THE HAND THAT BECKONED
Had an elephant walked out in that clearing in the Canadian woods, consternation could hardly have been greater. Certainly, the shock would have been less.
The late bridge guard shrieked loudly, spun around, and fled! His wild terror would have been comical, had it not been so harshly real. The man was stricken with horror.
He had seen a ghost coming across the clearing. A ghost of the bronze giant he had sent into the torrent below the waterfall! More appalling, this ghost was not moving with the stately walk usually attributed to its kind. The thing was coming with a speed which in itself seemed beyond human ability.
A towering bronze Nemesis, Doc Savage bore down on the swarthy man.
Doc’s escape had been managed quite simply. He now wore the remarkable vest of many pockets which held his assortment of apparatus. This was lined with a metallic mail which would stop even a big-game rifle slug.
In one of the vest pockets was a long, slender, very strong silk cord. To the end of this was fixed a grappling hook.
Doc had simply hooked the grapple over the rope spanning the river, then lowered himself until he hung concealed in the clouds of spray boiling above the water. It chanced that the wait was almost his undoing, however. In the terrific roar of the falls, he had not heard his enemy descending the canyon side. Luckily, Doc had seen the other first.
Doc had climbed back up his silk cord to the cable, and swung hand-over-hand to terra firma.
The bronze man had followed his assailant to camp, and had been lurking near by ever since. Unfortunately, he had not been in a position to help Patricia with her escape. Her flight had been opposite Doc’s place of concealment.
Doc had demolished the gasoline stove with the thrown rock.
What now transpired happened with the violence of exploding dynamite and the rapidity of an electrical phenomena.
Patricia Savage had often wondered what her famous cousin looked like. She had read of some of his feats. She had heard tales of him. But she had never met Doc, and she had doubted his being the man he was said to be.
Watching Doc in action, Patricia concluded he was all he was rumored to be, and then some. Discounting the fellow who had fled, there were eleven men in the clearing. All were fair physical specimens. Moreover, they were armed.
One man sprang forward, leveled his revolver at Doc’s chest, and pulled the trigger repeatedly. The range was short. He could hardly miss. It was possible to count the ragged holes which his bullets caused to appear magically in the bronze man’s coat front.
Doc did not waver. The slugs might have been beans pelted at a rhino. He came on like a juggernaut of metal.
The gunman finished shooting, and threw his revolver wildly at Doc.
The bronze man dodged. The way he did this was in itself reason for popeyed surprise. The gun seemed to pass through flesh and bone, so swiftly did he weave his head aside and back.
“I shoot him six times!” shrieked the one who had thrown the gun. “He should be dead!”
The seeming impossibility of what they had just witnessed held the others spellbound. The fractional moment during which they stood and stared proved disastrous.
The mighty bronze man drove a hand inside his clothing, brought out a small metal egg of an object. He flung it.
The metal lump dropped among the swarthy men with a loud report!
Without exception, the men clapped hands over their eyes. They began to yell in terror. They could see nothing—the world had suddenly gone jet black!
They were either too stupid or too surprised to realize they were now standing in a smoke cloud—a great wad of inky blackness which had spread with lightning suddenness from the metal egg.
* * * *
Patricia Savage was only slightly less surprised than her captors. She was lifted and borne rapidly through the black cloud. With such uncanny ease was she carried that Patricia was slow to realize human hands were bearing her.
She could not see a thing in the almost blue-black void, but she knew it must be the gigantic bronze man who was bearing her.
Patricia was carried out of the smoke. The day, dim and vaporous as it was, seemed almost brilliant after the sooty pall out of which they had come.
The young woman discovered her eyes had not been affected by the dense smoke. They did not smart.
She was lying across the bronze man’s mighty shoulders, she discovered.
Patricia looked down and gave a violent start. Under one arm, as easily as another man would carry a sack of groceries, Doc had tucked Tiny. The squaw weighed well over two hundred pounds.
Doc Savage whipped across the clearing, his great speed seemingly impeded not at all by his burdens. Patricia found it hard to believe. This metallic giant had the strength of a dozen men!
Reaching the edge of the clearing, Doc planted the two women on their feet.
“Run!” he said, and pointed in the direction of the rope spanning the river gorge.
Patricia began: “If you need any help——”
“Do what I say!” Doc said sharply.
Patricia looked slightly indignant, but began running.
Turning to the right, Doc veered around the clearing edge. His progress was swift, but he also zigzagged from side to side, keeping behind brush and trees as much as possible.
None of the swarthy men had come from the black cloud as yet. This was probably because the somber pall had spread until it was more than a hundred feet across. The smoke boiled like a dark foam.
One of the men finally staggered into view. He stood staring stupidly at the fog-packed sky, as if it were something he had never expected to see again.
Suddenly, he understood the nature of what he had thought to be a weird blindness. Drawing his revolver, he fired it rapidly into the air.
“This way, hombres!” he screeched. “We have been tricked!”
* * * *
In his excitement, the man failed to observe a bronze apparition which streaked under the pile of green boughs that covered the black monoplane.
The instant he was concealed under the brush, Doc glanced back to see if he had been observed. Apparently he was unseen.
He was under the right wing of the plane. Doc crawled to the big radial motor, and his deft fingers explored its innards.
Doc’s familiarity with airplane motors was as profound as his other lines of knowledge. He had, in fact, designed a motor which was in use on a large air line in the United States. This was not public knowledge, it being popularly supposed that the motor was the work of an elderly and kindly inventor whom Doc had befriended. Nor did any one but the inventor, who was also the manufacturer, know that the design for the motor had saved the old gentleman’s business.
The motor of this black plane was fitted with two carburetors. Doc removed both, his corded fingers loosening the fastener nuts after a little straining. Fortunately, they were not tight.
Doc buried both carburetors under the plane, carefully replacing the dirt so that the hiding place would not be noticed.
Peering through the fur of brush which camouflaged the ship, Doc saw the swarthy men. They were in a group, and heading for the opposite side of the clearing. A moment later, veering behind the immense wad of inky smoke, they were lost to view.
Doc Savage promptly deserted the plane. Entering the timber, he circled widely.
Patricia and Tiny had been running with all the speed they could muster. Patricia gave a start of surprise when Doc Savage materialized like a phantom beside her.
“One of those men shot right at you!” she gasped wonderingly. “I saw the bullets hit! Why didn’t they harm you?”
“Bullet-proof vest!” Doc explained cryptically.
Many things were puzzling Patricia. Speaking as she ran, she sought to get them straightened out.
“You are Doc Savage, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Right,” Doc admitted.
“How does it happen you are here?”
“Better save the breath for running,” Doc told her.
Patricia gasped with faint indignation. The fact that her father was a fairly wealthy man had not exactly spoiled her, but she was not accustomed to being told what to do in such short fashion.
“But,” she snapped, “I want to know what——”
“There’re lots of things we both want to know!” Doc told her. “We can save them until we get clear.”
Patricia seemed about to express an opinion contrary to this. But a loud, fierce shout from behind caused her to change her mind.
“Buenos!” was the cry. “Here is the trail!”
“Darn it!” cried Patricia, and saved her breath for running.
* * * *
They reached the rope which spanned the gorge below the falls. The canyon was like a great caldron in which water boiled thunderously and poured up frost-cold steam.
Patricia glanced over the brink and shuddered.
“I was never so scared in my life as I was when they hauled me over in this thing,” she declared, indicating the rickety cage which could be pulled across the rope.
Doc was somewhat at a loss to know why the swarthy men had spanned the river in this fashion. He put a question to clear that up.
“I presume there is no other point near by where the river can be crossed?” he asked.
“Not for miles in either direction,” Patricia replied.
She peered over the brink once more, and watched bucketfuls of spray being flung higher than the canyon walls by the force of the torrent.
Patricia had been under a great strain for the last few hours. The thought of crossing this ominous chasm was the last straw. Her grip on her nerves slipped.
She clapped her hands tightly to her eyes and shrieked: “I won’t go over! I can’t!”
Doc reached for her. There was no time to be lost.
Patricia struck at him hysterically, shrieked again.
The young woman realized what she was doing, and was not at all proud of her performance. Nevertheless, she could not help it. She had a bad case of what is generally called the jitters.
She felt herself seized. One of the bronze man’s hands glided past her cheek and pressed a certain spot near the cranial nerve center. There was a slight tingling sensation, and Patricia suddenly found herself powerless to move a muscle. It was weird.
She was tossed lightly across Doc’s shoulders. Then the mighty bronze man seemed to leap outward, straight into the caldron below the falls. However, his feet landed on the rope, and he came to a perfect balance. He glided along the hemp strands.
During any one of the dozen seconds which followed, Patricia would have died cheerfully. It was the most ghastly interval of her existence. She had admired the work of circus performers in the big top—trapeze and tight-wire artists who did amazing things. But she had never seen a feat which equaled this bronze man’s seemingly unconcerned defiance of death.
Patricia was placed safely on her feet on the opposite side. Doc’s bronze fingers found nerve centers again. The young woman recovered use of her limbs magically.
Patricia knew enough of human anatomy to comprehend some of the enormous skill which lay in Doc Savage’s fingers. She crouched on the edge of the cliff, dazed. She was frankly ashamed of herself.
Doc Savage crossed back over the chasm, running lightly on the rope.
Tiny was waiting there. She gazed into the chasm and shuddered.
“Wait!” she grunted uneasily. “Me take um chance—stay on this side.”
The voluminous Tiny never was exactly sure what happened after that. The bronze hands pressed her head. She became helpless. Then she, also, was borne out over the thundering abyss.
Doc seemed to handle the squaw’s weight as easily as he had managed Patricia’s.
Safely across, he loosened the pulley from the anchor tree, and let the rope fall back into the torrent. This blocked pursuit.
Patricia had said that, for several miles, there was no other way of crossing the violent little river.
* * * *
Doc Savage’s five men greeted their chief noisily when he appeared. They were no little impressed by the exquisite beauty of Patricia Savage.
“Look at that bronze hair!” Monk breathed ecstatically in an aside. “Say, she might almost be Doc’s sister!”
“She’s a knockout for looks!” agreed the debonair Ham, forgetting himself so much as to agree with Monk.
“Back to the cabin,” Doc directed. “We’ve got some talking to do.”
Doc had encountered his aides some distance from the cabin. They retraced their steps to the structure.
Out of courtesy to the young woman, Doc unfolded his part of the story first. He began with the fake telegram on the train, and omitted few details.
“To sum up,” he finished, “the whole thing is pretty baffling. The gang who just kidnaped you seem to be after an ivory block. And in some fashion, they must have learned we were coming here on a visit.”
“They probably learned that by robbing the mail box,” Patricia Savage suggested.
“That would explain it,” Doc agreed. “They attacked me on the train in an effort to prevent me coming here. Then there’s Señor Corto Oveja, his daughter, and El Rabanos. They headed in this direction, although we have seen no signs of them being around here.”
“What part do they play?” Patricia asked.
“That’s more mystery,” Doc told her. “They were attacked on the train. They laid it onto me. And their assailants left one of those werewolf marks.”
Patricia shuddered violently. “The werewolf marks! I have found several of them around this cabin.”
“We saw one on the cabin floor,” Doc admitted.
“Yes. That one appeared when I found Boat Face and Tiny afflicted with that weird sleep.”
Doc and his men exchanged glances. They had by no means forgotten their own experience with the weird slumber. But what the fantastic affliction was, they had not yet learned.
“When did this all start?” Doc asked Patricia.
“Some weeks ago. My father found a prowler in our cabin. The fellow fled. A little later, a mysterious voice called from the woods and demanded that dad hand over the ivory cube. Dad refused——”
“What ivory cube?” Doc interjected.
“One father found on a rock ledge near here,” Patricia replied. “Several human skeletons lay around the little block. It was years ago when he found it.”
Speaking rapidly, the young woman told of the repeated demands for the ivory trinket.
“Then my father was found—dead!” she finished jerkily. “Doctors said his heart had gone back on him. I think he was murdered—a victim of that fantastic sleep.”
Doc Savage indicated the lifeless figure of Boat Face. “When did that happen?”
“Last night, sometime,” Patricia said slowly. “Tiny and I found his body this morning, just before the rain. We carried it to the cabin. A few minutes later, those swarthy men came and seized us. They took us by surprise.”
“You haven’t the slightest idea why the ivory cube is in demand?” Doc questioned pointedly.
“No.”
“Let’s have a look at it.”
“Of course!” Patricia went to the bark-sheathed pillar which supported the living-room ceiling. She pressed a concealed catch, and the door flew open.
She shoved a hand confidently inside, and groped around. Then she bent over and stared into the recess.
“It’s gone!” she gasped.
* * * *
“Did Boat Face know where the cube was hidden?” Doc asked. His remarkable voice was smoothly unexcited, and told nothing.
“Yes,” Patricia admitted.
“And he could have removed it without your knowing it?”
Patricia hesitated. As yet, she had no knowledge of the half-breed’s duplicity.
“He could have,” she admitted. “But I would rather think he did not take it. No doubt he heard a prowler, went to investigate, and was knifed.”
“Boat Face—him no good!” said Tiny, with scant consideration for her dead husband. “Him no mean. Him just weak. And him foxy.”
“Boat Face was killed at a secret meeting,” Doc declared.
“How do you know?” Patricia asked.
“There were tracks.”
“I didn’t see any tracks!”
“They were there,” Doc assured her. “I’m sorry, Pat, but Boat Face seems to have been a crook.”
Patricia nodded slowly. She felt an agreeable tingling. Doc Savage had called her “Pat.” This seemed to indicate that he had accepted her as one of the gang. Patricia was pleased.
“I don’t know who took the ivory block,” she said. “This thing is getting more involved all the time.”
Doc Savage now made a second survey of the cabin and its vicinity. This search was so intense that it made his earlier hunt seem but a careless glance in comparison.
From a pack, which he had carried to this wilderness retreat, he removed what looked like a pair of tiny binoculars mounted in spectacle frames. The lenses of these were extremely powerful, and adjusted for a short distance.
Doc’s unaided eyes were keen. But, wearing these eyeglasses, he could cover the ground with microscopic thoroughness.
It was around the boathouse that his scrutiny became most intensive. In addition to the launch, the boathouse contained several canoes. There was also a rack of holding spades, saws, axes, and other tools.
Doc studied one of the spades closely.
“Has this been used recently, Pat?” he asked.
Patricia thought it over before she answered.
“No,” she said, “I’m quite sure it hasn’t.”
Lifting down the canoes one at a time, Doc examined them. Especially did he concentrate on the floor boards. On one of these he found a semicircular scar. When he tried the tip of the spade, it exactly fitted the mark.
Doc laid the spade aside.
Patricia picked it up, examined it. To her astonishment, she found nothing.
“I don’t understand!” she said, puzzled.
Johnny came forward hastily, removing his glasses which had the magnifying lens. He let the young lady inspect the spade under magnification.
“Oh!” Patricia ejaculated. “This spade has been used recently to dig in sand! There are tiny scratches which are not a bit rusted.”
Inspecting further, Doc found where a canoe had been carried to the water. The canoe had been floated to an out-of-the-way spot under some overhanging brush. There was no reason why it should be used for a regular point of launching. Yet marks in the sand showed that the canoe had arrived and departed numerous times. All of the tracks had been made by Boat Face’s moccasins.
Doc noticed that bushes prevented the landing place from being seen from the cabin.
“Boat Face seems to have made numerous excursions!” he announced.
Patricia stared at Tiny. “Did you know about his trips?”
The squaw shrugged stoically. “Me sleep sound! Me not hear!”
Doc collected his men before the door of the cabin.
“Let’s get organized,” he said.
* * * *
Doc’s five aides brightened visibly at the words. So far, they considered themselves as having been rather useless. At least once in each adventure, Doc usually had occasion to make use of the particular talent which each of his men claimed.
Monk, the chemist, was first to receive orders.
“Got your portable laboratory?” Doc asked him.
The question was hardly necessary. Monk was rarely to be found far from his remarkable outfit of chemicals. This piece of equipment was wonderfully compact, yet Monk could do work with it which called ordinarily for a great outlay of equipment. Monk was something of a Houdini with the test tubes.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“I want you to go to work on the inside of the cabin,” Doc told him. “Analyze and test everything.”
Monk did not comprehend fully.
“But what will I look for?” he demanded.
“Anything that might give a clew as to what caused the weird sleep,” Doc explained.
“I get you, Doc.”
“Renny,” Doc said; “think you can find our plane?”
Renny flicked an enormous hand inland. “Sure! I remember the way we came.”
“You have a small mapping camera in your luggage, haven’t you?”
“A special mapping lens which fits our regular camera,” Renny said. “It amounts to the same thing.”
“O. K.,” Doc told him “I want aërial photos of the vicinity of this cabin. Cover the region for several miles up and down the coast. Take one set of photos at a height of about five hundred feet. Take the others from a much higher altitude, at least a mile.”
“Got you!” boomed Renny.
Patricia’s pretty face was frankly incredulous.
She exclaimed, “You can’t get pictures in this fog!”
“We use cameras equipped to utilize infra-light,” Doc told her. “Haze and fog don’t faze these infra-rays.”
Renny gathered his equipment together and moved off, a giant of a man who was made to look smaller than he was by the incredible hugeness of his hands.
Doc Savage now addressed Long Tom and Johnny.
“You two fellows will work at the same job, but using different methods,” he advised. “Long Tom, I want you to take electric-wave tests that will help to determine the possible presence of oil or deposits of mineral underground. Johnny will prospect outcroppings in search of anything that might be valuable. We, of course, are hunting for whatever this gang is after.”
The two men lost no time getting busy. Few living men knew more of the earth’s structure than did Johnny; if there were mineral outcroppings, the gaunt geologist with his magnifying lens spectacles could find them.
The electrical device which Long Tom would use, employed several principles known to scientific oil prospectors and others. Wave impulses, both sonic and electric, were sent into the earth. Their subsequent reaction betrayed any unusual subterranean formation.
“What about me?” Ham demanded.
“You will guard Miss Patricia,” Doc said.
The rather handsome Ham grinned widely at this.
Homely Monk, who had overheard, emitted a loud groan. If there was anything Monk hated, it was seeing Ham enjoying himself in the company of an attractive girl. Disgusted with the latest developments, Monk turned away to conduct his chemical experiments.