THE DEVIL’S NEST
Men poured over the mountaintop from the left. They were Mo-Gwei’s followers, and they had been far to one side, so that they might escape the hideous effects of the blue meteor.
Despite the fact that none of them had been under the uncanny sky visitor, however, several individuals of weaker constitution stumbled erratically and seemed a little insane. They had not avoided the spell entirely.
In the lead bounded an apparition in brilliant yellow robes and a purple mask of Bron, the yak demon.
Mo-Gwei himself! He cried out in squawking tones like those of a magpie.
“The bronze man! Find the bronze man! Kill him instantly!”
A thug evidently took this to mean that all of the group overcome by the blue meteor were to be slain. He plucked a long sword, sprang to the side of Rae Stanley and lifted the blade.
The young woman stood perfectly motionless in the moonlight. Her eyes were wide and glassy. Although the sword blade was suspended before her eyes and murder rode the face of the brown fiend wielding the weapon, she gave no sign that she comprehended peril.
Her brain had ceased functioning.
The swordsman gathered his muscles for the stroke that would end her life.
There was a rap of a sound like that of a brittle stick breaking, only louder. The swordsman gave a small jump, and fell flat on his back, and spots on opposite sides of his skull began to turn red and moist, and to steam in the intense cold.
Mo-Gwei waved the automatic pistol with which he had killed his follower.
“Keep the prisoners alive for the time being,” he ordered; and his unearthly, cackling voice was even stranger than usual.
At the shot, every one had halted. They stood and stared at the dead man, at Mo-Gwei, at the girl and the others whose brains had suspended functioning.
“Find the bronze devil!” Mo-Gwei cackled again.
Round-faced men scattered hastily to comply with the order. They stood on the mountainside and peered downward, where boulders still gnashed together like great teeth. They strove to pierce the boiling fog of dust and snow.
“No one could live in that,” they muttered.
But they did not take Doc Savage’s demise for granted. Gingerly, making a human chain by holding hands, they descended the treacherous slope. They used powerful flashlights for illumination.
Over the settling débris in the valley, they scrambled. They peered into cracks and tried to lever boulders aside.
“It would be the work of an army to move all of this,” they decided.
So they went up to Mo-Gwei and reported.
“The bronze devil, who has the lives of a cat, is assuredly dead,” they said.
“If he is not dead, each of you will have a chance to try life without his head,” Mo-Gwei promised in his high, irrational gobble.
The men shivered, but stood their ground.
“We will not lose our heads,” they declared. “For the bronze man met his end in that landslide.”
“Good!” gibbered Mo-Gwei. “Tie all of these prisoners and bring them along.”
“Why not end their lives now?”
“Because, O men of small wits, the bronze devil may still live. In such case, we will buy him off with the lives of these others.”
“But the bronze one is dead.”
“It will do no harm to hold these friends of his. They are without their brains.”
“And what about Shrops?”
A horrible cackle of mirth came from behind the purple yak mask.
“I have a special hell to which I wish to consign Shrops,” said Mo-Gwei. “Come. Let us return to our castle.”
* * * *
Two hours later, the men of Mo-Gwei filed into their chief stronghold bearing Rae Stanley, Doc Savage’s five men, Shrops, and Shrops’s Tibetan aides.
The party made a great, evil cloud of humanity, which swarmed up one of the numerous mountain peaks of the region.
Atop the peak stood Mo-Gwei’s aerie. The place was not unlike a castle minus moat and drawbridge.
Walls were of brown rock, mud-mortared, and windows were almost nonexistent. The place towered fully three stories, and judging from the amount of debris below the walls, there must be numerous subterranean chambers. Roofs were of hardened mud.
Much of the south side of the peak on which the great structure stood, had slid away into a valley below in some past landslide, leaving a great sweep of loose rock and exposed clay.
Mo-Gwei stood beside the gate and watched the pitiful captives carried in. Toward the end he flew into a rage, wailing, “Where is their baggage?”
“We left it, O Mo-Gwei, The Devil-faced, Master of the Blue Meteor, and Future Master of All Mankind. Their luggage was too much of a burden to carry.”
“Return and get it, O-man-who-made-the-mistake-of-thinking-for-himself. And take with you a force of men to search that landslide thoroughly for the body of Doc Savage.”
“It is cold and not pleasant——”
“Silence! Go!”
The moon-faced man nodded, but not cheerfully. He glanced at the sky. It was very cold to-night, and moreover, indications were that a buran, one of the violent windstorms of central Asia, might strike before dawn. He knew better, though, than to argue with Mo-Gwei.
Gathering a squad of assistants, he shuffled off in the chill moonlight.
Mo-Gwei supervised the placing of the prisoners, following as they were carried down gloomy passages and through cavernous rooms that smelled of buttered tea and, farther on, of incense. The floors were of stone, and did not show great wear.
The entire structure had been built a long time ago, obviously, yet did not seem to have been much tenanted.
The captives were dumped in a large, windowless room, the door of which was crossed by a great bar.
“Guard them closely,” Mo-Gwei directed from behind his purple mask. Then he ambled off, yellow robes swishing, cackling demoniacal mirth.
* * * *
Silence fell within the confines of the ancient building. Occasionally low, guttural words of p’al-skad were spoken. Several times, meaningless bawling sounds rattled through the subterranean runways and cavernous rooms. These noises were human, yet without any quality of saneness.
The sounds were made by the victims of the blue meteor, and the Tibetans exchanged uneasy glances after hearing them. Calloused though they were, and familiar with the effects of the screaming blue thing, nevertheless the noises got under their thick hides.
Two hours ticked into eternity.
The men sent to get the baggage returned. They had made a quick trip, for it was cold, and running and keeping warm was easier than loafing and freezing. Anyway, they were excited.
“Mo-Gwei!” they shrieked. “Bad news, O Master!”
Mo-Gwei, still in yellow robes and purple Bron mask, came shuffling out of a passage. He might have been an evil animal exiting from its burrow.
“What?” he cackled.
“The baggage was gone.”
Mo-Gwei was ominously silent.
“Master, we looked in all places, but nowhere was there trace of what you sent us for,” insisted one of the party uneasily.
Mo-Gwei continued to say nothing. Back of the yellowish eyes of the Bron mask, the orbs of the man glittered. The yellow pupils of the mask were evidently colored glass, through which vision was possible. The upturned horns, great things that appeared like a set of needle-pointed handlebars, added to the villainous aspect of the masquerade.
“What else did you find?” he demanded.
His men squirmed. “There is naught, except that we could not find the baggage. It had vanished.”
The tone in which these words were spoken, however, revealed that they were not the truth. The men were not good liars. Mo-Gwei had spotted their uncertainty with the first speech.
“The truth!” he ripped.
“It seems that we will lose our heads, O Master,” a man wailed. “The bronze man still lives! We found a path where he had leaped clear of the landslide, and had stumbled through snow.”
“Did you not try to follow?” Mo-Gwei demanded ominously.
“We did. But the bronze man became stronger as he went on, and soon we lost the trail. It must have been he who carried off the baggage.”
Mo-Gwei launched into a cackling tirade which moved his followers to recoil in horror.
“I shall boil each of you in yak tallow, and crack open your skulls that the ravens may feast!” he snarled. “I shall——”
Abruptly, he fell silent, apparently considering.
“Your punishment can wait,” he said. “It may be that you can escape your just fate, if you do my bidding well.”
Every man went to his knees and stuck out his tongue to indicate his abject obeisance.