TEXT:  MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA.........................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson......................................................................................1
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE..........................................................................................2
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD.............................................................................................7
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE..................................................................................................................11
  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"..................................................................................................................19
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST.................................................................................................................24
  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE.............................................................................................................34
  Chapter 7. MONK HUNTS DOC..........................................................................................................40
  Chapter 8. FOUR SLEEPERS...............................................................................................................42
  Chapter 9. PASSENGERS FOR NASSAU...........................................................................................49
  Chapter 10. PIRACY.............................................................................................................................55
  Chapter 11. HIDDEN CARGO..............................................................................................................62
  Chapter 12. MYSTERY—AND HASH................................................................................................71
  Chapter 13. MONSTERS UNDER WATER.........................................................................................75
  Chapter 14. THE INCREDIBLE DOMAIN..........................................................................................80
  Chapter 15. OUT OF MYTHOLOGY...................................................................................................86
  Chapter 16. TAZ....................................................................................................................................89
  Chapter 17. DEATH IN THE DEPTHS................................................................................................92
  Chapter 18. THE TREASURE FABULOUS........................................................................................97
  Chapter 19. THE DEVIL IS A RABBIT.............................................................................................101
  Chapter 20. THE LOST.......................................................................................................................105
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  i
  
  MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  • 
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
  • 
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  • 
  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  • 
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  • 
  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  • 
  Chapter 7. MONK HUNTS DOC
  • 
  Chapter 8. FOUR SLEEPERS
  • 
  Chapter 9. PASSENGERS FOR NASSAU
  • 
  Chapter 10. PIRACY
  • 
  Chapter 11. HIDDEN CARGO
  • 
  Chapter 12. MYSTERY—AND HASH
  • 
  Chapter 13. MONSTERS UNDER WATER
  • 
  Chapter 14. THE INCREDIBLE DOMAIN
  • 
  Chapter 15. OUT OF MYTHOLOGY
  • 
  Chapter 16. TAZ
  • 
  Chapter 17. DEATH IN THE DEPTHS
  • 
  Chapter 18. THE TREASURE FABULOUS
  • 
  Chapter 19. THE DEVIL IS A RABBIT
  • 
  Chapter 20. THE LOST
  • 
  Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
  MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  1
  
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  PARADISE is a beach. It is on Long Island Sound near  New York City and, being one of the most
  convenient spots for swimming,  is much frequented during the summer. The patrons are jaded citizens of
  Manhattan who, having struggled for a living in the great city all  week, come for a rest.
  Paradise Beach was quiet. That was another reason  why it was so popular.
  On the first Saturday of September, however, the  quiet of Paradise Beach was rudely shattered.
  The life guard—he sat atop a tower which stood out  where the water was deep—was first to see the thing in
  the water. It  was night, about two hours after sunset. Big floodlights blazed along  the locker house, while
  others were on high poles out beyond the life  guard’s tower. It was the illumination of these which first
  disclosed  the thing in the water.
  "Drowning man!" yelled the life guard, making a  mistake.
  The guard executed a snappy dive off his platform  and swam rapidly out into the Sound. A man was
  swimming feebly out  there. The guard had thought he was a bather who had ventured out too  far. But,
  reaching the swimmer, he discovered the fellow was clothed,  except for shoes and coat.
  A wave came in; it was not large, for they do not  have large waves on Long Island Sound during calm
  weather. Yet it  submerged the man swimming in his clothing, and it was some moments  before he came up,
  gasping feebly.
  The life guard lent a hand, holding the fellow up  and, at the same time, peering out into the Sound in an effort
  to learn  where the unfortunate had come from. It was too dark to see much. The  guard decided the man must
  have been in a boat, that had sunk.
  "Were you alone?" he demanded. "Does anybody else  need help?"
  "Shut up!" said the one who was being rescued.  "Either get me ashore or leggo so I can swim."
  A light skiff, rowed by another life guard, arrived  at that moment and both the first life guard and the man
  swimming in  his clothes were taken aboard and paddled to the beach. The rescued man  started to get out of
  the boat, as if he were in a great hurry to leave.
  The fellow was restrained, however, by the life  guard, who knew that persons who have been near drowning
  sometimes  become hysterical and do not quite know what they are doing.
  "Leggo, dope," snarled the man who had been found  swimming in his clothes.
  "Not until the doctor looks you over," said one of  the guard.
  The rescued man then acted very ungallantly. He  seized an oar and managed, after a short skirmish, to crack
  the life  guards over the head, knocking them both senseless.
  The man ran away, his wet clothing making slopping  noises.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  2
  
  A THRONG of no small proportions was on the beach,  but the rescue had been executed so quietly that only
  a few had  realized what was happening. Most of the sharper observers had been  advancing cautiously to
  investigate. They broke into a run, and a loud  outcry went up as they saw the brief skirmish which felled the
  two life  guards.
  At first, there was no attempt to apprehend the  fleeing man. New Yorkers learn early that attending to their
  own  business is a policy which avoids trouble. However, two ambitious souls  did attempt to stop the runner.
  One of them, a fat man, got an oar  jabbed in the stomach for his pains. The other was discouraged by a  blow
  over the head.
  The fleeing man reached a row of bathhouses and  ducked between them.
  At this point, it was doubtful if many persons were  aware that a dark motor boat had come into the
  floodlighted area from  the Sound. This craft carried several men. Driven by a powerful motor,  it swerved in
  close to the beach, and all but one of the occupants  sprang overboard and waded ashore.
  The man who remained in the boat took it back out  into the Sound, and it was shortly lost in the darkness.
  Electric excitement suddenly swept Paradise Beach.  Those men who had gotten out of the motor boat were
  masked. Moreover,  they carried revolvers.
  The masked, armed men raced after the one who was  fleeing. At first, they were not interfered with, the
  patrons of the  bathing beach naturally being unarmed.
  Then one of the Paradise special policemen came  racing forward. He shouted, and had a gun in his hand.
  There was a  prompt burst of shots. The special officer suddenly concluded that his  salary did not cover gun
  fighting, and ignominiously took shelter.
  The procession—fleeing swimmers and armed  pursuer—left the confines of Paradise Beach behind them. In
  the  pavilions, the bathhouses, half a dozen telephones were being employed  to call policemen. This,
  incidentally, did no good whatever.
  The fugitive, by now, knew the pursuit was close on  his heels. There was a parking lot beyond the bathing
  beach buildings,  and he ducked into this, dodging among the parked machines, peering  frequently into
  vehicles, obviously trying to find one that was not  locked.
  On the far side of the lot, an automobile engine  started. It was a motorist who, blissfully unaware of what was
  going  on, had decided to leave. The fugitive raced madly for this machine.
  His pursuers outguessed him. Hearing the car start,  they surmised what he would do and directed their course
  to cut him  off. They succeeded. In grim silence, they sprang upon the runner. 
  The late swimmer was virtually exhausted, which was  one reason they had caught him so easily. He was
  beaten down, knocked  as thoroughly senseless as had been the two life guards.
  HALF an hour later, the victim regained his senses.  He looked about at the grim forms of his captors, still
  masked and  visible in the glow of a single flashlight, and peered at thick scrub  brush beyond them. This was
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  3
  
  plainly a remote spot.
  "He should be dead by now," one of the captors said,  callously. "The guy has more lives than a cat."
  The prisoner said nothing, tried to move and did not  succeed. He was being held tightly.
  "He’s bound to be in Davy Jones’s locker before  long," said another of the men.
  "Turn me adrift," growled the prisoner. "You swabs  have your lines tangled."
  "So you think," snarled one of the masked group.  "You scuttled our ship for us. Fixed it so it’ll sink sure."
  "I didn’t," snapped the victim.
  "We caught you," the other pointed out.
  "I don’t know anything about Taz, or the rest  of it," wailed the prisoner. "You got me all wrong! Sure you
  have!"
  "We got you, all right," one echoed, and laughed.  Others also laughed, not pleasantly.
  "Your name is Verne, ain’t it?" demanded one of the  masked men. "Twenty−Thousand−Leagues Verne they
  call you, don’t they?"
  The prisoner denied this vehemently. "No!"
  "Oh yes, you are," said the masked man. "And Diamond  Eve Post hired you!"
  "
  DIAMOND EVE POST?" the prisoner  mumbled. "Never heard of her." 
  He tried to sound puzzled, earnest, but he was not a  very good actor.
  "Listen, guy," said the other, "don’t lie about it.  We know she hired you."
  "No," the man insisted.
  "She sent you aboard to open the sea−cocks of our  hooker, while all hands were ashore," the other told him,
  grimly. "You  went her one better than that. You smuggled a keg of acid aboard."
  "And dumped the acid in the bilge," echoed another.  "The cursed stuff ate the plates right out of the bottom of
  our hooker.  She’s leakin’ like a sieve!"
  "This is all a mistake," insisted their captive.
  "We found the empty acid keg," he was told. "It was  glass lined. It was a keg you said held your private stock
  of liquor."
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  4
  
  The prisoner rolled his eyes wildly.
  The captive was a small man, but he had very large  bones which gave him a sturdy aspect. There was a bald
  spot as round as  a plate on top of his head. His clothing was rough and his pants legs  had large bottoms, sailor
  fashion.
  One thing about his appearance was particularly  striking—his skin: it looked as if some weird phenomenon
  had brought  all blood vessels to the surface. This gave a purple complexion which  was rather hideous.
  He struggled slightly, and there was a great horror  coming over his features.
  "I’m gonna die, if you don’t let me go," he wailed.  "After what you scuts done to me, there’s only one
  thing—"
  A captor kicked him, snarled, "Put lashing on that  tongue!"
  The masked group seemed to be undecided about what  to do next.
  "Puttin’ a knife in his ‘midships is the quickest  way out," one suggested.
  "Nix," another objected. "We want to give that  Diamond Eve dame somethin’ to think about. We had him
  fixed, only he’s  tougher than we expected."
  "He’s done for," said a third. "It may take a little  time, but he’s done for."
  The one who had suggested the knife snorted.
  "What if he gets to a hospital? Some of them  Manhattan hospitals are fitted up to take care of what’s gonna
  happen  to him."
  They thought that over.
  Suddenly, one grunted and drew a bottle from his  clothing. He shook the bottle, so that the liquid inside
  gurgled.
  "This is a sample of what’s left in that glass−lined  keg," he said. "I was keepin’ this stuff to show the big
  shot. But I  got an idea."
  He fell upon the prisoner, wedged the fellow’s mouth  open with a gun barrel, uncorked the bottle and poured
  some of the  contents into the captive’s mouth. The result was grisly. The  unfortunate man emitted a series of
  horrible shrieks, until they  clamped a coat over his face. It was some moments before they removed  the coat.
  The captive’s mouth, lips, and the lower part of his  face were hideously burned. His whining and gagging
  noises were pitiful.
  "
  ACID," said the man with the bottle.  "It’d eat the flukes off an anchor." 
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  5
  
  "What about his hands?" a man objected. "He’ll write  a note asking to be taken to a hospital."
  The man with the bottle leered. "I’ll fix that, too."
  He flashed a sheath knife and used it.
  "Scuttlin’ our ship is nearly gonna make us lose out  on that Taz thing," he growled. "This pays you back for
  that.  And it’ll teach Diamond Eve a lesson!"
  He released the victim and the man staggered away,  making small, unearthly noises. Agony from his burned
  mouth was so  great that he was oblivious of the trickle of scarlet from his wrists.  He began to run as best he
  could.
  His hands were now useless. The tendons had been  severed.
  A shout, ugly, full of threat, came from those who  had maltreated him. But it was doubtful if he heard.
  "Tell the dame—if you can—that she’ll get worse than  that, if she don’t furl her sails!" advised the one who
  shouted.
  The mutilated man’s run was more of a stagger, which  an average walk would have outpaced. He came,
  unexpectedly, out of the  brush and found himself on close−mown grass, beyond which glittered  light on a
  great shedded platform which stood on steel stilts.
  The victim’s eyes were running with tears of pain  and he had to peer for some moments before he recognized
  the structure  as the terminus of an elevated line. He ran toward it.
  There was a crowd of sweltering citizens, bound for  the parks, the beaches. Many gasps of horror were
  brought by sight of  the mutilated man. A woman fainted. Strangely enough, no one touched  the fellow or
  offered to help him. Possibly, the hideous sight of him  kept them away.
  The metal steps of the elevated stairway were  slippery with scarlet before the man got to the top, and he had
  fallen  twice. The crowd—those who had stout stomachs, followed him up, but  kept their distance, as if he
  were some poisonous thing. The man faced  them, made his horrible sound at them, but nothing that could be
  understood.
  Below, they were shouting for policemen, for an  ambulance. A woman was screaming that a maniac was at
  large and had  butchered himself.
  The mutilated man was plainly desperate. He roved  his pain−hazed eyes.
  And at this point, fate stepped in. Probably the  fact that the victim observed a certain poster, could not be
  attributed  to anything but a combination of circumstances. But it was certain that  he saw the poster. For he
  stumbled close to it, let his blurred eyes  observe it more closely. 
  It was merely one of the large posters exhibited on  railway station platforms in the metropolitan area for
  advertising  purposes. This one was plugging a certain popular national magazine.  The man plainly was not
  interested in the title of the magazine. His  attention was centered on the words which described the leading
  features in the magazine for the month. It read:
  DOC SAVAGE’S AMAZING SAGA—
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 1. THE MAN WITH NO TONGUE
  6
  
  ASTOUNDING DETAILS ABOUT THE
  MAN OF MYSTERY
  IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE
  What he had read suggested something to the  mutilated man. He dived into a train which had been standing at
  the  platform.
  The train was due to leave and the conductor must  have been unaware of what was happening, because he
  applied the current  and the string of cars clanked away. The victim huddled in the rear of  a coach and
  rebuffed those who sought to aid him.
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
  An argument was taking place behind a door on the  eighty−sixth floor of a towering midtown skyscraper.
  The lettering on  the door read:
  CLARK SAVAGE, JR.
  One of the voices sounded as if its source might  come from a small child. The other was suave, well
  modulated, one  obviously accustomed to much public speaking.
  "You’re nuts, Ham," affirmed the childlike voice.  "They wear ‘em that way so they can get ‘em on and off
  easy."
  "Monk, you thick−headed missing link," said the  other voice, "they wear them that way simply because it
  makes them look  smart, and for no other reason!"
  The pair who had been arguing, interrupted their  dissension. They were as unlike as their voices. The one
  with the  childlike voice, in the dim light of the reception room, might easily  have been mistaken for a
  two−hundred−and−fifty−pound gorilla. He had  practically no forehead, an incredibly homely face that was
  made  pleasant by an overly large mouth, and arms which extended his furry  hands to well below his knees.
  He was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew  Blodgett Mayfair.
  The other was a lean−hipped man whose garments were  the absolute ultimate in fashionable perfection. He
  had a not  unhandsome face with a high forehead, keen eyes and the mobile mouth of  an orator. He carried a
  slender black cane, which he had been waving in  an effort to drive home his arguments. He was Brigadier
  General  Theodore Marley Brooks.
  "You’re wrong, you ambulance−chasing shyster!"  "Monk" continued the altercation. "They wear ‘em that
  way because they  can get out of ‘em easy when they fall overboard."
  "Ham" waved his cane in Monk’s face.
  "You have the mind of a child!" he shouted. "The  fact that they are cut that way has no significance
  whatever!"
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
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  A newcomer had silently entered the office. A huge  man of bronze.
  "What are you two arguing about now?" he asked.
  The two dissenters—Monk and Ham—jumped as if they  had suddenly found their feet in cold water.
  "Doc Savage!" Ham exclaimed.
  "Gosh, Doc, you gimme a scare," Monk said, surprised.
  "What is the argument now?" Doc Savage asked them.
  "Sailors’ pants," Monk squeaked. "Any fool would  know they’re cut big at the bottom so that the sailor can
  get in and  out of them in a hurry, but this dumb shyster Ham—"
  "This accident of nature!" Ham slashed his cane at  Monk. "Just to look at him, you would know his head
  could not possibly  hold a brain cell! Now, sailors’ pants—"
  AN elevator door clanged in the corridor. Footsteps  clattered. A figure came weaving through the door.
  Monk stared at the hideous apparition and his big  mouth opened very nearly to its widest. He must have tried
  to say  something, but words did not come out.
  The mutilated man stood before them. If possible, he  was a more hideous specter than when he had
  frightened the crowd at the  elevated station. His wrists had stopped leaking. His mouth, however,  was now
  running scarlet, and with each of his faint breaths he blew a  fine mist of spray.
  He tried to speak. It was a gurgle.
  "Hey," Monk squeaked at him, "what’s wrong?"
  The victim weaved and went down on all fours, but  his slashed wrists would not hold him and he fell on the
  floor,  squirmed. As they moved toward him, he scrambled to his feet with a  species of mad energy. He
  gurgled and coughed, as if trying to speak.  He gave it up. Then he staggered to the big, inlaid desk.
  An inkstand with pens was on the table. Hitting this  with his elbow, he knocked it to the floor. Black and red
  ink gushed  over the costly rug.
  "Nix, nix!" Monk shouted, too late. "The Khedive of  Egypt himself gave Doc that rug."
  The mutilated man was in no condition to care. He  stabbed a toe into the ink, began to draw lines on the rug.
  It was slow  work, for his shoe proved to be no suitable brush.
  It was now evident that the man was trying to print  a message.
  Doc Savage whisked across the reception room and  through a door which gave onto a library, a huge room,
  yet one which  was jammed almost to capacity with ponderous−looking tomes. This was a  scientific library
  which was equaled by none.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
  8
  
  Crossing the library, the bronze man entered a  laboratory−workshop.
  He got a can of paint—it was used in coating the  unusual devices which he so frequently constructed—and a
  brush, also a  coil of wire for use in lashing the brush to the man’s shoe. Carrying  these, he whipped back into
  the reception room.
  Something horrible had happened to their visitor. He  was a contorted heap on the floor.
  MONK, who was crouching over the fellow, looked up.  "It beats me, Doc," he barked. "The poor bird got
  some kind of cramps  or somethin’ and just fell over in kind of a fit."
  Doc Savage went to the man, bent over him, examined  him.
  "My instrument case," he directed Monk.
  Monk ran into the laboratory and came back with the  instrument case. Doc Savage had been trained in many
  things, but his  first, and probably his greatest, forte was surgery. He straightened  from his diagnosis.
  "Monk, you stay here." He pointed to the strange  markings which the mistreated man had managed to ink on
  the carpet.  "Watch those. And try to decipher them."
  Monk, who disliked being left out of anything,  wailed, "But, Doc, what—"
  "Only one thing will save this man," Doc Savage  said. "We have that thing down at our water−front place. I
  must take  him there."
  Doc Savage gathered up the stricken man. Then he  addressed Ham.
  "Endeavor to find where this fellow came from," he  suggested.
  "Righto," Ham agreed.
  Both Monk and Ham busied themselves at their  assigned tasks.
  It took Doc with his burden but a short time to  reach what was ostensibly a huge unused warehouse on the
  Hudson River  water front. The warehouse was really a combination hangar and  boathouse.
  Doc carried the victim to a device which resembled a  large steel tank, with a hatch in the end and numerous
  valves and  gauges on the outside. There was nothing unique about this thing. Any  professional diver would
  have recognized it as an "iron doctor." Divers  enter the "iron doctor" for decompression, after being subjected
  to the  terrific pressure of a deep dive, to prevent the formation of fatal air  bubbles in their blood stream.
  Doc Savage did not open the "iron doctor." Rather  slowly, he laid his burden down.
  The man had died!
  Doc Savage worked furiously over the body,  attempting to return a spark of life, even taking the corpse into
  the  "iron doctor" and turning on the pressure. It was, however, of no avail.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
  9
  
  The victim had been seized with what divers call the  "bends." Recently, his body had been subjected to
  terrific pressure and  he had not been properly decompressed. The resultant formation of  nitrogen bubbles
  might not, necessarily, have been fatal. The "iron  doctor," perhaps, would have saved him.
  But the "bends" had not killed the man. He had died  from the effects of the acid burns about his mouth, the
  loss of his  life stream through his slashed wrists.
  Doc Savage searched the fellow’s clothing, examined  the body. An untrained searcher, perhaps, would have
  sworn there was  nothing to be found.
  There were a few grains of sand in the cuff of the  still−damp trousers. Doc Savage examined these under a
  pocket magnifier.
  "North shore of Long Island Sound," he said, as if  to himself.
  That would not have surprised a trained geologist.  Sands from different localities frequently have as distinct a
  personality as have finger prints.
  On the dead man’s shirt, the left shoulder, there  was a reddish brown smear, which the water had not entirely
  washed  away. Doc added lenses to his magnifier, increasing its power, and  scrutinized the stain.
  "Copper bottom paint off a ship," he concluded.
  Next he got a clean metal pan and, not without some  difficulty, managed to wring a few drops of water from
  the man’s  clothing. He carried the pan across the building.
  The interior of this building, which outwardly  resembled an old warehouse, was of enormous size. The walls
  were thick.  The roof as nearly bombproof as it could be made. The place housed a  remarkable assortment of
  vehicles for travel in the air, on the water,  and under the water. There were several planes, ranging from a
  huge  speed ship to a small autogiro; there was a dirigible of unusual  design; there were speed boats; and off
  to one side in a drydock of its  own stood a small submarine.
  From a locker, Doc Savage took a metal case and  opened it. An array of chemicals and chemical equipment,
  ingeniously  compact, was disclosed. This assortment, an unbelievably complete  portable laboratory, belonged
  to the homely Monk, and he invariably  took it along on expeditions.
  With a skill born of much study, Doc Savage set to  work analyzing his water sample. It was not easy, but
  neither was it  impossible. Water in the vicinity of Manhattan contains a certain type  of pollution, and this
  diminishes with distance from the metropolis.  Before long, Doc Savage knew approximately where the water
  had come  from.
  "The neighborhood of Paradise Beach," he decided.
  That was the extent of the clue. The bronze man left  the body in the "iron doctor," padlocked the hatch.
  Shortly afterward, he was back in the skyscraper  laboratory. He listened. There was no sound.
  "Monk!" he called. Then: "Ham!"
  No answer.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 2. THE MUTE AND THE DEAD
  10
  
  The bronze man whipped across the laboratory,  through the library, and stopped on the anteroom threshold.
  He remained  there poised and made for a moment a small, peculiar sound, which was  among the strangest of
  his characteristics. This note, a vague, eerie  trilling, was indefinable as the vagaries of a wind in a denuded
  forest, rose and fell. It had a quality of ventriloquism, for one  looking at the bronze man could not have told
  that he made the sound.  It was doubtful if Doc Savage himself realized he was authoring the  fantastic note.
  He made the sound only in moments of intense mental  excitement.
  Monk lay spread−eagled on the anteroom floor, flat  on his face. And there was the stillness of the dead about
  his apish  body.
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  Part of the rug was gone.
  The expensive panel of weaving had been cut with a  sharp knife and a segment, roughly circular in shape,
  removed. No trace  of this could be seen.
  The missing section bore such printing as the  mutilated man had managed to accomplish with his foot before
  he  collapsed.
  The door gaped open, and Doc Savage went to it. Half  through, he found a form sprawled on the shiny tiling
  of the corridor  floor. The victim was senseless, apparently having been knocked out by  a blow over the head.
  It was dapper Ham, and he had fallen atop his  innocent−looking black cane. Doc Savage carried him into the
  reception  room.
  Monk proved upon examination, merely to be  unconscious, likewise from a head blow, and Doc started
  administering  to him, to Ham, to bring them out of their forcibly induced slumbers.
  Monk, the toughest of the pair, revived first. Lost  in a mental fog, he mumbled words.
  "Justa dumb shyster, Ham," he squeaked faintly.  "Sailors’ pants are big at the bottoms because—"
  He broke off, sat up suddenly, blinked several  times, said abruptly in a rational voice, "Man, have I got bells
  in my  head!"
  "What happened?" Doc asked him.
  Monk jabbed a hairy, contemptuous thumb at Ham, who  was beginning to stir. "It was the shyster’s fault. He
  brought some  woman and a guy with her. They—"
  "It’s a lie!" Ham said, without opening his eyes.  "It was Monk’s fault. He should have been on the lookout."
  "Lookout!" Monk squawled. "You brought them in—"
  "And they promptly knocked me senseless," Ham  finished. "I met them down in the lobby, while I was trying
  to trace  that fellow with the burned mouth. They said they had some important  information, so I brought them
  up."
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  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  11
  
  "It was the woman," Monk growled. "She had two guns.  She tried to push one through that swell dinner I just
  ate. Then she  popped me over the ear with the other one. I kinda lost interest."
  "They obviously tricked me into bringing them up,"  Ham admitted without pride.
  Doc Savage indicated the missing section of the rug.  "How did they know about that?"
  Ham puckered his forehead, as if trying to think of  the best way of admitting an indiscretion.
  Homely Monk snorted, "The girl was a knockout. Boy,  did she have what it takes! I’ll bet Ham told her all
  about what had  happened."
  "Shut up, you ape!" Ham snapped. "She said the man  with the burned mouth was her brother, and wanted to
  know what had  happened to him. She was sobbing and carrying on, and it kind of got  under my skin."
  "So you told her about it," Monk jeered.
  "I did!" Ham yelled, angrily. "And you would have  done the same thing, you missing link! She was so pretty
  and so  grief−stricken—"
  "You know just as much about women as you know about  sailors’ pants," Monk told him, unkindly.
  HAM contemplated Monk, as if he would greatly relish  separating the homely chemist from his gnarled ears.
  "I made a mistake," he admitted, grudgingly. "Those  two tricked me into getting them in here, and knocked
  us out. Then they  stole part of the rug, so that we would not have a chance to figure out  what the poor devil
  was trying to print there."
  Monk scowled at Ham, as if the latter had committed  some crime which could never be forgiven.
  "That means the message was important," the simian  chemist pointed out. "It’s gone. And I think there was
  enough of it  that we could have translated the thing. You couldn’t read it right  off, of course, but—"
  "We will see about that," Doc Savage interposed.
  The bronze man now moved the massive inlaid table  into the center of the room and stood upon it, from
  which point he  could reach the ceiling. This was decorated in modernistic fashion,  with trim triangles and
  discs of shiny metals and colored glass. Under  his manipulation, what had appeared to be an ordinary glass
  plate came  away and proved itself a part of a motion picture camera, which was  recessed into the ceiling.
  "A few moments will be required to develop this," he  said, and took the film magazine into the laboratory.
  After he had been working a few minutes, Doc called  to Ham, "Telephone Paradise Beach on Long Island
  Sound and see if you  can learn anything about a strange visitor."
  Ham consumed two headache pills. Then he used the  telephone.
  "The fellow appeared at Paradise Beach," he said  when he finished. "He swam in from the Sound, knocked
  out two guards  and fled. A moment later, a motor boat landed a group of masked men who  pursued him. No
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  12
  
  one at Paradise seems to know more than that."
  Doc Savage was using a quick−developing process of  his own on the motion picture film, which was of
  miniature size. The  whirring of the device which wound the film through the developer  solution ceased. He
  transferred the film to a reel and carried it to a  projector.
  "When did you start that camera?" Monk asked,  curiously.
  "Just before leaving to take the man to the ‘iron  doctor,’" Doc replied. "The camera control, you know, is just
  inside  the library."
  The film clicked through the projector.
  "There it is!" Monk exploded, suddenly. "Say, we got  a fine shot of that message!"
  "We will run the rest of the film," Doc Savage said.  "Another look at that woman would be interesting."
  IT had happened about as Monk and Ham had said. The  film showed Monk peering at the inscription on the
  rug and scratching  his head, when the door opened and Ham came in, closely followed by a  blonde girl.
  "Boy, oh boy!" Monk murmured. "Is she a queen!"
  The girt, twentyish, arrestingly blonde, might have  stepped out of some particularly excellent chorus. Her
  frock had that  careless modishness which only the best designers achieve.
  One thing in particular caught their eyes: her  jewels. Diamonds—on her fingers, on her throat, circlets of
  them about  her wrists. They were all large stones.
  "She was wearing a fortune," Ham said.
  Monk growled, "Look at the gorilla with her."
  Monk had called the girl’s companion a gorilla. It  would have taken a psychologist to explain why he did
  that. Probably  because he secretly resented any man being in the company of a specimen  of the feminine sex
  so entrancing.
  The diamond girl’s companion was a tall, sturdy and  not unhandsome young fellow with a markedly
  weather−beaten face. His  hair was either naturally light or sun−bleached, and was wavy; it bore  a close
  resemblance to molding clay. The young man wore a blue  pea−jacket, and trousers that did not have an
  ordinary cut.
  Monk promptly drew attention to the trousers.
  "Lookit," he grunted. "Sailors’ pants, big at the  bottoms."
  Ham began, "They wear them with large bottoms merely  because it is the style—"
  "Wrong!" Monk snapped. "They’re big so—"
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  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  13
  
  "There is a sound track on this film," Doc Savage  interposed. "We will connect the scanning cell and the
  amplifier to the  loud−speaker. Whatever they said might be of interest."
  The necessary connections did not require long. As  the film began moving again, the loud−speaker hummed
  and the blows  which struck down Monk and Ham were distinctly audible. Monk had  emitted a tremendous
  groan in the course of his Waterloo and Ham now  seemed to find this vastly amusing. He chuckled over it
  until a speech  from the diamond girl silenced him.
  "Quick, Seaworthy," snapped the young woman. "We  won’t try to smear that message on the rug. We’ll cut it
  out."
  She had a voice which recorded beautifully.
  Her companion, whom she had called Seaworthy,  frowned at the rug and said, "Just what was Verne trying to
  write? Can  you make it out?"
  The girl moved over and studied the rug.
  "Oh!" she gasped. "That would have put Doc Savage  right on the trail! He would have learned all about
  Taz. We must  get rid of it. Cut it out."
  Seaworthy produced a knife and went to work.
  The girl stood to one side during the cutting  operation, and it was apparent that she was under strong
  emotional  strain. Once she made a sound very like a sob.
  "Poor Verne," she said, quietly. "They must have  caught him. I wonder if he got the acid into the bilge of
  their ship."
  "If he did, the tub’ll sure sink," grunted  Seaworthy. "That’ll cook their chances of getting to Taz ahead  of us."
  The girl shuddered. "I wonder if it’s worth it. It  means millions, and more than money, too. But is it worth it?
  Sometimes, I wonder why money isn’t abolished. It causes so much  trouble."
  "Something else would take its place for people to  fight over," said Seaworthy, who seemed to be something
  of a  philosopher.
  Seaworthy rolled the piece of rug, tucked the bundle  under his arm, then squinted at the diamond girl.
  "Why don’t you want Doc Savage in on this?" he asked  her, suddenly. "We might make a deal with him."
  She stamped a foot at him.
  "I’m greedy," she said with frankness. "I want the  money, the power that will come from Taz. I wouldn’t get
  it, if  Doc Savage mixed in the affair. He would throw the thing open to the  world."
  The two now took their departure. Following which  the movie film—it had run on and on—became rather
  uninteresting.  Nothing in the room moved. Except that the part of the rug bearing the  writing was gone, there
  was nothing which really held interest.
  "There won’t be nothin’ else," Monk said.
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  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  14
  
  "No harm in running it through to the end," Doc  Savage replied.
  Perhaps a minute later Monk let out an excited whoop.
  "Look at that!" he squawled.
  "That" was the figure of a man who had glided  furtively into the anteroom.
  THE newcomer’s appearance partook of the more  flamboyant qualities of a rainbow. His pants were
  plum−colored. His  coat was of distinct red and blue checks. His shirt was a jaunty  yellow; his tie a checkered
  green. A lemon handkerchief, a green hat  and bright yellow shoes completed the ensemble.
  The picture of this apparition was projected in the  full brilliance of its color. For Doc Savage had long ago
  ceased using  ordinary black and white negatives for photography.
  The rainbow man peered furtively around the  reception room, then ducked into the library and was lost from
  sight.
  The man returned shortly and stood staring at the  section which had been cut out of the rug. Then he went
  over and kicked  Monk and Ham in turn, as if he thought that might awaken them.
  "I wondered how I got that sore place on my ribs,"  Monk growled.
  A voice came from the loud−speaker. The exotically  clad man had not spoken, for they could see that his lips
  had not moved.
  "Find anything, Cap’n Flamingo?" the voice demanded.
  "Nothin’!" boomed Captain Flamingo in a powerful  voice.
  "Flamingo, the bird of brilliant color," Ham  murmured. "That name certainly fits the gentleman."
  Captain Flamingo spoke again.
  "I’d like to know just what happened," he said.  "What kind of a storm laid these two swabs out like this?"
  He walked over and kicked Ham again.
  Ham winced, as if the blow had actually fallen  again, and said, "I object strenuously to that."
  The voice—it was coming from the corridor—called to  Captain Flamingo, "Well, what’re we gonna do about
  it?"
  "We will not drop anchor here, that’s certain," said  Captain Flamingo. "We’ll see if we can’t find a cove
  across the street  where we can watch the channel into this little harbor."
  He walked out with, the rolling gait of a seafaring  man.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  15
  
  The film ran through to its end without anything  more of importance occurring. Doc stopped the projector,
  reversed it  until one of the best shots of the ink marks on the rug was depicted,  and stopped it.
  "An enlargement of this would help," he said.
  The bronze man started the process of making an  enlargement from the miniature film frame.
  Monk snorted and stabbed a big forefinger in the  general direction of the street below.
  "You heard what our sailor visitor with the bright  duds said, Doc," he squeaked. "Him and his buddy was
  gonna watch this  place. Ain’t we gonna glom onto ‘em?"
  "That is one of the few excellent ideas Monk ever  had," Ham said. "If we catch those fellows and question
  them, it might  clear the whole thing up."
  "Want to take care of that while this enlargement is  being made?" Doc asked.
  Monk rubbed his ribs where, as he had discovered in  the picture, he had been kicked. "Do I!"
  "Go ahead," Doc consented.
  Monk and Ham lost no time, but seized powerful  binoculars, opened the windows, leaned out and began to
  scrutinize the  street below, first turning out the lights in the room behind them.  There was little chance of
  their being observed. The sky above was  cloud−gorged, intensely black, and luminance from the street lamps
  did  not penetrate this high. Ham’s eyes proved the most alert.
  "See that!" He pointed.
  Monk looked and saw an individual who was  unmistakably their late visitor of the rainbow clothing. This
  fellow  was stationed in a doorway from which he could observe the skyscraper  entrance.
  "He’s waitin’ for us, even if he don’t know it,"  Monk grunted. "Come on."
  MONK and Ham managed to gain from the rear the roof  of the building in front of which their quarry stood.
  A bit later they  left the roof, descended stairs, and peering around an angle in the  corridor, they could discern
  through the frosted glass of an outer door  the lurking watcher.
  There was little light where Monk and Ham stood.  They swapped scowls by way of assuring each other that
  they were ready.  The door had a spring lock, which meant it could be opened from the  inside. They turned the
  knob and went out suddenly.
  The rainbow−hued man heard them, turned. He looked  very much surprised, but let Monk take one of his
  arms, Ham the other.
  "Well, reef my jib," he muttered. "I been boarded!"
  He did not seem too greatly concerned about it. The  reason for that was evident an instant later.
  "You’re on a rock, mates," said a quiet, bitter  voice.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  16
  
  Monk and Ham looked up. The areaway was old,  elaborate, built for merchandise displays, and there was a
  line of show  windows and a tiny balcony above.
  A man was leaning over the balcony with a sawed off  shot−gun.
  Monk hunched his big shoulders and started to  rumble. It was a peculiar trait of Monk’s that he lost his small
  voice  when he got into a fight, his shouts assuming a deep, bass resonance;  and he liked plenty of noise at his
  fights.
  Ham emitted a slight, "Ps−s−st! Get smart!"
  The bitter−voiced man with the shot−gun spoke  casually. 
  "You two birds may have yourselves decked out in  bulletproof vests," he said. "But me shooting down this
  way kinda takes  care of that. This scatter gun is loaded for deer."
  Monk muttered, "Now, how’d that guy know about the  vest?"
  "It shows under your coat, stupid," Ham told him.  "If you would get a decent tailor and have your garments
  padded so that  vest would not show itself—"
  "You two can argue fashions later," said the man in  the rainbow attire.
  "I’m comin’ down, Cap’n Flamingo," said the one  above. He tossed his shotgun down to Captain Flamingo,
  then grasped the  railing, swung over and descended without much difficulty.
  Flamingo, with his gun, had kept Doc’s two aids  covered.
  "Get going," the two prisoners were ordered.
  "You guys were all set for this," Monk complained. 
  "Sure," chuckled Captain Flamingo. "Why do you think  I been standin’ down there where I could be seen
  from Doc Savage’  windows?"
  "I’ll bite," Monk gritted. "Why?"
  "Why, you might say we were fishing," Captain  Flamingo told him. "Fishing for just what we got, see?"
  "But whatcha want with us?" Monk grunted.
  "Observe, and ye shall learn," chuckled Captain  Flamingo. "Now, reef the tongues and let’s steer a course."
  THEY got underway. A series of hallways led  completely through the block. When they reached the next
  street,  Captain Flamingo showed himself on the sidewalk. A car promptly came  cruising toward the
  unmistakable beacon which his gaudy raiment made.
  The car was a sedan, not expensive, not new, and not  well−kept, but very large. The driver had a thick neck
  and a round  face. His skin had a raw, red look, as if it had been sandpapered  recently.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  17
  
  He wore a sailor hat. There was a name on it.
  Captain Flamingo looked at the sailor hat and gave  an excellent demonstration of a man about to have a fit.
  He grabbed the  driver’s throat with one hand and the sailor hat with the other.
  "Have you plumb lost your ballast?" he snarled.
  Then he got a look at the name on the cap:
  TROPIC SEAS
  "
  Huh!" gulped Captain Flamingo. "Put  some wind in my sails, matey. What’s the idea?" 
  "If somebody got a look at me, or if I was to lose  that hat," said the driver, "I figured it would look—" He
  leaned over  and whispered words in the gaudily clad man’s ear.
  Monk and Ham did not catch it.
  "Sure, sure," said Captain Flamingo, delightedly.
  Monk demanded, "What’s the idea here?"
  Captain Flamingo glared at him.
  "I lost a ship of mine tonight, matey," he growled,  unpleasantly. "A swab poured acid in the bilge and it ate
  the plates  out of her. I ain’t in a helluva good humor. You better do what you’re  told to do. Get under way."
  Monk, Ham were loaded into the machine and it rolled  downtown.
  The bulletproof vests were stripped off Monk and  Ham, and Captain Flamingo spent his time examining
  them curiously. The  car joined traffic and rumbled over one of the bridges spanning the  East River into
  Brooklyn. It turned right and followed the water front.
  Pier sheds along the river were large at first, but  diminished in size and grew, for the most part, more
  ramshackle. They  came to a section devoted to small shipyards.
  Suddenly, for no reason that could be seen, Captain  Flamingo’s companion began to laugh. He laughed long
  and heartily and  finally wound up by stuffing his own fist into his mouth.
  "Batten your hatch," Captain Flamingo warned him.
  Monk squirmed and demanded, "What do you fellows  want with us?"
  "I’ll tell you," said Captain Flamingo, suddenly.  "We want you to tell us just how much Doc Savage knows
  about this  business."
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  Chapter 3. DIAMOND EVE
  18
  
  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  IT was before one of the shipyards that the car  finally pulled up. The driver switched off the lights. He left the
  engine running.
  To a wharf at the bottom of the shipyard was tied a  small rusty−looking steamer, a craft with a length of less
  than two  hundred feet. She needed painting. Naked, blazing electric light bulbs  dangled over her rails at
  intervals of not more than a score of feet,  lighting every inch of the water and the wharf about her. Not a soul
  was visible on or around the craft.
  Monk and Ham were forced into a small shed,  foul−smelling of ship stores. They were questioned, after their
  ankles  and wrists were bound. It seemed Flamingo wanted information of  "Diamond Eve" and "Seaworthy."
  They stepped outside the shed for a private  conversation. As they did so, a huge shadow glided into the shed.
  Monk  felt fingers wrenching at his bonds, felt the ropes snap, and  recognized the one person whose strength
  could accomplish the feat so  easily.
  "Doc!" he gulped.
  "Quiet," the bronze man breathed.
  "How did you find us?" Monk whispered.
  "By trailing the car which brought you," the bronze  man explained. He then released Ham, also.
  Doc glided out the door of the shed, to attempt  capture of Flamingo and his two men. But they suspicioned
  something and  hastened for a pile of timbers. Doc threw a piece of wood at the gloom  behind the timbers and
  it drew a shot that thumped into the side of the  steamer.
  Excitement in quantities now broke out aboard the  trampish−looking steamer. Men with rifles appeared on
  her decks.
  From where they lay, Doc and his men could make out  the name of the boat:
  TROPIC SEAS
  The armed men from the ship ran down the gangplank  and began an advance. Some of them carried hand
  searchlights.
  Doc pressed into the hands of Monk and Ham the  oversize machine pistols of Doc’s invention, shooting
  mercy bullets  which did not kill but only produced unconsciousness.
  "Watch the gate," Doc Savage directed. "Keep Captain  Flamingo and the other two from retreating in that
  direction. Their  only chance will be to swim for it."
  Monk and Ham eased in the direction of the gate.
  After they had departed, there was no stirring in  the shadow to indicate Doc Savage had also moved. But he
  had changed  position; doing so with the almost uncanny stealth of which he was  capable. He was, in fact,
  now not more than a score of feet from  Captain Flamingo and his two comrades. He could hear the trio
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  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  19
  
  quarreling.
  "Bringin’ them two guys here to question ‘em was a  dam−fool, reckless stunt!" snarled one of the men.
  "Belay that!" growled Captain Flamingo. "Sure, it  was a risk. But I was tryin’ to get Doc Savage onto that
  Tropic Seas gang."
  At that moment, a loud and very astounded  exclamation came from the direction of the gate. It was Monk.
  Plainly,  he had just received a profound surprise.
  Doc Savage made a cautious survey to ascertain what  had so moved Monk. He saw almost at once.
  The girl of the diamonds! She had come off the ship,  Tropic Seas, and was directing the sailors, urging them
  to charge.  With her was the man whom she had designated as Seaworthy, during her  visit to Doc Savage’s
  office.
  Captain Flamingo’s voice snarled, "Here’s where I  teach Miss Diamond Eve Post a lesson!"
  With all the speed of which his trained muscles were  capable, Doc Savage got a small flashlight out of his
  clothing. He  thumbed it, planting a beam squarely upon Captain Flamingo. The latter  had a revolver leveled
  in the direction of the girl. The unexpected  flashlight flare surprised him out of shooting at the young woman.
  Instead, he whirled and fired at Doc. But, by that time, Doc had doused  the light, was down. Captain
  Flamingo’s lead hit the timber behind  which Doc lay. It jarred the timber slightly.
  Rifles crashed. Bullets stormed overhead. The  Tropic Seas crowd had opened fire.
  Captain Flamingo began to swear in a shrill, almost  insanely mad voice. He could not remain where he was.
  The Tropic Seas attackers were spreading out, would soon have him flanked.
  "We’ll hit the drink!" Captain Flamingo rapped.
  He leaped up, ran toward the water. The other two  trod his heels. The darkness aided them. They reached the
  water.
  Surprisingly enough, they did not dive in  immediately. Instead, they flung themselves down behind a
  painters’  float which had been hauled out, and did something. Just what they did,  Doc Savage could not
  discern. The bronze man was at that moment engaged  in getting himself into the background.
  It was reasonable to expect that Captain Flamingo  and the others had removed part of their clothing, to make
  swimming  easier. But when they got to their feet, it proved they had done  nothing of the sort. Fully dressed,
  they plunged into the bay. They  disappeared and did not come up immediately, which was to be expected,
  since there was every chance that they would be shot the instant they  broke the surface again.
  What happened next was surprising, a bit  unbelievable. Also, it was something that later offered a grim
  significance of entirely surprising nature. It was a thing that, in a  sense, forecast the amazing, fantastic events
  that were to occur before  the whole incredible adventure came to an end.
  The men who had leaped into the water did not come  up at all!
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  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  20
  
  THAT they did not come up, was absolutely certain.  The men from the Tropic Seas aligned along the shore
  had turned  on their hand searchlights. Others lowered two motor tenders over the  sides of the rusty old tramp,
  and cruised about. The tenders were  equipped with surprisingly powerful searchlights.
  The young woman who displayed the diamonds was in  charge of the whole thing. And she handled it
  efficiently. The man  called Seaworthy seemed to be second in charge.
  Fully half an hour had passed before Doc Savage  joined Monk and Ham near the gate. They were alone here
  and could  converse.
  "Captain Flamingo and the other two must have had  portable diving apparatus," Monk muttered.
  "No," Doc told him. "Their figures showed distinctly  just before they entered the water and they certainly had
  no diving  equipment."
  "Then they drowned," Ham said, dryly.
  "It is strange," Doc Savage said. And his words were  slow. "They entered the water confidently, as if they
  knew what they  were doing."
  Monk snorted. "This is a screwy business, and we  still haven’t the slightest idea of what it’s all about."
  "We have two angles to work on," Doc Savage told him.
  "What do you mean?" Monk queried.
  "This affair right here is one," Doc replied. "The  other is the writing the dying man did on our office rug."
  "What was the writing?" Monk demanded. "It didn’t  look like anything to me but some funny marks."
  "There was not time to make sure about it," Doc  Savage told him.
  The bronze man now withdrew from his clothing a  rolled photographic print.
  "This is the enlargement of the marks," he said.  "Keep it, and both of you stay undercover."
  "What’re you gonna do?" Monk asked.
  He failed to get an answer, which did not completely  surprise him. Doc Savage had a small habit, most
  aggravating at times,  of completely neglecting to explain what he intended to do next. Now,  was one of those
  occasions. He moved away soundlessly and was lost in  the darkness.
  Monk and Ham looked at each other, shrugged, crept  out of the shipyard through the gate without being
  observed, and  concealed themselves among discarded automobiles which littered a junk  yard across the street.
  DOC Savage had something very definite in mind, it  was evident from his movements. The trampish−looking
  Tropic Seas was almost deserted, all hands being engaged still in the futile  search for the three men who had
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  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  21
  
  simply vanished under the water. The  lights would have revealed Doc Savage, had he attempted to walk
  down  the wharf. So, near the shore, he swung over the edge and, hanging by  his hands, swung along the
  stringers until he was close to the  rust−scabbed hull.
  Such portholes as were open were not large enough to  admit him. He reached the gangplank, made sure no
  one was near, whipped  onto the dock and got aboard the boat.
  Shortly afterward, he heard the crew returning. He  took pains to conceal himself where he could listen
  without being seen.
  The voice of the man called Seaworthy was first to  become distinguishable.
  "Blast Cap’n Flamingo!" Seaworthy complained. "Him  and the two with him got clean away."
  That statement was startling, to say the least—in  view of the apparently obvious fact that the three men must
  have  drowned.
  "We are in a jam," said the girl who wore the  diamonds. "What was Captain Flamingo doing here? What
  caused him to  fire the shot which attracted our attention?" 
  This indicated that they had no inkling of the  presence of Doc Savage and his two aids.
  There was the noise of fingers snapping loudly.  Evidently, this was Seaworthy.
  "You know what?" Seaworthy barked. "I’ll bet Cap’n  Flamingo came here deliberately and started that
  shooting. He knew it  would draw a police investigation."
  The girl emitted a mannish whistle of surprise.
  "A police search of the ship would sink our whole  plan," she said, grimly.
  "Listen," Seaworthy suggested. Somewhere in the  distance, a police siren was making a faint caterwauling
  noise.
  "Police!" the girl gasped. "Some one telephoned  them! Probably some neighbor! What are we going to do?"
  "We’ll set sail!" Seaworthy yelled.
  He began to bawl orders.
  THE disreputable ship had looked as if it were  driven by steam, but evidently its appearance was deceiving.
  The power  proved to be Diesels, and ones equipped for quick electrical starting,  at that. Doc Savage could tell
  this by their sound as they began  revolving.
  The hawsers were cast off. Propellers churned in  reverse. The ship moved with surprising facility for a
  hooker of her  appearance.
  The police arrived in time to do nothing but stand  on the end of the dock and shout.
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  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  22
  
  All hands, except those in the engine room, were on  deck during the excitement of the departure. Doc Savage
  made use of the  opportunity to examine a portion of the vessel. He learned a surprising  fact.
  The Tropic Seas had lately been a cargo  carrier, but she had been built over for some purpose, the exact
  nature  of which was difficult to determine. Living quarters for a very large  force of men had been installed
  amidships, not in the forecastle as was  customary
  Originally, there had been one hatch forward. Now  there were three. Cargo booms had been taken off and
  substantial  derrick affairs substituted. It could be seen that the hatches were  heavily padlocked.
  Doc Savage smothered a hearty desire to learn what  was in the hold when the crew began to move about the
  decks and come  below. The Tropic Seas was now well out in the harbor and,  judging from the vibration, was
  heading for the open sea.
  All lights were being extinguished. No illumination  was needed for navigation. The ample number of lighted
  channel buoys  took care of that. The green and red light points of these buoys were  sliding past at a much
  greater rate than might have been expected. The  old Tropic Seas was fast.
  Doc Savage worked his way toward the bridge. He  managed to attain that goal without being molested, aided
  no little by  the intense darkness. The bridge was glass−enclosed, but windows were  of the sliding type and
  now open. He took shelter in a niche behind the  bridge, where he could overhear what was being said.
  For a time, there was only the routine conversation  having to do with the piloting of the speeding vessel.
  They had muffled  the engine room gongs for the time being. Somewhere aboard, a ship’s  clock started
  striking and a man swore, ran to it, and muted it before  it finished.
  "The police are sure to radio the coast guard," the  girl said, uneasily.
  "It’s not likely they’ll pick us up," Seaworthy told  her. "It’s dark as a cave. And our radio man reported,
  before we  started, that he had tuned in on some ships out off Scotland Light  vessel. Fog out there."
  "By morning, we should be so far out they will never  find us," the girl admitted.
  Seaworthy laughed.
  "The world won’t hear from us again until we spring  Taz on them," he chuckled.
  "How long do you think it will take us to reach  Taz?" the girl asked.
  "Don’t know, Diamond Eve," Seaworthy said.
  "Don’t call me that nickname!" the girl snapped.  "The newspapers hung it on me, and I do not care for it."
  Seaworthy clicked off a prompt salute, and said,  "Certainly miss."
  THE girl strode out on the starboard wing of the  bridge and, with binoculars, swept the night. The Tropic
  Seas was now in the mouth of the harbor, the portion shown on the chart as  the Narrows. Brooklyn was a
  diffused light bank on the left, while  Staten Island lights were farther away to the right.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 4. "TROPIC SEAS"
  23
  
  "Not a sign of the coast guard," the girl said.
  "They run without lights, too," Seaworthy reminded  her. "But I think we’ll make it."
  The young woman walked back to the center of the  bridge, and questioned, "You are sure we can trust the
  men we have  aboard?"
  "Absolutely," said Seaworthy. "I know every one of  them personally. I’ve sailed with them all at one time or
  another."
  "Spare us another Captain Flamingo experience," the  girl said, grimly.
  "Captain Flamingo!" Seaworthy made a growling noise.  "We sure dismasted him! That idea of mine of
  getting acid into the  bilge of his boat was swell, huh?"
  The girl shuddered, said, "Poor  Twenty−Thousand−Leagues Verne."
  "We’ll settle a fortune on his relatives," Seaworthy  said. "We can do a lot of things, after we get to Taz."
  The girl was silent a moment.
  "You sure you have all the necessary equipment  aboard?" she asked him.
  "All we had the money to buy," Seaworthy told her.  "Of course, if we’d had more money, we’d ‘a’ got a
  small submarine and  fitted it up with locks by which divers could enter and leave."
  "I’m broke." The girl’s voice was grim. "I staked  every−thing on this. I even sold my diamonds. These things
  I’m wearing  are glass."
  "They don’t look like glass," Seaworthy told her.
  "Oh, they make good imitations these days," the girl  replied, casually. "And I had to keep myself in character
  by wearing  them."
  She turned and walked off the bridge.
  Doc Savage was there in the darkness to meet her.  Before she saw him, she was inside the trap which his
  corded arms made.
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  To make a prisoner of one person within a few yards  of another without the latter becoming aware, is no feat
  simple of  execution. In this case, it was made more difficult by the comparative  quiet reigning in the vicinity
  of the bridge.
  Doc Savage held the girl tightly with his right arm,  her feet off the deck; with his left hand he closed her
  mouth, her  nostrils.
  Her struggles, however, made enough small noise to  attract the attention of Seaworthy, who was handling the
  wheel.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  24
  
  "Something wrong?" he demanded.
  Doc Savage had spent countless hours experimenting  with his own voice, striving to do unusual things with
  it. One of his  major desires had long been to acquire the ability to imitate the voice  of a woman. He had never
  achieved what he considered success. But, for  a few words, he could do fairly well. 
  "I bumped into something," he said in a voice very  like that of Diamond Eve Post.
  That was no lie.
  "Oh," said Seaworthy, deceived. "See you later."
  Doc Savage retreated with the greatest caution,  carrying his struggling captive. Seizing her had not been an
  impulse.  The Tropic Seas was obviously sailing for some far goal, and Doc  did not wish that until the
  mystery was cleared up. If he could succeed  in removing the young woman, it was a reasonable supposition
  that the  sailing would be delayed.
  In making his seizure, the bronze man was, as a  matter of fact, taking no great chance, the vicinity of the
  bridge  being deserted. But one ability he did not possess. He could not see  into the future; he was no
  clairvoyant. He had no means of telling that  Seaworthy would pick that instant to remember a question he
  wanted to  ask the young woman.
  "Hey, skipper!" Seaworthy barked. "Where did you put  that piece we cut out of Doc Savage’s office rug?"
  Doc tried to get out of the predicament by again  imitating the young woman’s voice.
  "Never mind that," he called.
  "I must know!" Seaworthy shouted. "I just  remembered! Maybe we left it on the wharf!"
  He was excited. He left the wheel and came racing  through the passage. It was just another bad break that he
  paused to  turn on the lights.
  He saw Doc Savage and the girl.
  SEAWORTHY had a remarkable voice. His howl of  surprise must certainly have been heard in Brooklyn.
  And, still  squawling, he charged.
  Doc Savage used discretion and retreated, carrying  his captive. There was a sizable crew on the Tropic Seas.
  They  all looked competent. He could not fight the whole crowd.
  He descended a companionway, taking the steps in a  single long jump. A few feet beyond, was a bulkhead
  door. He got  through it, slammed it. The panel was of the type which could be  fastened from either side, and
  was of metal. He secured it.
  The Tropic Seas was in an uproar. Fore, aft,  amidships, men were shouting. And Seaworthy was certainly
  contributing  his bit to the bedlam.
  "It’s the bronze guy!" he was bellowing. "He’s  grabbed the skipper! Head him off!"
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  25
  
  Doc Savage was having a little difficulty with the  girl. She was no weakling. She bit him twice, until he
  tightened the  grip of his hand over her face.
  The bronze man, instead of heading deeper into the  inwards of the trampish vessel, changed his course and
  sought the  topsides. He had surveyed the vessel carefully back at the pier, before  coming aboard. The
  launches, motor−powered, in which the main search  had been made for Captain Flamingo and his two
  companions after that  trio had disappeared beneath the water, were hanging in the davits.  They had not yet
  been swung aboard and lashed.
  Doc Savage headed for the port side, where the  launches hung. He moved as swiftly as he could manage.
  With the best of  luck, he would have no more than a minute or two.
  He reached the bow launch. Holding the girl so that  she could not cry out while he disconnected the lowering
  lines from the  cleats, proved to be a task. He managed it with one hand, but took some  brisk punishment from
  the young woman.
  The davits were rigged so that the lines could be  handled from the descending launch itself. They had not,
  however, been  intended for one−man operation. Doc Savage got the little shell down a  dozen feet. Then
  something went wrong and he all but spilled himself  and his captive into the sea. He had to free her. She
  promptly yelled  bloody murder.
  It did not make much difference. The blocks needed  oiling, and their squeaking had betrayed them. Doc
  discarded caution  for speed.
  The boat hit the water with a distinct report. A  wave promptly banged it against the hull plates. Doc Savage
  scrambled  forward, and then aft, to throw off the davit lines. He got his foot  against the Tropic Seas’ hull and
  shoved off.
  NO lights had been turned on, as yet. That made  their escape simpler. And there was also a warning which
  Seaworthy  shouted repeatedly. 
  "Don’t shoot!" Seaworthy howled. "He’s got the  skipper with him!"
  Doc Savage had found it necessary to release the  young woman. She immediately sought to jump overboard;
  but he caught  her, hauled her back, held her as he worked over the engine.
  Diamond Eve Post began shrieking.
  "Seaworthy!" she hailed in her loudest voice. 
  "What is it?" demanded Seaworthy from the rail above.
  "Sail without me!" the girl cried. "Go on to Taz!"
  "
  Nix!" Seaworthy barked. "We’ll get  you away from that bronze guy!" 
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  26
  
  "Don’t be a fool!" Diamond Eve Post shrilled. "Doc  Savage seized me to make the Tropic Seas turn back! He
  thought  you wouldn’t go on without me!"
  Doc was having trouble with the engine. The gasoline  seemed to be shut off, and the valve was difficult to
  locate. He  shifted one hand to the girl’s mouth for the purpose of silencing her,  but was not immediately
  successful.
  "Sail for Taz!" the young woman shrieked at  Seaworthy. "If you turn back, Doc Savage will spike the whole
  business!" 
  Seaworthy wailed, "But you—"
  "I’ll be all right!" shouted the girl. "I’ll get rid  of this Doc Savage! Then I’ll charter a plane, and find you at
  Taz! Or maybe I’ll wait until you return!"
  Seaworthy objected, "But I don’t like the idea—" 
  "Go on!" the girl shouted.
  At that point, Doc Savage succeeded in muffling her.  He got the engine started almost simultaneously. The
  launch was fast.  It lifted its nose and moved rapidly, lurching in the swell.
  The bulk of the Tropic Seas was speedily lost  and there was only the noise of the shouting men aboard to
  mark its  position. But after a time, the night swallowed this, too. It was  evident that the Tropic Seas had
  continued on toward the open  ocean, as the young woman had commanded.
  Doc Savage told Diamond Eve Post, "Now we will have  a long talk and you can explain a number of things." 
  "You’re an optimist," she said.
  BY the time they had reached Doc Savage’s skyscraper  headquarters, it was beginning to look as if the young
  woman was right,  and that she was going to shed no light whatever on the general mystery.
  As a matter of fact, she consented to answer only  one question. She did this as they were riding up in the
  elevator.
  "What became of the piece you cut out of the rug?"  Doc asked her.
  "It’s aboard the Tropic Seas," she said,  maliciously. "You’ll never learn what was on it."
  The elevator let them out on the eighty−sixth floor,  and they swung along the corridor. Immediately, the
  sound of an  altercation came to their ears.
  "Just a dumb shyster," insisted Monk’s squeaking  voice. "You’re too bullheaded to admit it, but you know
  very well  they’re big at the bottoms for a reason."
  "Ridiculous!" Ham snapped. "It is just an inane  idea." 
  It was the sailors’ pants argument again.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  27
  
  The two dissenters called a recess and stared in  frank amazement at Doc Savage’s companion. Monk got up
  and executed a  snappy bow.
  "I do not know any one I would be more delighted to  see right now," he said.
  "I hate to throw cold water," the girl snapped.
  "Huh?" Monk blinked.
  "Having me here is not going to do you any good,"  she advised him. "So you might as well get unhappy."
  Ham murmured, "A young lady of determination."
  "You said it," agreed the young woman.
  Ham treated her to a speculative examination.
  "She’s a bit saucy," he said. "Perhaps if we took  her down and let her look at poor
  Twenty−Thousand−Leagues Verne, it  would cool her off."
  The girl lost a little of her ruddy color. But she  kept her hard exterior.
  "What did they do to him?" she asked.
  "Burned his mouth with acid, and cut the ligaments  of his wrists," Ham recited, callously. "And they did
  something to him  that caused him to get the bends."
  The girl swallowed several times.
  "There was probably an ‘iron doctor’ on Captain  Flamingo’s schooner," she said. "No doubt they put Verne
  in that,  subjected him to terrific pressure, then took him out without  decompressing him slowly."
  "What is Taz?" Doc Savage queried, abruptly.
  The girl cupped her chin in a palm in a mocking  attitude of deep thought and murmured sarcastically, "Let’s
  see, what  could it be? It might be a three−letter word meaning the first part of  Tasmania. But no; that’s
  wrong—"
  "That crack fell pretty flat," Monk suggested.
  "I’ll brush up on my jokes," she retorted.
  Doc Savage interposed, addressing Monk, "Do you have  that enlargement?"
  "Sure." Monk passed it over.
  Doc spread the thing out on the table. Considering  the smallness of the negative which had been its source,
  the  enlargement was encouragingly distinct. The marks which the dying man  had scraped with his toe were
  plainly discernible.
  The girl stared at the picture, gasped, "What is  that?"
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  28
  
  "A photograph of the rug before your friend  Seaworthy went to work on it with his knife," Doc told her.
  "Oh!" The girl knotted and unknotted her hands.  "Oh!" 
  She gave every indication of being completely  floored.
  DOC SAVAGE now consigned the job of watching the  young woman to Monk. This task the homely chemist
  plainly relished.
  "If you give me your word not to try to get away, it  might make it easier on you," Monk told her.
  "Nothing doing!" she snapped.
  Ham looked at the ceiling and said, as if to  himself, but in a loud voice, "That shows what a sucker Monk is
  for a  pretty girl. He’d take her word, and it’s probably not worth anything."
  "I’ll remember that, you dude!" the girl snapped.
  "I believe her word would be good," Monk insisted.
  "Thank you," said the young woman. "It would, but I  am not promising anything."
  It was evident that Monk was engaged in putting  himself in solid.
  Doc Savage gestured the young woman’s attention to  the enlarged photograph.
  "I do not suppose you would translate those marks  for us," he suggested.
  "Right. I cannot see any meaning in them," the young  woman assured him.
  "But the man who made them was working for you," Doc  reminded her. "He was trying to tell us something."
  She snapped, "He was mad with pain. He did not know  what he was doing."
  The bronze man did not press her further. Ham, who  had secured another sword cane, came over and studied
  the enlargement  intently. Monk joined him, but was careful, however, to keep one eye  cocked in the direction
  of the young woman. Monk was fully aware that,  if she escaped, he would never hear the last of it from Ham.
  Ham shook his head over the enlargement print. "I  fail to make anything out of it."
  Monk looked at the puzzling hieroglyphics from  several angles.
  "There’s that wiggly line," he said. "It kinda looks  like a crawling snake. There’s kind of a half loop in the
  middle.  There’s what looks like a cross mark on the edge of the loop. An’  there’s some other lines off to the
  side, as if somebody had tried to  draw a checkerboard."
  The interior decorations of the anteroom had been  made over recently, given a modernistic twist. The purpose
  behind this  was not an appeal to the eye. The modernistic panels formed an  excellent background for
  concealing such things as the map case which  Doc Savage now opened.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  29
  
  This chart case was a large affair. It was rimmed  with very brightly polished metal. This was an entirely
  effective  mirror.
  Doc Savage unrolled a chart of Long Island Sound. At  the same time, he watched the girl’s reflected image in
  the bright  chart case rim. Doc ran a finger along the chart.
  The young woman tried not to look uneasy and did not  entirely succeed.
  "The dead man was a sailor," Doc Savage said.  "Therefore, he knew charts. The line he drew was a shore
  line."
  "Huh?" Monk exploded. "Then that half a loop is a  cove! A little bay. Wonder what one."
  "Ten Fathom Cove, it would appear," Doc Savage said.
  The bronze man indicated the spot on the chart, and  Monk and Ham, after a brief inspection, nodded,
  agreeing that the shore  line contour depicted on the chart almost exactly matched the  wanderings of the wavy
  line which the dying man had inscribed on the  floor.
  Monk gave the young woman an amiable grin.
  "We ain’t so dumb, eh?" he asked.
  "You’d better watch your step," nipped Diamond Eve  Post. "That’s all I can say."
  THE sun may come up like thunder in China, as the  bards intimate, but along the north shore of Long Island
  at this season  of the year the rising of the solar orb was something of a sneaking  process. A mist usually
  crawls up out of the Sound and rolls inshore.  Out of this the sun crawls with apparent reluctance.
  The sun was not yet up as Doc Savage braked his car  to a stop. As a matter of fact, there was no evidence of
  it. But the  usual dawn mists were beginning to roll in.
  Monk alighted, then turned, ostensibly to aid  Diamond Eve Post, but actually to keep a grip on her arm to
  discourage  flight. Ham got out of the front seat. Unless absolutely necessary, Ham  made it a policy not to ride
  in the same seat with Monk. Doc Savage  locked the car.
  There was deep stillness about them. No breeze  fluttered leaves. Birds were quiet. It evidently was not the
  usual time  which roosters picked for crowing.
  Monk suggested to the young woman, "It’d sure be  nice, if you’d bust loose with some information."
  "Wouldn’t it," she said shortly.
  The road was behind them. They had pulled off on a  disused lane, which led in the general direction of the
  Sound, and it  was down this lane that they now walked.
  "This is the quietest darn place I ever saw," Monk  mumbled.
  He was mistaken. He knew that an instant later.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  30
  
  A voice in the brush said, "Holy cow! I thought you  would never show up!"
  The texture of that voice was somewhat astounding.  It was reminiscent of a lion roaring in a cave.
  "Renny!" Monk exploded. "What brought you out here?"
  The newcomer now separated himself from the brush,  lighting his way by a flashlight over the lens of which
  he had tied  several thicknesses of handkerchief, so that it would afford only a dim  glow.
  The man was a giant. His size, however, faded to  insignificance, once a glance was directed at his hands.
  These members  were unnaturally large. Each fist was composed of only slightly less  than a gallon of bone,
  gristle and leathery hide.
  He had a long puritanical face, and, if its  expression was any indication, he had not a friend on earth. It was a
  peculiar trait of "Renny’s" that he registered his emotions  inversely—the happier he was, the more gloom that
  might register on his  countenance.
  "How’d you come to get out here, Renny?" Monk  demanded again.
  Doc Savage answered Monk’s question, saying, "Renny  got the story from me over the telephone, while you
  and Ham were having  your troubles with Captain Flamingo. It was my suggestion that Renny  come out here."
  "Then you had already deciphered them marks on the  rug?" Monk questioned.
  "It was only a guess at first," Doc Savage said.  "Later, our young lady here verified the accuracy of the guess
  by the  anxious look on her face when this spot was indicated on the chart."
  Monk addressed Diamond Eve Post hopefully: "It would  save a lot of head scratching, if you would tell us
  what this is all  about."
  "Oh, quit bothering me," she snapped.
  Renny rumbled softly, "Plenty has been going on  around here, Doc. I’ve got something I want to show you
  first."
  They moved forward, a silent cavalcade. Big−fisted  Renny led the way.
  Renny was Colonel John Renwick, world−famed civil  engineer, and one of Doc Savage’s group of five aids.
  There were two other members of Doc Savage’s  organization—Major Thomas J. "Long Tom" Roberts, an
  electrical expert,  and a geologist−archaeologist, William Harper "Johnny" Littlejohn—but  neither of them
  were at present in the United States. The electrical  wizard was in South America, the geologist−archaeologist
  in Europe,  each engaged in following his respective trade.
  Renny stopped them when they had reached the beach,  before they had walked out where they might be seen.
  "Now, isn’t that something?" he said, and pointed.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  31
  
  THE scene in the little cove might have been lifted  from some historical saga of pirate days, when stout ships
  were  careened on coral sands of the Caribbees.
  The ship had been run in hard, parallel to the  beach, and grounded. This had been done at high tide, and a
  main part  of the hull now showed. It was a sailing ship, with auxiliary power of  some kind—they could see
  the faint outline of the propeller. Of the  three masts the forward was rigged with squaresail and raffee, the
  other two carried fore−and−aft rig—a bit of a hybrid schooner. 
  There was no stir of life.
  "The hooker isn’t as deserted as she looks, by a  long shot," Renny said, having difficulty keeping his great
  voice low.
  Doc Savage asked, "What have you seen?"
  "The ship had already been beached when I arrived,"  Renny explained. "You told me just to nose around, and
  so that’s all  I’ve been doing. They’ve been taking stuff out of that schooner and  loading it on barges. And
  tugs have been dragging the barges away."
  He pointed out into the Sound, where the running  lights of a tug with a tow could be seen.
  "There it goes with the last load," he said. "I  don’t think they’ve emptied the schooner, though. The tide went
  out so  much that they couldn’t get the barges alongside to load them. If you  ask me, they’re taking a recess."
  Ham demanded, "Can you explain why they beached that  boat?"
  "I crawled down close," Renny told him. "That hooker  has no more bottom than a sieve. Looks like the work
  of extremely  strong acid in the bilge."
  "Have you any idea what they are unloading to the  barge?" Doc asked.
  Renny shook his head. "All the stuff was boxed.  There was one exception: some big drums of wire hawser."
  "We will go down and look around," Doc Savage said.
  "You either have lots of nerve, or no sense," the  girl put in.
  Doc Savage suggested, "Renny, you might remain here  and watch the young woman, while the rest of us
  board the boat."
  "I will not," said Renny, visioning himself missing  out on a fight.
  "I’ll stay with her," Monk offered.
  Ham said dryly, "Renny would, too. Only, it has been  too dark, so far, for him to see what a beauty she is."
  "I hope you all get your blocks knocked off," the  girl said, unkindly.
  They left her with Monk and crept along the beach,  keeping close to the scrubby trees which overhung the
  sand. It was a  simple matter not to make much noise. Small waves made small sounds.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  32
  
  Doc Savage breathed a suggestion: "Notice how the  bowsprit runs up almost into the trees. That should offer
  us a chance  to get aboard."
  "Water must be deep in that place, to let ‘em get  this close in," Renny murmured.
  "They call it Ten Fathom Cove for that reason," Doc  Savage told him.
  They caught sight of the name of the schooner,  faintly discernible in the murk:
  HIGHLOW
  "
  Queer name," Renny breathed. 
  "On the contrary, a very fitting name," Doc Savage  replied.
  Renny frowned. "What do you mean—"
  He neither finished his question nor got an answer.  At the moment, a large crashing rose in the brush inshore.
  Several men  seemed to be approaching and, judging from the noises, fighting as they  came. Angry growls
  were frequent, as were blows.
  "This," Renny breathed hollowly, "is something new."
  DOC SAVAGE and his aids were almost under the  desired goal, the bowsprit. But, hearing a stirring on the
  deck above,  they withdrew, easing themselves into the shrubbery as silently as was  possible. Noises in the
  brush approached. A man was swearing. They  recognized the voice.
  Captain flamingo!
  It was incredible. It was like having some one arise  from the dead. For Captain Flamingo, to all appearances,
  had certainly  perished when he sank under the water at the shipyard and did not  appear again. But he was
  here now, and loud as life.
  He was saying, "You might as well calm down, matey.  We’re keepin’ you right with us."
  "This is very puzzling to me," complained a shrill  voice. "And it will go very hard with you for the indignities
  you have  forced upon me!"
  This speaker was plainly quite angry, yet he managed  to maintain a scholastic dignity in his manner of speech.
  Ham breathed close to Doc’s ear, "The voice of that  last speaker struck me as familiar."
  "You have heard it over the radio a number of times,  no doubt," Doc said.
  "I fail to place it," Ham whispered. "Who is—"
  A group of half a dozen men came out of the  shrubbery and stood in the sand under the schooner’s bowsprit.
  One of  them carried an ordinary oil lantern. He held up the light, enabling  Captain Flamingo to board the
  ship. The others were busy escorting  their captive.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 5. THE SCIENTIST
  33
  
  A little gray rabbit of a man was this prisoner. He  had a little nose that twitched, big fugitive eyes and even
  oversize  ears. His suit, light−gray and of some very fuzzy material, bore out  the general rabbit impression. He
  walked stiffly.
  They had a rope around his neck and they held his  arms, and indications were that he had been manhandled,
  somewhat.
  Renny, doubtless irked by an evening of inactivity,  breathed, "We can take this crowd, Doc."
  It was possible that Renny spoke deliberately, in  order to start things. The gang with the captive heard his
  whisper.  They started violently and stared into the murk.
  Then Renny hit them. He weighed around two hundred  and sixty pounds, all of it bone and gristle. He knew
  just about every  rough−and−tumble fighting trick in the book, and his huge fists were  about as effective as
  two concrete blocks.
  Two men dropped before they even had a chance. A  third got his guard up, both fists doubled in front of his
  face. Renny  swung, not around the guarding fists, but at them, driving them back  against the man’s jaw. The
  fellow dropped.
  Doc Savage had entered the fray with Renny. His  corded arms gathered in two men. He crushed them close,
  fell with them.  His metallic fingers were very busy for a moment. When he stood up, the  pair did not rise.
  Doc Savage had developed the ability to produce  abrupt unconsciousness in a somewhat unusual way—by
  administering  pressure on certain spinal nerve centers. It was much more effective  than a knockout blow.
  Ham entered the mêlée in a manner calculated not to  ruffle his immaculate clothing. He unsheathed his sword
  cane. The tip  of the blade was coated with a sticky, bilious−looking substance, which  was actually a chemical
  concoction that produced quick unconsciousness.  A slight prick was sufficient to administer it.
  He dropped the surviving man.
  The late prisoner, he who resembled a rabbit,  stumbled clear. All of his leg movements seemed rather clumsy.
  "Wonderful! Marvelous!" he gasped. "They have had me  in their power for weeks!"
  "Ha!" Ham rapped sharply. "Now I remember who he is."
  "Stanley Watchford Topping is his name," Doc Savage  said. "He is one of the great authorities on deep−sea
  marine life."
  "That is indeed I," said the rabbit man.
  He said it so that it sounded, somehow, a bit silly.
  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  During the next few minutes, Doc Savage, Ham and  Renny did little but remain concealed in the brush and
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  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  34
  
  keep the scrap  with the schooner going. There had been no opportunity to question the  man they had rescued,
  Stanley Watchford Topping. Now there came a lull.
  Stanley Watchford Topping was at Doc Savage’s elbow.
  "You said something about their holding you  prisoner," Doc suggested.
  "For weeks," agreed the little rabbit of a man. "It  has been quite hideous, I can assure you."
  Doc queried, "What was their purpose?"
  "The schooner," mumbled Topping. "She is my craft."
  Six evenly spaced shots came from the schooner. It  was a revolver. The lead knocked about in the foliage, the
  echoes  rattled about the cove.
  So far, the fighting had not drawn outside  attention. Nor was it likely to do so, this being an isolated spot, the
  nearest traveled road nearly a mile distant. Moreover, not many persons  were abroad this early in the
  morning. If the skirmish continued on  into the day, it might tell a different story.
  "Why did they hold you?" Doc Savage asked Topping  again.
  "Piracy!" said Topping.
  "Piracy?"
  "Exactly!" the rabbitlike man snapped. "They took  possession of my schooner and they held me captive, so I
  could not give  an alarm."
  "Have you any idea why they wanted the boat?" Doc  Savage asked.
  "It is the one I use in my deep sea expeditions,"  announced Topping. "It has some remarkable equipment
  aboard, devices  such as you will not find anywhere else. Apparently, they wanted to use  this equipment."
  "For what purpose?"
  "That" said Topping, dramatically, "is an amazing  story. You would not believe it."
  "Suppose you tell it," Doc Savage suggested.
  Two tongues of flame spurted over the schooner  rail—a rifle this time. The jacketed lead came too close for
  peace of  mind.
  "I will do better than tell you," Topping said,  grimly. "I will show you."
  "What do you mean?" Doc demanded
  "I own the land around this cove," Topping  explained. "I keep my schooner here, because it is an excellent
  anchorage. I have a house. It is only a little distance from here, on  the higher ground."
  "Newspapers have run stories about your  establishment here," Doc Savage told him.
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  35
  
  "Yes, I know," agreed the man. "But if we can reach  the house, I can show you something."
  "What?"
  "I would rather show it," Topping said, after  hesitating. "It will be more believable."
  More shots whacked from the boat. Renny leveled his  machine pistol, let it moan two short bursts. After the
  whooping echoes  had died, there was silence—excepting for occasional sounds of movement  aboard the
  schooner, which showed that the defending force had not been  put out of commission.
  Topping suggested, "If we could just get to the  house—"
  "All right," Doc Savage told him. "Those fellows on  the schooner will stay put, especially since it will be
  daylight before  long."
  Doc Savage called to Ham and Renny and, with Stanley  Watchford Topping, they eased back through the
  shrubbery.
  Monk, they surmised, was still guarding the girl.
  The house was big, which was about all it had to  recommend it to the eye. It had as much architectural
  comeliness as  three or four boxes of unassorted sizes arrayed one against the other.  There were not enough
  windows in the house.
  "It is inside, this thing you want to show us?" Doc  Savage asked.
  Topping wiggled his nose. There was now light enough  to see this small rabbitlike habit of his.
  "Inside." He nodded. "It will explain everything." 
  Renny rumbled, "Holy cow! Then what’re we waitin’  outside for?"
  They advanced to the door. Topping shoved it open,  then he hesitated.
  "My mind is not exactly easy," he said.
  "What do you mean?" Doc asked him.
  "It is a strange thing," Topping mumbled. "Their  leader is really a woman. She works for that devil, a gaudy
  parrot of a  person who calls himself Captain Flamingo."
  "Holy cow!" was all Renny could manage at that. 
  Ham, astonished, lipped, "Look here, do I get this  right? That girl is really their chief?"
  "She is," Topping murmured. "But she has taken great  pains to conceal it. With Captain Flamingo’s aid, she
  has even managed  to keep it from their own gang."
  Doc Savage and the others thought that over. It was  food for thought. Indeed, if anything could be called a
  stark surprise,  this was it.
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  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  36
  
  "But what makes you uneasy?" Doc Savage asked at  last. 
  "The woman may come here," Topping said, uneasily.  "Or Captain Flamingo may appear."
  "The woman is a prisoner," Doc Savage told him. "One  of our men, Monk, is holding her at a point down the
  beach."
  Topping did not seem greatly reassured.
  "Perhaps it would be better if we left a watchman at  the door," he suggested.
  "We will do that," Doc agreed. "Ham, you are  elected." 
  Ham said, "Certainly," and took up a position just  inside the door.
  THE air inside the house was heavy with two odors,  one of them quite distinctly that of fish. The other smell
  was less  easy to define, and Doc Savage put a query about it.
  "It comes from the special food for my morays,"  explained Topping.
  "Huh?" Renny grunted. "What’s a moray?"
  "I keep tropical fish and other live specimens,"  Topping explained. "It’s my business, you know. I am a
  specialist on  deep−sea life."
  "What’s a moray?" Renny repeated. "I’m no  ichthyologist."
  "A moray is possibly the most ferocious and deadly  thing in the sea," Topping informed him. "They are eels."
  They were moving along a corridor. Cases on the  walls held mounted fish.
  "Eels?" Renny sniffed. "An eel don’t appeal to me as  being a fierce critter."
  They entered a room, a large room in which there  were many glass aquarium tanks in which fish swam, and
  in which strings  of bubbles rose from aërating apparatus.
  "Morays are fierce," said Topping, dryly. "These I  have can a bite a man half in two, and they are of a
  particular species  a great deal more poisonous than rattlesnakes."
  They crossed the aquarium room, and Topping unlocked  another door. The doors of the house seemed to be
  made of metal, looked  very strong.
  "Nice customers," Renny said, referring to the  morays.
  "Here they are," Topping told him, and turned on the  lights in the next room. The chamber was absolutely
  windowless.
  Renny took one look.
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  37
  
  "Holy cow!" he exploded.
  He was not easily excited or surprised or appalled.  The underwater specimens before him lived up to their
  advance notices.  Not that, in repose, they looked particularly terrible. But one moray  happened to have its
  jaws distended, offering an excellent chance to  examine the equipment which made it so feared.
  In this room were tanks little short of gigantic.  The plate glass of their sides seemed to be very thick. They
  began at  the floor, and a man on tiptoe could not touch the top. They held  water. There was a grille of slender
  but stout steel bars over the top.
  "One of the morays got out of its tank once,"  Topping said. "We had a very difficult time with it. Of course,
  they  cannot remain out of water for long. But they are very active."
  Renny frowned at the moray which had its jaws  distended. Probably, the thing was yawning. Just looking at
  the jaw  equipment caused the back of Renny’s neck to feel cool. He held no  doubts about the thing being able
  to remove one of his legs with a  single snap.
  Doc Savage interposed: "Where is the thing we came  to see?"
  "There." Topping pointed, indicating the end of the  windowless room.
  THERE was an aisle before them, with the huge moray  tanks on either side. At the end of the room was a
  shelf, probably for  use in making notes during scientific study of the habits of morays. On  the shelf stood a
  case.
  "Gold!" exploded Renny, looking at the case. 
  "Nothing so valuable," Topping corrected. "It is  merely brass."
  In the somewhat inadequate light, the case did look  like gold. Its height was about six inches; its width near a
  foot.  Renny would have had to stretch his arms to span its length. It had a  hinged lid, and this was padlocked.
  "Is it yours?" Doc Savage asked.
  Topping gave a distinct shudder.
  "It belongs to that terrible and clever girl," he  said. "Captain Flamingo has been keeping it for her."
  They advanced between the tanks. Doc Savage studied  the morays curiously. He knew a great deal about the
  things, was fully  aware that they were probably the most dangerous denizen of the  tropical seas.
  It was the first time the bronze man had seen  morays, especially tank specimens, act as these did. They
  seemed  particularly ferocious.
  The party followed them then, eyes intent, the  length of their tanks. Renny was carefully walking in the
  middle of the  aisle and did not look especially comfortable.
  "What is in the brass box?" Doc Savage queried.
   MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA
  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  38
  
  "A terrible thing," said Topping. "An incredible  thing!"
  "That is repeating about the same statement you made  before," Doc reminded him.
  "I brought you here to show you the contents of that  case," Topping replied. "I wanted you to see with your
  own eyes. It  would be too much to expect you to believe a verbal recital."
  Renny gave a distinct jump, as one of the morays  rubbed against the side of its tank.
  "You’re sure one of these things can kill a man?" he  demanded.
  "I have seen it demonstrated." Topping shuddered  again. "It is an altogether horrible death."
  They reached the shelf on which the brass case stood.
  "Will the thing blow up?" Renny queried.
  "No, no, nothing like that," said Topping, hastily.  "Not unless you are speaking figuratively, referring to the
  effect this  thing will have upon the world if it ever gets out."
  Renny scowled. "You make it sound big."
  "I cannot exaggerate the importance of this terrible  thing," Topping said, and indicated the case.
  Renny reached out and lifted the case, testing its  weight. "Don’t feel very heavy," he said.
  "I will get a hammer," Topping murmured. "We will  have to break the lock."
  Renny let out a sigh that was like a small gale  coming from a cavern.
  "Boy this has built up on me," he said "I’m as  jittery as if I was gettin married. I’ll be glad to learn—" 
  THE world came apart. It was not exactly that, of  course. But it had all the abruptness, the violence.
  There was an explosion. It threw them against the  shelf. The brass box was knocked to the floor. The light
  went out. The  windowless place blackened utterly.
  There came a distinct clang all too full of  meaning. The door through which they had come had been
  slammed. A  rattle which followed indicated it was being locked.
  Stanley Watchford Topping emitted a scream, only a  sound of fear and horror at first, then the words
  becoming articulate.
  "The morays!" he squawked. "That explosion—a bomb!  It broke the tanks!"
  There was a pause, during which vivid splashings and  slitherings could be heard.
  Renny tried the shelf to ascertain if it would  support their weight. It broke away from the wall.
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  Chapter 6. THE BRASS CASE
  39
  
  "The morays are out!" Topping was gibbering now. "We  can’t keep them off in the dark!"
  It was true. There was water on the floor, the  warmth of it came almost to their knees—water of a warmth to
  which  these morays, vicious denizens of the tropic seas, had been accustomed.  It felt, that water, like the life
  fluid of something living.
  Chapter 7. MONK HUNTS DOC
  MONK was in rags. His clothes looked literally as if  they had been torn from his body. And they had.
  Monk had been in a fight. While guarding the girl,  Diamond Eve, the apelike one had been attacked by
  Captain Flamingo and  some of his men. Monk had been blackjacked before he could get into  action, and
  bound and guards put over him.
  But during the struggle, Diamond Eve had slipped  away unnoticed and came back with a revolver to hold up
  Monk’s guards  and release Monk from his bonds. Why she did this, Monk couldn’t figure  out.
  It was then the fight had taken place, for the girl  had taken the guns away from the guards and told Monk to
  defend himself.
  And he had! Thus the condition of his raiment.
  And then had come the explosion from the house.
  Safety demanded that Monk retreat a bit. He did so.  From his new position, he caught sight of the house.
  "Doc!" Monk roared.
  No answer.
  The homely chemist made for the house. His progress  had the noise and lack of caution of an elephant
  charge. He held to a  straight line.
  Guns began going off around him. The undergrowth  seemed full of foes. Their lead made a great racket in the
  leaves and  twigs.
  Monk, when he got in a fight, often had what might  be called unnatural luck. This was probably more a
  product of his  fighting style. In combat, Monk often did what would seem the least  sensible thing. Which
  probably explained why Monk was hit by none of  the bullets. Any hunter who has failed to bag a deer
  running through  brush could have explained it. Had Monk tried to be cautious and skulk,  the likelihood of his
  collecting bullets would have been great.
  A man was sprawled outside the door of the house. He  lay on his side, legs drawn up a little, head reposing
  on one crooked  arm. He looked as if he were asleep, but it was not a convincing  imitation.
  Ham certainly would not be asleep there!
  Monk vaulted a low stone fence, hurtled across the  yard. A fresh crash of gunfire made violent echoes. The
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  40
  
  bullets made  ugly noises around Monk, rifles and revolvers. There was a perceptible  difference between the
  noises the slugs made in passing. Rifle lead  whistled shorter, fiercer.
  Monk reached Ham, grabbed the dapper lawyer up and  went on through the open door, leaving the storm of
  bullets behind.
  "Doc!" Monk yelled.
  Again he received no answer.
  The thing which Monk valued most was, undoubtedly,  the well−being of Doc Savage. But the thing which
  could concern Monk  the greatest, although he would have parted with an arm rather than  admit it, was danger
  to Ham.
  Ham, Monk’s anxious examination disclosed, was only  senseless, and not very profoundly so at that. A knot
  on the back of  the dapper lawyer’s head indicated the cause. Finding it was not  serious, Monk fingered the
  knot rather ungently.
  This caused Ham to stir, groan.
  Monk grabbed Ham’s ears and gave them several  violent twists. Ham revived enough to take a swing at his
  tormentor.
  "You didn’t need to do it that way," Ham gritted.
  "I was waking you up," Monk said. "Where’s Doc?"
  Two bullets came in, dug plaster off the walls, and  they moved back a little before Ham answered.
  "In here somewhere," groaned the lawyer. "I was  lookout. Something exploded. The blast of air through the
  door knocked  me down. Some one ran around the corner of the house and kayoed me  before I could get up."
  "A swell lookout you turned out to be," Monk said,  unkindly.
  They entered the room which held the small  aquariums. Most of the glass cages had been broken by the
  explosion.  The doors of the room were of rather peculiar construction, with raised  thresholds, and this had
  caused the floor to become a pond in which  swam an amazing assortment of finny specimens. That the fish
  did not  have dispositions to match their beautiful coloring, was evident from  the way the big ones were
  already gobbling up the little ones.
  "It’s sure dog eat dog in this world," Monk  grumbled, and waded in.
  He reached the door at the end, which led into the  tank room of the morays. It was locked, with the key gone.
  Monk  wrenched. The door held. He hit it with his shoulder, and thereby  discovered the panel was of heavy
  metal.
  "Doc!" Monk bellowed. "You in there?"
  No reply came from beyond the locked door. Monk put  an ear against it, close to the keyhole. He could hear
  watery noises,  gurglings, sloshings, slitherings. This threshold was also raised, and  the sounds plainly
  indicated the room beyond had a floor covered with  water. Monk examined the keyhole. The lock could be
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  Chapter 7. MONK HUNTS DOC
  41
  
  picked from either  side, but Monk did not have suitable instruments.
  A commotion behind him distracted his attention. It  was Ham. The dapper lawyer was putting on a ludicrous
  performance. An  especially large and brilliant piscatorial specimen had apparently  decided to sample the
  nourishing qualities of Ham’s shanks, and Ham was  headed for the other door, the fish in pursuit.
  Monk, amazingly, did not laugh. He made a run, did  some fish dodging of his own, and joined Ham.
  "What do you make of this?" Ham gasped.
  Instead of answering, Monk squeaked, "Listen!"
  There were sounds outside the house, sounds of men  running. Monk and Ham raced to the door.
  Heavily armed men, more than a dozen of them, were  converging on the place. Captain Flamingo led the
  charge.
  Monk slammed the door, rapped at Ham, "Give me your  machine pistol."
  "The man who knocked me out took it," Ham snapped.
  "Then we’re really jammed up," Monk growled.
  Bullets began coming in though the door. They  retreated to the threshold of the aquarium room. They stood
  there,  trying to think of something to do.
  Then sounds behind them caused them to spin. The  door to the moray tank room had opened. Doc Savage
  came through!
  Chapter 8. FOUR SLEEPERS
  IN one bronze hand, Doc Savage held a small picklike  instrument, which he always carried for manipulating
  lock tumblers. His  other hand gripped the end of a grille of steel rods. Renny and Stanley  Watchford Topping
  held the end of this grating, and also the ends of  three others, with which they had fashioned a pen about
  themselves.
  They seemed very glad indeed to get out of the room.  The instant they were through the door, they dashed for
  Monk and Ham.  Renny was carrying Doc’s small flashlight.
  "Holy cow!" Renny thumped. "Is my hair white?"
  "No," Monk grunted. "What happened?"
  "Moray eels," Renny said. "Poison. Able to bite like  sharks!"
  "We tried to use our machine pistols on them," Doc  Savage explained. "But those mercy bullets flattened, the
  instant they  struck the water."
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  42
  
  Renny boomed, "Then Doc managed to get the gratings  off the top of the cases. We made ourselves a pen."
  Stanley Watchford Topping piped out in a voice that  was shrill, almost inarticulate with hysterical relief.
  "We escaped!" he bleated. "Unbelievable—certain  death—I shall never forget those moments!"
  "Thank Doc for that," Renny rumbled at him. "Blast  it, you were clumsy enough handling your share of those
  metal grilles—"
  Then, apparently for the first time, Renny saw what  had made Topping clumsy. The fellow had been carrying
  the brass case.
  "I give you credit," the big−fisted engineer  grunted. "You had presence of mind. I never even thought of that
  thing."
  "Nor would I," Topping retorted. "Doc Savage  requested me to bring it."
  Monk frowned at the long brass box. "What’s that  thing?"
  "Something that will explain what this whole  terrible affair is about," answered Topping.
  "Boy, that’ll be somethin’," Monk grunted. "Open it  up."
  There was a terrific crash. The whole house seemed  to tremble on its foundation. Walls creaked and plaster
  fell off. It  was a grenade, and it had blown down the front door. 
  "We will have to postpone for a short time the  examination of the box," Doc Savage said, and there was
  absolutely no  emotion in his voice.
  Renny’s machine pistol was the only firearms in the  party. The big−fisted engineer latched it to single−shot
  position, and  whacked two random mercy bullets out through the door.
  "The ammo drum is about empty," Renny boomed,  uneasily. "I gotta be a little stingy with what’s left."
  There was a door on the right side of the aquarium  room which held the small fish tanks. This had almost
  escaped notice in  the gloom. It admitted to a room which held a workbench and shelves on  which were
  littered wicking, cotton, plaster, preserving fluid,  varnish, coloring—the type of stuff used in mounting fish.
  There was a  half−mounted barracuda on the table.
  "My workroom!" gasped Topping. "Beyond it a stairway  leads to the upper floor."
  "What about a back door?" Doc Savage asked.
  "This way." Topping guided them.
  They were in the part of the house used for living  purposes now, and it differed little from any other dwelling.
  There  were rugs on the floor, substantial furniture. The stuff was not  expensive, nor was it cheap.
  The back door was a wooden one with a frosted−glass  panel. The morning was still early enough that it was
  somewhat dark in  the house, and Doc Savage was using his flashlight. The instant the  glow fell upon the
  glass−paneled door, bullets began to strike. The  glass fell out, jangling.
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  43
  
  "They had the back covered," Doc Savage said.
  Renny boomed, "It begins to look like we went out of  the pan into the fire!"
  DOC SAVAGE asked Topping, "Have you any guns in the  house?"
  "Only fowling pieces," replied the rabbitlike  authority on deep−sea life. "I am a skeet fan."
  He led them upstairs to a spot which, it developed,  was almost ideal for defensive purposes. It was an
  enormous square,  glass−enclosed sun room. A case on one wall held three expensive  fowling pieces, two of
  them over−and−under English guns. There were  boxes of shells and reloading kits. Topping, it appeared, did
  his own  reloading, like a true gun lover.
  They unlimbered the weapons. Carrying one, Doc  dashed back downstairs. He sighted the door, which had
  been blown open,  just in time to meet the charge of four men. He aimed at their legs,  and his shotgun
  unloosened two ear−splitting blasts.
  The four men ran away. The other two shotguns cut  loose upstairs. Outdoors, men yelled in pain. Rifles,
  revolvers barked.  Doc Savage fired twice more from the door, and their besiegers  retreated back into the
  brush.
  Going upstairs into the sun room, the bronze man  found most of the windows shot out. Those that remained
  were rapidly  disintegrating under a hail of lead. It was getting lighter now, and it  would soon be very
  dangerous for the occupants to attempt to look out.
  Doc Savage crawled to a dresser, upset it, broke the  mirror into large fragments and passed these pieces
  around. They could  lie on their backs, hold the mirror sections up, and get, reflected, a  fair image of what was
  going on outside.
  Before long, Captain Flamingo—his men rather, for  Flamingo himself remained under cover—started a
  charge. A volley from  the shotguns broke it up in short order. At that distance, a shotgun  was not a fatal
  weapon, but the agony the little pellets wrought was  very discouraging.
  Guns continued to smash. The walls of the sun room  below the windows were of masonry and thick enough
  to stop even the  high−powered rifle bullets. Despite the tension, time began to drag.
  It must have been an hour later when Doc Savage,  lying on the seaward side of the house, suggested, "Have a
  look, you  fellows."
  They gathered on that side for a brief scrutiny of  what the bronze man had seen. It was a tug and a barge,
  coming in from  the open Sound. The tug skipper knew his business, and jockeyed his  barge alongside the
  stern of the beached schooner without delay.
  Quite a number of Captain Flamingo’s men now gave up  the siege of the house, hurried down to the schooner
  and began to  transfer large boxes to the barge. Some of this merchandise appeared to  be very heavy. Sails had
  been cut away from the schooner gaffs, and  these were being employed as cargo booms.
  Doc Savage still had his small microscope tube  which, by altering the lenses, could be changed into a strong
  telescope.
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  44
  
  "What’s in the boxes, Doc?" Monk asked.
  "They are unmarked," the bronze man replied, and  glanced at Topping. "Do you know?"
  "I am not sure," Topping told them, "but I suspect  it is paraphernalia to aid them in this terrible thing they are
  trying  to accomplish."
  Renny rumbled, "Listen, Topping, it’s about time you  gave us the lowdown on that."
  "Let’s open the brass box," Monk suggested.
  Renny peered about, gulped, "Holy cow! Where is it?" 
  Topping looked frightened and rabbitlike, and spoke  hastily.
  "Downstairs," he said.
  Renny yelled, "What’s it doing down there?"
  "I left it in my workshop," Topping explained. "I  guess I was excited. I’ll go get it."
  "And I’ll just go along to see you don’t forget what  you went after," Renny snorted.
  The two of them crawled across the floor and  disappeared down the stairway.
  IT was the first opportunity which Monk had had to  speak with Doc Savage when Topping was not present.
  The homely chemist  made good use of his chance.
  "Doc," he squeaked, "I think Topping’s one of the  gang!"
  "What gave you that idea?" the bronze man queried. 
  "Things I overheard Captain Flamingo say when I was  attacked with the girl," Monk explained. "He seemed
  pretty sure you  were headed for a trap. And you were, it turned out."
  Ham spoke up, probably more for the sake of argument  with Monk than anything else.
  "But Topping was in there with the morays, along  with Doc and Renny," he pointed out.
  "Is that so?" Monk squinted at Doc.
  "He was there," the bronze man said.
  Monk frowned, scratched his nubbin of a head.  "Didn’t the guy have some way of duckin’ out or climbin’
  onto the wall  or somethin’? Some way of making sure the morays wouldn’t bite him?"
  "There was absolutely nothing he could climb upon,"  Doc Savage said. "There were no windows, and the one
  door was locked."
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  45
  
  "What do you say to that, Monk?" Ham demanded. 
  "Humph," Monk grunted. "Maybe he had them eels  trained so they wouldn’t bite him, or somethin’."
  "Not those morays," Doc Savage assured the homely  chemist. "No, they would have killed Topping just as
  quickly as they  would have killed us."
  Monk said, "Well, that kinda makes it look like he’s  straight. Now, after we see what’s in that brass case—"
  A shout came up from the lower rooms. It was Renny’s  voice—surprised, angry.
  "The brass case is gone!" Renny thundered.
  Monk heaved up, was shot at from outside, got down  on all fours and scuffled to the stairway.
  "Where’d it go?" he roared.
  Renny seemed to be trying to find that out. He could  be heard questioning Stanley Watchford Topping. In
  Renny’s bull−like  voice there was much suspicion, and little patience.
  A few minutes later, Renny and Topping came up. The  rabbitlike expert on fishes looked as if he would have
  dearly loved to  crawl in a hole somewhere.
  "This guy," Renny poked a derisive thumb at Topping,  "still says he left the case down there. Somebody got
  it."
  "One of Captain Flamingo’s men must have sneaked in  from outside," Topping quavered.
  Doc Savage, not without some risk, had his little  telescope trained on the schooner.
  "Have a look," he invited, abruptly.
  Ham took the telescope, peered, then said something  explosive under his breath.
  "Now what?" Monk demanded.
  "The brass case," Ham said. "Captain Flamingo’s men  got it, all right. They took it onto the schooner, and
  from there to  the barge. That was what Doc was looking at."
  Renny scowled darkly at Topping.
  "You’ve done enough stallin’," the big−fisted  engineer rumbled. "Spill what you know."
  Topping was patently a very nervous and scared man,  and individuals in that condition often do queer things.
  Topping now  blew up. His rabbit face grew purple, and the veins stood out on his  forehead. He made his
  rather scrawny hands into fists, seemed on the  point of taking a swing at Renny.
  "I’ve had all the bulldozing I’m going to stand  for!" he shrieked. "All of you can go stick your heads in the
  ocean! I  won’t tell you anything!"
  "You runt," Renny rumbled. "You’ll talk, or you’ll  get your neck wrung!"
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  Chapter 8. FOUR SLEEPERS
  46
  
  Just what the outcome of the quarrel would have been  was something they were not to learn. The gunfire
  outside suddenly  increased, until it took on the proportions of a pitched battle.  Strangely enough, hardly a
  bullet was going through the sun room.
  Doc Savage stood up for a look.
  "State troopers," he said. "All of this shooting was  bound to attract them."
  CAPTAIN FLAMINGO and his men promptly fled. Retreat  was orderly enough. They carried their wounded,
  converged on the  schooner and got aboard. They shifted to the barge, then to the tug.  The tug’s rail, of thick
  solid timbers, furnished an excellent bulwark.
  Lines holding the barge to the schooner were cast  off. The tug’s exhaust pipe spurted steam; water boiled
  under the  stern, and tug and barge moved out into Ten Fathom Cove.
  The police kept up a rattling fire, but this had no  effect.
  Doc Savage and his men were out of the house by now,  and Doc explained the circumstances to the State
  police. Then,  detailing Renny to watch Topping, Doc with Monk and Ham stood on the  headland at the
  mouth of the cove and gazed over Long Island Sound. The  tug and barge were lost to sight in an early
  morning fog.
  Deciding to question Topping more closely, they  could not find him. Then they discovered Renny in a clump
  of bushes,  unconscious. Stanley Watchford Topping had taken Renny unawares,  clubbed him down with a
  rock and escaped.
  Doc suggested they return to their headquarters. On  the way, he telephoned the coast guard, asking about the
  tramp steamer,  Tropic Seas, which had last been seen heading outward into the  Atlantic. The vessel had not
  been located. Fog conditions on the  Atlantic were even worse than on the Sound.
  Developments at this point seemed very much at a  standstill. Monk and Ham even resumed their argument as
  to why sailors’  pants were tailored with oversize bottoms.
  The argument was going strong, when Doc Savage,  Renny, Monk and Ham entered their eighty−sixth floor
  headquarters in  midtown Manhattan.
  Swinging down the corridor toward the anteroom door,  Ham insisted, "The cut of the pants is nothing but a
  style."
  "Nuts," Monk declared. "Now, take them dude pants  you got on there. If a wave washed over your feet and
  they got wet  around the bottoms, how’d you get ‘em off? You’d have a heck of a time.  There, that proves my
  point."
  The anteroom door opened when Doc Savage drew near  it. This phenomenon, mystifying to the unadvised,
  was simply explained.  Concealed in the floor in front of the door was a sensitive  electroscope connected to a
  relay, which, in turn, actuated the  mechanism that opened the door. Doc wore a plaque of radio−active metal
  in a shoe heel, and this affected the electroscope, putting the  apparatus in operation.
  They entered the office.
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  Chapter 8. FOUR SLEEPERS
  47
  
  THE argument resumed.
  "You’re pig−headed," Monk told Ham.
  "You baboon," Ham gritted at Monk. "Arguing with you  is about as hopeless as—"
  A sudden leap on Monk’s part caused Ham to break  off. Monk was headed for the inlaid table. On this stood
  an article  which had not been there when they were here before. It resembled an  oversize traveling bag of
  very stiff black leather, with a ventilating  screen at each end. Monk lifted the case, and a series of grunts
  came  from it.
  "Habeas Corpus," Monk chuckled.
  Ham exhibited symptoms of apoplexy, and yelled,  "How’d that get here?"
  "My secretary must have brought it up," Monk  grinned, and opened the carrying case.
  Habeas Corpus came out. Habeas was Monk’s pet pig,  and as homely a specimen of the porcine family as
  Monk was of the human  race. The pig had unnaturally long legs, ears like sails, a snout built  for
  inquisitiveness, and a body of no consequence.
  Ham stalked indignantly to the window and looked  out. Habeas, he had repeatedly maintained, was the one
  thing in the  world he could not tolerate.
  Monk began, "Sailors’ pants—"
  "Shut up!" Ham screamed.
  Ham seemed to have reached the end of his rope. He  spun, lifted his fist, took a step toward Monk. Only one
  step; then  something strange happened. Ham’s mouth opened very wide. A queer  expression overspread his
  face. His knees hinged, and he sat down on  the floor.
  "Poisoned by his own spleen," Monk said unkindly,  thinking it was some kind of an act.
  Ham sank flat on his face. An instant later, Renny  fell. He went down like a felled tree.
  "Blazes!" Monk gasped. Then he, too, began to look  strange.
  Doc Savage moved. With all of the tremendous speed  of which his great trained sinews were capable, he
  flashed across the  anteroom, into the library, on to the laboratory. There was almost an  incredible frenzy in
  his movements. He reached a chemical case in the  laboratory.
  The case held bottles. Labels on these bore the  strange symbols with which chemicals and chemical formulae
  are  designated. Doc got out three bottles, drank from each in succession,  holding the contents of all in his
  mouth, mixing them there, then  swallowing.
  The bronze man ran back into the reception room.  There was still that strange frenzied speed in his
  movements.
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  48
  
  Ham, Monk, Renny—all three were sprawled out on the  floor. The pig, Habeas, was also down and not
  moving. Doc Savage stood,  looked at them.
  The bronze man’s trilling sound, eerie and fantastic  to a greater degree than usual, filled all the anteroom, the
  library  and the laboratory beyond. Its loudness was greater than usual, and it  was a bit steadier, at first, but it
  began to subside very slowly, as  if its source were being throttled, stifled.
  And, as his trilling subsided, so did the figure of  the giant bronze man. The bend of his knees, hardly
  perceptible at  first, increased, and he folded, finally to topple forward, braced with  his hands on the floor, and
  remain there for a time. By slow jerks, he  let himself down.
  He seemed to relax completely.
  Chapter 9. PASSENGERS FOR NASSAU
  DOC SAVAGE wore nothing above the waist. His  muscles, even in repose, were like cables, bundled wire,
  over which the  fine−textured bronze of skin had been painted.
  Doc sat in a chair. A porthole behind him was open,  and through this came salty sea breeze and the noise of
  water rushing  past. In the room was a washstand, a built−in wardrobe, a rather worn  rug, two life preservers
  in a rack, and a notice on the door telling  where the lifeboat stations for the cabin were to be found. There
  was  also a bed.
  On the bed lay Renny, Ham, Monk and the pig, Habeas  Corpus. There was no sound for many minutes. Doc
  Savage did not move. A  ship’s clock struck six bells. Two women passed in the corridor  outside, chattering.
  "We reach Nassau sometime late tonight," one of the  women said.
  Then they walked on.
  Ham stirred a little on the bed, lifting an arm and  letting it fall on Monk. Monk brushed at the hand, as if it
  had been an  annoying insect. Renny, without stirring in the slightest, emitted a  rumbling sound.
  Doc Savage got up from the chair, went to the  washstand, took a drinking glass out of its rack and drew
  water. He  dashed a glass of water, very hard, into the face of each man. He threw  one on Habeas Corpus. The
  pig promptly got up, jumped off the bed and  scrambled under it.
  Monk sat up slowly, keeping his eyes shut until he  was in a sitting position. Then he opened his eyes, looked
  at Doc,  looked at the cabin, at the rest of the men. He blinked a number of  times. Then, with a perfectly sober
  face, he reached over and shook Ham.
  "Hey, shyster," he mumbled thickly; "why are  sailors’ pants big at the bottoms?"
  Ham opened his eyes after a bit, focused them with  difficulty and looked at Monk, much as if he had just
  discovered his  own personal devil. He said nothing. Renny rumbled again, rolled over  on Ham, and the
  dapper lawyer set up a vague bleating.
  It was fifteen minutes before they had entirely  awakened. Monk ranged small eyes over the cabin once more.
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  49
  
  "What I want to know," he mumbled, "is where are we?  How’d we get here? And what’re we doin’ here?"
  "You omitted an important question," Doc Savage told  him, without expression.
  "What?" Monk demanded.
  "The day of the week," Doc replied.
  "It was Saturday morning when we passed out," Monk  grunted. "I guess this is Saturday afternoon."
  "Thursday," Doc Savage said.
  "Huh?" Monk squinted. "You wouldn’t fool a guy?"
  "This is Thursday," Doc Savage repeated. "You have  been out of the picture for the better part of five days." 
  Had they awakened to the discovery that they had  undergone transmigration to some unexpected form of
  afterlife, they  could not have been a great deal more surprised. Ham sprang off the  bed, ran to the door, tried
  it and found it locked. Monk merely sat on  the bed and looked bewildered. Renny, however, lumbered to the
  porthole  and managed to jam his head out.
  "Water," he said, taking a look around. "Nothing but  ocean."
  "We have a starboard cabin," Doc Savage told him.  "We should be able to pick out Great Isaac before long."
  Renny frowned. "Who’s ‘Great Isaac’?"
  "An island on which stands a lighthouse," Doc Savage  explained. "It is situated on the edge of the
  deep−channel steamer lane  to Nassau."
  "Nassau?" Renny looked bewildered.
  "The main port of New Providence, one of the more  northerly islands of the Caribbean Sea," the bronze man
  elaborated.  "The ship is scheduled to reach there sometime tonight, judging from  the conversation of two lady
  passengers, who went down the corridor a  short time ago."
  Monk got down on his hands and knees on the floor,  put a long furry arm under the bed and brought out
  Habeas Corpus.  Habeas seemed pretty much disgusted by the whole business. His usual  agility was missing,
  but he had enough life to reassure Monk.
  Monk looked intently at Doc Savage.
  "What happened to us?" he demanded.
  "It is a queer story," Doc informed him.
  Monk snorted. "The whole thing has been queer, right  from the minute that guy staggered into our office,
  about ready to die.  And it wound up with the mystery talk Stanley Watchford Topping gave  about that brass
  case."
  "What is the last thing you remember?" Doc queried.
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  50
  
  "Something queer happening in the office," Monk  replied. "I went to sleep, it seemed like."
  "That was caused by a new type of anaesthetic, now  coming into use in hospitals," Doc told him. "It would
  not be hard to  forge credentials and purchase it from chemical concerns. That,  possibly, explains how the girl
  got it."
  "Girl?" Monk sprang off the bed. "Do you mean that  Diamond Eve Post dame—"
  "Diamond Eve Post did it," Doc informed him,  "probably by forcing the gas, which is nearly odorless, under
  t h e  d o o r   s i l l .  S h e  t h e n  m o v e d  u s  a l l  a b o a r d  t h i s  s t e a m e r ,  w h i c h  i s  a  s m a l l
  combination−passenger−and−freight vessel, making a regular round of the  Caribbean islands."
  "She brought—us—aboard?" Monk said jerkily, as if  the thing were too preposterous to believe.
  "She managed it with great secrecy," Doc advised.  "We were put in large trunks, which were sent to this
  cabin, then  removed after we were taken out. It is doubtful if any one but Diamond  Eve Post knows we are
  aboard."
  "What’s her reason for doing this?" Monk demanded.
  "That is a mystery," the bronze man admitted.
  Monk squinted at Doc. "How do you know what  happened? Have you talked to the girl?"
  "No," Doc said. "She probably thinks we are still  senseless."
  "Then how did you learn so much?" persisted the  homely chemist.
  "An antidote for the anaesthetic," Doc Savage told  him. "It was my fortune to recognize the nature of the
  stuff, when Ham  went down, and there was time to get into the laboratory and mix stuff  which would
  counteract its effect."
  "Then you haven’t been unconscious?" Monk grunted  the query.
  "At no time," Doc told him.
  MONK shook his head slowly, as if he found Doc’s  motive very difficult of comprehension. After he had
  given the matter  thought for a moment, he queried, "But why play possum? Why not just  grab her?"
  "She is a very difficult young woman to handle, as  you may have noticed," Doc Savage said slowly, a bit
  dryly. "She  brought us aboard this boat for some specific purpose. The most simple  and effective method
  seemed to be to trail along and ascertain what  resulted."
  "Is Diamond Eve Post aboard?" Monk asked, with a  perceptibly quickened interest.
  Doc Savage nodded. "She is."
  Monk’s grin draped his homely face from ear to ear.
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  51
  
  "Boy, it’s gonna be swell to put a fast one over on  her," he chuckled. "She sticks in my hair like chewing
  gum!"
  After that, Monk appeared to recall something. He  got down on all fours again, looked under the bed,
  grunted, and with  his long arms raked out a number of metal boxes. These were numbered  and equipped with
  carrying straps. He scowled at the boxes.
  "This is the equipment we usually take along when we  go on a job," he murmured. "How’d it get here?"
  "The girl," Doc said.
  "But how’d she know—"
  "The equipment was all in one cabinet for  convenience, you recall," Doc reminded him. "She did not need to
  be a  scientist to tell what it was. So she just brought it along."
  Monk demanded, "And why would she do that?"
  "
  Ps−s−st!" Ham hissed.  "Some one is coming!" 
  They listened. The water slopping outside the boat  made noises like the sighing of a big green beast.
  Footsteps in the  corridor were firm and bold, and they came up with every indication  that the one who made
  them was bound along the corridor. But they  stopped quite unexpectedly outside the door.
  A faint clicking gave the impression at first, that  a key was being inserted in the lock; but the clicking
  persisted. It  was no key. Some one was trying to pick the lock.
  Doc Savage gestured at the bed. He made his meaning  clear. They were all to play unconscious again.
  It was, in truth, a relief to spread themselves out  on the mattress once more. With the exception of Doc, they
  felt  aftereffects of what they had gone through—dizziness and some nausea.
  They got themselves positioned, without noise,  before the door opened, and Doc Savage was with them. He
  had an arm  carelessly across his eyes, so that he could watch without his open  eyes being observed.
  The door opened boldly. Stanley Watchford Topping  came in. He entered with shoulders back, step firm, but
  he did not  quite keep fear and uncertainty off his face. Obviously, he had forced  himself to enter in this
  manner, in hopes of making it seem he was not  skulking.
  He shed his bold attitude the instant he saw the  figures on the bed. He looked about as scared as a man could
  look,  whirled, wrenched the door open and got half through it. Then it dawned  on him that the figures on the
  bed had not moved.
  He hesitated for some moments, and then reëntered  gingerly. His nose twitched rapidly, rabbit fashion. He
  trembled. He  even wrung his hands.
  "That terrible girl!" he gasped, distinctly enough  that all the men feigning senselessness heard him. "That
  terrible girl!"
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  52
  
  He peered at the men on the bed, but did not  approach them.
  "That girl," he gulped. "She has killed them!"
  Then, unexpectedly, the door opened behind him. The  panel swung back with swift violence.
  Captain Flamingo and three of his men came in,  taking guns out of their pockets.
  Doc Savage watched the entire action from under his  arm, eyelids pinched to the thinnest slit possible that
  would still  permit vision. The bronze man did not move.
  Stanley Watchford Topping had plainly not expected  the new arrivals. He recoiled wildly, got his back
  against one wall of  the cabin and leaned there, the wall supporting him. He said no word.
  Captain Flamingo stared at the forms on the bed.
  "What’s wrong with them?" he demanded. Then, without  waiting for any one to answer, he swung over,
  grabbed Renny and shook  him violently. Renny was an actor. He managed to seem asleep.
  "Well varnish my topmasts," Captain Flamingo  muttered, puzzled. "They’ve got somethin’ wrong with ‘em!"
  "It’s the work of that girl," said one of his men.
  "She’s slicker than pot lead," muttered Captain  Flamingo. "She’s had ‘em in here since we sailed from New
  York, and we  never got wise. We never even knowed she was aboard, til we see her  cruisin’ into the dinin’
  room on the sly."
  "Trailin’ her, until we seen her come in here, was a  lucky move for us," added a man behind him.
  Captain Flamingo now exhibited every appearance of  indulging in deep thought. He adjusted his bright
  necktie, shifted his  gaudy hat on his head, and pulled out his lower lip and let it snap  back against his teeth
  several times. Then he smacked the palms of his  hands together.
  "Fog’s gone," he chuckled. "I see what the girl’s  game was."
  "What?" demanded one of those with him.
  "She trailed us and learned we come aboard with her  stuff," said Captain Flamingo. "She guessed the kind of
  a course we  planned sailin’. So she brought the bronze guy and the others aboard,  figurin’ she’d turn him
  loose on us."
  "She sure did fix us up with a lee shore," the other  agreed.
  Captain Flamingo produced an enormous sailors’ clasp  knife and said in an utterly cold voice, "Here’s where
  we sink our Doc  Savage troubles permanent."
  He stepped toward the bed. The men who had entered  the room with him also produced knives. Stanley
  Watchford Topping had  not moved or spoken.
  Doc Savage came off the bed. The abruptness with  which he did this just about defied the eye. One instant he
  was on the  bed, the next he was erect on the floor.
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  53
  
  Monk, Ham, Renny were on their feet a fraction of a  moment later. They separated, confronting the foes.
  Prospects for a  very bloody and terrific struggle looked excellent.
  The scrap failed quite to jell. This was due to an  interruption from a totally unexpected source.
  The voice of Diamond Eve Post said casually, "It is  very lucky indeed that this is a repeating shotgun."
  A picture, so insignificant that no one had noticed  it before, was now canted away from one stateroom
  wall—shoved aside by  what was unmistakably the barrel of a repeating shotgun, held by some  one in the
  adjoining cabin.
  A SCREAM came from Stanley Watchford Topping, a  scream so shrill that it might have been emitted by a
  woman. He dived  for the door, tore it open and popped out.
  Whether it was because Topping’s action unnerved  them, or whether cold reason told them that flight was the
  best course,  there was no indication. But Captain Flamingo and his followers fled,  not even attempting to use
  their knives. The last one through the door  got it shut before Doc Savage reached it.
  Doc seized the knob. One, maybe more, of the  fugitives was holding it on the other side. Doc wrenched. The
  screw  which held the inner knob on its shaft must have been defective. The  knob came off.
  The man on the other side jerked the shaft out of  its hole. The fellow’s grunt of delight at this development
  was plainly  audible. He could be heard running away with Captain Flamingo and the  others.
  The door was not locked, but it might as well have  been, for the latch held it securely. Doc tried to insert a
  finger in  the hole where the knob shaft had been, but there was not sufficient  purchase to turn the mechanism.
  He hit the panel with his shoulder. In  movies and fiction, doors are smashed quite easily. In practice, it is
  different, especially with a door as strong as this one.
  Doc hit it at least half a dozen times. Then the  lock ripped out and he was in the corridor. He looked forward,
  aft. The  fugitives were not in sight. It had sounded as if they had run toward  the stern. Doc moved in that
  direction.
  The adjacent stateroom door opened. The barrel of a  shotgun came out, then Diamond Eve Post.
  The young woman tucked the shotgun under an arm and  gave Doc Savage a most radiant smile.
  "They’ve gotten away," she said. "It would not be  the healthiest thing in the world to pursue them."
  "Why not?" Doc asked, quietly.
  "Captain Flamingo has not less than thirty men  aboard," the young woman announced.
  "Thirty?" Doc Savage eyed her steadily.
  Monk and the others had by now crowded out into the  corridor. They did not look especially enthusiastic,
  being still weak  from the long confinement, which, judging from the way their stomachs  felt, had been
  without food. 
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  54
  
  "We will go back in the stateroom," Doc Savage told  the young woman, "and ask you questions."
  "You can ask them," she said. "It won’t do you any  good."
  "You are still not going to talk?" Doc queried.
  "Still." She nodded vehemently.
  They filed back into the stateroom, and Doc’s three  men registering weakness, sat down—two of them on the
  bed, one of them  on the chair.
  The girl frowned at Doc Savage. "You’re entirely too  wide awake. How come?"
  In a tone which contained neither pride nor a sense  of triumph, Doc Savage explained that he had been at no
  time  unconscious as had the others.
  The young woman looked somewhat stunned, and gasped,  "But I have frequently observed you through that
  hole behind the  picture, and never suspected a thing."
  "The hole was not hard to find," Doc Savage assured  her. "You could usually be heard entering your cabin."
  A sharp report reached their ears. The sound had an  unusual quality. It was as if some one had hit the deck
  outside a  single blow with a hammer.
  "A shot!" Monk squeaked. "Somewhere down in the  hold!"
  "Captain Flamingo," Diamond Eve Post wailed. "He’s  going into action now!"
  It was the first time they had heard genuine fear in  her voice.
  Chapter 10. PIRACY
  DOC SAVAGE was suddenly in motion. He grasped the  girl’s arm, and his trained voice put a question with
  an imperative  crash.
  "What is Captain Flamingo attempting?" he demanded.
  "He wants this boat," said the girl.
  "Robbery?" Doc demanded.
  "No." She shook her head. "We put the schooner he  was using out of commission. He has to have a boat. So
  he’s seizing  this one."
  Doc Savage released her arm, whipped to the door,  opened it and lunged into the corridor. She followed him.
  Monk, Ham and  Renny, looking for once as if they would not relish a fight, staggered  after them.
  "Your equipment?" the girl snapped at Doc Savage.  "In the stateroom."
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  Chapter 10. PIRACY
  55
  
  "We may need it," Doc agreed. 
  They went back, gathered up the metal cases which  enclosed their equipment, carried them along.
  "I have concentrated food in my cabin," the girl  said. "I’ll get some of it."
  She bobbed into her stateroom, which differed very  little from the one occupied by Doc Savage and his men,
  and came out a  moment later bearing a common weekend case of leather.
  Monk noted the diminutive size of the case, and  sniffed, "Huh? I could eat more than that can hold, right
  now."
  "Not of the stuff that’s in here," she assured him.  "You put a pill of it in a kettle of water, and you’ve got beef
  broth."
  Doc Savage interrupted with, "We will head for the  most important spot on the ship."
  "Where’s that?" Monk demanded.
  "The radio room," Doc retorted.
  "I think it’s topside somewhere," said the girl.  "Near the bow—"
  "Nearer the stern," Doc corrected her. "This is a  one−design class of steamer. Its name is Caribbenda, is it
  not?"
  They were running along a narrow corridor, bordered  with handrails for use in a seaway. A stewardess stood
  gaping at them,  then stepped hastily out of their path.
  "How did you know what boat this was?" the girl  demanded.
  "Overheard the name several times in the last few  days," Doc explained.
  "Oh!" She smiled thinly. "I was beginning to think  you were clairvoyant or something."
  They clattered up a companionway. Somewhere, a man  began to scream. The voice seemed to come from
  above, but it had an  unnatural, far−away quality. It was, however, an absolutely  horror−stricken voice.
  They came out on deck. It was the topmost deck and  presented the usual jumble of ventilators, funnels, masts,
  hatches,  stays, deck chairs, and shuffleboard courts.
  The radio shack was just that—a shack aft which  looked as if it had been put there as an afterthought.
  A man was standing in front of the open door of the  radio shack. He held a revolver. Evidently, he was not a
  man who  believed in taking chances, because the instant he saw Doc Savage, he  took a flying leap over the
  rail toward the lower deck, disappearing  from view.
  Doc Savage reached the radio shack. One glance  inside was enough. The operator on duty was unconscious
  on the floor.  It was common for ships of this size to carry only two transmitting  sets—one short−wave, one
  long−wave. A fire−ax had been used to demolish  both of these.
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  56
  
  THE homely Monk had dropped his equipment case,  picked up a deck chair, and run to the railing over which
  the man with  the revolver had leaped. It was quite a drop to the lower deck, but the  fellow had managed it
  and was running away. Monk threw the chair at him  and did a very good job of it. The fugitive went down.
  The fellow was not unconscious, however, only upset;  and he did not lose his gun. After he stopped rolling,
  he did not try  to get up, but lay there and began shooting at Monk. The homely chemist  yanked himself
  backward.
  The steamer’s whistle started moaning, continued to  moan steadily. It was an extremely loud whistle. It made
  conversation,  even at a screaming pitch, impossible at more than the shortest  distances.
  Doc Savage and his aids, after bellowing  ineffectually at each other a few times, resorted to sign talk on their
  fingers, deaf−and−dumb fashion. They had practiced this in the past  until they were quite skillful.
  "The radio apparatus is out of commission," Monk  stated on his fingers.
  "Yes," Doc Savage agreed in the same fashion. "We  will try to keep them out of the engine room."
  They ran forward, headed for the companionway which  would give admittance to the engine room. They
  passed a ventilator from  which came various, unnatural sounds. Doc stopped the group.
  "Listen," he signaled on his fingers, and pointed at  the ventilator.
  Out of the flaring mouth of the horn−like airshaft  came the stifled moaning of a man. There was a shot, a
  shout; and after  a moment, silence.
  Captain Flamingo’s voice, coming out of the  ventilator, said, "That puts us in charge of the engine room. We
  don’t  give a hoot about the rest of the vessel. And the radio is out of  commission."
  Doc Savage got the attention of his men centered on  his bronze fingers.
  "This ventilator leads to the engine room," he  signaled. "Captain Flamingo seems to have taken over, down
  there."
  A gun banged from the bridge. One of Captain  Flamingo’s men was shooting at them. It was a high−powered
  rifle, and  the bullet made a deep perforation in the by no means thin metal of the  ventilator.
  Doc Savage and the others drifted hastily to cover.  They still had their equipment cases. They opened these,
  took an  inventory of the contents.
  "Holy cow!" Renny’s big rumble penetrated even  through the din of the whistle, which still blew. "No
  machine pistols."
  The girl shrieked, "I did the best I could! I  couldn’t find them!"
  Monk was pawing over his own share of the  paraphernalia.
  "No gas!" he shouted. "No masks, even if we did have  gas! Say, this is gonna be a tough business!"
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  Diamond Eve Post added to the general cheer by  managing to convey at the top of her voice a bit of
  information.
  "Captain Flamingo has all kinds of weapons!" she  advised. "He had a chance to bring everything that he
  would need!"
  There were shots, now, in other parts of the ship.  There was also a good deal of shrieking on the part of
  women  passengers, and hoarse bawlings by men.
  Unexpectedly, Doc Savage left the others and crawled  forward to the radio shack. He managed to get inside.
  When he came out,  he was carrying a bundle of yellow sheets which were fastened to a  clip−board.
  "What’s that?" Monk asked.
  "Radiograms; sent and received since the ship left  New York," Doc told him.
  MONK wanted to ask questions, the expression on his  homely face plainly showed, but the inquiries were
  side−tracked by a  sudden burst of shouting from below deck. Brittle voices were giving  orders. Captain
  Flamingo’s bellowing tone was among them.
  The passengers, it seemed, were being herded under  the after deck.
  Monk drew to one side, seeking the lee of a large  skylight hatch. The thing had the size of a small house. It
  was almost  as high as a man’s head. Monk was carrying a metal case. Opening this,  he began to pore over the
  contents.
  Doc Savage joined Monk. The box the homely chemist  was examining contained one of the remarkable little
  portable chemical  laboratories of which Monk was so proud. Monk had prepared several of  these and kept
  them in various boxes, convenient for emergencies. The  girl had evidently found this one, and included it
  with the other  equipment.
  Together, Doc and Monk went over the bottled  contents:
  "What can we rig up outa this, Doc?" Monk asked.
  Monk, despite the fact that he was conceded to be  one of the nation’s leading industrial chemists, was not
  hesitant in  conceding that seeking Doc Savage’s help would be a wise move. Monk had  a deep suspicion that
  Doc knew the most chemistry of the two of them.
  "We can try one thing, at least," Doc Savage told  him.
  The bronze man now went to work. In three trays he  mixed three different groups of chemicals. The trays
  were of an  ingenious collapsible type, which were folded perfectly flat. He  selected a number of small glass
  phials. These were of progressive  sizes so that they nested, one within the other, for compact carrying.  There
  were corks to fit each.
  He filled the phials, drawing from each tray in  about equal proportions. He promptly corked each one tightly,
  then  shook it. It could be noted that during this operation he was very  careful to hold his breath. When he did
  find it necessary to breathe,  the bronze man crawled a number of feet distant, where he could get the  fresh,
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  sharp sea breeze from the bow.
  "They’ll be able to see it," Monk said, when the  work was done. "It takes special equipment to make the stuff
  so that it  is perfectly colorless. It’ll smell a little, too."
  "We will try to get around that problem," Doc told  him.
  They could, they were discovering, move around with  a surprising degree of freedom on the top deck. It
  seemed that Captain  Flamingo’s men, occupied with taking over the rest of ship, were busy  with their own
  devices for the time being. No doubt there were plenty  of guards stationed in the companionways, however.
  DOC SAVAGE now crawled to a large wooden box, which  had a hinged top. Boxes like this were distributed
  along each side of  the deck. They held fire hose.
  The hose was of cotton−and−rubber construction. Doc  Savage made a bundle of it, and over this he sprinkled
  a highly  inflammable chemical taken from Monk’s portable laboratory. Then he  crawled to the base of a large
  ventilator, dragging the bundle, then  applied a match to the hose. It began to burn with a blue, sizzling
  violence. Doc Savage hurriedly disengaged the grating which covered the  mouth of the ventilator, and heaved
  the flaming bundle through.
  "That ventilator is part of the system which  supplies the saloon and cabins with fresh air," he said. "The
  smoke  will be distributed through the major part of the ship."
  "They’ll find the burning hose, and put it out,"  said the girl, who had been watching curiously.
  "Of course," Doc agreed. "But not before it makes  some smoke."
  They now waited, expectant ears cocked in the  direction of the ventilator. Perhaps five minutes passed.
  Shouts began  to go up.
  "Fire!" bawled somebody, nervously.
  Looking astern, and taking a chance and peering down  the companionway, they could see smoke. The stuff
  was strong enough to  set a number of persons coughing.
  Monk began to chortle gleefully. "The smoke’ll keep  ‘em from smellin’ or seein’ our stuff!"
  Doc Savage now worked forward. He carried with him  the glass phials which he had filled with the chemical
  mixture. As he  passed each ventilator, he hurled one of the small bottles into the  mouth of it—hurled it with
  sufficient violence that it broke. For good  measure, he lobbed two at the bridge and then threw two entirely
  over  it, so that they broke on the forward deck. Then he crawled back to  join the others.
  "Now we will watch them and see what happens," he  said. 
  Diamond Eve Post seized his arm, demanded, "What was  that stuff in the bottles?"
  "A liquid which will vaporize into a gas that  produces unconsciousness when breathed," Doc Savage told her.
  "It has  the advantage of being effective at very low concentration."
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  THE wind—they noticed its direction carefully from  the smoke drift from the funnels—was coming off the
  starboard bow.  Accordingly, they positioned themselves as near the starboard rail as  they safely could.
  "Can’t they escape the gas with masks?" Diamond Eve  Post asked, anxiously.
  "They will not have time," Doc Savage told her.  "They will not discover the presence of the stuff in time, due
  to the  smoke."
  "Want to make a bet?" asked the young woman.
  "What?" the bronze man queried.
  "You won’t get to first base with this gas gag," she  announced.
  Monk, overhearing, snorted, "Huh, you don’t know  this gas."
  "You have to breathe it before it works, is that  right?" asked the young woman.
  "That’s the general idea," Monk told her.
  "All right," she said. "It won’t work. Watch and  see." 
  It might have been noticed that, during the next few  moments, Doc Savage watched the young woman
  curiously, as if  endeavoring to read her mind. What she had just said had, undoubtedly,  interested him.
  Meaningful sounds began to come up from the lower  deck. Men shouted. There seemed to be a small panic.
  "They’re dying!" a woman screamed. "They’re falling  over dead!"
  Monk grunted. "Too bad to scare her, of course, but  they’re only fallin’ over unconscious."
  The panic noises began to subside. Fewer and fewer  persons cried out. Within the course of the next several
  minutes, the  ship acquired the quietness of a tomb.
  Doc Savage said, "We might as well go down, now."
  Diamond Eve Post caught his arm nervously.
  "Don’t!" she gasped.
  Doc Savage studied her. "But the gas—"
  "Oh, darn it," she snapped. "Captain Flamingo won’t  be taken in by this. I’m not going to tell you what, but I
  know he took  them; all of his men took them before they started out to capture the  ship."
  "Would you mind making yourself clear?" Doc Savage  requested.
  She gave him a very wide−eyed look.
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  "Do you remember, back in the shipyard in New York,  when Captain Flamingo and two of his men went
  under the water and did  not come up?" she demanded.
  "That incident is not very easy to forget," Doc told  her. "It certainly seemed they were drowned. Yet they
  were not."
  "All right," said the girl. "I’m not going to tell  you any more, except this: Be careful when you go below."
  Doc Savage watched her steadily for some moments. 
  "We are going to lose patience with you," he said.  "Chivalry, you know, will extend only so far. There are
  ways of making  even a young woman talk."
  "Boo," she said, carelessly. "Am I scared?"
  DOC SAVAGE vouchsafed nothing more, but worked his  way aft toward the companionway. Monk, Ham,
  and Renny trailed him.  There was no sound from below.
  "She’s sure a sassy gal," Renny rumbled resentfully.  "A good old−fashioned spanking would help her a lot."
  The ship now swung slightly, as if there were no  hand at the wheel. The sun made shifting shadows that
  caused them to  note the position of the solar orb. It was almost on the horizon; there  would be darkness
  shortly.
  Doc Savage halted his little cavalcade.
  "The girl seemed very sure of herself," the bronze  man said, quietly. "It might be advisable for us to use a
  great deal of  caution."
  The bronze man now changed his course and reached a  smaller skylight. Being familiar with the layout of a
  small steamer  such as this, he knew the skylight admitted to a diminutive writing  room, located aft. The
  skylight could be opened from the outside—and  without much noise, as trial proved. There was sufficient
  space for the  bronze man to crawl through. He did so.
  The drop to the floor of the writing room he managed  without undue noise. He listened. No sound. He glided
  to a porthole  which gave a view of the after deck.
  Passengers and the regular crew of the steamer had  been herded to the after deck before the gas struck them.
  They were now  sprawled in such positions as they had chanced to drop. There did not  seem to be a conscious
  individual among them.
  Doc Savage moved to the door. He stepped through it  into the gory red sunlight of the tropical dusk.
  Instantly, half a  dozen guns crashed.
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  Chapter 11. HIDDEN CARGO
  IT is commonly recognized that the human eye  requires a little time, brief though the interval may be, to
  recognize  movement. Registration of an optical image is no instantaneous process.  If it were not for this,
  many things would not be possible, among them  the ordinary motion picture.
  Doc Savage, through long, intense training, could  possibly perceive a thing more quickly than the average
  person; but  that was not what saved him now. He had spent a great deal of time  acquiring the ability to move
  more quickly than the other man.
  Captain Flamingo and his men were concealed about  the deck. They had guns. It was necessary to aim the
  weapons after they  saw Doc Savage. In the fraction of a second required for that, Doc  flashed back out the
  door.
  Roar of the shots was ear−splitting after the  prolonged quiet. Chopping, rending, making ugly noises, the
  bullets did  a great deal of damage to the door casing and the writing room walls.
  Doc Savage wasted no time. The girl had been right.  He flashed to position under the skylight, leaped, caught
  the edge.  Monk and Renny, hanging their arms down, furnished welcome assistance  to Doc in getting back
  on the top deck. They banged the skylight shut.
  "Holy cow!" Renny rumbled. "The gas didn’t work!"
  "It was effective on the passengers," Doc replied.  "But our young lady friend was correct about it not
  touching Captain  Flamingo and his men."
  Monk scowled. "They must have had masks."
  "There were no masks in sight," Doc assured him.  "Had they been wearing them, they would undoubtedly
  still have had them  on."
  Monk growled, "That’s what I call dang funny."
  Captain Flamingo’s shouting voice interrupted them.  The leader of their foes was below somewhere.
  "Come down offa there!" Captain Flamingo bellowed.  "One at a time! Have your hands up!"
  With his lips, Monk managed to make a very loud,  disrespectful sound known as the "Bronx cheer."
  "Come up and get us!" the homely chemist invited at  the top of his voice.
  "Not us!" Captain Flamingo bellowed. "My man you  caught outside the radio shack saw you carryin’ a bunch
  of metal boxes!  I know all about them gadgets you swabs like to fight with!"
  Renny used an enormous hand to wipe imaginary  perspiration off his long, puritanical face.
  "Nice to have a reputation," he rumbled softly,  careful that his words would not carry to the enemy.
  "They been afraid of us all along." Monk grunted.  "That’s why they haven’t given us a rush."
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  Diamond Eve Post crawled over and joined them. The  light had failed perceptibly, the sun having dropped
  entirely from  sight in the west. There was illumination enough, however, to show the  "I−told−you−so"
  expression on the young woman’s attractive features.
  "Who was wrong about the gas?" she asked.
  IF inquisitive looks could have penetrated, the  young woman’s mind would promptly have been probed to its
  deepest  recesses, and all its secrets laid bare. As it was, all they saw was  her pretty countenance wearing a
  derisive look. Monk evidently decided  on the spur of the moment to try his hand at verbal persuasion. He
  became the dignified chemist.
  "We are in a very dangerous spot here, Miss Post,"  he said, levelly. "You are in as much danger as ourselves.
  Don’t you  think it is the better part of common sense and safety to tell us what  you know?"
  "Phooey," said the young woman. "So now you try  logic on me."
  "I am only talking common sense," Monk assured her.  "Those men are trying to kill all of us. We have no
  idea of what they  are after, what is behind all of this, let alone why that gas didn’t  get them."
  "Listen," said Diamond Eve Post. "The less you know,  the better I like it. We’re all—Captain Flamingo,
  Stanley Watchford  Topping, myself, everybody—after Taz. You don’t know what Taz is. Swell!"
  "The course you’re taking is not logical," Monk told  her.
  "Oh, yes, it is," she said. "I am after Taz.  Rightfully, Taz belongs to me. I haven’t the slightest doubt but  that
  you would think differently. You would insist Taz belongs  to the whole world. It’s big like that, see? You and
  I are working  together nicely, because Captain Flamingo is after both of us. After  that—it’s me for me."
  Her long speech made Monk mad.
  "For two cents, I’d put you across my knee," he  growled.
  "I love you when you get ranty," she told Monk.
  Monk looked so indignant that Ham choked on  suppressed mirth.
  Captain Flamingo began howling at them from below.
  "Doc Savage!" he roared.
  "What is it?" the bronze man demanded.
  "Take a look at the fore deck," Captain Flamingo  suggested. "You’ve got our word that we won’t take a shot
  at your  bowsprit."
  Doc Savage moved at once.
  Monk gulped a wild warning. "You can’t trust that  sailor talkin’ mug, Doc."
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  "It will not be necessary to trust him," Doc Savage  replied. 
  From within his clothing, Doc Savage produced his  little telescopic device with interchangeable mirrors and
  lenses, which  could become, alternately, periscope, telescope, and microscope. The  girl had not removed this
  from his clothing during the period she had  thought him unconscious—the period when she had brought Doc
  and his  three aids aboard the steamer. Fitting the periscope mirrors on the  device, Doc peered over the rail.
  Captain Flamingo was not in sight. Several of his  men were in view, however. They stood over various
  unconscious  passengers. The guns in their hands were cocked and aimed at the  motionless figures at their feet.
  Captain Flamingo’s voice came from some point of  concealment.
  "You lookin’, bronze guy?" he demanded.
  "Yes," Doc Savage admitted.
  "You can reach a lifeboat from the upper deck!"  Captain Flamingo roared. "Great Stirrup Cay is a bit to the
  southeast.  By bendin’ smart to your oars, you can reach ‘er. You can get a trade  schooner to Nassau, or
  wherever you want to go. It’s a good idea, don’t  you think?"
  "We might not like it," Doc told him.
  "Maybe you’d like seein’ these passengers shot  better?" Captain Flamingo roared.
  DOC Savage’s long silence, following the captain’s  speech, might have meant that he was weighing the
  circumstances, the  probabilities. They were not pleasant to contemplate, there being no  reason to think
  Captain Flamingo did not mean what he was saying. The  man had already committed piracy. For that, he
  stood an excellent  chance of hanging, if he were caught.
  "What about the passengers?" Doc asked.
  "We’re puttin’ ‘em over the side in boats," Captain  Flamingo replied.
  Doc Savage told him, "You can hardly expect your  word to be trusted on that."
  "You don’t have to trust me!" Captain Flamingo  yelled. "I’m loadin’ ‘em in the lifeboats and droppin’ ‘em
  over the  side right now. Ain’t much current here. They can see Great Stirrup  lighthouse when they wake up.
  They’ll manage to row to it, all right.  And if you don’t get off yourself, we’ll run down every lifeboat and
  sink it."
  That was final enough. There seemed to be nothing  more to be said on the matter. It was a question of take it
  or leave it.
  "We’ll get off in the lifeboats," Doc Savage said.  "But at the first sign of treachery on your part, there will be
  genuine  trouble."
  "I’m sailin’ a clean course with ya, matey," Captain  Flamingo promised. "But there’s one thing I forgot."
  "What?" Doc queried.
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  "The girl—Diamond Eve Post," said Captain Flamingo.  "She stays."
  "No," Doc said, promptly.
  "Think it over," the other suggested.
  Doc Savage crawled back to his companions. The young  woman laughed softly in the increasing darkness.
  Her voice held an  unnatural quality.
  "You really think a lot of me," she said. "You’re  all hepped up to get yourself killed for me."
  "Don’t be like that," the homely Monk told her.  "You’re scared stiff, and you know it."
  "Listen," she said suddenly, "you fellows are  swell!" And there was that in her voice which indicated she
  certainly  did mean it.
  THE situation now confronting them held them silent.  Captain Flamingo’s men were not moving about
  much. Lights were coming  on. The ship’s clock struck.
  "This is gonna be real tough, what I mean," Monk  mumbled. "We haven’t got any weapons worth—"
  A rapid patter of footsteps silenced him. He failed  to catch their significance immediately. When he did, he
  heaved up,  roaring.
  "The girl!" he howled. "She’s going—"
  She was not only going. She was gone! Gone to join  Captain Flamingo! They knew that when excited shouts
  came from below  decks, followed by Captain Flamingo’s delighted howl.
  Monk gulped, "Now, why’d she do that?"
  "Try not to be such a sap," Ham said, dryly. "That  girl’s got what it takes. She saw we weren’t going to give
  her up. So  she gave herself up. Just a smart gesture, my homely friend, toward  saving our lives."
  Doc Savage went into action. Moving forward, he  called down to Captain Flamingo, stating that he and his
  aids would  leave in the lifeboat, providing the passengers were put off.
  "It’s a go, matey!" whooped Captain Flamingo in high  spirits.
  Doc Savage went back to his men.
  "Watch over each rail," he directed. "Make sure the  passengers are really put off into the lifeboats; and the
  crew, too.  Then we will leave."
  Silent, their spirits very low, they separated to do  as had been directed. It was quite dark now, with no lights
  on the  upper deck, and they lost sight of Doc Savage. They naturally presumed  the bronze man was
  somewhere near, likewise watching over the rail.
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  They were wrong. Doc Savage, a very few minutes  after he had sent them to the rail, was not even on the
  upper deck. He  had worked forward, silently removed the grating from a ventilator, and  scrambled into the
  aperture. The ventilator was not so large but that  he could lower himself by the pressure of his hands and feet
  against  the sides. At the bottom was a hatch, obviously there to facilitate in  cleaning.
  CAPTAIN FLAMINGO put the passengers and crew of the  little steamer over the side in lifeboats, as he had
  agreed. Monk, Ham  and Renny watched closely to be sure of that. The operation was one  that took some time.
  A lighted lantern was placed in each lifeboat. This  was no Samaritan gesture on Captain Flamingo’s part, but
  a precaution  to enable him to locate them for sinking, should Doc Savage not fulfill  his end of the agreement.
  "All set, Savage!" Captain Flamingo shouted,  finally. "We’re heavin’ to, to make it easier for you to get off!"
  Monk peered about in the gloom. He had not seen Doc  Savage for some time, not since a moment after the
  girl had deserted  them. 
  "Doc!" the homely chemist called.
  "Over here," the bronze man said, quietly. "We will  use this lifeboat."
  The lifeboat was an all−metal one, with air tanks.  Into it they loaded their metal equipment boxes. As a
  matter of  precaution, they made sure the boat held the fresh water and emergency  rations required by law.
  Renny thumped the metal sides of the boat with  a big fist.
  "Won’t turn bullets," he said, disgustedly.
  The davits had been maintained well. It was not  difficult to swing the boat out.
  "They could turn a searchlight on it and shoot us  down," Ham said, uneasily.
  "That thought occurred to me," Doc Savage told him,  quietly. "A certain mixture of chemicals from Monk’s
  little laboratory  may help solve our problem."
  The bronze man, it developed, had been delving into  the homely chemist’s pet piece of equipment. In his
  hands he held a  copper can. This had not been amid Monk’s paraphernalia, but was a  container from a life
  preserver flare, which the bronze man had emptied  and was using for his own purpose.
  He extracted a match from a water−proof container,  struck it, and applied the flame to the contents of the can.
  The stuff  burned yellow, and also gave off a prodigious quantity of very black  smoke. The ship was at a
  standstill. Doc heaved the can down into the  water. The dense smoke which it gave off spread, mushroomed,
  climbed  upward. It would effectually mask their descent.
  "Down we go," Doc said.
  "Wait, Doc," Monk squawked. He began to call,  "Habeas, Habeas!"
  "Leave the pig aboard," Doc Savage directed.
  "No!" Monk roared, promptly.
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  It was the first instant that any of the others  remembered, where Monk had openly revolted against a
  suggestion of the  bronze man. But he was in rebellion now.
  "Danged if I leave Habeas!" he shouted again.
  Doc Savage did not discuss the matter. Argument with  Monk, as Ham’s experience had long proven, was an
  interminable process.  Moreover, it was doubtful if the homely chemist could ever be convinced  on the
  present point.
  Doc simply gathered Monk up bodily and slammed him  into the lifeboat, and before the apish fellow
  recovered, the lifeboat  had descended nearly to the water.
  Enraged profanity above and to the side, coupled  with the ineffectual glow of searchlights, proved beyond a
  doubt that  Captain Flamingo had really planned treachery. He had stationed  riflemen along the rail. Guns
  began to crack; bullets screamed and  smacked the lifeboat. The boat hit the water. They disconnected the
  falls, gave the little craft a violent shove. They did not row straight  out, but diagonally.
  "Anybody hit?" Doc asked.
  "No," Renny grumbled. "Holy cow, that smoke gag sure  saved us!"
  Monk got up from the floor of the boat, where he had  been flung. He said no word, but seated himself and
  grabbed an oar.
  The lifeboat was heavy, but they were not  inexperienced oarsmen and they got the craft moving at a fair rate.
  They splashed as little water as possible. As another measure to keep  the noise down, they scooped up water
  in their palms, kept the oar  leathers—where they fitted into the oarlocks—wet, so they did not  squeak as
  much.
  They covered a full two hundred yards before  searchlights from the steamer picked them up. Rifle lead
  promptly began  to dig up water around them. Captain Flamingo, it was plain, did not  intend for them to
  escape alive. 
  Doc Savage shipped his oar, and changed his position  to the stern of the lifeboat. There was, it developed, a
  quantity  remaining of the inflammable chemical mixture which gave off such  intense smoke. Doc applied a
  match to at.
  In the murk of the tropical night the smoke looked  many times blacker than it could possibly have been. The
  breeze,  fortunately, was not blowing in such a direction as to sweep the poll  away and uncover them.
  The rifle bullets began to go farther and farther  amiss. The sharpshooters were baffled by the smoke.
  The Caribbean, as oceans go, is a quiescent pond,  although it does have its tantrums, during those few months
  of each  year known as the hurricane season. It was quiet on this night, with  few waves and little swell. The
  play of phosphorescence in the water  was something of eerie, remarkable beauty.
  "This is a fine mess," Renny complained, audibly.  "We got no idea of what this Taz thing is, or where it is."
  "It does look as if we had been pretty well shunted  out of the affair," Ham agreed.
  Monk said a gloomy nothing. It was plain that he had  Habeas Corpus on his mind.
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  They rowed briskly, keeping excellent time with  their strokes. Phosphorescence, like writhing little monsters
  of fire,  leaped back from each stroking oar blade, and a long snake of the stuff  clung to their stern, only to
  shorten itself and disappear entirely  when Doc Savage gave the word to cease rowing. They were now well
  out  of rifle shot.
  From within his clothing, the bronze man brought out  a flat bundle of yellow papers. He began to go over
  these with his  pocket flashlight.
  "What are they?" Renny boomed, interested.
  "The file of radio messages sent from the  Caribbenda," Doc told him.
  The bronze man continued sorting through the  missives. He removed one, then another, and another until he
  had an  even half dozen. He showed them to his companions. The first was a  message filed for sending:
  SEAWORTHY
  STEAMER TROPIC SEAS
  PLANS GOING NICELY STOP THINK CAPTAIN FLAMINGO CAN  BE STOPPED STOP KEEP ME
  ADVISED YOUR PROGRESS 
  POST
  Doc’s aids ran through the other messages. They were  all copies of radiograms received. One read:
  POST
  STEAMSHIP CARIBBENDA 
  MAKING GOOD TIME TOWARD TAZ
  SEAWORTHY
  The other messages, received at later dates, were  almost identical.
  Renny looked up from the radiograms, stared, gave a  violent start and emitted a roar.
  "Look!" he howled. "Here comes the steamer! They’re  gonna run us down!"
  RENNY’S excited cry was an exact statement of  Captain Flamingo’s intention. At the wheel of the
  Caribbenda stood Captain Flamingo himself. He was still attired in the civilian  garb of bright rainbow hues
  which he affected. Cocked at a jaunty angle  on his head, he wore a uniform cap purloined from one of the
  Caribbenda officers. 
  It was not the skipper’s cap. Captain Flamingo had  looked all the caps over and selected the one with the
  most gold braid  and the jauntiest cut. This headgear, it chanced, had belonged to the  purser.
  "Man them searchlights," Captain Flamingo ordered,  grimly.
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  68
  
  Men flew to do his bidding. They were well−trained,  this pirate crew.
  "Bring the girl to the bridge," Captain Flamingo  directed. "I want her to see this. She needs the wind taken
  out of her  sails."
  Shortly, two men appeared with Diamond Eve Post. The  young woman’s ruffled appearance was somewhat
  remindful of an angry  cat. She had been working on her two captors, it was plain. They were  plentifully
  scratched; their hair looked as if it had been thoroughly  pulled; their clothing was torn; and each had the
  makings of an  impressive black eye.
  "Why don’t you go ahead and shoot me?" she snapped  at Captain Flamingo. "I know it’s not because I’m a
  woman."
  "No, that’s not the reason," Captain Flamingo  admitted, frankly. "We’re makin’ live ballast outa you. You
  might  consider yourself a fact in an argument."
  "Talk sense," the young woman suggested.
  "Our good fellow sailor, Seaworthy," Captain  Flamingo growled. "He’ll reef down some when he finds
  you’re aboard us.  Seaworthy figures you’re about the trimmest little vessel afloat, my  lady."
  Diamond Eve Post did not answer that. Instead, she  moved suddenly and, before her captors could prevent,
  landed a vicious  kick on Captain Flamingo’s kneecap. Flamingo hopped on one leg and  howled in pain.
  "We’re almost on Doc Savage’s lifeboat!" yelled a  lookout forward.
  Captain Flamingo, standing on one leg, gave his  attention to the wheel. A searchlight had picked up Doc
  Savage’s little  shell. The steamer was bearing down on it. 
  The bronze man could be observed in the stern,  hurriedly igniting more of the chemical which gave off the
  heavy smoke.
  "Won’t do him any good," Captain Flamingo chuckled.
  Diamond Eve Post, suddenly realizing what was  contemplated, emitted strangled sounds of horror and began
  to struggle  violently. This did her no good. She was dragged to the rail, forced to  look in the direction of the
  menaced lifeboat.
  Captain Flamingo went about the business at hand  quite casually. He decreased the steamer’s speed, swung
  the helm  expertly.
  There was faint thump from the bow, as the  lifeboat was run down.
  DIAMOND EVE POST moaned. It was the first hint she  had given that she was capable of deep emotion.
  She pinched her eyes  shut tightly and swayed, and an instant later she was limp in a faint.  Her two captors
  held onto her tightly, fearful that she might be  pulling a trick.
  Captain Flamingo was very busy. He slammed the  engine room telegraph into reverse. The steamer trembled
  to a stop. A  searchlight and gasoline lanterns were ablaze along the rail.
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  "Lifeboat’s on the starboard side!" a man yelled.
  There was a surge for that rail. Light blazed  downward. Gasoline lanterns were even tied to ropes and
  lowered.
  The lifeboat was not more than two score feet from  the steamer’s hull plates. It floated upright, buoyed by its
  air tanks.  The oars floated near it.
  Of Doc Savage and his aids, there was no sign.
  "Break out bullets!" Captain Flamingo yelled. "They  may be hidin’ under the opposite rail of that lifeboat!"
  Rifle shots smashed in a scattering volley. So  bright was the glare of searchlights that bullet holes, appearing
  in  the sides of the lifeboat, could be distinctly seen.
  "Stove the air tanks with your lead!" ordered  Captain Flamingo. "Sink the bloomin’ thing!"
  It required a few minutes to do this. In the  meantime, searchlights were put to raking the sea. Their beams
  were  intensely brilliant. They even picked up, far astern, the lifeboats  carrying the late passengers and crew
  of the Caribbenda. But no  trace of Doc Savage or his three companions was disclosed.
  The lifeboat, air tanks riddled, went down amid a  boiling of phosphorescence. Bubbles came up profusely.
  Captain Flamingo strained his eyes overside until  the bubbles ceased rising.
  "We got three lifeboats left," he said. "Get ‘em  into the drink. We gotta make sure this thing is furled up
  tight."
  The boats were lowered. Those who manned them  carried gasoline lanterns. They spent all of an hour rowing
  back and  forth. They even circled the Caribbenda several times, examining  the water line to make sure that
  no one was accomplishing the seemingly  impossible task of clinging there. By the time the boats were hauled
  back up in the davits, Captain Flamingo was satisfied.
  "They’re in Davy Jones’s locker," he said.
  A man plucked at his arm anxiously, and mumbled,  "Say, Cap’n, suppose they knew more about Taz than we
  figured.  Suppose they could fix themselves up like we did back at that shipyard,  when we went under water.
  And here, when their gas had no effect—"
  "Not a chance," Captain Flamingo snorted. "They’re  drowned, that’s what."
  The man who had made the suggestion shrugged, and  went away.
  Captain Flamingo went to the bridge, set the engine  room telegraph to full speed ahead.
  "All canvas set for Taz," he sang out,  joyfully.
  The ship had not yet gathered full headway, when two  men approached the bridge. Between them, they
  carried Habeas Corpus,  each man holding one of the shote’s enormous ears.
  "We caught this insect below," one of them advised.  "What’ll we do? Feed him to a shark?"
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  Captain Flamingo adjusted his bright necktie in his  brighter waistcoat, and deliberated. It took him several
  moments to  decide on the disposition of the pig.
  "We’ll make breakfast bacon out of him," he said,  "the day we reach Taz."
  Chapter 12. MYSTERY—AND HASH
  Engines of the Caribbenda had stopped. The  effect of this was as if something very necessary were missing,
  as if  something had died.
  "Sailors’ pants are big at the bottoms for another  reason," said a small voice that might have belonged to a
  child. "Now,  you take a sailor when he’s on deck barefoot. Them big pants bottoms  hangs down and keeps
  his feet warm."
  The speaker was Monk, and obviously he was  continuing the interminable argument with Ham. His voice
  was somewhat  startling, breaking out as it did in the eerie silence.
  "Pipe down, baboon," Ham advised, sourly. "They  might hear you. The engines have stopped—so their
  vibrations won’t  cover any sound we might make, as they have been doing."
  It was intensely dark around the voices. The air was  bad, too, being breathable and not much more. Bilge
  odor was present,  much too strongly. Bilge odor, especially that along the keel of a  small steamer in the
  tropics, can acquire an unpredictable number of  unpleasantnesses.
  Big−voiced Renny tried to whisper, and the result  was a series of noises about as soothing to the ear as steam
  escaping  from a pipe.
  "How long have we been in here?" seemed to be the  substance of what Renny was trying to enquire.
  "Seven days, sixteen hours, and thirty minutes,"  Monk said.
  "Pretty close," Renny agreed, consulting a  waterproof wrist watch "Only it’s forty−eight minutes instead of
  thirty."
  Doc Savage’s voice sounded subdued, carrying no  particular emotion.
  "Something seems to be happening on deck," he said.
  They listened intently. It was a welcome diversion.  For days they had crouched here, the spot where they
  were least likely  to be found: literally, the bilge of the steamer. At times, especially  when the little steamer
  had pitched considerably, during what must have  been a blow, there was more than one occasion when they
  had been all  but submerged.
  Doc Savage alone had ventured forth during their  period of hiding, and this he had done only twice; both
  times to  ascertain if Diamond Eve Post was unharmed. The young woman, it seemed,  had suffered no
  damage thus far, except to her dignity.
  In the hiding place of the bronze man and his aids  was the assortment of metal cases which contained their
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  71
  
  equipment.  Getting the stuff aboard had not been easy, especially since it had  been necessary to make Captain
  Flamingo think they had been drowned.
  Deception of Captain Flamingo had been managed with  the aid of what is commonly called "lungs." The
  apparatus—a nasal clip  and a mouthpiece through which oxygen was supplied from a tiny tank—was  an
  adaptation of similar devices already on the market.
  Doc Savage and his aids had been out of the lifeboat  when the steamer ran it down. When the steamer
  stopped, they had  managed to get under the hull without being discovered. They had worked  aft on the
  starboard side, until they came to a rope which hung down in  the water.
  The rope was one Doc Savage had planted there for  that specific purpose, before departing in the lifeboat.
  They had  climbed it, pulled it up, concealed it, and sought their hiding place.  This was done while Captain
  Flamingo was trying to find some signs of  life around the lifeboat on the opposite side of the ship.
  The days of doing nothing had followed.
  "
  DOC," called Monk’s small voice.  "Why do you figure the engines have stopped?" 
  Monk had long ago gotten over his ire at having to  leave Habeas Corpus behind, having realized that the
  shote would have  been drowned in the course of the venture which Doc Savage contemplated.
  Doc slopped aft in knee−deep, smelly water to join  Monk. There was a small hatch, ill−fitting, through the
  cracks of which  noises could be heard more distinctly.
  The Caribbenda gave a lurch, and almost at  once lost all headway. The movement was accompanied by a
  loud grinding  and thumping from the starboard side. Men ran about on deck. They  shouted. Heavy objects
  apparently being moved around. In the course of  a few moments, the sound subsided.
  Then silence fell. It was absolute, and was very  puzzling.
  With Doc Savage leading the way, the party worked  their way cautiously to the deck. When their eyes, after
  the long days  in the dark hold, became adjusted to the dazzling sunlight, they saw an  astounding sight. 
  The Caribbenda was lying lashed alongside  another vessel! It was the Tropic Seas!
  For moments, Doc Savage and his aids remained where  they were. They were listening for some indication of
  life on the two  steamers. But they saw nothing, heard nothing.
  A search of both ships produced no person. And,  strangely, none of the lifeboats were missing, except those
  Captain  Flamingo had used when putting the passengers off the Caribbenda.
  No land was in sight. And in attempting to find  their position from the ship’s charts, Doc Savage discovered
  them to be  gone.
  It was a complete mystery as to what had become of  the crews of the two ships.
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  Monk, looking over the Caribbenda, was  overjoyed to find Habeas Corpus in a food locker near the galley.
  And  on the galley stove he discovered a stew cooking over a slow fire.
  Monk rushed on deck, swinging the pig as he always  did, by one oversize ear, and yelling his happiness at the
  top of his  small voice.
  Big−fisted Renny turned a hungry eye on the porker. 
  "Brother, I could sure surround some food," Renny  rumbled. "That concentrated stuff we’ve been living on
  may furnish the  necessary vitamins and things, but it sure don’t pad a man’s stomach  comfortably."
  "Reckon they poisoned the grub, Doc?" Monk asked. 
  "Hardly likely," Doc Savage replied. "It is almost  certain they did not know we were aboard."
  Monk, in a state of high elation because he had  found his pet pig, suddenly whirled and charged wildly
  toward the  galley of the Caribbenda.
  "That stew!" he shrilled over his shoulder. "I just  thought of it!"
  It was indicative of the hunger of the others that  they reached the galley almost as quickly as did Monk. They
  found the  homely chemist licking his lips and surveying the boiling pot of stew.
  "Come here," Monk said, and waved at the door into  the dining saloon.
  He showed them dishes on the table which had been  used quite recently. Grease on the bacon platter had not
  yet hardened.
  It did not take a close examination of the stains on  the plates to show that a part of the same stew, now
  bubbling up the  galley, had been a prominent viand in the repast.
  "If they ate the stew, it wasn’t poisoned," Monk  announced. "Me, I’m going to town on the stuff."
  They got bowls and big spoons. The stew could have  been very bad, and its quality still have escaped
  comment. They had  existed on scientific rations for more than a week; and previous to  that, while the girl
  held them, unconscious, they had practically been  on a fast—with Doc the exception.
  But hungry men, having their stomachs filled, become  critical of quality. It is one of the symptoms of a full
  stomach.
  "Their cook must have flavored this stuff with a few  pieces of tarred rope," complained Ham, who was only
  on his fifth bowl  of the slumgullion.
  Monk scowled and, because it was his habit to  contradict everything Ham said, grunted, "This stuff is swell."
  "It tastes like the stuff they dip sheep in,"  rumbled Renny. "I wonder how the heck I managed to get down
  eight bowls  of the stuff. Holy cow, I must not care what I eat!"
  Doc Savage, whose consumption of the stew had kept  pace with that of the others, offered no comment, but
  he drank water,  then tasted the concoction from the kettle again, so as to get a more  exact idea of its flavor.
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  The result of the test produced no visible effect on  the bronze man. Yet he was certainly not unmoved, for the
  small  fantastic trilling sound, which was his characteristic reaction in  moments of stress, came into being and
  traced its tiny, ethereal notes  in no specific tune.
  The sound died finally. It left the others staring  at the bronze man, wide−eyed, wide−mouthed.
  "Holy cow!" mumbled Renny.
  "Blazes!" Monk exploded. "What’s wrong with the  stuff, Doc?"
  The bronze man did not answer. He went into the  dining room. On the table lay a ladle with which the hash
  had been  dished out to the diners during the preceding meal. There was still a  little of the stuff in it. Doc
  tasted it.
  "It is exactly the same," he said. "These men ate  it. So it can be presumed that we were not poisoned."
  "But the stuff does not taste right," Ham clipped.  "Is it because of the cook, or what?"
  "Take a drink of water," Doc suggested.
  Ham complied, only to grimace distastefully. 
  "Water tastes the same way," he said. 
  "Take a full breath," Doc Savage requested. "Take  several of them, rapidly."
  Ham did this, filling his lungs to capacity several  times in succession. The results were remarkable. Ham’s
  face flushed.  In the course of the next few moments, when he started to take a step,  he teetered and nearly fell
  down. He gave them an idiotically happy  leer.
  "Nushing wrong wish shoup," he said, having trouble  with his speech.
  Any one coming up on Ham at that moment would have  sworn he was drunk.
  Renny looked very gloomy—which meant he was  happy—and rumbled, "I gotta notion to try that."
  "Suppose you hold your breath, instead," Doc Savage  requested.
  Renny did so, curiosity on his long, puritanical  face. A full minute passed. Then a second look of profound
  amazement  crept over his long face. He had the look of a man who has just  discovered that something
  incredible had happened to him. He stopped  holding his breath.
  "Holy cow!" he gulped. "Doc, it seems as if  something—"
  "Let us make sure of it," Doc Savage told him. "The  thing is possible, although science has never been able to
  accomplish  it on much more than a laboratory scale."
  Renny swallowed several times before he could get  words out. "But it—it’s so queer," he gulped. "It scares
  me!"
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  That, coming from Renny, was an admission, of  consequence, because occasions when Renny admitted to
  being scared were  very rare indeed.
  Chapter 13. MONSTERS UNDER WATER
  "
  Wait here," Doc Savage suggested. 
  The bronze man went below to the engine room, and  from the tool cabinet selected several wrenches, picking
  them for their  weight, rather than their mechanical utility. He carried them back to  the deck, where his men
  waited.
  During the interim, Monk had apparently made a  discovery of his own. He gesticulated wildly with his overly
  long arms.
  "Doc" he squawked. "Blast it! I’m dying or  something! Why, I’ve discovered—"
  "We had better not discuss it until we have some  clearer ideas," Doc Savage interposed.
  Monk howled, "But if I’m about to die—"
  "No shush luck," chimed up Ham, who was still giving  an excellent imitation of a man in his cups.
  Monk shrieked, "You shyster, I’m dying and you crack  a joke! Why, I’ll—"
  "Quiet," Doc admonished Monk. "The thing that seems  to have happened to us is rather weird to contemplate.
  Suppose we do  not discuss it until we make some experiments. When we know more about  it, we can talk it
  over."
  "I know too much about it now," Monk muttered. "I  know how I feel. I tell you when I—"
  "The thing has a scientific explanation," Doc  assured him. "You recall my statement of a moment ago that it
  has been  done on a laboratory scale. You are chemist enough to realize the  measures necessary to make such
  a thing possible."
  Monk groaned, "The stuff must have been in that  hash."
  "It was," Doc Savage told him. "And in the water,  too."
  "We shoulda tasted it at first," Monk wailed.
  "The substance evidently requires some time to  affect the taste glands," Doc Savage told him. "And we ate in
  much too  great a hurry. It serves us right."
  The bronze man now distributed his wrenches. "Each  of you take one," he directed.
  Doc removed his outer clothing, his shoes. He walked  to the rail, holding a heavy wrench in one hand. He
  swung atop the  rail, hung poised there, and spoke over his shoulder.
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  "You men can use your own judgment about following  me," he said.
  Then his bronze form arched downward into the water  in a clean dive. He entered without much splash.
  The bronze man’s three aids, on the deck of the  Caribbenda, waited. A half minute—a minute. The seconds
  were long.  Two minutes. If possible, the seconds seemed to grow longer. Three  minutes.
  Those watching were worried, but not exactly  appalled. For they knew that Doc Savage, who had studied the
  art among  the master pearl divers of the South Seas, could remain under water an  unbelievable length of time.
  Four minutes. Five minutes. Monk was trembling. Six  minutes. And six minutes is an unbelievable length of
  time for a man to  remain beneath the surface.
  Time ticked on.
  The bronze man had now been beneath the surface  longer than even he, with the incredible physique that a
  lifetime of  training had given him, could remain and still live.
  THE tension of watching, of waiting, had been very  effective upon Ham. He appeared to have completely
  shed his queer jag.
  "I’m going in," he said, grimly.
  He climbed to the rail, poised there only briefly,  then hit the water in a dive that was not bad.
  Big−fisted Renny preferred to follow Ham.
  "Wait," exploded Monk. "Maybe you die when you hit  the water, or something."
  "Won’t any water kill me," Renny thumped. The  overconfidence in his tone indicated his boast was partially
  to  reassure himself. "Doc may have jammed himself, somehow, down there.  It’s not too late for artificial
  respiration to bring him out of it."
  Renny made his dive.
  Monk climbed on the rail.
  "Here goes the tail after the rest of the cow," he  said, and jumped in.
  It did not surprise Monk that the water was rather  warm. The balminess of the air, and that particular
  intenseness of the  sun which characterizes the tropics, had told him what to expect. Monk  grasped his heavy
  wrench in both hands, so that he sank head−first.
  For the few moments, a character study of the homely  chemist’s features would have shown that he was very
  apprehensive,  concerned for some reason over the effect the water would have on his  own person. He bent his
  neck frequently to look himself over. Streams  of bubbles arose from his clothing, as the air was squeezed out
  of the  garments by pressure of the water. The fact that he felt no profound  ill effect seemed to reassure Monk.
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  The water was clear, almost fantastically so, in  fact. A landlubber, accustomed to muddy streams and
  stagnant ponds,  would have maintained such clearness was impossible. The clarity of the  water, however, did
  not amaze Monk unduly. He was accustomed to such  phenomena in the tropics.
  Looking down, Monk abruptly distinguished bottom. He  had not seen it previously, for the very good reason
  it was not the  usual light sand to be found in the tropics, but was rather dark. Monk  floated down more slowly
  than he had expected, doubled, and got his  feet on the bottom. He stood there, held down by the weight of the
  wrench.
  Around one hairy wrist, he wore a jeweled watch. He  held this close enough to his eyes that he could
  distinguish its hands,  figures. The second hand had made its circuit once. It circled again.
  It was doubtful if an expression of greater  amazement could have come over Monk’s homely countenance. It
  was  incredible, this thing which had happened to him. Monk goggled at the  watch. The second hand had gone
  around again. The watch, of course, was  waterproof, and there was not much doubt but that it was telling the
  truth.
  Monk’s small eyes were all but popping out of his  head, and this was not caused by the water pressure. His
  knees shook  visibly. He all but dropped the wrench.
  The impossible had happened to him.
  He could live without breathing! For his watch told  him he had been under longer than was possible, and still
  live!
  IT was, of course, manifestly impossible to breathe  under water, since Monk had no diving equipment for an
  air supply. Not  even Doc’s marvelously compact little diving "lungs." And the homely  chemist had now been
  under water fully twice as long as he had ever  been able to hold his breath. He felt not the slightest desire to
  breathe.
  Half suspecting some weird form of death was laying  hold of him, Monk pinched himself. There was nothing
  wrong, except that  he overdid the pinch somewhat, all but taking off a section of hide.  No, it had simply
  become no longer necessary for him to breathe.
  The certainty of his strange condition fully  realized, Monk began to look around for the others. Strangely
  enough,  he found their trail. The bottom was of some kind of dark, powder−fine  sand; and Renny and Ham,
  walking through this, had stirred it up. Monk  followed the murky trail.
  Ham and Renny had joined each other, according to  indications, then had gone through a series of erratic
  wanderings,  obviously in search of Doc Savage. No doubt, the eccentric nature of  their movements was
  partially due to the state of amazement which must  have gripped them when they found they had suddenly
  acquired the  ability to get along without air.
  Monk was still a bit nervous. He flexed his arms  repeatedly, pinched himself, but not as violently as before.
  Physically, he seemed to be right enough. There was water pressure, of  course. But Monk was familiar with
  this, having done a goodly bit of  diving on other occasions.
  The two serpents of murk lying on the sea bottom,  that were the trails of Renny and Ham, abruptly
  straightened out. The  pair had kept their sense of direction, and were heading toward the  spot where the
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  anchor of the Tropic Seas should be. They must  have concluded that Doc Savage might have climbed up the
  anchor chain  to the two lashed steamers.
  Because there was a calm on the surface, the anchor  chain was draped very slackly. Peering upward, Monk
  had distinguished  the big links in the light which the tropic sun diffused through the  depths.
  Walking was slow business. Monk peered ahead, and  the water seemed to be saltier than usual. But that was
  probably  imagination. It stung his eyes, which were not yet accustomed to the  stuff.
  Monk caught sight of three figures ahead, near the  anchor. Joy seized Monk. That would be Doc, Renny and
  Ham.
  But no! Monk gaped, startled.
  Four
  figures: Doc, Renny, Ham—and some one else: Monk, shoving himself  forward against the inertia of the water, got close
  enough to  distinguish the identity of the fourth person. 
  The girl, Diamond Eve Post!
  DIAMOND EVE POST, it became apparent, was handcuffed  to the heavy links which comprised the anchor
  chain of the Tropic  Seas. The young woman wore no diving equipment of any kind. It was  a reasonable
  conjecture that she had been there, beneath the surface,  for at least an hour. Doc Savage and his aids had
  prowled the decks of  the two ships in their search for fully that interval.
  Yet it was plain that Diamond Eve Post still  retained her faculties. She was very much alive.
  Doc Savage was engaged in the process of freeing  her. To do this it would be necessary to snap the handcuff
  links, or to  pick the lock. Doc was trying to break them. They were very stout  links. He borrowed the sleeves
  from Renny’s shirt—Renny still wore all  his clothing—and was wrapping the links. His hands thus protected,
  he  laid hold.
  Sinews stood out on his arms and across his back in  unearthly ridges. The bronze man seemed to become a
  great bundle of  muscle that was as hard as the ligaments distinguishable on the back of  an ordinary man’s
  hands.
  Monk was not surprised when the links snapped.
  The young woman managed to convey a smile of  tremendous gratitude through the clear water. She gestured
  upward,  conveying that she wished to go to the surface.
  Doc Savage nodded for her benefit. Then he flicked a  hand to catch the attention of big−fisted Renny. The
  engineer watched  the bronze man’s hand.
  Doc made a rapid succession of movements with his  fingers. It was the deaf−and−dumb sign language, the
  system universally  used by those thus afflicted. Doc Savage’s men had learned it in the  past, knowing there
  would be many occasions when they would desire to  confer by visual means only.
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  78
  
  "Captain Flamingo and his men obviously left under  water," Doc Savage told Renny on his fingers. "We
  should station a  lookout to watch for their return. How would you like to be watchman  for a time?"
  "O. K. by me," Renny signaled.
  "If Captain Flamingo and his crowd return, they will  probably climb up the anchor chain," Doc conveyed.
  "I’ll stick around," Renny flashed.
  Doc Savage, Diamond Eve Post, Ham and Monk, all  climbed the anchor chain. The links were not so large
  but that they  could be gripped comfortably, and the climbers hauled themselves up  easily by their hands.
  They did not throw away the wrenches.
  Renny watched them go. He could follow them almost  to the two long, dark shadows that were the hulls of
  the ships, afloat  on the surface.
  Some befuddlement still held Renny. The frankly  unbelievable phenomenon of finding himself able to do
  without breathing  had amazed him fully as much as it had Monk. He scratched his head and  thought deeply
  about the matter. Probably Doc Savage would be able to  explain it.
  Renny made a mistake. Under the circumstances, it  was possibly excusable. He became so wrapped up in his
  thoughts that he  failed to keep a close watch on his surroundings.
  Suddenly, he gave a violent start, stared, and his  mouth came open. His enormous fists clenched. All about
  him the dark  bottom of the sea seemed to be rising up, forming a cup around him,  preparing to enclose him in
  some sinister grip.
  THE impossibility that the bottom was rising  remained Renny’s belief for only a moment. Momentary
  surprise was  responsible for the mistake. He speedily realized that something was  agitating the dark, powdery
  sand of the sea bottom, stirring it up.  This was happening on all sides. He was completely encircled.
  What was stirring up the pall, the horrified Renny  had not the slightest idea. His gaze could not penetrate the
  dense  cloud. Whatever the nature of the thing, monster or not, behind the  ring, it was drawing closer.
  The slow approach of the mystery thing affected  Renny about as profoundly as anything he had ever
  encountered before.  He felt very much as if the water around him had turned into ice. There  was a distinct
  imaginary impression of small animals running up and  down the back of his neck.
  No one had ever questioned Renny’s nerve. But this  appeared to be a situation where nothing was to be
  gained by fighting,  unless Renny knew the nature of the thing he battled. He released the  heavy wrench,
  which was keeping him down, then straightened, powerful  legs shooting him toward the surface.
  Only then did he look up. He probably wished he had  done so earlier. For there was something above him,
  too. It was  grayish, pale almost nebulous. He could see the sun’s reflection  through it.
  But it was something very solid, very real, he  discovered when he hit it an instant later. He crowded the thing.
  His  fingers slithered over it, gaining no hold. It felt slick, a bit slimy.
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  Renny had a momentary impression that the thing was  the paunch of some monster of the deep. It seemed to
  possess a very  definite weight. It was bearing him down, forcing him to the bottom.  Directly into the center
  of that wall of roiled, boiling,  sinister−powdered sand, he was being carried.
  He fought madly. His great fists lashed. Their blows  were terrific. Renny’s boast, that there was no wooden
  door out of  which he could not knock the panels with his fists, was no exaggeration.
  The boiled black sand closed on him. Higher than his  head it towered. Its sepia opaqueness was that of ink.
  Renny heaved. He  lunged. But that hideous gray, slimy thing pressed him down. Under his  futile attack it
  recoiled; but always it came back.
  A gripping something laid hold of Renny’s ankle. He  kicked it off. It came back, got his knee this time. Then
  something  grabbed his other leg. Madly he floundered.
  What was attacking him, it was impossible to tell.  He was completely embedded in the roiled water now; and
  what seemed  like scores of clutching claws had fastened upon him.
  He was not exactly borne down. He was simply  surrounded, embedded in the phantasm which had assailed
  him. His  mightiest struggles availed only for the instant.
  Renny was entirely helpless.
  Chapter 14. THE INCREDIBLE DOMAIN
  Diamond Eve Post stood on the deck of the steamer  Carribenda, gingerly examined her rather shapely hands.
  The hands  had been somewhat scuffed.
  "I tried to pull out of the handcuffs," she said.  "Just one of my many mistakes."
  "Where is Captain flamingo and his gang, and the  rest?" Monk demanded.
  "I could show you," she said. "But, under the  circumstances, it will be impossible for me to tell you."
  "Huh?" Monk blinked.
  "See, I want to go along," she said. "If I told you,  you might leave me behind."
  Monk exaggerated a weary shrug.
  "So now you’re going to keep on being sassy," he  complained.
  "We’re still what you might call ‘friendly  enemies,’" the young woman explained. "We’re fighting a common
  enemy.  After we polish him off, we’ll turn around and fight each other."
  Monk tried his best to scowl blackly at her, but  wound up by grinning.
  "You sure get in my hair," he chuckled. "But I like  it." 
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  Ham, not quite so dapper in his drenched clothing,  addressed Doc Savage, demanding, "Doc, we seem to be
  able to get along  without breathing. How do you explain that?"
  "It is rather remarkable," Doc told him. 
  Diamond Eve Post interrupted sharply.
  "It’s not half as remarkable as some of the things  you’re going to buck into," she said.
  Ham told her peevishly, "If you’re not going to give  us any information, I wish you’d keep quiet."
  "Thank you," she said. "For that piece of  politeness, I’ll bring a steam calliope to your funeral."
  Ham ignored her elaborately.
  "What about this thing of our not needing to  breathe?" he asked Doc Savage.
  "The answer to that might best be started by asking  a question," Doc Savage told him. "Why do you breathe?"
  "Mainly to get oxygen," Ham said, promptly.
  "Correct for the most part," Doc agreed. "There are  other reasons, but we will not invite confusion by
  discussing them.  Supposing a chemical mixture which, if taken internally, would supply  the oxygen to meet
  your bodily requirements; what would that mean?"
  "You would not need to breathe," Ham said.
  Monk exploded. "But oxygen liquefied by compression  would work something like liquid air. It would freeze
  a man’s insides."
  "Wait," Doc Savage interposed. "An explanation of  that was coming up. Oxygen is taken into the body to
  accomplish certain  very necessary functions. It is conceivable that these same functions  might be
  accomplished by another chemical or element, much less bulky  than oxygen, and which could be handled
  more easily than oxygen."
  Monk scratched his nubbin of a head, obviously lost  in a fog of technical, chemical possibilities.
  "Use your head, missing link!" Ham told Monk,  unkindly. "Sure, it is possible. Take those concentrated food
  tablets  we’ve been living on, blast them! They were not beef steak and onions,  but they gave you the same
  necessary elements, did they not?"
  "Hah, an oracle!" the young woman said, bitingly.
  "Yeah," Monk admitted, finally. "It’s possible, all  right."
  Ham murmured, "The stuff was in the stew. That, I  presume, is what made it taste like old overshoes."
  The girl put in, "You’ve guessed it."
  Doc Savage asked her, "You knew that?"
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  "Yes," she said. "They’ve been taking the stuff  regularly, just on the chance it might come in handy for them
  to stop  breathing. It did. That’s why your gas failed to get them."
  "How long will the effect of the quantity we got in  the stew last?" the bronze man questioned.
  "It depends on how much stew you ate," she countered.
  "It was a lot," Monk muttered, feeling absently of  his stomach.
  "Several hours, possibly," she told them. "But they  also have the stuff in concentrated paste. I know where it
  is kept."
  "Show us," Doc requested.
  "Anything to oblige," she replied, and led the way  below.
  THERE were many boxes in the forward hold, most of  them of heavy wood strapped with metal. Close
  observation would show  that a certain portion of these boxes had been constructed either by  the same person
  or by the same gang of workmen. All of these similar  boxes bore labels consigning them to a firm in Nassau.
  "Captain Flamingo’s equipment," the girl explained.  "He shipped it aboard, and he and his men sailed as
  passengers."
  They found a box which had been opened, delved into  the contents, which proved to be wide−necked bottles,
  filled with a  stuff that, as far as appearances went, resembled apple butter. Monk  uncapped one of these,
  scooped up some of the contents on a finger  nail, smelled it, tasted it.
  "
  Oo−o−o−o!" he said. "This  is what made that stew taste like old socks!" 
  The girl said, "A spoonful of that stuff, swallowed  every two hours, is plenty. And don’t breathe too much.
  You’ll get  oxygen drunk."
  "Each of you take one of the bottles," Doc  suggested. 
  They selected bottles, and Monk carefully pocketed  an extra one.
  "For Renny," he said. "I know he’ll relish the taste  of the stuff."
  Monk, being no clairvoyant, was blissfully unaware  that Renny had encountered the weird, remorseless
  attack where he had  been keeping his vigil by the anchor chain.
  Doc Savage ripped covers off some of the other  cases. In some he found regulation diving equipment. In
  others were  weapons. Quite a number held explosives, along with paraphernalia  necessary for blasting. There
  was very complete diving equipment.
  "Captain Flamingo was prepared against every  emergency," said Diamond Eve Post.
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  Doc Savage eyed the young woman. "I suppose it is  useless to ask you questions."
  "You bet it is," she replied.
  "Where is your friend, Seaworthy, and the men from  his ship?" Doc Savage asked, suddenly.
  The young woman looked concerned, a bit nervous. She  moistened her lips and made fists out of her hands.
  "
  Taz," she said. 
  Ham interposed, "This is once we won’t ask you what  Taz is. But I’ll wager you we finally learn."
  For once, she did not come back with a verbal dart. 
  "Captain Flamingo and his men also went to Taz ," she advised. "I am worried. There is sure to be a fight."
  Monk said, tapping the extra bottle which he had  taken, "I am going to give this to Renny." The homely
  chemist went out.
  DOC SAVAGE and Ham engaged in several verbal  exchanges with Diamond Eve Post during the next few
  moments. Their  manner was casual and they did not ask her for information. Actually,  however, they tried to
  maneuver her into dropping information  unwittingly. They had no success. She was clever.
  "How about guiding us to where we can find Captain  Flamingo and his men?" Doc suggested.
  She hesitated. Finally the idea intrigued her, but  she put her lips together firmly and shook her head.
  "No," she said. "Seaworthy is no weakling. I do not  think Captain Flamingo can take him."
  Ham pointed out grimly, "Captain Flamingo is clever."
  She did not take the bait.
  "I’m betting on Seaworthy," she said.
  At that moment, a series of frenzied human squawls  came to their ears. It was Monk, afloat by the anchor
  chain, yelling at  the top of his voice.
  "Renny’s gone!" the homely chemist howled.  "Somethin’s got him!"
  Doc Savage, Ham and the girl reached the sea bottom  beside the anchor chain in the shortest time possible.
  The water was  enveloped in a great pall of powder−fine sand. Doc Savage dived through  this time after time,
  searching. But no Renny.
  Locating Monk, who had gone to the bottom after  giving the alarm, the bronze man made conversation on his
  fingers.
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  "Did you see any sign of Renny?" he asked.
  "No," Monk fingered back. "He was gone when I got  down here. All I could see was that mess of mud."
  Doc Savage made a wider circle. He found a trail  where the fine sand—it could hardly be classed as
  mud—was suspended  close to the bottom, not unlike smoke. There seemed to be no current  whatever in the
  sea at this point.
  With scooping motions of his hands, Doc got the  water in motion enough to wash the suspended sand to one
  side, so as to  expose the tracks. But the marks thus revealed were not very  illuminating. Indentations in the
  powdery sand did not retain a  definite form.
  The bronze man started to follow the trail. He  progressed only a few yards, then turned back to explain to
  Monk on his  hands.
  "There were lead diving shoes in Captain Flamingo’s  equipment in the hold of the Caribbenda," he coded.
  "We will  need them."
  THEY got the shoes. It required several minutes for  this. Out of the water, the things were clumsy, but in the
  depths, not  inconvenient.
  Such clothing as they were wearing they discovered  was a handicap. So they dispensed with shirts,
  undershirts, but not  socks and shoes. They tore their trouser legs off above the knees.  After that, they made
  better time. 
  Monk, drawing alongside Doc, fingered jerkily, "Any  idea what got Renny?"
  Doc Savage, for answer, pointed at the vague  smokelike trail they were following.
  "I know you can’t tell much by looking at the  trail," Monk fingered back. "Could it have been a shark?"
  "Sharks do not move along the bottom," Doc Savage  reminded him by signals.
  Monk nodded, propelled himself ahead of the others,  and his furry hands managed to shift some of the
  suspended mud away  from the trail. He scrutinized what was revealed closely. It did not  tell him much. In
  fact, it had a tendency to make his hair feel as if  it wanted to stand on end. It was difficult to conceive a
  monstrosity  which would make such a mark.
  The trail averaged two feet in width. There was a  small ridge along each side, as if the soft sand had been
  pushed aside.  The center of the trail was pocked with innumerable pits. These  indentations adhered to no
  particular pattern.
  Monk addressed Doc Savage on his fingers. "You know  what this makes me think of?"
  The bronze man gave the answer that was naturally  expected: "What?"
  "A centipede, one of them thousand−legged worm  things," Monk fingered. "All of them legs’d leave a trail
  just like  this."
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  Ham had come up in time to catch the hideous  possibility suggested by Monk.
  "Don’t you ever think of anything cheerful?" the  lawyer demanded, and gave his fingers an angry flirt after
  they had  fanned the last signal.
  Monk stuck to his guns.
  "It would take a centipede six or eight feet high,  and no telling how long, to make this trail," he conveyed.
  They went on, Monk looking very uneasy. Monk, the  truth was, had managed to scare himself thoroughly
  with his own  supposition, much as a small boy frightens himself by conjuring up  ghosts.
  Doc Savage, leading, halted abruptly. The others  came up with him and looked their questions. A leveled arm
  was the  bronze man’s reply.
  They peered through the crystal−clear water,  illuminated fairly well at this depth by the intense tropical
  sunlight  above.
  An ominous black hole, semi−round, almost large  enough for an automobile to have been driven in, gaped a
  few yards  distant. Into this the murky trail disappeared.
  Monk made frantic signals on his fingers.
  "The den of some kind of a monster," his digits  wiggled.
  THEY stood there, eyes fixed on the hole. The sea  bottom sloped up sharply here.
  It was remarkable, this place where they now stood.  It was tropical water. The warmth showed that. There
  should have been  marine growth, seaweed, some of the myriads of marine flora common to  tropical water.
  There should have been crustaceans, shell fish. There  should have been fish. There were none of these.
  The whole watery domain was as barren as death  itself. 
  They advanced. Inside the hole was intense  blackness. No telling what it held. They had no light.
  "I can go back to the Caribbenda for an  underwater searchlight," Monk signaled on his fingers.
  "It would take too long," Doc replied in the same  manner. 
  They hesitated, exchanging glances. Sunlight,  filtering through the water, gave their skins an eerie cast. They
  kept  their mouths closed. They had stuffed bits of cloth in their nostrils.  Salt water could be taken into their
  lungs without fatal consequences,  but it caused an agonizing smarting.
  Doc Savage moved first. He entered the hole. The  instant he was inside he disappeared from sight of the
  others, as if  gobbled up completely.
  They followed, encountered the bronze man. He  managed to convey that they should link hands. They did so,
  went  forward. Sand was underfoot for a time, then stone. They could tell the  difference through the heavy
  lead diving shoes. Doc Savage stopped.
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  Finding Monk’s wrist, Doc Savage began to tap out a  message in regulation wireless code. It was not
  difficult; Monk knew  the code.
  "Going on ahead," Doc tapped. "Will carry two small  rocks. Follow me. Rocks tapped together rapidly will
  mean danger."
  Then the bronze man was gone. He moved rapidly,  leaning forward until his hands were frequently on the
  floor of the  tunnel. It was a tunnel. Outlines of a flagged flooring could be felt,  covered in many places with
  sand.
  It was blood−chilling business, that creeping  forward through blackness toward the unknown. Absolutely
  nothing could  be seen. Doc kept his hands out ahead. Each held a small stone,  fragments from the flagging
  underfoot. So suddenly that it was as if  lightning had struck, they came out in brilliantly lighted water again.
  Gathering in a compact group, they looked around.  What they saw was profoundly interesting. Monk
  clamped an excited grip  upon Doc’s arm.
  The homely chemist was so excited that the first  letters he made with his stubby fingers were too erratic to be
  understood.
  "This explains everything," he managed to convey,  and waved an arm to take in their surroundings.
  Ham, to one side, stood very straight. Ham’s aplomb,  his air of being always at ease, confident of himself,
  was remarkable.  That it was not an atmosphere created by his usual sartorial perfection  was proven by the
  present situation. He stood perfectly unruffled in  the presence of what was one of the last things they had
  expected to  see.
  The young woman, Diamond Eve Post, caught their  attention. Then she stepped to one side, where there was
  a patch of  smooth sand. She gestured at their surroundings, then leaned over and  made marks in the sand.
  "
  Taz," she scraped with  her finger. 
  And Monk, with fingers that seemed more than a  little stiff, signaled, "Renny—here somewhere!"
  Chapter 15. OUT OF MYTHOLOGY
  Renny, had he been asked at that moment where he  was, could not have told. He was in the throes of a
  hideous seizure.  His lungs felt as if they were full of red ants. He gagged, pitched and  wrenched, and his
  chest throbbed and ached. There was a fog in his  head, but, quite suddenly, the fog cleared.
  Renny lay perfectly still. The agony in his chest,  he realized, was due simply to salt water which had entered
  his lungs.  He was still under water, of course. Completely surrounding him was a  wall of stone, very smooth
  and almost a score of feet high. The place  seemed to be a well, lighted now because the sun was directly
  above.  There was rubble on the floor. Renny looked upward again.
  There was something strange about the sunlight, a  weird quality which could not be explained by the fact that
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  it was  shining through water. It was queerly diffused. Renny stood up.
  His head ached. That would be from a blow which had  rendered him senseless.
  Renny had been knocked out before he even learned  the nature of the weird thing which had attacked him
  near the anchor  chain of the Tropic Seas.
  The big−fisted engineer swam upward. Movement, he  discovered, made his head swim, put a blur of pain
  before his eyes; but  he reached the top of the shaft. There he was stopped.
  Stopped by something he could not see. Or could he  see it? His vision was not up to par. He pushed his hands
  upward. It  was difficult to feel things properly, but there was certainly  something over the top of the shaft. It
  was resilient. It felt slimy.
  Whatever it was, it was exactly the same thing which  had prevented him from escaping upward during his
  weird fight.
  Because he did not feel equal to protracted  exertions at the moment, Renny relaxed. There was little or no air
  in  his aching lungs, so, lacking buoyancy, he sank slowly to the bottom of  the pit.
  A slight sound—sound travels well through  water—brought him around. He perceived then that he had a
  companion in  misfortune.
  Stanley Watchford Topping, the rabbitlike expert on  deep−sea life, was draped listlessly on the sand, and had
  evidently  been watching him. The two men stared at each other—Renny with what  could hardly be called
  friendliness. Topping, according to Renny’s way  of thinking, had behaved queerly throughout the affair.
  But Renny’s desire for information exceeded all  other considerations. He tried deaf−and−dumb sign language
  on Topping.  No response. He leaned forward and scraped letters on the sandy portion  of the floor with a huge
  forefinger.
  "What brought me here?" he wrote.
  Topping shook a negative. Then he parted the scanty  hair on his head to exhibit a rather frightful bruise.
  "I just regained my senses," he managed to scrape in  the sand.
  "Where are we?" Renny wrote.
  Topping marked three letters.
  "
  Taz."
  Renny shook his head, smoothed out the patch of sand  they were using as a slate, and wrote, "What is Taz?"
  "
  The most amazing place on earth,"  Topping scratched back. 
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  Renny looked as if he could have bitten heads off  nails. He was not feeling so well, and this continued
  mystery about  Taz was aggravating him to the point of madness.
  "What is Taz?" he scratched so violently that  he all but tore up the patch of sand.
  Stanley Watchford Topping was naked above the waist;  but he still wore his trousers, his socks, his shoes.
  The stiffness,  the awkwardness with which he handled his legs was very noticeable as  he bent to smooth the
  sand again.
  "I do not really know what Taz is," he wrote.  "That is the truth."
  If he had felt a little more like his usual self,  Renny would probably have blown up. As it was, he only sank
  back  wearily, too disgusted to do more than wait for his strength to return.  But inactivity palled, and within a
  few moments he was again grooving  letters in the sand.
  "How did you get here?" he queried.
  Topping looked very rabbitlike and extremely  defeated. He marked his reply.
  "They kept me prisoner," he explained. "They brought  me here. They thought I knew all about Taz. They
  were mistaken."
  Renny printed, "What did you see as they brought you  here?"
  Topping smoothed out their sand slate.
  "Nothing," he lettered. "They knocked me senseless,  soon after I left the ship."
  "Have you seen Seaworthy?" Renny tried.
  "No," wrote the rabbit of a man.
  Disgusted, feeling a little stronger, Renny got  erect, leaped and swam up to the top again. Glancing down, he
  saw  Topping following him up. For an expert on the deep sea, Topping  handled himself very poorly under
  the water.
  Renny gave attention to the thing over the top of  the pit. His eyes were not blurred now, and he had a firmer
  grip on  reality. He promptly made an astounding discovery.
  The eerie, mysterious, slimy, semi−transparent thing  was no mystery at all. It was simply a netting, not unlike
  window  screen, only of much finer mesh. The stuff was made of bright,  stainless−steel wire. When contacted
  under water, the polished  smoothness of the wires and their close spacing gave the whole thing a  slick feel.
  Renny at once felt much better. He maneuvered around  and got a grip on the pit edge with his huge left hand.
  Making the  right hand into a fist, he drove it upward. It was one of his best  blows, one he had practiced for
  the particular purpose of knocking  panels out of doors.
  The smash got results. The netting split. Tearing,  Renny widened the aperture. He scrambled through.
  Turning, he gave Stanley Watchford Topping  assistance. Both men pushed themselves a few feet from the pit
  edge,  then stopped.
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  Turning slowly, they surveyed their surroundings.  The sight which loomed before his eyes caused Renny to
  stiffen, made  his mouth come open. So startling was the spectacle that Renny all but  sank to his knees. It was
  the last thing he had expected.
  Not the last thing. That came now.
  Colored flame seemed to burst in Renny’s eyeballs,  to spread, blaze through his brain, to shatter his whole
  body. With the  flash, all things became swimming unreality.
  As Renny melted down to the sand by the pit edge, he  was seized, queerly enough, with one consuming wish.
  He wanted to hear  what Doc Savage would say, if the bronze man ever saw Taz.
  Then a monster of black gobbled Renny.
  Chapter 16. TAZ
  Renny was destined not to gratify the strange wish  which had seized him in the midst of disaster, since it was
  unlikely  that he would live his life over again. For Doc Savage was already  looking at Taz.
  The bronze man was also watching the comment which  homely Monk scratched in such smooth sand patches
  as they passed. Monk  was still trying to get information out of Diamond Eve Post.
  "How did you find Taz?" Monk lettered.
  The young woman stopped to scrape out a reply.
  "I financed a deep sea expedition," she wrote at  length. "Captain Flamingo commanded the ship. Seaworthy
  was second in  charge. Topping was along as technical expert."
  Conveying the information took some time, but it was  interesting enough to be worth it.
  Monk wrote another inquiry: "What started the  trouble?"
  "Everybody wanted what was in Taz," the young  woman wrote. "We quarreled. Seaworthy sided with me,
  so—"
  Doc Savage interrupted the exchange with an  imperative gesture.
  "Renny!" the bronze man’s fingers conveyed.
  They went forward. There was enough of a trail for  them to follow. One man could do that, while the others
  looked at  Taz.
  Taz was a city!
  The black tunnel through which they had come, they  knew now, was in the nature of a gate through a wall
  around Taz,  a wall against which the sea and time had drifted sand.
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  89
  
  There was drifted sand against the buildings about  them, too, but not as much as might have been expected.
  Only a few  barnacles, clung to the stone ramparts, which was little short of  amazing, considering the length
  of time these architectural structures  must have lain here beneath the surface.
  Some of the buildings were huge, containing  individual blocks of masonry which must have weighed tons.
  Everything  was built in squares, rectangles, triangles. Nowhere was there a  circular building. Nor had the
  original constructors seemed to  understand the arch; if they had, they had neglected to employ it.
  There was another remarkable aspect: the carvings.  They were everywhere. The original architects of Taz, it
  appeared, had abhorred an unadorned surface. Wherever a smooth piece of  stone presented, they had chiseled
  a design upon it, caricatures of  animals, grotesque likenesses of men, combinations of man and beast. A  few
  of the sculpturings defied recognition.
  Not that the place looked as if the populace had  just vacated it. Nothing of the sort. Some of the great
  buildings had  fallen down. Sand was drifted high in many of the streets. No doubt it  had completely filled a
  number of buildings. Yet, considering that  Taz must have been under the sea for ages past, its condition was
  to be marveled at.
  And marvel they did, slowing frequently to stare at  especially impressive sights. Within the course of a little
  time, they  were strung out in a line, with Doc Savage leading, Monk perhaps a  score of feet behind him, Ham
  even farther back, and the girl trailing  the lawyer.
  This was their position when Ham discovered the  young woman in the act of escaping!
  IT was not entirely luck on Ham’s part that caused  him to make the discovery. Ham was nothing if not
  suspicious of Diamond  Eve Post. Besides, her cocksure manner had gotten under his skin, and  he was
  keeping an eye open to see that the young woman did not put  anything else over on them.
  And now she was diving in between two stone  buildings, making frantic swimming motions with her hands
  to help  herself along.
  Ham promptly sped after her. Head down, he stroked  furiously with his own hands. Speed was hard to attain.
  There is  nothing much more clumsy, Ham reflected, than a man under water.
  Ham’s heavy lead shoes, which enabled him to remain  upright in the water, chanced to clank together. This
  small sound  reached Monk, but not Doc Savage.
  Monk turned. Clear as the water was, he could barely  distinguish what was happening.
  Not exactly sure what was up, Monk set out after  Ham. The homely chemist had been admirably fitted by
  nature for this  kind of life. His long arms made first−rate flippers. He overhauled Ham.
  The lawyer, by gestures, indicated the girl was  trying to escape. Of course, this was by now entirely apparent.
  Monk  and Ham both pursued her. They now made a discovery of which they were  not especially proud. The
  young woman could just about hold her own.  How she could do this was baffling.
  Over the huge, tumbled blocks of what had once been  a great building, the chase led. They seemed to be
  getting on higher  ground—or in shallower water, rather. This was indicated by a lessening  of the bodily
  pressure. Too, the architectural significance on each  side of them was more impressive.
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  Some of these great buildings, Monk reflected,  should very nearly break the surface of the sea. How had this
  place  escaped the attention of the world? There might be a number of  explanations. The tops of these great
  stone buildings, barely  submerged, if observed from the crow’s nest of a vessel, might readily  be mistaken for
  reefs; and mariners are notoriously reluctant about  venturing near reefs.
  Unexpectedly, Monk discovered why the young woman  was holding her own so well. She was taking small
  quantities of the  unique chemical concoction which supplied the necessary functions of  oxygen. Evidently,
  the stuff acted as a stimulant.
  Monk and Ham now followed her example. Results were  gratifying. They overhauled her.
  Diamond Eve Post dodged frantically, veering sharply  down a narrow passage, hoping to cause them to lose
  sight of her. The  ruse very nearly worked. When they reached the passage, she was nowhere  to be seen.
  A few square openings gaped in the walls of either  side. A haze of disturbed sand in one of these indicated
  where the girl  had gone.
  Monk and Ham half ran, half swam through the  aperture and found themselves in Stygian gloom.
  MONK and Ham kept their heads. For two individuals  who had never been known to address a civil word to
  each other, they  now did some nice teamwork. They joined hands and walked abreast,  looking back over their
  shoulders at the lighted rectangle of the door,  to make sure the girl did not duck out again. There was no use
  in  looking ahead; the place was as dark as the inside of a box of  lampblack.
  It was possible, by long and short squeezes of their  joined hands, to converse telegraphically.
  "She wouldn’t go in far," Monk coded. "She’d be  afraid to."
  "She’s not afraid of anything," Ham telegraphed back.
  "Maybe not," Monk admitted. "But she don’t know this  place. She wouldn’t take chances."
  "How do you know she doesn’t know the place?" Ham  continued.
  "She does know it," the lawyer pressured by dots and  dashes. "She knew where she was going while we
  chased her. I noticed  that."
  Those telegraphic communications were very slow, and  by the time they had exchanged this much
  information, quite an interval  had elapsed. There was no sign of the young woman.
  They hesitated, trying to make up their minds. They  decided to penetrate deeper. They went forward.
  Monk banged a wall forcibly with his head, saw  stars, recoiled and gave Ham’s arm a vicious jerk by way of
  relieving  his feelings. For this trick, he got a kick on the left shin from Ham’s  heavy lead diving shoe. Each
  squeezing the other’s hand fiercely, they  worked along the wall and found a doorway.
  The doorway was narrow and not tall enough for them  to pass through erect. It was very cramped, in fact.
  Ham went through  first, rather easily, and, when Monk became momentarily wedged in the  cramped space,
  Ham gave the homely chemist several ungentle jerks. The  result was that they both fell through into the room
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  beyond.
  There were other results, too, totally unexpected.  Came a grinding and jarring, which they distinctly felt.
  There was a  loud impact, as if a great weight had fallen.
  They scrambled up. Both were badly scared, and  honest enough to admit it. Their paramount thought was to
  get outside  again. They shoved themselves to the door.
  But there was no door!
  The opening was now closed by a huge block, so  ponderous that they could not possibly budge it. They tried
  several  times. Both of them, at that instant, would have given a great deal to  be out where they could see the
  sunlight through the water again.
  Monk found Ham’s arm and squeezed telegraphically. 
  "Some kind of a trap," he conveyed. "We sprang it by  struggling in the door."
  "Yes," Ham agreed.
  It was no impossible hypothesis. The mechanism was,  no doubt, of stone, which certainly would not
  disintegrate with time,  as would metal.
  Unexpectedly, Ham drove his fist into Monk’s side.  It was no fighting gesture. The lawyer merely wanted to
  call the homely  chemist’s attention to a sound. A series of sounds, rather.
  Monk had heard them and was already trying to  identify them. They were strange noises, eerie scrapings and
  scratchings. Something coming through the water, certainly. But what?
  Monk thought, and the thought was curdling, of that  queer trail which they had followed to this fantastic
  underwater  metropolis of Taz
  — the trail which looked as if it had been made by some gigantic  centipede. The sounds they were hearing now in the
  abysmal blackness  were noises such as might conceivably be made by such a thing coming  upon them. 
  Monk suddenly had not the slightest doubt but that  they were being attacked by the same horror which had
  made away with  Renny.
  Chapter 17. DEATH IN THE DEPTHS
  But Renny had not been made away with. He was only  senseless—and would not be in that condition long, if
  indications could  be trusted.
  Doc Savage was working over the big−fisted engineer,  kneading muscles, administering small pains
  calculated to stimulate  wakefulness. There were now two unpleasant bruises on Renny’s head, one  appearing
  more recent than the other. The latter one probably explained  his present senselessness.
  The fact that Doc Savage had not followed Monk, Ham  and the girl was simply explained. He had not, for a
  few moments,  discovered their absence, his attention being centered on trailing  Renny. Then, almost at the
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  same time that he became aware of their  non−presence, the bronze man had perceived Renny, a limp hulk
  beside  the round, black maw of the big−fisted engineer’s late prison.
  Renny now awakened. He revived in a manner which  gave a suspicion he did not much care what happened.
  After opening and  shutting his eyes several times, he summoned enough energy to make sign  talk with his
  hands.
  "What was the thing that grabbed me?" he queried.
  Doc Savage countered with sign language. "Do you not  know?"
  Renny shook his head, which evidently made it ache.  For he felt of it hurriedly, gingerly. Then he used sign
  talk to  explain how he had awakened in the pit. He described the presence of  Stanley Watchford Topping,
  and narrated the fact of his climb to the  top and his break through the stainless−steel net. He finished with the
  sudden, mysterious attack which had laid him senseless.
  "And I have no idea what became of Topping," he  completed.
  A little time would be required for Renny to get in  condition for movement. Doc Savage expended the
  interval in examining  the stainless−steel net, which was still in place over the pit. He was  particularly
  interested in the sling attachments around the edge of the  net. These gave an idea of what the thing had been
  intended for.
  A washing screen, a device for separating small  articles from the fine sand of the sea floor. It could be
  stretched at  a slant between supports, and used exactly as builders employ a screen  to separate large stones
  from the sand they intend using in concrete.
  Renny was now on his feet.
  "We will hunt Monk, Ham and the girl," Doc signaled  him.
  THEY backtracked to the point where the young woman  had deserted the cavalcade and had been pursued by
  Monk and Ham. There  was a trail of sorts through the sand. It could be followed, even if  slowly.
  Renny, who had been senseless most of the time since  he had been brought to Taz, showed great interest in
  his  surroundings. He was an engineer, so the structural aspects of the  place intrigued him.
  "The size of some of these stone blocks!" he  notified Doc on his fingers. "Handling them would be a
  problem, even  with modern machinery."
  "What do you make the architecture out to be?" Doc  queried.
  Renny scrutinized his surroundings closely.
  "Mayan," he decided. "They covered everything with  carvings."
  "It has Egyptian aspects also," Doc pointed out.
  "It does," Renny admitted.
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  Several moments later, Doc Savage conveyed his own  idea. 
  "You might call it Egypto−Mayan."
  They shoved themselves over huge, tumbled masonry  piles. Progress was now not only difficult, but the trail
  was getting  faint. Renny lost his balance atop a huge block, and fell head−first.  Had he not been under water,
  he might have suffered fatal damage. As it  was, the weight of his shoes pulled him down feet−first so that he
  landed without harm.
  Renny went through a small pantomine. He made a  cross with his arms. Then he put a hand against either
  side of his  head, fingers sticking out to indicate horns, and moved his jaws as if  chewing a cud. Thus he
  conveyed his ejaculation, "Holy cow!"
  DOC SAVAGE and Renny came finally to the doorway  through which Monk and Ham had followed
  Diamond Eve Post. Entering, Doc  and Renny discovered the stone block which barricaded the opposite end
  of the passage. Their best efforts failed to move it.
  Outside again, they circled the building,  endeavoring to find another entrance. The rather unusual design of
  the  building itself now struck them. It was circular, the one circular  building they had seen in the whole
  metropolis of Taz. Too, the  building was in a remarkable state of preservation. Nowhere had even a  single
  block fallen from the walls. The stone was of a hard obsidian  variety, almost as glassy as the day it had been
  cut and set.
  They came to what seemed to be the main entrance.  But just as the building differed from all the other
  buildings, so was  this entrance unlike the rest. It was an arch, the single one they had  seen.
  Over this arch was a carving which explained why the  place had been called Taz by Diamond Eve Post and
  the rest. The  design consisted of three groups, probably intended to depict men  engaged in mortal combat.
  Their interlocked, contorted figures, as seen  through the crystal water, looked like the three letters: T A Z.
  The entrance was open, inviting. But they were  getting cautious. They had approached among huge blocks of
  stone which  offered concealment. They remained among these, reconnoitering.
  It was fortunate that they did; perhaps unfortunate,  in the light of later developments.
  Doc Savage tapped Renny’s arm unexpectedly, pointed.  Renny followed the bronze man’s indicating finger
  with his eyes,  squinting. The salt water was making their eyes raw, and it was also  having an unpleasant
  effect on their bare skin. The human body was  probably never intended to take up a piscatorial existence.
  A file of men was approaching. Seaworthy, looking  young and remarkably stalwart, led them. The
  others—the crew of the  Tropic Seas
  — trailed him. They moved in Indian file, one behind the other, each  holding to the belt of the man ahead of him. This was
  the simplest  method of locomotion, since keeping one’s balance in the water was  difficult; joined together thus, the matter
  was simplified. 
  Doc stared at the trail they were leaving in the  sand. It explained a great many things. The numbers of
  treading feet  left a long mark, exactly resembling the one left by Renny’s captors.
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  Renny, then, when he was captured, had been seized  by men.
  SEAWORTHY led his procession directly through the  arched door, being met just outside the opening by
  more of his crew.  Within the space of a few moments, every one of them had gone inside.
  Renny looked at Doc Savage. The bronze man nodded.  They advanced. Outside the arched door, they
  listened carefully. There  was no sound; and had there been any, the water would have carried it  excellently.
  They shoved themselves inside, striving to make as little  noise as possible.
  The place was darker, Renny reflected, than any  other spot in which he had ever been. He brought his hands
  up to his  eyes and did not see the fingers—only felt them when they came in  actual contact with the eyeballs.
  They advanced a few yards, stopped,  used their ears.
  They heard noises, scuffings, rattlings—distorted,  of course, in the manner in which water alters sound; but
  the noises  were indicative of a group of men in motion and they came from far  ahead.
  Doc and Renny put on speed.
  With an unexpectedness that was total, light  drenched them. As light goes, it was probably diffused, a bit
  pale;  but, bursting out as it did in the intense darkness, it was blinding.  They blinked, squinted, until their
  pupils became accustomed to the  glow.
  Diamond Eve Post stood near by. She held an  electric, underwater hand flash, and the backglow revealed her
  figure.
  Doc Savage and Renny acted quickly. They moved  forward, separating so as to converge on the young
  woman from either  side. She fathomed that their intention was to seize her.
  She shook her head violently and, bending, smoothed  out the trampled sand which covered the floor and
  stroked letters with  her forefinger.
  "No," she printed. "I want to take you to Monk and  Ham."
  Doc Savage turned, so that the young woman could not  see what he was doing, and made finger talk at Renny.
  Diamond Eve Post had previously given no indication  that she understood the finger symbols, but she was so
  full of tricks  that Doc was taking no chances.
  "She is not telling the truth," Doc informed Renny.
  "It would not surprise me a bit," Renny stated.  "What makes you think so?"
  "Her triumphant manner," Doc signaled. "We will get  her flashlight, then take her along with us."
  Both Doc Savage and Renny now looked as grateful as  they could and drew near the young woman. She was
  not caught napping,  however. She motioned them back, indicating that they keep their  distance, and when
  they did not, she tried to flee. She was much too  slow. Doc caught her, got the electric lantern without
  difficulty.
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  The girl had, indeed, been deceiving them. In fact,  she had been playing with them. For lights now sprang up
  all around  them, brilliant electric underwater hand lights, they were. Seaworthy  and his men held them.
  Doc Savage bent swiftly, loosened the straps which  held on the heavy lead diving shoes. Renny did likewise.
  Freed of these  encumbrances, they could put forth their best in swimming.
  Doc retained the girl’s electric lantern, as he shot  upward through the water. It might be useful, even if
  dragging its bulk  did slow his movements.
  SEAWORTHY, it developed, had evolved a system of  signals for communication with his subordinates. He
  must have perfected  them by much practice aboard the Tropic Seas, in New York.
  By deserting their lead shoes, Doc and Renny secured  a distinct advantage. Seaworthy and the others retained
  theirs, and  when they wanted to get off the floor, it was necessary for them to  swim furiously.
  Renny seized Doc’s arm and, by pressure signals,  telegraphed, "Which way?"
  "In," Doc replied by the same method.
  This was agreeable with Renny. Monk and Ham, it was  reasonable to believe, were somewhere in here.
  For the next few moments, they swam furiously. Renny  was an expert in the water. The fact that Doc was
  ordinarily much  faster did not count for so much now, because the hand light slowed the  bronze man
  perceptibly.
  When the opportunity presented, Doc swam down to the  floor and along that in darkness, in an effort to find
  small stones. He  located none. He stroked up to the ceiling again, a distance of less  than a score of feet, and
  tapped the electric lantern against the  stone. There was method to his tapping—he was conveying as nearly as
  possible letters in the International Telegraph Code. He was requesting  that Monk and Ham reveal their
  presence by a like tapping.
  Answer came almost at once. It was hard to locate,  for sound direction is deceptive under water. Doc judged
  its source by  turning slowly, swam toward it, Renny following.
  It was necessary that they wedge through a none too  ample door. The room beyond was low of ceiling.
  Monk and Ham were confined in a surprising fashion!  Each lay on his back in a pit in the floor. These pits
  were each barely  large enough to receive a human figure. Monk’s bulk, in fact, bulged  out of the one in
  which he was confined.
  Across the chest of the two prisoners lay enormous  blocks of stone. These covered each captive, except for
  his head and  feet. The blocks were held in place by an ingenious contrivance of some  metal which had not
  rusted. The device resembled an oversize screen  door hook in some respects, and was so located that it could
  not be  freed by the prisoners.
  Monk had signaled by kicking his lead shoes against  the stone of his cramped pit.
  Doc’s captured hand light revealed this. The bronze  man swam swiftly to Monk. Renny went to Ham. They
  worked over the  slabs’ fastenings. These were not difficult.
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  Doc got his fastenings free first, but he did not  shove the block immediately. He bent over, examined it.
  What he found caused him to whip erect. Too late!  The big−fisted engineer gave the block over Ham a lusty
  shove. 
  Results were dismaying. The block moved easily  enough; but, simultaneously, came a great grinding and a
  crash behind  them!
  They spun. Doc flicked the light switch. Electric  whiteness spouted, hit the door.
  The door was now closed by parallel stone bars which  had dropped down from above. They were square,
  would measure a foot  either way. Plainly, the shifting of the blocks over the prisoners had  actuated a trigger
  which dropped the bars.
  Renny made signals in the light with his big hands.
  "Great stuff!" was his comment.
  Chapter 18. THE TREASURE FABULOUS
  Brilliant light appeared a moment later beyond the  bars, and Diamond Eve Post, Seaworthy, and their crew
  came up. They  were grinning, triumphant. The young woman stuck out her tongue at the  scowling Ham,
  small−girl fashion.
  Seaworthy, it developed, was well prepared. He  produced a slate and pencil of a type which could be used for
  communication under water.
  "This place is full of traps, such as the one you  just sprung on yourselves," he wrote. "You have to be careful.
  On our  previous visit, when we discovered the place, we lost four men."
  He passed the slate through the bars for them to  read and to make a reply.
  "What are you going to do with us?" Monk wrote on  it. 
  Seaworthy took the slate back and scribbled, "Will  you give me your word not to try to escape?"
  Monk used the whole slate to write the two letters  that comprised his reply: "No."
  That did not faze Seaworthy in the slightest. There  was evidently a method of operating the bars from
  outside, because they  now opened. Several of Seaworthy’s men came in.
  The attackers had long poles with razor−sharp blades  of steel on the ends. They were literally spears.
  Probably they had  been brought along to use against sharks or other under water denizens.  They were very
  effective weapons. Doc and his aids were crowded  backward.
  Doc Savage did manage to seize one of the weapons.  He wrenched, got control of it; but he threw it down
  again almost at  once. Seaworthy’s men were a thick, determined wall before him. To  escape, he would
  undoubtedly have had to take lives. He never did that,  if it could be avoided.
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  Doc, Renny, Monk and Ham were crowded into a corner,  seized, and light, stout ropes made fast to their
  necks. In tying these  ropes to their necks, Seaworthy cunningly employed a common hangman’s  knot, one of
  the most difficult for the victim to untie. They were led  out.
  Seaworthy had explored this place previously, it  became certain. His manner, as he stepped away forward,
  was sure.  Diamond Eve Post moved at his side. All of their electric torches were  on. They traversed narrow
  corridors, descended runways, mounted stairs,  turned often.
  Monk dropped back to Doc Savage’s side and managed  to convey a short explanation in the sign language.
  "Ham and me chased the girl," he signaled. "She led  us into Seaworthy’s hands."
  THE strange cavalcade came finally to its goal.
  It was a large room, and it was reached by passing  through a solid stone wall, every bit of twenty feet in
  thickness.
  At first glance, the most amazing thing about the  room was the ceiling. This—there was not the slightest
  doubt of it—was  composed of a single, titanic block of stone. It was, Doc Savage  realized, probably the
  largest single block of stone ever employed in  construction work. Certainly there were no historical records
  of a  larger one. Strangest of all, this colossal slab seemed not to lie over  the top of the room, lid−fashion, but
  was cut to fit inside the walls.  What held it up could not be discerned.
  In geometrical rows on the room’s floor stood what,  at first glance, might have been mistaken for stone
  coffins; but they  were shallower, narrower, somewhat longer. They were of some black  stone so hard that it
  had managed to retain some of its original polish  down through the ages. The lids fitted tightly, but had no
  visible  fastenings. In number, these cases exceeded a hundred.
  There was sand on the floor of the room to the depth  of several inches. In this, near the entrance, lay the
  broken fragments  of what must have once been a pottery jar. Seaworthy strode over to the  jar bits and kicked
  about among them, stirring up a cloud of the fine  sand. He got down on all fours and sifted the stuff through
  his  fingers. Finally, he straightened, holding a tiny object, a thing that  glinted green in the electric light. He
  extended this to Doc Savage.
  It was an emerald, not large, not especially  perfect, yet one which would have brought several thousands of
  dollars  on the open market.
  Seaworthy wrote on his slate, "Captain Flamingo got  enough of these on our first visit to buy his equipment
  and pay his  gang. He had big ideas of screening more of them out of the sand."
  Doc Savage recalled the screen which had been over  Renny’s pit. Renny’s captors, then, had been Captain
  Flamingo and his  crowd.
  Seaworthy wrote on the bottom of the slate,  "Souvenir," and passed Doc Savage the emerald.
  That surprised the bronze man. He took the slate. 
  "This is part of the treasure you came after?" he  wrote. 
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  Seaworthy grinned widely, shook his head. He reached  for the slate.
  "All the jewels in the world are not worth what we  came after." His slate pencil made scratchings unpleasant
  to the ear,  as they vibrated through the water.
  Doc Savage shook his head and conveyed by gestures  that he did not understand and was puzzled.
  Seaworthy shrugged, stepped to one of the cases,  grasped the lid, strained, got it off. The case was filled with
  metal  plates. These stood on edge, not unlike the plates in a storage  battery. Seaworthy extracted one.
  It was of some strange black metal, as intensely  black and shiny as emerald.
  The entire surface was covered with remarkedly clear  hieroglyphics.
  DOC SAVAGE’S flake−gold eyes were set unwaveringly  upon the strange plaque.
  Seaworthy placed it on the case, picked up the slate  and conveyed the statement: "It is possible that that plate
  alone is  worth millions of dollars." He put several exclamation points after the  statement to gain an effect that
  was not necessary.
  Doc Savage did not move. His eyes were still on the  plate, on the symbols inscribed whitely thereon. It was
  writing,  hieroglyphics—not Egyptian, not Mayan, a combination of both.
  And Doc Savage, who was somewhat familiar with both,  was slowly translating the symbols on the plaque. It
  was very  interesting. Put into English, it would have read somewhat as:
  CENTRAL SCIENCE LIBRARY
  PLATE OF 1001—MENTAL TELEPATHY
  BEING A RECAPITULATION OF EXHAUSTIVE EXPERIMENTS BY  CENTRAL SCIENTIFIC
  LABORATORY WHICH PROVE CONCLUSIVELY THAT THOUGHT  IMPULSE OVER THE NERVE
  STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BODY IS A PHENOMENON AKIN  TO THE FORCE KNOWN AS
  ELECTRICITY; THAT SUCH THOUGHT CURRENTS ARE  GENERATED BY ATOMIC REACTIONS
  CHEMICALLY PRODUCED; THAT THERE IS A  DISTINCT THOUGHT MAGNETIC FIELD AROUND
  HUMAN NERVES AND THE BRAIN  CELLULAR STRUCTURE, JUST AS A MAGNETIC FIELD IS
  FOUND AROUND WIRES  CARRYING ELECTRIC CURRENT.
  WHEREIN THIS AND FOLLOWING PLATES IS DESCRIBED FOR  POSTERITY CONSTRUCTION OF
  APPARATUS SUITABLE FOR RECEPTION OF SUCH  THOUGHT VIBRATIONS— 
  At that point, Seaworthy hastily replaced the plate  in the case. He grabbed his slate and wrote, "Can you read
  the stuff?"
  Doc Savage nodded.
  "What do you think of it?" Seaworthy wrote. 
  "Incredible, if true," Doc Savage wrote  machine−perfect characters on the slate.
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  Seaworthy took the slate and scribbled, "It is  genuine."
  Doc Savage lettered a question: "How do you know?"
  Seaworthy grabbed the slate back.
  "I took one set of plates away on my first visit,"  he wrote. "Translated, it told how to mix the chemical which
  has made  it unnecessary to breathe."
  MONK, Ham and Renny had crowded up to take in this  written exchange. The proper amount of amazement
  was on their  countenances. If they had visioned a treasure as being behind all of  the mystery and danger
  through which they had gone, it was certainly  one of jewels and gold; but this—it was entirely different, just
  a bit  unbelievable.
  They stood there and tried to visualize more of this  ancient city of the past.
  Seaworthy was as happy as a small boy in a toy shop.  He made signals to his men. They scattered. Around
  their waists they  were wearing sashes, long lengths of narrow cloth. They now unwound  these. Taking plates
  from the cases, they began to wrap them carefully  in the sashes.
  Once more, Seaworthy wrote on the slate and shoved  it at Doc Savage.
  "How would you like to be declared in on this?" he  had written.
  Doc Savage considered, then took the slate.
  "On what basis?" he penciled.
  Seaworthy frowned, as he composed his terms.
  "You get a percentage for translating the plaques  and building the apparatus they describe," he wrote.
  "A percentage of what?" Doc Savage countered.
  "You don’t think we’re suckers enough not to cash in  on this?" Seaworthy added two big exclamation points
  after this.
  "A thing such as this should be administered for the  benefit of mankind," Doc Savage wrote.
  Seaworthy grinned, seized the slate.
  "Sure," he printed. "And a lot of dollars will sure  benefit me." He added, "And Miss Post, too."
  Doc Savage looked at Monk.
  "Phooey on the cluck," Monk signaled with his  fingers.
  Doc Savage nodded. Those were his sentiments. The  affair was not yet over.
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  Just how far it was from being over became apparent  a moment later. There was excitement over by the door.
  It started  mildly, with a clattering of lead shoes on the stone and sand of the  floor and a rasp of one of the
  spear points as it scraped rock. All  glances went in that direction. What they saw was eye−filling.
  Captain Flamingo and his men were coming through the  door. The foremost of them carried an ordinary glass
  jug of five−gallon  capacity. To prevent breakage, this was encased in a wooden crate. The  name of the jug’s
  contents had been put on the crate with black paint:
  H2SO4
  Doc Savage, Monk recognized the common chemical  symbol. Sulphuric acid!
  Doc Savage comprehended the purpose of the stuff  instantly. It would be released in the room. Even diluted
  with the  water, it would affect their eyes, blind them.
  Chapter 19. THE DEVIL IS A RABBIT
  Every light in the science library room of the  ancient city now blazed in the direction of the door. Captain
  Flamingo  stood in the door, arrogant, confident. Under other conditions, he  would have been ridiculous. He
  wore his gaudy necktie, his brilliant  vest, but had no shirt. He still had his brilliant trousers.
  He wore underwater goggles. So did all his men. That  would preserve their eyes from the sulphuric acid.
  He strutted to one side of the door. A hand entered  a pocket. What proved to be a colored crayon came into
  view. On the  wall he wrote the message:
  YOU GET A CHANCE. LIE DOWN ON YOUR FACES AND WE TIE  YOU. WE WON’T KILL YOU.
  Doc Savage turned on Seaworthy. That young man had  been so confident a minute before. Now he was
  thoroughly squashed. Doc  took the slate.
  "Say you accept," the bronze man wrote. "Get over to  the side wall. Remove the lead shoes."
  Seaworthy’s first impulse plainly was to refuse. He  scowled, then he shrugged. Looking at Captain Flamingo,
  he nodded  vehemently. Which nod gaudy Flamingo undoubtedly took to mean assent to  his wishes.
  Seaworthy led the way to the right−hand wall. The  girl, his men, followed closely. Bringing up the rear were
  Doc and his  three aids.
  The moment they were against the wall, Seaworthy  made signals, then removed his own heavy lead shoes by
  way of  illustrating what he wanted. The others followed suit.
  Captain Flamingo was plainly puzzled by their  actions. He advanced. Waving his arms, he caused his men to
  spread out  across the room. They all carried knives, or spears such as Seaworthy’s  crew possessed.
  The man with the jug also walked into the room. It  was little concern of his whether the acid jug got broken
  or not.
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  Doc Savage waited. Flamingo’s crowd drew close. Doc  Savage made a gesture. Expressive, it conveyed his
  wishes perfectly.
  Seaworthy and his men promptly planted their  electric underwater lights on the floor, so that they shone
  directly  into the eyes of the approaching Flamingo party.
  Doc signaled again. Every one, relieved of the  weight of the heavy lead shoes, swam upward.
  The man with the jug broke it, releasing a mass of  sulphuric acid.
  CAPTAIN FLAMINGO, for once in his foxy career, was  caught flatfooted. The lights in his eyes blinded
  him and his men  momentarily. For a moment, they stared through pinched eyelids.
  They were handicapped also by the fact that they  still wore their lead shoes. They could get off the floor only
  by the  most violent effort. For the space of a few seconds, they did nothing  effective.
  Doc Savage, his men, some of the others, might have  escaped. But it was too much to hope for all to get
  away. Accordingly,  none fled. They held together, a compact group, moving as swiftly as  they could, ready
  for attack.
  Attack came. Captain Flamingo, grotesque in his  goggIes, gestured frantically at his followers. Some of them
  got their  lead shoes off, came up.
  Spears, knives met them. Seaworthy’s men had not  dropped their arms.
  It was a fantastic thing, that fight which followed.  It might have been some rankly imaginary movie depicting
  combat in a  land where there was no gravity, the film then being shown in slow  motion. Almost none of the
  combatants wore more than trousers. The  goggles on Flamingo’s men gave them a semi−human aspect, as if
  they  were beings from another world.
  Doc Savage’s maneuver had accomplished much. His  force had managed to get completely over the heads of
  Captain  Flamingo’s crowd. They did not swim down to the floor, but kept high  and worked as swiftly as
  possible for the door. They had a very good  reason for this.
  Doc Savage knew the specific gravity of sulphuric  acid. It was heavier than water, hence would tend at first
  to remain  near the floor. Excited, two of Captain Flamingo’s men ran through the  concentrated solution of
  sulphuric acid before it dissipated. It burned  them. They flailed about madly.
  Doc Savage, finding Diamond Eve Post beside him,  gave her a brisk shove toward the door. She tumbled
  almost to it,  spinning slowly through the water, regained her balance and grimaced at  him. Then she evidently
  decided to see if Captain Flamingo had left  lookouts outside. She disappeared through the door.
  That was dangerous. She was an overconfident young  woman, likely to get herself into trouble.
  Doc Savage studied the fighting. Seaworthy’s crowd,  aided no little by Monk, Renny and Ham, were more
  than holding their  own. Doc Savage’s aid was not essential, and it was very necessary that  the retreat trail
  should be opened.
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  Doc Savage eased back and whipped into the doorway.  He traveled swiftly, swimming, for that was infinitely
  faster than  walking under water.
  A brilliant light appeared ahead. It was Diamond Eve  Post, paddling along, not very swiftly, with an
  underwater light which  she had managed to retain throughout the excitement. Doc caught her.
  Without preliminary explanations, he grasped the  light and extinguished it. She tried to pull his hair for that,
  but had  no success. He left her there, no doubt sputtering with rage, and went  on. He traversed darkened
  rooms, black passages, for a time, guided by  his sense of touch.
  Another light appeared ahead. It did not surprise  him. Captain Flamingo possibly had left guards posted. Doc
  Savage drew  closer, made a discovery. No Flamingo guard this.
  It was rabbitlike Stanley Watchford Topping!
  TOPPPING was crouched in the middle of a glaring  white blaze of light, given off by a powerful underwater
  lamp. Fully  two−thirds of his time was devoted to casting nervous glances about. So  close a watch was he
  keeping that it was doubtful if even a minnow  could have swum close without being discerned.
  During the moments when he was not watching his  surroundings, Topping was working over a dark box, out
  of which  projected a plunger that had a handle on it. Wires ran from the box  into the sand that covered the
  floor. Where they went from there, it  was difficult to tell.
  Doc Savage eased backward. Surprising Topping would  be a hopeless task, so he was leaving the rabbitlike
  expert on deep−sea  life alone. Back through the passages, Doc Savage swam. Nearing the  room which had
  proved to be the scientific library of the lost  civilization, the bronze man was seized suddenly from behind.
  He  received two painful blows in the ribs. The girl, Diamond Eve Post!
  Doc successfully smothered an impulse to shake her,  and dragged her on ignominiously to the fighting.
  All of Seaworthy’s men had gotten out of the library  room. Captain Flamingo and his followers were still
  inside. Monk,  Renny, Ham and Seaworthy had spears, were holding the door. The door  itself had originally
  been closed by a huge slab of stone which swung  on ingenious pivots. During the ages, however, sand had
  banked up in  front of this. Too, the slab stuck on its pivot, probably due to the  growth of a few barnacles.
  Seaworthy’s men were fighting to free the  slab.
  They budged it, straining, lunging. They moved it.  The four defenders of the portal drew back to let it close.
  It shut.
  Captain Flamingo’s crowd promptly began ramming it  from the other side. Men scattered, searching for
  rubble with which to  block the opening of the slab. The stone blocks, they discovered, could  be pried from
  the floor of an adjacent room.
  They made a mound of stone against the door,  building it carefully. Doc placed the stones as they were
  brought.  Eventually, he decided the stone would hold the door for a time. He  signaled that fact with his arms.
  Seaworthy had lost his slate, but he still had the  pencil.
  He wrote: "We’ll go to the ship, get equipment, come  back and clean up."
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  Doc took the slate pencil.
  "Right," he printed. "But extinguish all lights.  Make no noise."
  "What?" Seaworthy wanted to know.
  "Topping" Doc printed. "He is connecting what  appears to be a blasting machine."
  Fist shakings and fierce faces conveyed what  Seaworthy thought of Topping.
  Stanley Watchford Topping still crouched where Doc  had last seen him. He still worked over the generator,
  which was of a  waterproof type, probably especially equipped for underwater work.
  Doc Savage led the way to the left. They kept away  from the wall, the floor, the ceiling, and they were
  careful, so as not  to make noise, not to strike their persons with their hands as they  swam. They passed
  Topping, entered the last passage and in a moment  could discern the comparatively brilliant outer water.
  In quick succession, they swam out of the strange,  round building which housed the scientific library of the
  pre−historic  civilization.
  Doc Savage stopped Monk and addressed him in sign  language.
  "We are not out of this yet," he fingered. "You and  Renny and Ham are probably better swimmers than any of
  this crowd. Beat  them back to the ship."
  "I get you," Monk answered on his fingers.
  "Make them come aboard one at a time," Doc Savage  continued. "Having them climb up the anchor chain
  would be excellent.  Bind each one."
  "Whole gang prisoners," Monk made a big grin. "I’ll  like that."
  He conveyed the information to Renny and Ham. The  three of them set out at once, rising to the surface so as
  to locate  the ships and set a direct line for them.
  Seaworthy and the girl were plainly stumped by this  action. They got together and tried to exchange opinions,
  but their  sign language was inadequate. They started looking around for a smooth  patch of sand to use as a
  slate.
  Doc Savage went back into the round building.
  That Stanley Watchford Topping contemplated  something desperate, there was not the slightest doubt.
  Topping, of  course, had knocked out Renny, after Renny had managed to get them both  out of the prison pit.
  Topping, no doubt, had then gone back to the  ship, gotten the explosive.
  Just what Topping intended to do was a mystery. Doc  intended to find out what it was, and stop it if the move
  was counter  to his own plans.
  The bronze man caught sight of Topping.
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  Simultaneously, he saw a number of other things.  Captain Flamingo! The man who loved gaudy clothing was
  closely trailed  by some of his men. They must have broken through the barricaded stone  block door to the
  library room.
  The room in which Topping crouched was large. Doc  Savage, on one side of it, could barely distinguish
  Captain Flamingo,  on the opposite side, coming through a door. This, despite the fact  that Captain Flamingo
  carried a brilliant electric hand light. The  water in the room, of course, was roiled somewhat by the traffic.
  Topping saw Captain Flamingo. The effect of the  discovery was pronounced and, as it turned out,
  cataclysmic.
  Doc Savage drove forward. He realized what was going  to happen; but there was not time to prevent it.
  Topping came down hard on the handle which generated  the current that ran through the wires, and set off the
  blasting  charge. The charge, it developed with a roar, was planted just inside  the door through which Captain
  Flamingo and his men were coming. The  wires had been concealed under the sand.
  Doc Savage saw the flash, a hideous red blaze; and a  split second before that he managed to get his hands
  over his ears.  That probably saved his hearing.
  The concussion was terrific. Pressure such as he had  never before experienced rammed against every inch of
  his great frame.
  The bronze man must have been knocked out for a  moment. He was never quite sure. He was aware of a
  terrific shock as he  slammed against the passage wall, and knew that the rush of water was  carrying him out.
  Light blazed in his eyes. He was in the water outside.
  There was a great rumbling and roaring, as of a  tremendous earthquake.
  Chapter 20. THE LOST
  Something was happening to the titanic circular  building which housed the amazing archives of the lost
  civilization.  The walls cracked in a place or two. Masonry fell. Great clouds of mud,  water and sand spouted
  from the door.
  The motion in the water carried Doc Savage upward  and he let himself go, stroking a little.
  Then a force—a vortex—seized him, dragged him toward  the building. The sea in the vicinity was moving as
  if rushing into a  great pit. The cause of that was evident a moment later.
  The library room roof—that titanic block of solid  stone—had dropped. Perhaps its wedging had been
  loosened by the blast.  Perhaps its original builders had rigged it as a cataclysmic trap of  sorts, just as they had
  rigged strange traps elsewhere in the circular  building.
  But the roof had dropped. Countless tons of stone  now weighted down the secrets of the ancient civilization.
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  A cloud of mud and sand boiled up, spreading,  swirling, diffusing. It hid the whole, it smarted Doc Savage’s
  eyes.
  The bronze man swam to the surface. It had seemed  bright in the depths, but the sunlight on the surface was
  infinitely  painful in its whiteness.
  Doc Savage swam about for a long time, waiting. No  one came to the surface. No bodies rose.
  He struck out for the two ships.
  Monk, his hairy simian frame encased in dry  clothing, leaned over the bow of the Tropic Seas and watched
  Doc  Savage climb slowly up the anchor chain.
  "Boy, are they squawking their heads off!" The  homely chemist grinned.
  "You got them all?" Doc Savage asked.
  "Every one," Monk chuckled. "The girl, too. Is she  saying things!"
  Doc Savage swung aboard.
  Monk asked, "What about Captain Flamingo?"
  Doc Savage hesitated, then said slowly, "Gone."
  They walked aft.
  Renny met them and rumbled, "We were plenty worried  about you, Doc. Holy cow, that was some
  explosion!"
  Seaworthy, Diamond Eve Post and the crew of the  Tropic Seas were bunched amidships. All were tied hand
  and foot.  Doc’s men had done a good job. Ham watched them, fingering a rifle.
  The girl looked at Doc Savage, and her expression  was that of a young woman who could think of many
  unpleasant things to  say. Deliberation, however, evidently decided her to hold her tongue.
  "What about Captain Flamingo?" she queried. 
  "Topping set off an explosion," Doc replied. "Every  one perished."
  "Topping," the girl said slowly. "He was Captain  Flamingo’s boss, at first. Captain Flamingo must have
  turned on him.  Probably Topping demanded too big a cut."
  Monk made an explosive sound, intended to convey  surprise.
  "Topping one of them?" grunted the homely chemist.  "I know it looked like it, at times. But back in New
  York, in that  moray eel trap, he took the same chance of being killed as the rest of  us."
  "Wrong," Doc Savage corrected.
  Monk blinked. "Huh?"
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  "The morays would have been unlikely to have bitten  any of us higher than the knees," Doc Savage told
  Monk. "Topping was  safe."
  "Why?" Monk was still puzzled.
  "Topping," Doc Savage said, "had artificial legs.  You would have known that, had you observed closely the
  way he walked."
  Monk looked dazed. "But if you knew he was one of  them, why didn’t you—"
  "There was the mystery of Taz that needed  solving," Doc Savage reminded.
  "You’re right about those artificial legs," the girl  put in.
  Seaworthy scowled at them. Seaworthy seemed to have  a very low opinion of himself at the present moment.
  "Now who gets the library of Taz?" he  muttered.
  "No one," Doc Savage said.
  Seaworthy started. "What do you mean?"
  "The roof of the library dropped," Doc told him. "No  equipment available in either of these ships will get at
  it."
  THE bronze man’s surmise proved to be correct in the  days that followed. They spent almost a month on the
  scene, attempting  to penetrate again into the library with its undoubtedly fabulous  wealth of scientific secrets.
  They used up all their dynamite. They  tried every ruse suggested by Doc Savage’s and Renny’s combined
  engineering skill. They got exactly nowhere.
  This city of ancient civilization—Taz, as it  has been dubbed, stood on what was once the top of a mountain,
  exploration developed. Soundings taken a few miles away in any  direction, showed rather deep water. Nor
  did a search of other  buildings of the metropolis reveal much of value, although it proved  highly interesting.
  In the course of the explorations, Monk cleared up  one more point that had puzzled him. It had nothing to do
  with  exploring, however.
  "What about that brass case that caused us so much  trouble at Topping’s house?" he asked Diamond Eve
  Post. "What was in  it?"
  "It was probably Captain Flamingo’s chart box," she  replied. "It might have held a chart showing the location
  of Taz , possibly maps of Taz itself."
  They sailed from Taz on the thirtieth day.  Doc Savage stood on the after deck of the Caribbenda and watched
  the light patch, like a shoal, which marked the location of Taz,  watched it until the vastness of the sea
  swallowed it. A radio compass,  improvised from the wrecked equipment of the Caribbenda, would  guide
  them back to civilization.
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  The Tropic Seas was left riding to her  anchor, to be sent back for when they reached land.
  Doc Savage, although the others perhaps had not  realized it, was not leaving empty−handed. That chemical
  concoction,  the one which made the function of breathing unnecessary, was certain  to prove invaluable to
  American medical science. It meant, in fact, a  new lease on life to sufferers from lung afflictions; and it
  would have  other uses.
  The disappearance of the shoal patch, which marked  the location of Taz, meant the end of this adventure.
  There  would be others. The very pursuit of his strange career of righting  wrongs, aiding the oppressed, meant
  unending trouble for Doc Savage and  his aids.
  Amidships, Monk and Ham were quarreling as usual.  Pretty Diamond Eve Post was the subject of the
  squabble this time. Monk  had been monopolizing the young woman, and Ham was trying to cut in.
  "Beat it, shyster," Monk told Ham. "The young lady  is teaching me to dance."
  "You can dance better than she can," Ham told Monk.  "You’re deceiving her, telling her you can’t dance a
  step."
  Possibly it was the reflection on her dancing  ability that caused Diamond Eve Post to blow up.
  "Always quarreling," she shrieked. "Keep away from  me! I’m getting tired of it!"
  Monk looked very contrite and said, "I’m awfully  sorry. I wouldn’t have done—"
  "Nuts!" said the girl. "And quit shining up to me.  My husband don’t like it."
  "Your husband?" Monk gulped.
  "Seaworthy," advised the young woman. "We’ve been  secretly married for almost a year."
  Monk looked very disappointed and scowled at Ham,  who also looked very disappointed, but who brightened
  when he saw the  degree of the homely chemist’s discomfiture.
  "Which shows what you know about women," Ham said,  nastily.
  Monk groped for something stinging. The only thing  he could think of was a resumption of their old
  argument.
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  108
  
  "At least, I know as much about them as you know  about sailors’ pants," he growled.
  Seaworthy came around the corner of the deckhouse,  demanding, "What’s this about sailors’ pants?"
  Ham snapped, "Monk claims they’re large at the  bottom, so as to go on and off easily. He’s crazy!"
  "Ham says they’re big just because it’s a style,"  Monk growled. "He’s crazy!"
  "You’re both crazy," said Seaworthy. "How could a  sailor roll his pants up when he wants to scrub a deck, if
  they weren’t  big at the bottoms?"
  Even though Seaworthy gave them an answer, Ham and  Monk would probably continue their argument
  indefinitely—at least,  until Doc called them to aid him in another adventure.
  THE END
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/036 Mystery Under the Sea.pdf