The Land of Terror ds-2

by Kenneth Robeson

Long Tom repeated his previous declaration. "Doc knows what he is doing. Long ago, we learned not to worry about him."

  Bittman made a move to return to his chair. His fingers sought the scalpel on his watch chain. Twirling the thing seemed to give him nervous surcease.

  Suddenly he leveled an arm at the door.

  "Listen!" he breathed. "Did you hear something?"

  Monk promptly awakened — although the words were far less loud than others he had slept through. One had a suspicion Monk had been pretending sleep so as to annoy Ham with his snoring.

  Renny’s gigantic fist had ruined the door panel, but temporary repairs had been effected with rough boards.

  A faint sound came from the other side of the door. Feet scuffing the corridor floor! Some one in flight!

  Monk kicked over the chair in which Renny slept. In a thundering avalanche, Doc’s five friends hit the door. They volleyed through. Oliver Wording Bittman jumped out of their path as though getting clear of a stampede.

  A man was just wedging into one of two waiting elevators.

  Doc had described all of the recruits assembled to Kar’s cause by Squint. This was one of them!

  The man got the elevator door shut before Doc’s friends reached it. The cage sank swiftly.

  But directly beside the lift the sneak had used, stood another car, open.

  In the office, Oliver Wording Bittman searched about wildly, calling, "Where are the guns?" He was not going to barge into trouble unarmed, it seemed.

  Renny, Long Tom, Johnny, and Monk dived into the open elevators. Monk stamped the button which started the doors sliding shut.

  Quick-thinking, waspish Ham threw himself against the closing panels, halting them.

  "Hold on a minute!" he clipped. "That man deliberately let himself be heard! And there is no attendant in this elevator!"

  * * *

  THE others stared at Ham, not comprehending what he was driving at.

  "Scat!" rumbled Monk. "If you don’t wanta see action, get out of the way of somebody who does! You can stay and guard Bittman. He still ain’t got no gun."

  "Shut up!" Ham rapped. "Come out of there! All of you!"

  "But what — "

  "Come out and I’ll show you what I suspect!"

  The conversation had occurred rapidly. Renny, Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny erupted from the elevator door as tumultuously as they had entered.

  Reaching into the cage gingerly, using his sword cane for a prod, Ham threw the lift control lever to the point marked, "Down."

  Nothing happened.

  Ham let the doors slide shut, closing the master circuit of the hoist machinery. Ordinarily, the cage would have departed with a gentle acceleration.

  But this time it fell!

  The dull report of a blast echoed from high overhead. An explosive had been placed in the lift mechanism!

  "Aw — " Monk muttered. He was not affected as much by the narrow escape from death as by the thought he would have to thank his roasting mate, Ham, for saving his life.

  Ham’s quick thinking had saved them from Kar’s death trap!

  "We’ll use Doc’s scooter!" Renny barked.

  They ran down the battery of elevators. The metal-paneled last door was shut. Apparently no cage stood there.

  Renny’s monster hand found a secret button and pushed it. The doors cracked open. A waiting cage was revealed.

  This was Doc Savage’s private lift, to be used in reaching the street in moments of emergency. Doc’s friends called it his "scooter." It operated at a far greater speed than any other cage in the huge skyscraper. It always waited here on the eighty-sixth floor for Doc’s use.

  Oliver Wording Bittman now came dashing out of the office. He had apparently reconciled himself to going into action without a gun.

  "Wait for me! I want in on this!" he called.

  He sprang into the elevator with the others, Monk hit the control lever. The cage floor seemed to hop out from under their feet. So swift was the descent that the sensation of falling persisted for some seventy stories. And the stopping piled them down on all fours.

  "Golly!" grinned Monk. "I always get a wallop out of ridin’ in this thing!"

  They hurried out to the street.

  "There he goes!" declared Long Tom.

  Their skulking visitor stood beside the curb half a block distant. Parked at this point was a cream-colored taxi. The man drew a taxi driver’s uniform cap from the cab, donned it. Evidently this was his masquerade.

  Suddenly he discovered Doc’s men.

  He bounded into the cab. The machine jumped from the curb, turned in the street like a dog chasing its own tail, and hooted away.

  Fortunately, Renny had his own car parked near. It was a tiny sedan, ill befitting Renny’s immense bulk. Into it, Doc’s men piled.

  The chase was on!

  * * *

  FEW vehicles other than an occasional milk wagon moved on the streets. That was lucky. The headlong pace the pursuit set allowed for no niceties of traffic dodging.

  Up Broadway they thundered, leaving a trail of bleating police whistles behind.

  Renny’s peewee limousine proved a surprise. It ran like a racer. And Renny was something of a Barney Oldfield at the wheel. The fleeing cab was slowly, steadily overhauled.

  Desperate, the machine dodged, doubled back. It only lost ground.

  Finally, the taxi veered over to Riverside Drive, then off the Drive and down a rutty workroad — the same road followed by the gold truck Doc Savage had trailed.

  Renny steered his machine in pursuit.

  Behind them, a police squad car caterwauled along the Drive, but missed seeing them. It wandered off, wrapped in the bedlam of its own siren, vainly searching for the two automobiles which had used the early morning streets of New York for a race track.

  The fleeing thug drove almost to the tumble-down pier where lay anchored the Jolly Roger. He hopped out, kept behind the taxi and scuttled for the pirate vessel.

  A pistol flamed desperately from his hand as he caught sight of Renny’s little sedan bucking down the rutty road. The murk was thick, so he missed.

  Renny instantly leveled one of the compact little machine guns Doc had devised.

  "It would be better if we could question the fellow!" Ham suggested. "Maybe we can make him lead us to Kar!"

  Realizing the truth of that, Renny withheld his fire. He braked to a stop. Monk all but tore a door off the tiny sedan in getting out. They pounded after the fleeing rat.

  Hollow clatterings arose as the rat ran across the wharf timbers, then a rowdy thunder as Renny and the rest arrived. The would-be killer had no time to draw in the gangplank. Wildly, he sprang for the first shelter handy — the forward deck hatch. His body plummeted straight into the black hold interior.

  The fellow made a bad landing. Monk nearly overhauled him there, his great, anthropoid hulk descending with a loud crash into the hold, and his hairy fingers trapping the quarry’s coat.

  But the Kar rodent twisted and tore out of his coat. He fled sternward.

  It was Renny who winged the man with a quick shot. The fellow plunged down, a leg shattered by the bullet.

  In a moment, Doc’s five men and Oliver Wording Bittman had surrounded the captive. They prepared to ask questions.

  Not even the first query was put, however.

  Several flashlights suddenly popped blinding beams upon them. The glare came from the hatchway above, and from the door in an aft bulkhead. The ugly nozzles of machine guns appeared in the luminance.

  Doc’s men stood helpless. They had pocketed their own compact and deadly weapons while they examined the prisoner.

  "Let’m have it!" snarled a voice from the hatch rim.

  Another rat suggested: "Maybe Kar will want — "

  "Sure — he wants ‘em dead! We got the bronze guy! We’ll get these fellows and finish the job! Let’s have it!"

  Oliver Wording Bittman gave a shrill cry and sprang to one side, seeking mad
ly to evade the incandescent blaze of the flashlights held by Kar’s killers.

  On the hatch rim, a machine gun in the hands of one of Kar’s men released an awful hail of bullets.

  While Doc was seemingly in the grip of death due to Kar’s planning, Doc’s friends, too, had fallen in a trap of the evil Kar!

  * * *

  Chapter 13. HIDING PLACE!

  DOC SAVAGE, as he braced himself on all fours with the terrific weight of the deadfall crushing down upon his back, knew the fate intended for him. He saw the slight steadying of the air gun which presages a trigger being pulled. He saw the finger of Kar’s hired killer snug to the trigger.

  The many hundreds of pounds atop him prevented even his mighty bronze body from negotiating a leap. He could not possibly reach the air gun muzzle and knock it aside.

  Nor did he attempt to!

  Doc had another plan. Inside his buttoned coat, he wore a metal plate which covered most of his chest. It was no ordinary metal, that plate. It was composed of the same material as the capsule missiles which held the Smoke of Eternity.

  Not without results had Doc consigned himself to his locked laboratory to analyze the capsule. The metal was a rare alloy, but its nature had soon been revealed by a searching analysis.

  As a matter of precaution, in case he was shot at with the Smoke of Eternity, Doc had fashioned himself a body armor from the rare alloy, a supply of which could be assembled from the absolutely complete stock of little-known medicals and chemicals which his laboratory held.

  Hence, the instant Doc saw the air gun about to discharge, he put forth a herculean effort and managed to get his armor before the muzzle. The capsule containing the terrible dissolving compound shattered on the armor.

  Doc had saved himself!

  Supporting the vast weight on his back with one hand, Doc used the other to tear off the armor and the front of his coat. The Smoke of Eternity was very potent — it might creep around the armor.

  Some of the weird stuff spilled on the deadfall. The ponderous timbers began dissolving.

  Not without effort, Doc moved rearward along the passage a few feet, being careful the while not to permit the heavy roof to crush him lower.

  He listened to the elated conversation of his attackers.

  "That," said one of the men, "fixes the bronze guy!"

  "Hey!" barked another an instant later. "What’s the noise?"

  Men could be heard, charging wildly onto the Jolly Roger! "We gotta look into this!"

  Doc’s assailants hurried away.

  The moment they were gone, Doc employed the full power of his huge muscles and lifted the deadfall. He worked clear, afterward easing the deadfall down so as not to make a thump.

  Doc crept out on deck. Forward, a man was snarling.

  "Let ‘em have it!" were his words.

  The man never heard the mighty bronze Nemesis that towered up behind him.

  * * *

  DOC SAVAGE took in the scene. Renny, Long Tom, Ham, Johnny, Monk, and Oliver Wording Bittman were all in the hold, brightened by flashlight beams.

  The fellows who thought they had just killed Doc were gripping machine guns.

  Also gathered about were the other members of the gang who had robbed the bank.

  All the thieves had returned!

  Doc’s eyes searched for Kar. No sign of the master mind did he discern.

  The machine gunners were preparing to fire. The leader of the gang would be the first to kill. He hissed,

  " Now!"

  But the fellow’s trigger finger did not discharge a single shot! The rapid firer was whisked out of his clutch by a grip of such strength there was no resisting it.

  The weapon erupted a loud squawl of reports. A ghastly lead storm struck Kar’s assembled slayers. Dying men toppled over the hatch rim, to fall into the hold like ripe fruit.

  "Doc!" howled Monk, down in the hold. "It’s Doc!"

  The respite furnished by their bronze leader gave the besieged men time to unlimber their compact guns.

  Kar gunmen who had been covering them from the bulkhead door now tried to shoot. They were too late. A hot wind of bullets wilted them.

  The captive Doc’s friends had been about to question tried to escape. Johnny knocked him cold with a set of bony knuckles.

  With powerful leaps, Renny and Monk sailed upward and grasped the hatch rim.

  "We’ll help Doc!" Renny clipped.

  Doc needed little help, though. By the time Renny and Monk pulled themselves outside, a Kar killer flung down his weapon.

  "Don’t croak me!" he blubbered.

  "The rest of you — drop your guns!" Doc’s powerful voice dominated the uproar.

  Weapons clattered on the deck. Arms flew skyward. The bleating pleas for mercy made a bedlam like a yelping coyote pack.

  "What a brave gang!" sneered waspish, quick-thinking Ham. He kicked a dropped submachine gun. "Only take these toys away from them and they are helpless!"

  "Tie them up," Doc directed. "I’m going to have a talk with the one who seems to have taken Squint’s place as straw boss."

  Doc collared the man who led him into the deadfall trap in the passage — the fellow who had fired the dissolving compound at Doc only a few minutes before.

  * * *

  A WHINE of fear escaped the man. He looked at Doc’s golden eyes, gleaming in the luminance of flashlights, and the whine became a screech.

  "Lemme go!" he slavered. He was afraid he would be killed on the spot.

  "He don’t want much!" Monk chuckled fiercely.

  Doc held the man, forcing their eyes to meet. "Where’s Kar?"

  "I don’t know anybody by that — " The lie ended in a loud wail as Doc’s amazing hands tightened a trifle.

  "Do you want to die?" Doc’s voice was like the knell of doom.

  The man obviously didn’t. And his resolution not to talk was rapidly evaporating.

  "I dunno where Kar is," he whimpered. "Honest, I don’t! He’s got a new hangout that nobody knows about but himself. He calls me whenever he’s got orders. I don’t even know who he is. I ain’t never seen him! That’s the truth — honest, it is!"

  "Ever hear of a man named Gabe Yuder?" Doc inquired.

  The captive wriggled. "I dunno!"

  Doc’s tone commanded the truth. "Have you?"

  "I guess so. I seen that name on a packin’ box, once. I think it was a box the Smoke of Eternity was shipped in."

  "Is he Kar?"

  "Huh?" The captive considered the matter. "He might be."

  "Where does Kar keep his supply of the Smoke of Eternity?"

  A mean, foxy look came into the prisoner’s face. He glanced to one side, then hurriedly back. "What do I get for telling?"

  "Plenty!" said Doc. "Your life."

  "You gotta promise to turn me loose," whined the captive. "It’s worth that to you, too. I’ll tell you why! Kar has only got so much of the Smoke of Eternity. It’s all in the hidin’ place. Kar can’t make any more until he goes way off to an island somewhere an’ gets the stuff to make it out of. You destroy his supply and you’ve got him."

  "No." Doc’s bronze mouth was grim. "You will remain my prisoner. I will not free you."

  "Then I don’t tell you where the Smoke of Eternity is!"

  "You don’t have to."

  "Huh?" The man’s eyes moved slightly — toward the same spot at which he had looked at first mention of the Smoke of Eternity hiding place.

  That eye-play had shown Doc where the horrible dissolving compound was stored!

  "I know where it is!" Doc’s voice had a triumphant ring.

  "Where?" Monk demanded eagerly. "If we destroy the supply, and Kar can’t make any more, we’ve fixed him."

  "Until he goes to Thunder Island and gets whatever unknown element or substance is the basis of the weird stuff," Doc pointed out. "I’ll show you where the cache is in a short while. First, we’ll do a couple of things. No. 1 is, tie up these prisoners."

&nb
sp; The binding was effected in short order.

  "Now we get the gold ashore," Doc directed.

  This took considerably longer. Doc and Renny did the diving. They looped ropes around the sacks. The others hauled the coin to the wharf.

  "Carry it to shore," Doc commanded, to their puzzlement.

  The sun was well up before the task was completed.

  Doc now took care that all the prisoners were clear of the Jolly Roger, and the wharf as well, by some hundreds of feet.

  He dived overboard near the stern. As he had suspected, he found the shelf on which the gold coin had been hidden was not the only one fixed to the Jolly Rogerhull below the water line. On the opposite side was another.

  The Smoke of Eternity cache was here. It consisted of a single large canister of the rare metal which was impervious to its effects. This had a capacity of perhaps five gallons.

  Doc brought the canister to the deck. He placed it in plain view atop the deckhouse.

  Going ashore, he used a pistol to perforate the canister.

  The result was awesome to the extreme. The earlier phenomena when the Smoke of Eternity was released were pygmy in relation. It was like comparing a match flame to an eruption of Vesuvius. In the space of seconds, the Jolly Roger, the ramshackle wharf, and a sizable bite of the shore were wiped out.

  It was impossible to tell how deep into the bowels of the earth the annihilation extended. But it must have been a respectable distance, judging from the terrific rush of water to fill the hole. Anchored ships far down the Hudson snapped their hawsers, so great was the pull of water. A Weehawken ferry gave its passengers a hair-raising ride as it went with the current.

  The gray, vile smoke arose in such prodigious quantity as to make a pall over all the midtown section of New York. The play of strange electrical sparks created a sound like a hurricane going through a monster forest.

  But, beyond a general scare, no harm to anybody resulted.

  * * *

  Chapter 14. THE RACE

  ONE week had passed since the incidents on the Jolly Roger. The nearly two million dollars in gold coin, which Doc had recovered, had been restored to the bank. One noteworthy incident accompanied the return of the wealth.