TEXT:  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST...................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson.....................................................................................1
  Chapter I. OLD ONE OF THE DESERT................................................................................................1
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE............................................................................................................6
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE...................................................................................................................10
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN.................................................................................................17
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE..............................................................................................24
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE..........................................................................................29
  Chapter VII. DETOUR..........................................................................................................................33
  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT....................................................................................41
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION............................................................................................46
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW..........................................................................................................53
  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX.....................................................................................................59
  Chapter XII. CAPTAIN SCUTTLE......................................................................................................65
  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE...............................................................................71
  Chapter XIV. SCORN ISLAND............................................................................................................80
  Chapter XV. TREASURE SHIP............................................................................................................87
  Chapter XVI. NARROW MARGINS....................................................................................................95
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  i
  
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. OLD ONE OF THE DESERT
  • 
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  • 
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  • 
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  • 
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  • 
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  • 
  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  • 
  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT
  • 
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  • 
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  • 
  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  • 
  Chapter XII. CAPTAIN SCUTTLE
  • 
  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR TREASURE
  • 
  Chapter XIV. SCORN ISLAND
  • 
  Chapter XV. TREASURE SHIP
  • 
  Chapter XVI. NARROW MARGINS
  • 
  Scanned and Proofed
  by Tom Stephens
  Chapter I. OLD ONE OF THE DESERT
  "SAGEBRUSH" SMITH was undoubtedly not the first Smith who got into  trouble without expecting it.
  However, Sagebrush Smith managed to confine his troubles to the  ordinary ones of a cow−puncher until the
  advent of a certain fifteenth  day of March. This fifteenth of March followed the fourteenth, which  was the
  day Sagebrush Smith got fired. He got canned off the Lazy Y  spread for giving the round−up boss, "Hoke"
  McGee, what he called "a  bust in the snoot" over a trifling matter of who had put a deceased  rattlesnake in
  Sagebrush Smith’s bedroll.
  Sagebrush was scared of rattlesnakes, also of red−eye whisky and  women. However, these three items, of all
  the things Sagebrush had  encountered in his twenty−four years of life, were the only things he  had ever been
  scared of. He certainly wasn’t afraid of Hoke McGee.
  Sagebrush Smith was a long, gangling young man with a freckled hide,  and he had no cares. He was not,
  fortunately or unfortunately�depending  on the outlook�very ambitious. There was, in fact, only one thing he
  really wanted to do, if he ever got around to it: he wanted to see a  fellow he had read about, a man named
  Doc Savage. He just wanted to  have a look at this Doc Savage. He had never told any one about the  yen. He
  figured they would think it kind of silly.
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
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  Having been fired, and having offered, in a warm moment, to unravel  cartridges with Hoke McGee or
  anybody on the Lazy Y who wanted to  unravel them, Sagebrush Smith slapped his Texas saddle on his
  Roman−nosed pinto, thonged his warbag and slicker on the back, and  rode. He rode "slick−heeled"�−without
  spurs�for his paint bronc didn’t  need spurs. The cayuse was next thing to a broomtail, and plenty  spirited.
  Some one had said there was a job repping to be had over beyond Tule  Canyon, at an outfit near Sugar Loaf
  Butte. Sagebrush thought he might  as well see. To get there, he would have to ride down into the north  arm of
  Death Valley, over the floor, and out again. He filled his water  bag at a spring about sundown, and set out
  across Death Valley by dark.
  In the first four hours of night riding, he shot the heads off  twenty−six rattlesnakes, but only half the head off
  the twenty−seventh.
  "Boy, howdy!" Sagebrush Smith remarked. "I’m slippin’!"
  That, of course, was a modest understatement. He wasn’t slipping.  Except for a slight technicality, he had
  shot the heads off  twenty−seven rattlesnakes, shooting in brilliant moonlight at targets,  none larger than a
  silver dollar, which were moving.
  Then a person or persons unknown reciprocated by shooting Sagebrush  Smith’s bronc through the tail.
  THE tail shot was a freak. Sagebrush Smith felt at once that it was  an impossible shot, reflected as much
  when he picked himself out of the  Death Valley sand. Sagebrush was about to flop down in the sand again  for
  caution’s sake, but thought of the sidewinders and remained on his  feet. He’d take his chances with bullets.
  The paint pony left there as if it had a destination somewhere  beyond Wyoming. The reins, Sagebrush
  remembered with disgust, were  knotted over the jughead’s neck, so he wasn’t likely to stop going.
  "The water bag!" exploded the cowboy.
  The water bag was on the saddle! Sagebrush watched eagerly, hoping  the bronc would buck the water bag
  off. The pinto was an enthusiastic  bucker, with a style noted for getting rid of things, including,  occasionally,
  the saddle. But the piebald didn’t buck. The horse loped  over a sand dune and vanished.
  When Sagebrush Smith looked around, he saw more sand dunes, plenty  of them, a few heat−discouraged
  whiskers of mesquite, and some tall  black mountains which appeared about two miles away. The mountains,
  he  knew, were thirty miles distant. About two days of the kind of walking  he would have. No one ever
  walked two days in Death Valley without  water. He was already thirsty.
  A fresh bullet arrived about that time. It cruised past somewhere  overhead.
  "The first one was too good," Sagebrush remarked. "And this one is  too poor. There’s somethin’ locoed here."
  He drew his six−gun and fanned two lumps of lead in the general  direction of the moon. Then he listened.
  Two shots answered, and the lead of the second one missed him so far  that he could barely hear it sing, and
  the former was not much better.
  "Nobody," opined Sagebrush, "could be that bum at lead−slingin’."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  2
  
  He had the cowboy habit of talking to himself, a failing born of the  fact that for too much of his life he had
  been his own audience.
  He banged off his gun again.
  A bullet replied, and it missed him as far to the left as the others  had been to the right.
  "Somethin’ is sure rotten in Denmark," the cowboy concluded.  "Whoever is turnin’ loose them blue whistlers
  ain’t shootin’ straight  because it, him or her, can’t shoot straight."
  Having thus decided, he concluded it was safe to advance, and  likewise very advisable. He had to get water,
  or the big black birds  with the raw, red necks would have a man to eat.
  Sagebrush advanced. He got his boots full of sand, his exposed hide  covered with ‘skeet scratches, and had
  his hair lifted assorted times  by sidewinders. Twice, scorpions did their best to sock stingers  through his
  boots into his legs, but failed because he was wearing good  twenty−dollar Justins built for service.
  "Damn all deserts!" he said feelingly.
  Then he came upon the old man.
  THE old man was wanting to shoot somebody. He had his rifle in his  hand, a frantic fear and a grim
  desperation in his bloodshot old eyes,  and awful agony working in the wrinkles of his old baboon face.
  He wore scuffed old leather boots, laced khaki pants, a rag over one  shoulder that had been a shirt, and he had
  an old body that looked as  though it was made out of rake handles. He kept shooting little gouts  of blood out
  of his mouth.
  Sagebrush Smith slipped around a mesquite clump and jumped in the  middle of the old man’s back. When he
  saw the kind of thing he had  jumped onto, he got off again.
  He got down beside the old duffer and straightened him out on the  sand and put the rifle to one side. He wet
  his handkerchief with water  from a canteen the old man had tied to his belt and wiped off the old  fellow’s
  wasted face.
  "Golly, pop, I’m sorry," he said.
  The old man looked steadily at Sagebrush Smith and bubbled a little  as he breathed.
  "I was afraid you wouldn’t make it, Doc’s man," he said. "I kept  hearing them shooting at you. Just one shot
  at a time. The shots kept  getting closer. I knew they were trying to pick you off before you made  it."
  Sagebrush Smith, who was as shaggy as a young jackass on the  outside, and about as handsome, had a
  likeable, kindly nature; and he  wanted to humor an old man who was half mad and dying in the desert.
  "I fixed ‘em," he said.
  The old man of the desert looked Sagebrush Smith’s long, gangling  young frame up and down.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  3
  
  "Doc’s man," he said, "I’m glad to see you."
  Being called "Doc’s man" had Sagebrush Smith puzzled. He finally  figured it out and decided that the old
  fellow thought he had come from  the doctor.
  "Buck up, old−timer," he said. "Stick out your horns and show some  sand. You gotta last until I can take you
  to the doctor."
  "You came to take me to Doc?"
  "Yeah. Betcher boots."
  "Won’t do no good," the old man said. "I’ve got cancer. I’ve had it  two years, and I haven’t got any insides
  left to speak of."
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH got up on his feet rather quickly, because he  couldn’t have stayed there on his knees
  without feeling sick. He  stamped his boots in the powder−fine sand and jammed his hands in his  pockets,
  then took them out again and peered around for something to  get his mind off the dying old man. Mentally,
  he added a fourth item to  the list of things he was scared of: a man dying slowly.
  So, in trying to get away from a sight that turned his stomach,  Sagebrush Smith walked around�came upon
  the amazing laboratory. First,  he only saw an old adobe hut, and thought: "This is a funny place for  one of
  them things." Then he looked inside and saw that it was really  something unusual.
  The mud walls had been plastered inside, and the plaster painted  white. Around three walls of the room ran a
  bench, with shelves above  and bins below; and the shelves and bins were crowded with nest arrays  of copper
  wire, silver wire, copper rods and silver rods, coils,  bakelite insulating panels, bottles, boxes, jars, and
  innumerable  things that resembled radio vacuum tubes, and yet weren’t quite like  vacuum tubes.
  It was very cool in the hut, leading Sagebrush Smith to realize the  interior was air−conditioned, exactly like
  the movie house in  Goldfield. He was a little surprised.
  He was more surprised as he went along. The box in the center of the  room intrigued him. A skylight let
  moonglow in through the roof and he  could see the box. It was about as tall as himself�around six feet�and
  about a dozen feet long by eight feet wide.
  "Creepin’ Moses!" said Sagebrush Smith. "It’s solid silver!"
  It wasn’t. His imagination had run away with him. It was lead, he  decided, after he gave it a good scratching
  with the point of his  pocketknife.
  One whisker of shiny copper tubing stuck up out of the top of the  lead box.
  After he had moseyed around the thing a while, Sagebrush found a  door, and being of an inquiring
  disposition, he opened the door and  went in, after first striking a match.
  He looked around the inside of the lead box. He saw a lot of stuff  that he didn’t understand. In fact, he saw
  practically nothing that he  did understand, and he began to wish he wasn’t so ignorant about  electricity.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  4
  
  Sagebrush rubbed his jaw and scratched his head and began touching  things, but an electric spark jumped out
  and bit him, and he stopped  that.
  There was a small box on the floor which aroused Sagebrush’s  curiosity. He polished the lock on the box
  thoughtfully with the ball  of a thumb. He could see it was the kind of lock you couldn’t pick. The  box itself
  was of high−quality steel. Sagebrush tried his jackknife on  it, and the metal of the box turned the razor edge
  of the knife blade,  and didn’t even scratch. He lifted the box to test its weight, and  grunted with the effort.
  "Almost as heavy as Hoke McGee’s opinion of himself," he remarked.
  He went back outside.
  "Your layout’s got me guessin’, pop," he said.
  THE old man was propped up on his hands, straining, hurting himself  listening to the whispering night
  sounds of the desert sands. He turned  his head, and there was a wild look on his face.
  "I think I heard some of them creeping!" he croaked. "Creeping over  the sand!"
  Sagebrush Smith put the palm of a hand on the nape of his neck, just  to reassure himself that the short hairs
  were not standing on end.
  "That’s just sidewinders, old−timer," he said.
  There was a silence filled with the kind of stillness that only  comes in Death Valley�stillness of utter death
  and time abysmal. Then a  breeze, a small lost breeze, came feeling over the dunes, seeking in  the mesquite,
  sifting in the sands, and sighing.
  Sagebrush Smith took off his hat, mopped his forehead and grinned  foolishly. He felt the need of doing
  something to break the spell, so  he kicked out, like a boy, with one foot. His toe hit a rock.
  He peered at the rock, then got down on his knees, brushed sand away  and kept on brushing until he had a
  space cleared the size of a bunk  house table. The rock bore grotesque carvings and silly−looking  hen−track
  marks.
  Sagebrush Smith got to his feet, kicked around in the sand and  uncovered other such rocks. Then it dawned
  on him that the stones lay  all around; some of the huge ones were even the reason for the sand  dunes being
  here.
  "We’re in one of them mysterious ruined cities or my name ain’t  Sagebrush," he muttered.
  The old man said, "That was in my letter to Doc," very weakly.
  "Some fellers that called themselves archaeologists were in Death  Valley one time," Sagebrush continued.
  "They figured there had been  cities in here thousands of years ago, but they couldn’t figure out  much else
  about them." (These prehistoric ruins, some actually  stretching for miles on the heat−seared floor of Death
  Valley in  California, are something of a puzzle to archaeologists. KENNETH  ROBESON)
  "That is why I came here," the old man said.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  5
  
  "Oh," Sagebrush Smith said.
  The dying man closed his eyes for a while and rested. After a moment  or two he started talking again.
  "Did Doc remember me?" he asked suddenly. "Did Doc remember old  Meander Surett?"
  "Yeah," said Sagebrush. "‘Course he remembered you."
  Old Meander Surett closed his eyes. He appeared about as pleased as  he could be.
  "I’m not suprised that he remembered," he said. "I was one of the  world’s greatest authorities on electrical
  research�before I  disappeared."
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  THE desert night was either very still, or it was made weird by the  tiny whirls of wind that went scurrying
  through the sand dunes,  although some of the winds weren’t so tiny and traveled like Kansas  whirlwinds,
  picking up fine sand, lifting it two and three hundred  feet, looking in the moonlight like cinnamon−robed
  giants  hobble−skirting along.
  Sagebrush Smith hunkered on his high−heeled boots and felt funny.  Not humorous. Just funny. The old man,
  Meander Surett, was dying, and  Sagebrush had started out by agreeing with everything, hoping that  would
  soothe the old fellow. Now he began to see that he was walking  into something. Meander Surett apparently
  had expected some one named  Doc to arrive. He thought Sagebrush Smith was one of this Doc’s
  representatives.
  Curiosity assailed Sagebrush. He wanted to know who Doc was. He  wanted to know the purpose of all that
  stuff in the adobe hut. He  wondered what was in the alloy−steel locked box. He would like to know  why the
  place was located in one of the prehistoric ruins on the floor  of Death Valley.
  He could not ask any of these questions without exciting Meander  Surett and speeding his death.
  "Sagebrush," said Meander Surett unexpectedly.
  "Yeah?"
  "How did they find out you were coming?"
  "They? Who do you mean?"
  "The men who followed you."
  "Oh." Sagebrush Smith hunted in his mind for a lie. "I don’t know. I  thought maybe you could tell me."
  "They’ve been spying on me for years," the dying man said weakly. "I  have been working here for ten years.
  It was about three years ago that  I first noticed them spying. I guess they knew I sent Doc a message."
  "Message?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  6
  
  "Yes. The letter. Doc got it, of course, or he wouldn’t have sent  you."
  Sagebrush Smith swallowed. "Oh, sure," he said.
  "I don’t know the men who watched me," croaked Meander Surett.
  "You’d better be quiet," the cowboy urged.
  Meander Surett coughed and bubbled. "Get me the metal box in the  lead−insulated experimental chamber."
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH got the box. It was heavy enough that he was  sweating and out of breath by the time
  he had it at the side of Meander  Surett.
  "Now," Meander Surett gurgled, "unbuckle my money belt."
  The money belt was made of chamois. It was fat and heavy, and  Sagebrush Smith, when he was ordered to do
  so, looked inside.
  "Geewhilikers!" he said.
  "There is about seven thousand dollars’ worth of gold dust left,"  Meander Surett said. "I had half a million
  dollars when I started  experimenting ten years ago. I had the money changed into gold dust  because nobody
  is suspicious of an old man who comes out of the desert  with a little gold dust. They think he is a prospector."
  Sagebrush Smith was stunned. "You mean," he muttered, "that you  spent half a million here in the desert?"
  "It was worth it." The dying man reached out a wasted hand to the  shiny metal box. "This"�he patted the
  box�"is going to  change the course of all mankind!"
  Sagebrush Smith wiped his forehead. "Uh−huh," he muttered. He didn’t  know what to think.
  "Use as much of the seven thousand as you need for expenses," said  Meander Surett.
  "Expenses?"
  "Plane fare, hotels, taxicabs and so on." The old man had a coughing  spell. "You can give the rest to Sally."
  "Sally?"
  "My daughter. Sally Surett." Old Meander Surett smiled in spite of  pain and weakness. "She may call herself
  Nola. She never did like the  name Sally. Her full name is Sally Nola Surett. She lives at 110 North
  Boulevard, in New York City. You better write that down." Sagebrush  Smith swallowed.
  "I’ll remember it," he said. "Sally Nola Surett at 110 North  Boulevard, New York."
  "Take her to Doc," ordered Meander Surett, "and give the box to her  and to Doc, to be owned and shared
  jointly." He shut his eyes and  shuddered. "The contents must be used to benefit mankind, not�the  other."
  "To Doc�who?" Sagebrush Smith asked involuntarily.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  7
  
  "Why, to Doc Savage," Meander Surett said.
  "Doc Savage!" Sagebrush Smith took off his hat. "Blazes!"
  THERE is probably no institution of mankind better equipped with  reading matter than the cowboy bunk
  house. The height of the stack of  magazines in the corner will vary with the seasons, shrinking in the  winter
  when they are handy for starting fires, but usually it ranges  around shoulder high. So Sagebrush Smith had
  read about Doc Savage.
  He had read of Doc Savage several times. Once in a medical journal,  twice in a physical culture magazine,
  and a number of times in  magazines devoted to science and mechanics. Sagebrush Smith did not  believe all
  he read. He did not think there was any such fellow as  remarkable as the Doc Savage mentioned in these
  magazines.
  What got his dander up was a magazine stating that this Doc Savage  could take a six−shooter and hit fifty
  silver dimes, thrown into the  air, with fifty shots.
  Sagebrush Smith was willing to stand on a stack of Bibles and say it  couldn’t be done. He knew. He’d just
  like to pay a visit to Doc Savage  and show the fellow up.
  "You want me to take this box to Doc Savage?" said Sagebrush. "And  you’re furnishing the expense money?"
  "Yes," said old Meander Surett. "You must promise to go to Doc and  my daughter, Sally."
  Sagebrush Smith suddenly became enthusiastic about the job.
  "You’re on, old−timer," he said earnestly. "But what’s in the box?"
  The old man was apparently too far gone to hear. 
  "What’s in the box?" the cowboy asked more loudly. 
  The dying old man rolled his head. His eyes were strange.
  "There is a sheaf of data in the box," he mumbled. "That will  explain everything."
  "But where’s the key to the box?"
  "It has already been mailed to Doc Savage," old Meander Surett  mumbled.
  "Oh," said Sagebrush Smith.
  Old Meander Surett’s throat began to rattle. Sagebrush Smith had  heard that throats rattle when people die.
  "Take it easy, pop!" Sagebrush mumbled.
  The old man’s hands fastened to the cowboy’s arm like claws.
  "Son, they’ll try to take it from you!" he croaked.
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  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  8
  
  "They won’t have much luck," Sagebrush said soothingly. "Don’t rile  yourself, old−timer."
  The old man made noises. The bite of his fingers tightened.
  "Son," he gulped, "I haven’t told you everything!"
  "No?" Sagebrush said curiously.
  "I caught two of them�one of the men watching me." Meander Surett  was shaking. "I killed one of them. I
  took the other captive. I’ve got  him now�a prisoner. Tried�to make him�talk�for months."
  His words were beginning to be separated by the rattling.
  "Sure, you killed one and you’ve got the other prisoner," Sagebrush  said. "Take it easy, pop."
  "The�prisoner�over there!" Old Meander Surett croaked.
  "Eh?"
  The dying man pointed. "Over�there! Chained!"
  "You mean you’ve got a man chained over there?" the cowboy  demanded incredulously.
  "Fastened�with�a�a chain. He wouldn’t�talk�"
  The old man’s eyes rolled and he could only make noises.
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH got to his feet, took a step or two in the direction  in which Meander Surett had
  pointed. He stared. He bent over to see  better.
  The mesquite was tall and thick and cast black shadows. It was too  dark to make out anything much. The
  cowboy licked his lips, then  advanced.
  Suddenly, Sagebrush jerked to a stop and snatched at his six−gun. He  had heard a noise, a small, whimpering
  sound. He listened. His pulse  was a−booming. Then there was a small movement. Something was really  there!
  Holding his gun in one hand, he advanced. It was very dark. His foot  struck something, and feeling with his
  free hand, he found a chain. He  tugged the chain. It jerked in his hand, and the low whimpering came  again.
  "Hey, feller!" Sagebrush Smith called softly. "How long has the old  man had you a prisoner here?"
  The whimper was his only answer.
  Sagebrush Smith struck a match.
  There was only a mangy and half−starved coyote pup on the end of the  chain. And around about was bedding
  and odds and ends of clothing and  enough of the kind of food that a man eats to show that old Meander  Surett
  had been treating the coyote as a man.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter II. THE MANCAPTIVE
  9
  
  Meander Surett was dead when Sagebrush Smith went back to him.
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  WHEN Sagebrush Smith guided two donkeys up to the Lazy Y ranch  house, he was not doing it because he
  wanted to, but because he had to  have water. There had not been enough in Meander Surett’s canteen. The
  Lazy Y had the only water on the route to the nearest railroad town.
  The two donkeys had obviously belonged to old Meander Surett, for  Sagebrush had found them hobbled in
  the Death Valley sand dunes after  he buried the scientist and freed the half−starved coyote. He’d  appropriated
  one donkey to carry the box, and one to carry himself,  although the last hadn’t worked out; after trying to ride
  for twenty  miles, a habit of both mountain canaries of trying unexpectedly to take  a bite out of his leg had led
  him to favor walking.
  Hoke McGee, the Lazy Y foreman, looked on the advent of Sagebrush  Smith with no favor at all.
  "I thought we run you away from here once," he growled.
  "Nobody ever run me away from anywhere," said Sagebrush.
  He grabbed a donkey by an ear with one hand and held the animal  while he unlashed the metal box with the
  other hand.
  "Take your brothers"�Hoke McGee pointed at the donkeys�"and get the  hell out of here!"
  "Maybe you’d like to make me?" suggested Sagebrush.
  Hoke McGee scowled.
  "Maybe," Sagebrush said, "you and your whole danged Lazy Y outfit  would like to try to make me go?"
  Hoke McGee was a perfectly safe fellow to quarrel with�as long as  you were looking at him. It was after
  dark, or when he was behind you,  that he was dangerous. This was a fact that Sagebrush well knew.
  Hoke McGee was not of the true west, not of cactus and purple sage.  He was a product of crooked carnivals
  and low gypping. An old carney  man of the never−give−the−sucker−a−break school. When the carney shell
  games went out, he took up cow−punching on the Lazy Y, the owner of  which was a distant relative, as well
  as a bird of similar feather.  They called him "Hoke" because he liked to brag about the hokum the  yaps used
  to fall for.
  Hoke McGee wasn’t yellow, but he was cautious enough not to hit out  when there was a chance of getting hit
  back. He thought himself quite a  smoothie. Physically, he was short and broad and ran more to body and
  arms than to legs or head.
  Sagebrush Smith always said that if you could find a he−toad five  feet five inches tall and take the warts off
  him, you would have Hoke  McGee.
  "I’m stayin’ for supper," announced Sagebrush Smith.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  10
  
  "The hell you are!" snarled Hoke McGee.
  "The hell I ain’t!" said Sagebrush.
  Having unlashed the metal box, Sagebrush Smith got under it with  both arms, and kneed the donkey in the
  ribs to make the animal jump out  from under the case. Sagebrush staggered over to the shade of the bunk
  house and put the box down.
  "What’s that?" Hoke McGee demanded.
  "That," said Sagebrush Smith, "is a gookus−wookus."
  "A what?"
  "Somethin’ to make fools ask questions."
  Ten minutes later, the owner of the Lazy Y appeared, in tow of Hoke  McGee.
  "You’ll have to pay for your supper," the owner said shortly.
  "You’re dang tootin’ I’ll pay for it!" declared Sagebrush Smith.  "I’m particular who I take favors from."
  "It’ll cost you five dollars," said the owner of the Lazy Y.
  "It’ll cost me two bits," corrected Sagebrush, "which is more than  the kind of chow you serve here is worth."
  And because he wanted to devil them, he whipped out his money belt  and made them weigh out a gold
  nugget and give him change for  twenty−five cents. He knew nothing would hurt them like letting them  see
  that he had a nice gold dust stake. He figured he had them bluffed  to a point where they wouldn’t dare do
  anything about it.
  That was a mistake.
  HOKE McGEE and the owner did not eat in the bunk house with the rest  of the rannys. They ate in the ranch
  house and had better food.  To−night they had a conference.
  "How much money did Smith have when he left here?" asked Hoke McGee.
  "Not much more than forty dollars," said the owner of the Lazy Y.
  "Now he’s got a belt full of gold. Between six and eight thousand  dollars’ worth."
  "What’s in that box?" asked the owner.
  "I don’t know," said Hoke McGee, "but I bet you it’s full of gold."
  "Why?"
  "I tried to lift it. The thing weighs anyway two hundred pounds."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  11
  
  "Gold, eh?"
  "Why, hell, it couldn’t be anythin’ else, boss. This ranny goes off  in the desert empty−handed and comes
  back with a belt of gold, an iron  box and two donkeys. Now me and you both know that he either got the  stuff
  by robbin’ somebody, or he found somebody that had died in the  desert. And either way it stands to reason
  there’s gold in the box."
  "Hm−m. That’s too bad," said the owner.
  Hoke McGee grinned evilly.
  "We’ll know just how bad it is," he said, "by along about mornin’."
  Sagebrush Smith was fully aware that the Lazy Y would have its  cupidity aroused by the gold dust and the
  box. But Sagebrush was  reckless enough and salty enough that he didn’t give, as he put it, "a  tinker’s damn!"
  However, after supper, and immediately prior to sunset, he put on a  little demonstration for effect. He had
  received seven silver dimes as  change for his supper payment of gold dust, and he took the seven dimes
  outside, and four poker chips. He tossed up the seven dimes, one at a  time, and hit two out of the seven with
  bullets from his six−gun,  firing, however, twelve times.
  "That goes to show," Sagebrush declared, "that it can’t be done.  Nobody can do that trick!"
  Then he threw the four poker chips into the air and shot them into a  myriad of pieces with four bullets from
  his six−shooter.
  "Of course," he announced, "that last ain’t no trick at all."
  Sagebrush blew the smoke out of his hogleg, gave it a spectacular  twirl on his fingers, and smacked it into the
  leather. He figured he  had cooled off any ambitions anybody might have had toward the box. He  was rather
  pleased with himself.
  His bubble of pleasure got a pin stuck in it when he went back to  the metal box.
  A man was crouched over the box, who held a scrap of paper in one  hand. With the other hand, the man was
  trying to pick the lock with a  wire. He was intent on the business.
  Sagebrush walked up to the man and drew back and gave the fellow an  enthusiastic kick. Various things then
  happened, none of them expected.
  THE crouching man squawked, sailed completely over the box, turned  in the air and landed facing Sagebrush
  Smith.
  Sagebrush then got a look at the man and had the impression that he  had kicked a bull baboon.
  The paper the man had been holding fluttered away into the sagebrush.
  The baboon of a man sailed back over the box and hit Sagebrush  Smith. Hit him, to the salty cowhand’s
  everlasting mortification,  before Sagebrush could draw his six−shooter.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  12
  
  The punch combined electricity and dynamite. Sagebrush saw strange  lights, suspected he was swapping ends
  in the air, and found himself  flat on the ground.
  Sagebrush unleathered his six−gun and threw lead. His first bullet  went into the sand, the second went toward
  the moon, and he wasn’t sure  about the next two. However, they must have come close to the apish  man,
  because the latter turned and sought safety. He reached the tall  sage and vanished by the simple expedient of
  bending double.
  His head had cleared, so Sagebrush bounded up and charged after the  stranger. The fellow had been at least a
  foot and a half shorter than  Sagebrush, and the latter resented being knocked on his ear by such a  sawed−off
  specimen.
  However, for a man whose legs appeared to be a good deal shorter  than his arms, the stranger made
  remarkable time.
  Sagebrush did not get another glimpse of him.
  The Lazy Y rannys and their husky foreman, Hoke McGee, had arrived  by that time, looking puzzled and
  demanding to know what had happened.
  "I just met," Sagebrush explained, "a spook with hair on his chest."  He felt of his jaw and grimaced. "The
  homeliest dang jigger I ever  seen!"
  Following which he made pointed inquiries about whether or not the  Lazy Y had hired any new hands during
  his absence, and because he was  so plainly in an irritated mood, he got civil answers. Sagebrush became
  convinced that the short, apish marauder was as much a stranger to the  Lazy Y men as to himself.
  "Wait a minute!" Hoke exclaimed. "Two strange dudes sifted through  here the day after you left. One of ‘em
  was a feller built with kind of  a thin waist like a mud−dauber and dressed fancy as Mrs. Astor’s horse.  Hell,
  he even carried a cane!"
  "This galoot that erupted on me didn’t look nothin’ like that,"  Sagebrush grunted.
  "Yeah, but there was an hombre with this fashion plate," said Hoke  McGee, "that was dang nigh as wide as
  he was tall, had rusty−lookin’  hair over ‘im, and a face that was somethin’ to stop a clock. After he  left, one
  of the rannys looked in the dictionary under orang−outang and  found somethin’ that looked like ‘im."
  "That’s my honeybunch!" said Sagebrush.
  A Lazy Y cowboy chuckled. "Don’t forget," he said, "the pig and the  monkey them two fellers had along."
  "The what?" said Sagebrush.
  "They had two pets," said the cowboy. "A pig and a monkey. Anyhow, I  guess it was a monkey. There was
  some argument about that."
  Sagebrush Smith rubbed his jaw again. "This is sure a funny world."
  "Those two men," said Hoke McGee, "were lookin’ for some gent named  Meander Surett."
  Sagebrush stopped rubbing his jaw. "Huh?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  13
  
  "Meander Surett, they called him."
  "Why, dang it, that’s the old geezer who gave me the box and gold�"  Sagebrush swallowed. He hadn’t
  intended to say even that much.
  He would have done much better to have gone ahead with explanations,  because Hoke McGee had made a
  serious error. Hoke had misunderstood the  fragment of a sentence. He thought Sagebrush had said "box of
  gold."
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH did some cogitating, after which he got himself a  good−sized club and went looking
  for his donkeys. He had discovered  that the jackasses would stand and let him catch them if he carried a  club,
  but would run like rabbits if he was empty−handed.
  Having captured one of the donkeys, the cowboy lashed his box to the  back of the animal. This was work, but
  he didn’t want to leave the box  lying around, even for a few minutes; not even while he rode out to  have a
  look at his back trail before it got dark.
  Sagebrush’s examination of his back trail showed him that two men,  two burros, one pig and one monkey had
  tracked him out of the desert to  the Lazy Y ranch. The two men were evidently better at hiding  footprints than
  he was at following them, because he failed to find  them before night fell.
  Somewhat puzzled, Sagebrush went back toward the Lazy Y ranch house.  Two men had followed him out of
  the desert. Not the slightest doubt of  that. He frowned. He never had been quite able to convince himself that
  old Meander Surett had been insane. Of course, the poor old man had  been mentally unbalanced during the
  last weeks of his life, but as for  prior to that, there was a question in Sagebrush’s mind. And thinking  of the
  dying old man’s wild and repeated insistence that there had  been some one watching him. . . . Sagebrush got
  out his gun and gave it  a grim examination.
  "I’m gonna do some ventilatin’ the next time I see either of them  jaspers!" he declared.
  Reaching the Lazy Y ranch house, Sagebrush unloaded the chest, and  it was while doing this that something
  came back to him. He snapped his  fingers gravely.
  "Dang!" he said. "I forgot all about that paper!"
  He borrowed a flashlight from the scowling Lazy Y foreman, went to  the spot where he had caught the
  mysterious, apish gentleman examining  the box, and searched industriously for half an hour before he found
  what he wanted�the sheet of paper the apish fellow had dropped.  Considering that it was obviously only part
  of a communication, it was  interesting:
  �theories undoubtedly substantiated, the belief being held by others  besides Thomas A. Edison. The Edison
  experiments were unfortunately  begun late in that great man’s career, and were interrupted by the  gifted
  inventor’s death. I mention this because the work of these  scientists was the starting point for my own.
  The contents of the metal case cannot be considered of anything less  than world−shaking importance.
  The case is of vault steel, the type which is impervious to cutting  torches. It is a foot and a half deep, two feet
  wide and three feet one  inch in length. The lock is the best obtainable.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  14
  
  There had originally been much more to the communication,  apparently, but it ended there. This segment had
  been torn from the  rest, top and bottom, evidently by using a ruler as a straight edge.
  SAGEBRUSH folded the paper, stowed it in a pocket and went to  contemplate the box. He was having an
  attack of intense curiosity about  the contents, but unless he was mistaken, the metal case would be  harder to
  crack than a safe.
  He was sitting on the box dragging at a cigarette when hoofbeats  rattled up to the Lazy Y corral. Sagebrush
  shifted so that his gun was  handier. He needn’t have bothered. It was only the Lazy Y wrangatang,  who had
  ridden to town for the mail.
  The mail included the usual bundle of newspapers.
  Sagebrush Smith dragged the metal box into the bunk house where he  could watch it; then he picked up a
  newspaper idly. His casualness  didn’t last long.
  PROFESSOR MEANDER SURETT DIES
  ONE OF WORLD’S GREAT
  SCIENTISTS
  Body Buried Near Death Valley Laboratory
  Believed He Worked Alone There
  Vanished Years Ago
  "Great Muley steers!" said Sagebrush Smith.
  He read the two columns on the first page down to where it said  "Turn to Page Two," then discovered that
  page two was all about Meander  Surett. The pictures were of the man Sagebrush had found in the desert,  or
  rather, of the man as he would have been ten years ago in good  health.
  The story said Meander Surett pioneered wireless; ranked almost with  Marconi. Meander Surett formulated
  the most acceptable theory of cosmic  rays. Meander Surett pioneered ultra−short−wave radio.
  There was almost everything about Meander Surett except what  Sagebrush Smith wanted to know. And that
  was: Who had found the body?  Sagebrush Smith had buried the old scientist three days ago, and he had  not
  yet told any one anything. Who, then, had found out the old fellow  was dead? And how had they gotten the
  news to the papers? There weren’t  any telephones nearer to Death Valley than the one which ran from town
  to the Lazy Y.
  "Ah, frog feathers!" complained Sagebrush Smith.
  IT got dark at eight o’clock. About nine the telephone in the ranch  house rang and the operator said, "New
  York is calling Mr. Hoke McGee."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  15
  
  "This is Hoke," said Hoke McGee, who had happened to answer. "Uh�New  York, you say? Who’s callin’ me
  from New York?"
  "Mr. Barr," said the operator. "Just a moment."
  Hoke McGee wrinkled what forehead he had. Barr�Barr. The only Barr  he knew was Everett Everett Barr,
  the lawyer. Hoke McGee and Everett  Everett Barr had run a carnival skin game in partnership, but that had
  been many years ago. Everett Everett had gone a long way since those  days. He was an eminent New York
  attorney, he had written in his last  letter, when he had turned down Hoke McGee’s invitation to buy a gold
  mine which Hoke had all nicely salted and waiting.
  "Hello, Hoke. How are you?"
  It was Everett Everett, all right.
  "I’m all right," said Hoke, "but if you’re after that gold mine, the  price has gone up."
  Everett Everett Barr laughed. Mr. Barr had the heartiest and most  convincing laugh of any man Hoke McGee
  had ever heard.
  "Hoke, old pal, old boy, old friend"�Mr. Barr was always very  effusive�"this is about something big.
  Something a lot better than any  gold mine. It’s really gigantic. Colossal. It’s actually�well, have you  read the
  newspapers?"
  "Yeah," said Hoke wonderingly.
  "Then," said Everett Everett Barr, "you know all about the great  scientist, Meander Surett, who was found
  dead in the desert near your  ranch?"
  "All I know is what I read." Hoke McGee was puzzled.
  "Hoke, old pard, old mate, old chunk−off−the−log, you’ve got to move  fast. Grab your airplane, your horse,
  your jackass or whatever you use  for transportation out there and buzz over to where they found the old
  scientist. You’ll have to really step on it, because you’ve got to get  there before they take the box away."
  "Box?" 
  said Hoke McGee dumbly. 
  "Sure. Box. Made of steel. About three feet long, two feet wide, and  a foot high. Locked."
  "I don’t get this," Hoke complained.
  "Hoke, old buddy, old sweetie, you’ve got to get this box for me.  Get it at any cost. Any cost, see? Borrow,
  bribe, shoot, steal or say  please! But get the box for me!"
  The gist of this sank into Hoke McGee’s head and he leered lovingly  at the telephone.
  "How much in it for me?" he asked.
  "Twenty−five thousand of Uncle Sam’s dollars," said Everett Everett  Barr.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter III. HOKE McGEE
  16
  
  "Uh�wuh!" 
  Hoke McGee swallowed twice with difficulty. "Uh�twenty �what did you say?"
  "Twenty−five thousand dollars when the box is in my hands, Hoke, old  son, old socks, old�"
  "One box," Hoke interrupted, "coming up!"
  He hung up and got out his handkerchief and removed the wetness from  his forehead. Then he played
  leapfrog over a chair and threw down his  hat and jumped on it.
  "You know what?" he asked the Lazy Y owner excitedly.
  "What?"
  "Old Double−Everetts wants to pay us twenty−five thousand smackeroos  for that box Sagebrush Smith is
  totin’ around!"
  "What? Huh? Great spades! That’s just like finding twenty−five  thousand!"
  "Twenty−five thousand�hell! It’s just like findin’ a million!"
  "How come?
  "Anythin’ that old Double−Everetts would offer twenty−five grand for  is worth a million at least. I know my
  Everetts!"
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  WHEN Hoke McGee issued a cordial invitation to sleep in the bunk  house with the boys, Sagebrush Smith
  bull−headedly insisted on sleeping  in the ranch house with the powers that were. He figured that if Hoke
  wanted him in the bunk house that night, the bunk house was no place to  be; but what he didn’t stop to figure
  was that Hoke McGee knew him like  a book by this time; knew that if Sagebrush was invited to sleep in the
  bunk house, he would insist on the ranch house instead.
  So Sagebrush entered in the ranch house front bedroom, rolled back  the bedcovers and looked for rattlesnakes
  as a matter of habit, then  removed his boots and pants and got in bed. All good cowboys sleep in  their shirts
  and underwear.
  Sagebrush lay for a while and had vague sensations. He was beginning  to feel something like a professional
  mouse−catcher who had come upon a  lion. It was possible that he had taken a bite out of something huge  and
  mysterious. Just what was in that box, anyway? He went to sleep in  a bad humor, because he resented things
  he did not understand.
  It was about three o’clock in the morning when the rat trap went  off. When he heard the rat trap snap, he
  reared up in bed, clawed for  his six−gun and pointed it at the box. He had set the rat trap and  placed the box
  on it before he retired, so that the trap would go off  if the box was lifted.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  17
  
  To Sagebrush’s astonishment, he could not see any one near the box.  And there was moonlight in the room.
  To his greater astonishment, a gun snout was jammed into his right  ear. He knew it was the nose of a gun
  because the sight cut him.
  "Drop that hogleg!" gritted Hoke McGee’s voice. Sagebrush thought  about what a bullet going in his right ear
  might do to his brains, and  let fall his six−gun.
  "Polecats!" he said.
  Hoke McGee came around from behind the bed, much pleased with  himself.
  "We was all rigged for you, smart puss," he chuckled. "We had the  screws loose in the window lock and the
  window slide greased, and we  had a hole poked in the wall so we could watch you from the other room.  We
  saw you fix the rat trap. Sit still, you!"
  Hoke unlocked the door, and the Lazy Y owner came in carrying a  sawed−off shotgun.
  "You tote the box," Hoke told him.
  The owner strained with the box, then complained, "Danged if it  ain’t heavy!"
  Sagebrush said, "I’ll skin you ginks alive!"
  "Shut up!" said Hoke. "Get movin’!"
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH got out of bed and walked toward the front door,  feeling�with his hands held open by
  his ears and in his shirt  tails�very much like one of the donkeys.
  "Hey," he muttered. "Lemme put on my boots!" 
  "Heh, heh!" said Hoke viciously. 
  Sagebrush began to feel as though he had waded into a spring of cold  water.
  "You gonna take me into the desert and turn me loose without any  shoes?" he gritted.
  "I wouldn’t be surprised," Hoke McGee said. Sagebrush swallowed with  discomfort. In the desert without
  shoes! Sun and weather had done  something to the desert rock around Death Valley and it had become like
  broken glass� 
  Suddenly deciding he would take chances with guns instead of the  desert, Sagebrush stepped through the
  front door�and pitched to one  side.
  It was ink dark on the porch. He hit some one. Whoever he bumped  into fell down.
  "Blast your hide!" said the one who had fallen. He spoke in a voice  remarkably like that of a child.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  18
  
  Sagebrush popped his eyes at what was now happening in the doorway.  A rather slender man had appeared in
  the lighted door. This man was  lean, of average height. He wore fine cordovan gentleman’s riding  boots,
  well−tailored whipcord breeches, a checked sports coat, ascot  tie, pearl−gray derby with a small, bright
  feather in the band. He  carried a slender black cane.
  This male fashion−plate jerked the cane apart at the handle; it  became a sword with a lean, flashing blade.
  The dapper man was a wizard  with the sword. The point licked out and perforated Hoke McGee’s gun  hand
  and Hoke bawled and dropped his gun.
  The Lazy Y owner was carrying the box. He tried to put it down,  tripped and fell, landing with the box atop
  him. He howled as the sword  cane dived like a spark and left a red line across his cheek.
  Next both Hoke McGee and the Lazy Y owner made loud, sighing noises  as though very sleepy, and fell on
  their faces and made no more moves,  except to breathe. They did continue breathing.
  All this happened while Sagebrush was getting to his feet. The  cowboy peered to see whom he had bumped
  into. Suspicions were correct;  it was the apish individual he had kicked earlier in the night.
  "The hairy spook again!" Sagebrush grunted.
  Then the Lazy Y rannys arrived.
  LAZY Y cowhands had a bad reputation. They were gun−toters, and more  than one had ridden the "owl
  hoot" trail; had rustled cattle or engaged  in other thievery. No one could say they were afraid of a fight where
  money was involved.
  Hoke McGee must have told them there was money mixed up in this,  because they came storming on to the
  porch with lanterns, rifles and  revolvers. They came boiling, fighting.
  Sagebrush grabbed a man around the neck with one hand, punched him  with the other hand. He did very well.
  But some one stepped up and  cracked him with a rifle butt and drove him against the ranch house  wall so
  hard that he bounced. Next, he was down and high−heeled boots  were walking on him.
  The apish man and the dapper man were hemmed in. Backs to the ranch  house wall, they fought. Some one
  threw a rifle; it caved in the  well−dressed man’s pearl−gray derby and did enough to his skull so that  he
  kneeled down. Men landed on him. The apish man bawled, tried to  rescue the other. He, too, went down.
  Lazy Y hands piled on. A gun or two went off, but fighting was too  close and it was too dark for effective
  lead−throwing. Then the fight  was over suddenly and the Lazy Y had won with numbers.
  "Get a rope," someone said. "We’ll tie ‘em up."
  "I’ll get it," a cowboy muttered.
  He stepped off the porch, stopped.
  "Who�who�who"�he pointed�"who’s that?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  19
  
  Sagebrush Smith, struck by the strangeness in the cowboy’s voice,  raised his head and looked. He saw the
  bronze man. It was the first  time he had seen the bronze man. And he never forgot it.
  The bronze man came out of the tall sagebrush and at first, walking  out there in the moonlight, he seemed of
  average size. Then he came  closer. He wasn’t average size. Wasn’t average anything. He seemed to  grow,
  develop. He became a giant so perfectly proportioned that it was  only when he was near other men with
  whom he could be compared that his  tremendous stature was evident.
  Sagebrush stared. It wasn’t only the bronze man’s size that gripped  him. There was more; eyes. Even in the
  moonlight the man’s eyes�like  pools of flake gold�seemed to have a hypnotic compelling power. The man
  wore no hat and his hair fitted like a metallic skullcap, and was a  bronze hue only slightly darker than his
  skin. When he moved his head  tendons barred out in his neck; he walked with eerie lightness. And  probably
  more than anything else, his calmness was impressive. He  seemed entirely unconcerned.
  He reached the porch and spoke. His voice was deep, cultured,  remarkably toned, and had also a subtle,
  compelling power that was in  keeping with the power of the man himself.
  "Here is something," he said, "that might be interesting."
  He held out a palm; an object that might have been a glass marble  rolled off it, hit the porch floor with a faint,
  crunching sound, and  became a wet spot. A wet spot for but an instant; then the wetness was  gone and there
  was only the thin glistening of a broken, globular,  glass container.
  Sagebrush Smith was suddenly seized by the apish man. The fellow  clutched Sagebrush’s mouth and throat
  and shut off air from his lungs.  Fighting to free himself, Sagebrush realized the other man was holding  his
  breath, too.
  Then a Lazy Y cowhand took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh  and got down on his knees. Ludicrously,
  the cowhand peered at the porch  floor as though hunting a soft place; then he laid down. The other Lazy  Y
  men did the same thing in quick succession until there was no one but  the strange bronze man left standing.
  Fully thirty additional seconds passed during which Sagebrush was  not allowed to get air. He knew his face
  was purple. But his struggles  against the apish man were absolutely futile.
  Then the bronze man spoke�he, too, had held his breath.
  "The anaesthetic gas has dissipated by now," he said.
  THE apish man and the well−dressed man�the latter wasn’t so  well−dressed now�got to their feet. Both
  gulped air in the fashion of  men who had been holding their breath.
  "I thought you was in the plane headed for Meander Surett’s  laboratory," the apish man said sheepishly.
  "I was afraid you might have a little trouble here, Monk," the  bronze man explained.
  The bronze man went to the vault−steel box, and picked it up�picked  it up, actually, with one hand�and
  swung it onto a shoulder without as  much as seeming to strain. Sagebrush Smith’s eyes popped; he knew the
  weight of that box.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  20
  
  "Let’s go," the bronze man said. "There are more men at the bunk  house."
  They left the ranch house, the bronze man carrying the metal case  easily.
  Several Lazy Y cowboys still at the bunk house�they had been  delayed, probably, by the necessity for
  digging their weapons out of  bedrolls or war−sacks�began shooting. Bullets ate off pieces of  sagebrush
  around the retreating men.
  "Your machine−pistol, Monk," the bronze giant said.
  The apish man produced a weapon which slightly resembled an  overgrown automatic pistol. It had a drum
  magazine.
  "It’s loaded with them new bomb bullets," "Monk" explained. "That’s  the reason I didn’t use it."
  The bronze man took the gun; pointed it in the direction of the Lazy  Y buildings and pulled the trigger.
  Sagebrush Smith’s ears were  assailed by such a roar as he’d never heard before. If there could be a  bull as big
  as Pikes Peak, and if the bull were to bawl, the noise  would be about like the one the little gun made.
  An entire corner of the Lazy Y ranch house flew into the air; the  windmill jumped up and fell over; and part
  of the corral disintegrated  into flying rails. Wagonloads of earth sprang into the air at points  closer and closer
  to the bunk house. The Lazy Y rannys around the bunk  house turned and fled like prairie dogs in a
  thunderstorm.
  "That kinda discouraged ‘em," Monk said.
  Sagebrush Smith and his companions trotted half a mile over the arid  hills into a deep dry−wash and
  approached two burros which were tied.
  By then, Sagebrush Smith had recovered enough from general  astonishment to gulp a question. "What the
  heck kinda guys are you,  anyhow?" he demanded.
  No one responded.
  The bronze giant lowered the metal case to the sand. He showed no  effects of having packed such a heavy
  burden at a trot for half a mile.  Producing a flashlight which apparently operated from a  spring−generator
  instead of a battery, and which emitted a thin, very  white rod of light, he examined the box.
  In the midst of the bronze man’s scrutiny, Sagebrush Smith was  startled by a fantastic sound. It was low,
  strange, and utterly exotic.  Trilling best described it. Sagebrush at first made the mistake of  thinking it was a
  product of the night wind and the desert sand, and  only when he saw the apish Monk and the dapper "Ham"
  peering at the  bronze giant intently did he realize the latter must be making the  sound�that it must be a small,
  unconscious habit. The note was low,  indefinable, almost unearthly, and faded away into nothingness.
  "This is Meander Surett’s vault−steel chest," the bronze giant said.
  "It sure answers the description he gave in his letter," Monk agreed.
  "Monk, did you examine Meander Surett’s desert laboratory closely?"  asked the bronze man.
  "We sure did," Monk said.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  21
  
  "Did it seem to you that Meander Surett could have been insane?"
  "Insane?"
  "That point is important. If the scientist was sane, his letter can  be believed; in which case the man has made,
  beyond doubt, the greatest  scientific discovery of ages."
  "Think it’s that important, huh?"
  "Meander Surett’s discovery, if genuine, cannot be estimated." The  bronze man’s unusual voice was serious.
  "The effects may change  civilization, perhaps alter religions and overthrow governments.  Results of a thing
  so unexpected and so startling are hard to estimate.  The point is: Was Meander Surett sane�or did he only
  imagine he had  made his fantastic discovery?"
  Monk swallowed. He moistened his lips.
  "Well," he said, "I think Meander Surett was sane."
  "Ham," said the bronze man, "what do you think?"
  "Nobody but a sane man could establish such a laboratory as he had,"  the dapper man replied. "But I also
  think he was out of his head from  suffering for a while before he died�possibly for a few days, or maybe  a
  few weeks."
  The bronze giant looked at Sagebrush Smith. "What is your name?"
  "Sagebrush Smith," said Sagebrush with involuntary haste.
  THERE was something about this strange bronze man that gripped and  compelled, and Sagebrush, who was
  indignant and wanted to stamp and  shout and demand to know what it was all about, found that his tongue
  was falling over itself to give civil answers.
  "Are you puzzled by all this?" the bronze man asked.
  "Kinda," Sagebrush admitted.
  "Here, briefly, is what has happened," the bronze man said. "A  number of days ago a letter came to us in New
  York. It was from Meander  Surett. It said that Meander Surett had worked for years in a secret  Death Valley
  laboratory to perfect an amazing discovery. The nature of  the discovery was revealed in the letter. But there
  was also a request  that absolutely no one be told its nature. I am respecting Meander  Surett’s request for
  secrecy."
  Sagebrush nodded and swallowed.
  "Meander Surett’s letter," continued the bronze man, "stated that  unknown men had been trying to steal the
  discovery. Meander Surett  confessed in the letter to killing one of these men, and also to  capturing one, which
  he was holding prisoner.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  22
  
  "Monk and Ham came out here to investigate," the bronze man went on.  "They found Meander Surett dead
  and buried. They radioed me to that  effect, and I gave the information to the newspapers in such a manner
  that they did not know where it came from. There was no reason why it  should be unknown that one of the
  greatest scientists of the day had  died. And make no mistake�Meander Surett was a great scientist."
  Sagebrush Smith nodded dumbly.
  "Monk and Ham trailed you," the bronze man said. "They traced you to  that ranch house. In the meantime, I
  had caught up with detail work in  New York, and came out by plane to help personally with the  investigation.
  To−night Monk and Ham were to seize you and the metal  box, while I went on into the desert to examine
  Meander Surett’s  laboratory. Suspecting there might be difficulties at the ranch, I  delayed the desert trip,
  which explains my appearance a few minutes  ago."
  "I see," Sagebrush Smith said.
  "Smith," said the bronze man, "why did you take that box?"
  "Meander Surett gave it to me," Sagebrush explained. "He had me  promise him to take it to his daughter
  Sally and Doc Savage."
  "What was your opinion of Meander Surett’s mental stability?"
  "His what?"
  "Was he crazy?"
  "Hell, I don’t know. He was, and he wasn’t."
  "What do you mean?"
  "At first, I figured there was nothin’ wrong with him," Sagebrush  muttered. "He kept claimin’ unknown
  people had been watchin’ him. I  thought maybe they had. But then he told me he’d caught one of the  gents
  who was watchin’ him, and had the geezer tied in the desert. When  I looked, it was only a mangy coyote he
  had on a chain."
  "A coyote?"
  "Yeah. I�well, after that, I didn’t know what to think."
  For the second time, there came the faint trilling. The sound,  Sagebrush decided, was one of the most eerie
  things he had ever heard.
  The bronze man spoke to Monk and Ham. "You might as well head for  the railroad with the cowboy and the
  box."
  Monk said, "But�"
  "I will go to Meander Surett’s laboratory," the bronze man said. "It  is of the utmost importance that we know
  whether or not his story was  the product of a demented mind."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IV. BIG APE AND PIG MAN
  23
  
  The bronze giant arose, moved aside a few yards and stood near a  knobby gray clump of jumping cactus.
  Then, with weird abruptness, he  had vanished.
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH asked, "Who was that guy?"
  "Doc," Monk said, "is Clark Savage, Jr., better known as Doc Savage,  the man of bronze."
  "Hm−m−m." Sagebrush rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "So that’s the gent  they write about in the magazines so
  much."
  "You sound a bit surprised," Monk growled.
  "Kinda. I didn’t figure there was no such hombre." Suddenly  Sagebrush whacked his right fist into his left
  palm. "I still don’t  think," he yelled, "that he can hit fifty dimes in the air with fifty  shots from a six−gun!"
  "That," Monk said, "ain’t no trick a−tall for Doc."
  "You’re a liar by the clock!" said Sagebrush. "There ain’t no jasper  can do such a thing!"
  Monk grew indignant.
  "Turn this guy’s stern my way, Ham," he ordered.
  "Why?" asked the dapper Ham.
  "He’s the hooligan who kicked me," Monk squawked. "I’m gonna  reciprocate."
  "I can lick both you jaspers!" said Sagebrush rashly. 
  Ham said to Monk, "You kick this man and I’ll take this cane and  carve a map of the moon on you. The
  moon is covered with craters, in  case you don’t know it, you hairy monstrosity!"
  "Who’s a hairy monstrosity?" demanded Monk irately. 
  "You. You’re also a fur−encrusted gossoon, and as simple−witted as  you look!"
  "You keep that up," Monk said, "and I’ll wring you out until you  resemble your last year’s gray spats!"
  Sagebrush batted his eyes at them.
  "You geezers seem to quarrel a little," he remarked.
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  MONK and Ham stopped quarreling. Monk pointed at the moon.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  24
  
  "Look," he said.
  A strange, gigantic insect seemed to be hanging in front of the  moon, an insect with a fat body and a set of
  four wings which it  whirled windmill fashion instead of flapping. The insect made a faint,  hissing noise. It
  came nearer, sank close to the dry−wash in which  Monk, Ham, and Sagebrush Smith crouched, and they
  could see the faint  glow of light from an instrument panel.
  "That ain’t like no airplane I ever saw," Sagebrush Smith muttered.
  "It’s a true gyro," Ham advised him shortly. "One of the very few  which ever got beyond the experimental
  stage. It can rise straight up,  come straight down and hang absolutely motionless in the air."
  "How does it do that?" Sagebrush demanded, not unreasonably.
  "Go study aëronautical engineering for six years, Young Wild West,"  Monk advised, "and you’d understand
  it if it was explained to you."
  "I can see," Sagebrush said, "that me and you are gonna get along  great."
  The gyro came to a dead stop overhead, the cabin window opened, and  Doc Savage’s arm appeared briefly
  and waved. Then the gyroplane’s  silenced motors hissed a little louder and it climbed straight up for a  few
  hundred feet, after which the sound it made was almost inaudible.  The gyro vanished out over the desert.
  Doc Savage turned a knob and caused a hand to move around a dial  which was marked with points of the
  compass. Then he turned switches,  and a robot pilot took over the gyroplane and flew it on the compass
  course which he had set with the dial. Another dial−and−hand device  governed the height.
  From time to time, the bronze man changed the setting of this to  keep close to the stony terrain below. In the
  space of a few miles, the  sides of Death Valley sloped from an altitude of several thousand feet  to below sea
  level.
  The weirdness of Death Valley at night was spread below. Far to the  right was the white smear of the great
  borax beds. They seemed only a  mile or two distant; were actually more than sixty miles away. Ahead,  the
  Funeral Mountains reared; behind were the Panamint Mountains; and  both ranges had a blackness that was a
  little fantastic.
  Doc Savage consulted instruments which had nothing to do with the  business at hand�a device for measuring
  cosmic penetration in this  area, an apparatus for checking the characteristics of shorter radio  waves at this
  lower−than−the−sea level. He filed the readings of the  instruments for future reference�in his memory.
  The bronze man had a prodigious memory, developed as a part of the  remarkable two−hour routine of
  exercises which he had taken with daily  regularity since childhood�exercises that accounted for many of his
  amazing faculties. He was continually experimenting, had a score of  projects under way at times. It might be
  weeks before he got around to  using the data he took from the instruments in Death Valley, but so  highly was
  his memory trained that it would serve as well as a notebook.
  Doc’s next move was to spread old Meander Surett’s letter in the  glow from the instrument panel. The bronze
  man’s training had made him  skilled in many subjects, handwriting being one of them. He knew that  it was
  possible to check the sanity of a person to an extent by the  individual’s handwriting.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  25
  
  But it was impossible to check old Meander Surett’s mental condition  from his letter. The letter was
  typewritten, except for the signature.  The signature was legible, and the letter text was rational enough.
  The bronze man located Meander Surett’s desert laboratory without  difficulty. Monk and Ham had given him
  its location. Since the gyro did  not need a runway to rise, as did an ordinary plane, he merely dropped  it on
  the sand.
  THE sand was white. In mounds and valleys and ridges and cones, it  lay as albescent as bone dust. Jutting
  here and there, fantastic in the  moonlight, was the scattered ruin of the prehistoric city, baffling  physical
  presence of an enigma to scientists. There were other ruins on  the floor of Death Valley, and they were as
  puzzling as this one.
  Science knew something of the cliff dwellers of Arizona, the mound  builders of the Mississippi valley, the
  pyramid−makers of Yucatan,  because skeletons of the one−time inhabitants had been found. But the  only
  skeletons ever found in these ruins had been those of prospectors  who had died of heat that was almost a
  hundred and forty in the shade.
  A sidewinder slid away sidewise, deadly blunt head and little eyes  always on the bronze man. A little
  scorpion curled its stinger−bearing  tail menacingly. Coyotes yapped in the distance, like children  laughing.
  The little mouse−bodied bats of the desert floated close and  made tiny noises with their teeth; sounds that
  were like one finger  nail being picked with another finger nail.
  Doc Savage reached the adobe hut which housed poor old Meander  Surett’s laboratory. He entered. When he
  turned a light switch, a  motor−generator unit started and the place was flooded with luminance.  He looked
  around.
  Doc Savage himself maintained two laboratories�one in the New York  skyscraper headquarters, the other in
  an isolated Arctic spot which he  called his "Fortress of Solitude." Both laboratories were remarkably
  complete. To the New York one came scientists from all over the world  to examine, to copy the instruments
  developed there. The one in the  Fortress of Solitude was even more complete, but only Doc Savage had  ever
  seen it.
  The bronze man spent three hours in old Meander Surett’s  laboratory�for he knew he was examining
  something more complete than  anything he had for research into the lesser−known phases of electrical
  phenomena.
  He got out old Meander Surett’s letter:
  The man was spying on me and tried to shoot me when I caught him,  and I shot first with my rifle and killed
  him. He is buried one hundred  yards due west of the door of my laboratory.
  The bronze man frowned at that paragraph in the letter. Then he  stepped off the hundred yards west of the
  adobe hut door and began  digging.
  The man buried there had, strangely enough, been mummified by the  super−heated sand, probably because he
  had not been buried deep. He  wore riding boots, khaki breeches, a khaki shirt. He had been shot  squarely in
  the heart.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  26
  
  Old Meander Surett had buried his victim in haste. There was a bill  fold in the man’s inner coat pocket
  containing several hundred dollars  in paper money.
  The telegram was tucked inside the leather halves of the man’s belt,  which was composed of two strips of
  leather sewn together after the  fashion of some belts. It would have escaped an ordinary search:
  BILL HORDER
  BARSTOW CALIFORNIA
  IF YOU THINK HE HAS PERFECTED HIS DISCOVERY GO AHEAD AND GET HIM OUT  OF THE
  WAY
  There was no signature.
  The envelope was tucked in the dead man’s shirt pocket where any one  could have found it. But it was
  empty, and no one would have been  interested in it except a chemist or a pharmacist, who would know the
  meaning of the penciled symbols on the envelope. Doc Savage knew  probably more chemistry than his aid,
  the homely Monk, who was one of  the greatest contemporary industrial chemists.
  The bullet which had killed the man was a .30−30 rifle bullet.  Sagebrush Smith had not taken old Meander
  Surett’s rifle. It was a  .30−30.
  Doc Savage made a large bundle of gunny sacks, canvas and waste from  the laboratory. A container filled
  with paraffin would have been  better. He fired the .30−30 into the rags, recovered the bullet and  compared it
  with the one that had killed the man, using a pocket  magnifier of considerable power.
  Old Meander Surett might have kept a coyote chained in the desert  under the impression it was a man, but it
  was also pretty evident that  he had killed a man.
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH had buried Meander Surett carefully and covered the  body with stones lugged from
  the ruins which were all around and half  buried in the desert sand. Atop the grave, the cowboy had erected a
  cross inscribed:
  MEANDER SURETT
  Scientist
  Autopsies are not pleasant things. Doc Savage liked them no better  than the next man, in spite of his intensive
  training as a surgeon  which had brought him in contact with such things as dissecting rooms.
  Meander Surett had not died from a cancer. His insides had been  burned away by a pernicious poison, which
  had remained in his system  and eaten and eaten until death had come.
  The symbols on the envelope from the pocket of the man who had been  shot was the formula of the poison
  which had killed Meander Surett.
  So it was fairly evident that the man had poisoned the old scientist  before the latter had caught him
  marauding and had killed him.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  27
  
  Doc Savage went back to the plane and turned on the short−wave radio.
  "Monk," he said into the microphone.
  There was a short wait. Monk and Ham would be keeping their portable  short−wave outfit on monitor setting,
  only the receiver operating. The  transmitter had to be switched on and warmed up.
  Finally Monk’s small voice could be heard saying, "�and I’m gonna  slam you on the head, Ham, so hard that
  your ears will be growing out  of your ankles." In a more pleasant tone, Monk said, "Yeah, Doc?"
  "Meander Surett did not die from cancer," Doc Savage said. "He was  poisoned. And he did kill a prowler, as
  his letter indicated."
  "Then," Monk muttered, "it looks like he was sane."
  "Meander Surett’s death," Doc Savage said, "was obviously the result  of a plot."
  "Then maybe we’ll run into some trouble on this yet," Monk remarked.
  He sounded rather cheerful about the prospects. 
  "You will proceed back to New York," Doc Savage directed. "Does  Sagebrush Smith wish to go?"
  "I’ll ask him," Monk grunted. "Hey, Young Wild West, do you wanta go  to New York with us?"
  The microphone was sensitive enough to bring Sagebrush Smith’s  response over the air to Doc Savage.
  "I made old Meander Surett a promise and I’m gonna keep it, and  don’t think I ain’t!" said Sagebrush.
  "Yeah, but you’ve delivered the box to us," Monk reminded him.
  "I ain’t delivered it to Sally Surett," growled Sagebrush. "That was  part of the bargain."
  Monk said to Doc Savage. "He’s a kind of contrary bonehead, Doc.  Want me to tie a knot in his leg and leave
  him to untie it?"
  "If he insists," Doc Savage said, "take him along."
  "I insist!" Sagebrush yelled.
  "If you go with us," Monk informed him, "you may get into trouble.  We’re generally kinda magnets for
  trouble."
  "That’s great," said Sagebrush. "I’d like to see what trouble is  like."
  "Doc, he ain’t got no sense," Monk said.
  "Gimme a gun," Sagebrush howled, "and then say that!"
  Monk chuckled. "Doc, I think I’ll give him a six−shooter and sic him  on Ham."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter V. SYMBOLS FOR TROUBLE
  28
  
  Doc Savage said, "You can make it to the railroad by morning."
  "What are you gonna do, Doc?"
  "Some investigating," the bronze man explained, "in the direction of  the Lazy Y ranch."
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  AROUND the Lazy Y ranch house there was not exactly an air of  jubilation. In fact, there was a good deal of
  wiping of perspiration  from foreheads, passing around of a bottle which some one had produced  from a tarp
  bedroll, and puzzled discussion.
  The Lazy Y hands had not figured out exactly what had happened.  Those who had gone to sleep so
  mysteriously on the porch had awakened  and been accused of playing possum. They had gotten scared and
  had all  pretended to be dead, claimed the hands who had never left the bunk  house.
  The men then went out and gathered around the ripped corner of the  ranch house, the shattered corral, the
  overturned windmill, and the  great pits in the ground, and asked each other a question:
  "What done that?"
  No one seemed to have been injured much.
  Hoke McGee and the Lazy Y owner awakened after every one else.
  "That sword cane had somethin’ on it that put us to sleep," Hoke  McGee muttered. "Where’s Sagebrush and
  them other two ginks and that  box?"
  "Gone." 
  "You infernal cowards! You let ‘em get away! Only three of ‘em, and  you let ‘em get away!"
  "There was more’n Sagebrush and the two others."
  "How many more?"
  "One more."
  "One! Why, you buzzards! You let one hombre whip you all?"
  "Somehow I ain’t ashamed," a cowhand muttered. "Not when the one  hombre was that bronze gent."
  "Bronze?"
  "He wasn’t exactly a runt, either. He just walked up and made a  remark kinda calmlike as if he was
  mentionin’ the weather. Next thing  you know, we didn’t know nothin’."
  "And the corner flew off the house, the windmill upset, the corral  jumped to pieces, and the ground began to
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  29
  
  cough out chunks," another  hand said.
  HOKE McGEE and the Lazy Y owner got a bottle of their own, locked  themselves in the ranch house, sat at a
  table, and looked bewildered.
  "That box," moaned Hoke, "weighed anyhow three hundred pounds.  Figurin’ it had two hundred and fifty
  pounds of gold in it, at  thirty−five dollars an ounce, it would be worth a hundred and forty  thousand dollars."
  "You’ve got your troy and avoirdupois weights mixed up," mumbled the  owner, "but it gives you some idea."
  They sampled the bottle several times, but it did not help their  spirits.
  "We gotta call Everett Everett Barr," Hoke grumbled. 
  "Call him? Why? We want that chest of gold ourselves, don’t we?"
  "Look at it this way," Hoke said. "We ain’t got no line on this  thing, but Double−Everetts apparently has. He
  may be able to put us  next to how we might head off the box."
  This was logical, so Hoke McGee got on the telephone, which was  fortunately in a part of the ranch house
  that was not ruined, and  called Mr. Barr in New York City.
  He told the whole sad story substantially as he understood it had  happened, neglecting, however, to mention
  that he’d held private  designs on the box’s contents.
  "That’s bad, Hoke, old boy, old socks, old kid," said Everett  Everett Barr. "Er�describe your Nemesis again,
  will you?"
  "My what?"
  "The�oh�personage of bronze who put your men to sleep."
  "I didn’t see him," Hoke growled, "but from reports, he was  somethin’ that just couldn’t be."
  "In that case," said Everett Everett Barr sadly, "there’s no doubt  about who he was."
  "Eh?"
  "Doc Savage."
  "Who," Hoke asked, "is Doc Savage?"
  The inquiry seemed to astonish Everett Everett Barr beyond belief.  "Hoke, old buddy," he said, "who
  invented the phonograph?"
  "Thomas A. Edison," Hoke said.
  "And who is president of the United States?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  30
  
  "Theodore�I mean, Franklin Roosevelt."
  "And who discovered America?"
  "Christopher Columbus," said Hoke. "What the blazes has that got to  do with it?"
  "Nothing," Mr. Barr said, "except that I am amazed that you have  heard of those persons and not of Doc
  Savage."
  HOKE McGEE realized that Everett Everett Barr was very earnest about  this.
  "Well," Hoke said, "I never heard of any Doc Savage. What’s he a  doctor of?"
  "Trouble."
  "Eh?"
  "Other people’s troubles, perhaps I should have said." Mr. Barr  cleared his throat. "Hoke, my trusty friend,
  my valued colleague, this  Doc Savage is one of the most remarkable men the world has known. You  have
  heard of the mythical City of To−morrow, the ultramodern  metropolis of the future? Doc Savage is the Man
  of To−morrow. He is a  combination of scientific genius, muscular marvel and Sir Galahad. He  is to−day what
  they hope man will be a few centuries in the future. He  is an electrician, chemist, geologist, engineer, surgeon
  and I don’t  know what else. Mind you, he’s not just an ordinary electrician,  chemist and so on. He’s probably
  the best there is in any and all these  lines."
  "Yeah?"
  "Furthermore," Mr. Barr continued, "Doc Savage has five assistants  who are world−noted scientists,
  engineers and lawyers. They make a  formidable company, believe you me. Two of them, Monk, the chemist,
  and  Ham, the lawyer, were evidently with him to−night at your ranch!"
  "Yeah?" Hoke said.
  "Anything," Mr. Barr declared, "that interests Doc Savage to the  point where he came all the way to Death
  Valley is bound to be big."
  "I see," Hoke said.
  "Very big indeed." Everett Everett Barr smacked his lips. "And I  happen to know this is big. Yes, I do. I
  know certain details which  even Doc Savage does not know and which, if he did know them, would  doubtless
  cause him to be rather excited. And I understand he does not  excite easily."
  "You mean you know somethin’ about that box?"
  "Indeed I do, Hoke, old pard, old chum, old soak, old�"
  "Who’s payin’ for this call?" Hoke interrupted.
  "Why�er�you are, aren’t you?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  31
  
  "In that case," Hoke snarled, "I don’t wanta discuss somebody named  Doc Savage. And never mind so much
  ‘old−chum, old−pal’ stuff. How we  gonna get hold of that box again?"
  "They will doubtless head for the nearest town," Mr. Barr said,  "where they will take a train to Los Angeles,
  where they will get a  plane for New York."
  "Plane?"
  "Doc Savage cannot take the box and his men back in his airship  because he is flying a gyroplane which
  cannot lift that much weight.  The gyro is a small ship, and the only one of its kind in the world."
  "You seem to know a lot about Doc Savage’s being out here," Hoke  muttered.
  Everett Everett Barr chuckled.
  "Hoke, old son," he said, "I have been right on this job for months.  I knew Doc Savage might be summoned
  by old Meander Surett. I knew it  because old Surett’s letters to his daughter�um�I mean, his  letters�ah�his
  letters were all postmarked Los Angeles.
  "Some months ago, I employed a man named Bill Horder, who located  Meander Surett. Bill Horder and
  myself�ah�had plans for Meander Surett.  But something happened and I did not hear from Bill Horder again.
  Unfortunately, I did not know where to find Meander Surett until I read  that he had been found dead in Death
  Valley. Of course, I got in touch  with you right away." 
  Hoke digested that for some moments.
  "Just what’s behind this?" he demanded.
  "You can’t imagine."
  "Blast it, of course not!" Hoke snapped. "That’s why I’m askin’!"
  "What I meant is that it is so big you couldn’t imagine the  possibilities," said Mr. Barr. "It’s stupendous.
  It’s�ah�colossal.  Hoke, old prince, stick with me and you’ll be a millionaire. Why, bless  me, a billionaire,
  maybe!"
  "I’m askin’ you," Hoke said, "what’s in that box?"
  "You bring the box to me," said Mr. Barr, "and I’ll show you, and  also give you twenty−five thousand
  dollars, and later a lot more money."
  "But�"
  "Instead of wasting words," added Mr. Barr, "suppose you be heading  after the box?"
  Hoke McGee hung up and contemplated the telephone disgustedly for  some time. Then he got out makings
  and constructed himself a somewhat  droopy cigarette.
  "You know what?"
  "What?" asked the Lazy Y owner.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VI. BLOODHOUNDS FOR HIRE
  32
  
  "I’m beginnin’ to think there’s somethin’ besides gold in that box,"  Hoke muttered.
  THE cowhand who dashed into the Lazy Y ranch house a few minutes  later was excited.
  "Hey!" he exploded. "We thought we saw that bronze feller again!"
  "Where?" yelled Hoke.
  "Walkin’ out there in the mesquite."
  "Was he near the house?"
  "Naw. He couldn’t get close. We been keepin’ a close lookout."
  Hoke relaxed. "I guess he couldn’t ‘a’ heard nothin’," he muttered.
  It was about this time that Doc Savage was returning to an equipment  case a sensitive electrical device which
  enabled him to eavesdrop on a  telephone wire from a distance of a score or more yards. He had not  been near
  the Lazy Y ranch house, but he had been under the telephone  line while Hoke McGee was talking to Everett
  Everett Barr.
  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH had never been a young man who was readily  impressed. There were few things
  which ever had held him spellbound.  The Grand Canyon of the Colorado had done so, on the one occasion he
  had seen it. Sometimes the panoramic vastness and the eerie character  of Death Valley held him silent and
  awed. He refused to be spellbound  by Doc Savage, the mystery surrounding one metal box, or two strange
  fellows named Monk and Ham.
  However, Sagebrush was somewhat impressed by two animals named  Habeas Corpus and Chemistry which
  turned up in the dry−wash.
  Habeas Corpus was a pig, and a remarkable pig. A shote with legs as  long as those of a dog, ears that came
  nigh being wings, and a long,  inquisitive snout. Habeas was Monk’s pet.
  Chemistry was a source of doubt in Sagebrush Smith’s mind, because  Chemistry probably could be an
  orang−outang, baboon, or runt gorilla.  There was room for argument. The animal might have been a
  combination  of any number of branches of the monkey family. Chemistry was dapper  Ham’s pet.
  "Haw! Haw! Haw!" whooped Sagebrush gleefully.
  What’s eatin’ you, Jesse James?" Monk demanded.
  "Every time I see that Chemistry thing," Sagebrush chortled, "he  looks more like you!"
  "The time is comin’ closer," Monk said, "when I take one cowboy in  my two hands and squeeze and there
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  33
  
  will just be a little grease on my  hands and no cowboy."
  "You’re quite a bag of wind," Sagebrush grinned.
  Monk fished a silver half dollar from his pocket, held it between  thumb and fingers, squeezed slowly�and
  bent the half dollar neatly  double. He surveyed the result and seemed disappointed.
  "Generally I squeeze ‘em back into nuggets," he explained.
  Sagebrush Smith swallowed. It was an incredible feat of strength,  and he was impressed with the fact that
  Monk was apparently as strong  as the bull ape which he resembled.
  "All muscle and no brains," Sagebrush muttered.
  The remark seemed to anger dapper Ham. He pointed his cane at  Sagebrush.
  "I’ll tell you something Two−gun Terror," he said. "Monk is one of  the greatest chemists in the world."
  Sagebrush sniffed. "I guess Doc Savage has to have somebody around  to do the muscle work."
  Monk scowled. "Listen, Six−Shooter Sam," he growled, "I had to use  the strength of my whole hand to bend
  that half dollar. Doc can do  it with his little finger!"
  "Bunk," Sagebrush said, a trifle uncertainly.
  "You’ll see," Monk promised him.
  Eventually they reached the town of Barstow, and Sagebrush Smith  provided himself with a suit of store
  clothes, a new pair of cowboy  boots and a cheap suitcase. About the time he finished shopping, a  passenger
  train came in and they got aboard. Habeas and Chemistry were  placed in the baggage car.
  Hoke McGee reached town just in time to swing, unobserved, aboard  the last coach of the same train. With
  Hoke were half a dozen Lazy Y  hands who were what is known in Western parlance as gun−slicks.
  THE train was streamlined, and it rumbled across the desert like a  jointed metal worm, pursued by a rope of
  dust. Heat shimmered in waves  off the sides of the cars, danced weirdly over the desert and blended  with
  changing mirages.
  When the train was nearing Los Angeles, the man in the khaki uniform  appeared. He had white hair, rather
  staring eyes of a brilliant blue  color and a tobacco−stained white mustache of the kind usually called a
  "soup−strainer." He walked always with a stoop, and his garments were  ill−fitting; probably he would have
  been very large had he straightened.
  "Disinfection before you enter Los Angeles county," he announced.
  "Disinfection?" muttered Hoke McGee. "What’s disinfection?"
  "I don’t know," said a puncher, "but I think it’s what they do when  you’re lousy."
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  34
  
  "I resent that!" said Hoke McGee.
  Resent it or not, he submitted meekly to being led back to the men’s  washroom.
  "Just take off your coat, shirt and undershirt," directed the old  man with the white hair and brilliant blue eyes.
  Scowling, Hoke McGee complied. The white−haired man produced a  sponge and a bottle of amber liquid. He
  dampened the sponge with the  liquid and gave Hoke McGee’s back, chest, and arms a sponge bath.
  "That’s all," the blue−eyed man said. "It’s just a health measure."
  Hoke McGee went back to his seat, sat down and rubbed his jaw.
  "There wasn’t much to it," he admitted.
  He watched the rest of his Lazy Y gun−slicks being escorted back to  the wash room, one at a time, where
  they were sponged, then allowed to  don their shirts and coats and return to their seats.
  Hoke was considerably less concerned when he observed that all the  other male passengers were being taken
  back to the wash room one at a  time. This disinfecting, he decided, was some new project of the  Democrats in
  Washington.
  "Still, this disinfectin’ is a new one on me," he muttered.
  Hoke’s mind would have not been so placid had he known that the  other passengers were not sponged. They
  were merely asked a few  questions about past ailments and permitted to return to their seats.
  The coach occupied by Hoke McGee and his men was the only one in  which the blue−eyed man conducted
  his "disinfecting" operations. When  the blue−eyed man had finished with that coach, he went forward to a
  drawing room in one of the Pullmans. He unwrapped tissue paper from a  small object which came out of a
  pocket.
  It was a small suction cup equipped with a handle, and he applied  this carefully to one eye, then the other,
  and removed the blue glass  caps which had disguised the flake gold hue of his eyes. He took off  the gray
  mustache. He applied a chemical cleaner to his hair and  eradicated the white hue, exposing the natural dark
  bronze color.
  Having removed his disguise, Doc Savage changed to a subdued dark  business suit, then glanced into the club
  car. Monk, Ham, and Sagebrush  Smith were riding there, and old Meander Surett’s vault−steel chest was
  beside them.
  Doc Savage went back to his drawing room without revealing his  presence on the train. Doc’s aids did not
  know he was aboard, for after  hiding his gyroplane in the desert the bronze man had followed them  aboard,
  fearing Hoke McGee might attempt some trickery and to keep an  eye on him and his men.
  MONK was occupying the time trying to explain to Sagebrush Smith  just how remarkable an individual was
  Doc Savage.
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  35
  
  "You’re tryin’ to make it sound," Sagebrush said, "like Doc Savage  gets mixed up in stranger things than
  anybody else."
  "Did you ever hear about the time Doc found that lost Island of  prehistoric dinosaurs?" Monk demanded.
  "Naw."
  "Ever hear of the devilish goings−on we found in the Louisiana  swamps?"
  "Nope."
  "Or about how Doc got his start?"
  "No."
  "You’re practically uneducated," Monk said.
  "What gets me," grumbled Sagebrush, "is why Doc Savage should be  stickin’ his nose in this."
  "Look, Billy the Kid," Monk explained, "Doc got a letter."
  "Sure. But why did Meander Surett write him?"
  "It’s this way," Monk said patiently. "Doc Savage was trained from  childhood to follow a career of righting
  wrongs and punishing  evil−doers in all parts of the world. I thought everybody knew that  until I ran into you."
  "These aspersions you’re castin’ on my education," said Sagebrush,  "is gonna get your nose skinned for you."
  "I’ll help you skin his nose," volunteered the dapper Ham. "What’ll  we do with the hide?"
  "My idea would be to use it to make a muffler for you!" Sagebrush  said belligerently.
  Ham frowned. Monk grunted. Sagebrush Smith glared at the pair.
  "You gents ain’t explained," he reminded, "why Meander Surett wrote  Doc Savage to begin with."
  "Meander Surett wanted his discovery to benefit mankind," Monk said.  "He knew Doc would see that it did.
  You’d savvy that if you wasn’t so  donkey−eared."
  "What’s in the steel box, short−and−hairy?" Sagebrush asked.
  "That’s a secret."
  "Who’s got the key?"
  "Doc. It was enclosed in Meander Surett’s letter."
  "There’s too durn much mystery about this!" Sagebrush complained.  "I’m plumb puzzled."
  "Maybe the texture of your head has got somethin’ to do with that,"  Monk said.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  36
  
  "For two bits," stated Sagebrush heatedly, "I’d take the box and go  hunt Sally Surett and let you ginks go
  twiddle your thumbs!"
  "Any time you get that box away from us," Monk said, "you’ll be a  lot wiser than you are to−day."
  "Yeah?" growled the cowboy.
  "Yeah!" Monk said.
  Sagebrush Smith was sensitive about having reflections cast on his  education. Doubtless this was because his
  schooling had stopped at the  third grade. However, he had read a great deal and rightfully  considered himself
  rather well versed. He was not dumb.
  Sagebrush began to be possessed of a hot desire to show Monk and Ham  that he was not dumb.
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH had never ridden on a railroad train, but he didn’t  let this faze him. It was the
  automobile age anyhow. Moreover, he’d  been up in an airplane, although that was a number of years ago
  when a  barnstormer in an old Jenny had set down at Tonopah one time to hop  passengers at ten dollars per,
  and hold your own hat.
  Railroad travel turned out to be about what he had expected,  although he hadn’t thought it would be as
  comfortable as it was in the  air−conditioned coaches.
  They arrived in Los Angeles. Unnoticed by any one, Doc Savage got  off the train and disappeared in the
  crowd.
  Los Angeles was much more than Sagebrush had expected. He was  indignant when Monk and Ham wouldn’t
  let him do what he called, "throw  a little toot in this place." They went out to the airport at once, to  his disgust.
  Aviation, Sagebrush perceived, had changed somewhat since he had  last been up in a plane. Great ships
  dropped onto the airport tarmac,  took off, or were snaked in and out of hangars by grumbling caterpillar
  tractors.
  Sagebrush watched an air liner taxi up to the passenger canopy and  unload.
  "Holy litters!" he said. "There was anyway thirty−five people got  outta that thing!"
  "There’ll be that many on the one we ride to New York, Cole  Younger," Monk said. "Get that there box and
  have it weighed and put on  the plane."
  Sagebrush scowled.
  "Another thing," he gritted, "you better quit callin’ me them wild  west names and givin’ me orders!"
  Sagebrush disappeared into the baggage room. Monk stood outside and  watched the doors, just on the chance
  that Sagebrush might try to skip  out with the box. However, Monk grinned as he kept a lookout; he rather
  liked the belligerent cow−puncher, and believed Sagebrush was perfectly  honest. But the salty cow−puncher
  might try to put something over on  them, just to show that he could do it.
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  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  37
  
  While Monk watched, Ham bought and paid for their airline tickets to  New York. Then they joined
  Sagebrush Smith in the baggage room.
  "What the dickens!" Monk exploded.
  Sagebrush Smith was knotting a rope around a canvas−covered object  the size of the vault−steel chest. He
  finished tying a granny knot and  gave the rope a jerk, then straightened and wiped off perspiration.
  "I put some canvas around the box," he said. "Figured it mightn’t do  no harm to disguise it."
  "That’s not a bad idea, considering the source." Monk pointed at the  rope. "But such knots! How you gonna
  untie ‘em? Why don’t you tie  sailor knots?"
  "Them’s cowboy knots," Sagebrush explained. "A cowboy always carried  a knife."
  They carried the box, grunting and stumbling, to a truck, and saw it  loaded aboard the plane they were to
  take. A few minutes later the  public−address system of the airport announced that it was time for  passengers
  to get aboard. There was some argument about letting the  pets on board�until Monk told who they were.
  Sagebrush Smith was first on the big air liner.
  "Kinda like a kid," Monk chuckled.
  MONK and Ham were seasoned air travelers who had flown more miles  than they had kept track of, and they
  stood back and watched the other  passengers enter. Monk watched the feminine passengers in particular.
  Monk had an eye for the ladies, and long ago he had discovered that  his ludicrous homeliness, combined with
  the fact that he had a pet pig,  somehow made it easy for him to get started with the ladies.
  Ham occupied his time scowling at Monk and making biting cracks  about the homely chemist. No one could
  recall ever having heard Monk  and Ham speak a civil word to each other, although there had been  occasions
  when each had risked his life for the other. Usually, their  association was a continual quarrel. But Sagebrush
  Smith had been so  quarrelsome that he had interfered with their private squabble. They  were behind on their
  dirty digs.
  Monk developed a great grin.
  "There goes Mary Main, the movie queen," he chortled. "I bet I have  her dated up before we get to New
  York."
  They climbed into the plane, and as they passed the movie charmer’s  seat, Ham spoke.
  "Why, Monk Mayfair," he said loudly, "isn’t your charming wife going  with you this trip?"
  Monk shuffled to his seat and collapsed into it.
  "You�you�toad in fine feathers!" he gritted. "Now she’ll think I’m  married! I’m gonna dump you out to feed
  the first buzzards we see!"
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  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  38
  
  The two became fully occupied with a quarrel.
  They were so occupied that the plane was in the air and had flown a  hundred miles before Monk lifted his
  head and sniffed. He wrinkled his  nose.
  "What’s that smell?" he muttered.
  The aroma had not been noticeable at first, but during the last few  minutes it had become quite perceptible.
  "Must be a polecat in here," Monk hazarded.
  Ham looked at Monk. "As long as I’ve associated with it, strange I  never noticed its odor before."
  Monk passed that insult because something had occurred to him. He  sprang out of his seat and dashed
  forward. A moment later he tore past  Ham, making for the stern. He came back, scowl wrinkles creasing his
  minimum of a forehead.
  "We still got the chest, at least," he muttered.
  "What’s that got to do with the smell, Ignatz?" Ham demanded.
  "Sagebrush Smith," said Monk, "has skedaddled."
  "What?"
  "Gone." Monk squared out a pair of hairy fists. "I dunno what the  smell is. Blast that cow−chaperon! He
  musta gone in the front door of  this thing, then climbed outta one of them little doors in the pilot’s
  compartment."
  "While you were looking for women!" Ham sneered.
  "We gotta have this plane turn back," Monk yelled. "He won’t get  away with this!"
  The two pilots of the passenger air liner had different ideas about  turning back. They had a schedule to make,
  they pointed out. They would  turn back for a storm, but not on the whim of a couple of irate  passengers.
  "But I’m Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair!"
  Monk shouted.
  So what? He could be second cousin to the sultan of Timbuctoo, and  still so what? Ham might be Brigadier
  General Theodore Marley Brooks,  as he stated, and so what? Furthermore, what was that smell in the  plane?
  They were Doc Savage’s assistants? The pilots swallowed.
  One picked up his radio mike and called his ground station,  explaining that two of Doc Savage’s men were
  aboard and wanted to turn  back. He listened intently to the reply.
  "That makes it different," he said. He called the stewardess. "Tell  the passengers that we are turning back to
  Los Angeles, but that  nothing is wrong."
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  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  39
  
  The stewardess went back down the aisle telling the seat  occupants�some of whom were holding their noses
  by now�that nothing was  wrong.
  FOUR men evidently did not believe her. These four men had  weather−beaten faces and grim expressions,
  and after they got to their  feet, they had guns in their hands. Big, worn guns which looked as if  they had seen
  use. They were Hoke McGee and three of his best men who  had been keeping well hidden behind newspapers.
  "Get ‘em up!" Hoke McGee roared. "This is a holdup!" 
  This was one of the new sound−proofed planes and their words  carried. Their guns were also rather
  convincing. Hands began lifting.
  Ham and Monk found themselves looking into gun snouts. With  alacrity, their arms arose.
  "Now," Monk said, "I know the source of the fragrance in here!"
  "Where’s that box?" Hoke McGee demanded.
  "It ain’t aboard," Monk said unblushingly.
  Hoke McGee snorted. "I just wondered how convincin’ a lie you could  tell," he chuckled. "I seen ‘em put it
  on the ship."
  One of the Lazy Y gun−slicks had gone forward and disarmed the pilot  and co−pilot who had guns because
  the ship carried mail.
  Hoke McGee and another man entered the baggage compartment and  wrestled the heavy canvas−covered
  case out into the cabin. Hoke broke  his finger nails on Sagebrush Smith’s knots, then used his jackknife.  He
  threw back the canvas.
  "Damn!" he croaked.
  Monk felt like making it stronger. He popped his eyes at the old  square trunk full of brickbats which the
  canvas had covered. Ham gave  Monk a jab in the ribs.
  "That infernal cowboy," he groaned. "He put one over on us!"
  Hoke McGee overheard the remark. Hoke began swearing. He swore for a  long period without once repeating
  himself.
  "We gotta go back and get on Sagebrush Smith’s trail again!" he  snarled.
  The pilots, menaced by the blue−black eye of a gun, turned the plane  back. They followed Hoke McGee’s
  directions about where to make a  landing.
  Evidently Hoke was all prepared for a get−away with the chest he  hadn’t got. The plane had hardly stopped
  rolling on the desert near Los  Angeles where it landed when a touring car pulled out of the brush and  drew
  alongside.
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  Chapter VII. DETOUR
  40
  
  Hoke McGee stabbed his gun menacingly at Monk and Ham.
  "The next time you jiggers cross my trail!" he roared, "I’m gonna  ventilate you plenty!"
  Then he ran to the car and got in. They took the pilot and his  assistant, carried them four miles down the
  desert road and threw them  out. Then they drove furiously toward Los Angeles. The car’s occupants  held to
  anything that was handy, swayed with the bucking of the  machine, and at times made small, involuntary
  gestures as if they  wanted to hold their noses.
  The driver looked around. "Have you gents noticed a kind of funny  smell?" he demanded.
  "There ain’t nothin’ funny about it!" Hoke McGee snarled.
  "What is it?"
  "That," Hoke said, "is what I’m wonderin’!"
  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT
  SAGEBRUSH SMITH was as tickled as he had been at any time in his  life. He was in stitches; his ribs were
  hurting from laughing.
  He had been standing outside the window of the radio room at the  airport and the window was open, and he
  had heard the hubbub when Monk  and Ham had demanded that the plane turn back, so Sagebrush knew
  Monk  and Ham had learned that he was missing. He hoped they knew he had  swapped boxes on them, too.
  Now he was waiting for further word from the plane; as a matter of  fact, he had decided to wait until Monk
  and Ham came back, then he  would join them with the genuine box. He believed he would get more  respect. 
  "I showed ‘em they wasn’t so slick," he chuckled.
  A commotion inside the radio room drew his attention. An attendant  dashed out and returned shortly with
  some one higher up.
  "What’s happened?" the higher−up demanded.
  "The plane carrying Doc Savage’s men has been hijacked!" the radio  operator shouted. "Four cowboys under
  the leadership of a man named  Hoke McGee made it land in the desert. They were after a box of some  kind.
  The pilot and co−pilot were carried away by the robbers. Doc  Savage’s man named Monk is giving us details
  over the plane’s radio."
  There was more excited talk, but it was only meat on the skeleton of  the event as first outlined.
  Sagebrush Smith did not feel like laughing. He rubbed his jaw,  considering. It appeared he had unwittingly
  thwarted a robbery; in  taking the vault−steel case, he had kept it out of Hoke McGee’s hands.
  "Well, rawhide my bronc!" he muttered. "I really done the best thing  that I could’ve done!"
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  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT
  41
  
  Very well pleased with himself, Sagebrush ambled into the waiting  room. As long as there was a robber
  scare, he didn’t see any sense in  being caught loitering suspiciously near radio room windows.
  He was leaning on the counter inspecting a plane time table when he  saw the platinum blonde girl.
  It just happened that this was the first platinum blond girl  Sagebrush Smith had ever seen. Also the first time
  he had seen in the  flesh the kind of feminine figure the movies liked to feature. The  combination rather took
  the cowhand’s breath. He found himself  swallowing to maintain equilibrium.
  The blonde startler tapped up to the ticket window on high heels.
  "I wish to charter a plane," she declared.
  "Ah�where do you wish to fly to?" asked the attendant.
  The blonde girl was twisting a black leather purse and black suede  gloves nervously with her hands. Her
  attire was black, the color which  brought out her shimmering silver blondness and peach complexion as a
  dark velvet background brings out the facets of a diamond.
  "My father," she said in a low voice, "has been found dead at his  laboratory in Death Valley. I wish to rent a
  plane and a pilot to fly  me to the spot."
  "I see," said the attendant.
  "I just arrived from New York by plane," the blond girl continued.  "I left New York as soon as I read about
  my father’s death in the  newspapers."
  Sagebrush Smith took several deep swallows and got hold of his wits.  He addressed the girl.
  "I�er�I’ll bet�say, this is quite a coincidence," he said.
  The blond beauty looked at him coolly. "I beg your pardon."
  Sagebrush flushed uncomfortably.
  "I beg yours, too," he mumbled. "Ah�er�are you Sally Surett?"
  "Why, yes," the girl said curiously. "How did you know?"
  SAGEERUSH SMITH was having more difficulty than he had hitherto  experienced in conducting a
  conversation.
  "Why, I�uh�that is," he said. "Well�uh�this is some coincidence. I  found your old�er��I am the man who
  found your father as he was dyin’."
  The blond girl winced a little, then frowned. "I thought the person  or persons who found my father had
  refused to reveal their identity,"  he said.
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  42
  
  Sagebrush squirmed. He had never been able to carry on a coherent  conversation with a girl, even a very
  plain one.
  "It’s kind of funny�I mean�it’s a queer story," he mumbled. "It’s as  mud as clear�uh�it’s as clear as mud,
  that is. Your father shot a  prowler, but he had a coyote chained�and�well, I don’t�anyhow, I’ve got  the box."
  "You’re not making it very understandable," the girl said.
  "I�uh�ain’t used to girls as pretty as you," Sagebrush said. Which  was a gallantry of high order, even if
  accidental.
  The blond looked at him. She decided to smile.
  "Maybe if we sat in chairs over there," she said, "you could get  used to me."
  Sagebrush had done a little thinking by the time they were settled  in a chair. He turned cautious.
  "Er�can you prove you are old Meander Surett’s daughter?" he asked.
  She could. She did. At least, there was a birth certificate,  automobile driver’s license for New York State, and
  numbers of letters  addressed to Sally Surett, 110 North Boulevard, New York City.  Sagebrush was satisfied.
  It took him twenty minutes to explain all that had happened.  Whenever he looked at the blond girl, his
  sentences came apart and he  had to take out time to put them together. He finished at last and  Sally Surett
  looked at him. She had big blue eyes that gave out  electric shocks.
  "I think you’re marvelous," she said.
  Sagebrush thought she was marvelous. He didn’t think the world was  such a bad place either.
  "I�uh�" he said. "That is�well�oh, gosh!"
  A voice behind Sagebrush Smith said, "There he is!"
  Another voice, a squeaky one, said, "Make room, because I’m gonna  pat him on the floor."
  Sagebrush peered at Monk and Ham, who looked as though they wanted  to relieve him of arms and legs.
  Behind them came their pets.
  "Er�meet Miss Sally Surett," Sagebrush said.
  Monk and Ham stopped. Monk was the first to get off his hat. Sally  Surett had the type of blonde beauty
  which had a devastating effect on  Monk.
  "Not the great Meander Surett’s daughter?" he asked in a properly  awed tone.
  "Yes," the blonde vision admitted.
  Ham said, "Er�ahem! I am Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks  and�"
  "Better known as Ham," Monk interrupted. "It’s too bad you can’t meet �yeoow!"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT
  43
  
  Ham had kicked a patch of hide off Monk’s ankle.
  "What Monk started to say," said Ham politely, "is that it is too  bad you can’t meet his wife, Mrs. Blodgett
  Mayfair, and some of their  numerous children."
  "You shyster!" Monk gritted.
  "You’d be interested in the children, I’m sure," Ham said. "All,  unfortunately, look like their sire. Cutest
  collection of little apes  you ever saw."
  MONK and Ham spluttered at each other. They wanted to cultivate  Sally Surett, ask her about her father’s
  discovery, give Sagebrush  Smith a clubbing, and fight each other. While they made irate noises,  Sagebrush
  Smith spoke.
  "I have the box in the express room here at the airport," he said.
  Sally Surett took his arm.
  "I’d love to see it," she murmured. "Good day," she said to Monk and  Ham. "Nice to have met you."
  "Er�we’re not leaving just yet," Monk said foolishly.
  They went to the baggage room, where Sagebrush Smith grinningly  dragged a canvas−covered case from the
  corner. The cowboy could not  repress a gloat.
  "I reckon it’s sure lucky I swapped boxes," he said.
  Monk and Ham said nothing. The only thing they could say was that it  had indeed been lucky, and they didn’t
  want to give Sagebrush that much  satisfaction.
  "Do take the cover off," the blond girl murmured.
  Sagebrush Smith whipped out his jackknife, cut the ropes with a  flourish and threw back the canvas. Then he
  looked as if he had walked  over the rim of a canyon. He almost fell down. There was just an old  wooden box
  filled with bricks.
  "Gee wbizz!" Sagebrush said miserably.
  The blond girl looked bewildered. "But I thought the chest was of a  steel which couldn’t be cut with torches!"
  "It is," Sagebrush groaned.
  "But�" She frowned. "I don’t understand."
  "Me neither," the cowboy gulped.
  "If I wasn’t so disgusted," Monk said, "I’d conduct me a one−cowboy  massacre on the spot."
  "Do you mean that some one took the chest from you?" the girl  demanded of Sagebrush.
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  44
  
  "It sure looks powerful like it," Sagebrush confessed.
  It was Ham, withdrawing in aloof disgust to stand twirling his dark  cane, who noticed a mark on the baggage
  room wall. He stepped closer  and scrutinized the mark. It was a series of figures, which might have  been put
  there by some one who had carelessly totaled up a sum on the  wall.
  "Pull the shades," Ham said briefly.
  Monk stared at Ham, and his homely face lighted. He hurried to draw  the shades. It became gloomy in the
  room.
  From one pocket, Ham extracted a flat device the length and width of  the leather cases used to carry cigars,
  but deeper, and equipped with a  folding crank after the fashion of pocket movie cameras which operated  a
  tiny generator inside the device. There was a lens on the apparatus,  a lens almost black in color.
  Ham turned the crank vigorously while pointing the device at the  wall where he had found the figures. The
  contrivance was a portable  projector of ultra−violet light. The ultra−violet rays, invisible to  the unaided eye,
  struck the wall and caused a fluorescence of words  written there with a chalk which Doc Savage had
  perfected. The chalk,  like such common substances as aspirin and vaseline, fluoresced or  glowed under
  ultra−violet light.
  The message read:
  Have taken box to Surfside Hotel to conduct examination.
  "But who wrote that?" Sagebrush Smith demanded excitedly.
  "Doc," Monk said. "He must have been sticking close to us and  keeping track of that thing."
  IT was a simple matter to get a taxi−cab at the airport. Monk, Ham,  Sagebrush Smith and the blond girl
  loaded aboard, along with the pets.  Chemistry rode in front with the driver. Habeas stayed in the back with
  Monk. The hack driver said that he ought to know where the Surfside  Hotel was because it was one of the
  best in the city.
  At first, every one in the cab was rather quiet, the natural  reaction of persons who had just received a
  shaking−up. Then Ham  frowned at his black cane and spoke.
  "Your father’s letter," he told Sally Surett, "indicated he had  written you about the contents of that case."
  "Oh, yes," said the young woman. "He wrote me a great many times."
  Sagebrush Smith came to life. "What is in the case?" he demanded.
  The blond girl smiled at him in a way that was highly disturbing.  "I’ll show you," she said. To their driver,
  she called, "Stop the cab!  I wish to buy a newspaper."
  She spread the newspaper out for Monk, Ham and Sagebrush to see.
  They stared at the headlines with profound astonishment.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter VIII. THE BLOND SALLY SURETT
  45
  
  SURETT INVENTED "SPIRIT RADIO" DEVICE
  COMPLETED BEFORE DEATH
  Proved "Static" Is From Spirit World
  Machine Translates It
  The dream of spiritualists and ordinary mankind from the beginning  of time has come true, according to an
  announcement made by Sally  Surett, daughter of the great scientist, Meander Surett, who was lately  found
  dead near his Death Valley laboratory.
  Part of the so−called "static" heard on an ordinary radio is an  effort by beings on the astral plane to get in
  touch with living  humans, Miss Surett said her father had proved conclusively.
  Miss Surett, a striking blonde, is enroute to Los Angeles to charter  a plane to visit her father’s laboratory.
  "Thomas A. Edison, the great inventor, first worked on the theory  that the little−known forms of static might
  be spirit messages," said  Miss Surett. "My father carried on from that start."
  Former associates of Thomas A. Edison, when interviewed, admitted  that Miss Surett’s statement was true.
  "Blazes!" Monk said. "I didn’t dream�that is�why�blazes!"
  Ham stared at Sally Surett. "You gave this interview to the  newspapers?"
  "Of course."
  "Why?"
  "Why not?"
  That stumped Doc’s aids. They could not think of any reason why  Sally Surett should not have given an
  interview to the press. They were  conscious that she was waiting for them to state a reason for opposing  the
  giving out of information; they had the impression that that she  was disapproving.
  "I sure can’t see no reason for it bein’ a big secret," said  Sagebrush Smith. "It wasn’t my idea."
  The young woman smiled at the cowboy gratefully. Then she looked  coolly at Monk and Ham.
  "I just wonder," she said frostily, "if these gentlemen and Doc  Savage could have some ulterior motive in
  wishing this to be kept  quiet."
  "I dunno what an ulterior motive is, exactly," said Sagebrush, "but  I wouldn’t be surprised."
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  THE Hotel Surfside was as flustered as a prim old maid trying to  entertain a football team. The Surfside
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  46
  
  ordinarily sailed along as  placidly as the Indian dugout canoes which are to be found in museums.  It was a
  hostelry which prided itself on nothing happening.
  The Surfside was very strict about this nothing−happening policy,  which was pursued on direct orders from
  the management in New York.  Just the night before, a prominent lawyer had been thrown out of the  bar for
  singing six words of "Sweet Adeline." As for motion picture  people, they weren’t even permitted to register.
  They hadn’t intended to permit Doc Savage to register.
  No indeed! The clerk had heard of Doc Savage, the man of bronze who  was always fighting somebody’s war.
  But after Doc Savage presented a  document, the clerk stopped explaining that the New York management
  was  particular about the guests. The document said that Doc Savage was  the New York management! The
  clerk hadn’t known that. He did everything  but get down on his knees and bump his forehead on the floor.
  The bronze man was calm about it and merely asked for a suite where  he would not be disturbed. He also
  requested that several metal cases  which had come by air express from New York consigned to a Mr. Clark
  be  sent to the suite. He explained that they contained his equipment.
  The bronze man had been carrying a metal box, and when three bell  boys insisted on helping him with it, he
  let them do so.
  That was four hours ago and the bell boys were now standing in the  lobby telling each other how heavy the
  steel box had been, and how Doc  Savage had handled it so easily with one hand. One bell hop wanted to  bet
  it weighed five hundred pounds; an exaggeration, of course.
  The rest of the bell boys were quietly moving the guests off the  floor which held Doc Savage’s suite. The
  bronze man had said he wanted  privacy, and he was going to get it; the Surfside prided itself on  giving
  service in large letters.
  The clerk was leaning on the desk downstairs, rubbing his jaw and  thinking. He could recall, back during the
  depression when the hotel  had been about to fail and throw every one out of work, that had been  taken over
  by what was known only as the Eastern Management.
  At the time, some remarkably sensible suggestions had come from the  Eastern Management as to what
  policies to follow; as a result, the  hotel had been prosperous since. The clerk grinned. He was remembering,
  too, that he had heard that Doc Savage had taken over other  near−failing industries�factories, stores, a
  steamship line or two,  even a railroad, and by some magical business touch�probably common  sense�had
  kept them going so that no one had lost any jobs.
  The clerk’s musings were interrupted when one very pretty blond  girl, three concerned men, one pig and one
  runt ape entered the lobby.  Sally Surett, Monk, Ham, Sagebrush, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry made a
  unique group.
  "I am very sorry," the clerk said instantly, "but we do not take  theatrical guests."
  The dapper Ham frowned at Monk.
  "We should have left you outside," he said. "Then he wouldn’t have  mistaken us for sideshow freaks."
  Monk smacked the desk with a hairy fist. "We’re assistants to Doc  Savage!" he squeaked. "Where’s Doc?"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  47
  
  "Oh," the clerk said. "I beg your pardon."
  DOC SAVAGE stood beside a long table in a room where the furniture  was substantial enough to be
  practical, but not practical enough to be  ugly. It was a comfortable, homey room, yet it seemed to emphasize
  the  remarkable physical power of the bronze man.
  He had removed his coat and tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves.  From across the room, the development of
  his forearms seemed ordinary,  but when the new arrivals came close, cabled layers of sinew were  subtly
  evident under fine−textured bronze skin.
  The tall blond girl stopped suddenly when she saw the bronze man at  close range. He affected people that
  way.
  "Doc, this is Sally Surett," Monk said.
  The blond girl advanced, holding out her hand, turning on a  ravishing smile and murmuring, "I’ve heard so
  much about you,  Mr. Savage."
  She seemed surprised and a trifle disappointed when the bronze man  was not overwhelmed. If he was
  affected at all, the symptoms failed to  register visibly.
  "She came west when she heard her father was�had passed away,"  Sagebrush Smith explained.
  The bronze man nodded slightly, and turned over a newspaper bearing  headlines about the discovery of the
  "spirit radio" to show that he  already had the information.
  Ham pointed at the headlines. "You’ve read about the machine, Doc?  It’s an incredible thing, isn’t it?"
  "Yes."
  "It’s plumb goofy if you ask me," interposed Sagebrush Smith. "There  ain’t no such thing as spirits."
  Doc Savage’s strange flake gold eyes rested on the cowboy with  inscrutable intentness. "What do you think
  will happen to you after  death?" the bronze man asked.
  "Why, I�uh��" Sagebrush swallowed. "How the blazes would I know?"
  "The belief in life hereafter is too general, too firmly  established, to be ignored," the bronze man said. "Our
  Christians  believe in Heaven, the Buddhists believe in Nirvana, the Mohammedans in  Falak al afla, and even
  the American Indian had his Happy Hunting  Ground. From time immemorial, all races, creeds, and stages of
  civilized beings have believed in life after death."
  The bronze man paused, and silence had the effect of driving home  what his powerful voice had just stated.
  "No belief of mankind has stood the test of ages with unshaken  strength as this one has," he continued. "And
  it is not enough to pass  the phenomena off by saying that man, wishing to live forever, conjures  up belief in
  everlasting life to mentally console himself. It is more  profound than that. It is deeper. The utter foundation of
  all religions.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  48
  
  "Certainly we know that the Christian religion, for instance, is  based on actuality. Nor has any scientist ever
  proven, for example,  that one word of the Scriptural Bible is false. Hence, in the face of  such overwhelming
  evidence, we who are here in this room are hardly  justified in saying there cannot be existence in some
  medium after  death."
  Sagebrush Smith rubbed his jaw. "What I meant to say was that the  static you heard on your radio is caused
  by lightnin’."
  "Only part of it," Doc Savage said. "When a lightning comes, you  hear a burst of static on your radio. But
  there are many forms of  static noises on a radio�atmospheric lightning, frictional static,  earth currents. There
  are, too, forms of static for which science has  never been able to define sources, and such static is present in
  the  remotest desert, in the middle of the largest ocean, and has been heard  at the north and south poles."
  He paused. "One thing," he said seriously, "is most mysterious about  static."
  "What’s that?" asked the cowboy.
  "Science," Doc Savage said, "has never succeeded in eliminating  static from radio reception."
  "Say," grunted Sagebrush, "that’s right."
  "Radio static," the bronze man said, "has been one of the most  elusive and mysterious things science has ever
  tried to fathom."
  Sagebrush Smith swallowed several times. Then he pointed at the  vault−steel box of Meander Surett.
  "You mean," he gulped, "that the machine there really translates  static into messages from people who are
  dead?"
  Doc Savage shook his head.
  "No," he said quietly. "The device is worthless."
  THE listeners stood in a shocked silence; they felt suspended,  hanging in space. Their excitement had
  climbed up a ladder of belief  that the machine of Meander Surett could talk with spirits, and now  suddenly
  the ladder was nothing. They couldn’t find words.
  The blond girl was first to speak.
  "How do you know?" she demanded.
  "The result of examination," the bronze man explained. 
  It was evident that he had made an examination. Meander Surett’s  vault−steel box stood open on the table,
  and the cover panels of  insulating material had been removed from the device therein to  disclose wiring,
  tubes, coils, intricate gears and tiny motors, a  moving roll of photo−sensitized tape, a tiny pin−beam of
  fluctuating  light after the nature of telephoto devices, and more, much more, that  even Monk, who was versed
  in electrochemistry, could not identify.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  49
  
  The girl seemed impatiently unconvinced.
  "My father worked a lifetime on that," she said sharply. "You  examine it for a few minutes�"
  "For almost four hours," the bronze man corrected.
  "For four hours then! How can you tell in such a short time that it  won’t work?"
  Before he answered, the bronze man picked up a thick sheaf of  blueprints and typewritten explanatory matter
  enclosed in a neat binder  labeled:
  CONSTRUCTION DATA OF STATIC TRANSLATOR
  BY MEANDER SURETT
  "This was in the steel case," Doc said. "The explanation it gives is  detailed, and the construction of the device
  follows identically the  blueprints. However"�he tossed the binder of papers into the  vault−steel box�"the
  contrivance is based on an utterly unworkable  electrical theory. It cannot possibly function."
  The blond girl nipped her lips with white teeth.
  "But�"
  "I am sorry," the bronze man said. "However, it is better that you  know the truth�at once, and that the public
  know, as well. I have  telephoned the newspapers that the device is unworkable."
  "You’ve what?" 
  the girl screamed. 
  "Advised the newspapers and press associations that Meander Surett’s  invention will not work," Doc Savage
  said.
  The girl glared.
  "You had no right to do that!"
  Doc Savage did not reply.
  "You might have waited!" the girl cried.
  "For what?" the bronze man asked.
  The blond young woman stamped a foot. "I don’t like what you’ve  done!" she shrieked. "I don’t see why my
  father was crazy enough to get  you mixed up in this! I don’t believe this machine is worthless! I  think you’re
  lying!"
  The fact that the bronze man showed no emotion did not surprise Monk  and Ham, who knew the remarkable
  control which he could exercise over  his facial expression.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  50
  
  "You have the privilege," Doc said slowly, "of believing whatever  you wish."
  "I don’t trust you!" the girl repeated. "I’m going to take that  machine and walk out of here with it."
  "What," Doc inquired, "do you plan to do with it?"
  "That’s my private business!" said the young woman. "But for your  information, I’m going to hire a real
  expert to examine the  device. And if you try to stop me, I’ll call the police!"
  The bronze man made a slight gesture. "You are welcome to it. Either  myself or one of my colleagues will
  carry it to a taxicab for you."
  The girl pointed at Sagebrush Smith. "I’d rather he carried it," she  said coldly.
  Sagebrush Smith, looking somewhat confused, went grunting and  stumbling outside with the box. The girl
  followed him.
  DOC SAVAGE walked over and closed the door after them. Then the  bronze man glanced at Monk and Ham.
  "You two had better stick here in this room," he said. "It may be  dangerous to get out until we learn what is
  behind this."
  "But ain’t it all over?" Monk gulped.
  "Hardly," Doc said. "In my opinion, it has only started."
  "Whatcha mean, Doc?"
  Instead of answering, the bronze man opened the window. He produced  from inside his clothing a small
  collapsible grapple of alloy steel to  which was attached a thin, extremely stout, silken cord of a length to
  more than reach the ground.
  "Long Tom, Johnny, and Renny have been working on this thing in New  York," he said.
  Monk and Ham were surprised. The three men Doc named were: Major  Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts, the
  electrical wizard; William Harper  "Johnny" Littlejohn, the geologist and archaeologist, and Colonel John
  "Renny" Renwick, the engineer. The trio were the remaining members of  Doc Savage’s coteries of assistants.
  It had been the opinion of Monk  and Ham up to now that the matter of Meander Surett’s letter was not
  serious enough for Doc Savage to put all his men to work on it.
  "You mean that Long Tom, Johnny and Renny learned something  important?" Monk demanded.
  Doc Savage nodded.
  "They learned that a man named Everett Everett Barr, an ex−carnival  swindler and now a shyster lawyer,
  formerly employed Sally Surett in  his office."
  "But what has that to do�"
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  51
  
  "Everett Everett Barr," Doc Savage said, "had the confidence of  Sally Surett. She did not know he was a
  crook. She showed him letters  from her father, and asked Barr how to find Meander Surett. She wanted  to
  hire detectives to find her father, because she was worried about  his long disappearance."
  "That’s natural," Monk admitted.
  "Everett Everett Barr evidently learned of this ‘static translator’  from Meander Surett’s letters to his
  daughter," the bronze man said. "I  am merely surmising that. But Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny did learn
  that Barr became much interested and sent a man named Bill Horder to  Death Valley to find Meander Surett
  and kill him.
  "Bill Horder poisoned Meander Surett in such a fashion that Surett  thought he had internal cancer. But
  Meander Surett also caught Horder  prowling around the desert laboratory and killed him. That left Everett
  Everett Barr up in the air with his plot, because he had no idea where  Meander Surett’s laboratory was
  located. No idea, that is, until he  read that the old scientist was found dead. Barr at once hired the Lazy  Y
  cowboys to get the steel box. And Barr himself has come from New York  by plane."
  "But what is this Everett Everett Barr’s plot?" Monk demanded.
  "That," Doc Savage said, "is one of two things we must learn."
  "Two things?"
  "The second thing," Doc Savage explained, "is the whereabouts of  Sally Surett."
  "But Sally Surett just left here with the box!" Monk exclaimed. "The  blond girl�"
  "The blond girl is not Sally Surett."
  "Not�"
  "However," Doc Savage added, "she does answer the description of  Everett Everett Barr’s wife."
  THE bronze man swung out the window and slid down to the street.  Monk and Ham, peering out the window,
  watched him vanish in the  shrubbery which edged the street.
  A few moments later, Sagebrush Smith and the bogus Sally Surett came  out of the hotel with the box.
  Monk drew back from the window, took out a handkerchief and wiped  his homely face.
  "Whew!" he said.
  "Maybe you’ll learn that you can’t judge women, you freak of  nature," Ham said. "You thought that blonde
  was on the level."
  "You didn’t, of course?"
  "I thought," Ham said dryly, "there was something phony about her."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter IX. DIFFERENCE OF OPINION
  52
  
  "That lie should make you black in the face!" Monk growled.
  The two associates contemplated each other in sour silence. Their  pets, Habeas and Chemistry, apparently
  partaking of the mood of their  owners, sat down in the middle of the hotel room and showed each other  their
  teeth.
  "You know," Monk said, "you can’t never tell about Doc."
  "What do you mean, tree−dweller?"
  "You go along and you think you know what Doc is doing," Monk  explained. "And then, whango! You find
  out he’s got hold of a rope when  you thought he only had a string."
  "If it wasn’t against my policy to agree with you," Ham admitted,  "I’d say you were right."
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  DOC SAVAGE had prepared from childhood for the unusual career which  he was to follow. He was a
  product of careful, modern thinking, an  example of what the most absolute possible training can do for the
  human body and mind.
  His major training had been in science, because science is the  future enemy of organized and individual
  crime, as police departments  of the world have come to realize in the last decade.
  In keeping with his reliance on scientific methods, the bronze man  had developed, and was continually
  developing, unusual devices, gadgets  which he employed in unexpected fashions. He kept as many of them
  with  him as possible, wearing for this purpose a pocket−vest designed and  padded so as to be as
  inconspicuous as was feasible.
  Doc Savage, having quitted the hotel room by the only method which  would have enabled him to reach the
  street unobserved ahead of  Sagebrush Smith and the fake Sally Surett, faded into the concealment  of
  shrubbery. He moved a few yards, at the same time withdrawing two  packages from a special pocket inside
  his coat.
  One of the packages was wrapped with plain tough brown grocery paper  and was near the proportions of a
  fifty−size box of cigars.
  The other package was not wrapped; it was, more properly, a leather  case.
  The Surfside was large enough to have a telegraph office in the same  building. Doc Savage entered this with
  his packages.
  Sagebrush Smith and the blond girl were putting the metal box into a  taxicab when a telegraph messenger
  boy hurried up and handed the cab  driver Doc’s package which was wrapped in brown paper. The messenger
  also presented a five−dollar bill.
  "After you have taken these passengers wherever they want to go,"  said the messenger, "deliver this package
  to the home of the manager of  this hotel." He gave the manager’s home address. "The five dollars is  for your
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  53
  
  trouble," he added.
  "Gosh, sure!" said the taxi driver.
  About that time, in the hotel, Doc Savage was speaking to the hotel  manager. "Later in the night a package
  will be delivered to your home,"  the bronze man said. "Just return it to me, if you will."
  "Of course, Mr. Savage," said the manager.
  The taxicab driver got behind the wheel with his package. Sagebrush  Smith and the girl got in the back with
  their box. The girl gave an  address, and the cab moved.
  When the cab was out of sight, Doc Savage came out of the hotel;  entered another taxicab, settled back on the
  cushions, and opened his  leather case. He telescoped up a small directional loop antenna, donned  a headset,
  and tuned in the miniature short−wave radio transmitter  which was in the package carried by the driver of the
  blonde girl’s  taxicab. The directional radio showed that the other cab had turned  sharply to the right and was
  heading for the part of town where traffic  was thickest.
  After that the directional radio gadget enabled the bronze man to  trail his quarry while he himself followed
  entirely different streets.
  THE blonde girl, when her cab was in very thick traffic, leaned  forward and tapped the window to get the
  driver’s attention. She asked  to be taken to a different address. Ten minutes later, she did the same  thing
  again. All the while, she watched the rear window, intensely  interested in their back trail throughout the ride.
  Sagebrush Smith commented on this.
  "Doc Savage," the girl explained, "may try to follow us. I’m just  making sure he doesn’t."
  Finally, she gave the address of a midtown hotel which was not too  particular about its guests. The cab pulled
  up before this hostelry.  The hotel boasted no doorman. The two bell boys were runts who strained  vainly with
  the Meander Surett steel chest.
  A very large hump−shouldered colored man approached. He walked with  a limp.
  "Ah carry dat foah two bits," he offered.
  "You need two bits worse than we need the exercise," said Sagebrush  Smith. "You’re hired."
  The way the confidence of the colored fellow evaporated when he took  hold of the chest made Sagebrush
  Smith grin. However, the big darky  stuck to the bargain and staggered into the hotel with the chest. There
  was no elevator. He shuffled up the steps, seeming to have a great deal  of difficulty, although, somewhat
  strangely, he was not perspiring at  all when he reached the top.
  The blonde girl knocked on a door.
  The man who opened the door liked trinkets. His cigarette was stuck  in a long holder, and the cigarette was
  monogrammed "E.E.B." His  nose−pincher spectacles had a flowing black ribbon. He wore a beret
  emblazoned with a yachtsman’s gold−braided insignia.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  54
  
  His free hand held an elaborate patent lighter. His wrist watch had  hands and faces to register second, minute,
  hour, day, month, year, and  the temperature. A patent pedometer was strapped around his other  wrist. An
  array consisting of a pencil−flashlight, a two−colors−of−ink  fountain pen and a fountain−pen−tear−gas−gun
  stuck in his vest pocket.
  Otherwise he was a round, well−fed man with twinkling devil eyes and  lips which were always making
  shapes. His clothing was expensive and  about as loud as it could be without causing people to follow him
  down  streets.
  "Well, well," he said. "Well, well, well, I do declare!"
  "This"�the blonde girl indicated Sagebrush�"is Sagebrush Smith."
  The round man dropped his cigarette holder. He picked it up again  quickly.
  "I’m delighted," he said heartily, "really and truly delighted to  meet you, because any friend of Miss Surett’s
  is a friend of mine and a  very dear friend, too."
  "Howdy," said Sagebrush bluntly. "What’s your name?"
  The round man busied himself taking short puffs of his cigarette  until he caught a slight nod from the blonde
  girl.
  "I am Everett Everett Barr, attorney at law," the round man then  explained. "Yes, sir, attorney at law, and a
  friend to Miss Surett, as  well as one who feels just as though Miss Surett was his own daughter."
  "Mr. Barr," the girl explained, "came out by plane to see that I got  the full benefits of my father’s great
  discovery."
  "Yes, indeed." Mr. Barr made a clucking noise of disapproval.  "Unfortunately, there are men who will take
  advantage of a young girl.  Ah�some men who are quite famous stoop to such scoundrelly tactics, I  am sorry
  to say."
  He caught a glimpse of the big darky with the chest.
  "My goodness!" exclaimed Mr. Barr. "Do bring that right in, Rastus,  my boy, my good fellow."
  The black man shuffled in. and deposited the chest on the floor.
  "Here’s your two bits," said Sagebrush.
  "Yes, yes, and here’s fifty cents more for your trouble,"  volunteered Mr. Barr generously.
  The black man took the coins and shuffled out.
  EVERETT EVERETT BARR was full of enthusiasm; he was so stuffed with  delight that he could not
  restrain himself. He bounced over, seized  Sagebrush Smith’s hand and gave it another hearty pumping.
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  55
  
  "Young man, you seem like a wonderful, upstanding, wide−awake and  clean−limbed fellow," he declared. "A
  true son of the West."
  Sagebrush grew uncomfortable. "Doc Savage claims that contraption in  the box ain’t worth a hoot," he
  muttered.
  "Tsk, tsk," 
  clucked Mr. Barr. "An unfortunate error, I do fear." 
  Sagebrush frowned. "Doc Savage," he said, "has got a reputation."
  "But I do hope you haven’t taken him too literally, my young friend?"
  "He kinda impressed me," Sagebrush said.
  Everett Everett Barr sighed regretfully. "Youth is always so  impressionable," he murmured.
  At this point, there was a knock on the door.
  It was the big colored man again.
  "Ah done drop mah rabbit’s foot in dis heah room," he explained  sheepishly.
  "Why, I do declare," said Mr. Barr. He looked around. "Well, you  certainly did drop it because there it is."
  Every one looked at the rabbit foot, a natural thing to do�every one  except the colored gentleman, who seized
  the diversion to stoop, open a  slit in the carpet with a razor−sharp pocket−knife and slipped a flat  metal
  plaque through the slit.
  "Ah sho done thank yo−all," he mumbled as he received back his  rabbit foot.
  The large darky withdrew from the room, closing the door, and backed  carefully down the hall�stringing a
  hair−fine wire which ran from the  plaque, sticking it against the wall with unnoticeable bits of  transparent
  wax called "magnetite," stuff magicians use to cause things  to stick to their fingers. Entering a near−by room
  which he had just  rented, the darky connected a powerful amplifier to the almost  invisible wire.
  The black man then became Doc Savage by removing his dark, curly  wig. He donned a telephonic headset
  and listened to what was being  picked up by the velocity microphone which he had planted under the  carpet.
  Everett Everett Barr was saying, "Miss Surett, my dear girl, have  you had dinner?"
  "No," the blonde admitted.
  "You two children run along and eat," ordered Mr. Barr. "You’ll  enjoy Miss Surett’s company, I’m sure you
  will, Mr. Sagebrush Smith."
  "I sure will!" agreed Sagebrush enthusiastically.
  "Take your time," requested Mr. Barr. "Yes, indeed. Take plenty of  time, because I shall be entertaining
  visitors in a private conference  while you are out. Ah�you might telephone and see if I am at liberty  before
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  56
  
  you return."
  There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and after that,  silence, so evidently Sagebrush Smith and
  the fake Sally Surett had  gone out to eat.
  A FEW minutes later, Mr. Barr removed the telephone receiver and  asked for a number.
  "You can come up now, Hoke, my pal, my friend," he said.
  It took about five minutes for Hoke McGee and his Lazy Y cowboys to  arrive in answer to the summons.
  As they came in the door, Mr. Barr made one very loud and emphatic  remark.
  "Phew!" 
  he said. 
  "Now don’t start that!" Hoke McGee snarled. "People have been goin’  phew! at us until we’re danged good
  and tired of it!"
  Mr. Barr made his clucking noise. "Goodness!" he said. "Gracious,  what an�er�By any chance, have you
  been trapping, raising, or otherwise  associating with the mephitis mephitis?"
  Hoke scowled. "What’s that?"
  "The lowly skunk," said Mr. Barr.
  Hoke McGee swore for one half a minute without once repeating  himself.
  "We ain’t in the mood for funny stuff!" he yelled. "It ain’t funny,  anyway! It’s danged serious!"
  "What do you mean?"
  "We’re victims!" Hoke shouted. "We’ve had the lowest trick pulled on  us that could be pulled!"
  "By whom, may I ask?" inquired Mr. Barr.
  "By Doc Savage."
  Judging from the nervous quality in Everett Everett Barr’s cough,  mention of Doc Savage did not have a
  soothing effect on his nerves.
  "Er�what happened?" he asked anxiously.
  "We had a disinfection inspection as the train came into Los Angeles  county!" Hoke gritted.
  "There is no such thing," said Barr, "as a disinfection inspection."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  57
  
  "We know that now!" Hoke swore some more. "We’ve got it figured out  that the big white−headed hombre
  who pulled the disinfection inspection  gag was Doc Savage or one of his outfit. He made us peel our shirts
  and  rubbed us with somethin’ out of a bottle."
  "And what," inquired Mr. Barr, "happened then?"
  "Can’t you smell?"
  "You mean that has happened to you?"
  "Sure!" Hoke McGee swore some more.
  "Why not take baths?" inquired Mr. Barr.
  "We did, dang−blast it�and it only made us smell worse! That stuff  he put on us was a chemical or
  somethin’." The Lazy Y foreman fell into  a chair and held his own nose. "You got no idea how it is to be like
  this. Why, dogs run barkin’ after us for blocks. They won’t let us ride  the street cars. We got throwed outta
  our hotel."
  "This seems most amazing!" murmured Everett Everett Barr.
  "It’s the dangest−fool thing I ever heard of!" Hoke snarled. The  Lazy Y foreman smashed his fists on the
  chair arms and ground his  teeth. "He could ‘a’ shot us, poisoned us, or had us arrested, and it  wouldn’t ‘a’
  been this serious. Do you realize what it means if we  can’t get this stuff off us?"
  "Why�er�you will become social outcasts," Mr. Barr admitted.
  Hoke McGee got up from the chair. He put out his jaw.
  "It means," he gritted, "that we’re gonna have a hot time gettin’  hold of that box!"
  "Hoke, my�ah�aromatic acquaintance," said Mr. Barr, "you needn’t  worry further about the vault−steel
  chest. I have it." He arose and  opened the door of a closet into which the metal case had been  inserted. "I
  have it, as you can see," he repeated delightedly.
  Hoke McGee made an audible noise as he swallowed.
  "What about the twenty−five thousand dollars we was to get?" he  gulped.
  "Don’t be ridiculous, my good friend," said Mr. Barr.
  THIS time, Hoke McGee swore for three full minutes without once  repeating himself. He ended up by
  shouting, "Welcher! Welcher!  Welcher!" at the top of his voice.
  "Hoke, you wrong me," declared Everett Everett Barr in an injured  tone. "I do not intend to pay for work
  which you did not do. You were  to get the case. You did not. It was recovered for me by my good and  valued
  helpmate�I mean, by a young lady, who, even if I do say so, is  an accomplished actress."
  "You ain’t lost your carnival grifter ways! You’re gonna freeze us  out! Well, you won’t!"
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  Chapter X. BRONZE SHADOW
  58
  
  "And what," asked Mr. Barr, "will stop me?"
  At this point Hoke McGee evidently came over and gave Mr. Barr a  hard shove which deposited him forcibly
  in a chair, because the Barr  grunt was loud and surprised.
  "You cut us in on this, whatever it is," said Hoke menacingly, "or  we go to the cops and explain how you
  hired an hombre named Bill Horder  to kill old Meander Surett."
  Everett Everett Barr made a strangling noise.
  "Hoke, you wouldn’t do that!"
  "Wouldn’t I!"
  "But, Hoke, my colleague, my old pard, my good�"
  "Nuts!" said Hoke. "Bushels of nuts, all with worms in ‘em!"
  There was silence for a time, during which Mr. Barr evidently  considered alternatives. So sensitive was the
  microphone−and−amplifier  eavesdropping arrangement which Doc Savage was using that the breathing  of
  the men in the room was clearly audible, along with the excited  ticking of several watches, probably of the
  large variety commonly  carried by cowboys and called "turnips."
  "Goodness!" said Mr. Barr plaintively. "I�ah�well, it seems I have  no choice."
  "Now you’re talkin’ sense," Hoke said. "And we’ll be fair about it.  The Lazy Y fell down so far, we admit.
  But we’ll go along with you from  now on, and when this is over, we get the twenty−five grand. How’s  that?"
  "Not"�Mr. Barr seemed sad�"exactly what I would have wished for. But  I will agree."
  "That’s great," Hoke said.
  "However," said Everett Everett Barr wildly, "you must keep out of  smelling distance. I�ah�cannot have you
  around here. You are not  exactly bouquets, you know."
  "That’s all right," Hoke said gloomily. "We’ll go out and see if we  can find a hotel that will take in hombres
  smellin’ like we do."
  "Er�be careful about any more disinfection inspectors," said Mr.  Barr dryly.
  Hoke McGee was saying things as he stamped out.
  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  WHEN Sagebrush Smith and the bogus Sally Surett returned to the  hotel room, Everett Everett Barr greeted
  them heartily.
  "Good evening, good evening," he said. "You two make a charming  couple, you really do. Won’t you sit
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  59
  
  down until the gentlemen of the  press arrive?"
  "Gentlemen of the press?" said Sagebrush vacantly.
  "Newspaper reporters," explained Mr. Barr.
  "But what’s a newspaper reporter comin’ here for?" Sagebrush wanted  to know.
  Everett Everett Barr now gave evidence of considerable seriousness.  He arose and paced twice around the
  hotel room, hands clasped behind  his back, after which he struck a dramatic pose, one thumb hooked into  the
  pocket which held his pencil−flashlight, fountain−pen−tear−gas−gun  and two−colors−of−ink fountain pen;
  and his other hand, the one with  the wrist that wore the pedometer, leveled rigidly at a stack of  newspapers
  bearing headlines saying that Doc Savage had declared  Meander Surett’s invention worthless.
  "Doc Savage," he announced, "has committed a dastardly offense."
  "Dastardly offense?"
  "This Savage," said Barr, "has given out a statement to the  newspapers declaring flatly that the great
  invention of Meander Surett  is no invention at all. Fraudulently, without warrant, right or  permission, actual
  or implied, he made a statement of such nature to  the press, and in so proceeding he committed fraud, libel
  and  misrepresentation, all monetarily and spiritually injurious to my  client."
  "Your client?"
  "This darling little girl, Miss Sally Surett, is my client," Mr.  Barr explained.
  Newspapermen began arriving before Sagebrush Smith could inquire  what measures Mr. Barr intended to
  take against Doc Savage, as well as  offer a personal opinion that the best thing for any one to do was to  leave
  Doc Savage alone.
  The gentlemen of the press impressed Sagebrush Smith as being a  baggy−kneed lot. They showed more
  initial interest in some bottles of  champagne which Everett Everett Barr produced for their consumption.  The
  representatives of the Fourth Estate were in need of shaves and the  attentions of a suit−pressing establishment.
  There were big reporters, little reporters, fat ones and thin ones,  and one slender fellow who seemed to be an
  Italian. The latter carried  an umbrella and wore rubbers, although there was not a cloud in the  California sky.
  "Sheeza maybe rain an’ I be fix," the reportorial Latin explained  gloomily.
  AFTER corks popped and champagne fizzed, Everett Everett Barr got  down to brass tacks and began
  explaining that the great scientist,  Meander Surett, had made an invention before his death, and that Doc
  Savage had declared the discovery to be worthless. Mr. Barr crashed his  fist against the table with great force.
  "Gentlemen!" he shouted. "Doc Savage was wrong! He is a great man  possibly, but he is utterly wrong! The
  invention of Meander Surett  will work!"
  A reporter picked up a champagne bottle and looked at it. "Nothing  wrong with your champagne," he said.
  "But as for your ideas�well, if  Doc Savage says the thing won’t work, it won’t work, as far as I am
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  60
  
  concerned."
  "Young man," said Mr. Barr, "you are impressed by a reputation!"
  The reporter shrugged. "Then so are most of the great scientists in  the world, and every crook who has heard
  of Doc Savage," he said.
  The remark gave Mr. Barr something that looked a trifle like  indigestion.
  "Ah�well�ahem�" He cleared his throat. "We might drop that line of  discussion," he said. "It is of no
  importance in ascertaining whether  or not Meander Surett’s device will work."
  "It seems to me to be doggone important," the reporter persisted.  "Doc Savage says it won’t work, and his
  opinion carries weight."
  Mr. Barr shook his head.
  "No," he said. "Doc Savage did not have all the device!"
  "Eh?"
  "One important attachment was missing," Mr. Barr explained.
  The reporters were interested.
  "Did Doc Savage know that he wasn’t examining all the machine?" one  demanded.
  "No," Mr. Barr said. "Savage did not know that."
  "Where is the missing part?"
  "Meander Surett’s daughter, Sally, has it," replied Everett Everett  Barr. "My old friend Meander Surett was
  not without acumen, gentlemen,  and he did not trust this man, Savage, fully, so he removed one very
  essential item from his device, installed it in a separate case and  sent it to his daughter, making no mention of
  the fact to Doc Savage."
  "You mean," a newspaperman demanded, "that you can stick this part  in the contraption, and it will work in
  spite of what Savage said?"
  "We hope so," Mr. Barr said seriously.
  "How about giving a demonstration?"
  "That is why you gentlemen were summoned here."
  EVERETT EVERETT BARR went to a closet and secured a stout leather  bag which he handed to the blonde
  girl with an impressive gesture. The  girl, with impressive solemnity, removed a key from the end of the  stout
  silk ribbon which was around her neck and used this to unlock the  bag, then lifted out a crackle−finished
  metal case of the type used to  enclose amplifiers in public−address systems. A cable containing  several wires,
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  61
  
  each carefully labeled, ran from this. 
  Everett Everett Barr produced a paper and said, "Here are directions  for connecting the attachment, supplied
  by Meander Surett." He worked  with a screw driver and a pair of pliers for some minutes, hooking the  new
  device onto the large one in the steel chest.
  "I betta two to one she’s notta work," said the Italian journalist.
  The other scribes only grinned derisively at him.
  "Ten to one she’s notta work," the Italian offered.
  None of the reporters had faith enough in the machine to take him up.
  Everett Everett Barr finished attaching the auxiliary device. He  turned various switches while carefully
  consulting the directions  supplied by Meander Surett.
  "Gentlemen," he said smilingly, "you understand that I am not a  technical expert, and hence I cannot explain
  exactly how the device  operates. But even if I were a technical expert, I should not reveal  the nature of
  Meander Surett’s discovery, for that would be violating  the best interests of the famous inventor’s bereaved
  daughter"�he  paused to pat the blonde’s shoulder�"who is here to witness the test of  her father’s incredible
  static−translator."
  A faint whirring came from the machine, accompanied by a sporadic  clicking sound such as stock tickers
  make.
  "Must be da spook rappa in da thing," offered the Italian.
  Everett Everett Barr frowned.
  "This is scientific and practical." He looked around. "My dear  friends, I will tell you what Meander Surett
  wrote his dear daughter  about the theory of his discovery. He said that science has long known  that all matter
  is composed of electricity�positive and negative  electrons, or conceivably some smaller division which
  science has not  yet discovered.
  "It was the theory of Meander Surett that everything is electricity.  Everything! Therefore the immortal, the
  everlasting part of the  human being�and I mean, of course, the spirit�would have to be  electricity, too. The
  spirit therefore could conceivably react on  sensitive electrical apparatus.
  "It could convey a message, you understand, just as you and I step  up and speak into a telephone, or as a
  telegraph operator taps a  telegraph key, providing we living humans could create a device which  the spirits of
  the departed could actuate.
  "Meander Surett accomplished this by arranging a moving light beam  which may be shifted in different
  directions by the electrical  vibrations in the infra−short wave lengths of radio."
  "Sheeza get kinda complicated," suggested the Latin. 
  "Indeed it is," Mr. Barr agreed. "I will make it simple. I will say  that Meander Surett merely created a highly
  complicated scientific  pencil with which astral beings may write messages."
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  62
  
  "To make this really good," a tabloid man chuckled, "somebody oughta  go in a trance."
  Mr. Barr took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
  "I do wish," he complained, "that this operation did not approach so  closely the discredited methods of
  so−called mind readers and mediums.  I fear you do not realize how important this is."
  The machine continued to purr and make clicking noises.
  "When does a message come out?" a man demanded. 
  "Patience," Mr. Barr requested. "The message is written with a tiny  beam of light which moves over a
  sensitized photographic paper after  the fashion of our modern telephoto machines."
  They waited about ten minutes before a line of tape began to creep  from the machine. Mr. Barr appeared
  hardly able to restrain himself  until the first sentence was completed. He tore off the tape and stared  at it.
  "Jehoshaphat!" he cried.
  He gazed around at the newspapermen, profound astonishment on his  round face.
  "Meander Surett was murdered!" he shouted.
  There was shocked silence.
  "A man named Bill Horder killed poor Meander Surett with poison!"  Mr. Barr yelled.
  DURING ensuing seconds, the state of the room was best described as  silent confusion. The newspapermen
  were astounded, speechless. If this  was true, it would be one of the biggest news breaks of all time!
  "Is that tape�is it a message from�Meander Surett?" a man croaked.
  Everett Everett Barr nodded solemnly. "It appears to be a  communication from the great scientist," he said.
  He passed the strip  of photographic paper to the blonde girl.
  "Is this your father’s handwriting?" he asked gravely.
  The blonde took one glance at the jittery white line registered on  the paper. She burst into tears.
  "It’s dad’s�writing," she said between sobs.
  Silently, Everett Everett Barr passed the portentous strip of  photographic paper around for examination. The
  newshawks read:
  My desire to be first. 
  . . . Meander Surett. . . . I am quite happy here  beyond. . . . I was murdered by a man named Bill Horder. . .  .
  Poison. . . . Seemed to be cancer. . . . I killed  Horder and buried him one hundred yards west of my
  laboratory. 
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  63
  
  While this was being read, all were aware that the device was  purring and clicking again.
  "Another message is coming!" Everett Everett Barr announced solemnly.
  Several newspapermen had made movements toward the door, but now  they restrained themselves.
  Mr. Barr tore off the next message and examined it.
  "This," he said hollowly, "seems to be a communication from a man  named Harold A. Beaver. I confess that
  the fellow is a complete  stranger to me."
  A journalist tried to speak twice and finally had to cough to get  his words loose.
  "Harold A. Beaver was murdered here in Los Angeles about a year  ago," he muttered. "Shot to death. They
  sent his widow to the  penitentiary for killing him after they found a twenty−thousand−dollar  insurance policy
  on his life�drawn in her favor. The policy was hidden.  Widow claimed she hadn’t known there was a policy
  at all. They made the  jury believe she’d killed her husband, then gotten scared and hid the  policy."
  Everett Everett Barr seemed so astonished at this that he could not  stay on his feet. He collapsed into a chair.
  "Gentlemen!" he gasped. "Gentlemen, this invention of Meander  Surett’s means there will never be another
  murder upon this earth! Read  what the spirit of Harold A. Beaver writes. Then you’ll understand!"
  The newsmen read:
  This Is Harold A. Beaver. . . . My wife is innocent. I was killed by  my business partner. . . . I was the only
  one who knew he had robbed  our firm. . . . He buried the murder gun under his garage floor. . . .  Insurance
  agent will identify him as man who took out policy on my life  to throw blame on my wife.
  Every newspaperman reacted to this instantaneously and in the same  fashion�by making a wild rush for the
  nearest telephone.
  The Italian charged out of the room after the others, but instead of  leaving the hotel, he ran down the corridor
  and entered the room in  which Doc Savage was eavesdropping with a telephone headset over his  ears.
  Monk, who was crouched astraddle a chair and also wearing a headset,  looked up. His homely face was
  incredulous.
  "Blazes!" he muttered. "I didn’t expect anythin’ like this to  happen!"
  Doc Savage and Monk listened while Ham removed his Italian disguise  and at the same time explained
  exactly what had happened in the other  room and described the additional attachment which Everett Everett
  Barr  had connected to old Meander Surett’s invention.
  "DOC," Ham finished, "do you think it possible that the extra gadget  could have made the contrivance work?"
  There was a long silence�a silence of sufficient length that Monk  and Ham saw that the bronze man was not
  going to commit himself on the  point.
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  Chapter XI. THE PUBLICITY BOX
  64
  
  "Doc," Monk muttered, "are you even sure that blonde girl in there  isn’t the real Sally Surett?"
  The bronze man was silent for some time.
  Then he said, "Renny, Long Tom and Johnny, investigating in New  York, forwarded a detailed description of
  Sally Surett, which they  secured by making inquiries at her rooming house and around Everett  Everett Barr’s
  office. They also managed to get a picture." He produced  a photographic print. "They had it telephotoed out
  here." He handed the  picture to Monk and Ham. "This is Sally Surett. Does it even resemble  that blonde girl?"
  Monk and Ham examined a photograph of a small, dark−haired and very  pretty young woman with a nice
  face who certainly had no resemblance to  the blonde.
  "I don’t savvy this," Monk muttered. "Did you hear what he got out  of that machine? The truth! The fact that
  Bill Horder murdered Meander  Surett!"
  Ham nodded. For once, he seemed too preoccupied to disagree with  Monk.
  "I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the tape," the lawyer  muttered. "Barr would be the last man in
  the world to want that to get  out."
  "Did you watch Barr’s face at the time?" Doc Savage inquired.
  "He looked plenty upset," Ham said.
  Doc Savage put the headset down. "Barr, the girl and Sagebrush Smith  have gone to see the police about the
  message from Harold Beaver," he  said.
  The bronze man remained motionless for some time, his metallic  features inscrutable. Then, so low at first
  that it was almost  unnoticeable, the trilling note came into being, rising and falling,  musical and exotic�the
  small, fantastic thing which the man of bronze  did unconsciously in moments of mental stress�of surprise or
  puzzlement.
  "We will watch Barr," he said. "It is only a question of time until  we learn what he is planning, or get a clue
  to the whereabouts of the  real Sally Surett."
  Chapter XII. CAPTAIN SCUTTLE
  THE police found the revolver under the garage floor of the late  Harold Beaver’s business partner. They took
  the partner to the  insurance agent, and he was identified as the man who had taken out an  insurance policy on
  Harold Beaver’s life in the name of Beaver’s wife.  The partner was arrested.
  The district attorney announced that Mrs. Harold Beaver would be  released from the women’s penitentiary as
  soon as it could possibly be  arranged.
  The newspapers went wild. They got out their biggest type. One  newspaper covered its front page with
  enormous headlines and explained  in a boxed item on the editorial page that:
  "We think this story of Meander Surett’s invention so amazing that  we are using the special batch of type
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter XII. CAPTAIN SCUTTLE
  65
  
  which we were saving for the  Second Coming of Christ."
  An expedition went into Death Valley by plane, exhumed Meander  Surett’s body and performed an autopsy,
  learning that the man had died  of an acid poisoning with symptoms probably similar to that of cancer.
  It was remarked that some one had apparently already conducted an  investigation. The body of Bill Horder
  was found buried where the  "Static Translator" message of Meander Surett had said they would find  it buried.
  So everything had checked out to prove the message from the device  to be a genuine one.
  Human nature is consistent. School kids like to catch their teacher  in a mistake, and every employee likes to
  show up his boss as being  wrong; nothing tickles an average individual like seeing a highly  touted expert stub
  his toe, and be proven wrong.
  The fact that Doc Savage was a highly touted expert was not of his  own choosing. The bronze man
  disapproved of publicity because it gave  enemies too much of a line on him, and because he was
  fundamentally not  an exhibitionist.
  Doc Savage was not surprised when the newspapers insisted with great  enthusiasm that he had been utterly
  wrong about Meander Surett’s  invention. It was not the first time the daily journals had opposed the  bronze
  man; some newspapers resented the fact that Doc ordinarily did  not give out interviews.
  The bronze man’s reticence was doubly aggravating because his doings  were front−page news. By way of
  getting revenge, the papers welcomed  chances to knock the bronze man with editorials.
  "They’re gonna caw at us like crows after an owl," Monk complained.
  "The best thing we can do," Doc Savage explained, "is disappear for  a while."
  "Disappear?"
  "As far as public notice is concerned."
  "What about the rest of our gang in New York�Renny, Long Tom and  Johnny?" Monk asked.
  "They will remain in New York for the time," Doc decided. "Action of  this thing may shift back to New
  York, and, too, they are busy back  there, hunting some trace of the genuine Sally Surett."
  Hence when a flock of reporters and cameramen descended upon the  Hotel Surfside, it was found that Doc
  Savage and his men had vanished.
  That same day, a new taxicab took up a stand in front of the grimy  little hostelry frequented by Everett
  Everett Barr, fake Sally Surett  and Sagebrush Smith.
  The driver of this hack was a squat Mexican who wore a large hat  habitually yanked down over his eyes,
  colored glasses, and who sported  an item not every Mexican possessed�a beard. A close acquaintance would
  have had to inspect the cab driver closely to recognize Monk.
  Ham, disguised as the wiry Latin journalist, continued to appear in  every conference which Everett Everett
  Barr held with the press. He  possessed credentials saying he represented a paper owned by Premier  Mussolini
  of Italy, and no one suspected otherwise.
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  66
  
  Doc Savage returned to his disguise of a large colored man, and  acquired a job as cleaning−man around
  Everett Everett Barr’s hotel.
  Habeas and Chemistry were left in a rooming house near Barr’s hotel  that Doc had rented for his own use.
  THERE were developments.
  Sally Surett began to receive monetary offers for the invention of  her father, these ranging up to one of a
  million dollars outright. And  all the offers, of course, were contingent upon it being proven beyond  shadow
  of doubt that the device was what it portended to be. And  Everett Everett Barr turned down all propositions in
  the name of Sally  Surett.
  SURETT DISCOVERY NOT TO BE SOLD
  TO BE GIVEN TO BENEFIT MANKIND
  This was what the headlines said. The story quoted Mr. Barr as  saying in press conference:
  "Realizing fully that this is no ordinary invention, but one which  will have a sweeping effect on the character
  of the world’s  inhabitants, my client, Miss Sally Surett, is not going to demand one  penny for the invention,
  but will give it outright to benefit mankind.
  "Just exactly how it will be given, however, is something that we  have not yet decided; and in the meantime,
  we are going to operate the  machine once daily, and representatives of the public, meaning the
  newspapermen, will be admitted."
  Ham reported this announcement to Doc Savage.
  "I still don’t see," Ham complained, "what that shyster is up to.  Still, I’m as sure as can be that he’s a crook."
  The homely Monk grinned.
  "They say it takes a crook to recognize a crook," he chuckled. "In  this case, it’s a shyster lawyer to recognize
  another shyster."
  "You hairy numskull," Ham snapped, "I’m behind on keeping you in  line!"
  "You talk to me in that tone," Monk said, "and I’ll tap you one on  that knot you call a head and you’ll be
  untying your shoe strings under  the impression they’re neckties."
  THE commotion over Meander Surett’s machine was not long in coming.  Like snowballs and wars, it started
  small and grew.
  It began with the demand of a spectacular, noisy, flamboyant and  notorious female evangelist that the "Static
  Translator" be destroyed  as an instrument of the devil. It was a sin, said the evangelist, to  have
  communication with the departed.
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  67
  
  Just why it was a sin was something the evangelist neglected to  explain, but the newspapermen thought that if
  there was any sin, it  might be the way the evangelist snatched at everything that came along  to get personal
  notoriety.
  But the real cannon roar from this incident came when the  "Translator" clicked out a message from a
  departed uncle of the  evangelist, the uncle explaining that he could testify from personal  experience that there
  was a Purgatory, and for the evangelist in the  future to give more attention to the Holy Bible and less to
  personal  gain, or there would be another of the family down there. The  newspaper−reading world got a hearty
  chuckle out of that.
  The "Static Translator" thereafter developed into "a confession box  for spooks," as one periodical dubbed it.
  A banker, whose looting of his own bank four years previously had  come to light when he had been killed
  unexpectedly in an automobile  accident, employed the "Translator" to explain that he had a partner in  the
  looting of the bank�the partner being a man held in much esteem who  was now a broker in Philadelphia.
  Two days later, police arrested this broker. On the strength of the  tip given by the banker’s spook, they had
  located enough evidence to  convict the unsuspected culprit.
  At the time the broker was arrested, three strangers were present.  One was an angular man with incredibly
  huge fists and the facial  expression of a fellow who didn’t have a friend in the world. The  second of the trio
  was a lean man with the complexion of a mushroom.  The third man was extremely tall and thinner than it
  seemed any one  could be, and he had a monocle which he fingered frequently but never  wore.
  These three men carried credentials indicating they were special  Federal agents. They did a great deal of
  investigating, inquiring  particularly into the death of the banker years before in an automobile  accident.
  The three were Doc Savage’s assistants, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny.  That night, they talked at some
  length with Doc Savage via short−wave  radio telephone.
  "Have you," Doc Savage asked, "found anything queer?"
  "Just one thing," said Renny, whose voice sounded like an angry bull  in a barn. "There’s a chance that the
  banker was murdered years ago.  The automobile went off a cliff and burned. The banker was behind the
  wheel, but he was rumored to be unable to drive a car."
  "What do you think that means?"
  "Holy cow!" Renny rumbled. "I don’t know, Doc. The broker helped the  banker loot the bank. That’s sure.
  Maybe the broker killed the banker  so he could take all the loot."
  "Have you checked on every one else connected with the case?"
  "Did our best."
  "Find any one who had been connected with carnivals at any time?"
  "Why, yes we did, Doc. This broker’s chauffeur�the chauffeur he had  at the time the banker was
  murdered�later quit his job and went to work  for carnivals."
  "That," Doc Savage said, "is an interesting point."
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  68
  
  THE arrest of the broker and the fact that enough evidence to  convict him had been unearthed gave enormous
  added credibility to the  "Static Translator."
  Many newspapers had featured editorials citing incredible inventions  in the past which had been hoaxes�and
  pointing out no less a personage  than Doc Savage had said this device of Meander Surett’s was worthless.
  After the broker−banker episode, however, such editorials disappeared.  The strongest skeptics were
  beginning to be convinced that the machine  actually worked.
  Even homely Monk was doubtful.
  "Doc," Monk said, "maybe we’ve got this wrong. You’ve got to admit  that confounded machine hasn’t done
  anything but good so far. Why, that  poor innocent woman was released from the penitentiary, and now this
  guilty broker has been arrested."
  "Both would appear to be desirable events," Doc Savage agreed.
  Dapper Ham, who had been absent all day, returned soon after this  short conversation."
  "Hello, fancy britches," Monk said.
  Ham ignored him.
  "Doc," Ham said, "I went to this man here in Los Angeles who is  accused of murdering Harold A. Beaver,
  and he was glad to accept my  offer to serve as his lawyer."
  "Hey?" Monk exploded. "What’s this? You�defending the man who  murdered Harold A. Beaver and let
  Beaver’s poor widow go to the pen for  the crime?"
  "That’s the idea," Ham said. "I managed to have his trial set for a  month from to−day."
  "You’re a lower shyster than I thought you were!" Monk yelled.  "Using your brains to get such rats out of
  trouble!"
  "Ham is following my suggestion," Doc Savage said quietly.
  "Oh!" Monk looked foolish.
  "Did you ask your client the question I requested," Doc asked Ham.
  Ham nodded.
  "Yes," he said. "And I was surprised. Even the district attorney  didn’t know that Harold A. Beaver’s widow
  used to work in carnivals."
  The bronze man did a rare thing: he showed a slight amount of  pleasure. His strange, trilling sound was
  audible for a brief moment.  Then he said, "The strongest evidence against the man now accused of  murdering
  Harold A. Beaver is the fact that he is accused of taking out  the insurance policy of Beaver in the widow’s
  name."
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  Chapter XII. CAPTAIN SCUTTLE
  69
  
  "Don’t forget the buried murder gun!" Monk put in.
  "Any one," Doc said, "can bury a gun."
  Ham said, "I examined the gun. I can prove in court that it couldn’t  possibly have been buried over a week or
  two."
  "Say," Monk gulped, "what is this?"
  Doc Savage asked Ham, "What did you find on checking up on the  insurance agent?"
  "His bank account," Ham said, "took a mysterious  five−thousand−dollar jump about two weeks ago."
  "That," Doc Savage said, "is also interesting."
  THE next day, the world heard about the spook of Captain Scuttle.
  Captain Scuttle’s spook spoke Spanish. Wrote Spanish, rather, in a  jerky, huge−lettered hand. The writing
  was very illiterate, fully half  the words being misspelled, and not a few entirely unreadable. It  required half
  an hour for Captain Scuttle to write a short message  through the medium of the "Translator." So it appeared
  that if a man  was illiterate on earth, he died and became an illiterate spook.
  Captain Scuttle was a pirate. A Spanish pirate, despite his name.  That is, he had started out as a sailor in the
  Spanish navy, became the  equivalent of an admiral, was finally assigned the job of conveying a  fleet of
  gold−laden galleons from a Peruvian port to old Panama City,  at which opportune time he turned pirate and
  sacked the whole fleet of  gold−burdened galleons.
  Captain Scuttle took half the treasure of his own, added to it some  other shares he persuaded his men to let
  him have for safe−keeping, and  hid the whole�only himself knew where. After this, he sailed away  alone,
  intending to return later for the buried hoard. He sailed north.  Off the west coast of Mexico, he was sighted
  by Spanish war vessels,  which pursued him.
  Captain Scuttle ran his war galleon ashore and fled into the jungles  with his men and a small share of treasure
  which he had retained for  capital. He was captured, staked out, and the big Mexican ants ate him.  But the
  small treasure which he had kept for capital was never found.  Neither was the big one.
  Consultation of historical records verified this biography which  Captain Scuttle’s spook gave of itself. It also
  came out that Captain  Scuttle’s big treasure was probably well over a hundred million  dollars. This latter fact
  created a stir when the newspapers published  it.
  Not half the stir, however, that was caused when Captain Scuttle  announced through the medium of Meander
  Surett’s weird machine that he  wanted to give his ill−gotten gains of three centuries ago to the  benefit of
  Twentieth−Century humanity.
  The newspapers in Paris, France, carried half a page about this,  which indicated how much of an international
  thing the story had become.
  By this time, Doc Savage was receiving no attention at all in public  print. The bronze man had dropped
  completely out of the picture.
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  70
  
  Which was what he was trying to do.
  Daily reports came from Doc’s operatives in New York�Renny, Long Tom  and Johnny�indicating they
  could still find no trace of the real Sally  Surett.
  THE next day Captain Scuttle’s illiterate Spanish scrawl gave the  location of the small treasure in Mexico.
  That was at ten o’clock in  the morning, and fifteen minutes after ten a fast plane was headed for  the spot.
  It landed at six that evening at the treasure site and was  confronted by a serious−faced bunch of Mexican
  military men. The  military men had read the telegraphic news dispatches, and gone to the  spot seeking for the
  treasure.
  They had found the treasure. The treasure was worth about ten  thousand dollars. It was in doubloons and
  solid gold religious  ornaments of ancient vintage.
  The Mexican government explained politely but firmly that treasure  found on Mexican soil was the national
  property of Mexico and would be  spent to aid Mexicans.
  Everett Everett Barr gave out a statement to the press in which he  said he was quite delighted and the
  Mexican government was welcome to  the treasure.
  Monk read of this development back in Los Angeles and went looking  for Doc Savage. Monk was carrying
  Habeas by one large ear, which was  his habitual way of carrying his pet pig. Monk was puzzled.
  "Blazes, Doc!" he complained. "Meander Surett’s machine really  works!"
  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  IT was highly probable that no individuals with level heads had, at  first, taken Meander Surett’s "Static
  Translator" seriously, but in  less than a week this initial attitude had changed completely.
  The device was apparently functioning. Everything seemed honest and  aboveboard. The spirits of two
  departed people had righted wrongs  committed during their span on earth. The departed shade of a great
  rogue of other centuries was trying to do the same thing�and had half  succeeded.
  That is, Captain Scuttle had two treasures, and he had given the  location of the smaller one, and it had been
  found. So when Captain  Scuttle’s spook announced it would give the location of the second  treasure on the
  following day, the world was ripe for  hundred−million−dollar news.
  Ham, of course, attended the press conference during which Everett  Everett Barr produced Captain Scuttle’s
  message from Meander Surett’s  machine. Immediately after the conference in which Captain Scuttle’s  bad
  Spanish scrawl said the whereabouts of the big treasure would be  made known to−morrow, newspapermen
  dashed for telephones.
  Ham’s dash was for Doc Savage. He told the latest news.
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  71
  
  "I can’t see what’s behind this, Doc," Ham said excitedly. "Do you  reckon we’re all wrong about the
  machine?"
  The bronze man began taking off his black−face makeup. It was the  first time he had removed it in days.
  "I think," he said, "that this affair has gone far enough."
  "What do you mean, Doc?"
  The bronze man was slow with his answer.
  "In waiting," he said, "it begins to appear that we are playing into  Everett Everett Barr’s hands."
  "That fellow," Ham said, "is just a cheap small−time shyster."
  "You should be able to smell out a brother," Monk volunteered  cheerfully.
  Ham scowled.
  "And speaking of smelling," Monk added, "what’s become of Hoke McGee  and his Lazy Y bouquets?"
  "I don’t know," Ham retorted. "The only one I’ve been seeing around  is Sagebrush Smith. And that blonde
  girl has him hypnotized." He  scowled. "She won’t give me a tumble."
  A moment later, Ham realized Doc Savage was studying him intently.
  "You’ve been talking to the girl, Ham?" the bronze man asked.
  Ham looked uncomfortable.
  "Uh�not very much," he said hastily. "In fact�I�ah�just spoke to  her."
  "That’s the first time I ever heard you stutter when you told a  lie," volunteered the homely Monk. "Usually
  you do it as slick as a  whistle."
  "I haven’t," Ham said earnestly, "done anything but merely speak to  the girl."
  Monk’s snort, which was loud and skeptical and said plainly that the  homely chemist thought the dapper
  lawyer was doing some dark−faced  prevaricating, was merely for effect. Monk knew as well as any one that
  Ham was telling the truth.
  "There’s not a chance," Ham insisted, "that the blonde guessed who I  am."
  HAM was wrong. Just how wrong it became evident when, unfortunately,  Ham was not in earshot. The
  occasion was that evening when Everett  Everett Barr and the bogus Sally Surett, having evaded an
  increasingly  attentive Sagebrush Smith, went to a remote spot for dinner.
  "I’ve got a surprise for you, my dear husband," said the blonde.
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  72
  
  Everett Everett Barr scowled. "I hope it’s not our very good cowboy  friend, Sagebrush Smith, who, if you
  will pardon my saying so, is  showing rather more interest in you than I anticipated or approved of."
  The blonde laughed.
  "That clown!" she said. "He’s just a big simp mesquitejumper. You  know what his ambition in life happens to
  be?"
  "I’ve been wondering," said Mr. Barr jealously.
  "He wants to find Doc Savage."
  "I have the same ambition," said Mr. Barr grimly.
  "Sagebrush Smith," the girl said, "is obsessed with the idea that he  is a better shot with a six−shooter than
  Doc Savage. He wants to find  Savage and have a shooting match to settle who is the better shot. He’s  a nut
  on that idea."
  "Of course," said Mr. Barr sourly, "he isn’t interested in you at  all."
  The blonde laughed again. "Honey," she said, "I’ve got a piece of  news that will take your mind off�"
  She was interrupted by the appearance of Hoke McGee and his Lazy Y  cowboys. Hoke and his men had
  entered the tiny restaurant, gotten  halfway to the Barr table, and the headwaiter had stopped them and was
  holding his nose and gesturing for them to leave with indignation.
  "It’s all right," Mr. Barr interposed placatingly. "I’ll rent the  whole restaurant for the rest of the evening."
  After this, the new arrivals seated themselves.
  "Phew!" 
  Everett Everett Barr said involuntarily. 
  Hoke McGee was a changed man. He had lost weight, there were hollows  under his eyes, and he had a wild,
  hunted expression. Too, his men  looked as if the hounds had been after them for some time.
  "It’s been a fright!" Hoke groaned.
  "I can guess," said Mr. Barr.
  "It wouldn’t be so bad," Hoke croaked, "if we could get ourselves  used to the way we smell. Blast us for
  coyotes! We can’t even sleep  with ourselves. You got no idea!"
  "Where are you staying?" Everett Everett Barr asked.
  "We finally hadda move out in the desert," Hoke explained gloomily.  "We got holda some tents."
  "It does seem that you could wash the chemical off."
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  73
  
  "We’ve danged near scrubbed ourselves down to the bone." Hoke shook  his head. "We went to a chemist and
  he says the stuff will last a week  yet anyhow, and that the only stuff that would neutralize it was  poisonous.
  We’ve blamed near decided to let him poison us."
  Hoke McGee suddenly whipped out a six−shooter. He beat the table  until glasses rolled off and broke. His
  eyes popped.
  "If I ever see that Doc Savage again, I’ll shoot his insides out!"  he screamed.
  "If I could find Savage for you," said Everett Everett Barr grimly,  "I’d gladly let you do it."
  The blonde smiled.
  "What I started to say a while ago," she said, "was that I have a  line on Doc Savage."
  Mr. Barr lurched to his feet. "What?"
  "You remember that thin−waisted Italian newspaperman?" the girl  asked.
  "Why, yes," said Mr. Barr. "I’ve noticed him examining you, my dear."
  "That Italian," the girl said, "is the Doc Savage assistant known as  Ham. I just figured that out to−day."
  Everett Everett Barr settled back. A beatific smile overspread his  countenance.
  "This is wonderful," he said. "Now I have Doc Savage exactly where I  want him." He chuckled. "And to
  think I have been doing so much  worrying of late over nothing!"
  THE next morning, Everett Everett Barr changed his policy. When the  newspapermen assembled, he
  announced that Captain Scuttle’s message  would not be made public. What had happened to the smaller
  Mexican  treasure made this inadvisable, he explained. If they revealed the  whereabouts of the big treasure,
  there would obviously be an  international scramble for the spot, and no telling what complications.
  They would get the treasure first, explain where they got it later.  But to be sure that everything was honest
  and aboveboard, a committee  of observers would be invited to sit in and see that nothing unlawful  was pulled.
  The committee invited consisted of the city’s leading lawyer, a  representative from the Los Angeles police
  department, and the head of  a prominent charitable institution. These persons promptly accepted.
  The message from Captain Scuttle revealing whereabouts of the  million−dollar treasure was brought forth in
  secret session.
  The committee and Everett Everett Barr then announced that a week  must elapse while a ship was being
  fitted out to go after the treasure.
  Ham was present to hear the announcement. He remained in the  background and carefully avoided the blonde
  girl’s eyes, being aware  that he had made an error previously in allowing his liking for  attractive femininity to
  entice him into speaking with her a few times.
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  74
  
  Ham’s hands didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves; he was  accustomed to the sword cane in his
  hands all the time, and, of course,  he was not carrying it while disguised as an Italian newspaper
  correspondent.
  Ham left the conference with the other newshawks. As was his custom,  he separated from them and headed
  for a near−by rooming house to report  to Doc Savage.
  He had walked only a few yards when he grew aware of an odor. He  stopped and turned. He knew an instant
  later that he should have dashed  into the nearest doorway and prepared for defense. But it was too late.
  Hoke McGee and four of the Lazy Y men were close and showing gun  snouts.
  "We ain’t foolin’ a bit!" Hoke McGee snarled.
  Ham looked at the mad light in the ranch foreman’s eyes and knew he  was in earnest.
  "You come along with us," Hoke McGee ordered.
  Ham appeared to grow terrified. He began to shake. He trembled so  violently that a small bottle was
  dislodged from his clothing  somewhere, fell on the sidewalk and broke, the liquid contents, vile  yellow in
  color, splattering over the concrete. Ham, seemingly  befuddled, stepped into the yellow mess with both feet.
  "What’s that yaller stuff?" Hoke McGee rasped.
  "Muh−medicine for muh−my trouble," Ham croaked.
  The Lazy Y foreman scowled. "What kinda trouble you got?"
  "Huh�heart trouble, I guess," Ham gulped.
  "That’s swell!" gritted Hoke McGee. "Get movin’!"
  They walked down the street to a car which was parked with the  engine running, another of Hoke McGee’s
  men behind the wheel.
  "Drive to Desert Drome Airport," Hoke McGee told the chauffeur.
  Ham, about to get into the car, opened his mouth wide and clutched  his chest. "My heart!" he gasped. Then
  he collapsed, moaning, and  writhed on the sidewalk. His fingers, moving in apparent agony, clawed  at the
  concrete.
  Hoke McGee picked Ham up, hurled him in the car, and the gang drove  off.
  DOC SAVAGE waited patiently for Ham’s return. Doc had given up his  eavesdropping post in Everett
  Everett Barr’s hotel for the reason that  the place had become such a focus of international newspaper interest
  that the scribes had started doing human interest stories about the  people in the hotel. Doc was fairly certain
  they would learn his real  identity if he lingered. He had returned to the rooming house.
  Monk came in trailed by Habeas Corpus and Chemistry and said, "This  is blasted funny!"
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  75
  
  He had the newspapers containing the announcement made at the  conference which Ham had attended.
  "Ham should be back," Monk pointed out.
  For a fractional moment, Doc Savage’s strange, trilling sound seemed  to pulse in the room. Then the big
  bronze man was at his equipment  cases, extracting one of his more powerful ultra−violet ray projectors
  disguised as a small metal case of the type plumbers use to carry tools.
  It was a dull day, threatening rain. Doc Savage and Monk donned long  raincoats and large hats, brims of
  which they yanked down over their  eyes. They set out for Everett Everett Barr’s hotel.
  They did not go directly to the hotel, but made a round of the block  containing the hostelry. Doc kept the
  ultra−violet projector  continuously roving the sidewalk.
  They found Ham’s footprints�tracks made by the yellowish stuff in  which Ham had stepped deliberately. The
  prints, hardly noticeable to  the naked eye, stood out a sulphurous color, even in the pallid  daylight, when
  subjected to the ultra−violet rays.
  "Ham�musta got�in a jam!" Monk croaked.
  Considering Monk’s frequently expressed intention of some day  dissecting Ham, the anxiety in his tone was
  surprising.
  Doc Savage’s metallic features remained inscrutable. He followed  Ham’s footprints to the point where Ham
  had been forced to enter the  car.
  The writing on the sidewalk was quite readable, in view of the fact  that Ham had put it there with the
  "invisible" chalk of Doc’s invention  while pretending to have a heart attack.
  The message said:
  Hoke McGee�me�Desert Drome Airport
  DESERT DROME AIRPORT was a mushroom product of the flying craze a  decade past, which had
  managed to survive somehow. Pilots in rickety  ships gave instruction at five dollars an hour, and the hangars
  were  full of crates that could no longer be licensed. There was a concrete  take−off ramp, but it was cracked,
  ancient. The only pilot around the  field had grease on his face.
  "I ain’t been payin’ much attention to what went on," he said. "Got  a loose rod in the engine of my bus."
  Doc Savage moved over the spots where an arriving automobile would  be most likely to park�and shortly he
  was following the sulphur−colored  prints left by Ham’s shoe soles, to which some of the chemical still  clung.
  The pilot popped his eyes at the footprints, even got down on his  knees to try to discover why they
  disappeared when the ultra−violet  light was no longer upon them.
  "I don’t savvy this," he muttered.
  "We’re followin’ a ghost," Monk enlightened him.
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  76
  
  Ham’s trail led out on the ramp. And once again, Ham must have  managed to get on the ground, because
  scrawled on the cracked concrete  of the ramp they found two words:
  Treasure Island
  Judging from the scrawl with which the second word ended, Ham had  not been given much opportunity to
  leave clues.
  The trail ended there.
  "They musta put him in a plane," Monk groaned. 
  Doc Savage confronted the loitering pilot. "What kind of ship took  off from here within the last hour or so?"
  "I dunno," the flier said, "but I think it was a two−motored  low−wing job. A considerably better crate than we
  generally see settin’  around this rookery. Oh, yes�there was a girl aboard, an invalid or  somethin’."
  Monk put in, "Can’t you describe the plane?"
  "No more’n I did," the pilot said. "There was this girl or woman who  was an invalid, like I said."
  Doc Savage glanced at the cloud−jammed sky, then waited patiently  until the sun came out and slanted rays
  across the field. Crouching,  moving to various positions, he studied the prints of the plane landing  gear on the
  ramp.
  He found a few grease puddles, clotted with dust, through which the  wheels had passed. Farther out, where
  the ramp ended and the tarmac was  dirt, dust stirred up by the propellers had obliterated everything.
  "It was an amphibian," the bronze man said. "A large one, with a  flying radius of at least two thousand miles."
  Monk moved to one side. He was becoming more and more worried.
  "Doc, d’you reckon them two words meant they were takin’ Ham to an  island where this Captain Scuttle’s
  treasure is hidden?" the homely  chemist demanded.
  "That," the bronze man admitted, "is apparently the only meaning."
  They went back to their rooming house.
  Monk entered the door, stopped, dodged backward, crashed into Doc  Savage, sat down and looked foolish.
  "Holy cow!" said a voice reminiscent of a large animal in a deep  cave. "You seem to have the jitters!"
  "Renny!" Monk squeaked. He got to his feet foolishly. "And Long Tom  and Johnny! How did you fellows get
  here?"
  "By plane," big−voiced, big−fisted Renny explained. 
  "A preeminently logical eventuation," added Johnny, the long and  thin geologist who never used a small
  word when he had time to produce  a large one.
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  Chapter XIII. MILLION−DOLLAR  TREASURE
  77
  
  "It was this way," said Long Tom, the deceptively unhealthy−looking  electrical wizard. "We’ve been
  working our heads off in New York, and  finally got trace of the real Sally Surett. She is being held prisoner,
  and has been for several weeks."
  "Then what’re you doin’ here?" Monk demanded.
  "The girl," Long Tom said, "was put on a plane in New York yesterday  and rushed here to Los Angeles. We
  trailed the ship and just got in.  We’ve been telephoning airports trying to locate it here in Los  Angeles."
  Doc Savage asked, "Was it a large two−motored amphibian?"
  "Why," said Long Tom, "how did you know that?"
  "The same plane," Doc Savage said, "took off within the last hour or  so with two prisoners aboard. The
  captives were Ham and a girl who was  mistaken for an invalid by the men at the airport."
  "That invalid," Monk surmised, "was the real Sally Surett. They got  her doped or something." The homely
  chemist stared at the bronze man.  "Doc, we gotta do somethin’ drastic. This thing, whatever it is, is  comin’ to
  a head and we’re just jumpin’ around grabbin’ at thin air."
  "Bring in your portable chemical laboratory," Doc Savage said  quietly, "and we will start operations."
  THE committee of a lawyer, a police official and the head of a  charitable institution, which was to observe
  the honesty of the search  for Captain Scuttle’s treasure, got together for a dinner that evening  at the lawyer’s
  home. They wanted to get better acquainted with each  other, since they were to be associated closely.
  Dinner was served in the large walnut−paneled dining room. In the  middle of the meal, something
  unexpected happened.
  Every one went to sleep.
  The police official slumped forward, buried his face in his soup and  made bubbling noises.
  Doc Savage threw wide the window through which he and Monk, the  chemist, had put anaesthetic gas into
  the room. The bronze man climbed  in, lifted the policeman out of his soup so he wouldn’t drown, then got  a
  hypodermic needle out of a metal case and began administering  chemical preparations to the three victims.
  Monk, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny climbed into the room while he was  doing this.
  "D’you reckon it was necessary," Monk muttered, "to gas ‘em, then  use truth serum to get the information we
  want? Maybe they’d ‘a’ told  us if we just asked ‘em."
  "These men," Doc Savage said, "are noted publicity−seekers. Their  sympathies, moreover, are with Everett
  Everett Barr. It is hardly  likely they would have given us much consideration, particularly in  view of the way
  the newspapers have been knocking us lately."
  The bronze man completed his administrations. The anaesthetic gas,  colorless and odorless, was virtually an
  adjunct to the truth serum,  coördinating its effects with that of the serum, which rendered the  subjects
  semiconscious and obliterated conscious control of their  faculties�in short, made them unable to remember to
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  tell a lie, or to  remember to refuse to answer questions.
  Doc’s first question: "Do you think Everett Everett Barr is honest  and the Meander Surett machine actually
  genuine?"
  "Yes," was the answer from all three.
  "Which means they’re not dupes of Barr," Monk muttered.
  Doc’s second question: "Where is the treasure of Captain Scuttle  located?"
  "On Scorn Island, off the coast of Lower California," was the answer  to this. "It is sunken in the small cove
  on the east shore, and not in  the large cove on the west shore."
  "Where’s a map?" Monk muttered. "I never heard of any Scorn Island."
  "Scorn Island," Doc Savage said, "is three miles long, half a mile  wide, has a maximum altitude of seven
  hundred feet, and is largely  barren, the principal vegetation being cactus and mesquite. The island  is located
  about thirty miles off the eastern, or barren side of the  peninsula of Lower California."
  THE bronze man’s four associates showed no surprise that he should  have an encyclopedic fund of
  information concerning an island of which  none of them had ever heard. They were quite well acquainted
  with the  fact that his mind held an incredible array of knowledge.
  "How are we gonna keep these three fellows from suspecting something  queer happened to them?" Renny
  rumbled.
  Doc Savage managed that quite simply. He removed all traces of the  visit of himself and his men, this
  consisting principally in sponging  away the drop or two of red leakage from the pricks of the hypodermic
  needle. Then he opened the jets of the gas heater and let enough gas  into the house to make a perceptible
  odor, but not enough to endanger  any one’s life. Then he called the fire department.
  From across the street, the bronze man watched the fire department  arrive and rush the three victims off to
  receive treatment for  imaginary gassing. A little later in the night, they would awaken, none  the worse for an
  experience, no detail of which they would be able to  remember.
  "Did you bring the big plane from New York?" Doc asked.
  "Yes," Renny admitted.
  "Get it ready for a flight to Scorn Island," Doc directed, "while  Monk and myself pick up our equipment."
  Then after a moment the bronze  man added, "We will leave Habeas and Chemistry behind in care of our
  landlady. I don’t think it would be advisable to bring them along where  we’re going."
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  Chapter XIV. SCORN ISLAND
  THE plane was bronze−colored. It had a wing span of the big sleeper  ships used on the transcontinental air
  lines, but lacked the bulk of  the flying arks on the transatlantic or transpacific runs. It could  alight and take
  off from land or water, and was a really remarkable  ship with probably its most unusual feature being the
  streamlining.
  The craft was internationally famous; almost any one posted on  aëronautics would recognize it as Doc
  Savage’s latest design, the  bronze man’s private speed job, built to his own specifications.
  The night was dark over the seven−hundred−fifty−mile long claw of  land snapped down from the
  California−Mexico border that was Lower  California. On the western coast it was cool, typically pleasant
  California climate; but on the eastern coast, over which the plane  flew, there was furnace heat even at an
  altitude of three thousand feet.
  There were clouds at ten thousand, but their wadded whiteness did  not promise rain. They merely shut out the
  moonlight occasionally.
  Both motors of the big bronze plane were silenced so effectively  that at three thousand feet its passing was
  hardly audible to  night−riding vaqueros or such caballeros as were abroad  this late. Occasionally
  night−flying golondrinas darted aside in  fright as the great man−bird of alloy metals arrowed across a rift in
  the clouds.
  The plane banked a little, changing course, leaving even these few  signs of civilization. Soon the rutty
  caminos no longer snaked  below, and there were no fine casas, and not even a miserable  sheep−tender’s hut.
  Only desert inhabited by the stinging alacran  and the fierce−biting red ant called hormiga.
  Then came a coast line as unlovely as a scab, and beyond that the  Gulf of Lower California�fishing waters
  for tuna, shark and the  barracudas that eat men.
  A hump appeared on the sea, a hump longer than wide. Scorn Island.  It was volcanic rock, a little less brittle
  than glass, about as  fertile. A cove took a bite out of one side of Scorn Island; a bay  gouged the other side.
  Bow windows of the plane looked down like eyes. The ship settled  over the larger cove, and light jumped in
  great white whiskers from the  landing floods, and the motors idled and coughed sparks. The ship lined  down
  at the waves.
  With coughs and snorts, sheets of spray shot from under the hull.  The ship bucked, rocked and bumped its
  belly on wave tops at sixty  miles an hour. The impacts came back from the rock−walled sides of the  bay like
  deep drumbeats.
  Having landed, the plane sat idle for a few moments; then the rudder  wagged, the propellers blew back a
  cloud of spray and the craft headed  in slowly toward the beach.
  The plane was about fifty yards off−shore when the speed boat  appeared. The speed boat headed straight for
  the big plane, gathering  velocity. A man stood up in the stern of the speed boat and jumped  overboard.
  The boat, still gaining speed, hit the plane going fully thirty  miles an hour.
  Gore−red flame jumped two hundred feet in the night. Concussion  flatted the bay water. Shock rolled
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  boulders on the sides of the lava  island. A gigantic geyser of blasted water climbed up and up until it  seemed
  it would never stop, and mixed in with this brine and foam and  smoke were the dissected remains of Doc
  Savage’s great plane.
  THE fabulous blast had stunned the man who had aimed the speed boat,  then jumped overboard. He made
  croaking noises, waved his arms, and as  flashlight beams ran out to him from shore his arms gesticulated like
  the legs of a hurt fly on its back.
  Hoke McGee jumped around on shore and shouted, "Somebody save ‘im! I  can’t swim!"
  Men plunged in and swam out to the injured man and dragged him  ashore. When they hauled the fellow out
  on the stony beach, he cursed  Hoke McGee with feeble vituperation.
  "I thoughtcha said five cases of dynamite wouldn’t stun me!" was his  refrain.
  Hoke McGee ignored the man. Stalking to the edge of the water, the  Lazy Y foreman shook his fist at the
  patch of bubbles, spreading oil  and floating life−preserver cushions which was all the evidence that  remained
  of the great bronze plane.
  "That fixes up Doc Savage!" he squawled.
  He continued to shake his fist, and he swore for four minutes  without repeating anything but the name of Doc
  Savage.
  "Puttin’ that stinkin’ stuff on us was funny, eh?" he yelled  violently at the spot where the plane had come
  apart in flame. "I bet  you don’t think it was clever now!"
  One of the Lazy Y cowhands came over to him.
  "You gone batty, standin’ there whoopin’ at the water? The smell’s  gone, so what’s the use of talkin’ about
  it?" the cowhand wanted to  know.
  "Shut up!" Hoke said. "This is one of my high points. Danged if I’ve  had many lately!"
  The Lazy Y foreman contemplated the smear of oil with grisly  delight. When the life−preserver cushions
  floated ashore, he ran to  one, seized it and turned his flashlight on the small monogram "DOC"  which it bore.
  "A souvenir!" he whooped. "He had the world buffaloed, but it took  old Hoke McGee to feed him to the
  fishes!"
  Hoke was delighted. He did everything but beat his chest and roar.  After which he whirled, stamped into a
  cleft among the lava boulders,  passing the amphibian which had brought him and his men to the island  and
  which had been drawn up out of the water into concealment.
  A hundred yards beyond the plane, Hoke McGee blazed the beam of his  flashlight into the eyes of Ham
  Brooks. Ham was bound.
  "You hear the firecracker a few minutes ago?" Hoke demanded.
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  Ham swallowed. He was pale.
  "That," Hoke said, "was the finish of that guy they called the man  of bronze."
  Ham said nothing. But he grew rigid.
  Hoke McGee strode onward a few yards and stood frowning at a second  bound figure�that of a small,
  dark−haired girl with attractive features.
  "Barr was a dope for keepin’ you around so long," Hoke told the  girl. "He thought he might need you to sign
  some papers or somethin’ to  help put over the hoax of Barr’s wife bein’ you. Hell, that was more  precaution
  than he needed to take!"
  "I’ve been trying to decide," the girl said coldly, "whether you’re  a worse rat than the others, or whether
  you’re all about alike."
  Hoke McGee drew back a foot.
  A Lazy Y cowhand interrupted, "I kinda hate to see women kicked  around, Hoke."
  "You wouldn’t be givin’ me orders?" Hoke snarled.
  "No," said the other. "I’m just tellin’ you I’ll shoot your teeth  out if you beat up this girl Sally Surett."
  Hoke stuck out his jaw. But he also withdrew his foot. True to his  policy of never doing any unnecessary
  fighting face−to−face, he made a  mental note to have the dissenter in front of him, where a bullet might  hit
  the fellow�accidentally of course�in case there was another fight.
  Hoke went back to Ham.
  "Everythin’ is mighty nice now," he said. "Nothin’ can slip. Old  Double−Everetts is aboard a little steamer
  he’s chartered for the  treasure hunt, and he and his party will be down here in three or four  days."
  Ham frowned. "The treasure is really on this island?"
  "Sure." Hoke McGee then laughed queerly.
  "What kind of infernal thing are you birds planning?" Ham demanded.
  "Partner," Hoke said, "it’s a honey. And the most honeyed thing  about it is that you and that girl and a dead
  man are gonna be blamed  for what finally happens."
  "Dead man?" Ham muttered.
  "I mean Doc Savage," Hoke said. "He’s probably pretty dead by now."
  FOR a dead man, Doc Savage was exerting a good deal of strength. His  cabled arms tightened, strained, and
  with such metallic hardness did  the sinews stand out that the bronze skin seemed to vanish and show
  incredible ligature development.
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  The gyroplane creaked quietly, lifted, came free of the lava crevice  which had trapped one wheel when the
  ship sank quietly out of the sky  and made a landing that had been too rough because of the necessity of
  making it without the aid of the engine. Silence had been important.
  Monk looked at Renny, and Renny looked at Monk. Physically, they  were the most powerful of Doc
  Savage’s group of associates. Both of  them had been straining at the wheel to make the lift the bronze man
  had just made�and hadn’t budged it at all.
  "There really wasn’t room for two men to lift at once," Doc remarked.
  Monk and Renny knew differently. Doc had managed alone what their  combined strength could not
  accomplish.
  "I’m afraid they maybe heard us land," muttered Long Tom, who looked  almost like a hospital case and yet
  could lick nine out of any ten men  he would meet on the street.
  "A dubitative point of polemicality," said Johnny seriously.
  "Will somebody," Monk requested, "translate that?"
  "He thinks it’s doubtful they heard us," Long Tom explained.
  Doc’s associates shouldered the plane around, moved it over against  a mass of lava boulders and backed it in
  between two of the rocks that  offered a natural hangar for the plane.
  Long Tom, the electrical wizard, remembered something and grunted.
  "I forgot to switch off the radio−control transmitter we were using  to guide the big plane," he explained.
  He climbed into the plane and cut off the battery power from the  complicated radio device, similar to the
  experimental machines with  which military men guide pilotless airplane bombs.
  "I don’t figure they know we’re here," Long Tom said, climbing out  again. "They wouldn’t expect another
  plane, and we stayed up against  the clouds when we brought the big plane down on the bay by radio." He
  scowled. "They sure blew up a good ship for us. Doc, how’d you know  they were planning that?"
  "Not being a clairvoyant," said the bronze man, "I could hardly know  what they planned. But Everett Everett
  Barr has been very clever and  careful so far. It was reasonable to believe they would have plans for  a
  reception, should we trace Ham to the island. That’s why I secretly  had this gyroplane hidden in case I should
  need it."
  Doc’s aids busied themselves getting equipment out of the plane: gas  grenades, the terrific little
  machine−pistols which fired the highly  explosive slugs or "mercy bullets" producing quick, harmless
  unconsciousness. There was also gas masks, chain−mesh outer cloaks of  an alloy metal which would turn
  anything short of a bullet from a  tank−rifle, and photo−electric mechanical devices for seeing in intense
  darkness with the aid of invisible wave lengths of light.
  "Hey!" hairy Monk grunted. "Doc’s gone!"
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  THE bronze man, the aids discovered, had faded away with the silence  which was characteristic.
  "Psst!" 
  Monk hissed. "Doc!" 
  There was no answer.
  "Psst!" 
  Monk said, more loudly. "Doc, where�" 
  "You trying to raise the whole island?" Long Tom whispered. "Doc is  probably scouting around."
  Monk snorted. "There ain’t no need of any scouting. We know them  mugs are down on the shore of the big
  bay. All we gotta do is go get  Ham."
  They talked the matter over.
  "I’m in favor," Monk insisted, "of getting right over to that bay."
  The idea of action appealed to Renny, Long Tom and Johnny. They had  been in New York during most of
  Doc Savage’s difficulties so far with  Meander Surett’s chest, and they had done dull detective work until  they
  were amply filled up on such stuff. They loved excitement.
  In fact, two things really held them in close association with the  bronze man, and money was not one of the
  things, each being  comparatively wealthy in his own right, or capable of making enormous  fees in his chosen
  profession. They liked excitement, action,  danger�and that was one of the two binding threads. The other was
  their  admiration for the man of bronze and the strange work he was doing.
  Having decided to go ahead with rescuing Ham, the aids left a note  to that effect on the plane for Doc Savage
  when he returned. Then they  set out across the island.
  They wore rubber−soled footgear, and the terrain was almost  exclusively hard lava rock, so they had little
  trouble with noise. Monk  went ahead. Second to Doc Savage, he could move with the greatest  stealth.
  Ham had always insisted this was because Monk’s ancestors had  obviously come down out of the trees
  several hundred centuries after  the rest of humanity.
  Coming close to the bay, Monk went ahead and investigated. He was  back shortly.
  "They got a camp under a cliff," he breathed. "Ham is tied up there,  and some girl�probably the real Sally
  Surett."
  After conferring, the bronze man’s helpers concluded to advance and  look over the situation. Meantime, Doc
  Savage should show up.
  "Take it easy!" Monk breathed.
  They crept forward.
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  HOKE MCGEE stood over Ham. The Lazy Y foreman had removed the barrel  from a rifle, and he was
  engaged in two pursuits: He was carefully  nursing up a hot fire out of desert island shrubs, and he was
  tapping  Ham over the head with the rifle barrel. He was hitting Ham just about  as hard as he could without
  causing unconsciousness.
  "You’re wasting your time!" Ham croaked painfully.
  Hoke McGee gave him another blow with the rifle barrel.
  "I’ve found out," Hoke snarled, "that Doc Savage has all the gold he  wants. He gets it from somewhere, and
  he’s been gettin’ it for years. I  wanta know where it comes from!"
  "Nothing doing," Ham said.
  Hoke McGee scowled, slugged with the rifle barrel. Ham made a  strangled noise and collapsed.
  "He’s throwed a Joe," a cowhand muttered. "You hit ‘im too hard."
  Hoke McGee began heating the rifle barrel in the fire.
  "This’ll bring ‘im out of it!" he growled.
  Monk crouched against the black flank of a near−by boulder, and his  arms began to tremble, so tight were his
  muscles. In spite of their  perpetual squabbling, he and Ham were the closest friends. Monk,  watching what
  was happening, was infinitely more enraged than if he had  been in Ham’s place.
  Hoke McGee wadded his battered five−gallon hat and used it to hold  the end of the heating rifle barrel. When
  he eventually drew it from  the flame, the steel was red with heat. He approached Ham.
  "I’ll go to work on one of his eyes," he muttered. "That’ll wake ‘im  up!"
  Rage that was stronger than any sense of caution sent Monk hurtling  out into the firelight. Bullet head back,
  mouth agape, great furry  half−dollar−crushing hands distended, the chemist charged. He made  roaring noises
  as he came. His fights were always noisy.
  Like the fox he resembled, Hoke McGee could move by instinct. Before  the reasoning part of his brain could
  possibly telegraph a message, he  could evade a danger. It was instinct that made him hurl the hot rifle  barrel
  blindly at Monk. Instinct sent him pitching for�not the outer  darkness�but for the small tent which comprised
  the camp. He pitched  into the tent.
  The interval during which Hoke McGee was inside the tent was hardly  more than ten seconds. During the
  time, there was a loud crash of  glass. Then Hoke McGee opened the back of the tent from ground cloth to
  cave with a bowie knife and went out through the back.
  "Run, men!" he bellowed. "Run!"
  He set an example. The darkness took him. Others followed. Two of  his men got up out of blankets near the
  fire and the darkness took  them, too.
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  Chapter XIV. SCORN ISLAND
  85
  
  MONK was full of red rage. He craved fight. And there was suddenly  no one around to fight. The homely
  chemist bellowed. He bounded up and  down. He kicked the fire to the winds and upset a bucket of water on
  the embers so that the light would not target him.
  "C’mon and fight!" he squawked.
  "You hairy clown," Ham said feebly. "Come on and untie me."
  Monk fell upon the knots which bound the lawyer and said, "I don’t  see why I didn’t let ‘em go ahead and fix
  you up, you shyster!"
  "Where did Hoke go?" Ham demanded.
  "In one end of the tent and out the other, kickin’ over glassware as  he went," Monk explained.
  "Glassware?"
  "I heard somethin’ break."
  "Oh, murder!" Ham croaked. "Run, Monk! Runt Leave me!"
  "Leave nothin’," Monk said. "In a minute�"
  "Run!" Ham screamed. "Run!"
  "But�"
  "You don’t get it, Monk!" Ham shrieked. "They had a five−gallon  container of gas! Intended using it if the
  dynamite didn’t get Doc�"
  He began to cough. Monk, suddenly understanding that Hoke McGee must  have broken the gas container in
  the tent, seized Ham, carried him. He  started coughing. He stumbled a dozen paces with Ham, and their
  coughing got worse; and then they fell down and beat their chests, held  their throats, and their coughing
  became terrible.
  The other aids ran up and tried to help them, but they were  coughing, too, and seemed weak, for they were
  unable to either help or  run away. They went down, and squirmed, and their writhing grew weaker;  and then
  they stopped moving altogether.
  Doc Savage, coming down the canyon, drawn by their cries, saw their  huddled forms. It was quite dark. He
  was using a projector of light  rays outside the visible spectrum, and a complicated viewer device for  his
  eyes�a contrivance of mirrors which received a semi−fluorescent  picture formed by impact of the reflected
  "black light" on a chemical  coating which retained the image long enough for it to be turned and  shown to the
  bronze man’s eyes.
  The apparatus was in theory like a camera which took a picture with  infra−rays, then showed the picture to
  the bronze man’s eyes�a picture  which faded instantly, and another took its place.
  The slumped forms of his men told him what had happened. Gas! Doc  removed the "black light" viewer. He
  pulled a gasproof hood over his  head which contained a "mechanical lung" for breathing purposes. Then  he
  went on. It was very dark now, except when he held the viewer to his  eyes�the harness of the device would
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  86
  
  not fit over the mask.
  Suddenly he stumbled. He got up�stumbled again. He stopped. The gas!  It was some kind that was effective
  through the skin pores!
  Realizing that, Doc turned and tried to retrace his steps. Once more  he went down. This time, he could not get
  up. He tried to crawl.
  The best he could do was drag himself into a lava crack and get off  the mask. Then existence became grisly
  blackness.
  Chapter XV. TREASURE SHIP
  THE sun was hot. Hot as it could get on these barren islands where  coolness and moisture of the Pacific
  Ocean was cut off by the great  bald finger of Lower California. It must have been well over a hundred  and
  thirty in the lava crack where the bronze man lay. Enough  perspiration was in his eyes to sting. Wetness of it
  was all over him.
  Doc Savage did not stir for some time after consciousness returned.  During the interval, his mind, clinical by
  habit, analyzed effects and  symptoms and decided on the kind of gas which had overcome him. He had  used
  that type himself on occasions.
  His men would not have died from the gas.
  What had happened to them after they had been gassed was  problematical. How long had Doc himself been
  here? His knowledge of the  gas indicated the effects lasted as much as three days.
  The bronze man tried to get up, and stiffness, weakness, and aches  told him the maximum of three days must
  have elapsed.
  Obviously, Hoke McGee’s men had not found him. He still wore the  unusual carry−all vest containing his
  equipment. He searched in it for  a strength stimulant in tablet form, and ate two of the tablets slowly.
  In fifteen minutes, Doc could move with some freedom, although his  mouth was dry and his lips withered. In
  spite of the deep bronze  coloring which tropical suns had given his skin, he had been sunburned.  He went
  looking for his men�went cautiously, keeping always under  cover, which was not easy.
  They were gone. Hoke McGee, his cowhands, the tent, their plane,  Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny,
  Sally Surett�everything and  everybody was gone. They might have been moved to some other part of  the
  cove.
  But after the bronze man had made a complete round of the bay, he  was sure they had left that part of the
  island.
  He went back to the spot where Hoke McGee’s crew had camped, and  found dried bloodstains where his
  men�dead or alive�must have been  thrown together. He used a diminutive ultra−violet ray projector which
  he took from his vest, but its projection was not as strong as the  large one and the brilliant sun defeated it
  until he removed his shirt  and made a tiny tent, after which he found the message in big−worded  Johnny’s
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  Chapter XV. TREASURE SHIP
  87
  
  handwriting. But this time Johnny had used small words:
  DOC WE MADE THEM BELIEVE
  YOU DIED IN PLANE BLAST
  That was all. Nothing to show what had happened to the prisoners.  Nothing to indicate whether they were
  still alive or whether they had  been thrown into the bay for the sharks.
  The bronze man went back to the bay and watched the water, knowing  that sharks were inclined to remain
  around a spot where they had been  well fed. There were a great number of sharks, like flexible slime−gray
  logs.
  Metallic features lined and grim, the bronze man turned and went  back inland to his gyroplane. To what
  remained, rather�the  fire−blackened metal corpse would never fly again. The craft had been  found,
  systematically demolished, and the parts�such of them as could  be used again�smashed. All equipment had
  been demolished, broken or  burned.
  There was only one large general equipment box left which Doc had  removed from the plane and concealed
  prior to leaving it�a precaution  which he habitually took and which had served him in good stead before.
  Of the most needed thing, there was none. No water. He had to have  water. He began collecting sheets of
  plane metal and copper fuel−line  with the idea of making a water still and firing it with island shrubs  to distill
  fresh water from the sea brine. He was working on it when  the whistle of a steamer whooped three times in
  excited haste.
  Doc Savage headed toward the sound.
  THE steamer had been built back in the days when people thought a  three−hundred−footer was quite a craft.
  Any one not knowing about  salt−water ravage would have thought she had not been painted since,  whereas,
  she had really been painted the last time but two or three  years past. Smoke crawled straight up from one
  funnel which was  slightly askew; and cargo booms, masts and cables, looked like a nest  started by a crazy
  bird.
  The old hooker lay in the little cove. The water was evidently very  deep, because she was held, not by
  anchors, but by rusting wire cables  sprung out to either shore. The cove was small.
  Two lifeboats were afloat in the cove. Everett Everett Barr stood in  one; Sagebrush Smith and the blonde girl
  were in the other. Men manned  the oars of each dory.
  A dozen men dressed in whites and helmets lounged under deck  canopies on the steamer. A man in dirty
  overalls and an officer’s cap  was whooping through a megaphone.
  "The radio operator," he bawled, "has picked up the short−wave  signals of an airplane, and he says, judgin’
  from the strength of the  signals, it’s blasted close!"
  "Who’s in the plane?" Everett Everett Barr shouted.
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  88
  
  "Somebody named Hoke McGee!" roared the steamer officer. "He’s  askin’ if the steamer has reached the
  island yet. We didn’t answer,  figurin’ he was maybe somebody who is tryin’ to grab old Cap’n  Scuttle’s
  treasure."
  "Tell him we’re here, you fool!" Everett Everett Barr bellowed.
  "But�"
  "Hoke McGee"�Mr. Barr was squawling angrily�"is a man I hired to  come ahead by plane and watch this
  island to see nobody got the  treasure before we arrived!"
  "I didn’t know�"
  "D’you think I tell everybody my plans?" Barr roared. "You tell Hoke  McGee we’re here. He knows where
  the island is. He came here four days  ago. I guess he’s been stayin’ at another island so as not to call
  anybody’s attention to this one."
  The man with the megaphone went away from the rail.
  Doc Savage hurried back to the equipment case which he had hidden  near his burned gyroplane. From it he
  got fresh oxygen cartridges for  his gas mask, which would serve also as a diving "lung."
  He returned to the small cove, inserted the oxygen cartridge and  donned the mask. The sides of the cove were
  rocky enough to make it  easy to enter the water unobserved.
  JUST before Doc submerged, he turned over his wrist watch to expose  the luminous−dialed compass which
  was on the back of the watch. He took  bearing on the steamer.
  He turned on his back, swam out and down, touching the bottom  frequently, until pressure told him that he
  was as deep as it was safe  to go without a pressure−proof suit.
  Doc had hoped to swim all the way to a point below the steamer and  keep on the bottom where there was less
  danger from sharks�less because  they could only attack from above and the sides. He swam carefully,
  turning, watching�and suddenly saw a shark.
  Length of the shark must have been sixteen feet, and even that was  not large for these waters. The bronze
  man came to a standstill,  paddling only enough to keep natural buoyancy from lifting him to the  surface.
  From a pocket of his carry−all vest he took a bottle which he  had brought from the equipment case. He
  opened this and shook out the  contents, a liquid.
  Meanwhile, the shark came closer, circled once, then flicked its  tail and came down for the bronze man. The
  water was clear, and the  shark’s open mouth seemed to hold a million teeth.
  Ten feet from the bronze man, the shark put on the brakes. Then it  turned wildly and fled.
  Doc swam on, leaving the protection of the chemical which he had put  into the water�a chemical the result of
  a careful study of what sharks,  barracudas and other sea−killers were most afraid of.
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  It was the physalia type of giant sea organism, a thing like  a plucked−up mass of purplish roots which had
  stinging, paralyzing  properties, smaller cousins to the things called Portuguese Man of War  along the Gulf
  coast of the United States. The chemical merely gave the  water the subtle bite of the presence of the physalia.
  It  terrified the sharks as the smell of a lion terrifies horses.
  Doc could have fought the shark with a knife�and been betrayed by  the rising blood to those on board the
  steamer.
  A few minutes later, Doc Savage was feeling along the  barnacle−warted bottom of the old steamer. He came
  up close to the  rudder.
  A glance showed that the plane had appeared and was circling,  intending to land outside the cove and taxi to
  the steamer. The two  lifeboats had returned to the steamer, and the occupants had already  climbed ladders to
  the deck. It was fairly certain every one would be  on the seaward side of the ship, watching the arrival of the
  plane.
  Doc Savage uncoiled his collapsible grapple and silk cord from  inside his shirt. He snared the rail with his
  first toss of the  rubber−silenced grapple. He climbed.
  Reaching the rail, he lifted for a cautious survey. No one in sight.  Swinging over the side, he made for a
  companionway and dropped down it.  Heat of the sun almost instantly dried what faint wet footprints he  made.
  THE old steamer had smells below. Strong smells. Odors remindful of  bananas, hides, guano, copra and plain
  dirt. Oil reek from her engines  fumigated her from stem to stern. Below, she was not a place where men
  stayed when they did not have to.
  Doc Savage encountered no one as he worked to the seaward side and  found a porthole. With the ball of a
  thumb, he cleaned a patch large  enough for a peephole.
  The plane had landed, and was being drifted tail−first toward one of  the cargo booms which had been run out
  to serve as a picket post for  the craft. Men were hurling lines, missing, and hurling again. Hoke  McGee was
  standing on the teetering plane wing, doing his customary  skillful swearing.
  The plane was eventually made fast to the end of the boom.
  Doc Savage listened to men who were standing on the deck directly  above him.
  "This’ll make a good color story for the final editions," said one  of the voices. "Get pictures of ‘em as they
  come off the plane, Sam."
  Newspapermen, from their conversation.
  "Who’s this Hoke McGee?"
  "All I know is that Barr said he’s a man they hired."
  "Seems to be a crowd in the plane."
  "Yeah. They’re comin’ aboard now�Hey! Great blazes! You see what I  see?"
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  "Their hands are tied. Five men and a girl, all with their hands  tied!"
  "Sam!" exploded one journalist. "Snap that! Snap a picture quick!  Those prisoners are Doc Savage’s men!"
  Excitement seized the newspapermen. They swarmed to the rail,  yelling questions. It was some moments
  before Hoke McGee quieted them  with profanity.
  "Of course they’re Doc Savage’s gang!" Hoke bellowed. "They came  down here by plane three days ago!"
  "But�"
  "Tried to grab the treasure! We captured ‘em!" 
  Punctuating with picturesque vituperative, Hoke described an  imaginary and inhuman raid by Doc Savage’s
  men upon his camp on the  island. Then he went into detailed length about a fight in which Doc  Savage’s men
  had been gassed and captured.
  "We’re gonna take ‘em back to Los Angeles, and demand they stand  trial for attempted murder and piracy!"
  Hoke bellowed.
  "Where is Doc Savage?" a newspaperman demanded.
  Hoke had an answer ready for that.
  "We ran Savage off," Hoke declared. "But he swore he’d come back and  get that gold if he hadda get rid of
  everybody around here."
  "That doesn’t sound like Doc Savage," a journalist remarked.
  "I’m just tellin’ you what happened," Hoke said virtuously. "Ask any  of my men if I ain’t right."
  There was an avalanche of questions from the newspapermen, but  Everett Everett Barr, interrupting with
  polite firmness, insisted that  the prisoners be committed to the ship’s brig, after which he and Hoke  McGee
  would confer. Later, the journalists could interview to their  hearts’ content.
  This was done.
  DOC SAVAGE watched the incarcerating of the captives from the end of  a corridor. He noted that two
  guards were placed in front of the barred  cabins with rifles. It was very hot, and the guards were naked to the
  waist.
  Monk, the homely chemist, was in a great rage. He did some bellowing  at the top of his voice.
  "This is all a dirty plot of some kind!" Monk squawled. "That  machine of Meander Surett’s won’t work. Old
  Meander Surett was touched  in the head. This Barr is pullin’ a shenanigan!"
  Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Ham were quieter. The small pretty girl,  Sally Surett, had nothing to say.
  Monk roared, "Lemme tell you newspaper guys exactly what happened!  This girl is�"
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  The homely chemist went silent�for Doc Savage had tensed his throat  and said one word, and it had seemed
  to come from the group of  newspapermen, thanks to Doc’s command of ventriloquial effects.
  The word was not one that Sally Surett, Everett Everett Barr or any  of the newspapermen understood. It was
  ancient Mayan for "Quiet!" and  Doc Savage and his aids were among the few people in the so−called
  civilized world who could speak the tongue.
  The prisoners had nothing more to say, and the one−word command  attracted no attention. Everett Everett
  Barr thought some one had  cleared a throat.
  "Gentlemen," said Mr. Barr to the newspapermen, "I am now going to  confer with my old pal, my old friend
  here, the Honorable Hoke McGee.  Come on, Hoke, my associate, my comrade, my good man."
  Hoke McGee strutted at Everett Everett Barr’s side, and they went to  the latter’s cabin. But they were trailed
  by persistent journalists,  and there was some confusion and a delay and finally the impatient  newshawks had
  to be locked out of Mr. Barr’s cabin.
  "There’s another door," Barr told Hoke. "I’ll lock it, too."
  The cabin was part of a suite of rooms, all with doors opening into  the corridor. Barr closed the connecting
  door to the adjacent cabin,  then sat down on a bunk and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
  "Thank the dickens that’s over," he muttered. "Getting those  prisoners aboard was a critical point."
  "I was afraid they’d do a lot of talkin’," Hoke muttered. "And them  hombres can bulldog words, believe me.
  That dang lawyer can talk the  knob off a door. They might’ve sold the newspaper mugs the truth."
  "Don’t worry," Mr. Barr said. "Everything is now set."
  THE cabin was stuffy, and Barr turned on a fan. Breeze from the fan  rippled the overhanging edges of the
  oilcloth cover on the one table in  the place, stirred the grimy curtain over the porthole. There was one  locker,
  a dresser, three chairs, and a blowsy rug on the floor. Hoke  McGee licked his lips.
  "You sure," he muttered, "that it’ll go through? It’s kinda  complicated."
  "Hoke, old pal, old sock, the machines which do the finest work are  the complicated ones, and as long as the
  parts are well designed and  put together, it makes no difference how complicated the machine is."
  "Um−m−m."
  "I worked on this for months," Barr said. "I began working on it  when little Miss Sally Surett showed me
  letters from her father,  letters which said he had perfected his ‘Static Translator.’"
  "When did you first know the ‘Static Translator’ was of no account?"  Hoke demanded.
  "Why, from the very first. Sally Surett knew her father was mentally  unbalanced, and guessed that he only
  imagined he had perfected his  device. Later, of course, Bill Herder found the Death Valley laboratory  and
  made sure the contrivance wouldn’t work."
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  "You’re pretty slick," Hoke admitted.
  Somewhere in the old steamer, a motor generator set started pounding  and whining. Heat steamed into the
  cabins of the vessel. Both Hoke and  Barr wielded handkerchiefs.
  "Hoke, old top," said Mr. Barr, "it was a good scheme. It still is.  Meander Surett was to be found dead in the
  desert, and his invention  discovered. Then I was to take the invention and by a clever series of  fake
  demonstrations, make it seem genuinely workable. That,  substantially, is what has happened�in spite of the
  intervention of Doc  Savage."
  "Damn that guy!" Hoke gritted. "Thank blazes he’s croaked!"
  "You’re sure about the croaking?"
  "Plumb positive."
  Barr sighed relief. "Everything played into my hands, Hoke, my  colleague. Take the case of Harold Beaver’s
  widow, who was in the  penitentiary. She really killed her husband. She sent word to me, an  old carnival
  acquaintance, that she would pay me five thousand dollars  to get her out. There, Hoke, my boy, was a
  ready−made job for Meander  Surett’s machine.
  "I merely buried the murder gun�the whereabouts of which Harold  Beaver’s widow told me�under the late
  Harold Beaver’s business  partner’s garage. Then I paid the insurance agent to say the partner  had taken the
  policy out on Beaver’s life to throw suspicion on the  widow. Presto! I had a situation all ready for a ghost
  message."
  Barr presented a cigarette case combined with lighter, barometer and  thermometer. "Have a smoke?"
  "Thanks."
  Barr inhaled smoke luxuriously. "The other case, the one of the  broker and banker, was a genuine
  dyed−in−the−wool murder all ready for  revealing." He chuckled. "I knew of it because the broker’s
  chauffeur,  who knew his boss murdered the banker and helped loot the bank,  afterward worked for me in a
  carnival. He got drunk once and the  story�er�leaked out."
  "Yeah," Hoke said, "but there ain’t no Captain Scuttle, the pirate."
  "Only we know that, Hoke, old soak."
  "But there ain’t no treasure, neither."
  EVERETT EVERETT BARR fell to chuckling. "There was one treasure: The  small one. They say it is worth
  ten thousand dollars. That’s a lie. It  cost me nearly fifteen thousand to buy those old coins and old gold
  crosses, vases and stuff which composed it. It cost me another five  hundred to fly down and bury it."
  "You spent a lot of dough," Hoke mumbled.
  "Twenty thousand or so. Not much, when the stake is two hundred and  ninety−eight thousand dollars."
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  "That what you got?"
  "Yes." Barr sighed regretfully. "If I had dared wait another day or  two, I could have made it half a million, I
  really do believe."
  The two men ground out their cigarettes and mopped their faces.
  "I’m sure surprised," Hoke said, "that people would put up that much  dough to finance the search for Captain
  Scuffle’s treasure."
  "Hoke, old bird," said Barr, "I knew human nature from my carnival  experience. People will gamble their
  money on the chance of getting a  big stake. I made the stake in this plenty big. One hundred million,  you
  remember my carefully prepared ‘Static Translator’ messages said."
  "How much did you have to pay out to charter this boat?"
  "Only three thousand for the ship and a number of large boxes which  are supposed to contain expensive
  diving equipment," Barr explained.  "The two hundred and ninety−eight thousand is net profit, Hoke, my
  brother."
  "Not bad," Hoke said, and licked his lips, "if the rest goes all  right."
  "It will go all right," Barr declared. "In about five minutes, we  will finish it."
  "That quick?"
  "Of course. Hold off court troubles. Doc Savage’s men might get out,  you know."
  "Then I take it we’re all fixed?"
  EVERETT EVERETT BARR nodded gravely. "There are one hundred cases of  dynamite in the hold, all
  fused and ready to blow up." Barr chuckled.  "The dynamite is in the boxes supposed to contain diving
  equipment."
  "But suppose it blows us up�"
  "Not a chance," Barr interrupted. "The sailors are going to start a  fight. They will shout that Doc Savage’s
  men have escaped. You and I  and my wife will dash to the plane and cast off. The men will take to  the boats,
  after lighting the fuse.
  "The dynamite will tear the ship to pieces, and Doc Savage’s men  will be drowned�because they will be
  locked in the brig. We will simply  say that they must have blown the ship up accidentally."
  "But," Hoke pointed out, "the birds who financed the search with  that two hundred and ninety−eight thousand
  dollars will want us to make  another try for Captain Scuttle’s treasure."
  "Let them," Barr said. "We won’t worry."
  "But�"
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  "We are going to disappear. Vanish, and enjoy our profits."
  "But your law business�"
  "Unfortunately," said Mr. Barr, "I was about to be disbarred."
  "Suppose the ‘Static Translator’ is found?"
  "What if it is found? It will go down with the ship, of course. It  is very unlikely to be found. This cove is
  extremely deep. I made sure  of that weeks ago in a search for a suitable island."
  Hoke scratched his head, mopped his face and made faces of a man  thinking everything over.
  "Yeah, I guess," he muttered finally. "But say, you never did tell  me exactly how you got the fake messages
  out of old Surett’s  contraption."
  "They came," said Mr. Barr, "out of the additional piece of  apparatus. I never did exhibit the contents of that
  device. It was  merely a clockwork which pushed out messages previously prepared." Barr  got to his feet. "We
  are talking over trivialities now. Hoke, old  ranny, old waddy, old cow−wrangler, the future beckons. Let us
  be up  and at it."
  "You mean�sink the ship now?"
  "Exactly."
  Hoke made an audible swallowing noise. He followed Everett Everett  Barr out of the cabin.
  Doc Savage opened the door of the locker from which he had been  listening to all that had been said. The
  bronze man left the cabin by  the side door�the same route by which he had entered under cover of the
  confusion as the newspapermen were driven away at the beginning of the  conference. His metallic features
  were unusually grim.
  Chapter XVI. NARROW MARGINS
  DOC SAVAGE had lived for a number of years a life of almost  continuous peril, and the fact that he was still
  alive could be  attributed to the amount of forethought he used. He never went into a  danger, if he could avoid
  it, without fully preparing in advance for  anything that might happen, either by accident or by the design of
  his  opponents.
  In the present situation, however, he was handicapped by  circumstances. He was aboard the old steamer with
  only the devices  which happened to be in his carry−all vest�and the vest was not loaded  with a fight such as
  this in mind. The contents of the vest, of course,  rarely remained the same for any two engagements. He
  changed the  gadgets in the pockets to fit situations.
  Doc was handicapped additionally because his physical condition was  bad. He had lain unconscious in the
  terrific sun for the better part of  three days, and that was enough to sap even his carefully cultivated  strength.
  He needed luck to defeat Everett Everett Barr, Hoke McGee and  at least a score of their men, both Lazy Y
  cowboys and sailors. He  needed a great deal of luck.
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  He had some almost at once. It was bad. He encountered Sagebrush  Smith and half a dozen newspaper
  reporters in the corridor. Sagebrush  had a six−shooter in his hand, and he was telling the journalists that  no
  man on earth could hit fifty silver dimes thrown into the air.
  "Hey!" Sagebrush bawled. "There’s Doc Savage!"
  If there was any one on the far side of the island, they heard the  cowboy’s yell.
  Doc Savage put on speed.
  "Hey!" roared Sagebrush. "Stop or I’ll shoot!"
  Doc Savage did not stop. Sagebrush did not shoot. The bronze man  dropped down a companionway with
  flashing haste, and the newspapermen  began to shout; and their cries were taken up, so that the tidings
  throbbed through the dirty old ship.
  "Doc Savage is aboard!"
  The bronze man whipped toward the bow, where his men and Sally  Surett were confined. The insides of the
  old ship were dark and  unventilated, and lights had to be burned, even in the daytime.
  The bronze man watched for exposed wiring, found none, and leaping,  tore the wire guard from an electric
  bulb. He twisted out the bulb,  wadded the wire guard into a cone and jammed it into the socket. Green  flame
  and molten metal spurted, and the lights went out as a fuse blew.
  Doc Savage went into the corridor where his men were confined.
  "Quick, give me the keys!" he shouted.
  He used an excellent imitation of Hoke McGee’s unpleasant voice.
  "Hurry up with those keys!" Doc snarled. "We’re gonna take the  prisoners out one at a time! They’ve gotta be
  taken outta there!"
  Talking about taking the prisoners out, using Hoke McGee’s voice,  Doc kept the two guards occupied until
  he was upon them. One guard was  taken easily. A blow of a fist dropped him. The other man jumped back.
  "What’s goin’ on here?" he roared.
  The fellow fired off his rifle, evidently hoping the flash would  show what was happening. Doc Savage took
  hold of the rifle with one  hand and twisted it aside. He then grabbed the back of the man’s neck  with the other
  hand, and his corded bronze fingers, experienced and as  strong as human sinew and bone could be, did
  something to the man’s  spinal nerve centers�exerted a pressure which rendered the man helpless  while still
  conscious. The man dropped. Doc Savage searched both guards.
  They did not have the keys.
  "MONK! Renny! Hit the door!" Doc Savage ordered grimly. "They’re  going to dynamite the ship!"
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  Heavy bodies crashed against the other side of the door. It was  steel, old and rusted, but solid. It only grunted.
  "Get back!" Doc ordered. "I’ll try the rifle on the lock!"
  He never got to do that. A man appeared at the other end of the  corridor with a flashlight and a rifle. The light
  jumped against the  bronze man, and the rifle crashed almost instantly. Doc reeled, went  down.
  "Got ‘im!" the man with the rifle bellowed.
  He was an optimist. His bullet had hit the bronze man in the chest,  smashed the contents of two pockets in the
  vest, and flattened against  the alloy metal mesh which underlay the vest and made it bulletproof.
  Doc Savage got up. He still held the rifle of the guard, but he did  not fire it. Instead, he tossed it through the
  grille of the brig door.
  "Try to shoot your way out!" he ordered.
  His voice was strained. The rifle bullet against his chest had taken  his breath away, and bruised a rib or two.
  Doc’s hand went into his vest and got a weapon he always carried:  smoke bombs. They were tiny, a little
  larger than marbles, and when he  tossed a few down the passage, they sprouted intensely black smoke  which
  defeated the beams of the flashlight.
  The bronze man whipped toward the bow. He had to get below in the  hold, stop the lighting of the fuses to
  the explosive. That meant  reaching a hatch. And to do that, he would have to leave the  superstructure, cross a
  short stretch of deck and drop down a hatch.
  He turned a corner and came up against a six−shooter in the hand of  Sagebrush Smith.
  Sagebrush squinted. He lowered his gun.
  "I’ve decided to string with you," the cowboy grunted. "There’s  somethin’ about that Barr that smells. I don’t
  trust no guy that Hoke  McGee works for."
  Doc Savage said, "Dynamite in the hold. They’re going to sink the  ship."
  "We oughta do somethin’ about it," Sagebrush Smith muttered.
  He followed the bronze man. They turned right, then left, sprinted  onto the open deck�and saw the forward
  hatch had been closed. They  wrenched at it. It was fastened below. A bullet came past so close that  its sound
  was a brittle crack. Doc Savage and Sagebrush Smith went down  behind the outthrust hatch.
  It was only a few yards to the cargo boom to which the plane was  tethered. Two men were scrambling along
  this. Barr and Hoke McGee. The  blonde fake Sally Surett was already aboard the plane, along with Lazy  Y
  men and others.
  Doc Savage leaped from the shelter of the hatch, ran to the boom,  ran out along it. Barr turned his head, saw
  the bronze man. Barr  squawked in fright, gave a wild leap, landed on the plane. Hoke McGee  was close
  behind him.
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  Doc Savage, reaching the plane, ignored the two men. Others, who  were trying to cast off the lashings which
  held the aircraft to the  boom, were more important. He plunged into the group. One went  overboard. The
  others closed with the bronze man in a dogfight too  close, too fast, too violent, for guns to be used. One at a
  time, men  were knocked off the plane.
  Once, Doc Savage nearly went over the side, stayed aboard only  because he struck with one foot and drove it
  through the thin  sheet−metal of a wing of the plane. A moment later, the last Lazy Y man  went into the water.
  Everett Everett Barr evidently had no gun, and Hoke McGee must have  emptied his, because they did not
  shoot. Instead, they turned wildly,  scrambled onto the boom and clawed back for the deck of the steamer.
  Sagebrush Smith stood at the head of the boom and pointed his  six−gun at the two men.
  "Get yer hands up, dang you!" he ordered.
  Hoke McGee and Everett Everett Barr were too terrified to react  normally to the threat. They seemed
  unaware of the gun�or they might  have still thought that Sagebrush Smith did not know they were enemies.
  They reached the deck, and raced wildly for a companionway.
  "Don’t light the fuse!" Barr screamed. "Don’t light the fuse!"
  At that point, Doc Savage’s men appeared on deck with Sally Surett.
  CONFUSION was everywhere on the steamer. The newspapermen�most of  whom had been pounding out
  stories of the latest development on their  typewriters�charged out on deck and bellowed questions at every
  one.  Below decks, men were shouting and shooting, staging the fake break by  Doc Savage’s aids which was
  to precede the blast. They still did not  know that the break had turned into a genuine one.
  Doc Savage, having cleared the plane, lifted his voice.
  "Get aboard the plane!" he shouted. "Get boats over the side! Leave  the steamer!"
  His remarkable voice had a crashing volume and a penetrating  vibrancy that echoed throughout the ship.
  "They’re setting off an explosion in the hold!" Doc explained.
  The news was a little too astounding for instant acceptance.  Newspaper reporters lined the rail, or hid behind
  ventilators, and  demanded to know what was going on.
  Doc Savage’s five assistants scrambled out on the cargo boom,  helping Sally Surett, and dropped aboard.
  Sagebrush Smith followed.
  "Get off the steamer!" Doc shouted. "There is going to be an  explosion."
  A rifle smacked once, viciously, from the wheelhouse window. Renny  grunted loudly, took hold of his leg,
  and nearly went overboard. Monk  grabbed him. They got into the cabin of the plane.
  The rifle whacked again, and the bullet bored into the plane,  narrowly missing Sally Surett.
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  Sagebrush Smith said, "I’ll fix that jasper!"
  He aimed carefully with his six−gun, fired. "Daggone!" he said.
  He fired again.
  "The guy is shootin’ from an openin’ about an inch wide," he  muttered.
  He shot once more.
  "Ah!" he said. "That’s sure a small target!"
  Doc Savage reached for the cowboy’s gun.
  "Wait a minute!" Sagebrush Smith said. "This takes shootin’!"
  The bronze man grasped the six−shooter, and an astonished Sagebrush  Smith, who had a good grip on the
  gun, found the weapon removed from  his fingers as though he hadn’t wanted to hold to it at all.
  Doc lifted the six−gun; there was no perceptible interval of aim;  the gun whacked. The menacing rifle muzzle
  jumped back out of sight.
  Sagebrush Smith looked foolish.
  The steamer jumped to pieces in the middle. The funnel went up  first, not straight up, but slanting off toward
  the sun. Then the  superstructure lifted, parting in the center, splitting, windows and  portholes flying out from
  the main bulk, followed by smaller timbers.
  A whole man seemed to fly up and out farther than anything else. His  limbs moved like the legs of an ant
  while he was in the air, and he  seemed suspended for such a long time that it appeared possible his  fall into
  the sea would not injure him; but while he was still fifty  feet above the water, falling débris overtook and
  mangled him.
  After the superstructure jumped a few feet into the air, the sides  of the ship laid over in the water. One of the
  sides laid on the plane,  but did it so gently, that the plane was only pushed a little bit  beneath the surface. The
  plane bobbed up like a cork as soon as the  wreckage slid off into the water with gurgling sounds.
  Doc Savage and his men were very busy for the next hour, bringing in  survivors, and busy for the next two
  days caring for the injured. By  that time, U. S. Coast Guard planes and other aircraft had arrived, and  a Coast
  Guard cutter put in an appearance.
  They listened to the bronze man’s story of what had happened, a  version that was verified by Everett Everett
  Barr’s wife, whose spirit  had broken. She had remained aboard the plane, and had escaped the  blast.
  "What about Everett Everett Barr?" was the immediate question.
  Sagebrush Smith answered that.
  "We found ‘im," Sagebrush said.
  "How is he?"
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  "He’s dead enough," Sagebrush said, "so that everybody oughta be  satisfied."
  EVERYBODY was fairly well satisfied, even the gullibles who had put  up nearly three hundred thousand
  dollars for Everett Everett Barr to  use in finding Captain Scuttle’s treasure. Barr’s widow got them most  of
  their money back. Of course, the newspapers weren’t satisfied. They  had made clowns out of themselves.
  Hoke McGee wasn’t satisfied, either. At first, he had been very glad  to be alive, but it was beginning to seem
  very much as if the  authorities were going to remedy that via the electric chair.
  Sally Surett, the genuine one, was very well satisfied. She was a  quiet little girl with a very sweet disposition
  and all the men  promptly fell in love with her, including Monk, Ham and Sagebrush  Smith. The young lady
  seemed to prefer Sagebrush Smith.
  "She shows good judgment," big−fisted Renny told Monk and Ham.
  Which was nearly the cause of his having to fight both Monk and Ham,  who were still quarreling with
  Sagebrush when they weren’t squabbling  with each other.
  "You two mugs," Renny told them, "have been so busy with your  quarreling that you haven’t had time to
  make love. No wonder the cowboy  got the girl."
  Doc Savage, using deep−water diving equipment which had been sent  from New York by air express, and
  brought down by a chartered plane,  descended to the sunken steamer. The water was well over two hundred
  feet deep. He brought up old Meander Surett’s device.
  "The strange thing," he told Sally Surett, "is that your father’s  apparatus utilized a theory along which science
  has done almost no  development. It is possible that, had he lived, and had he been brought  out of the mentally
  depressing surroundings of Death Valley, he might  actually have made the thing work. I am going to ask the
  newspapers to  make that clear."
  "They’re saying," the girl said gently, "that my father was a crazy  inventor."
  "I know. And they are wrong."
  The young woman nodded gratefully. It was a matter of no importance  to the world, now, whether or not her
  father had been mad; but to her  it meant a great deal, and she was grateful to the bronze man for  perceiving
  that and doing something about it. She explained as much to  Sagebrush Smith later.
  Sagebrush Smith approached Doc Savage. He was embarrassed.
  "Daggone," he said, "I wonder if you’d do me a favor?"
  "What?"
  The gangling cowboy began scooping silver dimes from his pockets to  his hat.
  "I’ve been tradin’ everybody outta their dimes," he said. "I finally  got fifty here. I want you and me to go off
  somewhere on the island  where that dingbusted Monk and Ham won’t be around to razz me, and I  wanta see
  you hit fifty dimes with fifty shots from a revolver."
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter XVI. NARROW MARGINS
  100
  
  "Is it important to you?" Doc asked.
  "Kinda. You see�ah�well, I’m thinkin’ of makin’ a change in myself."
  DOC and the cowboy went to a secluded spot. Sagebrush Smith threw up  dimes. Doc Savage stood beside
  him and fired. The bronze man hit  forty−nine of the dimes.
  Sagebrush Smith put the fiftieth dime back in his pocket.
  "I’ve got a hunch I’d feel better if you didn’t hit all fifty," he  explained sheepishly. "This
  fifty−dimes−with−fifty−shots business has  been a kind of important thing with me for years."
  The cowboy rubbed his jaw.
  "It’s been an ambition of mine to see you do that," he said.
  He took off his hat, scowled at it, put it back on and scratched the  back of his neck.
  "Ain’t that a hell of an ambition for a grown man to have?" he  demanded disgustedly. "I’m just a dang saddle
  bum! Just a shiftin’ cow  waddy with no gumption and no ambition but to sling a six−gun. Ah�bugs!"
  Doc Savage studied Sagebrush Smith, and knew he was examining a  young man who had wasted a good part
  of his life on trivialities, only  to suddenly awaken and find himself in love with a swell girl whom he  was
  unable to support.
  "I have been wondering," the bronze man said, "if you would care to  establish and manage a dude ranch and
  winter resort in the mountains  back East. Of course, a married man would be preferable, but�"
  "I can fix that!" Sagebrush grinned.
  The cowboy went gravely to the edge of the cliff where the shooting  had been done. With some solemnity, he
  removed his six−shooter from his  trousers waistband, drew back and hurled it as far out into the sea as  he
  could lob it.
  "That," Sagebrush Smith said, "is what I should ‘a’ done as soon as  I was big enough to throw it."
  THE END
   THE PIRATE’S GHOST
  Chapter XVI. NARROW MARGINS
  101
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/062 The Pirate's Ghost.pdf