Quest of the Spider ds-3

by Kenneth Robeson

  Johnny put forth a distinct effort to keep his face blank. This was getting hot!

  "Ees yo' in de inner circle?" he questioned.

  "I sure is!"

  Here was luck!

  "Right out of the hat, I picked a guy who is on the inside of the Cult of the Moccasin!" Johnny complimented himself silently. "And what I mean, I believe he's on the inside!"

  "Can yo' guide to where Gray Spider ees hang out, non?"he asked aloud.

  "Hees hangout at Castle of de Moccasin," retorted Buck Boontown. "Me—I can sure guide yo' dere. But first, I gotta find out if de Gray Spider want yo'!"

  Buck Boontown was on the inside, Johnny knew now. He settled to his paddling, elated that he was meeting with such good fortune. He felt he was drawing the net of Doc Savage's vengeance tighter about the sinister Gray Spider.

  * * *

  THE night was about gone before they reached their destination. Buck Boontown, Johnny learned in the meantime, had been en route into the swamp when he chanced to hear the bloodhounds. Knowing they were after some criminal, he had stopped. It was the law of the swamp dwellers that all criminals were to be aided to escape.

  As a matter of fact, Johnny had been aware of this far-from-honorable creed. That was why he had deliberately made himself a fugitive.

  Their journey ended at a small hill in the swamp. This was populated by hordes of dogs, only a few less children, and a number of evil-looking men and women. There was an even dozen ramshackle huts.

  A long shed held crudely baled moss. Evidently it awaited transport to a trade boat. Muskrat traps, seines, and fish lines festooned from the shack eaves.

  Johnny stepped from the dugout canoe to what he thought was a log. He got the start of his life when the "log" walked out of the water with him. It was a giant gator. The big reptile was picketed with a rope like a cow. It was apparently a pet, for it made no effort to annex Johnny's leg.

  "Yo' can sleep in de moss shed," suggested Buck Boontown.

  And there Johnny spent the rest of the night. He slept soundly, although subconsciously alert for the slightest hostile sound.

  A tremendous dog fight, punctuated with the howls of pickaninnies trying to break up the fray, awakened him. This seemed to be a usual morning occurrence, since none of the grown-ups paid particular attention.

  Soon after this, a series of piercing shrieks came from one of the largest shacks. The sounds were inhuman, terrible. They gave Johnny a crawling sensation along his spine. They set him to fingering his gun uneasily.

  "What is de racket?" he asked a swamp man.

  "Eet is Sill Boontown," explained the fellow. He tapped his head, then made a corkscrew movement in the air with his finger. "Hees got bats in de head!"

  Investigating, Johnny discovered Buck Boontown was married. The swamp man's wife was slightly better looking than the other females of the settlement, although that was not saying much.

  The couple had one child—a son about eighteen, named Sill. He was mentally unbalanced—crazy. He had been that way, Johnny learned, since a blow on the head suffered from a falling tree two years ago.

  It was a hideous, squalid colony here in the swamp. The people were an admixture of many races. They retained the bad qualities of them all, and the good points of none.

  The moment he judged the time propitious, Johnny began to exhibit his voodoo hocus-pocus. To the usual repellant rites and incantations of a voodoo man, Johnny added a few masterly touches of his own.

  First, he "hypnotized" the pet alligator. He did this by secretly breaking one of Doc's glass balls of anaesthetic under the reptile's snout. The trick created quite a furor. Johnny's stock as a man of magic went soaring.

  Using simple acids, Johnny made a bucket of water change color at his command.

  His crowning feat was to drive a long, thin rod of steel through his own brain. This he accomplished by having a tubing in his hat. The steel rod was flexible. It was guided around his head by the tubing—although the impression was that it passed directly through his skull.

  This made the eyes of his audience stand out until they could almost have been knocked off with a stick.

  * * *

  THE next day, Johnny's performance paid dividends. Buck Boontown had disappeared. Now he returned.

  "Man here who want talk wit' you'!" he muttered to Johnny.

  "Ees he from de Gray Spider?" Johnny demanded.

  Buck Boontown replied sharply: "Me—I don' know nothin' about nobody by name of Gray Spider!"

  Obviously, some one had put the bee in Buck's bonnet—warned him not to talk. Johnny silently berated himself for a lummox. Why hadn't he trailed Buck Boontown when he disappeared? The swamp man had apparently gotten in touch with the Gray Spider.

  "Bien!"

  said Johnny. "Vare ees de man who want to talk wit' me?"

  "Here I am, buddy!" said a harsh voice.

  Whirling, Johnny eyed the speaker.

  The man was wide and thick of limb. He wore muck-caked overalls. Underneath these, he was attired in something the true swamp man never saw—a collar and necktie.

  A brilliant silk mask obscured his face. It was even tied at the back of his head so as to hide the color of his hair. And he wore all-concealing cheap cotton gloves. It was impossible to as much as glimpse the hue of his skin.

  Johnny, however, knew by the sound of his words that he was a white man.

  "Buck Boontown tells me you're quite a voodoo guy," growled the man.

  "Oui!"

  said Johnny. "That ees right."

  "And he says you want to join the Gray Spider's outfit?"

  "Eet pay good?"

  "I'll say it'll pay you good!"

  "Bien!

  Then I join."

  The other man laughed shortly. "I'm not so sure that I’ll let you join. I must know more about you before we start talking that over."

  In his best dialect, Johnny repeated substantially the same story he had told Buck Boontown. He told it as earnestly as he could. A great deal might come from this, for Johnny thought he was under the scrutiny of the Gray Spider himself!

  "Ees yo' de Gray Spider?" he asked boldly.

  The masked man tensed visibly. He put a hand in a pocket that bulged as if it might hold a gun.

  "Listen—don't go asking silly questions!" he snarled.

  "Oui!"

  said Johnny, shrugging.

  The other man did not renew the talk immediately. Finally he said, "I'm gonna do some thinkin' about you. Hang around here for a few days. A man who knows voodoo like you would come in handy. But there can't be no chances taken, see!"

  Johnny saw. He also thought he saw that this man was the Gray Spider! If he could just get a look at the fellow's face! But that was too dangerous.

  Johnny was suddenly seized with an idea.

  * * *

  "BE yo' goin' to New O'leans?" he questioned

  "What's it to you?" snarled the masked man.

  Johnny replied with the declaration that he had left New Orleans in a hurry. As a consequence, a considerable sum of his money had remained behind. He was careful to lend the impression difficulties with the police had led to his sudden departure.

  He gave the masked man the address of the room where Doc Savage's bronzed, skilled fingers had applied the makeup. This room was in a private residence in New Orleans.

  "Could yo' bring me my money?" Johnny finished. "Yo' bein' de Gray Spider, yo' ees to be trusted."

  "Who said anything about me being the Gray Spider?" rapped the other.

  "Non, non,

  nobody!" Johnny said hastily. "Weel yo' bring my money?"

  "I'll bring it," replied the man.

  A subtle something in his tone told Johnny that the man intended to do nothing of the sort. This didn't bother Johnny greatly—because there was no money. The important thing was to get the man to go to the private residence in New Orleans.

  Johnny thought the fellow would do that—for the dishonest purpos
e of seizing the money and keeping it himself. Johnny had purposefully named the sum as amounting to nearly twenty thousand dollars. Even the Gray Spider would hardly pass up as juicy a steal as that.

  The masked man now departed.

  Evading the attention of Buck Boontown and the other inhabitants of the scrawny settlement, Johnny trailed the masked man. He could hear the fellow crashing along ahead, but did not catch sight of him.

  Johnny soon turned to the left. He found his hidden plane in the morass. Pawing the draping moss aside, he entered the cabin. In a minute, he was in radio-telephone communication with Doc Savage.

  "I sent this guy to that room where you put on my makeup," he told Doc, after explaining the situation. "You can grab him there."

  "Do you think he is the Gray Spider?" Doc's voice came back clear as a fine bell. They spoke in the language of ancient Maya, of course.

  "I cannot tell for sure," Johnny replied. "My guess would be that he is."

  "I'll hold a reception for him," Doc said grimly. "Good work, Johnny! Go back and continue as you were."

  "O.K.," said Johnny. He clicked off the radio-telephone apparatus and left the plane.

  Climbing a near-by tree, he glanced about over the steaming, festering swamp. It seemed to extend to the horizon in all directions.

  For an instant, Johnny caught sight of the masked man—discovered that the fellow had now removed his mask. He was too far away for Johnny to discern details about his face.

  The fellow flushed up a cloud of blackbirds, then trudged out of sight in the morass.

  Johnny slid back down his tree and moved toward Buck Boontown's settlement. His work for Doc Savage here in the voodoo swamps was progressing nicely.

  * * *

  Chapter XI. THE WELL-KNOWN EGG

  THE man who had worn the mask, swore at the cloud of blackbirds Johnny had seen him flush up. His profanity had a happy note. He seemed highly satisfied with the world.

  "That voodoo man is a dumb one!" he chuckled. "Thinks I will bring him his money! Nearly twenty thousand bucks! Imagine that!"

  He shied a clod at the little lizards racing up a palmetto.

  "That money goes in my own pocket and stays there!" he declared aloud. "It's so much gravy!"

  In the course of a couple of hours, he reached a bayou where lay a small motor boat. This sped him a number of miles, finally depositing him near a highway. A powerful coupй raced him into New Orleans.

  "Now to get the money!" he grinned.

  The fellow had certainly swallowed Johnny's bait, hook, line, and sinker.

  It was late afternoon. Canal Street seethed with office workers going home. Newspaper delivery boys dashed along the residential streets, flinging folded papers onto porches. A pop-corn man was doing a big business with school children.

  The man who had worn the mask, parked his car near the address Johnny had given him. He got out. Carefully, he surveyed the scene.

  A man was digging a ditch in front of the house. There was no one else in sight.

  The man who had worn the mask, swung up the walk to the house.

  As he passed the ditch, the man in it knocked the dirt off his shovel by banging it loudly on the cement walk.

  The visitor noticed this, but thought nothing peculiar about it. He strode across the porch and rang the bell.

  A thin, piping voice—it sounded like the tone of an old man on his last legs—invited, "Come in!"

  "Fine!" thought the man. "If there's nobody here but an old duffer, it will be simpler in case it comes to rough stuff."

  He opened the door. He didn't even trouble to have his hand in his pocket with his revolver. He stepped in boldly.

  His jaw fell. His hands whipped spasmodically for the weapon in his pocket. They never reached it. Bronze lacquered talons of tempered steel seized them.

  A moment later, the lightning seemed to strike his jaw. He went suddenly to sleep.

  The fellow's slack form lifted and came to rest under Doc Savage's mighty bronze arm.

  Doc strode outside. It was he who had imitated the piping tones of an old man and invited his victim indoors.

  The man was climbing out of his ditch. He scratched about in the soft dirt he had dug up and produced a black, innocent-looking cane that was in reality a sword cane.

  It was Ham.

  Ham stared at Doc's limp burden.

  "For the love of mud!" he exclaimed. "Is thatwhat our elaborate trap netted us?"

  "The scheme did sort of lay the well-known egg," Doc admitted wryly.

  Ham twirled his sword cane and scowled at the face of the captive.

  The man was Lefty—the survivor of the crooked lumber-detective pair.

  * * *

  "IT wasn't Johnny's fault we didn't get the Gray Spider," Doc explained as they rode downtown. "He had never seen Lefty. And, anyway, the man was wearing a mask when he talked to Johnny."

  "Any chance of this endangering Johnny?" Ham pondered.

  "Probably not," Doc replied. "This man undoubtedly came to get that money and keep it for himself, hence he would not report its existence to the Gray Spider. So the master mind has no way of knowing Johnny sent him into a trap."

  They added Lefty to the ever-growing collection of sleepers waiting transportation to the up-state New York criminal-curing institution.

  "We'll pay Long Tom a visit," Doc decided.

  They found the pale blond electrical wizard in a long, narrow room in an office building off Canal Street. Hugging each wall of this room was a row of small tables.

  Competent-looking young women sat at the tables. They wore telephone headsets. Their fingers grasped pointed pencils. Stenographic notebooks lay before them, open and ready.

  At one end of the room stood a radio telephone transmitter and receiver.

  Each young lady was a highly skilled stenographer. They were making records of every word of conversation to go over the phone lines of the leading lumber companies of the South.

  Long Tom had done a miraculous piece of work, considering the short time he had been at it.

  "Got anything?" Doc inquired.

  "Only one thing of real importance," Long Tom replied. "That is the tip that an important conversation should take place soon between one of the Gray Spider's chief lieutenants and the Gray Spider subordinate who has taken control of Worldwide Sawmills."

  "Any idea what the talk will be about?"

  "Nope. All I know is that the man at Worldwide Sawmills has been tipped that one of the big boys will give him a ring soon." Long Tom waved at a loud-speaker at the end of the room. "I've arranged to cut the conversation into that loudspeaker when it comes in, so we can all listen."

  "Fine," smiled Doc.

  He said nothing more, but waited. Apparently he was entirely unaware of the panic of feminine hearts he was causing among the battery of stenographers.

  Long Tom, it was to be suspected, had exercised an eye for pulchritude as well as efficiency when he hired his working force. He had picked a number of peaches. And the glances they threw in Doc's direction would have put life into a stone man. They had, however, exactly no effect on the mighty man of bronze. The stenographers didn't know it, but Doc was absolutely woman proof.

  "I'm gonna have to kick Doc out of here before these girls will go back to work," Long Tom grumbled.

  At this point, one young lady held up a hand.

  "The call you have been waiting for!" she said.

  Long Tom sprang to a panel. He threw switches. Out of the loud-speaker at the end of the room came a humming note that showed it was cut in on a telephone line, through an amplifier.

  * * *

  THE hum persisted for some seconds.

  "Hello, you at Worldwide!" said a harsh voice.

  "Hello yourself!" growled the other man.

  "How much you got on hand?"

  "Quarter of a million dollars. We sold that No. 3 plant for cash today."

  Doc saw clearly what was going on. The Gray Spider'
s man in charge of Worldwide Sawmills had disposed of another part of the company. They were continuing their looting. The last unit they had sold chanced to be the No. 3 sawmill where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been rescued.

  "The Gr—Well, you know who—will take personal delivery on this gob of cash," the man at Worldwide was told. "You're to meet him and hand over the jack tonight."

  "Meet him—where?"

  "You know where Buck Boontown's village is in the big swamp?"

  "Yeah."

  "Meet him there. Be on hand at ten o'clock, sharp!"

  "Aw—what does he think I am? It's a terrible trip into that swamp at night."

  "I can't help that, buddy. You got your orders."

  "Ahr-r-r!" growled the man at Worldwide. "I'll be there."

  "You better!"

  This ominous warning terminated the conversation. Sharp clicks denoted receivers being hung up.

  Doc, Long Tom and Ham exchanged knowing looks.

  "He's going to meet the Gray Spider at Buck Boontown's swamp settlement with a quarter of a million dollars in cash," Ham clipped. He made a fighting stroke with his sword cane. "I presume we will be on hand?"

  "With bells on," Doc assured him.

  "How about me?" Long Tom barked. "I'm in on this! Try to keep me out!"

  "Can your wire-tapping establishment here get along without you?" Doc inquired.

  "Sure it can."

  "Come on, then."

  * * *

  THEY hurried outside. Doc hailed a cab and directed: "The Danielsen & Haas building."

  "What's there?" Long Tom wanted to know.

  "Big Eric and Edna," Doc replied. "We will tell them what we're headed for and make sure they are safe."

  Their taxi rooted its way through traffic. Here and there stores were turning on the lights in their show windows, proof that dusk was near.

  "Have you heard from Renny and Monk?" Long Tom asked Doc.

  "Not a word," Doc admitted. "Monk, as you know, is pretending to be a chemist fleeing from the vengeance of a country he turned traitor to. Renny is taking the part of a dishonest special forest ranger. Both hope to get into the Gray Spider's gang. But they have no radio to keep in touch with me. That's why we haven't heard from them."