PROFESSOR STANLEY
Daylight saw the arabas and the cavalcade of Tibetans far to the northward. They had been traveling steadily. Traversing a mountain pass, they had encountered a snow flurry, for at this great altitude, no month was entirely free of a wintry touch. White flakes stuck to their clothing and to the shaggy fur of the ponies pulling the arabas.
They were crossing a sai, a great stretch of sand and boulders. Horsehair, which, with the first appearance of the morning sun, they had hung down over their eyes as a precaution against snow blindness, was still in place.
“My legs have become as dead yaks,” groaned a man, who was having difficulty lifting one foot and putting it ahead of the other.
They were all on the point of exhaustion, for there had been few halts for rest.
Due to their haste, and the necessity of untying and removing wounded men from atop it, the coffin-shaped box had not been opened. Nor had any of the strangely-sleeping men awakened.
The leader now advanced and rapped on the box.
“Are you comfortable, O fairest flower?” he demanded.
“Of course not!” replied a muffled, angry voice from within the box. “Let me out!”
The Tibetan smiled and dropped back among his men. The voice in the box he had recognized as Rae Stanley’s. He had, in fact, tapped on the box numerous times during the night. He wanted to make sure their prisoner did not freeze to death, for it was very cold.
The little caravan reached the edge of the sai. Below, in a valley, was a small, ramshackle village.
In architecture this settlement was not unlike the pueblos of certain American Indian tribes. The roofs, however, were of the sweeping Asiatic style.
It was evident the village had been long abandoned, and that the present tenants abided there only temporarily. Shaggy ponies were picketed near by, and riding yaks were to be seen.
Men came from the decrepit pueblo and stuck out their tongues at the newcomers by way of extending a polite greeting. More substantial welcome appeared in the form of yak horn goblets full of kumis. Having downed this beverage of fermented mare’s milk, the late arrivals immediately felt better.
“Is the all-wise Mo-Gwei present?” one asked.
“He is,” was the reply. “And he will see the fair flower at once.”
The coffin of a box was hurriedly unlashed from the two-wheeled cart. The wounded thugs were hauled off, together with the men who were strangely asleep.
“What evil magic has befallen these slumbering sticks?” growled a Tibetan.
“That, O-man-who-asks-questions, is a mystery.”
The weirdly quiescent fellows were dragged away to their quarters. Among the injured men, broken arms were the worst hurts.
“Come!” grunted a man. “Mo-Gwei awaits you.”
The casketlike box was carried toward the door of this village which was so remindful of one many-roomed house.
A particularly cold blast of morning wind came squealing across the sai and down into the canyon.
“Blessed be Mo-Gwei for selecting this abandoned Village of the Mad Ones for our temporary headquarters,” muttered a man. “I have no liking for the cold of these high places.”
* * * *
They bore the box down a narrow passage. One Tibetan, going ahead, lighted the way with a flaming bundle of tushkin, or mountain sage. There were no windows here in the depths of the dead town, and the way was inky.
The air smelled of the inevitable buttered tea, fermenting barley beer, and of men badly in need of a bath. An aroma of incense became noticeable and grew stronger, until it entirely overcame the less pleasant scents.
The cavalcade descended crude stairs, and wheeled into a room which was very large and lighted by two guttering copper lamps.
The chamber had been hewn from solid stone. There were no windows or other doors. No rugs padded the floor; no tapestries blanketed the walls.
The incense odor was almost overpoweringly strong here in this bare room.
“Lower the box, offspring of silly partridges!” rattled a shrill, quarrelsome voice.
No one had appeared. The piping voice was very loud, however. It penetrated to all corners of the room.
The men lowered the coffin-shaped case.
“Is the fair flower in that box?” asked the strident voice.
“Yes, all-wise Mo-Gwei.”
“Goats!” shrilled the weird voice. “Address me as Mo-Gwei, The Devil-faced, Master of the Blue Meteor, and Future Master of All Mankind!”
“It is the fair flower in the box, O Mo-Gwei, The Devil-faced, Master of the Blue Meteor, and Master of All Mankind to be,” the Tibetan repeated obediently.
The disagreeable voice rang out in laughter. Somehow, it sounded as if a guinea hen were cackling. Its owner was unseen.
“That has a sweet sound, my sons,” Mo-Gwei said when his mirth subsided. “I will be master of all that lives, and I will share richly with you who have cast your lot with me.”
The Tibetans licked lips, and looked greedy and pleased at this.
“Empty-headed ones!” shrieked the voice, suddenly changing from delight to squawking rage. “Do not stand there! Tell me—did you find any trace of those offspring of fishing worms, Shrops and Saturday Loo?”
“No trace, O Master.”
An irate screeching filled the room. It was not a guinea hen sound this time, but more of the racket which might be expected from a shrewish parrot.
“I should give you to the blue meteor!” it squawked. “Such dotards are of no use to one who will soon be master of all the world!”
The Tibetans blanched at this. Evidently Mo-Gwei was in the habit of carrying out such threats. They fell to their knees. Each man protruded his tongue as far as he possibly could.
Although ludicrous to an unknowing onlooker, such an exhibition was the most abject form of humility to these tribesmen.
“We searched industriously, O Future Master of Mankind,” whined a frightened villain. “But of Shrops and Saturday Loo, we could find no trace at all.”
“They are in Tonyi,” asserted Mo-Gwei. “The fact that the girl was in town proves Shrops and Saturday Loo were also present. They brought her.”
“They are concealing themselves cleverly, then, O Master.”
“I will dispatch more intelligent men to search for them,” declared Mo-Gwei. “Now dullards, open the box which holds the fair flower.”
The Tibetans pounced upon the coffin case. While untying the bindings, one man dared to look upward.
Mo-Gwei crouched on a bedlike platform which was suspended from the ceiling by four chains.
The platform was obviously of modern bullet-proof steel. Above it was a square opening through which Mo-Gwei no doubt clambered to reach his hanging perch.
The ceiling aerie was a simple device, but it guarded against attack by knife or rifle.
Of the master fiend himself, only a hideous purple mask was visible. The mask had a red clot of a nose, villainous yellow eyes, and two great upturned horns. It was intended to represent the yak demon, an ogre Tibetans consider among the worst.
“Here is the fair flower, O Master!” A Tibetan opened the box.
Had surprise possessed the power to kill, every disciple of Mo-Gwei in the chamber would have dropped dead.
* * * *
Instead of Rae Stanley, the mighty frame of Doc Savage raised from the coffin container. His bronze hand lashed out, the finger tips brushing the jowl of the man who had opened the box. The fellow collapsed.
A second Tibetan, chancing to have in his hand the sharp dao with which he had cut the bindings of the box, hurtled forward. He struck fiercely.
It seemed to the moon-faced fiend that nothing could prevent the steel thorn of his dao from finding the bronze man’s heart. He had knifed other men, and he had whetted his blade to a razor edge on his boots of yak hide. Experience and a sharp knife, he felt sure, would finish the bronze giant.
He even started a yell of triumph. “Ni kàn! Look! Watch him die——”
The blade gashed thin air. In a manner that seemed beyond human ability, the bronze man had moved aside.
The yell still pumping from his throat, the knifeman fell across the coffin of a box. But, as he went down, Doc’s fingers stroked his exposed skin. The wielder of the dao did not arise from his sprawled posture across the case, but lay perfectly motionless. A rather windy snore fluttered his lips.
The first man to fall also seemed asleep.
Both men had succumbed instantaneously to the magic in Doc’s touch.
Consternation gripped the other Tibetans. They fell backward, pawing for weapons. Two bolted unashamedly for the door.
Overhead, Mo-Gwei cackled like a guinea hen being forced to watch a hawk gobble up its chicks.
Doc scooped up the knife which had missed its mark in his heart. His gold-flake eyes drove a glance upward, but Mo-Gwei had prudently drawn all parts of his person from view. Doc threw the knife at a copper lamp, and the lamp hopped end over end and extinguished.
Stripping the bulky fur cap off the second unconscious man, Doc flung it at the other lamp. That, too, went out.
A monster of blackness seemed to swallow the room. Silence fell.
The Tibetans, with their guns drawn, were waiting for some sound from Doc. No doubt they were wondering, as well, how Doc had managed to take the girl’s place in the box.
In the excitement in Tonyi, of course, they had not noted the change in weight.
Not knowing of the tiny, portable radio transmitter which the bronze man carried, and with which he had directed his men to stage the attack in Tonyi, the Tibetans had reason to be puzzled. Eventually, it would dawn upon them that the assault had been made to draw them away from the casketlike box, so that the substitution of Doc for Rae Stanley might be accomplished without detection.
For a long time, probably, they would ponder how the voice of Rae Stanley—or a voice sufficiently like it to fool them—had spoken to them from the box.
The mystery would be clarified, however, to those who learned that Doc Savage, through unremitting practice, had developed an ability to imitate any voice, including even the shriller feminine tones.
* * * *
Doc Savage, positioning himself silently under the hanging, bullet-proof steel bed of Mo-Gwei, crouched low and leaped upward. His arms were extended high above his head. He hoped to reach Mo-Gwei’s bower.
The distance was too great. Dropping back to the floor, Doc made no sound. He heard Mo-Gwei stirring. The master of villainy seemed to be clambering up through the hole in the ceiling.
Doc pushed a hand inside his clothing and brought out an object of metal, approximately the size of a pigeon egg. He wrapped an arm around his head in such a manner that his ears were covered. He flipped the metallic egg across the room.
The entire earth seemed to jar apart, so terrific was the report which followed. The object had exploded in mid-air, and its blast, while doing no damage to walls or ceiling, almost ruptured eardrums. The flash of the blast was blinding, as well.
Doc removed his arm from his ears. His eardrums were singing. The Tibetans, with no protection over their aural organs, would be deaf to ordinary sound for some seconds.
Seizing upon the coffin box, Doc upended it under Mo-Gwei’s platform. He mounted the case, then used his flashlight briefly to locate the hanging bed of steel. He leaped, caught the contraption, and swung atop it. The deafened Tibetans did not hear him.
Mo-Gwei, however, had long since retreated through the ceiling hole.
Doc followed after him. He found himself on a level floor. His flash beam, waving like a white-hot wire, picked up mortared stone walls and a door. Doc whipped through the aperture.
Ahead, he caught a scuttling sound. He spiked his flash beam at the noise. Ugly flame licked at him, and he doused his light and weaved aside barely in time to let lead whistle past.
The bronze man went forward. He twisted through another low door.
The feet ahead were running. Obviously, it was Mo-Gwei in flight. Then came a grinding of rusty metals and a thump, noises which indicated a door was closing.
An instant later, Doc encountered the panel. It was solid, ponderous, and fastened on the opposite side. He rammed it with a Herculean shoulder. The cumbersome door only squeaked.
From his finger tips, Doc stripped tiny bronze caps. These were thimble-like, and so cleverly constructed that only closest scrutiny would reveal their presence.
The thimbles held tiny hypodermic needles containing a drug which induced instant unconsciousness. These devices held the secret of Doc’s magic touch.
With his finger tips freed of the caps, Doc drew another of the pigeon eggs of metal. He wedged this in a cranny in the coarse timbers of the door, released the time-trigger, and leaped back, hands covering his ears.
There was a flash, an ear-splitting roar! Parts of the ceiling came down. The door was turned into a cloud of flying beams and massive cedar planks.
Doc waded through the subsiding storm of wreckage and glided down the black corridor beyond.
Stairs led him downward. He listened as he descended. There was silence. He went on more rapidly.
The passage zigzagged right, then left, and dropped in a twenty-foot flight of stairs. Once more, Doc halted to listen.
There came a shriek, hideous with terror. It was followed by a slip-slap-slup of a sound. This terminated in a louder thump.
Doc ran forward, his flashlight gorging the gloomy subterranean corridor with light. He passed numerous closed doors.
“Help!” cried a feeble voice from behind one of these doors.
The word was in English.
Doc went on. More stairs dropped away steeply. He scooted his flash beam down these.
A man sprawled at the bottom of the steep stone staircase. He was folded in the middle, jackknifed backward in a fashion that meant a broken spine.
A repulsive mask of Bron, the yak demon, lay beside the awfully hinged body.
Doc descended swiftly, using his flash. Long before he reached the sprawled figure, he saw steam curling from the mouth and nostrils, from distended eyeballs, and from various oozing strings of crimson where skin had been broken in the fall. It was very cold, even in these depths, and the steam was formed simply because the body was moist and warm.
The man was dead, killed in the fall down the stairs.
Doc turned him over to get a look at the face. The features were altogether unlovely, being round and cheese-yellow, with black pencil dots for eyes and a tiny puncture for a mouth.
The dead man’s jaw sagged as Doc turned him over, and the small mouth came open to its greatest extent. Doc cast his light within. He sank to a knee and examined the interior of the lifeless one’s mouth.
Then, arising, he went back to the door at the top of the stairs—the door from behind which a voice had called in English for help.
The panel was secured on the outside by a stout bar. Shouldering the bar back, Doc prepared to open the door, but delayed the movement while he called out a question.
“Who is in there?” he demanded.
“Stanley,” quavered the voice. “Professor Elmont Stanley.”