ESCAPE AND CAPTURE
Doc’s aids were puzzled at first, not realizing his purpose in gathering them together. Then they comprehended; and without Doc issuing orders, they went into action.
Renny braced his head and arms against the stone side of the pit. With an agility befitting his apish build, Monk bounded upon Renny’s shoulders and balanced there. Johnny topped Monk. Soon they had formed a human pyramid, reaching almost to the top of the pit.
Up this living ladder Doc Savage clambered. Upright on the shoulders of Long Tom, who was the lightest, he could reach the rim. He peered out.
In the moonlight beyond the camouflaged shed he distinguished the two guardian giants. One was to the north. The other stood at the south. All around the shed, the rocky isle was smooth. Chances of crossing this without being observed seemed nihil.
Over toward the other side of the island there was talk and laughter—some of the mirth being expressed in thunderous howling noises. This was evidently the only type of laughter permitted to the afflicted giants’ vocal cords. Doc’s dire prediction that they could not be returned to normal size apparently had not been taken seriously.
Making no noise, Doc Savage clambered over the pit rim.
It was then that he caught a faint stir in the darkness inside the shed. He poised, listening, thinking perhaps that it might be Hack. But it was not.
The pig, Habeas Corpus, nosed against Doc, making another faint stir as he did so. The homely shote had managed to reach the shed without being seen by the giants.
Doc grasped the pig. Through the medium of signs and a gentle shove, he made the intelligent porker understand that he was to run away from the shed.
The pig galloped off.
The giants saw him. So unusual was the appearance of the pig that their attention was gripped.
The running porker held their attention only a moment. But that was long enough for Doc to move, unobserved, from the shed to the sheltering maze of boulders.
A bronze phantom who blended with the tawny hue of the rocks and melted entirely into the shadows, Doc Savage made directly for the edge of the island. The huge camouflaged hangars jutted up darkly. He waded past them, on out into the lake.
Scarcely a splash marked his entrance into the water. He filled his capacious lungs with air and submerged.
Doc was capable of swimming a tremendous distance under water. He had acquired the ability to do this in the manner that he learned all things—by studying the methods of the masters. The fine points of underwater work he had picked up from the skilled divers of the South Seas.
Coming to the surface at long intervals, projecting only his nostrils to replenish his air supply, Doc stroked into the lake.
He reached the point where his aids, the steel-haired girl, and himself had been forced to drop the containers of equipment which they had employed to hold themselves on the lake bottom.
The bronze man had made careful note of the location of the spot at the time of their capture by the giants. He had done this unobtrusively, and it had passed without being observed.
* * * *
Doc Savage chanced lifting his eyes above the surface. By aligning several of the larger boulders on the island, he located the spot where the equipment lay.
So accurate were his calculations that he found the cases on his third dive.
His sensitive hands explored a container. He was familiar with the boxes, having constructed them himself. This was not the case he wanted. He searched over the black depths of the lake bed until he found others. Not until he had identified the fourth container by touch, did he seem satisfied.
With the rather heavy box cradled under an arm, he stroked for the surface.
The return to the isle, swimming under water for the most part, was by no means easy, the weight of the case being a tremendous handicap.
Realizing there might be watchmen near the hangars, Doc left the water at the opposite side of the island. He did not waste time resting, once ashore. The effort of the return swim, great as it had been, had tapped only slightly his fabulous reservoir of vitality.
Carrying the metal case of equipment which he had retrieved from the lake, he crept inland.
Toward the other end of the island, there was still noisy talk and coarse laughter. Doc Savage approached the spot. To no phantom in the stories of mythology was ever attributed greater stealth.
The mirth sounds were emanating from a large, camouflaged shack which was evidently a bunk house. After ascertaining the nature of this structure, Doc did not approach too closely. He did not wish to risk discovery.
He began a foot-by-foot search of the island.
Near the boathouse he found a hidden building of some size. This seemed to be a laboratory. Shelves of rough, temporary construction held a surprising array of chemicals.
Doc examined the compounds, noting particularly their nature. For light in viewing the container labels, he employed matches from a box which he found near a Bunsen burner. He kept the tiny flame carefully cupped in his palms.
He found books on chemical treatises. The flyleaves of these bore the scrawled name of Pere Teston. There were also notebooks in the same handwriting.
The notebooks contained data on experiments at increasing animal growth. The cases described were apparently Pere Teston’s earlier efforts. There was data on the abnormal growth of a cow. Pere Teston seemed to consider this of great importance. He had written:
“It will be noted that the milk-producing capacity of the bovine kept pace with the expansion in bone and tissue. This means that my process of size increase will result in the creation of more efficient farm animals.
“Particularly do I hope to be able to center the effects of my compound to certain organs of the animal in further experiments. This would achieve, for instance, cattle with enormous milk-producing capacities.”
There were more notes of this nature. One set had to do with the growing of an enormous draft horse.
In these earlier experiments, dating back several years, Pere Teston had apparently entertained no idea of creating giant men to be used in terrorizing cities.
Doc found no data covering work over the last few months.
* * * *
Doc Savage left the laboratory and continued his search of the island. He entered several buildings, only to leave at once. They were store rooms, holding immense quantities of food for the giants’ sustenance.
Near the south end of the island Doc Savage came upon a small, shedlike structure of metal and camouflage-daubed canvas.
Cross-legged before this, so huge and ugly as to give the appearance of a grotesque, oriental idol, sat one of the giants. He seemed to be on guard. The fellow held a large pipe.
The giant poured tobacco into the oversized bowl. His big, clumsy fingers had trouble with matches. Several broke; the night breeze blew others out.
The giant was fully occupied with his smoking difficulties.
Doc Savage circled and drifted, wraithlike, toward the shed. In negotiating one narrow stretch of rock, he was completely exposed to the gaze of the colossus. Crossing this, Doc chose an instant when the giant was carefully striking a match.
Unseen, the bronze man reached the shed.
The metal sides of this were open, the canvas cover having been rolled up for ventilation. This sheathing could be lowered if necessary, making the shed seem from the air—or from a distance of a few yards on the island—nothing more interesting than an angular rock.
Doc Savage eased inside, curious to learn what the giant was guarding.
That mystery was soon clarified.
A man reposed on the rocky shed floor. Darkness was complete where he lay, so black as to seem solidified. Doc Savage found the fellow only by touch, and through use of his sensitive olfactory organs.
Doc’s bronze fingers explored, their skilled touch conveying impressions of almost visual clarity. He got the height of the prisoner, his probable weight. He found stout handcuffs on wrists and ankles.
The man lay perfectly motionless; none of his muscles stirred. Yet he was definitely alive.
Doc applied pressure on certain nerve centers, testing the reaction of muscles to pain. Doc’s knowledge of drugs, their effects and their symptoms, was profound. He came to the conclusion that the captor’s limbs were under the influence of injections of some local anæsthetic—some substance in the nature of the novocaine which dentists use.
Doc Savage examined the man’s ankles again. The chain of the manacles encircled the steel framework of the camouflaged shed. Doc tested the links. They were very strong.
The bronze man began removing his shirt, it being his intention to wrap the cloth around the manacles to muffle the inevitable snap as he broke them.
Then the giant guard, probably with the idea of getting out of the wind to light his big pipe, entered the shed.
Doc Savage was under no delusions. The match flame was certain to reveal his presence. He left the strange captive and crept out silently on the opposite side.
For several minutes he loitered near by. But the giant showed no sign of leaving the shed.
* * * *
Doc Savage continued his search. He found more huts. All were cleverly constructed to escape detection from the air. At last he located one of which he seemed to have been seeking.
This structure was obviously the headquarters. It held maps. These were marked with red lines to indicate the intended course of attack upon Detroit and other cities. There was also a large safe in the place.
Here, when he was upon the island, the master mind of the giants obviously made his headquarters.
Doc Savage still carried the case of equipment which he had rescued from the lake. Opening it, he removed certain small boxes and coils of wire. He concealed a tiny disc of a device overhead, where it was unlikely to be observed. The insulated wires leading from this were so thin as to be unnoticeable to the eye. Doc carried these down a metal girder to a boxlike container of his apparatus, which he buried under the dry sand floor.
This done, Doc left the hut.
At the other end of the island stood the log structure in which the giants were quartered. Doc approached it cautiously.
At a concealed point only a few yards from this bunk house he planted more of his apparatus, hiding it in such a fashion that it was practically certain to escape detection.
Then he returned to the pit where his companions were imprisoned. The pig, Habeas Corpus, was not in sight.
Doc studied the giant guards intently. Then the bronze man’s throat muscles tensed in a peculiar fashion. From the boulder some distance away came a voice—a voice resembling that of the florid Hack.
“Come over here a minute, you two big guys!” it directed.
The giants hesitated. They glanced at the shed.
“Hurry up!” rapped the voice from the rocks.
The giants were sure it was Hack’s voice. They lumbered toward the sound. They had not taken a dozen steps when the voice came again.
“Never mind,” it said, “I thought I heard a speed boat out on the lake. But it was just a frog croaking.”
The giants returned to their position. Not overly-bright fellows, neither realized they had been tricked.
Doc Savage was an excellent ventriloquist and a master of voice imitation. Throwing tones which were very like those of Hack, he had decoyed the giants, getting their attention.
While the giants had looked away, Doc had crossed to the roofed-over pit. Here he found Habeas inside the shed. He tucked the pig under his arm and dropped into the pit.
Doc’s five men all but held their breaths, waiting for their bronze chief to explain what he had been doing. No explanation, however, was forthcoming.
Two or three times, the men imagined they heard faint whisperings. These they dismissed as being gentle sounds made by grains of sand swept into the pit by the night breeze.
They failed to realize that Doc had drawn the steel-haired girl aside or that he was speaking to her in a wisp of a whisper.