The Red Skull

XIV — The Plot Sinister

Some 2 hours after this incident, nine grim and terse-worded men were arrayed in the large corrugated iron shack which was the dam headquarters office. The nine were Doc Savage, his 5 men, and the 3 owners of the Mountain Desert concern.

Nate Raff was preparing to tell in detail how he came to be alive in spite of indications that he had perished in the plane wreck. He had already imparted snatches. But not the complete story.

Doc had been too busy to question Raff at length. The 2 hours since their meeting had been occupied with organizing a search for Lea Aster and her captors. The necessity for this search accounted for Doc’s presence so soon at the dam.

Fully half the working force at the dam were now scouring the mountains for the blonde young woman.

Raff wedged a stubby pipe in his lipless mouth. As he talked, he kept the pipe between his teeth. This gave his words a snarling quality. He spoke rapidly with a sort of fierce energy.

“O’Melia and Keller have told you about our troubles here at the dam, haven’t they?” he began. “And how we finally decided — because of the frequency with which things went wrong — that somebody was behind our difficulties. We determined to ask you to come down here and look into the mess. We sent Bandy Stevens to New York for that purpose.”

“That much is clear,” Doc agreed.

“Well, Bandy wired us that he had been shot at in Phoenix. And that worried me,” Raff went on. “I started to New York just to make sure somebody got to you. I took a passenger plane from Phoenix. I like to fly.

“There were other travelers in the plane. After we had been in the air about an hour, one of the passengers drew a gun. He was a squatty gent with a flat nose and cauliflower ears. His name was Jud.”

“I met him,” Doc said dryly. “Jud is the one who was clever enough to block my efforts to learn the identity of his boss during my first visit to the cliff dwelling.”

“Jud is pretty smart,” Raff admitted. “Anyhow to get back to the plane, Jud made it land. He forced me to go with him and brought me to that cliff ruin where your men found me.”

“And we darn near didn’t find you!” Monk put in. “You were in an out-of-the-way room. Anyway, you were tied and gagged and Doc’s anesthetic gas had overcome you.”

“The gang fled so quickly they didn’t have time to take me along!” Raff flung through his teeth.

“You did not at any time catch sight of the Chief of the gang or hear anything pointing to his real identity?” questioned the dapperly-clad Ham who was sitting to one side, chin and hands resting on his sword cane — his habitual posture when thinking.

“No!” snapped Raff. “I’ve no idea who he is!”

Doc Savage brought the conversation back to the plane.

“You have not accounted for the plane crash, Mister Raff.”

Raff chewed his pipe violently. “I can’t account for it either. I don’t know what happened.”

“You did not see Jud place a bomb aboard?”

“The only thing I saw Jud do was bust up the radio. He smashed the instruments. Then he ordered the plane to take off. And it did.”

“It’s evident that Jud doctored the ship somehow, causing it to crash!” Ham snapped. “He wanted no witnesses alive to give him trouble later.”

“What was their purpose in seizing you, Mister Raff?” Doc asked.

“You’ve got me!” Raff ejaculated, throwing his hands up in a baffled gesture. “They didn’t give any reason. They just held me. I can’t understand it!”

“Nor I,” Doc echoed grimly.

Doc now drew from a pocket an edition of a Phoenix morning newspaper. It bore the current date. Newspapers were brought from the nearest railroad point by car and were delivered in the construction camp almost as soon as city dwellers received them.

The sheet had a large story about the plane crash, mostly having to do with efforts to identify the bodies.

“You say Jud took you from the airline?” Doc murmured.

“He sure did!” rasped Raff.

“Then how do you account for the fact that the number of burned bodies found compared exactly with the number of passengers the plane carried?” Doc questioned dryly.

Raff jumped up, his bellow of surprise blowing his pipe from between his teeth! He seized the newspaper and read it to make certain Doc’s statement agreed with the printed story. After reading, he sank back in his chair and swore violently.

“I can’t explain it!” he yelled. “There should be 2 missin’ because me an’ Jud left the plane! But the paper says 11 people were aboard. And 11 bodies found. It’s beyond me how the…”

Raff suddenly stopped shouting. He picked up his pipe. A wily look danced in his eyes.

“Here’s what I’ll bet they done!” he growled. “They doctored the passenger list of the plane to show 2 less than were aboard!”

“But why, Nate?” asked one of his partners.

“To make it look like I was dead, of course!” Raff retorted. “Then they could keep me prisoner and nobody would know the difference. If they decided to kill me, that would never be suspected either!”

Doc Savage said nothing for the moment. He moved to the office door and stood gazing idly through it.

Before his eyes stretched orderly streets of board shacks and tents. Several larger structures were labeled as groceries, garages, drugstores. There was even a barn of a hotel set in the midst of them all.

This was the mushroom town occupied by workmen on the Red Skull dam project. Some wag had named the settlement “Skullduggery” — probably because of the presence of the usual crop of boomtown card-sharpers and hard characters.

150-or-so yards distant stood a tar-papered shack. The windows were boarded over, indicating it was untenanted. The door was closed tightly.

Near by, a trash fire burned. A garage worker had dumped oily rags on this, causing a fog of sooty black smoke. This pall enwrapped the shack, making it seem more deserted than ever.

Despite outward appearances, however, the cabin was far from empty. The single large room was crowded with men! They were the evil individuals who had managed to escape from the cliff dwelling. Only one of their number was missing. Their Leader was nowhere in evidence.

Five of the gang sat around the edge of a trapdoor in the floor, dangling their legs down. Below was a cellar.

On the hard earth floor of this underground room Lea Aster lay. She seemed to be sleeping soundly. A little too soundly.

“Supposin’ the mohairrie should wake up an’ let out a squawk?” muttered one of the men uneasily. “Somebody would sure hear her. We’re right in the middle of town!”

“She won’t wake up,” growled Buttons Zortell. “I gave her enough drug to keep her sleepin’ all day!”

“I don’t like this hidin’ out in the middle of town,” complained Jud, rubbing his hammered-down nose. “And that smoke is chokin’ me!”

“Dry up!” Buttons advised him. “It’s the last place anybody would look for us.”

“Yeah, but supposin’ somebody seen us holin’ up in here?”

“Nobody did. We got here pretty early an’ we was careful. Anyhow if we did get found out, we wouldn’t have “no trouble shootin’ our way clear. Not with a third of the men in town on the Boss’s payroll we wouldn’t!”

“I didn’t know he was organized on that scale,” grunted Jud. “A third of the men… Man, that’s costin’ him jack! This thing he’s after must be worth plenty!”

Buttons Zortell now eyed his fellow thug with sharp curiosity.

“Have you been able to figure out what the Boss is anglin’ for?”

“No!” Jud growled. “I got a cussin’ the last time I asked ‘im. He’s sure keepin’ the secret to ‘imself!”

Buttons grinned cunningly. “Well, blazes! I ain’t lettin’ my curiosity get me down! We’re gettin’ ourn whether the Boss gets his or not! It’s gonna be pretty soft for us, too, what with the Boss intendin’ to take a try himself at gettin’ rid of Doc Savage.”

“I hope he has better luck than we did.”

“He will! This scheme he’s got is a darb! The bronze hombre will be rubbed out and it’ll look like an accident! Even his own men won’t suspect! Or if they do smell a rat, they can’t prove anything.”

“I’m willin’ to lay a bet on the Boss,” Jud chuckled. “Come over here an’ look!”

Jud had been peering through a tiny slit he had punched in the tar-paper which covered a knot hole. From this, he could see through the open door of the distant construction concern office.

In addition to Doc and his 5 aides, 3 men were present in the office — the partners who owned the tottering Mountain Desert Construction Company. They had been discussing the troubles of the concern.

O’Melia now arose, gave the belt of his worn khaki breeches a hitch, and scowled.

“I gotta get on the job. I’m the foreman of construction here, you know.”

Keller had been staring at the open door as though in a trance. This glaring at nothing in particular seemed to be a habit with him. He aroused himself… fingered his beard… then stood up.

“I believe I also shall do some work. I have some cost summaries to check over.”

“I’ll go along and see how much we’re in the ‘red’,” said Nate Raff with a macabre attempt at a joke.

The 3 partners took their departure together. Doc and his 5 associates were left alone together in the office. Ham — who had been thinking with his chin on his sword cane — gave vent to a soft whistle.

“I have just been considering what a remarkable coincidence occurred when O’Melia and Keller arrived at that bridge at just the right moment to permit our fleeing enemies to steal their car,” he said pointedly.

“Yeah!” Monk scratched the bristles that furred his bullet of a head. “That didn’t occur to me.”

“Naturally not!” Ham agreed bitingly.

Monk bent one little, bilious eye on his perpetual Pain-in-the-Neck.

“One of these days Harvard is gonna lose her lawyer!” he leered.

Ham sniffed… then continued.

“Are you sure O’Melia and Keller had a car in the first place, Doc?”

“I have only their word,” Doc replied.

“How do they compare in size to the Mastermind — the fellow in the gabardine coat? Could one or both of them have been at the cliff ruin?”

“Any one of the 3 partners could have worn the coat,” Doc declared. “But that is not proof or even grounds for suspicion. Furthermore, you must not lose sight of the possibility that the man in the gabardine was not the Chief after all.”

“Well, O’Melia and Keller might have been with the gang and dropped off at the bridge to give us a bum steer,” Ham said thoughtfully. “It would verify their story to some degree if we could find the car that they say was stolen.”

The car was located within the quarter-hour.

A phone call came in from a searching party covering one of the mountain roads. The machine had been found in a deep gulch, carefully blanketed with new-cut brush. The smell of gasoline from the abandoned vehicle had led to its discovery. No trace of the men had been found.

“Ham,” Doc directed, “take a fingerprint outfit and fly up to the spot in the gyro. See what you can find on the car in the line of prints.”

Twiddling his sword cane, Ham departed on the mission.

At Doc’s request, a company shack was assigned to his use. In this he set up a portable laboratory which was unloaded from the giant speed plane.

An important item in this laboratory was a device for analyzing complex chemical combinations — liquid and vapor — with only a few minutes’ work. This mechanism was simple utilizing the electrical decomposition of the substance under analysis. But the results it secured were equivalent to hours of painstaking work by hand.

With this device, Doc delved into the nature of the flaskful of air he had trapped within the cliff dwelling. He desired to learn the significance of the weird odor. And he hoped this knowledge would tell him what manner of fantastic thing had caused the cliff ruin passage to fill with molten stone!

His first analysis was far from satisfactory. This was demonstrated by the fact that he immediately made another analysis.

He did not apprise his 5 men — or anyone else — of the final outcome of his work.

Doc next went over a record of the difficulties which had beset the building of the dam. Without exception, they were listed either as “accidents” or due to somebody’s “carelessness”’. Some of the men making costly errors had been discharged. Many were still employed.

Considering the whole roster of troubles, it was evident they had been the working of a systematic plot. Not to prevent building of the dam but to make its construction as costly as possible!

“Somebody is trying to break the concern,” Doc told the 3 owners when they assembled for an early afternoon conference. “And I suspect many of your workmen are still on the payroll of the enemy.”

“Blast ‘em!” Nate Raff snarled. “We’ll fire the whole crew! It’s a fine lot of thanks we’re gettin’! You know, we started this dam in the first place just to keep our men at work when business got slack.”

“Sale of electrical power would have eventually paid for the project,” Doc said shortly.

“After what it’s cost us already, it’ll never get paid for!” Raff groaned. “Golly, Savage! Can’t you get us out of this somehow?”

“I’ll have to be given a free hand,” Doc pointed out. “But that will mean myself and my men taking full charge.”

“That’s what we were hoping you’d do!” Raff said elatedly.