THE DERRICK DEVIL

Chapter I. THE FLOWING RED DEVIL

THE man carried a .30-30 rifle in one hand and two boxes of cartridges, both open, in the other hand. He acted as if ready to drop the cartridges and use the rifle any instant.

The girl had a shotgun.

"I’ve got a hunch guns ain’t a lot of good against this thing!" the man muttered.

"What’s the matter, Reservoir?" the girl asked. "Believe in hobgoblins?"

It was too dark to tell much about them, only that the man was tall and skinny, except for his middle, which was big around, making him like a snake that had swallowed an egg. A nice snake, of course.

The girl was about the right size, and if she didn’t have a good form, the darkness lied. It was impossible to tell about her coloring.

"I still maintain I saw something coming out of the casing of that wildcat well, Miss Vida," the man muttered. "Reservoir Hill may be old, but he ain’t going nuts!"

The girl laughed. It was, somehow, not a very enthusiastic mirth.

"Sam Sands was to watch the well until midnight," she said. "It’s eleven. Time you and I were relieving Sam."

Holding the rifle with his finger in the trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl took long strides and kept at his side.

Tall, dry grass brushed their field boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the night breeze. Over in the hills somewhere, an owl was making a racket.

They topped the small hill and before them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well derrick stood reared against the cloudy night sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling rig was evidently a rotary.

The well was not a producer, because the breeze was coming from that direction and it carried, instead of the smell of crude oil, the odors usually found around drilling wells.

"Reservoir" Hill stopped.

The girl waited, but when he did not move or speak, she grew impatient. "Well!"

"We’ve got the wildcat shut down because our boss driller has disappeared," Reservoir Hill said, slowly.

"Well?" the girl said again, sharply.

"I’ve got a horrible suspicion," continued Reservoir Hill, "that we’ve already found our driller!"

THE girl was puzzled. She held her shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed her companion. A stray beam of moonlight came through a crack in passing clouds to illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends of him had been squeezed to make him big in the middle.

"What are you driving at, Reservoir?"

"Remember that gummy stuff we found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was near where we found the clothes our driller was wearin’—when he—well, when he disappeared."

"That was just old lube or grease that somebody had scraped out there."

"It wasn’t lube," Reservoir Hill said, shuddering.

"No?"

"I know lube oil." Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "I’ve worked in refineries too many years not to know grease or lube. This stuff looks more like—well—" He fell silent.

"Like what?"

Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug.

"Forget it! When they have been in the oil fields as long as I have, they sometimes got funny!"

The two of them walked toward the drilling rig. It was a complete outfit, even more modern on close examination. Everything was in readiness for the striking of oil, catch dams have been thrown across gullies with fresnos.

It was a steam rig, and the boiler was located far enough away that a possible unexpected outpouring of natural gas from the well would not be likely to reach the boiler fires before they could be extinguished by a supply of water which was kept close at hand. Steam was brought from the boiler to the machinery at the well by pipe.

And oil field scouts, fellows who know their business, would have said that here was a wildcat drilling outfit which knew what it was doing.

Hill stopped, inhaled until his chest was almost half as big as his stomach, and blasted a yell.

"Sam!" he howled. "Sam! Where are you?"

Echoes came gobbling back from the red oak carpeted hills.

They waited. Night breeze seemed to have suddenly stopped rustling the red oak leaves, but it might have been a freak of the night.

Reservoir Hill growled, "Well! Didn’t answer, did he?"

The girl had become concerned.

"Sam can’t be asleep! Your yell must have made half the Indian warriors in the Osage sit up in their graves!"

They ran forward, guns ready. The man, Reservoir Hill, produced a big, shiny flashlight which gave poor light and not much of it. The light immediately found shiny substance on the ground.

Reservoir Hill stared. His throat made a rasping noise more eloquent than any other sound could have been.

"Them’s Sam’s clothes, ain’t they?" he croaked.

THE male clothing—hat, shirt, coat, trousers, socks, heavy oil field shoes—lay exactly in a position they would occupy if the former wearer had lain down on his back and his body had become nonexistent.

The shirt was inside the coat, with the shirt sleeves down inside the coat sleeves in a natural manner. The socks were even inside the shoes.

The girl eyed him curiously. "Why are you scared? This is a practical joke! It’s too silly to be anything else!"

"Humph!" Reservoir Hill, to avoid the question, walked forward with his flashlight.

He took only a few paces before he wrenched to a rigid halt. His throat made its queer noise.

The girl ran forward, stood at his side and stared at what he had found.

"Some one had dumped more of that queer-looking grease," she said.

Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "Listen! Our boss driller disappeared! We can’t find him anywhere! But we find this gummy stuff!"

"I still say it’s grease!’

"I haven’t been working with crude oil and things for nothing, all my life," growled Reservoir Hill. "And I know this ain’t grease!"

"What is it then?"

"Ain’t quite ready to say what I think it is!" Reservoir Hill mumbled.

"Why not?"

"Don’t like to scare women when there maybe ain’t no need!"

"I was brought up on Indian massacre stories," the girl said, dryly. She was calm enough to make it seem as if she had been, too.

Reservoir Hill skulked forward. Silhouetted against the glare of his own flashlight beam, he was like a caricature of an old Indian fighter on the trail of a hostile redskin. He threw his light over toward the derrick.

He lifted his .30-30 and flame and noise came out of its muzzle.

The girl ran forward. "What is it?"

"Going into the well casing!" Reservoir Hill shrieked. "Throw my flashlight on the durn thing!"

The girl grabbed his flashlight, pointed its poor light in the direction of the derrick floor and the drilling casing which stuck upward in the center. The light was extremely weak.

"Battery about gone!" she complained. "I can’t see—!"

Then she saw. Maybe she had been brought up on tales of Indian massacres, but the scream she poured out now would have done justice to the most easily frightened maid.

THE thing going into the oil well casing had substantial reality to it, that was certain. It was not transparent, like a jelly. It flowed as some jellies will melt and flow when dropped on a hot stove. It was going into the sixteen-inch casing.

Color of the flowing mass was red.

"Whatever it is, we’ll stop it!" The girl’s shotgun banged hugely, banged again. Louder than the .30-30, it did not have as ugly a sound.

But the translucent red mass disappeared down the casing.

The girl and Reservoir Hill dashed forward, weapons ready. There was no sign of the red mass on the derrick floor.

Reservoir Hill touched the steel casing pipe. He wrenched his hand back, leaped to one side, grabbed up a fistful of waste and scrubbed his palm furiously.

"There’s gooey stuff on the casing!" he howled.

The girl looked closely. The "gooey stuff" was there. She did not touch it.

There were other marks on the casing. Shiny streaks left by lead! Big streaks made by the .30-30 slugs, and small ones where the shotgun slugs had hit.

The girl said, hoarsely, "Our bullets hit everywhere!"

"Hah!" Reservoir Hill took the flashlight out of her hand, and turned it on the derrick floor. "Look! A trail of the gooey stuff!"

The girl said, "Let’s follow it."

They followed it to the mysterious, shapeless mass they had found on the ground—the stuff that looked like grease, and yet didn’t.

Then the smeared path continued on to the clothes lying on the ground.

"It goes right to Sam Sand’s duds!" Reservoir Hill dropped to a knee, explored briefly, then gulped, "Vida!"

"What?" asked the girl.

"The gooey stuff is all over Sam’s clothes!"

There was rustling of leaves and crackling of dry twigs in the red oak thicket near by. This sound proved to be made by two men, who soon galloped up.

Reservoir Hill used his weak flashlight to identify the newcomers.

Chapter II. THE MAN NEEDED

ENOCH ANDERSHOTT was a man who strove for the effect of a rugged pioneer. He was big. His ruggedness stuck out all over him. His clothes were calculated to enhance the rugged aspect. Tweeds. He had a small mouth wrapped around a big cigar. His red face was redder because of running, and his breathing was a wish-wish-wish series of noises.

"Give me those guns!" he yelled. "Your bullets almost hit our cabin! Such carelessness is inexcusable!"

Which was typical of Enoch Andershott, who was always trying to browbeat some one.

Alonzo Cugg had big eyes with a permanent scare deep in them, and a way of holding his hands as if ready to sprint. No one knew of any reason why he had ever been scared of any one or why he should be. He seemed about one hundred and thirty pounds of skin over wires, and was about two shades lighter than a khaki shirt.

A big black dog came out of the red oak brush, making no noise. The dog was nearly pony size and had bloodshot eyes. The canine lifted a whiskered black lip off nicotine yellow fangs that were more than an inch long.

"Heel, Whitey!" ordered Enoch Andershott arrogantly.

The black dog skulked to Andershott’s heels. There was no white whatever on the dog.

Enoch Andershott and Alonzo Cugg owned an adjacent oil lease. They had scouted the Sam Sands-Vida Carlaw-Reservoir Hill drilling wildcat and a geologist had told them that the way the strata was running, there might be an oil dome under this region, a few thousand feet under the old production. So Andershott and Cugg were here in person, keeping an eye on things.

The oil blue book listed both as millionaires.

"You might have shot us!" Enoch Andershott yelled.

"You got a cellar over there you can get in?" suggested Reservoir Hill sourly.

No one said anything for a while.

"What was happening?" Andershott growled.

"At risk of being called crazy," said the girl, "I’m going to tell you.

"Our driller, Ben Hogan, disappeared last night. We’d shut down drilling when a broken gear we’d ordered hadn’t come. Ben Hogan took a walk. We never saw him again. We found his clothes. There’s no reason why he should walk off naked—"

"You’re forgetting that gummy stuff!" interposed Reservoir Hill.

"We found some stuff that looked like jelly or lube or something on the ground," explained the girl. "To-night, Reservoir Hill wanted to post a watch at the well. Sam Sands had first part of the night."

THE girl fell silent, looked at the dog. The dog’s eyes were luminous green and almost awful in the weak flashlight’s glow.

"We came out to relieve Sam Sands, found his clothing, saw a red object going into the oil well, and shot at it," the girl finished.

"We found another gob of that gummy stuff and it ain’t lube oil!" added Reservoir Hill.

Enoch Andershott asked, "Miss Carlaw, were you here last night when your driller disappeared?"

"No."

"Then you just have this man Reservoir Hill’s word for it?"

"Bless my children!" growled Reservoir Hill. "I’m gonna pat your wrist for that!"

Reservoir Hill started forward, and the big black dog came walking, stiff-legged, from behind Enoch Andershott. The dog made, deep inside himself, sounds like something dying. His fangs curved inward like a snake.

"Heel, Whitey!’ said Enoch Andershott.

The dog stopped, but did not cover the fangs with lips.

Nobody spoke. Alarm in Alonzo Cugg’s eyes had increased; his hands were more than ever in position for running.

"If there’s more reckless shooting," said Enoch Andershott shrilly, "we’ll call the sheriff!"

That seemed what they had come over to say. They walked away.

There was considerable crashing of brush when they went away, as if Enoch Andershott were smashing his path through instead of making any effort to go around.

"He does everything alike!" growled Reservoir Hill. "Just bulls through!"

The girl murmured, "You don’t like him?"

"He flimflammed me out of my first stake," growled Reservoir Hill. "I had a lease over by Bartlesville, years ago. Enoch Andershott, a young man then, was my driller. He came into Bartlesville one night and told me the tools were lost in the hole.

"I didnt have money enough to run a fishing job. I was disgusted. He knew that. Andershott bought me out through another guy for a song. You know what I found out the next day, Viddy?"

"What?"

"My well had hit oil!"

"I’m sorry," the girl said sympathetically.

"So was I."

On a lease to the north, pumping started up and walking beams squeaked. The sound had an unnatural quality.

The girl and Reservoir Hill poked about with the poor flashlight. They found nothing. Then they walked toward the house.

THE house was one of those oil field things. Wood and corrugated tin. Inside, it was beaver-boarded, and no paint had been used. Floors were bare. Living-room furniture consisted of a table and ten kitchen chairs.

On the table was a deck of cards and an ash tray half full of ashes and cigarette butts. The girl accidentally upset the ash tray when she put her shotgun on the table. Reservoir Hill helped her in cleaning up the mess.

"Wish you’d try to get along with Enoch Andershott," the girl said. "Since he and Cugg have the lease adjoining us."

"We’ll be all right!" Hill grunted. "Unless I meet him in a dark cañon when nobody is looking!"

They threw the ash tray mess outdoors.

"Reservoir!" the girl said.

"Huh?"

"Why are you so worried over the disappearance of our driller and Sam?"

Reservoir Hill went to the door and expectorated into the darkness. He had not laid his rifle down. He said, without looking at the girl, "Viddy, did you ever hear of that Indian legend about the papoose that was warned by his mamma not to dig holes in the tepee floor?"

"First time I knew you were interested in native folklore, Reservoir," the girl smiled.

"The papoose dug the hole in the tepee floor, anyway," said Reservoir. "An earth devil that lives in the center of the world sent his mean, red spirit up through the hole and grabbed the little papoose and ate him all up, except his grease, which would fry and sputter in the hot place at the center of the earth."

Reservoir Hill gave the girl a chance to speak, but she didn’t seem able to think of anything.

"There’s other legends about earth devils who send red spirits up to get men."

"Nonsense!" snapped the girl, "Indians have legends about everything!"

"Not everything!" Reservoir corrected. "And where there’s smoke, there’s sometimes fire."

"You actually believe such an insane theory?" the girl asked.

"‘Now look," Reservoir grinned wryly. "Don’t be so tough on your old partner."

The girl got up and paced. "But it’s impossible! It’s too ridiculous!"

She paced some more, stopped, reached for the cards, and absently turned over the top one. It was a king.

"Reservoir!" she said suddenly. "Did you ever hear of Doc Savage?"

RESERVOIR HILL sat in the chair, tilted it against the wall and balanced the rifle across his knees.

"I guess there ain’t many who ain’t heard of that fellow. Once I heard that fellow was going to stop his plane for fuel in Tulsa, and I drove up from Okmulgee, hell-bent for election just to see him. Me, who wouldn’t cross the road to see Adam eat the apple."

"Did you see Doc Savage?"

"Nope, He had come and gone."

"But you know Savage’s reputation, don’t you?" Reservoir Hill eyed his rifle. "I know that he has invented a type of drilling bit that I think is gonna come into general use. I’ve also heard that a lot of geologists use his theories."

"Do you know what his real business is?"

Reservoir Hill wet his lips, did not lift his eyes from the rifle, and said nothing.

The girl continued, "Doc Savage’s life work is supposed to be the righting of wrongs, the aiding of oppressed, and fighting crooks whom the law cannot bring to justice."

"I read that somewhere," Reservoir admitted. "I wondered how he made it pay."

"Doc Savage would probably be interested in this."

Reservoir Hill sniffed. "He wouldn’t touch a thing so small!"

Outdoors, a man screamed. He was some distance away. His first scream sounded as if it took out some of his throat lining.

In grabbing her rifle off the table, the girl knocked the saucer ash tray to the floor and it broke. She and Reservoir Hill ran outside.

"That squawk was over toward the wildcat derrick!" Reservoir yelled.

They ran in that direction. Before long, they heard a hideous growling and snarling, sounds loud and utterly ferocious.

Enoch Andershott appeared suddenly. He charged toward them.

"Help!" he squawled. "It tried to kill me!"

It was his voice which had screamed.

He reached Reservoir Hill and the girl and grabbed them both at once.

"A damned jelly thing flowing along the ground!" he screamed. "It almost caught me!"

"Hell!" Reservoir Hill ran toward the oil derrick, holding his inefficient flashlight.

The giant black dog with the fangs came unexpectedly out of the brush, and stalked, snorting, toward Reservoir Hill. Hill spun madly, and beat the dog back to the girl and Enoch Andershott.

"Heel, Whitey!" screamed Andershott, and the dog stopped.

"Keep that durn man-eater here!" growled Reservoir Hill and went back with his flashlight and rifle to search in the darkness.

It was almost fifteen minutes before he finished. "Couldn’t find it," he said. "There’s another one of them slimy trails coming out of the well casing. It goes around through the brush and back again."

THE giant black dog made hideous slobbering and snarling noises. It had been making them steadily.

Enoch Andershott shuddered. "I was p-prowling around your lease because I didn’t believe your story! This thing g-g-got after me! I r-ran!"

"An’ didn’t fall down!" Reservoir Hill said, gloomily.

Enoch Andershott did not resent the insult. For a man who affected a rugged pioneer air, he looked scared.

"Want us to accompany you to your cabin?" the girl asked.

"If you would!" Enoch Andershott said, gratefully.

Reservoir Hill sniffed.

The cabin on the Andershott and Cugg lease was the customary type. The living room held one rocking chair and only six kitchen chairs. There were no cards on the table. An old pipecap served as an ash tray, and a newspaper was folded so that black headlines showed. The headlines said:

OUTLAW "TOMAHAWK" TANT TRAPPED

POSSES SURROUND ELUSIVE BADMAN

Not much more of the story was readable, because some one had spilled coffee on the paper.

Alonzo Cugg gave them a meaningless stare. Enoch Andershott grunted fiercely at them, having regained his courage. The black dog showed long teeth.

Reservoir Hill said, as he and Vida went back to their own lease, "Fine thanks, we got!"

The girl went into a tiny room that evidently served the Sands-Hill-Carlaw partnership as an office. There was an old country-style telephone beside the desk. She gave the hand ringer a crank.

"Get me Doc Savage, in New York City," she said into the mouthpiece.

"Viddy!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "What crazy thing you gonna do?"

"It has suddenly dawned on me that this mystery is serious!" the girl said, grimly. "I am going to get it solved!"

"Wait a minute!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "I don’t think—"

"I want to talk to Doc Savage," the girl said into the telephone.

She listened for a time, then said, "That’s unfortunate. I’m coming to New York. I have to see Doc Savage. You try to find him in the meantime."

She hung up.

"Well?" asked Reservoir Hill.

"I TALKED to a man named Monk, who said he was one of Doc Savage’s assistants," the girl explained. "He said Doc Savage was not in New York, that he was off at some place called a ‘Fortress of Solitude.’"

"That," grunted Reservoir Hill, "let’s Doc Savage out!"

"It does nothing of the kind!" said the girl, firmly. "I’ll stop off and tell Andershott and Cugg that I’m on my way to New York to get Doc Savage. It may make them more comfortable if they know that."

"But why the heck go all the way to New York yourself? Telephoning will do just as good!"

"There’s another reason."

"Huh?"

"Money."

"Oh!" Reservoir Hill pursed his lips out in the manner of a man who understands perfectly.

The girl said, "We’re drilling this wildcat well on borrowed money. It’s been an expensive well. We’ve already sunk over fifty thousand dollars. Our oil properties here in the Indian Dome Field are mortgaged heavily. Unless we can borrow more money on them, we may be sunk before long."

"Don’t tell me about it!" groaned Reservoir. "I recite it in my sleep!"

"There’s money in New York," said the girl. "I’m going after it! And after Doc Savage!"

Chapter III. MURDER IN THE AIR

THE plane was a big, low-winged cabin job, and probably one of the fastest and most comfortable commercial types of airliner in the world. It was one of hundreds of such planes flying regular schedules on Uncle Sam’s air lines.

The plane was an hour out of Cleveland, Ohio, bound eastward, and flying high. Pilot and co-pilot were taking it easy. The hostess, having noted that it appeared no one was going to be sick on this flight, had stopped to talk to the fellow who wore pince-nez glasses.

The fellow was a wiry chap with a plain blue suit and a bright necktie. His face had a deep tan, and it was this tan which had moved the hostess to stop and talk to him, to permit herself to be talked to was more like it.

The man looked like a city grifter, except for the deep tan. Tans like that did not come from sunlamps. The pince-nez glasses made him look more gentlemanly, too.

The man had been trying outrageously to flirt with the hostess, and she had ignored him until this point.

As she halted beside his seat, the hostess noticed that the fellow wore plain black gloves of a very rich-looking leather.

Privately, the hostess wondered why the fellow had not tried to flirt with the girl in the adjacent compartment. This girl was as pretty as any young woman the hostess had ever seen on a plane. That was something, because chorus girls and millionaire’s cuties are frequent travelers by plane. The girl in the next compartment was preoccupied, as if she had something on her mind.

The hostess happened to know that this pretty girl was down on the passenger list as Vida Carlaw, of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The hostess immediately wished she hadn’t stopped to let the wiry fellow with the black gloves speak to her.

"Listen, baby," said the man. "How about you and me going places and doing things after this magic carpet parks us in little old New York?"

The hostess didn’t like the dead look in the man’s eyes. Anyway, it was the crudest kind of approach.

"I beg pardon!" she said frigidly.

"Listen, sweetie pie," said the black-gloved man. "I’m the little airplane girl’s friend. I like your type. You’ve got me all up in the air—"

"Then stay there!" suggested the hostess, and walked to her seat in the rear of the plane.

The hostess was angry as she plumped down on the cushions. Perhaps the anger dulled her wits. She did not dream at the moment that she had been deliberately insulted. The wiry man had purposefully made her so angry that she would flounce back to her compartment and not show herself for a while.

The hostess remembered that another queer customer had come aboard the plane at Cleveland, too. This individual was big and wore a light gray-belted combination topcoat and a large gray hat, with the brim yanked down.

He had, the hostess also recalled, worn gloves, but she couldn’t remember their color. This man had kept his chin in his collar when he came aboard, and had been wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, such as the movie stars affected when they wanted to disguise themselves.

The hostess was so wrapped in her thoughts that she failed to witness what was happening forward in the cabin. It was just as well, for it probably saved her from having nightmares.

THE plane was of the most modern type, which meant, of course, that it did not have the old-fashioned line of wicker seats down each side. Instead, there was a succession of boxlike compartments which could be made up into upper and lower berths. These compartments gave comparative privacy.

The wiry man with the black gloves suddenly whipped over into the seat beside Vida Carlaw, who had picked up a magazine and was reading it.

"Oh!" she gasped. "Say, what do you think you’re doing, anyway?"

The wiry man did not answer. He was looking at the magazine. It was open at a picture of a remarkably even-featured bronze man’s face. The bronze man’s hair was only slightly darker than his skin, and his eyes were a flake gold tint, and strange, even in the picture. The caption beneath read:

DOC SAVAGE

A Rare Picture of the Man of Mystery

The wiry man stared at the picture. He wet his lips. He reached over and put a finger on the picture.

"What’s the idea of gandering at that?" he demanded.

Vida Carlaw retorted, "And why should I tell you anything?"

"Suppose I tell you, then," said the wiry man. "‘You’re going to see this Doc Savage. That won’t do, see!"

"And I presume you think you can do something about it?"

"I hope I can," the man said, calmly. "Because, if I don’t get away with it, they’ll probably hang me."

The girl’s eyes mirrored her changing thoughts. At first, she didn’t believe the man. Then she doubted. Suddenly, she knew he did mean it, and she was scared. She tried to get to her feet.

The man was carrying a blackjack up his sleeve, the thong around his wrist. He struck her over the head so hard that his glasses fell off. She collapsed, not all at once, but slowly, with every muscle rigid, her eyelids doing a fast flutter.

The man leaned across her, grasped the window and raised it. The window was large enough to jump out of.

The wiry man replaced his glasses on his nose, then crossed to his own compartment and got a big bundle. Two parachutes! He put one on the girl, the other on himself, and cinched the harness tight.

He scooped up the girl and it was plain what he intended to do—jump with her, and open her ‘chute, then his own.

An unbroken fastness of wooded hills lay below, offering no landing place for the plane.

The man picked up the girl. Her eyes had opened.

"Tough, ain’t you?" the man snorted, and raised his blackjack.

Instead of striking, the wiry man emitted a scream so full of agony that it made every occupant in the plane jerk erect. His glasses fell off again.

A NEWCOMER had seized the wiry fellow. The appearance of this new arrival was striking. He might have been sculptured out of hard bronze. The contour of his features, his mobile and muscular mouth, his ample forehead, his lean cheeks denoted a power of character beyond the ordinary.

The bronze of his hair was a little darker than the bronze of his features. The hair was straight and fitted so close as to give the appearance of a metal skullcap.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of all was the bronze man’s eyes—like pools of flake gold, glittering when reflected light reached them, so that they seemed to exert a hypnotic influence.

The wiry man struggled with the bronze giant. He had no luck at all, for his Herculean captor demonstrated strength far beyond the ordinary. Muscles in the bronze hands, the forearms, and up and down the metallic neck, were like bundles of piano wire. The spectacles were stepped on and broken.

Vida Carlaw, conscious but weak, endeavored to maintain her balance as the plane gave a lurch, the pilot’s attention having been distracted by the fight.

Confusion now seized the plane. Screams of the wiry man had been so agonizing as to arouse pity. Several passengers rushed to his aid.

The co-pilot charged to help. He saw the giant holding the smaller man, and made a mistake. It was natural that, not knowing the facts, his sympathy should be with the little fellow.

The co-pilot drew a revolver which regulations prescribed that he carry, and jabbed it against the giant’s back.

"Get your hands off that man!"

The giant freed the wiry man. The fellow scampered toward the rear of the plane, parachute flopping against his shanks.

The co-pilot started to give the bronze giant his fiercest stare. Then he got a look at the big fellow, and his jaw sagged; his eyes popped, and he dropped his gun.

"Oh, slay me for an idiot!" he gulped. "Honest, I didn’t know who it was! Didn’t recognize—"

The bronze giant ignored the co-pilot’s apologies, and sprang toward the rear of the plane. The baggage hatch door was open to the sky.

The wiry man was floating under an open parachute behind the passenger airliner.

The bronze giant seemed capable of instantaneous decisions. He rushed back to Vida Carlaw.

"Equal to a parachute jump?"

Vida Carlaw made a smile with an effort.

"Anything," she said, "to escape this ringing in my head!"

The bronze man nodded, then stooped, scooped tiny particles which glittered on the floor and dropped them into a pocket. The girl watched his actions without saying a word.

THE bronze man now whipped to the seat which he had been occupying and yanked open a bag. It held a parachute.

At this point the plane’s hostess suddenly realized this metallic giant was the mysterious fellow who had gotten aboard at Cleveland wearing tan combination coat, horn-rimmed glasses, and hat with brim yanked down.

The bronze man began donning his parachute.

"Bring your plane as close as you can to where that man’s parachute is going to land!" He did not shout, but he seemed to have a voice with some unusual tonal quality which caused it to carry over the confusion inside the plane.

Somewhat surprisingly, the pilot obeyed the command, the reason being that he had gotten a good look at the big bronze fellow. Recognition had swept over the pilot’s face like a shock.

If five minutes ago any one would have tried to tell Vida Carlaw that she would allow a strange man to persuade her to make a parachute jump out of a plane some thousands of feet up in the air, she would have denied the remotest possibility of any such thing.

"Count ten, then jerk the ripcord ring," she heard herself directed.

Then she jumped.

The parachute opened. Vida Carlaw did not feel as much of a shock as she had expected. She looked downward; the world seemed to be rocking—first it would be high up on the right, then on the left. She decided the parachute was swinging.

The earth began to get bigger. What had resembled bushes swelled into trees; cracks became deep gullies, and a winding gray string turned into a concrete road.

Vida Carlaw observed a car was parked on the road not far from where they were going to land, a man standing close to the car.

Her late assailant!

The giant, who looked as if he were made of metal, seemed to be trying to guide his ‘chute toward the road, by spilling air from one side. Entire success did not attend this. He landed in some brush.

The young woman landed easier than she had expected, picked herself up and called, "Hope this isn’t a sample of what the rest of my life will be like!"

GETTING no answer, she craned her neck. The big metallic man was gone! He must have twisted out of the parachute harness and vanished into the brush with incredible abruptness. Vida Carlaw listened, and thought she heard him over toward the road. She was not certain.

On the road, the automobile engine could be heard. It speeded up, gears clashed, and the car moved off. When she last heard it, the car was making sound indicating high speed.

Vida Carlaw continued to listen. A few insects made a racket, but there was nothing else. The birds in the woodland must have been frightened into silence by the descending parachutes, since birds fear anything large in the air.

Then the bronze man appeared in a near-by glade, coming from the direction of the road.

Vida Carlaw reflected that he did not look nearly as large as he had in the plane. One really had to be close to him to appreciate his size, a phenomenon, she decided, which was due to a remarkable symmetrical muscular development. He did not have the pachyderm shape which usually marks very strong men.

Vida Carlaw demanded, "Just who are you anyway?"

The bronze giant looked at the strikingly pretty woman, without being visibly impressed.

"Clark Savage, Jr.," he said. "Sometimes called Doc Savage."

Chapter IV. DEATH WITHOUT REASON

VIDA CARLAW’S mind promptly became involved with a number of thoughts. She was astonished to learn that this remarkable fellow was the man she was flying to New York to meet, Doc Savage. And the high points of the parachute jump—her first—ran through her mind. Nor was she in the habit of having men try to kidnap her.

Besides all this, Vida Carlaw was an exquisite young lady who was accustomed to having members of the opposite sex show marked admiration when they were in her neighborhood. She was accustomed to taking their breath away. But this fellow appeared no more moved than if he were looking at a tree.

"What happened to the man who crowned me?" Vida asked, sharply.

"He got away."

Vida Carlaw mused that she had really never seen a more handsome man than this one.

"How did he do it?" she asked.

"Stopped a motorist. Pointed a gun at the driver, probably."

Vida Carlaw decided she liked the bronze’s man’s voice, just as well as his looks. That voice properly belonged to an opera singer.

"I was coming to New York to see you," she said. "A fellow named Monk, who said he was one of your assistants, told me you were away at some place he called a Fortress of Solitude."

"My return occurred sooner than expected. Monk mentioned your telephone call—hence my being aboard the plane."

Vida Carlaw, being as inconsistent as any young woman with her looks might be expected to be, decided that this bronze fellow was short on chivalry. He hadn’t even asked her how she felt after her first parachute jump. She decided to give him some frost.

"Why didn’t you make yourself known in the plane?" she snapped.

"My life’s work is the rather strange one, of helping those who are in trouble, and doing a bit toward dealing with those who are beyond the law. Enemies are the result. Their attacks come in queer ways. Safety demands caution in the case of a summons such as yours."

Vida Carlaw decided to feel insulted.

"I see! You thought I was a crook!"

"One cannot always tell."

Vida Carlaw felt herself getting angrier. Some thought might have convinced her that she was not getting anywhere. But this young bronze fellow—he was obviously young—was not acting as a young man should in the presence of a very pretty girl.

"So you think I’m a crook?" she snapped.

He did not help matters by inquiring, "Just what are you?"

"I’m an Oklahoma oil producer and wildcatter! My home is in Tulsa, and I’m putting down a wildcat well with two partners, Sam Sands and Reservoir Hill. Something has happened to our driller, and to Sam Sands!"

With the story all out, she waited to see what he would say.

"Give more details," he requested.

The bronze man’s voice had not changed, but Vida Carlaw got the feeling that he was interested in the mystery—if not in herself.

The young woman told him what had happened; she even included the Indian legend which Reservoir Hill had told her about the papoose who had dug a hole in the tepee floor, only to have the spirit of an earth devil come up through the hole and consume him, all but his grease.

At the end, Doc Savage asked, "Have you any enemies?"

"Why, no!" The young woman registered surprise.

"Then how do you explain the attempt to kill you on the plane?"

Vida Carlaw studied a speck far away in the sky. It had not been there a moment before.

"I can’t imagine! The whole thing completely mystifies me!"

There was silence for a few moments. The young woman became conscious of the droning noise, and decided the speck, now larger, was making it.

"A plane!" she said.

"Yes," Doc Savage said. "Probably a ship carrying some of my aids."

THE bronze man inserted a hand inside his shirt and brought out a round black bottle. Apparently he wore next to his skin some kind of a vest with pockets. He threw the round, black thing into near-by brush. It immediately gave off a prodigious quantity of smoke of strikingly brilliant, yellow hue. Such smoke would attract attention for miles.

The newcomer plane drew closer, proving to be no ordinary type of ship, but a gyro, a plane with the usual fuselage, but with whirling wings like big windmill blades. The craft demonstrated its ability to land in restricted areas by coming down on the near-by concrete highway.

The first man to alight was the answer to a tailor’s dream. Sartorial perfection itself! Slender, with a wasp waist and good shoulders, he had the figure for wearing clothing, and he was togged out in correct afternoon dress from striped trousers to cutaway, tall silk hat and a slender black cane.

This man removed his topper and executed a smart bow. His not unhandsome face was characterized by the large, mobile mouth of an orator.

"This is Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks," Doc Savage explained to Vida Carlaw. "His friends call him ‘Ham.’"

"And I hope I may include you instantly among those thus favored," "Ham" said, gallantly. "And especially do I pray you to accept my services at any time needed in a protective sense. There is, unfortunately, a low fellow with us who may annoy you, but I beg of you to overlook him, since the poor chap is actually believed not to be entirely—"

"Tellin’ lies about me already, huh!" piped a squeaky, almost childlike voice from the plane.

The owner of the voice appeared—an individual who would block traffic almost anywhere. He nearly missed being as wide as tall, and his hands dangled well below his knees.

He had an incredibly homely face, and his hair, rusty upstanding bristles, was not confined alone to his head, but was distributed over his visible anatomy. General effect was that of an amiable gorilla.

"This is the man to whom you talked on the telephone," Doc Savage told Vida Carlaw. "Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, better known as ‘Monk.’"

"Monk" gave the attractive young woman a grin which threatened to dislodge his ears. He pointed at the well-dressed man.

"Don’t believe what this shyster, Ham, says," he advised. "Sometimes I wonder if that wife and thirteen children haven’t kinda unhinged his mind."

The dapper gentleman in afternoon dress looked as if he were about to explode.

"I’m not married!" he yelled.

"These two are really friends," Doc Savage told Vida Carlaw.

"Friends?" Monk sneered. "I’ll tie knots in his neck!"

"You missing link!" Ham gritted. "I’ll cut so many holes in you that they’ll think the moths have been in a bearskin rug!"

THE hilly, wooded country was not thickly settled; this concrete road was the only one for miles, and other roads being mere trails. Automobiles were not thick.

There was still another man in the plane, doing the flying. This individual was extremely tall, and so thin that it often made people nervous to look at him. He had a tremendous forehead. His suit did not fit him, and from the coat lapel, by a ribbon, dangled a monocle which seemed to have an unusually thick lens.

"William Harper Littlejohn," Doc Savage said, presenting this other man to Vida Carlaw.

The girl looked stunned. "Johnny really knows little words," Monk explained, "but he saves ‘em for birthdays!"

"Johnny said it was a pleasure to meet such a charming beauty," offered dapper Ham.

"We want to find a sedan," the bronze man explained. "Baby blue color faded out, model three years old, had a red-and-blue cover on spare advertising a swimming pool."

They took to the air in the gyro.

A bit later, Monk, in between staring at the ground, in search of the car, advised the young woman that Johnny was really one of the world’s leading experts of geology and archaeology and that the monocle which dangled from Johnny’s coat lapel was not a monocle at all, but a powerful magnifying glass.

He himself, Monk admitted, was a chemist whom every one but a few jealous contemporaries admitted was one of the greatest in the world.

Ham, the young woman pried out of Monk with difficulty, was a lawyer. "But he don’t amount to anything in the opinion of anybody except Harvard Law School!" Monk added.

Five minutes later Doc Savage said, sharply, "There is a town ahead! It has a flying field! The sedan we are hunting appears to be parked on the field!"

Vida Carlaw strained her eyes in the direction of the town. She could see the town, and an open field which was probably the airport. How Doc Savage was able to spot the car was beyond her. He was not using binoculars, either!

And it was the car! They landed and inquired.

"There was a little, lean fellow came running in here and hired my pard and our plane to fly him to New York," explained a shabby fellow on the field.

"Give me the description and the numbers on the plane, and the name and description of your partner," Doc requested.

Once he had the information, Doc Savage returned to the gyro, and they took off. The craft was equipped with radio. The bronze man got in touch with the authorities in metropolitan areas, giving a description of the plane, the pilot, and the wiry man, and conveyed information that the latter was wanted for attempted kidnapping.

AS darkness fell that night, Doc Savage, his three aids and Vida Carlaw were seated in the field office at Newark airport, questioning the pilot of the rented plane.

"I ain’t done nothin’!" the pilot protested. "I don’t know what’s wrong! I land my plane at the field here, and a bunch of cops grab me! What’s it for?"

"We are tracing your passenger," he was told.

"Oh, that skinny squirt with the tan? Say—I thought there was somethin’ screwy ‘bout him! He wanted to be put down in a pasture anywhere on Long Island near New York City. He gave me twenty dollars extra for that. After I parked him in a farmer’s cow pasture, I flew over here; then these cops—"

"Can you point out that pasture on a map?"

The pilot could and did.

The farmer’s field was near Jamaica. The farmer who owned it had seen the plane alight, and was mad about it scaring his cows. He had seen the man who got out of the plane. The fellow had walked down a near-by highway, trying to thumb a ride toward New York, until lost to sight. Thousands of cars used that highway each day.

"We ain’t got a chance in a million of finding that guy now!" Monk grumbled.

Doc Savage said, "With a little luck, it shouldn’t be so hard."

"Huh?"

Doc Savage lifted from a pocket several fragments of broken glass. When he turned his flashlight on them, they glittered.

"This," he said, "is our cue."

EXISTENCE of Doc Savage’s establishment on the eighty-sixth floor of one of the most prominent buildings in the city was not unknown to the general public. Very few persons, however, actually knew a great deal about the place.

No newspaper had ever been able to secure actual photographs, although many had tried, and there was a handsome standing bonus for any staff photographer who could succeed. Some artists’ drawings, rank guesswork, had been published, but these were nowhere near correct.

Doc Savage’s headquarters consisted of three rooms. One, the reception room, was small, and furnished with little more than a huge safe, some comfortable chairs, and a fabulous-looking inlaid table. The other two rooms were immense.

One room was a library of scientific tomes, almost unequaled in the world for completeness, and the other was a laboratory which was the envy of the few great scientists who had seen it.

"Goodness!" said Vida Carlaw, eyes roving over the place. "I am beginning to comprehend why you have such a fabulous reputation!"

Doc undoubtedly heard this compliment, but his shell of calm disinterest did not crack, a fact that piqued pretty Vida Carlaw somewhat. She had decided to try a little flattery and see what would happen.

Vida hadn’t been able to make the bronze man out yet. She wasn’t sure he approved of her; certainly he was not following the example of his three aids, who were giving her the gallant attention which a ravishing beauty deserved.

Doc Savage, leaving them in the reception room, entered the library. New York City has several telephone directories, among them one with a red cover which is known as the "red book" and which lists under proper headings, the names of persons and firms following the various professions.

Doc Savage took this directory to the telephone. The manner in which he seated himself and adjusted the light indicated he was tackling a lengthy job.

In the reception room, his three men talked with their pretty guest. Vida, as the conversation continued, was agreeably surprised when it dawned on her that the men were remarkably clever fellows. It was at this point that she got an inkling of the truth—each of Doc Savage’s aids was something of a wizard in his particular profession.

WHILE they were talking, Monk’s attractive secretary arrived from his penthouse chemical laboratory near Wall Street. This pretty young woman—Monk claimed he had the snappiest secretary in New York—was escorting a remarkable-looking pig.

The pig had ears made for flying, legs for running, a snout for inquiry, and a scrawny body. The pig gave evidence of careful grooming. There was about him the aroma of expensive perfume.

Monk’s secretary left immediately after delivering the pig.

"This is Habeas Corpus, my pet," Monk told Vida Carlaw.

The young woman studied the unique-looking porker.

Ham said loudly, "That insect should be exterminated!"

Ham went to another telephone—there were several—and called his exclusive club.

"Bring my Chemistry down in the morning," Ham directed.

After hanging up, Ham listened, and could hear Doc Savage talking over the other telephone, making one call after another. Ham could not distinguish the bronze man’s words.

Monk was asking Vida Carlaw, "Do you believe a mysterious jellylike creature did any killing?"

The girl hesitated, nipping at her lips. "You probably think I’m foolish, but, after all, no one really knows what is in the depths of the earth. Of course, scientists have a general idea, but there may be—things—down there that they don’t know anything about."

Monk agreed. "I’ve run up against enough queer stuff in my time to learn never to be too surprised."

"Our oil well is deep," said the pretty girl. "It might have happened—"

Doc Savage came in from the library.

"Everything possible to locate your would-be kidnapper, has been done," he said. "Only thing now is to wait. And it might be advisable for all of you to get some sleep in the meantime."

Chapter V. HE WANTED TO HELP

WINDOWS of Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters were of unusual type. The glass, perfected by the bronze man himself, was of a new variety which permitted occupants of the office to look out with ease, but which prevented any one outside looking in. The special glass admitted a rather diffused light.

Morning sun had the reception room full of gentle light when a tapping on the door awakened homely Monk from sleep in a chair near the inlaid table.

Before he started for the door, Monk felt in a trousers pocket to make sure a certain coin was still there. Ostensibly, this coin was a half dollar; actually it was made of a radioactive metal which worked upon a hidden relay and electroscope combination which opened and closed the door. The device opened the door as Monk neared it.

A neat-looking fellow stood outside. He had ruddy cheeks and a distinctly English manner. Monk knew he was from Ham’s club.

The flunky was leading an animal which was almost an exact replica of Monk himself. Whether this creature was ape, chimpanzee, monkey, or some other variety of anthropoid, would be difficult to tell. In truth, experts had disagreed on that point.

"Take that blankety—blankety—blankety—blatherskite of a thing over to the river and tie a rock to it!" Monk yelled.

Ham got out of the chair where he had been sleeping.

"That’s my pet Chemistry!" he shouted indignantly.

"Bless me!" Monk said, gloomily. "Don’t you think I know it?"

The messenger departed.

Bony Johnny, still apparently sound asleep, said without opening his eyes, "An ichorous enigma of lobelia pigmentation!"

"Blazes!" said Monk. "It’s a wonder he don’t choke on them words! Anybody know what he just said in his sleep?"

"He’s muttering about the red monster out of the ground," Ham said.

From the library, Vida Carlaw called, "May I come in?"

They said she could, and she did. She looked radiant.

The telephone rang. Doc Savage, standing near the window, scooped it up and said, "Yes. . . . Requested immediate duplication, eh? . . . when will he return? . . .Yes. That earns the reward for you."

The bronze man hung up.

"We now have a line on the man who tried to kill Miss Carlaw," he said. "We will try to trap him and induce him to tell us what is behind this mystery."

"Don’t see how you worked it, Doc," Monk said.

The bronze man made no explanation. Monk, after he had waited for a reply until he was sure he was not going to get it, passed it off with a humorous suggestion that, "Somebody get a hammer, so we can awaken Johnny."

THE See-Well Optical Co. was not an elaborate establishment, which probably accounted for the proprietor having opened his doors an hour earlier than was customary for such firms. He was a round, bald man.

Doc Savage asked, "The man said he would be back when?"

"In about twenty minutes," replied the rotund proprietor.

Doc said, "It is not necessary for you to do anything about him. Just give him what he comes for."

"That’s swell!" gasped the fat man. "I was afraid I was gonna mix up in something!"

Doc Savage returned to his companions, who were waiting in a car down the street. The machine, a long, discreetly dark sedan, had little outward appearance of armor plate and bulletproof glass construction.

"I take it our man is going to show up here," Vida Carlaw said. "But how did you find it out?"

"Remember his glasses?"

"Of course. They were broken when you saved me."

"I picked up the pieces," Doc explained. "Examination showed the man would be very far-sighted without the glasses. In fact, he would just about have to have new glasses at once. Naturally, he would get them as soon as possible."

Monk squeaked, "So you phoned optical concerns, offering a reward to be tipped off when anybody had such a prescription for glasses filled!"

The street was full of noisy cars carrying people to work and newsboys calling morning editions. One newsboy came along the street, howling a headline.

"Oklahoma outlaw escapes!" the boy squawled. "Tomahawk Tant evades airplanes and posses!"

Monk said to the young woman, "Your native land seems to have made the headlines this morning."

"Tomahawk Tant!" The girl sniffed. "They won’t catch him!"

"No?" Monk grinned at her. "The outlaw has never lived who beat the law for long. Look at them. Al Spencer, Matt Kimes, Pretty Boy Floyd—all bad ones. And they all got licked."

Doc put in casually, "What about Tomahawk Tant? Not much about him has reached the East."

"He’s one of the old-time types of outlaw out there," Vida explained. "One of the cleverest. No one really knows much about him."

Monk began, "Well the law will get him—"

"Down!" Doc Savaged rapped. "Here comes our man!"

THE wiry man appeared, walking, wearing a dark-blue topcoat, which he must have purchased somewhere, and a dark hat. His black gloves appeared to be the same ones he had worn in the plane. He entered the optical concern.

Five minutes later, the man came out, stood and beckoned for a taxicab. One drew up and he stepped in.

"The usual method for trailing him!" Doc Savage directed his aids.

The trailing method was not Doc’s invention. Monk, Ham and Johnny each got a taxi, and they took turns, one on the trail, while the other got ahead. By switching about casually, they made it almost impossible for the man in the taxi to learn he was being trailed.

The quarry went to an obscure hotel in the theatrical district. He had his cab wait, and entered.

A moment later, Doc eased into the hotel and noted several innocent-looking loafers in the lobby. The bronze man purchased a newspaper, seated himself, and held the paper so it concealed his face. He kept watch through peepholes in the paper.

On Doc’s lap lay a black instrument which might have been mistaken by a photographer for a light meter or photometer.

In a few moments, the wiry man came down in an elevator, carrying a small, new briefcase. He passed Doc Savage without his slightest suspicions being aroused, and left the hotel.

Doc was watching the unusual instrument on his lap. As the man passed—the indicator needle crept up on the scale, then came back again when he had gone.

The instrument was a compact, suspersensitive device which registered the presence of any magnetic metal—steel, iron, etc.—in the immediate neighborhood. Surge of the needle probably had been caused by a quantity of steel in the briefcase. Guns?

Doc Savage went to the hotel clerk, made his identity known, exhibited some money, and received a volley of information. The wiry man had registered the previous evening—but there was a surprising angle to this.

The fellow had not been alone! Nearly a dozen men had registered with him! All of these men had been sunburned. None of them were now at the hotel.

Doc Savage returned to his car, where Vida Carlaw waited. Since the bronze man had now lost track of the quarry, and his own aids, he drove toward his headquarters. Any report would come there, as Doc’s men trailed their quarry.

"I have been trying to figure out why I was attacked in the plane," Vida Carlaw said. "It has me baffled."

"The idea was to stop you soliciting the aid of my men and myself."

"But why?"

Doc did not answer that one.

THEY had not been in Doc’s skyscraper headquarters reception room for long when incredibly bony Johnny put in an appearance. He fiddled with his monocle.

"A superabundant expenditure of indefatigation," he said.

Vida Carlaw blinked. "Would somebody translate that?"

"He says we have been wasting our time," Doc explained.

"Yes," added bony Johnny. "The wiry man and his pals are watching this very building!"

Johnny replied, continuing to use small words. "They don’t want us to investigate this mystery of the red things out of the ground."

Doc Savage directed Vida Carlaw, "You stay here."

"Alone?" She looked uneasy. "They tried to kill me once, and maybe—"

"This place," Doc Savage told her, "is practically impossible for an outsider to enter."

The girl studied the bronze man.

"Right," she agreed.

Long ago, Doc Savage had installed in the building a private high-speed elevator which admitted directly to his personal garage in the basement. So far as was possible, existence of both elevator and garage were secret. The elevator deposited Doc and Johnny in the basement garage.

They followed a passage which admitted to a near-by subway tunnel, down which they ran, avoiding the electrified third rail, and crouching close to the sides of the tunnel to let trains go past with a deafening uproar. They came to the surface some blocks distant.

It was late enough in the morning that the streets were full of sunlight. Doc had a knowledge of the vicinity, so he and Johnny did not take to the sidewalks, but kept inside stores and business establishments, working from one to the other, sometimes going to the roofs to accomplish this.

"There’s a spy!" Doc Savage said finally, and pointed.

The spy was a long fellow, almost as long as Johnny, and his arms and legs looked almost as bony as Johnny’s. His middle, however, was paunchy inside a big overcoat. The fellow lay prone on a rooftop, peering upward at Doc’s skyscraper across the street.

It was a tribute to Doc Savage’s stealth that the spying man was unaware of an impending attack until Doc got him.

They wrestled in silence for seconds. The man kicked, butted with his head, flounced his skinny body. He was a very bony man with a tremendous stomach. He did not cry out.

"Hell!" he growled suddenly, and gave up. He said nothing more, stared at Doc Savage intently, plainly amazed by the bronze man’s strength.

"I’ve met strong hombres in my time!" he muttered. "But this is the first time I ever ran into a human bear trap!"

Johnny came up and searched the man. The fellow had two big single-action six-shooters in the waistband of his pants, and plenty of cartridges in various pockets.

"Name?" Doc Savage requested.

"Considering I’ve got kind of a general idea who you are, just from looking at you," the man said, "I don’t mind giving you my name. I’m Reservoir Hill!"

BIG-WORDED Johnny had an exclamation which he invariably used when surprised. It escaped him now. "I’ll be superamalgamated! Vida Carlaw’s partner!"

"I can prove I’m Reservoir Hill!" said the prisoner.

"You could have all kinds of papers and stuff," said Johnny. "They can be faked."

"Pull up my coat tail and shirt and take a look at my back," the prisoner suggested. "There is a tattoo there. You can tell it’s been there for years, because there is a scar through it."

The tattoo was there; so was the scar, and both had obviously been there for years. The name read:

CROTON HILL

"Croton is a reservoir, part of the water supply of New York City," said the long, lean captive. "That’s how I got nicknamed ‘Reservoir.’ How’s Viddy—Miss Carlaw?"

Doc Savage suggested, "I thought she left you in Oklahoma?"

"Viddy just thought she did! That durn red thing coming out of the ground, and killing our driller and Sam Sands got me kinda worried! I was afraid something might happen to Viddy. I knowed she was coming East to see you, so I followed her, by plane, to keep her out of trouble!"

Reservoir Hill sighed. "So you’re Doc Savage! One time I came a-helling all the way from Okmulgee to Tulsa, just to get a look at you, when you stopped off in a plane, but you had left before I got there."

Bony Johnny, catching Doc’s eye, pursed his lips and looked skyward, a gesture which indicated the bony geologist did not believe Reservoir Hill’s story.

The bronze man released Reservoir Hill and the old oil man made no attempt to run.

Doc asked, "What did you fear might happen to Miss Carlaw?"

"Well, I didn’t know!" said Reservoir.

"There are no oil wells around New York out of which red monsters might come," Doc reminded him.

"Tell you, I didn’t know!"

"What were you doing at this spot?"

"Listen!" said Reservoir Hill. "I was coming to see you about half an hour ago, and I get me a look at an hombre who is watching your hang-out. Now this hombre is one I’ve seen in Oklahoma. Why should some rannihan from Oklahoma be watching your hang-out? So I decide to do some pussy-footing! That’s what I was doing when you caught me!"

"A glib answer to everything," bony Johnny said.

Reservoir Hill put out a flinty-looking jaw, "Don’t you get tough, bonebag!"

"Acquiescence occupies ephemeral supereminence," Johnny said, dryly.

"Somebody translate that!" Reservoir Hill requested. "If it means what I think, I’m gonna see who’s best man!"

"He merely said that your story seemed all right for the time being," Doc Savage translated, not quite literally.

Reservoir Hill, mollified, asked, "What do we do about these several ginks around here, all watching your place?"

"We’ll take care of them later," Doc said. "I want to question you and Miss Carlaw, in hopes of turning up something."

THEY returned to Doc Savage’s headquarters through subway, underground tunnel and the high-speed elevator.

They looked in the reception room, library, and the laboratory. They went out and examined the hall; then Doc went back into the laboratory, opened a hidden panel, and consulted recording dials of concealed instruments.

By these, he could tell if any one had come near the eighty-sixth floor recently. There was even a small concealed camera which photographed any one who appeared in the corridor, and Doc developed the tiny negative which this took.

"Vida Carlaw left alone," he said finally.

Chapter VI. THE TRAIL

"SOMETHING has happened to Viddy!" Reservoir Hill squawled.

Doc Savage went into the library and swung out a section of bookcase, to disclose a device which recorded telephone conversations to his headquarters. It was not unlike an ordinary office dictaphone.

He connected a reproducing microphone and a loudspeaker and played the record back. There had been a telephone call.

"Doc Savage’s office," Vida Carlaw had said, answering the telephone. "Doc isn’t here."

"Viddy," the harsh-voiced caller had said, "this is Reservoir Hill. Don’t you recognize my voice?"

"Oh! But I thought you were in Oklahoma?"

"No. I’m waiting down in front of the building; I’m with Doc Savage. We’ve got some important information. Come down right away."

"I’ll be right down."

That had ended the call.

Doc Savage stopped the instrument and placed a fresh record on the recorder.

Reservoir Hill yelled, "That guy faked my voice!"

Johnny eyed him intently. "To me, it sounded like yours!"

Reservoir Hill knotted his fists and took a step forward.

"In my country, they shoot ‘em dead for such cracks!" he snarled.

Johnny, who had been an erudite college professor in his time, snarled back, "Any time you’re ready, you sage-hopper!"

For a moment it looked as if there was going to be a fight; then Reservoir Hill grinned thinly. "Sage-hopper? They don’t have sagebrush in my part of Oklahoma!"

Doc Savage led the way downstairs, taking a regular elevator this time. In the lobby, there was some excitement, which they had missed by coming into the building by the secret underground route and up in the private high-speed elevator. There were policemen present, and an elevator captain was explaining.

"A girl came down in one of the elevators. Some guys were waiting here in the lobby and they grabbed the dame, banged her over the head, and dragged her away!"

Doc interrupted to describe Vida Carlaw.

"That’s the one they got!" said the elevator captain.

Doc hurried outside. There was no sign of Doc’s two aids, Monk and Ham. Nor was there any trace of the mysterious men from Oklahoma.

"They got Viddy and cleared out!" Reservoir Hill groaned; then he scowled at Doc Savage. "They put something over on you! You’re overrated! You ain’t what you’re cracked up to be!"

Doc did not reply, and showed by no sign that he was affected by the other man’s opinion.

Johnny, not exercising as much composure, scowled and demanded. "Look here, Hill! What do you know about what is behind this? What are you hiding?"

Reservoir Hill did not exactly give a start, but it was evident that he was shocked. He moistened his lips. "What you mean?"

"My personal opinion is that you’re not telling all you know!" Johnny snapped.

Reservoir Hill put out his jaw.

"Any more of them cracks and one of us is going to go to the hospital!"

Doc Savage said, "In view of the fact that the affair seems to be getting more involved, it might be advisable to call in our other two men, Renny and Long Tom."

THE remaining two members of Doc Savage’s group of five aids were no less remarkable than the others.

"Long Tom" was Major Thomas J. Roberts, an electrical wizard whose name would probably pass down through history because of some of the things he had accomplished. Yet he did not look like a man of deeds.

He was slight, appeared fragile, and his complexion was about as inviting as that of a mushroom. No one could remember him ever having looked differently—nor could any one ever remember him having been ill.

Colonel John Renwick was "Renny." Fame followed Renny for two, things—his fists and his engineering ability. Both were big. His fists were so large that archaeologists maintained that even the famous "Cardiff giant" had not possessed bigger hands. Renny’s ability as an engineer matched the size of his hands.

Long Tom and Renny arrived a short while after Doc telephoned, and the bronze man gave them a short outline of what had happened.

"What are we waitin’ for?" Renny rumbled in a voice reminiscent of a peevish lion roaring in his den, he being excited over the prospect of action, which he loved.

"Monk and Ham may have succeeded in trailing the girl’s captors," Doc explained.

"More than likely Monk and Ham are somewhere quarreling!" feeble-looking Long Tom suggested.

Big-fisted Renny drew a newspaper from a pocket, sat down, and began reading the front page.

"I see an outlaw named Tomahawk Tant is sorta struttin’ his stuff in Oklahoma," he rumbled. "Holy cow! If this earth devil thing takes us to Oklahoma, what you say we sorta relieve the citizens of Oklahoma of their outlaw, Tant, too?"

Reservoir Hill demanded, sharply, "Somebody been trying to sick you onto Tant?"

Renny looked up. "You sound interested!"

Reservoir Hill shrugged.

"Hell, no! I was just asking!"

Bony Johnny said, calmly, "Reservoir Hill, you understand, Renny, may not be telling all he knows."

Reservoir Hill had been seated in a chair. He got up and pushed his sleeves up his wrists.

"Blister my britches!" he growled. "I’ve took enough loose talk!"

"And I," Johnny said, calmly, "haven’t had any exercise for some time. When we finish, bet you sing a different tune."

Doc Savage requested, "Postpone that a moment, please!"

BOTH prospective combatants halted. They saw the bronze man go to the large array of sensitive radio apparatus with which the laboratory was equipped. A small electric call light on one of the panels was flickering, and Doc Savage touched a switch, cutting a loud-speaker into circuit.

The apish Monk’s squeaky voice came out of the loudspeaker. "Them guys gave us the slip! They had a big plane planted in a little field! They got the plane in the air and left us twiddling our thumbs! They had the girl!"

"They take her in the plane?"

"Yes!"

Doc Savage switched on the radio transmitter and asked, "Did they learn you followed them?"

"Don’t think so!"

"Which way they go?"

"West!"

Reservoir Hill shouted, "Heading for Oklahoma!"

"Come on!" Doc said, sharply.

Doc’s big armor-plated sedan was carrying them toward the water front a few minutes later, a siren moaning under the hood, to request police to clear traffic. This courtesy was extended to Doc Savage because of past services to law and order.

The clammy smell of the river was soon soaking into their nostrils.

HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY

The sign decorated the front of a building that was ancient, and of brick. The structure had a colossal hugeness about it, and it carried also the outward air of a building disused. The moribund aspect was deceitful, for this was Doc Savage’s giant water-front hangar and boathouse.

A red light on the front of the car served the double purpose of police light and infra-red projector. The invisible ray which it transmitted caused concealed photoelectric eyes to actuate machinery that opened the big hangar door. After the sedan was inside, the door closed.

Reservoir Hill gazed at the interior of the big building as lights came on, and his eyes popped a little.

"Durndest place I ever saw, or I hope to have rings around my tail!"

The interior proportions of the warehouse hangar were much greater than it had seemed from outside. There were several planes, varying in sizes and types, speed boats and a cabin cruiser, and even, over to one side, what seemed to be a submarine.

"The rest of you follow in the large plane," Doc Savage directed Johnny, Renny and Long Tom. "We want to lose no time. Contact Monk and Ham and pick them up."

The three aids nodded. Contact could be established by the short-wave set that was handy in all the cars and planes, and Monk and Ham had used one of the cars to trail the thugs who had kidnapped the girl. The car had been standing near the entrance of the building.

In conclusion, Doc added, "Reservoir Hill will go with me in the small speed ship."

"You hombres sure work fast!" Reservoir Hill offered.

AN hour later, Reservoir Hill’s opinion had not changed.

By that time, Doc’s plane had traversed a slice of Pennsylvania which would have surprised even an airspeed expert. The ship was a small one, consisting of a cockpit for two, radio equipment and a tiny fuselage and wing assembly—the rest of it was motor. Almost two thousand horse power!

The largest cities of the United States have police departments equipped with radio receiving and transmitting stations, and Doc Savage just finished communicating with a number of these, with the result that a net was now spread over Pennsylvania, and other States over which a plane bound for Oklahoma might fly.

"I’ll be whiskered if I knew the law was fixed up so elaboratelike for catching crooks!" said Reservoir Hill.

It was not long before they picked up a report that the fleeing plane had been sighted over the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia.

Doc Savage’s little ship, setting a pace that would have won any national air race of recent years, overhauled the quarry near the town of Middleport, on the Ohio River.

The fleeing ship was a big modern low-winged job, with two motors. She was of standardized aluminum color. In ordinary company, she would have been fast, but Doc Savage’s small racer buzzed around her like a fly around a chicken.

The cockpit of Doc’s machine was completely enclosed.

The bronze man slid the hatch back, stood up against the rip of the whipstream and waved for the other ship to land. There was farmland below, level enough to be used for that purpose. The answer was rifle muzzles poked out of the other plane.

The bronze man sank hastily into the cockpit. There was little chance of ordinary rifle slugs penetrating the skin of his ship, which was of a new type of alloy.

Fully a dozen bullets hit the little plane in the next few minutes. Reservoir Hill heard the sounds they made, and knew what they were.

"I wish this fight was on the ground, with Winchesters!" he snorted.

DOC SAVAGE drove his little ship for a spot ahead of the other ship. While he was jockeying for a position ahead of the nose of the other craft, he made adjustments with certain knobs and controls.

"What’s them jiggers?" Reservoir Hill asked, pointing at the gadgets which Doc Savage was adjusting.

"The valve controls for a tank of gas in the real," Doc explained. "The gas, when released in the air, is invisible, but causes a chemical reaction with the air which makes it noninflammable. In other words, a plane flying into this vapor will stop, because the air gas mixture sucked into its motor became nonexplosive."

Reservoir Hill craned his neck, looked back.

"They must suspect your game!" he grunted.

The other plane had whipped into a sharp dive, almost standing on its nose. Doc sent his little ship down after it.

The Ohio River, running high and muddy, was crooked, wide, and yellow below. In some places, the river overran its banks. The hills had a scrubbed look, as if recently rained upon.

"Hey!" Reservoir Hill squawled.

The yell was caused by the action of the other plane in suddenly wrenching level. Men leaned from its cabin windows with rifles. Their bullets rapped the armor of Doc’s ship.

"Viddy!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "See her!"

Doc Savage made no comment, but he could see the girl distinctly. She looked attractive, even from that distance, and apparently had not been harmed. She waved at them, then put her fists up in a fighting attitude.

"Viddy’s quite a gal!" Reservoir Hill yelled. "Blast them rascals! May their craws fill with cockleburs!"

Doc worked into a position ahead of the other ship, but again the other craft dived. The pilot was wary, taking no chances whatever. The other ship leveled out several hundred feet below. Doc arched down toward it.

In the west, clouds hung in the sky, thick clouds, black, with occasionally a long, red lightning spark dropping from them to the earth.

"Look!" Reservoir Hill pointed.

The men below had opened the door of their plane and were hurling a figure bodily out of the ship.

"Viddy!" screamed Reservoir Hill. "They’re throwing her out!"

The falling, skirt-clad figure did not wear a parachute.

"WE gotta do something to save her!" Reservoir Hill screamed.

At the moment, that did not seem an entirely sane suggestion. The form was falling. In movie cartoons, they dive planes down and draw falling men and women aboard; but in actual life, it is not so easy.

Doc put the plane’s nose down. A falling human body does not acquire speed which cannot be bettered by a fast plane, due to the resistance of the air. There was a chance of the plane overtaking the falling body. Reservoir Hill did not know this.

"Don’t follow her!" he screamed. "I don’t wanta see her hit! I don’t wanta see Viddy die!"

Doc Savage knew, split seconds later, that he had wasted his time. The body was going to hit before he could possibly overtake it—was going to hit in the river.

"Maybe—hitting the water—won’t kill her!" Reservoir Hill croaked.

Doc Savage had no such illusion. Water, struck at the speed at which that body was falling, had the demolishing force of a solid wall.

The pitiful, twisting figure hit the muddy, flood-bloated river.

Doc Savage pulled his plane out of the dive so close to the surface that water splashed up from the falling body and actually slapped the plane’s body like so much shot.

He hung the plane’s nose in the sky until it lost momentum and was about to stall, then arched off on a wingtip and came back, looking overside for any traces of the body.

They cruised for several minutes, and nothing came to the surface.

"We gotta land and see if we can find her!" Reservoir Hill yelled.

"There is no chance of any one surviving a fall like that," Doc explained quietly, and pointed the bawling nose of the plane into the sky.

RESERVOIR HILL swore in the other seat. He made his fists into balls of hard gristle and reared up angrily.

"Viddy may not have died!" he screeched. "You’re gonna land and look for her! You’re gonna land—"

Doc Savage grasped the old man’s arm. He did not speak, but something—it might, of course, have been the evidence of terrific strength which his grip conveyed—caused Reservoir Hill to sink back, limp and defeated.

"Yeah, you’re right," the old oil man muttered. "Viddy’s dead. The swellest little girl Oklahoma or any other durn place ever saw!"

Doc climbed his plane after the other craft, which had made good use of the delay. The other pilot had flown directly toward the immense mass of clouds that was the distant thunderstorm, and the ship had covered a good part of the distance.

"They’re gonna beat us to it!" Reservoir Hill groaned.

They did. The clouds, the thunder, the lightning and the rain swallowed the plainload of killers like some harridan, symbolic monster tossing in the sky.

Chapter VII. PREPARATION

THEY never found the plane carrying the killers. The craft vanished thoroughly, completely. Doc Savage and his aids even flew over the path covered by the thunderstorm, on the chance that the vanished plane had been struck by lightning and fallen in flames. They found nothing.

That afternoon, the air over the States of Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Tennessee, as well as Illinois and Indiana, became filled with planes, all searching. Radiograms from Doc Savage, addressed to the war department in Washington, caused every available plane to be ordered to take up the search.

The army planes found nothing, either.

Doc Savage and all his aids, when the latter arrived in the big plane, dragged the Ohio River and searched the banks for hours, but likewise found nothing.

"Poor Viddy!" groaned Reservoir Hill.

"Her body probably got caught under a snag, and has been buried with mud," a river man told him. "Reckon you’ll never find her!"

EARLY next morning, a small boy going out to get his cows, found an abandoned airplane in a meadow on his father’s farm. The spot was near Cleveland. The plane had evidently landed there the previous day, and it had been raining so heavily that no one had seen it.

The farm boy noted something peculiar the minute he stuck his head into the plane. Some one had dipped a finger or a stick into dirty oil—later examination showed the oil had been drained from the plane’s motor—and printed a name on the veneer lining of the cabin:

TO DOC SAVAGE

Below the name was a series of the strangest kind of marks—circles, dashes, half-moons, stars, crosses. Just about everything. It had an obvious resemblance to some kind of a code.

The farm boy lost no time. He had read the newspapers, had listened to the police broadcasts about the plane over his short-wave radio, and his dad’s telephone connected with the long-distance system.

The lad telephoned Doc Savage. And he was on hand when the man of bronze with his aids sank his big amphibian plane expertly on the meadow. They had left the little ship behind.

Doc talked to the farm boy for some time. The bronze man then took a casual look around the clearing, and one glance at the writing in the plane—if writing it was. Then he went back and talked awhile to the boy.

The lad was bright. He knew something about radio, was an amateur photographer, and interested particularly in planes. He had, he admitted, been studying books on aëronautical engineering. He had even been experimenting along those lines himself, having built a streamlined kite.

Doc Savage got a case from his plane, one of the metal boxes employed to transport his equipment. He removed a number of objects, some of which he did not unwrap, and presented them to the boy.

Monk, Ham and the others, much more interested in the abandoned plane, gathered around it. They paid little attention to what Doc was telling the boy, and when the bronze man joined him, they were full of questions. The farm boy went toward home.

"Look!" Monk said, and pointed.

He was indicating the interior of the plane.

But the bronze man made another tour of the clearing. Apparently he found no tracks. He came back.

By this time, the farm boy had reached his home. A few moments later, his kite was in the air. It was a trim-looking streamlined kite.

Monk nodded approval. Doc, of course, had asked to see the kite in the air. The real purpose of that was to get the boy out of the way, in case there should be danger.

Monk decided the kite was a good job. The lad surely must be interested in airplanes.

Doc examined the hieroglyphics painted inside the abandoned plane with cylinder oil.

JOHNNY had already been poring over them. Johnny had translated a Chaldean tablet which nobody else could read, except Doc, and Egyptian hieroglyphics were almost English to him. But this time, he was baffled.

Reservoir Hill walked off into the damp woods which bordered the meadow. Hill appeared consumed by gloom. The others presumed he wanted to be alone with his morbid thoughts. They did not pay him particular attention.

Doc used a pocket mirror on the oil symbols. Often a mirror will turn apparently meaningless marks around and cause them to become legible. It didn’t this time. The bronze man tried covering different parts of the marks, and scrutinizing them with the mirror and without.

Homely Monk became impatient. Monk liked action. Moreover, the horrible thing that had happened to Vida Carlaw preyed on his mind. By moving about, he kept himself from thinking of that so much.

"I’m gonna see where Reservoir Hill went." Monk said. "Him and me will probably look around for some trace of which way these fellers went."

Monk ambled into the thick brush. Reservoir Hill had mashed the wet grass down with his feet. The trail was easy to follow.

None of the others paid particular attention to Monk. They were occupied with the puzzle of the symbols in oil. Ham, Renny, Johnny and Long Tom were baffled by now. As a matter of fact, they had been from the first.

Doc Savage, however, was still at it. He had produced paper and pencil, and was trying different combinations of the symbols. Once, he made the strange, trilling noise which was so unearthly, so defiant of description. It had a definitely baffled undertone this time.

The bronze man abruptly put the pencil and paper away.

"The characters have no meaning, apparently," he said.

Johnny, at least, and probably the others, knew that the metallic giant’s admission covered a great deal of territory. Doc had done more than study the marks and write them down in different orders.

His agile brain had probably probed into a dozen ramifications of pictorial language, not neglecting the various systems of symbols used by hobos to indicate houses which are good and bad pickings.

Suddenly, so brief that the others almost failed to catch it, Doc’s trilling sang out.

"Quick!" A crashing haste was in the bronze man’s voice. "Get your weapons ready!"

Ham gulped, "But what—"

"We have fallen for a trick!" Doc told him.

MONK was at that moment having trouble following the footprints of Reservoir Hill. The old oil man, to Monk’s surprise, had kept walking. The footprints had been close together, an indication Reservoir had merely plodded on. But Monk had expected to catch up with him earlier.

A haystack appeared ahead. Monk expected to find Reservoir on the other side. He walked close to the stack, rounded it, and stopped. No one was in sight. But the grass! Not one set of footprints—many—not all Hill’s—what—

Monk’s cogitation ended there.

Hay fell on him. Hay and a man. The man kicked Monk in the face as he came down. Monk made a honking noise, grabbed the fellow, banged him on the ground. The victim actually bounced. And he sounded as if he had a leak somewhere, through which a lot of air had been driven.

"Blazes!" Monk exploded.

The man answered the description of one of the crowd which had decoyed Vida Carlaw to her fate. Monk cocked a fist and waited for the fellow to arise.

Monk was a bloodthirsty soul, and had no great scruples about hitting a man when he was down. He liked to see this one bounce. When he couldn’t get up was time enough to work him over on the ground. Doc Savage had never quite succeeded in training Monk to restrain his impulsiveness.

More hay and more men arrived. One. Two. A third. Monk whooped, scooped with his arms, got two of them. He did a neat trick and rapped the third on the top of the head with a heel. Only three! Just exercise! None of them were big.

Monk got an arm around each of the two surviving foes, jumped up and down, ape fashion, turned two somersaults, and had them dizzy. It was going to be simple.

Other men were heaving from the haystack. Hands got hold of Monk. Fists hit him.

The tops of haystacks are weighted down. It is a precaution the farmer takes to keep his hay from being blown away. Two fence posts, joined by a wire or binder twine, usually make up each weight.

One of these fence posts was the deciding factor in the fight. For ten minutes or so after it hit him, Monk lay in abysmal darkness and dreamed he was just one jump ahead of dapper Ham who, not surprisingly, had become equipped with horns and a spike-pointed tail.

Ham caught up with Monk, and began to dig at Monk’s ear with the lip of his sword cane. If Monk had had arms or legs, he could have fought back—

MONK got around to opening his eyes. There was no Ham. The sword cane in his ear was a finger. The owner of the finger was a hard, brown rascal with a face that would have interested a criminologist.

"This ticklin’ always wakes ‘em up," said the owner of the finger.

Monk shut his eyes and relaxed. He was going to let the other start screwing a finger around in his ear again; then he was going to knock the blazes out of the lad.

There was nothing wrong with the idea, except that Monk discovered he was tied hand and foot.

"Up and away with ‘em," a man said airily.

Monk decided to let out a bellow, on the chance Doc would hear. He sucked his chest full of air, got set—and they stuck a wadded felt hat in his big mouth.

The homely chemist was lifted, carried rapidly through the timber. His captors did a lot of looking behind them. They dropped a word or two which convinced Monk they were the same mob which had pursued Vida Carlaw to New York and attempted to prevent her reaching Doc Savage.

"That bronze guy isn’t anybody to kid around with," one uneasy fellow remarked. "The way he moved around in New York was somethin’ to see!"

"We got the girl outta his hands, didn’t we?" another snapped.

"We didn’t stop ‘er reachin’ ‘im, did we?"

They came to a graveled road, one evidently not used very much. Two automobiles stood under a tree beside the road. Big cars.

Monk noted they had well-worn tires. No tread marks on such tires to make identification easier. Monk scowled at the cars.

"You old pot-belly!" Monk thought. "I had a hunch you wasn’t what you let on!" He’d have said it aloud, but for the gag.

Reservoir Hill sat in the front seat of one of the cars. He pushed out his mouth at Monk and spat over the side.

The captors heaved Monk in the other car. Everyone loaded aboard. The motors hooted, and the machines rolled. Both cars traveled fast for two miles.

"You figure we’ll be safe in Cleveland?" a man asked, doubtfully.

"Sure," said another. "When we get to the city limits, a fake telephone company truck will meet us. We’ll dress up as telephone company linemen, ride right into the burg, and nobody will suspect a thing."

"It’ll take us right to the joint over Blackie’s garage on Nineteenth, where we’re gonna hang out?"

"Sure."

Monk was down on the car’s floorboards, where they had shoved him. He had squirmed about, and quite accidentally, had found a pencil. It was lying where some one had dropped it, perhaps by accident.

Monk went through some motions that might have been those of a man bothered by a cootie. He got the pencil. It was stubby, just right to hide between his fingers. Furthermore, the floorboards were exposed at one end, where the carpet had been kicked up. Writing a message on them would be simple.

Monk wrote.

THE car bearing Monk drove two more miles and came to a bridge over the same creek which ran through the farmer’s place. The creek was so much larger here that it could not have grown naturally. So it was probably nearing Lake Erie.

The car stopped in the middle of the bridge. The other car pulled up behind and also halted. Men got out quickly and threw their coats under the cars, directly beneath the engine pans.

"That’s so no oil will leak onto the bridge planks and show we stopped here," a man said.

They yanked Monk out of the car.

The bridge was a low concrete structure. The men produced a rope and tied it to one of the bridge’s rail pillars.

A motor boat was approaching. It was a big craft, but had a well-silenced motor. It was hardly more noisy than an automobile. Those in the motor boat hailed the others.

"Make it snappy!" they advised.

"Wait a minute," a man said. "It’ll only take a second to see if our trick worked."

The fellow leaned into the car and examined the spot where Monk had been lying. He burst out in a harsh chuckle.

"It worked!" he said. "Here’s what he wrote: ‘Fake telephone company truck, Cleveland. Blackie’s garage on Nineteenth." The man squinted more closely. "It’s followed by some kind of mark. I guess it’s this guy’s private sign, or somethin’. It don’t mean nothin’ to me."

They all burst out laughing. Monk got a gleeful kick in the ribs.

"We foxed you," he was told. "We dropped that pencil on purpose. We fed you that dope. You threw Savage off the trail yourself, because we’ll let him find these cars abandoned on the outskirts of Cleveland."

Monk made puppy noises around his gag. His eyes were rage filled.

THE men began climbing down into the boat. Monk was lowered. It seemed two of the crowd were going to drive the two cars to the outskirts of Cleveland and abandon them. Then old Reservoir Hill was lowered into the boat. Monk’s little eyes popped.

Reservoir Hill was bound hand and foot!

"They got me, then laid for whoever followed my trail!" old Hill gritted.

The coats were yanked from under the automobile oil pans. Away went the cars.

The boat lifted its bow and began to travel.

Reservoir Hill told Monk, "I guess you can figure what they’re gonna do?"

Monk nodded.

"They’re gonna scrag us if Doc Savage don’t forget all about this!" Hill growled.

Chapter VIII. THE HIGH EYE

DOC SAVAGE had done one thing daily since childhood. He had devoted a two-hour period to exercise. Not merely a flexing and strengthening of the muscles, but a scientific system of actions designed to strengthen eyes, olfactory senses, vision, hearing, and the others.

Perhaps the most unusual, and no doubt the more important, was the set of mental exercises which quickened his wits, strengthened his memory, and otherwise had equipped him with the amazing physical and mental powers which he possessed.

His aids, while remarkable gentlemen, did not have the bronze man’s powers. They did not need them, however, to read the story of what had happened where Monk had been seized. Monk’s captors had made no effort to cover up sign, and the story was plain.

Ham, searching in the hay, came up with an object and gulped, genuine grief in his voice, "Monk had this in his pocket!"

The object was an ear of corn which Monk carried to feed his pet pig, Habeas Corpus.

Doc Savage made a quick circle, his flake gold eyes reading further sign.

"Reservoir Hill was seized first," the bronze man explained. "Monk was following Hill’s trail and was seized also."

Big-fisted Renny rumbled angrily, "Doc! That writing in the plane, with engine oil, must have been done just to decoy us here!"

"It was," Doc agreed. "Here. The mob went this way."

They had no trouble following the trail to the gravel road. But not even a bloodhound could have followed it any farther.

THEY were back at the plane when the farm boy came running up.

"Somebody wants you on the telephone," he told Doc Savage. "He said to tell you that by now you probably know you had better talk to him."

The bronze man whipped to his own plane, entered the control cabin, and switched on the radio transmitter. Ordinarily, it operated on a short wave, but he lengthened the wave length to that of the police broadcast band. A number of police stations maintained both transmitting and receiving equipment

In not much more than a minute, police were tracing the telephone call to the farmhouse. This method of having the call traced was necessary, since the caller was waiting on the wire, and the farmhouse boasted no other instrument with which to locate a call.

Doc whipped toward the farmhouse. The boy’s kite was still high in the air. It was a well-designed kite, because it remained almost stationary.

The voice on the wire was that of the man who had tried to seize Vida Carlaw on the big passenger plane from Oklahoma—the lad who had narrowly escaped from Doc.

"No doubt you are having this call traced by now," he said wisely. "Therefore, I’m not going to be sucker enough to talk very long. Get this! We’ve got one of your men, and we’ve got old Hill. Hill is a meddling old goop, so we’re going to shoot him and leave him on a road somewhere. You’ll hear about it when his body is found.

"This will be done to demonstrate we’re not birds who can be fooled with! As long as you lay off us, your man Monk won’t be damaged! But no longer, see!"

The confidence in his voice was not up to that in his words. He seemed very glad to hang up.

Not more than three minutes later, a report came that the call had come from a drug store in Cleveland, but the man had gone by the time police could get there. Another call came half an hour later. Yes, the man had escaped.

Doc went out and watched the farm boy fly his kite.

"Doing all right?" he asked the boy.

"I think so," the boy said. "I’m doing my best."

"In an hour," Doc suggested, "you can pull it down."

THE telephone rang. It was the Cleveland police. Two cars had been found abandoned on the outskirts of town. A message to Doc Savage was written on the floorboards of one. His plane took Doc and his aids to the spot in less than fifteen minutes.

The police officer who guided them to the abandoned cars said, "The message obviously indicates that the mob is hiding out on Nineteenth Street at a place called Blackie’s Garage. We’ve got a squad headed for there now."

Doc Savage studied the message in the car.

"You can tell your squad to forget it," he said.

"Huh?"

The bronze man indicated the strange-looking mark which Monk had made following his message.

"Ancient Mayan," the bronze man explained.

"Eh? A shunt may what?" The officer hadn’t got it.

"A hieroglyphic in prehistoric Mayan," Doc Savage elaborated.

"I’ll take your word for it. What’s it mean?"

"It conveys a message. It says that nothing written is to be believed."

"I’ll be damned!" said the cop. "Why’d he write something if he didn’t want it to be believed?"

"Monk was probably kidding somebody," Ham explained. "Monk is quite a brilliant fellow."

This would have startled Monk, who had never heard Ham call him anything less dense than a bob-tailed baboon who had fallen out of the nest at an early age.

Doc Savage left it to the police to locate the drivers of the cars, who would probably have made themselves hard to find by now. He flew back to the farm where the abandoned plane had been found.

"I noticed the boy had stopped flying his kite," Ham commented as they landed.

They found the youth in the cave where his mother kept her canned fruit.

He was working over Doc Savage’s portable equipment for developing motion picture film.

"It was simple enough that I didn’t have any trouble making it work," the young man explained, pointing at the developing apparatus.

"What is he doing?" Renny rumbled, and bent over some of the developed film.

"Holy cow!" he exploded after an inspection.

Each square of film showed a large area of the surrounding country. Aërial photographs!

"Doc gave me one of his aërial cameras," the boy explained, as proud as a pup with a bone. "I fixed it to my kite. It took a picture every minute or two. But they’re so small I can’t make out much."

"We will use a magnifying glass," Doc told him.

The bronze man produced, not a magnifier, but a projector out of one of the equipment cases. They operated it on the plane’s battery system, and threw the images in the cabin, with the windows covered.

The pictures had been taken frequently enough for them to fairly well follow what had happened. They saw Reservoir Hill captured, then Monk.

"Monk," Ham said, admiringly, "put up quite a fight!"

Ham never had a civil word for Monk, to his face or behind his back, except on those occasions when he had a horrible fear his sparring mate was in trouble.

The pictures showed the mob shifting their prisoners from the cars to the boat.

"Now!" Long Tom exploded, "if that boat just didn’t go too far for the camera to still get it!"

The boat had not gone far. Four or five miles down the coast, once it reached the lake. There was a small cove. The power boat had stopped at a houseboat, had tied up astern of the other craft.

"We will look into this," Doc Savage said, quietly.

WHEN their plane slid down over the cove with the motors cut, Doc and his aids could distinguish a number of things. First, the cove, while more than a quarter of a mile wide, was really the mouth of a stream. A fast-running stream, and a muddy one. It muddied the lake for some distance outside the cove.

They kept their heads inside the plane’s cabin. The alloy metal which covered it would deflect anything but a special armor-piercing bullet. Also bulletproof were the windows, through which they watched.

Ham voiced the obvious. "Nobody in sight."

They could have seen any one in the speed boat. It was open, except for the motor box. But the houseboat was different. It seemed about fifty feet long, needed paint, and could hide a hundred men from a plane in the air.

Doc swung once more around the cove. He flew up the stream a short distance, and back, close to its muddy bosom. They saw no one. They saw no boat.

"Eyes open while we land," Doc said, quietly.

The plane stroked its underside over the water, not throwing up much foam. Doc gunned the engines. They rode close to the houseboat, but not too close.

No sign of life.

"Take the controls," the bronze man said.

Renny took over, but gulped, "Doc! They may be ambushed aboard! They may have a bomb fixed—"

"Swing the right wing-tip close enough to permit my getting aboard," Doc interposed without appearing to have heard the objection. "Then stand by."

The bronze man wore under his clothing, as he always did when he goes into action, the alloy chain mesh which he had perfected. The stuff that was so light, yet almost as impervious to bullets as the skin of the plane itself.

Before the bronze man got out of the plane, he donned another device which he had lately invented. It was a hood, transparent, in shape not unlike a goldfish bowl turned upside down.

The lower part fitted his shoulders tightly, and there were straps to hold it on. The material was thick, not glass, nor any combination of glass, but a chemical product that was as tough as steel.

A shoulder pack breath-purifier could be used in conjunction with the hood, making the wearer independent of outside air. A neat gas mask.

Wearing it, Doc got out on a wing of the plane. Renny maneuvered the ship expertly. A leap, easy for the bronze man’s muscles, put him aboard the houseboat.

HE did not step on deck immediately, but maneuvered along the rail. There was a chance an explosive might be set off by weight on the deck’s planks. Finally, Doc did go aboard. He listened. Then, with a casualness that hardly showed the care he was using, he went below.

It had never been an expensive houseboat. The woodwork was cypress, painted. The furniture was cheap stuff, most of it made for land use. Dampness had caused some of the glued joints to come apart. The carpets were mildewed.

Some one had lived aboard recently. Men, evidently, and not seamen. Things were not shipshape.

There was no one aboard, no prisoners, and no niches in which any one could have been concealed.

Doc went forward and examined the manner in which boat was moored. It was not anchored. It was tied to a mooring buoy, in the manner of yachts in their home harbor.

Renny taxied the amphibian close and called, "Where’s Monk and Hill?"

"Not aboard," Doc replied without emotion. "Pick me up."

The bronze man got aboard.

"We are leaving immediately," he said.

Renny rumbled, "But, Doc! We oughta do somethin’ toward finding Monk—"

"That," Doc Savage told him, "is exactly what we are doing when we leave here in a hurry."

Chapter IX. HIDE-OUT BELOW

MONK was tough. Men had knocked him completely senseless in a fight, only to see him come out of it, get up, and dive into the scrap again as if nothing had happened.

Monk sat up and tried to bust a nose which he recognized. He was, unfortunately, still tied. He looked around, at himself first. He was wet as the often-mentioned drowned rat. His clothing had leaked a big pool of water.

The owner of the nose retreated, muttering something about how "he’d be glad when the boss gave the word to turn loose the works." He was one of the mob.

Monk, realizing he was not gagged, let out a squawk which, if it did nothing else nearly deafened himself.

"Unless you enjoy doing that," said Reservoir Hill’s voice, "you might as well cut it out."

"Where are we?" Monk wanted to know.

"Don’t you remember?"

Monk made a face. This usually helped his thinking. "Oh, yeah!" he said. "They grabbed me and started to throw me overboard. I figured they was gonna drown me, so I tried to kick a guy’s head off. Did I?"

"You did well enough," old Hill chuckled. "But another tried a rifle barrel out on your head. The barrel won."

Monk felt his head, groaned, then asked a question, by making a statement, "The air smells kinda funny in here?"

"I don’t wonder," Hill told him. "We’re in a submarine."

"Submarine?" Monk squinted at the old oil man. "They must’ve given you a bat on the dome, too!"

"It’s an old submarine," Hill continued, unperturbed. "I don’t think it’s got an engine in it. I think it’s one that was showed at a fair in Chicago, or something, then sold for junk. Only some crooks got hold of it and made it an underwater hide-out. These crooks of ours rented it from the other crooks for a while, or something."

"It’s complicated," Monk said.

"I don’t know about that, but getting out is going to be complicated. We’re under the houseboat, I think. Anyhow, they climbed down the mooring chain. I dang near drowned."

Monk said, "Doc will find us."

One of the men came in at that instant. He overheard Monk’s remark and guffawed.

"Your bronze guy came, had a look at the houseboat, and just left," he advised.

Monk squirmed around a bit. He could not get loose. So he relaxed.

"There must be plenty of money at stake in this thing," he said.

"Not for us," the man said, somewhat sourly.

"Huh?" Monk looked surprised.

"We get a hundred bucks a day apiece for holding you," said the other, even more grouchily. "We got a thousand apiece for catching you. We’re just doing a job.

Monk frowned. "You mean you’re the fellows who fixed up this underwater hang-out, and you were only hired to get us? You’re not members of the mob we’ve been fighting?"

"That’s the idea," the other said easily. "Running this hide-away is our business and—"

A man put his head in the compartment.

"I think you might go up and look around," he said. "It sounded as if that plane took off more than half an hour ago."

The man who had been grousing to Monk nodded and went out.

THE fellow obviously had no love for the job ahead. He picked up a diving contrivance consisting of a mouthpiece, a nose clip and a chemical purifier. One could buy them on the market for a little over three hundred dollars apiece. He adjusted it.

The men got in and out of the submarine by a simple method. There was a hole in the bottom, near the bow. Air pressure held the water out. There was a compressor aboard.

At night, when no one could observe, they extended the periscope—it had been elongated—to the surface and pumped air down it until the compression tanks were full.

The man pushed himself down into the hole, felt for the rope which led to the mooring chain, and worked along it. The men followed that route back and forth to the surface.

The man had hardly started when he seemed to step into a gigantic bear trap. The jaws closed about his waist. Air left the man’s lungs so fast that it blew the mouthpiece from his teeth. He wrenched at what was around his waist. Legs! He twisted his head.

When he saw the individual who held him, the rest of the air left his lungs.

The man was almost drowned when Doc Savage got him up on the deck of the houseboat. It took time for him to speak.

"How many men are down there?" Doc asked.

"You—you’re Savage!" the other gulped. "Damn us! I knew we shouldn’t have taken this job! But the blamed submarine hide-out ain’t been payin’ a profit like we figured it would! Guys just seem to rather take a chance with the law than live down—"

"How many?" Doc repeated.

The bronze man’s tone made the prisoner gulp.

"Keepin’ my trap shut won’t help us now," he said. ‘"there’s a dozen. But, listen, we ain’t nothin’ but hired men! We took a job! It was to grab your man, or as many of ‘em as we could! The guys who hired us, all left! They took a canoe off the houseboat, a folding canoe they could hide on shore, and—"

He broke off to emit squeaks of pain as Doc tied him. He stopped everything but nose sounds when the bronze man installed a gag in his mouth. When the prisoner could neither move nor talk, Doc went out on deck.

He donned his transparent hood again. The device was a good diving rig as well as a gas mask. He had flown only a short distance in the plane, then returned, entered the water furtively, and found the submarine.

Doc had not been sure it would be there, had acted on the theory that there must be some good reason for the houseboat having a permanent mooring in this out-of-the-way place. The muddy water had been a hint, too. It was not such a spot as a houseboat party would seek for pleasure.

The bronze man lowered himself down the mooring chain. A weighted belt about his waist evened his weight with the water he displaced. He worked outside the submarine until he reached the stern.

Ham, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny were waiting there. They had their feet dug into the muddy bottom to maintain their position. Mud on their hoods kept them from seeing much.

Doc went to each. By pressing with his fingers—long and short for dash and dot—he conveyed enough Morse Code words to apprise them of the situation.

"We will depend on a surprise attack," he finished.

Single file, they worked to the hole in the underside of the derelict sub’s bow.

DOC went in first. Two of the mob were standing inside, waiting the return of their comrade. Doc’s glasslike helmet, rising out of the opening, must have given them a shock. They gaped just a moment too long. Doc got hold of them.

They evidently didn’t have guns. They tried to use their fists. That was a mistake. They only hurt their knuckles on the alloy mail.

Doc pushed one man violently in the face. The fellow went back readily with the blow, not realizing the steel wall was behind him. His head hit. He fell.

The other man twisted. Muddy water on Doc’s metallic hands made them slippery. The man got free, but fell down doing so. He scrambled up, saw a heavy wrench, and grabbed it. His best bet would have been to slug the bronze man in the midriff, or try to break a wrist or ankle.

Instead, he thought the helmet was glass, and tried to shatter it. The wrench only bounced off. And a bronze fist, hitting the man’s jaw, didn’t bounce.

Doc’s four men were inside by now. They yanked out small machine pistols, weapons which they always carried, and which were usually charged with a type of so-called "mercy bullet" producing unconsciousness, instead of fatal injury.

Men in the other part of the submarine heard the uproar. They came in a rush, yelling questions.

Renny’s machine pistol made a loud noise. It almost deafened them, even wearing the helmets. It was as if a titanic bullfiddle string had been sawed hard.

The effect on the enemy must have been stunning. No one fell immediately. It took a moment for the chemical in the slugs to function; then two men sank to the deck.

Monk was howling, frantic because there was a fight and he was tied up.

Doc worked through a bulkhead aperture, stepped over the two fallen foes, and sprang for a smaller bulkhead door. The moment he got his head through, a man shot at him. The bullet glanced off the helmet with a deafening impact. Doc lunged on through.

The man who had fired turned white and put up his hands. Maybe he was yellow. Possibly the unearthly apparition which Doc made in the helmet got the fellow’s goat. The bronze man did look like something from some sinister astral plane.

Altogether, they were not a brave crowd. Typical crooks. A few blasts from the machine pistols, a threat to use gas, and they threw down their guns.

Doc assigned Ham the job of freeing Hill and Monk, only to discover, a bit later, that Ham had untied Hill, but was standing over Monk, sneering and reciting a choice history of what he contended had been Monk’s ancestors.

It took Renny, Johnny and Long Tom to hold Monk off Ham when he was finally untied.

It was their quaint way of showing they were glad to see each other alive.

GETTING information out of reluctant subjects was a frequent need with Doc Savage. He had developed various methods. They began mildly and became more scientific.

The first treatment worked with their captives. It consisted of putting Monk in a room with them and shutting the door. Monk was not through explaining in detail what he was going to do to them when they started talking.

As the prisoners said, what was the profit in holding out? They had been caught. And they were only hired men. They did not belong to the Oklahoma mob, did not even know what the Oklahoma crowd was after. They called their employers—whom they cursed heartily—the Oklahoma crowd.

Altogether, Doc got but one piece of information. "Who is the leader of the other mob?" he asked. "Enoch Andershott," they said. "That’s the name they used, anyhow."

"I ain’t surprised," old Reservoir Hill growled.

Chapter X. RED MYSTERY

DOC SAVAGE left the prisoners at a Cleveland hospital. They were drugged, each in a stupor which would last until the bronze man got around to calling for them. Later, they would be consigned to a secret institution which Doc maintained for curing criminals of crooked tendencies by a brain operation and a course of training.

Johnny did not arrive in Tulsa with them. He had dropped out of sight. The others did not know where. But they suspected Johnny had remained behind to keep an eye on the prisoners in the hospital. They were not sure about this. It was just a guess.

When old Reservoir Hill had suggested that Johnny had remained to watch the crooks who had tried to turn an old submarine into a profitable hideout at so much per guest, Doc neglected to deny it.

A newsboy was crying a paper at the Tulsa airport. It sounded as if it were big news. Monk bought a paper, glanced at the headlines, started, and handed it to the bronze man:

OUTLAW TANT MEN FOUND

TWO BODIES STRANGELY

MANGLED

The heads and shoulders of two men were found in Mohawk Park this morning. Police have tentatively identified the bodies as "Muck" Orst and Lee "Leaping" Ketchum, two bad actors belonging to the mysterious Tomahawk Tant outlaw mob. Identification was difficult.

Parts of the torsos, arms and legs of the victims were missing. There was a mysterious substance resembling common lubricating grease under the body fragments.

Police refuse to explain what the greasy material is .

Old Reservoir Hill whistled softly when Monk read this aloud over Doc’s shoulder.

Monk grunted, "Queer business, huh! I wonder just what is goin’ on down here?"

Reservoir Hill made a snarling noise.

"Enoch Andershott can explain it, I bet!" he growled. "I’ll take you to where he lives."

Doc dropped big-fisted Renny off downtown, requesting, "Pick up what information you can on the general situation here. The newspapers would be a good bet."

ENOCH ANDERSHOTT and his partner, Alonzo Cugg, shared a home, it seemed. Both lived there when in Tulsa. It was a mansion. Old English style. And everything had been done to carry out the impression of the surroundings being a slice of old Sussex countryside.

"They musta tore down a lotta old barns to get the wood for this thing." muttered Reservoir Hill.

"Old dill pickle!" Monk told him. "Ain’t there any of your fellow men that you love?"

"No," said Reservoir. "And I’d like you to show me anybody that Andershott and Cugg like!"

A metal gate across the automobile driveway was closed, but the footgate was open. Doc Savage and the others left their car and walked up the drive. They kept in a compact group without thinking.

"We’d be a swell target for a shot gun!" grunted Reservoir Hill

Doc Savage tried the door.

"It is open," he said. Then the bronze man called, "Andershott! Cugg!"

The quiet of this exclusive residential district—exclusive unless one had the money—made the silence which came from within more impressive.

Inside, the house was gloomy. Pictures of oil wells, of drilling rigs, of refineries, of filling stations, of tank trucks, hung on the walls. Over the fireplace in the big library, instead of antlers or a mounted game head, there was an old-fashioned walking-beam.

The lights of the chandelier were suspended from the rim of an ancient, huge bullwheel. Strangely enough, even the air seemed to smell of oil, but this was due to the scent of crude oil carried across the Arkansas River from the mammoth refineries in West Tulsa.

Long Tom, walking into a room to one side, suddenly emitted a yell. Simultaneously, there was a loud snarling and snapping.

Long Tom came flying back, minus almost an entire trousers leg. The huge black dog of Enoch Andershott was in close pursuit. Seizing up a chair, Doc Savage got between the dog and Long Tom.

The giant canine, frothing and snarling, leaped at Doc, but the bronze man used the chair as a shield, after the manner of an animal trainer. The dog fell back, tried to get at Monk, then at Reservoir Hill.

Doc intercepted it each time. All the while, it showed its huge fangs and kept up a grisly chorus of snarling.

"That critter!" Monk gulped, "sure must like man meat!"

Long Tom, who had recovered his breath, gasped, "The dog was sniffing at a door! I think there’s something behind it!"

They went into the room out of which the dog had chased Long Tom. The dog snarled and slavered and kept its red, evil eyes fierce.

"That’s the door," said Long Tom, pointing. Instantly after he had spoken and pointed, he gave an imitation of a man doing his best to jump out of his skin.

What excited him was a puddle of red, jellylike stuff that protruded under the bottom of the door.

LIGHT in the room was none too good, being discolored by tall, stained windows in a corner with about that same greenish tint which starts off putrefaction. The greenish, rough walls had been carefully decorated to give an impression of infinite age, and the result of that effort and the lighting was the feeling of an unreal, dreamland dungeon in which anything might be expected to happen.

Had the place possessed a real, an earthy feeling, it would have been easier for common sense to discount the possibility of anything eerie.

They stared, as rigid and breathless as so many solidly frozen figures, and they all could see that the red horror on the floor was in motion. It was flowing into the room, coming toward them!

"Run!" yelled Reservoir Hill. "It’ll gitcha!"

Doc Savage produced an object which he carried in his pocket—a powerful flashlight. Doc planted the beam, which was like a sliver of the sun itself, upon the monstrosity oozing under the door into the room.

The huge black dog began to snarl and drool and make sounds of terror.

The instant the light was upon the horror flowing under the door, the thing stopped. There was a brief pause. Gradually, the semiliquid red mass began to retract itself under the door.

"It’s afraid of bright light!" Monk exploded.

"Quick!" Doc Savage rapped. "We’ll chop a piece of the thing off!"

The bronze giant hurled forward, and his speed was that of a jungle denizen leaping to the kill. Even while he was in the air, he got a knife out of his pocket, a knife with a spring-snap blade, which opened instantly.

His blinding speed was not enough. For the red mass was suddenly gone back under the door. Faster, almost, than the eye could perceive, it went.

Doc hit the door, and it was of big mahogany timbers, as solid in its wooden ponderosity as the door of a vault. It was locked.

"Blazes!" Monk yelled. "Didja see how quick that thing went! It’s fast as light!"

DOC leaped backward, seized a heavy table, and hurled it at the door. A panel broke out of the door. Doc threw the table again, causing the door to fly open, revealing a room which drawn shades made almost black.

They turned on the lights, and the room became so bright it ached their eyes. The big black dog kept behind them and always it snarled and made sounds deep in its chest that were like noises which might be made by some small thing dying.

The lighted room was big, with rich wooden panels along the walls, heavy furniture and a deep rug on the floor, and the rug looked as if thousands of fishing worms had crawled over it in battalions, leaving trails of slime.

No red, jellylike body could be seen.

It was Doc who looked up at the very tall ceiling. The others followed his gaze. Without exception, they started back in horror. The black dog emitted a yammering howl that came as near making their hair stand on end as anything could.

"A man—hanging from the chandelier!" Long Tom gulped.

Chapter XI. SEIZED

THE hanging man was big, bony, and his skin was not red alone because of his hanging there, for his complexion was the hearty one of the outdoors. He had an aquiline nose and big eyes. His crumpled morning suit, striped trousers and all, failed to give him a suave appearance. One word described him. Rugged!

The hanging man was breathing with difficulty through his nose.

Reservoir Hill said loudly, "Too bad! I thought for a minute you’d committed suicide!"

"Who is he?" Doc asked.

"Enoch Andershott," said Hill.

The man was not hanging by his neck, but by his middle. He was buckled to the chain of the chandelier by a strip of leather, evidently his belt.

"I’m so stiff I can’t move!" he groaned. "Cut me down, somebody!"

Doc Savage moved forward, and instantly, there was a snarling and scraping of sharp claws on the floor behind him.

"Whitey!" Enoch Andershott shrieked, feebly. "Heel! Stop it!"

The giant, ferocious black dog, which had started a charge, skidded to a stop, then slung back, dragging along on its stomach.

Enoch Andershott peered at Doc Savage. Andershott was a big man, but he seemed, somehow, dwarfed alongside the bronze man.

"They were trying to kill me!" Andershott said, hoarsely. "I don’t understand it! I think they were trying to make it look as if I was guilty of something, and did not want me alive to prove otherwise!"

Old Reservoir Hill spat noisily.

Andershott continued to look at Doc Savage. Abruptly, he recognized the bronze man.

"You’re Doc Savage!" he exploded. "You must be! Where’s my partner, Alonzo Cugg? Have you seen him?"

"Is he supposed to be around?" Doc asked.

"Cugg was here when the red things came," Andershott said rapidly. "I jumped and hung to the chandelier. I don’t know what happened to Cugg. He fled. The red things stayed on the floor, almost able to reach me.

"The last one fled just before you broke down that window—I mean, it went through that window just before you broke down the door."

He pointed at a window.

Monk ran to the window, which was open. He looked out over the sun-bathed morning landscape, then scowled at the window sill itself.

"Trail of that slime goes out here," he grunted.

"There are men," said Andershott, "who control, at least to some extent, those red things!"

IT must have been a thought that rendered every one in the room silent for a moment.

"Men!" Monk exploded. "Guiding that jelly thing!"

"What’d these guys look like?" Monk yelled.

"Their faces were vaguely familiar," Andershott explained. "But it was a long time before I kinda remembered where I had seen their pictures."

Andershott had been speaking fast, and he paused to catch a breath.

"They were outlaw Tomahawk Tant’s men!" he gulped. "I had seen their pictures in the newspapers!"

"Tant’s men?" echoed Ham in a surprised voice.

Old Reservoir Hill reacted instantly to that.

"You’re crazy!" he howled. "They couldn’t have been Tant’s men!"

Every one looked at Reservoir Hill. The old man glared, then apparently realized his howled statement had sounded queer, and looked confused.

"What I mean is that this dang gollywobbler, Andershott, couldn’t tell the truth if he wanted to!" he yelled. "He’s a natural-born liar. He’s lying now for some reason!"

Enoch Andershott drew himself up with some dignity, looked slightly angry for a moment, then shrugged.

"This old man," he said, "has held a fancied grudge against me for years. He is an old man with bile in his soul, and some persons hold the opinion that he is not quite responsible."

"Not respon—crazy, huh!" Reservoir Hill actually jumped up and down in his rage. "I’ll wring your neck, or I hope to be put on a diet of carrots, than which there’s nothing I like less!"

Monk told Andershott, "We were told you headed the mob of men who tried to prevent us reaching Oklahoma."

Andershott started. He opened and shut his mouth.

"Why—I don’t—maybe—I’ve got it! That is why they tried to kill me! They used my name to guide suspicion from themselves, whoever they are! They wanted to prevent me telling different!"

Doc queried, "If you had pictures of the Tomahawk Tant mob, could you identify the men you saw here, guiding these red mobsters?"

"I could try," said Andershott.

Ham interposed. "How were they—the monsters—guided?"

"I don’t know!" snapped Andershott. "I didn’t see!"

Doc telephoned the police, and they promised to come at once, bringing such pictures as they had of known Tant badmen. While the officers were on their way, Doc and his men went over the grounds and the Andershott-Cugg mansion. They found no monsters. They found no Cugg, nor no pile of strange-looking grease which might have been a Cugg.

The police spread their pictures on a porch table.

"There," said Andershott, pointing. "And there, and there. That’s four of them."

"Have you a picture of Outlaw Tant?" Doc asked the policemen.

"Tant is sort of a spook among badmen," one cop replied. "To tell the truth, we haven’t a picture we’re sure is him. But we have his finger prints."

"Mind letting me have the finger prints?" Doc requested.

They didn’t mind. The bronze man pocketed the print card which they gave him.

The police heard the story of the attack of the red, jellylike things.

"Queer," they said. ‘"Tant’s men controlling the things! And this morning, two of Tant’s outlaws were found dead, half consumed!"

"Probably they were carrying some of the red monsters and the things got loose on them," suggested Andershott.

THE police gave the premises a thorough going over, and it developed that they were more modern than usual, to the extent that they had an expert chemical analyst who went over the slime on the rugs and on window sills, and even on the lawn grass outside. The chemist tested this slime to learn what composed it.

"Whew!" he gulped, on finishing. "Whew!"

"What is it?" Long Tom asked, curiosity on his face.

"Digestive juices!"

"Digestive juices!" repeated the police chemist. "Of course, these are infinitely more powerful than those in the human body. But, nevertheless, I can best explain them to the layman by saying they are powerful digestive juices. Of course, to any one with a technical knowledge, I could say they are composed of—"

Doc Savage interposed. "There’s no need of going into a lengthy discussion. Digestive juices does cover the stuff."

"Thank you," said the police chemist, flattered.

Long Tom, face bewildered, said, "You mean to stand there and tell us this thing oozes digestive juices through its hide?"

No one answered.

A policeman, who had been telephoning headquarters, came into the room wearing the look of a man who has just been convinced there really are such things as ghosts.

"Listen," he said, hoarsely. "This thing is getting worse! The jelly devils have been down in the Seminole Field. That’s about forty or fifty miles from Indian Dome Field. They’ve been seen up near Bartlesville, during the night. Somebody near Cushing saw ‘em, or one of ‘em. But that ain’t the worst thing!"

He paused and wet his lips. Nobody spoke.

"The jelly devils got a drilling crew in the Indian Dome Field," he said. "It was at a well about three miles from the Sands-Carlaw-Hill lease, where the things were first reported. Some men on a near-by lease heard the drilling crew shouting and screaming and came over to investigate. They found a bunch of bodies! It musta been pretty bad!"

"What do you mean?" Doc asked.

"The bodies were only partly consumed," said the policeman. "The report said there was that grease stuff where the arms and legs and like were missing, and some of the men were—well, skeletons!"

"Were any of the monsters seen?" Doc asked.

"Yes," said the policeman. "But they went away, apparently because of the lights the approaching men carried."

The police left after a time, promising to have a general search made for Alonzo Cugg.

Long Tom said, "If you ask me, we’d better find out some way of detecting the presence of these red devil things. I think I can do the job easily with a magnetic capacity balance hook-up."

Enoch Andershott looked at Long Tom, surprised, and demanded, "Who is this chap?"

"Major Thomas J. Roberts, one of my aids," Doc explained.

The telephone rang. Doc Savage, happening to be nearest the instrument, lifted the receiver. "Yes?"

"This is a filling station attendant on the Sand Sprints road," said a voice. "Something queer just happened here."

ENOCH ANDERSHOTT came over. He made no effort to take the receiver from Doc Savage, but put his head close to Doc’s head so that he could hear. Over the wire came three pops, a louder pop.

"Go ahead," Doc directed the station attendant.

"All right," the fellow said. "A coupé just drove into my station for a fill-up and a quart of lube. It had a bit rack on the back, and this bit rack was full of what looked like canvas, maybe an old tent. I thought once I saw the canvas move.

"I never said nothing, on account of they might have had a dog or something in there, and anyway, one time last spring I almost got my puss shot off for sticking my nose into a car where some Tant bad boys were ridin’. Them boys just ups with a sawed-off pumpgun and—"

"Just what are you trying to tell us?" Doc interposed.

"That I found a note on the filling station drive after this coupé with the bit rack went on," said the attendant. "It was wrapped up in a ten-spot, which is probably the reason I’m callin’ you so quicklike."

"Read the note!" The three pops, the louder pop, came again.

"It says, ‘Tant behind whole thing. It’s worse than anybody thinks yet. They’re taking me to Tant hide-out, thirty miles due north of One Road Cut.’ And it’s signed, ‘Lonny.’ It’s addressed to be telephoned to Mister Enoch Andershott. There’s a postscript on the address which says Mister Andershott will give me another fifty dollars."

"Damned if I will!" growled Andershott.

"Then hell with you!" said the attendant. "I always heard you were so stingy you pluck the feathers off the Indians on your pennies before you spend ‘em! I’ve earned the ten-spot, way I figure, so hell with you!"

He banged the receiver up, just before the loud pop that was to be expected on the tail end of three lesser popping noises.

"Impertinent nobody!" yelled Enoch Andershott. Then, in the same breath, "Come on! We’ve got to save my partner, Alonzo Cugg! He signed that note! Lonny! That’s Cugg!"

"Right!" Doc Savage scooped up the telephone book, looked up the number of the afternoon newspaper and put in a call. "A man named Renwick around there?"

"Prying around in the morgue, over by the oil editor’s desk," a voice replied.

A moment later, Doc had Renny on the phone and was asking, "Find anything? You’ve been looking up recent developments in the oil fields."

"Well," replied Renny, slowly, "only thing I’ve seen concerning anybody involved in this is that Enoch Andershott and Alonzo Cugg have been selling their holdings over the period of the last year until now they own hardly anything except the lease in the Indian Dome Field adjoining the Sands-Carlaw-Hill lease."

Enoch Andershott roared, "And why the thunder shouldn’t we conduct our business any way we please?"

He had come up behind Doc, and the bronze man had known he was there, but had not given any sign.

"Meet us as we pass the newspaper office on the way to Sand Springs road," Doc directed.

Renny met them.

WELL out of Tulsa, past the little city park and the swimming pool and the small bungalow, stood a filling station. It was green, and like thousands of other filling stations owned by a great corporation.

Doc drove in, saying, ‘"This is where the call came from."

Monk exploded, "How’d you know?"

Doc pointed at a near-by oil well which was pumping. The gasoline engine operating the bullwheel walking beam pump device was one which sputtered three times, then back-fired loudly. Three regular exhausts, then a back-fire, as regular as clockwork.

"The sound of that pump came over the telephone," Doc said. "Driving along the road, I have been listening for it."

The attendant was a lean young man, with a good forehead, eyes and jaw. He peered at them, evidently decided they looked like trouble, and his hands blurred in movement—and were suddenly holding a six-gun.

"Since them bad Tant boys got tough last spring, I been practicing the draw and also how to shoot," he said. "Maybe you’d be so kind as to tell me whatcha want?"

"The note," Doc said.

The attendant squinted into the car and seemed to recognize Enoch Andershott, for he said, "Is it a fact that you’re an old meanie to the Indians on your pennies?"

Andershott yelled, "I’ll have you fired! You menial!"

"If you asked my boss to fire me, he’d laugh so hard they’d have to bandage his ribs," said the attendant. "My boss knows you."

"The note!" Doc repeated.

The attendant snapped, "Ask for it like a gentleman—" and got a look at Doc Savage. He undoubtedly recognized the bronze man, but he did not look abashed.

"O. K. My mistake. I’ve heard of you, and I’m for you in a big way."

He handed over the note, and Doc glanced at it. The attendant had read it exactly as it was over the telephone.

Doc produced a bill and passed it to the attendant.

"I don’t want your money." The attendant passed the bill back and nodded at Enoch Andershott. "But I’d take his right eye if I got a chance!"

THEY drove on, leaving the attendant with his six-gun in his hands and a big grin on his face.

Old Reservoir Hill fell to chuckling, and finally to laughing, and finally he said, "I think I’ll go to Timbuktu some day!"

"Why?" snarled Enoch Andershott.

"To see if there’s anybody there who likes you!"

Big-fisted Renny got between them, with his extremely long face more dour and sorrowful-looking than usual, as it became when he was secretly tickled.

They passed one of the big refineries in Sand Springs, heading for the canyon known as One Road Cut, in the wilder section of the Osage Hills. They were almost abreast of the big refinery gate when old Reservoir Hill barked out a demand.

"Stop here!" he shouted. "I got a friend in there who has a dang good repeating rifle in his office all the time. During his spare minutes, he goes over on the bank of the river and practices popping at floating junk."

Doc stopped. Reservoir Hill got out, went through the refinery gate, and out of sight, and the others waited in the car.

They waited a long time.

Doc sent Monk in to investigate. The homely chemist came back traveling at a wild run, and with an incredulous look in his homely face.

"Reservoir Hill skipped!" Monk squeaked excitedly. "He never went in there to borrow no rifle! He just walked through and out the other side!"

Chapter XII. BLAST TRAP

IF Doc Savage was amazed by the unexpected flight of old Reservoir Hill, he gave no sign of it, although it was a striking trait of the bronze man that only on the most unusual occasions did he show any emotion at all.

Doc put the car in motion.

Andershott yelled, "Ain’t we gonna hunt the old reprobate?"

Doc said, "We are hunting your partner, Cugg."

"Of course!" Andershott nodded violently. "Let’s go! To thunder with that stringy old goat, Hill!"

Renny, after keeping his chin in his palm for a time, pulled a paper out of his pocket. He tapped it.

"Editorial writer in here suggests that some nest of infernal creatures, previously unknown to man, was tapped a mile below the surface of the earth by that drilling oil well," he said.

No one spoke. The car followed the road around steep bluffs, with a river and a railroad below. Doc drove fast when he had a view of the road ahead, but slowed to an ample safety margin on the bad curves. Once they met a huge truck loaded with oil field pipe in the middle of the road. The slow speed saved them.

"That nest of strange creatures, a mile-underground theory, was advanced by somebody last night," Monk said at last.

The bluffs became very high over them. Below, fifty feet or so straight down, was the railroad, and running beside that, a giant concrete pipe running part of the time on top of the ground, sometimes on blocks, and sometimes half underground. It was a water main leading from a reservoir somewhere in the Osage.

The cliff slid down in the road ahead of the car.

The happening was so casual at first as to be ordinary. A huge mass simply settled. Then it fell to pieces, and there was noise, the roar of breaking rock, and the whoop of some kind of explosive.

As the stone mass fell to pieces, there was a great gushing of rock dust, and fragments came flying out of the mass, some hopping along the road, playful, innocent-looking things until one hit the car, which Doc had almost stopped, and completely wrecked the right-hand front wheel.

Andershott made a howling noise. Doc Savage and his aids gave almost no sign, scarcely changing their positions in the crowded sedan. But they knew what had happened.

The roar of rock subsided after a moment, although the dust continued to surge in a great gray pall over the mass of stone which had been blasted across the road.

"Listen to this!"

The voice came from the top of the cliff. Then something else came from the clifftop. It exploded with a deafening report and dug a considerable hole in the road behind the car.

"Dynamite!" Monk gulped.

Then the homely chemist poked his incredibly ugly features out of the car window and looked upward to see who had shouted and thrown the dynamite.

"Hy’ah, good-lookin’!" called the voice. "Get out of that iron, or we’ll blow you out!"

Monk pulled his head in.

"The guy answers the description of the one who was in the plane and tried to get Vida Carlaw," he said. "Yep. It’s one of the mob that finally murdered Vida Carlaw."

THEY sat very still in the big automobile. It was crowded. Doc cut off the engine, and they could then hear noises made by small bits of rock falling down the mangled cliff face.

The voice above yelled, "You honyoks can talk over the weather after you get outta there!"

Doc Savage said, "If we do not get out, they will throw more dynamite."

They got out, looked up, and could see rifles peeking over the cliff’s edge at them. A man stood in plain view, with a stick of dynamite in each hand. He wore plain black gloves.

"That lad must wear gloves all the time," Monk grunted. "I’ll bet his finger prints are on file somewhere, and there’s plenty charged agin’ ‘im!"

The dust cloud still boiled around the mass of blasted rock. Somewhere beyond the rock slide and its growing cloud of dust, a car horn was honking. A rifle whanged atop the cliff, and the car horn began to blow steadily and horribly.

A rope came snaking down the cliff.

"Climb it!" the voice above yelled.

"Well," Monk said, "it don’t look like they’re gonna kill us right off the bat. I guess I’ll climb up."

He started up.

Then Doc Savage moved. The bronze man had shifted a little apart from the others, and now he whipped into motion, off like a champion sprinter. He had covered some yards before those above began to yell and shoot. From one side to another, he pitched, still covering ground with amazing speed. He dived into the cloud of dust.

The dust cloud was very dense, enough so at its most umbrageous point to hide him from those above. Dust would not keep out their bullets, though. Lead tapped fiercely at the broken stone.

Doc got a break. Feeling, he came upon a cranny under a great mass of stone which was large enough to protect him from lead.

He grasped a great dornick, heaved it so that it went bounding down toward the river, starting a miniature rock slide of its own.

"There he goes!" squawled a man on the clifftop, mistaken.

Doc writhed into the rock cranny. Bullets chased the rolling rock until the men realized their mistake, then began to hit all about, searching the rock slide. A machine gun, evidently a small hand one, joined in, along with six-shooters and shotguns. The whistle and scream of bullets, the thunder of the reports and their echoes from the cliff, made an ominous syncopation.

"We oughta got ‘im by now!" a voice yelled. "Go down an see!"

Doc had been waiting for that. He could not wait too long, because the rock dust would settle soon—had settled dangerously already.

Easing out of the cranny, Doc felt his way downward. It was a bruising, nerve-shattering task, negotiating that mass of rock. He did not follow the slide all the way down, for it would have been impossible to keep from starting rocks rolling.

Doc gained the cliff’s edge. He carried in his clothing a silk cord with a grapple hook of collapsible style affixed to one end, and he set the grapple behind the sharp edge of a big boulder, took a chance, and went sliding down the face of the cliff.

He landed on the railroad bed, ran, found a culvert, crawled into it, through it and out on the other side, into water that was over his head.

The Arkansas River was muddy, and he swam out into it, under water, and came up, projecting only his face, under the roots of a willow tree. He could hear what was happening up on the road.

THE ambushers had evidently climbed down, and none of Doc’s companions had possessed sufficient agility to make good an escape in the manner of the bronze man. They were probably wise in not attempting it. The ambushers were hunting the rock slide. A profusion of profanity accompanied their efforts.

"He ain’t here!" they yelled.

Doc Savage furtively left the willow roots where he lay and swam downstream. He had a plan. While they hunted him, he was going to circle, get behind them, and do whatever possible toward rescuing the prisoners.

But the man with the black gloves must have recognized that, and he lost no time. The prisoners were rushed up the face of the cliff, and out of sight. They must have had cars hidden on a trail at the clifftop, because Doc could hear the engines. The bronze man scrambled out of the river, through bushes, and raced furiously to intercept the automobiles.

He was not successful. The cars sped away in the direction of Tulsa.

Doc ran after the machines, not because he expected to overhaul them, but because there had been a house back a short distance, and a telephone wire ran to it. Doc reached the house, found nobody home, broke in, and used the telephone to advise Tulsa police to be on the look-out for the fleeing cars.

It was not much of a chance. Doc could not identify the machines by appearance, not having seen them, but he had seen the tracks and, from a vast knowledge of such subjects, named the kind of tires on the cars. He left money to pay for the damage he had done in breaking into the house, and went back to the clifftop.

He looked over the vicinity, noting particularly such footprints as were discernible. Then he descended the cliff to the car which had honked, and which was still honking, although weaker, as if the battery were running down. It was a motor horn, and sounded dreary.

THE filling station attendant who had boasted of his shooting practice was slumped across the wheel, so that he held the button depressed with one shoulder. He was holding both hands to his neck, and when he saw Doc Savage, words came out of him that were half vibrations of vocal cords and half bubblings.

"You—great guy—read a lot—’bout you," he said, and It was with difficulty that even Doc understood the words.

"Followed you—figured—might help. Wasn’t I—the big ninny!"

Doc Savage said, quietly, "I like your style, young man."

The lips twisted a smile, almost imperceptibly, under the red film that was over them.

"I’ll tell—Saint Peter—you said that—and it—oughta be enough." He stopped and shut his eyes tightly. "Something to tell—you. I figured—it out—after you left."

"Yes," Doc Savage said.

"That—damn note—they left it—on purpose. I hope—that information—helps. Men in—front seat of car—knew about note."

"It helps," Doc Savage said, "a great deal."

The young man kept his eyes shut while he finished dying.

Chapter XIII. FLIGHT

ONE ROAD CUT was a canyon, and It had gotten its name back in the days when Oklahoma pioneers made their own clothes and drove ox teams, and used the handiest level going, more often than not a gravel creek bed, for a road.

The bottom of One Road Cut had been used as a thoroughfare, and at this point was wide enough for only one team of oxen at a time, hence the name.

Thirty miles north, the note had said Outlaw Tant’s men were taking Alonzo Cugg. The unfortunate filling station attendant had said the note had been purposefully lost—the men in the front seat had known about it. That meant Tant’s men had known the note was being left. Therefore, it was a fake.

A fake to lead Doc Savage and his companions into the trap on the cliff road perhaps?

It would seem a logical suspicion, then, that there was no outlaw Tant hang-out north thirty miles from One Road Cut.

But that was wrong. The hang-out was there. A ranch, old Western style, with corrals, hay barns, bunk house and ranch house of logs, and a very tall windmill and a water tank beside it.

There was no water in the tank; the staves were old and some had fallen; there had not been water in the tank for years; nor did it look as if the windmill pump had pumped for an equally long time.

Yet there was a well-worn footpath from the windmill tower to the bunk house. A crude awning of boards had been rigged on top of the windmill tower for a self-evident reason.

The windmill tower had been used as look-out point. No doubt the terrain could be seen for miles by a man with a good pair of field glasses.

Doc Savage did not call out. They would not have answered, anyway. He merely watched the place, listened, discerned no sign of life, then moved forward.

There was no one around.

Those who had been there recently had lived well, for the empty liquor bottles bore expensive labels, and the few suits left hanging were costly and tailored. They had dressed their women with a free hand, too, judging from the frocks left behind, and there were rare perfumes on the dressing tables.

Everywhere was confusion. They had taken suitcases, and had rifled through trunks, probably for the more valuable stuff. Garments too bulky, or not so necessary, had been thrown aside. A safe was open in the ranch house.

There were no guns on the place, but rags scattered here and there smelled of oil and gunpowder, and there were quite a few wads that had obviously been pulled through gun barrels by ramrods. Empty cartridge boxes were scattered about.

Doc took finger prints. He found enough to be sure that the Tant outlaw mob had used the place for a hang-out.

The outlaws had fled quite recently, in a great hurry. They had taken automobiles to the east, toward Pawhuska, and by now, must be out of the Osage.

DOC SAVAGE left the way he had come, afoot, traveling at an easy run which covered ground at, all told, a speed which a car could not have exceeded any great amount through terrain as rough and nearly impassable as this.

The bronze man made a telephone call over the first instrument which he found, one situated in a pumping station some miles out of Pawhuska. He called a number. The noise of a mechanical, musical device was audible the instant the distant receiver came down, and a voice said, "Fujiyama Roadhouse."

"Snook Loggard," Doc requested. "Lemme talk to ‘im."

The bronze man’s usual cultured tones had vanished, and he had assumed the voice of a typical tough guy.

"Who wants to talk to Snook?" the distant voice asked.

"What’s it to you?" Doc growled. "A pal. Tell ‘im it’s a little cardinal."

"A what?"

"Ne’rmind! Snook’ll get it!"

"Well, I’ll see if anybody named Snook is here," said the voice, obviously belonging to the roadhouse proprietor. "I ain’t never heard the name.

A few moments passed.

A harsh voice over the telephone said, "Well? This ain’t Snook, but I’ll take a word to ‘im."

"Hello, Snook," Doc Savage said.

"Huh! It’s you. ‘Sall right, then. I figured it might be a badge with a guy fastened to it. Whatsa wrong? Why ain’t you in St. Louis? Hah! This guy said you was a little cardinal wantin’ to talk to me! I gitcha now. The St. Louis ball club—the Cards—you from St. Louis—sure, sure!"

Doc Savage growled, "I’m just tippin’ yuh, pallo. St. Louis ain’t gonna be safe for mamma Snook’s boy for a dog’s age."

Snook chuckled, unconcerned. "Say, how long does a dog live, anyway?"

"It depends on how the dog lives," Doc rasped, dryly. "But you better cut St. Louis off your visitin’ list for a while. Better make a connection here."

"Don’t worry about me," said Snook. "I’m doin’ right well by myself."

"O. K., then," Doc growled.

"Thanks for callin me," Snook said, coarsely. "I’ll remember you to the next lawman I see."

He hung up laughing.

SNOOK had something wrong with one side, it appeared from the way he walked. He swung along in particularly grotesque fashion, with his left side seemingly almost inoperative. Yet he managed to travel at a good speed.

He was bowed over to one side by his trouble, with his face twisted out of shape, and he was a particularly uninviting specimen as a whole.

He had a skin the color of a pine plank that had lain for years in the weather, and his mouth seemed full of gold teeth. His eyes rarely met any one’s but when they did, there was something about them that made the other Individual turn his own gaze aside.

Snook lurched in to the bar, where stood half a dozen men who looked as if they were waiting for something and didn’t know what—or such best described their perpetual alertness and nervousness. Out of Snook’s pocket came a big bill off a bigger roll.

"It’s all on me again!" he shouted, boastfully. "Best the house has got!"

The proprietor picked up the bill, eyed it, and blinked. It was a century.

"This hot?" he asked, sharply.

"Not by a damn sight!" growled Snook. "Say—you too good to take my money? Maybe you’d like to do somethin’ about it, huh?"

The proprietor leaned casually against the bar. This put his hand on a sawed-off shotgun lying there.

On the other side of the bar, a man known as "Cackle," a lean fellow with a face remarkably like that of a chicken, slapped the bar and said loudly:

"What the hell! This is too early in the morning to get all het up! Bartender, I think I heard the hen cackle. Will you see if she didn’t lay me an eggnog?"

That eased the friction, and every one drank, and the talk turned to horse racing. It seemed there was a track wire upstairs, which accounted for the presence of the men this early in the morning.

A bit later, the man called Cackle drew the proprietor aside.

"What was that telephone call to him?" he asked, furtively. "You listened in on the extension, didn’t you?"

"Yeah," said the proprietor. "The hombre who called him was some bird tipping him off that the law wanted him bad in St. Louis, and he’d better stay clear of that burg."

"You think he’s O. K.?" demanded Cackle.

"Maybe. But I don’t like his snotty manner, and if he gets tough with me again, I’ll fix him up. The first shell in that shotgun is tear gas, and the second is rock salt, and when I give ‘em both, they remember—"

"Did you notice his left hand when you put your hand on that shotgun?" Cackle asked casually.

"Hell, no! I was watching his snaky eyes. You can tell from a man’s eyes when—"

"You better watch his hand," Cackle chuckled. "He had it full of as mean a looking derringer as I’ve seen in years. Keeps it up his sleeve, on that bad side, and gets it out by drawing his arm up inside in a way you don’t hardly notice."

Cackle left a deeply thoughtful roadhouse proprietor, and went over to the side of Snook.

"I think you and me has got some business," Cackle said.

THE two men retired to a corner of the room where no one was near, and they could be sure no one came near, and put their heads together. They made a perfect-looking pair of villains.

No one, least of all the erudite college professors with whom he had once worked, would have recognized the mean-mannered, boastful, vicious-looking Snook as the eminent archaeologist and geologist and Doc Savage aid, William Harper Littlejohn.

Cackle certainly had no suspicion.

"You’re Snook Loggard from St. Louis, ain’t you?" asked Cackle.

Johnny, playing the tough Snook to perfection, leaned back. He happened to know the real Snook Loggard was in an Ohio penitentiary, under an assumed name. Snook didn’t know the authorities knew his identity, but he would find it out when they got ready to release him, for a policeman would be waiting to arrest him and take him back to St. Louis, where he probably would be hanged.