* * *
BUT it was widely known that voodooism did exist.
The leader of the monkey men strode over to the slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane.
"What ees wrong with yo’?"
The two men made a meaningless gibberish in reply. Their words expressed no coherent thought.
"Sacrй!"
rasped the monkey man. "Yo' answer me!"
The fellow slapped the faces of the two he was questioning. They merely swayed in their chairs. They did not strike back. The monkey man's little eyes began to protrude.
"Heem hexed!" he muttered.
The ignorant fellow thought a voodoo spell had been laid upon the pair!
"Yo' bat!" gulped another. "Ol' hex got heem both, sure!"
The evil crew stood about. They shifted from one bare foot to another. Sweat, like hot paraffin, came to their foreheads. They looked at the slick-haired man and the pilot as though the pair were particularly undesirable ghosts.
"What yo' want do?" one asked the leader.
The man considered. Then he grinned fiercely, as though pleased with the idea his weak brain had evolved.
"Bien!"
he ejaculated. "Keel heem both! That ees make heem all O.K."
But a couple of the others doubted whether the two should be murdered.
"Yo' reckon Gray Spider like that?" one inquired.
"Mebbe so—sure!" growled the leader. "Thees feller make beeg flop at job Gray Spider ees geeve heem! Yo' know what that ees always mean!"
"Death!" muttered the other.
"Sure teeng!"
"Maybe we better take heem along anyhow."
"Non, non!"
leered the leader. "Eet ees too much trouble. Me—I feex heem!"
With that, the evil fellow flashed a knife from inside his shirt.
He stabbed twice. Both the slick-haired man and the pilot fell out of their chairs after the blade sank into their bodies.
"That way to knockum dead, huh?" chuckled the killer. "Both plenty feenished!"
Pretty Edna Danielsen, now recovered, brought herself to realize cold murder had really been committed before her eyes. She parted her lips and screamed as loud as she could.
The leader of the monkey men struck her cruelly, knocking her senseless.
As the foul fist fell upon his daughter, a frenzy seized Big Eric. Rage made him a maniac. It gave him a maniac's wild strength. He lunged against his bonds.
Big Eric was a product of the old lumberman's school, where an employer was expected to be able to lick every man he had working for him. The massive lumberman was very strong. The ropes snapped off his wrists.
In flash seconds, Big Eric had his feet free. He leaped up.
The leader of the monkey men flung his knife.
Seizing a chair, Big Eric caught the blade on its bottom in the same manner his ancestors had probably caught tossed spears on their war shields. He wrenched the knife out and started to slice Ham's bindings. But there was no time. The vile little men rushed him.
* * *
THE heavy chair whistled around Big Eric's head. No whiskered Norseman fighting overwhelming hordes of Britons ever stood more staunchly.
The chair met a skull, and broke it as though a baseball bat had hit an egg. A pistol flamed. The lead missed. Before the gun could fire again, the whirling chair downed the man who held it.
"Sacrй—hees fight lak debbil!" wailed a monkey man.
Ham flounced to the knife Big Eric had dropped. He reached it. But brownish-yellow men piled atop him. The little fiends were tough. Laying hold of one of them was like grabbing a weasel. They held Ham helpless.
Ham saw the odds were overwhelming.
"Beat it!" he yelled at Big Eric. "Take Edna and high-tail it out of here!"
Much as he hated to leave Ham, Big Eric knew this was the best advice. The safety of Edna came first. And the odds were too great to hope for victory.
A monkey man, racing to the senseless form of Edna, would have slain the young woman with his knife.
"Non, non!"
shrieked the leader. "Gray Spider ees want either gal or Beeg Eric alive! Hees want 'em both alive eef can do! Eet be better eef they sign some papers!"
Big Eric digested this as he fought. It proved what he had already suspected. The Gray Spider was after the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern. Whatever hold the fiend expected to get on the company would be strengthened if he had papers signed by Big Eric and Edna to back his claims.
Reaching Edna's limp form, Big Eric scooped it up with his left arm. With his right arm, he flailed the chair.
Two men went down, neither hurt badly. Big Eric got his back to a door. He twisted the knob.
It was locked. One of the monkey men had turned the key, hoping to keep him from escaping the room.
The heavy chair swung, driven by the old lumberman's muscular arms. The door caved outward. It was as though a mule had kicked a banana crate.
Big Eric waded through the wreckage. The moist night breeze from the Gulf washed against his flushed face. He raced down the walk. He quickly outdistanced his short-legged pursuers.
He neared the street.
Two men suddenly leaped out of the high shrubbery that bordered the walk. Both held cold blue revolvers.
Big Eric still grasped what was left of the chair. He lifted it threateningly. But he didn't strike. A loud bark of delight came from his lungs.
These men worked for him! They were "Lefty" Shea and "Bugs" Ballard. They were special policemen for the lumber firm of Danielsen & Haas. It was their duty to run down timber poachers and ferret out professional radicals who might be causing labor troubles in the sawmill and lumber camps.
Big Eric didn't stop to reflect that it was strange these men should be here. They were his employees. They were here. That was enough.
"The Gray Spider's men!" Big Eric bellowed. "Lefty! Bugs! Come on! We’ll make the pack of rats hard to catch!"
"Lead us to 'em" boomed Lefty.
Both lumber detectives were burly fellows. They had hard features and a tough manner.
Big Eric whirled to lead the way.
* * *
THE moment Big Eric's back was turned, Lefty struck heavily with his revolver barrel. The weapon parted the lumber king's thatch of blond hair. He fell heavily with his unconscious daughter.
He had been stricken down by one of his own employees.
The vicious little monkey men ran up, greeting Lefty and Bugs as friends!
"Bien!
Yo' gat heem, huh?" ejaculated the leader of the gang.
"Yeah, an' blasted lucky for you that we did!" sneered Lefty. "It looks like he blamed near smeared the whole mess of you swamp snipes!"
The monkey man showed his teeth in a weasellike snarl. He did not like the razzing that Lefty was handing him. However, he knew there was no time to argue about it.
"Yo' stow the sass!" he growled. "Yo' stay here. Beeg bronze man ees come back. Get heem. Me—I leeve four my boys so yo' have plenty men fo' job."
"Take your four men along!" Lefty snorted. "Me and Bugs don't need any help to croak one man!"
The leader of the monkey men leered knowingly. He had seen Doc Savage. And he was not too ignorant to know a Hercules of a fighting man when he saw one. He had an idea it would be the finish of Lefty and Bugs if they jumped the bronze giant without re-enforcements.
The monkey man rather fancied the thought of Lefty and Bugs meeting disaster. But should he fail to leave some of his men, he feared the wrath of the Gray Spider. And that wrath was a terrible thing.
"Me—I leeve my four boys, anyhow," he grumbled.
"Sure," chuckled Lefty. "They can stand around and watch two good men work!"
The insult was carefully ignored. Ham, Big Eric, and Edna were picked up bodily.
The corpses of the dead men were callously left lying inside the mansion. The mouth of one gaped open widely—showing the hideous moccasin tatooed inside.
/> After all but four of the monkey men had departed with the prisoners, Lefty and Bugs took up a position in the shrubbery beside the house. The unsavory pair fell to whispering.
"As long as these four swamp snipes are here, why take any risk ourselves?" Lefty inquired. "Let's let 'em grab the bronze guy. If they should get hurt, it ain't no skin off us."
"An idea, pal!" chuckled Bugs. "We'll do just that!"
They proceeded to maneuver the four monkey men inside the house, where they would be in a position to drive blowgun darts at Doc Savage about the same moment he discovered the bodies.
Lefty and Bugs waited outside.
The single shot which had come during Big Eric's valiant fight had evidently passed as an automobile backfire, for it had attracted no attention. Edna's scream had escaped notice, too, probably because the Big Eric Danielsen mansion was set in elaborately landscaped grounds that were as large as a city park.
* * *
BEFORE long, a car halted in front of the estate. It did not enter the grounds. After loitering a moment, as though to permit a passenger to alight, it drove on.
"Here he comes, I'll bet!" breathed Lefty.
They waited. There was no sound. They held their breath, but they still could hear nothing. No feet slapped the walk. No leaves or branches stirred.
It was as if the car had paused only to let a ghost enter the estate. Lefty and Bugs were puzzled.
Then their hair stood on end.
A mighty bronze man had appeared in the room that held the bodies.
His coming had been silent, as though suddenly projected there by an invisible motion-picture machine.
His golden eyes surveyed the scene. The slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane lay beside their chairs. They had fallen there after being stabbed, and had not moved since. The one monkey man Big Eric had slain in his fight also reposed on the floor.
The latter's jaws were agape. The tatooed serpent was visible on his mouth roof.
Even Lefty and Bugs, crouched outside, could see the strange flickerings in the golden eyes of the bronze giant. Those weird gleamings conveyed something terrible to the two villains. Just looking at them seemed to suck the courage out of their stocky bodies.
They were so awed that they hardly dared breathe.
A blowgun tube was projecting from a keyhole. Lefty and Bugs could see it. They were glad it was behind the bronze man. If he just wouldn't turn! And he was giving no sign of wheeling.
One second—two—and death would strike at Doc Savage's back.
But Doc suddenly went to the pilot of the gas plane, moving out of range of the blowgun. He bent over the man.
He had noticed the fellow breathing! The knife stroke had not been fatal!
Swiftly, Doc administered some of the compound which annulled the effects of the weird drug which the pilot had been given.
Outside the window, Bugs and Lefty were on the horns of a dilemma. They didn't want to shoot the bronze man, for fear the shot, fired outdoors, might attract attention. Too, they were downright afraid to start trouble. So they waited for the blowgun to do its grisly work.
Lefty and Bugs knew there was a poison dart in the blowgun now. It would bring instant death!
* * *
THE pilot of the gas plane stirred feebly. Control of his faculties had returned.
"The devils!" gritted the pilot. "The dirty, double-crossing swamp snipes!"
The fellow could remember all that had happened while he was helpless! He knew his own gang had tried to murder him. And it might be that they would succeed. The pilot was very far gone from his stab wound.
"Where is Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room. The power of it made Lefty and Bugs shiver outside the window.
A fit of coughing seized the pilot as he tried to reply. Crimson frothed his lips.
Working rapidly, Doc gave the man some relief from his wound. He did this by sinking his fingers into certain nerve centers, massaging them so as to produce a paralysis that deadened pain somewhat. It was in the realm of surgery that Doc Savage was most proficient, and osteopathy, chiropractic, and other similar fields were a part of his training.
When Doc finished, the pilot could speak.
"Look out!" he choked. "Behind the door across the room! They're hiding there with a blowgun!"
He had warned Doc!
The big bronze man spoke softly. No one but the dying pilot—Doc knew now that the fellow could not live—heard the words.
"I knew they were there!" Doc said.
The pilot couldn't understand it. "But how—"
"They're in need of a bath," Doc replied. "I could smell them. I also saw their blowgun project from a keyhole. I am out of range here."
But Doc did not know the two devils, Lefty and Bugs, lurked outside with revolvers in hand and a mixture of fear and murder in their hearts!
The pilot had not been able to note any unusual odors in the room. It was incredible to him that the bronze giant could not only detect a foreign smell, but locate its source—all without seeming to.
But the pilot had no way of knowing Doc exercised his olefactory senses intensively each day through his life. He knew nothing of the two-hour routine of high-pressure exercises which this bronze man put himself through each morning. An exercise routine which had made him the superman he was!
"The Cult of the Moccasin got the others," breathed the pilot. "The devils also left me for dead!"
"Do you know where they took the prisoners?" Doc inquired swiftly.
Outside the window, Lefty and Bugs were shivering in their excitement. Why didn't the monkey men go into action? They began to raise their own pistols.
"Yes," gulped the dying pilot. "I know where the captives were to be taken. It is a spot at which they will be held for a time. Then other members of the Cult of the Moccasin will come and take them to the Castle of the Moccasin. Only the Gray Spider and a few others know where the Castle of the Moccasin is."
"Where can I find them?" Doc interrupted. "You can tell me the rest later!"
The pilot drew in breath to answer. But the answer did not come.
The monkey men leaped out of the adjoining room. They rushed to the attack. One lifted the blowgun to his lips. He discharged it.
But big bronze Doc moved so quickly that he seemed to vanish completely, to reappear several feet to one side.
The blowgun dart missed by a yard. It plinked into the wall and stuck by its needlelike point.
Before the four monkey men could realize what had happened, there towered among them a Nemesis which might have been made out of metal.
The four clutched their sharp knives. They were at least not cravens. They would fight to the death!
* * *
TO the death it was! And it came more swiftly than they had dreamed possible.
One monkey man launched a stab he felt certain would end the fray. It was aimed directly for the bronze giant's heart. But the monkey man felt a terrible paralysis seize his wrist and arm. He did not have time to realize a steel-thewed hand had grasped his darting knife fist and turned it toward his own vitals—the blade was in his heart before he could realize that fact.
The wounded pilot of the plane put forth a terrific effort and hauled himself across the room. He took refuge in a closet, laboriously pulling the door shut after him.
Another monkey man struck at Doc with a razor-sharp stiletto. He, too, believed his stroke would go home. But by some miracle the bronze man moved a trifle. The blade only sheared open his coat and shirt.
"Sacrй—"
The beginning of the oath was the fellow's last word. He tried to strike again. There was a hollow snap. He collapsed. Great hands had broken his neck.
Lefty and Bugs, outside the window, leaped out, fearful of throwing themselves into the fray. They hoped the swamp men would soon overpower Doc.
Suddenly the bronze man strode across the floor. He held the surviving two monkey men, one in
each hand. The swamp rats squirmed. They tried feebly to knife the giant. But such was the agony of the hold upon them that they could not.
A pair of mighty arms propelled them for the window. They flew through the air. Their spinning bodies wiped the glass out of the window.
Both fell at the feet of Lefty and Bugs. This fact led the two crooked lumber detectives to think they had been discovered.
They were cowards. Terror seized them. Although they could have shot at the bronze man, they spun and fled instead. The threshing of the two dazed monkey men who had been hurled through the window covered the sound of their flight.
Doc Savage lunged to the side of the dying pilot. It was important that he get an answer to his question—where had the men of the Cult of the Moccasin taken Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?
But the man was dead!
From his stiffening lips would never come word of where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been taken!
* * *
Chapter V. THE BRONZE RESCUER
THE giant bronze form of Doc Savage moved to the window. He did not see Lefty and Bugs, because they were already out of sight.
Dropping lightly through the window, Doc searched the two dazed monkey men. He threw their weapons away. They seemed to grow light in his powerful grasp, and sailed through the window into the house. They tumbled end over end across the floor, such was the momentum with which they had been tossed.
Doc did not bother to tie them. When one tried to flee, he was knocked flat on his back before he had taken a single step. They had no more chance of escaping Doc than a captured mouse has of evading the cat that caught it.
"Where are the people who were taken away?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room.
"No savvy what yo' talk about!" muttered one of the vile swamp denizens.
"Have you any idea what will happen to you if you don't talk?"
The pair were scared. But it was not a drooling, cowardly fear. They were determined not to talk.
"Yo' nevair geet one single word from us!"
Doc was convinced they were right. He knew men. He felt these half-savage swampers could be tortured to death without a word escaping their lips.
Standing erect, Doc strode over to the lifeless body of the pilot. Then his gaze went to a cheap ring on a finger of the dead man.
Quest of the Spider ds-3 Page 4
