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COLD DEATH


COLD DEATH
A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright ⌐ 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com


Chapter 1. HAND IN A CROWD
Chapter 2. THE HOUSE IN THE MARSH
Chapter 3. THE CANAL OF DEATH
Chapter 4. GHOST VOICE AGAIN
Chapter 5. MONK IS SILENCED
Chapter 6. COLD LIGHT STRIKES
Chapter 7. MONK SNEEZES
Chapter 8. TRAIL OF A SHADOW
Chapter 9. MONKÆS SWEET TOOTH
Chapter 10. HAMÆS IN A JAM
Chapter 11. VAR BLINDS HIS TRAIL
Chapter 12. DEATH OVER MANHATTAN
Chapter 13. MONK BAILS OUT
Chapter 14. A GIRL SEEKS SCRAGGS
Chapter 15. THE MAGNETIC WALL
Chapter 16. THE DIVE OF DEATH
Chapter 17. SCRAGGS JOINS DOC
Chapter 18. HAM GETS POISON
Chapter 19. PLOTTED POISONING
Chapter 20. THE WALLS OF LIFE
Chapter 21. THE WOMAN IN IT
Chapter 22. SHADOW OF DEATH
Chapter 23. DEATH THREATENS DOC
Chapter 24. THREE VISITORS
Chapter 25. THE RUNAWAY PLANE



Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens


Chapter 1. HAND IN A CROWD
DOC SAVAGE knew a hand had touched his pocket. There was a swift, wraith-like
movement of fingers. Then the hand was gone.
The touch was fleeting enough, but Doc Savage knew it had not been for the
purpose of robbery. The fingers had not been explorative. They had merely
deposited something in DocÆs pocket.
Doc Savage did not pause. Nor did he make any effort to apprehend the man who
had touched him. It would have been simple to have laid hands upon him, corded
bronze hands; to have trapped him.
Doc knew the man was not a thief. He was aware nothing had been removed. Doc
pressed the back of a hand on the outside of the pocket and felt a square white
card.
The man who had placed it there had slipped aside in the crowd. No doubt, he
believed he had succeeded in delivering his message without being detected. If
he had known Doc Savage better he would have known this to be an impossible
feat.
It was DocÆs principle to avoid public encounter unless the circumstance was
compelling. He contented himself with a secondÆs glimpse of the man who had
touched him. He saw the back of a head.
The hair was scraggly, unshorn. This strung from under the frayed brim of a
disreputable hat. The neck was scrawny. Little more than a bony upper spine with
skin wrapped around it.
Doc Savage removed the card from his pocket. He did not slacken his speed. He
had been moving through the Wall Street crowd with the easy movement of a jungle
animal. Though there was a press on the sidewalk, it being five oÆclock, it was
amazing how this bronze-skinned man avoided contact with others.
Doc was careful to hold the card by its edges. The hands of the scraggly man had
been bare. There should be fingerprints.
Doc cupped the card. His eyes flicked across it. DocÆs eyes were like flaky gold
with stirring whirlwinds in their depths. The whirlwinds seemed to move more
rapidly now.
For a few seconds there was a haunting, trilling note. Those who might have been
watching the smooth, bronze face of Doc would have detected no movement of his
lips. There were many thus watching, for the man of bronze was a marked figure.
The trilling seemed to emanate from all of his huge, symmetrical body. It was a
sound of which Doc himself was hardly conscious. It might presage danger, or
that the man of bronze was upon the eve of a discovery.
The message on the card in his hand was brief, but explicit:
TO CLARK SAVAGE, JR:ùIF YOU WOULD PREVENT DEATH, DANGER TO THOUSANDS, CALL UNION
0-1214 TO-NIGHT AT EIGHT.
The words had been printed with a leaky pen. There was no signature. But the
back of a manÆs head was all the signature Doc would need. Intuitively, he knew
he would see the man again. Perhaps many times.

DOC SAVAGE continued through the Wall Street crowd. Now he moved with greater
speed, but still he touched no one.
The man of bronze had an errand in Wall Street. He completed his brief business
before returning to his headquarters. But his mind was busy with the problem the
card in his pocket might represent.
Because of his amazing adventures, his world-wide assistance to those in trouble
and his punishment of crooks, Doc Savage was always besieged with appeals. A few
merited his attention.
And he was likewise a target for many who feared him. Even this small card in
his pocket might be the bait for a trap.
When he had returned to his laboratory, Doc set about reading what he considered
vastly more important than the mere printed words on the white card. This
laboratory, on the eighty-sixth floor of ManhattanÆs most impressive skyscraper,
was most amazing in its equipment.
Not even the latest equipment of the police or the Federal department of justice
equalled the means here for scientific investigation. In addition, as the man of
bronze had entered, the doors of smooth, chrome steel closed him in. No locks
appeared on these doors. But their electroscopic fastenings made them possible
of opening only to Doc and his five companions in adventure.
Doc first dusted the card bearing the mysterious message. The distinct imprints
of a thumb and forefinger appeared. The card was a trifle grimy. The hand
delivering it had been that of a man who worked. The soiled spots had a brownish
tinge.
The bronze man dropped a colorless liquid upon these spots. The reagent brought
out a definite greenish color.
For the time, Doc made no further tests. He had arrived at one conclusion which
was significant. The hands placing the card in his pocket had been those of a
working chemist.

THE bronze man placed the card carefully in a glass case. The voice of a man was
speaking from the library adjoining the laboratory. It was fretful and
complaining.
"You danged shyster! I waited where you said, but you didnÆt show up! Dag-gonit,
you wonÆt get the chance to stand me up again!"
The speaker was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair. His voice was shrill
and childlike. But his appearance was that of an ungainly ape covered with
reddish-brown hair. Because of this, he was known as "Monk." He was one of the
worldÆs leading industrial chemists.
Monk had been speaking into the telephone. The man he had called a shyster was
Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, otherwise known as "Ham." He was the
legal luminary of Doc SavageÆs group.
Hearing MonkÆs voice, Doc Savage removed the card from the glass case. He came
into the library and laid the card on the table before Monk.
"I received this about three hours ago," Doc stated. "Those greenish spots were
brown."
Monk touched the edge of the card.
"The No. 7 reagent brought out the green."
Then he named a little-known chemical which had an acid reaction.
"That is correct, Monk," the bronze man approved. "The card was placed in my
pocket."
A huge man with a melancholy face peered at the card and frowned solemnly. He
was Colonel John Renwick, the engineer of the group. The hand "Renny" extended
toward the card lacked little being the size of a ham. He read the words
gloomily.
"Union Exchange, huh?"
The third man in the library said, "ThatÆs over in Jersey. And every time we
have business with Jersey there is trouble."
This man had an unhealthy pallor. He was small, compared to the others. But many
larger men had been sharply surprised by his strength and fighting ability.
He was Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard. His appearance had given him
the name of "Long Tom."

AS Long Tom finished speaking, a clock started chiming with musical notes.
Doc Savage crossed to the desk and picked up the telephone. The clock chimes
touched the final stroke of eight oÆclock with a harmonious lingering.
"Union 0-1214," said Doc, when he had the New Jersey connection.
A voice started to speak from the other end.
Without preliminaries, the voice said. "YouÆre Doc Savù"
Then it seemed as if the receiver had exploded. The voice was sliced off. No
reverberation followed. There was no lingering roll of sound, such as could have
been expected if the instrument had remained even for a few seconds in service.
"That was a powerful blast," Doc said. "The phone was torn out. The man who
tried to talk was an old man."
Doc didnÆt explain further. He didnÆt waste more time in speech. He had thumbed
the receiver bar. Two minutes later, he was given a trace-back on the Jersey
call.
"Blind number," he said to the others. "ItÆs off the Newark-Trenton highway in a
marshy strip."
Doc moved ahead through the outer door. His three companions paused only to make
a swift collection of a few special devices they might need. The bronze man did
not seem hurried, but the others were compelled to move fast.
DocÆs special elevator dropped with the speed of a rocket. It slowed with a
cushiony rebound, when it reached the bronze manÆs private garage in the
basement. DocÆs long low car, with its extra-powerful motor under the long hood
and its windows of bulletproof glass set in armor steel, glided toward the
Holland Tunnel.

Chapter 2. THE HOUSE IN THE MARSH
SHORTLY before the eight oÆclock telephone call made by Doc Savage, a battered
old roadster turned off a paved New Jersey highway. Headlight beams laid ghostly
fingers across a foggy strip of marshland.
When he was perhaps a mile and a half from the main highway, the driver abruptly
switched off the lights. He parked the little car in concealment of bushes
beside a crooked lane.
Climbing from the car, the driver walked cautiously ahead. Dim lights made a
blur in the fog. They indicated some habitation.
Close up, this might have been seen to be an old log house. It appeared to squat
gloomily in the murky depths of the Jersey marsh. The bulk of its presence was
marked only by faint illumination from an upper window and one slanting finger
of dancing, vari-colored light emanating from what seemed a mere slit at ground
level.
From the basement, or some underground chamber, came a low throbbing. A trained
observer would have said delicate machinery of some sort was being operated.
Apparently, there was but one outside watcher. And his figure was only a furtive
shadow among other sinister shadows cast by this strange, penetrating light.
At times, the escaping light gave forth a rainbow glow.
A rutty, obscure road that was little more than a twisting trail through
overgrowths of waving swamp grass apparently was the only traffic communication
between the old house and the highway of civilization, some two miles distant.
Across the swamp a pair of telephone wires had been strung along available
trees, most of them gaunt-limbed and dead.
In the upper story of the old house there was no movement. Except for the faint
light at the one window, there was no evidence the structure was then occupied
by a living person.

THE man from the roadster apparently feared something or some one within the old
log house. As he walked, it might have been observed he was a vague, catlike
figure. He kept to the tall marsh grass beside the road, pausing every few yards
to listen intently.
In the swamp at a point off the road, some considerable distance from the old
house, was a single glowing eye of fire. The man hissed an oath under his
breath. He crossed the soggy, yielding ground with such quick lightness his feet
seemed to leave no imprints.
Before he reached the spot, the red eye of fire winked out.
"Hunter maybe," the man murmured. "Well, heÆs picked a poor spot for a camp."
As if the possible presence of another human no longer interested him, the
luminous-eyed man retraced his steps. He glanced at the radium hands of a wrist
watch.
"The time is near," he mumbled, "if old Jackson hasnÆt been having
hallucinations."
Picking out a slightly higher, dry spot some two hundred yards to one side of
the house, the thin figure became a motionless part of the deeper marsh shadows.
His thin lips continued to emit whispered words.
"The great Doc Savage will be calling at eight oÆclock, or old Jackson has
guessed him wrong."
Again he glanced at his watch. It lacked five minutes to eight oÆclock. There
was no doubt but he had some objective which was closely related with the phone
call Doc Savage had been requested to make from Manhattan.
"It wonÆt work out," he muttered suddenly through gritted teeth. "And Doc Savage
saw me. I could feel him looking at the back of my head. I never really touched
him, but somehow I believe he knew I was there."
The radium hands of the wrist watch showed two minutes to eight oÆclock. To the
watcherÆs apparently raw-nerved senses, the lonely marsh had become alive with
voices. His teeth chewed nervously at his lower lip.
He glanced at a dead-armed tree. It seemed almost as if he were waiting to read
the message that might go out over the wires he knew were strung there. The thin
threads of communication between this eerie desolation and the teeming modern
heart of Manhattan.
One minute to eight oÆclock. The spear of multi-colored light piercing the slit
of the underground window of the squatting old house winked out. The wind moaned
a little, as if the withdrawal of the rainbow gleam were a signal.
The catlike man became rigid. He glanced over his shoulder. The red eyes of fire
deeper in the marsh had not reappeared. Perhaps this unexpected camper was no
longer in the swamp.
Eight oÆclock.
From the heart of the marsh, from no definite direction, came a low whirring
sound, vicious as the warning of a poisonous rattler.
The cat-eyed watcher had reared to his feet. He had turned and was running away.
The soggy ground of the swamp rocked and swayed. The earth heaved with a
convulsive, shuddering blast.

THE explosion started at the place of the old house. A knife of giant flame shot
upward and moved with ripping effect across the marsh.
The fleeing man was twice hurled from his feet. Each time, his face and clothing
were befouled by the ooze in which he fell.
The man staggered at last to the side road. The slicing destruction that had
seemed almost to be racing with him, had died as swiftly as it had come. The
blast had been accompanied by an expanding phosphorescent glowing of steely blue
light.
As the fugitive from his own apparent terror reached the spot where he had
concealed his roadster, darkness again had enwrapped the silence that was of
itself, by contrast, terrific. Over all of the marsh, the air had taken on an
icy chill.
The dank, sulphuric odor of death permeated the country for many miles.
Shuddering, the man leaped into the roadster. He glanced only once at the place
where the old log house had squatted evilly in the marsh.
Only blackness, emptiness was there. There was no light of any sort. Not even
the deeper, bulking shadow that had been the house.
Something like hatred twisted the manÆs thin face. His lips slavered and his
eyes burned. Then he turned the old roadster and sent it leaping away over the
rutty side road toward the main highway.

Chapter 3. THE CANAL OF DEATH
THE mysterious watcher had ample time to get far from the scene of the explosion
before State police were aroused to investigate. The narrow lane to the old log
house was some ten miles from the city of Newark.
Some time, therefore, elapsed before the tearing jolt of the blast had been
definitely traced. But cars of the State police were blocking the marsh side
road when Doc Savage drove into it.
"Holy cow! What a job!" growled Renny. "Look, Doc! ItÆs a canal, straight as if
it was laid out with instruments and this was intended for a feed reservoir!"
Renny saw everything from an engineerÆs point of view.
"It does seem to have remarkable symmetry," replied the man of bronze. "ItÆs the
first explosion I ever came upon that seemed to have been done to a geometrical
pattern."
"HowlinÆ calamities!" muttered squat Monk, his homely, apelike features showing
puzzlement. "ItÆs about the completest mess I ever bumped into!"
"CompleteÆs the word, all right," assented Long Tom. "And it looks as if it
wiped out some high-class electrical machinery. Look here, Doc!"
They were then beside a deep, rounded crater. It could be seen from a few
remaining foundation stones imbedded in the earth that this had been the site of
a house. But underneath it the ground had been scooped out as if by the swing of
a giant shovel.
On three sides of the cavernous hole in the spot where the house had stood, the
explosive force had apparently lifted directly upward. An ordinary powder blast,
if of sufficient strength and buried deeply, could have done this.
But Doc was coming to some startling conclusions, as he glanced along the fourth
side of the explosion crater. Instead of spreading in a mushroom burst, the
blast had been definitely directional.
Passing up, for the moment, the smashed electrical equipment Long Tom had
pointed out, Doc led the others away from the blastÆs place of origin. They saw
the explosive force had moved laterally along the ground, cutting through the
marsh by reason of the road having curved in a wide bend more than two miles in
extent.
The great ditch that had been cut was as evenly grooved along its sagging banks
as if a steam shovel had heaved out the soggy mud. Where the house had been,
this canal was its exact width. As Doc and his companions made their way along
the sucking marshland, the cut gradually narrowed.
They had proceeded about a fourth of a mile, when Renny grunted, "Doc, would you
look at this!"
A man lay at the edge of the knifed-out ditch. The torso, head and arms were
there. The legs were missing. The man had been sliced in half. It was as if a
giant cleaver had suddenly descended.
A shotgun and a pack showed the victim had been a hunter. Doubtless, he had made
his lonely camp, waiting for dawn and the first flight of fowl. Ashes of a dead
fire were near by.
Doc examined the explosion cut more closely under his generator flashlight. The
character of the clean incision in the soft earth and the phenomenon of the
hunterÆs body having been neatly severed in the middle were supplying him with
information.

LONG TOM said, "ThereÆs a busted electrical machine back there. Something must
have gone up accidentally. But that would mean tremendous voltage. Giant
generators would be needed to create the energy for a lightning blast like that.
Unlessù"
"Unless," said Doc, "the secret of cracking the atom has been coupled up with
transmitted electromagnetic force, or something similar to that."
A short distance from the dead man, possibly a mile from the annihilated house,
the canal cut petered out. It terminated in a rising indentation only a few
inches wide and an inch or two deep.
Doc had placed the warning message card in his pocket. Now he led the others
rapidly toward the site of the greater explosion. In all that mass of scattered
wreckage, the State police had passed up the thought of discovering
fingerprints.
Doc produced his own outfit. He had noticed every detail of the wrecked
electrical machine indicated by Long Tom. A polished copper ball had fallen to
one side. With State police watching curiously, Doc dusted the gleaming surface.
The lines of a forefinger, then of a thumb, took form. Under a powerful glass,
Doc studied the grimy message card, then the convolutions and whorls of the
lines on the copper ball.
Returning the card to his pocket, he said, "One and the same man, a scraggly
little fellow with the prehensile type fingers."
A State police sergeant stared at him.
"YouÆre Doc Savage, arenÆt you?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"WouldnÆt worry any more about those prints then," said the sergeant. "If he was
in there, he isnÆt much use to anybody now. Come over here, Mr. Savage."
The man who had been in the house would neither be a menace nor a help to any
one again. Only one foot remained, the leg severed roughly at the top of a
high-laced boot such as a man might be wearing in the marshy ground.
Doc only glanced at it.
"No," he said, "this wasnÆt the man. ItÆs some other person. I think this may be
the one who was on the phone."

DOCÆS final words were addressed in a low tone for his own companions only to
hear. Doc was piecing together the scanty material he had.
Some one in the house in the marsh must have known he was under a sentence of
death. At least he was aware of some menace hovering over him. This other man,
he of the scraggly person, had been sent with a message.
That might be it, but Doc was not thoroughly satisfied. Perhaps the person, or
persons, responsible for the gruesome tragedy might have a reason for bringing
him to the scene. This thought stuck with him strongly.
He pondered the possibility of this having been a demonstration. The messenger
might have intended to have him on the telephone when the blast was set off. He
would be sure Doc Savage would go directly to the scene. Then his purpose had
been fulfilled.
No more likely evidence appeared in the wide-flung jangle of house wreckage. The
booted foot was all that told a man had been in the house. Doc led his men to
his car.

DURING the investigation of the explosion, an automobile had been playing hide
and seek with State police and other cars arriving at the scene of the great
explosion. Several times, the automobile was swung into side roads as sirens
screamed warnings that forces of the law were arriving.
At last, the police having passed, the elusive car came into the main highway
and sped northward toward Newark.
A motorcycle patrolman who had remained watching the highway was hidden around a
curve as the speeding auto flashed by. He immediately swung onto the concrete
and gave chase.
The motorcycle forged abreast of the autoÆs rear fender. The driver of the car
jammed his foot suddenly on his brakes. The auto swayed and rubber squealed.
When it skidded, the motorcycle patrolman hadnÆt a chance.
The motorcycle catapulted into the air. It turned over three times. The
policeman became only a limp bundle in the ditch.
The driver of the car glanced along the highway. No other lights were showing.
The man talked rapidly for perhaps a minute. It was peculiar behavior, for he
seemed making some sort of a speech.
Then he climbed from the car. He kicked around in the loose soil a few yards
from where the motor cop lay motionless. The driver then got back under the
wheel and the car sped toward Newark.
By this time, some of the State police were returning from the scene of the
explosion.
When Doc Savage and his men reached this spot, a State police car had just
discovered the policeman in the ditch. The motor cop was beginning to revive. He
had only been knocked out.
He was able to say it was a car of well-known make, that had wrecked him. The
license plate had been smeared with mud.
Doc eased from his car.
Two other police cars stopped. Passing motorists halted their machines. Soon
there was a small crowd around the motor cop. The manÆs face was badly slashed.
From the last of the civilian cars to stop, three men got out. None noticed the
driver of this car turn off into a near-by side road. At this moment, the small
group around the injured patrolman had frozen to silence.
From the wall of foggy darkness over the marsh beside the highway, floated a
high-pitched voice.
"Doc Savage beware! Do not seek more information! I cannot be overcome! I
control the worldÆs most terrible force of destruction! I will not brook
interference! For I amùVar!"
The mysterious voice ceased abruptly.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "What is it, Doc?"

DOC had scanned every foot of the near-by ground. It had been much trampled. The
flashlight produced nothing.
"WeÆll have a look along the edges of the marsh," advised Doc. "You might try
kicking around a bit in the loose grass."
MonkÆs short body with his gorilla arms trailing vanished in the fog. The
chemist peered closely from the eyes deep-set in rolls of bristly gristle.
"Dag-gone it!" he growled. "I did hear it!"
He was not referring to the sepulchral tones coming from nowhere on the highway.
Monk had heard another faint voice. It had sounded like a manÆs hoarse cry for
help. Where any one needed help, there might be a fight. Monk pushed forward
hopefully.
Separated from his companions, Monk decided he would rather handle this alone
than wait and miss it. Pushing deeper into the marsh, he saw a man waist-deep in
the sucking mud of a bog. The man was sinking deeper with each second.
"Keep your chin up, fella!" Monk called, and started to wade into the mire.
From the tall grass, figures sprang upon him. There were three of the men. They
had Monk at a disadvantage. He was already knee-deep in the bog. One man hurtled
through the air and landed on MonkÆs back. It was his mistake.
MonkÆs long arms snapped up and back. His clasped hands hooked behind the other
manÆs head. MonkÆs shoulders barely twisted and the man turned over twice in
mid-air before he splashed face down in the mud.
Unable to release his mired feet, Monk whipped a fist into another manÆs face.
The man sat down with a whoosh! The third man had been more wary. He had held
back. When he moved, a thick, heavy club swished down upon MonkÆs unprotected
skull.
Monk fell as if he had suddenly sunk in the quagmire. Oozing mud and water
choked his mouth and nostrils.

AFTER several minutes of fruitless searching for the origin of the spoken
warning, Doc, Renny and Long Tom came back to the highway. They waited ten
minutes, but Monk did not appear.
A big car, with a rear trunk compartment opening under the wide seat, came from
the side road a hundred yards away. Unnoticed, it wheeled into line with the
parade of cars now returning to the city from the scene of the explosion.
Doc and the others combed the marsh for more than an hour. Then Doc summoned
Renny and Long Tom.
"TheyÆve got Monk," he said. "I found the place in the swamp where they fought
it out."
Doc had retrieved MonkÆs muddy hat.

Chapter 4. GHOST VOICE AGAIN
"FURTHER search here would be useless," announced Doc Savage. "MonkÆs captors
undoubtedly have returned directly to the city. I judge that, for the present,
he will be unharmed. We are confronted by an organization in control of a
hitherto unknown force."
In a remarkably brief space of time, DocÆs car was piloted down the ramp of his
special garage under the skyscraper headquarters. When they had ascended, the
bronze man apparently had arrived at some definite conclusion.
For some time, he said nothing. His smoothly corded hands were assembling some
small, but powerful, electrical amplifying coils. His knowledge of explosive
forces, especially of electromagnetic energy and powerful rays and waves
surpassed that of any other living man.
When he spoke, DocÆs words had little connection with what his hands were doing.
"There is a woman in the strange happenings of the night," he said, calmly.
"Holy cow!" exploded Renny. "I didnÆt see any evidence of one!"
"Yes, there is a woman in it," stated Doc. "She was speaking, only a murmur, but
perhaps arguing with this man who calls himself Var. All of us heard a ghostly
voice in speech. I was listening to two voices."
Renny exhibited no further surprise. DocÆs auditory perception was maintained by
his daily two-hour exercises on a specially devised scale of vibrations. His
hearing was selective.
"YouÆre planning some form of new electrical detector," Long Tom remarked,
watching DocÆs skillful bronze hands assembling some wound copper coils and a
series of tiny, but powerful, generators to be combined in a single power unit.
"Hardly that," stated Doc. "The explosion was brought about most likely by the
accidental unleashing of tremendous electrical force. A hitherto undiscovered
means of producing high voltage seems to have been involved. The day is close
when we shall find vast explosive energy confined in small, compact machines."

THE special device established in the elevator corridor of DocÆs headquarters
gave a warning buzz. In the square of glass at one side of the laboratory a
figure appeared, walking from the elevator toward Doc SavageÆs door.
He was a youthful, smiling-faced telegraph messenger. His expression seemed
proof he was somewhat awed, but much pleased, at this opportunity to visit the
headquarters of the famed Doc Savage.
The messenger stood by as Doc signed the book and opened the yellow envelope.
The message read:
HAVE UNEARTHED BONES OF PREHISTORIC PLATYPUS WHICH PRE-DATES PALEOZOIC MAMMALS
STOP WILL BE DOMICILED AT CASPER FOR FORTHCOMING FORTNIGHT IF YOU SHOULD DESIRE
TO COMMUNICATE
JOHNNY
"Johnny" was William Harper Littlejohn. He was the archaeologist and geologist
of the Doc Savage group. For several weeks, he had been in Wyoming investigating
a new discovery of prehistoric bones.
When the book was signed, the messenger reddened a little and stammered, "M-Mr.
Savageùc-could I just have one look into your laboratoryùp-please?"
Absorbing the telegram, Doc said, "Certainly. Stand here by the door."
The youthful messenger gasped as he gazed upon the hundreds of glittering
devices of polished metal and glass within the big room.
"Gee!" he exclaimed. "Gee!"
He turned and walked toward the outer door, crossing the office as if he were a
little dizzy from what he had seen. At this instant, the ghost voice came again,
thin but strident.
"Doc SavageùI am too strong even for you! I have your man Monk! Keep out of this
or he will be destroyed without a trace! One by one, your other companions will
be taken! You, too, must die if you persist! Nothing can stop me before my
purpose has been accomplished, for I amùVar!"
The messenger boy stopped an instant, eyes widening. He looked at Doc and his
two companions. None of the three had spoken. The messenger turned and fled
toward the elevators.
"Holy cow!" growled Renny. "TheyÆve planted something here while we were out!
Come on, Long Tom!"
Long Tom joined him in the beginning of a search. They were pulling out desk
drawers. Long Tom started to lift a corner of a rug.
Doc picked up the telephone. He gave the number of the nearest telegraph office.
In a few seconds he replaced the instrument.
"We wonÆt tear up the place," the bronze man announced, calmly. "The voice
walked out with our smiling messenger boy. I could have stopped him, but just
now, perhaps, it is better to permit this Var to play his hand a bit farther.
There has been no telegram sent from Johnny."
"No message?" grunted Long Tom. "Then this fellow who calls himself Var must
know all about us and what weÆre doing."
"ThatÆs it," Doc said, grimly. "Var not only has remarkable scientific
knowledge, but he is clever-brained in other directions. Brothers, we are
opposed to perhaps the most dangerous mind of our experience!"

A BUZZ of the desk phone interrupted further speech. Doc picked up the
instrument.
"This is the police commissioner. Doc Savage? . . . Well, thereÆs Hades popping!
YouÆre probably the only man who can be of help. This is something too big for
my men to grapple with."
Doc said, "What is it?"
"It looks as if that explosion over in Jersey wasnÆt any accident," said the
commissioner.
Doc said nothing, waiting.
"And weÆre up against something else," continued the commissioner. "The next
blast is scheduled for Long Island. ItÆs due to happen any time! You know J.
Afton Carberry, the fellow who made millions lending money in South America and
Europe?"
"I know him," said Doc. "Retired after the depression trimmed many other
financiers dealing in foreign stuff. Disappeared for a year. Announced he was
writing a book on cellular origin of the human species. Quite a smart chap."
"You know everybody," grunted the commissioner. "But Carberry isnÆt so smart,
right now. HeÆs scared green! Called in a few minutes ago. Had a crazy warning,
he said, from some sort of a voice where there wasnÆt anybody. CarberryÆs lost
his head!"
"What was the message?" interposed Doc. "Did it fix a time?"
"Nearly as he could repeat it, the message said: æYou have forty-eight hours to
accede to my demand and place your fortune at my service. Other financiers will
be quickly forced to follow your lead. I have a force none can oppose. Before
dawn, you will see a demonstration of it. You canÆt combat me, for I amùVar.Æ"
"I shall be awaiting you at CarberryÆs home," stated Doc.
The bronze man delayed only to direct Long Tom to carry out the electrical
experiment he had begun. The electrical wizard returned reluctantly to the
laboratory.
"YouÆll accompany me, Renny," Doc instructed.
Renny, who had gathered part of the phone conversation, already was inside a
special bulletproof vest of DocÆs invention.
The bronze man flowed toward the rocket elevator. They dropped with the speed of
a falling plummet to the basement garage. DocÆs powerful, armored car threaded
through the thinned traffic of the darkened streets.
While he drove, Doc was considering the possibilities of the threat against J.
Afton Carberry. DocÆs amazing, many-sided brain also was recalling all known
forces which might be employed to give explosive energy a definite path of
destruction.

Chapter 5. MONK IS SILENCED
AT the moment Doc Savage and Renny were speeding to the home of J. Afton
Carberry, Monk awoke in a coffin-like space. His long arms and short body were
folded and cramped. A hard metal wall jammed his head down upon his thick neck.
His feet were drawn up.
For once, Monk was thankful his legs were shorter than his arms.
"Dag-goned if I ainÆt dead anÆ buried!" he grunted, trying to wedge himself into
an easier position. "Nope, I ainÆt dead. My head mustÆve been busted wide open."
Monk breathed with laboring lungs. His mighty chest heaved with the effort to
extract a supply of ozone from the foul air in the confined space. Strength
flowed back into his body.
"Anyway, I ainÆt in the graveyard yet," he muttered, "or IÆd æaÆ been smothered.
AnÆ by the calamities, I ainÆt staying here!"
MonkÆs body, housing the strength of half a dozen ordinary men, began to swell.
He filled his lungs to capacity and his iron chest heaved. Elbows levered
against the walls of his metal prison.
The maker of the trunk under the rear seat of the automobile had not designed it
to withstand any such concentrated dynamite. The metal clasp and the brass
tongue of the lock snapped. The curved upright lid of the underseat trunk
flapped open with a bang.
MonkÆs landing was in keeping with his apelike contours. He hit on his feet. Low
growls of warning, amazement, impinged on his hairy ears. A man uttered a low
curse and hurtled toward him. Other figures converged in a rush.

THEY were in a dimly lighted concrete garage. Monk saw it was apparently in the
basement of some larger building. Heavy iron doors were closed and barred. Monk
lithely evaded the first rushing figure. With an incredibly fast sweep of one
arm, he gripped the manÆs thick neck. His assailant was heavy, but MonkÆs iron
muscles contracted with the force of an immense rubber slingshot.
His attacker was lifted from his feet. His body traveled a short arc through the
air. The manÆs head deeply dented the metal back of the car above the flapping
lid of the trunk. He collapsed to the floor without a groan. The human skull was
never designed for withstanding such an impact.
A jungle bellow issued from MonkÆs throat.
"CÆmon, you yella rats!" he growled. "Come anÆ get it!"
Three men, relying on strength of numbers, accepted the invitation.
Both of MonkÆs fists made definite, sickening contact with flesh and bone. One
of his feet twisted between the third manÆs legs. He sprawled on top of his two
companions. Others were coming at him, but Monk glimpsed one man standing back.
This man was short of body, broad of shoulders and face. His small eyes
glittered piglike in rolls of eye-rimming fat. In his moon face the mouth was a
small aperture. Set above a double chin that was adding a third roll of lard
above his collar, the tiny mouth gave him a grotesque appearance.
Monk saw he was badly outnumbered. Leaping clear of the floor on his short legs,
he projected his body between two more men. The backs of their heads cracked the
floor. Another man hit Monk a dizzying blow behind the ear with some blunt
weapon.
Monk staggered. He was facing the moon-faced fellow with the little rat-hole for
a mouth. The man had a polished piece of metal in one hand. It was shaped like
the round box for holding steel tape. From this box a slender stream of sizzling
vapor shot into MonkÆs face.
Monk gritted his teeth against the pain. It was an ammonia gun. Blinded,
scarcely able to breathe, Monk went to his hands and knees under a rush of
bodies. A minute later he was firmly bound about the arms and was being
propelled up a stairway.

MONKÆS captors placed him in an elevator operated automatically. Eyes smarting
from the burning fumes of the ammonia gun, Monk could only guess at the number
of floors they ascended. Then he was led along a hallway.
One of the men swore and muttered, "WhereÆs that button, Wheeze?"
Though he was only beginning to see dimly, Monk knew it was the moon-faced man
who was called "Wheeze."
"Right underùsissùthat little pictureùsissùby the molding, dumbhead!" came the
reply in the wheezing voice. Wheeze talked like a chronic case of asthma.
Monk could see enough now to know they were in the room of an elaborately
furnished apartment. A panel in the wall swung open. It revealed a spiral
stairway. The mean snout of an automatic was pushed into MonkÆs back.
At the top of the stairway they emerged into a vaulted room of lavishly rich
fittings. The walls of the room were odd. They were covered with paintings in
oil. All of these represented some of the lower forms of marine life. In spite
of his ticklish position, Monk was intrigued by this unusual display of art.
"Nobody but a nutÆd ever lived in this dump," he muttered.
He heard one of the men address Wheeze by another name. It was McGovern,
apparently his last name.
"Soft pedal the titles, Smoke," rapped Wheeze. "Stick to the handles the chief
tacked on."
By that, Monk judged the chief of this gang was not among those present.
Monk was pushed into a chair. Wheeze came and stood before him.
"So youÆre the big ape Doc Savage uses for some of his chemical tricks!" he
stated. "WellùsissùthereÆs one or two little tricks we want to find out. Also,
mister, youÆre going to tell us something about Doc SavageÆs set-up. There are
several things we need to know."
"Try anÆ make me!" gritted Monk.
WheezeÆs little mouth puckered and his small eyes gleamed wickedly.
"I gather from all those misfit words, you imagine youÆre not going to talk,
eh?" he sissed at Monk. "Well, weÆll see. Smoke, is the convincer all set?"
The man called "Smoke" smiled genially.
"The convincerÆs always ready," he put forth. "Right this way."
A single wide glass door was opened at the side of the room.

MONK was pulled to his feet and propelled into the adjoining space. This was a
bare, small room with enameled walls and no furnishings. The single man
occupying it required no chair. He was of shining armor metal and he stood erect
in the middle of the floor.
The binding cords suddenly fell from MonkÆs arm. But two men with automatics
poked the snouts into his ribs.
"We try to avoid shedding the blood of any person," Wheeze sissed in a
sanctimonious voice. "Every manÆs blood must be on his own head. So weù"
Monk was shoved close to the armored figure. He saw the contraption was some
sort of robot. It appeared to be hollow, and large enough to admit the person of
a very large man.
MonkÆs still-smarting eyes blinked at the robotÆs half-bent arms. For in the
metal fingers were clutched two long-pointed knives. These were directed inward
toward the robotÆs gleaming breast. It looked as if the metal man was thinking
of taking his own life.
In one enameled wall was a black switchboard. It contained a complicated array
of electrical switches, coils and other gadgets. In its center was what seemed
to be the circle of an enlarged microphone.
"Everybody quiet!" ordered Wheeze. His companions instantly became silent. None
even moved. "Now watch, you wise ape!"
One man stepped to the switchboard and turned a button. When he stepped back,
Wheeze spoke in a low tone.
"Do your stuff, big boy," he said.
Slowly, the metal arms of the robot moved inward. The pointed knives approached
two slits in the armored breast. The movement was so slow as to be almost
imperceptible.
Slowly, chillingly, even though the shining figure was but cold metal, the arms
continued to bend. The points of the knives disappeared into the shell-like
cavity of the robotÆs chest. A minute, two minutes passed. Monk growled in his
throat.
Both knives at last were buried to their hilts. The mechanism ceased to whirr.
"Just one little word will do it," murmured Wheeze. "One little whisper, or a
sneezeùand the mike picks up the sound and starts the robot. WeÆre going to
leave you with the convincer. After IÆve attended to some special business,
weÆll come back. If youÆve kept that big yap of yours quiet that long, maybe
youÆll be about ripe to loosen up with some conversation!"
"ThatÆs what you think!" barked Monk. "YouÆll get nothinÆ outta me!"
"ThatÆll be just too badùfor you," sissed Wheeze, softly.

THE automatics crowded MonkÆs spine, then his stomach, as the metal robot opened
on oiled hinges. Helpless to resist, he was shoved inside. His long arms were
forced into the bent hollow of the robotÆs arms. The torturing device was swung
shut.
The speech control button on the switchboard was off while this took place.
Wheeze looked up into MonkÆs orbs blinking through the armored eye-holes of the
robot.
"Now you can talk your head offùor your heart out," grinned Wheeze. "Ready,
Smoke! Everybody out! Click æer on!"
Wheeze followed his men through the single door of glass. It closed silently.
Monk could see the men outside talking, gesturing. He could not hear their
voices. He was alone with the robot and his thoughts in the soundproof room.
Monk glanced over at the round disk of the big microphone. He could see the long
knives inverted directly toward his heart. Many things came to Monk that he
would have liked to have said.
But he took it out in thinking.

Chapter 6. COLD LIGHT STRIKES
MONK was confident Doc Savage would pick up his trail quickly. He would have
been much more downcast had he known that Doc and Renny were at this moment
rushing along a Long Island road.
The man of bronze was even now scrutinizing a lowering sky over Little Neck.
This exclusive residence section just within the boundary line of New York City,
was sleeping. Great elms spread protective arms over the homes of millionaires.
At the terminus of a scattered row of ornate dwellings, was set the
colonial-style mansion of J. Afton Carberry. Unlike the others, the Carberry
pile of architecture was ablaze with lights. When they were half a mile from the
place, Doc and Renny could see this glaring illumination against the trees. The
light was reflected with a dull glow upon the low-flying clouds.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "YouÆd think a smart guy like this Carberry would
have more brains than to light his house up like a Christmas tree! Suppose this
Var fellow happened to be flying around upstairs? What a swell target that would
make!"
"Good guess, Renny," approved Doc. "ThatÆs the way it may come this time. WeÆll
see what we can do about it."
Police were thickly spotted in the Carberry grounds. The white gravel of the
driveway showed like a winding serpent among the trees. It was perhaps two
hundred yards from the entrance gate to the illuminated mansion.
Doc drove about fifty yards along the gravel. His own powerful motor was only a
whispering song under the carÆs long hood. The humming drone that swiftly
increased to a drumming throb among the scudding clouds, was distinctly audible.
"And there you areù" Renny began to say.

A NARROW band of blue-steel light shot from the murky sky. Like a long silvery
knife, it stood out against the night. Its point touched the driveway only a few
yards ahead of DocÆs car. But it was moving swiftly, swinging directly toward
the car itself.
Doc pulled the steering wheel around, swerving the car into the trees. With a
swift movement, he pushed Renny to the outside.
RennyÆs big body was through the door. Doc slid from under the wheel. His heels
crunched in the gravel. With gliding speed, he moved to one side. His direction
was toward the house.
"The thing canÆt miss it!" Renny yelled. "All those lights wouldù"
It was one of the few times in his life that Doc Savage failed to hear
distinctly. The drums of his ears suddenly thundered. It was as if a gigantic
knife of ice had been thrust all the way through his body from his brain to his
toes.
DocÆs arms and legs were instantly numbed. His motor nerves refused to respond
to the bidding of his brain. His keen sight was dimmed by a frost that seemed to
rim his eyes. He felt himself falling forward.
"Cold Light," was DocÆs instant thought. Like the illumination created by the
inhabitants of The Land of Always-Night. Only their light was cold and harmless.
This was deadly, more like a bath in liquid air.
Doc was temporarily paralyzed. He tried to warn Renny to keep away, but no words
issued from his constricted throat. He felt consciousness fading. Then he was
suffused with a vast warm wave. By comparison, it was like a fire that set his
skin prickling and brought waves of jerking pain to his muscles.
Slowly, Doc got to his feet. Overhead, the airplane was flying low. It carried
no riding lights, but the descending spike of cold light revealed it as a small
dark object.

RENNY had whipped out his super-machine pistol and was shooting into the air.
His fire was futile. The plane was beyond the reach of the mercy bullets. Renny
was beside Doc again. Police surged toward the house.
"Get back, all of you!" warned Doc. He hadnÆt raised his voice. He never did.
The peculiar quality of DocÆs calmest words always carried to those listening.
The rare, mellow whistle filled the space around him. The sound may have come
from his lips. But it seemed an aura of vibration that always thrilled its
hearers with the imminence of deadly danger. Doc guessed what was coming.
The air sucked away. Renny and the nearest coppers felt as if they were standing
in a vast vacuum. Their mouths opened and their chests heaved as they gulped for
breath. The air seemed to have been snatched from the depths of their lungs.
DocÆs eyes were fixed upon the Carberry mansion. He expected to see the
million-dollar mass of architecture disintegrate. But the residence remained
intact.
From the thicker woods well back in the wide estate came the roar as of a
rushing wind. The sound was of cyclonic intensity. In the hurricane hiss of
displaced air came the crackling report of great trees being snapped off.
The long spike of blue-steel flashed off. It was as if a switch had been thrown
in the midst of chaos. The rolling reverberation of the long explosion abruptly
died. Only the trembling ground, the hissing, sighing echoes across the
countryside, the heavy bumping and plopping of falling trees and shorn branches
remained as an aftermath of the blast.

POLICEMEN were climbing to their feet, dusting off their clothes. For a minute,
no one moved, either toward or away from the scene of the bursting Cold Light.
That is, none but Doc Savage.
Instead of heading for the spot where the blast had taken place, he was moving
toward the Carberry mansion. DocÆs stride was unhurried; but Renny, who
immediately followed, was forced to shuffle into a trot to keep up with him.
The drumming of the plane was dying away. It was flying out over Long Island
Sound. With the stoppage of the Cold Light, the pyramid of blue flame had
suddenly disappeared. It had seemed to ascend for half a mile or more. Doc
wondered if the Cold Light had remained on, would the flame have reached the
plane.
Renny was at DocÆs shoulder. They passed the policemen guarding the Carberry
doors. Inside, Doc instantly identified the financier, though he had seen only
his photographs in the news.
CarberryÆs face was the color of gray chalk. The area of color denoting his
terror extended up his high, narrow forehead into the baldness between strangely
thick tufts of graying hair.
The man was so tall, he was compelled to bend and droop his narrow shoulders to
hold a shivering, sobbing woman in his arms. Doc, for the moment, believed this
woman to be the financierÆs daughter. She appeared to be only about half the age
of the retired capitalist.
The woman was wearing a lacy negligee. Her skin was smooth, velvety. Renny
paused admiringly. The womanÆs face was white as polished ivory. All color had
been drained from it. Apparently, she had just come into the room, aroused by
the explosion.
"Darling! Oh, what is it? What is it?"
The hand of the financier on the womanÆs shoulder was blue-veined and thin. It
trembled as he gently patted the womanÆs alluring, rounded arm.
"ItÆsùitÆs nothing muchùdear," the man quavered, hoarsely.
Doc walked toward them. Carberry stared at him an instant, then his lips parted
in a half fearful smile.
"YouÆreùDoc Savage," he said, controlling his voice with an effort. "The
commissioner said he would call you. IÆve never met you, sir."
"And you are Mr. Carberry," Doc stated.
"Yes; and this is Mrs. Carberry, Doc Savage."
The woman gave him a tremulous smile. Her slight body shivered.

BEFORE Doc could acknowledge the introduction, another voice interrupted. At its
first note, Carberry stiffened, and his arm fell away from his wifeÆs shoulders.
His slightly protruding eyes of a light-bluish shade roved quickly, desperately
about the room. Doc was reminded of some scared animal in a trap.
"Holy cow!" ejaculated Renny. "ItÆs coming fromù"
The bulky figure of the engineer barged across the room in the direction of the
wide chimney. Doc laid a hand on RennyÆs arm.
The voice had addressed itself to J. Afton Carberry. Now it spoke with a
sibilant, ghostly cadence:
"Carberryùnow you have seen a demonstration of my power! You have forty-eight
hours! I shall communicate with you at the expiration of that time! I shall find
you wherever you are! I need your millions! I know the police have appealed to
Doc Savage! This time, he will fail. For I amùVar!"
RennyÆs keen instinct for direction had been correct. The voice was coming from
the fireplace, from the chimney. A log blazed between the tiled sides.
Heedless of the blaze, Doc thrust his body into the chimney opening. Looking
upward, he had the glimpse of a head silhouetted against the sky, a shadowy,
shaggy head.
Showering ashes and fire as he emerged into the room, Doc was at the outside
door in a flowing stride. The policeman at the door gaped after him. He had
hardly seemed to move, but he was already at the corner of the house nearest the
chimney.
From there, Doc seemed almost to float up the wall of the house. The residence,
with its many slight projections, was like a smooth road to the bronze man.
Doc bounded onto the roof. As he came erect, lead pounded the overlapping slates
at his feet. An automatic was spitting fire from the opposite end of the mansion
center gable. But fast as the attacker had been, Doc was far to one side as the
remaining slugs came higher in a searching stream.
Then Doc pivoted. The ground was thirty feet below. He poised only an instant,
then sprang outward. He alighted with the cushioned ease of a body set on coiled
springs.
Gliding toward the corner of the house, Doc encountered two city coppers in
uniform. One was holding an automatic that still smoked. He was saying, "I think
I got the guy! He fell off the roof!"
Doc halted the two men. "You just shot at a man on the roof?"
"Sure!" said the cop. "I alùgood gosh! ItÆs Doc Savage! Was that you up there?"
"I was on the roof," observed Doc. "Did you see another man come down, or
running away?"
"I heard a noise up there," said the cop, "but it must have been you I shot at.
I didnÆt see any other man."

RENNY was inside investigating the chimney. The log fire had been drowned. No
marks appeared to show that anybody or anything had been in the chimney
aperture.
Carberry was sitting on a couch. His wife still clung close to him.
"What would you advise us to do, Mr. Savage?" Carberry asked.
"IÆd take Mrs. Carberry and go away as secretly as possible," Doc advised. "Make
it a point not to inform even your servants of your destination. I hope within
forty-eight hours we may have something more definite on this man who calls
himself Var."
Doc and Renny departed from the house. Doc slipped under the wheel of his car.
His intended destination was the nearest airport. He had little hope of tracing
the Cold Light plane, but believed communication with some of the airports might
give him a lead.
Renny exclaimed, "Look at this, Doc!"
The engineer had noticed the leather flap of the side pocket was open and lifted
as if to attract attention. Renny held two square white cards. One was small,
the other large. The larger card showed a printed message under the pencil ray
of DocÆs flashlight.
The small card bore words plainly written with bright blue ink. There was no
attempt to disguise the hand of the man who had written it:
Admit bearer with password to inner circle. I amùVar.
"What do you make of it?" said Renny.
"Read this," replied Doc, passing over the larger card.
Go at once to Washington. Yellow house in 14th block on K Street. Third from
corner. Do not delay. Var will be there at 4 a.m. this morning. He has tricked
Ham into meeting you there. They will not kill Monk until he has talked with
you. The password for the card is "Rav Rules." VarÆs name reversed.
The card was unsigned. Under the pencil ray it showed stains of a brownish
tinge. Doc was sure the fingerprints would be the same he had encountered twice
before. The man whose fingerprints were on the polished copper ball at the death
house in the marsh, had escaped the explosion.

Chapter 7. MONK SNEEZES
MONK, at this moment, would have been relieved if he could have known of the new
cards in Doc SavageÆs possession. But no hint had been given he was not to die
before he talked with Doc.
The enlarged microphone on the black switchboard seemed to wink at him
ominously. Monk could almost hear it speaking with its own diaphragm.
"Talk, go on and talk! Why donÆt you say something?"
The thing seemed to be mocking him. Monk not only had no desire to talk now. He
was fairly sure he never would talk again. He had no especial fear, but he
couldnÆt avoid looking at the two pointed knives. He kept recalling how slowly
they had been pushed into the slits that now faced his own gorillalike breast.
Monk could see the movements of the men in the larger room with its unique oil
paintings. Wheeze McGovern had been giving orders for nearly half an hour. Monk
was sweating, wondering how long this phase of the little game was to be
continued?
Like Doc and his other companions, Monk could read the lips of others. When the
men were facing him, he could understand what they were saying as well as if
they had been beside him. So, he understood when Wheeze picked out six of his
men and ordered them to Washington.

WHEEZE picked up the telephone. He was facing the glass door of the soundproof
room.
Monk read WheezeÆs lips. The moon-faced boss of this group of men was calling a
telegraph office. Monk saw that he called himself Doc Savage. Wheeze was giving
a message. It was addressed to Theodore Marley Brooks.
Wheeze recited the message slowly. Monk quickly realized a trap was being set
for his bickering lawyer companion, Ham. The message, as it was being given, was
telling Ham to go at once to Washington. There he was to meet Doc Savage in a
yellow house on K Street. The house was designated as the third house from the
corner in the fourteenth block.
Even as rage fairly sizzled through his veins, Monk made a mental note of the
address. He was amazed at the knowledge possessed by this Wheeze. It struck Monk
that Doc and his friends must have been under some malevolent eye, or rather
many such eyes, for considerable time before to-nightÆs flashing events.
For Wheeze had the name of the hotel in Manhattan where Ham was attending a
gathering of noted legal personages. Monk knew it, because Ham had ditched him
on a theater date to go to this distinguished affair.
Monk came then to the brink of apoplexy. It was more than the big chemist could
endure, trying to maintain silence and keep his hide unpunctured.
The surge of blood to his head brought a sudden, fierce desire to sneeze. His
huge arms were tightly locked in the robotÆs terrible, hollowed sheets of armor.
MonkÆs sneeze exploded loudly in the soundproof room. The robotÆs armor
instantly vibrated. Somewhere close beside him, a motor had started.
The fearful knives began their cruelly slow descent toward the slits over MonkÆs
heart. Their needlelike points gleamed with wicked menace.

MONK felt the arms of the metal man slowly drawing inward. Silence being no
longer of consequence, he released a flood of choice language.
Slowly, slowly, the knives pushed inward toward the slits over his heart. The
motor, pulling the inexorable arms with torturing delay, kept up a steady
whirring. In the other room, Wheeze was standing with the gloating smile of some
vile beast of prey.
Two men remained with Wheeze. Because of the soundproof doors, MonkÆs
unfortunate sneeze and his following outburst had been unnoticed.
At that instant, the inwardly moving knives entered the slits. Their needle
points touched MonkÆs shrinking skin. They became painfully penetrating agony
which he could no longer evade. Two or three minutes would be required before
the slicing edges touched a vital spot. When they did, they would release a
scarlet flood which could never be stopped by human agency.
But the knife points were never destined to reach MonkÆs heart. The first touch
freed all the electrifying rage so long pent up in the big chemistÆs huge body.
His sudden bellow might have come from the snarling throat of some trapped
jungle beast.
Monk drew gallons of air into his capacious lungs. His body swelled. The mammoth
shoulders were bowed and braced. The long arms contracted and then expanded.
The slender rods of universal jointage necessary to operation of the robotÆs
arms were of strongest steel. But, after all, they were, by the requirements of
space, very slim. MonkÆs giant arms, driven by his released fury, were gigantic
in their expansion.
"Hold æer, Ham!" he bellowed. "Dag-gone it, shyster! IÆm cominÆ!"
He voiced the truth. The rods of slender steel were snapping. They made cracking
sounds, as if a manÆs finger joints had been bent backward. The ribbed
fastenings of the metal man snapped asunder.

MONK did not heed the rake of the knife points across his hard-muscled breast.
He did not even pause to regret the absence of his special bullet-proof vest,
because he did not feel the slicing of his flesh. The trickling of blood also
went unnoticed.
For Monk had torn loose the robotÆs jointed arms. He swung one in each ponderous
hand.
Wheeze and his men had been turned from the glass door of the soundproof room at
the instant catastrophe overtook their torturing metal man. They wheeled on
their toes only when the ape-like shape of Monk crashed through the thick
transparent plate.
One of the men whipped out an automatic and fired pointblank. Steel-pointed
slugs played jangling sparks of fire from one of the swinging metal arms in
MonkÆs hands. Chewed lead stung one of the enraged chemistÆs hairy ears.
A shot from the blazing automatic flew across the room and scarred one of the
oil paintings. It completely erased a fantastic conception of nonexistent marine
life. The thing was a slimy creature on oils, half human, half crab.
Monk did not observe this despoilation of weird art. One of his armored weapons
had cracked the forearm bones of the man who had been shooting. He was a giant
of a fellow, but he howled in agony and fell writhing to the floor.
WheezeÆs other companion hurled a heavy vase off a table. The improvised weapon
shattered to bits across MonkÆs iron-hard forehead. A little blood trickled into
the chemistÆs eyes. His other armored weapon struck this manÆs thigh bone. He
joined his broken-armed partner in howling on the rich Oriental rug.
Wheeze had slipped through the smashed glass door. Something on the switchboard
crackled with lurid blue flame. Short-circuited wires blanked out. The rooms
were plunged into Stygian darkness.
Monk found his special generator flashlight. The beam was pointed as a pencil.
He sent it roving about. There was no sound. Then in the distance somewhere, was
a wheezing laugh. A door slammed shut.
Wheeze had escaped.
Realizing the tricky affair of the concealed stairway they had used in bringing
him in the house, Monk at once decided pursuit would be useless. Besides, more
important business confronted him. He must get a warning to Doc. Perhaps he
could head off Ham from starting for Washington.
Vainly, Monk jiggled the receiver bar of the phone. The wire was dead. Wheeze
had thoughtfully removed this means of communication. His flight had been solely
in the interest of saving his own hide.

APPARENTLY the battle in the penthouseùMonk had discovered his prison quarters
to be suchùhad been unheard by the residents of apartments in the twelve-story
building. The apartment directly underneath was vacant, though its furnishing
were rich. The shorted wires from above had also plunged this place in darkness.
Monk found and employed the concealed stairway. He buzzed for an elevator. The
car was automatic. Monk made the street with a blank-faced doorman staring after
him.
Monk noted the apartment building was a block west of Central Park. Covering
blocks with his rapid, ungainly stride, Monk reached Columbus Circle.
Though it was well after the hour for the Broadway deluge of humanity at theater
closing time, Monk found himself caught in a flowing river of men and women. He
marked this was not the usual after-theater crowd of dressy individuals.
It was a crowd with a distinct disharmony of apprehension, of fear, in some
their voices approaching terror.
A husky-voiced newspaper vendor threaded through the human stream.
"Read all about it!" he bawled. "Big explosion in Manhattan! Var will blow up
whole city block! Read it!"
Monk plowed his way to the man. He snatched a paper.
"HowlinÆ calamities!" he squealed. "IÆve gotta get to Doc!"
Monk headed for a public phone booth. He dialed the number of DocÆs
headquarters.
Long TomÆs voice came impatiently. A call had instructed him to stand by for
another message from Doc. The bronze man had said he would have some plans for
Long Tom to work out in connection with a new machine he called an
"ex-neutralizer."
If it could be made to work, Doc wanted it to combat the Cold Light ray. Long
Tom saw a night of work ahead. He wished the bronze chief were here to direct
him, instead of sending his instructions by phone.
He was relieved, however, to hear MonkÆs voice.

"WHEREÆVE you been?" demanded Long Tom. "What happened?"
"Let it ride," said Monk. "WhereÆs Doc?"
"Headed for Washington," replied Long Tom. "But hereÆs Renny. HeÆll talk. IÆve
got a job to do."
"Where in time have youù" Renny began.
"Dag-gone it!" interrupted Monk. "Tell me something! WhatÆs going on, anyway?"
"This fellow who calls himself Var has turned all Hades loose," obliged Renny.
"The latest is his announcement with that ghost voice of his that heÆs blowing
up a whole city block in uptown Manhattan at nine oÆclock in the morning. ThatÆs
to-day. Turned the voice loose in one of the newspaper editorial rooms. The big
townÆs gone batty over it!"
"You tellinÆ me!" grunted Monk. "WhereÆs this blow-up cominÆ off?"
"Over in the upper East Side," said Renny, giving an address only two blocks
from the East River. "This Var warned the police to clear the whole block of
those who wanted to keep on living. He said the blast would rock the town and
destroy everything directly in its path. Said he doesnÆt want any loss of life."
"Dag-gone it, Renny!" rapped Monk. "What are weù"
"Coming to that, Monk. DocÆs in a Red Arrow transport plane. Called in by
radiophone. Said if I found you, weÆre to get into that block Var is planning to
shoot off and see what we can find. I donÆt know what weÆre to look for. But
itÆll take me an hour to fight my way over there andù"
"See you when you get there," cut in Monk. "IÆm on my way."

MONK reached a taxicab by the simple expedient of hulking his ponderous body
directly into the crowd.
News bulletins were running in the lights around a building near Times Square:
VAR ANNOUNCES THE EXPLOSION IN MANHATTAN WILL TAKE PLACE AT 9 A.M. HE SAYS IT
WILL BE CUT LOOSE FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE PASSING OVER MANHATTAN OF THE
WASHINGTON-NEW YORK PASSENGER-AND-MAIL PLANE.
MonkÆs cab pulled away.

Chapter 8. TRAIL OF A SHADOW
WHILE Monk was on his way to the menaced block in Manhattan, following Doc
SavageÆs instructions to his headquarters, the man of bronze had taken up
another trail. Rather, Doc had put himself directly in the way of a shadow he
believed was watching his movements closely.
Word of the new threat of the Cold Light over Manhattan had caused the bronze
giant to send Renny to join Long Tom at headquarters. At this time, Doc knew
nothing of MonkÆs escape.
The ray of Cold Light causing the explosion at the home of J. Afton Carberry had
given the bronze man something definite with which to grapple. DocÆs intricate
knowledge of all forms of electrical energy had taught him that some of the most
potent electromagnetic forces could be lessened, or neutralized altogether, by
the setting up of other similar but opposing rays or waves.
He had left Long Tom working upon an electrical experiment. It came to him how a
possible neutralizing force could be created to combat the mysterious Cold
Light. As ex-neutralizer. That would be it.
As Doc worked out this idea, he was speeding toward the Red Arrow passenger
airport. He had instantly decided to follow the bidding of his mysterious
messenger and go to the yellow house in Washington. Ordinarily, the bronze man
would have used one of his own fast planes for the trip.
But he judged he was being closely shadowed. By going directly to the passenger
port of the Red Arrow, he would be followed. Doubtless the emissary or enemy of
Var, whichever he might be, also would become a passenger on the plane.
From a concealed vantage, after booking his seat, the bronze man waited. He saw
all other passengers go aboard. He smiled grimly as he watched the last man to
take his seat.
Then Doc himself vanished into the wash room. In a few seconds, the plane would
be taking off. When it took the air, no person remotely resembling Doc Savage
was aboard.

IN Seat No. 7, on the right-hand side of the Red Arrow passenger plane, sat an
ugly specimen of humanity. Nature had been unkind, apparently, in the beginning
of the manÆs career. He had been endowed with ropy, tow-colored hair and
washed-out, pale-blue eyes.
In size, the man was of magnificent proportions, except for the hunching of one
shoulder and a malformation of his neck. Added to these marring features, the
manÆs nose had been broken and badly set. His cheeks were puffed and had an
unhealthy pallor.
In the No. 2 seat, on the left-hand side of the plane, a little man sat hunched
into the big collar of an overcoat. Only the peak of his slouch hat was visible.
For more than half an hour, this passenger had not moved.
The bucking of the plane in many of the air pockets was trying even to some of
the veteran passengers. Suddenly, in the recovery of a level keel, something of
minor importance happened in the pilotsÆ cabin. A service wire in the passenger
cabin was short-circuited for the fraction of a second.
The mishap was sufficient to blow out a fuse. Gasps came from women passengers.
"Never mind," came the calm voice of the trim stewardess. "ItÆs only a fuse. The
co-pilot will fix it."
The co-pilot, pushed his way along the aisle. In Seat No. 2, the
collar-concealed head of the little man slowly turned. The movement brought a
little scream from one of the women who had been chewing gum.
The homely mug in Seat No. 7 was watching with interest.
The shock to the timid woman was amply justified. For the eyes of the man in
Seat No. 2 glowed in the darkness with the luminous fire of a predatory cat
prowling the night. In them, one other man in the plane read hatred colored by
fear. Such as might cause the beady eyes of a rat to shine with desperation when
cornered.
When the fuse was replaced and the lights came on, the ugly mug from Seat No. 7
got up and followed the co-pilot toward the control room.
"What do you want?" growled the co-pilot. "Passengers have got to stay in their
seats! Hey! NobodyÆs allowed up inù"
The ugly mug calmly disregarded the admonition. Pushing past, he went through
the little door. Inside, concealed from the passengers, he murmured a few words
directly into the ear of the pilot at the controls.
"Never mind! Skip it!" barked the pilot at his scowling partner. "Take a seat in
back a few minutes! ItÆs O. K.!"
The puzzled co-pilot went back and slipped into Seat No. 7. The pale-eyed,
broken-nosed passenger had slipped into the co-pilotÆs seat and pulled on the
radio earphones.

FOR the space of some eight or ten minutes, this strange substitute for the
regular man at the secondary controls seemed very much at home. As he talked
into the phone, his gloved hands played automatically on the control wheel.
Any person would have supposed he was a flier. The veteran Red Arrow pilot was
not even supposing. He knew well enough the man with the broken nose was a
better flier than he would be if he lived a couple of centuries. His
conversation to the ground finished, the ugly mug relinquished his place.
"Thanks," he said to the pilot. "IÆll remember the favor."
The co-pilot still scowled, as he came up to swap places with the extraordinary
passenger who could so readily make hash of all the rules. But the passenger did
not notice this. He was, without seeming to do so, absorbing every visible
detail of the little man in Seat No. 2.
From this position, it could be seen that the man whose eyes had been luminous
in the darkness was rather an inconsequential personality. Every article of
clothing appeared to have been worn to the point of dissolution. His hat brim
was soiled and frayed. His overcoat collar was faded and threaded out. The manÆs
collar looked saw-edged.
This scraggly appearance was continued to the manÆs person. His hair was stringy
and uneven. His face was hatchet-thin, with an oddly turned-up nose. The chin
was long-pointed and stubbly with beard. The manÆs AdamÆs apple rambled up and
down.
He displayed no interest in what was transpiring in the plane. In his now normal
eyes was a disappointed look. The man he had come aboard to find had not
appeared.
The scrambled-faced passenger returned to Seat No. 7. When the cabin radio
started staccato bulletins of the menace hovering over Manhattan, the man seemed
to have dropped into a doze.

THE scraggly little man in Seat No. 2 was the last person to alight from the
plane at the Washington airport. He scrutinized each of his fellow passengers
hopefully, as they passed him. With a grunt of disappointed resignation, he
climbed from the plane.
Walking over to the information desk, he inquired, "Has any other passenger
plane or private crate from New York landed in the past hour?"
"Yes, a White Liner came in, half an hour ago," the girl said.
The little manÆs face brightened some. He went toward the taxicab stand with
short, hopping steps. Entering a taxi, he rode only to the first darkly shadowed
avenue.
Leaning forward, he handed the driver a dollar, and said, "Keep moving. IÆm
leaving you here."
He was back among the trees when another taxicab came from the direction of the
airport and turned the corner, following the first car. The luminous eyes shone
more brightly as this cab passed.
"Had me fooled, all right," he muttered. "But I guess this puts me one up on
him."
When the first of the taxicabs stopped and turned after proceeding a couple of
blocks, the broken-nosed man in the second cab observed that it was empty.
"Expected he would do that," the man remarked to himself. "All right, driver.
Take me to Dupont Circle. IÆll walk the rest of the way."
The open radius known as Dupont Circle was not far distant from a yellow house
in the fourteenth block on K Street.

THIS yellow house in Washington was, before the day was very old, to become a
rendezvous for several mysterious figures. With Doc Savage already near this
house in a guise which had passed him on the Red Arrow plane, Ham summoned by a
faked telegram and Monk aware of the trick, the identity and intentions of the
scraggly little man remained an enigma.
And while Monk was delaying a possible effort to assist Ham in order to
investigate the threat of a new explosion in Manhattan, still another puzzling
figure was planning a trip to Washington.
This last man had been pacing the floor of a palatial apartment during the
greater part of the night. He was walking restlessly up and down at the time the
blast shook the home of J. Afton Carberry.
This apartment was near the west side of Central Park.
The man was known as Charles Arthur Vonier, noted explorer.
Vonier had heard radio announcements of the Carberry explosion. There had been a
police report saying that even the redoubtable Doc Savage was baffled; that the
police commissioner believed the blasts were planned by some scientist who was
remarkably sane.
Vonier had switched off this report impatiently.
"And IÆd counted on Doc Savage toù" He broke off the muttered phrase.
Vonier was an emaciated, seemingly bloodless man. His thin, sensitive nose was a
single arching bone with tautly drawn skin covering it. His eyes were set under
projecting caverns of his bony skull. But they were intensely blue, and coldly
direct. Even now, under apparent stress that made his bony hands fumble, the
eyes were unflickering.
A spread newspaper on the table headlined the New Jersey log cabin explosion.
Vonier opened a library table drawer and drew out a sheet of paper. On it were
scrawled words in bright blue ink.
The explorer sucked his lips between teeth protruding from his skeleton-hard
jaws. He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket.
Picking up the desk tray of pens and ink, he selected a bottle. The tray was of
old, soft gold done in finely wrought hand carvings. It was reminiscent of the
workmanship of one of the lost, though highly civilized, mountain folk of
Indochina.

VONIER let a single drop of the ink fall from the bottle on a square of white
paper. The color was brightest blue.
"The strange trick of circumstance sometimes will involve the most innocent," he
murmured. "Doc SavageÆs microscopic eyes never would overlook a detail like
that."
He replaced the bottle, with his smile becoming whimsical. Apparently, a vein of
humor lay under the explorerÆs unappealing exterior.
A womanÆs dress rustled. Vonier arose to greet his wife.
"IÆm glad you came in, my dear," he said. "I can delay no longer. It is
necessary that I make personal contact with Doc Savage, at once."
The womanÆs voice was throaty but calm.
"Do you think itÆs best?" she said. "I canÆt quite understand why you must see
him."
Mrs. Vonier was slender of figure, as revealed by the silken gown of scarlet.
Her features were clear-cut and regular.
"IÆve discovered it is always best to strike the first blow, to meet an enemy
before he gets himself set," stated the explorer. "I have been busy. Doc Savage
will be on his way to Washington. I shall see him there."
"You will be careful?" the woman pleaded. "After all the dangers you haveù"
"Bosh!" interrupted Vonier. "Doc Savage must have the message. The news will
have it that the bronze wizard is baffled by these strange explosions. As usual,
the news is undependable!"
Vonier called a private air field. It was apparent he was ordering one of his
own planes tuned up for a quick takeoff to Washington. As he was preparing to
depart, the phone buzzed.
The call was long distance. It was from Washington. From VonierÆs words, some
special emergency had arisen in his affairs. Before he replaced the receiver, he
said, "I shall take care of that. I am just preparing to leave for Washington."

Chapter 9. MONKÆS SWEET TOOTH
ABOUT the time the plane of Charles Arthur Vonier was being prepared for a quick
flight to Washington, Monk was impatiently pursuing his investigation on the
East Side. He had discovered the warning of the threatened explosion had created
pandemonium.
There was the block where the fiendish Var had announced the Cold Light would
strike at nine oÆclock of the following morning.
A few policemen were being overrun in their effort to keep order without
resorting to the use of their sticks. Occupants of many surroundings blocks were
joining the general exodus.
There were perhaps some two hundred families living in this six-story block. The
street level housed small shops. All of the several hundred persons involved
seemed determined to be the first out with their various belongings.
Monk, to gain entry, kept close to the police. The squad had discovered nothing
that savored of a planted explosive. Monk aroused the policemenÆs interest when
he produced his pocket chemical laboratory.
With a colorless liquid, an instantaneous reagent chemical, Monk made a quick
analysis of each spot on the walls or elsewhere, when it seemed the stain had
been recently made. He was aware that some of the most deadly explosive could be
employed in liquid form. Perhaps even in the character of some powerful chemical
that could be dried and still continue to send forth some vaporous element for
many hours.
After several efforts, however, Monk wondered if all the scores of families in
the block threw cups of coffee at each other.

A BOOMING voice announced Renny had arrived on the trail of Monk. When the big
engineer swung his many pounds of brawn through a door, Monk was preparing to
depart. He had been through all the block.
"DocÆs worked out an idea to stop that Cold Light ray," Renny told Monk. "Doc
explained it to Long Tom by radio-phone from a Red Arrow plane on the way to
Washington."
"Now why would Doc go by one of the passenger planes?" wondered Monk.
"DonÆt know, but itÆs my guess heÆs laying a trap for somebody," said Renny.
"Anyway, this thing he calls an ex-neutralizer may stop the explosions, if Long
Tom can get the right gadgets together."
Long Tom, at the moment, was attempting to step up an electrical current to
sufficient power for creation of an electromagnetic ex-neutralizer on the
principal of the Hertzian wave. Long Tom was familiar with the practical
application of the Hertzian wave, or ray. It had been employed for the killing
of airplane motors at a distance.
No place remained where it seemed likely the smallest sort of bomb could have
been hidden. Renny and Monk agreed the explosive force of Var was carried in his
mysterious, terrible Cold Light.
"IÆll stick here anÆ see if the cops give it another going over," said Renny.
"YouÆve got me worrying about Ham. All he ever carries is that trick sword cane,
anÆ if they stick him in some robot like you say you were in, he wouldnÆt have
much use for a cane."
Monk chewed thoughtfully on a gumdrop. Some child had left a paper bag of the
candy on a sink drainboard in the hasty exodus. The thought of Ham in the hands
of VarÆs ruthless agents turned the candy suddenly bitter in MonkÆs mouth.
"Dag-gone it! NothinÆ even tastes right!" complained Monk, and he spat out the
gumdrop.

MONK stopped on his way to the Hudson River warehouse hangar where DocÆs private
planes were kept, to phone Long Tom again. Long Tom replied impatiently.
"No, nothing new," he said.
Monk took off from the Hudson River in one of DocÆs fastest amphibian planes.
The cabin craft shot across the murky night sky at a speed of nearly three
hundred miles an hour.
Monk felt somewhat ill. He attributed this to apprehension for the safety of
Ham. He had a bitter taste in his mouth. It had been there since he had left
Renny with the police on the East Side.
The big chemist had the feeling he had overlooked something vitally important in
the block threatened by the Cold Light. He felt it was something he should have
recognized. Anyway, the sooner he got to Doc, the quicker the thing might
appear.
DocÆs uncanny power to read the thoughts and reactions of his five companions
had been the salvation of Monk on many occasions. It was much the same with the
giant fist-slinging Renny. Doc had extricated Renny and Monk from many hazardous
spots.

IN the East, slight streamers of light were telling of an early dawn. The dawn
over Manhattan that was the beginning of a chaotic day.
Monk had planned to leave DocÆs plane at a Washington airport and there take a
taxicab to the vicinity of the address he had heard Wheeze McGovern give in the
telegram sent to Ham.
Over the suburbs of the capital city, Monk angled to a lower altitude. On half
throttle, the small plane skimmed along a couple of hundred feet above the tops
of the trees.
Suddenly, Monk angled even lower. A blotch of bright yellow had appeared among
the greenery. Monk took one of DocÆs own inventions, an electronic glass, or,
rather, powerful binoculars created by Doc on the electronic principle. The
lenses of this telescopic device not only brought distant scenes close to the
eyes, but they also amplified them in the vision much the same as radio tones
are amplified for the listener by the loud-speaker.
One look through the glasses, as he held the little plane in a tight spiral and
Monk growled in his throat.
"HowlinÆ calamities!" he barked. "I got here just in time! Hold æem, you
dag-goned shyster! IÆm cominÆ!"
Monk shoved the plane into a dive. The staccato thunder of its direct drop
awakened hundreds of Washingtonians before their usual hour of arising.

Chapter 10. HAMÆS IN A JAM
BRIGADIER GENERAL THEODORE MARLEY BROOKSÆS arrival in Washington somewhat
preceded the coming there of Doc Savage, and of Monk. If Ham had called DocÆs
headquarters after receiving the bogus telegram from Wheeze McGovern, the
outcome might have been different.
Ham was a natty figure, as he yawned his way from a passenger plane. He was
wearing a spiffy topcoat, with a light hat pulled with jaunty effect over one
eye. He swung what appeared to be a light walking stick.
In reality, it was the sheath for a sword blade of the finest steel. Several
inches of the sword tip covered with an anaesthetic drug. The smallest prick
with the point was sufficient to render an opponent temporarily insensible.
Ham, at this moment, knew little of the Var explosions. Only the radio report of
the Carberry blast and the warnings of the expected attack upon Manhattan had
reached him.
Though uninformed of his companionsÆ connection with the rapidly developing
menace, Ham suspected this sudden call in the night might have some connection
with it.
Ham left the airport in a taxicab. He gave Dupont Circle as an address close to
the residence where he had been instructed to appear.
It was somewhat puzzling why Doc should have commanded a meeting at the
unearthly hour of four oÆclock in the morning. Ham alighted at Dupont Circle and
made his way toward K Street. The yellow house was anything but modest. Its
golden-yellow bulk affronted its more decorous neighbors.
Heavy curtains were drawn at the windows, but knifelike lines of brilliant light
appeared at the edges. A dim light burned in the entrance hall. The front door
was set in a deep alcove approached by a wide porch.
HamÆs step was light as he crossed the porch. His fingers twiddled the cane in a
flourishing circle.

IT was the mistake of an unseen man, that he growled a command to others instead
of attacking silently. HamÆs reaction to the menacing voice was instant. His
heavy cane was traveling in a vicious arc before he had seen any person or any
movement.
The swinging cane rapped the man flatly across one ear. The man grunted once and
slipped to his knees.
Ham bounced the cane from the fallen one to a spot above a white face that
loomed up from the alcove. A ringing rap of metal on hard bone and a howl of
pain was the response.
If all of his unexpected assailants had been on the one side, Ham might have
disposed of the four who had been in ambush. But two others were behind him. Ham
heard their rush and attempted to draw the rapier blade from its sheath.
A hard-knuckled fist struck his spine a paralyzing blow at the base of his
skull. A sinuous arm enwrapped his throat, snapping his head backward. The dim
light in the entrance hallway danced, then it went out completely.

THE light came back, but now it was a painful glare against HamÆs aching eyes.
The lawyer was seated in an old-fashioned chair of the Victorian period. Before
he looked into the faces of his captors, he noted the big room was furnished
with articles antique collectors like to call "Early American."
Ham guessed shrewdly this old Washington home had either been leased or
purchased furnished, for whatever purpose the gang surrounding him intended
using it. Glancing at the nearest men, he quickly revised the thought of a
"gang."
Ham counted eleven men. Voices of others sounded from another room in the rear.
"Quite a reception committee," Ham drawled.
One man, with mild blue eyes, blinked behind thick lenses.
"I canÆt say exactly what the chief may want," he volunteered. "You will be
given a message later. You are to be informed that you are at the mercy of Var.
Your friendùthe chemist you call Monkùhas been in VarÆs hands for several hours.
The chief instructed you were to be told that Monk will be destroyed by the
armored robot in which he is now imprisoned, if you refuse to do exactly as you
are told. Your leader, Doc Savage, has been rendered helpless."
HamÆs keen face sobered at the reference to Monk. The manÆs words were too
sincerely spoken to have been an invention. But at the statement Doc had been
rendered helpless, Ham grinned.
The speaker withdrew and the men swung into small groups. They talked in low
tones. HamÆs eyes had been busy every minute he had been speaking.
His sword cane, still intact, he noted was only a few feet away in a corner. Two
buttons controlling the lights were plainly in view on the wall, a little to one
side of the cane.

MORE than HamÆs eyes had been at work for him.
On the middle finger of his right hand was what appeared to be a gold ring of
heavy pattern. Concealed by his back, Ham had crossed his pliant fingers.
One crossed finger pressed a spot in the head of the ring. Ham suppressed a
grimace. A sharp, tiny blade had darted along his palm and the wrist above it.
But the blade, operated on the spring forming the inside of the gold ring, had
darted inside the cord tying his wrists together and, in turn, his body to the
heavy chair. The deft finger worked rapidly. The spring recoiled and the blade
dropped back. Again, it was sent darting along his palm.
Ham knew blood was oozing from the cut in his hand. He maneuvered to keep its
dripping from being noticed by pulling his hands well upon the chairÆs cushion.
The cord parted. There were still several wrappings to be sliced.
The front door buzzer burred viciously. Ham risked severing an artery with his
swift play of the blade of the ring. He was still tightly held as four men moved
in a group toward the door.
"It will be VarÆs messenger, but take no chances," warned one of the men.
"I wouldnÆt know if it were Var himself," growled another. "IÆve never seen
him."
"None of us have, except Wheeze," the first man replied. "But make sure of the
password and the card."
The four men were in the hallway. The eyes of all the others were fixed in that
direction. HamÆs hands were slippery with blood, but he was free. He waited
tensely until he heard the outer doorÆs bolt being drawn. Now or never, he
decided.
Heaving his body forward, he kicked the heavy chair sidewise. It caught the
nearest man in the stomach. HamÆs lithe figure reached the wall. One hand was
clicking the light buttons as the other grasped the sword cane.

THE room was plunged into darkness. One of the buttons had also switched off the
dim light in the entrance hallway. The outer door had opened and a heavy voice
had muttered, "Rav rules!"
For three or four seconds no one moved, except the man who had got the chair in
his stomach. Ham grinned to himself over his temporary advantage. Though dawn
was breaking outside, the heavy draperies over the windows excluded all light.
Ham played his sword blade, sharp as a razor, in experimental thrusts. The point
contacted a yielding body. A man grunted with pain. He thumped to the floor on
his face. This terminated the breathless suspense.
Ham could hear the rush of bodies. His sword blade became a darting tongue. It
barely pinked two more men. A couple of others fell over this pair as they went
down.
"Look out!" cried a voice. "HeÆs got the sword out of that cane!"
One man started dragging back a curtain to let in light. Another man knocked him
aside.
"Keep æem closed, you fool!" he commanded. "Get him quick!"
The order was easily given. Laying hands upon the waspish, elusive figure of the
fencing lawyer was much more difficult. One man had filled his hand with a
silenced automatic. A yellowish-blue tongue of fire licked across the room.
At that instant, one man became distinctly visible to Ham. Or, rather, his eyes
could be seen. They seemed to float into the room without a body. They glowed
with the luminosity of a catÆs eyes on the prowl at night.
"Put up that gun!" said a high-pitched, strident voice. "He isnÆt to be hurt,
understand?"
The gun ceased to flame. The eyes came directly toward Ham, as if their owner
could see the lawyer plainly in the darkness. A door opened toward the rear of
the house. Faint light from somewhere above revealed a narrow stairway. Ham
shifted sidewise and pinked another man. Two of the gang rushed, and collided
with each other.
Ham was backing toward the narrow stairway. He figured if he could reach it he
could stand off an army, as long as the order held against shooting him. The
room he was leaving was filled with milling men, seeking him in the darkness.
The luminous eyes floated to one side. Apparently this man was withdrawing. The
eyes vanished.
Ham had his feet on the bottom stair. Here, he could be plainly seen. He started
backing slowly upward.
From the gloom of the space Ham had just vacated came an eerie, mellow sound. It
was like the low piping note of some rare tropical bird. The softly whistled
cadence filled all the rooms for an interval of a few seconds.
"Who did that?" rasped a voice.
The short puzzled oaths following, filled Ham with elation. Doc Savage was among
the men in that room. None had ever before heard the peculiar emanation of sound
that came from the bronze man.
The realization of DocÆs presence strengthened Ham. Whirling the sword point, he
retreated up the stairs. A dozen men crowded after him, but carefully maintained
a discreet distance. Ham found two more flights and backed up these.
One of the men below him laughed.
"Let him go!" he ordered. "He canÆt get off the roof! WeÆll have him! WhereÆs
the little persuader?"

HAM had determined to make a stand in the narrow stairway below the skylight
leading to the roof. Only one man at a time could reach him. He had hoped he
would be safe. Nothing but bullets would ever get past the shimmering sword
blade.
Something did get past it. This was the "little persuader" the man had
mentioned.
Ham was smiling. He was really enjoying his position, especially since he was
aware Doc was at hand. At any instant, he expected a tornado to break loose. He
waited hopefully, prepared to launch himself downward as soon as Doc went into
action.
Ham could picture the amazement when the bronze man exploded in the midst of
these men. Not even the gigantic Renny, or the apelike Monk, was half the equal
of Doc when he started using his mighty fists. But the group clustered at the
foot of the stairs remained intact.
Suddenly, there was a sizzling stream ascending. It was being shot from a small,
circular affair; such as would hold a steel tape line. Ham gasped. He was
compelled to use his left arm to shield his face and eyes.
Ammonia fumes were clogging his nostrils. He couldnÆt breathe. Then he heaved
himself upward and his shoulder carried away the window sash of the skylight.
Inhaling a long breath, Ham bounded to the roof.
As other feet pounded on the stairs, Ham sprang to one side. He was confident he
would discover a near-by tree or some other means of descending from the
four-story roof. He realized his mistake too late. He should have held his
opponents at the top of the narrow stairway.
Now some ten men were in the open on the roof. They were grimly determined on
recapturing their prisoner. Half the men carried short clubs and other
improvised weapons. Ham spotted a chimney and backed up to it.
His enemies ringed him closely. In the dawning light, they were able to keep
clear of his flying sword. Ham was deliberately refraining from taking the
offensive.
Doc was there somewhere. He wished he knew DocÆs plans. The bronze adventurer
always had carefully calculated reasons for his every action. That Doc had done
no more than apprize Ham of his presence was proof he had some definite goal.
Ham wished he knew more to guide his own play. He scrutinized the faces around
him. We was fairly sure two persons were missing from the ring of men now
closing in.
From the stairs came a high-pitched voice. There was a scuffling sound. A body
bumped in the hallway below the roof. Almost at once, an ugly, malformed face
appeared in the skylight.
A deep voice complained, "Some guy down there made a mistake! He swung for me,
but when I tried to grab him, he got away!"
"ItÆs all right, Gobo!" ejaculated one of the men, quickly.
"That probably was Scraggs! I was taking you to him when this sword slinger
broke loose! Come here and help grab this fellow!"

THE hulking man who came onto the roof had puffed, unhealthy cheeks. His
tow-colored hair was matted and his nose was broken. Of all the men Ham had
seen, this was the only one who had the marks of being a bruiser. Ham smiled
inwardly. He knew this man to be Doc Savage. Ham knew now whence the whistle had
come.
It had been this manÆs voice at the entrance giving the password, "Rav rules."
Without glancing at Ham, the new arrival said, "Circle the chimney and get him
from behind! The chief said he didnÆt want him injured. He wants to use him!"
Ham judged he should make a final pretense of fighting his way out, then permit
himself to be overwhelmed. The bronze man had not looked at him directly. In
fact, Doc was warily closing in on him from behind.
Ham deliberately pinked another man. Then a club was flung at him. His sword arm
took the blow and Ham staggered.
Low overhead, a small airplane suddenly roared in a dive.
It was Monk, coming in from New York.

AFTER sighting the vividly yellow house, Monk pulled DocÆs small amphibian into
a tight spiral.
Two maple trees grew beside the four-story house. They were spaced so near each
other, their leafy branches seemed to be interlaced. Monk drew in one long
breath, shifted the plane elevators and dived.
He clicked off the ignition as the trees, the house and the lawn leaped up to
meet the hurtling plane. With wind screaming in the wires, the diving ship
thrust between the trees. The silvery wings stripped off. The speed of the
cabinet fuselage was slightly checked.
The next instant, Monk was being carried through the wall of the yellow house
with the speed of a stone thrown from a catapult. The forward part of the cabin
was crushed. Through this aperture, the body of Monk continued onward.
MonkÆs rebound to his feet was fast. It was as if his ungainly body were made of
rubber. He was in an upper room of the house. Dashing through the first doorway,
Monk glimpsed two men dropping down the stairway from the roof.
Each carried a short club.
The big chemistÆs cry was one of delight. One man threw his club. He was not
quick enough. MonkÆs long arms had reached. The men were of average size. Both
were taller than Monk. But their heads took the impact of the hallway wall at
the same instant.
Monk had heaved one over each shoulder. Plaster and laths scattered under the
blows from their skulls. MonkÆs broad shoulders filled the narrow stairway and
the skylight. He gained the roof.
Two other men were quick enough, one with his fists and another with the flat
side of an automatic pistol. They hammered at MonkÆs head as he came up. The
chemistÆs breath hissed through his teeth. He caught an ankle and twisted once.
The owner squealed with pain and dropped the gun.

BACK in Manhattan, Monk had been given no chance to replace the super-machine
pistol WheezeÆs men had taken from him. Now he caught up the automatic from the
roof. He was about to shoot at another man rushing toward him, but he refrained.
There now were only six men on the roof around Ham. Monk contented himself with
rushing into the attackers, the automatic swinging as a club.
To MonkÆs disgusted amazement, Ham had dropped the point of his sword.
"You would bust in on a gentlemenÆs party!" came sharply from Ham. "CanÆt that
ape brain of yours understand when one is just practicing!"
MonkÆs short legs pivoted him to a stop. His homely face went blank with
amazement.
"Well, IÆll be flabbergasted!" he jerked out. "You tricky low-down shyster, now
what are youù"
HamÆs surprising words pulled his eyes away from his closest enemy. One of the
short clubs smacked him viciously behind the ear. Monk folded to his knees and
fell forward. His hard skull had barely resisted the impact. His senses had
faded out.
Ham groaned. He hadnÆt meant that to happen. He had hoped to see Monk seized.
But it was too late for regret, now. The broken-nosed man with the washed-out
blue eyes had glided swiftly between Monk and the man with the club.
"DonÆt hit him again!" he commanded in a guttural threat that got instant
respect. "The chief doesnÆt want these fellows hurt!"
It had been DocÆs unspoken order that had caused Ham to prevent Monk from
finishing the job of cleaning up the roof.
Ham had seen the lips of the broken-nosed man moving just as Monk sprang into
the encounter. He had read the brief message. All of DocÆs men were expert lip
readers. Doc had said:
"Hold it, Hamùstop Monkùlet them take youùescape policeùwe want Var."
Doc believed he was on a trail that would lead quickly to the Cold Light
murderer. Perhaps they could discover Var in time to avert the menace over
Manhattan.

Chapter 11. VAR BLINDS HIS TRAIL
HAM and Monk, securely bound, were shoved into two closed cars. There were three
cars in waiting. These leaped away along an alley.
Ham and Monk were unloaded at the rear of an isolated, tumble-down house at the
northern edge of Washington. Nine men, with Doc, had accompanied the cars.
Behind these cars, trailing them until the prisoners had been taken inside, was
a small, battered roadster.
The driver of this car was the little man with the scraggly face and clothes. He
halted his small car a block away and made his way cautiously forward. Unseen,
he slipped through a window into the basement of the old house. In the darkness
of the cellar, his eyes took on the luminous propensities of a prowling cat.
Keeping to his role, Doc Savage saw Monk and Ham deposited temporarily in a
small room with boarded windows. The other men assembled in a larger room with
cheap, rough furnishings. High, narrow windows gave forth a little light.
As Ham was dumped unceremoniously on the floor, Doc made an excellent pretense
of handling him roughly. At the same time, he was whispering:
"Follow all instructions. These men mean nothing. They seem expecting this Var
himself."
Ham was astute enough to play his part.
Though DocÆs role of the broken-nosed thug had been a surprise, his actions had
been cleverly carried out. The men of the Var ring apparently were unsuspecting.
DocÆs swift analysis of their character led him to believe that several were far
more intelligent than the average type of criminal.
The bronze man was confronted with the problem of being almost sure two or three
had never before engaged in a crooked enterprise. It made their association with
Var all the more puzzling.

ALL had the air of expectant waiting. This was suddenly rewarded by the tones of
a high-pitched voice. This came from a ventilator leading up from the basement.
"Brothers of the ring! Our action here has been deferred! The chief has decided
to wait until after the Cold Light has fallen upon New York! Then Doc SavageÆs
man will receive the message he is to deliver to the White House! The Manhattan
explosion will make certain a commission will be formed as Var wishes! Coming
from Doc Savage, the word to the White House will be impressive enough to gain
attention! Bring in this man Ham!"
HamÆs legs were now tightly bound, as well as his arms. He was carried in and
placed in a chair.
Doc unostentatiously shifted his position closer to a door he had marked as
leading to the cellar of the old house. He was convinced he knew the owner of
that voice. His character study brought before him a skinny neck in which a
nervous AdamÆs apple would be jumping up and down.
Doc knew these men never had seen their chief, the man called Var. The strangely
delivered message was the first direct link that seemed to connect with the
perpetrator of the Cold Light explosions. The voice spoke again briefly:
"Five of you will remain here to guard the prisoners! The others will go at once
to the place designated! We will thenù"
The speech was cut off abruptly by a smash of DocÆs mighty fist. A panel of the
locked basement door was shattered to splinters. The door was of ancient, flimsy
construction. The lock was torn loose and went flying down the basement
stairway.
Though the bronze man apparently made no leap, his feet were on the damp
concrete floor of the cellar when the lock banged with a ringing sound. His
surprising movement and his quickness converted the room he had just left into
roaring confusion.
In the basementÆs gloom, Doc flashed the searching ray of his generator
flashlight. His other hand held a stupefying capsule no larger than a small
glass pill. He located the cold-air shaft leading from the dead furnace.
Doc had expected to see the figure of the scraggy little man crouched somewhere
close by. He was surprised to see no one. Swinging the light around, he
discovered the small basement room seemed to be empty.
One more glance was sufficient to reveal the clever trick performed by this
elusive emissary of the man Var. The cold-air pipe had been dislodged close to
the outer wall of the foundation. One stone had been removed. The aperture led
into the ventilator located in the room above. VarÆs messenger had apparently
been crouched on the ground outside the house.

THE man had ceased speaking when the basement door crashed. He had vanished so
swiftly Doc could not hear his running feet. Before Doc could reach the stairs,
the men above were descending upon him.
Doc flipped a gas capsule and it fell at the feet of the foremost man. But the
rush carried the men over the gas before it could become effective. The bronze
man was holding his own breath. Then an automatic pistol slashed its blaze into
the gloomy basement. And a sizzling stream of ammonia searched for DocÆs eyes
and nostrils.
With his eyes tightly closed, Doc charged directly into the members of VarÆs
ring. Though he was not breathing, the ammonia was pungent in his nostrils. Two
men crashed into opposite walls under fists so fast and so effective they had no
chance to use their weapons against them.
But one man had fallen, locking his arms around DocÆs legs. The bronze man
staggered. He was free in an instant, and the other man had rolled over limply.
DocÆs thumb had simply pressed into a clotted nerve group in the ringsterÆs
neck. The man would be paralyzed for several minutes.
Five men in all cluttered the basement floor, as the bronze man reached the top
of the short stairway.
In a determined effort to free himself and go to DocÆs aid, Ham had succeeded
only in upsetting the chair. He was squirming on the floor.
As Doc reached him, a car roared away outside. Doc sprang to a window. In the
space of seconds, he was back and had sliced the cords from HamÆs arms and legs.
"The other room, Doc!" gasped Ham. "TheyÆve done something to Monk! If theyÆve
put him out, IÆll run them to the end of the world!"
But apparently the men who had escaped had not put Monk out. They had taken him
with them. The room was empty.
Doc and Ham got to the outside. Two of the three closed cars were still there.
But the hoods of both motors were thrown open. The ignition wires had been
ripped loose from the instrument boards.
The fleeing car was just disappearing on a side road, headed in the direction of
the city.

DOCÆS deduction was almost instant.
"Wherever they had Monk a prisoner, he saw too much," he stated. "Var needs your
legal experience for some purpose, Ham. But this probably upsets his idea. HeÆll
go ahead now with that explosion in Manhattan. We must return at once!"
"But how about Monk, Doc? I could make a try atù"
Doc looked thoughtfully into the sky to the eastward.
"IÆm very sure Monk right now is on his way back to New York," he stated.
He did not explain his reason for believing this.
Before they had reached a corner where a taxicab could be summoned, the thin
glass shells had been removed from over the eyes of flaky gold. Their hypnotic
pools again stirred with little whirlwinds.
Doc was thinking the luring of Ham and then himself to Washington had been for
the purpose of making sure they would not be in Manhattan at nine oÆclock this
morning.
The taxicab was rushing toward the airport. Doc saw he would have just time to
catch the plane that would arrive in New York at the time set by Var for the
explosion of the city block.
He said to Ham, "YouÆll wait and take the White Liner back. It arrives an hour
after the Red Arrow. If there is a little man on board with a ragged haircut and
a loose AdamÆs apple, we want to know where he goes. His clothes are as ragged
as his hair; and if you happen to hear him speak, it will likely be the voice
that came through the ventilator."
"Would that be the one I heard them call Scraggs?" Ham suggested.
"The name would fit, and you couldnÆt miss him," said Doc. "HeÆll be on one or
the other of the planes."
DocÆs conjecture was partly correct. The scraggly little man at that moment was
preparing to board a plane. But it was neither the Red Arrow nor the White
Liner.

VONIER, the explorer, was in the waiting room at the Red Arrow airport. His
intense blue eyes lighted a little when his gaze automatically followed the
turning of all faces toward the big man who came unhurriedly through the wide
doors.
"I can well believe all the adventures credited to him," murmured the explorer.
"He looks like a bad one to get in anybodyÆs soup."
Ten seconds later, Vonier added, again to himself, "ItÆs almost unbelievable,
but IÆd bet my last dollar Doc Savage knows IÆve been waiting here in the hope
of catching him. And he hasnÆt even seemed to glance this way."
This was true. The smooth, bronzed face had not once turned in the explorerÆs
direction. The eyes of flaky gold had not appeared to have observed any person
in particular. Then Doc walked across the big room and stopped before Vonier.
"A man IÆve always wanted to meet," the bronze man stated, as if introductions
already had been effected. "Your paper on your last trip into the Arctic
afforded me great pleasure. IÆm glad to meet you here, Vonier. You came here to
meet me, did you not?"
Vonier fixed him with a steady gaze. Then he glanced down his thin nose and
shook his head.
"That savors of the occult, Savage," he smiled. "No other person on earth,
except my wife, knew I had it in mind to find you in Washington. Are you a mind
reader?"
"Not at all, Vonier," Doc smiled in return. "By this time, all Manhattan is
stirred by something of which it never before heard. That is Cold Light. You are
one of perhaps only seven men in New York who has seen Cold Light, even though
it is of a far different variety. The other six men are my five closest
companions and myself."
"Yes," assented Vonier. "That is true, but how would that give you such absolute
certainty?"
"You knew we had visited, months ago, the caverns of the strange race in the
Arctic ice field," added Doc. "You had learned that we have been drawn into the
mystery of the man called Var. Perhaps you have learned something you believe I
should know."

VONIER laughed shortly, a note of uneasiness. He glanced around as if making
certain they could not be overheard.
"It may sound simple enough to you, Doc Savage, but the average man would
suspect you of being linked up with the supernatural. However, it is something
more vital to me than you think. Something that impelled me to reach you as
quickly as possible."
"Then youÆve had a message from this Var," Doc stated. "It is perhaps his idea
that he can use your vast knowledge."
Vonier spread his thin, bony bands.
"I give it up," he said. "Probably you know all that is in the message."
"Hardly that," the bronze man smiled. "But weÆve only two minutes. I must be in
New York at nine."
"I knew that, and it was why I was waiting here," Vonier said. "As soon as we
are aboard the plane, IÆll show you the note that has kept me awake and which
seemed unbelievable until last night. I am threatened with death if I do not
join VarÆs organization."
The pilot grinned down at Doc Savage as he climbed aboard. Because of an
emergency, the same flier was taking the early morning Red Arrow plane back to
the Newark Airport.
Vonier had maneuvered a seat next to the one Doc had thoughtfully reserved on
his arrival in Washington. The seat just ahead of Doc was vacant. He thought the
passenger had missed the plane, if it had been engaged, for the door was being
closed.
Then the door reopened and a breathless man came in. The pulsing blood had
reddened the bald spot between tufts of white hair. Doc recalled that only a few
hours before that same bald spot had been the color of gray chalk.
The man was Carberry, the retired financier.

CARBERRYÆS pale-bluish eyes, slightly protruding, seemed to jump with
recognition at the sight of Doc Savage. He extended one thin, blue-veined hand.
"I wish IÆd have known you were in Washington, Doc Savage!" he exclaimed. "IÆd
have asked you to go with me to the Federal agents! Even with all that has
happened, the government agents donÆt want to take this thing seriously!"
J. Afton Carberry was shaking. His hands jerked continuously. He had apparently
not noticed the explorer, Vonier, until the latter had spoken.
"I believe weÆve met, Carberry," he remarked. "You may recall I had occasion to
congratulate you on your book dealing with the origin of species."
"Yesùoh, yes!" admitted Carberry. "That is right. We were on the same program at
the museum. However, Vonier, IÆve never taken my own theories seriously. IÆve
made a hobby of many curious things. After a manÆs made his money, thatÆs about
all he has left."
Doc apparently was watching the preparation for the takeoff. He was studying
both men. They were the direct opposites of each other.
Vonier might perish in any one of countless ways, but his nerve never would be
shaken.
Carberry was of a volatile disposition. The menace over him had apparently
unnerved him to the point of physical discomfort. His blue-veined hands
continued shaking.
"I thought you had planned to take Mrs. Carberry away," suggested Doc.
"Yesùoh, yesùI have," the financier replied. "She is perfectly safe where she
is. IÆll admit, though, IÆm gravely concerned over this thing. This man VarÆs a
dangerous maniac!"
"ThatÆs not my idea," disagreed Vonier. "So far as IÆve learned it, his scheme
of destruction is too perfectly planned in detail to be the work of a lunatic."
Carberry seemed to be fumbling for a reply. The Red Arrow plane had taken off
and circled with the wind on its tail. It was already making up the lost time of
departure in the direction of Manhattan. Then came the voice. Thin, but
stridently clear, it filled the space of the passenger cabin:
"Doc SavageùCarberryùVonier-ùù"
Eyes of those in the seats leaped from one to another. All had heard of VarÆs
mystic warnings.
Vonier looked steadily at Doc Savage, a slight smile on his lips. There had been
a pause in the voice.
"Yes, Doc Savage," he said, calmly. "I think this Var is dangerously sane."

Chapter 12. DEATH OVER MANHATTAN
IN the passenger cabin, the first excited murmuring of the inmates hushed. Only
the steady beat of the motors could be heard.
Then the voice again:
"This is my final warning! Doc Savage, you will forget what you have learned!
One of your men is in my hands! Vonier and Carberryùyou will do as already
instructed! This is my final word! For I amùVar!"
The voice seemed everywhere. It had the elusive quality of direction which a
good ventriloquist imparts. DocÆs hypnotic eyes had observed Vonier and Carberry
in turn.
Carberry was shaking as if with palsy. Vonier was calmly rubbing one finger
along his thinly arching nose.
Then Doc was on his feet. Swiftly he directed the stewardess, "Go through every
article of the womenÆs baggage." There were four women aboard. "IÆll take the
men myself."
The stewardess hesitated. The broad-faced pilot had given the controls over to
the co-pilot. His mirror had shown the excited movement in the cabin, though he
had not heard the voice.
Taking a cue from the attitude of the stewardess, a male passenger started to
say, "By what right have youù"
"YouÆll do as Doc Savage directs!" snapped the pilot "He has full police
authority on the Red Arrow lines!"
The bronze manÆs hunt was quick but thorough. The stewardess aided as best she
could.

DOC and the others missed seeing a hand steal through a two-inch opening of a
window ventilator. A small object started on a mile drop to the gliding earth
below.
Vonier suddenly exclaimed, glancing at his wrist watch, "WeÆre a little late,
arenÆt we, pilot? ItÆs two minutes to nine oÆclock."
The pilot, moving back toward his cabin, sighted through a window. The sky
needles of Manhattan were shining in the brilliant sun only a few miles ahead.
"Ten minutes or so off schedule," the pilot grinned. "WeÆve been held up a
little. Figured maybe you folks would appreciate a grand-stand seat in the sky
for the big blow-off down thereùif there is one."
Clearly, the pilot was doubtful of the reason for all the madness in Manhattan.
"For HeavenÆs sake, man!" gasped Carberry. "You mean weÆll be over Manhattan at
nine oÆclock?"
"Correct, brother!" The pilotÆs grin broadened. "It oughta be worth an extra
fare!"
"IÆd say we are in the safest possible spot," stated Vonier, calmly.
"Perhaps," said Doc Savage.
Vonier leaned closer to him.
"When we get down, Savage," he said in a low tone," I believe I have something
new on the formula for Cold Light. IÆd like you to see it."
The explorerÆs lips were drawn back from his skeleton hard jaws. Even with his
coolness, the smile was gruesomely reminiscent of a bony deathÆs-head.
"IÆll appreciate that greatly," Doc replied.

DOC SAVAGE, during the flight to Washington, had worked out and transmitted to
Long Tom the formula for creating the ex-neutralizer with which he planned to
combat the destructive Cold Light.
While in the role of the broken-nosed man, he had employed the planeÆs
radiophone to good advantage. His instructions to Long Tom had been detailed and
explicit.
Doc had brought an advanced theory into practical working form with less than an
hour of thinking.
Back in Manhattan, Long Tom was at work in the creation of a machine that would
build a wall. Doc had enlarged upon an idea of a ray to meet a ray. He had so
analyzed the explosion at the home of J. Afton Carberry as to become positive it
had a double origin.
From some inexplicable source, perhaps from the magnetized earth itself, a
gigantic destructive force had leaped to meet the ray of Cold Light. Therefore,
a neutralizing ray to clash with that other ray in its death-dealing path would
hardly be sufficient.
Doc judged the force must be something more like a wall. That would be the
answer. An electromagnetic wall which the Cold Light ray could neither penetrate
nor cross.
Just now, with the Red Arrow plane flying toward the sky line of Manhattan at a
speed of more than two miles a minute, Doc was hoping Long Tom might have the
new machine ready for its first test.
And the explorer, Vonier, was calmly telling him he had something new to offer
on the formula of Cold Light. The bronze man studied the intensely blue eyes of
the man. VonierÆs eyes were the exact shade of the bright blue ink on the
passport card that had admitted him to VarÆs inner organization.
An aquamarine blue. The kind of a blue that only the occasional artistic genius
can capture in oils on a canvas.
The financier, Carberry, his thin lips twitching, also was observing Vonier
closely. Though VonierÆs words regarding the formula had been directed at Doc
only, CarberryÆs straining ears had caught them. The financier apparently was in
that state of extreme fear which led him to suspect any person who might be
familiar with such mysterious elements as Cold Light.

AS the island of Manhattan swam closer, with the broad Hudson widening into the
harbor below, the Red Arrow plane was between five and ten minutes behind its
schedule. The good-humored pilot angled the plane lower.
It was exactly nine oÆclock.
Around the Red Arrow passenger plane the sky was empty. Plainly, other pilots
were not interested in occupying grandstand seats for the explosion. The police
commissioner, taking every precaution, had issued an explicit order grounding
all aircraft in the Manhattan area.
But that order had failed to reach the Red Arrow pilot. Apparently, another
pilot also had disregarded it. But this second plane was at so great an altitude
as to be indistinguishable against the sun from the ground level. If it was seen
at all, it appeared as only a possible tiny black speck in the observerÆs eye.
It was a small plane and it was flying at an altitude of more than four miles
high.
As Carberry announced the time as nine oÆclock, a steely-blue ray knifed
downward from the higher heavens. Though the daylight was clear, this spikelike
band could be plainly seen. It struck instantly all the way to the earth below.
Crowds back of police lines blocks from the heart of the threatened area gasped.
To these hundreds of thousands of spectators, it seemed as if the fiendish hand
of the destroyer above had directed the Cold Light ray directly upon the Red
Arrow passenger plane.
The hushed crowds saw this. Simultaneously, a chilling blast of air swept across
all of the central Manhattan area. The normal breathing of the terror-ridden,
but curious, multitude of citizens was sharply interrupted. The air was sucked
upward in a mighty cyclonic whirlwind.
Then the air came slapping back with the force of some tangible substance.
Thousands of those closest to the explosion area would have been blown from
their feet, had not the packed mass of the crowd kept them erect. The whole sea
of upturned faces seemed to rock in a slow, rippling wave as individuals fought
to maintain their balance.

THE six-story block designated by Var instantly ceased to exist. In its place
arose an intense blue cloud. This was seen by those at a distance as a gigantic
pyramid with a pointed apex reaching toward the sky. The blueness of the sky
seemed dim in comparison to the color of the geometrically formed blast of
vapor.
From this leaping, single tongue, wreckage spewed over many surrounding blocks.
The island of Manhattan swayed. New York was given a brief demonstration of what
it feels like to be caught in an earthquake.
In the Red Arrow plane, Doc Savage has seen the first flash of the Cold Light.
So highly keyed were the reactions of the bronze manÆs senses, he had seen
something so clearly that he had arrived at a new conclusion in the
infinitesimal part of a second.
Some force more definite than the magnetic response of the earth itself was
leaping to meet the chilling ray of deadly Cold Light.
From below, the strange blue vapor of the blast was rushing upward. All of the
sustaining air had been instantly sucked away from the propellers and wings of
the Red Arrow plane. DΘbris was riding into the sky on the aquamarine pyramid.
All the air seemed to return upon the passenger plane with cyclonic assault. The
Red Arrow ship was whirled over and over. It became a mere helpless leaf blown
by a hurricane.

Chapter 13. MONK BAILS OUT
AT the moment the Red Arrow plane plunged into a seemingly fatal spin, Monk was
awakening to aching consciousness. Though his skull was hard as granite, the
battering of the past hours had been such as to have given a stone monument a
headache.
MonkÆs first impression was that he had been carried away in a boat. Then he
quickly realized the jerking lurches of the floor on which he was lying could
mean only one thing. He was traveling in an airplane.
Monk flexed the muscles of his long arms and short legs. All of his bones were
intact. Moreover, his feet and hands were free. Clearly, some one among his
recent enemies must be foolhardy.
Then Monk became aware his freedom of body did not afford all the opportunity he
had believed. He was breathing with difficulty. All his body was cold. When he
moved his arms, he discovered they were numbed.
This was no phenomenon. For the huge, apelike chemist was slowly being frozen.
The temperature about him was several degrees below zero. The plane was riding
at a high altitude. The rarefied atmosphere did not provide oxygen enough for
his unaccustomed lungs. This and the frigid bath prevented his greatly abnormal
strength from returning quickly.
Twisting his head, Monk peered through narrowed eyes under his gristly, jutting
brows. He was in a small cabin plane. The ship had twin control seats. A man
occupied each of these.

MONK could see their faces in a cabin-view mirror above the instrument board.
The man then handling the plane was smoothly sleek and dark-skinned. He had not
been among either of the groups Monk had encountered.
The pilot was stamped mostly by a gold-toothed smileùa fixed smile of evil, as
it showed in the strip of mirror.
The man in the other seat was scraggly of person and clothing. Monk did not know
this, but it was the mysteriously moving Scraggs. Doc had guessed Scraggs might
be returning to New York on either the Red Arrow or the White Liner plane. For
this, HamÆs departure from Washington had been delayed in the hope of picking up
the trail of the elusive messenger for Var.
Monk lay quite still, watching the two men. The plane was still taking on more
altitude. The chemist gritted his teeth to prevent their chattering. He was
gathering strength for an attack.
His big hands cautiously explored his clothing. Not a weapon or device had been
left upon his person. He must depend upon his bare hands alone. Monk grinned to
himself. There were only two men.
The luminous dial on the instrument board showed a few seconds to nine oÆclock.
The gold-toothed man muttered, but his words were snatched away by the
thundering beat of the propeller.
ScraggsÆs long, wraithlike hands took over control. Monk saw the other man was
bringing forth a flat instrument. This was somewhat the shape and size of a
large-calibered automatic pistol.
But the metal was of steely blue. Monk judged it was some new alloy of which he
did not know.
The gold-toothed man pressed one side of a series of buttons appearing on one
side. From the device came a vicious whirring, much the same vibrant sibilancy
as that of a rattlesnake about to strike.
Monk identified the sound as coming from some tiny, but powerful, generator. The
gold-toothed man pressed another button.
The scraggly little man drew MonkÆs gaze. He had cried out sharply, as if in
warning. The planeÆs motor had missed. It was coughing in the midst of what had
been a smooth rhythm of power.
Monk crouched. His chance was at hand.

THE little plane was staggering with a slowing propeller. An oath ripped from
the gold-toothed man. His thumb pressed a trigger on the side of the steely blue
instrument.
Monk could not have told if the air in the small cabin suddenly took on more
frigidity. The cold about him already was under the zero mark.
But his skin suffered, a tingling, prickly sensation. Thousands of tiny needles
seemed to be thrusting into him.
Monk saw an edged ray of light directed at the floor of the planeÆs cabin.
Though knifelike, it had an weird, intangible quality. For it was passing
directly through the metal that formed the planeÆs fuselage. The gold-toothed
man was pointing it downward.
One second or five, Monk could not have told.
Some tremendous, invisible force was lifting the whole body of the small ship.
It was as if the blue Cold Light itself was a motive force impelling the plane
upward.
At that instant, the motor died.
Monk was in the act of springing at the two men. But he was held back. The
support whirled from under his feet.
The scraggly little man at the controls dived into the metal frame of the
windshield glass. His thin body collapsed between the seats.
The gold-toothed man had shut off the cold-producing beam. This was a
convulsive, automatic act, rather than one of intent. The sender of the
explosive ray into the heart of Manhattan was hurled into the roof of the plane.

MONK felt as if he were in the exact center of a whirlpool. His body shuttled
this way and that, twice banging his hard head. But he kept his senses.
The plane did a complete wing-over and went into a tail spin.
Monk, fighting against being knocked out, could tell the convulsions of the ship
were due to something far different from ordinary air current. The plane seemed
to be plunging into a vortex, a vacuum of the sky.
This was in reality the vaporous burst shooting upward from the heart of
Manhattan. Even in that flashing instant, the Cold Light having been flicked
off, the cloud began to recede.
Below, bricks and metal were raining upon the city. Thousands of skyscraper
windows were being smashed. For blocks around the center of the blast the
windows and many walls of older buildings had buckled.
Monk got a grip on one of the control seats. His mighty muscles held him until
he could get into position. The bucking, whirling plane at first resisted every
effort to throw the ailerons and elevator into neutral.
Without much hope, Monk pressed the inertia starter. To his immense surprise,
the propeller whirled and the motor caught. He battled the ship to a level keel.
Monk then had time to notice his battered, unconscious airmates. The scraggly
man had a deep cut across his forehead. His sunken cheeks looked bloodless. But
one long-fingered hand moved at random over his skinny breast.
The other man could no longer indulge in a gold-toothed smile. Nose, mouth and
chin had been flatly smashed. Blood seeped over his chin. But he was still
breathing heavily.
From one of the wings came a crackling, tearing sound. The plane staggered and
fell off. It was temporarily out of control with a flapping aileron. Monk
shifted the side sticks to compensate for the drag.
Monk saw the plane had dropped nearly two miles in its dive into the turmoil of
the explosion. All possibility of gliding to a landing field was removed.
Ten thousand feet below loomed the green expanse of Central Park. But now, only
the greenery of the trees was showing. Monk had hoped there might be space
enough on one of the lawns to land the plane. All these areas were black, packed
with terrified humanity.
Monk could mark the sea of white, upturned faces. To attempt a landing would
kill and injure many persons.

AS packed mobs sometimes will, the thousands now in Central Park saw doom
rushing downward and remained motionless. It was the individual thought, also as
crowd madness, that death would hit only the other fellow.
Monk set the stabilizer device on the controls. This could not compensate for
the damaged wing. The plane started a slow, circling drop.
The two unconscious men were wearing seat-pack parachutes. In a cabin rack were
two other æchutes.
Monk did not hesitate. Before he slipped into the harness of the air life
preserver, he lifted the limp form of the gold-toothed man. Pushing him through
the door, Monk ripped the manÆs æchute as he sent him hurtling into space.
Five seconds later, Monk muttered, "I done all I couldù"
The parachute of the monster whose hand had rocked Manhattan had only halfway
blossomed. Some of its cords had tangled. The small umbrella only partly checked
the descent of the body, then it was torn apart by the rushing wind.
VarÆs aide, probably his chief lieutenant, fell nearly two miles. The body
struck the cornice of a skyscraper. Dismembered, every possible identifying
feature of the man was lost.
Nor was there about his clothing any mark or papers by which he might have been
traced.
The plane continued its crazy circling, as Monk pulled back beside the slight
figure of the scraggly little man.
"Dag-gone it!" muttered the big chemist. "I wouldnÆt wanta see that happen
again!"
Once more, he tried the controls. The whirling motion had disrupted the planeÆs
tail assembly. The elevator was tightly stuck.
The packed vista of Central Park was rushing upward. Monk made a quick,
determined effort. He let go of the controls when he had made sure the plane
would crash among some of the trees, well away from the densely packed crowds.
With a growl, he caught up the light figure of the scraggly man. The ground was
still nearly a mile below. A strong wind had whipped up following the explosion.
Monk stepped off into space. The light little man was in his huge arms. Their
bodies cleared the gyrating plane by only scant inches.

MONK was somersaulting, but his head was clear. One thick finger hooked into the
little manÆs parachute ring. He ripped the pack. The æchute spread. As it
checked their momentum, Monk let go his hold. He feared their combined weight
might tear the umbrella apart.
He pulled his own ring when he was still two thousand feet up. The æchute
billowed and danced under his weight. Caught by the wind, it drifted rapidly
south.
With some satisfaction, Monk saw he would fall below Central Park. He was
dropping toward the Seventh Avenue hotel section around Fiftieth Street. Just
before a flat roof offered the best chance of landing safely, Monk could see
small, blue-coated figures rushing along the avenue.
Then it came to him that he was falling from the plane that had brought madness,
destruction and death to Manhattan.
"Dag-gone it!" he mumbled. "Now IÆm in for it!"
His feet struck the roof of a hotel some three blocks from Central Park only a
few seconds after the Cold Light plane tore itself to fragments in a treetop. As
Monk regained his balance and struggled out of the æchute harness, all of the
hundreds who could reach the spot were tearing away the loose parts of the Cold
Light plane.
When police arrived on the scene, the Cold Light-ray gun had disappeared.
Monk made for the nearest skylight and pried it open. It had been locked, but
lock, bolt and all the fastenings came loose in his ponderous grasp. They might
as well have been made of papier-mΓchΘ. Monk was in a hurry.
He slid down the steep stairs leading to the roof. Numerous brawny arms of the
law were waiting to receive him.
Regardless of MonkÆs protests of innocence, they took him to headquarters on
suspicion of being connected with the Cold Light.

Chapter 14. A GIRL SEEKS SCRAGGS
AS the Red Arrow passenger plane winged over in the first mad hurricane of the
explosion, the dozen passengers were pitched from their seats. All except the
seemingly cool and imperturbable man of bronze.
Doc Savage had set his cablelike tendons for the shock. His fingers were locked
in the back of his seat.
Doc saw the pilot had been conked. The co-pilot was a limp bundle under his own
wheel in the control room.
The motors threatened to tear themselves loose from their mountings.
The pilot had been flying low. That is, rather low over the sky-piercing masses
of Manhattan. Doc had a glimpse of thrusting towers. The superb heights of the
Radio City buildings glittered near. They were dangerously close.
Even under this stress, the bronze manÆs eyes of flaky gold got camera flashes.
He was seeking reactions of those closest to him.
His bony legs thrust out as braces, Vonier, the explorer, was calmly seeking to
prevent himself from being tossed about with the other passengers. And across
his skeleton-hard mouth lay a faint smile.
The financier, Carberry, was jammed between another man and the roof of the
cabin. The roof was now under their feet. Blood oozed from a cut in CarberryÆs
forehead.
The manÆs countenance looked as if every drop of life fluid already had drained
through that single gash over one eye. The scared chalky pallor had been
replaced by the grayness usually seen only on the face of a corpse.
Carberry did not seem to be breathing.

THE man lying beside Carberry was evidently a traveling salesman. For he still
clutched a sample case by its handle. He was very much alive. His free hand
clawed for some new support, as the plane winged completely over for the second
time.
With this new somersault, Doc saw the towers of Radio City rushing upward. A
bare thousand feet more and the Red Arrow ship would be split into fragments
over one of the edges of the cornices.
The bronze manÆs movement toward the control cabin was neither a leap nor a
hurried swinging of his body. Everything within the big plane was topsy-turvy.
The stricken passengers were huddled lumps either of inert flesh and clothing,
or squirming bodies seeking some relief from the pain of many hurts.
The man of golden bronze glided through and over all of these. The motors were
threatening to shake the fuselage to bits. Upside down though it was, Doc
performed the feat of getting into the pilotÆs seat.
Gripping the control wheel with one hand, he got the safety belt around him. The
pilot had not been using it. His copilot had been hooked into his own. His
raglike body still clung there.
Now the earth, or the tangled, menacing part of it that was Manhattan, was for
the moment the bronze manÆs sky. As he took the controls, the air of the
explosion rushed back. The propellers bit into the atmosphere as if it were a
swiftly flowing stream.
Looping a passenger plane, even with the combined power of its motors, is among
the unrecorded feats of the worldÆs greatest pilots. But the Red Arrow ship had
succeeded in winging over on its back.
Doc played the controls with hands as strong and sensitive as those of some
master pianist. The motors had more than full power now. The ship was a leaf
apparently in the rushing wind from the Cold Light blast.

DOC started the nose climbing into that turbulent river of air. The wings
screamed. It almost seemed as if no human agency could have constructed
materials capable of resisting the tearing strain.
But the bronze man put the plane up and over. Bumps and groans rolled from the
passenger cabin. Those still conscious suddenly found their positions reversed.
The floor once more was under their feet.
With the plane upright, Doc was forced to throw the ship into a bank that almost
stalled its motors. Even VonierÆs eyes flickered then. One wing tip had come so
close it appeared to brush the sharp corner of the tallest Radio City tower.
Doc leveled off. The plane was shooting directly toward another clifflike
skyscraper. The distance was only a matter of yards. Similar masses of gleaming
granite and glass hedged the ship in on two other sides.
Doc saw he was trapped. No human hand could ever pilot a plane over these
heights. There was no space in which to circle in even the sharpest stalling
bank.
Only parts of seconds separated the Red Arrow craft and all in it from crashing
head-on into one or the other of the buildings. The speed was terrific. There
could be but one answer to that.
DocÆs golden eyes flashed downward. This was well within the area that had been
deserted. Some scattered dΘbris from wrecked buildings had fallen to the
streets.
Doc was thankful this was Manhattan. In almost any other city there would have
been interlacing wires, phone and power poles. Here there were none.
The spread of the big plane was so nearly the width of the Street that the wing
tips grazed the buildings on either side. Doc, without apparent anxiety, without
a tremor of those bronzed, sure hands, was coolly flying the Red Arrow ship
along a street.
Doc had no time to think about what street it might be. The signs flew past in a
blur. He saw only that a wider space loomed ahead.
The nearest open space was the widening triangle of Broadway and Seventh Avenue
between Forty-third and Forty-seventh Streets.
Doc depressed the elevators suddenly. The nose whipped up. The big plane seemed
almost to hang suspended by only the power of its motors. The wide wings were
flat against a vertical wall of air.

THE Red Arrow ship dropped. Its landing wheels were in the exact middle of
Broadway. One wing tip was over a sidewalk. The plane shot forward. A deserted
bus had been left standing in the middle of the street, just before the
explosion.
On one side reared the curved, cave-like entrance to a subway station. Between
the bus and this obstacle, the wings were trapped. One wing struck the bus and
half of it was sheered off. The cabined fuselage skidded on one side.
Those of the nearest crowds behind the police lines were breaking through.
Ambulances and police squad cars that had been held in readiness before the
explosion racketed into a combined screaming of sirens.
Doc was out of the control room of the plane. Lifting a woman in his arms, he
carried her to the door. The metal frame had jammed. Two men were frantically
trying to pry it loose. The door was unyielding.
Without releasing the burden of the woman, DocÆs cabled hand closed on a metal
part where the glass was broken out. The tendons of the arms stood out like
whipcords. Metal crunched and ground. The two men gasped as the door twisted out
of its frame.
Vonier was just behind Doc. He was carrying the limp figure of Carberry. The
financierÆs eyes opened. He moaned and tried to stand. Supported by the
explorer, he succeeded.
Vonier was looking directly at Doc. The bronze man was making his third trip
from inside the plane. Two police doctors were working over the victims.
"ItÆs a miracle!" said one of the medical men. "Nothing but shock, concussion,
three with minor fractures and bruises."
Some ten minutes elapsed before all were out and the medical men were ready to
start three patients to the hospital. Doc stood flexing his muscles. Not a mark,
bruise or scratch marred the smooth bronze skin. He was glancing around the
circle of faces of those who had been in the plane.
Suddenly, the voice that had startled all in the plane, that had put a whole
city in terror, spoke:
"Doc Savageùmy power has been proved! The world is in my hands! Stop before it
is too late! You and your friends will be the next to go! One of my own aides is
close beside you! I amùVar!"
The financier, Carberry, gave a great convulsive gasp. Vonier uttered a low,
short oath. He and Carberry were darting sharp glances at the others who had
been in the plane.

THE man who had been carrying a salesmanÆs kit grew suddenly pale. His eyes were
widening upon Doc. The bronze manÆs lips had not moved. His flaky, golden eyes
now were turned upon this man. They were hypnotic orbs, that seemed for an
instant to hold the man.
Then Doc moved slowly toward him.
Doc had simply applied his ventriloquistic talent. So adept was he in this
especial ability that none would ever have known the latest voice of Var had
issued from his own motionless lips.
The voice had been thin, strident, but clear. It might have come from any spot
within a fifty-foot radius. But upon that one man who knew of only one source
from which the real voice of Var might be summoned, there was the immediate
palsy of fear.
Doc was beginning to believe that the voice also fell with dire significance
upon the startled ears of another man within the passenger group. Because of
this second theory, he permitted the salesman passenger to recover enough to
begin edging back through the crowd.
The bronze manÆs eyes again were upon Vonier. The explorer was smiling, but his
lips were drawn back from the skeleton teeth.
"Pretty good," he murmured. "In fact, almost perfect, Doc Savage. I wonder if
the doctors have finished with the others, if one would have a look at my arm? I
think itÆs broken in two places."
Doc was forced to admire the manÆs stoical calm. His left arm was not only
broken, but in one place a sharp splinter of bone had been pushed through the
skin.
Doc shifted his eyes back to the salesman. He saw only his back. The man was
getting away. Doc took one step.
A girlÆs anxious voice inquired suddenly, "IÆm looking for a passenger named
Scraggs? He was to have arrived on the Red Arrow plane at nine oÆclock. Have any
of you seen him? He is a little man, wearing very old clothes. His hair is long
and kind of ragged."

DOC pivoted slowly. He was instantly struck by the womanÆs clear-cut beauty. Her
face was as perfect as an etching, as a carved cameo. Perhaps it was her
apprehension for the safety of the man she sought. Her voice was edged by a
sharp, metallic quality.
The pilot had recovered consciousness.
"We had such a man booked, miss," he said. "He went down with us on the
Washington flight, but I guess he missed the plane coming back. He had his seat
reserved, but at the last minute another man came with a note and took it. Maybe
he knows; heÆs thatù"
The pilot to whom Doc Savage had amply repaid the favor extended to him on the
Washington flight, gave a quick look at his grounded passengers.
"Why, I guess heÆs gone," added the pilot. "He looked like a salesman. He was
here a minute ago."
This clicked with Doc. He was sure the pseudo salesman had been the medium of
bringing VarÆs voice into the plane. Now it was indicated he had been in the
seat reserved by the man called Scraggs.
The bronze man pondered deeply. Who, then, really was Var? And who was the woman
whose voice had murmured in accompaniment to the first manifestation of VarÆs
ghostly tones on the New Jersey highway?
"Oh, then he must still be in Washington!" the girl breathed. Then,
unexpectedly, she looked at the bronze man and said, "YouÆre the famous Doc
Savage, arenÆt you?"
Did the girlÆs wide-spaced eyes express fear or were they merely widened in
wondering awe at being brought in contact with the world famed adventurer? It
was difficult to judge.
Doc quickly decided she was a rare combination. The girl had unusual beauty. Her
quick glance was one of keen discernment. Not often had the bronze man been thus
studied and measured by a woman.
In the brief space of seconds, this girl had weighed him. Her brows contracted
in a little frown. The bronze man read in her clear eyes what might have been
either a great grief or a lurking fear.
Doc inclined his head and replied, "I am Doc Savage."
At that, the young woman turned, as if she had lingered too long. Her slender
figure, cloaked in a coat of light blue seemed to melt into the crowd. Vonier
and Carberry, watching Doc, scarcely detected the movement which took him from
their view.
One second, the girl and Doc were there. The next, both had vanished.

DOC had suddenly determined the loose and puzzling end of the Var mystery lay
with the little man Scraggs. He did not think the strange girl believed Scraggs
still to be in Washington. She would know where to seek him next.
The girlÆs forward progress seemed impeded by the pressing of the crowd. The
bronze man suffered no such impediment. His lithe body passed through the river
of humanity without the touching of any other person.
The girl disappeared around a corner. Doc stepped aside to the curb to evade a
packed group of chattering bystanders.
"You have something to explain, Mr. Savage!" rapped a commanding voice. "One of
your men was in the plane of that blasting devil up there! WeÆve got him! The
commissioner wants to talk to you!"
Several hundred policemen in uniform, and others in plain clothes, were in
Broadway and adjoining streets. They had been called in from outside precincts
to serve as explosion guards. Four of these blocked DocÆs progress.
The force held Doc Savage and his men in the greatest respect. These men were
respectful. But their manner showed firm intention to carry out the order they
said they had been given.
Doc considered quickly. Had it been Ham recaptured, or had it been Monk in the
Cold Light plane?
Before he had time to question, the four policemen, guns pressed to his sides,
were indicating he should get into a closed squad car standing near by. Doc made
no protest.
The bronze man was quick to sense a deception. These men were not policemen. But
he decided the command to attempt the trick must have come directly from the
controller of the Cold Light.
Being taken to Var would be much more important than following a
will-oÆ-the-wisp trail of the girl in blue.
The bogus squad car jerked ahead. Then quick hands closed the curtains.
Revolvers were jammed viciously into DocÆs sides.
"Step on it, Smoke!" one of the men snarled.

Chapter 15. THE MAGNETIC WALL
A SHORT time before the crash, Long Tom had been working at headquarters, as
directed by Doc. Multiple coils, amplifiers, condensers, compact generators and
other electrical appliances were scattered about.
Before the Cold Light blast had struck, Long Tom had believed DocÆs experiment
was on the verge of success. At this time, Renny had been with the electrical
wizard.
Long Tom grinned up at him. His face was jubilant.
"WeÆve got it!" he exclaimed. "DocÆs ideas always work! Now why couldnÆt I have
thought out this one myself?"
Renny grunted. He knew all about his own professionùengineering. But Long TomÆs
gadgets always filled him with suspicion, until he saw them in operation.
"Now watch this!" Long Tom directed.

THE box the electrical expert had created was covered with a variety of
indicator needles. It was about one foot square, but barely three inches thick.
It was packed with amplifying coils and Long TomÆs own special generators of
diminutive size.
When he threw a switch, there was a whirring sound. But there was no visible
ray.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "How would I know anything about something I canÆt
see?"
It was true. The ray or emanation from one side of the box was invisible.
But Long Tom knew the electromagnetic ray had been created. It was more than a
mere ray. It spread invisibly in the shape of a mammoth fan. At the distance of
a few yards, it became a wall extending from floor to ceiling of the laboratory.
Renny grunted several times in the following few minutes. It was his way of
displaying appreciation. For he saw the ex-neutralizer cut off in turn the
violet ray, the X ray and a dozen other such electrical manifestations.
The interruption of a high-frequency current was disastrous. A polished globe
exploded and rained fragments among the retorts and tubes of fragile glass. A
fuse went out, and for a few seconds the laboratory was in darkness.
"Take it easy, Long Tom," advised Renny. "Maybe this thing will kick back on
you."
"ItÆs absolutely harmless!" insisted Long Tom. "WouldnÆt hurt a fly!"
With the lights on, he again turned on the ex-neutralizer. He directed it as a
dividing wall across the laboratory.
There were two rats in a cage. On these Monk had been testing the effectiveness
of certain anaesthetic, but non-injurious, chemicals.
The invisible electromagnetic wall was projected toward the cage. Without
special intent, Long Tom shifted the box.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "Now youÆve done it! WouldnÆt hurt a fly, huh?"
The rats didnÆt even squeal. Both dropped as if bullets had been imbedded in
their scanty brains. When Renny reached the cage, they were still and dead.
"DonÆt let that thing touch me!" cautioned Renny, hastily. "The rats went out
like a light!"
"Now what could have done that?" muttered Long Tom.
His homely face registered deep gloom. His tone indicated he would have liked to
put responsibility elsewhere. But it was his job. In some uncanny fashion, the
ex-neutralizer had become a death ray.
Long Tom set to work with frantic haste. He wished heartily that Doc were here
to advise him. In a few minutes, he believed he had found the flaw, and remedied
it. But just then, he had no further opportunity for proving his theory.
Renny was glancing at his watch. He went through the door to the window of the
outer office.
"Nine oÆclock, Long Tom!" he called. "If thereÆs to be fireworks, theyÆre due
right now! Holy cowù"
His words were snatched away by the reverberating blast.
"Good gosh!" exclaimed Long Tom. "ThereÆs the Red Arrow plane! Doc was coming
back on it!"
The pair saw the Cold Light ray, steely-blue in color, seeming to cut through
the big passenger plane. Renny seized a pair of the electronic binoculars. His
breath hissed from his big chest, as the Red Arrow ship winged over and over
like a leaf in a cyclone.
Immediately after the crash of the plane, Renny and Long Tom had sought to trace
Doc Savage. Contact with the police proved to them the bronze man had apparently
been duped and taken prisoner.
They also learned that Monk had been aboard the Cold Light plane and had been
taken by the police. In the meantime, another man also was trailing DocÆs
captors.

THE little man known as Scraggs, who had escaped with Monk, was running along a
street on the East Side.
ScraggsÆs progress was much like that of a fleeing rat. His thin body slithered
through holes where there didnÆt seem room for a man to pass. His frayed hat was
pulled low.
Scraggs was abruptly halted. It was the girl in the bright blue cloak.
"Oh, itÆs you!" she exclaimed. "I was at the plane that fell! You werenÆt there!
I started for the old houseboat hangar! You said youÆd meet me and thatù"
Her words tumbled out. Scraggs pushed off her detaining hand.
"Go back to the house in the woods!" his thin voice commanded stridently. "I
havenÆt time to explain! YouÆll have to wait for me there!"
"But, Scraggs, I saw Doc Savage!" the girl insisted. "WeÆve got to do something
quick! WeÆveù"
Scraggs interrupted impatiently, already moving away.
"I know more about that than you do!" his thin voice rasped. "And thatÆs what
IÆm on my way to do!"
The girl remained motionless for a long minute after Scraggs had disappeared.
Her perfectly chiseled features were as set as a marble mask. The paleness of
either deep despair or implacable purpose only enhanced the cameolike beauty of
her face.

DOC SAVAGE had hoped the police trick, on the part of the crooks, would lead him
straight to the man known as Var. Even after the car curtains were drawn, Doc
permitted his captors to think he had been tricked.
Doc knew nothing of the man Scraggs having witnessed his departure from the
wrecked Red Arrow plane. Nor did he know of Scraggs having been in the Cold
Light plane and having been saved by Monk.
From ScraggsÆs dash toward East River, the little man evidently knew more of
DocÆs destination than the bronze man himself could have guessed.
But the bronze manÆs thought was that this was the quickest and surest way to
come face to face with the Cold Light destroyer.
DocÆs conjecture was roughly shattered. The car was jouncing along a water-front
street on East River. Without any warning, one of the guns was whipped from his
side.
The weapon crashed on his skull with stunning effect. Fighting back a swimming
black cloud, Doc felt his arms gripped to his sides. A hoodlike affair was
pulled swiftly over his head.
Under ordinary conditions, the bronze man had defeated the purpose of assailants
who sought to administer an anaesthetic. His ability to hold his breath was that
of the longest-winded pearl diver of the South Seas. Some of these divers had
been known to remain under water for periods of three to four minutes.
Only half conscious, suffocated by the sack over his head as well as by the
etherizing vapor clouding his throat and nostrils, Doc lost all knowledge of
what was transpiring.

AS he slowly recovered, the bronze man had no means of knowing how many hours
had elapsed. He was only sure the day had passed. The pall of night was relieved
by twinkling stars he could see through a slitted window.
Under Doc, the floor quivered, jerked. Thunder beat upon his ears. His first
effort to move convinced him a thorough job of tying had been done.
Rawhide thongs had been expertly bound, not only around his arms and legs, but
another had been passed around his throat. This had been secured by spikes or
staples to the floor, or to a wooden crosspiece.
The long, coffinlike space in which he lay was moving. Up and down. Speeding
ahead. The dipping motion was sickening.
Doc knew instantly he was in an airplane.
There was no pilot at the controls. Twisting his head with great effort, Doc
could see no other person in the cabin. He was alone. A side roll of the plane
revealed rows of long white wave tops not so far below.
The bronze man was hurtling out to sea on a one-man flight. But no other man
controlled the plane and Doc had been rendered powerless.

Chapter 16. THE DIVE OF DEATH
DOC attempted to roll over. The rawhide thong around his neck cut off his
breath. So rigidly were his arms and legs bound with many wrappings, the bronze
man could obtain no leverage against the choking cord.
He tensed his throat muscles and put his weight against the rawhide. This
prevented the cord choking him, but his weight was insufficient.
Now he could see the lights of the planeÆs instrument board. He saw that his
fate had been made cleverly, fiendishly sure. The plane was controlled by an
automatic radio device. But in this plane the alternative hand controls had been
removed. Only the special mechanism which operated the small cabin ship on waves
of sound, was flying it.
The monster Var had taken no chances. Even were Doc Savage by some of his almost
supernatural powers able to free himself, no means had been left for controlling
the ultimate destiny of the plane now far out over the ocean.
The plane suddenly dipped in a breath-taking dive. But it only swooped down
close to the surface and then zoomed for altitude. Doc put all the strength of
his neck against the binding thong. It would not yield.
Even in this terrible predicament, Doc was thinking back. There was this
Scraggs. Furtive, elusive, ratlike Scraggs. Afraid of being identified with his
own efforts. Scraggs had acted at first as if he was trying to avert the
explosions of the Cold Light, to stop the evil workings of the mysterious Var.
Doc pondered another item. Who was this girl seeking Scraggs? When VarÆs voice
had first been heard, a feminine voice had murmured with it. Circumstances, as
yet, had led to no definite conclusion.
Doc could almost feel the landing gear of the plane slapped by the tops of the
ocean swells, as the little ship dived again. The rawhide thong was slowly
lessening his freedom to breathe.
Up again. Higher this time. Doc had been awaiting the moment when the plane
would be sent farther up. He could almost see the brain reasoning out the
finish. For the last dive, the Var operator, perhaps Var himself, would cause
the plane to take on more altitude.
This would make certain the disrupting effect of the final drop. If DocÆs throat
muscles had not been held as rigidly as a bar of iron, the drying rawhide would
have throttled him before this time.
The plane was still climbing. DocÆs super-sense put every nerve on the alert.
Slowly, he forced his head over. The bronze skin rasped from his neck as he
turned. He was looking into the shadowed space at the rear of the coffin-like
cabin.
From the darkness a voice spoke. It was thin and strident.
"I guess youÆve had enough to know Var is ruthless! He will stop at nothingù"
What seemed to be a bundle of disreputable, unkempt clothing rolled into view
and stretched into a skinny, little man.

IT was Scraggs. In the semidarkness of the planeÆs cabin, his eyes glowed like a
catÆs.
Doc eyed him closely. Scraggs had a pointed knife in his hand. It moved toward
DocÆs throat. The bronze man was helpless.
But the furtive, elusive Scraggs had only good intent in this movement. The
edged knife slit the tightening rawhide thong at DocÆs throat. The plane still
was climbing.
The knife slid down along the other bindings. Doc stretched his cramped arms and
legs, got to his feet.
"Thanks," he said. "ThatÆs a good turn IÆll not forget. But how did you happen
to be here?"
ScraggsÆs tongue licked along his bloodless lips.
"I overheard what had been planned when you returned to Manhattan. There were
too many for me to try to rescue you. I beat them to the plane and hid in the
cabin. I thought I could get you out before it was sent off, but nowùwell, now
there ainÆt anything we can do."
ScraggsÆs explanation sounded sincere. Anyway, it was clear the furtive little
man was in the same tight spot as Doc.
The nose of the plane suddenly dipped. The struts screamed in a full-powered
dive. Doc pushed Scraggs ahead of him. He forced open the door of the plane
against the terrific pressure of the wind.
"Jump from the door!" commanded Doc. "You will have to hurry!"
"But I canÆt! WeÆll be killed! No! No!"
Scraggs pulled away. Plainly, he feared the plunge into the open sea. DocÆs
strong hand gripped his shoulder and the little man winced. He was powerless to
resist the viselike hold.
Then the plane suddenly leveled off. The swells were again so close, the white
teeth of the combers could be seen plainly.
Doc let go of Scraggs and sprang to the radio mechanism. His corded hands
fastened on the machinery. With one wrench, he had ripped the controls loose.
Wires snapped under his super-human strength. Ailerons flapped. The tail
assembly jerked loose, erratic weaving.
With crumpling, devastating force, the ripping propeller smashed into the sea.
The planeÆs tail, went up and the little ship went far under the surface in its
final dive of death.

Chapter 17. SCRAGGS JOINS DOC
Doc could easily have freed himself. His enormous lung capacity made him as
nearly an amphibian as it is possible for any man to be. As the plane cracked up
and sank, Doc had absorbed enough air to keep him alive for several minutes.
Instead of pulling himself out he let go his supporting hold. ScraggsÆs first
scream died in a gasping gurgle. Doc groped his way to the confined space where
the little man was trapped. Gripping fingers fastened on a bony ankle.
Fortunately, the amount of air in DocÆs lungs increased his own buoyancy.
Pulling ScraggsÆs shoulders into a scissors hold of his locked legs, the bronze
man used his hands to drive them toward the surface.
Even DocÆs tremendous lung capacity was tested. When his head emerged, the first
long breath pierced him like many tiny knives. He rolled, treading. Scraggs was
shifted over one arm.
From the bronze manÆs clothing came a special restorative chemical. DocÆs
trained hands forced the water from ScraggsÆs lungs. A tiny needle pierced the
little manÆs muscles near his spine.
With briny water slapping and stinging his eyes and nostrils, the little man
gasped and started kicking. Doc turned him on his back. Perhaps one man in a
million could have fixed direction as the bronze man accomplished it.
Lying too low in the sea to glimpse the lights of shore, Doc simply made a quick
study of the stars. He fixed the position of the Great Dipper. This lined with
the North Star. Doc rolled and commenced swimming shoreward with the moaning
Scraggs.
One hand held the little man. The other arm and his legs beat the swells with
churning impact. DocÆs progress was much like that of the porpoise. To gain
speed, his mighty body plunged under some of the swells.
The distance may have been two miles or five. DocÆs tireless limbs moved with
the speed of motor-driven pistons. Even so, nearly an hour elapsed before he was
pulling Scraggs from the frothing wash onto a landing of flat rocks.
ScraggsÆs thin body was draped with clinging kelp. The weeds gave the little man
the appearance of some drowned sea animal. Doc worked him back to consciousness
again.

STRANGE combinations were forming theories. ScraggsÆs appearance. The Cold Light
of the explosion and the blast itself, with the queer coloring of aquamarine.
The few words, in the plane, of the explorer, Vonier, and the financier,
Carberry, over some of their theories.
All of these seemed to trend to the sea. They touched upon the mysteries of the
vast, little-known life of the oceans themselves. In the analytical brain of Doc
Savage, they became a directly separable quantity.
The greatest source of life lay in the sea. Therefore, why not the most terrible
forces of destruction?
Scraggs began talking in a hoarse, strained voice:
"Whoùwho saved us?" he stammered. "Whoùwho got us out?"
"We had luck," Doc stated. "The tide was with us."
Scraggs sat up, staring at him. The manÆs eyes glowed with a hint of
phosphorescent light. It was this made him resemble a cat in the darkness.
DocÆs own flaky eyes also were glowing. He shot a question.
"YouÆre safe now. Who is Var?"
Scraggs cringed as if he had been struck a blow. His thin lips trembled.
"IùI canÆt tell you that," he mumbled. "Because I donÆt know. IÆve never seen
him. Yes, you believe IÆve been working for him. I have, but never directly."
The little man clearly was on guard. There was something he did not intend to
reveal. The bronze manÆs hypnotic eyes held the sunken orbs of the other.
"No!" the little man almost shouted. "YouÆre trying to make me tell something I
donÆt know! I never saw Var, I tell you! But he murdered my best friendùthe
scientist, Jacksonùand I was his helper!"
There now was sincere grief in ScraggsÆs voice.
"Jackson was the man killed in the first explosion?" the bronze man suggested.
"Before he could talk over the telephone? You put a message in my pocket, then I
conjecture you went back to the house in the marsh."
Scraggs stared at Doc.
"Noùyes, I did go back," he said. "I saw Jackson killed. I couldnÆt stand it. I
ran away. I didnÆt dare be found there. Jackson was the best and kindest and
smartest man that ever lived! He was inventing this explosive for the man who
called himself Var."

"DIDNÆT Var come to the house in the marsh?" questioned Doc.
"Yes; but only at night, and I was never permitted to see him," insisted
Scraggs. "I knew some experiments were planned. Jackson told me where one test
was to be made. That was one in the woods near CarberryÆs home in Little Neck.
ThatÆs how I happened to be out there."
"The message indicated Jackson was afraid," Doc said.
Doc knew part of what Scraggs was telling must be the truth, but only part of
it.
"Yes," said Scraggs. "At the last, Jackson was afraid. The chief kept him a
prisoner in the house. There was no way out, except by the one road and it was
guarded."
"Var seems to have many men," said Doc. "They are not ordinary criminals."
"NoùI donÆt knowùwell, yes, you are right," stammered the little man. "Var has a
big organization. All of his men are smart. Jackson told me Var had first
planned to use his explosive for establishment of a new social justice."
"Jackson told you all of this?"
"Yes, yes, he told me!" exclaimed Scraggs. "IÆm being honest with you. Jackson
sent me with the message to find you. It was too late. VarÆs plans were
complete. He had no more use for Jackson."
"You want to avenge the death of your friend and employer, is that it?" said
Doc.
"Yes, thatÆs it," replied Scraggs. "IÆve tried to help you all I could. CanÆt
you seeùI even hid in the plane to try and rescue you; then we were both trapped
and you saved meù"
"Are you sure there wasnÆt some way to have controlled that plane without the
radio, some way that you knew?" Doc quizzed.
"No; I expected to get you out before the plane was sent off East River."

DOC pondered this quickly. Had Scraggs a reason of his own for wanting to appear
as the bronze manÆs rescuer? It might be a part of VarÆs plan to establish a
closer contact with DocÆs movements.
Scraggs suddenly interrupted his flow of thought.
"But I want to have your help," Scraggs said. "IÆll go with you and your men. I
know much I can tell you. There are several places you would never find alone.
IÆll help you, if youÆll let me stay with you."
Doc considered this a moment, without speaking. Then Scraggs seemed to recall
something important.
"Doc Savage!" he cried. "While you have been here, some of your own men may have
been wiped out! IÆve heard of a new plan of VarÆs. He intends to get your men in
your headquarters, maybe blow up the building!"
Scraggs was trembling. There was evidence of desperate sincerity in his warning.
"You can come with me," the bronze man decided. "We will find an automobile."
At about this time, Ham was arriving by a White Liner plane at the Newark
Airport.

Chapter 18. HAM GETS POISON
HE was his usually natty-appearing self, as he alighted from the passenger
plane. The waspish, well-clothed figure took on a hasty stride. He pushed
impatiently into the crowd awaiting arrival of other planes.
"I might have known I wouldnÆt have any luck!" he muttered.
Scraggs had not been aboard the White Liner. Ham believed the man he wanted
would be on the Red Arrow.
The excited comment of those around him and screaming headlines informed Ham the
Manhattan explosion had taken place on schedule. Ham seized a paper as he
entered the limousine used by the air transport company to carry passengers back
and forth between Manhattan and the airport.
Reading avidly, he groaned.
"Good heavens!" he grunted. "It canÆt be possible! Not Doc!"
The edition of the newspaper he had bought had been issued within a few minutes
after the Manhattan blast. This story had it the Red Arrow plane had crashed
against a building in Radio City.
Ham felt for his handkerchief. A small box was in the pocket. The box had been
slipped into his coat either on the plane or in the airport terminal buildings.
Across the box were printed a few words:
I TAKE THIS MEANS OF GETTING THIS STRANGE POISON GAS TO DOC SAVAGE. WHEN PLACED
IN WATER, THESE PILLS FREE ENOUGH POISON VAPOR TO KILL HUNDREDS. I BELIEVE ONLY
DOC SAVAGE CAN ANALYZE AND DISCOVER THEIR FORMULA. WHEN HE HAS DONE THIS, HE CAN
COMMUNICATE WITH ME AT BOX 1131, QUEENS POST OFFICE.
A FRIEND
Ham opened the box. It contained four round pills, about the size of small
marbles. These were of jellylike substance.
Ham carefully replaced the poison gas pills.
But more recent editions of the newspapers in Manhattan caused Ham to forget the
pills of poison gas. He read that Doc had saved the Red Arrow plane. But his
jubilation was short-lived.
For the papers had reported the manner of DocÆs disappearance. The police were
futilely searching for four phony coppers in a bogus squad car. Monk had been
freed by the police and had joined his companions at DocÆs headquarters. Ham
hastened directly there.

MONK and Ham might have been expected to congratulate each other on their
separate escapes from VarÆs clutches.
HamÆs mouth twisted into a sneering grin, as he looked at the big chemist.
"So they got one look at that classic profile of yours in the explosion plane,"
said Ham, "and then they jumped out. Well, that mug must have been a shock!"
"HowlinÆ calamities!" squealed out MonkÆs high-pitched voice. "AnÆ it takes a
smart shyster like you to get me conked when all IÆm doinÆ is tryinÆ to save
your worthless skin! TellinÆ me to quit on that roof! SayinÆ youÆre just
practicinÆ!"
Monk referred to the encounter on the Washington roof where Ham had heeded DocÆs
instructions and stopped the battle with VarÆs men.
"WhatÆs the latest news of Doc?" inquired Ham, anxiously, of Long Tom and Renny.
"ThatÆs just our trouble," grunted the worried Renny. "There isnÆt any. NothinÆ
to start on or get a hold on. Do you suppose weÆd be coolinÆ our heels here, if
we had a lead? WeÆve been hoping every minute the police would report something
to start us off."
"So the fake police car went up in thin air?" mused Ham, aloud. "Went toward
East River?"
"Yeah," said Long Tom, "but the river patrol hasnÆt reported a thing."
The dayÆs shadows lengthened. Toward night, a much subdued and unusually timid
Broadway was flashing its first lights.
"IÆve got it! IÆve found it!" Long Tom suddenly proclaimed.
"Found what?" groaned Renny. "A way to discover where DocÆs gone? ThatÆs all I
want to know right now!"
"Well, no," admitted Long Tom gloomily. "Nothing like that. But his
electromagnetic wall is O. K. IÆve fixed it so it wouldnÆt harm a fly."
"You said that before," complained Renny. "AnÆ look what happened to MonkÆs
rats."
"Aw, rats!" muttered Long Tom. Then he brightened visibly. "ThatÆs the idea," he
added. "Monk, how about getting us some more rats?"
Grumbling that something might happen, Monk finally agreed and departed.

THE three companions left in the laboratory made a concerted spring for the
front office when the phone buzzed. Ham picked up the instrument.
Thinly, stridently, a voice started speaking:
"We have Doc Savage! You will never see him again! To-morrow, the afternoon
Washington-New York express train will be next to feel the power
of Var! Tell Ham, the lawyer, he must go back to Washington! If Ham goes to
Washington and follows instructions, the train will be saved! I amùVar!"
With a bitter invective, Ham jiggled the receiver bar. A half minute later, he
replaced the instrument.
"The operator says itÆs a dial phone in a public booth somewhere and canÆt be
traced," he informed the others. "Brothers, weÆre faced by a situation that
seems to be beyond our control. Only one thing: the voice didnÆt say Doc had
been killed. And if he hasnÆt, weÆll see him again and it wonÆt be long."
Monk came back, bringing two rats in a wire cage. They were common, gray
rodents.
Monk set the cage at one end of the long, spacious laboratory. He joined Renny
and Ham at one side, watching Long Tom.
"Now," said Long Tom, "the Hertzian ray already has been perfected to the point
where it will kill electrical force at a great distance. It can be used to stop
airplanes in the air. But this is the first electromagnetic force to neutralize
any other electrical ray."
Long Tom moved a switch. Generators whirred in the square, flat box. The
ex-neutralizer wall formed an invisible partition across the laboratory.
"Dag-gone it!" squeaked Monk. "Even if they was rats, yÆ neednÆtÆve murdered
æem! I was wantinÆ æem to try out a new kind of poison gas!"
Long Tom stared mournfully at the wire cage upon which the ex-neutralizer was
directed.
The pair of gray sewer rats had rolled on their backs. Their legs were rigid.
They hadnÆt even kicked.
"Holy cow!" barked Renny. "See that you keep that thing turned off the rest of
us!"

LONG TOMÆS hand was moving to switch off the ex-neutralizer. Monk started over
to examine the rats. The apelike chemist jumped back as if he had been stung.
"HowlinÆ calamities!" he ejaculated. "Wouldja look at that! Keep that death
machine on, Long Tom! Keep it on!"
A mysterious, deadly ray of Cold Light sliced through the thick stone and steel
of the Manhattan skyscraper as a knife might have passed through soft cheese. It
penetrated half of the laboratory.
Seen close up, it was like an edged, flat band of bright blue steel. Long Tom
backed hastily toward the open office door. Thus the box in his hand cast a
fanlike ray that covered every inch of the test room from floor to ceiling.
"It works! By heavens, it works!" he shouted.
The skins of every one prickled with the sensation of cold.
But the deadly, explosive Cold Light did not reach its objective, whatever it
might have been.
Its frigid band reached Long TomÆs invisible electromagnetic wall. There it was
abruptly cut off. The magnetic insulation converted half the laboratory into an
impregnable refuge. Ham, Monk and Renny were within this haven.
For a long minute, the Cold Light remained fixed into the room. In the streets
below thousands of persons saw it shining across the night.
Crowds scurried for shelter.
Then the Cold Light disappeared. A traffic policeman had fixed its origin in a
near-by skyscraper. Within ten minutes squads of policemen were scouring this
building. But they found nothing.
The Cold Light then was being reported from farther uptown. In reality, it had
come from several miles. Its penetrating ray had pierced scores of office
buildings, mostly emptied for the night. Nothing had interfered with its
progress until it had encountered DocÆs electromagnetic wall.
The four men felt as if they were freezing. The Cold Light had vanished, but the
temperature of the room rose slowly.
Monk found chattering speech. The ex-neutralizer had been switched off.
"Lookit!" he shouted. "The rats! TheyÆve come back to life!"

WITH Long TomÆs ex-neutralizer turned off, the gray rats were frisking about as
if they had never been laid cold.
"Dag-gone it!" squeaked Monk. "ThatÆs nothinÆ but a hypnotizinÆ machine! Long
Tom, you try it on me! Betcha it wonÆt knock me out!"
Ham laughed derisively.
"Hypnotism takes effect on the brain, Monk. That wouldnÆt be much use as a
test," he suggested. "Rats have got some brains."
"HowlinÆ calamities!" squeaked out Monk. "Maybe you think that shyster brain of
yours would help!"
"I suggest we test it together," remarked Ham. "Suppose we both walk through
it?"
Long Tom demurred. But the rats apparently were wholly unharmed. He figured he
could switch the electromagnetic wall off, if the two bickering friends showed
any evidence of succumbing.
Again, the invisible wall partitioned the laboratory. Long Tom directed it
deliberately upon the ratsÆ cage. The rodents blinked their beady eyes and
promptly curled up their toes.
Side by side, Ham and Monk walked around the long table filled with globes,
retorts and a variety of tubes. Monk edged a little ahead. Part of his great
bulk was in the invisible wall.
HamÆs own waspish body was touching it.
"DonÆt feel a thing," asserted Monk, and moved across. "CÆmon, shyster. You
scared?"
Renny and Long Tom had their eyes fixed on Ham and Monk. The latter two were
looking at each other, keeping up a fire of sarcastic conversation. Thus none of
them saw the Cold Light ray suddenly reappear.
The blue-steel band knifed through the skyscraper wall. MonkÆs big hands went to
his face. He was almost blinded by chilling cold. Ham, seeing something was
wrong, reached for him. His own body had not yet crossed the protective
ex-neutralizer.
The door opening into the outer office burst open.
From the doorway came the weird, mellow warning of Doc Savage.

THE bronze man was standing there. His wet hair and skin were smooth and sleek.
Just back of him stood the sodden figure of Scraggs.
"Stay where you are, all of you!" Doc commanded.
His flaky gold eyes caught and followed the shifting Cold Light. He saw it
dissolve in the electromagnetic wall.
Long Tom moved to flick off the ex-neutralizer switch. Doc seized Long TomÆs
wrist.
"Leave it on," he directed. "Wait until the Cold Light stops. It would get all
of us!"
Monk staggered back to the safe side of the electromagnetic wall. His huge body
shook as with an ague. He felt as if he were freezing.
MonkÆs bulk struck Ham and sent the slighter figure of the lawyer to his knees.
"You big, blundering ape!" sputtered Ham. "Look where youÆre going!"
"I think Monk just saved our lives," Doc said, calmly.
ScraggsÆs mouth twitched, as he stared at the Cold Light ray.
"It didnÆt explode," he muttered, amazedly. "But I was right, Doc Savage. You
see, I was telling you the truth."
Ham walked toward him. "You were in that house in Washington. You know what all
this is about."
"IÆm not so sure Scraggs does know all about the Cold Light ray," said the
bronze man. "Perhaps he helped to save your life. If you had crossed the
ex-neutralizer, all of us would have been annihilated."

Chapter 19. PLOTTED POISONING
AGAIN, the Cold Light had been withdrawn. For the second time during the
evening, the police were unsuccessfully seeking its source. It had been directed
upon Doc SavageÆs stronghold from a new direction.
Doc directed Long Tom to set about duplicating the ex-neutralizer at once.
Scraggs watched silently. The bronze man apparently ignored him, but he was
studying the little manÆs reactions closely.
"WeÆll probably need as many machines as we can get together," he advised. "At
least, weÆll need two to try and save the express train youÆve told me about."
Ham had told Doc of the threat against the train, but had made it a point to
keep Scraggs from hearing. Now Scraggs looked up with quickened interest.
"You know about the train?" he exclaimed.
Ham looked intently at Scraggs.
"Perhaps, Doc, if Scraggs stays with us there wonÆt be any need to save the
express," he said, significantly.
"It wouldnÆt make any difference," Scraggs muttered. "But if you could prevent
an explosion here, you could do it there."
"ThatÆs what we hope to do," Doc stated.
Doc produced a thin book from inside his shirt. Fingers flicked through the
pages.
Monk could see the riffled pages. The little book was illustrated by brightly
colored plates. Monk grunted and peered more closely.
"Dag-gone it!" he exclaimed. "IÆve seen somethinÆ like that picture there!"
Doc glanced at him quickly.
"Sure of that, Monk? When did you see it?"
"CanÆt seem to remember where or when I saw it, Doc, but I know I did."
The bookÆs illustration was a picture of marine life. It was done in intense
blue. The figure shown was apparently half human, half crab. Gold letters gave
the name of the author.
The writer was Vonier, the explorer.
Clearly, Vonier had had good reason for his admiration for and his disagreement
with Carberry, the financier, over a treatise Carberry had written. For
CarberryÆs one plunge into science had dealt with the cellular origin of the
human species.
Such a study must necessarily lead to the established origin of all life; that
of the sea.

THE phone rang. It was Vonier, calling from a booth in the building lobby. Doc
invited him to come up at once. If Vonier recognized Scraggs, his impassive face
gave no hint. But Doc marked Scraggs staring intently at the explorer.
VonierÆs arm was neatly bandaged in a sling. His bony face was as calm as ever.
He announced he believed an attempt had been made on his life.
"When I reached my home and went into my office," he explained, quickly, "I
found these in my desk top. I couldnÆt have missed them."
He produced two jellylike globules, no larger than marbles.
"A note was with them," Vonier said. "It was signed just, æA Friend.Æ It
directed me to analyze them for a mysterious poison, and said the pills
possessed a rare form of germs that could be employed to pollute the whole water
supply of a great city."
Ham was staring at the man. Scraggs arose and walked nervously about the
laboratory.
"The note said they contained germs to be released in water?" Ham questioned.
"Then the first thing you probably would do would be to put one of the balls in
water to see what would happen. Then why didnÆt you?"
Doc said, "Perhaps that was what was wanted, Vonier. To have you place them in
water."
"I thought of that," remarked Vonier, dryly. "ThatÆs why I came to you. You are
reported to be a wizard on the safe analysis of any form of poison."
Ham took his own "poison pills" from his pocket. He laid them on the desk. Then
he produced the note he had received. Doc read it at a glance.
VonierÆs lips were drawn in a smile over his skeleton teeth.
"I would say the whole thingÆs the work of our good friend Var," he stated.
"IÆve heard the Cold Light ray has been jumping about again to-night. Something
has gone wrong. There has been no explosion. So Var seems out to get us by a
more devious device."
Doc said, "IÆll analyze these pills." He glanced at the nervous Scraggs. "In the
meantime, IÆll place them in the laboratory safe where I keep my radium. Even
poison gas canÆt escape from that."
This safe, heavily insulated with lead and a special rubberlike composition,
contained DocÆs radium. It was one of the largest amounts in the world in the
possession of a single individual.

SCRAGGS watched the pills being locked away. His eyes glowed as if a sudden idea
had struck him.
"IÆm going out for a while," he said. "When I return, I may have something
important to tell you, Doc Savage."
Doc merely nodded. HamÆs face was dark with suspicion, as Scraggs sidled toward
the elevators.
Doc apparently gave the matter no further attention. He turned to Vonier.
"Did any one of your household observe any suspicious person?"
"No," said Vonier. "Only the Japanese houseman was there. Mrs. Vonier has gone
to our house on the shore. IÆm convinced this Var means business. You are more
of a threat to him than I am, Savage, but I havenÆt the slightest intention of
complying with his demand that I join his organization."
Another phone call came from the skyscraper lobby. It was the hoarse, strained
voice of Carberry, the financier.
"In heavenÆs name, let me come up and stay with you to-night!" came the excited
voice. "I donÆt believe Var intends to wait forty-eight hours. He has learned I
was in Washington. Now there has been an attempt to poison me!"
DocÆs flaky golden eyes glinted strangely.
"Come right up, Carberry," he invited.
He told the others what Carberry had said. Vonier seemed about to impart
something more of importance, then he merely said, "I think perhaps when you get
to the bottom of this Cold Light thing, youÆll find yourself mixed up with some
of the mysteries of our little known marine life."
Monk gulped, started to speak, and changed his mind. It had come to him where he
had seen the picture of the half-crab and half-human creature. It had been one
of those done in oil on the walls of the room where he had fought Wheeze
McGovernÆs men!
Doc had slipped VonierÆs book on marine life into a drawer of his desk.

CARBERRY was a shaking figure when he entered. His protruding eyes appeared
ready to jump from their sockets. The bald spot between his white tufts of hair
had a ghastly hue.
"What? You here, too, Vonier?" were his first words. "IÆm glad to see youÆre
safe! I was afraid to stay out at my home, and I donÆt dare risk being trailed
to where my wife is hidden!"
"You said an attempt was made to poison you?" suggested Doc. "It would be some
sort of pill?"
"How in heavenÆs name did you know that?" exclaimed Carberry, producing a little
box.
"Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "TheyÆre different! Look like sugar cubes!"
"YesùyesùthatÆs itùand thatÆs where they were!" stammered the financier. "In the
sugar! A houseboy got hold of one. The butler found him dead. He had turned
purple. After the butler went through the sugar and found these, I thought you
could find out more quickly, Savage, what they are."
There were two square cubes. Though they were white and shaped like sugar, a
close inspection proved them to be less granular. There was a smooth crust
hardened over a jellylike substance.
In a few seconds, the new poison pills were behind the thick, insulated door of
the laboratory safe.
Long Tom came in, announcing he had the second ex-neutralizer ready. Doc invited
Vonier and Carberry to witness a demonstration on several different electrical
rays.
"Could one of them be made for me, Savage?" questioned Carberry. "IÆll let you
name your own price ifù"
Doc interrupted. "We never accept pay for what we do, Carberry. But youÆre
welcome to any safeguard we can devise. I would suggest both you and Vonier
remain here to-night. You shall sleep between invisible walls of the
ex-neutralizer."

DURING the night, Doc Savage perfected a plan for saving the Washington-New York
express from the Cold Light threat. In the early morning, Long Tom and Renny
left the headquarters. They were carrying the ex-neutralizer boxes. Their
destination was the Hudson River hangar where DocÆs planes were kept.
Ham and Monk were on their way to the warehouse hangar by a different route. Doc
Savage followed another direction.
Carberry had left with Vonier, saying he would stay with the explorer during the
day.
"Daylight braces me up," the financier announced. "But when night comes, I begin
to get the jitters. And my forty-eight hours are up to-night," he added.
"WeÆll be back late this afternoon," said Doc. "Meet us here again to-night."
Though Carberry seemed to have some doubt as to Vonier, it was apparent he did
not want to be alone.
Doc had not informed either the explorer or the financier of their destination.
After communicating with the railroad offices, Doc had advised that the
Washington-New York express be allowed to come through on schedule. He had
suggested, however, that a regular train for passengers be run as a second
section.
Only the necessary crew was to be carried on the first section.
Doc was at the controls of the plane. Long Tom was making sure the
ex-neutralizers were in perfect order. If the warning from Var had been genuine,
and none thus far had failed, the Washington-New York express would have one
invisible passenger.
The name would be Death!

ABOUT the moment DocÆs special cabin plane was taking off from the Hudson River,
a window was softly raised high in the tower of ManhattanÆs tallest
cloud-piercer.
The afternoon had seen the advent of a slow, drizzling rain. It had misted over
the city with the usual smoky fog. No person in the street below could have seen
the slender rope swaying from the high window.
Nor did any person observe the slim, shadowy figure coming down. The man was
light, his body almost wraithlike. Though supported only by his hands, he swung
out over space with a confidence of movement which proved he was accustomed to
great heights.
The manÆs feet poised lightly on the ledge of an eighty-sixth floor window. A
blunt instrument appeared in one hand. The glass crashed inward to the rug
without much sound.
An instant later, the intruder had raised the sash and admitted himself.
In the office, he produced a case of small instruments. The locked laboratory
door yielded to a control electroscope like that used by Doc Savage and his men.
From his clothing came a flat, metal case. A button was pressed and a tongue of
purple flame was reflected. This flame increased in intensity.
The insulated laboratory safe was not burglarproof. The insulating composition
and the lead were relatively soft materials. After two minutes, a square opening
appeared under the flame.
The intruder chuckled. Again the purple flame licked out. But this time, it did
not seem to be of a destructive nature. Rather, the cut square of the safe door
had been replaced.
The flame curled over the surface. The figure emitted another ironic chuckle.
The square was being "healed" into place.
Afterward, an observing eye might have noted the rewelding of the crevices, but
the average person, would not have known the wall of the vault had been tampered
with.
Shortly thereafter, the outside door of DocÆs headquarters opened. A man came
out and took the stairway upward. From the window a few floors above, the thin
rope was drawn in. The window was closed.
The "poison pills" were no longer in the vault. They were close to a water
faucet in the laboratory. Perhaps it was only by chance that a faulty valve
caused dropping water to dampen the surface of the metal on which the "poison
pills" had been laid.

Chapter 20. THE WALLS OF LIFE
EVEN while the mysterious visitor was in his laboratory, Doc Savage was piloting
a cabin plane over the eastern Pennsylvania hills. He was following a train to
set the plane down. He selected a flat field where a paved highway paralleled
the railroad track.
Apparently a worried engineer had been expecting them, for the air brakes
started steel grating on steel as Doc and his four companions appeared on the
track ahead. The youthful firemanÆs eyes rolled as DocÆs bronze figure swung up
on the grabiron into the cab.
"You get up front," Doc told Long Tom and Monk. "One on each side of the pilot.
ItÆs a ticklish spot for riding, but weÆll want every possible inch of the train
covered by the ex-neutralizers. Turn on the machines and keep the rays playing.
TheyÆre effective for at least a thousand yards; perhaps more. Renny and Ham and
I will take the rear end."
Monk growled and grunted as he clung to a pilot standard with one arm and worked
the ex-neutralizer wall.
"IÆll betcha," he squealed above the rush of the wind and the pounding of piston
heads, "that fashion-plate shyster has found himself a soft seat on the
cushions!"
"You keep that box working!" shouted Long Tom. "And slant it straight back!"
The invisible walls formed two magnetic shields, as the Washington-New York
Express gathered speed.
Instructing Ham to continue a patrol through the coaches, Doc took Renny with
him to the observation platform on the rear car. He had judged the Cold Light,
if and when it came, would have to be directed from an airplane or from some
automobile on the highway.
In case the danger came from above, Long Tom had been instructed to swing to the
locomotive stack and cover the top of the train. This feat Long Tom was ready to
perform.
By DocÆs instructions, the engineer kept the train to the low speed of around
thirty miles per hour. Renny and Doc on the observation platform were scanning
every passing auto and every distant plane in the sky.
The cars of the express poured into a shallow grade cut. It roared out onto a
long straightaway. Half a dozen cars were in view on the highway.
Making sure his own special grenadesùa powerful chemical explosiveùwere at hand,
Doc scanned each of these cars in turn. Nothing out of the ordinary showed for
some time.

WHEN the Cold Light ray flashed on, it came from a distance. The edged band,
blue-steel in color, was striking across the country from a wooded spot nearly
two miles away.
The knifelike emanation played along the sides of the speeding cars. Doc
breathed with relief.
For when the ray struck the invisible wall of the ex-neutralizer on that side,
it seemed to waver, then dissolve.
But a big closed car between the train and the wooded spot was not so fortunate.
The driver of this automobile was speeding. His car was passing the train.
The Cold Light played upon the driver. It seemed to jump along with the
automobile. Doc saw the driver stiffen in his seat.
Then the man reared up, took his hands from the steering wheel and clawed
blindly at his face. He pitched forward, his head striking the windshield.
The automobile left the highway. Careening down the bank, it somersaulted twice
and came to rest on flattened wheels. Two men were hurled out.
The first person to reach the scene of the crash reported, to the unbelief of
others, that the driver and his companions seemed to have been frozen stiff.
Three were dead. The other was seriously hurt.
The bronze man waited neither for the slowing of the train or for inspection of
the wrecked car. Dropping to the ground, DocÆs feet seemed to glide along the
gravel. He was upright when he let go, and landed on his feet with a single
bound over the right-of-way ditch.
Renny followed. His huge body lacked the springy resiliency of the bronze manÆs.
Renny failed to compensate for the speed of the train. His big feet tangled.
With an enraged bellow, he started rolling. It was well his muscles were
iron-hard and his neck was thick-sinewed.
After the third somersault, Renny managed to stagger to his feet. He was close
behind Doc.
Following orders, the train proceeded on its way. Ham, Monk and Long Tom stuck
by it. Monk saw Doc and Renny speeding across the near-by field over the
highway.
There seemed to be no side road leading from the wooded spot to the main
highway. Doc noted the square mile or so of bushy expanse appeared to have no
visible outlet. Renny was forced to give all he had to keep up with the bronze
man.
Doc did not seem to run. His speed was evolved from a gliding, sinuous movement
in which all of his trained muscles coordinated. In even the crisis of this
seeking of the maker of Cold Light, DocÆs brain was working on other angles of
the problem.
Monk had informed him of his recognition of the illustration in the Vonier book
on marine species. In VonierÆs well-done treatise on little known elements of
the deeper oceans were many direct references to as yet undiscovered atomic
energy greater than anything the worldÆs leading scientists had revealed.
Doc could readily understand how Vonier might be valuable indeed to Var. The man
who, according to Scraggs, had started out with the idea of reforming world
society and now wanted world domination, might well find an individual of
VonierÆs erudition immensely valuable to his further schemes.
Var also might fear Vonier possessed a knowledge that would enable him to solve
the mystery of the Cold Light force.
Doc considered this point. How much did Vonier really know of the elements that
might have gone into the creation of Cold Light as a destroying agency?
The bronze man also pondered the actions of the mysterious Scraggs. The presence
of Vonier, or something connected with the failure of the Cold Light to explode
in the laboratory, had caused the little man to invent an excuse to get away.
Doc was sure of this.
Then there was the girl in blue who had been seeking Scraggs at the wrecked Red
Arrow plane. There had been a woman close to Var, as he had uttered his message
after the first of his explosions.
Each of the suspects had a woman closely related to him or his activities.

THE bronze man and Renny arrived at the fringe of woodland.
They paused a moment, listening. Birds trilled in the brush as if nothing had
been there to disturb them.
The strip of woods was about a quarter of a mile in width. Its extent in the
other direction could only be guessed.
"You take the other side," directed Doc. "Keep under cover of the trees and move
quietly. If you run onto anything, fire the pistol."
Doc was gone, slithering through the bushes. His progress was that of a jungle
cat or a deer.
RennyÆs woodcraft was not nearly so skillful. Doc heard the huge engineer
crashing into the brush.
Doc weaved from side to side. His swiftness covered half the wooded strip
thoroughly. Under the trees the ground was damp and mossy.
Only a keen eye would have detected the dull coppery shining of a bit of metal
at the bottom of a shallow pond. Doc scooped up the small object.
It was a narrow cylinder of brass. It much resembled some form of cartridge,
open at one end. It seemed to have contained a sort of explosive powder and had
been recently fired.
The empty shell bore no imprint of hammer pin. If it had been exploded, the
force had been other than by impact. He instantly decided the cartridge had
contained some element employed in the Cold Light machine.
The mystery of this was heightened by the absence of any footprints or marks
around the edges of the little pond.
DocÆs gaze roved upward. A freshly broken leaf dangled on its stem. Bark had
been slightly scraped on a branch. The stunted trees here were close together.
It was plain enough some acrobatic individual had swung along from tree to tree.
A second later, Doc was in the branches.
A few yards above the ground, he followed a trail in the trees that led toward
the other side of the woods. Pausing, he listened for Renny. There was only
silence.
Renny must be near. He called cautiously. He received no reply.

WHEN Renny parted from Doc, he proceeded to the opposite side of the wooded
strip. The air was balmy. The whole scene was peaceful. Renny plunged into the
trees. Underbrush impeded his progress.
He had covered perhaps two hundred yards. Birds hushed into silence close around
him, but when he paused the distant ones resumed their trilling. Apparently,
nothing had disturbed them.
Suddenly this was changed. Renny came upon a robin on the ground. The
red-breasted bird was hopping about aimlessly. Sometimes it fell over.
When Renny pursued, the robin seemed not to see or hear him.
A half-grown rabbit lay on its back kicking. The little creature appeared to be
recovering from a blow. Renny picked it up. The body felt icy.
The rabbit had been almost frozen.
Recalling the effect of the Cold Light in the laboratory, Renny was instantly on
guard. Still no sound or movement disturbed the bush. Renny pushed through a
tangle of berry bushes.
Directly in his face, an icy wall sprung up. The Cold Light ray filtered through
trees as if they did not exist. Renny was bathed in an icy chill. The effect was
much the same as liquid air.
The engineer had seen no one. He had heard no movement. Instinctively, he
attempted to draw his supermachine pistol. His fingers clawed stiffly. His arms
were almost instantly numbed.
Renny tried to shout. His throat was constricted. His tongue was powerless to
utter a sound. The engineer was the first person upon whom the Cold Light had
been directly played.
Renny felt as if his whole body were being frozen. But he tried to struggle
onward. He went to his hands and knees. He crawled slowly.
Blurred figures came from the bush around him. Tape was slapped over his mouth
and eyes. Thongs enwrapped his arms and legs. His stiff form was lifted and
carried to an automobile.
Warmth returned to Renny. This was a warm wave. Renewed circulation brought
tingling pain all over his body. Much the same as when frostbite is being
relieved too quickly.
The automobile jounced and jumped over the rough road.
"Why didnÆt we wait and grab Doc Savage himself?" growled one harsh voice. "With
him at liberty, anything might happen!"
A hoarse voice, strangely familiar, replied curtly.
"Keep your advice, Smoke! HeÆs being saved for the big blow-off! The world may
suspect, but none will ever be able to prove what became of this so-called
invincible bronze man!"
Renny strained at his bindings. The effort availed nothing.

PERHAPS five minutes later, Doc Savage came upon the spot where Renny had been
seized. Tracks of the auto ran out to the highway. By this time, there were many
cars moving.
The man of bronze whipped back to the spot where he and his men had landed their
plane before boarding the train. Trailing the car in which Renny was a prisoner
was impossible. But Doc was convinced he could quickly gain a lead to the place
where Renny would be taken.

Chapter 21. THE WOMAN IN IT
DOC SAVAGE had instructed Monk, Ham and Long Tom to join him at the Hudson River
hangar, when they arrived back in New York. The man of bronze planned to visit
the penthouse apartment where Monk had first been held prisoner.
He had his own reason for delaying this visit until nightfall. Likewise, the
bronze man wished his companions to remain away from the skyscraper
headquarters. For this, he offered no explanation.
Vonier and Carberry had said they would not return until darkness. Vonier had
not yet imparted his own theory of the Cold Light.
Leaving his companions at the Hudson River hangar, the bronze man vanished.
During the late afternoon, he was engaged in visiting various real estate
offices handling properties on ManhattanÆs East Side.
He was especially interested in the block destroyed by the Cold Light explosion.
Darkness was falling over the city when Doc returned to the hangar.
And the coming of night was bringing another moving angle of the mysterious Cold
Light.

THIS new angle revolved around an isolated house, buried deep in a wooded
section of Long Island.
The furnishing of this obscure house was exotic. A raftered room with a high
ceiling had heavy window drapes tightly drawn.
A woman sat in this room. Her features were flawless, of chiseled perfection.
But the face lacked any warmth. Grayish-green eyes were like bright agate. A
mask of a face. It might have been cast of plaster of Paris. The mouth was a
pallid curve of bitterness. When she spoke, the name was hissed.
"Doc Savage! The luck of the devilÆs with him! The luck of SatanÆs own imps! I
should have used a knife in a crowd, as I suggested!"
She drew a thin, stiletto blade from a silver sheath in the bosom of her dress.
The blade was needle-pointed.
Somewhere in the back of the house was the tinkle of silver and dishes. A
soft-footed servant was moving about.
The woman walked with a sinuous movement to one of the heavily draped windows.
She pulled aside the corded cloth.
Overhead, the sky was speckled with coldly winking stars. The calm peace of the
night apparently stirred her to tigerish fury.
"The fool!" she said, venomously. "WeÆre not safe until this Doc Savage is put
out of the way!"
She moved back to one of the chairs.
"He had the greatest power in the world and he canÆt get one man," she said in a
low, brittle tone. "And now what is he doing? Since the first night, I havenÆt
been in on any of it!"
She crossed the room and pulled a silken cord. Two dark-skinned men appeared
from a rear room.
"Tako," the woman said, commandingly, "I want you and Scov to find your master
at once! Try the river place, and if he isnÆt there he may be in the uptown
apartment. You are to bring him here to me. Understand?"
"I understand," said the man addressed. "And if he doesnÆt want to come?"
The woman smiled, but it only made her mouth harder.
"You will bring him to me," she repeated, softly. "I will wait no longer!"
The two men withdrew.
Sparks glinted in the womanÆs grayish-green eyes.
"After all," she mused aloud, "the creator of the killing ray is dead. He can
never come back. Our supply is almost inexhaustible. The secret of its origin is
lost forever."

A GLASS clinked in another room. The woman arose and closed a pair of heavy
double doors. She turned a key in the great brass lock.
Crossing the room, she came to an alcove containing a case of books. It appeared
to have been built solidly into the structure of the house.
The woman glanced at the draped window. She touched a light switch and all but a
single, dim eye faded out.
The woman moved one book. The bookcase swung silently outward. Back of it
appeared a solid steel door. She whirled the knob of a combination.
A little light showed in the vaulted space behind the door. This was high enough
to admit the womanÆs figure.
There were a dozen piled cases. Each was about a foot long, and possibly four
inches in width and depth. They were like small caskets of a dull, lusterless
metal. Each casket was fastened with screwed steel clamps.
The womanÆs long fingers sought one of the clamps. She swiftly unscrewed the
casket fastening. The lid lifted. Under the raised top she could see the
contents of the little casket. She lifted it. The weight did not appear to be
great. Not as if the queerly devised boxes contained jewels or other treasure.
Yet the movement of the womanÆs hands was almost caressing.
For perhaps two minutes, the woman stood motionless. Her lips moved without
sound. Whatever her ruthless purpose, it no doubt involved the contents of the
dull metal caskets.
As she stood thus, she could not see the key in the ponderous brass lock of the
double doors. This key was turning slowly. In the room at the rear of the house
had sounded a muffled blow. It had been followed by a sighing moan.
The key was being turned so slowly from the other side of the door, its movement
was almost imperceptible. But, as it caught the tumblers of the brass lock,
there was a sharp click.
Without waiting to screw down the clamp of the small casket, the woman sprang
back into the room. The double doors were swinging back on silent hinges.
In the aperture appeared a moonlike face. The small mouth was merely a hole
above a thick, double chin.
"You!" gasped the woman. "WhatÆs happened? What are you doing here?"

WHEEZE MCGOVERN leered at the woman. His darting eyes had confirmed his belief.
She was alone. His gaze fell upon the open door of the steel vault.
"Perfect! Betterùsissùthan IÆd hoped for!" he wheezed. "Now just donÆt move!"
The woman was transfixed for an instant.
"Whereùwhere is Var?" she stammered. "Whyù"
"Sent me to get æem!" cut in Wheeze. "AnÆ I seeùsissùyou were expectinÆ me!"
"No! No!" The woman gave a little gasp. "YouÆre lying! Varù"
Her slim hand pushed at the vault door. It was heavy. Two other men crowded the
door behind Wheeze. He rolled his fat body across the room with incredible
speed.
One of the womanÆs hands was caught and squeezed in the door she fought to
close. Wheeze McGovernÆs pudgy fist struck her under one shell-like ear. The
blow staggered her.
But with a furious hissing breath, she flung herself upon the stout figure of
VarÆs aide. Curved fingers clawed at his face. The nails welted a bloody track
across its moon-shaped surface.
"I know what youÆre after!" the woman screamed. "IÆd been expecting it to
happen! Others have brains, if Var hasnÆt! But youÆll never get them!"
Wheeze snarled, and caught the womanÆs neck in a twist of his heavy arm.
Disregarding her clawing fingers, he forced her body to the floor.
"You listen to meùsissùanÆ maybe we can get together on this!" he wheezed. "With
the stuff weÆve got, we can have millions!"
The woman was breathing rapidly. Her eyes widened.
"Yes! IÆd thought of that!" she said.
One hand was sneaking to the bosom of her dress.
"What would you do with them?" she added. "What do you think could be done?"
Wheeze McGovern laughed softly.
"What? Collect millions!" he gloated. "Why, IÆd make the big boys pay plenty!
The timeÆs ripe to collect!"
He had relaxed his hold on the woman. She came to her feet with the quickness of
a cat. There was a silvery, flashing glitter in her hand.
For all of his apparently clumsy weight, Wheeze leaped aside with agile speed.
He ripped out an oath as the stiletto pierced the cloth of his coat and ripped a
furrow along the flesh of his arm.
"Why, youùsissùhellcat!" he grunted. "If youÆd been only halfway
reasonableùwellù"
He was chopping out the words, even as his fingers closed on the womanÆs throat.
His strength bent her downward and backward. He twisted the stiletto from her
hand with a brutal force that cracked a bone in the womanÆs slender wrist.
She tried to scream, but the grip on her throat was inexorable. The face of
chiseled marble turned slowly a greenish hue. Wheeze threw her limp body to one
side.
"Take her, Smoke!" ordered Wheeze. "AnÆ tie her up plenty!"
He pushed into the vault. He rapped out a command to another man. WheezeÆs hands
trembled a little, as he started passing out the small caskets. Then he came to
the last one.
This was the dull metal box the woman had partly opened. The lid was up a few
inches in the screw clamp. Wheeze gazed at the contents of the casket.
"Not a bad idea," he muttered. "Might as well leave it like it is."

WHEN all the caskets were in the car standing in the driveway outside, Wheeze
reδntered. The womanÆs slim body lay in the cool, green depths of a seaweed rug.
With her hands tightly secured and her ankles lashed to a heavy, shell-like
chair, the woman was powerless to move. Across her mouth tape had been fixed.
"Not that it matters," grunted Wheeze. "WonÆt anybody be cominÆ along this
forsaken road. Nobody but Var would have the idea, and that wonÆt mean
anything."
The womanÆs bosom was heaving convulsively. Her eyelids fluttered open. In the
gray-green depths of her orbs glowed killing hate. Wheeze shivered and looked
away.
Then he smiled a little. He went into the big vault. When he came out, he had
made sure the lid of the one casket remained open. He left the heavy steel door
slightly ajar. As he went out, he pushed a button.
The oddly furnished room was plunged in darkness.
In the darkness, the bound woman was staring at the partly open door of the
vault. None could see the terror that had replaced all other emotion.

WHEEZE MCGOVERNÆS closely curtained sedan swung onto the main, paved highway
about a mile from the house hidden in the woods. For persons leaving the scene
of a crime, the occupants of the car seemed in no great haste.
Once the car speeded up, Wheeze laid his hand on the driverÆs arm.
"There isnÆt any grand rush," he cautioned. "NobodyÆs chasinÆ us, and this is
one of the timesùsissùwe donÆt want to be picked up by any speed cop. Take it
easy."
The car proceeded at a sedate pace. It was a mile up the concrete from the side
road to the house in the woods. Two or three cars had passed in the opposite
direction. A couple had sped by toward the city, where myriad lights were
reflected in the sky.
Another car, with weak headlights, appeared, meeting the sedan. The face of this
driver was white and strained. The car was a roadster, old and almost paintless.
The man was driving fast.
In the darkness, Wheeze and his men could not distinguish the face. If they had,
their controlled speed toward the city might have been altered.
The driver of the roadster was the furtive, mysterious Scraggs.
Though Wheeze McGovern had not guessed the identity of the man in the roadster,
it was apparent Scraggs had recognized the other car. A short distance down the
road the little car squealed to a stop.
Turning, Scraggs was perhaps half a mile from the sedan. His foot pressed the
gas and he sped toward it.
It being early evening, traffic from the city showed a dozen dancing headlights
at the same time. Three other cars passed Wheeze while ScraggsÆs car was
creeping up behind the sedan.
The driver of one of these cars also slowed down. Only a minute later, a big car
whizzed by both Scraggs and the sedan, coming from the rear.
Out of the night, from the midst of the blazing headlights, another light
suddenly appeared. It was blue and cold; The Cold Light. The happenings of the
succeeding moments were so fast, an observer would have had no time to fix
details in mind.
Only it seemed the Cold Light had been directed at Wheeze McGovernÆs big car.
The blue-steel ray must have missed, for the sedan abruptly spurted ahead.
The long beam of the Cold Light shifted from the highway. The sender undoubtedly
was seeking to pick out Wheeze. The knifelike ray laid a silver pathway that
could have been seen for miles. But for only a second. Perhaps only a fraction
of that.
The Cold Light picked out the wooded area from which Wheeze and his men had
lately emerged.
The following roaring explosion had the might of an unleashed volcanic crater.
Vivid blue flame rushed through the trees toward the highway. An excavation the
width of the East River was being ripped across the formerly peaceful
countryside.
For miles, the earth rocked and trembled.

THE suction of the tremendous blast was so great that a dozen cars were caught
in the fury of the air stream. They slid from the highway, catapulting into the
ditches. Two automobiles were deposited up in the edge of the field through
which the lurid blue blaze had rushed.
The Cold Light was flicked off. Instantly, the tumult and fury of the main
explosion died. Only the reverberations and echoes remained.
At the scene of the apparent origin of the tearing explosion, when the first
State police arrived, was only an immense crater. Here the woods and all the
surrounding territory had been gouged out to great depths. An area of more than
ten acres was a deep excavation.
Not a stick or even the splinter of a tree remained. It was as if the house,
with its exotically furnished living room, had never existed.
Though the Cold Light had deliberately sought out the sedan of Wheeze McGovern,
the car had escaped its direct force. Other cars near by had hurtled from the
highway.
Even before the tearing chaos of the explosion had begun to die down, globules
of sweat were popping from Wheeze McGovernÆs forehead. His double chin trembled
and shook.
"Itùsissùgot her! Stepùsissùon it! No, wait!"
Ahead of the sedan, a closed car had turned over in the ditch. A woman was
crawling from a window. She was screaming. Blood ran from a cut on her forehead.
One arm dangled.
Wheeze sprang from the car. The woman moaned.
"Oh, my son! Please, my sonÆs down in there!"
Wheeze got down and pulled the inert figure of a boy from the crashed auto. The
youth was undoubtedly past all human aid. Wheeze opened the rear door of the
sedan and got the body inside.
Then he helped the woman get in. He followed.
"Now you canùsissùstep on it plenty!" he wheezed.
The sedan whirled cityward. The speed crept up past seventy miles an hour. Two
motor cycle cops flagged the car down.
"All hellÆs busted loose back there!" rapped Wheeze. "Maybe a dozen people
killed! WeÆre getting this woman and the boy to a hospital!"
The coppers saw five respectable-looking citizens. The woman with the bloody
face was an argument.
"Right!" assented one of the cops. "Hope you make it in time!"
The motor cycles sped on toward the scene of the explosion.
The policemen did not know when they passed a furtive figure behind the fence
over in a field. They did see a paint-less roadster upended on its nose.
The little man known as Scraggs crouched close to the yawning gash of the Cold
Light explosion. His luminous eyes glowed with hatred. His tongue licked his
thin lips with seeming satisfaction, as he looked toward the place where the
house had been.

Chapter 22. SHADOW OF DEATH
DOC SAVAGE used a plane to arrive at the scene of the latest Cold Light
explosion. He instructed his companions to be on their guard and await his
return to the hangar, before going to headquarters.
Havoc wrought by the new blast was such as to have destroyed any further lead to
the mysterious Var. A Long Islander divulged the information that a woman with a
number of servants had occupied the house.
The woman had been there only a short time. The house had been privately built.
Several hoursÆ check-up would be necessary to discover its owner.
Doc judged the Cold Light ray had been projected from an automobile. The word of
frightened witnesses bore out this theory.
The bronze man spent no more time here. He was convinced that a woman had died.
Returning to the Hudson River hangar, Doc announced, "WeÆll go first to
headquarters, then have a look at that penthouse west of Central Park where Monk
was imprisoned. VarÆs men might not use it again, but there are some things
there I should examine. We will take the ex-neutralizers with us."
Reaching the skyscraper headquarters, the four men ascended in the private,
high-speed elevator.
In the foggy street behind them, a tall shadow moved from a doorway. The manÆs
hat was pulled low. His eyes burned in the darkness.
Waiting until Doc and his companions had vanished, the man drew out a cigarette
case. Gently, he tapped the smoke on the silver box. He was watching the window
of a tall building only a block away.
Other windows in the row on that floor were lighted. This one was
distinguishable by its darkness. But in its square, back space glowed for an
instant a tiny light. It was as if a man had just lighted a cigarette.
The man in the street was computing the time required for one of the regular
skyscraper elevators to reach the eighty-sixth floor. Unfamiliar with DocÆs own
speedy, private cage, the man had loitered in the building lobby for some time
previously. He had made a careful check on the elevator indicators. He was sure
he had the lifts timed to the second.
A full minute passed, then seven seconds more. The man flicked on his cigarette
lighter. He swung it in three small circles past his face. Then he stepped back
into a doorway and applied the flame to his own smoke.
His next movement was fast. With a bound, he crossed the pavement and entered a
low-slung car. The gears screamed protest. The driver took the first corner
recklessly. The car gathered speed. A red traffic light loomed ahead.
The driver disregarded the signal, shooting across between a car and a truck. He
heard a policemanÆs whistle, but he only smiled. For he had timed everything to
make sure he would be at a sufficient distance. By the time the angered traffic
cop overtook him, if he did, he was sure the policeman would have something else
to take his attention.

DOC and his men were a good three minutes ahead of the furtive manÆs carefully
plotted schedule when they reached the eighty-sixth floor.
The outer door leading into the reception room opened. Doc stepped inside. The
bronze manÆs eyes went to the broken window. His calculation and reaction was
lightning fast.
Doc glided to the inner door leading to the laboratory. The door opened.
Doc was carrying one of the ex-neutralizers. His hands moved with incredible
speed. The electromagnetic ray laid its wall across one side of the big room.
"Cover the other side, Long Tom," he directed. "We are about to entertain the
Cold Light ray again."
Before he had finished speaking, the Cold Light had sliced the laboratory. The
blue-steel ray cut through the thick wall of the building as if it were a fog
bank.
"HowlinÆ calamities!" grunted Monk. "That fella Var donÆt seem to know when to
quit!"
But the Cold Light was effectively blocked by the ex-neutralizer wall spreading
its invisible fan from DocÆs hands. Against this strange electromagnetic force
it wavered and dissolved. It played with weird effects across the retorts and
polished spheres of the chemical and electrical equipment
"Hold it," said Doc, calmly. "Here, Monk, take the box. WeÆve had a visitor
while we were gone. If he had been able to replace that broken window, I fear,
brothers, we now would have joined the long list of VarÆs victims."
While the Cold Light still played futilely against the invisible wall, Doc
strode across the laboratory. His eyes searched among the clutter of tubes and
glasses on the laboratory tables.
"Not anywhere here," he stated. "Keep the ex-neutralizers at work, even after
the Cold Light leaves. He might think to surprise us and flash it back."
DocÆs surmise was correct. The Cold Light vanished. It was gone for a minute.
The bronze man continued his search. Finally he shook his head.
"WeÆve had a visitor," he said slowly. "But he doesnÆt seem to have left a
calling card."
The Cold Light came back for a second visit. Its play was briefer this time.
Then it was switched off. Doc directed the ex-neutralizers be set to protect the
laboratory while they armed themselves.

HAM walked over to the laboratory sink. Immediately, he called out to the
others.
"Quick! Get out before the water hits these things!"
He was scooping up the four globular "poison pills" and the two cubelike ones.
The dampened area from the dropping water was within an inch of touching the
first of these. Ham had no doubt but that a trap of deadly gas had been set for
all of them.
"Our visitor had it figured too closely," said Ham. "In another few minutes, the
place would have been full of the gas, if thatÆs what these things are intended
to do. We arrived just a little ahead of the killerÆs schedule. Say! Scraggs
knew where you put the poison pills!"
Doc looked at the white pellets lying in HamÆs palm.
"Yes," said Doc. "Vonier and Carberry also knew. The Cold Light might have been
a diversion to keep our minds elsewhere. IÆll take those pills, Ham. We must
find Renny."
DocÆs assured manner informed his men he had arrived at some definite conclusion
which he was not yet ready to divulge.
Long Tom was bending in front of the leaden safe. His nervous, long fingers were
rubbing across the door.
"Used the torch on this to get them out," he remarked. "Neat a job as I ever
saw."
Doc wrapped the pills in a silk handkerchief and placed them in his pocket.

DOC SAVAGEÆS Intention to investigate the penthouse where Monk had whipped a
robot might have been a great relief to Renny, if he could have known of it. For
Renny was conscious when he was carried up a stairway. His eyes and mouth were
taped, but sound and his sense of direction informed him he was near Central
Park.
Renny had counted floors while on an elevator.
"Holy cow!" he grunted. "You wouldnÆt think the boobs would be that dumb! ItÆs
the same place they had Monk, or IÆm no judge of descriptions! This will be the
first place Doc will make for!"
RennyÆs elation at the apparent dumbness of his captors was only short-lived. He
was dumped roughly into a room. This was so small it seemed to be little more
than a narrow closet. RennyÆs huge body required considerable room.
The tape was suddenly and roughly torn from his eyes. Renny mumbled a bellow of
rage through his sealed lips.
"Go on and howl, big fellow!" said a hard voice. "YouÆll be glad in a minute
weÆre letting you look everything over!"
The man stepped back. Renny was amazed to discover he was looking through a
doorway where there was no door. The sides of the frame were of gleaming copper
strips. Renny had been placed far back in the little room. He was perhaps ten
feet from this metal-sided entrance.
The man who had spoken was standing with several others on the rug of a
curiously painted room. The walls were of aquamarine. Renny stared at the
opposite side.
MonkÆs story of the metal man he had ripped apart was proved. A glass door had
been shattered. An armless, broken robot stood in the room back of the smashed
entrance.
Renny stared at one of the weird oil paintings. It was that of the half-crab,
half-human figure depicted as arising from the coral-strewn bottom of the sea.
So this was the picture on one of the colored plates in VonierÆs little book?
Renny wondered how Doc had come upon that angle of VonierÆs activities.

RENNY was sitting now, with his back propped against the back wall of the
closetlike room. He looked sharply at the men outside. He judged that Var was
not among those present.
One of the men said, "And right now, big fellow, youÆre figuring how you might
roll yourself outta that nice, little cell. Well, just in case you try it, IÆll
give you something to think about!"
The man was at least six or seven feet distant from the copper-plated entrance.
He walked over to the far wall, threw an electric switch and returned. In his
hand he held an ordinary walking stick with a thick, rubber tip.
He reached with the cane and pressed on the rug several feet from the copper
doorway. Instantly, there came a wicked crackling. An electrical current of high
voltage leaped across the space of the entrance. It played with vivid flashes.
"YouÆll notice itÆs the works," said the man with the cane. "And if my foot or
your foot were where this cane is, thereÆd be nothing left but to bring on the
lilies. Now, big fellow, itÆs about six feet from where you are to the doorway.
The plate on your side starts only a few inches from where youÆre sitting."
Renny could see he was hopelessly trapped. His mind leaped to another angle of
the ingenious death trap. Had VarÆs monstrous crew thought of that? He wasnÆt
left long in doubt.
"And now," continued his tormentor, "we will leave you. No doubt, your brainy
chief will think of this penthouse. HeÆll figure we wouldnÆt be dumb enough to
come back here after your ape-faced partner escaped. But heÆll want to have a
look, anyway."
Renny tried his muscles against the multiple cords.
"So, Doc Savage will be along presently," the man went on. "We wonÆt be visible,
but weÆll be close by. Naturally, heÆll make a hunt for you. Probably wonÆt
believe youÆre here until he sees you in this closet. That will be pretty.
"There you are. You canÆt talk or move. You can only use your eyes. WeÆll leave
a light on, so you canÆt be missed. No doubt, the smart Doc Savage will
immediately suspect the copper doorway is a trap. But he canÆt know how far the
plates reach under the rug.
"So your chief will walk up close enough to inspect the device." The man used
the cane againù"Like this!"
The walking stick was sheathed with metal. The rubber tip had been worn thinner
than the man using it had noticed. A blue electrical spark suddenly played along
the cane. It writhed and twisted around the manÆs hand.
With an oath frozen on his lips, the victim succeeded in heaving himself free.
He rolled to the floor, cursing wildly. Renny detected the odor of scorched skin
and flesh.
The man got to his feet, his body shaking. He rubbed his burned hand. His face
was white.

Chapter 23. DEATH THREATENS DOC
RENNY could only stare at the fiendish trap. His tormentor had presented only
facts. Even Doc could have no reason to suspect other than that the doorway
itself was highly charged. Renny groaned under the gagging tape. He hoped Doc
and the others would believe it useless to visit the penthouse where Monk had
been held.
But at this moment, four figures were emerging from the skylight of a roof less
than half a block from the penthouse.
"So up hereÆs where you chewed up an armored robot?" grinned Ham maliciously at
Monk. "And it didnÆt seem to make even a dent in that prognathous jaw."
"Dag-gone it!" squeaked Monk. "IÆll bet thatÆs an insult!"
Doc cautioned silence. Long Tom was following him closely, as they kept near the
coping walls along the street side of the roofs. Long Tom was carrying one of
the ex-neutralizers and Monk was burdened with the other.
Doc expected to find the penthouse deserted. He reached the shelter of a chimney
where he could see the structure rearing above the apartment house roof. To his
surprise, the windows of the penthouse glowed with mellow light.
Directing the others to keep back in the shelter of the shadows, the bronze man
glided forward. In the vague light his movement could hardly be detected, so
swiftly he moved from one shadow to another.
Doc flattened himself beside one of the windows. He was looking into the room
with vivid blue paintings. He saw the illustration about which Monk had
exclaimed in VonierÆs book.
He saw another painting. The same figures had been in VonierÆs book. It looked
as if the author had caused the room to be created. The bronze man considered
the relation of this room to the emotionless explorer.
Doc was using one thumb against the window casing. With only the pressure of
this, he was slowly raising the sash.
The room was in confusion. The drawers of a desk had been pulled out. A few
papers were strewn on the floor. There was other evidence that several persons
had taken a hasty departure. A door which apparently led to a stairway was
partly open. A manÆs hat and one glove lay on the floor near this exit.
A bottle of ink had been spilled on the expensive rug. It was logical the Var
men might have fled hastily after MonkÆs escape.
Though a night had passed, if no person had visited the penthouse, it was not
unreasonable to suppose the lights might have burned all day. DocÆs instinctive
senses put him on guard.
One bronzed hand gestured his companions to stay back. He eased himself into the
room.

DOCÆS figure was fully revealed. He judged if this were a trap, the time had
come for it to be sprung. Nothing happened.
The bronze man studied the marine paintings intently. From an inner pocket, he
brought out VonierÆs thin book. After a brief comparison, he nodded. From
another pocket came another book. This second volume was not illustrated. It was
a leather-bound volume. But its text was printed in bright blue ink.
Looking at the picture of the half-crab, half-human figure, Doc started reading
the accompanying text, when, from across the room, came a muffled, guttural
sound as if some one were strangling. Doc sought its source. He saw the
closet-like room into which Renny had been crowded.
His keen eyes saw the engineerÆs hunched figure. Though bound hand and foot, his
mouth taped, Renny was going through queer contortions. Doc strode across the
larger room.
Now he could see RennyÆs position more clearly. The big manÆs eyes were blinking
rapidly. His head shook violently. He was trying to warn Doc of something.
The bronze man moved closer. He was only about eight feet from the doorway.
Renny moaned under the tape. He reared to his heels. He lunged forward, heaving
his big body directly toward the concealed death plates.
In his loyalty to the bronze man, the giant engineer counted his own life a
slight sacrifice. If he could only strike the hidden peril in such manner as to
prevent Doc Savage being electrocuted, Renny felt it would be much more than
worth the price.
Instinct developed in many situations of extreme danger, brought instant
understanding to Doc. As Renny hurled himself toward the doorway, DocÆs own
springy body left the floor.
The almost simultaneous action of the two men carried their leaping bodies clear
of the floor. They were, for the moment, as agile and fast as two great apes of
the jungle. Two bodies cannot remain suspended for more than the fraction of a
second. Renny, knowing the truth, groaned deeply in mid-air. He had accomplished
nothing. Doc would die along with him. The striking of their weight would make
the fatal contact.

MONK, as ever venturing beyond where he had been instructed to go, had reached
the window opened by Doc. He had watched the bronze man as he paused in the face
of danger to read a book, examine the paintings.
Now he witnessed the inexplicable action of his chief. Monk could not possibly
reach either of the flying figures. To his awe-struck senses it seemed as if the
bronze man and Renny were bent upon annihilating each other. The purpose of
this, Monk could not fathom.
His own instinct told him this was his cue to do something. It was not within
human possibility to reach either of the men. Monk did the next possible thing.
He had no conception of what it would accomplish.
The ex-neutralizer box was in his hands. Monk flicked the switch. The focusing
slot of the invisible wall was pointed directly at the copper-lined doorway.
Renny and Doc collided in mid-air. Big as he was, the breath hissed from RennyÆs
lungs. He strove to make his weight hurl Doc backward.
They dropped together upon the rug between the deadly copper plates. There was a
lurid, blinding flash of high-frequency current. Like the bursting of a freakish
floating ball of lightning, the side of the room where the switch was concealed
exploded in blue smoke and yellow flame.
Renny and Doc rolled over together. RennyÆs breath was gone. His ankles and his
wrists were still tightly bound. He had leaped with the propelling force of his
corded leg muscles. DocÆs quick hand pulled the tape from the engineerÆs mouth.
"Holy cow, Doc!" Renny gasped, as darkness enfolded them. "Are we dead?"
"IÆm all right," replied Doc, bounding to his feet. "WeÆll remove these cords.
WeÆre due to have visitors."
Monk stood for a moment in petrified silence. As yet, he hardly realized what he
had done. Then he heard Renny and Doc speaking, and the apelike engineer exhaled
a mighty breath of relief.
"HowlinÆ calamities!" he grunted. "SomethinÆ sure busted somethinÆ!"
The something had been the invisible wall of the ex-neutralizer. Before either
Doc or Renny had hit the concealed plates intended for the bronze manÆs
electrocution, the electromagnetic ray had flashed through the closet doorway.
The invisible wall had the effect of interposing an insulating, non-conducting
element in the space across which the high-voltage current would have jumped.
This intangible, yet powerful, force had cut the circuit in such a manner as to
short circuit the high-powered wires at the hidden switchboard.
Fuses and a part of the board had gone out. With these went the house lights.
The strange room with its aquamarine paintings was instantly a dark cavern.

EVEN as DocÆs fast hands were slitting the cords off Renny, men were pouring
into the room.
"It didnÆt get æem!" snarled a voice. "I heard them speak! We canÆt take chances
now! Let æem have it!"
The bronze manÆs shoulder struck Renny and heaved him far to one side. They
rolled to the far wall on the deep rug.
Half a dozen flashes mingled with the vicious, whiplike crackling of silenced
pistols. Leaden slugs were ripping into the copper-sheathed door frame.
The bronze man was holding one of the anaesthetic gas capsules.
The gas capsule would have rendered any number of men helpless. But VarÆs force
was strong. Doc divined that not all were in the room. Before Renny and he could
make their way out, Renny might be hit by the gas. The engineer was not capable
of holding his breath half as long as Doc.
More bullets were being poured across the room. Doc felt the searing touch of
one across his neck. Renny grunted. A slug was buried in his shoulder. The
bronze man caught Renny and made another gliding change of base.
There came the sound of crashing blows. Monk was shouting.
"IÆll pulverize yÆ for that!"
"Look out!" warned one of VarÆs men. "ThereÆs another one hereù"
The speech was sliced off with the cracking, splintering impact of a blow. A box
was shattered.
Monk had swung the ex-neutralizer box as a weapon. The man who had spoken, and
another man, crashed down in the darkness. The unexpected landing of the apelike
chemist into their midst was the beginning of a frenzied battle.
VarÆs men were striking each other in an effort to put their unseen foe out of
business. MonkÆs long arms reached out and enfolded victim after victim. When he
drove them together, some heads were irreparably damaged. Others were merely
knocked senseless.
VarÆs men had ceased shooting. They were so tangled and scattered by MonkÆs
steam roller attack as to lose all sense of direction. Those still on their feet
could see only the dim square of light coming from below. It marked the secret
stairway from the penthouse.
A few of MonkÆs victims were breathing heavily from the floor. Then Renny let
out a bellow.
"Stop it, Monk! You wanta break my neck!"
Renny heaved once. He was more than a match for the apelike Monk. The chemist
smashed into one of the oil paintings. There was momentary silence.

THE whole battle had taken up less than two minutes. DocÆs pencil of light from
his generator flash picked out eight men huddled on the floor. The bronze man
gave several faces a brief study.
"The only way, brothers, we can help these men is to remove the temptation that
drew them into this," Doc stated. "TheyÆre men of brains. Surgical treatment
would do them no good. Remove the power of Var and theyÆll return to their
professions."
The sound of the retreating survivors of the encounter was dying out.
"ThereÆs only one thing here we want," Doc stated. Using the flashlight, he slit
one of the oil paintings free from the wall with swift strokes of a knife. It
was the picture of the half-crab, half-human form. The oil work was on canvas,
secured by its edges to the wall of the room.
Then Doc said, "ItÆs strange, Long Tom and Ham arenÆt here. They must have heard
the shooting."
The three men hurried through the open window to the roof. Doc called out.
Neither Ham nor Long Tom replied.
The bronze man led the way, gliding over a roof coping. Three bodies were lying
near an open skylight. It was quickly revealed that none of the three was Ham or
Long Tom.
Bending over one of the bodies, Doc pointed out, "HamÆs sword got him!"
The unconscious manÆs cheek had been pierced by the keen point of HamÆs cane
sword blade. The anaesthetic drug had done its work. The same treatment had been
parceled out to the other two.
Examination showed the skylight of this roof had been smashed. There was a small
pool of blood near by.
Excited voices were coming up from the floor below. Doc led Monk and Renny in a
swift descent. Panicky residents of the apartment house were pouring into the
hallways.
Doc quickly learned a number of men had tramped through the upper corridor. They
had pushed their way to the roof. One man had heard the scuffling noises of a
fight.
"Then they came tumbling back down!" this man said. "They were carrying one man!
He had a camera box in his hands! They had handcuffs on another man! He looked
like a gentleman! Funny! Come to think of it, all of them looked like
gentlemen!"
"The other ex-neutralizer!" groaned Renny. "That lays us wide open to the Cold
Light ray, doesnÆt it, Doc?ùsince Monk smashed our other ex-neutralizer in the
fight."
"WeÆll not worry too much about that," said Doc, quietly. "WeÆve first got to
find Ham and Long Tom. Come on, brothers. I have a feeling we shall have
visitors very soon at headquarters."

Chapter 24. THREE VISITORS
THE visitors to Doc SavageÆs headquarters numbered three. The explorer, Vonier,
was the first.
Doc noted that throughout all of the crowded events of the past forty-eight
hours, the explorerÆs fixed expression of cold detachment had not varied.
Vonier drew the bronze man quickly to one side.
"Just in case something happens we canÆt control, IÆd like you to know one or
two facts that might help you," he offered. "This Cold Light, or the destructive
force it represents, contains one element to be found only at the greatest
depths to which man has ever descended in the ocean."
The explorerÆs smile gave him a derisive, cynical look.
"IÆd guessed that," Doc replied, quietly. "I got the hint of it directly from a
book."
Vonier started perceptibly. His intense blue eyes became like sword thrusts.
"Yes?" he said. "From a book? YouÆve known then that I knew?"
"Could hardly avoid that," said Doc, "seeing you wrote the book."
"Marvelous!" murmured Vonier. "For the past two days and nights, you havenÆt
slept. YouÆve been threatened by death from many directions. Yet during that
time youÆve read a book."
"Two books, to be exact," smiled the bronze man. "They are oddly alike in many
parts, though others are dissimilar. By the way, Vonier, do you count artistic
conception among your other varied accomplishments?"
VonierÆs reply was surprisingly direct, defiant.
"No," he said. "IÆm not an artist. I didnÆt paint the pictures in the penthouse,
if thatÆs what you mean? Now youÆll be askingù"
"Well, yes," interrupted Doc. "Where have you been during the day, and thus far
to-night?"
"Many places. And alone mostly. IÆve been very busy."
"I judged you had," said Doc. "So you havenÆt been much comfort to Carberry. I
imagined he would stick by you."
"Carberry had several phone calls," Vonier stated. "He went away to attend to
some important business. He was still greatly scared, but he said he would meet
me here to-night." Just then, the headquarters had a visitor. It was the
financier, Carberry.

CARBERRYÆS first words were, "I hear thereÆs been another big explosion. IÆm
almost afraid to walk in the streets. IÆve called the police commissioner and
asked for a special police bodyguard. I think heÆll be sending them up here."
"We will give you all the protection possible," Doc stated. "We employ our own
methods, and call upon the police only when some matter should be brought to
their attention."
"Indeedùwellùyou seeùSavage, IÆm terribly sorry," stammered Carberry. "IÆll call
the commissioner at once. I feel safer with you than I would with a squad of
coppers. Let me haveù"
"Never mind," interjected Doc. "IÆve been in touch with the commissioner. He
told me of your request. IÆve already instructed him not to send his men. The
commissioner himself is paying us a visit in a few minutes."
"Oh, thatÆs all right then," mumbled the financier. "I suppose then youÆve
turned those poison pills over to him?"
"No," stated Doc. "I shall analyze them myself. Some one tried releasing the
poison gas to trap us, so IÆm carrying the pills with me."
Carberry gasped.
"Carrying them with you, Savage?" His protruding eyes rolled. "DonÆt you
fearùwell, mightnÆt something happen?"
The immediate entrance of the police commissioner interrupted Doc from giving an
answer.
The police commissioner was a stocky, red-faced man. For good reasons, involving
countless past services, his faith in Doc Savage was boundless.
He had met both Vonier and Carberry. While he did not ignore the importance of
the financier or the cause of his fear of death, the commissionerÆs attitude was
abrupt.
After all, though he was a world figure, Carberry was but one individual. The
safety of millions had now been in the balance for two days and two nights.
"WeÆve got those men from the penthouse," the commissioner announced. "WeÆve
been checking. Not one has ever been mugged. We find they are doctors,
professors and the like of that. Only two have any kind of records. We believe
they have been international spies in Europe."
Doc nodded. This confirmed his quick analysis in the penthouse. None of these
men had the kind of brains requiring the usual treatment for the reformation of
crooks.
Carberry arose. His terror seemed to be returning in force.
"I just remembered," he said. "I think I should go out and put in a call to Mrs.
Carberry. I want to know she is still safe."
"You could call from here," suggested Doc.
"Wait a minute," interrupted the commissioner. "I think Mr. Carberry should stay
with us. In fact, all of us have something we ought to do at once. IÆve a dozen
carloads of men on the way, but I came directly because I have to admit IÆm
afraid they canÆt stop this one."
"Holy cow!" muttered Renny. "ArenÆt things never goinÆ to quiet down?"
"We havenÆt any clue to your two men, Mr. Savage," the commissioner went on.
"But we have a phoned report that the Hudson River warehouse where you keep your
planes is to be the next spot visited by the Cold Light."

"WE must proceed to the hangar at once," Doc stated. "WeÆll have to do what we
can to get the employees to safety. Some of the workers are too loyal to flee
from any danger."
"I know," said the commissioner. "We tried warning them by phone."
"Get out the extra bulletproof vests," Doc instructed. "Commissioner, you and
the others need the protection. I believe this is much more involved than a mere
threat to destroy the hangar. It is a deliberate scheme to have us go out
there."
"If you think it is a trapù" began the commissioner.
"We shall go," said Doc, quietly. "Perhaps Vonier and Carberry would rather
remain here."
"WouldnÆt miss it for a million," Vonier said, promptly.
"I wouldnÆt feel safe anywhere but with you, Doc Savage," declared Carberry.
Doc was holding an extra bulletproof vest in his hands.
"WeÆve all got our vests, Doc," said Monk. "Why are you taking that one?"
A thin voice interrupted from the doorway of the outer office.
"Your Hudson River hangar is the next place Var intends to hit, Doc Savage."
Scraggs was standing there. His thin face was gray.
"I have been expecting you," replied Doc. "This vest is too big for you, but you
will be wise to put it on."
ScraggsÆs sunken eyes were staring now at Carberry, much the same as he had
looked at Vonier a few hours previously.
With Ham and Long Tom missing, there was ample room for the four extra men in
DocÆs armored car. The bronze man sent the motor at high speed across town.

ALL streets in the vicinity of the hangar were deserted. The commissioner had
caused police lines to be drawn several blocks from the innocent-appearing old
warehouse.
This building housed Doc SavageÆs latest in planes, his dirigible and two types
of submarines.
As they passed the final police line, Doc glanced at Vonier, Carberry and
Scraggs.
"I would suggest you leave us here. I will go ahead with my men and have the
watchman and the other men get out."
"IÆd prefer to be in at the finish," remarked Vonier, crisply. "IÆve a funny
hunch this will be some sort of a showdown."
"IùIùwouldnÆt want to stay here alone," Carberry quavered. "I mean with the
police. IÆd like to go along."
"IÆm seeing this through," came the positive voice of Scraggs.
Doc never wasted words in argument. The strangely matched pair, the explorer and
the financier, had made their own choice. If they could have seen DocÆs
flaky-gold eyes at the moment, they would have guessed the bronze man was not
ignoring their safety as much as it seemed.
For Doc Savage had arrived at a direct conclusion with regard to the Cold Light
ray and its explosive effect. By simple elimination of certain facts, he had
reached the point of knowing much more than the men accompanying him would have
believed.
Doc was convinced there would be an explosion.
But right now, he was equally sure he had discovered the means of controlling
the blast and its effect. And he had no intention of seeing the hangar
destroyed.
The police lines took in a half circle about a half mile distant from the
warehouse hangar. More than five hundred coppers, all heavily armed and
instructed to permit no one to pass, formed the guarding ring. Police patrol
launches guarded the river side.
The coppers looked apprehensively at the dark canyons of near-by deserted
streets close to the hangar. The round-up had been made.
But this had not included buildings which seemed vacant. In the lower part of
another old warehouse were four automobiles. Each of these cars carried eight or
ten men.
Doc swung the car in front of the hangar. He regularly employed a crew of a
dozen mechanics and others.
Entering the hangar, Doc ordered all his employees to depart from what he
considered the danger zone surrounding the hangar. All excepting one mechanic.
"The rest of you wait here," Doc instructed his companions. "IÆm sending up a
plane. ItÆs just an idea that came to me."
"You mean, youÆre going up?" queried Carberry.
"Rather a big chance to take, isnÆt it, Savage?" came from Vonier." Remember
what happened to the Red Arrow ship, or would have if it hadnÆt been for you?"
"No, I wonÆt be going up," said Doc. "Just the plane."
Accompanied by the mechanic, the bronze man quickly moved one of the amphibian
planes. The little ship was equipped with a radio-controlling robot. But unlike
the plane in which Doc had been sent out over the ocean, this ship had
alternative hand controls.
The radio-robot could be cut off at any time by a pilot in the ship. He then
could handle the plane in the usual manner.

THE police commissioner went back with the departing hangar employees to issue
further instructions to his police lines.
Renny and Monk started an immediate prowl of the building. Apparently, no one
remained. Vonier and Carberry were left standing together. Carberry, especially,
seemed to prefer being where the light was brightest.
Scraggs glanced furtively around. Then he vanished with the quick movement of a
scuttling small animal.
Carberry remarked to Vonier, "Savage seems invincible.
Nothing gets by him. But IÆm afraid this time he hasnÆt much of an idea what
makes the Cold Light."
Vonier smiled thinly at the financier.
He said, "To put Doc Savage out of the running, youÆd have to get inside his
mind. For example, right in the middle of this turmoil and threats, he stops to
read a book."
CarberryÆs eyes protruded more than ever.
"Read a book?" he queried. "What book?"
"Oh, the little thing I did on marine energy," replied Vonier, lightly. "Perhaps
he thought he had something there."
From the near-by warehouse, men were moving. They were keeping in deep shadows.
Doc Savage had ordered roof and river landing lights of his hangar on at their
brightest. Carberry and Vonier remained near the open street door.

IN a nearer shadow inside the hangar, Scraggs was moving to concealment. He
watched intently as Doc Savage and the mechanic got the small plane into its
dockage ready for a take-off from the broad river. Scraggs watched until he saw
the man of bronze climb into the planeÆs cabin.
The mechanic wound up the inertia starter. Apparently, it was DocÆs hand on the
throttle. The bronze man revved the motor with a warming burst. He remained in
the cabin several minutes. Then he idled the motor and emerged.
"WeÆll leave it idle," the bronze man stated. "IÆll give it the gun with the
radio controls when IÆm ready."
With the mechanic beside him, Doc started back across the hangar. Sudden shouts,
harsh oaths and the sound of blows broke from the vicinity of the street door of
the warehouse.
Doc glided into a run. The mechanic was close at his heels.
Half a dozen men swooped into the light where Carberry and Vonier were standing.
A blow sent the explorer to his knees. Two men had seized his arms. He was being
propelled toward the shadows.
Carberry was putting up a stiff fight.
Though a man of slight weight, the financier was surprisingly effective. Nor,
now that he was in physical combat, did he seem afraid.
With catlike movements, Carberry had disposed of two of his attackers before Doc
and the mechanic could make it halfway across the floor. Another man seized the
financier, only to go somersaulting over CarberryÆs head.
But more men were pouring into the building. Carberry saw them coming. Suddenly,
his nerve seemed to desert him. The financier turned and darted across the
inside of the warehouse.
Vonier had shaken off his two attackers. To DocÆs amazement, the explorer also
took to his heels. He ran after Carberry.
Renny and Monk came bursting from behind a plane. There were now more than a
score of men. They had started to pursue Carberry and Vonier.

RENNYÆS sledge-hammer fists disposed of four men in quick order. Monk whooped
shrilly and his long arms flailed a disconcerting broadside of knuckles and
elbows into the leaders of the rush to grab Carberry.
Then a pistol flashed, and another.
"Let æem have it!" wheezed a high voice. "Look out! HereÆs Doc Savage himself!"
Over the arm of the moon-faced man with the rathole in the middle of his
countenance for a mouth appeared the snout of a machine gun. He turned it
directly upon the bronze man.
Any one looking on would have sworn Doc merely sidestepped the stream of slugs
without great effort. The fact was, DocÆs reactions under a pointed weapon were
a split-second ahead of the gunmanÆs trigger finger.
Wheeze McGovern cursed, and sought to bring the machine gun directly upon the
slithering figure of the bronze man. The mechanic groaned with pain and sank to
the ground. Some of the bullets had got him in the stomach.
Doc became a moving streak, hurtling himself straight upon Wheeze and his
crackling gun. With all his massive weight, he dived under the tearing streak of
death. One shoulder struck WheezeÆs stubby legs.
There was a sharp crack. Doc rammed his head upward. With one leg broken and all
the breath gone from his body, Wheeze dropped his weapon.
As Doc came to his feet, he saw that Renny and Monk were being overwhelmed by
numbers. Renny was handicapped already by having a bullet in one shoulder as the
result of the penthouse battle. Now he had a furrow across one temple and he was
staggering groggily.
Monk cracked the heads of two men together, his favorite pastime. Then he sprang
to RennyÆs assistance. A pistol butt crashed down on the chemistÆs head and sent
him to his knees.

DOC SAVAGE exploded suddenly in the midst of the attackers. His arrival had
about the same effect as a cyclone ripping through a field of dry corn.
DocÆs iron knuckles played at the ends of his corded arms with a speed too fast
for the human eye to follow. When his knuckles landed, one man stayed down.
Though there had been some shooting, the invaders of the warehouse were now too
closely packed to use their pistols. Nor did Doc or his men attempt the use of
weapons. In the bright light it was mΩlΘe for fists and muscles.
A group of six men remained on their feet. Seeing their leader, Wheeze McGovern,
was out, they started a retreat. As they withdrew, two men drew their pistols.
They now had a free play at Doc and his two companions.
They snarled hard laughs as they aimed the guns.
Two figures came lithely from the street outside. They were disheveled objects.
Cords still trailed from the legs of one. Handcuffs held the wrists of both men.
The mistake of Wheeze McGovern had been that he had not manacled the menÆs hands
behind them.
Long Tom was a slight specimen of manhood. He looked frail compared to any other
of DocÆs men. But he could make the average man very sick indeed in a fistic
encounter.
This time, Long Tom had an advantage. He swung the heavy handcuffs in sweeping
arcs. Two men were mowed down with bleeding heads.
Ham, the lawyer, was quick as light. His favorite weapon was his trusty sword
blade. Lacking this, the steel handcuffs seemed to serve very well. The manacles
crashed on three heads before the men could get themselves set.
Almost abruptly, there were only four or five men left of the gang, and these
were running toward the street.
"They wonÆt find the cars theyÆre looking for!" panted Ham. "Long Tom tore out
their ignition wire!"
Doc was starting toward the door of the lighted radio control room.
"Keep an eye on all of these men," he instructed. "You neednÆt trouble about the
one with the machine gun. He has serious trouble with his legs."
Doc was in the door of the control room. A slim figure ran past the edge of the
lighted area.
The running man was Scraggs. He vanished in the direction Carberry and Vonier
had taken. Neither the explorer nor the financier had reappeared, although all
pursuit was definitely ended.
Doc stood before the radio controls. He closed a switch. In its take-off dock,
the motor of his small plane roared on fuller throttle.
The bronze manÆs hand moved over to the impulse that would control the take-off.
His hand never reached it.
The little ship suddenly lifted its tail and moved out upon the river. Gathering
speed, its nose lifted under an expert hand.
Some one was in the radio-controlled plane. It was being zoomed into the air in
the direction of the ocean by a human hand.
DocÆs eyes held little golden whirlwinds of light.
He knew the mystery pilot of the zooming plane believed him still to be carrying
the "poison pills" in his pocket.

Chapter 25. THE RUNAWAY PLANE
THE police commissioner was in the doorway of the radio control room. He stared
at Doc Savage. DocÆs feet were braced wide apart. He was looking up at the sky
through the observation window.
"YouÆre sending up a plane with the radio robot?" questioned the commissioner.
"WhatÆs the idea, Mr. Savage?"
"It was my idea to send up a plane with the radio," stated Doc, tersely. "Now,
itÆs another idea altogether, and I donÆt know but itÆs a good one."
Renny appeared beside the commissioner. He was mopping blood from his long,
solemn face.
"Holy cow, Doc!" he exclaimed. "I thought all the time that skull-faced explorer
would bear watching. HeÆs in that plane! I saw him run over that way."
Ham pushed his way in.
"YouÆre wrong, Renny, this time," he interposed. "ItÆs that ratty little fellow
Scraggs. I was watching him making for the plane when Doc came in here. HeÆs
making a get-away!"
Doc smiled a little.
"Time will tell us that, and it wonÆt be such a long time either," he said. "Has
Carberry returned?"
"Not him!" supplied Monk. "The last I saw of him he was high tailinÆ for the
police lines!"
Doc was watching the riding lights of the small plane. The ship had been sent
steadily upward. It was nearly two miles high and its lights had faded in the
fog. Only the thin drone of its motor could be heard.
"Hope he stays that far up," said Doc, crisply. "Just the same, IÆd advise all
of you to get back toward the police lines. I could switch off the hangar
lights, but IÆd rather have him come back over the river than try landing some
other place."
"Why? Do you think heÆll come back?" said the commissioner, doubtfully. "I think
whoever it is, heÆs making his get-away. HeÆll probably land somewhere up or
down the coast. IÆll get to one of the cars and send in a radio warning to be on
the lookout for him."
"That will hardly be necessary," smiled Doc.

THE others obeyed the suggestion. They listened. They heard nothing. Only DocÆs
keenly tuned auditory nerves had detected the thrumming of the planeÆs motor
growing steadily louder.
In fact, Doc was the only one among them who had not lost the vibration
altogether. Even at its farthest point away, the bronze man had judged the plane
to be nearly two miles high and still climbing.
The enigmatic smile deepened across DocÆs bronze jaws.
He alone knew that the mysterious pilot of the runaway plane was expecting to
hurl destruction upon the warehouse hangar. That the man at the controls was Var
himself.
Var, at this instant, was sure he had the means of striking one mighty blow. A
blow that would not only wipe out DocÆs hangar, but end the lives of all of
DocÆs men and the police commissioner.
Moreover, Doc was now sure that VarÆs own men had turned upon him. He could read
only one answer to the attack of Wheeze McGovern.
McGovern, VarÆs chief aide, had made an effort to steal the Cold Light gun. He
lacked only this to complete the combination that would make him the master of
the shattering annihilator.
Once in possession of the gun, Wheeze McGovern had planned to embark on a career
of crime with his own selected companions. They had seen the chance to extort
millions from fear-crazed millionaires.
Doc was sure Wheeze McGovern never would obtain that gun. Its owner was flying
high, high in the sky over the man he most feared and hatedùDoc Savage and his
four valiant companions.
By a change of wind, the others now could hear the increasing beat of the
planeÆs propeller.
"Making for some inland field," said the commissioner. "HeÆs taking on altitude,
thinking weÆll have planes after him."
"HeÆs taking on altitude," replied Doc, "but not through fear of any other
plane. He believes heÆs putting himself far enough up to be beyond the danger of
his own deviltry."
"I donÆt understandù" the commissioner began.
His words were lost in a shattering explosion. Only Doc had seen that
instantaneous flash of the Cold Light ray. It was no more than the thousandth
part of a second. For the Cold Light had no distance to travel to reach its
objective.
A lurid cloud of blue flame spread across the heavens. Its weird illumination
made all faces in the group seem pockmarked and gray. Indeed, the face of the
commissioner was a chalky gray.
The blue cloud was only a momentary flash that lighted the sky from horizon to
horizon. The blast was like the impact of a battleship broadside.
The air about the group in the warehouse chilled. All of the hangar lights went
out as if a master switch had been pulled.
Then the silence was so complete each man thought his eardrums had been
hopelessly shattered.
DocÆs radio plane had totally dissolved, as if it had never been. From the lack
of any tiny bit of falling wreckage, it was conceivable that the terrible,
close-up force of the Cold Light explosion had disintegrated the ship into all
of its component atoms.
And with the ship, the man whose ghostly voice had announced, "I AMùVAR!"

RENNY was the first to find speech.
"Blazes!" he muttered, hoarsely. "So thatÆs the last of our friend, Vonier!"
Ham found his voice and spoke in the darkness.
"That rat Scraggs, you mean!" he rapped out.
Two voices murmured close by. Footsteps approached slowly.
"Who is speaking of us?" inquired the calm voice of the explorer. "WeÆre here to
talk for ourselves."
The eyes of Vonier were like bits of shiny blue glass against the light. Beside
him was the thin, shambling figure of the little man, Scraggs.
"I rather thought you would be around somewhere," said Doc Savage, quietly. "I
admit I was quite a bit mixed up for a while. But after I discovered Carberry
had written his book on the cellular origin of the human species from oil
paintings he had copied from your book, Vonier, I made some other inquiries."
"HowlinÆ calamities!" squeaked out Monk. "And he was with us most of the time!"
"Some of the time," corrected Doc. "But at no time when he was trying to explode
the Cold Light bombs."
"What do you mean, Doc, Cold Light bombs?" questioned Ham. "IÆve never seen
anything but the Cold Light itself."
"You carried some of them in your pocket for quite a while, Ham," said Doc. "I
seem to recall you rescued all of us from being poisoned by gas. You thought the
intention was to kill all of us in the laboratory by having them dampened."
"Good gosh!" exploded Monk. "And that shyster tries to pulverize all of us with
that weak brain of his!"
"I wonder," mused Renny, who had just thought of something. "Say, Monk. Maybe
Ham didnÆt do so bad. Come to think of it, you tried eating one of the bombs in
that Manhattan tenement. You thought it was only a gumdrop."
Long Tom broke in.
"Listen, Doc!" he exclaimed, excitedly. "You had six of the things in your
pocket!"
"ThatÆs what Carberry thought," said Doc, calmly. "In fact, I had them when we
came here. It was my idea to send them up in that plane and dive it into the
ocean. I had hidden them in the plane. And Carberry thought it was his chance to
destroy his enemies.
"You see, some of his own men were double-crossing him. If IÆd had the Cold
Light bombs in my pocket, it would have wiped them out as well as us. In a way,
he was driven to it, for this Wheeze McGovern had turned on him."

THE little man, Scraggs, was muttering.
"And I discovered who Var was just too late," he complained. "I was almost sure,
and I learned where his wife was hiding. I was on my way out there to-night,
when Carberry met Wheeze McGovernÆs car on the highway. I guess Carberry
suspected Wheeze and tried to stop him with the Cold Light."
"You knew there was something more, some element other than the Cold Light ray
that caused the explosions?" Doc suggested.
"Yes, I knew there was some sort of combination, for Jackson had told me that,"
admitted Scraggs. "But it was only after I saw in your laboratory those pills
you thought were poison that I got a real idea what the bombs might be. ThatÆs
why I started out to find Mrs. Carberry. I had a hunch the supply of bombs would
be wherever she was hiding. McGovern must have grabbed the bombs from the
woman."
Scraggs shook his head sadly.
"That was a terrible thing!" he went on. "The Cold Light missed McGovernÆs car.
McGovern had the rest of the Cold Light bombs, thousands of them, in insulated
boxes. But the ray would have exploded one of the uninsulated bombs if it came
within a ten-mile radius. ThatÆs why CarberryÆs wife never knew what happened. I
imagine McGovern had left some of the bombs open with that purpose."
"But," interposed the police commissioner, "how about the explosion at
CarberryÆs mansion? The voice he heard, that every one heard?"
"Among other things, I learned Carberry had been an actor, a character man
before he became wealthy," Doc stated. "He married a young actress. After the
murder of Jackson, the old chemist, they had it all fixed to put on a show, a
red herring across any trail the police might pick up."
"ThatÆs right," said Scraggs, eagerly. "Only they had me fooled. Jackson had
told me there was to be a test in the woods at the Carberry place, to frighten
the millionaire."

A FLUTTERING figure came running from the street door. It was the same lovely
girl who had appeared at the smashed Red Arrow plane, looking for Scraggs. All
were amazed when she threw her arms around the disreputable-appearing little
man.
"Scraggs, honey!" she exclaimed. "Are you all right?"
Scraggs looked at the others sheepishly, but his thin arms went around the girl.
"Meet Muriel Jackson, gentlemen," he said in a thin, proud voice. "You see, it
was her fatherùwell, I had to get his murderer."
The girlÆs face was bathed in tears. She hugged the scraggly head to her bosom.
"Well, IÆll be dag-goned!" sputtered Monk.
The homely chemist had a weakness for beautiful women.
Doc turned to Vonier.
"You suspected Carberry from the first, didnÆt you?" the bronze man questioned.
"But you werenÆt sure?"
"Right again, as usual, Savage," said the explorer. "Old Jackson read my book
and came to me to explain his experiments with an element I had mentioned found
in the depths of the sea. I told him it would be best to let it alone. He said
he wanted the army and navy to have it. I wasnÆt sure he had gone to Carberry,
but he mentioned having read the manÆs book and how like my own it seemed to be.
So I suspected he went to Carberry."
"Strange what angles a normally intelligent brain will take," Doc said, slowly.
"Carberry had a rich manÆs traditional respect for property rights. He owned
that Manhattan block he blew up. He was one of the biggest stockholders in the
railroad and he tried to blast the express. In trying to cover up his trail, he
laid the broadest possible one for his own detection."
"He was especially good at laying false trails," added Vonier. "He used a
special bright blue ink in writing warning notes. It happens I had used that
same sort of ink. I have a bottle of it in my study. Carberry adopted it."
"That clears that up," Doc stated. "I have seen the ink on your desk, Vonier."
"Saw it? On my desk?"
"Yes," replied the bronze man, "when I visited your study to confirm a few
deductions arising from your rather remarkable book."
"Is there anything on land or sea or in the sky you overlook, Savage?"
DocÆs quiet bronze smile was his only reply.

THE END