THE ELECTRIFIED NET
As Doc and his two aids topped the hill, the mysterious wall came into view.
“Some joint, eh?” Ham suggested.
The wall was so high as to conceal whatever lay behind it. A somber barrier of gray, it was altogether forbidding.
“Concrete,” Ham offered softly.
They left the road. The brush was high; it grew thickly. They eased through the leafy maze with little sound, and came to the gate in the wall—the only gap, according to Monk and Ham.
This gate was notable for its size, being fully fifteen feet wide and equally as high.
Monk breathed, “Look at the size of the bars.”
Monk possessed furry wrists almost twice as thick as those of an ordinary man. The gate bars were of a diameter about equal to his wrists. The gigantic gate was supported by a multiple array of ponderous hinges. Apparently, it opened and closed through the medium of machinery.
“They wouldn’t need bars a fraction of that size to hold elephants,” Ham said. He ran a finger thoughtfully up and down the glistening black length of his cane.
Doc Savage listened for a time, but detected no sound. He moved along the wall, eyes ranging its towering height. When he had circled the place completely, he had proven Monk and Ham’s declaration that there was only one entrance.
The wall did not enclose much of an area.
Doc Savage withdrew with his two men to a point remote from the gate of giant bars.
From within his clothing the bronze man produced a collapsible metal grapple hook. To the shank of this was secured a long silk cord. He sprung the hook open, then tossed it upward expertly. The grapple fastened itself somewhere on the opposite side of the wall.
Doc mounted the thin cord with an amazing ease and speed.
Nearing the crest, he slackened his pace. From a pocket came a tiny periscopic device. This instrument he had put to frequent use in the past. Its barrel was little larger than a match; the average eye would fail to detect its projecting above the wall. Its tiny lenses were finely ground; its functioning was almost equal to that of a larger instrument.
Doc jutted the periscope above the wall, not showing himself.
What he saw brought forth the weird trilling note which was characteristic of the bronze man.
He swung atop the wall. Crouching there, he gestured to Monk and Ham, directing them to ascend the cord.
Monk grasped the thin thread. The hairy chemist had bent copper pennies quite easily for the amusement of the children. Great as was his strength, however, he could barely cope with the task of mounting the silk thread—a feat which Doc had accomplished with ease. Monk was perspiring prodigiously from the effort when he reached the top.
Monk had buttoned the pig, Habeas Corpus, inside his coat.
Ham struggled valiantly to mount the silk line. But his most Herculean efforts got him less than ten feet from the ground. His hands became sweated and he slipped back.
Doc made gestures indicating that the lawyer should tie the cord under his arms. This done, Doc hauled him upward.
The three men surveyed the enclosure.
“For the love of mud!” Monk gulped. “What kind of place is this, anyway?”
* * * *
Stretched over the walled area was a huge, crisscrossed net of copper cables. The cables were nearly three inches in thickness. Their mesh measured nearly a yard.
“I don’t understand this!” Ham muttered. The lawyer had retained a grip on his cane as he was hauled up. Now he gave the cane handle a twist, and withdrew a long, slender blade of steel.
Ham’s innocent-looking black stick was a sword cane.
“Notice that the cables are insulated from each other,” Doc said.
These insulators were substantial affairs of a brown dielectric composition.
“The cables are built to carry a high-voltage electric current,” Monk decided.
“Don’t touch them,” Doc warned. “They may be charged.”
“What gets me, is the solidness of the construction,” Ham mused.
From the gigantic net, they dropped their attention to what lay below.
Beneath the net stood a house of native stone. It was vast; undoubtedly old. Its state of repair was good. It was two stories in height, the roof top almost reaching the thick cables.
“I’ll bet that place has fifty or sixty rooms,” Monk muttered, and held Habeas by an ear to keep him away from the insulated copper hawsers.
Untended shrubbery surrounded the house. It was carelessly crushed down at some points. Nowhere was there sign of life.
“We make swell targets up here,” Ham said grimly.
The grapple had hooked on the wall lip. Dangling it by the silk cord, which was not a conductor of electricity, Doc used the hook to short-circuit two of the crisscrossing cables.
There was a crackle and a blue-hot spark. The big net was electrified!
“Enough of a current to kill a man, if you ask me!” Monk grunted.
“You fellows keep an eye on the place,” Doc suggested.
Monk and Ham nodded. From their clothing they drew weapons which resembled slightly oversize automatic pistols. They were fitted with drum magazines, and the mechanism looked somewhat intricate.
These were superfiring machine guns perfected by Doc. Their rate of fire was so rapid that their roar was like the hoarse song of a gigantic bass fiddle. In addition, the slugs which they discharged did not produce fatal wounds, being “mercy bullets” charged with a drug which brought only unconsciousness.
Doc Savage calculated briefly, then sprang outward upon the spreading copper net. He went forward in a series of agile leaps, maintaining perfect balance.
His position was dangerous. Should he touch two of the metal hawsers simultaneously, death by electrocution would be almost certain. He was safe as long as he poised on only one conductor at a time, just as a bird can perch, unharmed, on a high tension power line.
Soon he was over the house roof. The net mesh was amply large to permit him to drop through. He did so, executing the move with a batlike quietness. The roof shingles were very old.
The bronze man listened for a time. His ears, attuned to the keenness of a wild animal’s, detected vague stirrings. There was also an odor—a beasty odor.
Doc worked down the steep slope of the roof. From eaves to ground was an appalling drop. He took it with the casual ease of a great, tawny cat. Leaves fluttered slightly as he landed in the shrubbery.
Doc’s two men still crouched on the wall, alert. Monk shook his small head, indicating he had seen no danger astir.
The shrubbery, unclipped for months, was over Doc’s head at points.
From the wall crest, Monk howled, “Look——”
A rifle sounded from a window of the house.
To his remarkable vision, developed and kept sharp by scientific methods, Doc owed his life. He saw the rifle barrel even before Monk perceived it and started his yell of warning.
Doc saw the face behind the gun—the visage of the man who had killed Carl MacBride.
A split second before the gun discharged, Doc veered left. The bullet chopped shrilly at the space he had vacated. Seeming not to slacken his pace at all, the bronze man gained a sheltering corner of the house.
* * * *
From the top of the wall came an abrupt, almost deafening moan. Monk and Ham had put their supermachine pistols in action.
The rifleman ducked from view so quickly, that he was unhit.
Monk and Ham hastily made the grappling hook fast and slid down the silk cord. They used care not to touch the charged copper cables. Monk had his pet pig under an arm.
Ham came up, sword cane unsheathed. Monk lumbered on his heels. The pig, Habeas, trailing Monk, was as excited as the simian chemist.
“We’d better get inside,” Doc said crisply. “That fellow may try to use his rifle from another window.”
The bronze man reached a window and gave the sash a rap with his palm. Glass fell with a brittle clanging. Doc crawled in through the opening.
Ham and Monk kept at his heels. The homely chemist grabbed Habeas by an ear and hoisted him inside.
The room in which they found themselves was large, apparently a smoking room. The chairs were upholstered in leather; the furniture was massive, dark. A thick layer of dust reposed over everything. Cigarette stubs were scattered about with great carelessness for the well-being of the furniture.
Not for a long time had the place received a cleaning.
Doc yanked open a door. It gave into a hallway. This, too, needed cleaning.
The men went down the hallway, making no attempt at silence, except when pausing to use their ears. But no sound did they hear; nor did they see any one.
They came to the room from which the rifle had been fired. An empty, high-powered cartridge shell lay on the floor. It reeked of burned powder.
The rifleman had fled.
A scuffling sound led the trio toward the upstairs regions. They mounted stairs which were carpeted. From the carpet nap their feet knocked up little puffs of dust. It had been long uncleaned. At the top they found a corridor lined with many doors. Passages branched off from it.
“You’d think this place was a hotel,” Monk breathed.
To their left a door opened. The bright metal snout of a pistol poked out.
A determined feminine voice said, “Don’t move!”