Quest of the Spider
( Doc Savage - 3 )
Kenneth Robeson
Kenneth Robeson
Quest of the Spider
Chapter I. THE PLOTTERS STRIKE
A COMET hurtled through the cloudy summer sky. It was a man-made comet of toughened steel and alloy—the New Orleans-New York passenger plane. A hoarse, unending snarl of power poured from the exhaust stacks of the three speed-cowled motors.
About a dozen people lounged in the cabin. Some toyed with magazines. Others played bridge. They could not have been more at ease under a reading lamp at home.
Two of the passengers were not so calm, however. Their faces were tense. Their eyes held fear.
It was plain they were not scared merely because they were riding in a plane. Their gaze fanned the surrounding clouds time after time. It was as if they momentarily expected some hideous fate to pounce from the dingy heavens.
"Take it easy, Edna," murmured one of the two. "I think we are safe here."
The speaker was a man. He bulked big in the wicker plane seat. His rugged hands were drawn into knobbed fists. His blond, coarse hair was peppered with gray at the temples. It had been touseled by nervous stroking of the man's blunt fingers. He seemed very worried.
The man looked like a picture an imaginative artist might paint of that two-fisted Norseman, Eric the Red.
* * *
HIS name actually was Eric. He was "Big Eric" Danielsen, president of Danielsen & Haas, the largest lumber company in the southern United States. Every man in the lumber business had heard of Big Eric, who had worked up from lowly shed stacker in a sawmill to power and millions.
"Big Eric Danielsen—now there's a white guy!" they'd generally say. "Hasn't got an enemy in the world!"
They would have changed their minds, could they have seen Big Eric's drawn face and tense muscles as he sat in the speeding plane. He was like a man apprehensive of being stricken by a fiendish enemy at any instant.
"Try to get some sleep, dad," suggested the young woman Big Eric had addressed as Edna. "You sat up all night with an automatic pistol, and don't try to say you didn't! I awakened during the night and saw you!"
The resemblance between Edna and her father was strong. She had his firm features, blond hair, and blue eyes. She was nearly as tall as Big Eric. And she was a ravishing beauty.
A famous motion-picture concern had once offered Edna Danielsen a young fortune if she would enter the talkies. The company had been flabbergasted when the entrancing young woman pointed out that her salary as an executive vice president of her father's lumber corporation exceeded the film offer. It was an event when such beauty and brains came together.
The fact that the men passengers on the plane—those who didn't have their wives along—had selected seats where they could steal a covert look at Edna now and then, showed what a pippin she was.
One man passenger alone had not done that. Strangely enough, this fellow was the cake-eater type who usually ogle pretty girls in an ill-mannered fashion. His hair was slicked down until the top of his head resembled the greased back of a black turtle. He had an evil face.
A moment before, this unsavory fellow had visited the washroom in the rear of the plane. In passing Big Eric and Edna, the man had carefully kept his face turned away.
"There's something queer about the way that man acts!" muttered Big Eric.
"I was just thinking the same thing, dad," replied the gorgeous Edna.
* * *
The plane cabin was partially sound-proofed. Up forward in the pilot's compartment, they could hear the assistant pilot talking into the radio-telephone instrument, which was in communication with the nearest plane dispatcher of the air line. The man was giving the condition of the air they were passing through, and getting information on visibility ahead, as reported by other planes.
"I'm gonna keep an eye on that slick-haired gigolo!" growled Big Eric, still watching the evil-faced man, who sat forward. The massive lumber king removed a large army automatic from a hip pocket. He put it in a coat pocket, where it could be gotten at more swiftly.
"Don't do anything reckless, dad!" warned Edna.
Big Eric tried to chuckle. He was under such a strain that the sound he produced was hardly more than a hollow rattle.
"I'm not so jumpy that I'll start shooting everybody that looks suspicious, just on the chance that I'll get the Gray Spider, or one of his men."
At mention of the Gray Spider, dread flashed to Edna Danielsen's pretty face. It was obvious the name had a terrible significance.
"Do you—think our trip to New York will really be of any help?" she asked hesitatingly.
Big Eric clenched his jaw and said firmly: "I’m sure of it!"
"I have never met the man we are going to see," murmured Edna.
"Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks!" Big Eric's rugged face lost some of its worry. He spoke reminiscently. "I met him when I was working my way through Harvard. We were pals. I was a plodder. Ham was a brilliant man, one of the quickest thinkers I ever knew. But we got along swell."
"Ham—is that his nickname?"
"Sure. Ham got it in the Big War. He was always a lover of adventure. Even back in college days, he carried an innocent-looking black cane that was in reality a sword cane. It got him out of many a tight spot. He was always tumbling into trouble. But he still managed to become the greatest lawyer Harvard ever turned out.
"In the World War, he advanced to a brigadier generalship. His quick thinking saved the lives of thousands of our soldiers."
Edna Danielsen seemed doubtful. "But can even a great lawyer and quick thinker help us? The Gray Spider must have hundreds, thousands, of men in his evil organization. A lawyer can't whip an army! Not even a superman could!"
Big Eric's firm lips arched in a tight smile. "That is exactly why I’m going to see Ham Brooks. Ham knows a person who is just what we need—a superman!"
"I don't understand!" Edna was puzzled.
"Doc Savage!" Something like awe was in Big Eric's voice as he spoke that name.
He mentioned Doc Savage in the same manner an Italian peasant would speak of Mussolini, or a deeply religious Mohammedan would refer to Allah, or a Christian minister to his Deity. It was obvious from Big Eric's tone that he considered Doc Savage nothing less than a supreme being.
"Ham knows Doc Savage!" he said proudly. "We may be able to get Doc Savage to help us against the Gray Spider!"
Big Eric spoke as if he believed that would solve everything.
* * *
PRETTY Edna Danielsen puckered her charming forehead in an amazed fashion. "You speak of this Doc Savage as if he was just about the most remarkable person in the world," she murmured; "yet, I’ve never even beard of him."
"You never heard of Clark Savage, Jr.?"
"Oh!" gasped Edna. "Is thatyour Doc Savage? Why, he's the wizard who perfected that new species of fast-growing tree. Why, with that rapid growth, the forests of this world will never be exhausted! But what good will he do us? We don't need forests!"
"No," grinned Big Eric. "But this Doc Savage is just as great in other things. Medicine, geology, engineering—all these fields are his familiar territory—"
"And still," interrupted Edna, her mind centered upon their immediate troubles, "that doesn't help us out in the least! Neither your Ham nor your Doc Savage can cope with the Gray Spider!"
His daughter's exasperation now mildly amused Big Eric. He went on, then, explaining his purpose in seeking out Doc Savage in their trouble.
"Perhaps neither Ham nor Doc could help us against the Gray Spider, but Doc and Ham and the rest of their pals can help us, I'm sure!"
"You see, it's not Doc
alone, though Doc is the mainspring and regulator of the group. There are five of them, besides Doc. They're all men who are experts in their respective lines, and all of them owe so much to Doc—even their lives—that they will do anything for him. Not only that, but his knowledge is so great that he is the one person to whom all must bow.
"And I know they'll help us, because that's their work; their lives are devoted to the task of smashing those who plot evil, of helping those who need help. They want excitement; they yearn for adventure; they live on thrills! They're real men—and it will take real men to get the Gray Spider!"
Father and daughter now fell silent. Discussing the power and mastery of the mighty Doc Savage had renewed the courage of both. They stared steadily beyond the nose of the speeding plane. In that direction lay the city of New York.
There in the metropolis, they hoped to find their salvation—Doc Savage.
* * *
THE assistant pilot was speaking again into the radio-telephone transmitter. "All going O.K.," he intoned calmly. "Looks like a perfect trip."
He was wrong.
There came a sudden, terrific explosion. It was within the washroom at the rear of the plane. The washroom door popped off its hinges. It flew the length of the cabin. A great tongue of scorching flame seemed to pursue it.
Sheets of the thin metal skin of the plane were ripped from the rear of the fuselage by the blast. Windows burst outward. Acrid smoke boiled in the cabin.
Miraculously, no one aboard the plane was killed, but the ship began to flounder crazily. The tail structure had been nearly torn off. Controls were severed. The craft was helpless as a bird with a broken back.
The pilot and his assistant seemed stunned with surprise. There had been no fuel tank in the rear of the plane. No part of the regular equipment could possibly have caused the explosion.
"Dad!" exclaimed Edna Danielsen. "That slick-haired man went into the washroom a few minutes ago! Remember?"
"Sure, I remember!" rumbled Big Eric. "The dirty rat! He lit the time fuse of a bomb and left it in there, if my guess is right!"
The plane careened more crazily. The mangled air liner was going to crash! The altimeter in the pilot's compartment read ten thousand feet. It was indeed fortunate the plane had been flying so high. There would be precious minutes in which to escape.
This air line was one which equipped their planes with a parachute for each passenger! The packs and the quick-attaching harness were in baskets above the seats. One 'chute to each passenger, but no spares!
The pilot and his assistant still seemed paralyzed with surprise.
Big Eric showed the stuff that had taken him from a lowly sawmill worker to the heights. He assumed charge.
"Put on your parachutes!" he boomed commandingly. "You will find them in the baskets over your seats! Then jump! One at a time! Quickly!"
A fat lady promptly screamed.
"Be calm!" urged Big Eric. "There's nothing to be scared of!"
But pandemonium seized the dazed passengers. Parachute jumping might hold no terrors for Big Eric and his blond, beautiful daughter, who stood so staunchly at his back. But to the others it smacked of the next thing to suicide. Another woman screeched. Men bellowed senseless words at each other in their fear.
Big Eric caught sight of the slick-haired man. The evil-faced fellow had been crouching from view behind a seat. But now the plane door opened.
The man leaped through into space. He had donned a parachute before the explosion!
This proved to Big Eric that the man had set the bomb. The fellow was one of the Gray Spider's minions!
* * *
BIG ERIC stood in the center of the plane cabin, and used his vast voice and powerful arms to quell the excitement. He knew how to handle panic-stricken crowds. He had learned that trick in many a sawmill disaster.
"Cut out the fool screeching and jump!" he roared. "Pull the ripcord ring of your parachute when you're clear of the plane!"
Big Eric's brain was racing. Why had the Gray Spider's man set the bomb—if the fellow was really one of the sinister gang? How could it be an attempt on the life of Big Eric and his daughter? The other passengers seemed in as much danger.
The torn plane was falling faster. Air was roaring through the rent portion of the fuselage. The earth was swelling upward like the green and bloated paunch of a vast monster.
In faltering succession, the passengers pitched through the plane door. The faces of some held white terror as they jumped. A few were grimly composed. Others sobbed belated prayers.
The pilot and his assistant had awakened to their sense of responsibility. They were left alone with Big Eric and his daughter.
"Jump!" the pilot shouted. "We shall go last!"
Big Eric understood. No doubt the pilot and his assistant felt bad because they had not been first to rise to the emergency and take charge of the passengers. They would feel better were they the last to quit the fast-falling plane.
Swiftly, Big Eric swung for the door. Other passengers were safe.
With a lunge, his daughter got in his path. Her horrified look brought the big lumberman up short.
"What's wrong?" he demanded.
"If this is an attempt on our life—our parachutes must have been tampered with!" gasped the girl.
A sharp rumble came out of Big Eric's chest. Wrenching his 'chute pack around, he tore open the brown canvas covering. He stared at the silk folds of the 'chute itself.
"Look!" he bellowed.
A powerful acid had been poured into the parachute pack. The stuff had destroyed the strength of the silk.
A quick examination was made of Edna's 'chute. They found the same condition.
Big Eric swallowed rapidly. The nimble thinking of his attractive daughter had saved both their lives. To have jumped with those mutilated 'chutes would have been certain death.
The pilot and his assistant came forward with an offer that redeemed their earlier failing.
"Our packs are O.K.! Two of us will jump with each 'chute!"
* * *
THE huge, mangled air liner had paused at about four thousand feet as though to chase its own broken tail about. But now it careened downward in a steeper plunge than ever.
The pilot hastily wedged pretty Edna Danielsen into his own 'chute harness. The two of them leaped bravely through the plane door.
There was no time for Big Eric to note whether the two had made the jump safely. Seizing the assistant pilot, Big Eric sprang clear of the plane. He was trusting his work-hardened muscles, now wrapped around the other man's body, to withstand the shock of the opening 'chute.
When they had tumbled well clear of the plane, the assistant pilot gave the ripcord a yank. With a swish like a large bird spreading its wings, the silken folds poured out. A shock followed that seemed to draw Big Eric's arms an inch apart at the joints. Then they floated in the air.
Big Eric glanced about. He emitted a bellow of rage.
The slick-haired man had landed and cast free of his 'chute harness. The fellow had dashed to a near-by highway. He was stopping a motorist, using a pistol for the purpose.
Big Eric dug his automatic out of his coat pocket, twisting one arm around for a firmer hold. It vomited a deafening pow, pow, pow!But the distance was too great. He saw the bullets spade up dust far wide of the target. He stopped shooting, not wanting to hit the innocent motorist.
There was quite a shock as the overloaded parachute lowered Big Eric and the assistant pilot to a cornfield. Big Eric dashed madly across corn rows to learn whether his daughter had landed safely.
He found Edna giving the pilot a ravishing smile of thanks—a smile the airman undoubtedly would remember the rest of his life.
"C'mon!" shouted Big Eric. "That slick-haired skunk is getting away from us!"
He charged to the highway. But he was too late. The shiny-haired, evil-faced man who had set off the explosion was already out of sight in his commandeered car.
Big Eri
c glanced at Edna and said grimly: "I’d bet a million that he was a tool of the Gray Spider!"
They hurried to a farmhouse telephone, and put out an alarm for the would-be murderer. It was of no avail, however. The man had vanished.
From the nearest town, Big Eric and Edna caught a train for New York City.
"I'm not going to breathe easy until we put ourselves in the hands of Doc Savage," Big Eric said uneasily, as he listened to the click of the speeding train wheels.
* * *
Chapter II. CULT OF THE MOCCASIN
ALIGHTING in the vast Grand Central Station in midtown New York City, Big Eric and Edna hurried to a telephone.
"I'm going to call Ham," Big Eric explained. He looked up "Ham's" number, then lifted the receiver.
He did not pay particular attention to a man who hobbled near by on a pair of crutches. The fellow had one arm in a sling. His face was swathed in bandages. His hair projected a tousled mass from the gauze swathing. It was curly and yellow.
Big Eric replaced the receiver.
"Ham was not at his home," he told Edna, "but he left an address where I can find him."
The two travelers from Louisiana quitted the station and engaged a taxi.
They failed to note that the bandage-swathed man had hobbled out after them on his crutches. The fellow showed remarkable agility.
Over to Fifth Avenue ran Big Eric's cab. It wheeled south. The hour was near dusk. Myriads of lighted windows in the skyscrapers made them like stacks of flashing jewels.
The bandaged man had taken another cab. In the obscurity of the machine, he was keeping a close watch on Big Eric's vehicle. At the same time he fingered his bandages as though their presence was irksome.
Big Eric Danielsen and his daughter alighted before a great building that ran upward like a white slab for nearly a hundred stories. It was one of the largest and most sumptuous in New York.
They rode in an elevator to the eighty-sixth floor. Big Eric touched the bell button beside a door which was severely plain, and devoid of all lettering.
Quest of the Spider ds-3 Page 1