Quest of the Spider ds-3

by Kenneth Robeson

  The pilot had used the upraised setting of his ring to scratch three letters and a number in the wall plaster:

  W.W.S.3.

  Doc Savage's eyes ranged over the sprawling inscription. He examined the pilot's ring and made sure traces of plaster still clung in the setting. The pilot had undoubtedly scrawled the cipher.

  Perhaps a minute, Doc remained motionless. Then he nodded slightly, as if to himself. He had solved the puzzle of those letters. There was a telephone in the adjacent room.

  The two evil little swampmen found themselves batted head over heels into the next room. They wound up in a corner, dazed, aching. It was not pleasant treatment they were receiving.

  Standing with one golden eye on the unsavory pair, Doc picked up the phone. He was connected with the leading morning newspaper in New Orleans.

  "I would like to get the location of Worldwide Sawmills No. 3 plant," he requested.

  This, Doc had decided, was the meaning of the "W. W. S. 3" scratched in the closet plaster.

  In a moment, the information came rattling over the phone wire.

  "Thank you." Doc hung up.

  The two swamp rats squirmed uneasily, expecting the worst. Their captor seemed to have no more regard for their kind than a lion has for a jackal. And he handled them in about the same fashion.

  "Come on, come on!" Doc told them. "We're leaving here!"

  Half an hour later, the two swampmen were sleeping in a hotel room. Their sleep was caused by a drug, the effects of which would not wear off for weeks. The two would not be disturbed by the hotel attendants.

  In a day or so, a mysterious stranger would arrive. He would take the two men to an amazing institution in the northern part of New York State. This place was run by one of the greatest experts on psychology and criminal minds alive. This wizard made a business of curing men of their criminal tendencies, whether they wanted to be cured or not. No one released from his institution as cured had ever been known to go back to his former life of crime!

  This remarkable place was supported by Doc Savage's fabulous wealth. Doc Savage never sent a villain who opposed him to a prison. The police never got them. Instead, they went to this weird establishment to be renovated into decent citizens.

  Doc telegraphed the man at the institution to send for the two swamp natives. Then he selected a small garage that seemed to need business and bought a good used roadster for cash.

  The car carried him rapidly out of New Orleans. He was headed for the No. 3 plant of Worldwide Sawmills concern.

  Night wind whipped his bronze face and deeper bronze hair, but with no more effect than had he been a man of metal. Tires whined on the concrete. The speedometer flirted with seventy.

  * * *

  DAWN was not far off when the charging roadster neared the vicinity of Worldwide Sawmills Plant No. 3. It was in a cypress logging district. Off to the right the surface of a bayou shimmered in the bright moonlight. An occasional late-feeding fish leaped, casting ring after ring of ripples.

  A floating sawmill was on the bayou. It consisted of a head saw, edger, trimmer, and cut-off saws mounted on a big scow. It was shut down for the night, but a tendril of smoke strung from the boiler stack. A fireman was puttering about, preparing to get up steam for the new day's work.

  Doc turned off the roadster headlights. The windshield had become splattered with night moths, and he had turned it down. His eyes roved alertly. It was only a few miles more.

  Great branches overhung the road. Tendrils of moss draped low enough to whip his face occasionally. It was a somber, macabre region.

  Kicking the gears into neutral, Doc switched off the motor. The machine, going seventy, would roll a mile on this road. After the engine died, the call of night birds was audible. The tires buzzed on the pavement.

  Before his momentum was gone, Doc wheeled off the road into a brushy lane. He left the car masked by a thicket of swamp maples.

  Out on the bayou, a tug whistle honked stentoriously. Through the trees, Doc saw the tug was escorting a raft of logs fully half a mile long. Evidently they were being rushed to some mill in time for the day's work.

  But they were not headed for Worldwide Sawmills No. 3! The plant was shut down!

  A soundless wraith in the roadside brush, Doc reconnoitered.

  Judging from appearance, the sawmill had been shut down about a month. It was an expensive plant, too. The capacity must have been nearly a hundred thousand board feet. Storage sheds for dry lumber were large enough to hold supplies of twenty million or so board feet.

  It was obvious these sheds were nearly empty! That explained it! The Gray Spider's men were selling off the lumber from the dry sheds.

  The plant was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence of surprising height. The steel poles extended twenty feet above the ground.

  Doc started to run lightly up the fence. Halfway to the top, he suddenly released his grip and dropped to the ground.

  "A narrow squeak!" he told himself sagely.

  Finding a wet limb, he tossed it against the upper part of the fence. The twig came in contact with two of the barbed strands.

  There was a sputtering burst of unholy green fire. Smoking, the twig fell to earth.

  The fence carried a high-voltage electric current!

  Only the sharpness of Doc's eyes in noting that the wires ran through insulators at the steel posts had saved him from death by electrocution!

  * * *

  AROUND the fence, the bronze giant worked. He found a tree. It had one branch which extended beyond the electrified fence.

  A great leap launched Doc's powerful form several feet up the tree. He ran on up as easily as a squirrel. He worked out on the branch, balancing like a tight-rope walker.

  It was a full thirty feet to the ground. Yet great muscles cushioned his drop until it seemed he had hardly more than stepped off a chair.

  Doc's golden eyes were alert. He knew this was the most dangerous moment of his entrance. If there was a guard, it was likely the fellow would see him.

  He was right.

  An eye of flame batted from behind a dry kiln. It licked so rapidly it was an ugly glow. Bullets passing Doc's head made a ringing sound like a nail tapping against a bottle. Then came the tumbling gobble of a machine gun.

  Doc flattened against the ground. He moved with a bewildering speed. His bronze skin and dark clothing blended surprisingly with the earth.

  The gunner stopped firing. He had completely lost track of his target He stepped out into the moonlight He held his weapon ready. It was not one of the submachine or "Tommy" guns firing .45-caliber pistol cartridges, but a regulation aircraft type gun shooting the big cartridges. It was harnessed to a wide leather belt about the guard's middle so he could handle the powerful recoil.

  "Eet's de bronze guy!" bellowed the fellow. "Hee's over de fence!"

  "Non, non!"

  called another monkeylike member of the Cult of the Moccasin. "Hees could nevair find dis place!"

  "Mebbe so—but he done be in here right now!"

  The second man came running. He vaulted a row of live rollers, a conveyor formerly used to move sawed lumber to the kilns.

  A mighty bronze arm flashed up from the shadowy side of the conveyor. It pulled the man down. A piercing scream tore from his lips.

  The gunner, hearing that scream, but not seeing what had happened because he was looking elsewhere at the instant, ran over. He took one look on the other side of the conveyor.

  He turned pale as though his heart had started pumping whitewash.

  His companion lay there, crimson spilling slowly from the corners of his open mouth. The man was only unconscious, but the gunner took it for granted he was dead.

  He let out a howl that rivaled the one he had just heard. He tore full speed for one of the storage sheds which still held dry lumber. He considered it impossible that anything of flesh and blood could have moved from the spot under the tree to the conveyor with such swiftness. And without being s
een?

  He couldn't fight a bronze ghost!

  * * *

  HE dived into the great shed. The interior was rather dark. Rough, dry lumber was here. The piles were fully sixteen feet high. Back into the labyrinth, the scared swampman worked.

  He thought he heard a noise behind. He whirled wildly with his gun. But he saw nothing to alarm.

  "Vat's wrong weeth yo'?" came a harsh whisper.

  The gunner gulped his relief. This was the voice of one of his own evil kind.

  "A debbil!" he gulped. "A bronze debbil man! Heem move like cloud that ees tie to rabbit's tail!"

  "A debbil?" The other voice was muffled.

  "Yo' bat!" The gunner shuddered.

  It was darker than the inside of an owl here in the rough-dry shed.

  "Me—I don' hear nottin'!" declared the other man.

  The gunner licked his lips. He couldn't hear anything, either.

  "Yo' don' nevair hear dat debbil man!" he muttered. "Say, vat yo' out here for? Boss ees say fo' ever'body stay outta sight, except for us two on guard!"

  "Me—I come out get drink," said the other shortly. "I'm dang if l can find way back."

  "Ho, yo' lost?"

  "Oui!

  I tell yo' I'm dang if I can find way back, ain't I?"

  The gunner gave a harsh snort.

  "Ho, de place ees in middle of de pile right yere!"

  "De one yo' leanin' on?"

  "Oui!

  Dat ees right!"

  The next instant, a lumber pile seemed to fall on the gunner—except that it was bronze in hue and delivered paralyzing blows with great, powerful fists.

  Just before the gunner went down, senseless, he realized what had befallen him.

  He hadn't been talking to one of his fellows. He had been conversing with the bronze "debbil!"

  Doc had simply imitated the swampman's dialect in order to learn where the kidnaped victims were being held. The spot was inside one of the great lumber piles!

  * * *

  DOC now did a peculiar thing. He depressed the firing lever of the aircraft type machine gun belted to the monkey man's middle. The weapon spewed flame, fumes, and copronickel slugs. The terrific din made in the narrow space between the lumber piles was like two bolts of thunder fighting.

  Doc released the firing lever.

  "Got heem!" he yelled, imitating the polyglot, of the swamp speech.

  A soaring leap took him up some feet on the sheer side of a lumber stack. He clung there to a board that projected hardly more than a quarter of an inch.

  Below him, the apparently solid side of the lumber pile opened outward. Sounds told him what had happened. It was too dark to see anything.

  "Vat ees eet?" called a voice. "Who ees yo' got?"

  It was right under Doc! The speaker had thrust his head out of the lumber pile.

  One of Doc's mighty hands floated down. It fished. It found a head.

  The victim emitted one faint, low sound like a chicken that had been stepped on. Then his head collided with the side of the lumber pile, and he hung loose and unconscious.

  Doc let him fall. He whipped inside the lumber pile.

  A flashing from within spiked a narrow beam. The glare found Doc. It lost him as he moved swiftly. The man with the light fired a revolver, then gritted curses because he had missed the mark.

  There seemed to be a large room inside the lumber pile. The walls were built like those of a refrigerator—with an air space between inner and outer planking. No doubt the secret chamber was virtually soundproof.

  A blood-curdling shriek rang inside the room. A body threshed. A gun exploded. Silence followed.

  The man with the flashlight had felt the mighty hand of Doc Savage! He was now senseless on the floor.

  The interior of the lumber pile held the quiet of a tomb of ancient Egypt. But a watch ticked somewhere in the black abyss. It ran rapidly. It sounded like a woman's watch.

  "Doc!" called Ham's voice softly. "There was only four of them here."

  "Then the roost is cleaned!" chuckled Doc. He lit a match.

  Big Eric, Edna, Ham—all three were safe on the floor. Their arms were a bit purple because of the tight ropes that bound them. But such trifles could be soon forgotten.

  "I thought we were as good as dead!" Big Eric muttered. "They were going to send us to their chief hide-out, the place they called the Castle of the Moccasin. There, the Gray Spider would have tried to force us to sign papers declaring we had suddenly decided to take a long vacation. Then we would have been killed, I suspect."

  "The Castle of the Moccasin!" Doc said dryly. "The thing for us to do is to persuade our prisoners to tell us where the place is! We may be able to get the Gray Spider there!"

  "I hate to hang crepe, Doc," Ham offered, "but you're out of luck!"

  "Eh?"

  "None of these fellows know where the Castle of the Moccasin is, unless I'm mistaken. From their talk, I gathered that it is sort of sacred high temple of their voodoo cult. Only the high-muck-amucks are permitted to visit it. Regular barbarian taboo stuff."

  "Why are you so sure, Ham?" Doc asked.

  "Because I overheard a talk they were having. They didn't think we'd ever escape. There was no reason for them to deceive us."

  "Then we'll have to fall back on my original plan," Doc said steadily.

  He departed to turn the deadly high-voltage current off the barbed-wire fence, and to get his roadster.

  He walked swiftly, for he was in a hurry to get back to New Orleans and place his four additional prisoners with the two in a drugged sleep in the hotel room. There would be six of them to go to his amazing criminal-reforming institution in up-State New York.

  No doubt more than six would be resting in the room before this affair was settled. For Doc Savage had as yet hardly started to fight the Gray Spider!

  * * *

  Chapter VI. DEATH-END TRAIL

  A GLORIUS dawn had seized upon New Orleans. Crowds hurried to work. In Canal Street, traffic boiled. The Walnut Street, Jackson Avenue, and Canal Street ferries carried a full load every time they crossed the Mississippi.

  The business day was starting.

  Doc had brought his friends and prisoners to town. Leaving the prisoners in the hotel room with the previously-captured men, Doc was back again in his roadster.

  Wheeling the car along St. Charles Avenue, then turning right shortly after Julia Street, Doc stopped before the Danielsen & Haas building, and all got out.

  The Danielsen & Haas building was one of great beauty. The masonry was gleaming white, with a modernistic scheme of ornamentation carried out in black stone. It looked like the conception some artist had formed of how buildings of the future would appear. It was not a skyscraper, reaching upward only ten stories.

  A large number of people hurried in arid out.

  "You seem to work quite a force," Ham suggested.

  "More on the pay roll than we ever had," Big Eric replied proudly. "And I'm one lumberman who has not taken advantage of conditions to cut salaries."

  They entered the lumber concern's offices.

  "A note for Doc Savage," said the reception clerk. "The watchman claimed it was shoved under the front door some time during the night."

  Doc took the note and opened it. Inside was a sheet of plain white paper.

  The paper was perfectly blank—except for a thumb print. The thumb print was enormous. It looked big as a baby track.

  Doc smiled slightly. He recognized the print easily. Its very size was enough. Doc doubted another man on earth had a hand as big as the one which had made the print.

  It belonged to Colonel John Renwick, the one of his five friends and aids who was called Renny. A man noted all over the world for his feats of engineering—that was Renny. He was also famed as the man who had a playful habit of knocking panels out of the heaviest doors with his vast fists.

  The strange message told Doc his four men—Renny, Monk, Long Tom, and Johnny—had arrived
in New Orleans during the night. No doubt, they had flown by a slightly slower plane.

  Big Eric now led the way to his private office. In striking contrast to the palatial air of the rest of the building, Big Eric's sanctum was no more ornate than that of a sawmill foreman. The rug was full of holes, so that one had to step high to keep from tripping. The desk was old, with the edges pitted where cigars had carelessly burned.

  "I can't work in a joint where they put on a lot of dog," Big Eric apologized. "This is the equipment I started out with thirty years ago."

  Adjoining, was an office the exact opposite of Big Eric's in fittings. It had the finest Oriental rugs on the floor. The desk must have cost more than a sawmill jacket-feeder would make in a year. A complete bar with refrigerating and mixing machines occupied a corner. Pictures of young women—obviously chorus cuties—were about.

  "The office of Horace Haas, my junior partner," explained Big Eric. Then, realizing the place hardly looked like a business office, he added defensively, "Horace Haas may not be a crack business man, but he furnished the capital for my start in life!"

  At this point, a shrill, whanging voice said, "Could I have a word with you, Mr. Danielsen?"

  Big Eric turned. "Oh, it's Silas Bunnywell, one of the bookkeepers."

  * * *

  SILAS BUNNEYWELL was a typical movie bookkeeper. He was tall, but his upper body was hunched as though he had sat on a stool all his life. His face was shrunken. He had a little pot belly, but the rest of him was too thin. His hair was white as a cottontail rabbit's tail.

  He wore a shiny blue suit. His glasses were the sort Edna Danielsen had expected Doc Savage to be wearing. The lenses were like bottle bottoms.

  "What is it, Bunnywell?" inquired Big Eric.

  Old Bunnywell kneaded his hands together nervously. He seemed reluctant to talk.

  "It is rather private," he muttered. "If I could see you alone—"

  "Shoot!" Big Eric commanded. He waved an arm at Doc, Ham and Edna. "Ain't nothin' too private for these folks to hear."

  "I'd rather only you—"

  "C'mon, c'mon, Bunnywell!" rumbled the massive lumberman. "Talk up!"