The Pirate of the Pacific ds-5

by Kenneth Robeson

  "Most important of all, we are sufficient in number to take up arms and offer Tom Too very stiff opposition. We already have the very latest in machine guns and airplanes. We stand ready to fight the instant Tom Too comes into the open.

  "Tom Too has learned this. That alone is forcing him to postpone his coup. He is seeking to learn our identity. He captured me here in New York and tried to force me to reveal the names of the secret society members. Once in possession of those names, he will remove every man. Then he will seize power."

  Doc put a hand inside his coat, where he wore the receiving apparatus of his television receptor. A faint click sounded. He glanced at his wrist.

  A molten glow came into his golden eyes, a strange, hot luminance.

  "Isn't there something you can do toward rescuing your three friends?" Mindoro asked Doc.

  "I'm doing it now," Doc told him.

  Mindoro was puzzled. "I don't understand."

  "Come here and look." Doc indicated the disk on his wrist.

  The others leaped to his side.

  "Holy cow!" Renny shouted out, "Why, there's Long Tom, Monk, and Johnny!"

  * * *

  FLICKERING on the crystal-like lens of the telewatch was the somewhat vague image of a dingy office interior, The place held a pair of desks, filing cabinets, and worn chairs.

  On three of the chairs sat Long Tom, Monk, and Johnny. They were bound hand and foot, tied to the chairs, and gagged.

  "I know that place," Renny ejaculated. "It's the office of the Dragon Oriental Goods Company, across the street from the skyscraper under construction."

  "Our friends were just brought in," said Doc.

  Mindoro made bewildered gestures.

  "That is a television instrument, of course," he muttered. "But I did not know they were made that small."

  "They re not, usually," Doc explained. "But this one is not radically different from the larger sets. It is merely reduced in size. Being so small, it is effective for only a few miles."

  "Where is the transmitter?" Renny questioned, "In the Dragonboat?"

  "In the adjoining office. I installed it after leaving you and Mindoro in the taxi. Other transmitters, operating on slightly different wave lengths, are at the radio store and at the spot where Tom Too so nearly finished you. This one got results first."

  Ham ran into the laboratory. He came out bearing several of the compact little machine guns which were Doc's own invention, gas masks, gas bombs, and bullet-proof vests.

  Riding down in the high-speed elevator, Ham, Renny, and Mindoro donned the vests, belted on the machine guns, and stuffed their pockets with bombs.

  Mindoro, who was unfamiliar with Doc's workin" methods, showed astonishment that the mighty bronze man did not follow their example.

  "Aren't you going to carry at least one of these guns?" he queried.

  Doc's bronze head shook a negative. "Rarely use them."

  "But why?"

  Doc was slow answering. He didn't like to talk about himself or his way of operating.

  "The reasons I don't use a gun are largely psychological," he said. "Put a gun in a man's hand, and he will use it. Let him carry one and he comes to depend upon it. Take it away from him, and he is lost — seized with a feeling of helpless-ness. Therefore, since I carry no firearms, none can be taken from me to leave the resultant feeling of helplessness."

  "But think of the handicap of not being armed!" Mindoro objected.

  Doc shrugged and dropped the subject.

  Ham and Renny grinned at this word play. Doc handicapped? Not much! They had never seen mighty bronze man in a spot yet where he didn't have a ready way out.

  Doc rode the outside of the cab which whisked them down Broadway. He watched the diallike lens of his telewatch almost continuously.

  Several Mongols were now in the Dragon concern office. They moved about, conversing. The image carried to Doc by television was too jittery and dim to permit him to read their lips. Indeed, he could not even identify the faces of the men in the room, beyond the fact that they were lemon-hued and slant-eyed.

  Considering the compactness of Doc's tiny apparatus, how ever, the transmitted image was remarkably clear. An electrical engineer interested in television would have gone into raptures over the mechanism. It was constructed with the precision of a lady's costly wrist watch.

  An interesting bit of drama was now enacted on the telewatch lens.

  Monk, by squirming about in the chair in which he was bound, got his toes on the floor. Hopping like a grotesque, half-paralyzed frog, he suddenly reached the grimy window. He fell against the pane. It broke.

  Some glass fell inside the room; some dropped down into the street.

  A yellow man ran to Monk and delivered a terrific blow. Monk upset, chair and all, onto the floor. He landed on fragments of the window he had broken. Doc watched Monk's hands intently after the fall.

  The Mongols peered anxiously out of the window. They drew back after a time, satisfied the falling glass had alarmed no one.

  Doc's view was now interrupted.

  A slant-eyed man came and stood directly before the eye of the hidden television transmitter. All the apparatus registered was a limited view of the fellow's back.

  Doc waited, golden eyes never leaving the telewatch dial. None of his impatience showed on his bronze features. Three minutes passed. Four. Then the Mongol moved away from the television eye.

  The situation in the Dragon concern office was exactly as it had been four minutes ago. The three forms bound to chairs were quiet.

  Doc's head shook slowly.

  "I don't like this," he told those inside the taxi. "Something strange is happening in that office."

  Doc continued to watch the scanning lens. The three tied to the chairs were motionless as dead men. He could not see their faces.

  "We're almost there, Doc," Renny said from the cab interior.

  Doc directed the driver to stop the machine. They got out.

  "Let's rush 'em!" Renny suggested, his voice a rumble like thunder in a barrel.

  "That is probably what they're hoping we'll do," Doc told him dryly.

  Renny started. "You think this is a trick?"

  "Tom Too is clever enough to know you picked up the trail of his man at the Dragon concern office. He must surely know we are away — he has been using the office. Yet he chanced discovery in bringing our pals there, or having his men bring them. He would not do that without a reason."

  "But what — "

  "Wait here!"

  Leaving them behind, Doc moved down a side street. Two or three pedestrians turned to stare after his striking figure, startled by sight of a physique such as they had not glimpsed before.

  * * *

  SOME distance down the side street, a street huckster stood beside a two-wheeled hand cart piled high with apples and oranges. This man had but recently arrived from his native land in the south of Europe, and he spoke little English.

  He was surprised when a voice hailed him in his native tongue. He was impressed by the appearance of the bronze, golden-eyed man who had accosted him. A short conversation ensued. Some money changed hands.

  The huckster wheeled his cart to a secluded spot. But he shortly reappeared, pushing his vehicle toward Broadway. He turned south on Broadway, and was soon before the Far East Building, on the tenth floor of which was the office of the Dragon Oriental Goods Company.

  The door of the Far East Building was wide. The huckster calmly wheeled his car inside an unheard-of thing.

  The half-caste elevator operator dashed forward angrily. Another man was loitering in the lobby. His broad face, prominent cheek bones and almost entire absence of beard denoted, to an expert observer, Mongol blood. He joined the elevator operator.

  They proceeded to throw the fruit vender out bodily. It took both of them. They wrestled the peddler clear to the sidewalk and dumped him into the gutter. Then they came back and shoved the cart out.

  Neither man noticed
the fruit in the cart was not heaped as high as it had been a moment before.

  The huckster wheeled his vehicle away, barking excitedly in his native tongue. He disappeared.

  Doc Savage had been hidden under the fruit. No one but the peddler knew Doc was now in the Far East Building — least of all the Mongol in the lobby, who was obviously one of Tom Too's pirate horde.

  "Me think that velly stlange thing to happen," the Mongol told the elevator operator.

  "Allee same lookee funny," agreed the operator. "Mebbe so that fella wolk alongside blonze man?"

  The Mongol swore a cackling burst in his native tongue. "Me thinkee good thing follow fluit fella! Alee same cut thloat and play safe."

  With this, he felt a knife inside his sleeve and started out. He reached the door.

  Splat! The sound was dull, mushy. It came from the side of the door. Thin glass fragments of a hollow ball tinkled on the floor tiling.

  The Mongol went to sleep on his feet — fell without a sound.

  Doc had hurled one of his anaesthetic balls from the stairway. He had not intended to reveal his presence. But it was necessary that he protect the innocent huckster whom he had bribed to bring him here.

  The elevator operator spun. He saw Doc. A screech of fright split past his lips. He charged wildly for the street door.

  The cloud of invisible, odorless anaesthetic had not yet become ineffective. The man ran into it. He folded down, and momentum tumbled him head over heels across the walk.

  Doc stepped to the door.

  From two points — one up the street, one down it — machine guns brayed a loud stream of reports.

  Doc had expected something like that. This was a trap, and Tom Too's men were hardly fools enough to wait for him on the upper floors of the building, where their retreat would be cut off.

  He flashed backward in time to get in the clear.

  Fistfuls of stone powdered off the building entrance as jacketed bullets stormed. Falling glass jangled loudly. Ricocheting lead squawled in the lobby.

  Doc glided to the stairs, mounted to the second floor and tried the door of a front office. It chanced to be locked. He pulled — not overly hard, it seemed. The lock burst from its anchorage as though hitched to a tractor.

  Entering the office, Doc crossed to a window and glanced down.

  The machine guns had silenced. A gray sedan sped along the street, slowing to permit the Mongols to dive aboard. The car continued north. It reached the first corner.

  Suddenly there was a series of sawing sounds, like the rasp of a gigantic bull fiddle.

  Doc knew those noises instantly — the terrific fire of the compact little machine guns he had invented. Renny, Ham, and Mindoro had turned loose on the Orientals.

  The gray sedan careened to the left. It hurdled the curb. There was a roar of rent wood and smashing glass as it hit a display window. The car passed entirely through the window. Wheels ripped off, fenders crumpled, top partially smashed in, it sledded across the floor of a furniture store.

  Doc saw the attackers wade through the wreckage after the car. Several times their little machine guns made the awful bull-fiddle sawings.

  Then the three men came out and sped toward the Far East Building.

  Doc met them downstairs.

  "Three of the devils were in the car!" Renny grimaced. "They're all ready for the morgue."

  "What about our pals?" Ham demanded. He seized Doc's wrist and stared at the telewatch dial. "Good! They're still tied to those chairs!"

  Doc said nothing. His golden eyes showed no elation.

  They rode up in the elevator. Renny raced down the tenth-floor corridor. He did not wait to see whether the Dragon concern office door was locked. His keg of a fist whipped a terrific blow. The stout panel jumped out of the frame like match wood.

  Renny, continuing forward, tore the door from its hinges with his great weight.

  Ham leaped to one of the bound figures, grasped it by the arm. Then he emitted a squawk of horror.

  The arm of the form had come off in his hand!

  * * *

  "THEY'RE dummies," Doc said. "The clothes worn by Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny — stuffed with waste paper, and fitted with the faces of show-window dummies."

  Ham shuddered violently. "But we saw Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny in here! They were moving about, or at least struggling against their bonds."

  "They were here," Doc admitted. "But they were taken away and the dummies substituted while one of the Mongols stood in front of the television transmitter, unless I'm mistaken."

  Renny's sober face was black with gloom. "Then they knew the television sender was installed here!"

  "They were lucky enough to find it," Doc agreed. "So they brought the three prisoners here, hoping we would see them and come to the rescue. They had the machine-gun trap down in the street waiting for us. That explains the whole thing."

  Ham made a slashing gesture with his sword cane. "Blast it! We haven't accomplished anything!"

  Doc swung over to the fragments of broken window lying on the floor. One piece was about a foot square, the others smaller. He began gathering them.

  "What possible value can that glass have?" Mindoro questioned curiously, still trembling a little from the excitement of the recent fight.

  "Monk broke this window and his captors knocked him over," Doc replied. "He lay on top of the glass fragments for a time, while the Mongols looked down at the window to see if the breaking window had caused alarm. They did not watch Monk at all for a few seconds. During that time, I distinctly saw Monk work a crayon of the invisible-writing chalk out of his pocket and write something on the glass."

  Renny lumbered for the door. "The ultra-violet apparatus is at the office. We'll have to take the glass there."

  They left the Far East Building by a rear door, thus avoiding delay while explanations were being furnished the police.

  In Doc's eighty-sixth-floor retreat, they put the glass fragments under the ultra-violet lamp.

  Monk's message confronted them, an unearthly bluish scrawl. It was brief, but all-important.

  Tom Too is scared and taking a run-out powder.

  He is going to Frisco by plane and sailing for the

  Luzon Unlon on the liner Malay Queen. He's

  taking us three along as hostages to keep you

  off his neck. Give 'im hell, Doc!

  "Good old Monk!" Ham grinned. "That homely ape does pull a fast one once in a while. He's heard the gang talking among themselves. Probably they figured he couldn't understand their lingo."

  Mindoro had paled visibly. He strained his graying hair through palsied fingers.

  "This means bloodshed!" he muttered thickly. "Tom Too has given up trying to get the roster of my political group. He will strike, and my associates will fight him. Many will die."

  Doc Savage scooped up the phone. He gave a number — that of a Long Island airport.

  "My plane!" he said crisply. "Have it ready in an hour."

  "You think we can overhaul them from the air?" Ham demanded.

  "Too risky for our three pals," Doc pointed out.

  "Then what — "

  "We're going to be on the liner Malay Queen when she sails from Frisco!"

  Chapter 10

  THE LUZON TRAIL

  THE liner Malay Queen, steaming out through the Golden Gate, was an impressive sight. No doubt many persons on the San Francisco water front paused to admire the majesty of the vessel. She was a bit over seven hundred feet long. In shipbuilding parlance, she displaced thirty thousand tons.

  The hull was black, with a strip of red near the water line; the superstructure was a striking white. The craft had been built when everybody had plenty of money to spend. All the luxuries had been put into her swimming pool, three dining saloons, two lounges, two smoking rooms, writing room, library, and two bars. She even carried a small bank.

  Most of the passengers were on deck, getting their last look at the Golden Gate. At For
t Point and Fort Baker, the nearest points of land on either side, construction work on the new Golden Gate bridge was in evidence — a structure which would be nearly six and a half thousand feet in length when completed.

  Among the passengers were some strange personages.

  Of exotic appearance, and smacking of the mystery of the Orient, was the Hindu who stood on the boat deck. Voluminous white robes swathed this man from neck to ankles. Occasionally the breeze blew back his robes to disclose the brocaded sandals he wore. A jewel flamed in his ample turban.

  Such of his hair as was visible had a jet-black color. His brown face was plump and well-fed. Under one ear, and reaching beneath his chin to his other ear, was a horrible scar. It looked as though somebody had once tried to cut the Hindu's throat. He wore dark glasses.

  Even more striking was the Hindu's gigantic black servant This fellow wore baggy pantaloons. a flamboyant silk sash, and sandals which had toes that curled up and over. On each turned-over toe was a tiny silver bell.

  This black man wore no shirt, but made up for it with a barrel-sized turban. He had thick lips, and nostrils which. flared like those of a hard-running horse.

  Passengers on the Malay Queen had already noted that the Hindu and his black man were never far apart.

  "A pair of bloomin' tough-lookin' blokes, if yer asks me," remarked a flashy cockney fellow, pointing at the Hindu and the black. "Hi'd bloody well 'ate to face 'em in a dark alley. Yer'd better lock up them glass marbles yer wearin', dearie."

  The cockney had addressed a stiff-backed, very fat dowager in this familiar fashion. They were perfect strangers. The dowager gave the cockney a look that would have made an Eskimo shiver.

  "Sir!" she said bitingly, then flounced off.

  The cockney leered after her. He was dressed in the height of bad taste. The checks in his suit were big and loud; his tie and shirt were violently colored. He wore low-cut shoes that were neither tan nor black, but a bilious red hue. His hat was green. He smoked bad-smelling cigars, and was not in the least careful where he knocked his ashes. His face bore an unnatural paleness, as though he might have recently served a long prison term.