THE KING MAKER

SIXTY or seventy pedestrians probably saw the silk-hatted gentleman get out of his resplendent town car in front of New York's finest skyscraper. Out of the sixty or seventy, nobody seemed to catch the significance of the man's pale face and lips drawn so tightly that they were blue.

“The lucky stiff,” some onlookers possibly reflected.

Taking snap judgment on the silk hat and costly town car, most of the onlookers would have swapped places willingly with the top-hatted personage. In New York, such trappings signify an individual of importance, a somebody.

Had they known the truth, no amount of money would have inveigled an onlooker into changing places.

Maybe some of the spectators noted that the man's face was pale and grim. If so, they may have decided he was a business magnate with pressing responsibilities.

The truth was that the gentleman in the topper was scared. He was in the grip of an awful terror.

This frightened, very-much-dressed-up personage stalked rapidly into the vast and ornate lobby of the cloud-piercing building.

His town car waited. On its door was the coat-of-arms of the ruling house of the kingdom of Calbia, one of the Balkan countries of Europe. Probably nobody in the crowd knew it, but the uniform of the chauffeur designated him as no less than a general in the Calbian army.

Now there is something about ragged clothing and shabby attire that seems to label the wearer, the world over, as a person of lowly station.

This was why those rubbering at the swanky car and the silk-hatted man paid little attention to the old woman who entered the building at the same time.

She was very short, broad and stooped. There were wrinkles in her face, in which one could almost hide a lead pencil. A shawl was tied over her head, knotted under her chin. A rent in the top permitted a glimpse of gray hair. Her dress looked as if she had made it herself. Her shoes were shabby.

The man and the old woman—riches and rags, as it were—entered the same elevator.

“Call your floors,” said the elevator operator.

“Eighty-six,” came from the man in the silk hat.

“Eighty-six,” the old woman echoed, somewhat shrilly.

The two passengers looked at each other. There was nothing in their expressions to indicate that they had ever met before.

“The eighty-sixth is Doc Savage's floor,” the elevator operator offered, apparently by way of information.

The cage shot upward and stopped. Both passengers stepped out into a plain, yet rich, corridor. It was evident, from the way they looked around, that neither had ever been here before. They found their way to a door.

The door bore a name outlined in very small letters of bronze. They read:

DOC SAVAGE

Grasping the knob, the man in the silk topper tried to walk in. But the door was locked. He knocked with a brisk impatience—and the door opened.

The gentleman in the silk hat made a mistake which later cost him his life. He elbowed into the room ahead of the old lady. This act was anything but chivalrous.

So unusual was the appearance of the man who had opened the door, that both visitors jerked to a stop and stared.

The individual was little taller than a half-grown boy. He came near being as wide as he was high. His hands swung on great beams of arms well below his knees, and they were covered with hairs which resembled rusty shingle nails. This gorillalike fellow's face was phenomenally homely. He frowned at the gentleman in the silk topper, showing dislike of the way the man had shoved in ahead of the old lady.

“Doc Savage?” the silk-hatted one demanded imperiously.

“I'm Monk,” grunted the apish one. “I mean—I'm Andrew Blodgett Mayfair.”

His voice was tiny, childlike, a ludicrous tone for such a mountain of hair and gristle.

“Tell Doc Savage that Baron Damitru Mendl wishes to see him at once,” commanded the pompous man.

Monk did not seem impressed. He glanced past the silk hat, frock coat, and morning trousers to the shabby old lady.

“You wanta see Doc Savage, too?”

“Please, sir,” she quavered.

She appeared to be overawed by the magnificence of the office, with its sumptuously comfortable chairs, its impressive safe, and a huge, finely inlaid table.

“Just a minute,” said Monk, tiny-voiced. He crossed to a door, opened it and stepped through, closing the panel behind him.

He was in a great room, which held literally hundreds of huge bookcases. These were crammed with tomes.

Monk advanced. He stopped when he could see the bronze man.

This man of bronze occupied a chair under a reading lamp. The chair was massive, yet it seemed small, so Herculean were the proportions of the man sitting in it.

The muscular development of the bronze man was something to arrest attention. Like great cables, sinews wrapped his frame. Their size, and the way they seemed to flow like liquid metal, denoted a strength bordering on the superhuman. These sinews, in repose, were not knotty, but were more like bundled piano wires on which a thin bronze skin had been lacquered.

“Two persons to see you, Doc,” said Monk. “One is a guy in a silk hat who seems to think he's somebody. He shoved in ahead of the other one, a kinda ragged-lookin' old lady.”

Doc Savage glanced up. This movement emphasized the most impressive thing about him—his eyes. The orbs might have been pools of fine flake-gold. The gold flakes, appearing to be always in motion, caught little lights from the reading lamp.

“The gentleman has bad manners, eh?” The bronze man's voice was pleasant and low, but obviously capable of great volume and tonal change.

“You said it.”

“Use your own Judgment, Monk.”

Monk ambled back into the outer office, furry hands brushing his knees. He executed a polite bow in the direction of the shabby, elderly woman.

“Doc'll talk to you first,” he said kindly.

“Thank you.” She started for the door.

Baron Damitru Mendl snapped, “I am the Calbian ambassador to the United States. My business is important!”

Monk frowned. “You could be the king, and it wouldn't make any difference around here.”

When she entered the ample library and saw Doc Savage, the old woman's mouth sagged open. She was more than a little impressed by the bronze giant.

“Doc Savage?” she quavered. “I've heard a great deal about you and the wonderful things you do. You help poor people who are in trouble, don't you?”

Doc Savage's nod and the tone of his reply were calculated to put her at ease. “Something like that,” he said.

“My poor son,” said the visitor rapidly. “He's crippled. The doctors say they can't help him. I've heard that you can do many things better than any other man. I read in the paper that you are one of the greatest chemists in the world, and that nobody knew as much about electricity as you do. But, above everything else, is your skill as a surgeon. I want you to help my boy!”

Doc Savage said nothing. The tiny lights flickered in the flake-gold of his eyes.

“I know you can help him,” quavered the elderly lady. “You see, his legs—”

“It will be better to make the diagnosis myself,” Doc Savage put in quietly.

“Then you'll help him!” The elderly visitor sounded as if she were about to burst into delighted tears.

“Where is he now?”

“In my room at 7832 East Fourteenth Street.”

The tiny lights in the bronze man's eyes seemed to grow a bit more brilliant.

A box of apparatus, replete with knobs and dials, stood on a stand at his elbow. A microphone was attached to this. Leaning over, the bronze man flicked the switch, then spoke into the microphone.

The elderly woman seemed startled when she heard his words. To her, it was plain the syllables were not understandable. They were in some weird, not unmusical, guttural language.

Doc Savage switched off the apparatus, then glanced at his guest.

“The matter of your son will be looked into,” he stated.

“What did you say into that box of a thing?” the old woman asked, surprisingly enough.

Doc Savage seemed not to hear the inquiry. He bowed her politely to the door.

The success of her mission seemed to have moved the elderly woman to an ecstasy of delight. Once she was in the outer office, she appeared unable to control her pleasure. She hobbled to Baron Damitru Mendl, kneading her hands together.

The baron glowered at her.

“Doc Savage is helping me!” squealed the crone.

Then she opened the hands which she had been kneading together. The homely Monk was behind her. Doc Savage was still in the library. Hence, neither saw what the old woman's cupped palms held.

Baron Damitru Mendl saw it, however.

The object was a small red marble.

At the sight of the red marble, Baron Damitru Mendl became starkly pale. He actually trembled. His eyes protruded.

“Doc Savage is helping me!” shrilled the old woman.

Repetition of these words had a startling effect upon Baron Damitru Mendl. He whirled, grabbed up his silk hat and fled the office. Once in the corridor, he thumbed an elevator button furiously, and when the cage arrived, literally dived inside.

The elderly woman took a second cage a moment later.

Doc Savage appeared in the door which connected outer office and library. The size of the door emphasized his giant proportions.

“Thought we had another visitor, Monk.”

Monk scratched the bristles atop his bullet of a head. “We did have, Doc, but I guess the guy flew into a rage because we interviewed the old woman first. He walked out on us.”

Monk was an intelligent, observing individual. He was, in fact, conceded to be one of the greatest of living chemists. His reputation in that field was world-wide.

But Monk had not seen the red marble.

Down in the lobby, the old hag was hobbling toward the street. Chuckles came from her wrinkled face.

BARON DAMITRU MENDL climbed into his costly town car and sank back nervously on the rich cushions.

DOC SAVAGE, in his headquarters on the eighty-sixth floor of New York's most impressive skyscraper, saw the flash which marked the destruction of Baron Damitru Mendl's yacht. The bronze man's windows faced toward the lower bay and the sea. Moreover, his flake-gold eyes missed little that transpired about him.

At the moment he observed the flash, Doc Savage was nearing the end of his daily two-hour exercise routine. It was rather late for the exercises, but the unusual man of bronze never allowed a twenty-four hour interval to elapse without taking them.

When he saw the bright flash out at sea, Doc Savage called a suggestion to Monk, the homely chemist.

“Tune in the radio, Monk, and see if you can pick up something that will tell us what that flash was.”

The pleasantly ugly Monk was engaged at the moment in painting a small, crimson flag on the side of Habeas Corpus.

Habeas Corpus was as uncouth a specimen of his kind as Monk was of the human race. Their kinship extended farther than that. Both Habeas and Monk would be classed as very intelligent members of their species.

Habeas Corpus was Monk's pet pig. Habeas was lanky and razor-backed, with legs like a dog, and phenomenal ears. His ears seemed large enough to serve as wings.

Monk dropped the brush he was using into the can of crimson paint, went to a radio receiver, turned it on, and tuned.

Later, he let out a yell.

“Doc! Doc!” he barked excitedly. “That flash was a yacht blowing up! A coast guard cutter just reached the wreckage! I picked up the cutter radio report.”

Doc Savage approached the radio. The flowing ease of his movements conveyed a striking impression of tremendous muscular strength. “Any survivors?” he queried.

“One—the mate of the yacht, a guy named Lacy. He's all banged up, but was able to tell 'em who was on board.”

Monk paused and squinted his small eyes at the giant bronze man. “Listen, Doc—you remember the guy in the silk hat who came in here this afternoon, then walked out? He told me he was Baron Damitru Mendl.”

Doc Savage said nothing, but the flake-gold in his strange eyes seemed to swirl faster.

“Baron Mendl was on that yacht, and the explosion killed him,” Monk concluded.

The closest inspection of Doc Savage's lips would have showed no movement, yet a weird trilling sound came into being and permeated the vast room. It defied description, this trilling, being possessed of no tune, roving the musical scale aimlessly. It might have been the product of some wayward breeze through the array of massive bookcases, or the night song of an exotic jungle bird.

Monk blinked. He knew this sound. The eerie trilling was a characteristic exclusive to Doc Savage—a tiny, unconscious thing which he did in moments of stress.

“We'd better get at the bottom of this,” Doc said sharply. “Something queer is going on!”

“Wonder what's back of it?” Monk pondered.

“No telling.” Doc moved for the door. “Come on.”

Monk scooped Habeas up by an ear—the oversized ears served very nicely as handles, and Habeas did not seem to mind—and cried, “Where we goin'?”

“To the explosion scene.”

The Hudson River lay only a few blocks to the west. It did not take them long to reach the water front.

The warehouses were great gloomy hulks in the pale light cast by street lamps. Signs were barely decipherable in the dimness. One of these read:

HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY

A door in the shoreward end of this warehouse opened to Doc Savage's signal, and it became evident that walls and roof of the structure were remarkably thick. The place, in fact, was virtually a huge vault. Darkness gorged the rear, and just what this huge building held was not immediately discernible. A hooded bulb illuminated the forward portion. This light stood on a workbench.

Affixed in a vise on the bench was a long, thin, razor-sharp blade of Damascus steel. The sheath for this, reposing near by, disclosed that the weapon was a sword cane, innocent-looking but deadly.

A man who had opened the hangar door looked at Monk and said sarcastically, “The world's homeliest man, and ugliest hog!”

Monk leered. “Hello, Ham, you shyster!”

Ham—his Alma Mater, Harvard, knew him as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, the most astute lawyer ever to pass its portals—was a slender man with a waist like a wasp, the dark, piercing eyes of a listener, and the large, mobile mouth of an orator. Ham's dress was sartorial perfection. Good taste kept his clothes from being flashy, but he was a man who gave his physical appearance close attention.

Ham and Monk glowered at each other.

An uninformed observer would have thought fisticuffs, if not something worse, imminent. The truth was that these two were good, if quarrelsome, friends.

Doc clicked light switches, and electric radiance whitened the hangar—for that was the real purpose of the vast building. Housed inside were a number of planes. These ranged from small gyros to a gigantic tri-motored speed ship with wonderful streamlining. All were amphibians, capable of berthing on land or water.

“We'll take the big plane,” Doc announced. “It is more efficient for a landing in the open sea.”

THE coast guard cutter, which had been first to reach the spot where disaster had overtaken Baron Damitru Mendl's yacht, kept in more or less continuous radio communication with its base. The operation of this radio transmitter guided Doc Savage to the scene. The bronze man employed a sensitive radio direction-finder, with which his fast amphibian plane was equipped.

The direction-finder amplifier fed into a loudspeaker, so that Monk and Ham could hear the cutter's transmission. This was in continental code, but both the chemist and the lawyer understood it. They were skilled operators.

“The cause of the explosion seems to be a profound mystery,” Ham remarked.

“I wonder what we're gettin' mixed up in,” Monk muttered. The homely chemist leaned over to scratch one of Habeas Corpus's winglike ears. “What does this thing smell like to you, Habeas?”

“Trouble!” said Habeas.

When the pleasantly unlovely pig made this intelligent reply—or seemed to make it—Ham started violently. The phenomenon gave him a shock, although he had witnessed it numerous times before, and knew very well that the pig did not have a voice.

Monk was a proficient ventriloquist, and frequently exercised his dexterity in the art on Habeas Corpus.

At an altitude of two thousand feet above the cutter, Doc Savage ran a bronze fingertip over a row of buttons on the dashboard of the plane, selected one and pressed it. Mechanism clicked, and from a wing compartment a parachute flare was launched. This was like a small sun, as it settled slowly toward the sea.

Doc Savage pointed. “Wreckage—evidently from Baron Mendl's yacht.”

The flotsam consisted of deck chairs, life preservers, portions of lifeboats, and a few torn timbers.

Before the parachute flare fell into the sea, Doc Savage dropped his big amphibian on the surface and taxied alongside the cutter. The sea was rough, the landing a dangerous one, requiring great skill. The man of bronze, however, showed with no expression that he considered the descent anything but ordinary.

The cutter was a drab, businesslike vessel with a keel length of approximately a hundred feet. Three-Inch guns fore and aft had their breech mechanism swathed in weather coverings.

Doc turned the amphibian controls over to Monk, then clambered out, balanced adroitly, and ran to the tip of the wing.

Monk, an expert airman, jockeyed the wing tip close enough to the cutter to enable Doc, with a tremendous leap, to board the coast guard craft.

“This fellow Lacy,” Doc demanded of the cutter skipper. “Where is he?”

“In the fo'castle,” replied the officer.

“Let's see him.”

Lacy was a still, slack shape on a bunk. His ordinary ruddy color had ebbed until his skin about matched the battleship-gray paintwork of the cutter. He was senseless, and barely breathing.

Doc made a quick examination. The strange bronze man was skilled at many things—he knew more chemistry than Monk, more law than Ham; but above all was his knowledge of surgery.

“There's a fracture of the squamous portion of the occipital,” he stated. “In other words, a fractured skull.”

The cutter skipper strained his hair with his fingers. “He must be pretty bad. He was unconscious when we found him, revived enough to talk some, then passed out again.”

“Did he give any hint as to what caused the blast, or why the yacht was destroyed?” Doc asked.

“No.”

“I want to take him to a hospital. That is his only chance.”

The commander shrugged. “That'll have to be OK'd by my commanding officer.”

The cutter captain went to the radio cabin and communicated with his headquarters. Orders to coöperate fully with Doc Savage came crackling back with a rapidity that gave the officer rather a shock. He had heard of Doc Savage, of course, but he did not know the bronze man had such influence with the coast guard.

Guardsmen transferred the seriously injured Lacy to Doc's speed plane.

The small boat, which had been lowered to pick up Lacy, still bobbed alongside the cutter. Entering this, Doc Savage directed that he be rowed through the floating wreckage of Baron Damitru Mendl's yacht. The casual strength dominant in his unusual voice had its effect on the sailors, and they rowed about briskly.

The bronze man picked up a shattered hatch, inspected it closely, then discarded it. He did the same with a life preserver, two deck chairs, the stem of a lifeboat, and miscellaneous spars and timbers.

His examination was short, for he wanted to get Lacy to the hospital. He soon boarded the plane.

“You sized up the wreckage, Doc” Monk said. “Whatcha' make of it?”

“The manner in which those timbers are shattered indicates that the force of the explosion came, not from within the yacht, but from the top of the superstructure.”

“You mean like a dropped bomb?”

“It might have been a bomb.”

Doc Savage was moved to alter his surmise shortly after he reached the hospital with Lacy.

THE hospital to which Doc took Lacy was not especially large or ornate, but it was acquiring an increasing reputation for good work, and, moreover, handled an unusual number of charity cases.

Probably not more than a dozen people in New York City knew that Doc Savage had financed the construction of this institution and was furnishing the money which kept it in operation. The building stood near the river, and Doc was able to taxi his plane almost to the door.

Appearance of the bronze man with the patient created something of a flurry among the surgeons, and it was not because their salaries were paid out of Doc's pocketbook. They did not know that. What excited the surgeons was the prospect of seeing a master of their profession perform.

The main operating room, scene of the most delicate work, was circular, with a glass ceiling, through which spectators would observe operations. Every surgeon who could find a free moment posted himself above this glass with a pair of strong binoculars, hoping to see Doc Savage's skilled fingers perform new miracles of surgery.

They were not disappointed. Exactly how Doc revived Lacy was probably understood by only those with the necessary technical knowledge. Certainly it was beyond Monk and Ham, who were present. The attention of those on hand, the rapt intensity of the observers above, told them that Doc was doing something far beyond the ordinary.

An hour later, Lacy talked a little.

“Have you any idea what caused the explosion?” Doc queried.

“Nope,” said Lacy, in a fairly strong voice.

“It was apparently something in the nature of a bomb.”

“You mean dropped from an airplane?”

“Yes.”

“Nix. It couldn't have been that. I was on lookout. I didn't hear a plane.”

“A plane motor can be efficiently silenced.”

“There weren't any lights on the yacht,” Lacy insisted. “I'm plumb certain of that. I tell you, it couldn't have been an aërial bomb. A plane couldn't have seen us.”

“How about planted explosive?” Doc suggested.

“Nix again.” Lacy managed a slight grimace. “We searched the yacht ahead of time. Baron Damitru Mendl's orders.”

The lights played in the flake-gold of Doc's eyes. “What was Baron Mendl afraid of?” he asked.

“I don't know, and that's the truth,” Lacy said earnestly. “I was just one of the yacht's crew. I tried to question him, but he told me I was hired to take orders and keep my mouth shut.”

“You had better not talk any more now,” Doc informed him. “Later, we will discuss the affair in detail. There may be some minor point which you overlooked, but which will give me a clue.”

“Am I gonna pull out of this all right?” Lacy asked.

“You are,” Doc told him.

Chapter IV. THE PRINCESS

DOC SAVAGE was wrong, but due to no misjudgment of his own.

The spectacular nature of Doc Savage's career had made him excellent newspaper copy. Almost any of his feats were good for a front-page story. One of the surgeons who had observed the operation forgot that there was an order standing which directed that newspapermen were to be given no information concerning Doc Savage. This specialist called a friend—a reporter on a tabloid paper—and gave praise of the extremely delicate nature of the operation which Doc had performed upon Lacy's shattered skull.

The tabloid appeared with two-inch headlines, scooping all its rival sheets.

An hour later, the hospital attendants heard a single shot. It came from the private room where Lacy lay.

They rushed to the room. Nurses are supposed to be inured to unpleasant sights, but two of them screamed when they saw Lacy.

A pistol bullet had entered Lacy's left temple, tunneled through his brain, and all but torn off the ear of the opposite side in leaving his head.

An open window and a fire escape indicated the route by which the murderer had come and gone. At the foot of the fire escape was found a copy of the tabloid newspaper which carried the story of Lacy's operation. The story had furnished the killer with both the name of the hospital and Lacy's room number.

Extremely pale, and staggering a little as he walked, the surgeon who had given the newspaper the yarn went to the phone and called Doc Savage. He told the bronze man exactly what had happened. Then he tendered his resignation.

“Your resignation will not be accepted,” Doc Savage advised him.

“But the story I gave the newspaper resulted in the man's death,” the surgeon groaned. “It furnished the killer with Lacy's whereabouts. I murdered that man just as surely as if I had done it with my own hands.”

“It was unfortunate,” Doc agreed. “But your resignation will not help matters. In you there is the making of a great surgeon. You can do more to atone by going ahead with your work.”

“I—am very grateful—to you,” the other said weakly, and hung up.

DOC SAVAGE had received the call in his skyscraper office. When the conversation had terminated, he advised Monk and Ham of what had occurred.

“For the love of Mike,” Monk muttered, small-voiced. “Lacy was killed to shut his mouth. Somebody was afraid he might know things. Doc, there must be something infernally big back of this.”

“Lacy told us all he knew, I'm sure,” Doc said slowly. “But, in later questioning, he might have given us some clue. And it was to prevent us getting that clue that he was slain.”

The bronze giant, of such titanic proportions that the massive furniture about him was dwarfed in comparison, swung into the library. He went to the chair in which he had been seated, reading, when the elderly hag visited him that afternoon. He switched on the apparatus which stood beside the chair—the device into which he had spoken in the weirdly unintelligible tongue when the crone was present.

“Renny—Johnny—Long Tom!” Doc called into the microphone appended to the contrivance.

When there was no answer, Doc called again.

Monk and Ham looked on, their perpetual quarrel for the moment forgotten. They knew that the apparatus was a radio transmitter and receiver. It operated on a short wave-band.

Doc Savage possessed several other transmitter-receiver outfits which operated on this same wave-length. The sets were kept turned on continuously in the spots frequented by his five aides—their apartments, their automobiles and their private planes.

“What's the idea of tryin' to raise the other three of our gang?” Monk queried.

“Remember the old woman who visited us at the same time that Baron Damitru Mendl was here?” Doc countered.

“Sure, and was she a homely old heifer!” Monk grunted.

At that, Ham snorted and eyed Monk's homely features meaningfully.

Monk ignored the dig. “What about the old woman, Doc?”

“When she was present, I spoke a few words of the Mayan language into the radio. Close watching of her face convinced me she did not understand the language. Hence, she does not know that the words directed Long Tom, Johnny and Renny to trail her.”

Monk's big mouth sagged open. Ham almost dropped his sword cane.

“You mean the old lady was a phony?” Monk exploded.

“Exactly! Her story about an ailing son was a pack of lies.”

Monk blinked incredulously. “But how'd you catch on?”

“The address she gave me, where her son was supposed to be, was 7832 East Fourteenth Street. There is no such number. Moreover, her manner gave her away. She was somewhat too glib.”

Doc Savage now shifted his attention to the radio. “Johnny—Long Tom—Renny!” he called again.

He secured no answer, and left the apparatus turned on.

“The three of them are trailing the crone,” he said, settling back in the chair. “I directed them in Mayan to pick up her trail when she left the building. I gave them the description. They were downstairs in our secret garage.”

Monk grinned. His grin was remarkable, for it puckered all of his homely face, persimmon fashion. Ham withdrew his sword cane a few inches from its sheath and clicked it back. Both were excited.

The fact that Doc was quiet in the chair, his metallic features impassive, did not deceive them. He was already moving to unravel this tangle of murder and mystery. If events of the past were any criterion, there would be danger ahead, plenty of action—adventure!

Monk and Ham were not mournful about the prospects. To them this sort of thing made life worth living.

A click came from the radio—a microphone being cut into the voice circuit.

“Doc Savage!” called a rather scholastic tone from the loud-speaker.

Doc leaned close to the transmitter. “Yes, Johnny,” he called.

“The superannuated crone has terminated her meanderings,” advised Johnny.

Johnny—William Harper Littlejohn, as the realms of geology and archaeology knew him—never used a small word where he could think of a big one.

“Where did she go?” Doc demanded.

“She promenaded the metropolis for an interval,” explained the master of big words. “In her peregrinations, she tarried to indulge in three telephone calls. To our vexation, we could not overhear the telephonic discussion.”

“Where is she now?”

“In a hovel. I think that term fits the habitation adequately.”

“Is it on Fourteenth Street?”

“In Brooklyn—87 Mervin Street.”

“All right,” Doc said quietly. “Watch the place, you fellows. Monk, Ham and myself will be right out.”

“You desire to interview this crone?” questioned Johnny.

“Right. We are getting mixed up in an infernally big plot. As yet, we have no idea what it is all about. But the ambassador of a Balkan nation and the crew of his yacht have been murdered entire—”

The telephone rang, interrupting the conversation.

Monk clamped the receiver to an ear, blinked once, then barked, “Doc! Quick!”

“Just a minute, Johnny,” Doc said into the radio set, and swung to the telephone.

“It's a girl,” Monk breathed, and surrendered the phone.

“Savage speaking,” Doc said.

From the telephone receiver came a series of dull thumps.

“Well?” Doc said sharply into the transmitter.

“They're breaking the door down!” The whisper was feminine, husky, hasty.

“What is this?” Doc demanded.

Apparently she did not get his words, for her whispered exclamation poured on in a frenzied rush.

DOC SAVAGE'S three men who were trailing the old crone had been watching for some time the house into which she had gone.

Johnny, the big-worded archaeologist and geologist, was a very tall and an almost incredibly bony man. Monk had once described Johnny as looking like the advance agent for a famine. Due to the bony nature of his frame, Johnny's clothing never fitted him well. Attached to a lapel by a dark ribbon, was a monocle—actually a powerful magnifying glass which Johnny needed in his business and carried as a monocle for convenience.

“We are indulging in unproductive inaction,” insisted Johnny.

“Keep your hair on,” Long Tom rumbled. “Renny is scoutin' the place. When he gets back we'll go in.”

Major Thomas J. “Long Tom” Roberts easily seemed the physical weakling of Doc Savage's group of five aides. He was not tall, and only moderately well-knit. He had the complexion of one who had lived much of his life where the sunlight could not get to him.

Long Tom's appearance was slightly deceiving for, in a fight, he could probably whip ninety-nine out of the first hundred men he would meet walking down a city street.

Long Tom's work in the field of electricity had earned him something of a reputation, his name being mentioned in connection with such terms as “wizard of the juice” and “electricity shark.”

“I wonder what motivates this enigmatic procedure of ours,” pondered verbose Johnny.

“You mean—what is Doc's idea?” Long Tom shrugged in the gloom of the shrubbery where they were crouched. “Search me. Doc wants this old heifer, so we'll bring her in. Ps-s-st! Here comes Renny!”

A tower of gristle and bone reared out of the darkness. Renny—Colonel John Renwick—was well over six feet tall and weighed in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds. His face was extremely long, and wore the expression of one who had just attended a funeral. This was Renny's characteristic look when he was embroiled in trouble. He loved trouble.

The outstanding thing about Renny's appearance, however, was his hands. These, when squared into fists, made somewhat less than a gallon of a gristle and bone composite which rivaled granite in hardness. It was Renny's boast that he could knock the panel out of any wooden door with either fist.

He was also one of the greatest of modern engineers, although he seldom mentioned that fact.

“It's a roomin' house.” Renny's usual tone was a great roaring, and he now experienced difficulty in whispering. “The old woman seems to have a room on the second floor rear. Come around to the back here and you can see into the window.”

Using all stealth possible, they wormed through the shrubbery to the back of the house. Only one window was lighted.

“Watch it!” Renny breathed hoarsely.

A telephone stood on a table near the window. Even as they watched, the old woman hobbled to this.

“Hey!” grunted Long Tom, “I'm gonna listen in on that talk.”

The electrical wizard darted forward, wrenching to free a small metal case which was planted in an inside pocket. Once out and opened, this proved to hold an electrical device with dials and switches, and a small recess which contained a watch-case type receiver.

Johnny clamped the receiver to an ear, turned switches and adjusted dials. Then he walked along the rear wall of the house, holding his device close to the wooden clapboards.

“Chances are that the phone wires lead from a conduit strung down the alley underground,” he whispered. “I'm tryin' to get my pickup device in the neighborhood of the lead-in.”

He succeeded a moment later. Long Tom's device was one which simply utilized that troublesome inclination of old-time regenerative radio receivers to pick up the conversations on near-by telephone wires. Long Tom had designed the apparatus in the box specifically for this purpose.

By crowding their ears close to the watch-case receiver, all three could hear what was being said.

The old woman had evidently called a number and was waiting for an answer. They could hear the regular buzz of the automatic ringer. Then there was a click as a distant receiver lifted.

ONE of the charging group yelled,

“

He grasped the metal ladder. There was a click, and it dropped off the bulkhead.

“Trick ladder!” Renny howled, dodged the descending rungs.

“I'll be superamalgamated!” groaned Johnny. “What have we got into?”

Renny crouched slightly, then leaped. He grasped the hatch edge and pulled himself up.

A swarthy man with an automatic was just stooping to peer into the hold. Renny's huge fist drifted out of the black recess and collided with the fellow's jaw. Head and fist did not differ greatly in size. The dark man skittered across the deck, and hung like a rag over the rail, senseless.

Renny chinned himself, got his elbows over the hatch edge, then rumbled to those below: “Grab my legs and climb up.”

Both Long Tom and Johnny were more than ordinarily agile. They proceeded to grasp Renny and climb him as though he were an oversized rope. Renny's belt snapped when Johnny seized it, but a moment later all three were on deck.

Up forward, hatches and companions had spewed armed men. Their guns began to bang and lip flame. Moreover, two more men were running down the wharf. These had evidently been among the lookout group on shore, and had remained behind to take care of an emergency.

“Down!” Renny rapped, and flattened behind the hatch coping.

Somebody threw a hand grenade, but with bad aim, so that it hit the deck, bounced and landed in the water before it exploded. The wave it kicked up washed over the deck, drenching Renny and his two companions, and the boat rolled.

Long Tom's superfirer moaned, and two Calbians went down, reeling.

Renny raised his head, lowered it as a bullet snapped past.

“They're passin' up more grenades from below!” he boomed. “Blast 'em, they'll blow us to pieces! Lets take to the water!”

With a concerted leap and dive they cleared the sea speedster's rail. Long Tom squawked painfully as he collided with a pier piling. Then, stroking rapidly, they were in the forest of vertical timbers under the wharf.

“They'll have a swell time gettin' us out of here,” Renny rumbled.

Their enemies cursed and yelled in Calbian. They threw grenades, but the explosions only tore the piling—one grenade even bouncing back and opening a sizable cavity in the boat deck.

Next, the Calbians tried turning on a searchlight. Johnny shot this out, and also drilled two men in the legs with mercy bullets.

Comparative silence fell over the wharf.

“It's up to them to think fast,” Renny chuckled. “This shootin' and the grenades will attract the police.”

The Calbians did think fast, and efficiently. A bustling sound came from the boat Then there was a loud hissing—and liquid sprayed through the wharf piling. A strong odor accompanied it.

“Gasoline!” Renny groaned. “They've connected a fire hose to their fuel tank. They got us! They'll burn us outa here and shoot us when we show up.”

Muta's shrill, querulous voice came to them.

“You three—you have one chance!” he snarled. “Come out and surrender, and we will not put a match to the gasoline.”

“Holy cow!” Renny mumbled. “We'd better take him up. We're lucky at that.”

“Coming out!” Long Tom called.

The three men paddled to the speedboat, first dropping their machine pistols into the water. With no gentleness at all, they were hauled aboard.

“Where are your weapons—the strange guns which shoot so rapidly?” Muta demanded.

“We dropped 'em in the bay,” Renny growled.

“Take them below decks,” Muta gritted to his men. “We must get under way quickly. The police may come.”

Hedged in by gun muzzles, the three captives were conveyed below.

Powerful engines were started. The moorings were cast off, and the big seagoing racer backed out into the harbor, away from the growing wail of police sirens en-route to the scene of the fight. As Renny had surmised, the uproar had drawn the officers.

The harbor night swallowed the boat. For such a large and fast craft, its engines were unusually silent. There was little but the moan of disturbed water, the slam of waves against the bows, as it streaked not toward the mouth of the harbor, but northward, up the Hudson River.

On deck there was much tramping about, clattering of mechanism, and low orders. Renny and his two companions overheard enough to tell them what was going on.

“They're putting a couple of boats overside,” he muttered. “Wonder what they're gonna do?”

He found out shortly. Muta and others came below carrying chains, padlocks and wire. Using these, they fastened Renny and the other two men securely, padlocking the ends of the chains around hull braces.

Muta stood back, admiring the job. Absently, his hand drifted into a pocket and brought out a small red marble. He juggled this from one hand to another.

When Renny stared at the red marble, it was hurriedly pocketed.

Muta made an elaborate gesture of consulting his watch. “You gentlemen will have possibly five minutes in which to live, after we abandon this craft. Perhaps a little longer, but not much.”

“You won't get away with it!” Long Tom snorted. “The police will grab the guys who were overcome by our gas on the wharf. They'll be made to talk.”

IN the house with the newly varnished and painted rooms, on New York's Upper West Side, Princess Gusta Le Galbin, of the reigning family of Calbia, stood and tapped an impatient toe on the floor.

Captain Flancul stood near by, and from time to time favored the young woman with a glance which was nothing if not admiring. Once he indicated the prone and motionless form of Doc Savage.

“You did excellent work, my dear,” he remarked.

“You will please abstain from the use of affectionate terms,” Princess Gusta said shortly.

“A thousand pardons, your highness!” Captain Flancul bowed. “May I suggest that your highness depart, and leave me here alone to question this man Savage?”

They were conversing in Calbian.

IN the skyscraper headquarters, Monk and Ham were quarreling. The fact that no observers were around detracted no whit from their enjoyment of the good-natured fracas.

“You baboon!” Ham yelled, gesturing with his sword cane. “You blunder of nature! This is the last straw!”

Monk was engaged in assembling his portable chemical laboratory. This device was something he always took when accompanying Doc Savage on an expedition. It occupied little space, yet it contained an unusually complete assortment of chemicals.

The homely chemist eyed Ham and sighed. “What's in your hair now?”

For answer, Ham lunged and struck a hearty blow with his sword cane. The object of his attentions was the pig, Habeas Corpus. But Habeas was intimately acquainted with Ham. He jumped, and was a yard away when the sheathed cane landed.

“Hey!” Monk howled. “Take your spite out on me if you gotta. But let that hog alone!”

“I'll assassinate both of you!” Ham promised. He pointed at the crimson pennant which Monk had painted on Habeas. “You put that on the freak just to devil me!”

It was hardly likely the ordinarily observant Ham had failed to previously discover the scarlet pennant. More likely, he had delayed to the present moment to make a fuss about it.

“I didn't paint that flag there to pick a fuss with you,” Monk disclaimed innocently. “The hog likes red flags.”

“Harvard is a great university,” Ham snapped. “Painting its colors on the side of that hog is an insult.”

Monk grinned. “How was I to know crimson was a Harvard color?”

“You're gonna use some paint remover on that hog!” Ham promised ominously.

Monk, showing no great concern, moved to a case which held a teletype machine. This was connected with the police circuit and furnished Doc with a copy of all alarms broadcast.

Ordinarily, Monk did not pay much attention to the teletype, but just now he was somewhat worried because Renny, Long Tom and Johnny had failed to report for a time.

The pleasantly ugly chemist took one look at the copy roll and let out a yell. “Ham! Come here!”

Ham peered over Monk's shoulder, and read:

ATTENTION WATER-FRONT PRECINCTS

MYSTERIOUS SHOOTING ABOARD SEAGOING SPEEDBOAT ON BROOKLYN WATER FRONT. CRAFT FLED INTO HARBOR. LONG BOAT, NARROW BEAM, PAINTED BLACK. REPORT PRESENCE OF SUCH CRAFT.

TAXICAB, LICENSE S3, AND MILK DELIVERY TRUCK, LICENSE S4, FOUND ABANDONED NEAR SCENE.

“

Ham reached for his hat. “We'd better look into this.”

They rushed for the door. Habeas Corpus, squealing, scampered after them. In the corridor they encountered Doc Savage, carrying Conte Cozonac. The fat man was still senseless.

“Doc!” Monk yelled. “Renny and the others are in a jam!”

His small voice an excited squeak, Monk told about the message over the teletype.

Doc Savage said nothing, but he went to the library with his plump burden. Conte Cozonac was planted in a chair, his wrists positioned carefully on the arm rests. At Doc's touch, steel bands flashed up, encircling the wrists and locking there. Other bands, hidden in the legs of the chair, appeared and secured the portly man's ankles.

Nothing less than a steel-cutting torch would now free Conte Cozonac.

Doc locked all doors. They were of thick steel, though they did not look it.

“We want this fellow to be here when we get back,” the bronze man explained. “He can tell us a great deal.”

Monk and Ham in his wake, Doc entered the speed elevator and was dropped to the basement garage. All three piled into the roadster. The machine raced them toward the water-front hangar which masqueraded as a warehouse.

“Got any idea what this is all about, Doc?” Monk demanded.

“You've heard of Calbia?” Doc suggested.

Monk nodded. “It's a Balkan kingdom, one of the few remaining monarchies where the king actually runs things. It has a population of ten or twelve million.”

Doc nodded. “One point you forgot—Calbia is now in the throes of a revolution.”

Monk blinked. “Huh? I didn't know that. There ain't been much about it in the papers.”

“Censorship,” Doc told him. “The Calbian government prevents news of political disturbances from getting abroad. Calbia's not the only one. The others do the same thing.”

“Why?”

“Any hint that the government may be unstable affects foreign credit, the value of their bonds, and that sort of thing. Naturally, no one wants to buy the bonds of a government which may be out of business tomorrow.”

“This Calbian revolution is something serious?”

“It is,” Doc assured him. “Long ago, I arranged with certain men, closely in touch with the political situation in each European country, to keep me informed by cable of developments. That is where my information came from.”

Monk gave one of Habeas Corpus's ears a thoughtful tug. The porker was riding on his knee. “You think this business is connected with the Calbian revolution?” he asked.

Instead of answering that, Doc countered with a question. “What would you say if Princess Gusta Le Galbin, only daughter of the ruling King of Calbia, and Captain Henri Flancul, wealthy Calbian and chief advisor to the king, were here in New York, and had made an attempt to capture me?”

“Did they?”

“They did.”

Monk scratched his red-bristled nubbin of a head.

“We're mixed up in somethin' big, Doc,” he declared.

They reached the hangar, drove the roadster inside, and entered the big speed plane. A moment later the craft was moaning across the river surface, and quickly lifted into the air.

In the soundproof cabin, conversation in ordinary tones was possible.

“Who was the fat guy we left in the office?” Monk queried.

“He is Conte Cozonac, commander-in-chief of the revolutionary forces seeking to overthrow the King of Calbia,” Doc answered.

Monk and Ham were surprised, but they did not ask the bronze man how he knew all of these facts. Doc was a student of political affairs of all nations. It would have been no shock if Doc had told them the names of all of the obscure plotters seeking to overthrow the government of, for instance, Germany. He probably had that information. His fabulous knowledge seemed to touch on all things.

“Baron Damitru Mendl, who was murdered when the mysterious explosion demolished his yacht, was Calbian ambassador to the United States,” Doc offered further. “Yes, brothers, this whole thing smacks of political intrigue for big stakes.”

The bronze man now switched on the radio apparatus and tuned it to the wave-length of a police radio station. He asked for further information concerning the seagoing speedboat. He secured only one additional morsel worthy of attention.

“The speedster headed for the mouth of the bay and the open sea, according to persons who were attracted by the shooting,” said the operator of the police radio station.

Doc promptly banked the big tri-motored plane around and headed it in the opposite direction.

“We're going the wrong way,” Monk grunted.

“There's a chance that they doubled back and went up the Hudson,” Doc pointed out. “Anyway, if they took to the sea, we would stand little chance of finding them until daylight.”

The motors of the big ship were well muffled, their sound being only a powerful hiss. As the craft climbed to a thousand feet and raced northward, it was doubtful if pedestrians on the street or such sailors as happened to be on the decks of ships in the harbor heard it.

Shortly after taking off, Doc touched a lever and released a parachute flare. With Monk and Ham he used binoculars to sweep the river surface, but he discerned no sign of the boat they sought.

Three miles further on, they dropped another flare.

Monk's squeak, Ham's shout, and Doc's abrupt gesture were simultaneous. They had sighted the craft.

“It's standin' still in the middle of the river,” Monk offered unnecessarily.

MANHATTAN ISLAND, the Bronx, Yonkers, made a bank of lights to the right. Hoboken and the Jersey shore north toward Englewood was a patchy glow on the left. The river, whitened by the flare, was a slightly rippled ribbon of steel-blue beneath.

Doc stood the plane on its nose and bored down for the boat.

“No sign of life aboard,” Monk reported, and Ham nodded agreement. Both were using binoculars.

The plane landed close alongside the black, slender speedster, and long before it lost headway, Doc dived overside, and struck out with driving strokes. He could hear Diesel engines idling in the slim black craft.

Monk and Ham brought the plane to a quick stop—the propellers were fitted with a reversing device—then yanked a collapsible boat out of its locker.

Doc kept high in the water and was careful that his arms, in stroking, did not get before his eyes and obstruct his view. However, there was no movement, no sound from the black boat.

Doc reached the stern. There were no dangling ropes or chains, a circumstance which might have delayed a man of lesser strength and agility. To the corded bronze arms and hands, the rudder post offered a quick means of getting aboard.

Listening, Doc heard only the mutter of idling Diesels.

“Renny—Long Tom—Johnny?”

His call brought a faint rattling of chains from somewhere below. Doc darted forward, came to a hatch and descended. A flash appeared in his hands and spouted light. The flash was of a type which used no battery, current being supplied by a generator operating from a spring motor which was wound by twisting the rear portion of the barrel, the whole being waterproof.

Outside, the flare that had been dropped from the plane settled into the river, fizzed, sent up a cloud of steam and went out.

Doc found his three men, gagged, and secured by chains. Planting the flash on the hull floor, Doc wrenched out the gags, then went to work on the padlocks with a slender metal probe which came from his pocket.

“Holy cow!” rumbled Renny. “Step on it!”

“What's up, Renny?”

“They told us we'd croak in ten minutes after they left!”

“The interval has been substantially longer than ten minutes,” put in big-worded Johnny.

“They wasn't kiddin',” Renny thumped.

“That dwarf, Muta, spouted a lot of stuff about a mysterious weapon that was a world-beater,” Long Tom added.

Doc did not speak, but worked steadily upon the padlocks. He got one open, a second, then another—and Renny was free.

The big-fisted engineer swung his arms to limber them. “We got a chance to see this infernal weapon work,” he said.

“I hope we don't see it at too close range,” Long Tom mumbled.

“Say, strange they left the motors running. Reckon that's got somethin' to do with their murder plan?”

Doc did not comment, but continued his frenzied work upon the padlock. “Get off, Renny. Dive overboard and swim.”

Renny seemed not to hear. He grasped the chains securing Johnny, wrenched at them, and succeeded in snapping one. There was amazing strength in the engineer's huge fists, strength probably exceeded only by Doc's remarkable development.

Doc got Long Tom loose, then Johnny. They ran to the hatch, vaulted out, and plunged overboard.

“I tell you Muta wasn't foolin', Doc,” Long Tom declared, and raised a great splashing with his overhand stroke.

They were some fifty yards from the black speedboat when Doc abruptly stopped swimming and breathed, “Listen!”

The others, listening, could hear nothing.

“What is it, Doc?” Renny queried.

“A strange whistle, so shrill that it is probably inaudible to your ears.”

“What is the thing?” demanded Renny.

Renny's question was answered in cataclysmic fashion.

The sky and the river seemed to turn suddenly to white-hot flame. It blinded them. Then the air slammed against their eardrums and the water smashed their bodies with excruciating force.

Where the black boat had been, wreckage spouted into the air. River water split apart, and a wave of foam, débris and water rushed upon the men and engulfed them.

Doc, stroking heavily, regained the surface, and soon the other three men appeared. They stared at the spot where the dark craft had been.

Nothing remained but bubbles, demolished timbers, and boiling river water.

“That's the same way Baron Damitru Mendl's yacht went, I'm bettin'!” Long Tom gulped.

“Holy cow!” Renny thumped. “What was it? I mean—it was an explosion of some kind, but where did the explosive come from? And how was it set off?”

“Possibly a time bomb,” Johnny suggested.

Somewhere in the darkness the pig, Habeas Corpus, was squealing and Monk and Ham were shouting at each other.

“You danged near upset this tub!” Ham accused Monk.

“Listen, if I hadn't balanced it, it would have upset!” Monk shrilled back at him.

The pair were not far distant, judging by their voices, and apparently had put off from the seaplane in the collapsible boat. They paddled up when Doc called to them, giving his whereabouts.

“What in blazes happened?” Monk demanded, helping them aboard.

“A bomb on the boat,” insisted Johnny.

He was badly mistaken—as he found out a moment later.

“Listen!” Doc said sharply. “There's that shrill hiss again, that whistle!”

This time also the others were unable to hear it. Doc's long use of the exercise device, which made sound waves above and below the audible frequency, had given him hearing more efficient than their own.

“Hang on,” Doc ordered. “The thing may get us this time, or it may not—”

The white-hot flash, the ear-splitting roar, the mountainous rush of water repeated itself. The collapsible boat capsized, throwing them all into the river. Spray spattered about them.

Doc had retained a clutch on his flashlight. Regaining the surface, he played its beam about.

Monk came up beside him, stared, then exploded. “Our plane!”

The tri-motored speed ship had been demolished. Only an aileron was visible, and this bobbed about and soon sank, after which bubbles ceased to rise. The river became calm.

“No plane in the darkness could drop a missile, or rather two missiles, with such accuracy,” Doc stated.

Renny paddled about with his big hands until he found the gaunt Johnny in the water.

“I ask you, gentleman of big words,” he inquired, “do you still think it was a bomb?”

“I'll be superamalgamated,” was the best Johnny could answer.

Chapter IX. THE MAKER OF KINGS TALKS

AN hour later, Doc Savage and his five men entered the huge building which housed their headquarters.

“It might have been a bomb,” Johnny was insisting stubbornly. “Maybe a plane dropped it, a plane equipped with some new type of sight.”

“There was no sound of a plane,” Doc reminded him. “Just that strange, faint whistle.”

“Yeah,” Renny thumped gruffly. “I've been in a few wars in my time, and anything that can find and destroy a target as small as our plane or that boat on a night as dark as this—whatever the thing is, it's quite a weapon.”

They entered the library with its impressive array of bookcases holding volumes of massive scientific works. Through an open door was visible the enamel, the glass, and the shiny metal glitter of the laboratory.

Conte Cozonac, a more or less shapeless mound of fat, occupied the chair into which he had been fastened. He eyed Doc Savage and the other five, alert-eyed. He had revived.

Strangely enough, one watching the portly revolutionist would have secured the impression that he considered his predicament highly humorous. There was a sort of bubbling humor in his eyes, and when he shifted, his paunch jiggled as if he were laughing. But whether the jiggling was from suppressed merriment or not, it was hard to say.

“I tried yelling,” he said blithely. “The walls seem to be soundproof.”

Doc Savage advanced and touched buttons inaccessible to the occupant of the chair, which released the steel wrist and leg bands which imprisoned Conte Cozonac.

The fat man did not arise.

“If you do not mind,” Cozonac asked. “What happened back at that house?”

Doc told him.

“So the girl did not lay you out with her needle, after all!” Conte Cozonac ejaculated. For a moment, his laughter squeaked and twittered. “Then, Mr. Savage, my attempt to rescue you was so much superfluous effort.”

Doc's flake-gold eyes fixed themselves upon the fat man. “You entered the place to rescue me?” he asked.

“Assuredly!”

“And why the great interest in me?”

“I will tell you.” Conte Cozonac shed his mirth and became surprisingly dignified. “Prepare yourself for a shock.”

“I fail to comprehend.”

Conte Cozonac bowed stiffly.

“You, Doc Savage, are the future King of Calbia.”

DOC'S five men reacted in various fashions to this statement. Monk grinned unbelievingly and continued his diversion of scratching Habeas Corpus behind the ears. Ham twirled his sword cane slowly. Long Tom and Johnny exchanged glances.

“Holy cow!” Renny grunted.

“Quite a few offers come my way,” Doc Savage said slowly. “Usually they are in the nature of bullets, knives, or other forms of sudden death. This is the first throne proposition.”

“The offer is made in entire seriousness,” Conte Cozonac announced.

“Suppose we go into details.”

The fat man nodded briskly. “I presume you are sufficiently posted on the Calbian political situation to know that a revolution is now in progress—and I, Conte Cozonac, am the leader of the rebel forces.”

“I knew that,” Doc stated quietly.

“And with how much more are you familiar?”

“Very little.”

The bulky man eyed Doc. “How does the idea of being a king strike you?”

“Preposterous, in the first place. Furthermore, kings are out of style. A republican government is much more desirable.”

Conte Cozonac shook his head slowly.

“I hardly thought it would be necessary to sell you the idea of a throne. Listen—let me tell you of some of the atrocities committed by the present regime in Calbia. Did you know that within the past year the King of Calbia has ordered many men shot by firing squads? Furthermore, there are thousands of political prisoners in Calbian jails.”

“Political difficulties in the Balkans are usually bloody affairs,” Doc replied.

“Especially when a tyrant like King Dal Le Galbin is on the throne,” Conte Cozonac pointed out. “The king is supported and advised by a ring of arch rogues. That fellow, Captain Flancul, is one of the worst.”

“Princess Gusta applied that same designation to you,” Doc pointed out dryly.

Conte Cozonac indulged in birdlike laughter for a moment. “If I had not been very careful indeed, they would have planted me in front of a firing squad long ago. You see, I am the gentleman who is going to chase those grafters out of Calbia.”

“Yes?”

“Exactly. I am the King Maker,” Conte Cozonac boasted.

“While we are on the king-making subject, it might be well to point out that kings are usually natives of the country over which they wield a scepter,” Doc said.

“Which leads up to the fact that you are no Calbian, eh?”

“Exactly!”

“I can make a king,” Conte Cozonac chuckled, “and he does not have to be a native of the country, either.”

Doc Savage was silent for a time, as if considering this. Monk and Ham, their perpetual quarrel for the moment a minor matter, watched Conte Cozonac intently. Extreme quiet held the room, and the ticking of at least three watches was audible, all jumbled together.

“The Calbian people will be glad to accept you as their sovereign,” Conte Cozonac told Doc earnestly. “Your reputation has penetrated even to Calbia. My mere word is sufficient to assure many thousands that you are the man for the throne. And the work which you will do in Calbia, thrashing King Dal Le Galbin and his corrupt satellites will, I am sure, mold public opinion in your favor.”

“We don't just go to Calbia and take over the throne, eh?” Doc asked.

Conte Cozonac made a grim mouth, the rest of his face retaining its mirthful expression. “Frankly, Domnule Savage, you will have to win the revolution first.”

“So that's the catch!”

“I came from Calbia to do two things. The first was to enlist your aid.” Conte Cozonac hesitated, then continued: “My other purpose was to have Baron Damitru Mendl draw up a new set of plans and make a working model of the devilish weapon which he invented.”

Doc leaned forward slightly.

“Baron Damitru Mendl invented the device, which causes the mysterious explosions?” he asked quickly.

“Correct!” Conte Cozonac put the tips of fat fingers together over his chest. “The weapon is a terrible one. Blueprints of it have been in the Calbian war department flies, Baron Damitru Mendl having surrendered them before the government became so corrupt. He understood that his device was to be used only in the event of war.”

“Who is using the infernal contraption now?”

“King Dal Le Galbin and his clique. Their spies must have learned that I was coming to America to see Baron Damitru Mendl, who was in sympathy with my revolutionary efforts. So they murdered Baron Mendl. But I was fortunate enough to get on their trail and follow them to that house.”

The fat man paused to give emphasis to his next words.

“They tried to murder you, Doc Savage, and there is not the slightest doubt but that they will endeavor to do so again.”

“Do you have any conception of the nature of this mystery weapon?” Doc queried.

“None.”

The fat man separated his fingertips, straightened slightly in his chair, and his plump face became grim, questioning, anxious.

“What is your decision, Mr. Savage? Will you help us, and accept the throne of Calbia after things are straightened out?”

Doc said nothing.

Conte Cozonac moistened his lips. “Later, of course, you can abdicate the throne in favor of some worthy person. That is entirely up to you.”

“This will take some thinking over,” Doc Savage told him.

Chapter X. THE “SEAWARD” TROUBLE

THE time was one week later.

The passenger ship Seaward of the Calbian-American Line, was in the Mediterranean. The Seaward's trip from New York had been uneventful, except that the craft was in a fair way of breaking its own record for the trans-Atlantic run. This did not mean that the Seaward was in a class with the fastest American, Italian, and other ocean greyhounds. She was slower, though not exactly a sluggish boat.

The sun overhead was hot, the decks almost blistering to the feet of such passengers as were using the deck swimming pool. The salt water in the pool, pumped fresh from the sea, was cool enough to offer relief.

Monk, his ungainly form sprawled in a chair in the sitting room of a suite, mopped perspiration and squinted at big bronze Doc Savage.

“Doc, for a future king, you're sure leading a secluded existence,” he grumbled. “We haven't been out of this suite all the way across the Atlantic.”

“No need of inviting trouble,” Doc reminded him. “In tentatively accepting this king proposition, we took hold of something big. This is a Calbian ship. We may have enemies aboard.”

Monk, fanning himself, got up and moved over to where Habeas Corpus dozed. He tried to aggravate the shoat with a tickling finger. Habeas opened one eye, then resumed his sleep, ignoring Monk.

The chemist ambled to the porthole and glanced out, then pointed. “There's Conte Cozonac.”

The individual whom Monk indicated looked like a large, much too-well-fed Chinaman. A pigtail dangled down the fellow's back. His blouse resembled a robe, and reached to his ankles, and his feet were shod in embroidered slippers. He shuffled along with hands tucked inside his sleeves. The disguise was remarkable. A close acquaintance would scarcely have recognized Conte Cozonac.

“Doc did a good job, disguisin' him,” Monk declared.

Renny, Ham, and Johnny got up and crowded around the porthole. They had been shut in long enough that any type of diversion, even observing disguised Conte Cozonac, was welcome.

Long Tom, the electric wizard, was not present. This was unusual, for Long Tom had never before deliberately passed up a chance to accompany Doc Savage.

“Think I'll stay behind in New York and work on my insect eliminating device,” Long Tom had declared, some hours before sailing time.

Long Tom's interest in this device, an apparatus which would be of inestimable value to farmers, although profound, had not before exceeded his love of adventure.

Among Monk and the others, there had been considerable discussion of Long Tom's changed attitude. Doc Savage had not joined in these discussions.

Doc now joined the group watching Conte Cozonac through the porthole.

Conte Cozonac was sauntering aimlessly along the rail, seeming to watch the waves. Sternward an orchestra was playing, and the fat man began to sway his hands in accompaniment; his lips moved. A casual observer would have thought he was keeping time and repeating the words of the song to himself.

Doc Savage watched Conte Cozonac's lips intently. Among the bronze man's accomplishments was that of lip-reading.

Conte Cozonac was singing the words of no song. He was speaking sentences soundlessly.

“I have done considerable roaming around the boat,” he said. “I have seen none of our enemies. Probably there will be no trouble if you show yourself on deck. Incidentally, we land at the Calbian seaport tonight. The city of San Blazna is seventy miles inland from the port, over the mountains. There is a railroad to the capital.”

Doc Savage moved a hand in front of the porthole to indicate that he understood. This act was the first intimation the others had that Conte Cozonac's lip movements had conveyed a secret message.

“I'll be superamalgamated!” Johnny gasped. “What was the subject matter of the clandestine dissertation?”

“Nothing of importance,” Doc replied. “He had been able to find no enemies aboard—and we land tonight.”

Johnny polished his monocle thoughtfully with a bony thumb. “This hermitageous sequestration is abominable,” he said.

“Well, you can get out and walk around,” Doc told him. “Of course, there's the chance that somebody may take a shot at you.”

The gaunt Johnny thought this over, and evidently concluded to take the chance.

“I will promenade,” he decided.

“Better let me disguise you,” Doc advised.

The bronze man selected a makeup box from his luggage and proceeded to ornament Johnny with a cropped white mustache, a clipped Vandyke, and a pair of spectacles with plain glass lenses.

Ingenious shoulder and torso pads gave the geologist the appearance of a much plumper man.

Johnny tried to borrow Ham's sword cane, insisting that a stick was a necessary accoutrement for the type of individual he was playing.

Ham refused the loan. The dapper lawyer rarely let his valued sword cane out of his hands.

Leaving the suite, Johnny strolled along the deck. The Seaward was a liner large enough that the appearance of a new face did not attract attention. Enjoying the breeze, such as it was, and drawn by the hilarious shouting of bathers at the pool on the rear deck, Johnny moved sternward.

He was approximately even with the after funnel when he snapped to a stop, and his protruding eyes threatened to push the spectacles off his nose.

Scuttling along the deck ahead of him was the dwarf—Muta.

Two things moved Johnny in his next act. He loved excitement. Furthermore, he had been cooped up in a suite of cabins so long that it did not take much to touch him off. Without thought of consequences, he darted forward to seize the bland-faced midget.

Muta did not hear Johnny coming. The undersized rogue had his attention fixed on something ahead—an individual who was strolling down the deck—a bulky gentleman in Chinese garments.

Muta contemplated some violence toward Conte Cozonac, for the one in celestial garb was he. Or thus Johnny reasoned.

Johnny descended upon Muta, wrapping the squat fellow in his long arms.

Muta squawked in surprise, then reached up and managed to grab Johnny's hair with both hands, and yanked.

The gaunt geologist discouraged the hair pulling by casually inserting a thumb in Muta's left eye. The dwarf bit like a dog, and his teeth snapped barely an inch short of Johnny's throat. Johnny retaliated by grasping an ear and endeavoring to twist it off. Judging from Muta's squawk, he nearly succeeded.

The dwarf kicked Johnny's shins with such violence that the bony geologist's feet went from under him, and he clattered down on the deck with a sound like falling stonewood.

The fight was not uneven, although Johnny was fully twice as tall as his antagonist. The pair were probably not far apart in weight.

The two rolled on the deck. They kicked, gouged and bit, making the fray a steady parade of free-for-all brawling tactics. Muta seemed to know an endless string of foul tricks.

Johnny, scarcely resembling the tall gentleman who had once headed the natural science research department of a famous United States university, returned each vicious act of his foe, usually with a little interest.

Conte Cozonac whirled when the brawl started. He gaped, pop-eyed, and his hands untucked themselves from his sleeves to dangle limply at his sides.

“Don't mix in this mess!” Johnny yelled, using what, for him, were very small words. “I'll take care of this sawed-off squirt!”

The geologist's yell was intended to advise Conte Cozonac not to take a hand in the affair. It accomplished its purpose. Conte Cozonac merely stood and stared, as any fat, easy-going Celestial might be expected to do.

Johnny seized his chance, and landed a punch. The dwarf dropped. Another blow subdued him.

A small red marble came out of Muta's pocket and rolled on the deck.

Johnny mopped perspiration. He eyed the red marble curiously, wondering what its significance could be.

The captain of the Seaward and two other ship's officers came running from the direction of the bridge. They shouted questions in Calbian.

“This runt!” Johnny indicated Muta. “He tried to kill me in New York!”

The captain picked up the red marble. “Who does this belong to?” he asked.

Muta pointed at Johnny. “It is his!”

“Liar!” Johnny growled. “What is that marble, anyway?”

There was a commotion in a nearby doorway. Johnny turned his head.

Johnny had not previously seen Princess Gusta Le Galbin or Captain Flancul, but Doc Savage had described the two. The geologist recognized the pair now.

Princess Gusta and Captain Flancul had stepped through the door. Princess Gusta gasped, and leveled an arm at Johnny.

“Arrest that man!” she snapped. “He is an enemy of Calbia!”

Chapter XI. CASTAWAYS

THE captain of the Seaward and his officers gaped, astounded.

”

“

”

“

Doc moved away from the tube and gathered up his equipment boxes.

“But Doc,” Monk protested. “When we get into the launch we'll be swell targets for those bums with rifles. I know something of these political fanatics. The captain of the Seaward may mean well, but I'll bet Habeas Corpus here against Ham's necktie, which is my idea of something no man should own, that some of those fellows will shoot at us.”

Judging by his lack of response, Doc might not have heard Monk. He led them out of the engine room and down a passage which smelled of' grease. They were not molested. Ascending a companion they turned left, and, after waiting a time, advanced and found a hatch in the hull had been opened and a landing stage set in place.

The launch, engine muttering, was snubbed to the stage.

Monk began again, “But, Doc, them rifles—”

The bronze man opened one of his cases. It held spheres of metal fully as large as Monk's nubbinlike head. Doc flipped levers on three of these and tossed them out into the sea. They spouted a pall of black smoke.

“For the love of Mike!” Monk chuckled. “That'll take care of the rifles.”

The smoke bombs continued to pour vapor. The dark cloud grew and grew until it enveloped most of the Seaward. There was a breeze, which pulled the smoke away in a long, black serpent which rolled its sepia belly against the surface of the Mediterranean.

Concealed entirely by the smoke, and making no noise, Doc and his men entered the launch. At the loudening roar of the engine as they pulled away, numerous rifles did discharge from the Seaward. Only two bullets hit the launch, however, and these sank themselves forward on the decked-over bows.

On the deck of the Seaward the commander swore and dashed about, searching for those who had used the rifles. The skipper was a man who believed in keeping his word.

Captain Henri Flancul muttered under his breath. “Clever devils! I never thought they would use a smoke screen.”

Princess Gusta, at his side, gasping in the smoke, exclaimed, “You put those men up to using the rifles?”

“No!” Captain Flancul disclaimed. “But I knew what they would do.”

“Sometimes,” the young woman said thoughtfully, “you seem very blood-thirsty, Captain Flancul.”

“I have the welfare of the ruling house of Calbia deeply at heart,” Captain Flancul told her solemnly.

“And you are a wealthy man who stands to lose much if the revolution is successful,” Princess Gusta retorted.

After a time, the breeze blew the smoke away from the Seaward. But before the last of it was wafted off an unexpected thing occurred.

The sound of the launch engine was still audible, although the craft was lost in the smoke.

Whu-r-o-om! A terrific explosion occurred, from the spot where came the sound of the launch engine. The white flash of the blast was brilliant enough to penetrate even the smoke screen. The shock caused the big Seaward to list a trifle, and water carafes danced on the dining saloon tables.

After that, the launch engine was heard no more.

The wind carried the smoke away. The black pall did not disperse, but rolled along like dark cotton upon the water.

The Seaward's engines were put in operation and the liner cruised over toward where the explosion had occurred. Lifeboats were lowered. The crews found a few splintered timbers, scarcely a one larger than a man's hand—and that was all.

“Some mysterious explosion killed Doc Savage and his men,” was the verdict rendered when the lifeboats had returned.

Princess Gusta Le Galbin, remarkably enough, became quite pale when she heard the news which confirmed the destruction of the launch. She excused herself and went hastily to her cabin. Then she locked the door, and flung herself upon the ornate bed.

After a while she began to sob uncontrollably.

The Seaward resumed its course. Behind the liner, and off to one side, the smoke screen still hovered, a wide-flung fog of black. Somehow that black mass was strangely like a shroud covering a coffin.

Chapter XII. THE PLANE

THE Seaward sailed for three hours before she got out of sight of the smoke pall. On the bridge of the liner an earnest conference was held, during which the bits of the wrecked launch were displayed. The subject under discussion was what medium could have destroyed the small craft.

There was, the skipper of the Seaward declared, no bomb concealed aboard the small boat. The explosion had been one of almost incalculable violence; but beyond that they could determine little.

Shortly after the Seaward was lost to view, a plane appeared in the sunny Mediterranean sky. The craft spiraled slowly at an altitude of nearly twenty thousand feet, and it was to be suspected that this height was maintained for the purpose of escaping detection. It would take a sharp eye, looking up from the sea, to discern it.

The plane was a large one, tri-motored, fast, and obviously new. It was of English manufacture, a very modern type.

Upending its tail abruptly, the plane screamed downward in a long dive. When it pulled level, the sea was only a few hundred feet below, and the mass of black smoke a slight distance to one side.

The ship was an amphibian. As it banked to come down on the sea, an observer interested in aëronautics would have noted that the motor exhaust stacks bore a silencer of unique design—a type not in use in Europe, although the plane itself was manifestly a British product.

The plane taxied close to the smoke pall. The pilot shoved an arm out of the cockpit window, gripping a revolver. He throttled his engine, then fired three slow shots. He counted carefully to twenty-five, then discharged three more bullets. The lead went into the sea beside the hull float. He was signaling.

A collapsible boat, driven by an outboard motor of extreme smallness, scooted out of the remnant of the smoke screen.

The boat held Doc Savage and his four men.

Monk, carrying Habeas Corpus by an ear, stood up and stared at the plane, particularly at the pilot.

“For the love of Mike!” he cried, amazement on his face.

“Holy cow!” Renny jabbed oversized hands at the plane. “Long Tom!”

Ham, turning his sword cane slowly in his hands, eyed Doc.

“You had the foresight to transfer to this collapsible boat a moment after we left the Seaward.” Then he pointed at the plane and its pilot, Long Tom. “But where'd our invalid pal, the electrical wizard, come from?”

“I thought he remained in New York to conduct his experiments,” Johnny added.

“A blind,” Doc explained. “Long Tom crossed to England on a fast liner, bought that plane and came south.”

The bronze man paused to touch one of the metal equipment boxes. “There is a portable radio in here,” he said.

“I heard you working with it a couple of hours ago,” Ham admitted.

Doc nodded. “I was summoning Long Tom.”

A wide grin was on Long Tom's pallid countenance as he helped them transfer their equipment, then the collapsible boat, to the plane.

“Why keep the cat in the bag, Doc?” Monk grumbled.

“Sorry,” Doc told him. “But Captain Flancul and Princess Gusta are clever. They might've done some eavesdropping.”

“Yeah,” Monk admitted. “We would've talked it over, probably, if we'd have known. They might've overheard.”

Long Tom seated himself at the control wheel, opened the trio of throttles, and maneuvered the plane off the water. He set a course east and north, toward Calbia, climbing rapidly to some twenty thousand feet.

Renny pulled thoughtfully at his long jaw. “You figured on such an emergency as this, Doc?”

“Not exactly this.”

“Well, it worked out neat. Them guys on the Seaward think we're dead.”

Monk chuckled. “Are they gonna get a shock!”

Westward, off in the direction of Italy and Spain, indications were that the sun would shortly descend. Already the Mediterranean had begun to change color. Ahead, over Calbia, clouds were wadded profusely in the sky.

Doc opened the portable radio and prepared it for operation.

“Whatcha gonna do?” Monk wanted to know.

“Get in contact with the revolutionary forces,” Doc advised him. “They have radio equipment. Through them, we will notify Conte Cozonac that we are safe.”

“Then what?”

“We will land before we reach the coast, wait for darkness, then visit Conte Cozonac and concoct a definite plan of operation.”

Chapter XIII. BAT SHIP

IT was night.

Clouds over Calbia shut out the luminance of moon and stars at a height of nine thousand feet, so that only sepia murk lay below. The cloud formation was nimbus—a dark and shapeless layer with few openings. From this type of cloud rain usually falls, but there was no downpour now, although the clouds themselves were saturated, and gave promise of a slow, steady precipitation later in the night.

Doc Savage's plane kept in the clouds. The party had landed on the sea far out of sight of any one ashore, and had waited until the night was well along before again taking off. They were fairly sure no one had observed their presence, nor was the passage of the plane likely to be detected, for the exhaust silencers—they were the type developed by Doc, which Long Tom had brought from New York—were highly efficient

Renny was navigating, and gaunt Johnny had the controls. Frequently, both looked over their shoulders into the cabin.

Doc Savage was engaged in a task which interested them all, intrigued them the more so since the bronze man was more than usually reticent about the purpose of the thing.

Doc had been working upon his contrivance for some little time before his activities had come to their notice. When they had discovered him, he was just closing one of the metal equipment boxes.

What had gone into the box, they did not know.

“That thing—what is it?” asked Monk, who was always full of questions.

“That's an experiment,” Doc replied, and that was all they got out of him.

Employing some steel piano wire from a large spool, Doc fashioned a secure cradle for the metal box, so that it would dangle at the end of the wire. Then he lowered the receptacle through the door and began playing out wire. The spool was large, and he unreeled all of the wire.

The metal box was now towed along at least a quarter of a mile behind the plane. Doc extinguished the flashlight which had illuminated his operations.

Monk wrinkled his flat nose in the gloom of the plane cabin. Curiosity was literally oozing from his pores, but he did not attempt to question Doc further. He knew that it would get him—nothing. The man of bronze would only exercise his habit of appearing not to hear the inquiries.

Whatever the significance of the object they were towing, Monk felt that it was important. Doc had done strange things on other occasions which had turned out to be of no small significance.

Ham announced, “I'm going to eat my share of those sandwiches Long Tom brought. You fellows gobbled up yours, but I'm going to eat mine slowly. A gentleman gets some enjoyment out of his food.”

The lawyer moved to his seat. An instant later, he emitted a yell.

Habeas Corpus exploded a pained grunt.

“Dang you, Ham!” Monk howled. “I told you to quit kickin' my pig around!”

“If I catch him, I'll throw him out of here and see if those big ears are really any good as wings!” Ham gritted. “And if you open that big mouth of yours, I'll let you go with him.”

Monk tried to keep the glee out of his voice. “Aw, what ails you now?”

“That infernal hog,” Ham snarled, “ate up my sandwiches!”

HALF an hour later, the plane lifted above the clouds.

Renny scrutinized the stars, consulted the compass, the air-speed meter, and scribbled figures on a paper pad by the light of a flash.

“We're about twenty miles north of the Calbian capital city of San Blazna,” he vouchsafed. “That's the spot you wanted, ain't it, Doc?”

Doc Savage had been making sure that the end of piano wire was securely fastened to a fuselage cross-piece. They were still towing the mysterious metal box behind.

“Twenty miles north of San Blazna is the location,” the bronze man agreed. “As you fellows know, I was in communication with the revolutionary forces before we landed on the sea to kill time. They gave us the location of their headquarters. Conte Cozonac will hurry there by plane as soon as the Seaward docks. He is probably there now.”

“All right,” Renny told Johnny, who had the controls, “stand her on her nose, big words.”

The plane upended and went down.

“Take it easy,” Doc suggested. “We want to keep that box on the piano wire as far behind us as possible.”

Johnny flattened the plane out slightly and their descent took the form of a great spiral, slow swings with a radius of nearly a mile.

Binoculars in hand, the other man opened the cabin window and hung outside. This was strange country below, and just how he would make a landing was puzzling Johnny.

“Want to drop a flare when the altimeters show we're close to the ground, Doc?” the gaunt geologist and archaeologist called.

“They have a landing field of sorts; they advised by radio,” Doc told him. “We are to signal with a flashlight, and they will mark the field with lanterns. The signal is the letter C in the Continental Code.”

“C standing for Cozonac, maybe,” Monk suggested absently.

“C meaning cooked, which is what your goose is going to be, if you don't teach that hog to leave my stuff alone,” Ham growled.

“Habeas is just playful,” Monk explained.

“Sure, sure,” Ham gritted. “But he never plays with anybody's stuff but mine. And do you know why?”

“I can't imagine,” Monk disclaimed innocently.

“Because you've taught him to work on me!” Ham said angrily.

Monk opened his mouth to make some retort—instead, he grabbed wildly for the handiest support.

A crack, cataclysmic in its loudness, slammed through the roar of air about the open cabin windows. Reverberations followed, like something monstrous and hard rolling down vast steps, or thunder romping through the clouds. A scintillating light-burst made visual accompaniment to the sound salvo.

Convulsing air pummeled the plane, heaved it over on a wing tip.

Johnny, juggling the wheel, treading the rudder, nursed the ship to an even keel.

In the sky behind them, a mammoth skyrocket might have opened a ball of fire. Blazing fragments sank, swirling slowly, shedding bright sparks.

“Another explosion!” Monk gulped, his small voice almost lost in the air roar.

“It destroyed the box we were towing on the piano wire,” Doc agreed.

“Holy cow!” Renny squinted at the spot which Doc occupied in the darkened cabin. “Was the box a decoy?”

“It was.”

“Then, Doc, you know what is causin' the explosions!”

“What's makin' the blasts?” Monk demanded.

“You're too optimistic,” Doc advised. “There is no definite proof of what the thing was. Towing that metal box behind was merely an experiment.”

Monk pondered this. He knew from long experience that Doc was not in the habit of putting theories into words. The bronze man made no wild conjectures. Therefore, unless he knew the exact nature of the mystery, knew with such certainty that he could recreate the device himself, Doc would avoid any statement.

“What was in the metal box?” Monk persisted.

“Remember the alcohol stoves we brought along in case we might have to camp out?” Doc said.

“Sure. Designed 'em myself. Four of 'em, and they give off a lotta heat for their size.”

“All four of the stoves were in that metal case—lighted.”

“Lighted!”

“Right. If you had used binoculars on the box before it was destroyed, you might have noticed that it was almost red-hot.”

The discussion was interrupted.

Two searchlights suddenly poked up white, exploring rods from the ground. Another beam appeared. The trio swayed, crossed and uncrossed, somehow remindful of stiff, reeling white ghosts.

On the ground, an anti-aircraft gun winked a red eye. A flare shell ripened a brilliant fruit high above the plane. Light bathed not only the plane but the earth as well.

A woods lay below, a furry carpet of trees. In the center was a clearing. It seemed comparatively level.

As the flare shell sank, the earth grew more brilliantly lighted. Remarkably enough, a casual glance could discern no living being below.

Renny, who had been in the engineering corps dining the war, was familiar with camouflage.

“A lot of the trees are just green paint on tents,” he declared. “There's a military force camped below us.”

“How many?” Monk demanded.

“Ten or fifteen thousand men, I should judge. Man, they've got some up-to-date war machinery!”

A green hut which resembled a treetop spurted flame—and an anti-aircraft shell opened off the left wing tip.

Johnny hurriedly changed course. Doc untied the end of the trailing piano wire and cast it overboard in order that it might not hamper their maneuvering. Then, thrusting a flashlight from a window, he blinked it rapidly.

He made a dash-dot-dash-dot combination—the letter C of the Continental Code.

“That'll tell us if they are Conte Cozonac's men.”

The reply to the signal was prompt. Searchlights went out. The anti-aircraft guns did not fire again.

Shortly afterward, a string of lights appeared, evidently electric lanterns. They marked the position of the landing field.

“I ain't so sure about this,” Renny rumbled pessimistically.

“Aw, you're suspicious of everything,” Monk told him. “They turned out their searchlights and quit shootin', didn't they? They're Conte Cozonac's outfit.”

“Yeah, but the thing that exploded—who turned it loose on us?”

“The Royalists, of course. They're usin' the darn thing.”

Renny snorted. “But how'd they know we was comin'?”

“Ever hear of spies?” Monk queried sarcastically. '“The Royalists may have agents in Conte Cozonac's radio station.”

“OK, OK,” Renny muttered.

Doc Savage now took over the controls of the plane. The others, expecting him to land immediately, received a surprise. The bronze man swung the big ship far wide of the copse of wood which harbored the military encampment.

“Monk! Ham! Come here!” he called.

Monk and Ham hurried forward. For several seconds, they consulted with Doc in the control cockpit.

Renny, Long Tom and Johnny, being in the rear, did not hear what was said.

Monk and Ham left the control compartment and hurriedly strapped on parachutes. Then they opened the cabin door. Monk scooped up Habeas Corpus and tucked the pig under an arm.

“Here goes!” he grunted, and stepped out into black space.

Ham followed him, hand on his chute ripcord ring.

The darkness below swallowed the two plummeting forms.

Renny lumbered to the control cockpit. “Holy cow, Doc! Why'd Monk and Ham go overboard with chutes?”

“Come here, all of you,” Doc suggested.

All three crowded about the bronze man.

“We'll employ a somewhat different policy than usual on this Calbian job,” the bronze man explained. “Each man is going to be assigned a definite job. None of you will know what the others are doing, except in the case of two of you working together.”

“What's the idea?” Long Tom wanted to know.

“Nobody, in case of capture, can give information about the others.”

“

“

“Yeah. That's right, too,” Long Tom agreed.

“The same thing applies to me,” Doc stated.

“You mean—”

“You will not let me know where you are except when you make reports. In other words, if captured, I do not want to be able to give your whereabouts.”

“Everybody works separate, eh?”

“That's it, except when two are on the same job.”

Long Tom considered. “Not a bad idea, after all.”

“Monk and Ham evidently landed far enough from the military encampment to escape discovery,” Doc announced, after watching the ground below for a time with binoculars. “There is no excitement.”

“Were they to signal a safe landing?”

“No. Too much chance of a light being seen,” Doc advised.

He sent the plane back toward the encampment where the landing field was marked by electric lanterns.

Chapter XIV. THE BRONZE MAN PLANS

DOC Savage planted the big plane in the clearing without great difficulty. Use of the landing lights on the wingtips simplified the descent. Wheel brakes brought the bus to a stop. He loosened one brake, gunned the motors on that side, and turned the ship, so that it was ready for a quick take-off, should an emergency arise. He did not switch the engines off, but left them idling.

Gripping the tiny supermachine guns charged with mercy bullets, the party dropped out of the cabin.

Men approached. They came in squads, walking with military precision, automatic rifles ready in front of their chests.

Johnny dashed the beam of a flashlight over them, augmenting the glow of electric lanterns which marked the landing field.

The rebel soldiers wore olive-green uniforms. The regalia was sprightly, and showed the liking of these Balkan peoples for ornate attire. Even the privates wore snappy Sam Browne belts. The officers carried swords.

On the sleeve of every soldier—the right sleeve just above the elbow—was sewed a circular piece of red cloth. Obviously these red balls were the insignia of the revolutionists.

“That's funny,” Renny rumbled.

“I see nothing conducive to joviality,” Johnny retorted.

“Remember the little red balls them fellers on the black ocean speedboat in New York carried?” Renny countered. “And I believe you said when you grabbed Muta on the Seaward one of them red balls fell out of his pocket.”

“True.” Johnny fingered his monocle magnifier. “Hm-m-m!”

“Well, these soldiers are wearin' red balls on their sleeves. I was just wonderin', that's all.”

The squads of soldiers came to a stop, at the Calbian command, of

“

Conte Cozonac nodded vehement agreement. “It would.”

“Then we will seize the trio,” Doc stated.

The giant bronze man's suggestion that they kidnap the two principal members of the Calbian royal family, and their chief advisor gave the revolutionist staff officers a shock. They traded blank looks.

Having grown up under a monarchy, probably having been taught from childhood that the regele, or king, was only a little short of a sacred personage, Doc's suggestion undoubtedly struck them about as the kidnaping of the president would strike a citizen of the United States.

Conte Cozonac also showed evidences of being stunned, but he came out of it quickly—not enough, however, to start trilling his weird laughter. His round face was solemn.

“You know, Doc Savage, that is an idea worthy of the man of bronze,” he declared earnestly. “It is perfect. If you need men, I can supply them—any number up to two hundred thousand. About that number of able-bodied men have enlisted in the revolutionary cause.”

“In work of that kind,” Doc told him, “a very few men have a better chance of success, while a mob would be defeated by its own inability to strike with swiftness and without discovery.”

Conte Cozonac indicated Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny. “You mean that only yourself and your men are to seize King Dal Le Galbin and the other two?”

“That is the idea.”

There was silence in the tent, broken occasionally by the tinkle of one medal against another as the staff officers shifted, or the guttural challenge of a sentry posted nearby in the darkness.

Abruptly, far off in the night, rifles crackled. The moan of machine guns joined in, then the heavy thump of artillery and the reverberations of exploding shells. Although the war sounds were miles away, the very ground under the tent seemed to tremble.

“Makes me think of old times.” Renny said thoughtfully.

A phone rang. Fat Conte Cozonac went to it, listened, spoke in Calbian, then hung up.

“A Royalist raid on one of our positions,” he said. “Our revolutionists are managing to hold them back.”

The warlike noises subsided after a time.

Doc Savage had been waiting, no change visible upon his metallic countenance, and now that the distant raid seemed to have played out, he spoke.

“About this mystery weapon which is in the hands of the Royalists—have they been using it upon you?”

Conte Cozonac looked as grim as a man of his fatness possibly could. “They certainly have,” he said firmly. “On three different occasions planes carrying my staff officers have been literally blown to smithereens, as you Yankees describe it. Motor cars have been wrecked. Once a moving train was demolished. The force of the blast centered on the locomotive.”

“It is always moving machinery that suffers, eh?” Doc questioned.

“Not always, although usually a moving object. Two men who helped me organize this revolution were killed while cooking their supper over a camp fire in the woods.”

“Did loss of those men cripple your force badly?”

Conte Cozonac shook his head slowly. “Not greatly. The opposition must have only a few of the mystery weapons. Once they have time to manufacture them, it will be terrible!”

Doc Savage had been occupying a folding camp chair. Now he stood erect.

“We want that infernal machine, whatever it is. It must be rendered harmless.”

The fat man nodded. “Everything is in your hands.”

Doc eyed his three men. “Come on. We have a lot to do before morning.”

Chapter XV. THE CHINESE BUZZARD

DAWN saw the sun come up pale and red behind the clouds. Rain had started a few hours before daylight, a slow drizzle, which was little more than a fog, but produced infinite discomfort.

Renny had turned into a camouflaged barracks tent to get some sleep. The prospect of excitement did not interfere with his slumber, except for one nightmare in which he was a Brobdingnagian giant walking around in a land peopled by wee kings, princesses and Captain Flanculs. A sack was part of Renny's equipment in the dream, and into it he continuously stuffed kings, princesses, and Captain Flanculs.

Doc Savage's bronze hands shook him awake.

“Holy cow!” Renny grunted, rubbing his eyes with fists almost as large as his own far-from-small cranium. “Did I have a dream!”

He listened to the thunderlike thump and rumble of cannonading in the distance. “You know, those field guns are bound to be killin' a lot of people.”

“We want to stop this thing as soon as possible,” Doc agreed. “Come on, Renny. I've been working through the night, and have things ready for you.”

“Didn't you sleep?”

“No. Time for that later.”

“Where're Johnny and Long Tom?”

“They've already departed on their mission.”

“Huh?” Renny thumped. “What's their job?”

“Remember that none of you was to know what the others are doing,” Doc reminded him.

“Sure, I forgot.” Renny fished about for his clothes, failed to find them, and boomed, “Hey! Where'd my duds go?”

“I took them,” Doc advised. “Wrap a blanket around yourself.”

The big-fisted engineer complied with the command. He followed Doc out of the tent and across the encampment to the clearing. On the edge of this, a large, camouflaged canvas cover had been rigged over Doc's tri-motored amphibian, to keep off the rain.

Renny peered at the aircraft.

“Holy cow!” he exploded.

The amphibian was now painted an entirely different color, being a particularly garish purple. Nor was that all. Coiled around the fuselage was a flame-spouting Chinese dragon, done in practically every color of the rainbow. There were numerous characters of the Chinese alphabet emblazoned on the wings, hull and tail structure.

In large letters on each side of the hull a name was painted:

CHAMP DUGAN

THE PURPLE TERROR

Renny squirmed in his rain-sodden blanket “Say, what's this mean? Who's Champ Dugan?”

“You,” Doc said.

“Huh?”

The bronze man now withdrew from a pocket a sheaf of yellow papers—cablegrams both sent and received.

“Read these over and you'll get the idea,” he said.

Renny consulted the messages which had been sent and received by Doc Savage from his powerful private radio station atop the New York City skyscraper before they sailed on the Seaward. The messages had gone to men in China, India, Persia, and Turkey.

The names of most of these men were strange to Renny, but he did recognize a few of them as individuals he happened to know were deeply indebted to Doc Savage and would do anything to oblige the bronze man. Hastily, Renny went through the rest of the messages.

“The way has been paved for you, as you can see,” Doc told him. “A man in China, a gentleman who is under the impression he owes me a debt of gratitude, was to radio the King of Calbia, using the name of Champ Dugan.

“According to the wire my friend sent from China, the imaginary Champ Dugan was a world-beater as a fighting airman. Several references were given, and as you will note from the wires there, the references were men who were also glad to help further our deception. The upshot of that was that King Dal Le Galbin hired the mythical Champ Dugan.”

“And you thought of all this in New York,” Renny muttered.

“The mythical Champ Dugan is supposed to be on his way to Calbia,” Doc continued. “Radiograms have been sent from India, Persia and Turkey with his name signed to them. Champ Dugan, in fact, is due to arrive at the capital of Calbia today.”

Renny rarely allowed a grin to decorate his long, sober face. However, he now permitted himself the luxury of a wide smile.

“This is the real reason you sent Long Tom via England, to buy this plane, eh?” he asked.

“Exactly. You will notice that Champ Dugan is to receive a high command in the Calbian Royalist air force. King Dal Le Galbin evidently has a good opinion of Yankee free-lance airmen. Notice the salary he's paying you.”

Renny consulted the telegrams. “A thousand dollars a week! Not bad!”

“Except that you usually make that much a day at your trade of engineer,” Doc added dryly. “Now as Champ Dugan, flyer extraordinary, you should be able to get close to King Dal Le Galbin and Princess Gusta.”

“The idea is to grab 'em if I can?” Renny rumbled.

“Even more important, get a line on the thing causing the big explosions,” Doc suggested.

“Yeah. That's the main job, after all.”

“With a few suggestions as to how Champ Dugan is to act, you'll be ready to go. I'll disguise you, also.”

THREE hours later the Chinese dragon plane with the name “Champ Dugan” lettered on its side dived out of eastern clouds and descended on the Calbian capital city of San Blazna. It was from the east that a plane from China would be expected to arrive.

Due to the drizzling rain, few people were in the narrow streets of San Blazna when the grotesquely decorated plane first appeared. Here and there squads of soldiers marched. Automobiles were few, far outnumbered by the mule carts of peasants.

The noise of the plane brought San Blaznites from their houses like hornets out of a disturbed nest. They stared upward. Evidently they were no strangers to air raids, and feared the weirdly colored ship might be an enemy plane.

Steam plumes spurting from locomotive whistles and power houses told Renny an alarm was being spread. He had removed Doc Savage's remarkable silencers from the plane exhaust stacks, and the ship was making a great deal of noise, completely drowning out the sound of the whistles below.

From a military airport on the edge of San Blazna, a squadron of fighting planes appeared and climbed upward. There were nine of them, holding formation triangles of three craft each.

Renny watched their flying closely. To a layman, it might have appeared that Calbians were skillful fighting buzzards, but to Renny's experienced eyes, they were doing a ragged job.

“Kiwis,” opined Renny.

Renny's accomplishments did not end with the field of engineering, where he was among the greatest, but included, among other things, many hours of flying time, a portion of them under the highly efficient tutelage of Doc Savage. Doc possessed the facility that goes to make great teachers—he seemed able to convey some of his own uncanny skill to those whom he instructed.

Not many fliers were more skillful than Renny, and he proceeded to give a demonstration of that fact.

The nine Calbian pursuit planes spread into a duck flight line in the drizzle and approached. Pilots craned their necks from cockpits to study Renny's weirdly bedizened chariot.

Renny flew straight forward.

Probably by way of warning, two of the pursuit craft discharged machine gun bursts. The tracer lines threaded over Renny's head, and not far distant from it either. The fighting crates came on arrogantly.

Renny let them get quite close. Abruptly he stamped the rudder and wrestled the controls. One of the planes which had used a machine gun was the object of his maneuver. The big amphibian literally pounced upon this craft.

The pursuit pilot's face, glistening wet in the rain, became starkly white as the great ship cannoned toward him. He was, in fact, more stunned than Renny had expected, and the big-fisted engineer was forced to battle the controls again to prevent a collision.

The pursuit pilot dove out of his way, oozing a cold sweat. He had been scared badly.

Renny booted his big bus around and hung onto the tails of the pursuit squadron.

The Calbian flyers, not sure whether he was an enemy, sought to jockey clear. They found that impossible. Their fighting craft were smaller, much faster than Renny's lumbering amphibian, yet such was the engineer's skill and knowledge of aërobatics that he succeeded in making the Calbian army pilots look like rank amateurs.

Diving at them fiercely, keeping away from their machine guns with an uncanny facility, Renny literally chased the pursuit ships into the clouds.

Then Renny dived down and proceeded to raise the hair on the heads of the inhabitants of San Blazna.

A river snaked through the center of San Blazna. A large stream, it bore the name of River Carlos, after King Carlos Le Galbin I, the founder of the present dynasty of Calbia. At one point, two bridges spanned this stream, and nearby, on the left bank, stood the great castlelike structure which was King Dal Le Galbin's palace.

Renny flew under the arch of both bridges, apparently with but inches to spare on either side. He chased a squad of highly uniformed Royalist soldiers into the king's castle. Then he thundered around the castle, a wing tip almost scraping the masonry.

Sentries tried to shoot at him from the walls. He cranked down the landing gear of the amphibian, swooped at the riflemen, and sent them scuttling to cover.

The Calbian flag and the king's personal colors fluttered on a flagpole above the castle gate. Renny, calculating beautifully, flew close enough to the pole to carry away both flags on his landing gear. He looped and barrel-rolled arrogantly over the castle.

Untangling both flags from his wheels, he yanked the undercarriage up, landed on the river, and beached his craft under the castle walls.

The Renny who got out of the amphibian hardly resembled the sober-faced gentleman the engineering profession knew. For one thing, Renny's hair had been dyed a particularly gaudy red. His face was freckled. Most startling change of all was the enormous grin which had displaced his usual funeral-going expression.

His garb was a Chinese blouse, with enormous sleeves which ordinarily hung down over his hands, concealing the proportions of his enormous fists with surprising effectiveness. He wore baggy Turkish trousers, soft Russian boots.

With Doc's aid, Renny had disguised himself to look the part of “Champ Dugan,” the daredevil Yank buzzard from China. His arrival in San Blazna had been in Champ Dugan's style.

Once, in medieval times, the river waters had been diverted into a moat which encircled the castle. A walk along the edge of this moat now served as a promenade. Renny clambered up the river bank and strode along this esplanade.

A platoon of guardsmen, each in a high fur uniform cap, swung toward him on the double-quick. Their uniforms were most eye-filling. Renny concluded this was a part of the castle guard.

Playing Champ Dugan to the fullest, Renny greeted the guardsmen with a wide, freckled grin. “Hi, soldiers!” he called.

“You are under arrest,” he was informed in Calbian,

“Yeah?” Renny snorted. “Listen—you mugs start with me, and you'll get them pretty uniforms mussed!”

The officer in charge stepped forward and grabbed at Renny's arms, evidently with the idea of pinioning them.

There was a whack of a big fist on a jaw and the officer sprawled on his back.

“I can whip the king's guard as well as the Calbian air force,” boasted the pseudo Champ Dugan. “You palookas don't know so much about fightin'.”

The arrival of a courier interrupted what might have developed into a first-class scrap.

“Are you Champ Dugan, the Yankee flier from China?” asked the messenger.

“So somebody in Calbia has heard of me, eh?” Renny made a big freckled grin.

“King Dal Le Galbin will give you an audience at once,” said the other.

“An audience—oh, you mean he wants to talk to me? OK, let's go.”

Chapter XVI. THE CALBIAN TOUGH GUY

KING DAL LE GALBIN had a tangled mass of snow-white hair. His eyes were blue, his jaw strong, his mouth grim. The handsome lines of his features explained where his daughter, Princess Gusta, got her exquisite beauty.

The monarch of Calbia had powerful shoulders and a lean waist, and although his age must have been near fifty, indications were that he was still very much a man.

He wore an extremely plain uniform, tailored snugly to his strapping physique. He affected no medals, gold braid, swords, or pistols.

“Give me one good pursuit plane, and I can whip your whole air force,” Renny declared loudly. “They're not so hot.”

The ruler of Calbia, the man who was at present the world's nearest approach to an absolute monarch, produced a plain gold case of monogrammed cigarettes, and offered it.

“Do you smoke, Champ Dugan?” he asked.

Renny shook his head. “Fightin' and braggin' is my only dissipation.”

To his surprise, Renny was discovering that he rather liked King Dal Le Galbin.

King Dal permitted a court flunky to dash forward with a patent lighter and ignite his cigarette.

“You seem to be a rather unusual individual, Champ Dugan. In your opinion, what is wrong with my air force?”

“Judging from the samples I've seen, they're not fire-eaters. Too, they're a little shy on combat training. What you need is about fifty free-lance fliers, professional swashbucklers.”

“My air force has not been very effective against the rebels.” The king drew slowly on his cigarette.

“Who has charge?” Renny asked.

“One of my advisors is air minister—Captain Henri Flancul. I will summon him.”

Renny would willingly have postponed confronting Captain Flancul. It was possible Flancul had seen him, either in New York or on the liner Seaward, and might recognize him. But a meeting was inevitable, and he might as well have it over with now.

Captain Flancul, a resplendent figure in uniform, entered.

Princess Gusta also came in to the audience chamber. The young woman's frock was plain, cut on military lines. She was, Renny reflected, one of the most ravishing beauties he could recall having seen.

The ruler of Calbia performed the introductions.

“This is, Champ Dugan, Yankee aviator who is going to see what he can do with our air force.”

Captain Henri Flancul flushed. “What does that mean?” he demanded. “I thought I had control of the air force?”

“You are not being displaced,” the monarch told him. “Champ Dugan is merely an advisor. But I might suggest that you take his advice.”

Renny was watching Captain Flancul and Princess Gusta intently. They gave no sign of not accepting him, in his fictitious personality of Champ Dugan, buzzard from China. Doc's disguise was effective.

DURING the remainder of the day, Renny behaved in a fashion calculated to elevate himself in the graces of the king.

The most discerning eye could have observed nothing in Renny's actions to indicate that he contemplated kidnaping the King of Calbia and, if possible, the king's daughter and chief advisor as well.

Renny kept alert for some word of the mystery device which had caused the explosions. He even sounded out officers of the king's guard on the subject. They obviously knew nothing—which surprised Renny somewhat.

Renny borrowed a pursuit plane that afternoon and led a Royalist patrol into revolutionist territory.

“If we meet any rebel ships, you kiwis stay in the background,” Renny directed, before the take-off. “Don't give a hoot how many there are. I'll show you guys a real sky brawl.”

They met rebel planes—eleven of them. Two were bombers, and the rest pursuit jobs. Alone, Renny dropped out of the clouds upon the flight.

For a few minutes planes whirled in the rain soaked sky like leaves in a mad wind. Streams of tracer bullets raced here and there, like cobwebs invisibly spun.

The Royalist fliers circled above, obeying the command to stay out of the “dog fight.” The blustering, freckled Yankee had said he would show them how it was done—and he kept his word. King Dal's fliers saw four enemy planes go spinning down at the end of squirming smoke plumes.

Just what happened to the rebel pilots they did not see, due to a fog which blanketed the ground. The presence of the fog was a fortunate circumstance. Otherwise, some one might have discovered that none of the planes actually crashed, and that the smoke was coming, not from flaming gasoline tanks but from ordinary smoke bombs hidden in cockpits.

Conte Cozonac's fliers were coöperating with Renny, helping him build up a reputation.

Renny led his Royalist squadron back to San Blazna, after he had apparently, single-handedly, defeated the rebel airmen and shot down in a few minutes more revolutionist planes than King Dal's fliers had been able to bag since the outbreak of hostilities.

Renny became a hero. King Dal personally complimented him.

Princess Gusta was also extremely friendly, listening with interest to hair-raising tales of some of Champ Dugan's aërial accomplishments in China and elsewhere.

Among other things, Renny had a fertile imagination.

Later, Princess Gusta offered to ride Renny around the town in one of the royal limousines and show him points of interest. Renny was not acting when he grinned from ear to ear. He was making excellent progress, and it was only a question of time until an opportunity would present itself for the kidnaping.

Furthermore, Renny could not imagine a more charming and desirable guide than the king's daughter.

On that sight-seeing ride, there occurred an incident which wiped out some of Renny's satisfaction.

The royal limousine which they used was long and sleek, plain black in color, except for the ornate coat of arms of the Calbian ruling family, encrested on either door.

The chauffeur was a meek individual whose vocabulary seemed to be limited to, “Yes, Your Highness.”

There was no escort, Princess Gusta having ignored her sire's suggestion that they take one.

In the course of their sightseeing, they visited the ancient stone house—now a museum—where the first King Le Galbin had been born, some generations ago. Renny gathered that this first Le Galbin had been born a lowly peasant, and had made himself king by using his brain and fighting ability.

The street outside was deserted, except for the meek chauffeur in the limousine, when they left the old house. Secretly, Renny debated whether this might not be a good time to kidnap Princess Gusta.

A shabby-looking beggar hobbled around the nearest corner. The fellow's left leg dragged, and he used a crutch. He approached, doffed a greasy hat from tangled hair that needed combing, and offered it hopefully for alms.

Renny, feeling expansive at the moment, used both bands to fish in the pockets of his voluminous trousers for a coin.

With stunning speed, the mendicant whipped up his crutch and crashed it down on Renny's head.

Stunned, the big-fisted engineer sank to his knees.

THE lumbering Botezul, saying nothing, untied King Dal Le Galbin, who had already regained his senses. Then Botezul got down on all fours and put his forehead against the floor.

“Me suspect this man, Your Highness,” he mumbled. “Me watch him.”

King Dal Le Galbin bent over shakily and plucked at Botezul's shoulder, indicating that he was to get to his feet.

“You shall be amply rewarded for this, my good man,” he said earnestly. “I did not have the slightest suspicion of this fellow.”

“Him no good,” muttered Botezul.

“So it seems. Will you please summon my daughter and Captain Henri Flancul?”

Botezul went away, but was back shortly, trailing like a big, good-natured black dog behind the excited Princess Gusta and Captain Flancul.

In a few words, King Dal explained what had happened; finishing: “This Yankee flier was obviously attempting to seize me.”

Botezul lumbered forward abruptly, rumbling, “Look, Your Highness!”

The dark giant rubbed briskly at the freckles on Renny's countenance. These began to come off. Then he secured a handkerchief and rubbed at Renny's hair. Color on the handkerchief indicated Renny's red hair was dyed.

“See?” said Botezul. “Him got makeup on.”

Captain Henri Flancul cried out and darted forward. He scrubbed the rest of the freckles off Renny's face, then covered Renny's red hair. Kneading and twisting the engineer's face, he made it assume its habitual expression of unutterable gloom.

“I know this man!” Captain Flancul snarled. “He is one of Doc Savage's five assistants!”

The words had a remarkable effect on attractive Princess Gusta. At first she paled slightly, then color swam over her face; her lips parted, and she gasped, “This man was with Doc Savage—when they put off in that launch from the Seaward.”

“That is right,” Captain Flancul told her.

“Then Doc Savage may be—alive?”

“I hope not,” Captain Flancul gritted.

This remark caused Princess Gusta to give Captain Flancul a stare of unutterable loathing.

Renny interrupted proceedings by stirring and groaning, endeavoring to sit erect. Botezul loomed over the engineer and jammed him back to the floor.

“This man, him belong to gang of men you no like?” Botezul queried, indicating Renny.

“Yes, Botezul,” explained King Dal Le Galbin. “This fellow is one of a group of five men who assist an American known as Doc Savage. This Doc Savage is helping the revolutionists to fight us.”

Botezul pushed Renny back on the floor again as the engineer sought to arise.

“Why not make this feller tell how we can get hands on Doc Savage?” questioned the dark-skinned giant.

“I do not approve of that suggestion,” Princess Gusta said abruptly.

Captain Flancul frowned. “Why not, Your Highness?”

“I do not like the idea of torturing this man. He will not talk otherwise.”

“You need not concern yourself about the dog!”

“Yes, Gusta,” King Dal put in. “There is too much at stake to be squeamish. The man will not die, I promise you, until he has stood trial, but we may have to use a certain amount of violence to make him talk.”

“Me make him talk!” muttered Botezul.

Princess Gusta included Botezul in a glance of disapproval.

“What is the matter, Gusta?” the elder Le Galbin demanded sharply. “Don't you want this Doc Savage captured?”

The young woman flushed slightly.

“What a question!” she snapped, then pointed at Renny. “How do you propose to loosen his tongue?”

Captain Henri Flancul answered this. “The old citadel on the outskirts of the city has, in its dungeons, a number of devices which we might use.”

Princess Gusta shuddered. “That horrible place! They are medieval torture chambers!”

“The citadel, Your Highness,” Captain Flancul reminded her, “was built by the first Le Galbin to be a king of Calbia. I suggest that we load this man in a car, take him to the citadel, and let Botezul work upon him.”

LONG TOM, the electrical wizard, had a face so pale that it was inclined to show up in the darkness like the features of a ghost. To get rid of this undesirable phenomenon, he had rubbed the end of a burned cork over his lineaments, darkening them. As an added precaution, he wore dark clothing.

Johnny, the gaunt geologist and the man of big words, also wore dark attire.

The two men were picking their way furtively down a Calbian mountain road. Fir trees were thick along the way, their branches almost interlacing overhead. This, coupled with the cloudiness of the night, made it very dark.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Long Tom and Johnny both came to a prompt halt. They knew that a man, prowling through the night, is prone to stop and listen to such sounds, especially if his nocturnal mission is of a sinister nature.

The electrical wizard and the geologist were following such an individual. It was Muta they trailed.

Long Tom and Johnny had been assigned their task before Renny flew away from Conte Cozonac's camp to play the part of Champ Dugan, the daredevil Yankee air man from China. Doc Savage's instructions to them had been simple.

“Just hang around, wandering over the countryside, letting no one see you—and turn up whatever you can,” the bronze man had suggested. “Do not go near the revolutionist army or Conte Cozonac.”

“Look for some sign of Baron Mendl's doo-dad, eh?” asked Long Tom.

“That's it. And anything else interesting.”

For two days, it had seemed to Long Tom and Johnny that they were going to unearth nothing of value. Then, only a few hours ago, they had discovered Muta. The ugly dwarf had apparently been in hiding near the camp of the revolutionists.

Muta's lurking place was in a rather substantial farm house which, among other things, was equipped with a telephone. Whether or not Muta had received orders over this phone and was now on his way to comply with them, Long Tom and Johnny did not know. But they were certain that Muta was bent on some mission which boded no good.

The dog stopped barking and the footsteps ahead resumed. The dwarf was moving onward. Doc's two men trailed him.

“My hypothesis is that yonder renegade is a spy,” offered big-worded Johnny in a wispy whisper.

“Yeah,” Long Tom agreed. “He's probably been scoutin' the revolutionist forces. Man, I sure favor crawlin' that sawed-off runt!”

“Doc advocated that we refrain from apprehending him,” Johnny said regretfully.

Slung in a knapsack on his back, Long Tom carried a portable radio outfit. It was with this that he had informed Doc Savage—who was playing the part of Botezul, the swarthy Calbian mountaineer—that Muta had been discovered. Doc had returned instructions to follow Muta, noting every move the thick, squat rascal made.

The road which Long Tom and Johnny trod became narrower, rough, and more steep. Rocks underfoot, scattered at first, grew more plentiful.

“Wait!” Long Tom breathed. “We're liable to step on a rock and make a noise that the runt will hear.”

From the back pack which held the radio set, Long Tom produced a pair of headphones and another apparatus which, when assembled, bore likeness to nothing so much as a college cheerleader's megaphone. This latter was actually a highly sensitive microphone which, connected to the audio-amplifier in the radio receiver and certain supplementary coils and tubes, was set into the headphones.

With this contrivance Long Tom could pick up faint sounds over a long distance.

The two trailers dropped back nearly a hundred yards, and followed Muta by the aid of Long Tom's electrical “listener” alone. Even if they would inadvertently turn a pebble, Muta was unlikely to hear it.

“I wonder what's become of Monk and Ham?” Long Tom pondered.

“Problematical,” murmured Johnny.

“We haven't seen 'em since they jumped out of the plane with parachutes before we landed at Conte Cozonac's camp,” Long Tom breathed. “Monk had the pig, Habeas Corpus, under his arm. I hope they got down all right.”

“You have my concurrence in that wish,” returned Johnny.

“Blast it!” Long Tom whispered. “We don't even know what mission Doc sent 'em on. I guess it's just as well. If the Royalists should grab us, we couldn't tell 'em where Monk and Ham are. That was a good idea of Doc's—all of us workin' separate.”

“What about our nefarious quarry?” Johnny queried.

“Muta? He's still goin' straight ahead.”

Then they fell silent, since it was not particularly diverting to conduct a conversation in whispers. They dared speak no louder, lest they be heard.

The clouds parted overhead momentarily, allowing silver moonlight to flood down, and this illuminated the roadway which they were traveling. It was a strange sort of a thoroughfare.

What they had thought merely a profusion of pebbles they saw now was actually the remains of a cobblestone pavement, which exposure through countless years had caused to separate, the mortar disintegrating. The road did not show signs of having been used much. Certainly, no wheeled vehicles had traveled this way for a long time.

There was timber about them, a thick tangle of woods. The ancient road twisted through this, mounting steadily upward.

Long Tom moved to one side, climbed atop a great boulder and strained his eyes to peer through the moonlight.

JOHNNY joined Long Tom, and together they swept the room with their eyes. They did not discern a sign of the late occupants.

“Let us invade the premises,” the bony geologist breathed. Long Tom said, “We oughta get Doc on the radio an' tell him—”

“Later,” said Johnny, who had spent the last few days in wearisome scouting, and who now craved action. “I'm going in.”

“I'm with you, guy!”

They tried the door; it was not locked, and opened without undue effort. On tiptoe they crossed the floor, then circled, searching.

“That thump we heard—it must've been a secret door,” Long Tom whispered.

The electrical wizard sank to his knees and began to scrutinize the boards of the floor. Johnny, using his monocle magnifier, inspected the thick stone walls. It was he who found the concealed door.

Cleverly made, the panel resembled the stone of the walls. He grasped rough ends of the rock, tugged, and only succeeded in breaking his finger nails.

Long Tom rapidly thrust and yanked at other flinty projections, one of these proving to be a catch. Pushing it, the panel flew open. It was perhaps two feet wide and about four high.

A man was standing on the other side of the panel—the staff officer. He had a gun in one hand, and the instant the panel opened he shot Johnny at a spot six inches above the belt buckle. Johnny grunted loudly, folded his bony frame in the middle, jacknife fashion, and fell to the floor. He rolled, kicking and squirming.

The staff officer then swerved his gun at Long Tom.

The electrical expert hurled the megaphonelike pickup mike which he was carrying. Hitting him squarely in the face, the device upset the fellow. His arms flailed out, and he fell backward down a flight of narrow, steep steps, which descended from the secret opening. He screamed once on the way down, and his gun discharged twice.

With a flying leap, Long Tom went after him. He landed on the fellow, feet-first; but there was no need of that. The officer had cracked his head on the way down, and was out cold.

Johnny appeared at the top of the steps, still doubled over. He wobbled half the way down, fell the rest of the distance, and, remarkably enough, hit on his feet.

“Oh-h-h!” he groaned, both skeleton-thin arms wrapped across his chest. “I've got on one of Doc's bullet-proof vests, but darned if it feels like it helped much.”

“You should have some flesh under the vest for a pad,” Long Tom snorted.

Leaning down, he cracked the staff officer over the head with the fellow's own gun to prolong unconsciousness. Then he lunged down a passage which angled away to the left.

Unbending himself a little, Johnny followed Long Tom. They ran twenty feet, turned a corner, came to a stop.

A wall of mortared stone blocked their progress. Outwardly, the place seemed a blind panel.

“There must be another hidden door somewhere!” Long Tom rapped.

While his words still echoed, the floor dropped from under their feet. With a wild spring, Johnny sought to reach solid footing. He failed. For the whole length of the passage, the floor simply folded like a dropped leaf.

They fell no more than six feet, and hit water. Down they went, well over their heads. When they came up, sputtering and splashing, it was to find themselves in intense darkness. The trap door of the passage had closed over their heads.

Soon afterwards, there was a loud splashing—a roar of incoming water near by. They could plainly feel the swirl of the current.

“They got this thing fixed so they can flood it with water!” Long Tom yelled. “Man, are we in a jam!”

“Come!” Johnny barked. “Let's get to the far end of this thing.”

They stroked furiously.

“You've got—a grenade?” Long Tom puffed.

“Right,” said Johnny. “Maybe we can blow the floor out of this pit.”

Gaining the extremity of the rapidly filling pit, they flattened against the wall. Grasping rough edges of stone, they hauled themselves up as far as possible out of the water, reasoning that the shock of the air would be less violent than the concussion made by the water. Handkerchiefs were ripped in half and stuffed into their ears.

Then Johnny threw his grenade. The concussion from the explosion was so terrific that their ears temporarily ceased to function, despite the precaution of the handkerchief. Their bodies felt as if numberless axes, chopping simultaneously, had tried to remove their flesh.

The water shoved up over their heads. With what strength they could muster, they stroked forward.

The trap door floor at the far end had been ripped open. Grasping the shattered edges, they clambered through, stumbled to the stairway, trampled over the unconscious form of the staff officer, and mounted.

“We're gonna—make it!” Long Tom gulped.

They staggered out into the upstairs room.

Two tear-gas bombs landed in front of them and opened with a sound which they barely heard, due to the effect of the grenade on their ears.

Muta had thrown the gas missiles from the door.

Long Tom and Johnny had no defense against the tear gas. Blinded, they tried to find the door.

Since they were without the use of their eyes, they failed to put up much of a fight, as Muta and his companions, protected by gas masks, seized and bound them.

Thirty minutes elapsed before Long Tom and Johnny could use their eyes with any degree of success. The tear gas was not of the efficient type used by the American police, but seemed to contain ingredients other than the usual xylyl bromide. It made them violently ill for a time.

The staff officer had been revived. He stood with the stunted, evil Muta and the others, and scowled at the two prisoners.

Muta, puffing out his over-developed chest, jeered, “It seems that we meet again, and—”

“Dry up, you freak!” Long Tom gritted.

Muta's tone changed to a snarl as he continued where he had been interrupted: ”—and I am to have one more try. I am disposing of you gentlemen. Listen, I will make you a proposition.”

Long Tom blinked. “What?”

“If I fail to get rid of you this time, I will place my person in your hands, to do with as you see fit.”

“Yeah,” Long Tom sneered. “You'd do that!”

Muta shrugged.

Long Tom winked his still-aching eyes rapidly for a time, then for lack of anything else to say growled a threat. “It isn't lucky for yahoos like you to crack down on Doc Savage's friends.”

“I am stricken with terror!” Muta laughed, and shivered dramatically.

“Which shows you don't know Doc Savage well enough yet,” Long Tom told him grimly. “Furthermore, Conte Cozonac and this rebel army will also start huntin' for you if anything happens to us. You aren't liable to get away from 'em.”

At this, Muta went into a gale of laughter. His mirth spread to the staff officer and the others. They all cackled like guineas.

“What's the joke?” Long Tom demanded.

“Wait,” Muta suggested, and consulted a large turnip of a watch he drew from a pocket. “Yes—wait about five minutes.”

No more was said during the interim. It was raining again. The drops pattered on the roof, and streams running from the eaves made sobbing and gurglings which, under the circumstances, struck Long Tom and Johnny as altogether unpleasant.

A rumble, hollow and reverberating, broke out in the distance. It was not thunder, but the noise of cannonading, as the revolutionist army and Royalists fought.

Footsteps splattered moistly outside. Muta himself opened the door.

Conte Cozonac walked in.

Long Tom and Johnny stared at the fat leader of the revolutionists with popping eyes. Conte Cozonac was probably the last person they had expected to appear.

“Look what we have here,” Muta grinned, and waved a short arm at the two captives.

“What happened, Muta?” Conte Cozonac demanded.

Long Tom gazed blankly at Johnny. The skeleton-thin archaeologist returned the look.

Conte Cozonac and Muta were co-conspirators!

In staccato Calbian, Muta told Conte Cozonac what had occurred.

The bulbous rebel chief scowled blackly throughout the recital. Then he stamped over and stood, various of his bulges shaking with rage, over Long Tom and Johnny. His usual trilling and cackling laughter was markedly absent.

“I want certain questions answered,” he grated. “First, where are Doc Savage's other two men, Monk and Ham?”

“Blessed if we know,” Long Tom retorted—truthfully.

The fat man teetered on his heels. His face was a study in rage and villainy.

“I am not going to try any melodramatic deceit,” he said grimly. “You two fellows are to be shot; but first, you are going to tell me where my men can get Monk and Ham.”

Long Tom wet his lips. “So you think.”

With a swift gesture for such a fat man, Conte Cozonac kicked the electrical expert in what is probably the tenderest part of the human body—the throat.

Long Tom moaned and made hacking sounds, and groveled on the floor, but could do nothing because of his bindings. He was tied with braided cotton cords.

“Take them into the underground room,” Conte Cozonac commanded.

Muta and the others lifted the two prisoners and bore them to the concealed door, through it, and down the narrow steps.

Conte Cozonac, following, snarled, “They must be disposed of, but first they must answer my questions.”

Chapter XX. TALE OF DECEIT

A FEW miles from the Calbian capital city of San Blazna, Doc Savage was making a statement which did not differ greatly from the latter half of Conte Cozonac's speech.

“First, you had better answer some of my questions,” the bronze man was telling Princess Gusta Le Galbin. “Then I will put your mind at rest about your present position.”

King Dal Le Galbin and Captain Henri Flancul had regained consciousness, although both were still slightly dizzy from the effects of Doc's blows.

“You have seized us and are going to turn us over to the revolutionists!” the Calbian ruler shouted wrathfully.

Doc Savage ignored him. “Why did you and Captain Henri Flancul come to New York, princess?” he asked.

The young woman studied the bronze man by the glow which the car dashlight diffused backward. The machine was nosing down a little-used country thoroughfare. The rain on the top made sounds like dozens of mice scampering, and the twin windshield wipers swick-swucked in concert. Water was pooled in the road, and flew away in lazy sheets from the impact of the wheels.

“Some years ago, Baron Damitru Mendl invented a fearsome weapon of warfare,” the young woman stated. “The plan for that weapon—there was only one in existence—was locked in the vaults of the Calbian war department.”

“Conte Cozonac told us that,” big-fisted Renny put in.

“There was an understanding with Baron Mendl,” continued the young woman. “This weapon was not to be used, or manufactured, except in the defense of Calbia.”

“Baron Damitru Mendl had retired from the inventing business?”

Princess Gusta nodded. “He was given his title of baron as a gesture of appreciation for his scientific works. He grew interested in politics and became Calbian ambassador to the United States. He was very efficient.”

“In what particular branch of science did Baron Mendl specialize?” Doc asked abruptly.

“A study of light.”

“Hm-m-m. The science of light, I thought so. Well, go on with your explanation of why you went to New York.”

Big-fisted Renny, listening, would rather have delved deeper into the relation of Baron Damitru Mendl's study of the physics of light to the mystery weapon which he had invented. Renny smelled the beginning of an explanation of the nature of the weird, terrible explosions which destroyed airplanes, boats, automobiles, railway engines, and even men cooking around a campfire.

“Some weeks ago the plans of Baron Damitru Mendl's invention vanished from the Calbian war department vaults,” said Princess Gusta.

“Have you any idea who stole the plan?” Doc questioned.

Captain Henri Flancul took it on himself to answer that. “No idea whatever,” he stated.

Doc's golden eyes, shifting briefly from the milky mixture of headlight glare and raindrops ahead, rested upon Captain Flancul.

“So you and Princess Gusta came to New York to get duplicate plans from Baron Damitru Mendl. Is that it?” he inquired.

“

“Yes,” Doc said, “but why the excitement?”

“Under that old house somewhere, there must be hidden rooms,” Monk explained. “We been eavesdroppin'. This old house is the plant where them infernal machines are bein' manufactured.”

“Give me the location of the place,” Doc directed.

“You ain't heard the worst yet, Doc. They've got Long Tom and Johnny.” Then Monk rapidly gave the location of the old house.

Doc reached for the master switch, which controlled the radio. “Their lives in danger, Monk?” he queried.

“Conte Cozonac was goin' to question 'em first—”

“Monk, you and Ham do what you can,” Doc directed. “Try to hold out, if it won't put Long Tom and Johnny in too tough a spot, until I get there.”

“You're coming out, Doc?”

“Right out.”

Doc switched off the radio.

Chapter XXI. THE DEATH STEEPLE CHASE

RENNY, long face set, jaw out, lumbered for the door. “My plane—at the airport, Doc! We can use that!” he cried.

“Fine!” Doc snapped the lid down on the radio case, then began tearing at the pile of hay in the end of the shack. “It's only a few minutes' run from here to the airport.”

From the hay, he withdrew one of his metal equipment cases. Renny looked for the identifying number on the case. He knew the numerals on most of them, and the contents each number signified. Number four, for instance, was gas bombs, and thirteen, fittingly enough, was the one which always held Doc's little supermachine pistols and ammunition drums—these were bad luck for any one.

But the number had been painted out on this case, the case Doc now held.

King Dal Le Galbin demanded, “Do you wish us to go with you?”

Captain Henri Flancul said, “I prefer to tackle this thing side by side with Mr. Savage, from now on.”

“My sentiments also,” said the ruler of Calbia. He made a fighting jaw. “It has been a long time since I had any real excitement. I believe I shall get a kick out of this.”

They ran toward the car, Doc Savage carrying his two boxes—the radio case, and the metal equipment container which bore no identifying numerals.

“We will leave Princess Gusta in the car at the airport,” he said. “Some of the Royalist army pilots will escort her back to the palace.”

“You will do nothing of the kind,” the young woman declared. “I shall see this thing through with the rest of you.”

Doc slid under the car wheel, clicked on the lights, then extinguished his own flash, which had been giving illumination. Then he turned in his seat to eye the elder Le Galbin.

“You had better convince her that she should remain behind,” he suggested.

There was argument in the back seat as the car wallowed and moaned through the mud. Rain sheeted the windshield, and the wipers raced until it seemed they would tear themselves off.

The machine topped a hill, a sharp little rise, and for twenty feet beyond all four wheels were off the ground. They traveled over black asphalt pavement, which had probably come from Calbian oil wells; there being rich petroleum fields in certain sections of the little kingdom.

The car alternatingly lunged and slackened speed, as straight stretches and curves were traversed.

“You, Gusta, are a young lady, and as such have no business with us tonight,” the King of Calbia was insisting in the rear.

“Rats!” Gusta retorted. “Less than a month ago I heard you say in a speech that women should be allowed to do anything that men do.”

“That was just a speech,” snapped her parent. “Furthermore, it was spoken before the Calbia National Women's Suffrage League, and was just to make them feel good.”

Doc applied the brakes, and tires shrieked on the wet pavement. The machine skidded, careened into the airport, and excited sentries popped out of their boxes, shouting;

PRECEDING the folding of the trap-door floor, there was a faint click and grate of machinery. Slight this was, but coupled with Doc's quick reasoning that the blind passage had some significance, it was sufficient to warn him.

The passage was narrow. Doc twisted, jumped, and planted his feet against one wall. His shoulders slammed against the other wall. The stone was rough, and he managed to wedge there.

When the trap was down, his flashlight showed the water pit beneath.

He began to work for the stairs. It would have been a slow, laborious task for ordinary muscles, but the bronze man was not in that category. He gained the solidity of the steps just as a slab of stone, ostensibly part of the passage wall, hinged back.

Conte Cozonac looked out. It was doubtful if the fat man even saw Doc, for a bronze mallet of a fist, lashing against his face, was large enough to cover mouth, nose and eyes completely. The revolutionist leader was driven backward so forcibly that his arms whipped around and stuck out straight in front of him.

He went down heavily, and momentum lifted his heels into the air. They came back to the floor with a distinct crack. Crimson seeped from Cozonac's pulped lips and unshaped nose.

The big-bodied dwarf, Muta, was standing behind Conte Cozonac, but managed to dodge with a terrier alacrity. He held a gun, fired it while still in the air. It was an unaimed bullet, and went wild. The report was ear-splitting in the confines of the narrow stone corridor which led, at a gentle slope, downward.

Muta's leap carried him forcibly against the wall, and this ruined his second shot. There was no third. The midget was scooped up, held with a steel-banded efficiency, and the gun was literally milked from his clutch by bronze fingers.

Carrying the hideous little dwarf, Doc charged forward. He held Muta's gun ready. The bronze man rarely employed firearms in personal combat, his reason being that he considered reliance on a gun bad policy.

The passage veered and opened into a large room. A man in the uniform of a revolutionist waited there, with a pistol. He had the weapon ready, but did not fire at once for fear of hitting Muta, who was clamped in front of Doc's chest, a kicking, screeching, rather ineffective shield. The soldier shifted his pistol, endeavoring to get a bead on Doc's skull.

The gun Doc had taken from Muta whacked an earsplitting thunder. The soldier's arm folded as if it had acquired an extra joint between wrist and elbow. The pistol slipped from between his fingers.

Doc, lunging on into the room, swept him aside. He glimpsed Monk, Johnny, Long Tom and Ham arrayed along the wall, each bound securely.

TWO men in the regalia of the rebel forces—the officer who belonged to Conte Cozonac's staff, and one other—were running forward. They grasped automatics which had barrels almost as long and thin as pencils.

The subterranean chamber convulsed again as Doc's captured gun drove lead. The weapon was small in his mighty hand, almost hidden, and its muzzle flame was a maroon spark that jumped out of his fist.

The foremost of the two soldiers screamed, went weak in the knees, and quite pale. Doc's bullet had mangled the fellow's hand against the grip of the automatic. The rebel's pistol hit the floor at his feet, bounced, and spun like a top. The man, interested only in his agony, and goggling at his shattered hand, made no effort to secure the firearm.

The survivor—the staff officer—lost his nerve. The beating he had taken from Long Tom earlier in the night probably helped. He dropped his gun and jutted his arms overhead. The mad desire to get his hands very high caused him to raise up on tiptoe.

DOC got a hammer from one of the benches and went to work on the lock. He struck rapidly; sparks flew; then the steel began to give.

The lock surrendered. Doc removed the bar and gave the door a shove.

“Who's gonna guard the prisoners!” Renny boomed.

Nobody volunteered to stand watch. They were all too desirous of seeing the mystery weapon.

“Monk, Ham,” Doc said, “it's up to you.”

“Aw,” Monk grumbled. “OK, Doc.”

He and Ham stayed behind, scowling blackly at the prisoners. The latter were all conscious by now, but had wrapped themselves in a great silence, except for an occasional frightful groan from the pair who had been hit by Doc's bullets.

Doc led the way through the opened door.

The chamber beyond was long and low of ceiling. Extensive racks had been hastily assembled with crude lumber. These were in the nature of cradles—and they held the mystery weapons.

For some seconds, Doc and the others surveyed the place in silence.

“Holy cow!” grunted Renny.

Skeleton-thin Johnny echoed his pet ejaculation, “I'll be superamalgamated!”

“Nearly a hundred of 'em!” Long Tom calculated aloud.

King Dal Le Galbin and Princess Gusta said nothing, but stared at the devices blankly, as if not fully comprehending their nature.

PRINCESS GUSTA said, “Give me a gun, someone!”

Renny passed her one of the pistols which had been taken from the captives below.

“We'd better scatter, and watch from the windows of the rooms that are dark,” the big-fisted engineer boomed softly.

He and Captain Henri Flancul scuttled through a door.

Ham and Monk came up the narrow stone steps from the subterranean region.

“Quiet!” Doc warned them. “Keep out of sight.”

“How'd you reckon they got tipped that we had grabbed Conte Cozonac and Muta?” Monk breathed.

“That,” Doc replied grimly, “is a mystery.”

Princess Gusta, standing close beside the bronze man, asked, “Is there—much danger?”

“Enough that you had better go below,” Doc breathed back.

The girl shuddered.

MONK was in anything but a happy frame of mind, and Doc Savage's next words did nothing to cheer him.

“The chances are that they took the torpedo with the idea of sending it back at us,” offered the bronze man.

Monk experienced difficulty in swallowing. Then events of the last few minutes, upstairs, took on significance.

“Doc, you got me out of the room where the fire is! You did that deliberately, so that they could escape.”

“Something like that.”

“But why?”

“It looked like the simplest solution of this whole mess.”

The chemist groaned audibly. “You're way out of my depth. If this is a solution, well, I—hope it is a solution.”

Doc studied the ceiling. It was of concrete, steel reënforced, and the storeroom being rather far underground, several feet of earth lay between themselves and the burning room above.

“The heat won't explode these,” the bronze man decided, and touched one of the aërial missiles.

“Maybe not,” Monk muttered. “But I know dugouts and how explosives work on 'em. This ain't deep enough to protect us from the T.N.T. in that infernal machine they took away with 'em.”

Doc moved toward the stairs, ascended them, and found Renny and Ham endeavoring to extinguish the gasoline fire, but without noticeable success. The hail of lead from the besiegers was a handicap.

“No use!” Renny said hollowly. “The floor is dry, and the gasoline set the stuff off like tinder.”

Doc demanded, “Where are the others?”

“Some of 'em are watching from the windows. That crew outside may try to rush us.”

From the kitchen Princess Gusta Le Galbin called, “Here are pots and pans and a bucket or two. We can carry water from that trap-door pit underground.”

Doc and Monk ran to get the receptacles.

“You,” Doc informed the young woman, “are what Americans call a brick.”

Monk tried to chuckle, produced an eerie croak instead, and put forth a second effort which was moderately hearty. The chemist was visioning imminent arrival of the missing aërial torpedo. He had seen enough of the things to know what the result would be.

“Doc doesn't pass out many compliments, Your Highness,” he told Princess Gusta.

“So I have noticed,” she said dryly.

Monk caught her double meaning, but did not feel like remarking upon it. Young women, especially those as attractive as this one, were usually accustomed to flattery of the sort sometimes called “sweet nothings.” Doc did not go in for that sort of thing. Monk decided the princess was piqued.

They filled the buckets and kettles in the water trap from which Ham had rescued his sword cane, using the aperture opened by Long Tom and Johnny's grenade for the purpose. Transferring the water to the fire was a ticklish, dangerous procedure.

In another part of the house, more of the roof, rent by machine-gun slugs, collapsed. Shot sounds were steady thunder out in the rain.

“We can keep the fire from spreading beyond the gasoline-soaked area,” Doc concluded, after watching the effects of their first bucket-brigade effort.

“Wonder why they started the fire?” Monk pondered. “Trying to burn us out?”

“No,” Doc told him. “They did it to furnish what you might call a magnet for their aërial bomb.”

Monk dropped his kettle. “Huh?”

“The aërial bombs are attracted by heat.”

Long Tom appeared in time to hear the last statement. The pallid electrical wizard strained fingers through his hair and shook his head slowly.

“But Doc, I supposed the torpedoes were guided by some radio adaptation.”

Doc was silent, seemingly listening.

“Baron Damitru Mendl's invention is an eye which, in connection with the usual relays and mechanism employed in radio-directing, sends the aërial torpedoes toward objects emitting heat,” he offered. “You will recall that all of the objects struck in the past were giving off heat—airplane motors, boat engines, motor cars, even a camp fire.”

Monk shuddered. “We can't get this fire out. Let's clear outa here before the bomb strikes.”

In the pause which followed, the clamor of machine guns and the squeal, rip and bite of striking bullets, appeared to take on a more deadly loudness.

“We couldn't make it,” Doc declared quietly. “The gunners are too far away to reach with our grenades.”

“Holy cow!” Renny boomed. “How can you take this so easy, Doc? When that thing hits—blooie! It's curtains!”

Doc said, “Take it easy.”

“Blast it! I ain't got your nerves!”

Long Tom, his voice strained and shrill, managed a gurgle that was meant for a laugh.

“I'd like to go out knowing more about this eye that Baron Damitru Mendl invented, Doc.”

The bronze man knocked shut the door of the room, from which the flames were coming, so that the light from within might not betray them.

“The secret of the eye's ability to literally see and guide the torpedoes to any hot object in darkness, fog or even a smoke screen is found in a well-known scientific principle.”

King Dal Le Galbin came crawling in from one of the other rooms, shouting, “They seem to be moving back farther from the house!”

“Gettin' out of the way of the blow-up,” Monk groaned silently; then aloud: “What is that scientific principle, Doc?”

“Any object that is warmer than its surroundings gives off beams of radiant heat,” Doc stated. “The heat from an ordinary radiator is an example. These rays penetrate darkness and smoke.”

The ruler of Calbia snapped, “This is a fine time to be discussing scientific principles!”

“Dry up!” Monk grunted, their danger making his temper short.

Doc continued as if there had been no interruption.

“The heat rays are invisible to the naked eye, although you can detect them by other methods. Holding your hand near the source of heat—the radiator for instance—is the simplest way.”

“Hurry it up, Doc!” Long Tom groaned. “I know my hair is turning white!”

“Baron Damitru Mendl's eye for detecting these heat rays is simply a photo-electric cell of remarkable sensitivity,” Doc finished. “The mechanism which causes the eye to point, like a compass needle, at the source of the rays, is too complicated to explain without illustrative drawings. But it is not new in principle. The eye, due to its astounding sensitivity, will sight a hot object from a considerable distance.”

“I know why you pulled that box of lighted stoves along behind our plane,” Monk grunted. “The heat was greater than that given off by our plane engines, and thus decoyed the torpedo.”

Doc began, “Yes. That—”

He went silent.

Through the gunfire, the hungry bullet noises and the rain came a mutter that all recognized instantly.

A plane motor had started.

“My army fliers!” King Dal Le Galbin gasped.

“Nix,” Monk discouraged him. “It's somebody takin' our plane up.”

The motor sound drummed, ebbed, rolled out again as the motors were warmed; and after a while it took on a changed note, shriller, more forceful.

“They're in the air!” Renny rumbled.

The multiple bawl of exhausts went faint, then began to grow rapidly louder.

“They climbed for some altitude,” Doc decided aloud. “Now they're coming back, probably to turn the aërial torpedo loose.”

Renny knocked his big fists together, and that noise was audible over the other uproar.

“Run for it, eh?” he cried. “Maybe we got a chance?”

Doc's one word was an emphatic crash. “No!”

They waited. Doc was motionless, saying nothing more. His five men, having before been in peril as great as this and having seen the amazing man of bronze extricate himself with some bit of master strategy, were not entirely without hope.

But there was always a chance of a slip. Doc, for all of his fabulous ability, was no supernatural personality. This might be the one time his plans would go wrong. The five were undeniably scared.

The plane roar was a thing approaching thunder.

Princess Gusta gripped Doc's arm.

“I guess I'm not a brick, after all,” she breathed thickly. “I'm—scared. Awfully scared!”

This was the psychological moment to drop an arm around the young woman's shoulder, and that was conceivably what she expected. Doc disappointed her.

“Cover your head with your arms,” he directed. “The blast may knock the roof down on us.”

The explosion did do exactly that, but it was a lead-shattered section of the roof which did fall, not the entire covering.

The very air itself took on the aspect of white-hot flame that blinded. There was shock against their eardrums, a slam of air that almost split the membranes. Raindrops, coming downward by the gallons, sheeted on the house and through the holes.

The part of the roof collapsed, its drop a crack and roar.

The shooting stopped as if some magic had caused every gun to run out of ammunition at the same instant.

Silence followed. Probably the flames crackled and some rain fell, but the force of the blast had rendered their ears insensitive to such minor noises.

Ten seconds, twenty, the pause lasted. Then Thump! The sound of a fall was heavy, and not far off.

“The plane motors,” Doc said.

There came a crash; then lesser clatters.

“That will be the rest of the plane,” surmised Doc.

After a time, the rain grew steady in its washing downpour, but the gunfire did not renew.

Habeas Corpus, the pig, grunted a few times, as if in complaint, until Monk promised audibly to pull off his oversize ears and make Ham a present of them. Monk sounded like a man enjoying one of the happiest moments of a lifetime, or maybe the most relieved moments.

“The aërial torpedo backfired on 'em, eh, Doc?” Monk asked. “How come?”

“There was,” Doc enlightened him, “a metal box in the tail portion of the plane, far back.”

“The one you brought from the shack—the case without any numbers on it?” mallet-fisted Renny interjected.

“That's it. It held apparatus which emitted rays that attracted the photo-electric eye in the aërial torpedo.”

“Holy cow! But wasn't it hot enough to attract attention?”

Doc shook his head. “The business of these rays is complicated. They go through solids—they're possibly a form of atomic stream. Science really doesn't know much about them. But the rays can be created and sent out without a great deal of heat.”

Renny made a long face. “Too complicated for me!”

“Consider these heat rays and X-rays as having somewhat the same qualities. Does that make it simpler?”

“Sure.”

“All right. The box in the plane emitted the rays in great quantities. I left it there to draw any aërial torpedo which might be launched at us.”

“I getcha.”

“But wasn't they afraid the plane motors would draw the torpedo after it was launched?” Monk put in.

“The fire here in the house would be the stronger attraction, especially since the eye was pointed at the fire. But the device in the box was powerful enough to turn the contrivance back.”

No shots had come from outside. Doc thumbed a flashlight and ranged its beam over those assembled in the room.

“Notice one of our party is missing,” he said grimly.

The others stared about.

“Captain Flancul!” gasped Princess Gusta. “Where is he?”

“I didn't see him through the last half of the scrap!” Monk muttered.

“Maybe he was caught under a piece of the roof when it fell!” Renny boomed, and wheeled as if to search.

“Captain Flancul was caught—but not under the roof,” Doc said quietly. “The explosion overhead got him.”

Princess Gusta brought a hand up and pressed it tightly to her eyes. “Then Captain Flancul—”

“Telephoned from here tonight, while pretending to search, and summoned the party of rebels who are outside,” Doc finished.

Renny rumbled rage. “Captain Flancul was the ringleader?”

“Apparently. It was he who freed the prisoners.”

“But, Doc, if you suspected—”

“There was no proof against him,” Doc explained. “When the rebel party came, it seemed certain that some one had summoned them. Captain Flancul was the logical one to suspect.”

“But you let 'im escape!”

“Let him give himself away,” Doc corrected. “We know he is guilty. Our job now is to get him.”

THE task of getting Captain Henri Flancul proved to be a nearly impossible accomplishment. Nor was it any simpler to seize Conte Cozonac and Muta.

True, enough of their bodies was found to identify each. The trio had been in the death plane. There was not much more to it.

The Calbian Royal Air Force pilots arrived in a dozen pursuit planes and dispersed the revolutionist besiegers, shooting a few and chasing the others into the thick woodland.

A wounded rebel verified what Doc had surmised. Captain Henri Flancul was the instigator of the revolt. He had stolen Baron Mendl's secret from the Calbian war department archives. It was Captain Flancul's wealth which had financed the purchase of rebel arms. He had fancied himself as a modern Napoleon, this Captain Flancul. He had hoped to make himself King of Calbia, then, with Baron Mendl's weird secret as a weapon, had contemplated conquest of surrounding countries.

The injured rebel told something else, too—he explained the fact that the aërial torpedo had been used against certain members of the revolutionist force. The victims had been men who disliked Captain Flancul, men who disagreed with his Napoleonic ideas. The torpedoes had been employed to put them out of the way.

DOC SAVAGE did not become King of Calbia.

King Dal Le Galbin, with fine trustfulness, did offer the bronze man a dictatorship by way of reward. He was even insistent that Doc accept. But, since the revolution collapsed almost as soon as it was left leaderless, Doc declined with fitting ceremony.

Princess Gusta Le Galbin, especially entrancing in a creation of San Blazna's finest dressmaker, was on hand and heard Doc's decision. She went away somewhat tight-lipped, and was secluded in her quarters the rest of the day, with not even her favorite lady-in-waiting admitted. That night, at the royal banquet tended Doc and his men, even a heavy application of mascara did not hide her red eyelids.

“Doc sure slays 'em,” Monk, looking more apish than ever in evening clothes, told Ham.

“It's too bad, you ape,” Ham, very natty in like regalia, retorted. “She's a swell girl.”

Doc Savage did ask one boon before leaving Calbia—which was granted. A sample of the aërial torpedo was sent to the war department of every country in Europe, together with detailed information as to how objects emitting suitable heat could be used as a decoy for the devices, and thus serve as a defense.

“That gets rid of the terror of the thing,” Doc declared.

Terror! The bronze man called the menace of the uncanny aërial torpedoes that, not knowing of the thing which he was next to encounter. Had he been a clairvoyant, he might conceivably have looked at what he was to meet within a few weeks, and consider the menace of the air missiles of comparative mildness.

It began in London. A man came to Doc Savage. He brought with him terror, death, awful mystery—and a story.

Several hundred years ago, there had been a great city in the jungles of Indo China, a populous city, with much wealth. One day, terror walked the streets—a thing so frightful that all the inhabitants fled in frenzy, and no single one ever returned, so that the city stood yet in the jungle, very much as on the day it was abandoned, except for the encroaching creepers and plants.

The terror was still there—and something else. That was the man's story. It led Doc Savage and his five aides to the mysterious horror of The Thousand-headed Man. Monk naturally knew nothing of the unpleasantness ahead when he suggested, “Say, Doc, how about takin' sort of a vacation for a few weeks, here in Calbia?” Ham, overhearing the remark, snorted loudly. Princess Gusta, Ham had noted, had turned to the pleasantly homely Monk for comfort. Monk was doing very well as comforter. Giving up the job did not appeal to him.

THE END