THE MAN IN THE WHITE HAT
The stuttering of the rapid-firer ended as abruptly as it had started. The last few empty cartridges to jump from the ejector mechanism tinkled brassily on the rocks. There was no sound after that, but the mad flight of a rabbit which had been frightened out of its wits by the sudden uproar. Eventually, that noise also died away.
“Bueno!” hissed a voice. “That, amigos, settles our troubles!”
“Si, si!” a low whisper agreed.
Men advanced. From the sound of their movements, there were four of them. They strode warily.
“Un fosforo!” commanded one. “A match!”
There was a tiny clatter of safety matches in a box. The box scraped open. But no match was lighted.
One of the marauders screeched! The sound was awful—as if invisible hands had seized his heart and were tearing it out. The ghastly peal trailed off in a sob—a sob like water pouring through a pipe.
The other three skulkers were brave enough. They leaped to assist their companion.
“Que hay?” yelled one. “What is the matter?”
He found out soon enough. Something seized his left arm—something which crushed flesh against bone with an awful pressure. The arm went numb with pain. It had no more feeling than a thick cord attached to his body. And by that cord the man was abruptly lifted and flung far to one side.
As he slammed down in brush and rocks, the man was quite sure that it could not have been a human hand which had seized him. It must have been some hulking colossus of the night.
He was wrong.
The other two men became aware of the truth, for their groping hands and striking fists encountered a form unmistakably human.
“En verdad!” choked one. “Indeed! It is the bronze hombre! Our lead missed him!”
The four men, seeing Doc sink as their shots roared, naturally supposed he was done for. Not knowing the blinding speed with which the bronze giant moved, they had been too optimistic.
Doc had been warned in advance by a faint click as a machine-gun safely was released, and had dropped in time to get clear. But some rapid-firer slugs had come so close that his ears still rang with their whine.
One of the would-be killers tried to use his machine-gun. The weapon muttered deafeningly! The bullets dug up a cloud of dust.
Doc seized the gun, pulled, and got its hideous gobbling stilled before it could do any damage.
Then came a new development. Somewhere near by, running feet sounded. Reënforcements arriving!
Doc listened, wondering if they were his own men.
They were not. A guttural ejaculation in Spanish told him that.
Flashlight beams—blinding funnels of white—jumped from the hands of the newcomers. The glare illuminated Doc.
One of the new arrivals fired a revolver. Had Doc not pitched violently to one side, that bullet would have ended his career. It was well aimed.
* * * *
Doc Savage had, for much of his life, walked in the shadow of peril and sudden death. Many men had sought to end his existence by violent means. To kill in defense of his own life, frequently seemed imperative. Yet Doc never did that.
The bronze man’s enemies by no means went unscathed. They frequently perished—but always in traps of their own setting. Doc did not take life with his own hands.
Doc still held the machine-gun which he had seized. He could have fired upon the approaching gunmen. His chances of downing them were excellent, for there seemed to be only two. But because of the darkness, he knew he would have to kill rather than merely wound.
Flinging aside in a leap that was of almost incredible length, Doc temporarily evaded the white funnels of the flashlights. Doubling low, he raced from the vicinity.
The surrounding terrain was level. Boulders and brush were both small, and would conceal a man only if he lay prone and perfectly still. Doc was forced to race fifty yards before he found adequate cover.
Twice, in that distance, flashlights found him and guns cackled noisily. One bullet cut his coat across the shoulders, but did not open his bronze skin. This was excellent shooting, since Doc was traveling at great speed.
He ducked into the shelter of a boulder, and waited.
The newcomers smashed out more random bullets. They made no effort at pursuit; instead, they helped the four they had rescued to stand erect.
The whole party retreated at a wild run.
Doc promptly set out after them. He deemed it wise to go slowly, for they blasted frequent bullets in his direction. At first, because it would be very dangerous, he made no effort to overhaul the group. Once they reached rough going, he intended to whip close to them.
He suddenly quickened his pace. The rusty squeak of barbed wire against staples had told him the men were mounting a fence.
An automobile engine burst into noisy life! Headlights came on. The car rocketed away.
There was a road beyond the fence, very dusty, but wide and well graded. Doc stood in it and watched the receding car. The tail-light bulb bad been extinguished, so he could not read the license number.
A flight of bullets came up the road from the receding auto, and Doc hastily quitted the thoroughfare.
Going back to the scene of the fight, he dabbed his flashlight beam about. Tracks were numerous. Doc’s practiced eye measured these for possible future reference. He gathered up several empty machine-gun and revolver cartridges.
Beside a studded bush, he found his chief clew. This was an extremely white Panama hat, wide of brim and high of crown. Inside the sweatband of the hat, printed in gold lettering, was a name:
OVEJA
Thanks to the darkness, Doc had not glimpsed the features of any of his attackers. The first four had been sprawled on the ground when the two rescuers appeared with their flashlights. Had they been on their feet, Doc might have glimpsed their faces.
Doc recalled the message in invisible chalk which one of his five men had left on the water glass. It had stated that Señor Oveja had donned a large white Panama. And who had read Doc’s wire asking the Mounted Police to surround the train on arrival? Oveja, of course.
Switching on his ultra-violet lantern, Doc resumed what he had been doing when the attack came—following the arrow markers left by his men. The indicators jumped out in unearthy blue flame at frequent intervals. The route angled away from the railroad tracks and mounted a hill.
Beyond the hill, lights were arrayed like white-hot beads strung on taut wires.
* * * *
The spots of iridescence were street lamps of the town which the train had been nearing when it had stopped so suddenly. It was not a large metropolis—only a few thousand in population.
Doc Savage followed the luminous arrows down the slope. They turned, paralleling the railroad. When the trail dropped into a small gulley, he used his flashlight, which gave a light as bright as burning magnesium.
The sandy gulch floor was pocked with tracks. To an individual of average perception, they would have looked pretty much alike. An experienced tracker might have known, from the depth of the prints, that two of the men making the tracks were very heavy, and that one was a woman.
Doc Savage, however, read the prints like a chart. He picked out the tracks of his five men—he knew their every peculiarity, from the fact that Monk and Renny, the giants, made deep, big prints, to the straight, military preciseness of Ham’s walk, with the little irregularity when the lawyer twiddled his sword cane.
When he had the five segregated, three sets remained. These had been walked over by Doc’s aides, so he knew his friends were trailing the three persons. Two of the quarry were men, the other a woman. Her prints were high-heeled and very feminine.
Near the edge of town, the trail turned abruptly and began to circle the settlement.
Doc studied the town, judging its size from the street lights. In small villages, telegrams were usually handled from the railway station. This borough looked large enough to have an office uptown.
Deserting the trail, Doc entered a street and ran along it. His pace would have taxed a proficient sprinter, but, even after he had traversed several blocks, the bronze man’s breathing had not quickened appreciably. His mighty muscles were conditioned by regular exercise until they seemed to show no more fatigue than the metal of a machine.
The telegraph office was nested in the front of a brick hotel. It was brilliantly lighted, and relays were cheeping on the instrument table.
On duty was an exceedingly tall and freckled young man, whose hair stood up like the coiffure of a Fiji Islander.
“I want information about certain telegrams which may have come here to-night,” Doc told him.
“That is against the rules!” the young man replied promptly.
Doc brought a wallet out. This held numerous cards. He selected one particular pasteboard from the collection in that wallet.
“Does this make it any different?” he asked, and exhibited the card.
The young man looked, then whistled softly. “I’ll say it does!”
The card was signed by the highest official of the company, and informed all employees that Doc Savage was to receive every assistance possible, no matter of what nature, or what the possible consequences.
* * * *
Going behind the counter, Doc sorted through carbon copies of messages received that evening. He found his own communication, addressed to the local Mounted Police. There was also a wire signed by Señor Corto Oveja, asking the Mounties to arrest Doc as soon as the train arrived.
The prize, however, was one signed simply, “John Smith.” It was addressed to “Sam Smith.” Doc eyed the body of the message. At first glance the thing seemed unintelligible. The stuff sounded like bad poetry.
THE HORSE OF IRON HE SAW THE CITY FLEAS AWAY DID RUN AND THAT VERY SWIFTLY STOP MAN OH MAN WAS THE GAS BUGGY HANDY
Doc read the doggerel again. Its meaning became clear. It was simply a message from John Smith to Sam Smith, advising that the train would be deserted at the edge of town, and that an automobile should be on hand. The Smith names were probably fakes.
“Remember the fellow who received this?” Doc asked.
“Yep!” said the operator eagerly. “There was two of them. They came in and asked if there was a message for Sam Smith. I remembered them because of the funny way that message sounded.”
“Describe them,” Doc requested.
“Both were short and dark-skinned. They wore greasy coveralls. I saw an aviator’s helmet sticking from the hip pocket of each man.”
“Fliers! And strangers in town, eh?”
“Yes, sir!” The telegrapher was beginning to look awed. “Gee whiz! Say, I just happened to think that I’ve heard of you. Aren’t you the Doc Savage the newspapers carry stories about—the fellow they call the ‘Man of Mystery?’ Aren’t you the man who just got back from Arabia, where you took a submarine and followed an underground river under the desert? And at the end of the river you found——”
“I’ll use your wires,” Doc told the frizzle-haired operator. He had not changed expression, but he was a bit embarrassed. Hero worship got Doc’s goat—when he was the subject of admiration.
He examined the “John Smith” telegram. It had been sent from a small way station on the railroad some fifty miles back.
Doc opened the telegraph key. A moment later, he was in communication with the station from which the message had been sent. He described the missive in which he was interested.
“It was thrown off the fast train,” reported the distant telegrapher. “But I didn’t get a look at the party who threw it.”
“Was it handwritten?” Doc queried over the wire.
“It was printed,” the other replied.
Doc closed the key and stood up. Since the message was printed, there was no chance of tracing the author by his handwriting.
The freckled, frizzle-haired young man stared at Doc in open-mouthed amazement. He had been listening to the wire talk. He had just heard some of the fastest and most perfect hand-sent Morse to which he had ever listened. It had been as rapid as if sent with a fast automatic key, a “bug.” The freckled young man had not believed such a thing possible.
* * * *
Leaving the telegraph office and its stunned manager, Doc resumed the luminous-arrow trail left by his friends. He had sprinted the entire distance from the telegraph office. He continued running as he followed the trail.
Around the fringe of the settlement, his course led.
A prowling dog, sighting the bronze man, began to growl fiercely.
“Cut it out, old fellow,” Doc called.
The calm friendliness of the mighty man’s tone had a marked effect upon the dog. It exchanged tail-wagging for growling. Doc was forced to toss a rock near the dog to keep the suddenly friendly animal from following him. This was another example of the remarkable things his great voice could do.
Unexpectedly, Doc came upon Monk. The homely chemist was sprawled flat on the ground. The pig, Habeas Corpus, lay comfortably beside him.
“Hands up!” Monk growled. “Grab a cloud!” He had failed to recognize Doc.
“Bite him, pig!” Doc ordered dryly.
Habeas Corpus promptly stood up and bit furiously at Monk. Monk dodged. Much to the homely chemist’s disgust, somebody had recently taught his pet pig the trick of biting the nearest human when told to do so. Monk was usually the victim of these nips. He suspected the dapper Ham had taught the pig the trick.
“Where is the rest of the gang?” asked Doc.
Monk waved a furry arm in the gloom. “They’re watching that joint over there.”
Doc peered into the night. He made out a building which resembled a gigantic, square hatbox. “An airplane hangar!”
“Sure,” said Monk. “There’s a little flying field over there. Señor Oveja, the girl, and El Rabanos are in the hangar.”
“You’re sure Señor Oveja is there?” Doc asked quickly.
“You bet! We’ve been right on their heels since they left the train. He couldn’t have slipped away.”
“Señor Oveja has been wearing his white Panama hat?” Doc queried.
Monk’s voice was very small in the murk. “He tossed that aside before he left the train.”
“What made him do it?”
“Don’t know for sure,” Monk said. “It looked like El Rabanos pointed out that the white hat would show up plain in the dark.”
Doc informed Monk of the attack which had come as he followed the trail.
“The first four men to jump me might have been off the train,” he declared. “From what I learned at the telegraph office, the other two were obviously fliers, waiting near by in a car.”
Monk grunted softly. “Renny said he saw a black monoplane that seemed to be following our train. That was just before dark.”
“It might have been carrying the two who got the telegram at this town,” Doc admitted.
“This thing is sure a mess,” Monk muttered. “It shapes up like this: Señor Oveja, his daughter, and El Rabanos are after you. Another gang is after them, and also you.”
“And the motivation behind the whole thing is a deep, black mystery,” Doc agreed. “Let’s collar the three in the hangar, here, and see what we can dig out of them.”
* * * *
As if touched off by the decision, a hollow roaring burst from the airplane hangar.
“Blazes!” Monk barked. “They’ve started up a plane!” He raced for the hangar.
The pig, Habeas Corpus, bounced after him, squealing and grunting with each jump.
Doc joined Monk in the race. Both heard metal doors on the hangar rasp open. A plane jumped out of the structure. Its exhaust stack was a fiery mouth that slavered sparks! Its roar was like cannonading!
Except for one thing, Doc and his men might have seized the plane’s occupants. It was doubtful if those in the craft knew of the presence of their pursuers. Had the wind been coming from straight ahead, they would undoubtedly have stopped in front of the hangar to warm the engine, before taking off. But the wind was in the opposite direction; it was necessary to taxi across the field before taking the air. The pilot decided to warm his engine while doing that.
Away the ship went. It rolled too swiftly even for Doc’s fleet running. Landing lights jutted fans of incandescence from the wing tips of the airplane.
Reaching the far edge of the tarmac, the plane taxied around and took off. It was a large yellow biplane, with a cabin for six.