The Land of Terror ds-2

by Kenneth Robeson

  He saw a caterpillar which had been knocked from a leaf so recently it still squirmed to get off its back, on which it had landed. He saw grass which had been stepped on, slowly straightening. The direction in which this grass was bent showed him the course pursued by the feet which had borne it down.

  Doc followed the trail. His going was as silent as a breeze-swept puff of bronze smoke. A running man could hardly have moved as swiftly as Doc covered this minute trail.

  Things that showed him the trail were microscopic. One with faculties less developed than Doc’s would have been hopelessly baffled. The slight deposit of dust atop leaves, scraped off by the fleeing Squint and his companion, would have escaped an ordinary eye. But such marks were all the clews Doc needed.

  Squint and his aide had escaped from the factory grounds through a hole they had clipped in the high woven wire fence. Bushes concealed the spot. Doc Savage eased through.

  The quarry was not far ahead. Neither of the two fleeing men had taken a bath recently. The unwashed odor of their bodies hung in the air. A set of ordinary nostrils would have failed to detect it, but here again, Doc Savage had powers exceeding those of more prosaic mortals.

  Doc glided through high weeds. He reached a road, a little used thoroughfare.

  A score of yards distant, five men had just seated themselves in a touring car. The car engine started.

  "How’d it go, Squint?" asked one of the five in the machine.

  The man’s words, lifted loudly because of the noisy car engine, reached Doc Savage’s keen ears. And he heard the reply they received.

  "Slick!" replied Squint. "Old Jerome Coffern is where he won’t never give us nothin’ to worry about!"

  The touring car lunged away from the spot, gears squawling.

  * * *

  BEFORE the car had rolled two dozen yards, the ratty Squint looked back. He wanted to see if they were followed.

  What he saw made his hair stand on end.

  A bronze giant of a man was overhauling the car. The machine had gathered a great deal of speed. Squint would have bet his last dollar no race horse could maintain the pace it was setting. Yet a bronze, flashing human form was not only maintaining the pace, but gaining!

  The bronze man was close enough that Squint could see his eyes. They were strange eyes, like pools of flake gold. They had a weird quality of seeming to convey thoughts as well as words could have.

  What those gleaming golden eyes told Squint made him cringe with fear. One of his companions clutched Squint’s coat and kept him from toppling out of the car. Squint squealed as though caught in a steel trap.

  At Squint’s shriek, all eyes but the driver’s went backward. The trio who had waited outside the factory grounds while Squint and his companion murdered Jerome Coffern were as terrified as Squint. Their hands dived down to the floorboards of the car. They brought up stubby machine guns.

  As one crazed man, they turned the machine gun muzzles on the great bronze Nemesis overtaking them. The guns released a loud roar of powder noise. Lead shrieked. It dug up the road to the rear. It caromed away with angry squawls.

  But not one of the deadly slugs was in time to lodge in the bronze frame of Doc Savage. As the first gun snout came into view, he saw the danger. His giant figure streaked to the left. With the first braying burst of shots, tall weeds already had absorbed him.

  Squint and his companions promptly fired into the weeds. Doc, however, was dozens of yards from where they thought. Even his overhauling of the car had not made them realize the incredible speed of which he was capable.

  "Git outa here!" Squint shrieked at the car driver.

  Terror had seized upon Squint’s rodent soul. He showed it plainly, in spite of a desire to have his companions think him a man of iron nerve. But they were as scared as Squint, and did not notice.

  "W-who w-was it?" croaked one of the five.

  "How do I know?" Squint snarled. Then, to the driver, "Won’t this heap go any faster?"

  The touring car was already doing its limit. Rounding a curve at the end of the factory grounds, it nearly went into the ditch. It turned again, onto the main highway. It headed toward New York, passing in front of the factory buildings.

  The speeding machine flashed past a large, powerful roadster. Squint and his companions attached no significance to this car.

  But they would have, had they seen the giant bronze man who cleared the factory fence with an incredible leap and sprang into the car. Doc Savage had simply cut back through the factory yard after escaping the machine guns.

  Like a thing well trained, Doc’s roadster shot ahead. The exhaust explosions came so fast they arose to a shrill wail. The speedometer needle passed sixty, seventy and eighty.

  Doc caught sight of Squint and his four unsavory companions. Their touring car was turning into an approach to George Washington Bridge.

  * * *

  THE uniformed toll collector at the New Jersey end of the bridge stepped out to collect his fee. Directly in the path of Squint’s racing car, he stood. He expected the car to halt. When it didn’t, the toll collector gave a wild leap and barely got in the clear.

  An instant later, Doc’s roadster also rocketed past.

  The toll collector must have telephoned ahead to the other end of the bridge. A cop was out to stop the car.

  His shouts and gestures had as much effect as the antics of a cricket before a charging bull. Squint’s car dived into New York City and whirled south.

  Doc followed. He slouched low back of the wheel. He had taken a tweed cap from a door pocket and drawn it over his bronze hair. And so expertly did he handle the roadster, keeping behind other machines, that Squint and his companions did not yet know they were being followed. The killers had slowed up, thinking themselves lost in the city.

  Behind them, a police siren wailed about like a stricken soul. No doubt it was a motorcycle cop summoned by the bridge watchman. But the officer did not find the trail.

  Southward along Riverside Drive, the wide thoroughfare that follows the high bank of the Hudson River, the pursuit led.

  Squint’s touring car veered into a deserted side street. Old brick houses lined the thoroughfare. Their fronts made a wall the same height the entire length of the block. The entrance of each was exactly like all the others — a flight of steps with ornamental iron railings.

  Swerving over to the curb before the tenth house from the corner, the touring car stopped. The occupants looked around. No one was in sight.

  The floorboards in the rear of the touring car were lifted. Below was a secret compartment large enough to hold the machine guns. Into this went the weapons.

  "Toss your roscoes in there, too!" Squint directed. "We ain’t takin’ no chances, see! A cop might pick us up, and we’d draw a stretch in stir if we was totin’ guns."

  "But what about that — that bronze ghost of a guy?" one muttered uneasily. "Gosh! He looked big as a mountain, and twice as hard!"

  "Forget that bird!" Squint had recovered his nerve. He managed a sneering laugh. "He couldn’t follow us here, anyway!"

  At that instant, a large roadster turned into the street. Of the driver, nothing but a low-pulled tweed cap could be seen.

  Squint and his four companions got out of their touring car. To cover shaky knees, they swaggered and spoke in tough voices from the corners of their mouths.

  With a low whistle of sliding tires, the big roadster stopped beside the touring car. The whistle drew the eyes of Squint and his rats.

  They saw a great form flash from the roadster; a man-figure that was like an animated, marvelously made statue of metal!

  Squint wailed, "Hell! The bronze guy — "

  "The rods!" squawled another man. They leaped for their guns in the secret recess below the touring car floorboards. But the bronze giant had moved with unbelievable speed. He was between them and their weapons.

  * * *

  SQUINT and his men gave vent to squeaks of rage and terror. That showed what
spineless little bloodsuckers they were. They outnumbered Doc Savage five to one, yet, without their guns, they were like the rats they resembled before the big bronze man.

  They wheeled toward the tenth house in the row of dwellings that were amazingly alike. It was as though they felt safety lay there. But Doc Savage, with two flashing side-wise steps, cut them off.

  One man tried to dive past. Doc’s left arm made a blurred movement. His open hand — a hand on which great bronze tendons stood out as if stripped of skin and softer flesh — slapped against the man’s face.

  It was as though a steel sledge had hit the fellow. His nose was broken. His upper and lower front teeth were caved inward. The man flew backward, head over heels, limp as so much clothes stuffed with straw.

  But he didn’t lose consciousness. Perhaps the utter pain of that terrible blow kept him awake.

  Doc Savage advanced on the others. He did not hurry. There was confidence in his movements — a confidence that for Squint and his rats was a horrible thing. They felt like they were watching death stalk toward them.

  No flicker of mercy warmed the flaky glitter of Doc’s golden eyes. Two of these villainous little men had murdered his friend, Jerome Coffern. More than that, they had robbed the world of one of its greatest chemists. For this heinous offense, they must pay.

  The three who had not committed the crime directly would suffer Doc’s wrath, too. They were hardly less guilty. They would he fortunate men if they escaped with their lives.

  It was a hard code, that one of Doc’s. It would have curled the hair of weak sisters who want criminals mollycoddled. For Doc handed out justice where it was deserved.

  Doc’s justice was a brand all his own. It had amazing results. Criminals who went against Doc seldom wound up in prison. They either learned a lesson that made them law-abiding men the rest of their lives — or they became dead criminals. Doc never did the job halfway.

  With a frightened, desperate squeak, one man leaped for the car. He tore at the floorboards under which the guns were hidden.

  He was the fellow who had helped Squint murder Jerome Coffern.

  Doc knew this. Bits of soft earth clinging to the shoes of that man and Squint had told him the ugly fact. The soft earth came from the grounds of the Mammoth factory.

  With a quick leap, Doc was upon the killer. His great, bronze hands and corded arms picked the fellow out of the touring car as though he were a murderous little rodent.

  The man had secured a pistol. But the awful agony of those metallic fingers crushing his flesh against his bones kept him from using it.

  Squint and the others, cowards that they were, sought to reach the tenth house in the row along the street. Lunging and swinging his victim like a club, Doc knocked them back. He was like a huge cat among them.

  Squint spun and sped wildly. The other three followed him. They pounded down the street, toward Riverside Drive.

  The man Doc held got control over his pain-paralyzed muscles. He fired his gun. The bullet spatted the walk at Doc’s feet.

  Doc slid a bronze hand upward. The victim screamed as steel fingers closed on his gun fist. He kicked — tore at Doc’s chest. One of his hands ripped open the pocket where Doc had placed the capsule of metal that had held the substance which dissolved the body of Jerome Coffern.

  The capsule of strange metal flipped across the walk. It fell between the iron-barred cracks of a basement ventilator.

  * * *

  Chapter 3. SHIP JUSTICE

  DOC SAVAGE saw the metal capsule vanish. He wrenched at the hand of his victim. The pistol the man held was squeezed from the clawlike fist. The fellow had desperate nerve of a sort, now that he was in deadly terror of death. He seized the weapon with his other talon. He jammed the muzzle against Doc’s side.

  The life of a less agile man than Doc would have come to an end there. But Doc’s bronze hand flashed up. It grasped the man’s face. It twisted. There was a dull crack and the murderer fell to the walk. A broken neck had ended his career.

  Doc could have finished him earlier. He had refrained from doing so for a purpose. Whatever weird substance had dissolved Jerome Coffern’s body, a great, if demented scientific brain had developed it. None of these men had such a brain. They were hired killer caliber.

  Doc had wanted to question the slayer and learn who employed him. No chance of that now! And Squint and the three others had nearly reached Riverside Drive.

  To the iron-barred basement ventilator, Doc sprang. He could see the capsule of strange metal. His great hands grasped the ventilator bars. The metal grille was locked below.

  Doc’s remarkable legs braced on either side of the ventilator. They became rigid, hard as steel columns. His wonderful arms became tense also. Intermingled with Doc’s amazing strength was the fine science of lifting great weights with the human body.

  With a loud rusty tearing, the grille was uprooted. Loosened concrete scattered widely.

  The feat of strength had taken but a moment. Doc dropped into the ventilator pit. He retrieved the crumpled metal capsule and pocketed it.

  Squint and his trio had fled straight across Riverside Drive, dodging traffic. They vaulted the ornamental stone wall that ran along the lip of the high river bank.

  Running easily, but making deceptive speed, Doc pursued. He reached the showy stone parapet.

  Below him sloped the nearly clifflike river bank. It was so steep that grass and shrubs barely managed to cling. Some hundreds of yards down it and across a railroad track lay the Hudson River.

  Squint and his three men were leaping and tumbling headlong in their mad haste.

  At this point on the Hudson bank stood a couple of rickety piers. To one of these was anchored an ancient sailing ship. The vessel was quite large, a three-master. It was painted a villainous black color. The hull was perforated with numerous gun ports. From some of these, rusty old muzzle-loading cannon projected blunt snouts.

  The old ship had a truculent, sinister appearance. Atop the deck house, a large sign stood. It read:

  THE JOLLY ROGER

  Former Pirate Ship.

  (Admission Fifty Cents)

  Doc Savage vaulted the low stone wall. With prodigious leaps, he descended the precipitous slope.

  Squint and his trio were racing for the old pirate vessel.

  Doc knew from a Sunday newspaper-feature story that the ancient craft had anchored at this spot recently. Curious persons strolling on Riverside Drive, young swains with their girls for the most part, were wont to pay half a dollar to go aboard the unusual ship.

  The fiendish instruments of torture the old-time pirates had used on their captives was a chief attraction. The buccaneer craft was supposed to be replete with death traps. Among these was a trapdoor which let an unwary stroller down a certain passage fall upon a bed of upturned swords. It was inoperative now, of course.

  * * *

  SQUINT and his men gained the pirate ship a dozen yards ahead of Doc. The last man aboard hauled in the rickety timber that served as a gangplank.

  But that inconvenienced Doc hardly at all. A great leap carried him up twice the height of a tall man to the rail. He poised there a moment, like a bronze monster.

  Squint and the others were diving into the deck house.

  Doc dropped aboard.

  A revolver cracked from the deck-house door. Squint and his men had found weapons inside!

  Doc had seen the revolver muzzle appear. Twisting aside and down, he evaded the whizzing bullet. A capstan, of hardwood and iron and thick as a small barrel, sheltered him momentarily. From that, a quick leap sent his bronze form down a gaping deck hatch.

  He landed ten feet down, lightly as a settling eagle. Rough, aged planks were underfoot. Doc went aft.

  The hold was a gruesome place. It had been fitted up as an exhibit of pirate butchery. Papier-mвchй statues of whiskered buccaneers stood about, holding swords. Figures depicting victims sprawled or kneeled on the planking.

  Some were
beheaded, with puddles of red wax representing gore. Some were minus ears and arms. A likeness of a beautiful woman hung by chains from the ceiling.

  Doc traversed a passage. Cutlasses and pikes reposed on pegs on the walls.

  Seized with an idea, Doc grasped a pike and a cutlass. There was nothing fake about the weapons. They were genuine heavy steel. The cutlass was razor keen.

  Doc retraced his route. He was in time to see one of his ratty quarry peering into the hatch. The villainous fellow got a glimpse of Doc’s bronze form. He fired his revolver.

  But Doc had moved. The bullet upset an image of a whiskered pirate. An instant later, the pike whizzed from Doc’s long arm.

  The steel-shod shaft found accurate lodgment in the gun fiend’s brain. The man toppled headlong into the hold. His body, crashing to the floor, sent a gruesome papier-mвchй head bouncing across the planks.

  While the grisly head still rolled, Doc bounded to a spot below the hatch. Faint noises on the deck had reached his keen ears. One or more of the others were near the hatch.

  Suddenly a thin claw shoved a revolver over the hatch lip. The gun exploded repeatedly, driving random bullets to various parts of the hold.

  Doc’s powerful form floated up from the floor. The razor-edged cutlass swished. The hand that held the revolver seemed to jump off the arm to which it belonged. It was completely amputated.

  The maimed wretch shrieked. He fell to the deck.

  With a second leap, Doc caught the hatch rim with his left hand. The by no means easy feat of flipping his heavy form outside with one hand, he accomplished easily. The handless man groveled on the deck.

  The third of Squint’s aides was running for the deck-house entrance.

  Squint himself was just diving into the temporary safety of the deck structure.

  The running rat twisted his head and saw Doc. He brought his gun around. But the weapon was far from being in a position to fire when the sharp, heavy cutlass struck him. Doc had thrown it.

  The blade ran the gangster through like a steel thorn. He convulsed his parasite life out on the deck.