THE VANISHED BOX
Doc Savage’s shoe soles seemed to acquire roller bearings. His giant form skittered back down the sloping wire.
He was bent nearly double now—he had folded into that position an instant after the rifleman fired. His movements were strangely grotesque. He slouched forward and seized the rope, his arms and legs whipping wildly! Doc seemed to be trying to retain his grip on the rope.
The swarthy rifleman leaned far out to peer through the mist.
“Bueno!” he hissed. “My bullets hit his heart!”
The man jacked a fresh cartridge into his rifle, planted the weapon against his shoulder, and aimed deliberately.
He could barely make out Doc’s figure. It was a feverishly contorting, bronze-hued smear in the dripping gray abyss. The bronze man’s movements reminded the rifleman of a squirrel that had been shot, and was attempting frantically to cling to its limb. Even as the man peered over his rifle sights, the metallic figure fell away from the overhanging cable.
Spray which boiled up from the water swallowed Doc’s falling body.
“Bueno!” hissed the swarthy man again. He lowered his rifle. “He did not need a second shot.”
The rifleman did not take the death of the bronze man for granted, however. He scrambled down the steep wall of the canyon to the water. There, washed by spray which the mad waters flung up, he explored.
He was positive Doc Savage had fallen into the river where it was roughest and running most violently, and equally sure Doc could not have escaped, even had he not been shot through the heart.
The man climbed back up the canyon wall and left the vicinity. He seemed none too familiar with the region. His progress was a series of careful sallies from one landmark to another. He stood near a tree, which had an extra large trunk, until he located a pair of large boulders which looked familiar. His next lap was to a brier thicket.
The fellow was plainly no woodsman, and he was taking no chances on getting lost.
He did not have far to go, soon entering a large grove of trees. There was a clearing in the center of the grove.
Four tents were pegged out in the clearing. The canvas was painted a green hue which camouflaged perfectly with the leaves overhead.
At the edge of the clearing stood an enormous, brushy-looking mound of green. This had a somewhat artificial look. However, only close examination would have revealed that the mound was made of freshly cut green boughs.
The boughs were stacked over a black monoplane, concealing it thoroughly. It would be almost impossible for an aviator flying over it to detect presence of the black ship.
Several men sprang to meet the bridge guard. They had rifles in their hands; revolvers were belted about their midriffs.
“Mulo cabeza!” gritted a man. “Mule head! You were left to guard the rope over the river!”
“Keep your shirts on, caballeros!” chuckled the rifleman. “What do you think I have just done?”
“Deserted your post!” somebody growled.
“No, amigo! I was standing at the rope end with my rifle ready, when the bronze man tried to cross. I shot him in the heart! He fell into the river!”
“Bueno!” chortled the other, suddenly delighted. “Good! Did he fall where the water ran swiftest?”
“He fell where no man could swim, amigo.”
* * * *
More men stumbled out of the green tents. They crowded around the man who was the self-admitted killer of Doc Savage. They were prepared to make a hero of the fellow.
“You are quite a caballero!” declared a man. “Many others have tried to kill this bronze wizard and failed. I once heard a rumor that he was gifted with everlasting life—that he could not be killed.”
“Where did you hear that rumor, señor?” demanded a listener.
“In our native Spain, amigos.”
“Tue?” ejaculated the other. “What? Has the fame of Doc Savage penetrated to our native land?”
“Si, si! That bronze man was known to many lands.”
“Was is correct, señors,” chuckled another fellow.
The late bridge guard swelled with pride. He flashed white teeth in an expansive grin, and stuck out his chest like a pouter pigeon.
“It is possible I shall draw a bonus when our boss hears of this, eh señors?” he queried.
“We must find the ivory cube before anybody draws a bonus!” one of the others reminded.
“Have you not yet learned where the white block is?” snapped the guard.
“What do you think we are—magicians?” snarled one of the group. “We have not had time to question the señorita—fittingly.”
“The fat one—the squaw—she is what the Yankees call a bat from hell!” a man offered. He felt tenderly of an ear. From the upper end of the ear, a semicircular segment had been bitten. “Like a dog, the squaw snapped at me! Before I could dodge, she was spitting out a piece of my ear!”
Somebody unkindly laughed.
Five of these men were the fellows who had escaped in the black monoplane. The others—there were seven more—were somewhat incrusted with grease and dirt, an indication they had been encamped here in the wilderness for some time. The only clean, well-kept thing about them was their guns. These were spotless, freshly oiled, and carried in open holsters.
“What do we do next?” questioned a man.
“We will let our chief know that I have killed Doc Savage,” said the rifleman who had guarded the rope bridge.
“Have you forgotten, my friend?” somebody chided him, “that we have strict orders never to go to our chief. He always comes to us.”
“The chief, señors, should know what I have done,” insisted the man. “It was no small feat! Here is how I did it!”
The man now proceeded to describe a terrific fight at one end of the rope bridge. Many blows had been exchanged; bullets had flown, and knives had flashed—to hear him tell it.
The fellow was an accomplished liar. Out of his imagination, he conjured an amazing battle; before he had finished talking, he had not only slain Doc Savage, but had first bested the bronze giant in a physical contest.
“And that is how it happened, hombres!” The tale spinner wiped perspiration from his forehead. The sweat had been brought out by the very fierceness of the combat which he had just described. “Truly, it was the great fight of my life.”
“You are mucho hombre!” a listener agreed, tongue in his cheek. “If you could now lead us to the galleon with the crew of skeletons, you would indeed be a hero.”
“Si, si,” agreed the world’s champion liar. “The galleon of skeletons! We will find it, amigo! But the ivory cube comes first!”
* * * *
The words caused the men to exchange glances. An ugly determination rode each face. Here was a question on which they all seemed to be of the same mind.
“A man should go and guard the river crossing,” some one suggested.
“Not me, señor!” snapped the man who had lately been at the post. “I have done my guardings for this day.”
This struck the others as being a reasonable statement. So another man was dispatched to take a position at the rope over the river.
“Now to question the Señorita Savage,” the leader announced.
They moved in a body to one of the green tents.
“Come out, Señorita Savage!” commanded the leader.
There was no response from the tent.
“Come, señorita!” the man directed, more sharply.
Once more, nothing happened.
The man stooped and looked in. He emitted a surprised yell. He dived into the tent like a terrier after a rat. There was noise as he jumped about, and two blankets flew outdoors.
“Es no posible!” the man screeched. “It is not possible! Señorita Savage is gone!”
Had the men suddenly discovered that they were standing over a lighted charge of dynamite, they could not have scattered more quickly. In a wild wave, they spread around the tent. At the rear wall, one fellow found a stake loose.
“Here is where she escaped!” he cried.
“En verdad!” sneered the former bridge guard. “Indeed! So this is the way you hombres keep track of your prisoners!”
“Your own big mouth is to blame, caballero!” some one advised him angrily. “While you were talking so loud and fast, telling us what you did to this man Savage, she escaped!”
“Scatter, hombres!” shouted the man who seemed to possess some semblance of authority. “Look everywhere for her! She cannot have gone far.”
Like a pack of hounds which had lost a trail, the men dispersed. Some dashed madly into the woods; others peered in brush clumps. There was plenty of shrubbery, for the gang had not troubled to clear the camp site.
Some of the men probed about the camp. One of these went to the green tent which held the squaw, Tiny. A single glance inside sufficed to show that the squaw’s legs were still bound securely. The man started to back out.
“Wait!” grunted Tiny. “You want know what way white gal go?”
“Si, si, señorita!” said the man. “Yes, yes!”
“Cut um loose,” said Tiny. “Me tell um.”
“Si!” exclaimed the man delightedly. He sprang inside. He was hardly in the tent when a slender, sinewy brown arm enwrapped his throat from behind. This caused his mouth to fly wide open. Another brown hand promptly stuffed a wadded handkerchief between the gaping jaws.
* * * *
Patricia Savage had been crouching to one side of the tent door while Tiny enticed their victim inside.
During the excitement which had attended the arrival of the killer, Patricia had managed to free herself and crawl into the tent which sheltered the squaw.
Her escape had been discovered at an inopportune moment. Given a few seconds more, and Patricia would have been gone, along with Tiny.
Tiny reared up to help subdue the man. She gave a wrench, and the rope fell off her wrists. A kick, and her ankles were free. The ropes had merely been arranged to look like they were tied. That was Patricia’s idea.
The man was probably not more than twenty-five, and quite husky. He had a neck like a young bull. He was more than a match for nine out of ten run-of-the-street men.
Patricia, however, had taken him by surprise. Moreover, she was a young lady who combined good looks with a well-developed muscle. She not only kept the man from yelling an alarm, but she had his wind completely shut off.
The man kicked, struck backward. Not for nothing had Patricia taken fencing lessons in a finishing school. She evaded his blows easily. The man grabbed her attractive bronze hair and gave it a tremendous yank.
Tiny went into action. Stooping, she seemed to pick something off the floor and plant it forcibly on the man’s chin. It was a beautiful haymaker.
The man stopped struggling as suddenly as if he had been shot through the brain.
“Me learn that practicing on Boat Face,” Tiny muttered. A moment after she had spoken, Tiny seemed to remember that Boat Face was dead. Her lower lip quivered, and tremendous sobs shook her enormous bosom.
Patricia eyed their unconscious victim, then appraised the squaw’s size.
“I’ll have to put on his clothes and walk out of camp,” she said. “If they would fit you, I’d let you go, Tiny. But you’re too darn big. When I get out of camp, I’ll make a fuss. I’ll yell or something. When they rush to investigate, you beat it.”
“O. K.,” said Tiny.
The man had a gun. Patricia took that; then she yanked off the man’s shirt. After this, she turned her back.
When she wheeled around again, Tiny had the fellow’s pants and shoes, and had spread a blanket over his sleeping form.
Patricia now donned the garments. She picked up the man’s hat, looked at the greasy interior, grimaced, scrubbed it vigorously with her elbow, and put it on. She stuffed her bronze hair under it.
“How do I look?” she asked Tiny.
Tiny leaned over and popped their prisoner on the jaw with a fist. He had shown signs of reviving. “You look all right, Miss Pat.”
Patricia calmly walked out of the tent and strolled for the woods. If any of her enemies discovered her, there was a good chance that they would start shooting. They were of a race notoriously quick on the trigger.
No one, fortunately, saw through her disguise. When she reached the first trees, Patricia resisted an impulse to run. The woods were full of maddened searchers.
* * * *
Patricia had not covered two rods when she saw a human hunter. He was prowling around, peering this way and that. It chanced that he was the same individual who had been guarding the bridge.
Patricia, peering out of her tent while making her escape, had seen this man. She had heard him bragging of the murder he had committed. The name of the murder victim had been a shock.
It was Patricia’s first knowledge that her famous cousin, Doc Savage, was in the vicinity.
The young woman was at a loss to explain why Doc was in this part of Canada. She did not know it, but she had not received the bronze man’s messages advising her of his northern vacation.
Patricia had intended to send to Doc for help. But that morning, she had found both the storage barrel and the launch tanks empty of gasoline. This had prevented her from going to send a telegram. She was relieved that no gesture of hers had drawn Doc to his death.
However, Patricia was horrified to think that Doc had perished. She was also filled with a consuming rage against his killer.
Patricia was no butterfly who blossomed forth only at social functions. That did not mean she was a wall-flower when confronted with the glittering pomp of society. But at the same time, she was a two-fisted young woman who could go out and do things.
Glaring at the self-admitted murderer of Doc Savage, she made a decision. She concluded to seize the fellow and turn him over to the nearest Mounted Policeman.
Stepping behind a tree, Patricia drew her gun—the weapon she had taken from the man she had overpowered. She examined it; the thing was loaded. She waited purposefully.
Patricia could hear her victim approaching. He had been headed in this direction when she first saw him. She believed his course would take him within arm’s length of the tree behind which she stood. In this, she was not wrong.
The man rounded the tree. He was looking in another direction, so his back was half turned. He did not see Patricia.
Reaching out, Patricia jammed the barrel of her gun against the nape of the man’s neck.
The man gave one horror-stricken scream and fell over in a dead faint.
Patricia was thunderstruck. She would have maintained that it was beyond the most nervous of women to faint at the mere touch of cold metal on the back of a neck. But what Patricia had no means of knowing was that this man was highly wrought up.
For the last half hour, the fellow had been seeing Doc Savage in his mind’s eye. Especially did he remember the metallic quality which was Doc’s chief characteristic.
When cold metal touched his neck, his reaction was that Doc’s frosty ghost had seized him. So he fainted.
“Darn it!” snapped Patricia, and began running deeper into the woods.
By yelling before he had keeled over, the man had upset her plans. The howl had spread the alarm.
“Que hay!” shouted a man from somewhere. “What is the matter?”
Patricia hoped he would be a long time finding out. She put on more speed, and began to have a faint hope that she would make it. If she did, her plan would have worked out to a nicety. The alarm would be exactly what was needed to give Tiny her chance to escape.
Patricia was too optimistic, however. A man hurled himself from behind a tree into her path. His gun was in its holster. With bare hands, he sought to seize the fleeing girl.
The fact that the man was not using his gun saved his life. Instead of shooting him, as he no doubt deserved, Patricia made a pass at his head with her revolver barrel.
Clank! went the gun on the fellow’s skull. He fell at her feet.
Thinking he was unconscious, Patricia started to step over him. But the man grasped her by the ankles and tripped her.
Too late, Patricia sought to shoot him—through a leg. They scuffled for a moment. Then Patricia lost her revolver.
That marked the finish. In a moment, more swarthy men came rushing through the timber to the aid of their comrade. Seizing Patricia, they bound her hand and foot. Then they carried her back to camp.
* * * *
The first thing Patricia saw in camp was the voluminous Tiny. The squaw lay on the ground in an attitude of slumber.
“What have you done to her?” Patricia shrieked.
A man tapped his rifle barrel expressively and said: “I kees her weeth thees, señorita.”
Patricia gripped her upper lip between firm white teeth, and said nothing. She was worried and angry enough to burst into tears. She felt certain she would not get another such opportunity to escape.
“What do you want with me?” she demanded of the men.
“We have told you that, señorita!” one said.
“The ivory cube?” Patricia asked bitterly.
“Si, señorita. The ivory cube is right. We want it.”
“It’ll be a long old day before you get it!” Patricia retorted angrily.
The man shrugged his shoulders and made expressive hand-spreading gestures.
“Quien sabe?” he smiled coldly. “But why are you so determined not to give it to us?”
“I’ll never turn the cube over to my father’s murderers!” Patricia rapped.
The young woman’s captor looked hurt at this. His face assumed an injured expression. He shrugged several times.
“But, señorita,” he said mournfully, “you do us mucho wrong to think that.”
Patricia sniffed indignantly.
“Of course, I have no proof,” she said. “You could claim the werewolf did it.”
The man gave a pronounced shiver. He rolled his eyes skyward. He crossed himself.
“Heaven forbid!” he muttered. “The werewolf, señorita—has he bothered you also?”
Patricia eyed the man narrowly. She could not for the life of her tell whether he was putting on an act for her benefit, or telling the truth.
“Oh, don’t try to kid me!” she said finally.
“We are not kidding anybody, señorita. We know nothing of this murder. But we do know you have a certain ivory cube. It is imperative that we have it. We are going to get it.”
“Why do you want it?” Patricia countered.
“That, señorita, is our own affair!”
“I examined the block,” Patricia said wonderingly. “There is no inscription of any kind on it. It seems perfectly solid—it does not ring hollow when you tap it. Of what possible value can a plain ivory block be to you?”
“So you do have the block!” her captor exclaimed triumphantly.
Patricia bit her lips. The cat had been in the bag without her knowing it, and she had let it out.
Her captor waved his arms in excitement. He shouted loudly to his fellows: “You hear, amigos? She has the block! We have but to make her tell where it is!”
* * * *
The swarthy men gathered about. Eying them, Patricia decided they were about as evil-looking a collection as she had ever seen. Any one of them would have drawn a second look from a policeman. She did not like the fierce greed on their ugly faces.
The men began to make cruel suggestions.
“A knife on her pretty face!” proposed one. “That will make her talk!”
“Si, si,” agreed another. “But a red-hot iron is better.”
“Why not work on the squaw?” asked one man. “I think the Señorita Savage is a young woman who will talk to save her servant.”
At this point, the man who had fainted when he felt Patricia’s cold gun against the back of his neck, regained consciousness. He glanced about in a dazed fashion, keeping silent until he found out what was going on.
“What happened to you?” somebody asked him.
“She struck me over the head!” replied the wily liar. “But, at great risk to my life, I managed to yell the alarm!”
A man ran up. He carried a small portable gasoline stove of the type woodsmen sometimes use—usually tenderfoot woodsmen who have trouble building fires.
He pumped up the pressure tank on the stove, and applied a lighted match. The stove began to roar softly, and give out an intensely hot blue flame.
The man placed the stove near Tiny. Then he prepared to grasp the squaw’s feet and hold them over the blue flame.
He had almost forced the feet into the flame when there was a loud crash. The gasoline stove lost much of its shape, and jumped end over end. It had been hit by a large rock, flung with terrific force.
The swarthy men whirled.
They saw a sight which, to a man, they carried in their memories to their day of death.