TROUBLE CLUB
The Coastal Yacht Club was one of the oldest and most distinguished in the United States, and it had occupied its site on the banks of the Hudson River since Colonial days. But the last city administration had taken over the shore line along the stretch by the club with the intention of establishing a park. There had been a squabble in the courts, after which the yacht club abandoned its large but ancient building and betook its membership further uptown.
The old club lay now, awaiting the wreckers, a forlorn, rambling white structure of wood extending partially over the river, and with a flagpole which was a little off plumb.
It was shortly after eight o’clock when a puffing tug escorted a large empty barge to the ramshackle yacht club dock. At the dock, moored stem and stern so that its paintwork would not be chafed, lay a small cabin cruiser. There was no one aboard.
The barge was nursed up to the dock and lines made fast, then the tug skipper cast off and chugged away down the river. The two bargemen scrambled ashore.
They were very grimy specimens, these two, wearing old clothing too voluminous even for the chilly morning, and oilskin southwesters which made it seem as if they had been out all night in the fog and rain.
Heads down, they shuffled to the club, seeming in no hurry as they reached the porch and seated themselves. One kept his hands out of sight a great deal.
“Thought that wreckin’ crew was supposed to be here by this time,” he said loudly at last.
“Let’s get our tools ashore,” growled the other.
They left the porch, went to the barge and returned bearing large, grimy canvas sacks. They deposited one of these on the wharf, another on the rear porch of the yacht club, and went around to the front and placed another on the porch there. Then they seated themselves and resumed talking.
“Strange the wreckers ain’t showed up,” said the one who kept his hands out of sight.
“Yeah,” agreed the other. “Let’s look inside and see how much of a job this is gonna be.”
They both got up and ambled to the door. They tried to peer inside, but dust had settled on the glass panel, shutting out vision. They tried to open the door, but it resisted their efforts. One of them pulled out a key and started to insert it in the lock.
The door opened suddenly. With great speed, the two shabby wreckers sprang forward. They might have been expecting this.
Inside the yacht club, a man squawked in surprise. He was an Oriental who had once been brown of skin, but who was now a weirdly bleached fellow. The man had held a knife; but the door, slamming into him, had taken the knife point and he was wrenching to get it free.
A fist banged the man’s head and he fell down heavily, leaving the knife sticking in the door. The fist was a tremendous thing, and it belonged to the wrecker who had been keeping his hands out of sight.
There were two more knife wielders inside the door.
The two wreckers had changed character remarkably. No one could mistake their identity now. They were Doc Savage and Renny.
* * * *
The two knifemen—white-brown men—saw they had caught Tartars; but they had nerve and did not try to retreat, endeavoring to get in with ripping knife strokes. Their skill was evident as they lunged.
Both saw their knife strokes were going home to the chests of their foes. Doc and Renny seemed strangely clumsy, defenseless. Knife point traveling at blinding speed, one of the knives hit Doc almost in the pit of the stomach. But instead of penetrating, there was a rasp of a noise and the blade broke off short.
A blow clanked on the knife wielder’s head and he fell. Probably he had not even had time to realize Doc was wearing a bulletproof vest.
The other knifeman made an industrious effort to sink his blade into Renny, discovered the bulletproof vest too late, and was slammed down.
Shrill Tananese squawls were piping through the ancient building. They conveyed wild alarm.
Doc and Renny charged forward. Their procedure might have seemed reckless, but not only did they wear the armor vests which protected their bodies, legs, and even a portion of their necks, but the oilskin hats which they wore were not conventional seamen’s hats at all, but thin steel helmets as efficient as regulation army equipment.
A labyrinth of passages and stairs opened ahead of them. Boarded-up windows made the interior murky, almost dark, in spite of the morning brilliance outside. In the gloom, white-brown men flitted like ghosts. Occasional shots whooped.
“Monk!” Renny boomed. “Ham! You in here?”
In answer to that, a scuffle started somewhere in the rear.
“That’ll be them!” Renny growled.
The big-fisted engineer and the bronze man dived in that direction. They made ghostly figures with their unnaturally white skins, their grim expressions.
A cluster of animated men appeared ahead, vague figures in the gloom. Monk and Ham were putting up a fight, hoping to prevent themselves being carried away. Able to use only their bound legs and arms, they were not doing badly.
Gun flame lashed out, and the room filled with ear-splitting concussion as guns were discharged. The spike-snouted automatics had a particularly vicious crack, and the bullets, driven with force enough to penetrate anything less than extraordinarily efficient bulletproof vests, delivered tremendous blows.
Doc and Renny separated, getting down behind large steel cabinets. This had evidently been the club locker room, and the lockers had not yet been removed. The Tananese, disgusted and excited, drove a few bullets through metal cabinets. They cackled orders among themselves.
Renny had expected them to charge. He was surprised when they did not.
“What’re they up to?” he demanded loudly.
“They’re trying to take the prisoners, away,” Doc called.
A door banged in the extreme rear; then the room became quiet. Doc and Renny reared up simultaneously, charged the panel and found it barred on the inside. Renny put his huge fists to use, smashing with a violence that seemed incredible. He pulled splinter-edged slabs out of the door, got the panel open, and he and Doc whipped through.
Steps slanted downward.
“Back stairs!” Renny roared.
“Wait!” Doc rapped. “Listen!”
They listened, and they could hear running feet in the halls below, heard doors bang open, and caught the weaker pipe of Oriental voices outside.
“They’re out!” Renny growled.
Doc Savage jerked his coat back, wrenched and got the skirt of his bulletproof tunic up. This disclosed a small case which had been well protected. Projecting from the case was a knob resembling those on radio sets, and a pointer was affixed to this. In a circle around the pointer, four numerals were stamped. Where the pointer now rested, the panel was marked “Off.”
Doc turned the pointer to the first number.
Outside, there was a loud, mushy explosion, as if some one had dropped a rotten egg several feet in diameter.
The bleached brown men began to scream and cackle like guineas.
* * * *
“Hah!” roared Renny. “I guess they didn’t expect that!”
Doc Savage said nothing, but turned the knob to the next number. This resulted in another explosion. The first had been at the rear, but the second occurred around in front. A fresh caterwauling of sound arose from the Orientals.
“Now’s our chance,” said Renny, needlessly, for Doc Savage was already racing downstairs.
They plunged out of the yacht club building, and were suddenly among a forest of squirming, yelling men. The bleached brown fellows—those immediately at the door—were not showing fight. They were interested solely in their own difficulties, in the thing which had happened to them.
They looked as if they had been pierced by thousands of needles, or perhaps caught in a storm of fine, flying shot. Drops of scarlet, very tiny, were oozing from their skins in such profusion that the result was a freckled appearance.
Odor of burned powder hung in the air. A small cloud of powder smoke made a haze over the mêlée. Scattered about were the fragments of the tool bag which Doc Savage had placed on the yacht club porch.
The Tananese began toppling over, contorted, mouths gaping.
Renny snorted gleefully and waded through them. Doc’s tool bags had been bombs, exploded by remote radio control. They had been filled, not with deadly shrapnel, but with solidified particles of the same chemical which the dapper Ham employed to Goat the tip of his sword cane. The stuff looked like a yellowish rock salt.
“Holy cow!” Renny boomed. “Monk and Ham are not here!”
That was true. Neither the homely chemist nor the lawyer was in sight.
Foot clatter came from the direction of the dock. View of the structure was impeded by a boat shed. Doc whipped around that—and almost fell over two prone figures, both of which were bound and gagged.
They were the girl, Joan Lyndell, and the hawk-nosed Khan Nadir Shar. The pair rolled their eyes imploringly at the bronze man.
On ahead, out toward the dock end, fully a dozen of the Tananese were racing for the moored cabin cruiser. Among them, they carried two limp figures which were bundled in old canvas, probably abandoned sails which they had picked up around the yacht club. Little about the shrouded forms could be distinguished.
Among the Tananese was one who kept his head covered. He was a towering, gaunt figure, stooped in an effort to hide some of his height. And he had pulled his coat up over his head so that it was covered. He ran in the lead, as if more anxious than the others to escape.
On the ground in front of Doc, the Khan Nadir Shar wrenched about. He got his hands up. His fingers had been stripped of jewels, but grooves where the rings had rested were distinguishable. He managed to get the gag out.
“Your men, Monk and Ham, they carry them away!” he rapped in English which was still unnaturally perfect in spite of its staccato speed. “And seize the one who has his head hidden with a coat!”
Doc ran toward the wharf end.
* * * *
The Tananese pitched the two shrouded forms which they carried, and the figures landed on the trunk of the cabin cruiser. Brown men leaped down and whisked them inside. One seized the controls. A starter gnashed at a flywheel with iron teeth. The motor banged into life.
All but two Tananese were now aboard. These two took a great leap to the top of the cockpit cover. This broke, letting them through on the man who still had his coat over his head. He fell down, but did not uncover his head, then got up and kicked soundly in the ribs the two who had broken through.
The cabin cruiser was moving now. Its propeller threw a plume of water. The pilot put the wheel hard over.
“Damn!” Renny roared, and looked as if he were going to plunge in after the craft.
Doc Savage hauled him back—then gave him a violent shove. Renny flailed his arms, turned over once and made a great splash. Doc hit the water almost simultaneously.
Renny came up, spouted and started to yell.
“Down!” Doc rapped. “Stay under!”
There was a loud chung! as a bullet hit water. Others followed. Lead-knocked spray stung Renny’s eyes. The Tananese were leaning over the cabin cruiser cockpit, shooting with the wildness characteristic of excited Orientals.
Renny bloated his lungs with air and sank. He knew now why Doc had shoved him overboard then dived in himself. On the flimsy dock they would have stood no chance. Finding a dock spile, Renny hugged it and remained down until his lungs took fire and his ears began to bang in sympathy with his heartbeat.
He came up half expecting to find the cabin cruiser had come back. But it was not there. Far down the river, it scudded like a fat white duck.
The explanation of its continued flight was moaning out on the river: the speedboat occupied by Johnny and Long Tom. The speedboat had been loitering slowly, its stern sunk far down. But now it was up on the surface so high that it seemed only propellers and rudder were buried in water.
In toward the dock boiled the speedboat. It cut its speed, settled, then seemed to stand on its stern as Johnny slammed the reverse lever.
Doc Savage stroked to the craft and whipped over the gunwale. Renny splashed up. Long Tom seized both of his big wrists. The two of them were nearly yanked overboard as Johnny snapped the throttle around on the quadrant. Renny finally landed on the floorboards, sputtering, clothes leaking water. When he got up again, the speed of the boat was such that the rush of air almost knocked him over.
Johnny cut the exhaust streams from the mufflers. Quiet was no longer necessary; and the cutting out of the silencers added a little to the boat’s power. The water was rough; the hull smacked down on the waves with a series of loud reports.
Other clapping sounds began to be heard. The non-shatter windshield acquired round perforations; streaks of splinters arose on the mahogany coaming.
“They sure do like us,” Long Tom said grimly. “I hope they haven’t anything stronger than those foreign pistols.”
“A propensity conducive to salubriousness,” agreed Johnny. He had jacked a periscope up and was using it to steer by.
Bullets fired from the cabin cruiser continued to nick the speedboat hull, but did no harm, because the craft had been conceived and designed for a violent existence. It was armored as heavily as circumstances permitted; under the innocent-looking mahogany sheeting was a layer of nickel-chrome alloy, carbonized and tempered like the plate on battleships.
Doc opened a locker, got out another periscope and employed it to watch the cabin cruiser. The craft was swinging out across the river, bound north.
“Heading for the Jersey shore,” he advised.
Renny, who was never too cautious, popped up his head for a brief look.
“They’ll make it, too,” he rumbled. “Got a head start on us when Johnny swung in to pick us up.”
For a moment there was only the terrific bawl of the motors and the loud reports of waves smacking past.
“They’ve got Monk and Ham wrapped in sailcloth!” Renny boomed. “Blast it! I hope they’re still alive!”
Doc said nothing. He was watching the cabin cruiser. It was headed for a stretch of beach, one of the few along the river.
Beyond the beach, clinging to the steep slope of the bank, was an amusement park. This was closed for the winter. It had a drear, deserted aspect.
The cabin cruiser scarcely slackened speed when it came to the beach. Propellers and rudder were torn off. The craft slid twice its own length out of water.
The Tananese picked themselves up and began to spill out. First to hit the ground was the tall man who kept his coat over his head.
The next men to spring out carried the two forms wrapped in sailcloth.
* * * *
Johnny held the speedboat directly for the beach. Doc reached his side, said a word and Johnny surrendered the controls. Then Johnny, Long Tom and Renny draped themselves forward over the bullet-ripped coaming. They gripped cleats and wrenched them up, thus lifting special steel shields already fitted with slit loopholes. They leveled their mercy-bullet-charged supermachine pistols through these. The guns began to racket, and spew smoking empties.
The Tananese stood for a moment, trying to make a fight of it. Two went down. The tall man who kept his head covered, waved an arm and probably shouted orders which did not reach the speedboat. His party raced in wild retreat.
Doc jacked the speedboat engines into reverse. Some thousands of horsepower whooped and moaned. Mechanism strained. The braking shock sent all three men skidding off the coaming. Then the boat grounded lightly.
Doc took a running leap along the deck and reached dry land. His three men splashed out behind him. They ran furiously, using the machine pistols.
They shot freely, taking few pains to avoid hitting the two canvas-swathed forms. The mercy bullets would not harm Ham and Monk seriously, except on the rare chance of contact with an eye.
The Tananese reached a row of concession booths, all deserted and boarded up. Scrap trash and paper were scattered about. Gaudy paint had already started peeling from the booths and the amusement houses. The great framework of a roller-coaster had the aspect of a many-boned skeleton.
Dodging among the booths, the Tananese paused to shoot occasionally. They were fighting a difficult battle, and knew it by now. Doc and his men, with their effective body armor, were invulnerable to everything but a carefully placed shot.
Flight was not going to be easy, either, and the bleached brown men began to realize that, too. They took shelter among the buildings, found rests for their gun arms and started shooting with a great deal more accuracy.
Renny barked a pained surprise as a bullet made a rather gory mess of his left ear.
“Get down!” Doc directed. “Stay here!”
Renny boomed, “But Doc, if we circle around and cut ’em off, we’ll be able——”
“Stay here!” the bronze man directed.
He crawled away, keeping below an ornamental sidewalk, and vanished behind a building which had a paint-scabby sign reading, “House of Mirrors.” Renny, Long Tom and Johnny did not catch sight of him again.