TEXT:  THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  THE LIVING FIRE MENACE.........................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson.....................................................................................1
  Chapter I. A STRANGE WARNING......................................................................................................1
  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE.........................................................................................................4
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS.................................................................................................................11
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES..........................................................................................................15
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE.............................................................................................20
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED..........................................................................................25
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER............................................................................................................29
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS...................................................................................................33
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES.........................................................................................................38
  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE....................................................................................................................43
  Chapter XI. A MIRACLE NEEDED.....................................................................................................46
  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH.........................................................................................................50
  Chapter XIII. THE LIVING FIRE  STRIKES.......................................................................................56
  Chapter XIV. A PROFESSOR PLAYS  TRICKS................................................................................60
  Chapter XV. KILLERS CLASH............................................................................................................64
  Chapter XVI. A MOB AMUCK............................................................................................................69
  Chapter XVII. BETWEEN TWO FIRES..............................................................................................72
  Chapter XVIII. A FLIGHT FOR LIFE..................................................................................................78
  Chapter XIX. THE SUB AFIRE............................................................................................................83
  Chapter XX. JOURNEY’S END...........................................................................................................87
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  i
  
  THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. A STRANGE WARNING
  • 
  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
  • 
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  • 
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  • 
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  • 
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  • 
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  • 
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  • 
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  • 
  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE
  • 
  Chapter XI. A MIRACLE NEEDED
  • 
  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  • 
  Chapter XIII. THE LIVING FIRE STRIKES
  • 
  Chapter XIV. A PROFESSOR PLAYS TRICKS
  • 
  Chapter XV. KILLERS CLASH
  • 
  Chapter XVI. A MOB AMUCK
  • 
  Chapter XVII. BETWEEN TWO FIRES
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. A FLIGHT FOR LIFE
  • 
  Chapter XIX. THE SUB AFIRE
  • 
  Chapter XX. JOURNEY’S END
  • 
          Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
  Chapter I. A STRANGE WARNING
  THE man reeled as he tried to run. His breath came  in short gasps. Time after time his head twisted to dart
  quick, fearful  looks behind him.
  Perspiration was streaming from his body. His face  was a queer cherry−red, the lips puffed and scarlet bright.
  His feet  kicked up small clouds of sand.
  Overhead, the sun was beating down relentlessly. On  either side were cactus and sage. And ahead, not far
  now, were the  scattered buildings of the desert town of Sandrit.
  Mumbled words came from between the puffed lips. 
  "I’ve got to make it! I’ve got to make it! I’ve got  to get word out�get word to Doc Savage!"
  THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
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  At Palm Springs, only a few short miles away,  beautiful movie stars were lounging around in shorts. Cooling
  drinks  were near at hand. The thermometer was well over a hundred.
  But the running man was dressed as if for a zero  winter day.
  Strange wrappings on his feet accounted for part of  his reeling gait. Strips from an old inner tube had been
  bound about  those feet. The strips had cut into the flesh until blood drops marked  the trail, but the man did
  not pause.
  His body seemed sheathed in many clothes. And about  those clothes other strips of rubber had been bound.
  On his hands were  heavy rubber gloves.
  But it was the man’s eyes that held attention. Fear  blazed from sunken orbs�deadly, unhealthy fear.
  Some might have doubted that the reeling man was  sane. And the words he babbled sounded like those of a
  man in  the grip of a nightmare:
  "The living fire! The death that cannot be avoided!  The fire that spurts from within, that burns and destroys!
  A hell−fire!  And it’ll get me! I cannot escape!"
  The man’s heart pounded as he thought of the secret  he carried�a secret he must reveal at once if he were to
  prevent untold  calamity.
  Once again his head twisted so that he looked behind  him. A faint cloud of dust showed on the road over
  which he had just  come. A big car came into view.
  Frantically the man tried to run faster, his  cherry−red face twisting with renewed anguish, his eyes popping.
  "I’ve got to go on!" he gritted. "I’ve got to get  word to Doc Savage!"
  The girl in the big car did not look dangerous. She  looked as if she might be one of the movie stars visiting at
  Palm  Springs.
  Long black curls framed a face that was almost  perfection. Only a stub nose broke the faultless symmetry of
  her  features. Her eyes were dark pools of bewitching enchantry. Shorts and  a halter did little to hide the
  seductiveness of her form.
  But as the girl caught sight of the reeling man  ahead, her face changed subtly. An expression almost of
  craftiness  flashed in her dark eyes; her soft lips tightened.
  The man had almost reached the filling station. The  girl braked the big car, slowing it instantly until it was
  barely  moving.
  The girl glanced behind her. Something like a sigh  escaped her lips as she saw the road was clear.
  She reached into a side pocket of the car, even as  she brought the machine to a stop at the edge of the road.
  Then she had opened the door, had slid to the  ground, was moving rapidly toward the filling station where the
  reeling  man had vanished. The sunlight flickered wickedly on the small, deadly  automatic she carried in her
  hand.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
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  The filling−station attendant did not see her. He  was gazing open−mouthed at the strange apparition that had
  materialized  before him.
  The queerly dressed man seemed oblivious of the  attendant. With glazed eyes, he rushed toward the
  old−fashioned−type  telephone in one corner of the room.
  "I’ve got to tell them! There she is! I’ve got to  get word to Doc Savage�"
  Hands awkward in their heavy gloves, the man spun  desperately on the crank to signal the telephone operator.
  "Number, please," came a cool, crisp voice. The  frightened man’s words tore from his swollen lips.
  "Get me Doc Savage’s office, in New York!" he half  screamed. "Tell him this is Z−2 calling. Get Doc
  Savage! Get him!"
  THE filling−station attendant’s mouth dropped open  even farther. His eyes tried to jump from his head.
  "Doc Savage!" he repeated, and his voice held a note  of awe.
  There was frenzied fear in the stranger’s face, in  the queer, pinched lines about his eyes as he waited for his
  call.
  "Hurry!" he yelled impotently. "Hurry! I’ve got to  reach Doc Savage before it’s too late!"
  The telephone operator was hurrying. The name Doc  Savage had done something to her, also. Her voice had
  an unusually  excited timbre as she implored intervening stations for speed.
  "Doc Savage’s office. William Harper Littlejohn  speaking," came calm, measured tones from the other end of
  the wire.
  The telephone operator’s heart sank. "A call for Mr.  Doc Savage," she said hopefully.
  "Clark Savage, Jr., is absent for the nonce. I will  hear the communication."
  "Johnny! Johnny! Listen! This is Z−2!" the queerly  dressed man shouted frantically into the telephone.
  "You’ve got to get  word to Doc at once!"
  He paused, subconsciously stripped one heavy glove  from a hand to wipe the perspiration from his face.
  "I’ve found something that’s unbelievable! The fate  of the world is at stake. And there’s a plot aimed at Doc,
  at all of  you! Listen. I’ll give you the low−down fast. I haven’t got long to  live. There’s a living fire. It’s
  terrible! It’s�"
  A pretty face pressed close to a half−opened window  of the filling station. Dark eyes gleamed with sudden
  anticipation.
  Blam!
  There was a noise like two boards smacking together  sharply. A queer, burned odor filled the air.
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  At the other end of the wire, more than two thousand  miles away, that sharp crack came clearly.
  But no more words came over that wire.
  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
  WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN, better known as "Johnny,"  seldom showed excitement. Lean, with a
  half−starved look, with glasses  hiding his eyes, he appeared like just what he was: a studious  scientist, one of
  the world’s greatest geologists and archaeologists.
  But he was excited now. With almost unseemly haste,  for him, he signaled for the long−distance operator,
  barked with  unaccustomed harshness:
  "Get that number back, operator. Get it back at  once. This is Doc Savage’s office speaking!"
  Across the room a thin, lean man with yellow,  unhealthy−appearing skin, lounged indolently in an
  easy−chair. He was  pulling absently at an oversize ear.
  Major Thomas J. Roberts appeared a physical  weakling. Appearances were deceitful, even as his slouching
  pose was  now. He tried to seem nonchalant; actually, he was afire with curiosity.
  "What is it, Johnny, some nut?" he asked.
  "Nut, nothing!" Johnny rapped.
  Major Thomas J. Roberts, familiarly called "Long  Tom," sat up abruptly in his chair. The very fact that
  Johnny had  failed to use his usual quota of big words was sufficient to tell him  that something was in the air.
  "That was Z−2," Johnny explained rapidly. "He’s an  undercover agent for the Department of Justice. I once
  knew him well,  was in the army with him. He’s tripped across something big."
  Swiftly Johnny repeated the message the man known as  Z−2 had given him.
  "I wish Doc were here," Long Tom muttered.
  But Doc Savage was not near by. He was not even in the city, but was miles away, possibly thousands of
  miles away.
  The telephone rang sharply. Johnny grabbed for it. 
  "I have your party back for you," the operator said  sweetly.
  "Z−2?" Johnny demanded breathlessly. "What happened?  What was that noise�"
  "Naw," came a half−frightened, choking voice.  "T−this ain’t that guy who called himself Z−2. H−he ain’t
  here no more.  H−he’s dead. T−this is Paul Smith, the filling−station attendant."
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  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
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  PAUL SMITH’S pimply face was still white. He’d  witnessed something he knew he’d remember until he
  died�something that  had horrified, yet fascinated him.
  "This guy, see," he explained, as Johnny demanded  details swiftly. "This guy he came in here all funny
  dressed. Hot as it  is, he even had gloves on and had inner tire tubing wrapped around his  feet for shoes."
  "Go on," Johnny ordered crisply.
  "His face was a funny red color, and his hand, too,  when he took one glove off. I didn’t think of it at the time,
  but I  know now he was awful scared."
  "I’ll take that for granted. What happened?" Johnny  interrupted impatiently.
  "W−why, this guy, he called for Doc Savage," Paul  Smith explained. "Somebody answered. He started to
  talk."
  "Yes. Yes."
  "He was awfully hot. He was wiping sweat off his  face as he talked. And he really was shouting. He seemed
  awful worked  up."
  "I know." Johnny’s voice became very resigned. "But  tell me in words of one syllable, what happened?"
  Paul Smith wet dry lips with the tip of his tongue.
  "He�he blew up!" he shouted. "H−he just became a  sheet of fire!"
  There was silence for a moment.
  "How did it happen?" Johnny asked softly.
  "I�I don’t know." Paul Smith was frankly sobbing  now. "It�it was just as if a sheet of lightning hit him, or
  something.  He�he just became one big flash of fire, like I said. He�he shriveled  and burned, and the odor of
  his flesh, it�ah�"
  "And there was nothing near him, no one close but  you?"
  "N−no one," Paul Smith whimpered. "It�it just  happened. I�I couldn’t’a’ done it. No one could. I−it seemed
  as if the  flame came from within, not from outside him anywhere. No one but I was  near him, anyway."
  Paul Smith thought he told the truth. He never had  seen the beautiful face of the girl that had been near the
  half−opened  window.
  Long Tom was an electrical genius. He shook his head  when Johnny suggested there might have been
  something about the  telephone that caused a short circuit or electrical discharge that  could have killed Z−2.
  "Impossible," he said flatly. "That could not have  happened under any circumstances."
  "But something did," Johnny reflected softly.
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  "What could a government man have been doing in a  small desert town like Sandrit?" Long Tom puzzled
  aloud. "It had to be  something big, but whoever heard of a living fire? And what was he  trying to warn us
  about? How could we be in danger?"
  Johnny shook his head. He was equally puzzled.
  LONG TOM and Johnny would have been even more  puzzled just then if they could have heard and seen
  what was going on  in a lavish suite at a big hotel not many blocks away.
  Three men were there. One was pacing nervously up  and down the room. He was a tall man, and very thin.
  He looked almost  like a scarecrow. His face was a peculiar cherry−red. Petrod Yardoff  was not well known
  in the United States. In some European countries he  was too well known. Many strange stories had been
  linked with his name.
  Lounging across from Yardoff was a long, husky man,  with the steely, unblinking eyes of a snake. Those
  eyes and the gun he  always carried had earned him the nickname "Stinger." Stinger Salvatore  was well
  known in the United States. Many strange tales had been  linked with his name, too, but none had ever been
  proved in court.
  The third of the group watched his companions with  cynical amusement. Clement Hoskins was known to
  very few. He intended  to remain that way. Huge, with a barrel−shaped body that was as big  around as he was
  tall, Hoskins nevertheless gave the impression of  rough, vicious strength.
  "You have done good work so far, Stinger," Petrod  Yardoff said softly. "But one job remains. A tough job."
  Stinger shrugged slightly. He pulled a handkerchief  from one sleeve, wiped his hands. "Spill it," he said
  laconically.
  "Would you like to cut in on a game that will pay  off in millions?" Clement Hoskins queried sardonically.
  Stinger Salvatore’s lounging frame came erect  suddenly. "Millions?" he repeated slowly. "The job you’ve got
  for me  must be a tough one!"
  "A tough job, but worth it�if you consider the  millions," Hoskins grated. "But I wonder�I wonder if you’ve
  got nerve  enough to tackle it?"
  Stinger’s face reddened. "Spill it!" he snapped.
  "We want six men�just six," Clement Hoskins breathed.
  The gangleader snorted contemptuously. "And I  thought it was a tough job. How do you want ‘em? Alive
  or�"
  "Those six men," Petrod Yardoff said gently, "are  Doc Savage and his five aids."
  THERE was sudden silence in the room. Stinger’s face  turned the shade of paste. "Doc Savage," he muttered.
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  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
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  Stinger’s features became sober. "Friends of mine  have tried to buck that bronze devil," he said. "They’ve
  never been  seen again. He’s poison."
  "Are you afraid?" Yardoff sneered.
  The gangster looked at him with unwinking eyes.  "Afraid? No," he said softly. "Just careful."
  "Yet we will cut you in on a deal that’s going to  pay off in millions," Hoskins reminded.
  Stinger took a deep breath. "Perhaps I’ll try it. If  I really thought you guys had anything�"
  "You have a bodyguard outside, haven’t you?" Yardoff  interrupted.
  "Why, yes. But what�" Stinger frankly showed his  surprise.
  "Call him in!"
  Stinger hesitated for a moment. Something in  Yardoff’s face decided him. He called, "Rudolph!"
  A typical gunman shuffled into the room. In one hand  was a short−barreled .38. "Trouble, boss?" he croaked.
  "No trouble, no trouble at all," Petrod Yardoff  said. His lips split thinly as he walked forward, tall frame
  swaying.  "We were merely talking about making a million dollars, and Stinger  here seems a little reluctant.
  You wouldn’t be, now would you?"
  "What?" The other’s pig eyes opened wide.
  Stinger’s jaw dropped. He started to shout. Yardoff  was stripping a glove from one hand. The glove was of
  transparent  rubber. It had been practically invisible.
  The words never came from the gangleader’s mouth. 
  Yardoff, still smiling, dropped his hand casually on  Rudolph’s shoulder.
  There was a sudden sheet of fire. The bodyguard  jerked; his mouth opened, but he made no sound. The gun
  dropped from  seared hand. He was dead before he hit the floor.
  The odor of burned flesh filled the room.
  "The living fire!" gasped Stinger.
  Stinger’s features no longer were smooth and  unruffled. They were drawn and taut. His fingers played
  nervously with  the handkerchief in his sleeve.
  Stinger had seen many men die. He wasn’t afraid of  death�as long as it was some one else who was checking
  out.
  Petrod Yardoff apparently had had nothing in his  hand when he had placed it on the bodyguard’s shoulder.
  No one else in  the room had made a move.
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  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
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  Yet the bodyguard showed every evidence of having  died from a tremendous bolt of electricity�a bolt that
  had covered his  entire body with flame. And Petrod Yardoff, touching him, had been  unharmed!
  Then the gangleader saw something that had escaped  his attention before. There was a thin, transparent,
  practically  invisible rubber mask covering Yardoff’s peculiar cherry−red features.  His shoes were of rubber.
  Even the gray suit he wore was made of rubber.
  Stinger had heard of the living−fire death, had  heard it spoken of in awe−stricken tones in the underworld. It
  had been  tied with whispers of a mysterious secret�a secret worth millions.
  Petrod Yardoff opened a big trunk. Then he picked up  the shriveled, burned form of the bodyguard, placed it
  in the trunk and  locked the lid.
  "Was the exhibition satisfactory?" he asked.
  Stinger gulped. "Y−yes," he agreed reluctantly.
  "We’re waiting for your answer!" the barrel−shaped  Clement Hoskins reminded sharply.
  "Doc Savage is s−still tough medicine," Stinger  protested weakly.
  Petrod Yardoff turned. Once again he started to  strip a rubber glove from his hand. A merciless smile split his
  narrow  face. He started to move forward, catlike.
  "No! No!" Stinger shrilled. His hand shot for a  telephone. Still breathing swiftly, he made several calls in
  rapid  succession.
  "Doc Savage is out of town," he reported at last,  and there was no mistaking the relief in his voice. "The two
  they call  Johnny and Long Tom are the only ones at his office, although I  understand the other three aids are
  around."
  "Get them," the thin man said. "They’ll do to start  with."
  "Here are your instructions," Clement Hoskins  rasped. The barrel−shaped man spoke rapidly.
  Stinger nodded, the color gradually returning to his  face. Then he lifted the telephone receiver again, barked
  quick orders  when he was connected with his number.
  "Johnny and Long Tom first," he concluded.
  JOHNNY and Long Tom were unaware of their danger,  but they were worried.
  Long Tom turned away from the compact, short−wave  set in one room of Doc’s suite of offices, a frown
  smearing his  forehead.
  "Can’t raise him," he said shortly.
  The tall geologist nodded, glanced at his watch. "I  know he implicitly instructed us to make no effort to
  interfere with  his meditations until after eight o’clock at night, but I agree with  you, I wish he would reply."
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  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
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  Long Tom rose to his feet, shrugged. Outside it was  becoming dark.
  "Let’s go," he said shortly. "We’re due to meet Monk  and Ham for dinner. Perhaps they can help us dope out
  what this is all  about."
  A high−speed elevator dropped the two aids abruptly  to the basement of the big building.
  In the basement they moved without words to a big,  closed car. A few moments later and they were out in
  traffic, heading  rapidly downtown.
  Both of Doc’s men were thinking of Z−2’s queer  death, of the strange warning he had imparted. Long Tom
  drove  automatically. Johnny sat hunched in the seat, eyes half closed behind  his glasses.
  Even had they been alert, it is doubtful that they  would have known they were being followed. Traffic was
  heavy, and those  trailing them knew their jobs.
  The shadowers were in two cars. There were five in  each automobile. Each of the men had a significant bulge
  under the left  armpit. The drivers weaved in and out of traffic with the skill of  cabmen.
  Doc’s big car was always kept in sight.
  Near Brooklyn Bridge, Long Tom swung toward the East  River, angling back to strike South Street.
  A little while later Long Tom swung off the smooth  pavement of South Street, onto the cobblestone street
  that led to a  sea−food tavern called Reefer’s. He noticed several cars parked near  by, but that meant nothing
  at the time. Reefer’s was a popular place.
  As Long Tom swung the big machine to the curb, he  noticed several men alight from a car near by. One
  glance was all the  electrical expert needed to recognize the type.
  For just a moment Long Tom hesitated, his  unhealthy−appearing face doubtful. Johnny was already getting
  out of  the machine. Then Long Tom shut off the motor and opened the car door.
  In that moment, the attackers struck.
  MEN seemed to erupt from dark doorways, from behind  cars. A surging mass crashed into Long Tom and
  Johnny in the same  instant, arms swinging, deadly blackjacks in hand.
  Doc’s men should have gone down under that first  rush.
  They didn’t. Their attackers had been too anxious.  They had massed too closely for their charge, got in each
  other’s way.
  A bellowed shout came from Johnny. Long Tom tried to  dive back into the car. Hands grabbed him, yanked
  him back into the  street.
  Then the fight was on.
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  Johnny, fists swinging, head low, plunged into the  men bearing down on him like a long, lean dreadnought.
  Speed and the  very unexpectedness of his hammer−like blows, carried him across the  sidewalk to a wall. He
  whirled, back firm against boards, clenched  knuckles cracking with dazzling speed.
  Long Tom sprawled forward, almost went to his knees.  Still doubled up, he hit like a charging football guard.
  Small, weakly  as he appeared, he spun men in all directions, got clear for a moment.
  A swinging blackjack caught the electrical wizard  across one arm, almost paralyzed it. He did not hesitate,
  did not  pause. Lifting one big thug from his feet with a right that came from  his shoetops, he made a second
  dive for the car.
  This time Long Tom got as far as the car door before  a terrific blow caught him across the head. A shower of
  sparks seemed  to flash before his eyes, but even as he fell he yanked a queer−shaped  weapon from the car
  door pocket. He whirled, his finger tightening on  the trigger.
  There was a sound like a bullfiddle’s roar.  Attackers tumbled limply.
  The weapon was one of Doc’s own inventions. The  "mercy" bullets it shot produced unconsciousness, not
  death; but it was  as effective as a machine−gun.
  LONG TOM was still dazed from the blow on top of his  head. He could hear Johnny battling desperately. He
  thought only of  that. He should have jumped inside the car. It had bulletproof glass,  was as impregnable as a
  tank. From there he could have rescued Johnny  easily.
  Instead, he darted around the rear of the car,  weapon in hand.
  A small man, a wicked grin on scarred features,  reared up behind him, swung a blackjack coldly and
  efficiently.
  Long Tom went down, sprawled awkwardly on the  cobblestones.
  Something resembling a moan came from Johnny’s tight  lips. He went berserk. For a moment, his flaying
  fists beat back the  men who crowded upon him. But he saw there was no hope. There were too  many
  assailants.
  "Help, Doc!" he bellowed instinctively.
  A second later he, also, went down. A billy caught  him squarely behind an ear.
  Then the attackers suddenly froze.
  Clear and cold came a voice. It was low, but it had  a peculiar timbre, one that made it carry plain and
  distinctly. It was  the voice of Doc Savage.
  "I’ll soon be there," Doc said.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter II. ATTACKERS STRIKE
  10
  
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  BUT Doc Savage was far from the water−front battle  scene.
  His bronze skin gleaming in the reflected glow from  an instrument board, his flake gold eyes intent on the
  story those  instruments told, he was far even from civilization.
  Seated in the inclosed cockpit of a speedy plane  that was the type pilots call a "flying motor," Doc Savage did
  not  appear big. But that was due to the remarkable symmetry of his body.  His hair was straight, and bronze
  like his skin. Corded muscles showed  on the backs of the hands that held the controls. His features were
  classic and calm. Seldom did he smile or show emotion.
  The roar of the powerful motor came but faintly  inside the cockpit. For that cockpit was heavily insulated. It
  had to  be. The plane was flying thousands of feet up in the air, far up in the  substratosphere. It was winging
  forward at nearly five hundred miles an  hour.
  The sound of Doc’s strange, impelling voice had  shocked the thugs in New York. They would have been
  more shocked if  they had known just how far away he was when he had spoken. They would  have thought it
  magic.
  There was no magic about it. On the panel directly  before the bronze man was a small television set. Above it
  was the  speaker of a short−wave radio. A mike was near at hand.
  The car Long Tom and Johnny had used was similarly  equipped. Doc had seen part of the fight in New York;
  he had heard  Johnny’s cry for help. The bronze man’s reply had merely come from the  loudspeaker in the car
  his aids had occupied.
  Now the bronze man was speeding toward New York. He  had missed Long Tom’s earlier calls. At that time
  he had not been in  his plane.
  Casual acquaintances had often wondered where Doc  Savage ever found time to maintain his amazing grasp
  on every  development of science, to study and keep ahead of a majority of those  developments.
  The secret was quite simple. Far in the north he had  a hidden retreat�his "Fortress of Solitude." Here, when
  things were  quiet, the bronze man would seek solitude for the tremendous  concentration of which he was
  capable, would try new experiments,  perfect new advances in medicine that would save thousands of lives,
  would solve some problem that had long puzzled chemists.
  He was returning from such a trip now. For six  months he had been apart from the world. And it was plain
  that he was  returning just in time.
  In a surprisingly short time Doc’s plane dived down  from the heavens to circle the lights of Manhattan.
  Minutes more, and  it was dropping gently to the waters of the Hudson River, gliding  smoothly toward the
  dingy warehouse that bore the sign, "Hidalgo  Trading Co." Doc was the Hidalgo Trading Co. He owned the
  pier and  warehouse.
  From an adjoining pier, a small man slipped away  unobtrusively. His close−set eyes gleamed wickedly in the
  darkness. At  a corner cigar store he slipped into a phone booth, dialed a number.
  "He’s here, chief," he said curtly. "The bronze boy  himself . . . OK . . . Yeah, I’ll keep him covered."
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  11
  
  DOC SAVAGE had no way of knowing that his movements  were being watched. Yet he moved
  inconspicuously as he made his way to  the skyscraper where he had his offices. His private elevator shot him
  to the eighty−sixth floor.
  In the hallway, he moved soundlessly. Just outside  the door he paused, his flake−gold eyes narrowing slightly.
  A faint whisper of sound came through the hallway.  It was so low that the normal ear would have missed it.
  Seeming almost to float, so swiftly, yet so silently  did he move, the bronze man drifted down the hallway. He
  stopped before  an apparently solid section of wall.
  A low−pitched whisper came from his lips�a whisper  that could not have been heard two feet away.
  Instantly a section of the wall melted away and an  opening appeared. Doc vanished within. The opening
  closed.
  The bronze man was standing in one of the rear rooms  of his suite of offices. It was dark, but he moved
  without hesitation,  opened a small panel, flicked a switch.
  Light glowed on a tiny screen. A desk and several  chairs came into view. On the screen appeared a picture of
  the front  office.
  And in one corner, barely visible, was a crouching  figure!
  For several moments the bronze man studied the scene  intently. Then he flicked off the small television set.
  A second later, Doc opened another panel. A queer  set of assorted switches came into view. Above them
  were two huge,  oval, mercury tubes. A dull light glowed in the tubes as the bronze man  pushed the switches
  home. A faint hum sounded for an instant, rose to a  high pitch, then died out.
  Doc walked over, opened the door, and entered calmly  into the room where the crouching figure lurked.
  A girl glanced up. In her hand she held a small,  deadly automatic. Long black curls framed an almost flawless
  face.
  She saw the opening door. She shrieked, raised her  gun and fired. In the same instant she hurled two black
  cylinders she  had in her other hand to the floor. The cylinders shattered into many  pieces.
  "To what am I indebted for your call?" came the low,  peculiarly carrying voice of Doc Savage.
  For an instant it appeared the girl was going to  faint. The gun dropped from her nerveless fingers. Her dark
  eyes were  strained wide, terror showing in their depths.
  Frantically, those eyes probed every hidden recess  of the room, every dark corner.
  They could see nothing.
  "A�a trick!" she breathed.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  12
  
  Strong hands caught her wrists, lifted her easily  from her feet.
  And if the girl had been frightened before, now she  was panic−stricken. She could feel the grip of those
  hands, knew there  must be some one there before her, some one who had grabbed her.
  Her tongue stuck to the top of her mouth. She tried  to scream, but emitted only a faint moan. Her eyes
  dropped down�and her  heart seemed to stop.
  She could not see her own body either. She, also,  had become invisible.
  She slumped, inert.
  HAD the girl retained consciousness, she would have  understood much. She was carried to a small sofa, laid
  there gently.  Then a click sounded from the adjoining room as Doc released the  switches he had pressed a
  few moments before.
  Almost immediately he became visible again.
  There was nothing supernatural about any of it. The  faint sound the bronze man had heard in the hallway had
  told him some  one had broken into his office. The low whisper he had given had merely  been the proper tone
  to operate a familiar robot, a mechanical device  that opened a sliding panel in a wall that looked solid.
  And while becoming invisible was not commonplace, it  was something that had been done before.
  The switches he had operated had released a series  of short high−powered light waves, known as invisible
  rays. As those  rays struck a human being, that human gradually vanished simply because  the eye could not
  distinguish it when penetrated by the speeding beams.  Doc had not invented the process; that had been done
  by Stephan Pribil,  a Hungarian scientist. But the bronze man had improved it, so that  invisibility came almost
  immediately.
  The bronze man knelt beside the girl, held smelling  salts under her nose. She stirred restlessly, half opened
  her eyes,  only to close them.
  "Who sent you here?"
  Doc’s voice dropped even lower than usual. It held a  queer, hypnotic quality.
  "I�I came because I wished to."
  The words came from the girl’s lips dully, the voice  that of a person speaking in his sleep.
  "What did you wish?"
  "I came to destroy a record I knew you must have. I  came to keep�"
  With startling suddenness the girl pulled erect on  the sofa. Fear, tinged with horror, flamed in her dark eyes.
  One hand  pressed against her lips.
  "You are in no danger," Doc Savage said quietly.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  13
  
  The girl’s eyes sought the bronze man’s face.
  "Doc Savage," she breathed.
  The bronze man nodded. "Now if you will explain who  you are, and what you desired here?" he suggested.
  Fear returned to her eyes. "I�I can’t! I can’t!"
  "But you must. It is necessary that I know. Some one  has seized two of my men. I must know�"
  Doc broke off suddenly. A hideous uproar had burst  loose in the hallway just outside the door.
  The sounds were almost indescribable. First came the  lordly roar of a bull ape, a fearsome sound. It was
  followed instantly  by the shrill grunt of an angered pig.
  As the girl’s lips parted and her hands clenched,  there was a furious burst of fighting. The pig seemed to be
  going wild  as it squealed in rage. The bull ape’s roars increased in violence.
  There was a sudden, desperate squeal from the ape,  then a ripping sound, as if that ape had been torn in two.
  The door burst open. A gangling figure with long,  apelike arms appeared. It had a titanic chest, with
  practically no  hips, and the small eyes were almost lost in pits of gristle. Coarse,  reddish hair covered the skin.
  Behind that figure came a lean, dapper man who could  have passed as a fashion plate at any time, so well was
  he dressed. He  was waving a cane furiously, his face red with anger.
  "That blasted pig can’t win all the time!" he  roared. 
  "Meet Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair,  known as Monk for quite obvious reasons," Doc said,
  with just a  suspicion of a smile. "Pursuing him, dressed in the latest mode as  usual, is Brigadier General
  Theodore Marley Brooks, more often called  Ham."
  There was sudden silence. The girl’s glance went  from one to the other of the newcomers with quick
  comprehension.
  "Monk" stopped as if he had run into a ten−ton  truck. A slow flush crept over his homely face.
  "Ham" grinned openly, his anger disappearing as  quickly as it had come. It always amused him to see Monk
  get flustered  in the presence of a pretty girl.
  "It was this ape here making all the noise," he  explained maliciously. "Somewhere he found an out−of−work
  radio  imitator who taught him to make those hideous sounds. He’s been making  them ever since, always
  pretending he’s a pig licking an ape."
  "At least he hasn’t been able to figure out any way  for the ape to lick the pig," Monk put in. His thin,
  childlike voice  always came as a shock to those who first heard it. It sounded so out  of place compared with
  his hulking frame.
  Doc said nothing for the moment. Monk and Ham were  always fighting each other when there was no one
  else to fight. Their  quarreling dated far back to War days.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter III. A GIRL CALLS
  14
  
  Yet despite the fact that they never seemed to work,  Ham was known as Harvard’s gift to the legal
  profession, an outstanding  attorney; and Monk was a gifted chemist.
  "What happened to Johnny and Long Tom?" Doc asked  quietly.
  Levity faded from the faces of the other two.
  "That’s what we really came up here to see if we  could learn," Ham said seriously. "For some reason, they
  seem to have  been kidnaped. I don’t think it’s anything serious, although I don’t  know.
  "We were to meet them for dinner at Reefer’s. We got  there just after they’d been seized. Was quite a fight,
  from what  witnesses told us. They were taken off toward the piers at the lower  end of South Street, and
  probably put in a boat. We searched without  finding a clue."
  "Unless one remark we heard means something," Monk  piped up. "I talked to a kid who was close to the car
  that carried Long  Tom and Johnny away. He told me something that he said he’d overheard  that sounded as if
  he was having a pipe dream."
  "What was that?" Doc asked swiftly.
  "He said he heard one of the crew say: ‘I wouldn’t  want to be these guys. They’re gonna see the menace of
  the living  fire.’"
  A gasp came from the girl. The three whirled toward  her.
  Her eyes were wide and staring. Her lips moved, but  no sound came. Once again she fainted.
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  TWO men stood just outside the door of the office.  One was Petrod Yardoff. He took a small, cup−shaped
  instrument away  from the door, took headphones from his ears.
  "We are just in time," he whispered.
  His companion shuddered slightly. He was also  dressed in rubber clothes, but so well were those clothes
  made that few  would have guessed their composition. Thin, flesh−colored gloves  covered his hands; tennis
  shoes were on his feet.
  "This will be all that is asked of me?" he quavered. 
  "This will be all, Meeker," Yardoff said. His thin  lips twisted sardonically. "After this, you will be�free."
  The other’s shoulders bunched; a shrewd gleam  flashed for a moment in deep−set eyes.
  "I am ready," he said.
  "Good." One of Yardoff’s hands slipped unnoticed  into a pocket. It came out holding a small vial. As he
  talked swiftly,  his fingers loosened the cork. A white liquid poured out, seeped under  the feet of his
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  15
  
  companion.
  "Be sure you make the argument strong enough,"  Yardoff concluded. "Tell just enough of the truth to arouse
  Doc  Savage’s interest. That is all that is�"
  His companion waited for no more. His lips came  together firmly. He opened the door, walked into the
  bronze man’s  office.
  Ham spun; the end of his cane slipped off to reveal  a long, deadly sword. Monk, leaning over the girl,
  whipped erect,  jerked to his feet, long arms swinging.
  "Watch the girl, Monk," Doc said quietly.
  The newcomer closed the door carefully behind him.  His face was working with some strange emotion.
  Then fear flashed over the rubber−clad man’s face;  his features changed from a queer cherry−red to the color
  of chalk. He  danced wildly from one foot to the other.
  "Watch out, Doc!" he screamed. "I was sent here to  try to lure you to California, to Sandrit. I was told I’d be
  free if I  did that. I’ve been tricked! I’m going to die!"
  Saliva trickled weirdly from the corners of his  mouth.
  "Don’t go to Sandrit! Stay far away from there. The  menace of the living fire protects it, kills all�"
  The words broke off in a scream.
  There was a sudden flash of fire�fire that came from  inside the man’s rubber suit. The man’s body jerked
  violently; his eyes  almost popped from his head. The odor of burned rubber and burned flesh  filled the room.
  The man fell. He was quite dead.
  A peculiar, trilling sound filled the room. It  seemed to come from no particular place, yet from everywhere. It
  was  the sound Doc Savage unconsciously made when he was surprised.
  With Monk and Ham at his heels, he darted to the  side of the fallen man.
  Outside, Petrod Yardoff smiled thinly as once more  he replaced his listening device in his pocket. He had
  expected his  companion to try to double−cross him, to try and give a warning.
  That had been just what he wanted. From what he had  heard of Doc Savage, the bronze man now would leave
  no stone unturned  until he had tried to solve the mystery.
  "BUT what caused it?" Monk’s childlike voice was  filled with wonderment.
  "A bolt of lightning!" Ham snapped impatiently.
  "The results are about the same at any rate,"  Doc agreed quietly. "Do you notice that the rubber suit he is
  wearing  is untouched on the outside? The fire that destroyed him came from  within."
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  16
  
  "And he mentioned the menace of the living fire,"  Monk breathed. "Say. That’s what that kid said Johnny and
  Long Tom was  gonna have to face."
  The bronze man nodded soberly. "I am afraid they are  in great danger," he said slowly.
  Monk jumped up, fairly danced about. "Then let’s get  going! What are we waiting for?"
  "Do you recognize this guy?" Ham asked suddenly. 
  Doc inclined his head. "He was Darren Meeker, once a  very great scientist," he said. "Meeker killed a man
  some years ago,  and was committed to an asylum."
  "And escaped about four months ago, very  mysteriously. It happened while you were away," Ham added.
  "Holy cow!"
  The expression came in an awed tone of voice. Doc  glanced up.
  A huge man stood in the doorway�a man a good six  feet four inches tall, who must have weighed over two
  hundred and fifty  pounds. His face was severe, the mouth thin and grim. That mouth was  set tightly now, the
  features puritanical. Bony monstrosities of fists  hung at the end of enormous arms.
  "You’re just in time, Renny!" Monk howled.
  "But what�"
  Swiftly, Ham sketched what had occurred. The  puritanical look grew even more severe on the face of Colonel
  John  Renwick. One huge fist smacked into an equally big palm, as if he were  trying to batter down a
  door�one of his favorite pastimes.
  "You say this fellow just walked in, bellowed a  warning, then went up in fire?" he asked wonderingly.
  "Right!" snapped Ham.
  "Hmm." 
  The corners of "Renny’s" mouth drew down disapprovingly. "I wonder.  Don’t seem likely. But I wonder if
  that girl I saw going down the  stairway could have had anything to do with this. She sure was a  beauty, but
  beauty doesn’t always�" 
  A howl came from Monk. His piglike eyes were staring  with complete disillusionment at the sofa where the
  girl had been.
  That sofa was empty now. The girl was gone.
  DOC turned, looked at Monk. The hairy chemist’s eyes  dropped.
  "Yeah, I�I know," he apologized weakly. "I was  supposed to watch her. But I got excited�"
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  17
  
  "The girl may not hold the key to this mystery, but  I am sure she has information that we need," the bronze
  man said slowly.
  "And this ape let her get away," Ham jeered.
  Doc walked over to a small, square box on the desk.  He opened the back, took out half a dozen slips of paper,
  handed one  each to Monk, Ham and Renny.
  "But�but these are pictures of the girl," Renny said.
  "Right." Doc’s voice was matter of fact. "I tried  out this new camera while she was here. Complete prints are
  made in the  matter of seconds and dropped through a slot into the rear of the  camera to dry."
  Renny’s mouth dropped open, but he said nothing. He  had seen too many of Doc’s inventions to be greatly
  surprised.
  "That girl was from the West. Her accent showed  that," the bronze man went on. "She must be stopping at
  some hotel.  Check each one, find out where she is, and find out what she knows."
  As the door closed behind the three, Doc went to a  bookcase near the far wall. That bookcase had been pulled
  out,  disclosing a niche that held a machine.
  The machine was a telephonic monitor, and recorded  all telephone conversations. No disks were on the
  monitor now, however.  The girl had found them. They were shattered on the floor.
  The bronze man worked swiftly. Soon the disks had  been put together again.
  Doc played them over. He heard Z−2’s conversation  with Johnny. He heard Johnny’s conversation with the
  filling−station  attendant.
  For a moment the bronze man’s flake gold eyes were  half closed. He went to the telephone, placed a call. A
  few minutes  later and he was talking to the youth at the Sandrit filling station.  He asked only one question.
  His queer, trilling sound filled the room  at the answer he received.
  Soon afterward Doc left the building.
  DOC SAVAGE had friends in many places. Thus it was  that he had no difficulty in gaining access to the
  morgue of the city’s  largest newspaper.
  A newspaper morgue contains clippings from scores of  papers on everything that is printed.
  The editor looked at the bronze man queerly when he  heard the type of clippings Doc wanted to see, but he
  asked no  questions. Soon several folders were laid on the editor’s desk.
  Doc Savage ran through them swiftly. He was  interested only in those dated during the last six months.
  The small mountain of clippings gradually faded. At  last only five remained of the many he had read.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  18
  
  These five the bronze man reread carefully. The  stories they told came from widely separated points. One
  said:
  San Quentin, Cal.�Ten prisoners escaped mysteriously  from San Quentin penitentiary to−day. The men, all
  trustees, were  tending flowers in the outer yard. In some manner they overcame and  killed Herbert Yokes,
  thirty−two, the guard. His body, badly burned,  was found shortly after the men must have escaped.
  A strange feature of the case is the fact that the  iron gate at the entrance to the yard seemed to have been
  melted as if  an acetylene torch had been used, although prison officials say this  was impossible.
  Among those who escaped was Frederick Scone, a  former university professor in chemistry, serving a life
  term for the  murder of his wife. The others were� 
  Another clipping read:
  Albuquerque, N.M.�A man, later identified as "Slug"  Bremer, an escaped convict, was killed instantly here
  to−day when  struck by a train. Bremer evidently had fallen from a freight train, on  the main tracks only a
  mile from town, and was run over by the  California Limited. His body was badly mangled. Strange burns that
  seemed to cover the entire body could not be explained by Coroner Smith.
  Of the three other items, two told of more escapes,  one from a prison, in which more than twenty trusties had
  gotten away  at the same time. The second told of a break at a Missouri asylum. The  third reported the
  mysterious death of another of those who had gained  freedom.
  The editor was studying Doc’s face curiously. "If  there is anything more I can do," he began hopefully, "or if
  I can get  you any more information�"
  "This is satisfactory, thank you," Doc said. 
  The editor watched him leave with a long face. 
  In a telephone booth in the lobby, Doc called his  office. The telephonic monitor had been put back in working
  order. At  Doc’s voice, another mechanical robot put the record into operation. It  repeated the last call
  received.
  "Renny calling in to report," came the recorded  voice. "I have located the girl. She is staying at the Midtown
  Hotel,  has just come in and gone to Room 1412. I’ll keep watch."
  Doc hung up, started for his car in front of the  building.
  THERE was a small, private alleyway only a hundred  yards from the front of the newspaper building. In this
  alleyway, two  men were crouching.
  One rubbed his hands nervously on a handkerchief,  flicked that handkerchief back into one sleeve.
  He spoke out of one corner of his mouth. "You’re  sure everything is fixed? There must be no slip−ups. I was
  told to get  this bronze devil alive, but that’s too dangerous. I want him dead."
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IV. STINGER STRIKES
  19
  
  His companion squirmed uneasily. He wore greasy  overalls, and his face was smeared with dirt. He held an
  odd−shaped  object in his hands.
  "It’d take more than a miracle to save that mug," he  growled sourly, "even if he is�"
  He broke off as Stinger’s hand came down on his arm.
  Doc Savage had emerged from the building. The bronze  man glanced up and down the street rapidly.
  The car at the curb was a big, inclosed job, similar  to the one Long Tom and Johnny had used. The door was
  locked. Doc took  out a key, reached toward the lock.
  At the alleyway, Stinger drew a long sigh of relief.  "I still wish we had the real thing to work on this guy," he
  muttered,  "but the plaything you’ve got rigged up should work."
  Doc inserted the key in the car door, started to  open it.
  Beside Stinger, his overalls−clad companion worked  on the odd−shaped object he held in his hands. There
  was a faint,  humming noise.
  Doc’s big figure seemed to jerk erect. Fire danced  about the car. Flames crackled and jumped. Women
  screamed. The editor  stood frozen, face vacant.
  For a moment the bronze man appeared absolutely  rigid. A peculiar odor filled the air.
  Stinger’s companion worked again on the odd−shaped  object he held.
  The bronze man’s fingers fell nervelessly from the  car door. His big frame crumpled to the sidewalk.
  Stinger laughed, lips drawn back from his teeth. 
  "Let’s go, punk!" he grated. "Things are goin’ to be  even hotter than that around here as soon as they learn
  that bronze  devil is really dead."
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  RENNY had expected Doc to receive his message. He  waited for a time in the lobby of the Midtown Hotel.
  Waiting became  tiresome.
  Towering high above others in the lobby, he  approached the desk. "Who’s in 1412?" he rumbled.
  The clerk glanced up haughtily, inspected his  fingernails with elaborate unconcern. "And your business?" he
  asked  snippily.
  Renny placed one huge, bony monstrosity of a fist on  the desk. He closed that fist until it looked like a rough
  chunk of  iron.
  "Did you ever hear of Doc Savage?" he asked softly.  "Or"�his fist rose and fell expressively�"does this look
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  20
  
  like a better  argument?"
  The clerk gulped. "D−Doc Savage. Why didn’t you say  so? Glad to do anything for a friend of Mr. Savage.
  It�ah�Miss Virginia  Hoskins, of Sandrit, California, is in 1412. A very beautiful girl."
  Renny’s mouth drew down disapprovingly. "Any one  with her?"
  "Yes. Ah�a Mr. Clement Hoskins, also of Sandrit, is  registered in an adjoining room with a Mr. Petrod
  Yardoff."
  "Know anything about them?"
  "Ah�why yes. Mr. H−Hoskins, I understand, owns a  factory of some kind in Sandrit. He is a stout, very jolly
  sort of  fellow. Mr. Yardoff, I believe, is connected with him in a business  way. He�ah�does not seem so
  jolly. A very slender, tall sort of chap."
  Renny nodded.
  Across the lobby, concealed by a pillar, a very  tall, slender man jerked his head to two companions. His eyes
  were  narrow slits. Swiftly, the three made their way to an elevator. They  disappeared just as Renny turned
  away from the desk.
  The big engineer rode the elevator to the fifteenth  floor, walked down one flight, and approached 1412 with
  silent tread.  An ear to the door, he listened carefully, but heard nothing.
  He knocked softly. A faint stir sounded inside the  room, then ceased. There was a buzz, which might have
  been a whispered  conversation.
  Once more Renny knocked.
  A lock turned. The door opened an inch. The dark  eyes of Virginia Hoskins, fright showing in their depths,
  appeared  fleetingly.
  "What did you run away for?" Renny demanded primly.  "Doc wanted to talk to you."
  "I�I never saw you before," Virginia stammered. She  tried to push the door closed. Renny put one big foot in
  the opening.  It was as if a small−sized gunboat had moved in.
  "P−please, please go," the girl whispered.
  Renny snorted. "Monk might fall for that, but not  me," he announced�and pushed the door wide as he
  stepped inside.
  A blackjack caught him expertly, squarely at the  base of the brain, with force enough to crush an ordinary
  skull.
  Renny kept on going forward�right on his face. All  six foot four of the big engineer sprawled, immense arms
  outstretched.
  Strong hands grabbed him under the armpits, yanked  him inside. The door closed softly.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  21
  
  HAM also thought Monk might fall prey again to those  dark pools of enchantry if he should encounter the
  girl.
  The dapper lawyer was glad when he reached the  Midtown Hotel that he did not see the hairy form of his
  friend around.  Monk was good in a fight, none better; but when it came to the fair sex  he quite often seemed
  to park his brains at home.
  Ham’s face showed no sign of concentration as he  walked across the lobby, but he was thinking swiftly. He
  also had  received the robot message from Renny, and he knew the big engineer  should be waiting; but Renny
  wasn’t in sight.
  Ham didn’t go near the desk. If anything was wrong,  some one would be sure to be watching there. He drifted
  back through  the dining room, through a side door, and raced upstairs.
  The dapper lawyer was breathing a little heavily as  he reached the fourteenth floor. The climb was a long one,
  even for a  man in perfect condition.
  Then his eyes narrowed, his hand tightened on the  sword cane he carried.
  Lights were out in the hallway. Somewhere, close at  hand, he could hear faint breathing.
  Ham held his breath as long as he could. Doubled  over, he reached the top of the stairs in a silent leap�and
  jumped to  one side.
  Something swished by one ear. A heavy form lunged  toward him. Ham spun, fast as a dancer, jerked the long
  blade of his  sword free from the cane.
  Big arms wrapped around him. The sword was knocked  from his hand to fall on the thick carpet of the
  hallway. Ham’s elbow  shot back, landed with satisfying solidness just below the ribs.
  His assailant said "Whoof!" and put one big  paw over Ham’s face, almost cutting off his wind. The man made
  small,  animal−like noises as he spun the dapper lawyer around, slugged him  hard on the side of the head.
  Ham’s head rang. His right fist shot up, caught the  other under the chin, staggering him. The hand came away
  from his face.
  "Stop it, you overgrown ape!" Ham yelled.
  The other sighed deeply. "Dang it," came Monk’s  piping voice, "and I really thought I’d caught something!
  But it turns  out to be a clothing−store shyster!"
  "WHAT’S happened?" Ham asked, still struggling to  get his wind.
  "I was watching to see when you came blundering  along," Monk complained. "I doused the lights, so if that
  girl did come  by I couldn’t see her face. Then I could talk to her. But nobody’s been  in or out of that room."
  "Let’s go. Something’s wrong!" Ham rapped swiftly. 
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  22
  
  A muffled murmur of voices came from Room 1412. 
  "Doesn’t seem like a girl’s room to me," Monk  muttered.
  "Unless she’s entertaining," Ham agreed.
  He knocked loudly on the door. There was a roar of  laughter from inside the room. No one answered the
  summons.
  Monk’s piglike eyes sank deeper back in his head; a  scowl crossed his homely face. His fist shook the door
  panel.
  "Beat it!" a rough voice advised.
  Monk’s face assumed a hurt expression. "I don’t like  to do this," he said, his childlike voice annoyed. "It’s
  really Renny’s  job, but he ain’t here. So�"
  His huge fists smashed into the door panel with all  his apelike strength behind the blow. The panel split.
  Calmly he put  one hand through the opening, turned the lock and opened the door.
  With Ham at his heels, Monk pushed into the room.  Then they froze.
  "Did Renny make a mistake in the room number?" Ham  wondered aloud.
  It seemed that way. Certainly no girl was in the  room now. Instead, four men were there. They were seated
  about a card  table. Chips were before them. The room was full of cigarette smoke.
  The green−shirted dealer was rising from his chair.  His hand started for a gun that hung in a shoulder holster.
  "What is this, a raid?" he snapped.
  Monk lumbered forward, long arms swinging, half  crooked. One of those arms shot out. "Greenshirt’s" hand
  was knocked  from the butt of his gun; he was spun halfway around.
  "You boys been playing here long?" Monk inquired  mildly.
  "Not that it’s any of your business," sneered one of  the players, "but we’ve been here for the last two hours."
  "Yeah?" Monk’s voice was deceivingly bland. "Funny.  Lots of smoke in here, sure enough. But there are no
  cigarette butts in  the ash trays�and the scent of a woman’s perfume is still strong in the  air."
  Greenshirt’s hand was lightning fast as it went for  his gun. Monk hardly seemed to move.
  Then Monk held the gun in one huge paw, while with  the other, he caught Greenshirt by the collar, lifted him
  up, then  smashed him down so hard the chair buckled under him.
  "I really would like to play games," the hairy  chemist invited plaintively.
  Ham was grinning tightly. Light glittered on the  bright blade of his sword cane. The other three card players
  had been  caught flat−footed. They sat, hands partly raised, mouths open.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  23
  
  "I suggest we start by playing the game called  Truth," Ham proposed. "We want some information as to what
  has happened  to some friends of ours."
  "Go to hell! We don’t know nothing about any friends  of yours," Greenshirt sneered.
  Monk looked very hurt. He put his head forward,  invitingly.
  Without warning, Greenshirt kicked him viciously on  a shin. "Dang it!" Monk howled. He danced around,
  one foot in the air.
  Greenshirt thought he saw his chance. He ducked his  head, butted Monk hard in the belly. Another of the
  card players  grabbed a gun.
  Monk, his piglike eyes blazing, caught Greenshirt by  the middle, threw him across the table into the gunman.
  The two went  down.
  Without hesitation, the hairy chemist leaped after  them. In the same instant, some one upset the table. It
  caught Ham off  guard, knocked the sword cane out of his hand.
  "Hold everything, folks!" 
  a voice blared loudly. 
  THE fighting ceased. Six figures halted in varied  and assorted attitudes. It was an instant before they realized
  the  words had come from a radio loudspeaker in the room.
  Before they could resume the struggle, the voice  went on�and six pair of ears strained to catch every word.
  "I’ve got hot news, folks, a flash right off the  griddle that involves two of the trusted aids of the famous Doc
  Savage."
  The voice hesitated a moment, then went on with  machine−gun rapidity.
  "You all know Doc Savage, folks, that famous  adventurer, who, with his five aids, is always fighting against
  injustice. Two of those aids will never fight again."
  The news announcer halted dramatically.
  "A flash has just reached me from the harbor police,  folks. There was an explosion on a speedboat, an hour
  ago. How many  were killed has not been definitely ascertained, as yet. But two bodies  were recovered. Those
  bodies were badly burned. But they were  identified from water−soaked papers in their pockets.
  "They were: Major Thomas J. Roberts, known to his  friends as Long Tom, and William Harper Littlejohn,
  called Johnny. Long  Tom, as you know, was a wizard with electricity. Johnny was a famous  archaeologist
  and geologist.
  "Just what caused the explosion has not as yet been  learned. A passing tugboat�"
  The voice went on. Monk and Ham were no longer  listening.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter V. A CALL TO THE MORGUE
  24
  
  Ham’s face was white. "That was no accident!" he  grated. "They were killed!"
  "And I think maybe these mugs can tell us  something." Monk’s voice was hardly recognizable.
  The gunmen were huddled together. Three had their  guns. Those weapons were in their hands, but they
  looked fearful just  the same.
  "We’ll shoot," quavered one.
  Monk spun, started to advance.
  "A super−flash, folks! A super−flash!"
  The excitement in the news announcer’s voice penetrated even the  red haze that seemed to float before
  Monk’s eyes.
  "Doc Savage himself has met with a mishap, a serious  one. Something big must be breaking, folks. This flash
  just came in. As  Doc Savage started to get in his car in front of the Globe office, just  fifteen minutes ago,
  there was a terrific flash. It must have been  electrical. Doc Savage went down� 
  "Wait a minute, folks! Here it is: Doc Savage, the  famous adventurer, was instantly killed to−night when he
  was  electrocuted in some manner as he started to enter his car! His body is  being taken to the morgue�"
  "The Morgue! I’m going there!" Monk moaned. He  turned, raced from the room. Ham was close behind,
  stopping only to  pick up his sword cane.
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  GREENSHIRT grinned sheepishly and got to his feet. 
  "We could’a’ got ‘em in the long run, but just the  same, I’m glad those babies left," he said. "Let’s play cards
  a while.  The job is over with."
  Cards were dealt. Chips clinked.
  "What’s it all about, anyway?" asked the small man  with close−set eyes.
  Greenshirt glanced about nervously. "Not even  Stinger knows. But it’s tied up with the living−fire death we
  heard  about."
  "The living−fire death!" The small man shivered. "I  don’t want nothing to�"
  "Quiet!"
  Greenshirt was tense. Perspiration appeared on his  face. His head turned, an inch at a time, toward the
  windows that  looked out over a side street. One of those windows was raised.
  "You’re hearing things," jeered the dealer. He  riffled the cards rapidly.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  25
  
  "I�I thought I heard something out there,"  Greenshirt said shakily. He glanced at his hole card.
  "Ace high, bets a dollar," said the dealer.
  "I’m staying�" started Greenshirt. He glanced at the  window again.
  He shrieked. A high−pitched shriek of fear that  froze in the roof of his mouth.
  A face had appeared at the open window. It was  looking in calmly, without expression. It was a bronze face.
  The face  of Doc Savage!
  The card players whirled, sat frozen as they looked  at the face in the window.
  Behind them, the shattered door swung wide. Stinger  Salvatore walked in, two gunmen behind him.
  Stinger’s face went blank. He looked as if he were  seeing a ghost.
  "It can’t be! He’s dead!" Stinger gasped. 
  Sound of his voice seemed to break the spell. The  small man with close−set eyes cursed with violent rapidity.
  His gun  appeared in his hand, belched flame three times in swift succession.
  The face at the window did not move, did not change  expression.
  THE small man prided himself as a marksman. It did  not seem possible that he could have missed at such a
  close distance.  He was sure his bullets had struck squarely in the center of that  bronze forehead.
  A whimpering sound came from the gunman’s lips. Once  more he fingered the trigger of his gun, sent lead
  screaming through  the window, directly at the plainly seen target.
  The bronze face wavered, but did not disappear. 
  Stinger tried to cry out. He found he had lost his  voice. His legs wanted to run but his muscles would not
  obey his mind.
  Then a bronze thunderbolt hit!
  The thunderbolt did not come through the open  window. It appeared through the door that led to an adjoining
  room.
  That thunderbolt was Doc Savage. He dived through  the door in a flying tackle. He was headed directly for
  Stinger  Salvatore.
  The small gunman rose suddenly from his chair. He  was directly in front of Doc’s flying figure. The bronze
  man struck  him, crashed into the table. The table collapsed.
  The room became filled with struggling, surging  figures. Some were trying to fight. Some were trying to
  escape. A gun  spoke sharply and a gunman collapsed as the bullet intended for the  bronze man found another
  victim.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  26
  
  The shots had attracted attention. The hotel was in  an uproar. Outside, in the hallway, women were
  screaming. In the  distance could be heard the approaching sirens of police cars.
  Doc caught two of the thugs, smashed their heads  together. A third dropped as strong fingers caught the back
  of his  neck, bringing quick unconsciousness.
  Stinger went away from there. He went swiftly. He  went in as close to a panic as he had ever been. The
  hallways were  filled with frightened, milling people. It was easy for the gangleader  to dart into the crowd and
  disappear.
  The house detective burst into the room. Behind him  came an avalanche of blue−clad figures, carrying riot
  guns.
  Doc looked at them calmly. Six prone figures were  scattered about the room.
  "But�but Mr. Savage. I thought you were dead! The  radio said so!" gulped the house detective.
  Doc ignored the question in the other’s voice. In  calm, brief sentences, he explained that he had been looking
  for Renny,  had been fired on by a room filled with thugs. He said nothing about  Stinger.
  The police were curious. They asked some questions.  But they did not ask too many. They knew Doc rated
  high with the  commissioner.
  The unconscious gunmen were carted off to jail. The  police restored order in the hotel.
  When Doc had the room to himself, he examined it  closely. Then he walked to a closet door. The door was
  locked. With a  small instrument, the bronze man released the lock in a matter of  seconds. He opened the door.
  Renny was hanging inside!
  THE huge engineer’s feet were tied. His hands were  bound behind him. A gag had been thrust in his mouth,
  puffing out his  cheeks.
  Doc reached in, freed the back of Renny’s coat from  the hook that was holding him in the air. He took the
  gag from Renny’s  mouth.
  "Holy cow!" the engineer gasped. "I thought you were  dead and I was sure I was."
  Renny’s legs were weak. They buckled up when he  tried to stand. Doc carried him easily to a bed, made him
  comfortable  while he freed him from his bonds.
  "What happened?" Renny gulped.
  "I wanted people to think I was dead for the time  being," Doc explained briefly. "I had the newspaper editor
  instruct the  ambulance driver to proceed toward the morgue."
  "Yeah, I know," Renny argued. "But that radio guy  said you had been electrocuted. It sounded as if you had
  been killed  just like that fellow at your office."
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  27
  
  "No." Doc shook his head. "There was nothing  mysterious about the attack on me. A high−powered electric
  line had  been attached to my car, and the juice was stepped up through a  transformer as I touched it, but I was
  wearing rubber gloves. I was  unhurt."
  Renny wiped his head weakly, sat up. He still had  but little strength.
  "That girl tricked me, too," he confessed. "She  acted frightened, and I pushed in. Somebody slugged me from
  behind. I  came to in the closet and heard them talking."
  Doc’s face did not change. "And they said they were  going to leave New York at once and go to Sandrit," he
  contributed.
  Renny’s eyes bulged, his puritanical features showed  astonishment. "But how�how did you know?"
  "Some one wants us to go there very much," Doc said  slowly. "That is self−evident. By pretending to try and
  keep us away,  they expect to decoy us there."
  "But�but that fellow who died in the office, was  that his purpose?"
  Doc shook his head. "No. He sincerely meant his  warning. But whoever was behind him anticipated what he
  would say, and  wanted him to say it."
  "I guess we are up against clever opponents," Renny  agreed.
  He then told Doc what the clerk had revealed about a  Petrod Yardoff and Clement Hoskins.
  "I’ll tear them limb from limb!" a childlike voice  promised with undeniable ferocity.
  "You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll leave them  alive until we can find out who is behind them," a second
  voice  objected.
  Monk and Ham burst into the room.
  AN incredulous look of delight crossed the homely  chemist’s features as he saw the bronze man and Renny.
  Ham grinned  delightedly.
  "I told this hairy monstrosity from the antediluvian  age it would take more than a gang of punks to get you!"
  the lawyer  shouted.
  Monk was making small noises. He walked to the  window, reached out and pulled in the bronze face that
  floated there.
  "Ectoplasm!" he snorted. "Nothing but bronze tissue  cloth in many folds, cut in the form of a mask, with
  small gas  cylinders at the top to hold it in the air."
  Doc ignored the interruption. "At the start all this  might have seemed a revenge plot. It does not now. Too
  many efforts are  being made to decoy us to Sandrit."
  "Will there be action?" Monk dropped the ectoplasm  mask.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VI. A CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
  28
  
  "We still don’t know what has happened to Long Tom  and Johnny," Renny reminded quietly.
  Monk sobered in an instant. "We saw the two bodies  at the morgue that were taken from the harbor."
  "And they were those of escaped convicts," Doc put  in quietly.
  Ham’s eyes grew large. "They were badly burned. I am  sure they weren’t those of Long Tom and Johnny,
  although identification  is almost impossible. But escaped convicts�"
  The bronze man nodded. "I believe that is what an  investigation will show."
  "And Long Tom and Johnny?"
  "I am sure they are alive�at least so far. I am just  as sure that it is intended they never shall be seen alive."
  "I guess we’ll be moving soon," Monk said, "so I’ll  get Habeas and�"
  "I’m afraid not," Doc warned. "This fire menace is  too dangerous to bring your pets along. They’ll have to
  remain behind."
  "Are we going to Sandrit then?" Renny demanded. 
  Doc nodded. "At once. We will accept the challenge  that has been hurled at us."
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  LONG TOM and Johnny were alive. That was the only  thing they were absolutely sure about.
  They did not know where they were. They did not know  who their captors were. They did not know what had
  happened to them.  They were fairly certain, however, that they were a long way from New  York.
  Long Tom twisted awkwardly until he could see  Johnny’s bound body. The archaeologist’s eyes were open
  behind his  glasses, but they held a dazed look. Long Tom seemed even more yellow  and
  unhealthy−appearing than before.
  There was only a faint hum of noise around them.  They were lying in small, smelly bunks. The walls of the
  room were of  steel.
  "We got licked," Long Tom admitted.
  "I dimly recall regaining consciousness only to be  anaesthetized," Johnny said weakly.
  "Chloroformed," the thin electrician agreed.
  "But at some time we were transported by airplane."
  "I remember coming to several times in the air, but  each time I got another shot of chloroform," Long Tom
  conceded.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  29
  
  "But what transpired then? All that must have been  hours, possibly aeons ago."
  "I think I know where we are."
  "On a submarine," Johnny nodded glumly. 
  Long Tom turned on his side, tried to hook the ropes  that bound him over the edge of the bunk.
  There was no sound of Diesels. That meant the sub  was running on batteries, probably submerged. The sticky
  heat and heavy  feeling of the air bore that out.
  A small door opened. Several men filed in. They were  dressed in greasy dungarees. There was a military
  bearing about them  despite their attire.
  The leader had a small beard that bobbed when he  talked. His lips split in a grin. He spoke with a faint accent.
  "You will not try to escape, please. It is useless."
  "Yeah?" Long Tom asked belligerently.
  "Yes." The small beard made a short dip. "We will  now assist you remove the ropes you seem to dislike."
  Johnny’s mouth dropped, his eyes became wide behind  his glasses. Two of the seamen stepped forward,
  stripped off the ropes.
  The small beard came up firmly.
  "You will come with me, please."
  The leader turned, led the way. Johnny looked at  Long Tom, shrugged. He followed. The seamen brought up
  the rear.
  Their guide led them to the control compartment. He  bowed deeply, and his short beard seemed just the least
  bit unsteady.
  "Here they are, sir," he reported.
  A tall, very thin man, with piercing eyes, dressed  entirely in rubber, turned slowly.
  "Welcome, gentlemen," Petrod Yardoff said with a  sardonic twist to his sharp lips.
  LONG TOM’S eyes traveled over the other shrewdly. He  thought of Z−2 and the way the filling−station
  attendant had said the  F.B.I. man had been dressed.
  Yardoff divined his thoughts. "Yes," the thin man  murmured with mock politeness, "your unfortunate friend
  wore a  makeshift costume for much the same reason I wear this."
  A long crease appeared in Long Tom’s forehead.  Yardoff was perspiring freely under the nearly airtight
  costume he  wore. His face was a peculiar cherry−red color.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  30
  
  "Strange," Long Tom muttered.
  Johnny hunched forward, a strange look in his eyes.  Others had left the control room. They were alone with
  Yardoff.
  The thin man did not appear to be watching him.  Johnny glanced at the controls. They were of a familiar
  type.  His fist knotted behind him. He set himself for a haymaker swing.
  "Don’t!" Long Tom rapped swiftly.
  Yardoff turned slowly, an enigmatic smile spreading  his sharp lips. "I thought you might guess part of the
  truth, Long  Tom," he complimented.
  Johnny’s eyes made saucers behind his glasses. He  looked angrily at his comrade. "If you had only retained
  silence, I  would have whiffed our repellent host to a land of unutterable  oblivion."
  Yardoff mocked him with his eyes. "Your friend saved  your life," he said without interest.
  Johnny looked a question at Long Tom. The electrical  genius pulled the lobe of one oversize ear reflectively.
  "It�it don’t seem possible, Johnny," he said. "But  I’m afraid this guy is right."
  "Naturally you are asking yourself questions,"  Yardoff bowed. "I have no particular reason for not satisfying
  some of  your curiosity. Look here."
  Long Tom stepped forward gingerly. He glued his eye  to the twin of the periscope through which Yardoff
  had been looking.  His breath came in sharply.
  Powerful lights were illuminating the course the  submarine was following. That course was a weird one.
  They were in a winding, stone passageway. The top of  the submarine was barely awash. The submarine was
  moving slowly,  twisting and turning on an erratic course.
  As Long Tom watched, the channel widened. For a few  moments they were in a huge, underground stream.
  The water appeared  dark and malevolent.
  Stalactites hung from the ceiling of the cavern.  There was an oppressive air about the scene; the searchlight
  appeared  unable to penetrate dark crevices.
  With an effort, Long Tom brought his mind back to  normal. Petrod Yardoff was surveying them with a
  jeering, sardonic  look. The electrical genius was glad when the cavern passed behind,  when the submarine
  moved on into another dark, winding passageway.
  Johnny stepped forward, took his place at the  periscope. The geologist forgot all about danger. He exclaimed
  with  sudden interest.
  "This proves my theorem!" he shouted loudly.  "Scrutinize those stratifications, those near the roof. Why, they
  are  the oldest known type, and that directly beneath�why, it proves that�"
  Petrod Yardoff chuckled. There was something evil,  something dangerous about that chuckle.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  31
  
  "You will see more than that, my friend, where we  are going. You will see things you will wish never existed.
  You are  going to a strange land, my friends."
  Long Tom looked unconcerned. "Doc will show up  sooner or later," he scoffed. "We have nothing to fear."
  A thin cackle broke from Petrod Yardoff’s sharp  lips. "The bronze man! He cannot even take care of himself.
  Even now he  is walking into a trap. He and the rest of his men."
  The submarine moved on, slowly, through the dark,  treacherous passageway.
  If Doc, Monk, Ham and Renny were running into a trap  they gave no sign that they realized that fact. They
  were soaring  westward in Doc’s speedy transport plane. No words were exchanged  during the trip. All were
  filled with a premonition of unusual danger.
  In a short time the landing field at Palm Springs  appeared below. Several cars were parked there, and as the
  crowd caught  a glimpse of the bronze man descending from his ship as it rolled to a  stop, they made a
  concerted rush toward Doc.
  Doc’s aids were pushed to the outskirts of the crowd  in the mêlée that followed.
  Monk’s face had become a mile long. There were many  beautiful girls surrounding Doc. "It’s tough what
  Doc has to put up  with," he growled.
  "Yeah," chuckled Ham. "Just about what the fox said  when he couldn’t get the grapes."
  DOC made a path through the crowd and rejoined Monk,  Ham and Renny. They looked over the cars at the
  landing field. Several  had "to hire" signs on the windshields.
  Renny moved forward deliberately, glanced at each of  the cars in turn. At an open car he paused.
  The driver was short and chubby, with an amiable  face and carefree smile. "Car, buddy?" he invited.
  The four got into the car. "Where to?" asked the  driver.
  "Do you know a Clement or a Virginia Hoskins, at  Sandrit?" Renny asked.
  The driver nodded. "Sure. I know everybody in this  neck of the woods. That Virginia sure is a good−looker."
  He threw the car in gear, the motor roared. At the  first corner, the car was doing better than forty.
  Ham threw a quizzical look at Doc.
  "I think this was the car we were expected to take,"  the bronze man said. His voice, with its peculiar carrying
  quality,  reached the ears of his aids, but the driver did not hear.
  Renny was startled. "Holy cow! How could it be?" he  asked. "Nothing could happen to us in this machine."
  Doc said nothing.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VII. A WILD DRIVER
  32
  
  The fat driver, his face still cloaked in a  friendly, reassuring grin, really put on the speed as they reached the
  open road. His passengers bounced around in the rear seat.
  "I hope this mug leads us into a gang," Monk  rumbled. "I’d like a fight."
  Monk’s childlike voice carried better than he knew.  The driver heard. His ears wiggled, but he did not turn
  around.
  They came to a road that left the main highway. The  long touring car skidded as it made the bend.
  Instinctively, those in the rear seat reached for  something to hold onto.
  The car hit sand. It skidded wildly. An observer  might even have believed the driver was making it skid on
  purpose.
  "Ouch!" Monk squealed.
  He yanked his hand from the rod he had been holding,  looking curiously at a finger. There was a tiny
  puncture near the first  joint. A drop of blood appeared.
  The car bucked, skidded, all but overturned. It was  impossible to stay in the rear seat without holding on.
  Renny tried to cry out, but his voice was lost in  the wind. Ham’s shoulders jerked.
  Doc could have braced himself with his powerful  legs, but the others crashed into him. He also was holding
  to a rod.
  Something was happening to Monk. His head dropped.  His mouth went slack. He slumped.
  "Poison," Ham muttered weakly. "Poison on tiny barbs  on those rods we grabbed."
  Renny’s huge frame sagged over on Doc. The bronze  man’s flake gold eyes were flickering.
  The fat, amiable driver glanced over a shoulder with  a grin. He straightened the car out, slowed its pace to a
  more  reasonable speed.
  Behind him, his four passengers were sprawled in  awkward, unconscious attitudes.
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  "SO that’s the famous Doc Savage, the guy everybody  is afraid of," the driver sneered. He drove on a short
  distance, then  turned off on a road that was barely a trail.
  He followed the trail until it dropped into a small  arroyo. He shut off the motor, lighted a cigarette.
  The hum of a second engine sounded, faintly at  first, then more loudly. A big car appeared. The fat driver did
  not  seem surprised. He motioned toward his unconscious passengers and drew  a deep puff on his cigarette.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  33
  
  "Easy as falling off a log," he grinned.
  Eight men poured out of the second car. Even though  Doc and his aides were unconscious, the men
  approached warily. Three  were carrying Tommy guns. The others had automatics.
  The bronze man’s eyes flickered. The fingers of one  of his powerful hands were pressed tight against the
  arteries in his  other wrist. The pressure was as effective as a tourniquet. His lips,  hidden as he bent over,
  sucked the powerful, quick−acting anaesthetic  from his veins. That anaesthetic had been injected by the point
  of one  of the many small pin−points hidden on the hand−holds.
  Doc’s frame was inert, apparently lifeless.
  The gunmen opened both rear doors of the touring  car. Doc and his men were yanked to the ground. They fell
  limply.
  Doc was thrown into the rear of the second car. As  the attackers were lifting Monk and Ham, Doc’s hand
  rose, loosened the  top of the gas tank. A moment more and the top was replaced.
  Monk was pulled up first. He was tied firmly; then,  still unconscious, he was tossed into the back of the
  second car. Renny  was bound next. More men came toward Ham and Doc, ropes in their hands.
  Two of the gunmen reached over, pulled the bronze  man half up. One started to loop a rope about his wrists.
  That was the last that gunman knew for a long time.
  Doc galvanized into action. The palm of one hand  caught the gunman in the back of the neck. The man never
  knew what hit  him. The second thug opened his mouth to yell. He was lifted from his  feet, hurled bodily into
  the gunmen tying Ham.
  The others went for their guns. An automatic spoke.  A Tommy gun went into action.
  The gunners had to be careful not to hit their own  men. Their first shots went wide.
  The arroyo where the cars were was not particularly  deep, but the walls rose sheer for nearly a dozen feet. It
  seemed  impossible for any one to escape that way.
  The gunmen were not even expecting Doc to try it.  The bronze man caught them unprepared.
  With one leap, he was on top of the touring car. A  second surge of his mighty muscles and his fingers reached
  the top of  the canyon wall.
  Hot lead tore only inches behind him as he flashed  over the rim of that wall, sprawled on the ground at the
  top.
  The Tommy guns kept up a deadly barrage. One gunman  issued swift orders. A look, almost of awe, was in
  his eyes.
  The driver of the second car, with Renny, Ham and  Monk tied tightly in the rear seat, roared away.
  The others made a thorough search for Doc Savage.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  34
  
  They did not find him.
  A MILE away, a girl watched the scene through  powerful binoculars.
  She saw the gunmen hunt through sage and cactus,  explore small ravines. Finally she saw them return to the
  touring car,  drive away.
  Still she watched. Her breath came in sharply as she  saw a faint movement almost at the edge of the arroyo.
  Then Doc  appeared, coming from a tiny depression. He had drawn sage over him  until he was completely
  hidden.
  The girl’s hand reached for the rifle at her side.  Her dark eyes held a strange expression, her lips were half
  parted.
  She was clad in a riding habit. The trim−fitting  pants emphasized her soft curves. A pulse beat rapidly in her
  throat,  just over the collar of her flannel shirt.
  For a moment Virginia Hoskins hesitated. She glanced  behind her, where a groom was standing near two
  grazing horses. Then  she pushed the rifle aside and raised the binoculars again.
  She saw Doc Savage seat himself on a rock, reach  inside his shirt and bring out the belt he always wore about
  his body.  He worked swiftly. In a few minutes he no longer looked like Doc Savage.
  A faint glow of admiration came to the girl’s face.  The bronze man placed a cap on his head, he reversed his
  coat. Glasses  covered his flake gold eyes.
  Rising, he made for the main highway at a lope that  was deceiving as to its speed. Apparently tirelessly he
  moved on,  reached the point where the cars had turned.
  There the bronze man slowed, but only for an  instant. Unerringly, he turned in the direction taken by the
  gunmen’s  cars.
  The girl hesitated no longer. She grabbed her rifle,  ran toward the waiting groom and horses. She spoke to the
  groom  briefly. They leaped into the saddles, cut off across the desert. The  girl used her spurs hard, sending
  her roan recklessly onward.
  Doc Savage did not see the girl. His eyes were on  the road.
  The glasses he wore were tinted. Through them he  could see all that could be seen with normal eyes, and
  something more  as well.
  He could see a faint, irregular design, almost as if  the road was marked for him.
  In a way it was. When his hand had been at the  gasoline tank, Doc had dropped a small powder into the fuel.
  This  powder dissolved in the gasoline, but would not burn. It was thrown out  by the exhaust.
  The normal eye could see nothing, but through the  glasses a clear trail was left.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  35
  
  The trail finally turned off onto a hard,  well−packed gravel road. Sandrit had been circled. Unknown danger
  lay  ahead.
  IN the space of a comparatively few hours, all five  of Doc’s men had been abducted. Those behind the dread
  events had shown  cunning and cleverness. But if Doc Savage was concerned, he did not  show it.
  Doc might have been able to rescue his men in the  arroyo. That he did not attempt to do so, was merely in
  line with the  policy he always followed.
  The attackers had been heavily armed. In a general  fight, Monk, Ham or Renny might have been killed. Doc
  always was  willing to face death himself, but when it could be avoided he never  risked the lives of his men.
  His aids undoubtedly were safe, at least for the  present. Had the object been to kill them, there would have
  been no  reason for delaying the execution.
  The trail left by the car’s exhaust thinned, then  expanded to the size of a large smudge. It was as if the car had
  halted  there briefly.
  Doc did not pause. He moved past at a steady walk,  eyes still downcast.
  Behind him, two men rose suddenly from clumps of  sagebrush that had hidden them at the sides of the road.
  Submachine  guns were cradled under their arms.
  Slowly they raised their guns, trained them on Doc’s  moving figure. The muzzles were held low, aimed at the
  legs, as if the  purpose were to disable, but not kill.
  "Sherlock, hell!" one of them sneered. "Let’s see  that wise mug deduce this!" His finger squeezed the trigger.
  Br−r−r−r−r−r−r−r!
  Lead rained down the road. It hit nothing.
  Even as the gunmen fired, Doc Savage vanished. He  vanished with a sidewise leap that carried him clear of
  the road, into  the surrounding brush.
  The gunners rushed forward.
  A small, brittle, egg−shaped object caught the first  squarely on the chin. His arms went up. The Tommy gun
  fell to the  ground. Then the gunman followed it, curling up, as if asleep.
  His companion paused, startled. Strong fingers  suddenly caught the gunner around the neck; thumbs pressed
  down hard on  the back of his skull.
  The machine gunner became limp.
  The bronze man’s expression was sober. The killers  had expected him. Only tiny extensions on the glasses he
  wore had saved  him. Those extensions protruded on either side of his face; they were  mirrors. Even facing
  straight ahead, he could see behind him.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  36
  
  When Doc moved on, five minutes later, the glasses  had disappeared. His features seemed covered by a two
  days’ growth of  beard. His face was putty−like, with weak lines about his mouth. He  carried a Tommy gun
  under his arm and walked as if very weary.
  Tire marks were plain in the road now. They led over  a small hill. On the other side of that hill, looming
  starkly in the  open desert, was a big building. A sign at the gate read:
  HOSKINS GLASS FACTORY
  The tire marks of the gunmen’s car turned in there.
  CLEMENT HOSKINS was peering from one of the big  windows of the factory building. A cold grin was on
  his round face. His  big, barrel−shaped figure was tense.
  An angry expression flashed over his features as he  saw a stooped, wavering figure approach down the road.
  "The fool! What is he coming back for?" he muttered.
  Hard−eyed killers were grouped about him. One  shifted nervously. "Looks like Sam is suffering from a
  sunstroke,  boss," he suggested uneasily.
  The wavering figure on the road appeared to find it  more and more difficult to walk. The submachine gun
  was trailing, held  by limp fingers.
  Once the man lifted his head, weakly, then dropped  it again. The factory building was almost before him.
  High wire fences  surrounded the sprawling building. Every other strand of the fence was  barbed wire. "Stay
  out" and "No Trespassing" signs were posted at the  top.
  A grim, ominous silence pervaded the scene.
  The only entry to the factory was through a large  gate in front. At one side of the gate, built half inside, half
  outside  the fence, was a watchman’s shack.
  The wavering figure headed toward the gate.
  "Sam Belough! Come in here! Did you kill him?"
  The voice came from within the shack. It was a  girl’s voice. There was a note of urgency in it�a note of
  almost  hysterical fear.
  The man with the machine−gun turned slowly toward  the door of the shack. Virginia Hoskins stood there,
  black curls  framing features that were almost perfect. A gun was in her hand. It  was aimed directly at the man
  before her.
  "Come in here! Quick! If you’ve killed Doc Savage�"
  Without hesitation, the wavering man entered the  shack.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter VIII. A GUNMAN SPEAKS
  37
  
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  ONLY a few miles away, movie stars were enjoying  late afternoon siestas or dressing for dinner. Ice clinked
  in tall  glasses. A subdued hum of conversation, of polite, well−bred phrases  mingled with cheerful laughter.
  There was none of this in the watchman’s shack. But  fear was there! Stark, horrible, fear!
  It showed in the set of Virginia Hoskin’s lips. Her  finger tightened on the trigger.
  "I wouldn’t shoot, Miss Hoskins," Doc Savage said  quietly.
  A gasp came from the girl. The gun dropped as her  hands twisted frenziedly.
  "Doc Savage?" she breathed.
  "Perhaps it is time now for you to tell me your  story," the bronze man said.
  His flake gold eyes glanced about the shack swiftly.  It was comfortably furnished. The walls were thick,
  apparently of  metal, strong enough to withstand rifle bullets. At the rear, looking  toward the factory, was a
  window. The glass appeared bulletproof.  Through the window, faint activity could be seen inside the factory.
  The girl took a long breath. "Perhaps I had  better explain."
  Doc nodded. He glanced through the rear window  again, and began to work swiftly with his hands.
  Virginia Hoskins swallowed hard. She sank limply  into a chair. "Clement Hoskins is my uncle. He is a
  crook," she started.
  The bronze man said nothing.
  "My money is invested in this factory. I have become  rich, but my uncle has become even more wealthy.
  That aroused my  suspicions. I investigated."
  Doc remained silent
  "He is involved in something crooked, something so  big I am almost afraid even to guess what it means. But
  it’s linked  with the living−fire death!"
  Doc glanced at her politely. "Yes?"
  "I heard my uncle and Petrod Yardoff plotting. They  wanted to capture you and your men. I was afraid for
  my uncle, for such  lawless acts could have only one end. I was afraid for you, for if he  succeeded, you
  eventually would have to die."
  "So that is why you attempted to destroy the record  of Z−2’s conversation? You wanted to keep me from
  becoming interested?"
  The girl nodded, dumbly. "I�I saw Z−2 die. It�it was  terrible! I had followed him, trying to learn what he had
  discovered,  hoping to learn what my uncle really was doing. Then Z−2 died. My uncle  and Yardoff had
  flown to New York. I flew after them. They�"
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  38
  
  "Quiet!" The bronze man raised his hand suddenly. 
  There was a faint noise just outside the shack. A  man, listening there, turned swiftly and raced toward the
  factory.
  The bronze man’s deception had been discovered.
  DOC spun, face emotionless. "Speak swiftly," he  said. "Our time is short."
  His tone brought the girl’s head up. She flushed.
  "Other men were in the plane with uncle, and Petrod,  horrible men." She shuddered.
  Doc nodded. That explained the man who had died in  his office, the two whose bodies had been found in the
  harbor.
  "I�I didn’t intend to trick your friend, Renny.  He�he wouldn’t listen to my warning. And I wanted to warn
  you, earlier  to−day. I couldn’t. One of uncle’s men was with me. Now if you go on,  you are doomed. All
  your men are doomed."
  "Why?" Doc’s single word snapped like a pistol crack.
  The girl paled. Fear returned to her dark eyes, her  lips trembled.
  "They�they’ve been taken in there, taken down to  that horrible place�" She broke off, fought visibly for
  control.
  Her eyes turned to the window at the rear of the  shack. A scream burst from her lips.
  A score of men were pouring from the factory,  heavily armed men. In the lead was the big, barrel−shaped
  figure of  Clement Hoskins.
  "Surround that shack! Take no chances, but get Doc  Savage!" Hoskins bellowed.
  The big man glanced about anxiously. The sun was  dropping. Already it was dusk. Soon the swift night of the
  desert would  arrive. But Hoskins was confident. His men had circled the shack.  Nothing, no one, could get
  out of there unseen.
  "Virginia," Hoskins rapped, "come out of there  before you get killed!"
  For long seconds there was no answer to that  command. Then the door to the shack opened. Virginia Hoskins
  came out.  Her face was tear−stained.
  Her uncle grinned without mirth.
  "Now, Doc Savage," he bellowed, "you are surrounded!  You cannot escape. Surrender, and your life will be
  spared. Attempt to  fight, and you will die!"
  Silence was his only answer.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  39
  
  Clement Hoskins swore bitterly. He motioned to one  of the killers standing at his side.
  The man stepped toward the gate. A small switch was  just inside. He pulled that switch down.
  A brilliant, blinding light enveloped the watchman’s  shack. The flame sizzled, white−hot, dazzling as a
  lightning flash.
  A second time the switch was drawn back, shot home.  A second time hell−fire danced about the shack.
  Clement Hoskins closed his eyes, temporarily blinded  by the flash. Then he opened them.
  "Go get his body, boys," he said wearily. "I’m sorry  we had to do that. I could have used that guy alive, but
  now�"
  Cautiously, the gunmen crept to the shack. Guns were  ready in their hands. Flashlights were turned on. The
  door was thrown  open. A shrill yell of surprise broke from the first man to enter.
  The shack was empty!
  CLEMENT HOSKINS’S jaw dropped. A look of utter  bewilderment spread over his flabby countenance.
  "He−he couldn’t’a’ got away!" he bellowed.
  "But he did. And I’m glad." Virginia Hoskins brushed  tears from her eyes, smiled wanly.
  Hoskins motioned to a gunman. "Take her!" he rapped.  "Lock her up. She’s getting too dangerous."
  Virginia paled. She fought She screamed. It was  useless. She was carried away.
  Hoskins, breathing hard, rushed into the shack. The  gunman had been correct. No one was there.
  "The floor is metal. The walls are lined with  metal," the barrel−shaped man muttered incredulously. "Even
  the chairs  are of metal, and connected with the floor. Enough juice went through  here to fry a dozen men, but
  that devil escaped�"
  "Could he ‘a’ ducked out when we was all blinded by  the light?" one of the men asked, nervously.
  Hoskins nodded. That had to be it. There was no  other answer.
  The big man jerked erect with sudden decision.
  "He couldn’t have gone far. He’ll stay around here,  trying to rescue his men. Spread out. Hunt for him."
  "But−but that guy’s poison. It’s dark. We’ll�"
  Hoskins spun on the speaker. One huge paw shot out.  The man soared through the air, fell sprawling, his face
  a crimson mass.
  "Treat ‘em rather rough, don’t you, Hoskins?" a  voice drawled mockingly.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  40
  
  The barrel−shaped man swung around, his hand held a  gun suddenly. Then he relaxed.
  Facing him was a tall, well−dressed man with the  hard face of a killer. The man drew a handkerchief from
  one sleeve,  wiped his hands casually.
  "Stinger!" Hoskins exclaimed. "How did you get here?"
  The other waved one arm negligently. "Easy enough.  Came by plane. Walked up while you were all busy.
  But where did Savage  go?"
  The barrel−shaped man looked at Stinger with eyes  that were tight slits. A dim suspicion had flared in his
  brain. Doc  Savage was known to be an artist at disguises. He had reached the  watchman’s shack in the garb
  of Sam Belough. This man looked like  Stinger, but was it Stinger? Could it be the bronze man in a new dis� 
  Br−r−r−r−r−r−r−r!
  A Tommy gun spoke viciously. It came from the  desert, across the road from the factory. Lead whistled
  overhead.
  Clement Hoskins’s face cleared; he smiled. Doc  Savage was good, no question about that; but he couldn’t be
  in two  places at once. And the bronze man had carried Sam Belough’s Tommy gun.
  "Glad to see you, Stinger," Hoskins said.
  HOSKINS’S gunmen, twenty strong, spread out in a  thin line. They vanished across the road, weapons ready.
  Hoskins’s big shoulders lifted and fell in a deep  sigh. "They’ll get him now," he said. "Come on in the
  factory."
  His companion was looking about him curiously.
  "You’ve got light, lots of light, and you must have  power," he said wonderingly. "But I don’t see any power
  lines. Where do  you get your juice?"
  The barrel−shaped man grinned thinly. "You’ll wonder  about lots of things if you stick around here. And, by
  the way, what  did you come here for?"
  The other shrugged, impatiently. "You mentioned  millions, didn’t you?" he drawled.
  A peculiar light flashed for an instant in Clement  Hoskins’s eyes, and was as quickly veiled. He led the way
  to the  factory.
  In the distance, the Tommy gun spoke again.
  Inside the doors, Hoskins waved his hand with  ill−concealed pride.
  In the rear of the rambling structure, were huge  electrical furnaces. Closer at hand, were shelves stacked with
  glassware. The tall man’s eyes narrowed slightly as he noticed some of  that glassware. The handkerchief
  flicked from his sleeve.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  41
  
  "Making some rather queer things, aren’t you?" he  asked.
  Hoskins chuckled. "We can make anything out of  glass. Clothes, rope, instruments, or what have you."
  He led the way to a small office. "We’ve got all  Doc’s men," he said. "When we get the bronze devil himself,
  we’ll all  be�"
  Hoskins stopped, frowning. Running feet sounded  outside. An excited summons came from the other side of
  the door.
  SCOWLING, the big man went to the door, closing it  behind him. He was gone only a few seconds.
  Hoskins was smiling when he returned.
  "You spoke of the glassware we make," he said. "I’m  going to let you in on a secret: I’m going to show you
  one of our  experiments."
  The big man pushed the other ahead of him, toward  the rear of the factory. A huge furnace was in a big room.
  Waves of  heat swirled about them. The heat was pulsing from the furnace.
  "This is where we do our testing," Hoskins said.  There was an excited tremor in his voice. "Right now,
  molten sand is in  that furnace. But in a few minutes�"
  Sound of a scuffle came from outside the room. The  door opened. Monk, Ham and Renny were pushed
  inside. Their hands were  bound behind them. Gags were in their mouths.
  Men pulled them along roughly. Ham kicked out; Monk  struggled; Renny strained at his bonds. But they
  were helpless.
  They were hauled to the top of a platform  overlooking the furnace. An inclosed slide led from that platform
  into  the vat where molten sand bubbled.
  "Doc Savage really is a clever man," Clement Hoskins  said. He spoke as if to himself. "He wasn’t near that
  Tommy gun at all.  My men found it, quite by chance. A clockwork arrangement had been  attached to it, so it
  would fire at regular intervals."
  "Yes?" His companion’s features did not change, he  remained relaxed.
  "Yes." Hoskins’s voice suddenly was harsh. Armed men  were pushing into the room. Their weapons were
  ready in their hands.
  "Yes," Hoskins repeated, "so I’m going to show you  this experiment The three men up there, the three aids of
  Doc Savage,  are going to be thrown into that furnace. I’ve often wondered what the  result would be, how it
  would affect the glass, I mean, to mix human  bodies with the sand. So they are going to die, unless�"
  "I see your point." The other spoke with the  peculiar, low, yet carrying voice of Doc Savage. His flake gold
  eyes  looked full into Hoskins’s fat face. "You want me to help you. If I  refuse, then Monk, Ham and Renny
  die. I understand."
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  Chapter IX. THE TRAP CLOSES
  42
  
  "And your answer?"
  The flake gold eyes swept unemotionally about the  ring of armed men.
  "Tell me your problem," Doc Savage said. "I will see  if I can solve it for you."
  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE
  CLEMENT HOSKINS’S eyes narrowed slightly; his mouth  tightened. For a moment he hesitated, then
  waved his hand. Monk, Ham  and Renny, still struggling, were carried from the room.
  Other armed guards stood close about Doc. They were  alert, with nervous fingers on triggers.
  Hoskins turned to the guards, motioned to the bronze  man. "Take him to the escape room," he ordered
  harshly.
  Doc turned obediently as muzzles of Tommy guns were  thrust in his sides. Silently he permitted himself to be
  herded along.
  He was taken down a short flight of stairs into a  small room. The floor of the room was of glass. Light
  glowed eerily  beneath it, revealing a narrow−walled passageway.
  The bronze man was thrust inside roughly. Hoskins  joined him. The guards stood in the doorway, weapons
  raised.
  "You are a clever man, very clever," Hoskins said  silkily. "I am afraid you are as clever with words as with
  deeds."
  The bronze man did not move, did not speak.
  "Your men have been taken to a place from which none  may escape," Hoskins said grimly. "Should they
  attempt it, a terrible  fate awaits them. None who go where they are may return and live�unless  I will it. And
  now, whether they live or die, whether those aids of  yours burn and suffer or survive unharmed, depends
  entirely on you."
  Time seemed to stop. The guards held their breath.  Hoskins’s eyes were riveted on the emotionless features
  of the bronze  man.
  "Do you wish to speak in front of all your men, or  would you rather tell me what you want me to do after we
  are alone?"  Doc asked indifferently.
  The tension went out of the barrel−shaped man  suddenly. He wiped drops of perspiration from his forehead.
  With a  faint smirk, he turned to the guards.
  "Go outside, close the door, but guard it well," he  ordered.
  The gunmen obeyed.
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE
  43
  
  "I’m glad you are showing sense, Savage," Hoskins  said. There was no mistaking the relief in his voice. "I
  would rather  have you with me than against me. You are a miracle man, if ever I saw  one. No one but you
  could ever have escaped from that watchman’s shack,  as far as that is concerned."
  Doc’s face did not change. "That was simple," he  said briefly. "I knew the shack was wired. Since I am
  wearing  rubber−soled shoes and took care to stand where my body would not form  a completed circuit, I was
  unharmed."
  The fat man nodded. "Clever. But you will need more  than that to solve what I want done."
  He closed his lips quickly, went to the door. It was  partly ajar. He slammed it.
  "Now," he began, "we’ll get down to business. To  begin with, have you any idea what you are up against?"
  "A faint idea," Doc said frankly.
  "I thought you would have," Hoskins grinned. "And  that gives you some idea of the peril, also. The stuff
  works fast. As  fast�"
  "�as this," Doc finished calmly. One big fist  flashed through the air. It caught the barrel−shaped man just
  under the  jaw. Big as he was, Clement Hoskins went out as if mowed down by a  cannon ball. Doc caught him
  under the armpits, lowered him to the floor.
  In the matter of seconds, the bronze man changed to  Hoskins’s garb. He padded himself with clothes, made
  up his face until  he resembled Hoskins. He stepped to the door, quickly.
  "He got rough," he said harshly as he moved from the  room, closed the door behind him. "Keep him there for
  a time. Take no  chances. I’m going below."
  The guards looked startled, but said nothing. They  did not penetrate Doc’s disguise.
  The bronze man walked on swiftly. Somewhere, near at  hand, there must be a way of descent to that place of
  horror where his  men had been taken.
  THREE of Doc’s men actually were not far away. But  to Monk, Ham and Renny, it seemed that they were in
  a different world.
  They were in an elevator cage. And that cage was  made entirely of glass. Even the cables that held it were
  finely spun  and woven glass.
  The cage was dropping slowly, very slowly. A  strange, peculiar hum came to their ears.
  Armed guards were crowded about them. They carried  weapons made of glass. That should have held the
  attention of their  prisoners. It didn’t. They were more interested in what they could see  passing on either side
  as they dropped downward.
  The rock formation changed steadily. Streaks of  copper, yellow veins of gold were passed. Tunnels showed
  where those  veins had once been worked.
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  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE
  44
  
  The gags had been removed. Renny exclaimed in  astonishment as he saw the store of mineral wealth as yet
  untouched.
  "Holy cow! It don’t seem possible! If all this is  being passed up, what can be farther down?"
  Monk and Ham shook their heads. They wondered, also.
  A faint smell of sulphur drifted in the air. With it  was another smell, a far more unusual one. It was the odor
  of ozone,  such as sometimes is smelled in a severe electrical storm, after a bolt  of lightning, or near a
  powerful dynamo.
  Renny looked wordlessly at the others.
  The glass elevator stopped. Long shafts led back on  either side. A hundred yards away one shaft led into a
  big, roomlike  cavern. There was a thunderous, stamping noise. Blast furnaces glowed.  Queer instruments and
  utensils were near by.
  "An underground glass factory!" Monk breathed  unbelievingly.
  The guards who had accompanied them so far, were  leaving the elevator. Other men were taking their places.
  It was sight  of these other men that brought the short hairs up on the back of the  hairy chemist’s neck.
  With the queer newcomers at the controls, the  elevator cage again began to sink.
  Down, down it went, into the bowels of the earth.  And for once, not even Monk had a word to say.
  There were no lights visible. Rock pressed close on  either side of the shaft. Yet the elevator cage glowed with
  a strange  cherry−red glow.
  It came from the bodies of the new guards.
  OTHER strange things were taking place far down in  the depths. A long, sleek, cigar−shaped monster was
  rising slowly in a  huge, underground stream. Slowly the big submarine eased toward the  tiny dock.
  Men poured from the submarine, made it fast. Petrod  Yardoff appeared, his thin, scarecrow figure still clad in
  its rubber  garments.
  Long Tom and Johnny were boosted out of the tower  hatch. Their hands had been tied, blindfolds were about
  their heads.
  Guided by sailors, they were brought to the tiny  dock.
  "One false move, and you both will die," Petrod  Yardoff warned in a strangely subdued voice. "I shall not be
  able to  help you. We do not want you to die�yet. So please be careful."
  The pair were pushed ahead. They walked up a long  corridor of uncertain footing and were told to stop. Then
  the sound of  machinery came to them. A change of air pressure told them that a great  door had opened.
  As the door closed behind them, Yardoff spoke: "Step  ahead, carefully, then pause."
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter X. MEN OF FIRE
  45
  
  Without hesitation, Long Tom and Johnny obeyed. For  minutes, it seemed, they stood motionless. There was
  no sound. Then  their blindfolds were removed.
  Above them walls glowed dully. They seemed  translucent, to be admitting light from behind. But a closer
  examination showed the light came from the walls themselves in some  unexplained manner.
  Johnny’s mouth opened and closed. "Most  extraordinary manifestation of inspired luminescence," he
  muttered.
  "Come on!" Yardoff snapped.
  They struggled upward in a cavernous passageway. The  weird light from the walls grew brighter. They
  wound through twisting,  confusing tunnels, then passed through another great door. The portal  apparently
  was made of lead. The men who opened it handled it  carefully. They used rubber gloves of great thickness.
  Long Tom and  Johnny were thrust inside. Both gasped.
  The light was blinding. The tunnel was wider here.  There were dozens of strange−appearing men in
  breechcloths. Light  glowed from their reddened skins.
  They were men of living fire!
  "Well, I’ll be�" Long Tom started.
  A high−pitched voice came from around the corner. "I  don’t give a dang if we are in a spot!" sounded the
  squealing tones of  Monk. "You tin−horn shyster, you just mention again that you’d like to  roast a pig down
  here, and I’ll grind you to pieces on one of these  rocks!"
  Monk came around the corner. He was followed by Ham  and Renny.
  "Howling calamities!" the chemist shrilled. "How did  you birds get here?"
  "We were just out for a boat ride," Long Tom said  dryly. "They let us off here."
  "Holy cow, but I’m glad you two are alive!" Renny  boomed.
  "And I’ll be glad when Doc gets us out of this  place," Ham muttered.
  "Quite an incongruous spot for a reunion," Johnny  put in. "I don’t like it."
  The others glanced around. They were ringed by those  strange cherry−red figures. There was something
  ominous about their  silence.
  Chapter XI. A MIRACLE NEEDED
  THERE was a steady hum in the big cavern. It did not  seem particularly noticeable after a time, but at first it
  was  deafening. Doc’s aids had been shouting, much as they would do in a  subway. Now they, too, became
  silent.
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  46
  
  The steady hum rasped on nerves. In the ring of  cherry−red men about them were those whose hands and
  faces twitched in  sympathy with that hum.
  A faint look of uneasiness was on Petrod Yardoff’s  face, but he tried to look unconcerned. He was pulling
  rubber garments  from his scarecrow body, he took the gloves from his hands, the thin,  transparent rubber
  mask from his face.
  "Move on. We’ll go to the laboratory," he said.
  The cherry−red men opened a path for them. They made  no sound, but their eyes were full of hate. A glass
  weapon appeared in  Yardoff’s hand.
  Then the party rounded a turn in the corridor. The  ominous silence of the men behind them was forgotten.
  "Jumping catfish!" Monk squealed. "I don’t believe  it!"
  The tunnel−like corridor fanned out into a cavern of  horrible magnificence. Pointed stalagmites of strange
  rock formation  reached weird fingers up from the floor.
  Johnny’s eyes were staring. The geologist was  looking at rock formations such as had never been known to
  science  before.
  Everywhere there were the strange, cherry−red men in  breechcloths. Light glowed from their skins. The
  queer figures labored  at strange tasks. Glass work benches were everywhere. At one side was a  glass anvil, of
  steel−like hardness. A piece of glowing, blue−white  rock lay on the anvil. One man held it with long glass
  tongs. The other  swung a great sledge, also made of glass.
  The piece of stone was small. The sledge undoubtedly  was heavy. The sledge crashed down. The man
  grunted. The sledge did not  break, but neither did the small piece of rock.
  Then Ham’s breath came in swiftly. For the first  time he noticed the faces of the workers. He knew some of
  those faces,  had seen them pictured in the newspaper. And every one was a criminal!
  Yardoff leaned close to the lawyer, raised his voice  above that constant hum of sound.
  "That noise," he said. "It makes some of them crazy.  We’ve got to be careful how we handle them."
  Then Yardoff jerked erect. A piercing shriek rose  above the humming sound.
  "I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!" the voice  screamed.
  That scream might have been a signal. All work  stopped. For an instant everything hung motionless. Then
  there was a  concerted movement.
  From all sides men streamed toward Petrod Yardoff  and Doc’s aids!
  YARDOFF whipped up the glass pistol. In the lead of  the advancing men was the one who had screamed. His
  eyes were wild,  protruding from his face.
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  47
  
  The glass pistol spoke. The man curled up. 
  The sharp bark of the weapon brought a momentary  halt in the ranks of the attackers. Yardoff’s voice rang
  out.
  "Halt, fools! You know you cannot escape!" he  shouted.
  The cherry−red men started to move ahead again. They  moved slowly, cautiously.
  Yardoff retreated, step by step. "Get behind me,  head for the near wall," he gritted at Doc’s men. They
  obeyed.
  The advancing men suddenly abandoned caution. They  started to run.
  Yardoff turned, sprinted toward the wall. Monk, Ham,  Johnny, Long Tom and Renny followed him. They did
  not know what it was  all about, but they did know they stood no chance if they fell into the  hands of the mob.
  The tall, scarecrow figure of Yardoff reached a  small niche. He grabbed open a small door, yanked out a coil
  of hose.
  Liquid shot from the hose as he turned it toward the  approaching mob. The liquid fell short. It landed on the
  hard, orelike  floor of the cavern.
  But it was enough. The mob halted. A long,  disappointed wail burst from a hundred lips.
  With hardly a pause, the cherry−red men turned,  raced back toward their work benches. Strain showed on
  Petrod Yardoff’s  features.
  But blank astonishment was on the faces of Doc’s  aids. For the liquid spouting from the hose was common,
  ordinary,  everyday water!
  Yardoff replaced the hose. Where the water had  struck the floor little eddies of steam arose. Shortly all sign
  of the  water had disappeared.
  "I�I don’t understand!" gasped Renny.
  "In time you will," Yardoff said. There was a thin,  merciless grin on his features. "Now we will go on to the
  laboratory.  There will be no further trouble, not for a time at any rate. These men  are like children. A slight
  thing will set them off. Once stopped, they  forget almost as quickly."
  Confidently, Petrod Yardoff started forward, the  others trailing.
  A man approached at a half run. He spoke to Yardoff  in a low tone. The message seemed to bring joy to the
  scarecrow figure.  He was grinning widely as he turned.
  "Wait here for a moment," he ordered. "I will return  soon."
  He started away with the messenger.
  Johnny had eyes only for the strange rock  formations. Ham was studying the features of the workers. One
  after  another, he identified wanted criminals. Many were those who had been  listed as escaped convicts in
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  Chapter XI. A MIRACLE NEEDED
  48
  
  recent months. Long Tom and Renny were  talking together in low tones.
  A childlike grin overspread Monk’s features. The  chemist’s little eyes glittered in their pits of gristle. He saw
  Yardoff and the messenger enter the corridor through which they had  originally come.
  Monk backed into that corridor. If he could grab  Yardoff, perhaps a way out could be found. He looked ahead
  cautiously.
  Scarcely fifty feet ahead Yardoff and the messenger  had paused. Yardoff was putting his rubber clothes into a
  glass  cabinet. Monk knew Yardoff had a glass gun. It was possible the  messenger did, also. But that didn’t
  bother him. He picked up a piece  of loose rock. It was the only weapon he could find.
  Cautiously he slipped along. Yardoff’s back was  toward him. The chemist was almost upon him when the
  messenger shouted  a warning. And in the same instant the messenger drew a gun.
  Monk hurled the rock. The messenger fell on his  face. With a bellow of glee, the hairy chemist leaped
  forward.
  Yardoff whirled. He seemed to be trying to say  something, to give some warning. Monk paid no heed. He
  dived.
  Yardoff tried to dodge. He tripped, went down.
  A shout went up behind Monk. He heard other feet  pounding into the corridor. The voice sounded like that of
  Long Tom.  That voice also was crying a warning.
  Monk paid no heed. With a roar, he sprang again. His  huge hands closed around Yardoff’s neck.
  A crackling like that of high−powered static  electricity burst into the air. Monk was hurled through the
  corridor.  His hands were seared and burning. He landed flat, lay still.
  WHEN Monk regained consciousness, Johnny, Renny,  Long Tom and Ham were standing beside him. Close
  by was Yardoff, a thin  grin on his thin lips.
  "This is a good object lesson, my friend," he  purred. "Fortunately you chose me for the victim and not the
  guard. Had  you touched him you would now be a charred stump of flesh. The living  fire is practically
  exhausted from my body."
  Monk struggled to his feet weakly. "How’d you do  it?" he demanded. "What happened?"
  Yardoff’s thin smile grew larger. "You might ask  your friend, Long Tom. I think he has a glimmer of the
  truth, although  he cannot bring himself to believe it."
  "It�it can’t be so," Long Tom muttered.
  "But it is so," Yardoff said grimly. "Now come with  me."
  The five men walked through the corridor with sober  faces. They passed the men at the work benches, went
  on through another  corridor until they approached a second cavern.
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  49
  
  A blue, uneven light flashed at the far end. It was  a strange, unreal light.
  "Holy cow!" Renny muttered skeptically. "That looks  like a nightmare."
  A great pulsing, like the beating of some  all−encompassing mechanical heart, came from a half−concealed
  chamber  in the distance. A huge ball of the blue light seemed to be revolving  around the walls. It danced
  unevenly.
  Yardoff laughed. "That comes from another cavern,  even deeper than this," he said. "My men do not like to
  go in there.  They fear they will never come back. I call it the Pit of Horror."
  "What is it?" Johnny demanded eagerly.
  Yardoff’s thin face wrinkled strangely, his eyes  narrowed.
  "It is the problem you have been brought here to  solve," he snarled. Greed was in his voice, lust for power. "It
  is a  problem that has defeated the best scientific brains I’ve been able to  get so far. But you men, and Doc
  Savage, are supposed to be even better.
  "That Pit of Horror holds a force and a material  that will control the world. Some details I know. Some parts I
  can  control; some I can’t. You must solve the mystery that so far has  baffled all of us, must learn how we can
  control what we have found."
  A strange, unreal look was on Yardoff’s face. It was  as if a mask had dropped. A fiendish, driving lust for
  power was there,  a merciless, satanic desire.
  A breechclothed guard with a particularly brutal  face appeared. Between Chicago and New York he had
  committed at least a  hundred murders.
  "Take these men to the laboratory, put them to  work," Yardoff said.
  The guard’s mouth twisted into a snarling grin as he  surveyed the new arrivals.
  "Before I came here I would’a’ been afraid of Doc  Savage," he gloated. "Not now!"
  Ham apparently didn’t hear him. He was looking with  amazement at his companions. Their faces, also, were
  beginning to turn  a faint cherry−red.
  "Doc Savage was supposed to be a miracle man," the  guard went on. "I want to see him pull one."
  "He’ll soon be here," Yardoff smiled. "He’s a  prisoner up above. He will be brought down soon."
  "I want to see him pull a miracle, too," Ham  whispered. "I hope he can do it."
  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  DOC was doing pretty well. And Yardoff had been  mistaken. The message to Yardoff that the bronze man
  was a prisoner had  been relayed below before it had been learned that Doc, not Clement  Hoskins, had left the
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  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  50
  
  escape room.
  The bronze man, clad as Hoskins, was striding  through the underground glass factory, the first stop made by
  the glass  elevator toward the inferno beneath.
  Machinery pounded and thumped around him. Blast  furnaces threw a lurid red glare over the place. The
  bronze man  hesitated now and then, let his eyes absorb every detail of the place.
  The workers there paid no attention. They were  accustomed to inspection trips by Hoskins.
  There was one peculiar aspect to the cavern. Great  motors whirred to run heavy machinery, the furnaces
  glowed; but nowhere  was there any sign of a power line, just as there had been no such sign  in the factory
  above. The machines seemed to draw their tremendous  forces from the thin air itself.
  Perhaps Doc delayed longer than he should have. Or  perhaps Hoskins’s jaw had been more solid than it
  seemed. Hoskins  should have been out for more than an hour. He wasn’t.
  Before the bronze man was halfway through the great  workshop, a shrill alarm bell sounded. Red lights
  flickered in a signal  board up above the main doorway.
  Shouts of surprise came from the workers. One seized  a telephone. His face was pallid as he dropped the
  receiver.
  "Grab that guy!" he shouted. "The one who looks like  Hoskins. That ain’t Hoskins. That’s Doc Savage!"
  Mingled howls of rage and panic resounded in the  cavern. The men dropped their work, seized heavy tools as
  weapons. They  rushed toward Doc.
  One huge fellow was faster than the rest. He showed  no caution as he rushed in, swinging a heavy wrench.
  The bronze man dodged easily. His powerful hands  shot out, seized the huge attacker. The man hurtled
  through the air  like some long−legged medicine ball. His soaring figure bowled over  leaders of the horde
  rushing behind him. They fell in a heap, arms and  legs tangling.
  A second man leaped out. He held a glass revolver.  The next instant and he, too, lost consciousness. Doc’s
  fingers had  seemed barely to flick his neck. The gun was in Doc’s hand.
  Doc didn’t shoot. The gun was loaded with deadly  bullets. The bronze man had no desire to kill. He sped
  swiftly toward  the elevator, dodging and twisting.
  A group formed near the doorway. Doc turned to evade  them. There was a sudden rush from behind him. The
  bronze man appeared  hemmed in, trapped from in front and behind.
  His flake gold eyes sparkled. A route was open to  one side. Without hesitation he turned that way, running
  lightly but  with the speed of a deer.
  Doc started to cross what seemed a bed of sand. Too  late he saw what it really was. He twisted in mid−air,
  spun, tried to  turn back.
  He was too late. The sand gave beneath his feet like  powder. Fierce heat surged up below him. The sand
  sucked him down as if  it had been quicksand.
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  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  51
  
  Doc had stepped into a sand conveyer. It led  directly into a huge blast furnace in an adjoining room, a blast
  furnace filled with molten glass.
  THE bronze man’s pursuers gathered about. One raised  a glass revolver.
  "Don’t shoot, fool!" the voice of Hoskins screamed.  "We need that bronze devil!"
  The barrel−shaped man shouldered his way through the  mob.
  "You’re really caught this time, Savage," he  gloated. 
  Doc relaxed, lay flat on his back, with only his  legs buried in the sand. The edge of the pit was almost within
  reach  above his head. But that was of little good. Even if he could reach  that edge, he still would have to face
  the pack of killers that lined  the pit.
  The bronze man’s hands appeared relaxed. One was at  his side, half hidden under the sand. Suddenly that arm
  shot up. It  made two motions in the air.
  A blinding flash filled the cavern. A second blast  followed instantly. Concussion knocked men to the floor.
  Heavy,  sulphurous smoke rolled through the cavern. Men choked, gasped for  breath and ran in circles. They
  knocked against each other, blinded.
  Hoskins realized what must have happened. He had  seen Doc throw two small objects. Those objects, the
  barrel−shaped man  knew, must have been small, concentrated thermite bombs. When the bombs  struck the
  pyrite wall, the terrific heat of the thermite burned into  the sulphur, flooded the cavern with the dense,
  choking smoke.
  But although the fat man was not deceived, he, like  the others, was blinded.
  Doc alone was not.
  The bronze man’s eyes were closed. He popped an  oxygen lozenge into his mouth. Then his long arms
  stretched out, he  jerked forward. His steel−strong fingers caught the edge of the pit. A  moment more and his
  feet were on firm rock.
  DOC could not open his eyes because of the sulphur  fumes. But that did not stop him. He moved forward
  swiftly, his  remarkable sense of direction guiding him straight to the corridor that  led to the elevator.
  Two guards still stood at the elevator. They had  heard sounds of the chase and of the explosion, but had not
  moved.  Hoskins had ordered them to remain where they were. They looked  surprised when they saw Doc
  approach, but made no move. They thought  Hoskins had returned.
  Doc jumped into the glass elevator, pressed the  starting button and hung on. The elevator had two speeds, one
  very  slow, one very fast. The bronze man used the fast one.
  The glass car pitched downward. For a time the shaft  appeared to have been hewn from solid rock. Then the
  rock took on a  different quality. A weird, glowing surface lighted the shaft with  bluish luminance. Here were
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  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  52
  
  other evidences of attempts at mining.
  Efforts had been made to carve corridors in the  rock. They had been unsuccessful. The surface appeared little
  more than  scratched. Doc halted the car for a moment, inspected one of the mining  efforts.
  A faint, trilling sound came from his lips. The ore  was different from any he had ever seen before. That very
  difference  might explain why Hoskins was so eager to obtain the bronze man’s  services.
  The bronze man started the elevator again. For  several seconds it dropped swiftly. Then that drop was halted.
  It was  halted so suddenly one of the glass−woven cables snapped; the cage  bounced for an instant like some
  huge toy on the end of a rubber band.
  The elevator had not reached the bottom of the  shaft. It had been stopped by some other control, some switch
  operated  from above. The next instant it began to ascend with dizzy speed.
  The car jerked to a stop and the door grated open.  It was at the mine level of the foundry cavern. Hoskins,
  armed men with  him, rushed into the cage. The cage was empty.
  "He isn’t here!" Hoskins roared somewhat needlessly.  "He either got all the way down or got off at one of the
  experimental  levels below."
  The brutal−appearing guard whom Doc had hurled at  his fellows in the cavern fight stepped in behind his
  leader.
  "That mug won’t get far, chief," he muttered. "We  got him covered here. And if he did get through the lead
  door, why�"
  "Yes, yes," Hoskins agreed. He seemed to think  swiftly. "You come with me, I’ll take care of you. The others
  can  remain here."
  The brutal−appearing guard quailed. Before he could  object Hoskins slammed the door of the cage. The lift
  shot again into  the depths of the earth.
  It stopped with a sickening jolt. The mine shaft  terminated in a small cavern. At one side was a massive door,
  made of  some leadlike metal.
  Hoskins eyed the door for a long moment and a slow  grin split his fat face. "It does not appear that he has
  passed through  this door, although he is so damned tricky he may have figured out how  to do so without
  leaving a sign. Go back up, keep guard."
  As the elevator shot upward once more, a shadow  seemed to drift into a hidden corner of the cavern. That
  was all. But  Doc was on the scene.
  He had leaped into one of the mine shafts when the  cage had been yanked up. As the cage returned, bearing
  Hoskins to the  bottom, the bronze man had ridden with it. He had ridden on top.
  Hoskins turned toward the great leadlike door. A  smile was on his lips. He was sure Doc couldn’t get away,
  even if he  wanted to. And he was more than certain the bronze man could not run  until his men were at least
  safe.
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  53
  
  The barrel−shaped one reached beside the door,  pressed a hidden lever. The big portal swung open suddenly.
  Hoskins  stepped inside.
  A sudden rush of feet swept him back. A thin,  rat−faced man clad in a breechcloth, his skin a cherry−red, led
  a dozen  others similarly appearing in a rush toward Hoskins.
  "We know you, Doc Savage!" he cried. "We was  telephoned you was comin’ down dressed as Hoskins."
  Hoskins opened his mouth to speak. But the words  that apparently issued from his lips brought an expression
  of amazement  over his fat face.
  "What are you going to do about it?" he seemed to  say.
  "I didn’t say that!" he screamed in the next breath.
  "I said what are you going to do about it?" Hoskins’  voice repeated.
  Hoskins’s expression was that of a man stunned, a  man who couldn’t believe his own ears, and seemingly not
  his own voice.  But it was nothing to the consternation on the ratty pan of the  breechclothed thug. Some one
  had told him once that when Doc Savage  acted mysterious, he was doubly dangerous. And this was certainly
  mysterious. It didn’t even make sense. "Rat−face" gulped.
  "I ain’t enjoying doing this, Savage," he shouted,  "but it’s the living fire if I don’t!"
  Hoskins’s face became almost purple with apoplectic  rage.
  "What do you mean, you rat?" he screamed. He gulped.
  "Well, get it over with, start something," he seemed  to continue. "I can take all you guys!"
  That was too much for Rat−face. He shouted to his  fellows. Long strands, ropes of rubber and woven glass,
  swished through  the air. They encircled Hoskins, caught him around the arms and the  legs. In the end the
  barrel−shaped man was bound thoroughly.
  The jolting brought Hoskins to his senses. He  recalled then that Doc was known as an expert ventriloquist,
  realized  the bronze man must have been close by and had thrown his voice to make  it appear Hoskins was
  speaking when the barrel−shaped man really was  not.
  Hoskins looked directly at the rat−faced man. His  lips moved soundlessly. Rat−face started; he looked
  incredulous.
  Hoskins shook his head savagely. Again the lips  formed words without sound.
  Slowly, cautiously, almost fearfully, Rat−face moved  forward. He leaned over, put a hand against Hoskins’s
  face.
  There was a faint snap. That was all.
  "You�you’re really Hoskins," Rat−face muttered.
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  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  54
  
  "Of course." Hoskins sighed deeply. "I’ve been down  here so often, I’ve taken the living fire from my body
  so much, that it  takes only a few minutes for me to be safe here. Had you touched Doc  Savage then, you
  know what would have happened: he would have been  dead."
  Rat−face was apologetic. He loosened the bonds about  Hoskins with trembling fingers. "But Doc Savage is
  smart enough�" he  began.
  "No man is that smart!" Hoskins snarled. He got to  his feet, whipped a glass gun from his pocket He spoke
  almost in a  whisper:
  "Savage had to be close, or he could not have made  it appear I was speaking. Search the elevator cavern
  closely. Doc  Savage must be there. Find him!"
  The cherry−red men swarmed into the room where the  elevator had descended.
  Hoskins watched with narrow eyes. The men were  finding nothing, but a strange thought had occurred to him.
  "Come here!" he rasped.
  The men obeyed, returned through the lead door.  Hoskins closed and secured it. When he turned, his features
  were hard,  a glass gun was ready in his hand.
  "You know that those who first enter this cavern  cannot touch one of you without immediate death," he said
  harshly. "It  is only after they have remained here a while, until their bodies have  become as yours, that they
  are safe. Now, stand in line. Join hands!"
  There was one big cherry−red man in the group. He  had been the last to come from the elevator cavern. He
  walked to one  end of the fast−forming line.
  Hoskins’s eyes centered on that man. He couldn’t be  sure, but he didn’t remember any of his attackers being
  that big. But  he hadn’t counted them. If this was Doc, then he would know soon.
  "All right! Join hands!" Hoskins repeated  impatiently.
  The big man joined hands with the cherry−red figure  closest him. It happened to be Rat−face.
  Nothing happened.
  Hoskins’s face fell. He had been mistaken.
  "O.K.�" he began.
  "Chief! Chief! This guy’s a fake!" Rat−face was  screaming the words. He was trying to free his hand from
  the grasp of  the big man who held him.
  "This guy ain’t one of us’" Rat−face bellowed.  "He�he’s wearing rubber gloves!"
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  Chapter XII. SANDS OF DEATH
  55
  
  Chapter XIII. THE LIVING FIRE  STRIKES
  THE big man at the end of the line gave a tremendous  surge. Mighty muscles rippled and tightened under
  smooth skin. The  entire line of cherry−red men were snapped through the air like a group  of skaters cracking
  the whip on slick ice. They smashed into Clement  Hoskins, knocked him from his feet.
  Then the big man let go. Flake gold eyes flashed as  he turned and raced down the corridor.
  Doc Savage was on his way to the Pit of Horror! 
  Clement Hoskins was running almost before he got to  his feet. Doc Savage on the loose in the underground
  labyrinth that  surrounded the Pit of Horror did not suit him at all.
  Hoskins was worried. He didn’t know what the bronze  man would do next.
  Frantically he raced in pursuit. He stood no chance.  His barrel−shaped figure was not built for running.
  Hoskins soon realized that. He was panting as he  reached that great cave of the workshop.
  Yardoff took one look at his barrel−shaped partner.  The scarecrow−shaped man halted.
  "You let him get away?" he said.
  Hoskins nodded. His shoulders slumped. "But�but he’s  down here," he said.
  "Tell me what happened."
  Hoskins did. "I’m afraid," he concluded simply. His  breathing had returned to normal.
  Yardoff’s thin face narrowed in concentration. "He  is smart," he said at last. "That was why we wanted him.
  But he is up  against something he can’t escape�unless we help him. We have no  intention of doing that. You
  and I can get out of this place alive. No  one else can. Sooner or later, since he is down here, we will find him."
  "But�but suppose he catches us, holds us as  hostages?"
  "A checkmate," Yardoff agreed. He grinned  venomously. "Or would be�if it wasn’t for Virginia."
  "Virginia?" Hoskins repeated vacantly.
  "Certainly." Yardoff’s face became malevolent. "She  tried to save him. She has fallen for him. He knows this,
  and while I  know he never falls for women himself, he would go to any length to  save her from harm."
  "So?"
  "I want her." Yardoff spoke calmly, but his eyes  were not nice to see. "Have her brought down. Put her on the
  submarine.  If that bronze devil tries to disrupt our plans, we’ll tell him she  will die. She must be put out of
  the way anyway, sooner or later,  because she knows too much; but we won’t tell him that."
  Hoskins’s mouth opened and closed. He became old  suddenly. But he did not argue. He turned to leave.
  Instructions must  be given.
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  Chapter XIII. THE LIVING FIRE  STRIKES
  56
  
  "No one can beat you," he said.
  HOSKINS might not have been so sure had his eyes  been equipped with television. Two scenes might have
  disturbed him:
  One was the figure of a great, breechclothed man  gliding silently through the queerly glowing recesses of the
  corridors  and caverns of the underground labyrinth.
  Doc Savage was heading directly for the Pit of  Horror!
  The other scene would have shaken Hoskins even more.  It was taking place at Palm Springs.
  Three silver−gray transport airships had landed. It  was night now. A lean, hard−appearing man was the first
  to descend.  Unconsciously he pulled a handkerchief from one sleeve and wiped the  palms of his hands.
  The men who poured out of the three planes did not  look appealing. They were as choice a gang of murderers
  as ever  gathered in a single spot.
  They headed toward an open touring car at Stinger  Salvatore’s command.
  The driver of the touring car was staring at Stinger  with fear−stricken countenance. Like a hypnotized
  chicken, he could not  move his gaze from the unblinking eyes of the gangleader.
  "I�I’m lost," he breathed. "Stinger is going to kill  me."
  The driver tried to make himself small as Stinger  Salvatore halted in front of the car.
  "Double−crosser!" spat the gangleader.
  "I�I ain’t done nothin’, boss," the moon−faced  driver whimpered.
  Stinger’s eyes glittered. "You let me get tricked,"  he rasped softly.
  "I�I don’t understand."
  "Get in, boys," Stinger ordered. The gangsters  poured into the machine. There were so many, some had to
  stand on the  running boards.
  "Get going!" Stinger snarled.
  So nervous his hands would not hold still, the fat  driver put the car into motion.
  "What is it, boss?" he quavered. "What is wrong;  what have I done?"
  "You let Hoskins and Yardoff pull a fast one on me!"  Stinger cracked.
  "But�but�"
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  "Yardoff and Hoskins came to me and talked of  millions," Stinger explained softly. "They wanted me to get
  Doc and his  men for them. I got two of them. And what happens?"
  "I�I don’t know."
  "That was what they wanted to happen. As soon as  they get the two guys, Yardoff and Hoskins go on their
  own. They never  intended to cut me in, to begin with. They’re giving me the run−around.  And I had you here
  to keep me posted. You didn’t. You let them make a  sap out of me."
  The fat driver wet dry lips. Stinger was right.  Hoskins had paid him more than Stinger, had told him not to
  say  anything about Doc Savage arriving. He tried, now, to clear himself.
  "Doc and three of his men got here this afternoon,"  he muttered. "They were overpowered and captured."
  "Good!" snapped Stinger. "Now I’ll get the whole  crowd."
  If the driver hadn’t given reports to Stinger  before, he tried to make up for it now. The crooks on the running
  boards grinned. It always amused them to see some one else trying to  talk his way out of being murdered.
  The factory soon came into view. "Stop here!" rapped  Stinger.
  The crooks got out of the car. It was strange how  many musicians there appeared to be. Nearly all were
  carrying violin  cases.
  "I�I can go now?" trembled the driver.
  "Sure," said Stinger. As calmly as if he were  butchering a chicken, the gangleader pulled out a silenced
  revolver and  shot the driver. A round hole showed in the driver’s forehead. He fell  on his face.
  "Okay, boys," Stinger said. "You know what to do.  Let’s go!"
  "I wonder what we’re going to find here," said one  killer to his companion. "This whole set−up is a screwy
  one!"
  THE gunman would have thought things were more  screwy than ever if he could have seen Doc Savage just
  then.
  The humming drone of disembodied power roared in his  ears. In addition, now, there was a queer pulsing in
  the air.
  Doc was proceeding slowly. The manner in which the  bronze man stopped, examined every inch of queer
  rock formation around  him, indicated he was trying to find the answer to some vital problem.
  The bronze man stopped, looked at his hands and  arms. His skin tingled with an odd, galvanizing sensation,
  was turning  an actual cherry−red under the cherry−red dye he had used to hide his  distinctive bronze coloring.
  In the long, twisting passageway behind him a face  showed for an instant. It disappeared when Doc stopped.
  As the bronze  man went on, a stealthy figure crept slowly in pursuit.
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  Doc’s ears were keen. But the constant humming drone  was sufficient to drown out any other noise. He did
  not know he was  being followed.
  The figure behind him was neither the barrel−shaped  one of Hoskins, nor the scarecrow figure that was
  Yardoff. Indeed, this  one looked furtively behind him as often as he looked ahead. Whatever  was his purpose,
  it seemed it was entirely his own.
  Doc went on. He turned a corner. His bronze skin  seemed to turn a livid blue. A large cavern lay before him.
  The air  that filled it seemed to be a burning, livid blue. It was as if the  cavern were a great mercury arc lamp.
  In the midst of this danced a  great ball of even more brilliant blueness. It rocked about unevenly  like a weird
  will−o’−the−wisp of hell.
  The bronze man stood still for a moment. Then  cautiously, he crept forward. He stopped, peered over a high
  ridge in  the floor of the cavern.
  Then he saw the wall of living fire!
  A great, jagged wall of rock seemed to blaze with  smokeless flame. The will−o’−the−wisp ball seemed to
  draw its strength  from there. The humming noise was almost deafening. The pulsating  vibration was strong
  enough to make the flesh quiver.
  And at the bottom of that wall of living flame was  the Pit of Horror.
  Doc did not need to be told. The evidence was there.  A heap of skulls lay suggestively at one side. But that
  was not what  made the scene so loathsome. It was the pile of bodies that had not yet  become skeletons that
  appeared fearsome.
  The men were dead. They had been dead for some time.  Flame played over their bodies, flame that sparkled
  and shot out tiny  streams of sparks.
  Doc’s strong hands grasped the top of the ledge  before him. He raised himself slightly for a better look as a
  faint,  trilling sound came from his lips, sounded even over the pulsating roar.
  Then it happened.
  Strong, ghostly hands seemed to grasp the bronze  man. His fingers, steel strong, grabbed at the ledge of rock.
  Those fingers were not strong enough. So fast that  his body itself seemed a streak of light, Doc was picked up
  from the  ledge. He was jerked through space.
  With a loud, smacking impact the bronze man was  literally sucked hard against that wall of living flame.
  He hung there, midway up a smooth, perpendicular  surface. There were no obstructions near him. His arms
  were outflung,  but they were limp. Like a fly impaled on a pin, he was suspended.  Flame flickered over his
  body. His eyes were glazed and unseeing.
  Back in the corridor, soft footsteps drew closer. A  figure dodged furtively behind a rock. A mirthless chuckle
  drifted  through the air.
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  Chapter XIV. A PROFESSOR PLAYS  TRICKS
  DOC’S five aids were in the laboratory cavern. For a  long time they had nothing to do. They could only look,
  while guards  lounged near by.
  The laboratory was worth inspecting. It was  different from any they had ever seen before, but only in one
  respect:  Everything was made of glass. In addition, however, it was as well  equipped as even the best
  scientist could ask.
  But just looking grew palling. And Doc’s aids  were not the kind to remain worried for any length of time.
  Even the  guards grinned as Monk and Ham bickered.
  "Enter, the scarecrow," grinned Ham. The others  looked up. Yardoff was approaching.
  "I see you couldn’t catch Doc," Monk gibed.
  Yardoff’s eyes grew hard, but he ignored the remark.  He held out his hand to Long Tom. In his palm was a
  small piece of  queerly glowing rock. He said:
  "Your job is to discover the atomic structure of  this substance. Do not waste time. Your lives and the life of
  Doc  Savage depend upon your success."
  Yardoff dropped the small piece of rock in Long  Tom’s hand. Long Tom jerked in surprise. The rock was
  heavy�heavy  beyond all proportion to its size.
  His exclamation caught Monk’s interest. Johnny moved  forward, eyes lighting.
  Yardoff grinned slightly. "I’ll leave you in charge  of my very able assistant, Professor Torgle," he said.
  "Holy cow!" said Renny.
  There was reason for his astonishment. The man who  came from behind Yardoff would have attracted
  attention anywhere.
  His feet headed one direction, his body another, as  if some giant had at one time twisted him halfway around.
  His head was  unbelievably flat on the top. Little eyes that had no color of their  own, glowed like tiny red
  coals. The mouth looked like a ragged slit  cut by a knife into a dull piece of red leather.
  "I hope you boys are as smart as you’re supposed to  be," he said. The voice was a mirthless cackle.
  Yardoff disappeared.
  "In this laboratory," continued Professor Torgle,  "you are all at my mercy. I have not been able to solve the
  secret of  the power rock, so I have amused myself making death traps, that never  fail. Make yourselves at
  home, gentlemen."
  Ham was studying Professor Torgle with particular  interest. Torgle had been one of the most dangerous
  criminals the world  had ever encountered. He had been particularly dangerous because he was  a scientist of
  more than ordinary ability, with a sharp, keen brain.
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  Torgle supposedly was in an asylum, but he wasn’t.  He was here.
  Renny moved toward the queer−shaped professor.
  Ham barked gutturally in a tongue that made Torgle’s  head snap around. It was the language of ancient Maya.
  Professor Torgle’s small eyes flamed with quick  anger. "Plotting against me, are you?" he cackled. He
  gestured toward  one side of the cavern.
  Almost behind Ham was an enormous electric chair. It  looked not unlike the one in Sing Sing’s death house,
  save that it was  larger and made of glass. There were metal contact plates in the seat,  on the arms and on the
  high back.
  "Watch!" screamed Torgle.
  Whipped about by an invisible force, Ham found  himself suddenly seated in that chair.
  AN expression of amazement came over the  dapper lawyer’s face. Clamps of glasslike substance snapped
  around his  legs and arms.
  "Now get to work, do what you were told to do!"  Torgle screamed. "The lawyer is of no use down here
  anyway. So I will  keep him here until you have finished."
  Ham had not been plotting against Torgle when he  spoke in Mayan. He had been warning them to be careful,
  not to arouse  the queerly shaped man, that it might be dangerous.
  "Let’s get to work," Long Tom urged. "It looks like  that is the best we could do for all concerned."
  Ham did not appear to be in particular danger. And  since he wasn’t, the expression on the dapper lawyer’s
  face was almost  laughable.
  The hairy Monk was scowling, however, as he followed  the others to a work bench. He’d like to get the
  scrawny neck of  Professor Torgle between his fists.
  Monk spread an array of test tubes out before him,  began to tinker with chemicals. Johnny and Long Tom
  pressed close by.
  Renny wandered about. He was an engineer. The others  were much better equipped for this job than he was.
  Monk applied various chemicals to the piece of  glowing rock. Nothing happened. It seemed insoluble in
  anything. He  used a diamond drill on it. The diamond point wore flat. The rock was  harder than the diamond.
  Then with Johnny, he put the chunk in a small  electric furnace. Long Tom turned the power on full. The
  indicator  needle shot up. It went far beyond the melting point of any rock or  metal they had ever heard of.
  Then they cooled it, took out the  crucible holding the glowing chunk.
  The piece of ore was as unscathed as if no heat had  been turned on it at all!
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  "HOWLIN’ calamities!" Monk shrilled. "I can’t  believe it!"
  "A phenomenon of extraordinary possibilities," the  geologist murmured. "If it could be smelted or milled, it
  would be an  impregnable metallic substance."
  "You boys ain’t doin’ so good," cackled Professor  Torgle.
  Monk growled to himself. Long Tom was bending over  another bench. He had pulled about him a
  complicated array of indicator  dials, induction coils, high−voltage batteries and transformers.
  Renny was idling in the direction of the electric  chair. He looked over a shoulder. Torgle’s attention seemed
  centered on  the experiments the others were making.
  The big engineer dived toward Ham. If he could only  get those big hands on the fastenings that held the
  lawyer down, he was  sure he could free him.
  A startled shout broke from the engineer. His  severe−appearing features contorted with pain. He halted as if
  he had  smashed into a wall in mid−air.
  Torgle turned around, chuckled hideously. Monk  looked up just as Renny went to the floor.
  Monk bellowed like an enraged bull. He plunged  toward Torgle. The queer−shaped man scuttled backward
  with unexpected  speed. He reached a lever, pulled it.
  Monk also stopped as if he had slammed flat against  an invisible wall. He struck it with such force that he
  knocked over a  large glass work bench.
  The work bench did not go all the way to the floor.  It stopped, tilted far over, as if held up by invisible hands.
  Renny got to his feet, an incredulous expression on  his disapproving face. Monk’s arms were crooked, his
  piglike eyes  flaring.
  Torgle laughed.
  "That is a high−frequency ray of greater voltage  than man has ever known," he chortled. "Another one
  surrounds your  friend in the electric chair. You are helpless."
  Monk’s face was grim. He understood how  high−frequency rays worked. They set up an invisible wall, and
  this one  had been as strong as steel.
  Long Tom alone had gone on with his work. He labored  with a feverish intensity. He hauled one huge
  step−up transformer  before him, adjusted a complex array of coils and dials.
  Experimentally he pulled a lever. There was a sharp,  whirring sound, and crackling sparks shot from the
  step−up transformer.  The electrical wizard shut it off, adjusted another dial. Then he  pulled the lever down
  again. A tight smile spread over his face.
  The whirring was louder this time. The crackling  sparks shot many feet into the air. Then the whirring
  became a hum.
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  A sharp crash came from behind them. The crazily  leaning work bench had fallen to the floor. Ham leaped
  from the  electric chair.
  The high−frequency rays which had formed the  invisible wall had been broken.
  TORGLE howled in surprise. He hadn’t thought these  aids of Doc Savage could penetrate the mystery of his
  devices.
  Renny started for him. The queer−shaped professor  shuffled rapidly backward. Long Tom spoke swiftly in
  Mayan. Renny  stopped.
  "We’ve still got to figure out what this is," Long  Tom reminded.
  "Yeah and Ham is no use to us, you should’a’ left  him where he was," Monk grumbled.
  "You didn’t do so hot yourself," Ham gibed.
  Monk leaped toward him. Ham danced out of the way,  seized a glass knife and brandished it in front of him.
  "I’ll carve slices off that hairy hide of yours!" he  yelled.
  Professor Torgle looked on with open mouth. "Get to  work!" he screamed.
  A faint grin was on Long Tom’s face. As Torgle’s  attention was centered on the struggling pair in the center
  of the  laboratory, the electrical genius moved toward the panel of levers the  professor had been operating.
  "Okay, boys," he yelled suddenly, "get him! I’ve got  his control board. He’s helpless!"
  Torgle yelled with rage. The mock fight in the  center of the room stopped. The four aids all raced toward the
  professor.
  "Stop! Stop!" howled Torgle.
  "Stop nothing!" said Ham. "I’m going�"
  Professor Torgle pressed a concealed button. The  effect was amazing.
  Doc’s aids stopped as if they had been suddenly  frozen. They seemed to hang grotesquely in the air. They
  looked like  motion−picture films of runners suddenly halted in the projector. Long  Tom’s hands hung
  motionless over the levers on the panel board.
  The five might have been living statues. They could  not move; they could not speak.
  A strange light flickered in Professor Torgle’s  sunken red eyes.
  "Fools!" he cackled. "If you had used brains, if you  had solved the secret of the strange stone, we all would
  have been free  men. Now you will remain here and die. But not me."
  With his queer, sidling walk, Torgle slipped from  the laboratory cavern. He went toward the Pit of Horror.
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  At the ledge he peered over. Doc Savage’s body still  hung, suspended against the wall of living fire. The
  professor laughed  horribly. It had been he who had trailed the bronze man to this place.
  "The others fear, and rightly," he chortled, "but  not me. And now I have the famous Doc Savage at my
  mercy."
  Carefully, his strange method of walking making his  task more difficult, Torgle descended directly into the
  Pit of Horror.  He paid no attention to the fearsome heap of bodies.
  Without hesitation he walked to the wall of living  fire. His fingers sought tiny projections. He pulled himself
  up, an  inch at a time.
  As he hung beside Doc’s suspended body, he took a  glass knife from his breechcloth. He lifted the knife, held
  it back of  Doc’s neck, the arm poised for a thrust.
  His tiny eyes danced with wild glee.
  Chapter XV. KILLERS CLASH
  CLEMENT HOSKINS would have been worried if he could  have seen Doc then. Not that he cared about the
  bronze man’s health,  but he needed him alive, needed Doc’s brains.
  But just then Hoskins wasn’t even thinking of Doc.  He had other worries.
  Yardoff, his thin face venomous, was listening to a  telephone description of things happening above ground.
  His eyes  glittered dangerously. Armed gangsters were creeping upon the glass  factory. One of the thugs on
  guard above thought he had recognized  Stinger Salvatore.
  Rapidly Yardoff told Hoskins what he had heard.  Hoskins’s moon face hardened savagely.
  "It is time," he said, "that we eliminated Salvatore  anyway. He has outlived his usefulness."
  Yardoff nodded. "The fact that he is attacking  without warning shows he realizes we intended to do that."
  Hoskins rolled his barrel−shaped body toward one of  the queerly glowing walls of the cavern in which they
  stood. There,  above a rubber plate on the floor, protruded two short handles.
  Hoskins seized the handles, kicked a lever with his  feet. The ruddy complexion of his face turned a bright
  crimson. Sweat  poured from his fat pores. He stood there, silent, for more than a  minute. Then he released his
  grip and turned to Yardoff.
  "Just a precaution," he rapped. "I have a plan."
  The two strode toward the leaden door that opened  onto the elevator shaft. As they passed it, Hoskins pressed
  a button  and the whine of machinery announced the descent of the glass cage.
  From a small locker, Hoskins took out rubber shoes,  rubber gloves and outer clothing. Yardoff did the same.
  The cage jolted  to a stop. The two got in.
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  "Perhaps," Yardoff grinned thinly, "we can talk  suitable terms with this ambitious gangster."
  The lift shot upward.
  THE thugs in the glass factory did not know how many  attackers there were. One of them, a huge,
  broken−nosed individual, had  seen a dozen or more slinking figures. Suddenly he brought a  machine−gun to
  his shoulder, pressed the trigger.
  Br−r−r−r−r−r−r−r!
  Stinger had one less cohort. The broken−faced killer  grinned. This was going to be simple. Only an artillery
  attack could  take the glass factory.
  The killer looked out the window again. He saw a  queer−looking weapon poke out from behind a pile of
  sand. It wasn’t a  machine−gun. It had a heavy gauge and a queer, pineapple−like  protuberance.
  There was a loud bang! and the protuberance  disappeared. It hurtled through the window, scarcely an inch
  from the  skull of "Broken−nose."
  Boom!
  The glass factory rocked as the bomb exploded.  Broken−nose lost all interest in proceedings. Parts of his
  body  splashed on the walls. Two other thugs dropped, dying.
  Fear gripped the survivors. Machine guns were one  thing. Fighting against virtual trench mortars was
  something else  again. The factory walls were not built to withstand an attack of that  kind.
  "Those guys are tough," whined one. "Maybe we’d  better�"
  He didn’t finish his sentence. He saw Hoskins and  Yardoff emerge from the elevator. Their appearance was
  more terrifying  to him than the weapons in the hands of the attackers outside. He  changed his mind about
  suggesting that perhaps they should join forces  with Stinger Salvatore.
  Hoskins conferred briefly with Yardoff and barked  quick orders. Men lined the windows with deadly Tommy
  guns. Their death  roar filled the air. Bursts of sand kicked up in front of the factory.  Occasionally a scream
  announced a bullet had found its mark.
  Powerful searchlights, sheltered by bulletproof  glass, made the scene outside as light as day.
  Hoskins drew in his breath sharply. The attackers  had come prepared.
  A dozen armed thugs were creeping across an open  space. Lead beat about them. But they were unharmed.
  They were pushing  ahead of them prow−shaped shields of metal. The shields were so  constructed that they
  deflected machine−gun slugs without injury to the  men behind them.
  The boom of grenades grew louder, like the bass  notes to the higher whine of the Tommy guns in the
  symphony of death.  Lethal bombs crashed through factory windows. One entered the open  mouth of a blast
  furnace.
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  The explosion spewed molten glass out into the room.  Men screamed in agony, covered with burning
  torment. The stench of  singeing flesh filled the room.
  Three blasts came in rapid succession. They were not  inside the factory. They were just outside. Barbed wire
  leaped into the  air.
  A path through the death−charged strands had been  cut by the exploding grenades.
  The defending thugs cast frantic, desperate looks at  Yardoff and Hoskins. Yardoff glanced at his
  barrel−shaped companion,  nodded.
  Without a word, Hoskins pulled a great white sheet  of cloth from a locker, hung it from a window.
  "Cease firing!" Yardoff rapped.
  Stinger Salvatore grinned evilly as he saw that  flag. 
  "They couldn’t take it," he chuckled. A  wizened−faced lieutenant, beside him, shook his head.
  "It’s too easy, boss," he cautioned. "Watch out for  a trick."
  "Right!" agreed Stinger, and his unblinking eyes  narrowed to deadly slits. "They plan to double−cross me
  again,  probably. This time I’m going to do the double−crossing."
  Hoskins’s voice blared from a loudspeaker. 
  "There is no need for this killing, Stinger!"  Hoskins bellowed. "There will be more millions than any of us
  will know  what to do with. Together we can accomplish much. Will you talk  business?"
  Stinger’s grin grew larger. "Sure, Hoskins, but not  inside the factory. I’ve got to be careful."
  "I will put myself at your mercy. I’ll come out to  talk with you," Hoskins declared.
  The barrel−shaped figure of Hoskins appeared in the  factory door. He walked out into the square. He was an
  excellent target  in the strong searchlights.
  From behind the queer shields, half a dozen Tommy  guns were aimed directly at his body.
  "Now," Stinger whispered to his lieutenant, "you go  talk to him."
  "Me?" Fear showed on the wizened one’s face. 
  "You." Stinger’s voice was harsh. A heavy automatic  was in his hand. "And when you get near him, this is
  what you do." He  talked rapidly.
  "I’m sending my chief lieutenant," Stinger’s voice  rolled out. "He can talk for me."
  An expression of disappointment flickered for a  moment over Hoskins’s fat face, and was gone.
  The wizened criminal slipped from behind a shield  and stepped forward. He licked his lips, darted furtive
  eyes to each  side of him. It was apparent he did not like his assignment.
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  Ten feet from the barrel−shaped man, the killer  whipped out a gun. Without warning he leveled it, squeezed
  the trigger.
  Hoskins dropped. He waved one hand toward the window  of the factory.
  The ground shook as from a tremendous clap of  thunder. Lightning seemed to play about the big yard. Sparks
  of  terrific voltage leaped from one antenna post ‘to another. The entire  yard became a field of electricity, of
  voltage greater than a thunder  cloud.
  The wizened thug died like an insect before a  blowtorch. Those behind shields who had reached the outer
  limits of the  yard withered and died, and turned into black, scorched things that had  once been men.
  A curse ripped from Stinger’s tight lips.
  Hoskins leaped up, ran unscathed from the scene of  terror to reach the comparative safety of the factory.
  "A double double−cross!" Stinger swore. "The blasted  field has no honor!"
  Stinger could not understand Hoskins’s escape,  either from the bullet or the terrible lightning that rained in
  the  yard. Hoskins hadn’t entirely escaped the bullet. But the little killer  who had shot at him had been
  nervous; the lead had merely nicked the  big man.
  Had Stinger witnessed the scene in the cavern far  beneath the earth, before Hoskins came to the surface, he
  might have  understood why the barrel−shaped one could run through lightning  unscathed. Then again, he
  might not have understood.
  But one thing the flashily dressed gangster did  know, and that was that the blasts of electricity which were
  barring  his advance, were flashing from the antennalike posts.
  Grenades rained about those posts. The posts went  down. The deadly lightning ceased.
  Clement Hoskins’s face was as nearly gray as it  could be under the cherry−red complexion he now had.
  Yardoff’s sharp lips were tightly closed. His  scarecrow figure was tense.
  "A tight spot," he conceded.
  Hoskins nodded. "Those damn grenades. And he was too  smart to come near me himself in the yard."
  The defenders were quailing, ashen−faced.  Frantically Hoskins and Yardoff drove them to the windows,
  forced them  to keep up a rain of machine−gun bullets.
  Both Yardoff and his barrel−shaped companion had  removed a glove. Sight of the waving, cherry−red hands
  alone kept the  thugs at their posts.
  A second blast furnace erupted, spraying molten  glass, as an explosive bomb hit it.
  "Let them have the factory," Yardoff ordered  suddenly. "We can get them easier if they do."
  Hoskins rasped a brisk command.
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  Thugs wasted no time. They raced frantically toward  the elevator that ran beneath. There weren’t so many
  left now. One load  could take them all.
  As Stinger’s men rushed in above, the glass cage of  the elevator rocketed downward. It stopped at the furnace
  level.
  Yardoff leaped out, pressed a button.
  There was a dull boom from above. Sand and rock  rained down. The upper part of the tunnel collapsed.
  "Let them dig through that," Yardoff sneered. "If  they do, they’ll find some nice surprises for them."
  Hoskins nodded, soberly. "Right, but we’ve got to  work fast at that. We’ve got to find Doc Savage at once,
  put the  pressure on him."
  PROFESSOR TORGLE also was planning to put pressure  on Doc Savage.
  He had been amusing himself. Time after time he had  swung his knife, to halt its razor−sharp point a hair’s
  distance from  the back of the bronze man’s neck.
  He wearied finally of the sport.
  "No," he cackled�and prepared for a thrust that  would drive the glass knife into the bronze man’s heart.
  It was then that Doc Savage moved slightly. 
  Professor Torgle’s knife hand froze. The bronze  man’s body had not moved much, but it was enough.
  "Alive," breathed Torgle. "Alive. The key to safety  and freedom. And I�I thinking him dead, was about to
  destroy that key!"
  Torgle scampered down the sheer face of the wall of  fire as if pursued by demons. A twisting, grotesque grin
  was on his  face; his flat head bobbed up and down.
  He was drooling as he reached the Pit of Horror. He  kicked one of the bodies contemptuously, and climbed
  up the ledge until  he could reach the corridor that led to the big caverns.
  Torgle reached the first group of workers. He  whispered to them excitedly.
  Incredulous looks were his answer. He argued.
  "But�but the Pit of Horror!" gasped one. "We�we dare  not go there. That is death!"
  Professor Torgle spat. "Fools!" he cackled  contemptuously, "you carry your death with you in your own
  body. The  wall of living fire in the Pit of Horror cannot hurt you, because you  are already living fire. The pit
  of death has merely been used as a  bogy to frighten such fools as you. Those who have gone there have been
  shot down, not mysteriously killed. But you will die, die horribly,  like a sheet of fire, unless you take the
  chance I’m offering you."
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  His words carried conviction.
  The cherry−red men dropped their tools; they began  to pick up pieces of glass that could be used for weapons.
  Others carried the message through the cavern. A mob  formed swiftly.
  "We will get this Doc Savage, we will hold him for a  hostage!" Torgle shouted. "We will demand that we be
  given the secret  which will bring us freedom or we will kill the bronze man. If Hoskins  and Yardoff don’t
  agree, we will kill them, also!"
  The mob started racing for the Pit of Horror.
  "But why is the bronze man helpless there?" one  convict asked, not unreasonably.
  "I do not know, fool!" Torgle shouted. "We will  learn. And I need help to bring him out."
  "I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!" a voice  screamed suddenly. The shriek was high and despairing.
  "Kill! Kill!" another shouted.
  An insane spirit gripped the mob. In a moment they  were changed to a mob of maddened, kill−crazy convicts.
  They raced on ahead of Torgle. The queer−shaped  professor tried vainly to halt them. He saw his plans
  evaporating under  the kill−crazy frenzy of the mob.
  Then something happened to him, too. He also was  affected by the steady, never−ending hum. He screamed,
  scampered  forward with the rest. He forced his way to the front.
  Professor Torgle had become just another  murder−determined man, racing at the head of the pack.
  "Kill! Kill!" the men screamed. "Kill Hoskins! Kill  Yardoff! Kill Doc Savage!"
  Chapter XVI. A MOB AMUCK
  DOC SAVAGE heard the mob approaching. The bronze man  stirred; his flake gold eyes opened.
  He had been slammed so hard against the wall that  the blow had knocked him unconscious. His head had
  taken a terrific  shock, his entire body had been subjected to terrific punishment.
  But his powers of recuperation were far beyond those  of an ordinary man. Almost in the same instant his eyes
  opened, his  brain cleared, became alert.
  Instantly Doc acted. His hands went to his waist.  About that waist was the emergency kit he always carried
  with him. In  it were compact instruments of all kinds.
  Some of those Instruments were of metal. And it was  the metal that had caused his predicament.
  The wall of living flame had acted as a gigantic,  tremendously powerful, electromagnet.
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  Electromagnets such as are used in handling of huge  quantities of scrap iron are so powerful that they will lift
  a man from  the ground merely by attraction to the nails in the bottom of his shoes.
  The wall of living flame was even more powerful. It  had literally jerked Doc through space in pulling toward
  it the metal  that was in his emergency kit. As long as the bronze man had that belt  around him, he was held
  suspended in the air.
  There had been nothing of metal about Professor  Torgle. He had escaped the action of the electromagnet.
  Doc’s fingers worked swiftly. They explored several  pockets of the emergency kit.
  The weird will−o’−the−wisp ball of fire, which had  been dancing overhead, dropped lower, passed over the
  bronze man. He  paid no heed.
  The mob streamed over the ledge, dropped down in the  Pit of Horror. Professor Torgle was in the lead. He
  had his glass knife.
  Several of the more agile of the killers started up  the wall. Doc loosened the strap on the emergency kit. His
  body floated  down�dropped to land squarely in the center of the pack of murder−mad  convicts!
  THERE were more than fifty armed killers in the pit.  More were dropping down every moment. It appeared
  sure death for one  man to oppose that mob. No one person�not even Doc Savage�could hope to  overcome all
  of them.
  Doc Savage had no intention of trying.
  His arms smashed out. Those nearest him were thrown  back. They crashed into others, kill−crazy.
  That was all the bronze man intended. It was enough. 
  In an instant the pit was a snarling, whirling mass  of fighting men. Men fighting each other.
  Doc had correctly interpreted the temper of the mob.  Knew that they had to fight, would fight any one, even
  each other.
  Glass knives rose and fell; blood spurted. The  screams of dead and dying made the Pit of Horror live up to its
  name.
  Torgle’s crafty, maddened brain alone saw what was  happening.
  "It’s Doc Savage!" he screamed. "Don’t let him get  away! Kill him! Kill him!"
  Doc twisted through the screaming, fighting throng.  Occasionally his fist shot out and some killer dropped,
  unconscious. It  was impossible for Torgle to keep him in sight.
  Suddenly one of the convicts on the edge of the  crowd screamed. He pointed at the pile of skulls at the
  bottom of the  wall of living fire.
  The pile of skulls began moving. No one was near.
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  Then one of the skulls seemed to mount, unaided,  into the air. The vacant eye sockets appeared to be grinning
  in the  ghastly, weird blue light.
  The skull began to speak
  "Those who have died here resent your presence,"  came the words. The jaw bone clicked. "Leave while you
  yet have time."
  Fear of the supernatural swept over the crowd. Mob  spirit is infectious. It sweeps with amazing speed. The
  men scrambled,  tried to climb up the ledge to get out of the cavern.
  But just as quickly, they stopped, turned around. 
  Perhaps if they had not been maddened, the trick  would have worked. Killers fear what they cannot
  understand. But this  mob of murderers was past that fear. They returned to their one idea:  Kill! Regardless of
  the cost, kill!
  The mob swept toward the skull hanging in mid−air.  That one they would even kill again. Professor Torgle’s
  flat head was  in the lead. His slit of a mouth was working strangely.
  Then Doc Savage stepped into view.
  The bronze man was dangling the skull from a black,  invisible silken cord. A second thread was attached to
  the bony jaw.  The supernatural was explained.
  A yell of hate rose from the mob.
  Doc Savage dropped the skull. He ran directly toward  the mob.
  Death seemed certain. Two score knives were ready.  Some were thrown, to whistle dangerously close as the
  bronze man dived  directly toward his foes.
  Then one cabled arm shot out. The knife in Professor  Torgle’s hand clattered to the floor. Those near him
  were swept back by  powerful blows.
  The next moment Doc had picked up the queer−shaped  scientist and had tucked him under an arm like some
  light bundle. As  Professor Torgle kicked and twisted vainly, Doc whirled, raced away.  The baying pack was
  in hot pursuit.
  A wall of flame was in front. The bronze man dived  through it. There was a thin, narrow trail. The trail
  skirted the edge  of a mighty underground precipice. The pit stretched down from there  many hundred feet. 
  Even the narrow trail did not go far. It ended in a  thin line that not even a mountain goat could follow.
  But Doc did not get that far. He took three quick  steps. Then he seemed to lose his balance. Torgle cried out
  in horror.
  Doc’s feet faltered. Then he fell, taking Torgle  with him, straight into the yawning pit below the precipice!
  A howl of frustrated rage came from the pursuers.  The more venturesome crowded to the lip of the clifflike
  rock. They  peered down, muttered.
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  Nothing was to be seen. The bottom of the precipice  was so far below that it was hidden in the veil of blue.
  "Doc Savage is dead!" howled one.
  The cry was taken up by others. From disappointment  they turned to glee. They danced, raved, swung arms
  aloft.
  "Now for the others!" screamed a convict who had  once been Public Enemy No. 1. "Let’s get them, get them
  all, Hoskins  and Yardoff!"
  The tide turned. The convicts rushed backward,  scrambling over each other in their haste to leave the pit.
  "Doc Savage is dead. Doc Savage is dead! Kill  Hoskins! Kill Yardoff!" they shrieked.
  Up the long corridor they rushed, toward the great  cavern and the lead doors they knew opened to the outer
  world.
  Chapter XVII. BETWEEN TWO FIRES
  LONG TOM stared straight ahead. He could not even  move his eyeballs. His lips had been caught half
  opened. He spoke  through those lips, his voice strangled. One by one, he called out the  names of the other
  four men in the room.
  Johnny could only grunt. Ham’s reply was smothered.  Monk gave a faint squeal. Only one voice seemed
  freer than the others:  That was Renny’s.
  "We are being held in an electrical field," said  Long Tom. He articulated with difficulty. "You, Renny, seem
  nearer the  outer edge than any of the rest. Try hard to move."
  As Long Tom spoke, maddened shouts drifted through  the closed door of the laboratory. The electrical
  wizard did not know  what was happening.
  But the tenor of the shouting of the convicts was  not encouraging. The men were obviously out to
  escape�and to kill  whatever lay in their path.
  Renny’s huge frame strained. Every ounce of muscle  in his six feet four of solid strength strained in mighty
  surges to  break the invisible bonds that held him.
  "I can move a little, not much, though," he gasped.  Perspiration was streaming down his severe, puritanical
  face.
  Renny’s huge fists clenched. He gave an exclamation  of delight at the sign. It showed he was breathing
  through the  invisible electrical field.
  "Touch the wall, Renny!" Long Tom urged desperately.
  The huge engineer worked like a man trying to swim  in some heavy, clinging substance. Inch by inch, he
  worked one arm out.  His outstretching fingers touched the glittering, luminescent wall.
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  There was a crackling noise. Sparks flew from the  ends of Renny’s fingers and the wall where he had touched
  it. The bonds  that held him seemed to slacken.
  Instantly, the big engineer threw himself hard  against the rock where the luminescence was brightest
  His already cherry−red face became more and more  livid.
  "Feel anything, Renny?" Long Tom asked. 
  Renny’s lips moved spasmodically. He swallowed hard.  The words seemed to choke from his throat.
  "Feels like some one tickling me all over," he  muttered. "Sort of a queer tingling."
  "Good!" Long Tom snapped. Then he was silent for a  moment. Outside, the shouting was louder. The
  convicts were almost at  the door of the laboratory.
  Long Tom was sure the convicts would be as little  affected by the electrical field as Torgle had been. He was
  sure they  could come in and slash the five men with glass knives while they were  helpless.
  Sweat trickled down his face. His jaw was contorted,  his own muscles strained to the utmost in a futile effort
  to escape.
  "The button�the button Torgle pushed!" he gasped. 
  Renny lunged forward. He fought as though swimming  against a strong tide.
  "Kill them! Kill them!" came the roar of the mob.  The roar came from just outside the laboratory door.
  The big engineer gave a final, desperate lunge. He  reached the button, pressed it.
  THE roar of the mob swept by outside. The convicts  were surging down the corridor, on toward the main
  workshop cavern.  Evidently they had not known Doc’s aids were in the laboratory, or if  they had known, they
  had forgotten.
  Monk and Ham stretched strained muscles. Johnny  slumped as the electrical field was shut off and they were
  freed from  their living−statue poses.
  Long Tom leaped up. "We’ve got to get to work, and  work fast!" he bellowed. "Something has gone wrong,
  or Doc would have  been here."
  "Right," said Ham.
  "What do you know about it?" Monk protested in mock  anger. "You can’t do anything but talk. But perhaps
  you’d better  practice up on a good speech, for if that gang comes back here after  us, it may take some good
  talking to save our lives."
  "If that Torgle comes back here, I’m going to wring  his blasted neck!" Renny said solemnly.
  "And me�" started Johnny.
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  The door of the laboratory opened slowly. A  misshapen figure with a twisted head showed in the doorway.
  The twisted figure started to speak. His words were  drowned in a roar of animal rage from Monk. The
  homely chemist, his  hairy arms outstretched menacingly, darted forward.
  Renny was step to step with him. They reached the  figure simultaneously.
  Then a peculiar thing happened.
  Monk was lifted into the air as lightly as if he had  been a feather duster. Renny’s big fist shot out, but
  whizzed through  empty space. The two men charged again, slammed into each other with a  force that almost
  knocked them both out.
  "We should not fight against ourselves," Doc’s voice  said dryly. "That would impede our progress."
  The amazement in Monk’s eyes at the treatment he had  received changed to wild delight.
  "Howlin’ calamities, Doc!" he squealed. "We didn’t  suspect it was you!"
  Long Tom’s shoulders lifted and fell. A smile of  relief crossed features ordinarily pallid and
  unhealthy−appearing, now  a bright cherry−red.
  "I’m glad you’re here, Doc," he said simply. "I  think I know what this thing is all about, but what to do about
  it has  got me licked."
  "Doc’s a spirit again," Ham jeered at Monk. "See,  this time he returns to us as the spirit of Torgle."
  "Shut up, you big−talking shyster!" the hairy  chemist squealed. He danced about excitedly.
  The tension was gone. Doc’s aids didn’t ask  questions. It was enough for them that the bronze man was
  finally with  them.
  "What are our chances, Doc?" Renny asked.
  The bronze man did not answer for a moment. He was  busy assembling various pieces of equipment. He
  moved rapidly and  without hesitation.
  Long Tom watched him with the delight of a star  pupil watching a master at work.
  "What chance did you say we had, Doc?" Renny  repeated.
  "Many things are happening," the bronze man said  slowly. "As to our chances�that I will know in a very few
  minutes. I am  going to try an experiment. If it works, we have a chance. If it  doesn’t�"
  There was silence for a moment in the laboratory.  Doc’s aids glanced at each other briefly. It was seldom
  they had heard  the bronze man admit that they might not be able to get out of any jam  in which they found
  themselves.
  But they did not know all that Doc did.
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  The bronze man did not explain how he had escaped  from the Pit of Horror. None of his men knew of his
  peril there, and he  did not think it worthy of mention.
  The escape really had been quite simple. Doc had  seen a ledge beneath the precipice. The ledge was hidden
  so that only  sharp eyes could see it at all.
  When Doc had seized Torgle, he had leaped to that  ledge and hidden. The convicts, peering down, did not
  know the ledge  existed and missed it entirely. Doc had brought Torgle back to safety  after the convicts had
  fled, donned his disguise and came to the  laboratory.
  The bronze man was working with startling swiftness.  His aids stood silent, watching intently. From what
  Doc had said, and  his actions now, they realized that their situation was indeed perilous.
  The bronze man found zinc and copper plates  carefully wrapped in pliant folds of malleable glass. He was
  careful  not to touch the metal plates. He held them in glass tongs, suspended  them in vats of acid.
  Then he hooked them up in an intricate series of  wiring. He pulled Long Tom’s experiment apart, used much
  of the  apparatus that was in it. He found half a dozen storage batteries with  glass cases and from one corner
  pulled a huge electric motor. Its case  was of glass. All metal parts were carefully covered.
  The bronze man’s muscles strained as he brought it  into the center of the room. It was then that his men
  noticed his  strange complexion.
  They were cherry−red, but they appeared pallid  compared with Doc. The bronze hue of his skin had been
  replaced with a  fiery red glow more startling than that of any of the breechclothed men.
  Doc hooked up the large motor. Then he walked  silently to the other end of the complex circuit running
  through the  zinc and copper plates in the acid vats. He paused for a moment before  two large contact points
  of copper. He stood on a rubber mat.
  Then it was that Doc Savage did a strange thing. He  was pressed for time, he had been working with the
  utmost swiftness.  But now he paused. Carefully he removed every bit of make−up, stood  forth as Doc
  Savage, recognizable by all.
  "If this experiment is not a success, do not try to  leave the caverns," he said, and there was unexpected feeling
  in his  voice. "You must barricade the door of this laboratory. Long Tom will  continue to experiment until
  success has been achieved."
  Long Tom leaped forward. Horror was on his face. He  understood why Doc had removed his make−up, why
  he had spoken as he did.
  Doc Savage was going to try a dangerous experiment.  If he failed, he wanted Long Tom to know he was to
  carry on, wanted to  look as his friend had always known him.
  If the experiment did not succeed, Doc Savage would  be dead!
  LONG TOM’S tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his  mouth. He dampened parched lips as he tried to
  speak. His voice came as  if from a distance.
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  "Stop, Doc!" he cried. "Let me try it. You could  carry on�"
  Doc pushed him aside. Looks of understanding crossed  over the faces of the bonze man’s other aids. Monk
  would have stepped  forward, would have tried to dissuade Doc by force, even though he knew  it was useless.
  Renny held him back. Sorrow was on the big  engineer’s thin, severe features. "He−he would do it anyway,
  Monk," he  objected. "It’s hard, hard for all of us, but there is nothing we could  do."
  Long Tom’s figure was tense. He, more than any of  the others, realized the chance Doc Savage was going to
  take.
  The death of Z−2, the death of the escaped scientist  in Doc’s office, the fear the cherry−red men had shown
  for an ordinary  stream of water, all pointed to one thing:
  Each of them was carrying a lethal jolt of  electricity in his body!
  Long Tom did not pretend to know how to explain it.  He only knew it was so. The human body always has a
  certain amount of  electricity in it, and the cherry−red men in the cavern seemed charged  so that they were
  almost walking dynamos. If they touched metal that  was grounded, if they touched water so that it grounded
  their body, it  brought their death.
  They were doomed to die if they escaped. Only in  this cavern, for some reason, were they safe.
  And Doc Savage and all his aids were now cherry−red.  It would seem logical that they would also face death
  unless they found  something to counteract that peril.
  The bronze man was going to try and experiment to  see if he had solved the secret. If he failed, he would die.
  He would  die as Z−2 had died, as others had died. He would die horribly, his  body burned and scorched, his
  powerful muscles, his keen brain wiped  out as a fuse is wiped out.
  Doc’s lips were set firmly. He reached out, seized  the two contact points.
  The smell of ozone filled the air. Acid in the vats  began to boil.
  The bronze man’s muscles contorted in a mighty  effort. An ammeter needle on a dial began to jump crazily.
  Wires glowed  red−hot with the sudden burdening of terrific current.
  Then the big electric motor began to turn!
  It moved slowly at first, then began to whine with a  sudden, mighty surge of power.
  "Another extraordinary manifestation of electric  phenomenon," Johnny muttered amazed, and gazed at Doc’s
  face in sudden  awe.
  The ruddy hue of the bronze man began to pale, the  natural bronze color of his skin appeared.
  Doc’s flake gold eyes were flashing. He watched  another ammeter needle slowly drop toward the zero marks.
  "Success!" Long Tom breathed, and it appeared to be  the first time he had taken a breath since Doc had
  seized hold of the  contact points. "Now if we only have time�"
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  Sudden shots sounded from the corridor outside. A  Tommy gun roared in the distance.
  It did not appear there was going to be time.
  THINGS were happening in the big workshop cavern. It  was an uproar, a surging mass of fighting, savage
  men.
  Hoskins’s fat face was worried, his sunken eyes  frantic. Yardoff was fighting with grim, bitter enjoyment, his
  scarecrow figure relaxed, as if, now that a showdown had arrived, he  really enjoyed a battle.
  And a showdown was near.
  The blast in the upper tunnel had failed in its  work. It had not completely blocked the shaft. Stinger
  Salvatore’s men  had found an opening, had worked their way down.
  And Yardoff and Hoskins, with the few loyal thugs  they had left, were between two fires.
  Salvatore’s men, armed and deadly, were attacking  from one direction. The maddened convicts, with glass
  knives for  weapons, were attacking from the other.
  "A tough spot," Hoskins panted.
  "The convicts complicate things," Yardoff agreed. A  smile that was scarcely human split his thin face. "If
  they were with  us, if they would attack Stinger’s men, it would soon be over. As it  is�"
  He lifted the Tommy gun he held in rubber−clad  hands, brutally mowed down a group of cherry−red men
  who had started to  rush forward.
  Br−r−r−r−r−r−r−r!
  Lead hammered the corridor wall. One of Stinger’s  gunmen had turned a bend in the corridor, almost had the
  range.
  "We’ve got you, Yardoff! You and Hoskins better give  up. Maybe if you do we’ll let you live, even if I do
  take the millions  you expected to get."
  Stinger Salvatore’s voice was triumphant and  jeering. It seemed to the flashily clad gangster that he held all
  the  cards.
  One of Yardoff’s eyebrows lifted mockingly. He moved  to a lever beside the wall, pulled it.
  The passageway behind became a solid sheet of flame.  The gunner who had fired a moment before became a
  burned chunk of flesh.
  Stinger bellowed in frustrated rage. The roar of a  grenade sounded.
  Yardoff shrugged. "It will only take them a few  moments to blast down the electrical connections," he
  conceded. "We had  better retreat."
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  Hoskins nodded. Sweat was running from him in long  streams under the hot rubber suit he wore.
  Cautiously they backed up. More of the cherry−red  men appeared.
  The thugs with Hoskins and Yardoff appeared as  frightened of the cherry−red men as they had been of
  Stinger’s killers.  Their guns popped ceaselessly.
  But the convicts were canny. The first burst from  Yardoff’s Tommy gun had brought some measure of sanity
  back to them.  They lurked in passageways leading off the main corridor.
  As the thugs passed, a cherry−red hand would dart  out. That hand would touch one of the thugs.
  The thug would yell once. Then he became very dead.  Half−insane shrieks of glee from the kill−crazy
  convicts would follow.
  "Kill! Kill! Kill!" they chanted.
  "The end?" Hoskins asked. His lips trembled.
  Yardoff surveyed him scornfully. "Of course not!" he  rapped. "Stinger and his men will destroy themselves.
  They do not  understand what they are up against here."
  "Then what are we to do?" Hoskins was almost sobbing.
  Yardoff lifted his Tommy gun, blasted a path through  an approaching horde of cherry−red men. Behind them
  another grenade  exploded. Exultant yells followed.
  "We will simply get Doc Savage and his men, take  them to the submarine, and return when the fighting is
  over," Yardoff  said.
  His Tommy gun blared its song of death.
  Chapter XVIII. A FLIGHT FOR LIFE
  THE roar of the Tommy gun was warning enough to Doc  and his men that things had gone wrong outside.
  And it told them  enemies were approaching.
  "If I only had my sword cane!" Ham moaned. 
  "Or if we had some super−firers!" Renny shouted. 
  "I’ll take ‘em! I’ll take ‘em all!" Monk howled. He  jumped up and down, beat his chest in perfect imitation of
  a bull ape.
  "Shut up, you guys!" Long Tom put in swiftly. "Help  Doc. He can’t save us all if you don’t work."
  "We’ll stand guard," Renny said, motioning at Ham.  "We’re no good on the type of stuff you’re doing,
  anyway."
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  The bronze man said nothing. The situation was one  of the toughest of many tough spots he and his men had
  ever been in,  but work, not idling, was the only thing that would save them.
  Monk, with Long Tom, grabbed more plates, more glass  boxes, worked rapidly to put together additional
  batteries of the type  Doc had made.
  Johnny was pulling out additional electric motors,  working swiftly to splice connections to them, careful to
  use rubber  and glass only when he came in contact with the wires.
  Doc was mixing chemicals in several glass retorts.  He poured the resulting liquid into glass balls, plugged the
  openings.
  Swiftly he handed half a dozen each to Renny and Ham.
  A wide smile overspread the dapper lawyer’s face. He  opened the door, tossed one of the glass balls down the
  corridor.
  It landed not a score of feet in front of Yardoff  and Hoskins.
  There was a most satisfying explosion.
  The barrel−shaped man and the scarecrow one almost  went on their noses, so quickly did they stop.
  Yardoff snarled, loosed a blast from his Tommy gun  that played on the door.
  Renny waited until the drum of the gun clicked  empty. Then he jumped out, looped two of the glass balls
  down the  corridor as if he had been a baseball pitcher.
  Hoskins had raised a glass pistol. He shot, but he  was so anxious to get away from there that he almost
  tripped over his  own feet.
  The two crooks raced back, until they could stand in  the comparative safety of a small niche in the wall while
  they reloaded  the Tommy gun.
  Two more apparatus such as Doc had erected were  ready for use now.
  Monk seized the handles of one. Long Tom grabbed  onto the other. Slowly the cherry−red color died from
  their faces; the  queer, tingling sensation their skin had experienced faded. They felt  more keen, more
  mentally alert than they had for some time.
  "Hurry, Doc, hurry!" The cry came from Renny. The  big engineer had left his post at the laboratory door, was
  rushing  toward the back.
  A cherry−red face had appeared around a bend. A  hideous face, with lips drawn back over dirty teeth, with
  glass dagger  held in one hand, only the glass dagger did not show its real color. It  was dripping crimson.
  "Give me those glass bombs!" Monk squealed. "You’ve  got to get deloused!"
  He reached out, almost touched Renny’s hand. Doc  shouted. Monk froze.
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  79
  
  "Lay the bombs down, Renny, then let Monk pick them  up," the bronze man said. "Had he touched you, he
  would have been  killed."
  Yardoff’s submachine gun roared.
  "Kill! Kill!" came cries from the cherry−red men.
  Doc and his aids were surrounded.
  LONG TOM replaced Ham at the laboratory door. The  dapper lawyer, Renny and Johnny, grabbed hold of
  the contacts to the  queer, battery−appearing machines.
  Motors hummed.
  Monk suddenly squealed, came running back. "Out of  bombs," he bellowed, "and one of those mugs almost
  touched me!"
  Doc nodded. "It is time to go," he said.
  And it was time to go.
  Yardoff and Hoskins had discovered that although the  glass bombs made a terrific roar, they were practically
  harmless. The  cherry−red men were so inflamed they did not think of danger at all.
  Doc ran toward the maddened convicts. His men  followed.
  A small, runty killer was in the lead of the pack.  He was bleeding from a score of wounds, but his
  bloodstained hands bore  mute witness that he had slain his share of victims.
  The bronze man halted directly before him. The runty  killer raised his knife.
  Long Tom’s breath came in sharply. Doc no longer was  cherry−red; the electricity that had been in his body
  was gone. If the  killer even touched him, that touch would be fatal!
  One of Doc’s hands shot out. It was sheathed in a  rubber glove. It caught the killer’s wrist, threw him back.
  "Wait!" the bronze man said.
  The average man could not have done it. It is  doubtful that even Ham, with all his power of oratory, with all
  his  knowledge of how to grip attention, could have done it.
  But Doc Savage did. The horde stopped.
  The bronze man’s flake gold eyes swept over them.  There was something hypnotic in his eyes.
  "Look at me," he said. "Look at me carefully. A few  moments ago, I was cherry−red, even as you are. I, too,
  was doomed to  death. I am not now."
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  A gasp of awe went up from the killers. The bronze  man had seized the only thing, had said the only thing
  that would have  halted their rush for long, that would have brought the light of sanity  back to their eyes.
  "My friends and I have solved the secret of how to  get rid of the living fire," Doc said.
  Behind him, Yardoff and Hoskins had reached the door  of the laboratory. They paused for a moment, fearing
  a trick. But it  could only be seconds before they smashed through. The bronze man paid  no attention, spoke
  as if he had hours for the task.
  "You will find three machines in the laboratory," he  went on. "Three at a time, grab hold of the control
  handles that are  attached to them. You will become normal, will no longer be walking  dead men."
  A scream of excited jubilation came from one of the  killers. That was all that was necessary.
  The next instant they were sweeping past Doc and his  men, the thought of killing them forgotten.
  Knives flashed again as they fought to be the first  at the machines that would mean life if they could ever
  escape.
  When Yardoff and Hoskins thrust open the laboratory  door, Doc and his men had vanished.
  JOHNNY tried to take the lead. He thought he knew  the path that led to the submarine.
  "If we get away now," Long Tom argued, "we can come  back later, save what men are still alive. If we delay,
  we’ll be dead  and no one will survive."
  Doc Savage nodded his agreement.
  "You figured it out, Doc, you know what it is all  about?" Monk asked pridefully.
  "Of course he did, stupid, or we wouldn’t have any  chance at all!" Ham gibed.
  Doc and his aids raced into a maze of tunnelways.  Some of them were so low they could hardly pass through
  them. Others  were high, and winding. Sounds of shooting and shouting became dim.  There was only the
  steady, monotonous roar.
  "I’m completely nonplussed," Johnny confessed.
  "If you mean lost, I am, too," Long Tom said.
  Doc moved in the lead. He turned in a direction that  seemed directly opposite the right one to Johnny, but the
  geologist  gulped and said nothing.
  The six slid forward on silent feet. The noise of  shooting grew more loud. Now and then a shriek could be
  heard plainly.  Tommy guns roared. Occasionally there was the blast of a grenade.
  Tension grew. For the first time in their careers,  Doc and his men were completely without weapons.
  Cherry−red men might  jump from any of the side passageways they passed. If they did, Doc and  his aids
  would be helpless.
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  A face appeared ahead of them. It was the face of  one of Stinger Salvatore’s thugs.
  The killer yelled gleefully; he yanked up his gun to  fire.
  Doc’s hand shot out. A rock sped through the air  with unerring accuracy. It caught the killer on the nose.
  Blood  spurted, blinded him.
  Howling vengefully, the thug opened fire. But he  could not see. His shots went wild.
  "Come," said Doc.
  If the six had moved fast before, now they fairly  flew. Doc did not seem to hesitate. Without a second’s pause
  he moved  from one corridor to the others.
  The bronze man had not been to the submarine, but  that appeared to make no difference. And it didn’t. From
  the slant of  the passageways and the geological structure of the walls, Doc figured  out the only direction in
  which the underground stream would lie.
  And if his men had felt tense before, now  they felt doubly so. Not only were Petrod Yardoff and Hoskins
  after  them, not only would they most likely die if they encountered the  cherry−red convicts, but they knew
  Stinger Salvatore would realize that  he could not let them escape alive, that he would go to any length to  stop
  them.
  A sigh of relief was wrenched suddenly from Long  Tom. A heavy door had loomed ahead.
  Monk squealed happily. Before Doc could stop him, he  raced in the lead, grabbed at the lock on the door. 
  There was a sudden flash. Monk was hurled through  the air, to land sprawling.
  HAM raced to the hairy chemist’s side. "Monk! Monk!"  he pleaded. "Speak to me! Speak to me!"
  "Why should I, you overripe specimen of a razor−back  pig?" Monk’s words came weakly�but he could speak.
  Ham leaped to his feet. He was as nearly flustered  as it was possible for an astute lawyer to be. It always
  embarrassed  him when Monk caught him showing emotion of any kind.
  "You�you. I’ll slit your gullet when I get my sword  cane back!" he raged.
  "The machines did not take all the electricity from  our bodies," Doc explained. "I was afraid that they would
  not, since we  did not have time to do a thorough job."
  The bronze man took a small glass bottle from his  breechcloth. It was one Long Tom had watched him fill
  while he was in  the laboratory.
  Quickly, Doc poured out liquid. He ran it from the  tip of one finger, up his arm, across his shoulders and
  down the other  arm.
  Without hesitation he stepped toward the door. He  placed one hand on the ground. With the other he touched
  the metal.
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  There was a streak of flame. It followed exactly the  path of the liquid. Doc was unhurt. He opened the door
  without  difficulty.
  "Juice will seek the easiest conductor," Long Tom  explained to Renny. "What juice there was left in Doc shot
  out along  the line of liquid metal, without hurting him."
  The second door was also opened easily. In front of  them lay the submarine, deck awash in the huge,
  subterranean stream.
  Sounds of fighting came clearer behind them. Their  pursuers, battling among themselves, but each eager to
  grab Doc and his  men, were growing closer.
  "Safe!" Johnny shouted. He raced along the tiny  wharf to the sub.
  Doc delayed a moment, a faint frown creasing his  bronze forehead.
  There was no sign of life about the submarine. 
  Johnny threw up the hatch, dropped down inside. The  others followed.
  As Doc landed, men seemed to pour out onto them from  all sides.
  They were the sailors who handled the sub. Some held  deadly guns. Others were armed with heavy wrenches.
  Chapter XIX. THE SUB AFIRE
  SOMEWHERE near by a girl screamed. It was the voice  of Virginia Hoskins.
  "Help! Help!" she cried.
  A gun was pointing directly at Monk. The gun went  off when the hairy chemist jumped at the man behind it.
  Ordinarily Monk respected a gun. He knew how quickly  one could end the life of even the strongest man. But
  the pure terror  in Virginia Hoskins’s voice had made him forget all ordinary caution.
  His long, apelike arms swinging, animal noises  coming unconsciously from him, the hairy chemist went into
  battle. He  knocked the sailor out with one punch, turned hungrily for more.
  Ham was jabbing with the scientific accuracy of the  trained boxer. He missed his sword cane, but he could
  fight just as  well as the average−trained ring man.
  Renny’s huge arms were working piston−like. His bony  monstrosities of fists crunched jaws or skulls with
  equal facility.
  Renny was probably the poorest fighter of all Doc’s  aids, but he was far better than average. And he was
  giving an  excellent account of himself.
  The engineer was frankly angry, not so much at the  attack, as at what that attack might mean.
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  Renny wanted to come back to the underground caverns  when he could work uninterrupted, when he could
  have time to study the  queer geological strata, prepare papers on it that would confound his  scientific
  associates.
  He did not approve of being trapped at the last  moment, of losing out when all seemed won. He was
  expressing that  disapproval with straight rights and lefts, interspersed with a few  well−aimed kicks at shins.
  Doc alone seemed to be taking no very active part in  the mêlée. And that was strange. For ordinarily the
  bronze man was in  the front rank, leading even causes that appeared hopeless.
  The bronze man’s eyes swept the room of struggling  figures. The room was small, the fighters were
  constantly getting into  each other’s way. Knuckles aimed for one jaw quite often smacked the  jaw of another.
  And creeping toward them, hard faces set in sardonic  lines, were two men carrying submachine guns!
  The fighters were between Doc and the approaching  killers. He could not get at them. Soon those weapons
  would swing into  action.
  And from the look on the faces of the men carrying  the guns, they wouldn’t care if a few of their own men
  got killed, as  long as Doc and his crew, were wiped out.
  "Cease fighting! Drop to the floor!" Doc roared.
  Monk groaned; Renny seemed to want to argue. But  none hesitated.
  Doc’s aids did not know what it was all about, but  they trusted the bronze man implicitly. Without hesitation
  they dropped.
  Br−r−r−r−r−r−r!
  A Tommy gun spoke. Slugs tore over the heads of  Doc’s aids. It was aimed directly at the bronze man.
  He was no longer there. He had dived through a  hatchway behind him.
  SOME sailors tore frantically in pursuit. Others  paused to tie up the five men who had dropped to the floor.
  Renny’s face was a study. He did not need to be told  why Doc had acted as he had, but he liked a fight almost
  as much as  Monk did, despite his disapproving features.
  Doc had seen the killers approach, his men realized,  had known some of them might be killed, even if they
  could overcome all  their foes in the end.
  And the bronze man would try any strategy rather  than permit one of his aids to be killed.
  His strategy was now plain. He had drawn all  attention to himself, was willing to play a lone hand against the
  dozen  or more men who were on the boat.
  A man with a short, black beard�the one who had  first conducted Long Tom and Johnny before
  Yardoff�issued crisp  instructions, his beard bobbing energetically.
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  84
  
  "
  The bronze devil cannot get off this boat," he said in his  queerly accented voice. "He is the one Yardoff most
  wished. Try to get  him alive if possible, but if not�kill him. He is dangerous." 
  Ham was forced to grin. "Blackbeard" evidently  hadn’t heard all the fighting in the big caverns, did not know
  that  possibly by this time Yardoff had no interest except in his own safety.
  But it was understandable that the sailors did not  know. The doors leading into the caverns were thick and
  heavy. Noise  could not be heard through them.
  The searchers went to work swiftly but cautiously.  They knew their boat, knew every possible hiding place,
  and hiding  places are not so many on pigboats where every inch of space must have  its use.
  One by one, those searchers disappeared. At first  their absence was not noted.
  They would drift toward the battery room, enter�then  all sign of them would cease. Each of them was armed.
  It seemed  unlikely that even if the bronze man were hiding there that he could  overcome them all without at
  least one being able to fire a warning  shot.
  The black−bearded leader returned to the control  room. His eyes were puzzled as he noticed how few men he
  had left. He  called. There was no answer.
  The puzzled look was replaced by one of slight  alarm. He sniffed the air.
  "Gas!" he rapped suddenly. "The bronze devil has  gotten to the chemicals in the battery room, has made a
  gas!"
  The black−bearded man raced toward the battery room.  His remaining sailors were at his back.
  "Be careful," he warned, "Savage is tricky. He may  have figured out a way to save himself."
  He thrust open the door, stood at one side, gun  ready. His mouth dropped open.
  Inside the battery room, the floor was covered with  sprawled figures. In the center of those figures was the
  big form of  Doc Savage.
  "S−strange," the black−bearded man muttered.
  A peculiar expression crossed his face. He turned,  tried to flee. His legs would not carry him. He slumped,
  went down.  Behind him, sailors crumpled to the floor.
  Above, Doc’s five aids were bound and tied so that  they could not move. The gas from the battery room
  spread toward them.
  NOR were things going well for those in the caverns. 
  The big, bluish−lighted rooms held mute evidence of  the carnage that raged. Of the more than one hundred
  convicts who had  been alive less than an hour before, fewer than two score remained.
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  85
  
  Stinger was practically without aid. That puzzled  him.
  Weapons that his men had carried had suddenly turned  into death agencies for their owners. Flame had
  spurted, the killers  had died.
  Stinger did not know that the bodies of his men had  become filled with electricity, that the metal of the guns
  had caused  death−dealing shocks. But he had been smart enough to throw his gun  away when he saw
  electrical sparks play along the weapons of others.
  He found a glass pistol, went on. The humming noise  of the caverns, the wild screams of the maddened
  convicts, acted on the  flashily dressed gangster’s nerves, also, but he did not know it.
  He thought he was sane, that every one else was  crazy.
  A group of cherry−red men plunged into view. In  front of them, running for his life, was the barrel−shaped
  figure of  Clement Hoskins.
  Stinger Salvatore’s lips were back, his unblinking,  steely eyes filled with desperate purpose. He pulled the
  trigger.  Hoskins staggered. The bullet had caught him high up, near a shoulder.
  A smaller man would have gone down. Hoskins did not.  He proved that his big body was not fat, but the
  powerful, solid muscle  he had bragged about.
  A deadly grin wreathed his moon face. He brought his  own gun up carefully. As Stinger fired a second time,
  Hoskins pulled  the trigger.
  Lead from Stinger’s gun plucked Hoskins’s sleeve.  Hoskins scarcely noticed it. A third eye appeared in
  Stinger’s  forehead. This eye was unblinking, also. But it was not steely, it was  black that rapidly changed to
  crimson. He was dead.
  Yardoff was running down the corridor that led to  the submarine. He was pursued by several of the
  cherry−red men. Their  flashing knives foretold his fate if he was caught.
  Clement Hoskins lumbered after then. He ran slowly.  He could not run fast. His strength was seeping from
  the bullet wound  in his shoulder.
  A queer, misshapen figure slid into the corridor  almost at his back. The man had an almost flat head, with
  little,  deep−sunken red eyes.
  "Hoskins!" called Professor Torgle.
  Hoskins turned with a snarl. It was then Torgle  leaped, plunged his knife deep into the barrel−shaped man’s
  heart.
  Clement Hoskins was dead, but he did not know it.  One of his hands reached out, caught Torgle by the wrist,
  held him  fast. The other encircled the misshapen man’s throat. Slowly that fist  tightened. Torgle scratched
  and kicked, he clawed and fought.
  Hoskins went down. Torgle went with him; strange,  strangling noises came from his throat.
  After a while they both lay still.
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  Petrod Yardoff was more clever. He tricked his  pursuers by dodging off, taking a winding passageway. But
  he made one  mistake, too. He did not take time to close the doors when he passed  them.
  Panting, he came through the second door, saw the  submarine resting peacefully on the subterranean stream.
  He paused, looked behind him for a moment, took off  a rubber glove to wipe his forehead.
  It was at that moment that Doc’s big figure rose  from the group of sprawled men in the battery room. An
  oxygen tablet in  his mouth had saved the bronze man from being overcome, while the  others had dropped.
  Swiftly he turned on blower fans. The gas he had  concocted with chemicals in the battery room brought quick
  unconsciousness, but its effects would not linger long.
  Then the bronze man raced to the control room, freed  his men.
  "Tie up the sailors," Doc said calmly. "Then get to  your posts. We are ready to leave."
  As his aids rushed to obey, Doc looked out the  conning hatch.
  It was then Petrod Yardoff saw him.
  The scarecrow man realized Doc and his crew had  seized the submarine, that all his own plans to escape had
  been  blocked. He knew then that he was lost.
  But he knew something else, too, knew one final  trick that would carry those who had blocked him to death.
  An almost insane shriek came from his lips. He  leaped to a switch beside the lead door. He shoved the switch
  home.
  Instantly, water began to boil about the submarine.  A wire carrying a tremendous load of electricity had been
  hooked to the  pigboat. In a moment its plates became red−hot.
  It was a flaming submarine of death!
  Chapter XX. JOURNEY’S END
  DOC had only an instant of warning. He saw the  switch as Petrod Yardoff lunged toward it.
  "Stand on rubber!" the bronze man shouted. His voice  penetrated every part of the submarine. His men heard.
  They obeyed.
  Several of the unconscious sailors were touching  metal. It was unfortunate, but there was no hope for them.
  They were  electrocuted instantly, dying as if they had gone to the electric chair  for murders they had
  committed.
  The submarine was rapidly becoming unbearably hot  due to the tremendous current that was running through
  the metal, and  the strong resistance of that metal.
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  Something had to be done, and done fast, or motors  inside the pigboat would become worthless.
  A terrible leer was on Petrod Yardoff’s face.
  Doc went into action. A diving suit was in one  corner of the control room. Evidently one of the crew had
  been  inspecting the bottom of the mysterious stream.
  With dazzling speed, the bronze man donned the suit.  He grabbed a pair of wire−cutting pliers. The handles
  were taped, but  that seemed slight protection against the enormous flow of electricity  that must be coming
  into the submarine.
  The wire was fastened near the nose of the sub.
  Doc took a long breath, popped out of the conning  hatch. The next moment and he was running down the top
  of the sub, had  slipped into the water.
  The water surrounding the pigboat was so hot the  diving suit immediately became a turkish bath. Steam
  clouded the glass.
  Working blind, the bronze man fumbled for the wire.
  Frantic cries were coming from inside the submarine.  It was becoming unbearably hot there. And Doc’s aids
  did not know what  was happening, did not know whether the bronze man had escaped or not.
  The pliers encountered the wire. Sparks flew. 
  With steady hand, Doc slipped the cutters over the  wire, applied pressure.
  Despite the tape on the handle of the pliers,  despite the rubber gloves of the diving suit, a sudden surge of
  electricity went through the bronze man’s body.
  He was thrown in the air, tossed about by the  mighty, invisible force.
  Doc’s lips came together hard, his flake gold eyes  almost closed. With the last ounce of his strength, he
  pressed the  pliers home.
  The wire parted.
  IT was seconds before the bronze man recovered  enough to scramble back on the boat. Yardoff stood as a
  man amazed. His  last hole−card had failed.
  Once more he wiped perspiration from his forehead.  He took a step toward the boat�and halted.
  Monk and Renny appeared out of the conning tower.  Renny’s face was grim and merciless. Monk gave a sigh
  of relief as he  saw that Doc was uninjured.
  It was then that the surviving cherry−red men  appeared.
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  They came running through the lead door noiselessly,  running as a wolf pack runs when the kill is near. A
  terrible sound  came from their throats as they saw Yardoff.
  The scarecrow man screamed�once.
  As far as he could see there was death behind him  and death in front of him, for he could not understand that
  others  might be more merciful than he, that Doc might save him.
  "Back to your posts, prepare to dive," Doc Savage  ordered his aids.
  There was an unusual note of urgency in his voice.  Monk looked wonderingly. He could not see what could
  cause the bronze  man to speak so when all seemed won.
  Then he saw what Doc had seen seconds earlier, and  for once he lost his color. He was almost trembling as he
  raced into  the submarine. And Renny was right behind him.
  "Come on, Yardoff! Come now!" 
  Doc shouted. Petrod Yardoff hesitated. He looked  behind him. The pack of cherry−red men were almost
  upon him. Their  weapons were raised.
  Certainly there was no mercy there. There might be  some hope with Doc. Yardoff made up his mind. He
  raced forward, out on  the tiny dock toward the submarine.
  Had he looked behind him, he would have seen a  strange thing then. The cherry−red convicts had halted.
  They tried  frantically to yell. Their voices seemed paralyzed.
  With one accord, they turned, raced back in the  direction from which they had come.
  But Yardoff did not see. He stretched out one hand,  grabbed a rail to lift him up.
  There was a sudden sheet of fire. Flame played over  the scarecrow body of the man who was playing for
  millions.
  The odor of burned flesh came into the air. Petrod  Yardoff died as others had died from the living flame. He
  died from a  trap of his own devising, only he had made it for others.
  He had forgotten to replace his rubber glove after  he had wiped his face.
  Doc glanced once more at the shore. The long,  electricity−charged wire he had cut was still dancing. Sparks
  were  flying from it. Those sparks had already done their work well�too well.
  A fuse was flaming slowly. It was leading under the  leaden door where buried explosive lay waiting.
  "Crash dive!" ordered Doc.
  THE submarine shuddered. It smashed downward, under  the water, as its tanks were thrown wide open to fill
  at once.
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  "Full speed ahead!"
  Doc gave the order before the submarine could reach  the bottom of the subterranean stream. He knew he
  must do so.
  And barely in time.
  There was a muffled roar, a noise that did not echo  loud inside the submarine, now under water and nosing
  toward the outlet  that led to the sea.
  But if the noise was not loud, the results of that  noise more than made up for any lack of sound.
  There was a rush of water. The submarine was lifted  up, hurled backward as if by a gigantic hand. Its
  propellers raced; its  motors labored.
  The explosive under the leaden door evidently had  been buried deeply enough so that water from the stream
  was released  into the underground cavern.
  Possibly the blast opened up a new passageway into  the lower depths of the land of living fire.
  Only the fact that the submarine was in the big  stream saved it. Had it been caught in a narrow passageway,
  even its  strong hull would have been crushed under the beating it would have  taken.
  As it was it was almost an hour before the surge of  waters passed, before the battle for safety finally ended.
  Then Doc headed toward the open sea.
  VIRGINIA HOSKINS was still pale. She had passed  through much. But her cheeks became a faint pink when
  she saw the  admiring gaze Monk could not keep from his face. The girl had escaped  being electrocuted by
  standing on a rubber mat after hearing Doc’s  warning.
  Doc turned over the controls to Renny, let the big  engineer show his stuff as he piloted the way through the
  twisting  tunnel, fought against the surge of the tide.
  The bronze man with the others relaxed in the ward  room, relaxed for the first time in hours.
  "Now will you tell me what it was all about?" Monk  demanded.
  Doc nodded. "As nearly as possible," he said. "To  begin with, I think Yardoff and Hoskins first discovered
  the wealth of  native mineral in the upper passageways of the cavern. A majority of  those minerals,
  particularly pyrites, are vital to the munitions  industry.
  "Many nations are arming. Some wish to hide that  fact. If they bought in the open market, they could not
  keep it secret.  Yardoff was once an agent for an international munitions firm. His  reputation was shady.
  Hoskins contacted him. Together they smuggled out  the minerals they had found."
  "Bootlegged it by submarine," Ham said with  satisfaction.
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  "Then they discovered the lower cavern, the cavern  with the living fire. The ore there, as we all know, was
  highly charged  with electricity. It operated the furnaces of the glass factory; the  very ore itself provided light.
  "But they needed men to work there, men who would  not talk. Hence the prison breaks which they
  engineered with the  Stinger’s help. That is where Z−2 came in. As an F.B.I. man, he was  investigating a
  Federal prison break. He tried to get away, and knew  something of the peril he faced, but even then he died."
  "But," objected Long Tom, "where did Hoskins and  Yardoff hope to profit? They could have used the ore for
  power, that  would have brought them a fortune, and legitimately."
  "Yes," Doc agreed. "They could. But did you not  notice how hard and how heavy that ore was? If they could
  have learned  how to smelt it, how to work it, so that it would have been used, they  would have had an
  impenetrable armor plate, something worth many  millions."
  "So that’s why they wanted us!" Johnny gasped.
  The bronze man nodded. "Without doubt, that is why."
  Virginia Hoskins shuddered. "But I still don’t see  where the horrible living−fire death came in."
  "The ore has strange electrical qualities," Doc  explained gently. "The longer the human body was exposed to
  it, the  more electricity it absorbed, until the convicts were walking dynamos.  If they touched anything that
  grounded them, they died. If they touched  a person not affected as they were, that person died. That was
  apparent  from the first. Z−2 touched an oil barrel with his bare hand. The man  at the office had the sole of
  one shoe eaten away by quick−acting acid.  Hoskins and Yardoff, however, evidently had a battery
  arrangement much  as we used to de−electrize themselves."
  Johnny wet his lips. "A−and what was the ore, Doc?"  he mumbled at last.
  "You are a geologist, Johnny. Don’t you know?"
  "I think I do. I am almost afraid to say."
  "But you are right, you must be right," Doc said.  "We were privileged to be among the first to see the ore that
  comprises  the core of the earth. There was a bulge there, one that brought that  core comparatively close to the
  surface.
  "No one else has ever seen it, although scientific  tests prove it must be of the hardness and density that we
  found. It  could have changed the history of the world�made into armor plate. The  nation that owned it would
  be unbeatable."
  "I−I’m going to take a vacation!" Monk blurted  suddenly. His eyes were on the beautiful face of Virginia
  Hoskins.  "When we get out, I’m going to visit Palm Springs, that is�" He gulped,  became as vivid a red as he
  had appeared in the cavern.
  "He means," Ham explained maliciously, "that he is  going to visit there if you are anywhere near, Miss
  Hoskins."
  "I am going there, also," Johnny said. "The  phenomenon must be investigated. I wish to probe further the
  strange  working of the labyrinth."
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  Chapter XX. JOURNEY’S END
  91
  
  But Johnny and Monk were mistaken. Johnny lost all  interest in Sandrit and the desert when he read the first
  newspaper he  saw as they returned to civilization.
  The newspaper told of a strange eruption that had  occurred on the desert.
  Citizens of Sandrit were quoted as telling of a  strange gun fight that had preceded the eruption, but authorities
  were  inclined to doubt that.
  But a glass factory owned by Clement Hoskins, who  was missing, had suddenly been swallowed by the earth.
  In its place was  a huge, bubbling stream, heated by some strange, subterranean force.  And queerly, the water
  was salty.
  The sea had hidden nature’s secret.
  THE END
   THE LIVING FIRE MENACE
  Chapter XX. JOURNEY’S END
  92
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/059 The Living Fire Menace.pdf