Quest of the Spider

Chapter XI. THE WELL-KNOWN EGG

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

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

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

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

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

"Now to get the money!" he grinned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was Ham.

Ham stared at Doc's limp burden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Got anything?" Doc inquired.

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

"Any idea what the talk will be about?"

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

"Fine," smiled Doc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE hum persisted for some seconds.

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

"Hello yourself!" growled the other man.

"How much you got on hand?"

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

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

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

"Meet him—where?"

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

"Yeah."

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

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

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

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

"You better!"

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

Doc, Long Tom and Ham exchanged knowing looks.

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

"With bells on," Doc assured him.

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

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

"Sure it can."

"Come on, then."

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the Danielsen & Haas building, Doc and his men left their taxi waiting.

In the lobby, they encountered pretty Edna Danielsen. She was alone. She looked worried.

Doc said seriously. "It is dangerous for you to be chasing around alone without—"

"Wait!" she interrupted. "I am afraid something terrible has happened!"

"What do you mean?" Doc questioned sharply.

"Horace Haas has disappeared!" Edna Danielsen explained. "And poor old Silas Bunnywell is also gone! Worse still, I made a horrible discovery in Silas Bunnywell's little office!"

"What sort of discovery?"

"Come! I'll show you."

An elevator rushed them up to the top floor. Edna Danielsen led the way to old Silas Bunnywell’s cubby-hole.

"Look!" she gasped, and pointed.

SILAS BUNNEYWELL’S accounting table was overturned. So was a wastebasket. Red and black had spilled together in a lurid puddle. There had been a fierce struggle in the little cubicle.

To one side lay an inkwell. It was a heavy fistful of glass. Red ink from it was splashed high on the walls.

"Obviously somebody was clubbed over the head with this," Doc murmured. He picked up the inkwell. His golden eyes appraised it.

Several dark hairs clung to the bottom.

"Poor old Silas Bunnywell!" choked Edna Danielson.

"Not Silas Bunnywell," Doc corrected thoughtfully. "Hehad almost snow-white hair. These hairs are dark. Unless I'm mistaken, they came from the head of Horace Haas. You're sure Silas Bunnywell and Horace Haas are both missing?"

"Absolutely!" declared the attractive young woman. "Dad and I have looked everywhere for them."

"Where is your father?"

"In his office."

They retired to Big Eric Danielsen's office. Big Eric was treading circles on the worn carpet. The office was fogged with smoke from the cigar he was puffing.

"Where in the devil do you reckon Horace Haas and Silas Bunnywell have disappeared to?" he demanded.

"Frankly, I'm puzzled," Doc admitted.

Big Eric shivered. It did not add to his cheerfulness to hear this mighty bronze man admit he was puzzled, even though the bafflement might be only temporary.

"What are you going to do now?" he questioned.

"Unfortunately, we only have time for one bold stroke," Doc replied. "One of the men the Gray Spider has installed as a looter at the head of Worldwide Sawmills is to meet his master tonight at Buck Boontown's swamp settlement. He is to deliver a quarter of a million dollars of their loot to the Gray Spider in person. Ham, Long Tom, and myself have barely time to get there. We'll rush out there and try to grab the Gray Spider."

"I'd like to help you!" Big Eric declared.

"Nothing doing!" refused Doc. "You will stay here in New Orleans and guard the life of your daughter. We will escort you home immediately. We will also leave machine guns and hand grenades, so you can defend yourself against any attack by the Gray Spider's men."

They left this office. Almost running, they made for the elevators. The cage ferried them down.

Perhaps forty seconds after the elevator door clanked shut, one corner of the carpet in Big Eric's office lifted slowly. It flipped back. This disclosed that a section of the floor had been cunningly contrived into a trapdoor. Below it was a coffinlike cavity a few inches deep.

A man had been occupying this—listening!

THE eavesdropper stood up from his coffinlike skulking place. He wore a gaudily colored silk mask—much like a gay silk handkerchief.

The fellow looked somewhat ludicrous, for he wore a woolly overcoat. And the summer evening was rather hot! From his standpoint, there was cunning in the wearing of the coat. It had no exposed buttons which might have scraped on the sides of his hiding place and betrayed him! He had even pulled big wool socks over his toes so there would be no squeal of leather against wood.

This sinister person scooped up the telephone. He asked for a number and got it. He listened intently and recognized the voice which spoke to him.

"This is the Gray Spider!" he said in hoarse, fierce tones. "Assemble the most trusted men of the Clan of the Moccasin!"

"It will be done," replied an awed whisper.

"Tonight we wipe out the bronze devil! He cannot evade us!"

With an ugly, guttering laugh, the Gray Spider hung up. He glided into the corridor. He had not removed his silk mask, nor his foolish overcoat, nor the big wool socks from over his shoes.

He found a Window in the front of the building. Craning his neck, he managed to see down to the street. He made a snarling noise at what he saw.

Doc Savage was installing Big Eric, Edna, Ham, and Long Tom in the taxi.

Doc himself rode the running board, as was his custom. The cab rolled away from the curb.

Doc's golden eyes roved everywhere, missing nothing. They scrutinized the windows of the Danielsen & Haas building casually.

There was now no masked face at a top-floor window, however.

Big Eric and Edna were left at the Danielsen mansion. Doc handed over a pair of his wonderfully compact, extremely rapid-firing machine guns—the weapons of his own invention. He also produced gas masks and violent little hand grenades.

He made a quick, thorough search of the elaborate dwelling. Finishing, he was certain none of the Gray Spider's men were concealed about.

"Have you floodlights that will illuminate the grounds?" he questioned Big Eric.

"I sure have."

"Keep them on all night. One of you be on guard every minute. We will try to be back by morning. But it is impossible to guarantee that."

"We'll be all right," Big Eric declared.

"And you must be careful!" ravishing Edna Danielsen told Doc in a strange, tight voice, the significance of which was quite lost on him.

Ham and Long Tom exchanged knowing looks when they were outside.

"The queen has tumbled for Doc!" Ham grinned.

"And don't they all?" chuckled Long Tom.

THEIR next move was a quick return to Long Tom's "central," which he had established for all his tapped phone lines. There, Doc made an effort to get in touch with Johnny. But his rapid radio calling elicited no answer from the plane in the swamp.

"No way we can let Johnny know we're coming," Doc decided. "We'll leave the radio apparatus turned on, and if he calls, one of the stenographers can slip him the news."

Once more they entered a car. But it was Doc's roadster this time, instead of the taxi. The rumble seat and the baggage compartments already held such equipment as Doc thought they would need for just such a jaunt as this.

Doc wheeled the car into traffic. One of his bronze fingers clicked a newly installed switch. Under the hood, a police siren began to wail. The speedometer climbed past forty, fifty and sixty with ten-mile-an-hour jumps.

Ham and Long Tom sat tight and held their hat to keep them from being blown off by the terrific rush of air. Doc wore no hat. No goggles protected his golden eyes. The windshield was down. Yet the roaring wind seemed to have absolutely no effect on his bronze immaculateness.

"Hadn't we better pick up a boat somewhere?" Ham inquired.

"We’ve got it," Doc replied.

"Huh?"

"In the rumble seat—a collapsible silk boat you can almost put in your coat pocket. Also, there's an outboard motor that hardly weighs more than a portable typewriter. Other things, too!"

Ham pinched his eyes shut against the slapping, tearing wind. The uncanny way his big bronze leader had of preparing for every emergency was a continuous source of wonder to Ham. He, carrying in his head the keenest thinking machine of the adventurous group, excepting only Doc, could pick out many possible emergencies that could arise. But mighty Doc Savage saw ahead to dangers of which Ham did not dream, and seemed always to have a defense against them.

The miles streaked under the panting roadster. Darkness had fallen. The moon was out, brilliant.

Into the swamps dived the road. Great cypress towered like clouds of green over the thoroughfare. On higher ground, yellow pines stood slender and tall like arrayed sentinels.

"Great lumber country," Ham offered, to break the silence.

"Second only to the State of Washington in the value of lumber produced," Doc replied.

Long Tom chuckled. "And I sort of had the idea sugar cane and cotton was all they grew down here!"

The smokestack of a sawmill spouted sparks on their left. Steam labored. A head saw bit into a log with a sound like silk cloth being torn. The mill was ablaze with lights. More electric bulbs hung out on a cableway system used to lift logs out of the storage yard and drop them on the log dogs in the bull chain that fed the sawing carriages.

Doc's roadster whipped on and the night-working sawmill was left behind. The road seemed to sink. It became a tortuous groove in a spongy mat of steaming, ominous swamp. The moonlight did not reach it often.

The headlights danced like fat white chalk sticks juggled on the snout of the roadster.

"Is this the only road into Buck Boontown's part of the Morass?" Ham asked.

"It is," Doc assured him.

THE monotony of their swamp trip was soon shattered. The road lifted suddenly. It narrowed until there was room for only one car. The road was crossing a deep bayou on a high levee.

To either side, moonbeams shimmered up from the listless surface of the bayou. Higher and higher, the car swept. It was half across the grade.

At this point, Doc's uncanny keenness of eye was demonstrated. The others saw nothing portentous of danger. No obstruction barred the way.

But Doc's golden eyes noted a disquieting object. A small stick, smaller even than a lead pencil, projected upward from the road middle. It had been set there recently. The disturbed condition of the road showed that.

Doc trod the brake. The suspicious stick was only a few yards away. The roadster was doing sixty. It skewered. It careened from side to side, skidding. All four tires, frozen immobile by the brakes, squealed like hungry pigs.

The stick came nearer. Doc saw the roadster wasn't going to stop in time. The road was too narrow to steer to either side.

Suddenly several men ran into view at the end of the levee. They were wizened. They looked like big, hairless, bob-tailed monkeys.

Harnessed to his middle, every man had an aircraft-type machine gun.

Doc's bronze head flashed around. Behind them, more of the swamp men had appeared.

"A trap!" Ham rapped.

The exclamation was hardly off Ham's lips when a powerful bronze arm grasped him and flung him bodily out of the roadster. Ham's form cleared the levee! He sailed for the water.

Despite the suddenness of what had occurred, Ham still retained a clutch on his sword cane.

Even as he saw Ham clear the levee, Long Tom found he was also spinning through space. Turning over in the air, he got a glimpse of Doc Savage's powerful frame cleaving down after him.

Both Ham and Long Tom felt as though they had been half jerked apart by the titanic sinews of the bronze giant. They were as dazed as though a stunning electric current had unexpectedly caroused through their bodies.

There had been no time for Doc to be gentle. He had hurled both his men clear of the levee and followed himself—all in an instant so fractional only a finely calibrated stopwatch could have caught it.

The roadster had not yet hit the upraised stick.

But now the car skewered into it. There was a terrific roar. A hideous tongue of flame leaped magically into being and tore the levee apart. The burst mangled the entire front off the roadster. It spouted smoke, sparks, dirt and rent fragments of the car.

Had the roadster been moving a little faster, it would have been completely annihilated. As it was, only the fore part met destruction.