WADE was silent for a moment, his brow furrowed.
“You own this mine?” he asked at length.
“I inherited it. There was some mix-up about the title and I learned about the property only a year ago. My grandfather married a Spanish girl. It had been in her family since Pizarro conquered Peru.”
“I see,” Wade replied musingly. “Dellera desecrated the temple of the Poison People’s ancestors—the ancient Incas—and sold or melted down the statues of their gods. Naturally the natives are on the warpath. They want revenge.”
“Dellera’s taken precautions, but it’s death to go out of the gorge,” the girl said.
“That’s why he set up that pill-box at the mouth, isn’t it?” Wade hazarded.
“Yes. To keep the Poison People from coming in. They’d kill us all if they could. The prisoners can’t escape for there’s nowhere for them to go except the forest. And that’s suicide….” She hesitated at the door of the largest structure. “He lets me go anywhere I want, though. I can’t escape. I can’t fly a plane, so I can’t get away in Patek’s ship. If—”
The iron door swung open.
“Come in, Mr. Wade,” a silky voice murmured. “Come in! I’m glad you found Astrid’s arguments convincing. I’m very glad!”
The man who stood in the doorway was grossly and enormously fat. Sweat formed on his bald head and dripped down his sagging pink jowls, saturating his ill-fitting linen suit. His teeth, stained black with betel-nut, flashed darkly in a triumphal smile. A holstered gun swung from a cartridge belt that circumnavigated that huge paunch. But Dellera’s cushion-like hands were empty.
“Come in,” he urged again. “I’m not dressed for outdoors.” His chuckle seemed to surge up from fat abysses. “Outside the gorge it’s blazing hot, but in here it’s like an iceberg.”
Biting her lips, Astrid stepped past Dellera. Wade followed, his back itching with the sense of danger all around. He had expected to find himself in some sort of factory, but instead there was only a narrow passage, its length marked by several doors. The first one, ajar, was almost at Wade’s side.
He glanced in, paused and turned to face Dellera, whose huge face was impassive. Then, his face flushing with suppressed rage, Wade stepped across the threshold. He stared down at the bleeding, unconscious figure that had caught his eye.
From photographs, he recognized Rupert Carnevan, but the Government agent was in a sad state now. His garments were torn and ragged and filthy, caked with what seemed to be black coal-dust. His hands were puffy and blistered. He lay crumpled in a corner, blue bruises rising on his haggard face, one eye discolored by an angry welt.
The room was fitted up like an office. Seated idly on the edge of a desk, swinging his legs, was a hawk-nosed, thin-faced man with a penciled line of mustache. It was Patek. He was dangling a gun from one forefinger, but made no move to use it as Wade, with a sharp glance at him, crossed the room and knelt beside the unconscious explorer.
FROM behind Wade came Dellera’s chuckle.
“Do you know Carnevan? Poor chap, it became necessary to discipline him.”
“Looks like you did a good job of it,” Wade said tonelessly.
“Yes,” Dellera stated blandly. “When we discovered this morning that Thunder Jim Wade and his two colleagues were on our trail, we guessed that a message must have been smuggled out somehow. Patek, here, found the radio set you so cleverly installed in that Indian head. I’d noticed that Astrid and Carnevan had been pretty thick lately, so I questioned our friend.” Dellera popped a fragment of betel-nut into his capacious mouth and chewed slowly. “He didn’t want to talk, but I managed to convince him.”
The fat man slapped his grotesquely padded fists together, with a soft thwacking sound. Wade saw horror in Astrid’s dark eyes as she glanced at Dellera. The girl was standing in the doorway, waiting, but every line of her figure spoke of taut anxiety.
Wade rose from his knees beside the explorer, found a cigarette and lit it thoughtfully. Through the smoke his narrowed eyes squinted at the two men.
“What about my friends, Red Argyle and Dirk Marat?”
The gun spun from Patek’s forefinger. The man’s knife-face was expressionless. His legs swung slowly, ominously. Dellera chuckled again.
“Oh, they’re safe. They were the bait that caught you. Let me have your gun, Wade, and that machete. My men have orders to kill Marat and Argyle unless you play ball.”
Wade shrugged, slipped the machete and gun from his belt and tossed them to the floor. Patek slid off the desk and gathered them up. At a nod from Dellera, he approached Wade and searched him thoroughly.
Dellera examined the tiny pliers with interest.
“So that’s how you got through the barbed wire, eh? I thought as much.”
He watched Patek put Wade’s weapons into a drawer of the desk and turn a key in the lock. “As a matter of fact, I’m taking unnecessary precautions. I don’t think even Thunder Jim Wade could beat my draw.” The fat jowls shook with silent laughter. “I don’t look very fast, do I? But watch.”
Wade did not see the pudgy hand move, yet suddenly Dellera’s gun was in his hand. The fat man shot from the hip, apparently without aiming. In a matter of a split-second the bullet splashed against the rock wall a hair’s-breadth from Wade’s ear. Stinging fragments of stone and hot lead burned his cheek.
Chapter VII
The Factory in the Jungle
WADE had not moved an inch, but his nostrils dilated almost imperceptibly. Never in his life had he seen such a quick draw. Dellera, for all his gross bulk, was far more dangerous than Wade had expected.
The fat man spat betel-juice on the floor and grinned. “Okay. Now you’re going up to the mine, Wade, with the rest of the crew. Patek!”
He pointed to Carnevan’s motionless body. Patek picked up a pail of water from the floor and sloshed its contents over the explorer, who groaned feebly.
“Pick him up,” Dellera said. “He’s rested long enough.” The fat man turned to Wade. “Come along. Astrid, you’ll amuse yourself, won’t you?”
There was harsh mockery in his voice.
Silently Wade followed Dellera out the door. Patek came behind them, half-supporting Carnevan, who was still in a stupor and dragging his feet listlessly. Wade knew, without looking back, that there was a gun aimed unwaveringly at his spine.
They went through the “temple.” As Thunder Jim had expected, it was a factory of sorts for refining gold ore. The light, portable machinery was motionless and silent now. A few hard-faced, armed men were lounging about, on what Wade guessed to be guard duty.
There was no time to see much. The four men emerged in the cold wind of the gorge and started down the cleft, along the path that led to the tunnel mouth some distance away. The wind was at their backs. Wade’s keen eyes examined his surroundings, mentally filing away what he saw.
The ground was broken here, littered with boulders and crevices. At his back was the central temple-factory and its surrounding buildings. Ahead and to his left was the mine. On the right, the river flowed down to the gorge’s mouth, where the pill-box was set to guard against the Poison People.
There was nothing that could be done just yet. Wade looked up. Above the mine’s mouth the cliff slanted outward as it rose, jagged and weathered. It could be climbed by an experienced mountaineer. There seemed to be many boulders up there that could be easily dislodged. Since it overhung the place, a rock dropped from a height on the cliff-face might strike the temple building itself, if it did not hit the river.
On the other hand, Dellera would have guarded against such an obvious danger. There probably was a marksman on the temple roof.
The tunnel mouth gaped. They passed under the overhead cable, ducking as a car filled with black ore slid out and instantly the rushing, icy wind was silent. The mine was lit at intervals by electric bulbs that were strung in a row along the ceiling.
After a few steps the passage broadened out into a grea
t room, its rock walls carved intricately and with niches here and there. A temple, Wade thought. Most of the niches were empty, but in a few were statues of Incan gods, made of rock. The really valuable ones, those made of gold, Dellera would have removed long since.
THIS, then, was the desecrated temple of the Incas, whose degenerate descendants, the Poison People, were now seeking murderous revenge. Well, it was their right, Wade found himself thinking. It was quite likely that some fair compromise could have been reached between the natives and any whites who wished to work the mine. But to take the sacred idols of the Indians and ruthlessly destroy them—that, to a native, was unforgivable.
They went on, into a tunnel mouth that yawned in the farther side of the underground temple.
Dellera’s purring voice broke into Wade’s thoughts.
“Resting, eh? Well, I suppose even the crew must eat some time. Pedro!”
At this point the mine widened somewhat and the lights were brighter. Thirty or more men, dirty, unshaved and haggard, were squatting on their haunches, eating with wolfish hunger from tin pannikins filled with some unsavory mess. There were only five guards. Wade was puzzled by this. Thirty men could certainly overpower five, unless they knew that the attempt would be hopeless.
The dull-eyed prisoners glanced up, then went back to their feeding. The unloaded flat car swung in on the overhead cable and went whizzing by into the depths of the mine. As it vanished, Patek, with an impatient gesture, sent Carnevan reeling into the group of prisoners.
The explorer lay motionless where he had fallen. A big man, with a thatch of flaming red hair, picked him up and set him in a more comfortable position. It was Red Argyle, already filthy with the black dust, his craggy face grim as iron.
He didn’t look at Wade. Neither did Dirk Marat, whose slim figure Wade saw near Argyle’s. The little man was eating, with incongruous daintiness, out of his pannikin and humming under his breath some foreign song.
It wasn’t a song, though. It was the Spatari Radio Code, a little-known universal language vaguely akin to Esperanto and Ro, but without grammar or vocabulary. It was based on the seven notes of the musical scale. More than once Wade and his two colleagues had used it to communicate secretly in the presence of enemies. For all Dellera knew, Marat might have been singing La Cucaracha in Sanskrit.
Wade couldn’t answer immediately without giving himself away, but his right hand moved swiftly in a few odd gestures, unseen by anyone but Marat. It was a single word in the one-handed deaf and dumb language.
“Wait!”
While Wade and his friends knew a good many languages thoroughly and possessed a working knowledge of others, for their own private communication they depended on little-known codes like the Spatari Radio Code.
Dellera made a gesture. Pedro, a stocky half-breed with a white scar slashing across his face, came forward, bearing a good-sized rock about which a length of strong chain was wound. On the chain’s end was an ankle-cuff. Pedro deftly affixed this to Wade’s leg.
“I’m taking no chances.” Dellera grinned and spat betel-juice. “The old-fashioned ball and chain has its uses. You can’t escape, Wade, so you may as well settle down to mining with your friends.”
THUNDER JIM didn’t answer. Silently he carried the heavy rock over to where Marat was sitting, accepted the pannikin of greasy stew that was given him and apparently fell to work eating it. Dellera stood watching him for a long moment. Then, with a grunt, he turned and went out, followed by Patek.
Pedro’s rifle was slung easily in the crook of his arm. The half-breed’s eyes were intent on Wade, but he entirely missed the significance of what was happening in that dark corner.
Wade’s hand was moving swiftly. Marat nodded briefly and his eyes searched the mine’s floor. Failing to find what he sought, he caught Argyle’s glance and hummed a few notes.
The red-haired giant yawned lazily, stretched and palmed something from the rock wall. It was a tiny sliver of sharp-pointed rock. Pedro did not sec it pass from Argyle to Marat and thence to Wade, who leaned forward and seemed to relax. But his hand, unseen, was working on the lock of his ankle-cuff.
Thunder Jim and Houdini had much in common. Wade could have escaped from that cuff by painfully working it over his ankle and foot. His long year of gymnastic training had given him incredible muscular control. But he couldn’t do that without arousing Pedro’s suspicion. However, the sliver of stone made an excellent picklock and few locks were mysteries to Wade.
It wasn’t long before he heard the tiny click that told him he was free. But he did not attempt to escape. Instead he communicated with Marat, telling him of his plan.
The little man’s face was impassive under the grime. He acknowledged the message with a quick flirt of his hand, passed the information along to Argyle and waited. From the depths of the mine came a faint creaking.
The loaded pulley-car swung into view. Instantly Wade acted. The chain dropped from his leg as his muscles tensed.
Marat stood up, seemed to stumble and fell directly into the path of the cable-car. Red Argyle’s huge body seemed to explode into action as he hurled himself forward like a catapult. He smashed into Marat and knocked the smaller man out of the car’s path.
For a moment, the guards’ attention was diverted to the incident. That moment was enough. Wade picked up the chain-wrapped rock. He saw Pedro whirl, the rifle swinging around to cover him. Simultaneously he hurled the stone.
It smashed into Pedro’s chest, knocking him back. Then the cable-car was between them. Wade’s lithe body hurtled up. His hands caught the edge of the car and he swung there for a second before he could draw himself up. A bullet shrieked past him.
He was on the car, shielded from deadly gunfire by the pile of ore that filled it. The vehicle was racing swiftly toward the mine entrance. Behind him he heard shouts and the thud of racing feet.
The car slowed. Before it came to a stop, Wade was off and dashing toward the daylit rectangle of the mine’s mouth. His back crawled with expectation of a bullet, but the car’s bulk shielded him.
Then he was out in the icy, wind-swept daylight of the gorge. To his right, the temple towered. At his left, but out of sight from here, was the pill-box that guarded the entrance.
Wade turned and went up the face of the cliff like some agile trapeze artist. The weathered stone was full of cracks and rifts. He climbed faster.
His captors poured out of the mine, Pedro in the lead. Blood was trickling from the half-breed’s mouth. They did not look up at first. Their eyes searched the rocky plain that stretched down the river.
Wade was far up now, working to the right toward the temple. Beneath him, he could see the gray, oily surface of the river, for the cliff overhung it at a sharp angle, making it more difficult to climb. But even that had its advantages.
From the temple’s roof a puff of smoke mushroomed. A bullet spanged against the rock near Wade, exploding into a star-shaped silvery splash. Now the men below also saw their quarry. Their guns joined the fire.
But the marksman on the temple roof was more accurate. His next bullet made the figure on the face of the cliff stiffen, arch out like a bow and fall.
Wade’s impetus sent him out over the river. Icy water swallowed him.
Pedro and his men came racing across the plain. They halted on the bank, guns ready. Silently the half-breed pointed to a long streak of blood sliding downstream with the current. His lips twisted in a cruel, triumphant grin.
Chapter VIII
Back to the Thunderbug
THUNDER JIM WADE had not counted on such excellent marksmanship. Drifting down the river, rising occasionally to breathe, he realized that he had had a narrow escape. The flesh wound on his shoulder stung painfully, though it did not impede his movements. Yet blood, in a tropical river, was dangerous. The taste and smell of it might bring piranhas.
Still Wade knew he could not leave the river till he was out of the gorge. The pill-box still guarded the entrance.
He wondered whether Dellera had ordered the barbed wire net repaired, decided that there had not been enough time for that.
Now what would happen? Alone and unharmed, he couldn’t fight Dellera and Patek, or free the mine slaves. But there was the Thunderbug.
Drifting with the current, it did not take him long to reach the gorge’s mouth. As Wade had hoped, the net had not yet been repaired. Holding his breath, he slipped through the gap under the water. Men from the pill-box were patrolling the bank above, he saw, but they did not glimpse him in the murky, reddish-brown water.
A few minutes later he was safely in the depths of the jungle. With a gasp of relief he climbed ashore. There might be no piranhas here, but the shadows held things just as deadly.
He found the flame-pistol where he had cached it, bandaged his arm and set out to retrace his steps. The distant whisper of a drum paced him, but there was no visible trace of the Poison People. Though he was not molested, the drum muttered of danger.
“Death!” it sang resonantly through the dim aisles of the forest. “Beware of the Poison People. Death—beware—death—beware!”
The Thunderbug was still moored where Wade had left it. Several arrows lay blunted on the ground near its doors, but the Poison People had vanished into the jungle.
Wade climbed into the Thunderbug’s cabin, closing the door carefully behind him. He studied the controls for a moment, then made several quick adjustments. He had already cast off from the bank. As the propeller spun, the amphibian swung out into the lake.
Wade guided the plane upstream along the river, which was quite broad enough to accommodate it. Fighting the current, the powerful motors dragged the Thunderbug along. Tight-lipped, Thunder Jim sat at the controls, deftly guiding the craft. It responded to his least touch, almost as if it were a part of him, an extension of his own body. He knew all its secrets and capabilities and how it would respond.
Presently, before reaching the gorge’s mouth, he guided the Thunderbug into a little cove where the water lay still and silent. He could go no farther in a plane—but the Thunderbug was considerably more than just a plane!
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