CHAPTER IV

THE SNATCH

Doc took the Arab’s words without change of expression. That did not mean he was uninterested. So schooled were the bronze man’s nerves that he possessed the unusual ability to show emotion only when he wished.

Monk and Ham forgot to glare at each other. Renny’s long face became even more sober.

“Who is Prince Abdul Rajab?” Doc asked quietly.

“The ruler of a rich tribe in southern Arabia,” Mohallet explained. “He is quite wealthy. And he has authorized me to pay any reasonable sum for the rental of the submarine.”

“Why does he want the craft?”

Mohallet drooped his shoulders apologetically. “I greatly regret that I cannot tell you. I do not myself know.”

“Then you’re wasting your time,” Doc said shortly.

Mohallet sprang erect, showing his jeweled teeth in a profuse smile.

“The Prince Abdul Rajab is something of an explorer,” he declared hastily. “It is certain that he wants the submarine for some expedition, probably under the ice at one of the poles. Since you wish to know the use he intends to make of the underseas boat before you will rent it, I will cable him for the information. I hope that will be satisfactory?”

“It might help.”

Mohallet waited for Doc to say more, was disappointed, then queried: “You will charter the vessel?”

Doc ignored the question. “Who is the white-haired girl?”

Mohallet blinked his right eye. His left orb, the glass one, had a disconcerting habit of remaining always unlidded, staring. He replied nothing.

“Who were the four Arabs with poisoned swords who seized me in an effort to learn the whereabouts of the sub?” Doc continued.

Mohallet’s jaw sagged.

“And who was the man who tried to kill me with a mysterious silent weapon which fired torpedo-shaped projectiles of steel?” Doc went on.

The diamonds in Mohallet’s teeth winked as he ran his tongue over them. “I do not understand!”

“You know nothing of these things?”

“Believe me, I do not! Ahadha sahih? Is it true? Has some one from my country been seeking the submarine?”

“They have. When you cable your Prince Abdul Rajab, you might ask him about that.”

Wa-asafah, akhkh!” Mohallet was lapsing into Arabic in his perturbation. “Alas! I cannot understand this! I hope these incidents have not persuaded you to refuse to charter the Helldiver?”

“Not if the craft is to be used for a good purpose.”

“I am sure you will approve of the use to which it is to be put! I shall cable my master, Prince Abdul Rajab.”

“Immediately!”

Mohallet hesitated. He passed a finger tip over his fantastic teeth. “Before we enter negotiations, I should like for you to show me over the submarine. I wish to make sure that it is in working condition. Then I shall cable my chief.”

Doc’s bronze features remained immobile. “I’ll show you the Helldiver. Come on!”

They went out into the corridor, entered an elevator. Doc’s three aids, after receiving a nod from their giant chief, followed.

Down in the ornate, mirrored lobby, Doc turned back abruptly.

“I left my keys upstairs,” he explained. “I’ll go back for them.”

* * * *

A bulky safe stood in one corner of the eighty-sixth-floor office. Doc opened it and extracted a case containing scores of flat keys.

He did not leave immediately. Instead, he glided into the laboratory, traveling with great speed. He came back almost at once, carrying a large glass vial filled with a bilious-looking chemical.

He sprinkled the stuff on the rich office rug.

His own footprints, Monk’s, Renny’s, and those of Mohallet, immediately turned a yellowish color.

The footprints of Ham, who had not left the office recently, did not become visible on the rug nap.

Doc whipped to a telephone. He called the number of New York’s most famous hotel.

“Connect me with the banquet room, where the American Society of Scientists is holding its meeting,” he requested. Then, when he had his circuit: “Major Thomas J. Roberts and William Harper Littlejohn, please!”

“I am sorry,” replied an uninterested voice. “I cannot call those two gentlemen. They are the most important speakers of the evening.”

“This is Doc Savage.”

“Huh!” gulped the voice, no longer casual. “Just a moment! I’ll call them!”

Possibly a minute later a new voice said briskly: “This is Long Tom Roberts. Johnny’s right here by me.”

“We seem to be in trouble again,” Doc told “Long Tom.”

“Great! Me and Johnny will ditch this banquet pronto! We weren’t doing anything up here but shooting off our mouths!”

There was little about Long Tom’s speech to show that he was probably America’s greatest electrical wizard. The man with him—”Johnny”—was an archæologist and geologist whose works on these subjects were already becoming classics. They were the remaining members of Doc’s little group of five aids.

“Come right down here, then,” Doc suggested. “Orders will be in the usual place.”

“O.K.”

The conversation terminated, Long Tom and Johnny going back to explain briefly to the august gathering of scientists that important business necessitated their immediate departure. Any call from Doc meant excitement and adventure. And that was the stuff for which they lived.

Doc extinguished the office lights. Then he stepped to the window. From a pocket, he brought a tiny object—a crayon of peculiar substance.

With the crayon, he wrote rapidly on the windowpane.

He finished, stepped back, and turned the light on briefly. There was nothing visible upon the glass to show he had written. Nor would examination with a microscope of moderate power have revealed anything.

Long Tom and Johnny, upon their arrival, would turn a small lantern projecting ultraviolet light upon the window, for orders were commonly left there by Doc. Under the ultraviolet rays, the writing would fluoresce, or glow, in the fashion of vaseline and other materials when treated thus. The letters would spring out with a dazzling electric blue.

It was Doc’s custom to communicate directions to his aids in this secret fashion. His life work of punishing wrong-doers and aiding the oppressed had made all criminals his enemies. Interception of his slightest command might on occasion be a matter of life and death.

* * * *

Mohallet and Doc’s three friends were waiting downstairs when Doc joined them. Ham was adjusting his immaculate clothing in one of the many mirrors, while Monk looked on, disgust on his simian face.

Ham’s natty attire was famous; tailors often followed him down the street to see fashionable clothing being worn as it should be.

Mohallet and the other three loaded into a taxicab. Doc rode outside on the running board. This was a thing he habitually did when danger threatened. Little escaped his amazingly sharp eyes.

Mohallet peered often through the cab windows at Doc as they rolled toward the Hudson. He seemed fascinated by the bronze giant.

It was still raining. Doc wore no hat. His bronze hair shed the drizzle, duck-back fashion, and the moisture seemed not to cling to his fine-textured, metallic skin.

Doc glanced backward often as the cab progressed. His presence on the running board had a pronounced effect on such traffic policemen as they passed. The officers fell over themselves to open a lane through streams of cars.

There were few policemen in the city who did not know this mighty bronze man by sight. The lowliest rookie knew there was a mandatory order out that Doc Savage should receive every co-operation from the police department.

Each of Doc’s five aids held high honorary commissions on the force.

The taxi passed the pier where Doc had taken the four Arabs, went on, and halted before the vast warehouse on the front of which a sign read:

HIDALGO TRADING CO.

The Hidalgo Trading Co., had any one cared to investigate, was Doc Savage himself. It did no business, and owned only this warehouse.

They dismissed the cab. Doc inserted a key, and admitted them to the huge structure. His touch upon a switch brought lights.

Ana mut’ajjib!” gasped Mohallet. “I am astonished!”

He had reason to be. At the outer end, the concrete floor sloped downward into the river. Cradled upon the floor were numerous planes. They ranged from a gigantic trimotored speed ship to small giros, which could ascend and descend vertically. All ships were amphibians—capable of landing on earth or water.

Doc led the way to the right, opened another door, which gave into a partitioned part of the gigantic building.

“There it is!” he announced.

* * * *

This section of the structure was a long boathouse, literally a big indoor drydock, in fact. For in the huge concrete trough where the Helldiver lay there was no water.

The craft was slender, cigar-shaped, possibly a hundred yards in length. The hull was without a superstructure, although there was a collapsible shield which could be raised to form a navigating bridge. The bows terminated in a spring-steel ram of a bowsprit larger than a telephone pole. The rudders and propellers were inclosed in steel baskets to protect them from ice cakes, as were the diving fins.

From bow to stern ran massive steel runners, intended to enable the strange craft to skate along under the polar ice floes.

“Come aboard,” Doc suggested. “You can soon tell she’s in good shape.”

They crossed a swaying gangplank and began their inspection.

Months ago, Doc Savage had visited the vicinity of the north pole in the Helldiver. As far as the rest of the world knew, the expedition had been a scientific one, in which hardship had brought death to all aboard the craft, excepting Doc and his five men.

Actually, the jaunt had been a mad, bloody, perilous race for a derelict liner with a fifty-million-dollar treasure aboard. Since that frightful venture the Helldiver had lain here—no one had shown a desire for such a craft.

Mohallet did not carry his scrutiny far.

“I can see she is in excellent condition!” he declared. “Let us return and conduct our negotiations.”

They left the strange submarine, crossed the big room which held the plane, and stepped out into the leaking night.

“Keep close together!” Doc directed. “We’ll find a taxi.”

Crossing the wide street which paralleled the water front, they sought the shelter of high buildings along a narrow thoroughfare.

Feet clattered behind them. Men appeared, closing in from the rear. A full dozen of them!

Doc splashed the beam of a flashlight. It revealed swarthy evil faces. The visages of the four who had attacked the bronze man earlier in the night were among them. All held weapons.

Wallah!” Mohallet gulped. “What does this mean?”

E-e-eek! The vicious, whistling squeak of a noise was close overhead. A bomb-shaped steel projectile dug a shower of fragments off a brick wall.

“It means we’d better hunt cover!” Doc suggested dryly. “Up the street!”

“The devils!” hissed Mohallet. “If I had a gun——”

“Up the street!” Doc repeated, and gave him a shove that propelled him many feet.

Doc’s three men followed the Arab. For a moment, they lost track of their bronze chief in the darkness. Then wood splintered ahead. Doc had preceded them, with the tremendous speed of which he was capable, and had forced a door.

“C’mon!” Monk puffed.

An instant later, Doc’s low voice guided them to the doorway through which he had broken. Torn remains of the panel crunched underfoot as they piled through.

“There’s a stairway!” Doc rapped. “Up it, and hold ’em back at the top! Where’s Mohallet?”

A loud wail from the street answered that question. Blows followed, curses, grunts.

“He must’ve been a poor runner!” Renny boomed. “They’ve got him!”

Mohallet’s voice screeched from the street: “They have seized me! Help——” It ended suddenly.

* * * *

Renny and the others started back outdoors. Nothing appealed to them more than a fight. It made no difference that there were a dozen foes outside, with poisoned swords and some very mysterious silent weapon which launched terrific bolts of steel.

Doc blocked them. “Upstairs, men!”

They went up, obeying not because they feared Doc, or had to take his commands, but because they knew his directions were usually the best.

Doc was not with them. They knew that before they were at the top of the creaking flight. He had eased back into the drooling night.

Silent as the sinking raindrops, Doc floated to the right. He intended to circle, cross the street, and launch himself upon the dark horde from the rear.

A man trotted across the pavement to the left. Doc veered for him.

The fellow thumbed on a flashlight. The glare waved like a gigantic plume, then smacked into Doc’s face. The flash wielder gasped.

U’a!” he squawled. “Look out! Here he is!”

Doc whipped forward. The light made such a glare that he could not distinguish the man behind it. But, as the fellow struck with a sword, movement of the flash betrayed the direction of the swing. The light traveled slightly with the sway of the tawny body.

Judging with uncanny facility, Doc knew the blade was traveling in an overhead swipe. He twisted aside. The steel hissed past. Force of the blow carried it down until the metal chopped the pavement. The blade snapped off halfway to the hilt.

Doc grasped the hand holding the flash, twisted. The man shrieked. His light, falling, jarred out lens and bulb on the pave. Doc jerked again; once more, the victim wailed. In his agony, he lost his fragment of a sword.

Approaching feet were almost a roar.

“Wait!” croaked a hollow voice in Arabic. “Get back! I will handle the bronze devil!”

A grisly e-e-eek! echoed the words. More followed. They came faster and faster, until their noise was an almost continuous scream.

The man Doc had disarmed gave a hideous squawk as one of the steel bolts drove through him. More of the weird projectiles thudded into flesh.

There was no sound from the weapon firing them, but only the eerie squeal of the missiles themselves.

Then silence fell.

“He is dead!” the hollow voice said with certainty. “I swept the entire street, both at the level of a man’s chest and close to the pavement! A light, you sons of camels!”

A flash spiked a white rod. It waved, nudging the body of the man Doc had tackled. The unfortunate fellow had been pummeled by the steel bolts until he retained little of the shape of a human.

“The fool!” rumbled the hollow voice callously. “We had to slay him to get the bronze man. But he had it coming for permitting himself to be overpowered so easily.”

The flash beam continued to dart about. Gradually, the truth dawned. Doc Savage, or his body, was not in sight.

“He must have reached cover!” snarled the man with the light. “Into this doorway after the others!”

Swarthy figures piled into the door. They crowded shoulders up the stairs. Then, amid a great screeching and cursing, they came toppling back.

“They have found heavy boxes of goods to hurl!” a man moaned.

There was a short, profane palaver. It ended in the gang gathering up their injured and taking to their heels in a big rush.