TEXT:  SPOOK HOLE
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  SPOOK HOLE....................................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson......................................................................................1
  Chapter I. MYSTERY OF THE "HARPOON".......................................................................................1
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER...........................................................................................8
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST.....................................................................................................19
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP..........................................................................................................25
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS......................................................................................................................31
  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA.........................................................................................40
  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE............................................................................................46
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA.........................................................................................53
  Chapter IX. DEATH PLANS................................................................................................................58
  Chapter X. SASS ERRS........................................................................................................................63
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT...................................................................................................70
  Chapter XII. THE TERROR IN THE LAGOON..................................................................................78
  Chapter XIII. WAR IN SPOOK HOLE.................................................................................................83
  Chapter XIV. MAN TRAP....................................................................................................................91
  Chapter XV. WAPP CLOSES IN..........................................................................................................95
  Chapter XVI. MÊLÉE.........................................................................................................................101
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  SPOOK HOLE
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. MYSTERY OF THE "HARPOON"
  • 
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  • 
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  • 
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  • 
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  • 
  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  • 
  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  • 
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  • 
  Chapter IX. DEATH PLANS
  • 
  Chapter X. SASS ERRS
  • 
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  • 
  Chapter XII. THE TERROR IN THE LAGOON
  • 
  Chapter XIII. WAR IN SPOOK HOLE
  • 
  Chapter XIV. MAN TRAP
  • 
  Chapter XV. WAPP CLOSES IN
  • 
  Chapter XVI. MÊLÉE
  • 
  Chapter I. MYSTERY OF THE "HARPOON"
  THE man had one arm. Hence, to load the revolver, he had to crouch  and grip the barrel between his knees
  while he thumbed fresh cartridges  into the cylinder. The gun had been fully loaded before, but he was
  replacing the cartridges, apparently fearing they had gotten wet. The  night air was full of soaking mist. It was
  very dark down here by the  New York water front. The one−armed man had been skulking, and doing it  most
  furtively. He had made scarcely a sound. Once, more than five  minutes ago, he had frightened an alley cat out
  of a rubbage can, but  that had made only a slight noise. 
  "Devils!" the man gritted. "Almost twenty of us, they would kill!"  He mumbled some more, unintelligibly,
  and finished up, "Damn 'em! They  know I won't go to the law for protection!" 
  His mumbling was a mistake. A bare twenty feet away, the second  skulker heard him. This man had two arms
  well filled with muscle, and  his face was chiefly notable for the lack of space between the eyes,  and an
  oversized jaw. This man gripped a two−foot length of heavy wire  hawser which had been wrapped with
  adhesive tape. It was an instrument  that could kill a man. 
  The one with the bludgeon waited. The one−armed man was coming  straight toward him. 
  Uptown, an elevated train clanked south. Out on the harbor, a bell  buoy clanged. Somewhere far above,
  thunder gave a great whoop, but  there was no lightning. 
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  The man with the hawser lifted his weapon. He took his tongue  between his teeth, as one who intends to
  strike hard. 
  The thunder gobbled and chuckled and went romping off into the  infinite distances, while down among the
  water front warehouses, it  left echoes not unlike that of a big metal barrel tumbling end over  end. Large drops
  of rain began to splash the cobbles. They were very  cold. 
  The man with the bludgeon took his teeth out of his tongue to suck  in a breath, then set himself again, ready
  for the killing blow. 
  He got a surprise. 
  A noise sounded from ahead. There was also a sound as if some one  had pushed down on a tire valve and let
  the air leak out for an  instant. 
  The man with the taped hawser sprang forward. He whipped out a  flashlight. He thought that his one−armed
  quarry had fallen. He wanted  to take advantage of that fact. 
  The flashlight popped a white cone. The man with the hawser let out  a loud grunt. He tried to stop, slipped on
  the wet cobbles, went down  flat on his back, and the big raindrops wet his face. He turned over,  got up, and
  without looking back, ran. 
  He had left his flashlight behind. It was still on, pointed so that  the beam was on him. He wore oilskins and a
  seaman's sou'wester. He ran  madly, with great leaps, and did not look back as long as he was in the
  flashlight's glow, which was for some distance. He had seen an  apparition. 
  THE apparition was huge and black, shiny from the rain, and it  crouched over the prone figure of the
  one−armed man. The latter was not  entirely prone; his head and shoulders were off the cobbles, for the
  fabulous black figure had him by the neck. 
  An instant later there was a dragging noise, and a water puddle  gurgled as if something had been hauled
  through it. The nearest  warehouse was a score of yards distant. A plank squeaked inside of it. 
  The big raindrops fell like solid things on the warehouse roof.  Thunder let loose another great bumping. The
  elevated train clanked on  downtown. 
  Inside the warehouse, a thin rod of brilliant white light appeared.  It undoubtedly came from a flashlight, but
  the beam was little thicker  than a pencil, even at the end. It prowled over the one−armed man's  figure. 
  The fellow was bound now, with lengths of that very stout−tarred  cord known to sailors as Italian marline.
  Both his wrists and ankles  were secured, and these were lashed together so that he was doubled  over in such a
  manner as to discourage rolling. A sponge was held  tightly in his mouth by a wire which could not be chewed
  through. 
  The one−armed man had changed. Changed In a startling way. He  actually had two arms. 
  Obviously one of his arms had been confined tightly to his side by  a long bandaging of canvas. The canvas
  had been stripped off. The thin  flash beam picked up its snaky length on the floor. 
  Several times the flashlight prowled along the arm which had been  strapped under the coat in such a manner
  as to be almost unnoticeable.  It was as if the matter of the arm constituted some mystery which  needed
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  solving. 
  There was not enough of light from the thin flashlight to show the  giant black apparition who was doing the
  examining. The light string  collapsed. The squeak of a floorboard was the only sound as the big  black figure
  departed. 
  It had not taken long. The slamming of the elevated train was still  audible. An extremely keen ear might still
  have heard the running of  the man with the hawser bludgeon − had there been no rain. 
  The man with the hawser bludgeon had suddenly acquired a great  dislike for the wet night. He was making
  for the only spot of light  visible among the piers. This was a single electric bulb, encased in a  wire shield,
  which glowed above a gangplank that led, through a hull  hatch, into the black innards of a ship. 
  The man crossed the gangplank without slackening speed. He brought  up smack against the snout of a short
  rifle. 
  "Where's the fire?" growled a coarse voice back of the gun. 
  The man with the hawser countered, "Where's Captain Wapp?" 
  "You see a big bad spook?" grinned the rifleman. 
  "Where's Captain Wapp?" the other shrieked. 
  "In his cabin." The rifleman stepped aside. "What's wrong?" 
  The hawser carrier ran on without answering. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP had to pass sidewise through more than one door on his  ship. He was big. But he never
  had to stoop, even for the low bulkhead  doors down near the bilge. The shortest man in his crew was taller by
  a  head. His belt was a cotton rope that had once been white. Maybe he  could not get a leather one large
  enough. The rope belt fastened with a  gold snap and ring, set with diamonds which could not be classed as
  small. 
  He was cleaning his finger nails with a big clasp knife. When the  door exploded open, he twisted the knife in
  his hand, holding it so  that the hilt pointed at the door. The knife hilt was one of those  deadly little novelty
  weapons, chambered for a .22−caliber cartridge. 
  "You bane in big hurry," he said dryly. 
  The newcomer still carried his length of taped hawser. 
  "Something is screwy!" he gulped. 
  Captain Wapp absently uncocked the firing mechanism in the haft of  the knife. This made a faint click. 
  "Dot be not so good," he grunted. "Tell us about it very  snappylike." 
  The other held his hawser bludgeon with both hands and spoke with  the mad speed of an auctioneer closing a
  brisk sale. 
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  "I'm standing watch on the dock, like you ordered, see," he said.  "All of a sudden, I get a look at a man who
  heaves up between me and a  distant light." The man hefted his hawser. "I get ready to pop him,  see, because
  he's cruisin' around mighty snaky." 
  "You bane do right thing," advised Captain Wapp. 
  "Only I didn't do it," corrected the other. "I didn't get a chance  to lay aboard this skulker with my little
  persuader, here. Something  else got him." 
  Captain Wapp looked interested, "Something?" 
  "Well, it didn't look human," grumbled the man with the bit of wire  hawser. "It was big and black. And I'll be
  damned if it made any sound  at all. It wasn't none of Braski's crowd." 
  They were silent. The bell buoy gonged slowly out in the harbor.  Thunder cascaded in hollow salvos high
  above in the leaking night sky.  It sounded muffled in the cabin. 
  THAT thunder had a more robust quality at the gangplank where the  watchman with the rifle was stationed.
  The latter was very much alert  and somewhat puzzled; from time to time, he looked over his shoulder,  as if
  expecting some one to come from the direction of Captain Wapp's  cabin and tell him what had gone wrong. 
  The thunder chased itself away, and almost instantly a fresh burst  crashed, accompanied by a flash of
  lightning across the whole  southwestern part of the sky. Lightning glow showed the wet dock  planking, the
  puddles, the big raindrops. It also illuminated the  watchman faintly, so that he could be seen from the wharf,
  but he did  not realize that. 
  "Dang that hog, Braski," the watchman muttered. "Dang old Hezemiah  Law and his Spook Hole and the
  whole dizzy business. We gotta kill a  lot of people, too." 
  He scowled, hefted his rifle and sighed loudly. 
  "But, blast it, a million bucks is a million bucks," he added. "And  any part of it ain't to be sneezed at." 
  His own mumbling occupied his attention, and when a voice called  from behind him, "Hey, you − look here a
  minute!" he gave a start.  Wheeling, he peered into the ship. The voice had been strange, very  faint. 
  "Whatcha want?" he growled. 
  The faint, strange voice came again. 
  "Look closely," it requested. 
  The watchman squinted, straining his eyes. He could see no one. He  thought that strange. It was strange, but
  not so much so that it could  not be explained. The man knew little about ventriloquism, hence did  not dream
  that the small, weird voice did not come from within the  ship, but from outside, on the dock. 
  Nor was the watchman aware that the author of the deceptive call, a  giant form swathed in black, was gliding
  silently up the companionway. 
  The watchman's first inkling of danger was a terrible grasp which  fell upon his neck. He tried to cry out. His
  vocal cords would not  work. 
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  He tried to fire his rifle. But, strangely enough, the weapon fell  from his fingers, and was caught by the dark
  assailant before it made a  noise on the planking. 
  The watchman tried to get a look at the features of his assailant.  He failed there, too. The huge one was
  shrouded completely in some  black cloth, probably of silk, which seemed waterproof. 
  A mysterious listlessness began to come over the watchman. It  seemed to come from the terrific pressure on a
  particular portion of  his neck. 
  At first, that pressure had been painful, but now it was only a  tingling. The man's whole body seemed to go to
  sleep. He could see,  could hear, but could not move a muscle. Even his eyes could observe  only what was
  immediately before them, for the watchman now possessed  no power to roll his eyeballs. 
  The fantastic giant in black left the watchman lying in his queer  helplessness and moved on into the interior
  of the ship. 
  The flashlight beam of remarkable thinness leaped out at intervals,  roving. It picked up a ring life preserver
  which some one must have  brought down from deck. 
  The life preserver bore the name of the ship, Harpoon. 
  IN the master's cabin of the Harpoon, short, broad Captain Wapp  absently cocked and uncocked the pistol's
  mechanism in his big clasp  knife. 
  "Somebody bane prowl around," he said slowly. "So vot? Some feller  dot Braski sent, Aye bet." 
  The man with the taped length of hawser fingered his weapon. He  batted it against one oilskinned leg. 
  "You don't worry enough, captain," he complained. "There was two of  'em. Maybe one was a Braski man,
  sure. We expected Braski to try to lay  aboard us. But who was the other one?" 
  "Dot feller?" Captain Wapp held the knife with one hand, gave his  rope belt a hitch with the other. "A cop,
  maybe." 
  "No." The hawser whacked oilskin. "There ain't no one−armed cops.  And who ever heard of a cop working
  like that big black guy did?" 
  Captain Wapp looked pained. 
  "Dis business, Aye bane afraid she give me a headache," he  complained. 
  "Listen," grunted the other. "Why can't we pull out of here? Let's  head for Spook Hole and finish it up." 
  Captain Wapp shook his head. "She bane too risky." 
  "You mean the woman?" 
  Wapp's head shook again. "Woman, she bane easy to get rid of. It's  dot monkeyshiner, Oliver Orman Braski." 
  The hawser length made two angry pops on the other's oilskins. 
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  "Braski knows enough to make trouble, eh?" he demanded. 
  "He could ruin the whole works," said Wapp. "He would, too." 
  "Scuttle him," the other suggested. "Bat his brains out and leave  him in an alley. Hell! We gotta kill nearly
  twenty, anyway!" 
  Captain Wapp sighed mightily. 
  "For vun whole week, we have try to do dot very thing," he said.  "And vot did it get us?" 
  The man with the hawser scowled uneasily. 
  "You think old Hezemiah Law smells anything?" he questioned  anxiously. 
  "Law bane smart feller," Wapp mumbled. "But Aye not tank he smart  enough." 
  The other frowned at his hawser length. 
  "Well, we gotta handle this right," he said. "With maybe a million  dollars − " 
  "More dan dot," interposed Captain Wapp. "From what Aye laid eyes  on, dot Spook Hole has enough of de
  stuff to pay each feller on my ship  not less than − " 
  A gun banged loudly in the corridor outside. A man cursed, then  began yelling a mad alarm. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP lunged to the door, wrenched it open. He had the  little pistol knife almost hidden in one
  broad, red−furred hand. The  man with the hawser trod his heels. They did not dive into the  corridor, but put
  their heads out cautiously. 
  One of the crew was in the corridor, crouched back against a  bulkhead, standing rigidly, not moving any part
  of his body other than  his features as he screamed terribly. His arms were bent in a grotesque  fashion. 
  "The blasted thing went aft," the man moaned, and tried to pick up  his gun, which lay on the floor at his feet.
  His strangely bent arms  refused to function. 
  Without coming from the shelter of his cabin, Captain Wapp swore at  the man. 
  "Vot you say?" he roared. 
  "Outside your cabin," groaned the sailor. "It was black. Never had  much shape. I thought it was a pile of
  clothes or something from the  laundry. When I came up, it grabbed me." 
  He cried out wordlessly from the effort of trying to move his arms. 
  Captain Wapp yelled, "Which way?" 
  "Aft," whined the sailor. "I told you that." 
  Captain Wapp leaped forward, seized the sailor and gave each of the  fellow's arms a rough, terrific yank. Pain
  caused the man to burst into  tears. But his arms straightened. They had only been out of joint. 
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  "Get up and help hunt!" snapped Wapp. 
  They ran aft, yelling an alarm, turning on the excellent electric  lighting system with which the vessel was
  equipped. 
  They found no one. They located no one who had seen anything  suspicious, except the watchman at the
  gangplank, who was in no  condition to say anything. 
  "Vot ails you?" Wapp asked him. 
  The watchman said nothing, did nothing, acting in all like a man  alive and yet dead. More of amazement than
  rage on his features, Wapp  turned upon the man who carried the taped bit of hawser. He asked no  question
  with words, but the other read his expression. 
  "I dunno what it was," he disclaimed. "Same thing that grabbed the  one−armed man on shore." 
  They hastily rigged big floodlights along the rail − lights which  were undoubtedly ready at hand for night
  work at sea. The vast quantity  of illumination showed the nature of the Harpoon. It was a whaling  ship, one
  of the modern type, a gigantic pot−bellied thing, with a  runway aft where the whales could be hauled up to
  the processing plant  in the innards of the craft. 
  Captain Wapp and the others on the Harpoon, having found nothing,  stood at the rail, muttered, and looked
  very puzzled indeed. 
  UNKNOWN to those aboard the Harpoon, a sinister, fantastic figure  stood and watched. The form, huge and
  black, stood in the shadows of  the pier, beyond the floodlight glare. The strange being had gotten off  the
  whaling ship before the search was well under way. 
  Not for long did the personage of darkness linger to observe. He  moved away, and the silence of his going
  was almost supernatural,  eerie. 
  Some moments later, the giant of blackness stopped at the spot  where the one−armed man − rather the man
  who had pretended to have only  one arm − had been left, securely bound. The monster of the night  paused
  there, rigidly, and there came into the darkness around him a  fantastic sound. 
  It was low, that sound, and eerie, a note defying definition by  word. It was not a whistle; it did not seem the
  product of vocal cords.  It had the qualities of a trilling. 
  Probably most fantastic of all was the way the sound seemed to come  from no definite source, but to come
  from the very air itself, as if it  were the ventriloquial note of some exotic tropical bird. Certain it  was that the
  note had a musical quality which was inspiring to an  appreciable degree. 
  Certain also was the fact that the strange one of the darkness was  making the sound. And undoubtedly the
  strange trilling denoted surprise  over a discovery which had just been made. 
  The one−armed man was gone. 
  The lengths of very stout−tarred marline rope which had bound the  one−armed man lay on the warehouse
  floor. Some had been untied. Most  had been cut. 
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  The giant of darkness produced his flashlight which projected the  thin, infinitely white beam. He searched.
  There was no visible sign to  show whence the one−armed man had gone, or how he had managed to get  free. 
  After a bit, the dark titan moved out of the warehouse and down a  side street which was full of the thunder's
  muttering and occasional  small drops of rain. It was very dark. 
  The giant of the night reached a parked car. No glimmer of light  showed from the machine, but when he
  opened the door, light spilled  out. It was a sedan, a very well−curtained car. Bathed in the  illumination, the
  giant began changing his appearance. 
  He stripped off a dull−black rubber cape and hood combination which  served the double purpose of keeping
  off the rain and making him almost  invisible in the night. He removed black gloves. 
  It was an amazing individual who stood revealed, a giant man, a  Herculean figure, whose remarkable body
  might have been cast from hard  bronze. 
  The sedan was large, yet as the man stood beside it, the car seemed  none too ample. The man was not fat. His
  body was a huge machine of  sinew. 
  There was more of the unusual about the bronze man than his  physique. His eyes, for instance, were like
  pools of flake gold always  in motion, and possessed of a magnetic quality. His hair, a bronze hue  but little
  darker than his skin, straight and fitted like a metal cap. 
  He got into the sedan. 
  Two men were already there. One of them spoke. 
  "Doc," he said. "What did you learn?" 
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  DOC SAVAGE, man of miracles and mystery, replied nothing. That was  a peculiar habit he had, puzzling to
  strangers, but familiar to those  who knew the bronze giant. 
  He was a character of international note, this man of bronze. He  had done things which had startled the
  world. He had also done things  even more startling, of which the world knew nothing. He was a man with  a
  profession probably as unique as any one had ever followed. His  profession was trouble. Other people's
  trouble. 
  Doc Savage's profession was helping others out of trouble, when in  doing so, he was righting wrongs. He had
  been trained from childhood −  until he was a remarkable combination of mental genius and physical  strength
  − for his profession. Pursuit of it carried him to the ends of  the earth. 
  Doc Savage was assisted by a group of five aides almost as unusual  as himself. It was two of these who were
  in the car with him now. 
  Saying nothing, the bronze man drew from a pocket a telegram, which  he unfolded. It was a local message,
  marked by the date line as having  been sent here in New York City. It read: 
  SUGGEST WHALING SHIP HARPOON MIGHT INTEREST YOU STOP BETTER BE  CAREFUL 
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  There was no signature. 
  One of the other two men leaned forward. He was hardly taller than  a half grown boy, but he would have
  weighed well over two hundred and  fifty pounds, and the hairs on his wrists were like rusty finishing  nails. 
  He spoke, and his voice was very small and almost ridiculously like  that of a child. 
  "We checked on that message while you were investigating the boat,  Doc," he said. "A one−armed man
  seems to have sent it." 
  "No other information, Monk?" Doc queried. 
  "Nope," said the individual who bore more resemblance to a bull  gorilla than to the human tribe. 
  "Monk" was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, whose  accomplishments as an industrial chemist
  were known in many parts of  the world. 
  The third occupant of the car leaned forward, resting his sharp  chin on the thin black cane which he carried.
  He was a lean man with  the large, mobile mouth of one given much to oratory, and his attire −  full evening
  garb − was absolutely faultless. 
  "What did you learn on the Harpoon, Doc?" he questioned. 
  "I met a one−armed man," Doc said. "He really had two arms,  however." 
  The man with the cane frowned. "I fail to understand." 
  "Disguise, Ham," Doc told him. "Possibly he was the one who sent  that rather puzzling telegram. Possibly
  not." 
  "Ham" shifted his chin on his cane. He was Brigadier General  Theodore Marley Brooks, conceded by many
  to be the most astute lawyer  Harvard ever turned out, and he looked the part. 
  "And what about the Harpoon," he queried. 
  The bronze man shook his head slowly. "Something queer is underfoot  there. It concerns some one named
  Braski, a man called old Hezemiah  Law, and a place designated as Spook Hole. There also seems to be
  something involved worth some millions of dollars." 
  "That's vague," said small−voiced Monk. 
  "It was all very puzzling," Doc agreed. "I hoped to hear more, but  a sailor came along the passage while I was
  listening and discovered  me. Where is Johnny?" 
  "Eh?" Monk blinked. 
  "Johnny," Doc said. "Where is he?" 
  "Oh." Monk waved an arm vaguely. "He went over to help you look  around. Guess he missed you. He'll be
  back soon, probably." 
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  9
  
  Doc Savage got out of the car. His movements were fast without  seeming unduly so. 
  "We had better look into that," he said. "Things seem to be tense  around that whaling ship." 
  THE bronze man opened a compartment in the car. The machine seemed  to be fitted with innumerable such
  recesses. The device which he  brought out had somewhat the appearance of a small, old−fashioned magic
  lantern − one of the type which projected pictures from a postcard to a  screen. 
  The large base obviously contained a strong battery. Doc switched  it on. As far as the eyes were concerned,
  nothing happened. It did not  project light. 
  Doc turned the lantern affair on the damp ground. Where nothing  visible had been before, small, glowing
  patches appeared. The spots  were something over two inches across and glowed like pale phosphorous,  or
  smears of the stuff off of radium watch dials. 
  It was noticeable that where Doc Savage and the other two stepped,  they left the round, glowing marks. Close
  examination would have shown  that the heels of their shoes were not leather, but of a porous fibre
  impregnated with some chemical compound. 
  "Johnny started off this way," Monk said, and pointed. 
  They followed the marks left by "Johnny's" heels. None of the trio  commented on the phenomena of the
  glowing tracks, for it was not  strange to them. 
  The lantern was one projecting ultraviolet, or so−called "black  light," and was not so intricate that it could not
  have been understood  readily by the average electrical experimenter. 
  The composition of the shoe heels was more complex, being a  compound developed by Monk, the master
  chemist, working with Doc  Savage. It was simply a blending of certain of those chemical  substances which
  fluoresce, or glow, when exposed to ultra−violet light  − a property not especially remarkable, being shared by
  a substance as  common as vaseline. 
  Johnny's tracks were spaced in a manner which showed he was a  long−legged man indeed, and they
  progressed, after some meandering, to  the vicinity of the warehouse where Doc Savage had left the bound
  form  of the man who was pretending to have only one arm. 
  What had occurred was easily read. Johnny had heard some sound made  by the bound man; possibly the
  fellow had beaten his heels against the  floor. 
  "So Johnny turned him loose," Doc said dryly. 
  Monk chuckled. "Won't Johnny's face be red. For once, I'll bet he  can't think of a big word." 
  "Johnny" was William Harper Littlejohn, a gentleman who had once  held the chair of natural science research
  in a university which went  in for deep learning rather than athletics. He was another member of  Doc Savage's
  group of five assistants. 
  "Let's see where he went," Ham suggested. 
  Johnny's glowing prints were thick about the spot where the bound  man had been released, but they finally
  led off through a side door.  Soft mud outside still retained tracks, and these indicated that Johnny  and the
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  10
  
  man he had freed were together. 
  The prints led to an alley, and in the dark recesses of the latter,  mute evidence reposed. Doc Savage found it
  first and pointed it out. 
  Bits of thin, broken glass. Scuff marks on the concrete pavement. 
  Monk picked up the fragments of glass and inspected them,  expression and manner remindful of a monkey
  examining a flea found upon  its person. 
  "Johnny's monocle," he said. "Here's where he got what good  Samaritans usually get. The fake one−armed
  guy crowned him." 
  "But where is Johnny?" Ham snapped. 
  That, it developed, was to be a mystery. Johnny's fiery trail ended  in the alley. 
  "Knocked senseless and carried off," Monk hazarded. 
  Doc Savage issued quick orders. 
  "You two continue looking for Johnny," he directed. "Be careful." 
  Monk, as hurriedly as possible, demanded, "What're you gonna do,  Doc?" 
  Then Monk made a disappointed grimace. He had not been quite soon  enough with his question. Doc Savage
  was already gone, swallowed up,  wraithlike, by the darkness. There was no sound to show the direction  he
  had taken. 
  MONK sighed, grumbled, "I got a notion to get my pet pig Habeas.  He's better'n a bloodhound." 
  The dapper Ham put out a sharp jaw. "That hog is useless, and you  know it." 
  "You overdressed shyster!" Monk growled indignantly. "I'm gonna  call my laboratory and have my secretary
  bring Habeas down." 
  They moved off in the darkness, insulting each other in a low,  vehement fashion that would have led a
  stranger to think they were on  the point of blows. 
  It was perpetually thus with Monk and Ham. Nobody could recall one  having addressed a civil word to the
  other. Yet, conversely enough,  they were as attached to each other as two men could be, each having  risked
  his life on several occasions to save the other. 
  Habeas Corpus was Monk's pet pig, a porker of grotesque appearance  and somewhat astounding intellect.
  Habeas was also the dapper Ham's pet  hate. 
  Although wrangling, the two men were keeping a sharp look−out for  some sign of Johnny. It was Monk who
  heard a small, foreign sound. He  yanked Ham to a stop with more force than was necessary. 
  "You missing link!" Ham gritted. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  11
  
  "Sh−h−h!" Monk admonished. "I think somebody is ahead of us!" 
  A new and totally strange voice spoke up from the darkness to their  rear. 
  "There's somebody behind you," it said. "Turn around and have a  look!" 
  Monk and Ham spun − not around, but to the sides, diving in  opposite directions. They moved with the
  perfect coördination of men  who had been in trouble before. Their separation was on the principle  that two
  fires were harder to fight than one. 
  Back of them, a man swore, just as a flashlight came on. The one  who cursed had no doubt intended to
  illuminate them with the flash. 
  "Quick!" the fellow barked. "Don't let them get away!" 
  It was suddenly apparent that numerous men were in the surrounding  darkness. Monk bumped some one. He
  swung a furry fist. It landed  solidly. 
  The one who had been hit skidded backward, feet making slitherings  on the wet pavement, then fell down. 
  Over on the other side, Ham gave the handle of his immaculate black  cane a twist. It separated, and from the
  dark shaft came a lean sword  blade, the tip of which was coated with a chemical concoction,  compounded by
  Doc Savage, which would produce abrupt unconsciousness  once it entered a wound. 
  Ham flirted the blade about. He did it gently, his object to wound  slightly rather than to wreak great damage. 
  A man came hard against Ham's back. The dapper lawyer tried to get  his sword cane around, failed, was
  knocked off his feet. The attacker  fell atop him, missing the chemical−coated blade by luck. 
  They were in a narrow alleyway, and it was suddenly full of quiet  fight sounds − quiet until Monk began to
  roar and bellow as he always  did when in combat. But he was not noisy for long. His roars muffled  abruptly,
  as If a man had sat on his face. Soon after, silence came. 
  "Tie them," said the man who had spoken first. 
  Monk gulped a faint question past the hand which was over his  mouth. 
  "You birds off the Harpoon?" he asked. 
  The leader of their captors laughed harshly, said in a glad voice,  "We got a break, gang. They must be two
  sailors off the Harpoon." 
  ROLLS of black adhesive tape were produced and many turns taken  about the wrists of Monk and Ham.
  They were not gagged. 
  "Let out a bleat, and you'll get muffled in a way you won't like,"  the man advised them. 
  Monk strained against the binding. His physical strength was  tremendous. He did not free his hands from the
  swathing bundle of tape. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  12
  
  The chief of the captors stepped back, and the flashlight he was  holding chanced to illuminate his own
  person. 
  He was a lean man with almost incredibly black hair on his head,  brows, chin and wrists. His eyes were round
  and brilliant. He made Monk  think of a black tomcat. 
  "Yeah, they're sailors off the Harpoon," he decided again. 
  "What makes you think that, Braski?" one of his party queried. 
  Braski changed position. He handled himself like the black cat he  resembled. 
  "Didn't they ask us if we were off the Harpoon?" he demanded. "They  hoped we were some of their pals." 
  Monk growled, "You guys have made a mistake!" 
  Braski laughed. It was not a nice sound. 
  "Where's Spook Hole?" he asked. 
  "That place again?" Monk shrugged. "I wouldn't know, but you  probably wouldn't believe that." 
  Braski stepped forward and calmly inserted a thumb in Monk's left  eye. It was a cruel thing to do, and Monk
  writhed and groaned while  four men wrestled him down. 
  "Where is Spook Hole?" Braski repeated. 
  "Blast you!" Monk snarled. "I don't know!" 
  Ham next received the eye treatment. 
  "I have no idea where Spook Hole is or what it is!" he gritted in  an agonized voice. 
  "Maybe they don't know," suggested a man. 
  "Captain Wapp does know," Braski said dryly. "Well go ask him.  We've got to get him out of the way,
  anyhow. The double−crosser!" 
  "What about the girl?" the man asked. 
  "We'll get her if we can't nab Captain Wapp," grunted Braski. "I'm  almost sure Wapp is holding her so we
  couldn't find her and learn from  her where this Spook Hole is." 
  The other looked dubious, queried, "How'll we get aboard? They'll  have guards posted all over that whaling
  ship." 
  Braski laughed again, unpleasantly, and kicked Monk's shins  briskly. 
  "Maybe they got a password or something," he said. "Our two pals,  here, will know it. They'll get us through
  − if they know what's good  for 'em." 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  13
  
  Monk growled, "Brother, you're steaming up a mess for yourself. We  ain't off the Harpoon." 
  Braski said, "Don't lie to me!" and poked Monk's eye with a thumb. 
  They moved in the direction of the Harpoon. There seemed to be  nearly a dozen men in the party, and all
  were armed. 
  THE floodlamps along the rail of the Harpoon had been turned off,  but a single bulb made fitful glow above
  the gangway. Two men lounged  there. They wore no weapons visibly, but their manner of keeping hands
  close to their raincoat pockets was understood by a close observer. 
  Braski's party and their prisoners stopped well back in the  darkness and conferred. 
  Monk, finding himself close to Ham, whispered, "This is a pickle.  We're supposed to give a password, or get
  shot. And we don't know any  password. Maybe we oughta tell 'em we're part of Doc Savage's crowd." 
  "No!" Ham breathed emphatically. "They haven't mentioned a thing to  indicate they know that Doc is
  involved. We had best keep still about  that. Might make it easier for Doc to work." 
  "Just the same − " Monk fell silent. He was thinking of various  past occasions when a connection with Doc
  Savage had been the equal of  a death sentence. Doc was automatically the mortal enemy of all who  were
  outside of the law. 
  Braski stuck his black goatee out at them and grated, "What are you  two whispering about?" 
  "The weather," Monk told him. "It looks like somebody is gonna get  rained on plenty." 
  "Two clever boys, eh?" Braski snarled. "All right, do your stuff.  Walk up to those two watchmen and get us
  aboard. And if you fail,  you'll be the first to get shot." 
  Monk wailed, "Listen! I wouldn't try this!" 
  "Get moving," Braski directed. 
  "Our hands are tied," Monk pointed out. 
  "We'll fix that," Braski said, and proceeded to cut their hands  free of the tape. "Now, put on your show." 
  They were urged toward the Harpoon gangway. Monk was in the lead,  simply because a gun muzzle
  happened to gouge more firmly against his  back. The gangway vibrated under their feet. The two watchmen
  became  alert and put their hands in their raincoat pockets. 
  "Make it good!" Braski hissed into Monk's ear. 
  Monk pumped out his chest, strode boldly toward the first watchman  and said, "Where's Captain Wapp. We
  got something important for him." 
  The watchman, to Monk's astonishment, grinned widely and said,  "You're the captain's friend, ain't you? We
  been expectin' you and your  crowd." 
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  14
  
  "Uh−huh," Monk muttered, then, as gun pressure hardened against his  back, added hastily, "Sure! We're
  friends of everybody!" 
  The watchmen stepped back, and one of them called loudly down a  passage, "Here's the captain's friends." 
  "Bring them to the cabin," called a voice. 
  They entered the passage, one watchman leading the way. They  progressed some two feet. A door clanked
  shut ahead. Another slammed  behind. Their guide turned, and he had two guns out. 
  "You bums thought you were pullin' something!" he snarled. 'We know  you, Braski! Drop them guns and
  elevate!" 
  "Is this gonna be a party!" Monk breathed, and leaped straight up  with considerable violence. 
  There was a passage light overhead, protected by a wire cage. Monk  jammed both hands against it, mashing
  the wire, breaking the glass  bulb, cutting his hands a little. 
  It was the only light in their section of the corridor. Intense  darkness clapped down. 
  Bedlam erupted. A revolver made swift, ear−splitting noise. A man  shrieked in agony. More guns whooped. 
  MONK slammed flat, reasoning that fewer bullets would find the  floor regions. He groped for Ham's ankle.
  A foot kicked him solidly in  the face. 
  He grabbed it, knew by the smallness of the shoe and the spats  encasing the ankle that Ham kicked him, and
  yanked Ham down, giving the  ankle a twist by way of reprisal. 
  A man fell on them. Monk grabbed his throat, felt warm wetness  flood his hands and let go. The man had
  been shot in the neck and was  already dead. 
  Monk barked loud words in a dialect which would have been  intelligible to not more than a dozen men in the
  so−called civilized  world. 
  It was the tongue of ancient Maya, a language Doc Savage and his  men had learned on one of their numerous
  adventuring jaunts, and which  they now used to communicate with each other when not wishing to be
  understood by outsiders. 
  Monk had simply advised Ham that he intended seeking the other end  of the room. 
  "Me, too," Ham said in the Mayan tongue. 
  They scuttled along the wall and met at the other end of the  passage. From the amount of shooting and
  yelling, it was obvious that  large numbers of the Harpoon's crew had rushed to the attack. 
  "Let's let 'em fight it out," Monk suggested in Mayan. "Think  they're coming in at a door over here. Let's
  clear out that way." 
  "One of the few good ideas you ever had," Ham agreed in the same  dialect. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  15
  
  They had little trouble locating the door. It was still dark,  except for the flash of guns, an illumination by
  which little could be  discerned. A sailor stumbled coming through the door and fell noisily. 
  Monk reached down, struck at the man's temple, hit the floor by  accident the first time, then corrected his aim
  and knocked the fellow  trembling and senseless. 
  Monk shoved Ham through ungently, then eased outside himself. They  flattened to one side. 
  "Get der bummers!" a voice was bellowing from down the corridor. 
  The speaker charged into view an instant later − a man so huge that  he had to come sidewise through the
  bulkhead doors Monk and Ham  recognized him from Doc Savage's description. Captain Wapp. 
  Gloom enwrapped the passage, and Captain Wapp charged past without  observing Monk and Ham. Straight
  into the fray, the squat giant  slammed. 
  "Git dot Braski!" he bawled. "His neck, we will twist!" 
  Monk listened to the turmoil they had escaped. Men howled, guns  crashed, and strings of profanity joined the
  whole in a violent  syncopation. 
  "When they thin each other out, I'll go in and lick both crowds,"  Monk chuckled. 
  The homely chemist had no idea that he was bragging. He might have  been able to do it. He certainly thought
  he could. He got to feeling  that way in a fight. 
  But his hope did not materialize. Braski and his men apparently  broke through the other end of the passage,
  for the fight sounds  receded with a rapidity that indicated men in flight. 
  "Shall we follow them?" Ham suggested. 
  "Heck, no," Monk grunted. "Let's look this ark over." 
  ALL hands aboard the Harpoon must have been called to the fight,  for Monk and Ham were not molested as
  they swung down the passage and  up a companionway. They had no idea where they were going, having
  never  been in closer contact with a whaling ship of this modern type than  pictures in the Sunday newspapers.
  Shortly, they found themselves on  deck. They looked over the rail. 
  Men were dashing madly down the gangplank. Captain Wapp stood under  the gangway light and jumped up
  and down, waving his clasp knife which  was also a pistol. He bellowed orders to his men. 
  "Braski and his crowd must have gotten away," Monk said  regretfully. 
  "His attempt to find where the mysterious Spook Hole is did not get  him far," Ham agreed dryly. 
  Monk moved along the deck. "Let's see what luck we can have in that  direction." 
  The dark−haired Braski had permitted them to retain their  flashlights, and they now employed these, opening
  doors and poking into  the holds. 
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  16
  
  They found numerous tanks, boilers and other blubber processing  machinery. The blubber "trying works,"
  this was, although they did not  know the technical terminology. There was an odor present, ample and  not
  exactly entrancing. 
  "Bet they don't live down here," Monk suggested wryly. "Let's try  the upper decks, and forward." 
  They worked forward and up, getting away from the blubber vats, but  not from the odor. Ham grimaced
  mightily and often. He was fastidious  in senses as well as dress, and the physical aspects of the whaling  ship
  did not appeal to him. 
  Ham probed into a room and found spare harpoons, guns and the  explosive cartridges used in the killing
  harpoons. 
  "Nothing here," he decided. 
  Monk found another door, barred on the outside, but not locked. 
  "Wouldn't be anyone in here, probably," he grumbled, and unbarred  the door and thrust his head and
  flashlight inside. 
  The next instant there was a sound such as a billiard ball might  make if dropped on hard ground. Monk
  plopped down on all fours, shaking  his head. 
  "I have a gun," a woman's voice said with brittle abruptness from  within the room which had been locked. "I
  think I will use it." 
  Ham poised, on the horns of a dilemma. He could not see the  speaker. 
  "Careful," Monk groaned from the floor. "She popped me with  something, probably the gun she's talkin'
  about." 
  "Use your left hands and be very careful and toss me your guns,"  the feminine voice directed. 
  Monk and Ham hesitated. 
  "Haven't got any," Monk advised. 
  There was another pause. No one moved or said anything. 
  Still on the floor, Monk growled, "I don't believe any woman would  shoot me." He got to his feet. 
  "You put a lot of reliance in your charms," Ham told him. Ham still  kept his arms up. 
  There was another silence. 
  "Come out of there, lady," Monk suggested. 
  More waiting. 
  "I guess the bluff won't work," said the feminine voice. 
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  17
  
  The woman came out. She wore a disgusted, defeated and slightly  frightened look. She carried no gun, but
  she did carry a flexible  bludgeon, an affair which looked as if it were made of silken hose  stuffed with
  something hard. With this she had probably felled Monk. 
  MONK frowned at her. Ordinarily, he would have turned on the  amiable grin which made his homely
  features surprisingly pleasant to  look upon. But his head still ached. 
  The young woman was not hard to frown at. She was neither unusually  tall nor especially short, nor was her
  figure especially striking,  although it left little to be wished for. But she had hair the tint of  dark honey, and
  her skin was almost exactly the same color. Eyes, lips,  nose, were exquisite. Taken altogether, she was
  striking without being  gaudy in any respect. 
  Monk reached out abruptly and grasped the weapon she carried. She  surrendered it contemptuously. 
  Monk examined it. Inside the silk hose was cloth, and in that,  fragments of heavy china dishes broken in
  small bits − cup, saucer, a  plate. 
  "Your friends evidently did not think I had anything to make a  weapon," she said dryly. "Do better, next
  time." 
  "Friends?" Monk grinned. "You got us wrong, miss − " He waited. She  did not supply a name. 
  "Who are you?" he asked. 
  "You should know," she snapped. 
  "Nix," the homely chemist grinned. "We don't belong on the Harpoon.  In fact, if the crew found us, they'd
  probably have a scalping party." 
  "Oh." The girl frowned. Then her expression changed. She seemed to  jump at a conclusion. "I am Nancy
  Law." 
  "Nancy Law." Monk squinted. "So what?" 
  "Didn't Braski send you aboard to find me?" she countered. 
  Monk started to shake his head, but Ham interrupted hurriedly. 
  "You're friendly to Braski, aren't you?" asked the dapper lawyer. 
  "I'm the friend of anybody who will get me out of here," the girl  said vehemently. 
  "Then let's get off of this boat," Ham smiled. 
  They worked toward the upper deck and the rail, using much more  caution now that the young woman was
  along. 
  Ham asked Nancy Law, "Why were they holding you?" 
  "To keep Braski from getting hold of me, I heard them say," the  girl replied. "But you should know that.
  Didn't Braski tell you?" 
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  Chapter II. THE "HARPOON" PRISONER
  18
  
  "Indirectly, yes," Ham said hastily. 
  THEY reached the deck, and under the pretense of looking over the  ground, Ham drew Monk aside. 
  "We'll let her think we're Braski's men," the barrister whispered.  "I think it'll make it easier for us to find out
  what this is all  about." 
  "I don't think the idea is so hot," muttered Monk, whose policy was  to disagree with Ham whenever possible. 
  Excitement around the Harpoon had died, although Captain Wapp, a  grotesquely broad and squat figure, still
  stood in the light near the  gangplank. From all appearances, the dark−haired Braski and his gang  had made a
  complete escape. 
  Monk and Ham worked forward with the girl and reached a mooring  line as thick as Monk's ample leg. Monk
  went down this to the dock with  simian ease. The girl came next, not having much difficulty, and Ham
  brought up the rear. It was as simple as that. They were not molested. 
  "Stands to reason they'll have guards around," Monk grunted. "Ham,  you and me had better take a look." 
  They moved off, but in separate direction. Reconnoitering took them  not more than three or four minutes.
  Monk, for his part, found no one,  and decided the way was clear, by a roundabout route, to escape. 
  He returned to the spot where he had left the girl. Ham was there.  Monk peered into the murk. 
  "Where's Nancy Law?" he demanded. 
  "That's what I'm wondering," Ham snapped. 
  "Huh?" Monk gulped. 
  "She cleared out," Ham said. "Gave us the slip." 
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  MONK and Ham stood and glared at each other. There was much more  thunder overhead now, and some
  lightning, so that they could see each  other at fitful intervals. 
  "It was your bright idea, lettin' her think we were Braski's men,"  Monk accused. "Bet that's why she skipped
  out." 
  "It was your suggestion, leaving her alone!" Ham snapped angrily.  "You have the same ideas as a baboon!" 
  They worked toward the shore end of the pier, going carefully,  listening often, hoping to find some trace of
  the young woman. The only  sounds, however, were those made by Captain Wapp and his men about the
  Harpoon's gangplank. Those noises were sufficient to urge Monk and Ham  away from the vicinity. 
  Ham, lost without his sword cane, suggested, "I think my cane was  left lying in that alley where we were
  grabbed. I'm going after it." 
  They sought Ham's cane, and found it without great difficulty. Ham  flourished the unique weapon in an
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  19
  
  eminently satisfied manner. 
  "Wonder what became of Doc?" he pondered. 
  "Maybe he's back at the car," Monk suggested. "We'll go see. If  he's not, we'll look around some more for
  Johnny, on our own hook." 
  They approached the sedan warily, lest it be watched, circling it  completely twice. Satisfied no one was near,
  they strode up boldly in  the intense blackness and opened the door. At that instant, lightning  ripped above.
  Both distinctly saw an entirely unwelcome sight. 
  A hand was projecting from the car and holding a gun almost in  their faces. 
  "Whew!" Monk exploded, and snapped to all fours on the moist  pavement 
  There was absolute silence until the next jagged whip of lightning. 
  "Dubitation is now an evanescent quotiety," said a dry, scholastic  voice from within the car. 
  Monk bounded erect. 
  "Johnny!" he exploded. "You scared me out of ten years' growth." 
  Johnny got out of the car. He was very tall and thinner than it  seemed any human frame could be and still
  retain life. His raincoat was  ripped down the back, one eye was darkening, and he showed other  evidences of
  rough handling. 
  Johnny stowed the gun under an armpit, in a specially designed  holster which sat in padding so that its
  presence would not have been  noticeable on a man of less skeletal build. 
  The weapon resembled an oversize automatic, except that it had a  drum magazine. It was a machine−gun
  pistol, perfected by Doc Savage,  and capable of a remarkable rate of fire. 
  "Consummate ischiagra, a bit of cephalalgia, and a touch of  torticollis describes my condition," Johnny
  groaned. 
  "Put it in small words," Monk requested. 
  "I feel like hades," Johnny complied. 
  "What happened to you?" Monk asked. 
  "My noctambulation − " 
  "Little ones," Monk grunted. "I already got a headache." 
  "I found a man tied up in a warehouse," Johnny said, lapsing into  words of fewer syllables than he usually
  affected. "I turned him loose.  A bit later, he banged me over the head. I awakened, most ignominious  of all,
  in an ash can, and came here, found no one and waited." 
  "That's all?" Monk asked. 
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  20
  
  "All," Johnny agreed. 
  They stood there in silence while thunder made whooping echoes  along the darkened streets and rain began to
  shoot down steadily in  small drops. 
  "I think," Monk said suddenly, "that we're going to have trouble." 
  MONK was right. Four men came stepping out of the darkness, and  when close, they projected flashlight
  beams. They held guns out in the  light so that they could be distinguished. 
  "If you want trouble, we got plenty of it," one advised. 
  Johnny simply leaned backward and fell into the sedan. The car was  bullet−proof. Johnny got his
  machine−gun pistol out as he fell. Monk  and Ham dived after him. They slammed the doors. 
  Gun noise made competition for the thunder above as one of the men  fired. His bullet struck a window glass,
  but only made a cobweb design  of fine cracks and fell to the pavement, flattened. The man swore. 
  Johnny seized the window crank to raise the glass very high. This  would expose small, shielded loopholes
  through which the muzzles of  their machine−gun pistols could be shoved. They were in a rolling  fortress only
  slightly less impregnable than a tank. 
  "We got 'em!" Monk rapped. 
  It was not the first time he had been wrong. The door on the  opposite side of the car whipped open abruptly.
  It had a lock on the  inside, but in the heat of the excitement, they had overlooked throwing  this. The visible
  enemy was on the other side, anyway. 
  But some one of the gang had raced up, unseen, on the opposite  side. Monk and the others found themselves
  staring at gun muzzles. 
  "You got just one chance," a man ripped. 
  Monk glared. It was suicide to try to bring his machine−gun pistol  around. There was only one thing to do
  and he did it − put his hands  up. Ham and Johnny followed suit. 
  A man looked them over closely with a flashlight. He jabbed a  finger at Monk and Ham. 
  "These two are Braski's men and came aboard the Harpoon with him,"  he said. He scowled at Johnny. "I
  never saw this pile of bones before." 
  Another man walked around in front of the sedan and turned his  light on the license plates. He bent almost
  double to stare. Then he  jumped erect as if he had been kicked unexpectedly. He all but fell  down getting
  around to the side of the machine. 
  "Damnation!" he squawled. "We're in a jam!" 
  "You gone nuts?" a man snorted. 
  "Them license plates!" the first man rapped. "Take a look!" 
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  21
  
  The other went around with a flash and examined the tags. He came  back unconcernedly. 
  "The number is DOC 3," he said. "So what? A low number, sure. But  they don't mean anything special any
  more." 
  "For the love of mud!" the first man growled. "Mean to say you  don't know about them license plates from
  reading about the guy in the  newspapers?" 
  "What guy?" 
  "Doc Savage," said the first. "Them's special plates issued to  him." 
  It was very quiet. The thunder romped in the sepia heavens and a  flurry of rain came along with considerable
  gusto. 
  "Let's see Captain Wapp about this," a man suggested. 
  CAPTAIN Wapp was standing at the Harpoon's gangway, both hands  plunged inside the rope that served him
  as a belt, when they came up.  His expression showed that he had heard the shooting at the sedan and  was
  anxious to know what had happened. 
  "Vot it is?" he growled. 
  They told him about the license plates. Captain Wapp scowled at  Monk, Ham and Johnny, then, without a
  word, he went back into the  innards of the whaling ship, probably to his cabin, to return shortly  with an
  illustrated magazine which featured true detective mysteries.  He had the periodical open at a story titled: 
  DOC SAVAGE − MAN OF MYSTERY 
  TERROR OF CROOKS 
  There was a picture on the opposite page, one of the rare shots of  Doc Savage and his five aides ever to get
  publication. 
  Captain Wapp picked Monk, Ham and Johnny out of the group. 
  "Them, it is," he muttered. "Dot is no mistake." 
  "They are Doc Savage's men, then?" one fellow mumbled. 
  "Didn't I just say it?" Wapp retorted. 
  There was some muttering, as those few who knew little of Doc  Savage received information from those who
  knew much, or thought they  did. There was none of their usual boisterous profanity. They were  sober, like
  men at a funeral. 
  "Doc Savage must be working with Braski," a man suggested. 
  "For a minute, don't you think it," Captain Wapp told the fellow.  "Dot Savage, he would get on to a bummer
  like dot Braski, in a minute." 
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  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  22
  
  "Then what's he doing around here?" the other countered. 
  Captain Wapp took his pistol knife out of one pocket and stowed it  in another. 
  "Dot man Savage is after us all," he growled. "Braski. Us.  Everybody. I am betting it." 
  A man swore. 
  "You mean Savage is helping old Hezemiah Law?" he suggested. 
  Captain Wapp shook his head. "Hezemiah Law know nothing of vot it  is we are trying to do to him." 
  "Then it's the girl!" the man barked. "She rung Doc Savage in  somehow!" 
  Wapp nodded heavily. "Dot must bane it." 
  The man with the unique weapon made of a length of hawser came up,  curious to learn what lay behind the
  excitement. For the first time, he  was addressed by a nickname. 
  "You been missin' things, Ropes," a man said. 
  "Ropes" frowned, heard the latest developments repeated, and said,  smacking the hawser length into a palm,
  "I ain't liked a lot of things  that've hove up tonight. This is mighty bad." 
  "Take der three of 'em aboard," Captain Wapp directed. "We'll put  der screws to 'em and things we will
  learn." 
  "Acrimonious contumeliousness, I call it," Johnny said. 
  "Holy smoke!" gulped a sailor. "We have the dictionary along with  us." 
  THEY were urged toward the gangplank, the gaunt Johnny leading, Ham  at his heels, with Monk bringing up
  the rear. The tide was near high,  and the gangplank sloped steeply. Monk kept his head down as he  mounted. 
  In the distance somewhere, a police siren was mingling a puny wail  with the thunder above, evidence that the
  shooting around the water  front had drawn attention. 
  "Out of sight, get in a hurry," Captain Wapp directed. "We bane  make things look innocent as your Aunt
  Olga's tea party." 
  A voice came out of the darkness suddenly. It might have been a  reply to Wapp, but was not, for it spoke in
  Mayan, the dialect of Doc  Savage and his group. It was a strange, ventriloquial voice, and not  one in the party
  had the least idea from whence it came. The voice  spoke one short sentence. 
  Monk and the other two betrayed by no sign that they had heard or  understood. The stopped because their
  captors had halted, puzzled. 
  Unexpectedly, from the wharf, there came a fiendish cry, a screech  of tremendous proportions. Startled, every
  one faced that direction,  staring. 
  Monk, Ham and Johnny shut their eyes tightly, lifted their arms and  buried their faces. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  23
  
  The next instant, there was a hollow report and an incredible flash  of light. It was as if a tremendous
  photographer's flashlight had gone  off, except that the glare was longer in duration and infinitely more
  brilliant. 
  The light had other qualities besides an infernal brilliance. It  reacted on the eyes, affecting them much as
  would an electric welding  arc if stared at too long. Momentary blindness seized the Harpoon's  crew. One or
  two squawked in agony. 
  Monk and his two comrades came to life, uncovering their eyes. The  call in Mayan had warned them to
  protect the orbs. The second,  unearthly screech had been to draw all eyes toward the spot where the  flash was
  to be set off. 
  Jamming a shoulder out, Monk lunged, went down the steep gangplank  like a bowling ball through an array
  of pins. Ham, Johnny trailed him.  They did not strike blows, but shoved, tripped, ran past their captors.  The
  blindness would not last many seconds. 
  They cleared the Harpoon's crew, veered toward the spot from which  the flash had come. 
  "This way," said an unexcited but powerful voice. 
  Lightning sizzled, and they made out Doc Savage, a tower of bronze  in the darkness. Doc led them along the
  wharf, past stacks of barrels  which possibly held whale oil and which they certainly did not stop to  examine. 
  Not until they were in the sedan and rolling away from the vicinity  did they take time for conversation. 
  "BOY, we've been goin' around and around," Monk told Doc. He  elaborated, explaining about the girl, Nancy
  Law, and described the  manner in which she had evaded them after they had freed her. 
  "There's something mysterious behind this, a thing or a place known  as Spook Hole," he finished. "But all we
  found out and all that  happened don't leave us with any idea of what it's about than when we  started." 
  Ham interposed, in the manner of a trial lawyer summarizing, "We  know, or can deduce, that this Captain
  Wapp is seeking something in  Spook Hole, something belonging to the man they call 'old Hezemiah  Law.'
  Braski is after the same thing, but does not know where Spook  Hole is, and is trying to secure the information
  from Wapp by force.  Since Nancy Law bears the same name, she is probably a relative of old  Hezemiah Law,
  who apparently is not on the scene, but is in Spook Hole.  That explains things." 
  "Except the one−armed man who wasn't one−armed," Monk interposed.  "And who called Doc on the job?" 
  The bronze man himself spoke up. 
  "I have a plan to try," he said quietly. "A plan which may get us  information." 
  "Yeah?" Monk squinted, interested. "Shoot!" 
  "For the past hour, more or less, I have been following the man who  carries a bit of taped wire rope for a
  club," Doc advised. "They called  this man Ropes, I believe. Ropes proved to be an individual with
  remarkable angles." 
  Monk frowned. "Angles?" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter III. SPOOK HOLE QUEST
  24
  
  "I will explain when we reach headquarters," Doc replied. "This  Ropes is not exactly dumb." 
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  AT almost the same moment, Ropes was receiving oral corroboration  of the fact that he was not exactly
  dumb. The statement came from bulky  Captain Wapp of the Harpoon, and was delivered in the cabin of the
  whaling ship master. 
  "You bane good man," said Captain Wapp. "Aye do right by you,  Ropes." 
  "Thanks," Ropes said. 
  "Vun of mine men, you will take," directed Wapp. "Look for dis  bummer, Doc Savage. Maybe you find him." 
  "Sure," Ropes agreed. 
  Ropes closed the cabin door carefully behind him when he departed.  The passage outside was gloomy. He
  stopped there and carefully examined  the length of wire cable which he carried. He chuckled once, and not
  pleasantly, then went on, stowing his weapon. 
  The man Ropes selected to accompany him was the individual who bore  the designation of third mate on the
  Harpoon. This worthy was  weak−chinned, vacillating, and shy on nerve, a misfit as far as whaling  went,
  except in one respect − he was a navigating wizard. 
  "I got work to do on board," he said uneasily when Ropes asked him  to venture into the night. 
  "Captain Wapp's orders," Ropes growled. 
  The third mate, who had been dubbed, not unfittingly, "Sextant,"  signed tremulously and followed Ropes.
  The watchmen at the gangplank  passed them. They entered the dark waterfront streets. 
  There, in a narrow, intensely black street, Ropes calmly whipped  out his taped hawser length and stroked his
  companion over the temple  with it. 
  Ropes had used his weapon a great deal. He knew just how hard he  could hit and not crack a skull. 
  Picking up the senseless mate, Ropes carried him to the vicinity of  a street light, deposited him there,
  produced a bottle of whisky with  which he had thoughtfully provided himself, and sprinkled his victim  with
  enough of it to give him a strong odor. 
  "My buddy's soused," Ropes then told the first taxi driver to  cruise past. 
  The unsuspecting hack driver carried them to an address in the  flashy uptown apartment district. Ropes
  hauled his victim into the  hallway of a private dwelling, an ancient building sandwiched among new  and
  modern apartment structures. Possibly a bell rang after Ropes  pressed the button beside the door, but if so, it
  was so deep within  the house that it could not be heard. 
  Ropes punched the button carefully, giving a signal which must have  been agreed upon previously. 
  The dark−haired Braski himself opened the door. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  25
  
  Not more than an hour ago, Captain Wapp's men had been doing their  best to kill this same Braski. Wapp
  would no doubt have been surprised  to witness the warmth with which Braski now greeted Wapp's own
  henchman, Ropes. 
  "I am delighted," Braski said. "Come in and we'll talk." 
  ROPES laughed. "You're lookin' at Santa Claus himself," he said,  and stepped back so that Braski could see
  the third mate of the  Harpoon. 
  Braski started, gulped, "Dead?" 
  "What kind of a dope do you think I am?" Ropes grinned. 
  "Who is he?" Braski demanded. 
  "Third mate and the bird who does most of Captain Wapp's  navigating," Ropes explained. "In other words,
  he's the lad who should  know where Spook Hole is." 
  An expression of infinite delight overspread Braski's swarthy  features. 
  "It was a wise move when I decided to give you a third cut for  throwing in with me, Ropes," he chuckled. 
  Ropes grinned appreciation of the compliment. 
  "Got any ice water?" he asked. 
  "In the refrigerator," Braski replied, and nodded toward the  kitchen regions. 
  As Braski stepped back from the door, it was evident that he could  not walk without limping. He gave slight
  aid in handling the senseless  third mate. 
  "Bullet grooved my hip in that scrap in the Harpoon," he explained.  "That wasn't such a bright move, tryin' to
  get aboard to grab Captain  Wapp." 
  Ropes said nothing, but ambled off in the direction of the kitchen.  The ease with which he found the culinary
  region showed that he had  been in the house before. He ran faucet water over a tray of ice cubes  until they
  were loose. 
  Replacing the empty tray in the refrigerator, he returned to the  front room and rubbed ice on the mate until
  the latter awakened,  moaning. Ropes gave the man no time to consider his situation. 
  "Where's Spook Hole?" he demanded. 
  The third mate, blinking, recognized Braski, then Ropes. 
  "Double−crosser!" he snarled at Ropes. "I had a feeling you were a  crook!" 
  "Aren't we all?" Ropes chuckled. "Answer my question, you mug." 
  "I told Captain Wapp you could not be trusted!" yelled the third  mate. "But he said he had known you in the
  old days and you were just  the kind of a man we needed." 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  26
  
  "Where's Spook Hole?" roared Ropes. 
  "Go bite a blubber spade!" gritted the other. 
  Ropes glowered, then fell upon the mate, wrestled with him a bit  and succeeded in tying the fellow's wrists
  and ankles with the flexible  wire ripped from a floor lamp. Then Ropes drew a bottle from his coat. 
  It was the one holding the liquor which he had previously sprinkled  on the mate's clothing, and a quantity of
  the amber fluid still  remained. 
  Ropes doused whisky on the man's hands. Then he struck a match and  applied it. The alcohol in the liquor did
  not ignite immediately. Then  it began to burn blue. 
  THE mate began to shriek. Three times he managed to thresh the  flames out, and each time, Ropes ignited the
  liquor again. 
  Braski ran into a bedroom and came back with a pillow which he  placed over the victim's face, muffling his
  agonized cries. 
  Within five minutes, they had the third mate talking freely. 
  "I don't know where Spook Hole is!" he moaned. "So help me, I  don't." 
  "In a whale's eye," Ropes growled. "Captain Wapp has been there  with the Harpoon. And you're his
  navigator." 
  "I wasn't on the Harpoon when she made the visit," the tortured man  insisted desperately. "Captain Wapp
  recruited me, just like he did you,  Ropes, after he decided to croak old Hezemiah Law and take over Spook
  Hole." 
  "Damn lie," Ropes opined. 
  "I got discharge papers off another ship, right in my pocket, to  prove I wasn't on the Harpoon then," the other
  declared. "Look at 'em,  Ropes. You know that Captain Wapp took the Harpoon to the place more  than six
  months ago." 
  Glaring, Ropes found the papers in the man's pockets. He inspected  the date. He swore, hurled the papers to
  the floor and jumped upon  them. 
  "Five months ago you left the other ship!" he grated. "Blast it!  You weren't with Wapp when he went to
  Spook Hole!" 
  Braski now scowled blackly at Ropes. 
  "A fine out!" he snapped. "Now what do we do with this third mate?" 
  "We damn sure can't turn him loose," Ropes said darkly. "He'd put  Captain Wapp wise to me. We got our
  troubles without that, what with  this Doc Savage monkeyin' around." 
  Braski suddenly looked somewhat as he might have had a bolt of the  lightning crashed down upon his house
  unexpectedly. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  27
  
  "Doc Savage?" he echoed in a small voice. 
  "I FORGOT to tell you," said Ropes. 
  Speaking rapidly, he advised Braski of events at the wharf and  aboard the Harpoon. 
  "So that's all you forgot to tell me!" Braski snarled. "That's all!  Just nothing at all! I suppose you thought it
  didn't amount to  anything?" 
  Ropes scowled, said, "You don't see me in any icebox just on  account of Doc Savage." 
  Braski said dryly, "I'm beginning to wonder if you have good sense.  That man Savage is compound poison.
  His appearance on the scene changes  the whole complexion of things." 
  "Well?" Ropes demanded. "Do we give up the whole thing?" 
  "Give up − " Braski let his voice trail off. It was some seconds  before he resumed. "There's millions at Spook
  Hole, if we can just get  it. Millions, I tell you. I've seen the quality of the stuff, and have  some idea of the
  quantity. I ought to know. I've been marketing it for  old Hezemiah Law." 
  "Which adds up to what?' Ropes wanted to know. 
  "We stay in there and keep plugging," Braski decided. 
  "Swell!" Ropes reached down and got the bound third mate by the  throat. "Now I get this guy out of our
  hair." 
  The mate must have been under the impression he was in no great  danger, and now it suddenly dawned upon
  him that he was to be killed.  At no time had his courage been great. Now he blanched. 
  "Don't!" he gulped. "Please don't." 
  Ropes said, "Believe it or not, I croaked a ten−ton whale with this  thing once," and lifted the taped hawser
  length. 
  The mate gargled incoherently. 
  "Don't!" he choked. "Keep me here. Do anything. Only don't − " He  seemed about to swallow his own
  tongue, so great was his horror. "I'll  help you. I'll work for you." 
  "A lot of help you'd be to us," Ropes snorted. 
  He hefted the taped hawser once again, bringing it against his left  palm with solid force. Then he lifted his
  arm for a longer swing and  bent over the helpless mate. 
  There was no concern whatever on his features and there was not the  slightest doubt but that he intended to
  kill. 
  There came a crashing knock from the street door. 
  "Police!" a voice bawled. "Open up!" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  28
  
  "Damn!" Ropes gritted, and prepared to swing his bludgeon. 
  Braski caught his arm, ripping, "You fool! Kill him, and if we got  caught, we'd hang! Let him lay. We'll try to
  clear out." 
  They left the prisoner and raced for the rear of the house. 
  THE frightened third mate of the Harpoon obviously had no more  desire to encounter the police than had
  Braski and Ropes. 
  He struggled desperately with the wires which held him,  concentrating on the ankles. He could have freed
  himself earlier, if  allowed to try, but his two captors had watched him closely. Now, it  did not take him long
  to get loose. 
  The banging at the door had ceased. It now sounded as if some one  were trying the lock with a skeleton key
  or a picking device. 
  The third mate raced toward the house rear. It was the same  direction taken by Braski and Ropes, but the
  mate felt confident they  were far ahead. The rear door was open. He peered out cautiously.  Lightning showed
  him an alleyway. Empty. He scuttled out. 
  The man ran on his toes, so as to avoid making noise as much as  possible. As it was, his feet slopped water a
  good deal. When the alley  approached a street, he slowed his pace and swung along in a leisurely  manner
  which would not attract attention. 
  Parked cars were gloomy humps along the darkened thoroughfare, and  the street lamp made a pale zone at the
  corner, not unlike a ball of  soiled yellow cotton. 
  The fleeing man had covered no more than forty feet when a door  opened in one the parked machines. The
  car was a sedan. It had curtains  of remarkable efficiency, for the interior was lighted and no hint of  that had
  been evident until the door opened. 
  The third mate took one look at the individual revealed inside the  machine and wrenched to a stop. He shifted
  from one foot to another,  uncertain as to what he should do. 
  The mate had recognized the party in the car − a giant man of  bronze whose flake−gold eyes seemed to hold
  a remarkable power. 
  "Get in the sedan," the bronze man commanded. "Your life is in  danger." 
  The third mate hesitated, and that was his death. 
  Down the street, a gun whooped out six times. It was an automatic.  No revolver could have been triggered
  that rapidly. Echoes were one big  salvo. 
  The third mate of the Harpoon was standing in the light that knifed  from the sedan, and he gave two or three
  violent leaps, then threw back  his head as if trying to scream, but instead of words, his throat shot  a stream of
  crimson which sloshed over the sedan side. He went down  after one of his leaps, sliding on his face. 
  Doc Savage leaned back into the sedan and from some one of its  numerous compartments, brought one of his
  machine−gun pistols. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  29
  
  He rarely carried one of the weapons on his person, being convinced  that carrying a firearm led the bearer to
  depend too much upon it, thus  being the more helpless if disarmed. 
  The superfirer sheeted flame and filled the street with a sound  remindful of the moan of a titanic bullfiddle.
  Doc roved the barrel,  hosing the vicinity from which the shots had come, striving to search  out the killer
  whom he could not see. 
  The drum magazine ran empty. He clicked a new one in place  instantly. Like the first, it was charged, not
  with mortal lead, but  with so−called "mercy bullets," slugs which only brought  unconsciousness. 
  There was no return fire, no sign that the mercy bullets had hit  any one. 
  MONK came racing from the direction of Braski's house. 
  "I knocked on the door and yelled that I was a cop," he said  rapidly. "What happened?" 
  "Get under cover," Doc directed, and when the homely chemist had  complied, the bronze man added
  explanation. "Your knocking on the door  frightened Braski and Ropes away and saved the third mate's life
  for a  while. But when the mate came out, some one shot him from down the  street. Probably it was Ropes. He
  and Braski ran in that direction." 
  Doc Savage eased away from the sedan, keeping behind other parked  machines, and approached the spot
  from whence the killer had fired. He  searched thoroughly. No empty automatic cartridges did he find. The
  slayer must have kept a hand over the ejector as he fired, catching  them. 
  There was no sign of Ham and Johnny when Doc returned to the parked  sedan. 
  "We got a tough break," Monk grumbled. "Here you had watched that  guy Ropes and found he was
  two−timing with Braski, and we trail him and  his prisoner to Braski's house and listen, hopin' we'll hear
  something.  But they were gonna kill the third mate, and we have to pull that fake  cop gag to save his
  no−good life. And even that didn't work. And now  we've lost Braski and Ropes. And where's Ham and
  Johnny?" 
  "No sign of them yet?" Doc queried. 
  "Naw." Monk shook his bullet of a head. "What were they doin' while  I was hammering that door and howlin'
  'I'm a cop!'?" 
  Instead of answering, Doc Savage got into the sedan. The street had  been quiet for a few moments after the
  shooting, but suddenly a man had  started bellowing for the police. He was some householder, no doubt,  who
  had been looking out of his window and had seen the body in a  lightning flash. 
  "No use moving the Harpoon's third mate," Monk said, and got into  the sedan. "He's stone dead." 
  Doc Savage put the sedan in motion, driving without the headlights,  so that no one would see the license
  plates. 
  Monk said, "No sign of Ham and Johnny, yet. I don't like that." 
  "On the contrary," Doc told him. "It is a very favorable sign." 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter IV. DOC SETS A TRAP
  30
  
  "Yeah?" Monk blinked owlishly. "That sounds as if you had hatched  some kind of a plan." 
  Lightning, the most tremendous burst of the night, raced blue,  twisting fire across the heavens, and the
  thunder that followed seemed  to be trying to shake down the buildings. 
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  OLIVER ORMAN Braski ducked nervously at that infernal blast of  lightning and thunder. For a moment, he
  seemed inclined to get down on  the floorboards of the taxicab in which they were riding. 
  "I hope you ain't losin' your nerve on me," Ropes said in a low,  sour voice. 
  "Your killing that third mate right under the noses of the police  is enough to give anybody the jitters," Braski
  retorted nervously. 
  Ropes scowled. "This taxi driver might have ears, you know." 
  Both passengers now looked at the driver. The latter was a very  swarthy fellow who wore a cap, had a lump
  in one cheek, and who smoked  a strong−looking cigar. He seemed to be paying no attention to his  fares. 
  "We'd better take some precautions," Ropes growled, and ordered  their driver to stop. 
  A few moments later, a second cab went past and Ropes hailed it.  The driver of this one was bundled in a
  very yellow raincoat, inside  the neck of which a large towel was wrapped to absorb such rain water  as tried to
  run down his neck. 
  "We'll change cabs just in case that other hackie might remember  where he picked us up," Ropes whispered.
  "Where'll we go now?" 
  "My office," Braski declared. 
  Ropes looked dubious. "But the cops may have that covered." 
  "We'll have to take the chance," Braski said desperately. "There  are records in my safe that must be
  destroyed." 
  "Stuff concerning old Hezemiah Law and the junk he brings from  Spook Hole?" Ropes grinned. 
  "Not entirely," Braski sighed. "You see, this is not the first  thing I have done which was − off color." 
  Ropes laughed. The fact that he had just killed a man seemed to  affect him not at all. The taxi ran through a
  rain squall, and the  driver drew his towel tighter around his neck. 
  Oliver Orman Braski's office proved to be in a skyscraper building  down in the financial district. The marble
  corridors of the structure  were peopled only by janitors and scrubwomen at this hour. 
  Braski and Ropes looked the place over thoroughly before they  entered, or even left their cab. They pretended
  to have made a mistake  in the address, and had the driver take them through the neighboring  streets while
  they sought an imaginary building. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  31
  
  This was to make sure no police patrol cars were parked near by.  They paid off their driver and entered
  Braski's office building by a  back door. 
  The scheming pair prided themselves that they had done an excellent  job of thwarting pursuit. It might have
  shocked more than their pride  had they been able to watch their taxi driver. The latter drove to a  near−by
  street, stopped, and used a telephone in an all−night drug  store. 
  Some minutes later, he was joined by the driver of the first cab  which Braski and Ropes had taken. The
  telephone call had plainly  summoned the latter. 
  The fellow rubbed brown grease paint off his features, spat out a  tremendous wad of gum, and discarded his
  atrocious cigar. He got a thin  black cane off the cab floorboards. He had metamorphosed into Ham, the
  dapper lawyer. 
  The other driver did various things with his appearance and became  the gaunt, bony Johnny. They grinned at
  each other. 
  "We got a break," said Ham. 
  "An irrefutable apothegm," agreed big−worded Johnny. 
  Ham suggested, "Now we'll call Doc." 
  "Propitious thought," said Johnny. 
  BRASKI and Ropes, blissfully unaware of the near−by happenings,  proceeded past numerous scrubwomen
  polishing brass, and surveyed the  corridor outside of Braski's office carefully, after which they  entered, to
  breathe thanks when they found no one there. 
  With great haste, Braski began shuffling through personal papers  which he drew from a large safe. From time
  to time he separated certain  documents from the others and burned them in a large smoking stand.  When the
  office became smoky he opened a window. 
  Ropes, for his part, stood near the door, which had a frosted glass  panel. He inspected the legend thereon. 
  OLIVER ORMAN BRASKI 
  Foreign Sales Agent 
  Ropes grinned at Braski. "Your racket must have gotten plenty of  graft, judging from the number of papers
  you are burning." 
  "It is not bad," Braski agreed. He had recovered some of his  aplomb. 
  A moment later, Braski tossed a sheaf of papers to Ropes. The  latter squinted at the designation typed on the
  front of the file. 
  HEZEMLAH LAW 
  With great interest, Ropes turned to the first page. He studied the  principal entry thereon. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  32
  
  Sold to La Touls, Et Cie, Paris, $53,000.00 
  He turned to the next page, dated only a few days later. 
  Sold to Carlo Bonhomme, Ltd., Antwerp, $71,500.00 
  "The name of the stuff ain't down here," he pointed out. 
  Braski said dryly, "Old Hezemiah Law would have had a pup.  Everything was secret. He didn't want any one
  to know what he had." 
  "Do you blame him?" Ropes chuckled. 
  "He wasn't afraid some one would take over Spook Hole, so much as  he feared the market would go down if
  news of what he had got out,"  Braski explained. 
  "How soon are you gonna be through?" Ropes asked. "The cops may  show up here any minute." 
  "Soon," Braski said. 
  IT was perhaps a minute later that the telephone rang. Brash and  Ropes both started violently, then exchanged
  uneasy glances. 
  "Don't answer it," Ropes advised. 
  Braski hesitated. "Any one calling me this time of night has  something important." He picked up the
  instrument. "Hello. ... Yes,  speaking." 
  He listened intently. His mouth became round. 
  "Yes, yes, of course," he gasped once. "I'd be delighted to help  you. No, we will mention no names. I can
  guess who you are from what  you say. Now, tell me this. ... Can you furnish any information about  Spook
  Hole? ... You can! Excellent! Be right up!" 
  He cracked the receiver on the hook and all but jumped up and down  in his excitement. 
  "Who in blazes was that?" Ropes demanded. 
  "Nancy Law!" Braski shouted. "She didn't give me her name, but I  know it was her." 
  Ropes scowled. "She didn't give you her − " 
  "Oh, she must have been calling from a public telephone where she  didn't want to say too much," Braski
  retorted. "She was only a  stenographer, you know. Probably lived in a rooming house and didn't  have a
  telephone in her room." 
  "Funny she'd call you," Ropes said suspiciously. 
  "Not at all," Braski told him. "She knows Captain Wapp and myself  are enemies, and Wapp is certainly no
  friend of hers. She undoubtedly  wants to throw in with me." 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  33
  
  "That's tough," Ropes grinned. 
  "Isn't it?" Braski laughed. "She knows the location of Spook Hole." 
  They hurried out. 
  THE address which the young woman had given over the telephone  proved to be in the cheaper east side
  residential district. 
  Braski and Ropes entered and eyed the names above the array of call  buttons. 
  NANCY LAW 
  "I told you," chuckled Braski, and rested a thumb on the button. 
  Three flights above, a hall door opened. 
  "Who is it?" a feminine voice called down. 
  "Oliver Orman Braski," said Ropes's companion. 
  "Will you come up, please?" the young woman invited. "First door on  your right." 
  The two men mounted the stairway eagerly, noting by the pale light  that the carpeting was worn. A pale
  red−shaded floor light glowed in  the room behind a young woman who was holding a door open. Only her
  silhouette met their gaze. 
  "Come in," she invited. "You made enough noise on the stairs." 
  She closed the door behind them, then crossed to turn on a brighter  light. At the click of the switch, intense
  white luminance gushed. 
  Braski and Ropes started violently, then looked about as chagrined  as they could. 
  "I would advise you to be very careful," said the young woman. 
  She was not Nancy Law. She was holding a machine−gun pistol which  looked very businesslike. 
  Braski and Ropes glanced at the door. The young woman had not only  locked it, but taken the key. They
  stared at her. 
  She was tall and exquisitely beautiful. But what was more striking,  she had a wealth of hair of a certain
  remarkable bronze hue. She was  entirely too calm for their ease of mind. 
  A closet door opened. Doc Savage came out. Monk, Ham and Johnny  appeared from a tiny kitchenette. 
  "Good work, Pat," Doc Savage told the young woman. 
  Braski snarled at the girl. "You framed me! Told me you were Nancy  Law!" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  34
  
  "I did not," the young woman addressed as Pat retorted dryly. "I  might have led you to believe that, but not
  once did I say outright  that I was Nancy Law. Not that it matters." 
  Ropes was scowling at Ham and Johnny. He began to look slightly  ill. 
  "You two mugs were the taxi drivers!" he croaked. 
  "Nice of you to take the first hacks that came along, wasn't it?"  Ham asked dryly. "Bally convenient for us, I
  will say." 
  Doc Savage addressed the young woman. "Your job is finished, Pat." 
  Pat frowned at him. "Now look here! You rang me into this, and I  stay. I'm dying for some excitement." 
  "I asked you to help us simply because I cannot imitate a woman's  voice with any great success," Doc told
  her. "You promised faithfully  to clear out after you did that. I'm holding you to that promise." 
  Pat looked chagrined, said, "I just love this!" sarcastically, and  tapped high heels out of the room. 
  She was Patricia Savage, cousin of Doc Savage, and she operated one  of the most sumptuous, efficient and
  costly combination beauty parlors  and gymnasiums for women in the metropolis, and she had much of the
  bronze man's liking for excitement. She had aided him on more than one  occasion. 
  ROPES muttered uneasily, "Why not let the dame stick around?" 
  Monk scowled blackly and lumbered over, a giant, apish figure. "So  you've got a hunch what you're in for.
  You think we'd go easier if  there was a woman around?" 
  Ropes was not without brute courage. He moved both hands suddenly.  One went for his taped length of
  hawser. The other stabbed for the  automatic with which he had killed the Harpoon's third mate. 
  Things happened with violent abruptness. Monk struck straight out  with his left fist, hitting Ropes between
  the eyes and blinding him  with pain. 
  The next instant, the burly Ropes draped his midriff over Monk's  furry right fist. He was hardly on the floor
  before he was relieved of  his weapons. Monk stepped on his chest and began to jounce up and down. 
  "You're − mashing − me!" Ropes gurgled. 
  Doc Savage advanced warily and relieved Braski of a small revolver.  The black−haired man offered no
  resistance, nor did he speak. 
  Monk, still standing on Ropes's chest, teetered up and down. The  victim's ribs gave forth ominous sounds. 
  Big−worded Johnny said, "You will induce disseverance of his  virescible anatomy." 
  "I'll induce more than that," Monk growled, then roared at the man  under his feet, "What is this Spook Hole?
  You know that, even if you  don't know where it is." 
  Ropes gargled. Monk got off his chest so that he could talk. But  Ropes only swore wrathfully. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  35
  
  Monk hopped back on his chest. 
  "Tell us what's behind all of this!" he ordered savagely. 
  Doc stood in the background and watched. He knew that Monk was  running a bluff, although a somewhat
  rigorous one. 
  Ropes, the killer, was not entitled to gentle handling, and if he  could be terrorized into talking, that would
  simplify matters.  Furthermore, Monk was enjoying what he was now doing. 
  And if Ropes could not be frightened into speech, there were other  expedients, for instance, a species of truth
  serum, similar to that  tried often by police, but more refined, which Doc himself had  developed, and which
  worked sometimes, although on some occasions it  brought forth only a delirious jumble of statements, from
  which it was  necessary to pick the truth largely by guesswork. 
  The room had a telephone. It rang. Doc scooped the instrument up. 
  Pat's voice, rapid, excited, said, "When I went out, I saw men  acting suspiciously outside. I think − " 
  "Wait!" Doc stopped her. 
  He listened. Daily, he took a scientific exercise calculated to  sharpen his sense of hearing. He caught sounds
  outside of the door. 
  "You're too late," he told Pat. "But thanks." 
  The lock slammed out of the door, propelled by a bullet fired from  the hallway. 
  MONK was surprised into falling off Ropes. The latter tried to get  up. Monk swung a terrific haymaker from
  a sitting position and knocked  Ropes stiffly senseless. 
  Oliver Orman Braski jumped into a corner and got down on all fours,  where random bullets were least likely
  to find him. He was scared,  puzzled, but retained his wits. 
  The door came open. Men did not come in, but a shotgun muzzle did.  It spouted noisily. Two revolvers
  followed it. 
  "I'll be superamalgamated," said the bony Johnny. He casually drew  a machine−gun pistol from under his
  armpit and turned it loose on the  door. Its roar rendered ears insensible to all other sound for the  moment. 
  Then a small object came through the door, hopped to the middle of  the floor and made a popping noise. It
  was tear gas. Doc retreated with  the first smart of it in his eyes. 
  "Fire escape!" he rapped. "We have no masks." 
  The window was stuck. Doc knocked the glass out with a chair.  Simultaneously, Ham extinguished the lights.
  They clambered out on the  fire escape. 
  In the courtyard below a gun flashed, and lead gnashed dust off the  bricks beside them. 
  "Whoever it is has the back covered," Monk growled. "Johnny, your  noisemaker!" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  36
  
  Johnny wielded his machine−gun pistol. Apparently he hit no one,  for he could not see a target in the night,
  but the gunman must have  been scared off. He was not in the court when they swung down the  fire−escape
  ladder. 
  Guns began to crash from the rooming house window. A bundle of  flaming newspapers were tossed out,
  making dangerous light before they  were extinguished by the slow rain. 
  Doc and his three aides found shelter in a back door entry. The  exit from this was locked, stout. It resisted
  their efforts to get  through for more than a minute − the time it took Johnny to find  explosive bullets which
  he substituted for the mercy slugs in his  rapid−firer. These ripped open the door. 
  Their passage through the house beyond was made exciting and hasty  by an irate householder, who turned
  loose liberally with what sounded  like an old−fashioned six−shooter. 
  Reaching the street, they found themselves on the opposite side of  the block from the rooming house. They
  ran for the corner, rounded it,  and sprinted. 
  They sighted the rooming house just in time to observe two large  cars plunging in the opposite direction. 
  Doc's sedan was in an all−night garage two blocks distant. Their  quarry was gone before they reached it. 
  "A fine mess," Monk said disgustedly. 
  A moment later, Patricia Savage came along, obviously searching for  them. 
  "Are we having fun," she said cheerfully. "I suppose, by now, you  boys know what it's all about." 
  "We don't," Monk growled. "We don't even know who pulled that  raid." 
  "They got away while I was trying to find a cab to follow them,"  Pat said. "They had men in their waiting
  cars, so I couldn't hide in  the machines, or anything like that. But I recognized them from what  you had told
  me before." 
  "Is it a secret?" Monk asked. 
  "The raiders were Captain Wapp and his men," Pat advised. 
  AT about the time Pat made her statement, the identity of his  captors was also dawning upon Oliver Orman
  Braski. He was just  recovering from the effects of the tear gas sufficiently to see. He had  not been quite sure
  before. His captors had spoken little. 
  Braski looked at the squat, bulky Captain Wapp, then shut his  streaming eyes as if he had just glimpsed a
  horned devil. 
  "Greetings, vot," said Captain Wapp sourly. "Your neck, Aye should  take in mine two hands and break." 
  Braski wet his lips, said nothing. His entire face was soaked with  the tears which the gas had brought. Even
  his intensely black goatee  was a soggy mass, and from time to time dripped salty water. 
  On the floorboards of the car, Ropes stirred and groaned, just  recovering from the knock−out blow which
  Monk had administered. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  37
  
  Ropes's groan caused Braski to shiver. 
  Captain Wapp scowled at Ropes, then at Braski. 
  "You two bane together," he growled. "Vot for?" 
  Braski felt distinctly cold. Captain Wapp was known as a man of  short temper, and violent when aroused. If
  learning his trusted  henchman Ropes was working hand in hand with Braski did not arouse him,  nothing
  would. 
  Braski held his tongue. 
  Ropes groaned again. Then, for some time, he was silent. He seemed  still senseless. But actually he was
  doing what few men would have had  the presence of mind to do − playing 'possum until he found out how
  things stood. He succeeded. Then he did some thinking. 
  Finally, Ropes emitted an unusually loud groan, put forth an  exaggerated effort and managed to sit up. He
  pretended to see only  Braski. 
  "Damn you!" he yelled. "Where are you taking me now?" 
  Then he glanced around and seemed profoundly surprised when he saw  Captain Wapp. 
  "Gosh!" he exploded, pretending great relief. "So you rescued me!" 
  "Vot monkeyshines is this?" Captain Wapp grunted. 
  "Why," said Ropes, "this crook Braski captured me. Yes, sir,  captain. He captured me and the third mate. We
  tried once to get away,  and the third mate was killed in the fight and I was knocked senseless.  I just now
  woke up." 
  Braski sank back on the car cushions and mumbled with simulated  anger. That was to cover his immense
  relief. Mentally, he complimented  himself on enlisting the aid of so clever an associate as Ropes. 
  "So Braski got you," Captain Wapp grunted, thoroughly deceived.  "Spook Hole, he bane try to find, no?" 
  "Right," Ropes agreed. 
  Captain Wapp glared at Braski. "Them other bummers in dot house,  who they was?" 
  "Doc Savage," Braski said. 
  Captain Wapp shut his eyes and grimaced as if he had tasted  something very bitter. 
  "Aye not sure dot feller would work with bummers like you," he  said. 
  "He wasn't," Braski said promptly. "Doc Savage raided my place and  made me prisoner while I was
  preparing to question Ropes, here, when he  regained consciousness. You showed up in the nick of time to
  save me. I  am grateful for that." 
  "Keep der change," said Captain Wapp. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  38
  
  The cars rolled through the rain and the darkness. 
  IT was Ropes's agile mind which spawned the next suggestion of  importance. 
  "Look," Ropes said. "Spook Hole is rich enough for all of us, ain't  it?" 
  "Braski not sure," said Captain Wapp. 
  "I know." Ropes passed over that. "With this Doc Savage fiddling  around, ain't none of us gonna get nothing
  if we don't watch out." 
  "That's a fact," Braski declared. 
  He had gotten an inkling of what Ropes was approaching. 
  Ropes waited some moments before springing his big suggestion. 
  "Let's all kinda let bygones be bygones," he said slowly. "Pitch in  together. Maybe we can arrange a different
  split. But we'll need all  we've got to get rid of this Savage." 
  Captain Wapp did not favor that much. But Ropes was a good talker.  He pointed out that Doc Savage was
  noted the world over as a Nemesis to  evildoers, a species of superman who seldom failed. He was deftly
  throwing a scare. He got Captain Wapp worried. Then he clinched his  argument. 
  "All right," Captain Wapp agreed finally. "But Aye watch Braski.  One funny move he bane make, and Aye
  take with mine hands his neck and  make with it a loud crack." 
  "I'm shooting square from now on," Braski promised fervently. 
  But a little later, Braski got Ropes aside and queried. "The old  arrangement between us still goes, eh? We get
  Doc Savage. Then we find  out where Spook Hole is, and we get rid of Captain Wapp?" 
  "O. K., by me," Ropes agreed. 
  "Swell," said Braski. "I'll give you better than a third of the  take. I'll make it a half." 
  Ropes, off by himself a bit later, muttered over that last bit of  generosity. 
  "A half!" he growled. "And me with a brain like mine." 
  "Vot say?" asked Captain Wapp, who had seen the lip movement. 
  "I was tryin' to tell myself some way we can dispose of Doc  Savage," Ropes lied. 
  "Goot," said Wapp. "Aye bane hope you tell to yourself one goot  scheme. Then tell her to me." 
  Ropes nodded, then continued talking to himself, this time without  moving his lips. 
  "Half!" he sneered. "And me with my brains. I'll have the whole  works − once we get this Doc Savage. I
  wonder where the heck that  bronze guy is now?" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter V. TWO HEADS
  39
  
  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  DOC SAVAGE was saying, "We will go to headquarters, get dry  clothing, and work out some kind of a
  plan." 
  "And get my pet hog, Habeas," Monk added. 
  "Ugh!" Ham shuddered, as he always did when Habeas was mentioned. 
  "What about calling Long Tom?" Monk asked. 
  "Commendable advocation," said big−worded Johnny. 
  Doc did not reply. 
  "Long Tom" was Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard  extraordinary, and another of Doc Savage's
  aides. Long Tom had not yet  appeared for the simple reason that he had been delivering, that night,  an
  informative lecture to a Congressional committee in Washington. 
  The committee was one interested in the eradication of insects  injurious to farm crops, and Long Tom
  believed he had perfected a  device, utilizing ultra−short electro−sonic waves, which would kill  insects
  without harming other living organisms. 
  "Long Tom is due back in New York about this time," Monk continued. 
  Doc still did not speak, and Monk, after waiting patiently for some  comment, sighed and said, "Well, Renny
  is going to miss this. He'll  hate that." 
  "Renny" was Colonel John Renwick, famous civil engineer, at present  engaged in a railway building project
  in a remote Asian province. He  was the fifth member of Doc's group. 
  Doc Savage stopped the sedan, and glanced at Pat. The bronze−haired  young woman looked out. Then she
  made a belligerent jaw. 
  "Going to get rid of me after all?" she snapped. 
  She had discovered that they were in front of the beauty  establishment which she operated. She frowned at
  the elaborately  modernistic front of the place as if it were the last thing she had  wanted to see. 
  There was some argument. There was always argument when any one  tried to get Pat away from some
  excitement. But her present verbal tilt  with Doc Savage terminated as they usually did. She lost, and they
  unloaded her. 
  DOC SAVAGE did not drive directly to his headquarters, but went  first to the sumptuous bachelor quarters
  which Ham maintained in an  exclusive club. Ham wanted to select fresh raiment from the astounding  array of
  suits which he maintained. Then they drove to the headquarters  structure. 
  Many persons knew that Doc Savage had some type of establishment on  the eighty−sixth floor of what was
  certainly the most impressive  skyscraper in the metropolis. 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  40
  
  Not so many knew, however, that the place held a laboratory which  for completeness and modernity could be
  rivaled by only one other, this  latter also the property of Doc Savage, but located in some remote  corner of
  the globe which he called his "Fortress of Solitude," the  whereabouts of which none but himself, not even his
  five aides, knew. 
  To this "Fortress of Solitude," Doc Savage retired at long  intervals for study and experimentation, and on
  such occasions even his  aides did not know where he was or how to reach him. 
  As for the New York skyscraper aërie, it also held a library of  scientific volumes, a collection of tomes as
  nearly up−to−date as it  could possibly be kept. The outer door bore the simple designation, in  small bronze
  letters: 
  Clark Savage, Jr. 
  The door had no keyhole, knob, or other evidence of a lock. It was  secured by a device actuated by a small
  radioactive token. These tokens  were carried by Doc and his aides, and by Pat Savage, but by no one  else. 
  They had but merely to approach the door, and the tokens reacted on  a device similar to an ordinary
  electroscope, this apparatus opening  the door mechanically. 
  The door opened, and Doc entered. He stopped and frowned at the  occupant of the outer reception room. 
  "But we just got rid of you," he said dryly. 
  Pat Savage wrinkled an attractive nose at him. "I'm in on this,  now." 
  "You are not," Doc told her. "We settled that." 
  "You're sunk," Pat retorted. "You have no idea what this is all  about. You have no clues to go on. You don't
  even know what Spook Hole  is. You're sunk." 
  "We'll start swimming again, directly," Doc told her. 
  "I have a life preserver," Pat said archly. 
  "Yes?" Doc studied her. "What is it?" 
  "Am I in on this excitement or not?" demanded Pat. 
  "You wouldn't hold information out on us," Doc queried. 
  "Wouldn't I!" Pat laughed sarcastically. "For ten cents, a thin  dime, I'd take my life preserver and jump into
  this and try to clean it  up myself. It sounds very interesting, with whaling ships, mysterious  one−armed men
  who aren't one−armed, Spook Holes and something worth a  lot of money, and what not." 
  Doc did not comment on that. He knew Pat. Possibly she was not  bluffing. She was capable of starting her
  own campaign. The bronze man  let out a long breath. In the final analysis, Pat was handy to have  around. 
  "You're with us," he consented. "But I'll remember this coercion." 
  "Swell!" Pat opened the library door. "May I present my life  preserver." 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  41
  
  Nancy Law came out of the library. 
  "She showed up at my beauty salon," Pat explained. "She was hunting  you." 
  MONK, who had heard the whole exchange, grinned at Pat, and said,  "Feminine guile, I calls it." 
  Nancy Law, for her part, was staring at Monk and Ham as if they  were apparitions. Surprise detracted no whit
  from her unusual, blended  beauty. More striking than ever was the combination of aureate honey  tint of her
  skin and hair. 
  "You two were Doc Savage's men!" she gasped. "Why, back at the  whaling ship, I thought you were working
  with Braski." 
  Monk jerked a contemptuous thumb at Ham. "That was a lie this  shyster thought up. He ain't got any sense.
  Providing for his wife and  thirteen children has made him half−witted." 
  "That's a lie!" Ham snapped indignantly. "All he said was a lie." 
  It was not the first time Monk had told an attractive young woman  that Ham had the wife and offspring of
  unlucky numbers. Monk did that  regularly. The fact that it was absolutely untrue, that Ham had never  been
  married, seemed to concern Monk not at all. 
  "You mistake of nature!" Ham grated at Monk. 
  Doc Savage interrupted the beginning of a quarrel that might have  continued for hours. 
  "Just how much do you know about this mystery?" he asked Nancy Law.  "First, who is Hezemiah Law?" 
  "My only living relative," Nancy Law said promptly. "An uncle." 
  "You were seeking me for what reason?" Doc queried. 
  "I've heard about you," the girl replied. "You help people who are  in trouble. I seem to be in trouble." 
  THE others gathered around, greatly interested in what Nancy Law  had to reveal. Pat, however, remained in
  the background, and the  expression on her features was the one commonly associated with  Cheshire cats. 
  Doc asked Nancy Law, "Where is Spook Hole?" 
  "I don't know," said Nancy Law. 
  "What is it?" Doc queried. 
  "I don't know," replied Nancy Law. 
  "What is this mysterious thing that Braski, Captain Wapp and the  others are after?" 
  "I don't know." 
  "Exacerbative sciolist in cognoscence," said Johnny. 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  42
  
  "Eh?" Nancy Law eyed him. "Come again with that." 
  "He wants to know what you do know," Doc offered. 
  "Practically nothing," said Nancy Law. "I am − was − a  stenographer. Probably I've had my pay stopped by
  now. A week ago,  Captain Wapp came to my rooming house, pointed a gun at me, made me  stick my face in
  a towel soaked with something that put me to sleep. I  woke up on the whaling ship. I've been there since." 
  Doc questioned, "No idea why you were seized?" 
  "Oh, yes." She nodded vehemently. "That was to keep this man named  Braski from getting in touch with me." 
  "How long since you have seen your uncle, Hezemiah Law?" Doc  queried. 
  "Months," said the girl. 
  "What was his profession?" 
  "Ichthyology," the girl answered. 
  Monk glanced at Johnny. "Make little words out of that one," he  requested. 
  "The man studied fishes," said Johnny. 
  "He was an expert on them." Nancy Law shook her head dubiously. "He  must have made some money out of
  it, but I don't see how." 
  Doc demanded, "What makes you think that?" 
  "The last time Hezemiah came to see me, about seven months ago, he  had a foreign car so long it could
  barely turn the corners," explained  Nancy Law. "Moreover, he had a chauffeur and a flunky to open doors,
  both of them about seven feet tall with Indian faces and admirals'  uniforms. He gave me five thousand
  dollars. He said the Indians were  Patagonians." 
  She hesitated, studied Doc Savage, then took a breath. 
  "I thought he was crazy," she said. "I put the money in a bank. I  am afraid something has happened to Uncle
  Hezemiah, or is about to  happen. I'll pay you part of that five thousand, or all of it, to look  into this." 
  Doc Savage shook his head slightly. 
  Nancy Law gasped, "You mean you won't help − " 
  "Doc never takes money for his services," Monk interposed. "That's  what he meant." 
  Nancy Law looked at the giant bronze man. "You're a queer guy." 
  "You haven't started to find out the queer things about him," Pat  told her dryly. 
  A sudden, arresting whining sound filled the room. 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  43
  
  WHEN the sound first came, Nancy Law started violently. It was  nerve wracking, that note. 
  "What is it?" she demanded. 
  "Prowler alarm," Monk told her. 
  Doc Savage went to an apparently solid section of the paneled wall,  did something to what seemed only a
  whorl in the wood, and a large  cabinet opened. 
  This held the high−frequency buzzer which was making the noise, and  numerous indicators, not unlike those
  used in large residences to show  whether the front or back doorbell is ringing. One indicator was  tripped. It
  bore a label. 
  Fire Escape Shaft 
  Doc, all of his aides, started for the doorway together. 
  "Watch the Law girl!" Doc told Pat. 
  "Aw," Pat said disgustedly, and turned back. 
  The skyscraper, in common with such structures, did not have an  outside fire escape, but obtained the same
  effect by employing an  enclosed shaft, fireproof, lined with steps. 
  Doc Savage was far in the lead of the others as they reached the  shaft. Once inside, he whipped glances about
  and roved the beam of a  flashlight. The place was white, immaculate. 
  The only thing unusual which his light picked up was a twisted pair  of insulated copper wires. These led from
  above to some spot below. 
  Monk lunged up the stairs with ungainly speed. An instant later he  was back. He covered ground with
  remarkable facility for such a  clumsy−looking fellow. 
  "Wires run to a small parabolic microphone which some one put on  the window sill outside of our reception
  room window," he barked. 
  "Eavesdropper!" Ham clipped. 
  They lunged down the fire escape stairway, seeking the spot to  which the wires led. 
  "The guy, whoever he is, must have come up to look over the wire  connections," Monk roared. "That set off
  our burglar alarm." 
  The twisted pair of wires could hardly have been said to be  installed − they were merely draped down the
  stairway, secured here and  there with a bit of black electrician's tape. They led out of the shaft  and into the
  open door of a closet which held electric floor scrubbers  and other cleaning paraphernalia. 
  There was no one in the little cubby−hole. 
  MONK eyed a very modern amplifier and headset which the  eavesdropper had, in his haste, left in the place.
  This apparatus  served the same purpose as the old style dictograph, but was more  sensitive. 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  44
  
  "The bird heard us when the alarm went off," Monk said disgustedly.  "He blew." 
  The find had taken only flash parts of seconds. Doc Savage seemed  scarcely to interrupt his swift movement.
  He continued on and up the  stairway. 
  When this extremely modern skyscraper had been erected, not many  years before, Doc Savage had taken a
  considerable part in its design.  As a matter of fact, the architectural drawings had been prepared by  his
  colleague, Renny. 
  Numerous provisions for Doc Savage's special needs had been made,  including a special elevator which
  operated at a speed that the  building inspectors would have considered suicidal. 
  Doc and his aides entered the lift. So sudden was its drop when the  control lever was thrown that they seemed
  to stand in thin air and fall  for some sixty stories, after which the braking effect pulled two of  the men, Ham
  and Johnny, to their hands and knees. 
  The lobby door of the elevator was a panel which, for convenience,  and to prevent casual patrons of the
  building from trying to use it,  presented the aspect of a mere wall panel. 
  Elevator operators were still on duty at this hour, since there was  a night club on one of the upper floors.
  They recognized the bronze man  and showed some excitement. 
  "Did any one just come down in a hurry?" Doc demanded. 
  "That way," said an operator, and pointed. 
  The bronze man flashed outside. To the right, he saw his quarry. 
  There was no mistake. The man was almost under a street light, just  getting into a parked coupé. He was lean
  and had a weathered face. He  wore colored glasses and his raincoat collar was turned up, making
  identification of his features almost impossible. But one  characteristic was plain. 
  The man seemed to have only one arm. 
  A TAXICAB was cruising across the street, bound in a direction  opposite that in which the one−armed man's
  roadster was headed. Doc  lunged for the hack. 
  The one−armed man dived into his roadster. The engine was running  already, judging from the abruptness of
  the take−off. The car took the  first corner on two wheels, disappeared. 
  If the one−armed man's escape motions clicked perfectly, Doc  Savage's efforts to commandeer the taxicab
  did not. The driver of the  hack must have been a very suspicious soul indeed. 
  He saw Doc racing across the street, Monk, Ham and Johnny charging  wildly at his heels. Possibly Monk's
  apish appearance frightened the  driver. 
  The fellow knocked his hack out of gear, yanked on the emergency  brake, and let the stopping swing of his
  hack pitch him through the  door. He lit running. 
  "Hey, you!" Monk roared. 
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  Chapter VI. THE ONE−ARMED ENIGMA
  45
  
  If it was possible, the driver ran faster. 
  "Blast him!" Monk snorted. "Well, we'll borrow his hack." 
  They plunged into the machine confidently. Doc started a hand for  the switch, stopped it. 
  "Driver took the key," he said quietly. 
  "Wire around the switch!" Monk exploded. 
  Doc whipped out of the cab. "Take too long. That type of switch  locks the transmission as well." 
  They spent two full minutes in a vain search for another cab. Then  Doc turned back toward the skyscraper. 
  "No use," he advised. "That fellow got away." 
  Back in the reception room, the bronze man asked Nancy Law a  question. 
  "Do you know anything about a mysterious one−armed man, who really  has two arms?" 
  "Eh?" The young woman looked puzzled. "I don't get this." 
  "He wears one arm strapped to his side, probably for purposes of  disguise," Doc explained. 
  She shook her head. "I never saw him. I never heard of him." 
  Monk said, "I guess the only thing for us to do is start snooping  around that Harpoon ship again." 
  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  MONK'S suggestion concerning the whaling ship Harpoon was an  obvious one, so obvious that the
  possibility had occurred to Captain  Wapp. That worthy was taking measures. 
  Captain Wapp sat in his cabin, played with his knife which was also  a pistol, and from time to time gave his
  rope belt a hitch. He wore an  intent expression. 
  Successively, men entered the cabin. Sharp questions were put to  them. Frequently, Captain Wapp or Oliver
  Orman Braski stepped out to  the pier head telephone to make a call. These calls, in a manner, were  to check
  the credentials of the men being interviewed. 
  The men passing through Captain Wapp's cabin had hard faces and  hard manners. Some of them were
  seafarers. Others did not know a  scupper from a binnacle. But they all had one quality in common. They  were
  hard and had no scruples. 
  Oliver Orman Braski and Captain Wapp had certain connections with  the underworld, and they were
  recruiting fresh blood to their cause. 
  To each prospective addition to the gang, Captain Wapp made one  statement. 'We are going up against Doc
  Savage." 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  46
  
  Two out of every three of the prospects walked out of the cabin at  that news, and left the Harpoon in great
  haste. 
  "Savage bane have big rep'," Captain Wapp said dryly. 
  "You can't blame those fellows for playing it safe," Braski  mumbled. "They're only getting fifty dollars a
  day." 
  Not all of the recruits professed fear of the bronze man. A certain  gentleman named simply, so he said, Sass,
  was a typical sample. He was  asked his full name. 
  "Sass," he growled. "You want something to call me. Make it Sass.  To hell with the rest. I heard you were
  payin' fifty a day for guns." 
  "Who bane tell you dot?" asked Captain Wapp. 
  Sass gave the names and telephone numbers of two men on the current  list of public enemies, and Braski
  went out to check by telephone. 
  "You bane shoot a man, ever?" Captain Wapp asked. 
  "Hell of a question," Sass snorted. "I'm here, ain't I? I said I  wasn't scared of Doc Savage, didn't I? Do I get
  on, or don't I?" 
  He was most uninviting to look at, this Sass. He did not have the  height of an ordinary man, nor did he seem
  to have the muscular  development of even an invalid. 
  His skin was yellowish, and his thin hair was entirely missing from  a patch or two on his head, as if he were a
  victim of the mange. Two  incredibly large and yellow gold teeth did not help his evil grin. 
  From time to time, he dipped a hand into a pocket and brought out  dark brown flakes of something, which he
  popped into his mouth. 
  CAPTAIN Wapp surveyed the other's puny physique with some doubt. 
  "Don't think you could stand the gaff," he said. "We need men." 
  "Yeah?" Sass moved suddenly, and before Captain Wapp knew what was  happening, he was yanked out of
  his chair, relieved of his gun knife,  and slammed flat on the cabin floor. 
  Agony lashed through his frame as Sass tweaked muscles and yanked  various joints. Captain Wapp was
  entirely helpless. 
  Then Sass stepped back and asked, "What do you think now?" 
  Captain Wapp got slowly to his feet, and said, "Dot wasn't so bad." 
  Then he drove out a fist which caught Sass squarely between the  eyes. Sass all but went head over heels, and
  hit the floor heavily. He  lay there, dazed. 
  "Vot you say now?" Captain Wapp asked sourly. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  47
  
  Oliver Orman Braski came in. 
  "This man checks O. K.," he said. "He was a flyweight wrestler  until he killed a man in a match and got sent
  to the penitentiary." 
  Captain Wapp eyed Sass. "Still want der job?" 
  "O. K. by me," Sass said from the floor. 
  He reached into his pocket, drew out some of the brown flakes, and  flipped them inside his mouth. His face
  convulsed from pain as he  started to chew, but he went through with it. He even added a fresh  supply of the
  brown stuff. 
  Captain Wapp indicated the brown material and asked, "Vot it is?" 
  "Sassafras bark," said Sass. "I like it. That's why they call me  Sass." 
  "Git out," directed Captain Wapp. "And one more time you lay a hand  on me, and your neck Aye bane
  wring." 
  "Aye, Aye, sir," said Sass, with an exaggerated salute. He went out  singing: 
  "I'm a sailor, by heckety−heck, 
  I'll swab yer bloomin' deck, 
  I'll climb yer blasted mast. 
  But show me, it might be best, 
  Which is the blasted mast, 
  And which is the bloomin' deck." 
  "Probably bane goot man," said Captain Wapp. 
  They called in the next prospect. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP and Oliver Orman Braski were not alone in their  preparations for strife. Monk, in Doc
  Savage's skyscraper  establishment, was assembling his portable chemical laboratory, a thing  unique in its
  type, containing ingredients from which the homely  chemist could concoct an amazing variety of surprises. 
  In odd moments, Monk was devoting attention to pretty Nancy Law. He  had an eye for attractive young
  women, did Monk. He had also perfected  a technique. This revolved around his pet pig, Habeas Corpus. 
  Like Monk, Habeas was about as homely as he could be. He had legs  of amazing length and ears of fantastic
  size. In comparison with these  parts, the rest of his anatomy was negligible. 
  Internally, he had a remarkable brain; and Habeas had been trained  long and carefully by Monk. He knew
  innumerable tricks, including a  special assortment Monk had taught him for getting the attention of  attractive
  young women. 
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  48
  
  Habeas would walk up to the young lady, stop, sit down, extend his  huge ears and look intrigued. 
  "Oh, my," he would say. "I wish Santa Claus would leave something  like you in my stocking." 
  It would not be Habeas speaking, of course, but it would sound so,  for Monk was a skilled ventriloquist. 
  That usually broke the ice, and put Monk on the inside, invariably  to the disgust of Ham, who was undeniably
  handsome, a remarkable  dresser, and not without amorous leanings. 
  Monk and Habeas had just put on their act, and were progressing  amazingly with Nancy Law. Ham tried to
  interrupt. 
  "Pardon me," he addressed Monk ironically. "But could you tell me  where Doc went?" 
  "Away," Monk said airily. "Hence and maybe yon. He didn't tell me  which, and that was some time ago. Can
  I be of further service, little  Lord Fauntleroy?" 
  "You hairy baboon!" Ham gritted. 
  "Shyster!" Monk howled. 
  "I'll cut you open and stuff that hog in you!" Ham yelled. 
  "Try it!" Monk bawled. "I'll tie knots in your windpipe!" 
  "Oh, goodness!" Nancy Law glanced anxiously at Pat. 
  "Let 'em eat each other," Pat advised. "They've been at it for  years." 
  Doc Savage came in, said, "At it again, eh?" without either humor  or censure, and seated himself at the large
  inlaid table which was the  principal article of furniture in the reception room. 
  "Have you accomplished anything?" Ham asked. 
  Doc shrugged. "Too early to tell." He nodded at Nancy Law. "I have  something I want you to do." 
  She came over eagerly. "Of course." 
  "Have you any way of getting in touch with your uncle, Hezemiah  Law?" the bronze man asked. 
  Nancy Law, after hesitating, nodded. "Well, yes. He told me that if  I ever needed him, I was to send him a
  cable to Blanca Garde." 
  "Where's Blanca Garde?" Monk asked. 
  "Patagonia," the girl replied. 
  Ham told Monk nastily, "Patagonia is on the south end of South  America." 
  "I know where it is," Monk retorted. "I been there. But I never  heard of Blanca Garde." 
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  49
  
  "It is not much of a town," Nancy Law interposed. "I looked it up  on the map. It must be the jumping−off
  place for nowhere." 
  THERE was an all−night cable office adjacent to the skyscraper and  they all went down while Nancy Law
  filed the cablegram which Doc Savage  dictated. 
  "Just Blanca Garde is all the address he gave me," Nancy Law  explained. 
  "Probably has arrangements there for delivery," Doc said. The  bronze man seemed thoughtful, as if
  something had just occurred to him.  It would have taken a close observer to note this. Doc rarely showed  his
  thoughts, then only to a microscopic degree. 
  The filed message read: 
  HEZEMIAH LAW 
  BLANCA GARDE S A 
  AM BEING MOLESTED BY MEN NAMED CAPTAIN WAPP AND OLIVER ORMAN BRASKI  STOP
  SURE THEY ARE PLOTTING AGAINST YOU STOP WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT AND  CAN YOU HELP
  ME 
  NANCY 
  "'Being molested' is a mild way of putting it," Monk said dryly. 
  "Why didn't you want me to say you were interested?" Nancy Law  asked Doc Savage. 
  "There is something mysterious about the whole affair," Doc told  her. "Hezemiah Law might not divulge
  information which he thought would  get to me. You don't mind, do you?" 
  Nancy Law hesitated, then said "Not at all." 
  They left the cable office. The night was still very dark. It had  stopped raining, but there was a dull fog in the
  air. 
  Possibly the fog accounted for Doc Savage failing to glimpse a man  watching them with binoculars from an
  office window in the same block.  It would almost have taken foreknowledge of the man's position to see  him,
  anyway. He was very careful about his concealment. 
  Doc and his party returned to the eighty−sixth floor establishment.  Doc entered the laboratory. Part of the
  unusual equipment there was a  radio transmitter of great range and power. 
  He seated himself before its innumerable switches and dials and  began calling one of the large South
  American relay stations. 
  "Huh?" Monk gulped. "What's the idea?" 
  "It was better to send the cablegram through the usual channels,"  Doc said. "It saved some argument,
  although I might have gotten it  through personally. Too, I was not sure I could secure information this  way." 
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  50
  
  "What are you trying to do?" Monk wanted to know. 
  "Find out if Hezemiah Law is in Blanca Garde," Doc replied. "And if  he is not, it might help to know how
  soon our cablegram can be  delivered to him." 
  THE bronze man then spent fully half an hour in radiotelegraphic  and telephonic communication with the
  South American relay stations.  Some of the more distant work was conducted with the headphones, so  that
  the others did not hear what was being received. All of Doc's  aides were expert radiotelegraph operators. 
  Doc put down the headphones finally. 
  "Well?" Monk queried eagerly. 
  "Strange," Doc said. 
  "What is?" 
  "The method by which the Blanca Garde cable station is to deliver  any messages to Hezemiah Law," said the
  bronze man. 
  "Yeah?" Monk waited, mouth open. 
  "The messages are simply to be rebroadcast by radio telephone at  six o'clock each morning from Blanca
  Garde," Doc explained. "In other  words, Hezemiah Law is a figure of mystery in Blanca Garde. He appears
  there frequently, always in an airplane. No one knows where he comes  from, or where he goes to. The spot
  may be anywhere within five hundred  miles of Blanca Garde. That is the range of the local radiophone
  transmitter." 
  "Anybody down there know anything about Spook Hole?" Monk asked. 
  "No one," Doc replied. "Spook Hole is still a puzzle." 
  "So Hezemiah Law gets his messages at six o'clock." Monk went to  the window and stared out. "It's not far
  from that now. Sun is  beginning to show." 
  MONK'S squat figure bulked large in the window. The man with the  binoculars in the office window far
  below managed to make it out,  although the angle was very steep. He scowled and stowed the binoculars  in a
  pocket. 
  "Reckon I might as well be doing things," he grunted. 
  The office was dark, empty of furniture, and the door lock had  obviously been broken open. Not until the
  man ventured out on the dim  street was his identity discernible. 
  He wore a disguise of sorts, a tan waterproof topcoat, a trick  mustache which stuck to his lip with adhesive,
  and a soft hat with the  brim snapped low. 
  The disguise would hardly have fooled any one who knew him and gave  him a second glance. It was Ropes,
  he of the hawser weapon. 
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  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  51
  
  Ropes used more than his average amount of caution as he eased out  into the street, sought a drug store which
  was open at this unearthly  hour, and made a call. He got Captain Wapp on the wire. 
  "They went into a cable office and the girl sent a message," Ropes  explained. 
  "You bane get copy of it," Wapp directed. 
  "Sure, I just walk in and the telegraph people will give it to me,"  Ropes growled. "They will, like hell!" 
  Captain Wapp thought that over. Then, speaking the singing tones  peculiar to his accent, he began explaining
  a plan. It involved the aid  of the girl friend of one of his men. 
  It was a good plan, so much better than anything that Ropes had  been able to think up, that Ropes terminated
  the conversation with  considerable new respect for bulky Captain Wapp. 
  The upshot of the scheme was that the telephone rang in the cable  office some time later. The clerk answered
  it and heard a businesslike  feminine voice speaking. 
  "This is Nancy Law, the young woman who just filed a cablegram  there," said the voice. "I either forgot to
  keep a copy of the message,  or I lost it somewhere. Will you please arrange to have a copy made for  me." 
  The clerk had no way of knowing this was the voice of a woman  enlisted for the moment by Captain Wapp.
  Cable attendants are  ordinarily very careful about showing copies of telegrams filed with  them, but this
  seemed entirely aboveboard. 
  "I will make a copy," said the clerk. "Shall I send it up to Doc  Savage's office? I noticed you were with Doc
  Savage when you filed the  message." 
  "Make the copy," requested the feminine voice. "I will send a man  down for it, a man with a mustache and
  wearing a yellow waterproof  topcoat." 
  A FEW minutes later, Ropes walked in and got a copy of Nancy Law's  cablegram. He took it to Captain
  Wapp. Braski and Wapp held a  discussion. 
  "Der milk bane spilled!" Captain Wapp groaned. 
  "No chance of taking old Hezemiah Law by surprise now," Braski  wailed. 
  "It's a hell of a note," Ropes contributed. 
  They talked pro and con. Braski and Wapp talked, rather, while  Ropes sat back and considered. Ropes's brain
  hatched a scheme. 
  "I got an idea," he said. 
  "Maybe we had better call the men in while we make plans," Braski  suggested. "Things might go smoother." 
  "Not much," Ropes snorted. "We don't know yet just how straight  these new guys are gonna shoot. There's
  one wise guy been giving  everybody a lot of lip. He's the one that calls himself Sass." 
  Captain Wapp felt of the spots where Sass had taken hold of him.  The spots still ached. He growled, "Yah!" 
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  Chapter VII. THE PATAGONIA CABLE
  52
  
  Ropes beckoned them together and began to talk. 
  "We'll keep an eye on this Doc Savage," he commenced. 
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  IT was nearly noon. Doc Savage was missing again. It worried Monk  to the point where he was even
  neglecting to cultivate pretty Nancy  Law. The homely chemist took turns about the skyscraper laboratory,
  weaving among stands holding intricate scientific apparatus. 
  The pig, Habeas Corpus, trailed Monk around, keeping not more than  six inches from Monk's heels.
  Occasionally, Habeas grunted. Habeas knew  when Monk was perturbed. 
  "This is the second time Doc has ducked out without tellin' anybody  what he was up to," Monk complained. 
  Ham was taking advantage of Monk's neglect of Nancy Law to advance  his own cause. He looked up from
  this agreeable occupation. 
  "Maybe Doc is hunting Long Tom," he suggested. 
  Monk shook his head doubtfully. A bit earlier, he had telephoned  Long Tom's quarters − a miserly room off a
  gloomy basement laboratory  where Long Tom conducted his experiments; an extremely lowly  environment,
  considering that Long Tom was probably several times a  millionaire in his own right. 
  There had been no answer from the electrical wizard who was a  valued member of Doc's group. 
  "I'll try to phone Long Tom again," Monk said. 
  But before he had time to do this, Doc Savage appeared. The giant  bronze man was immaculate and fresh,
  showing no traces of the previous  night's violent activity. 
  "Where's Long Tom?" Monk demanded. "Have you seen him?" 
  "I have not seen him," Doc replied. 
  Monk groaned, "I hope nothin's happened to him. What've you been  doing?" 
  Instead of answering that, Doc Savage went into the library, sought  an open space among the shelves of
  books which he commonly used for the  purpose, and opened a case of rather unusual devices. He began
  taking  his exercises. 
  This exercise routine was one the bronze man took each twenty−four  hours, without fail. He had been taking
  them since childhood, and each  day, they ran approximately two hours. 
  The routine was scientific, intense, and accounted for the bronze  man's unusual development of muscles and
  senses. There were  contrivances, highly scientific in nature, calculated to develop ears,  eyes, olfactory
  organs, even the sense of touch. 
  Monk watched Doc go into the routine. The homely chemist had seen  it many scores of times, and it
  invariably made him perspire.  Personally, Monk never took any exercises, depending on the rigorous  life
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  53
  
  which he led to keep him in trim, which it did quite effectively. 
  "What've you been doing, Doc?" he asked again. 
  "Learning things," Doc told him. 
  "Yeah?" Monk looked interested. "What?" 
  "The Harpoon crowd has us covered," Doc advised. 
  "What do you mean?" 
  "Telephone wires tapped," Doc replied. "Men watching the entrances  and exits of this building." 
  "The vipers!" Monk grinned wryly, and scratched his nubbin of a  head. "Good thing I didn't get Long Tom on
  the wire and thus tip that  Harpoon crowd off to where he was. But I do wish that electrical  buzzsaw would
  show up." He paused, frowned. "What are we gonna do about  them guys covering us downstairs?" 
  "We will let them alone for two hours or so, until they begin to  feel they are undiscovered and quite clever,"
  Doc said. "Taking them  will then be more simple." 
  The bronze man went on with his exercises. He was now listening  intently to a device which was not making
  any sounds that Monk could  catch, but which was evidently putting out some which Doc could hear. 
  Monk knew the apparatus was one which emanated sound waves above  and below the so−called audible
  spectrum. By practicing with it for  years, Doc Savage had developed his ear mechanism to a remarkable
  degree. 
  The telephone rang. Doc Savage whipped to the instrument. The voice  which came out of the receiver was
  drably businesslike, but utterly  mechanical. 
  "We have a cable for Nancy Law," said the voice. "May we speak to  her?" 
  DOC SAVAGE showed no visible excitement as he asked, "Who is  calling, please?" 
  "The South American Cables Corporation," replied the emotionless  voice. It was just such a tone and delivery
  as might have come from  reading thousands of messages over a telephone. 
  Doc let a moment lapse, to give the impression that he might be  consulting with Nancy Law. 
  "Miss Law will send a man down for the message," he said. 
  "The same man who came for the copy of the one she sent?" the voice  asked. 
  For the briefest of moments, Doc Savage's strange trilling sound,  the vague, unconscious note which was his
  characteristic reaction to  mental stress, saturated the vicinity of the telephone. 
  "What was that?' he asked. "What other man?" 
  "Miss Law sent a man after a copy of the cable which she filed  earlier," the voice explained. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  54
  
  "Describe the man," Doc requested. 
  The emotionless voice rattled off a fair enough description of the  burly Ropes. 
  "Thank you," Doc Savage said. "And hold the cablegram which you now  have for Nancy Law. Do not read it
  to any one over the telephone. I  shall be down after it." 
  The bronze man pronged the receiver. 
  "They were clever enough to get a copy of the message we sent to  Hezemiah Law," he told Nancy Law. "And
  an answer seems to have come  from Hezemiah Law. I am going down after it. The rest of you stay  here." 
  Monk promptly looked worried. 
  "They'll lay for you, Doc," he predicted. "You said they had the  wire tapped. They'll have heard you say you
  were coming down after the  message." 
  Doc Savage seemed not to have heard, although Monk knew very well  that he had. 
  THE bronze man now left the eighty−sixth floor headquarters, but by  a somewhat unusual route. He went
  into the laboratory room and  approached a glass affair somewhat resembling an enormous goldfish  bowl. 
  This held a number of extremely voracious−looking fish, finny  specimens, several of which seemed
  composed mostly of teeth. There was  a sign on the aquarium. 
  THESE FISH ARE POISONOUS 
  SPECIES. KEEP AWAY! 
  A peculiar thing about the bowl was that it appeared to be built up  from the composition floor, the floor
  forming part of the bottom. Any  one hunting a secret exit from the laboratory would not have given the  thing
  a second glance. 
  Doc Savage touched a valve. Water level in the fish tank sank some  six inches. Doc vaulted atop the rim and
  lifted a glass cover over a  circular glass tube more than three feet in diameter which extended up  in the
  middle, and due to the carefully designed optical illusion which  had entered its construction, was almost
  impossible to detect when the  tank was full. 
  Doc passed down the tube and into a metal shaft which had a ladder.  The hole in the floor of the fish globe
  was concealed by a method known  to most magicians, and involving the clever placing of mirrors. 
  The shaft gave admission to a tiny elevator, hardly accommodating  more than one man. This sank
  soundlessly for many stories, stopping  finally deep underground. Doc stepped into a narrow tunnel. He
  followed  this some fifty yards. 
  Some moments later, an individual in greasy overalls and bent over  from the weight of a grimy tool case,
  stepped from a tool locker in a  near−by subway station. In appearance, he differed little from workmen
  commonly seen in subways, except that he was very large physically. 
  It would have taken a close observer to discover that the workman  was Doc Savage. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  55
  
  STILL carrying his box of tools, Doc Savage mounted to the street,  coming out only a block from the
  gigantic building which housed his  headquarters. He stood on a corner, ostensibly waiting for a street  car. His
  flake−gold eyes roved alertly. 
  The rain had turned to fine, shotty snow, and it was cold. Rain of  the night before was freezing in the gutters,
  and the hard snow  particles hit the metal tool box which Doc carried, making distinct  sounds, tinny and
  metallic. 
  The bronze man changed his position, as if impatient, and walked to  the other end of the block. This was so
  that he could survey the  vicinity more thoroughly. 
  He saw no sign of men from the Harpoon. He showed no visible  concern, but this was not what he had
  expected. 
  A few minutes later, Doc Savage, still the personification of a  subway workman of somewhat sullen mien,
  walked into the cable office  and asked for Nancy Law's message. 
  "No message for any Miss Law," said the clerk, somewhat sharply. 
  Doc, thinking the fellow might have some doubts about delivering  the message to a person of his present
  disreputable appearance,  disclosed his identity. The attitude of the clerk underwent a profound  change. But he
  stuck to his previous story. 
  "No reply to Miss Law's cable," he insisted. 
  "But one of the clerks telephoned me," Doc said. 
  The attendant went back and questioned those on duty with him, only  to return shaking his head. 
  "No one telephoned you," he said. 
  Doc Savage left the cable office with some haste. He was disgusted,  puzzled, although it could not be told
  from his appearance. His life,  entirely perilous, had led him to exercise great caution always, to  suspect
  everything, to analyze every happening for traces of a plot. 
  It was not often that he was taken in. But he had been tricked this  time − drawn out of his headquarters for
  some motive not yet apparent. 
  Since none of the Harpoon's crew were to be seen, Doc returned to  the eighty−sixth floor of the skyscraper by
  the public elevators. 
  He approached the door which had the opening mechanism actuated by  the radioactive disc which the bronze
  man carried. But this time, the  door did not open. He tried it with pressure. Securely fastened! 
  Whipping around the corridor corner, Doc worked with the concealed  fastening of the back door, a panel
  which was absolutely unnoticeable  to the naked eye for the simple reason that, since it was rarely used,  it was
  plastered over and painted as was the surrounding wall. 
  Plaster particles showered over the floor as the door broke open.  Doc dived inside. 
  What he saw was not pleasant. Broken test tubes and retorts  littered the laboratory on one side. 
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  Chapter VIII. NEWS FROM PATAGONIA
  56
  
  Beyond, in the library, a great bookcase was upset, and costly  scientific volumes trampled and torn on the
  floor, and, scattered over  the tomes, a freckling of red droplets that were still wet. The red  fluid was puddled
  in one spot, as if the victim, whoever he was, had  fallen here. 
  The reception room showed the greatest confusion. There was more  scarlet there, and the walls were pocked
  where bullets had struck. 
  Racing eyes over the lead pits, not counting them, but estimating  their number, Doc decided some forty or
  fifty shots had been fired.  That they had not been heard from the street was simply explained.  These rooms
  were as soundproof as modern science could make them. 
  Nowhere was there a sign of Pat, Nancy Law, Monk, Ham, or Johnny.  Even the pig, Habeas Corpus, was
  missing. 
  DOC began going over the place. Near the door, he found an empty  cablegram envelope. This probably
  explained how the enemy had gotten  the door open − one had pretended to be a cable messenger. 
  Doc Savage summoned the elevators and questioned the operators.  None had taken either prisoners or captors
  down, it developed. This  puzzled Doc for a time, until he actuated the automatic control which  brought his
  private speed elevator up, and glanced inside. The method  of exodus became clear. 
  The captives had been taken down in the speed lift, existence of  which the Harpoon gang had probably
  ferreted out with no great  difficulty, since the door was prominent in the corridor, although  masked down in
  the lobby. 
  There was a note in the cage − a soiled bit of paper weighted and  held to the floor by an ugly gout of scarlet. 
  SAVAGE 
  THIS WHOLE THING IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. LAY OFF AND YOUR FRIENDS  WILL BE
  O.K. 
  There was no signature, nor did one seem necessary. The bronze man  took the note into the laboratory and
  processed it for finger prints. 
  He got several. He did not photograph them, but simply eyed them  steadily for a time, impressing them in his
  trained memory. 
  He burned the scrap of paper. An ordinary detective would not have  done that, for it was evidence admissible
  in a court. But Doc Savage  never took his difficulties to a court of law, but rather, was judge  and jury − and
  executor of sentence − all in himself. 
  Next the bronze man employed his ultra−violet lantern which caused  prints left by the shoe heels of his men
  to glow, or fluoresce. The  device did not function so uncannily in daylight. Indeed, it was  impossible to see
  the glowing prints with the naked eye. Doc had,  however, perfected fluoroscopic eyeglasses which overcame
  this  difficulty. 
  He trailed the captives to the street, but no farther. Evidently  they had been loaded into cars. 
  Doc visited the cable office on the chance that an answer had come  from mysterious Hezemiah Law. It had. 
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  57
  
  "Why, the cablegram arrived and was called for shortly after you  were here," the attendant told him. 
  "Describe the person who called for it," Doc requested quietly. 
  The attendant described Captain Wapp himself. 
  "Give me a copy of the reply," Doc requested. 
  There was some argument over that. It ended when Doc put a call in  to the cable company officials, and he
  got the copy. It read: 
  NANCY LAW 
  NEW YORK 
  LEAVING FOR NEW YORK BY PLANE STOP BE IN BLANCA GARDE IN MORNING  STOP CABLE
  NEW DEVELOPMENTS THERE 
  HEZEMIAH LAW 
  Doc Savage rarely talked to himself, but he did so now. 
  "That," he said, "does not help much." 
  Chapter IX. DEATH PLANS
  IF Doc Savage was not satisfied with the way events were breaking,  neither was Captain Wapp of the
  Harpoon. The burly skipper paraded the  floor and fumbled with his pistol knife in a manner which made
  Oliver  Orman Braski extremely nervous. 
  "Aye bane like it not a bit!" Captain Wapp growled, and gave his  rope belt a hitch. 
  "Me, neither," said the burly Ropes, agreeing with Captain Wapp  partially to keep on the good side of the
  latter. 
  Captain Wapp did not yet suspect that Ropes and Braski had been  co−conspirators against him. 
  Braski said steadily and firmly, "It is not only that I am against  wholesale murder. It is the fact that we have a
  club to hold over this  Doc Savage. He will hesitate to endanger his friends, if he has any  sense." 
  "Dot bronze feller hesitate for nothing," Captain Wapp said with  firm conviction. 
  Braski squirmed. "All right, suppose we kill them and get caught?" 
  Captain Wapp snorted. "Suppose we get caught anyhow? We bane get a  medal, you suppose?" 
  "Oh, use your head," Braski sighed wearily. "We've been over this.  I left that note in Savage's elevator to
  warn him to keep away from us.  I'm betting he will lay off. But let him find out that we killed the  prisoners, if
  we do kill 'em, and Savage will turn loose with  everything. And that's bad." 
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  Ropes suddenly agreed with Braski. "That's a fact." 
  Wapp evidently held faith in Ropes's judgment. 
  "Vot about dot Nancy Law?" he demanded. 
  "Bait," Braski grinned. 
  Captain Wapp yelled suddenly, "Dommit! Don't talk to me with  riddles! Vot you mean?" 
  "Keep her alive with the others," Braski advised. "We'll use her to  pull old Hezemiah Law into our hands and
  get rid of him. Then we'll  polish her off. We'll polish the other prisoners at the same time, if  that'll make you
  feel better. Then we'll go on and clean out Spook Hole  for ourselves." 
  "Vot about Hezemiah Law's men at Spook Hole?" Wapp grunted. 
  Ropes answered that, putting in, "Ain't it been agreed all along  that they'd have to go? We can't have a lot of
  loose ends around to  give us trouble." 
  "Twenty or thirty dead mans bane not so funny," Captain Wapp  muttered 
  Braski asked, "Feet cold?" 
  Captain Wapp scowled and snarled, "Some day, Aye bane break dat  neck for you." 
  The skipper of the Harpoon went to a window, lifted a corner of the  blind and peered out cautiously. The
  street below was beginning to  whiten with the hard, cold late spring snow, and was, under the  whitening,
  altogether squalid and filthy, with almost no one in sight. 
  The deserted nature of the neighborhood seemed to reassure the big  man, for he pocketed his pistol knife and
  waddled around, grinning  wryly. 
  "Not so bad for ourselves, we have done," he chuckled. 
  He ambled into an adjacent room, walked straight to the bound and  gagged frame of Monk, and kicked the
  homely chemist resoundingly in the  side. 
  "You pull in dem big ears!" he growled. "Maybe something you hear,  she not so good for you." 
  IT was entirely against Monk's nature to take any kind of abuse  quietly, nor did he do so now. He reared up,
  tied as he was, and  succeeded in flipping around, with lightning speed, and swiped Captain  Wapp's ankles
  with his own bound legs. Wapp came down. 
  Monk rolled atop him, was butting with his nubbin of a head and  delivering such blows as he could with
  elbows and knees when Ropes came  running in and stopped the mêlée by the simple process of knocking
  Monk  senseless. 
  The room was furnished with a bed, a dresser and what passed for a  writing desk. There was also a carpet, so
  worn that it was nearly in  two pieces. 
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  Along the wall, the other captives were arrayed. The gaunt Johnny  had been damaged to some degree, and
  seemed to have a bullet wound in  some portion of his shoulder. Ham was disheveled, bruised. Pat and  Nancy
  Law, outside of showing evidences of rough handling, were  unharmed. 
  Captain Wapp looked them all over, frowning, then stalked back into  the other room. 
  "Them peoples can hear all talk vot we make," he boomed. 
  "What the hell difference does it make?" Ropes queried. "They're  goin' with us, ain't they?" 
  Captain Wapp mulled over that in silence. 
  "What about der airplanes?" he questioned. 
  "I have taken care of that," Braski advised. "We will get three  very large ships. They will handle our entire
  party, including the  prisoners." 
  "Dot costs money," said Captain Wapp doubtfully. 
  "I am paying for it myself," Braski offered generously. "The  pay−off is big enough to warrant spending
  money." 
  Wapp grinned unpleasantly. "How you think maybe she be best to get  old Hezemiah Law?" 
  "Cable him and sign the girl's name," Braski retorted. "Tell him  the girl will meet him in − what's that town?" 
  "Blanca Garde in Patagonia," supplied Ropes. 
  "Tell him Nancy Law will meet him there, and that she's coming by  plane." Braski finished. "That'll hold him
  until we get there." 
  "Goot," said Wapp. "Where bane paper, pencil." 
  They searched through their pockets, seeking writing equipment.  Their movements were not unduly anxious
  or hasty. 
  In the adjacent room, however, there was one individual whose  motions were at that moment anxious and
  hasty. It was Monk. He had  revived and had been listening to the conversation in the next room,  almost every
  word of which was understandable. 
  As silently as possible, and with as much haste, Monk had rolled to  the writing desk. He could, by exercising
  tremendous effort, get erect  on his feet. 
  He managed to paw the desk open. There was writing paper within −  and a book of telegraph blanks. This
  must be a small hotel which  catered to underworld gangs and their machinations. 
  Working frantically, Monk managed to wrench from his coat collar  what might have been mistaken for one
  of the coarse hairs sometimes  woven there to strengthen that part of the garment. With this, he made  scraping
  movements over the blank. 
  He shut the drawer, lurched backward and managed to deposit himself  on the floor without undue noise. 
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  Monk had taken a chance that those in the next room would not have  paper. Apparently they had, but there
  was some mild argument. 
  "Put the cable on a regular blank," Braski suggested. "Looks more  fitting." 
  They came in and got the book of blanks with which Monk had  fumbled. 
  HALF an hour later, the prisoners were seized by a number of men,  who examined bindings and gags to
  make sure they were secure. Then each  captive was made unconscious by having a towel soaked with an
  anaesthetic held tightly over his or her nostrils. 
  The senseless forms were then rolled in old rugs stripped off the  floors, and carried outside. It chanced that
  only three pedestrians  were abroad in the chill street, and these, chins buried in coat  collars, were not
  interested in some shabby, hard−looking men loading  old rug rolls into a dilapidated van. These people did
  not look closely  enough to note that the rug bundles seemed extremely heavy. 
  During the aviation boom, airports mushroomed up with great  frequency around New York, not a few of
  them being located in spots so  unhandily located that only the enthusiastic promoters dreamed they  would
  ever be useful in a practical way. The result is that at present  many weed−grown flying fields are eyesores in
  the suburbs. 
  The Sunnydaze Flying Center was such a field, perhaps a bit better  off than some because one dilapidated
  hangar still stood. There were  woods all about and no houses near, hence no curious persons to remark  upon
  the presence of three gleaming and extremely large tri−motored  planes now at the airport. 
  Armed men were hidden in the woods, just on the chance that some  one should come prying, but no one did. 
  The ancient van arrived, and the rugs were unrolled and the  prisoners transferred to one of the planes. 
  Inconspicuously colored, but fast cars brought men to the field.  Some were off the Harpoon. Others were the
  new recruits hired by  Captain Wapp and Braski. 
  Among the latter was the cocky little thug who chewed sassafras  bark. He carried a blanket under one arm,
  and the manner in which the  blanket kicked and fluttered pointed to a lively contents. 
  "Vot it is?" Captain Wapp demanded, and pointed at the animated  blanket. 
  "What is it to you?" Sass growled, and expectorated brown bark  juice. "We're allowed so much baggage, ain't
  we? This thing in the  blanket is my part." 
  "Vot it is?" Wapp yelled, angered by the evasion. 
  Sass put out a sallow jaw. "My new pet. And don't bawl at me like  that!" 
  "Aye bawl at whoever Aye want!" Wapp advised him thunderously.  "Open it up, that package!" 
  Scowling, Sass undid the blanket. The homely pig, Habeas Corpus,  jumped out, and promptly took off for the
  nearest timber. But Sass had  a stout cord tied to Habeas' leg, and the shote brought up forcibly at  the end of
  that. Sass restored the squealing porker to the blanket. 
  Captain Wapp looked as if he were going to explode. "Dot ape's pig!  Vare you get?" 
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  "In the street close to that hotel where the prisoners were held  for a while," Sass grunted. 
  Braski, attracted by the dispute, came up and eyed the pig. 
  "The pest managed to follow us out of Doc Savage's headquarters,"  he said. "Last I saw of the thing, it was
  following our cars like a  dog. Wonder it kept up with us." 
  "Shoot him!" ordered Captain Wapp, indicating the pig. 
  Sass drove brown juice solidly against the freezing ground and put  out his sallow jaw again. 
  "The pig's my new pet," he advised. "I keep 'im, see!" 
  "Aye bane wring your neck for dot back talk!" howled Captain Wapp. 
  But when the verbal sulphur cooled, Sass was in one of the planes  with his pig, unharmed. Within the course
  of the next hour, Habeas was  in imminent danger of being dropped overboard, having bitten, not only  his new
  master, but three Harpoon sailors as well. 
  IT is the duty of bookkeepers in cable offices to go over messages  and list the charges in their ledgers.
  Usually, each day's business is  handled on the morning following. 
  One particular clerk, listing cablegrams on the morning following,  got a shock as he inspected a certain
  message. The original missive on  this blank read: 
  HEZEMIAR LAW 
  ELANCA GARDE S A 
  COMING SOUTH BY PLANE STOP WILL MEET YOU AT BLANCA GARDE 
  NANCY 
  The bookkeeper, of course, did not know the message was the forgery  sent by Captain Wapp. But the clerk
  did know that an astonishing thing  had happened to the face of the blank since he had last seen it. 
  Letters, thin, stilted, somewhat erratic letters of a blood−red hue  had appeared. In spite of their awkward
  construction, the message which  they conveyed could be read. 
  GET THIS TO DOC SAVAGE 
  EVERYBODY OFF TO BLANCA GARDE 
  MONK 
  The cable clerk consulted his boss. Five minutes later, they were  in communication with Doc Savage. 
  Few persons knew that Doc Savage maintained, in what was ostensibly  a warehouse on the Hudson River
  water front, a modern hangar housing  planes of various types. 
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  Hence, every one was surprised, half an hour later, when a plane of  great size and remarkable streamlined
  construction appeared suddenly  upon the river, and with a ghostly quiet, zoomed up into the leaden  clouds
  which were spilling snow. Like a spectre, the plane appeared,  and as mysteriously, it was gone. 
  The motors of the ship were silenced with great efficiency. 
  Chapter X. SASS ERRS
  So well were the motors of Doc Savage's big speed plane muffled  that they produced no trace of what pilots
  sometimes call air deafness,  even after they had been run wide open as far as Miami, Florida, when  the
  bronze man landed for a fueling stop. 
  It was reasonable to expect the three planes that were his quarry  might have taken this route. He made
  inquiries. 
  An attendant at the field advised that the three planes, their  cabin windows curtained, had taken fuel nearly
  twenty hours previously.  Description of the man paying for the gasoline − broad and powerful,  wearing a
  rope for a belt. Captain Wapp, beyond a doubt. 
  But the field attendant contributed something else of no little  interest. 
  "There a race on, or something?" he queried. 
  "Why?" Doc countered. 
  "The other guy was all hot to know how far they were ahead,"  replied the airport man. 
  "There was a plane other than myself and those three large ships?"  Doc questioned. 
  "Sure," said the other. "A single−seater speed job came through  about four hours behind the first three. Was
  he burning it up! A  one−armed guy, to boot." 
  "One−armed man!" Doc Savage's strange trilling sound came for a  moment, and puzzled the airport
  attendant; then the vague, strange note  ebbed away into the nothingness from which it seemed to have come. 
  "Sure he had only one arm?" Doc asked. 
  The other thought, scratching his head. "Well, his coat did kinda  bulge where his arm was supposed to be
  missing. Say, what kind of a gag  is this?" 
  Doc Savage took off without relieving the fellow's curiosity. 
  Built into the instrument panel of the big speed ship was the  equivalent of a common alarm clock, and the
  bronze man proceeded to  employ the awakening effects of this at two−hour intervals, that he  might check the
  course. 
  The rest of the time, a competent mechanical piloting device, one  of the common commercial variety which
  he had refined, took care of the  flying. 
  Doc picked up rain over the gulf, and in Colon, on the Panamanian  isthmus, again got word that four planes
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  were ahead of him − three  which were patently Wapp and Braski and their crowd, and the other  plane, still
  behind, piloted by the man who was pretending to have only  one arm. 
  There was nothing to show that the prisoners were still with Wapp's  expedition, however. There was no
  indication that they even lived. 
  The nights were long, the days uneventful, until finally the  forlorn−looking coast of South America had
  reeled nearly all of its  length behind the bronze man's craft. 
  It had been cold spring in New York; it was sultry fall weather  down here. The Andean mountain ranges were
  a hazy−blue parade off to  the left. 
  Blanca Garde came into sight, with steamers, no doubt loading  nitrates in the harbor, barely discernible. Doc
  Savage did not fly  directly in, but circled, using powerful binoculars in an effort to  pick up the three planes
  which were his quarry. 
  The sun was low. Perhaps that accounted in part for what he managed  to pick up. There was coarse grass
  flooring a natural amphitheater  surrounded by boulders and scrub trees, and the grass had been mashed  down
  by wheels, making long depressions which the sloping rays of the  sun filled with shadows. The width
  between the marks told Doc what they  were − airplane wheel prints. 
  The bronze man circled. Five minutes, it took him to pick up the  planes. Two of them in number. They had
  been covered with canvas, and  green boughs plucked and tossed on top of the tarpaulin shrouds. 
  Doc landed his own ship approximately a mile distant and set out  for the amphitheater afoot. 
  ABRUPT night clamped down before he reached the clearing. He did  not mind, for it made chances of a trap
  more remote. The region was an  outlying one. Beyond a single stone hut, the roof thatched, he saw no
  habitation. 
  Brush was thick about the amphitheater. Obsidian rocks towered. In  the distance, a steamer whistle moaned,
  and a bell tolled in some  Blanca Garde chapel. 
  When near the clearing, Doc listened for a long time. There was no  sound. He advanced, reconnoitered a
  while, then examined the two  planes. 
  One was the small−flying bullet in which the one−armed man who was  not one−armed had trailed the Wapp
  crowd southward. Doc tested the  motor for warmth. It had the coldness of hours of inactivity. 
  The other ship was an amphibian, built for landings on earth or  sea. It was a foreign job, slow, but of
  enormous structural strength  and probably of load−carrying ability that would furnish a surprise. 
  The after part of the craft was equipped with a bin, this with a  lid and stout locks. It was unfastened. Doc
  opened it, and peered  within, but found only emptiness and a very pronounced odor. 
  The bronze man tested the scent again and again. It was the aroma  of something old, not a carrion tang, but
  very distinct. It was a smell  not easily forgotten. 
  Exactly the same odor Doc Savage had found upon the hands and  clothing of the mysterious man in New
  York − the man who had two good  arms, but, who was pretending to possess only one. 
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  Doc began going through the pockets in the forward part of the  cabin. They were empty. He got out. 
  The canvas coverings on which the green boughs lay formed a canopy  of sorts, and beneath these lay boxes.
  They were wooden, stout, and  about them lay greasy wrapping paper and excelsior packing. Doc  scrutinized
  the litter. It was not difficult to identify the nature of  the former box contents. 
  Ammunition, rifles and machine guns. 
  All the boxes bore an address, a name, and the necessary permit  stamps and seals. 
  HEZEMIAH LAW 
  BLANCA GARDE, SOUTH AMERICA 
  Doc Savage stood for a time, summarizing mentally. The foreign  amphibian plane was probably the property
  of Hezemiah Law, and those  who had flown it here had been joined by the mysterious "one−armed" man
  from New York. They had broken out a supply of weapons and left their  ships. 
  Going back to his own plane, Doc Savage ran, covering the distance  in time that would have surprised an
  expert on such matters, and  reaching the ship with a remarkable control over his breathing. 
  He took off at once. Sent the plane directly over Blanca Garde,  picked up the airport, and banked down,
  leveled. 
  Wind direction caused him to settle near the west edge of the dusty  field, close to the single beacon.
  Floodlights on the wing tips were  on; he left them blazing as he taxied toward the nearest hangar, a  huge,
  corrugated iron structure. 
  He was fifty yards from the hangar when a flurry of hard rain  seemed to strike the plane. 
  THE sound was loud for rain. It vibrated the big ship. It began in  the central cabin, came forward and up, and
  when it touched the cockpit  windows, the sound was as a riveter going to work upon iron. 
  Doc Savage whipped down from the cockpit seat, cutting the big  motors simultaneously. He never did
  entirely trust the bulletproof  glass in the plane, unless necessary, although he had superintended,  personally,
  its moulding. 
  The armor alloy of the cabin walls, he knew, would stop anything  less than a tank rifle. And this had the
  sound of an ordinary machine  gun. 
  He chanced a glance. The rapid−firer was winking an ugly eye over  in shrubs beyond the field edge. 
  Bullets knocked hungrily along the wings, and tried for one of the  flood lamps, but that was bulletproof also.
  Doc clicked the lights out.  That seemed to alarm the gunman. He stopped firing. 
  Doc Savage remained perfectly motionless in the plane, then eased a  cabin door partially open and listened.
  Over where the shots had come  from, he could hear a bull voice roaring. 
  The bull voice was Captain Wapp, and he was ready to strangle with  his own anger. Choking profane
  expletives, he ran at the diminutive  Sass and launched a terrific kick, which the target nimbly dodged. 
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  "Dummox!" Wapp gritted. "Der plane had bulletproof sides!" 
  It was Sass who had opened up with the machine gun. He retreated  warily. 
  "How was I to know?" he demanded angrily. "We were here to give  that bronze guy a lead stitching, weren't
  we? And things looked set." 
  Captain Wapp worked big fingers and advised, "Aye tank Aye twist  your neck!" 
  "That might not be so easy!" Sass snarled. 
  Oliver Orman Braski piped in nervously. We'd better be getting away  from here. It's dark, and that bronze
  man is probably out of his plane  by now." 
  This apparently struck them all as an excellent idea, and they  retreated − three others, besides Wapp, Braski
  and the hard little  thug, Sass. 
  They had, it developed, a car parked down near the airport road.  Into this, they piled. 
  An angry squealing greeted them. 
  "Dot hog!" Wapp howled. 
  Habeas was fastened by a small chain to the steering wheel. They  lost moments while the driver tried to
  transfer the shote without  getting bit. The car pounded into motion. 
  LITTLE was said for some time. Their pace was fast, the road was  strange, and none too good a road at that.
  Too, they had not much faith  in their car, which was a rented machine. 
  Sass, holding Habeas Corpus by both big ears so that the shote  could not bite him, said finally, "What sticks
  in my craw is how you  birds knew Doc Savage was coming." 
  Captain Wapp said, "Shut up!" 
  Braski said, "It was simple." 
  "Yeah?" Sass frowned. "Just how simple? 
  "Twenty−dollar bills distributed among hangers−on around the  airports where we refueled," Braski chuckled.
  "Not only one of them  cabled us, but three. That gave us a good idea of when the bronze guy  would show up
  and what kind of a plane he would be flying." 
  Sass swung Habeas by both ears. "You guys don't miss many bets, do  you?" 
  "We get along." 
  "Shut up!" said Captain Wapp. 
  They were within the confines of Blanca Garde now, with  neat−balconied structures on each side, an
  occasional plodding donkey,  a few copper−tinted natives from the highlands in gaudy blanket  ponchos, and
  numerous sandaled and straw−hatted local inhabitants. 
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  Captain Wapp's driver tooled the car along with great regard for  the local speed limits. 
  They got out in front of a quiet hotel, entered with the peaceful  decorum of American tourists, and went to
  their suite of rooms. 
  Ropes was waiting there, with the other members of their gang. 
  Captain Wapp and Braski eyed Ropes. 
  "Any trace of old Hezemiah Law?" Braski demanded. 
  Ropes grinned unpleasantly. "It was a cinch!" 
  A look of unholy anticipation overspread Captain Wapp's features.  He hitched at his rope belt. 
  "Well, spit it out!" he boomed. 
  "They're holed up in a hut out in the edge of the mountains," Ropes  advised. "There's seven of 'em − all them
  big Patagonian natives that  old Hezemiah Law keeps around Spook Hole. Tough customers, they'll be.  Only
  the place is made to order for us." 
  "What you mean by dot?" Wapp demanded. 
  "The hut is in a canyon," Ropes explained. "Dynamite will do the  trick." 
  "We get all our mans in here for to hear dis." Captain Wapp heaved  up and looked around. "Where dat Sass
  bane go?" 
  "Out walking his hog," somebody stated. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP swore roundly and sent a man out, and the fellow  returned shortly, accompanied by Sass
  and the pig, Habeas. Sass only  sighed when Wapp cursed him. Then they began laying plans. 
  Ropes described the contour of the canyon. He even drew a crude map  of the hut and its surroundings. 
  "Canyon is blasted narrow all of the way up," he said. "Tough  goin', too. We'll have to walk and carry the
  dynamite. But it's a pipe.  Plant the stuff with time fuses, clear out, and bingo! Just like that!" 
  Sass put in, "How about look−outs at the canyon mouth? From what  you guys been saying, old Hezemiah
  Law wasn't exactly born last night." 
  Wapp frowned at Ropes. "How about dot?" 
  "No guards." Ropes spread his hands. "They don't suspect a thing.  We clean 'em out. Then we go on to Spook
  Hole and give the works to the  rest. Then − oh, man!" He rolled his eyes. 
  "Lots of killing connected with this," Sass said dryly. 
  Wapp growled, "Maybe you don't like?" 
  Sass said, "Oh, hell!" and grabbed Habeas by an ear just in time to  keep from being bitten. 
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  Chapter X. SASS ERRS
  67
  
  "What about. Doc Savage?" Braski asked uneasily. "My gag of  threatening to croak some of his friends if he
  didn't lay off never  worked so well. He's down here." 
  Wapp boomed, "We vill croak one. Maybe dot remind him we bane mean  business." 
  "Swell," said Ropes. 
  "Hell will pop," predicted Braski. 
  Captain Wapp let out his rope belt a bit, mumbled, "Aye bane wonder  how Doc Savage learn to here we have
  come." 
  Nobody seemed able to answer that one. 
  Ropes spoke up abruptly. 
  "That reminds me of something queer," he said. "I saw a one−armed  guy go into that hut in the canyon. I'll
  swear I've seen the same  one−armed bird poking around the whaling ship in New York a time or two  the last
  few days." 
  "Who he bane?" Wapp roared. 
  "How would I know?" Ropes spread his hands. "He kept his mug  covered up so I couldn't get a good look at
  him." 
  "Forget it." Sass stood up. "Let's percolate." 
  They hurriedly got their equipment together. Machine guns were  wrapped in canvas, and several donned new
  laced boots and laced  breeches, obviously purchased that afternoon, together with  straight−brimmed
  campaign hats. One shouldered a surveyeing transit,  also plainly a new buy. Others wrapped the dynamite. 
  Leaving their quarters, they might have been a party of American  engineers. Indeed, this was what they had
  professed to be upon arrival.  Engineers might carry packages around without exciting suspicion. This  was
  Ropes's idea. 
  An armless beggar with a pitiful basket of flowers was seated  beside the hotel door. Under pretense of
  fumbling for a coin for the  mendicant, Captain Wapp paused to take a good look around. He saw  nothing
  suspicious, and they went on. 
  IT would have been better for the furtherance of his own shady  schemes if Captain Wapp had taken more
  than a cursory glance at the  miserable−looking peddler of flowers. 
  This worthy remained squatted by the hotel door only as long as  Captain Wapp and his party were in sight.
  Then he arose and scurried  down the street in the opposite direction. 
  The mendicant did not glance back. He seemed to have some important  affairs to attend to in a hurry. 
  It was his misfortune that he did not give closer attention to his  back trail. For he was not the only furtive
  watcher near the hotel.  There was another, a shapeless shadow of a figure atop a near−by flat  roof. 
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  68
  
  This second watcher hastily stowed a small periscopic device which  had been employed to peer over the roof
  edge, and followed the beggar. 
  The shabby purveyor of flowers dived into the first dark doorway,  stripped off his rags, threw them away
  with a disgusted grunt, then  rubbed his arms − he had two sound ones − which had been strapped to  his side.
  He engaged in thought for a moment. Then he strapped one arm  back. 
  When he walked out of the gloomy recess, the mendicant had become  the one−armed man of mystery who
  was not one−armed. He evidently knew  the town well, for he traveled fast. 
  He did not glance back. So he was unaware that he was being  shadowed expertly. 
  The erstwhile mendicant soon joined several huge, swarthy fellows  who were loitering before a drinking
  place. They all walked aside. 
  The one−armed man who was not one−armed began speaking in the  tongue employed by the big,
  half−savage natives of Patagonia. 
  "Those who are our enemies have fallen into our trap," he said in  the lingo. "They have found the hut in the
  canyon, and as we had hoped  they would do, they have planned to dynamite the cliffs down upon it  and crush
  us all to our deaths." 
  He used the English word for "dynamite," there apparently being no  suitable equivalent in the Patagonian
  tongue, or if there was, he did  not know it, and this caused some confusion until the man explained  what
  dynamite was, and its probable effects. This elicited fierce  grunts from the big natives. 
  "They're a lot of blasted murderers!" gritted the one−armed man of  mystery. "Thieves, too!" 
  He translated that into Patagonian, and added, "Despite the fact  that these men would kill us, we will give
  them a chance to surrender." 
  The tone of the replying grunts indicated that this met with no  great approval from the listeners. 
  "They probably won't surrender." The one−armed man laughed sourly.  "In fact, I know they won't. We'll
  have to give them the same dose they  plan for us." 
  They moved off into the darkness, reached automobiles, entered  them, and drove rapidly. Leaving the
  machines after a short time, they  took an abbreviated route over the rough hills, a course which brought  them
  to the canyon leading to Hezemiah Law's hut ahead of Wapp's party. 
  The men paid no attention to their back trail. That made it simpler  for the shadowy figure which trailed them. 
  THE one−armed man who was not one−armed selected spots on the  canyon sides which he must have
  decided upon previously. He unearthed  wooden boxes which were concealed near−by, took out explosives
  and a  battery−detonating apparatus, and went to work. 
  "We won't take a chance on fuses," he said grimly. "I'll stretch a  fine wire, a hair wire, across the canyon, and
  when it is broken, a  relay will be operated and set off the blast." 
  The Patagonians did not understand that. They had no ideas about  electric wiring, either. So they were
  ordered to stand aside. 
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  69
  
  It did not take long for the trap to be set. 
  The man of mystery clambered to a rock pinnacle and listened. Some  ten minutes later, he heard sounds
  down the canyon which indicated men  were coming. 
  "This is just about your finish, Wapp," he grated savagely, and  faded into the darkness with his huge, swarthy
  companions. 
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  CAPTAIN WAPP was in a growling good humor as he led the advance up  the canyon. He rumbled and
  muttered and swore as if the entire world  were wrong, his way of acting when he felt it was all to the right. 
  "You better shut that big trap," Sass told him. 
  "Aye tank Aye pull your head off some time," Captain Wapp replied  with cordial ugliness. 
  "All right," Sass growled. "Let 'em know over in Buenos Aires that  we're coming." 
  "This thing is going too smoothly," Braski mumbled. "I would feel  more easy if something would happen." 
  He got his wish. The earth seemed to sink several inches under  their feet, then fly upward, dislodging
  countless tons of stone from  the canyon sides. Simultaneously, a flash as of a score of lightning  bolts striking
  lashed upward in the darkness ahead. 
  Captain Wapp let out a bawl, spun and knocked down Ropes and Braski  in his haste to quit the vicinity. The
  upset pair were up instantly and  in wild flight with the others. Sass grabbed Habeas up by the ear and
  followed the rest. 
  They had guessed, by now, what had happened. 
  "A trap!" Wapp bellowed. "Ropes, you bane get us into this!" 
  Ropes made no retort. He was devoting all of his attention to  running. 
  A man fell down. He emitted a scream of agony. 
  "Help me!" he shrieked. "My damned ankle is broke, or something!" 
  Captain Wapp yanked to a halt, but instead of aiding the unlucky  one, wrenched his novelty pistol knife from
  a pocket. 
  It made a small report which came back from the canyon walls in a  crisp echo over the noise of stone still
  falling behind them. The  fallen man made no other sound. 
  "Run!" boomed Wapp. "No time to help anybody! Dot Hezemiah Law bane  behind this!" 
  They were off again, making a good deal of noise, but not  exchanging words. They were a terrified gang of
  thugs, interested only  in quitting the treacherous vicinity. 
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  The man who had injured his ankle lay perfectly still. Once, he  groaned a faint curse. His ankle was not
  broken badly, but the pain  kept him from walking. 
  In addition, there was the sickening heaviness of the bullet from  Captain Wapp's pistol knife somewhere
  inside his chest, and the awful  smart of the hole it had made. The man had retained presence of mind  enough
  to feign death after the shot. 
  The pain from his ankle became unbearable, and he changed position  slightly. He regretted that, an instant
  later, for he suddenly knew  that someone was near. 
  The beam from a flashlight, entirely blinding, smashed into his  eyes. The man groveled, visioning himself
  being dispatched at the hand  of Hezemiah Law's big, dark Patagonians. 
  "Don't!" he squawled. "Wapp shot me! I'll do anything you say! Only  don't finish me!" 
  The glittering white beam of the flash shifted a little, permitting  the man's frightened eyes to make out the
  figure which towered over  him. He had seen that giant personage before. 
  "Doc Savage!" he choked. 
  THE bronze man said nothing, but searched the injured one, found a  heavy automatic and a sheath knife, and
  tossed them both aside. Then he  picked the fellow up, and when the man groaned in agony, relieved him  of
  pain by pressing on certain nerve centers to induce a numbness. 
  Doc went down the canyon rapidly, following the fleeing Wapp party.  He could still hear them, hence, certain
  they had not planted an  ambush, he used his flashlight to illuminate the way. Thus he gained.  But not enough. 
  Automobile engines moaned ahead; their roaring departed amid a  hasty gnashing of gears. 
  Doc reached the canyon mouth in time to have dust smart his eyes,  and to see a red tail−light bob out of sight
  in the distance. 
  "Get your car!" groaned the man on his shoulder. "Follow 'em!" 
  He was now anxious to see Wapp meet disaster. 
  "No chance," Doc told him. "My car is on the other side of the  hills, where I left it when trailing the
  one−armed man here." 
  "Huh?" The wounded fellow was puzzled. 
  "He set the canyon trap," Doc explained. "Then he withdrew. I  managed to set the explosion off ahead of you
  fellows." 
  The other swore hoarsely. 
  "You − saved our necks," he growled. "Why? Tell me that." 
  "You might be surprised," Doc told him dryly, and did not go into  explanations. "You are willing to talk?" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  71
  
  "Am I!" The injured man swore again. Then he added, fear abruptly  in his voice, "But I ain't gonna be no
  information book, and that's a  fact. Now don't think I'm holdin' out on you. I'd give my right arm to  get that
  Captain Wapp. He's the blackest devil in sin!" 
  "You were not in on everything?" Doc prompted. 
  "I'll say not," the man snapped. "I'm one of the new guys they took  on in the big burg, see. Me and that bird
  Sass and some others. We  don't know what's back of the gag, see. We only know we're gettin' paid  plenty to
  do as we're told and keep our mouths shut. But we do know  we're after somethin' big, and somethin' a lot
  different from the  ordinary swag. And we know a bunch of people are to be bumped off. But  that's all I know.
  And that's a fact." 
  "You," Doc told him, "have not touched on the thing that interests  me most of all." 
  "What?" The other was puzzled. 
  "The whereabouts of the prisoners, my friends," Doc replied. 
  "I know that, all right." 
  "Where are they?" 
  "Little dump opposite the Casa El Caballero, on that alley they  call El Esteban," the other explained. "You
  can't miss the house. It's  got one of them trick porches, and it's painted a lousy red. But watch  out for guards.
  Two of Wapp's men there." 
  "Excellent," Doc Savage said grimly. 
  The quickest route back was via the short cut, over the hills, and  since the hut where Hezemiah Law was
  supposed to have quartered himself  was not out of the way much, Doc dropped in there, carrying the
  wounded  man. 
  Search of the miserly stone place, however, turned up no one, and  the bronze man went on to his car, still
  with the injured fellow. 
  ON the outskirts of town, Doc Savage brought the machine to a stop.  He scribbled on a bit of paper, and gave
  it to his passenger, along  with a small sheaf of greenbacks. 
  "Deliver that in New York," he requested. "The money will pay your  fare back. And keep out of sight." 
  "Sure," said the other. 
  After he had been left in the night, the man immediately sought the  illumination of a street light and read the
  note. It was addressed to a  person who seemed to be a physician in New York, and read simply: 
  GIVE THIS MAN TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. 
  DOC SAVAGE. 
  "Will I deliver this!" the man chuckled. "Boy, will I!" 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  72
  
  Within the hour, the fellow had been party to a murder plot, so he  considered that he had gotten off easily
  indeed. 
  "The bronze guy is a sucker," he concluded. 
  He was a little premature in his conclusion. Doc Savage knew from  experience that hardened crooks do
  reform voluntarily, but their  numbers are in minority, so he had perfected a method of forced reform  of his
  own. 
  There was a catch to that ten thousand dollars. The physician at  the address in New York would take this
  man, by force if necessary, and  it probably would be, and send him to a strange institution which the  bronze
  man maintained in upstate New York. 
  At this place, trained surgeons would operate on the man's brain,  causing a complete loss of memory of past
  events. Then the man would  receive a course of training in the ways of honest citizenry, including  a trade by
  which he could earn a good livelihood. 
  Upon discharge from the unique criminal−curing "college," the  patient would have no memory of his past,
  and would have instilled into  him a thorough abhorrence of crooks. In addition, he would receive a  bank
  account of ten thousand dollars to facilitate his new start in  life. This last was a late addition to the "course." 
  But the injured man in Blanca Garde had no idea of the strings  attached to the ten thousand. 
  "The bronze guy's a sap," he chuckled, and vanished toward the  steamship pier. He had decided to get a
  physician on shipboard to treat  his injuries. 
  "I hope Doc does find his pals," he had the grace to mutter. 
  THE alley of El Esteban was a poverty−stricken thoroughfare named  after some minor and almost forgotten
  local hero. Once it had been, as  such streets so often were, an avenue of class distinction, but that  had been
  years ago, and property goes to ruin fast in the rigorous  climate of Blanca Garde. 
  The red house with the trick porch, as the wounded criminal had  described it, stood out very distinctly, being
  the only structure of  that color on the block. 
  Doc Savage entered it by climbing to adjacent roofs, moving over,  then, after listening, dropping down into
  the central patio. 
  Almost at once, he heard feet scuffing in the street outside, and  the lock on the barred outer door rattled. The
  bronze man glided toward  the sound. 
  Two men came in from the street. They stood with the door open a  little, watching to see if they had been
  followed. Satisfied on that  point, they closed the door. 
  "I'll lock it," said one. "You go get set to do the job." 
  He worked with the lock, which was rusty, and once he cursed the  pompous old Chilean who had rented them
  the building, with no questions  asked, but with a guarantee that everything was in good shape. 
  The man left the door, took several paces, and it suddenly occurred  to him that his companion had been
  remarkably silent. 
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  73
  
  "Hey!" he called. "Where'd you go?" 
  The next instant, the man emitted an awful cry − tried to, rather,  for a frightful constricting pressure had
  clamped upon his neck. As if  he had been stricken with a fantastic malady, numbness ran through his  limbs.
  He seemed to go to sleep all over. 
  Yet he was conscious, and realized he was being placed on the  floor, and that, when a light came on, he was
  beside his companion, who  was also motionless and helpless, yet alive. The light also revealed  the giant
  bronze man who had overcome them. 
  Doc Savage tested certain muscular reflexes to be sure the  paralysis he had induced by pressure on spinal
  nerve centers would  continue for some time. Then he began to search the house. He did not  have to look far. 
  MONK and Ham were spread−eagled in an adjacent room. There was a  look of death about them. Thongs of
  raw, wet llama skin had been used  to peg their wrists out to stakes driven into the hard dirt floor.  Drying, the
  thongs had tightened, shrunk. 
  The pair were so smeared with gore as to be almost unrecognizable.  The cuts were fresh. Crimson still ran. 
  Doc cut them loose, worked over them. Both had a spark of life  still. It would have flickered in another hour,
  three at the most. 
  Producing a small case which held stimulants, Doc managed to get  both awake. While strength was returning
  to them, he searched the rest  of the house, but found no one. 
  Monk, with an animal stamina in his apish frame, was the first able  to talk. 
  "Where are the other prisoners?" Doc asked him. 
  "Wapp took them away," Monk groaned. "He left me and Ham here. We  were to be bumped off to remind
  you to keep out of the mess. Wapp beat  us before he left. Two of his men were to come back and finish the
  job." 
  "They came," Doc advised. 
  Monk needed more time to gather strength, and Doc utilized the  interval to drag the two prisoners into the
  room. Monk glared at them. 
  "That's the two cookies who were to come back," he growled. "Whew!  Every joint I've got feels like it had
  been pulled apart." 
  "Know where the other prisoners were taken?" Doc asked. 
  "Nope," Monk said. 
  "What have you learned about the mystery behind this?" Doc queried. 
  "Not a whole lot," Monk replied. "They're after something that's  being grown in this Spook Hole." 
  "Something being grown?" 
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  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  74
  
  "Sure. I heard 'em say that." Monk groaned. "And this Spook Hole is  an island." 
  "Spook Hole an island," Doc echoed slowly. 
  MONK changed his position. He was able to move a little, if he  endured pain. He said, "That's all I know." 
  Doc stated, "We'll see what these two fellows can tell," and  drifted a hand at the pair on the floor. 
  "That's no dice, either," Monk mumbled. "They're two of the gang of  new hands that Wapp and Braski put on
  in New York. They haven't been  told a thing." 
  "They may know where the prisoners were taken," Doc suggested. 
  "They'd better!" Monk gritted fiercely, and began to crawl toward  the weirdly paralyzed pair. 
  The two retained full mental function, and were able to realize  what it might mean if the homely chemist got
  his hands on them. Horror  filled their eyes, and a few twitches ran over their features. 
  Doc went to them, relieved one of the pressure paralysis with a  kneading of spinal nerve centers. 
  "You know what we want," he said. "You'd better talk." 
  "What do we got out of it if we talk?" one snarled. 
  "Your life," Doc said. "And there will be no bargains." 
  The man did not think it over for long. He must have heard a great  deal of this bronze man. 
  "Wapp took the skinny guy, Johnny, and the two women," he gulped.  "They were going to lay for old
  Hezemiah Law. Wapp found where Law's  plane is hidden, with the plane of that one−armed guy − the bird
  nobody  knows." 
  "Wapp will be at the hiding place with the prisoners?" Doc asked. 
  "Yeah." 
  Doc looked at Monk. "You know what to do with these two?" 
  "Yeah," Monk said grimly. "I know." 
  Doc bound the two prisoners, and when he left, they were screaming  in terror, convinced they were to be
  killed, for they had no way of  knowing they were to be put under the effects of a long−lasting  anaesthetic and
  shipped to New York, ostensibly as victims of a strange  disease going north for treatment. In New York, they
  would be committed  to the criminal−curing "college" in upstate New York. 
  A plane was moaning overhead when Doc went out into the night. The  throaty noise of the motor roar
  indicated powerful horsepower from a  single engine. 
  The sound diminished rapidly in the south. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  75
  
  IT required almost an hour of wild driving for Doc Savage to reach  the vicinity of the remote hill spot where
  he had, before landing at  the Blanca Garde airport, located the big foreign amphibian and the  little speed ship
  in which the one−armed mystery man had come from New  York. Doc left his car and walked the final half
  mile. 
  Walking, he heard planes again. Two of them, this time, and their  sound had that quality which indicated at
  least three motors apiece. 
  Those two planes also went away rapidly to the south. Doc put on  speed, expectant of the worst. 
  What he found was up to expectations. He saw the flames long before  he reached the hiding place of the
  planes. Gory and wild, the scarlet  tongues were a bundle−shaped monster that lapped with frenzy at the
  underside of a pall of black and lemon smoke. 
  It was the big foreign plane burning, together with the canvas  cover. The green camouflaging boughs which
  had been piled upon it added  heat to the inferno. Too, the big plane had a lot of wood in its  construction; it
  was the kind which burned well. 
  There was a small crowd about − blanketed natives, shivering in the  chill of the night. They had been drawn
  by the fire, obviously. 
  Doc Savage addressed them in Spanish, one of innumerable languages  which he had learned to speak
  fluently. He put questions. 
  Shots had been heard from this spot, it developed. Men had done no  little shrieking. A plane had taken off
  toward the end of the fray. 
  Doc was particularly inquisitive on the point of the plane. 
  Afterward, there had been the fire. No one had been able to get  close. 
  Doc Savage found a long, green bough, worked as close to the  burning plane as he could, and poked about.
  There were bodies inside −  what was left of bodies. There was no means of telling whether dark or  light,
  large or small. 
  Doc managed to rake one out, and the covering had cooked away  enough to show the neat drilling of bullets
  in the skull. 
  Captain Wapp and his gang had succeeded, to some extent at least.  But some of their victims, one man at
  least, had escaped southward in  the fast little plane. 
  Wapp's gang had followed south in two of their own large ships. Or  had they? The bronze man was only
  recalling the plane sounds he had  heard in the night sky. 
  They had. Doc learned that later in the night when he located the  small flying field where Wapp had kept his
  planes. One of them was  still there. Doc went over it. 
  Monk and Ham were with him. They could do little more than hobble  about, so occupied with their own
  pains that they even forgot to  quarrel with each other. 
  Doc gave up his examination of the deserted plane, having learned  precisely nothing. 
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  76
  
  "We're sunk now!" Monk groaned. "They've gotten clean away from us.  We haven't the vaguest idea where
  Spook Hole is." 
  "We'll wait," Doc said. 
  "What for?" Monk countered. 
  "Something that I hope will turn up," Doc said dryly. "Things are  not as hopeless as you might think." 
  Monk studied the bronze man for some moments. 
  "Just what have you got up your sleeve?" he demanded. 
  He got no answer, which did not surprise him. Doc kept many of his  plans from his own aides, not because he
  did not trust them, but  because they might fall into the hands of enemies, and there are  methods of getting
  information from any man, no matter how determined  he be not to talk. 
  DOC SAVAGE spent the remainder of the night and most of the ensuing  morning at his portable radio
  receiver and transmitter. So far as Monk  and Ham could tell, and they watched him closely, the bronze man
  neither sent nor received a single word. But he listened continuously. 
  "I don't think you'll have any luck," Monk told him. "You're  listening for something from Spook Hole, ain't
  you?" 
  Doc was slow replying. "Yes." 
  "We know old Hezemiah Law got his cablegrams by having 'em  broadcast from here, and he must have
  picked 'em up on a receiving  set," Monk continued by way of argument. "But that don't mean he had a
  transmitter. And if he had one, would he summon help? He's went to a  lot of trouble to cover up this secret of
  hisn." 
  Ham, feeling much more chipper, said, "We know this Spook Hole is  an island. Suppose we fly up and down
  the coast − " 
  "One of your typical dumb ideas," Monk told him. "This island isn't  on the map. That must be a name old
  Hezemiah Law gave it. Now, my idea  − " 
  There was timid knock on the door. Monk opened it. There was a  bare−legged native in a fantastically
  bright−hued blanket and a conical  straw hat outside. 
  He extended a wad of paper, said something in Spanish. Monk replied  in the same tongue, gave the native
  money, and took the paper. 
  "He said the noisy bird in the sky laid this egg in his yam patch,"  Monk told Doc, indicating the wad of paper.
  "He says it says something  in it about being delivered to you. Let's see." 
  He spread the paper wad open and read it. 
  "Well, I'll be a jumpin' − " He shoved the missive at Doc. "Of all  the breaks! Read this!"  FINDER WILL BE
  REWARDED FOR 
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  Chapter XI. DEATH IN THE NIGHT
  77
  
  DELIVERING THIS TO DOC SAVAGE.  SPOOK HOLE 49−32−15s and 75−12−02w. 
  (Signed) your ONE−ARMED ACQUAINTANCE. 
  "Latitude and longitude of Spook Hole!" Ham rapped. 
  "The one−armed guy with the two good arms threw it out of his plane  after he got away from Wapp's crowd,"
  Monk concluded. 
  A thought seemed to strike Monk. He frowned at Doc Savage. 
  "Look here − you were expecting a break!" he grinned. "Was this  it?" 
  "This is not the one," Doc Savage said promptly. "But it will do." 
  Monk still looked puzzled, but he did not question the bronze man  further. It would have done no good. 
  Chapter XII. THE TERROR IN THE LAGOON
  DOC SAVAGE elected to get his plane on the longitude parallel of  Spook Hole, and fly that line south. It
  was simpler, more certain, for  when they crossed the correct latitude, there would be the island of  mystery,
  with its broth of enigma and intrigue and death. It was night,  and they flew by the stars. 
  It got colder rapidly. It was chill even in the big insulated cabin  with the electric heaters going. 
  "If this is summer down here," Monk grumbled, "they must have some  winter! I hope that snake Sass keeps a
  blanket on Habeas." 
  "He probably won't," Ham said cheeringly. 
  "Habeas is a hot country hog," Monk continued. "When it's cold, he  likes his toddy. Do you know how to mix
  a hog toddy, Ham?" 
  "I bought a book the other day that tells how to make pork  sausage," Ham snapped grimly. 
  "To make hog toddy, you take − " Monk stopped, eyed Doc Savage  fixedly. "Oh, oh! Doc seems to have it
  spotted!" 
  The bronze man nodded, pointed, and the others got out binoculars  with extremely wide illumination fields −
  the type sometimes called  night glasses. It did not take them long to pick up Spook Hole. 
  It was an island of weird shape, being somewhat of the contour of a  fat horseshoe, with here and there a
  jagged tentacle of stone ramming  out into the sea. 
  Across its widest part, the distance could have been no more than  two miles, and the lagoon in the center was
  at points over a mile  across. Monk and Ham remarked on the peculiar aspects of the place. 
  "Not a tree on the blasted place," Monk grunted. 
  "Too dark to be sure," Ham corrected. "But look at the height of  that rock! Bally poor place to attempt a
   SPOOK HOLE
  Chapter XII. THE TERROR IN THE LAGOON
  78
  
  landing from a boat." 
  Doc Savage sent the big ship lower, and cut in the excellent  silencers. That along with the throttling of the
  motors, might help  them not to be noticed. The ship skirted the island. 
  There was no beach on the outer shore. Too, a nasty swell was  running. Breakers climbed and frothed over
  the rocky coast line, at  times spraying considerably over three score feet upward. 
  The lagoon in the center, however, was only slightly rippled. Most  of it lay in darkness, for the surrounding
  stone walls were  precipitous. 
  The plane came opposite the lagoon mouth. 
  "Hey!" Monk exploded. "Lookit!" 
  There was a man−made barrier across this only opening which the  central lake had to the sea. Part of its
  distance out from each shore,  the construction was ordinary − a dike of piled stone. 
  It was the central portion of the barrier which caught their  attention. At first glance, this resembled a picket
  fence, with the  pickets closely spaced. 
  Doc Savage sent the plane very low, that they might examine. When  the ship arose after their look, they were
  all thoughtful, silent. 
  "Did you notice the size of those pickets," Ham said at last.  "Steel girders, most of them a foot thick." 
  "Like a blasted fence!" Monk scratched his bullet of a head,  grimacing as his muscles complained. "Now why
  would anybody want a  fence of that size across the mouth of that lagoon?" 
  Ham shook his own head. "Strange." 
  THE ship lifted and spun over the island, angling at times to the  right and to the left as those aboard sought a
  spot which looked level  enough for a landing. 
  "That begins to look like the roughest blasted place I ever saw,"  Monk grunted. 
  Their search carried them back to the mouth of the gigantic cove,  or lagoon − or whatever it could be classed
  − and they scrutinized the  fencelike barrier of enormous steel bars again. 
  "Lookit!" Monk yelled. "There's kind of a gate affair, swung on  pontoons. That must be to let boats in and
  out." 
  Doc Savage sent the plane into the lagoon. The sides of the thing  shoved up on them, darksome and
  forbidding. There was only a patch in  the middle where the moonbeams touched. It was smooth water,
  however. 
  "We gonna land in here?" Monk demanded. 
  "Have to," Doc told him. "It's blowing outside, and that swell is  terrific. Even if we did get the plane down
  safely, we would stand no  chance of landing." 
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  79
  
  With easy precision, the bronze man settled the big ship lower, at  the same time cranking up the streamlined
  struts which supported the  landing wheels. Struts and wheels became flush parts of the hull  itself, leaving a
  perfect surface for water landing. The design of the  huge craft permitted the hull to be used as a pontoon. 
  Spray sheeted outward, the plane bounced a little, and the small  waves made rattlings underneath. Then, so
  suddenly that it was almost  startling, they were in intense darkness. They had run out of the zone  of
  moonlight. 
  "Landing flood lamps?" Monk suggested. 
  "They make too good a target," Doc told him. 
  The bronze man cut the motors entirely. Nothing is quite as cranky  of management as a seaplane in the water,
  but the speed ship was  equipped with a simple solution for that difficulty. 
  Doc leaned out and clamped an outboard motor to fittings which  hinged outward from the hull. The outboard,
  light, easily stowed, did  not make much noise, and it pushed the big ship in toward the invisible  beach. 
  "We will anchor a short distance from the shore until morning," Doc  announced. "That will make it easier to
  discover any attack which may  be attempted." 
  The outboard muttered gently. The water seemed like ink below.  Occasionally, a ripple caught some faint
  gleam of light behind them.  All about, the rim of the island was outlined jaggedly against the sky,  which
  seemed to have acquired an unwholesome steel−blue hue. Monk  voiced his impression of the spot. 
  "Kinda like I figured the mouth of Hades would look," he chuckled. 
  Ham got a sounding line and climbed out, hanging by a leg from the  door. He lobbed the lead ahead and
  down. 
  "No bottom at ten fathoms," he called. 
  The outboard drove the plane on. 
  "By the mark, nine fathoms," Ham reported, calling the depth after  the seafaring fashion. 
  "Plenty of water," Doc remarked. 
  "And a quarter, nine," Ham called. 
  The plane gave a slight lurch. 
  "Hey!" Monk barked. "We hit bottom." 
  "In nine fathoms?" Doc said dryly. "You know better than that." 
  Something began to happen to the plane under their feet. It  lurched, lifted. A great commotion arose in the
  water below. 
  "Blazes!" Monk howled. "A sea monster or something's got us!" 
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  THE homely chemist tore all of the buttons off the front of his  coat getting a machine−gun pistol out of its
  underarm holster. The  plane gave a great lurch, and upset him. 
  Lying flat on the floor, Monk shoved an arm over the door−sill and  released a stream of bullets into the
  water. The roar of the gun was  ear−splitting, even over the commotion in the water. 
  Ham promptly stamped on Monk's wrist. 
  "Puddinghead!" the dapper lawyer barked. "Want to stir the thing up  more than it is?" 
  Monk, enraged by the stamping of his wrist, struck fiercely at  Ham's shin, and Ham began to hop on one leg
  and relieve himself of  choice opinions of Monk in parlor Harvard language. 
  For a moment, it seemed that the ship was going to capsize. Monk  afterward declared that half of one wing
  did go under. Then, with a  tremendous gurgling, the ship settled level. 
  Light gushed out, so white it was eye−hurting. It was Doc Savage at  the plane door with a strong searchlight.
  He turned the rays downward.  Monk and Ham shoved their heads out to look. 
  What they saw was calculated to complete the standing of their hair  on end. The water, green, ominous, held
  something of fabulous size, a  thing that was sinking rapidly into the depths, causing a swirl that  seemed for a
  moment about to pull the ship under. The eddy turned the  big craft around twice. 
  "Sea monster!" Monk gulped again. 
  "Idiot," said Ham. "There are no such things." 
  "Sure, it was only my imagination!" Monk grated. "I got a notion to  throw you over and see if the thing is a
  maneater. Stamp on my wrist,  will you! Right where them guys had me tied up last night!" 
  "The outboard has stopped," Doc Savage said. 
  It had been stopped some moments − since the fantastic thing had  come up under the plane. Leaning out, Doc
  Savage fought to free the  motor from its brackets. It was jammed, twisted. Finally, he got it  loose, hauled it
  inside. 
  The shaft, the tubing in which it turned, was bent into an elbow.  And the blades of the propeller were a
  gnarled tuft. There was some  substance entangled with the propeller. Monk took hold of it gingerly  and
  wrenched it free. He turned It slowly. The stuff was raw, dark and  tough. 
  "Hide," Monk said. 
  "Don't be silly," Ham jeered, but in an uncertain voice. "That  stuff is more than an inch thick." 
  Doc Savage took the leathery piece, examined it. 
  "What's your verdict?" Monk questioned. 
  "The same as yours," Doc told him. 
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  THERE was a somewhat uneasy silence as Doc Savage started the plane  motors and sent the big craft toward
  shore. 
  "Any objections if we spend the night ashore instead of anchored,  as we had planned?" he queried. 
  Monk said fervently, "Fifty million dollars wouldn't keep me out  here all night." 
  Since there had been enough noise to advertise their presence to  any one within miles, they turned on the
  floodlights in the wings.  These picked up − across an entirely peaceful stretch of water − an  inviting hard
  sand beach. 
  Doc cranked the landing wheels down and they rolled the plane up on  the beach. It was not extensive enough
  for a take−off, so they turned  the nose of the plane toward the water, so that if the worst came, they  would
  have a chance to get into the air from the lagoon surface. 
  They doused the lights and unloaded. 
  "You should get some sleep," Doc warned. "You fellows are still  pretty well under the weather." 
  "I never felt less sleepy," Monk announced. "In fact, after what  just happened, I'll have nightmares for a
  month." 
  Doc considered. 
  "If you fellows want to guard the plane, I will scout a bit," he  suggested. 
  Monk agreed, "O. K. by me." 
  DOC SAVAGE moved away from the plane, but did not quit the vicinity  immediately. Instead, he walked in
  a slow circle, depositing on the  sand and among the rocks small, dark balls approximately the size of  bird
  eggs. These he had gotten from the plane before starting. 
  When he was done, he had distributed a semicircle of the balls  around the plane, covering approaches to it
  from the land. Satisfied,  he moved off into the night. 
  He kept to the beach. It was as likely a place as any for his night  prowling, and more easily traversed. 
  It was a forlorn, spooky place. The wind which was stirring the sea  outside whooped like distant banshees
  among the rocky pinnacles of the  island. The small lagoon waves made rapid lappings on the beach. 
  Once, out in the lagoon, there was a terrific tumult of watery  noises, coupled with a tremendous snufling and
  snorting, as if some  aquatic titan were disporting playfully. Doc listened for a long time,  but the noise did not
  come again. 
  Shortly after that, the bronze man's trained nostrils caught an  odor, vague at first, then, as he advanced, more
  distinct. It was a  very civilized smell. Gasoline. 
  He advanced. Changed nature of the wave lappings told him there was  something in the water near shore. He
  waded out. 
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  He found two planes − mangled as he had never seen planes mangled  before. Falling into the lagoon had not
  done the damage. Rather, they  seemed to have been pummeled about. Wings were knocked into the
  fuselages. Hulls were caved in, pontoons crushed − not from the top,  but from the bottom. 
  Doc did not use a light, but went over them by hand. Gasoline still  leaking from a slightly punctured tank, ran
  cold on his hands. 
  The bronze man knew planes. He identified the type of these, and by  that knew they were the two crafts
  flown by Wapp and his gang. Hopeless  wrecks, both. 
  He found no bodies inside. 
  But farther along the beach, there was a dead man. He had been  crushed from the waist up, every major bone
  in that portion of his  anatomy broken. He was one of Wapp's crowd. 
  Doc Savage turned back toward his plane. 
  He was looking toward the spot where it lay when there was a loud  report, somewhat hollow, followed
  instantly by a tremendous blaze of  white light. The light continued its brilliant glare steadily. 
  Chapter XIII. WAR IN SPOOK HOLE
  DOC SAVAGE ran toward the light. The Illumination did not surprise  him. It was the work of one of the
  small balls he had distributed so  carefully. They were filled with a chemical which ignited and burned
  brightly when the thin−shelled container was broken − as it would break  if stepped upon by a prowler. 
  Another of the lights whitened out. Either Monk and Ham had stepped  upon them by mistake, or there was an
  attack. 
  It was the latter. Two pistol shots banged out. One of the  machine−gun pistols turned loose an unholy
  moaning. Doc put on more  speed. 
  Out in the lagoon, there was a great splashing. It went almost  unnoticed in the new uproar. 
  Doc came to a point where he could see the plane more distinctly.  It was being attacked. Men were running
  toward it, firing as they came.  The bulky squatness of Captain Wapp was prominent in the foreground. 
  Wapp dived to one side, slammed down behind a small boulder, and  proceeded to roll the rock ahead of him
  as a shield. This perhaps  looked easy to Wapp, but in execution, it proved to be difficult. He  fell behind the
  others. 
  The superfirers were taking their toll. One man went down, then  another. The rest wavered. The sudden
  bursting of light from the little  chemical balls had already upset their nerves. 
  Wapp had one quality of a leader. He knew when to retreat. 
  "We bane licked!" he howled. "Run, you fellers." 
  Obedience could not have been more prompt. With great leaps, the  attackers sailed back into the night. 
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  "Dummers!" roared Wapp. "Take der two dot got hit! Doc Savage's  fellers bane shoot a bullet dot only puts
  you to sleep." 
  This moved the fleeing ones to pause and gather up the pair who had  fallen. Staggering, swearing, they
  plunged away. Captain Wapp got up  and followed them. 
  MONK bounced out of Doc's speed plane, doing some howling on his  own account, eager to push an
  offensive. The homely chemist was  exhibiting an agility not much less than incredible, considering his
  condition the night before. 
  Captain Wapp, bringing up the tail end of the retreat, paused to  empty a revolver at Monk, and the latter
  hastily dived back into the  plane. He loosened another burst from his machine−gun pistol. 
  Doc Savage came up, asking Monk and Ham, "You hit?" 
  "Heck, no!" Monk grunted. 
  "I'll see what I can do to hasten their retreat," Doc said. 
  The bronze man ran toward the edge of the beach. Monk and Ham raced  after him, the stiffness of their
  muscles slowing them up somewhat. 
  Doc threw over his shoulders, "It's not good for you fellows to  exert yourselves too − " 
  Ham said, "I would not miss this for anything!" and tried to put on  more speed. 
  They could hear their quarry ahead, retreating fast. Twice, Monk  tried bursts from the machine−gun pistol.
  They seemed to do nothing but  bring back stray bullets which sizzled noisily among the rocks. 
  Wapp's crowd must have been familiar with the terrain, probably  having seen it during the day. They made
  better speed than Doc's trio −  perhaps not better speed than the bronze man could have made alone, but  he did
  not leave Monk and Ham, who were very slow and tired quickly. 
  It was fantastically difficult going. Time after time, a sheer  height of stone barred their way. Once, Monk
  would have tumbled into a  gaping chasm had Ham not gripped his coattails. They did not show  lights. It
  would have drawn bullets. 
  Doc came to a decision. 
  "Back we go," he said. "Daylight is the time for this. And they may  flank us and get to our plane." 
  They turned back, moving more slowly, stopping often to listen.  Perhaps a hundred yards from their plane,
  Doc Savage exploded into  abrupt movement. 
  "Some one at the ship!" he rapped, and plunged into the night. 
  THE chemical ball flares had burned themselves out around the  plane, leaving a darkness that was like
  solidified ink. 
  Doc's ears had caught small sounds in the sepia abyss. They were  water noises, splashes, the rasp of
  something, probably a boat keel, on  sand. There had been another note too − a clinking, as of wrenches
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  working on metal. 
  Not wishing to charge into an ambush, the bronze man produced a  flashlight, twisted the focusing head so
  that it would throw a wide  beam, and crouched behind a boulder. He thumbed the light on. 
  There was no one around the plane. 
  But fifty feet from the shore, there was a strange, flat little  boat. It was very shallow of draft, and driven by an
  outboard motor.  The motor was not running. 
  A man, standing erect, was poling the craft along silently in the  shallows, leaving the vicinity of the plane. 
  It was the man of mystery, the fellow who had pretended to be  one−armed. 
  He flopped flat in the boat and gave the starting cord of his  outboard a yank. He must have primed the little
  motor ahead of time,  for it caught instantly. 
  Lying flat in his speeding shell, the man yelled. His words could  be understood distinctly. 
  "I've got the carburetors off your plane motors!" he shouted. "You  can't get away. There's no food on this
  island. And I've got the only  water protected so you can't get to it." 
  "What are you trying to do?" Doc's powerful voice was a crashing to  reach the man above the outboard moan. 
  "Hit a bargain with you," the man bellowed back. "Get Wapp and his  crowd out of the way for me, and I'll
  give you your motor parts so you  can get away from here. You'll have to leave without asking too many
  questions, too!" 
  The outboard was powerful and the little craft receded swiftly. It  was almost out of the flashlight beam range
  when Monk and Ham came  staggering up. 
  Doc seized Monk's rapid−firer and drove a stream of mercy slugs  toward the fleeing boat. But the occupant
  slammed down flat, and turned  the craft so that the bulk of the motor protected him. He got away. 
  They listened to the moan of the outboard betaking itself away. One  thing was noticeable. The little boat
  clung very closely to the shore,  where the water was shallow. Not once did it venture out in the depths. 
  "Looks kinda like that guy was leery of them monsters, or whatever  they are, in the lagoon," Monk remarked. 
  DOC SAVAGE made a hasty examination of the plane, and it was as the  mysterious one−armed man had
  said; he had taken off all the  carburetors. This had not been difficult, since the carburetors, for  ease in
  cleaning, were fitted with quick−detachable lugs. 
  "Any spares aboard?" Monk asked. 
  "No," Doc told him. "Only those minor parts which commonly get out  of order." 
  "I think we will put the plane in the water and anchor it," Doc  said. 
  Ham began doubtfully, "But those things, whatever they are, in the  water − −" 
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  "I believe we will be safe enough where the water is shallow," Doc  told him. "At least, it is a choice between
  two evils − the lagoon, or  Wapp's gang − and I do not think Wapp's crowd will be eager to venture  into the
  water." 
  Doc told of the smashed planes he had found on the beach, and of  the crushed human body near by. 
  "Whew!" Monk breathed, after the recital. "Some hole, this!" 
  He glanced about, small eyes striving to pierce the intense  darkness. He listened to the mournful, sepulchral
  howl of the wind  among the rock spires. It was not an inspiringly cheerful sound at the  best, and even less in
  view of what the night had so far produced. 
  "The Spook part of the name fits, too," Monk added. 
  They shifted the position of the plane, managing to roll it by hand  down the hard sand until it floated, then
  guiding it, at times fighting  the strong wind gusts, until they were some hundreds of yards from  their previous
  position. They anchored in water not much more than knee  deep. 
  "The tide is coming in," Doc said. "That means there will be more  water here soon. If it becomes too deep,
  we will move toward the  shore." 
  An hour later, the moon shifted its position enough to disclose,  quite near, a cove with high rocky sides.
  Inside this, the plane would  be concealed from view, except to an observer across the lagoon. 
  Monk said, "I still can't sleep. What do you say we leave the crate  and scout around?" 
  Doc agreed. He was anxious to find the prisoners, Pat, Nancy Law  and Johnny, if they were still alive. 
  Before leaving the plane, they did a number of things calculated to  entertain any prowler. Small bombs
  containing an anaesthetic gas which  produced harmless unconsciousness were hooked up to detonate if the
  doors were opened. 
  Monk, with some difficulty, rigged electrical shocking devices  which would all but render senseless any one
  touching certain parts of  the fuselage. 
  "Long Tom would be the guy to do this," Monk remarked as he worked.  "Wonder what happened to him in
  New York? He never did show up from  that engagement he had in Washington." 
  Doc said, "Let us get going." 
  THE night was cold. Moisture in the sand had frozen, so that the  brittle crust crunched under their feet until
  they moved in close  against the wall of cliffs, where the sand was more dry. 
  The wind made strange sounds. Out in the lagoon, there was an  outburst of the elephantine splashing. 
  "A plugged nickel would buy my share of this place," Monk stated. 
  Doc drove a bronze hand against Monk's arm, stopping him. Ham was  brought up likewise. The three of them
  stood, ears hunting sounds until  their drums ached. Monk and Ham caught only the ghostly orchestration  of
  the island. 
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  Then the bronze man eased away in the darkness. He was gone fully  five minutes, and at no time did he make
  a perceptible sound. Then he  materialized beside Monk and Ham. 
  "What was it?" Ham breathed. 
  Doc Savage was slow speaking. When he did voice words, they were  abrupt, imperative, excited. 
  "There he is!" Doc ripped. "Get him!" 
  The bronze man made rapid slappings with his feet − but did not  change position. Monk and Ham likewise
  stood rigid. They did not know  which way to move. 
  Silence followed, absolute except for the island noises. 
  Monk, very small of voice, queried, "Just what was the idea?" 
  "Thought I heard some one near," Doc said dryly. "I could not  locate anybody by searching. I tried that trick,
  hoping that the  skulker would move and betray his position. I guess there was no one.  The wind must have
  moved a rock." 
  They went on slowly. 
  There was a skulker. Had he been a white man, Doc would probably  have found him. But this fellow was half
  a thing of the wild, versed in  ways of the stalk, and sly. 
  He had stood perfectly still since inadvertently making the small  noise, nor did he stir until Doc Savage and
  his two companions had  moved on a good distance. 
  The aboriginal fellow wore no stitch of clothing, for garments have  a way of rubbing together and making
  small noises. Too, he had done  what for him was an unusual thing − he had taken a bath recently, to  rid
  himself of any body odors that might reach a keen nostril. 
  The skulker eased away. His big, calloused feet made no noticeable  sounds. He seemed impervious to the
  chill, in spite of his nakedness,  and did not shiver. 
  He quickened his pace when he was out of earshot, beginning to run  with great strides. A time or two, he fell
  over rocks, but on the  whole, he got along surprisingly well. 
  His course led him around the edge of the lagoon. Then he turned  toward the shore and began to climb. He
  seemed, as far as the moonlight  permitted vision, to be surmounting a sheer crag which poked upward  like a
  gigantic thumb. 
  There was a path of sorts, a series of exposed steps. They led to a  timber which bridged an expanse of space
  with a straight drop of fully  two hundred feet directly below. Beyond the timber was a ladder which  led up to
  a round hole in the stone. There was a stir at the hole. 
  A swarthy giant with a knife of immense size looked out, then  grunted wordlessly and permitted the naked
  one to enter. 
  THE native without clothes went directly to a stone chamber in  which a very modern electric light burned.
  The subterranean chamber was  large, and its depth in the stone pinnacle was indicated by the fact  that no
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  sound of the noisy night penetrated, not even the hollow roar  of surf on the outer coast of the island. 
  The place was not especially tidy, but it held a tremendous array  of chemical equipment. It was not a
  laboratory, one versed in such  matters would have realized at a glance, but rather an installation  designed for
  the manufacture of some special product. Just what that  product was, it might have taken even an experienced
  chemist some time  to discover. 
  The one−armed man of mystery was working in the center of the room,  plunging an electric stirring device
  into an enormous vat under which  electric heating apparatus functioned. 
  There was a concoction being mixed in the vat. Three glass tubes  ran steady streams of ingredients, and from
  time to time the man turned  the contents of the jars. 
  He was using both his arms, and his face wore a grim expression. He  might have been a sorcerer concocting
  some witch's brew. 
  He looked at the big native and said, "Who do you think you are −  Adam? Go put on some clothes." 
  The Patagonian tied a cloth about himself. When he spoke, his  English was fair enough. 
  "Doc Savage and his two men have changed the location of their  plane," he said. "They have anchored − " 
  "The fools did not get out in the lagoon?" the other snapped. 
  "No, no," the native explained hastily. "They are in a small cove,  in shallow water, exploring the vicinity." 
  "How much have they learned?" 
  "Very little," said the aborigine. 
  "Wait a minute," the white man grunted. "I've got to finish this  stuff. Our project cannot stop." 
  "The vats are low," agreed the other. 
  "Didn't leave enough before I went to New York," grumbled the man  mixing the strange brew. "But this is
  about done. It will be  administered as usual. You understand?" 
  "I understand − mixed with the food before it is thrown into the  lagoon," the swarthy giant agreed. 
  NEARLY half an hour was expended in the completing of the mixing  process. Not until the final product was
  dished out into glass jars did  the man who was preparing it seem satisfied. 
  "That will carry us a week," he said, stepping back. 
  "Shall I return to watch the bronze man?" asked the big native. 
  "No." The fake one−armed man seemed weary, desperate. "This fellow  Wapp got ashore with all of his men
  but one, although he was fool  enough to make the mistake of landing his planes in the lagoon. He is
  dangerous, for his party outnumbers us, and is a well−armed party. Too,  I think he brought a small field gun
  and explosive shells. I believe I  saw them dragging it out of the wreck of their planes." 
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  "We fight them," said the dark Indian. 
  "And get licked," grunted the other. "No. We've got to use our  heads. I've got a plan. I hate to use it, because
  it means one of us  will have to let ourselves be captured by Wapp." 
  "I do that," offered the Patagonian. 
  The white man smiled, and clapped the other on the shoulder. 
  "With luck, you can persuade them not to kill you," he said. "And I  think it will be worth the risk." He
  frowned blackly. "Spook Hole,  here, is the product of my life's work and study. I worked on this for  years.
  And I've got it, something that will make us all wealthy. And  damned if I turn it loose." 
  "What you want do?" queried the native. 
  "Poke around Wapp's camp," directed the other. "Let yourself be  caught. Pretend to be scared into talking
  when they try to question  you. Tell them where Doc Savage is." 
  "Then they make another try and maybe kill this Savage man," said  the native. 
  The other shook his head. "Oh, no. Because, in the meantime, I'll  warn Savage. The idea, you see, is to keep
  these two outfits scrapping  each other until Savage finally licks Wapp. Then we − " 
  "Suppose Wapp win?" 
  "He won't," the white man said with conviction. "I'm betting on  that. And when Savage comes out on top,
  we've got the parts of his  plane to bargain with him. We can force him to leave without asking too  many
  questions." 
  They talked it over. It was a simple plan, to play each side  against the other, retaining a club over the
  combatant which they  thought would win. 
  "Wapp will keep you unharmed," the one−armed man assured the  Patagonian. "Let Wapp think you know
  how this place may be taken. And,  if you can, aid those prisoners of Wapp's to escape. One of them is my
  niece, Nancy Law. The other two are Doc Savage's friends, one his aide,  Johnny, and the other his cousin,
  Patricia Savage. No telling when  Wapp, the fool, will decide to kill them." 
  They went out, and at the exit, found a very puzzled guard. 
  THE baffled expression which the door guard wore caught the  attention of the one−armed man instantly. 
  "What is it?" he asked in Patagonian dialect. 
  "Strange cries from below." The aborigine pointed downward vaguely.  "They have the sound of one of my
  people in distress. They are in my  language. I go down. But there is no one." 
  "It has the mark of a trick," the white man said slowly. "But it  could not be Wapp. None of his crowd speak
  the Patagonian language.  You, guard, use much care in investigating these sounds if you hear  them again." 
  "I have used care," the look−out said. "I will continue to do so." 
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  The big Patagonian who had come from the cove where Doc's plane  lay, and the white man, the latter
  fastening one arm inside his coat so  that it would appear he was one−armed, took their slow departure down
  the sheer face of the stone spire. 
  The guard at the entrance watched them go, then listened after the  night swallowed them. The spot which he
  guarded was one almost entirely  inaccessible, except for this one route, and a single man could stand  off an
  army from that point. 
  There is one gesture which seems to indicate puzzlement the world  over − the simple, absent scratching of
  the head with a finger. 
  The Patagonian look−out did this as he peered downward. He was  puzzled over those cries he had heard.
  Intently, he watched the  darkness below. 
  From time to time, sounds came from the series of rooms carved out  of the rock behind him, but he paid no
  attention. Some of his fellow  aborigines were quartered there. 
  There was, however, a figure stirring in the stone chambers which  was not one of the Patagonians, although
  in physique, the prowler  considerably surpassed even the largest of the enormous natives. 
  DOC SAVAGE was in the room which held the chemical apparatus, and  he was very interested in the brew
  which the one−armed man of mystery  had so painstakingly concocted. 
  The Patagonian who had come from the cove where the plane was  hidden, so blithely sure he had evaded the
  bronze man, had been  markedly less clever than he imagined. 
  Doc, after pretending to depart with Monk and Ham, had simply  circled back and waited until the man did
  move. Following the fellow  had been difficult, but certainly not impossibly so. 
  Entering the stronghold within the stone peak had been more  difficult. Solution of that finally had been the
  decoying of the  look−out with faint cries in his own tongue. Doc had entered, unseen,  while the man
  investigated. 
  The bronze man went over the chemical array a second time, now  inspecting the ingredients of the strange
  brew. These were in bottles,  phials, cartons, and all bore labels. None of them were especially rare  −
  practically all could be purchased from a large pharmical supply  house. 
  Any one watching the bronze man's features would have, for once,  seen expression. Comprehension!
  Satisfaction! 
  For a moment, the strange, low trilling sound, the exotic note  peculiar to Doc's moments of mental
  excitement, came into existence,  ranging not unmelodiously. 
  It carried, and back in the recesses of the stone labyrinth, a  coarse aboriginal voice rumbled out in
  puzzlement, causing Doc's sound  to come to an abrupt end. He had not realized he was making it, which  was
  not uncommonly the case. 
  Always, that sound had a distinct significance. And just now it  meant that the bronze man had completed
  links in his chain of theory  which made the whole thing become an array of convincing fact. 
  He had a good line on the secret of Spook Hole. 
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  Chapter XIV. MAN TRAP
  DOC SAVAGE eased out of the chamber, and headed toward the exit.  Once, when he heard a man stirring
  somewhere, he whipped into a room  which seemed empty. 
  It was evidently a study of some sort, for a number of bookracks  stood well away from the walls, and there
  was a chair, ponderous,  poorly stuffed, apparently made by a man who was no especially skilled  carpenter. 
  On the walls and in home−made exhibit cases were mounted marine  specimens. Doc Savage examined one
  by the light that filtered in from  the corridor. It was a rare asterozoa type. 
  It was no assortment which would be kept by the ordinary amateur,  but rather was one which showed
  Hezemiah Law − and probably he had made  the collection − was no ordinary authority on marine life. 
  There was a large case along one wall, covered with canvas. Doc  lifted the canvas covering. Inside were jars
  which held a colorless  liquid, possibly a preservative, and dark, tumorish−looking growths in  various stages
  of development. 
  It was such an exhibit as might have been found on the shelves of a  physician specializing in cancer or some
  like growth, except that these  exhibits were huge. Some of the growths were fully as large as bushel  baskets. 
  Since he hoped to create for himself the opportunity of examining  all of this later, at his leisure, Doc Savage
  moved out of the study  and down the corridor. There was a soft pad of sand underfoot. This  stone pinnacle
  was of soft formation, not difficult to excavate. 
  The guard at the entrance came into view. He was still leaning  downward, listening, hoping to hear the
  strange cries which had so  puzzled him. 
  Doc satisfied the watchman. The bronze man moved his head back,  tensed throat muscles, and there issued
  from him a ventriloqulal  imitation of a man calling out in the Patagonian tongue in the infinite  distance. 
  The guard started violently, decided the call came from below −  whence it did seem to emanate − and picked
  up a powerful hand light and  began to descend the precarious path. By tossing his light ahead, he  could
  illuminate every foot of the path. He knew no one could get up  past him. 
  The man made one mistake. He neglected to look behind him. Had he  done so, he might have seen a giant
  bronze man, larger by far than  himself, sliding down a thin silken cord, one end of which was secured  to a
  collapsible grapple which had caught in a crevice in the stone. 
  But the watchman did not look back, and spent the next half hour in  a vain search for the voice he thought he
  had heard calling from below. 
  Doc Savage made an attempt to pick up the trail of the mysterious  one−armed man and his big Patagonian.
  He had no luck. They had too much  of a start. 
  The bronze man headed for the little cove which harbored his plane  and Monk and Ham. 
  THE one−armed man of mystery and his Patagonian had traveled fast  since leaving their stronghold. But,
  nearing the spot where Wapp and  his gang were encamped, they came to a halt. 
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  The white man climbed atop a jutting of rock and surveyed Wapp's  camp. Evidently, he had spotted it during
  the previous day, or some of  his Patagonians had watched Wapp's crowd take up a position there. 
  Wapp had used judgment in the selection of a camp site. Atop a  steep hill, there was a pile of weathered stone
  blocks of tremendous  size, probably once a part of a great boulder which the ice of many  winters had split
  into fragments. 
  This formed excellent shelter, and since the sides of the steep  hill were without cover, and rather
  well−illuminated by moonlight, it  was a retreat very difficult to take by surprise. A fire smouldered  among
  the boulders and cast weird, bloody flickerings. 
  The one−armed man climbed down and talked to his Patagonian. 
  "You will advance and let yourself be caught," he said. "Tell them,  after a time, where Doc Savage can be
  found. It is a risky thing you  are doing, my friend, and I shall not forget it. Your house will  forever be a rich
  one." 
  "It is all I ask," said the big Patagonian in his native tongue. 
  The aboriginal went forward, skulking in the moon shadows. He  seemed to have a good idea of where
  Wapp's watchmen were stationed. 
  He managed his own capture in a simple manner. He simply stumbled,  as if he had fallen accidentally while
  prowling, and fell out in plain  sight. 
  "Hold it!" ripped a voice from above. 
  The Patagonian simulated terror and lay perfectly still. The man  above did not take chances. 
  "Get up and come here!" he grated. "And no funny business!" 
  It was the small, tough−looking fellow, Sass, and he had the pig,  Habeas, anchored to a near−by boulder. 
  The Patagonian advanced, making his big limbs tremble as if scared  half out of his wits. He permitted himself
  to be taken a prisoner. Very  shortly, he was before Wapp. 
  Wapp used no gentle method of questioning. He kicked and beat the  big native, all the while bellowing
  demands. He wanted to know how to  get into the veritable fortress excavated in the spire of stone. 
  "There be no way," insisted the Patagonian. He was crying like a  child now. His act was very good. 
  Wapp wanted to know where Hezemiah Law could be found. Was Hezemiah  Law dead, among the slain in
  the burned plane at Blanca Garde? It  seemed that Wapp did not know. 
  Wapp finally got around to asking questions about Doc Savage. 
  The big Patagonian could have shown even the wily Ropes, who was  standing near by with Braski, fine
  points in the art of deceit. 
  Apparently in great fear, the native admitted that he had been  scouting for Doc Savage, had found his camp,
  and was returning with the  information when he had, oh, so unfortunately, been captured. 
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  "Where bane dot Savage feller?" Wapp howled. 
  The Patagonian described the cove. 
  Wapp roared orders. A great bustle of activity seized the camp as  an expedition prepared to get under way to
  wipe out the bronze man − or  at least, try it again. 
  OUT in the darkness, the one−armed man of mystery had watched until  he saw that surge of motion as men
  got ready to go forth. He had wanted  to be certain Wapp would fall into the trap before he went to warn Doc. 
  While waiting, the man had freed the arm which he had been keeping  fastened under his coat. But now,
  before leaving his vantage point, he  replaced the arm in its covering. He muttered his dislike of this. 
  "I hope it don't go on forever," he grumbled. 
  The man clambered down from the rocky prominence, sighed his relief  when he reached smoother going, and
  stepped out swiftly. He would have  to move fast, if Doc Savage was to be warned, and tipped of a method by
  which he might set a trap for Wapp's crowd. 
  The one−armed man took no more than half a dozen steps. He heard a  slight sound, stopped. The next instant,
  there was a louder noise, a  whistling, at his back. His brain seemed to fly to pieces. He started  falling, it
  appeared, an infinite, black distance. 
  He fell, actually, only as far as the ground. 
  A man who had struck him down pounced upon him, fearing resistance.  But the one−armed fellow was
  senseless. 
  The attacker chuckled once, gleefully, then picked up his victim  and bore him toward Wapp's stronghold. He
  hailed the guard at the top,  and was told to advance. He did so, carrying his prize. 
  "I guess I didn't do so bad, eh?" he chuckled. 
  The watchman stared. 
  "For the love of a blubber spade!" he gulped. "The one−armed guy  who's had everybody guessin'! Where'd
  you annex him?" 
  The proud captor conveyed that information to Wapp an instant  later. 
  "I was scoutin' around, like you told me," he advised Wapp. "I hear  two birds moseyin' around. I sneak up
  close, but can't crack down on  'em on account of there ain't no chance. But I hear 'em gabbin'." 
  "Vot dey done said?" Wapp demanded. 
  "They had a scheme," replied the other. "That big wild man was to  kid you into jumping Doc Savage. This
  other bird was to tip Savage so  he'd have a party all ready for you." 
  "Der bummers!" roared Captain Wapp. 
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  LUNGING over, Captain Wapp performed his favorite operation on  prisoners. He gave the one−armed man
  of mystery a terrific kick in the  side − and thus discovered that the prisoner really had two good arms.  They
  freed the hidden arm, swearing their amazement. 
  The surly Ropes had been standing back with Braski, watching. Now  they both leaped in and went to work on
  the captive. 
  The man of mystery was relieved of a set of false teeth, and a  certain amount of grease paint was rubbed off
  his features, leaving a  visage which was certainly not that of a young man. Vigorous rubbing  also disclosed
  that his hair was covered with some greasy darkening  substance. Actually, he was nearly white−headed. 
  Braski and Ropes stood back triumphantly and looked at Captain  Wapp. 
  "Recognize him?" Braski asked. 
  "I'm telling a man," Wapp leered. He leaned close to the prisoner.  "Vot was der idea?" 
  The captive looked incredibly old and beaten. 
  "Oh, I suspected Braski from the first," he said wearily. 
  "Me!" Braski exploded. "You suspected me?" 
  "You had been selling my product and keeping part of the proceeds,"  said the man on the floor. "I checked up
  on you and learned that. I  assumed the disguise of a one−armed man and went to New York to get  back at
  you, somehow. It was then that I learned you and Captain Wapp  and Ropes were all working together, and
  that you planned to kill me  and take everything. Not satisfied with what you could steal, were  you?" 
  Braski swore. 
  Wapp looked at him and gibed, "Not bane so smart as you think, eh?" 
  The man on the floor added another bit of information. 
  "It was me who called in Doc Savage," he said. "I sent him an  unsigned telegram telling him to investigate
  the whaling ship Harpoon.  That was after you grabbed my niece, Nancy Law. I wanted Savage to  rescue her.
  I didn't think he would learn anything. The girl knew  nothing." 
  Captain Wapp jumped up and down like an enraged animal and bawled  profanity which carried fully a mile,
  even over the wail of the ghostly  wind. 
  "You bane pay for trouble you cause!" he shrieked. 
  "You'll never take my headquarters," the man on the floor said  grimly. "My Patagonians will fight you to the
  end." 
  "About dot, we will see," Wapp told him ominously. 
  The small, pale thug, Sass, had been standing in the background.  Now he shoved forward, pointing at the man
  who was being questioned. 
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  "Just who is this?" he demanded. 
  Wapp swore. 
  "That," he said, "is Hezemiah Law." 
  Chapter XV. WAPP CLOSES IN
  SASS absently nudged the pig, Habeas, with a toe, as he stared at  the recumbent form of the man identified as
  Hezemiah Law. Then Sass  scratched his head. 
  "But the dame, Nancy Law, cabled down here when this guy was in New  York, and got an answer," he said. 
  Braski glared at Hezemiah Law. "How about that?" 
  Sass popped brown sassafras bark between his jaws and echoed,  "Yeah? How about it?" 
  "I was watching Doc Savage's office," Hezemiah Law said drearily.  "They caught me snooping, but I got
  away. Anyway, I knew the girl had  sent the cable. So I simply cabled my men here to answer it as if I  were
  still in Patagonia. I had some of my natives waiting in Blanca  Garde with a plane, as you well know." 
  "But why all the phenagling?" Braski persisted. 
  "Yeah," Sass agreed. "Why the fiddle−faddle?" 
  "To keep every one thinking I was in Patagonia," Hezemiah Law  snapped peevishly. "I didn't want Doc
  Savage to know I was in New York.  He would have asked questions about this place, and I wanted its secret
  kept. And naturally, I didn't want you crooks to know." 
  "Smile when you say dot!" Captain Wapp boomed with coarse  pleasantry, and delivered a kick which must
  certainly have cracked one  of old Hezemiah Law's ribs. 
  Law writhed some, moaned, but said nothing with words. 
  Wapp teetered back on his heels and eyed Braski. 
  Braski said, "This is about cleaned up. We got Law. We got his  niece. We got Doc Savage's cousin and one
  of his men, and we got Doc  Savage himself spotted, and the two men with him ain't in such hot  shape for a
  fight." 
  "Dot's a mouthful," Wapp agreed. "Me, Aye say get rid of them dot  we've got here." 
  Braski nodded. "All but Hezemiah Law." 
  "Why not him?" Wapp wanted to know. 
  "We must know the ingredients of that stuff Hezemiah Law mixes up  for feeding purposes," Braski pointed
  out. "Without it, we can't go  ahead and operate this place for ourselves." 
  "Dot's a fact," Wapp nodded. "We keep Hezemiah alive. We put kibosh  on rest, eh?" 
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  "O.K.," said Braski. 
  They finished getting their weapons together, Wapp giving the  orders. A close observer might have noticed
  that Braski and his crony,  Ropes, were trying to get together without being observed. But they did  not
  succeed. 
  Wapp separated one man from the expedition and told him to stay  behind. 
  "How much nerve bane you got?" Wapp asked. 
  The selected thug was a scarred, weazened rodent with the marks of  his trade all over him, and he said, "I got
  plenty. All it takes. Try  me." 
  "When Aye get back, Aye might not find nobody but Hezemiah Law  alive, eh?" Captain Wapp said
  meaningly. 
  "I get you," said the man. "The others might have bullet trouble." 
  Thus were the orders for murder given, 
  CAPTAIN WAPP formed his expedition into a tight group, and they set  forth down the side of the hill,
  moving alertly, and vanished into the  darkness. 
  They did not make much noise, for soon the whoop and moan of the  wind was all that could be heard. A thin
  cloud scud had appeared and  was racing in detached fragments, like badly scared animals, across the  moon's
  face, making eerie intervals of murk. 
  The man left behind to do murder handled his gun, then pocketed it  and drew out a knife, which he seemed to
  have decided to use. He began  whetting the knife. 
  He was testing the edge on a hair plucked from his own head when he  heard a sound and stared, to see the
  diminutive Sass coming up the  hill. 
  "What'd you come back for?" asked the appointed killer. 
  Sass swore. 
  "That fool, Wapp," he growled. "He changed his mind. Sent me back  to tell you." 
  "Tell what?' 
  "You're not to kill the prisoners," said Sass. "And brother, you'd  better not, because I'm going back and tell
  Wapp they're alive, and  he'll skin you if you croak 'em. He's decided − " 
  "Aw, hell!" growled the other. 
  Sass betook himself away in the noisy night. 
  The man left behind to do the killing had much of the satanic in  his make−up. He moved around to where the
  prisoners lay − the long,  bony Johnny; Pat, looking very bronze−haired and trim; and attractive  Nancy Law,
  who did not seem unduly frightened. 
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  The man knew the prisoners had heard that they were to be slain,  all but old Hezemiah Law, who lay, bound
  and gagged, in a crevice. But  the man did not think they had heard Sass come back and countermand the
  order. So he thought he would have some of his brand of fun. 
  He whetted his knife visibly for a time, then walked over, tangled  fingers in Pat's hair, and lifted her head,
  baring her throat, as if  for a cut. 
  "If I was a gentleman, I might leave you until the last, baby," he  said. "But I ain't no gentleman." 
  With dryness in her throat, Pat said, "Anybody could see that." 
  The man snarled, grabbed her hair again − and something happened.  Something whizzed out of the
  surrounding night, went clank! on his  head, then bounced off. It was a rock the size of a baseball. The man
  fell fiat on his face and only the tips of his fingers moved. 
  All of the prisoners lay still, stunned with surprise. Pat's lips  were parted slightly. They separated more as a
  knife came sailing out  of the darkness, from the spot where the thrown rock had materialized.  It skittered
  almost to her. 
  Pat lost no time looking the gift over. She rolled, got her fingers  on the knife, and cut herself free. She sliced
  through the ropes which  held the others. 
  Johnny heaved up, gulping, "I'll be superamalgamated," and ran and  searched where the knife and rock had
  come from. 
  "Uncomeatable eventuation," he murmured. 
  "We weren't all born with a dictionary in our mouths," Pat told  him. 
  "An incredible happening," Johnny said with smaller words. "I  cannot find any one." 
  They all looked about. But there was no sign of their mysterious  benefactor. 
  WHILE they were tying up their late captor, who was only senseless,  Pat said, "We've got to help Doc. Warn
  him!" She turned on old Hezemiah  Law. "You know where Doc is. Show us the place." 
  "I will that!" Hezemiah Law said with alacrity. He got up, groaned.  "That Wapp broke one of my ribs when
  he kicked me." 
  They took the pistol they found on the person of the senseless  guard. It was the only weapon they had. They
  left the hill and stumbled  through the darkness, traversing the incredible forest of stone in the  direction of the
  lagoon cove. 
  Johnny came closer to Hezemiah Law. 
  "Consummate exergesis, a recapitulation, is mandatory," he said. 
  Hezemiah Law grunted. 
  Pat came over. "Maybe he doesn't speak your language, Johnny." She  addressed Hezemiah Law. "What we
  want to know is what is behind all of  this. What is there on Spook Hole that everybody wants?" 
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  "I was afraid you would ask that," Hezemiah Law grumbled. 
  "Afraid!" Pat wrinkled her nose, "I'll bet you were sure of it. Out  with the answer." 
  "No," said Hezemiah Law. 
  "What an egg you are!" Pat observed. 
  Hezemiah Law had enough of pride to think that some kind of an  explanation was necessary. 
  "The thing I have here is the product of a lifetime of work," he  said. "From the time I was a boy, I dreamed of
  the possibilities of  accomplishing it. I worked and studied. All of my career was aimed  toward its eventual
  accomplishment. Now, I have it." 
  "And you're set on keeping it," Pat said sarcastically. 
  "It's not that, alone," Hezemiah Law told her. "It is the fact that  if the world got word of what I have here, it
  would do no good, and it  would create infinite harm. For one thing, the price of what I have to  sell would
  drop, once the market learned there was a method of  producing great quantities of it." 
  "So," said Pat. 
  Hezemiah Law defended, "You know what happened to the price of  pearls when science learned how to grow
  culture pearls by introducing  grains of foreign substance into oysters?" 
  "It's not pearls you have here?" Pat questioned. 
  "Of course not," said Hezemiah Law. 
  "Pipe down," said Pat. "Wapp might hear us." 
  They fell silent and used much more caution, for now they were  drawing near the lagoon shore and the cove.
  They could hear the rustle  of the lagoon waves above the rumble of distant−breaking surf on the  outer shores.
  They descended sharply. Sand was underfoot. 
  "Here is the cove," Hezemiah Law breathed. 
  They used so much caution that it was boring, and they searched the  dreary little cove from end to end.
  Johnny, with his extreme tallness,  even waded across the middle. 
  They found neither Doc, his men, nor the plane. 
  IT was old Hezemiah Law who caused the next excitement. His niece,  Nancy Law, rather. 
  The two of them had gotten apart in the darkness. 
  "I will not!" Nancy Law cried out suddenly, vehemently. "Either  they go too, or I don't!" 
  Pat swung over, saying, "Pipe down, you two! Want the world to come  to an end? What's going on here?" 
  "I can't say that I care a lot for this uncle of mine," Nancy Law  said angrily. 
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  "I only hoped − " Hezemiah Law did not finish. 
  "He only hoped he and I could sneak off together and reach his  fort, or whatever he calls it," Nancy Law
  snapped. "He wanted to desert  the rest of you here." 
  Hezemiah Law mumbled, "I am trying to keep Doc Savage from learning  my secret." 
  "If I know anything about Doc, he's already solved your secret,"  Pat said grimly. 
  Hezemiah Law was silent for some moments, and when he did speak, it  was slowly, apologetically. 
  "I will take you all with me," he said, as if resigning himself to  something he had hoped to avoid. 
  Anger moved Johnny, for once, to use small words. 
  "Very kind of you," he said. 
  They now set a course toward Hezemiah Law's stronghold. Johnny,  using small words and his best persuasive
  personality, attempted to  pump Hezemiah Law, but learned exactly nothing. 
  "It is very baffling, this secret," Johnny told Pat. "I do not  believe I ever went through so much trouble before
  and learned so  little. Frankly, it gives me a headache." 
  "Me, too," Pat agreed. 
  As they drew near the stony prominence in which Hezemiah Law had  excavated his stronghold, they
  increased their pace. Johnny and Pat  kept a close watch on Hezemiah Law, also, lest he give them the slip as
  they were about to enter the unusual retreat. 
  "You seem to suspect me," Hezemiah Law grumbled. 
  "We are taking no chances," Johnny told him. 
  "Neither are we," said Captain Wapp, and stepped out of the  darkness holding a submachine gun tightly
  against his hip. 
  AWFUL silence held Johnny's party for a long minute. They made no  sudden moves, but looked around
  thoroughly. It was well that they did.  Captain Wapp's men were all about them, and their ugly grimness
  indicated an entire willingness to use the firearms which they held. 
  Captain Wapp stated, "Myself and three of my men will walk up that  path with you. Law, you will tell your
  damned Patagonians to admit us." 
  Hezemiah Law grated, "I am very likely to do that." 
  Wapp said, "I will kill you all right here." 
  He made that statement neither loudly nor with more than usual  vehemence, but there was in his voice a cold
  finality, an utter  resolution. He clicked off the safety of his machine gun and pointed it  at Nancy Law. 
  He was going to kill. There was not the slightest doubt of it. 
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  "I will do as you say," Hezemiah Law said in a sick voice. 
  What followed was very simple in its grisly significance. Hezemiah  Law led the way up the precarious path,
  the path which not even an army  could have taken, and because he had to, the defeated old man called  out to
  his Patagonians, so that they let the Wapp crowd get close. 
  The latter leaped upon the unsuspecting aboriginals, beating them  down with guns, firing a few shots. 
  There was some fighting in the inner rooms. Then it was all over.  Captain Wapp had possession. He was
  joyful. He had reason to be. In the  excitement of a few minutes ago, he had spoken clearer English than was
  his wont, but now he relapsed into his strange dialect. 
  "Aye bane happy man," he said. "Aye bane so happy dot Aye want to  do good things for other fellers." 
  He told this to Hezemiah Law. The latter only stared dully. 
  "Aye turn you all loose," said Captain Wapp. "Aye know leetle  island where Aye bane take you and you can
  live. Maybe you don't get  off. But dot not so bad as dead, eh?" 
  Hezemiah Law mumbled, "I don't believe you." 
  Wapp grinned. "Of course, you bane do one thing to pay me back for  mine gift." 
  "What is it?" Law asked. 
  "Tell me vot you put into dot mixture dot you feed to your pets in  the lagoon," said Captain Wapp. 
  "No!" Law snarled. "I won't!" 
  "Aye bane see about dot," said Captain Wapp, and grasping the bound  form of Hezemiah Law, he dragged
  the man into an adjacent chamber, from  whence grisly sounds of beating and torture began to emerge. 
  Braski and Ropes took advantage of this to edge together. 
  IT was the first opportunity Braski and Ropes had taken to confer  in some time. They had been cautious. 
  Ropes leered and said, "We're about ready, eh?" 
  Braski chuckled. "When Wapp gets the ingredients of the feeding  mixture, we will learn what it is. Then we
  will take care of Mister  Wapp." 
  "Shoot him?" Ropes queried. 
  "Together," Braski agreed. 
  "What about the others?" Ropes asked doubtfully. 
  "They don't give a damn who is chief," said Braski. "When we point  out that they'll get a bigger split, they'll
  side in with us. I know my  crooks." 
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  "I think the same way," Ropes agreed. "O. K. When Wapp gets the  dope, we won't waste time. We'll cut into
  him." 
  They moved away from the darkened recess where they had held their  conference. 
  An instant afterward, another figure appeared from farther back in  the darkness. It was the lean,
  unhealthy−looking Sass. He had heard  every word the two plotters had exchanged. 
  Sass's features wore a devilish expression. He went straight to  Captain Wapp, interrupting that worthy in the
  act of hammering Hezemiah  Law's skull with the butt of a revolver. 
  "Vot you want?" Captain Wapp snarled. 
  Sass told him. He told him every word he had overheard, and he even  embellished a little to make it
  especially good. 
  Captain Wapp all but had a spasm. He did it silently, though, and  when he had calmed down a little, he said
  simply, "Aye bane see!" 
  Sass wandered off. The entrance to the high retreat was being  guarded, of course, but there were small
  windows to the rear,  observation points giving out upon another part of the island. 
  Sass produced a flashlight, made sure he was alone, then blinked a  signal from one of the windows. 
  He got an answering flash of light almost immediately. 
  A thin rope came out of Sass's clothing. He lowered this through  the opening. Shortly, there was a
  pronounced tug, after which a  considerable weight bore on the rope as a man climbed. 
  It was Doc Savage. He had some difficulty wiggling through the  aperture. 
  Below, Monk and Ham were climbing the rope. 
  Doc addressed Sass. "Your part didn't pan out so well. I was  expecting you to radio me back at Blanca
  Garde." 
  "Didn't have a chance," said Sass. "Boy, that Wapp is careful. I  did manage to see that Johnny, Pat and Nancy
  Law were not harmed,  however. A while ago, I countermanded Wapp's order to kill them, then  managed to
  conk the guard with a rock and throw Pat a knife. They got  caught again, however, so that was wasted effort." 
  Ham clambered inside. Monk was below, mounting. He appeared a  moment later. It took two of them to get
  him through the small  aperture. 
  Monk bewildered, grasped Sass and stared at him with great  intentness. 
  "For the love of mud!"  he gulped. This is our pal − Long Tom!" 
  Chapter XVI. MÊLÉE
  HAM pumped Long Tom's arm up and down vigorously, gasping, "Sass  and Long Tom the same! Man,
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  101
  
  how'd you work it? Why, this is  unbelievable." 
  "Doc's idea," Long Tom chuckled. "He got wise that Wapp was adding  thugs to his crew. We scared a crook
  chief into recommending me to  Wapp. It was that simple. I've been sort of standing by in the gang,  helping
  when I could." 
  "Simple," Monk muttered, and rolled his eyes. "What a man!" 
  Long Tom − he did nothing to remove his Sass disguise − told them  how things stood. 
  "Wapp is going to tie into Braski and Ropes," he finished. "That  will be our cue to cut loose." 
  "Good," Doc said. "We will wait. Where are the rest of the  prisoners?" 
  "The Patagonians, Johnny, Pat and Nancy Law are in a side room,"  explained Long Tom, unconsciously
  speaking as Sass would have spoken.  "Wapp is questioning old Hezemiah Law." 
  They could hear Wapp yelling as he quizzed Law. The words were  almost mad with rage, and sprinkled with
  profanity. 
  Old Hezemiah Law's refusing whine was growing less and less  vehement. Finally, his voice sank to a
  mumble that was not intelligible  beyond the confines of the room. 
  Shortly after that, Captain Wapp could be heard laughing  triumphantly. 
  This might have been a signal, for certain of Wapp's old sailors  from the Harpoon gathered in the room where
  stood Braski and Ropes.  There was nothing peculiar about this, except that the men held their  guns in their
  hands. 
  Wapp came out of the room where he had been questioning Hezemiah  Law. He stood in the stone arch, a
  bulky, evil, gloating figure. 
  He waved a sheet of paper. 
  "I got it," he said. "It's all written down here, together with  directions of how to mix the stuff." 
  Braski looked at Ropes. Ropes nodded. They reached for their guns.  This was the moment to kill Captain
  Wapp. 
  In that underground labyrinth, things happened. Event followed  event with such grisly speed that it was
  doubtful if any of the  participants were ever quite sure of all that did occur. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP had set a trap for Braski and Ropes. The instant they  reached for their weapons to commit
  murder on their chief, the sailors  of the Harpoon flashed their own guns into action. 
  Braski and Ropes died almost instantly. Captain Wapp probably  thought that would settle it. He was
  mistaken. 
  There came through the nearest door a giant Nemesis of bronze, a  fighting fury of skill and ingenuity. On his
  heels crowded Monk and  Ham, and from another door came Johnny and the giant, dark natives of  Patagonia,
  ferocious killers with a cause to avenge. Some of them had  died that night. 
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  There was Long Tom, the electrical wizard, also − he who Wapp knew  as Sass, the cocky thug. Long Tom
  chanced to be standing close to Wapp,  and he swung a haymaker, hoping and indeed mightily endeavoring, to
  knock Wapp's head from his shoulders. 
  He did not succeed entirely, but he jarred Captain Wapp until that  worthy dropped his gun and fell flat on the
  floor, only to get up and  plunge into the fight with his two bare hands. 
  Some one began shooting the lights out, and the chambers hollowed  in rock became a bedlam in black. Men
  fought for their lives and many  died. 
  The deaths were not to Doc Savage's liking, for he had a set policy  never to take human life, even under the
  most rigorous provocation. He  had requested the Patagonians to restrain from killing, but they were  natural
  fighters, and in the heat of conflict, forgot everything. 
  Within three minutes, Captain Wapp was retreating toward the exit,  bawling at the survivors of his party to
  do likewise. 
  CAPTAIN WAPP did reach the exit, did manage to descend the path,  but when he reached the bottom, only
  four of his men were with him, and  the big Patagonians were hot after them. 
  It was partially daylight now, and the men fought in sort of a  lurid glow that somehow was hellishly befitting
  events. 
  The Patagonians closed in, and Wapp retreated. It was only a  question of moments until he would be beaten
  down with his followers.  And the aboriginals had taken to dispatching those who fell. 
  "Surrender!" Doc Savage yelled. "We can make the natives let you  live!" 
  Captain Wapp was in no mind to reason. Too, he had a cunning plan.  He had glimpsed a small boat on the
  beach, the same shell which  Hezemiah Law had used to relieve Doc's plane motors of their  carburetors earlier
  in the night. 
  Wapp led the retreat toward the boat. He and his men reached it.  With frantic haste, they shoved off, clubbing
  at the big Patagonians. 
  They got clear. 
  Captain Wapp bawled in triumph, seized a gun from one of his men,  and tried to shoot down Doc Savage.
  The bronze man, however, reached  cover in safety. 
  Wapp did not get clear. He had forgotten the monsters in the  lagoon. 
  He was far out in the little boat when disaster came. The tiny  shell lifted, borne upward by a darksome,
  gleaming body of enormous  proportions. The boat upset, and as it did so, a huge tail slashed out  of the water,
  came down, and a vast cloud of spray arose. 
  The boat and the men clinging to it disappeared utterly. The craft  happened to be of collapsible metal
  construction. 
  It was fully a minute later that Ham looked at Monk. 
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  Chapter XVI. MÊLÉE
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  "Monsters!" he snorted. 
  "How were we to know, in the night?" Monk demanded sheepishly. 
  "Plain whales," Ham grumbled. "That's what they are. Plain whales." 
  THE whales were not exactly plain whales, they learned in the  course of the next few days. They were
  ordinary whales, but in a sense,  they were all ill − ill because Hezemiah Law had been feeding them a
  chemical compound which he had spent most of his life in concocting. 
  The sick whales, thanks to Hezemiah Law's feeding, produced that  marine treasure known as ambergris.
  Ambergris! Product of fabulous  value on American and European markets, because of its use in the
  perfume−making business. 
  The whales had long haunted this cove, Hezemiah Law explained,  appearing there at times in small schools.
  He had managed to pen one of  these schools in the cove, some years before. 
  The ingredients of his mixture which provoked the growth of  ambergris, Hezemiah Law refused to reveal −
  until Doc Savage, after a  chemical analysis of the batch Law had mixed, told him what it held. 
  Hezemiah Law had changed a little. The horror of the last few days  had pretty well broken him in spirit. He
  had lost, too, his greed. 
  Law offered Doc Savage a half interest in the treasure of Spook  Hole. 
  It was against the bronze man's policy to accept monetary  remuneration. He deliberated. And he made certain
  researches, which  proved that the production of ambergris by Hezemiah Law's method was no  cruel process.
  After that, Doc broached a proposition. Hezemiah Law  accepted. 
  Proceeds from the sale of ambergris were to be divided four ways. A  fourth to Hezemiah Law, and another
  fourth to Nancy Law. The remaining  quarters went, one to the Patagonians, and the last to certain  charities
  which were agreed upon. 
  That cleaned up the matter of Spook Hole. 
  Hezemiah Law produced the missing parts of the bronze man's plane,  but Doc Savage and his aides did not
  leave immediately. Hezemiah Law,  Doc discovered, possessed probably more knowledge than did any other
  living man concerning fish and their food, life and habits. 
  Doc spent some time on Spook Hole for the deliberate purpose of  adding to his own store of knowledge what
  he could learn from Hezemiah  Law. 
  Altogether, they had a pleasant vacation after the hectic matter of  Captain Wapp. 
  THE END  1 
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/030 Spook Hole.pdf