The Pirate of the Pacific

Chapter 5 THE DRAGON TRAIL

THE cab let Doc Savage out before an uptown New York police station. He entered. The marked deference of the cops, the celerity with which they sprang to grant his wishes, showed they knew him as a person of power. The police commissioner himself would not have gotten better service.

A "back number" telephone directory was produced. This listed the phone numbers, and the names to which they belonged, rather than the name followed by a number, as in an ordinary directory.

Doc looked up the number Liang-Sun had called — Ocean 0117. It was listed as the:

DRAGON ORIENTAL GOODS CO.

The address was on Broadway, far south of the theatrical portion of the street known as the Great White Way.

Doc took a cab downtown. The hack driver wondered all the way why his passenger rode the running board of the taxi, rather than inside. The hackman had never before had a thing like that happen.

The building, housing the Dragon Oriental Goods Company, was a shabby, ten-story structure. It was decorated in the ornate fashion popular thirty years ago. "The Far East Building," a sign said.

Chinatown lay only a few blocks away.

Directly across the street, a new forty-story skyscraper was going up. The steel framework of this was nearing completion. A night force of men was pushing construction. Noise of riveting machines banged hollowly against near-by structures and throbbed in the street.

A dusty directory told Doc the Dragon concern occupied a tenth-floor office.

An elevator, driven by a man in greasy tan coveralls, was in operation. The fellow's round moon of a face and eyes sloping slightly upward at the outer ends advertised that some of his recent ancestors had come from the Far East.

This man never saw Doc enter. The bronze giant walked up. He did not want to advertise his presence — the elevator operator might get word to whoever was leading the Mongol horde.

The office of the Dragon Oriental Goods Company faced the front of the building. The door lock yielded readily to a thin steel hook of an implement from Doc's pocket. He entered.

No one was there.

For furniture, the place had a couple of desks, worn chairs, filing cabinets. Desk drawers and filing cabinets were empty. There was not a sheet of paper in the place. No finger prints were on the telephone, desk; window shade, or doorknob.

The window was dirty. Across the street, the girders of the building under construction made a pile like naked brush. The drum-drum of riveters was a somber song.

The elevator operator did not see Doc quit the building.

HALF an hour later, Doc entered his eighty-sixth-floor skyscraper office uptown.

He was surprised to find none of his five friends there. He consulted one of the elevator boys.

"They all five went out a few minutes ago to get something to eat," explained the youth.

"When they come back, tell them I was here," Doc directed.

He did not depart immediately, though. His next actions were unusual.

From a pocket, he took a bit of colorless substance shaped like a crayon. He wrote rapidly on his office window with this — putting down a lengthy message.

Yet when he finished, there was no trace of what he had written. Even a magnifying glass would not have disclosed the presence of the writing.

The elevator carried him down to the street. He walked away rapidly.

Some ten minutes later, his five men returned. Their faces mirrored the satisfaction of men who had just eaten a hearty shore dinner after some weeks of dining in the grease-soaked interior of a submarine.

"I missed the pint of grease I've had to take with my meals recently," Monk grunted contentedly. Then he leered at Ham. "Them pigs' knuckles and sauerkraut was swell!"

The distinguished, snappily clad Ham scowled at hairy Monk. Any mention of pigs that Monk made was sure to aggravate Ham. This hearkened back to a couple of incidents in the War.

Ham had taught Monk certain highly insulting French words, and told him they were just the thing to flatter a French general with. Monk had used them-and landed in the guardhouse.

Monk had barely been released when there occurred one of the most embarrassing incidents of Ham's career. He was hailed up on a charge of stealing hams. somebody had framed him!

To this day, Ham hadn't been able to prove the framing was Monk's work. That rankled. Especially since Ham had received his nickname from the incident; a nickname he didn't care for in the least.

"After the way you stuffed yourself, I have hopes!" Ham snapped.

"Hopes of what?" Monk queried.

"That you'll croak of indigestion!"

The elevator operator spoke up eagerly when he saw them.

"Mr. Savage was here, and has gone," he said.

Doc's five men exchanged sharp glances. They lost no time getting up to the eighty-sixth floor.

LONG TOM, the scrawny-looking electrical wizard, hurried into the laboratory. He came out with an apparatus which might easily be mistaken for an old-time magic lantern.

The lights were switched off. Long Tom flicked a switch on his machine. He pointed at the window on which Doc had written.

Doc's message sprang out on the darkened windowpane. Glowing with a dazzling electric blue, its appearance was uncanny.

Long Tom's apparatus was simply a lamp which projected strong ultra-violet light rays. The substance with which Doc had written on the window, although invisible to the naked eye, would glow in eerie fashion in the ultra-violet light.

It was by this method that Doc habitually left messages for his men.

The five read the communication. Doc's handwriting, machinelike in its perfection, was as easy to read as newsprint:

Here is your job, Ham: The Mongols are holding Juan

Mindoro and his friend, Scott S. Osborne. A messenger

will visit Osborn's brother, to demand a ransom.

Your work as a lawyer has probably brought you

in contact with the family attorney of Osborn's

brother, so you should be able to work through him

and persuade them to pay the ransom demanded.

We will then follow the man to whom it is paid.

But do not follow the messenger who demands it.

"This will be a cinch," Ham declared, spinning his sword cane adroitly. "I happen to be quite well acquainted with that attorney. Incidentally, he is the lawyer of both Scott S. Osborn and his brother."

"Shut up!" Monk grunted insultingly. "Don't you think we want to read the rest?"

They deciphered the remainder of the instructions in silence:

Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny will go to Scott

S. Osborn's home north of town. The place is built

like a medieval castle. Inside are perhaps a dozen

Mongols and half-castes. You will ship them to our

institution, then come back here and wait.

"Holy cow!" Renny was bewailing. "There won't be any excitement in our part of it!"

Monk's big grin was crowding his ears.

"I got hopes, though!" he chuckled. "If Doc has bagged that many men this early in the game, it shows we've tackled something that is plenty big. We may get our feet wet yet!"

Monk was no prophet. His feet wet! He'd be deep enough in trouble to drown, before long. But he had no way of knowing that.

HAM watched the others depart to ship the Orientals Doc had captured to the up-state institution, where they would receive the effective, if unusual, treatment that would turn them into honest men.

A telephone call put Ham in touch with the elderly lawyer who served Scott S. Osborn and his brother. Ham explained what he desired.

"The family might hesitate about complying with the wishes of a stranger," he finished. "It would help greatly if you would sort of put the O.K. on me. I am, of course, working for the interest of your clients."

"I'll do better than that!" declared the other attorney. "I shall be at the home of Osborn's brother when you arrive. When I advise them of the situation, I am sure they will do as you desire."

"That will be great," Ham assured him.

Ham hurried to his bachelor quarters, in a club which was one of the most luxurious in the city, although not widely known. The members were all wealthy men who wished to live quietly.

A change of clothing was the object of Ham's visit. He donned formal evening garb, secured a more natty-looking sword cane from a collection he kept on hand, and took a taxi to the home of Scott S. Osborn's brother.

The dwelling was large. It might have been mistaken for a small apartment building.

Dismissing his taxi, Ham mounted the steps. He was about to ring the bell when his hand froze.

A stream of scarlet was crawling slowly from under the door.

Ham listened. He could hear nothing. He tried the knob. It turned, but the door, after opening about two inches, would go no farther. Ham shoved. He could tell that he was pushing against a body lying on the floor inside.

He got the panel half open, put his head in cautiously. The vestibule was brilliantly lighted. No living person was in sight.

The body of the old lawyer whom Ham had called not many minutes ago, had been blocking the door. The elderly man had been stabbed at least fifteen times.

Ham, his sword cane ready, stepped inside. The weight of the dead man against the door shoved it shut. The lock clicked loudly.

As though that were a signal, a man hurtled from a near-by door.

The fellow was chunky, lemon-complected, sloping of eye. His face was a killer mask. He waved a sword.

It was Liang-Sun, although Ham didn't know that, not having seen him before.

Liang-Sun got a shock when Ham unsheathed the slender, rippling steel blade of his sword cane. Ham's blade leaped out hungrily.

With desperate haste, Liang-Sun parried. He was surprised, but still confident. Among the fighting men of Mongolia and China, he had been considered quite a swordsman.

Ten seconds later, Liang-Sun's confidence leaked out like water from a gunnysack. The air before his face had apparently turned into a whistling hell of sharp steel. A chunk of his hat brim was sliced off and fluttered away.

Liang-Sun felt like a man clubbing a swarm of hornets with a stick. Backing up, he sought to haul a revolver from his coat pocket with his left hand. He hadn't wanted to use the gun before, because of the noise. But he would be glad to do so now.

A dazzling slash of Ham's sword cut the whole skirt and pocket from Liang-Sun's coat, and the revolver bounced away.

STEEL whined, clashed, rasped. Both fighters sought to get to the revolver. Neither could quite do it.

Liang-Sun felt a tickling sensation across his stomach. He looked down and saw his clothing had been slit wide. Another inch would have finished him.

He backed away swiftly, passing through the door from which he had leaped. Ham followed, cutting and parrying briskly.

A man was sprawled across a table in the room. He had white hair, ruddy features. He, too, had been stabbed to death.

Ham had seen the man once before, perhaps a year ago. It was the brother of Scott S. Osborn.

A wall safe gaped open.

On the table with the dead man lay a heap of jewels, rings, currency.

This explained the situation to Ham.

The Mongol messenger had come to demand ransom, had seen the money, and decided a bird in hand was better than one in the bush. He had slain and robbed Osborn's brother, rather than bother with ransom.

The poor old lawyer out by the door had been murdered when he arrived.

White with rage, Ham redoubled his sword play. Liang-Sun fairly ran backward. A sudden spring put him through a door. He slammed it. Ham pitched against the panel. It resisted.

Seizing a chair, Ham battered the door down. He ran across a dining room, then a kitchen. A rear door gaped open beyond. It let him into an alleylike court. There was only one exit from this, a yawning space between two buildings, to the right.

An indistinct, rapidly moving figure dived into this opening.

Ham pursued. He pitched headlong between the buildings, came out on the walk, and saw his quarry scuttle under a street lamp at the corner.

Ham set out after him-only to bring up sharp as a powerful voice came to him from a near-by door recess.

"I'll follow him, Ham!" the voice said.

It was Doc Savage.

Ham understood, then, why Doc had directed, in the message on the skyscraper window, that the ransom-demanding courier was not to be followed. Doc intended to do the trailing, hoping to be led to the master mind who was behind all this callous, inhuman bloodletting.

In order not to make the fleeing Oriental suspicious, Ham continued his chase. But at the first corner, he deliberately took the wrong turn.

When he came back, there was no sign of Doc or the half-caste Mongol.