Quest of the Spider ds-3

by Kenneth Robeson

  It was the print of Renny's gigantic thumb which had signed the blank sheet of paper they had left at the Danielsen & Haas office to show Doc they were in town.

  They caught sight of Renny's features through the hole his big fist had made. The face would have surprised a stranger, who would naturally have expected to see a wide grin.

  It was forbidding, solemn. Indeed, it looked as if the owner had just gone to a funeral.

  But that was another peculiarity about Renny, who was six feet four, and weighed two fifty. The more joyful the occasion, the more sour he looked.

  Another burst of screeches and moans came out of the room.

  Doc and Monk entered.

  * * *

  "GLORY be!" grinned Monk. "What're you doin' to that poor feller, Long Tom?"

  Long Tom—Major Thomas J. Roberts on the military records—was the weakling of the crowd, judging by appearances. He was undersized, slender, only fairly set up. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a somewhat sallow complexion—as though he might have spent a lot of his life in a cellar.

  His ears were big and thin and pale, and since they were between Doc and Monk and the light, it was almost possible to see through them.

  Long Tom sat on a beaten-up swamp man. He was busily engaged with the ends of an electric cord he had torn from a floor lamp. He was tying them to the wrists of the man on whom he sat.

  "This monkey don't know what electricity is," he snorted. "I'm gonna give a couple of shocks. It might persuade him to tell who the Gray Spider is, and where we can get him."

  It was natural that Long Tom's thoughts should turn to electricity. That was his profession. His reputation in the electrical field had few equals. He was called in for consultations by the great electrical experts often.

  A loud moan of agony drew their eyes to the window.

  "Another experimenter!" Monk snorted.

  The last member of Doc's group of friends and aids was near the window. He, too, sat on a prisoner. He was tall and gaunt, with a half-starved look. His hair was thin, and gray at the temples. He had the appearance of a studious scientist rather than an adventurer.

  This was Johnny, or William Harper Littlejohn to the great men of archaeology and geology. Johnny possibly knew more about the structure of the earth and the habits of mankind, ancient and modern, than ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called experts on the subjects.

  With one hand, Johnny was holding his glasses in the sunlight. The left lens of these spectacles was in reality a very powerful magnifying glass.

  Johnny didn't need a left lens, since he had practically lost the use of that eye in the Great War. So he carried in its place a magnifier, which he could use in his business.

  A curl of smoke came from the coat of the man Johnny sat on. The sun, concentrated by the magnifying lens, was burning the coat.

  "Talk!" Johnny directed his prisoner. "Or I'll put this glass to work on your eyes! It'll burn 'em out in about a minute!"

  The captive only glared hate.

  A moment later, Long Tom's victim gave a squawk as the electric current tingled through him. Although harmless, the voltage was highly uncomfortable. The man kept a tight lip.

  "I hate to discourage you," Doc chuckled, "but I'm afraid you won't get anything out of these men. You would have just about as much success trying to scare an Apache Indian into talking."

  "They're peculiar beings, these swamp dwellers," Johnny agreed. "Being the offspring of criminals who have fled to the swamps for safety, they have had one rule of existence drummed into them all their lives. That rule is to tell nothing to an outsider, no matter what the cost."

  "That's the idea," Doc agreed. "Did any of them get away?"

  Johnny counted Monk's armload of captives. "Five! And these two make seven. Seven are all we saw."

  "That's right," Renny agreed.

  "Then we'll take them to the hotel where I have some of their friends sleeping," Doc replied. "Afterward, we'll find a new hang-out for you fellows. And I'll outline the part you are to play in the festivities."

  They left, bearing the prisoners.

  * * *

  A MOMENT after Doc and his friends vanished, a man sidled out of a room down the corridor.

  "What I mean, I was lucky!" he muttered.

  The man was Bugs, other half of the crooked lumber detective pair. At the start of the fight which had resulted in the downfall of the swamp men, Bugs had had the good fortune to dodge into an empty room without being seen. There he had crouched, preserving his own hide, callous to what happened to his assistants.

  He scurried down successive flights of stairs, reached the lobby, and worked across it. Excitement raged in the lobby. Wiremen were arriving, although there was no need of them. Bell boys and guests charged about, adding to the general confusion. Bugs walked outside.

  He saw Doc Savage and his friends putting the prisoners into two taxicabs. Instantly, he concealed himself behind a fire truck.

  Bugs thought fast. He abhorred the idea of following Doc. He feared the big bronze man more than the devil himself. The devil wasn't real to Bugs, but only somebody the preachers shouted about. The giant bronze man was real—entirely too much so.

  But if he trailed Doc and his men to their new rendezvous, Bugs knew he would have something with which to curry the Gray Spider's favor. He decided to take a chance.

  He engaged a cab to follow the pair Doc and his men had taken.

  The cavalcade led to the little hotel where Doc was storing his drugged prisoners to await transportation to the New York State institution where their criminal tendencies would be cured.

  "Huh!" grunted Bugs, watching the captives being taken inside. "That beats me! I thought they'd be handed to the cops! Oh, well, I'll remember this address, and the Gray Spider can come here and turn his swamp snipes loose."

  Doc and his men—in one taxicab now—betook themselves to a neat little inn in the French district. Watching from the street, Bugs saw them engage quarters. He trailed inside after they mounted steps to the upper regions.

  Revolver in hand, Bugs climbed the stairs. He heard the innkeeper returning. The fellow had installed Doc and his men in their room. Bugs scuffled behind a handy drape, revolver ready, hoping the gloominess of the hallway would aid in preventing his discovery.

  The innkeeper went below without dreaming Bugs was inside.

  Down the hall, Bugs crept. He heard voices. One boomed like a large rock rolling around in a huge drum. He remembered that tone. It belonged to the human leviathan who knocked panels out of doors with his fists.

  The corridor was carpeted. On tiptoes, Bugs approached the door.

  Something crunched faintly underfoot. He paid no attention. It might be a bit of a cracker or a portion of a bread crumb. Bending over, Bugs put his ear to the keyhole.

  He could hear everything being said in the room!

  * * *

  "THIS fiend who calls himself the Gray Spider is clever," Doc Savage was saying. "I am convinced that to get him, we will have to go after him with a deeply laid plan."

  "Shoot the works!" Monk chuckled. "I'm r'arin' to go! I could scrap guys like them that tackled us a while ago all day, and it wouldn't be more trouble than fighting mosquitoes."

  "You don't lick any one this time," Doc told him. "You use that brain nobody would suspect you've got. Starting immediately, you are a famous German chemist. You specialized on poison gas. You sold a secret gas formula to an unfriendly country, and as a result, you're taking it on the lam. You're hiding out for fear secret agents will kill you. Got it straight?"

  "You bet." Monk's little eyes glittered.

  "All right," Doc smiled. "You will strike out into the swamps like a man who is hunting a hiding place. Your purpose, of course, is to let the Gray Spider add you to his organization. In this way—if you don't die of snake-bite, or the alligators don't eat you, or the swamp natives fill you full of lead, or the Gray Spider get suspicious and order you killed—you should learn s
omething."

  Monk's wide grin never budged. "Ain't you the cheerful guy, Doc!"

  "Renny" Doc continued, facing the big fisted engineer, "you will visit the governor of Louisiana, flying to Baton Rouge this afternoon. He will commission you a special forest ranger. I will telephone him long-distance, and see to that. Your engineering training fits you for the forest ranger job. You will go into the swamps, and, like Monk, try to learn something definite about the Gray Spider."

  "Want me to pretend to be a crooked ranger, eh?" Renny grinned.

  "I imagine it would get better results."

  Doc's golden eyes now roved to Long Tom, the electrical wizard. "You are to tap the phone lines of the large lumber companies of Louisiana, and arrange to listen in on any conversation of importance. This will entail hiring a force of expert stenographers, of course, since no man could listen in to twenty or thirty phones simultaneously."

  Long Tom nodded. "I presume it would be best to first tap the lines to the companies we know are in the power of the Gray Spider. Worldwide Sawmills, Bayou Sash & Door, and so on."

  "That's the idea."

  It was to Johnny that Doc's gaze now came. The gaunt, half-starved geologist and archaeologist grinned boyishly.

  "What is my part in this quest of the Gray Spider?" he asked.

  "It's the toughest job of all, Johnny," Doc told him seriously. "I'd tackle it myself, except that the Gray Spider has my description. You are the only other man fitted for the job, thanks to your knowledge of savage peoples and their religious beliefs and superstitions."

  "Meaning?" Johnny inquired.

  "That you are to enter the swamps as a high priest of voodoo!" Doc replied.

  * * *

  JOHNNY nodded eagerly. "That is right up my alley! I made an extensive study of voodooism in the southern United States, Haiti and Africa."

  "This is highly dangerous!" Doc warned.

  Johnny sobered instantly. "I know it! But I can handle the job!"

  "How is your command of the gibberish these swamp men speak?"

  "Only fair," Johnny admitted. "But it will get by. I speak the French patois of Haiti fluently. I will pretend to be a high priest of voodoo from another country."

  "O.K." Doc got to his feet. He stepped swiftly to the door. He opened the panel.

  A man lay outside in the hall. He was curled up and breathing regularly, as though asleep.

  "Well, for cryin' out loud!" Monk gulped. "Who's he?"

  "He is called Bugs," Doc replied. "He's one of that pair of crooked lumber detectives."

  "But what's happened to 'im?"

  "He crept up to the keyhole to listen," Doc said dryly. "And he went to sleep on the job."

  Monk snorted. "Quit running around the bush, Doc! What put him to sleep like that?"

  Doc Savage indicated several small glass bulbs on the floor. These were thin-walled, about the size of grapes, and held a colorless fluid.

  "A very powerful anaesthetic," he explained. "I spread them here as a matter of precaution before we started talking. Bugs simply had the misfortune to step on one."

  It was this which Bugs had mistaken for a bit of cracker or a crumb of dry bread crushing underfoot—although he never did discover that fact.

  * * *

  Chapter IX. THE SWAMP ENCOUNTER

  MONK departed to become an outlaw chemist fleeing from spies of a foreign country. Renny left to get his commission as special forest ranger. Long Tom ambled out full of his plans for a phone-tapping campaign, such as had probably never been equaled for wide-spread scope.

  Doc and Johnny added Bugs to the growing collection of sleepers in the hotel room. In fact, so extensive was his conquest becoming, Doc engaged an additional room. He made sure each of the villains was properly under the influence of the drug which kept them slumbering and out of mischief.

  "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen," Johnny counted them. "If this keeps up, you'll have to hire a special train to up-state New York. They'll be a lot of bother and expense."

  "But they'll be fourteen upright citizens when they're turned loose from that institution," Doc replied.

  "I don't understand how it's done!" Johnny chuckled. "I mean—how one of these rats can be taken and made into an honest man. And that whether he wants to be made an honest man or not!"

  "It's too complex to go into now," Doc told him. "It is done by many methods. Most undergo intricate brain operations that wipe out all memory of their past. Then they are taught a trade by which to make a living, as well as upright citizenship.

  "In other words, we merely reduce their minds to a blank and give them the sort of training they should have had. When they're released, crime does not occur to them—simply because they don't know they've ever been criminals."

  They left the hotel where the prisoners slept. Going to his plane at the airport Doc secured a metal case about the size of an old-fashioned telescope bag such as granddad used to carry. They retired to a room they engaged at a private residence.

  "Strip!" Doc commanded.

  Johnny obeyed. Doc opened the case. It proved to be a most complete make-up box.

  With ingredients from the box, Doc proceeded to dye Johnny's hide a muddy yellow from head to foot. He clipped Johnny's somewhat thin hair, dyed it an intense black, and gave it a permanent curl.

  "None of this stuff will wash off," Doc reminded.

  "Holy smoke!" Johnny ejaculated. "You mean I gotta go around lookin' like this until my coloring wears off?"

  "Sure," Doc chuckled. "That'll only be six months or so."

  * * *

  DOC SAVAGE continued to work over Johnny. He stood back at last.

  "From now on, you're in blackface!" he smiled.

  Where Johnny had sat, there now sprawled a lanky, scrawny-looking yellowish-brown man. He had thick lips. His nose looked as if it had been stepped on during his youth. Several realistic scars gave his eyes a mean cast.

  "Bien!"

  ejaculated Johnny, imitating the conglomerate dialect of the swamp men. "Yo' haf feenished, non?"

  "And how!" Doc declared. "You'll do. What's your name, swamp boy?"

  "Name ees plain Pete. Mees swell name, Pete ees. Oui?"

  "The name will do," Doc replied, judiciously. "But you're about a foot and a half taller than the rest of the swamp dwellers. Maybe they'll overlook that."

  The two men now separated.

  Doc Savage returned to the Danielsen & Haas building to keep watch over Big Eric and his daughter, and to await reports from his men.

  Johnny swaggered down into the foreign quarter. Doc had supplied him with a number of voodoo charms. These Johnny exhibited quite often, toying with them when he saw he was under the scrutiny of any one who looked as if he might belong to the voodoo Cult of the Moccasin.

  The net result was that he wasted an afternoon. From the look of things, New Orleans might never have heard of any kind of a voodoo cult, much less the Cult of the Moccasin with the fiendish master mind, the Gray Spider, at its head.

  "I'll have to tackle the swamp," Johnny muttered. Then, realizing he had slipped out of his dialect, added: "Me—I do not t'ink much of de swamp! Whew! I gotta even do my thinkin' in this crazy lingo, to play safe!"

  Johnny now stuck himself in a telephone booth and called Doc Savage.

  "My results so far are what the little boy shot at," he reported. "Thought I'd tell you I probably won't communicate with you again for a while."

  "Go to the Lake Ponchartrain water front, near the old Spanish fort," Doc directed.

  "Huh?" grunted Johnny, much surprised.

  "Be there shortly after dark," Doc added.

  "O.K." Johnny grinned. "I'll be there."

  * * *

  DUSK had dropped a steamy, clammy grasp upon New Orleans and environs. A faint, hot fog lent the moonlight pallor. The Gulf breeze, stirring the fog, made it seem as though the air were full of fine ashes. On the horizon in all directions, heat lightning flickered luridly.

 
; Johnny—a scrawny and sinister-looking gentleman of a pale-brown color—lurked in City Park near the old Spanish fort. Long, narrow Bayou St. John emptied into placid Lake Ponchartrain near by.

  Johnny settled behind an aromatic magnolia shrub and listened. He could hear cars honking occasionally on distant Gentilly Road, and on nearer park drives. Behind him, to the south, the lights of the New Orleans business district made a vast glow in the steaming night.

  Suddenly there reached Johnny's ears a series of droning noises. It was as if some one were holding a bumble bee near by, and letting it buzz its wings at intervals of a half minute or so. The sound came closer. Johnny recognized it.

  "A seaplane taxiing along the lake edge!" he decided aloud.

  Soon the buzzing quality left the motor spurts. They became violent hisses. The exhaust had been cut into mufflers.

  "Doc's speed job!" Johnny concluded. "It's the only craft I know of fitted with silencers."

  He grinned. Doc was going to get him into the swamp by plane! That would simplify things.

  Johnny knew Doc must have had floats installed on the big speed ship during the afternoon. The craft was equipped for quick installation of a type of float commonly carried in stock by large plane-supply concerns.

  Boldly, Johnny advanced for the lake edge.

  He did not expect danger. He knew positively he had not been trailed here. So he took no pains to muffle his footsteps or keep to the shadows.

  That was a mistake.

  Swi-s-h!

  Something sailed out of the blackness beneath a near-by tree. It settled on Johnny's neck. It tightened. It jerked him from his feet.

  Johnny clawed at the thing that had him. It was a lasso of thin piano wire. It yanked again, digging into the flesh of his throat.

  Three scrawny swamp men pitched from the murk beneath the tree. One flashed an ordinary cane knife which was honed like a razor.

  "Non!"

  gritted one of his fellows. "Gray Spider ees want talk to dis scamp!" He knocked the knife aside.