a moment, the information came rattling over the phone wire.
"Thank you." Doc hung up.
The two swamp rats squirmed uneasily, expecting the worst. Their captor seemed to have no more regard for their kind than a lion has for a jackal. And he handled them in about the same fashion.
"Come on, come on!" Doc told them. "We're leaving here!"
Half an hour later, the two swampmen were sleeping in a hotel room. Their sleep was caused by a drug, the effects of which would not wear off for weeks. The two would not be disturbed by the hotel attendants.
In a day or so, a mysterious stranger would arrive. He would take the two men to an amazing institution in the northern part of New York State. This place was run by one of the greatest experts on psychology and criminal minds alive. This wizard made a business of curing men of their criminal tendencies, whether they wanted to be cured or not. No one released from his institution as cured had ever been known to go back to his former life of crime!
This remarkable place was supported by Doc Savage's fabulous wealth. Doc Savage never sent a villain who opposed him to a prison. The police never got them. Instead, they went to this weird establishment to be renovated into decent citizens.
Doc telegraphed the man at the institution to send for the two swamp natives. Then he selected a small garage that seemed to need business and bought a good used roadster for cash.
The car carried him rapidly out of New Orleans. He was headed for the No. 3 plant of Worldwide Sawmills concern.
Night wind whipped his bronze face and deeper bronze hair, but with no more effect than had he been a man of metal. Tires whined on the concrete. The speedometer flirted with seventy.
* * *
DAWN was not far off when the charging roadster neared the vicinity of Worldwide Sawmills Plant No. 3. It was in a cypress logging district. Off to the right the surface of a bayou shimmered in the bright moonlight. An occasional late-feeding fish leaped, casting ring after ring of ripples.A floating sawmill was on the bayou. It consisted of a head saw, edger, trimmer, and cut-off saws mounted on a big scow. It was shut down for the night, but a tendril of smoke strung from the boiler stack. A fireman was puttering about, preparing to get up steam for the new day's work.
Doc turned off the roadster headlights. The windshield had become splattered with night moths, and he had turned it down. His eyes roved alertly. It was only a few miles more.
Great branches overhung the road. Tendrils of moss draped low enough to whip his face occasionally. It was a somber, macabre region.
Kicking the gears into neutral, Doc switched off the motor. The machine, going seventy, would roll a mile on this road. After the engine died, the call of night birds was audible. The tires buzzed on the pavement.
Before his momentum was gone, Doc wheeled off the road into a brushy lane. He left the car masked by a thicket of swamp maples.
Out on the bayou, a tug whistle honked stentoriously. Through the trees, Doc saw the tug was escorting a raft of logs fully half a mile long. Evidently they were being rushed to some mill in time for the day's work.
But they were not headed for Worldwide Sawmills No. 3! The plant was shut down!
A soundless wraith in the roadside brush, Doc reconnoitered.
Judging from appearance, the sawmill had been shut down about a month. It was an expensive plant, too. The capacity must have been nearly a hundred thousand board feet. Storage sheds for dry lumber were large enough to hold supplies of twenty million or so board feet.
It was obvious these sheds were nearly empty! That explained it! The Gray Spider's men were selling off the lumber from the dry sheds.
The plant was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence of surprising height. The steel poles extended twenty feet above the ground.
Doc started to run lightly up the fence. Halfway to the top, he suddenly released his grip and dropped to the ground.
"A narrow squeak!" he told himself sagely.
Finding a wet limb, he tossed it against the upper part of the fence. The twig came in contact with two of the barbed strands.
There was a sputtering burst of unholy green fire. Smoking, the twig fell to earth.
The fence carried a high-voltage electric current!
Only the sharpness of Doc's eyes in noting that the wires ran through insulators at the steel posts had saved him from death by electrocution!
* * *
AROUND the fence, the bronze giant worked. He found a tree. It had one branch which extended beyond the electrified fence.A great leap launched Doc's powerful form several feet up the tree. He ran on up as easily as a squirrel. He worked out on the branch, balancing like a tight-rope walker.
It was a full thirty feet to the ground. Yet great muscles cushioned his drop until it seemed he had hardly more than stepped off a chair.
Doc's golden eyes were alert. He knew this was the most dangerous moment of his entrance. If there was a guard, it was likely the fellow would see him.
He was right.
An eye of flame batted from behind a dry kiln. It licked so rapidly it was an ugly glow. Bullets passing Doc's head made a ringing sound like a nail tapping against a bottle. Then came the tumbling gobble of a machine gun.
Doc flattened against the ground. He moved with a bewildering speed. His bronze skin and dark clothing blended surprisingly with the earth.
The gunner stopped firing. He had completely lost track of his target He stepped out into the moonlight He held his weapon ready. It was not one of the submachine or "Tommy" guns firing .45-caliber pistol cartridges, but a regulation aircraft type gun shooting the big cartridges. It was harnessed to a wide leather belt about the guard's middle so he could handle the powerful recoil.
"Eet's de bronze guy!" bellowed the fellow. "Hee's over de fence!"
"Non, non!"
called another monkeylike member of the Cult of the Moccasin. "Hees could nevair find dis place!"
"Mebbe so—but he done be in here right now!"
The second man came running. He vaulted a row of live rollers, a conveyor formerly used to move sawed lumber to the kilns.
A mighty bronze arm flashed up from the shadowy side of the conveyor. It pulled the man down. A piercing scream tore from his lips.
The gunner, hearing that scream, but not seeing what had happened because he was looking elsewhere at the instant, ran over. He took one look on the other side of the conveyor.
He turned pale as though his heart had started pumping whitewash.
His companion lay there, crimson spilling slowly from the corners of his open mouth. The man was only unconscious, but the gunner took it for granted he was dead.
He let out a howl that rivaled the one he had just heard. He tore full speed for one of the storage sheds which still held dry lumber. He considered it impossible that anything of flesh and blood could have moved from the spot under the tree to the conveyor with such swiftness. And without being seen?
He couldn't fight a bronze ghost!
* * *
HE dived into the great shed. The interior was rather dark. Rough, dry lumber was here. The piles were fully sixteen feet high. Back into the labyrinth, the scared swampman worked.He thought he heard a noise behind. He whirled wildly with his gun. But he saw nothing to alarm.
"Vat's wrong weeth yo'?" came a harsh whisper.
The gunner gulped his relief. This was the voice of one of his own evil kind.
"A debbil!" he gulped. "A bronze debbil man! Heem move like cloud that ees tie to rabbit's tail!"
"A debbil?" The other voice was muffled.
"Yo' bat!" The gunner shuddered.
It was darker than the inside of an owl here in the rough-dry shed.
"Me—I don' hear nottin'!" declared the other man.
The gunner licked his lips. He couldn't hear anything, either.
"Yo' don' nevair hear dat debbil man!" he muttered. "Say, vat yo' out here for? Boss ees say fo' ever'body stay outta sight, except for us two on guard!"
"Me—I come out get drink," said the other shortly. "I'm dang if l can find way back."
"Ho, yo' lost?"
"Oui!
I tell yo' I'm dang if I can find way back, ain't I?"
The gunner gave a harsh snort.
"Ho, de place ees in middle of de pile right yere!"
"De one yo' leanin' on?"
"Oui!
Dat ees right!"
The next instant, a lumber pile seemed to fall on the gunner—except that it was bronze in hue and delivered paralyzing blows with great, powerful fists.
Just before the gunner went down, senseless, he realized what had befallen him.
He hadn't been talking to one of his fellows. He had been conversing with the bronze "debbil!"
Doc had simply imitated the swampman's dialect in order to learn where the kidnaped victims were being held. The spot was inside one of the great lumber piles!
* * *
DOC now did a peculiar thing. He depressed the firing lever of the aircraft type machine gun belted to the monkey man's middle. The weapon spewed flame, fumes, and copronickel slugs. The terrific din made in the narrow space between the lumber piles was like two bolts of thunder fighting.Doc released the firing lever.
"Got heem!" he yelled, imitating the polyglot, of the swamp speech.
A soaring leap took him up some feet on the sheer side of a lumber stack. He clung there to a board that projected hardly more than a quarter of an inch.
Below him, the apparently solid side of the lumber pile opened outward. Sounds told him what had happened. It was too dark to see anything.
"Vat ees eet?" called a voice. "Who ees yo' got?"
It was right under Doc! The speaker had thrust his head out of the lumber pile.
One of Doc's mighty hands floated down. It fished. It found a head.
The victim emitted one faint, low sound like a chicken that had been stepped on. Then his head collided with the side of the lumber pile, and he hung loose and unconscious.
Doc let him fall. He whipped inside the lumber pile.
A flashing from within spiked a narrow beam. The glare found Doc. It lost him as he moved swiftly. The man with the light fired a revolver, then gritted curses because he had missed the mark.
There seemed to be a large room inside the lumber pile. The walls were built like those of a refrigerator—with an air space between inner and outer planking. No doubt the secret chamber was virtually soundproof.
A blood-curdling shriek rang inside the room. A body threshed. A gun exploded. Silence followed.
The man with the flashlight had felt the mighty hand of Doc Savage! He was now senseless on the floor.
The interior of the lumber pile held the quiet of a tomb of ancient Egypt. But a watch ticked somewhere in the black abyss. It ran rapidly. It sounded like a woman's watch.
"Doc!" called Ham's voice softly. "There was only four of them here."
"Then the roost is cleaned!" chuckled Doc. He lit a match.
Big Eric, Edna, Ham—all three were safe on the floor. Their arms were a bit purple because of the tight ropes that bound them. But such trifles could be soon forgotten.
"I thought we were as good as dead!" Big Eric muttered. "They were going to send us to their chief hide-out, the place they called the Castle of the Moccasin. There, the Gray Spider would have tried to force us to sign papers declaring we had suddenly decided to take a long vacation. Then we would have been killed, I suspect."
"The Castle of the Moccasin!" Doc said dryly. "The thing for us to do is to persuade our prisoners to tell us where the place is! We may be able to get the Gray Spider there!"
"I hate to hang crepe, Doc," Ham offered, "but you're out of luck!"
"Eh?"
"None of these fellows know where the Castle of the Moccasin is, unless I'm mistaken. From their talk, I gathered that it is sort of sacred high temple of their voodoo cult. Only the high-muck-amucks are permitted to visit it. Regular barbarian taboo stuff."
"Why are you so sure, Ham?" Doc asked.
"Because I overheard a talk they were having. They didn't think we'd ever escape. There was no reason for them to deceive us."
"Then we'll have to fall back on my original plan," Doc said steadily.
He departed to turn the deadly high-voltage current off the barbed-wire fence, and to get his roadster.
He walked swiftly, for he was in a hurry to get back to New Orleans and place his four additional prisoners with the two in a drugged sleep in the hotel room. There would be six of them to go to his amazing criminal-reforming institution in up-State New York.
No doubt more than six would be resting in the room before this affair was settled. For Doc Savage had as yet hardly started to fight the Gray Spider!
* * *
Chapter VI. DEATH-END TRAIL
A GLORIUS dawn had seized upon New Orleans. Crowds hurried to work. In Canal Street, traffic boiled. The Walnut Street, Jackson Avenue, and Canal Street ferries carried a full load every time they crossed the Mississippi.
The business day was starting.
Doc had brought his friends and prisoners to town. Leaving the prisoners in the hotel room with the previously-captured men, Doc was back again in his roadster.
Wheeling the car along St. Charles Avenue, then turning right shortly after Julia Street, Doc stopped before the Danielsen & Haas building, and all got out.
The Danielsen & Haas building was one of great beauty. The masonry was gleaming white, with a modernistic scheme of ornamentation carried out in black stone. It looked like the conception some artist had formed of how buildings of the future would appear. It was not a skyscraper, reaching upward only ten stories.
A large number of people hurried in arid out.
"You seem to work quite a force," Ham suggested.
"More on the pay roll than we ever had," Big Eric replied proudly. "And I'm one lumberman who has not taken advantage of conditions to cut salaries."
They entered the lumber concern's offices.
"A note for Doc Savage," said the reception clerk. "The watchman claimed it was shoved under the front door some time during the night."
The business day was starting.
Doc had brought his friends and prisoners to town. Leaving the prisoners in the hotel room with the previously-captured men, Doc was back again in his roadster.
Wheeling the car along St. Charles Avenue, then turning right shortly after Julia Street, Doc stopped before the Danielsen & Haas building, and all got out.
The Danielsen & Haas building was one of great beauty. The masonry was gleaming white, with a modernistic scheme of ornamentation carried out in black stone. It looked like the conception some artist had formed of how buildings of the future would appear. It was not a skyscraper, reaching upward only ten stories.
A large number of people hurried in arid out.
"You seem to work quite a force," Ham suggested.
"More on the pay roll than we ever had," Big Eric replied proudly. "And I'm one lumberman who has not taken advantage of conditions to cut salaries."
They entered the lumber concern's offices.
"A note for Doc Savage," said the reception clerk. "The watchman claimed it was shoved under the front door some time during the night."