The Red Skull

XXI — Robot Men

Buttons Zortell led the gang downward through a spillway tunnel. This had been cut in the solid stone canyon walls. It was about 50 feet in diameter. It slanted downward, but not so steeply but that it could be negotiated afoot.

Buttons chose the tunnel because there was less danger should shooting start. They had 4 submachine guns as well as rifles and revolvers. Anyone who tried to attack them from the top of the tunnel would have hard going.

No enemies were below on the canyon bed. Some of the gang were in a powerhouse guarding the prisoners — Doc’s 4 men and Lea Aster.

Men could hardly descend to the canyon depths without attracting their attention. It was very dark in the vast spillway tunnel.

“Get a move on, you rannies!” snapped Buttons. “I don’t know what the Boss has got in his sleeve. But it’s up to us to help ‘im put it over!”

Loose rock — not yet mucked out of the cavernous excavation — clattered underfoot. Echoes rumbled off sides and ceiling.

“I ain’t so hot about this,” complained one of the crew. “Supposin’ that dam would bust? There’s a lot of water behind it. The stuff would come down the canyon like a bat out of hell!”

“Pipe down!” Buttons growled, little knowing the words were in the nature of a finishing touch to his death warrant. “We’ll get the prisoners outa the powerhouse the first thing!”

A grayish smear ahead denoted the exit into the gloomy canyon bed.

At this point, there sounded a sudden thump! and a flurry of gravel. It was impossible to tell what had happened in the muggy black of the spillway tunnel since the men were not using lights which might draw bullets.

“What is it?” somebody snapped.

“Dang the luck!” snarled Buttons’s voice. “I fell down!”

The others advanced from the tunnel and stood on the canyon bed. They could hardly see each other in the dark murk.

Buttons Zortell did not appear.

“What’s the trouble, Buttons?” a man called.

“I’m takin’ a rock out of my shoe!” rumbled Buttons’s tone within the tunnel. “You rannies go on to the power house an’ get the prisoners!”

Complying with this order, the men moved off.

A moment later, a figure scuttled out of the tunnel. The garments this person wore were those of Buttons Zortell. But the movements were extremely unlike the swaggering shuffle usually affected by Buttons.

The form moved with amazing speed for the powerhouse! The swiftness with which the figure moved would have identified it to an observer.

It was Doc Savage!

He had listened to the men receive their orders and — before that — he had watched the Master Killer’s sinister preparations!

Doc lost no time.

He had overpowered Buttons Zortell in the tunnel with such quiet and dispatch that none had suspected. His remarkable command of the art of voice mimicry had furthered the deception.

But his work was far from done.

Circling, he evaded the slow-moving gunmen. His superior speed enabled him to reach the great powerhouse in advance of the gang.

A guard stood before the door. He sighted Doc.

“Who’s that?” he growled as Doc came closer.

“Who d’you think, you dope!” Doc’s imitation sounded wondrously like Buttons Zortell.

The lookout was fooled. He let Doc come within reach probably because Doc wore Buttons’s cowboy hat and jumper.

Cr-a-c-k!

To his dying day, the guard carried an impression somebody had hit him on the jaw with a stick of dynamite!

Doc tangled his right hand in the fellow’s coat. It was the same right hand with which he had struck the blow. He shoved the unconscious man into the powerhouse.

2 more guards started in surprise. Their hands dived for six-guns. The weapons hung low in tied-down holsters. Their hands did not have far to travel. No doubt they did not dream but that they both could slam lead into Doc Savage before he reached them.

They dropped before they had time to change their ideas. Charging them, Doc Savage was a tawny flash!

One man got a poke that set his jaw awry. The second fell after Doc had apparently done nothing more violent than snap a finger against his temple.

It was not often that Doc used his fists. But when he did, no blows were wasted. Should he have had to strike a second time, he would probably have added a half-hour to his daily exercise routine!

He glided on into an inner room of the powerhouse.

Blonde Lea Aster — her prettiness lessened no whit by her captivity — lay on the floor bound&gagged.  It was obvious that she had not been harmed seriously by her captors.

Monk sprawled nearby, also roped and silenced. He had been through a fight. His homely face would bear a new crop of scars for it looked as if somebody had walked on his features with hobnail boots.

Renny and Long Tom had been working on each other’s bonds. Johnny had broken the thick magnifying lens of his glasses and was industriously seeking to cut through his own ropes.

They greeted Doc with fish-like flops — the only way they could express their delight!

“Quiet!” Doc’s wispy-but-penetrant whisper warned.

A knife appeared in his bronze hand. He quickly cut the prisoners free from their bonds.

Then he flashed to each of the group, handing out tiny articles which he took from a padded metal pocket case.

These objects were weird fighting weapons — weapons perfected by Doc Savage and used by no one else.

They were metallic thimbles. Each held a tiny hypodermic needle containing a drug which induced a weird helplessness. The victim could see and hear what went on about him. But he could not think for himself. He could move yet being unable to think for himself, never stirred until told to.

Ordinarily, Doc loaded his thimbles with a drug which merely produced instant unconsciousness. But now he was using his more mysterious concoction.

Armed with the thimbles, Doc and his men took up positions outside the powerhouse. Even pretty Lea Aster crouched back of a caterpillar tractor and scrutinized the heavy darkness for quarry.

The gunmen stumbled up, making considerable noise.

They were quickly vanquished. A single concerted swoop by Doc and his aides… their hands stabbed like serpent heads… and their enemies simply stopped in their tracks. Not a shot was fired.

“Drop your guns!” Doc commanded in a powerful voice.

Such were the weird effects of the drug that the thugs obeyed. Their thinking processes were paralyzed. They would do nothing unless ordered for they could not recall Doc was their enemy.

“The way this stuff works always tickles me,” Monk chuckled. “You can take the meanest guy an’ it turns him into nothin’ but a flesh&blood machine!”

“What are we going to do with them?” Renny demanded.

“The usual thing,” Doc replied.

The others knew what he meant — the institution he maintained in up-state New York where criminals were made over into honest men by the fantastic brain operations and a course of schooling. These culprits would be sent there.

“Buttons Zortell ain’t even entitled to that muc!” Monk grumbled. “He’s a murderin’, no-good louse! He killed Bandy Stevens.”

Doc did not reply. To the drugged prisoners, he said: “Get moving!”

The men moved as through in trances. They might have been unthinking robots.

When one bumped into a large boulder, he stood pressing against it, unable to reason that he could avoid the obstacle by going around it. He had to be told what to do.

Doc’s men carried the three who had been knocked unconscious. They entered the steeply sloping spillway tunnel. They found Buttons Zortell lying where Doc had dropped him with a terrific fist blow.

Monk scooped Buttons up.

“This is one guy I sure hate to see escape payment for his crimes!” Monk grumbled.

“Who’s the brains behind all this?” Renny demanded. “Believe-it-or-not, we haven’t been able to find out.”

“You shall see before long,” Doc replied grimly.

“Then you know who it is?”

“A suspicion only,” Doc replied gravely. “This man is so diabolically clever that he has managed to cover his footsteps. I have discovered the purpose behind his crimes, however. And I have learned the thing he is after.”

“What is it?” came the eager chorus.

“You recall the molten rock in the cliff dwelling and the strange odor which was present?” Doc questioned of them.

“I’ll never forget that smell!” Monk grunted. “It was something entirely new!”

“Exactly,” Doc told him. “The scent marked the presence of an entirely new gas. A gas previously unknown. A gas which — when burned — produces a heat as great as that of the hottest electric furnace!”

“How’d you find that out?”

“By analyzing the cliff-dwelling air, some of which you’ll recall I trapped in a flask. A quantity of this gas was undoubtedly burned in the cliff ruin. It turned the solid rock into lava, blocking the secret passage. Some of the stuff escaped without burning. And it was this which I secured for chemical analysis.”

“Holy cow!” Renny muttered. “Where did the stuff come from?”

“That puzzled me for a time,” Doc said softly. “But when the Mastermind went to such pains to get the lake bed flooded, the answer was plain.”

“It’s under the lakebed then!”

“Exactly. There must be a vast deposit since many thousands-of-dollars were spent in the criminal effort to secure it. The gas, of course, is extremely valuable because of its heat-producing nature. It can be used in welding, smelting — wherever tremendous heat is necessary.”

Doc dropped his voice somewhat for they were advancing up the spillway tunnel.

“The gas was found during test-drilling to learn the water-holding qualities of the lakebed, of course,” he went on. “The man who found it set out systematically to break the Mountain Desert concern so that he might buy the lake bed cheaply. Like all criminals, he was too greedy to share the profits of his discovery with others.”

Doc now halted the procession. For some moments, he was silent as though engrossed in thought.

“We have a task to perform, brothers,” he said in a tone which — although low and soft — was absolutely emotionless. “It’s not a pleasant task. But the cause of Justice demands that we do it.”

His men gathered close, lending intent ears. They knew what was coming.

Doc Savage was going to hand the Master Killer his just deserts!