MASTER OF THE GIANTS
Hack, the thug with the neck which seemed perpetually flushed, appeared at the top of the pit half an hour later. He was excited; his electric hand lantern blazed light downward with an angry suddenness.
“What’s been goin’ on here?” he rapped.
Doc Savage did not look upward. His manner was tranquil. He ignored Hack’s question.
“You, big bronze guy—I asked you a question,” Hack grated.
“Yeah?” said homely Monk.
“Don’t get funny. I’m talkin’ to your boss. What’s been goin’ on here?”
Doc Savage seemed to consider, as if debating what could possibly be meant by the inquiry.
“We’ve been talking,” he replied. “And we’re getting a bit hungry, too. Suppose you produce some food.”
“I’ll produce some trouble,” Hack promised harshly. “The big fellows say they heard my voice around here a while ago. I wasn’t here. What did they hear?”
“Can the giants talk?” Doc asked. “From the sounds they have made in the past, I presumed their vocal cords were affected by the size-increasing process.”
“They can’t talk, but they can write out their words. What’ve you birds been up to?”
Doc glanced at his fellow prisoners and asked, “What have we?”
“Search me.” Renny popped his huge fists together, and the impact made a rocky sound.
“You’re givin’ me a run-around!” Hack rasped.
Then Hack discovered Habeas Corpus. The sight of the pig brought a cry of angry surprise. He leaned over to see better, with the result that he nearly fell into the pit.
“Where’d that peewee edition of a hog come from?” he demanded, when he had recovered his balance.
Monk held Habeas up. He spread the shote’s enormous ears, and asked, “D’you see these ears?”
Hack only snarled.
Monk, homely face serious, explained, “Habeas is a very special kind of a pig. You’d be surprised at what he can do. He uses his ears for wings. He can fly like a bat. He flew down here.”
Hack made a choking sound of wrath.
“Habeas can talk, too,” Monk added. “Listen.”
He held the pig higher. Words seemed to come from the freakish porker’s mouth.
“Say, Hack, when do we eat?” asked the voice.
Hack maintained a dumbfounded silence for a long minute. Then the explanation dawned on him.
“A ventriloquist!” he barked. Laughing heartily, he extinguished his light. “That explains the voice they heard.”
In a loud tone, Hack yelled for four additional giants. These arrived, their heavy footfalls plainly audible to the prisoners in the pit.
After ordering the newcomers to assist in guarding the captives, Hack took his departure.
“Fat chance we’ve got of getting away, now,” Renny groaned.
Monk moved close to Doc, and asked, “Did I do right—havin’ the pig talk to him?”
“You could not have done better,” Doc replied.
* * * *
The hours which followed seemed interminably long. Monk prowled around the pit walls like a caged gorilla. Habeas grunted at his heels.
“The sun must’ve forgotten to come up,” Monk complained.
Later, the homely chemist was surprised to find Doc sleeping in the center of the pit. Reassured by the calmness with which the bronze man was taking their incarceration, Monk also tried to slumber. Failing even to keep his eyes shut, however, he gave it up.
He started a whispered consultation with the others by asking, “I wonder what Doc found while he was outside?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” inquired the steel-haired girl.
“No use.”
“Why not?”
“Doc’s ways are kinda strange to those who don’t know him,” Monk explained. “If he don’t want to give information, he won’t.”
“But you haven’t asked him what he found,” Jean Morris retorted.
“The five of us know Doc as well as anybody knows him. We can tell when he’s got things to say, and when he hasn’t. When he kept silent after returning, that was the tip-off. Right now, he’s not talking.”
“Humph!” sniffed Jean Morris.
To kill time, Monk managed to pry several small fragments of rock from the pit bottom. He pegged these up at the giants.
The monsters retaliated by showering down great handfuls of fine sand. The choking cloud produced great discomfort.
“Let them alone,” advised Doc, who had been awakened by the sand. “They have the upper hand now.”
Jean Morris decided to try her hand at persuading Doc to talk.
“What did you find outside?” she asked. “And what did you do?”
“That will be cleared up when the time comes,” Doc answered.
And this was all the information the steel-haired girl received, although she put several more questions to the bronze man.
Disgusted, she flounced to the other side of the pit and tried to get some sleep.
Dawn came after what seemed an age. It gorged the top of the pit with reddish light. The depths remained gloomy.
Doc Savage approached Jean Morris where she sat apart from the others, and said something which the rest did not catch.
The young woman was apparently piqued by Doc’s refusal to answer her questions. Her voice was waspish.
“I remember every word you told me last night,” she said, “but you might inform me of what you found outside.”
“Not so loud,” Doc admonished, and left her.
The bronze man’s aids exchanged surprised glances. This was their first hint that Doc and the steel-haired girl had held a consultation.
“We heard whispers right after Doc got back,” Monk said thoughtfully. “He was talking to her then.”
The five men eyed Doc. Curiosity was consuming them, and their expressions showed it.
“Listen, Doc,” Monk said hopefully, “what’s the idea of keepin’ us in the dark?”
“Psychology,” Doc replied.
“Huh?”
“If you fellows were told how our trouble here will work out—if it goes according to my expectations—your hopes would rise. You might get the idea you were almost out of the mess.”
“And would that make us mad!” Monk snorted.
“On the contrary, it would make you highly elated.”
“Spill it, Doc! After a night in this hole we need a pick-up.”
“If the scheme goes wrong, you’re going to be very disappointed,” Doc remonstrated casually. “You will feel much worse than you would if you had known nothing of it. To save you that let-down is the reason I did not tell you.”
“Well, we’re all stirred up now,” Monk grinned.
Doc studied them. He apparently concluded the purpose of his keeping silent had been defeated.
“All right, I’ll tell you,” he said.
But he never did.
* * * *
Plane noise came through the morning air. It started with a fault drone, like that of a mosquito, and loudened with surprising rapidity. It stopped the discussion and gripped their attention.
“Sounds like a fast bus,” Renny offered, and eyed his huge fists in the dusk of the pit bottom.
The plane swooped overhead, so low that its propeller blast fluttered the canvas shed covering. Fine sand was blown into the pit.
“It must be a friend of theirs,” Monk grunted, “I don’t hear any sounds of excitement.”
“It’s the boss!” came Hack’s excited yell from somewhere on the island.
Once more, the plane crashed its exhaust stacks past overhead. Then, with noisy backfiring, it landed. Motor boat engines sputtered and howled. They were evidently towing the plane into a camouflaged hangar.
The giants on guard at the pit made coughing and gobbling sounds at each other. Delight was distinguishable in the uncouth noises.
“They seem glad to see the big shot,” said Long Tom.
“And no wonder,” Ham snapped. “He’s the guy who knows how to return them to normal size. If something would happen to him, they’d be in a fine pickle.”
The arrival of the plane had completely occupied the attention of Doc’s five men, so the bronze man was given no opportunity to explain his plans for their escape.
Amid many glad cries from the giants, men approached the pit. Hack’s raucous tones became audible. He was explaining things to his chief.
“We’ve got the whole Savage gang,” he said. “They’re in the pit. We disarmed them. They’re helpless.”
“Then why in hell didn’t you rub them out at once?”
The master villain spoke these last words—there was no doubt of it. Utter arrogance crackled in the voice. The tones were hollowly froglike.
“Pere Teston!” Monk breathed.
“It doesn’t sound like a natural voice!” gasped Jean Morris.
“Too hollow,” Monk agreed.
Doc Savage spoke. “The master mind seems to be speaking into a tube to disguise his voice. Using a gas pipe, or perhaps a cardboard mailing tube.”
Hack’s harsh tone said, “We kept ’em alive, boss, thinkin’ you might want to talk to ’em.”
“They can tell me nothing of importance,” snarled the master of the giants.
“They might know how Detroit is fixin’ to receive us,” Hack whined. He sounded servile, ingratiating. This was a marked change from his usual overbearing manner.
The master villain laughed harshly into the tube which he was using to disguise his voice.
“It makes no difference what Detroit does!”
Hack wailed, “But if they use airplanes and bombs on us——”
“We’re not attacking Detroit to-night,” retorted the ruler of the giants. “Instead, we’ll give Milwaukee a surprise.”
“Milwaukee—instead of Detroit?” Hack gulped.
* * * *
“Hack, my friend, you are very dumb at times,” said the cavernous voice. “You do not think that the few giants we have here, even with their armor, would stand any chance in attacking a city prepared to receive them.”
“They’re mighty big——”
“Size is not of supreme importance these days, my friend. It is brains which count. Bombs and modern machine guns would make short work of our giants.”
“Then what are we gonna do?” Hack groaned.
“Do not sound so disappointed,” chuckled the hollow tones. “My plan is based on psychology. If you had read the newspapers to-day, you would understand. The size of our giants has been exaggerated. Our earlier newspaper advertisements helped.”
“I don’t get you.”
“The imaginative American public actually thinks we have monster men a hundred feet high. We will make our little foray upon Milwaukee, first bombing the light plant so that the city will be in darkness. The giants will smash windows, and catch a few people and break their necks. In the darkness few will see the big fellows. After that, rumor will have the giants infinitely larger than they are.”
Hack seemed to be digesting his chief’s words. “You think we can scare them towns into coughing up five million apiece?”
“We can certainly try,” chuckled the hollow voice.
“But if we don’t——”
“Then there are many other crimes our giants can commit, my friend. As you know, the compound which made them large also made them very hard to kill. Wounds which will overcome an ordinary man will not even faze these fellows.”
“You’re right, at that,” Hack agreed.