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Doc took the note and opened it. Inside was a sheet of plain white paper.
The paper was perfectly blank—except for a thumb print. The thumb print was enormous. It looked big as a baby track.
Doc smiled slightly. He recognized the print easily. Its very size was enough. Doc doubted another man on earth had a hand as big as the one which had made the print.
It belonged to Colonel John Renwick, the one of his five friends and aids who was called Renny. A man noted all over the world for his feats of engineering—that was Renny. He was also famed as the man who had a playful habit of knocking panels out of the heaviest doors with his vast fists.
The strange message told Doc his four men—Renny, Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny—had arrived in New Orleans during the night. No doubt, they had flown by a slightly slower plane.
Big Eric now led the way to his private office. In striking contrast to the palatial air of the rest of the building, Big Eric's sanctum was no more ornate than that of a sawmill foreman. The rug was full of holes, so that one had to step high to keep from tripping. The desk was old, with the edges pitted where cigars had carelessly burned.
"I can't work in a joint where they put on a lot of dog," Big Eric apologized. "This is the equipment I started out with thirty years ago."
Adjoining, was an office the exact opposite of Big Eric's in fittings. It had the finest Oriental rugs on the floor. The desk must have cost more than a sawmill jacket-feeder would make in a year. A complete bar with refrigerating and mixing machines occupied a corner. Pictures of young women—obviously chorus cuties—were about.
"The office of Horace Haas, my junior partner," explained Big Eric. Then, realizing the place hardly looked like a business office, he added defensively, "Horace Haas may not be a crack business man, but he furnished the capital for my start in life!"
At this point, a shrill, whanging voice said, "Could I have a word with you, Mr. Danielsen?"
Big Eric turned. "Oh, it's Silas Bunnywell, one of the bookkeepers."
He wore a shiny blue suit. His glasses were the sort Edna Danielsen had expected Doc Savage to be wearing. The lenses were like bottle bottoms.
"What is it, Bunnywell?" inquired Big Eric.
Old Bunnywell kneaded his hands together nervously. He seemed reluctant to talk.
"It is rather private," he muttered. "If I could see you alone—"
"Shoot!" Big Eric commanded. He waved an arm at Doc, Ham and Edna. "Ain't nothin' too private for these folks to hear."
"I'd rather only you—"
"C'mon, c'mon, Bunnywell!" rumbled the massive lumberman. "Talk up!"
"It's about Horace Haas," Bunnywell whined. "I loaned him five hundred dollars some time ago. He promised to pay it back within ten days. But when I ask him for it, he just laughs me off. I wonder—I wonder if you would speak to him. Five hundred dollars may not seem to you like much, but it is a large sum to me. I worked very hard to save it"
Big Eric cleared his throat noisily. He scowled. It was plain that he was disgusted with his business partner. He drew a large wallet from his pocket and extracted several bills.
"Here's your five hundred!" he boomed. "I'll collect it from Horace Haas!"
Old Bunnywell seemed about to sob. "Oh, thank you."
"Forget it!" thumped Big Eric. "I want my employees to make a complaint against an executive of the company just as soon as they would against an office boy, or quicker!"
Silas Bunnywell shuffled out, all but hugging his money.
"It's about time for me to hand Horace Haas another trimming with my fists!" growled Big Eric. "I have to knock him into line about once a year."
"Here he comes now, dad," interposed Edna.
Horace Haas came in. One noticed first the light-yellow, double-breasted tea vest he wore. Second in prominence was an enormous diamond ring. Morning coat, striped pants, too-shiny shoes and spats were noteworthy, as well as a flashy cravat.
The least striking thing in all this flamboyance was Horace Haas, the man. He was just a weak-chinned, florid, watery-eyed and roly-poly fat man. His hair was very dark.
He was excited. He flourished a sheet of paper.
"Big Eric!" he barked loudly. "I got something important! Lookit! A letter come through the mail this morning from Topper Beed, the man who has been helping us against the Gray Spider!"
Big Eric took the letter. He gave it a glance.
"Read this!" he boomed, and thrust it to Doc.
Doc's golden eyes translated:
If you want to seize the Gray Spider, I can tell you where to get him. TOPPER BEED.
"Give me Topper Beed's address!" Doc commanded.
"He has a large sawmill equipment repair shop and secondhand store over beyond Canal Street," replied Horace Haas. He gave the exact address.
Haas stared at the mighty bronze man. His weak jaw fell slowly. His shifty eyes seemed to swell in their watery sockets. He was awed by the giant metallic figure before him.
"So this is the Doc Savage you told me you was goin' after!" he muttered to Big Eric.
Doc Savage moved silently for the door. "I am going to interview Topper Beed," he said grimly.
No sign of life was apparent around the ramshackle sheet-iron building which housed the shop. The door was secured with a heavy chain and a padlock.
Doc Savage's sinewy bronze fingers worked for a moment with the padlock. They manipulated a steel tool that looked much like a darning needle, with a crook on the end.
The padlock opened. Doc entered the shop.
The place was built like an airplane hangar, although not quite as large. A sizable drill stood in one corner, an enormous forge and anvil in another. Grease and metal chips made a gum underfoot.
In one spot, water shone glassily on the greasy floor. It had been splashed there not many hours ago. Near the water stood a wooden tank. This had evidently been made by sawing in half a very large barrel.
The tublike tank was full to the brim with water. A coat of oil floated on the surface. Evidently it was the water used to temper metal after it had been worked with on the forge and anvil.
Doc stuck a pair of long-handled blacksmith's tongs into the tub—brought up the body of a man!
The form was stocky and muscular, with the rough red skin and calloused palms of one who has long worked with heat and metal.
The man had been stunned by a blow on the head, and held in the tank until he drowned.
Several letters reposed in an inner pocket. The addresses were still legible. They bore the name of Topper Beed.
The man had surfeited his life for his activities against the Gray Spider!
As Doc came out of the shop, two men down the street hastily settled low in the car they were driving.
"We gotta look out for that guy, Lefty!" one said.
"And how!" breathed the other. "Don't go staring at him like he was Santa Claus! He might notice!"
The pair were Lefty and Bugs, the two lumber company detectives who were in the Gray Spider's gang—the same pair who had treacherously struck down Big Eric!
Only a few minutes ago, they had received rush orders from the Gray Spider to come here and pick up the trail of the bronze man.
"We're to croak 'im if we get the chance!" muttered Lefty. "We might cut down on him right now!"
"Too risky!" Bugs hastily protested. "There's a cop in the next block."
They watched Doc Savage enter his roadster.
Lefty glanced about uneasily, as if to make sure no one was near, then growled: "I wonder if the bronze guy found anything to show we scragged old Topper Beed?"
"We didn't leave no clues!" snarled Bugs.
Doc Savage was unaware of the two murderers of Topper Beed crouched in their car. The morning sun shone on the windshield of their machine in such a manner that the reflection made it impossible to see inside.
Doc's roadster carried him over to Canal Street, thence southward. It halted shortly before a concern which sold dictaphones.
Lefty and Bugs, following discreetly far to the rear, saw Doc enter the establishment.
"I wish to purchase several dictaphone recording cylinders," Doc informed a clerk. "I wish also to use a dictaphone for several minutes."
It was an unusual request, but the clerk complied.
Seating himself at a machine used for demonstration purposes, Doc clipped on one of his new records and proceeded to dictate a long message.
No one heard his voice. The machine recorded smoothly. Doc gave order after order, together with detailed instructions on how they were to be carried out.
He was delivering commands to his men—for he intended to dispatch the records to them by messenger.
"Keep in mind," he finished, "that should one word of these instructions reach the Gray Spider, it might easily mean immediate death and destruction to us all."
Doc made his records into a small package. Down the street a few doors, he entered a telegraph office and engaged a messenger.
On a paper, he wrote the name of a hotel and a room number. It was the hotel to which he had directed his four pals—the directions having been on the message he had left in invisible ink at the Danielsen & Haas offices. Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny would be waiting there.
The messenger stood on the curb and watched the giant bronze man enter his roadster and drive toward the Danielsen & Haas building.
He eyed the address of the hotel, then tucked the paper in his tunic pocket. He pedaled on his errand.
Traffic was heavy on Canal Street. The messenger decided his shortest route was a left turn on Claiborne Avenue.
He veered over.
Suddenly an automobile whipped in front of his bike. He trod his coaster brake. No use! He hit the car head-on. His front wheel crumpled. He took a dive over the handlebars and banged his head against the car. Limp and unconscious, he dropped to the pavement.
By a miracle, the package he carried did not fall heavily enough to shatter the well-padded records inside.
"Nifty work Bugs!" chuckled one of the men in the car.
"Hold everything, Lefty!" rasped the other. "I'll grab the package the kid was carryin'!"
"Get the paper we saw him put in his coat pocket, too!"
The pair of crooked detectives had welcomed the chance to shift their shadowing activities from Doc Savage to the defenseless messenger boy. All too well, they remembered what the bronze giant had done to the four swampmen who had tried to slay him. They did not like the shadowing job, so they had taken a chance that whatever the messenger was carrying would be important enough to point to a reason for losing Doc Savage—for they would have to show the Gray Spider a good excuse.
Bugs got the package, and the paper from the messenger's pocket. He sprang into the car. The machine raced away.
"Hey, lookit!" exclaimed Bugs, opening the package. "Dictaphone records!"
"They got anything on 'em?"
"Guess so."
Lefty quickly turned their car to the curb as he caught sight of another office-supply concern.
"The bronze guy must've rented a machine to make 'em!" he declared. "What's to keep us from rentin' one to hear 'em?"
"That's usin' the old think box!" complimented Bugs.
They entered the office-supply establishment, drew a clerk aside, and made their needs known. A moment later, they were bending over a transcribing machine. A record was fitted on the cylinder.
The headset consisted of two receivers. They divided it between them. Lefty started the machine. They held their breath. The rotating record, not yet to the message, made a low hiss-hiss in their ears.
Then it began to talk to them!
A dazed expression seized their faces. It was as though somebody had suddenly hit them in the head with a hammer.
They couldn't understand a word they were hearing!
Doc Savage had dictated in a language not one person in a hundred million knew—the tongue of the ancient Mayan civilization! Doc and his men had learned this language from pure-blooded descendants of the ancient race of Maya—from the folk who resided in the lost valley in Central America, and who kept Doc supplied with gold.
"What're we gonna do now?" Bugs growled.
"Get these to the Gray Spider," Lefty decided.
The unsavory pair hurried toward the old French quarter, the bundle of records tucked under Lefty's arm.
Stepping into the French quarter is like stepping into an ancient part of Paris. Old buildings and quaint streets characterize the place. Overhanging balconies were plentiful.
Lefty and Bugs sidled furtively into one of the shabbiest of the buildings. They clumped down a shadowy passage. A door opened after they had mumbled their identity.
The shoddy, ill-smelling room in which they found themselves, was fitted with tables, rickety metal chairs, and a bar. Perhaps a dozen slovenly individuals were present, all men.
One of the yellowish-brown monkeylike men sat at a table. Lefty and Bugs gave him their package and the paper bearing the name of the hotel.
"Get this to the Gray Spider," Lefty directed. "Tell him we think it's important. Tell him we quit trailin' the bronze guy to grab it. And ask him what he wants us to do now."
Without a word, the monkey man departed with package and paper.
"I'd kinda like to follow that swamp snipe and see where the Gray Spider's got his hang-out here in New Orleans," leered Lefty.
"If you ask me, it wouldn't be healthy!" mumbled Bugs. "You saw what old Topper Beed got for knowin' too much!"
"You mean what we gave him!" Lefty chuckled coldly. "But he got hisn because he was spillin' what he knew."
"How'd Topper Beed happen to get wise to the Gray Spider?" questioned Bugs. "How'd he learn who the Gray Spider is?"
"Topper Beed was buyin' the stolen sawmills the Gray Spider's men were sellin'. But he got suspicious about the deals. He began to snoop around. He went to Danielsen & Haas with what he knew. And he finally found out too much."
"I'll say he did!" Bugs leered.
Several cigarettes were smoked by the pair in the wait that followed.
The yellowish-brown monkey man reappeared in the vile den.
"Gray Spider plentee much mad!" he growled. "Vat yo' send in de package vas no good to heem. Hees say yo' one pair plentee fools!"
Lefty and Bugs took this silently. They were getting off easy, for they had openly disobeyed the Gray Spider's orders in not at least trying to kill the mighty bronze man.
They gathered the Gray Spider had not been able to understand the mysterious lingo inscribed on the dictaphone records.
Another of the monkeylike swamp men shuffled in. He carried a cheap, new-looking black handbag. This he placed on the table.
"What's that?" Lefty demanded.
"Don't ask so many questions!" growled the swamp denizen. "Yo' ees to do mo' work. Oui!And yo' bettair not fall down on dis next job!"
He continued to speak. At times his gibberish was so rapid that Lefty and Bugs had to swear at him to slow him down understandably.
The two crooked lumber detectives began to get pale at the gills as the significance of the Gray Spider's orders dawned. They perspired freely.
"Jimminy!" Bugs whined. "I don't like this!"
"Me either!" grunted Lefty.
"Gray Spider order yo' do dese t'ings!" snapped the monkey man. "Yo' want me tell heem yo' say hees can go jump een river?"
"Nix, nix!" Lefty said hastily. "We'll go through with it."
"Git at it, den!" ordered the monkey man.
"There's one thing I don't like about workin' for this Gray Spider!" Lefty growled when they were out of earshot. "All of our orders come from them ignorant swamp snipes! Imagine us takin' orders from the likes of them!"
With the supreme egoism of a cheap criminal, Lefty was ignoring the fact that he was a more vile specimen than the illiterate swamp men. Lefty and Bugs had a certain amount of education, whereas the little monkey men were so ignorant as to hardly know right from wrong. In contrast to the two crooked detectives, they were men who might easily come under the superstitious sway of the Gray Spider.
"The snipes are only the Gray Spider's messengers!" Bugs said resignedly. "Anyway, it's payin' us to take the Gray Spider's orders! Ain't we makin' more money than we ever got in the lousy lumber detective business? Even with all the graft we could knock off lettin' timber poachers bribe us?"
"Yeah—that's right."
Chapter VII. KILLERS AT WORK
Chapter VIII. DOC PLANS
The paper was perfectly blank—except for a thumb print. The thumb print was enormous. It looked big as a baby track.
Doc smiled slightly. He recognized the print easily. Its very size was enough. Doc doubted another man on earth had a hand as big as the one which had made the print.
It belonged to Colonel John Renwick, the one of his five friends and aids who was called Renny. A man noted all over the world for his feats of engineering—that was Renny. He was also famed as the man who had a playful habit of knocking panels out of the heaviest doors with his vast fists.
The strange message told Doc his four men—Renny, Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny—had arrived in New Orleans during the night. No doubt, they had flown by a slightly slower plane.
Big Eric now led the way to his private office. In striking contrast to the palatial air of the rest of the building, Big Eric's sanctum was no more ornate than that of a sawmill foreman. The rug was full of holes, so that one had to step high to keep from tripping. The desk was old, with the edges pitted where cigars had carelessly burned.
"I can't work in a joint where they put on a lot of dog," Big Eric apologized. "This is the equipment I started out with thirty years ago."
Adjoining, was an office the exact opposite of Big Eric's in fittings. It had the finest Oriental rugs on the floor. The desk must have cost more than a sawmill jacket-feeder would make in a year. A complete bar with refrigerating and mixing machines occupied a corner. Pictures of young women—obviously chorus cuties—were about.
"The office of Horace Haas, my junior partner," explained Big Eric. Then, realizing the place hardly looked like a business office, he added defensively, "Horace Haas may not be a crack business man, but he furnished the capital for my start in life!"
At this point, a shrill, whanging voice said, "Could I have a word with you, Mr. Danielsen?"
Big Eric turned. "Oh, it's Silas Bunnywell, one of the bookkeepers."
* * *
SILAS BUNNEYWELL was a typical movie bookkeeper. He was tall, but his upper body was hunched as though he had sat on a stool all his life. His face was shrunken. He had a little pot belly, but the rest of him was too thin. His hair was white as a cottontail rabbit's tail.He wore a shiny blue suit. His glasses were the sort Edna Danielsen had expected Doc Savage to be wearing. The lenses were like bottle bottoms.
"What is it, Bunnywell?" inquired Big Eric.
Old Bunnywell kneaded his hands together nervously. He seemed reluctant to talk.
"It is rather private," he muttered. "If I could see you alone—"
"Shoot!" Big Eric commanded. He waved an arm at Doc, Ham and Edna. "Ain't nothin' too private for these folks to hear."
"I'd rather only you—"
"C'mon, c'mon, Bunnywell!" rumbled the massive lumberman. "Talk up!"
"It's about Horace Haas," Bunnywell whined. "I loaned him five hundred dollars some time ago. He promised to pay it back within ten days. But when I ask him for it, he just laughs me off. I wonder—I wonder if you would speak to him. Five hundred dollars may not seem to you like much, but it is a large sum to me. I worked very hard to save it"
Big Eric cleared his throat noisily. He scowled. It was plain that he was disgusted with his business partner. He drew a large wallet from his pocket and extracted several bills.
"Here's your five hundred!" he boomed. "I'll collect it from Horace Haas!"
Old Bunnywell seemed about to sob. "Oh, thank you."
"Forget it!" thumped Big Eric. "I want my employees to make a complaint against an executive of the company just as soon as they would against an office boy, or quicker!"
Silas Bunnywell shuffled out, all but hugging his money.
"It's about time for me to hand Horace Haas another trimming with my fists!" growled Big Eric. "I have to knock him into line about once a year."
"Here he comes now, dad," interposed Edna.
Horace Haas came in. One noticed first the light-yellow, double-breasted tea vest he wore. Second in prominence was an enormous diamond ring. Morning coat, striped pants, too-shiny shoes and spats were noteworthy, as well as a flashy cravat.
The least striking thing in all this flamboyance was Horace Haas, the man. He was just a weak-chinned, florid, watery-eyed and roly-poly fat man. His hair was very dark.
He was excited. He flourished a sheet of paper.
"Big Eric!" he barked loudly. "I got something important! Lookit! A letter come through the mail this morning from Topper Beed, the man who has been helping us against the Gray Spider!"
Big Eric took the letter. He gave it a glance.
"Read this!" he boomed, and thrust it to Doc.
Doc's golden eyes translated:
If you want to seize the Gray Spider, I can tell you where to get him. TOPPER BEED.
"Give me Topper Beed's address!" Doc commanded.
"He has a large sawmill equipment repair shop and secondhand store over beyond Canal Street," replied Horace Haas. He gave the exact address.
Haas stared at the mighty bronze man. His weak jaw fell slowly. His shifty eyes seemed to swell in their watery sockets. He was awed by the giant metallic figure before him.
"So this is the Doc Savage you told me you was goin' after!" he muttered to Big Eric.
Doc Savage moved silently for the door. "I am going to interview Topper Beed," he said grimly.
* * *
TOPPER BEED’S sawmill repair shop and secondhand store was not located far from the old French quarter. Beside the place, and easily accessible to a wharf on the Mississippi, lay what looked like a junk lot of the parts of scores of sawmills. Some of the stuff was in good shape.No sign of life was apparent around the ramshackle sheet-iron building which housed the shop. The door was secured with a heavy chain and a padlock.
Doc Savage's sinewy bronze fingers worked for a moment with the padlock. They manipulated a steel tool that looked much like a darning needle, with a crook on the end.
The padlock opened. Doc entered the shop.
The place was built like an airplane hangar, although not quite as large. A sizable drill stood in one corner, an enormous forge and anvil in another. Grease and metal chips made a gum underfoot.
In one spot, water shone glassily on the greasy floor. It had been splashed there not many hours ago. Near the water stood a wooden tank. This had evidently been made by sawing in half a very large barrel.
The tublike tank was full to the brim with water. A coat of oil floated on the surface. Evidently it was the water used to temper metal after it had been worked with on the forge and anvil.
Doc stuck a pair of long-handled blacksmith's tongs into the tub—brought up the body of a man!
The form was stocky and muscular, with the rough red skin and calloused palms of one who has long worked with heat and metal.
The man had been stunned by a blow on the head, and held in the tank until he drowned.
Several letters reposed in an inner pocket. The addresses were still legible. They bore the name of Topper Beed.
The man had surfeited his life for his activities against the Gray Spider!
* * *
DOC SAVAGE soon quitted the shop. The killers had been either clever or lucky, for they had left no clue to their Identity.As Doc came out of the shop, two men down the street hastily settled low in the car they were driving.
"We gotta look out for that guy, Lefty!" one said.
"And how!" breathed the other. "Don't go staring at him like he was Santa Claus! He might notice!"
The pair were Lefty and Bugs, the two lumber company detectives who were in the Gray Spider's gang—the same pair who had treacherously struck down Big Eric!
Only a few minutes ago, they had received rush orders from the Gray Spider to come here and pick up the trail of the bronze man.
"We're to croak 'im if we get the chance!" muttered Lefty. "We might cut down on him right now!"
"Too risky!" Bugs hastily protested. "There's a cop in the next block."
They watched Doc Savage enter his roadster.
Lefty glanced about uneasily, as if to make sure no one was near, then growled: "I wonder if the bronze guy found anything to show we scragged old Topper Beed?"
"We didn't leave no clues!" snarled Bugs.
Doc Savage was unaware of the two murderers of Topper Beed crouched in their car. The morning sun shone on the windshield of their machine in such a manner that the reflection made it impossible to see inside.
Doc's roadster carried him over to Canal Street, thence southward. It halted shortly before a concern which sold dictaphones.
Lefty and Bugs, following discreetly far to the rear, saw Doc enter the establishment.
"I wish to purchase several dictaphone recording cylinders," Doc informed a clerk. "I wish also to use a dictaphone for several minutes."
It was an unusual request, but the clerk complied.
Seating himself at a machine used for demonstration purposes, Doc clipped on one of his new records and proceeded to dictate a long message.
No one heard his voice. The machine recorded smoothly. Doc gave order after order, together with detailed instructions on how they were to be carried out.
He was delivering commands to his men—for he intended to dispatch the records to them by messenger.
"Keep in mind," he finished, "that should one word of these instructions reach the Gray Spider, it might easily mean immediate death and destruction to us all."
Doc made his records into a small package. Down the street a few doors, he entered a telegraph office and engaged a messenger.
On a paper, he wrote the name of a hotel and a room number. It was the hotel to which he had directed his four pals—the directions having been on the message he had left in invisible ink at the Danielsen & Haas offices. Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny would be waiting there.
The messenger stood on the curb and watched the giant bronze man enter his roadster and drive toward the Danielsen & Haas building.
* * *
WHEN Doc Savage was out of sight, the messenger got astride his bicycle. He carried his package carefully. He had been instructed to take pains not to drop it.He eyed the address of the hotel, then tucked the paper in his tunic pocket. He pedaled on his errand.
Traffic was heavy on Canal Street. The messenger decided his shortest route was a left turn on Claiborne Avenue.
He veered over.
Suddenly an automobile whipped in front of his bike. He trod his coaster brake. No use! He hit the car head-on. His front wheel crumpled. He took a dive over the handlebars and banged his head against the car. Limp and unconscious, he dropped to the pavement.
By a miracle, the package he carried did not fall heavily enough to shatter the well-padded records inside.
"Nifty work Bugs!" chuckled one of the men in the car.
"Hold everything, Lefty!" rasped the other. "I'll grab the package the kid was carryin'!"
"Get the paper we saw him put in his coat pocket, too!"
The pair of crooked detectives had welcomed the chance to shift their shadowing activities from Doc Savage to the defenseless messenger boy. All too well, they remembered what the bronze giant had done to the four swampmen who had tried to slay him. They did not like the shadowing job, so they had taken a chance that whatever the messenger was carrying would be important enough to point to a reason for losing Doc Savage—for they would have to show the Gray Spider a good excuse.
Bugs got the package, and the paper from the messenger's pocket. He sprang into the car. The machine raced away.
"Hey, lookit!" exclaimed Bugs, opening the package. "Dictaphone records!"
"They got anything on 'em?"
"Guess so."
Lefty quickly turned their car to the curb as he caught sight of another office-supply concern.
"The bronze guy must've rented a machine to make 'em!" he declared. "What's to keep us from rentin' one to hear 'em?"
"That's usin' the old think box!" complimented Bugs.
They entered the office-supply establishment, drew a clerk aside, and made their needs known. A moment later, they were bending over a transcribing machine. A record was fitted on the cylinder.
The headset consisted of two receivers. They divided it between them. Lefty started the machine. They held their breath. The rotating record, not yet to the message, made a low hiss-hiss in their ears.
Then it began to talk to them!
A dazed expression seized their faces. It was as though somebody had suddenly hit them in the head with a hammer.
They couldn't understand a word they were hearing!
Doc Savage had dictated in a language not one person in a hundred million knew—the tongue of the ancient Mayan civilization! Doc and his men had learned this language from pure-blooded descendants of the ancient race of Maya—from the folk who resided in the lost valley in Central America, and who kept Doc supplied with gold.
"What're we gonna do now?" Bugs growled.
"Get these to the Gray Spider," Lefty decided.
The unsavory pair hurried toward the old French quarter, the bundle of records tucked under Lefty's arm.
* * *
THE French quarter is the most ancient section of New Orleans. Although only a short distance from the new business district of skyscrapers, the French quarter is probably one of the most unique features of any American city. It is more remarkable even than the Chinatown of San Francisco.Stepping into the French quarter is like stepping into an ancient part of Paris. Old buildings and quaint streets characterize the place. Overhanging balconies were plentiful.
Lefty and Bugs sidled furtively into one of the shabbiest of the buildings. They clumped down a shadowy passage. A door opened after they had mumbled their identity.
The shoddy, ill-smelling room in which they found themselves, was fitted with tables, rickety metal chairs, and a bar. Perhaps a dozen slovenly individuals were present, all men.
One of the yellowish-brown monkeylike men sat at a table. Lefty and Bugs gave him their package and the paper bearing the name of the hotel.
"Get this to the Gray Spider," Lefty directed. "Tell him we think it's important. Tell him we quit trailin' the bronze guy to grab it. And ask him what he wants us to do now."
Without a word, the monkey man departed with package and paper.
"I'd kinda like to follow that swamp snipe and see where the Gray Spider's got his hang-out here in New Orleans," leered Lefty.
"If you ask me, it wouldn't be healthy!" mumbled Bugs. "You saw what old Topper Beed got for knowin' too much!"
"You mean what we gave him!" Lefty chuckled coldly. "But he got hisn because he was spillin' what he knew."
"How'd Topper Beed happen to get wise to the Gray Spider?" questioned Bugs. "How'd he learn who the Gray Spider is?"
"Topper Beed was buyin' the stolen sawmills the Gray Spider's men were sellin'. But he got suspicious about the deals. He began to snoop around. He went to Danielsen & Haas with what he knew. And he finally found out too much."
"I'll say he did!" Bugs leered.
Several cigarettes were smoked by the pair in the wait that followed.
The yellowish-brown monkey man reappeared in the vile den.
"Gray Spider plentee much mad!" he growled. "Vat yo' send in de package vas no good to heem. Hees say yo' one pair plentee fools!"
Lefty and Bugs took this silently. They were getting off easy, for they had openly disobeyed the Gray Spider's orders in not at least trying to kill the mighty bronze man.
They gathered the Gray Spider had not been able to understand the mysterious lingo inscribed on the dictaphone records.
Another of the monkeylike swamp men shuffled in. He carried a cheap, new-looking black handbag. This he placed on the table.
"What's that?" Lefty demanded.
"Don't ask so many questions!" growled the swamp denizen. "Yo' ees to do mo' work. Oui!And yo' bettair not fall down on dis next job!"
He continued to speak. At times his gibberish was so rapid that Lefty and Bugs had to swear at him to slow him down understandably.
The two crooked lumber detectives began to get pale at the gills as the significance of the Gray Spider's orders dawned. They perspired freely.
"Jimminy!" Bugs whined. "I don't like this!"
"Me either!" grunted Lefty.
"Gray Spider order yo' do dese t'ings!" snapped the monkey man. "Yo' want me tell heem yo' say hees can go jump een river?"
"Nix, nix!" Lefty said hastily. "We'll go through with it."
"Git at it, den!" ordered the monkey man.
* * *
LEFTY and Bugs slunk out into the picturesque, ancient street. They carried the handbag. It looked very new against the age of their surroundings."There's one thing I don't like about workin' for this Gray Spider!" Lefty growled when they were out of earshot. "All of our orders come from them ignorant swamp snipes! Imagine us takin' orders from the likes of them!"
With the supreme egoism of a cheap criminal, Lefty was ignoring the fact that he was a more vile specimen than the illiterate swamp men. Lefty and Bugs had a certain amount of education, whereas the little monkey men were so ignorant as to hardly know right from wrong. In contrast to the two crooked detectives, they were men who might easily come under the superstitious sway of the Gray Spider.
"The snipes are only the Gray Spider's messengers!" Bugs said resignedly. "Anyway, it's payin' us to take the Gray Spider's orders! Ain't we makin' more money than we ever got in the lousy lumber detective business? Even with all the graft we could knock off lettin' timber poachers bribe us?"
"Yeah—that's right."
* * *
Chapter VII. KILLERS AT WORK
IN the course of a little time, Lefty and Bugs turned up before the modernistic Danielsen & Haas building. They entered, carrying the cheap, new handbag.
An elevator lifted them to the top floor. Both men now had a spray of cold sweat on their evil faces.
"This is what I call walkin' into a lion's den!" shivered Bugs.
It was on this floor that Big Eric Danielsen had his office. If the fire-eating lumberman should see them, it would be too bad. And well they knew it!
Danielsen & Haas employees hurried about in the corridor. No one paid the two villainous lumber detectives particular attention. Although Big Eric knew the pair were the Gray Spider's men, he had not spread the word.
"The Gray Spider said we'd be tipped off if the cops started lookin' for us," Bugs muttered. "He said it'd be safe to walk in here, as long as Big Eric, Edna, Ham or the bronze guy didn't see us. I hope he was right!"
"Forget it!" sneered Lefty. "The dope we get from the Gray Spider is always right! He's one guy who don't make mistakes!"
They scuttled swiftly past the door of Big Eric's office. The next door bore the inscription:
HORACE HAAS
Lefty and Bugs exchanged uneasy glances. Then Lefty knocked on the door of Horace Haas's office.
Nothing happened.
"I wonder if whoever answers this door is the Gray Spider?" Bugs muttered.
"I was just wonderin' the same thing," whispered Lefty. "I’m gonna get a look at his face when he opens the door!"
The panel marked with the name of Horace Haas suddenly opened about six inches.
Lefty and Bugs hastily moved to stare into the crack. They were disappointed. They could see only the head of the man inside. And that head was muffled in a mask made out of a very large and brightly colored silk handkerchief.
"Give me the hand bag!" rasped the man in a tone so muffled Lefty and Bugs could not tell whether they had ever heard it before.
The cheap, new bag was passed into the room.
"You understand clearly what you are to do next?" demanded the masked man.
"You mean about goin' to the hotel named on the slip of paper we took from the messenger boy?" Lefty faltered.
"Exactly! You are to go there. You will find some of my swamp men waiting. You are to kill any and all men who registered at that hotel last night and this morning!"
Lefty and Bugs were bewildered. They didn't understand the purpose for the wholesale murder. "But why—"
"It is obvious the dictaphone records you intercepted were orders from Doc Savage to his men!" snarled the masked one. "Since Doc Savage only arrived in New Orleans last night, it is certain his men got here later. By wiping out all late comers to the hotel, we will be certain to get them!"
"What do Doc Savage's men look like?" quizzed Bugs. "How many are there?"
"I do not know that!" hissed the masked man. "I have exhausted my resources in an effort to learn! But it is no use. Whether he has one man or a hundred, I do not know! His aids might even be women! That is an idea! Kill all women who have registered lately at the hotel. Wipe them out along, with the men!"
Lefty and Bugs swapped knowing glances. The conversation had shown them something.
The masked man was the Gray Spider!
The master villain was taking the slaying of mighty bronze Doc Savage into his own hands.
"Go!" rasped the Gray Spider.
The unsavory pair turned away. They almost ran to the elevators. It was as if the devil himself stood in the door of Horace Haas's office at their backs. They had met the Gray Spider—and they were more afraid of the fiend than ever.
"The fools!" hissed the Gray Spider into his silken mask. "Their haste could easily attract suspicion. Their very clumsiness makes them dangerous men to have around. I shall have to add them to my playthings at the Castle of the Moccasin—as soon as they finish these murders for me."
The Gray Spider closed the door of Horace Haas's office.
However, all these physical quirks were assumed. Should some one enter the office unexpectedly, he did not want to be recognized. He kept a big automatic pistol in his hand against just such a contingency.
An eyehole of the Gray Spider's silken mask pushed close to the keyhole of the door that connected with Big Eric's office.
A faint gritting came from behind the silk mask, as though the wearer were grinding his teeth in hate at what he saw.
Doc Savage, striking as a mighty bronze statue, occupied a chair near the window. Sunlight slanted against his remarkable features. An unending play of tiny flickerings came from his eyes, as though they were pools of flake gold being continually stirred.
Big Eric, Edna, and Ham lounged in chairs. None of the three were more than an arm's length from the bronze giant. Ham had recovered his sword cane from where he had lost it during the attack of the swamp men at Big Eric's mansion. He twiddled it idly in his fingers.
The group talked in low voices. Big Eric and Edna were giving Doc details about the Gray Spider—details which there had been no time to deliver before. They were also discussing peculiar phases of the situation.
"Horace Haas has not been attacked by the Gray Spider, as I understand it," Doc suggested.
"Not a single time," admitted Big Eric.
"If you and your daughter should meet death, control of the company would fall into the hands of Horace Haas. Is that right?"
Big Eric looked like he had been slapped. His vast face purpled.
"Now, listen here!" he grumbled: "Horace Haas may be a fop and a spendthrift, but I'll stake my life he wouldn't lay a finger on Edna or me! He's not the Gray Spider!"
"You're jumping to conclusions," Doc said dryly. "What I was getting at is this—the Gray Spider may be trying to kill you two so control of your concern will go to Horace Haas. The Gray Spider could then terrorize Haas into doing his bidding. I think you will agree with me that Haas does not seem to be a man of particularly strong character. The Gray Spider could control him, I'm afraid."
Big Eric was thoughtful. Then he muttered: "I’ll bet that's it!"
Again the gritting sound of gnashed teeth came from the silk-masked man hunkering at the keyhole in the adjacent office.
The Gray Spider swiftly opened the new, cheap hand bag. He wore pale-gray gloves for this work.
The bag contents consisted of a strong but small steel tank, to which was attached several feet of tough hose somewhat smaller than a lead pencil.
"Poison gas!" gritted the Gray Spider, stroking the steel tank. "The same kind they managed to escape when my plane released it ahead of their craft. But they will not evade it this time! The slightest breath of it is death! Even its touch brings a terrible fate."
He inserted the hose end in the keyhole. He turned on a valve at the tank. With a shrill squeal, gas began escaping. The stuff was under high pressure.
The Gray Spider scuttled out of Horace Haas's office.
Luckily, the gas cloud did not blow directly against Doc and his friends. But it made a barrage between them and the other door—a barrage which it would be death to penetrate.
The only other means of exit was the window. And below that was a death-fall of ten stories.
Doc Savage's amazing muscular development gave him the ability to ascend or descend the average brick wall as easily and rapidly as a lesser man would dash up a flight of stairs. But the Danielsen & Haas building had been constructed of white marble blocks polished to a glassy luster, and fitted together with joints that were hardly visible to the naked eye. Even Doc could find no handhold on that sheer wall!
Nevertheless, the window was the only escape.
Sinewy bronze arms wrenched up the window a chip part of a second after the gas began to whistle.
"Outside!" Doc's powerful voice crashed. "Stand on the sill!"
Big Eric and Edna hastily scrambled out. Ham followed. The window sill was hardly six inches wide. They were forced to grasp every handhold that offered to their finger tips.
"No use!" Big Eric wailed. "The infernal gas will seep around the window edges and get us! These sashes don't fit tight! I've often felt a draft when they're closed!"
It was Doc Savage's keen brain that solved the problem.
A small pot of ordinary white paste stood on Big Eric's shabby desk. Doc scooped this up. He joined the others outside on the window sill. He closed the window.
With quick strokes, Doc strung the gummy white paste around the window, effectively sealing all cracks.
"That's what I call quick work!" Big Eric said admiringly. "But why couldn't we have dashed through the gas cloud to the door?"
"The stuff is not only deadly if inhaled, but fatal if it touches the skin, unless I am mistaken," Doc explained. "I believe it is closely akin to the terrible mustard gas used in the World War."
Doc sidled swiftly to one end of the window sill.
The next window was half a dozen feet distant. The wall between was every bit as smooth as glass.
But Doc Savage, employing the springy tendons of his legs, and the balancing effect of his strong arms, leaped side-wise from the window sill. It seemed an impossible feat to accomplish without falling outward from the sheer building.
His great bronze frame appeared to skid a rising arc along the wall. He reached the next window. His powerful fingers grasped and held.
He was safe!
It had happened before the others could as much as emit a gasp of amazement.
"Stay where you are!" Doc commanded them.
Doc watched the building entrance several minutes. He saw no one leave in a suspicious manner.
Returning upstairs, he noted that old Silas Bunnywell, the bookkeeper, occupied a tiny cubicle from the door of which the entrance of Horace Haas's office could be seen. Old Bunnywell was stooped over his ledgers.
"Have you noticed Horace Haas leave his office recently?" Doc inquired.
The old man took off his glasses and rubbed his reddened eyes. "No, sir. I'm quite sure I haven't. Mr. Haas must be in his office now. Only a few minutes ago, I saw two men hand a bag through his door."
"Describe them!" Doc commanded.
Elderly Silas Bunnywell gave an accurate description of Lefty and Bugs.
Doc recognized the pair from what Big Eric had told him of them.
"And Horace Haas is in his office now?" Doc said grimly.
"I am not sure. But he must have been there a few minutes ago. I am not able to observe all who enter, because of my work."
Doc swung to the door of Haas's office. He opened it. He was cautious, not knowing what form of death might lurk within for him. But he need not have been careful.
The office was empty, but Doc saw the gas contrivance.
He turned off the petcock on the tank of gas in the hand bag. Then he got a rope, went to the roof, and rescued Big Eric, Edna, and Ham from the window sill.
They held a serious council in Haas's office.
"It looks bad for friend Horace!" Ham said, tight-lipped.
"You mean you think Horace Haas turned that gas on us?" Big Eric muttered.
"What do youthink?"
"I don't know," Big Eric replied, a long hesitation between each word. "I hate to think he'd do such a thing. But there's no reason why he should go out."
At this juncture, Horace Haas came into the room. His step was not as jaunty as usual. He looked like a fat, overfed pup somebody had just kicked. He gave a distinct start at sight of Doc and the others.
"I—er—hello," he said uncertainly.
Big Eric got to the point without delay.
"Where in thunder have you been?" he roared.
Horace Haas reddened angrily. "Since when was I tied to your apron strings? None of your business—where I've been!"
"It might interest you, wise guy," Ham put in, "to know that an attempt was just made on our lives from your office. And, to be very frank, you are under suspicion!"
Doc Savage watched the man. Either Horace Haas was a finished actor, or he was genuinely shocked at the accusation.
"I—er—suppose I had better tell where I was." Horace Haas pulled a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. The piece of silk was brightly colored.
"I received a telephone call from a—er—young lady," Haas began.
"A chorus stepper?" rumbled Big Eric.
Horace Haas flinched. "Ah—yes, a young lady of the chorus. At least, that is who she said she was. She asked me to meet her at a soda fountain near here. So I went—"
"An old goat of your age!" Big Eric snorted. "I oughta get up and kick the seat of your pants!"
"—but I didn't find the young lady!" Horace Haas finished desperately. "She did not appear. I waited some time, decided I was being stood up, and came back."
Big Eric rumbled a noisy laugh. "Somebody played you for a sap to get you out of your office so an attempt could be made on our lives!" He whirled to Doc. "Don't you think that was it?"
Doc had formed no definite opinion. He had no proof against Horace Haas—he had no real proof that he was innocent, either. He gave a noncommital answer.
"Possibly."
Swinging over to the telephone, Doc called the number of the telegraph company branch office from which he had engaged his messenger. He was merely checking up on whether the dictaphone records had been delivered to his fellow scrappers.
He received the bad news.
"What?" he demanded. "The messenger was waylaid and robbed en route?"
Hanging up, Doc let his golden eyes range over his companions.
"It seems," he said slowly, "that the Gray Spider is setting out to carry the warfare to us."
"The boys may be in danger!" Ham clipped.
Doc nodded. "Exactly. You stay here, Ham. Take every precaution to guard against the Gray Spider. I'm going to see if our four brothers are in any kind of a mess!"
He left the building swiftly.
An elevator lifted them to the top floor. Both men now had a spray of cold sweat on their evil faces.
"This is what I call walkin' into a lion's den!" shivered Bugs.
It was on this floor that Big Eric Danielsen had his office. If the fire-eating lumberman should see them, it would be too bad. And well they knew it!
Danielsen & Haas employees hurried about in the corridor. No one paid the two villainous lumber detectives particular attention. Although Big Eric knew the pair were the Gray Spider's men, he had not spread the word.
"The Gray Spider said we'd be tipped off if the cops started lookin' for us," Bugs muttered. "He said it'd be safe to walk in here, as long as Big Eric, Edna, Ham or the bronze guy didn't see us. I hope he was right!"
"Forget it!" sneered Lefty. "The dope we get from the Gray Spider is always right! He's one guy who don't make mistakes!"
They scuttled swiftly past the door of Big Eric's office. The next door bore the inscription:
HORACE HAAS
Lefty and Bugs exchanged uneasy glances. Then Lefty knocked on the door of Horace Haas's office.
Nothing happened.
"I wonder if whoever answers this door is the Gray Spider?" Bugs muttered.
"I was just wonderin' the same thing," whispered Lefty. "I’m gonna get a look at his face when he opens the door!"
The panel marked with the name of Horace Haas suddenly opened about six inches.
Lefty and Bugs hastily moved to stare into the crack. They were disappointed. They could see only the head of the man inside. And that head was muffled in a mask made out of a very large and brightly colored silk handkerchief.
"Give me the hand bag!" rasped the man in a tone so muffled Lefty and Bugs could not tell whether they had ever heard it before.
The cheap, new bag was passed into the room.
"You understand clearly what you are to do next?" demanded the masked man.
"You mean about goin' to the hotel named on the slip of paper we took from the messenger boy?" Lefty faltered.
"Exactly! You are to go there. You will find some of my swamp men waiting. You are to kill any and all men who registered at that hotel last night and this morning!"
Lefty and Bugs were bewildered. They didn't understand the purpose for the wholesale murder. "But why—"
"It is obvious the dictaphone records you intercepted were orders from Doc Savage to his men!" snarled the masked one. "Since Doc Savage only arrived in New Orleans last night, it is certain his men got here later. By wiping out all late comers to the hotel, we will be certain to get them!"
"What do Doc Savage's men look like?" quizzed Bugs. "How many are there?"
"I do not know that!" hissed the masked man. "I have exhausted my resources in an effort to learn! But it is no use. Whether he has one man or a hundred, I do not know! His aids might even be women! That is an idea! Kill all women who have registered lately at the hotel. Wipe them out along, with the men!"
Lefty and Bugs swapped knowing glances. The conversation had shown them something.
The masked man was the Gray Spider!
The master villain was taking the slaying of mighty bronze Doc Savage into his own hands.
"Go!" rasped the Gray Spider.
The unsavory pair turned away. They almost ran to the elevators. It was as if the devil himself stood in the door of Horace Haas's office at their backs. They had met the Gray Spider—and they were more afraid of the fiend than ever.
"The fools!" hissed the Gray Spider into his silken mask. "Their haste could easily attract suspicion. Their very clumsiness makes them dangerous men to have around. I shall have to add them to my playthings at the Castle of the Moccasin—as soon as they finish these murders for me."
The Gray Spider closed the door of Horace Haas's office.
* * *
CARRYING the new, cheap hand bag, the Gray Spider crossed the office. He did not remove his mask. He walked with his body drawn into a hunched bundle. He had a pronounced limp.However, all these physical quirks were assumed. Should some one enter the office unexpectedly, he did not want to be recognized. He kept a big automatic pistol in his hand against just such a contingency.
An eyehole of the Gray Spider's silken mask pushed close to the keyhole of the door that connected with Big Eric's office.
A faint gritting came from behind the silk mask, as though the wearer were grinding his teeth in hate at what he saw.
Doc Savage, striking as a mighty bronze statue, occupied a chair near the window. Sunlight slanted against his remarkable features. An unending play of tiny flickerings came from his eyes, as though they were pools of flake gold being continually stirred.
Big Eric, Edna, and Ham lounged in chairs. None of the three were more than an arm's length from the bronze giant. Ham had recovered his sword cane from where he had lost it during the attack of the swamp men at Big Eric's mansion. He twiddled it idly in his fingers.
The group talked in low voices. Big Eric and Edna were giving Doc details about the Gray Spider—details which there had been no time to deliver before. They were also discussing peculiar phases of the situation.
"Horace Haas has not been attacked by the Gray Spider, as I understand it," Doc suggested.
"Not a single time," admitted Big Eric.
"If you and your daughter should meet death, control of the company would fall into the hands of Horace Haas. Is that right?"
Big Eric looked like he had been slapped. His vast face purpled.
"Now, listen here!" he grumbled: "Horace Haas may be a fop and a spendthrift, but I'll stake my life he wouldn't lay a finger on Edna or me! He's not the Gray Spider!"
"You're jumping to conclusions," Doc said dryly. "What I was getting at is this—the Gray Spider may be trying to kill you two so control of your concern will go to Horace Haas. The Gray Spider could then terrorize Haas into doing his bidding. I think you will agree with me that Haas does not seem to be a man of particularly strong character. The Gray Spider could control him, I'm afraid."
Big Eric was thoughtful. Then he muttered: "I’ll bet that's it!"
Again the gritting sound of gnashed teeth came from the silk-masked man hunkering at the keyhole in the adjacent office.
The Gray Spider swiftly opened the new, cheap hand bag. He wore pale-gray gloves for this work.
The bag contents consisted of a strong but small steel tank, to which was attached several feet of tough hose somewhat smaller than a lead pencil.
"Poison gas!" gritted the Gray Spider, stroking the steel tank. "The same kind they managed to escape when my plane released it ahead of their craft. But they will not evade it this time! The slightest breath of it is death! Even its touch brings a terrible fate."
He inserted the hose end in the keyhole. He turned on a valve at the tank. With a shrill squeal, gas began escaping. The stuff was under high pressure.
The Gray Spider scuttled out of Horace Haas's office.
* * *
THE squeal of the liberating gas seemed to increase its note. So great was the velocity with which it left the hose that it was thrown completely across the office in which the four intended victims sat.Luckily, the gas cloud did not blow directly against Doc and his friends. But it made a barrage between them and the other door—a barrage which it would be death to penetrate.
The only other means of exit was the window. And below that was a death-fall of ten stories.
Doc Savage's amazing muscular development gave him the ability to ascend or descend the average brick wall as easily and rapidly as a lesser man would dash up a flight of stairs. But the Danielsen & Haas building had been constructed of white marble blocks polished to a glassy luster, and fitted together with joints that were hardly visible to the naked eye. Even Doc could find no handhold on that sheer wall!
Nevertheless, the window was the only escape.
Sinewy bronze arms wrenched up the window a chip part of a second after the gas began to whistle.
"Outside!" Doc's powerful voice crashed. "Stand on the sill!"
Big Eric and Edna hastily scrambled out. Ham followed. The window sill was hardly six inches wide. They were forced to grasp every handhold that offered to their finger tips.
"No use!" Big Eric wailed. "The infernal gas will seep around the window edges and get us! These sashes don't fit tight! I've often felt a draft when they're closed!"
It was Doc Savage's keen brain that solved the problem.
A small pot of ordinary white paste stood on Big Eric's shabby desk. Doc scooped this up. He joined the others outside on the window sill. He closed the window.
With quick strokes, Doc strung the gummy white paste around the window, effectively sealing all cracks.
"That's what I call quick work!" Big Eric said admiringly. "But why couldn't we have dashed through the gas cloud to the door?"
"The stuff is not only deadly if inhaled, but fatal if it touches the skin, unless I am mistaken," Doc explained. "I believe it is closely akin to the terrible mustard gas used in the World War."
Doc sidled swiftly to one end of the window sill.
The next window was half a dozen feet distant. The wall between was every bit as smooth as glass.
But Doc Savage, employing the springy tendons of his legs, and the balancing effect of his strong arms, leaped side-wise from the window sill. It seemed an impossible feat to accomplish without falling outward from the sheer building.
His great bronze frame appeared to skid a rising arc along the wall. He reached the next window. His powerful fingers grasped and held.
He was safe!
It had happened before the others could as much as emit a gasp of amazement.
"Stay where you are!" Doc commanded them.
* * *
A FRECKLED stenographer strangled on the gum she was chewing as the big bronze man appeared like magic in the window beside her desk. She was still coughing when Doc crossed the room and entered the corridor. She had received the shock of her gum-chewing career.Doc watched the building entrance several minutes. He saw no one leave in a suspicious manner.
Returning upstairs, he noted that old Silas Bunnywell, the bookkeeper, occupied a tiny cubicle from the door of which the entrance of Horace Haas's office could be seen. Old Bunnywell was stooped over his ledgers.
"Have you noticed Horace Haas leave his office recently?" Doc inquired.
The old man took off his glasses and rubbed his reddened eyes. "No, sir. I'm quite sure I haven't. Mr. Haas must be in his office now. Only a few minutes ago, I saw two men hand a bag through his door."
"Describe them!" Doc commanded.
Elderly Silas Bunnywell gave an accurate description of Lefty and Bugs.
Doc recognized the pair from what Big Eric had told him of them.
"And Horace Haas is in his office now?" Doc said grimly.
"I am not sure. But he must have been there a few minutes ago. I am not able to observe all who enter, because of my work."
Doc swung to the door of Haas's office. He opened it. He was cautious, not knowing what form of death might lurk within for him. But he need not have been careful.
The office was empty, but Doc saw the gas contrivance.
He turned off the petcock on the tank of gas in the hand bag. Then he got a rope, went to the roof, and rescued Big Eric, Edna, and Ham from the window sill.
They held a serious council in Haas's office.
"It looks bad for friend Horace!" Ham said, tight-lipped.
"You mean you think Horace Haas turned that gas on us?" Big Eric muttered.
"What do youthink?"
"I don't know," Big Eric replied, a long hesitation between each word. "I hate to think he'd do such a thing. But there's no reason why he should go out."
At this juncture, Horace Haas came into the room. His step was not as jaunty as usual. He looked like a fat, overfed pup somebody had just kicked. He gave a distinct start at sight of Doc and the others.
"I—er—hello," he said uncertainly.
Big Eric got to the point without delay.
"Where in thunder have you been?" he roared.
Horace Haas reddened angrily. "Since when was I tied to your apron strings? None of your business—where I've been!"
"It might interest you, wise guy," Ham put in, "to know that an attempt was just made on our lives from your office. And, to be very frank, you are under suspicion!"
* * *
THIS blunt declaration had a marked effect on Horace Haas. He reddened even more—then suddenly went quite pallid. He fumbled for a chair with a jeweled hand and sat down heavily.Doc Savage watched the man. Either Horace Haas was a finished actor, or he was genuinely shocked at the accusation.
"I—er—suppose I had better tell where I was." Horace Haas pulled a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. The piece of silk was brightly colored.
"I received a telephone call from a—er—young lady," Haas began.
"A chorus stepper?" rumbled Big Eric.
Horace Haas flinched. "Ah—yes, a young lady of the chorus. At least, that is who she said she was. She asked me to meet her at a soda fountain near here. So I went—"
"An old goat of your age!" Big Eric snorted. "I oughta get up and kick the seat of your pants!"
"—but I didn't find the young lady!" Horace Haas finished desperately. "She did not appear. I waited some time, decided I was being stood up, and came back."
Big Eric rumbled a noisy laugh. "Somebody played you for a sap to get you out of your office so an attempt could be made on our lives!" He whirled to Doc. "Don't you think that was it?"
Doc had formed no definite opinion. He had no proof against Horace Haas—he had no real proof that he was innocent, either. He gave a noncommital answer.
"Possibly."
Swinging over to the telephone, Doc called the number of the telegraph company branch office from which he had engaged his messenger. He was merely checking up on whether the dictaphone records had been delivered to his fellow scrappers.
He received the bad news.
"What?" he demanded. "The messenger was waylaid and robbed en route?"
Hanging up, Doc let his golden eyes range over his companions.
"It seems," he said slowly, "that the Gray Spider is setting out to carry the warfare to us."
"The boys may be in danger!" Ham clipped.
Doc nodded. "Exactly. You stay here, Ham. Take every precaution to guard against the Gray Spider. I'm going to see if our four brothers are in any kind of a mess!"
He left the building swiftly.
* * *
Chapter VIII. DOC PLANS
THE hotel to which Doc Savage had directed his four men was the Antelope. It was neither the largest nor most luxurious in New Orleans. Conservative business men and drummers patronized it for the most part.
Doc parked his roadster a block from the hotel, and on the opposite side of the street. He mingled with the pedestrians. These turned, practically without exception, to stare at the amazing bronze man. He was far more striking in appearance than the pictures that accompany the strong-man advertisements in magazines. The fact that Doc wore no hat added to his prominence.
Before the Antelope Hotel stood a vanlike delivery truck. This was marked with the name of a prominent baking concern.
On the truck seat sat the burly, hard-featured crook of a lumber detective, Lefty.
A monkeylike swamp man occupied the seat beside him.
Their actions betrayed nervousness. They glanced repeatedly upward. It seemed they momentarily expected something to happen in one of the upper-floor hotel rooms.
Lefty and his monkeylike companion discovered Doc Savage's great bronze form about simultaneously.
"Get 'im!" Lefty gulped—and turned loose with his revolver. The monkey man followed suit with a sawed-off shotgun. Their shooting started thunder bumping about in the street. But that was about all it did.
Doc Savage had seen the pair before they started their fireworks. By the time the first shot crashed, he was sheltered behind a parked limousine. Glass from the limousine windows sprayed his back. Bullets hit the car body with tinny noises.
A bronze blur, Doc scuttled fifty feet down the walk and calmly seated himself behind a fire hydrant. He had no gun. Indeed, he so rarely found necessity for a weapon, that he seldom carried one. He waited.
Shrieking pedestrians were darting about like chickens in a pen into which a hawk had suddenly dived. From the volume and terror of the yelling, one might judge half of them were suffering mortal wounds. As a matter of fact, a foppish youth who had a foot-long cigarette holder blown out of his mouth by a shotgun burst was the only casualty.
Lefty and the monkey man, both shooting wildly, emptied their respective weapons. They didn't take time to reload.
"We're gettin' outta here!" Lefty gulped.
The delivery truck rear wheels gave a spasmodic spin, caught the pavement, and propelled the vehicle away like an explosive.
"Yo' leavin' de others!" wailed the monkey man.
"Nothin' else to do!" rapped the cowardly Lefty. "The jig is up with you and me!"
The truck sideswiped a car, careened half across the street, took a corner on two screaming wheels—and was gone.
An instant later, there was a terrific explosion inside the hotel.
Metal shieked across the street to knock puffs of masonry off the building there. A piece of this metal fell near Doc. It was a common steel ball bearing.
Shrapnel! A blast of shrapnel had been set off in the room registered for by his men!
Doc's big bronze figure flashed across the street and into the hotel. He seized the register. He saw his men had signed for Room 720.
It must be the room in which the shrapnel had been exploded.
Doc sprang for the elevators.
Ten feet from them, he halted. One of the cages had just come down. But the door didn't open immediately. Instead, there was a terrific uproar in the cage. It sounded like a gigantic cat-and-dog fight. Loud bangings arose, as though a sizable sledge was beating the metal sides of the lift.
Men screeched. They moaned. They sobbed, cursed, blubbered. And through all the bedlam ran a fierce rumbling and roaring as of some big beast in action.
Then silence fell.
The cage doors opened.
Out of the lift walked an individual who should have been the wild man in a circus. He was a bare five feet and a half in height, but almost equally as wide. He would tip the scales at two hundred and sixty pounds. He was covered all over with coarse red hair like hog bristles. His eyes were so surrounded by gristle as to resemble little stars twinkling in pits. The rest of his face was incredibly homely.
He carried five battered and unconscious men in his arms—much as a bell boy carries several suitcases.
"Monk!" Doc's great voice seemed to fill all the hotel lobby with a glad ring.
For this remarkable individual was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of Doc's five aids. He was called by the only nickname that could possibly fit him—"Monk." He was, despite his gorillalike looks, one of the greatest living chemists.
"Hy'ah, Doc!" Monk grinned from ear to ear. He shook his armload of captives. "I been collectin' rats!"
"You escaped the blast?" Doc demanded.
"Sure—thanks to your advice. Like we was directed in that message you left on the Danielsen & Haas front door, we registered for one room, but got the hotel to give us another one, and not put it on the register."
Monk chuckled. He had a surprisingly mild voice for so huge and homely a man. "We kept a sharp lookout. We saw these rats skulkin' around, and closed in on 'em, right after the blast."
The elevator operator was prone on the floor of the cage. There was not a mark on him. He had simply fainted from fright during Monk's terrific fight.
"Where are the others?" Doc questioned.
"Reckon they've got the rest of them upstairs," Monk laughed. "Anyhow, they was goin' strong when I chased these five into the elevator."
"What floor they on?"
"Fifth."
Doc halted the cage at the fifth floor. He got out. Monk trailed him, pausing only to butt the head of one of his captives against the wall when the fellow seemed about to revive. Monk did this without even shifting the prisoner under his arm.
Stifled screeches and moans were coming from a room down the corridor. Doc and Monk approached the sounds.
But they had only taken a few steps when the panel flew out of the door, a torn mess of splinters. Approximately a gallon of reddish, iron-hard knuckles appeared.
"Renny is celebratin'!" Monk chuckled. "The big lout is gonna haul off and hit a block of iron by mistake some day."
The fist belonged to Colonel John Renwick. He was honored throughout the world for his feats in civil engineering—and for his ability to pop the panel out of the stoutest door with his fist. He had a habit of doing this when he felt good. Evidently his spirits were high now.
It was the print of Renny's gigantic thumb which had signed the blank sheet of paper they had left at the Danielsen & Haas office to show Doc they were in town.
They caught sight of Renny's features through the hole his big fist had made. The face would have surprised a stranger, who would naturally have expected to see a wide grin.
It was forbidding, solemn. Indeed, it looked as if the owner had just gone to a funeral.
But that was another peculiarity about Renny, who was six feet four, and weighed two fifty. The more joyful the occasion, the more sour he looked.
Another burst of screeches and moans came out of the room.
Doc and Monk entered.
Long Tom—Major Thomas J. Roberts on the military records—was the weakling of the crowd, judging by appearances. He was undersized, slender, only fairly set up. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a somewhat sallow complexion—as though he might have spent a lot of his life in a cellar.
His ears were big and thin and pale, and since they were between Doc and Monk and the light, it was almost possible to see through them.
Long Tom sat on a beaten-up swamp man. He was busily engaged with the ends of an electric cord he had torn from a floor lamp. He was tying them to the wrists of the man on whom he sat.
"This monkey don't know what electricity is," he snorted. "I'm gonna give a couple of shocks. It might persuade him to tell who the Gray Spider is, and where we can get him."
It was natural that Long Tom's thoughts should turn to electricity. That was his profession. His reputation in the electrical field had few equals. He was called in for consultations by the great electrical experts often.
A loud moan of agony drew their eyes to the window.
"Another experimenter!" Monk snorted.
The last member of Doc's group of friends and aids was near the window. He, too, sat on a prisoner. He was tall and gaunt, with a half-starved look. His hair was thin, and gray at the temples. He had the appearance of a studious scientist rather than an adventurer.
This was Johnny, or William Harper Littlejohn to the great men of archaeology and geology. Johnny possibly knew more about the structure of the earth and the habits of mankind, ancient and modern, than ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called experts on the subjects.
With one hand, Johnny was holding his glasses in the sunlight. The left lens of these spectacles was in reality a very powerful magnifying glass.
Johnny didn't need a left lens, since he had practically lost the use of that eye in the Great War. So he carried in its place a magnifier, which he could use in his business.
A curl of smoke came from the coat of the man Johnny sat on. The sun, concentrated by the magnifying lens, was burning the coat.
"Talk!" Johnny directed his prisoner. "Or I'll put this glass to work on your eyes! It'll burn 'em out in about a minute!"
The captive only glared hate.
A moment later, Long Tom's victim gave a squawk as the electric current tingled through him. Although harmless, the voltage was highly uncomfortable. The man kept a tight lip.
"I hate to discourage you," Doc chuckled, "but I'm afraid you won't get anything out of these men. You would have just about as much success trying to scare an Apache Indian into talking."
"They're peculiar beings, these swamp dwellers," Johnny agreed. "Being the offspring of criminals who have fled to the swamps for safety, they have had one rule of existence drummed into them all their lives. That rule is to tell nothing to an outsider, no matter what the cost."
"That's the idea," Doc agreed. "Did any of them get away?"
Johnny counted Monk's armload of captives. "Five! And these two make seven. Seven are all we saw."
"That's right," Renny agreed.
"Then we'll take them to the hotel where I have some of their friends sleeping," Doc replied. "Afterward, we'll find a new hang-out for you fellows. And I'll outline the part you are to play in the festivities."
They left, bearing the prisoners.
"What I mean, I was lucky!" he muttered.
The man was Bugs, other half of the crooked lumber detective pair. At the start of the fight which had resulted in the downfall of the swamp men, Bugs had had the good fortune to dodge into an empty room without being seen. There he had crouched, preserving his own hide, callous to what happened to his assistants.
Doc parked his roadster a block from the hotel, and on the opposite side of the street. He mingled with the pedestrians. These turned, practically without exception, to stare at the amazing bronze man. He was far more striking in appearance than the pictures that accompany the strong-man advertisements in magazines. The fact that Doc wore no hat added to his prominence.
Before the Antelope Hotel stood a vanlike delivery truck. This was marked with the name of a prominent baking concern.
On the truck seat sat the burly, hard-featured crook of a lumber detective, Lefty.
A monkeylike swamp man occupied the seat beside him.
Their actions betrayed nervousness. They glanced repeatedly upward. It seemed they momentarily expected something to happen in one of the upper-floor hotel rooms.
Lefty and his monkeylike companion discovered Doc Savage's great bronze form about simultaneously.
"Get 'im!" Lefty gulped—and turned loose with his revolver. The monkey man followed suit with a sawed-off shotgun. Their shooting started thunder bumping about in the street. But that was about all it did.
Doc Savage had seen the pair before they started their fireworks. By the time the first shot crashed, he was sheltered behind a parked limousine. Glass from the limousine windows sprayed his back. Bullets hit the car body with tinny noises.
A bronze blur, Doc scuttled fifty feet down the walk and calmly seated himself behind a fire hydrant. He had no gun. Indeed, he so rarely found necessity for a weapon, that he seldom carried one. He waited.
Shrieking pedestrians were darting about like chickens in a pen into which a hawk had suddenly dived. From the volume and terror of the yelling, one might judge half of them were suffering mortal wounds. As a matter of fact, a foppish youth who had a foot-long cigarette holder blown out of his mouth by a shotgun burst was the only casualty.
Lefty and the monkey man, both shooting wildly, emptied their respective weapons. They didn't take time to reload.
"We're gettin' outta here!" Lefty gulped.
The delivery truck rear wheels gave a spasmodic spin, caught the pavement, and propelled the vehicle away like an explosive.
"Yo' leavin' de others!" wailed the monkey man.
"Nothin' else to do!" rapped the cowardly Lefty. "The jig is up with you and me!"
The truck sideswiped a car, careened half across the street, took a corner on two screaming wheels—and was gone.
An instant later, there was a terrific explosion inside the hotel.
* * *
DOC SAVAGE’S golden eyes lifted, seeking the source of the blast. It was a window far above the street. This window was just flying outward, Torn wood and a shower of bricks followed.Metal shieked across the street to knock puffs of masonry off the building there. A piece of this metal fell near Doc. It was a common steel ball bearing.
Shrapnel! A blast of shrapnel had been set off in the room registered for by his men!
Doc's big bronze figure flashed across the street and into the hotel. He seized the register. He saw his men had signed for Room 720.
It must be the room in which the shrapnel had been exploded.
Doc sprang for the elevators.
Ten feet from them, he halted. One of the cages had just come down. But the door didn't open immediately. Instead, there was a terrific uproar in the cage. It sounded like a gigantic cat-and-dog fight. Loud bangings arose, as though a sizable sledge was beating the metal sides of the lift.
Men screeched. They moaned. They sobbed, cursed, blubbered. And through all the bedlam ran a fierce rumbling and roaring as of some big beast in action.
Then silence fell.
The cage doors opened.
Out of the lift walked an individual who should have been the wild man in a circus. He was a bare five feet and a half in height, but almost equally as wide. He would tip the scales at two hundred and sixty pounds. He was covered all over with coarse red hair like hog bristles. His eyes were so surrounded by gristle as to resemble little stars twinkling in pits. The rest of his face was incredibly homely.
He carried five battered and unconscious men in his arms—much as a bell boy carries several suitcases.
"Monk!" Doc's great voice seemed to fill all the hotel lobby with a glad ring.
For this remarkable individual was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of Doc's five aids. He was called by the only nickname that could possibly fit him—"Monk." He was, despite his gorillalike looks, one of the greatest living chemists.
"Hy'ah, Doc!" Monk grinned from ear to ear. He shook his armload of captives. "I been collectin' rats!"
"You escaped the blast?" Doc demanded.
"Sure—thanks to your advice. Like we was directed in that message you left on the Danielsen & Haas front door, we registered for one room, but got the hotel to give us another one, and not put it on the register."
Monk chuckled. He had a surprisingly mild voice for so huge and homely a man. "We kept a sharp lookout. We saw these rats skulkin' around, and closed in on 'em, right after the blast."
* * *
DOC entered the elevator. Monk turned and followed him inside like a big dog, still carrying his five victims under his arms.The elevator operator was prone on the floor of the cage. There was not a mark on him. He had simply fainted from fright during Monk's terrific fight.
"Where are the others?" Doc questioned.
"Reckon they've got the rest of them upstairs," Monk laughed. "Anyhow, they was goin' strong when I chased these five into the elevator."
"What floor they on?"
"Fifth."
Doc halted the cage at the fifth floor. He got out. Monk trailed him, pausing only to butt the head of one of his captives against the wall when the fellow seemed about to revive. Monk did this without even shifting the prisoner under his arm.
Stifled screeches and moans were coming from a room down the corridor. Doc and Monk approached the sounds.
But they had only taken a few steps when the panel flew out of the door, a torn mess of splinters. Approximately a gallon of reddish, iron-hard knuckles appeared.
"Renny is celebratin'!" Monk chuckled. "The big lout is gonna haul off and hit a block of iron by mistake some day."
The fist belonged to Colonel John Renwick. He was honored throughout the world for his feats in civil engineering—and for his ability to pop the panel out of the stoutest door with his fist. He had a habit of doing this when he felt good. Evidently his spirits were high now.
It was the print of Renny's gigantic thumb which had signed the blank sheet of paper they had left at the Danielsen & Haas office to show Doc they were in town.
They caught sight of Renny's features through the hole his big fist had made. The face would have surprised a stranger, who would naturally have expected to see a wide grin.
It was forbidding, solemn. Indeed, it looked as if the owner had just gone to a funeral.
But that was another peculiarity about Renny, who was six feet four, and weighed two fifty. The more joyful the occasion, the more sour he looked.
Another burst of screeches and moans came out of the room.
Doc and Monk entered.
* * *
"GLORY be!" grinned Monk. "What're you doin' to that poor feller, Long Tom?"Long Tom—Major Thomas J. Roberts on the military records—was the weakling of the crowd, judging by appearances. He was undersized, slender, only fairly set up. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a somewhat sallow complexion—as though he might have spent a lot of his life in a cellar.
His ears were big and thin and pale, and since they were between Doc and Monk and the light, it was almost possible to see through them.
Long Tom sat on a beaten-up swamp man. He was busily engaged with the ends of an electric cord he had torn from a floor lamp. He was tying them to the wrists of the man on whom he sat.
"This monkey don't know what electricity is," he snorted. "I'm gonna give a couple of shocks. It might persuade him to tell who the Gray Spider is, and where we can get him."
It was natural that Long Tom's thoughts should turn to electricity. That was his profession. His reputation in the electrical field had few equals. He was called in for consultations by the great electrical experts often.
A loud moan of agony drew their eyes to the window.
"Another experimenter!" Monk snorted.
The last member of Doc's group of friends and aids was near the window. He, too, sat on a prisoner. He was tall and gaunt, with a half-starved look. His hair was thin, and gray at the temples. He had the appearance of a studious scientist rather than an adventurer.
This was Johnny, or William Harper Littlejohn to the great men of archaeology and geology. Johnny possibly knew more about the structure of the earth and the habits of mankind, ancient and modern, than ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called experts on the subjects.
With one hand, Johnny was holding his glasses in the sunlight. The left lens of these spectacles was in reality a very powerful magnifying glass.
Johnny didn't need a left lens, since he had practically lost the use of that eye in the Great War. So he carried in its place a magnifier, which he could use in his business.
A curl of smoke came from the coat of the man Johnny sat on. The sun, concentrated by the magnifying lens, was burning the coat.
"Talk!" Johnny directed his prisoner. "Or I'll put this glass to work on your eyes! It'll burn 'em out in about a minute!"
The captive only glared hate.
A moment later, Long Tom's victim gave a squawk as the electric current tingled through him. Although harmless, the voltage was highly uncomfortable. The man kept a tight lip.
"I hate to discourage you," Doc chuckled, "but I'm afraid you won't get anything out of these men. You would have just about as much success trying to scare an Apache Indian into talking."
"They're peculiar beings, these swamp dwellers," Johnny agreed. "Being the offspring of criminals who have fled to the swamps for safety, they have had one rule of existence drummed into them all their lives. That rule is to tell nothing to an outsider, no matter what the cost."
"That's the idea," Doc agreed. "Did any of them get away?"
Johnny counted Monk's armload of captives. "Five! And these two make seven. Seven are all we saw."
"That's right," Renny agreed.
"Then we'll take them to the hotel where I have some of their friends sleeping," Doc replied. "Afterward, we'll find a new hang-out for you fellows. And I'll outline the part you are to play in the festivities."
They left, bearing the prisoners.
* * *
A MOMENT after Doc and his friends vanished, a man sidled out of a room down the corridor."What I mean, I was lucky!" he muttered.
The man was Bugs, other half of the crooked lumber detective pair. At the start of the fight which had resulted in the downfall of the swamp men, Bugs had had the good fortune to dodge into an empty room without being seen. There he had crouched, preserving his own hide, callous to what happened to his assistants.