TEXT:  
   
  THE FANTASTIC ISLAND 
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine December 1935 
   
   
  The Fantastic Island 
   
  was  but  a  small  volcanic  outlying  island  of 
  the Galapagos Archipelago;  but when Johnny 
  wrecked  on  it  and  Doc  Savage  went  to  his 
  rescue, the island spawned a plot as  
  gigantic as it was small 
   
  A Complete Book-length Novel 
   
  By KENNETH ROBESON 
   
   
   
  
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  2 
  Chapter I 
  SHIPWRECKS TO ORDER 
   
   
  THE 
  disappearance 
  of 
  William 
  Harper Littlejohn attracted no public attention 
  whatever. The reason for this was simple. 
  The public never learned about it. 
   
  William Harper Littlejohn was a very 
  famous man. It was impossible that, if ten 
  average men on the street should be stopped 
  and asked who William Harper Littlejohn 
  was, they would not have had the slightest 
  idea; but, in his field, William Harper 
  Littlejohn was tops. His field was archaeology 
  and geology. Wherever men are interested in 
  such things, he was known. 
   
  William 
  Harper 
  Littlejohn’s 
  disappearance was simple. He had chartered 
  a ship and was taking an archaeological 
  expedition to the Galapagos Islands, below 
  the equator in the Pacific Ocean. The 
  Galapagos are said to be the world’s 
  strangest islands. William Harper Littlejohn 
  simply disappeared. The ship vanished also. 
  The whole expedition, too. 
   
  It could not have been that their radio 
  merely failed. There were three radio 
  transmitters on the expedition ship. No, there 
  was some other reason. It was strange. 
   
  Just how strange it was, no one had 
  any idea at the beginning of the thing. 
   
  William Harper Littlejohn happened 
  to be one of the five men associated with that 
  remarkable man of mystery, Doc Savage. 
  Word of his disappearance reached Doc 
  Savage at his New York headquarters. Doc 
  Savage acted promptly. 
   
  Two of Doc Savage’s aids—he had 
  five of them altogether—were on a vacation 
  cruise in the yacht Seven Seas, which 
  chanced to be off the coast of Panama, in the 
  Pacific. Aboard the yacht also was Patricia 
  Savage, a remarkable young woman, whose 
  relationship to Doc Savage was that of 
  cousin. Pat had gone along for the trip, she 
  claimed; but it was to be suspected that she 
  was looking for excitement. 
   
  If she was looking for excitement, 
  she was certainly destined to find it. 
   
  Doc 
  Savage, 
  man 
  of 
  bronze, 
  individual of mystery, mental wizard and 
  physical marvel—to quote the newspapers—
  sent a radiogram to the yacht Seven Seas 
  headed for the Galapagos to look for William 
  Harper Littlejohn, who was better known as 
  “Johnny,” and his expedition. 
   
  The Seven Seas was now about to 
  slam headlong into more trouble than those 
  aboard would ever have believed possible. 
   
   
   
  THE Seven Seas was riding a radio 
  beam radiated, by special courtesy on the 
  part of the powerful United States Naval 
  radio station, from the Panama Canal Zone. 
  This beam simplified navigation, and they 
  were riding it straight for the Galapagos. 
   
   
   
   
  Brigadier General Theodore Marley 
  Brooks stood on the dripping deck of the 
  Seven Seas and stared into an immensity of 
  black sky and blacker water. Occasionally he 
  scowled anxiously upward at the radio 
  rigging. Water slapped and phosphoresced 
  around the bow. 
   
  Right now, the yacht was rolling in a 
  huge ground swell, rolling alarmingly. Rivets 
  strained and bulkheads creaked. There was 
  at least half a gale blowing, and it made 
  noises in the rigging like the sighs of dying 
  men. 
   
  Brigadier General Theodore Marley 
  Brooks was commonly called “Ham,” a name 
  which he did not like. He now frowned darkly 
  and made his way to the pitching bridge. 
   
  “This is dangerous,” he snapped. 
  “We may run onto a reef any minute.” 
   
  “Don’t I know it?” a surprisingly 
  childlike 
  voice 
  retorted 
  from 
  the 
  semidarkness of the bridge. “This ground 
  swell is bad—mighty bad. When it piles up 
  like this, it means the water is getting 
  shallow.” 
   
  Ham snapped, “But I thought you 
  said—” 
   
  “Something 
  screwy,” 
  piped 
  the 
  childlike voice. “According to your log, we’re 
  supposed to have more than a hundred miles 
  between us and the nearest land.” 
  
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  3 
   
  A young woman joined them on the 
  bridge. She was a very striking young woman 
  to look at, having not only a lovely face, but 
  hair of a very unusual bronze color and eyes 
  which actually looked golden. She was 
  Patricia Savage, who loved excitement. 
   
  “I wish you’d ask your old ocean to 
  behave,” she requested, cheerfully. “I’ve 
  been thrown out of my bunk three times in 
  the last fifteen minutes. I gave it up.” 
   
  “Something is wrong, Pat,” Ham told 
  her. “We’re getting into a big ground swell. 
  That means we are near land, or at least in 
  shoal 
  water. 
  And 
  that 
  is 
  very 
  much 
  impossible.” 
   
   
   
   
  Pat walked over to the second man 
  on the bridge. “Just what is the trouble, 
  Monk?” she asked. 
   
  The man addressed as “Monk” sat in 
  the shadows, hunched like a bulky Buddha 
  over an audio-frequency amplifier. His thick 
  hands indicated the apparatus containing 
  vacuum tubes for increasing the voltage and 
  power of radio beacon signals. 
   
  “These 
  direction-finding 
  doodads 
  have gone plain haywire,” he insisted in that 
  small squeaky voice. 
   
  Ham joined them and listened to the 
  signal 
  pulsations 
  coming 
  from 
  the 
  loudspeaker. He said, “The beat frequency is 
  sounding just as it should. We are certainly 
  not off the course as broadcast to us from the 
  government radio beacon in the Canal Zone.” 
   
  “We’re right in the beam, all right,” 
  Monk grunted. “The A wave is jammed with 
  the N waves so you don’t hear any dots—just 
  a blur of dashes. We can’t be off our course, 
  but we must be.” 
   
  “Impossible!” snapped Ham. “Our 
  goniometer, with its new type amplifier 
  developed by Doc Savage himself, insures 
  that the direction finder couldn’t go wrong. 
  And the United States government station is 
  transmitting the beam to us.” 
   
   
   
  THE word exchange had the rather 
  unexpected effect of throwing Monk into what 
  looked like a very violent rage. 
   
  “You tellin’ me, you courtroom fop?” 
  Monk growled belligerently at Ham. 
   
  “Don’t get tough with me, you 
  missing link,” Ham snapped. “I’ll make shark 
  bait out of you!” 
   
   
   
   
  Monk pushed back from the radio 
  apparatus and squared off threateningly 
  before Ham. 
   
  “Who 
  says 
  I’m 
  wrong?” 
  he 
  demanded in a voice no longer mouselike. 
   
  “I did, you ape,” Ham snapped. 
   
  “You’re a liar besides bein’ a shyster 
  lawyer,” Monk bellowed. “I’m right, and you 
  know darned well that I’m right!” 
   
  Pat said dryly, “I wonder if you know 
  what you’re quarreling over.” 
   
  The two men pretended not to hear. 
  Ham and Monk seemed always on the point 
  of taking each other apart violently. The 
  mildest word from one was likely to set the 
  other off in a rage; but it was only on rare 
  occasions that their enmity extended beyond 
  the talking stage. 
   
  Patricia Savage cast an idle glance 
  around the horizon. She started violently. 
   
  “Look!” she cried. “Ahead there, a bit 
  to port. Green and red lights!” 
   
  “Huh?” 
  Monk 
  jerked 
  around. 
  “Channel lights that sounds like.” 
   
  Ham stared intently, forgot himself 
  and his feud with Monk. “Channel lights they 
  are, but they were not there a minute ago.” 
   
  Monk’s small eyes blinked rapidly. “It 
  ain’t possible.” 
   
  “Some mistake,” Ham muttered. “No 
  lights are indicated on the chart.” 
   
  Pat pointed at them and said, “There 
  they are,” with inescapable feminine logic. 
  
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  4 
   
  Ham and Monk crowded forward for 
  another inspection of the charts. They offered 
  a strange contrast in appearance, these two 
  men. Ham was meticulously attired in a blue 
  marine uniform, a blue cap with its insignia in 
  gold set jauntily on his head. He carried a 
  slender black cane. He was handsome, lithe, 
  and wore his clothes like a fashion plate. 
   
  Monk, on the contrary, wore a not 
  too white pair of duck pants, wrinkled across 
  the thighs and bagged at the knees. An 
  enormous green-and-white-striped undershirt 
  fitted around his barrel chest like a circus tent 
  slipped on over an elephant. Rusty hair stuck 
  out on his bulletlike head like mashed bristles 
  on a wire brush. The hair grew low down on 
  his forehead, half burying his ears, almost 
  meeting his scrubby eyebrows. His homely 
  face was mostly mouth and flat nose. His 
  body was nearly as wide as it was long and 
  his fists hung down almost to his knees. In 
  fact, he did not look like a man. He 
  resembled an amiable ape. 
   
  It was a mistake to judge either of 
  these two by appearances. Ham was no fop. 
  He was one of the most astute lawyers 
  Harvard had ever turned out. And Monk, as 
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, 
  was recognized as one of the greatest, living, 
  industrial chemists. 
   
  The greatest claim to distinction of 
  these two men, however, was that they were 
  members of Doc Savage’s group of five 
  remarkable aids. That alone made them 
  unusual, for each of the bronze man’s five 
  aids was a master of some particular 
  profession. 
   
  Pat went over now and disconnected 
  the robot control which had been steering the 
  ship. 
   
  “Shall I hold to the channel lights?” 
  she asked, swinging the wheel slightly over. 
   
  “I don’t like this,” Ham said, uneasily. 
  “There should be no harbor at all near us, 
  least of all a lighted harbor, even a lighted 
  channel. But there is nothing else to do.” 
   
  “Why not?” Monk demanded. “We 
  don’t have to go in that channel, do we?—if 
  there is a channel.” 
   
  Ham 
  snapped, 
  “It’s 
  worth 
  investigating. That is what I mean.” 
   
  It looked as if their perpetual quarrel 
  were going to break out again. 
   
  Pat solved the problem by turning 
  the Seven Seas toward the channel markers. 
   
   
   
  THE yacht was caught in a choppy 
  cross-current now, and the wind was rising. It 
  no longer sighed like men at death’s door. It 
  wailed and howled. 
   
  Ham went to the end of the bridge 
  and clung to the railing to keep from being 
  pitched off the violently tilting craft into the 
  boil of black water around them. In spite of 
  the wind, the night was oppressive, muggy, 
  with a faint sulphurous smell. Suddenly a 
  flickering glow, as of sheet lightning, sprang 
  into life, tingeing the low-hanging clouds. 
   
  Ham made a mistake. He dismissed 
  it at first as ordinary lightning. Then he saw 
  that there was something different about 
  these luminous flashes. They were weird, 
  unearthly. They stained the low-hanging 
  clouds a bloody red. 
   
  Ham heard a rasped breath behind 
  him and was startled into whirling. It was 
  Monk. 
   
  “Red 
  lightnin’,” 
  Monk 
  uttered, 
  hanging on against the fetid, sulphurous wind 
  at the deck tip. “That’s funny-lookin’, ain’t it?” 
   
  Again the gory light mushroomed out 
  under the clouds. It was more sustained, 
  brighter this time, and it showed them things. 
  Off to one side bulked a shore line; but this 
  did not strike them with terror. Pat called 
  attention to the thing that did. 
   
  “Look!” she screamed. “Look! All 
  around us!” 
   
  “Hard alee!” Monk squalled. “Engines 
  reversed!” 
   
  The fantastic red light went out. 
   
  “Did you see?” Ham gasped in the 
  silence that followed. “There must be two 
  dozen ships, big and little, wrecked all 
  around us.” 
   
  “And the devil only knows where we 
  are,” Monk gulped. “I’m gonna back this boat, 
  turn around, get outta here an’ wait for 
  daylight.” 
   
  “A whole graveyard of wrecked 
  ships,” Pat gasped. “Red lightning that smells 
  of sulphur!” 
   
  Pat’s voice sounded, it seemed, 
  rather cheerful. 
   
  “You always did like trouble, didn’t 
  you?” Monk grunted at her. 
   
  “And mystery,” Pat added. “I eat it 
  up.” 
   
  There must have been a tide that 
  carried the Seven Seas to one side, or 
  something. They were in reverse, exactly 
  
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  5 
  retracing the course they had been sailing, 
  when it happened. 
   
  A curling wave lifted the bow of the 
  Seven Seas high in the water and hurled it 
  down. The yacht shuddered with a wrenching 
  shock that knocked Monk and Ham sprawling 
  on the wet deck. There was a nightmare of 
  grinding and scrapings as steel plates were 
  wrenched from the hull by jagged coral. 
   
  Caught fast on the submerged reef, 
  the craft did not rise with the next wave. She 
  heeled half over instead, with a groaning of 
  tortured steel; and the wave washed in an 
  avalanche of water over the deck. 
   
  Ham 
  and 
  Monk 
  were 
  battered 
  against the anchor winch. They staggered 
  up, half drowned, to claw their way toward 
  the bridge. 
   
  “Aid Pat, if she needs it,” Monk 
  bellowed. “Me, I’m goin’ for Habeas Corpus!” 
   
  Habeas 
  Corpus 
  was 
  Monk’s 
  cherished pet pig. He never went anywhere 
  without the animal, much to Ham’s disgust 
  and frequent infuriation. 
   
  A streak of light, blue-white, darted 
  from the Seven Sea’s bridge, knifed across 
  the rock-fanged water. 
   
  “Turn that searchlight off,” Ham 
  shouted to Pat, as he went down again under 
  a drenching cross-wave. 
   
  “It’ll help us see to swim ashore,” Pat 
  protested. 
   
  “It’ll draw sharks,” Ham snapped, as 
  he caught the life preserver Pat threw him. 
   
  “So you’re afraid of sharks,” Pat said. 
   
  But she switched off the searchlight 
  and joined Ham at the submerged rail. Monk 
  appeared on deck an instant later with the 
  squealing, kicking armful of razorback hog 
  that was Habeas Corpus. 
   
  Habeas Corpus had a snout like a 
  wood-rasp, flopping coal-scuttle ears, long 
  ungainly legs. The special life preserver 
  which Monk had previously fashioned for 
  Habeas did not improve his appearance. It 
  added to his buoyancy, however. Monk 
  jumped into the water with the wet pig. 
   
  “That hog’ll draw sharks,” Ham 
  yelled. 
   
  “Habeas, he fights sharks!” Monk 
  roared back. “Come on!” 
   
   
   
  PAT and Ham went overboard, Ham 
  still holding tightly to his slim black cane 
  which was almost as much a part of him as 
  his shirt. The cane was in reality a formidable 
  weapon—a 
  sword 
  cane. 
  Its 
  innocent-
  appearing exterior sheathed a length of 
  gleaming steel, the point of which had been 
  impregnated with a chemical capable of 
  producing almost instant unconsciousness. 
   
  Under the red lightning glare, surf on 
  all sides broke against hidden reefs, churning 
  the water to a bloody froth. But Pat and Ham 
  came through the barrage of wave-dashed 
  rocks and reeled, half drowned and gasping, 
  onto a mangrove-studded beach. Monk 
  swashed ashore close behind them, holding 
  the squirming Habeas Corpus under an arm 
  with difficulty. 
   
   
   
   
  “That hog’ll kick a rib out for you 
  some day,” Ham warned, breathing hard. 
   
  “Lay off Habeas Corpus,” Monk 
  gasped, “or I’ll be kickin’ out some ribs on my 
  own account.” 
   
  The red luminance bloomed again 
  against the clouds. It crawled and writhed, 
  disappeared, and blanketed out again like a 
  bloody mist floating in air. 
   
  “What 
  is 
  it?” 
  Pat 
  demanded, 
  shivering in spite of the sultry night. 
   
  “Nothing 
  supernatural,” 
  Ham 
  explained. “You notice the color on the 
  clouds does not seep through from above. 
  The light is reflected from underneath—” 
   
  “There’s 
  an 
  active 
  volcano 
  somewhere on the island,” Monk summed 
  up. 
   
  Pat 
  pressed 
  water 
  out 
  of 
  her 
  drenched hair. “Do you suppose here’s 
  where Johnny is?” 
   
  “We’ll have to find out,” Ham said, 
  grimly. 
   
  “One thing I’d like to clear myself on,” 
  Pat said earnestly. “The shipwreck. I was 
  holding dead in the middle of the channel 
  when it happened.” 
  
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  6 
   
  “Yeah,” Monk agreed, “it wasn’t your 
  fault.” 
   
  “This shipwreck was arranged,” Ham 
  said, ominously. 
   
  “Some one on this island set those 
  lights so we’d run slam on the reef, you 
  mean?” Monk muttered. 
   
  Ham said soberly, “Some one drew 
  us a hundred miles off our course and 
  wrecked us. We’re up against something 
  really sinister.” 
   
  “Kinda wish Doc was here,” Monk 
  announced.  
  The next moment he was wishing it 
  even more violently.  
  Attracted perhaps by 
  the blue-white searchlight beam which had 
  lanced out from the Seven Seas a moment 
  after she had gone on the rocks, shadowy 
  man-figures 
  loosened 
  from 
  the 
  darkly 
  entwined mangrove thicket and bore down 
  upon the castaways, brandishing short clubs 
  and shrieking a harsh unintelligible gibberish. 
   
   
  Chapter II 
  ISLAND OF HORROR 
   
   
  THE dimly seen attackers, twenty or 
  more, rushed out of the mangroves in a solid 
  wave. Ham and Monk thrust Pat behind, then 
  met the attack—Ham with his sword cane, 
  Monk with his granite-knuckled fists. 
   
  Ham dropped two of the assailants 
  with deft thrusts of the sword cane. He was 
  careful not to allow the valuable cane, tipped 
  with 
  the 
  unconsciousness-producing 
  chemical, to be struck; in fact, Ham was 
  more regardful of the cane than of himself. 
   
  Unexpectedly, there was an ugly-
  sounding whack, and Ham staggered back 
  groggily from a club which had bludgeoned 
  past his guard. Dazedly, he saw the club lift 
  again. But it did not descend. Not with any 
  weight behind it. There was a rap of knuckles 
  against a jaw as Monk’s long arm jabbed out 
  and knocked the club-swinger off his feet. 
   
  Ham recovered his balance and got 
  his deadly sword cane into use again. 
   
  “Let’s charge ‘em,” Monk squawled. 
   
  “Righto,” Ham agreed. “We’ll try to 
  break through into the mangroves!” 
   
  Side by side, they advanced into a 
  rain 
  of 
  clubs—Monk’s 
  pummeling 
  fists 
  working like locomotive driving rods, Ham’s 
  sword cane darting in and out like an 
  aroused snake. Pat, pressing forward behind 
  them, scooped up rocks from the beach and 
  threw them as fast as she could. Even 
  Habeas Corpus did his part, squealing and 
  grunting and gouging his sharp tusks into 
  every foot and ankle that came within reach 
  of his wood-rasp snout. 
   
  The varied strategy was too much for 
  the attackers. They thought Ham’s sword 
  cane was dealing out death, and they broke 
  suddenly, with hideous yells, to go crashing 
  away and disappear in the black recesses of 
  the mangrove sink. 
   
  Monk picked up Habeas Corpus and 
  swung him lustily by the long ears, much to 
  the pig’s squealing delight. Monk grinned, 
  and the action lighted up his unbelievably 
  homely face, making it very pleasant to look 
  at. 
   
  There was a little light now from the 
  stars. Ham was making a quick examination 
  of the anaesthetized victims of his sword 
  cane. 
   
  They were of different races and 
  colors—and all wore loin cloths. Their necks 
  were encircled with copper-studded collars 
  made, seemingly, out of lizard hide. 
   
  A great blast of noise riveted Ham’s 
  attention. It was only Monk laughing. 
   
  “What’s the matter, you hairy ape?” 
  Ham demanded, suspiciously. 
   
  “I was thinkin’ how you’d look in the 
  costume of the country—a loin cloth and a 
  dog collar.” 
   
  Ham bristled and gripped his sword 
  cane tighter. “You wide-mouthed macaw—” 
  he began. 
   
  Pat silenced him with tight-lipped 
  words. “If you want more fighting, save your 
  strength,” she said. “They’re coming back.” 
   
   
   
  A LOUD plud sounded in the wet 
  sand near Ham’s feet. In a second the air 
  was filled with heavy missiles. Habeas 
  Corpus squealed. 
   
  “They’re 
  heaving 
  rocks!” 
  Ham 
  shouted. 
   
  “They can throw more rocks than we 
  can,” Monk growled. “Let’s get outta here.” 
   
  Monk tucked one of the short, thick 
  clubs under his arm, grabbed up Habeas 
  Corpus by the ears, and lunged into the 
  shadowed thicket. Pat and Ham followed 
  closely. 
  
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  7 
   
  Pressing through the mangrove sink, 
  they came out upon a height of land that was 
  nothing if not weird. Volcanic rock, black lava 
  sharp as broken glass, swallowed them up in 
  a welter of fantastically shaped hills and 
  gullies. Much of the razor-edged glass was in 
  tilted sheets which were prone to slip and 
  shatter under the weight of a footfall. Giant 
  cactuses rooted in the crevices and dangled 
  their spiny pads overhead, like hooded 
  cobras ready to strike. 
   
  They lost all sounds of pursuit. 
   
  The low-raking clouds lifted and the 
  three pressed on under the pale white light of 
  equatorial stars. 
   
  “I hope we get somewhere quick,” 
  Pat said, appalled. 
   
  “They speak of the Galapagos 
  Archipelago as the ‘world’s end,’“ Ham 
  remarked. 
   
  “They don’t miss it much,” Monk 
  grumbled. “How we’re goin’ to find Johnny in 
  this volcanic scrap heap, I dunno.” 
   
  “Did 
  either 
  of 
  you 
  get 
  the 
  impression,” Pat asked suddenly, “that our 
  League-of-Nations 
  attackers 
  were 
  being 
  careful not to kill us?” 
   
  “Yeah,” Monk admitted. “Even those 
  rocks were not thrown too hard.” 
   
  “They wanted us alive, I guess,” Ham 
  supplied. 
   
  “My guess, too. But why?” 
   
  “That’s anybody’s guess.” 
   
  “We could sure use Doc Savage 
  about now.”  
   
  Climbing higher up the glassy slope, 
  they passed through a belt of cold volcanic 
  pits and cones, where, ages before, the 
  molten rock had bubbled like mush and 
  cooled in scabrous pockmarks. 
   
  They came out on a wide plateau 
  where nothing grew, not even the cobra-head 
  cactus, and where the pits were smaller, 
  clogged with earth and so close together that 
  it was necessary to skirt the region to make 
  any forward progress. 
   
  Monk stopped suddenly. 
   
  “These pits are all in geometric 
  order,” he declared. “They’re not volcanic pits 
  like the ones below. They’re manmade.” 
   
  Ham stared. On the plain, the glassy 
  rock had given way to a kind of reddish clay, 
  or hard-packed volcanic ash. 
   
  “Right,” he clipped. “The pits are 
  crumbling away now and mostly buried under 
  loose earth. Hard to tell, but they must have 
  been laid out originally with the regularity of 
  cells in a honeycomb.” 
   
  As 
  they 
  continued 
  on, 
  the 
  honeycomb pattern became more apparent 
  as the pits were revealed in a less crumbling 
  condition. 
   
  “These 
  were 
  dug 
  later,” 
  Ham 
  observed. 
   
  “Yeah,” Monk agreed. “The farther 
  we go, the fresher the pits look.” 
   
  “But 
  what 
  are 
  they 
  for?” 
  Pat 
  wondered. “Say, this all gets queerer and 
  queerer. What’s it all about?” 
   
   
   
  “LISTEN,” Ham said, tensely. 
   
  Wafted on the miasmatic breeze 
  came sharp, cracking sounds. There was 
  unearthliness about the sounds, as though 
  they sprang from the air of their own volition. 
   
  “What is it?” Pat asked uneasily. 
   
  “No animal ever made a sound like 
  that,” Monk blurted. 
   
  Suddenly through and above the 
  cracking sounds, came a long-drawn wail 
  which quavered up and down the scale in 
  agony so appalling that a trickle of icy water 
  seemed to be loosened on the back of each 
  of the three listeners. 
   
  Pat gasped: “I never heard anything 
  like it. Horrible!” 
   
  “A dying animal of some kind,” Ham 
  said. 
   
  “Dying man!” Monk corrected, grimly. 
   
  “Come on,” Ham said, gripping his 
  sword cane. 
   
  As they pressed forward, the pits in 
  the rocklike ash actually became as sharply 
  delineated as the cells in a honeycomb. A 
  giant honeycomb. These pits were about ten 
  feet in diameter, and some ten feet where 
  they were not filled with loose earth. The 
  mysterious cracking noises sounded louder. 
   
  “Ahead there,” Ham rapped under 
  his breath. “Look!” 
   
  “Shadows!” Pat gasped. “Like men 
  moving!” 
   
  The three worked closer, holding to 
  the concealment of the fringing thicket. 
  White-pointed thorns tore at them, viciously 
  shredding their clothes and piercing flesh. 
  But they succeeded in approaching opposite 
  the place where the shadows moved, and 
  from where the cracking, cutting noises 
  issued. Here the plain stretched on, but the 
  advancing line of pits came to an end. 
  
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  8 
   
  They 
  crouched 
  down, 
  watching. 
  Stars dripped pale light. And suddenly a 
  close, bulking mountain disgorged a red 
  glare into the sky. Bathed in the baleful light 
  of volcanic fires, huge-muscled men could be 
  seen moving ceaselessly up and down at the 
  edge of the honeycombed ground. The men 
  were clothed as those others had been—in 
  loin cloths and leather collars. They carried 
  long whips, which they swung over their 
  heads and cracked down into the row of pits. 
   
  Hideous 
  groans 
  and 
  jabberings 
  issued from the unseen depths of the pits. 
  The whip-crackers, their half-naked bodies in 
  the red volcanic glare sleek with glistening 
  sweat, looked like satanic apparitions come 
  to earth. 
   
  “Back on the yacht I said maybe we 
  were headed for hell,” Monk muttered. “Now, 
  I know it!” 
   
  “The cracking noises we heard were 
  from the whips,” Ham observed. 
   
  “What’s in the pits, I wonder?” Pat 
  asked, in a hushed tone. 
   
  Monk was already edging forward, 
  crawling on his stomach. 
   
  “Hold Habeas Corpus,” he whispered 
  back. “I’ll find out.” 
   
  “Blast your hog,” Ham complained, 
  but he held the pig. 
   
  As he muscled to a position where 
  he could look down into the pits, Monk 
  gasped with grim surprise. In every one of 
  the circular holes, as far as he could see 
  down the long line, stakes were driven, and 
  to the stakes were attached chains, and to 
  the end of the chains were fastened men. 
   
  There was one man with a shovel in 
  each pit, digging. The diggers wore loin 
  cloths only, lacking the lizard-leather collars 
  worn by the whip-cracking overseers. These 
  collars Monk correctly assumed to be 
  emblems of authority. 
   
  Each of the pit-men was digging a 
  hole of a circumference allowed by the length 
  of his chain. The holes, extending across the 
  plain in a straight line, were of uniform 
  width—about ten feet. 
   
  Under the lash of the whips, in the 
  hellish red volcano glare, the chained men 
  were actually digging their way to death. 
   
   
   
  SUDDENLY, from behind Monk, 
  sounded a fast thudding on the hardpacked 
  ground. Something thrust hard against his 
  back as he swerved around. A shrill squeal 
  sounded. 
   
  Monk clamped his huge hands over 
  Habeas Corpus’s snout to smother the 
  affectionate squeals of the pig which had 
  burst away from Ham and had run straight to 
  Monk. 
   
  He throttled the squeals. But the 
  damage was already done. Whip-cracking 
  overseers jabbered sharply at each other and 
  clumped 
  forward 
  to 
  investigate 
  the 
  disturbance. 
   
  Monk’s squat bulk reared upward. 
  Brandishing his stout club, he lunged forward 
  to meet the attack of the nearest man. But 
  before Monk could close in, a deadly swish 
  sounded. Monk’s enemy was still six or eight 
  paces away, but Monk felt his knees gripped 
  as though by iron hands, jerked tightly 
  together and pulled out from under him. He 
  fell, striking the ground with stunning force. 
   
  Monk knew what had thrown him, 
  and his hands raked down to jerk away the 
  lead-tipped thong which had whipped out of 
  the night murk and entwined his legs. Before 
  he could free himself, his assailant was 
  standing over him, the weighted whip handle 
  raised high to crash against Monk’s head. 
   
  Ham’s sword cane slithered in that 
  instant, dropped the overseer, and saved 
  Monk from the blow. But another whip 
  swished out of the night, wrapped around 
  Ham’s legs and hurled him to the ground on 
  top of Monk. 
   
  Clubs 
  battered 
  them 
  both 
  to 
  unconsciousness before they could claw free 
  from the knee-binding thongs. 
   
   
   
  WHEN they came to, a few minutes 
  later, they found themselves bound and lying 
  on the ground at the edge of the line of pits. 
  Ham focused his groggy glance at the 
  nearest pit worker. The man had sunk his 
  hole about five feet down, so that his face 
  was practically on ground level. That pain-
  racked face was almost within hand’s reach 
  of Ham. 
   
  Ham started violently. In a red 
  volcanic flare he had recognized the man as 
  being one of the members of Johnny’s 
  expedition. 
   
  “Tony!” Ham whispered hoarsely. 
   
  A shudder went over the man as his 
  crazed eyes turned to Ham’s. His lips 
  
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  9 
  widened in startled recognition. He said 
  nothing, but kept on digging. 
   
  Ham shot a quick glance around, 
  saw that the nearest overseer was intently 
  engaged in a bullying cross-examination of 
  Pat. Ham squirmed close to the edge of the 
  hole, so that his lips were almost at the 
  digger’s ear. 
   
  “Where’s the rest of the ship’s 
  crew—and Johnny?” he whispered. 
   
  “Crew’s in the pits, diggin’,” the man 
  answered in a kind of wrenching sob. 
   
  “Where’s Johnny? Is he alive?” Ham 
  hung on the answer fearfully. 
   
  “Alive, but he won’t be long.” 
   
  “Where is he?” 
   
  “A big guy with a black beard took 
  him away. I don’t know where. I only know 
  they’re gonna kill Johnny. They’re gonna kill 
  all of us!” The man’s voice rose to hysterical 
  rasp. 
   
  “Don’t talk so loud,” Ham cautioned, 
  fiercely. “What have we got into here? Tell 
  me what you know. Quick! While we’ve got 
  the chance.” 
   
  “I can’t tell you—but I can—” Then 
  the man’s voice rose in a choking shriek, out 
  of all control now. It was an insane shriek. 
   
  Plainly, the fellow had broken under 
  the tortures he had endured. 
   
   
   
  WHATEVER it was he meant to tell, 
  or not to tell, Ham, remained forever untold. 
  The overseer rushed forward, mouthing 
  unintelligible curses. His arm reared up, and 
  down. The leaded whip handle struck with 
  gruesome thump against the crazed man’s 
  head. It was a blow heavy enough to have 
  dropped anything alive. But the man in the pit 
  was not exactly alive now. He was a raving 
  madman, 
  mercifully 
  removed 
  from 
  all 
  consciousness of pain. His whitish eyes 
  rolled madly. Crimson foam bubbled from his 
  lips. 
   
  The leaded whip handle descended 
  again. This time the man slumped, a slack 
  weight in the pit. He was dead before his 
  body hit the bottom. 
   
  The 
  overseer—he 
  was 
  some 
  unidentifiable Asiatic type—bawled orders in 
  harsh gibberish. Two guards shoved forward. 
  One was a giant brown-skinned man; the 
  other a paunchy Caucasian of indeterminate 
  race. The brown man bent and commenced 
  ripping the thongs from Ham’s hands and 
  feet. The other guard jumped heavily down, 
  unlocked the iron cuff from the dead man’s 
  leg, and heaved the limp body out of the pit. 
   
  The guard on top grunted, and 
  pushed Ham roughly over the edge. Ham fell 
  sprawling. The guard in the pit was ready for 
  him. He jangled the chain against the stake, 
  grabbed Ham by the foot and slapped on the 
  iron cuff, warm from the dead man’s leg. 
   
  He picked up the dead man’s shovel, 
  thrust it into Ham’s hands. The overseer 
  above cracked down with the whip. A thick 
  welt bloomed on Ham’s cheek. He started 
  digging. 
   
  Overseers herded Monk a short 
  distance down the line of horror holes, and 
  put him similarly to work. 
   
   
  Chapter III 
  PRISONERS OF THE PITS 
   
   
  PAT 
  experienced 
  a 
  somewhat 
  different fate from that of the two men. She 
  was consigned to one of the pits; but, though 
  she was chained to the stake, she was not 
  whipped, nor was she compelled to dig. 
   
  She was greatly relieved at this 
  concession to her womanhood until, cutting 
  through the harsh medley of groans, whip-
  cracks and guttural cries, she heard the close 
  voices of two guards conversing in English. 
   
  “Make her dig.” 
   
  “No. The count will surely order her 
  to be brought to the palace. He will not want 
  her worn out from digging.” 
   
  “But she could well stand a little bit of 
  whipping—” 
   
  “No,” the other protested. “In this 
  case, the count will prefer to do his own 
  whipping.” 
   
  “Maybe you’re right,” the overseer 
  growled, and moved away down the line of 
  pits. 
   
  The other guard bent close over the 
  edge of the hole. Pat shrank back. All at 
  once, the pulse throbbed violently in her 
  wrists and in her blue eyes sprang a look of 
  desperate hope. She was recognizing this 
  guard. He was another member of the 
  expedition that had disappeared with Johnny. 
   
  “Aren’t 
  you—” 
  she 
  started 
  to 
  suggest. 
   
  “Al 
  Fredrickton, 
  first 
  mate,” 
  he 
  supplied. 
  
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  10 
   
  “But you—that whip!” 
   
  “I have to whip to keep from being 
  whipped,” he whispered, savagely. “I’m on 
  top today. Tomorrow they may yank the 
  collar off my neck and pitch me in a hole. I’m 
  just as much a prisoner as these poor devils 
  digging.” 
   
  “But what is it all about?” Pat 
  questioned. 
   
  “I don’t know any more about it than 
  you do. I only know that men dig and die.” 
   
  “Dig and die!” she echoed, starkly. 
  “What about Johnny?” 
   
  “He was taken to the palace. He may 
  be alive. Listen: 33 Redbeach Road, Long 
  Island. Can you remember that?” 
   
  “33 Redbeach Road—I’ve got it.” 
   
  “Boris Ramadanoff, at that address.” 
   
  “I’ve got it. What about it?” 
   
  The man’s breath came faster. 
  “You’re our only hope,” he rasped. “They’ll 
  take you to the palace. Try to contact 
  Johnny. Tell him the name and address. 
  There’s a powerful short-wave radio sending 
  set at the palace. Johnny must get a 
  message to Doc Savage. Tell Doc Savage to 
  contact Boris Ramadanoff.” 
   
  “Yes, but what good will that do?” 
   
  “Ramadanoff can tell Doc Savage all 
  he needs to know to effect our rescue. 
  Ramadanoff is the brother of the big shot 
  here on the island. They quarreled, the two 
  brothers. And Boris left for New York.” 
   
  “How did you find out all this?” 
   
  “After our ship fallowed in the false 
  harbor lights and was wrecked, we were 
  taken prisoners. The steward and I were 
  retained to work in the palace kitchen. The 
  steward heard the brothers quarreling. He 
  learned Boris’s new address and passed it 
  on to me.” 
   
  “Where is the steward?” Pat asked. 
   
  “Dead!” 
  said 
  the 
  man. 
  “They 
  suspected he knew something. They killed 
  him.” 
   
  Pat shuddered. “Life isn’t worth much 
  here, is it?” 
   
   
   
  SOMETHING happened the next 
  moment to demonstrate anew the fiendish 
  ruthlessness of the sinister genius in control 
  of this island. 
   
  A drumming beat sounded against 
  the ground and a huge horse, ridden hard, 
  snorted to a stiff-legged stop in front of the 
  line of working pits. The horse was a 
  quivering black shadow under the wan 
  starlight, and the rider was a shadow 
  proportionately huge and black. 
   
  With virulent curses, the rider urged 
  the plunging horse in among the cowering 
  overseers. He leaned far out of his saddle, 
  cracking heads right and left with a fearful 
  instrument—a knout, fashioned somewhat on 
  the order of those used in Imperial Russia. 
  Again and again the knout descended, its 
  woven leather thongs, reënforced with wire 
  and hardened by a rosin treatment, biting 
  down deeply and forcing agonized yells. 
   
  One of the guards showed fight. He 
  dodged the blow of the knout, flung in close 
  against the plunging horse and reached up to 
  pull the horseman from the saddle. The man 
  in the saddle only laughed a raw ghoulish 
  clacking, pulled a revolver from holster and 
  shot the guard dead. 
   
  The horseman kept laughing and 
  driving bullets into the guard’s body, even 
  after the fellow was slumped in a still, dead 
  heap on the ground. After that, no one 
  offered resistance. 
   
  The horseman raised his voice in a 
  bawled order. Guards scurried frenziedly into 
  the pits where Monk and Ham and Pat were 
  shackled. They unlocked the leg irons and 
  motioned for the captives to climb out of their 
  holes. 
   
  The three were brought before the 
  man on the horse. The man spoke in precise 
  English. His voice was suavely sinister. 
   
  He said: “It was a stupid blunder of 
  my slaves to chain you to the pits. It is only 
  the Asiatic immigrant ships sailing to South 
  America that I intercept for my pit laborers. 
  Those, 
  and 
  occasional 
  Ecuadorian 
  fishermen, guano and moss hunters. When, 
  upon rare occasions, a yacht comes this 
  way, its occupants are received as welcome 
  guests.” 
   
  “How does a guest get off this island 
  after his ship is wrecked?” Ham asked dryly. 
   
  “My dear General Brooks,” came the 
  precise voice from the darkly-bulking figure 
  on the horse, “none have ever gotten off.” 
   
  “This lug knows who we are!” Monk 
  muttered. Then, aloud, he said: “They’re all 
  on here now, the guests?” 
   
  “They are, my dear Colonel Mayfair, 
  though a bit unrecognizable, some of them.” 
   
  Monk bristled. “Johnny better be 
  recognizable.” 
  
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  11 
   
  “Doubtless you have reference to 
  Professor Littlejohn,” the other murmured. 
  “He is quite recognizable. I shall take you to 
  him. But first permit me to introduce myself. I 
  am Count Alexander Ramadanoff.” 
   
  Turning to the guards, the count 
  barked an order. Men padded forward with 
  peculiar contrivances, resembling wicker 
  hammocks. They deposited the litters on the 
  ground and stood a little back. 
   
  The count’s hand waved out. His 
  sardonic voice sounded: “There is one for 
  each of you. Recline, and I will conduct you 
  in state to the palace.” 
   
  Monk hooted, “No hospital cot for 
  mine. I’ll walk!” 
   
  “Recline,” the count ordered again, 
  and the knout swung menacingly in his hand. 
   
  They took their places on the wicker 
  litters—Monk grumbling, Ham doubtful, and 
  Pat frankly grateful for the convenience. 
   
  “Hey!” Monk blurted. “We’re forgettin’ 
  Habeas Corpus.” 
   
  “You have reference to the trained 
  Arabian pig?” the Count questioned with 
  suave politeness. 
   
  “You know everything, don’t you?” 
  Monk growled. “Yeah, I mean my pig.” 
   
  Count Ramadanoff exchanged a few 
  guttural phrases with the overseers, then 
  addressed Monk. 
   
  “The pig must have escaped into the 
  jungle. He will find company more to his 
  liking there. Wild swine overrun this island.” 
   
  Ham said, “Well, anyhow, we’ve 
  seen the last of that hog.”  
   
  Monk glowered at Ham. “It’s your 
  fault, shyster. You let him go.” 
   
  “If it wasn’t for you and your pesky 
  pig, we wouldn’t be in this fix,” Ham retorted. 
   
  Count Ramadanoff cut short their 
  quarrel by ordering the litter bearers to 
  proceed. Through a narrow path hacked in 
  the vine-matted jungle growth, they jogged 
  along, the count, on his horse, bringing up 
  the rear. 
   
  They came out on a strip of rocky 
  coastline and the “guests” stared with 
  astonishment. 
   
  “Blazes!” 
  Monk 
  gulped. 
  “Blazes! 
  Look!” 
   
   
   
  RISING sheer, washed by ocean 
  spray on one side and bathed in the blood-
  red glare of volcanic light on the other, a 
  palace of medieval Slavic type flung its black 
  rock turrets high above the jungle growth. 
   
  Through 
  a 
  drawbridge 
  in 
  the 
  bastioned wall of twenty-foot thick volcanic 
  rock, 
  they 
  entered 
  the 
  bleak 
  palace 
  courtyard. 
  The 
  drawbridge 
  swung 
  ponderously closed behind them. 
   
  Pat shivered. She felt as though she 
  was locked out of the world. 
   
  “An army couldn’t get through these 
  walls,” Ham reflected uneasily. 
   
  “Some joint,” Monk mumbled. 
   
  Past the high buttressed towers the 
  “guests” were carried and deposited in front 
  of 
  a 
  low-arched 
  doorway. 
  The 
  count 
  dismounted from his black horse and waved 
  them inside. 
   
  “Some joint is right!” Monk said 
  emphatically, as he stopped inside the stone 
  threshold and stared around. 
   
  The room was huge, high-vaulted—
  an oppressive cavern of black volcanic rock 
  and wooden beams. Demoniacal blue flames 
  leaped within a fireplace large enough to 
  have engulfed a whole ox for roasting. The 
  fire shadows swooped on long curtains of 
  somber ruby red which hung on brass hoops. 
  Silver samovars glowed dully from shadowed 
  recesses. Ancient icons looked down from 
  the walls. The only modern touch in the 
  whole vast room was a grand piano draped 
  with costly sea otter furs and brightly 
  illuminated by crystal spangled candelabras 
  which shed a 
  yellow light from high 
  overhead. 
   
  Count Ramadanoff indicated ornately 
  gilded, ruby-plush chairs. “Sit there before 
  the fire,” he invited, “while your chambers are 
  being prepared.” 
   
  In the light, the count was revealed 
  as a magnificently proportioned man, broad-
  shouldered, muscled, well over six feet in 
  height. He was dressed in black—black 
  riding boots, black breeches, black coat, 
  black satin string tie. His Czar-of-Russia 
  beard was black too, and his black eyes 
  smoldered with a sinister light which it was 
  impossible for him to conceal. 
   
  Pat sat on the edge of her high-
  backed chair and mentally chewed her finger 
  nails because there had been no opportunity 
  for her to divulge to Monk or Ham the 
  information she had learned regarding the 
  New York address of the count’s brother. 
  
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  12 
   
  Monk pawed at his bargelike jaw. 
  “Where’s 
  all 
  the 
  other 
  guests 
  you 
  mentioned?” 
   
  “Where’s Johnny?” Ham rapped. 
   
  Pat also spilled questions. “What is 
  the location of this island? How did you know 
  us? Why did you wreck us? What are those 
  horrible pits for?” 
   
  The count stood with his back to the 
  fireplace, his fingers writhing before the blue 
  flames, which, strangely, gave off little light 
  and almost no heat. 
   
  “Answering your questions in order,” 
  he said in his suave, precise voice, “you 
  would not enjoy seeing the guests.” 
   
  “Why?” Monk demanded. 
   
  “Because, my dear Colonel Mayfair, 
  most of them are in various stages of 
  decomposition.” 
   
  “Huh?” Monk grunted. 
   
  “The mortality rate among my guests 
  has been regrettably high.” 
   
   
   
  MONK went directly to the point. 
  “You mean you kill ‘em?” 
   
  “Nothing so crude as that,” the count 
  denied. There was a quality about the count’s 
  voice which gave a menacing, blood-crawling 
  emphasis to his most casual words. 
   
  “What, then?” Ham demanded. 
   
  “They were, shall we say, liquidated.” 
   
  “Sent to the pits?” 
   
  “Many of them, yes.” 
   
  “Why?” 
   
  Fires flared deep in the count’s 
  fanatic eyes. “Some of them for trying to 
  escape. Some for becoming too curious.” 
   
  The 
  man’s 
  cruel, 
  glinting 
  eyes 
  fastened upon Pat. “For becoming too 
  curious,” he repeated. “That, I think, my dear 
  young lady, answers all four of your 
  questions.” 
   
  Pat’s breath drew in sharply. She 
  glanced nervously around the oppressive 
  room. “That’s a beautiful piano,” she said. 
   
  “It is, indeed,” the count agreed. 
  “Four men were killed taking it off the boat. 
  Do you play?” 
   
  “No,” said Pat. “Won’t you play 
  something?” 
   
  Count Ramadanoff nodded. “I regret 
  to say that, later, I most likely shall.” 
   
  “You regret?” 
   
  “Yes. When I play, it is always a 
  prelude of unpleasantness for somebody. 
  Savages in the jungle are aroused to an 
  animal frenzy through the beat of their own 
  tom-toms. In similar fashion, I am impelled to 
  unspeakable decisions when my fingers 
  wander over the keys.” 
   
  Monk and Ham, playing a waiting 
  game, said nothing.  
   
  Count Ramadanoff spoke again: “I 
  have now met all except two of Doc Savage’s 
  world-famed specialists. It would give me the 
  utmost 
  pleasure 
  to 
  match 
  wits—and 
  strength—with 
  this 
  almost 
  fabulous 
  personage, Doc Savage, himself.” 
   
  “Perhaps,” 
  murmured 
  Pat 
  enigmatically, “you shall.” 
   
  A dark-skinned man approached on 
  soundless feet, bowed low before Count 
  Ramadanoff and motioned toward the broad 
  stone steps disappearing upward in a 
  sweeping spiral into a region of shadows and 
  ruby-colored velvet drapes. 
   
  The thin, cruel line of the count’s 
  mouth seemed not to move, but an abrupt 
  hissing noise escaped his lips. It seemed to 
  be a signal of dismissal, for the slave turned 
  and padded swiftly up the stairway. 
   
  “Follow him,” the count said, shortly. 
  “He will conduct you to your chambers.” 
   
   
   
  UPSTAIRS, the three were shown to 
  separate rooms. 
   
  Ham had not been alone for more 
  than forty seconds before he saw his door 
  latch lift noiselessly. He crouched, the fingers 
  of his right hand involuntarily clenched, as 
  though he gripped his deadly sword cane. 
   
  But the cane would have been of no 
  use to him. It was only Pat who opened the 
  door and eased into his room. In a rush of 
  whispered words, she told him of her 
  conversation with the pit guard who had been 
  with Johnny’s expedition. 
   
  “The logical place for the radio room 
  is in the top of the tower,” Ham said, 
  excitedly. 
   
  “But there’s a steel door barring the 
  stairway to the tower!” 
   
  “Let us go talk to Monk,” Ham 
  suggested. 
   
  When he heard the news, Monk, 
  characteristically, was all for immediate 
  action. 
   
  “We won’t get a better chance than 
  now,” he declared. 
   
  Ham was inclined to agree. 
  
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  13 
   
  “But that steel door!” Pat protested. 
   
  “Come on. We’ll go look at it.” 
   
  Monk eased out into the gloomy hall. 
  For all his simian bulk, he moved with 
  surprising agility on catlike feet. Pat and Ham 
  followed. 
   
  “An army tank couldn’t push it in,” 
  Monk muttered. 
   
  Monk reached the door, felt over the 
  steel panels with his powerful hands. The 
  door was tight in its frame. 
   
  Pat reached up and touched the 
  latch. The door swung open soundlessly. 
   
  “Unlocked!” Monk blurted. “Well, I’m 
  a bush ape!” 
   
  “Didn’t I always say so?” Ham 
  accorded, readily. 
   
  “You tailor’s dummy,” Monk retorted. 
   
  “Sh-s-sh,” Pat cautioned. “We may 
  never get another chance at this. Come on.” 
   
  The steps coiled upward, like a 
  circular stairway in a lighthouse. They were 
  fashioned out of blocks of untrimmed stone. 
  There was no railing, no light. A single 
  misstep on the narrow flight would plunge a 
  person down to unknown depths. 
   
  Closing and bolting the door of 
  ponderous steel behind them, they mounted 
  single file in the pitch blackness, feeling with 
  their hands, hugging the damp side wall. 
   
  They came out at the top in the tower 
  room without mishap. A single alcohol lamp, 
  set in a wall niche, burned with a small 
  straight flame, casting a glow over the rock-
  girt room. The floor was constructed of steel 
  plates. This room was as weirdly unreal as 
  the rest of the place. 
   
  But there was nothing unreal about 
  the banked instrument which glinted softly in 
  the light. Ham and Monk pressed forward, 
  their hands touching familiarly the tubes, 
  condensers, wire-wound induction coils of a 
  radio sending set as modern as any they had 
  ever seen. 
   
  They switched on the juice and 
  started tapping out Doc Savage’s call letters. 
  Violet light flashed weirdly from the tubes. 
   
  Pat’s face shone pale in the glare. 
  “Won’t they hear this noise downstairs?” she 
  questioned. 
   
  “Not a chance,” Ham said. 
   
  “Couldn’t hear a cannon through 
  these walls,” Monk confirmed. 
   
   
   
  HAM sent the key dancing under his 
  sensitive fingers, as he spelled out the words 
  of the message. The message read. 
   
   
  PRISONERS 
  ON 
  FANTASTIC 
  ISLAND IN GALAPAGOS GROUP STOP 
  CONTACT BORIS RAMADANOFF THIRTY 
  THREE REDBEACH ROAD LONG ISLAND 
  STOP GRAVE DANGER— 
   
   
  Unexpectedly, the harsh transmitter 
  whining ceased. The key continued its frantic 
  dance under Ham’s deft fingers but the 
  electrical power had been cut off; no further 
  radio words were flung to the air. 
   
  And now, a new sound flooded the 
  room. The sound came from everywhere, yet 
  from nowhere definitely. It crept and crawled 
  and 
  writhed—never 
  loud, 
  but 
  clear, 
  insidiously penetrating, eerie, freighted with 
  menace and unseen death, causing hair to 
  tug at its roots and goose flesh to prickle out 
  with a shuddering chill. 
   
  This sound which wafted with such 
  horrible portent through the high tower room 
  was music. Piano music. 
   
  “The count is playing his piano,” Pat 
  said in a small voice. 
   
  “He said he only played when 
  somethin’ was goin’ to happen to somebody,” 
  Monk remembered aloud. 
   
  “How can we hear it from this high 
  place?” Ham asked, tensely. 
   
  “This radio apparatus makes more 
  noise than a piano,” Pat said, fearfully. “If we 
  can hear him, he must have heard us!” 
   
  Ham said grimly, “It must be because 
  he heard us sending the radiogram that he’s 
  playing on his piano.” 
   
  Suddenly the music stopped; but the 
  notes continued to throb their eerie menace 
  for seconds, it seemed, before quietness 
  clamped down. 
   
  “Let’s get out of here!” Monk jerked, 
  breaking the ominous hush. 
   
  “Do not be in a hurry,” a suave voice 
  interposed.  
   
  It 
  was Count Ramadanoff who 
  spoke. No one having heard that sinister 
  voice before could have mistaken it. The 
  prisoners stared helplessly, trying to locate it. 
   
  Then a huge slab of stone in the 
  tower wall swung outward. From within a 
  hidden recess, the count stepped forth. He 
  carried a modern automatic pistol in his 
  hand. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  14 
   
  “I always plan my radio room with 
  two entrances,” he purred. “And dictaphones 
  are useful household articles to one such as 
  I. And now, since you have violated my 
  hospitality, I must dispense with your valued 
  company. You are, accordingly, sentenced to 
  labor in my pits. Strong-backed coolies 
  sometimes last a month. A big Frenchman, 
  last year, endured for two weeks—” 
   
  Monk’s 
  hand 
  thrust 
  down 
  and 
  squashed out the feebly flaming alcohol 
  lamp. In the pitch darkness which flooded the 
  tower room, he hurled the glass lamp bowl at 
  the spot where the count, revolver in hand, 
  had been. 
   
  At the same instant, all of Monk’s 
  great muscles acted to wrench his body to 
  one side. The action undoubtedly saved his 
  life. Saffron gun flame and a bullet blasted 
  out of the count’s revolver. The lead 
  slammed so close to Monk that it jerked a 
  quick breath from his lips. 
   
  A loud curse from the count indicated 
  that the man had been struck by the flung 
  lamp. Both Monk and Ham leaped forward in 
  the darkness to overpower him before he 
  could recover from the blow. But not more 
  than a single step did they take. Then a 
  blighting force seemed to rocket through their 
  bodies. 
   
  Pat, also, felt the enervating force. It 
  tingled from the feet to the tips of the fingers, 
  freezing the muscles into instant, cramped 
  immobility. As firmly as though they were 
  glued to their tracks, their feet were fastened 
  to that steel-plate floor. They could only 
  tremble; they could not cry out. 
   
   
   
  A WHITE beam slashed from the 
  count’s flashlight. He barked an order and 
  out of the same secret entrance through 
  which he had originally appeared, a shadowy 
  man-figure emerged. The man moved silently 
  and slapped handcuffs on the wrists of the 
  three. 
   
  The count reached back and turned 
  off an electrical switch. The numbing force 
  which held the prisoners fast to the floor 
  flowed out of their bodies again, and they 
  were free to move. 
   
  “As you must have deduced,” the 
  count’s suave voice sounded from beyond 
  the flashlight, “these steel floor plates, in 
  alternate strips, are wired to take charges of 
  electricity. You were rooted to the floor by the 
  electrical current as efficiently as though you 
  had sat on an electric railway track and 
  grasped the third rail. I, myself, as you see, 
  am wearing sandals insulated by thick 
  rubber, and so am immune to the shock.”  
   
  He paused impressively. 
   
  “I have just one thing more to say,” 
  he continued. “In view of your belligerent 
  attitude, I have decided not to send you to 
  the pits, but to keep you here in the palace 
  under my close observation. Kindly proceed 
  down the stairs and we will join another 
  member of your group: Professor William 
  Harper Littlejohn—or Johnny, as I believe 
  you refer to him.” 
   
  Near the bottom of the winding 
  stairway, the count requested his prisoners to 
  halt. He indicated a long slot in the tower 
  wall, which looked out upon an inner 
  courtyard. Hemmed in as it was on all sides 
  by starkly-rearing palace walls, the courtyard 
  was, in effect, a dungeon pit. A dozen feet 
  above the flagstoned yard, a balcony ran 
  entirely around it. 
   
  “Under the balcony,” the count’s 
  voice sounded in a silky purr, “observe your 
  new quarters.” 
   
  They 
  looked. 
  Thick 
  iron 
  bars 
  extended from the balcony edge into the 
  flagstoned floor below, marking off a number 
  of bare prison cells. 
   
  Count Ramadanoff spoke again. “Do 
  you observe that bundle of rags in the cell off 
  to the left? Look closely.” 
   
  While they strained their eyes in the 
  courtyard 
  gloom, 
  the 
  interminable 
  red 
  lightning rippled out of the island volcano and 
  sent its ghostly glare over the heavens. 
  Cleverly arranged reflectors at the top of the 
  courtyard dungeon directed the hellish glow 
  downward to the flagstoned floor. 
   
  The still bundle of rags in the barred 
  cell was bathed in the blood-red light. 
   
  “Johnny!” Monk and Ham jabbed, 
  fiercely. 
   
  And Pat echoed it: “That’s Johnny in 
  there!” 
   
   
   
   
  “YOU will be interested to know,” the 
  count’s odious voice continued, “that the cell 
  bars are movable. They are actuated 
  electrically. I have only to press a button, and 
  they rise out of the floor to allow a prisoner to 
  step out into the courtyard—or to allow the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  15 
  prisoner to be visited by an inhabitant of the 
  courtyard.” 
   
   
   
   
  “What inhabitant?” Pat asked quickly, 
  impelled by a foreboding curiosity. “I don’t 
  see any.” But the next instant she did. 
   
  A bulky shadow stirred from the 
  flagstones, propelled itself out into the red 
  volcanic glare. 
   
  Pat gave a little choked cry of sheer 
  horror, and started back. Ham leaned 
  forward, his fingers clutched so tightly on an 
  imaginary sword cane that the knuckles were 
  white splotches on his skin. Monk crouched, 
  his simian bulk frozen. 
   
  “Blazes!” he gulped. 
   
  The 
  courtyard 
  below 
  had 
  an 
  incredible inhabitant. Monk, Ham and Pat, all 
  three, possessed what is commonly called an 
  “iron nerve.” Yet the thing below aroused in 
  them 
  absolute 
  horror, 
  a 
  feeling 
  of 
  desperation. They seemed hardly able to 
  breathe as they stared at it. 
   
  “It ain’t real!” Monk choked, at the 
  same time knowing he was mistaken. 
   
  “It is quite real,” murmured the count 
   
  They stared, as fascinated as birds 
  suddenly confronted by a snake. Suddenly, 
  Pat emitted a low, strangled cry, spun, 
  covered both eyes with her hands. She 
  trembled. 
   
  “Your 
  chief, 
  this 
  famous 
  Doc 
  Savage,” the count droned, “would no doubt 
  be greatly interested by our little friend in the 
  courtyard.” 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Monk . . . in the pitch darkness which flooded the tower room . . . 
  hurled the glass lamp bowl at the spot where the count, revolver 
  in had, had been standing. 
   
  Chapter IV 
  RADIO TRAP 
   
   
  AS a matter of fact, some very 
  interesting things were, at that moment, on 
  the point of happening to Doc Savage. 
   
  In the skyscraper section of midtown 
  New York, a man so thin that at first glance 
  he seemed to be walking sidewise, and who 
  had a skin so white that it rivaled the pallid 
  waxiness of a lily, strode along with a 
  briskness which belied his fragile physical 
  appearance. 
   
  The man—”Long Tom,” or Major 
  Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard, as he 
  was known to the world at large—was 
  another of Doc Savage’s aids. Long Tom’s 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  16 
  specialty was electricity, of which he had 
  profound 
  knowledge. 
  Electrical 
  patents 
  recorded under his name were legion. 
   
   
   
   
  Long Tom looked like a man on his 
  last legs. But appearance in his case was a 
  terrific lie. His chalk-white face did not 
  indicate ill health. He happened to be one of 
  those rare individuals who, no matter how 
  much they expose themselves to the sun’s 
  rays, cannot get a tan. There was incredible 
  strength in his fragile-appearing body. 
   
  Long Tom turned in at a building 
  which towered, a sheer mountain of gleaming 
  stone and steel, nearly a hundred stories into 
  the sky. The entire eighty-sixth floor of this 
  building 
  constituted 
  the 
  New 
  York 
  headquarters of Doc Savage. 
   
  Past a phalanx of elevators in the 
  skyscraper lobby, Long Tom strode, and 
  paused before Doc Savage’s own private 
  elevator shaft, fishing in his pocket for a key. 
  This speed elevator was of Doc Savage’s 
  own ingenious designing, and it maintained 
  lightning passage between that eighty-sixth 
  floor and the main lobby, as well as the 
  basement where, in a subterranean garage, 
  Doc’s remarkably equipped motor vehicles 
  were housed. 
   
  Fitting the peculiar key to the hole, 
  Long Tom gained access to the speed 
  elevator. 
   
  He jumped wildly just after he 
  stepped into the lift. There was blurred 
  movement as something—it appeared to be 
  an amazingly elongated mouse—scurried 
  between his feet and disappeared around the 
  corner in the lobby. 
   
  Long Tom popped his head out of 
  the elevator to get a better view. All he got 
  was another impression of blurred motion. 
  The thing, strangely, did not seem to be 
  running on legs, nor did it writhe like a snake. 
  It flowed, seemingly. 
   
  Like a grayish-blue streak it flowed 
  against the shiny black oxford of a uniformed 
  elevator starter and disappeared within the 
  recesses of his trousers leg. 
   
  The elevator starter was an active 
  young man, who liked to practice tap steps 
  when no one was around. He was rather 
  good at it. But the dance routine he went into 
  when that grayish-blue streak flowed up his 
  pants leg was like nothing executed on a 
  stage or ballroom floor. 
   
  Long Tom grinned at first, watching 
  the 
  young man’s epileptic antics. But 
  suddenly he quit grinning and started forward 
  with great strides. 
   
  He had caught a glimpse of the 
  elevator starter’s face. The young man’s 
  features were knotted in stark agony. A shrill 
  cry broke from his writhing lips. His knees 
  bent under him. He fell, arms gyrating wildly. 
   
  Long Tom caught him before he 
  struck the floor and bent over the shuddering 
  body, his hands patting frenziedly over the 
  young man’s trousers leg, attempting to 
  crush that unseen thing responsible for the 
  fellow’s tragic condition. 
   
   
   
  “STAND back,” Long Tom warned, 
  as men and women in the lobby surged 
  close, curious. 
   
  They paid no attention, of course, 
  crowding in and staring, asking aimless 
  questions. New Yorkers invariably behave 
  thus, when one of their number acts in a 
  manner slightly deviating from the normal. 
   
  “Get a doctor,” some one advised. 
   
  “Stand back,” Long Tom warned 
  again, sharply. “Something bit him. There’s a 
  poison snake, or bug, or rat or something, 
  loose in here. You’re all in danger!” 
   
  Even that did not move them. With 
  new recruits continuously pressing in from 
  behind, the crowd swelled closer. Curiosity 
  was an emotion more rampant than fear. 
   
  Then something happened which did 
  move them. They became all at once 
  conscious of a man approaching. He neither 
  spoke nor shoved, but there was such quiet 
  mastery in his face and manner that, 
  instinctively, they looked at him, and then 
  with a kind of awe, pressed back to allow him 
  free progress through the crowd. 
   
  The man was a giant. His strong 
  features, kilned by tropic sun and arctic wind, 
  and held under superb emotional control, 
  seemed to be molded in bronze. He topped, 
  by fully a head, every man in the lobby. And 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  17 
  yet, so perfectly was his huge frame 
  developed, prodigious muscles molded in 
  perfect symmetry, that it was only the 
  manner in which he towered above the close-
  pressed crowd that revealed him as the giant 
  he really was. 
   
  His crisp hair seemed made of 
  bronze only a shade darker than his skin. His 
  great neck sinews, only slightly less hard 
  than metal, showed decidedly above his 
  collar. Cables of the sinew ridged his hand. 
   
  The most remarkable feature of all 
  about the bronze man, was his eyes. Strange 
  eyes they were, hypnotically compelling; like 
  pools of flake-gold, stirred with restless life, 
  as though tiny whirlpools kept the fine gold 
  flakes continually in boiling suspension. 
   
  For an instant after the bronze giant 
  was discovered in their midst, a hush settled 
  over the lobby. 
   
  “Doc Savage!” some one said. 
   
  Others took up the name. From lip to 
  lip, the murmur flew: “Doc Savage!” . . . “Doc 
  Savage!” 
   
   
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE was bending over the 
  unconscious form of the elevator starter. 
  Cabled 
  fingers 
  which 
  could, 
  without 
  exaggeration, twist a horseshoe into a 
  straight line, rolled up the trousers leg of his 
  patient with gentle deftness. On the calf of 
  the leg, two rows of blued holes were 
  revealed. 
  There 
  was 
  no 
  swelling, 
  no 
  inflammation, just that double row of tiny 
  lacerations. 
   
  Suddenly, penetrating the many-
  mouthed murmur in the lobby, came a weird 
  sound, a kind of musical trilling which ran up 
  and down the scale, softly, fantastically, as 
  though the sound emanated from the air 
  itself. It was suggestive of the sibilant slipping 
  of an evening wind through palm fronds, or of 
  the call of some golden-winged bird out of an 
  Arabian Nights fairy tale. 
   
  This sound came from Doc Savage 
  himself. It was an unconscious part of the 
  bronze man, a thing he did in moments of 
  stress or at times of great surprise. 
   
  Doc Savage spoke to his aid, Long 
  Tom. The bronze man’s voice was arresting, 
  deep, pleasantly resonant. 
   
  He said, with impressive simplicity, 
  “We will take him upstairs.” 
   
  Doc lifted the unconscious man with 
  noticeable ease. The crowd made a path for 
  them to the elevator. 
   
  On 
  the 
  eighty-sixth 
  floor, 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  and 
  Long 
  Tom 
  entered 
  the 
  headquarters reception room. The room, with 
  its great comfortable chairs, deep-piled 
  oriental rug, solid table exquisitely inlaid with 
  ivory, reflected the power and solid dignity of 
  Doc Savage. 
   
  Doc examined his patient more 
  closely and administered a hypodermic. 
   
  Long Tom hovered close. “Will he 
  come out of it, Doc?” 
   
  “He will,” the bronze man said, 
  quietly. 
   
  Doc listened then attentively, while 
  Long Tom related what he knew of the 
  elevator starter’s injury. 
   
  “Did you identify the thing which 
  attacked him?” the bronze man queried. 
   
  Long Tom shook his head. “I only 
  glimpsed it. It seemed to flow along the floor 
  so fast, I saw only a blur. It didn’t appear 
  again, after attacking this lad. I think it must 
  have been trampled under the feet of the 
  crowd.” 
   
  Doc pointed to the parallel rows of 
  lacerations on the patient’s leg. “Only one 
  thing could have left such marks.” 
   
  “Centipede?” Long Tom hazarded. 
   
  “Correct,” Doc said. “Judging from 
  the angle in which the anterior legs, or 
  modified fangs, have dug into the flesh, and 
  the space between lacerations, and the 
  immediate effect of the creature’s poisonous 
  bites, I should say one of a species of giant 
  centipedes indigenous to the Galapagos 
  Islands.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  18 
   
  “The Galapagos! That’s where Monk 
  and Ham and Pat sailed, looking for Johnny!” 
   
  “They have arrived,” Doc said grimly. 
  “And they found trouble.” 
   
   
   
  LONG TOM stared. “How do you 
  know?” 
   
  “This message came in over the 
  short-wave set, a few minutes ago.” 
   
  Doc handed Long Tom a copy of 
  Ham’s and Monk’s message, reading: 
   
   
  PRISONERS 
  ON 
  FANTASTIC 
  ISLAND IN GALAPAGOS GROUP STOP 
  CONTACT BORIS RAMADANOFF THIRTY 
  THREE REDBEACH ROAD LONG ISLAND 
  STOP GRAVE DANGER— 
   
   
   
  Long Tom whistled. “I’m beginning to 
  get it! It’s a long arm that reaches from the 
  Galapagos to New York City. This centipede 
  was meant for you, Doc! It was introduced 
  into your elevator as an attempt upon your 
  life.” 
   
  “Perhaps,” Doc Savage admitted, 
  “though the immediate intent was probably to 
  render me unconscious, as the first step in a 
  kidnaping plot.” 
   
  “How do you figure that?” 
   
  “A centipede’s bite is rarely fatal. But 
  we all seem to be under the thousand-
  legger’s shadow. Consider: Johnny was first 
  apprehended; now Ham and Pat and Monk 
  are taken. And almost paralleling their 
  message of distress, comes this Galapagos 
  calling card in the form of a centipede.” 
   
  Long Tom was silent for a moment. 
  As a result of their unceasing war upon the 
  most ruthless and cunning forces of criminal 
  adventurers, Doc and his aids lived always in 
  the shadow of danger. But at the moment, 
  they had no active case under investigation. 
  The developments of the last few minutes 
  had struck with stunning suddenness. 
   
  “What do you make of it, Doc?” Long 
  Tom questioned, uneasily. 
   
  “Frankly,” said Doc, “I don’t make 
  anything. It’s a complete mystery.” 
   
  “That address in the radiogram; we 
  ought to turn up a clue there.” 
   
  Doc nodded soberly. “I was on my 
  way to 33 Redbeach Road when I ran into 
  the excitement downstairs. Let me suggest 
  you see about getting this young man to his 
  home, then jump in your car and join me at 
  the Long Island address.” 
   
  Doc 
  descended 
  in 
  the 
  private 
  elevator to his subterranean garage, the 
  existence of which was known only to a few 
  people outside the immediate circle of his 
  five aids. From among the number of 
  specially built vehicles, Doc chose a low-
  swung coupé of gunmetal finish and expert 
  streamlining. The car was, in reality, a rolling 
  fortress, with bullet-proof glass, armored 
  body, chrome-steel fenders, and bulletproof 
  tires of cellular rubber construction. 
   
  The garage doors, actuated by 
  photo-electric cells, opened silently as Doc 
  eased the car forward; the doors closed 
  automatically behind him as he rolled along 
  the ramp into the stream of uptown traffic. 
  Toward Queensboro Bridge and Long Island 
  he headed, the powerful motor under the 
  beetle-backed hood propelling the car with 
  silent, flowing motion. 
   
   
   
  SEEKING 33 Redbeach Road took 
  Doc Savage to a semi-deserted tide-flat 
  region on Long Island Sound. He turned in at 
  a brush-grown lane. Swirls of fog were rolling 
  in from the Sound. An ancient brick house 
  with sagging porch roof and rusted rain 
  spouts loomed through the mist. The place 
  had evidently once been a fine estate, but it 
  gave 
  every 
  evidence 
  of 
  having 
  been 
  deserted for a long time. 
   
  Doc 
  parked 
  under 
  a 
  dragging-
  branched elm which dripped water from 
  leaves sodden with condensed fog. He did 
  not get out on the steering-wheel side of his 
  car. He slid over to the opposite side, 
  stepped to the ground and disappeared in a 
  grove of wet birches. 
   
  Doc had no reason to doubt the 
  authenticity of the Galapagos radiogram. He 
  was not expecting trouble. But it was his 
  policy never to take unnecessary chances. 
   
  After 
  a 
  few 
  minutes 
  of 
  reconnoitering, 
  he 
  approached 
  a 
  side 
  entrance to the decaying mansion and 
  knocked. There was a long silence. Doc 
  knocked again. Still nobody came. 
   
  Doc Savage, through years of patient 
  training, had perfected his hearing to an 
  animal keenness; he could hear sounds 
  above and below the scale audible to the 
  average person. Within this house which 
  appeared to be as deserted as a snatched 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  19 
  grave, he could hear movement—hurried, 
  secretive, man-movement. 
   
  Doc’s bronzed features remained 
  immobile. He simply waited there by the 
  door, and after a while the knob turned from 
  inside the curtained room and the door 
  opened. A foreign-appearing man with short-
  cropped hair stood within the dimly lighted 
  interior and invited him in. 
   
  “You 
  are 
  Doc 
  Savage?” 
  he 
  questioned in broken English. “I have been 
  expecting you. I am Boris Ramadanoff.” 
   
   
   
   
   
  DOC stepped inside, but, because 
  he had been made wary, the thing which 
  happened next was no surprise to him. With 
  all his senses alert, he caught the creak of 
  shoe leather against the carpeted floor, the 
  virtually imperceptible movement behind a 
  curtained alcove. 
   
  The bronze giant crouched and 
  whirled, as men flung in at him from three 
  directions. His cabled hands streaked out, 
  closing with a grip of iron on the shoulders of 
  two of his attackers. He lifted them both from 
  the floor, crashed them against each other 
  and let them drop. 
   
  They fell, stunned, in an octopus 
  tangle of arms and legs; and Doc, with 
  smoothly synchronized effort, struck out with 
  his appalling fists at two other of his 
  attackers. 
   
  Just once with each fist, he struck. 
  One man went down, wailing, his face 
  altered. 
  The 
  other, 
  jarred 
  into 
  instant 
  unconsciousness, went down, too, and never 
  knew until an hour later that his jaw was 
  broken. 
   
  Doc swerved as he caught a glint of 
  the revolver drawn by the man with the 
  cropped hair who had represented himself as 
  being Boris Ramadanoff. 
   
  With a leap that in its force and 
  precision could be compared only to that of a 
  Nepal tiger, Doc landed halfway across the 
  room. The short-haired man smacked the 
  floor with a solid thud, and Doc was standing 
  there with a firm grip on the revolver. 
   
  He was absolute master of the 
  situation. There were ten men in the room 
  besides himself. Most of them lay stunned as 
  the result of Doc’s rough handling; the others 
  cowered back, afraid to try another move. 
   
  From outside the house, in the 
  direction of the roadway, sounded a burst of 
  machine-gun fire. Echoes crashed flatly. 
  Then a new noise broke with a harsh 
  drumming. It was a fearful sound. Doc 
  Savage recognized it as the bullfiddle bellow 
  of one of the superfiring pistols carried by his 
  aids. 
   
  The superfirer was one of Doc’s 
  inventions. 
  It 
  resembled 
  an 
  overgrown 
  automatic, and pumped out a withering 
  stream of so-called “mercy bullets,” hollow 
  shells filled with a drug which, upon the 
  slightest penetration of the skin, produced 
  instant unconsciousness. It was Doc’s code 
  never to take a human life when he could in 
  any way avoid it. 
   
  Wafting on the hooting echoes of the 
  superfirer, came a sharp, urgent sound of a 
  man calling. 
   
  “Doc! Doc!” 
   
  The bronze man recognized Long 
  Tom’s voice. He could guess what had 
  happened. 
  Long 
  Tom, 
  according 
  to 
  directions, had driven up and he had run into 
  a machine-gun ambush as he stepped out of 
  his car. Fierce fighter that he was, Long Tom 
  would 
  never 
  call 
  for 
  aid 
  unless 
  the 
  emergency was dire. 
   
  The safety of his men was a thing 
  that Doc Savage put before every other 
  consideration. On the instant, Doc gave up 
  the advantage which he held over his 
  enemies in the room. He wheeled, wrenched 
  open the door, and plunged out into the fog, 
  his great thewed legs carrying him in giant 
  strides to Long Tom’s aid. 
   
  Doc still held the automatic which he 
  had taken from the man who had said he 
  was Boris Ramadanoff. 
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE carried no revolver or 
  superfirer of his own. It was the bronze man’s 
  contention that dependence upon such a 
  weapon robbed a man of ingenuity, made 
  him helpless in the face of danger should he 
  chance to be deprived of the accustomed 
  weapon. Therefore, Doc depended upon his 
  own strength and cunning to pull him out of 
  desperate situations. Where strength did not 
  suffice, he resorted to some chemical or 
  mechanical trick, which was usually effective 
  and always baffling. 
   
  Doc did not scorn the use of a gun, 
  of course, when emergency put one in his 
  hands. He used one now. Pushing out 
  through the dripping birch leaves, he came 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  20 
  upon Long Tom who, behind a meager rock 
  shelter, was caught in a threatened cross-fire 
  of submachine gun lead. 
   
  As the machine gun swiveled down 
  to rake Long Tom, the automatic in Doc’s 
  hand barked. The single bullet damaged the 
  hand of the gunner. The man squalled and 
  let his weapon clump to the ground. The 
  second machine gunner swung the snout of 
  his death-dealing gun on Doc, holding down 
  the trigger, slicing a leaden pattern through 
  the fog-drenched birches. 
   
  But the gun cut out before the leaden 
  stream reached Doc. Another coolly directed 
  bullet from the bronze man’s automatic took 
  care of that. The gunner cursed, let his 
  weapon drop and wrung his injured hand. 
   
  From behind the brick house, now 
  lost in the fog, sounded the throaty roar of 
  two automobile motors exploding into life. 
  There was a grinding of gears, clashing shifts 
  into second, then a rapidly diminishing sound 
  as the cars rammed into distance. 
   
  “Watch this pair,” Doc called to Long 
  Tom. 
   
  Doc’s prodigious strides carried him 
  in a matter of seconds back to the house. As 
  he had feared, all ten of his attackers were 
  gone. He searched the house. It was empty. 
  The 
  uninjured 
  men 
  had 
  loaded 
  the 
  unconscious members into the cars and 
  decamped. 
   
  Doc did find one thing—a hastily 
  scrawled note, signed: “Boris Ramadanoff.” 
  The note read: 
   
   
  Next time it will be different.  We will 
  use more than our fists. 
   
   
   
  Long 
  Tom 
  came 
  up 
  with 
  two 
  prisoners. 
   
  “Stay here and watch this place,” 
  Doc directed.  “Move your car up close to the 
  house, where we can keep in touch with 
  each other through the short-wave radio set 
  while I tail those vanished cars.” 
   
  But Doc did not chase the autos.  
  The bronze man’s coupé, each car used by 
  his 
  aids, 
  and 
  their 
  eighty-sixth 
  floor 
  headquarters as well, was fitted with short-
  wave telephone receiving-and-transmitting 
  apparatus. As Doc flung inside his car, he 
  clicked concealed switches under the dash. 
   
  Static crackled from the radio loud-
  speaker, and then the excited voice of 
  Colonel John Renwick, renowned engineer, 
  the fifth of Doc’s five aids, boomed out of the 
  diaphragm. 
   
  “Renny” was doubtless speaking 
  from the skyscraper headquarters. 
   
  Doc lifted a microphone from a 
  concealed hook. “Listening,” he said. 
   
  Renny’s voice roared: “Better get 
  back to headquarters quick, Doc. There’s the 
  devil to pay!” 
   
   
   
  Chapter V 
  RUSSIAN TEA PARTY 
   
   
  AS the bronze man hurled his car 
  down the driveway, he spoke back through 
  the 
  microphone—the 
  radio 
  apparatus 
  functioned while the car was in motion, of 
  course. 
   
  “What, precisely, has happened?” he 
  asked over the air.  
   
  Renny’s voice bawled out of the 
  loudspeaker: “That queer centipede that 
  disappeared after clawin’ up the elevator 
  starter—well, it showed up again.” 
   
  “Did you manage to kill it?” 
   
  “Yes, but too late. It attacked another 
  man.” 
   
  “Yes?” 
   
  “The man died, Doc!” 
   
  “Are you positive the victim was 
  killed by the centipede’s bite? Except in the 
  case of the aged or infirm, death rarely 
  results from—” 
   
  “Nothing aged or infirm about this 
  victim, Doc. He was a thirty-year-old, two-
  hundred-pound cop, and he took about six 
  breaths—that’s all—after the bug got him, 
  and died in my arms.” 
   
  “That was too quick for a hypodermic 
  to have done any good. Watch yourself, 
  Renny.” 
   
  Doc 
  spoke 
  quietly, 
  but 
  Renny 
  understood 
  that 
  the 
  bronze 
  man 
  had 
  delivered a warning that an ordinary man 
  would have yelled. 
   
  “Is there anything else?” Doc Savage 
  questioned. 
   
  “No—except there’s a guy here 
  waiting to see you.” 
   
  “Who is he, Renny?” 
   
  “Some Russian-sounding name—
  Boris Ramadanoff.”  
   
  From his radio speaker, Renny heard 
  a weird note—an almost soundless musical 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  21 
  trilling. He thought it was some static 
  manifestation at first, but almost instantly he 
  identified the sound as that subtle emanation 
  peculiar to Doc Savage in moments of stress 
  or surprise. 
   
  “Doc,” Renny thumped, “what is it?” 
   
  The bronze man countered with a 
  question of his own. “How long has Boris 
  Ramadanoff been there?” 
   
  “Long 
  as 
  I 
  have, 
  anyhow—ten 
  minutes.” 
   
  “Describe him.” 
   
  “Old-fashioned little guy with a black 
  cutaway coat and a black Czar-of-Russia 
  mush all over his map. Talks with an accent. 
  What’s the excitement, Doc?” 
   
  Doc complied: “A man claiming to be 
  Boris Ramadanoff sought to kill me, a few 
  moments ago. Sit tight, Renny. We have 
  good reason to believe that the lives of 
  Johnny and all those who went after him—
  maybe our lives too—depend upon what we 
  do within the next few hours.” 
   
   
   
  AS Doc stepped out of his elevator 
  on the eighty-sixth floor and entered the 
  headquarters reception room, a remarkable 
  man shifted his towering bulk out of a 
  comfortable leather chair and lumbered 
  forward. Alongside any one but Doc Savage, 
  this individual would have been considered 
  enormous. 
   
   
   
   
  This man had a long, puritanical face 
  that was shrouded in gloom, as though he 
  had lately returned from a funeral and 
  contemplated going to another. As a matter 
  of 
  fact, 
  the 
  expression 
  was 
  habitual 
  whenever he was expecting action, which 
  was most of the time. Queerly enough, it 
  meant he was happy. His fists swung 
  restlessly at his sides. Huge fists they were, 
  larger than Monk’s, rivaling the flint-padded 
  claws of a Kodiak bear. 
   
  The big-fisted man was “Renny”—
  Colonel John Renwick—an engineer who 
  had possibly built dams and bridges in more 
  parts of the world than any man alive—and 
  knocked out more door panels with those 
  appalling fists. 
   
  Renny’s hand waved toward a little 
  man who had sprung up from a chair and 
  was in the middle of a courtly bow. 
   
  “This is Boris Ramadanoff,” Renny 
  announced. 
   
  The 
  black-bearded 
  little 
  man 
  continued to make bows.  
  “I am prostrated,” he said in precise 
  English. “From the colonel here, I have just 
  learned that you met with trouble from a man 
  posing as myself.” 
   
  “Do 
  you 
  have 
  an 
  address 
  on 
  Redbeach Road?” Doc asked, cryptically 
   
  “But yes! The number is thirty-three.” 
   
  “Within the last hour at that address, 
  several men, one of whom claimed to be 
  Boris Ramadanoff, did try to trap me,” Doc 
  admitted. 
   
  The little man’s eyes gleamed. “Was 
  he a bullet-headed fellow with close-cropped 
  hair?” 
   
  “The 
  one 
  who 
  claimed 
  to 
  be 
  Ramadanoff? Correct.” 
   
  “I know of him. I repeat it, sir, I am 
  prostrate! To think that you should be set 
  upon by thugs in my own home! The truth is, 
  I have many enemies. Doubtless they took 
  possession of my house, their intent being to 
  apprehend you, m the belief that you could 
  furnish them with information regarding my 
  whereabouts.  Accept my most profuse 
  apologies.” 
   
  Doc nodded. “You wished to see 
  me?” he suggested. 
   
  “From South America, I have come 
  to see you!” The little man bowed again, and 
  with a quick, birdlike motion thrust a leather 
  folder toward Doc. 
   
   
   
  “THIS establishes your identity,” Doc 
  said to Boris Ramadanoff, as he handed 
  back the papers. “And now—” 
   
  “I seek your aid, sir,” Boris said 
  earnestly. “I need it desperately. Lives hang 
  in the balance. I will come quickly to the 
  
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  22 
  point. In the Galapagos Archipelago there is 
  an unknown island upon which my brother, 
  the Count Ramadanoff, has set himself up as 
  master of life and death over every living 
  thing, causing ships to be wrecked, and 
  forcing the seamen to dig the circular pits.” 
   
  “Why the pits?” Doc questioned. 
   
  Boris shrugged eloquently. “That is a 
  profound 
  mystery 
  to 
  me. 
  The 
  Count 
  Ramadanoff, my brother, transported all his 
  worldly possessions from our native land to 
  this island before the revolution. He brought 
  with him artisans who built a castle. But of 
  that original company, I alone remain. He has 
  killed them all. His real motive for such 
  horrible deeds, I do not know.” 
   
  “Precisely what do you want of me?” 
   
  “I want you to go with me to that 
  island in the Galapagos and help free scores 
  of 
  poor 
  devils—shipwrecked 
  seamen—
  digging their way to death in the honeycomb 
  pits.” 
   
  “Purely an appeal in the name of 
  humanity?” 
   
  “Yes; although, in freeing those 
  others, you may also be in time to save one 
  of your own men, Professor William Harper 
  Littlejohn, who is also a shipwreck victim of 
  my mysterious brother!” 
   
  The little man had meant this to be a 
  smashing climax to his appeal. But, if he 
  expected Doc to show surprise over the 
  information, he was disappointed. 
   
  Doc said merely, “How do you know 
  about this?” 
   
  “I was on the island at the time my 
  brother caused your aid’s boat to be 
  wrecked. Since then, I escaped.” 
   
  “You have come directly to me?” 
   
  “Yes—and thereby saved my life!” 
   
  “How do you explain the Redbeach 
  ambush?” 
   
  “I arranged for the house some time 
  ago, without seeing it, expecting eventually to 
  make it my permanent New York address.” 
  The little man’s eyes closed weakly. A 
  shudder coursed over him, tremoring the 
  very tip of his beard. 
   
  “My 
  fiendish 
  brother 
  anticipates 
  every move I make! His hand is long—and 
  ruthless. He caused the trap to be set for me 
  at Redbeach Road. He caused the centipede 
  trap to be set for me here, thus bringing 
  tragedy to those two: the policeman and the 
  elevator starter.” 
   
  Doc put another question to Boris 
  Ramadanoff. “You have charts which will 
  enable us to fly directly to the island?” 
   
  “But yes. They are at your disposal.” 
   
  “How soon can we see them?” 
   
  “At your convenience. Immediately, if 
  you wish.” 
   
  “The sooner the better,” Doc said. 
   
  Ramadanoff bowed. “My thought 
  exactly. Perhaps you will be moved to 
  accompany me now to my hotel apartment? 
  We will go over the charts—perhaps plan a 
  course of action—we will have tea.” 
   
  Doc 
  assented. 
  As 
  he 
  and 
  Ramadanoff were leaving, the bronze man 
  advised Renny: “Best stay where you can 
  keep in touch with Long Tom and myself.” 
   
   
   
  IN 
  Ramadanoff’s 
  apartment—the 
  apartment was like a thousand others in the 
  metropolis—Doc sat studying charts, while 
  Boris Ramadanoff, in the next room, brewed 
  tea. 
   
  Soon the little man came out smiling. 
  “The day for me is not complete without my 
  tea. You will join me, no?” 
   
  Doc 
  nodded 
  shortly, 
  and 
  fired 
  questions relative to directional bearings on 
  the unknown island. The other answered 
  concisely; then, excusing himself, he left the 
  room and returned with a silver tray bearing 
  two crystal glasses two-thirds filled with pale 
  tea, and a steaming china-lined silver pot. 
   
  “Please,” he said, holding the tray 
  before Doc. 
   
  Doc took one of the glasses and 
  touched his lips to it. There were two reasons 
  why he did not drink more. One reason was 
  that he did not commonly indulge in 
  stimulants of any kind, reserving them only 
  for their proper emergency use. The other 
  reason was that his acutely developed taste 
  warned him of a foreign substance in the tea. 
   
  “You do not care for it?” Ramadanoff 
  asked, solicitously. “It is made in my own 
  samovar which I carry with me always. But 
  perhaps you do not like the flavor of the 
  Galapagos herbs which I add to the tea to 
  give it its unusual tang?” 
   
  Doc’s 
  gold-flecked 
  eyes 
  bored 
  steadily at Ramadanoff. “It is not the herbs to 
  which I object. It is the poison.” 
   
  “What?” The little man’s hands, 
  holding the tray, started shaking so that tea 
  splashed from the spout of the silver pot. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  23 
   
  “Poison,” Doc repeated. 
   
  “Poison?” 
  Ramadanoff 
  gasped, 
  incredulously. 
   
  He sat the tray on a low table and 
  reached out for Doc’s glass. “Allow me,” he 
  murmured. 
   
  He raised the glass to his nose, 
  sniffed cautiously. His face went white to the 
  roots of his beard. The glass slipped from his 
  trembling hand and crashed on the floor. 
   
  He slumped in a chair, then roused 
  himself to lean forward and sniff at his own 
  glass. He slumped back again, weakly. 
   
  “They are, indeed, poisoned!” he 
  said hoarsely. “We have, sir, very narrowly 
  escaped death.” 
   
  “Do you recognize the active agent?” 
  Doc asked, quietly. 
   
  “Yes, since you have called my 
  attention to it.” 
   
  “What is it?” 
   
  “A vegetable poison known, to the 
  best of my belief, only to that Galapagos 
  madman, my brother!” 
   
  Doc Savage continued to hide his 
  reactions 
  behind 
  a 
  mask 
  of 
  bronze 
  immobility. “You can explain?” he asked. 
   
  Ramadanoff covered his face with 
  trembling hands. Two gems on finger rings 
  flashed a weird menace against his white 
  hands. One of the gems was an emerald, 
  thicker than a man’s thumb. The other was a 
  ruby of equal size and fineness. 
   
  “No,” the little man moaned, “I cannot 
  explain. As you yourself are aware, I left the 
  room where I was preparing the tea for only a 
  moment.” 
   
  A new voice sounded, mockingly, in 
  the still room. “The moment was ample!” 
   
  At sound of the voice, Ramadanoff 
  stiffened in his chair as though an electric 
  current had jolted through his body. He 
  jerked his head from side to side, peering, 
  with a groan, through spread fingers. He saw 
  nothing to explain the mocking voice. 
   
  His writhing lips wrenched words. 
   
  “It 
  is 
  our 
  doom—the 
  Devil’s 
  Honeycomb!” He husked the meaningless 
  phrase again: “The Devil’s Honeycomb—” 
  His tortured voice trailed into silence. 
   
  Only 
  his 
  long, 
  tapered 
  fingers 
  moved, digging in agony into the flesh of his 
  face; and the gems on his fingers protruded 
  from the whiteness of hands like baleful 
  eyes. 
   
  Chapter VI 
  THE PLATINUM PACKET 
   
   
  DOC’S action, when that mocking 
  voice filled the room, was in marked 
  contradiction to Ramadanoff’s.  The bronze 
  man sat perfectly still, relaxed. 
   
  Out of the dead hush, his voice 
  sounded—controlled, compelling. 
   
  “Come and join our tea party,” he 
  suggested. 
   
  Another crawling hush followed Doc 
  Savage’s calm pronouncement. Then the 
  closet door burst open. A man shouldered 
  out, cuddling a submachine gun.  The man 
  was the same bullet-headed, hair-clipped 
  individual 
  who 
  had 
  posed 
  as 
  Boris 
  Ramadanoff at 33 Redbeach Road. 
   
  While he kept Doc under the 
  machine-gun muzzle, the man’s gutteral 
  voice chopped orders, and two men, armed 
  with automatics, sidled in from the next room 
  and two more machine gunners came in 
  through the French windows from the fire 
  escape. 
   
  The five guns covered Doc and 
  Ramadanoff in a close, deadly ring. 
   
  The bullet-headed man’s blond face 
  was a fiery red from the excitement of his 
  triumph. His blue eyes glittered with cold 
  malignity as he looked at Doc. 
   
  “I promised you,” he gloated, voice 
  thick with his foreign accent, “that, the next 
  time, we would use more than our fists.  And 
  I promise you now that at the slightest sign of 
  resistance, you will eat lead from five guns!” 
   
  “Interesting,” 
  Doc 
  said 
  quietly, 
  remaining relaxed in the chair.  “What do you 
  want of me?” 
   
  The man with the close-cropped hair 
  scowled.  “I’ll do the questioning.  You figured 
  we were here, didn’t you?” 
   
  Doc nodded.  “You made some slight 
  sounds.  And there was your bodily odor, 
  which carefully trained nostrils could detect.” 
   
  The other snarled nervously, “Why 
  didn’t you do something about it, if you knew 
  you were on a spot?” 
   
  Doc started stretching his arms, 
  leisurely. “I intend to.” 
   
  “The devil you do!” The machine gun 
  jerked. The bullet head jerked, too. The thin 
  lips barked an order. “Rats, the handcuffs! 
  Get the big one first!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  24 
   
  A thin man with ratty eyes—one of 
  those 
  carrying 
  an 
  automatic—wrestled 
  handcuffs from his pocket and approached 
  Doc. He walked warily, his swarthy face 
  apprehensive. 
   
  Doc, sitting in his chair, continued his 
  leisurely stretching until his arms were 
  straightened out from his body in the form of 
  a cross. The rat-eyed man with the handcuffs 
  stared helplessly, with panic gripping him as 
  he found himself so close to those great, 
  cabled fists. 
   
  “Don’t go chicken, Rats,” the bullet-
  headed leader snarled. “We can put enough 
  lead in him to sink through the floor.” To Doc, 
  he ordered: “Hold your wrists together for the 
  cuffs.” 
   
  “All right,” Doc said. “And when I do, 
  you watch what happens.” 
   
  Slowly, like the wings of an eagle 
  closing, Doc swept his arms to meet in front 
  of him. The eyes of every man in the room 
  were on those closing arms. Doc meant that 
  they should be. There was purpose in his 
  dramatics. 
   
  While 
  he 
  was 
  centering 
  their 
  attention on his arms, the toe of his right foot 
  was deftly disengaging a novel metal packet 
  from within his left trousers cuff. It was a 
  packet scientifically designed to withstand 
  the utmost in internal pressure, fashioned out 
  of an alloy stronger than any other known 
  metal. 
   
  The 
  instant 
  Doc 
  succeeded 
  in 
  releasing the packet from the cuff, he kicked 
  it away from him. The bullet-headed leader, 
  alert for tricks, caught the movement out of 
  the tail of his eye. 
   
  “Watch his feet!” he snarled. 
   
   
   
  IT was too late for anybody to watch 
  anything. 
  A 
  sharp, 
  cracking 
  explosion 
  blended with an unnameable sound, a sw-
  oo-sh reminiscent of blanketing fire damp 
  gas 
  ignited 
  in 
  a 
  coal 
  mine. 
  Almost 
  instantaneously, the room was choked with a 
  yellowish smoke so dense that it appeared 
  black. 
   
  For the space of a rasped breath, 
  there was silence. Then bedlam. Shrieked 
  curses; splintering wood and crashing glass 
  as automatics barked and machine guns 
  clattered. In their panic at Doc’s nerve-
  racking maneuver, the men butted blindly, 
  their guns making ruddy flashes in the smoke 
  as they drove their bullets. 
   
  Doc Savage was in the clear. At the 
  instant of the smoke explosion, he had 
  rammed forward from his chair, ducking low, 
  one thewed arm reaching for the spot where 
  he knew Boris Ramadanoff to be, the other 
  arching upward like a scythe toward the 
  bullet-headed leader’s neck. 
   
  Doc’s packet had contained an 
  organic chemical held under pressure. With 
  the bursting of the packet, the chemical had 
  expanded instantly in a gaseous state. 
  Moisture in the air had acted to cause partial 
  combustion of the chemical, thus generating 
  the instantaneous cloud of smoke. 
   
  Then the unexpected happened. 
  Boris Ramadanoff was not where he should 
  have been in the chair, and the short-haired 
  leader had shifted his position. 
   
  Doc Savage moved about very 
  silently, endeavoring to find Ramadanoff. 
   
  “Open the windows and let this stuff 
  out,” rapped the chief of the raiding party. 
  “Everybody be perfectly still, so we can hear 
  the bronze guy if he moves.” 
   
  They could think quickly, these men. 
  They had taken the one course which would 
  most quickly result in disaster to the bronze 
  man. Doc Savage changed his position, 
  using the utmost stealth. Even his eyes could 
  not penetrate the smoke. 
   
  Some moments passed in utter 
  silence. Then, outside, police sirens began to 
  wail in the streets. Neighbors must have 
  heard the shooting, the excitement, and 
  summoned officers. 
   
  “The cops!” ripped the man with the 
  cropped head. “We gotta blow!” 
   
  With that, they made a concerted 
  charge for the door. Doc Savage moved 
  swiftly, but chanced to brush some one. 
  There was a pale burst of gunfire and deep 
  crash of gun noise near his ear. His hands 
  streaked through the smoke, knocking the 
  gun out of the man’s grasp and clamping a 
  hold on the fellow’s neck. 
   
  There was more shooting in the 
  room, wild shots. 
   
  “Out!” the mob-leader was howling. 
  “The law is comin’!” 
   
  Then, amid a great rush of feet, they 
  were all out of the room. They slammed the 
  door. A number of shots were driven into the 
  panel from the hallway outside, to discourage 
  pursuit. 
  
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  25 
   
  Carrying the man he had captured 
  under one arm, Doc Savage hurriedly 
  searched the rooms. 
   
  Boris Ramadanoff was gone! 
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE carried his prisoner to 
  the fire escape, hurriedly descended. His 
  purpose was to watch the rear of the 
  apartment building. The police, by now, were 
  around in front. They would take care of the 
  entrance. 
   
  Doc Savage, noting that from the 
  spot where he had parked his coupé he 
  could watch the court that gave to the rear 
  entrance of the apartment, hurriedly carried 
  his prisoner to the car. It was just as well to 
  get the fellow out of sight of the police, thus 
  avoiding the delay which explanations would, 
  necessarily, cause. 
   
  The radio was still turned on in the 
  coupé. Static crackled from its loud-speaker, 
  and mingled with that was the frantic crackle 
  of words. 
   
  Doc recognized the voice. It was 
  Long Tom, no doubt speaking from the 
  transmitter of his car at the Redbeach Road 
  address where Doc Savage had left him on 
  guard. The electrical wizard’s voice came in 
  frantic bursts, almost inarticulate. 
   
  “Doc—centipedes—killing me—” 
   
  The words suddenly ceased coming. 
   
  That changed Doc Savage’s whole 
  plan of action. Any danger to Long Tom 
  transcended in importance what might have 
  happened 
  to 
  Boris 
  Ramadanoff. 
  Doc 
  switched the coupé’s engine on; with a 
  squalling of tire rubber, it got under way. The 
  car rocketed down the street, siren squalling. 
  The use of the siren was permitted Doc by 
  the police department. Doc depended upon 
  it, of course, only in dire emergencies. 
   
  While he wheeled along, Doc called 
  through the coupé’s radio, attempting to 
  renew connection with Long Tom; but he got 
  no response. 
   
  He shifted his call back to Renny at 
  headquarters. 
  Renny 
  was 
  listening 
  in, 
  feverishly awaiting directions. 
   
  Doc said, “Better get over here to 
  Ninety-seventh Street and stand by. Try to 
  avoid trouble with the police. Leave your 
  radio switched on in your car, so we can 
  keep in contact.” 
   
  “Right, Doc,” Renny answered. 
   
  Doc replaced his microphone on the 
  hook and turned his attention to the captive 
  he had lugged into the car with him. He was 
  “Rats” Hanley, the scrawny-chested, rat-eyed 
  individual who had been going to clip the 
  handcuffs on Doc. 
   
  Doc put pressure on him and learned 
  from him that the bullet-headed man was 
  Jans Bergman, and that Bergman worked for 
  some 
  one 
  higher 
  up. 
  Gaining 
  this 
  information, Doc put Rats to sleep by 
  pressing on a hidden nerve. Later, Rats 
  would be sent to Doc’s “crime college” in 
  upstate New York. There, by surgical means, 
  the crook would be cured of his criminal 
  tendencies. 
   
  Doc’s 
  coupé 
  crossed 
  the 
  Queensboro Bridge over the East River and 
  continued along the Sound. Sea fog still hung 
  heavy 
  over 
  the 
  run-down 
  estate, 
  the 
  decaying red brick house at 33 Redbeach 
  Road, as Doc swerved his car in at the gate 
  and rolled silently up the brush-grown lane. 
   
  There was no sign of Long Tom. 
   
   
   
   
  THE bronze man spent no time in 
  reconnoitering. 
  With 
  Long 
  Tom’s 
  life 
  threatened, even seconds were important. 
  He leaped from the car, traversed the short 
  distance to the house in great bounds. He 
  tried the door. It was locked. He used 
  Renny’s pet method, and one of his fists, 
  propelled by prodigious arm and shoulder 
  muscles, crashed through the solid oak 
  panel. 
   
  Like closing vises, his hands caught 
  the splintered wood and wrenched. He tore 
  the door half down, then walked through the 
  rest of it with forward-pressing force which 
  shattered the entire door frame. 
   
  In the dim interior, he moved around. 
  His footfalls sounded hollowly throughout the 
  ghostly house. The place seemed to be 
  deserted. He whipped out a flashlight, 
  snaked its searing rays over floor and walls. 
  Black corners leaped into white life. 
   
  In one room, he found evidence of a 
  furious struggle. Furniture was overturned. 
  Still-wet scarlet was on the carpet. 
   
  The crimson was not the most 
  alarming thing. Scattered over the floor were 
  the crushed bodies of fully 
  a dozen 
  centipedes. Hairy legs on some of the broken 
  segments were still writhing. 
  
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  26 
   
  While Doc’s flashlight poked its white 
  beam around the shambles of the room, 
  there came a sound from the hall of a floor 
  board creaking. Doc whirled, crouching a 
  little, the light from his flash snuffing out. 
   
  He glided to the wall and waited, 
  frozen close. The creaking from outside the 
  door sounded louder. It paused, started up 
  again, paused a second time within the 
  doorway. Doc could hear the cautious 
  breathing of the stalker. 
   
  The unknown took a wide step to 
  clear the bare floor and land soundlessly on 
  his feet on the carpet. He got his foot on the 
  carpet, all right—then his whole body left the 
  floor. With his feet as high as his head, he fell 
  heavily on his back. 
   
  Doc 
  had 
  taken 
  advantage 
  of 
  opportunity, when the stalker took his wide 
  step, to pull the carpet from under him. 
   
  The man’s trigger finger started 
  jerking spasmodically. Plaster showered and 
  the room rocked to gun thunder as orange 
  flame stabbed the gray light. Suddenly, the 
  echoing uproar stopped. There was a 
  metallic clatter and a hollow thump. Doc, with 
  one leap, had landed in the middle of the 
  room, knocked the gun to the floor with one 
  hand and whacked the man’s head down 
  with the other. 
   
  He looked at the man he had 
  knocked unconscious. There was enough 
  light to reveal features. The man was no one 
  Doc had seen before. 
   
  But the next moment, Doc was 
  looking upon a face which he had seen 
  before. It was one of the few times in Doc’s 
  life that an enemy succeeded in actually 
  surprising him. 
   
  A 
  floor 
  board 
  creaked 
  in 
  the 
  doorway. Doc looked up to find himself 
  covered at deadly range with a submachine 
  gun. The gunner had been able to advance 
  without being heard because of the uproar 
  the pistol shots had made. 
   
  The smooth skin of the man behind 
  the submachine gun gleamed with pale 
  menace in the half light. The wide mouth 
  opened. Thin lips writhed in triumphant 
  grimace. 
   
  The 
  gunner 
  who 
  stood 
  there 
  threatening quick death was Jans Bergman, 
  the man with the close-cropped hair whom 
  Doc had left on Ninety-seventh Street, 
  Manhattan, in an apartment with a squad car 
  of the police department closing in. 
   
   
   
  “THERE is only one way you could 
  have gotten here so soon,” Doc said, quietly. 
   
  “One way,” Bergman agreed, with his 
  heavy foreign accent. “In the luggage 
  compartment of your coupé.” 
   
  “You are clever,” Doc said. 
   
  “You had a lot on your mind,” 
  Bergman said grimly. “That helped. Stowed 
  away in that compartment, I heard the radio 
  S O S that came through from here.” 
   
  “How did you leave everybody on 
  Ninety-seventh Street?” 
   
  “Pretty badly shot up. It was a nice 
  trick—the smoke. Your last trick, I think.” 
   
  Doc straightened. 
   
  “Hold your hands high!” Bergman 
  slashed. “Keep them wide apart! The fingers, 
  even—keep them open.” 
   
  Doc complied. 
   
  “And the feet—step them wide 
  apart.” 
   
  Doc moved to stand wide-legged. 
   
  “That’s better,” Bergman said. “You 
  don’t trick me this time.” 
   
  Doc stared with a certain grimness 
  into the slitted eyes of his enemy. He spoke 
  what he was thinking. 
   
  “But few men have opposed me 
  before, and risked another meeting.” 
   
  “I,” Bergman bragged, “am a bold 
  man.” 
   
  “Perhaps only foolhardy.” 
   
  “You are the foolhardy one, if you 
  think you can outsmart Jans Bergman. 
  Maybe you’re wearing bulletproof clothes. 
  Don’t depend upon them. My machine-gun 
  lead will push your face out the back of your 
  skull.” 
   
  Doc shrugged, asked evenly, “Now 
  that you have the bear by the tail, what do 
  you propose to do?” 
   
  Bergman 
  stared, 
  slitted 
  eyes 
  glittering. “I’ll keep holding the bear by the tail 
  until—until a very few moments. Do you hear 
  what I hear?” 
   
  Outside the house, an auto was 
  droning up the driveway. The sound throbbed 
  close, died. Car doors slammed. Feet 
  scraped across the wooden porch, entered 
  the house. 
   
  Bergman yelled, “This way, you 
  guys!” 
   
  Foot scufflings, muttered curses 
  sounded closer. 
  
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  27 
   
  “Inside here,” Bergman ordered. “Get 
  a line on him from four angles. If he moves a 
  finger a quarter of an inch, let him have it—in 
  the face!” 
   
  Four men, black shadows in the gray 
  gloom, eased inside the room and took 
  positions within a yard of Doc, machine guns 
  poking for his face. 
   
  Bergman bent, placed his rapid-firer 
  on the floor, and approached Doc with 
  handcuffs in one hand and an automatic in 
  the other. 
   
  He said hoarsely, to cover his 
  nervousness: “Now you will see how we treat 
  the bear we have caught by the tail.” 
   
  Something happened then and Jans 
  Bergman was jolted by surprise greater than 
  any which had come to him in his active life. 
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE did not move his feet. 
  He did not move his hands. He did not even 
  move his fingers. But, suddenly, there was a 
  sound that might have been explosion in 
  slow motion. 
   
  There was superwhite light, too. It 
  was an undertone of blue, and looking at it 
  was something like looking at the arc of an 
  electric welding operation. It did things to the 
  eye. In fact, it brought blindness that was 
  momentarily complete. 
   
  Doc Savage had his own eyes 
  closed tightly, and thus escaped the blinding 
  effect of the flash to a great degree. He 
  ducked for safety as lead spurted with ear-
  shattering clatter. 
   
  Jans Bergman began bellowing for 
  his men to quit their suicidal shooting. More 
  than any of them, Bergman came near 
  understanding what had happened. He had 
  caught the flash of Doc’s wrist watch an 
  instant before the flash came. He had 
  realized the bronze man had expanded wrist 
  muscles so as to split the case and release 
  the contents. 
   
  Jans Bergman, of course, knew 
  nothing of the chemical composition of the 
  powder which had been in the watch and, 
  when released into the air, had ignited 
  instantly by spontaneous combustion. Nor 
  did he know that the powder was one which, 
  when burning—it burned like ordinary flash 
  light powder—gave off those rays of light 
  most destructive, over a temporary period, to 
  the delicate nerve mechanism of the human 
  eye. 
   
  While his enemies were milling 
  about, cursing, shooting, gradually getting 
  vision back into their eyes, Doc Savage 
  plunged out into the hall. He slammed the 
  door behind him, streaked through the 
  shadowed house and outside into the sea fog 
  which still rolled in from the Sound. 
   
  The bronze man made for his coupé 
  in the driveway, got there in time to hear 
  Renny’s frantic voice trying to raise Doc 
  through the loud-speaker. There was no way 
  of telling how long Renny had been calling. 
   
  “Doc!” Renny was rumbling urgently. 
  “Calling Doc Savage! Important!” 
   
  Doc grasped the microphone and 
  said into the apparatus: “Listening.” 
   
  “Doc,” 
  Renny 
  thumped, 
  “I 
  am 
  shoving off in my car—gonna join you. I’ve 
  learned something. Boris Ramadanoff! Holy 
  cow—he—” 
   
  A grinding crash blasted from the 
  microphone. 
   
  It was a noise such as might have 
  been made by two cars crashing together at 
  high speed. 
   
  “Renny,” Doc called in alarm, “are 
  you all right?” 
   
  “All—right—Doc,” sounded Renny’s 
  voice, faintly. 
   
  “Quick—what did you find out?” 
   
  A new voice jumped from the 
  microphone, harsh, mocking. 
   
  “The same thing you’ll find out, 
  Savage—after it’s too late!” 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  SUBWAY SEIZURE 
   
   
  DOC trod the starter of his car; but 
  the great motor under its long hood did not 
  throb into life. It remained as cold and 
  unresponsive as the water-dripping trees 
  which loomed through the fog. 
   
  He dived out and lifted the hood. He 
  could see at a glance what was wrong. 
  Wiring had been torn loose and ignition parts 
  smashed. Jans Bergman, obviously, had 
  used a monkey wrench before entering the 
  house. 
   
  The gunfire had ceased inside the 
  house. But it soon cracked from close 
  outside. Lead skidded off the armor plate of 
  the gunmetal coupé, mushroomed against 
  
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  28 
  the 
  bulletproof 
  glass. 
  Hoarse 
  shouts 
  sounded. 
   
  Doc 
  Savage, 
  a 
  bronze 
  flash, 
  streaked from the other side of the car and 
  melted into the fog. Bullets came hunting 
  him, chopping through wet branches. Doc 
  twisted, running low, changed his course, 
  crashed on through fog-drenched trees and 
  came out on the automobile highway. 
   
  A truck headed toward New York 
  City pounded past. The bronze man left the 
  ground in a headlong leap and got a grip on 
  the endgate of the wheeling truck. He 
  crawled over the gate and made his way 
  forward. 
   
  From behind, he had been sighted 
  by his enemies. Machine-gun slugs crashed 
  out of the gray murk, but fanned harmlessly 
  past as the heavy truck swayed around a 
  curve. Doc reached the truck driver. 
   
  “Faster,” he ordered. 
   
  The driver took one startled look and 
  jammed the accelerator to the floor boards. 
  The truck stepped up to fifty-five, weaving 
  ponderously on the wet pavement. They 
  covered a mile or two. 
   
  Fifty-five was not fast enough. At that 
  speed, they could be overtaken by Jans 
  Bergman. A sleek sedan bored from behind, 
  doing a few miles more than the truck. It was 
  not Bergman. Just a motorist. As the motorist 
  swung left to pass around the truck, there 
  was a thump on his sedan which gave the 
  driver a badly startled moment. A bigger 
  moment 
  followed 
  for 
  him 
  when, 
  unceremoniously, a door of his car opened. 
   
  Doc Savage had left the truck with a 
  gauged leap, landing on the speeding sedan. 
   
  “Let me have the wheel,” he ordered. 
   
  The bulging-eyed driver shot one 
  gasping look at the bronze giant and 
  complied. 
  Doc 
  took 
  the 
  wheel. 
  The 
  speedometer needle went to eighty—eighty-
  five—ninety miles an hour. 
   
  They were out of the fog now. Doc 
  looked behind. There was a car tailing them. 
  Doc recognized it. Jans Bergman’s. The 
  pursuing car was coming up fast. 
   
  They were running through traffic 
  now. Doc did not want to subject pedestrians 
  or his drafted driver to the dangers of speed 
  and machine-gun bullets. 
   
  He said to the man who had been 
  driving, “Slow down ahead there, I’m going to 
  the subway station. I’m leaving you.” 
   
  “O. K., D-Doc Savage,” the other 
  stuttered. He had recognized the bronze 
  man. He would brag about this experience 
  for the rest of his life. So would the truck 
  driver. 
   
  The brakes squealed like stuck pigs, 
  tires slithered, as the sedan buckled in 
  toward the curb. 
   
  “Thanks,” Doc flung, and plunged 
  down the subway stairs.  
   
  A second afterward, Jans Bergman’s 
  car, rubber smoking, careened to the curb. 
  Bergman stayed in the car, but three of his 
  men burst out and followed Doc down the 
  stairway. 
   
   
   
  THE automatic steel doors of a 
  Manhattan-bound express train were sliding 
  shut as the bronze man flashed through the 
  subway turnstile. A split-second before the 
  door hooks caught, Doc’s outstretched hand 
  fastened on the rubber-cushioned door edge 
  and yanked the door open again. He 
  disappeared within the brightly lighted car 
  and let the door slide shut at his heels. 
   
  The doors to cars in New York 
  subway trains are connected by a safety 
  mechanism to the motorman’s controls. 
  When Doc stayed the closing of one door, it 
  delayed the starting of the train. This gave 
  Jans Bergman’s men time to squeeze 
  through the windows of another car. 
   
  The train started; it roared its way 
  through the black tube. 
   
  The train was crowded. Passengers 
  were standing closely packed in the wide 
  aisle, some of them with hands reaching up 
  to hold white-enameled grab-irons. 
   
  The cosmopolitan population of New 
  York City is less observing, perhaps, than the 
  citizenry of any other city in the United 
  States. People crowd the streets, subways, 
  towering skyscrapers of the metropolis with 
  blank looks on their faces, immersed almost 
  wholly in their own business. It is doubtful if 
  even as commanding a personality as Doc 
  Savage would have been noticed in the 
  closely packed subway, except for the fact 
  that the bronze man over-topped by a head 
  the tallest man in the car. 
   
  People were beginning to murmur, to 
  point, to gasp with recognition, when, 
  suddenly, there was a crash of sound, a 
  blinding 
  swath 
  of 
  greenish-blue 
  light 
  enveloping the train. 
  
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  29 
   
  With an ear-piercing shriek of brake 
  shoes on wheeling metal, the train bucked to 
  a violent stop, flinging many of the people in 
  the car to the floor. Following the blinding 
  greenish glare, darkness shut down—the 
  darkness of underground places, jet and 
  utter. Acrid smoke fumes drifted through 
  broken windows, causing the panic-stricken 
  passengers to shriek and struggle in mad 
  frenzy against each other. 
   
  A uniformed trainman switched on a 
  flashlight and bawled at the top of his voice: 
  “There’s no danger! Short circuit, that’s all!” 
   
  The light was knocked from his hand 
  by somebody’s thrashing arm, but he kept on 
  bawling to the milling passengers: “No 
  danger! Take it easy! No danger!” 
   
  The New York underground is as 
  safe as any railway in the world. The 
  passengers knew this. Gradually the panic 
  subsided as the hoarsely repeated words: 
  “No danger! No danger!” penetrated through 
  the din to their consciousness. 
   
   
   
  FOR one person in that car, there 
  was danger, however. This had been no 
  ordinary short circuit. The unscheduled stop 
  had been promoted by one of Jans 
  Bergman’s men. As the subway went back 
  and the cars lurched to a standstill, Doc’s 
  great form was jostled to the floor with those 
  others. But it was not alone the jolting car 
  which had taken Doc off his feet. In the 
  darkness, two hard swung blackjacks had 
  thudded against his head. 
   
  Before the lights went on, under 
  cover of the confusion, it was a relatively 
  simple matter for Jans Bergman’s thugs to lift 
  Doc’s limp body through a window and carry 
  it down the black passageway. They cursed 
  under their heavy burden and stumbled 
  often, being careful to feel their way by 
  scuffing their shoes along the cold rail at the 
  opposite side of the track from the hooded 
  death of the live third rail. 
   
  They came to a place where a red 
  light glowed, marking an emergency exit in 
  the massive expanse of dusty, reënforced 
  concrete. Onto the catwalk platform they 
  lifted Doc, and carried him with effort up the 
  steep steps. 
   
  Out on the street with their limp 
  burden, they ran slam into a stick-twirling 
  policeman. One of the men cursed under his 
  breath and his hand jerked toward his coat 
  pocket. Before he could draw his automatic, 
  his quicker-witted companion had knocked 
  his hand aside and blurted to the policeman: 
   
  “Subway accident—train stalled—
  this guy we’re carryin’ out overcome by gas! 
  Lot more of them down there in the same fix. 
  S’awful! You better report it.” 
   
  Deceived, 
  conscious 
  of 
  his 
  importance in being the first to turn in a 
  report of a first-page headline accident, the 
  copper rushed for a call box. 
   
  Doc’s captors rushed for a taxi, 
  shoved the bronze man inside. 
   
  One of them clipped to the driver, 
  “Nearest hospital.” He spoke loudly, for the 
  benefit of spectators crowding close. 
   
   
   
  IT was not in a hospital room that 
  Doc opened his eyes. He was lying on his 
  face on a brick floor, his wrists handcuffed 
  behind him. He turned sidewise, maneuvered 
  his legs under him, got to his feet. Light 
  filtered wanly through a sidewalk grating, 
  illuminating the bare, brick-walled room. The 
  place was damp, musty-smelling. A single 
  steel fire door, tightly closed, was the only 
  exit. 
   
  Doc tried his weight against the door. 
  His ramming shoulder attack shuddered the 
  rusty sheet steel. With time, he might break 
  through. Then he heard voices outside and 
  paused, listening. He could not catch the 
  words, at first. 
   
  While the muffled mumble of voices 
  approached, Doc tried his strength on the 
  handcuffs which bound him. Other times in 
  his life, he had broken the connecting link on 
  a pair of handcuffs by utilization of sheer 
  strength and wrist leverage. 
   
  Muscles bulged and rippled now as 
  he bent forward, exerting a terrific tug on the 
  steel cuffs. He tried only once. Then he knew 
  what he was up against. His enemies were 
  taking no chances with him. His hands had 
  been locked behind him with the most 
  modern of tempered chrome handcuffs. A 
  sledge and chisel would not have sufficed to 
  get the cuffs off his wrists. It was work for a 
  cutting torch. 
   
  Another appalling feature was that 
  the cuffs contracted, took up slack, when 
  pressure was exerted against them, forcing a 
  saw edge into lacerating contact with the 
  wrists. Crimson dripped from his skin, where 
  the steel points had gouged. 
  
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  30 
   
  The bronze man bent his fingers 
  upward till they could touch the end of his 
  coat sleeve. His fingers moved deftly, 
  unraveling a thread. From a pocket in the 
  coat sleeve his hands received a small metal 
  envelope, flexible as lead foil. Doc opened 
  one end of the envelope with his finger nail 
  and carefully maneuvered his hands to pour 
  the liquid contents—a few drops only—on the 
  handcuff links. 
   
  The talking men outside had now 
  approached close enough to the door that 
  Doc could hear what they were saying. He 
  recognized one of the voices. It was Jans 
  Bergman’s. The blond, bullet-headed leader 
  with the skull-tight skin had apparently just 
  come in. His glib pronouncements sounded 
  strange, when uttered with that foreign 
  accent. 
   
  Doc heard him saying, “You left his 
  clothes on? You fools—” 
   
  A sullen voice answered: “We frisked 
  him—got everything he had.” 
   
  “You couldn’t have gotten half of it! 
  Savage has a thousand pockets. You could 
  yank out his teeth, shave his head, and pull 
  out his nails and he’d still have enough 
  chemicals hidden on him to blow up a 
  battleship.” 
   
  The other cursed nervously. “I don’t 
  like it—monkeyin’ with this bronze guy.” 
   
  “You’re getting your cut.” 
   
  “What good’s heavy sugar, if I croak 
  before I can blow it?” 
   
  There 
  was 
  a 
  silence, 
  heavy, 
  oppressive. 
   
  Then Bergman asked, “Has he come 
  out of it yet?” 
   
  “Look through and see for yourself,” 
  the other snarled. “I ain’t even lookin’ at him 
  any more. He’s like a poisonous snake to 
  me.” 
   
  There was a sharp, metallic rasping 
  as Bergman slid back an eye-slit in the door 
  and peered through. 
   
   
   
  HE saw Doc lying on his back, 
  feigning unconsciousness. 
   
  “He’s still out,” Bergman said. 
   
  “He ought to be. We both of us give 
  him a tap that would have busted a cable on 
  Brooklyn Bridge.” 
   
  There was another silence, more 
  ominous 
  than 
  the 
  one 
  before. 
  When 
  Bergman spoke again, it was in a hoarse 
  voice, curiously hushed. 
   
  “We’ve got to kill him,” he said. 
   
  “Maybe 
  you’re right,” the other 
  muttered. “But how would we kill him? A 
  gunshot would bring one of them thousand-
  legged bugs crawlin’ down our necks.” 
   
  “A gunshot, yes—but a slit throat 
  makes little noise.” 
   
  “Get close enough to that bronze guy 
  to cut his throat? Not for mine.” 
   
  “He’s handcuffed.” 
   
  “Suppose he skins out of them 
  cuffs?” 
   
  “How can he?” 
   
  “How can he do a lot of things he 
  does?” 
   
  “All right, suppose he gets out of the 
  cuffs? He can’t; but if he does, look at the 
  knives. We won’t have to get so close to him 
  as you’re thinking.” 
   
  Bergman tiptoed aside. From under 
  a litter of boxes and excelsior packing he 
  lifted two huge knives, bone-handled, with 
  blades nearly half a foot in width and close to 
  a yard long. 
   
  To Doc’s ears came the gasped 
  words: “Sugar cane knives, ain’t they?” 
   
  “Right. I’m going to cut Savage’s 
  head off.” The heavy door swung open with 
  ponderous creaking and Jans Bergman, 
  followed closely by his companion, advanced 
  across the damp bricks toward Doc’s prone 
  form. The assassins walked in a crouch, their 
  machetes raised high. 
   
   
   
  ONCE in reach of Doc, they paused. 
   
  “If I don’t make a clean job with the 
  first stroke,” Bergman muttered, “dip your 
  own knife in the blood. Then follow me out in 
  a hurry.” 
   
  The other’s teeth started chattering. 
  The massive knife wavered and he grasped it 
  with both hands. 
   
  “I’m practically out on the sidewalk 
  now,” he husked. 
   
  Bergman’s knife lifted higher, then 
  down it chopped, the wide blade glinting dully 
  in the half light. 
   
  The first stroke was not enough. It 
  was not even a starter. As the blade swished 
  close, Doc, whose muscles had been tensely 
  braced against the floor, wrenched head and 
  shoulders forward. 
   
   
  
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  31 
   
  Steel met steel with grinding clangor, and the knife aimed 
  at Doc skittered in the air. . . . 
   
   
  It was too late for Jans Bergman to 
  change his stroke. The frightful blade 
  slammed past Doc’s head and sank inches 
  deep in the mortar. 
   
  Before Bergman could pull the blade 
  free, before his companion could chop down 
  with the other knife, Doc sprang an even 
  greater surprise on them. 
   
  His arm, free from the handcuffs, 
  struck out and down, against the back of the 
  mortar-imprisoned blade, knocking it forcibly 
  from Bergman’s grasp. At the same time, his 
  other hand streaked forward and grabbed the 
  handle. 
   
  “No 
  handcuffs!” 
  the 
  other 
  man 
  shrieked in terror, as he chopped down, 
  holding his knife in both hands. 
   
  Doc parried the down stroke with the 
  knife he had taken from Bergman. Steel met 
  steel with grinding clangor, and the knife 
  aimed at Doc skittered in the air, glinting like 
  water heaved from a bucket, and clattered on 
  the bricks at the other side of the room. 
   
  “No handcuffs!” Bergman echoed, 
  and the skin was drawn so taut across his 
  
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  32 
  face in his terror at the spectacle of the 
  bronze giant wielding that slab of razor-blade 
  steel that it seemed his cheek bones must 
  poke through. 
   
  The explanation of Doc’s handcuff 
  escape was simple. The liquid he had 
  released from the flexible metal envelope 
  had been an acid which made short shift of 
  steel such as composed those handcuff links. 
   
  From outside the room sounded 
  excited voices, approaching footsteps. Doc 
  bolted for the door, brandishing his fearful 
  weapon in the faces of the newcomers and 
  scowling ferociously. 
   
  Doc made no attack on these 
  enemies. He was looking for bigger game 
  now. He took the basement steps in a series 
  of bounds. From above, he hurled the 
  unwieldy cane knife down, since he preferred 
  to depend upon his own scientifically 
  developed weapons. 
   
  Locking the solid door at the top of 
  the landing and bolting it against the 
  aggregation below, he stalked away in 
  search of the master schemer he knew to be 
  somewhere in the building; in search, too, of 
  Renny and Long Tom, whom he surmised 
  must have been captured. 
   
  It was this last objective which had 
  brought Doc to this building. Back in the 
  subway, the bronze man had not been 
  knocked out by those thudding blackjack 
  blows. 
  He 
  had 
  only 
  feigned 
  unconsciousness, 
  reasoning 
  that 
  the 
  quickest way to locate his aids, if they were 
  still alive, was to maneuver to get himself 
  taken to their place of imprisonment. 
   
   
  Chapter VIII 
  THE THUMB-HOLE DEATH 
   
   
  MOUNTING from the basement, 
  flight after flight, Doc Savage was not long in 
  discovering the type of building he was in. It 
  was one of those ancient tenements, 
  condemned and abandoned, on the upper 
  West Side of New York City near the Hudson 
  River. It was a sore spot among the 
  surrounding modern buildings, its windows 
  blanked out with time-chipped whitewash. 
   
  As he raced upward, his senses 
  were alert to catch the faintest sign of human 
  habitation. His footfalls sounded hollowly 
  against the worn, splintery floor, revealing 
  wooden laths like the ribs of something long 
  dead. 
   
  On the sixth floor, Doc paused. Here, 
  plaster on the hall floor had been ground 
  under many feet. Doc went up another flight. 
  Here, 
  too, 
  plaster 
  had 
  been 
  crushed 
  underfoot. This building was several stories 
  taller than most of its kind. Doc went up two 
  more flights to the top floor, the ninth. 
   
  There were signs of recent passage 
  on the stairway leading to the roof. Doc went 
  up. At the top landing he had a mild surprise. 
  A fire door of modern steel construction had 
  recently been built in. It was solidly placed. 
   
  For the present, Doc contented 
  himself with peering through a lookout slit in 
  the door. His almost inaudible trilling sound, 
  weirdly traversing the musical scale—that 
  small, unconscious manifestation of Doc 
  Savage in moments of stress or surprise—
  tremored in the dead air of early evening as 
  the man of bronze focused his eyes on the 
  roof top. 
   
  He saw a plane—a gyro of ultra-
  modern design—lashed down on the roof 
  under a collapsible silk-cloth shelter. Huge 
  silencers were attached to motor exhaust 
  stacks. The roof had been leveled, patched 
  and reënforced; and a raised apparatus—a 
  navy type catapult—erected. There was also 
  a conventional cable device to kill landing 
  speed. 
   
  That the roof had been used for 
  landings was evident by the wheel marks. 
  The district was a mercantile one, virtually 
  empty after business hours. Surrounding 
  buildings were low. Quite evidently, the gyro 
  did not operate from this base by municipal 
  permit, but it must have been able to go and 
  come by night, undetected. Luminous paint 
  markings on the roof were commencing to 
  glow in the twilight. A clever scheme for night 
  landings. 
   
  Doc turned, noiseless, a shadow in 
  the failing light, and silently descended the 
  stairs. On the sixth floor, he paused for a 
  detailed search. Tracks in the plaster dust led 
  to closed doors of several rooms. Before 
  each door Doc paused, listening. He made 
  no sound; he might have been a bronze, 
  floating cloud. 
   
  Suddenly, a screeching, splintering 
  noise 
  crashed 
  through 
  the 
  shadowed 
  hallway—a screeching of hinges rent from 
  doors, the splintering of the door itself under 
  the terrific force of Doc’s lunge. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  33 
   
  Doc, listening in the hall, had caught 
  the sound of human breathing inside the 
  room. As he smashed through the door, a 
  man who had been bending over, twirling the 
  dials of a modern safe, straightened up with 
  a guttural curse. 
   
  From the crashed-in door, all that 
  was visible of the man was a bulky body, a 
  blunt, close-cropped head. Jans Bergman! 
   
   
   
  IN the time it took for Bergman to 
  jerk his bullet head around to look, Doc 
  Savage had cleared the width of the room 
  and locked a steel-thewed arm around the 
  man. 
   
  Bergman struggled, trying to get at 
  the automatic in his pocket. He was a big 
  man; during his youth in his native country, 
  he had won recognition as a wrestler. But, 
  with Doc’s arm holding tighter and tighter, 
  strength flowed out of Bergman’s body until, 
  if Doc had not held him up, he would have 
  fallen to the floor. 
   
  Doc 
  appropriated 
  Bergman’s 
  automatic and tossed it clattering onto the 
  writing surface of an old-fashioned roll-top 
  desk. Then he allowed Bergman to slump 
  into a chair. 
   
  Doc indicated the safe. He said, 
  “Greed brings many men to ruin. You did not 
  leave when you had the chance. You came 
  back here to help yourself to more money.” 
   
  “Yes! Let’s get out of here—while 
  we’re alive!” 
   
  Jans Bergman was staring up at Doc 
  with panic creeping into his slitted eyes. 
  Sweat was beading his brow and glistening 
  in the close-cropped hair on his head. 
   
  “Who is your boss?” Doc questioned. 
   
  Bergman’s thin lips pressed so tightly 
  they 
  disappeared 
  in 
  the 
  stretched 
  smoothness of his skin. He shook his head. 
   
  Doc shrugged. “All right. But here is 
  one you will answer. Where are my two men, 
  brought here before me?” 
   
  Bergman’s lips writhed. “I have 
  nothing to say!” 
   
  Doc settled himself on the large roll-
  top desk, and said, “We will stay here until 
  you talk.” 
   
  “Savage, 
  you’re 
  nuts!” 
  Bergman 
  jabbered. “It’s as dangerous for you in here 
  as it is for me! Sometimes a man drops dead 
  with nobody near him, and what has killed 
  him is a little hole in his temple about the size 
  you could poke your thumb into.” 
   
  “What 
  makes 
  that 
  hole?” 
  Doc 
  queried, curiously. 
   
  “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you where 
  your men are—” 
   
  In the twilight murkiness of the room 
  leaped a peculiar sound, a kind of fleshy 
  crunch. Bergman’s words died in his throat. 
  His head flopped sidewise. His shoulders 
  followed it with flowing motion. His head 
  thumped hollowly against the floor. His body 
  lay there in a twisted huddle. 
   
  Doc leaped from the desk, made a 
  quick examination. His fingers encountered a 
  bone-crushed depression in the left temple, a 
  smooth, white wound, in its size and contour 
  the same as a man’s thumb would have 
  made if jabbed into white lard. 
   
  Even as Doc looked, the wound 
  commenced to ooze scarlet in red pin points 
  which quickly built up an overflowing red 
  puddle. Bergman’s flat ear divided the two 
  streams, which ran onto the floor. 
   
  Jans Bergman’s racketeering days 
  were over. He was a victim of what he had 
  called the “thumb-hole death.” 
   
   
   
  A VOICE sounded in the room, 
  precise: 
  “The 
  same 
  thing 
  could 
  have 
  happened to any one—any one!” 
   
  No one had come into the darkening 
  room. There was no one standing outside the 
  doorway. There was only that mocking voice 
  rebounding from the walls. 
   
  Doc turned, fastened his gaze on the 
  roll-top desk. 
   
  A laugh floated mockingly into the 
  room. “Congratulations, my dear Savage. 
  You have located my voice. Almost any 
  second now you may look toward the 
  doorway where you will be confronted by a 
  second menace, not so mysterious, but fully 
  as deadly as that thing which Jans Bergman 
  so quaintly called the ‘thumb-hole death’.” 
   
  Shoe scuffling sounded from down 
  the hall. Doc turned to see two men loom 
  inside the doorway. They were clearly none 
  of Bergman’s men. They were squat Mongol 
  types, massive of shoulder, heavy of jowl. 
  They 
  carried 
  equally 
  heavy, 
  squat 
  weapons—short guns with stubby barrels 
  flared at the muzzle. 
   
  “Meet 
  my 
  personal 
  bodyguard, 
  Savage,” the voice sounded. “Their weapons 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  34 
  will interest you. They are instruments of my 
  own designing, combining the features of a 
  sawed off shotgun and a blowgun. Each is 
  loaded with slightly more than one hundred 
  poisoned darts, which can be released en 
  masse by a trigger controlling an air pressure 
  mechanism. Your face will be the target, if 
  you make it necessary for them to fire.” 
   
  A faint whirring sounded and a stout 
  oak panel in the side of the roll-top desk slid 
  hack. A man stepped out into the room, and 
  the panel closed behind him. He stood there, 
  with black glittering eyes—a little man with an 
  Old World manner, and a black Czar-of-
  Russia beard. 
   
  It was Boris Ramadanoff. 
   
  Doc evinced no surprise. 
   
  Ramadanoff said, suavely, “Why 
  should you wish to be here?” 
   
  “To secure the release of my two 
  men.” 
   
  As he spoke, the bronze man 
  commenced sliding the toe of his right foot 
  toward the cuff on his left trousers leg. 
   
  Ramadanoff’s beady eyes caught the 
  movement. 
   
  “Hold it!” he slashed angrily, and 
  then in throaty Asiatic speech barked an 
  order to his bodyguard. 
   
  The two squat assassins, Mongol 
  eyes closing to slanting penciled slits in their 
  broad faces, moved closer with their fantastic 
  guns. 
   
  Ramadanoff warned Doc: “Twice you 
  have escaped with your tricks. You will not 
  do so a third time. The movement of a single 
  muscle will bring you death.” 
   
  Ramadanoff 
  stepped 
  forward, 
  stooped, ran his fingers quickly around Doc’s 
  trouser cuff while the two Mongols held a 
  steady bead on Doc’s head with those wide-
  lipped guns. In the left cuff Ramadanoff’s 
  fingers closed on a small metal packet. He 
  detached it with a quick movement and 
  stepped back, holding the article as gingerly 
  in 
  his 
  fingers 
  as 
  though 
  it 
  were 
  a 
  nitroglycerine cap. He deposited it upon the 
  desk top, being careful not to allow it the 
  slightest jar. 
   
  He faced Doc triumphantly. “Now, no 
  more tricks. The claws of the tiger are 
  drawn!” 
   
  The last words were spoken in a 
  tone somewhat strange. They were jumbled, 
  as if the tongue that made them was 
  suddenly under the influence of an intoxicant. 
   
  Then the little man with the beard 
  demonstrated that he was an amazingly 
  quick thinker. As lightning strikes, so did the 
  realization of something wrong hit him, and 
  he acted simultaneously. Straight to the door 
  he flung, to literally fall through it. 
   
  Doc 
  Savage 
  had 
  been 
  slightly 
  crouched, waiting, knowing what was to 
  come. The mechanism of the little packet 
  was such that it would open shortly after 
  being detached from his trousers cuff. It held 
  some of the anaesthetic gas which he had 
  developed long ago, and which he used so 
  frequently—it was odorless, colorless, and its 
  effects were almost instantaneous. 
   
  Doc lunged through the invisible gas. 
  Holding his breath had saved him from the 
  anaesthetic gas. 
   
  But where the door should have 
  been there was something else. Doc collided 
  with such force against an unyielding surface 
  that he was flung back. He kept his breath in 
  his lungs. 
   
  As firmly set as concrete, a smooth, 
  metallic 
  surface 
  was 
  now 
  mysteriously 
  substituted for the wooden door which he 
  had bashed in with his fists. He heaved the 
  full weight of his massive shoulders, ramming 
  with all the power of his remarkably 
  developed body. The surface did not budge. 
   
  From 
  outside 
  in 
  the 
  hallway, 
  sounded Boris Ramadanoff’s sardonic, if 
  weak, laugh. His voice filtered in faintly. He 
  had not gotten enough of the anaesthetic to 
  overcome him. 
   
  “Just a trick, Savage,” he snarled. “I 
  managed to press a button on my way out, 
  sliding the steel door into place from within 
  the wall. Did you think I had no more 
  protection for my safety than the wooden 
  door you broke down? You can stay in there 
  and simmer in your own juice, as the 
  Yankees say, or perish in your own gas. 
   
  “I will go back and tell my brother it 
  was a mistake for him to have sent me to 
  New York for you. You cannot be controlled. 
  Very well—then die!” 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  FLAMING FURY 
   
   
  WHILE Ramadanoff’s voice droned 
  from the hallway, Doc turned. Three great 
  strides carried him to the window. There was 
  
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  35 
  a grating sound that would have set a man’s 
  teeth on edge. It was caused by Doc 
  Savage’s finger tips scraping on smooth 
  metal. The same mechanism which had 
  blocked the doorway with heavy sheet steel 
  had similarly actuated a steel window barrier. 
   
  With both door and window barred to 
  exit, Doc drove his metallic fist against the 
  plaster of the wall. It was a futile move. He 
  found that the walls had been reënforced 
  with heavy metal back of the plaster. 
   
  Still holding his breath against the 
  anaesthetic vapor, Doc hurled himself across 
  the room. He had one last hope—the 
  movable panel in the roll-top desk. There 
  was not time to look for the control key which 
  would open the panel. There was time only to 
  crash it in. Swiftly, Doc felt out the 
  boundaries of the stout oak with his sensitive 
  fingers. 
   
  Then his fists drummed a mighty 
  tattoo. Fists were not enough. His shoulders 
  lunged. He braced himself against the wall 
  and kicked. His hand drifted out and 
  contacted a heavy chair, swung it in a wide 
  arc. The chair splintered in a dozen places, 
  and the panel remained unmoved. 
   
  Doc was trapped! Not from the gas, 
  however. That would become harmless in a 
  few seconds, as it mingled more completely 
  with the air. 
   
  Faintly, 
  from 
  an 
  unidentifiable 
  source, voices sounded. The words were not 
  articulate, but Doc could recognize the tones. 
  It was Renny and Long Tom shouting from 
  some part of the building. They had heard 
  the noise and, aware of Doc’s presence in 
  the building, they were shouting in the frantic 
  hope that their voices might direct him to 
  their rescue. 
   
  They had no way of knowing that the 
  bronze man’s situation was as desperate as 
  their own. 
   
  Doc 
  could 
  breathe 
  now. 
  The 
  anaesthetic gas had dissipated its powers, 
  due to chemical reaction with the oxygen in 
  the air. 
   
  Doc flung himself upon the massive 
  roll-top desk. His attack was not chaotic, but 
  planned so that he could use every muscle in 
  his powerful body. Wedging himself on top of 
  the writing surface with knees jackknifed in 
  air, feet braced against one end, shoulders 
  against the other, he pushed. 
   
   
   
  MUSCLES bunched and quivered, 
  and suddenly his jackknifed knees went 
  straight. There was a screeching of rent 
  metal as he pried the desk apart. Doc parted 
  the rest of the desk with his hands, making 
  an opening large enough to squeeze 
  through. 
   
  He found that the sliding panel had 
  given onto a secret upward passage, 
  converted from an old dumbwaiter shaft. 
  Before plunging in, Doc leaped back into the 
  room and examined the prone bodies of the 
  two Asiatics. 
   
  He 
  found 
  about 
  what 
  he 
  had 
  expected. Both men were senseless from the 
  anaesthetic gas and would remain so for 
  some time. 
   
  Turning, 
  Doc 
  bolted 
  for 
  the 
  dumbwaiter shaft. His hands closed on the 
  rungs of a built-in ladder. He streaked 
  upward like an islander climbing a palm. 
   
  A partition had been roofed across 
  the shaft at the next floor level. In the side 
  wall in front of him, Doc’s probing fingers 
  found a wooden door. His fists battered, the 
  blows ringing hollowly. The door was as stout 
  as the one built into the roll-top desk. It did 
  not yield. 
   
  But Doc’s pounding occasioned an 
  uproar from the other side of the door. Voices 
  came through in wild clamor. 
   
  “Doc, is it you—” That was Long 
  Tom. 
   
  “Holy cow, Doc!” That would be 
  Renny. 
   
  “Stand back from this door,” Doc 
  called. 
   
  He jackknifed his body between the 
  door and the opposite shaft wall, using the 
  same kind of bodily leverage he had utilized 
  on the roll-top desk. The door broke in with 
  splintering crash, and Doc was catapulted 
  inside the room. 
   
  Beyond the Palisades, the sun had 
  gone down. Already Broadway was blazing 
  under a sun of its own making. A billion 
  electric bulbs supplied scattered illumination 
  for the rest of the city. But the room in which 
  Doc stood reunited with Renny and Long 
  Tom was dark. Electrical connections had 
  long since been cut off from the outside. 
   
  Renny boomed, “The little squirt with 
  the bush on his map yelled at us just before 
  you came. He said—” 
   
  “—he’s firing the building and leaving 
  us to burn!” Long Tom cut in. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  36 
   
  “This trap would go up like a gasoline 
  tank, Doc.” 
   
  Long Tom added, “We’ve been trying 
  to break down the door—” 
   
  Renny cracked his big fists together, 
  wailed, “I’ve nearly wore ‘em out on that 
  door, Doc! She almost breaks, but not quite.” 
   
  It was evident to Doc that Renny 
  considered his reputation at stake, as well as 
  his life. Renny had long boasted—and 
  backed up his boast—that his bare fists could 
  pound the panel out of any wooden door. 
   
  “I smell smoke!” Long Tom gasped.
   
   
   
  Doc’s sensitive nostrils had already 
  detected the acrid odor of the smoke. 
   
  “This building has been fired,” he 
  admitted. 
   
  “Listen!” Long Tom breathed. 
   
  A 
  heart-stopping 
  sound—the 
  seething crackle of flames feeding through 
  dry wooden floors—wafted to them faintly. 
   
  “We got to get out of here!” Renny 
  blared. 
   
  “Right,” Long Tom seconded. 
   
  “Come on, Renny,” Doc directed. 
  “We will try the door.” 
   
   
   
  UNDER the combined fist battering 
  and shoulder lunging of Doc and Renny, the 
  door shuddered, groaned, then collapsed like 
  a hut in a tornado. Smoke billowed in as all 
  three men burst out. It was slightly lighter in 
  the hall, in spite of the smoke. 
   
  “Stay close,” Doc rapped, and leaped 
  for the stairway. 
   
  Renny roared. “Holy cow! That’s the 
  wrong way!” 
   
  “The other way is down,” Long Tom 
  added. 
   
  Doc, taking the steps several at a 
  time, 
  did 
  not 
  pause 
  to 
  explain. 
  He 
  disappeared in the smoke and darkness of 
  the floor above and forged on up the next 
  flight of stairs. His flake-gold eyes, ever alert, 
  had seen something his aids had missed. 
   
  Doc had glimpsed Boris Ramadanoff 
  scuttling around the bend of the stair landing 
  above. The bronze man’s giant strides 
  slashed the distance between himself and 
  the murderous little man. At the top of the 
  roof flight, Doc was only a little behind. 
   
  Ramadanoff went out on the roof like 
  an eel. He got the door shut behind him. A 
  snap lock caught and held as Doc rammed 
  the panel with terrific force. 
   
  After Doc had tried his strength on 
  the door that once, he did not waste time on 
  it again. 
   
  From the roof, Boris Ramadanoff 
  shouted with raw gloating: “Stay there and 
  burn!” 
   
  Doc did not hear. He had already 
  vaulted the bannister and landed on the 
  smoke-filled floor below. He met Renny and 
  Long Tom coming up. 
   
  “Down,” he ordered. “Back into the 
  room out of which we just came!” 
   
  “We can’t, Doc!” Renny thumped. 
   
  “Fire’s already cut us off from that 
  floor!” Long Tom cried. 
   
  Creating its own draft, the fire 
  funneled up the stairway below them. A few 
  flights down, there was a crash as something 
  collapsed. 
   
  “Down!” Doc ordered, and led the 
  way.  
  Unquestioning, 
  Long 
  Tom 
  and 
  Renny followed him, shielding their eyes, 
  slapping at flames that caught their clothes. 
   
  “This was our only chance,” Doc 
  threw out, as they gained the room. 
   
  Long Tom’s eyes were seared shut 
  with smoke. “Doc, where are you?” 
   
  “This way!” 
   
  They followed his voice, crowding 
  into the shaft out of which Doc had smashed 
  his way a few minutes before to rescue them. 
  Splintering wood showered down on their 
  heads. 
   
  “The 
  building’s 
  falling!” 
  Renny 
  roared. 
   
   
   
   
  BUT it was only part of the building—
  the overhead partition which had been built in 
  to seal off the shaftway. Doc had torn it out. 
   
  Doc said, “Follow me up. There’s no 
  ladder above. We will have to brace 
  ourselves, feet and shoulders in the shaft, 
  and shove with our hands. It is only two 
  floors to the roof.” 
   
  “Is the shaft open at the roof?” Long 
  Tom gasped. 
   
  “If it is not, we will have to open it,” 
  Doc replied. 
   
  “What good’s it gonna do to get on 
  the roof?” Renny questioned, hoarsely. 
   
  “Save your breath,” Doc advised. 
  “Climb.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  37 
   
  The shaft was not open at the roof. 
  While the fire roared and crackled behind 
  them, and smoke packed about them like 
  black mortar, Doc struck and heaved against 
  the roof surface which capped the shaftway. 
   
  The bronze man’s metallic muscles 
  were more enduring than the planks which 
  opposed them. His prodigious hands tore out 
  a hole big enough for his body to follow. 
   
  From the roof, a throbbing drone 
  reached his ears. It was Boris Ramadanoff’s 
  gyro plane. It had taken Ramadanoff a few 
  minutes to clear the airplane of its silk-cloth 
  covering. But now the machine, its “windmill” 
  revolving, was wrenched along by the navy-
  type catapult for a take-off. 
   
  The gyro pitched dangerously to one 
  side, as it cleared the catapult. The side pitch 
  gave Boris Ramadanoff a nasty moment, as 
  the roof tops below tilted dizzily. But the 
  whirling “windmill” blades steadied the plane, 
  and Ramadanoff snatched an easy breath. 
   
  He was totally unaware of the reason 
  for that unexpected side pitch. 
   
  Many curious persons, crowding the 
  street to watch the fire, could have told him 
  the cause. Gasps left many throats as 
  watchers saw something they could hardly 
  believe. They saw the gyro float up from the 
  roof, glinting red in the lurid, reflected light of 
  flames. That alone was exciting enough. An 
  escape by airplane from a burning building! 
   
  The gasps which sprang from a 
  multitude 
  of 
  lips, 
  however, 
  was 
  not 
  occasioned alone by the rising gyro. What 
  brought the sound from throats was the 
  figure of a man clinging to the tail skid of the 
  gyro, causing the “windmill” plane to pitch 
  alarmingly and the man’s dangling body to 
  swing from side to side. 
   
  The spectacle was visible for only an 
  unreal instant. Then the lifting gyro and the 
  man 
  dangling 
  in 
  thin 
  air 
  from 
  the 
  understructure were blotted out by smoke. 
   
  If the awed watchers could have 
  seen what followed they would have received 
  an even greater thrill. Climbing with an agility 
  made possible only by tremendous muscles, 
  Doc worked astride the fuselage and toward 
  the open cockpit of the gyro. 
   
  Boris Ramadanoff uttered a hoarse 
  yell when, warned by the behavior of the 
  plane, he turned and saw the bronze man 
  come into view. The presence of Doc on the 
  plane after an iron door had slammed in his 
  face, locking him in a burning building, 
  smacked momentarily of the supernatural—
  at least, to Ramadanoff. The bearded man, 
  as though bitten by demons, reared up and 
  plunged overboard from the opposite side of 
  the cockpit. 
   
  His body dropped. He wore a 
  parachute 
  and 
  this 
  promptly 
  bloomed, 
  snubbing his fall. 
   
  Doc reached the cockpit and took the 
  controls. Back to the burning building, he 
  headed. The crowd in the streets got another 
  thrill. They saw the gyro float in through 
  smoke, blood-red in the reflections of the 
  flame, and like a gigantic humming bird, 
  settle out of sight on the roof top. 
   
  The excitement the street watchers 
  experienced was not a fraction of the one 
  Long Tom and Renny felt, there on the 
  blistering roof. 
   
  The crowd yelled itself hoarse when 
  the gyro arose again. Most of them thought 
  they were witnessing a sensational fire-
  department rescue, although a few noisily 
  expressed the opinion that the whole thing 
  was a publicity stunt of some kind. 
   
   
  Chapter X 
  EQUATORIAL FLIGHT 
   
   
  WHEN Boris Ramadanoff bailed out 
  of the gyro, his parachute lowered him into a 
  narrow strip of parkway between Riverside 
  Drive and the Hudson River. There was but 
  one person to witness his landing, that 
  individual being a bench derelict, sodden with 
  alcohol. 
  He 
  merely 
  stared, 
  wild-eyed, 
  believing the spectacle of the man crashing 
  into the underbrush with something like a bed 
  sheet fluttering over his head to be a 
  variation of the old “pink elephant” theme. 
   
  Boris Ramadanoff, therefore, was 
  enabled to land virtually unseen. Skinning out 
  of his ‘chute harness and scrambling through 
  the park shrubbery, he scurried up the long 
  flight of stone steps to the street level and 
  caught a taxi on the Drive. On Tenth Avenue, 
  directly west of the Times Square district, he 
  directed the driver to the curb. 
   
  “Wait for me,” he called, and leaped 
  out and ducked into a grimy doorway. 
   
  He was back soon, clutching a stiff 
  object wrapped inside a trailing blanket. 
   
  “West Street!” he barked. 
  
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  38 
   
  Riding toward the river, Ramadanoff 
  took the ends of the blanket and wrapped 
  them more snugly about the object which he 
  carried. 
   
  West Street skirts the Hudson River 
  and is lined with docks. When Ramadanoff 
  let his taxi go, he walked a block down the 
  dimly lit river-front street till he came to a 
  large, roofed-over pier. 
   
  The huge, brick building, was smoke-
  stained, old-looking. There was nothing to 
  distinguish it in appearance from any of a 
  thousand 
  other 
  piers 
  in 
  New 
  York, 
  accommodating the world’s shipping. 
   
  A sign over the corrugated metal 
  door read: 
   
  HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY 
   
   
  As Ramadanoff very well knew, there 
  was something unusual about this pier. It 
  was not, practically speaking, a pier at all. It 
  was Doc Savage’s water-front hangar. It 
  housed an assortment of heavier-than-air 
  craft as remarkable as the ultra-modern land 
  vehicles garaged in the basement of Doc’s 
  skyscraper headquarters. 
   
  Ramadanoff made no attempt to 
  force an entrance into the sprawling bulk of 
  the hangar. He had scouted the locale 
  before. He knew that the hangar, protected 
  by photo-electric eyes and magnetic fields, 
  was as impossible of entrance as a bank 
  vault would have been. 
   
  What he did was ridiculously simple. 
  On each side of the driveway door was head-
  high, rather scrawny, shrubbery. Ramadanoff 
  moved along the dim street until his dark 
  figure merged with the shadows of the 
  shrubbery. 
   
  Any 
  one 
  watching 
  could 
  have 
  observed that his figure did not show again 
  on the other side of the shrubbery. But there 
  was no one watching. The little man 
  squirmed into the very center of the 
  concealing branches and crouched down. He 
  pulled the blanket wrapping from his parcel, 
  exposing a submachine gun of non-glinting 
  blue-metal finish. 
   
   
   
  WHEN 
  Ramadanoff, 
  weaponless, 
  had ducked out of the taxi into the Tenth 
  Avenue doorway, it was to make a lightning 
  quick call on one of Jans Bergman’s men 
  who had a room at the address. Bergman’s 
  demise was not yet known to his men, so it 
  had been no trouble for Ramadanoff to 
  arrange for the use of the machine gun. 
   
  Doc Savage, Ramadanoff knew, 
  would waste no time in arriving at the hangar 
  to take off for the Galapagos. Of course, Doc 
  would go by plane. 
   
  But the bronze man, Ramadanoff 
  was determined, would never even enter that 
  hangar. He would drop before a withering 
  blast of ambush lead. 
   
  After a while, a sedan rolled down 
  the street and nosed silently in the Hidalgo 
  Trading Company’s driveway. 
   
  Ramadanoff’s pulse quickened, then 
  slowed. He had expected Doc to stop the car 
  and get out and open the hangar door. But 
  the car ran on without slackening of speed, 
  pointing head-on for the closed roll-down 
  door. At the instant Ramadanoff expected a 
  collision, the door rolled silently upward, 
  actuated by a short-wave radio beam 
  transmitted from within the car to a detector-
  relay device connected to an electric door-
  opening mechanism. 
   
  Doc’s car disappeared within the 
  hangar and the door closed down. 
   
  Ramadanoff’s face was purpled from 
  his rage at missing the last chance he would 
  have to prevent Doc from flying to the island. 
  He had a ferocious impulse to empty the 
  machine-gun drum against the corrugated 
  metal door in sheer insane frustration. 
   
  A moment later, he was glad that he 
  had not wasted those bullets. Amazingly, the 
  door opened again. 
   
  Ramadanoff could hear a scuffling of 
  shoe leather against dusty concrete. Then a 
  huge bronze figure became visible in the 
  door. 
   
  The drowsy quiet of early evening 
  was smashed by thunderous, macabre rattle 
  as Ramadanoff held the trigger and swung 
  his stream of leaden death back and forth. 
  Mindful of bullet-proof garments, he aimed 
  high, for the face. A great many bullets 
  sprayed harmlessly against the corrugated 
  metal surface of the hangar front. 
   
  But fully a score were direct face hits 
  on the bronze man’s figure in the doorway. 
   
  There might have been more hits; 
  but suddenly the machine gun silenced. A 
  crashing weight had descended into the 
  shrubbery, apparently from the clouds, 
  grinding the underbrush, the assassin, and 
  the 
  machine 
  gun 
  into 
  the 
  ground. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  39 
  Ramadanoff’s finger was broken before he 
  could clear it from the trigger. But the finger 
  was the least of his troubles. He felt himself 
  lifted and slammed. He knew what had him. 
  Doc Savage! 
   
  Doc had leaped from a hidden door 
  high in the warehouse side, directly on top of 
  Ramadanoff. 
  Doc 
  dragged 
  Ramadanoff 
  inside the hangar door and said to Long 
  Tom, “Haul Robbie in and get the door shut.” 
   
  Long Tom chuckled. “Robbie will be 
  needin’ a new paint job on his face, Doc.” 
   
  “Yeah,” Renny boomed. “And a set 
  of new teeth.” 
   
  Ramadanoff stared, bleary-eyed, as 
  Long Tom and Renny pushed the huge 
  bronze figure, which had appeared in the 
  doorway and taken the bullets, inside, and 
  closed the hangar door. 
   
  “A dummy!” he ejaculated. 
   
  “Sure,” 
  Long 
  Tom 
  said. 
  “A 
  mechanical likeness of Doc. Robbie, the 
  Robot.” 
   
  “And can Robbie take it!” Renny 
  rumbled. 
   
  “Had his face shot off him four times, 
  so far,” Long Tom added. 
   
  Ramadanoff was muttering profanely 
  to himself. 
   
  “Don’t you get it, Whiskers?” Long 
  Tom demanded. 
   
  Ramadanoff scowled. 
   
  Renny explained sardonically: “Doc 
  likes to coöperate, so he provided the 
  shrubbery outside for guys that want to pot 
  him from cover. Doc ordered the bushes big, 
  so as to give plenty of room for a man with a 
  gun to hide inside.” 
   
  Long Tom continued, “And the 
  bushes are wired so that any one crowding 
  inside of ‘em will cause a signal to flash.” 
   
  Doc was already penetrating deep 
  within the hangar. 
   
  “Come on,” he called back. 
   
  Dragging their prisoner, Renny and 
  Long Tom hurried after Doc Savage. 
   
  The bronze man was swinging inside 
  the cabin of his large speed ship, a three-
  motor job with streamlined alloy hull. The 
  wings tapered into the fuselage for minimum 
  wind resistance. It was a combination land-
  and-sea plane and had a speed of nearly 
  three hundred miles an hour. 
   
  “We taking this one, Doc?” Long 
  Tom queried, hand waving out to indicate the 
  plane before them. 
   
  “Right,” the bronze man said. 
   
  Renny and Long Tom shoved their 
  prisoner inside and piled in after him. 
   
   
   
  WITH the three supercharged motors 
  delivering their full quota of power, the big 
  speed plane hurled south through the Atlantic 
  seaboard darkness. 
   
  They caught the slumberous twinkle 
  of early morning lights in Cuba and roared 
  on, doing better than three hundred miles an 
  hour as they climbed high and rode the 
  stratospheric air currents to the Canal Zone. 
   
  At Colon, they got a surprise. 
   
  They set down for refueling. A dark-
  skinned man in a white linen suit popped out 
  of the directional radio station operated by 
  the department of commerce and ran across 
  the field toward Doc’s plane. The man was 
  waving a radiogram. 
   
  “For Doc Savage,” he called. 
   
  The 
  dark-skinned 
  man 
  leaned 
  against the low-slung cabin with a hand 
  resting on the ledge of an opened porthole, 
  and his black eyes were centered in rapt 
  admiration on Doc as the bronze giant 
  opened 
  the 
  envelope 
  and 
  read 
  the 
  radiogram. 
   
   
  HAVE 
  DISCOVERED 
  BORIS 
  RAMADANOFF IS WORKING WITH HIS 
  BROTHER COUNT RAMADANOFF STOP 
  DISREGARD OUR OTHER RADIOGRAM 
  STOP ALIVE BUT MAY NOT BE FOR LONG 
  STOP BETTER DO THINGS 
  MONK 
   
   
  Doc handed the radiogram to his 
  aids. 
   
  “Huh!” Renny snorted. “We got 
  Boris’s number before they did, I guess.” 
   
  “They’re still alive,” Long Tom said, 
  tensely. 
   
  “Yeah, and we’ll be there in a few 
  hours,” Renny thumped. 
   
  “Watch the plane,” Doc instructed 
  Renny. “Do not let Ramadanoff out, or let 
  anybody else come near.” 
   
  Doc, with Long Tom, the electrical 
  wizard, accompanied the dark-skinned man 
  back to the broadcasting station to try to get 
  a line on what was the matter with the radio 
  beam. 
   
  “A ship carrying one of my aids, 
  while following your beam, was recently 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  40 
  thrown off its course and wrecked,” Doc 
  advised. 
   
  “The trouble must have been with the 
  receiving apparatus,” the dark-skinned man 
  said. 
   
  “Impossible!” interposed Long Tom, 
  who had made the boat’s radio installation 
  and knew it was as perfect as was possible. 
   
  “Then examine my layout,” the radio 
  station attendant invited. 
   
  Doc and Long Tom made a careful 
  examination, then returned to the plane. 
   
  “What’d you find out over there?” 
  Renny queried. 
   
  Long Tom answered, “Everything 
  was in perfect mechanical shape.” 
   
  Refueled, the plane took off, soared 
  high over the feverish Panama jungle, then 
  left the lush green for the sparkling blue of 
  the Pacific as, engines throbbing, it bored 
  steadily southward toward the Galapagos. 
   
  Long Tom was bending over the 
  audio-frequency amplifier. He jerked his head 
  phones off and held one to Doc’s ear. A dot-
  dash combination in sharp staccato sounded 
  plainly. 
   
  “The A wave is coming in too 
  strongly,” Long Tom said. 
   
  “Are we off the course?” Renny 
  rumbled. 
   
  “We are off the course as transmitted 
  by the beam antenna back at the Canal 
  Zone,” Doc stated. 
   
  “But that’s the right course,” Renny 
  protested. 
   
  “Is it?” Doc asked mildly. 
   
   
   
   
  “IT’S the beam the others were riding 
  when their ship piled on the rocks,” Renny 
  rumbled. “We want to go where they were 
  wrecked, don’t we?” 
   
  “Yes,” Doc said. “But this beam may 
  not be directing us there.” 
   
  “I get it,” Renny muttered. “If there’s 
  nothing the matter with the instruments, the 
  trouble must lie with that dark-skinned baby 
  at the Canal Zone who is transmitting the 
  signals.” 
   
  Doc nodded. “He transmitted the 
  beam so that it put Johnny on the rocks. It 
  may be that now he is laying down a beam 
  which, if we follow it, will land us in the 
  Pacific Ocean with empty gas tanks.” 
   
  Renny snorted, “Thinks he’s sendin’ 
  us on a one-way trip, huh?” 
   
  Long Tom was struck with an idea. 
  “Stop me, if you’ve thought of this one, Doc—
  but how does the course, as broadcast to us 
  by the radio beacon, compare with the 
  latitude and longitude of the island as given 
  you by Boris Ramadanoff?” 
   
  “The two check perfectly,” Doc said. 
   
  “Then Ramadanoff gave us the 
  wrong directions, too?” 
   
  “It is almost certain that he did.” 
   
  “Want me to bring him in, Doc?” 
  Renny asked, eagerly. 
   
  “Yes,” 
  Doc 
  said. 
  “It 
  is 
  time 
  Ramadanoff talked.” 
   
  Renny hurried aft, unlocked a small 
  individual cabin, roused Boris Ramadanoff 
  out and trundled him forward to Doc. The 
  bronze man turned the plane controls over to 
  the sensitive mechanical arms of a robot 
  pilot, and faced Boris Ramadanoff. 
   
  “I want the latitude and longitude of 
  your brother’s island,” Doc announced. 
   
  “I gave it to you—” 
   
  “I want the correct latitude and 
  longitude,” Doc interrupted, severely. 
   
  “The one I gave you is correct,” the 
  little man insisted, stubbornly. 
   
  Doc fixed his gold-flecked eyes on 
  Ramadanoff while he spoke in brittle tones to 
  Renny and Long Tom. 
   
  “Get out the rope, Renny, and loop it 
  over Ramadanoff’s right foot,” the bronze 
  man said. “Long Tom, open the side hatch.” 
   
  Renny 
  looped 
  the 
  rope 
  over 
  Ramadanoff’s foot and pulled it tight. Renny 
  hauled back so exuberantly that he pulled the 
  bearded little man off his feet. Long Tom 
  threw open the side hatch, revealing a patch 
  of blue—the Pacific Ocean—perhaps a mile 
  below. 
   
  “Pull his ‘chute off, Long Tom,” Doc 
  directed. 
   
  Long Tom slipped the pack-’chute 
  from the little man’s shoulders. The packs, 
  contrivances developed by Doc himself, were 
  not bulky, and they could be worn with no 
  more inconvenience than a heavy coat would 
  have occasioned. Doc and his men, when in 
  the air, were usually equipped with the safety 
  devices and, in this case, they had provided 
  one for their prisoner. 
   
  Doc looked at Ramadanoff, and said, 
  “Renny, here, is going to lower you through 
  the hole. He will lower you down hand over 
  hand, slowly, till he comes to the end of the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  41 
  rope. Then, if you have not indicated that you 
  will speak the truth, he will let go the rope.” 
   
  Doc looked toward Renny. “Lower 
  away.” 
   
  Ramadanoff had been lowered half 
  of the rope’s length when the bluff worked. 
  He looked up and squalled like a wild cat. 
   
  “I’ll tell!” he screamed. 
   
  “Hold him there a minute, Renny,” 
  Doc ordered. He looked down at the cringing 
  prisoner. “The location?” 
   
  Ramadanoff screamed latitude and 
  longitude down to minutes and seconds. He 
  had it on the tip of his tongue. 
   
   
   
  “WE will let him cool off now,” Doc 
  decided. “Renny, take charge of him.” 
   
  “Will I, Doc!” Renny boomed. 
   
  Ramadanoff was so giddy from being 
  dangled on the rope that he could not stand 
  when he was first drawn back within the 
  plane. Long Tom fitted the pack-’chute back 
  on the man’s shoulders, and Renny dragged 
  him ungently aft and locked him in the 
  fuselage compartment again. 
   
  The plane ran into a fog bank as it 
  droned southwest. Doc climbed the plane 
  and came out on top, in dazzling sunshine. 
  Occasional rifts in the fog showed him the 
  blue Pacific below. 
   
  Eventually, a rent showed something 
  else besides water. 
   
  “Land below,” Renny announced. “A 
  small island.” 
   
  “Cocos Island,” Doc said. “We take 
  our final bearings from here. The next land 
  we sight will be the Galapagos.” 
   
  “That won’t be long, at the rate we’re 
  traveling,” Long Tom said. 
   
  It was only a brief glimpse they got of 
  Cocos Island, then the fog closed in again 
  like swaddling cotton, seeming to wedge the 
  hurtling plane against the sky. 
   
  “Bring out the prisoner, Renny,” Doc 
  suggested, some time later. “We will try 
  again to find out something more about this 
  mysterious Devil’s Honeycomb.” 
   
  Renny grinned, and went aft to 
  unlock the compartment door. 
   
  “We’ll make him talk,” Long Tom 
  affirmed, grimly. 
   
  But 
  they 
  did 
  not 
  make 
  Boris 
  Ramadanoff talk. 
   
  Renny 
  threw 
  open 
  the 
  prison 
  compartment door and stared, jaw sagging, 
  his generously proportioned mouth yawning 
  wide like a tunnel opening. 
   
  “What’s the matter?” Long Tom 
  called, sharply. 
   
  “Matter!” Renny howled, dazedly. He 
  turned, dived forward. 
   
  “He busted a hole in the floor!” 
  Renny squalled. “He’s jumped out!” 
   
   
   
  “HOW could he break out?” Long 
  Tom demanded. “Nobody can break through 
  the alloy skin of this plane. It’s even 
  bulletproof.” 
   
  “How did he do it, Renny?” Doc 
  asked, quietly. 
   
  “That was the compartment where 
  we had the floor ripped up the other day, 
  Doc,” Renny muttered. “It wasn’t welded; just 
  small bolts set in temporarily.” 
   
  Doc looked at the chart. “It is too late 
  to do anything about it now. Doubtless, 
  Ramadanoff bailed out over Cocos Island. It 
  is entirely too large an island for us to waste 
  time trying to locate him.” 
   
  The great tri-motored speed ship 
  scudded on, riding above the fog bank like a 
  gigantic water bug skimming the surface of 
  quiet depths. 
   
  “How’re we gonna locate anything in 
  this fog?” Renny wanted to know, later. 
   
  “We can 
  get 
  our 
  latitude 
  and 
  longitude above, then go down and land on 
  the water to wait till the fog lifts,” Doc 
  explained. “That, of course, may not be 
  necessary.” 
   
  That logical plan, it developed later, 
  was never to be put into execution. At the 
  present latitude and longitude, given by Boris 
  Ramadanoff under pressure, the fog became 
  strangely reddish in color over a considerable 
  area. This crimson glow was uneasy, 
  flickering, brightening and dulling as though 
  the leaping fires of hell itself strove to break 
  through. 
   
  Doc banked the speed plane in a 
  wide spiral around the scarlet-stained sector. 
   
  “What caused that?” Renny rumbled, 
  awe making his voice somehow queer. 
   
  “Volcano,” Doc decided. “Active.” 
   
  “Let’s 
  ease 
  down,” 
  Long 
  Tom 
  suggested. 
   
  They did go down, but not easily. 
   
  An 
  ear-splitting 
  crash 
  sent 
  a 
  convulsion through the plane, then tilted it in 
  a mad dip. Accompanying the detonation, 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  42 
  flame sheeted out, enveloping them. They 
  were stunned, temporarily blinded. 
   
  “Whole back end blown off!” Renny 
  bawled.  
   
  “Lost half the fuselage!” Long Tom 
  shouted.  
   
  The plane was plummeting, weaving 
  dizzily, shuddering and bouncing in the air as 
  against something solid. 
   
  “Jump!” Doc ordered. “Spill air to 
  guide your ‘chutes away from the red portion 
  of the fog!” 
   
   
   
  Chapter XI 
  SHREDDED DEATH 
   
   
  THE plane had been very high when 
  the explosion occurred. Their parachutes 
  were larger than the average, so they went 
  down slowly; and because they pulled at 
  shrouds on one side, they skidded through 
  the sky. They left the domain of lurid red light 
  behind. 
   
  In fact, lost from everything but each 
  other in the fog, they overdid the skidding a 
  little. They came down in water. 
   
  Close over the sea, the fog was thin. 
  Doc and Renny, releasing themselves from 
  the parachute harnesses a few feet above 
  the water, plunged into the seething gray 
  expanse within easy hailing distance of each 
  other. Long Tom plummeted down farther to 
  the left; where the plane hit, they could not 
  tell, although it was probably nearer shore 
  and off to the left. 
   
  Treading water and trying to orient 
  himself in the smother of waves, Renny 
  bawled, “What caused that explosion, Doc?” 
   
  “A bomb, obviously,” the bronze man 
  shouted back. 
   
  “But 
  we 
  searched 
  Ramadanoff 
  before we brought him aboard,” Renny 
  pointed out. 
   
  “Ramadanoff did not do it,” Doc 
  returned. “It must have been done at the 
  Canal Zone landing field—” 
   
  “The 
  dark-skinned 
  guy!” 
  Renny 
  roared. “The one who brought the radiogram 
  out—and stood by while we read it!” 
   
  “Right,” Doc agreed. “The fellow 
  evidently had his orders in advance.” 
   
  Renny took water, coughed it up and 
  sputtered, “But what made the thing go off 
  right when we were over the island?” 
   
  “Probably a radio control detonator, 
  actuated by a transmitter below,” Doc 
  Savage hazarded. “The mechanism would 
  have been fairly simple for a good radio 
  technician to construct.” 
   
  The bronze man was treading water. 
  The water all about them seemed to be 
  swirling, like a furiously running stream. 
  There was a pronounced undercurrent that at 
  times nearly took them under. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny thumped. “Some 
  swimming pool!” 
   
  “A tide rip,” Doc Savage offered. “It 
  seems to be carrying us offshore.” 
   
  Unexpectedly, 
  a 
  streak 
  of 
  phosphorescence angled in toward the 
  bronze man. The streak was preceded by a 
  water-slashing fin. 
   
  “Sharks!” Long Tom yelled from near 
  by. 
   
  But Doc had already seen the racing 
  black fin. 
   
  “Make for the reef!” the bronze man 
  shouted to Long Tom. 
   
  The black fin, swerving close to Doc, 
  went under in a boil of bubbles and 
  phosphorescence. Doc went under, too. Half 
  a minute later, Long Tom uttered a hoarse 
  cry and kicked out with his feet. He thought 
  he was being attacked by the shark; but it 
  was only Doc, who had swum under water 
  and come up alongside him. 
   
  With Doc’s assistance, Long Tom 
  gained rapidly in his fight against the current. 
  Nearing the coral reef and temporary safety, 
  a shark slashed in at them. 
   
  “Try to make it alone,” Doc jerked, 
  and disappeared under water again, almost 
  under the chisel nose of the attacking shark. 
  The shark dove with the bronze man, rolling. 
   
  Long Tom made it to the jagged reef, 
  and a moment later Doc stroked up and 
  muscled out of the water alongside him. 
   
   
   
  LONG TOM coughed water. “Playing 
  tag 
  with 
  that 
  man-eater—drawing 
  him 
  away—you saved my life, Doc 
   
  “Listen,” Doc cautioned. 
   
  The put-put of a motor launch 
  sounded strongly. 
   
  “What’ll we do?” Long Tom gulped. 
   
  “Could 
  you 
  make 
  it 
  ashore, 
  swimming?” 
   
  “Afraid not,” Long Tom puffed. “I was 
  almost gone when you reached me.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  43 
   
  “Renny might not make it either,” 
  Doc said, thoughtfully. 
   
  The motor launch nosed around a 
  wave-laced reef into close view. Men in the 
  bucking launch waved. Doc answered their 
  signals. 
   
  Long 
  Tom 
  growled 
  tragically, 
  “Wrecked just when we could begin to do 
  some good! Our superfirers, all our weapons, 
  at the bottom of the ocean! And now we’ll be 
  taken prisoners the same as Johnny, Pat, 
  Monk, Ham and the rest of ‘em.”  
   
  A bellow of distress reached them 
  faintly through the whipping wind. 
   
  “It’s Renny!” Long Tom gasped. 
  “Sharks!” 
   
  Doc took the water in a shallow dive 
  which bounced him to the surface and sent 
  him streaking through the short, steep waves 
  toward Renny’s voice. 
   
  The motor launch came on, picked 
  up Long Tom and bore down upon Doc and 
  Renny. A boat hook snagged Renny’s collar 
  and drew him alongside. Hands reached 
  down and helped him aboard. 
   
  “Sharks!” some one exploded. “Right 
  alongside!” 
   
  A boat hook probed at Doc. The 
  shark reached the bronze man. Doc and the 
  shark disappeared in a welter of churning 
  water. Bubbles streamed up and broke 
  whitely on the dark surface. 
   
  But only at first did they break 
  whitely. Very soon, they were breaking red. 
  The red stain spread over the water, a gory 
  blanket around the pitching launch. 
   
  Renny and Long Tom stared at the 
  water in dawning horror. The half dozen men 
  who had come out in the launch crowded the 
  rails, chattering in queer languages as they 
  scanned the surface looking for visual 
  evidence 
  of 
  the 
  tragedy 
  indicated 
  as 
  occurring below. 
   
  Blood in the water brought more 
  sharks closing in. The launch threaded back 
  and forth until the red stain was diffused; but 
  Doc did not again appear. 
   
  The helmsman swung the launch 
  around and started bucking the currents 
  toward the shore. 
   
  All the crew were dressed in the 
  same fashion—simple loin cloths, and collars 
  of lizard hide. The launch docked at a pier 
  running 
  out 
  from 
  the 
  palace 
  of 
  the 
  Ramadanoffs. 
   
   
   
   
  INSIDE the palace, in the huge 
  room—that high-vaulted cavern fashioned 
  from wooden beams and black volcanic 
  rocks—Long 
  Tom 
  and 
  Renny 
  were 
  welcomed by the Count Ramadanoff in the 
  same suavely polite manner in which he had 
  greeted Monk, Ham and Pat. 
   
  The heatless blue flames leaped as 
  before within the mammoth fireplace, causing 
  shadows to dart and vanish throughout the 
  luxuriantly 
  furnished 
  hall. 
  From 
  high 
  overhead, the crystal-spangled candelabra, 
  hanging from its massive chain and burning 
  fully two hundred candles, shed a yellow light 
  which penetrated weirdly to the middle stair 
  landing hung with the long curtains of somber 
  ruby velvet. 
   
  Long Tom and Renny, grief-torn as 
  they were by Doc’s disappearance after the 
  attack by the shark, could not help but feel 
  the menace which stalked through the dank 
  air of the place. 
   
  The Count Ramadanoff, himself, 
  appeared as some one not quite real. He 
  was a towering giant, almost as large as 
  Doc—this much they realized. With his Czar-
  of-Russia beard, his courtly bearing, he 
  appeared to be a replica of his brother, 
  Boris—a replica fully twice as large. 
   
  The count bowed, said precisely: “My 
  guests have a predilection for arriving here in 
  wet clothes. I will have a change of dry 
  garments laid out for you.” 
   
  The count’s thin lips writhed back to 
  emit a sharp cobra-like hissing. A wizened 
  slave padded forward on bare feet in answer 
  to the summons. 
   
  While the count issued orders for the 
  preparation of a chamber for his guests, 
  Long Tom murmured an aside to Renny: 
  “You see what I do?” 
   
  Renny grunted. “The slave! He’s a 
  member of Johnny’s expedition—or was, 
  wasn’t he?” 
   
  Long Tom nodded. “We’ve got to put 
  on an act, until we get the lay of things here. 
  It’s all queer.” 
   
  “And we can’t let this whiskered devil 
  know we think Doc is dead,” Renny 
  whispered. 
   
  The count looked sharply at Renny. 
   
  “So,” he murmured, “the bronze man 
  is dead!” 
   
  Renny stared belligerently, aware 
  that the count must have read his lips. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  44 
   
  Long Tom smoothed things over. 
  While Renny’s big fists started swinging 
  nervously at his sides, Long Tom said, 
  “There seems to be a mistake. It’s the shark 
  that’s dead.” 
   
  The count’s eyes glittered. “I hope 
  you are right. I am eager to meet personally 
  this Doc Savage.” 
   
  “What we want to know,” Renny put 
  in bluntly, “is where are Ham, Monk, Johnny 
  and Pat?” 
   
  The count answered precisely: “You 
  have reference, doubtless, to Brigadier 
  General Theodore Marley Brooks, Lieutenant 
  Colonel Andrew—” 
   
  “Yeah,” Renny interrupted, “they’re 
  the ones! Where are they?” 
   
  The count shrugged. “How should I 
  know? This is an extremely remote island in 
  the Galapagos, not an information booth.” 
   
  Renny’s glance roved fiercely around 
  the great hall and fastened for an instant 
  upon the grand piano draped with rich sea-
  otter furs. 
   
  The count’s cruel eyes flashed. “I 
  assure you, my dear Renwick, the persons 
  you mentioned are not concealed in my 
  piano.” 
   
  The slave in his loin cloth and lizard-
  hide collar, padded down the broad stone 
  steps and prostrated himself before his 
  master. But his eyes, for a flashing instant, 
  had caught Long Tom’s with a significant 
  glance. 
   
  “You may follow the slave,” the count 
  announced. “When you have changed to dry 
  clothing, I will receive you down here.” 
   
  As Long Tom and Renny mounted 
  the sweeping spiral of the stairs and passed 
  beyond the ruby-colored drape held back by 
  the 
  slave, 
  Count 
  Ramadanoff’s 
  voice 
  followed them with suave menace. 
   
  “One thing, remember,” Ramadanoff 
  intoned: 
  “The 
  shadow 
  of 
  the 
  Devil’s 
  Honeycomb 
  lies 
  everywhere 
  upon 
  this 
  island.” 
   
   
   
  INSIDE the chamber assigned them, 
  the slave bent to take off Long Tom’s wet 
  shoes. Renny reached down and poked a 
  huge thumb and finger under the man’s chin 
  and tilted his head up. 
   
  “Don’t you know us?” he asked. 
   
  The man squirmed, looking at Renny 
  out of fear-haunted eyes. 
   
  “Not I,” he whispered. “I don’t know 
  you.” 
   
  “Downstairs, you did,” Long Tom 
  suggested.  
   
  “That was before he reminded me.” 
   
  “Reminded you of what?” 
   
  The man’s voice rasped hoarsely. 
  “That the Devil’s Honeycomb is a menace 
  everywhere on the island!” 
   
  “Where’s the rest of your party?” 
  Renny demanded.  
   
  “I don’t know anything!” the man 
  mumbled. 
   
  “You mean you won’t talk.” 
   
  The man’s lips whitened. “Anybody 
  who tells anything on this island dies!” 
   
  Renny grunted with disgust at the 
  display of fear. 
   
  “It ought to be safe to talk here,” 
  Long Tom urged. 
   
  “It’s safe nowhere,” muttered the 
  other. “You talk and you die.” 
   
  “How do you know?” the electrical 
  wizard insisted. 
   
  “Mister, I’ve been standin’ close 
  when it happened,” the slave mumbled. “A 
  little hole comes in your temple, about the 
  size you could jab your thumb into.” 
   
  “Baloney,” Renny summed it up. 
   
  Suddenly flooding the room, a weird, 
  strumming music vibrated. Fantastic melody! 
  It struck the ear with pulsations that seemed 
  to raise goose flesh over the entire body and 
  cause the hair to tug at its roots. 
   
  “What’s that?” Renny demanded, 
  glaring about, swinging his big fists. 
   
  The man who had become a slave 
  was staring with panic bulged eyes. He 
  choked out words, “The count playin’ at the 
  piano!” 
   
  “So what?” Renny boomed. 
   
  “So somebody dies!” 
   
  “Nuts!” Renny rumbled. 
   
  The man rasped stubbornly, “Every 
  time I’ve heard him play like that, somebody 
  has died right after! Why, your own men, and 
  the girl—” He choked off his words with 
  spasmodic effort. 
   
  Both Long Tom and Renny seized 
  him and shook him simultaneously. 
   
  “What about our men and the girl?” 
  Renny’s great voice was thunder. 
   
  In the grand hall below, the music 
  had stopped, though faint mocking echoes 
  hung about like an exotic perfume. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  45 
   
  “All right!” the man gasped. “I’ll tell 
  you! I might die for it; but if I don’t tell you I’ll 
  die anyway. But first, is it true that Doc 
  Savage is dead?” 
   
  “A shark took Doc,” Renny said, 
  bleakly. “He didn’t come up.” 
   
  The man wilted. “Then it’s no use! 
  Without Savage we can’t—” 
   
  “Talk!” Long Tom jabbed. “What 
  were you going to tell us?” 
   
  The man opened his mouth to speak. 
  But it was not his voice which Long Tom and 
  Renny heard. There was a flesh-crawling 
  sound—a bony crunch, and the man who 
  would have talked plunged forward, his head 
  striking solidly on the floor, his body flopping 
  over and lying inert. 
   
   
   
  RENNY and Long Tom stared wildly. 
  There had been no visible movement within 
  the room—just that crunch, then the man 
  falling limply. 
   
  Renny, fists swinging, went tearing 
  around the room, pulling aside curtains, 
  banging closet doors, looking under the 
  beds. 
   
  He found nothing. 
   
  With Long Tom, he examined the 
  limp body. The man was dead from a wound 
  in his temple, a hole a bird’s egg might have 
  dropped into—or a man’s thumb. 
   
  All 
  at 
  once, 
  welling 
  with 
  chill 
  mockery, music from the count’s piano 
  flowed through the room again. 
   
  Renny jerked upright, swerved for 
  the door. 
   
  “Come on!” he barked at Long Tom. 
   
  “Come on where?” 
   
  “To punch the count’s face out from 
  between his pointed ears!” Renny roared. 
  “We’ll settle all this mystery now!” 
   
  “It’s a good idea,” Long Tom agreed, 
  and plunged out after Renny. 
   
  Past the hanging ruby drapes on the 
  middle landing and down the wide stone 
  steps, three at a time, they rushed. The count 
  rose from his piano to confront them with 
  suave dignity. 
   
  “Why do you hurry, gentlemen?” he 
  questioned, dark eyebrows arched. 
   
  Momentarily disarmed by the count’s 
  quiet manner, they slowed their precipitous 
  descent, came forward slowly. 
   
  “But you have still your wet clothes 
  on, gentlemen!” the count chided. 
   
  “When we get through, you won’t 
  worry about clothes!” Renny threatened. 
   
  “Who killed the man in our room?” 
  Long Tom demanded. 
   
  The 
  count 
  smiled 
  thinly. 
  “Your 
  bellicose manner becomes understandable. 
  A man has been killed, you say?” 
   
  “In our room!” Long Tom grated. 
   
  The big bearded man queried, 
  “There is, perhaps, a hole in his temple?” 
   
  “If you know that, you did it!” Renny 
  howled, starting his forward rush. 
   
  The count, unperturbed, lifted a 
  hand. “One moment, my dear Renwick. It is 
  only natural that I should know about the 
  thumb-hole death. Such deaths occur with 
  great frequency on this island.” 
   
  While he talked, the count’s white, 
  tapering fingers toyed with a small object—a 
  slim thing of flashing gold. 
   
  Long Tom moved forward to look at 
  the gold thing.  
   
  “Pat Savage’s lipstick!” he clipped, 
  horrified. 
   
   
   
  LONG TOM’S hand reached out. 
  “Let me see that.” 
   
  “With pleasure.” The count handed 
  over the lipstick.  
   
  “It is Pat’s!” Long Tom muttered, 
  examining it. He glared at the count. 
  “Where’d you get it? You said you hadn’t 
  seen Pat. Where is she? Snappy, brother, 
  before we give you what is known as the 
  works!” 
   
  “Ridiculous!” the count asserted. “In 
  your United States, lipsticks are mass-
  production articles. There must be upward of 
  half a million of this identical design.” 
   
  “There aren’t half a million of these!” 
  Renny’s voice sounded in a bawl of hoarse 
  triumph, as he rushed to a corner and seized 
  a slim black malacca cane, held it up. 
   
  “Ham’s sword cane!” Long Tom 
  echoed. 
   
  Renny faced Count Ramadanoff. 
  “Here’s Ham’s cane! I want to know where 
  Ham is.” 
   
  “You are making yourself utterly 
  ridiculous,” the count asserted. 
   
  “Brother, you asked for it!” Renny 
  roared, and rushed the count, striking out 
  with his great fists. 
   
  The count made no attempt to 
  dodge. He stood and took it—and in return 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  46 
  laid his fist against Renny’s jaw in a blow 
  which rocked the big engineer back on his 
  heels. 
   
  Renny blinked dazedly. He had 
  never met opposition like this in his life. He 
  could almost believe that it was Doc 
  Savage’s powerful muscles that had just put 
  those staggering blows across. 
   
  Long Tom was helpless to aid, 
  because, at a nod from the count, a slave—a 
  squat Mongol—had appeared from behind a 
  wall drape and nudged Long Tom’s ribs with 
  the flare-lipped muzzle of a diabolical poison 
  dart gun. 
   
  Renny 
  tried 
  everything—science, 
  brute force, but he might as well have been 
  fighting a shadow, for all the impression he 
  made. 
   
  Finally, the count grew weary of the 
  sport. Eyes glinting, thin lips drawn back to a 
  thin line, he put over a haymaker. Then he 
  stood over Renny, callously kicking him back 
  to consciousness. 
   
  “I will always regret that I did not 
  meet your Doc Savage,” the count said 
  gloatingly, and sighed. “It appears that I must 
  live all my life without meeting a foe worthy of 
  my efforts.” 
   
  He hissed again and the slaves 
  bound and dragged the two prisoners out of 
  the main hall and part way up the tower 
  steps. Before the same slot in the tower hall 
  which Doc’s other aids had been forced to 
  look through, Renny and Long Tom were 
  halted. 
   
  “Observe your playmates,” the count 
  directed. 
   
   
   
  THEY looked through the slot, and in 
  that courtyard dungeon, hemmed in by 
  starkly rearing palace walls, they saw the 
  same unbelievable monster that Monk, Ham 
  and Pat had witnessed. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny breathed. 
   
  Squatting in the middle of the 
  flagstoned pit, bathed in the red volcanic 
  glare, was a creature that had a ridge of 
  toothlike horns running down his scabrous 
  back and tail.   
   
  Swinging its armored head upward, it 
  snorted two streams of vapor from its 
  nostrils; then it drew in air, and its sides 
  swelled out until, to the horrified glance of 
  Renny and Long Tom, the loathsome thing 
  threatened to expand to such a bulk that it 
  would fill the whole courtyard. 
   
  “What is it?” Long Tom gulped. 
   
  “I don’t know,” Renny said, suddenly 
  hoarse. 
   
  “In 
  observing 
  this 
  Gargantuan 
  monstrosity,” the count’s odious voice broke 
  in, “do not overlook the cells under the 
  balcony—your 
  temporary 
  abode. 
  I 
  say 
  ‘temporary’ because the cell bars are 
  movable, actuated electrically at my desire—
  my desire being dictated to a large extent by 
  the humor of the creature you are observing.” 
   
  Again 
  the 
  count 
  sounded 
  his 
  ghoulish hiss, and Long Tom and Renny 
  were hustled down the stairs, out onto the 
  circular balcony which ran all the way around 
  the 
  courtyard 
  dungeon 
  and 
  thrust 
  unceremoniously through a trapdoor in the 
  balcony floor. They landed heavily ten feet 
  below on the flagstoned floor of a cell. 
   
  Through the heavy iron bars they 
  could see clearly in the courtyard. The 
  monster had retreated out of sight into its 
  den. 
   
  Opposite them, on the balcony, the 
  count looked down. “The creature has 
  enjoyed itself for the day,” he informed. “He 
  will sleep before he needs diversion and 
  exercise again.” 
   
  Suddenly, Renny and Long Tom 
  reached out and clutched each other, 
  trembling. They had seen the same things 
  almost at the same instant. 
   
  There, almost under their feet, were 
  four shapeless, mauled bodies. The flags of 
  the court were stained a ghastly red that did 
  not come from the reflected volcanic light. 
  Remnants of clothes clung to each torn body. 
  And Long Tom and Renny were recognizing 
  those remnants! 
   
  They 
  were 
  the 
  claw-and-teeth-
  shredded garments of Johnny and Ham and 
  Monk and Pat. 
   
  “And the shark got Doc Savage,” the 
  count remarked, looking down from his 
  balcony. 
   
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  THE HONEYCOMB HORROR 
   
   
  THE 
  Count 
  Ramadanoff 
  was 
  somewhat mistaken. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  47 
   
  The shark did not get Doc. The red 
  smudge which had bloomed on the water 
  was not occasioned by the shark’s flat, 
  pointed teeth tearing at the bronze man, but 
  came from wounds inflicted by Doc’s 
  slashing knife on the shark itself. 
   
  After beating off the shark’s attack, 
  Doc swam under water and came up out of 
  sight of the launch, behind a jutting coral 
  reef. He waited until the boat had churned 
  away through chopping waves, then struck 
  out in the long, hard swim for the island. 
   
  Doc had touched shore on a lava-
  strewn beach, waded through a belt of brown 
  sea weed, and plunged into the obscurity of 
  shoreline 
  vegetation—wind-bent 
  trees 
  bleached white with ocean spray, and 
  dangling, cobra-headed Peruvian cactus. 
   
  Doc drove on through the thorn-
  studded undergrowth and came out on a 
  broad, well-defined game trail. He recognized 
  it as an age-old path used by the Galapagos 
  tortoises as they butted through the jungle 
  between their feeding grounds and watering 
  places. 
   
  It was evening and the volcano was 
  blinking its red light over the island when Doc 
  reached the high plateau, pocked by those 
  mysterious, man-made honeycomb pits. He 
  forged forward, keeping to the jungle fringe 
  until he arrived near the active workings. 
   
  From a cactus covert he watched, 
  gold-flecked eyes weirdly alive, while the 
  overseers strode up and down before the 
  long line of pits and cracked their whips over 
  the backs of the chained slaves digging their 
  way to death from exhaustion in the strange 
  honeycomb pattern of circular holes. 
   
  The bronze man watched for a 
  chance to maneuver closer and examine the 
  pits. But, since the disturbance created by his 
  aids on the day they had been wrecked on 
  the island, the guards had been doubled. 
  Doc had no opportunity to get close enough 
  to look down. 
   
   
   
  AHEAD of the advancing line of pits, 
  perhaps fifty yards distant on the high 
  plateau floor, loomed a small stockade 
  containing surplus working tools; it was 
  guarded by four men, beefy-shouldered, 
  swarthy fellows, their seminude bodies 
  glistening with a hard burnish whenever the 
  volcano lighted up the sky with its hellish red 
  glare. 
   
  They talked among themselves in 
  brittle Asiatic gibberish. 
   
  One of them clacked suddenly in his 
  native tongue, “That flat rock out there, 
  where did it come from?” 
   
  The volcanic fire died down before 
  his companions could look. 
   
  “I remember no rock out there,” one 
  of them said. 
   
  “Then look the next time the glow 
  comes,” the other suggested. 
   
  Momentarily, 
  the 
  lurid 
  lightning 
  sheeted out again. 
   
  “Look!” 
  the 
  sharp-eyed 
  one 
  exploded. 
   
  “Look where?” the other snapped. 
   
  “I am looking,” a third said. “I see 
  nothing.” 
   
  “Are you trying to fool us?” the fourth 
  remarked. “There is nothing there.” 
   
  “But before, there was a rock!” the 
  first guard growled, stubbornly. “I am sure—” 
   
  In the blanketing darkness, the 
  man’s voice was cut off with a muffled gurgle. 
   
  “What’s 
  wrong 
  with 
  you?” 
  a 
  companion asked, sharply. “Did you swallow 
  a bug—” 
   
  There was another muffled gurgle as 
  this man ceased speaking in the same abrupt 
  manner as the first. 
   
  Together the other two men clacked 
  in alarm: “What is the matter—” 
   
  They never learned what it was. Two 
  gurgles sounded simultaneously; and after 
  that came silence. For, all evidence to the 
  contrary, it might have been the equatorial 
  darkness, pressing malignantly close, which 
  had 
  choked 
  all 
  four 
  watchers 
  into 
  insensibility. 
   
  Volcanic light gleamed again over 
  the honeycomb pattern of pits on the high 
  plain. The light revealed the four guards 
  sitting silently upright, their backs to the 
  stockade—while inside the stockade a giant 
  bronze man moved, selecting a digging 
  instrument, a wedge-pointed pick. 
   
  The light went out, then flared again 
  and revealed a lump that might have been a 
  bronze-hued rock on the plateau, halfway 
  between 
  the 
  stockade 
  and 
  fringing 
  underbrush. But the next time red light 
  rippled out, the stone had vanished—and 
  Doc Savage, under cover of the thorny bush, 
  was creeping toward the line of pits with the 
  wedge-pointed pick in his hand. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  48 
   
  He had silenced the guards by deft 
  pressure exerted on nerve centers at the 
  back of their necks with his cabled fingers. It 
  would be hours, perhaps, before the guards 
  regained consciousness. 
   
   
   
  DOC passed by the front line of pits 
  in which the chained slaves were digging, 
  and watching his chance, crawled over and 
  dropped inside one of the worked-out cells 
  immediately behind the active front row. 
   
  Doc crouched with pick in hand and 
  commenced rapidly digging a hole in the 
  circular walls. The wall separating the cells 
  was thin. In a matter of minutes, Doc had 
  picked a hole large enough to let him look 
  through. 
   
  It had been Doc’s intention to contact 
  one slave after another in this manner, until 
  he came upon one who could furnish 
  information regarding the fate of his aids. As 
  he looked through the fist-sized hole he had 
  dug, his trilling sounded faintly. 
   
  The 
  chained 
  slave 
  heard, 
  and 
  stiffened 
  visibly. 
  This 
  slave 
  was 
  an 
  astounding individual, with a massive hairy 
  torso, neck nearly as thick as his broad head 
  and long, gorilla-like arms extending almost 
  to his knees. There was such strength in that 
  hairy body that the man could bite his shovel 
  into the flint-packed volcanic ash without the 
  necessity of loosening it first with the pick. 
   
  The gory glow of volcanic light 
  illuminated the man’s face briefly, revealing a 
  sprawled nose, a huge gash of mouth and a 
  forehead almost buried in bristling hair. The 
  man was so incredibly homely that be was 
  rather pleasant to look at—like a genial bull-
  dog. 
   
  He kept digging, but his keen little 
  eyes had detected the hole Doc had gouged 
  in the pit wall. He heaved close, the chain 
  rattling against his leg iron. 
   
  His voice was small, childish, jerky 
  with emotion. 
   
  “Blazes, Doc! How’d you get here?” 
   
  “Give me the story, Monk,” Doc 
  whispered, guardedly.  
   
  “We’re all alive—but we wouldn’t be, 
  much longer,” Monk said, making his small 
  voice smaller. 
   
  “The situation seemed desperate, 
  from that second radiogram you sent to 
  intercept me at the Canal Zone,” Doc said. 
  “Or did you send it, Monk?” 
   
  “We only sent one, Doc—to New 
  York,” Monk grunted. 
   
  “The second message sounded so 
  legitimate that it deflected my attention 
  enough for Count Ramadanoff’s agent to get 
  a time-bomb in our plane,” Doc said, grimly; 
  “which, of course, was why the radiogram 
  was sent.” 
   
  “Did you crash here, Doc?” Monk 
  demanded. 
   
  “Offshore. Renny and Long Tom are 
  prisoners. Where are the others?” 
   
  “Ham’s chained in the pit next to me, 
  and Johnny is in the one beyond that,” Monk 
  advised. 
   
  Doc breathed, “And Pat.” 
   
  “As far as I know, the count’s got her 
  cooped up in his palace. We got to get her 
  out. The count’s got a man-eatin’ beast there 
  as big as a mountain. I know it doesn’t sound 
  sane, but all of us saw the thing. Whew!” 
   
  Doc asked, “You were imprisoned for 
  a time at the palace?” 
   
  “Yeah, but when old bush-face saw 
  how tough we were, he sent us here to kill 
  ourselves diggin’, instead of feedin’ us to his 
  critter,” Monk growled. “That man-eatin’ thing 
  has even got teeth on its back, Doc! You 
  wouldn’t believe a monster like that was in 
  the world!” 
   
   
   
   
   
  A GUARD passed by and looked 
  down, lashed with his whip. A red welt 
  sprang out on Monk’s shoulder. 
   
  “Quit mumblin’ to yourself,” the guard 
  directed in English. “And dig faster!” 
   
  After the guard continued on, Monk 
  gritted through the hole to Doc, “You see how 
  it is? Most of the diggers die off quick.” 
   
  “Why the pits?” Doc queried. 
   
  “You’ve got me,” Monk grunted. 
  “We’ve sure wondered about ‘em.” 
   
  “I’m going to dig through into your pit, 
  Monk,” Doc informed. “Stand so your back 
  will hide me as much as possible.” 
   
  After Doc entered Monk’s pit, he dug 
  his way quickly through into Ham’s. Monk 
  filled both the holes as best he could. Doc, in 
  the adjoining pit with Ham, kept close to the 
  wall so that, unless one of the overseers 
  stepped close and looked directly down, he 
  would remain undetected. 
   
  Ham stifled his amazement at Doc’s 
  appearance; and Doc, reaching out with his 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  49 
  pick, gouged an entrance for himself into 
  Johnny’s pit. 
   
   
  The whip cracked down at Johnny. Doc’s hand reached out,  
  grasped the slashing rawhides, gave a downward jerk. 
   
   
  Almost 
  the 
  instant 
  he 
  arrived 
  alongside Johnny, things began to happen. 
   
  “I’ll be superamalgamated!” the bony 
  geologist exploded, as Doc squirmed into 
  view. 
   
  “Say it louder!” Doc directed. 
   
  “What?” Johnny blurted, startled. 
   
  “Say it louder,” Doc repeated. 
   
  Johnny was so surprised at the 
  whole business that he did not speak out in 
  his accustomed verbose manner. 
   
  “It’ll bring the guards down on us!” he 
  protested. 
   
  “That,” Doc said, “is what we want.” 
   
  “I’ll be superamalgamated!” Johnny 
  blurted his favorite expression again. 
   
  “Louder!” the bronze man directed. 
   
  Johnny gulped, raised his voice with 
  determination. 
   
  “I’ll 
  be 
  superamalgamated, 
  superagalmated, superaglerated—aw, nuts, 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  50 
  Doc, you say it!” The word, for once, had 
  gotten him down. 
   
   
   
   
  But it was not necessary for Doc to 
  say it. An overseer lunged toward the pit. 
  Doc was back against the side. The overseer 
  did not observe him. The whip cracked down 
  at Johnny. Doc’s hands reached out, grasped 
  the slashing rawhides, gave a downward 
  jerk. 
   
  The unexpected tug pulled the 
  overseer off balance before he had time to 
  brace himself or let go the whip. He teetered 
  on the brink of the pit, then fell inward, 
  sprawling. Doc’s fist lanced out, smacking 
  against the fellow’s jaw while he was still in 
  the air. The man was unconscious before he 
  hit the bottom. 
   
  Doc bent, flipped him over, yanked 
  loose a key dangling from a thong on the 
  lizard-hide collar. He fitted the key to the lock 
  of Johnny’s leg iron, twisted briefly and 
  Johnny stood free. 
   
  Doc grabbed up the whip he had 
  wrested from the guard and, swerving, 
  ducked through the hole into Ham’s pit. 
   
  “Follow me, Johnny,” Doc suggested, 
  cautiously, and reached to unlock Ham’s leg 
  iron. 
   
   
   
  SUDDENLY, from all along the line 
  of fantastic pits, the groans and babblings, 
  the 
  whip-cracking, 
  ceased. 
  One 
  note 
  dominated the nightmare scene: the deep, 
  echoing clangor of a brass gong. 
   
  One of the overseers had witnessed 
  his fellow plunge mysteriously into the pit and 
  he had sounded the warning gong. While the 
  dread hush spread over the pit, overseers 
  converged, running, toward the hole where 
  Johnny had been working. 
   
  “We’ll never make it, Doc,” Johnny 
  snapped. “They kill anybody caught trying to 
  escape!” 
   
  A cursing uproar burst out, as the 
  first-arriving overseers discovered Johnny’s 
  pit to be empty. More of the lizard-collared 
  guards swarmed down. A whip lashed into 
  Ham’s 
  pit, 
  as 
  one 
  of 
  the 
  overseers 
  discovered the three men there. 
   
  Bellowed words brought the others 
  crowding to the pit rim. Whips lashed down. 
  As Doc lunged upright from unlocking Ham, 
  the pit became a whistling storm of flesh-
  cutting rawhide. 
   
  Doc shoved the leg-iron key to 
  Johnny. 
   
  “Follow me through into the next pit 
  and unlock Monk,” he shouted above the 
  swish and crack of flaying leather. 
   
  Close at Doc’s heels came Johnny 
  and Ham. While the two bent to the task of 
  releasing Monk, Doc stood upright, taking the 
  rain of whip lashes, cutting back with the 
  whip he had wrested from the first guard. 
   
  Under the red volcanic glare, Doc’s 
  face, uplifted to the lightning of whips, was a 
  mask of emotionless bronze. He did not use 
  his left arm to fend off the searing strokes. 
  He had better use for that left arm. It 
  coöperated like a machine with his whip-
  cracking arm. 
   
  Doc was not whipping aimlessly. 
  Holding his left arm in such a way that he 
  could protect his eyes, he sent his lash 
  snaking upward from the pit with a twist of his 
  cabled wrist. A deft jerk at the precisely 
  correct instant caused the long, pliant 
  rawhide to curl tightly about whatever object 
  it 
  struck. 
  Sometimes 
  it 
  was 
  a 
  neck. 
  Sometimes an arm or a leg. 
   
  But in every instance, a quick, 
  backward jerk of Doc’s arm brought his whip-
  hooked victim toppling into the pit. And then it 
  was that Doc’s left fist coöperated, driving 
  against the head of each falling victim, 
  pounding them into senselessness. 
   
  And after Doc had dragged some 
  half a dozen men into the pit with relentless 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  51 
  precision, the remaining overseers drew 
  back, cursing and shouting, out of range of 
  the appalling rawhide lash. 
   
  “O. 
  K., 
  Doc,” 
  Johnny’s 
  voice 
  sounded. 
   
  Monk kicked his loosened leg chain 
  aside. “I’m clear, Doc!” 
   
  “Lead the way, Monk,” Doc ordered. 
  “Duck through the same hole I first entered 
  by. The rest of you follow. I will hold them off 
  with the whip and bring up the rear.” 
   
  Monk, crowded closely by Johnny 
  and Ham, butted through into the next pit 
  back of the active working line. Doc ceased 
  slashing his whip and bent to follow them, 
  only to have his head rammed with a hollow 
  thump against an object hurtling back 
  through the hole from the other direction. 
   
  It was Monk’s granite head that Doc 
  had bumped.  
   
  “We can’t get out that way, Doc!” 
  Monk roared, in his frantic haste squirming 
  past Doc and whacking his head on the 
  bottom of the pit as he fell in. 
   
  Ham 
  and 
  Johnny 
  came 
  piling 
  through on top of Monk. 
   
  “Carnivorous crabs!” Johnny loudly 
  shrieked. 
   
  “Man-eating ones!” Ham augmented. 
   
  “Big as dogs!” Johnny insisted. 
   
  “And millions of ‘em!” Monk finished, 
  holding his head. 
   
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  BITS OF HELL 
   
   
  “THIS way, then!” Doc said, and 
  whipped through the hole into the pit where 
  Ham had been chained. 
   
  There was a blur of movement on 
  the pit floor, accompanied by a fearful sound: 
  a metallic clacking. 
   
  Then, Monk, coming through the 
  hole in the wake of Doc, found himself 
  jammed into the pit he was trying to leave. 
   
  “Blazes!” Monk protested. “What’s 
  the matter?” 
   
  “This route is barred, too,” Doc said. 
   
  “Crabs?” 
   
  “Right! The pit floor is covered with 
  them.” 
   
  “They keep ‘em in cages somewhere 
  behind the working pits,” Ham jerked. “They 
  turn them loose to forestall escapes. I saw 
  one poor blighter go down under a wave of 
  them, last night. They had his bones picked 
  clean in a horribly short time.” 
   
  The metallic clacking grew louder, 
  coming into the pit with a din like the croaking 
  of thousands of tree frogs. 
   
  “That noise is the crabs clackin’ their 
  claws,” 
  the 
  academic 
  Johnny 
  said, 
  ungrammatically, but forcefully. “They can 
  take a man’s finger off with one snip. They 
  climb your legs, all the time hacking you up 
  as if two razors were working on you.” 
   
  “They’re land crabs, too, Doc,” Ham 
  put in. “Something like those recorded in 
  parts of Siberia, only bigger. Not as big as 
  dogs, as Johnny said, but bigger than any I 
  ever heard of before. Ferocious as tiger 
  sharks!” 
   
  There was a thumping sound on the 
  pit sides. 
   
  “Them guys with the dog collars are 
  heavin’ rocks!” Monk roared. 
   
  Ham’s shout blended with Monk’s 
  roar. “Here come the crabs!” 
   
  “Kick ‘em back!” Monk bawled. 
   
  “Kick them back yourself!” Ham 
  snapped. “I have no shoes on!” 
   
  “Whadda you think I’m wearin’?” 
  Monk growled. “I’m barefooted, too!” 
   
  “Block the hole with your head!” Ham 
  suggested, sarcastically. 
   
  While they quarreled, they were 
  acting; Monk had picked up one of the large 
  stones which had been heaved into the pit 
  and was smashing crabs as they came in. 
  Ham was slugging at another hole with the 
  weighted butt of the whip which Doc had 
  dropped. 
   
  Some of the clack-clacking monsters 
  got through. Johnny was dancing around on 
  his bare feet, trying to stamp on their backs 
  before their fearful claws could nip off his 
  toes or slice through the muscles of his legs. 
   
  “Doc,” Monk yelled. “They’re comin’ 
  through faster’n I can pop ‘em off!” 
   
  “Let a few of them in,” the bronze 
  man said, suddenly. 
   
  Puzzled, but aware the bronze man 
  must have some plan, Monk complied. Doc, 
  in the meantime, was stripping off his outer 
  garments. He managed to get at the 
  bulletproof chain-mesh undergarment which 
  he wore, and removed it. He used it to shield 
  his hands, grasped one of the crabs when an 
  unusual brightness came into the unholy 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  52 
  crimson sky, and straightened. He hurled the 
  fearsome thing at the nearest overseer. 
   
  There was light enough for the cruel 
  fellows to see it coming. They emitted cries 
  and crowded into the nearest of honeycomb 
  pits in an effort to escape. The wall of earth 
  between the pits was not wide enough to 
  permit quick, mass action. 
   
  Monk got the idea and admitted 
  more crabs, one at a time. Doc grabbed the 
  things, hurled them. The overseers, as a 
  matter of safety, withdrew. 
   
  “All right,” Doc rapped. “We’ll make a 
  break for it, now, let me heave you up.” 
   
  Monk ran, jumped into the bronze 
  man’s clasped hands and Doc gave a jerk, 
  hurtling the apish chemist up to the pit run. 
   
  “Head for the underbrush,” Doc 
  called. 
   
  Ham and Johnny ran at the bronze 
  man, and Doc heaved them up in the same 
  manner. Then he himself leaped, caught the 
  edge of the pit with one deft arm, drew 
  himself up, and ran across the narrow walls 
  of earth between the honeycomb pits, to join 
  his aids. 
   
   
   
  THE 
  overseers 
  were 
  already 
  swarming upon them. Strangely enough, the 
  fellows seemed to have no weapons other 
  than 
  the 
  vicious 
  whips. 
  They 
  were 
  handicapped by their very numbers, due to 
  the scarcity of the footing on which they had 
  to work. 
   
  “Make it faster,” Doc called. 
   
  His aids were having trouble. Their 
  feet were bare and the volcanic rock had 
  many of the characteristics of broken glass. 
   
  Stones began falling near them, 
  rattling on the brittle rock, occasionally 
  breaking off glassy fragments. Whips lashed, 
  popped. 
   
  “Go ahead,” Doc directed. 
   
  They went on, moving as rapidly as 
  the tangled vegetation would allow. Lower 
  down, the jungle growth became more 
  dense. Matted vines and thorny branches 
  disputed their way. Gigantic orchids, pale 
  flowers of evil in the flickering volcanic light, 
  dangled fleshy petals from overhead. Doc’s 
  huge frame often bored a way for the others. 
   
  “What’s the hurry, Doc?” demanded 
  Monk, puffing.  
   
  “Renny and Long Tom and Pat are 
  prisoners at the palace,” Doc said, simply. 
   
  “Well, why bust our necks in this 
  jungle?” Monk queried. “Let’s get on one of 
  the turtle trails.” 
   
  They were paralleling one of the 
  well-beaten trails. At the moment, the red 
  volcanic light was flaring. Doc moved close to 
  the trail and scanned the way ahead. 
   
  “Come,” he said, and started on a 
  trot down the ancient path. 
   
  “This is better,” Monk muttered, 
  lumbering close behind. 
   
  Fifty 
  yards 
  ahead, 
  Doc 
  halted 
  abruptly. 
   
  “Stand back,” he said. “Look!” 
   
  He stood well to the side of the trail. 
  His bronzed hand drifted out, plucked at 
  something invisible to the eyes of the others. 
  There was a swish of tree branches slicing 
  through air, a glint of metal, a sharp thud. 
   
  Doc bent and pulled out of the 
  ground a knife buried to the hilt. His hands 
  moved, unfastening the knife from the branch 
  to which it was deftly attached by means of 
  leather stringing. 
   
  “An old Malay trick,” he announced. 
  “An animal-hair trigger is strung across the 
  trail, practically invisible even in good light. A 
  sapling is bent back with the knife attached. 
  When the hair is broken by a man walking on 
  the trail, the sapling springs upright, sinking 
  the knife into the stomach of the trail walker.” 
   
  Monk rubbed apprehensively at his 
  midriff, said nothing. 
   
  “These trails are possibly guarded by 
  other traps, also,” Doc stated. “By daylight, 
  looking sharply, they might be traversed 
  safely, but at night they had best be left 
  alone.” 
   
  Doc handed the knife to Ham. 
  “Perhaps you had better carry it till we locate 
  your sword cane.” 
   
  “That reminds me of something else 
  we lost, Doc,” Monk burst in. “Habeas 
  Corpus—” 
   
  “That porker getting lost is the only 
  good thing that’s happened to anybody on 
  this blasted island,” Ham snapped. 
   
  “Come,” 
  Doc 
  said, 
  forestalling 
  another resumption of the quarrel. 
   
  He plunged back into the tangled 
  jungle growth. The others followed. They 
  forged on, working interminably through 
  darkness slashed occasionally by the lurid 
  volcanic light. 
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  53 
   
  IT was nearing morning 
  when, 
  through the interstices of jungle vegetation, 
  the grim walls of Count Ramadanoff’s palace 
  loomed ahead. On the side toward the sea, 
  the walls were glistening wetly black from 
  high-flung spray. On the jungle side, the 
  towers and turrets of igneous stone were 
  bathed in a bloody mist, as the red volcanic 
  light blanketed through miasmatic swamp 
  vapor. 
   
  Monk 
  hunched 
  his 
  massive 
  shoulders. “Spooky-lookin’ joint, ain’t it?” 
   
  “A habitation singularly minacious,” 
  Johnny murmured. 
   
  Monk, as Johnny’s self-appointed 
  interpreter, said: “He means full of threats.” 
   
  “Everything is threatening on this 
  island,” Ham said. “Doc, those pits where we 
  were digging—what’s it all about?” 
   
  Doc’s hand waved out toward the 
  bastioned walls of twenty-feet-thick volcanic 
  rock surrounding the palace. 
   
  “The secret of the pits lies behind 
  those walls,” he stated. 
   
  “You mean that whiskered devil, the 
  count?” Ham queried. 
   
  “With the Count Ramadanoff, yes.” 
   
  Doc stepped a few paces aside, bent 
  over, and straightened up holding a fallen 
  palm trunk thicker than his body. 
   
  “Help 
  with 
  this 
  fallen 
  log,” 
  he 
  instructed. “If we are to climb that wall, we 
  will have to get it propped over the water in 
  the moat by the wall.” 
   
  All labored strenuously getting the 
  log solidly against the wall. Doc tested it with 
  his weight; then standing with legs grimly 
  planted and back braced against the wall, he 
  said, tersely, “Monk! Up on my shoulders.” 
   
  Monk stepped from Doc’s cupped 
  hands to the bronze man’s shoulders with a 
  balanced ease surprising for a man so 
  heavily built. With his feet on Doc’s 
  shoulders, he braced his back against the 
  wall. 
   
  “Next, Ham,” Doc said. 
   
  Ham mounted swiftly from Doc’s 
  hands to the top of his head, from Monk’s 
  hands to Monk’s shoulders. Standing there, 
  back to the wall, his own upreached hand 
  missed the top of the wall by only a few feet. 
   
  “All right, Johnny,” Doc called. 
   
  “Veritably, an elevating proceeding,” 
  Johnny murmured. “Herculean in concept, 
  but destined irrevocably for fructiferous 
  termination.” 
   
  “Save that until Ham gets off my 
  neck,” Monk grumbled.  
   
  The professorial Johnny stepped 
  closer and then—monocle, loin cloth and 
  all—skinned up the three-man “rope” with the 
  agility of an acrobat. Gaining the top of the 
  wall, he lay flat to hook his feet over the rear 
  edge, then reached over, grasped Ham’s 
  upreaching hands. 
   
  Supported by Johnny’s grasp Ham 
  swung free from Monk’s shoulders. Monk, in 
  turn, grasped Ham’s legs. Doc climbed over 
  the dangling human chain and got his hands 
  atop the wall. The wiry Johnny, for a 
  moment, had been sustaining the weight of 
  all of them. Johnny might be an ex-professor 
  and he might wear a monocle, but he was 
  about as toughly muscled an individual as 
  could be found. 
   
  When all were on the wall, Doc 
  eased over and hung by his hands from the 
  other side, and, one after the other, his aids 
  climbed over his body, hung from his feet 
  and dropped into the palace courtyard below. 
  Then Doc dropped lightly to join them. 
   
  “Lateral 
  peregrinations 
  eminently 
  successful,” Johnny whispered. 
   
   
   
  DOC led the way through inky 
  shadows to a small stone structure which 
  evidently had been intended as quarters for 
  servants. He forced the door and led his aids 
  inside. 
   
  “Wait here,” he said. 
   
  “Where’ll you be, Doc?” Monk asked, 
  mystified. 
   
  “Going to climb the tower and enter 
  the palace from above. Will open the door 
  from the inside—when you hear my whistle.” 
   
  Johnny asked, “Does it percolate to 
  this secretive assemblage that the sinister 
  genius of the Galapagos may be simulating 
  nescience of our ensconcement behind his 
  bastioned ramparts?” 
   
  “You mean the count might know 
  we’re here and he’s set a trap for us?” Monk 
  translated. 
   
  “Exactly,” Johnny agreed. 
   
  “Possible,” Doc admitted. “This count 
  is diabolically clever.” 
   
  “And there’s that beast—that thing—
  that monster!” Monk muttered. “There ain’t 
  rightly no name for it, Doc.” 
   
  “It is as large as a house,” Ham 
  corroborated. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  54 
   
  “Assuredly, yes,” Johnny said, “with 
  an infinitesimal exaggeration.” 
   
  “How close were you to the thing?” 
  Doc questioned. 
   
  “Too close!” Monk gulped. “We saw it 
  from the slitted window of the tower.” 
   
  “Let us hope you hear my whistle,” 
  Doc said. 
   
  The bronze man took silent steps 
  and was swallowed by crawling shadows. His 
  aids stared tensely in the direction where the 
  palace loomed in the darkness. And when 
  next the red lightning flashed its lurid 
  menace, they saw Doc, flattened like a 
  human fly on the sheer surface of the black 
  tower, climbing by the sheer fabulous 
  strength of fingers and toes the almost non-
  existent cracks between the stone blocks. 
   
  Then 
  the 
  lightning 
  died 
  and 
  blackness swooped down, and when again 
  the 
  red 
  lightning 
  flickered, 
  Doc 
  had 
  disappeared. 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  JUNGLE PALACE 
   
   
  DOC had little difficulty effecting an 
  entrance through one of the high tower 
  windows, for it had no fastening. In the 
  darkness, 
  he 
  felt 
  his 
  way 
  down 
  unbannistered, serpentine steps. In the 
  halfway room containing the long window slit 
  overlooking the courtyard dungeon, he 
  paused and peered out. 
   
  Below, in the flagstoned enclosure, 
  the rippling volcanic light revealed to him the 
  same incredible monster that the others had 
  seen. The fearful beast on its shapeless 
  multi-clawed legs was propelling its gross 
  body around, its saw-toothed tail lashing, its 
  armored head wagging. Foam dripped from 
  its grisly jaws as it braced itself against a 
  barred cell, its claws scraping out. 
   
  In a frenzy of impotence at its failure 
  to break through the bars, the monster 
  swelled its scabrous body to what appeared 
  to be half again its original size. 
   
  Doc Savage, watching, made no 
  sound. His finger drifted out, felt briefly over 
  the glass of the slitted window, then 
  drummed softly. 
   
  As though the drumming on the 
  window glass had been a signal, there was a 
  sound in the darkness behind Doc—a breath 
  unwillingly expelled. Doc crouched, jerked 
  out of line of the window and listened. 
   
  Through the weighting blackness 
  came sounds of breaths, jerkily taken. 
  Plainly, Doc was sharing this room with some 
  person attempting to conceal the noise of his 
  breathing. 
   
  Holding his breath, moving with the 
  utter silence of a jungle denizen, Doc eased 
  toward the source of those bated breathing 
  sounds. His body was crouched, his hand 
  outstretched, cabled fingers tensed to grip 
  and choke. 
   
  Then he stood stock still, sensitive 
  nostrils flaring. A subtle odor, a faint and 
  familiar perfume, wafted to him. The tension 
  went out of his clawed fingers and he 
  straightened, groping in front of him gently. 
   
  “Pat,” he whispered. 
   
  From out of the darkness sounded a 
  smothered gasp and feminine hands grasped 
  for him. 
   
  “Oh, Doc,” breathed Pat. 
   
  Pat Savage was trembling; but with 
  Doc’s presence, strength seemed to come 
  back to her. She stopped shaking, sighed 
  and looked up, trying to see the bronze 
  man’s face. She shuddered. “Another hour 
  would have been too late. Renny and Long 
  Tom were to be given to the—thing, at 
  daybreak.” 
   
  “You mean the monster in the 
  court?” 
   
  “Yes,” Pat said, grimly. “The count 
  locked me in here to watch the—the feeding. 
  He says I’ll be the next one.” Her voice 
  became more grim. “He’s been trying to 
  scare me into agreeing to stay on the island. 
  He says he’ll make me a queen. Imagine! 
  Queen of the honeycomb pits. He’s not 
  human. He’s a fiend! He’s more of a monster 
  than that—that thing in the courtyard!” 
   
  Then Pat went silent, as the fateful 
  piano music flooded the room, bombarding 
  their ears with weird vibrations, the notes 
  seeming to roll through the darkness with 
  lethal menace. 
   
   
   
  AS suddenly as it had begun, the 
  music stopped; though, as always before, a 
  ominous pulsing hung in the air. 
   
  “Some one is going to die!” Pat 
  gasped. 
   
  “Why do you say that?” Doc asked, 
  sharply. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  55 
   
  “The count plays on his piano—and 
  some one always dies!” Pat said, rapidly. “I 
  know it sounds mad. But it is true. Usually, it 
  is the thumb-hole death. A hole appears in 
  your temple, about the size you could press 
  your thumb into!” 
   
  Concealed lights flashed on then, 
  bathing the bare rock-girt room with white 
  brilliance. Doc and Pat blinked to accustom 
  their eyes to the sudden glare. Pat gasped at 
  what she saw in the light, shuddered. Doc 
  was equally surprised, but his bronze 
  features remained impassive. 
   
  Standing there, so close Doc could 
  reach him with a leap, was the Count 
  Ramadanoff. 
   
  In black evening clothes he loomed 
  tall and sinister, his Czar-of-Russia beard an 
  inky-black against his long white face. 
  Broader than his brother Boris, nearly two 
  feet taller, he was in other respects identical 
  in appearance, even to the rings on his 
  tapering fingers, a ruby and an emerald, 
  each as big as the end of a man’s thumb. 
   
  Doc watched the count’s eyes—as 
  hard and glittering as the gems on his 
  fingers. Doc had power that but few men had 
  succeeded in developing down through the 
  ages. He could use his gold-flake eyes upon 
  another, often to hypnotize against the 
  other’s will. 
   
  But with the count, Doc got nowhere. 
  The brittle, gemlike eyes glared back as 
  though they did not see at all. The count’s 
  lips twitched slightly. He made a low and 
  courtly bow. His white hand waved out, the 
  jewels flashing. 
   
  He spoke suavely: “If you will be so 
  gracious as to escort the lady, early morning 
  breakfast is served in the great hall.” 
   
  Pat said, with her lips only, “He does 
  the queerest things. This is some kind of 
  trap.” 
   
  Doc nodded without speaking, rested 
  his fingers against Pat’s elbow and guided 
  her through the opened door and down the 
  winding stone steps. The count followed 
  closely, as they pushed through the hanging 
  drapes of ruby velvet on the stair landing and 
  entered the cavernous maw which was the 
  hall. 
   
  Before the huge fireplace where the 
  blue flames danced without sound, without 
  heat, without appreciable light, a breakfast 
  table was set for three. 
   
  “You see, I have prepared for you,” 
  the count said, nodding them to chairs. 
   
   
   
  THE breakfast table with its crisp 
  damask and softly glowing silver service was 
  the only fresh touch in the high-raftered hall. 
  All else remained the same: the grand piano 
  swathed 
  in 
  sea 
  otter, 
  the 
  swinging 
  candelabra burning in hundreds of flames, 
  the regal collection of samovars, sending off 
  dull 
  metal 
  glitters 
  from 
  velvet-draped 
  recesses. 
   
  While slaves served the food, the 
  count leaned forward and said in a confiding 
  manner: 
   
  “You are a man of the world enough 
  to know that things are not always as they 
  appear.” 
   
  “And so?” Doc said, noncommittally. 
   
  “It would appear that I have treated 
  your aids badly,” the other murmured. “Such 
  is not the case. 
   
  “Three of your men I consigned to 
  my pits,” the count continued. “Strange as it 
  may seem, I did it to protect them from an 
  island horror.” 
   
  “The 
  thumb-hole 
  death?” 
  Doc 
  suggested. 
   
  The bearded giant murmured, “Ah, 
  you know of it?” 
   
  “I had occasion to observe its deadly 
  effect in New York.” 
   
  The count’s eyes glittered. “It has 
  long hovered over brother Boris.” 
   
  “And what have you to say regarding 
  my other two men?” Doc questioned, dryly. 
   
  Their host drawled, “My dear fellow, 
  they are at this minute leading a searching 
  party to recover your body, supposedly 
  mangled by sharks.” 
   
  Pat interposed hotly, “If that is true, 
  why was I locked in the tower room and told 
  to watch their executions?” 
   
  “A proceeding later to be illumined,” 
  the count said precisely. “The intended 
  executions—a myth.” 
   
  “There was no myth about that—that 
  monster I saw in the courtyard!” Pat insisted. 
  She was not eating. 
   
  The count helped himself to food. He 
  leaned toward Doc. “You have seen my pet?” 
   
  “The creature in the courtyard?” Doc 
  questioned. “The iguana?” 
   
  The count’s breath drew in raspingly. 
  “So—you were able to identify it!” He 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  56 
  shrugged. “Identifying it, you must have been 
  all the more impressed by its formidable size. 
  A Galapagos, or seagoing, lizard, attaining 
  the length of six feet, would normally be 
  considered a monster. You saw my pet in the 
  courtyard. How long would you estimate him 
  to be?” 
   
  “It appeared,” Doc admitted, “many 
  times that size.” 
   
  “But 
  how 
  is 
  it 
  possible?” 
  Pat 
  protested. 
   
  She was not eating. She had no 
  taste 
  for 
  food 
  served 
  in 
  the 
  sinister 
  environment of the palace. The blue flames 
  in the fireplace, instead of lighting up her 
  lovely face, threw it in ghastly, bluish 
  shadow. 
   
   
   
  PAT shrank back as the count’s 
  tapering fingers reached out to touch her 
  arm. 
   
  “On this island are undreamed 
  horrors,” he murmured. 
   
  “And something else,” Doc put in. 
  “Something you wish found.” 
   
  For the first time, something other 
  than sinister evil seemed to come over the 
  man before them. He straightened visibly in 
  his 
  chair 
  and 
  put 
  down 
  his 
  eating 
  implements. 
   
  “You have learned of that?” he 
  asked. 
   
  “It has become evident,” Doc Savage 
  told him. 
   
  The big man leaned forward, smiling 
  eagerly in his black beard. “You know what it 
  is?” 
   
  “The name?—yes,” the bronze man 
  admitted. “The Devil’s Honeycomb.” 
   
  “You don’t know more than that?” the 
  other demanded. 
   
  “No,” Doc admitted. 
   
  The bearded man settled back and 
  seemed relieved. He began eating again, 
  glancing once at them curiously, as if noting 
  for the first time that they were consuming no 
  food. He did not urge them to eat. 
   
  “I have need of your scientific 
  abilities,” said the count, casually. “I have 
  tried the usual instruments for making 
  subterranean 
  surveys. 
  They 
  are 
  not 
  sufficiently sensitive. You can make more 
  powerful ones, more delicate ones.” 
   
  Doc Savage said, sharply, “In order 
  to properly design the instruments, it will be 
  necessary to know what you want located.” 
   
  “That is impossible,” the other said, 
  abruptly. 
   
  “Then what you ask me to do is also 
  impossible,” Doc informed him. 
   
  The bearded man showed his teeth 
  through his heavy whiskers. 
   
  “You have the reputation of a man 
  who does the impossible,” the count said, 
  grimly. “You will manage to do it now, or take 
  some very unpleasant consequences.” 
   
  Doc Savage said nothing. 
   
  “With your exhaustive knowledge of 
  geology and cartography, my dear Savage, it 
  should not be too difficult for you to locate an 
  object which I shall describe as having an 
  atomic structure entirely different from the 
  rest of the island,” the whiskered man said. 
   
  The count raised his napkin and 
  blotted his thin lips. He blotted carefully. For 
  a moment, the whole lower half of his face 
  was concealed by the stiff damask. 
   
  The blue flames which leaped in the 
  fireplace commenced promptly to shorten. 
  They died down to half their height, within the 
  next few seconds. 
   
  Doc Savage spoke suddenly to Pat 
  in 
  strange 
  language—words 
  composed 
  largely of guttural, though curiously melodic, 
  sounds. Doc was using the language of the 
  ancient Mayans, the remarkable people 
  whose civilization flourished in the Yucatan 
  peninsula of Mexico long before the Egyptian 
  pyramids were built. 
   
  It is doubtful if more than a dozen 
  persons in the so-called civilized world were 
  sufficiently conversant with the strangely 
  syllabled speech to understand it. 
   
   
   
  EVEN as Doc talked, the blue flames 
  shortened farther until they became little 
  more than crawling stubs within the massive 
  fireplace. 
   
  “What are you saying?” the count 
  demanded. His voice had a noticeable nasal 
  quality now. 
   
  “Nothing,” Pat answered, tensely. 
  She sat back in her chair, breathing deeply 
  as Doc, speaking in Mayan, had directed her 
  to do. 
   
  “Fill your lungs with fresh air,” Doc 
  had said. “And if the blue flame goes out, do 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  57 
  not take another breath until we can get 
  outside.” 
   
  To the Count Ramadanoff, Doc said 
  in English: “Before I do anything about 
  locating your Devil’s Honeycomb, the release 
  of my two men held prisoners in your iguana 
  pit will be necessary.” 
   
  “So?” the count said, with nasal 
  quality still predominantly in his voice. “You 
  have finished with breakfast chatter? You 
  prefer to deal in realities? Then listen to this: 
  Not only do I refuse to release your two men, 
  but I am pleased to inform you that your 
  other three aids are prisoners of mine also—
  securely locked in that same garden shelter 
  where you left them when you scaled my 
  tower. 
   
  “This palace, my dear Savage, is 
  amply equipped with electrical safeguards, 
  much in the manner, I should judge, as your 
  own skyscraper headquarters in New York is 
  protected. Nothing can happen within these 
  walls that I am not immediately informed 
  about.” 
   
  Turning 
  his 
  head, 
  the 
  count 
  summoned a slave by means of that odious 
  hissing noise he made through compressed 
  lips. 
   
  “Throw open the outside door,” he 
  ordered. 
   
  The slave, swarthy, of mixed blood, 
  padded across the hall, swung wide the 
  massive door and started back toward the 
  breakfast table. Thirty feet from the door, his 
  body 
  was 
  gripped 
  with 
  spasmodic 
  convulsions. A chopped-off scream of agony 
  passed his lips as his face contorted and his 
  body, grotesquely knotted, thumped onto the 
  floor. Early morning sunlight slanted through 
  the open door, bathing his heaped body with 
  funereal benediction. 
   
  The count’s eyes glittered. “If you 
  doubt he is dead, my dear Savage, you have 
  my special permission to examine the body. 
  And anyone else who approaches within that 
  thirty foot area in front of the door, will be 
  similarly 
  electrocuted. 
  I 
  arranged 
  the 
  exhibition to demonstrate to you the futility of 
  attempting escape.” 
   
  From the region of the fireplace 
  sounded a metallic sigh, as the blue flames 
  flickered out. Out of the tail of her eye, Pat 
  had been watching the flames. She held her 
  breath. Doc did the same. 
   
  As Doc was aware, the failing of the 
  blue flames signaled the flooding of the room 
  with an anaesthetizing, perhaps even a 
  lethal, gas. 
   
   
   
  AS a flame in a gas stove burns 
  blue, giving off virtually no illumination, so did 
  the weird flames in the count’s fireplace burn 
  blue and lightlessly. That they gave off no 
  heat 
  was 
  accounted 
  for 
  by 
  drafts 
  mechanically arranged to conduct the heat 
  up the chimney. 
   
  But 
  the 
  draft, 
  controlled 
  by 
  a 
  concealed floor button within reach of the 
  count’s toe at the breakfast table, could be 
  closed and the flames extinguished, throwing 
  such a volume of unburned gas into the great 
  hall that, even with the outside door opened, 
  a few whiffs would rob a person of 
  consciousness. 
   
  Doc had been warned when his alert 
  eyes had observed the count pressing the 
  napkin to his lips. Under cover of the napkin, 
  the count had inserted, no doubt, wads of 
  chemically treated gauze into his nostrils so 
  that he could breath for a short time with 
  safety in the gas-laden atmosphere. It was 
  this gauze that had given his voice its 
  pronounced nasal quality. 
   
  Coincident with the failing of the blue 
  flames, a loud crash sounded. It was the 
  breakfast table going over, propelled by a 
  forcible kick from Doc’s feet. The table turned 
  over in the direction of the count and with 
  such appalling force that the count, in his 
  chair, went over also. 
   
  In the moment that the bearded man 
  was clearing himself of the table wreckage, 
  Doc grabbed Pat by the arm and propelled 
  her violently across the room and up the 
  sweeping flight of stone steps. 
   
  The count was on his feet and 
  running forward by the time Doc and Pat had 
  reached the stair landing, hung with the 
  velvet drapes. The count looked very happy 
  as he observed that the ruby-colored drapes 
  had tangled themselves about the fugitives 
  and must certainly trip them up. 
   
  But Doc and Pat were not tripped by 
  the hangings. It was no accident that the 
  drapes had become swathed about Doc’s 
  mounting figure. Doc was holding them in 
  one metallic hand, carrying them upward with 
  him. 
   
  Suddenly he stopped, faced around. 
  “Hang onto my back,” he said in Mayan to 
  Pat. “And hold your breath.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  58 
   
  Pat thrust arms about Doc’s neck 
  from behind. From high overhead, the brass 
  hoops creaked on their rod and the ruby 
  drapes became taut as a wind-bellied sail, as 
  Doc, lifting his feet and gripping the drape 
  like a rope, swung downward in a wide arc. 
   
  Down he swung on that plunging 
  curve, passing high over the astonished face 
  of the count and up, up, with Pat clinging 
  tightly around his neck. At the very height of 
  his swing, he was dangling at a fearful 
  distance above the high-swung candelabra. 
   
  He let go his hold on the drape and 
  hurtled forward and down, the wind a hard 
  rush in his ears. His muscle-corded hand, 
  outstretched, caught the candelabra, his 
  momentum swinging it forward. Candles 
  showered down, their flames whipping like 
  tiny comets’ tails. 
   
  Letting go of the candelabra, the 
  man of bronze swooped through the air 
  above that death stretch—the thirty feet of 
  flooring in front of the door charged with high-
  amperage electricity. Through the lofty door 
  his body shot, down. He landed easily, taking 
  the shock in a way that showed he had 
  practiced jumping from great heights. 
   
  Pat had managed to hang on 
  throughout. 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  MANGROVE MURDER 
   
   
  SAFELY outside that palace of 
  death, Doc circled the tower, running; and 
  Pat ran with him. It was Doc’s intention to 
  reach the tomblike structure in the garden 
  where his aids were imprisoned, and effect 
  their release. 
   
  But Doc did not reach the prison 
  house. He got close enough that Monk, Ham 
  and Johnny, all three, could see him from the 
  barred window. Ham even shrieked a 
  warning. But it was too late. 
   
  A black fury, which had leaped down 
  from a palace window, landed with crushing 
  weight on Doc’s shoulders. Doc went down, 
  a hard fall to the flagstoned yard, and on top 
  of him, riding him down, was the figure of 
  Count Ramadanoff. 
   
  The count’s fists thudded on Doc 
  with vicious short-arm jabs, delivered with the 
  force of a pile-driver. His white hands that 
  looked so soft, were not soft at all. On his 
  short cut through the palace to intercept Doc, 
  he had slipped his hands into gloves of 
  basket-weave wire, as flexible as thin kid and 
  knobbed on the knuckles with jagged slugs of 
  lead. 
   
  “With my own hands, I will beat you 
  to death!” the count raged. “Three of your 
  men at one time my fists have beaten—and 
  now you!” 
   
  As Doc’s head hit the flagstoned 
  surface, the count’s right fist bludgeoned in. 
  There was nothing short-arm about this jab. 
  He had timed the blow. His fist bashed in 
  from far back, with all the weight of his 
  massive shoulders behind it. He meant to 
  crush Doc’s skull between mailed fist and 
  flagstone. 
   
  The fist drove down, struck solidly—
  but not on Doc’s head. Doc jerked clear, 
  timing his movement so that the count could 
  not pull his punch. The fist swished air in 
  Doc’s face and rammed flagstone. Holes had 
  been fashioned in the backs of the leaded 
  gloves so the finger rings could push through 
  and serve as additional punishment factors. 
   
  Under the drive of fist against 
  flagstone, the ruby, as big as the end of a 
  man’s thumb, crushed into a mound of 
  reddish crystalline powder. 
   
  Doc, as he jerked clear, drove his 
  own fist upward to the point of the count’s 
  chin. The madman’s head rocked back till his 
  bull neck creaked; and Doc doubled his knee 
  and kicked himself clear. 
   
  Up on their feet, the two crashed in 
  at each other. Doc took one fearful blow on 
  the side of his head, but he rolled with it, 
  thereby avoiding most of its effect and, at the 
  same time, providing an opening for his own 
  fists. 
  He 
  hit 
  three 
  times 
  in 
  dazzling 
  succession. It was almost like a single blow; 
  a drilling one-two punch over the heart and 
  an uppercut to the jaw swung from down 
  around his knees. The blow would have 
  dropped a rhinoceros. 
   
  It 
  dropped 
  Count 
  Ramadanoff 
  senseless. 
   
  He did not awaken until several 
  minutes later; and by that time, his hands 
  were tied. Doc, guided by Pat, had found the 
  generator room and turned off the electricity 
  all over the palace. Also, by the use of a tiny 
  vest-pocket grenade, he had broken down 
  the door of the garden prison and freed his 
  three aids. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  59 
   
   
  THE count sat up groggily, and Doc 
  ordered, “Inside the palace! Free my two 
  men locked in your dungeon cells.” 
   
  “And make it fast,” Monk threatened. 
   
  With the count leading and the 
  others following close, they trooped through 
  the great hall and up the winding stairs. 
   
  “You have beaten me with your fists,” 
  the count said. “Very well; but there is still the 
  thumb-hole death.” 
   
  Before the door to the balcony which 
  surrounded the animal pit, the count paused, 
  impressively. 
   
  “What you will see beyond this door 
  is something the like of which, until today, 
  has never been observed by any living man 
  except myself,” he announced, dramatically. 
   
  “I know what we’ll see,” Monk 
  blazed. “The monster!” 
   
  “Not the monster you have in mind,” 
  Doc interposed, enigmatically. 
   
  The count’s breath rasped. “So you 
  have solved my mystery?” 
   
  “Correct,” 
  Doc 
  admitted. 
  “The 
  window which looks upon this courtyard from 
  the tower room is, in reality, a powerful 
  magnifying glass. The beast we saw is not as 
  large as it appears.” 
   
  The count’s lips writhed. “Do not 
  make the mistake of thinking the horror is 
  diminished. It is increased uncounted times.” 
   
  Pat shuddered. “What could be 
  worse than that—monster?” 
   
  The count leered at her. His answer 
  was simple—and devastating. 
   
  “Many monsters,” he said. 
   
  His foot must have touched a hidden 
  lever, actuated mechanically, for the door to 
  the balcony swung open. Doc’s aids crowded 
  forward 
  and 
  stopped 
  with 
  ludicrous 
  suddenness, staring down into the pit with 
  cold shock. 
   
  Monk was the first one to get his 
  voice. 
   
  “Not one monster!” he gasped. “But 
  about a hundred of ‘em, all nearly six feet 
  long!” 
   
  The hundred was somewhat of an 
  exaggeration, because the iguanas, the most 
  hideous of beasts, were so tightly packed on 
  the dungeon floor that their scaly hides 
  rubbed together and made it impossible for 
  them to swell out their bodies in the 
  loathsome habit they had in moments of 
  excitement. 
   
  The 
  mass 
  of 
  scabrous-hided 
  monsters undulated on the flagstoned floor, 
  snorting, armored heads without exception 
  pointing toward the cell wherein Renny and 
  Long Tom were held captive. 
   
  “They have been starved to hunger 
  frenzy,” the count’s odious voice sounded. 
  “They are waiting for the bars to go up, so 
  that they may get inside the cell.” 
   
  Pat uttered a choked cry of dismay. 
   
  The count’s silky voice, thick with 
  expected 
  triumph, 
  continued: 
  “Iguanas 
  inhabiting some of the Galapagos Islands are 
  not particularly savage, I believe. These are 
  different. Everything on this island is savage. 
  If I did not find it so when I came, I made it 
  so. 
   
  “You will observe, for one thing, 
  these brutes are a full foot longer than the 
  average. The strongest—those fellows which 
  have forged their way to the front and are 
  grinding their teeth against the bars—are half 
  again larger than any other iguana reported 
  on other islands.” 
   
  “Tryin’ to throw a scare into us, huh?” 
  Monk blustered, secure in the realization that 
  the electricity had been cut off and that the 
  count could no longer control the bars by a 
  touch of a hidden button. 
   
  “If anything happens to my  men—” 
  Doc began, ominously. 
   
  “Your warning comes too late, my 
  dear Savage,” the count rasped. “Look!” 
   
   
   
  BEFORE their horrified eyes, the iron 
  bars commenced to lift upward out of the 
  floor. There was a gobbling sound—the 
  count’s weird laugh. 
   
  “Fools!” he raved. “What matters it if 
  you have temporarily disrupted my electrical 
  system? There are a hundred places on this 
  balcony where I can touch my toe and 
  actuate the bars by mechanical control!” 
   
  As the bars lifted upward, the 
  slavery-jawed iguanas surged like a wave 
  inside the cell. 
   
  Renny and Long Tom, acting in a 
  way 
  they 
  had 
  planned 
  for 
  just 
  that 
  emergency, leaped upward, caught hold of 
  the rising bars. The bars ceased lifting and 
  the two men hung, sag-weighted, while the 
  scabrous monsters, with frenzied grunts and 
  a blood-chilling grate of serrated teeth, 
  leaped up at them, falling just short. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  60 
   
  The count continued his gobbling 
  laugh. 
   
  “It is always the same!” he gloated. 
  “The victims hang onto the bars until the 
  weight of their bodies loosens their grip. The 
  monsters then have their fun. Observe how 
  the iguanas crowd from behind. The two men 
  will not be enough to appease them. So you, 
  my dear Savage, with your three other aids 
  and your charming cousin, will form a second 
  course for my pets, I confidently predict.” 
   
  Doc’s gold-flecked eyes were lancing 
  around the torture chamber. He could not 
  reach his aids by means of the circular 
  balcony. A sheer dividing wall cut off the way. 
  And by the time he could circle through the 
  palace, forcing doors, it would be too late. 
  Long Tom and Renny, their bodies grown 
  leaden, would have lost their grips and fallen 
  prey to rending jaws and claws. 
   
  There was but one way to the cell. 
  That way led directly through the pit where 
  the monsters crowded together. 
   
  Doc looked at Johnny. “Hold your 
  knife at the count’s neck! If he makes a 
  move— Monk, you and Ham stand by.” 
   
  Swerving, Doc gripped the balcony 
  railing and vaulted down into the pit, along 
  with the swarming, hunger-crazed monsters. 
   
   
   
  “DOC!” Ham shouted in horror. 
   
  Ham’s voice was lost in the beastly 
  chorus of grunts echoing up as the iguanas 
  discovered the human in their midst. 
   
  Pat suddenly hid her eyes. Had she 
  watched, she would have seen some 
  interesting footwork. Doc landed on the 
  scaled backs of one of the creatures. As it 
  lurched, he leaped onto the back of another. 
  Four opened mouths rushed him. He leaped 
  clear, in rapid succession stepping from back 
  to back of the close-pressed animals, much 
  in the manner of a white-water timber-jack 
  running over a log jam. 
   
  By virtue of expert eye-to-muscle 
  coördination, never remaining more than a 
  split-second in any one spot, Doc reached 
  the middle of that nightmarish arena. From 
  then on, progress was easier. The animals 
  were too closely packed to attack him 
  successfully, so long as he kept on his feet 
  and moving. 
   
  Doc reached the cell. Leaping from 
  the back of the enraged iguanas to grip the 
  iron bars, he pulled himself up to a safe 
  height. Then, bracing his feet against one 
  bar, hands gripping another, he exerted all 
  his tremendous strength in an effort to pry 
  them apart. 
   
  Under the appalling force of his 
  muscular pressure, the loose ends of the 
  bars shuddered, then bent. 
   
  “Can you squeeze through now?” he 
  demanded. 
   
  Long Tom did not have to answer. 
  His bean-pole body had already writhed 
  through. Holding to the bars, he added his 
  own strength to that of Doc’s. The bars bent 
  enough more to permit Renny also to squirm 
  through. Hand over hand, the three climbed 
  the bars and pulled themselves over the 
  railing to the balcony floor. 
   
  Looking back across that frightful pit 
  of frustrated monsters, Doc called to his aids, 
  “Wait till we come to you!” 
   
  Doc used a vest-pocket bomb—tiny 
  things, they were; no bigger than medicinal 
  capsules, 
  but 
  loaded 
  with 
  a 
  powerful 
  explosive—and blew down a door which 
  separated the balcony from the rest of the 
  palace. Where necessary, he used more of 
  the capsule bombs to force other doors, and 
  reached his aids. 
   
  United now for the first time since the 
  Devil’s 
  Honeycomb 
  mystery 
  had 
  flung 
  malignant shadows across them, Doc, his 
  five aids, and Pat, with Ramadanoff their 
  prisoner, went on a quick, triumphant tour of 
  the palace. 
   
  They found the palace empty, the 
  slaves having decamped into the jungle at 
  the first opportunity. 
   
   
   
   
   
  “WE’RE all together at last,” Pat said, 
  joyfully. 
   
  “Yeah, all but Habeas Corpus,” Monk 
  amended, a dour look on his homely face. 
   
  “I favor leaving the island quickly,” 
  Ham snapped. “Before that hog finds us!” 
   
  “You 
  shyster!” 
  Monk 
  growled. 
  “Habeas Corpus is a good hog.” 
   
  “Good to eat, maybe. But I doubt 
  even that.” 
   
  After 
  providing 
  themselves 
  with 
  firearms, Doc’s aids donned some of the 
  count’s clothes. The count wore nothing 
  apparently, but black. Long Tom pointed at 
  Renny’s long, puritanical face protruding from 
  a black waistcoat. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  61 
   
  Doubling with laughter, Long Tom 
  said, “You look like Frankenstein!” 
   
  “Anyhow, they fit,” Renny growled. 
  “And I don’t look like a scarecrow in a garden 
  patch, like you.” 
   
  Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  made 
  acrid 
  comments on each other’s appearance. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny rumbled. “It’s sure 
  swell to hear you two guys scrappin’ again. 
  This lug that calls himself a count, fixed up 
  some skeletons with some of your clothes 
  hangin’ bloody on ‘em, and we thought you 
  had all been killed.” 
   
  As they were all in the act of leaving 
  the palace, Ham pounced upon the blade of 
  his sword cane, where it had been concealed 
  beneath the sea-otter robes on the piano. He 
  examined the tip, found it still coated with the 
  sleep-producing chemical, and shifted the 
  blade back into the malacca cane handle. 
   
  Monk 
  sighed. 
  “‘Now 
  absolutely 
  everything is found but Habeas.” 
   
  “And he won’t be found,” Ham said, 
  hopefully. “Didn’t you hear the count say the 
  island is infected by fierce things?” 
   
  Monk insisted, “Habeas’ll never be 
  devoured by anything, on account of he’ll do 
  the devourin’ himself, if any.” 
   
   
   
  VOLCANIC smoke hung over the 
  island in a black pall, dimming the equatorial 
  sun as Pat, Doc, his aids, and their prisoner 
  hurried from the palace courtyard. 
   
  “Now what?” Long Tom muttered. 
   
  Doc Savage studied the volcano for 
  a time. Its glow seemed to have acquired 
  additional brilliance. 
   
  “That volcano is not behaving in a 
  manner calculated to inspire peace of mind,” 
  Doc said. “However, there are two things 
  requiring our immediate attention.” 
   
  “One is to rescue those poor devils 
  digging those honeycomb pits,” Ham offered. 
   
  “Right,” Doc admitted. 
   
  “And the other,” Johnny said tensely, 
  for once using small words, “is to find out 
  what this Devil’s Honeycomb business is all 
  about.” 
   
  “Right again,” Doc agreed. 
   
  As the party plunged into a grove of 
  mangroves, Doc and the scholarly Johnny 
  conversed in lowered tones. 
   
  “No doubt, you have already reached 
  the conclusions that I am going to outline,” 
  Johnny said. “First, Ramadanoff insisted you 
  could 
  locate 
  this 
  Devil’s 
  Honeycomb, 
  whatever it is, with instruments. That means 
  the Devil’s Honeycomb is composed of 
  substance different from the island and 
  volcanic ash.” 
   
  “Exactly,” Doc Savage agreed. “And 
  the fact that those pits are being dug close 
  together 
  indicates 
  that 
  the 
  Devil’s 
  Honeycomb, whatever it is, is not large. If it 
  was a large object, they would have dug the 
  pits farther apart.” 
   
  “I had not thought of that, but it bears 
  out my theory,” Johnny declared. “Now have 
  you noticed the geologic structure of this 
  island? That coastal plateau is really a ridge 
  along the shore. That is where they are 
  digging. I am positive the plateau was thrown 
  up as a deposit of volcanic ash. This 
  occurred not many years ago, judging from 
  the lack of vegetation. Beyond the plateau, 
  inland, is a small swamp section, heavily 
  jungled.” 
   
  Doc Savage put in, “There are 
  indications that the swamp was originally the 
  seashore.” 
   
  Johnny chuckled. “I see you have 
  reached the same conclusions as myself. Are 
  we going to look the place over?” 
   
  “We are,” Doc Savage told him. “We 
  are going to examine that swamp quite 
  thoroughly.” 
   
  Monk dropped back to grumble, “I 
  wish somebody’d tell me what all of those 
  honeycomb pits are for.” 
   
  “Did the overseers examine the 
  volcanic ash you excavated from the pits?” 
  Doc Savage queried. 
   
  “Sure,” Monk said. “But not very 
  closely.” 
   
  “The purpose of those pits may 
  prove to be somewhat of a surprise,” Doc 
  Savage said, and offered no more. 
   
  As 
  the 
  party 
  proceeded, 
  the 
  mangroves grew more dense. The coiled 
  roots were head-high in places, causing 
  frequent stumbles in the spongy, water-
  logged soil. The volcanic smoke grew 
  blacker. The red flashes became more lurid. 
  A fine ash of volcanic pumice sifted down 
  through the maze of weirdly curved tree 
  branches above. 
   
  Uttering raucous alarms, frigate birds 
  and fantail gulls skimmed over the tops of the 
  giant 
  mangroves. 
  Red-footed 
  boobies 
  perched on their nests and squawked 
  continually. 
  
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  62 
   
  “These birds would drive a guy nuts!” 
  Monk rumbled. 
   
  “They’re sure to give us away, in 
  case anybody’s looking for us,” Long Tom 
  added. 
   
  “Snipers in these mangroves is one 
  thing we don’t have to worry about,” Monk 
  mumbled. “The count was afraid to let any 
  one else on the island have a gun—” 
   
  “Down!” Doc rapped, unexcitedly. 
  “Everybody! Get down!” 
   
  Monk, with the others, instantly 
  dropped on all fours. A moment later, there 
  was a crash of rifles. Lead snarled through 
  the mangroves, chipping bark, tearing at 
  boughs over their heads. 
   
  “My mistake about the snipers,” 
  Monk said, grimly. 
   
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  PORTUGUESE FREEBOOTER 
   
   
  DOC and his men returned the fire 
  with the guns they had confiscated from the 
  palace. With the sifting volcanic ash turning 
  the shadowed mangroves into a place of 
  perpetual night, the enemy guns flared in 
  saffron bursts. Echoes crashed flatly. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny boomed. “Sounds 
  like an army!” 
   
  Doc Savage said, “My guess is that 
  brother Boris has flown here from Cocos 
  Island and rounded up the slaves.” 
   
  Renny groaned. “We should have let 
  Boris drop when he was on the end of that 
  rope hanging from the airplane!” 
   
  Monk fired a burst of three shots. 
  Answering 
  bullets 
  chopped 
  mangrove 
  branches about his head. 
   
  “Trouble with firing at their gun 
  flashes is, they shoot back at yours,” Monk 
  growled. 
   
  The battle went on, the mangroves 
  rocking to gun thunder, and the black 
  volcanic dust sifting down as though trying to 
  blot out the livid bloom of guns. Lead whined 
  and smacked, driving the combatants to seek 
  additional protection by burrowing deeper in 
  the mud. 
   
  “Monk’s pig would love this!” the 
  fastidious Ham gritted, bogged almost to his 
  eyebrows. 
   
  Big-fisted 
  Renny 
  growled, 
  “Let’s 
  charge ‘em!” 
   
  Suddenly the enemy firing increased, 
  coming noticeably closer. 
   
   
  “They’re 
  charging 
  us!” 
  Renny 
  boomed. 
   
  “Keep down!” Doc ordered. Doc 
  spoke calmly, hiding the alarm he must have 
  felt. As a matter of fact, they were on as 
  deadly a spot as any they had run against on 
  the island. With lead slapping around them 
  like hail, there was a good chance of none of 
  them escaping. 
   
  “Let’s charge ‘em!” Renny roared 
  again. 
   
  Johnny’s 
  scholastic 
  voice 
  said 
  sharply. “Exsiccate, and attune auditory 
  faculties.” 
   
  “Huh?” 
  Renny 
  gulped, 
  startled. 
  “Whatcha say?” 
   
  “He means for you to dry up and 
  listen,” Monk interpreted. 
   
  Listening, they heard clearly above 
  the whooping gun thunder a new sound, a 
  massed grunting, as though perhaps a 
  hundred or more of the count’s hunger-
  crazed iguanas had escaped from the palace 
  and were butting through the mangroves on 
  a man-hunt. 
   
  The Count Ramadanoff, himself, was 
  first to name correctly the sound. He did so 
  with considerable excitement. 
   
  “Climb trees!” he bawled, abruptly 
  concerned over his own safety. “I will call at 
  our enemies to cease shooting!” 
   
  “What’s comin’?” Monk demanded. 
   
  “The little wild hogs!” the count 
  gasped. “They run in droves like peccaries; in 
  sufficient numbers, they can bring down 
  anything that lives!” 
   
   
   
  THEY listened. It was a herd of the 
  ferocious little animals, undoubtedly. There 
  was a good deal of noise in the mud. 
   
  The count was screaming at the 
  enemy riflemen, beseeching them not to 
  shoot, to climb trees themselves and seek 
  safety. The response was interesting, for it 
  seemed that Doc Savage’s party had taken 
  shelter in the only large trees immediately 
  convenient, and that those where the 
  besiegers lay, although thick enough for 
  excellent concealment, were only bushes 
  which would hardly support human weight. 
   
  In a mud-slogging wave, the herd of 
  wild pigs approached.  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  63 
   
  “The trees!” Doc Savage directed, 
  and they hauled themselves out of the mud 
  and climbed, boosting the big, bearded count 
  up into the branches, helping Pat, the rest of 
  them following hastily. 
   
  Ham, always concerned with his 
  appearance, paused to scrape some of the 
  mud off, with the result that he was slow in 
  reaching a tree. In fact, before he gained his 
  tree, a lean, ungainly shote with long legs 
  and flapping sail-like ears popped out of the 
  brush and headed straight for Ham. The 
  mud-smeared lawyer unlimbered his sword 
  cane as he retreated hastily. 
   
  “Hey!” Monk bawled. “Be careful! 
  That’s Habeas!” 
   
  “What of it?” Ham snapped. “If I don’t 
  get him, that pack of wild hogs chasing him 
  will!” 
   
  “Chasing 
  him, 
  nothing!” 
  Monk 
  bellowed. “Habeas, he’s leadin’ that gang of 
  hogs!” 
   
  Monk’s prediction proved to be 
  optimistic. He had based it, no doubt, on 
  Habeas’s 
  previous 
  accomplishments 
  in 
  fighting; which had been considerable. But 
  Habeas, in these wild, peccary-like island 
  hogs, had encountered—if not singly, at least 
  in numbers—his match. He could outrun 
  them, however, and he was engaged in 
  doing it. 
   
  Ham went up his tree and Habeas 
  promptly tried to climb after him, but failed. 
   
  “Scat!” Ham yelled. “Go away! Take 
  your friends with you!” 
   
  An idea seized Monk. He hung 
  down, at risk of falling out of his own leafy 
  retreat, and waved an arm, whooping to get 
  Habeas’s attention. Monk had long ago 
  taught his pet shote to move in response to 
  hand gestures. 
   
  “Take ‘em away, Habeas!” Monk 
  yelled, indicating the shote should go in the 
  direction of the enemy attacking party. 
   
  Habeas Corpus acquitted himself 
  royally. Promptly setting off at a wild pace, he 
  took his troubles in the shape of a grunting, 
  snorting, tusk-flashing horde of wild pigs, in 
  his wake. 
   
  Among the enemy there was much 
  excited shouting, shooting, and an enraged 
  squealing from the pigs. Doc Savage waited 
  until the peccary stragglers joined what 
  sounded like a considerable warfare ahead. 
   
  “Come on!” the bronze man said, 
  sharply. “Now is our chance to get clear!” 
   
  They scrambled down out of the 
  boughs. Making their escape did not prove to 
  be difficult, because the men who had been 
  besieging them were involved, for the time 
  being, with the herd of wild hogs. 
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE’S party pressed for 
  considerable time through the tangled growth 
  and finally came out in what amounted to a 
  valley. Before the last volcanic eruption—if 
  Johnny’s geologic observations were as 
  accurate as they should be—the valley had 
  been the shores of a bay. 
   
  Doc Savage listened for some time. 
  He heard no sounds of enemies. 
   
  “Wait here,” he directed the party. 
   
  The next moment he was gone into 
  the lurid gloom. He traveled swiftly, setting a 
  course for a definite spot—the beach near 
  where his plane had crashed. Once there, he 
  stripped off his outer garments and entered 
  the surf. 
   
  The tide, fortunately, had changed, 
  and the rips were not bad as he swam out to 
  the spot where his plane had sunk. It was 
  impossible more than to approximate the 
  location, which meant that Doc had to make 
  a number of dives before he located the craft 
  in some four fathoms of water. In truth, a film 
  of oil on the surface, coming up from the 
  crashed plane, led the bronze man to the 
  location of the ship. 
   
  He dived to it a number of times, and 
  when he swam back to shore, he was heavily 
  burdened. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny exploded, when 
  Doc joined them in the valley that had 
  formerly been a bay. “Whatcha got?” 
   
  “Our devices for locating metals 
  underground,” Doc Savage told him. “Long 
  Tom—Johnny—you can help with this.” 
   
  The apparatus was sensitive, but 
  was unimpaired by submersion; its case had 
  been waterproof. They worked with it for 
  three hours. Then Doc Savage went and 
  stood on a particular spot. 
   
  “Here,” he said. 
   
  It was near the beginning rise of the 
  coastal ridge and was in volcanic ash. They 
  dug in, using sticks for implements, working 
  as quietly as possible. It was Monk whose 
  stick first hit buried wood. He scraped madly 
  and uncovered a porthole. 
   
  “Pirate 
  treasure!” 
  he 
  gulped, 
  excitedly. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  64 
   
  Doc Savage held a match close to 
  the porthole to examine it, then said, “Look,” 
  and pointed at an inscription on the porthole 
  rim. 
   
  The inscription read: 
   
  Patented June 1, 1908 
   
   
  “Pirates,” Doc Savage said, “were 
  put out of business before 1908.” 
   
  The porthole was large; and after 
  they had broken out the glass and worked 
  the rim free, they could by squeezing get 
  inside. Doc posted Renny and Monk as 
  guards. Doc, with the others, managed to get 
  inside. 
   
  They searched carefully and at 
  length, and found nothing to indicate this was 
  anything but an old tramp steamer. The boat 
  had a metal hull; most of the bulkheads were 
  of steel; and there were no skeletons about. 
  The hull was mutilated enough to show the 
  ship had been wrecked—probably driven 
  high on the shore in the course of a storm, or 
  by a tidal wave. 
   
  “This has turned out to be a bust,” 
  Long Tom complained.  
   
  Only 
  the 
  count 
  registered 
  no 
  disappointment. Doc, observing the bearded 
  man covertly, noted that, strangely enough, 
  the fellow could not keep from his face a look 
  of feverish triumph. 
   
  Shortly 
  after 
  this, 
  the 
  count 
  approached Doc, complaining that the ropes 
  hurt his wrists and he might as well be freed, 
  since the only exit from the wreck—the 
  porthole—was guarded by Renny and Monk. 
   
  Doc removed the bonds, at the same 
  time remarking, “If you try to escape, the 
  results may not be pleasant.” 
   
  The count bowed, narrowing his 
  eyes to hide a gleam of triumph. He moved 
  to one side, and Johnny and Pat promptly 
  assailed Doc with misgivings. 
   
  “Why did you do it?” Pat demanded. 
  “He was lying about his wrists hurting him.” 
   
  Doc’s expression was enigmatic. 
  “Pretend not to notice him.” 
   
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE himself pretended to 
  be occupied in another part of the wreck. The 
  count, when he judged himself to he 
  unobserved, slunk from sight, entering a 
  portion of the wrecked hull formerly used as 
  the captain’s cabin. 
   
  The count found the spot for which 
  his fingers were feeling. His tapering fingers 
  pressed. A small panel slid open. He thrust 
  his hand through the hole, felt behind the 
  bulkhead, and drew his hand out quickly, 
  holding something. 
   
  “Give it to me!” Doc ordered, and 
  advanced on the bearded man. 
   
  The count snarled, his bearded face 
  contorted in baffled rage. Then, quickly, he 
  controlled himself, forced a grim smile. 
   
  “Take it,” he growled. “But I warn 
  you, it means death!” 
   
  He placed the article in Doc’s 
  outstretched hand. 
   
  “Outside,” Doc ordered, and the 
  count walked out. 
   
  “Tie him up again,” Doc directed 
  Johnny. 
   
  Only after the count’s arms were 
  again bound did the bronze man allow his 
  attention to be distracted to the object in his 
  hand. It was a mariner’s emergency hand 
  compass, studded on the back with two 
  superb stones, much like those which had 
  graced the count’s finger rings. An emerald 
  and a ruby! 
   
  Unexpectedly, 
  wafting 
  on 
  the 
  pumice-fogged air, the bronze man’s trilling 
  note came, causing Pat and Johnny to flash 
  startled looks. Doc held the compass out for 
  Pat to see. 
   
  “What is it?” Pat asked. She frowned, 
  “I don’t get it.” 
   
  “The engraving,” Doc suggested. 
   
  “It’s in Russian,” Pat decided. “I’m 
  not so good at Russian.” 
   
  “It says merely that the compass was 
  presented to the Count Ramadanoff by the 
  Czar of Imperial Russia,” Doc told her. “It is 
  the date which is important.” 
   
  “I’ll be superamalgamated!” Johnny 
  exploded. “The date is 1911!” 
   
   
  Chapter XVII 
  THE RED RING 
   
   
  “RIGHT,” Doc said. “The date is 
  1911.” 
   
  His 
  words 
  were 
  echoed 
  by 
  a 
  rumbling sound, like caged thunder. No wind 
  blew. The noise seemed to press down with 
  the sifting black pumice, and at the same 
  time to ooze up through the ground. It was 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  65 
  everywhere—as though tortured rocks, far 
  below the earth’s surface, were vibrating 
  throughout the globe. 
   
  “What is it?” Pat gasped. 
   
  “The volcano,” Doc said. 
   
  “The exordium of the termination,” 
  Johnny remarked. 
   
  “I get that one,” Pat said tensely. 
  “The beginning of the end.” 
   
  “We must drop everything,” Doc said, 
  “and hurry ahead to rescue those poor devils 
  in the pits.” 
   
  Doc led off, his aids and Pat trailing 
  after him, bringing big, bearded Ramadanoff. 
  Out of the jungle tangle, forging ahead 
  through jagged lava beds, Doc’s party was 
  within close view of the squat volcanic cone. 
  The mountain’s mouth was wreathed in lurid 
  light and smoke belched upward in a twisting 
  spiral, to mushroom against high clouds and 
  sift its pumice over the entire island. 
   
  “It won’t be long now!” Ham yelled. 
   
  “She’s been buildin’ for a bust ever 
  since we’ve been here!” Monk agreed, loudly. 
   
  Doc slowed his giant strides to fall 
  back alongside Pat. When no one was 
  observing, he placed the jeweled compass in 
  her hands. 
   
  “Keep it where it will be safe,” he 
  admonished. 
   
  “You must be expecting violent 
  action!” Pat gasped. 
   
  Doc said nothing, possibly because 
  ahead, from out of gloom created by the 
  black ash, gun flashes stabbed redly, like 
  tiny, erupting volcanoes. 
   
  “Down!” 
  Doc 
  shouted. 
  Bullets 
  slammed whining past. 
   
   
   
  “BROTHER 
  Boris 
  again!” 
  Monk 
  squawked. 
   
  The 
  volcanic 
  rock 
  afforded 
  innumerable 
  crevices. 
  Concealing 
  themselves, Doc and his aids returned 
  enough fire to keep the enemies at a 
  distance. Of even greater danger than the 
  smashing lead, was the brittle volcanic slag 
  which broke into thousands of pieces under 
  impact of bullets, showering the slivered rock 
  around like glassy needles. 
   
  Doc issued strict orders against 
  reckless exposure on the part of any of his 
  aids; then, leaving Monk and Ham and Pat in 
  charge of the prisoner, he took the others 
  with him to stage a flanking movement. 
   
  Taking advantage of lava gullies and 
  dead, gas craters, Doc’s flanking party 
  worked up close. Once they were sighted, 
  and a burst of bullets hunted them. One slug 
  felled a high torch thistle and slapped the 
  frightful plant across Renny’s shoulders, 
  which meant Renny would spend weeks 
  picking the barbs from his skin. Bullets 
  splattered volcanic glass, drove splinters. 
   
  Doc left them, merging away into the 
  gloom. The volcanic ash was falling thicker 
  now and the squat volcano cone was bathed 
  in a perpetual rose glow. Appearing to ooze 
  from the rock under foot, that fearful rumble, 
  like caged thunder, came again. 
   
  Then came a crashing roar. Different 
  sound! It sent echoes ricocheting through the 
  lava canyons like a dynamite blast. 
   
  “Doc’s 
  little 
  capsule 
  grenades!” 
  Renny boomed. 
   
  Piercing the ash-laden air on the 
  heels of the explosion echoes, stabbed 
  frantic shouts. A ragged burst of gunfire 
  came from Boris Ramadanoff’s men. These 
  noises receded until there was only silence 
  and the sifting black snow, and the mountain 
  top gleaming a fiery red. 
   
  Rock crunched, and Doc loomed 
  toward them from out of the murk. 
   
  “Foray was eminently successful?” 
  Johnny suggested. 
   
  Doc nodded. “They’re on the run.” 
   
  “We better be, too,” Renny grumbled. 
  “The whole top of that mountain’s about due 
  to blow off, if you ask me.” 
   
  “It is becoming more threatening 
  every minute,” Doc admitted, gravely. “Come 
  on; we’ll join the others.” 
   
  But Doc’s flanking party did not join 
  the others. The others joined them. That is, 
  part of the others did. 
   
  “Doc!” 
  Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  roared 
  together, as they came plunging out of the 
  gloom. 
   
  “Here!” Doc called, sharply. 
   
  “The count’s gone!” Ham squalled. 
   
  “With Pat!” Monk bellowed. 
   
  “He cut his hands free on this glassy 
  rock, I guess,” Ham gasped. “And he 
  grabbed Pat!” 
   
  Monk howled in rage, “We couldn’t 
  shoot on account he held her in front of him.” 
   
  “And in this dust and murk, he was 
  out of sight in about six steps,” Ham finished. 
  “We tried to find him, but no luck.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  66 
   
  “Go on to the pits,” Doc directed. “Let 
  me hunt Pat.”  
   
  With a parting wave of his hand, the 
  bronze man moved quickly away. He was out 
  of sight in a few long strides. 
   
   
   
   
  WHILE Doc’s aids raced for the 
  honeycomb pits, the underground thunder 
  sounded again and the rosy light glowing 
  above the volcano crater expanded violently, 
  flinging fiery streaks through the ashy gloom 
  and disgorging a torrent of lava, which 
  cascaded in red streams down the blunt 
  mountainside. 
   
  “I said she was ready to blow,” 
  Renny grunted. 
   
  Johnny, the geologist, reassured 
  them. “It would be excessively rare for the 
  initial eruption to be of sufficient volume to 
  inundate the plateau where the honeycomb 
  pits are.” 
   
  Long Tom gasped, “Look!” 
   
  “Blazes!” Monk blurted. “Run!” 
   
  The warning was hardly necessary. 
  Oozing down a defile upon them came a 
  mass of red, liquid lava. It was a moving 
  serpent of liquid, superheated rock which, 
  disgorged 
  from 
  the 
  gutted 
  earth, 
  had 
  cascaded down the outside of the squat 
  volcanic cone and was now seething forward. 
  Heat in gaseous billows fanned out ahead of 
  the molten avalanche. Doc’s aids felt the 
  withering blast, as they climbed in a frenzy 
  toward higher ground. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny gulped. “That was 
  close!” 
   
  “And how are we gonna get back 
  across that strip of melted hells?” Monk 
  wanted to know. 
   
  “We’re only cut off on one side,” 
  Long Tom pointed out. Nearing the pits, 
  Doc’s 
  aids 
  fired 
  warning 
  shots. 
  The 
  overseers, having no firearms, did not 
  contest their advance. Already filled with 
  dread at sight of the volcanic activity, the 
  overseers, shouting in panic, surrendered. 
  Doc’s men, scattering over the entire front, 
  forced the lizard-collared men into the pits to 
  unlock the diggers. 
   
  So 
  furiously 
  the 
  rescue 
  work 
  proceeded, so intent were Doc’s aides in 
  effecting the release of every last one of the 
  miserable fellows chained in the pits, that 
  they were unaware for a time of a frightful 
  trap closing in on them. 
   
  It was Monk who first became aware 
  of their predicament. 
   
  “Blazes!” he roared.  “There’s lava on 
  both sides of us!” 
   
  It was true.  The seething lava flood 
  had swelled, curled out in a broad path on 
  each side of the plateau, straddling it.  The 
  only escape from the plateau of the 
  honeycomb pits was by the sea. 
   
  Renny 
  cracked 
  his 
  huge 
  fists 
  together, helplessly. 
   
  “The sharks!” he gulped.  “Brothers, 
  we’re really jammed!” 
   
  Even as he spoke, the lava rivulets 
  seemed to grow—like a doughnut swelling in 
  a cauldron of boiling fat; the red ropes, fed by 
  a continuous fiery flow from the spewing 
  volcano 
  mouth, 
  swelled 
  and 
  swelled, 
  pressing inward, threatening to engulf the 
  entire honeycombed plateau. 
   
   
  Chapter XVIII 
  THE MOUNTAIN MAKERS 
   
   
  WHEN Doc Savage took the trail of 
  the count and Pat, his gold-flecked eyes 
  ferreted out minute clues: a bit of shoe-
  crunched volcanic glass, a bruised leaf, 
  missing barbs from a form of jumping cactus 
  which grew rankly in the lava crevices. 
   
  Mounting upward toward the smoke-
  belching crater, Doc came shortly across in 
  the crushed volcano glass indisputable 
  evidence that the Count Ramadanoff had 
  met brother Boris’s party and joined forces 
  with them. 
   
  Trails of the brothers Ramadanoff led 
  up and up the squat cone of the smoking 
  volcano, headed directly for the fiery crater. 
   
  The trail grew fresher, Doc was high 
  on the stubby cone of the mountain when the 
  lava burst from the crater in an especially 
  violent eruption.  Flowing down in a 
  mountain-high waterfall of fire in broad 
  channels to the left of Doc’s position, the 
  liquid rock, like the spawn of many glass 
  furnaces dumped together, sprayed heat and 
  light through the sooty air. 
   
  Then, above him, Doc glimpsed 
  those he trailed.  A yellowish pall of smoke 
  smudged them from view; but the glimpse 
  had been enough.  The bronze man left the 
  trail and lunged upward on a shortcut which 
  would allow him to intercept his enemies. 
  
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  67 
   
  It was hard going over old, lava-flow 
  formation.  The stuff was deceptive.  Twice 
  the ground gave way beneath Doc’s plunging 
  feet and precipitated him into head-high ruts.  
  Needle-point lava showered down upon him. 
   
  The ground under his feet became 
  hotter as he proceeded; noxious gases, 
  oozing from fumaroles, made breathing a 
  hazard.  Nearing his quarry, Doc, to avoid 
  being detected, half slid, half climbed into 
  one of the fuming, cinder caves and groped 
  his way across the bottom between smoking 
  holes gleaming a raw red color and noisily 
  horrible with the suck and gurgle of fluid rock 
  below the cinder crust. 
   
  With lids slitted to prevent his 
  eyeballs from being scorched, he waded 
  through that withering heat and climbed the 
  opposite slope of the clinker pit, maneuvering 
  for a position which would bring him out 
  above his enemies. 
   
  Doc gained the position—and then 
  lost everything in the moment which should 
  have been his greatest triumph. 
   
  The air in the deep fumarole he had 
  just traversed was impregnated with an 
  insidious gas—carbon monoxide—colorless, 
  odorless, making its presence felt only by its 
  sudden sapping of a man’s strength. Doc had 
  been aware of the possibility of this gas in 
  the smoky atmosphere. Making his painful 
  way across the scoria, or metallic rock froth, 
  he had breathed no more than was 
  imperative. 
   
  But even this little was too much. He 
  felt a giddiness settle upon him. His legs 
  grew leaden. Taxing his reserve strength to 
  the utmost, he reeled to the top of the pit and 
  then plunged down, an avalanche of needle-
  pointed clinkers sliding in a brittle wash 
  behind him. 
   
  With his eyes momentarily sealed 
  shut from the stinging reek of volcanic gases, 
  his reeling steps had carried him onto a 
  bubble-glass surface which had crashed 
  under his weight, plunging him down a 
  tortuous slope almost on the heads of his 
  enemies. 
  He 
  was 
  half 
  buried 
  in 
  the 
  downsurge of the metallic rock. 
   
  Before he could extricate himself, 
  Boris Ramadanoff’s revolver muzzle was a 
  burning coldness against the back of his 
  neck. 
   
   
   
  THE count stood in front of Doc, his 
  bearded head thrown back, ghoulish mirth 
  issuing in loud gobblings from his mouth. 
   
  “Everything, 
  it 
  is 
  perfect!” 
  Ramadanoff roared. “Better even than we 
  could have planned it. Is it not so, brother 
  Boris?” 
   
  Boris 
  Ramadanoff 
  nodded 
  emphatically. 
   
  Pat Savage, imprisoned between two 
  of 
  the 
  lizard-collared 
  slaves, 
  stared 
  speechlessly, her face taut. 
   
  The count pointed a tapering finger 
  at her. Even in the tenseness of the moment, 
  Doc noted that the emerald was missing from 
  the man’s hand. 
   
  “We have the girl,” the count rasped. 
  “And we have you. And your other friends are 
  trapped on the plateau.” 
   
  Doc looked at the count, spoke in a 
  composed voice. “No lava flow will flood the 
  plateau of the honeycomb pits.” 
   
  The count’s eyes glittered. “One 
  thing you have not taken into consideration. 
  Brother Boris and I have long been prepared 
  for 
  this 
  eventuality.” 
  He 
  pointed 
  with 
  spasmodic eagerness. “Do you see that 
  volcano crater?” 
   
  Doc said nothing. No one could have 
  seen the crater through the smoke. 
   
  “It is mined with nitro charges,” the 
  count growled. “That is why brother Boris and 
  I have climbed this slope—to explode those 
  charges. With a new vent blown out for the 
  lava, the plain of the pits will be covered with 
  molten lava.” 
   
  Doc shook his head. “You would not 
  blow those charges.” 
   
  “And why not?” the count asked. 
   
  “It is dangerous business tampering 
  with the normal flow of volcanic lava,” the 
  bronze man reminded. 
   
  “If it were not for the fact that brother 
  Boris is going to pull the trigger on the 
  revolver which he is holding against your 
  neck, you would see us dare it,” the count 
  said, ominously. 
   
  Doc, ignoring the threat, said: “There 
  is still another reason why you would not 
  flood the plain. That Devil’s Honeycomb for 
  which you have so long looked, digging your 
  pits—you would hardly care to have it buried 
  under a hundred feet of lava.” 
   
  “So!” the count purred, dangerously, 
  “you have deduced where the Devil’s 
  Honeycomb lies.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  68 
   
  “Since the bronze man knows so 
  much,” Boris sneered, “why not tell him the 
  rest of it, brother? Perhaps, in the world to 
  which my trigger finger will send him, he will 
  meet the real Count Ramadanoff, whose 
  interest in this bit of unrecorded history will 
  be vast.” 
   
  “Agreed, brother Boris,” the madman 
  answered. He fixed his gaze upon Doc. 
  “Know, then, that I am not the real Count 
  Ramadanoff. The real Count Ramadanoff 
  came to this island to escape the horrors of 
  the Russian revolution. His vessel was that 
  tramp steamer, which you, my dear Savage, 
  so kindly located for us today. 
   
  “Escaping the revolutionists, the 
  original count brought with him to this island 
  a hundred people, artisans and noblemen. Of 
  that hundred people, brother Boris and 
  myself alone remain alive today.” 
   
   
   
  “THE thumb-hole death doubtless 
  accounted for the others,” Doc remarked. 
   
  “Some of them died by the thumb-
  hole death,” the madman admitted, readily. 
  “Others went by the way of the pits. But you 
  interrupt my story. Among the articles which 
  the count brought with him was—well, the 
  Devil’s Honeycomb, among other things. This 
  he cunningly hid. 
   
  “Brother Boris and I bungled badly 
  when 
  we 
  killed 
  the 
  original 
  Count 
  Ramadanoff. He died before we had wrested 
  from him the secret of his hiding place. Some 
  things we knew, however. We knew that the 
  Devil’s Honeycomb is concealed on that 
  plateau now encircled by red, running rock. 
  So brother Boris and I caused ships to wreck, 
  and, in that way, procured men to dig for us. 
  The pits were dug to a system. It was our 
  intention to honeycomb—the honeycomb 
  part is humor, eh?—the whole plateau, if it 
  was necessary—” 
   
  Doc Savage put in, “The tramp 
  steamer? How did it happen that you failed to 
  know its location?” 
   
  “It was wrecked in a tidal wave when 
  the volcano erupted, and covered with 
  volcanic ash,” replied the other. “Neither 
  Boris nor myself knew its location.” 
   
  “But you knew about the compass, 
  that it was the key to the whereabouts of the 
  Devil’s Honeycomb,” Doc said. 
   
  Boris Ramadanoff started violently, 
  peered at his brother. “You found the key?” 
   
  “No,” the brother lied, quite calmly. 
  “This man Savage is prevaricating, trying to 
  turn your hand against me for his own gain.” 
   
  “He knew the nature of the key,” 
  Boris snarled. “How did he know it was a 
  compass, if he did not see it when you found 
  it?” 
   
  “I tell you it’s all a lie, brother!” 
  barked the other, somewhat desperately. 
  “Pull the trigger that will send a bullet 
  crashing through his brain. We will end this!” 
   
  Boris scowled. “I would hear more 
  about this compass key.” 
   
  “Fool!” the bogus count hissed. 
   
  Promptly 
  following 
  the 
  hateful 
  exclamation in the smoky haze, there was a 
  sound which might have been made by 
  fingers snapping very hard. Boris slumped 
  ominously to the ground, scarlet commencing 
  to ooze through a depressed fracture in his 
  temple. The “thumb-hole death” had struck 
  again. 
   
  As a safety-first move, Doc Savage 
  went into action. All during the bogus count’s 
  revelations, Doc had been surreptitiously 
  working his knees and hips against the 
  volcanic slag which had avalanched down 
  and half submerged him, holding him to a 
  degree. He had succeeded in loosening 
  appreciably the hold of the stuff. 
   
  Now he lunged forward. Clinkers 
  washed in a wave as his body heaved free. 
   
  He felt something close to his 
  temple. The exact nature of it was hard to 
  define. It must have shaved him very close, 
  for his temple seemed to burn. It must have 
  been the “thumb-hole death.” 
   
  The bogus count suddenly lost his 
  nerve. He lunged backward, spun around 
  and started running. 
   
  Doc Savage shouted at Pat in the 
  Mayan 
  tongue. 
  She 
  twisted, 
  lunged 
  frantically; only her wrists were bound. So 
  stunned were her captors at what had just 
  occurred, that she managed to get free. 
  Lunging, Doc Savage reached her side. 
  Together they went over the edge of one of 
  the smoke-ringed clinker pits. They ran 
  furiously. Doc helped Pat. 
   
  Up to the right somewhere, hidden 
  by the smoke, Doc Savage could hear the 
  bogus count scrambling through the metallic 
  clinkers. Judging from the strenuous sound, 
  the fellow’s main thought was to get away 
  from the vicinity, immediately. His nerve had 
  cracked, finally. 
  
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  69 
  Chapter XIX 
  HONEYCOMB OF THE DEVIL 
   
   
  PAT demanded grimly, “Shall we 
  follow the count?” 
   
  “We will,” Doc Savage agreed; “but 
  do not get too close to him. Make sure he 
  hears us.” 
   
  This combination of suggested action 
  seemed to puzzle Pat. To remain behind the 
  count and follow him furtively, she could have 
  understood, but to follow him at a distance, 
  and still let the man know they were doing 
  so—that bewildered her. 
   
  “What’s the idea?” she demanded. 
   
  Instead 
  of 
  answering 
  her, 
  Doc 
  Savage paused and dislodged a heavy rock, 
  letting it roll down a declivity. The man ahead 
  had been traveling fast, but now he cursed. 
  His speed became that of a madman. He 
  knew they were behind him. 
   
  The earth had cracked in spots, 
  probably under the force of expanding gases. 
  They passed a stream of lava which had 
  been diverted somewhere above and was 
  already beginning to solidify in irregular 
  waves, some of these head-high. In other 
  spots, rivulets of the superheated stone 
  twisted sinuously along. 
   
  They came to a region where 
  imprisoned gases had long ago hollowed out 
  the volcanic structure to form fantastic 
  underground pits. It was as if monsters had 
  dug dens in the sloping side of the cone. 
  They 
  waded 
  through 
  ground-glasslike 
  clinkers in which they sank to the knees. 
   
  “It cuts like razor blades,” Pat 
  groaned. “My boots won’t stand much more 
  of this.” 
   
  Unexpectedly, they came out on a 
  level area, beyond which there was a sharp 
  slope down to a cove. The wind was in their 
  faces and it swept the dust back to the other 
  side of the island. Accordingly, they could 
  see a little better. Doc’s flake-gold eyes 
  scrutinized the terrain intently. 
   
  “Follow me,” be directed Pat, and 
  was suddenly gone.  
   
  Pat tagged after him as best she 
  could. She was about exhausted. It seemed 
  days since she had eaten, slept, had a 
  peaceful moment, or drawn a breath of air 
  that was fit to breathe. 
   
  A shout came from ahead; shots. 
  She heard the count scream. Then Pat came 
  on the scene. 
   
  It was at the edge of the little cove; 
  the water was comparatively calm. Doc 
  Savage was standing on the cove’s edge, 
  sheltered by a high boulder. 
   
  Fully two hundred yards away, the 
  count was retreating warily along the beach, 
  revolver in hand. He shot at Pat. She got 
  undercover, crawled forward and joined Doc. 
   
  She looked at the bay. 
   
  A seaplane floated there—a high-
  winged, twin-motored amphibian, each motor 
  being equipped with a three-bladed propeller. 
  This ship was moored close to the shore, and 
  on its fuselage a painted legend could be 
  read: 
   
  COCOS ISLAND TREASURE 
  HUNTERS, INC. 
   
   
  “You headed the count away from 
  the 
  plane!” 
  Pat 
  gasped, 
  suddenly 
  understanding why Doc wanted their quarry 
  to know he was being followed. It had kept 
  the fellow frightened, had made him flee 
  toward the plane. And it had worked. 
   
  “Right.” Doc Savage waved at the 
  plane. “That explains how the other brother 
  got here. There must have been a treasure-
  hunting expedition on Cocos Island. There 
  usually is, as a matter of fact. This plane was 
  probably stolen from them.” 
   
  This theory, upon later investigation, 
  proved to be true. 
   
  They waded out to the plane and 
  climbed aboard. 
   
   
   
  THE big plane had a stout fuselage, 
  one made for heavy work, which was 
  fortunate, because the landing on the other 
  side of the island, although Doc Savage 
  made it expertly, was not easy on the hull. 
  No plane could land easily in that chopping 
  riptide. 
   
  Monk, Ham and the others, howling 
  their delight, met the ship on the beach, 
  wading out and seizing the hull to keep it 
  from being damaged on the rocky shore. 
   
  “We can’t clear outta here too soon 
  for me!” Monk yelled. “I gotta find Habeas 
  Corpus. He’s somewhere on the other side of 
  the island.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  70 
   
  “Probably with that herd of wild hogs 
  still after him,” Ham offered. 
   
  Doc 
  Savage 
  issued 
  abrupt 
  directions. “Monk, the rest of you, use this 
  plane to ferry these poor prisoners of the 
  count’s to safety. Better take them out to the 
  reef, not to the island. The reefs are not 
  submerged, even at high tide. They would be 
  safe there.” 
   
  “What 
  about 
  you, 
  Doc?” 
  Monk 
  demanded. 
   
  “The Devil’s Honeycomb is here on 
  this plateau,” Doc Savage advised. 
   
  Pat had been thinking, apparently. 
  Now, she said sharply, “Doc! That compass! 
  There must have been a map in it, or 
  something!” 
   
  “Undoubtedly,” Doc Savage assured 
  her. 
   
  “But the count took it away from me!” 
  Pat gasped. “We haven’t got it.” 
   
  For answer, the bronze man brought 
  from within his clothing the jeweled compass. 
   
  “It left the count’s person when he 
  took part in the struggle attending my 
  capture. I picked his pocket.” 
   
  Pat elected to stay. So did Renny. 
  The others, being armed, felt able to take 
  care of the prisoners, carrying them to one of 
  the reefs near where the fake channel lights 
  had decoyed ships to disaster. 
   
  There was light about them now; 
  burning jungle ignited by lava, and lurid 
  flashes from the cone took care of that. Doc 
  Savage worked at the compass, got the 
  glass out, lifted the card off its jeweled 
  bearing. Beneath, tied to the bearing pin with 
  silken cord, was a bit of parchment. Doc 
  unwrapped this. 
   
  It was a simple chart, showing 
  landmarks and paced distances. 
   
  They were lucky. The principal 
  landmark, it developed, was a boulder of 
  extraordinary size which reposed near one 
  end of the plateau. They ran to this, pausing 
  only to gather digging implements from some 
  of the honeycomb pits. Doc Savage paced 
  off the distances. 
   
  They began to dig—Doc Savage and 
  Renny in the hole, Pat keeping the slag 
  tossed back. They hit the leaden lid of a 
  small chest some six feet down. Prying the 
  chest out, they could tell that there were 
  many other similar chests below. 
   
  “Let’s have a look at the inside,” 
  Renny rumbled, and struck with his shovel. 
  The lead was soft; it split. Huge globules of 
  green and red glittered before their sweat-
  smarted eyes. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny breathed. 
   
  The contents of the lead box was an 
  affair of gold, probably a part of an ancient 
  breastplate of armor. In this were set the 
  jewels. The design of the mounting was 
  orderly and laid out in such a fashion that it 
  somewhat resembled a honeycomb. 
   
  There 
  were 
  diamonds, 
  rabies, 
  emeralds, every one a stone that looked 
  valuable. 
   
  “I can see why they called it the 
  Devil’s Honeycomb,” Renny boomed. 
   
  “What about getting the rest out?” 
  Pat demanded. 
   
  They began to dig for the additional 
  chests. The sides of the bole promptly caved 
  in, delaying them somewhat. A moment later, 
  there was another misfortune, which entirely 
  overshadowed this minor one. 
   
  There came a crashing detonation. 
  The very earth itself seemed to convulse, 
  leap upward, then shake, as if trying to split 
  itself wide open. A great thump, queerly 
  hollow, followed that. It was such a sound as 
  characterizes the detonation of an extremely 
  powerful explosive. 
   
  Pat looked appalled. “The count’s 
  nitro charge!” she gasped. 
   
   
   
  THEY 
  looked 
  toward 
  the 
  high 
  volcanic cone, saw a sight which was 
  probably the most spectacular, and at the 
  same time the most menacing, they had ever 
  witnessed. A rumble had started and was 
  growing and growing. But that was almost 
  unnoticed. It was the thing happening to the 
  top of the cone that held their eyes. Niagara 
  Falls seemed to have become molten fire, 
  and was flowing upside down out of the great 
  cone. 
   
  “Holy cow!” Renny rumbled. “That’s 
  what I call a Fourth of July celebration!” 
   
  Doc Savage straightened, glanced 
  about rapidly; he was calculating the size of 
  the eruption and appraising their distance 
  from the beach. 
   
  “Run for it!” the bronze man said, 
  abruptly. 
   
  Renny protested, “But these lead 
  boxes—” 
   
  “Nothing like that is worth dying for,” 
  Doc Savage said, grimly. “If you stay to dig 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE FANTASTIC ISLAND xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  71 
  them out, you will not have a chance to get 
  away.” 
   
  Renny did not have to think it over 
  long. 
   
  “You’re right!” he thumped. 
   
  They ran for it, Renny pausing only 
  to scoop up the cluster of mounted jewels 
  which so strangely resembled honeycomb—
  a honeycomb the cells capped, not with wax, 
  but with scintillating brilliance. 
   
  The plane picked them up without 
  much more difficulty than they had expected. 
  They got away none too soon. As the ship 
  lifted from the water and circled toward the 
  more peaceful end of the island, they studied 
  the scene. 
   
  Under a sky hell-red to the far 
  horizon, the cone was spitting lava, boulders, 
  some of the latter as huge as small buildings. 
  A few of these great chunks fell into the sea, 
  or rolled there, and sent up unbelievable 
  quantities of billowing steam. 
   
  With the roar in their ears of a world 
  coming to an end, and the light of an inferno 
  before their eyes, Doc himself took the 
  controls of the plane and landed it on the 
  comparatively calm water inside the little 
  cove. They did not beach the ship, but kept it 
  off, with the motors running, ready for a quick 
  take-off should an earthquake start. The 
  latter was a possibility. 
   
  Monk, ignoring all arguments, went 
  ashore. 
  He 
  wanted 
  his 
  hog, 
  Habeas. 
  Strangely enough, the dapper Ham—not at 
  all dapper now—accompanied the homely 
  chemist. 
   
  They were back unexpectedly soon, 
  running, and they had Habeas Corpus. 
   
  “We found the other brother—the 
  count—the one who was alive!” Monk yelled. 
  “What do you think happened to him?” 
   
  No one made a guess. 
   
  “Those wild hogs!” Ham said, grimly. 
  “They had finished with him by the time we 
  got there!” 
   
   
   
  HABEAS CORPUS, Monk’s pet, 
  never a sartorially inclined porker at the best, 
  now looked very bedraggled. That he had 
  spent a hectic time on the fantastic island, 
  was evident. He took every opportunity to lie 
  down. He had been thin before, as thin as it 
  had seemed possible for a porcine specimen 
  to get, but now he was even thinner. 
   
  Renny jumped suddenly, squawled 
  and grabbed his side. He looked somewhat 
  foolish, examined a small spot which rapidly 
  grew livid. 
   
  “What did that?” he roared. 
   
  Monk made a quick movement with 
  his wrist, and something thudded against 
  Renny’s ribs again. 
   
  “Hey!” Renny said, startled. “What is 
  that thing?” 
   
  Monk glanced at Doc Savage. “Had 
  you decided what that darn thing was, Doc?” 
   
  The bronze man nodded. “The 
  brothers 
  must 
  have 
  spent 
  much 
  time 
  practicing, to acquire such proficiency.” 
   
  “Yeah, they sure must of,” Monk 
  agreed. 
   
  “Holy 
  cow!” 
  Renny 
  grunted, 
  examining the object which Monk held. “It’s 
  that big emerald ring the count wore! It’s tied 
  to a tiny thread, but you can’t hardly see it!” 
   
  “And the thread is stronger than 
  blazes,” Monk told him. “You see, this is the 
  thumb-hole death.” 
   
  “But it seemed so mysterious,” Pat 
  said. “So sinister.” 
   
  “It 
  was 
  both,” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  interpolated. “If you recall, the thumb-hole 
  death struck only when the light was not 
  strong enough to reveal the almost colorless 
  cord. They threw the ring with great force. 
  Both brothers were well muscled, you will 
  recall. They must have practiced a great 
  deal. Then they jerked the ring back with the 
  cord.” 
   
  “We found it on the count,” Monk 
  announced. “The wild hogs—well, they left 
  it.” 
   
   
   
  THEY fell silent after that, watching 
  the scene before them. The rumble and roar 
  of it. The leap and flash of gory light. The 
  rumble of descending boulders. It was a 
  fabulous spectacle. 
   
  Still, watching the volcano, they 
  knew they were free to depart in the plane at 
  any time and ferry the late prisoners of the 
  brothers Ramadanoff to other and larger 
  islands in the Galapagos, where sailors could 
  call for them, as they later did. 
   
  Monk 
  was 
  exhibiting 
  the 
  honeycombed, jeweled breastplate. 
   
  “Not much, compared to what we 
  probably left behind,” he said. “But my guess 
  is it’ll sell for a million, anyway. Divided up 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  72 
  among the prisoners we rescued, that oughta 
  help a little.” 
   
  If Ham heard that, he showed no 
  interest. Ham had plenty of money, anyway. 
  He was eyeing the pig, Habeas Corpus. 
   
  Ham suddenly emitted several loud 
  grunts. He shuffled his feet noisily. 
   
  “Wild hogs!” he yelled. 
   
  Habeas Corpus never looked back. 
  He hit the water swimming, and made for the 
  safety of the plane. 
   
  “Boy, oh boy!” Ham grinned. “For 
  years, I have been trying to find a way to 
  make that hog keep out of my sight!” 
   
   Ham might have mentioned a few 
  other things to keep out of his sight, could he 
  have looked forward enough to see the 
  danger, the catastrophe that the Murder 
  Mirage would bring. Things no person ever 
  thought of seeing were brought before the 
  amazed eyes of Doc and his men; things that 
  seemed like a mirage, except that murder 
  played too prominent a part in this next 
  thrilling adventure into which Doc Savage 
  and his men would be cast. 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/034 The Fantastic Island.pdf