TEXT:  THE SEA ANGEL
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  THE SEA ANGEL..............................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson......................................................................................1
  Chapter I. THE AMAZING REDSKINS................................................................................................1
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL................................................................................................................4
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS...................................................................................................8
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED................................................................................15
  Chapter V. THE NICE YOUNG MAN.................................................................................................19
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT............................................................................................................21
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS.....................................................................................................................25
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN....................................................................................................29
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP.........................................................................................................................32
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN.......................................................................................................34
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT........................................................................................................37
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME.................................................................................................................42
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL..............................................................................................................45
  Chapter XIV. COOLINS GETS A CLUE.............................................................................................49
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN".......................................................................................51
  Chapter XVI. THE "PATIENT"............................................................................................................58
  Chapter XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL...........................................................................................63
  Chapter XVIII. THE ANGEL’S LAIR..................................................................................................66
  Chapter XIX. DEATH RENDEZVOUS................................................................................................74
  Chapter XX. H. O. G.............................................................................................................................78
  Chapter XXI. TRAPPED BELOW........................................................................................................87
  Chapter XXII. FAST..............................................................................................................................92
  Chapter XXIII. THE ANGEL ON THE  CLIFF...................................................................................95
   THE SEA ANGEL
  i
  
  THE SEA ANGEL
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. THE AMAZING REDSKINS
  • 
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  • 
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  • 
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  • 
  Chapter V. THE NICE YOUNG MAN
  • 
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  • 
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  • 
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN
  • 
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP
  • 
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN
  • 
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  • 
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME
  • 
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  • 
  Chapter XIV. COOLINS GETS A CLUE
  • 
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  • 
  Chapter XVI. THE "PATIENT"
  • 
  Chapter XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. THE ANGEL’S LAIR
  • 
  Chapter XIX. DEATH RENDEZVOUS
  • 
  Chapter XX. H. O. G.
  • 
  Chapter XXI. TRAPPED BELOW
  • 
  Chapter XXII. FAST
  • 
  Chapter XXIII. THE ANGEL ON THE CLIFF
  • 
  Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
  Chapter I. THE AMAZING REDSKINS
  HE was a peaceful old gentleman who was scared out  of his wits. Peaceful−looking, that is. His hair was
  white, and his  skin was as soft and pink as a baby’s even if it did have wrinkles in  it.
  He was frightened. As terrified and as full of cold,  horrible suspense as a man watching a black widow spider
  crawl down his  arm.
  The scared old man was getting out of an automobile  in front of the main entrance to the Museum of Natural
  History. The  automobile was one equipped with armor plate and special glass. Another  automobile had
  driven up to the museum entrance ahead of it. Still  another had followed behind. These two escort cars were
  full of  gentlemen with guns in their pockets, suspicion in their eyes, and  detective badges�private and
  police�on their clothing.
  Before the old gentleman stirred from his car, the  guards scattered over the sidewalk and into the museum,
  looking around,  then signaled discreetly that it was safe.
  THE SEA ANGEL
  1
  
  Having observed nobody suspicious inside the museum,  the burly man in charge of the guards came out to
  report to the old  gentleman.
  "Coast looks clear," he said. "But, Mr. Quietman, it  would make it a lot simpler if we had some idea of just
  who is  threatening you. Who is this Sea Angel?"
  The old gentleman�Leander L. Quietman,  philanthropist, patron of arts, beloved old gentleman who gave
  dollar  bills to poor newsboys, according to the newspapers�shrugged and looked  exasperated.
  "I’ve told you I do not know!" he said. "It�the  thing�your job is to protect me from anything. Anything!
  Now, I  am going in to have a look at the exhibit of the Calhugi Indians which  I am presenting to the
  museum."
  As he entered the museum, Quietman looked just a bit  more scared than any man should be who does not
  know what he is scared  of, except that it was a telephone voice calling itself the "Sea  Angel."
  THE Calhugi Indian exhibit was located in an alcove  off the enormous third−floor hall which contained
  exhibits of other  tribes of American, Canadian and Alaskan Indians. There was not a  single visitor or
  spectator in the room. The reason for this was  simple: It was seven o’clock in the morning, and the museum
  was not yet  open to visitors.
  Leander L. Quietman, after having a guard go ahead  to make sure the place was empty of human presence,
  said, "You men may  wait for me outside if you wish. I prefer to admire this alone."
  Then he walked toward the exhibit which he was  donating. 
  The bodyguards loafed outside the door and indulged  in their favorite pastime of trying to figure out who or
  what was  menacing Leander L. Quietman.
  Meanwhile, Leander L. Quietman was walking toward  his Calhugi Indian exhibit, which was at the far end of
  the hall. The  Calhugi Indians were probably as little−known aborigines as ever chased  a buffalo or paddled a
  birch−bark canoe.
  Quietman drew a breath of admiration when he saw his  exhibit, only just completed by the finest restoration
  artists in the  business. Experts in working with wax.
  It consisted of a sod house shaped like a beehive.  At one side of the house stood a small herd of six shaggy
  ponies. On  one of these ponies sat a squat, enormously thick and broad Indian.
  This Indian had an amazing set of muscles, which was  probably fortunate, because he did not look as if he
  could possibly  have many brains. Other Calhugi savages were seated, cross−legged,  around a camp fire,
  along with their squaws. They were engaged in  arrow−making and other pursuits.
  Quietman heaved another sigh of admiration. He  stepped under the velvet rope surrounding the exhibit and
  advanced for  a closer look at a wax Calhugi Indian, who was making a tomahawk.
  "A marvelous work of art!" gasped Leander L.  Quietman, after a close look. "A beautiful specimen of the
  human race!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  THE SEA ANGEL
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  "My mother always thought so, too," said the Calhugi  brave, who was supposed to be made of wax.
  The next instant, he had Quietman by the throat and  had lifted his tomahawk.
  "One peep," he said, "and I’ll tomahawk you plenty!"
  POOR old Leander L. Quietman became pale, and began  to shake.
  The Calhugi Indian sitting on the wax pony got off.  His legs were stiff, and he staggered about ludicrously.
  "Damn this razorback horse!" he groaned.
  Several more of the supposedly wax redskins now got  up, and two came out of the sod beehive. One of these
  carried a rope  ladder.
  The squat, muscular fellow who had been on the  horse�he had an enormous stomach of the type commonly
  called  pot−belly�now took charge.
  "The window," he said. "And no more wise cracks.  Them bodyguards may hear us."
  "O. K., Boscoe," the fake Indians agreed, and  grabbed Leander L. Quietman.
  "W−what does this m−mean?" Quietman gulped.
  "It means," said the tubby "Boscoe," "that we had to  try this crazy gag to get our hands on you. You didn’t
  think that  because you walked around in a swarm of cops and bodyguards we wouldn’t  get you, did you?
  Grabbing you is the only way to save you from the Sea  Angel."
  Quietman choked, "S−saving me f−from the Sea Angel?"
  "Believe it or not, and strange as it seems," Boscoe  agreed.
  Quietman moaned, "Y−you are m−making a mistake!"
  "The hell we are!" Boscoe grinned.
  The men proceeded with their saving. They taped  Quietman’s lips, fastened his wrists with wider tape, then
  led him to a  window. One opened the window. Tying Quietman to an end of the rope  ladder, they lowered
  him.
  During this operation, Boscoe went back to the  Calhugi Indian exhibit and pilfered. He stuffed his pockets
  with stone  knives, flint arrowheads and several pairs of moccasins.
  Boscoe seemed to forget everything else in his  absorption with the looting. He grabbed two or three bows,
  two  tomahawks, then began to tuck arrows under an arm. He added a long  spear. Indeed, he seemed bent on
  taking everything in sight.
  Several of the men were now down the ladder, and  they had untied old Leander L. Quietman and were
  holding him. The  others descended. Boscoe was last.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  THE SEA ANGEL
  3
  
  Boscoe’s descent was something of burlesque comedy.  He had stuffed his Indian garments with everything
  they would hold, and  had both arms full, which left no hands free to handle the rope ladder.
  It was with the greatest reluctance that he  surrendered an armload of his loot, and climbed down.
  "Whatcha gonna do with that stuff?" a man gritted.
  "Oh, I dunno," Boscoe said vaguely. "I’ll think of  something."
  THE Museum of Natural History originally started  with one building, and others were added. There are
  alleyways and  courts between these structures. The men had descended into one of the  courts, from which an
  alley led to a side street.
  They got in motion, two of them guiding Leander L.  Quietman.
  Boscoe had his difficulties. He dropped an arrow,  stooped to pick it up, and lost two moccasins. He
  progressed in this  fashion, bobbing along after the others, but leaving a trail of  erstwhile Calhugi belongings.
  He groaned in agony as he saw his loot  dwindling.
  This obviously tickled his companions. They grinned  widely.
  Then their grins faded.
  A most remarkable−looking man had appeared in front  of them.
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  STANDING on pedestals here and there inside that  part of the museum devoted to sculpture were a number
  of bronze statues  of ancient athletes who had legendary strength.
  This stranger was like that. He might as readily  have been one of the statues come to life, as the other men
  had lately  been Calhugi Indians. He was, however, attired in a neat, brown  civilian suit, and there was no
  make−up on his skin to make it resemble  bronze, whereas the others had their hides painted a coppery red.
  Nothing happened for some moments. The fake redskins  looked at the man they had met.
  Boscoe said quickly, "Watch it, guys, watch it!  Daniel in the lion’s den didn’t have anything on us!"
  "One side, bronze guy!" a man snarled. "Or we’ll  take you plenty!"
  "You apes!" Boscoe growled. "Do you know who this  guy�"
  Boscoe did not finish. The action started. A man  pointed his pistol at the bronze giant. There was blurred
  motion, and  the bronze giant was not where he had been; and two men were flat on  their backs, kicking their
  legs like flies and trying to figure out  just what had happened.
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  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  4
  
  Poor old Leander L. Quietman had been dropped on the  hard cement alley pavement. The men who had held
  him leaped to the  attack.
  A man drew a gun. "Get ‘em up!"
  "Nix!" Boscoe barked anxiously.
  The next instant, as if by some miraculous  legerdemain, the bronze man had secured the gun. He pointed it at
  the  sky, pulled the trigger. A mousetrap would have made more noise. The  pistol was not loaded.
  Boscoe groaned, "Now he knows our guns are empty!"
  If the fact that a gang of men staging a kidnaping  carried unloaded guns amazed the bronze giant, he did not
  show emotion  about it.
  The fight continued. It became obvious the  unbelievable was going to happen. The mountain was coming to
  Mahomet,  water would run uphill. One amazing bronze man was going to whip the  whole gang!
  Then, and the very, suddenness of it was incredibly  weird, men seemed to freeze where they stood. They had
  been jumping  about wildly, striking, trying to get clear of their Nemesis. They  stiffened. It was as if they
  were a movie which had been stopped at one  scene. They seemed scarcely to breathe, until finally, Boscoe
  lifted a  thick arm slowly and pointed.
  "The Sea Angel!" he croaked.
  THE bronze man�Doc Savage�whirled and saw it.
  Fantastic thing. An incredible thing. Had it been  night, the thing might have been a bit more believable.
  Eight feet might be the height of the incredible  creature. That, though, was a guess. It was frilly around the
  edges. It  was half as wide as high. It had a thick part for a body. It had  triangular wings, two of them, and
  these ran to a point; and from these  dangled black ropelike arms, eight or ten feet long. Each arm  terminated
  in a black ball a little smaller than a baseball.
  Silver was the creature’s color. The slick silver of  a fish. But there were black markings�the edges of the
  thing, and the  arms.
  As it stood there, it did bear some resemblance to  an angel. It had a mouth. This was evident when the mouth
  opened and  showed a jet−black gullet. The mouth was large enough to take a beer  keg, with only a little
  stretching.
  Boscoe croaked, "Boys, we’re in a predicament now!"
  Doc Savage lunged for the silver monstrosity. He was  lightning on his feet.
  But the Sea Angel was lightning doubled. One of the  black arms whipped forward, and the long, black rope
  came around like a  blacksnake whip.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  5
  
  Doc dodged, and the dark ball barely touched him.  But the touch had an incredible effect: He felt it from head
  to foot.  Not pain. Something else. Shock. Agony.
  The bronze man stumbled back, was clear when the  other arm struck. He kept moving, reached old Leander
  Quietman, scooped  him up.
  It became evident that there was no way out of the  alley and court. But in a corner was a small brick box of a
  building,  the door open, a key in the lock. Tools, lawn mowers, were inside.
  Doc whipped to the shed, popped Leander Quietman  inside, and closed the door. He turned the key in the
  lock, then took  the key out.
  Doc got close to the brick wall. He shoved the key  into a cranny between the bricks, twisted, and broke it so
  that it  would never open the little tool cubicle again.
  The strange creature, the Sea Angel, glided to the  tool house, fluttered about it a moment. It could not get in.
  It made  no sound.
  Boscoe and his men ran. They ran as if getting away  from there was the nicest thing they had ever been able
  to do.
  THE Sea Angel advanced on Doc Savage. The bronze man  dipped into his clothing and brought out a small
  gas grenade. He hurled  it. The thing broke against the monster, poured out tear gas.
  The tear gas had absolutely no effect, except that  it made it necessary for the bronze man to get away
  immediately. He  managed to do it by a wild rush.
  Doc got out of the alley and onto a side street.
  Boscoe and his men were in two cars, leaving rapidly.
  A young woman stood on the sidewalk. An unusually  tall and attractive young woman, who was staring in
  wonder at the  goings−on.
  Suddenly she screamed, whirled, ran.
  She had seen, of course, the Sea Angel. The thing  was following Doc Savage.
  Doc ran swiftly. Construction work was being done on  a near−by street, under the elevated railway. The
  bronze man made for  the loose bricks, and when he reached them, he picked one up, and let  fly.
  The brick struck squarely. And the monster wavered  for an instant, driven off balance. Doc picked up more
  bricks. The  incredible apparition retreated swiftly.
  A taxicab came cruising around the corner, and the  daydreaming driver saw the silver−and−black creature.
  He gave a violent  start and hung his amazed face out a window.
  One of the monster’s strange, black feelers snaked  out and barely touched the driver’s elbow. The hackman
  shrieked.  Screeched as if he had lost the arm. And he fed his cab gears and gas.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  6
  
  The monster leaped, and got onto the cab. Not onto  the running board, but across the top, great flipperlike
  wings draped  down on the side, the black feelers tossed up over its back.
  The taxi driver saw what he had aboard. He was still  shrieking when he and his machine and his fantastic
  passenger were lost  to sight, six blocks away.
  Doc Savage ran to his car, a long, powerful, plain  roadster and gave chase; but the cab was gone, although he
  hunted over  an area of many blocks before he gave up.
  Doc Savage went back to the alley between the museum  buildings where he had left old Leander L. Quietman.
  The girl who had been such an interested observer of  the excitement was not in sight. She was, it developed,
  concealed just  inside the mouth of the alley. She showed Doc the business end of a  small lady’s pistol when
  he walked into the alley.
  "YOU will put up your hands," she said, and shook a  little.
  "Miss Quietman," Doc Savage said. "Sure you are not  making a mistake?"
  She widened her eyes at him. "You know me?"
  "You are Nancy Quietman."
  She snapped, "That makes no difference! Get your  hands up!"
  Doc Savage appeared not to hear the order. "Changed  your mind or something?"
  "What do you mean?"
  "It was you who asked me to try to help your  grandfather, who was in trouble. You wrote me a letter."
  "Oh!" Nancy Quietman lowered her gun. "You are Doc  Savage! I’m sorry. I did not know you."
  "I am glad," Doc told her.
  She showed surprise. "Glad that any one should not  recognize you?"
  "Publicity," the bronze man said, "is very bad for  any one doing such work as myself and my aids do. Now,
  what is your  grandfather’s trouble? Your letter gave no details."
  "I do not know," Nancy Quietman said. "He has  suddenly become terribly worried about something. He hired
  bodyguards,  and got the police to assign detectives to guard him."
  "What excuse did he give the police?"
  "Merely that he was scared."
  Doc questioned, "You have no other clue?"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter II. THE SEA ANGEL
  7
  
  "No," Nancy Quietman said. "Unless it is this: I  heard grandfather muttering over and over, ‘the
  twenty−third! I am to  be the twenty−third!’ He said it did not mean anything when I asked him  about it."
  She was silent, looking, at the bronze man. Finally,  the girl shuddered.
  "Was it real?" she asked. "Has any one ever heard of  it before?"
  The bronze man did not answer.
  "Your grandfather?" Doc Savage asked finally.
  "I found him in the tool shed," Nancy Quietman said.  "He was yelling. One of the groundkeepers let him out."
  "We might talk to him," Doc said, and walked into  the alley between the museum buildings.
  But old Leander Quietman was not there.
  Some groundkeepers and a few curiosity−seekers stood  around and looked puzzled.
  "He left," they explained, "in a hurry."
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  DOC SAVAGE and Nancy Quietman hurriedly entered the  museum. They found the phalanx of guards
  blissfully unaware that  anything had happened to Leander Quietman.
  "Those men probably doubled back and seized him!"  the girl said, and added that it was a wonder some one
  had not taken to  stealing the New York City police stations.
  Whatever the cops thought about this, they were  polite enough not to say. Doc Savage and the young woman
  walked out on  the street.
  The newsboy was still there, yelling the headlines.  Doc bought a paper. When he opened it, black type was
  big on the page.
  GRAND JURY FAILS TO INDICT MAYFAIR!
  "Awful Miscarriage of Justice," District Attorney  Says.
  Nancy Quietman said, "I suppose you have dismissed  that man, Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, or Monk, as he is
  called, from your  organization?"
  "I have," Doc said quietly.
  The girl nodded approvingly.
  "It was terrible, the way he swindled that poor  lawyer, Theodore Marley Brooks�Ham, as he is nicknamed,"
  the girl said.
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  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  8
  
  Nancy Quietman, in referring to the swindle  mentioned in the newspapers, was talking about a scandal that
  had  started the politicians in Washington howling, and which had turned  collective Wall Street as pale as a
  ghost. The politicians were  claiming it proved the laws governing Wall Street were too lax, and  Wall Street
  was afraid of what the politicians would do.
  Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair had cleverly swindled  Brigadier General Theodore Marley "Ham" Brooks,
  noted war veteran, out  of three million dollars, reducing Ham to a pauper. Poor, impoverished  Ham had
  attempted to take his own life.
  On the other hand, the rapscallion Monk boasted that  everything had been perfectly legal, and apparently it
  had, because  they were still trying to get him in jail.
  Doc Savage had ejected Monk from his organization  and publicly branded any one who would commit such a
  swindle as a type  of rascal which was not doing the country any good.
  The method by which Monk had perpetrated his swindle  on Ham was a bit too complicated in its legal
  aspects for an average  citizen to understand.
  "Your grandfather may have gone home," Doc told the  girl.
  "I live at grandfather’s house," she said. "Would  you care to accompany me there and perhaps talk with him?"
  The bronze man accepted the invitation.
  THE Leander L. Quietman mansion bore more  resemblance to a church than to a home. It was an old−timer,
  and  situated on an uptown eminence overlooking the Hudson River.
  A butler in exactly the correct attire opened the  door. 
  "Your grandfather just left, Miss Quietman," he  said, when asked about Leander L. Quietman.
  "So he got back safe!" the girl exclaimed happily. 
  The elderly butler adjusted his eyeglasses. "Your  grandfather took his bags, miss. He asked me to tell you he
  might be  gone for some time."
  "Where did he go?"
  "He didn’t say, miss."
  "That’s queer," Nancy Quietman said, and looked  worried for a few moments. Then she smiled at Doc
  Savage. "Would you  like to have coffee with me?"
  They entered a room which she explained was her  grandfather’s laboratory.
  "Oh!" she exclaimed, looking around. "What�what�"
  The desk drawers were hanging out, the papers in  them birdnests of confusion. Other papers were on the floor.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  9
  
  "Grandfather left in a hurry!" Nancy Quietman  gasped, explaining a scene that spoke for itself.
  "Would you give me your permission to make an  investigation, Miss Quietman?" Doc Savage asked quietly.
  "You think something is wrong?" 
  "Manifestly," Doc said. "First, the call for  bodyguards, then the attempted kidnaping, now this."
  "Go ahead with your investigation!" the girl said,  vehemently. "This whole thing is as strange as�as that
  monster!"
  Doc Savage’s investigation was interesting. First,  he visited his car, and returned with a small metal case on
  which were  some knobs which were like those on ordinary radio sets.
  "A device which howls when any metal is brought near  it," the bronze man explained.
  Doc now moved the contrivance about the room,  keeping near the walls. It howled. He located a spot in the
  wall where  it howled very loudly.
  The wall, of wood paneling, looked solid at that  point; but after the bronze man had worked on it a bit, a
  secret door  came open. This revealed a safe door.
  "Know the combination?" the bronze man asked.
  "I didn’t even know the safe was there!" the girl  exclaimed.
  Doc then opened the safe door.
  HAD the bronze man unexpectedly moved a wall with a  hand wave, the old butler’s eyes would not have
  come nearer jumping out  of their receptacles. He emitted a great croak of astonishment.
  But Doc Savage was already taking a bundle out of  the safe. There seemed to be nothing else in the safe. The
  bundle was  letters, some new and some old.
  Riffling them like cards, the bronze man inspected  the dates. The most ancient was about ten years old, the
  newest only a  few weeks. All were addressed to Leander L. Quietman.
  Not a letter bore a return address.
  Doc started to pluck out the contents of a missive.
  "Your permission?" he asked the girl.
  "You have it."
  Doc spread the letter out. It read:
  I am killing myself to−night. I hope that will  satisfy you!
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  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  10
  
  There was no signature.
  The second letter read:
  Hitherto I have been the exemplification of  skepticism about things after this life. Perhaps atheism was my
  failing  perhaps only a lack of contemplation. But I have changed, and now I  know there is a hell, and that it is
  expressly for the likes of you!
  That one was not signed either.
  The next one threatened:
  I have made up my mind. I shall kill you!
  No signature.
  The fourth:
  For heaven’s sake, will you relent? I am ruined, but  you continue to wreak your horrible work upon my
  family and relatives.  Surely the human race cannot claim you as a member!
  I do not know what I shall do!
  THOMAS CANWELDON.
  Doc Savage put the missive down, and said, "This is  dated a year ago last January third. The day after that, a
  Thomas  Canweldon went mad and murdered his wife and family."
  Nancy Quietman had become pale. Now she sank on a  chair.
  "What does it mean?" she asked hoarsely.
  Doc Savage did not speak.
  The girl choked, "But grandfather�he�every one knows  he is one of the sweetest old souls who ever lived.
  He has given  millions to charity!"
  THE girl, still seated on the chair, passed a  shapely hand over her brow several times. Then she fell to
  looking at  the bronze man steadily.
  "I’m beginning to wonder," Nancy Quietman said  slowly. "You started looking around in this room as if you
  were  searching for something very definite. It appeared almost as if you  really knew there was a safe here.
  Did you?"
  "Not exactly," the bronze man said. "It merely  seemed possible there might be a private safe here."
  "Did you expect to find�what you found?"
  "The letters?" The bronze man was silent a moment.  "What I sought was proof of a theory."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  11
  
  "And are those letters the proof?"
  "They are. All that is necessary for my own purpose  at least."
  Nancy Quietman suddenly made fists out of her hands.  She got to her feet, looking determined.
  "Look here!" she snapped. "You know more about this  than you are telling me. I demand to know the whole
  story!"
  The bronze man relented to the extent of saying,  "This affair is part of something infinitely greater than you
  imagine.  It is, according to the evidence these letters contain, part of a  mystery we have been trying to solve
  for weeks."
  "I don’t understand. What mystery have you been  trying to solve for weeks?"
  Doc Savage produced, from an inside coat pocket, a  sheaf of newspaper clippings held together with a rubber
  band. He  removed the elastic and handed them to the girl for inspection.
  She read the first: It was the oldest. Exactly one  year old!
  NORFOLK STILL MISSING!
  Police to−day stated that Elvin O. Norfolk, the  financier who was reported missing by his family five days
  ago, has not  been located. It was also stated that Norfolk had no financial  troubles. He is a millionaire. His
  family furnished police with names  of persons whose enmity Norfolk might have incurred in the course of
  business, and officials have decided none of these could have had a  hand in Norfolk’s disappearance.
  The girl riffled through the others, catching only  the headlines. The second:
  UNABLE TO FIND BUSINESSMAN
  The third:
  ASSOCIATES REPORT JOHN COLE
  "WINE KING," HAS DISAPPEARED
  The fourth:
  HUSBAND DESERTED, WIFE SAYS
  COPS CAN’T FIND HUBBY
  The fifth:
  FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN
  MISSING BROKER CASE
  And so on. None were dated more than a year back.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  12
  
  Nancy Quietman, apparently stricken by a sudden  thought, ran quickly through the whole sheaf of clippings,
  counting  them.
  "Twenty−two!" she gasped in horror.
  "Exactly," the bronze man agreed.
  "But grandfather muttered something about his being  a twenty−third!" the girl cried.
  "That," Doc said quietly, "puts your grandfather in  with the mystery of the twenty−two missing men, which
  myself and my  aids have been working upon for some weeks."
  NANCY QUIETMAN was a young woman with courage. She  took a gulp of coffee, which the bow−legged
  butler had thoughtfully  brought while she was reading the clippings.
  The bronze man drew another pair of clippings from  his pocket.
  "Just so you will be thoroughly puzzled," he said,  and presented them.
  The first clipping was from a New York newspaper,  and bore a date sixteen months old. Just four months
  older than any of  the others.
  H. O. G. COOLINS’S MISSING
  ASSOCIATES SEEK FINANCIER
  It became known to−day that for almost two weeks  private detectives have been vainly seeking H. O. G.
  Coolins, Wall  Street financier and silk magnate. The detectives were employed by  business associates of
  Coolins.
  Police stated they have no clues to Coolins’s  whereabouts.
  Coolins’s business associates refused to make a  statement.
  There was a column of that.
  The second clipping:
  COOLINS FOUND
  H. O. G. Coolins, financier and silk magnate who has  been reported missing for almost three months,
  reappeared in New York  to−day.
  Coolins only laughed when police questioned him, and  asked the officers if they had ever heard of the Sea
  Angel.
  Later, Coolins explained that he had been away on a  private business trip.
  He refused to explain what he meant by the Sea Angel.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  13
  
  Nancy Quietman shuddered violently and put the  clippings down.
  "The Sea Angel!" she said, after swallowing. "That  man Coolins must know something about what it is. Why
  haven’t you  questioned him?"
  Doc did not answer immediately.
  "Coolins went about his business for some two months  after he returned," the bronze man said finally. "Then
  he suddenly  dropped from his usual haunts. He did not disappear. He just became  very scarce."
  Nancy Quietman nipped her lips. "You mean�he�perhaps  he got scared of this Sea Angel�that impossible
  monster�and is hiding  out?"
  The bronze man did not answer, because there was an  interruption. This came out of Doc’s coat pocket, the
  rightside coat  pocket, in the form of a tiny, metallic voice.
  "Reporting, Doc," the voice in the pocket said.
  DOC SAVAGE immediately removed from the coat pocket  a flat case which had rather well filled the
  pocket. He held the case  close to his lips and spoke to it.
  "You have something to report, Renny?" he asked.
  The voice out of the case said, "Long Tom and I were  watching the north side of the museum while you
  watched the other side,  Doc, and we saw old Leander Quietman sneak away. We trailed him. He  hurried
  home, got a bag, and took a taxicab to a steamship office,  where he bought a ticket on a liner sailing for South
  America at noon.
  "He gave a fake name when he bought the ticket. Then  he went to the small office which he maintains in a
  building at the  lower end of Wall Street. Probably he is in there now gathering up his  papers, or whatever he
  would want to take along with him on his sudden  trip to South America."
  Nancy Quietman exclaimed, "A portable radio outfit!"
  "What do you want us to do about this, Doc?" Renny  asked.
  "Where are you?" the bronze man queried.
  "In the corridor of a Wall Street office building,"  Renny replied, via the tiny radio. "The steamer on which
  Leander  Quietman booked a passage to South America is tied up to a pier not far  from the foot of Wall
  Street."
  "Seize Leander Quietman," Doc said. "It is possible  he can answer some rather important questions. I am at
  his home. Bring  him here."
  "Holy cow!" Renny thumped. "He is as good as seized!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter III. THE THREAT LETTERS
  14
  
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  THE diminutive radio had hardly done justice to  Renny’s voice. It was a remarkable voice with the tonal
  qualities of an  angry bear in a large den. Renny’s fists were also remarkable, each  being a gigantic piece of
  bone and gristle.
  Renny was Colonel John Renwick, noted throughout the  world for his abilities as an engineer.
  "Long Tom," Renny’s companion, was a very  feeble−looking fellow. The truth was that he had never been
  ill, and  could whip nine out of any average ten men he would meet on a street.  He was famous for the things
  he could do with electricity.
  These two assistants to Doc Savage stood in a  third−floor corridor of the office building which they had
  mentioned to  Doc as being near Wall Street. Through an open window at the end of the  corridor, traffic
  noises and the shouts of a newsboy reached them.
  "Grand jury fails to indict Monk Mayfair!" the news  vendor was howling. "Read about it! Extra! Law cannot
  punish Monk!"
  Long Tom said soberly. "According to the tabloid  newspapers, people are beginning to talk about lynching
  Monk."
  Renny also nodded. "I heard that, too. Well, we’d  better grab old Leander Quietman."
  Leander Quietman had entered an office near the  opposite end of the corridor. He had come straight to this
  office after  making his telephone call.
  Renny and Long Tom went to the door, put their ears  against it and listened.
  They heard nothing inside the office.
  But they had not the slightest difficulty in hearing  a man behind them say, "Two Sneaking Sams, eh?"
  RENNY and Long Tom spun. Then they batted their eyes  as men somehow do when they unexpectedly find
  themselves looking into  the muzzles of guns.
  The man who had spoken was almost seven feet tall,  stoop−shouldered, and very burly. He had hams on his
  shoulders and  practically no neck. He looked like the kind of fellow who would be at  home in a striped suit, a
  ball and chain attached to one ankle, and a  rock−breaking sledge in his hands. But he was nattily attired, even
  to  a gardenia in his lapel.
  The automatic in his hand�a big military  model�looked new. Several other men behind him held the same
  kind of  guns.
  "What are you doing here?" the stoop−shouldered man  wanted to know.
  "Have you got a good reason why we should answer  your question?" asked Renny, who was easily enraged.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  15
  
  "I’ll give you an answer!" the man said, and stepped  forward, lifting his gun to strike Renny.
  That was his mistake. Renny’s pet boast was that he  could smack the panel out of any wooden door with
  either fist. Renny  hit the man.
  The latter’s arms went up wildly as he sought to keep his balance. His automatic hit the ceiling, caromed off
  the wall.  Long Tom caught it like a first baseman picking up a fast ball.
  Two men slammed into Long Tom, banging him against  the wall. Both grabbed his hand which had caught
  the gun. A man came up  behind and whipped Long Tom over the ears with the flat of his gun. The  man made
  faces and grunted as he whipped.
  Renny rumbled, waded to Long Tom’s rescue. His big  right hand got hold of an arm. He jerked. The arm got
  a bend in the  wrong place. Men struck Renny, kicked at him.
  One of the gang ran to the end of the corridor,  yanked a huge brass fire extinguisher out of its clips, came
  back, and  after two false starts, managed to bump Renny’s head with it. Renny  fell down. Every one, except
  those holding Long Tom, fell on Renny, and  it was soon over.
  Every one lay still, or stood still, for a while,  recovering their breath.
  "These are two of Doc Savage’s crowd," a man puffed  finally.
  The tall, stoop−shouldered man picked his gardenia  from the floor and replaced it in his lapel.
  "This may turn out to be a tough break for  somebody," he said.
  THE huge, stooped man then went to the door, turned  the knob and went in.
  "Why are you looking so scared for, Quietman?" he  demanded, loudly.
  Old Leander Quietman, who had evidently been  crouching terrified in the office, croaked, "What�what�why,
  you are H.  O. G. Coolins!"
  Coolins swore, yelled, "Don’t use my name!"
  "B−but why n−not?" Quietman gulped.
  "Shut up and put your hands out!" Coolins ordered.
  A moment later, the huge, stooped H. O. G. Coolins  propelled Leander Quietman roughly out of the office.
  Leander Quietman seemed dazed, and very puzzled.
  "What do you w−want with me?" he stuttered.
  "The Sea Angel is after you, isn’t it?" Coolins  countered.
  "Y−yes!" Quietman choked. "T−that’s why I was  l−leaving the country!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  16
  
  H. O. G. Coolins snorted grimly.
  "It can’t be done unless I help you," he said. "I  was a prisoner, but escaped the Sea Angel. I swore I’d get
  even, and  now’s my chance!"
  One of the men said, "Hadn’t we better blow, boss?" 
  "Yes," Coolins said. "We’ll go now."
  "W−why are you t−taking me?" old Quietman gulped.
  "I’m going to destroy the Sea Angel," Coolins said,  grimly. "When I came back, I immediately got myself an
  organization.  This is part of it that you see here. We’re going to finish the Sea  Angel."
  "B−but�"
  "The Sea Angel wants you," Coolins stated. "We’re  going to use you for bait."
  The men now got ready to go. Doc Savage’s two aides,  Renny and Long Tom, who had taken all this in with
  silent astonishment,  were bound and gagged.
  "We’ll take them out by the freight elevator,"  Coolins said. "It opens into an alley, and nobody will see us."
  Throughout the affair, there had been a man  stationed on the stairs below. Renny and Long Tom had not
  known this,  but they realized it the instant the lookout came stumbling into the  hallway.
  The lookout had the expression of a man being eaten  alive by something invisible.
  "The Sea Angel!" he croaked. "On the stairs!"
  NO small boy caught in a watermelon patch ever got  into action quicker than did H. O. G. Coolins when he
  heard those words.
  "Quick!" he snarled.
  Old Quietman, Renny and Long Tom were seized  instantly, rushed down the corridor toward the freight
  elevator. This  lift was situated at the end of the corridor opposite the stairs.
  But that delay had been a bit too much. There was a  scraping and shuffling sound, and the Sea Angel came up
  the stairs.
  Guns began crashing in the corridor. The bullets  must have hit the weird monster; they could hardly have
  missed at that  distance.
  But lead had no effect on the creature!
  The wings waved a little, then flapped, and the  black tentacles whipped out. Each trapped a man.
  Renny and Long Tom had never before heard men  screech quite like those two did.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  17
  
  The victims fell, writhed, made awful noises.  Obviously, they had been rendered helpless by some eerie
  power in the  feelers.
  Coolins left the two victims. He got the rest of his  men and the prisoners into the freight elevator, banged the
  doors shut,  sank the cage.
  The loud breathing of the men was audible in the  comparative quiet as the cage sank. It was the sound of a
  pack of  hounds which had just run out of a scent.
  BIG−FISTED Renny suddenly began to laugh. Being  gagged, he had to laugh mostly through his nose. But
  he managed to get  a lot of mirth out.
  Science had explained everything, barring a few  germs they couldn’t yet see with their compound
  microscopes. This Sea  Angel, this monster, therefore, had to be some fellow dressed up in a  trick outfit. That
  grown men should be scared out of their wits by such  a thing was ridiculous.
  Renny thought it was as funny as a barrel of monkeys.
  The men had cars waiting at the freight−elevator  entrance. The prisoners were dumped in, and the machines
  left with  noisy haste. Renny still laughed.
  H. O. G. Coolins slapped him.
  "You remind me of the good laugh I had when I first  saw the thing!" Coolins snarled. "I don’t like to think
  about it! I  thought it was a man in an outfit. You think the same thing, I’ll bet.  Well, it isn’t!"
  "Whuz−zuhuhuz−wenn?" Renny said, which was the  nearest he could come to, "What is it then?" talking
  through his nose.
  "I’ve seen it fly!" Coolins snarled. "I’ve  seen it swim under water, fifty miles an hour or more!"
  The man’s eyes were glaring with earnestness.  Looking at him, Renny suddenly decided he did not feel so
  much like  laughing.
  Coolins gritted, "It’s a monster! Bullets  don’t hurt it much. I guess they’re not heavy enough. It can’t be
  gassed, so it must not breathe!"
  He interrupted himself to snarl at the driver for  more speed.
  "But it’s got a brain, and can think!"  Coolins groaned. "It’s more clever than any human being! I tell you,  it’s
  something the like of which the world has never before known."
  The cars headed north along a waterfront street. 
  "Whatcha gonna do with Doc Savage’s two pals?" a man  asked from the front seat.
  "We’ll kill these two Doc Savage helpers as soon as  we figure a way to dispose of the bodies," Coolins said.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IV. GRABBERS AND THE GRABBED
  18
  
  Chapter V. THE NICE YOUNG MAN
  IN the uptown home of elderly philanthropist Leander  Quietman, Doc Savage was waiting for Renny and
  Long Tom to appear with  the old gentleman.
  Nancy Quietman, having asked Doc if he knew who the  men were who had threatened her grandfather, and
  received in reply a  bunch of words which did not really answer the question either way, had  turned on her
  grandfather’s radio.
  She sat listening to an orchestra moan through the  latest song about a cowboy and his dying horse, and
  studied the bronze  man, obviously with approval.
  Doc asked abruptly, "Do you know a young man with  red hair and a pug nose?"
  Nancy Quietman wondered fleetingly if this was some  round−about method the bronze man was using to
  learn if she was at  present being monopolized by any one particular young man.
  "No," she said, after pretending to think. "I don’t  know such a fellow."
  "Then it’s probably rather strange that he should be  peering through the window," Doc said.
  The bronze man was on his feet the next instant,  reached the window, noted it had a steel frame and
  bulletproof glass,  and threw it up.
  A young man who had been doing a "Peeping Tom" at  the window was legging it through the shrubbery. Doc
  whipped over the  window sill and set out after him. The young man glanced back, seemed  stunned at the way
  he was being overhauled. When Doc was close, the  fellow began dodging like a rabbit with a dog blowing
  breath on his  tail.
  It did him no good. Neither did the first blows he  tried. He squared off with some boxing skill, missed two
  hooks, and was  suddenly grabbed by the bronze giant and carried ignominiously to the  study.
  The gardeners, who seemed to have been collected on  the other side of the house, came running. Nancy
  Quietman spoke sharply  and sent them away.
  Doc took the red−headed, pug−nosed young man into  the study. The young fellow was tall, athletic, and
  apparently unable  to comprehend how his captor was handling him so effectively.
  "Just who are you, anyway?" Nancy Quietman asked. 
  "Nat Piper," said the man with freckles and red  hair. 
  A thump jarred from the study door.
  The bow−legged butler had fainted there.
  NANCY QUIETMAN leaped to the butler’s side, and  began worrying over him. Doc advised her quietly that
  it was only a  faint, and that the man would revive unaided. After that, Nancy  Quietman glared at "Nat" Piper.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter V. THE NICE YOUNG MAN
  19
  
  "Why did he faint when he heard your name?" she  demanded.
  Nat Piper opened his mouth and made his eyes big.  "Surely you don’t think that made him faint?"
  "What are you doing here?" the girl countered. 
  Nat Piper, instead of answering, reached out  tentatively with one hand and felt of Doc Savage’s arm in three
  different places. Then he shook his head and whistled.
  "They must be muscles, but they feel like bone," he  said. "I begin to see how you handled me."
  He looked Doc Savage over intently. "Say, there’s  something familiar about you!"
  "That is Doc Savage," the girl said.
  Nat Piper acted as if he had swallowed a bug for a  moment. 
  "Doc Savage!" he exploded. "Why, you’re�you’re�no  wonder I couldn’t handle you! I’ve read about you! I
  guess the  description of you made you look familiar."
  "Why were you sneaking around here?" the girl  repeated.
  "I had a business appointment with Leander  Quietman," Nat Piper replied.
  Doc Savage put in his first question. "What was the  nature of your business with Quietman?"
  Nat Piper took time out to marvel at the bronze man  before replying.
  "Art," he said. "I’m a promising young painter whom  nobody ever heard of. I showed Leander Quietman
  some of my work, and I  think he is going to let me paint his portrait."
  Doc Savage made no reply. Instead, the bronze man  got up and took a turn around the library. He paused to
  close the  bulletproof window, which was still open, and while he stood there, he  made for an instant a tiny,
  mellow and remarkably eerie, trilling note.  This was a small habit which he had when mentally agitated.
  Doc looked at Nancy Quietman.
  "Do your gardeners change shifts in the middle of  the morning?" he asked.
  "Why, no!"
  "A completely new set of gardeners has appeared on  the grounds," the bronze man advised quietly.
  The girl flew to the window.
  "Oh!" she gasped.
  The new gardeners had all started toward the house.  Each man carried a gunny sack under his arm�gunny
  sack in every sense  of the word, because it was obvious the sacks concealed guns.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter V. THE NICE YOUNG MAN
  20
  
  NAT PIPER flung to the window, stared, rapped,  "They’re attacking the house!"
  His voice was a squawk of alarm.
  "I’ll call the police!" Nancy Quietman cried.
  She scooped up a dial telephone, listened, frowned,  tried dialing, called; "Operator! Operator!" a few times. 
  "It’s dead!" she gasped. "I can’t get a dial tone!" 
  Doc Savage up to this point had shown no special  excitement. He now dipped into a pocket and brought out a
  handkerchief,  absently wiped his palms, then sat down.
  Nat Piper rapped, "Aren’t you going to put up a  fight?"
  The bronze man only looked mildly unconcerned.
  Nat Piper snatched a poker and an andiron from the  study fireplace, and charged out into the hall.
  Following this, there was a great deal of noise in  the hallway, punctuated by such vocal emissions as, "Hold
  him!" "Damn!"  and "Ouch!"
  Then the raiders dragged Nat Piper into the study.  They pointed guns at Doc and the girl, neither of whom
  moved.
  The surprising development now came. The raiders  seemed interested only in Nat Piper. They looked him
  over closely, even  lifting his eyelids�they had knocked him out�to make sure his eyes were  blue.
  "This is the guy Coolins described!" a man growled. 
  "Yeah," said another, scowling at Nat Piper. "He’s  the guy we had orders to grab if he showed up around
  here."
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  WHILE three men pointed guns at Doc Savage and  looked as if they really wanted to shoot somebody,
  another man came  over and searched the bronze giant. After a few explorative pats, the  latter made goat
  noises of astonishment.
  "This guy is a walkin’ arsenal!" he said. "He’s got  some kind of a bullet−proof undershirt, and a vest with the
  pockets  full of stuff! Who is he?"
  "That’s Doc Savage," some one said.
  The man backed away, looking as if he had discovered  himself smoking cigarettes in a dynamite factory.
  "Does Coolins know Doc Savage is mixin’ in this?" he  croaked.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  21
  
  "Course he does!" snapped another. "Didn’t you know  Coolins just grabbed two of Doc Savage’s men, Renny
  and Long Tom, when  he grabbed old Leander Quietman?"
  "What’re we gonna do about ‘em?"
  "See if they’re bulletproof," said the other.
  At this point, Nat Piper tried to get up. He kicked  a man’s feet from under him, stuck a finger in another
  fellow’s eye,  then was knocked flat on his back. The shock when he hit the floor  caused a picture to fall off a
  wall.
  "Blast your souls!" Nat Piper yelled. "What’re you  picking on me for?"
  "Brother," said a man, "we came here to get you."
  "You’ve got the wrong man!"
  "Coolins said a red−headed guy with a bull−pup face.  That’s sure you. Coolins said you would show up here
  looking for  Quietman after that business at the museum. And sure enough, you  showed."
  Nat Piper looked at Doc Savage. "I absolutely can’t  understand what they’re talking about," he said.
  The man who had been searching Doc Savage, having  gotten his courage back, now advanced cautiously.
  "Watch ‘im close!" he said hoarsely.
  They watched, and if the bronze man had made a move,  he would almost certainly have died. The man
  removed Doc’s coat, and  this uncovered the bronze man’s vest. It was a remarkable vest, in that  it was
  composed almost entirely of pockets.
  The man began to look at the vest when he got it  off. He then started removing gadgets from the pockets.
  "I’ll be damned!" he remarked. "Here’s little bombs  and grenades. Here’s a trick flashlight not much bigger
  than my  fingers. It’s got a spring generator instead of a battery. Here’s a  little hacksaw, a tool kit for picking
  locks." He held up a flat case,  said, "I wonder what’s in here?" and opened it. 
  He then said, "Hh−h−h−h!" and got down on his  hands and knees. Two men beside him coughed, and fell
  over, their  teamwork perfect.
  A man pointed his gun at Doc Savage.
  Doc fell over on the floor and lay motionless.
  The man with the gun, instead of shooting, said  vaguely, "It got him, too!" Then he collapsed.
  It required no more than a minute for everyone in  the room to go down. They breathed, but did not otherwise
  stir. 
  Doc Savage then got to his feet.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  22
  
  THE bronze man had been holding his breath, and he  did not breathe now�until he was out in the corridor.
  He made a quick search of the mansion. The  bow−legged butler was apparently the only house servant on
  hand, and he  was unconscious with the others.
  Doc went out into the grounds, roamed through the  thick shrubbery, and at the rear, where the ornamental
  bushes made a  jungle, he found the gardeners.
  The gardeners were all bound and gagged. Doc, having  inspected them, did not turn them loose. They would
  be all right where  they were, and would not upset any plans.
  The bronze man’s next move was to drag all the  senseless raiders to an upstairs room. He found tape in a
  bathroom, and  gagged them. A drawer in the kitchen yielded enough clothesline to tie  them.
  Doc left Nat Piper and the bow−legged butler  together. He did not tie either one. He did, however, search Nat
  Piper,  but found nothing.
  Doc rigged a tiny microphone�it was in one of the  pockets of his vest�behind a picture in the room. Two
  wires which he  attached to this were scarcely larger than human hair. He ran them to  an adjacent room, and
  attached them to two binding posts, there for  that purpose, inside his tiny radio set. The radio took care of the
  amplification from the mike.
  Doc carried the girl into the room where he had  rigged his receiving station.
  Nancy Quietman awakened before long. Her first  actions somehow seemed perfectly natural. She gave her
  hair a pat or  two.
  "Gas!" she said.
  The bronze man nodded.
  "But how did you know they would open the case?" she  wanted to know.
  "Every human being has curiosity," Doc replied  quietly. "That case was not the only object in the vest which,
  if  tinkered with, would release an odorless and colorless gas which  produces quick unconsciousness."
  Nancy Quietman looked at the bronze man and  murmured, "I do wish you would tell me what all these
  incredible  goings−on are about!"
  Before the bronze man’s silence had lasted long  enough to prove he was not going to talk, the radio speaker
  began  reproducing speech which the hidden microphone picked up.
  Nat Piper or the bow−legged butler, or both, had  regained their senses, because there was a brief struggle and
  a blow or  two.
  Then: "Begging pardon, sir, but what’s the idea?"
  That was the butler, of course.
  Nat Piper said, "You know me! You know who I am, and  you’re the only man here who does! Savage doesn’t
  know, and Coolins’s  men don’t know."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  23
  
  "Turn me loose!" the butler croaked.
  "Fat chance!" snorted Nat Piper. "I’m taking you  with me. I can’t have you talking. You won’t get hurt if you
  behave."
  The microphone was sensitive and picked up a rattle  and squeak which was the window opening.
  Doc Savage gave the girl her small gun.
  "Those men, Coolins’s gang, as they call themselves,  are in a room upstairs," he said. "Watch them for me
  until I return."
  "Right," the girl said instantly. "You are going to  follow this Nat Piper and learn who he is and what he is up
  to."
  Doc left the room silently, yet his silence somehow  managed to convey to the girl that she had guessed
  correctly.
  NAT PIPER scuttled away from the house by way of the  thickest brush. He had tied a curtain cord around the
  old butler’s neck  with a slipknot, and held tightly to the other end of the cord.
  Nat Piper took his prisoner downtown in a rattletrap  coupé, the exhaust of which smoked. Doc Savage did not
  have much  difficulty following in his subdued roadster.
  The lower end of Manhattan Island is split down the  middle by the street called Broadway. On the east side of
  Broadway is  Wall Street, the financial district, with the world’s finest collection  of skyscrapers. On the other
  side of Broadway is a wholesale district  with some of the world’s worst buildings.
  Nat Piper turned in on the wrong side of Broadway,  and drove his car in to the curb between a moving van
  and a junk truck.
  "Out!" he told the butler. "And walk fast so nobody  will notice your goofy clothes!"
  This referred to the livery the butler wore. He  scampered, and they entered a door and tramped up stairs
  which squeaked  like mice. The two climbed four flights of stairs, met nobody, passed  no offices which
  seemed to be occupied, and stopped before a door which  did not look as if it would stand much slamming.
  The frosted, glass  panel bore a legend:
  THE FINANCIAL ORBIT
  Percy P. Smalling, Editor
  A harsh muttering was coming from behind this door.  When Nat Piper went in, the muttering became a man
  saying, "Let’s kill  him! Let’s get it over with and kill him!"
  "Let’s cut his legs off first!" said another man.
  "Hell, no, let’s pull his eyes out!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VI. THE WALK−OUT
  24
  
  Nat Piper went in and frowned at several men seated  around what seemed to be the reception room of the
  financial  publication offices. They were the men who had tried to seize old  Leander Quietman by playing at
  being wax Indians in the museum.
  Boscoe seemed to be the individual whose demise they  were discussing.
  "Hello, chief," Boscoe said, looking at Nat Piper.
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  THE other men all said, "Lo, chief," or "Howdy,  skipper." 
  Nat Piper said, "Hello, girls."
  One of the men explained, "There’s nothing else to  do. We’ll have to kill Boscoe."
  Boscoe grinned sheepishly. "Chief, I honest to  goodness can’t help it. I’ve told these guys what the doctors
  tell me.  It’s a disease. It’s something I can’t help. I’ve took medicine and  everything, but it didn’t do
  anything. I got�"
  "You got my gun!" one of the men said grimly. "I  don’t know how you got it, but you did. Snitched it!"
  "I gave it back, didn’t I?" Boscoe demanded.
  "Suppose I had needed that gun?" the man demanded.
  "Well, it was loaded with blanks, anyway," Boscoe  said.
  "Do you want to help us kill him, chief?" a man  asked Nat Piper.
  Nat Piper said, "Boscoe, you must exercise your will  power. You have a subconscious complex which makes
  you steal everything  you can get your hands on. You must overcome it. You must exert your  strength of
  character�"
  "Right there is the trouble," a man said. "He hasn’t  any." 
  Nat Piper, changing the subject, demanded, "Where is  Percy?"
  A man jerked a thumb at the inner offices. "In the  stink box."
  Nat Piper urged the bow−legged butler forward,  ignoring a man who wanted to know, "Who’s he? The guy
  who was born  astraddle a barrel?" Passing down a narrow corridor, the floor of which  creaked, Nat Piper
  reached a door which said:
  PERCY P. SMALLING
  Editorial Director
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  25
  
  Nat Piper opened the door, then ducked his head  involuntarily against a gust of faint blue smoke and some
  awful fumes.  He coughed a couple of times, then shoved his prisoner inside. The  bow−legged butler also
  coughed.
  "Hello�kerchoo!�
  Percy!" Nat Piper said. 
  Percy P. Smalling had a box and a small contraption  in front of him. The box was filled with black tobacco
  which looked as  strong as incense soaked in liquid tear gas. The contraption was a  jigger for making
  cigarettes, and Percy Smalling was manufacturing  cigarettes with it. He was also smoking one of his terrible
  products.
  "Have one," he invited.
  "Heaven forbid!" Nat Piper said. Then he shook the  butler. "But we might use one of them to torture this
  fellow into  talking."
  Percy Smalling drew on his cigarette, blew out a  cloud of smoke which would have killed flies, and asked,
  "Who’s he?"
  "Old Leander Quietman’s butler."
  "Where’s Quietman?"
  "Coolins got him."
  "What the hell would Coolins want with Quietman?"
  "Bait to catch the Sea Angel, maybe. And maybe he  has the idea Quietman might help finance him. He might
  be right, at  that."
  Percy Smalling was a withered collection of hide and  bones who looked fully old enough for a pension.
  "Just what happened, Nat?"
  "Coolins sent his men to grab me," Nat Piper said.  "Coolins must have figured I would show up at
  Quietman’s home in an  effort to locate the old man."
  "Coolins is smart enough to figure that, all right.  He’s a tough mug. He would murder his own mother."
  Nat Piper said, "Doc Savage is mixing in this in a  big way." 
  Percy Smalling groaned audibly. "How much does  Savage know?"
  "I don’t think he knows you and I and Boscoe and the  boys are working for the Sea Angel," Nat Piper said.
  "At the museum,  the boys pulled the gag of running from the Sea Angel in order to fool  Savage into thinking
  they were fighting it. They also tried it on  Quietman, and might have convinced him they were helping him,
  if the  bronze guy hadn’t showed up. But you can’t be sure about what a fellow  like Savage knows or will do.
  Maybe he suspects we’re working for the  Sea Angel."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  26
  
  DOC SAVAGE overheard that statement, but if he got  any satisfaction from it, his metallic features did not
  show that fact.
  The bronze man was on the roof, dangling his little  microphone down beside the open window of Percy
  Smalling’s office. He  continued to listen.
  He looked mildly astonished when he heard nothing  more. It was not often that Doc’s metallic features
  registered an  emotion.
  The man of bronze moved the suspending wire  slightly, causing the microphone to come in contact with the
  wall. This  made a loud noise in the speaker. The device was still in working order.
  The bronze man hurriedly reeled up the mike, stowed  it in a pocket with the tiny amplifier, and moved to the
  fire escape at  the rear, via which he had gained the roof.
  His actions during the next fifteen minutes were as  cautious as they possibly could be. At the end of that time,
  Doc was  inside Percy Smalling’s suite of offices.
  No one was there.
  The birds had flown. Just how, there was nothing to  show. But they might have taken the simple course, and
  merely walked  out.
  Doc began looking around, and soon discovered how  his presence on the roof had been detected. The place
  was fitted with a  marvelously modern burglar−alarm system. The roof, for instance, was of  metal, and a
  capacity balance system was attached to this. If a man  walked on the roof, a light would come on in the alarm
  panel in Percy  Smalling’s office.
  Doc gave the offices a going over. Percy Smalling  seemed to be his own office force in the publication of The
  Financial Orbit. It was obvious from the reports in his desk and  filing cabinets that he maintained an
  organization of informers similar  to those who supply newspaper gossip columnists. The check stubs
  indicated these informers got paid only when they turned in something  of value.
  A large green filing cabinet yielded the real  dynamite.
  THE green file was full of fat brown envelopes. On  each of these was a name.
  One drawer was marked: "Finished business."
  There were twenty−two envelopes in this drawer. All  were fat. All bore names.
  The names were those of the twenty−two men who had  vanished inexplicably.
  Doc Savage went through the envelopes one after  another. They were filled with sheets of paper bearing
  typewriting and  handwriting. Reports. Tips from Percy Smalling’s informers. And such  tips!
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  27
  
  Every one of the twenty−two men had pulled one or  more sharp business deals. Nothing outside the law. Just
  a legal  fleecing which they had given some one. "Legal robbery" more aptly  described the deals.
  Doc went through the rest of the file, which was  marked: "Unfinished Business."
  Each brown envelope bore a name. Some were fat, some  thin. They held records of the business dealings of
  most of the big  financiers of the United States.
  Far more than the majority of these financiers had  been entirely honorable in their transactions. A number
  had sacrificed  their personal fortunes in order that others might not lose. Each of  these envelopes was marked
  with a small star.
  Other financiers had pulled some legal grabs. These  deals were carefully outlined in the reports. And the
  envelopes were  decorated with a black check mark.
  Occupying a prominent position was the envelope  bearing the name: "Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett
  ‘Monk’ Mayfair."
  Inside was a full report of the scandalous, but  apparently legal, swindle which Monk Mayfair had worked on
  an  unfortunate and respected lawyer named Brigadier General Theodore  Marley "Ham" Brooks. The report
  showed that Monk Mayfair had obviously  robbed Theodore Brooks, and had, moreover, indulged in callous
  gloating  about it.
  Having explored all the envelopes, Doc Savage closed  the file.
  Several copies of The Financial Orbit were  lying about. "Percy Smalling, Editor," was on the contents page.
  The financial journal was a very reserved sheet,  almost too conservative. Doc Savage was familiar with the
  publication.
  It was not the kind of sheet which would have any  use for such stuff as the envelopes held. At least, it never
  published  material like that.
  Doc Savage walked to Percy Smalling’s desk, which he  had already searched.
  On the desk lay a newspaper. A late edition. The  darkly prominent headlines dealt with the grand jury’s
  failure to  indict Monk Mayfair for the financial flimflamming he had given Ham  Brooks.
  Doc looked at the paper; it lifted slightly as a  breeze caught it. The bronze man spun. The breeze had come in
  through  the opening door.
  The eerie−looking bulk of the Sea Angel was gliding  through the door.
  THE bronze man said nothing. He whipped to one side,  scooped up the table, which was heavy, and ran with
  it toward the  incredible thing now rushing toward him. He flung the table. The  monster dodged back. The
  table landed so that it fenced the creature in  a corner.
  The snakelike, black tentacles whipped forward, and  the round knobs on the ends would have hit the bronze
  man, had he not  dodged.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VII. SCHEMERS
  28
  
  Doc glided backward, got two chairs, and rushed. He  sparred expertly, and managed to get one of the chairs
  wrapped around a  black feeler. He twisted, and tangled the hideous black arm with the  chair.
  An instant later, the man of bronze managed to  tangle the second dark tentacle with the other chair. He held
  both arms  clear, rushed, and jumped against the monster with both feet. It went  down. They tangled in a
  furious fight. The silver hide of the thing was  like leather, and slippery.
  The spectral thing of silver−and−black had not made  a sound. Again and again, the bronze man’s fists struck.
  The creature  might have been iron under his knuckles. And his blows had no  appreciable effect.
  The monster floundered. A tentacle loosened from one  chair, fell across the bronze man’s neck.
  Strength all but left him. He could not see.  Instinct alone helped the man of bronze roll clear, throw off the
  feeler. On all fours, unable to gain his feet, he floundered away.
  When he hit a wall, he got erect. At once, his hands  touched a window. His eyes were working a little. He
  could see the  impossible thing making for him.
  With his elbows, Doc knocked the glass out of the  window. He got through, cutting himself some, hung by
  his hands, and  dropped�blindly, not knowing what was below.
  The Sea Angel reached the open window, and with some  difficulty, crowded part of its macabre upper
  portion out of the  opening.
  The thing was there for several seconds. Then it  withdrew, and whisked silently out of the office via the door.
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN
  HAM BROOKS was a man with a thin waist, a high  forehead and an orator’s mouth. He was
  intelligent−looking, and rather  handsome. The nurses at the Gotham Sanitarium liked him.
  Ham was in the sanitarium because he was threatened  by a nervous breakdown, brought on by worry over his
  financial plight,  the newspapers had explained.
  Whenever they could, the nurses talked to Ham. The  place employed some extremely pretty nurses, and the
  nurses probably  knew they were pretty, and that they might help take Ham’s mind off his  troubles.
  Ham also had his pet ape, Chemistry, with him. This  pet belonged to the ape family, although there was some
  doubt as to  just what branch.
  When a visitor appeared at the sanitarium to see  Ham, he was conducted in immediately. Company, the
  doctors had  explained, was good for a man in Ham’s depressed mental state.
  The visitor was a tall young gentleman with a pug  nose and red hair. He looked as if he might be a very
  strong young man  physically.
  "My name is Nat Piper," he introduced himself to Ham.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN
  29
  
  Ham, who was lying on a bed, looked at him vacantly.
  "The Brooklyn Dodgers won the Series," he said,  somewhat vaguely. "Wasn’t that strange?"
  Nat Piper frowned at this declaration.
  "Don’t worry," he said. "You are going to have your  money returned to you. Do you understand? Monk is
  going to make  restitution, even if he does not know it yet."
  Mention of the name Monk acted upon Ham very much as  if a gun had been shot off under the bedcovers. He
  sat up straight,  moaning, shaking.
  "A devil!" he croaked. "There on the wall! He’s  green with little sharp horns and�"
  Nat Piper backed away from the bed and found a nurse.
  "Is he always this bad?" Nat Piper wanted to know.
  "He seems to be getting worse, poor fellow," the  nurse replied.
  Nat Piper made a grim mouth. "Has he any money left  at all?"
  "Not a cent. He is a pauper."
  Nat Piper said, "I’ll take care of his hospital  bill, and I can also supply a few dollars for spending money."
  "That would be wonderful," the nurse said. "But why  should you do that?"
  "Maybe I’ve been through the same thing Ham is going  through," Nat Piper said.
  WHEN Nat Piper left the hospital, he wore a fiercely  determined expression. He strode to a waiting car.
  Boscoe, the fat fellow who couldn’t help stealing  things, was driving the car. And Percy Smalling, the
  financial journal  publisher, was in the rear seat.
  "Drive to Monk Mayfair’s penthouse. Boscoe," Nat  Piper said.
  Monk Mayfair’s penthouse was one of the flashiest in  the city. It occupied the top of a skyscraper near Wall
  Street. Part of  it was devoted to an enormous chemical laboratory, for Monk was a  clever chemist, and had
  perfected a number of chemical discoveries  which had brought him a considerable fortune. He had already
  been a  rich man when he had perpetrated his cruel swindle on Ham.
  Not the least interesting feature of the penthouse  was a marble−and−silver wallowing place for Monk’s
  unusual pet pig,  named Habeas Corpus. This wallow was filled with perfumed mud, equipped  with
  health−ray lamps and other devices.
  Monk was only a little over five feet in height, and  was almost as broad. He had long thick arms which were
  very hairy. His  face was an incredibly homely one, with a huge mouth which was twisted  in a big grin as
  Monk surveyed Nat Piper.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN
  30
  
  "Whatcha want?" Monk asked.
  "I have just been to see Ham Brooks," Nat Piper said.
  Monk’s grin got bigger. "That shyster!"
  Nat Piper said, "You robbed Ham Brooks!"
  "The heck I did!" Monk jeered. "I was inside the  law!"
  "Nevertheless, you robbed him," Nat Piper said. "Ham  Brooks may not be the first man you have swindled,
  although I will  admit you have covered the other acts cleverly. We found no evidence  against you when we
  examined your record."
  Monk shoved his homely face forward.
  "Look here, what’re you checkin’ up on me for?" he  demanded.
  "Simple," Nat Piper said. "You are going to return  to Ham Brooks every cent you fleeced him of."
  Monk brayed a laugh.
  "Furthermore," added Nat Piper, "you are going to  present one million dollars of your personal fortune, over
  and above  what you return to Ham, to charity. The million will be a gift to  redeem yourself with society."
  Monk scowled. "You think you’re serious about that?"
  "Don’t worry. I’m serious enough."
  Monk suddenly roared mirthfully. "You crazy fool,  whoever and whatever you are! Get out of here!"
  Nat Piper said, "We always warn our patients. We  give them a chance to repent and make restitution."
  "What kind of crazy talk is this?"
  "It probably does sound mad," Nat Piper stated. "But  maybe this will help change your mind."
  NAT PIPER now produced a small note book, to the  pages of which were pasted newspaper clippings. They
  dealt with the  disappearance of the twenty−two wealthy men during the past year or so.  It was identical with
  the assortment of clippings which Doc Savage had  assembled.
  "Huh!" Monk growled. "What’s this?"
  "I don’t know whether these warnings do any good,"  Nat Piper said. "Each of those twenty−two men were
  warned, too, but  they ignored it."
  Monk yelled, "You mean you are responsible  for these men vanishing?"
  "Not I," corrected Nat Piper. "The Sea Angel."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter VIII. THE WARNED MAN
  31
  
  "The what?"
  "The Sea Angel. A fantastic being which has come out  of the sea, a creature with supernatural powers, an
  angel of vengeance  which strikes only at wrongdoers."
  "Then the Sea Angel will have to take care of you,"  Nat Piper declared quietly.
  With that, Nat Piper backed out and hurried down to  the street. He got into the car with Boscoe and Percy
  Smalling, and  they drove off.
  "What about Doc Savage?" Boscoe wanted to know.
  "I do not think Savage is making much progress," Nat  Piper said.
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP
  DOC SAVAGE was making progress. At least, he had  recovered consciousness and the ability to move.
  He lay on the sidewalk of the street in front of  Percy Smalling’s office. A curious crowd surrounded him.
  Three men in  white who had evidently arrived in an ambulance which was standing  near, were dressing
  various cuts.
  Two or three persons on the street had seen the  incredible Sea Angel at the window from which Doc had
  fallen, or  rather, flung himself.
  Police had entered the building, searched it, but  the monster must have departed already by the back way.
  Came a stir in the throng. A man shoved through. He  was taller than any man in the crowd, and he was also
  thinner than it  seemed any man could be and still live. He was just a bunch of sticks  inside his clothing. A
  monocle dangled from his lapel by a ribbon. He  was not wearing it.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" the man exploded. "Doc!  They telephoned me you had been killed!"
  "Not quite, Johnny," the bronze man said.
  "Johnny" was William Harper Littlejohn, the final  member of Doc Savage’s group of assistants, or associates.
  Johnny was a  noted archaeologist and geologist. He was also a man who never spoke a  small word when he
  had time to think of a big one.
  "Come on," Doc said.
  And they left the ambulance internes protesting that  Doc should have a day or two of hospital rest, as well as
  a thorough  X−raying for broken bones.
  Doc Savage, having evaded the crowd of curious,  paused to address the tall, bony Johnny.
  "You know where Leander Quietman’s town mansion is?"  Doc asked.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP
  32
  
  Johnny nodded.
  "Quietman’s granddaughter is watching several bound  and gagged men," Doc explained. "You had better go
  there and relieve  her of the job."
  "What are you going to do, Doc?"
  "Investigate a man named Coolins," the bronze man  replied.
  JOHNNY left Doc Savage and took a subway uptown. The  subway was the fastest method of transportation.
  A little later, Johnny  entered the grounds of Leander Quietman’s mansion. He knocked on the  front door.
  "Who is it?" a feminine voice asked.
  "A coadjuvant emissary," Johnny said.
  The girl thought that over, then said, "I don’t want  any. Go away!"
  Johnny reluctantly resorted to words a normal person  could understand and explained that he was William
  Harper Littlejohn,  associate of Doc Savage, who had come to help guard the prisoners, also  to question them.
  He was admitted. The young lady, Nancy Quietman, had  a gun, but put it away after she surveyed Johnny.
  "I think one of those men would talk," she said.
  "A pragmatical eventuation," Johnny said. "Er�I  mean, that would be a help."
  The man who the girl thought might talk proved to be  a fellow who did not look as if he had been getting
  enough sleep  lately. There was water and fear in his eyes.
  Johnny hauled him away from the others, slung him  down on a divan. Then the gaunt archaeologist and
  geologist began  rolling up his sleeves.
  "W−what are you g−gonna do?" the man quavered.
  "Ascertain the frangibility of your ossified  tissular substratum," Johnny said.
  "Huh?"
  "In other words," Johnny explained, "I’m going to  see just how easy your bones will break."
  The man was even more impressed than Johnny had  expected. Possibly the big words helped the effect. The
  fellow rolled  his eyes.
  "W−why you gonna do that?" he croaked.
  "We want to find out what’s behind all this," Johnny  explained.
  Another voice said, "I guess it’s about time you got  interested in something else!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter IX. THE TRAP
  33
  
  JOHNNY spun wildly, and his grim expectations were  fulfilled. Men with guns. Several of them. And more
  of them coming in.
  H. O. G. Coolins appeared, very tall and stooped. He  looked Johnny up and down, one extraordinarily tall
  man interested in  another one.
  Having played safe, remaining in the rear until his  men made the raid, Coolins now took charge.
  "Look around, boys," he directed.
  They looked around, and found the prisoners and  released them.
  "I’m proud of you!" Coolins told them sarcastically.
  The freed men examined their feet intently and said  nothing.
  Coolins gave the girl a big, snaggle−toothed grin.  "Getting you is a break," he said. "Your old granddad has
  got the idea  he does not want to help finance my fight against the Sea Angel. I  think my having you might be
  an argument to convince him he should  donate a little money to my cause."
  "Extortion!" the girl hissed.
  "Let’s get out of here!" Coolins snapped  impatiently, paying no attention. "First thing you know, Doc Savage
  will be showing up here."
  "What if Savage goes to your office, Coolins?" a man  asked.
  "I’ve got men waiting in my offices for just that,"  Coolins said, grimly.
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN
  H. O. G. COOLINS and his men entered two large,  closed cars which were waiting, parked innocently in
  front of the  Leander Quietman mansion.
  "Get us back in a hurry," Coolins told the drivers.
  They took half an hour to arrive at their  destination, up on a bank of the Hudson River. The spot was north of
  the city, and deserted. The cars had groaned and heaved over a  weed−grown road for the last quarter mile.
  Johnny, when he was hauled out of the car, peered  about. There was a boat tied up to the steep bank. At first
  glance, it  looked as large as a liner.
  The prisoners were hauled toward the boat, propelled  up a squeaking gangplank and aboard. Johnny knew
  what the boat was then.
  An old Hudson River sidewheel steamer! A hooker so  ancient that she was no longer serviceable, tied here to
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN
  34
  
  the bank to  lie until some one made an offer for her as junk.
  A man turned on a flashlight, and Johnny observed  that the portholes, the doors, the metalwork, had already
  been stripped  off the craft. There was junk on the decks and in the corridors.
  "A perfect hide−out," H. O. G. Coolins chuckled. "I  own the old pile of junk under another name."
  The gang heaved Johnny and Nancy Quietman into a  cabin. They looked around. Also in the room were
  Renny, Long Tom and  old Leander Quietman.
  They could not exchange comments, because they were  gagged as well as bound.
  Tall, stooped, evil−looking Coolins was gone for a  few minutes. During the time, he evidently conferred with
  his men. He  returned with his mind made up about what he was going to do next.
  He pointed at Johnny, Long Tom and Renny.
  "Bring ‘em along," he said.
  Doc’s aids were taken into the depths of the  sidewheeler, to the engine room. The old boat had once been
  equipped  with two boilers�she was steam−operated�but one of the boilers alone  remained. The engines were
  also gone.
  There was one boiler, and a steam pump. That was all.
  "Get that boiler going," Coolins directed.
  A man put a crumpled newspaper inside the boiler,  added shavings he whittled off a pine board. He built up a
  mound of  kindling scrap lumber.
  "The caretaker fires up the boiler every other day  to pump the ship," Coolins leered. "The smoke won’t attract
  attention."
  Then he singled out one of his men.
  "You go ashore," he directed. "Telephone the men at  my office to get away from there. We’re going to lay
  low for a day or  two, and figure out a trap for the Sea Angel, with old Quietman as  bait. And anyway, I’ve
  got to persuade Quietman to furnish me with some  financial backing. I think he’ll do so to keep his
  granddaughter from  getting hurt."
  The man who was to telephone left the old ship, got  into one of the cars, drove a mile or so, and telephoned
  H. O. G.  Coolins’s downtown office.
  H. O. G. COOLINS’S downtown office�which he had been  careful not to visit for some weeks past,
  incidentally�was situated in  a building which, except for height, pretty much resembled the  Washington
  monument.
  The telephone cables which supplied the building  with wires entered underground, through a single large
  conduit.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN
  35
  
  Doc Savage had tapped those wires�or the particular  one which ran to Coolins’s office. It had not been
  difficult. He had  brought the equipment.
  From where he crouched, at the end of the corridor  on which was located Coolins’s office, he could watch the
  door.
  Doc got all the conversation between the office and  the man who was relaying Coolins’s orders. It was short.
  "Boss wants you to come to the hangout," the man  said, and hung up.
  Almost immediately, seven men came out of the  office. They were drawing on coats and lighting cigarettes.
  They were  not a collection a peaceful citizen would want to meet on a lonely  street.
  Doc Savage was in a little niche at the end of the  hall. They did not see him. By moving fast, the bronze man
  got down to  the lobby in time to see the men leaving via the front door.
  Doc did not follow them immediately. There was a  very good reason for that.
  Two rather plain−looking young men, loitering in the  office−building lobby, had exchanged small signals.
  Then they fell in  behind Coolins’s men.
  Doc watched. It was obvious the two plain−looking  men were trailing the others. Doc fell in behind the two
  groups, far  enough back that they would not notice him.
  The trail led northward through the city. Two  sedans, an old roadster and a taxicab. Doc was in the cab. It
  was the  best kind of conveyance for trailing purposes.
  A strange thing happened as the cavalcade went  north. An unexpected thing. Other cars began to join the
  procession.  When the northern end of Manhattan Island was reached, fully a dozen  automobiles were trailing
  Coolins’s men.
  Doc Savage worked with the dial of his tiny radio  outfit, trying different wave lengths. Before long, he picked
  up a  voice:
  It was Nat Piper’s voice, saying:
  "Broadway and One Hundred Ninety−first Street,  northbound," the voice said. A moment later, "One
  Hundred Ninety−second  Street, still northbound. . . . Don’t crowd us, boys. I think they’re  leading us to
  Coolins."
  After that, Doc Savage kept tuned in on the  transmitter, which was obviously operating from one of the cars
  ahead.  If they got suspicious about the taxi, and one of the cars was ordered  to investigate, he wanted to know
  about it in advance.
  But they did not get suspicious. Coolins’s men  arrived at the river bank. The pursuers, Nat Piper’s men,
  poured out  after them. Doc Savage brought up the rear.
  There was smoke coming from the funnel of the old  sidewheel steamer.
  Nat Piper said over the radio. "Let’s open the egg,  boys!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter X. BODIES THAT BURN
  36
  
  THEY proceeded to open it.
  Nat Piper’s cars were apparently armored. They sent  the machines roaring to the side of the old steamer.
  Coolins’s men scampered aboard the ship, took  shelter, and began shooting. The bullets clanked flat on the
  armored  cars, or climbed off into the sky with violin noises.
  Nat Piper’s voice in the radio, said, "Stick in the  cars, boys. They’ll line up along the rail to pot−shot at us.
  Then  we’ll take ‘em plenty!"
  Boscoe’s braying voice yelled from one of the  machines, "What about using guns, boss?"
  "Only as a last resort," Nat Piper replied over the  radio. 
  Doc Savage had ordered the taxicab to stop in the  brush some distance back. The driver, who apparently did
  not know Doc,  but who had done the trailing for a ten−dollar bill which Doc had  shoved him, was terrified.
  Doc got out. The driver headed back for the city at  full speed.
  Doc Savage slid into the brush, and traveled fast.  He reached the river a hundred yards above the old
  sidewheeler. 
  Out of his carry−all vest, the bronze man brought an  unusual contrivance�a nose clip and a mouthpiece
  mechanism. He inserted  two tiny cartridges of chemical into the mouthpiece mechanism. Then he  donned the
  apparatus, eased silently into the river and sank beneath  the surface.
  The tiny diving "lung"�the nasal clip and mouthpiece  would also serve as a gas mask�was good for almost
  thirty minutes  beneath the surface. It did not take Doc ten to reach the sidewheeler.
  He grasped the huge blades of the paddlewheel on the  river side and climbed.
  The noise covered the sound which Doc made as he  reached over and yanked the boards off a square porthole
  from which the  glass had long ago been salvaged.
  The bronze man swung through the opening. He  listened. There was only the uproar on deck.
  Doc went looking for the prisoners, not sure as yet  that they were aboard. Not being a clairvoyant, he had not
  attached the  real significance to the smoke coming from the funnel.
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  H. O. G. COOLINS’S voice rasped over the bedlam.
  "Finish the job in the boiler room!" he yelled.
  A submarine gun made a noise that might have been  the laugh of an iron hyena.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  37
  
  "Four of you!" Coolins added. "Get back to the  boiler room!"
  A moment afterward, four men scuttled past the door  of the cabin in which Doc Savage crouched. They did
  not look inside.
  Doc, when they had gone, glided to the door. He did  not seem interested in the four men, or what they had
  been ordered to  do�the nature of the latter being something he had no way of knowing.
  The bronze man listened, trying to locate the exact  whereabouts of H. O. G. Coolins, instead of setting out
  after the four  who had passed.
  The four men were grim. They were not especially  appalled at what they had been ordered to do. They were
  scared.  Frightened by the attack from shore: H. O. G. Coolins, in his angry  excitement, had neglected to tell
  them the attackers were Nat Piper’s  gang, and not the police.
  So the four pounded frantically for the boiler room.
  "We gotta get the bodies burned!" one snarled.
  The five prisoners were sprawled out, bound and  gagged, before the fire box. Renny, Long Tom and Johnny.
  Nancy Quietman  and her grandfather. And the sides of the huge fire box were red from  the roaring blaze
  within.
  The victims had already been stripped of belt  buckles, pocket contents. Buttons had been cut off their
  clothing.  Everything identifiable that would not burn had already gone overboard.
  One man seized a long stoking iron. One hand over  his face, shielding off the heat, he lunged at the moaning
  fire box,  pushing the white coals aside, making room for a human form.
  He pointed at Renny.
  "Him first!" he barked. "He’s biggest. He’ll take  longest to burn."
  "I’ll bet them fists make a hot fire," another said,  playing wise−cracking tough.
  The third man pointed at Nancy Quietman and the old  man.
  "Them, too!" he barked.
  "But Coolins wants to use the old man�"
  "Hell with Coolins!" the man yelled. "We snatched  ‘em, didn’t we? A snatch is a caper they burn you for!
  They give you  the chair! So we get rid of the evidence. All of it!"
  The fourth man, who had lost his nerve, moaned.
  The men laid hold of Renny. He was big. It took all  four of them to lift him.
  So they were in a group when Doc Savage came through  the door.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  38
  
  THE bronze man had lived as long as he had because  he did not take a chance that he could avoid. He had
  delayed following  the four, seeming more interested in the whereabouts of H. O. G.  Coolins. He had wanted
  to make sure Coolins was not going to send more  men below.
  It was four against one in the boiler room�until Doc  reached them. He struck twice. It was easy. The men did
  not even see  him. The two carrying Renny’s feet went down and out.
  The other two�they carried Renny’s head and  shoulders�spun. One yelled, dived a hand for a gun. The other
  also  yelled, and sprang backward. He hit the fire box where it was red.  Yelled again. Threw up his arms,
  sailed forward, and crashed violently  into the bronze man.
  Attack by accident, but the best the man could have  made. Doc went down, caught off balance.
  The other man got his gun out. He aimed. Doc lashed  a foot at his ankles, connected, and the man upset. The
  gun put a  bullet in the ceiling.
  When the crook fell, he was close to Nancy Quietman.  She kicked him. Both high heels, against his temple. It
  did not faze  him at all. But the man yelled, rolled over and pointed his gun at the  girl’s head�and was hit by
  the man who had collided with Doc. The two  floundered. Doc came down on them and used his fists.
  That part of it was over.
  One of the senseless four had a sheath knife at his  belt. Doc used that and cut loose the five prisoners. He
  plucked the  tape off their lips.
  Renny and Long Tom, who had been seized some hours  previously, writhed about, struggling to get up. They
  couldn’t.
  "Holy cow!" Renny thumped, in agony. "I  can’t�stiff�dang Chancy horse!"
  Long Tom struggled with arms and legs as rigid as  sticks.
  Bony Johnny got erect, weaved a little, said,  "Metabatics are inutile, but of indubitable potentiality."
  When he could think of words like that to say that  he might manage to navigate, he was not in bad shape.
  Doc Savage said, "Renny, Long Tom, when you’re able,  take care of the girl and Quietman."
  To Johnny, he said, "Come with me. We may be able to  catch Coolins."
  "If anybody needs getting, it’s that guy!" Johnny  said, earnestly, using small words.
  They left Renny and Long Tom to recover from the  distressing effects of being tied, and headed for the upper
  deck.
  The old sidewheeler was a large one, and Doc and  Johnny had three companionways to mount. They climbed
  two, and the  bronze man’s sensitive ears picked up something that interested him.
  "Let’s see what it is," he said.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  39
  
  JOHNNY had no idea what Doc meant until the bronze  man led him into a stateroom and peered through the
  cracks of a  boarded−over porthole.
  A cabin cruiser, a lean, fast craft, was approaching  the old sidewheeler.
  "Harbor police!" Johnny exploded. "No! They’re not  flying the police flag. It must be some yachtsman
  coming over to see  what the fuss is about."
  On the deck of the cruiser stood several men. They  were equipped with rifles and tin hats. Doc drew attention
  to them.
  "Yachtsmen do not usually carry that kind of  equipment," he reminded.
  Since standing and looking at the approaching boat  would net them nothing, Doc and Johnny worked up
  toward the deck. They  climbed a companionway, came out on a deck. It was one of the enclosed  lower decks.
  The cabin was between them and the fighting men. They  worked toward the stern, intending to survey the
  situation.
  The shooting on one side of the ship suddenly  stopped. Men began shrieking.
  Doc Savage started running. Nat Piper had pulled  some kind of rabbit out of the hat, judging from the sounds.
  He had.
  Piper’s cars were close to the sidewheeler. His men  had rolled down the armor−plate glass windows, and had
  poked nozzles  through the openings. These nozzles were attached to cans resembling  large portable fire
  extinguishers.
  A liquid the color of yellow paint was coming out of  the nozzles, turning to vapor, and the breeze was
  sweeping the mist  aboard the sidewheeler.
  Johnny exploded, "Gas!" Then he added, "But  Coolins’s men have gas masks!"
  They had, most of them. But it did not seem to make  much difference.
  Johnny knew something about modern types of gas.
  "This stuff works on the skin!" he barked. "You  don’t have to breathe it!"
  Then he looked pained and began to scratch his arms  and neck.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" he exploded. "The stuff  is back here already!"
  On the river side, a siren whooped three times. It  was the cabin cruiser.
  H. O. G. Coolins reacted quickly.
  "The boat!" he yelled. "We’re licked! Get aboard  it!" 
  Which explained that the cabin cruiser was a craft  kept near by for emergencies. Probably it had been kept in
  sight  somewhere.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  40
  
  The cabin cruiser was near the box. Coolins ran for  it. His men followed. Those who could not run were
  helped by those who  still could.
  Men began getting out of Nat Piper’s cars. They had  donned rubberized fabric suits which covered them from
  head to foot. Up  the gangplank they scampered, like beings from another universe.
  Doc said, "It is time we got Renny, Long Tom and the  other two."
  It was past time. When the bronze man and Johnny  tried to get below, their skin burned as if alcohol had been
  poured  upon it, then lighted. The gas had penetrated inside the old  sidewheeler.
  The bronze man directed, "Wait here!" and tried it  alone. 
  He could stand the pain, the awful agony. But there  was more to the gas than that. It worked into the body,
  absorbed by the  skin, and brought on an immediate and overpowering weakness.
  The bronze man’s sight blurred; his huge muscles  lost the feeling of movement. He went down, not
  stumbling, not wanting  to go down, but just sinking.
  Doc hauled himself back to the deck, found Johnny  sprawled out helpless, and managed to get them both
  tumbled over the  side into the river.
  IN the course of the next three or four minutes, Doc  Savage came nearer death, probably, than at any other
  time in his  strange career. The garments he wore, the mail armor and the vest, were  heavy, and he lacked the
  strength to swim. Almost.
  Doc Savage passed out completely, and came out of it  to find himself on the surface, swimming feebly.
  Johnny was in the water, a few yards distant.  Floating, which was an almost supernatural feat, considering
  that he  had almost nothing on his bones to make him float.
  Together, they gained the overhanging bushes along  the shore.
  There was enough excitement on the old sidewheeler  that no one had noticed them.
  H. O. G. Coolins and most of his men had gotten  aboard the cabin cruiser. The boat left�in much haste.
  Nat Piper’s gas−suited men raced around on the  sidewheeler’s decks, waving their arms and probably cursing
  inside  their suits.
  Shortly afterward, they began carrying the prisoners  off the sidewheeler. Those of H. O. G. Coolins’s men
  who had been left  aboard had been likewise treated.
  They loaded the captives into the car.
  Doc Savage grasped bushes with his hands, hauled,  strained. He was still lying in the water, but he was trying
  to get  out, endeavoring to do something to prevent his men being carried off  by their new captors.
  Johnny croaked. "We’ve got�stop�that." He tried to  get out of the water.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XI. DEVIL’S DERELICT
  41
  
  Neither of them had strength enough to make any  progress worth mentioning.
  Nat Piper drove away with his prisoners.
  He was jubilant.
  "Coolins got away, but we put a crimp in him," he  chortled.
  He had not seen Doc Savage, did not know the bronze  man had been aboard.
  "When the Sea Angel gets Monk Mayfair, we’ll have  this business nicely lined up," Nat Piper said.
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME
  MONK, otherwise known as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew  Blodgett Mayfair, was a fellow who had always
  claimed that he didn’t  care anything about his clothing. This was not the truth. Monk secretly  admired flashy
  clothes. He had just blown himself to an outfit that was  hard on the eyes.
  Monk stood in front of one of the many mirrors in  his penthouse, admiring the effect. Cutaway coat, striped
  pants, fawn  vest, patent leather shoes and gray bowler. He grinned at himself,  pleased.
  Monk’s pet pig, Habeas Corpus, wore a platinum  collar which was studded with some rather expensive
  jewels. The pig was  trying to push the collar off, using both rear feet.
  "Cut that, Habeas, or I’ll tie knots in your legs!"  Monk ordered.
  Having satisfied himself with his sartorial rig,  Monk picked up a small brass−bound leather bag which had a
  metal mesh  lining which could not be cut by any ordinary knife. In addition to the  handle, there was a
  leather−covered alloy steel chain attached to the  bag and the end of this was fitted with a locking ring, like
  one  bracelet of a handcuff, which could be locked about the wrist.
  Monk opened the bag and took out an object wrapped  in velvet. Removing the velvet, he admired the object.
  It was worthy of  admiration.
  It was a royal crown�gold and platinum,  jewel−encrusted. A rich−looking piece.
  Monk opened the newspaper. Inside was an item:
  MONK MAYFAIR BUYS ROYAL CROWN.
  PAYS MILLION FOR JEWELED PIECE
  "Monk" Mayfair, the financial tightrope walker whom  the grand jury failed to indict for relieving Theodore
  Marley "Ham"  Brooks of a tidy fortune, to−day blew part of his swag. He announced  that he had purchased
  the crown of King Emanuel Alfredo, one−time  monarch of Spain.
  The purchase price was slightly over one million  dollars.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME
  42
  
  The latter part of the item described Monk’s daily  habits, stated that he was carrying the crown about with
  him so as to  be able to admire it frequently. There was the added note that the  police had refused curtly to
  furnish him special bodyguards.
  The whole article amounted to a subtle invitation to  any thief who cared for the job to attempt to relieve
  Monk of the crown.
  Monk replaced the crown in the bag, tossed the  newspaper on a modernistic table, whistled at his pet pig, and
  strode  out jauntily to ring for the elevator. But he did not ring.
  He stared at the end of the reception hall. His  small eyes all but hung out.
  He closed his eyes tightly, rubbed them, then opened  them again. The apparition was still there. He looked
  down at his pet  pig.
  "Sic ‘im, Habeas!" he requested.
  Habeas, the pig, emitted a dubious grunt or two and  began to back away on stiff legs.
  Monk squinted at the vision at the end of the  reception room.
  "I can’t say I care for your looks," he said.
  THE Sea Angel said nothing. It did not even move.  Huge, incredibly hideous in the dimness of the reception
  room, it stood.
  Monk, who had no nerves, grinned amiably.
  "This is the twentieth century, the age of  progress," Monk said. "You couldn’t even scare a modern kid with
  that  rig."
  The Sea Angel remained motionless and silent.
  "You ain’t foolin’ me," Monk stated. "You’re a man,  and you’re wearin’ a masquerade."
  There was a stir behind Monk. The homely chemist  spun. Two men had appeared through the doorway that
  opened on the  stairs.
  Boscoe, the fat habitual thief, and wizened Percy  Smalling. The latter was smoking one of his awful
  cigarettes.
  Monk jerked a thumb at the Sea Angel. "If this thing  is your pet, you two guys had better get it out of here. I
  don’t like  its looks."
  "That is the Sea Angel," Percy Smalling said.
  "I told you about it, or, rather, Nat Piper did,"  Boscoe added.
  "It," Monk said, "is a man with an outfit on."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME
  43
  
  "Hah!" Boscoe snorted. "What an education you are in  for."
  Percy Smalling looked at Monk and shook his head  solemnly.
  "It is natural that you should refuse to believe it  is real," he said. "They never do think so�at first. But let me
  assure  you that the Sea Angel is very real, and is, furthermore, a creature  with powers which you might
  consider supernatural.
  Monk yelled, "You two guys are the craziest−talking  pair of loons I ever heard! Clear out of here! Get me?
  Beat it!" And  with that, Monk flashed a pistol.
  Things happened very rapidly. Percy Smalling and  Boscoe put up their hands. That was only a stall. It kept
  Monk  occupied. The next instant, one of the Sea Angel’s weird, black  tentacles had lashed forward. It
  wrapped around Monk’s neck. The second  tentacle got Monk’s ankles.
  And it was as if hot lead had been poured into the  hollow parts of Monk’s bones.
  The homely chemist collapsed, helpless. Boscoe and  Percy Smalling sprang forward, whipped out blackjacks
  and tested his  skull for hardness.
  "That oughta hold him for a while," Boscoe grinned.
  BOSCOE then opened the bag which was about Monk’s  wrist. He found the key in the chemist’s pockets.
  "Jumping paupers!" Boscoe exploded when he got a  look at the crown.
  Percy Smalling smiled widely. "It looks as if we  have already got back part of the money he swindled away
  from poor  Theodore Brooks."
  The Sea Angel withdrew a few feet, shuffling. The  thing did not make a sound.
  "Let’s get him downstairs," Percy Smalling said.
  "Wait a minute," Boscoe protested.
  Boscoe ambled through the other portions of the  penthouse. As he moved along, things got into his pockets.
  Boscoe’s  acquisitive urges seemed to be those of a raccoon. Anything flashy  attracted him.
  And when he rejoined impatient Percy Smalling,  Boscoe carried a sack containing something that kicked and
  squealed.
  "What’s that?" Smalling wanted to know.
  "A funny−looking pig," Boscoe explained.
  "Throw it away, darn you!" Percy Smalling snapped.
  "But there’s a platinum−and−jewel collar on the  hog," Boscoe explained. "I couldn’t undo the lock without
  the hog  eating an arm off. So I sacked him and brought him along."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XII. THE SCHEME
  44
  
  They picked Monk up bodily, carried him to the  elevator and descended.
  The Sea Angel had not stirred.
  One of Nat Piper’s sedans was parked on the street,  a man at the wheel. The latter was not Nat Piper.
  Monk was loaded into the car hurriedly. The men  waited, looking around alertly.
  "Nobody saw us," Boscoe said. "We might as well set  sail."
  "Wait," Percy Smalling grunted. "This fellow will  come out of it before long. And I want him to see what
  happens up  there."
  The pig, Habeas Corpus, grunted and went around and  around, sack and all, as they waited.
  "I don’t think he’ll make good bacon," Boscoe said.  "Too much rind to him."
  Monk blew out several vast groans and opened his  eyes. Boscoe stuck a blackjack wrapped in a handkerchief
  in his mouth.
  "You yell and we’ll pop you," Boscoe advised.
  Percy Smalling said, "Look out of the car at the top  of your skyscraper."
  MONK, curious to know what they were pulling on him,  looked out. What he saw made his eyes pop a little.
  It was more than fifty stories up to his penthouse,  and he had to crook his neck at a sharp angle in order to
  see. But  there was no mistaking what he saw.
  Up from the penthouse flew the Sea Angel. It could  fly! There was almost uncanny ease to its movement.
  Like a  stingaree going through water, it moved. Swaying a little, it crossed  the street and was lost to sight
  above the other skyscrapers.
  "All right," Percy Smalling said. "I guess now you  still think it is a man in a trick outfit."
  Monk did not say anything.
  The car got into motion and lost itself in the  traffic.
  "Another three or four hours will see us where Doc  Savage or H. O. G. Coolins won’t be able to bother us,"
  Boscoe  chuckled, as the car headed toward Long Island.
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  BOSCOE of the sticking fingers would have been  affected painfully, no doubt, had he been in a position to
  listen in on  what Doc Savage was saying about this time. The bronze man and gaunt  Johnny were arriving at
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  45
  
  the hospital in which Ham, the swindle victim,  was confined.
  Doc and Johnny went quickly to Ham’s room. Ham gave  them a listless look while a nurse stood by
  solicitously.
  "You only have a few moments," the nurse told Doc  and Johnny. "He seems to be getting worse.
  Newspapermen were just here.  Poor Ham was very bad while they were present."
  Ham registered glassy−eyed approaching idiocy.
  Doc Savage was carrying a small case. He indicated  it. 
  "This is a radio receiver tuned to a transmitter in  Monk’s penthouse laboratory," the bronze man explained
  quietly. "In  various spots around Monk’s laboratory are switches, secretly located,  which put the transmitter
  in operation so that it will send out a  steady buzzing. Monk was to throw one of these switches if any one
  came  to seize him."
  The bronze man now turned on the portable radio  receiver he was carrying. Immediately, a steady buzzing
  came out of it.
  Big−worded Johnny said with small words, "Some one  has captured Monk."
  Ham sprang out of his hospital bed.
  "It’s worked!" he yelled. "It’s worked!"
  "Mister Brooks, please be calm!" the nurse said  anxiously.
  "Good old Monk!" Ham howled. "He put it over!"
  Ham seized Johnny’s bony hands and danced around the  room emitting war whoops.
  "Gentlemen!" the nurse cried angrily. "You are  exciting him needlessly!"
  Ham, still howling delightedly, skipped over and  gave the nurse a resounding kiss, causing that flustered
  individual to  collapse in the handiest chair.
  "Come on," Doc said.
  Ham, Johnny and the bronze giant sped out of the  hospital. One of Doc’s cars was waiting outside. In this
  machine, they  headed downtown. Ham had brought along his pet ape, Chemistry.
  Ham remembered how shocked the hospital attendants  had looked and burst into renewed laughter.
  "They didn’t dream I have been faking," he chuckled.  "And those newspaper reporters! They’ll roast me alive
  when they find  out that the whole swindle was a frame−up between Monk and myself!"
  Johnny said, "The consummation was eminently  paradisiacal."
  "Of course the results are swell," Ham agreed. "It  was a great idea of Doc’s. We found out men were
  disappearing  mysteriously. We failed to dig up any trace of where they had gone, or  why. But Doc knew
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  46
  
  something was wrong, and became very interested  because such mysterious goings−on are the kind of things
  he makes his  business."
  Ham paused to take a deep breath. "We could only  find one thing in common about the men who were
  disappearing: They were  all financial sharpers. Each vanished man had sometime in the past  given some one
  a legal skinning."
  Ham chuckled. "So we staged this thing. Monk gave me  a financial trimming, by arrangement. He fleeced me
  out of all my  money."
  At this point, Ham looked suddenly belligerent.  "Monk couldn’t have done it without my consent! That
  homely missing  link wouldn’t stand a chance in a financial deal with me!"
  When no one denied this, Ham continued.
  "Well, the idea was to get Monk to vanish  mysteriously, like the others," he said, "then trail him and find out
  what was going on. It seems to have worked."
  "All but the trailing," Johnny said uneasily.  "Better not get too confident."
  THE bronze man and his two aids drove directly to  Monk’s penthouse. They found several persons still
  standing around in  the street, gaping wonderingly at the sky. When asked, these  individuals explained they
  had seen an incredible bird fly off through  the skyscrapers.
  "I’ll be superamalgamated!" Johnny said.
  They went up to Monk’s establishment. It developed  there were hidden movie cameras in the penthouse
  which had taken  pictures of the raid.
  Johnny said, "I’ll be superamalgamated!" again when  they examined the films. From the cameras, the films
  ran into  self−developing tanks which processed them immediately.
  There was a good picture of the Sea Angel.
  Ham, moved to incredulous astonishment, exclaimed,  "It can’t be real!"
  Doc said nothing and went on the penthouse terrace.
  After Boscoe and Percy Smalling had taken Monk away,  the Sea Angel had walked out on the penthouse
  terrace. There were no  cameras there, it happened, so there were no photographs of the  monstrosity flying
  away.
  "We have very little time to waste," Doc reminded.
  All entered the car and drove northward, toward Doc  Savage’s river−front hangar.
  Ham bought a newspaper when they paused for a  traffic light. When he finished reading the editorial
  lambastings  directed at Monk, Ham was weak from laughing.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  47
  
  "If they had only lynched him!" Ham chortled.
  Any misfortune suffered by Monk always tickled Ham,  providing it was a minor one. Monk and Ham had
  been good−natured  enemies for years, and had never been known to exchange a civil word  with each other.
  This had made the present set−up ideal. Monk had  gone through the motions of swindling Ham in order to
  attract whatever  power was snatching swindlers and causing them to vanish. Nothing had  seemed more
  natural than that Monk should finally settle Ham’s hash for  good. The two had been perpetrating petty insults
  and tricks on each  other for years.
  Doc Savage’s river−front hangar outwardly resembled  a warehouse. The sign, "Hidalgo Trading Company,"
  on the front  furthered that impression. The building was of brick, big and  smoky−looking. The general
  impression was that it had not been used in  twenty years.
  Inside, it was a surprise. There were several  amphibian planes, a speedy motor boat or two, a dirigible of
  small size  and other conveyances.
  The plane which Doc selected was an autogiro, a  cabin type, not so fast, but capable of hovering. While
  Johnny and Ham  warmed up the ship, Doc tinkered with a device.
  The contrivance in which Doc was interested at first  glance resembled an aërial camera which was mounted
  on a swivel and  could be pointed at different places. But there was no place for  plates. Instead, a headset of
  telephonic type plugged in.
  Doc took this into the plane. The autogiro took off.  Johnny flew, and, at Doc’s suggestion, got two thousand
  feet of  altitude.
  After he had adjusted headset and knobs, Doc pointed  his device at the city. He moved it about.
  "I hope they took the crown to the same place they  took Monk," Ham said uneasily.
  No one said anything for a few minutes.
  Then Ham grumbled again, "Inside that crown was a  terribly small area in which to mount a micro−wave
  radio transmitter."
  "East," Doc Savage said to Johnny, who was flying.  "They seem to have taken Monk out on Long Island."
  The two aids settled back and began to wear big  grins. The device the bronze man was using was a direction
  finder of  his own design. And it had spotted the diminutive micro−wave  transmitter in Monk’s recently
  purchased crown�or the fake imitation of  that crown which the bronze man had supplied to Monk.
  TWO hours later, the autogiro was still in the  air�well out toward the end of Long Island now. With
  binoculars, Doc  and his two aids could see the car which was carrying the crown, and  Monk, they hoped.
  The cars�four machines, one behind the other�were  traversing a marsh road. There were few houses. The
  Atlantic Ocean was  to the south, Long Island Sound to the north.
  "Look!" Ham rapped, shoving Chemistry off his lap to  the floor.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XIII. ISLAND TRAIL
  48
  
  The cars were turning off. They bumped over a road  which was rough enough so that the gymnastics of the
  machines could be  seen even from the air.
  An ancient house perched near the Sound. Patches of  shingles were missing from its roof. The cars pulled in
  and stopped.
  The men, with their prisoner, Monk, unloaded.
  Ham used binoculars.
  "I see Boscoe and Nat Piper," he said. "But I don’t  see Percy Stalling. Hey! They’re looking up at this plane!"
  Doc directed Johnny, "We do not want to make them  suspicious. Fly on toward the end of the island. Planes
  often take this  route carrying fishermen out to Montauk Point."
  Ham groaned, "But what about Monk?"
  Which, considering the violent opinions he always  expressed about Monk, was strange. Ham sounded
  concerned.
  Doc said, "We will land at a spot where they cannot  see us and return to investigate that place."
  Johnny sent the plane on toward the end of Long  Island, announcing that he thought it a good idea to get out
  of sight,  then fly back with the motors muffled, and keep low so that they would  not be discovered. It was a
  good idea.
  Ham, settling back, muttered, "But where’s Percy  Smalling? We want to get him in the net, too."
  Chapter XIV. COOLINS GETS A CLUE
  PERCY SMALLING was already in a net.
  He had just fallen into it. The net took the form of  half a dozen vicious−looking men with guns. They had
  appeared as Percy  Smalling entered the office of his financial publication.
  "Behave, brother," one of the men advised.
  Smalling was smoking one of his awful home−made  cigarettes. It fell off his lower lip. He looked at the guns
  and became  pale.
  "Who�what�"
  "Shut up!" they ordered, and searched him. They  found no weapons.
  "This is an outrage!" Percy Smalling declared.
  "Matter of opinion," said a gunman. "You been  pulling some outrages yourself."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XIV. COOLINS GETS A CLUE
  49
  
  "You must be mistaken," Smalling stated virtuously. 
  "You’re the guy who gets the low−down on businessmen  for the Sea Angel," the other reminded. "You dig
  the stuff up under the  guise of getting news for your financial paper."
  "Er�what kind of low−down?" Percy Smalling parried. 
  "You have been classing perfectly legitimate  business deals as financial swindles and turning the information
  over  to the Sea Angel," retorted the other. "And the Sea Angel then causes  the businessmen to disappear."
  "You have a quaint idea of what comprises a  legitimate business deal!" Smalling snapped.
  "We got some other quaint ideas, too. Get moving!"
  The men took Percy Smalling downstairs and heaved  him into the rear of a large truck, then got in and closed
  the van  doors. The conveyance got into motion.
  Percy Smalling looked steadily at a man who had been  waiting in the van.
  "Oh!" he said. "I begin to understand."
  H. O. G. Coolins, the man who had waited in the van,  smiled thinly and grimly.
  "It took a lot of careful research to discover you  were the one who gathered the Sea Angel’s information," he
  snarled.
  Percy Smalling, obviously frightened, removed one of  his cigarettes from a pocket. They had allowed him to
  keep his smokes.  He lighted it, blew out smoke, and some of the men immediately began  coughing.
  "What are you going to do with me?" Percy Smalling  asked uneasily.
  "You will soon know," Coolins replied dryly.
  Smalling swallowed. "I’m afraid I don’t understand."
  "We’re going to see what information we can get out  of you," H. O. G. Coolins elaborated.
  This did not cheer poor Percy Smalling perceptibly.  He thought about it for a while, then attempted a
  desperate expedient.  He tried to yell. But a wadded felt hat was quickly jammed into his  mouth and he
  received an admonishing slap or two which made him see  stars.
  IN the course of time, the van stopped and Percy  Smalling was tumbled out. He looked around. The van was
  inside some  kind of large, ancient building.
  A man yanked the hat out of Smalling’s mouth.
  "Have a good yell," the man invited, "and get it out  of your system. Maybe it’ll sell you the idea nobody can
  hear you here."
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  Chapter XIV. COOLINS GETS A CLUE
  50
  
  Percy Smalling, who could not see where it would do  any harm, emitted a terrific bleat.
  H. O. G. Coolins hitched up his trousers and  produced a box of grocery−store matches.
  "Want to make it easy on yourself?" he asked.
  "What do you mean?" Percy Stalling gulped.
  "Talk," Coolins directed. "We didn’t grab you  because we like your looks, or because we think you amount
  to anything  in the Sea Angel’s gang. What we want out of you is words."
  "W−what kind?"
  "Where can we get our hands on Nat Piper, Boscoe and  the rest of them?"
  Percy Smalling paused just a moment too long before  he answered, "I’m sure I don’t know."
  He had lied, of course. H. O. G. Coolins knew it. He  opened his box of matches.
  "Strip him," he ordered. "And tie him across the  truck hood."
  They did this. H. O. G. Coolins began striking his  matches and sticking the heads into Percy Smalling’s flesh
  while they  still sizzled.
  Percy Smalling screamed until his mouth ran red.  After a while, he talked.
  Percy explained, "They’re waiting at an old  farmhouse on Long Island." He described the location of the
  farmhouse.  "They’ll be there until after dark," he added.
  "What’re they waiting for?" Coolins demanded.
  "The Flying Dutchman," Percy explained,  moaning.
  "Ah!" Coolins leered. "What about the Sea Angel?"
  "I don’t know where it is," the victim groaned. "You  know that we ourselves never know where it is."
  Coolins scowled, but believed this.
  "We’ll get Nat Piper, Boscoe and the Flying  Dutchman!" he leered. "And we’ll get the Sea Angel, too!"
  His thoughts of what he was going to do made him  very brave.
  "If Doc Savage shows up, we’ll fix him, too," he  said.
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  BY this time, Doc Savage was nearing the Long Island  farmhouse with his two aids, Johnny and Ham. They
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  51
  
  had left the autogiro  three miles back. Chemistry knuckled along at Ham’s heels.
  Woods were around them now and they were near the  farmhouse. Wave sound from the beach reached them.
  Sea gulls sailed and  squeaked overhead.
  Birds were seeking roosting places in the trees, for  it was nearly dark. There was a perceptible chill in the air.
  Doc Savage said, his remarkable voice so low as to  be almost inaudible, "Wait here a few moments."
  The bronze man became a shadow in the growing  twilight, and the shadow moved, and then there was no
  visible evidence  of his presence.
  The farmhouse had something the shape of a  four−armed starfish, being two stories in the center, with
  one−story  arms shooting out. Twenty years ago, perhaps, it had received its last  coat of paint. Doc did not
  waste much time on the house.
  Men were standing by the rear door. They peered  impatiently at the setting sun.
  "It’s dark enough now," one said.
  "Hold your horses," Boscoe rumbled.
  "I’ve got the habit of holding everything while you  are around," the man told him, and chuckled.
  At that instant, a man came stamping out of the  house and confronted Boscoe.
  "That crown is gone!" he barked, "Boscoe, where is  it?"
  "Don’t look at me," Boscoe muttered sheepishiy. 
  "I’ll not look at you!" gritted the man. "I’ll knock your block off!"
  "Aw−w−w," Boscoe muttered. "I guess I forgot and  took it after all."
  Boscoe now reëntered the house. Nat Piper and  another man followed him, looking angry and serious. They
  used  flashlights.
  Boscoe reluctantly lifted a loose floorboard, dug in  the loose soil which was exposed. This soil looked as if it
  had been  thrown up by burrowing rats. Boscoe brought out the crown, neatly  wrapped in paper.
  Sight of the gaudy bauble was too much for the man  with Nat Piper. He swore, launched a swing at Boscoe.
  The ungainly  Boscoe ducked, dropped both the crown and his flashlight.
  The crown hit the floor and broke wide open.
  Boscoe and the others popped their eyes at the  crown. They could see now that the interior was not rich gold,
  but a  complicated mechanism, electrical in nature.
  "Radio!" Nat Piper gulped, after making an  examination.
  "Can’t be," Boscoe growled. "Too small."
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  52
  
  "It’s one of those micro−wave outfits," Nat Piper  explained. "They don’t use much current."
  He examined the mechanism further. Then Nat Piper  reached a decision:
  "Prize suckers we are!" he growled. "We bit on this  one!"
  He went over to Monk, and in his rage, gave the  bound and gagged chemist, who reposed in an adjacent
  room, a kick in  the ribs.
  "You had that crown fixed up so some one could trace  you by it!" Piper snarled.
  Renny and Long Tom lay beside Monk. Near them  reposed Nancy Quietman and her grandfather. All were
  securely bound and  silenced.
  Nat Piper, after another moment of thought, began  issuing quiet, grim orders.
  DOC SAVAGE, watching the house, saw Nat Piper come  out.
  He also heard what Nat Piper said.
  "I think it’s dark enough now that we can get  moving," Nat Piper declared.
  Men then came out of the house. They carried the  prisoners. All of them.
  "Half of you go down to the beach and see that  everything is ready," Nat Piper directed.
  Half of his men obeyed. It was completely dark by  now.
  Doc did not follow them because they did not take  the prisoners. The men who remained behind stood around
  the rear door  of the old house. They seemed uncommonly alert.
  Doc Savage became very interested in this alertness.  Once he made the strange, small, trilling sound which
  was his  unconscious characteristic in moments of stress. It had a puzzled  quality.
  The men were waiting for something. Doc Savage was  no mindreader, but he was a perceptive thinker, and in
  a few moments he  realized that it had something to do with the men who had gone toward  the beach.
  Doc eased away, intent on investigating.
  Yells, blows, whipping of brush stopped him. Then he  traveled with the speed of a sprinter through the
  darkness. His two  men! The fight sounds were from where he had left them. 
  A light came on. A very bright light. Doc used  caution.
  Nat Piper’s beach expedition had circled and  discovered Johnny and Ham. They had taken Doc’s two aids,
  and were  holding them to the ground. One man was lighting the scene with a  gasoline lantern. Four others
  held revolvers. One had captured  Chemistry.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  53
  
  The menace of the guns kept Doc from rushing in. The  men were alert. The bronze man felt about for a rock
  with which to  smash the lantern. But the vicinity was remarkably bare of rocks.
  Before Doc found a stone, Nat Piper and more of his  gang arrived from the house. All bore lights.
  There was now too many of them to attack.
  Ham and Johnny were carried, kicking and  complaining, toward the old house. They were tied and deposited
  with  the other prisoners. Doc kept in the background. As yet, Piper’s gang  did not know he was around.
  Nat Piper looked at Ham and Johnny and scratched his  head industriously.
  "You’re Doc Savage’s men," he grumbled. "I don’t get  this at all. The only way you could have found us is
  by that radio  micro−wave transmitter in the crown. But how come you are coöperating  with Monk? Doc
  Savage threw Monk out of his organization for swindling  Ham."
  Piper rubbed his head some more.
  Boscoe suggested, "Maybe this Ham was trying to find  Monk to get revenge on him?"
  "Maybe." Nat Piper snapped his fingers. "But maybe  Doc Savage got Percy Smalling and made him tell
  where this place is!"
  He dashed into the old house. There seemed to be a  telephone line, because he could be heard using the
  instrument  frantically. He came out wearing a long expression.
  "Percy Smalling isn’t at his office!" he snapped.  "Something has happened to him. Doc Savage must have
  gotten him!"
  Nat Piper had made a mistake. H. O. G. Coolins had  seized Percy Smalling. Piper was aware of this error an
  instant later.
  Some one in the near−by darkness put a bullet past  his nose.
  IT was a bad shot. The marksman undoubtedly intended  to kill Nat Piper. Piper yelled, dodged.
  "Douse the lights!" he squalled.
  The lights went out.
  "Get to the Flying Dutchman!" Nat Piper  howled. 
  Doc Savage heard this. Naturally it was the first he  had heard of anything called the Flying Dutchman being
  in the  vicinity. The bronze man eased through the trees. It was almost  entirely dark now.
  The new arrivals were attacking. Doc had heard them  coming, but there had not been time to do anything
  about it. The  newcomers had rushed straight in to the attack.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  54
  
  The bronze man also knew who they were. Nat Piper  had yelled out that something had happened to Percy
  Smalling. Doc had  not bothered Smalling. Therefore, it must be H. O. G. Coolins.
  Shots were banging wildly around the old farmhouse.  Then men began coughing. Tear gas! Doc got a whiff
  of it, and retreated  quickly. It was not the ordinary tear gas, but the kind which worked  through the skin pores
  and rendered its victims temporarily helpless.
  Nat Piper’s men had evidently hurled the gas  grenades to either side, leaving a lane through which they could
  reach  the beach. They worked toward the water, carrying the prisoners.
  Doc Savage headed toward the water himself. He had  sampled the potency of Nat Piper’s gas. He kept well
  back.
  One of Nat Piper’s men fired a Very pistol. The  missile from this signal weapon burst into colored stars high
  above,  skyrocket fashion.
  From the sea came a replying rocket.
  "The Flying Dutchman!" Boscoe yelled.
  That changed Doc’s entire plan. There were thirty or  forty men embroiled in this murky affair. Whipping
  them was an  operation that would require time. And there was a very good chance of  getting shot.
  A bronze ghost, Doc eased toward the water. The  shore curved to make a small cove at this point. Instead of a
  beach,  there was a marshy cut bank which sloped down sharply into deep water.
  No boats were tied to this cut bank. There was a  small, rickety wharf. But no boats. Doc had noted that from
  the air.
  Reaching the water, Doc listened, Nat Piper’s crowd  was still coming. Coolins’s men were still trying to head
  them off.  Coolins’s men were shooting steadily. No replying shots came from Nat  Piper’s crowd. But they
  were throwing gas grenades. When these burst,  they sounded as if a paper sack full of water had been
  dropped.
  Doc shed his coat, eased into the water. He sank and  pinned the coat to the bottom with a small twig. He had
  picked the twig  up enroute for this purpose. The coat would hamper his swimming. But  now, if they searched
  the shore, they would not find it.
  Boscoe and Nat Piper reached the shore. Boscoe made  his hands into a funnel at his mouth.
  "Get a move on!" he roared.
  He directed this shout at the sea.
  Doc listened, keeping close under the bank where  they would not discover him. Not until he got his head
  under the  surface did he hear oars. Water carries some sounds better than the  air. Two or three boats, the
  bronze man judged. Approaching rapidly.
  Doc sank again and swam out toward the mouth of the  cove. He came to the surface. A moment later, the
  boats passed him.  Three of them. When they reached the ramshackle wharf, Nat Piper’s crew  quickly loaded
  aboard with the prisoners. A man brought the ape,  Chemistry.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  55
  
  "Get to the Flying Dutchman in a hurry," Nat  Piper ordered.
  GUNS banged on shore. A flashlight spiked its beam  at the boats. Boscoe fired a revolver. The light went out.
  Boscoe  chuckled. Nat Piper threw a grenade. After it burst, there was not much  shooting.
  "Whoa!" Boscoe barked. "Maybe we can go back and  grab that gang!"
  "Too risky," Nat Piper ordered. "Keep going. We  haven’t got our gas suits. Anyway, too many of those
  fellows are still  able to shoot."
  The boats came on. Doc waited for them. Being  interested exclusively in the shore, the men did not see him.
  A few strokes put Doc directly in front of the first  boat. He reached up, grasped the bow. Close to the water
  line at the  bow was a ring, a heavy rope painter tied to it. Boats were often  bridled thus to make them tow
  easier. Doc held to the ring.
  Up to that instant, it had been the bronze man’s  plan to upset the boats. He would stand his best chance
  against such  odds in the water.
  But Doc did not try to upset the boat. It was a very  potbellied boat, not easy to turn over. The bronze man
  clung to the bow  ring. That way, they could not see him unless they leaned over the bow.  And they were
  excited enough not to notice the extra drag on the boat.
  They probably rowed two hundred yards. Then they  approached something long and low lying in the water.
  This might have  been a shiny whale. Waves washed almost completely over it fore and  aft. No trace of light
  showed anywhere.
  A submarine.
  Doc released his grip, sank, and swam with power. He  came up near the stern of the craft.
  It was quite dark. The small boats were coming  alongside the bow of the submersible. The occupants
  unloaded. Then the  boats were yanked aboard and stowed away in large flush lockers.
  DURING the excitement attendant on this operation,  Doc Savage hauled himself aboard the submarine. A
  hatch aft of the  conning tower was open. Nobody was near it. The conning tower shut off  the view of those
  forward.
  Doc eased down the hatch. He had a plan. It was to  reach the engine room. From there, the behavior of the
  ship could be  controlled.
  Doc Savage was the product of an intensive training  since childhood. He had studied submarines. He owned
  one himself, a  small one which had been built for scientific investigations under the  Arctic ice pack. He
  realized that this undersea boat was a German  U−boat of World War vintage.
  Once in control of the engine room, he would have  the submarine at his mercy.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  56
  
  The man of bronze worked along an iron corridor  toward the engine room. Then he heard voices.
  Approaching. Three men.  Not yet ready to reveal his presence, Doc looked about for a hiding  place.
  A tiny steel cubicle seemed to be the only thing  which was offered. He stepped into it. The chamber was
  stacked high  with boxes of canned food. There was barely room to close the door,  once he was inside. He got
  it shut. Small ventilating slits perforated  the top of the door, so there would be air.
  Doc waited. The men tramped close.
  Clank! 
  went the hasp on the door. Doc was not often taken by surprise, but  this got him flat−footed. He tried the door
  surreptitiously. It would  not open. 
  One of the men outside said, "There’s canned fruits  and jellies in there. We won’t need any of it for several
  days.  Probably not until we reach the Sea Angel’s home. But Boscoe will clean  the place out if we leave it
  unlocked."
  Another man chuckled. "Boscoe ate a whole case of  peaches in two days on the last trip. You said it. We’d
  better lock  this up, if we want any fruit."
  A padlock went click and the men went away.
  Doc Savage exerted all his terrific strength against  the steel panel. But the human sinew which is stronger
  than steel,  actually, has not yet been developed.
  The bronze man made his small, trilling noise. It  had a disgusted quality, for he knew he was not going to get
  out.
  The engines started and the submarine moved.
  H. O. G. COOLINS, on shore, saw the submarine get  into motion. He nestled a high−powered rifle to his
  cheek and pumped  out cartridges until the magazine was empty. Throwing the gun down, he  jumped up and
  down in a rage.
  "We shouldn’t have rushed them!" he snarled. "We  should’ve sneaked up behind them!"
  He swore at his men. Those who could stagger were  stumbling about picking up those who could no longer
  navigate. The  breeze had moved the gas cloud away. Some of them were not entirely  senseless, and their
  moaning was impressive.
  "How many dead?" H. O. G. Coolins gritted.
  "Two," a man advised. "And I got a suspicion we shot  them two accidentally. Seemed to me as if the Sea
  Angel’s men were  shooting over our heads."
  "It’s their boast they have never killed nobody!"  Coolins snarled.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XV. THE "FLYING DUTCHMAN"
  57
  
  He got his gang together. They stumbled off to the  cars in which they had come. The machines were parked
  some distance  away.
  They left the two dead men at the old farmhouse,  first stripping all means of identification from their clothing.
  "Maybe if the bodies are found there, it’ll get Nat  Piper into trouble," Coolins said, hopefully.
  Percy Smalling was waiting at the cars, guarded by  one man. Percy was a nervous wreck, trembling and
  mumbling under his  breath.
  Coolins looked at him and became more cheerful.
  "He’ll tell us the location of that place they call  the home of the Sea Angel," he declared. "He may even tell
  us what  route the submarine plans to take. If we can catch that undersea boat  enroute, what we’ll do to it will
  be plenty."
  "Something like a nice depth bomb?" a man asked.
  "Something like that," Coolins agreed. "Make it  snappy. We have to get planes."
  Chapter XVI. THE "PATIENT"
  DIESEL engines were driving the submarine along the  surface at a fair speed. Indicators in the control room
  showed the  ballast tanks were almost fully blown, yet the craft rode low in the  water. At times, waves gurgled
  entirely over her. Two lookouts in the  conning tower wore oilskins and had a wet job.
  Nat Piper and Boscoe gave a few orders about the  course. The men were to keep the undersea boat out of
  waters frequented  by boats. And at the slightest sign of any craft, they were to dive.
  This done, Nat and Boscoe went below to a tiny steel  cabin where the prisoners were confined. Orders were
  issued. Pretty  Nancy Quietman, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom and Renny it seemed, were to be  merely locked in a
  cabin. Two cabins, rather. The young woman was to  have one by herself.
  "It is unfortunate we had to bring you along," Nat  Piper explained, grinning boyishly. "We regret it is much
  as you do.  You will simply be prisoners, but well−treated captives if you behave.  Perhaps what you see in the
  next few weeks will be a profound lesson to  you."
  He ignored their angry demands for an explanation of  what was ahead of them.
  "Take those two to the engine room," he ordered,  pointing at Monk and old Leander L. Quietman, the noted
  philanthropist  and lover of mankind.
  These two were hauled into the engine room. The  hauling was none too gentle.
  Every spare inch of the submersible was occupied by  stored goods. Food, largely. But lashed to pipes in an
  unused corner of  the engine room were several remarkable−looking objects. Each of these  consisted of a long
  and heavy metal yoke.
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  Chapter XVI. THE "PATIENT"
  58
  
  This was almost six feet long and looked like  nothing so much as two heavy archers’ bows with the ends
  bolted  together. To each end was fastened a chain, and at the other end of the  chains dangled ankle irons.
  Monk did some indignant kicking, but before long he  found his neck inside one of the bows. It was bolted,
  and the ends of  the bows riveted over the taps. The ankle irons were fastened around  Monk’s ankles. Then he
  was untied and ungagged.
  Monk immediately started a fight. He swung at a foe,  but the latter dodged. Monk tried to rush Boscoe. The
  ankle irons  jerked the yokes against his neck and he fell down heavily. He got up  looking enraged and
  sheepish.
  "Hey!" he complained. "I can’t stand up straight  with this rig on!"
  "Just what we had hoped," Nat Piper smiled.
  Poor old Leander L. Quietman was subjected to the  same treatment.
  This made Monk even more angry. Old Quietman looked  so pitiful.
  "A fine bunch of tramps!" Monk yelled. "Picking on  an old man!"
  Nat Piper said grimly, "If this old man got what he  deserved, he would go to the electric chair!"
  Monk and Leander L. Quietman were now locked in a  tiny stateroom. Their prison looked small when they
  first entered, and  seemed to get smaller the longer they were in it. They discovered that  when one wanted to
  stand up and stretch, the other would have to stay  in one of the two berths. There was an upper and lower
  berth, both  painfully hard.
  Elderly Leander Quietman moaned, "I cannot  understand why they accuse me of being a bad man. For many
  years, I  have given to charity and helped poor unfortunates. I thought every one  knew I was a good man."
  Monk had been puzzled about that, too.
  THE submarine lumbered steadily ahead. In a few  hours, it began rolling as only an undersea boat can roll.
  Renny, Long Tom, Johnny and Ham, confined in one  cabin, wore plain khaki coveralls. The only garments
  they had been  permitted to retain. Their best efforts unearthed no way of escaping  from the cell.
  "Where are we?" they yelled at a passing man, whom  they could see through the ventilating slits in their door.
  "You’re on the Flying Dutchman," the man  advised. "There’s no name on her, so I guess you didn’t know.
  But  that’s what we call her."
  "She’s an old World War U−boat, isn’t she?" asked  Renny, whose engineering knowledge included a bit
  about submarines.
  "Right," agreed the man. "You wouldn’t think she  laid under the sea for twenty years, would you?"
  "Huh?"
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  59
  
  "Her port diving rudders must have fouled a mine net  which then tangled with the propellers," the man
  explained. "She could  not get to the surface and her crew were overcome by lack of oxygen."
  "Is this a straight story?" Renny demanded.
  "Oh, it’s true enough," the man said. "There was an  item in the newspapers about a fisherman seeing her
  when she came to  the surface. You see, the net which fouled her eventually rusted free  of its anchor and the
  old tub still had enough air in her to rise.  She’s a remarkably tight craft."
  Renny rumbled, "So that’s how you got her?"
  "Nat Piper happened to be close by," the man said.  "He took charge of her, and�"
  Nat Piper himself, who had come up, said, "I  wouldn’t talk too much."
  The man said, "Yes, sir!" and left.
  The prisoners tried to get Nat Piper to talk to  them, but he walked away. After which the captives tried to
  make things  disagreeable by shouting and yelling. They did it in relays, hoping to  keep any one from
  sleeping. Renny’s great voice was particularly good  at this.
  But their captors appeared with an iron plate which  they fastened over the ventilating slits. Soon the air in the
  tiny  cubicle ran out, and the prisoners were very glad to promise to keep  quiet.
  After that, the chung−alung−chung−chung of  the Diesels got very monotonous indeed. The fact that the air
  was none  too aromatic did not help. Its sustaining qualities seemed good enough,  however.
  It was sometime the next day when Monk and poor  Leander Quietman were hauled out of their
  uncomfortable cubicle.
  WHILE the two unlucky prisoners stood in hunched  positions because of their yokes and chains, they were
  handed a pail of  suds and two brushes.
  "Scrub!" they were ordered. "And after you get done,  the dishes will be ready to wash."
  "Not me!" Monk roared, and threw his brush at the  nearest tormenter, knocking that worthy temporarily
  unconscious. Monk  then followed up by dousing fat Boscoe with the pail of suds.
  Boscoe wiped his smarting eyes. "How about the water  treatment, boss?"
  "Go ahead," Nat Piper directed.
  Monk and elderly Quietman were taken on deck. It was  rather cold. They shivered. Ropes were tied to their
  yokes and they  were flung overboard. It was really cold then. Furthermore, they were  nearly drowned after
  being towed behind the submarine for a while.
  They decided the scrubbing job was preferable.
  "This yoke hurts my neck," Monk complained. "It’s  heavy!"
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  Chapter XVI. THE "PATIENT"
  60
  
  Nat Piper laughed cheerfully and said, "That yoke is  the weight of your sins bearing down on you."
  "Just what in blazes do you mean?" Monk gritted.
  "Haven’t you guessed what you are in for?" Nat Piper  demanded.
  "I got a suspicion. But suppose you tell me."
  "The Sea Angel is reforming rich men who got their  money at the expense of other people. You got yours
  that way. At least,  you got part of it by swindling Ham Brooks. We are going to make you  suffer for it. You
  are going to suffer until you decide you will never  make another dollar wrongfully. You will suffer until you
  decide to  give back what you have taken. Then, if your suffering properly reforms  you, and you promise
  never to do a wrongful act again, we may give you  another chance."
  Monk scratched his head and eyed Nat Piper. He  decided young Piper did not look like a bad egg, and his
  idea, if he  was telling the truth, was not an unworthy one. But Monk did not care  for the method.
  Monk pointed at poor old Leander L. Quietman.  "You’re abusing this poor old fellow, Piper. Quietman is a
  philanthropist who is well known for his kindness."
  Nat Piper looked at Leander L. Quietman with utter  disgust. 
  "That old man is the most two−faced old reprobate  who ever lived!" Piper gritted. "For years, he has
  pretended to be a  fine old lover of mankind. And on the side, he has perpetrated business  swindles. He has
  been utterly merciless. Not less than half a dozen  suicides are chalked up against him. Men he has ruined."
  Monk looked at white−haired old Quietman. "Anything  to that?"
  "It’s a dirty lie!" Quietman snarled.
  But the old man’s face was twisted, and there was  something in the shape of his snarl, the utter ferocity and
  desperation  in his eyes, that Monk had never noticed before.
  Monk took a deep breath. It was as if he were seeing  a weasel in a coop of small chickens which it had
  slaughtered. Monk  suddenly knew that nice−looking Leander L. Quietman, the old gentleman  with the saintly
  reputation, was a wolf in a sheep’s garb.
  "Whew!" Monk gulped. "Whew!"
  Monk then decided it was time Nat Piper had the  truth about himself.
  "Say, Piper," Monk asked tentatively, "if I wasn’t  really a swindler, would I get different treatment?"
  "Of course," Nat Piper said.
  Monk sighed his relief. "Well, I’m not. I only faked  that trimming of Ham. The idea was to have me play the
  part of a bait  to find out what had been making wealthy business sharpers vanish."
  The reactions to this were not exactly what Monk had  hoped for. Nat Piper emitted a roar of laughter, and
  Boscoe echoed it.
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  "You financial wolves are expert liars!" Nat Piper  chuckled. "You think of the dangedest stories to get
  yourselves out of  your troubles!"
  "You don’t believe me?" Monk exploded.
  "Of course not!" Nat Piper snapped. "And for telling  that lie, you can wash a double share of the dirty dishes
  and polish  the boots of everybody aboard!"
  Monk’s groan was something calculated to melt the  heart of a snow man. Nor was his injured feeling
  softened when he heard  stifled laughter from the chamber where Ham was confined. Ham, Monk  realized,
  had overheard.
  And any misfortune befalling Monk, as long as it did  not endanger the homely chemist’s life, invariably
  tickled Ham.
  THREE more days of travel in the submarine became  very monotonous. By that time, even the crew were
  barking at each other  occasionally.
  Boscoe in particular was suffering. It was his own  fault. The homely, fat fellow who could not help stealing
  things had  been banished to a pallet on the floor of the torpedo room forward.
  Boscoe’s mates had become tired of collecting their  watches, money, guns, belt buckles, even their shoes,
  from the places  where Boscoe hid them after he could not help stealing them. 
  Another thing was working on Boscoe. He loved fruit.  If fresh fruit was not at hand, the canned variety would
  do. And he  could not find the store of canned fruit which he knew should be aboard.
  Accordingly, Boscoe was devoting his spare time to  surreptitious prowling in search of the canned delicacies.
  He was  methodical about it. He began at the bow and worked aft. He found a  number of things which he
  fondled longingly, then put back, for the  fruit was uppermost on his mind.
  In the course of time, Boscoe located a lazaret  which was padlocked. He reasoned the fruit was inside. So he
  repaired  to the engine room and, while no one was observing, carefully fashioned  himself a tool for picking
  locks. Boscoe had had some experience along  these lines.
  His tool worked remarkably well on the padlock,  opening it with the first try. Boscoe peered up and down the
  narrow  passage, made sure no one was in sight, then opened the door and  reached in eagerly for a case of
  fruit.
  What he got was a terrific wallop on the chin. It  should have knocked him senseless, and did stun him. He fell
  limply,  not making a sound. His small eyes ogled the giant bronze man who had  struck him.
  Only then did Boscoe realize he had discovered Doc  Savage. The unfortunate part of the incident was that
  Nat Piper and two  other men also realized it�after they came unexpectedly into the  passage. A man with
  Piper was one of the engineers. He had seen Boscoe  make his tool and had guessed that they would have to
  look after their  canned fruit supply.
  Nat Piper yanked out a small Boy Scout whistle and  blew a terrific blast.
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  62
  
  Doc Savage rushed. Nat Piper put up his fists. He  should have run, although Doc would probably have caught
  him. The  bronze man had fared well on a juicy canned fruit diet. Piper felt  something like an explosion on his
  chin. It was a while before he felt  anything else.
  The other two men ran. Doc pursued them. The two had  a slight start. They skinned themselves while getting
  through a  bulkhead door. They slammed the door, dogged it tight on the other side.
  Doc spun. He knew he was in a water−tight  compartment alone. It would be a good idea to get out of it.
  He did not make it. Men drawn by the whistles came  running from the other direction, saw him, banged the
  door in the other  bulkhead before he could stop them. He was locked in a water−tight  chamber, or section, of
  the submarine.
  The rest was easy.
  The compartments were equipped so they could be  pumped separately. By the same token, water could be
  flushed in. The  crew did this.
  Before the water was up to his knees, Doc banged on  the bulkhead and surrendered. There was nothing else
  he could do.
  It was just as well he gave up when he did, because  they made him pump the water out of the compartment
  by hand. It was no  easy job.
  Chapter XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
  AS soon as Doc Savage finished pumping, he was  equipped with one of the yokes and leg−iron contrivances.
  They then  conducted him to Nat Piper, who had revived and was examining his jaw  with a hand mirror.
  "You pack a wallop," Piper grinned.
  Doc Savage said nothing.
  Nat Piper studied the giant bronze man for a time.  He was obviously impressed by the remarkable physique
  he was observing,  because he whistled quietly.
  "I’ve always admired you," he said, frankly. "You  are more or less engaged in the same kind of work as
  my�my�er, the Sea  Angel."
  Doc did not seem particularly interested.
  "You right wrongs and punish evildoers," Nat Piper  said. "The Sea Angel is doing the same thing. Only in a
  more effective  way."
  Doc said, "A way that is not practical."
  "I think it’s as practical as hell!" Nat Piper  laughed. "You should see our results."
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  63
  
  "One of your graduates has been running around New  York�running after you and me part of the time," Doc
  offered dryly.
  Nat Piper looked uncomfortable.
  "H. O. G. Coolins is the individual referred to,"  Doc said.
  "I know who you’re referring to!" Piper snapped. 
  "Coolins took your course of training, didn’t he?" 
  "He was an exception," Nat Piper explained gloomily.  "The others won’t be like him."
  "How do you know? Coolins is the only one you have  graduated so far, is he not?"
  "Yes," Piper admitted. "Say, you seem to know a lot  about us."
  "Only some guesswork," the bronze man explained.
  "Well, it’s good guesswork. We’ve been taking these  rich financial gobblers and putting them through the
  mill. Boy, we  really give them hell. And when we figure we’ve got them cured, we will  turn them loose.
  They’ll be changed men."
  Doc Savage said nothing.
  NAT PIPER seemed to consider, and reach a  conclusion. The quickness with which he came to this
  conclusion was  some slight proof that he had toyed with the idea previously.
  "Look here," Piper said. "Maybe the Sea Angel will  let you work with us in this. You’d be a lot of help to us.
  You’d be  doing a good work for the world. How about it? Will you aid us if the  Sea Angel will consent to the
  idea?"
  "No," Doc said.
  "Huh?"
  "Not a chance."
  "But why not, blast it? Your life’s work is  something along the same line."
  "Your method," the bronze man said, "will never be  successful."
  "The heck it won’t! We put the fear into them!" 
  Doc Savage explained patiently. "Your system is  psychologically wrong. Criminal tendencies are the result of
  a  maladjustment of certain little−known glands in the human body. Fear of  punishment is only a temporary
  deterrent to a criminal. Submitting the  individual of criminal tendencies to physical pain and hardships only
  aggravates the condition in most cases. The only feasible cure is an  operation or non−surgical treatment of
  the defective glands which are  causing the individual to become non−social."
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  64
  
  "I don’t go for that scientific claptrap!" Nat Piper  declared. "Scare hell out of them and they won’t dare fleece
  anybody  again."
  "H. O. G. Coolins, for instance," Doc said.
  "Aw, nuts!" Nat Piper snapped. "He was an exception.  Oh, well, if you won’t go in with us, you won’t."
  "Your scheme is admirable in purpose, but positively  will not work in actual practice," Doc Savage said
  levelly. "If it were  possible to cure crooks by the method you are using, I should be the  first to offer my aid."
  Nat Piper sighed. Then he put a sharp question.
  "You don’t think the Sea Angel is real, do you?" he  demanded.
  Doc Savage did not answer.
  "It’s real, all right," Nat Piper said. "I think  you’ll realize that before long."
  JUST what Nat Piper meant was not evident until some  twelve hours later, when Doc Savage was hauled
  from the small storeroom  where he had been confined. The submarine was wallowing in a greasy sea.
  It was very dark. A gasoline lantern was blazing on  deck. This light disclosed a considerable gathering.
  Pretty Nancy Quietman was there. She gazed at Doc  and managed a small smile.
  "This is an incredible predicament, isn’t it?" she  said quietly.
  All the other prisoners were on deck.
  Nat Piper cleared his throat noisily and said, "It  occurred to me that all of you might like to see that the
  master of  your destinies is still with you. Look!"
  He pointed over the side.
  They all looked. What they saw was unexpected and  caused several to all but stop breathing.
  The Sea Angel! It was swimming beside the submarine,  about ten feet beneath the surface. Although it was
  night, the thing  showed up distinctly. It was phosphorescent in nature. It glowed. It  writhed and fluttered as it
  swam, darting about a bit. Even the long,  fearsome cords attached to its queer wings glowed with an uncanny
  luminance. These cords were trailing behind the creature as it swam.
  "Whew!" exploded homely Monk.
  "Well, bless me!" echoed Ham. It was the first time  Ham had seen the impossible thing.
  Nat Piper allowed them all time for a good look,  then gave orders.
  "Get below," he directed. "The Sea Angel has been  accompanying us since we left Long Island Sound. He�it
  prefers to  travel by itself, rather than in the submarine. Sometimes it flies  through the air."
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  Chapter XVII. THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
  65
  
  "Somebody here is crazy!" Ham said, positively.
  "Speak for yourself," Monk grumbled.
  "That thing is some kind of trick!" Ham snapped. "It  can’t be real!"
  "That," said Nat Piper, "is what I am trying to  prove to you. It is real!"
  The prisoners were herded below decks and returned  to their respective places of confinement.
  Once more, time dragged. But it was only five or six  hours. Then, it developed, the prisoners were to be
  permitted to dine  together. The place where they messed was the combination crew’s  quarters and dining
  room forward. The food was plain but palatable,  with two exceptions:
  Monk and old Quietman were given nothing but bread  and water.
  "I ain’t gonna put up with this!" Monk explained.  "I’ve already lost twenty pounds!"
  Old Leander L. Quietman glared malevolently. The old  man seemed to have undergone a marked change. It
  was as if the  philanthropist and man who did nice things for the poor was only a  veneer, and hardship was
  wearing it off, showing the vicious old rascal  beneath. The true reprobate that most of the world had never
  dreamed  existed.
  The prisoners were cautiously led aft, one at a  time. They passed under an open hatch. And, of course, they
  glanced up.  And each one saw the Sea Angel.
  The fantastic thing was flying along, not more than  fifty feet above the submarine! Its triangular, finlike
  wings moved  lazily as it kept pace with the submarine.
  It was foggy outside, but it was also daylight, and  the monster was plainly visible.
  The prisoners were silent, impressed, after they  were returned to their posts.
  An hour later, the submarine dived suddenly. It  seemed that a ship had been sighted on the horizon.
  "We don’t want to take chances!" Nat Piper yelled.  "We were seen twice before, but the reports were just
  passed off as a  mistake. But we don’t want it to happen too often!"
  Chapter XVIII. THE ANGEL’S LAIR
  DOC SAVAGE and his men never did know just how long  the trip in the submarine required. Doc probably
  could have given a  very close estimate, but the nearest he ever actually came to setting a  time was, "Several
  days." Monk insisted it was a year.
  Monk was having a very tough time indeed. Not only  was he unable to convince his captors he was not a
  financial sharper,  but he had to perform all kinds of menial tasks�washing the dishes,  washing clothes,
  wiping the engines. He had to get down on his knees  when Nat Piper, Boscoe or any of the others passed. If
  he did not, he  was promptly knocked down. To be sure, he retaliated by knocking down a  man now and then
   THE SEA ANGEL
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  66
  
  himself, but it was small satisfaction.
  Monk was further troubled by his fellow prisoner,  old Leander Quietman. The old man was slowly turning
  into a fiend. Or  perhaps the fiend had been there all the time and was just beginning to  show himself.
  At any rate, old Quietman was no individual to have  for a fellow prisoner. Not the least of the difficulties was
  the way  old Quietman had taken to talking in his sleep. He did not mumble words  which could not be
  understood, as do most sleep talkers. What he said  was distinct.
  It curled Monk’s hair. Old Quietman talked about the  men he had swindled, men he had ruined, driven to
  their graves. And old  Quietman gloated about it. Actually slavered his joy. It made Monk  shudder.
  Monk would give Quietman a resounding slap and wake  him up. But the old reprobate would only go to
  sleep, and the talking  would start again. During his waking hours, Quietman had taken to  staring at Monk in
  such a fierce way that the homely chemist began to  wonder if the hitherto supposedly benevolent old man had
  cannibal  ideas. The bread−and−water diet was enough to give them to him.
  Ham, when Monk complained audibly about his  difficulty, only laughed gleefully.
  Monk suggested to Piper that he, Monk, would  willingly turn over his personal fortune to charity and reform
  forever  if they would only let him drown Ham. The suggestion was not adopted.
  The two pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry, were  aboard, Monk had discovered. The two animals were
  permitted to remain  in the company of Ham, Johnny, Long Tom and Renny.
  Monk was not permitted to even pick his pig up and  swing him by the ears, a process Habeas Corpus
  enjoyed. Furthermore,  Habeas was getting distinctly fatter, and Monk was permitted to  overhear talk
  indicating the shote would be turned into bacon as soon  as a vote decided he would not be entirely a rind.
  Little was heard from Doc Savage. Nat Piper and the  others were very careful with the bronze man, giving
  him no chance to  make a break.
  Everyone was in a frame of mind to welcome the  stopping of the engines when they finally did halt.
  Before the machinery stopped, however, a mysterious  process was followed. First, the Diesels were shut off.
  The electric  motors started whining. These were used for underwater propulsion. The  submarine went under
  water. Very slowly. Nat Piper shouted orders  nervously. Two men were at submarine sounding devices.
  Three times, the craft grated against something  which sounded like rock. It was barely moving, and no harm
  was done.
  Finally, it came to the surface and the motors were  shut off. 
  Nap Piper came and grinned at Monk.
  "We’re here," he said.
  NONE of the prisoners were permitted to go on deck  and look at the surroundings for a while. Instead, Nat
  Piper had his  men bringing more of the yoke−and−chain devices.
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  67
  
  "I’ve been thinking," Piper told Doc Savage. "You  and your men seem to have a bit more spirit than we like
  to see. You  are our prisoners. You’ve got to understand that. And I’m afraid you  don’t. So we are going to
  take measures."
  The measures seemed to be the application of a yoke  to Doc and each of his men.
  Only Nancy Quietman was spared.
  "You’ll go in with the rest of our patients," Nat  Piper told Doc Savage and his men. "When we have decided
  you understand  we are running this show, we’ll ease up on you."
  The bronze man made no comment, and the prisoners  were escorted on deck. They stared about.
  "Glory be!" homely Monk exploded. "How’d we get in  this place without flyin’?"
  It was big−fisted Renny who more closely described  the way the place impressed them all.
  "A cup," he said. "We’re in a cup, or maybe you’d  call it a hole. A devil of a hole."
  That was about it. The walls were not high. Two  hundred feet or so. But at least a hundred feet of that was
  sheer  straight up and down. At one side, the wall was lower, and a sizable  stream of water poured over the
  edge into the oval lake in which the  submarine lay. But nowhere could a man climb the wall.
  There was no visible outlet to this stream. But the  prisoners knew there was an outlet. Underground. Leading
  to the sea.  The submarine had come up it, submerged.
  It was cold. Snow was visible in the crannies of the  rocky cliff. The interior of the submarine had been warm,
  and those on  its deck shivered. But the shudders were not entirely because of the  cold. They had seen the
  repenting men. They had no way of knowing just  yet that they were the repenting men. They found that out
  later.
  The men had yokes, chains and leg irons. They were  tall men, short men, fat men, thin men, old ones and
  young ones. They  all wore rough khaki. They were all on their hands and knees on the  shore. They were not
  looking at the submarine, but at the rocky, cold  ground.
  Not all the men wore yokes. Only twenty−two of them.  The other men, about half a score of them, were
  green devils who stood  around leaning on their forked spears.
  "This gets nuttier and nuttier!" Monk exploded.
  Monk referred, of course, to the green devils with  the forked spears. The green devils were really men, but
  they were  dressed in green devil outfits. Their forked spears had thick shafts.
  One incongruous touch was the tin military helmets  they wore.
  By now one of the submarine’s dories had been gotten  into the water, and the prisoners were ferried ashore
  and lined up with  the other poor wretches who were yoked.
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  68
  
  "GET down on your knees!" Nat Piper directed.  "Hereafter, whenever a devil comes near you, you get down
  on all fours  and pray for the deliverance of your soul and ask to be made a good  man."
  "I don’t object to the praying," Monk declared. "But  I’ll be danged if I’ll kowtow to them guys. Where’d they
  get them devil  outfits anyhow?"
  "From a musical comedy that went broke in New York,"  Nat Piper grinned. "We bought them. You may
  think it’s a childish touch  at first, but before long it becomes quite symbolic."
  "Symbolic of what?" Monk snorted.
  "Of the place where financial shysters go when they  die," Nat Piper said. "Get down and bow!"
  Monk, who was never bashful in the face of odds,  waved his arms and managed to jump up and down
  bull−ape fashion in  spite of his yoke.
  "I’ll fight all your devils first!" he yelled.
  Renny roared, "And I’ll help you!"
  The green devils seemed to enjoy this. They grinned,  held their forked spears ready and advanced.
  The line of prisoners kept on their hands and knees,  and watched. There was nothing but dejection on their
  faces.
  Monk squared off. Renny followed suit. So did the  rest of Doc’s men. Doc, however, did not.
  "You are only asking for trouble," the bronze man  advised quietly.
  Monk said, "Maybe, but I feel like asking for it."
  One of the green Lucifers jumped at Monk. He poked  the homely chemist lightly with his spear. Results were
  explosive.
  Monk howled, jumped high in the air, nearly broke  his neck with the yoke, and came down flat on his back.
  He squalled,  "Ow! Oww�w!"
  "Holy cow!" Renny blared, having been prodded  himself. The would−be scrappers were speedily induced to
  get down on  all fours.
  "The spear handles contain batteries, spark coils  and a push button," Nat Piper grinned. "They deliver an
  agonizing but  harmless shock."
  "We tried whips first," Boscoe added. "But these  beat whips all hollow."
  Nat Piper said solemnly, "Day by day, in  every way, I want nothing more than to love my fellow man."
  "What’s that?" Monk gritted.
  "It’s what you say out loud every time a green devil  passes you," Nat Piper explained. "Say it."
   THE SEA ANGEL
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  69
  
  "I won’t!" Monk yelled.
  One of the unique spears poked him.
  "Ow−w−w!" 
  Monk roared. "Day by day, in every way, I want nothing more than to  love my fellow man!" 
  The homely chemist scowled, then added, "And I do  hope, to get a rope, and tie it snug, around the necks of
  you mugs!"
  For that, they gave him an extra prodding with the  electrical spears.
  HAM was grinning. The whole thing struck him as so  ridiculous as to be funny.
  But some of Ham’s amusement leaked when he was put  to work with the yoked men. It seemed they were
  building a new barracks  hut. The captives were engaged in shaping the stone blocks out of  boulders. Each
  man was furnished with a small hammer for this purpose.
  Monk, debating his chances of hitting the nearest  green demon with his hammer, decided the fellows were
  wearing their  incongruous soldier helmets as a defense against just that.
  Doc Savage had apparently resigned himself to his  fate. He went to work quietly and chipped out two very
  good stone  blocks.
  Nat Piper stood in the background, watched this, and  was not pleased.
  "Keep an eye on the bronze fellow," he warned his  amazingly attired guards. "That bronze fellow is as full of
  tricks as  he can be."
  When they had their blocks completed, the prisoners  were ordered to carry them toward the line of cliffs.
  They did so. They  were stiff with the cold.
  Then they saw the barracks. These were long stone  huts, about as inviting to the eye as tombstones. Their
  location was  behind a small rock ridge which stood some distance from the cliff.  That was why they had not
  been seen from the water. The huts, however,  were some distance from the cliff, too.
  "We build ‘em back a ways because pieces fall off  the cliff during cold weather," Boscoe explained. "The
  cold splits off  the rock somehow."
  By the time dusk came, the prisoners were very  tired. All afternoon they had found it necessary to work as
  fast as  they could. Not entirely because of the green imps who stood around  with their spears. It was cold. If
  one loafed, he almost froze.
  It got colder with darkness. The prisoners were  confined all in one long barracks hut. Considering that they
  were  gentlemen in the process of being reformed, they did not behave  themselves well. They stole each
  others’ blankets. They snapped and  snarled at each other. There were two fights.
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  Chapter XVIII. THE ANGEL’S LAIR
  70
  
  Monk felt sorry for them until he awakened, stiff  and blue with cold, and discovered some one had sniped the
  blankets off  him while he slept. After the homely chemist staggered around and got  himself able to walk
  again, he went hunting and came back with more  than his share of blankets.
  Monk rolled himself tightly in the blankets. The  others were doing the same thing. It seemed to be necessary.
  AT breakfast, Doc and Monk both tried to talk to  their fellow prisoners. The results were not encouraging.
  They were  snarled at impolitely unless they confined all their talk to one  subject: the stock market. What was
  it doing? What were the quotations  on this stock, that one? Was the government keeping its hands off?
  One realization was necessary: These financial  wolves were not being reformed. They were merely being
  goaded into  showing their true natures. They were not suave slickers. They were  vicious cutthroats.
  Monk had never seen a set of gangsters who acted  more like thugs.
  "You were right, Doc," Monk said. "The Sea Angel is  using the wrong system in trying to reform these eggs."
  The rest of the day passed and brought nothing  except a liberal education in the difference between a low
  criminal who  uses a gun and a high one who uses his wits. The latter were more adept.
  These men were the most skillful shirkers Monk had  ever seen. They had formed themselves into small
  cliques, and these  groups preyed on each other, stealing each other’s food and extra  garments, conniving to
  get the easy jobs.
  The prisoners were supplied their food, which they  had to cook themselves. When Monk got ready to cook
  his lunch, he found  his food had disappeared. He squawked. The green devils told him that  was his hard luck;
  they thought he had hid it himself to get a double  ration. He would have to go hungry until the next day’s
  ration was  distributed.
  That evening, all saw the Sea Angel.
  THE eerie monster appeared and perched on the rim of  the unscalable cliff which surrounded the bowl. It
  remained there for  some time, motionless.
  Nat Piper came out of his hut, looked at the  creature. Then he waved.
  The Sea Angel gestured slightly with one silver−hued  flipper in return.
  "Holy cow!" Renny told Doc. "I kinda figured up  until now that Nat Piper was the Sea Angel. What do you
  think, Doc. Is  the thing real?"
  The bronze man did not reply.
  The Sea Angel was still there when darkness fell.
  Nancy Quietman seemed to be faring well enough. She  had been assigned a small cabin to herself, but was
  not permitted to  move about unless she was accompanied by a guard. The guarding job was  one very much in
   THE SEA ANGEL
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  71
  
  demand.
  The two pets, Habeas Corpus and Chemistry, had been  taken in charge by the young woman. Monk was
  alarmed to note that  Habeas seemed much fatter.
  The next day, Doc Savage selected a strata of  particularly hard stone on which to work. This rock, being of
  flint  hardness, was avoided by the prisoners because it was very difficult to  shape it into blocks.
  Doc pounded away industriously.
  About noon, he showed the green devils his hammer.  The iron head of it had been beaten into a small knob
  on the hard rock.
  They gave him another hammer. Then they made him  work on rock which was not so hard on the hammers.
  That evening, a wind moaned over the stone bowl. By  dusk, snow was falling. Cold snow. It funneled over
  the edges of the  bowl like sugar.
  Nat Piper made the rounds, warning, "Do not leave  your huts to−night. You might freeze."
  Flannel rags were given the prisoners to wrap around  the iron yokes so the cold metal would not touch their
  necks.
  Piper spoke to Doc Savage. "Percy Smalling usually  keeps in touch with us through a twenty−meter radio
  amateur station. We  haven’t been able to contact him. Did you do something to him?"
  "No," Doc said.
  Nat Piper seemed to believe the bronze man. He  scratched his head. "I wonder if H. O. G. Coolins got him.
  I’m afraid  I’ll have to sail the submarine back to New York to investigate."
  Piper grinned. "We’re going to get a politician  next. He’s been swiping the public money appropriated to
  relief."
  Doc queried, "Does Percy Smalling know the location  of this spot?"
  "He has the latitude and longitude of this spot on  the coast of Iceland," Nat Piper said.
  Doc Savage was careful to look as if he was glad to  know they were on the coast of Iceland. As a matter of
  fact, they  weren’t. Doc knew that. Iceland has a certain type of rock formation,  and this wasn’t that type.
  This was Labrador stone. North Labrador, on the east  coast of Canada. The bronze man had not neglected
  geology in his  studies.
  Nat Piper left, looking worried.
  Other nights had been quiet. This one was noisy with  the howl of the blizzard. Doc had been waiting for a
  noisy night, and  he went to work.
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  72
  
  FROM the cuff of his khaki coveralls�the garments  had no pockets�the bronze man drew several small
  slivers of steel.  These were crescent−shaped, and thin.
  They had come off the head of the hammer Doc had  ruined. To form them was his purpose in working on the
  hard stone  everybody else had shunned.
  The slivers were not good lock−picking instruments.  But then the locks on the leg irons were not particularly
  complicated.  In something like ten minutes, Doc got them off.
  The bronze man pushed out into the howling blizzard  and looked around. There were no guards patrolling in
  the blizzard.  That, however, did not mean safety.
  Doc had been using his eyes. This place was wired  with a hidden alarm system. Buried plates and wires
  which, if a man  walked near them, had their capacity increased enough to actuate a  delicate relay.
  The bronze man watched the cliff rim. The snow  purled over steadily. It formed little overhanging ledges of
  drift.  These grew larger. Directly, one of them came loose and fell. Two or  three hundred pounds of damp
  snow.
  Doc remained where he was. He saw snow fall in lumps  three different times.
  The bronze man was satisfied. That snow, falling in  chunks, would operate the capacity−system burglar
  alarms, the same as a  man walking over the plates or near the wires. Nat Piper’s men would  probably have
  the alarms shut off.
  Doc went back and picked the leg−manacle locks of  his men. 
  This aroused the other prisoners. Immediately, they  all demanded to be turned loose.
  "We’ll kill Piper and all his men!" an old gentleman  snarled.
  That was exactly what Doc had expected. It was the  reason he did not want to free them yet. The bronze man
  did some  explaining intended to placate them.
  Doc described the horrors and hardships of an escape  most realistically. He explained that whoever escaped
  would send back a  rescue party, and those who remained behind to be rescued would really  have the easiest
  time of it. This appealed to these unfortunate  financial wolves. They quieted down.
  Doc Savage and his men now had the leg manacles off,  but they still wore the yokes.
  "I don’t know how we’re gonna get rid of these,"  said Monk, who had immense strength in his arms. "I tried
  to spread  mine until I was blue in the face. I couldn’t budge it."
  "Lie down," Doc directed.
  Monk did so. Doc put his feet in one side of the  yoke. He fastened the leg irons of his own yoke to the other
  side of  Monk’s yoke. Then he straightened, used all of his tremendous strength,  Monk grinned and got out of
  his yoke as it spread.
  "A little help with mine," Doc suggested.
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  73
  
  Both Monk and Renny, the two strongest of Doc’s  aids, added their sinew effort to that of the bronze man. He
  got his  yoke off. They freed the others.
  Monk dry−washed his hands and squeaked, "I’m ready  to go to town!"
  Chapter XIX. DEATH RENDEZVOUS
  THE bronze man and his aids left the long barracks  hut.
  "Walk straight for the cliff," Doc suggested.
  That was so they could circle the strange hide−out  and approach the submarine from the opposite side. All
  had trouble with  the falling snow. Once, they were completely buried for a time, but  extricated themselves.
  Doc and his aids did not begrudge the snow. It would  render the alarms ineffective.
  They reached the edge of the water, moved along it.  The snow was knee deep. It got up their trouser legs.
  Their clothing  was thin. Monk had to hold his jaw to keep the clatter of his teeth  down.
  The small wharf where the submarine dory commonly  docked loomed.
  "Br−r−r!" 
  Renny gulped softly. "They’ve got the dory aboard the sub." 
  "We’ll have to swim out," Ham said.
  Monk gave a great shake and said, "I’ll give myself  up before I’ll do that! There’s ice around the edges of this
  salt  water. And when salt water freezes, it’s cold!"
  Doc Savage slid out of his bulky coveralls. This  left only his shorts.
  "Keep moving so as not to get stiff," he directed,  and waded quietly into the water.
  The water felt warmer than the air at first. Then  much colder. The bottom was of rock. With his hands, the
  bronze man  pushed aside the slush ice. He took long, easy strokes, keeping his arm  beneath the surface, using
  a submerged beat kick. He made good time.
  The submarine was a hard, slimy mass. Snow coated  the plates, was a mush in the water. The steel was slick,
  Doc worked to  the bow, maneuvered carefully and got aboard. Shape of the submarine  made it more difficult
  at the bow, but he had a reason for picking that  point.
  He was right. There was a lookout in the conning  tower. But the fellow had crouched down out of the
  blizzard, and could  not see the bow.
  The fellow was dozing. Snow had stuck to the bronze  man’s damp skin. It was a silent, white ghost who
  descended upon the  lookout.
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  Chapter XIX. DEATH RENDEZVOUS
  74
  
  Doc’s metallic fingers found the fellow’s spinal  nerve centers and did something which only his vast
  knowledge of  anatomy made possible. Pressure induced a strange paralysis. The victim  was conscious, but
  could not move or cry out. He had made no sound.
  Doc listened. No sound. The conning−tower hatch was  open for ventilation. The bronze man descended
  quietly. It was warm  below. Snow melted and ran off the big, metallic−looking man. A single  electric bulb
  glowed. The blizzard sounded far off, and somewhere  forward an ordinary alarm clock ticked noisily.
  Doc made for the clock ticking.
  Six men were aboard. All were in the large sleeping  compartment. Their clothes and their weapons hung from
  hooks.
  After he had made sure all were asleep, Doc  collected the weapons. Then he silently closed the compartment
  doors  and dogged them shut. He twisted the metal dogs down, using most of his  strength. After that, the
  chances were none of them would be able to  free them without the aid of hammers. And there would be no
  time to use  hammers.
  Doc started in on the sleepers.
  TWICE, his luck was very good. The first two men  fell victims of the nerve center paralysis as quietly as had
  the  lookout on deck.
  The third man must have been having a tense dream.  At the touch of the bronze man’s fingers, the fellow
  emitted an  ear−splitting squawl. It aroused the others. They rolled out of their  bunks.
  Doc tightened down on the one who had howled.  Inducing the nerve paralysis required a second or two. Doc
  held on. The  other four men rolled out of their bunks and sprang upon the bronze  giant
  One man seized a pair of trousers. Doc ducked him  twice. The third time, the fellow got the trousers around
  the bronze  man’s neck. He held on, twisted the two ends together, tightened down.
  "Help me!" he croaked. "This is our only chance!"
  Two of them held the improvised garrot. The third  man was now paralyzed. The fourth survivor sprang back,
  wrenched up a  floor plate. This exposed the batteries. Also a shiny, mechanical  gadget�a float and an
  electrical contact device. The man jerked the  float.
  On deck and in the control room, sirens began  howling.
  Doc had not known about that. It was a patent bilge  alarm. It warned of water high enough to endanger the
  batteries. The  man had thought quickly and set it in operation.
  Having done his good deed, the fellow sprang back to  the attack. Doc met him with a fist. The fellow looked
  startled,  foolish, sat down and took his jaw in both hands.
  The other two men were tough. They knew their way  around in rough−and−tumble. Their fists found
  sensitive places. Their  kicks hurt. They were hard to hit.
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  75
  
  Over and over, the two went. The choking trousers  were still around Doc’s neck. Very tight, now.
  The two sirens still moaned alarmingly.
  Doc trapped one foe with his legs. The fellow said,  "Oo−s−h!" as his air went out. He released the trousers.
  Doc  twisted, got free of the other man. The fellow leaped for the bulkhead  door, fought the dogs.
  With just the right force to make unconsciousness  without undue damage, Doc bumped the other man’s head
  on the iron  floor. The fellow, when released, rolled over and lay half in the  battery tray.
  The last man squared off and tried to box, which was  his mistake, because there was a loud report and it was
  some time  before he awakened.
  Doc hauled the man out of the battery tray so the  acid on top of the storage batteries would not eat his hands.
  Then the bronze man jerked the bilge alarm contact  open. The sirens stopped. Too late, probably.
  It was too late. Doc saw that when he reached the  conning tower.
  Nat Piper had heard the siren alarm. The whole  interior of the rocky pit was white with light from a flare
  which he  had put out.
  PIPER’S men were running for the water. Three of  them carried light skin kayaks. Eskimo−type boats.
  Monk and Doc’s other aids had hesitated about  entering the water. They were cold. The water was cold. It
  was doubtful  if they could all make it to the submarine, swimming. But they had  decided to try.
  There was no shooting. Merely action. Piper’s men  raced to the water, launched their kayaks. Some one put
  out a second  magnesium flare and made things brighter. A weird scene with the snow,  the wind and the fast
  movement.
  Ham was in trouble now. A cramp from the cold. He  cried out once and sank. Monk, who had frequently
  voiced the hope Ham  would drown, turned back and helped him.
  Doc raced forward, worked with the dories,  endeavoring to get one in the water. The submarine was
  anchored.  Getting the hook up would take time.
  Launching a dory would take too much time, too. They  were collapsible craft. Work with a wrench was
  necessary to make them  water−tight.
  Doc whipped back to the tower, went below. He got  some of the guns he had collected. He broke them,
  looked at the  cartridges. At first glance, they had the appearance of blanks. But  tiny print on the wads said,
  "Reg. Tear." Tear gas. No good here. He  looked. There seemed to be no cartridges with bullets.
  He went on deck and plunged overboard. The water  felt like solid ice, full of needles. And it was too late,
  anyway. Nat  Piper’s men in the kayaks had overhauled the swimmers. The latter dived.
  Piper’s men began tossing grenades into the water.  They threw them well clear of the swimmers, so that the
  terrific  concussion as they exploded would show the swimmers they had no chance.
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  76
  
  Monk and the others realized this. They permitted  themselves to be hauled ashore.
  The three kayaks raced Doc for the undersea boat.  The bronze man beat them, but by no more than twenty
  feet.
  He pitched into the conning tower, dropped the  senseless lookout below, followed, snapped down the hatch,
  made it  snug. Then he sprang to the controls and sank the submarine.
  Nat Piper’s men stamped the deck and swore as the  U−boat submerged. Then they were washed off and
  could only swim.
  WATER in the cup was deeper than expected. Fully a  hundred feet. Doc brought the craft to rest gently on
  the bottom. There  were several things to do in order to make the craft safe, and he did  them, then conducted a
  leisurely search of the craft. He was safe here  for the time being, for Nat Piper was not likely to endanger his
  craft  and his own men, even if he did become bloodthirsty.
  Doc found several of the all−enclosing rubber gas  suits. He located grenades. But none of the gas. He tied the
  prisoners,  but did not gag them.
  The prisoners awakened, and after they had a good  swear, took it philosophically.
  "You can’t buck the Sea Angel," one said, grimly.
  "You’re not up against anything human with the Sea  Angel," another said. "Yeah, you’re out of luck."
  Doc did not remark what he thought either way. He  went into the control room and stationed himself at the
  sensitive  underwater sounding device. This functioned by registering the  intervals a sound took to reach the
  bottom of the sea and be reflected  back.
  But it was also a device which picked up any  underwater sounds.
  The bronze man heard small noises almost at once.  Then he was aware of a scraping aft. He knew what that
  meant. The  rubber suits. They were diving rigs as well as gas protection. Nat  Piper’s men had dragged a cable
  out of the submersible and were  fastening it to the craft.
  Whipping to the controls, Doc blew the tanks. The  undersea boat came to the surface with a rush, and the
  bronze man flung  the conning−tower trap open. He got outside with his hands full of the  grenades.
  Two kayaks were near by, where they had been  overturned by the unexpected rise of the submarine.
  Doc flung a grenade. It exploded far off.
  "Keep away!" his powerful voice crashed.
  The men righted their kayaks expertly and paddled  away.
  Doc flung more grenades as a warning to the divers.  After a while, the divers walked out on shore, removed
  their hoods and  shook their fists at the submarine.
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  77
  
  "Want to make a deal?" Doc called.
  "Yes!" Nat Piper called. "Give yourself up and you  won’t get hurt!"
  Doc did not answer to that.
  Toward dawn, it stopped snowing.
  And shortly after dawn, three big tri−motored planes  scooted overhead. Their motors made a great bedlam.
  The rock cup  reverberated like the interior of a drum.
  The planes went on. In three or four minutes, they  were back.
  A door of one of the craft opened. An object tumbled  through and fell toward the submarine.
  It was poor Percy Smalling. He was alive when he was  thrown out. He hit the water not a score of feet from
  the submarine.
  Chapter XX. H. O. G.
  THE planes arched over, stood on their noses,  twisted from side to side. Machine−gun snouts bled red. One
  of Nat  Piper’s men was sickled off above the waist. The others ran, gained the  stone huts.
  Jacketed lead drummed the submarine plates, bubbled  the water alongside. Doc went overboard. Not hit. He
  was after poor  Percy Smalling.
  Smalling had gone down. He was still below. Doc  reached him, fifteen feet or so beneath the surface. The
  body was rag  limp.
  Doc used all the care he could, got it aboard. There  was still life. A small thing, miraculously lurking in
  broken bone and  mangled flesh.
  Doc spread Smalling out on the catnap bunk in the  control room. Really a locker with a pad thrown over it.
  Then Doc  worked over the mangled man.
  The planes came back and the machine guns cackled  like iron things of death. Five− and six−bullet bursts
  slammed the  deck. Men who know machine guns and how they will heat and jam do not  fire long bursts.
  Long bursts make aiming difficult, too.
  Doc paid no attention. Percy Smalling might live. A  miracle. His back was not broken. His skull was intact.
  Nothing much  else about him was, though.
  It was Coolins’s gang in the planes, of course. Doc  worked. The bronze man was skilled at many things, but
  first he was a  surgeon. The submersible’s medicine cabinet furnished some of the tools  of the trade. Judging
  from the cabinet, one of Nat Piper’s men was a  surgeon.
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XX. H. O. G.
  78
  
  THE opiate to ease Smalling’s pain also started him  talking. His lungs were not punctured. Doc did not try to
  stop him  talking. Smalling was rational, almost.
  "They tortured me," he said. "I had to tell them  something. I told them this place was in Iceland. They
  thought it was  in Iceland, anyway. We make all our patients think that."
  He shut his eyes, and the crushed pulp of his face  worked.
  "We hunted along the Iceland coast for a week," he  creaked. "Then they knew I was lying. They kept
  torturing me. I didn’t  talk. Not willingly. But they gave me some stuff. I think it was a  truth serum. They got
  it out of me�I didn’t want�couldn’t  help�Oh−h−h−h!"
  Smalling shut his eyes again. He seemed dead.
  Then he said, "My pocket�note�"
  He did not talk any more. But he was not dead.
  Doc read the note:
  NAT PIPER:
  We want your submarine, your base and your  prisoners.
  We want the Sea Angel dead.
  We don’t care about the rest of you. You may leave.
  It was printed and not signed.
  "Coolins?" Doc Savage asked.
  Percy Smalling, who looked as if he were dead,  emitted a small sigh that was "Yes."
  "What does Coolins want with the prisoners?" Doc  queried.
  "Ransom," Percy Smalling managed, after a long  while. "They are all wealthy men. Millionaires. We only
  got the big  crooks. They can pay ransom. Millions�can�will�"
  He shut his eyes. Kept them shut, rather.
  "Open your eyes," Doc directed.
  Smalling opened them.
  Doc held the bright lens of a flashlight in front of  the man’s face, not shining it into his eyes, but so he could
  see its  brightness.
  "Hope," the bronze man said in a calm, firm tone.  "All men have it. All men can keep it. You can keep it.
  You must keep  it. While you have it, you will go on and on."
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  Chapter XX. H. O. G.
  79
  
  The bronze man talked slowly and distinctly. With  his finger tips, he helped poor Percy Smalling keep his
  eyes open. His  voice was an encouraging, an inspiring and powerful thing.
  He extinguished the light.
  "You still see it," Doc said. "You have it in you.  Hope. You will keep it. You will live. While a man has
  hope, he will  not die. You will keep yours and live. Keep it. Keep it�"
  After a while, Percy Smalling was hypnotized, and  held in his subconscious, pain−racked mind the will to go
  on living.  The thing which would do more than anything else to make him hold to  the thread of life.
  Doc Savage had done this sort of thing before. It  was not exactly new. The power of hypnotism, if properly
  used, has long  been recognized.
  Doc took the note, a monkey wrench, some string, and  went up onto the conning−tower platform.
  THE planes had gone away. But not their sound. They  were off to the west, out of sight. Their noise indicated
  they were  seeking a landing place�finding it, too.
  Nat Piper, Boscoe and the others had come out of  their stone huts. They were rigging a machine gun. Their
  silence was  grim.
  Doc called, "Coolins!"
  "The H. O. G.," Nat Piper barked back grimly.
  "You’re in a jam," Doc said.
  "I can clean my own fish," Piper said.
  "Catch," Doc directed.
  The bronze man set himself on the fore−deck grating,  drew back and threw the monkey wrench, to which he
  had tied the note  with the string. It looked like an impossible throw. But the wrench  arched up, made it. The
  note was knocked off when the wrench hit shore  rock, but was not torn so badly but that Nat Piper and
  Boscoe could  read it.
  "This don’t tell me anything," Nat Piper called. "I  guessed it already."
  Doc said, "Come aboard. Unarmed. Bring the  prisoners. I will open the forward compartment, and you will
  file in  there and I will lock you in. We’ll get away before they come back."
  "What about me?"
  "You are a mental case, yourself," Doc Savage said.  "You are possessed of a mania for punishing wealth.
  You were swindled  once yourself, weren’t you?"
  "Yes!" Nat Piper said, with emotion. "I was ruined.  Every cent taken from me. This is my revenge."
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  80
  
  "It upset your mental balance," Doc said. "You need  treatment."
  "I’m not crazy!"
  "Not insane, no. But you will admit there is  something twisted in a mind that will conceive a scheme as wild
  as this  whole thing."
  Nat Piper got mad. He did not like being advised  that he was not exactly balanced.
  "I suppose you can cure me!" he yelled wrathfully.
  "I maintain an institution that will do it," Doc  replied.
  Nat Piper snorted loudly. "What about the Sea Angel?"
  Doc did not reply immediately.
  "You and I know what the Sea Angel is," he said.
  This obviously startled Nat Piper, because he  absently rubbed his jaw and looked at his feet, then behind him
  at the  largest of the huts, the one which he and his men occupied.
  "Damned if I surrender!" he yelled. "I’ll fight you  and Coolins both!"
  Doc had expected as much. A young man who had done  the things Nat Piper had done, fantastic as they were,
  would not give  up until the last ditch.
  Doc gave some advice.
  "Get all the prisoners but my men in the open and  chain them on the far side of the bowl," the bronze man
  advised.  "Coolins will not harm them, because they mean money to him."
  Nat Piper nodded. "Good idea."
  "Hide my men," Doc directed. "Otherwise, Coolins  will kill them."
  "Fat lot of hell I care about your men!" Nat Piper  yelled, still smarting about the reflection on his mental
  balance.
  But he kept Doc’s five aids under cover.
  COOLINS’S came before long. His men dropped a few  bullets into the stone bowl to get attention. Nat Piper
  and his men  scudded to shelter.
  "Have you decided to give up?" Coolins bawled.
  No one answered him.
  "We’ll lower a rope ladder down the cliff!" Coolins  roared. "Climb it with your men!"
   THE SEA ANGEL
  Chapter XX. H. O. G.
  81
  
  There was a stir at the large hut. The door opened.  In the aperture appeared a gleaming gray bulk. It
  squirmed, got through  the door and became the weird shape of the Sea Angel.
  The thing straightened and absently folded its  wings, flinging the long, black tendrils over its back. The
  creature  had a certain dignity.
  A rifle whanged. The bullet struck the Sea Angel.  There was not the slightest doubt of it. Struck, and glanced
  off! The  bullet made a bumblebee whizz going off into the sky.
  The Sea Angel turned, stalked to the hut door, and  calmly entered. When it had vanished, the door closed, but
  opened  almost immediately to let Nat Piper shove his head out.
  "You see!" Piper yelled. "You’re not fighting men  alone!"
  A rifle bullet went s−slack! into the door  beside his head. He ducked back.
  "We’ll take our chances with that thing, too!" H. O.  G. Coolins roared.
  Two bullets tapped the submarine conning tower where  Doc was watching, and he got down quickly.
  Repairing to the control  room, the bronze man used the periscope.
  Coolins’s men tried to throw grenades onto the roofs  of the huts. They had no luck. The huts were located too
  far from the  base of the cliff and, although it seems otherwise, it is impossible  for a man to throw an object
  from a height a great deal farther than he  can throw it on level ground.
  Rifle fire was sporadic. Piper’s gang did not show  themselves.
  Neither did Coolins’s gang�after one of them was  shot unexpectedly by some one in the huts below.
  Nat Piper’s men had started killing in self−defense.  It was, as far as Doc knew, the first life they had taken.
  With strings and bits of leather, Coolins’s men  fashioned slingshots. The kind of weapons with which David
  slew  Goliath. They tried launching the grenades with these. Their luck was  not admirable. After they nearly
  blew themselves up, they quit that.  They withdrew. Strange, tapping sounds became audible.
  One of the planes flew over that afternoon. Nat  Piper, Boscoe and some others peppered it with bullets. The
  plane did  not come back, which was wise. Its cabin was not armored. The one bomb  it dropped did not
  damage the huts much. The tapping back of the cliff  continued monotonously.
  Doc Savage worked over Percy Smalling, renewing the  wound dressings and the hypnotic spell.
  The bronze man’s afternoon was almost without other  incident, except that they shot the lens out of his
  periscope,  rendering it useless.
  The night, when it came, was so full of moonlight as  to be like day.
  DOC SAVAGE studied the night sky for a time, and if  he was disappointed because it was not dark, it did not
  show on his  smooth, metallic features. He went below and examined the machinery,  the fuel tanks, and made
  certain adjustments with valves.
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  In the conning tower again, but sheltered from  bullets by the steel rim, the bronze man called out loudly.
  Power and  volume of his trained voice echoed off the cliffs.
  Doc spoke Mayan, the ancient lost language which few  besides himself and his men could understand.
  "Are you safe?" he demanded in the language. Back of  the cliff the tapping stopped.
  Monk bawled from one of the huts, "So far!"
  "Tied?"
  "We sure are. What is your plan, Doc?"
  "The wind is dropping," the bronze man said, in  Mayan. "In an hour or so, there should be practically no
  breeze. Be  ready for action then."
  Monk did not reply to that. Renny tried to, but it  was evident from the way his shout stopped that Nat Piper’s
  men were  gagging the prisoners. The tapping back of the cliff started again.
  Nat Piper was scared. It showed in his angry shout.
  "Savage!" he screamed. "I’m in too tight a spot to  stand for any trouble from you! The first move you make,
  I’ll have your  men shot!"
  Doc did not reply.
  The twenty−two rich Wall Street men whom Nat Piper  had been holding prisoner now set up a great yelling.
  They conveyed  advice to H. O. G. Coolins. They told him how Nat Piper had his men  distributed. They
  thought Coolins was there to help them.
  Nat Piper roared at them, telling them the truth.  The prisoners fell silent, not because they believed Piper, but
  because  he promised to shoot them if they didn’t shut up.
  The moonlight got brighter, and the wind fell. The  surface of the water inside the bowl became glass−smooth.
  Doc Savage threw an empty, air−tight syrup bucket  overboard. The spot against the east edge of the cliff,
  where it  drifted, showed him the location of the subterranean outlet.
  Nat Piper and Coolins both saw the bucket incident.  It made them both uneasy. The tapping stopped again.
  This time, for  good.
  For a while, there was ominous quiet. The water  falling down the cliff into the bowl did not make much
  noise. Hardly  any of the snow had melted during the day. In the far−off, a pack of  wolves howled. Twice, the
  owls made noise.
  Doc dampened a finger and held it up. It got equally  cold all around. The wind had died completely. The
  bronze man was ready  to go into action.
  But so was H. O. G. Coolins.
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  IT wasn’t exactly an explosion. It was more of a  giant, abrupt moan. And a convulsion of the earth. The
  whole surface of  the lake writhed and trembled from the shock. The submarine rolled  slightly.
  And meantime, a great section of the cliff toppled  over, coming apart as it tipped, as if it were a brick wall; a
  giant  wall made of bricks without mortar to hold them together. It roared as  it came down. Dust blew up. The
  earth shook. It kept roaring a long  time after it seemed the cliff should have all fallen at that one point.
  Coolins’s men, of course, had planted TNT or  dynamite. The tapping sounds had been made as they had
  drilled.
  When the dust cleared, the cliff was merely a steep  slope of broken rock. A very steep slope.
  Coolins’s men came down. They moved carefully, so as  not to dislodge the loose rock. The stones looked
  small from where Doc  was, until he compared them to the size of the men descending. Then the  rocks
  became big. Many of them larger than automobiles.
  Nat Piper yelled. His men fired.
  "Don’t break out the gas!" Piper shrieked.
  That was because he had seen H. O. G. Coolins’s men  were wearing rubber suits which would protect them
  from the gas.  Coolins had come well prepared.
  It was not likely many of Coolins’s men would be  hit. The big rocks of the steep débris slope sheltered them.
  Doc went below in the submarine. The men he had  overpowered in taking the undersea boat lay on bunks.
  White, tense.  They knew what was happening, or most of it. Doc told them the rest in  a few words.
  Then he turned them loose. He gave them their guns  loaded with tear gas.
  "You can go ashore and fight," the bronze man said.  "But Nat Piper has started using real bullets in his guns."
  "I was afraid it would come to that," one of the men  said quietly.
  The men went out on deck. Bullets rapped about them.  One man went down, his leg broken.
  Doc changed his mind. "You cannot make it ashore.  Stay here."
  Then he told them something else that they should do.
  After he had instructed them, the bronze man went  overboard quickly.
  THE cold water, so cold that it felt solid, gripped  Doc like a hard animal. As if by pressure, it strove to
  paralyze his  muscles.
  Beneath the surface, he swam as far as he could. It  was not more than half as far as he could normally have
  managed. He  came up, was shot at, got his lungs full of air, went down again. Three  times Doc did that, and
  then the stone of the steep beach was underfoot.
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  Lunging, he got behind a boulder. From that to  another. A fleeting, bronze ghost, almost naked, a strange
  figure in  the snow, the bitter cold and the turmoil of men trying to kill each  other.
  The bronze man looked back at the boat. The moon was  still bright, but the submarine seemed to lie in the
  middle of an  ominous, black shadow upon the water.
  Doc located the hut holding his men. He ran, dodged,  crawled in the snow some of the time. And finally he
  reached the hut.  The door was open. He went in. There was moonlight enough to see.
  A man was stooping above Doc’s aids. The man had a  knife, and his face was set, grim. The prisoners were
  kicking madly at  him.
  Doc went in quietly. The man with the knife failed  to notice the shadow for a moment, then realized there had
  been one. He  turned, started violently.
  He handed Doc the knife.
  "You cut them loose," he said. "They seem to think I  want to kill them. They keep kicking at me."
  Doc took the knife. The man picked the gag off Renny.
  "Holy cow!" the big−fisted engineer croaked.
  The man who had had the knife said, "Piper said to  cut them loose so they would have had a chance."
  Doc slashed Monk’s bonds. Monk removed his own gag  and got up.
  "That guy Piper has some good points along with his  bad ones," the homely chemist grunted.
  The prisoners got loose and got up and wheeled their  arms around their heads and jumped up and down.
  Loosening muscles.
  "If we only had something to fight with!" Ham  snapped.
  The man who had brought the knife began taking  revolvers out of his pockets. He had several.
  "Piper sent these," he said.
  Doc Savage went to the hut door.
  Coolins’s men, some of them, were down in the cup.  They fought cautiously, sure of themselves, of their
  superior numbers.  They came on, as impossible to stop as a flood.
  But Doc was interested in the submarine. The great  black shadow around the craft had spread. It covered
  more than half of  the inlet.
  "Fire it!" the bronze man called loudly.
  Those on the submarine heard. A brand of oil−soaked  cloth, blazing with flames, arched out of the
  conning−tower hatch. The  hatch then banged while the brand was still in the air.
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  Oil was on the water. Thick, but inflammable fuel  oil. It caught fire. With a whoosh! it spread. Not as fast as
  gasoline, but fast enough.
  The burning area grew. Pumps inside the submersible  were still forcing out fuel oil. Thousands of gallons.
  Burning fuel oil throws off almost as black smoke as  any ordinary burning substance. The sepia pall grew,
  spread, tumbling  and expanding. There was no wind to lift it out of the cup. It began to  fill the place.
  "That," Monk barked, "is what I call an idea!"
  "WAIT," Doc said, and the group waited.
  The smoke wad grew, crawled toward them like an  impossible black mushroom.
  "The flames will not harm the submarine through her  plates," Doc said, in case any one was worrying about
  that.
  The smoke was almost on them.
  "The men on the U−boat did this at my instruction,"  the bronze man explained.
  The party sucked the first smoke into their lungs.
  "Now," Doc said.
  They ran toward the huts where Nat Piper and his  gang were confined.
  Coolins was yelling on the cliff. "Hold it!" he was  bawling. "Hold it! They know the ground! You won’t have
  a chance if you can’t see anything!"
  Maybe his men heard him. Perhaps they did not, and  used their own judgment. They held their positions,
  firing a lot.
  Doc and others kept down. They gained the  thick−walled stone hut where Piper was barricaded.
  "Piper!" Doc called, so he would not shoot them.
  Piper, coughing, gritted. "Damn you! What do you  mean by setting this smoke off�"
  "Move fast," Doc said. "We have a chance to make the  submarine."
  Nat Piper did not have to think that over long.
  "Come on, fellows," he said. "It may be an idea at  that."
  They came out. It was impossible to see one another  or anything else in the darkness.
  "I’ll keep talking," Doc Savage said. "Follow my  voice."
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  "Right."
  "Over this way," the bronze man said, talking. "Keep  close together and keep down, and do not fire back at
  those men. They  are making so much noise with their shooting that they may not hear us.  Keep down. Do not
  make any noise. We are going to pick up the  prisoners. They are just ahead."
  "You’re going to take my rich men?" Nat Piper asked,  and laughed queerly, almost madly.
  Doc Savage said, "We will take them, of course.  Although there is not much choice between you and Coolins
  in their  case. They might even be better off in Coolins’s hands."
  He kept his voice low. It did not carry far. But it  was full of a quality that made it easy to locate in the black
  pall of  smoke. Voices can be made that way.
  "Coolins would turn them loose, after they paid off.  They would probably prefer that. Here they are."
  Doc had found the first of the financial sharpers.  They were still yoked, wore their leg irons. They were held
  together by  a long chain which was fastened to a huge boulder.
  "I left the key to this chain in the hut!" Nat Piper  croaked suddenly.
  Chapter XXI. TRAPPED BELOW
  MONK said, "Blazes! Go back and get it!"
  "Wait," Doc suggested. "Let’s try something first."
  The bronze man tested the weight of the boulder to  which the chain was attached. It did not budge. They all
  lent their  shoulders. The rock held its place. It weighed several tons.
  Doc picked up the chain. It was heavy. He could  never break it. He worked down to the lock. There was a
  chance there.  He took two or three turns of the chain around each hand, then tossed a  loop of it around his
  chest, over his arms, with the lock in the  middle. He deflated his chest and slackened his muscles, then
  tightened  the chain.
  By this method, he could exert greatest strain. The  force with which the human chest can expand is
  astounding, and the  bronze man’s muscles were tremendous. Every one held their breath.
  The padlock broke.
  The prisoners had been jumping about to limber their  muscles. Some of them were reluctant about going
  along. To save  argument, they were kept on the chain.
  Doc began talking again, saying, "Follow my voice.  The submarine is to move close to shore. Pick a spot
  where the water is  deep. The oil will be burned off the water shortly. We should be able  to get aboard."
  "Help!" bawled one of the rich swindlers. "Help,  Coolins! They’re boarding the sub with us!"
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  Monk jumped and knocked the man senseless.
  "Dumb−bell!" Ham told the homely chemist. "Now you  can carry him."
  Monk did so, grumbling. Two or three rifle bullets  came toward the group. The smoke seemed to be lifting.
  Coolins began howling. "Head them off, boys!"
  Doc said, "Hurry up. Over this way. You can see each  other now. There is the submarine."
  The submersible had moved in, silent under its  battery power. The bow was aground. But twenty feet of
  water separated  the bow from the beach, and flames were licking over the area. Small  flames, but a man
  could not swim or wade through them.
  "The boat," Doc called.
  The men on the submarine had the dory ready. Red and  blistered−looking, they first heaved a line ashore.
  Doc caught the end.  Then the men tossed the dory bodily overboard. Doc and his aids pulled  it ashore along
  the line.
  Men loaded into it with some of the prisoners. They  coughed, gagged in the smoke. Perspiration rolled. They
  got the first  load onto the submarine.
  Pretty Nancy Quietman was with the prisoners, her  wrists handcuffed. She gasped when she touched the
  undersea boat’s  plates. They were evidently hot. Monk sprang aboard and lifted her onto  the deck bodily. The
  plates were hot enough so that they had to keep  dancing about.
  The dory returned. Again. All the prisoners were  aboard now, but Doc remained on shore, because it had
  been necessary  for him to shove the hot dory to get it off.
  Nat Piper held the other end of the line as Monk  took the dory back for Doc.
  And then Nat realized the position he held. He could  throw the rope into the water and be free of Doc. The
  bronze man stood  no chance of reaching the submarine. The nearly red−hot dory contained  no oars. The
  water was aflame with burning oil.
  Nat Piper coiled the rope and drew back to throw it  away.
  INSTEAD of throwing it, he said. "Oh, hell!" and  pulled them to the submarine.
  Monk gave him a parched grin. "I’ll forgive you a  lot for that."
  Doc found the boat’s plates hotter than he thought.  The paint was off, naked red iron showing through in
  places. He kept in  the air as much as possible, jumping aft.
  Nancy Quietman eyed the bronze man anxiously as he  dropped down the conning−tower companion.
  "You’re not hurt?" she wanted to know.
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  Her concern, considering the species of hell they  had all been going through, was a bit surprising.
  Doc said, "Have Monk take your handcuffs off in the  engine room," gave her a brief expression that might
  have been a smile,  and went to work.
  The men got the conning tower hatch shut. It was  hot, almost unbreathable in the submarine. There was not
  much smoke,  however. The men had been careful to keep the hatch shut all they could.
  The ballast tanks drank in water when the valves  were opened. The submersible sank. The electric motors
  began to drone.
  "Tail down," a man said. "That should lift the bow.  Shall we back her off, sir?"
  "Back her off," Doc said.
  They backed, successfully. Doc watched the clock,  the tachometer, judging the distance they had backed. The
  compass told  him the direction.
  "Kill sternway," he said.
  The undersea boat lurched a little, stopped. The  indicator said they were thirty feet down. It was not
  perceptibly  cooler yet.
  The prisoners, the rich men, were huddled around the  control−room door. Some of them had been able to
  crowd into the  passages with their yokes and were crouched there.
  Nat Piper moved about to study the instrument panel.  He had shoved his revolver into a hip pocket, but the
  grip projected.
  One of the wealthy swindlers lunged suddenly, got  the gun.
  He cocked it and crouched back, showing his lips,  eyes ugly.
  "Here’s where we take a hand, damn you!" he  croaked.
  No one moved.
  THEN Nancy Quietman came in, saying, "I just  remembered. What became of the Sea Angel? We didn’t
  see�"
  She looked at the gun, which was now pointed at her.  The handcuffs were not on her wrists. Monk must have
  removed them.
  "Come over here, dear!" the man with the gun snarled.
  The girl stood still.
  The gun went off. Nancy Quietman screamed, dodged,  fell.
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  "I’ll kill you!" the man said. "Come over here!"
  The girl had been startled, not hurt. She came over,  trembling. The swindler with the gun got behind her.
  The shot had drawn attention. Men rushed to the  door. Old Leander L. Quietman was first, probably because
  he had been  nearest the door. He still wore his yoke and chains.
  Old Quietman crouched for a moment in the narrow  bulkhead opening. His lips peeled off his teeth, and his
  face got a  weird look.
  He said something nobody could have understood. Just  a gurgling in his throat.
  Then he said, "That’s swell. What do you want me to  do?"
  "Get their guns." The man using the girl for a  shield nodded at Piper’s men.
  Old Quietman walked into the control room. But he  walked toward the man with the gun.
  "Don’t be a fool!" Doc said to old Quietman.
  Old Quietman seemed not to hear. His bloodshot eyes  were fixed on the man with the gun. And the latter
  suddenly realized  old Quietman was not with him. Quietman was going to attack him!
  "Damn you!" he screamed.
  Then the man pointed his gun at Quietman and pulled  the trigger.
  Doc jumped. He was in the air before the gun  exploded. He hit it as it discharged, perhaps an instant before.
  The  bullet missed Quietman, made a lead smear on the wall.
  Doc’s metallic fist took care of the man with the  gun. Then Nancy Quietman clung to the bronze man and
  trembled. There  was probably reason for the trembling, at least, and maybe for the  other.
  Old Quietman sat down weakly and grinned. It was a  rather nice grin for such a wrinkled, old face.
  "Funny," he said slowly. "I guess I’m quite an old  louse, but she’s the one thing�I love�I guess�I didn’t care
  much  whether he was going to shoot me."
  Long, bony Johnny came bounding in, bumping his head  everywhere, and barked, "I’ll be superamalgamated!
  What happened?"
  "A man got his conscience aroused," Nat Piper said  dryly. "And I didn’t think he had one."
  "I didn’t think so�either," old Quietman said, and  laid over in a faint.
  DOC SAVAGE asked Nat Piper, "How do you follow the  channel under the cliff to the sea? Sunken
  magnets?"
  "How’d you guess?" Piper exploded.
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  "It is not a new method."
  Piper walked to the lazybench�the single berth in  the control room. He lifted the lid, and out of the locker
  exposed drew  a box with sensitive meters.
  "Turning a crank in this case lowers a feeler ball,"  he said. "It’s an electrical contrivance which detects the
  presence of  magnetism. The magnates on the bottom are heavy permanent magnets, and  they�"
  "We had better not waste too much time," Doc  reminded.
  Piper nodded. He reached into the locker and spun a  crank which lowered a thin, perfectly round cable
  through a watertight  stuffing box. He watched the dial.
  "Cruise back and forth," he suggested. "I’ll pick up  the line of magnets."
  Doc gave orders. The motors whined and moved the  submersible, and after a while, Piper said, "Now. Put her
  dead east."
  The bronze man spun the wheel, careful to check the  swing, and did a good job, bringing the compass
  indicator to rest less  than a degree off the E on the dial.
  "Slow," Piper said.
  Doc asked, "How deep?"
  "Six fathoms. The bowl is deeper than the entrance."
  The submarine moved ahead, its speed a mile an hour  perhaps. The tension grew. This was the critical test. If
  they got  through, it would be simple to evade the planes.
  Doc, to ease the tension, asked, "How did you happen  to find this place the first time?"
  "Gold mining was my business," Nat Piper said. "I  prospected this coast years ago, and found this place. It
  was the  season of the year when the tides are the lowest. When the tide is very  low, you can see the
  underground mouth."
  He took a breath. "The place fascinated me. I  climbed down and camped in it."
  "The cliff could be climbed, of course," Doc said,  and it was a statement, not an inquiry.
  "Yes. Starboard a bit."
  Doc put her starboard a bit.
  Nat Piper said, "You had to know where to climb the  cliff. As I said, I remembered this place. And after I
  found this sub  while cruising on a small ketch in the North Sea�I went around the  world in the ketch after I
  was swindled out of my gold−mining company�I  thought of this place and what an excellent spot it would
  be. Port a  trifle."
  Doc steered a shade to port.
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  "We’re getting under the cliff," Nat Piper said. "I  can tell. The magnets on the bottom are bigger under the
  cliff. We  placed them with diving suits. Now�now�we’re just getting under the�"
  What occurred next happened much too quietly. There  was faint sound, barely audible over the motor whine.
  The submersible  put its nose down.
  Then there was a great grinding and rending of metal.
  Doc whipped forward through the narrow bulkhead  doors. He found men fighting the dogs at the bow
  compartment door.  Water was sheeting in around the door as they fought to secure it. One  of the men was fat,
  thieving Boscoe.
  "The whole bow is crushed!" Boscoe said hoarsely.
  Chapter XXII. FAST
  DOC SAVAGE helped the men with the bulkhead door.  They got it shut. But water still came in. About
  twenty gallons a  minute.
  The door had been sprung.
  The bronze man whipped back to the control room.
  "It is not bad," he said.
  That, perhaps, was misleading. True, they were  alive. But they wouldn’t be for long when that water got to
  the  batteries. Salt water and the sulphuric acid in the batteries would  combine to make a poisonous gas. More
  men have died in submarines from  it than from anything else.
  For that matter, gas had killed the original crew of  the submarine. The Germans who had manned her during
  the World War.
  The motors were in reverse, turning both propellers.  They labored. Doc listened, watched. Nothing happened.
  "We’re fast!" Nat Piper croaked.
  Two of the rich men he had been trying to reform  promptly screamed like frightened children. One fainted.
  Doc examined the instruments. The tanks had been  blown completely in an effort to raise the boat. Nothing
  gained there.
  "Coolins had rigged wires with weights on them, I’ll  bet," Nat Piper guessed irrelevantly. "The wires hung
  down into the  water, and when the sub hit them, the jerk set off a mine he had  arranged on the cliff."
  "Or he decided to blast the cliff when we were under  it," Monk suggested.
  "One or the other," Nat Piper agreed.
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  They were a weird−looking crowd, black with soot,  perspiring, faces anxious−looking. The rich men
  mumbled or moaned, and  some, rather surprisingly, began to pray.
  Nancy Quietman came to Doc Savage and rested a hand  on his arm.
  "Somehow," she said, "I don’t feel as scared as I  suppose I should."
  The bronze man, not being entirely without  perceptive powers, was by now aware that the young woman was
  showing  rather more than casual interest. He was embarrassed.
  Nancy Quietman was a very attractive bit of  femininity, but that made it worse, because the bronze man made
  an  unalterable practice of permitting himself no feminine entanglements.  This was probably the only respect
  in which he forced himself to be not  exactly human. It was not always easy.
  Monk and Ham both perked up at this point. They were  Doc’s rescuers when something like this came up. It
  was their job to  distract the pretty young woman’s attention. Sure enough, Doc gave them  the eye.
  "Look," Ham suggested to Nancy Quietman. "Suppose  you and I see what we can do toward reviving your
  grandfather."
  "Of course," she agreed.
  Doc turned his attention back to the instruments. He  grasped valves and filled the tanks. The submarine
  settled, groaning a  little.
  "We only have air enough to blow the tanks once  more," Nat Piper reminded.
  Doc seemed not to hear him. He ran the port  propeller in forward speed, the starboard prop in reverse. The
  undersea  boat groaned and moved a little again. Doc reversed the propellers.  Another groan.
  The bronze man did that several times. Then he  reversed both wheels full speed. The U−boat moved.
  "We’re loose!" Nat Piper squawled.
  HE lunged to blow the tanks and bring the  submersible to the surface. Doc stopped him.
  "But why not?" Nat Piper exploded.
  Big−fisted Renny said, "Doc probably figures we’ll  need some foxy work to get out of this."
  Doc Savage now gave orders to pump a large quantity  of the fuel oil out into the water.
  "It will rise to the surface and lead them to think  we are down for good," he said. "Otherwise, they may try to
  set off  depth bombs."
  A man came from the forward compartment.
  "The water is making gas from the batteries," he  said. "I closed the next compartment. That will keep the gas
  out.  Before long, there will be enough water in the boat so that we cannot  get to the surface."
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  Doc Savage nodded, then looked at Nat Piper.
  "The escape port aft works, does it not?"
  "Yes," Nat Piper admitted. "A man can leave the  submarine through it."
  "You operate it," Doc directed. "Come on."
  "But who’s going out?"
  Piper knew the answer to that when the bronze man  entered the tiny barrel of a chamber which had a
  water−tight hatch at  the bottom, and another hatch opening into the sea. Submarines, the  more advanced
  ones, had been equipped with these during World War days.  All modern undersea boats now have them.
  Having examined the escape port, Doc dropped down  and said, "Now, Piper, I want a true answer to my
  question."
  Nat Piper took a deep breath. "You’ll get it."
  Doc asked his question.
  "Where is the Sea Angel?"
  Nat Piper swallowed, looked as if he wanted to lie,  said, "I guess you want me to explain�"
  "Where it is," Doc said.
  "In the big hut," Nat Piper said.
  Doc said, "Give me fifteen minutes. Then blow the  tanks, bring the boat to the top and beach her."
  Nat Piper swallowed. "Right."
  Doc got into the escape port, closed the lower lid,  and tightened it.
  When the port was full, and the outer hatch wide, he  swam out. He swam sidewise, and when increasing light
  told him he was  near the surface, he was careful.
  Smoke still hung over the water. But the fire had  burned itself out. The new oil was thick. Doc got his head
  out and  breathed.
  A man was shouting on shore.
  "There’s fresh oil on the surface!" he was  bellowing. "We’ve sunk the sub!"
  Doc Savage sank quietly out of sight.
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  Chapter XXIII. THE ANGEL ON THE  CLIFF
  H. O. G. COOLINS, financial sharper who had not been  reformed, and who probably never would be, was
  torn between joy and  disgust.
  "We got them!" a man kept telling him. "We crushed  the sub. That mine trap we fixed with wires got them."
  Coolins swore.
  "There’s ten million dollars’ worth of rich men in  that submarine!" he snarled.
  The man remembered that. And he began to swear, too.  Coolins’s other men heard the profanity, and thinking
  maybe some of  their enemies had been discovered, came galloping around the edge of  the bowl, close to the
  water.
  Coolins swore at them, at himself, at everything.
  "This is a hell of a way for things to turn out!" he  said.
  "It could have been worse," some one offered. "They  could have licked us."
  Meanwhile, the smoke was dissipating itself. It  lifted slowly, and showed the greasy water in the bowl, the
  steep slope  of the débris down which the men had made their charge, and the other  features of destruction,
  including the bodies of some of Coolins’s men  who had been killed.
  Among other things, the pig, Habeas Corpus, and the  ape, Chemistry, were discovered. The two animals were
  lurking forlornly  among the boulders.
  A man said, "Let’s make a clean sweep of it," and  took a pot−shot at Habeas. He missed, because Habeas was
  hard to hit.
  Another man said, "Suppose we search the huts and  see if there was any loot left."
  "What about the Sea Angel?"
  That got silence. Uneasy quiet.
  "There ain’t been a sign of the thing," a man  muttered.
  Coolins gritted. "We’ve got to get the Sea Angel.  Otherwise, we’ll never be safe."
  "Probably it was on the submarine," a man said.
  "It can live underwater," some one reminded.
  "And fly."
  Then a man in the background croaked horribly,  "Speaking of the devil�" He pointed.
  "The Sea Angel!" 
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  Coolins bawled. 
  The weird monster had walked�if its queer,  penguinlike progress could be called walking�out of the large
  hut. It  seemed unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Its  progress was taking it toward the
  rock slide, by which it was possible  for any one with legs to mount to the top of the cliff.
  A man threw up his rifle, fired. He hit the Sea  Angel. He was sure of it. But the thing merely jerked a little,
  and  went on.
  "After it!" Coolins roared.
  COOLINS’S men held their rifles tightly and charged.  They had quite a distance to go. The Sea Angel, weird
  creature, reached  the rock slide and mounted rather rapidly.
  Another man fired.
  "No use shooting!" Coolins yelled. "Bullets won’t  touch it! You should know that by now!" 
  They panted as they ran.
  "Then how�we gonna�stop it?" a man gulped.
  "Grenades!" Coolins snapped. "I’ve got some grenades  that will blow a battleship apart!"
  The Sea Angel was almost halfway up the slide before  the men reached the bottom. Coolins led his men, his
  face red. They  scrambled up the precarious surface.
  Several times, rocks were dislodged and threatened  to start a slide. The whole slope was a precarious affair.
  "It’s�gaining!" Coolins groaned.
  Some of his men were holding back. He discovered  this, and it added to his rage.
  "Come on, you fools!" he screeched. "We’ve got to  get this thing!"
  "I don’t like that loose rock!" a man yelled.
  Coolins, beyond caution, scrambled madly. He bit his  lips until they ran red in his rage.
  By the time he was halfway up the slope, the Sea  Angel was only a few yards from the top.
  The strange monster seemed to be looking back.
  Coolins stopped. He dug one of his powerful grenades  out of a pocket, drew back to throw.
  An unexpected thing happened then. The Sea Angel  spoke. 
  "You’re taking a chance!" it said.
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  Coolins wanted to take a chance. He was desperate,  too mad to reason. He believed he could throw to the top,
  and if so,  felt his grenade could blow the weird silver thing to bits.
  Coolins threw the grenade.
  He knew, an instant after he hurled the grenade,  that he had overestimated his own throwing arm. It was
  going to fall  short. Coolins leaped sidewise, trying to get out of the slide that was  sure to follow the blast.
  He did not make it.
  The boulders came down, little ones the size of  baseballs, and some as big as tractors. Hopping one over the
  other.  Slithering and grinding and rubbing sparks.
  They treated H. O. G. Coolins much as a grist mill  treats a grain of corn.
  Some of Coolins’s men escaped the slide. Not all of  them.
  The submarine, coming to the surface about then,  unloaded enough angry men to take care of the survivors.
  No one was  killed in the process, miraculously.
  A little while later, when Monk found a greasy spot  on a rock, he swore up and down that he had found H. O.
  G. Coolins.
  Monk, having disposed of that, and perceiving the  weird form of the Sea Angel descending the newly
  reformed slide, dashed  forward.
  "I’m gonna go around and around with this thing  until I find out what it is!" Monk gritted, and sprang upon
  the Sea  Angel.
  He was not shocked senseless by the long tendrils.  He had, in fact, an easy time of it. There were some
  fastenings in the  back of the creature. The chemist opened these.
  "As Renny would say, "Holy cow!" Monk exploded. 
  He had uncovered Doc Savage.
  THE bronze man got out of the rig, which was quite a  complicated and heavy affair of aluminum beamlets
  supporting an  amazingly light, considering its invulnerability, bulletproof covering.  This was chain mesh in
  nature, several thickness, with padding between.
  A man, once he had encased himself inside it, could  navigate with fair agility. The weight was distributed so
  that the  affair was not clumsy.
  "But what gave them tendrils their kick?" Monk  exploded.
  Doc Savage showed him the extremely compact and  powerful generator of high−frequency electric currents
  enclosed in the  thing. This could be switched on to throw a charge into the long  feelers when they were
  wielded.
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  "The same system the green devils used on their  spears," Monk grinned.
  A moment later, the homely chemist remembered. "But  this Sea Angel flew. And it swam underwater."
  Nat Piper came up and explained, "The thing you saw  flying was a rubber imitation of this Sea Angel
  disguise filled with  helium. One of my men released it from your penthouse. We were  impressing you."
  "How about the thing you showed us underwater?"
  "Merely an affair of wood and luminous paint towed  under the submarine," Nat Piper explained. "As for this
  bulletproof  disguise here, we all took turns wearing it. First one, then another."
  Monk looked into the disguise again. "Hah! Gas mask,  too. That explains why gas didn’t affect the Sea
  Angel. Some rig, but I  feel kinda goofy about it. You know, for a while, I really thought this  thing was
  something supernatural."
  "They all did," Nat Piper said dryly. Then he looked  at Doc Savage. "That is, but Savage, here," he added. "I
  suspect now  that he guessed all along what it was."
  Monk scratched his nubbin head. "But I don’t see why  all the elaborate business was necessary."
  "Fear," Nat Piper said, and shrugged. "We felt a  supernatural touch would add terror to our operations. Men
  are not  scared of men. But men are scared of things they do not understand."
  Which was logical reasoning
  Nat Piper, it developed, had suddenly decided to  give up his project of trying to reform rich shysters by the
  methods he  had been using. He had been doing some thinking he explained a bit  later, and he had concluded
  his methods were not getting very good  results.
  Which was just as well, because some of Doc’s men  had remained aboard the submarine to make sure Piper’s
  men did not  seize their prisoners again.
  An expedition composed of Renny, Johnny and Long Tom  discovered H. O. G. Coolins’s three planes intact
  on a near−by bit of  level country.
  That took care of transportation back to  civilization, although several trips would be necessary.
  DOC SAVAGE and Nat Piper had a long discussion  during the next two days, while preparations for
  departure were being  made, and while Percy Smalling was getting well enough to be moved.  Chemistry and
  Habeas had rejoined their masters.
  It was agreed that Doc should take the "patients"  which Nat Piper had not been making much progress with.
  The bronze man  would put them through his institution for curing criminals by brain  operations, which made
  them forget their pasts.
  Old Leander Quietman was also sent to the  institution, along with the others. After the wealthy men were
  trained  to hate crime and crookedness, they would be allowed to go back to  their fortunes.
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  The chances were very excellent that the men would  then do a great deal of good with their money.
  During this discussion, Monk was absent. Some one  had stolen the jeweled collar of the pig, Habeas Corpus.
  Monk was  wrathfully hunting the thief. He had a good idea of the latter’s  identity.
  Ham seemed to be doing rather a good job of  distracting pretty Nancy Quietman’s attention from Doc
  Savage. Either  Ham was very good, or the young woman had concluded the bronze man was  impervious to
  pretty femininity.
  Ham’s success did not overly please Monk.
  Monk was very mad when he appeared. He had the thief  by the neck. The culprit was Boscoe.
  Monk marched Boscoe up before Doc and ordered,  "Speak your piece, sticky fingers!"
  Boscoe swallowed a few times, then got it out.
  "Look," he said. "Monk’s been telling me about a  place you got in up−State New York. Er�uh�Monk�I
  mean, I was wondering  if you could take me there and cure me of being a thief?"
  THE END
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/057 The Sea Angel.pdf