TEXT:  
   
  THE TERROR IN THE NAVY 
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE Magazine April 1937 
   
  Annihilation strikes at the United States Navy fleet— 
  and  only  Doc  Savage  is   able  to  find  the  hidden  
  menace  as  he  smashes  the  power  of  
   
  The Terror in the Navy 
   
  By KENNETH ROBESON 
   
  Complete Book-length Novel 
   
  Chapter I 
  WRECK! 
   
  THE 
  two 
  seamen 
  met 
  in 
  the 
  darkness near the stern of the navy 
  destroyer, under an awning. They were 
  cautious. They stood for a long time listening, 
  and at last they were satisfied that no one 
  was near enough to overhear. 
  One growled, “The chief’s orders are 
  for none of us to be seen talkin’ together!” 
  The other hissed, “I know it! But 
  something’s gone wrong!” 
  “What? We’ve covered every angle.” 
  “That nosey Lieutenant Bowen Toy! 
  He’s haunting me. He’s shadowing me. If he 
  keeps it up, he may learn too much. He’s got 
  to be killed!” 
  There was no light and no sound to 
  show that four other naval destroyers were 
  steaming full speed in the wake of this one, 
  guided by a radio beam transmitted from this, 
  the leading craft. 
  
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  2 
  “What put the bug in Lieutenant 
  Toy’s bonnet?” asked one of the two furtive 
  seamen. 
  “His brother, Captain Blackstone 
  Toy.” 
  “How much do you think Lieutenant 
  Toy knows about—well, tonight’s business, 
  for instance?” 
  “I’ve got no idea how much he 
  knows. All I know is that if he keeps on 
  haunting me, he’ll learn too much!” 
  The other man laughed.  
  “What’re you laughing at?” the first 
  man wanted to know. 
  “I was just thinking that Lieutenant 
  Toy will probably learn what it feels like to 
  die.” 
  “O. K. We take Toy at the first 
  chance, then?”  
  “First chance.” 
  The two separated and left the 
  vicinity. 
  A moment after they had gone, a 
  man swung down off the top of the awning 
  under which the two men had met and 
  secretly plotted death. He had heard every 
  word that they had said. 
  This man walked away, headed 
  toward the lower deck. 
   
   
  LIEUTENANT BOWEN TOY went 
  directly to his cabin, closed the door, locked 
  it, and took out a revolver he had been 
  carrying in an armpit holster. He went over to 
  the mirror and looked at himself. He was 
  pale. He held his hands up, first one, then the 
  other. 
  “Shaking like an old woman!” he 
  snapped. Then aloud: “I’ve got to do 
  something!” 
  Lieutenant Bowen Toy went to his 
  bag, opened it and got out a long-bladed kris, 
  an ugly weapon which was evidently a 
  souvenir of a visit to China. About to close 
  the bag, his gaze fell upon another object in 
  it. An idea seemed to seize him. He lifted the 
  object out. 
  It was a book. 
   
  THE ARMOR PLATE VALUE OF 
  CERTAIN ALLOYS 
  By Clark Savage, Jr. 
   
  It was a thick book, full of fine print 
  and intricate mathematical computations. 
  Lieutenant Bowen Toy stowed the 
  kris inside his belt, where it would evidently 
  serve as reserve weapon. He did not take his 
  attention off the book, or, rather, off the name 
  of the author, Clark Savage, Jr. 
  Abruptly, Lieutenant Toy left his 
  cabin and walked, with his hand always on 
  his automatic and his eyes wary, to the 
  bridge, where he addressed the navigating 
  officer. 
  “Where can Doc Savage be found?” 
  asked Toy. 
  “Doc Savage is well known enough 
  that a telegram addressed to him in New 
  York City should reach him,” said the officer. 
  It was dark on the bridge, except for 
  a subdued glow from the binnacle. The 
  navigating officer had been intrigued by 
  something queer in Lieutenant Toy’s voice. 
  He now thumbed a cigarette lighter aflame 
  and held it to throw light on Toy’s features. 
  The utter terror he saw there startled him. 
  “Lieutenant!” he gasped. “What on 
  earth is wrong?” 
  Lieutenant 
  Bowen 
  Toy, 
  in 
  his 
  nervous excitement, drew the revolver, which 
  had been in one pocket, and held it in his 
  hand. 
  “I have just made an incredible 
  discovery,” he gulped. “The entire United 
  States navy is menaced! No telling how 
  many ships will be destroyed! No telling how 
  many men will be killed, before the thing can 
  be stopped! I’ll give you the whole incredible 
  story in a minute! But first, I’m going to send 
  a radiogram and ask this Doc Savage to get 
  started on the New York end of it!” 
  He bounded off, eyes darting warily 
  from side to side, the gun held ready for 
  defense. 
  The navigating officer stared after 
  him 
  and 
  exploded, 
  “I’ll 
  be 
  damned! 
  Lieutenant Bowen Toy has gone nuts!” 
  The officer was blissfully unaware 
  that imminent events would convince him 
  that he himself, if anybody, was losing his 
  mind. 
   
   
  LIEUTENANT BOWEN TOY went to 
  the radio room, seized a blank and wrote: 
   
  DOC SAVAGE 
  NEW YORK 
  HAVE 
  DISCOVERED 
  AMAZING 
  AND 
  TERRIBLE THING ABOUT TO HAPPEN 
  
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  3 
  STOP 
  GO 
  TO 
  APARTMENT 
  OF 
  MY 
  BROTHER CAPTAIN BLACKSTONE TOY IN 
  PARKVIEW HOTEL AND GET NOTES 
  HIDDEN IN PICTURE OF MYSELF  
  LIEUT BOWEN TOY 
   
  “Send this to a commercial station,” 
  Toy directed, handing the operator the 
  message. “And get that message out 
  instantly!” 
  “Yes, sir!” 
  Lieutenant Toy stepped out of the 
  radio shack and walked warily toward the 
  bridge. 
  Then, with stunning suddenness, he 
  was flying headlong down the deck. He hit a 
  stanchion, glanced off that, fell and turned 
  over and over. There followed a moment of 
  brittle silence. 
  The ship had been traveling at about 
  thirty knots a moment before. Now it was at a 
  standstill. 
  Bells began ringing. There was a 
  loud report amidships, followed by a shrill 
  hissing. This meant a steam line had been 
  broken. The destroyer rolled heavily as a 
  wave hit it, and there was a grinding from 
  underneath the hull. 
  Lieutenant Toy gained his feet, 
  scrambled across the sloping deck, hauled 
  himself up a companionway and reached the 
  navigating bridge. 
  The navigating officer’s face was 
  pale and terrible. The helmsman was 
  propped against his wheel, mouth open, eyes 
  weird. Both men looked as if they had just 
  seen a horned devil. 
  “What’d we hit!” Toy shouted. 
  The navigating officer made feeble, 
  stabbing gestures at the helmsman. 
  “Tell what—what happened—again!” 
  he croaked. The helmsman blinked. When he 
  spoke, it was in a tone that sounded, 
  somehow, as if he did not believe himself. 
  “Something—something—pulled the 
  ship through the sea!” he mumbled. “It just 
  took hold of us and pulled us into whatever 
  we hit!” 
   
   
  Chapter II 
  THE “POWER”! 
   
  NAVY men are well trained, and it 
  was 
  natural 
  mat 
  some 
  one 
  should 
  immediately take a sounding. The cry of the 
  one who had dropped the lead overboard 
  came from forward. 
  “By the mark, two!” the voice yelled. 
  “Solid rock!”  
  Lieutenant Toy gulped, “Only two 
  fathoms of water under the stern, and a rock 
  bottom! That’s impossible! Our course was 
  ten miles offshore!” 
  The steersman gasped, “I tell you, a 
  thing had this ship!” 
  “Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped the 
  navigating officer.  
  The steersman said, sullenly, “I could 
  feel the pull of the thing! It was drawing the 
  ship through the water! I fought it. I put the 
  wheel hard over half a dozen times, but the 
  vessel simply wouldn’t respond. I tell you, 
  there was a thing!” 
  Lieutenant Toy heard that, and his 
  eyes came wide and seemed about to pop 
  out of his head. “It struck this destroyer first!” 
  he shrieked. “It’s real! It can destroy ships!” A 
  moment of terrible silence followed. 
  “Those 
  men—the 
  two 
  sailors 
  I 
  overheard talking under the awning—they 
  know about it!” Toy howled. “Grab them 
  before they can get away! Get them! Quick, 
  I’ll point them out and tell—” 
  The rest of his howl was lost in a 
  terrific crash alongside. There was a rending 
  and grinding noise. There was that peculiar, 
  uncanny screech made by steel plates being 
  ripped apart. Men shouted wildly. 
  Lieutenant Toy grabbed a brass 
  stanchion, and a ghastly expression came 
  over his lace. 
  “The other boats are hitting!” he 
  gasped. 
  A second crash came, followed 
  shortly by a third. A scraping rumble stopped 
  Toy’s forthcoming groan. It came from farther 
  away. The last destroyer had piled on the 
  rock. 
  Rockets, parachute flares, began 
  going up, and their light illuminated a 
  confused scene. Five sleek gray war craft 
  with their bellies torn out on hard rock. They 
  rolled as big, greasy swells nudged them 
  about, and there was an almost steady 
  grinding of steel hull plates on stone. 
  Officers 
  on 
  the 
  boats’ 
  bridges 
  megaphoned profanely at each other. They 
  blamed the lead destroyer for what had 
  happened. 
   
  
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  4 
   
  THE 
  confusion 
  became 
  more 
  orderly. Rockets got answers from shore, 
  obviously not more than half a mile distant. 
  The radio apparatus was used to secure 
  radio compass bearings, and from this it was 
  ascertained that the five war craft were piled 
  up on a long, narrow reef which had deep 
  water on each side. 
  Within fifteen minutes, one destroyer 
  slid off the reef and sank. One sailor was 
  drowned. The others got away in lifeboats. 
  It became evident that the big swell 
  was going to jar the other unlucky vessels 
  around until they also slid off the reef and 
  sank. And it was not going to be long before 
  this happened. 
  Other navy boats and two passenger 
  steamers were heading for the scene of the 
  holocaust at full speed, but they stood little 
  chance of arriving on time. 
  Officers on the wrecked destroyers 
  gave 
  hurried 
  orders. 
  Lifeboats 
  were 
  launched, and the destroyers abandoned. 
  Lieutenant Bowen Toy was ignored 
  in the excitement. No one had time to ask 
  him questions. He moved about, doing his 
  share, but all the time he kept a sharp watch, 
  and his gun convenient. 
  When 
  he 
  got 
  into 
  a 
  lifeboat, 
  Lieutenant Toy sat in the bow, where no one 
  was at his back. The lifeboat lunged into the 
  surf breaking over the reef. 
  It was one of the two lifeboats which 
  were unfortunate enough to be overturned in 
  the surf. 
  Lieutenant 
  Toy 
  was 
  a 
  strong 
  swimmer. The shore was not more than half 
  a mile distant. The remaining lifeboats were 
  full. Toy swam. 
  Flares had burned out by now, and 
  the darkness was rather dense. Along the 
  shore, automobile lights and regulation 
  marine flares were making a prominent 
  display. 
  The next thing heard of Lieutenant 
  Bowen Toy was when a man—he happened 
  to 
  be 
  the 
  helmsman 
  of 
  the 
  leading 
  destroyer—came 
  rushing 
  madly 
  to 
  his 
  superior officer, who stood on the beach 
  swearing at what had happened. 
   “I felt it again!” the helmsman 
  shrieked. “I felt it, I tell you! It was something 
  you couldn’t see and couldn’t touch, but it 
  pulled you!” 
  The man’s superior officer sprang 
  upon the gibbering helmsman, grabbed his 
  arms and held him tightly, shouting at other 
  sailors, “Help hold this man! He’s gone off his 
  nut!” 
  The helmsman screeched, “I’m not 
  mad, I tell you! It got Toy! It grabbed 
  Lieutenant Toy and pulled him under! I felt it!” 
  “You what?” 
  “I 
  felt 
  it’s 
  pull!” 
  screamed 
  the 
  helmsman. “It drew Toy under! It was 
  something you couldn’t see! Oh, I know you 
  don’t believe me!” 
  Nor did they believe him, even after 
  they found Lieutenant Bowen Toy. But his 
  story sounded a little more credible after they 
  found Lieutenant Toy. 
  Toy had been drowned. 
   
   
  OF course, there was a hullabaloo 
  along the beach, and a great crowd of 
  landlubbers came to see the wrecked 
  warships and look at the wet, excited, dazed 
  sailors. Newspaper reporters arrived and 
  began to ask the sailors questions about 
  what 
  had 
  happened, 
  and 
  to 
  snort 
  unbelievingly at the answers they got. 
  But long before anything about the 
  disaster was put in print, two men in navy 
  uniforms—uniforms of common seamen—
  made their way ashore and skulked to a 
  telephone. 
  They were the same two to whose 
  furtive conversation Lieutenant Toy had 
  eavesdropped. 
  They called a long-distance number 
  in New York. 
  “Chief?” one asked. 
  “Yes,” said a dry voice. 
  “Lieutenant Toy Sent a message to 
  Doc Savage,” said one of the sailors. “We 
  weren’t able to stop the message or even get 
  a look at it.” 
  “This message went to whom?” the 
  voice asked. 
  “Doc Savage. Ever hear of him?” 
  The “Chief” swore. 
  “I’ve heard entirely too much about 
  him! How was this message sent?” 
  “Radio. It’ll reach New York as a 
  regular commercial message.” 
  “Thanks,” said the distant speaker. 
  “We’ve got to do things fast.” 
  He hung up. 
   
  
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  5 
  Chapter III 
  CAUTIOUS CROOKS 
   
  THE man in New York did not 
  replace the telephone on its stand after 
  hanging up. He held the instrument close to 
  his chest and thought deeply. 
  It was night, and the man was in bed. 
  He reached over and touched a tiny 
  jack-switch concealed under the telephone 
  stand. 
  This 
  apparently 
  connected 
  the 
  telephone with a private wire. The man 
  jiggled the hook. 
  “Yeah, chief?” said a sleepy voice. 
  “We 
  have 
  received 
  what 
  is 
  sometimes called a bad break,” said the man 
  in bed. 
  “Yeah?” 
  “You have the file of information 
  which we gathered about Doc Savage?” 
  “Yeah,” said the sleepy voice, not so 
  sleepy now. “But I still don’t see why we went 
  to the trouble of finding out so much about 
  Doc Savage.” 
  “Doc Savage is logically the one man 
  we have most to fear,” reminded the man in 
  bed. “In short, we learned everything we 
  could about him because he might menace 
  our plans. I thought it would be a wise move. 
  Now I know.” 
  “You mean that Doc Savage has an 
  inkling of what we’re going to do?” 
  “Lieutenant Toy sent a radiogram to 
  Doc Savage before he—ah—before Toy met 
  a mysterious fate, as the newspapers will put 
  it. That is the bad break I mentioned. We’ve 
  got to stop that message before it reaches 
  Doc Savage.” 
  “Was it a radiogram?” 
  “Yes.” 
  “Leave it to me!” said the man on the 
  other end of the wire, and listened until he 
  heard his chief hang up. Then the fellow put 
  the receiver on the hook and began to 
  remove his pajamas. 
  He was a long, snaky man with an 
  almost animal growth of black hair on his 
  chest and up and down his back. It is a 
  popular theory that eyes have to be small to 
  be mean. This man’s eyes were big—and 
  mean. 
  When he had dressed, he glanced 
  about the close and rather untidy room, took 
  two nasty-looking flat pistols in holsters off a 
  wall hook, fastened them under his coat, and 
  walked to the door. He passed into another 
  close and untidy room, in which six men lay 
  on cots. 
  One of the men on the cots opened 
  an eye and said, “What a conscience you 
  must have! Don’t it ever let you sleep?” 
  “Get dressed!” The snaky, hairy man 
  shook 
  the 
  others. 
  “Get 
  dressed, 
  you 
  Davids—we’re gonna sally forth after a 
  Goliath!” 
   
   
  HALF an hour later, they were tying 
  shoestrings and ties and yawning, as their 
  car moved through downtown Manhattan. 
  The snaky, hairy man was talking, explaining. 
  When he finished, one of the others 
  addressed him by what seemed to be his 
  nickname. 
  “Fuzzy,” said the man, “this Doc 
  Savage is big-time poison.” 
  “Keep your shirt on,” said the hairy 
  “Fuzzy.” “We’ll do this so Savage will never 
  know a thing about it.” 
  The driver stopped the sedan, and 
  they all looked out. They saw a giant office 
  building which hurled itself upward until it 
  was lost against the cloudy night sky. 
  Fuzzy pointed a limber, hairy finger 
  almost straight up into the night. 
  “Top floor,” he said. “Eighty-six 
  stories up. Sort of an eagle’s nest.” 
  They got out and went into the giant 
  building—it 
  was 
  admittedly 
  the 
  most 
  imposing in New York City. An elevator let 
  them out two flights below Doc Savage’s 
  floor, and they climbed stairs, so as not to be 
  seen. 
  On the last flight of steps, Fuzzy 
  waved the others back. 
  “Kind 
  of 
  erase 
  yourselves,” 
  he 
  directed. “Let me look the ground over.” 
  Fuzzy then ran up the final flight of 
  stairs. There was a door which seemed to be 
  made of bronze. Letters on it were so 
  unobtrusive as to be almost difficult to locate. 
   
  Clark Savage, Jr. 
   
  There was no knob on the door, no 
  handle; it seemed to be just a slab of bronze. 
  Fuzzy happened to know it was a slab of 
  armor steel, bronze-plated. 
  Repeated pressings of the button 
  beside the door got no answer, and Fuzzy 
  went back to his men. 
  
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  6 
  “Coast clear,” he grinned. “The 
  bronze guy ain’t in.” 
  “How we gonna get into that place?” 
  asked the pessimist. “It’s more burglar-proof 
  than a bank vault.” 
  Fuzzy held out a hand to one of the 
  men. “Gimme that package I gave you to 
  carry.” 
  The packet which the man handed 
  over was the size of a pocket match box. 
  Fuzzy tapped it with a finger. 
  “This holds a piece of radioactive 
  metal,” he said. “Watch what happens.” 
  He walked toward the door of Doc 
  Savage’s 
  office. 
  The 
  door 
  opened 
  mysteriously. 
  “Hah!” said Fuzzy, pleased. “What’d I 
  tell you? There’s a sensitive electroscope 
  hidden beside the door. When a piece of 
  radioactive metal is brought near it, the 
  electroscope causes a relay to close and that 
  makes a machine open the door.” 
  He walked through the door. 
  “You guys wait outside,” he directed. 
   
   
  THE 
  room 
  in 
  which 
  hirsute, 
  serpentine Fuzzy found himself seemed to 
  be a reception room. Principal items of 
  furniture were an enormous safe, a number 
  of comfortable-appearing chairs, and a rather 
  remarkable-looking inlaid table. 
  Fuzzy ignored everything in the 
  room, and went into a library which held 
  thousands of tomes. 
  Libraries are traditionally gloomy 
  places, but this one was not. The windows 
  along one side were so large that the wall 
  seemed almost solidly of glass. 
  Fuzzy looked at the windows and 
  grinned. It was by watching through these 
  that a great deal had been learned about Doc 
  Savage. The method employed had been 
  ingenious, and Fuzzy was particularly proud 
  of it because he had thought it up himself. 
  He picked up a telephone and called 
  the office of the concern handling radio 
  messages. 
  He asked, “Has a message come for 
  Doc Savage, signed by Lieutenant Bowen 
  Toy? This is Doc Savage’s headquarters. . . . 
  No? Will you telephone the message as soon 
  as it arrives? Do not send it by messenger. 
  Telephone it. Thank you.” 
  Fuzzy hung up and gave every sign 
  of being ready to wait as long as necessary. 
  He wandered over to the window. 
  In the night sky, some distance 
  away, blazed an electric sign advertising a 
  little-known variety of beer. In fact, the variety 
  of beer did not even exist! 
  The sign was held in the air by a 
  balloon, which was in turn moored to a barge 
  in the Hudson River. 
  Fuzzy waved both arms. The electric 
  sign on the balloon promptly blinked. Fuzzy 
  grinned. His men, with extremely powerful 
  astronomical telescopes trained on Doc 
  Savage’s office, had recognized their straw 
  boss. 
  Some 
  time 
  elapsed 
  before 
  the 
  telephone rang. Fuzzy sprang to the receiver, 
  lifted it, said, “Doc Savage’s headquarters!” 
  “This is the radio office with a 
  message,” the voice said.  
  The voice read Lieutenant Bowen 
  Toy’s message. 
  “Thank you,” said Fuzzy. “Do not 
  bother to send a copy by mail, or by 
  messenger. It won’t be necessary.” 
  “Very well,” replied the radio office 
  clerk. “We will not.”  
  Fuzzy hung up, went out, let the trick 
  outer door close behind him, and shoved his 
  chest out triumphantly at his men. 
  “That fixes it!” he said. “Doc Savage 
  will never know a message was sent to him!” 
  They walked toward the stairs. 
  A young woman came up the stairs. 
  She pointed on old-fashioned six-shooter at 
  them—a six-shooter with a barrel so big that 
  any man present could have put his little 
  finger in the barrel with ease. 
  “They gave me this thing to cut my 
  teeth on!” the girl said, jiggling the six-shooter 
  in her hand. 
   
   
  THE men goggled. 
  The young woman would have 
  gotten 
  a 
  monopoly 
  of 
  male 
  attention 
  anywhere. She was tall and had every curve 
  necessary to make an exquisitely moulded 
  feminine form. Her features were what the 
  old literary masters would have called finely 
  chiseled, with an outdoor skin. 
  One remarkable quality was the 
  unusual bronze hue of her hair and the 
  almost matching color of her eyes. Or 
  perhaps her eyes tended more to golden. 
  
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  7 
  Her frock and accessories—it was a 
  silver and white evening creation—were the 
  ultra in fashion. 
  Fuzzy gulped, “Who’re you?” 
  “Patricia Savage,” the woman said. 
  “Oh, you’ve never heard of me, probably. 
  Doc Savage is my cousin. I have a beauty 
  establishment 
  uptown 
  where 
  I 
  charge 
  outrageous prices, and the customers like it.” 
  Fuzzy swallowed. The mouth of the 
  six-shooter seemed incredibly big. 
  “Uh—well—uh,” he mumbled. 
  “You gentlemen look like a bunch of 
  crooks to me,” Pat said brightly. “And why 
  were you pussy-footing around? While you 
  think up some lies to answer, you can back 
  into Doc’s office, with your hands in the air.” 
  A man appeared silently on the stairs 
  behind Pat Savage. He threw a gun which he 
  held. It hit the back of Pat’s head. 
  Fuzzy, the others, lunged forward. 
  Pat was dazed. She tried to get her gun up. 
  Fuzzy kicked it out of her hand. 
  Another man drew an automatic 
  pistol. 
  “Let her have it?” he wanted to know. 
  “And get Doc Savage on our trail for 
  murder!” snorted Fuzzy. “Don’t be like that! 
  Here! We’ll do this!” 
  He picked up Pat’s big six-shooter, 
  measured her, and hit her over the temple. 
  She fell. Fuzzy dropped her big six-gun 
  beside her. 
  “Amscray, as Caesar would say!” he 
  ordered. 
  They went down some flights of 
  stairs, entered an elevator, and, looking very 
  innocent, rode down to the street. 
  As they got into their car on the 
  darkened street, the man who had thrown the 
  gun reminded every one, “It was lucky I saw 
  this dame and hid me out while she passed 
  me up!” 
  “Don’t 
  worry, 
  you’ll 
  get 
  your 
  bouquets!” said Fuzzy. The men did not drive 
  away fast enough to attract attention from 
  any cops who might be around. 
   
   
  Chapter IV 
  THE MAN OF METAL 
   
  PATRICIA SAVAGE opened her gold 
  eyes and with her hands tried to help herself 
  up off the floor. She sniffed indignantly when 
  she discovered she was sitting in a chair. 
  She looked around. 
  “Oh!” 
  she 
  said. 
  She 
  sounded 
  exasperated. “I might have known you would 
  happen around and catch me when I wasn’t 
  at my best!” 
  The giant bronze man standing 
  before her smiled faintly, which was a rare 
  thing for him to do. Some persons had known 
  him for years and had never seen him smile. 
  Not that he went around looking gloomy. His 
  amazingly regular features, almost classic in 
  their firm handsomeness, simply had no 
  expression at all, most of the time. 
  He stood near the door, and it looked 
  doubtful if he could pass through it without 
  ducking. Yet, when he stepped away from 
  the door, he seemed to shrink in stature, due 
  to 
  the 
  remarkable 
  symmetry 
  of 
  his 
  development. There had to be something 
  around to which his size might be compared 
  before 
  his 
  full 
  Herculean 
  stature 
  was 
  apparent. 
  His hair was straight, a slightly 
  darker bronze than that of Pat Savage, and 
  his eyes were gold, also, but of a different 
  nature. The bronze man’s orbs were like 
  pools of flake metal, always stirred by some 
  invisible force. They seemed also to possess 
  a weird, compelling power. 
  The sinews in his neck were like 
  hausers, the thews in the backs of his hands 
  like round files. 
  “Doc 
  Savage!” 
  Pat 
  exclaimed 
  cheerfully. “You’re smiling! You’re actually 
  becoming human!” 
  The remarkable-looking bronze man 
  spoke. He had a voice that was arresting, not 
  so much because of the things that were in it, 
  but because of the feeling of things that were 
  left out, things the voice could do if called 
  upon. 
  “You happened along at an unlucky 
  time, Pat.” 
  Pat sniffed audibly. “I’ll have you 
  know if it hadn’t been for me, you might 
  never have known some men had raided 
  your office!” 
  “Wrong,” Doc Savage said quietly. 
  “You’re not telling me I got hit on the 
  head for nothing?” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE walked into the 
  corridor. Despite his size, he seemed 
  remarkably light on his feet. He touched the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  8 
  corridor wall, and an apparently solid section 
  opened, showing a recess large enough to 
  hold a man. 
  Pat stepped into the niche and 
  perceived there were obscure peepholes 
  from which could be seen, not only the 
  corridor, but the reception room, and library. 
  “You weren’t in here when those 
  men came?” she demanded. 
  “And when you got your clip on the 
  head.” 
  “But why?” Pat gasped. 
  Doc escorted her around and into the 
  headquarters reception room. 
  “Notice the electric sign advertising 
  beer in the sky beyond the window,” he 
  suggested. “Do not stare noticeably at it, 
  however.” 
  “Oh!” said Pat, understanding. “A 
  balloon! Telescopes! How long has this been 
  going on?” 
  “For days,” the bronze man replied. 
  “Who are they? What are they up 
  to?” 
  “That,” Doc Savage said, “is what we 
  have decided it is time to find out.” 
  Pat said cheerfully, “You figure 
  something is getting ready to happen?” 
  “Possibly.” 
  “Big?” 
  “That balloon cost a few thousand 
  dollars,” 
  the 
  bronze 
  man 
  reminded. 
  “Whatever is about to happen must be big 
  before any one would spend that much 
  money just to get information on me.” 
  “Good!” said Pat. “Great! Swell! I like 
  excitement, big excitement.” 
  Doc said quietly, “You are not going 
  to get involved in this—whatever it is—and 
  possibly get killed. Out you go.” 
  “I won’t!” Pat snapped. “I won’t go!” 
  But she did go. She made indignant 
  noises as Doc propelled her out and shut the 
  door and locked it. 
  There 
  were 
  small 
  lights 
  of 
  appreciation in the bronze man’s flake-gold 
  eyes as he went into the library. Pat was his 
  cousin and she had many of his own 
  qualities, not the least being her love for 
  excitement. It was a rare week that passed 
  without her asking to be let in on something. 
  Doc refused as often as he could. 
  Too dangerous. But Pat was hard to 
  discourage. 
  Doc swung a bookcase away from 
  the wall, disclosing a niche which held a 
  machine. 
  The machine was the bronze man’s 
  telephonic monitor. Attached to the telephone 
  lines, it recorded all conversations with 
  immense fidelity of tone. 
   
   
  DOC played the record back. It gave 
  him the text of the radiogram sent by 
  Lieutenant Bowen Toy from the destroyer 
  which had met such a mysterious fate—the 
  message directing Doc to go to the 
  apartment of Captain Blackstone Toy in the 
  Parkview Hotel. 
  Doc played the record back again. 
  He wanted to fix Fuzzy’s voice in his 
  memory, so that he would know it if he heard 
  it in the future. 
  The bronze man’s private speed 
  elevator lowered him to the garage in the 
  skyscraper basement. Few persons knew of 
  the garage. 
  The car he chose was a convertible 
  coupé, discreetly dark, with a wheel base 
  longer than usual. The top was down, the 
  windows up. Glass in the windows was of the 
  type known as bulletproof. The steel boot into 
  which the top recessed came up high enough 
  at the back to decrease the chances of being 
  shot from behind. 
  The convertible coupé was equipped 
  with a two-way radio, and the bronze man 
  switched it on. 
  “Renny, Long Tom, Johnny!” Doc 
  called into the microphone. 
  Doc Savage had five aids, men as 
  remarkable, almost, as himself. The names 
  he had just called belonged to three of the 
  aids. 
  “Holy cow!” rumbled an answering 
  voice out of the loud-speaker. “Don’t you 
  ever sleep, Doc?” 
  “Anything new, Renny?” Doc asked. 
  “Nope,” said big-voiced “Renny.” 
  “Be with you in a few minutes,” Doc 
  told him. 
  “So we’re gonna do something about 
  this at last!” Renny rumbled happily. 
  Doc drove toward the water front, 
  and passed a newspaper plant from which 
  late editions were being loaded. The bronze 
  man stopped, got a paper and studied the 
  page black with headlines. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  9 
  NAVY PLANE CARRIER WRECKED! 
  CRASHES STEAMER! 
   
  The wreck of the aircraft carrier had 
  occurred only a short time previously, near 
  Norfolk, Virginia. 
  In an adjacent column was another 
  expressive headline. 
   
  NAVAL EXPERTS BLAME 
  MYSTERY FORCE FOR FIVE 
  DESTROYER AND PLANE 
  CARRIER WRECKS. 
   
  Navy officials hinted tonight that 
  some mysterious and unexplained influence 
  caused the five destroyers and the plane 
  carrier to run off their courses to disaster. 
   
  That was all of that angle of the 
  story. Evidently navy officials had been afraid 
  about hinting. It was enough of an inference, 
  however, coupled with what was to follow, to 
  set the entire country agog within the next 
  twenty-four hours. 
  Doc Savage folded the paper slowly, 
  his bronze features expressionless, and 
  drove on. 
   
   
  RENNY gave the impression of 
  being a walking pair of fists. His hands were 
  tremendous, each almost half a gallon of 
  bone and gristle with the consistency of flint. 
  He had a long face, and habitually wore the 
  expression of a man going to the funeral of a 
  good friend. 
  Renny was Colonel John Renwick, 
  who 
  loved 
  two 
  things: 
  trouble 
  and 
  engineering. As an engineer, he was world-
  famed. 
  As an associate of Doc Savage, he 
  got his excitement. 
  Renny dropped out of a freight car 
  near the water front. He had a newspaper in 
  his hand and he rustled it in the murk. 
  “Queer thing about the wrecking of 
  them five navy destroyers,” he said. “I’ve just 
  been reading about it.” 
  “It is queer,” Doc agreed. 
  “Queer!” 
  Renny 
  tossed 
  the 
  newspaper aside. “Say! Long Tom and 
  Johnny and me have been watching them 
  guys in that beer-sign balloon for almost a 
  week. How much longer do we have to keep 
  it up?” 
  Renny had difficulty pitching his 
  tremendous, rumbling voice in a low tone. 
  Doc said, “We’ll look into it now.” 
  They advanced through the murk, 
  using care to avoid noise, and shortly came 
  upon two other men crouched in the 
  darkness on the river bank. 
  “I’ll 
  be 
  superamalgamated!” 
  whispered one of the pair, who was very tall, 
  and thinner than it seemed a man could be 
  and still live. 
  He was William Harper Littlejohn, 
  eminent archaeologist and geologist, and an 
  inveterate user of big words. He was 
  commonly called “Johnny.” 
  “They’ve got one guy watching the 
  balloon cable winch,” said the second of the 
  two men. 
  This second man was not an 
  impressive physical specimen. He gave the 
  impression of having grown up some place 
  where it was always dark. 
  He was Major Thomas J. Roberts, 
  electrical wizard, a man whose appearance 
  of being a physical wreck was deceptive. He 
  had secured the nickname of “Long Tom” 
  somewhere. 
  “How many in the balloon?” Doc 
  queried. 
  “Two,” said pale Long Tom. 
  “And one watching the winch,” added 
  Renny. 
  “Can you grab them?” Doc asked. 
  “We can have a swell time trying!” 
  grinned big-fisted Renny. 
  “Question them,” Doc directed. “Find 
  out what connection their watching me has 
  with the wrecking of the destroyers and the 
  aircraft carrier.” 
  The darkness then absorbed him, or 
  seemed to, so silently did he depart. 
   
   
  Chapter V 
  PERSISTENT PAT 
   
  DOC SAVAGE’S three aids—Renny, 
  Long Tom and Johnny—looked at each other 
  questioningly after their chief had gone. 
  “What’s he up to?” Long Tom 
  grunted. 
  “An 
  interrogatory 
  promulgation 
  concerning what might be called an Ethiopian 
  enigma,” said Johnny. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  10 
  “I’ll bet Doc already has this covered 
  from all angles,” said Renny. “He covers 
  things like the dew.” 
  “Doc,” said big-worded Johnny, “is a 
  compendium of Machiavellian callidity.” 
  “He’s what?” asked Long Tom. 
  “A lad who doesn’t overlook any 
  bets,” translated Renny.  
  Long Tom snorted quietly. “Let’s give 
  that balloon our attention.” 
  They crept forward, and before long 
  could make out details. The balloon cable 
  was of alloy wires wound around a core of 
  two insulated telephone wires. The cable was 
  attached to a winch turned by a gasoline 
  motor. The winch was mounted on a heavy, 
  ancient barge which was moored securely to 
  the end of a dock. 
  A watchman sat on a box, his back 
  against the winch. He was a blond man who 
  looked as if he needed exercise. He was 
  having difficulty keeping awake. At intervals, 
  he reached up and slapped his own face. 
  The man was slapping his face when 
  Renny leaped soundlessly from behind and 
  grabbed his arms. Long Tom clamped a 
  hand over the man’s mouth. They held the 
  fellow helpless. 
  “We could double as spooks, eh?” 
  big-fisted Renny chuckled. 
  Tall, bony Johnny leaned close to the 
  prisoner. He used small words. 
  “What’s the idea of this balloon 
  spying business?” he asked. 
  The man gritted, “You can kindly 
  go—” 
  He did not finish, because Renny 
  took the fellow’s whole face in one huge 
  hand. It was almost as if the big-fisted 
  engineer had palmed an apple. 
  “If I squeezed, I think it might pop like 
  a melon,” Renny rumbled, referring to the 
  head. 
  “Let’s get that balloon down first,” 
  suggested Long Tom.  
  Doc Savage never used violence 
  where it could possibly be avoided. This was 
  a characteristic of the bronze man. His five 
  aids, however, tended to the other extreme. 
  They were not loath to use rough stuff 
  occasionally. 
  They 
  knocked 
  their 
  prisoner 
  senseless to save the bother of tying him up. 
  They examined the balloon winch. 
  There was no hand crank. They would have 
  to drag it down with the gasoline motor, 
  which would mean noise. 
  “No other way, though,” said Renny, 
  “unless we can talk Long Tom into climbing 
  the cable after them.” 
  “Don’t be silly!” sniffed the pallid 
  electrical wizard. “We should have Monk for 
  that.” 
  They started the motor, and the 
  winch drum revolved, winding the balloon 
  down. 
  Doc Savage’s three assistants kept a 
  close watch. They held flashlights and 
  peculiar machine pistols which Doc Savage 
  himself 
  had 
  perfected, 
  guns 
  firing 
  unconsciousness-producing “mercy” bullets 
  at a tremendous speed. 
  The balloon seemed to get larger as 
  it came down. It was like a fat wiener, not too 
  well 
  stuffed, 
  with 
  a 
  basket 
  hanging 
  underneath. Its electric beer sign got brighter 
  and brighter. 
  “This is as simple as catching 
  catfish!” Renny grinned.  
  Then the wire cable came hissing 
  down upon them, giving them a belaboring, 
  and the winch engine raced madly. 
  The balloon bounded away into the 
  night sky! 
   
   
  THERE was noise and confusion 
  until Johnny, hopping about like a long-
  legged porch spider, got the winch engine 
  shut off.  
  “Holy cow!” boomed Renny. “They 
  unfastened the cable!” Their prisoner, who 
  had 
  regained 
  his 
  senses 
  during 
  the 
  excitement, snarled, “You guys ain’t the 
  Slippery Slims you thotcha was!” 
  Renny promptly reached down, hit 
  him, and the prisoner went to sleep again. 
  “Come on!” yelled Johnny, for once 
  using small words. “We’ve got to keep track 
  of that balloon! Get a plane! Get an airplane!” 
  The balloon was drifting down the 
  river, toward the bay and, beyond, the open 
  sea. But there was not enough wind to carry 
  it very fast. 
  Doc Savage’s three aids raced for 
  their car, which was hidden in a near-by 
  alley. Pallid Long Tom stopped, grabbed 
  bony Johnny, and gave him a shove back 
  toward the wharf. 
  “You’re elected to stay and watch the 
  prisoner!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  11 
  Johnny yelled, “But it was me that 
  thought of using a plane—” 
  “A swell idea!” barked Long Tom. 
  “And, as your reward for thinking of it, you 
  stay where it is safe and watch that prisoner.” 
  Bony 
  Johnny 
  made 
  disgusted 
  noises, and the other two ran off in the 
  darkness. Johnny liked excitement too well to 
  fancy the prosaic job of guarding a senseless 
  captive. 
  Long Tom, when he was out of 
  hearing, chuckled, “We horsed that job off on 
  him slick!” 
  Which would have thrown Johnny 
  into a spasm, had he heard it. 
  Their car was one of Doc Savage’s 
  special machines. Renny switched the radio 
  on. It was an all-wave set, and happened to 
  be tuned on a local broadcast. 
  An extremely late dance program 
  had been interrupted, evidently, and a news 
  bulletin was being read. 
  “A late national radio press flash,” 
  said the announcer. “The United States 
  battleship 
  Oglethorpe 
  less 
  than 
  fifteen 
  minutes ago struck a rock on the Pacific 
  Coast near San Francisco and is sinking. 
  Hope of saving the Oglethorpe has been 
  abandoned. Many lives are believed to have 
  been lost.” 
  Renny and Long Tom were grimly 
  silent after that. “Holy cow!” Renny muttered 
  suddenly. “That’s the third major naval 
  disaster tonight!” 
  He moved the radio receiver knobs, 
  shifting it from the broadcast band to the 
  short-wave one, on which Doc Savage did 
  his radio transmitting and receiving.  
  Long Tom was leaning forward, 
  giving the tuning his close attention, when a 
  bark from deep-voiced Renny startled him. 
  “Holy cow!” Renny rumbled. “Look! 
  What’n blazes is happenin’ to our balloon?” 
  The entire street suddenly became 
  white with light. 
   
   
  BOTH craned their necks out of the 
  car. The machine promptly hopped the curb, 
  grazed a telephone pole, and upset a stack 
  of ash cans. 
  “Watch where you’re goin’!” Long 
  Tom yelled. 
  Renny got the car back into the 
  street, stopped, and they both looked out 
  again. 
  “Who the heck can that be?” Long 
  Tom exploded. 
  That 
  was 
  an 
  airplane, 
  a 
  little 
  streamlined trick which looked cute from that 
  distance. From the manner in which it was 
  swooping back and forth in the heavens, it 
  could out-travel many a professional racing 
  job. 
  The pretty little plane was visible 
  because it was bathed in the glow from a 
  parachute flare. The plane must have 
  dropped the flare directly above the balloon. 
  Little whiskers of fire ran out from the 
  nose of the plane. 
  “Machine gun!” Long Tom grunted. 
  “Riddling 
  our 
  balloon!” 
  Renny 
  boomed. 
  “Well, it’ll make it come down 
  quicker!” 
  The 
  balloon, 
  it 
  appeared, 
  was 
  sinking. The basket swinging beneath the 
  bag was in shadow, so it was impossible to 
  tell what the occupants were doing. 
  Renny 
  and 
  Long 
  Tom 
  drove 
  recklessly down the Waterfront streets, 
  keeping under the bag. It became evident 
  that the balloon was going to fall in the bay, 
  just off Battery Park, on the lower-most end 
  of Manhattan Island. 
  “We gotta find a boat and get out 
  there when they come down!” thundered 
  Renny. 
  They failed to find a boat, excepting 
  a dory, which was padlocked and chained, 
  and anyway, was minus oars. 
  “We’ll swim!” Renny decided. 
  All of Doc Savage’s aids were 
  excellent swimmers. 
  “We don’t want to be under the bag 
  when it hits the water!” warned Long Tom. 
  They 
  might 
  have 
  saved 
  their 
  apprehensions, however, for the basket 
  touched slowly, and the rest of the bag 
  remained aloft for some time. 
  Renny and Long Tom swam to the 
  bag, impulsively grasped the dangling lines, 
  and hauled themselves up. They looked, 
  Renny swinging the beam of a flashlight, and 
  both became very silent. They climbed into 
  the basket, peered around, then jumped out 
  and swam clear as the bag collapsed. 
  “If they had been in there, they’d 
  probably have shot us, anyway,” Renny said 
  gloomily, treading water. 
  “But how’d they get out?” Long Tom 
  snapped. “Where’d they go?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  12 
  “Only one explanation,” Renny said. 
  “Parachutes!” 
  “Parachutes!” Long Tom gritted. “We 
  should’ve kept a spotlight on the balloon!” 
  The 
  little 
  plane 
  circled 
  rapidly 
  overhead, went off down the river, and 
  approached 
  against 
  the 
  wind. 
  It 
  was 
  equipped with floats, and the pilot made a 
  skillful landing. 
  Renny and Long Tom trod water and 
  watched the plane approach. At the first sign 
  of danger, they intended to duck beneath the 
  surface. 
  Pat Savage shoved her attractive 
  head out of the plane’s cabin when the craft 
  was closer and greeted, “Do you boys often 
  go swimming after midnight with all your 
  clothes on?” 
  “Phooey to you!” said Long Tom. 
   
   
  PAT brought her plane alongside, 
  and they climbed aboard.  
  “Where’d they go?” Renny wanted to 
  know. “The two in the balloon, I mean.” 
  “Mystery to me,” said Pat. 
  “Hm-m-m-m.” Renny wrung water out 
  of his coat skirts. “Where’d you get this 
  plane?” 
  “Built it to enter races next summer,” 
  said Pat. 
  Long Tom snapped suddenly, “Look 
  here, Pat! Doc wouldn’t like to have you 
  mixing in this! If Doc were here, he would tell 
  you to clear out.” 
  “And telling,” snapped Pat, “is all the 
  good it would do!” 
  “Look!” Renny grunted suddenly and 
  pointed. “What’s them things?” 
  Two collapsed masses of silk were 
  floating in the water, buoyed up by patches of 
  air imprisoned under the cloth. Parachutes! 
  “That explains how they got out of 
  the balloon,” said Renny disgustedly. “Left it 
  before you dropped those flares!” 
  They 
  gathered 
  the 
  parachutes 
  aboard, aware they might serve as clues. 
  Then Pat taxied her plane up the river. 
  “Kinda 
  head 
  for 
  that 
  pier 
  to 
  starboard,” Long Tom said. 
  “We left Johnny there, guarding a 
  prisoner.” They alighted on the barge and 
  looked about and called. 
  Then they became alarmed. Excited 
  dashing about followed for some time. 
  At 
  last 
  they 
  found 
  Johnny’s 
  somewhat shapeless hat lying in a dark spot. 
  Long Tom picked it up. He dropped it almost 
  instantly, and held his hands out in front of 
  him. 
  “Blood!” he said hoarsely. “On the 
  hat!” 
   
   
  Chapter VI 
  THE TRAP 
   
  GAUNT, incredibly bony Johnny had 
  blood on his hand, too. He was acutely 
  conscious of this, the first thing as he 
  awakened. He was also in a car. He opened 
  his eyes, saw blackness, and something hurt 
  his 
  eyeballs. 
  Blindfolded, 
  of 
  course! 
  Somebody had banged him over the head on 
  the pier, he recalled. 
  “An unpropitious situation,” Johnny 
  said vaguely. 
  “Yep!” said a harsh voice. “He must 
  be the one called Johnny. The one who uses 
  big words.” 
  A man groaned. Johnny reflected 
  that this one who groaned sounded about as 
  he himself felt. 
  “How you comin’, pal?” a voice 
  asked the other sufferer. 
  “I guess I’ll live,” mumbled the man 
  who had groaned. “Say, did you two guys get 
  out of the balloon with parachutes, then 
  come back and get me?” 
  “That’s the idea,” said the voice. “We 
  popped your bony pal, here, on his scholarly 
  head.” 
  “Where we goin’ now?” 
  “To get in touch with Fuzzy,” the 
  other replied. “He should be told that Doc 
  Savage wasn’t as dumb as we figured. Fuzzy 
  can tell the chief, and we’ll get our orders.” 
  Bony Johnny lay perfectly still. He 
  didn’t want them knocking him senseless 
  again. He wanted to stay awake and hear all 
  he could. Maybe he could overhear enough 
  information to explain the mystery of what 
  was happening to the United States navy 
  ships. 
  They rode for a long time. Johnny’s 
  blindfold was removed. He could see 
  suburban streets. 
  “Just yell,” he was told, “and you’ll 
  learn what a dead man feels like.” 
  Johnny didn’t yell. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  13 
  They drove into a neat driveway 
  edged by green shrubbery and leading to a 
  trim bungalow with green shutters and a red 
  tile roof. The shutters were closed. A radio 
  played behind them. The car drove into an 
  attached garage, and Johnny was led up into 
  the house. 
  A snaky-looking man with a growth 
  of dark hair on his person met them. 
  “This is Johnny, one of Doc Savage’s 
  men,” said one of Johnny’s captors. “We 
  thought we’d bring him to you, Fuzzy.” 
  The snaky, hairy man shut off the 
  radio, then yelled at the top of his voice, 
  “What in the hell is this you’re telling me?” 
  The story of what had happened 
  came out in hurried sentences. Serpentine 
  and hirsute Fuzzy heard it through in the 
  manner of a man being told he has 
  inadvertently 
  exposed 
  himself 
  to 
  a 
  contagious disease. 
  When the recital was ended, Fuzzy 
  walked toward the door. 
  “I’m gonna contact the chief and find 
  out what to do about this,” he said. 
   
   
  FUZZY 
  was 
  gone 
  perhaps 
  ten 
  minutes, and came back looking more 
  worried than when he had left. 
  “The chief sure warmed up!” he 
  grunted. 
  Fuzzy turned toward a lean fellow 
  who wore a coal-black hat with the brim 
  turned down all around. 
  “Shade, you get the bread truck 
  ready to roll,” he instructed. “We’re taking this 
  guy with us so as to bait the bronze guy.” 
  “Right you are, Fuzzy,” said “Shade,” 
  and left the room. 
  A few minutes later, the others came 
  from the house, Johnny with them, and got 
  into the truck. Shade drove. The others rode 
  in the rear, and talked. 
  “What’s on the schedule?” a man 
  asked. 
  “Doc Savage, the chief figures, must 
  have learned what was in that radiogram 
  sent by Lieutenant Bowen Toy,” said Fuzzy. 
  “The message said for Savage to go to the 
  Parkview Hotel and look inside a picture of 
  Bowen for something. Well, the bronze guy 
  ain’t had a chance to be there yet, because 
  he’s checking at the place where the ships 
  crashed.” 
  “So what?” 
  “Doc Savage will probably follow the 
  instructions 
  when 
  he’s 
  finished 
  his 
  examination, and when he does, that’ll be the 
  last thing he’ll ever do!” 
  Shade, 
  driving, 
  was 
  given 
  an 
  address. It was a big house, alone in three or 
  four acres of landscaping. The house was of 
  very dark red brick, with very white window 
  frames and a tiny white porch. 
  A lean man with more than his share 
  of nose met them at the door. He wore 
  evening clothes, but looked much too wide 
  awake. He grinned when he saw who they 
  were, opened the door wide and dropped in 
  the crook of one arm a shotgun which he had 
  held behind himself, out of sight. 
  “Where’s Lieber Von Zidney?” asked 
  Fuzzy. 
  “In the library,” said the man who had 
  let them in. 
   
   
  THE library had been filled with 
  books in neat red and green and blue 
  matched sets. The furniture was mission, the 
  style popular when this type of house was 
  the kind of house to build in the suburbs. 
  One man was in the library, seated in 
  a wooden mission chair. He had a bright 
  blanket around long, big legs. His tall, large 
  body was encased in a Chinese robe on 
  which a dragon was about to eat a man on a 
  horse. 
  “Ach!” he exploded irritably. “What is 
  it now? Is it no privacy at all that I get?” 
  “Things are kinda going wrong, Von 
  Zidney,” Fuzzy said. 
  Von Zidney sat up straight and 
  popped his eyes a little. His eyes were baby 
  blue. 
  “Is it bad for me?” he demanded 
  sharply. 
  His hair was reddish, cropped to the 
  skin around the sides. His mouth was very 
  big and filled with small teeth. 
  Fuzzy grunted, “We need India 
  Allison, your secretary.” 
  “Eh?” snapped Von Zidney. “I do not 
  understand.” 
  “India Allison,” said Fuzzy, “is an 
  expert penwoman. We want her to do some 
  forging. Get her.” 
  Von Zidney scowled, then got erect. 
  He was taller by a foot than the tallest man in 
  the room. He banged on a door. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  14 
  “India!” he called. “Our friend Fuzzy 
  and his men are here!” 
  “What do they want?” a sleepy 
  feminine voice asked. 
  “Nothing nice, you may be sure,” Von 
  Zidney said, in a dry voice. 
  The door opened, and a young 
  woman came in. 
  Johnny, who had been brought 
  inside the house, was not an impressionable 
  gentleman where femininity was concerned. 
  But Johnny now emitted a gasp of admiration 
  worthy of the most susceptible youth. 
  The young woman was a knock-out! 
  She had Pat Savage’s figure, almost, except 
  that she tended a little more to nicely 
  rounded curves, whereas Pat was sinewy. 
  She had soft, brown hair and a tremendous 
  wealth of it. She had the most gorgeous eyes 
  Johnny had ever seen. The bony geologist 
  swallowed twice and felt younger than he 
  had in years. 
  “What do you want?” “India” Allison 
  asked softly.  
  Fuzzy did not look at the young 
  woman. None of his men looked at her. 
  Johnny, staring for all he was worth, noted 
  this, and was puzzled. 
  Fuzzy drew a letter from a pocket 
  and said, “This is a letter written by Bowen 
  Toy to his brother Blackstone. We stole it. It 
  is a sample of Bowen’s handwriting.” 
  Fuzzy drew from another pocket a 
  sheet of peculiarly heavy, porous note paper, 
  and grunted, “You’ll use this to write a note 
  on, duplicating Bowen Toy’s handwriting.” 
  “What shall I write?” asked India 
  Allison. 
  Fuzzy said, still not looking at her, 
  “Write for any one who reads the note to go 
  to Captain Blackstone Toy for information 
  about any one who might have been an 
  enemy of Lieutenant Bowen Toy. Then write 
  that the note must be burned immediately. 
  Underline that part about the note being 
  burned.” 
  India 
  Allison 
  took 
  the 
  papers, 
  murmured, “I must be alone to do a good job 
  of copying the handwriting,” and went out. 
  Johnny, looking after India Allison, 
  reflected that she had the sweetest eyes he 
  had ever seen, and that hidden deep in them 
  was the light of an incredible fear. 
  India 
  Allison, 
  who 
  looked 
  like 
  Michelangelo’s idea of an angel, was scared 
  stiff of something. 
   
   
  INDIA ALLISON locked the door 
  through which she had passed. She stood 
  there a moment. She was trembling, and she 
  became very white. 
  She went to a writing desk, turned 
  the light on and examined the note paper 
  closely. 
  “The old trick for eliminating a spy 
  who was about to be caught!” she gasped. 
  She glanced about, as if fearful of 
  being observed. Then she pulled the writing-
  desk light down, so that it bathed only a small 
  area. 
  Outside, Fuzzy called, “Hey! We 
  haven’t a lot of time!” 
  The girl made no answer, and Fuzzy 
  paced impatiently. 
  At last, the young woman came out 
  and extended the bit of thick, porous paper, 
  which now bore writing, and the letter with 
  the sample handwriting. 
  “The chief won’t forget this,” Fuzzy 
  said, taking them. 
  The girl said nothing. Fear was in the 
  back of her soft eyes. 
  They left India Allison and Lieber 
  Von Zidney in the big brick house and drove 
  toward the Parkview Hotel. 
  The Parkview was an imposing block 
  of masonry in the Bay View section of 
  Brooklyn. The mouth of New York Bay and 
  its parade of ships could be viewed from one 
  side and two ends of the hotel. It was in an 
  apartment district. As a hotel, the Parkview 
  flourished by renting apartments to naval 
  officers and their families, because it was not 
  far from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 
  Fuzzy seemed to know what he was 
  doing. He went to an apartment on the fourth 
  floor, the name plate on the door of which 
  read: 
   
  Captain Blackstone Toy, U. S. N. 
   
  Fuzzy used what was evidently a 
  skeleton key and let himself into a sitting 
  room which held, in addition to the usual 
  hotel furniture, some fittings purchased by 
  the occupant. The customary French prints 
  were missing from the walls, and in their 
  place hung personal pictures. 
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  15 
   
   
  Working with speed, Fuzzy lifted 
  down a picture of Lieutenant Bowen Toy. He 
  pulled brads out of the back, and took out the 
  cardboard backing of the picture, disclosing 
  three sheets of typewritten paper. He read 
  these sketchily. 
  “Hell’s bells!” he gulped. “It’s lucky 
  we got these before Doc Savage put his 
  hands on them!” 
  Fuzzy removed from a pocket the 
  sheet of thick, porous note paper on which 
  the girl had written. He placed this where the 
  sheets of typewritten paper had been. 
  He replaced the cardboard picture 
  backing. He hung the picture back on the 
  wall. 
  “That,” he said grimly, “will fix Doc 
  Savage.” 
  “But I thought we were gonna set a 
  trap to croak the bronze guy?” a man asked. 
  “We have,” Fuzzy told him. 
  “Huh?” 
  Fuzzy pointed at the picture. 
  “The writing on that note says to burn 
  it.” He pointed to a fireplace across the room. 
  “There’s a convenient place to burn it.” 
  As an afterthought, he went to the 
  fireplace. It was a gas log. He turned it on, 
  touched a match to it, and adjusted the flame 
  so that it was not too high. 
  “That makes it even simpler,” he 
  said. 
  “I don’t get it,” said the man. “I don’t 
  see any death trap.”  
  Fuzzy chuckled. 
  “That piece of porous note paper is 
  impregnated with a chemical which, when it 
  is burned, releases a gas that will kill a man 
  instantly,” he said. “The minute Doc Savage 
  burns that paper, he will die.” 
   
   
  THEY went down to the street. It was 
  almost dawn. Shade, black hat brim bent 
  down over his eyes, waited behind the 
  bakery truck wheel. 
  He extended a newspaper. 
  “Newsboy came past minute ago,” 
  he said. “I got a paper off him. Thought you 
  might be interested.” 
  Fuzzy took the journal. Headlines 
  were large. 
   
  FOURTH NAVAL DISASTER OF 
  NIGHT. NAVY SUPPLY SHIP 
  CRASHES IN PANAMA CANAL 
  hint of mysterious force driving vessel into 
  locks rumored as navy has fourth disaster of 
  night. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  16 
  “Four!” Fuzzy laughed heartily. “If 
  they only knew what is coming!” 
  They got into the truck. 
  A man glanced anxiously at the 
  apartment house and asked, “Are we gonna 
  hang around and see if the trap gets Doc 
  Savage?” 
  “Hang around and have the bronze 
  guy spot us!” snorted Fuzzy. “Don’t be 
  naïve!” 
  He 
  pronounced 
  it 
  “navy,” 
  then 
  laughed over his own pun. They drove away. 
  A man asked, “What about this fellow 
  Johnny?” 
  “We’ll see how bulletproof he is, as 
  soon as Doc Savage is done for,” Fuzzy said, 
  calmly. 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  INDIA ALLISON 
   
  WHEN Doc Savage approached the 
  Parkview Hotel, morning sun had flushed the 
  sky. A newsboy stood in front of the place, 
  howling headlines. 
  The “newsboy” was perhaps fifty 
  years of age. He was plump, had gray hair 
  and a face that did not look very pinched by 
  care. His clothes were shabby, and he wore 
  glasses with enormous shell rims. 
  Doc Savage bought a paper. He was 
  recognized. 
  “You’re Doc Savage!” the newspaper 
  vender exploded excitedly. “Say, what’s 
  happening to all these battleships?” 
  “Imagine a good many people would 
  like to know that,” Doc told him, and went into 
  the hotel. 
  A hallway directory gave him the 
  number 
  of 
  Captain 
  Blackstone 
  Toy’s 
  apartment. A thin lock-picking probe let him 
  into the apartment. He wore gloves. 
  Doc made a search of the place, 
  found no one. 
  From inside his clothing came a tiny 
  atomizer device with which he blew fine 
  spray over the doorknob. This promptly 
  became crusted with a brownish deposit. 
  Doc went to the picture of Lieutenant 
  Bowen Toy. He sent a spray from the tiny 
  atomizer over parts of the picture. The brown 
  deposit appeared again, not in a smooth film, 
  but in scattered patches. 
  The brown deposit was simply oily 
  film left by human hands, as acted upon by 
  chemical reagents from the atomizer. An 
  infinitesimal oily deposit is left by the touch of 
  almost any human hand. 
  The nature and consistency of the 
  film naturally changes with time. The oil 
  vaporizes, dries up. The less the oily film had 
  vaporized, the more intense the brown 
  deposit. Thus, Doc could judge accurately 
  how long since hands had touched an object. 
  In the present case, he decided that 
  men had been in the apartment not more 
  than half an hour earlier, and had touched 
  the picture. Close examination showed that 
  the picture had been taken down from the 
  wall. There was no dust on it, and there was 
  never an ordinary housekeeper who dusted 
  behind pictures regularly. 
  Doc did not use his bare fingers to 
  remove the brads holding the cardboard 
  backing of the picture. Brads can be 
  poisoned. He used tiny pliers, also taken 
  from inside his clothing. 
  He got the piece of porous note 
  paper, and read it by the leaping flames of 
  the gas fire in the fireplace. 
   
  To whom it may concern: 
  In case of this note being read, 
  something will probably have happened. My 
  brother, Captain Blackstone Toy, will be able 
  to give valuable information on the matter. 
  Please burn this note and examine the 
  ashes. 
  LIEUT. BOWEN Toy. 
   
  Doc Savage gave close attention to 
  the last sentence, the one about burning the 
  note and examining the ashes. His glance 
  went to the fireplace, to the flames leaping 
  merrily within. 
  Doc strode over and touched a 
  corner of the note to the flames. The thing 
  burned rapidly. It gave off much smoke, 
  which curled up around Doc’s face. 
  The man of bronze fell to the floor 
  and lay utterly still. 
   
   
  AN electric clock in the room 
  continued its noise of tiny machinery running. 
  The gas log in the fireplace hissed and its 
  flames sounded windy. 
  The window came up. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  17 
   
  Doc touched a corner of the note to the flames. It gave off 
  much smoke, which curled up around Doc’s face. 
   
  “Oh!” choked a voice back of the 
  window. “Oh!” 
  The owner of the voice came in. It 
  was India Allison. More than ever horror was 
  in her eyes as she flung across the floor and 
  dropped beside Doc Savage. 
  “Why did it work?” she gasped. 
  “What made it overcome you? I thought it 
  was harmless paper?” 
  She reached for Doc Savage, as if to 
  shake him. 
  Doc Savage, moving his metallic 
  hands only a short distance, caught her 
  wrists. 
  India Allison choked. “What—what 
  did—” 
  “It was harmless paper,” Doc Savage 
  said quietly. “You substituted it for their paper 
  impregnated with poison chemicals.” 
  “You knew that!” she gasped. “How?” 
  Doc appeared not to hear her query, 
  and put one of his own. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  18 
  “Why are you here?” he asked. 
  “Listen!” she said rapidly. “When I 
  heard they were afraid of you, I determined 
  to get to you the first chance I could and ask 
  you for help!” 
  Doc got to his feet. The young 
  woman got up, also, and gripped one of his 
  arms tightly with both her hands. 
  “They brought that piece of note 
  paper to me, and I knew it was a death 
  instrument,” she said. “I decided they were 
  going to trap you. They would use such a 
  clever murder method only on some one 
  such as you. So I exchanged a harmless 
  piece of paper for the other one. Then I 
  followed them here.” 
  She crowded closer to the bronze 
  man. 
  “I climbed the fire escape, intending 
  to wait until you came,” she continued. “You 
  were here, and just as I came, I saw you 
  burn the paper.” 
  Doc Savage walked to the window, 
  not because he wanted to see the window, 
  but because he wanted to get away from the 
  disturbing presence of the young woman. 
  There was a fire escape outside the 
  window. The street below was beginning to 
  fill with traffic. 
  “What is your story?” he asked. 
  Exquisitely beautiful India Allison 
  brought her soft presence close again and 
  took hold of his arm. 
  “I’m scared!” she said. “We are 
  menaced by something you can’t see!” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE looked at the hand on 
  his arm, and reflected that he had never seen 
  a more perfectly shaped feminine extremity. 
  “Five weeks ago, it started,” the girl 
  said. “First it was only—boxes and things 
  falling off shelves. Once, a piano upset. 
  Chairs turned over.” 
  She gave the most violent shudder 
  which Doc Savage had ever seen a young 
  woman give, holding onto his arm tightly as 
  she did so. 
  “Then Lieber Von Zidney was seized 
  and—and hurled against a wall and badly 
  bruised by something—something he could 
  not see!” 
  “It sounds rather ghostly,” 
  Doc 
  offered. 
  “You don’t believe me!” she said 
  wearily. “I didn’t expect you to! It’s too 
  fantastic to think there can be a force—
  something 
  invisible—which 
  can 
  seize 
  persons and hurl them about. Or which can 
  grab one’s car and force it off the road, which 
  is what happened to me at one time.” 
  “The navy ships which met disaster 
  last night,” Doc reminded her. “There was 
  talk of some mysterious force, according to 
  the newspapers.” 
  The girl gathered herself. “Two 
  weeks ago, a man with a sawed-off shotgun 
  appeared. He said he was there to protect us 
  against the mysterious attacks, and that we 
  were to stay inside and inform no one of what 
  was happening. The man refused to say who 
  he was, why he was there, or what he was 
  doing. He said he was there to guard us 
  against what he called—a horrible thing.” 
  “I see.” Doc noted the exquisite 
  texture of the skin of the slender hand on his 
  arm. 
  “I am Von Zidney’s ghost writer,” said 
  the girl. “Von Zidney does technical articles 
  for American journals on foreign trade. He is 
  an importer of optical instruments. He is not 
  good with English, and I speak his native 
  language fluently, and can turn his work into 
  English. I am also his secretary.” 
  “Continue, please.” Doc was aware 
  of some of the young woman’s exquisite 
  curves, and of the warm grip she was 
  keeping on his arm. 
  “We had never seen the man who 
  walked in before,” said the girl. “He simply 
  took up his job of guarding us.” 
  “Why?” Doc asked. 
  “I don’t know.” The young woman 
  squeezed Doc’s arm. “And I don’t know why 
  the mysterious attacks were aimed at us in 
  the first place.” 
  Doc Savage reached out and almost 
  patted 
  the 
  young 
  woman’s 
  small, 
  marvelously built hand, almost took it in his 
  own bronze fingers. Then some solidity of 
  thought returned, and he drew in a breath 
  and stepped away, so that the shapely hand 
  slipped from his sleeve. 
  “Know anything else?” he asked, his 
  voice vaguely stirred. 
  “No.” The young woman gave the 
  bronze man a glance which was nothing if 
  not disturbing. 
  “Does Lieber Von Zidney know what 
  it is all about?” Doc persisted. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  19 
  “Not that he had told me,” India 
  Allison said, and looked as if she might get 
  disturbingly close again. 
  “Let’s talk to him!” Doc said hastily, 
  and moved toward the door. 
  The newsboy selling the newspapers 
  with the story of the five mysterious naval 
  disasters of the night was doing a big 
  business in front of the Parkview. If he saw 
  Doc Savage, he gave no sign, and yet he 
  could have hardly helped seeing the bronze 
  man and his enchanting feminine companion 
  enter the car at the curb. 
  Doc Savage stopped his convertible 
  coupé just before it came in sight of the big, 
  blocky house of Lieber Von Zidney. He 
  looked at a near-by clump by bushes. 
  “Monk!” he called. 
  The 
  bushes 
  stirred, 
  and 
  India 
  Allison—she had hold of Doc’s arm again—
  emitted a soft, startled sound which would 
  have been an outcry had Doc not hastily 
  placed a hand over her soft lips. 
  A man had come out of the brush. 
  He looked like exactly the kind of man one 
  should expect to come out of brush. He 
  would weigh in excess of two hundred and 
  fifty pounds. His arms were perceptibly 
  longer than his legs. 
  He had a titanic chest and no hips to 
  speak of, and his mouth was big beyond all 
  sense; his eyes were small and almost lost in 
  pits of gristle, and he was covered with 
  coarse, reddish hairs which looked as if they 
  might be clipped off, straightened out and 
  used by a carpenter for finishing nails. 
  Doc Savage said, “This is one of my 
  five aids, the 
  world-renowned chemist, 
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair.” 
  Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett 
  Mayfair gave the pretty young lady a big grin 
  with a face that was so homely it was, almost 
  unbelievably, pleasant. 
  “Them that ain’t afraid to, calls me 
  Monk, miss,” he said, in a very small voice 
  which sounded as if it belonged to a juvenile. 
  “I’m not afraid of you,” smiled India 
  Allison, and extended a hand. 
   
   
  “MONK” made his grin even bigger. 
  Monk was something of a connoisseur where 
  feminine pulchritude was concerned, and he 
  obviously rated this young woman high. 
  Doc asked, “Monk, has anything 
  happened?” 
   
  "Monk" is the chemist of Doc 
  Savage's little band of fighters. You 
  couldn't tell from looking at him, for he 
  looks more like the missing link, as his 
  companion, Ham, would put it, than 
  anything else. 
  But Monk is a chemist, and a good 
  one. He is also a fighter—and if 
  anything, a better fighter than a chemist. 
  Moreover, he's one of Doc's com-
  panions—and that's enough to stamp 
  any man as the best in manhood! 
   
   
  “Nope,” Monk said, in his small 
  voice. “Lieber Von Zidney and that other guy 
  with the shotgun are still around. Von Zidney 
  is in the house. The other guy is mowing the 
  lawn.” 
  “The man with the shotgun is one of 
  the gang, left there to watch us,” said the girl. 
  “I managed to give him the slip.” Then India 
  Allison gave Monk a sweetly angelic smile, 
  and put her hand lightly on Doc Savage’s 
  sleeve. 
  “Now I see how you knew about my 
  switching a harmless piece of paper for the 
  deadly one!” she said. “But how did you 
  happen to be watching?” 
  Monk glanced at Doc. “All right to tell 
  her?” 
  “No harm,” Doc said. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  20 
  “We’ve 
  known 
  Doc 
  was 
  being 
  watched several days,” Monk explained. 
  “Doc had three men watching the balloon. 
  The other two of us were posted downstairs. 
  The last two was myself and a guy who don’t 
  count, named Ham. Anyway, we trailed that 
  guy Fuzzy. We’ve been on his trail all the 
  time.” 
  “Oh!” said India Allison admiringly. 
  Doc said, “We will talk to Von 
  Zidney.” 
  “But what about the guard?” the girl 
  asked anxiously. 
  “We can sort of collaborate on him,” 
  Monk suggested. 
  They advanced—and were almost 
  immediately passed by a newsboy. He was a 
  gray-haired newsboy, well fed, with an 
  unlined face. 
  “Paper?” he called. “Read all about 
  the mysterious naval disasters.” 
  Doc Savage stood looking after the 
  departing newsboy. 
  “What’s wrong?” Monk asked. 
  “That newsboy was in front of the 
  Parkview Hotel!” Doc said. 
  The newsboy walked around a 
  corner out of sight. 
  “He’s kinda old to be hawking 
  newspapers!” Monk grunted. “I’ll go round 
  him up.” 
  Monk went around the corner where 
  the elderly newsboy had vanished, and was 
  out of sight three or four minutes. He came 
  back with empty hands and a puzzled look. 
  “Gone!” 
  Monk 
  grunted. 
  “Funny, 
  huh?” 
  Monk now whistled softly. There was 
  a stir in the bushes near by, and an animal of 
  remarkable appearance came out of the 
  shrubbery and across the sidewalk. It had 
  elephantine ears, legs of great length, and a 
  snout built for inquiry into remote places. A 
  pig. 
  “Habeas Corpus—my pal,” Monk 
  explained, indicating the pig. 
  Doc said, “We had better see Von 
  Zidney without delay. First, we will have to 
  take care of the guard.” 
   
   
  THE guard had a straw hat pulled 
  over his long nose, and had donned overalls 
  and canvas sneakers, together with the look 
  which a man who doesn’t like work wears 
  when he has to work. He was pushing a lawn 
  mower to which was attached a basket to 
  catch the grass. 
  The basket held the man’s sawed-off 
  shotgun, where he could fall upon it without 
  delay. 
  The 
  man 
  stopped 
  pushing 
  his 
  mowing machine when Monk appeared from 
  the direction of the street. Monk carried his 
  own coat rolled under his arm. 
  “Gotta 
  de 
  old 
  clothes 
  to 
  sell, 
  meester?” asked Monk, almost unintelligibly. 
  “Get the hell offn this place!” yelled 
  the grass mower. 
  Monk, wearing a big idiotic grin at 
  which he was particularly adept, ambled 
  closer. 
  “De Englees me no savvy mucha,” 
  he said. “She no spik wit’ me so good 
  neither. Me, I am buying with ol’ clothes you 
  got? Savvy? Me ol’ clothes feller. Me buy—” 
  But by this time Doc Savage had 
  come out of the lawn shrubbery with the 
  silence of a ghost and had put his trained, 
  corded bronze hands upon the man at the 
  mowing machine. 
  The man never made a sound loud 
  enough to frighten birds out of the near-by 
  bushes before he became senseless from a 
  peculiar pressure which Doc Savage exerted 
  on his spinal nerve centers. 
  “That,” Monk told India Allison, “is 
  what me and Doc call collaboration.” 
  “I think you’re wonderful!” the young 
  woman murmured, and Monk beamed like a 
  cat that had discovered cream in his 
  whiskers. 
  “Stay here,” Doc said, “and watch the 
  prisoner.” 
  “Sure,” Monk agreed, grinning at 
  India Allison. 
  Doc walked toward the house. India 
  Allison stayed behind. 
   
   
  MONK shook the prisoner, got no 
  response, and thus assured that the fellow 
  was senseless, gave his attention to the 
  young woman. 
  India Allison was looking Monk over, 
  apparently 
  with 
  approval. 
  She 
  smiled 
  radiantly. 
  “You’re terribly strong, aren’t you?” 
  she asked. 
  They were not making modest men 
  the day Monk was created. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  21 
  “Sure, I’m strong,” he grinned. “Did 
  you ever see these circus strong men take 
  horseshoes and straighten them out?” 
  “Oh!” gasped India Allison. “Can you 
  do that?” 
  “I invented the trick,” Monk said. 
  India Allison pointed at the house. 
  “Look! Isn’t that something moving?” 
  Monk looked. “I don’t see—” 
  He did not finish, for the simple 
  reason that a good slice of the earth seemed 
  to make sudden contact with the back of his 
  head. 
  The 
  intense 
  blackness 
  of 
  unconsciousness enveloped him as he fell, 
  and he was trying, trying to call out for Doc 
  Savage, and failing. He wanted to tell Doc 
  never to trust any woman, that this young 
  female, with her sweet face and her nice way 
  of looking so flatteringly at a man, had hit him 
  over the head. 
  He did not feel the shock as he hit 
  the lawn. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE reached the house, 
  listened, and heard nothing to indicate a 
  human presence. He went into the big 
  ugliness of the house and walked in gloomy 
  silence, looking for some sign of life, and 
  determining before long that there was none. 
  He used his atomizer. Brown deposit 
  was brought out darkly by the reagent on a 
  side door, indicating the presence of a hand 
  not more than five minutes previously. Doc 
  Savage passed through the door and studied 
  the ground. 
  Doc Savage did unusual things and 
  was obviously a unique personage, but in 
  truth he was much more remarkable an 
  individual than any one suspected. His 
  senses; his faculties, were developed to an 
  almost superhuman degree, thanks to a full 
  two hours of exercises which he had taken 
  each day since childhood. 
  Doc had learned trailing and tracking 
  from some of the world’s masters, and it was 
  not difficult for him to see that one man had 
  come to the side door of the house, and two 
  had gone away. Doc followed the trail of the 
  two. A bent blade of grass, one among 
  hundreds, disturbed dust on the leaves of 
  bushes, dew drops spattered and smeared, 
  showed him the way. 
  The two men had gotten into a car 
  on a side Street. A fresh drop or two of oil 
  from the car was on the paving. 
  Near by, in a clump of bushes, Doc 
  found hidden a lump of newspapers, all very 
  late editions. 
  They were, Doc recalled, the same 
  editions which the elderly “newsboy” had 
  been 
  selling—the 
  “newsboy” 
  who 
  had 
  appeared at the Parkview, then here. 
  Doc walked toward where he had left 
  Monk. 
  Five 
  minutes 
  later, 
  he 
  was 
  completing a search which convinced him 
  Monk and the girl, India Allison, were gone. 
  He had found the spot where Monk had 
  fallen when struck down; Monk’s apish frame 
  had mashed down the grass perceptibly. 
  Doc went to his car and switched on 
  the radio, adjusting the wave band to the 
  short wave which he and his men used for 
  intercommunication. 
  “Ham!” he called into the transmitter 
  microphone. 
   
  "Ham" Brooks, whose mind, whetted by 
  careful legal training, was clever enough 
  to save a whole division in the War, was 
  not able to overcome the weighty 
  evidence piled up against him in a case 
  of stealing hams from the commissary. 
  "Monk" still reminds Ham of that incident, 
  which is about the only thing that can 
  upset the impeccable, waspish Theodore 
  Marley Brooks and his great legal mind. 
  Ham's wit is as sharp as the point of the 
  sword cane he invariably carries. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  22 
  “Ham,” 
  was 
  Brigadier 
  General 
  Theodore Marley Brooks, the remaining 
  member of Doc Savage’s group of five aids. 
  Ham was also the pride of Harvard law 
  school alumni and was frequently nominated 
  by magazines of fashion as the best-dressed 
  man in the United States. 
  “Ham!” 
  Doc 
  called, 
  a 
  rap 
  of 
  imperativeness in his trained voice. 
  Ham had been assigned the task of 
  keeping track of Fuzzy and his gang. Doc 
  had directed Ham to keep in touch by radio 
  at every opportunity. 
  “Ham!” Doc called again. 
  There was no response, nothing to 
  show how Ham was making out with his job 
  of shadowing snaky, hairy Fuzzy and Shade 
  and the rest of the gang which had gaunt 
  Johnny a prisoner. 
   
   
  Chapter VIII 
  THE DEATH PATROL 
   
  LONG, bony, big-worded Johnny 
  was seeking to extract some vague bit of 
  information from his captors. 
  “This 
  dilemma 
  presents 
  a 
  labyrinthine physiognomy,” he murmured. 
  “Truly a cosmorama infinitely—” 
  “Whew!” muttered Shade, from the 
  driver’s compartment. “Have him speak 
  English!” 
  “Shut up!” directed Fuzzy. “We’ll 
  soon be home.” 
  Shortly after this, Shade drove the 
  bread truck up the neat driveway edged by 
  green shrubbery to the trim bungalow with 
  the verdant shutters and tile roof the color of 
  blood. No one got out until the car was in the 
  attached garage. 
  They all unloaded. It was a bit 
  gloomy in the garage. 
  Fuzzy selected a man with a finger 
  and directed, “Useless, you go out and kinda 
  gander around the place, just in case. I ain’t 
  got no reason to think anything is wrong, but 
  it never hurts to be careful—as the rooster 
  said after he flew into the thorn tree.” 
  The designated man went out. 
  Fuzzy led the others inside. He was 
  in an expansive good humor. 
  “Doc Savage will find that note and 
  burn it,” he said. “That’ll be his end!” 
  “I’d watch that dame, India Allison, if 
  I were you,” a man said. 
  “She’s doing what she’s told,” said 
  Fuzzy. “Don’t worry about her.” Fuzzy then 
  directed a man to make some coffee in the 
  kitchen, after which he decided he’d get a 
  late newspaper. He walked out to the street. 
  The newspaper boy who was fifty 
  years old was still there, and Fuzzy bought a 
  paper and made some comments as he read 
  it. 
  “The whole dang navy is what a 
  prissy guy would call ‘in a dither,’” he said. 
  “Boy—are they balled up and wondering 
  what’s coming next!” 
  In the house, Fuzzy laughed aloud, 
  then stopped and looked suddenly sober. 
  “Wonder what they’ll say when 
  Captain Blackstone Toy’s dawn patrol of 
  naval airplanes is destroyed this morning?” 
  He seemed about to elaborate on 
  this, but there was a shout from outside. The 
  man designated as “Useless,” who had been 
  sent to look the grounds over, came 
  slamming back inside. 
  “Shade!” 
  he 
  bawled. 
  “Shade! 
  Something’s got Shade!” 
  The man who had driven the truck 
  was in the room. He looked bewildered. 
  “If anything’s got me, it’s the first time 
  I knew of it!” he snapped. 
  Useless stabbed an arm at him. 
  “This guy ain’t Shade! I found Shade stuck 
  with a sword cane that was lying beside ‘im, 
  and there was dope of some kind on the 
  sword cane’s point! The sword cane only 
  stuck ‘im in the arm, but it made ‘im 
  senseless!” 
   
   
  FOR a matter of ten seconds or so, 
  there was comparative silence. 
  Somebody became choked and gave 
  a loud cough. It was as if he had fired a 
  starting gun. 
  Shade—the fake one—whipped for 
  the nearest window. Some one skidded a 
  chair in his path. He went down, rolled as he 
  fell, hands tearing at his coat. 
  He brought from an armpit a gun like 
  a huge automatic pistol with a drum 
  magazine. Some one hit him with another 
  chair. He yelled loudly and his black hat with 
  the yanked-down brim was knocked off. He 
  lost his queer gun. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  23 
  Johnny looked at the embattled fake 
  Shade and recognized him. 
  “Ham!” 
  Johnny 
  howled. 
  “I’ll 
  be 
  superamalgamated! Ham!”  
  Johnny promptly became a bundle of 
  flailing arms and legs. Two men had kept 
  always close to him, but these had their 
  attention distracted at the moment. Johnny 
  knocked them both down. 
  Fuzzy began jumping up and down 
  like a man having a fit.  
  “Ham is one of Doc Savage’s men!” 
  he squawled. “Ham put Shade out with a 
  sword cane he carried and took Shade’s 
  place and none of us noticed it!” 
  Johnny kicked Fuzzy in the stomach. 
  A gun went off. Ham was striking the faces of 
  two men and trying to kick a third in the 
  midriff. 
  Another gun went off. Chairs were 
  flying. A table came flying across the room 
  and Johnny dodged it. 
  Fuzzy got his breath and squawked, 
  “Get ‘em! Kill ‘em! If they get away, the 
  boss’ll skin us alive!” 
  The uproar grew louder, the action 
  more dizzy. Men were all over the floor. 
  Other men came running in. 
  Johnny and Ham, outnumbered, 
  were seized and held helpless. 
   
   
  FUZZY and his men did nothing but 
  pant for a few moments. 
  “Talk about—a merry-go-round!” one 
  gulped. “These two birds are the ponies’ 
  necks!” 
  “You 
  oughta 
  be 
  thankful—they 
  wasn’t Doc Savage himself!” another puffed. 
  Ham—erstwhile Shade—said loudly 
  and impressively. “You men are trapped! 
  Throw your weapons down, give yourselves 
  up and it will go easier with you!” 
  “Kick his face in!” Fuzzy directed. 
  “He’s bluffing!”  
  Ham was soundly drubbed while 
  they held him. Ham had a high forehead, 
  piercing eyes, and a large orator’s mouth. 
  The piercing eyes were blacked and the 
  orator’s mouth was split in three places. 
  During this excitement, bony Johnny 
  lay flat on his back, his hands behind him 
  and under him, with two men seated on his 
  chest. He writhed about in a peculiar fashion. 
  Johnny asked suddenly and loudly, 
  “Did I hear something said about disaster 
  menacing a squadron of planes under the 
  command of Captain Blackstone Toy?” 
  “Kick his face in!” Fuzzy yelled, 
  pointing at Johnny.  
  In the midst of the drubbing being 
  given 
  to 
  Johnny, 
  hairy 
  Fuzzy 
  heard 
  something. 
  His 
  serpentine 
  aspect 
  was 
  enhanced, now that he was excited. He 
  made a wild series of hissing noises, and 
  finally got silence. 
  “Somebody comin’!” he croaked. 
  “This bird Ham outfoxed us and has probably 
  been keeping Doc Savage posted! This must 
  be Doc Savage comin’!” 
  An automobile moaned up and slid to 
  a stop in the driveway, tires squealing. Fuzzy 
  and his men put their guns and their heads 
  out of windows and examined the car. 
  The car held the man who had been 
  watchman at Lieber Von Zidney’s residence. 
  Also in the car was Lieber Von Zidney 
  himself, the sweet looking girl, India Allison, 
  and a prisoner. 
  The prisoner was apelike Monk. 
  “Well, I hope to be buried at sea!” 
  Fuzzy gulped. “Monk! Say, we’ve got three of 
  Doc Savage’s men! Not a bad score!” 
  Then Fuzzy must have thought of 
  something. He made a series of hissing 
  noises in his wild haste to speak. 
  “This 
  place 
  is 
  dangerous!” 
  he 
  squawled. “This bird Ham has outfoxed us 
  and has probably been keeping Doc Savage 
  posted! 
  Savage 
  may 
  have 
  the 
  place 
  surrounded now! Come on! We’ll blow!” 
  They charged out, hauling their 
  prisoners, and got into their cars and drove 
  wildly out of the grounds, their guns ready. 
  They were agreeably surprised when nothing 
  happened to deter their flight. 
  “What’re we gonna do?” a man 
  asked Fuzzy. 
  “Contact the chief,” Fuzzy growled, 
  “then lie low until Captain Blackstone Toy’s 
  flight of planes is taken care of.” 
  “But what about Doc Savage?” 
  “He’ll never catch up with us now!” 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  DOOMED FLIGHT 
   
  DOC SAVAGE approached the white 
  bungalow 
  with 
  the 
  green 
  shutters 
  unobtrusively in his convertible roadster. The 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  24 
  radio transmitter and receiver in the machine 
  was turned on, and Renny’s bull-like voice 
  was coming out of the receiver speaker. 
  “We’ll be with you in a minute, Doc,” 
  Renny was saying.  
  Doc parked and waited a bit, eyes 
  roving, then got out and crossed the 
  landscaped grounds. He walked slowly, and 
  there was nothing in his manner to show that 
  he was more than ordinarily alert. 
  He wore gloves. He came to the 
  door, opened it and went in. His sensitive 
  ears and remarkably trained nostrils had told 
  him there was no one in the house. 
  The bronze man went over the room 
  rapidly, then went to other rooms. 
  A car drove up outside and a voice 
  called, “Doc!” 
  It was Renny’s thumping tone, and a 
  moment later, Renny came in behind the 
  ready snout of a supermachine pistol. He 
  was trailed by Long Tom, who looked 
  infinitely more unhealthy by daylight than he 
  had at night. 
  “Holy cow!” Renny said, looking 
  around. “Who lives here?” 
  Long Tom grunted, “I thought Monk 
  and Ham would be around!” 
  Then both of them began glancing 
  over their shoulders. 
  Doc saw the glances. 
  “Out with it,” he directed. 
  Renny opened and shut a pair of 
  hands large enough to crack cocoanuts. 
  “It’s—well, 
  we 
  know 
  it’s 
  too 
  dangerous to have anybody—” 
  A voice interrupted from outside, 
  “Where is everybody? Look what I found!” 
  Pat, 
  golden 
  eyes 
  alight, 
  every 
  slender inch of her alive and vibrant and on 
  the trail of excitement, came in. She saw Doc 
  Savage and stopped. 
  “Oh!” she said. “The big bronze day 
  of reckoning again!” 
  Renny jabbed a hand at Pat. “That’s 
  it!” he said. 
  If Doc Savage heard, he gave no 
  sign. 
   
   
  PAT SAVAGE said again, “Look 
  what I found!” and snapped her fingers, as if 
  she were calling a dog. 
  An animal waddled into view. It was 
  a remarkable animal in appearance. If the 
  missing apish chemist, Monk, had been 
  subjected to a reducing process, and shrunk 
  to the height of his own knees, he would 
  have looked remarkably like the animal which 
  now waddled into their presence. 
  “Chemistry!” Long Tom exploded. 
  “Ham’s pet what-is-it!” 
  “I found Chemistry tied to a bush out 
  where nobody could be expected to find 
  him,” Pat explained. 
  “Where’s Ham?” big-fisted Renny 
  demanded. “He probably tied his pet to the 
  bush while he played the part of Shade. But 
  where is he now?” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  said 
  nothing. 
  He 
  seemed 
  to 
  have 
  lost 
  interest 
  in 
  the 
  conversation, and was moving toward the 
  door. He went to the car and came back 
  shortly with a device which might be 
  mistaken for a small old-fashioned magic 
  lantern. 
  “Pull the shades,” he requested. 
  The shades were pulled. It became 
  gloomy in the house. Doc Savage pressed a 
  button on the side of the lanternlike device 
  which he carried. Nothing visible happened. 
  Doc Savage turned the ultra-violet 
  lantern on the floor. Nothing happened in that 
  room. But in the room where Johnny had lain 
  on the floor and squirmed, writing sprang out 
  in an unearthly fluorescent series of lines. 
  “That’s the hen tracks Johnny calls 
  handwriting,” Long Tom offered. 
  It read: 
   
  Some 
  danger 
  menacing 
  plane 
  squadron of Captain Blackstone Toy. Hurry 
  on this. They’ve got both me and Ham. 
   
  “Doc!” Renny roared. “Do you know 
  what airport this Captain Blackstone Toy flies 
  from? Have you looked it up?” 
  “Yes,” Doc said. 
  “Well, hadn’t we better—” 
  “We had,” Doc said. 
   
   
  CAPTAIN BLACKSTONE TOY was a 
  navy man, and he was assigned to a training 
  school temporarily established near New 
  York City. It was the purpose of the school to 
  train flyers for the highly exacting business of 
  landing on the restricted decks of aircraft 
  carriers, to teach them about catapults, and 
  to give their aërobatics and formation flying a 
  final polish. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  25 
  The airport was a large civilian one 
  built during the boom days, and now under 
  lease to the navy. It was approached by a 
  fine concrete road. 
  Doc Savage’s car rolled along the 
  road toward the airport.  
  Pat said for the fourteenth time, 
  “Now look, Doc, where’s your chivalry?” 
  Doc Savage continued a complete 
  silence. 
  He stopped the car when the sentry 
  challenged them at the gate. 
  Pat said, “Doc, your own cousin! You 
  wouldn’t 
  deny 
  her 
  a 
  little 
  innocent 
  excitement?” 
  Doc Savage said, “Renny, keep her 
  out of my sight or some one’s health may 
  suffer.” 
  Renny escorted Pat to the rear, 
  looking very gloomy, as he did when he was 
  tickled at something. 
  Doc Savage talked to the sentry at 
  the gate. It seems to be a rule that military 
  establishments must have a sentry at the 
  gate, although there may not even be a fence 
  around the rest of the place. 
  Reaching into a hip pocket, Doc 
  produced a black case which held, among 
  other things, a document given him by the U. 
  S. navy as a gesture of appreciation for 
  presenting the United States government 
  with a device which would guide a torpedo to 
  any ship afloat within an area of miles, a 
  contrivance that enabled submarines to 
  launch torpedoes that would hit enemy ships 
  without even being aimed at them. The 
  document would do a great many things 
  besides get Doc past a navy sentry. 
  Five minutes later, Doc was talking 
  to the commandant, who was in a dressing 
  robe, rubbing his eyes, it still being early in 
  the morning. 
  “I wish to speak with Captain 
  Blackstone Toy,” Doc said.  
  “He is in the air now with the dawn 
  patrol,” the commandant explained. 
  “Radio Captain Blackstone Toy to 
  return 
  immediately 
  and 
  exercise 
  every 
  possible precaution against danger in any 
  form,” Doc directed. 
  The commandant looked startled, 
  then glanced at the document which Doc had 
  shown the sentry. 
  “Yes, sir!” he said. 
  He gave the necessary orders. 
  A sailor came in with a paper. The 
  commanding officer read it. 
  “Incredible!” he muttered. “Look here, 
  Savage, are you working on this infernal 
  mystery of what is happening to our navy?” 
  “You mean the matter of five 
  destroyers, the aircraft carrier, and the supply 
  ship?” Doc queried. 
  “That’s not all!” the commander 
  yelled. 
   
  “No?” 
  The commander groaned, “More 
  than ten different accidents, all of an utterly 
  mysterious nature, occurred last night! In 
  each case, there was unbelievable talk about 
  a mysterious force or something causing the 
  accidents!” 
  A sailor came to the door and said, 
  “Captain Blackstone Toy’s squad of planes is 
  in sight, sir!” 
   
   
  MODERN fighting ships of the United 
  States navy, the breathtakingly speedy little 
  jobs which operate from plane carriers, are 
  probably the equal of any fighting craft in the 
  world. Captain Blackstone Toy’s dawn patrol 
  had six of them. They flew in close formation. 
  Naval air combat strategists having 
  somewhat abandoned the idea that the 
  fastest fighting planes can be built if only one 
  man is carried, these ships each carried two 
  men, both trained pilots and observers. Each 
  plane was fitted with six machine guns, a 
  rack for bombs, and the latest thing in aërial 
  cameras. 
  “Nice crates, what?” remarked the 
  commandant of the air base. 
  The airport was situated near the 
  sea. The water at this point was deep and 
  always in motion, due to a strong tidal 
  current. 
  Wind direction required that Captain 
  Toy lead his flight in a swing out over the sea 
  to come in properly upon the runways. 
  They were hardly over the sea when 
  something happened. The foremost plane 
  suddenly put its nose down and headed 
  straight for the sea! The others did likewise! 
  The pilots, it could be seen, were 
  doing everything they could to resist! The 
  ships began to spin. One actually leveled out 
  for a short distance, but almost immediately 
  went into another fall. 
  Crash-boat sirens began howling. 
  Doc Savage and his aids managed to spring 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  26 
  aboard one of the crash boats. They 
  crouched in the enclosed cockpit, amid first-
  aid equipment and pumps for removing water 
  from the lungs of drowning aviators, as the 
  boat darted away from the wharf. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy’s plane had 
  been first to start down. It was first to crash. 
  Yet, with what appeared to be marvelous 
  skill, Captain Toy fought it level just above 
  the surface, so that it hit on the fuselage, 
  glanced, hit again, and turned over. 
  An instant later, the other planes 
  were down. They hit hard enough to vanish 
  beneath the surface almost at once. Only two 
  remained on top. They promptly burst into 
  flames. 
  Captain Toy’s ship was one of those 
  that burst into flame. It sank quickly and 
  Captain Toy was carried down, still in the 
  cockpit. 
  Doc Savage, when the crash boat 
  was near enough, dived after Toy’s sinking 
  plane. 
   
   
  THIS water was bitterly cold. It was 
  full of tiny whirls and rushing up-and-down 
  currents, for this was a tide rip so vigorous 
  that it was avoided even by yachtsmen 
  sailing this part of the coast. 
  The moving water tugged at the 
  bronze man, pummeled him. He had to swim 
  violently to reach the sinking plane. 
  The sinking craft was deep now. The 
  streamlined fuselage offered few handholds. 
  Doc reached the observer’s cockpit. It was 
  empty. He hauled himself forward. 
  The other cockpit was occupied. The 
  slide hatch had jammed in some fashion, and 
  the pit’s occupant had been unable to break 
  out. Doc tore at the hatch. 
  The plane was sinking fast. It was 
  down so deep now that there was darkness 
  all around. The pressure had become terrific. 
  Doc’s wrenching got the hatch loose at one 
  corner. The efforts of the man in the cockpit 
  helped. 
  The flyer was about exhausted, 
  probably more than half drowned. In addition, 
  terror seized him, and he grabbed frantically 
  at Doc Savage, as drowning men, however 
  strong their will power, will. 
  Doc held him off without much 
  difficulty, 
  the 
  bronze 
  man’s 
  developed 
  strength making it unnecessary to resort to 
  the usual expedient of knocking the man 
  senseless. 
  “You’ve saved Captain Blackstone 
  Toy!” an ensign yelled as Doc and the other 
  man were hauled aboard a minute later. 
  “Better get him under a pulmotor,” 
  Doc advised. “He took in quite a bit of water.” 
  The crash boat was busy for the next 
  few minutes. All the planes had sunk by now. 
  Some aviators were swimming. One of these 
  drowned before he could be saved. It was 
  necessary to dive for two more. 
  One man was moaning as they 
  hauled him out of the water. 
  “Something seemed to grab my 
  plane—to 
  pull 
  it 
  down!” 
  he 
  gasped 
  hysterically. 
   
   
  HALF 
  an 
  hour 
  later, 
  Captain 
  Blackstone Toy was able to talk. He 
  addressed his first words to Doc Savage. 
  “There is no question but that you 
  saved my life!” he said earnestly. “I hope that 
  I shall never be so ungrateful as to forget 
  that, and I hope that my chance shall come 
  to repay you in whatever measure I can.” 
  Pat, in the background, murmured, 
  “A right nice speech, I call that.” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  asked, 
  “What 
  happened, Toy?” 
  Captain Blackstone Toy became 
  very still on the cot on which he lay. He bit 
  his lips doubtfully. 
  “In the face of being called a liar, I 
  will say that something unseen simply 
  seemed to grab the plane,” he said finally. “I 
  fought the controls. It was no use. I put forth 
  my most Herculean effort just before we 
  struck the water, but although the ship came 
  level, I do not think I could have held it so.” 
  “What, exactly happened to the 
  plane?” Doc persisted. 
  “Some force seemed to seize it!” said 
  Captain Blackstone Toy. 
  Another man offered, “It is exactly 
  such statements that the other disaster 
  survivors make!” 
  There was silence in the hangar 
  where the men were gathered. 
  “What’s happening to the navy?” a 
  man asked hoarsely. 
  “Whatcha mean?” another grunted. 
  “These disasters!” the man said 
  slowly. “What is wrecking these ships?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  27 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  studied 
  Captain 
  Blackstone Toy, then asked, “What do you 
  know about this affair?” 
  Captain Toy pondered, then said, 
  “Nothing.” 
  “I’d like to speak to this man alone,” 
  Doc announced. 
   
   
  Chapter X 
  ZEPHYR! 
   
  THERE was some hesitation, for Doc 
  wore no insignia to show the navy men why 
  any order he gave should be obeyed. The 
  commandant, however, issued a sharp 
  command, and a moment later, Doc was 
  alone with Captain Blackstone Toy. Even Pat 
  was escorted, indignant, outside. 
  Captain Toy was watching Doc 
  Savage. He seemed to read something in the 
  bronze man’s manner. 
  “What’s 
  wrong?” 
  Captain 
  Toy 
  demanded. After a minute, he added, “I can 
  take it!” 
  “Your brother,” Doc Savage said, “is 
  dead.” 
  Captain Toy wet his lips. “I knew it. I 
  got the news last night.” 
  “Before he died, he sent a message 
  to me, asking to get something from behind 
  his picture in your apartment,” Doc Savage 
  added. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy got off the 
  cot. 
  He 
  collapsed 
  almost 
  immediately, 
  holding his head in his hands. 
  “I knew of the stuff behind the 
  picture,” he mumbled. “Didn’t you get it?” 
  “No.” 
  Toy absently picked at his insignia of 
  captain in the navy. 
  “It was a typewritten account of what 
  my brother, Bowen Toy, had overheard, or 
  thought he had overheard,” he said. “Would 
  you care to hear about it?” 
  “Go ahead,” Doc directed. 
  “My brother was visiting me at this 
  naval airport,” said Captain Blackstone Toy. 
  “He chanced to overhear something which 
  led him to believe there was a plot underfoot 
  against the navy.” 
  “Just whom did he overhear?” Doc 
  Savage asked. 
  “It was two mess stewards, little 
  fellows who look like foreigners, that Bowen 
  overheard talking,” said Blackstone Toy. 
  “One steward said: “The preparations have 
  been in the making for years. Now everything 
  is ready. We will wipe out the American navy 
  before we can be stopped. Then our nation 
  will attack.’” 
  Captain Toy paused as if probing in 
  his memory for further details. 
  “My brother heard the other steward 
  answer, ‘Our warships are already off the 
  United States coast ready for the attack.’ The 
  steward had a newspaper when he said that. 
  We did not get a glimpse of the newspaper, 
  so we do not know what foreign navy was 
  meant.” 
  Doc Savage directed, “Show me the 
  stewards who were overheard talking!” 
  Captain Blackstone Toy made a 
  helpless gesture. 
  “They deserted the next day,” he 
  said. “They must have learned my brother 
  and I suspected them.” 
  Doc Savage said quietly, “This is not 
  very much information.” 
  “I know it’s not,” said Toy. “And I’m 
  sorry. I think my brother knew, or had 
  overheard, other things after the incident 
  here at the flying field. Unfortunately, I do not 
  know what he did overhear.” 
  Captain Blackstone Toy was a 
  sturdily built man with lots of chest and jaw, 
  which might or might not mean anything with 
  regard to character. He wore a military 
  uniform, and all military uniforms look rather 
  much alike. His hair was curly, looked as if 
  he used a good grade of hair oil on it. He had 
  eyes which looked somewhat as if they were 
  cast out of file steel. 
  The pause was broken when Doc 
  Savage got up suddenly. He had been 
  standing where his gaze could range through 
  the small side door of the hangar, and sweep 
  a line of bushes which paralleled the flying-
  field edge at some distance. 
  Skulking in the bushes was the 
  elderly newsboy who had haunted the 
  scenes of action thus far. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE barely glimpsed the 
  fellow. The bronze man made no move to 
  show that he was particularly interested. 
  Instead, he strolled to the big outer hangar 
  door, humming under his breath. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  28 
  The humming became louder, and 
  turned into words of some exotic, guttural 
  song in a foreign language. 
  The song was not unmusical, and 
  the interesting quality of it was enhanced by 
  the power and depth of the bronze man’s 
  voice. Then he stopped singing, the song 
  having apparently lost interest, and went 
  back into the hangar. 
  “There is nothing more that you can 
  tell me?” he asked Captain Blackstone Toy.  
  “I have been racking my brain,” said 
  Captain Toy. “There is nothing. And I’m 
  terribly sorry.” 
  He paused and rubbed the palms of 
  his hands on his khaki-breeched thighs, then 
  put out his prominent- jaw. 
  “Look here, Savage! Some kind of 
  devilish organization of spies or sabotage 
  agents from a foreign power has apparently 
  killed my brother! I will do anything in my 
  power to secure vengeance! May I offer my 
  services? May I take your orders until the 
  devils are brought to justice?” 
  Captain 
  Toy 
  looked 
  grimly 
  determined as he waited for Doc’s verdict. 
  There was also a plea in his eyes. 
  “Help is something no one ever has 
  too much of,” Doc Savage said quietly. 
  Which 
  statement 
  would 
  have 
  surprised Renny, Long Tom, Pat and the 
  others who knew Doc Savage well, for the 
  unusual bronze man was noted for his lone-
  wolf manner of doing things. Doc rarely 
  accepted aid from any one outside his circle 
  of acquaintances. 
  “Then I can work with you?” Toy 
  demanded. 
  “Yes.” 
  Then Doc Savage seemed to be 
  waiting for something to happen outside—as 
  in truth he was. 
   
   
  PATRICTA SAVAGE, walking briskly 
  on high heels and looking pleased with 
  herself, came up to big-fisted Renny and 
  invalidish-looking Long Tom. 
  “Didn’t you hear the orders Doc gave 
  you a minute ago?” she demanded. 
  “Huh?” grunted pale Long Tom. 
  “Holy cow!” said Renny. “No! What’d 
  Doc say?” 
  “He gave you orders,” Pat said. “He 
  came to the door of the hangar and sang 
  them in Mayan, that language that only Doc 
  and the rest of our gang speaks. You know, 
  the one you all learned when you had that 
  fantastic affair in the Valley of the Vanished 
  in Central America.” 
  “What were the orders?” Renny 
  thumped. 
  Pat smiled sweetly. “Boys, you 
  should have been close enough to hear the 
  orders when Doc gave them. Of course, Doc 
  is too swell a guy to raise Cain, but you’ll feel 
  bad about it, won’t you?” 
  “Come on!” Renny growled. “What’d 
  Doc want? Out with it!” 
  Pat’s smile grew more sugary. “Look, 
  you two boys be nice and help persuade Doc 
  to let me have a part in this excitement, and 
  I’ll tell you.” 
  “Chiseler!” 
  “Blackmailer!” 
  “No helpee, no tellee.” 
  Long Tom and Renny tried to scowl 
  her down, but had no luck. 
  “All right,” they agreed. 
  “Doc sang in Mayan that there was 
  an elderly man skulking in the bushes near 
  the road,” Pat explained swiftly. “The old 
  fellow has been playing the part of a 
  newsboy, and has appeared often enough so 
  that his actions are suspicious. Doc wants us 
  to get on the other side of the bushes, and 
  grab the old fellow when he’s frightened 
  toward us.” 
  “Come on!” Renny roared. 
  They took up their positions, not so 
  hastily as to attract suspicion, being careful 
  to keep out of sight of the bushes in which 
  lurked the elderly newsboy. 
  They had hardly gotten themselves 
  stationed when Doc Savage came out of the 
  hangar. He was running—straight toward the 
  bushes. 
  “Stop that old newsboy!” Doc yelled. 
  Naturally, the elderly news vender 
  was frightened into flight. He popped out of 
  the 
  bushes, 
  head 
  cocked 
  over 
  one 
  shoulder—and ran straight into Renny’s big 
  hands. 
  What happened next was something 
  that Renny put into his autobiography. 
   
   
  THE old newsboy calmly put two 
  fingers in both of Renny’s ears. An ordinary 
  man 
  could 
  never 
  have 
  done 
  that 
  successfully. But this old fellow was no 
  ordinary man. He was as fast as lightning. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  29 
  Renny squawked. The old man 
  kicked. A thunderbolt seemed to strike Renny 
  in the midriff. Funny lights and things got in 
  his eyeballs, along with pain. 
  The old man jerked away. Renny 
  clutched madly, got hold of a coat. The old 
  man jerked, slipped out of his coat. 
  Renny got a terrific smash on the 
  head. It must have been a fist, but he had 
  never felt a harder fist. And Renny’s 
  experience with fists was not exactly limited. 
  He went down. He was dazed. Ringing filled 
  his head. 
  Through 
  the 
  ringing, 
  he 
  heard 
  smacks and pops and grunts and hisses and 
  frantic scuffing of feet. 
  Once, Pat said, “Why, he’s no 
  gentleman! He’ll hit a lady!” 
  There was more noise, then the 
  racket abruptly ceased. 
  Renny rolled over on his face, got 
  some of the ringing out of his head, and tried 
  to see. The gouging fingers had practically 
  blinded him for the moment. 
  “I’m glad you could hold him!” he 
  said dizzily. 
  “Hold him!” Long Tom yelled. 
  “Yes,” echoed Pat weakly. “Who held 
  him?” 
  Renny 
  recovered 
  some 
  vision, 
  looked about and made a discovery which 
  completely punctured the poor balloon that 
  remained of his vanity. 
  The old newsboy was gone. 
  A car’s motor started in the distance. 
  It went away with great rapidity. 
  “That’s 
  him,” 
  Pat 
  enlightened. 
  “Gone!” 
  Doc Savage came running up. The 
  bronze man had been so far away, that it had 
  been impossible for him to take a hand in the 
  fight. He looked at them. 
  He said nothing. His metallic features 
  did not show the slightest emotion; no 
  accusation, no wrath, no criticism. 
  Pat said gloomily, “I know some 
  people that I wish would raise old Jake when 
  they’re mad.” 
  She squinted at Doc. 
  “Or maybe you’re not human enough 
  to get mad?” she asked. 
  Renny said, “You better quit deviling 
  Doc, or you won’t have no posterity.” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE went over and took 
  from the dazed Renny’s hands the coat 
  which the big-fisted engineer had managed 
  to shuck off the superannuated newsboy. 
  “He was wearing this?” the bronze 
  man asked. 
  “Yeah,” Renny admitted. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  went 
  through 
  the 
  pockets of the dark-gray coat, which was 
  neatly pressed. He brought out a package of 
  gum, a candy bar, a nickel, one penny, and a 
  telegram. He went through the rest of the 
  pockets and found nothing else. 
  “That telegram had better furnish us 
  with something!” Renny thumped. 
  Doc opened the telegram. It was 
  made up of gummed paper teletype strips 
  pasted on a blank, and read: 
   
  LIEBER VON ZIDNEY 
  DAWN GARDENS 
  JAMAICA LONG ISLAND 
  AIRSHIP ZEPHYR IS MAKING A FLIGHT 
  THIS AFTERNOON FROM LAKEHURST 
  STOP EVERYTHING ARRANGED WITH 
  REGARDS TO HER  
  INDIA 
   
  Startled exclamations came from 
  Doc Savage’s aids.  
  “The Zephyr is the navy’s new 
  Zeppelin type airship!” exploded Renny. 
  “Isn’t Lieber Von Zidney the guy who 
  owns the white bungalow with the green 
  shutters—the place where Ham was seized?” 
  Long Tom grunted. 
  “And a girl named India Allison 
  claimed to be his secretary,” Pat said dryly. 
  “Was she good-looking, Doc?” 
  Doc Savage gave an excellent 
  imitation of a deaf man. After a bit, he tapped 
  the telegram, and said, “The fact that the 
  dirigible Zephyr is taking a flight today—” 
  An orderly in a neat uniform trotted 
  up and interrupted, “Mr. Clark Savage, Jr.?” 
  “Right,” Doc admitted. 
  “The secretary of the navy has 
  requested your immediate presence,” said 
  the orderly. He clicked off a salute. “I am 
  asked to advise whether you can grant the 
  request for an interview.” 
  Doc Savage said, “The answer is 
  ‘yes.’” 
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  30 
  Chapter XI 
  SOMETHING TO SELL 
   
  THE incumbent secretary of the 
  United States navy was a not-too-fat well-
  dressed man, with about the proper amount 
  of gray hair for his years. He had a nice 
  manner, a mellow voice and a way of getting 
  what he wanted done without insulting any 
  one or leaving them with the idea that he had 
  been gypped. He was a swell fellow by 
  reputation. 
  He sat at the head of the table. 
  The men who sat around the table 
  were, to all intents and purposes, the United 
  States navy and a good part of the United 
  States government. There were senators and 
  congressmen present, members of a naval 
  appropriations committee. 
  Doc Savage, escorted in by a page, 
  recognized them all and bowed slightly. He 
  did not smile or glad-hand any one, but yet 
  he managed to convey a feeling of good 
  fellowship. 
  He 
  seemed 
  to 
  emanate 
  a 
  completely 
  likeable 
  personality, 
  without 
  making any undue effort to do so. 
  After preliminary introductions, the 
  secretary of the navy took the floor. He 
  addressed his words directly to Doc Savage. 
  “We are calling you here, Savage, to 
  make a request,” he said. “It is an unusual 
  one. This letter will explain it.” 
  He handed over a letter. It was 
  typewritten, all in capital letters. 
   
  SECRETARY OF U. S. NAVY: 
  LAST 
  NIGHT, 
  NUMEROUS 
  DISASTERS BEFELL SHIPS OF YOUR 
  NAVY. 
  WHAT 
  CAUSED 
  THESE 
  DISASTERS IS A MYSTERY TO YOU. 
  THESE 
  DISASTERS 
  WILL 
  CONTINUE. THEY WILL AFFECT CRAFT 
  OF THE U. S. NAVY IN THE AIR AND ON 
  THE SEA. 
  THEY WILL CONTINUE UNTIL A 
  CERTAIN FOREIGN POWER FEELS IT IS 
  SAFE TO ATTACK THE UNITED STATES. 
  THE BEST EFFORTS OF YOUR 
  INTELLIGENCE 
  OFFICERS 
  AND 
  ALL 
  YOUR PRECAUTIONS WILL NOT STOP 
  THE DISASTERS. ONLY ONE LIVING MAN 
  KNOWS HOW TO STOP THEM. 
  THE DISASTERS ARE CAUSED BY 
  AN INFERNAL MACHINE. IT THROWS OUT 
  AN INVISIBLE FIELD OF A PECULIAR 
  NATURE, AND NOTHING ON THE SEA, 
  UNDER IT, OR IN THE AIR, CAN RESIST. 
  I 
  AM 
  THE 
  INVENTOR 
  OF 
  A 
  MACHINE WHICH GENERATES A FIELD 
  OF FORCE NULLIFYING THE ONE WHICH 
  IS CAUSING ALL THE DAMAGE. 
  I WILL TURN THIS NULLIFIER 
  MACHINE OVER TO THE UNITED STATES 
  GOVERNMENT. 
  BUT 
  FIRST, 
  ONE 
  CONDITION MUST BE MET. BEFORE 
  THAT CONDITION IS MET, THERE MAY BE 
  SOME BARGAINING NECESSARY. I WILL 
  NEED AN INTERMEDIARY, A GO-BE-
  TWEEN. 
  I WANT DOC SAVAGE AS MY GO-
  BETWEEN. GET IN TOUCH WITH HIM. IF 
  HE WILL SERVE, PUBLISH THE FACT IN 
  THE NEWSPAPERS. 
  THIS IS NOT A CRANK LETTER. 
  TO PROVE IT IS NOT, I AM GOING TO 
  TELL YOU WHERE THE NEXT DISASTER 
  WILL STRIKE. I HAVE MY 
  AGENTS 
  SHADOWING THE OPERATIVES OF THIS 
  FOREIGN 
  COUNTRY 
  DOING 
  THE 
  DAMAGE, AND I KNOW THEIR PLANS. 
  THE NEXT DISASTER WILL BE TO 
  CAPTAIN BLACKSTONE TOY’S DAWN 
  PATROL OF NAVY PLANES. 
  AUGUST ATLANTA BRAUN. 
   
  The secretary of the navy said, “We 
  thought it a crank letter, until it called the turn 
  on the Toy disaster.” 
  Doc Savage laid the letter down. He 
  said nothing. 
  “Will you serve as intermediary?” he 
  was asked. 
  “There 
  is, 
  naturally, 
  only 
  one 
  answer,” Doc Savage said. “Yes.” 
   
   
  PALLID Long Tom Roberts, the 
  electrical wizard, Pat and Renny met Doc 
  Savage outside the ornate governmental 
  building where the conference had occurred. 
  “I got a feeling things have taken a 
  queer twist,” Long Tom said. 
  “They have,” Doc admitted, and told 
  him about the demand to serve as an 
  intermediary. 
  “Holy cow!” exploded Renny, who 
  had listened. 
  Pat said, “So my famous cousin is 
  going into the brokerage business. Or would 
  you call it agent?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  31 
  They bought a newspaper on the 
  way to the airport to take a plane back to 
  New York. 
  Headlines in the paper indicated that 
  two more U. S. battleships had sunk, for no 
  good reason that could be explained. 
  “Gosh!” grunted Long Tom. “A war 
  would hardly knock off destroyers and 
  battleships that fast!” 
  They rode a regular passenger line 
  plane to Newark airport, and took a taxi from 
  there. Long Tom, a frugal soul, sat in front 
  and grumbled about the expense of taking a 
  taxi. He had once asked half a million dollars 
  to superintend a hydro-electric project in 
  Africa. 
  They bought another newspaper in 
  Manhattan. 
  It said that Doc Savage had been 
  appointed as representative of the U. S. navy 
  in a certain secret mission. 
  When 
  they 
  reached 
  Doc’s 
  skyscraper headquarters, the telephone was 
  ringing. Doc lifted the receiver. 
  “This is August Atlanta Braun,” said a 
  pleasantly robust voice over the wire. “In the 
  street in front of your headquarters, a taxi is 
  waiting. It will look like an ordinary taxi until 
  you notice that a piece of bright-red string is 
  tied to the right rear wheel, the wheel next to 
  the curb. You will get in. The driver will do the 
  rest. No harm will befall you, unless you 
  neglect to come alone.” 
  At the start of the conversation, Doc 
  had switched an amplifier and loudspeaker 
  into the circuit, so that all in the room heard 
  the voice. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy, who was 
  along, exploded, “But you won’t go!” 
  “Of course,” Doc told him quietly. 
  “But it may be a trap!” the naval 
  officer argued. “Probably is!” 
  Doc Savage said, “Clues, leads to 
  what is behind this affair, are too scarce to 
  warrant the exercise of too much discretion.” 
  The man of bronze walked out, and 
  the others, attempting to follow him, found 
  the door locked in some unexpected and 
  mysterious fashion. 
   
   
  THE taxi was like a thousand others, 
  except that it had a red string tied to the 
  spoke of one wheel. Doc Savage walked 
  straight to the machine and got in. Without a 
  word, the driver put the cab in motion. 
  The driver was a lean man. The hair 
  on the back of his neck, below his hackman’s 
  cap, was long, and the skin underneath had 
  a different color. A wig, of course. By 
  reaching forward, Doc could have grabbed 
  the man’s face and turned it around to get a 
  look at it. He did not. 
  They drove southward, then out on 
  Long Island, and to the south shore, which is 
  low and marshy. It was a long drive. The 
  chauffeur said not a word. 
  They got in a little flat-bottomed, 
  canvas-covered boat fitted with an outboard. 
  Doc saw the guide’s face then. 
  It was a face easy to remember. The 
  face was round, but the nose wasn’t, and the 
  ears were big, attached flaps. Doc could not 
  recall ever having seen the man before, and 
  had he, he would have remembered him. 
  The water was shallow. The boat ran 
  rapidly, the driver guiding it with a practiced 
  ease. Noise of the outboard motor frightened 
  up birds. The salt water grass all around 
  them was thick and tall. They saw no 
  humans other than themselves. 
  They came at last to a small 
  seaplane. The wings and fuselage were 
  painted green, and from the air it was 
  doubtful if it would attract attention. It was 
  anchored. Moored to one seaplane float was 
  a tiny outboard racing hull which could 
  probably do fifty miles an hour. 
  On the seaplane wing stood the 
  elderly newsboy. 
  He had changed his clothes, was 
  wearing a pair of greenish coveralls and a 
  neat white helmet, new looking, with the ear 
  flaps turned up. He displayed a big grin. 
  “I’m August Atlanta Braun,” he said. 
  “Are you surprised?”  
  Doc Savage said nothing. 
  “I had better explain some things 
  before I do anything else,” said ex-elderly 
  newsboy 
  August 
  Atlanta 
  Braun, 
  in 
  a 
  pleasantly cultured voice. “I was shadowing 
  our enemies—the gentlemen representing 
  that foreign power which is doing our navy so 
  much 
  damage. 
  They 
  have 
  lady 
  representatives, too, one of whom you met—
  the charming and clinging India Allison. As I 
  say, I was watching the gang, and that is how 
  you happened to see me. Have you any 
  questions to ask about that?” 
  Doc Savage did not speak. 
  “Of course,” said Braun, “I fled when 
  you tried to seize me, because I do not wish 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  32 
  to give up my liberty. Oh, no! You will notice 
  that I have at hand here the means to escape 
  by air or by water. I would not advise you to 
  dive into the water in hope of reaching me 
  before I can do anything about it. Look, and 
  you will see the reason.” 
  Doc had already looked at the water. 
  It was covered with some kind of liquid film 
  which floated on top, and which was not oily. 
  “An 
  acid,” 
  said 
  Braun. 
  “Deadly 
  poisonous. If it gets on your skin, you would 
  die very shortly. So I do not advise you to try 
  to swim to me. You see, I am a very cautious 
  man.” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE said nothing. 
  Braun asked, “Is the navy convinced 
  that a foreign power is really wiping it out?” 
  Doc made no reply. 
  Braun scowled blackly, then twisted 
  his lips into a thin smile and said, “As I said, I 
  am not going to be seized! I have a bone to 
  pick! Indeed I have!” 
  He 
  began 
  to 
  look 
  angry, 
  and 
  apparently what he was thinking about made 
  him angrier and angrier until his jaw was out, 
  his lips were off his teeth. He looked ready to 
  spit sulphur. 
  “A year ago, I took my invention to 
  the United States government!” he yelled. “I 
  offered it to them free! Did they take it? No! 
  I’ll say they didn’t! Instead, an incompetent 
  nincompoop of a clerk insulted me! The nitwit 
  as much as said I was a crank, a nut! 
  “My dear Doc Savage, they will pay 
  for that. Now that they need my invention, 
  now that they have to have it, they will pay 
  through 
  their 
  dear 
  sweet 
  nostrils 
  for 
  insinuating I was a goof!” 
  He was all but shaking in his rage. 
  He stopped yelling and began cursing Uncle 
  Sam. 
  “My country, is it!” he squawled. 
  “Damn my soul, they’ll pay me for being a 
  patriot! They’ll pay me one hundred million 
  dollars!” 
  Doc Savage spoke for the first time. 
  One word. 
  “What?” 
  “One hundred million dollars!” August 
  Atlanta Braun howled. “One hundred million 
  dollars! In cash! In French, Italian, English 
  and German money, as well as small United 
  States greenbacks. You will remember that, 
  please! They may even include some 
  Japanese yen and Argentine pesos. I intend 
  to travel a bit after I am paid off. And, 
  anyway, it would be almost impossible to 
  pass one hundred million dollars in American 
  money.” 
  “You seem to think you will get it,” 
  Doc Savage said. 
  “I know I will,” Braun said more 
  quietly. “Otherwise, the United States navy 
  will be destroyed. I have a tiny machine 
  which will save the navy. I invented it. When I 
  offered to give it to the navy, knowing what 
  was coming, they laughed at me as a crank. 
  Now they will pay me one hundred million 
  dollars. Go tell them that!” 
  Doc Savage was silent. 
  “Go tell them that!” Braun howled. “I 
  will get in touch with you and find out what 
  they say!” 
  Doc Savage said quietly, “I can tell 
  you right now what they will say.” 
  “What?” 
  “That you are foolish to think the 
  United States government can be black-
  jacked in any such manner as this.” 
  August Atlanta Braun laughed loudly 
  and nastily. 
  “Before long, the United States will 
  awaken to the realization that a hundred 
  million is a cheap price to pay for the safety 
  of the United States,” he said. “This foreign 
  nation is afraid to attack us if our navy is 
  intact.” 
  “What nation is it?” Doc asked. 
  Braun laughed again. “You probably 
  have a good idea. I am not going to say 
  anything. After all, I don’t give a damn if the 
  nation does go on sinking United States navy 
  battleships. I’m not very patriotic where one 
  hundred million dollars is concerned.” 
  “Obviously,” Doc agreed. 
  “This concludes our interview,” said 
  Braun. “You will return alone. No doubt, you 
  can run an outboard motor boat.” 
  The pilot of the motor boat climbed 
  off onto the pontoon of the plane. Doc had no 
  chance to make a move. Braun had drawn a 
  gun. 
  “I’ll get in touch with you later,” said 
  Braun again. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE did not move for 
  some time, made no gesture at departing. 
  “What about the Zephyr?” he asked 
  suddenly. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  33 
  Braun was startled. It showed on his 
  face. But he shrugged. 
  “Nothing.” 
  “You are interested in it, Braun!” 
  Braun looked puzzled for some 
  moments before a light of understanding 
  came upon his face. 
  “The coat your man Renny snatched 
  off me!” he said loudly. “Of course, it had that 
  message about the Zephyr from one of the 
  foreign operatives to their chief. I filched that 
  telegram from the foreign crowd. It interests 
  you?” 
  “It does.” 
  Doc 
  waited, 
  still 
  looking 
  unconcerned, and showing no sign of 
  departing. A gull, unafraid of men, dipped 
  close to pick up something floating in the film 
  on the water. The gull’s beak made a little 
  splash dipping beneath the surface. The bird 
  did not fly far before it turned, end over end, 
  squawling, and fell dead on the water. 
  “You see,” said Braun, “the stuff on 
  the water is quite potent.” 
  Doc knew it was. He went away, and 
  the minute he was able to reach a 
  coastguard station, planes were in the air 
  and boats were speeding into the salt marsh. 
  But August Atlanta Braun had made 
  his get-away. 
  Doc Savage was joined by his aids 
  and Captain Blackstone Toy. 
  “The navy department has assigned 
  me to assist you in any way I can,” said 
  Captain Toy. “That takes care of the official 
  end of it.” 
  Big-fisted Renny had a newspaper, a 
  late edition. 
  “Look here, Doc,” he said. “This 
  came out while you were conferring with 
  August Atlanta Braun.” 
  Doc looked at the headlines: 
   
  NAVY ONCE REFUSED TO CONSIDER 
  “NULLIFIER” MACHINE WHICH 
  WOULD SAVE SHIPS NOW. 
   
  Inventor with grudge now wants 
  hundred million. Demands huge 
  price for device. 
   
  There was a story under that, 
  obviously mailed to the newspapers before 
  Doc Savage went to the marsh meeting with 
  August Atlanta Braun. 
  The remarkable part about this story 
  was that it stated the inventor, Braun, was 
  sure the navy would refuse to pay a hundred 
  million for salvation. 
  Braun, in his statement, insinuated 
  the navy was just dunce enough to lose all of 
  its ships rather than pay the sum, which was 
  only equal to the cost of a few battleships. 
  “That kinda puts the navy in a bad 
  light,” Renny said thoughtfully. “The public 
  will give ‘em hell for turnin’ down this guy’s 
  invention, and maybe a lot of people will 
  secretly kinda sympathize with this Braun 
  lug. Nobody likes to be called a nut.” 
  Long Tom demanded gloomily of 
  Doc, “Any sign of Ham, Monk or Johnny?” 
  “No sign,” Doc said. 
  They drove into New York City. 
   
   
  THEY were fired on in front of Doc 
  Savage’s skyscraper headquarters. The firing 
  was done with a high-powered rifle, evidently 
  equipped with telescopic sights and a 
  machine rest, for the spot from which the 
  bullets came was proved to be a full half mile 
  distant. 
  Doc and his party conducted a brisk 
  search, aided by policemen, but the snipers 
  had taken flight. Descriptions, however, by 
  people who had seen them, indicated beyond 
  any shadow of a doubt that they were Fuzzy 
  and his gang. 
  Finally, Doc and the others entered 
  the skyscraper aërie on the eighty-sixth floor. 
  Pat looked around curiously. 
  “The windows,” she said, “look kind 
  of different, somehow. Is it some new kind of 
  bulletproof glass you’ve put in? About time!” 
  “There’s been bulletproof glass in 
  these windows for a long time,” pale Long 
  Tom reminded her. “Ever since some guys 
  on the tower of an unfinished skyscraper 
  tried to shoot Doc, almost three and a half 
  years ago.” 
  “Then 
  what’s 
  wrong?” 
  Pat 
  demanded. “The windows look different.” 
  “They’re a new type of glass.” Long 
  Tom explained. “You can see out, but you 
  can’t see in. In other words, it’s one-way 
  glass.” 
  “Do tell!” said Pat. “Who invented it?” 
  “I dunno,” Long Tom told her. “But 
  Doc did a lot of work to perfect it, and 
  between you and me, he’s got two factories 
  working twenty-four hours a day making it. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  34 
  It’ll be a big hit for windows in houses. And 
  it’ll make plenty of money—” 
  Doc Savage said, “We have one clue 
  to work on in this affair. Only one.” 
  “What?” rumbled Renny. 
  “The new dirigible, Zephyr,” Doc 
  said. “We know that the enemy was 
  interested in knowing when it was to make a 
  flight.” 
  Captain Blackstone Toy said, “I 
  advance the idea that we be aboard when 
  the Zephyr takes off this afternoon.” 
  “My plan,” Doc Savage said. “As 
  soon as we telephone August Atlanta 
  Braun’s ultimatum to Washington, we will 
  leave for Lakehurst.” 
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  THE BIG DEATH 
   
  BATTLESHIPS 
  are 
  popularly 
  supposed to be the most expensive war 
  machine put together by modern man, but 
  the Zephyr had cost more than any battleship 
  afloat. Not all of the millions charged against 
  her cost sheet had gone into actual materials 
  and labor in her construction. She was the 
  product of years of experimenting, and 
  experimenting with dirigibles is expensive. 
  The Zephyr was longer than a 
  battleship, and she was the attempt of the 
  United States of America to show the rest of 
  the world that lighter-than-air craft are 
  practical. 
  If the Zephyr crashed any time within 
  the next year or two, aviation as centered 
  upon lighter-than-air craft would receive a 
  setback from which it was just possible it 
  might not recover. 
  The Zephyr was all metal. There was 
  not a stitch of fabric in her. She was so 
  strong that the makers claimed she could fall 
  a mile and not be damaged so badly that she 
  could not fly. There was a catch to that, of 
  course. A ship as light for her size as the 
  Zephyr could not fall very fast. 
  The Zephyr had accommodations 
  equal to those aboard a liner. She could 
  carry enough poison-gas bombs to kill every 
  man, woman and child in any city in the 
  world, and she could fly so high and so 
  silently that there was only a chance in a 
  thousand of enemy war planes finding her. 
  She carried enough machine guns to 
  whip a flotilla of fighting planes, and 
  thousands of machine-gun bullets through 
  her vitals would not bring her to the ground, 
  because she was made like a honeycomb, 
  with countless cells. The only way she could 
  be vanquished was by being blown apart by 
  a bomb, and blowing her apart would not be 
  easy, because she could fly as fast as some 
  war planes. 
  She was the marvel of her age. Who 
  had designed her, the world did not know. 
  The navy department had announced that 
  the name of the designer was being kept a 
  secret so that his life would not be in danger, 
  since any enemy nation contemplating war 
  on the United States would naturally seek to 
  eliminate a designer of such genius. 
  The truth was that Doc Savage 
  wanted to avoid publicity wherever possible, 
  and had requested that his connection with 
  the designing of the ship be kept a secret. 
  “She’s a darb, this Zephyr!” said big-
  fisted Renny, as they got out of a plane 
  which had landed them at the Lakehurst 
  dirigible airport. 
  Doc Savage said nothing. Neither did 
  Pat, who was wondering when she would be 
  requested to clear out. Long Tom and 
  Captain Blackstone Toy were gloomily silent. 
  Captain Toy wore a black band about his 
  uniform sleeve in memory of his brother. 
  Doc’s flake gold eyes came to rest 
  on Pat, who was getting out of the plane. Doc 
  lowered a large suitcase he was carrying. 
  “You needn’t trouble to land,” he told 
  Pat. “You are taking our plane back to New 
  York. The Zephyr, you know, is flying to 
  Roosevelt Field, on Long Island. You can 
  meet us there.” 
  Pat put out a nice-looking jaw. “I’m 
  going along!” 
  “Do you ever get tired of persistently 
  trying to get yourself killed?” Doc asked 
  wearily. 
  “No!” Pat said. “Neither do you!” 
  Big-fisted Renny put in gingerly, 
  “Doc, you know Pat has been through some 
  pretty fast action in the past, and has always 
  come out all right. If she’s so set on coming 
  along, why not—” 
  “So she worked some trick to get you 
  to take her part?” Doc said abruptly. 
  Renny blinked. “How’d you know 
  that?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  35 
  “Every one knows Pat,” Doc said. 
  “The only way of getting rid of her is to tie her 
  up.” 
  “Or marry her off to somebody!” Long 
  Tom put in. 
  “That would do no good,” Doc told 
  him. “The husband isn’t built who could keep 
  Pat at home when there’s excitement 
  around.” 
  Two hundred yards away, big ground 
  tractors backed the Zephyr out of her 
  revolving hangar—revolving so that the 
  mouth could always be made to face away 
  from the wind. 
   
   
  HIGH up in the body of the dirigible, 
  several men lay and swore at their luck. 
  “Of all the damn things that had to 
  happen!” one groaned. 
  “To have this Doc Savage show up!” 
  One man yanked at the brim of his 
  navy cap, as if anxious to get it over his eyes. 
  The man was Shade. 
  Fuzzy, who lay near by him, said, 
  “Don’t let your pants get full of ants. This will 
  go through all right.” 
  Fuzzy looked more snaky and hairy 
  than, ever in his uniform of a naval officer 
  attached to aviation. He glared at his men. 
  “Don’t you let this bronze guy get you 
  all iced up!” he gritted. “The boss has given 
  his orders, and I, by Harry, am going to see 
  ‘em carried out! Doc Savage and his crowd 
  won’t come back from this flight!” 
  A man tried a laugh, to show that he 
  was confident and wasn’t at all scared. The 
  laugh sounded something like the last noise 
  a small cat makes when caught by a big 
  bulldog. 
  “Gleeps!” muttered Fuzzy. “If you 
  gotta make a noise like that, do it some other 
  time. Don’t get scared. Doc Savage, in a few 
  hours, will be as finished as this dirigible that 
  the world thinks is such a nifty!” 
  “Doc Savage is to be killed,” a man 
  said. “It’s simple enough. He’ll get his when 
  the dirigible is destroyed.” 
  “That’s 
  the 
  talk,” 
  said 
  Fuzzy. 
  “Everybody will lay low here. We managed to 
  get aboard by pretending we were inspectors 
  making a final exam, and stowed away. They 
  won’t be using these catwalks, so we’re safe 
  until we get ready to spring the job.” 
  They prepared to wait. 
  Down on the ground, Pat had settled 
  things, at least to her own satisfaction, by 
  putting her nose in the air and walking to the 
  neat little gangplank that led up into the 
  dirigible cabin. 
  Doc, Renny, Long Tom and Captain 
  Blackstone Toy followed Pat to the ship. Doc 
  carried his big suitcase. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  stopped 
  the 
  commandant of the airship. 
  “I am conducting an experiment,” he 
  said. “You have orders to coöperate with me 
  as long as it will not endanger the safety of 
  the airship, have you not?” 
  “Yes, 
  sir,” 
  said 
  the 
  Zephyr 
  commander. 
  “I am experimenting with the malady 
  known as airsickness,” Doc said. “As you 
  know, a cure for airsickness—a sure cure, 
  effective on every one—has not yet been 
  found.” 
  “Yes, sir,” said the commandant, 
  puzzled. 
  “I want every man aboard the airship 
  to take a spoonful of this preparation which I 
  have with me,” Doc said. “Have your men 
  line up and pass by for their spoonful of 
  medicine, and have your crew list checked so 
  that no one will be missed.” 
  “It’s unusual,” said the bewildered 
  commandant. “But the admiral said I was to 
  do as you wished.” 
   
   
  THERE 
  were 
  many 
  humorous 
  comments from aërial sailors who did not 
  care for the taste of the concoction which 
  Doc fed them. 
  “Phew-w-w!” 
  complained 
  one 
  bluejacket. “That stuff must have been 
  brewed by a witch!” 
  “Or by a marine!” 
  The business of dosing the dirigible 
  crew delayed the takeoff almost an hour, but 
  finally the Zephyr took to the air. She lifted 
  rapidly, driven forward by her multiple 
  motors, so that much of the lift, or planing 
  effect, of the air was taken advantage of. 
  The shape of the gas bag of the 
  Zephyr, as a matter of fact, was an 
  innovation suggested by Doc Savage, in his 
  capacity of anonymous designer, to take 
  advantage of the lift secured by a wing of 
  aërofoil design. 
  The giant gas bag, instead of being 
  cigar-shaped—the conventional style—had 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  36 
  more the contour of an airplane wing cross-
  section. 
  The Zephyr’s flight was to take her 
  out over the Atlantic, the object being to fly 
  extremely high and test the efficiency of an 
  intricate device which was intended to locate, 
  in absolute darkness or the most intense fog, 
  any enemy plane, airship, or even a 
  battleship or submarine, in the vicinity. 
  When the corrugated surface of the 
  Atlantic was below, Doc Savage picked up 
  the suitcase which he had brought aboard. 
  He climbed a spidery, extremely lightweight 
  staircase to the catwalk, which ran from the 
  bow to stern of the dirigible. 
  Renny, Pat and Long Tom, looking 
  interested, followed the bronze man. They 
  knew Doc well enough to know that 
  something was about to happen. 
   
   
  DOC carried his suitcase to the nose 
  of the dirigible, and stopped near the intakes 
  of the big ventilators. These ventilators kept 
  the catwalks and runways inside the giant 
  gas bag free of seepage gas which might 
  overcome a man at an inopportune moment. 
  Doc Savage opened the suitcase. It 
  held four metal tube containers fitted with 
  petcocks. Doc took these tubes out. 
  “All of you took that concoction which 
  was given the crew before departure?” he 
  asked his aids. 
  Renny, Long Tom and Captain Toy 
  nodded. 
  “I didn’t,” Pat said. “I didn’t care for 
  its taste! Any time I down something as rank 
  as that stuff, I’ve got to know the reason 
  first!” 
  Doc said, “This must be your 
  contrary day, Pat. Fortunately, the results of 
  your not taking the concoction, while not 
  pleasant, will not necessarily be fatal.” 
  Pat snapped, “Say, what do you 
  mean?” 
  Without answering, Doc held one of 
  the metal tubes inside a ventilator intake and 
  opened a petcock. There was a hissing, and 
  a gas came out of the tube container. The 
  vapor was blue in color. 
  The rush of air carried it through the 
  ventilating ducts. In a few moments, it would 
  penetrate throughout the dirigible. 
  Pat Savage happened to be standing 
  where some of the gas enveloped her. She 
  had a suspicion all was not going to be well, 
  and she held her breath as long as she 
  could. But at last, she had to inhale. 
  An incredulous expression came 
  over her face. 
  “Oh!” she gasped. “Ha, ha, ha! I don’t 
  see—ha, ha!—what—ha!—ha!” 
  She went off into a fit of laughter. 
  Big-fisted Renny shook his head 
  slowly. 
  “Pat has her moments, but I never 
  thought she’d go off this way,” he said 
  gloomily. “There’s nothing to laugh at around 
  here, what with the navy being wrecked and 
  Johnny, Monk and Ham maybe dead.” 
  “Ha!—ha!” gurgled Pat. “I’m not—
  ha!—ha!—laughing—ha!” 
  Doc Savage said, “It’s the gas.” 
  “The what?” Renny thumped. 
  “A new type of laughing gas,” Doc 
  answered. “It’s harmless, but it throws the 
  victims into paroxysms of laughter which they 
  cannot help. It affects the muscles and 
  nerves of the throat.” 
  “But 
  I’m 
  not 
  affected!” 
  Renny 
  boomed. 
  “The strong-tasting liquid given you 
  and the crew was an antidote,” Doc 
  explained. “Had Pat taken hers, she would 
  not be affected.” 
  “Ha!—ha!” gurgled Pat. “I hope—
  ha!—ha!—somebody hangs for this!” 
  “But I don’t get the idea!” Long Tom 
  exclaimed. 
  “If there are stowaways aboard,” Doc 
  pointed out, “we can now hear them.” 
   
   
  AT Doc’s command, the engines, the 
  generators, the air compressors and other 
  machines aboard the Zephyr were stopped. 
  Squads of sailors began searching the 
  catwalks and inspecting tunnels, stopping 
  frequently to listen for laughter. 
  They heard it before long, audible 
  mirth. Cackling, whooping, gagging mirth. 
  Armed sailors made for the sounds, which 
  were aft, near the stern. 
  “Them guys are what you might call 
  laughing themselves into a hell of a pickle!” 
  said a bluejacket. 
  “Laughing themselves to death, if 
  they’re the ones who have been sinking navy 
  ships!” grated another. 
  “They couldn’t have sunk all the 
  ships,” corrected the first. “Some sank on the 
  Pacific coast, thousands of miles from here.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  37 
  Doc Savage was in the main control 
  room when word came to him that laughter 
  had been heard. The Zephyr was equipped 
  with telephonic communication to all her 
  remote portions. 
  “Commander,” Doc Savage said. 
  “Keep every bit of machinery aboard stopped 
  until you hear from me. If necessary to spend 
  ballast, do so with the hand controls. Do the 
  same if gas must be valved off.” 
  “Yes, sir,” said the commandant, 
  looking bewildered. 
  Doc Savage ran toward the stern, 
  followed by Renny, Long Tom and Captain 
  Toy. They overhauled the searching sailors. 
  “The stowaways are right ahead,” 
  said the man in charge of the searchers. 
  “Hear them laughing.” 
  They could be heard. Fuzzy and 
  some others. They sounded as if they were 
  having a high, hilarious time of it, and they 
  didn’t want to. 
  Doc went forward. The navy men 
  followed him. 
  The catwalks were equipped with 
  loud-speakers at intervals, making it simpler 
  for orders to be given. The loud-speakers 
  now bellowed out an alarm. 
   “Men are leaping out of the stern 
  with parachutes!” 
  Doc Savage whipped to a lookout 
  port, from which a view could be secured 
  downward. Men, attached to white para-
  chutes, were falling. Fuzzy and his gang! 
  The 
  men 
  swinging 
  from 
  the 
  parachutes all laughed heartily as they fell. 
  But they did not look happy. 
  “They knew they were trapped!” pale 
  Long Tom snapped. “They’re trying to make 
  a get-away! There’s a plane. They must 
  expect it to pick them up!” 
  The plane flew close to the sea. To 
  look as large as it did from this height, it must 
  be a large craft. It swung over toward the 
  men descending by parachute. It was a 
  seaplane. 
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  CRACK-UP! 
   
  DOC SAVAGE listened, and there 
  was no sound of laughter, which meant the 
  entire gang had quitted the Zephyr by 
  parachute. The bronze man whirled and 
  whipped along the catwalks to the mid-ship 
  portion. These catwalks were roomy, unlike 
  the old ones on such earlier crafts as the 
  Macon and the Los Angeles. 
  He came to the enclosed hangars in 
  the belly of the airship. Three of them, one 
  behind the other, each holding a small 
  pursuit plane. 
  Doc took a seat in one of the planes, 
  touched the starting controls, and the motor 
  began turning over. He reached up and 
  grasped a lever. 
  “You had better follow in the other 
  two defense planes,” he called to his men. 
  “There are only these three planes aboard.” 
  The Zephyr was able to carry almost 
  a score of small fighting planes, but these 
  were her wartime complement, and never 
  carried in peace time, except during war 
  maneuvers. On ordinary cruises, she carried 
  but these three. 
  Doc 
  hauled 
  the 
  lever. 
  Efficient 
  machinery clicked, and the plane was 
  suddenly plunging down toward the sea. The 
  bronze man let it dive for some distance, so 
  as to get clear of the dirigible underbody. 
  Then he came back on the stick. 
  Both wings tore off! 
  There was nothing particularly violent 
  about its happening. Simply a squeal of pins 
  sheared through, and the wings, which were 
  of the modern detachable type, came away 
  from the fittings and fluttered away like big 
  leaves in a wind overhead. 
  Doc did not look at the sea, or at the 
  loose wings. He heaved up in the cockpit. 
  The cushion was a seat type parachute. But 
  a moment was required to swing it out. He 
  did not buckle on the harness, but depended 
  on the cabled strength in his hands to hang 
  on. He plucked the ripcord. 
  The parachute opened with a pop! 
  and a ripple—the ripple being torn strips of 
  ‘chute fabric. For the silken lobe had been 
  ripped by a knife! 
   
   
  DOC let go the harness. There was 
  nothing else left to do. Not enough of the 
  parachute remained to break his fall. 
  He turned slowly as he fell and 
  fought at his coat. The sea had been nearly a 
  mile and a half below at the start of his fall. It 
  was much nearer now. 
  It is possible for a man falling free in 
  the air to control himself by kicking, by 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  38 
  thrusting out his arms, by flipping them about 
  violently. Doc kept himself falling feet 
  downward. At the same time, he removed his 
  coat. 
  He was wearing, under his coat, a 
  flat parachute of unusual light and strong 
  chemical-product fabrikoid, a filmy stuff 
  infinitely stronger and lighter than the best of 
  silk. This fabrikoid had been perfected by the 
  chemical genius, the apish Monk. 
  The parachute of fabrikoid came 
  near opening too late. Doc hit the water with 
  more force than he relished; it was barely 
  possible that an individual whose physical 
  strength was less might have died from the 
  shock. 
  The bronze man went very deep, 
  and when he had gained the top, he spouted 
  some water and lay still on the surface, not 
  entirely 
  knocked 
  out, 
  but 
  also 
  not 
  enthusiastic about immediate activity. 
  His flake gold eyes were open. He 
  could see the dirigible. Trapdoors to the 
  plane compartments were open, but the 
  other two planes had not been released. 
  Renny and Long Tom must have seen the 
  wings come off Doc’s ship in time to stay 
  themselves from taking a chance in the other 
  crafts. 
  Doc, lifted on a wave, saw one wing 
  of his plane floating near by, and swam to it. 
  The bolts in the fittings which held 
  the wings to the fuselage were clever 
  imitations made out of lead. The plane had 
  been tampered with. 
  Doc swam toward the spot where 
  Fuzzy and his gang would have fallen with 
  their parachutes. There was not much wind, 
  but there had evidently been a blow not long 
  ago, for the swell was considerable. It was 
  like swimming up and down small hills. 
  The big seaplane was now landing to 
  pick up Fuzzy and his gang. 
  Savage was fast in the water. But he 
  was not fast enough to reach the plane 
  before it got Fuzzy and the other men 
  aboard, and took to the air. The unknown 
  pilot did some nice flying. 
  Doc, 
  watching 
  the 
  tremendous 
  waves, somewhat doubted if he himself could 
  be sure of getting a plane off such a sea. The 
  plane banked, came toward him. Sput!—
  sput!-—sput!—sput!—and 
  a 
  series 
  of 
  splashes spouted around the bronze man. 
  They might have been raindrops, falling hard 
  and fast. 
  Doc sank with great speed. He had 
  been shot at from planes with machine guns 
  before. 
  Doc swam down, and also to one 
  side. He swam violently. They could see him 
  from the plane, of course. And if they had 
  bombs—  
  They had. A great weight seemed to 
  compress 
  the 
  sea. 
  Despite 
  his 
  best 
  resistance, air was driven from Doc’s lungs, 
  and he felt all but crushed. His head 
  pounded; strange lights came and went. He 
  stroked weakly to the surface. 
  A few drops of water were still falling 
  back. The bomb had expended most of its 
  force upward. The plane was circling, coming 
  back. Machine-gun slugs from it, badly 
  aimed, fell into the sea, not close enough to 
  worry about. 
  A fish came to the surface and 
  floated, white stomach uppermost. It had 
  been killed by the explosion. Doc’s giant 
  frame ached from head to foot. 
  Then 
  something 
  happened 
  up 
  above. The giant dirigible Zephyr began a 
  steady, awful dive toward the sea—all the 
  camouflaged hundreds of feet of her, the 
  most modern air machine devised by man. 
  The plane slanted toward Doc. He 
  changed position rapidly on the surface, at 
  the same time digging inside his clothing, 
  seeking a certain pocket in the remarkable 
  vest which he wore—a vest with many 
  pockets holding the innumerable gadgets 
  which he frequently found occasion to use. 
  There was a pocket in the vest for 
  smoke bombs, but they were gone, the 
  pocket split open by the force of his fall. The 
  man of bronze dived, stroked to the left 
  madly. 
  The bomb explosion came again. 
  Worse, if possible. He did not come to the 
  surface again immediately. Instead, he 
  slipped out of his outer clothing, and left it in 
  the water. Soaked as it was, it would not rise 
  to the surface immediately, and it might be 
  mistaken for his body. 
  The ruse worked. Savage swam far 
  away, and showed himself on top only 
  momentarily for air, keeping the rest of the 
  time well beneath the surface.  
  Of course, from the plane, they could 
  see a surprising depth beneath the surface. 
  But they had expected the bomb to kill Doc, 
  and seeing his clothing, thought it had, so 
  they dropped no more bombs. Then the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  39 
  dirigible came arching down and distracted 
  their attention before they discovered the 
  bronze man. 
  The Zephyr was going to crash! 
   
   
  DOC saw it hit. The manner of its 
  crash was uncanny. It was going almost full 
  speed, all motors roaring, when it hit. The 
  Zephyr was strong, but not strong enough for 
  that. The nose caved—caved back full a two 
  hundred feet, as if the water were a solid 
  wall. The backbone of the air giant broke in a 
  dozen places. 
  Big, invisible hands might as well 
  have taken it and mashed it between them. 
  Hands a mile across the palms, perhaps. 
  Men sprang into the sea, wearing life 
  preservers. The crash had apparently not 
  killed a great many. They could get life 
  preservers 
  because 
  they 
  were 
  handy 
  everywhere about the great dirigible. They 
  were fabrikoid containers, honeycomb, filled 
  with helium, and were lighter than air, hence 
  helped to lift the dirigible. 
  The motor nacelles of the Zephyr, 
  the lower halves of them, were lowered away 
  into the sea, and became lifeboats. They 
  were designed for that purpose. 
  Doc Savage swam toward the ruined 
  dirigible. 
  His 
  metallic 
  features 
  were 
  expressionless, but that did not mean he had 
  no feelings. He had worked for months, he 
  and a crew of the world’s leading experts, 
  designing that airship. 
  Nor was that all that was going to 
  happen. The big seaplane which had taken 
  Fuzzy and his men aboard was circling, 
  getting above the dirigible. Now it dived. It 
  swept the length of the mangled Zephyr, not 
  more than fifty feet above the great bag. Out 
  of the plane poured a stream of tiny objects. 
  The objects hit the back of the 
  dirigible, burst into white flame. All of the air 
  giant seemed to blaze. And the Zephyr was 
  supposed to be fireproof from stem to stern! 
  Doc Savage was sufficient of an 
  expert on incendiarism as applied to military 
  purposes to know what had happened. This 
  was thermit, the same kind of stuff used in 
  military incendiary bombs to set fire to enemy 
  factories and cities. The stuff burned with a 
  terrific heat, would melt metal, would sputter 
  and scatter and go on burning. 
  It 
  would 
  riddle 
  enough 
  of 
  the 
  honeycomb cells of the dirigible so that it 
  would sink. 
  After a bit, the seaplane flew away 
  and lost itself in the afternoon sun, landward. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE swam about the 
  Zephyr, what was left of her. 
  He aided some of the wounded. And 
  finally he found his aids, Renny and Long 
  Tom, riding in a motor gondola lifeboat, along 
  with Captain Blackstone Toy. Pat was near 
  by in another of the queer craft, with the 
  dirigible commander. 
  Pat was no longer laughing. 
  “What 
  happened?” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  asked. 
  “We started the engines, intending to 
  aid you,” the commandant of the dirigible 
  said, in a horror-stricken voice. “After that, 
  something incredible happened! The ship 
  would not answer to her controls! The motors 
  would not stop! We could not shut them off! 
  And before we could do much, we had 
  crashed!” 
  “You do not know what really 
  happened?” Doc persisted.  
  The commandant wet his lips. “I hate 
  to say that an invisible something seemed to 
  grasp the craft!” 
  Doc Savage said nothing. He did not 
  remind 
  the 
  commandant 
  that 
  he 
  had 
  suggested that the dirigible’s engines not be 
  started until orders were given to that effect. 
  It was almost dark when the first of 
  the destroyers arrived to pick up the 
  survivors. The captain of the destroyer 
  sought Doc Savage out. 
  “Confidential radio message for you,” 
  he said. 
  The message read: 
   
  SUGGESTION THAT UNITED STATES PAY 
  HUNDRED MILLION FOR GADGET TO 
  PROTECT ITS NAVY PREPOSTEROUS 
  STOP 
  PROPOSAL 
  ABSOLUTELY 
  REFUSED 
   
  It was signed by the highest of 
  authority. 
  “Well,” rumbled big-fisted Renny 
  when Doc showed him the message, “what’s 
  the outcome gonna be?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  40 
  “The outcome,” Doc Savage said, “is 
  going to be unpleasant for quite a few 
  people.” 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  CHAOS 
   
  A NAVY destroyer landed Doc 
  Savage’s party at the Battery, on the lower 
  end of Manhattan, that night. There was a 
  crowd of something like thirty thousand 
  people there to see the arrival of the first of 
  the disaster survivors, and half the crowd 
  seemed 
  to 
  be 
  newspapermen 
  and 
  cameramen. 
  Newsreel planes had harassed the 
  destroyer coming up the river, trying to take 
  pictures with the new infra-red method by 
  which photos could be taken in the dark, 
  provided the proper sources of infra-red 
  projection was handy. 
  Doc Savage, Renny, Long Tom, Pat 
  and Captain Toy made a flying wedge and 
  got through the crowd. The subway was 
  fastest, so they took that uptown. Doc was 
  besieged by autograph seekers. He was rude 
  to no one, although Captain Toy became 
  exasperated and threatened to crack a head 
  or two. 
  They stepped out of the elevator on 
  the eighty-sixth floor of their headquarters 
  skyscraper, and a voice said, “Oh! At last!” 
  It was a woman’s voice. They stared 
  at the owner. 
  “India Allison!” exclaimed Pat. 
  India Allison, looking gentle and 
  utterly terrified, huddled against the corridor 
  wall, back in a corner, and she held, with two 
  hands which shook, a big army automatic, 
  pointed at the floor. She laid the gun down 
  gently, as if she were afraid of it, and came 
  toward Doc Savage. 
  Doc, who was always wary of the 
  feminine sex, stepped back, but there was a 
  wall in the way, and in a moment, India 
  Allison had her arms around the bronze 
  man’s right arm. She hung on tightly. 
  Pat stood in the background and 
  looked as if she wanted to say something 
  catty. 
  “Mr. Savage!” India Allison gasped. 
  “They turned me loose! They released me so 
  I could—” 
   “How,” asked Pat, who had heard 
  the story of India Allison and had recognized 
  her from Doc’s description, “did you and 
  Monk happen to get captured?” 
  “Oh!” said India Allison. “Monk and I 
  were knocked senseless!” 
  “Oh!” echoed Pat. “I was under the 
  impression that you knocked Monk senseless 
  and turned him over to this mysterious gang 
  we’re fighting.” 
  India Allison frowned at Pat. “Were 
  you there?” 
  “No,” Pat had to admit, “but it 
  appeared—” 
  “Don’t 
  draw 
  conclusions 
  about 
  something you don’t know anything about!” 
  snapped India Allison. 
  Pat looked indignant. 
  Renny whispered to Pat, “I guess 
  she got you told!” 
  Pat gritted, “If people keep on 
  abusing me, I’m going to collect myself some 
  heads!” 
  Doc Savage, since he could hardly 
  loosen India Allison’s frightened embrace 
  with anything less than violence, resigned 
  himself to having an extremely attractive 
  young woman hanging onto one arm. He 
  had, for once, some expression on his 
  bronze features. It was not a comfortable 
  expression. 
  “Mr. Savage!” gasped India Allison, 
  in a frightened voice. “They turned me loose 
  to tell you that Monk, Ham and Johnny would 
  be killed if you made any further effort to 
  interfere with their plans!” 
  She paused and held tighter to the 
  bronze man, and Doc looked a bit more 
  uncomfortable, but very interested in what 
  she had to say. 
  “They told me to tell you something 
  else,” she said rapidly. “They will kill Monk, 
  Ham and Johnny if you serve as go-between 
  for this August Atlanta Braun in an effort to 
  sell his machine to the United States 
  government for one hundred million dollars.” 
  “The skunks!” interjected pale Long 
  Tom. 
  “Monk, Ham and Johnny will be freed 
  if you can capture August Atlanta Braun and 
  turn him over to the representatives of this 
  foreign nation,” said India Allison. 
   
   
  THERE was a pause while that 
  soaked in. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  41 
  “I think,” said Captain Blackstone 
  Toy grimly, “that this proves the importance 
  of 
  August 
  Atlanta 
  Braun’s 
  protective 
  machine. Personally, I am a patriotic man 
  with a respect for my government, but I think 
  the United States is foolish not to buy the 
  contraption.” 
  Pat said nothing. She was smiling 
  wryly as she watched India Allison clinging to 
  Doc. 
  “A hundred million is a lot of money,” 
  Renny muttered. 
  “And I don’t like the way this August 
  Atlanta Braun is going at it!” added Long 
  Tom. 
  “August 
  Atlanta 
  Braun 
  deserves 
  hanging!” snapped Captain Toy. “But a 
  hundred million would be a cheap price for 
  the lives that have already been lost!” 
  Pat asked India Allison, “Where did 
  you get your gun, dear?” 
  “I ran home for it!” India Allison said. 
  “It was my father’s. Why?” 
  “I just wondered,” Pat said. 
  They went into Doc Savage’s office, 
  and Doc, more to get himself disengaged 
  from India Allison than for any desire to know 
  the late news, went over to a teletype, or 
  printing telegraph machine, which had been 
  installed in his office and connected to the 
  leading national news agency. 
  The teletype was rattling its keys 
  rapidly, clicking out the latest news of the 
  nation. Some of the items were interesting: 
   
  FLASH! 
  U. S. WARSHIP IN ORIENTAL WATERS 
  REPORTED SUNK BY MYSTERY FORCE! 
   
  A bit further on, there was another 
  one: 
   
  FLASH! 
  NAVY PLANE CRASHES IN CALIFORNIA! 
   
  There was another: 
   
  FLASH! 
  PANAMA CANAL REPORTED BLOCKED 
  BY SINKING WARSHIP! 
   
  Then, possibly most alarming of all: 
   
  FLASH! 
  CONGRESS 
  CALLED 
  FOR 
  SPECIAL 
  SESSION! WAR DECLARATION FEARED! 
  UNKNOWN NATION WIPING OUT U. S. 
  NAVY IN PREPARATION FOR ATTACK! 
   
  Big-fisted Renny boomed, “This thing 
  is getting bigger and bigger!” 
  Pretty, sweet-looking India Allison 
  sank into a chair and took one of her 
  shapely, suede-shod feet in soft-looking 
  hands. 
  “I do wish I could faint or something,” 
  she said weakly. “I’m so terrified.” 
  “Where were they holding you?” Doc 
  asked. 
  “I don’t know!” she gasped. “They 
  kept me in a car, blindfolded, for a long time 
  after we left the place where they were 
  holding me.” 
  She sighed, and fumbled with her 
  suede foot covering.  
  “When they led me out of the place 
  where they had been holding me, I stepped 
  in something and got my shoe full of it,” she 
  said. “It feels like sand, and hurts!” 
  She tugged off her suede slipper and 
  upended it. A stream of grayish, hard-looking 
  particles ran out. 
  Doc Savage picked up some of the 
  particles and examined them closely. 
  Long Tom asked sharply, “They 
  mean anything, Doc?” 
  “Probably,” Doc Savage said, “they 
  will result in our finding Monk, Ham and 
  Johnny.” 
  “Holy cow!” Renny boomed. “What is 
  the stuff?” 
  “Salt,” Doc Savage said. “Common 
  rock salt.” 
   
   
  AN hour later—it was still dark now, 
  of course—Doc Savage rolled his big, armor-
  plated, bulletproof-glassed sedan through a 
  section of Long Island City devoted to 
  manufacturing plants, and kept a sharp 
  lookout through a powerful pair of magnifiers 
  of the type commonly called “sportoculars.” 
  Suddenly, a strange sound filled the 
  big sedan. It was an exotic sound. Small, so 
  vague as to be nearly unnoticeable at first; it 
  mounted in volume and became a fantastic 
  cadence which filled all of the sedan. 
  It was a trilling, although so eerie as 
  to be almost indescribable. It might have 
  been a wind filtering through some far, 
  denuded jungle, or the song of some tropical 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  42 
  feathered creature as yet uncatalogued by 
  ornithologists. 
  This 
  weird 
  sound 
  was 
  a 
  characteristic of Doc Savage, a small 
  fantastic thing which he did in moments of 
  mental stress. Frequently, he went for long 
  intervals without making the sound. Again, it 
  came often. Always, he was not conscious 
  that he was making it—although he could 
  stop making it, or start, at will. 
   “Hey!” barked Long Tom, color 
  coming into his pale face. “What’d you see 
  that caused that?” 
  Doc Savage said nothing in reply, 
  which was another small, peculiar and 
  frequently aggravating habit which he had. 
  The big sedan ran on, and after a 
  while, turned into an alley. Doc got out. The 
  others did likewise, because they knew of 
  nothing else to do. 
  “Holy 
  cow!” 
  rumbled 
  Renny. 
  “Sometimes I like to know what I’m doing.” 
  “What else can you expect out of 
  Doc?” Pat asked.  
  They moved forward, following the 
  bronze man.  
  Renny grunted at Pat. “What’ve you 
  got it in for Doc for this time? You’ve done 
  nothing but squawk at or about him.” 
  Pat said, “I resent his idea that a 
  woman cannot take care of herself as well as 
  a man! Any woman is as entitled to 
  adventure as a man! Why, look at the ancient 
  Amazons, who—” 
  “Quiet,” Doc Savage said. “Please!” 
  He stopped, pointed, and the others 
  suddenly knew why they were in this part of 
  town. 
  “The only factory of its kind near the 
  city,” Doc explained. 
  The electric sign which the bronze 
  man had indicated was a small one. It read: 
   
  Acme Salt Co. 
   
  “Rock salt shipped in and later 
  refined,” Doc explained. “The salt which 
  came out of Miss Allison’s shoe was of a type 
  which this factory alone handles.” 
  “That means they led her through the 
  salt storage yard when they took her away 
  from their hiding place,” Renny grunted. 
  Doc said, “There seems to be only 
  one logical hiding place in this neighborhood: 
  that old power plant to the north. Come on.” 
   
   
  THE abandoned power plant was a 
  relic of a day when street cars were the most 
  popular form of transportation. It looked as if 
  at least five years had elapsed since 
  electricity had flowed from the place. 
  Boards had been nailed over the 
  windows, and were still in place, but 
  appeared ancient. Four tall brick chimneys 
  had originally stood in the back, but one had 
  fallen down. There was a brick wall around 
  the place. 
  “Wait here,” Doc Savage ordered. 
  The bronze man was gone before 
  the others could object, or ask questions. So 
  silently did he move, there was not often a 
  stirring of shadows to show when he passed. 
  It was dark. The river was not far 
  away, and a tugboat was going up it with a 
  heavy tow, making considerable noise, what 
  with the rattling of the exhaust and the boiling 
  of water heaved up by the propellers. 
  Doc waited, watching a cloud sneak 
  nearer the moon, and when it was darker, he 
  went over the fence, then worked forward 
  through a litter of bricks and rusting 
  machinery, looking for signs of life. 
  A man on lookout stood near the 
  base of one of the big chimneys. He betrayed 
  his position by knocking dottle out of a pipe. 
  Doc crept toward him. 
  Then some one screamed in one of 
  the darkened streets near by. It was a 
  piercing scream, not of terror or fear, but of 
  alarm. 
  “Watch it!” the voice shrieked. “Doc 
  Savage’s crowd!” 
  Doc Savage whipped toward the 
  sentinel. But he was too late. Alarmed, the 
  guard whisked into the power plant and 
  banged a big iron door shut. 
  Doc hit the door. He knew instantly 
  that he might as well have saved his effort. 
  The door was too solid. 
  Inside the old power plant, there was 
  excited shouting. A man was crying out, 
  wanting orders. 
  “Von 
  Zidney!” 
  the 
  man 
  was 
  screaming. “Von Zidney! What’re we gonna 
  do about this?” 
   
   
  THERE was no doubt about it. The 
  man’s voice was distinctly understandable. 
  “Von Zidney!” he was shouting. “Doc 
  Savage is here! What’ll we do?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  43 
  There was dull response from within 
  the plant somewhere. 
  “What’d you say?” the door guard 
  howled. 
  The voice within sounded louder, 
  “We’ll take the underground route! Hurry up!” 
  It sounded like Lieber Von Zidney’s 
  voice. 
  “What about the prisoners?” the 
  guard shouted.  
  “We’ll take them, too,” said the 
  muffled voice which sounded like Von 
  Zidney’s. 
   “And what about the rest of the 
  men—the ones in the next block—” 
  “Never mind!” shouted the Von 
  Zidney voice. “They’ll attack Doc Savage’s 
  crowd from the rear!” 
  Doc, 
  distinctly 
  overhearing 
  this, 
  thought at first that it was a bluff, a ruse to 
  draw him out of the vicinity, so that the 
  enemy might effect an escape. But an instant 
  later, he knew it was no bluff. 
  Shots crashed in the streets near by. 
  A man howled. It was Renny, whose howl 
  was something not hard to recognize and not 
  easy to forget. 
  Then came a brief whoop of sound 
  that was remindful of a violent note from a 
  great bullfiddle. This would be one of the tiny 
  supermachine pistols perfected by Doc 
  Savage and carried only by the bronze man 
  and his aids. 
  Long Tom’s voice yelled, “Doc! We 
  can take care of this! Go on with what you’re 
  doing!” 
  Doc Savage leaped, caught the sill of 
  a window, and an instant later was standing 
  on the sill, tearing at the boards over the 
  aperture. 
  The thick boards, the big nails, 
  seemed no more than lath and brads under 
  his strength. He got the window bared, and a 
  blow from a sleeve-covered elbow sent the 
  glass inward. 
  Darkness was inside. The bronze 
  man listened briefly, and used his trained 
  nostrils. No one seemed to be in the room, 
  but men were running toward the chamber—
  men who shouted a great deal. 
  Doc whipped inside. He bent low, 
  hands out before him, feeling his way. His 
  trained eyes aided. An instant later, he was 
  in a wide hallway—and eased away from 
  men who charged up with flashlights and 
  looked into the room into which he had 
  broken. 
  “We scared him away!” they decided, 
  mistakenly. 
  They ran back the way they had 
  come. Some one shouted at them from 
  below. 
  “Come on!” said the voice. “We’re 
  blowing!” 
  It sounded rather like Lieber Von 
  Zidney. 
  After a moment, things became 
  unexpectedly quiet. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  ran 
  downstairs, 
  producing a big flashlight, and roving its 
  beam. He saw no one, and there was such a 
  litter of junk, such a labyrinth of old power 
  rooms, that a thorough search would take 
  possibly a quarter of an hour. 
  Suddenly Doc left the old power 
  house. He vaulted the fence encircling the 
  place, and ran toward the near-by river. 
  Shortly before he reached the river, 
  he heard noises. Men moving. Men talking. A 
  voice. 
  The voice said, “Hurry up and get 
  them into this boat!” 
  Doc Savage had guessed what had 
  happened. There was a big, old pipe running 
  from the river to the plant. Originally it had 
  carried waste, but now the men were utilizing 
  it for escape, and they must have a boat 
  anchored at the river end. 
  Doc went over the river bank with a 
  great leap. 
   
   
  THE attack was reckless, but it was 
  dark enough to make recklessness safe. It 
  would have helped, of course, if Doc Savage 
  had managed to alight on the back of some 
  one. But he didn’t. 
  He did, however, land close enough 
  so that his first swing sent a man flying away 
  into the water. The water was shallow here, 
  and they were standing in it, loading their 
  boat. The man who had been hit yelled. 
  “Savage!” some one choked. 
  Doc hit the man who had spoken, hit 
  him guided by the voice sound alone. 
  “Doc!” piped out a squeaky voice. 
  That would be Monk. He was to the 
  right. Doc made for him, arms striking. It was 
  too dark to see anything. Some one fired a 
  gun. The red flash was too momentary to 
  show much. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  44 
   
  The thing became a mêlée. Fists hit Doc. He struck back. 
   
  The thing became a mêlée. Fists hit 
  Doc. He struck back. Once a gun blew off so 
  close to his face that his flake gold eyes were 
  powder-burned. 
  He found Monk. The homely chemist 
  was bound. Doc grasped him, heaved him up 
  on the bank, and Monk landed so painfully 
  that he grunted, which drew a man upon him, 
  but Monk kicked the fellow far out into the 
  river, where the water was several feet deep. 
  The boat’s engine got going. Men 
  yelled at other men to get into the boat, and 
  the other men yelled back to get out of the 
  boat and fight. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  45 
  Doc located Ham next. He got Ham 
  away from three men who were trying to hold 
  him, and threw him up on the bank beside 
  Monk. 
  Both Monk and Ham seemed to be 
  tied hand and foot.  
  Then some one hit Doc over the 
  head with a rifle. The blow was unexpected, 
  something that could not be avoided. Doc 
  sank, recoiled, made no sound to show that 
  he was hurt, or where he’d crouched. His 
  head sang and for a little while it seemed 
  blacker than before, and sounds were faint. 
  There was a great deal of splashing, 
  after which the motor boat went away. 
  Doc got out of the water finally and 
  used his flashlight. There was no one in 
  sight, except Monk and Ham, up on the bank. 
  “Some fight!” said the dapper lawyer, 
  Ham. 
  “Doc,” grunted the homely Monk, 
  “they had Johnny, too. Did you get him?” 
  “No,” Doc admitted. “They seem to 
  have gotten away with him.” 
  “That’s too bad,” Ham said, grimly. 
  “Their chief was with them.” 
  “Who?” Doc countered. 
  “Lieber Von Zidney,” said Ham. 
  “How do you know that?” 
  “Why, they made no secret of it,” 
  said the lawyer. “They telephoned him for 
  orders, and we heard him giving them orders 
  in the next room.” 
  “Lieber Von Zidney is the big shot, all 
  right,” Monk agreed. 
  “Come on,” Doc said. “There is 
  another 
  fight 
  in 
  the 
  street 
  near 
  that 
  abandoned power plant.” 
  They ran for the plant. 
   
   
  THERE was no fight. There was only 
  silence. 
  Not until they were in the street, and 
  had listened to automobiles in the distance, 
  going away at a great speed, did they 
  discover any sign of life. Then it was a 
  feminine voice calling from some distance. 
  “Mr. Savage!” the voice called. “Mr. 
  Savage!” 
  “India Allison!” the homely Monk 
  grunted. “Does she know Von Zidney is the 
  big-shot crook—the head of this ring of 
  foreign sabotage agents?” 
  “No,” Doc said. “And do not tell her.” 
  “Sure,” Monk said. “She’s too pretty 
  a little thing to be given such bad news. I 
  don’t think she has an inkling of it. Von 
  Zidney has fooled her into thinking he is just 
  a persecuted old man.” 
  “Poor little girl!” Ham sniffed. “I 
  wouldn’t be too sure she’s so innocent!” 
  “You 
  shyster!” 
  Monk 
  grunted. 
  “You’ve dealt with crooks for so long as a 
  lawyer, that you’ve gotten the idea the world 
  is full of crooks.” 
   “Listen, you exaggerated monkey 
  model!” Ham began. “I’m telling you that—” 
  Doc left them and went forward and 
  found the frightened, trembling India Allison. 
  “It was awful!” she gasped. “We were 
  attacked. They carried off Pat!” 
  “What?” 
  “They took Pat away!” The girl clung 
  to Doc. “Renny and Long Tom and Captain 
  Toy fought valiantly. They’re over here.” 
  She led the way down an alley, and 
  Doc, peering in the murk, made out three 
  figures. Two were senseless; one was 
  stirring a bit. The latter was Long Tom. 
  “Where’s Pat?” Long Tom gulped. 
  He was grimly silent when told what 
  had happened to Pat.  
  “That bird Fuzzy was heading this 
  gang,” Long Tom said at last. 
  Doc Savage worked over Renny and 
  Captain Toy, and they revived eventually. 
  Renny had a bullet hole in an arm, but 
  insisted it would not put him out of 
  commission. Doc, examining the wound, 
  agreed. 
  Monk, not at all ruffled by the recent 
  excitement, watched his chance, and shortly 
  India Allison found herself clinging to the big 
  chemist rather than to Doc Savage. 
  Monk was a great admirer of 
  feminine pulchritude, and lost no opportunity 
  to afford it attention wherever he found it. 
  Strangely enough, his frightful homeliness—
  Ham, at least, called it frightful—was an 
  asset, apparently, instead of a liability. 
  “The ladies can always tell a man’s 
  man when they see one,” Monk was wont to 
  explain it. “They want hair on their menfolk’s 
  chests.” 
  The dapper Ham, who was not bald, 
  and certainly not unhandsome, could not 
  explain it. True, the hair on his chest was 
  moderate. 
  They did not find a trace of the gang 
  who had seized Pat and fled. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  46 
  Doc Savage, when they gave up the 
  search, had one question. 
  “Who,” he asked, “gave the alarm 
  back at that abandoned power plant? Who 
  yelled that I was at the plant?” 
  Big-fisted 
  Renny 
  closed 
  and 
  unclosed his fists. 
  “That’s kind of a mystery, Doc. We 
  heard a noise behind us. We separated to 
  investigate. Then came that yell. I—well, I 
  don’t know how we were discovered.” 
  India Allison said hoarsely, “I hope 
  I’m not suspected!”  
  Doc Savage said nothing, but he 
  made, for the briefest of moments, his 
  strange, exotic trilling noise. 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  TRIAL 
   
  NEARLY a dozen men sat stiffly 
  around the reception room of Doc Savage’s 
  skyscraper headquarters. None of the men 
  was young. Some of them wore uniforms, 
  and the others looked as if they belonged in 
  uniforms, except for two or three, who were 
  obviously big-time politicians. 
  One, evidently the spokesman, got 
  up when Doc Savage came in. 
  “We were told you would have a 
  package for us,” he said. 
  There was always about the man of 
  bronze a dignity and a reserve. It was not 
  upset now, although this was the first he had 
  heard of a package. 
  “Who advised that I would have a 
  package for you?” he asked 
  At that moment, Monk, who had 
  stopped off downstairs for the mail, could be 
  heard outside, insulting Ham, who had also 
  stopped off for the mail. 
  “Ham, you shyster,” Monk said, 
  “suppose you open this box before you take 
  it inside. Sure, go ahead. Take it in the 
  corner, there, and open it.” 
  “It might be a bomb!” Ham objected 
  loudly. 
  “Sure,” said Monk. “That’s what I 
  thought of.” 
  “You accident of nature! How awful 
  your mother must have felt after she looked 
  at you and seen what had happened!” 
  Doc Savage requested quietly, “Will 
  you two come in here?” 
  They came in. Ham was carrying a 
  box, a very large box, which seemed about 
  all he could carry. The apish Monk, who 
  looked much bigger and stronger than the 
  lawyer, was carrying a few ounces of letters. 
  “We matched to see who would carry 
  the box,” Monk explained. “He lost.” 
   “I was gypped!” Ham yelled. “He 
  used that trick nickel with heads on both 
  sides!” 
  Doc Savage tore off a letter which 
  was fastened to the outside of the box with 
  adhesive paper. 
  “Who left this box here?” he asked. 
  “Somebody,” Monk said, “who gave 
  the name of August Atlanta Braun.” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  looked 
  at 
  the 
  assembled naval men and the politicians, two 
  of whom he recognized as senators on the 
  appropriations committee. 
  “Who advised you there would be a 
  box here for you?” he asked again. 
  “August Atlanta Braun!” said one of 
  the senators.  
  “It is the nullifier machine,” said a 
  high naval officer.  
  “We are to be permitted to give it a 
  trial,” another man, his uniform bearing the 
  designation of a rear admiral, offered. 
  “I 
  suppose,” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  said 
  quietly, “that you know where an attempt to 
  sink a navy ship will be made, so that you 
  can give the machine its test under fire?” 
  “Yes,” 
  the 
  other 
  replied. 
  “The 
  message from August Atlanta Braun told 
  where the enemy will strike next.” 
  “What enemy?” 
  “This foreign power that is reducing 
  our naval force in preparation for war,” the 
  rear admiral said stiffly. 
  “Do you know what power it is?” Doc 
  queried. 
  The rear admiral wet his lips, pulled 
  at his regulation tie—or, at least, it looked 
  regulation. 
  “No,” he said. “We don’t! We have 
  made an effort to find out. Unfortunately, two 
  of our secret agents, who were on the point 
  of getting valuable information, were found 
  killed.” 
  “Where?” Doc queried. 
  “Near the edge of the city, not far 
  from a plant dealing in the refining of salt,” 
  the man replied. “We searched the salt plant, 
  but learned nothing.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  47 
  “You might have tried the abandoned 
  power house near by,” Doc said. “But it is too 
  late now.” 
  The bronze man examined the 
  boxlike package. 
   
   
  THE affair was almost as large as a 
  trunk. It was covered with heavy brown 
  paper, wrapped around with twine almost as 
  large as rope. 
  “The thing is heavy,” Ham offered. 
  Doc Savage untied the cord, stripped 
  off 
  the 
  heavy 
  brown 
  paper, 
  removed 
  cardboard protection covering which was 
  underneath, and exposed a box which 
  seemed to be covered with heavy canvas, 
  stitched and cemented. 
  On the top was a little lid. Doc lifted 
  this. A switch was revealed, and tied to the 
  switch, which was open, was a tag. Words 
  were typed on it: 
   
  When effect of enemy’s device is felt 
  or expected, close this switch. This puts 
  machine in operation. It will operate for about 
  a hundred hours on the power contained 
  within. 
   
  A 
  navy 
  official 
  stepped 
  over, 
  examined the tag, and murmured, “Ah! The 
  device must be of electrical nature, and has 
  batteries that will run down!” 
  Monk, in the background, sniffed, 
  just loud enough that the navy man did not 
  hear. Monk was an army booster. 
  Ham casually kicked Monk’s shins, 
  and scowled, “The man was right in his 
  deduction, you funny-looking thing!” 
  Monk snorted, “But his deduction 
  was so childishly obvious. Electrical in 
  nature! Hah!” 
  Doc Savage turned the box over. A 
  legend, a warning, was painted on one side. 
  He turned it again. The same warning was 
  printed on all four sides and the bottom. It 
  read: 
   
  WARNING! 
   
   
   
  An attempt of any kind to examine 
  this case will have dire consequences! 
   
  “That ‘dire consequence’ sounds real 
  melodramatic, don’t it?” the homely chemist 
  chuckled jeeringly. 
  When no one smiled or answered, 
  Monk took the big grin off his homely face. 
  Doc Savage said, “So August Atlanta 
  Braun tipped you of an attempt to be made to 
  sink a ship, in order that you would have an 
  opportunity 
  to 
  try 
  out 
  the 
  protective 
  machine?” 
  “The battleship Missouri is to be sunk 
  as it sails from New London harbor tonight!” 
  the rear admiral replied. 
  Doc Savage said nothing in reply, 
  but his small, eerie trilling noise seemed to 
  come into being somewhere in the far 
  distance, and, after a bit, to go away without 
  coming much closer. 
  The naval men and the politicians 
  surrounded the box. They handled it, peered 
  at it closely, and seemed on the point of 
  closing the switch experimentally. 
  “Maybe this thing is a bomb intended 
  to blow up navy big-wigs!” offered homely 
  Monk. “Of course, anybody’d know a lot of 
  big shots would be around when it was 
  opened, so the thing would naturally kill—” 
  Two minutes later, every naval 
  officer and senator had made a dignified 
  departure. 
  Doc Savage faced his men. 
  “We will have to work fast,” he said. 
  “We want every bit of information available 
  on August Atlanta Braun.” 
  “Where’ll we look first?” Long Tom 
  wanted to know. 
  “The newspaper files,” Doc said. 
  “Scientific 
  journals. 
  The 
  naval 
  records. 
  Everywhere.” 
   
   
  NEW LONDON is a seaport town on 
  the Connecticut shore, where the Thames 
  River makes a deep harbor. Once it was the 
  whaling capital. Today it comes nearer being 
  the submarine capital, what with a big 
  submarine base and shipyard engaged in U-
  boat construction. 
  The navy officials and politicians, 
  seeing no reason why they should risk their 
  necks by flying to New London, had gone by 
  train. 
  Doc and his party had delayed in 
  New York until the last minute, digging up 
  what they could on August Atlanta Braun. 
  Now they were flying to New London in Doc’s 
  big tri-motored speedplane, which was 
  probably the fastest aërial conveyance of its 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  48 
  size in the world. Pale Long Tom handled the 
  controls. 
  Doc and his party did not have 
  August Atlanta Braun’s machine in his box. It 
  had gone to New London on a train, in a 
  special car, in custody of some marines. The 
  marines had not been told the thing might 
  blow up, and might not have cared, anyway. 
  Big-fisted Renny was fingering some 
  notes. 
  “August Atlanta Braun has had an 
  eventful life, according to what I dug up,” the 
  big-handed engineer reported. 
  “He was in the navy for almost ten 
  years. He got kicked out. His dishonorable 
  discharge was handed him for taking graft. 
  You see, he was in charge of buying stores, 
  and let concerns hand him a cut for buying 
  from them.” 
  Renny continued, “Braun is a lucky 
  one. He moved to Europe and became a 
  citizen of a country over there. Now that 
  helps him a lot. If he was a citizen of the 
  United States, the government could do 
  things to him. As it is, his status is that of a 
  foreign inventor trying to sell something to 
  the country.” 
  “Anything else?” Doc asked. 
  “Nope,” Renny said. “There’s no 
  record of Braun’s whereabouts for the last 
  few years, as far as I could learn, except that 
  he is listed as a citizen of this European 
  country.” 
  Long Tom brought the plane down 
  on New London harbor, and anchored it up 
  by the coast guard academy, where the 
  guardsmen could watch it. 
  Doc Savage said, “Renny, you’ll stay 
  with me. The rest of you go on ahead aboard 
  the Missouri. Renny and myself will join you.” 
  The Missouri was quite a few 
  millions’ worth of alloyed armor steel, guns 
  and gadgets. She was chunky, her funnels 
  and masts had an alert rake, and she looked, 
  somehow, as haughty as a European 
  dictator. 
   
   
  PRETTY India Allison, Long Tom, 
  quarreling Monk and Ham, all got a nice 
  enough reception aboard when they arrived 
  with Captain Blackstone Toy. 
  Doc Savage and Renny were not 
  very late. About fifteen minutes. They offered 
  no explanation of what had made them late. 
  The 
  Missouri’s 
  electric 
  donkey 
  engines cranked up her anchor, and she 
  pushed out of the harbor mouth. She got up 
  enough speed for steerageway and no more. 
  The strange canvas-covered box of 
  August Atlanta Braun, the contraption he was 
  trying to sell to the U.S. government for a 
  hundred million dollars, was set up on top of 
  a gun turret, where it was figured the thing 
  could blow up, if it was going to blow up, 
  without killing anybody but marines, who 
  were going to close the switch with a long 
  pole. 
  What happened next all came very 
  swiftly. 
  “She’s swinging!” the 
  helmsman 
  bawled suddenly, wildly. 
  “Something’s pulling her!” he added 
  an instant later. 
  Every one could feel the sharp 
  swerve of the war giant of the seas. Men 
  yelled. Signal bells jangled. 
  “Turn 
  on 
  the 
  protector!” 
  the 
  commander squawled at the turret.  
  There was an instant of silence. 
  “Protector on, sir,” came from the 
  turret. The big battleship straightened back 
  on her course. 
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  TRICK! 
   
  GREAT 
  happenings 
  are 
  usually 
  following my moments of silence. This one 
  was. The same thought was probably in 
  almost every mind. The U. S. navy was 
  saved! 
  “I think,” said an officer, “that this 
  calls for a cheer!”  
  So, in a boyish spirit generated by a 
  feeling 
  of 
  infinite 
  relief, 
  gray-bearded 
  admirals and commanders sent a series of 
  huzzahs 
  ringing, 
  frightening 
  away 
  the 
  seagulls which were flying close in the dusk. 
  Doc Savage was already at a 
  secluded spot back of the bridge. Here, big-
  fisted Renny and pale Long Tom crouched 
  among a forest of delicate electrical and 
  engineering gadgets. 
  “Your instruments register anything?” 
  Doc asked. 
  “Nothing,” said Long Tom. 
  “No trace of a magnetic field?” Doc 
  persisted. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  49 
  “None,” said the pale electrical 
  wizard. “And, brother, I’m here to tell the 
  world that my instruments are sensitive 
  enough to get one, if there had been any!” 
  Doc asked Renny, “What about 
  variations in gravitational balance?” 
  “Zero,” said Renny. 
  “Presence of gyro influences beyond 
  ordinary?” 
  “Also zero,” rumbled Renny. 
  “Good,” Doc Savage said, and went 
  back to join the naval potentates and the 
  senators who virtually ran the appropriations 
  committee of the Congress. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy was saying, 
  “Gentlemen, it breaks my heart to think of 
  paying this man Braun a hundred million 
  dollars for his machine.” 
  “It is not your position to criticize the 
  decisions of your superior officers!” an 
  admiral said stiffly. 
  Doc Savage asked, “So Braun has 
  sold you his machine?” 
  “If you care to put it that way, he 
  has,” was the reply. “The efficiency of the 
  device has just been demonstrated.” 
  The 
  battleship 
  put 
  about 
  and 
  reëntered port. 
  “The machine must be protected,” 
  said an admiral. “We will keep it aboard.” 
  After the Missouri had anchored, 
  they brought the canvas-covered box onto 
  the bridge, and sentries took up positions 
  guarding it. 
  The high-ranking officers retired to 
  the conference chamber and chart room to 
  send a telegram to the navy department, and 
  also to draft statements to the press. 
  The sentries guarding the box were 
  alert, fully aware of the importance of their 
  task. The canvas-covered box containing the 
  machine stood on a table in plain sight of 
  every one. The vicinity of the bridge was 
  comparatively 
  deserted, 
  except 
  for 
  the 
  guards. 
  Suddenly, mysteriously, one of the 
  guards fell to the floor planking of the bridge. 
  He had been leaning against the binnacle, 
  and he fell quite heavily. 
  The other guards paid not the 
  slightest attention. 
  Doc Savage walked onto the bridge. 
  In his arms, he carried a box, canvas-
  covered, which was an exact duplicate of the 
  one being guarded. It even bore the same 
  warnings 
  for 
  the 
  contents 
  not 
  to 
  be 
  examined. 
  Doc Savage exchanged his box for 
  the one which August Atlanta Braun had 
  furnished. 
  The guards seemed not to see nor 
  realize what was going on. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE picked up the guard 
  who had fallen. The fellow’s muscles were 
  rigid, and when he was placed upright, 
  leaning against the binnacle in the proper 
  position, he remained there. 
  Doc Savage walked away, carrying 
  the genuine box, and the guards did not 
  make any attempt to follow him, nor indicate 
  in any way that they had seen him. 
  Renny, Long Tom, Monk, Ham, India 
  Allison and Captain Blackstone Toy met the 
  bronze man. They all looked at Doc 
  somewhat as they would look at an individual 
  carrying a can of nitroglycerine into their 
  midst. 
  “But the guards didn’t interfere with 
  you!” gulped Captain Toy. “What is wrong 
  with them?” 
  The homely Monk took it on himself 
  to explain, “Doc and me, working together a 
  long time ago, fixed up a gas that causes 
  temporary 
  periods 
  of 
  absolute 
  unconsciousness. A guy inhaling some of 
  this gas goes to sleep for a minute or two, 
  and never knows exactly what has happened 
  to him.” 
  “So you used that gas?” 
  “Doc did,” Monk told Captain Toy. 
  From a spot aft, they watched the 
  guards on the bridge. They all awakened 
  about together, and, although there was 
  some 
  exchanging 
  of 
  furtive 
  looks 
  of 
  puzzlement, they did not mention, any one of 
  them, having felt queerly a moment earlier. 
  Doc 
  had 
  depended 
  on 
  this 
  psychological trait which makes a man, 
  somehow, too proud to complain about his 
  small ailments, especially fainting spells. 
  A bit later, Renny went ashore, got a 
  launch, brought it alongside, and the canvas-
  covered box was lowered overside without 
  any one being the wiser. 
  It was taken to Doc Savage’s big 
  seaplane, which they had left anchored 
  before the coast guard academy. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  50 
  “You stay outside and watch, to 
  make sure no one comes around,” Ham 
  directed Monk. 
  “Who you giving orders to?” Monk 
  demanded indignantly. “You try to push me 
  around, and I’ll walk the length and breadth 
  of your puny chest bone!” 
  Doc Savage suggested, “Suppose 
  both of you stay outside and watch.” 
  Ham and Monk sat outside in the 
  boat, insulting each other enthusiastically in 
  whispers. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy asked Doc 
  Savage, “What was the idea of stealing 
  Braun’s device from the navy? What are you 
  going to do with it?” 
  “See what is inside it,” Doc said. 
  “But the warnings on the outside, 
  instructing not to attempt to examine it!” 
  “We’ll X ray the thing,” Doc said. “We 
  brought 
  X 
  ray 
  apparatus 
  and 
  big 
  photographic 
  films 
  along 
  for 
  just 
  that 
  purpose.” 
  Captain Toy considered. His face in 
  the vicinity of his jaw became more solid. His 
  eyes hardened in their expression. 
  “As a United States navy man, I must 
  warn against it!” he snapped. “I do not know 
  what possessed me to let the stealing of this 
  device go as far as it has!” 
  Renny displayed his two big fists 
  prominently. 
  “It wouldn’t be too good an idea to try 
  to upset Doc’s apple cart now!” Renny 
  rumbled ominously. 
   
   
  CAPTAIN BLACKSTONE TOY did 
  not seem to be the type of man easily 
  bluffed. 
  “If that means a threat of bodily 
  damage, I don’t scare worth a damn!” he 
  yelled. “I’m not going to stand for this. I 
  demand that you return that device!” 
  Doc Savage said, “My movements 
  are aimed at meeting out justice to the 
  murderers of your brother.” 
  Captain Toy acted as if he had been 
  struck with something 
  solid. He grew 
  perceptibly paler, moistened his lips, then got 
  a grip on himself. 
  “I have followed you, taken your 
  orders, so far!” he snapped. “I thought you 
  had at heart the best interests of your 
  country. Now I do not think so. I demand that 
  you hand that box back to the navy officials!” 
  “No,” Doc said. 
  “Then I’ll tell the world you stole it!” 
  yelled Captain Toy. Renny said, “I guess I’m 
  gonna have to give him a dose of knuckle 
  anaesthetic!” 
  Doc Savage said nothing. He was 
  arranging the big X ray machine and the flat 
  container which held the huge film. 
  Captain Toy stood very still for some 
  moments, and it was plain that he was 
  thinking 
  deeply. 
  Then 
  he 
  shrugged, 
  apparently in resignation. 
  “Well,” he said, “there is nothing I 
  can do about it.”  
  He changed his position a little, 
  casually. It brought him near the door. And 
  suddenly, with a headlong dive, he was out 
  of the cabin of the plane into the bay. 
  Monk and Ham, caught flat-footed, 
  sputtered and abused each other. Then they 
  produced flashlights and spurted the beams 
  over the water. 
  “There he is!” Monk exploded. “Start 
  the motor, Ham!”  
  Monk cast off. The launch drifted 
  away with the tide. Ham fought the motor, 
  which did not seem to want to start. Monk 
  lumbered aft. 
  “Why not turn on the fuel?” he 
  gritted. 
  “Well, why don’t you, you simp?” 
  Ham demanded.  
  They got the launch going. By this 
  time, Captain Blackstone Toy was swimming 
  some distance away. 
  Monk and Ham sent the launch 
  toward him. They would not have had the 
  slightest difficulty in overhauling Toy, except 
  for what happened next. 
  In the murk some distance away—it 
  was quite dark now—a powerful motor boat 
  started. It came closer. The engine made a 
  shrill buzz. 
  The stranger craft came within range 
  of Monk’s flashlight. It held four men. Two 
  leaned over the side, arms extended, hands 
  reaching to clutch Captain Toy. One of these 
  was hairy, snaky Fuzzy. 
  They grabbed Captain Toy, hauled 
  him out of the water and aboard without the 
  speedboat more than swerving in its wild 
  charge. Fuzzy nearly fell overboard, but 
  didn’t quite. 
  “Help!” 
  screamed 
  Captain 
  Blackstone Toy. “Help! Help!”  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  51 
  The speedboat took him away. Monk 
  and Ham, trying to follow, lost ground swiftly 
  in their infinitely slower boat. 
   
   
  “AT least,” Monk yelled, “Captain Toy 
  didn’t want to be rescued. Did you hear him 
  howl for help? That shows then—” 
  Monk fell silent. From the cabin door 
  of Doc Savage’s plane had spouted a round 
  string of light. It picked up the fleeing 
  speedboat. Fuzzy was standing in the craft, 
  looking back. 
  But it was not the powerful hand 
  searchlight Doc wielded that particularly 
  interested Monk and Ham. It was the big-
  barreled rifle which the bronze man held, and 
  was aiming. 
  The rifle exploded. Once, twice, 
  three times. 
  A storm of bullets came from the 
  distant, fast-traveling speedboat. Monk and 
  Ham, for safety’s sake, both jumped into the 
  river. Doc whipped back inside his plane, 
  which had a bulletproof cabin. 
  “We can catch ‘em in the plane!” 
  Monk howled. He swam noisily to the aircraft 
  and hauled himself inside. “Doc, ain’t you 
  gonna chase ‘em?” 
  “No,” the bronze man said.  
  “What?” Monk all but choked.  
  “No,” Doc Savage said. “Let them 
  go.” 
  Monk groaned, “It’s too bad your rifle 
  shots missed ‘em!” 
  “They didn’t,” Doc Savage said. “At 
  least, it is fairly certain they hit.” 
  The homely Monk muttered, “I don’t 
  see the idea of lettin’ them guys get scat 
  away when we might try to follow ‘em?” 
  “We will make a gesture at chasing 
  them,” Doc said. “But we will be sure not to 
  find them.” 
  They started the motors of the big 
  plane, and taxied down New London harbor 
  with the wingtips searchlights turned on. 
  They took to the air, and with the searchlight 
  which gave such a narrow thread of a beam, 
  raked the water front—but not too thoroughly. 
  Monk, who knew the plane held 
  flares which would make all of New London, 
  and most of Long Island Sound over to Long 
  Island, only a little less brighter than full 
  daylight was puzzled. Doc, it seemed, didn’t 
  want to find the speedboat. 
  “I guess,” Monk said gloomily, “that 
  you got this all figured out.” 
  “Something like that,” the bronze 
  man agreed. “Our next move is to examine 
  the Braun machine.” 
   
   
  EXAMINATION 
  of 
  the 
  Braun 
  machine necessitated rearrangement of the 
  X ray device and the big photographic film. 
  They did the rearranging in New London 
  harbor, near the yacht club. 
  “The 
  coast 
  guard 
  might 
  ask 
  questions about that shooting if we anchored 
  in front of the academy again,” Doc said. 
  The bronze man, it was to be noted, 
  set his X raying device up near the door of 
  the plane. He did the work painstakingly, and 
  at last stepped back. 
  “All set,” he said. “Long Tom, you 
  turn the current into the X ray apparatus.” 
  Long Tom nodded and threw the 
  switch. The results gave every one plenty to 
  think about. 
  There was a popping noise inside 
  the canvas-covered Braun box, then a burst 
  of flame. A blinding glare filled the plane 
  cabin. The entire top of the box had become 
  like a molten cauldron of iron ore. 
  Doc Savage’s quick action—and his 
  foresight in placing the box near the door for 
  the test—saved the plane. He lunged, hit the 
  box with a foot. It fell out of the plane cabin 
  into the water. 
  Sinking, the box gave off a startling 
  amount of light, so hot was the flame which 
  consumed it. Even after it was a score of feet 
  down, the glow suffused the water for many 
  yards in every direction. 
  “Huh!” Renny boomed. “That’s the 
  same stuff that damaged the Zephyr. 
  Thermit!” 
  “Exactly,” Doc Savage admitted. 
  “The stuff can be purchased in the open 
  market.” 
  “But what set it off?” Renny wanted 
  to know. 
  “Braun, when he made up that box, 
  was clever,” Doc said. “He put inside it a 
  device sensitive to X rays. The moment X 
  rays passed through the box, this device 
  caused the thermit to be released, destroying 
  the contents of the box before an X ray 
  picture of it could be secured.” 
  While they stood there, with the glow 
  of the burning box still discernible in the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  52 
  depths—water seemed to have no effect on 
  the thermit—the battleship Missouri passed, 
  farther out in the bay, heading for the open 
  sea. 
  “Guess 
  they’re 
  putting 
  to 
  sea, 
  perfectly sure they’re safe with that fake box 
  of ours aboard,” Renny said gloomily. “Holy 
  cow! Only they don’t know it’s a fake box!” 
  Long Tom suggested, “Suppose we 
  bring up what’s left after the thermit burns out 
  and see if it will tell us anything?” 
   
   
  THEY did this. So potent was the 
  thermit that a considerable interval of time 
  elapsed before it became cool enough to be 
  handled and brought to the surface. 
  A thorough examination told them 
  nothing. 
  A motor boat approached. It was a 
  naval craft of the type ordinarily called a 
  “captain’s gig,” and was occupied by naval 
  officers.  
  “The Missouri ran on a reef outside 
  the harbor!” an officer yelled. “No one was 
  killed, but the Braun 
  machine proved 
  worthless. It was opened by angry navy 
  officials immediately after the crash. There 
  was nothing inside but some scrap iron and 
  excelsior waste!” 
  “That,” Doc Savage said, innocently, 
  “is unfortunate.” 
  “Fortunate, I should say!” snapped 
  the navy man. “Braun will never sell his 
  worthless device to the U. S. navy now!” 
   
   
  Chapter XVII 
  LOTS OF LUCK—ALL BAD 
   
  THE navy men went away in the 
  captain’s gig. Big-fisted Renny said slowly, “If 
  the navy ever gets wise that we stole the 
  genuine machine, we’ll be lucky if they only 
  skin us alive!” 
  “I do not like it either,” said Ham. 
  “Phooey!” grunted Monk, disagreeing 
  with Ham as usual. “I’m not worried!” 
  Pretty India Allison wrung her hands. 
  “I’m so worried!” 
  Monk grinned at her. “We’re perfectly 
  safe.” 
  “I 
  don’t 
  feel 
  that 
  way!” 
  she 
  murmured. 
  Monk waited a few moments, until 
  Doc Savage chanced to move into the rear of 
  the plane cabin. Monk leaned closer to the 
  girl and whispered: 
  “Don’t get worried, Miss Allison,” he 
  advised. “I’m willin’ to bet that Doc knows just 
  about all there is to know about this affair.”  
  “He hasn’t shown many signs of it,” 
  wailed the girl. “He tried to examine that box, 
  and it burned, so that he lost his only chance 
  to learn what was inside it. Now—” 
  Doc Savage came from the rear of 
  the plane cabin. He was carrying an object of 
  considerable size, wrapped in heavy paper. 
  “Renny, can you watch the young 
  lady?” Doc asked. “Take care of her while 
  Monk, Ham and myself go ashore.” 
  “What about me?” pale Long Tom 
  asked. 
  “You will stay here with Renny and 
  the girl,” Doc advised. “Keep a sharp lookout. 
  Our lives are in danger every minute.” 
  “Holy cow!” boomed Renny. “Won’t 
  nobody pull anything on us!” 
  The plane was equipped with a 
  collapsible boat for use as a dinghy, and Doc 
  Savage, Monk and Ham rowed ashore. 
  Habeas Corpus, the homely pig, and 
  Chemistry, the grotesque monkey which bore 
  such a resemblance to Monk, were aboard. 
  Doc, when asked if there was any reason 
  why they should not be brought, had said 
  there was none that he could see. 
  Once ashore, the bronze man led his 
  rather unique little caravan into the yacht 
  club, where they got a good deal of 
  attention—until they departed furtively by a 
  back door. Doc still carried his package. 
  They 
  went, 
  without 
  attracting 
  attention, to a commercial airport on the 
  outskirts of the city. At Doc’s instruction, 
  Ham, who looked less striking than Doc and 
  Monk, went forward alone, showed his 
  transport pilot’s license, and rented a plane, 
  a six-place cabin job. 
  He taxied it down to the end of the 
  field, under the pretense of getting ready to 
  take off into the wind, and Doc and Monk 
  loaded aboard hastily. 
  The plane took the air. 
  Monk and Ham were still in the dark 
  as to what it was all about. They had not 
  asked questions thus far, because Doc 
  Savage had a habit of not answering 
  questions unless he wanted to. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  53 
  More often than not, he did not 
  answer them for a good reason, though. But 
  now curiosity got the best of Monk and Ham. 
  “Why all this business of hiring 
  another airplane when we had a perfectly 
  good seaplane in the harbor?” Monk asked. 
  “A seaplane, I might add, which can fly rings 
  around this ark.” 
  “Our enemies will be watching our 
  plane,” Doc said. “They will if they have a 
  fraction of the sense we credit them with. 
  And if we had taken off and flown over the 
  city, it would have looked suspicious, and 
  might have warned them before we could 
  find their hide-out.” 
  “Oh!” mused Monk. “So we’re looking 
  for their hide-out now, huh?” 
  “Right.” 
  Monk looked overside. It was very 
  dark. Due to the lateness of the hour, 
  alternate street lights had been turned out. 
  “Fat chance we’ve got of seeing 
  anything in the dark!” snorted the homely 
  chemist. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE plucked the paper 
  from the object which he had brought along. 
  It was long—about three feet—made of 
  metal, 
  composition 
  and 
  glass. 
  It 
  was 
  equipped with handles for holding, and an 
  opening at the back to take a man’s eyes and 
  forehead. This opening was edged with black 
  cat fur. The thing looked like an aërial 
  camera, fitted with a stereopticon back. 
  Monk said one word loudly. “Oh!” 
  Which meant that he understood the 
  nature of the device. It was a contrivance 
  perfected 
  by 
  Doc 
  Savage, 
  its 
  inner 
  mechanism consisting in effect of a film 
  which traveled in front of a lens in the bottom 
  of the device, then traveled around and 
  passed in front of the eye of the observer. 
  The film was coated with a chemical 
  which caught and preserved for a moment in 
  fluorescence any trace of certain wave 
  lengths of infra-light. Thus, a user of the 
  device could observe, from a great distance, 
  certain wave lengths of invisible light. 
  “I don’t see how we’ll spot ‘em yet,” 
  Monk said. 
  “Remember the shots fired by myself 
  with the rifle?” Doc asked. 
  “Huh!” Monk exploded. 
  “The cartridges were shells filled with 
  chemical,” Doc elaborated. “They hit the boat 
  and splashed on it. We should be able to 
  spot the boat, wherever it is, by the glow it 
  gives off.” 
  Ham flew the plane above the 
  seashore, not too high. Doc Savage used the 
  infra-light spotter. The rays, of course, would 
  be invisible to the naked eye, but Monk 
  stared overside anyway. 
  They were well up the Thames River 
  when Doc said, “There!” 
  Then he passed the device to Monk. 
  Monk looked. At first, he saw only 
  blackness. Then he spotted a tiny, flickering 
  dot of greenish phosphorescence. He got a 
  bead on the thing, then jerked his eyes away 
  from the viewing contrivance and decided 
  where the launch was lying below. 
  “Right alongside that patch of electric 
  lights,” he said, “on the river bank.” 
  “Exactly,” Doc said. “Now we’ll land 
  and return to the seaplane.” 
  They took the plane back to the field 
  from which they had rented it. Half an hour 
  later, they were standing on the shore near 
  the spot where their seaplane was moored in 
  the river. 
  “Ahoy the plane!” Doc called, and his 
  trained voice carried surprisingly without 
  being loud. 
  There was no answer from the plane. 
   “Ahoy, Renny, Long Tom!” Doc 
  called. 
  “Ahoy, Miss Allison!” piped up Monk. 
  “Always got a woman on your mind!” 
  Ham said scathingly. “You would call her—” 
  “Look!” Monk howled. “Something’s 
  dragging the plane under!” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE was in the water 
  when Monk’s excited howl ended. The 
  homely chemist and the dapper lawyer dived 
  after the bronze man closely. 
  They could see the plane. It was 
  moving out toward deeper water, and at the 
  same time, slowly going under. There was, 
  as far as they could see in the darkness, 
  nothing attached to the craft. It simply moved 
  in uncanny fashion. 
  “Renny!” Ham shrieked. “What’s 
  wrong?” 
  No answer. 
  “Miss Allison!” Monk squeaked. 
  The plane fuselage was half under 
  the surface now. It was the type of craft 
  
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  54 
  which had no floats, but alighted upon the 
  belly of the fuselage. 
  There was a great gurgling as it went 
  down 
  deeper. 
  The 
  fuselage 
  vanished 
  completely. 
  “Long Tom!” Ham shrieked. 
  Only wings of the plane showed now. 
  One of these dipped under. Then the other. 
  Only a boil of water, a great gurgling turmoil 
  of rising bubbles, showed where it had gone 
  under. 
  “Careful!” Doc shouted. 
  Monk either did not hear, or didn’t 
  care, for he kept on swimming and Doc had 
  to overhaul him, to hold him back. Monk was 
  very fast in the water, but Doc seemed to 
  have not the slightest difficulty in overhauling 
  him. 
  “Long Tom—Renny—India Allison!” 
  Monk croaked. “They’re in there!” 
  “Stay back!” Doc rapped, and by way 
  of making sure that his command was 
  obeyed, gave Monk a clip that rendered him 
  dizzy for the next few minutes. 
  Then Doc swam forward. He dived, 
  swam down and down until it seemed certain 
  that his lungs would burst. It was very dark in 
  the depths. He could see nothing. Only the 
  swirl of water showed him which way the 
  sunken plane was being dragged. 
  He endeavored to follow the craft, 
  but the effort was useless. He could not 
  overhaul the plane. And at last he lost all 
  trace of it. 
  With Monk and Ham, Doc swam 
  back to shore. 
  “But it was incredible!” Monk gulped. 
  “I’ve really been kind of skeptical of this 
  mysterious something business up until now, 
  but I’m here to tell you I’ll now bet anybody 
  my shirt there is such a thing!” 
  “It was the happening of something 
  that couldn’t happen,” Ham said grimly. 
  Doc Savage offered, “We had better 
  hurry to the launch which we spotted from 
  the air.” 
  Ham said gloomily, “It was near a 
  patch of bright lights on the riverbank.” 
   
   
  Chapter XVIII 
  TORPEDO ROOM! 
   
  HALF an hour later, Doc Savage was 
  saying, “The patch of bright lights, Ham, is 
  the shipyard where the construction of new 
  United States navy submarines is being 
  pushed day and night.” 
  Ham picked up his homely pet, 
  Chemistry. 
  “You better leave that pest behind,” 
  Monk advised. 
  “What about your hog?” 
  “He’s a well-behaved hog,” Monk 
  growled. “Furthermore—” 
  Doc said, “The launch seemed to be 
  down this way.”  
  The bronze man found the launch 
  without much labor. It was tied up to an 
  ancient dock, and there was no one near, 
  nothing to show what had become of the 
  men who had seized Captain Blackstone 
  Toy. 
  “We’re not a heck of a lot better off,” 
  Monk complained. 
  “Never satisfied!” grunted Ham. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  said 
  nothing, 
  but 
  studied their surroundings. Downstream a bit 
  was the submarine building shipyard, a huge 
  plant, one of the largest in the world. 
  Upstream was a large naval wharf. 
  There seemed to be no craft tied to this, 
  although it was impossible, because of the 
  darkness and the angle of view, to see the 
  seaward side. 
  Doc 
  said, 
  “There 
  is 
  only 
  one 
  explanation of why the launch came—” 
  He fell silent, listening. He had 
  trained 
  his 
  ears 
  since 
  childhood 
  with 
  complicated exercises, and they were now 
  registering sounds which Monk and Ham 
  could not hear. 
  “Some one coming,” Doc said. 
  After a time, feet shuffled down the 
  shore. Two men were coming! 
  “Me, I think the boss is nuts to sink a 
  good speedboat that we just bought!” 
  complained one of the men. 
  He was Shade, the fellow whose 
  place Ham had supplanted so skillfully for a 
  time. 
  “The 
  chief 
  thinks 
  there 
  was 
  something phony about the rifle shots Doc 
  Savage fired at us,” complained the other. 
  “He thinks maybe Savage marked the 
  launch, and he wants it sunk.” 
  “He’ll get it sunk!” 
  They climbed down, swore at each 
  other, and after a time, got the seacocks in 
  the launch open. They climbed out and stood 
  for a long time on the old wharf. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  55 
  “Well, it’s sunk!” Shade said, and 
  turned away. 
  They moved off into the night. 
  Doc Savage and his two aids kept 
  close on their trail. Shade and his companion 
  went upstream, striding along a footpath 
  which led through weeds and some scrawny 
  shrubbery, and around rocks and old masses 
  of machinery. 
  “A 
  typical 
  sample 
  of 
  industrial 
  America,” whispered Ham. “An ugly waste of 
  trash and weeds and—” 
  “A heck of a time to start a lecture on 
  natural beautification,” grunted Monk. 
  Doc Savage held out an arm and 
  halted his two aids. They waited, listened, 
  and the destination of the two men they were 
  following became apparent. 
  “Huh!” Monk gulped. “They’re going 
  back to that big dock. And say! There’s a 
  submarine anchored off the end of the dock! I 
  can see it now!” 
  “Exactly,” Doc said dryly. “They 
  brought the launch here because they have 
  their headquarters aboard that submarine.” 
  Monk craned his neck. 
  “Can’t see the flag,” he said. 
  “They don’t fly flags at night,” Ham 
  reminded. 
  “All right, wise guy!” Monk muttered. 
  “I’m tryin’ to see what nationality this 
  submarine is. Cinch it ain’t American. Must 
  belong to some foreign power, the one that’s 
  causin’ all this trouble.” 
  “I hate to admit it, but you must be 
  right,” Ham agreed. “I’d give a lot to know 
  what nation it belongs to.” 
  Doc Savage said, “You two wait 
  here.” 
  “But, Doc—” 
  The bronze man, however, was 
  already gone, merging with the night as if his 
  nature partook of the blackness itself. 
   
   
  DOC 
  SAVAGE 
  worked 
  through 
  weeds and shrubbery and around big rocks 
  and got close to the water. Sure enough, the 
  tide was out, and there was a patch of bare 
  sand and stone along which he could creep. 
  The moon was in such a position that the 
  narrow beach lay in intense shadow. 
  He could distinguish the submarine 
  more distinctly now. She was a big craft, 
  enormous for an undersea vessel. She 
  floated high, fenders out to keep her away 
  from the dock piling. A faint glow of light 
  came out of two hatches, and out of a door in 
  the side of the conning tower. 
  Waves made small noises on the 
  gravel of the beach. A buried clam squirted 
  water with an audible sound. A dog barked. 
  Across the river in town, a clock struck. 
  Automobile horns honked abruptly in the 
  distance, then were silent. 
  And suddenly, Doc Savage stopped. 
  He listened. A tiny noise had come to his 
  ears, a click-click-click. He waited, but it was 
  not repeated. 
  He went on, veered over into darker 
  shadow, then abruptly wheeled and crept 
  back the way he had come. He had not-
  doubled back far when he heard the click-
  click-click noise again. He came upon the 
  balls of his feet. 
  An instant later, he had a man’s neck 
  in his corded bronze hands. He did not do 
  anything lethal to the fellow—merely exerted 
  pressure on certain spinal nerve centers 
  which caused the man to be seized with an 
  unconsciousness that was like a paralysis 
  and would not wear off for some time. 
  Then Doc felt around. He found it 
  quickly. A telegraph key! The man had a 
  sounder headset on his head. Doc hurriedly 
  appropriated it. 
  The wire, small and unnoticeable in 
  the darkness, led toward the submarine. It 
  had been tossed up on the brush to get it out 
  of the way. 
  “A m-i-s-t-a-k-e h-a-s b-e-e-n m-a-d-
  e,” Doc Savage tapped over the key slowly. 
  “E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g i-s a-l-l r-i-g-h-t.” 
  Which might not be the truth, but was 
  not an outright lie, either. 
  “B-e 
  m-o-r-e 
  c-a-r-e-f-u-l,” 
  the 
  sounder headset tapped back. 
  “O-K.” 
  Doc waited. There was no more. He 
  put headset and key down and worked 
  forward. This was the old army method of 
  equipping an outpost so the fellow could 
  telegraph back an approach by the enemy. 
  The system enabled a suitable reception to 
  be prepared. 
  Doc came closer and closer to the 
  submarine. He decided to slide into the water 
  and swim beneath the surface to the 
  submarine, and began removing his clothing. 
  There was some noise aboard the 
  submarine. He waited. It was casual noise, 
  such as men might make moving about. Doc 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  56 
  got his outer clothing off. His undergarments 
  were of a type which could double easily as a 
  bathing suit. He waded out furtively. 
  From 
  the 
  submarine 
  came 
  an 
  unearthly howl. Big-fisted Renny’s voice! Big-
  fisted Renny himself popped out of the 
  conning tower hatch. 
   
   
  RENNY was whooping at the top of 
  his voice, which meant he was probably 
  awakening the residents of Noank. The way 
  he crossed the gangplank to the dock was a 
  miracle. At every jump, he emitted a howl. 
  Men piled out of the conning tower 
  hatch. The darkness outside, after the light 
  within the submarine, seemed to baffle them. 
  Renny gained ground. 
  Then Monk and Ham, down the 
  shore, came charging recklessly to Renny’s 
  rescue, whooping at the top of their voices. 
  “Renny!” Monk bawled “Stick with 
  ‘em! We’ll be helpin’ ya in a minute!” 
  Renny heard the reassuring shout. 
  Its effect on him was exactly the opposite of 
  what might have been expected. He came to 
  an abrupt stop, threw back his head, and 
  emitted a warning howl on his own account. 
  “Go back!” he squawled. “They 
  turned me loose!” 
  “It don’t sound like it!” Monk roared, 
  in reply. 
  “They let me get away!” Renny 
  bellowed. “Now I see why! They wanted to 
  trick you guys into showing yourselves. They 
  musta known you were near. They got 
  sentries out with telegraph wires!” 
  Whether Monk and Ham heard all 
  that or not was doubtful. And, anyway, it was 
  too late. For armed men suddenly arose 
  behind Monk and Ham and rushed upon 
  them. 
  Doc 
  Savage, 
  crouched 
  in 
  the 
  shrubbery near the water, knew that he was 
  observing the springing of an almost perfect 
  trap contrived by the enemy on the spur of 
  the moment. 
  The sentry Doc had overpowered 
  had telegraphed a warning, and Doc’s later 
  attempt to quiet any alarm had failed, but 
  they had let it seem that he had succeeded. 
  Then they had sent men out into the 
  darkness, 
  furtively 
  noiseless, 
  and 
  had 
  released Renny to draw Doc and the others 
  into the open. 
  Monk and Ham did not fight for long. 
  Almost immediately, they were overwhelmed 
  by sheer force of numbers. 
   
   
  THE obviously best thing for Doc 
  Savage to do was to go to the aid of his two 
  assistants, to help them fight clear. But Doc 
  made no move. In the first place, there was a 
  really excellent chance of getting shot. In the 
  second place, he had another idea. 
  He glided along the beach, entered 
  the water where the shadows were black, 
  and sank beneath the surface. He swam 
  underwater, swiftly at first, then more slowly 
  when he knew the submarine must be near. 
  The painted steel hull of the submarine did 
  not have many barnacles on it. 
  Doc worked toward the bows, with 
  the idea of clambering quietly upon the diving 
  rudders, then gaining the deck and ducking 
  down a hatch, to hide somewhere in the 
  depths. 
  He managed it with even less 
  difficulty than he had expected. The entire 
  gang seemed to be outside, capturing Monk 
  and Ham. But surely not the entire submarine 
  crew! Doc was puzzled on that point. 
  The bronze man noted one thing in 
  creeping across the deck to the hatch. The 
  hull was very wet. Below, it was warm, and 
  the air had that odor and heaviness which it 
  has in a submarine which has lately been 
  beneath the surface. 
  Forward seemed the logical place to 
  remain hidden, so Doc moved in that 
  direction. He moved with certainty, for he 
  knew a great deal about submarines, having 
  possessed one himself, which he had 
  designed. He knew, of course, the layout of 
  this big, modern craft. 
  He concealed himself in the forward 
  torpedo room, under a pile of heavy canvas 
  which was evidently a weather cloth and an 
  awning which were put up when the 
  submarine made long surface cruises. With a 
  tiny hole torn in the canvas, he could observe 
  what went on. 
  Feet tramped on deck as men 
  returned aboard. They came clattering down 
  the hatches, and there was some swearing 
  and fighting as Monk and Ham were hauled 
  below. The two prisoners, both resisting 
  stubbornly, were yanked forward into the 
  torpedo room. 
  
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  57 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  remained 
  perfectly 
  quiet. This was a bad break, for more and 
  more men crowded into the torpedo room. If 
  they should attempt to move the canvas— 
  Fuzzy, Shade and the fellow once 
  designated as Useless came in, along with 
  others. Shade sat down on the canvas—on 
  Doc’s knee and foreleg to be exact. The 
  bronze man gave no sign, made no 
  movement, and Shade failed to detect the 
  difference. 
  Fuzzy did the talking. But first he 
  glared at the prisoners, Monk and Ham, as if 
  he intended eating them. 
  “Where’s 
  Doc 
  Savage?” 
  Fuzzy 
  growled. 
  Monk gave back a glare as fierce as 
  Fuzzy’s own. 
  “Don’t kid us!” snarled the homely 
  chemist. “You’ve got Doc already!” 
  “Oh, yes?” Fuzzy said, sarcastically. 
  “Yeah!” 
  Monk 
  gritted. 
  “Doc 
  disappeared! We know he was lookin’ for 
  you, and you musta grabbed ‘im! We was 
  prowlin’ along the shore huntin’ for ‘im when 
  this mess started!” 
  Fuzzy stared narrowly at his two 
  captives. Ham’s rather handsome features 
  were 
  inscrutable. 
  Monk’s 
  homely 
  face, 
  however, was absolutely earnest. Monk was 
  acting out the whopper he had just told, and 
  doing a good job of it. 
  Apparently satisfied, Fuzzy jerked his 
  head. “Put them with the prisoners.” 
  Monk and Ham were carried out. 
   
   
  Chapter XIX 
  BURIAL AT SEA 
   
  SHADE got up off Doc Savage’s leg, 
  turned around, and with a display of ill 
  temper, gave the canvas a kick. 
  “That’s a damned hard seat!” he 
  growled. 
  Doc Savage gave no sign, although 
  the skin on his leg was broken and the spot 
  began to ooze a bit of crimson. 
  All of the gang moved out of the 
  torpedo room, which was at best an ill-
  ventilated place, but had the advantage of 
  having only one entrance and exit, which was 
  why the two prisoners had been questioned 
  here. 
  Doc carefully extricated himself from 
  beneath the pile of canvas, and eased to the 
  bulkhead door. Shade and another man were 
  standing on the metal ladder which led up to 
  a hatch in the adjacent compartment. They 
  were talking. 
  “Boy, this is our lucky night,” Shade 
  remarked. “That fight a minute ago don’t 
  seem to have attracted any attention.” 
  “What about the sentry we found 
  senseless down the beach, the one who 
  gave the alarm by telegraph?” The other man 
  asked. 
  “He’s coming out of it,” Fuzzy said. 
  “He don’t know who grabbed him, or who he 
  saw, but he thinks it musta been that big 
  gorilla guy, Monk.” 
  “How come he figure that?” 
  “From the way he was mauled 
  around.” 
  A voice came crackling from forward. 
  Fuzzy! He was giving orders. A moment 
  later, the exact text of what he was saying 
  became understandable. 
  “Orders were for this submarine to 
  sail for a test run an hour before dawn,” 
  Fuzzy said loudly. “The chief says it’ll look 
  suspicious unless we sail, so we’d better be 
  getting under way.” 
  Doc Savage listened. There was 
  noise of hatches being closed and dogged 
  down. This was done only to the forward 
  hatches, over which seas might break when 
  the submarine was outside. The conning-
  tower hatches could be left open for 
  ventilation. 
  Lines were cast off, hauled aboard 
  and coiled down in recessed steel deck 
  lockers. It became evident from the slowness 
  of the preparations and the amount of 
  swearing and galloping about that not all of 
  the men handling the craft were submarine 
  experts. Indeed, there appeared to be not 
  more than half a dozen experienced pigboat 
  men aboard. 
  Getting under way from the wharf 
  required some time. There was also difficulty 
  in starting the Diesels. The engines fired off 
  bravely enough at first, but some one had 
  forgotten to turn on the fuel from the tanks, 
  and after the oil in the lines was consumed, 
  the motors stopped. 
  In the silence which followed, Doc 
  Savage distinctly heard Monk’s voice, loud 
  and startled. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  58 
  “Blazes!” Monk was saying. “For the 
  love of little fishes! This thing ain’t no foreign 
  submarine! It’s an American submarine!” 
  A volley of profanity from the engine 
  room drowned out Monk’s voice. 
  “An American submarine!” Monk’s 
  voice came again, a bit later. 
  Then they got the Diesels started. 
   
   
  THE submarine passed out of the 
  harbor at a very slow rate of speed, with at 
  least half a dozen men on the conning-tower 
  bridge, arguing about which were channel 
  lights. There was profanity in profusion when 
  they nearly ran down a buoy. 
  Doc Savage heard two men come 
  into the adjacent compartment. He chanced 
  a brief glance and saw that they carried 
  Monk and Ham’s two pets, Habeas Corpus 
  and Chemistry. Evidently the animals had 
  been captured before the submarine sailed. 
  When the submarine was well out 
  into the open water, Fuzzy came below. He 
  called several of his men and they all started 
  for the torpedo room. 
  It was a bad moment for Doc 
  Savage, for it seemed they had discovered 
  him. But no. They merely wanted to talk in 
  the torpedo room, because it was the 
  quietest place aboard the submarine. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  concealed 
  himself 
  under the pile of canvas. He could overhear, 
  but could not see, for there had been no time 
  to locate the tear through which he had 
  observed proceedings earlier. 
  “Bring the crew of the submarine in 
  here!” Fuzzy ordered loudly. 
  There ensued much activity. Doc. 
  listening, could tell by the sounds that bound 
  men were being carried into the control room 
  and arrayed along the wall. These men 
  swore heartily at their captors. 
  Doc took a chance and lifted a 
  corner of the canvas. He could just barely 
  glimpse two of the prisoners. 
  They wore the uniforms of submarine 
  men, U. S. navy. 
  “That’s all of ‘em,” some one said 
  finally. 
  “All right,” Fuzzy snapped. “Get 
  everybody in here that’s not needed to run 
  this pigboat.” 
  “What about the other prisoners, Doc 
  Savage’s crowd and—” 
  “Leave a guard over them,” ordered 
  Fuzzy. “But get everybody else in here. The 
  chief has some things to say.” 
  “Is the chief aboard?” some one 
  asked, in an awed voice. 
  “Yeah,” said Fuzzy. “Things are 
  getting kinda critical, so he’s decided to keep 
  out of sight. He’s in the skipper’s cabin, and 
  he’ll join us in a minute.” 
  There was much scuffling as men 
  entered the torpedo room. The air became 
  close. There was some coughing. One of the 
  prisoners created a commotion, and ended 
  by getting himself knocked senseless. 
  Then abrupt silence fell. It was the 
  kind of silence that reigns in a radio 
  broadcasting studio the instant before the 
  program goes on the air. 
  “The chief!” said Fuzzy. “I guess you 
  all know who he is.” 
  “I’m here to have a little talk with you 
  men,” said a new, authoritative voice. 
  Doc chanced lifting the canvas a bit 
  again. But the leader was standing where it 
  was impossible to see him. 
   
   
  THE submarine engines made a 
  good deal of noise, and there was vibration. 
  Electric fans whined, sucking air down 
  through the ventilators, and generators and 
  compressors added to the general din. 
  “Close 
  that 
  door,” 
  the 
  leader 
  directed. 
  It was quieter, but not a whole lot, 
  after the door was closed. 
  “We have all five of Doc Savage’s 
  assistants aboard as prisoners,” said the 
  leader. “We have, also, the girl, Pat Savage, 
  and the other girl, India Allison, together with 
  the stupid ignoramus who is her boss, Lieber 
  Von Zidney.” 
  There was a pause while a man 
  opened the door, put his head in, and said, 
  “We’re clear of the island. What course, sir?” 
  “East by south,” directed Fuzzy. 
  “That O. K., chief?” 
  “We want to take the submarine into 
  deep water and submerge her,” replied the 
  leader. “Then we will expel these navy men 
  through the torpedo tubes in water so deep 
  that the pressure will kill them. Not one of the 
  sub crew will reach the surface alive.” 
  “That’ll be simple,” said Fuzzy. “But 
  what about the other prisoners?” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  59 
  “The Doc Savage crowd will be shot 
  when we are at sea, the bodies weighted and 
  cast overside,” said the leader. 
  “Well,” grunted Fuzzy, “that takes a 
  weight off my chest.”  
  It sounded at this point as if every 
  one 
  prepared 
  to 
  leave, 
  thinking 
  the 
  proceedings were ended. 
  “Wait!” rapped the leader. “I have a 
  few additional words. What I have to say now 
  is intended to restore your confidence and 
  show you how absolutely foolproof is our 
  scheme to make a hundred million dollars.” 
  Silence fell in the torpedo room. 
  Silence as far as the men were concerned, 
  although the machinery kept on making 
  noise. 
  “My plan started out as a plot for 
  revenge upon the United States navy for 
  disgracing me,” said the leader. “But as it 
  progressed, I thought of the hundred million.” 
  He paused to laugh. It was a 
  perfectly intelligent, but greedily fierce, laugh. 
  “I started working almost five years 
  ago,” the leader continued. “I assembled my 
  men, picking them carefully, and got them to 
  enlist in the navy until I had men in every 
  branch 
  of 
  the 
  service. 
  By 
  careful 
  maneuvering, my men managed to get 
  themselves stationed in strategic positions. 
  They became steersmen on battleships and 
  destroyers. They became aviators. Some of 
  them even became airship men.” 
  He paused while Fuzzy went to the 
  door and ordered the course changed a little. 
  The submarine was beginning to heave and 
  roll to a marked degree, indicating she was 
  heading out into the open sea. 
  “Everything,” continued the leader, 
  “was done according to probably the most 
  clever and audacious plan ever organized.” 
  He paused for effect. 
  “The plan,” he continued, “of making 
  the navy think a foreign power with a 
  mysterious force, capable of drawing ships 
  out of their course, was wrecking the United 
  States fleet.” 
  He paused again. 
   
  “The deceit has gone over,” he said. 
  “I think we have fooled every one.” 
   
   
  THE submarine gave a pitch, and 
  several men staggered about, off balance. 
  “Our first gesture was to maneuver 
  the grounding of the five destroyers on a 
  reef,” the leader said, after the momentary 
  confusion had subsided. “This we could do 
  because our man happened to be steering 
  the leading destroyer. The other ships ran on 
  the reef because they were following in the 
  radio beam sent back by the leader.” 
  He paused and laughed. 
  “The men who told the story about a 
  thing pulling the destroyer off her course did 
  a very good job,” he continued. “That was 
  exactly what we wanted. Later, when it was 
  necessary to drown Lieutenant Bowen Toy, 
  the men who drowned him told a convincing 
  story about something invisible being the 
  actual killer. Another excellent bit of lying.” 
  The waves sloshing over the deck 
  made distinct gurgling noises. 
  “And so it went,” continued the 
  leader. “Our men struck in U. S. navy ships 
  all over the world, running them into reefs, 
  causing collisions, opening seacocks and 
  causing them to sink. In each case, the work 
  was attributed to some fantastic force.” 
  There was general laughter. 
  “Oh, it was excellent acting,” the 
  leader said grandly. “The unfortunate point 
  was that Lieutenant Toy had managed to get 
  an inkling of what was going on, and was 
  instrumental in getting Doc Savage involved. 
  That was unlucky. We had to fight Doc 
  Savage.” 
  The mention of the name of the man 
  of bronze brought silence. Evidently it was 
  not a pleasant subject for thought. 
  We locked the controls of the 
  dirigible 
  Zephyr 
  and 
  disconnected 
  the 
  throttle-closing 
  controls,” 
  continued 
  the 
  leader.  “When they opened the throttles, the 
  ship dived, and crashed before they could 
  stop it.” 
  He laughed. 
  “Perhaps our best touch was in 
  hooking this submarine to Doc Savage’s 
  plane and dragging it beneath the surface, 
  after we had captured the bronze man’s 
  assistants,” he said. “That touch, I am sure, 
  completely confused Savage.” 
  The sub rolled more heavily. 
  “The navy, I am sure, is absolutely 
  convinced that there is a mysterious force,” 
  the chief resumed. “It is now up to us to sell 
  them the protective device, the sale of which 
  is really behind this whole plot.”  
   
   
  
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  60 
  THERE was a commotion on the 
  floor, among the bound sailors. This was 
  stopped with a series of cruel blows. 
  “Doc Savage put quite a crimp in the 
  sale of the protective device when he stole 
  the thing and gave the navy a box full of 
  junk,” said Fuzzy. 
  “True,” admitted the leader. “That 
  was a smart move on the bronze man’s part. 
  But he did not learn that the actual contents 
  of the box he had seized, the genuine box, 
  were as worthless as the one he had 
  substituted for it. He did not learn that thanks 
  to the precautions we had taken against the 
  box being opened or X rayed.” 
  “How are we gonna convince the 
  navy the protector is really worth a hundred 
  million?” Fuzzy wanted to know. “That’s 
  what’s worryin’ the boys.” 
  “And it is to allay your fears that I am 
  going over the whole affair so thoroughly,” 
  the master mind replied. “We will free 
  Captain Blackstone Toy, who will explain that 
  Doc Savage stole the genuine device.” 
  “What about the girl, India Allison, 
  and that cluck, Lieber Von Zidney?” Fuzzy 
  asked. 
  “They will be used as was intended 
  all along,” replied the leader. “Guilt has been 
  pointed at them. They cannot prove they are 
  innocent, cannot prove that we have had a 
  man following them around with a gun for 
  days, forcing their every move. And, too, 
  thanks to certain clever stunts we have 
  pulled, they actually think there is a foreign 
  power with a mysterious force machine. They 
  do not suspect the truth.” 
  Fuzzy said, “I guess maybe we will 
  get that hundred million after all.” 
  The other said, “There is not the 
  slightest doubt of it. We already have the 
  entire navy of the United States shaking in 
  their boots.” 
  “But what about Doc Savage?” 
  “That, admittedly, is a dangerous 
  point. First, we must find the fellow—” 
  At this precise moment, which might 
  be called the dramatic one, the sub gave a 
  much more violent roll than ordinary, and two 
  men sat down on Doc Savage. 
  The bronze man did not move. 
  The 
  leader 
  did 
  not 
  finish 
  his 
  statement about Doc Savage, but, instead, 
  said, “It is fortunate we had a good number of 
  our own men in the crew of this submarine, 
  so that we could seize it without difficulty. We 
  will make it seem that the mysterious 
  invisible 
  monster 
  or 
  force 
  drew 
  the 
  submarine to its destruction. 
  “Then we will keep the craft in a 
  hiding place, to take away the money, and to 
  furnish a method of escape should we need 
  it. As for the crew, the ordinary navy men, we 
  shall soon be in water deep enough—” 
  One of the men sitting on Doc lifted 
  the canvas and looked at the bronze man’s 
  face. 
   
   
  Chapter XX 
  TUMULT UNDER THE SEA 
   
  WHAT 
  happened 
  next 
  probably 
  escaped a number of the men in the torpedo 
  room. Some of them saw the bronze man, 
  and realized he had been discovered in their 
  midst, but others didn’t. 
  Doc made no effort to scramble from 
  under the canvas. That might have meant 
  getting entangled with it. He simply exploded, 
  heaving the canvas up and throwing it at 
  Fuzzy and the others. The canvas filled the 
  air like a great cloud, and they ducked wildly 
  from instinct, and became confused. 
  In a flash, Doc was out of the 
  torpedo room. 
  Fuzzy and the others fought the 
  canvas off their heads and looked around 
  wildly. 
  “I musta dreamed I saw ‘im!” Fuzzy 
  gulped, not discovering Doc Savage. 
  “You did in a cat’s eye!” a voice 
  snarled. “He went aft!” 
  They charged aft, through crew 
  quarters, and storerooms, and into the 
  control room. 
  “He’s been here,” Fuzzy said, looking 
  at two senseless men lying on the control-
  room floor. He glanced upward at the open 
  conning-tower  hatch. “Maybe he went out 
  and jumped overboard!” 
  A man screamed near the stern. 
  “Nope,” Fuzzy groaned. “No such 
  luck!” 
  The man who had screamed was a 
  guard who held a pistol, but who had had no 
  chance to use it. Doc Savage took the man 
  by the arms first, and got the gun, then 
  grasped the fellow’s neck, and the man 
  became unconscious. He was a thin man 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  61 
  and he made a rattling sound falling on the 
  steel floor-plates. 
  There was yelling behind the bronze 
  man, a series of enraged howls. 
   “Monk, Ham!” Doc yelled. 
  “In here!” piped Monk’s voice from a 
  cabin to the right. 
  Doc wrenched at the dogs, got the 
  door open, and not only Monk came tumbling 
  out, but also Ham, Renny, Long Tom, Johnny 
  and Pat. 
  Pretty India Allison and Lieber Von 
  Zidney, the latter with his big mouth open 
  and frightened, showing all of his small teeth, 
  also appeared. 
  “Ach!” gasped Von Zidney. “Vat a 
  cruel world, this one!” 
  Doc said sharply, “We’ll take the 
  engine room.” 
  Monk scooped up the gun which the 
  guard had dropped when Doc seized him. 
  “No shooting if it can be helped!” Doc 
  warned. 
  “Sure,” grinned Monk. “This is just for 
  sound effects!” With which he fired the 
  weapon and missed, by not more than two 
  inches, shooting through the forehead a man 
  who came charging from the direction of the 
  control room. 
  In some manner, Pat had managed 
  to get ahead of Doc Savage in the direction 
  of the engine room. Doc had delayed briefly 
  to warn Monk, who frequently became so 
  enthusiastic as to forget about Doc’s rule 
  against taking life, even under the most 
  extreme circumstances. 
  Pat was only a yard or so from the 
  engine-room door. 
  Captain Blackstone Toy came out. 
  “Help us!” Pat shrilled at him. “We’re 
  trying to retake the submarine!” 
  Captain Blackstone Toy swung a 
  terrific blow which knocked pretty Pat Savage 
  senseless. 
   
   
  THE next instant, Doc hit Captain 
  Blackstone Toy. The blow could be heard 
  over all of the engine room, and the engine 
  room was not quiet. Captain Toy went up in 
  the air and came down and lay like a big rag 
  in the corridor. 
  The men in the engine room were 
  perspiring and hot, and were not wearing 
  their guns, because there was not much 
  room for guns in the cramped engine 
  compartment. There was a box of tools near 
  the door. 
  Doc and his men stood in the door 
  and threw wrenches and hammers until they 
  had taken the engine room, except for one 
  man, whom they had to pull out from behind 
  a generator, where he tried to hide. They 
  knocked him senseless. 
  They got Pat inside and closed the 
  engine-room door. Bullets smashed against 
  the door from the direction of the control 
  room. None of the lead got through. 
  “This type of submarine can be 
  handled completely from inside the engine 
  room,” Doc Savage said. “We can submerge 
  her, and when the water comes in the 
  conning-tower hatch, they will very soon 
  decide to give up.” 
  “But they’ll close the conning-tower 
  hatch!” Monk exploded. 
  “Not,” Doc said, “if we can work a 
  trick on them.” 
  The bronze man scrambled aft to the 
  engine-room hatch. It was closed, and he got 
  it open, then fished about in a locker and 
  came up with a length of rope. 
  “Won’t do,” he decided, and tossed 
  the rope aside. “Get ready for a crash dive!” 
  He scrambled up through the hatch. 
  The deck was slippery. The sub, taking one 
  wave after another, was wet. Doc worked 
  forward and found one of the lockers which 
  held the wire ropes used for mooring 
  purposes. They were stiff, heavy. 
  He tried to make as little noise as 
  possible, and hauled the rope out of the 
  locker. He worked forward, reached the 
  conning-tower hatch, and listened. There 
  was a lot of cursing and shouting below, but 
  no one had thought of coming up to see what 
  was happening on deck. 
  Doc took a turn over the conning-
  tower hatch with the wire-rope end. He drew 
  it tight, then tied it—a granny knot so that it 
  would be hard to untie. 
  It was a stiff job, the tying of the wire 
  line, even for his corded muscles. He had a 
  suspicion that it would take several men 
  some time, or a cutting torch, to get the wire 
  rope off so the hatch could be closed. 
  They heard him toward the end. He 
  dived back toward the engine-room hatch. 
  “Crash dive!” he barked, as he 
  dropped down the  hatch. 
  Monk, an experienced pigboat man, 
  put the sub into a dive with the engine-room 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  62 
  controls, which he had disconnected from the 
  master controls in the control room. 
  Doc got the hatch shut then ran to 
  the bulkhead door admitting to the forward 
  part of the submersible. 
  “Give up, and we’ll keep you from 
  drowning!” he called. 
  Profanity answered. That and shots. 
  Then men yelled. They screamed, as men 
  will scream when they feel cold death 
  washing 
  down 
  upon 
  their 
  heads 
  and 
  shoulders and slopping at their shanks. 
  There was more shooting. 
  Finally, a man beat at the door. 
  “Don’t drown us!” he squawled. 
  “Please! They’re gone!” 
   
   
  “BRING her up,” Doc directed. 
  Monk sent the submarine back to the 
  surface. They ran the bilge pumps for a time, 
  then opened the bulkhead door. Some water 
  came in, but not much more than enough to 
  wash inside some men who had their hands 
  in the air. 
  They were the sailors, the men who 
  had been seized by the plotters. 
  “What happened?” Doc demanded. 
  “They decided to swim for it!” gasped 
  the sailor. “They’re all gone! They managed 
  to get overboard. Let the control room fill with 
  water, and when it stopped coming in, they 
  swam out.” 
  “The durned ignoramuses!” Monk 
  grunted. “Didn’t they know they’d drown?” 
  “They have very little chance in this 
  sea, even if they did reach the surface,” Doc 
  said. “We must be miles from land by now.” 
  “I guess they didn’t care to stick 
  around and face a surefire chance of getting 
  hung,” replied the sailor. “After all, they’re 
  guilty of murdering every man who has been 
  drowned or otherwise killed in all of these 
  naval disasters.” 
  Doc set Monk to work attempting to 
  revive Pat, who was still senseless from 
  Captain Toy’s blow. Going on deck, the 
  bronze man directed the sub put about, and 
  used the searchlights in an effort to pick up 
  swimmers. 
  There was practically no chance of 
  finding any one in the darkness and the high 
  seas. 
  But, strangely enough, they did find 
  one body in a life preserver. It was Captain 
  Blackstone Toy. He had drowned. 
  “I can’t feel sorry for that guy,” Renny 
  rumbled grimly. “He kept right on working 
  with the gang that killed his own brother.” 
  They did not find any more bodies 
  that night. 
  About dawn, Pat came to her 
  senses. She had been, she admitted, 
  knocked as thoroughly senseless as at any 
  time in her eventful life. She looked terrible; 
  she admitted she felt it. 
  “I don’t know, Doc,” she admitted 
  gloomily. “Maybe you were right all along 
  about these little parties of yours being too 
  rough for a woman.” 
  Which, coming from Pat herself, was 
  proof she did feel terrible. 
   
   
  THE newspapers got the story. Doc 
  Savage let the newspapers get the idea that 
  he had a list of the entire gang of plotters. 
  During the next day, there were 
  scores of desertions from the U. S. navy. 
  Only by these desertions did the authorities 
  know who had been involved in the plot, and 
  who had not. 
  “This gang had undermined our 
  navy,” said a high official, “more thoroughly 
  than we believed any foreign power could. 
  This will be a lesson to us. Suppose it had 
  been a foreign power! We will be more 
  careful!” 
  And they were. It became very 
  difficult to enlist in the U. S. Navy. 
  Some days later, a number of bodies 
  had drifted up on the coast, an indication that 
  most of the plotters had drowned. 
  There was quite a hullabaloo when 
  the body of August Atlanta Braun was found. 
  For, thanks to the newspapers, the 
  American public now knew that August 
  Atlanta Braun had been behind the whole 
  thing. 
   
   
  “BRAUN sure was a clever fellow.” 
  This came from Monk, who had been reading 
  the facts concerning the finding of Braun’s 
  body. “He almost had navy big shots 
  believing they were seeing things and that 
  some nation was knocking at our navy. In 
  fact, I almost fell for it myself.” 
  “Nothing remarkable about that!” 
  snapped Ham from his chair. “With a brain 
  like yours, a child could convince you the 
  earth is flat!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE TERROR IN THE NAVY xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  63 
  There was a roar from Monk as he 
  bounced from his chair. “You fashion plate!” 
  he howled. “I’ll make you see things in a 
  moment, as soon as I get my hands on you!” 
  Monk was going to regret that last 
  crack. 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  MAD EYES 
   
  Something was wrong. People who were otherwise sane and normal were 
  beset by the strangest, weirdest sights. Eyes which functioned normally, all of a 
  sudden changed in their task and almost drove people crazy. Even Doc and his 
  companions fell prey to this strange malady—and all the things that went with it, 
  until a smashing climax cleared eyes and atmosphere of foul schemes! 
   
  Read the complete novel in the next issue of 
   
  DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE 
   
  TEN CENTS—AT ALL NEWS STANDS 
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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