TEXT:  THE MIDAS MAN
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  THE MIDAS MAN.............................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson.....................................................................................1
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED..............................................................................................2
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS.......................................................................................5
  Chapter III. THE MANDEBRAN SCION..............................................................................................9
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON.......................................................................................................11
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN....................................................................................................16
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON................................................................................................20
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET.........................................................................................25
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS........................................................................................31
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS...........................................................................................................39
  Chapter X. FLIGHT...............................................................................................................................44
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN....................................................................................................................49
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION.....................................................................................53
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES...........................................................................................63
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED.......................................................................................69
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN....................................................................................................75
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES.......................................................................................79
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER....................................................................................84
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS......................................................................................................90
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT..................................................................................93
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN.....................................................................................................................97
   THE MIDAS MAN
  i
  
  THE MIDAS MAN
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  • 
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  • 
  Chapter III. THE MANDEBRAN SCION
  • 
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  • 
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  • 
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  • 
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  • 
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  • 
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  • 
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  • 
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  • 
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  • 
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  • 
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  • 
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  • 
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  • 
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS
  • 
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  • 
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  • 
  Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
  THE MIDAS MAN
  1
  
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  THE American public gets many of its ideas about  what is going on, from the newspapers. Newspapers
  sometimes make  mistakes, so the public, on occasion, fails entirely to get the true  significance of things that
  are happening. It was thus in the Jethro  Mandebran case.
  Maybe it was just as well that the public did not  catch on to the true significance of the Jethro Mandebran
  affair. A  good many heads might have turned gray.
  Jethro Mandebran vanished on Sunday afternoon on his  private golf course. He knocked his ball into the
  rough, which was a  patch of woods, and went in after it. That was the last they saw of  him. It was utterly
  confounding. A swarm of private detectives could  find no tracks. Some one finally thought of the
  old−fashioned idea of  using bloodhounds, but the dogs picked up no trail.
  The newspapers broke out their biggest headline  type, because Jethro Mandebran, in the staid city of
  Philadelphia,  amounted to something.
  As a matter of routine, an examiner, on Monday  morning, began checking the books of the bank which
  Mandebran owned—The  Mandebran Trust Company. That afternoon, they took the examiner to a  hospital, a
  potential nervous wreck.
  There was slightly more than twenty million dollars  missing.
  When this came out, not a newspaper in town carried  the story. They were afraid to. Such a colossal shortage
  in the  accounts of one previously as honest as Jethro Mandebran smacked of  impossibility. The editors of the
  journals, visioning big libel suits,  would not allow a word in their columns. But after a corps of examiners
  corroborated the findings, the front pages of the newspapers could  hardly hold the story.
  An examiner who liked the bright light of publicity  gave out a list containing the names of those whose
  money was among the  missing funds. The list was a long one. It contained the name of almost  every
  prominent person in Philadelphia, as well as numbers of  financiers in New York, Boston, and elsewhere.
  Clark Savage, Jr., was the three hundred and  seventy−sixth name on the list.
  The next day, Clark Savage, Jr.’s name as a loser  made the headlines. Clark Savage, Jr., was the stuff that
  newspaper  copy is made out of. Most of the journals, however, instead of calling  him Clark Savage, Jr.,
  designated him as Doc Savage.
  The mention of Doc Savage’s name in the newspapers  led to his being involved in one of the most incredible
  adventures of a  remarkable career.
  NEWSPAPER reporters and cameramen made a rush for a  headquarters which Doc Savage maintained on the
  eighty−sixth floor of  New York’s most distinctive skyscraper. They were met at the door by a  tall bag of
  bones who wore a suit many times too large. A monocle with  a thick glass was attached to this man’s coat
  lapel by a ribbon. He  received a certain deference from the newspaper reporters, which was  surprising,
  reporters usually being unimpressed by big−shots.
  The string of bones with the monocle was William  Harper Littlejohn, one of the most famous archaeologist
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  2
  
  and geologists.  He was asked where Doc Savage could be found.
  "Prognostication effectuates diaporesis," the bony  gentleman replied.
  One journalist, fortunately, carried a pocket  dictionary, so the reporters managed to gather that these
  seventeen−dollar words were meant to convey that Doc Savage’s present  whereabouts was a puzzle to the
  bony gentleman. Further questions got  more replies that had to be translated. Approximately half an hour
  elapsed before it dawned on the reporters that they were being kidded  and told nothing.
  The scribes then retired to the nearest bar, which  happened to be on the corner, and swapped information.
  There was conjecture about what could have happened  to Jethro Mandebran. Had he vanished of his own
  accord? Did he have the  twenty millions with him in a couple of motor trucks, which would  probably be the
  size of the vehicles necessary to haul away such a sum?  Why had a man previously so honest done such a
  thing?
  These newspapermen later had occasion to remark on  just how far wide of the facts were their conjectures on
  this occasion.
  Not one of the journalists guessed anything near the  incredible truth!
  When the collective conversation shifted to such  subjects as the horse races, and the pet insanities of certain
  city  editors, two men detached themselves from the group. They did this  casually. One of the pair carried a
  large press camera. The other wore  a suit which needed pressing, and had a vest pocket stuffed full of  copy
  pencils.
  As a matter of fact, the man was not a reporter.  Neither was his companion a news cameraman.
  THE two mysterious gentlemen held a conference  outside, covering up with the business of lighting
  cigarettes.
  "Not so hot, huh?" muttered the one with the camera. 
  "You said something," agreed the other. "That skinny  gink with the big words was not putting out
  information. I believe Doc  Savage is taking a hand in the Mandebran business!"
  "But how could he have gotten wise?"
  "Maybe he isn’t—entirely."
  "You figure he don’t know how big the thing really  is?"
  "Probably not—yet."
  "Then we gotta make him stop nosin’ around before he  finds out too much!"
  "Yeah," the man with the seedy suit and the pocket  full of copy pencils agreed. "That’s the chief’s orders."
  "You got any ideas," demanded the first, "about how  to do it?"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  3
  
  "I always got ideas," said his companion. "Come on." 
  They now walked rapidly down a side street, and got  in a certain taxicab which had been waiting for them.
  The driver of the  cab was a casual−mannered young man, with a face which was noteworthy  for its absence
  of chin.
  "The Museum of Natural History," directed one of the  passengers as they got seated.
  "What the hell?" snorted the driver. "You guys  decided to get an education or something?"
  "Stick around us," he was told, "and you’ll  get an education!"
  Some three quarters of an hour later, the trio stood  looking at a case in the Museum of Natural History. The
  case held a  small plaque which, the card on the case stated, had come from the tomb  of the famous
  Tutankhamen.
  It was not a busy time for the museum. The room was  empty, except for two guards.
  Without appearance of undue haste, two of the men  sidled over to the guards, drew blackjacks from under
  their clothing  and swung them against the heads of the two guards. Both watchmen fell  without an outcry.
  The other man inserted a small jimmy under the  wooden lid of the case and broke the lock. He lifted the
  tablet out and  shoved it inside his shirt under his belt. Then he tightened his belt  to hold it there.
  The three men walked out of the museum with their  loot, attracting no attention.
  TALL, bony William Harper Littlejohn came to the  door of Doc Savage’s skyscraper headquarters wearing a
  weary  expression. He also looked slightly annoyed. He had been examining the  almost perfect skull of a
  prehistoric man, which a cowboy in Wyoming  had brought to light while digging post holes. The skull was
  likely to  prove the existence of a high type of man in America much earlier than  any one expected.
  William Harper Littlejohn instantly recognized two  of his visitors as having been with the contingent of
  reporters and  cameramen. The third had the attire of a taxi driver.
  "Salutations," William Harper Littlejohn said, not  very enthusiastically.
  "I got to talkin’ with them other scribblers, after  we left here, and found out you were an archaeologist," said
  the man  who had played reporter. "I had a friend who died a few weeks ago, and  willed me his belongings.
  About the only thing he had was a trunk full  of junk. Old jars, tablets and such things. I thought I’d bring one
  of  the things to you, and maybe you could tell me whether the stuff was  worth anything or not."
  The man now drew out of his shirt the tablet from  the museum.
  William Harper Littlejohn gaped at the object.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he exploded.
  "It worth anything?" demanded the fake reporter.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter I. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  4
  
  "Antiquity indubitable!" murmured William Harper  Littlejohn.
  "There’s a lot more of these thing," said the fake  gentleman of the press.
  "Is perlustration a potentiality?" murmured William  Harper Littlejohn.
  The visitors looked dizzy. The one playing the part  of reporter grinned.
  "Don’t you know any little ones?" He held up a hand  with thumb and forefinger separated about half an inch.
  "Little ones  about that long? Words, I mean."
  "Can I see this trunk?" asked Littlejohn, thereby  proving that he did know some small words.
  "You sure can," said the reporter. "It’s in my  rooming house. You wanta go out?"
  "Subitaneously!" agreed William Harper Littlejohn.
  William Harper Littlejohn was ordinarily a gentleman  of caution. His long association with Doc Savage had
  made him so. He  was one of a group of five men, each one remarkable in his way, who had  associated
  themselves with Doc Savage, partially for the sake of the  adventure involved, but also because they had an
  unbounded admiration  for Doc Savage.
  William Harper Littlejohn was a bug on archaeology,  and highly enthusiastic over this tablet. He had
  recognized it as  genuine, and had visions of turning up a find of archaeological relics.
  His enthusiasm evaporated in an explosion of colored  lights inside his skull, a moment after he was seated in
  a dark−blue  taxi on the street. He did not even see the blackjack blow coming.
  By the time he got himself organized, handcuffs were  on his ankles and wrists, and a piece of sponge filled
  his mouth,  strapped there with adhesive tape.
  The blue taxicab threaded through city traffic. A  lap robe was thrown over William Harper Littlejohn,
  concealing his bony  form on the floorboards. He struggled, but upon receiving a kick in the  ribs, desisted. He
  could hear his captors talking.
  "That was simple," declared the captor who had  played cameraman.
  "Brains," said the other. "Brains is what makes the  world go ‘round."
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  THE blue cab went through the Holland Tunnel into  New Jersey.
  William Harper Littlejohn squirmed, and managed to  get hold of the floor carpet. He took a firm grip. Then
  he groaned  loudly. The groan was to cover the sound of the carpet tearing as he  ripped a piece out. He had to
  groan three times and strain with all of  his might before he was successful. When victory crowned his efforts,
  he held a piece of carpet about the size of the palm of his hand.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  5
  
  Thanking his lucky stars for the presence of the  enveloping lap robe, William Harper Littlejohn worked with
  the bit of  carpet.
  What he was doing took almost fifteen minutes.
  The lank geologist’s apparent inactivity had allayed  the caution of his captors only a little. When he reared up
  suddenly,  violently, they fell upon him. William Harper Littlejohn, however,  struggled with great ferocity.
  He managed to stand up straight and shove his head  hard against the top. It broke through.
  In the excitement, the men failed to note the bit of  rug being flung from his manacled hands through an open
  window.
  William Harper Littlejohn was wrestled down and  received a booting for the trouble he had caused.
  "We’re gonna lose patience with you!" one of the men  gritted.
  The last half hour of the journey was through  sparsely settled country. The car rolled into what seemed to be
  an  estate. William Harper Littlejohn was now blindfolded, lifted out and  carried across a porch that creaked
  into a house. His blindfold was  removed and the sponge taken out of his mouth.
  He was in a dark cave of a room. The walls were  painted black, which was unusual. There was a solid black
  rug on the  floor, which was even more unique.
  But the one article of furniture was most startling  of all. It was approximately eight feet long and three
  wide—an  irregularly shaped box with a lid. William Harper Littlejohn was  startled into using small words,
  something he rarely did.
  "A mummy case!" he gasped.
  A man went out, evidently to the car, and came back  carrying a pair of pliers. He showed these to the prisoner.
  "See these?" he demanded. "They’re gonna reduce your  vocabulary."
  William Harper Littlejohn could hardly help seeing  them; they were almost jammed in his eyes.
  "An anagrammatical conjugation of exigency!" he  muttered.
  "There!" growled the man with the pliers. "That’s  what I mean! No more of them words! Them jawbreakers!
  For every big  word you use, we’re gonna pull one of your teeth. A tooth for each word  we can’t understand!
  Savvy?"
  William Harper Littlejohn blinked and looked as  indignant as a securely bound man could.
  "I don’t understand what this is all about," he  snapped. "Why did you seize me?"
  "You have no idea?" demanded the other.
  "No!" retorted William Harper Littlejohn. "I’m  completely puzzled!"
  "Swell!" grinned the other. "You’re gonna be more  puzzled, before we get done!"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  6
  
  They laid hands upon the skeletonlike form of  Littlejohn, lifted him, and calmly plunked him down in the
  mummy case.
  WLLLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN had been able to give the  mummy case merely the slightest of
  inspection, but he had recognized it  as being a genuine article. And the idea of lying in a mummy case  failed
  to appeal to him.
  "I object to this treatment!" he yelled.
  "We know how you feel!" said one of the men, with  grim sympathy.
  William Harper Littlejohn growled, "Inacquiescence  is—"
  The man with the pliers sprang forward. He  endeavored forcibly to pry the prisoner’s mouth open. There was
  brisk  action for several moments, during which the pliers failed to get a  firm hold on any of the captive’s
  teeth.
  "I’ll let that one go!" the man with pinchers  decided, grudgingly. "But for every big word from now on, you
  lose a  tooth! Listen! They call you ‘Johnny,’ don’t they?"
  "Yes," William Harper Littlejohn admitted. "But  what—"
  "Johnny, you just shut up and lay there!"
  One of the men left the black room. It was fully  half an hour before the fellow reappeared. During this
  interval,  "Johnny" made several attempts to leave the mummy case, but was knocked  back into the
  sarcophagus. All he could do was to lie there and glare  indignantly.
  The returning man bore a newspaper.
  "I see Jethro Mandebran had a son who was in  Europe," he declared.
  "So what?" asked one of his fellows.
  "So the son is tearing home to try to help find his  old man," announced the fellow with the paper. "It says
  here that he  chartered a plane and flew out five hundred miles in the Atlantic to  catch a transatlantic steamer.
  It says his plane landed on the ocean  and was hauled aboard the ship. It also says that the son is gonna  leave
  the ship in his plane as soon as he’s within five hundred miles  of New York. In fact, the son is probably in the
  air again right now."
  "I’ll see if the chief has any orders about this,"  one of the three captors said, and left the room.
  JOHNNY strained against the handcuffs, but they were  too strong. He indignantly tried to push the sides out
  of the mummy  case, but had no luck. He tried to get out of the case, but they hit  him on the head with a
  revolver barrel.
  He lay back, pain making his eyes water. He was  caring less and less for the inside of the mummy case.
  Possibly it was  only imagination, but he thought he could smell traces of its original  occupant.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  7
  
  Johnny yelled, "Was there any trunk full of  archaeological relics?"
  "No!" grinned the man who had practiced that  deception.
  "Shut up, you fool!" snapped the other. "You should  have told him there was!"
  "He won’t dream what it’s all about," retorted the  first. "And, say, pal, don’t be so free about who you call a
  fool."
  Johnny addressed the fellow who had objected to  being insulted. "You haven’t much pride, letting him call
  you a fool  and get away with it. Shows you’re short on nerve."
  The man grinned widely.
  "You ain’t kidding anybody, you bag of bones," he  chuckled. "You’re trying to start a fight. Not a chance!
  This guy and  me are great pals, even if he does have a face built for nibbling  cheese."
  The other man, whose features did have something of  a mousey look, shoved out his jaw, made fists with his
  hands, and it  seemed for a moment as if there was going to be a fight after all.
  The man who had gone out of the room—to get orders  from the mysterious "chief," he had said—came back.
  He looked very  cheerful.
  He said, "Doc Savage really don’t know a thing about  this business. We made a mistake when we grabbed
  this bag of bones."
  Johnny swallowed several times. This was the truth.  But how had they learned it?
  The man looked at Johnny. "We can’t turn you loose,  because you would tell Doc Savage what has happened
  and he would  meddle. So we gotta figure what to do."
  There was a silence. It did not look to Johnny as if  they were doing much thinking. It looked as if they
  already knew what  they would do with him, and it would not be pleasant.
  A man demanded, "Is the Happy Skeleton business  going through okay?"
  "The Happy Skeleton business? Sure! No slips there."
  "You fools had better quit talkin’ so much," the  third man told the rest.
  They fell silent.
  All of this conversation made not the slightest  sense to Johnny.
  "What do you fellows want with me?" the gaunt  geologist demanded, angrily.
  "Nothing now," said one of the men. "We’re through  with you, brother!"
  "You haven’t done anything with me!" Johnny looked  bewildered. "I mean—nothing that made sense."
  "It makes plenty of sense, if you only knew!" the  other assured him.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter II. THE MUMMY CASE BUSINESS
  8
  
  "Then turn me loose!" Johnny ordered.
  The other seemed to consider this at length.
  "As soon as Jethro Mandebran’s son lands in his  airplane," the man said, "I think we shall shoot you."
  Chapter III. THE MANDEBRAN SCION
  ALEXANDER CROMWELL MANDEBRAN was, as was natural  under the circumstances, a public figure
  for the time being, a  celebrity. Alex Mandebran had been interviewed aboard the transatlantic  liner and had
  named the airport at which he expected to land in the  United States. As a result, reporters and cameramen
  were on hand to  greet Mandebran’s plane.
  The airport selected was one on the outskirts of the  city of Philadelphia, the metropolis from which the
  missing Jethro  Mandebran had disappeared.
  The plane was a small English amphibian, sturdily  built. An English pilot employed by Alex Mandebran was
  at the controls,  and, fairly early in the morning, he made an excellent landing. He  taxied up to the hangar of
  the airport, and immediately the ship was  surrounded by a crowd.
  Alex Mandebran proved to be a large man, with an  especially good pair of shoulders. He had full lips, a
  square jaw, and  his general appearance indicated considerable physical strength. His  hair was smeared with
  gray at the temples, despite the fact that his  age had been reported in the newspapers at twenty−eight.
  "Really, now, I cawn’t be expected to waste much  time, can I?" he said, when asked to answer questions.
  "Nawsty thing,  you know. Fair takes my breath. I’m in rawther a hurry to get to  Philadelphia and investigate
  the beastly mess."
  Despite the affected English accent, Alex Mandebran  seemed a nice enough young man.
  "What do you think has happened to your father?" he  was asked.
  "Really, I cawn’t say yet," he replied.
  "What do you think has happened to the twenty  million dollars?" was the next question.
  "Really, I’d rawther not say as to that either," the  young man murmured.
  "Do you know anything at all about the case?"
  "I am sure that the name of my father will be  cleared in the end, oh, definitely! I am going to Philadelphia at
  once.  I trust I shall have more to say, after I am there a short time."
  A reporter inquired, "How long have you been abroad?"
  "Most of my life, to tell the truth," said young  Mandebran.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter III. THE MANDEBRAN SCION
  9
  
  AT this point, a very large Negro, wearing a neat  blue uniform, stepped up to Alex Mandebran and saluted
  deftly.
  "Ah got an official cah waitin’ foh yo’, suh," he  said.
  Alex Mandebran blinked. "I do not understand."
  "Police, boss," said the Negro. "They done want to  be nice to yo’ all. In this heah cah, ye’ can make a quick
  trip, an’ it  won’ cos’ a cent."
  Taking off his hat, Alex Mandebran ran his fingers  through his hair. "The police want to question me?"
  "Ah reckons dey do," said the big black man. "Ah  wouldn’t know."
  The car proved to be a large, dark limousine. The  big Negro in the uniform handed young Mandebran into the
  rear and got  behind the wheel. The car rolled away from the airport and headed for  Philadelphia.
  Three other cars followed. These machines held  newspaper reporters, who had orders to keep tab on young
  Mandebran.
  The three cars of the newspapermen started out with  full expectations of keeping the machine ahead in sight.
  They received  a surprise. The dark limousine traveled faster and faster. The  newspapermen pushed their cars
  to the utmost, but they were rapidly  left behind. Within twenty minutes, the newshawks had lost all trace of
  the black car. Thus they missed a bit of drama which would surely have  been good for headlines.
  Alex Mandebran in the black car became alarmed at  the excessive speed.
  "I say, driver!" he called. "We are hardly going to  a fire!"
  This got no results. Alex Mandebran rapped sharply  on the glass which separated the driver’s compartment.
  The big Negro  piloting the machine did not even look around. The young man tried to  crank the glass down.
  It would not budge. He endeavored to open the  doors. They would not open. He tackled the windows. No
  luck there,  either.
  "What the hell does this mean?" Mandebran shrieked,  completely shedding his English accent.
  Getting no answer, he wrenched off a shoe and  employed it to beat against the glass. The glass was like
  armor plate.  Alex Mandebran sank back on the cushions, somewhat pale.
  The black limousine had left the main highway by  now, and was jouncing over rough roads. Turning off
  sharply into a  grove of trees, it stopped. The driver got out, calmly opened the rear  door.
  "Damn you, whoever you are!" Alex Mandebran gritted,  and leaped to the attack.
  The thirty seconds or so which ensued were brisk and  discomfiting to Mandebran. Not only did he fail to bear
  the other down  with his charge, but he was seized, lifted and slammed to the earth so  hard that the breath left
  his lungs.
  The captor held his wrists easily, searched him for  a weapon, but found none.
  "Blast you! What are—"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter III. THE MANDEBRAN SCION
  10
  
  Alex Mandebran went abruptly silent, for he had  gotten a look at one of his captor’s wrists.
  Some of the disguising color had been rubbed off the  wrists in the struggle. The captor was unmistakably a
  white man.
  "What’s the meaning of this?" Alex Mandebran  demanded.
  THE reply of the mysterious black driver was to  begin wiping more of the coloring off his features. He
  worked rapidly,  employing a chemical remover which came in a tube, and which he had  been carrying in a
  pocket.
  Alex Mandebran began to stare in amazement. He all  but rubbed his eyes in disbelief.
  "Good night!" he gasped.
  "So you recognize me?"
  Alex Mandebran wet his lips. "I—I recognize you from  your pictures!" he admitted, jerkily.
  Alex Mandebran was now urged into the limousine, and  the erstwhile Negro chauffeur got behind the wheel.
  The car was shortly  swallowed by the woods.
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  IT was around noon when a tall and very huskily  built young gentleman presented himself at the office of the
  Philadelphia police chief and requested the privilege of an interview  with whoever was in charge of the Jethro
  Mandebran investigation.
  "What name shall I say?" inquired the reception  clerk.
  "Alexander Cromwell Mandebran," said the young man.
  A few minutes later, the young man was confronting  the police chief, district attorney, a Federal investigator,
  police  officials and a number of newspaper reporters.
  "We had expected you earlier," he was told.
  "I took the wrong road," the young man explained.
  The district attorney asked, "Do you object to the  presence of newspapermen?"
  "Not at all."
  "You are Alexander Cromwell Mandebran, Jethro  Mandebran’s son?" he was asked.
  "I think I can prove that," the young man said, and  smiled slightly. "I have a number of letters." He now
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  11
  
  produced  envelopes addressed to Alexander Cromwell Mandebran in assorted English  and European cities.
  These were examined.
  While the scrutiny was taking place, a newspaperman  nudged his companion. Both of the journalists had
  been at the airport  when Alex Mandebran landed, and had been with the party of scribes  which had later lost
  the scion of missing wealth.
  "Notice anything queer about friend Alex?" whispered  the scribbler.
  His companion examined Alex Mandebran intently.  "Nope. Why?"
  "Maybe it’s my imagination," said the other.
  The investigators handed back the letters which they  had been scrutinizing.
  "Satisfactory?" demanded the young man.
  "Yes," he was told.
  THE Federal investigator studied Alex Mandebran,  then asked, "Are you married?"
  "No."
  "At one time you were engaged to a young woman named  Sylvan Niles," the investigator stated.
  Alex Mandebran looked surprised. "How did you know  that?"
  "We are leaving no stones unturned," the other  assured him. "Sylvan Niles broke your engagement herself,
  did she not?"
  Alex Mandebran moistened his lips, then admitted,  "She did."
  "The engagement was broken at a London night club,  was it not?" the investigator persisted. "There was
  something of a  scene. Sylvan Niles called you some things and threw your ring at you,  did she not?"
  Alex Mandebran nodded uncomfortably.
  "Why did Sylvan Niles break her engagement?" the  government man asked.
  Alex Mandebran hesitated. He not only looked  uncomfortable, but indignant.
  "She caught me going out with another girl," he  snapped.
  Some of the reporters laughed at this, and their  mirth drew a scowl from Alex Mandebran.
  The district attorney now took over the questioning,  asking, "You are an only child, are you not?"
  "Yes," admitted Alex Mandebran.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  12
  
  "And, as your father’s only offspring, you should be  his principal heir?" the prosecutor questioned.
  Alex Mandebran admitted, "I suppose so."
  The district attorney took a long breath. "Then tell  me," he directed, "why your father’s will cuts you off
  without a cent."
  Alex Mandebran sat perfectly still for a time. He  did not look particularly disappointed.
  "I did not know there was a will," he said, levelly.  "Am I to understand that my father is dead?"
  "Not at all," he was told. "We have no idea what’s  become of him."
  "Then why have you opened his will?" shouted the  young man.
  "Because we are leaving no avenue of investigation  unexplored," the other replied.
  Young Alex Mandebran was now asked another question.
  "Do you know the present whereabouts of your former  fiancée, Sylvan Niles?" he was asked.
  "I no longer have the slightest interest in Sylvan  Niles," Alex Mandebran snapped.
  "Did you know Sylvan Niles was here in  Philadelphia?" the questioner countered.
  "Good night!" exploded young Mandebran. "No!"
  THE newspapermen obviously had not known Sylvan  Niles was in Philadelphia either. There was a bustling
  among them as  they demanded the young woman’s address. This was given them. The young  woman lived in
  the Salimar Apartments.
  It might have been noted that Alex Mandebran  listened intently to this address.
  Some of the reporters now departed in a great hurry,  anxious to interview Sylvan Niles.
  A few more routine questions were put to Alex  Mandebran. Replying to them, the young man asserted he had
  not the  slightest idea what had happened to his father, that he considered his  parent one of the most honest
  men living, and that he could not even  hazard a guess as to what had happened to the twenty million.
  "Did you know a great deal about Sylvan Niles?" he  was asked.
  "No, I did not," he admitted. "I realized that  later. I knew practically nothing about the young lady’s past."
  "Did you know a man named Hando Lancaster?"
  "Scarcely at all," said Alex Mandebran, quickly.
  "He was Sylvan Niles employer, was he not?" prompted  the interrogator.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  13
  
  "That was my understanding, I think,"
  "Her capacity was that of laboratory assistant or  secretary, was it not?" asked the other.
  "Sylvan Niles told me very little about her work,"  replied Alex Mandebran.
  "What was Hando Lancaster’s business?"
  "I have not the slightest idea," declared young  Mandebran.
  "Were you at any time jealous of Hando Lancaster?"
  "Good grief, no!" gasped Alex Mandebran. "Sylvan was  the one who was jealous!"
  There was some further questioning, but the subjects  of Hando Lancaster and Sylvan Niles were not brought
  up again. The  questions were general ones having to do with the character of the  missing Jethro Mandebran.
  Had he been a gambler? Had he been a chaser?  Did he drink? Had he ever shown any dishonest traits? To all
  of these  Alex Mandebran answered in the negative.
  "I should like to put a question of my own," he  said, suddenly.
  "Of course," he was told.
  "In just what form was this twenty million dollars  when it disappeared?" Alex Mandebran demanded.
  "In the form of unregistered bonds," the district  attorney explained. "Bonds which, unfortunately, cannot be
  traced."
  "Now, I should like to be excused," said young  Mandebran.
  This seemed to be agreeable, so Alex Mandebran took  his departure.
  PERHAPS three quarters of an hour later, a taxicab  unloaded the young man two blocks from the apartment
  house where the  police had said Sylvan Niles lived. He sauntered along the street and,  under the pretense of
  waiting for a bus, observed Sylvan Nile’s  apartment house.
  The apartment building was a six−story structure,  neat and comparatively new−looking. Several automobiles
  were parked in  the street in front of the structure and a number of newspaper  reporters were arguing violently
  with the uniformed doorman. One of the  scribes ducked past the doorman, and the latter pursued him. A
  moment  later, the journalist appeared again, with the doorman maintaining a  secure grasp on the seat of his
  pants and his coat collar.
  The young man who had just arrived in the taxi  glanced up and down the street and then, without undue
  appearance of  haste, stepped among near−by bushes.
  A streetsweeper was approaching, trundling his large  can on wheels, and occasionally pausing to use his
  long−handled brush.  He came opposite the bushes.
  "Ps−s−st!" 
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  14
  
  came out of the bushes. 
  The streetcleaner stopped and peered. He saw a young  man on all fours in the bushes, apparently hunting for
  something.
  "I’m trying to find something," the young man called  softly. "There’s five bucks in it for you, if you’ll help
  me."
  The streetcleaner hastily trundled his can to the  curbing, left it and walked into the bushes to stop and look
  down at  the young man who was on all fours. Since the latter had not looked up,  the streetcleaner had failed
  to see his face as yet.
  "Whatcha huntin?" asked the streetcleaner.
  "It would be rather hard to explain," said the young  man.
  He then reached inside his clothing and brought out  a small glass phial. He emptied the contents of this, a
  liquid, on the  ground beside him. Simultaneously, he held a handkerchief over his own  mouth and nostrils.
  "What the heck?" demanded the streetsweeper. "You  nuts or something?"
  The young man made no reply to this.
  The streetsweeper seemed to grow sleepy. He yawned.  He shut his eyes. Then he fell to the ground and began
  to snore.
  The young man bent over the streetsweeper and began  removing the latter’s rather ample white uniform. The
  streetcleaner was  a large man, and the uniform had been made larger than was necessary  for him, since he
  wore it over his regular clothes.
  The man playing the part of Alex Mandebran donned  the somewhat soiled white uniform. The cap had
  "Department of  Sanitation" on the band. He pulled it well down over his eyes.
  He started away, paused, then came back. From a  pocket he withdrew a wallet. The contents of this must
  have been  thousands of dollars. The man extracted a twenty, folded it, and tucked  it in the sleeping
  streetsweeper’s vest pocket.
  NONE of the excited group about the apartment house  paid particular attention to the large man in the white
  uniform of a  Department of Sanitation employee who trundled his trash can past them.  A great deal of
  microscopic trash was cleaned up in the vicinity during  the next few minutes. It did not take an
  extraordinarily keen pair of  ears to ascertain what the excitement was about.
  The newspaper reporters were squabbling with the  doorman. The trouble seemed to be that Sylvan Niles did
  not want to be  interviewed. She had given the doorman ten dollars to keep the  gentlemen of the press out.
  The reporters were trying to outbid the  young woman, but the doorman had now gotten mad and was telling
  them  specifically where they could go.
  The man in the streetcleaner’s uniform now trundled  his trash can around to the back. He peered furtively
  into the delivery  entrance of the apartment house. There was a service elevator, with an  operator. Two
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IV. THE STRANGE SON
  15
  
  newspapermen were trying to persuade the operator to take  them up. They were having no luck.
  The man in the streetcleaner’s uniform now hurried  to a neighborhood grocery store. He brought a small
  quantity of  groceries, which were placed in a spare cardboard carton. He carried  these on his shoulder, so that
  the box half hid his face, and entered  the apartment house.
  "Fourth floor," he said. "I wanta collect some  money, so I gotta take ‘em up myself."
  This ruse got him into the apartment house. He  searched rapidly and found a door with the name card:
  SYLVAN NILES
  He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He  knocked again.
  The door whipped open and a feminine voice snapped,  "I told you newspaper—"
  The voice stopped. The young woman stared, her eyes  widening. Suddenly she drove her hand into the neck
  opening of her  frock and brought out a small revolver. She pointed this at the man in  the streetcleaner’s
  uniform.
  "Come in, Alex Mandebran," she said. "I can’t think  of anybody I would rather see, right now!"
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  SYLVAN NILES was a young woman with horror in her  eyes.
  She was also a young woman who achieved the unusual  combination of being extremely pretty, and still
  managing to look  efficient. She would never have made a movie actress. She was too tall.  Movie directors are
  chary of having heroines taller than heroes.
  "Come in," she repeated. Her voice was queerly  hoarse.
  The man in the white uniform carried the groceries  in, put them on a table in the living room of an apartment
  which looked  as if it had been rented furnished.
  The girl held the revolver steady.
  "I’ve been reading the newspapers!" she said,  hoarsely. "It has come to me what this terrible thing is all
  about."
  The young man shrugged. "If you know, you know more  than I do."
  "Turn around!" ordered Sylvan Niles, grimly.
  "What?"
  "Turn around. Put your hands over your head and  press you palms against the wall. Better still, step back
  about four  feet, and lean forward, resting your weight against the wall. I don’t  want you moving quickly."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  16
  
  The visitor hesitated, then complied. The young  woman slapped a hand over his person, obviously searching
  for a weapon.  She found none.
  "All right," she said. "Now we’re going places!"
  "What if I don’t choose to go?" the man demanded.
  "I don’t know," said the girl. "I might shoot you."
  "They electrocute people here for that."
  "They wouldn’t electrocute me," Sylvan Niles said,  grimly. "Not if what I suspect is true."
  "What do you mean?"
  "You know what I mean," she retorted. "The world  thinks that Jethro Mandebran has absconded, or possibly
  been kidnaped.  There is not the slightest suspicion of what is really behind it. If  the truth should come out,
  right now, and the newspapers publish  it—well, it wouldn’t be believed."
  "Why not?"
  "Too incredible! Too fantastic!"
  "What about Hando Lancaster?" asked the large young  man.
  This had a remarkable effect on the young woman. She  cocked her gun.
  "You do know what’s behind this!" she gritted.
  The captive shrugged resignedly.
  "Raise the window!" Sylvan Niles directed.
  This was done. There was a rooftop on a level with  the window, but perhaps a dozen feet distant.
  "You will find a long plank in the bedroom,"  announced the young woman. "Put it across from the window to
  the roof.  We are leaving."
  "So you had your get−away all fixed," remarked her  captive.
  "I have not been taking any chances," she assured  him. "Get a move on!"
  The plank was rather heavy, but the young man  handled it with marked ease, shoving it through the window
  and planting  the end on the roof.
  "Go across," he was directed. "And do not try to run  when you get on that other roof.
  He obeyed. The young woman followed. The roof had  been tarred and gravel sprinkled on the tar. The gravel
  crunched under  their feet. There were several buildings in a row, all of the same  height. They crossed from
  one rooftop to another.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  17
  
  "We’re far enough away now so that those reporters  can’t see us," said Sylvan Niles. "You’ll find the fire
  escape at the  rear. Go down that."
  The descent was negotiated without incident. The  young woman had lowered the hammer on her revolver,
  but she kept the  weapon convenient. When they were in the alley where they might be  seen, she dropped the
  light coat which she had brought along over her  arm so that it concealed the gun.
  "This way," she said.
  There was a new medium−priced roadster parked in the  street. The girl took the wheel, started the engine and
  pulled away  from the curb.
  SYLVAN NILES passed the outskirts of the city and  turned into an abandoned factory of some kind. The
  main building was of  brick. There were a few outbuildings of wooden construction, but these  had practically
  all fallen down. A tall metal fence surrounding the  place, however, was in an excellent state of repair; it was
  nearly a  dozen feet in height and surmounted by several strands of ugly barbed  wire.
  The young woman got out of her car, produced a key  from her purse and unlocked the huge padlock which
  secured the gate.  She drove inside, got out and locked the gate again. Then she drove  directly to a large door
  in the side of the brick building.
  She tapped the horn button three times in quick  succession. The big door opened, disclosing an utterly dark
  interior.  The girl drove inside and shut off the engine. The door closed. An  electric bulb flared on.
  "Get out!" the girl told her prisoner.
  The captive alighted from the machine and glanced  about with interest. The building had no windows, and its
  walls were  evidently of immense thickness. Without the light of the electric bulb  over the door, it would have
  been very dark indeed.
  The man who had opened the door and was now shutting  it was worth an inspection. In fact, the poor fellow
  must have been  accustomed to being stared at. He was a freak. His body was more nearly  round than it
  seemed a human torso could be. He was small and his head  was tremendously large. Indeed, there were times
  when it seemed his  body and head almost corresponded in size.
  He had long, pencil−thin legs. His arms and hands  looked remarkably like two long weeds which had been
  pulled up with the  roots attached. His clothing was ill−fitting.
  The young woman looked at her prisoner.
  "You haven’t forgotten Hando Lancaster have you?"  she demanded rigidly.
  The prisoner bowed slightly. "Glad to see you,  Lancaster."
  "Like hell you are!" yelled Hando Lancaster.
  His voice was as brittle as glass breaking, and he  threw the words out in an utterly fierce, contemptuous
  manner.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  18
  
  "Would you be kind enough to explain what this is  all about?" requested the prisoner.
  "You mean to tell me you don’t know?" screamed Hando  Lancaster.
  It became apparent that yelling and shrieking was  Hando Lancaster’s normal manner of speech.
  "He’s lying!" snapped Sylvan Niles.
  "He might not be!" corrected Hando Lancaster,  screaming. "We’ll darn soon find out!"
  The prisoner was ordered to hold his hands out. His  wrists were lashed together. He was marched into an
  adjacent room and  up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs, Hando Lancaster  unlocked a stout door.
  This door, it could be noted, was of plate steel,  very thick. The room, in fact, was literally a vault.
  In the center, on the floor, stood a rectangular box  of some dark wood. This box looked very like a coffin.
  The prisoner was forced to lie in the casketlike box.
  THE man in the box now gave every evidence of being  profoundly puzzled.
  "What’s the meaning of this?" he demanded.
  "It’s an old Himalayan custom!" yelled Hando  Lancaster.
  Hando Lancaster now left the room. He had a rather  marked facility for moving silently, like a spider on a
  web.
  It was very quiet in the vaultlike room for a few  moments. Hando Lancaster, in departing, had closed the
  door, making the  room a tomb from which, it was quite probable, there was no escape.
  "Twenty million is a big haul!" the girl said,  suddenly. "With it, operations could be started on a widespread
  scale."
  "I do not know what you are talking about," said the  man in the box.
  The girl became very grim as she stared at him.  "You’re lying, of course. You must be the brains of the
  organization.  No telling how many are working with you. Hundreds, perhaps."
  "I wish you’d tell me just what you are talking  about," stated the fellow in the box.
  "The infernal scheme must be nipped now," the girl  said, grimly. "Within thirty days, it will be too late.
  You’ll ruin no  telling how many lives!"
  "You credit me with great abilities," said the  prisoner.
  "With this thing, you’ll upset the whole course of  the world!" shrilled the girl, who seemed on the point of
  losing  control of herself. "It’s hideous!"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter V. A DIFFERENT COFFIN
  19
  
  "It is mysterious, at least," said the other. 
  The girl leaned forward.
  "How about the Happy Skeleton?" she demanded.
  "Skeleton?" The fellow in the box acted vastly  surprised. "You amaze me!"
  Sylvan Niles gritted, "So you claim to know nothing  about the Happy Skeleton? Well, I’ll tell you—"
  THE heavy metal door heaved open suddenly. Hando  Lancaster came flying inside. He looked more than
  ever like a human  spider.
  "Don’t talk!" he howled at the girl. "Don’t tell him  anything!"
  "Why not?" she demanded.
  "Wait!" shrieked Hando Lancaster. "Watch him  closely! I’ll be back in a minute and show you!"
  He scuttled out. His arms had a peculiar habitual  movement when he walked, as if he were rolling himself
  along in a wheel  chair.
  The strange, round−bodied spider of a man came  flying back almost at once. He carried a glass bottle in one
  hand, a  wad of cotton waste in the other. The content of the bottle was  alcohol, odor proved. He poured some
  of it on the waste, then leaned  over the coffinlike box and scrubbed briskly at the prisoner’s  features. He also
  scrubbed the prisoner’s hair.
  Sylvan Niles leaned down and stared at the features  of their prisoner.
  "Good night!" she exclaimed.
  Hando Lancaster glared at the girl and yelled, "It’s  your fault!"
  "Don’t squall at me!" she snapped. "Everybody makes  mistakes!"
  Hando Lancaster leveled an arm at the prisoner in  the box. 
  "You’re not Alex Mandebran!" he screamed. "Who are  you?"
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  A BRITTLE tension seemed to clamp over the confines  of the room.
  "He’s not Alex Mandebran!" gulped the girl.
  Hando Lancaster looked as if he was about to attack  the prisoner.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  20
  
  "Who are you?" he demanded.
  Action was the captive’s answer. He got out of the  coffinlike box. The manner in which he did this was the
  first  indication that he was an individual of amazing abilities.
  His wrists were tied with thick, fuzzy cord, almost  small rope. It was unquestionably stout. Yet, by leveling
  his wrists  apart, he broke the binding with ease.
  Coming out of the box, he gave Hando Lancaster a  violent shove. The spider−like man sailed backward,
  collided with the  girl. They both fell, but the girl retained her gun. She made a  frenzied effort to get it pointed
  at the late prisoner. The latter was  too fast for her.
  A flash part of a second later, Sylvan Niles was  looking at her own empty hand with a dazed expression. She
  had been  relieved of her weapon in a way that smacked of magic. She gaped at the  tartar they had caught.
  "Who—who—" She swallowed twice. "Who are you?"
  "You do not know?" demanded the late prisoner. This  unusual individual’s voice had undergone a striking
  change. Previously,  he had used an uncanny imitation of Alex Mandebran’s voice. The tone he  was using
  now was apparently his natural one.
  The voice was not only deep and resonant, but was  vibrant with an impression of controlled power.
  Sylvan Niles and Hando Lancaster exchanged looks,  which were not so much discomfited as bewildered. It
  was plain that  they did not have the slightest idea as to the identity of this man.
  The man picked up the girl’s revolver, emptied the  cartridges, then tossed the weapon to the floor.
  "An examination of this coffin−shaped box should  prove interesting," he suggested.
  Hando Lancaster stared at Sylvan Niles. The young  woman stared back.
  "He doesn’t know what it’s all about!" Hando  exploded.
  "He’s sure to find out!" the girl retorted. "We’ve  got to do something."
  It began to look as if they contemplated desperate  measures.
  "Be careful," warned their late prisoner.
  He seemed on the point of saying more, but did not.  Instead, he whipped to the door of the room. There was
  something almost  inhuman about the speed with which he moved. He glanced through the  door, then ducked
  back.
  A bullet came in, richocheted from ceiling to wall  to floor. Gun noise filled the building with a great
  whooping.
  THE big man whipped back and got the girl’s empty  gun. He lunged to the door and threw the gun. A man
  squawked in a loud,  shocked voice. Judging from thumps, curses and other squawks, the  fellow hit by the gun
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  21
  
  fell down the stairway.
  "Nobody knew I was hiding out here!" screeched Hando  Lancaster.
  "They are no friends of yours," said the late  prisoner. "They shot the instant my form was distinguishable in
  the  door, and before they possibly could have told my identity."
  With that, he was out through the door.
  Sylvan Niles looked at her companion. "You know what  I think?"
  "The same thing I do!" retorted Hando Lancaster.
  "I have guessed who that man is!" said Sylvan Niles.  She pulled in a long, shaky breath.
  "We’ve been fooling with dynamite!" said Hando  Lancaster.
  "Worse than that!"
  "Listen!" exclaimed Sylvan Niles.
  A man was making sounds. They were wild, involuntary  sounds, as if the man could not help what he was
  doing. Great agony  seemed to have fallen upon him. The uproar ended with suggestive  abruptness.
  The victim had fallen forward on his face. Strangely  enough, he did not seem to be exactly senseless. His
  eyes were open. He  breathed regularly, but his arms and legs were quite rigid.
  THE amazing individual who had played the part of  Alex Mandebran paused a few feet from the victim he
  had just  overpowered. He did not move for a moment. There he took from his  cheeks certain wax paddings
  which had given the upper part of his  features a beefy aspect and had made his lips seem thicker.
  He straightened, and it was evident that by a  semicrouch and by keeping his head drawn down, he had kept
  his true  height from being apparent
  The thing which he did to his eyes was the most  remarkable of all. From each eyeball, where it had been held
  by  suction, he carefully removed a glass cap. These were similar to the  very modern eyeball lenses which
  some opticians employ. But the bits of  polished glass had not been there to aid vision. They were carefully
  colored, although not enough to hinder sight. What they accomplished  was to change the color of the
  wearer’s eyes.
  Suddenly, every light went out. Intense darkness  clamped down.
  The interior of the big building was so quiet that  few human ears could have picked up a sound. But the man
  who had been  disguised seemed to have abilities beyond those of an ordinary mortal.  He plainly detected the
  sound of a man shifting his position off to the  right. He glided in that direction, and an instant later he struck
  again. His fingers were on the neck of a crouching man before the  fellow became aware of any threat.
  What followed would have been cause for further  amazement to an observer. The mysterious one’s fingers
  did something  swift, and seemingly not very violent, to the back of the victim’s  neck. The unfortunate never
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  22
  
  emitted a sound. His arms and legs became  rigid.
  He was a victim of paralysis induced by pressure on  certain sensitive nerve centers.
  At that instant, a flashlight came on and the beam  fell on the individual who possessed so many unusual
  abilities.
  The sight of this person had a pronounced effect on  the fellow with the flashlight
  "Lookit!" he bawled. "Old King Trouble himself!"
  THERE were other men in the building, several at  least. Gasps and startled curses betrayed their presence.
  They did not  seem happy.
  The man who held the flashlight dropped it. The drop  did not extinguish the flash. The man ran for the door.
  "Damn you!" a voice squalled at him from somewhere.  "Stick with this!"
  "Stick with it yourself!" barked the runner. "I’m  not gettin’ paid to buck that guy!"
  Others seemed to have the same idea. "Where’s the  door?" yelled a man.
  "Over here!" shouted the first to start running.
  An instant later, the fellow got the door open,  letting in light. He popped outside.
  A gun started banging. One man, at least, had  courage. He fired several times. The bullets clouted around the
  spot  where had stood the one whose mere appearance frightened them so.
  Then the man who had done the shooting switched on a  flashlight. Daylight from the doorway did not
  penetrate throughout the  interior of the big building.
  "Douse that glim!" a man squalled. "That guy’ll be  able to see to shoot!"
  "He never carries a gun!" barked the other.
  "Well, douse the damn light anyway, so he can’t see  us!"
  A shrill scream broke up the conversation. The giant  had taken another victim on the opposite side of the
  room.
  "I’m clearin’ outta here!" one of the raiders yelled.
  Came another burst of shots as some one got a  glimpse of their enemy. Apparently, none of the bullets took
  effect. No  one showed willingness to go over and make sure, however. All were  working toward the door.
  "Pick up the unconscious men!" ordered a fellow who  seemed to be in charge. "We can’t leave them here!"
  Not very willingly, the others obeyed the command.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  23
  
  The men were scared, but they kept their heads. Had  they separated and fled wildly; there would have been a
  good chance of  their being picked off one at a time. They stuck together. When they  got outside, they were in
  a compact group. They were carrying two  unconscious men.
  They kept a sharp watch on the door of the big  building as long as it was in sight. When it was shut off from
  view by  shrubbery, they quickened their pace. Those in the middle of the group  carried the unconscious men.
  Those on the outskirts kept a watch.
  "We were suckers to leave the cars so far away," one  complained.
  "How the heck was we to know we’d run into something  like this?" another countered. "We trailed old Hando
  Lancaster here,  but there wasn’t no sign of that other—that other guy."
  "Reckon they’re workin’ together?" a man demanded. 
  "If they are, it’s bad," the first said.
  Suddenly, the leader of the gang emitted a bellow of  anger, waved his arms.
  "What’s eatin’ you?" one gasped.
  "We left a man behind!" the leader shrieked.
  THE group stopped. In the confusion and haste, they  had not realized they were short a man.
  "It’s too late now," one pointed out uneasily.
  "Right!" agreed the chief. "Thing for us to do is  clear out of here."
  They fled. They did not follow the road, but  surmounted the high wire fence by ladders, which they no doubt
  had  placed there at the start of the raid. They struck out across the  fields, through brush and coarse weeds.
  "The big guy is poison, from what I’ve heard," one  muttered. "Ain’t like ‘im to let us get away like this."
  "Maybe he’s overrated," snorted another.
  "A lotta birds have figured that!" retorted the  first.
  "Yeah?"
  "There’s a rumor that he don’t ever kill anybody,"  explained the other. "But he does somethin’ queer to ‘em. I
  know a guy  that had a brother that this bronze guy got. My pal later met his own  brother on the street. The
  poor guy didn’t even know him. He’d had  somethin’ queer done to him."
  A little−used byroad appeared ahead. Two cars were  parked on it. They were big, fast machines. But neither
  was new enough  or expensive enough to attract undue attention.
  The men piled into the cars as if they had been  swimming in an ocean and had reached lifeboats.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VI. THE HAPPY SKELETON
  24
  
  "Where to?" demanded one driver.
  "We better check on the Happy Skeleton," said a man  near the window.
  "You wanta go to the Happy Skeleton now?" demanded  the other.
  "Yeah. Make it snappy."
  The cars left hurriedly.
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  THE men in the cars, close as was the lookout which  they had kept, had seen no one watching them. There
  was, however, an  observer. The tall, amazingly powerful−looking man who, for a time, had  been the girl’s
  prisoner.
  This individual crouched in the shrubbery near the  road. His position had been quite close to the cars at their
  moment of  departure. He was close enough, in fact, that he had been able to  observe the lips of the one who
  had told the driver where to go.
  He happened to be, among many other things, a lip  reader. 
  The man of unusual abilities now headed back toward  the large brick building. He covered ground at
  unexpected speed,  without seeming to be in any great hurry. As he traveled, he removed  more of his
  make−up; by vigorous rubbing, he erased most of the  bleaching coat from his hands and face. Thus it was
  revealed that his  skin had an unusual bronze color and was of smoother texture than  ordinary.
  His eyes, without the disguising cups of  semitransparent colored glass, were like pools of flake−gold that
  swirled and eddied like some inner current.
  Of a sudden, he began to run. His speed was amazing.
  A plume of smoke had arisen from the brush ahead. It  crawled straight up the sky, flattened, darkened.
  The old brick building—the interior had been of  wood—was burning. No doubt of that. The big man of
  bronze ran at great  speed.
  There came a sound of a car starting near the brick  building.
  The bronze man changed his course, veering to the  right, came to a tree of fair size, caught a branch and
  climbed. He  gained a point from which he could see the road.
  The car was on the road. It had two occupants, one  an individual of such gnarled physical build that he was
  instantly  identifiable.
  Hando Lancaster was fleeing in the girl’s car!
  Hando Lancaster’s companion was a senseless man, the  one Doc Savage had overpowered, and who had been
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  25
  
  left behind by his  fellows.
  The car sped rapidly down the road and vanished.
  Doc Savage looked toward the burning building and  decided gasoline was responsible for the violence of the
  conflagration.  The girl had not fled. She had a number of five−gallon gasoline cans,  and was splitting the tops
  of these open and throwing them at the  building. She was taking chances; a moment later, she was almost
  burned!
  That must have scared her. She gave it up, backed  away and appraised her handiwork. What she saw
  appeared to satisfy her.  The building was going to be a total loss.
  THE young woman heaved a sigh, as if she were well  satisfied. She threw her other gasoline cans on the roof.
  She played  safe this time, however, for she did not open them, but threw them up  intact, depending on the
  increasing heat to burst them.
  There was little more she could do to make  destruction complete. She ran through the gate, which had been
  left  open when Hando Lancaster’s car departed. Her halt was abrupt. She  grabbed for her revolver, which she
  must have retrieved and reloaded.
  But the bronze giant, who had appeared suddenly from  the brush, was upon her. She tried to dodge, had no
  success. A metallic  hand plucked the gun out of her fingers.
  A brief scrap ensued. She kicked her captor’s  shins—kicked at them rather, for he dodged her kicks with
  uncanny ease. Looking disgusted rather than frightened, she gave it up.
  Her captor remarked on the lack of fear. "You do not  seem scared?"
  "You have the reputation of never killing any one.  Why should I be scared?"
  The bronze man studied her. There was absolutely no  expression on his metallic face. "Just who do you think
  I am?"
  The young woman shrugged. "I know you, all right!"
  When his flake−gold eyes seemed to seek hers with  strange power, she looked away hastily.
  "And you’re not going to hypnotize me!" she snapped.
  "Why did Hando Lancaster leave in the car and let  you remain behind?" he asked. "Why did he take that
  unconscious man?"
  Silence was her reply.
  "You had something in that building," said the  bronze man. "Hando Lancaster took it away in the car. You
  remained  behind to make sure the building burned and wiped out any traces which  might have remained."
  "You’ve added mind reading to your other  accomplishments!" she said, coldly.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  26
  
  The bronze man must have concluded further  questioning useless. He threw the gun into a ditch, then led the
  girl  off the road. She looked scared, and struggled. He picked her up and  carried her, his tremendous strength
  making her quite helpless.
  THE reason for his leaving the road was soon  apparent. A fire engine passed with a great racket. Others
  followed,  gathered around the old brick building. There seemed to be no water  available in quantity, so they
  employed chemical equipment.
  Success was noticeably absent. If anything, the fire  seemed to burn more briskly, the firemen gave it up, drew
  back, and  devoted their attention to keeping the conflagration from spreading  through the brush. This
  occupied them for almost two hours.
  During the interval, the bronze man and his prisoner  remained in the brush. He spoke only once.
  "What is behind this mystery?" he asked. "What  became of Jethro Mandebran and the twenty million?"
  "Look in your crystal and see!" the girl suggested.
  He did not ask her any more questions.
  Once the blaze had burned itself out, and there were  no more flying sparks, the firemen loaded their
  equipment and departed.  A few curious persons had gathered, but these drifted off.
  "Come," the bronze man said.
  The girl, Sylvan Niles, obeyed because she had no  other choice. She was taken to the scene of the fire. Her
  captor  proceeded to look around. He did a very thorough job of it.
  Particularly did the bronze man devote attention to  the hot ruins. He risked burning himself to scrutinize that
  part of the  remains, where the ashes of the strange, coflinlike box would have  fallen. He found nothing there.
  The thing had been completely destroyed.
  Next, the big man circled widely, searching trash  dumps in the vicinity. Prying with a long stick, he worked
  over their  contents. Then he went back to the girl.
  "Hando Lancaster has been conducting some sort of  experiments here, has he not?" be asked.
  "It’s a pretty day, isn’t it? she suggested.
  THE big bronze man studied her for some moments.
  "You are going to talk!"
  "That’s what you think!"
  He grasped her right wrist and they set out down the  road. His strides were long, easy, without apparent haste,
  but she had  to trot at times to keep up.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  27
  
  When they came near the outskirts of the city, she  brightened, apparently visioning herself calling help. But
  the bronze  man thwarted that by tying her wrists and ankles together, despite her  violent struggles. Then he
  gagged her. His work was effective, but not  rough.
  He left her concealed in a thicket.
  A few minutes later, the bronze man appeared in a  near−by neighborhood grocery store and asked permission
  to use the  telephone. He made a brief call, and spoke in a voice so low that no  one in the store overheard.
  Then he went back to the girl. She eyed him  curiously, obviously wanting to know what he had done. He did
  not  explain.
  Half an hour later, a large limousine arrived. It  was the same car which had picked up young Alex Mandebran
  at the  airport. Alex Mandebran himself was occupying the rear seat.
  The car’s driver was an individual who must have  weighed in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds, and
  whose height  could not have been much over five feet. He was almost as broad. Hair  on his wrists was like
  rusty shingle nails. He had an incredibly big  mouth, small eyes, and almost no forehead. 
  In short, the gentleman looked like an ape.
  This simian apparition leaned out of the car window  and spoke in a voice that was utterly ridiculous for one
  of his  appearance. It was a child’s voice.
  "Hiyah, Doc!" he said.
  The girl looked intently at her giant bronze captor.  "So I was right about your identity!"
  The bronze man’s strange flake−gold eyes studied  her, but he said nothing.
  "You are the famous Doc Savage," the girl repeated. 
  "Who’s the lady, Doc?" demanded the apish man. 
  "Miss Sylvan Niles, this is Lieutenant Colonel  Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, more frequently known as
  ‘Monk,’" the bronze  man said. "Monk is one of the world’s leading industrial chemists."
  The young woman looked at "Monk’s" bullet of a head,  and asked, "Where do you keep them?"
  "What?" Monk demanded.
  "The brains."
  Monk grinned amiably at her, opened the door to the  front seat and said, "Get in."
  Sylvan Niles stared at a creature which the opening  of the door had revealed. It was a pig, an entirely
  grotesque−looking  shote with long legs, tremendous ears and a body of no consequence.
  "Good night!" the girl gasped. "What’s that thing?"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  28
  
  "That’s no thing," Monk explained in an injured  tone. "That’s Habeas Corpus, my pet pig. Habeas, meet the
  lady who  don’t think a heck of a lot of our looks."
  "She’s too ritzy for me!" Habeas apparently said. 
  Sylvan Niles swallowed her surprise, deceived for a  moment, but then realizing Monk had used ventriloquism
  to make it seem  that the pig had spoken. She started to get in the front seat.
  "She had best ride in back," Doc Savage said.
  MONK’S lifted eyebrows almost merged with his  close−cropped hair.
  The bronze man opened the rear door. Alex Mandebran,  sitting inside, looked steadily at the young woman.
  "You have met Alex Mandebran?" Doc Savage asked the  girl.
  The stare which Sylvan Niles bent on Alex Mandebran  was icy. "Do I have to ride with him?"
  "You do," Doc Savage told her.
  With Alex Mandebran and Sylvan Niles in the rear of  the limousine, Doc Savage and Monk in front, the car
  got in motion. It  rolled into Philadelphia.
  "Take the bypass road," Doc directed. "We are going  on to New York."
  Monk nodded. He was an excellent driver. The big  machine slipped along almost noiselessly.
  Doc Savage touched a button located out of sight  under the dash, then put on what was ostensibly a radio
  headset, but which actually reproduced what was said in the rear seat.  It caught and magnified even whispers,
  which was well, because Sylvan  Niles and Alex Mandebran were whispering.
  "I tell you, I came over to try to help my father!"  Alex Mandebran was saying.
  "Liar!"
  Young Mandebran groaned. "You’ve got me all wrong.  You seem to suspect me of something. I assure you I
  am not  guilty of anything underhanded!"
  "Liar!" repeated the young woman.
  "I wish you’d do me the justice of telling me of  what I am suspected," the young man whispered. "After all,
  that’s only  fair. You broke off our engagement in England without a reason."
  "I gave a reason!"
  "It didn’t make sense! You said I was scheming  against you and Hando Lancaster. I don’t understand that.
  What was it  all about?"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  29
  
  At this point, the car halted for a stop−light, and  the young woman made a sudden effort to open the door and
  leap out.
  "It’s no use," young Mandebran assured her. "These  doors are fastened by some kind of trick lock. I myself
  haven’t been  able to figure out how they work."
  Sylvan Niles snapped, "You mean I’m a prisoner in  here?"
  "Call it that."
  The young woman subsided with an indignant hiss.
  The traffic thinned, and the car picked up speed.  They got on the broad, smooth expanse of an express
  highway.
  The loud−speaker reproduced more conversation from  the rear seat.
  "WHAT are you doing here?" Sylvan Niles demanded.
  Alex Mandebran began, "I told you I came over to try  to help locate my father."
  "I mean right here in this car!" 
  "I am helping Doc Savage."
  "Ah−h−h!" grated the girl. "Don’t lie to me!"
  "I’m not. Doc Savage met me at the airport. He got  me away by a ruse, so that the newspapermen would not
  know he had met  me. Later, he explained he was interested in my father’s disappearance."
  "Why?"
  "Part of that missing twenty million is his. Some of  it belongs to charitable institutions in which Doc Savage
  is  interested."
  "I see," said Sylvan Niles.
  "Doc Savage wanted to investigate secretly, so the  criminals wouldn’t know he was on the job," explained
  Alex Mandebran.  "He hit on the idea of going to Philadelphia, disguised as myself. I’m  a large man, although
  not quite as large as he is. He managed a  wonderful disguise. The man is a wizard!"
  Sylvan Niles seemed to think the matter over.
  "Sometimes I almost feel that you are honest," she  admitted at last. "I know that can’t be right."
  Alex Mandebran protested, "Would I be working with  Doc Savage, if I were a crook?"
  "I don’t know," said the girl. "I don’t know what to  think."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VII. THE DESTROYED CASKET
  30
  
  "Suppose you tell Doc Savage all you know," Alex  Mandebran suggested.
  "I’ll think it over."
  In time, they entered on the Skyway over the Jersey  flats and approached the Holland Tunnel under the
  Hudson River—the  entrance into New York City.
  While the tolls were being paid, there were sounds  of a struggle from the rear seat. Evidently the young
  woman was trying  to attract attention by waving her arms. Doc Savage looked back. Alex  Mandebran had
  coöperated to the extent of pulling the curtains, so that  the girl’s antics could not be seen. He must be holding
  her mouth.
  They went into the noisy tunnel.
  "What part of the city, Doc?" Monk asked.
  "Wall Street sector," Doc Savage said. "The Miners’  Building. We’re going to look into the mystery of this
  thing they’re  calling the Happy Skeleton."
  Monk worried the ribs of his pig, Habeas Corpus,  with a toe, looked happy as he anticipated coming action.
  "What we find at the Miners’ Building," Doc Savage  said, "should help clear up the mystery of the Happy
  Skeleton."
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  THE Miners’ Building was exactly what its name  implied—an office structure which housed on its
  two−score of floors  some of the world’s leading mining corporations. It was a colossal  structure, and the
  designer had striven for an effect of massive  strength. There were almost no decorative embellishments.
  "Drive around the block," Doc Savage directed. 
  "Huh?" Monk looked puzzled.
  "Two carloads of men left Philadelphia headed for  the Happy Skeleton," Doc Savage explained. "They were
  the fellows who  made the attack on the brick factory building which burned."
  How Doc Savage connected anything called the "Happy  Skeleton" with the Miners’ Building, was beyond
  Monk. He shook his  nubbin of a head and drove as directed. Doc Savage kept a sharp lookout  without it
  being too obvious that he was doing so.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  31
  
  The bronze man saw no trace of the cars used by the  gang which had staged the strange attack.
  "Park somewhere," Doc directed.
  Monk did so.
  The bronze man now alighted. The manner in which he  opened the rear door of the car would have been
  utterly mysterious to  an observer. He simply grasped the handle, turned and the door came  open. It was no
  more complicated than that.
  There was, of course, a simple explanation for the  mechanism of the door’s lock. Unnoticed in the palm of
  one hand, the  bronze man carried an electromagnet. The door handle itself was of  nonmagnetic brass,
  concealed in which was a steel plunger, well oiled.  A tiny spring kept this shoved in where it engaged the
  lock mechanism,  blocking its operation. Under the influence of the electromagnet, the  bolt was drawn out
  against the pressure of the weak spring, leaving the  lock free to operate when the door handle was turned.
  It was a simple device, but one which not every  individual would solve.
  Sylvan Niles and Alex Mandebran started to alight.  Doc Savage motioned them back, then indicated that
  Monk was to enter.
  "Watch these two," Doc said.
  "Will I!" Monk grinned, and put his pig, Habeas, in  the back.
  Leaving the three of them locked in the rear of the  car, Doc Savage entered the Miners’ Building. He
  consulted the  directory of tenants on one wall of the lobby.
  CASTELLO MINING CORPORATION
  The bronze man’s inspection stopped there. The  Castello Mining Corporation was a big concern. Doc had an
  amazing  memory, thanks to training by scientific methods.
  Castello Mining Corporation had been in the news  lately, having opened up a new vein of gold ore in their
  holdings in  the western part of the United States. So promising had been this  strike that the stock of the
  concern had skyrocketed. Doc Savage simply  recalled having read this in the newspapers, together with the
  location  of the concern’s offices.
  The gold strike had been made in the Happy Skeleton  range of mountains near Death Valley, and the Castello
  Mining  Corporation had recently been nicknamed the Happy Skeleton.
  An elevator took Doc Savage to the seventeenth  floor, where the offices of the Castello Mining Corporation
  were  situated. In fact, the concern had the whole floor.
  It is a common practice for visitors to business  offices merely to walk in. Doc Savage did so.
  A dead man lying on the floor was the first thing to  meet his eye.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  32
  
  THE dead man was not alone. He was surrounded by a  cluster of silent, staring persons, evidently company
  employees. There  were two policemen present, and a gentleman who was undoubtedly the  medical examiner.
  The latter was going over the body.
  The corpse had a bullet hole through the head. The  hole where the bullet had gone in was powder−burned.
  The fingers of the  cadaver clutched a revolver.
  "Who is he?" Doc Savage asked.
  "John Maurice Castello," a policeman growled. Then  he recognized Doc Savage, and his impersonal, slightly
  gruff attitude  changed instantly. "Anything we can do for you, Mr. Savage?"
  Almost every policeman in the city knew that Doc  Savage held a high honorary commission on the force.
  "You might answer some questions," Doc said. "Is it  murder?"
  "Oh, no! Not at all."
  "Sure?"
  "Absolutely!" said the policeman. "Castello walked  out of his office, carrying a revolver in his hand. He
  stood right here  in front of everybody and shot himself."
  "There was no possible chance of foul play?"
  "None." The officer suddenly looked doubtful. "None  that anybody can see. You any suspicions?"
  Doc Savage did not answer that. Instead, he put a  question. "Any motive?"
  "You bet, a darn good one!" The officer seemed on  firm ground here. "A couple of months ago, this guy’s
  mining company  opened a rich vein of gold ore out West—"
  "That was in the newspapers," Doc said. "The Happy  Skeleton."
  "The vein was a fake," explained the policeman. "It  was fixed up so that the big news would boost the
  company’s stock. They  worked it very smooth, what I mean!"
  "How did this come out?"
  "The district attorney got a telephone tip today,"  replied the officer. "An investigator from the district
  attorney’s  office came over and talked to Castello. He threw a bluff into  Castello. The man confessed that the
  Happy Skeleton vein was a fake"
  "The investigator was here when the suicide  occurred?"
  "Yeah, and is his face red! Castello said he wanted  to dismiss his office employees for the day, and came out
  to tell them  to go home. There was a policeman at the door, so Castello couldn’t  have escaped. He must have
  had a gun in his clothing. They hadn’t  searched him yet. He pulled it out and shot himself. That’s all there  is
  to it."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  33
  
  DOC SAVAGE moved slowly about the office. He seemed  in no hurry, yet his flake−gold eyes missed
  nothing. The late  Castello’s private office was marked by his name on the glass. The door  was partially open.
  Doc Savage shoved it farther ajar and entered. He  stood just inside, eyes roving.
  "Has the place been searched?" he asked the  policeman.
  "Nope," said the officer. "We haven’t got around to  that yet."
  "Who telephoned the tip about Castello’s  crookedness?" Doc queried.
  "Somebody who wouldn’t give a name."
  The bronze man beckoned. "It might be a good idea to  search this place now. Would you care to be present?"
  "You bet!" said the officer, who had heard a great  deal about the manner in which this bronze man worked.
  "We might get a  line on the other one."
  "What other one?" Doc countered.
  "Castello had a silent partner," elaborated the  policeman. "Whoever it was, he sure kept in the background.
  Even these  employees here don’t know the person’s name; but we’re prying around.  We’ll learn who it was."
  "When you do, would you mind letting me have the  information?" Doc Savage requested.
  "Sure, we’ll do that."
  The bronze man had been looking over the room as he  talked. It was large for an office. The furniture, as
  might have been  expected, had been selected to create an impression of substantial  richness, the background
  from which shysters and confidence men prefer  to work.
  There was an enormous mahogany desk. A  straight−backed chair for visitors was situated at either end of
  this.  Behind that was the chair apparently used by Castello. This was a great  overstuffed affair of leather and
  wood. Probably it had cost as much as  some of the minor employees of the concern earned in a year.
  "We will examine that chair closely," Doc Savage  said.
  The results of his words were unexpected,  cataclysmic.
  There was a flash, a terrific report. A hellish  white light filled the room!
  THE explosion had been rather terrific. The  policeman was completely upset. Doc Savage himself had been
  slammed  backward a few paces, but did not lose his feet.
  Doc Savage lunged forward. The blast had completely  demolished the chair. It seemed to be Doc’s idea to get
  some of the  fragments. He did not succeed, for a simple reason.
  The room was on fire! It was an unusual kind of  conflagration. It spread with incredible rapidity. The desk,
  which had  been partly demolished, was a bundle of red flame. The carpet was  burning. So were the walls.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  34
  
  Doc Savage changed his course suddenly, lunged,  seized the policeman and dragged him out of the room to
  safety. He was  not a fraction of a second too quick. The office was literally stuffed  with fire.
  The cop, while dazed, had not been knocked  senseless. When Doc released him, he managed to stand.
  "Whew!" 
  he gulped. "Whew!"
  Doc Savage seemed to have a number of things to do  in a great hurry. He flashed across the office, past the
  excited,  howling employees and policemen. In the corridor, he veered left. At  the end of the elevators was a
  stairway. He plunged into this,  descending one flight, and reached the door of the office suite beneath  that of
  the Castello Mining Corporation. He hit the door hard. The  panel caved.
  This office also was a mass of flame. There was a  hole in the ceiling, undoubtedly blown out by the blast
  upstairs.
  Fire virtually covered the office. The heat was  terrific. The few window panes unbroken by the blast were
  starting to  melt and buckle. Doc Savage shielded his eyes against the white, hot  glare, managed to look
  around enough to determine that a rather  miserable desk and a pair of chairs, along with a cheap rug, had
  been  almost the sole items of furniture. Desk and chair were already  virtually burned, and the rug was filling
  the air with a choking stench  of yellow smoke.
  Doc had partially torn the door from its hinges in  entering. He now finished the job, then carried the door to
  the end of  the hall and up the stairway.
  There was a great deal of excitement in the Castello  offices. They were trying to fight the fire. The bronze
  man ignored the  uproar, and took one of the police expert’s finger print outfits, which  had been abandoned
  for the moment, and went over the door which he had  brought up. He found no finger prints.
  Some one strung a water hose from the standpipe in  the hallway. Water was turned through this and played
  on the fire. The  results furnished quite a surprise. It was almost as if gasoline had  been applied to the blaze.
  Doc abandoned his search for finger prints,  convinced there were none.
  "Keep water off that fire!" he called, sharply.
  They looked at him as if they thought he had gone  suddenly mad.
  "Then how you gonna put it out?" a cop demanded.
  "It is impossible by ordinary means," Doc Savage  explained. "The interior of that overstuffed chair was
  loaded with a  type of incendiary chemical. The more water you put on it, the hotter  it gets."
  The officer waved his arms, bellowed, "But what—"
  "The best procedure is to let it burn itself out as  soon as possible," suggested the bronze man. "In the
  meantime, it might  be a good idea to empty the building of occupants. This is a fireproof  building, but the
  steelwork may be weakened enough to permit the roof  to sag."
  "We’ll do that!" gulped the police officer.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  35
  
  HALF an hour later, the excitement had subsided  somewhat. A crowd had gathered down in the street to
  watch smoke  pouring out of the skyscraper. The assemblage had been increased by the  exodus of tenants
  from the building.
  The chemical fire had burned itself away. The  interior of the office in which the explosion had occurred had
  been  almost completely destroyed. So had the office below. The floor had  fallen in, leaving only the naked
  girders of the building’s structure.  These were still red−hot, and sagged.
  Doc Savage moved about in the smoking wreckage,  still searching. The heat had not only melted from the
  windows such  glass as had not been broken in the explosion, but had fused odd bits  of metal. Everything
  even remotely inflammable had gone.
  "‘Twas a death trap which some one had set for  Castello," decided a police officer.
  Doc made no comment.
  "There was a bomb in the chair, with the chemical  stuff," elaborated the policeman. "There must have been a
  wire or  something down through the floor to the office below, where somebody  was hiding and set the thing
  off when you were about to examine the  chair. They hoped to kill you."
  Doc held silence.
  "Well, it was a death trap!" The officer shook his  head slowly. "Crime sure don’t pay! That guy Castello was
  fixed to get  it anyway, if he hadn’t committed suicide!"
  At this point, another policeman approached.
  "We’ve dug up some dope," he said.
  "What about?"
  "The name of the partner of this Castello."
  "Who is the partner?"
  "The telephone operator was lying to us before,"  explained the policeman. "You know how these telephone
  operators are.  They’re not supposed to talk about the firm’s secrets. This one wasn’t  going to talk, but that
  explosion and fire scared her. She broke down  and gave us the name."
  "And are you gonna gimme that name or not?" growled  the man’s superior.
  "Hando Lancaster."
  "Eh?"
  "Hando Lancaster is the partner’s name."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  36
  
  THERE came into the room a small, weird sound. It  was a note which almost defied description, not alone
  because it was  vague, but also due to its eerie, ethereal quality. It was best  described as a trilling.
  Both policemen peered about curiously. It was the  first time they had heard the sound, so they did not know
  that it  belonged to Doc Savage; that it was a small unconscious thing which the  bronze man did in moments
  of mental stress.
  The trilling faded into nothingness, and, since Doc  Savage offered no explanation, the source of the sound
  was left a  mystery.
  "Any further information on this Hando Lancaster?"  Doc Savage asked.
  "None," replied the policeman. "This telephone girl  remembered the name, because one time Castello put in a
  long distance  call to Hando Lancaster in England."
  "Did she listen to the conversation?"
  "She did. But what she overheard don’t make any  sense. Or maybe it does! I dunno. Castello wanted his
  partner, Hando  Lancaster, to put more money into the mining company."
  "What was Hando Lancaster’s response?"
  "He refused."
  Doc Savage asked a few more questions, to which he  got replies that added nothing to the information which
  had already  come to light. The bronze man now conducted another brief search of the  establishment. He
  turned up nothing of value.
  Doc entered the elevator, rode down to the street  and pushed his way through the throng which was still
  congregated there.
  Walking rapidly, Doc Savage went to the spot where  he had left the limousine containing Monk, Alex
  Mandebran and  attractive Sylvan Niles. The car was where he had last seen it. The  street was wet. Evidently
  a sprinkler had just passed.
  The machine was empty.
  THE car doors were closed. Doc Savage slapped a hand  swiftly into a pocket, got the tiny electromagnet
  which was necessary  in opening the car and wrenched the door ajar. Excepting for the pig,  Habeas, who
  grunted noises of delight when he saw Doc, the interior of  the machine was indeed empty.
  Indications of violence showed. The floor carpeting  was wadded in a corner. The cushion lay askew. On the
  cushion was a wet  scarlet stain. Doc scrutinized it and decided some one had been wounded.
  Doc Savage withdrew from the machine.
  With great suddenness, he dived inside again.  Simultaneously, there was a shrill squeak, a loud clank, as a
  rifle  bullet hit. Doc banged the car door shut just as another slug arrived.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  37
  
  The bronze man undoubtedly owed his life at that  moment to the routine of exercises which he had taken
  each day since  childhood. One particular part of that exercise routine had to do with  development of vision
  and alertness of eye. Very little of what went on  around him escaped the bronze man.
  A man with a rifle is a distinctive figure, even  when he shows only a part of himself and his weapon in a
  doorway half a  block distant. Doc had seen him, and moved a fraction of a second  before the fellow fired.
  The bronze man dived forward into the front seat.
  A bullet flattened against the windshield. These  slabs of glass were not much less than an inch thick, and
  proof against  all ordinary bullets.
  The key was still in the ignition switch. Doc  started the motor.
  Doc drove toward the rifleman. The fellow must have  seen that his murder scheme had been thwarted. He
  sprang back in the  doorway.
  The district was a somewhat shabby one, despite its  nearness to the financial section. The building into which
  the man had  vanished was evidently one housing small factories and lesser  wholesaling establishments.
  Doc Savage wrenched swiftly in a compartment almost  unnoticeable under the car seat. A drawer came out.
  In a tray in this,  bedded in cotton, were a number of glass globes, somewhat smaller than  baseballs. They held
  a bilious−looking liquid. Doc cranked down a  window a crack, but not enough to leave himself unprotected.
  He tossed  the glass balls through as he drove down the street.
  The spheres burst on hitting the pavement, the  contents splashing wetly. These damp stains evaporated, as the
  liquid  turned into a colorless, odorless vapor. It was a gas of a type  perfected by Doc Savage. It produced a
  harmless form of unconsciousness  lasting for intervals varying from a few minutes to many hours,  depending
  on the strength of the ingredients. The stuff was also  dissipated by the air, becoming powerless in a long or
  short time,  depending on the strength of another of its components.
  DOC did not slacken the speed of the car, but drove  swiftly, reached the corner and turned to circle the block.
  There  would, of course, be a chance for the rifleman to escape into the next  street. Doc was still tossing out
  gas grenades. It was his intention to  lay a barrage of the vapor around the block.
  He ran into difficulties, however. There was a  traffic jam in the street at the end of the block. He saw it,
  stopped  quickly, turned around and headed in the other direction. He escaped  the effects of the gas in the
  street simply by holding his breath the  length of the block. The gas had to be inhaled, before it would
  overcome any one.
  Noise of racing automobile engines reached his ears.  Two machines appeared in the street ahead, both open
  touring cars. Out  of the door came the man with the rifle. He flew down the steps, across  the sidewalk and
  hopped into one car. The automobile went into motion.
  Doc Savage was half a block behind. His machine  gained swiftly, for it had momentum and the other two did
  not. The  occupants of the cars ahead began to shoot. Bullets, hitting the  bulletproof windshield, made fine
  spidery cracks which hindered vision.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter VIII. MYSTERY IN THE MINERS
  38
  
  The enemy cars took the first corner, turning right,  and Doc Savage got a glimpse of the occupants as they
  swung.
  The same gang that had raided Hando Lancaster’s  building!
  Monk, Sylvan Niles and Alex Mandebran were in the  cars! 
  Monk was a prisoner. It was impossible to be sure  about the others.
  Doc Savage took up pursuit. There was small  likelihood of their losing him, for they had stock cars, while the
  special machine Doc was driving was capable of something near a hundred  and fifty miles an hour.
  The motor of Doc’s car stopped!
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  THERE was nothing indefinite about the stopping of  the motor. One instant it was running, and the next it
  was not. Doc  coasted to the end of the block, wheeled into a side street, where he  would be protected from
  bullets, and stopped.
  A bullet could hardly have cut the ignition.  Radiator and hood were armor−plated, and there was dual
  ignition,  anyway. The bronze man gave the gasoline gauge a glance. That cleared  the mystery. Tank empty!
  He searched, and quickly found the reason. Some one  had crawled under the chassis and parted the feed line
  from the  gasoline tank.
  It was rarely that Doc Savage was taken by surprise,  due to developed powers of observation, but he had been
  tricked on this  occasion. The freshly sprinkled street accounted for it. Water from the  sprinkler, of course, had
  floated off the gasoline, which had run from  the tank; otherwise, Doc would have detected the odor.
  The interval required to locate another car—it  chanced to be a taxicab—was sufficient for the enemy in their
  speeding  machines to escape. The bronze man cruised in the hack for several  blocks, found no trace of those
  he sought, and returned.
  He spoke briefly to the police, and an immediate  alarm was broadcast to radio patrol cars, directing that the
  two  tourings be picked up.
  Enlisting the assistance of a squad of police, Doc  Savage now went through the buildings in the block around
  which he had  distributed the gas. Since more than fifteen minutes had elapsed, the  stuff had dissipated itself.
  An examination of the premises showed that  no one had come to harm.
  Doc Savage neglected to explain to the police just  what had put every one to sleep. The police knew nothing
  of the  existence of his unusual gas. To tell them what had happened would have  caused needless
  complications. Even Doc Savage’s influence would not  have preserved him from questioning and, perhaps,
  criticism. He avoided  possible difficulties by keeping still.
  The police received a telephone report from a  precinct station that the two touring cars had been found,
  abandoned.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  39
  
  There was no trace of the occupants.
  DOC SAVAGE went to the spot. The two automobiles  stood in a little−used water−front street, literally an
  alley. The  occupants must have changed to other conveyances, but there had been no  observers.
  Doc Savage went over the two cars for finger prints.  There were none. Nor were there other clues.
  "This is gettin’ plumb mysterious," said a policeman.
  The bronze man said nothing, maintaining his usual  lack of emotional display.
  Doc hailed a cab and went back to the spot where his  own car had stalled. He picked up Habeas Corpus, who
  had been rooting  around the back seat, and transferred him to the cab. Then Doc  instructed the cab driver to
  go to his skyscraper headquarters.
  Doc walked close enough to the big building to  observe a number of men lounging about the lobby. The fact
  that some of  these had cameras, marked them as newspaper employees. The bronze man  backtracked, with
  the pig following, reached the other side of the  building and entered what seemed to be an innocent freight
  entrance  into which trucks could be backed. It was really the exit from his  private basement garage, and he
  walked down the runway, traversed a  passage and took his private elevator to his eighty−sixth floor  quarters.
  A voice greeted him excitedly, the instant he  entered.
  "Doc!" the voice exploded. "There’s the devil to  pay!"
  The speaker was a wiry man with an unusually thin  waist. He had a high forehead and the large mobile mouth
  of an orator,  but his clothing was the item about his appearance which struck the  eye. The man was a sartorial
  miracle, his garb an array to delight the  eye of any tailor.
  "What is it, Ham?" Doc Savage asked.
  The sartorially correct man was Brigadier General  Theodore Marley Brooks, better known as "Ham"—a
  nickname he did not  particularly care for. He was by way of being one of the nation’s most  astute lawyers,
  when he chose to practice. But he was happier  adventuring with Doc Savage.
  Besides Johnny, Monk and Ham, Doc Savage had two  other aides, who, because their professions called
  them for the time  being, were not in the thick of the present mystery. One was  "Renny"—Colonel John
  Renwick, world−famed engineer; the other was "Long  Tom"—Major Thomas J. Roberts, a wizard with
  electricity.
  "It’s Johnny," Ham said, in reply to Doc’s question.
  "What about him?"
  "Let me show you."
  Ham led the way from the reception room into a  library, the walls of which were lined with bookcases,
  holding  ponderous−looking tomes.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  40
  
  Ham took, from the top of a bookcase, a bit of  fabric which looked as if it had been torn from the floor carpet
  of a  car.
  HAM waved the piece of carpet.
  "A schoolboy brought this," he explained. "He said  he’d found it lying on a road in New Jersey."
  Doc Savage took the piece of carpet. Fastened to the  underside by the clip which must have originally
  secured it to a  ribbon, was a monocle.
  "The boy said the monocle was wrapped in the piece  of carpet so that it would not break," Ham explained.
  "The monocle is Johnny’s," Doc Savage said.
  "It certainly is!"
  The monocle was an elaborate one. The concave side  of the frame was engraved with what, from a distance
  of a few feet,  looked like ornamental scroll−work, but on closer examination this  proved to be lettering:
  $50 REWARD FOR RETURN 
  OF THIS TO DOC SAVAGE
  "Johnny has all his monocles engraved that way, in  case they get lost," Ham reminded. "Something has
  happened to him!"
  "Obviously!" the bronze man agreed.
  Ham shook his head slowly. "I’m afraid it won’t help  us much. Poor Johnny must have dropped it as a clue to
  indicate which  way he was being taken. But it was dropped hours ago, and there are  hundreds of roads in
  New Jersey. No telling where he is!"
  Doc Savage said, "Suppose we examine the thing a bit  more closely."
  Wonderingly, Ham followed Doc into the laboratory.  This was an enormous room, by far the largest in the
  establishment. It  contained an incredible array of scientific equipment. The bottles and  phials of chemicals
  must have numbered into thousands. There were  supplies of rare metals. There were retorts, furnaces, even
  lathes for  working metal, and a complete equipment of tools. It was here that Doc  Savage developed and
  constructed a great many of his unusual devices.
  From a cabinet, the bronze man produced a  contrivance which resembled an old−fashioned magic lantern,
  except that  the lens, although it resembled glass, was almost jet−black. Doc Savage  pulled the shades,
  plugged the apparatus into an electric outlet and  switched it on. He pointed it at Johnny’s monocle.
  The unexpected happened. Tiny, carefully made  letters, previously invisible, appeared on the monocle’s glass:
  Seized. Blue taxie. Hole in top.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  41
  
  "Jove!" exploded Ham. "Johnny used some of that  invisible chalk which is only brought out by ultra−violet
  light."
  "The metal caps of his shoe laces hold some of the  stuff," Doc Savage agreed. "He must have gotten the
  opportunity to pull  the cap off a shoe lace and write this message."
  "We’d better start hunting Johnny!"
  "First, it might be wise to do some checking," Doc  said, quietly.
  "I don’t get you."
  "We are going to telephone a number of Wall Street  brokerage houses." 
  "But what earthly good will that do?"
  Doc Savage did not explain.
  THE bronze man went back to the reception room and  picked up the telephone book. He handed this to Ham.
  "List names and telephone numbers of stock brokers,"  he directed.
  Plainly not understanding the purpose behind the  request, Ham, nevertheless, complied. As soon as the first
  name and  number was on paper, Doc Savage began telephoning. To each brokerage  office, he put the same
  request.
  "Give me the names of your customers who have made  killings on the stock exchange recently?"
  His average of answers was not much more than fifty  per cent. Some brokers declared they would not answer
  such a question  without a court order, even after Doc Savage explained his identity.  Others declared it would
  take time to assemble such a list. But about  half had the information available, and were familiar enough with
  Doc  Savage’s reputation to comply with his request. Doc listened intently  to each recital of names. He did not
  write them down. His trained  memory made that unnecessary, especially since he was only listening  for the
  appearance of one particular name on more than one list.
  He spent almost an hour telephoning, then put the  instrument down for the last time.
  His weird trilling note came into existence,  persisted for the briefest of moments, then ebbed away into
  nothingness. Ham brightened. He had heard the sound often enough to  know that it presaged an important
  discovery.
  "You dug up something?" he asked.
  "Market killings have not been very frequent  recently in Wall Street," Doc said. "Only one person seems to
  have  taken a good deal of money out of Wall Street recently."
  "Who?"
  "Sylvan Niles," Doc Savage said.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  42
  
  "Who is Sylvan Niles?" Ham queried, looking puzzled.
  Ham had not been enlightened about recent events.  Doc now furnished him with the story, beginning with his
  own decision  to investigate the Jethro Mandebran twenty−million−dollar disappearance.
  In the midst of the recital, Ham walked to a chair  on which reposed a cane, gloves, and a hat. He picked up
  the cane. It  was a neat black stick. He stood fingering this through the remainder  of the story.
  Once, he twisted the handle slightly, and the stick  came apart, disclosing that it was a sword cane with a blade
  of  excellent steel.
  Ham eyed Doc intently. "Have you any idea what’s  behind it?"
  Doc Savage held his silence.
  "It’s bally sinister, whatever it is!" added Ham  who, at times, affected an English accent.
  UNFORTUNATELY, Ham was not gifted with an extra  faculty which would enable him to look through
  thicknesses of plaster,  steel and wood. Had he been able to do this, his hair might possibly  have stood on end,
  although his hair was not addicted to demonstrations  in the face of fear.
  Doc Savage’s office occupied the eighty−sixth floor  of the skyscraper.
  The eighty−fifth floor, the one immediately below  Doc’s headquarters, had been rented only the day before.
  The four  renters were in the suite. Three held machine guns. These rapid−firers  were of a foreign
  manufacture, evidence that Federal laws stopping the  distribution from American makers was having an
  effect in crookdom.  They were hungry, mean−looking fellows who had apparently led a hard  life.
  The fourth man was engaged in an extraordinary  occupation. He was seated between two huge suitcases on
  the floor of  the inner room. The bags were open and disclosed a complex assortment  of apparatus, much of
  which seemed to be electrical in nature.
  More interesting, however, was the unique headgear  which the man wore. This piece of equipment gave the
  impression of a  great amount of intricate apparatus packed into the smallest possible  space. Quite a number
  of wires ran from it to the suitcases. Another  wire ran into the adjacent room and extended up to the ceiling.
  The man took off the headset. He had an ugly face,  and he seemed angry.
  "You, out there," he snarled at one of the gunners  in the outer office.
  "Yeah?"
  "So you’d like to croak the bronze guy, huh?"  snarled the first.
  The gunners looked vastly startled.
  "For the love of Pete, how’d you know—" The one  gunner did not finish. He seemed to remember something.
  A silent laugh  shook his frame.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter IX. STOCK TRADERS
  43
  
  "Ain’t it a great world?" he grinned.
  The man using the set was not amused. "Get the hell  outta there!" he gritted. "You’re mussing up things. Get
  over by the  door!"
  They hastily complied with the order. "You learnin’  anything?" one called.
  "Pipe down!" another of the machine gunners  suggested. "You might be heard upstairs!"
  "Not a chance!" said the first. "The bronze guy’s  place is darn near soundproof, I’ve heard."
  The man with the headset had replaced that weird  contrivance on his head. It covered his cranium completely,
  and lent  him a grotesque appearance.
  There was utter silence in the room for a number of  minutes. Then the man suddenly wrenched the set off his
  head. Utter  horror was on his face.
  "The bronze guy!" he exploded. "He’s got our whole  layout figured!"
  "He can’t have!" gasped one of the guards.
  "He has! He even knows who the boss is!"
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  IN the reception room upstairs Ham, the dapper  lawyer, was moving his head slowly, and sheathing and
  unsheathing his  sword cane in a baffled way.
  "What is behind it?" he was asking Doc Savage, for  perhaps the fifth time.
  The bronze man seemed to have gone suddenly deaf. He  appeared not to hear the lawyer’s question. He had
  offered no  explanations of any theories that he held. Ham, as a matter of truth,  was not surprised. He knew
  Doc. The bronze man was not often involved  in a mystery for long before he had formulated some fairly
  correct  convictions. But Doc was not in the habit of voicing suspicions which  he was, for the time being,
  unable to prove, or which, for other  reasons, he did not wish to divulge.
  "Ham," Doc Savage said, suddenly, "we had best  search this office."
  "What?" Ham was open mouthed. "You think—"
  "A suspicion has occurred to me," said Doc Savage.  "Let us make sure."
  The bronze man now led the way through the library  to the laboratory. While three walls of this great room
  were inclosed  mostly in windows, the fourth wall looked solid. This was deceptive,  however, as Doc proved
  by manipulating concealed locks in a panel. The  wall opened, disclosing an array of recording instruments.
  These  consisted of clockwork devices that turned a paper disk on which an  inked needle was dragged. One of
  the disks showed a line which had an  irregularity in it. Doc pointed to this.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  44
  
  "Some three hours ago, a prowler entered through the  reception room window. He must have gained the roof
  and lowered himself  down. Considering the height of this building he could have done that  without being
  observed from the street."
  "Any one observing him, would have thought him a  window washer," Ham agreed. "Do you think he’s hiding
  in here?"
  Doc Savage pointed out a second wavy section in the  recorded line. This inking device was connected to a
  clock, for the  purpose of designating the exact time of a depredation. There was a  recorder for each window
  and door.
  "The man was inside for perhaps an hour," Doc Savage  pointed out. "Then he left."
  "We’d better see what he was up to," Ham growled.
  "Exactly."
  The bronze man now moved through his establishment,  metallic eyes alert. He scrutinized various drawers
  and cabinet doors,  all equipped with tiny hidden mechanisms which told whether or not the  doors and
  drawers had been opened.
  "The place was not searched," Doc Savage said.
  "Then what would anybody break in for?"
  "There can be only one reason." 
  "Yes?"
  "Something was planted here!"
  There was a pow! of a noise, and a great  sheet of flame lashed before their eyes.
  DOC SAVAGE grasped dapper Ham and yanked him bodily  backward, which probably saved him. It was a
  chair, one of the large  overstuffed ones, which had literally exploded. The blast, however, had  not been
  nearly as violent as the one downtown in the office of the  Castello Mining Corporation.
  The bursting did throw streams of what looked like  superheated liquid fire. Some of this splashed almost
  where Doc and Ham  had been standing, but by that time the two men were back in the  laboratory, sheltered
  to one side of the door.
  Wherever the liquid fire splashes struck, there was  a burst of flame. The heat was blistering, terrific. Even
  Habeas, the  pig, tough though his hide was, had backed into a corner for safety.
  After the incendiary chemical had fallen, they made  an attempt to get through the office to the door. It was
  impossible,  due to the heat.
  Doc and Ham retreated. The bronze man opened a panel  and wrenched one of three levers. There was a loud
  hissing noise in the  reception room. From concealed vents along the molding came streams of  chemical
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  45
  
  which vaporized as it settled downward. This was the fire  extinguishing system which Doc Savage himself
  had installed. The  flames, hot as they were, began to subside.
  But the chair, its contents—whatever they were—had  been destroyed.
  "What set that stuff off?" Ham yelled.
  "Men in an office below," Doc Savage decided,  quietly.
  "I’ll look into that!" Ham growled, and dashed for  the laboratory.
  Although there was apparently no means of exit from  Doc’s establishment other than the conventional door
  through the  reception room, it was actually possible to step from the laboratory  through a concealed panel
  into the corridor. Ham passed through this  secret exit in great haste, picking up a rapid−firing machine pistol
  on  the way. The rapid−firer shot anaesthetic mercy bullets that did not  kill—one of Doc Savage’s inventions.
  At the end of the hallway, stairs descended. Ham  clattered down. He had completed half his descent when a
  gun slammed  lead at him from below.
  Ham grunted. It was a very loud, pained grunt. He  sat down heavily on the stairs. Involuntarily, he clasped
  both hands  over his middle.
  The bullet had hit him squarely in the stomach!
  HAM’S head swam. Awful lights jumped in his  eyeballs. As a matter of fact, he had just received the
  equivalent of a  terrific solar plexus blow. He began to feel quite ill.
  But he breathed brief and silent thanks for a  bulletproof undergarment, which all of Doc Savage’s aids
  habitually  wore. The protector was of chain mail, woven from a specially developed  alloy of extreme
  strength. It was light and stopped bullets, although  the shock was sometimes sufficient to break bones and
  leave rather  terrible bruises.
  The gun below crashed again. The bullet missed,  partially because Ham heaved up and retreated.
  He got a brief glimpse of the person trying to kill  him. It was a lean, soured−looking man whose pinched
  face, while it had  nothing definitely wrong with it, was not a prepossessing visage. The  man was using a
  revolver which appeared to be of foreign manufacture.
  Ham coughed several times and rubbed his midriff. He  had retained his grip on the machine pistol. Now he
  leveled it. The gun  made a noise like the moan of a bullfiddle magnified many times.
  The gunman who had fired the shot was no longer in  sight, so Ham had no definite target. He was shooting
  for effect. He  knew how unnerving was the great noise of the superfirer.
  There was no return fire. Ham scuttled down the  stairs, gingerly. The bullet against his stomach had knocked
  caution  into him.
  He ran into the corridor and peered at the line of  elevator cages. One of these seemed to have just started
  down.  Wheeling, he dashed back up the stairway and into the corridor of the  floor which housed Doc
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  46
  
  Savage’s quarters.
  "Doc!" Ham squalled.
  "Yes?"
  "They’re taking an elevator down!" Ham screeched.  "I’m going to follow in the speed lift!"
  "No!" Doc Savage called, sharply.
  Ham howled, "They’ll get away!"
  "Did you give them a scare?" Doc Savage demanded.
  "I don’t know about that," Ham said. "But they gave  me one!"
  "They’re leaving, though?"
  "Oh, yes."
  "Come in here."
  Puzzled, Ham entered the laboratory by the secret  panel which he had left open—to discover Doc Savage
  leaning through a  window.
  In Doc’s hand was a rifle with a barrel almost as  large as that of a shotgun.
  Where the bronze man stood, he could see the  building entrance far below. Even as Ham came up, Doc
  reached into a  cabinet, secured a pair of binoculars and focused them on the sidewalk,  as an aid to identifying
  any one who appeared.
  "You do the same," he told Ham.
  The dapper lawyer hurriedly complied, at the same  time using one hand to rub his stomach, which was still
  troubling him.  Ham watched the sidewalk closely. His glasses were powerful.
  Four men soon came out of the building far below.
  "There they are," Ham said.
  The four men walked directly to a large car which  was parked at the curb. They entered.
  "They’re going to get away!" Ham groaned.
  Doc Savage’s reply was to lift the rifle very  deliberately and fire. The noise of the gun was much less than
  might  have been anticipated. It was not much more than a loud cough.
  HAM leaned out of the window with his glasses,  staring. He saw the car swing away from the curb as if
  nothing had  happened. The rifle in Doc Savage’s hands made its strange soft cough  again. The car below did
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  47
  
  not falter in its flight. It rolled rapidly. 
  "You’re missing it!" Ham gasped, incredulously. The  lawyer knew that the bronze man, although he rarely
  resorted to the use  of firearms, was an expert shot.
  The fugitives’ car disappeared around a corner.
  "Gone!" Ham yelped.
  "Come on!" Doc Savage clipped.
  The bronze man made a swift dash for the reception  room and looked over the scene there. The fire had been
  extinguished  completely. He leaped to the ruins of the chair, made a brief scrutiny.  There was nothing to be
  found. Destruction had been complete.
  "There must have been something in that chair!" Ham  gasped.
  "There was," Doc Savage told him. "But they were too  quick for us. They destroyed it."
  Back into the laboratory, Doc raced, Ham at his  heels. The bronze man opened a hidden panel, one which
  Ham had not  touched in his passage to the hall. This one gave admission to a  bullet−shaped cage, the interior
  of which was padded and equipped with  straps for hanging on. The thing was not large. They dived inside it.
  Ham had scooped up Monk’s pig and taken it along, much as he despised  the porker.
  Doc closed the hatches of the bullet−like car, and  touched a lever. The results were astounding. There was a
  loud moan of  compressed air and machinery. The car sank like a plummet. A few  moments later, there was a
  violent wrench as the car changed its  course. It was like a pea being shot through the barrel of a blowgun.  The
  noise was ear−splitting. Conversation was impossible. Then the  effects of braking mechanism could be felt.
  The car slowed. With a  clank, it stopped, and Doc Savage opened the hatch. They stepped out.
  A few seconds before, they had been on the top floor  of the skyscraper, but their surroundings now were
  vastly different. It  was a huge building of brick, of steel—Doc Savage’s water−front  airplane hangar and
  boathouse.
  This hangar was as much a secret as it was possible  to keep it. Outer appearance of the building differed little
  from other  water−front structures, being a huge edifice of grimy brick. It was  erected on a pier. Across the
  front a sign said simply:
  HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY
  The Hidalgo Trading Company was Doc Savage.
  The big building housed a number of planes, boats, a  small dirigible, and even a submarine.
  Doc Savage chose a small amphibian gyroplane—a  windmill ship which was perfect for work at close
  quarters.
  Ham, in the meantime, seemed to have something else  on his mind.
  "Chemistry!" Ham called loudly. "Chemistry!" 
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter X. FLIGHT
  48
  
  A CREATURE of astounding physical appearance waddled  into view—astounding because the physical
  likeness which the animal  bore to the homely chemist, Monk, was a bit uncanny. Chemistry was a  large,
  tailless monkey with a certain number of human points—just  enough of them, in fact, to make it possible for
  him to be mistaken for  Monk, if seen at a distance and in somewhat inadequate light.
  "Come on, Chemistry!" Ham called.
  Chemistry swung into the gyro. Ham boosted the pig  in next.
  Chemistry was Ham’s pet, one he had lately acquired  as a defensive organism against Monk’s pet pig,
  Habeas Corpus.  Chemistry and Habeas got along together practically as well as did Ham  and Monk—which
  meant they never quite got to the point of slaughtering  each other.
  Doc Savage started the gyro motor, and the ship  rolled down the incline and intercepted light beams which
  played on a  photo−electric cell, causing the hangar doors to open. The doors closed  automatically as soon as
  the plane was out on the river.
  Shortly, the ship was in the air.
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  THE gyro cabin was soundproof, although not  perfectly so. The engine, an air−cooled radial, fed its exhaust
  gasses  through a valve which directed them either into a long silencing  cylinder, or into the open air. During
  takeoff, the cutouts were open,  noisy. Doc closed them when they were in the air, to permit  conversation.
  "Get the fluoroscopic spectacle devices," Doc Savage  directed Ham.
  The dapper lawyer moved into the rear of the plane  cabin, probed into special lockers, and came out with two
  contrivances  which bore a very faint resemblance to goggles. At least, they fitted  over the eyes,
  goggle−fashion. The lenses, however, were as large as  condensed milk cans and were very black.
  Ham moved a tiny lever on the sides of the canlike  lenses. They began to make the same kind of sounds
  given off by a  miniature motion−picture camera when in operation. Ham fitted the  lenses over his eyes.
  The bronze man manipulated the plane’s controls.  Soon they flew over the masonry canyons that were the
  streets of uptown  New York.
  Ham leaned from the window, peering downward through  his strange eyegear. He could distinguish only the
  faintest outlines of  what was below.
  "Watch for what looks like a brighter patch of  light," Doc Savage directed.
  "Righto," Ham agreed. "I know now what we’re looking  for."
  Ham watched the terrain below intently.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  49
  
  "There it is!" he called.
  Immediately, the bronze man sent the gyro up.
  "Watch the car!" Doc Savage warned.
  The gyro climbed and climbed. Ham paid no attention  to that. He knew Doc was getting up where they would
  not attract  notice. Planes are plentiful over New York, and the conventional  autogyros are not uncommon.
  This ship, although it was true gyro, could  hardly be distinguished from an autogyro at a distance.
  Ham kept a close watch on the spot of light. It was  fading, but still discernible.
  The lawyer knew what it was. It was the top of the  car in which the men had escaped.
  Doc Savage had fired his unusual−looking gun at the  machine. The purpose of this had puzzled Ham for a
  time. The bullets  had been shells containing a chemical concoction in liquefied state,  which had splashed on
  the car roof. This stuff had made a film, perhaps  unnoticeable to the naked eye, which reflected infra light
  better than  the surroundings. This was doing with infra light what a film does with  ordinary light.
  Doc Savage had merely arranged to trail the quarry  to their hangout, hoping thereby to find Johnny or Monk.
  THE State of New Jersey has an unusual distribution  of inhabitants. Directly across the Hudson River from
  New York City and  a bit to the southwest, is Newark, a metropolis, a city of consequence.  Not a great many
  miles distant, however, are sections of brush−covered  hill country which might almost be called uninhabited.
  It was into this isolated section that the trail Doc  Savage was following led. The bronze man was flying the
  gyro high, and  Ham was employing binoculars to keep track of the car below.
  "The car is pulling into a farm!" Ham called,  abruptly.
  Doc Savage took the binoculars for a moment. They  were fully twice as long as the largest ordinary field
  glasses, and  their magnifying power was a good deal more than twice as great. They  had, in fact, the strength
  of a small celestial telescope.
  The bronze man studied the spot where the quarry had  stopped. There was a high stone wall and a house, a
  great rambling  thing of wood. The structure was of a style popular fifty years ago. 
  One car already stood in the yard. From Doc’s  height, it was impossible to tell with certainty, but the machine
  appeared to be a taxicab, painted a faded blue color.
  There was a small hole—it might have been made by a  man’s head thrusting upward hard—in the top of the
  cab.
  "Hope Johnny and his big words haven’t come to  harm," Ham said, slowly.
  Doc Savage piloted the gyro in a wide swing, until  the craft was in the sky directly west of the house to which
  their  quarry had gone. To see the plane now, any one at the house would have  to look almost directly into the
  afternoon sun. Even then, it was  highly unlikely that the ship could be discerned.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  50
  
  "You take the plane off again," Doc Savage directed  Ham.
  "Righto!" agreed Ham, not looking particularly  pleased with the assignment.
  "If either of the cars leave, follow them."
  Doc landed the gyro in a small clearing. Ham got the  ship back in the air immediately, and Doc struck out
  through the  scrubby hill growth.
  When Doc got close to the huge, ancient wooden house  and its imposing stone wall, he used more caution
  and searched for a  posted guard. His scrutiny of the brush, the ground, was infinitely  painstaking. Particularly
  did he examine the sheer threads of cobwebs,  on the theory that one of these could be fine wire, the breaking
  of  which might set a bell ringing.
  The wall around the house, in the rear, was coated  with ivy vines. This foliage was thick and green.
  Doc Savage scrutinized the place intently. The upper  parts of the house which he could see, looked decrepit,
  deserted. There  was no sound, no movement.
  Doc’s pockets were rather amply filled with various  of his innumerable gadgets, and he now produced one of
  these somewhat  the shape and size of a cigar case. He opened this.
  It proved to hold some apparatus and a small,  watchcase receiver. He placed the receiver to an ear, then
  turned the  apparatus slowly, as he would a searchlight.
  The thing was an amplifier and sound pick−up, tiny  but remarkably sensitive. It could catch the buzzing of a
  fly, for  instance, farther away than the fly could be seen with the naked eye.  Whatever the bronze man heard,
  it seemed to be interesting.
  He exchanged the listener gadget for another device  about three times the size of the little boxes which hold
  ordinary  pocket matches. This container was of metal. The top had a saucerlike  depression, and there were
  various dials on the sides.
  Doc Savage placed this contrivance in the shrubbery.  He left it there and walked forward. Something like a
  score of paces  brought him within a dozen feet of the wall.
  The vines covering the wall parted and a man stepped  out with a sawed off shotgun, cocked.
  "Howdy," said the man.
  Doc Savage stood perfectly still, and replied  nothing.
  "Mister, maybe you think we ain’t glad to see you!"  The man leered. "Bend over and take hold of the toes of
  your shoes with  both hands, and stand like that."
  Doc Savage complied with the command. It put him at  a distinct disadvantage. The other advanced warily.
  "I’ve heard a lot about you, big guy," he growled.  "I ain’t takin’ no chances."
  He pressed his gun to Doc’s back with his right  hand, and with his left began slapping spots where there was
  likely to  be a holstered weapon. He was as worried as a green lion tamer on his  first job. It showed in his
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  51
  
  manner. However, he took no chances.
  Before long, something happened which disrupted  proceedings. Out of the brush behind them came a voice,
  shrill,  distinctly metallic. It was not a calm or natural voice, but then no  voice could be expected to be calm,
  under the circumstances.
  "Drop that shotgun!" ordered the voice.
  It was inevitable that the man with the shotgun  would look up to make sure the new speaker meant business.
  When he did  this, Doc grabbed the fellow’s ankles and yanked. The man upset. His  gun did not go off, due to
  Doc’s quickness in clamping on his wrist a  grip which caused the finger sinews to slacken rather than tighten.
  The  struggle which ensued was terrific, but lasted not much longer than it  would have taken a man to get a
  long breath.
  Having flattened the man on his back, holding him  with throat clamped so no noise could escape, Doc Savage
  caused  unconsciousness by exerting his specialized pressure on spinal nerve  centers. This was as effective as
  a knockout blow, and not noisy.
  THE moment the victim was senseless, Doc Savage  retreated hastily into the brush and picked up the metal
  contrivance  which he had placed there before advancing. It was still giving forth  an almost inaudible whirring
  noise and would, in the course of a few  seconds, repeat other commands to surrender. There was a tiny record
  inside, and the concave area in the top of the box was simply a  reproducer diaphragm. Doc Savage shut the
  thing off, pocketed it and  went back to the prisoner.
  The fellow had not stirred and would not for at  least an hour to come. Doc Savage picked him up and carried
  him to a  niche in the wall which was concealed by vines. The niche proved to be  perhaps about three feet in
  depth, the same in width and high enough  for even Doc Savage to stand erect.
  While the wall around the house was manifestly very  old, this niche seemed to have been constructed more
  recently, within  the past few weeks, judging from the appearance of the mortar. The rear  was a wooden
  door—unlocked, fortunately.
  There was a square opening in the door, not quite a  foot across, and this was strapped with iron bars. Doc
  Savage looked  through the aperture.
  The old house looked even larger than it had from a  distance. The ramshackle aspect seemed to have
  increased somewhat. It  could be noted, however, that the shingles were intact on the roof, and  that, while the
  shutters were, in some cases, loose and even hanging by  as little as a single hinge, the windows were all
  unbroken. Moreover,  none of the siding was loose. As a matter of fact, the house was in  good condition,
  except for paint and minor repairs.
  There was shrubbery in the yard, beds planted  irregularly in the old−fashioned way. Lawn grass was uncut.
  Such paths  as were in the yard were constructed of processions of large, flat  stones, and close inspection
  disclosed they had received recent use.
  The bronze man crawled swiftly, making little noise.  About the house was the silence of a tomb. Basement
  windows seemed to  offer a means of entry. Doc Savage headed for them.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XI. QUEER MEN
  52
  
  The bronze man learned later that the grounds were  wired with an extremely modern type of burglar alarm.
  The wires of the  contraption were buried underground, and the effect as he passed over  them caused sensitive
  relays to set off an indicator.
  The first hint of this was the appearance of  movement in one of the upstairs windows. Some one was behind
  the  window, staring downward. The individual moved closer to the pane, the  glass of which had been washed
  recently.
  It was the girl, Sylvan Niles!
  SHE apparently saw Doc Savage. Then she was gone  from sight. The next instant, there was a crashing noise.
  Glass dropped  out of the window where the girl had been. A bullet bedded viciously  alongside Doc Savage.
  The bronze man moved. Most of his torso was incased  in a bulletproof garment of chain mail, but his head
  and neck were  always vulnerable to a well−aimed or a lucky shot. Out of his coat he  drew a metal egg. There
  was a small lever on the side of this. He  flicked the lever, and threw the small spheroid close to the side of  the
  house.
  The thing hatched with a flash that hurt the eyes  and a roar that menaced eardrums. A portion of the house
  wall fell  inward. Glass jumped out of windows all along the side of the house.  There was some
  bluish−looking smoke and a not inconsiderable quantity  of dust.
  And there was a hole in the side of the house  through which a horse, providing he was agile, might have
  jumped.
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  DOC SAVAGE was in motion. He calculated nicely,  allowing just enough time for flying débris to settle, but
  moving  quickly enough that the dust and smoke would help conceal him.
  A mess of splintered laths and torn flooring delayed  him slightly. The wreckage was still groaning as it
  settled. A large  scab of plaster fell tardily off the ceiling.
  Doc waded over the torn mass of a rug, sidestepped a  divan which the explosion had mangled. There was a
  mirror door and an  ordinary door side by side at the end of the room. Most of the mirror  glass was out. Being
  aware that mirrors are usually put in closet  doors, Doc Savage ignored that one. The second panel was stuck.
  It  proved simpler to bash the thin wood out and crawl through, than to  bother with opening it.
  A gun barked at him the instant he was in a hall. He  rolled, twisted, and gained an angle in the corridor.
  Where he had been  when the shot crashed, a cloud of black smoke appeared. It spread  rapidly. A draft pulled
  some of it through the hole which he had  smashed in the door. The rest mushroomed out in the hallway,
  shutting  off visibility.
  The stuff was coming from a metal container which  Doc had left there.
  The gun did not slam again. The shot had come from a  point which seemed to be a staircase. Up this, feet
  pattered. The noise  they made was rapid and rather light, almost effeminate.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  53
  
  Doc Savage headed toward the fleeing individual. The  smoke, while it concealed him completely when he
  was within the cloud,  left no traces of soot on his person. Nor did he seem to have  difficulty breathing while
  in it. However, creeping toward the stairs,  he fell to absently rubbing his hands, one with the other. He rubbed
  his neck. Then, apparently realizing what he was doing, he put forth an  effort and stopped this.
  That smoke bomb was a very particular type. A great  deal of experimenting had gone into its concoction.
  At the foot of the stairway, he paused.
  "Johnny!" he called.
  "Here!" came a muffled voice.
  It was Johnny’s voice, although the wordy  archaeologist and geologist rarely used a word so small. He
  seemed to  be upstairs and toward the front of the house.
  Bullets came down the staircase in a businesslike  procession. It was plain that whoever was up there wanted
  to be alone  with the prisoner.
  Doc Savage produced another of the powerful little  grenades.
  "You had better move!" he called to the gunman. "In  about ten seconds, there is not going to be much left of
  the spot where  you are standing!"
  The bronze man listened intently. He never killed or  seriously injured any one, if it could be avoided.
  The bullets kept coming.
  Doc adjusted the firing mechanism of the grenade. He  chose a moment when there was a pause in the
  shooting and flicked the  little thing upward. It landed with a small clatter.
  The gunman fled.
  The house shook on its foundations. Noise, smoke,  laths, plaster, and a few stray stair treads came flying
  down. In the  spot where Doc crouched, plaster fell off the ceiling and deluged him  painfully.
  He went up the stairway. The hall above was a wreck.  A door at the end had been pretty well demolished.
  The girl, Sylvan Niles, lay just beyond it. She was  on her face, senseless, and it looked as if something had hit
  her on  the back of the head. Fragments of the door were scattered over most of  the room. Her outflung right
  hand still held a revolver.
  DOC SAVAGE lunged to the young woman, dropped beside  her, and proceeded to demonstrate that a man
  can simultaneously do an  entirely different thing with each hand. With his left hand, he felt  the girl’s pulse
  and learned she was alive, then turned her head and  opened her eyes. He moved her head, holding her eyes
  open. The  inactivity of her eyeballs during this operation proved that she was  genuinely senseless.
  With his right hand, the bronze man opened the  revolver. It was the type which held five cartridges, and all
  had been  discharged. The fact that the barrel was warm proved the firing had  been recent.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  54
  
  Doc Savage closed the revolver and replaced it in  her hand exactly as he had found it.
  Heaving erect, the bronze man lunged across the room  and found what had evidently, in the heyday of the old
  mansion, been a  serving pantry. From this, a stairway led down.
  He listened. Men were leaving the house; several of  them, judging from the noise. They seemed to be getting
  into the cars.  Doc did not move to descend the stairs. They would be expecting that.  He found a door
  admitting to that side of the house where the  automobiles stood. He tried it. Locked. He lunged against it.
  With a  tearing of wood, it came open.
  In the center of the room stood a strange−looking  thing. It was longer, higher, wider than a man. A box. But
  the wood  looked very ancient, and on it were limned cabalistic symbols in  vermilion and purple and gold.
  Any young lad moderately up on his history could  have identified the thing. A mummy case!
  Small, weird sounds were coming out of the case.
  Doc Savage ignored the noises. He flung to a window,  tried to get it up, and found it was nailed in place. He
  smashed the  glass out of one panel.
  He did not put his head through, for the very  excellent reason that a swarm of bullets arrived. The slugs took
  the  remainder of the glass out and made a great noise against the ceiling.  Other pellets began clouting through
  the walls of the house itself.  These last must have been the product of high−powered rifles. A machine  gun of
  some light variety using revolver cartridges was playing through  the window.
  The motors of two automobiles could be heard through  this battle uproar.
  DOC SAVAGE veered to the left, at the same time  producing another grenade. He did not often make a
  gesture which he  knew in advance would be futile, but he made one now. He flung the  grenade, knowing
  very well, from the angle at which he had to throw it,  that the thing would land nowhere near the cars. The
  concussion,  however, might be morally effective on the occupants of the machines.
  The roar was tremendous, and the whole house shook.  Immediately, the shooting stopped. The cars went
  away, motors straining  for speed.
  The noises were still coming from the mummy case.
  Doc Savage took a chance and leaned from the window.  Two cars—the taxi−cab with the hole in the top and
  the vehicle which  Doc and Ham had trailed to the spot—were on the road. From the way they  were bouncing,
  the occupants must have been having a rough time. The  road was not fit for speed such as they were making.
  Doc went to the mummy case. His swift scrutiny  showed him that it was undoubtedly genuine. Mummies are
  not technically  supposed to arise from their receptacles, and the ancients had taboos  against outsiders
  desecrating the contents of such cases. Therefore, it  was not equipped with a lock. But some one had fastened
  the lid down by  the simple expedient of tying a rope around the whole case.
  Doc Savage untied the rope and opened the lid.
  The long, bony man inside sat up and gulped, "I’ll  be superamalgamated!"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  55
  
  WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN had, at one time, taught  in a college. Right now he looked anything but
  a professor. The only  thing he wore was a breechcloth which he had fashioned of a large  towel. His hair was
  down in his eyes, and he was dirt and bruises and  dried blood from head to foot.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he gulped again, and  left the mummy case as if it were the last place in the world
  where he  wanted to be.
  "You all right?" Doc Savage asked.
  "Do I look like I’m all right?" Johnny demanded,  indignantly. "The answer is, no! Emphatically, no!"
  He was all right.
  "An unequivocal, baleful demoniacality!" he  sputtered.
  Doc Savage looked at the sarcophagus. While not  absolutely airtight, it was nearly so.
  "You were not in there long," he said, stating an  obvious fact.
  "No," Johnny agreed. "I heard you call and answered.  They grabbed me, slammed me in there and roped the
  lid shut. Blast  their souls! I might have smothered!"
  Johnny, while he affected big words in the course of  ordinary conversation, was not exclusively addicted to
  them. He did  not, as a usual thing, employ his big words in the presence of Doc  Savage. Rather, he used them
  to confound lesser listeners.
  "Did they torture you much?" Doc Savage asked.
  "I should say they did!"
  "Trying to learn what?"
  "They were endeavoring to ascertain just how much  you knew of this whole devilish mystery," Johnny
  explained. "In doing  that, they were, of course, butting their heads against a stone wall.  Not that I like to
  designate myself as a stone wall. Quite the  contrary. I think I proved very invulnerable."
  "How much did you tell them?"
  "All I knew," announced Johnny. "It amounted to  exactly nothing, so I could see no harm in telling them."
  "They did not believe you?"
  "Naturally not. Hence, their playful parading back  and forth across my chest. They also kicked me, pulled
  some of my hair  out, and were getting around to throwing lighted matches at my eyes  when you arrived."
  DOC SAVAGE nodded. He seemed to be interested in the  sarcophagus. He moved it. There was a round hole
  perhaps two inches  across bored in the floor directly beneath the coffin. There was  nothing in the hole.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  56
  
  Doc Savage examined the bottom of the sarcophagus  and found another hole, a bit larger than the one in the
  floor, in the  bottom of the death box. He peered into this. It was too dark to see  anything.
  "Did they talk much?" the bronze man asked.
  "Too much!" said Johnny. "They talked all of the  time. They were very windy."
  "They dropped hints?"
  "No man, or group of men, can talk as much as they  did without dropping hints!"
  Doc Savage was scrutinizing the inside of the  sarcophagus. It seemed to be solid. He produced a pocketknife
  and  scraped. This revealed that the box, sometime in the recent past, had  been taken apart. He continued
  scraping until he located the joints.
  "How many in the gang which held you?"
  "I can’t say," said Johnny. "Quite a number. They  came and went."
  "A dozen?"
  "At least that many."
  Doc Savage seated himself on one side of the open  sarcophagus, put his feet against the other side. He
  prepared to use  strength.
  "Hear anything of Monk?" he asked.
  "Have they got Monk?" Johnny exploded. 
  "Yes."
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" groaned Johnny.
  THE bronze man put forth a little exertion. The  sarcophagus cracked, but did not give. He changed his
  position to use  more advantageously his great strength.
  "I didn’t hear a word about Monk," Johnny said,  grimly. 
  "We’ve got to find him," Doc Savage said. "That is  our first job."
  Johnny nodded. He moistened his lips. Then, because  there seemed nothing else to comment upon, he pointed
  at the mummy case.
  "There is something queer about that thing," he  said. "I have suspected before this that my brain is not the
  greatest  in the world. But now I have a suspicion that it is the dumbest! They  put me in that case several
  times, then took me out again and took me  into another room. I could not make heads nor tails of it."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  57
  
  Doc Savage exerted the power of his leg muscles  suddenly, violently. There was a ripping, and the mummy
  case came  apart. Doc turned it over and continued his wrecking until he had it  entirely separated, the entrails
  of the thing exposed.
  Johnny peered with great interest. He bent down and  stared. If there had been a fly speck present, he would
  have found it.
  "Somebody," he gulped, "is crazy!"
  The bottom of the mummy case and a considerable  portion of the sides were hollow, but contained nothing.
  "Were you in this room all the time," Doc Savage  asked. 
  "No." Johnny frowned. "They could have taken  something out of that without me seeing."
  "They did," Doc Savage told him.
  "Eh?" Johnny frowned at the bronze man. "You’ve got  an idea of what this is all about?"
  Instead of relieving the lank  archaeologist−geologist’s mind, Doc Savage gestured. "There is a person  down
  the hall whom you might be interested in seeing."
  Johnny nodded, started for the door, then stopped.
  "I forgot to tell you something," he said—"the name  of their chief."
  "You heard that?"
  "Oh, yes. They seemed quite certain I was not going  to leave here alive, so the name was mentioned."
  "What was the name?"
  "Sylvan Niles. A very bloodthirsty fellow, this  Sylvan Niles, I take it!"
  The bronze man escorted the battered Johnny to the  spot where the young woman lay unconscious. He
  pointed.
  "Sylvan Niles," he said.
  "A woman!" Johnny gulped. "I’ll be superamalgamated!"
  Doc Savage asked, "You are sure that the leader of  this gang is named Sylvan Niles?"
  "That is what their conversation led me to believe,"  Johnny reiterated.
  SYLVAN NILES showed no signs of consciousness  returning immediately.
  "Wait here," Doc Savage directed.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  58
  
  The bronze man made a thorough search of the place.  Particularly did he scrutinize the room below the
  sarcophagus. The hole  was prominent in the ceiling. It seemed to come straight through.  Plaster which had
  fallen off the ceiling littered the floor. Doc Savage  pushed this to one side with a toe and examined the floor.
  He found  nothing there to interest him, and continued his search of the house.
  Evidently the place had been used as a living  quarters, but for an interval of no longer than a week or so. This
  was  indicated by the state of the discarded cans which had held food. Some  cans had not been cleaned out
  thoroughly, so that it was possible to  form an estimate.
  It became apparent that there was no one else in the  house.
  Doc Savage stepped out into the yard at the rear,  where he had left the man he had overcome; but that fellow
  was gone. He  had been in no condition to navigate under his own power, so it  followed logically that some of
  his friends, in their flight had  gathered him up and carried him away.
  Doc went back upstairs.
  WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJ0HN was surveying senseless  Sylvan Niles with a great deal of interest.
  Johnny cut quite an  impressive figure in his breechcloth.
  "There are window draperies downstairs," Doc Savage  suggested. "They might make a more fitting garment
  than that towel.  Your clothing seems to have disappeared."
  "Good night!" Johnny exclaimed. "I had entirely  forgotten."
  Johnny hurried out, treading gingerly over broken  plaster and splintered wood, and worked his way down the
  stairs. He  came back some minutes later, arrayed in a crude toga which he had  fashioned out of window
  draperies. His pipe−stem legs and arms  protruded from this, giving the somewhat unearthly impression that
  he  was composed exclusively of bones.
  Doc Savage had opened the window and was leaning far  out of it. Johnny noted that the bronze man seemed
  to scrutinize the  sky.
  "Something up there?" he asked.
  "Ham was supposed to be flying around in the gyro,"  Doc replied. "He seems to have disappeared."
  At this point, Sylvan Niles turned slightly and made  a sighing sound. After an interval, she had her eyes open
  and was  sitting up.
  She said nothing. She simply looked at Doc Savage,  and then at Johnny. She blinked several times when she
  saw Johnny, as  if his grotesque figure were something new in her experience.
  When Johnny would have spoken, Doc Savage admonished  silence with a slight gesture. They watched the
  young woman. She peered  about and evidently decided where she was. She looked at the wreckage  which the
  grenade had made, then started to feel the lump on her head,  which must have been paining considerably.
  This gesture brought to her  attention the revolver which she held in her hand.
  She pointed the gun at Doc Savage and Johnny.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  59
  
  Johnny groaned, "Doc, we should have taken that away  from her!"
  "Stand still, you two!" the young woman rapped. "I’m  going to get out of here!"
  Instead of standing still, Doc Savage advanced. He  came slowly, giving her ample opportunity to pull the
  trigger.
  "Back!" Sylvan Niles gritted.
  Doc came on. The young woman cocked the gun. She set  herself desperately and put on what she evidently
  intended to look like  a determined expression. But when Doc Savage was almost upon her, she  threw the gun
  down.
  "You’ve got too darn much faith in your ability to  read human nature!" she snapped at Doc. "I might have
  shot!"
  DOC SAVAGE neglected to inform her that the chance  of her shooting him with a gun in which all of the
  cartridges had been  discharged was negligible. He picked up the gun and tossed it out of  the window.
  "What happened to you?" Doc asked her.
  She seemed to be a young woman who was coherent with  her descriptions.
  "You left me with Monk, young Alex Mandebran, and  that pig, Habeas, in front of the Miners’ Building," she
  said. "We had  only been there a few moments, when a man came along knocked on the car  window and said
  he had a message from you. Monk opened the door. The  man managed to keep the door open while other
  men ran up. They grabbed  us."
  "They gagged and blindfolded you immediately?" Doc  asked, remembering that he had seen her and young
  Alex Mandebran  without either blindfold or gag in the departing car.
  "No," she said. "They did that later."
  "Then what?"
  "They brought me here. They took Monk and Alex  Mandebran somewhere else. I don’t know where."
  The vicious treatment he had received led Johnny to  burst in with a suspicious question.
  "Suppose you explain how you were left senseless  with that gun in your hand?" he requested.
  "They hit me on the head and left me that way!"
  "That is at least a good story," Johnny said.
  The girl glared angrily. "Who are you, you  funny−looking bag of bones?"
  Doc Savage supplied, "He is William Harper  Littlejohn, more often known as Johnny, one of my aids."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  60
  
  "I am disappointed!" said the young woman. "It looks  as if you went to the zoo for your assistants!"
  JOHNNY favored the young woman with the coldest of  stares, but did not address her again.
  Doc Savage asked the girl, "Will you talk freely  now?"
  "No!"
  "It might make matters simpler."
  She shook her head mutely, then seemed to think of  something. She pointed at the basement regions. "Did
  you search down  there?"
  "Hurriedly," Doc Savage admitted.
  "They had a hide−out underneath," said the girl.  "Some of them might have got in there. We’d better look."
  Doc Savage helped her to her feet and it was evident  that she could walk, although with some uncertainty.
  They negotiated  the torn area at the top of the stairs and descended.
  The basement was not large. The floor was of packed  clay, the walls of ancient brick. Directly in the center,
  rising like a  ponderous column, was the foundation of a fireplace, evidently in the  room above. At the foot of
  this was a tiny door for the removal of  ashes.
  The girl pointed. "There."
  Doc Savage opened the ash−door and looked into the  chimney foundation. He took a small stick and poked,
  bringing out  nothing but soot.
  "It’s there," said the girl. "You step into the side  of the chimney, or something."
  Doc Savage searched. Whoever had made the recess had  done an excellent job. The joint was hardly
  perceptible, even with a  magnifying glass. The mechanism which opened the thing defied discovery  entirely.
  Doc went outside, got a heavy rock, came back and smashed it  against the chimney.
  In a moment, he had a panel uncovered—a panel as  wide as his shoulders, almost as high as his head. It was
  of metal, and  the brick had been cemented to the outside. Doc got it open.
  The recess beyond would accommodate his person with  some squeezing. The footing was not firm when he
  stepped upon it. There  were ropes on the right hand side, indicating the thing was an  elevator, operating in
  dumbwaiter fashion.
  "Send the young lady down after me," Doc directed. 
  The bronze man turned in the lift, manipulated the  ropes and without much noise, he sank. Several times, he
  put finger  tips against the sides of the concrete shaft in order to estimate  speed. The lift dropped nearly fifteen
  feet before coming to a stop.  Doc produced a flashlight.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  61
  
  The walls were shored up with timbers. There was  only a single room, and that not large. The place was
  equipped with a  bench and innumerable boxes. Tools were scattered on the bench.
  On the bench also was a high stack of papers. Doc  Savage went over and scrutinized these. They were
  receipts for stocks  bought and sold on the New York and other stock exchanges. 
  The name of the trader in each case was Sylvan  Niles. Sylvan Niles seemed to be a financial wizard. In no
  case had  money been lost; and the winnings, in some instances, amounted to many  thousands of dollars.
  Doc Savage went back to the shaft and called, "Send  Sylvan Niles down!"
  "Righto," called Johnny.
  A MOMENT later, the lift, which Johnny had pulled  up, descended and the young woman stepped out. Doc
  was holding a  flashlight and he studied her features intently in its glow, as she  looked the place over. Either
  she was genuinely surprised by her  surroundings, or she was an excellent actress.
  Then Johnny came down.
  "Just exactly what is in this den?" he demanded,  peering about.
  "Some kind of mechanical construction has been  carried on here," Doc Savage said. "We might try to
  ascertain exactly  what was built."
  They centered attention on the boxes. They were  already opened. Every box was entirely empty. Some still
  held excelsior  packing. This was pulled out carefully and sifted, divulging nothing of  interest. There was not
  even a scrap of paper. The boxes themselves  bore no markings.
  The two men went to the bench, scrutinized the  tools. Doc indicated a long rack above the bench which,
  evidently, had once held a great many tools, but was now empty.
  "Every clue has been disposed of," the bronze man  said.
  A shrill gasp drew their attention to Sylvan Niles.  She had walked to the sheaf of buy−and−sell−order
  confirmations, and  was examining them. She was agog.
  "You made a nice profit!" the bronze man said, dryly.
  "I?" she exploded. "I never saw these before!" 
  Johnny hurried over to the papers, cast a glance  over them, then eyed the girl.
  "Hermeneutical catachresis is expedient," he  remarked.
  "What?"
  "Your explanation had better be good," Johnny told  her. 
  "I’ve been framed!" she snapped. "Some one has been  trading on the stock market and using my name!"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XII. THE BURDEN OF SUSPICION
  62
  
  Johnny shook his head solemnly. "Very thin!" 
  Then, as if to go through the papers more  thoroughly, Johnny picked up the whole bundle. The results were
  discomfiting. There was a loud grating of metal overhead, a clang. Doc  Savage lunged to the shaft and looked
  upward.
  A heavy steel plate had slid across the shaft,  closing it. By wedging himself into the shaft, Doc climbed
  upward to  the barrier and exerted his strength against it. The thing was entirely  solid.
  They were trapped!
  JOHNNY was looking at the spot on the table where  the papers had lain. Coming up through holes in the
  wood were two tiny  wires, insulated except for the tips, which had been held together by  the weight of the
  papers. Lifting the documents had allowed the wires  to separate, breaking an electric circuit, which had, in
  turn, resulted  in the closing of the shaft.
  "A trap!"
  The girl said nothing.
  Johnny secured a stout screw driver, scrambled up in  the shaft and worked on the trap panel, but made no
  noticeable progress  toward getting it out of their way. Clinging in the shaft was a  difficult business, and he
  dropped back to the floor shortly, exhausted.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he mumbled. "We’re in a  jam sure enough now! We’ll never get out of here!"
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  BRIGADIER GENERAL THEODORE MARLEY BROOKS was, at the  moment, nowhere near the old
  country house where Doc, Johnny and Sylvan  Niles were trapped. Furthermore, Ham was heading away from
  it, and  hoping his gyro would not be seen by the occupants of the two cars  traversing New Jersey highways at
  a high rate of speed.
  In the rear of the plane, Ham’s pet monkey,  Chemistry, and Monk’s pig, Habeas Corpus, quarreled. They
  were evenly  matched. Habeas could bite, use his sharp−hoofed feet; Chemistry, while  larger, had only
  monkey fists and less effective teeth.
  Ham had little difficulty keeping track of his  quarry, except when they passed through villages. Fortunately,
  there  were no large towns.
  The cars took to a disused woodland road. Boughs  arched over this thoroughfare so that, at times, the
  machines were  completely hidden from view. Ham resisted the temptation to fly lower,  knowing it was quiet
  in the woodland and they might hear the noise of  the plane’s motor. His eyes ached intolerably from the
  strain of using  binoculars.
  Then a peculiar thing happened. The two cars pulled  off the road into a tiny clearing which was surrounded
  by a dense wall  of foliage. In this clearing stood two other cars. It was impossible to  tell a great deal about
  these machines from this height, but they  looked long, powerful. The men changed cars.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  63
  
  The dapper lawyer decided drivers had been waiting  with a change of cars in the clearing.
  The two relief machines headed back the way the  others had come. They traveled at a high rate of speed, and
  because two  fast cars, one behind the other, would tend to attract attention, they  separated a distance of
  perhaps three quarters of a mile. These  machines were much more difficult to keep track of.
  Ham perspired freely. The goal of the cars became  evident. They pulled up beside the tracks of a railroad
  which ran  between Washington and New York. The men left the machines and  scattered along the right of
  way, which was bordered by brush at this  point.
  Ham decided they were doing something with the  railroad signal system. He kept a sharp lookout to make
  sure they did  not tear up rails, or place anything on the tracks which might cause a  wreck.
  Since this district was frequently traversed by  planes and one more was not likely to attract attention, Ham
  sank his  ship a bit lower. If these men intended to endanger lives, he would  interfere. Otherwise, he intended
  to play the role of observer. He was  not optimist enough to believe that, single−handed, he could capture  the
  crowd.
  A rather long wait followed.
  A TRAIN appeared, coming from the direction of  Washington. It was one of the new streamlined trains. It
  must have been  making around eighty miles an hour. Rounding a curve, it streaked down  the straight stretch
  where the men Ham was observing had stationed  themselves. Things began happening.
  First, the block signal located ahead of the train  changed, directing a stop. Then men popped up alongside the
  tracks,  waving red flags.
  Since there was no reason why he should do anything  else, the engineer of the train applied the air. The
  streamlined cars  came to a stop. The engineer alighted, evidently to ascertain what was  wrong. Men leaped
  out of the brush beside the right of way and ran  toward him. They held guns. The engineer put his hands up.
  More men ran  down the side of the train and entered the coaches.
  The whole thing was executed with great speed. The  raiding party was inside the train scarcely mere than two
  or three  minutes. When they reappeared, they were escorting a prisoner. This  individual was larger than any
  of his captors, and he kept his hands  rigidly above his head. He was rushed to the waiting automobiles, which
  promptly sped away.
  Ham happened to know that this particular railroad  equipped its streamlined trains with a so−called
  wired−wireless system  of communication, whereby the moving train could keep in touch with  intermediate
  stations; but this must have been put out of commission by  the raiders. A group of uniformed train officials
  left the stalled cars  and dashed madly toward a distant farmhouse, evidently headed for a  telephone.
  Ham did not see more, his attention being centered  on following the two cars. They were heading directly for
  the spot  where the exchange from the other cars had been made. In fact, it  developed when they reached that
  spot, the men intended to change back  to their previous conveyances. They did so and resumed their journey.
  The gyro was equipped with radio  transmitting−and−receiving apparatus. The receiver was of the universal
  type in its wave band coverage. Ham turned it on and tuned it to police  broadcasting wave lengths, and before
  long was rewarded with  interesting information.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  64
  
  "Calling All New Jersey State Police!" 
  intoned an official voice from the loudspeaker. "Watch for two  large black sedans, license numbers unsecured, occupied
  by gang of men  estimated to exceed a dozen in number. Men held up Washington−to−New  York railway train and took off
  Samuel Gerard Crowell, private  secretary to Senator Lorton, chairman of the committee on tariff  revision."
  There was more of it, having to do with the routine  of the search for the two cars. This was not especially
  important,  since the two machines had already been abandoned.
  HAM did some concentrated thinking, which got him  nowhere. He could not understand of just what value
  would such a  prisoner as Crowell be?
  Observing that the cars had turned into a roadside  establishment, Ham put other thoughts from his mind. He
  throttled the  gyro engine down so that it barely maintained his altitude, and made as  little noise as possible.
  Then he rubbed his aching eyes and once more  used the strong binoculars.
  The place below seemed to be a summer camp and  consisted of a large main building and a number of
  smaller bungalows,  all situated on the shores of a small lake. At least one detail of the  layout was interesting.
  There was a building on the lake shore built  over the water, and it was too large for a mere boathouse. Ham
  hazarded  a guess that it housed a seaplane.
  The dapper lawyer continued his observation until he  was certain the cars had reached their destination. He
  saw the machines  put into garages. Shutting off the gyro motor, he headed the craft  downward to the west of
  the camp where the blinding effects of the late  afternoon sun would help prevent the aircraft being observed.
  He landed  on the level floor of a dry creek, the only spot available in the  wooded vicinity.
  He got out and ran toward the camp, trailed rather  closely by Chemistry and Habeas Corpus.
  A MAN loafed on the rustic porch of the camp’s  largest building. A shotgun lay across his knees. A close
  observer  might have noticed that he kept a sharp lookout over the vicinity.  Another man was doing the same
  thing on the rear porch, and he also had  a shotgun. Between them, they kept the surroundings under close
  observation.
  Noise suddenly broke out in the brush some distance  from the house. It was a not inconsiderable uproar,
  marked by  squealings and squeakings. In fact, considering the kind of a noise it  was and the locale, it was a
  startling sound. In a jungle infested by  wild pigs and monkeys it might have been explainable, but here in the
  Jersey hills it was hard to account for.
  "Bill!" yelled the fellow on the back porch. "What  the hell’s going on around there?"
  "It’s in the brush!" Bill explained. "Danged if I  know what it is!"
  So unique and so loud was this noise which had  suddenly shattered the solitude of Jersey, that the two men
  joined each  other in the yard and stood staring at the brush.
  "Must be a couple of wampus cats," one grinned.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  65
  
  "They got them in Jersey?" the other asked, with  entire seriousness.
  His companion snorted.
  "Come on," he said. "Let’s look into this!"
  The two men, with their shotguns ready, advanced  into the brush. The undergrowth being thick, they had to
  make a little  noise themselves.
  The uproar ahead abruptly ceased, and there was a  sound as if two animals of not very impressive size were
  leaving the  vicinity in great haste.
  The two men ran forward, craning necks to see what  they could. One fell down and got up, cursing. They
  were no woodsmen,  and they did not care for the brush tearing their clothing. They  stopped and jumped up
  and down like dogs looking for rabbits in a  meadow. They did not, however, catch sight of the causes of the
  noise.
  "Oh, well!" One shrugged. "Every little bit of  excitement around this dead hole helps."
  They trudged back to the house and took up their  positions on the front and rear porches, shotguns ready
  across their  knees. Having been gone only a few moments, and returning to find no  visible change in the
  place, they took it for granted that everything  was all right.
  EVERYTHING was not all right—not from the standpoint  of the two lookouts. They did not know that Ham
  had managed to get the  two strange pets, Habeas and Chemistry, to stage a fight. Not that this  took a great
  deal of ability, however. Habeas and Chemistry were ready  to stage a fight almost any time. Under cover of
  the uproar which had  drawn the two lookouts away, Ham had flitted across the clearing and  was now inside
  the large building.
  Ham had crawled through what looked like a basement  window, and had found, much to his disgust, that
  there was no basement.  The house rested on a foundation, about a yard off the ground, and the  rock wall of
  this foundation was perforated with windows.
  Ham was disgusted. He had run himself into a hole  from which escape would be difficult. He crouched there,
  mentally  chewing his finger nails, until his eyes, which had been used to the  afternoon sunlight,
  accommodated themselves to the gloom underneath the  house. It was then that Ham perceived that things
  were not as bad as  they had at first seemed.
  Almost over his head—he was well under the  house—there was a trapdoor. The explanation for this
  completely defied  him for a moment. Then he decided on the reason.
  The trapdoor had been newly made. Somebody must have  provided it for an escape!
  Ham glanced about, then worked toward the rear.  Because there seemed to be no harm in doing so, he struck
  matches. They  afforded some light for his study of floor beams above his head,  which were festooned with
  cobwebs. These cobwebs were scraped loose in  some places. Ham found an area which was almost free of
  the sheer silky  threads. Directly beneath this spot, he thumped the ground gently with  a fist.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  66
  
  As he expected, there was a hollow sound. He scraped  quietly with his hands and uncovered a square board.
  He lifted this and  exposed the mouth of a shaft which was timbered.
  Ham crawled back to the trapdoor, put an ear to it  and caught a voice murmur; but the speakers did not seem
  to be in the  room above. Ham put force against the trapdoor. It lifted hard. A  moment later, he knew it came
  up under a settee or some other large  article of furniture, and was covered by a rug.
  The voices were quite distinct now, the words  understandable.
  SEVERAL men were talking and they seemed to be  discussing another man, who was in difficulties.
  "He’ll be comin’ out of it shortly," one said.
  "He oughta!" growled another. "If you was careful  with that chloroform."
  "What was that noise outside?"
  Some one must have gone out and questioned the two  guards, because there was a noise of steps leaving, an
  interval, then  they returned.
  "Two rabbits or somethin’ got to fightin’ in the  brush."
  "Rabbits don’t fight!"
  "Well, it was somethin’. Didn’t amount to nothin’.  Look! Our friend, the senator’s secretary, is
  comin’ ‘round."
  That identified for Ham the man they had  chloroformed. It was the fellow they had taken from the train. They
  must have drugged him to keep him quiet.
  Ham listened intently. He heard an assortment of  groans, such as might have come from a man in the act of
  regaining  consciousness. There was a series of loud pops, as of hands on flesh.  Evidently the victim was
  being slapped awake.
  "Everything set?" demanded one of the captors,  anxiously. "The adjustments should be made before he
  regains—"
  "Shut up that fool talk!" another told him. "This  guy isn’t to know what the whole thing is about!"
  A shrill voice began to sputter.
  "What—what—what is the significance of this  outrage?" it demanded.
  That, Ham decided, was exactly the kind of voice  that senators’ secretaries should have—the voice of a
  young man who had  too much dignity for his age.
  "You know very well why you are here!" one of his  captors growled.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  67
  
  "Why—why—I can’t imagine!" snapped the senator’s  secretary. "I never saw you men before! Let me go!
  I’ve no money to pay  you a ransom!"
  "We don’t want money!"
  "Then what do you want?"
  "Revenge!"
  THERE was a short interval while the young man who  was a prisoner tried to decide what they meant.
  "Revenge?" he gulped. "I don’t understand!"
  A moment of silence followed. Ham, in his mind’s  eye, could see the men who were doing the questioning
  glaring at the  captive.
  "You lyin’ little whelp! You do know what  we’re talkin’ about!"
  "I don’t!" the prisoner exploded, hastily.
  "It happened within the last ten days," he was told.
  "But I don’t recall anything." insisted the prisoner.
  "Think hard," growled the other. "You’ll recall it,  all right. Maybe it didn’t mean nothin’ to you. But it sure
  meant a lot  to a pal of ours. We’re gettin’ even for him, see?"
  Ham, following the proceedings with all his  attention, envisioned the prisoner thinking over every move he
  had made  during the recent past. Ham also did some thinking himself. He had  concluded these men were
  putting on an act, for they were not very good  actors and their amateurishness had given them away.
  What was their motive? Ham’s best brow wrinkling  failed to bring to mind anything that would explain the
  proceedings.
  Apparently, the problem was too much for the  prisoner, too.
  "Please!" he exploded. "I’ve thought over every move  I’ve made in the last two weeks. I can’t think of a
  thing."
  A man with a harsh voice asked, "What about it?"
  Apparently, this question was not addressed to the  senator’s secretary.
  "I’ll see," said one of the men, in reply to the  question. 
  Some one left the room where the interrogating was  taking place. Three or four minutes elapsed. Then the
  one who had  departed came back.
  "It’s all hunky dory," said the man who had left the  room.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIII. HAM HAS DIFFICULTIES
  68
  
  "What’s the meaning of this insanity?" yelled the  prisoner. 
  The man with the harsh voice laughed heartily.
  "Buddy, I’m gonna have to beg your pardon," he said.  "We’ve made what you might call a terrible big
  mistake." 
  "You mean I’m the wrong man?"
  "You said it, buddy."
  "I’ll have you all in jail for this!" shrilled the  prisoner, suddenly regaining his courage.
  "Um−m−m!" muttered the harsh voice. "In that case,  maybe we just better tie a rock to you and drop you in
  the lake,  instead of turnin’ you loose!"
  There was a moment of horrified silence.
  "No! No!" exploded the prisoner. "I won’t tell any  one about this!"
  "Blindfold him," directed the leader. "Take him out."
  The prisoner was not long on courage. He began to  scream at the top of his voice, stopping only when a hand
  was evidently  slapped over his mouth.
  "Gag him!" directed the leader. "Take him away." 
  The young man was dragged out.
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  HAM had confidence in the cold−blooded villainy of  the men above him, and was half convinced that he had
  just heard a  murder ordered. He must stop that! He shoved against the trapdoor and a  piece of furniture—it
  was a settee—slid away, making little noise,  thanks to the muffling effects of a rug. 
  Ham tilted the trapdoor lid back and, in almost  complete silence, climbed up into a room. He was no sooner
  there than  he wished he had not been so hasty, because he immediately heard words  from the next room
  which assured him that murder was not to be done.
  "You ain’t gonna croak the kid?" one of the gang  asked, anxiously.
  "Nah!" said the man with the harsh voice. "Blindfold  and gag him, take him over on the other side of the
  State somewhere,  and dump him."
  "That’s the best out," agreed the other. "If he was  to get killed, it’d stir up a fuss."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  69
  
  At that point, a man entered the next room in some  haste. He was evidently carrying papers in his hands. Ham
  could hear  them rustle.
  "Well?" growled the coarse voice. "Did you get it  all down in shorthand?"
  "Most of it! Enough to make plenty of jack!"
  "How does it read?"
  "The tariff committee is gonna recommend that the  import duty on Cuban sugar be reduced exactly fifty per
  cent," the man  with the papers explained. "And what the committee recommends is pretty  sure to get by the
  House, the Senate, and the president. That means the  tariff will be reduced."
  The coarse voice laughed. "That’s swell! I’ll get in  touch with the big chief right away and we’ll have brokers
  buying up  the available supply of Cuban sugar in no time at all."
  "How much do you think this will make us?" 
  "How the hell would I know?"
  "I hope it’s more than the Jethro Mandebran haul."
  "It may be," said the other. "Anyway, this is more  legitimate. We ain’t comin’ right out and stealin’ the
  money. If they  did catch us, I doubt if they could do anything."
  "What about takin’ that senator’s secretary off the  train? Ain’t that kidnapin’?"
  "Not for a smart lawyer. We didn’t ask for ransom,  did we?"
  The man laughed heartily at his own explanation of  just how simple the circumstances were.
  Ham was hearing interesting things, and wanted to go  on hearing them. He decided accordingly it might be a
  good idea to get  back under the floor, and made a move to do this. But there is such a  thing as being too
  cautious, especially when under a nervous strain.
  The trapdoor slipped out of Ham’s clutch and upset.  Had the roof of the house fallen in, it could not have
  made a more  disastrous noise.
  Following the clatter, there was dead silence. Then  some one cursed. Feet rattled on the floor, as men made a
  rush for the  door.
  Ham was a cautious soul. He was wearing one of Doc  Savage’s bulletproof chain mail undergarments, but
  that did not mean he  cared to have the men shooting at him.
  Diving a hand at his armpit, Ham produced from a  padded holster one of Doc Savage’s supermachine pistols.
  He pointed it  at the door, and the thing let out an earsplitting moan as it dropped  the so−called "mercy
  bullets" through the aperture.
  The noise of the gun was so profoundly impressive  that the charge of the men was halted.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  70
  
  There must have been a rack of high−powered rifles  in the next room. The men used them to drive bullets
  through the walls.  Laths and plaster of the partition offered little resistance.
  HAM’S legal training and practice had equipped him  with an agile set of wits. He could think quickly at all
  times, but he  was possibly at his best in a crisis, and proceeded to prove this now.
  He seized the trapdoor, jammed it back in place,  covered it with the rug and replaced the settee. The shooting,
  the  thudding of rifle bullets, the clatter of falling plaster, the howling  of the men, covered any noises he might
  have made.
  Ham next raced to the window. It was closed. He  opened it and unhooked the screen. This was to give the
  impression that  he had come in by that route. The two guards who had been outside might  wonder how he
  had managed to do this unobserved. However, that was  their problem.
  Working swiftly, Ham upset a chair near the window.  It was his hope that the enemy would think this was
  what had made the  clatter.
  Ham now drew a deep breath. Bullets were smacking  through the walls here and there. It was only by good
  fortune that he  had not been hit, although a head wound would be the only kind which  could disable him
  seriously, thanks to his bulletproof undergarment.
  Ham eyed the opposite wall, then took a short run,  jumped in the air and hit the wall feet first.
  It was a partition giving into another room—not the  room from which they were shooting. The building had
  been constructed  for summer occupancy, and the partitions inside were of a composition  board. This
  cardboardlike stuff surrendered. Ham went through to his  waist, struggled violently, and then managed to
  negotiate the rest of  the passage.
  There was a tiny hallway, and a flight of rustic  stairs. Ham raced up the stairs, found a door at the top and
  shoved  through.
  "You!" 
  exploded a voice that might have belonged to a small boy. "Talk of  the devil, and—" 
  Ham looked at Monk, who was tied up in ropes about  as securely as a man could be.
  "Who’d you think it was?" Ham demanded, producing a  knife and starting on the ropes.
  "An army, from the amount of shooting! Be careful  with that dang knife! Where’s my pet hog?"
  "Around somewhere with Chemistry."
  "He’s in bad company," Monk growled. "Turn that  other guy loose."
  "What other guy?"
  Monk pointed. "Where’s your eyes?"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  71
  
  The upstairs section of the building was little more  than an attic, and since there were no windows, it was
  comparatively  dark in the recesses. Ham peered and discovered a figure he had missed  before.
  The individual was stout, gray−haired, with a pair  of cheeks as ruddy as apples. Under ordinary conditions,
  he would have  been a dignified gentleman with an air about him; but there is  something about being tied
  hand and foot which dispels dignity.
  Ham leaped over and began using the knife on the  elderly gentleman’s bindings. The latter was not gagged,
  and he spoke.
  "What do you think our chances are of getting out of  here alive?" he asked, calmly enough.
  "Excellent!" said Ham. Always an optimist.
  The elderly gentleman got to his feet. Some of his  dignity automatically returned. Ham, who was one of the
  greatest living  experts on sartorial matters, observed that the gentleman’s suit was of  expensive cloth and fine
  tailoring.
  "Who," Ham demanded, "are you?"
  "Jethro Mandebran," said the elderly man.
  IT was not entirely necessary for Jethro Mandebran  to reveal his name. Ham had already guessed his identity,
  having  recognized the missing banker from pictures which had been printed by  the newspapers. Ham peered
  about in search of other prisoners. The rest  of the attic seemed devoid of inhabitants.
  The gang downstairs was still shooting through the  walls. No bullets had as yet sought out the upper portion
  of the house,  so they probably thought Ham was still below.
  The coarse−voiced man was shouting, and his orders  had an ominous trend. He was directing some of his
  men to get outside  and take up positions where they could cover the house and prevent any  one from escaping.
  "Where is your son, Alex?" Ham demanded of Jethro  Mandebran.
  A startling change came over the banker. His fists  clenched, and his cheeks distinctly lost some of their ripe
  apple color.
  "My son!" he yelled hoarsely. "Have they got him?"
  The yell was heard below. A rifle bullet came up  through the floor with an unpleasant rap, and missed Monk
  not more than  six inches. The homely chemist bounced hastily to one side.
  "If you got any rabbits in your hat," he told Ham,  "you better pull ‘em out. We’re in a jam!"
  "Just keep your hairy hide on!" Ham advised.
  The dapper lawyer inserted a hand into a pocket and  brought out a flat metal case which held two ammunition
  clips for his  machine pistol. These bullets, however, were not charged with the  chemical concoction which
  produced unconsciousness. What they held was  of more violent nature.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  72
  
  Ham inserted one of the new drums in his machine  pistol, ran to the stairs, leaned over and fired. He gave the
  trigger  the briefest of pressures, to release not more than a dozen shots.
  The result was annihilating. The rooms below filled  with noise, splinters and reddish flame. It was as if
  lightning had  struck a dozen times in one spot.
  With a hasty gesture Ham latched the machine pistol  into single−shot position, the high explosive missiles
  being too  precious to waste. Before launching more of them, he listened.
  As was not unreasonable to expect, the men  downstairs were suddenly giving all of their attention to getting
  out  of the house. They had suffered damage. One fellow was screaming that  he had a broken leg and
  demanding help, even threatening to shoot some  one if he was not aided.
  Ham released two more explosive bullets. They shook  the house and hurried the exodus.
  "Come on!" Ham ordered Monk and Mandebran. "If we  give them time to get organized, we’ll be out of
  luck!"
  "My son!" gulped Jethro Mandebran.
  "Monk!" Ham rapped. "Where’d they take young Alex  Mandebran?"
  "Somewhere else," Monk explained. "They said  something about their boss wanting to question him."
  "Come on!" Ham repeated.
  The stairway was a wreck. Ham bounded hopefully to  the lower floor, led the way into the adjacent room
  and, with wild  haste, moved the settee and the rug and levered up the trapdoor.
  They all dropped through, and Ham exposed the mouth  of the tunnel shaft he had discovered previously.
  "Hah!" Monk grunted. "I might have known he’d have a  hole located!"
  HAM took the lead, holstering his machine pistol so  that dirt would not get in its mechanism when he started
  crawling. At  the best, there is something ominous about crawling through a tunnel  barely large enough to
  accommodate one’s person. There were times when  the bulky Monk, bringing up the rear, groaned that he
  would never make  it. Thoughts of what would happen if the walls collapsed, pestered them.
  Ham, controlling an overpowering desire to crawl as  fast as possible, soon splashed into water and
  experienced a hideous  feeling that the thing was flooded. This proved not to be the case, for  it was only a
  puddle of seepage.
  After he had crawled so far that it seemed certain  they had traversed a large slice of the State of New Jersey,
  Ham bumped  a wooden door. Fumbling, he found a latch, which be manipulated  cautiously.
  He was not surprised to find himself peering out  into a large building which held an amphibian plane. The
  plane was not  especially large; it was a single−motored cabin job. The ship had a new  look, as if it had just
  come from a production line.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  73
  
  "This is a break!" Ham scrambled out of the tunnel.  "Come on, you two!"
  He ran for the ship. Monk and Jethro Mandebran  hurried after him, looking vastly relieved. It was beginning
  to seem  that they would make a get−away after all.
  "This," declared Monk, "is gonna be a cinch!"
  Monk had scarcely released the words, when the door  of the plane popped open and revealed a man seated on
  the cabin floor.  He held an automatic rifle. At that range, he could scarcely miss them.
  "It’s a cinch!" the man said. "If you don’t think  so, just make a funny move!"
  Ham, Monk and Jethro Mandebran came to a dead stop,  and seemed unable to think of anything to say.
  The man with the automatic rifle remarked casually,  "These bullets are copro−nickel and will go through that
  armor cloth  stuff of Doc Savage’s. We tried it, to make sure."
  "How’d they find out about the chain mail  undergarments?" Ham asked out of the side of his mouth.
  "They took mine away from me after they grabbed me,"  Monk growled back at him. "Johnny was wearing
  one, too."
  Jethro Mandebran breathed desperately, "Shall we  make a break for it?"
  If Ham and Monk were toying with that idea, they  dismissed it when a man stood up from behind a gasoline
  drum in a  corner, two automatic pistols in his hands. More men came in.
  "We thought of watchin’ this end of the tunnel first  thing!" one of the newcomers grinned.
  Ham was relieved of his machine pistol. A stout cord  was employed to lash his wrists behind his back. Monk
  and Jethro  Mandebran received the same treatment.
  "We gotta find out what’s to be done with you," one  of the men said, and walked out.
  HAM eyed Jethro Mandebran.
  "What have they been doing with you?" he asked.
  "That mystifies me," said Mandebran. "Nothing!"
  "Nothing?"
  "They just held me! They asked me questions about  bank affairs and so on. I did not even answer the
  questions. Strangely  enough, they did not insist on replies, nor did they torture me."
  Ham asked dryly, "How about the twenty million that  disappeared?"
  "What?" Jethro Mandebran’s eyes flew very wide.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIV. THE MAN WHO VANISHED
  74
  
  "That sum has vanished from the bank which you  control," Ham informed him.
  "Why—why—" Jethro Mandebran choked. He was a picture  of a profoundly startled and horrified elderly
  gentleman.
  "Why," he exploded finally, "there was that much  money available, but no one could have gotten their hands
  on it without  knowledge which I alone possess!"
  "That is what the authorities think," Ham remarked.
  Jethro Mandebran became rigid. "You mean I am  accused?"
  "The police are doing a lot of wondering," Ham  admitted. 
  At this point, four men marched in, picked up Jethro  Mandebran and carried him out bodily.
  Monk and Ham exchanged curious glances. Some five  minutes later, the same four men walked in again.
  "What’d you do with Mandebran?" Monk demanded,  apprehensively.
  The men did not reply. Their manner, however, as  they laid hold of Monk and Ham, was ominous.
  Ham did not like the look of it, and a horrible  thought struck him. These fellows seemed not to be at all
  afraid, and  it was incredible that they should be unafraid of Doc Savage. Could it  be that the gang had
  managed to trap Doc? Had they disposed of him?
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  DOC SAVAGE had not been disposed of, but he was  having his difficulties. Incarcerated with Johnny and
  Sylvan Niles in  the deep basement room of the old country house, escape from which was  denied them by the
  steel plate which had closed the top of the  dumb−waiter−like shaft, they were trapped. How thoroughly, they
  were  not sure as yet.
  Since the plate across the shaft was extremely  solid, they were trying to dig up alongside it. For digging tools,
  they  had demolished the bench and were using the big bolts which had held it  together. Johnny, finishing his
  spell at the work, dropped down out of  the hole. They were taking turns.
  Doc Savage climbed up. He had taken the rubber heels  from his shoes, split them into sheets with his pocket
  knife and had  bound these around the longest bolt handle with a shirt sleeve. This  insulating of the bolt was
  merely a precaution.
  Johnny, having caught his breath somewhat, began  throwing questions at Sylvan Niles. Johnny had occupied
  all his rest  intervals in that fashion, but his success at uncovering anything new  had not been a marked
  success.
  "How do you and Hando Lancaster hook into this?"  Johnny demanded.
  "We don’t," said the girl. "We were dragged in."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  75
  
  "How?"
  "Through the spying and crookedness of a friend,  socalled," retorted the young woman.
  "Meaning young Alex Mandebran?"
  "Meaning whoever you want to think?" she snapped.
  "Be specific," Johnny requested.
  "It must be a swell day outside, don’t you suppose?"
  "A predicational abnegation!" grumbled Johnny. He  knew the girl would now start giving him snappy
  answers which meant  nothing.
  Unexpectedly, Doc Savage dropped down out of the  hole which they were digging upward. The point of the
  bolt looked as if  it had been placed for a time in the flame of a welding torch. Bluish  smoke rolled down out
  of the hole.
  "Electricity?" Johnny demanded.
  The bronze man nodded.
  "High amperage stuff carried by a network of  insulated wires."
  BONY Johnny peered doubtfully at the hole. He  fumbled with an absent movement at the spot on the left side
  of his  chest where his magnifying monocle usually dangled. This gesture meant  that he was concerned.
  "The wires can be cut?" he said, hopefully.
  "Not with the equipment we have available," Doc  Savage corrected. "The handle of this bolt is wrapped with
  all the  insulating materials we have. It is not enough. Touching the wires gave  me quite a shock through the
  handle."
  Gaunt Johnny frowned. "Does that mean we are stuck?"
  "Not exactly," Doc told him. "But it does mean we  will have to try something that may conceivably result in
  our being  buried alive."
  "What is it?"
  Doc Savage looked at the young woman. "Do you want  to take a chance?"
  "I might as well," she retorted. "If we’re here when  those men return, we might as well commit hara−kiri."
  Without further explanation, the bronze man went to  work. He drew from a pocket one of the tiny grenades
  which had wrought  such havoc upstairs earlier. He opened this, doing it carefully by a  process of unscrewing.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  76
  
  Doc completed dissection of the grenade without  disastrous consequences. The explosive, once he had it in
  the palm of  his hand, looked something like grease. He crawled up into the shaft  and worked the stuff into the
  cracks at the edge of the metal plate.  After some difficulty, he also wedged the detonator device of the bomb
  alongside the explosive.
  "Get back!" he warned.
  An instant later, he had set the timing device in  operation, dropped down the shaft, leaped to the opposite side
  of the  chamber, protecting head and face as well as he could with his arms.  Johnny and Sylvan Niles did
  likewise.
  Came a crash as if planets had collided. They  distinctly felt the shock all over their bodies—sudden, violent
  pressure which left a feeling of tingling strangeness. Earth and débris  tumbled down. Doc came erect and
  raced to the shaft mouth.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" gulped Johnny, also  reaching the shaft.
  The vertical tunnel seemed to have collapsed. The  lower part of it was completely blocked.
  THEY began to dig furiously. Dust choked them. They  had to back away from the shaft and stand on tiptoe to
  breathe air that  was comparatively free of dust. Johnny was perspiring freely. The girl  was pale, grim. The
  explosive had thrown off fumes that nauseated them  and stung their eyes.
  They started digging again, and soon discovered the  blast had shattered the steel barrier topping the shaft.
  When finally they crawled out into the basement, it  was dark. They breathed deeply, coughing and hacking to
  get rid of the  dust, and slapped earth off their clothing.
  "If you know a big word meaning hurrah, you might  use it!" Sylvan Niles told scholastic Johnny in the
  darkness.
  "When we get out in daylight, if it’s still daytime,  I’ll do my best," Johnny replied.
  "Maybe this’ll help!" suggested a howling voice.
  The electric lights came on. The light bulbs were of  a 32−volt size, using current supplied by a small
  farm−type plant, and  the lighting was not especially bright.
  The light was enough, however, to disclose Hando  Lancaster.
  HANDO LANCASTER, at his best, was not a gentleman  pleasant to look at. His round body, his tremendous
  head, his pipe−stem  arms and legs, were unnatural. Too, his perpetual expression was that  of a man who has
  just tried to consume a green persimmon.
  Just now, his appearance was made more forbidding by  the efficient−looking blue revolver which he held.
  "Hando!" the girl gasped. "How did you find this  place?"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  77
  
  Hando Lancaster’s features twitched "I had a  prisoner!" he screeched at the girl.
  She nodded. "Yes! The one Doc Savage overpowered at  the old brick factory. You carried him away when
  Doc was chasing the  fellow’s companions."
  "I learned of this place from that prisoner," yelled  Hando Lancaster. "It took me time! I got here and was
  searching, when I  heard that explosion. I simply waited to see who was digging out."
  Doc Savage changed his position slightly, and Hando  Lancaster jutted his revolver in the bronze man’s
  direction. "You stand  still!"
  Doc Savage studied the strange−looking fellow with  the howling voice. "You are taking the wrong course,
  Lancaster."
  "I’ve spent my life working on something that can  change the whole course of human existence!" Hando
  Lancaster bellowed.  "It’s been stolen from me! The whelps who got it are using it to steal  money!"
  "Will you accept my aid in recovering your  invention—as you call it?" Doc asked.
  "No!"
  "That makes it look as if you contemplate some  crookedness of your own. Perhaps these other men just beat
  you to it."
  Hando Lancaster squawled, "For thirty cents I’d  shoot you!"
  He looked as if he meant it.
  Sylvan Niles interrupted hastily, attempting to calm  the storm.
  "Hando and I have spent every cent we possess on  experiments," the girl explained. "Hando’s idea is worth a
  fortune. It  will do civilization an untold amount of good!"
  "It is the greatest invention in history!" yelled  Hando Lancaster.
  "Exactly!" said the girl. "And we are darn well  going to get paid for it. Call us greedy, if you want to."
  Johnny was watching Doc Savage’s metallic hands. The  bronze man’s fingers had been moving idly, as if he
  were nervous. This,  however, was not the case. He was forming words in the deaf−and−dumb  sign language,
  in the manipulation of which he and all of his aids were  skilled.
  "You’re two crooks!" yelled Johnny, doing as Doc  Savage had directed him by sign language.
  Hando Lancaster started to shift his gun toward  Johnny. Doc Savage, displaying blinding speed, leaped and
  grabbed Hando  Lancaster’s gun.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XV. THE GNARLED MAN
  78
  
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  FIVE minutes later, the entire party—Doc Savage,  Johnny, Sylvan Niles and Hando Lancaster—were in
  Hando Lancaster’s car,  a large sedan which looked shabby, but which seemed sound enough  mechanically.
  The car had a large trunk on a rear rack.
  Doc Savage was driving. Sylvan Niles rode beside  him. In the rear seat, Johnny administered rather roughly
  to Hando  Lancaster, who was just recovering from a clip on the jaw which Doc  Savage had found necessary
  to give him.
  Hando Lancaster opened his eyes, blinked several  times, and put a fierce grimace on his large face. This came
  so near to  being his usual expression that, strangely enough, he did not seem  especially angry.
  "An antipugnacious attitude is of inestimable  signification," said Johnny.
  Hando Lancaster frowned and gave several additional  blinks.
  "They didn’t have words like that when I went to  school!" he growled.
  "If you’re smart, you won’t get tough," said Johnny,  putting his earlier remark in simpler phraseology.
  Hando Lancaster snorted, but he evidently thought it  was good advice. He behaved.
  Doc Savage was driving, and tooled the car along  expertly at a high rate of speed. When they reached a
  village, Doc  stopped the car, left Johnny to watch the other two, entered a  newsstand and bought a late
  edition of a paper. He walked out of the  drugstore reading the newspaper, and on reaching the car, handed it
  to  Johnny.
  "Take a look at that!" he suggested.
  Johnny knew the bronze man was referring to the  headlines:
  GANG HALTS FAST TRAIN
  SENATOR’S SECRETARY TAKEN
  Hando Lancaster leaned forward and stared steadily  for several moments, reading the headlines and a part of
  the story  below. The story explained the senator was head of the sugar tariff  revision committee.
  "Want to tell us what that means?" Doc Savage asked  him.
  Hando Lancaster only stared.
  "I’ll tell you," the girl spoke up, unexpectedly.  "It’s worth it, if we can keep that gang from—"
  "Shut up!" yelled Hando Lancaster.
  "Use your head!" the girl snapped at him. "Those men  stand a chance to make millions—"
  "They’re not robbing anybody, are they?" retorted  Hando Lancaster.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  79
  
  "Yes, they are!" asserted the girl. "That senator’s  secretary probably knows what is to be done about the sugar
  tariff.  These men will jump in and buy or sell sugar, and will take profits  that should go to the people who
  grow and handle the sugar."
  "Shut up!" yelled Hando Lancaster.
  Without saying a word, Doc Savage got behind the  wheel and drove on. He headed for New York City. If the
  girl and Hando  Lancaster expected him to question them, they got a surprise, for he  addressed no inquiry
  whatever to them.
  DOC drove directly to the skyscraper which housed  his headquarters. He did not put Hando Lancaster’s
  sedan in the  basement garage, but parked it in a side street near the skyscraper.
  Without persuasion, Hando Lancaster and the girl  accompanied Doc Savage and Johnny into the building. It
  was significant  that Lancaster and the girl, both virtual prisoners, did not call on a  policeman for help,
  although they passed within a few feet of one and  the officer saluted Doc smartly.
  They took Doc’s private elevator to the eighty−sixth  floor, stepped out into the severely plain modernistic
  corridor and  approached the metal door entering into Doc’s headquarters.
  "Wait here," Doc Savage directed.
  Leaving the others behind, Doc entered the reception  room. There he did a thing which would have surprised
  Johnny, had he  seen it. Doc got an ordinary−looking revolver from a case. He carried  this through the library,
  selected a large, overstuffed chair and  thrust the gun down beside the cushion. It was out of sight there, but
  any one sitting in the chair would be almost certain to feel its hard  bulk.
  Doc went back and admitted the others.
  "There might have been enemies hidden here," he  explained.
  DOC guided Hando Lancaster and Sylvan Niles into the  library, waved at chairs and requested, "Take seats."
  Hando Lancaster occupied the chair which was most  convenient to him when Doc Savage issued the
  invitation. This chanced  to be the chair with the gun concealed beside its cushion.
  Johnny left the room to change from the breechcloth  he was still wearing, to some street clothes. He came
  back quickly.
  Going to a telephone—there were extension telephones  in all parts of the place—Doc Savage got a long
  distance operator.
  "Get me Senator Lorton, in charge of the senatorial  committee on tariff revision," the bronze man requested.
  The wait was short enough to be a compliment to the  efficiency of modern telephone communication. Doc
  Savage made his  identity known to Senator Lorton. Evidently, the bronze man’s name and  reputation were
  familiar to the legislator, because there was no  preliminary negotiating before Doc launched into the heart of
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  80
  
  the  matter on his mind.
  "Your secretary, Samuel Gerard Crowell, was seized  this afternoon by a group of unscrupulous men who
  desire to know what  the senatorial committee has decided to do about the sugar tariff  question," the bronze
  man said. "Your secretary undoubtedly knew what  the committee had decided to do."
  "He did," admitted Senator Lorton. "But my secretary  was asked no questions about the sugar tariff. I have
  just talked to  him—his kidnapers released him, not long ago—and he stated explicitly  he was not lying."
  "Nevertheless, the information was probably secured  from him," Doc Savage said. "Are you familiar enough
  with my name to  take my word that the information was secured?"
  The senator hesitated for a long time. "I’ll assume  you know what you are talking about."
  "The men who got the information undoubtedly intend  to use it to trade on the sugar market. If the tariff is
  raised, any  domestic sugar they buy now can be sold for more money a bit later. Can  you do something about
  that?"
  "I certainly can!" said Senator Lorton. "I will  explain to the committee that we must pigeonhole this bill for
  an  indefinite period. Would that do the trick?"
  "It would," Doc told him. "And thank you."
  "I would like to have more details on this."
  "You will get them," Doc assured him. "Later."
  The conversation was terminated.
  During the conversation, the bronze man had been  watching the windows—but not because he was interested
  in the view. He  could see Hando Lancaster’s reflection in one of the windows.
  Doc had seen Lancaster give a slight start, then  casually insert a hand between the cushion and the side of the
  chair in  which he sat. Hando Lancaster had discovered the presence of the gun.
  "I’ll be back in a few minutes!" Doc Savage said to  Johnny.
  The bony geologist was occupying a chair near the  window. He had secured a machine pistol from the
  lockers in the  laboratory where the weapons were kept. He was not holding this in his  hands, but had placed it
  on a small table beside his chair. If he  needed the weapon, he would have to reach for it.
  Doc Savage left Johnny sitting there, watching the  two prisoners, and walked into the laboratory. Once in
  there, Doc moved  swiftly, leaping to the rear of the large room. Here he manipulated  hidden locks, and
  caused a panel in the wall to open.
  Doc stepped through the panel; it closed behind him.  A magnifying glass would have been necessary to find a
  trace of the  spot where he had disappeared.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  81
  
  IN the library, Johnny watched his two prisoners  idly. Neither said a word, but both looked very ill at ease.
  Hando  Lancaster seemed to be scratching his right thigh.
  "Cerebration might be expedient," Johnny suggested.
  "Eh?" said Hando Lancaster, who did not seem to be  up on long words.
  "Think it over!" Johnny translated. "If you’ve got  good judgment, you’ll decide to throw in with Doc Savage.
  Only crooks  buck the big bronze fellow."
  That last remark was scarcely tactful, and it caused  Sylvan Niles to glare indignantly.
  "I’m no crook!" she snapped. "You should realize  that by now!"
  "Your actions haven’t indicated as much," Johnny  reminded her.
  "What does this indicate to you?" Hando  Lancaster asked, suddenly.
  Johnny looked, and became a rigid linkage of bones  when he found himself scrutinizing the business end of a
  revolver. The  presence of a gun in Hando Lancaster’s hand smacked of black magic to  Johnny, the gaunt
  geologist not having seen Hando bring it up from  between and beside the cushion of the chair in which he sat.
  "Unless you figure you’re bulletproof, you’d better  sit still," said Hando Lancaster. "And don’t reach for that
  trick  pistol there by your elbow."
  Johnny was not exactly without caution, so he sat  still. He did his best to peer into the revolver’s chambers to
  see if  the weapon was loaded, but the light was wrong.
  "Sylvan, get his gun!" Hando Lancaster directed.
  The young woman complied with the request.
  Hando Lancaster heaved a sigh of relief when Johnny  was disarmed. Then the spiderlike inventor left his
  chair, came forward  and gouged Johnny’s stomach with the revolver muzzle.
  "We’re taking you as a hostage!" said Hando  Lancaster.
  The girl objected, "But that will only get us into  more trouble!"
  "Pipe down!" suggested Hando Lancaster. "From now  on, I’m going to use a different system! People are
  going to stop  walking on me, if they know what’s good for them."
  "Nobody’s been walking on you," Sylvan Niles told  him, frostily.
  "The heck they ain’t!"
  Johnny was urged toward the door. Hando Lancaster  managed to do an excellent job of watching Johnny and
  the laboratory  door at the same time. Hando evidently feared Doc Savage would appear.  The bronze man did
  not.
  Five minutes later, Johnny found himself seated in  Hando Lancaster’s ancient sedan. The car got into motion.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  82
  
  THE sedan had once been a sumptuous machine.  Upholstery was of good quality, although worn and in need
  of cleaning.  There was a clock mounted in the back of the front seat, so that those  riding in the rear could tell
  time without craning their necks. This  was an electric clock and it was running.
  It rewound itself with a rather loud click,  which called Johnny’s attention to the time. Later, it wound itself
  again, and Johnny noted that the elapsed time was exactly half an hour.  The clock was evidently old, or it
  would not rewind itself so often.
  It turned out that the rewinding activities of the  clock were to be Johnny’s only method of judging the
  passage of time,  for, once they were outside the confines of the city, the gaunt  geologist was blindfolded and
  forced to lie on the car’s floorboards.  He listened to the engine, trying to judge how fast they were going.
  This was difficult, because it was an old and noisy engine and probably  sounded as if it were going a good
  deal faster than it was.
  Once, the car turned sharply and bumped for a short  distance over what was evidently a rough side road. It
  came to a stop,  the engine died, and they remained parked there for some time. The only  piece of
  conversation was very short, and enlightened Johnny not at all.
  "Hando," said Sylvan Niles, "I think we’re doing the  wrong thing."
  "Leave it to me," retorted Hando Lancaster.
  "Possibly we should have told Doc Savage the whole  story," said the girl. "It’s likely he will find out,
  anyway."
  "Not if I can help it, he won’t!"
  After that, there was deep silence. The car engine  seemed to have overheated a little, and Johnny could hear
  the radiator  boil for a time. The sound finally subsided, but Johnny did not believe  they had stopped because
  of the overheating of the engine. A remark  made by Hando Lancaster finally told him the guess was correct.
  "Nobody following us!" said Hando Lancaster. "I’ve  watched the road, and there’s not an airplane in sight.
  It’s safe to go  on."
  "Where?" the girl asked him.
  "I’ll show you," said Hando Lancaster. "I fixed us  up a neat place!"
  The car backed out of the rough side road onto an  asphalt highway. Johnny, even blindfolded, could tell the
  difference  between asphalt and concrete pavement. Concrete slabs have expansion  joints at intervals, and
  cause a series of slight bumps as car wheels  passed over them.
  The clock reset itself twice before the car finally  came to a stop.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVI. THE BRONZE MAN MOVES
  83
  
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  JOHNNY, still blindfolded, was hauled out of the  car. Hando Lancaster seemed to have a great deal of
  strength, despite  his gnarled stature.
  Try as he would to look down his nose under the  blindfold, Johnny had no luck. He endeavored to use his
  ears, but Hando  Lancaster had left the noisy car engine running and its uproar  blanketed all small sounds.
  Johnny took several deep breaths through his nose.  The girl evidently realized he was trying to catch some
  scent which  would identify his surroundings, and promptly grabbed his nose and held  it, forcing him to
  breathe through his mouth so that he could not smell  effectively.
  "I’ll fix that!" said Hando Lancaster.
  A moment later, a small quantity of gasoline was  dumped on Johnny’s face. The strong tang of the stuff
  overcame all  other scents.
  "It’d make it simpler if we knocked him out,"  growled Hando Lancaster.
  He did not do this, however, but lifted Johnny and  carried him. Johnny, who had expected to be transported
  only a short  distance, was surprised when Hando Lancaster walked for some time.  Finally there came a series
  of jars, and Johnny decided he was being  carried down a long flight of stairs. He distinctly caught the odor of
  wet earth, of dampness. He was, he decided, being taken to a  subterranean cavern somewhere.
  Johnny, had his blindfold been removed, would have  received quite a shock. He would also have been
  disgusted with his own  perceptive abilities. Hando Lancaster had walked quite a distance, it  was true, but his
  walking had been done in a small circle. Now, by a  series of short jumps, he had succeeded in giving the
  impression to  Johnny that they were descending steps, when, as a matter of fact, they  were still on level
  ground.
  The girl had picked up a handful of damp earth and  was holding it where Johnny could get its scent through
  the gasoline  fumes.
  Though quite confident he was underground, Johnny  heard himself being carried across a wooden floor and
  through a door.  Metal came under the feet of the man who carried him. Then Johnny was  dumped with a
  painful thump on a hard steel floor.
  The blindfold was removed from his eyes. He blinked.  Intense darkness was all about him.
  Blinding light leaped from a flashlamp in Hando  Lancaster’s hand, and its roving luminance showed the steel
  wall of a  cubicle scarcely more than eight feet square. The metal had once been  red−leaded and painted, but
  the paint had scaled off, and there was a  great deal of rust.
  Both Sylvan Niles and Hando Lancaster were present.
  Johnny now demanded indignantly, "What’s the idea of  this?"
  "Glory be!" said Sylvan Niles. "You do use little  words once in a while, don’t you?"
  "Keep him here," Hando Lancaster directed.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  84
  
  HANDO LANCASTER walked out of the steel cell of a  room, his manner determined, as if he had
  something definite in mind.  During the interval when he was gone—about five minutes—Johnny looked
  around with great interest, endeavoring to ascertain where he was. The  steel chamber had no windows. The
  only opening was a door, and it was  narrow. The place smelled of dampness and rust.
  Hando Lancaster came back, walking gingerly. In his  arms he carried an army of complicated−looking
  apparatus. He put this  down near the door and began sorting it out. His touch was almost  loving.
  Johnny had been connected with Doc Savage long  enough to recognize most ordinary types of scientific
  devices. He  looked over Hando Lancaster’s outfit and noted several battery boxes.  There was also a pair of
  large cases covered with dials, and with  little inspection ports, through which intricate−looking vacuum tubes
  could be seen. The thing, Johnny decided instantly, was something Hando  Lancaster had created himself.
  Stare as he would, Johnny gathered not the slightest  idea of what the thing was.
  Hando Lancaster attached two peculiar−looking  headsets to the devices. These headsets were unusual in
  appearance.  They were literally cages of wires and glass tubes.
  One of the things was placed over Johnny’s head. It  was heavy.
  "You break that and I’ll knock your brains out!"  said Hando Lancaster, seriously.
  Johnny had been contemplating just that, but the man  sounded so earnest that he changed his mind.
  Hando Lancaster placed the other headgear carefully  over his own cranium. He squatted beside the boxes and
  fiddled with the  dials and switches. Johnny waited for something to happen. He half  expected to be
  electrocuted, but as far as he could tell, nothing  whatever occurred.
  Hando Lancaster began to grin widely. He was a  grotesque−looking bug of a chap under the headgear.
  "Who do you think is the main villain behind all  this mystery?" Hando Lancaster asked, abruptly.
  Johnny had, of course, considered that question  before and had concluded that Hando Lancaster himself
  looked as much  like a mastermind as anybody. The girl, of course, was working with  him, Johnny had
  concluded. Yet he was reluctant to think her thoroughly  villainous. Rather, she must have been deceived by
  Hando Lancaster.  Probably, the fellow had told her whatever he was doing was perfectly  legitimate, and she
  had believed him.
  "I haven’t the slightest idea who is the brains,"  Johnny said.
  "You’re a liar!" Hando Lancaster told him. "You  think I’m the mastermind."
  Johnny blinked and his mouth came open.
  "Furthermore, I have not deceived Sylvan Niles, as  you think," Hando Lancaster snapped.
  Johnny swallowed several times. To say that he was  stunned, was putting it mildly. He was dumfounded. The
  man was reading  his mind!
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  85
  
  "Exactly!" said Hando Lancaster.
  "Huh?" Johnny exploded.
  "I am doing exactly what you think I am doing,"  Hando Lancaster told him. "Reading your mind."
  WILLIAM HARPER LITTLEJOHN was an erudite soul, far  more filled with learning than the average
  individual. He was so  educated, in fact, that he seldom saw anything happen which he could  not explain
  instantly. His life had been a hectic one, especially since  he had joined up with Doc Savage. Yet, not often
  had he been completely  baffled.
  He was baffled now. Further, he was profoundly  amazed. It was impossible, of course, that Hando Lancaster
  could be  reading his mind. There must be a trick.
  "I’ll fool the guy," Johnny thought. By  concentrating, he cast his memory back. He thought of an incident,
  months in the past, when he had gone through some hair−raising  encounters with what had at first appeared
  to be monsters, but which  had later turned out to be nothing but oversize lizards.
  "What was I just thinking about?" Johnny demanded.
  "You are testing me by thinking about some big  lizards which you encountered some months ago," said
  Hando Lancaster.
  Johnny would not have been more dazed by a blow on  the head with a hammer. The man was reading his
  mind!
  Hando Lancaster came over, removed his apparatus  from Johnny’s spinning head and carried it toward the
  door with  infinite care, evidently planning to take it outside where it would be  safe.
  He was backing through the door, when a pair of  sinewy bronze hands jumped from concealment beside the
  door and grasped  Hando by the nape of the neck.
  Hando Lancaster had self−control. He did not want to  smash his apparatus, and he lowered it carefully to the
  floor before he  started to fight.
  He tried to reach a pocket, but Doc Savage trapped  his arms, preventing that move. Doc tore the pocket from
  the suit, and  a gun fell to the floor. Sylvan Niles ran for the weapon. Doc Savage  got in her way, still holding
  his prisoner.
  Shoving both Hando and the girl into a corner, Doc  managed to keep them there, thwarting easily their
  lunging attempts at  escape.
  Johnny flounced around on the floor, trying without  much success to loosen the bonds which held his wrists
  and ankles.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he barked. "How’d you  get here, Doc?"
  "Hando’s car," Doc explained, "has a large trunk."
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  86
  
  Hando Lancaster squawled, "You were in that trunk?"
  The bronze man nodded. It then dawned on Hando  Lancaster that he had been tricked throughout.
  "You planted that gun beside the chair cushion!" he  screeched. "I’ll bet it wasn’t even loaded!"
  "It wasn’t!" Doc Savage admitted.
  Sylvan Niles looked at Hando Lancaster accusingly.
  "I told you he would get the best of us," she said.  "We should have taken him into our confidence."
  Hando Lancaster glowered at Doc Savage. "Why did you  trick me into leading you here?"
  Doc pointed at the contraption which had been used  on Johnny.
  "To get hold of one of those things," he said.
  HANDO LANCASTER and Sylvan Niles, realizing that  they were wasting time trying to escape, stopped
  resisting and sulked  in the corner.
  Doc untied Johnny, then used the ropes which had  been on Johnny’s ankles to secure Hando Lancaster’s
  wrists and ankles.
  Then the bronze man assured Sylvan Niles, "if you  try to run, we shall have to tie you also."
  "I’ll stay!" she snapped.
  Doc dragged Hando Lancaster to the center of the  steel room, then brought the strange apparatus over. Doc
  spent several  minutes examining the device, which seemed to pain Hando Lancaster so  much that he groaned
  loudly.
  "Your life’s work, eh?" Doc asked.
  Hando Lancaster only moaned.
  "Judging from the care with which you were handling  it, this must be the only one you have left?" Doc
  suggested.
  The spiderilke man did not reply.
  As a part of the preparations for his unusual  career, Doc Savage had studied many subjects intensively.
  Electricity  was one of the sciences in which he had majored, and few living men had  a greater general
  knowledge of electricity.
  Lifting the headgear, which had been on Johnny, he  fitted it over Hando Lancaster’s head.
  "You want to do the receiving?" Doc asked Johnny. 
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  87
  
  "Will the thing really work?"
  "Try it and draw your own conclusions."
  Johnny hesitated. The device had seemingly  accomplished such a confoundingly impossible thing that he was
  skittish  about trying it. Finally, he shrugged and permitted the other headset  to be fitted over his brow. Doc
  then began adjusting knobs and switches.
  "If my mishandling endangers the device, you might  tell me," he requested of Hando Lancaster.
  "Turn the filament control knobs of the current  amplifier back about three points," Hando Lancaster growled.
  "They’re  in the upper right hand corner. I made those amplifier tubes myself,  and I don’t want them burned
  out. I haven’t got replacements!"
  "I don’t think the thing will work!" Johnny  interposed, emphatically.
  "It operates on a perfectly sound principle," Doc  Savage said, adjusting the knobs. "It is well known to
  scientists, and  has been for some time, that tiny electrical currents are generated in  the human brain. These
  currents are infinitesimal, only millionth parts  of volts."
  "Oh!" said Johnny. "I begin to catch on!"
  "Many experimenters have succeeded in detecting the  presence of the current by rigging supersensitive
  galvanometers around  the heads of human subjects," Doc Savage told him. "A galvanometer is  merely a
  device which indicates the presence of an electric current."
  Johnny frowned and seemed to be trying to  concentrate. "I don’t hear anything," he said.
  "And you won’t," Doc Savage told him. "Just relax.  Don’t try to think of anything."
  JOHNNY shut his eyes in an effort to do this. For  several moments there was absolutely no sound.
  "Do some thinking, so he can pick it up," Doc Savage  told Hando Lancaster.
  The latter only glared.
  More moments of waiting ensued. Johnny began to wear  an air of intense concentration. Finally, his jaw
  began to sag.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he exploded.
  "You are beginning to see how it works?" Doc Savage  asked him.
  "I certainly am!" Johnny replied. "I don’t hear  anything or see anything. A series of thoughts just pass
  through my  mind! I know darn well they’re not my thoughts, because I don’t know  anything about the
  subjects with which they are concerned!"
  The bronze man nodded. "The device on Hando  Lancaster’s head is a supersensitive antenna," he said. "It
  picks up  the electric field created by his thought waves. They are amplified  and—through the transmitter
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  88
  
  antenna which you are wearing—implanted  upon the nerves in the cells of your own brain."
  "Simple!" said Johnny, dizzily.
  "That is only the roughest kind of an explanation,"  Doc Savage assured him. "Actually, the process is highly
  involved,  amazingly complicated. But that is substantially how it is done."
  "An ultra−prodigiosity!" said Johnny.
  "What is Hando Lancaster thinking?" Doc Savage asked.
  JOHNNY sat silent for some time.
  "He is thinking that he would like to wring both our  necks," he said, and frowned reprovingly at Hando
  Lancaster.
  Hando Lancaster returned an indignant glare, but  said nothing. There was more silence.
  "He is thinking about the years he spent developing  this thought telepathy device," Johnny said. "He is
  thinking how he and  his secretary, Sylvan Niles, spent all their money on their  experiments. They went
  abroad to have a foreign scientist make up some  of the highly complicated vacuum tubes which they needed."
  "Excellent!" Doc Savage said.
  Johnny continued, "Hando Lancaster is thinking of  meeting young Alex Mandebran abroad. He is wondering
  how Alex Mandebran  could have learned of the existence of the mental telepathy apparatus.  He is also
  wondering how Alex Mandebran managed to steal his secret."
  "I’ve done some wondering on that score myself,"  Sylvan Niles interjected.
  "Please be still!" Johnny told her. "Hando Lancaster  is now thinking what a fiendish devil Alex Mandebran
  is, to seize his  own father and carry him away and subject him to examination with the  mental telepathy
  device in order to learn how to rob his poor father’s  bank of all those securities."
  Johnny began to look rather excited.
  "Doc!" he exploded. "Hando Lancaster knows  absolutely that Alex Mandebran is the brains behind this
  whole affair!  Hando Lancaster got that information from the prisoner whom you  captured for him out of the
  old factory building."
  The girl stared at Hando Lancaster.
  "Hando!" she gasped. "You did not tell me that you  had absolute proof of Alex Mandebran’s guilt."
  There was a noise from the doorway, a significant  noise. It drew all eyes.
  Three men, all the narrow opening would accommodate,  were wedged in the door. They had their hands full
  of guns.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVII. THE MENTAL TELEPATHER
  89
  
  "You people are finding out too blasted much!" one  said, grimly.
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS
  IF Doc Savage moved a muscle, it was not noticeable;  but Johnny was not as composed. He wrenched the
  complicated headgear  off his brow, placed it on the floor and scrambled erect.
  "You’re kind of a thin target," one of the gunmen in  the door told him. "But I believe I could hit you."
  Johnny clenched his fists, but he used excellent  judgment and stood still.
  "You’ve got us in a fine spot!" Sylvan Niles snapped  at Doc Savage.
  The bronze man said nothing.
  Entering the steel cubicle with extreme caution, two  of the newcomers proceeded to search Doc Savage and
  Johnny for weapons.  They seemed surprised to find none on the bronze mans person, although  they removed
  his coat, patted his trouser legs, searched under his  shirt, and even yanked off the bullet−proof chain mail
  undergarment  which he always wore.
  Several more men appeared. All were heavily armed.
  "How did you get here?" Hando Lancaster screamed at  them.
  "Shut up!" one told him. "We’ve had men following  you. You came here and looked this place over a week
  ago. One of our  men was on your trail."
  "Blast you!" shrieked Hando Lancaster.
  "There’ll be some blasting, if you don’t pipe down!"  he was informed.
  A man came bearing a new, sound rope, and Doc  Savage’s wrists were lashed behind him.
  One of the men nudged Hando Lancaster’s mental  telepathy apparatus contemptuously.
  "This is one of the first models," he sneered. "The  receiving antenna has gotta be on a guy’s head before it’ll
  work. Now,  with the newer models of the set—"
  "Which you stole from me!" Hando Lancaster screamed. 
  "With the newer models," the man continued, as if  there had been no interruption, "reception of the thought
  waves is  possible at a distance of eight to ten feet, under favorable  circumstances. Of course, the closer the
  subject is to the antenna, the  better."
  Doc Savage and the others were herded out of the  room. They were led down a narrow, rust−strewn corridor.
  There were  boards underfoot, and they were rotten for the most part. The walls  were rusty steel.
  They mounted a flight of decrepit, ladderlike  stairs, and Johnny suddenly realized where they must be.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS
  90
  
  "A ship!" he exploded.
  "One of the abandoned War−time bulks, tied up in  Chesapeake Bay," Doc Savage hazarded. "An excellent
  hideaway!"
  On an upper deck, they were guided into what had  once been a dining room for the crew, judging from the
  long benches and  tables which were still in place.
  On one of the tables stood a complicated mass of  apparatus. It was only a little more bulky than Hando
  Lancaster’s. One  of the men pointed at it.
  "That’s the new model!" he said, and scowled at Doc  Savage. "We’re gonna use it on you. We’ve been
  planting the pick−up  antenna in things like chairs and mummy cases."
  THEY were evidently surprised at the fact that Doc  Savage was offering no resistance. Johnny was also
  puzzled, but kept  quiet about it. Doc did not usually permit himself to be hustled about  in this manner.
  The bronze man was forced to seat himself on a  bench. The antenna of the telepathic pick−up contrivance
  was not fitted  on his head, but merely placed on the bench near him. A man donned the  receiving antenna,
  which was a compact headset.
  "Keep everybody else away from here," this operator  warned.
  Evidently this device, while it was more sensitive  than the other, was subject to picking up interference from
  persons who  might be standing near by.
  The operator adjusted the knobs carefully, then  leaned back and shut his eyes in an attitude of frowning
  concentration.  It quite frequently requires concentration not to think. For three or  four minutes, there was
  absolute silence.
  "Damn the luck!" cursed the man doing the receiving.
  "What is it?" some one asked him.
  "The bronze man knows that the chief is Alex  Mandebran!" grated the operator.
  "Well, why get fussed up about that?" snorted the  other. "We already suspected he knew, didn’t we?"
  "That ain’t the worst of it!" barked the operator.
  "What?"
  "What time is it?"
  One of the men consulted a watch. "Ten o’clock."
  "Here’s the dig," said the operator. "The bronze guy  is thinking that he’ll be rescued and all of us will be in
  the can at  exactly midnight!"
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS
  91
  
  This information was not received with what could be  called glee.
  "What’s gonna happen?" a man said.
  There was a wait, while the man with the receiving  antenna tried to get additional information out of Doc
  Savage’s brain.
  "Whew!" he said. "This bird thinks like chain  lightning!"
  "How does he figure he’s gonna get out of this jam?"  snapped one of the group. "An’ how does he figure
  we’re gonna land in  the can?"
  There was another wait.
  "No use!" snapped the operator. "He’s stopped  thinkin’!"
  "Stopped?"
  "Well, not exactly," the man muttered, uneasily. "He  is thinking about how we will all probably draw life
  terms for grabbing  old Jethro Mandebran and the twenty million."
  "Better see what the chief wants to do about this,"  one suggested.
  The man departed. Shortly, he was back.
  "The chief says to put them with the other  prisoners," he advised.
  Doc Savage, Sylvan Niles, Hando Lancaster and Johnny  were led down a companionway, along a corridor,
  and jammed into a large  chamber which bore a resemblance to a stateroom. There was one  porthole, too
  small for any one to climb through.
  The four prisoners were jammed into the room. The  door was slammed behind them.
  "We gotta watchman on deck," one of the guards  advised. "The first guy who sticks his head out of that
  porthole and  starts yelling, is gonna stop a bullet!"
  DOC SAVAGE ran a glance over the three prisoners  which the room already held.
  Monk and Ham were there and looked the worse for  wear. The third man, Jethro Mandebran—Doc
  recognized him easily from  newspaper pictures—was managing to maintain his dignity, though bound  hand
  and foot. His gray hair was tousled.
  Monk gulped unbelievingly, "You’re not a prisoner,  Doc?"
  The gaunt Johnny answered that one, using small  words.
  "I suppose you think these ropes are on us for  ornaments?" he snapped.
  Monk groaned noisily.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XVIII. CLEANUP PLANS
  92
  
  "Stop that, you hairy crape−hanger!" Ham said,  peevishly.
  "But we’ll never get out of this," Monk complained.  "These guys’ll shoot us!"
  ‘They’ve taken over my hiding place here!" Hando  Lancaster bleated. "We’ll never get help! No one ever
  visits this  place!"
  Elderly, dignified Jethro Mandebran broke into the  dour recital with a cheerful note.
  "We have seen no sign of my son, Alex," he said.
  "So what?" Sylvan Niles snapped.
  "Alex has probably escaped," Jethro Mandebran told  her. "I am confident that he will manage to rescue us."
  The young woman drew a deep, shaky breath. She  seemed on the point of informing the rather pompous old
  man that his  son was the mastermind responsible for their present straits. But she  must not have had the heart.
  She remained silent.
  Hando Lancaster, however, held no such qualms.
  "Alex is behind all this!" he informed the old man,  giving the information in a yell, his habitual manner of
  speech.
  The statement was too big a lump for elderly Jethro  Mandebran to comprehend all at once.
  "What are you saying?" he asked, hoarsely.
  "Your son, Alex!" Hando Lancaster howled. "He’s the  brains of this thing!"
  Old Jethro Mandebran seemed to melt like a tallow  candle to which a hot flame has been applied. He had
  been standing.  Now, he sat down slowly.
  "That isn’t true," he moaned. "I won’t believe it!"
  "You wouldn’t!" Hando Lancaster snapped. "But it’s a  fact!"
  "Alex!" the old man gasped. "Alex—oh—oh—"
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  ELDERLY Jethro Mandebran’s grief was a pitiful thing  to see. The old man had iron in his make−up, for he
  had stood staunchly  under the shadow of knowing that he would have to prove to the  authorities, if he ever
  escaped his captors, that he had not absconded  with the fabulous sum of money which was missing from his
  bank.
  The story that he had been seized in order that a  mindreading device might be used on him by a gang of
  crooks, who had  found out in this manner how to get the money and had taken it, was a  thin story. Almost
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  93
  
  any policeman would laugh himself purple in the face  after listening to it. Jethro Mandebran had known,
  undoubtedly, that he  must make this story believable or go to prison. That knowledge had not  shattered his
  self−control.
  But the information that his son was the brains  behind the affair, had wrecked him. He was a broken old
  fellow, lost in  a swamp of grief. The world, for him, had become a cruel and horrible  thing.
  It was a long time before any one spoke. Even Hando  Lancaster was silent, as if regretting what he had told
  the old man.
  It was Monk who squeaked finally, his small voice  more than usually shrill, "Have you got any kind of a
  plan, Doc?"
  "Well wait," Doc Savage told him.
  Johnny eyed the bronze man.
  "What did that stuff about our getting out of this  at midnight mean?" the bony geologist asked. "The stuff
  their machine  told them you were thinking about?"
  Doc Savage did not answer.
  "I’ll confess I’m uneasy," Johnny continued.
  "Do not talk about it!" Doc Savage directed.
  "Huh?"
  "Their telepathic pick−up antenna may be located  close to us," Doc said. "If they can find out what the plan
  is, they  can thwart it."
  "Oh!" said Johnny. "I see!"
  IF Doc Savage was having difficulty keeping his  thoughts confined to channels which would give their
  captors no  information, he received material assistance some five minutes later  when the door opened and a
  man came in. The fellow carried a large  bundle of old burlap sacks. He went to the porthole.
  The glass, as they had all noticed, was missing from  the port. In fact, the whole rim of the porthole was gone,
  evidently  having been salvaged in the past. Into this opening, the man began  stuffing the burlap sacks. He
  kept at his task until he had the  aperture thoroughly stoppered. Then he made a careful examination of  the
  prisoners’ bonds.
  "I guess you won’t do much moving around," he said.
  The man now walked out; but he was back an instant  later, carrying a cardboard box. The open top of this
  bulged with  excelsior.
  The man began picking the excelsior out. He was  careful at his task, and when he straightened, he was
  holding a fat  glass jug, which had been packed in the carton.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  94
  
  He held the jug in the glow of a flashlight, where  Doc Savage could see.
  "You able to guess what this stuff is?" the man  asked.
  Doc eyed the jug’s contents. Liquid. The stuff had a  characteristic color, too.
  "Hydrocyanic acid," the bronze man hazarded. 
  "Check!" agreed Monk, who had not been asked to  comment.
  "If I dropped this, what would happen?" the man  asked.
  "You would probably die before you got to the door,"  Monk offered, hopefully. "That stuff makes a vapor,
  the effects of  which are among the quickest and most deadly known."
  "What I meant," the man leered, "is what would  happen if I threw the stuff in from the door and then
  slammed the door?"
  No one spoke.
  "It’s the boss’s idea!" said the man.
  At last, Jethro Mandebran gasped, "Alex—my  son—ordered—"
  He seemed to choke.
  Then there was a shout in the corridor, the sound of  running feet, and a man appeared. He wore a worried
  expression, and  this cleared when he saw the prisoners were unharmed.
  "What can we do about it besides croak the prisoners  and clear out of here?" asked the man with the
  hydrocyanic acid.
  "We’re gonna use the telepathic apparatus on Doc  Savage again," announced the other, "and see what we can
  get outta him.  Bring him along!"
  Doc Savage was seized. Four men carried him out, and  back to the dining room. He was placed on the table
  near the receiving  antenna of Hando Lancaster’s remarkable invention.
  A MAN donned the receiving headset, and fiddled with  the controls until he had the adjustment right. It
  seemed to be a very  delicate matter, this getting an adjustment.
  "All right," the man said.
  Instantly, another fellow dashed forward and  delivered a terrific blow with a gun to Doc Savage’s face. He
  struck  again. The blows were calculated to produce great pain, rather than  unconsciousness.
  The man who had done the beating retreated hastily  from the zone of the receiving antenna.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  95
  
  "That oughta make it hard for him to keep from  thinkin’ about whatever plan he’s got," the fellow gritted.
  There was  an expectant silence.
  "Got it!" yelled the man doing the receiving.
  The others dashed forward.
  "What is it?"
  "The bronze guy knew where this place was, before he  came here," exploded the operator. "He told the State
  police! Troopers  have got us surrounded!"
  More than one man swore fearfully at that  information.
  "Quiet!" ripped the man who had used the receiver.  "There’s a way outta this. If the bronze guy appears on
  the bridge and  turns a flashlight on himself to show that he’s all right, the troopers  have orders to withdraw
  and let him handle the thing to suit himself."
  A man barked, "Then all we gotta do is take him to  the bridge, untie him and—"
  "Exactly!"
  Doc Savage was seized and bundled out. He was borne  with the greatest of speed to the ancient ship’s bridge.
  There, they  untied him. A flashlight was thrust into his hands.
  "We’ve got you covered with guns," they told him.  "Stand on the bridge and throw the light on yourself.
  Keep the light  on, until you’re sure the cops have seen you."
  "And just what will refusal mean?" Doc demanded. 
  "It’ll mean you and the rest of ‘em’ll get croaked!"  a voice grated. "An’ it’ll also mean we can fight our way
  outta this  trap!"
  Doc Savage was silent for a moment, apparently  considering the fate of himself and his men. Then he
  shrugged.
  "All right," he said.
  He stepped to the end of the bridge. The rusty old  rail was of metal pipe, except for the top strake, which had
  been of  wood and was still in fair shape. This presented a flat upper surface.
  Doc Savage thumbed the flashlight on. He placed it  on the rail. The beam was turned, not on himself, but on
  the men with  the guns.
  Then Doc vanished!
  It happened in flash parts of seconds. It seemed  that the light was hardly on the men before their guns roared.
  Yet the  interval was sufficient for the bronze man, knowing exactly what he was  going to do, to move. He
  leaped the bridge railing over the side of the  ship.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XIX. THE IMAGINATION FIGMENT
  96
  
  He did not, however, go completely over. Instead, he  grasped the rail, lowered himself and moved rapidly to
  the left,  clinging with his hands. He was in darkness, so that his action was not  observed. The manner in
  which he had sailed over the rail deceived the  men.
  "He’s in the water!" they bawled.
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  THE men charged for the rail.
  The bronze man regained the deck some distance from  the bridge. His feet touched a bit of loose wood and
  made some racket,  but the noise escaped notice in the confusion. Doc picked up the  fragment of wood and
  tossed it overside.
  "There he is!" they shouted. A burst of shots  followed the splash which the chunk of wood made.
  Doc moved as silently as possible. Most of the outer  doors had long since been removed from the old vessel,
  and he entered  the first opening which he found. There was a great deal of noise in  this part of the ship. Men
  were rushing for the scene of excitement.
  Doc Savage descended into the lower regions of the  vessel. It was now necessary to progress by sense of
  touch alone, but  he made good speed.
  Nearing the stateroom where the other prisoners were  confined, he met two of the gang carrying flashlights.
  He saw them in  plenty of time, however, and lurked inside a cabin door in wait for  them.
  His pounce upon them was the descent of Nemesis  herself. He managed to get an arm around the neck of
  each  simultaneously. He wrenched. Their heads came together forcibly. Each  kicked once violently, then
  became limp.
  One of the men wore a long, light topcoat and a hat.  Doc appropriated these two garments, and also one of
  the flashlights.  He put that hat on his head and ran toward the prison stateroom,  pulling on the topcoat.
  There was a guard at the door. He was holding a  flashlight on the prisoners; but when he heard Doc
  approaching, made a  move to turn his flashlight beam in that direction.
  "It’s all right!" Doc said, in a voice greatly  different from his normal one.
  Deceived, the guard did not turn his flash on the  bronze man. The fellow probably never knew exactly what
  happened to  him. Certain it was that he did not see the metallic block of a fist  which hit solidly ahead of his
  right ear.
  The man turned a neat somersault into the room and  landed flat on his back, unconscious.
  AN instant later, Doc Savage was untying the  prisoners.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  97
  
  Outside, guns still banged. The men were doing some  wild shooting, in hopes that a bullet would find the
  bronze man.
  "Listen to the fireworks!" Monk squeaked, excitedly.  "Boy, them cops must be cleanin’ house!"
  "Quite the contrary," Doc said, grimly. "There are  no cops."
  "Huh?"
  "Their mind−reading machine picks up a man’s  imaginings, just as it does ordinary thought processes," Doc
  explained.
  Monk gulped out, "You mean that business about  police being posted around here was imagination?"
  "It was," Doc admitted. "And it took some rather  intense concentration to put it across."
  Hando Lancaster heaved up, howling, "Let’s get out  of this! I wish I’d never invented the thing!"
  "Not so loud, guy!" Monk admonished.
  All of the prisoners were now untied. They crowded  out into the corridor.
  "We will go toward the stern," Doc said, "and try to  make a get−away."
  Since caution was more imperative than haste, Doc  used his flashlight only sporadically. They made fair
  time, however.  Monk and Ham brought up the rear. Jethro Mandebran and Sylvan Niles  were in the middle.
  Hando Lancaster kept at Doc Savage’s elbow, along  with Johnny.
  They had covered perhaps two−score yards, when Doc  Savage stopped abruptly.
  "Something wrong?" Hando Lancaster growled.
  "Quiet!" Doc told him. "Listen!"
  The others heard it then—a faint scuffling and  bumping, close by.
  "It’s comin’ outta that room there!" Monk breathed,  and pointed.
  Doc Savage veered toward the source of the noise. He  used his flashlight. It revealed a door, or rather the
  opening where a  door had been. He stepped through and thumbed the beam on again.
  A man, thoroughly entwined with ropes, was  disclosed. The fact that this man was blindfolded and gagged,
  made it  impossible to discern his features. Doc Savage whipped forward.
  The others crowded into the door, behind the bronze  man, staring curiously. They had known of no other
  prisoners, but here  was one!
  Doc removed blindfold and gag from the captive, and  the man’s features became distinguishable.
  "Young Alex Mandebran!" Monk barked.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  98
  
  THERE was shocked silence.
  Sylvan Niles gasped, "But—but—he’s their leader! How  did he get here?"
  Doc Savage was removing the rope from young Alex  Mandebran. The man could move better under his own
  power.
  "Alex Mandebran is not their leader!" Doc  explained, as he worked with the rope.
  Sylvan Niles gasped, "But they said that—"
  "They were giving us a clever line of talk to throw  the blame on Alex Mandebran," Doc Savage told her.
  "The real leader of  the outfit was, at the time, playing the part of a prisoner with us. He  was building himself
  an alibi in rather clever fashion."
  There was a scuffle near the door.
  "Grab Hando!" Doc yelled, suddenly.
  "Too late!" Monk snapped. "He’s running for it!"
  DOC SAVAGE, rushing for the door, rapped, "We must  stop him! He knows there are no police, and he will
  tell the gang!"
  Hando Lancaster had demonstrated on other occasions  that there was speed in his pipe−stem legs. He proved
  it again now. He  went down the passageway with the agileness of a scared goat. Doc,  putting forth his best
  efforts, overhauled the man, but much more  slowly than was to be desired.
  Hando Lancaster began to yell. The fact that his  ordinary manner of speech was a howling and roaring, had
  given him a  foghorn voice. He used it to advantage. His squalls must have carried  far beyond the confines of
  the abandoned boat.
  From on deck, forward near the bridge, shouts  answered, and men could be heard charging to the assistance
  of Hando.
  Ahead of Doc Savage, Hando Lancaster came to a  sudden stop. Sensing an ominous purpose behind the
  move, the bronze man  also halted. He dashed his flashlight beam down the corridor.
  Hando Lancaster had evidently known where the jug of  hydrocyanic acid had been placed. He had gotten it,
  was holding it in  his hands.
  Johnny, Monk and Ham came up behind Doc.
  Hando Lancaster’s men were below deck now, coming  from the direction of the bows.
  With fierce purpose, Hando Lancaster drew back to  throw the jug of deadly acid. He was no more than fifty
  feet away. The  jug of hydrocyanic, once he threw it, would either hit Doc Savage or  burst close enough to
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  99
  
  splash the bronze man. In the cramped confines of  the corridor, there would be slight chance of escaping the
  stuff.
  Doc Savage wore low−cut shoes. They would come off  without unlacing. He removed one, then the other. He
  placed the  flashlight on the floor, so that the beam played on Hando Lancaster.  With the shoes ready, he
  waited.
  The bottle would have to be broken in mid−air with  one or the other of the shoes.
  Hando Lancaster seemed to be enjoying himself, and  he took a long moment to get set for the throw. That
  was his undoing.
  A gun slammed so close to Doc Savage’s ear that he  was almost deafened.
  The jug came to pieces in Hando Lancaster’s hands.  Since he was holding the thing above his head at the
  moment, the  contents deluged him, splashed over the floor.
  Hando Lancaster screamed as only a man can scream  when he knows he is going to die. He spun and fled. He
  did not,  however, get far, before he went down, still shrieking—to have  convulsions on the floor and
  eventually to die.
  DOC SAVAGE scooped up the flashlight and spun to  confront Monk, who was holding a smoking revolver.
  "Why didn’t you wait until the thing was thrown,  when no one would have been killed?" Doc Savage
  demanded.
  "Who do you think I am, Annie Oakley?" Monk snorted.  "I was lucky to hit that jug when he was holding it
  still in his hand."
  "Where did you get the gun?"
  "Off that fellow you kayoed."
  "Come on!" Doc said, grimly.
  They resumed their flight. Monk trailed Doc Savage a  bit uneasily. Doc had an ironclad rule that no human
  life was to be  taken by himself or his men on any occasion, whatever the provocation.  Monk, the truth was,
  had his own idea of what should happen to  gentlemen of Hando Lancaster’s ilk.
  A scream rasped out in the depths of the ship. It  was followed by others.
  Doc Savage halted again.
  "They ran into the hydrocyanic vapor, not knowing it  was there," the bronze man said, slowly.
  Doc’s party hesitated for a time, then worked toward  the stern. There was nothing they could do to aid those
  whom the  hydrocyanic was probably killing. They would probably have been shot  at, anyway, had they tried
  to offer assistance.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  100
  
  Reaching the stern, they stopped. Pursuit seemed to  have come to a complete end.
  "How’d you come to suspect Hando Lancaster?" Monk  asked Doc.
  "The suicide of his business partner Castello, who  headed the Castello Mining Corporation, threw suspicion
  on him," Doc  explained. "That was about the only thing which would account for  Castello’s taking his own
  life. He had learned what Hando Lancaster was  doing."
  Monk sighed.
  "Me," he said, "I suspected Alex Mandebran!"
  Attractive Sylvan Niles came close to Doc Savage and  spoke in a strained voice.
  "I did not know what Hando Lancaster was really  doing," she said. "I wonder if I can ever prove it?"
  "I think your actions so far have proved it," the  bronze man assured her.
  Seemingly, Sylvan Niles did not know that Hando,  using the knowledge gained from the thought machine,
  had made money in  the stock market in the girl’s name.
  She was silent for a bit, and when she did speak it  was in a low voice that pulsed with feeling. "Thank you."
  They continued to wait, and listen. After a bit,  there was a noise of a small group of men leaving the
  abandoned ship in  a great hurry.
  Monk growled, "It’s my guess that we’re finished  with this business!"
  MONK’S prediction proved to be excellent. A search  of the ship disclosed that the greater number of Hando
  Lancaster’s  followers had fallen victims to the hydrocyanic vapor into which they  had unwittingly plunged.
  The survivors had evidently fled.
  Four of Hando Lancaster’s strange inventions came to  light, and Doc Savage set his aids to packing these for
  transportation.  The things were too dangerous in their possibilities, to take a chance  on their again falling into
  unscrupulous hands.
  The bronze man had concluded to send them to his  skyscraper headquarters for examination. There was a
  possibility that  they might turn out to be of some assistance to police departments.  That they would never be
  infallible, of course, was proved by the fact  that they registered any mental process; and imaginings were  also
  picked up as thoughts.
  The search of the old ship also brought to light  other things—nearly a truckload of them. These were sealed
  copper  boxes. They were sunk in the half−submerged bilge of the old ship, an  excellent hiding place. Doc
  Savage retrieved and opened enough of these  boxes to ascertain their contents.
  Loot! Tremendous sums of it—in Liberty Bonds,  securities and currency, the plunder which Hando Lancaster
  had taken  thus far.
  This stuff, of course, would have to be returned to  the rightful owners.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  101
  
  Near dawn, after their work was finished on board  the wreck, they gathered on the top deck for a rest.
  Because there  seemed to be nothing to say, silence fell. The full loneliness of the  place became impressed
  upon them. It was a quiet night, and the waves  made no noise. Even the usual quota of insect sounds was
  absent.
  "Blast such a place as this!" Monk complained. "I’ll  take mine on land or sea, not in a backwash like this!"
  Monk sighed again, more loudly. Dawn was coming. It  had already brought light enough for him to catch a
  glimpse of Sylvan  Niles and young Alex Mandebran. The two young people seemed in a fair  way to resume
  their love affair which had been broken off in England  through the false accusations of Hando Lancaster.
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  102
  
  Monk ambled over and gave Ham a jab in the ribs.
  "We gotta go up in the New Jersey woods, shyster!"  Monk grunted.
  "Why?" Ham demanded, peevishly.
  "To find my hog, Habeas, and your baboon,  Chemistry," Monk explained.
  "To find Chemistry," Ham corrected in his best  courtroom manner. "I have no interest in your hog, Habeas!"
  THE END
   THE MIDAS MAN
  Chapter XX. THE BRAIN
  103
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/042 The Midas Man.pdf