Robeson Kenneth. Quest of the Spider

   He scurried down successive flights of stairs, reached the lobby, and worked across it. Excitement raged in the lobby. Wiremen were arriving, although there was no need of them. Bell boys and guests charged about, adding to the general confusion. Bugs walked outside.
   He saw Doc Savage and his friends putting the prisoners into two taxicabs. Instantly, he concealed himself behind a fire truck.
   Bugs thought fast. He abhorred the idea of following Doc. He feared the big bronze man more than the devil himself. The devil wasn't real to Bugs, but only somebody the preachers shouted about. The giant bronze man was real—entirely too much so.
   But if he trailed Doc and his men to their new rendezvous, Bugs knew he would have something with which to curry the Gray Spider's favor. He decided to take a chance.
   He engaged a cab to follow the pair Doc and his men had taken.
   The cavalcade led to the little hotel where Doc was storing his drugged prisoners to await transportation to the New York State institution where their criminal tendencies would be cured.
   "Huh!" grunted Bugs, watching the captives being taken inside. "That beats me! I thought they'd be handed to the cops! Oh, well, I'll remember this address, and the Gray Spider can come here and turn his swamp snipes loose."
   Doc and his men—in one taxicab now—betook themselves to a neat little inn in the French district. Watching from the street, Bugs saw them engage quarters. He trailed inside after they mounted steps to the upper regions.
   Revolver in hand, Bugs climbed the stairs. He heard the innkeeper returning. The fellow had installed Doc and his men in their room. Bugs scuffled behind a handy drape, revolver ready, hoping the gloominess of the hallway would aid in preventing his discovery.
   The innkeeper went below without dreaming Bugs was inside.
   Down the hall, Bugs crept. He heard voices. One boomed like a large rock rolling around in a huge drum. He remembered that tone. It belonged to the human leviathan who knocked panels out of doors with his fists.
   The corridor was carpeted. On tiptoes, Bugs approached the door.
   Something crunched faintly underfoot. He paid no attention. It might be a bit of a cracker or a portion of a bread crumb. Bending over, Bugs put his ear to the keyhole.
   He could hear everything being said in the room!

* * *

   "THIS fiend who calls himself the Gray Spider is clever," Doc Savage was saying. "I am convinced that to get him, we will have to go after him with a deeply laid plan."
   "Shoot the works!" Monk chuckled. "I'm r'arin' to go! I could scrap guys like them that tackled us a while ago all day, and it wouldn't be more trouble than fighting mosquitoes."
   "You don't lick any one this time," Doc told him. "You use that brain nobody would suspect you've got. Starting immediately, you are a famous German chemist. You specialized on poison gas. You sold a secret gas formula to an unfriendly country, and as a result, you're taking it on the lam. You're hiding out for fear secret agents will kill you. Got it straight?"
   "You bet." Monk's little eyes glittered.
   "All right," Doc smiled. "You will strike out into the swamps like a man who is hunting a hiding place. Your purpose, of course, is to let the Gray Spider add you to his organization. In this way—if you don't die of snake-bite, or the alligators don't eat you, or the swamp natives fill you full of lead, or the Gray Spider get suspicious and order you killed—you should learn something."
   Monk's wide grin never budged. "Ain't you the cheerful guy, Doc!"
   "Renny" Doc continued, facing the big fisted engineer, "you will visit the governor of Louisiana, flying to Baton Rouge this afternoon. He will commission you a special forest ranger. I will telephone him long-distance, and see to that. Your engineering training fits you for the forest ranger job. You will go into the swamps, and, like Monk, try to learn something definite about the Gray Spider."
   "Want me to pretend to be a crooked ranger, eh?" Renny grinned.
   "I imagine it would get better results."
   Doc's golden eyes now roved to Long Tom, the electrical wizard. "You are to tap the phone lines of the large lumber companies of Louisiana, and arrange to listen in on any conversation of importance. This will entail hiring a force of expert stenographers, of course, since no man could listen in to twenty or thirty phones simultaneously."
   Long Tom nodded. "I presume it would be best to first tap the lines to the companies we know are in the power of the Gray Spider. Worldwide Sawmills, Bayou Sash & Door, and so on."
   "That's the idea."
   It was to Johnny that Doc's gaze now came. The gaunt, half-starved geologist and archaeologist grinned boyishly.
   "What is my part in this quest of the Gray Spider?" he asked.
   "It's the toughest job of all, Johnny," Doc told him seriously. "I'd tackle it myself, except that the Gray Spider has my description. You are the only other man fitted for the job, thanks to your knowledge of savage peoples and their religious beliefs and superstitions."
   "Meaning?" Johnny inquired.
   "That you are to enter the swamps as a high priest of voodoo!" Doc replied.

* * *

   JOHNNY nodded eagerly. "That is right up my alley! I made an extensive study of voodooism in the southern United States, Haiti and Africa."
   "This is highly dangerous!" Doc warned.
   Johnny sobered instantly. "I know it! But I can handle the job!"
   "How is your command of the gibberish these swamp men speak?"
   "Only fair," Johnny admitted. "But it will get by. I speak the French patois of Haiti fluently. I will pretend to be a high priest of voodoo from another country."
   "O.K." Doc got to his feet. He stepped swiftly to the door. He opened the panel.
   A man lay outside in the hall. He was curled up and breathing regularly, as though asleep.
   "Well, for cryin' out loud!" Monk gulped. "Who's he?"
   "He is called Bugs," Doc replied. "He's one of that pair of crooked lumber detectives."
   "But what's happened to 'im?"
   "He crept up to the keyhole to listen," Doc said dryly. "And he went to sleep on the job."
   Monk snorted. "Quit running around the bush, Doc! What put him to sleep like that?"
   Doc Savage indicated several small glass bulbs on the floor. These were thin-walled, about the size of grapes, and held a colorless fluid.
   "A very powerful anaesthetic," he explained. "I spread them here as a matter of precaution before we started talking. Bugs simply had the misfortune to step on one."
   It was this which Bugs had mistaken for a bit of cracker or a crumb of dry bread crushing underfoot—although he never did discover that fact.

* * *

Chapter IX. THE SWAMP ENCOUNTER

   MONK departed to become an outlaw chemist fleeing from spies of a foreign country. Renny left to get his commission as special forest ranger. Long Tom ambled out full of his plans for a phone-tapping campaign, such as had probably never been equaled for wide-spread scope.
   Doc and Johnny added Bugs to the growing collection of sleepers in the hotel room. In fact, so extensive was his conquest becoming, Doc engaged an additional room. He made sure each of the villains was properly under the influence of the drug which kept them slumbering and out of mischief.
   "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen," Johnny counted them. "If this keeps up, you'll have to hire a special train to up-state New York. They'll be a lot of bother and expense."
   "But they'll be fourteen upright citizens when they're turned loose from that institution," Doc replied.
   "I don't understand how it's done!" Johnny chuckled. "I mean—how one of these rats can be taken and made into an honest man. And that whether he wants to be made an honest man or not!"
   "It's too complex to go into now," Doc told him. "It is done by many methods. Most undergo intricate brain operations that wipe out all memory of their past. Then they are taught a trade by which to make a living, as well as upright citizenship.
   "In other words, we merely reduce their minds to a blank and give them the sort of training they should have had. When they're released, crime does not occur to them—simply because they don't know they've ever been criminals."
   They left the hotel where the prisoners slept. Going to his plane at the airport Doc secured a metal case about the size of an old-fashioned telescope bag such as granddad used to carry. They retired to a room they engaged at a private residence.
   "Strip!" Doc commanded.
   Johnny obeyed. Doc opened the case. It proved to be a most complete make-up box.
   With ingredients from the box, Doc proceeded to dye Johnny's hide a muddy yellow from head to foot. He clipped Johnny's somewhat thin hair, dyed it an intense black, and gave it a permanent curl.
   "None of this stuff will wash off," Doc reminded.
   "Holy smoke!" Johnny ejaculated. "You mean I gotta go around lookin' like this until my coloring wears off?"
   "Sure," Doc chuckled. "That'll only be six months or so."

* * *

   DOC SAVAGE continued to work over Johnny. He stood back at last.
   "From now on, you're in blackface!" he smiled.
   Where Johnny had sat, there now sprawled a lanky, scrawny-looking yellowish-brown man. He had thick lips. His nose looked as if it had been stepped on during his youth. Several realistic scars gave his eyes a mean cast.
   "Bien!"
   ejaculated Johnny, imitating the conglomerate dialect of the swamp men. "Yo' haf feenished, non?"
   "And how!" Doc declared. "You'll do. What's your name, swamp boy?"
   "Name ees plain Pete. Mees swell name, Pete ees. Oui?"
   "The name will do," Doc replied, judiciously. "But you're about a foot and a half taller than the rest of the swamp dwellers. Maybe they'll overlook that."
   The two men now separated.
   Doc Savage returned to the Danielsen & Haas building to keep watch over Big Eric and his daughter, and to await reports from his men.
   Johnny swaggered down into the foreign quarter. Doc had supplied him with a number of voodoo charms. These Johnny exhibited quite often, toying with them when he saw he was under the scrutiny of any one who looked as if he might belong to the voodoo Cult of the Moccasin.
   The net result was that he wasted an afternoon. From the look of things, New Orleans might never have heard of any kind of a voodoo cult, much less the Cult of the Moccasin with the fiendish master mind, the Gray Spider, at its head.
   "I'll have to tackle the swamp," Johnny muttered. Then, realizing he had slipped out of his dialect, added: "Me—I do not t'ink much of de swamp! Whew! I gotta even do my thinkin' in this crazy lingo, to play safe!"
   Johnny now stuck himself in a telephone booth and called Doc Savage.
   "My results so far are what the little boy shot at," he reported. "Thought I'd tell you I probably won't communicate with you again for a while."
   "Go to the Lake Ponchartrain water front, near the old Spanish fort," Doc directed.
   "Huh?" grunted Johnny, much surprised.
   "Be there shortly after dark," Doc added.
   "O.K." Johnny grinned. "I'll be there."

* * *

   DUSK had dropped a steamy, clammy grasp upon New Orleans and environs. A faint, hot fog lent the moonlight pallor. The Gulf breeze, stirring the fog, made it seem as though the air were full of fine ashes. On the horizon in all directions, heat lightning flickered luridly.
   Johnny—a scrawny and sinister-looking gentleman of a pale-brown color—lurked in City Park near the old Spanish fort. Long, narrow Bayou St. John emptied into placid Lake Ponchartrain near by.
   Johnny settled behind an aromatic magnolia shrub and listened. He could hear cars honking occasionally on distant Gentilly Road, and on nearer park drives. Behind him, to the south, the lights of the New Orleans business district made a vast glow in the steaming night.
   Suddenly there reached Johnny's ears a series of droning noises. It was as if some one were holding a bumble bee near by, and letting it buzz its wings at intervals of a half minute or so. The sound came closer. Johnny recognized it.
   "A seaplane taxiing along the lake edge!" he decided aloud.
   Soon the buzzing quality left the motor spurts. They became violent hisses. The exhaust had been cut into mufflers.
   "Doc's speed job!" Johnny concluded. "It's the only craft I know of fitted with silencers."
   He grinned. Doc was going to get him into the swamp by plane! That would simplify things.
   Johnny knew Doc must have had floats installed on the big speed ship during the afternoon. The craft was equipped for quick installation of a type of float commonly carried in stock by large plane-supply concerns.
   Boldly, Johnny advanced for the lake edge.
   He did not expect danger. He knew positively he had not been trailed here. So he took no pains to muffle his footsteps or keep to the shadows.
   That was a mistake.
   Swi-s-h!
   Something sailed out of the blackness beneath a near-by tree. It settled on Johnny's neck. It tightened. It jerked him from his feet.
   Johnny clawed at the thing that had him. It was a lasso of thin piano wire. It yanked again, digging into the flesh of his throat.
   Three scrawny swamp men pitched from the murk beneath the tree. One flashed an ordinary cane knife which was honed like a razor.
   "Non!"
   gritted one of his fellows. "Gray Spider ees want talk to dis scamp!" He knocked the knife aside.
   Johnny kicked a man in the middle. He booted so hard that he distinctly felt his heel push a stomach in and jar against a backbone. The fellow sailed ungracefully away.
   A club rapped Johnny's head, causing a burst of colored lights and lances of flame. That, and the wire drawing steadily tighter around his neck, sapped his strength. His struggles weakened. They became slower. He was like a clockwork toy that was running down.
   "Bien!"
   puffed one of the Gray Spider's swamp men. "Eet ees about over!"
   It was. But not like the swamp man expected.
   There suddenly wafted over the scene of strife an uncanny trilling note. It was a whistle, and yet not a whistle. It had a low and mellow quality that might be likened to the song of some rare bird of the jungle, or the melodious but untuned note of a wayward breeze filtering among the pipes of a great organ.
   It seemed to come from everywhere.
   Johnny heard it, although but half conscious. The sound of Doc Savage!

* * *

   THE sound had a remarkable effect on Johnny. Renewed energy flowed into his faltering muscles. He struck and flailed fiercely.
   Out of the night came flashing a mighty bronze form. The charge of a lion would hardly have been more disastrous to the Gray Spider's two men.
   Only two blows, coming so close together that they sounded like two men clapping hands simultaneously, and the pair went tumbling like rabbits shot on the run. It was doubtful if either had seen what caused their downfall. The third man, disabled by Johnny, writhed and moaned near by, entirely helpless.
   Doc freed Johnny's neck from the wire noose.
   "You're a handy guy to have around, Doc," Johnny laughed shakily. Then he noticed that the seaplane still taxied out on the lake. It was nowhere near shore. "Huh—I thought you were in the plane."
   "Ham is flying the bus," Doc explained. "It occurred to me after you called that the Gray Spider might be doing some wire-tapping himself. In that case, he might have heard us make the appointment to meet here. So I dropped around merely to play safe. And here we are."
   "Yeah—thanks to you," Johnny said wryly, feeling his sore neck. "One thing that is fortunate—on my call to you I didn't say a thing which would give the Gray Spider a clue to my identity or purpose."
   "Sure—there's no harm done," Doc agreed. "In fact, we've added three more prisoners to our menagerie. Every little bit helps."
   The plane now taxied close in. Ham, slender and waspish, waded ashore. He held his sword cane high over his head and said some uncomplimentary things about the mud underfoot.
   "You are to take the plane into the swamp," Doc told Johnny. "Park it at some spot where nobody’ll find it. Use the radio to get in touch with me. Long Tom has installed a receiving and transmitting station in it. You will, of course, use the Mayan language, so no one will understand our talk."
   "Righto," Johnny agreed.
   "There's some stuff in the ship that you might need," Doc added.
   Johnny now waded out to the plane, hauled himself up on one of the newly installed metal floats, and sprang into the cabin. The silenced motors sped up. The propellers churned the air shrilly. Out across Lake Ponchartrain, the craft streaked, then leaped into the air.
   Johnny banked for the swamp country. He was an expert pilot, thanks to the teaching of Doc Savage. The remarkable bronze man seemed gifted with the ability to impart much of his own vast knowledge and skill to those whom he taught, and it was this strange quality which had turned his five friends into accomplished airmen, second only to Doc himself.

* * *

   THE foggy area proved to be only in the vicinity of New Orleans. Johnny soon left it behind. He kept the silencers on the motors, made the cabin airtight, turned on the apparatus which supplied artificial air, and flew very high—about twenty-five thousand feet. He used powerful binoculars to observe the terrain below.
   A narrow bayou wound like a frayed silver ribbon through the marshy jungle which looked from that height like so much green velvet. Johnny observed a few tow steamers escorting long, flexible log rafts.
   An occasional sawmill town made a spotty patch of lights. These sawmill towns differed from other settlements in that they were always scattered about a group of mill buildings—sawing structure, kilns, rough-dry and finish storing sheds, planing mill, machine shops, and other shacks.
   The sawmill towns became scarcer. Riverlike bayous, the only avenue of transportation in the swamp, ceased to gleam in the moonlight. Tall trees suitable for timber also became scattered.
   Johnny knew he was over the wildest portion of the great swamps. He cut the ignition switches of the three motors. He threw a lever. This changed the characteristics of the plane wings, giving the remarkable craft a less steep gliding angle and a much slower landing speed.
   The great ship settled upon the swamp like a monster bat with wings outstretched and paralyzed.
   Johnny selected a tiny bayou. It resembled a spot where a huge finger had scraped away the festering layers of swamp vegetation, revealing the shining surface of a mirror. The mirror, of course, was water.
   Lightly, the plane dunked its floats in the water. It coasted ahead. The wake it left fanned outward, seeming to throw the bayou into shimmering convulsions.
   "If I just don't hit the bank too hard!" Johnny muttered.
   He didn't. The ship grounded with a slight jar, after sloughing through tall cane and under heavy overhanging branches.
   Johnny clambered out. Walking along the wing, he pulled down armloads of the clammy aлrial moss from the vines and drooping branches overhead.
   This moss was the variety called "old man's beard" by the natives. Johnny used it to cover the wings and fuselage of the plane, so there would exist less likelihood of its being seen.
   That job completed, he extracted a large leather pouch from the plane. It was this which contained the stuff Doc had told Johnny he might need. After one look at the pouch contents, Johnny chuckled.
   "Doc foresees about everything!" he declared.
   Johnny thrust a rather unusual pistol inside his shirt. This weapon was in reality a wonderfully compact machine gun—undoubtedly the smallest and most efficient killing mechanism in existence.
   The unique weapon was the invention of Doc Savage. They were manufactured secretly for him. Only his five friends and aids were supplied with them.
   Johnny left the plane.

* * *

   THE swamp was an indescribable tangle. Vines and creepers made a more impenetrable mass than any barbed-wire entanglement Johnny had encountered in the War. The gray, scaly moss hung so thick at times that it seemed he was entirely bundled up in the horsehairlike stuff.
   In the next hour, Johnny made less than a mile.
   "I can see why a criminal fleeing into this district would be safe!" he muttered. "Nobody could get in to grab him!"
   Johnny was aware, however, that there must be secret trails through the morass—trails known only to the evil, ignorant colony, the offspring of criminals, who had spent their lives here. The little monkey men!
   It was dark. Although moonlight pressed brightly upon the top of the jungle mat, few of the beams penetrated to the treacherous mess of foul water, mud, roots, and creepers that formed the earth.
   Johnny came to higher ground. He listened. Owls were making quite a racket. Somewhere near, a hideous bawling arose. Johnny knew what it was—alligators!
   He wet his lips. The 'gators had a grisly way of grabbing a man's leg, then whirling over and over until the leg was torn completely off.
   Then, in the neighborhood, Johnny heard a sound which gave him a distinct start.
   Apparently it was a child sobbing. He strained his ears. It was a child sobbing!
   Puzzled, wary, Johnny made for the sound. The ground became higher. He reached a small glade.
   Huddled in the middle of the glade, as if seeking the moonlight, was a small boy. The tot could not be more than four. He was scared. An owl hooted stentoriously at the glade edge, and the little boy emitted a series of squawls. He could not have made a bigger racket were he being devoured alive.
   There seemed to be no one else near.
   Johnny advanced.
   The little boy saw him. His sobbing stopped. He raced for Johnny, stubby legs churning through the rank weeds.
   "Ise losted!" he proclaimed in a small and trembling voice.
   "That's tough, skipper!" Johnny chuckled. "What'd you do—go rabbit huntin' and follow the rabbit off?"
   "How did oo know?" the tot inquired blankly.
   Johnny grinned widely. "That's the way little boys usually get lost."
   However, Johnny was wishing heartily the little boy had never heard of a rabbit hunt. Finding him, complicated things. Johnny, of course, would have to see his charge home.
   Racking his brain, Johnny recalled having noted the light of a house a mile or two distant, just before he landed his plane. He decided to take the shaver there. He set out, the small boy riding his shoulder.
   They had covered most of a mile when affairs took a surprising turn.
   A flashlight sprayed against Johnny and the tot.
   "There he is!" bellowed a coarse voice. "It's what I told you! That dirty, voodoo worshippin' swamp man kidnaped him! Lucky we happened onto him before he got away with the kid!"
   "Daddy!" cried the tot at the coarse voice.
   "Put the kid down!" snarled a second man behind the flashlight.
   Johnny lowered the child. The shaver ran for his father.
   Johnny started to explain. He was not given time.
   "Teach 'im to go kidnapin' kids!" bellowed the coarse voice. "Kill 'im! Blow his head off!"
   A shotgun loosened a terrific gush of flame almost in Johnny's face.

* * *

Chapter X. VOODOO'S DOMAIN

   JOHNNY thought faster than the man with the gun—by about eighteen inches. The shotgun charge missed him that much. With a bound, he was out of the flashlight glare.
   The flash stabbed wildly in pursuit of him. In his excitement, the man who held it let his finger slip off the button. Darkness clapped down.
   It was the rush of sepia blackness that gave Johnny his big idea. He was thinking.
   Why was this father so enraged and so certain his small son had been kidnaped? What had caused him to leap to the conclusion so swiftly? Why had he been determined to slay Johnny without waiting for an explanation?
   What made the enraged man act as if Johnny was a foul rat, to be scotched without mercy?
   The wrathful father had mistaken Johnny for one of the villainous swamp denizens—a voodoo worshiper. Certain obscene rites of the voodoo fiends usually involved the blood from a human sacrifice—a child!
   The father thought his tot was being seized for a hideous voodoo ceremony!
   Johnny's keen brain raced. He saw suddenly that this situation was made to his order.
   He darted forward. He scooped up the small boy. He sprang into the brush. The father dared not shoot, even should he have had the chance, for fear of hitting his offspring.
   The shaver was quiet. He seemed to be enjoying the excitement. This was not to Johnny's liking.
   "Bellow for your dad, skipper!" he commanded. "Make him think I'm eating your ears off!"
   Obediently, the boy let out a piercing howl for "Daddy!"
   "He's over there!" shouted the frenzied father. "Follow him! Don't let the voodoo devil get away with my son!"
   Johnny put on speed.
   "Kinda onery to fool your old man like this," he told the shaver. "But maybe it'll teach him not to be so sudden on the trigger. If I had jumped a little less quick, the world would have lost its second best geologist."
   Johnny was careful to make considerable racket, and not go so swiftly that his pursuers would lose track of him. Abruptly sighting the lights of several houses, he swung to one side. Evidently what he had seen was a trading post, where the swamp dwellers bartered muskrat skins, moss, fish, and crabs for their few necessities.
   A few minutes later, he stopped his dawdling. He put every ounce of effort into racing through the swamp with the small boy.
   For bloodhounds were now on his trail! Evidently they had been secured from the trading post. His trailers gained rapidly!
   "This isn't quite so funny!" Johnny muttered. If those enraged pursuers caught him, he was certain to be shot or hanged without delay. Johnny looked exactly like one of the fiendish swamp denizens, and as such would be considered lower than a rat.
   Mile after mile, Johnny plunged ahead. His legs ached. Each breath felt as if a mowing machine-sickle was being sawed up and down his throat. A lesser man than Johnny would have collapsed long ago, for Johnny's remarkable physical quality was his endurance. Ordinarily, he was tireless. But carrying the shaver and outrunning the bloodhound pack was taxing even his abilities.
   He reached a break in the jungle where moonlight poured down like transparent silver.
   Suddenly a man appeared before him. The fellow jabbed out a long-barreled squirrel rifle.
   "Who yo' be?" he rumbled.

* * *

   JOHNNY carefully kept his face expressionless. This was exactly what he had been hoping for! The man was one of the yellowish-brown, monkeylike swamp clan!
   True, the fellow was the largest of the tribe Johnny had seen. And he had a somewhat more intelligent face than usual. A good muscular development showed under the torn sleeves of his shirt.
   "Bien!"
   ejaculated Johnny, lapsing into the conglomerate swamp dialect. "Yo' show me way to lose de bloodhounds! Me—I pay yo' to do dat! Oui!"
   "Vat yo' do?" inquired the swamp man suspiciously. "Why dey want yo?"
   Johnny indicated the small boy, who was peering with mingled interest and fear at the sinister-looking swamp man.
   "Me—I grab dis white pickaninny!" Johnny explained.
   "Dam'! Why yo' do dat?"
   Here Johnny drew on his knowledge of voodoo. He explained, with many a hocus-pocus gesture, that he was no less than a high priest of voodoo!
   The swamp man was impressed. He furtively produced a charm which looked suspiciously like it was carved out of a human arm bone.
   "Yo' want white pickaninny to make beeg voodoo sacrifice?" he muttered. He was a voodoo believer. As such, he would help Johnny.
   "Yo' got de idea," said Johnny.
   Meantime, the bloodhounds were rapidly drawing nearer. The beasts set up a fearsome baying and yipping. Frightened owls and other birds flashed over the clearing in flight, resembling darksome, big, wind-blown leaves.
   "
   Sacrй!"the swamp man swore softly. "Yo' have to leave white pickaninny. No can take heem!"
   "Non!"
   growled Johnny, pretending great reluctance. He added that the voodoo dieties demanded a sacrifice of the blood of a white child in the good old-fashioned manner.
   "Yo' gotta leave heem!" insisted the swamp man.
   "Non!"
   Johnny retorted stubbornly. "Eef we can escape, we can take white brat along."
   The real reason for leaving the little boy behind now came out—not that Johnny had the slightest idea from the first of letting him fall into the hands of the voodoo men.
   The Gray Spider did not want the attention of the law drawn to his clan of swamp devils. To kidnap the white boy would do just that. Therefore, either Johnny had to leave his prize behind, or take his chances with the bloodhounds and the shotguns.
   Johnny feigned vast disappointment. He boosted the small boy to a branch, strapped him there with his belt, and followed the swamp man.
   Covering only a couple of rods, Johnny's guide waded into a cluster of canes. He bent the tall, rushlike stems aside. A small pirogue, dug out of a single log, was concealed there. The two men entered. Both dipped crude paddles. The little craft handled almost as easily as a birch-bark canoe, even if it was hollowed out of a log.
   They shot away.
   Behind them, they heard shouts.
   "Here he is!" the father called, finding his son safe. "The voodoo devil had to leave him!"
   Johnny smiled slightly. No harm had been done. The father had been punished with a little additional worry for his too hasty attempt to shoot Johnny. The shaver had put in an exciting hour or two in the swamp, with no danger to himself.
   And Johnny was in a fair way to be welcomed with open arms by the voodoo-sacrificing swamp denizens. They would look on him with admiring eyes. Hadn't he tried to get a white child for the human sacrifice?

* * *

   JOHNNY was amazed at the speed they were making. On other occasions he had seen natives go swiftly through a jungle that seemed impenetrable. But never anything quite like this!
   At times his escort propelled the pirogue straight for a seemingly solid bank. But water always materialized under the keel. Sometimes the watery trail was completely concealed by cane and reeds growing out of it.
   "Yo' sure know de way!" he flattered his guide.
   "Oui!
   I oughta! Me—I live all my life here."
   "What yo' name?"
   "Buck Boontown," replied the swamp man.
   "Buck" Boontown, Johnny reflected, seemed to be of a somewhat higher mentality than the other swamp dwellers, just as he was a better physical specimen.
   Nevertheless, the fellow was a vicious character. His belonging to the voodoo cult showed that.
   "Where yo' come from?" demanded Buck Boontown.
   Johnny now spun an elaborate story. He had been all over world, studying the fine points of voodoo sorcery, and now he was visiting this region, where he had heard the art had attained a high degree of perfection. Or so he said.
   This vaguely missed being an outright fib. Buck Boontown ate it up. Johnny—or plain "Pete," as Johnny introduced himself—made an instant hit with Buck.
   We got plenty big voodoo man in dese swamps," Buck Boontown said impressively. "Yo' ever hear of de Gray Spider?"
   "Me—I t'ink so," Johnny said vaguely. "Nothin' but talk, though."
   "
   Bien!"ejaculated Buck Boontown. "Maybe Gray Spider take yo' into his inner circle."
   Johnny put forth a distinct effort to keep his face blank. This was getting hot!
   "Ees yo' in de inner circle?" he questioned.
   "I sure is!"
   Here was luck!
   "Right out of the hat, I picked a guy who is on the inside of the Cult of the Moccasin!" Johnny complimented himself silently. "And what I mean, I believe he's on the inside!"
   "Can yo' guide to where Gray Spider ees hang out, non?"he asked aloud.
   "Hees hangout at Castle of de Moccasin," retorted Buck Boontown. "Me—I can sure guide yo' dere. But first, I gotta find out if de Gray Spider want yo'!"
   Buck Boontown was on the inside, Johnny knew now. He settled to his paddling, elated that he was meeting with such good fortune. He felt he was drawing the net of Doc Savage's vengeance tighter about the sinister Gray Spider.

* * *

   THE night was about gone before they reached their destination. Buck Boontown, Johnny learned in the meantime, had been en route into the swamp when he chanced to hear the bloodhounds. Knowing they were after some criminal, he had stopped. It was the law of the swamp dwellers that all criminals were to be aided to escape.
   As a matter of fact, Johnny had been aware of this far-from-honorable creed. That was why he had deliberately made himself a fugitive.
   Their journey ended at a small hill in the swamp. This was populated by hordes of dogs, only a few less children, and a number of evil-looking men and women. There was an even dozen ramshackle huts.
   A long shed held crudely baled moss. Evidently it awaited transport to a trade boat. Muskrat traps, seines, and fish lines festooned from the shack eaves.
   Johnny stepped from the dugout canoe to what he thought was a log. He got the start of his life when the "log" walked out of the water with him. It was a giant gator. The big reptile was picketed with a rope like a cow. It was apparently a pet, for it made no effort to annex Johnny's leg.
   "Yo' can sleep in de moss shed," suggested Buck Boontown.
   And there Johnny spent the rest of the night. He slept soundly, although subconsciously alert for the slightest hostile sound.
   A tremendous dog fight, punctuated with the howls of pickaninnies trying to break up the fray, awakened him. This seemed to be a usual morning occurrence, since none of the grown-ups paid particular attention.
   Soon after this, a series of piercing shrieks came from one of the largest shacks. The sounds were inhuman, terrible. They gave Johnny a crawling sensation along his spine. They set him to fingering his gun uneasily.
   "What is de racket?" he asked a swamp man.
   "Eet is Sill Boontown," explained the fellow. He tapped his head, then made a corkscrew movement in the air with his finger. "Hees got bats in de head!"
   Investigating, Johnny discovered Buck Boontown was married. The swamp man's wife was slightly better looking than the other females of the settlement, although that was not saying much.
   The couple had one child—a son about eighteen, named Sill. He was mentally unbalanced—crazy. He had been that way, Johnny learned, since a blow on the head suffered from a falling tree two years ago.
   It was a hideous, squalid colony here in the swamp. The people were an admixture of many races. They retained the bad qualities of them all, and the good points of none.
   The moment he judged the time propitious, Johnny began to exhibit his voodoo hocus-pocus. To the usual repellant rites and incantations of a voodoo man, Johnny added a few masterly touches of his own.
   First, he "hypnotized" the pet alligator. He did this by secretly breaking one of Doc's glass balls of anaesthetic under the reptile's snout. The trick created quite a furor. Johnny's stock as a man of magic went soaring.
   Using simple acids, Johnny made a bucket of water change color at his command.
   His crowning feat was to drive a long, thin rod of steel through his own brain. This he accomplished by having a tubing in his hat. The steel rod was flexible. It was guided around his head by the tubing—although the impression was that it passed directly through his skull.
   This made the eyes of his audience stand out until they could almost have been knocked off with a stick.

* * *

   THE next day, Johnny's performance paid dividends. Buck Boontown had disappeared. Now he returned.
   "Man here who want talk wit' you'!" he muttered to Johnny.
   "Ees he from de Gray Spider?" Johnny demanded.
   Buck Boontown replied sharply: "Me—I don' know nothin' about nobody by name of Gray Spider!"
   Obviously, some one had put the bee in Buck's bonnet—warned him not to talk. Johnny silently berated himself for a lummox. Why hadn't he trailed Buck Boontown when he disappeared? The swamp man had apparently gotten in touch with the Gray Spider.
   "Bien!"
   said Johnny. "Vare ees de man who want to talk wit' me?"
   "Here I am, buddy!" said a harsh voice.
   Whirling, Johnny eyed the speaker.
   The man was wide and thick of limb. He wore muck-caked overalls. Underneath these, he was attired in something the true swamp man never saw—a collar and necktie.
   A brilliant silk mask obscured his face. It was even tied at the back of his head so as to hide the color of his hair. And he wore all-concealing cheap cotton gloves. It was impossible to as much as glimpse the hue of his skin.
   Johnny, however, knew by the sound of his words that he was a white man.
   "Buck Boontown tells me you're quite a voodoo guy," growled the man.
   "Oui!"
   said Johnny. "That ees right."
   "And he says you want to join the Gray Spider's outfit?"
   "Eet pay good?"
   "I'll say it'll pay you good!"
   "Bien!
   Then I join."
   The other man laughed shortly. "I'm not so sure that I’ll let you join. I must know more about you before we start talking that over."
   In his best dialect, Johnny repeated substantially the same story he had told Buck Boontown. He told it as earnestly as he could. A great deal might come from this, for Johnny thought he was under the scrutiny of the Gray Spider himself!
   "Ees yo' de Gray Spider?" he asked boldly.
   The masked man tensed visibly. He put a hand in a pocket that bulged as if it might hold a gun.
   "Listen—don't go asking silly questions!" he snarled.
   "Oui!"
   said Johnny, shrugging.
   The other man did not renew the talk immediately. Finally he said, "I'm gonna do some thinkin' about you. Hang around here for a few days. A man who knows voodoo like you would come in handy. But there can't be no chances taken, see!"
   Johnny saw. He also thought he saw that this man was the Gray Spider! If he could just get a look at the fellow's face! But that was too dangerous.
   Johnny was suddenly seized with an idea.

* * *

   "BE yo' goin' to New O'leans?" he questioned
   "What's it to you?" snarled the masked man.
   Johnny replied with the declaration that he had left New Orleans in a hurry. As a consequence, a considerable sum of his money had remained behind. He was careful to lend the impression difficulties with the police had led to his sudden departure.
   He gave the masked man the address of the room where Doc Savage's bronzed, skilled fingers had applied the makeup. This room was in a private residence in New Orleans.
   "Could yo' bring me my money?" Johnny finished. "Yo' bein' de Gray Spider, yo' ees to be trusted."
   "Who said anything about me being the Gray Spider?" rapped the other.
   "Non, non,
   nobody!" Johnny said hastily. "Weel yo' bring my money?"
   "I'll bring it," replied the man.
   A subtle something in his tone told Johnny that the man intended to do nothing of the sort. This didn't bother Johnny greatly—because there was no money. The important thing was to get the man to go to the private residence in New Orleans.
   Johnny thought the fellow would do that—for the dishonest purpose of seizing the money and keeping it himself. Johnny had purposefully named the sum as amounting to nearly twenty thousand dollars. Even the Gray Spider would hardly pass up as juicy a steal as that.
   The masked man now departed.
   Evading the attention of Buck Boontown and the other inhabitants of the scrawny settlement, Johnny trailed the masked man. He could hear the fellow crashing along ahead, but did not catch sight of him.
   Johnny soon turned to the left. He found his hidden plane in the morass. Pawing the draping moss aside, he entered the cabin. In a minute, he was in radio-telephone communication with Doc Savage.
   "I sent this guy to that room where you put on my makeup," he told Doc, after explaining the situation. "You can grab him there."
   "Do you think he is the Gray Spider?" Doc's voice came back clear as a fine bell. They spoke in the language of ancient Maya, of course.
   "I cannot tell for sure," Johnny replied. "My guess would be that he is."
   "I'll hold a reception for him," Doc said grimly. "Good work, Johnny! Go back and continue as you were."
   "O.K.," said Johnny. He clicked off the radio-telephone apparatus and left the plane.
   Climbing a near-by tree, he glanced about over the steaming, festering swamp. It seemed to extend to the horizon in all directions.
   For an instant, Johnny caught sight of the masked man—discovered that the fellow had now removed his mask. He was too far away for Johnny to discern details about his face.
   The fellow flushed up a cloud of blackbirds, then trudged out of sight in the morass.
   Johnny slid back down his tree and moved toward Buck Boontown's settlement. His work for Doc Savage here in the voodoo swamps was progressing nicely.

* * *

Chapter XI. THE WELL-KNOWN EGG

   THE man who had worn the mask, swore at the cloud of blackbirds Johnny had seen him flush up. His profanity had a happy note. He seemed highly satisfied with the world.
   "That voodoo man is a dumb one!" he chuckled. "Thinks I will bring him his money! Nearly twenty thousand bucks! Imagine that!"
   He shied a clod at the little lizards racing up a palmetto.
   "That money goes in my own pocket and stays there!" he declared aloud. "It's so much gravy!"
   In the course of a couple of hours, he reached a bayou where lay a small motor boat. This sped him a number of miles, finally depositing him near a highway. A powerful coupй raced him into New Orleans.
   "Now to get the money!" he grinned.
   The fellow had certainly swallowed Johnny's bait, hook, line, and sinker.
   It was late afternoon. Canal Street seethed with office workers going home. Newspaper delivery boys dashed along the residential streets, flinging folded papers onto porches. A pop-corn man was doing a big business with school children.
   The man who had worn the mask, parked his car near the address Johnny had given him. He got out. Carefully, he surveyed the scene.
   A man was digging a ditch in front of the house. There was no one else in sight.
   The man who had worn the mask, swung up the walk to the house.
   As he passed the ditch, the man in it knocked the dirt off his shovel by banging it loudly on the cement walk.
   The visitor noticed this, but thought nothing peculiar about it. He strode across the porch and rang the bell.
   A thin, piping voice—it sounded like the tone of an old man on his last legs—invited, "Come in!"
   "Fine!" thought the man. "If there's nobody here but an old duffer, it will be simpler in case it comes to rough stuff."
   He opened the door. He didn't even trouble to have his hand in his pocket with his revolver. He stepped in boldly.
   His jaw fell. His hands whipped spasmodically for the weapon in his pocket. They never reached it. Bronze lacquered talons of tempered steel seized them.
   A moment later, the lightning seemed to strike his jaw. He went suddenly to sleep.
   The fellow's slack form lifted and came to rest under Doc Savage's mighty bronze arm.