TEXT:  MAD EYES
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  
  Table of Contents
  MAD EYES..........................................................................................................................................................1
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson.....................................................................................1
  Chapter I. NIGHTMARE OF MONSTERS............................................................................................1
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN..............................................................................................................7
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED...............................................................................................12
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES...........................................................................................................17
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK................................................................................................22
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS..................................................................................................29
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK..........................................................................................35
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE.................................................................................................40
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES......................................................................................................45
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS......................................................................................................51
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER................................................................................................54
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH..........................................................................................59
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT............................................................................................64
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS....................................................................................................67
  Chapter XV. TRAIN IN THE NIGHT..................................................................................................73
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN...........................................................................................75
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS...........................................................................................80
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN........................................................................................84
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR................................................................................................91
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL............................................................................................97
   MAD EYES
  i
  
  MAD EYES
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  http://www.blackmask.com
  Chapter I. NIGHTMARE OF MONSTERS
  • 
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  • 
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  • 
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  • 
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  • 
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  • 
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  • 
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  • 
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  • 
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS
  • 
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  • 
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  • 
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT
  • 
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  • 
  Chapter XV. TRAIN IN THE NIGHT
  • 
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  • 
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  • 
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  • 
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  • 
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  • 
  Chapter I. NIGHTMARE OF MONSTERS
  "THEY’RE after me!" screamed the gaunt,  loose−jointed man. "Take them away!" His voice cracked out
  with a nasal  twang.
  The man’s arms were long. His big hands flapped. He  was beating at the empty air about him. One set of
  fingers clutched  suddenly at his colorless hair. The hand came away with strands the man  had torn loose.
  The long man was clad in brown overalls. Lights  slanting across the railroad yards showed him to be beyond
  middle age.  His wild, terror−filled screams were loud enough to be heard above the  grinding and the clanking
  of switch engines.
  A cut of freight cars was being shunted onto a  siding. The running man evaded these by only a few feet. He
  was headed  back toward the building from which he had dashed.
  A thin rain slashed down on the railroad yards. The  mist of it almost obscured the building from which the
  man had darted.
  MAD EYES
  1
  
  "They’ll tear me to pieces!" screamed the man.
  He pitched to his hands and knees in the middle of a  track. Two brakemen were riding the bumper step of a
  switch engine. One  man shouted hoarsely.
  "Hey! Look out! You gone nuts? You’ll be  pulverized!" 
  The brakie’s lantern swung. The switch engine  stopped with a squealing of brakes. The two railroad men
  scrambled off.  But the tall man had leaped to his feet.
  "Grab ‘em!" he shrieked. "That one’s got ten heads!"
  The two brakemen tried to seize and restrain the  fellow. The man was too quick for them. His hands
  apparently were  batting at nothing.
  "They’re everywhere!" the tall man continued to  scream.
  Having escaped the switch engine, he leaped across  the tracks. He tried to reënter the building from which he
  had come.  But there appeared to be no doors.
  "That’s the watchman�an’ he’s gone nuts!" growled  one brakeman. "Anybody’d go off his bean, locked up in
  that crazy place  every night!"
  "Yup!" barked the other railroad brakie. "This big  guy, Doc Savage, fixed them doors. Even the yardmaster
  can’t open ‘em!"
  THE doors of the long, low, concrete building were  as described by the railroad men. The structure, unlike
  other  industrial plants along the metropolitan railroad yards, bore no sign.
  In the thin rain, the building looked much like a  tomb. No windows appeared anywhere. The wildly
  screaming watchman had  emerged from a small door. This door was of chromium steel.
  One end of the long building appeared the same as  the other. But at intervals�perhaps twice a week�one end
  would slide  open. When this took place, the yardmaster would be notified.
  All of the incoming and outgoing shipments were  handled in special sealed cars. None of the regular yard
  crews were  ever permitted inside. It was not surprising that the railroad men  viewed the plant with suspicion.
  Especially ominous were those doors. On a few  occasions, the railroad men had seen persons connected with
  the plant  enter the place. It seemed to the railroad men that these persons  merely stopped and looked at that
  small, low door of chromium steel.
  The yardmen were not aware the small door and the  house track slide were locked by an electroscopic device.
  Those opening  the doors were equipped with radio short−wave control of these  electroscopes.
  The screaming watchman had now returned to the small  door.
  For a few seconds he beat his fists against the  steel. His voice still rose above the pounding of wheels in the
  yards.  When he was not hitting the door, the man was whirling and striking at  something invisible to the
   MAD EYES
  MAD EYES
  2
  
  near−by brakemen.
  "Guess we’d better sit on ‘im an’ get one of the  yard bulls to take ‘im out," suggested one of the brakemen.
  "He’ll bump  into something around here!"
  Though the engineer and fireman of the switch engine  climbed down and joined the chase, the screaming
  man evaded them.
  His long arms writhed above his head, as if he were  being tortured. Though he might have been, as the
  railroad men  imagined, in an advanced stage of delirium tremens, John Corbin, the  trusted watchman, never
  would describe the frightful monsters he may  have seen.
  Leaving the concrete building, the man started  running across the maze of yard tracks. He leaped and
  screamed, tearing  off some of his clothing. The four men of the switch−engine crew were  close behind him.
  "If he runs into one of them third rails�"
  One of the brakemen yelled this. His cry was lost in  the roar of a local train coming out of Manhattan. The
  crazed watchman  apparently just missed being struck by this train.
  He had fallen and rolled over when the local flashed  past. Now he again staggered to his feet. The blinding
  headlight of a  limited express came across the yard and bore down on the watchman.
  The crew of the switch engine stood frozen to the  spot. They could do nothing more. Against the brilliant
  headlight of  the express, the leaping watchman showed for a few seconds. His long  body with the flapping
  arms was like that of some black human bug about  to be impaled.
  "Goshamighty!" gritted the engineer of the switch  engine. "It got ‘im!"
  THE roaring express had hit John Corbin, the  watchman.
  For an instant it was a fearful human projectile.  Then the watchman was only a bag of crushed bones, lying
  more than a  hundred feet from the spot where he had been struck.
  The four men from the switch engine were the first  to reach the crushed body. The watchman’s face had
  escaped  disfigurement. But the railroad men were sick.
  John Corbin’s eyes were still wide open. Though his  hands no longer batted at invisible monsters, all his
  features were  twisted, as if the man still saw something horrible.
  "By criminy!" grunted the engineer. "If that’s what  hooch does, I’m never takin’ another drink!"
  The whole tragedy thus far had the brand of being an  overdose of intoxicants.
  "Couldn’t blame a guy for takin’ on a few snifters  in that doggoned graveyard buildin’!" said one of the
  brakemen.
  One of the railroad men had summoned a yard bull.  This representative of the law had in turn put in a call for
  a regular  State police detail, an ambulance and the nearest deputy coroner.  Waiting for the arrival of proper
   MAD EYES
  MAD EYES
  3
  
  authority, the yard bull went over to  the long, concrete building.
  Like the other railroad men, the bull suspected the  business of this windowless, lockless structure might not
  be on the up  and up. But the name of Clark Savage, Jr., was a power with the  railroad officials.
  Among his countless other interests, the noted Doc  Savage had a considerable financial finger in the affairs of
  this  transportation line. The railroad officials knew only this building was  under the control of Doc Savage.
  They also knew the plant was operated  by a rather queer old codger, a Professor Lanidus Spargrove.
  "That’s funny," muttered the yard bull, walking  around the end of the building where two lines of railroad
  tracks  disappeared under the blank wall of the door. "Never saw it up like  that before."
  The yard bull bent down in the rain. This end of the  concrete building was in darkness. The bull played a
  flashlight across  the two tracks. The immense door was made to fit down evenly over the  rails.
  Now the big door was almost a foot above the tracks.  It looked as if the door had been opened and then
  improperly closed.  The yard bull was a bulky man. But there seemed to be space for him to  crawl under the
  door.
  "Might as well have a look," he murmured, and  started twisting under the wall−like door.
  Something happened. It was noiseless. Only the  agonized yell of the yard bull hit the ears of the railroad men
  beside  the watchman’s body. Two men ran through the rain around the side of  the building.
  The yard bull had screamed only once. What the two  railroad men saw was worse than the body of the
  watchman. The door over  the tracks had dropped.
  The yard bull had been part of the way under it.
  THERE were two cases awaiting for the county police  and the deputy coroner. That of the yard bull was the
  most horrible.  But the brakemen, still beside the watchman’s body, had quit looking at  the twisted face.
  "I’m signin’ off this yard after to−night," muttered  one of the men.
  The twin lights of a motor car showed on the highway  just below where the body of the watchman lay. The
  car stopped.  Apparently the driver had been attracted by the railroad men’s lanterns  near the track above.
  The man who got out of the automobile was a bulky  figure. Yet he moved up the embankment with the easy,
  soundless steps  of a cat. A slicker over his other clothes protected him from the rain.
  "What’s happened here?" said the new arrival. "One  of your men get hit?"
  "No," said one brakeman. "It’s the old guy who had  the job of watchman at that nutty building without the
  windows. Acted  like he’d been hit by the D. T.’s an’ run right into the�"
  The brakeman stopped speaking abruptly. His mouth  hung open.
  The big man from the car on the highway had thrown  back his slicker. He had dropped on one knee beside
  the dead John  Corbin. One big hand was passing softly over the dead watchman’s face.
   MAD EYES
  MAD EYES
  4
  
  The stranger was making a swift examination. The  light from the brakemen’s lanterns were shining on him. It
  was this  that had caused the brakeman to quit talking so suddenly.
  For the driver’s hands were the color of bright  bronze. The skin of his face and his thickly corded neck was of
  the  same golden hue. The rain slid off his hair as if it were a waterproof  mask.
  The hair, also, was bronze in color. It was only  slightly different from the skin.
  The brakeman found his voice again after his survey. 
  "You must be Doc Savage himself," he said. "Then  maybe you know more about this guy than we do. Say!
  One of the bulls  got hurt over there! A couple of the boys have gone over!"
  The big bronze man rubbed the tips of his fingers  across the forehead of the dead watchman. He straightened
  to his feet.  Once more the slicker was around his body. But his eyes were fixed on  the brakemen.
  These orbs seemed now to be shining like flakes of  polished copper.
  "You say one of your men was hurt over by the  building?" asked the bronze man. "I shall see about it."
  The bronze man walked around the corner of the  building. The men there could do nothing for the yard bull.
  The door on  his body weighed tons. The bronze man stood behind them.
  Perhaps the others thought the bronze man only  looked at the great door over the house tracks. One hand was
  under his  slicker. Suddenly, the great door started upward.
  "Remove the man," stated the bronze giant. "Have the  police been called?"
  "Ye−yes, Mr. Savage," stammered one of the railroad  men. "I�I guess all this trouble’s over that watchman
  hittin’ the  hooch."
  The body of the yard bull was then removed. The  bronze man said nothing. When the railroad men looked
  where he had  been, he was no longer visible.
  POLICE INSPECTOR HIGGINS had an Adam’s apple which  seemed to make him mad. When he talked,
  this lump slid up and down his  thin neck. Inspector Higgins talked most of the time.
  "Well! Well! Well!" jerked out Inspector Higgins,  walking around the bodies of John Corbin, the watchman,
  and the yard  bull. "Whyntcha stop ‘im from runnin’ head−on into that express? An’  where’s the engine that
  hit ‘im? Why’d this bull crawl under the door,  an’ how’d he get out? Answer me that?"
  The railroad men attempted to reply to all of these  several inquiries at once. One said, "Well, the watchman
  was crazy with  too much booze an’ he got away from us."
  The deputy coroner who was also the medical examiner  shook his head mildly.
  "You’re all wrong about the liquor," he stated.  "This man shows no evidence of having been drinking. It must
  have been  something else."
   MAD EYES
  MAD EYES
  5
  
  The railroad men stared at each other.
  "Then it must be that crazy building where Doc  Savage makes machinery for war or something," one man
  volunteered.  "When the watchman came out of there, he was nuts an’ runnin’ in  circles. An’ when the bull
  tried to crawl in, the door come down on  him."
  Inspector Higgins hopped around the building on his  skinny legs. He took in the railroad door with a jumping
  Adam’s apple  and a gleam in his eyes.
  "Well! Well! Well!" he snapped. "Somebody open these  doors, an’ we’ll have a look at what started this!"
  "You have to know how to look at them doors to make  them open," grinned a railroad man. "I guess it’s done
  with mirrors or  something."
  "Don’t try bein’ funny!" snapped Inspector Higgins.  "You fellas in the yard know how to get cars in and out!
  Where’s the  yardmaster?"
  "He don’t know no more than the rest of us," said  another railroad man. "That dump’s Doc Savage’s own
  plant, an’ none of  the crews ever get inside."
  "That’s a good story!" yapped Inspector Higgins.  "Then how in time didja get the bull’s body out from under
  that door?  Will you answer me that?"
  "Sure," said a railroad man. "Doc Savage himself  just stood there an’ looked at the door. It opened and
  closed."
  "DOC SAVAGE?" barked Inspector Higgins. "Well, where  is this Doc Savage? This is his trouble! Where’d
  he go? Why didn’t you  hold him here until duly constituted authority arrived?"
  A chunky brakeman scratched his head.
  "You mean you think we should’ve grabbed Doc Savage  himself?" he said. "Say, from what I’ve heard of
  that big bronze guy I  wouldn’t try grabbin’ him if he was already tied up with barbed wire!"
  "I guess you fellas are just dumb because you’re  shackies on a railroad, or maybe it’s the other way around!"
  sneered  Inspector Higgins. "Me, I’m gettin’ into that dump an’ seein’ what’s  been goin’ on! Come on, boys,
  bust down that little door!"
  Inspector Higgins was accompanied by half a dozen of  his men. If he said break down a door, it was their job
  to do it. They  failed, however, to carry out this laudable intention.
  "Well! Well! Well!" snapped Inspector Higgins. "Jam  it in with the end of a railroad tie!"
  But though he added his bony weight to the tie, the  improvised door−buster might as well have been rammed
  into the two−foot  thickness of the concrete itself.
  "I would suggest calling Professor Spargrove, the  fellow who runs this joint," said one of the railroad men.
  "He’ll just  look at that door and it’ll open up."
   MAD EYES
  MAD EYES
  6
  
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  WHILE Inspector Higgins was making his useless and  profane effort to break down one small steel door, a
  closed car was  smashing several speed records. This car slewed and skidded alarmingly  in the rain.
  "Listen, you misfit of nature, you either slow down  or I’m getting out of this bus and walking the rest of the
  way!" rasped  a stridently sharp voice. "You might bounce that solid skull of yours  off the concrete without
  any damage, but I’ve got something inside mine  I’d like to keep there!"
  The apish−looking driver twisted the speeding car  dangerously near the edge of the concrete. He seemed to
  have an uncanny  skill at just shaving the soft shoulder of the highway.
  "There wouldn’t be nothin’ much missin’, unless you  happened to bite off your tongue," said the driver, in a
  childlike  voice. "Anyway, I could make this car climb a tree."
  "You slow down, or I’m ramming about ten inches of  this sword cane into your neck!" snapped the other
  man. "Now what�That  cursed shote of yours has gone and bit Chemistry! In about a minute�"
  The hunched−over driver straightened. One long arm  whipped over the back of the seat. A hairy fist smashed
  into a flat  nose. A voice much like that of some angry child jabbered.
  The driver skidded the car to a stop with a reckless  disregard for brakes and tires.
  "Hey!" yelled the driver. "You take that wrench away  from that bob−tailed monkey of yours, or I’ll wring
  both your necks!"
  The thing in the back seat of the car did look much  like a bob−tailed monkey. He was a baboon, and tailless.
  Also, he was a  smart baboon. The thin, raspy−voiced man in the car was Theodore Marley  Brooks, better
  known as "Ham."
  Ham was a lean man. He dressed in most perfect  taste. And he was one of the world’s smartest lawyers.
  His companion, Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, was  everything in appearance that Ham was not. Known as
  "Monk," though he  was one of half a dozen leading industrial chemists, he really  resembled a gorilla. His
  arms were too long and his legs too short. His  forehead sloped, and his eyebrows were too near the top of his
  skull.
  Added to this, Monk was thickly covered with wiry,  reddish hair.
  THE wild scrimmage now taking place in the back of  the closed car was between two of the world’s oddest
  animals.
  One was an Arabian woods hog, composed of mostly  long ears, and long legs. The other was a tailless
  baboon. The baboon  came from South America.
  The hog answered to the name of Habeas Corpus, which  was a direct insult to the impeccable Ham. The
   MAD EYES
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  7
  
  baboon had been named  Chemistry, with malice aforethought on the part of the lawyer.
  Just now, Habeas Corpus had taken a good−sized bite  out of one of the baboon’s legs. Chemistry knew better
  than to risk  himself close to the razor−edged teeth of the hog. A tire wrench was  handy.
  Chemistry was in the act of trying to brain Habeas  Corpus, when Monk interfered. The baboon chattered and
  cracked the  heavy wrench across Monk’s arm.
  "Daggonit!" squeaked Monk. "This time I’ll put that  baboon brother of yours to sleep for keeps!"
  "That would be no less than fratricide," drawled  Ham. "You can’t go killing off your own relatives."
  How far this bickering would have continued never  would be determined. Monk twisted suddenly back in his
  seat.
  "Good gosh!" exploded Monk. "Didja see that?"
  "Well, what am I supposed to see, and where?"  snapped Ham.
  "Huh!" grunted Monk. "Well, it was either something  that went past us on the road or up on the railroad or
  between the  highway and the railroad. I just got a glimpse of it an’ then it was  gone."
  "I knew it," nodded Ham solemnly. "It’s been  creeping up on you gradually. Nothing passed us. I see the
  lights of a  car coming around the bend ahead, but that’s all there is."
  Monk scratched his furry head. His small eyes  glittered.
  "You didn’t see anything that might have been a  train?" he said plaintively. "Not on the track�maybe down
  here on the  road?"
  "Too bad, too bad," said Ham mournfully. "I’ll come  and see you some time in the hospital. I’ll try and take
  good care of  Habeas Corpus for you."
  Monk started the car. But he continued to stare up  at the railroad. About ten minutes before a limited express
  had roared  northward. Since then, Ham was sure nothing had moved on the lines of  rails.
  "Perhaps all this mystery about Doc’s new machine  has gone to your head," suggested Ham helpfully. "This
  must be about  the biggest thing he’s ever tried. He hasn’t even taken Renny or Long  Tom or Johnny in on it.
  They’re supposed to meet us out here at  midnight."
  "Daggonit!" complained Monk. "You know, I don’t like  this! We haven’t seen Doc for three days, then he
  calls us by radio. It  must be somethin’ Doc’s afraid somebody wants to steal."
  Ham and Monk were speeding toward the tomblike plant  they knew only as the Spargrove Laboratories. The
  same plant where even  now one Inspector Higgins was jumping up and down because he had failed  to break
  in the door.
  The inspector, though, had succeeded in raising  Professor Spargrove. The excited professor would not be
  more than half  an hour in reaching his locked laboratories.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  8
  
  HABEAS CORPUS and Chemistry temporarily adjusted  their war. They watched each other with bright,
  wary eyes.
  Ham caught Monk’s right arm.
  "Look out," he cautioned. "That driver’s hitting  seventy, and he’s taking most of the road."
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squawked Monk. "You think I’m  movin’ over for any road hog! I’ll�"
  Two blinding headlights leaped down the road  directly toward their car. For the fraction of a second, it
  seemed as  if the other driver intended crashing them head−on. Monk quit talking  to hold as far to the side of
  the highway as he could.
  "I told you!" rapped Ham. "Hey, hold her!"
  The lawyer’s warning was too late. The flying  headlights had stabbed on into the rain. But where the four
  tracks of  shining, wet concrete had been brilliant, Monk was now driving into  what resembled a floating pool
  of ink.
  Monk’s hand reached out and turned a switch. He  clapped huge, over−sized goggles to his eyes. Still he was
  looking into  a smoky cloud.
  An infra−red beam of invisible light should have  penetrated almost any smoke screen. But this was
  something more than  mere smoke. It had the density and opaqueness of black velvet.
  Ham let out a yell, but it was somewhat scattered by  his head having been banged into the roof of the car.
  The reason for this was simple enough. Their car was  no longer on its wheels. In the black cloud, the
  automobile had plunged  from the road. It was bouncing along on its top. It traveled thus for  possibly fifty
  yards, before it rolled over and again stood upright
  Ham was bruised and scratched in several places.  Only the glass being bulletproof and shatterproof had
  prevented serious  injury.
  "All right, you imitation of an ape, I hope you  broke your nose!" yelped Ham. "Just why in the devil do you
  want to try  driving upside down?"
  Monk made no reply to this. The inky cloud was now  clearing away.
  Monk was whipping the car around. But few motor  vehicles would have taken that shock and continued to
  run.
  But the tires were of sponge rubber. The chassis was  of special alloy. From wheels to top, nothing much less
  than a  cannonball could have wrecked this car’s amazing motor.
  "Run me offa the road, will they?" exploded Monk.  "Daggonit, I’ll show ‘em!"
  "Good gosh!" groaned Ham. "Now I’m in for it!"
  Riding with Monk on a normal drive was filled with  dire possibilities. But riding with Monk when he was in
  a hurry was  only a degree short of suicide.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  9
  
  THE car which had emitted the inky cloud must have  gained at least two miles. It was still being trailed by a
  dense screen  of smoke. Monk was favored in one respect. A brisk wind was now  whipping the rain in sheets
  across the highway. This gave glimpses of  the concrete in Monk’s headlights. Ahead, the tail−lights of the
  other  car jumped in and out of Monk’s vision.
  "And when you get those fellows, then what?"  inquired Ham sarcastically. "They haven’t done anything to us
  but throw  a little smoke in our eyes."
  "I’m findin’ out what kind of juice throws that  smoke screen," announced the stubborn Monk. "Maybe we
  could use some of  it."
  Ham was watching the red tail−lights of the other  car.
  "I wouldn’t be too sure we’ll catch up with that  fellow," he announced. "There’s something funny about that
  motor. You  haven’t been gaining an inch."
  Monk had the gas in his car wide open. The big  chemist was mad all the way through. He knew Ham was
  telling the truth.  For ten miles, he hadn’t gained an inch.
  "Suppose we call it off and get back to meet Doc,"  suggested Ham. "The message said midnight. That isn’t
  far away."
  Monk was holding the car at close to a hundred. The  lights bored around a curve. They picked up a pair of
  brilliant red  reflectors. Ham’s fingers gripped Monk’s right arm.
  "Grade crossing, insect!" he rapped. "Pull her down!"
  The red reflectors told where the highway crossed  the lines of the railroad.
  Monk had made no movement to slacken the speed.
  Abruptly, the red reflectors disappeared. They were  blotted out as if a giant hand had’ smashed them off the
  crossing. The  night was shattered with a rending, crackling crash. Two red  tail−lights went up in the air.
  These lights acted as if they were attached to  pinwheels. 
  The crash died suddenly into a grinding drag. It  sounded as if steel and glass were being dragged along the
  ground. One  wild, human scream of pain came out of the darkness.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" exploded Monk, jamming on the  brakes. "That car got hit at the crossin’! It’s smashed
  to splinters!"
  "Hit by what?" Ham grated. "There isn’t a train in  sight! Pull over, Monk! We’ll have to look into this!"
  The highway swung onto the railroad on a slight  grade. Both of the red reflectors had been broken off. Nearly
  a hundred  yards from the road crossing a bright flame flared up.
  "Hurry up, Monk!" shouted Ham, running along one  railroad track. "It’s that car, an’ it’s on fire! They’ll be
  burned up!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  10
  
  Ham was correct in part. The blaze was shooting from  what had been a part of an automobile. Other parts
  were scattered along  the track.
  Monk had twisted the headlight beams of his own car  to cover part of the space. Ham was using one of Doc
  Savage’s special  generator flashlights. Both men were prepared for the shock of coming  upon a scene of
  horror.
  MONK and Ham reached the blazing fuel tank together.
  "Good grief!" rapped Ham. "What became of the people  in that car? Say! You don’t suppose they jumped and
  made their get−away  before the car crashed?"
  Monk was standing in the middle of a track,  scratching his head.
  "It’s confounded funny," he muttered. "Ham, there  ain’t any sign of anybody havin’ been in that car, an’ if
  there was,  what hit ‘em?"
  "Why, it had to be a train�" Ham began, then  stopped. Then he blurted, "Monk, we didn’t see any train! That
  car  couldn’t have been hit! It’s been fifteen minutes since that last train  passed us!"
  "Daggonit!" growled Monk. "I don’t like this! I  looked all along the road where we stopped! There ain’t any
  place the  people in that car could have jumped out! Their lights were movin’ as  fast as ours all the time!"
  Examination of parts of the car’s seats showed no  marks of blood. Monk took out a small bottle. He shook a
  greenish  powder over the plush of the wrecked car’s seats. Immediately, there  appeared a faint glowing.
  "Every seat was occupied," he announced. "There were  five persons in that car within the past few minutes.
  So where did they  go?"
  Ham was kicking at the tire of one wrecked wheel. He  bent down and ran his hand along the rubber.
  "Listen, Monk!" he stated emphatically. "This is one  of Doc’s own cars! That tire’s sponge rubber and can’t
  be punctured!  Have a look at this!"
  Ham’s foot kicked over a badly shattered infra−red  beam projector among the wreckage.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squeaked Monk. "You don’t  suppose Doc could have been in that car? I’ve been all
  around, an’  nobody got hurt! Ham, I’ll betcha something’s happened to Doc! We’ll�"
  "Wait a minute," interrupted Ham. "Here comes  something!"
  The something was a thumping, banging gasoline car  running on one railroad track. It came from the
  direction of Manhattan.  The lantern of a railroad worker illumined a man in overalls.
  The gasoline car chugged to a stop. The man climbed  off.
  "Hey! What’s all this?" he demanded. "Somebody smack  off them crossin’ lights?"
  Ham prodded Monk’s ribs.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter II. VANISHED TRAIN
  11
  
  "About five minutes ago one of your trains smashed  an automobile, and these pieces along here are all that’s
  left," stated  Ham. "The train didn’t stop, and neither did the occupants of the car,  so far as we can ascertain."
  THE railroad man held up his lantern and looked  closely at Ham’s lean face.
  "You’re screwy, brother," he announced. "There ain’t  been no train up the line or down it since the express,
  an’ that went  north more’n twenty minutes ago. I guess I oughta know, because I’m the  track inspector on
  this line. I just come buzzin’ up the road an’ there  ain’t a wheel turnin’ in this ten−mile stretch."
  "Is that so?" complained Monk. "That car could’ve  smashed itself, but it didn’t scatter the pieces a hundred
  yards along  the track!"
  The railroad track inspector walked up and down  muttering.
  "It’s screwy, that’s what it is," he repeated. "No  automobile could be hit by a train where there ain’t been no
  train.  It’s as nutty as what happened a while ago down in the yards. The  watchman at that loony place they
  say is bein’ run by Doc Savage was  knocked off tryin’ to climb over an express an’ one of the bulls got
  himself caught in a door that don’t have no locks, an’�"
  "Good gravy!" rapped out Ham. "Monk, come on! Now we  have got something to dig into! What did they
  find inside that  Spargrove plant, if that’s the place you mean?"
  The track inspector rubbed his dazed eyes.
  "So far, they ain’t been able to bust in," he said.  "But the police is lookin’ for the fellow they call Doc
  Savage, and�"
  Monk was loping back toward the car. He stopped  abruptly.
  A girl’s voice had cried out. It came from a clump  of bushes several yards above the railroad. This was on the
  opposite  side from the parts of the wrecked car.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" yelled Monk. "Ham, there was  somebody left from that car! It’s a woman!"
  Monk’s flashlight beam picked out a face. It was the  white, round face of a young woman. Her eyes were as
  snappy as black  opals in the light.
  "Well, can’t one of you help me out of here?" she  demanded.
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  THE young woman was plumply rounded out. She did not  seem quite the type to have a fiery temper. But
  sparks were snapping in  her black eyes. Her voice was edged with anger.
  "Hurry up, funny face, and pry me loose from these  thorns!" the girl demanded of Monk. "It’s a wonder I’m
  alive! Oh!  You’re one of Doc Savage’s men! Well, I’m not a bit surprised!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  12
  
  Monk’s long arms lifted a hundred and fifty pounds  of fairly good−looking woman from the bushes. He set
  her on her feet  between the rails of one of the tracks.
  "You don’t mean to tell me you were in that wrecked  car?" said Ham. "You don’t look as if you were hurt
  much."
  "That car?" exclaimed the young woman. "You think I  was in that? I couldn’t have been, the way it looks.
  But I must have  come here some way! After Doc Savage started looking at me, I knew  something was
  wrong!"
  The girl’s black eyes flashed at Ham. She had  smooth, black hair and a white forehead. Her mouth was round
  and small  and very red.
  "I knew it!" exploded Monk. "I told you, Ham! Doc’s  in trouble! Where’d you come from, miss, and how�"
  "Don’t try to kid me!" snapped the young woman.  "Both of you belong to Doc Savage, so you must have
  been with him!  Sure, that’s it! You were there when he held up the laboratories and  put me in a trance with
  his whirlwind eyes!"
  "Hold everything just a minute," suggested Ham.  "Let’s begin at the beginning. You’re saying Doc Savage
  hypnotized you  or something like that? I presume then you came from the Spargrove  Laboratories. You claim
  you didn’t know you were in that wrecked car?"
  "You heard me telling you I don’t remember anything  after Doc Savage looked at me in that funny way he
  has," declared the  young woman. "Anyway, I’m Jane Davidson, and I’ve been helping  Professor Spargrove at
  his laboratory."
  "I don’t care who you are!" howled Monk. "I want to  know if Doc was in that smashed car!"
  "How many times do I have to say I don’t know?"  rapped Jane Davidson. "I may have been in the car!
  Probably I was! But  I don’t remember anything after Doc Savage looked at me! Besides that,  I was called to
  the laboratories to help Professor Spargrove with some  kind of meeting for Doc Savage and�"
  "I believe you, Miss Davidson," interrupted Ham.  "You’ve got Doc all wrong, but I guess you think you’re
  telling the  truth. Monk, put Miss Davidson in our car. I’m having a look around.  She couldn’t have come here
  alone."
  "I won’t go with you in any car!" snapped Jane  Davidson.
  Sheets of rain whipped down on gusts of wind. The  track inspector grinned a little.
  "Maybe I could give you a lift, miss," he suggested.
  "On that thing?" said the girl, looking at the  rain−swept gasoline engine. "I should say not!"
  JANE DAVIDSON appeared to be an extremely contrary  young woman. She suddenly changed her mind.
  And from the loose folds of  her coat she produced a stubby−looking automatic.
  "All right!" she stated. "I’ll go with you in the  car!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  13
  
  She walked along the tracks toward the highway  crossing. Monk ambled beside her. Though the ugly chemist
  was worried  about what might have happened to Doc, he was wearing a crooked grin.
  Monk liked young women with spirit.
  "Daggonit!" he said plaintively. "You don’t have to  wave that pistol! We were on our way to meet Doc!
  We’ll take good care  of you!"
  "You certainly will!" announced Jane Davidson  grimly. "And if something’s gone wrong at the laboratories,
  I’m sure  Doc Savage knows about it!"
  The track inspector’s one−lunged gasoline car  chugged away. The railroad man was going to the nearest
  point where he  could report the crossing smash. He acted as if he were glad to get  away from the place and
  the company.
  Ham, meanwhile, climbed the steep bank above the  railroad. He used his flashlight around the place where
  the girl had  been tangled in the thorny bushes. The only evidence of her having been  there was a scrap of her
  dress hanging on a branch.
  "It’s confounded crazy," murmured Ham. "There are  her tracks in the mud after Monk lifted her out, but there
  are none  coming up. So she must have been thrown out of that car."
  Ham saw Jane Davidson and Monk walk into the  headlight beams of their own car still standing on the
  highway. At that  instant, the lawyer became conscious of a peculiar note on the wind.
  The sound was like the wind had suddenly blown  across taut, melodious strings. It was eerie, something like
  a tune,  yet having no clear melody. It seemed to proceed from a point back of  some near−by rocks.
  "Doc!" exclaimed Ham. "That sounds like him, and yet  it isn’t exactly the same!"
  In moments of stress, danger or concentration, Doc  Savage nearly always emitted a weird trilling. The sound
  was a part of  the bronze giant.
  But something warned Ham to proceed with caution.  The lawyer whipped a few yards toward the rocks in the
  darkness. As he  moved, the smooth, black cane he carried separated. In his right hand  played a gleaming,
  pointed sword blade.
  The sword cane was Ham’s favorite weapon. The point  of the blade was covered with an anaesthetic drug.
  The lawyer needed  only to touch an enemy to render him instantly unconscious.
  Ham slipped between two large rocks. The trilling  sound had not been repeated. Rain slapped into the
  lawyer’s eyes. He  could see only a few feet ahead. But by concentrating on one point, he  was sure he had
  seen a shadow move.
  "Doc!" Ham called out softly. "You in there?"
  A husky, whispering laugh came from close behind  Ham. Something like a human foot crunched on the
  rocks. The lawyer  whipped around, bringing the sword blade into play.
  Ham was aware he had been tricked. He was surrounded  by what seemed only swiftly moving shadows in the
  drenching rain. He  thrust at one of these with his sword. To his astonishment, the  keen−pointed blade passed
   MAD EYES
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  14
  
  directly through one of the shadows.
  The bright steel jammed into a rock. The blade  snapped. Something made a hissing noise in the rain. Ham
  was forced to  drop both his cane and the broken blade. A soft, hairy noose of some  kind had dropped over his
  head and tightened around his throat.
  The noose cut off Ham’s breath. He attempted to let  out a yell. Somehow, he got his fingers under the cord.
  But he could  not free enough breath to utter a warning.
  Again there came a hoarse, whispering laugh. This  was more like the wind than a human voice. A coarse,
  sacklike affair  descended over Ham’s head. Kicking and threshing around, the lawyer was  pulled to the
  ground.
  The inside of the sack had a sweetish smell. In a  few seconds, Ham lay still.
  MONK looked up at the hill above the railroad. He  could not see where Ham had disappeared. He called out
  several times. 
  "Now I’ve got to go an’ find that daggoned dumb  shyster," growled Monk. "You get in the car an’ keep dry."
  Jane Davidson started to climb into the car. She  still held her stubby automatic. An unearthly squeal came
  from the  car’s rear seat. It was followed by a coughing grunt of rage.
  "Good heavens!" exclaimed Jane Davidson. "I might  have known there was some trick!"
  She backed hastily into Monk’s arms. The ferocious,  small eyes of Chemistry, the tailless baboon, were
  shining at her, as  well as those of Habeas Corpus.
  "They won’t hurt you," assured Monk. "That’s Habeas  Corpus, my pig, and Chemistry, Ham’s pet baboon."
  For the first time, Jane Davidson seemed shaken.
  "I�I guess I’ll wait out here," she said. "I’ve been  in enough trouble to−night without mixing up with a
  menagerie."
  Monk quieted Habeas Corpus. He dragged the pig out  by one ear.
  "Now you’ll be all right," he promised. "Come on,  Chemistry, we’ve gotta find Ham."
  Jane Davidson got into the car out of the rain. She  kept a tight hold on the stubby pistol. Monk loped across
  the railroad  toward the hill. Habeas Corpus did not seem to mind being toted by one  long ear.
  The tailless baboon grumbled and grunted. But he  followed. His ambling movement was not much different
  from that of  Monk. The baboon had sense. He hunched ahead of Monk.
  In the rocks above the tracks, the baboon halted. He  pounded his hairy breast and whined much like a human
  baby. Monk called  Ham’s name, but got no reply.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  15
  
  The tailless baboon had picked up some object. He  was hitting a rock with it. There was a metallic sound.
  Monk used the  powerful generator flashlight.
  Chemistry was whipping the hilted half of Ham’s  broken sword blade against a rock. Monk found the
  remainder of the  sword and the cane sheath.
  The big chemist whipped out the superfiring pistol  which looked like a small drum with a tube sticking out of
  one side. He  called and moved with infinite caution among the rocks.
  The stones showed no footprints. Monk attempted to  use chemical tracing powder, but the rain had washed
  out possible marks.
  The chemist produced a small, flat box. When he  moved a switch, nothing apparently happened. But in the
  invisible ray  of black light emanating from this box some queer marks appeared on the  hard ground.
  These looked like the prints of a man’s heels. They  showed where Ham had come up the hill. Where he had
  stood between the  rocks, the marks were all mixed up. They glowed with blue light.
  This was simply a substance contained in the spongy  rubber heels of Ham’s shoes. It was one of several
  chemicals which  fluoresced under the black light.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squealed Monk. "Ham didn’t  walk away from here!"
  This was apparent. The imprints of Ham’s heels  ceased abruptly in the confusion of marks where the broken
  sword had  been picked up.
  Monk loped back and forth among the rocks. The  tailless baboon was even more excited. But from that one
  point in the  rocks, Monk could find no trail.
  Perhaps Monk would have remained, searching all  night. But from the highway below came the strident
  whine of a radio.  The whine became two words.
  "Ham�Monk! Ham�Monk!"
  With a last, fruitless look around, Monk ran back  down the hill. The baboon followed, pounding his breast
  and chattering.
  JANE DAVIDSON was huddled miserably in the seat of  the car when Monk returned.
  "The radio’s been calling you," she said. "It  couldn’t be possible, but I’m sure it’s Doc Savage’s voice."
  The radio speaker under the dashboard of the car  still whined out the call for Ham and Monk. It sounded like
  the voice  of Doc Savage.
  Monk immediately tuned in with a reply.
  "Ham�Monk!" came the order. "You will proceed at  once to the Spargrove Laboratories. Renny and Johnny
  will join us  there."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter III. DOC SAVAGE ACCUSED
  16
  
  Monk gave an O. K. to the summons. But his homely  face was twisted like a crossword puzzle.
  "That couldn’t have been anybody but Doc," he  stated. "But you think Doc was with you in that smashed car.
  And now  Ham has been grabbed!"
  "Ham has been seized?" said Jane Davidson. "I don’t  believe it! And if that was Doc Savage on the radio,
  then he had some  one else bring me out here and try to kill me on that crossing! I’ll  bet Ham went away with
  whoever brought me out here!"
  Monk glared at the girl. The big chemist liked most  pretty women. But Jane Davidson was plainly rubbing
  his fur the wrong  way.
  "Doc!" said Monk over the radio. "Ham’s been grabbed  out here! One of your cars�"
  Doc’s voice cut in on the other end of the broadcast.
  "I know all about the car. Ham will be all right.  You will do as directed. Bring with you the young woman
  who was in the  wreck at the crossing!"
  Monk let out a gasp. Jane Davidson spoke with a  sneer.
  "So, your wonderful Doc Savage didn’t have anything  to do with trying to kill me?" she jeered. "You’d better
  do as you’re  told, and if you make one wrong move, I’ll be driving this car back  alone!"
  Jane Davidson jabbed the stubby automatic  emphatically into Monk’s ribs. Monk was too puzzled to even
  grunt.
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  AS Monk headed his car reluctantly toward the  Spargrove Laboratories, another small car was reaching the
  locked doors  of the tomblike structure. From this small vehicle climbed an odd  figure.
  The man was short of stature. He wore a shabby,  hairy overcoat. The fuzzy hair of this coat seemed to
  continue where it  touched his neck. The hair on the man’s head was thick and bushy.
  The man wore what once was known as a mutton−chop  beard. This stuck out belligerently on both sides of
  his face. It made  his face look smaller and funnier than it would have been. It was small  and funny, anyway.
  The man’s little eyes jumped around under bushy  brows. He came to the group around the small locked door
  of the  Spargrove Laboratories.
  "What’s this? What’s this?" he sputtered. "Who  called the police to interfere with my work? Where’s Jane? If
  you  wanted in, why didn’t you get hold of John Corbin?"
  "Well! Well! Well!" gabbled Inspector Higgins.  "Wasn’t you told this John Corbin went bugs an’ tried to
  bump an  express train offa the track? An’ this infernal trap of yours murdered  one of the railroad bulls, an’
  you can’t be runnin’ any place that  won’t open its doors when duly constituted authority wants to get in!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  17
  
  "John Corbin’s been killed?" said the hairy man.  "I’m Professor Spargrove, of course. Well, why didn’t you
  have the  young woman or Doc Savage let you in? They’re both inside."
  "Yeah?" rasped Inspector Higgins, hopping around.  "An’ what other crooked contraptions you got in there?
  Unlock this door  before we get a few sticks of dynamite an’ blast hell out of it!"
  Despite the news about John Corbin’s sudden and  untimely end, Professor Lanidus Spargrove had a will of
  his own.
  "I want to see John Corbin’s body," he announced.  "Then perhaps I will open the door, if Doc Savage
  consents."
  "You’ll perhaps?" yelled Inspector Higgins.  "If Doc Savage consents? I’m representin’ the law in this end of
  the  county!"
  "Let me see John Corbin’s body," said Professor  Spargrove mildly. "I will then take up the matter of opening
  the door.  I don’t believe I’d try dynamite if I were you, inspector. It is  possible there are some elements in the
  building which might cause you  inconvenience."
  "Inconvenience?" shouted Inspector Higgins. "Two  bump−offs already, an’ this crooked dump all locked up,
  an’ you talk  about inconvenience! What inconvenience, Professor Spargrove, if that’s  your right name an’ not
  some alias?"
  Professor Spargrove was nervous and excited, but he  still spoke calmly.
  "In other words, an attempt to blow those doors  probably would set off an explosive that would make TNT
  seem like a  penny firecracker," he stated.
  A few of the railroad men were beginning to ease  away from the spot. The mild deputy coroner spoke.
  "Whether it would blast this place or not,  inspector, I don’t believe I’d try crossing up any property belonging
  to Doc Savage."
  Inspector Higgins’s Adam’s apple jumped. Inspector  Higgins hopped.
  THE body of John Corbin had been covered with  canvas. Professor Spargrove swept back the protective cloth
  with quick  but gentle hands. The eyes under his bushy brows missing no detail of  his dead watchman’s
  corpse.
  One hand rubbed across John Corbin’s cold forehead.  Into the eyes of Professor Spargrove came a
  speculative gleam.
  "He was like this when the express hit him?"  questioned Professor Spargrove.
  "Well, he was jumping around and fighting pink  elephants or something," volunteered a railroad brakeman.
  "Yes?" said Professor Spargrove slowly. "Coroner,  have you removed anything from the body?"
  The mild deputy coroner bristled.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  18
  
  "It is not my custom to disturb a corpse more than  necessary!" he said.
  "Curious, most curious," murmured Professor  Spargrove. "So John Corbin was running away from
  something?"
  "That’s it! That’s it!" piped up Inspector Higgins.  "An’ my men are bringin’ up half a case of powder! In
  about one minute  I’m going into that crazy plant of yours!"
  Rain slashed across Professor Spargrove’s hairy  face. The deputy coroner remarked that Doc Savage himself
  had examined  the body of the watchman.
  "Then I think Doc Savage went away down the road in  a blue sedan," said the deputy coroner. "If there’s
  explosive inside,  that Higgins will play the devil. He’s a stubborn guy."
  Sticks of the yellow−wrapped dynamite were being  piled in front of the small, chromium steel door.
  Inspector Higgins  yapped at his men.
  "You’re being detained, Professor Spargrove!" he  rapped out. "Just in case you’ve really got explosives
  contrary to duly  constituted authority inside this joint!"
  Inspector Higgins had slashed one end of a stick of  powder. In this he had stuffed an explosive cap.
  "You’re right, inspector," stated Professor  Spargrove. "We would be detained. Too much detained, in fact. So
  now�"
  The hands of the professor fumbled under his hairy  coat. He was looking at the chromium steel door. The
  door swung  silently open. A low passage appeared. It was lighted by a row of small  incandescent bulbs.
  "My gosh!" grunted a railroad man. "The hairy guy  just looked at it! An’ them cops have been buttin’ it with
  a railroad  tie!"
  But something else was taking place. Professor  Spargrove seemed to have lost his mind. He seemed to be
  talking into  his own mutton−chop whiskers.
  "Spargrove speaking. Is it all right, Doc, to permit  the police to enter?"
  Out of the rainy air came a voice. It might have  been an emanation from the hairs of Professor Spargrove’s
  beard. It was  a compact radio set attached to his body.
  "Let the authorities investigate in your own  judgment."
  "Come in, Inspector Higgins, and you other  gentlemen," invited Professor Spargrove. "I will find my
  assistant.  Undoubtedly she is informed of what has taken place. You will do well  to remain in this main
  room. I will not be responsible for trouble if  any one enters other compartments."
  The interior of the Spargrove Laboratories appeared  to be of cellular construction. One central room seemed
  to be the  assembling compartment for several types of ponderous machinery.
  Professor Spargrove directed the body of John Corbin  be brought into the main room. He spoke to Inspector
  Higgins.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  19
  
  "You say my watchman is reported to have seen  various strange things which caused those who observed him
  to believe  him suffering from liquor or hallucinations?"
  "Well! Well! Well!" grunted Inspector Higgins.  "There ain’t any doubt but what he had the D. T.’s or
  somethin’! He was  seein’ things that wasn’t there!"
  At this moment Professor Spargrove himself looked a  bit off.
  "John Corbin really saw those things," he said  quietly. "Only I didn’t know my assistant knew of the secret. I
  shall  have to inquire into this. You will please wait here."
  PROFESSOR SPARGROVE whisked himself through a small  inner door. Like those outside, this seemed to
  open as he looked at it.  In less than ten seconds, Professor Spargrove leaped back into view.  For the first
  time, he appeared greatly excited.
  He opened another door and shouted. "Jane! Jane!  Where are you? Come here at once!"
  Professor Spargrove was running from one small room  to another. He dashed back into the central chamber.
  This time, all his  calmness had departed.
  "My whole life’s work�all gone!" he yelled. "I tell  you, it’s impossible! All of it’s gone! Jane! Jane! Why
  didn’t Doc  Savage stop them?"
  Inspector Higgins imposed a hard hand on one of the  excited professor’s shoulders. This copper was not so
  dumb. He knew the  time to break a case was when he had the other fellow somewhat out of  his head.
  "All right! All right!" snapped Inspector Higgins.  "So your whole life’s work is gone, is it? What’s gone?"
  Professor Spargrove led the way through a small  door. Here was another large room. Along one side was a
  loading  platform. Switch tracks penetrated all of the vaultlike building.
  "Jane Davidson, my assistant, has been kidnaped!"  yelled Professor Spargrove. "She preceded me here to
  attend a meeting  with Doc Savage and some of his men! Now they’re gone�gone�and the two  copper globes
  weighed more than three tons apiece!"
  Professor Spargrove was pointing with a trembling  hand at huge concrete blocks. These bore the fresh
  imprint of other  objects. They seemed to have been the foundation for heavy machinery.  Two blocks looked
  as if they had been fitted to the base of immense  globes.
  "They were both made of copper!" shouted Professor  Spargrove. "They weighed more than three tons apiece!
  There were four  big generators on those other bases! The whole thing would be more than  ten tons! And they
  were all here less than three hours ago when I left!  Who opened the doors?"
  INSPECTOR HIGGINS scratched his nubbin of a head.  Anyway, he was sure none of his coppers had
  opened the doors. The  railroad men on duty all night all immediately stated the plant doors  had not been
  opened at any time, except when John Corbin had emerged.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  20
  
  Professor Spargrove was walking around and around  the concrete foundations. The other men could see
  plainly enough that  heavy machinery had been removed only recently. The marks of the copper  globes were
  bright. These would have tarnished in a few hours.
  "Well! Well! Well!" rapped Inspector Higgins. "So  somebody walked in an’ picked up ten tons of copper an’
  iron and walked  out with it? Maybe that crazy watchman was carrying it in his pockets  when he butted into
  that train!"
  Professor Spargrove appeared to be looking at the  big sliding doors through which the tracks had their exit.
  The big  doors went up silently. The professor whipped outside. Inspector  Higgins was close beside him.
  "Look here!" yelled Professor Spargrove. "These are  truck tracks! It was a big truck! Who saw that truck
  leave here?"
  At the edge of the motor highway back of the  laboratories was a muddy shoulder. Immense doughnutlike
  tires of a big  truck had cut deep into the soft earth. The tracks were fresh.
  "Holy Moses!" growled the yardmaster. "We can’t keep  track of all the trucks that go by here!"
  "All gone!" wailed Professor Spargrove. "Wait until  Doc Savage discovers this! I’m ruined!"
  "Doc Savage?" barked Inspector Higgins. "He knows  plenty about it! We’ve got to find that guy�and quick,
  too!"
  INSPECTOR HIGGINS was jotting down many notes. What  these meant, he probably did not know himself.
  The snatching of ten  tons of machinery under the eyes of a railroad yard full of men was  adding a little too
  much to this assignment.
  Now Professor Spargrove seemed to have forgotten  about the reputed missing globes. He had led the way
  into another long  room. This looked as if it might have been an aquarium.
  Long rows of glass tanks were ranged around the  sides. Only these tanks appeared not to have been filled
  with fish.  Scummy green water showed against the glass. The air was rank with the  odor of decaying
  vegetation.
  Professor Spargrove was walking up and down.
  "It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be!" he kept repeating.  "You are sure John Corbin screamed he was seeing things?"
  One of the railroad men affirmed this. Professor  Spargrove darted into a side room. When he came out, he
  was staring  strangely. He seemed hardly to see the others in the room.
  "It’s incredible! Incredible!" the professor cried  out. "The globes are gone! Yet I see�I see�It can’t be
  possible!"
  "Well! Well! Well!" snapped Inspector Higgins. "An’  what do you see?"
  "You wouldn’t understand," the professor said  quietly, "but I see the same things John Corbin saw. Only I
  know what  they are, and poor John Corbin did not. Some of them have a hundred  heads and some have a
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IV. MISSING GLOBES
  21
  
  thousand mouths. They are reaching for me with  long tentacles."
  "Holy mackerel!" grunted a railroad man. "Me! I’m  pullin’ my freight right now!"
  Inspector Higgins slipped a hand into a side pocket.  His Adam’s apple was clearly out of control.
  "I guess maybe, professor, you’d better come along  with us," he suggested. "Probably the strain’s been too
  much for you."
  But Professor Spargrove leaped and struck at  something in the air. Unfortunately for Inspector Higgins, his
  bony  nose was in the path of the professor’s fist. Scarlet fluid spattered  over the inspector’s chin.
  "We’ve got to get them back!" screamed Professor  Spargrove. "My life’s work! I tell you not even Doc
  Savage can rob me  of what I’ve slaved years to produce!"
  "Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!" growled Inspector  Higgins. "I bet that bronze guy knows all about this!
  Make a close  check−up on all freight that’s been moved! Ten tons of machinery can’t  walk out of the middle
  of a railroad yard without being seen!"
  "THAT’S the complete check−up," announced the  yardmaster half an hour later. "Nothing has been moved
  on this side of  the yards to−night. It would also have been impossible for any one to  have transferred ten tons,
  or even one ton, of equipment from that  building to a truck on the highway without being seen."
  "That puts this whole thing right back on this Doc  Savage," declared Inspector Higgins. "He was here. He
  saw what had  happened, an’ then he beat it away in a blue sedan. It all checks up."
  Inside his plant, Professor Spargrove was wandering  from room to room. Inspector Higgins had two county
  policemen keeping  him under surveillance. They could hear the professor talking to  himself.
  Occasionally, Professor Spargrove came in and stared  at the tanks of green water. Each time, he resumed his
  crazed  muttering. He did not seem to observe the policemen. The coppers kept  more than a respectful
  distance.
  Also, the policemen kept a close eye out for  anything that might have a hundred heads and a thousand
  mouths. They  wouldn’t have been surprised to really find long tentacles reaching for  them.
  Outside, Inspector Higgins still had no trace of the  missing machinery.
  He repeated a telephone order to have Doc Savage  picked up as soon as he could be located.
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  COLONEL JOHN RENWICK, famous engineer, was standing  his companion’s hair on end. William Harper
  Littlejohn, noted  archaeologist and geologist, was not a man to have shivers sent easily  through his scalp.
  But when it came to driving a big car with a fast  motor over a rainy highway in the night, Colonel Renwick,
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  22
  
  otherwise  known as "Renny," seemed to have no sense of either speed or safety.
  "Renny," stated "Johnny," "an apparently  insuperable obstacle looms in the immediate foreground. Unless
  you  alter your present tangent, it will be the mournful case of an  irresistible force colliding with an
  immovable object."
  Renny was a giant of a man. His hands on the wheel  were ponderous as small hams. His rugged face was
  solemn, so solemn he  had the appearance of grieving greatly most of the time.
  Johnny, who had once occupied a chair in a leading  university, was addicted to the longest words he could
  manage.
  "Put it in English, Johnny," rumbled big Renny.  "Whatcha mean ‘my present tangent?’"
  Johnny was a long, bony fellow. His body looked as  if it might break if he bent over suddenly.
  "I mean, Renny, if you don’t pull over about two  inches, we’re going to smack head−on into that house truck
  coming down  the road," said Johnny quickly. "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!"
  The last exclamation was drawn out by the margin of  less than an inch which Renny allowed in squeezing by
  the huge truck.  The truck driver stuck out his head. Johnny could see him swearing.
  A short distance behind the truck came a small  coupé. It seemed to be trailing the truck. The faces of two men
  showed  behind its windshield.
  "Holy cow!" grunted Renny, as they swung the next  curve.
  "It looks like Doc is having plenty of company!"
  The engineer skidded his car off the concrete  into the muddy shoulder of the road. Close by loomed the
  vault−like  building of the Spargrove Laboratories. In response to a special radio  summons from Doc Savage,
  this pair had arrived at the laboratories.
  Dozens of men with lanterns and flashlights were  scurrying around the building. Some were shouting orders.
  INSPECTOR HIGGINS was the first to confront Renny  and Johnny.
  "Huh! Well! Well!" he slapped over his bouncing  Adam’s apple. "So you fellows belong with this Doc
  Savage, an’ you was  to meet him here? Well, I want to meet him here or any other place!  He’s been pulling
  enough crooked stuff�"
  "Hey, Renny, wait a minute!" said Johnny hastily,  grabbing at the engineer’s arm. "Remember, this guy’s an
  inspector!  He’s talking for the law!"
  "Yeah?" thundered Renny. "An’ if he makes one more  crack like that, he won’t be talkin’; he’ll be eatin’ soup
  through a  straw! What does he mean ‘Doc’s crooked?’"
  Johnny had been in the nick of time to save  Inspector Higgins from a fist that had smashed many tough
  doors. The  inspector hastily sidestepped.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  23
  
  "Well, anyway," he said, "your Doc Savage ain’t  here. He’s been here, an’ ten tons of machinery went up in
  thin air.  The professor who runs this joint has gone cuckoo! He’s seein’ things!"
  Johnny’s skull−like countenance turned upon the  inspector. His eyes brightened in their bony sockets.
  "And what might Professor Spargrove have been  seeing?"
  They were in the long room filled with tanks of  stagnant water. The air had the odor of dying vegetation.
  "Well," said Inspector Higgins, "the professor was  lookin’ straight at them glass cases full of weeds an’ he
  kept sayin’  he was seein’ somethin’ like the maybes. I guess this place drives ‘em  all nuts. That’s what started
  this watchman runnin’ loco."
  Johnny ran a long finger along his sharp nose. He  looked at the tanks of dirty green water.
  "Seeing the maybes?" he remarked, in a musing tone.
  "Could it have been, inspector, he might have been  suffering with illusionary phobia of the amoeba?"
  "Havin’ the what of the what?" snapped Inspector  Higgins.
  "Perhaps the chlorophyll or the vorticelli suddenly  assumed hitherto unknown dimensional relativity and
  emerged from the  jungle of algae to be observed about us," continued Johnny solemnly.  "Did Professor
  Spargrove by any chance refer to hydra−headed monsters  with tubular tentacles, inspector?"
  Inspector Higgins swallowed his Adam’s apple. His  eyes popped at Johnny.
  "Either you’re tryin’ to kid me, or you’re nuttier  than them others!" he yelped. "What in thunderation are you
  talkin’  about?"
  Johnny rubbed his finger along his nose and smiled.
  "Let it pass," he suggested. "I fear it wouldn’t  make any difference if I explained. Did Professor Spargrove
  happen to  have anything in his hands when he mentioned seeing these maybes, as  you call ‘em?"
  "He didn’t have nothin’ nowhere!" rapped out  Inspector Higgins. "He just stood in the middle of this room
  an’ looked  around. He was yellin’ about two big copper globes an’ some ten tons of  electrical machinery
  havin’ been grabbed off them concrete foundations.  We checked up, an’ that stuff must have been taken out
  of here before  to−night. It couldn’t have been done!"
  Johnny was suddenly silent. He walked over and  dipped a bony hand into one of the tanks of green water.
  Slimy  vegetation clung to the hand.
  "Big copper globes and generators?" he said, in a  musing tone to himself. "So that’s why Doc wanted us out
  here!"
  Professor Spargrove danced into the room. He  recognized Renny and Johnny instantly.
  "They’re gone!" he yelled. "The copper globes  weighed all of three tons apiece! They were all hooked up,
  and the  generators went with them! Where’s Doc Savage?"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  24
  
  "Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "I guess he has got the  maybes, or whatever it was you were talkin’ about!"
  "We came here to meet Doc," stated Johnny. "What was  the purpose of the big globes and the generators,
  professor?"
  "I am not at liberty to divulge the nature of this  equipment," Spargrove stated, with some dignity. "Only Doc
  Savage can  inform you of that. It was for that purpose, I believe, he summoned you  here to−night. Doc
  Savage and myself alone know the secret. No other  person could possibly be informed."
  "Well! Well! Well!" yapped Inspector Higgins. "All  this yammerin’ is gettin’ us nowhere! For two cents, I’d
  lock up all  you fellows until we get our hands on Doc Savage! If he knows what  drove that one guy nuts an’
  killed him, he ain’t safe runnin’ around  loose!"
  "I fear, inspector," said Johnny, "that Doc Savage  knows a great many things that would drive lesser minds
  nuts, as you  call it. Also, I can assure you he must have some good reason for being  absent at this time.
  "Professor Spargrove, I believe you are wrong. Other  persons do know the purpose of the copper globes, if
  they have  disappeared as you say."
  "Thunderation!" rumbled Renny.
  His sudden bellow was startling. The giant engineer  had a pair of lungs like blacksmith’s bellows. When he
  was excited, his  voice was a good imitation of a roaring foghorn.
  "Now what the�" began Inspector Higgins.
  "That big truck we passed, Johnny!" shouted Renny.  "There was a little car trailin’ it! Accordin’ to the time it
  was  makin’, it was rollin’ a heavy load! It was headed upcountry! Come on!"
  Renny and Johnny paused only long enough to make  sure of the tire treads in the mud near the laboratories.
  Inspector Higgins got several of his men into the  police car. Professor Spargrove still retained enough of his
  mind to  jump into the seat of his roadster.
  LED by the police car, the three motors plunged into  the slashing rain. The wind had taken on extra violence.
  Solid sheets  of water whipped across the concrete.
  This was no night to be driving more than a safe  thirty miles an hour. The police car was doing seventy.
  Professor  Spargrove’s roadster bettered that. At one of the first curves, the  professor skidded his roadster
  ahead of the police car.
  Red lights suddenly appeared in the rain ahead of  the three cars. They were undoubtedly the tail−lights of a
  truck. Just  behind this big, rumbling vehicle a small car was being driven fast.  The top lights of the truck
  showed green and red. The vehicle seemed as  big as a house.
  "Honest guys don’t drive a big bus like that on a  night like this," declared Renny. "That truck’s doing all of
  sixty.  It’s top−heavy an’ the way it’s takin’ them curves, somethin’s due to  bust."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  25
  
  Renny was undoubtedly correct. For the truck and the  car following it had just swung into an S turn. Its lights
  waved in a  manner that indicated the heavy body of the vehicle was doing a roll  that threatened to turn it over.
  The truck’s lights were swinging wide on the S turn.  Apparently the driver was giving the big bus all the gas
  it would take.  Also, he must have been taking the wrong track on the road.
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" gulped out Johnny.
  "Holy cow! It had to happen!" boomed Renny.
  Twin headlight beams flashed around the crooked  turn. A car was coming fast in the opposite direction.
  Apparently the  driver of the truck lost his head completely.
  The top lights of the truck seemed to hover in  mid−air. Then they went up and over. The whooping wind was
  not loud  enough to drown out the rumbling, roaring crash. Tons of wood and steel  were smashing to bits on
  the rocks of the hill below the highway.
  "There goes the professor’s copper globes!" yelled  Johnny.
  Johnny quit talking. Renny stopped cars much the  same way he drove. Suddenly Johnny bumped his bony
  forehead against the  windshield.
  Inspector Higgins’s car had narrowly avoided piling  on top of Professor Spargrove’s roadster. The professor
  had stopped by  the simple, if dangerous expedient of skidding off the concrete.
  Already Professor Spargrove was out of his car and  leaping down the embankment.
  "That other little car never stopped," said Renny. 
  "That’s the great help we get from police sirens,"  commented Johnny. "The fellows in that little car probably
  won’t stop  this side of Providence or Boston."
  The car that had caused all of the confusion had  slid on into the night. It had been traveling fast. Now it was
  slowing  down. Its driver was showing an intention of coming back.
  Inspector Higgins and the others did not notice  this. They were piling down the hill toward what was left of
  the big  truck. The giant doughnutlike tires of the truck stuck up in the air.  They were still spinning.
  They looked remarkably like the helpless feet of  some monster suddenly turned on his back.
  "HEY, you fellas!" yelled Inspector Higgins at his  cops. "One guy’s busted all to hell on them rocks, but
  there’s somebody  inside! Listen to him!"
  Acute ears were not required to ascertain some one  was inside the splintered body of the big truck. For a
  human voice was  screaming.
  "Take ‘em off! Take ‘em away! They’re eatin’ me  alive! Look! That one’s got a thousand eyes! There’s
  heads everywhere!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  26
  
  "We seem to have an uncanny faculty for arriving at  psychological moments," observed Johnny.
  "Good grief!" growled Renny. "Maybe the truck’s on  fire inside!"
  The truck had not caught fire. One whole side had  been broken open on the rocks. A county copper’s
  flashlight shot a  finger of illumination into the wreckage.
  "My life’s work�all smashed to bits!" shouted  Professor Spargrove. "I’m a ruined man! Doc Savage’ll never
  forgive me!"
  "Well! Well! Well!" snapped Inspector Higgins. "If  that’s your life’s work, I know you ought to be in the
  nuthouse. Good  grief! It ain’t anythin’ but one of them water tanks, an’ the glass  ain’t even cracked!"
  Professor Spargrove ceased shouting. The hairy  scientist had remarkable moments. One moment he seemed
  crazy. The next,  he acted as if nothing mattered. Now he was staring at what the  policeman’s flashlight
  showed.
  "One of the amoeba," he said, in a musing tone. "And  they didn’t take the globes in that truck. Say, there’s a
  man! He’s�"
  The entire load of that huge truck was indeed  strange. For it consisted of that one small, unbreakable glass
  tank.  And one human passenger. It was this man who had been shouting. He was  still screaming.
  Yet, in all the crash, the victim did not seem to  have suffered more than a bumped nose and a blackened eye.
  This gave  his face a queer, distorted appearance. But the man’s voice did not  lack in strength.
  "See ‘em!" he squawked. "Millions of ‘em! They’re  big as houses!"
  "The gentleman seems to enjoy a remarkably wide  perspective," remarked Johnny, climbing to the side of
  Professor  Spargrove.
  "What do you make of it, professor?" Johnny added.
  The professor had no time to reply.
  The passenger suddenly caught the edge of the broken  side of the truck. He swung himself out. A policeman
  grabbed for him  and missed. The man started running among the rocks. Such hair as this  man had left was
  fuzzy and gray at the edges.
  Inspector Higgins let out a shout.
  "Get ‘im! Don’t let ‘im hurt himself! Good gosh!  That fella’s Howard Van Ronzen, the millionaire! He’s
  been batted on  the bean or somethin’!"
  "Van Ronzen," stated Johnny, "lives at Great Neck,  Long Island. I visited once on one of his yachts. He’s
  worth millions."
  VAN RONZEN, the millionaire, proved to be an agile  man for his age. He climbed on a rock. His thin hands
  slapped at  invisible objects. His coat had been removed and his shirt was partly  torn off.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  27
  
  "It’s got a thousand heads!" screamed Van Ronzen.  "Take ‘em away! I’ll give you anythin’ I’ve got!"
  Inspector Higgins and his men encircled the rock.  But Professor Spargrove was the first to reach the yelling
  millionaire.  The professor sopped his handkerchief in a pool of water on the rock.  When the coppers reached
  him, he was bathing Van Ronzen’s head.
  This application seemed to have a remarkably  soothing effect. The millionaire’s eyes were closed. He opened
  them,  but he no longer yelled. He stared at the men around him as if he had  no idea of where he might be.
  Then in a perfectly sane voice, Van Ronzen said,  "Did, you see them? One had a thousand arms. They
  followed me. What am  I doing out here in the rain?"
  Inspector Higgins’s Adam’s apple had almost rubbed a  hole in the skin of his scrawny neck. He gulped and
  looked at Van  Ronzen.
  "I think perhaps he will be all right now," said  Professor Spargrove calmly. "He should be brought to a
  hospital at  once."
  "We’ll attend to that!" said Inspector Higgins.  "Where have you been, Mr. Van Ronzen? How did you get in
  that truck?"
  "Was I in a truck?" said Van Ronzen dully. "Have I  been somewhere? There were so many of those things
  trying to wrap their  tentacles around me, I lost track of where I was."
  "I believe Mr. Van Ronzen should not be questioned  now," advised Professor Spargrove.
  The medical examiner, the pudgy deputy coroner, had  been in the police car. He was as puzzled as the other.
  But he said, "I  agree that now is no time to ask questions. Get the man to a hospital."
  "Well," snapped Inspector Higgins, "now where are  all those big copper balls you was talkin’ about,
  professor?"
  Professor Spargrove stroked his mutton−chop  whiskers. A cunning look came into his almost hidden eyes.
  "It does not matter greatly at this moment," he said  calmly. "The globes are not in operation. Apparently they
  were not in  this truck. The dead driver can be of no assistance."
  All of this was indeed evident. With the assistance  of an army of piano movers, two three−ton copper globes
  might possibly  have been transferred from the Spargrove Laboratories to the big truck.  That is, if the vehicle
  could have hauled these along with the other  machinery Professor Spargrove reported as missing.
  Inspector Higgins had made a swift investigation.
  "Them license plates on the truck are phonies," he  announced. "They don’t belong on that kind of job."
  STILL moaning and showing evidence of having been  through a terrible ordeal, Van Ronzen, the millionaire,
  was carried up  to the highway.
  In the midst of this, Professor Spargrove lost all  of his recent calm attitude.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter V. THE RUMBLING TRUCK
  28
  
  "They’re on again!" he yelled. He danced up and  down. "I am ruined! My life’s work is gone! We’ve got to
  find the  globes before there is great disaster which even Doc Savage cannot  prevent!"
  Johnny was close to the professor. He whipped  suddenly upon him. But the professor was quick. He sprang
  nimbly up the  hill. He showed in the headlights of a car that had just arrived.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squealed a childlike voice.  "What’s happenin’? Hey, Renny! Johnny! Is Doc with you?"
  Inspector Higgins hopped up the embankment. He  peered into the furry, ugly face of Monk.
  "My good gosh!" groaned Inspector Higgins.
  In the window of the halted car appeared another  face. There was an angry, chattering voice. Something like
  a pig  squealed.
  Inspector Higgins was speechless for a moment. He  was looking into the glittering, bright eyes of Chemistry,
  Ham’s baboon.
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  INSPECTOR HIGGINS was not a fainting man. He had  been a county copper too long to keel over. But he
  almost did keel over  as Chemistry’s hairy face and wicked eyes showed in the glass of the  car.
  He made a valiant effort. This time he seemed to  swallow his Adam’s apple completely.
  "You�you’re lookin’ for this Doc Savage?" he  groaned. "An’ why did you expect to find him out here, if you
  can speak  the English language?"
  "Daggonit!" yelped Monk. "I’ll push some of the  English language down your skinny throat! I’m lookin’ for
  Doc because  he’s the only one who can straighten out all this mess! Renny, you seen  him?"
  "That’s exactly what I thought!" snapped Inspector  Higgins. "So is everybody else lookin’ for Doc Savage! It
  looks like he  could explain a few little things about crazy monsters, an’ bumping off  people, an’ stealin’
  copper globes, an’�"
  "And don’t forget," said a cool, angry voice from  the seat of the halted car, "Doc Savage also might explain a
  kidnaping!"
  "Jane! Jane!" shouted Professor Spargrove. "How did  you get here? Where have you been?"
  "All I did," said the young woman with the snapping,  black orbs, "was to make the mistake of looking into
  Doc Savage’s eyes.  The next thing, I was stuck in some thorn bushes on a hill. The car I  was supposed to be
  killed in was scattered along the railroad tracks.  Then this Monk and Ham come along with their menagerie,
  and Ham beats  it."
  Inspector Higgins was writing furiously in his  notebook. If he knew what he was putting down it was a
  miracle.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  29
  
  The deputy coroner was still a relatively sane man.
  "Affairs seem to grow more complicated as we go  along," he commented mildly. "I suppose there are more
  bodies back by  that wrecked car on the crossing?"
  "That’s the funny part of it," said Monk. "There  were five people in that car an’ it was smashed to pieces.
  Then Ham  went up the hill and disappeared. This Jane Davidson is the only one of  the five we found, and she
  don’t know if she was in the car to start  with."
  Inspector Higgins snapped off his pencil violently.
  "And you said things were complicated, coroner?" he  groaned. "If you’re askin’ me, they’re all hell west an’
  crooked! We’ve  got to find Doc Savage! I’m gettin’ to a telephone! All you others hold  yourselves ready to
  be arrested any minute!"
  "They got the globes, Jane," Professor Spargrove was  saying to Jane Davidson. "I don’t know what I’ll do.
  Years of work, and  they’re gone."
  "I’ll return to the laboratories with you,  professor," announced Jane Davidson. "I have learned poor John
  Corbin  was killed. He must have been knocked out before Doc Savage walked in  on me. Anyway, I can’t
  remember anything after that."
  Despite repeated efforts, little was brought to  light about what had happened to the millionaire. Van Ronzen
  stated  that he had been riding along a Long Island country road. A car had  suddenly crowded him into the
  ditch. Apparently he had been knocked  out. When he had recovered, the whole world had changed.
  Johnny, listening to the tale, formed a startling  theory concerning the happenings of the night. But he had no
  means of  verifying it. And what was more, he wasn’t going to repeat it to any  one. He didn’t want to be
  considered crazy, too.
  Inspector Higgins didn’t believe anything of Van  Ronzen’s story. Neither did he believe Professor Spargrove
  had been  seeing things. The inspector hadn’t seen anything, so he had reached  but one conclusion: All were
  mad.
  Inspector Higgins left the scene in disgust and went  back to headquarters. There he tried to make something
  out of the notes  he had written. They were so badly scribbled they made little sense.  After he got them
  straightened out, they made less sense.
  AFTER Inspector Higgins had left, Monk, Renny and  Johnny made repeated efforts to pick up Doc Savage’s
  radio signal. They  then decided that their quickest way of finding their bronze chief was  to return to
  headquarters. Apparently nothing more could be done at the  scene of the Spargrove Laboratories.
  Doc Savage’s headquarters covered the entire  eighty−sixth floor of one of Manhattan’s most impressive
  skyscrapers.  Doc’s famous laboratory, his great library of scientific volumes and  his other devices, were
  housed under a tower of stone and steel.
  "Daggonit!" groaned the sleepless Monk. "It ain’t no  use! If Doc’s anywhere at all, he ought to be gettin’
  them signals!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  30
  
  Monk, Renny and Johnny had been taking turns working  the remarkable short−wave radio which was a part
  of Doc Savage’s  system. This specially powered transmitter and receiver could pick up  the Doc Savage code
  in almost any part of the world.
  "Confound it!" rumbled big Renny. "Why don’t we do  somethin’?"
  "About this time," suggested Johnny, "a few thousand  county and city police are looking for Doc. We’ll
  probably get results  by staying where Doc can locate us."
  Chemistry, the tailless baboon, wandered restlessly  around the laboratory. Sometimes he whined like a baby.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squeaked Monk. "Anyway, I  ain’t waitin’ much longer! I’ve been callin’ Ham’s club
  an’ all over,  an’ he’s not anywhere! The spooky devils that wrecked that car must’ve  got him, or he wouldn’t
  have busted that sword cane!"
  MONK and the others would not have believed their  own eyes if they could at this moment have been
  walking through an  isolated corner of Central Park.
  Some life stirred in Central Park. It being a sunny  morning, a few men and women of the Park Avenue set
  cantered along a  bridle path. Others who preferred early morning walks, were strolling  along some of the
  bypaths.
  On some of the more hidden Park benches, a few  frowzy individuals unrolled themselves from newspapers.
  They blinked  and yawned. The park had been their only lodging house. A park copper  walked along.
  Occasionally he tapped the soles of a late sleeper.
  But the copper did not disturb one man on a bench.  This fellow was apparently of the better class. In fact, he
  was  elegantly clad in the latest morning stripes affected by Park Avenue.  In his buttonhole was a fresh
  gardenia.
  The man flicked some dust from one knee with a pair  of immaculate gloves. Beside him reposed a neat black
  cane. One or two  persons hurried by. They glanced enviously at this paragon of the  latest in spring fashions.
  For the man thus enjoying the sunshine after a night  of driving rain was none other than Theodore Marley
  Brooks. If Ham had  suffered any ill results from his strange disappearance, he must have  forgotten it.
  Truthfully, Ham was having trouble with his memory  at this moment. Those knowing his shrewd brain would
  have been amazed  to know the lawyer was trying to assemble a few illusive facts.
  Here he was all dressed for a morning stroll in the  park. Everything was in perfect order. He had been bathed
  and shaved.  Doubtless he must have come from his apartment in an exclusive club  near Park Avenue.
  Yet Ham had not the faintest recollection of where  he had passed the night, or how he had arrived in Central
  Park.
  "Monk and I started out to meet Doc," he murmured to  himself. "Yes, that was it. Then Monk went off the
  highway. Good gravy!  I’ll have to call up and find out about that insect!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  31
  
  No person was in sight as Ham arose and started  along a gravel walk. But just then a small,
  unhealthy−looking fellow  came across the park. This man had a sallow complexion. He appeared to  be in the
  final stages of some serious ailment.
  Any two or three thugs who might have tackled the  fellow would have been in for a great shock. For the man
  was Major  Thomas J. Roberts, otherwise known as "Long Tom."
  He was the fifth of Doc Savage’s companions.
  Long Tom was the electrical wizard of the  adventurous outfit. His appearance was most deceptive. Though
  small and  apparently in poor health, Long Tom could handle several men larger  than himself.
  The sartorially perfect Ham instantly identified his  colleague in Doc Savage’s group. Jauntily swinging his
  black cane, Ham  started across the plot of grass.
  "Hello, Long Tom!" he called out. "I’m glad you  happened along! I seem to be in somewhat of a mental fog
  this morning!"
  THE pallid−faced electrician halted abruptly. He  stared at Ham. For Long Tom had only a few minutes
  before been  contacted by Renny and the others. This was why he was hurrying toward  downtown Manhattan
  across Central Park.
  And Long Tom had been informed of Doc’s mysterious  actions and disappearance the night before. Also, he
  had been told of  Ham having vanished at the railroad crossing. Yet here was Ham, looking  like a fashion
  plate and wholly unconcerned!
  Ham was looking directly at Long Tom. Near−by, to  one side, was a small pool in which a few pond lilies
  grew. Ham  suddenly experienced a queer sensation. Something like an iron band  tightened around his brain.
  In the stagnant pool suddenly arose a great turmoil.  Water and weeds were lashed about. It was as if the small
  pond had been  hit by a cyclone wind.
  Ham stood, staring stupidly at this manifestation.  Out of the churning water arose a long, slimy head. It was
  followed by  a score of others. Then it seemed to Ham there were hundreds of ugly  heads with blobby, bright
  eyes.
  Forked tails lashed through the water. Monstrous  creatures came to life. One with a score of protruding necks
  seized  upon another. Somehow, all of the necks succeeded in swallowing the  other monster, dividing it into
  parts.
  Onto the grass crawled long, serpent−like bodies.  They had forked tongues. Then some seemed to sprout
  wings. They were  attacking each other. Wide mouths gaped. Into these disappeared some of  the monsters.
  Now the air was filled with writhing, terrible  bodies. All around Ham the sun must have disappeared. For he
  was in the  midst of great, pudgy beasts. These flew without wings. Some came close.
  Ham yelled loudly. He struck with his sword cane. He  did not have time to draw the blade. For his whole
  body was being  enveloped by hideous creatures.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  32
  
  Still the pond was a whirlpool of battle. When Ham’s  sword cane struck one of the flying beasts, the creature
  simply divided  into separate parts. Each part became a new hydra−headed monster.
  "Take them away!" shouted Ham. "Kill them, Long Tom!"
  Ham imagined he could see Long Tom running toward  him. Then scores of filthy, incredible serpents with
  many heads  surrounded Long Tom. Ham saw the electrician vanish in the midst of the  unbelievable attack.
  "Run, Long Tom, run!" Ham screamed. "Look out!  You’ll be eaten alive!"
  But instead of dashing to Long Tom’s aid, Ham turned  and darted in another direction. Above him came
  weird figures of the  shape of scorpions. They were of prehistoric size. Ham could see only  they were about to
  enclose him with their frightful pincers.
  "Run Long Tom!" he yelled again.
  With his natty attire, Ham slammed into the pool of  stagnant water. He whipped about with his sword cane.
  His escape from  the monsters of the air seemed to have been a mistake.
  Ham lay down in the shallow, muddy pool. Park Avenue  would have been greatly shocked. The impeccable
  Ham was smearing his  face and head with the filthy mud.
  "Take them away!" he yelled. "There are more of them  coming!"
  Ham hurled his sword cane at some monstrous shapes.  Then he slapped at others with his bare hands. His
  blows seemed to pass  through the great monsters. And each time there were two where one had  been before.
  Ham slid into the water. He gulped great mouthfuls.  He was gasping, choking.
  LONG TOM ran around the pond. This spectacle of the  usually calm and self−possessed lawyer suddenly
  losing his mind was  terrible for the electrician.
  "Keep quiet, Ham!" Long Tom called out. "You’ll have  all the cops in Manhattan here! Wait a minute! I’ll
  pull you out! There  ain’t anything after you!"
  Ham struck at him with both fists and yelled. Long  Tom grunted. It looked as if there was only one remedy
  for this. He  took it. His hard fist cracked Ham expertly under one ear. Ham quit  fighting.
  The lawyer rolled over and lay still as Long Tom got  him onto the grass.
  Long Tom looked around. He wanted to get Ham away  without having to make explanations. He groaned as
  a big car skidded  and stopped in the nearest driveway. Then he gasped with relief.
  The figure of a big, bronze giant glided from the  car. His eyes glowed like dull copper as he looked at Ham
  and Long Tom.
  "What happened, Long Tom?" the man said quietly.  "How did Ham get into that state?"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  33
  
  "That’s what I’d like to know, Doc," replied Long  Tom. "I heard he had disappeared last night. Renny told
  me you couldn’t  be found. I was hurrying downtown when I saw Ham walking along. Then he  started batting
  things in the air and yelling."
  "There’s something very mysterious about all this,  Long Tom," the bronze man stated. "I fear we are opposed
  by a terrible  power. Last night I had some contact with Ham and Monk; then I lost  control of the radio."
  Ham was recovering from the blow to his jaw. He was  slowly sitting up. He stared wildly, but he had ceased
  fighting.
  "Doc, you here?" said Ham dazedly. "What became of  those things? My heavens! The whole park was full of
  them!"
  "They must be gone now, Ham," said the bronze man  quietly. "Long Tom, you go at once to headquarters. I
  will take Ham in  the car to his club. Tell the others I shall join you presently. We  have work to do."
  Ham, the cool lawyer, never had been so shaken. He  walked with the bronze man to the bulletproof car in the
  driveway.
  "We got a lucky break that no cops came along," said  Long Tom. "I’ll tell Renny and the others everything is
  all right."
  LONG TOM watched the big car with its sponge rubber  tires disappear. It went in the direction of Park
  Avenue. Long Tom  hailed a taxicab at the nearest street. He reached headquarters.
  "Holy cow!" thundered Renny. "Ham in Central Park?  And him seein’ things? Why can’t we get in touch
  with Doc?"
  "Doc said something had happened to the radio,"  explained Long Tom. "He said we were to be prepared to
  fight some great  power. It seems he already has started something. But he wanted Ham  taken care of at his
  club."
  "That’s funny," declared Monk. "I never knew Doc to  act like he’s been doing since last night. An’ if it’s
  somethin’ could  make Ham see things, it’s plenty bad."
  "Wait a minute," called out Renny. "I’ve got Doc on  the radio."
  A message was coming through. Undoubtedly it was in  Doc’s own code. But he was evidently having some
  trouble with the  transmission. Johnny figured it out.
  "Doc says we are all to go at once to the plant of  the Twentieth Century Alloy Metal Works in the yards
  across East  River," interpreted Johnny. "Says it is important we waste no time. He  thinks there will be some
  trouble there very soon."
  "The Twentieth Century?" said Long Tom. "Say, that  isn’t so far from the Spargrove Laboratories. They’ve
  been making some  special stuff this Spargrove was using in some of Doc’s experiments,  I’ll bet the whole
  thing’s mixed up with what happened last night!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VI. HAM SEES MONSTERS
  34
  
  "Howlin’ calamities!" exploded Monk. "Have we got to  start that all over again? I’ve still got a headache
  tryin’ to figure  out what happened! Anyway, I wish I could see Ham an’ find out where he  went on that hill!"
  Monk’s wish was almost immediately gratified. The  door opened slowly. Ham staggered in. His eyes were
  red and bloodshot.
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  THEODORE MARLEY BROOKS, legal light and Beau  Brummell, never before had been in such a state.
  Monk looked at him and  scratched his nubbin of a head. Ham’s condition ordinarily would have  called forth
  insulting comment from the apelike chemist.
  But Monk was in no mood to jeer at Ham. Long Tom  stared at the lawyer.
  Ham’s Park Avenue stripes clung to him in soggy  rags. Traces of pond weeds stuck over his ears. Ham stood
  in the middle  of the room. Suddenly, he jumped to one side and looked all around.
  "I guess they’re gone," he croaked. "There were  millions of them! Monk, you made a mistake turning that car
  on its top."
  "Holy cow!" grunted Renny. "Long Tom said Doc took  you to your club! Why did you leave him?"
  "Doc?" said Ham slowly. "Yes, that’s right. Doc and  I went for a ride in Central Park. That was after Monk
  upset the car.  Then Monk ran off with that black−haired dame."
  Johnny was preparing a hypodermic. Ham made no  objection to having it thrust into one arm. The needle
  contained a  sedative which Doc Savage had devised for control of the most serious  mental ailments.
  The bronze adventurer was noted as a great surgeon.  This was only one of the many accomplishments he had
  gained by a  lifetime of the most rigid training and exercises.
  Ham’s nerves became more quiet. He glanced in a  mirror.
  "I’m in a devil of a mess," he said quietly. "I’ll  bet I’ve been talking wild. But if you had seen the things I
  did, you’d  all be ready for the bughouse."
  "Howlin’ calamities, shyster!" squeaked Monk. "You  still believe you saw somethin’?"
  "I saw a lot of things that were uglier than you,  insect!" was Ham’s sarcastic reply. "Then Doc came along
  and took me in  his car. Say! Something must have happened to Doc! The next thing I  knew, I was walking
  along a street down on the East Side. I had one  devil of a time convincing a cop who I was, and then he didn’t
  seem  sure."
  "Brothers, perhaps all of this has been mere  hallucination," stated Johnny. "But we’ve had a radio call to go
  to  that Twentieth Century plant. It came in our code. It was Doc’s voice.  I don’t know what this is all about,
  but I’m sure Doc needs us."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  35
  
  ALL agreed that Doc Savage would not have summoned  them unless there was urgent need for their
  presence. Ham continued to  be jumpy, but he prepared with the others for a fast ride to the  railroad yards
  across the East River.
  At this moment a strident, whining noise came from  one wall. Into what appeared to be a black square of
  glass jumped two  figures. This glass was merely the electrical arrangement whereby  callers at Doc’s
  headquarters could be inspected from the inside.
  "I was afraid that piece of bad news would be coming  along," grunted Johnny. "That means, anyway, the
  police haven’t picked  up Doc. And Inspector Higgins has got your black−haired friend with  him, Monk."
  The ugly chemist let out a growl.
  "That Jane Davidson ain’t any friend of mine, an’  she ain’t to be trusted," declared Monk. "Now what do you
  suppose they  want?"
  Inspector Higgins followed his Adam’s apple into the  outer reception room. The snappy−eyed Jane Davidson
  accompanied him.
  "Well! Well! Well!" rapped Inspector Higgins. "Now  don’t any of you fellows make any resistance! I’ve got
  this place  surrounded! I’m havin’ a look for this Doc Savage!"
  Doc’s five companions grinned slightly. All the  police of two of the world’s most thickly populated counties
  could have  surrounded that downtown Manhattan skyscraper, and the occupants of the  eighty−sixth floor
  could still have walked right out.
  Doc Savage had been one of the designers of this  immense pile of stone and steel. His headquarters had many
  exits which  the most searching scrutiny would not have revealed.
  "I presume you came armed with a search  warrant?" suggested Ham, who was now nearly recovered.
  "Warrant?" yelled Inspector Higgins. "I’m the duly  constituted authority! This young lady with me was
  abducted last night,  and an attempt was made to murder her!!"
  "From what I’ve heard of the young lady," rapped  Ham, "it’s too bad it was only an attempt!"
  Ham did not mean this literally. His nerves were  still raw. The absence of Doc Savage had all five of his
  companions in  an extremely touchy mood.
  "Let him go ahead and search the place," suggested  Long Tom. "We’ve got to get out to that Twentieth
  Century plant."
  "You’re going where?" snapped Inspector Higgins.  "You’ll wait until I can accompany you! There is no
  doubt but that Doc  Savage has been breakin’ the law! I’ve just come from Howard Van  Ronzen!"
  "Yes!" snapped Jane Davidson. "And Mr. Van Ronzen  now remembers how he was seized on the road! He
  says he never met Doc  Savage, but he described him perfectly! It was a big bronze man who ran  his car into
  the ditch and then hit him over the head!"
  "Let Inspector Higgins have a look around,"  suggested Johnny. "We’re as anxious as you are to find Doc,
  inspector."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  36
  
  Doc’s five companions were seething with rage. They  did not believe any of the reports being made about
  Doc Savage. But  they were greatly perturbed.
  They completed their preparations for departure as  Inspector Higgins went through the big library and the
  laboratory. This  duly constituted authority emerged from the laboratory with somewhat of  a blank look in his
  blue eyes.
  "Good gosh!" he exploded. "With all them infernal  machines this Doc Savage has got in there to torture
  people, he should  have been put in jail a long time ago! I never saw such contraptions!  But from now on he
  ain’t goin’ to do no experimentin’ on good an’  law−abidin’ citizens!"
  In the outside room, Jane Davidson repeated  emphatically that it was Doc Savage who had hypnotized her
  before she  was taken for a midnight ride.
  Doc’s five companions were becoming excessively  irritated with this positive young woman.
  "You come with us out to the Twentieth Century Metal  Alloy Works," advised Johnny. "If Doc is there, it
  won’t take long to  prove both you and this skinny−necked cop are goofy."
  "You can wager your sweet life I’m going with you!"  blazed Jane Davidson.
  A few minutes later three automobiles flashed along  the East River streets northward to the bridge crossing
  into the Bronx  district. One carried Inspector Higgins and some of his men. In another  car Monk and Ham
  had taken Jane Davidson as a passenger.
  AS the three laden cars sped through the Bronx on  the Boston Post Road, one section of railroad yards not so
  far from  this main highway up the coast was busy. It was close to noon.
  With a slamming of bumpers, a coughing of stacks and  the whine of electric engines, the morning cars were
  being spotted. Two  freight trains were being made up. The yardmaster was busy hopping  around.
  The Twentieth Century Alloy Metal Works did a mixed  business, as its name indicated. Its furnaces made a
  specialty of  metallic alloys designed for unusual services. Most of its shipments  were of great value and had
  to be handled carefully.
  Steel box cars stood at two long loading platforms.  Along these loading platforms moved two−score laborers.
  They wheeled  heavy boxes on trucks.
  The fussy, little man jumping around was the kind  who would be expected to hold the same job with the
  same company for a  great many years. He took his job seriously. His men imagined he had  eyes in the back
  of his head.
  His name was Evans. He was the general manager of  the Twentieth Century. Just now, he was watching the
  spotting of an  express car close to the main office on an inner loading platform. This  indicated some shipment
  of unusual value was due to be loaded.
  Manager Evans was also watching several men loading  a box car. He squinted at these men and walked over
  to a white−collared  foreman.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  37
  
  "You gotta bunch of new men again, Bill!" rasped  Manager Evans. "Seems like we’re changin’ hands all the
  time lately! I  don’t like it! I want all new men to report to me!"
  The foreman rubbed a sweaty forehead.
  "Got six boxes to be made up for the mixed local at  noon, an’ you know how the loaders are," he replied.
  "Half of ‘em  didn’t show up this morning, an’ I had to pick up what I could get."
  "Well, I don’t like it!" insisted Manager Evans. "I  want to know the record of all men workin’ for the
  Twentieth Century!"
  "That’d get a lot of cars loaded," muttered the  foreman as Manager Evans hopped back toward the offices.
  A serious, owl−eyed young man came from the inside  office.
  "You got all that stuff in the big box?" demanded  Manager Evans. "We’re supposed to deliver half a ton of it
  to−day, an’  the express car’s been spotted."
  "Yes, sir," said the serious young man. "All them  conduits have been put in the safe. We made the thermit
  test yesterday.  Only one batch went soft. The rest of it took five thousand degrees."
  "Great stuff, that thermit tester," declared Manager  Evans. "If those conduits went through it, they’ll stand
  anythin’ Doc  Savage will ever use."
  "I hope so," commented the serious young man. "But  from what I’ve heard of Doc Savage, he’s likely to have
  something that  might shove the temperature to ten thousand degrees."
  "That’ll never be done," stated Manager Evans.  "Thermit’s the only thing that’s ever been found that’ll melt
  down the  hardest metals. The fellow who thought of mixin’ aluminum an’ iron  oxide an’ then shootin’
  electrical currents through it made himself a  fortune."
  "Guess he did," assented the young man. "That  reminds me, Mr. Evans. We’ve got a batch of that mixture
  thermit in one  of the big vaults outside. We ought to move it. A short circuit in  there might play the devil."
  "I’ll look after that end!" said Manager Evans  snappishly. "You see that those conduits are ready for loadin’.
  But  don’t unlock the big safe until the guards are on hand."
  His words indicated the new alloy conduits designed  for Doc Savage were immensely valuable. They were.
  They rated higher  per ounce than gold, even at its advanced prices.
  At this moment, a breathless office boy hurried onto  the loading platform. The boy looked as if he had just
  seen a ghost.
  "D−Doc S−Savage himself’s in your office, Mr.  Evans!" stammered the boy. "H−he says he wants you right
  away!"
  MANAGER EVANS’S office was not brightly illuminated.  A man was standing by the windows. His great
  hulk seemed to fill all of  the lighted space. The man’s hands were fumbling with a metallic object  he had
  picked up from the desk.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  38
  
  "Sorry, Mr. Savage, to keep you waitin’," exclaimed  Manager Evans. "I was just out preparing to load those
  conduits to be  shipped to the Spargrove Laboratories. Mornin’ paper said there was  some trouble over there
  last night. A watchman killed an’ one of the  railroad men. Hope it won’t hold up your experiment?"
  The bronze skin of the big man glowed in the faint  light from the window. His bronze hands showed their
  tremendous reserve  strength as they toyed with the metallic object.
  "Nothing will interfere with the experiment," stated  the bronze man. "I’m glad to hear you have the conduits
  ready. They  stood the thermit tests all right?"
  "Five thousand degrees," stated Manager Evans. "Not  many persons could afford to pay the price for that
  kind of alloy. It’s  the greatest thing our chemists ever have produced."
  "That’s fine," said the man with the bronze skin.  "Let me have the keys to the big safe, and I’ll look the stuff
  over  before it’s loaded."
  "Why�why, well, I’ll unlock the safe for you," said  Manager Evans. "I make it a rule never to let these keys
  out of my  hands. I hope you won’t feel offended. You see I�"
  Manager Evans had turned toward the door of the  office. The bronze man must have moved with the speed of
  a cat. Manager  Evans heard nothing.
  "A−a−agh!" 
  he gulped. "You can’t do that�" 
  Manager Evans’s windpipe suddenly collapsed. The  great nerve centers at the base of his skull became
  paralyzed. The  fussy little man batted the air with his hands. His movements became  feeble.
  It was very strange. Manager Evans remained wholly  conscious. He could still see and hear. The big bronze
  man extracted a  bunch of keys from one pocket. One of these was of peculiar design.
  The strong safe of the Twentieth Century plant  operated on an electroscopic principle of its own. This had
  been  invented by Manager Evans himself. It required a key which made an  electrical contact.
  Now Manager Evans lay on the floor. Only his finger  tips wiggled faintly. When he tried to cry out, he had
  no voice. The  big bronze man passed into the outer offices.
  CLERKS in the outer offices saw the big bronze man  whip into the main room. He stood for a moment
  looking around. He was  looking out at the loading platforms.
  "Everything is ready, Bill," said the bronze man,  without raising his voice. He turned on the perplexed clerks.
  "Every  one will get out at once."
  The serious young man who had talked with Manager  Evans was the only person to protest against the
  strange order.
  "But�but�Mr. Evans said nobody was to�"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VII. DOC’S STRANGE ATTACK
  39
  
  The big bronze fellow apparently made little  movement. His eyes glowed like flaky copper. One hand
  snapped out with  unbelievable speed. The serious young man left the office through one  of the windows.
  This exit carried the sash and the panes of glass  with it. The other clerks rushed outside.
  In the meantime, some of the new men on the loading  platform had suddenly dropped their truck handles.
  Fists started  smacking. Older employees were on the wrong end of those blows. A dozen  of the regular men
  were herded and hurled into an open box car.
  The door slammed shut and the iron hasp was fastened.
  Knuckles pounded at the inside of the car. Men’s  voices shouted. But the new men of the loading crew had
  other business.
  The foreman called "Bill," seemed to be directing  this effort.
  Men with rubber gloves dragged two electrical wire  leads toward the end of the Twentieth Century plant.
  Here was a vault  with a door something like that of a refrigerating plant.
  Two men carried the wire leads through this door.  They came out hurriedly. Bill shouted an order. Another
  man pushed a  switch.
  Under the door of the big vault appeared a  flickering, blue flame. The electrical leads were alive. They were
  pouring a current of high frequency into the closed vault.
  "Everybody out!" yelled Bill. "That thermit’s worse  than dynamite! It’ll melt everything in sight!"
  The thick−walled, insulated vault seemed to  dissolve. In its place appeared a terrible blue flame. This flame
  seemed to have no tongues or smoke. It was like an expanding sponge of  the fiercest heat.
  The plant’s stock of thermit was pouring out five  thousand degrees of heat. Platforms began to disintegrate.
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  THE small tank of terrible thermit did not cause an  explosion. Switcher crews in the railroad yard began
  yelling. The yard  siren squawled.
  One of the yard fire engines got streams playing on  the fire. Fortunately, the thermit burned itself out quickly.
  Only one  end of the big plant was destroyed.
  In the meantime, the yardmaster had ordered a rapid  shifting of car strings on the sidings. A dozen electric
  engines ran  cars to a safe distance from the plant, should the fire spread.
  On the near−by Boston Post Road, many motor cars  were halted. Drivers poured out to witness the fire.
  Arriving county  cops and patrolmen quickly got most of these moving. But traffic was  jammed for perhaps
  twenty minutes.
  During this time, the driver of a big moving van  appeared to be blocked. He was forced to run his immense
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  40
  
  truck onto the  flat shoulder of the road close to the burning plant. He climbed out  and ran around swearing at
  other drivers.
  It might have been noticed that a small automobile  with its shades drawn had also stopped near the truck.
  Workmen from the  burning plant were now carrying out some of the portable objects of  greatest value.
  The workmen apparently made some mistake. They  seemed to be loading some of the rescued boxes into the
  stalled moving  van.
  After an interval of swearing with his voice and his  hands, the truck driver climbed back into his seat. The big
  van found a  way through the traffic, heading toward the Bronx.
  The smaller closed car also vanished at about the  same time.
  The fire was now being rapidly brought under  control. The thermit had burned out.
  ABOUT this time, Manager Evans must have regained  his physical faculties. His face was blackened with
  smoke, but his  voice seemed unimpaired. The firemen and railroad men had believed  every one had left the
  plant.
  Manager Evans leaped into the edge of the crowd on  the Boston Post Road.
  "Stop him!" he was yelling. "We’ve been robbed! They  took it away! Doc Savage got it! They took our
  conduits! An’ they  grabbed a five−ton safe!"
  "The heat’s got ‘im," commented the nearest  policeman. "Nobody moved any five−ton safe or any other safe.
  Come on,  we’ll have a look."
  Manager Evans led the way into the scorched main  office. The policemen gaped at what he pointed out.
  Without doubt, a  tremendous safe had recently stood at one side of the big office.
  Gouged marks showed where it had started to move.  Beyond that point the floorboards had been badly
  scorched.
  "You say it was a safe an’ it weighed five tons?"  questioned a copper.
  "Yes, yes, yes!" yelled Manager Evans. "The new  metal alloy in it was worth maybe a million! Before the
  fire I got  myself knocked down! He took my keys!"
  "Well! Well! Well!" rasped a nasal voice. "Who took  what keys? What’s worth a million, an’ how’d you get
  yourself knocked  down?"
  County Police Inspector Higgins had pushed his  acrobatic Adam’s apple into the picture. Close beside him
  was a  round−faced, plump and pretty young woman.
  Four others of Doc Savage’s companions were at  Inspector Higgins’s elbow. Big Renny had halted outside.
  The three cars  from Manhattan had arrived just as the fire had been brought under  control.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  41
  
  Renny had an engineer’s eye. He had been attracted  by the clever methods of the yard crews in shunting
  strings of cars out  of danger. Renny was absorbing a mental picture of the yards of the  Twentieth Century
  plant.
  Ham was with the others. His eyes still had a vacant  expression.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" yelled Monk. "We’re lookin’  for Doc Savage! Who’s seen him? Was he here before
  this fire started?"
  "I’ll bet he was here," stated the cold voice of  Jane Davidson. "There aren’t many places he hasn’t been."
  "That’s right!" shouted Manager Evans, pulling at  his scorched hair. "Doc Savage was right here! It was him
  who knocked  me out an’ took my keys! That was just before they grabbed this  five−ton safe!"
  Inspector Higgins swallowed his Adam’s apple. He  waited until he had it in action again.
  "An’ that cinches this Doc Savage!" he rasped. "You  saw him, an’ he knocked you down? Then he took your
  keys an’ stole your  safe?"
  "That�well, that’s what I think happened," said  Manager Evans.
  "Then," interrupted Long Tom, "all you have to do,  Inspector Higgins, is find a big bronze fellow walking
  around with a  five−ton safe under his arm."
  "Don’t try to be funny!" snapped Inspector Higgins.  "Disappearin’ copper balls an’ machinery, crazy men
  seein’ things where  they ain’t, an’ now this Doc Savage walks right through a crowd with  five tons of safe!"
  "It seems to me you’re being funny without trying,"  suddenly commented Johnny. "Mr. Evans, how would
  they have got that  safe out of here?"
  "I believe�I think�I’ll bet I know!" gulped a  serious young man. He was the clerk who had been ejected
  through the  window.
  "Well! Well! Well!" exploded Inspector Higgins. "You  believe, you think, you bet�Make up your mind!"
  "Yes, sir�no, sir," gulped the confused young man.  "But about five minutes ago there was a big moving van
  loaded with  something out of the plant while it was on fire�an’ it went down the  Boston Post Road toward
  Manhattan�there were boxes and�"
  "Good gravy!" snapped Ham suddenly, coming out of  his apparent coma. "Wouldn’t you know if there was a
  safe?"
  "Yup�of course! Sure, there was a safe!"
  "Great Scott!" yelled Inspector Higgins. "An’ we’re  standin’ here! I’m gettin’ Doc Savage this time!"
  MONK drove one car. Renny was at the wheel of  another. Inspector Higgins himself had the police car.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  42
  
  Though traffic on the Boston Post Road pulled off at  the wail of the police siren, it seemed an even bet which
  driver would  be the first to hit the ditch.
  The determined Jane Davidson rode with Monk. Perhaps  the ugly chemist made the going a little tougher on
  this young woman’s  account. She had persisted in accusing Doc Savage.
  "Daggonit!" yelped Monk, who was leading the other  cars. "That must be the truck!"
  The lumbering vehicle was making all the speed of  which it was capable. But the four−track Boston Post
  Road did not seem  wide enough. Many drivers were being crowded into the ditch.
  The driver of the truck was leaving several minor  smashups in his wake. And close behind the truck was a
  smaller car.  This was a sedan. The back window was obscured by a curtain.
  "Move over!" shouted Inspector Higgins. "There ain’t  goin’ to be no more foolishness!"
  The police car shot ahead. From its windshield  protruded a mean−looking snout. This suddenly took on a
  rosy blossom of  fire.
  "Good gravy!" exclaimed Ham. "That crazy cop’ll  knock some other car off the road! This isn’t any place to
  turn on the  fireworks!"
  Inspector Higgins must have been mad. A stream of  jacketed bullets skipped straight up the concrete. This
  climbed to the  gas tank of the sedan following the truck. The sedan skidded and slewed  to one side.
  "That got ‘em!" yapped Inspector Higgins. "Blow them  tires on the truck!"
  The police machine gunner knew his stuff. A  knifelike line of slugs rippled off the concrete. This sliced
  through  first one and then the other of the huge, double doughnutlike tires  under the moving van.
  "That bus’ll wreck somebody before it goes over!"  asserted Long Tom. "Look! There she goes!"
  The big moving van was going over. It partly  toppled. The sliced tires swung the rear end over toward the
  ditch.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squealed Monk. "Look at that  other fool driver!"
  The remark was justified. The sedan with the leaking  gas tank had swung up alongside the big truck. It
  seemed as if it would  be crushed under the van at any second.
  Then two figures leaped from the driving seat of the  truck. They caught the sides of the closed sedan.
  The driver must have swung the truck’s wheel  desperately at the last instant. The moving van jumped like a
  house  with dynamite suddenly applied to its foundation. As it turned over,  its huge body completely blocked
  the four tracks of the road.
  Inspector Higgins jumped up and down like a madman.  His car had to be driven high on the bank before it
  could pass the  truck. Monk and Renny followed.
  "We’ll get those fellows," said Long Tom. "Look at  the road."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  43
  
  IT was apparent the fleeing sedan was losing gas  rapidly. The wet line showed where it was pouring out. But
  the wrecking  of the truck had given it nearly a mile lead. It had disappeared around  a sharp curve.
  Inspector Higgins and the others braked to a stop.  Two men were jumping up and down in the middle of the
  highway. Near  them the closed sedan was burning. It had been shoved into the ditch.
  "Well! Well! Well!" barked Inspector Higgins. "Get  them out of that fire! Them fellows are under arrest!"
  One of the men jumping up and down in the road had a  black eye. The other man’s nose was bleeding.
  "Get ‘em out?" yelled one of these men. "Hell! They  ain’t in there! They just knocked us down, grabbed our
  car an’ beat it!  They set that sedan on fire with a cigarette lighter!"
  Inspector Higgins’s Adam’s apple threatened to sock  him on the chin.
  "Stole your car?" he yelled. "What’d they look like?  What make of car?"
  "Well," said one man, "it was a Caddy, an’ faster’n  what you’ve got! It’s insured, anyway. There were five
  guys in that  sedan. One of them that hit me was a big guy with a brown face like an  Indian."
  "Now that couldn’t possibly have been Doc Savage?"  murmured Jane Davidson, with a malicious note in her
  voice.
  Apparently the other car had too great a start.  There were too many side roads. Ten minutes later, Inspector
  Higgins  had a report from up the road that the stolen car had been jammed into  a wall near the railroad and
  abandoned.
  "So, the young man saw a five−ton safe loaded into  this truck?" observed Renny. "Maybe they tossed it over
  to that sedan  when the men on the van made their get−away."
  Inspector Higgins was speechless. This wrecked truck  carried a few boxes. All were small. They were minor
  parts of machinery  from the burned Twentieth Century plant. There was no evidence of a  five−ton safe or any
  other heavy article having been carried.
  BACK at the Twentieth Century plant, Manager Evans  was in a state of collapse. No evidence had been
  uncovered to show how  the big safe and the million−dollar conduits had been removed. One man  had lost his
  life in the fire.
  The foreman known as Bill was missing. It was feared  that he had been trapped near the burned thermit vault.
  But Bill had  not been trapped in the vault.
  Doc Savage’s men were looking around the place.  Inspector Higgins wasn’t with them. He was on the
  telephone wire,  giving orders that the man of bronze should be picked up. He was  adding, dead or alive.
  Doc Savage’s men were as anxious as Inspector  Higgins to have Doc Savage found. Never before had Doc
  called them to  places of danger without excellent reason.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter VIII. THE VANISHED SAFE
  44
  
  Renny was the first one to notice something wrong.  He had whipped out into the railroad yard and was
  inspecting the lines  of cars saved from the fire. Once before, he had impressed every detail  of the switching
  yard on his brain.
  "That’s funny," he muttered. "I wonder why they  moved that stuff out?"
  Two minutes later, Renny was talking to a yardmaster.
  "What became of that old carnival car that was on  the graveyard track?" demanded the engineer.
  "By golly!" said the yardmaster. "It’s gone, ain’t  it? Maybe one of the switch engines moved it out of the way
  of the  fire."
  A search followed, minute in detail. But the car was  not found.
  The carnival car had disappeared.
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  THERE was but one light in the dungeonlike room.  This was a dust−covered electric bulb set in the high
  stone ceiling.
  But there were countless other little lights.  Terrible little lights. Because they were not white like the dim
  globe  above. They were tiny, and green, and deadly.
  These little lights moved constantly. This was  accompanied by a shrill squealing. There were gnawing sounds
  like small  knives being sharpened on stones.
  The many green lights were but reflections. They  were the eyes of scores of great rats. Starving rats, shut off
  from all  food for many days.
  Now they scurried back and forth in the shadows at  the edges of the room. Their hunger was not great enough
  to bring them  to attack the only other living figure in the cellar dungeon.
  For many hours there had been only one other living  figure. He was a big man. From before the time John
  Corbin had run  screaming to his death from the Spargrove Laboratories, this figure had  been bound to the
  oozy, filthy wall of stone.
  The prisoner had been there at the time Jane  Davidson had stated she had looked into the eyes of Doc Savage.
  The  green−eyed rats had crept closer and closer. Only that light in the  ceiling kept them from attacking this
  human enemy.
  The rats only waited for the prisoner to fall  asleep. Or for that little light in the ceiling to wink out.
  But the bound prisoner had still been awake when Ham  was seeing monsters in Central Park. He was still
  watching the  scurrying rats when a five−ton safe was removed from the Twentieth  Century plant.
  For the prisoner was Doc Savage, the great bronze  adventurer.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  45
  
  The manner of binding Doc Savage had been simple.  Too simple to be easily disengaged. The bronze giant
  had been known to  free himself from the most complicated of modern manacles. But few sets  of handcuffs
  would have held him.
  Doc Savage was helpless now under the most primitive  of winding cords. Strips of rawhide, only partly dried,
  had been  employed. These enwrapped all of his tremendous body. They were  interknotted around the massive
  arms from wrists to shoulders.
  The legs were encased as securely as the wrappings  of a mummy.
  Doc Savage had been tricked to this underground  cellar on the East Side. The ruse had also been simple.
  For Doc Savage had seen himself. The other man had  appeared only a few times in the street crowds. But
  each time, the  bronze giant became aware his own appearance had been duplicated.
  The other man’s size, his bronze skin, the smooth  mask of his bare head and his movements were faithful
  copies of Doc  Savage.
  Another note added to this. It was the strange  trilling which suddenly swept over the crowd, then was as
  quickly  terminated.
  Scores of persons had been halted by that unexpected  eerie note. It was gone so quickly they had not located
  its origin. But  Doc Savage had marked it.
  That trilling was Doc’s own distinctive brand of  sound. Usually it was uttered when in the face of danger or
  when  concentrating upon some deep problem. His own men knew the trilling as  a part of Doc.
  Now Doc heard it emanate from his double.  Undoubtedly the man desired that Doc Savage hear it.
  Doc Savage knew the fellow had a purpose in all that  show. He had wanted to be observed and followed. Doc
  had immediately  taken up his trail.
  Perhaps Doc Savage should not have so accommodated  the other man’s wishes. For his double had almost
  disappeared when Doc  himself found himself surrounded.
  Doc Savage’s defensive devices were numerous. The  big bronze man never carried a lethal weapon, such as a
  pistol. He  believed men came to rely too much upon such weapons. This lessened the  use of their wits.
  True, Doc was armed with small grenades, tiny  capsules and a few other devices which would render an
  enemy  unconscious. But Doc had no desire to kill. Many of his enemies had  been overcome. Then they had
  disappeared.
  These men never were heard from again in their true  identity. At an institution far in northern New York,
  many criminal  minds were treated. When they emerged they were new persons. The twist  of crookedness had
  been removed from their brains.
  Now that Doc’s double had appeared and vanished, the  bronze man was surrounded by a throng of men. They
  were closing in from  all sides. Doc was fully aware it was their purpose to capture him. The  bronze man
  deliberately refrained from fighting.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  46
  
  DOC SAVAGE had been rendered unconscious by  something like one of his own chemicals. Here was proof
  that a most  dangerous enemy had appeared for some mysterious purpose.
  Doc’s awakening was in the cellar with the scores of  huge rats.
  His immediate belief was that his strange enemy  wished to terrify him for some purpose. The filthy, black
  rodents  scuttled and squealed close to his feet.
  A few times the small light in the ceiling went out.  When this happened, there was a rush of, many small
  bodies. Then the  rats permitted their hunger to overcome their fear of a human presence.
  But this torture wasn’t quickly over with. Rather,  it was prolonged. Each time the ceiling light went out, it
  remained  dark for a few seconds. When it flashed on again, the squealing rats  retreated. This torture of the
  prisoner had continued for hours.
  Doc Savage possessed a brain as accurate as a clock.  He was conscious of having been in the dungeon for
  nearly twenty−four  hours. And in that time the bronze man had tried to connect up his  imprisonment with
  some outside purpose.
  What could be the reason which would make it worth  while for another man to appear as Doc Savage?
  The whole situation was baffling. It was even more  so because of the thoroughness with which the bronze
  man had been  disarmed. Even his bullet−proof skullcap with its bronze hair had been  removed.
  Again the little light winked out. Almost  immediately the rats were scuttling across the floor. Sharp teeth cut
  through the cords into one of the bronze man’s arms.
  The light came on again. And now a big man stood in  the middle of the cellar. Doc Savage had heard the
  grating of a stone  door by which the man had entered.
  The man who stood there was of splendid proportions.  He weighed perhaps two hundred and fifty pounds.
  His white shirt was  stripped back from his forearms. Muscles stood out like small cables.
  But the most amazing thing was the man’s skin. It  was bronze, a perfect replica of Doc Savage’s own skin.
  Any one in a  thousand persons would have mistaken him for Doc Savage.
  Doc Savage waited. Little whirlpools stirred briefly  in his gold eyes. He could see the eyes of the other man.
  They, too,  appeared to be of bright copper. The light made whirlwinds show in the  middle.
  Doc Savage’s first words were a quiet comment on the  other man’s appearance.
  "IT is very difficult to obtain glass shells of that  color," stated Doc. "It is a metallic shade, which makes it
  possible to  reproduce it in glass. The rest of your set−up looks like the real  thing. Perhaps you will inform me
  why all this masquerade?"
  The other big man laughed. Plainly he was proud of  his success in becoming a replica of Doc Savage himself.
  "You see," he stated, in a voice as quiet as Doc’s  own. "I never have had the opportunity to study your eyes at
  close  range. Photographs are not much good. You know, of course, that no  person can detect the exact color
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  47
  
  of another person’s eyes at a  distance of more than fifteen feet. I shall remedy that error."
  Doc Savage did not have to be informed that here was  the most dangerous type of enemy. Sure of himself.
  Cool as a cucumber.  Remarkable in his make−up ability.
  The big man came closer. His stride had that easy,  catlike movement which marked Doc Savage. He did not
  have to bend down  to peer closely into the eyes of his bound prisoner.
  "I see what you mean, Doc Savage," he stated calmly.  "The iris of the fake shells I am wearing do not give
  the proper  whirling effect in the light. I shall have that remedied. Also, it  might gratify you to know that my
  eyes will not hypnotize as yours have  been known to do. That’s tough through glass."
  Doc Savage smiled slightly.
  "After you have all the make−up perfect, you could  hardly expect to fool my own men when they are near
  you," he stated.
  The fake bronze man laughed confidently.
  "On the contrary," he stated. "I have already  completely fooled two of your smartest men. I met Long Tom
  and Theodore  Marley Brooks, or Ham, in Central Park not many hours ago. Long Tom  followed my
  instructions, and Ham willingly accompanied me in an  automobile."
  "But you have not attempted speaking with them�over  the radio, for example," suggested Doc.
  The big man laughed.
  "For many weeks I have had a short−wave set cut in  on your own sender," he advised. "I have learned the
  sending code, also  your system of voice scrambling. Not less than a few hours ago all your  men replied to a
  call to the Twentieth Century Metal Alloy Works above  the Bronx."
  Doc Savage’s calm countenance did not change  expression.
  "Then this whole game is for the purpose of stealing  some of our most valuable alloys?"
  "Much more than that, oh, much more," smiled Doc’s  double. "When we have finished, some terrible things
  may have happened.  Whole cities will discover we control their water supplies. Ah, no, Doc  Savage! We
  shall not appear in the role of extortionists or  blackmailers."
  "The Twentieth Century alloys?" said Doc, in a  musing tone. "It couldn’t be possible that connects up with
  the  Spargrove Laboratories?"
  "You are a very erudite man, Doc Savage," stated his  bronze double. "Unfortunately John Corbin, the
  watchman at the  Spargrove Laboratories, must have been drinking some very bad liquor  last night. He was
  killed in the yards while trying to escape the D.  T.’s."
  For a minute or two Doc Savage didn’t say anything.  His face was a blank mask.
  Few men could discover when anger came uppermost in  Doc Savage. His calm control was always perfect.
  Yet now he was  seething inside. Doc’s double’s statement that he and his cohorts could  control whole water
  supplies told the bronze man more than other  persons could have guessed.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  48
  
  "Becoming Doc Savage would hardly further your  scheme, whoever you are," stated the man of bronze. "It is
  true you may  possibly discover the means of killing millions. You could lay barren  millions of acres of this
  and other countries."
  "Also," smiled Doc’s double, "we can restore what  has been destroyed. And could not the great work of Doc
  Savage be  carried forward? Perhaps you now can see what we are attempting."
  "I would be very dumb indeed, if I did not," advised  Doc. "But certainly you cannot hope to keep me under
  cover forever? My  men will not be fooled for long."
  "Ah," Doc’s double said, rubbing his big bronze  hands together, "you have come upon the main thought. We
  would not try  to keep you under cover forever. Nor will your able companions be free  to upset any of our
  plans. In fact, the great Doc Savage is staging his  last stand!"
  DOC SAVAGE could read death in the other bronze  man’s voice. But he could tell that the other man was
  not yet finished  with taunting him.
  "Perhaps," said Doc’s double, "you do not believe  everything is in order to carry out what I have outlined.
  You have  observed my gestures?"
  "They are almost perfect," admitted Doc. "I could  only suggest that the trilling note you uttered on the street
  would not  mislead any of my men very far. That in itself is something over which  I myself have no control."
  "Your men need not understand for long," said Doc’s  double. "As soon as we have pretty generally
  discredited the great Doc  Savage with his friends and the police, it is probable your men will  cease to be a
  factor in our plans."
  Doc Savage spoke quietly.
  "You may have discovered part, but you could not  have all that which you are boasting."
  Doc’s double laughed. One bronze hand flicked back  the mask of his hair. It was a movement much like Doc
  himself night  have made.
  Doc’s double stepped close. His hands flashed across  Doc’s eyes.
  "Now you see nothing?" mocked Doc’s double.
  "True enough," stated Doc. "Now I see nothing."
  The bronze man’s voice was without expression.
  Doc’s double slopped his feet through the ooze of  the cellar. He crossed to the opposite wall. A small,
  circular disk  hung there. Doc’s double said, "All ready, Anstratton?"
  There was a brief delay. Then Doc’s double said,  "Let the great globes turn!" 
  For a few seconds the fake bronze man watched Doc  Savage. The real man of bronze did not change
  expression. He seemed to  be looking into the corners into which the countless rats had scurried,  waiting for
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  49
  
  their human prey.
  Suddenly Doc’s double laughed loudly. For the  moment, he seemed to forego that calmer role of the Doc
  Savage.
  "Now you can see them!" he squawked. "They are  beautiful creatures! What a boon to civilization the
  invention would  have been! Perhaps after we have collected plenty, I will see that it  is applied as you
  intended! But you and your companions will know  nothing of the results! Probably I will decide to become
  hailed as the  world’s greatest benefactor! Disease and death will be conquered! You  do see them, don’t you?"
  UNLIKE John Corbin, the watchman who dashed to his  death, or Ham, the lawyer, Doc Savage did not
  appear greatly disturbed  by what he might have been seeing.
  Any one looking through the bronze man’s eyes at the  moment would have missed seeing the eyes of the
  furtive rats. For the  floor of the cellar had suddenly become filled with the most incredible  vermin.
  Some of these creatures were the size of men.  Hideous, hydra−headed monsters crawled around Doc
  Savage’s feet.
  Around his bound arms and legs were gigantic coiling  serpents. Great pudgy beasts floated before the bronze
  man’s face. The  single light in the ceiling had temporarily disappeared.
  In its place were big, violent animals. They were of  more terrible proportions than those of the prehistoric age.
  It must have seemed remarkable that the scores of  giant rats were not terrified. But all that seemed to hold
  these  ravening rodents in check was the electric bulb.
  Doc Savage could not now see his bronze man double.  But he spoke clearly, quietly.
  "I fear you have made one vital mistake," he  advised. "Temporarily, no doubt, you have possession of
  Professor  Lanidus Spargrove’s laboratories. But there must soon be metal  replacements you cannot make.
  Ponderous machinery has to be moved."
  Doc’s double laughed scornfully.
  "You think we would be such fools as not to know all  that before we started?" he mocked "We have taken
  enough of the new  alloy from the Twentieth Century plant to keep all this in operation  for ten years."
  "But how could you remove tons of machinery?" asked  Doc.
  "No matter," said Doc’s double. "It has already  been done. And that is as great a secret as your own.
  Combined, they  give us the greatest power on earth. Already, we have a few men of  great wealth who will
  contribute to our campaign."
  "Men with wealth would not embark upon such an  enterprise," stated Doc.
  "Ah!" stated Doc’s double. "One such man has escaped  us. He never will forget what he saw. Just now, you
  are seeing our  pleasant little friends with the horns and the many heads. They do not  affect you. But there are
  many persons who will not know the truth.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter IX. TWO DOC SAVAGES
  50
  
  "In fact, Doc Savage, when it comes to telling the  boys with millions where they get off, this beneficial
  device of yours  is a devilish contraption."
  Doc’s double stepped to the disk in the wall. He  spoke a few words. Almost instantly the dingy cellar room
  became  normal. The hydra−headed monsters vanished.
  In their place were the green eyes of the gray rats,  who still scurried about. They only awaited the
  extinguishing of that  light in the ceiling.
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS
  DOC’S double stepped quickly before the man of  bronze.
  "Picked bones in an old basement cellar, when and if  they are discovered, mean little on New York’s East
  Side," he remarked  pleasantly. "Too many poor devils have died in too many unpleasant ways  to cause much
  furor."
  Doc Savage now could see the other bronze man  clearly. 
  "Regardless of your disguise," said Doc, "I shall  know you instantly when we meet again. In your case I shall
  have  several items to remember."
  The oozy walls of the old cellar shook. The rumble  might have been that of an "el" train or a subway. Doc
  Savage knew well  enough his remarkable bronze double was speaking the truth.
  This dungeon was not directly under a house. It was  placed beneath what had been the end of an abandoned
  street. Years  before, it had marked the outlet of an old storm sewer.
  Apparently the route of the sewer had been changed.  There was nothing now but the crumbling walls of
  broken masonry leading  into the depths. No doubt, this emerged far under the East River.  Possibly the outlet
  had long ago been broken and filled with sand and  silt from the river’s bottom.
  The gurgle and suck of the water could be heard.
  "Remembering me will do you little good, Doc  Savage," said his double pleasantly. "The bones of one man
  are much the  same as those of another. There will be no broken bones, no bullet  marks. The rest of your brief
  existence lies now between you and your  friends, the rats."
  Doc Savage was fully aware even his great strength  could not break those rawhide thongs. They had been
  bound about him  with uncanny skill. One knot or two might be severed, but the others  would hold.
  "The rats are keeping back in the shadows now," said  Doc’s double. "But even your strength cannot break
  those rawhide  thongs. I could dispose of you now, but there must be no marks. None  but ourselves�not even
  my men�have been in this basement tomb."
  DOC’S double strode toward ascending stone steps.  His movements were a perfect imitation of the man he
   MAD EYES
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS
  51
  
  was leaving behind  to die. His steps rang with a hollow sound on the stone. A heavy iron  door clanged shut.
  Doc Savage was alone with the horde of rats.
  Doc’s body was nearly stripped. His arms and wrists  were bound firmly behind him. All his tremendous
  strength only  tightened the rawhide cords.
  He could hear the distant gurgle of water in the old  storm sewer. The opening of this was dimly visible. It was
  back of the  main horde of rats.
  Doc kept close eye on the light bulb. All the time,  he set his trained muscles against the rawhide cords.
  Perhaps one would  yield.
  But he was not seeing the cellar and the light bulb.  Occasionally the writhing, leaping monsters filled the
  space.
  They were a terrible weapon in the hands of  unscrupulous persons. There was little doubt but that this bronze
  man  who was Doc’s double was one of the world’s most unscrupulous men.
  In some manner, Doc Savage knew, his double and his  men had gotten full control of the globes. And yet
  nothing that moved  along the highway could have transferred the machinery from one spot to  another.
  Once more the monsters of the dungeon disappeared.  There was now only the vaguely flickering lamp bulb.
  Once it winked  out. Immediately there was a rush of the rats. Then the light came on  again.
  With the light on again for a few moments, Doc  studied the dungeon. He was too tightly bound to attempt to
  climb the  steep stone steps. He rolled over and watched the rats scuttling behind  some boxes.
  Slowly, with infinite caution, the bronze giant lay  down on the floor. Inch by inch, he pushed toward the
  boxes in the  corner. With great care, he thrust his bound arms between the boxes.
  Here his arms and wrists were in the darkness. It  required the maximum of will power to keep his arms there.
  Great rats attacked in this dark space. Their edged  teeth sliced into the rawhide thongs. They did not miss the
  flesh. But  to the rats, the hide of the binding cord was an unusual delicacy. Doc  had remembered that hordes
  of rats live around tanneries. They are an  evil all tanners must combat.
  The rawhide thongs went first. Doc’s massive arms  did not escape. When his hands at last broke free, blood
  was pouring  over his fingers. He got the thongs off his legs in record time.
  But as he heaved himself from the floor, the little  light went out. Immediately, the blood−crazed rats were
  upon him. They  sprang upward and clung with teeth and claws. Doc could not see his  horde of enemies. He
  could fight them only when they struck.
  The man of bronze got across the dark cellar. He had  fixed the position of the stone steps ascended by his
  double. On these  steps, he was able to beat back the rats a little better.
  ACHIEVING the exit door accomplished nothing. For  Doc’s great shoulders might as well have been set
  under the foundation  of his own skyscraper headquarters.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS
  52
  
  The exit door was a solid block of thick concrete.  It was smooth underneath, with no mark for a ring or
  handle.
  There remained but one outlet.
  This was the broken storm sewer of the East River,  filled to the dungeon with water seepage. Perhaps it was
  not solidly  blocked at the underwater end.
  Doc Savage backed into the small space. He beat the  rats away from his face with his hands. Suddenly one
  hand encountered  what felt like a rounded club.
  This proved an effective weapon. But the rats were  ferociously determined not to be cheated of their meal.
  Doc was backing  into the cold water of the river in the sewer.
  He was striking with the club. Again, his other hand  encountered what might have been clubs. Then he
  discovered he had been  fighting the rats with the thigh bone of a human skeleton.
  From the big man of bronze broke that eerie, weird,  melodious trilling. It was considerably unlike the
  imitation employed  by Doc’s double.
  Doc Savage whipped squealing rats off his face. In  the muck of the broken sewer, he collected an armful of
  human bones. He  succeeded in gathering together the complete skeleton.
  The darkness was Stygian. Doc felt his way back into  the stone dungeon. Rats sprang and fought him all the
  way. The bronze  man had lost a great deal of blood.
  When he again backed into the old sewer, all the  bones of a human skeleton had been piled in the basement
  cellar. Doc  Savage smiled grimly.
  Now he was in water up to his waist. The rats would  not follow. The top of the old sewer bumped his head.
  Within a few  yards, the sucking tide of the East River touched it.
  Battling away the last of the rats, Doc Savage  filled his lungs and submerged. Even the divers of Southern
  Seas could  not surpass the man of bronze under water.
  But there was always the chance this broken sewer  would be blocked. Doc swam rapidly away from the basin.
  The rats were gone now. Doc’s only enemy was the  river itself. This busted old sewer conduit. All at once,
  the bronze  man struck something. This was a rusted iron grating lodged solidly  across the sewer outlet under
  the river.
  The bronze man applied all his remaining strength to  loosen this iron. It was weighted down by what seemed
  to be tons of mud  and river silt. It could not be moved.
  Doc raised his head, only to discover no space  existed between the top of the sewer and the water. His bronze
  hands  wrenched desperately at the iron grating.
  At last there was no more air and little more  strength in Doc’s huge body. He pulled feebly at the bars of the
  grating. He could not now have returned to the dungeon of the rats if  he had so desired. All avenues of escape
  were cut off.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter X. TEETH OF THE RATS
  53
  
  Something struck the iron grating. Doc could feel  the barrier move. This seemed incredible. It was as if giant
  fingers  had suddenly reached under the river and given their aid to the bronze  giant.
  Doc could only cling to the iron grating. Slowly, it  was being torn away. Claws like steel came through. They
  narrowly  missed Doc’s face.
  About this time, Doc Savage must have lost  consciousness. But his hands still were thrust through that iron
  grating.
  ALL the time, Doc Savage was seeing the hideous  monsters at intervals. Strangely enough, the man of bronze
  could have  quit seeing the unbelievable creatures at any time.
  But it was by his continued view of the monsters  that Doc was keeping check on what his mysterious
  enemies were doing.
  However, Doc Savage was seeing nothing when the  bucket of an East River dredge clanked to the surface
  bearing the  section of iron grating that had been over an abandoned storm sewer.
  "Holy mackerel!" shouted a big member of the  dredging crew. "Look what we’ve snagged on the bottom!
  We’ve got a  corpse!"
  Indeed, it looked as though this might have been a  corpse. It was the huge bronze body of Doc Savage.
  The bronzed hands still were locked in the bars of  the sewer grating.
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  POSSIBLY it was some hours after Doc Savage was  scooped from the bottom of the East River that three
  men entered the  downtown Manhattan skyscraper.
  These three men drew smiles of recognition from two  men on one of the rear freight elevators. Whenever
  there was a load to  be moved for Doc Savage, it meant an extra, generous tip.
  The three men who made their way up on the freight  elevators were the big bronze man, Renny, with his
  solemn face and his  slow movements, and Monk, who, having once been seen, could never again  be mistaken
  for some other person.
  Sam Simpson had been in the Manhattan building for a  long time. The other man was a new employee.
  "Forget everythin’ else, an’ do what the big bronze  guy wants; he’ll make it worth our while," advised Sam
  Simpson.
  Doc Savage had once paid for making one of the  Simpson children walk again. The operators held the
  elevator on the  eighty−sixth floor.
  The doors of Doc Savage’s headquarters opened by the  usual radio control. This would always remain a
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  54
  
  mystery to Sam Simpson.  Once inside, the man of bronze issued hasty orders.
  "That stuff in the laboratory first," he directed.  "Bring in the cases from the elevator. I want especially to have
  all  the electro−magnetic machinery packed."
  Renny and Monk moved as if they knew their way  around. The bronze man aided in packing some of the
  stuff. But most of  the time seemed to be occupied in a wrecking expedition.
  "If they get back in here, I’ll bet they don’t find  much stuff working," stated the man of bronze.
  This indicated he was deliberately acting to remove  intricate devices, and to destroy those which were
  permanent fixtures.
  It must have seemed that Doc Savage’s experience of  the past few hours had made it seem necessary to
  transfer his  headquarters to some other location.
  Strangely, for Renny, he seemed clumsy. He broke two  pieces of television equipment in removing it from
  the wall.
  "Be careful of that stuff, Renny," growled the  bronze man.
  Sam Simpson was listening at the door.
  "O. K.!" snapped Renny. "But how would I know the  thing would bust when you touched it?"
  Several huge wooden cases had been brought up. These  were filled.
  "Stack them on the alley loading platform,"  instructed the man of bronze. "We’re having a truck brought
  around, to  take them away."
  "Certainly, Mr. Savage," agreed Sam Simpson.
  But the elevator man was suddenly watching the  bronze man closely. He had heard the sharp words between
  the bronze guy  and Renny. It must have seemed somewhat unusual to Sam Simpson.
  A DOZEN cases had been packed and removed by the  freight elevator when the man of bronze said, "The
  truck is just around  the corner. It’s a big Red Rooster moving van. One of you fellows can  call it around for
  the load."
  Sam Simpson spoke to his fellow operator.
  "You call the truck, Jim," he directed. "I’ll help  with the rest of this stuff."
  Monk’s long arms were wrapped about a small case.  This must have contained glass. It slipped from the
  chemist’s arms.  There was a crackling impact.
  Sam Simpson was looking directly at Monk. Monk had  reddish hair of almost a furry texture. But over one
  ear, Sam Simpson  was sure he had glimpsed a small patch of smooth, black hair. The  elevator man moved
  closer to Monk.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  55
  
  At that instant, the awkward Renny again stumbled. A  wooden case struck one foot of the bronze man. The
  bronze man’s fist  lashed out and caught Renny a staggering blow under the chin.
  "You damn big lummox!" shouted the bronze man.  "Whyn’t you look whatcher doin’?"
  Sam Simpson blocked the controls of the freight  elevator. One of his hands slapped at Monk’s head. A wig of
  fuzzy, red  hair flew off.
  Sam Simpson knew that Doc Savage never became  excited. He also was aware that Doc never shouted at any
  one.
  "Hey!" yelled Sam Simpson. "Wait a minute! You ain’t  takin’ any more of this stuff down! There’s
  somethin’ phony here! I’ll  see�"
  What Sam Simpson intended to say, never would be  told by him. An oath whistled from the teeth of the
  bronze man. One big  hand caught Sam Simpson’s throat. It jammed the operator’s head back  with slow,
  sickening force.
  Sam Simpson’s eyes protruded. He clawed uselessly  with his hairy hands. Then his spine cracked like a dry
  stick. The  bronze man laughed mirthlessly.
  "We’ll have to move fast now," he said. "I didn’t  expect to get this far without a jam. Dump him down the
  side."
  The ugly, squat fellow who had been enacting the  role of Monk picked up the body of Sam Simpson. The
  elevator was some  twenty floors from the alleyway basement. Sam Simpson must have turned  over a dozen
  times before all of his bones were broken at the bottom.
  The other elevator operator came running in.
  "Here’s your Red Rooster truck!" he shouted. "What’s  become of Sam?"
  The bronze man’s reply was without words. The second  elevator man was not in evidence when the Red
  Rooster truck was being  loaded. The bronze man and his two companions swung onto the truck as  it drove
  away.
  THE truck had just vanished toward the East River  when two cars arrived at Doc’s headquarters. These
  carried Ham, Long  Tom and Johnny, and Inspector Higgins with Jane Davidson.
  Inspector Higgins did not care for Doc’s high−speed  elevator. Its rocket−like ascent to the eighty−sixth floor
  was too much  for his nerves. On the other hand, the cool, black−haired Jane Davidson  seemed to enjoy the
  upward flight immensely.
  "Good gracious!" exclaimed Jane Davidson at the  eighty−sixth floor. "Your Doc Savage must have got back!"
  "It does look like it�" began Johnny. Then he closed  up like a clam.
  With Ham and Long Tom, Johnny was staring at the  havoc which had been wrought in the big laboratory.
  Bits of broken  packing cases lay all over the outside floors.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  56
  
  "So, the big bronze guy beat it?" snapped Jane  Davidson. "And you still think he’s on the square? Wrecks his
  own joint  while he sends you fellows on a wild−goose chase! Anyway, he’s made a  good job of it!"
  "The sooner you choke, the better pleased I’ll be,"  muttered Ham. "Come on, Johnny, Long Tom�there’s
  been a lot of stuff  freighted down the back way! We’ve been raided!"
  "Well! Well! Well!" snapped Inspector Higgins,  coming in. "That’s your story. But they’ve found one man
  knocked out,  an’ another one croaked downstairs!"
  "Maybe there’s been an accident," ventured Long Tom.  "It looks as if we’ve had burglars up here."
  "Hooey!" snarled Inspector Higgins. "Accident? One  man at the bottom of an elevator shaft with his head
  almost knocked  off, an’ another one just comin’ out from under a punch on the chin!"
  "Perhaps it’s difficult for you to understand,"  stated Ham. "But we have had visitors who didn’t belong up
  here. Some  of our most valuable equipment has been taken away. Find the thieves  and you’ve got the men
  who killed that elevator operator."
  SAM SIMPSON was dead. But the other elevator man was  not hard to find. After he got back his senses and
  his voice, he was  very much on the job.
  "Sam was killed by that big bronze fellow he called  Doc Savage," volunteered the elevator man. "Sam told
  me he was Doc  Savage. He said if we handled the bronze fellow’s stuff carefully, we  would get a big tip. So
  we handled it right, an’ that’s what poor Sam  got. Then the bronze guy poked me on the chin."
  "Can you describe the two fellows with this Doc  Savage?" demanded Inspector Higgins.
  "Betcher life I can!" asserted the elevator man.  "You couldn’t miss ‘em, even if they was in a crowd at Coney
  Island!  One had red hair all over and looked like a baboon. Sam called him  Monk. The other one was as big
  as the bronze guy an’ looked like he was  goin’ to a funeral. Sam called him Renny."
  "Which cinches the whole thing!" said Inspector  Higgins. "Maybe you fellows can tell me why this Renny
  and Monk beat it  right after we had that runaway truck out at the Twentieth Century  plant?"
  "Aw, what’s the use in talking about it?" said Ham,  with disgust. "You heard them say they were going to the
  Hudson River  hangars to look for Doc. That is about the only place left where we  haven’t searched."
  "I don’t know anythin’ about your Hudson River  hangars!" shouted the living elevator man. "I know this
  fellow called  Doc Savage broke Sam Simpson’s neck! He ain’t out at no hangars! He  left here in that Red
  Rooster truck!"
  "Red Rooster truck?" snapped Inspector Higgins. "Now  we’ve got to go chasin’ another truck!"
  "Our luck doesn’t seem to be finding things in  trucks," commented Ham caustically. "We ought to try
  chasing a street  car for a change."
  "I believe you’re all murderers!" raged Jane  Davidson. "You would protect your Doc Savage to the limit! I’m
  going  back to the laboratories and see if Professor Spargrove is all right!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  57
  
  "Your decision merits supreme acclamation," declared  Johnny.
  "In other words," supplied Ham, "if you never come  back, it will be a great relief to us."
  "Quit evadin’ the issue!" gulped Inspector Higgins.  "I wish to know at once if Renny and Monk are at the
  Hudson River  hangars! What is the number?"
  "It isn’t listed," stated Ham. "But I’ll prove to  you that Renny and Monk went straight to the hangars."
  Ham connected with a number, while Inspector Higgins  listened on the extension.
  "No," replied one of the caretakers at the Hudson  River hangars, "we haven’t seen Doc Savage, or Renny, or
  Monk for  several days. We’ve been wondering what had happened."
  "Well! Well! Well!" rapped Inspector Higgins. "We  will again go trailin’ a truck! This one probably ain’t got
  nothin’ in  it but eggs or somethin’!"
  Jane Davidson had flounced out to return to  Professor Spargrove.
  TWO cars flashed northward over the truck highway  out of Manhattan. Because of its glaring Red Rooster
  insignia, the  truck these cars were trailing was not difficult to trace.
  The Red Rooster truck apparently had followed the  Second Avenue route. This heavy vehicle thoroughfare
  parallels the East  River to a bridge crossing far above the East Nineties.
  The main highway northward was the old Boston Post  Road. It is a heavily traveled road.
  But Red Rooster vans were scarce.
  Filling−station operators identified the flaming  signs of the big van. Yes, it had turned northward on the
  highway  paralleling one of the main lines of railroad.
  Inspector Higgins was a firm believer in clearing  traffic with his wailing siren. This disgusted Long Tom,
  who was  driving one of Doc’s cars.
  "That Red Rooster driver will know we’re on his  trail at least a couple of miles before we catch up with him,"
  growled  Long Tom. "What do you suppose has happened to Doc?"
  "I’ve been trying not to think about that," grunted  Ham. "If he could get to us, he would."
  A few more filling−station operators identified the  Red Rooster van. It was still headed north along the
  railroad.
  Several times, it seemed, the pursuing cars had lost  all trace of the Red Rooster van. Then a motorist became
  obliging.
  "Sure, I saw a big truck with a Red Rooster on its  side layin’ in the ditch about five miles up the road," he
  volunteered.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XI. SKYSCRAPER MURDER
  58
  
  A few minutes later the two cars arrived at the car  wreck. 
  Inspector Higgins walked around the truck. He came  back and glared at Ham, Johnny and Long Tom.
  "I’ll betcha you fellows knew just what was goin’ to  happen!" he accused them. "There ain’t a damn thing in
  that bus but  some straw an’ some broken glass!"
  "I fear we would have to resort to some obscure  occultism," supplied the long−worded Johnny.
  "We ain’t resortin’ to nothin’ but the hoosegow for  Doc Savage, if we can catch up with him!" rapped
  Inspector Higgins.
  Many persons had gathered around the overturned Red  Rooster truck. None recalled the unloading of the
  wrecked van.
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  WHILE Inspector Higgins was making a general  nuisance of himself on the old Boston Post Road, Professor
  Lanidus  Spargrove was sitting dejectedly in the office of his laboratories.
  Inspector Higgins was getting nowhere. All he was  doing was snarling up traffic. Inspector Higgins now
  suspected every  innocent motorist of being the notorious Doc Savage. He had heard many  reports of the
  bronze man’s ability to disguise himself.
  Still there had been no definite trace of what had  become of the contents of the Red Rooster van. The Red
  Rooster company  freely admitted hiring the truck out for a hauling job earlier in the  day.
  Perhaps Professor Lanidus Spargrove also wanted to  find Doc Savage. As he sat in the gloomy office of his
  laboratories, he  was apparently a deserted man. None of his workmen had appeared.
  "What’ll I do, Doc?" was the murmur of Professor  Spargrove.
  Occasionally, the little man passed his hands over  his eyes. He would stare at the walls. Then he would speak
  other words.
  "They’re there, Doc! They’re there!"
  These other words became almost a scream.
  "Why did you do this to me, Doc?" was another  sentence Professor Spargrove uttered.
  Occasionally he let out a yell. "Stop them, Doc!  Stop them!"
  Two police guards remained at the plant. They  regarded Professor Spargrove as some kind of lunatic.
  "If he don’t stop that yappin’ about seein’ things,  he’ll have me doin’ it!" grunted one of the guards.
  Professor Spargrove wandered from his office. He  stood looking at the immense concrete foundation. There,
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  59
  
  clearly  imprinted, were the marks where two huge copper balls had rested. On  other blocks the bolt pinions of
  electrical machinery apparently had  been removed bodily.
  Great strength had been required to accomplish that.
  Suddenly Professor Spargrove was back in the room  with the small tanks of stagnant water.
  He yelled. The two police guards could hear him  plainly.
  "I’ve got it, Doc! I know who did it! I know why it  was done! There could have been only one person! I’ll
  find you, Doc,  and I’ll tell! There they are again! This will mean a world  catastrophe!"
  The police guards heard Professor Spargrove rush  back into his inner office.
  "If that was me," commented one of the guards, "I’d  give that guy a shot in the arm. But maybe the inspector
  hopes he’ll  spill somethin’."
  PROFESSOR LANIDUS SPARGROVE never was to divulge  anything of great importance.
  It must have been that Professor Spargrove was  fleeing from something more definite than vague monsters he
  might have  been seeing. Almost immediately, a woman screamed.
  "Now what?" yelped one of the guards. "How did that  dame get in there?" They clumped toward the inner
  offices.
  The two guards did not reach Professor Spargrove’s  inner offices. A crazy−looking young woman rushed out.
  Her black hair  was streaming. Fresh blood spilled in scarlet stains over her dress.
  "He grabbed me!" she yelled. "Oh, he grabbed me! He  was all cut to pieces. He said ‘Doc Savage!’"
  The young woman dashed past the guards.
  "There were two of them!" she shrieked. "They were  going toward Professor Spargrove’s offices! I shouted
  to warn him! But  there was a tall man! He looked like Doc Savage! He caught me and  pushed my head into
  one of the tanks!"
  Apparently the young woman had been pushed into one  of the tanks containing the stagnant water. Green
  weeds were mixed with  the blood in her hair.
  One of the police guards caught hold of one of the  girl’s arms.
  "What happened then?" he demanded. "Have you been  seein’ things, too?"
  "No! No!" screamed Jane Davidson. "I saw nothing!  Only those two huge shadows! One was holding a knife!
  Before I got out  of the tank of water, I heard Professor Spargrove groan!"
  "What happened then?" the police guard questioned  again.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  60
  
  "Professor Spargrove threw his arms around me!"  gabbled the frightened girl. "The shadows were gone! The
  professor just  said, ‘Doc Savage,’ and then he fell down!"
  NO doubt, blood had been spurting from Professor  Spargrove’s throat. His greater veins had been severed by
  a sharp knife.
  Jane Davidson must have had a horrible experience.  Her disheveled appearance indicated Professor
  Spargrove had died in her  arms.
  "‘Doc Savage!’ was all he said just before he died!"  Jane Davidson kept repeating.
  "Then you think Doc Savage had somethin’ to do with  his death?" asked the county copper.
  "I don’t know! Oh, how could I know? He might have  had many reasons for speaking Doc Savage’s name
  just before he died!"  cried the girl.
  Jane Davidson looked to be ready for a room in some  sanitarium. But that amazing young woman quickly
  recovered her  self−possession.
  "I’m going back to Doc Savage’s men," she announced.  "I’m going to stick with them until we have run this
  Doc Savage to  earth. Nobody but Doc Savage and one of his men were in the  laboratories. Professor
  Spargrove and myself were the only persons who  knew the secret of his life’s work."
  ABOUT the time Jane Davidson was discovering the  murder of Professor Spargrove, big Renny and Monk
  were nearing the  Hudson River hangars. Though this was the location of Doc Savage’s most  important aërial
  and underwater craft, it looked to be only a very  shabby warehouse.
  A little sign read: "Hidalgo Trading Co."
  "Holy cow!" boomed Renny. "If Doc had been around  the hangars, the radio hook−up would have showed it
  before this!"
  "Howlin’ calamities!" yelped Monk. "You know what I  think? I believe Doc’s been held prisoner somewhere
  while we’ve been  chasin’ fake radio calls!"
  "But, confound it!" thumped Renny. "There ain’t  anybody could use our code!"
  "Well, anyway, it seems to me that the kind of guy  who could elope with ten tons of machinery from one
  place an’ a  five−ton safe from another spot in the middle of railroad yards  wouldn’t have much trouble
  stealin’ a few special air waves," asserted  Monk. "I’m beginnin’ to think none of these messages we got were
  on the  square!"
  "Good gravy!" thundered Renny. "Then where’s Doc  been all this time? What’s them copper globes for,
  anyway?"
  "I’m only a chemist," said Monk plaintively. "I  ain’t any magician. Besides�"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  61
  
  The long, low sedan was only a few blocks from the  Hidalgo Trading Co. warehouse. The narrow
  water−front streets along  this part of the Hudson River were gloomy. Monk slowed the car for a  traffic light.
  Now the ears of Doc’s companions were almost as keen  as his own. The bronze man had taught them a great
  deal of his system  of training. Any one should have heard the opening of a car door,  especially when riding in
  the front seat of that car.
  But the controlled voice which spoke proved that  Renny and Monk had accumulated an unexpected and
  uninvited passenger.  The voice came from the rear seat.
  "When you pass this light, keep driving�but do not  go to the hangars."
  Having once heard it, none could ever mistake the  calm, penetrating voice of Doc Savage. The bronze man
  had come out of  the night. He was in the rear seat.
  When Renny saw his figure, the big engineer gasped.  For Renny seemed to be looking at himself, as in a
  mirror. Doc Savage  had made himself an exact counterpart of his giant companion. Now the  real bronze man
  issued swift instructions.
  Renny, the engineer, was dropped from the car in an  isolated section. Doc Savage himself took the wheel.
  Yet any one seeing  the bronze man and Monk driving back toward downtown Manhattan would  have sworn
  this remarkable substitution had not been made.
  From under the hood of the car came a strident  whining. Monk identified it instantly as a call meant for them.
  He  twirled the dial:
  Professor Spargrove murdered�Police ordered to pick  up Doc Savage, Colonel John Renwick and Andrew
  Blodgett Mayfair at  once�Jane Davidson has found card clutched in Professor Spargrove’s  hand�Has not
  told police�Card had address which may be important�Jane  wants all Doc’s men to meet her alone�Renny
  and Monk lay low�Hudson  River hangars watched�Gyroplane on upper river�If you receive, give  counter
  signal�
  Monk twirled the dial. He turned to Doc Savage, who  now was driving.
  He yelped. "Did you get that? All of us are wanted!  They’ve bumped off that professor!"
  "I thought that would happen," stated Doc. "The  professor knew too much. That is why it is best, for the
  present, that  I appear as Renny. It will be believed I am dead. We will meet this  Jane Davidson on the upper
  Hudson. That was Ham sending."
  Then Doc added, "For the present, we will let Jane  Davidson and the others imagine I am Renny."
  HALF an hour later the big sedan carrying Monk, with  Doc Savage at the wheel, slid down a little−used road.
  In a sheltered  spot, a peculiar craft lay moored to the shore.
  This machine appeared to be a huge umbrella with  four small leaves. It was an ordinary type of gyroplane,
  but it was  winged and powered for added speed.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  62
  
  Jane Davidson was with Doc’s other three companions.  It was plain that neither Long Tom, Johnny nor Ham
  had accepted the  girl through friendship. But Jane Davidson plainly was excited.
  "Professor Spargrove must have scribbled the note in  his own blood, then tried to reach the door of his
  office," declared  the girl. "It might not mean much to other persons, but I know what he  tried to tell. Here it
  is."
  Cragrock Sanit
  Here the dying professor’s hand must have failed.  The card was blotted with the man’s own blood. Jane
  Davidson explained.
  "I remember taking it when Professor Spargrove  grabbed me and fell, but I did not think it important. Now I
  know he  wanted me to look for something at Cragrock Sanitarium. It’s one of the  most isolated places in the
  State. No road of any kind goes there."
  "Then how are we supposed to reach this mythical  sanitarium?" demanded Ham.
  "That’s part of its secret," smiled Jane Davidson.  "And I believe it is one of the places maintained by Doc
  Savage."
  "If you don’t lay off Doc, I ain’t budgin’ an inch,"  grunted Monk. "Now I suppose you think he killed this
  Professor  Spargrove?"
  Jane Davidson shook her comely, black head.
  "I can’t help it, even if I think that," she  announced. "But I do believe the rest of you have been misled. You
  are  entitled to a break. Also, I think you will come nearer finding the  murderer of Professor Spargrove than
  the police. Even if it’s Doc  Savage, I’ll depend on you to play square."
  Ham, Johnny and Long Tom had not penetrated Doc’s  disguise. To them he was big Renny. Now they heard
  an amazing statement.
  "Holy cow!" boomed Doc in Renny’s thunderous voice.  "If Doc or anybody else has been responsible for this
  killin’, I want  to be among the first to get him!"
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny.  The scholarly geologist was staring.
  "THE sanitarium is operated by a man called Doctor  Josiah Anstratton," said Jane Davidson. "He is a queer
  combination.  Once he practiced psychiatry. Later, he took up geology. Then he built  an observatory at this
  place he calls Cragrock. Now, I believe, he  takes care of only exclusive patients who arrive by plane."
  Doc Savage said, "This Doctor Anstratton doesn’t add  mythology and oceanography to his other hobbies,
  does he? Perhaps he  takes some of his nutty patients up there and tries to get their minds  off themselves by
  giving them a course in astronomy?"
  Jane Davidson replied, "Professor Spargrove told me  once that Doctor Anstratton had taken up astronomy
  and other applied  sciences to bring his wealthy patients back to normal."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XII. THE PROFESSOR’S FINISH
  63
  
  "Daggonit!" piped up Monk. "An’ maybe that includes  havin’ his patients see things that don’t exist!"
  Ham fixed a cold and glittering eye upon the ugly  chemist.
  "Those things do exist!" he snapped. "I don’t wish  you any bad luck, insect, but I hope you see a few of them
  yourself!"
  Doc Savage, as Renny, interrupted.
  "I’ve been lookin’ over some charts," he stated.  "This Cragrock Sanitarium is situated on the peak of a walled
  mountain.  Three sides always have been abrupt precipices upon which no highways  could be constructed."
  "And so," supplied Johnny, "we’re supposed to  conduct a nice, quiet search by coming down on the landing
  field this  Doctor Anstratton maintains at the top of the mountain."
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT
  WITH all but Monk still believing him to be missing,  the man of bronze continued in his role of Renny, the
  engineer, as he  directed the flight. His purpose now was to mislead Jane Davidson as to  his identity, until the
  real status of this young woman was more  clearly established.
  Soon the flat mesa of Cragrock stuck up from the  ground like a man’s bald head. In this appeared an
  elongated slit.
  "That’s Cragrock, all right," said Jane Davidson.  "These goggles are wonderful! There doesn’t seem to be any
  one moving  outside!"
  The goggles referred to by the girl were wonderful.  The others were also in a position to see clearly without
  being seen  from below.
  The gyroplane’s infra−red beam projector was  working. Its black−and−white illumination swept all the space
  around  Cragrock Sanitarium.
  "The nearest highway is about ten miles away,"  stated Long Tom. "But there are lines in that old granite
  quarry down  there. I’ll bet those were the switch tracks they used to haul out the  rock. They run right up to
  the wall."
  It could be seen this line of railroad must have  been built some ten miles into the hills for the purpose of
  taking out  the valuable granite. Then it was apparent the vein of granite had run  out.
  "Looks like they had run into some softer quartz  back of the granite," explained Johnny. "The observatory is
  on top of  that quartz. It’s softer rock. Doctor Anstratton could have constructed  himself an inside passage up
  to his sanitarium."
  "Loosen up the tops," instructed Doc suddenly.  "Johnny, you hold the gyroplane in position. I’m havin’ a
  look down  below."
  "Good gravy!" exploded Ham. "If it’s anybody’s job  to take that jump, it’s mine or maybe Long Tom’s.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT
  64
  
  You’re heavy, Renny,  for a ‘chute drop."
  Doc Savage was slipping into the harness of a  special parachute.
  "I’ll have a look around first," he stated in  Renny’s voice. "Keep the black light on. I’ll rub you a signal if
  you  are to land and where."
  By this, Renny meant he would use a special  fluorescent chemical on the ground below. Thus, without having
  been  observed, the gyroplane could be set down right in Doctor Anstratton’s  front yard.
  DOC did not make the jump at once. It was Jane  Davidson who cried out.
  "Oh! They can see us! Look! That man is pointing up  here!"
  The sanitarium with its bald−domed observatory was  much of the same construction as the Spargrove
  Laboratories. Only a low  door showed here and there. From one of these doors, a man had darted.
  "He didn’t wait to put on his clothes!" exclaimed  Ham.
  It did appear as though the man was wearing only a  nightshirt. This flapped around his skinny legs.
  The running man did not seem to be affected by the  rain or the cold. He could not see the gyroplane now
  hovering a few  hundred feet above him. But he did seem to be pointing upward.
  "By gosh!" exploded Long Tom. "He’s fightin’  somethin’!"
  The nearly naked man was leaping madly. He was  striking all around him in the air.
  Doc had whipped out a strange−looking pair of  binoculars. 
  These were superlensed. They showed all objects in  four dimensions at any distance.
  "Who does that fellow look like, Johnny?" asked Doc.
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" exploded Johnny.  "That’s Rufus Bannaford! He’s been missing for weeks!"
  Now other men were running from the building. They  were fully dressed. Half a dozen seemed to be pursuing
  the fleeing man  in the nightshirt.
  Above pursued and pursuer, the gyroplane was  hovering like a silent, gray moth. Its infra−red beam projector
  outlined the drama below.
  Rufus Bannaford screamed once, a high−pitched yell  of terror. His bare feet spurned stones from the very lip
  of the  granite quarry.
  "Oh! He’ll be killed!" cried Jane Davidson.
  For once that cool young woman seemed overcome. Her  eyes closed. She fainted. Her body struck the lever
  controlling the  infra−red beam. When the running man fell from the cliff, those in the  plane did not see the
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT
  65
  
  tragedy.
  "Keep the plane steady!" boomed Doc Savage in  Renny’s voice, and jumped.
  Johnny attempted to swing the infra−red beam into  service. Jane Davidson’s plump body was jammed across
  the lever.
  "There’s somethin’ haywire about all this," grumbled  Long Tom, who was handling the device which
  operated the four blades of  the gyroplane. "First it’s Ham slips a notch, and begins seein’ things,  and now it’s
  Renny gone off his bean. There’s nothin’ to be gained by  jumpin’ out and gettin’ mixed up down there."
  Monk made a chuckling noise in his throat. He was  getting a big kick out of the others believing Doc to be
  Renny.
  LONG TOM succeeded in holding the gyroplane a few  hundred feet above the light which marked the bald
  dome of the Cragrock  Sanitarium.
  A thunderstorm was rising over the mountain. This  let go with a sudden, blinding sheet of lightning. In this,
  those in  the plane could clearly see several figures below.
  These figures looked as if they were balanced on the  lip of the thousand−foot drop into the abandoned granite
  quarry.
  "That fellow Bannaford took his last dive over the  wall," asserted Ham. "Probably Doctor Anstratton’s men
  will go down  there looking for him. It wouldn’t be so good to have his body  discovered that close to the
  sanitarium."
  Lightning started playing more luridly across the  mountain. The men near the sanitarium had ceased looking
  into the old  quarry. They were darting about. Some pointed upward.
  Two or three men were running back toward the  sanitarium.
  But while the pursuers of the mad millionaire may  have seen the gyroplane, they did not detect the parachute
  in which Doc  Savage had jumped.
  Wind of the increasing storm whipped at the big body  under the swaying parachute. This was a gale across
  the knob. It  threatened to slap the ‘chute over the edge of the rocks and down into  the granite quarry.
  Doc did not wish to land in the old quarry. Nor did  he intend to be trapped by dropping directly among those
  who had run  out in pursuit of Rufus Bannaford.
  The big man under the ‘chute gathered some of the  cords in one immense hand. This lessened the spread of
  the parachute.
  The ‘chute landed on Cragrock. Yet none saw it. All  eyes were directed at the flapping wings of the hovering
  gyroplane.
  The bronze man’s ‘chute collapsed directly on the  rounded top of the observatory tower. Doc rolled along the
  sloping  roof. Few persons in the world could have maintained a hold.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIII. MURDER IN THE NIGHT
  66
  
  Doc freed himself from the cords of the ‘chute. He  slid along the roof to the edge of the slit through which
  protruded the  body of Doctor Anstratton’s telescope. Here he was looking directly  into the inner room of the
  observatory.
  What he saw there brought a gasp of amazement.
  If Doctor Josiah Anstratton was engaged in treating  persons suffering with mental disorders, he was
  employing unusual  methods. He must have been giving treatment to four patients at this  time.
  Four men were tightly bound to chairs. These chairs  were of carved stone.
  The four patients were so held as to be unable to  move any of their muscles. Only their eyes were alive.
  Doc twisted his big body alongside the projecting  telescope. His hands slid along its smooth surface. Heavy
  glass  surrounded the instrument. Doc did something to this glass with some  liquid he spilled from a small
  bottle.
  The glass broke and came away. Doc did not permit  any of it to fall inside the room below.
  THOSE in the gyroplane had no glimpse of Doc. At  this time, Johnny was engaged in attempting to start the
  forward speed  motor. The plane had dropped to within two hundred feet of Cragrock.
  "Them gorillas are shootin’ at us!" yelled Monk.
  This seemed to be true. From the summit of Cragrock  spurted short slices of blue flame. But there was no
  sound of bullets  striking the gyroplane.
  If bullets were coming from the guns being fired,  there were no bright lines indicating combustible tracers.
  But suddenly  there was something much more disastrous.
  "They’ve got us!" rapped out Long Tom. "That’s what  I’ve been expecting! Everything’s gone dead!"
  The blue slices of flame ceased coming from the  ground. But the gyroplane was dropping.
  Long Tom’s expert hands played across dead switches.  Sustained only by its revolving blades, the gyroplane
  was dropping  directly into the depths of the old granite quarry.
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  LONG TOM and his companions in the gyroplane knew  what had happened. One of several rays perfected
  for disabling plane  motors had been employed.
  The long, revolving gyro blades on top of the plane  prevented it from being dashed to pieces.
  The gyroplane struck with force enough to partly  stun its occupants. Monk’s long arms prevented the plump
  Jane Davidson  from being dashed into one of the windows.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  67
  
  "Now I know it’s Doc Savage!" she asserted. "No one  but him could have stopped one of his own planes like
  that! What are we  going to do?"
  "Daggonit!" grunted Monk. "One more crack about Doc,  an’ I’m goin’ to put you back in some thorn bushes
  like I found you!"
  "I’ve got an idea we had better collect everything  we need and get as far away from the plane as possible,"
  advised Ham  suddenly.
  WHILE Doc Savage’s companions were following Ham’s  advice, four men sat in stone chairs. All four were
  men of gray−haired  dignity.
  A queerly deformed figure paced before the four men.  His hands were mostly knuckles. All his flesh had
  shrunken away.
  This man laughed with a malicious chuckle. One  shoulder twisted much higher than the other. This shoulder
  was the  controlling feature in the life of Doctor Josiah Anstratton.
  Doctor Anstratton undoubtedly owned one of the  world’s most remarkable brains. Perhaps if he had been
  normal  physically, his mind might not have become warped as it was.
  But as he walked, Doctor Anstratton tried to make it  appear that the lower shoulder was as high as the other.
  This gave him  the appearance of a hobbling dwarf. But he was a tall man.
  The eyes of the four men in the stone chairs  followed the figure of the doctor. One of the four men spoke. He
  could  have been identified as Jonas Hydebottom.
  The name of Jonas Hydebottom was a power in  financial circles. He was noted as a man who had no fear.
  "I don’t believe it, Doctor Anstratton! You’re not  that crazy," said Jonas Hydebottom. "You wouldn’t dare let
  Bannaford go  to his death. This talk about Doc Savage proves this whole thing is a  bluff!"
  Doctor Anstratton rubbed his bony knuckles and  chuckled.
  "Already you have observed what might happen," he  stated. "You will see more, much more. Doc Savage is
  dead. We have his  bones."
  The bodies of all four men in the stone chairs  seemed to shiver.
  SHORTLY before the gyroplane owned by Doc Savage had  arrived over Cragrock, five men had sat in five
  stone chairs. These  chairs were of peculiar, carved construction.
  When there had been five men in the chairs, Doctor  Anstratton had walked before them.
  Rufus Bannaford, the youngest of the prisoners, had  been seated in the fifth of the stone chairs.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  68
  
  "You are all men of wealth and influence," Doctor  Anstratton had announced, in a calm voice. "All of you are
  acquainted  with the bronze man known as Doc Savage. First of all, Doc Savage is  dead. His marvelous
  devices and inventions have passed into my hands."
  Rufus Bannaford had worn a scornful grin.
  "Nuts!" he said quite distinctly. "You’ve been  looking into that telescope so long you’ve begun seeing things,
  doctor!"
  Doctor Anstratton had controlled his fierce anger  with an effort.
  "Seeing things?" he snarled. "That’s exactly what  you’ll be doing, unless you are prepared to be reasonable! I
  tell you I  will soon control all Doc Savage’s inventions! I lack only financial  backing to become a world
  benefactor! You, gentlemen, are going to  supply some of that backing!"
  "Nuts!" came from Rufus Bannaford.
  Doctor Anstratton became suddenly calm, dangerously  quiet. He stood in front of Rufus Bannaford.
  "I intend only to do good," asserted the doctor.  "But in order to accomplish good, it is sometimes necessary to
  adopt  queer expedients. I have selected you gentlemen to be brought here. You  will contribute to our great
  cause, and you will go away and say  nothing about it. Otherwise, one by one, you will lose your minds."
  "Nuts!" sneered Rufus Bannaford. "This is a modern  century and you’re within ten miles of a State police
  patrol!"
  Doctor Anstratton stepped back. He cracked his bony  hands together. Three men appeared.
  "Treatment!" snapped Doctor Anstratton. "Lightly!" 
  Rufus Bannaford was seized. Some lesser anaesthetic  was applied to his nostrils. In a few seconds, his eyes
  closed.
  Doctor Anstratton walked over. He rubbed his hands  gently across Rufus Bannaford’s forehead. He touched
  each of his closed  eyes. Then he produced a bottle of aromatic spirits.
  "Well, that’s over!" sneered Bannaford. "You won’t  get a dime of my money to carry on your nutty schemes!"
  A heavy voice spoke. This was not that of Doctor  Anstratton. It came from the vicinity of the immense
  telescope in the  observatory.
  "That which you have heard is true! I have seen Doc  Savage die. We have greater power than even he
  possessed! Now you are  entering another world; you are surrounded by incredible monsters�"
  RUFUS BANNAFORD strained forward in the stone chair.  His muscles strained. The locks holding him in
  the chair were suddenly  released.
  Doctor Anstratton chuckled evilly.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  69
  
  Rufus Bannaford uttered a profane shout. He struck  out violently with his fists.
  "It isn’t true!" he yelled. "There are no such  things! There�take it away from my head! Take it away, you
  fiend! I  won’t give you a cent of my money! Look out, doctor!"
  "Why, I see nothing," stated Doctor Anstratton  mildly. 
  "You lie! You lie!" screamed Bannaford. "That one’s  got a thousand heads! Look! Look at the arms! They’re
  strangling me."
  Rufus Bannaford sprang back. He fell over the stone  chair. He was up again. His swinging fist hit one of the
  other  prisoners.
  "For Heaven’s sake, Doctor Anstratton!" said this  man. "It’s all a trick! Stop it! Bannaford! There is nothing
  here!"
  "There are more coming�more!" screamed Rufus  Bannaford. He ran, smashing into a wall. His fingers
  locked with some  invisible creature which must have seemed to him to have been flying  about in the air.
  Rufus Bannaford struck the floor, still wrestling  with the monsters that apparently were visible only to him.
  The Voice from near the telescope spoke.
  "Notice that no one is near this madman; no one  approaches. No one touches him�"
  Rufus Bannaford sat up. He caught the queer  expressions of the other men. Bannaford was no longer scornful.
  "They’re gone," said Bannaford slowly. "I don’t know  where. Yet I believe they are still there waiting for
  me."
  "Your friends think you were hypnotized," suggested  Doctor Anstratton.
  "No, no, no!" shouted Bannaford. "I saw them! Some  were like snakes with many heads! They were all
  around me! I was not  hypnotized! It’s all some devilish trick�and I won’t give a penny  toward this man’s�"
  The invisible Voice spoke again.
  "You have committed yourself to madness from which  you never will recover! They have come upon you
  again�"
  Doctor Anstratton was not even looking at Bannaford.  He was gazing at the others with a triumphant
  expression.
  Rufus Bannaford leaped straight up. He was clad only  in a flowing nightshirt. This he attempted to tear off, as
  if it were  choking him.
  Perhaps it was Doctor Anstratton’s command which  opened a low door. Rufus Bannaford dashed through it.
  Several men pursued him. In a few minutes, they  returned. There was a hurried conference with Doctor
  Anstratton. The  Voice spoke.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  70
  
  "Doc Savage’s men! At last we have them! Bring them  down�"
  THIS Jonas Hydebottom was thoroughly a tough  customer. There was no doubt but that Rufus Bannaford
  had died. His  final wailing shriek had been heard.
  "He saw nothing but monsters," announced Doctor  Anstratton quite calmly. "Gentlemen, you have your
  choice. Madness or a  few millions. You shall be reimbursed for what you invest. I can boast  of one invention
  greater than Doc Savage ever owned. It is one by which  many tons of his most valuable equipment have been
  spirited away."
  "You damn killer!" rapped Jonas Hydebottom. "You  have nothing but a misshapen body and a crooked mind!
  I’ll see you in  hell before I give you a dime!"
  Doctor Anstratton’s dark eyes glowed with hatred. He  waited for no assistance. He himself applied a light
  anaesthetic.
  Doctor Anstratton brought Jonas Hydebottom back to  consciousness by roughly slapping the millionaire’s
  cheeks.
  "Now look at them!" rasped the doctor. "So I’m  deformed, am I? In the next few years of your life you’ll
  wish you were  dead!"
  Jonas Hydebottom was not freed from his stone chair.  He became like some man bound to a stake with
  burning coals applied to  his body. He writhed and twisted and screamed.
  Doctor Anstratton walked over. The Voice spoke.
  "Now we shall see!"
  Jonas Hydebottom seemed to have recovered his  sanity. But the other three men eyed him suspiciously.
  "I was not hypnotized," stated Jonas Hydebottom. "I  saw some of the most horrible creatures! And your ears
  became as big as  houses. No, I am entirely sane."
  Plainly the other three men did not believe Jonas  Hydebottom.
  The Voice said, "It will require only a few  millions�millions which will be returned. Doctor Anstratton has
  told  you we have one invention alone that is worth more than all your  millions, it has been used to destroy
  Doc Savage and his power; we  cannot market it yet, but soon all your money will be returned! Take  your
  choice: You can aid us or follow Bannaford�or leave here with  millions of monsters in your minds!"
  "Yes! Yes!" shouted one of the other men. "Let us  all go! You can have what you ask�only Jonas must be
  released and�"
  The doors of the Cragrock Sanitarium were  constructed of wood. They were of the strongest oak.
  The chuckling pleasure of Doctor Anstratton was  lost. The threat uttered by the invisible Voice died away. It
  seemed  that nothing less than an earthquake could have broken down the solid  oak of the door leading toward
  the observatory telescope.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  71
  
  Three or four men shouted oaths. The great oaken  door burst as if it had been hit by a battering ram. This was
  no Less  than a huge, knuckled fist.
  The door cracked and sagged on its hinges.
  The first of the Cragrock guards who came in was a  huge man. He was big and tough. But he came in on his
  back. His lower  jaw was cocked at a queer angle. It had been dislocated.
  The second guard might have said something, but he  was too busy holding his stomach.
  A portion of the oak−door panel hung around the  wrist of one great fist.
  Doc Savage had smashed the door and the guards. He  stood erect on massive legs. His face was melancholy.
  Those who knew  Renny, the engineer, would have said this was one of the moments when  he was enjoying
  himself immensely.
  All that now seemed to trouble the big man was the  lack of another jaw or two to crack.
  JONAS HYDEBOTTOM thought he was looking at Renny.
  "Colonel John Renwick!" he shouted. "So Doc Savage  is dead, huh? I knew there was a catch to this
  somewhere! Get us loose,  Colonel Renwick!"
  Doctor Anstratton snarled like a wild beast. His  bony knuckles twisted, and his deformed shoulder jumped.
  "Doc Savage is dead!" he yelled. "None of his men  can do anything to stop us! I’ll�"
  Doctor Anstratton was quick. He darted toward one  wall. It was clear he intended plunging the room into
  darkness.
  A piece of oaken panel fell from the bronze man’s  fist. None could have followed the motion of his hands.
  Doctor  Anstratton was suddenly stricken motionless.
  The deformed doctor stopped as suddenly as if a  bullet had furrowed his warped brain. Only one of Doc
  Savage’s thumbs  had touched the doctor. That touch was close to the shoulder, the one  which hunched
  upward.
  Doctor Anstratton fell to his knees, squawling.  "Stop him! He’ll kill all of us! Stop�"
  The giant gave no more heed to Doctor Anstratton.
  "We will end this here and now!" boomed the man of  bronze. "It seems I arrived just in time! One other man
  has died!"
  But Doc did not move toward the prisoners in the  chairs of soft stone. From the vicinity of the telescope, the
  Voice  spoke.
  This Voice sounded much like that of Doc Savage  himself. It was not raised. Yet its lowest tone penetrated to
  every ear  in the room.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIV. FEAR OF MADNESS
  72
  
  "Stand where you are," commanded the Voice quietly.  "You can do nothing. If you make a further motion
  against my will, all  of the men before you shall die instantly. Others will be easy to find  to take their places."
  Doc released his hold on Doctor Anstratton. The  doctor slumped to the floor. Doc was watching the four
  prisoners in the  stone chairs. His own hands were close to various devices which might  have been effective
  under ordinary circumstances.
  But behind each chair appeared the wicked, blue  muzzle of a machine gun. The cold steel of each of these
  touched a  man’s neck.
  "For griefs sake, Colonel Renwick, stand still!"  gasped Jonas Hydebottom.
  Doc’s big hands dropped. A dozen men seized his  arms, but he made no resistance. Doctor Anstratton
  laughed in a high,  cackling tone.
  Chapter XV. TRAIN IN THE NIGHT
  SOMETHING about that abandoned quarry gave it more  than average eeriness. Thunder rumbled above the
  thousand−foot wall.
  "Daggonit!" complained Monk. "I’ve got only one  wish! I’d like to have Inspector Higgins out here! Maybe
  he could find  a truck or something to chase!"
  Jane Davidson was stumbling along with the others.  All the bottom of the quarry was a maze of rusted rails.
  Many tracks  had been constructed to remove the valuable granite.
  The weird, blue illumination of the lightning showed  a track leading directly toward a granite wall.
  "I judge we are promenading in an erroneous  direction," advised Johnny. "If we are to get out, we should be
  working  away from the wall."
  Jane Davidson squealed. That competent young woman  seldom let herself go. But she sobbed loudly, and
  started running. She  was stopped by a sump hole.
  Sump holes in quarries are filled with water. Monk  pulled her out.
  "Oh, I saw him!" gasped the girl. She pointed.  "Right there by the wall!"
  All followed the extended finger and saw the huddled  shape lying in one corner.
  Rufus Bannaford had fallen a thousand feet.
  He was a gruesome spectacle for even the cool Jane  Davidson. The girl had had a number of horrible
  experiences. She sat  down beside the body and shivered.
  Rufus Bannaford’s head had somehow escaped being  crushed.
  It seemed Jane Davidson was not quite herself. She  was holding the dead man’s head in her arms.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XV. TRAIN IN THE NIGHT
  73
  
  "Good grief!" exclaimed Ham. "Maybe she knew him!  She’s acting like she thought a lot of him!"
  Johnny was saying nothing. The scholarly geologist  was looking intently at the girl. He had the thin pencil
  beam of a  flashlight touching her face. Tears squeezed from Jane Davidson’s eyes.
  The girl rubbed her hand over the dead man’s  forehead. 
  Suddenly Jane Davidson screamed. Crying, she  stumbled along the track toward the granite wall.
  All were on one of the rusted tracks. Johnny halted  suddenly.
  "Look out, Miss Davidson!" he called out. "Get to  one side!"
  Johnny sent Long Tom flying into the bushes with his  elbow.
  "Monk!" he shouted. "Get off that track! Stay off!" 
  From the rusted rails came a low, steady humming. 
  "Maybe it’s an airplane," said Ham. "I’ll bet Doc  has got on our trail."
  "Sure, shyster," grunted Monk. "So he’s using one of  these tracks. I’ll�"
  MONK did not complete his sentence. The thing that  came out of the rainy darkness had no form that could
  be detected. It  was like the passing of a cyclonic wind.
  Jane Davidson and the others were thrown on their  faces.
  The thunder whooped suddenly. A brilliant glare of  lightning split the black canopy above the old quarry.
  "My good gosh!" gasped Long Tom. "I saw that quarry  wall break wide open! And what was that thing went
  by?"
  "After the things I saw in Central Park," declared  Ham, "I don’t believe anything went by."
  Johnny was a little slower to venture an opinion. 
  "Something passed us at incredible speed," he  asserted. "It was running on that old track. And it was going
  right  toward the wall of the quarry!"
  Johnny ran a light along the rusted rails. He  grunted when he proved the inner edge of one rail had been worn
  and  polished. Still it seemed impossible anything could have been operated  over the old, weed−grown track.
  There was no further evidence of the monstrous  object that had hurtled by them in the darkness. Long Tom
  slipped away  from the others. In a few minutes he returned.
  "One thing we won’t have to worry about," he  remarked, "is patching up the gyroplane. Apparently it has
  departed."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XV. TRAIN IN THE NIGHT
  74
  
  "You mean," gulped Monk, "Doc’s gyroplane ain’t  there?"
  "Right," said Long Tom, "and not even a mark where  it might have been."
  "Come on, brothers," invited Johnny. "We’ll have a  look at that granite wall. You all right, Miss Davidson?"
  "I’m as all right as any one could be after what’s  happened," stated Jane Davidson. "I don’t expect to get out
  of here  alive, so I’ve quit worrying about it."
  Johnny walked close to the young woman. He spoke  shortly.
  "By the way, Miss Davidson. What was it you took off  Rufus Bannaford’s body?"
  Jane Davidson drew herself to the full height of her  plump body. One hand slapped Johnny unexpectedly
  across a bony cheek.
  "What do you mean by an insulting question like  that?" she blazed.
  Johnny made no movement. He did not appear to be in  the least angry.
  "I meant," he repeated, "to inquire what you took  off Rufus Bannaford’s body. Of course, if he’s an old
  sweetheart or  something, it’s none of my business."
  "Well, if you must know," snapped Jane Davidson, "it  was this!"
  The young woman produced a small photograph in a  pocket frame. It was a good likeness of Jane Davidson.
  "All of us make mistakes," said Johnny quietly. "I’m  sorry if he was a friend of yours."
  THE rusted track ended abruptly against the wall of  solid gray granite. Nothing less than dynamite could
  have made an  opening where the last of the rails touched the flinty rock.
  "Just as well make up our mind we’re like Ham and  the rest of them," said Long Tom. "We’ve been seeing
  things. Nothing  went by us back there. We just imagined it."
  The freakish lightning failed to reveal any crack or  break in the thousand feet of granite wall.
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  SOME monstrous thing must have whipped along the old  quarry track, even if it did appear that it had
  vanished into a solid  wall of granite. For, ten miles from the Cragrock quarry, traffic had  been badly
  disrupted on the North−and−South railroad.
  A station agent had seen or imagined a ghostly train  passing at terrific speed in the night. He had attempted to
  warn other  trains, but somewhere between stations the illusive monster had  disappeared.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  75
  
  This had been but a few minutes before the rushing  demon had seemed to pass through the quarry pit. The
  station agent had  been accused of "seeing things." He had been discharged. For the train  he had reported
  seeing had apparently vanished into thin air.
  There was not a connected switch track where it  might have been shunted off. The rails leading to Cragrock
  quarry had  long been disconnected from the main North−and−South railroad lines.
  Yet it was in that vicinity the speeding monster had  disappeared.
  And about the time the railroad men were muttering  over the mystery, Doc Savage’s companions and Jane
  Davidson were  listening to the same wind whining over the lip of Cragrock quarry a  thousand feet above
  them. After she had confessed knowing Rufus  Bannaford, Jane Davidson had been very quiet.
  "I think," she said finally, "the best thing we can  do is try and follow the old switch track out of here. You
  may feel all  right about whatever crazy thing Doc Savage is doing, but I don’t want  to run into him again."
  It was difficult to hear anything over the roaring  of the storm. But Johnny’s ears were keen.
  "Some one’s using our gyroplane, or there’s another  plane cruising around overhead," he announced. "No, it
  isn’t our plane.  This one has twin motors."
  "I believe that’s one of the new police special  jobs," stated Long Tom. "Look! He is trying out the
  searchlight. He  won’t see much down in this soup."
  "I knew it!" yelped Monk. "I’ll betcha that fellow  Higgins is right on our tail!"
  Monk moved closer to Ham.
  "Dang it, Ham," he muttered. "Maybe there’s  somethin’ haywire about that dame wantin’ us to come out
  here. I don’t  like that woman!"
  Johnny made an announcement.
  "Brothers, there is no evidence we saw or heard  anything on the switch track a little while ago. But there has
  been  something on these rails that wore the inner edges clear of rust."
  "That makes your explanation perfect," drawled Ham.  "And I suppose whatever it was went right through
  that solid wall of  granite?"
  They stumbled back along the track for perhaps a  hundred yards. Long Tom was leading. With a yell, he
  jumped back. He  caught Johnny and pushed the others to the ground.
  "Look out!" he shouted. "We’re running into  something!"
  THIS something was a weird, snakelike line of fire.  It seemed to come from nowhere. But it crackled in a
  wavering thread a  few feet above the ground.
  "High frequency!" pronounced Long Tom. "If we’d  walked into that on this wet ground, all of us would have
  been  electrocuted! Brothers, it doesn’t seem intended we are to leave this  place!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  76
  
  The line of strange fire became a wide noose of  flame. This was slowly being drawn together.
  "I’m going to duck under the thing!" exploded Monk.  "It’s driving us back to that crazy wall!"
  Before the others could interfere, the apelike  chemist had made a dive from his short legs.
  The line dipped directly toward the spot where Monk  was starting to roll under it. Ham yelled and plunged
  forward. He  caught Monk’s ankles.
  Both men splashed into one of the sump holes.
  None made another attempt to cross the electrical  noose. The crackling fire line was much like that employed
  by Doc  Savage to guard the doors of his headquarters.
  "You know," stated Johnny, "we have been making  chumps of ourselves. We might as well walk right up to
  that granite  wall and say, ‘here we are!’"
  "You mean, we have been watched all the time?" said  Long Tom. "I have been suspecting that for some time.
  Apparently we are  not the only persons who have discovered the use of waves too short to  be visible to the
  human eye."
  "The more we get into this thing," declared Jane  Davidson, "the more it is being proved Doc Savage is
  making monkeys out  of us all."
  Directly overhead, perhaps a thousand feet above the  edge of the granite quarry wall, the sky was suddenly
  split by a sharp  detonation.
  Though they were being backed slowly toward the  granite wall by the noose of electrical fire, all had been
  keeping an  eye on the darting beam of the plane circling above Cragrock.
  Apparently the presence of the plane, if it were a  police special, had not been overlooked by the habitants of
  Doctor  Anstratton’s sanitarium. And now it looked as if methods had been  employed to remove it from its
  post of observation.
  "Good grief!" exclaimed Long Tom. "They must have  used a ray that ignited the tanks! I hope it isn’t that
  fellow Higgins!  He was such a darn nuisance. I got so I kinda liked him!"
  EVEN the encroaching electrical fire was forgotten  as the twin−motored plane burst into flame two thousand
  feet above the  old quarry.
  The long fuselage plunged toward the dome of  Cragrock. It was like a falling rocket. Johnny and the others
  had no  doubt but that it was the flaming coffin for at least two men.
  Johnny caused all the party to move faster toward  the thousand−foot wall of granite. The deadly line of the
  high  frequency current had been speeded up.
  Now all were crowded into only a few yards of space  between the electrical loop and the face of the tall cliff.
  "Daggonit!" yelled Monk. "Come on out an’ fight!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  77
  
  The ugly chemist had produced his superfiring  pistol. He brandished the awkward−looking weapon around in
  search of an  enemy. None appeared.
  "Probably this will be the finish," announced  Johnny. 
  From the wall itself came a light. Though Monk  whipped around with his superfirer, and Ham slapped his
  sword blade  into one hand, the light seemed to have no particular point of origin.
  It seemed for a few moments as if the whole face of  the huge granite wall had become a flat, cold flame.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" squealed Monk. "I’ll bet that  dame knew all the time what she was runnin’ us into!"
  Though her dress was muddy and wet and clung to her  plump figure, and her black hair was stringing around
  her face, Jane  Davidson somehow managed to look calm.
  "If you weren’t such a dumb, ugly ape, I might pay  some attention to you," said Jane Davidson calmly.
  From the granite wall now came a Voice. This was so  remarkable in its tone, that Ham exclaimed.
  "Good gravy! It’s Doc! It couldn’t be any one else!" 
  The others stared at the wall. They tried in vain to  fix the location of the Voice.
  "Stand where you are! Make no resistance and you  will not be harmed," 
  said the Voice coolly. "You are mistaken in thinking you might  escape or injure any one by fighting. When
  the walls open, you will  walk in."
  The granite cliff split silently. It was like the  slow movement of a theater curtain. A score or more men came
  walking  out.
  THESE men seemed to wear only ordinary clothing.  Under the queer light from the cliff their faces had a
  bluish  appearance.
  "I ain’t goin’ in there!" shouted Monk.
  He raised the superfiring machine pistol. The weapon  whined like a swarm of bees. Its bullets streamed into
  the line of  slowly walking men.
  Johnny and Long Tom joined with their own  superfirers. Johnny selected a couple of small glasslike globes
  and  tossed them at the feet of the oncoming men.
  The men from under the mountain were immune to the  anaesthetic capsules.
  The score of men continued walking as if they were  animated by some sort of machinery.
  "Your mercy bullets are worthless," 
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  78
  
  suddenly announced the Voice from the wall. "Doc Savage is dead.  Another, greater than Doc Savage has
  taken his place."
  "It’s a lie!" shouted Monk. "Doc Savage is right�"
  The ugly chemist did not complete his sentence.  Johnny had been looking up at the granite wall beside the
  opening. He  hoped there might be some means of ascent where they could make a stand.
  No crevasse appeared. But high on the wall a few  stunted trees stuck out.
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny.  "It’s Renny! He didn’t get onto Cragrock! He’s been
  hanging up there  all the time!"
  Monk sprang close to Johnny. One of his big furry  hands fastened on Johnny’s arm.
  "Daggonit! Keep your mouth shut!" yelped the chemist.
  For Monk had instantly realized this was Renny  himself clinging to the wall above with Inspector Higgins.
  No doubt,  Higgins had picked up the big engineer after Doc Savage had taken  Renny’s place.
  Monk could foresee complications. He knew that the  man of bronze, made up as Renny, must be somewhere
  on Cragrock. He  could not have been in the wrecked plane with Higgins. Now there would  soon be two
  Rennys in the picture.
  Johnny saw something that took his breath. In the  branches above him appeared the torn remnants of a
  parachute.
  "Good gravy!" spilled Ham. "I ain’t so sure I’m not  seeing things again! That looks like Inspector Higgins!
  And he and  Renny are both hangin’ to the same parachute! Say! How could Renny�"
  Monk’s furry hand closed over Ham’s thin face.
  "Start fightin’ shyster, an’ don’t do no more  lookin’ up!" muttered Monk. "Them other guys from under the
  mountain  ain’t seen that ‘chute! Let’s rush ‘em before they spot it!"
  The men coming from under the granite wall had not  spotted the parachute caught in the small trees. They
  were still under  the overhang of the cliff. In addition to that, they were facing the  renewed whooping of
  superfiring pistols.
  "Come on!" shouted Monk. "We’ll show ‘em!"
  His short legs carried him valiantly into the lead.  Ham was close beside the chemist. The men from under the
  mountain did  not fall.
  JOHNNY and Long Tom fell down. It was strange. None  of the men from under the mountain had apparently
  fired a weapon. But  each now held a short black rod. As two of these rods were pointed at  Johnny and Long
  Tom, they collapsed.
  Jane Davidson ran forward. Monk, grabbed Ham and  pulled him down behind a broken piece of granite.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVI. UNDER THE MOUNTAIN
  79
  
  "I’ll bet we’re up against some new kind of  paralyzing ray," said Monk.
  Jane Davidson cried out. She had whipped up one  white hand. One of the short black rods merely pointed
  toward her. The  plump young woman slumped to the ground.
  "Listen, Monk, they’re going to get us," said Ham.  "I guess I’ve been half nuts ever since I saw those things
  in Central  Park, but I’m not the only one who saw Renny up there in that parachute  with a fellow that looked
  like Higgins. How in thunder did he get  there?"
  Monk was looking up the wall. Renny and the man who  had looked like Higgins had disappeared. A
  fragment of the parachute  fluttered in the rainy wind. Monk saw that Renny and Higgins must have  crawled
  to some safer spot. At least, they had escaped detection. For  the present, the hairy chemist had decided to
  keep to himself the  secret that Doc was disguised as Renny. But it was Renny himself with  the police
  inspector.
  Four men came slowly around the granite slab. Each  held a short rod. Ham sprang to his feet. His sword
  blade played like a  flash of light.
  "Get ‘em, Monk!" he shouted. "Shoot for their faces!"
  Monk did not shoot. The apelike chemist made a  croaking poise in his throat. One of the men pointing a short
  black rod  merely smiled. It might have been seen that the rod was attached to a  thin wire.
  Ham’s sword was aimed at one of their attackers’  throats. The blade halted in mid−air. It fell from the
  lawyer’s hand  and banged on the granite.
  High on the wall, Police Inspector Higgins and his  companion saw Johnny and the others carried from view.
  The great wall  of the old granite quarry closed silently.
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  THIS place under the mountain was much like a  cathedral. Its roof was supported by huge columns. Some of
  the rooms  were of fantastic shape.
  One of these rooms might have been some place for  lepers. There was one, low−arched entrance which all
  the workmen  avoided.
  All the men except one. This man was the queerly  deformed Doctor Anstratton. When he hunched his way
  through the archway  into the shunned room, he wore a large mask.
  And as he entered, Doctor Anstratton dropped a  curtain behind him. Though this curtain was no more than
  gauze, it was  the only protection the others had from grisly horrors.
  Doctor Anstratton stood before this curtain. His  mask had a long protuberance. He was rubbing his bony
  knuckles.
  "At last�at last!" he chuckled. "The last of Doc  Savage’s famous group is in our power! Soon we shall begin
  the conquest  of the invisible! The stubborn ones shall die! The little beasts which  none can see shall destroy
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  80
  
  the last vestige of them!"
  Doctor Anstratton lifted the gauze curtain. As he  did this, a dozen or more men working near by turned their
  faces and  hurried away.
  The Voice that seemed to direct all of the affairs  of Cragrock spoke.
  "Make sure, my good doctor, that they shall only be  paralyzed," 
  it stated. "We shall be greater by restoring the living who have  been partly dead than by saving those who
  never have suffered."
  Doctor Anstratton replied with his high, cackling  laugh.
  "Restore these, indeed?" he sneered. "To be sure, we  must see what can be done. But they must never leave
  this place."
  If it were possible for human animals to be  converted into merely eyes, with voiceless tongues and inert
  muscles,  the dozen men inside the room of the gauze curtain might be described.
  These men neither sat, nor stood; nor were they  lying down. They were but bundles of motionless bones and
  flesh. They  wore only rags of clothes. Some mouths were open and tongues stuck out.
  But there was not a quiver of a muscle. Yet it could  be felt these men were cursing Doctor Anstratton with all
  of the venom  which could be expressed by human eyes.
  For all these men seemed to be, was a dozen pairs of  human eyes. None of these eyes were dull. None
  indicated stupid brains.
  The eyes moved. Only the eyes. They followed the  doctor’s figure. There was cold murder in each pair of
  eyes.  Intelligent, premeditated murder. No doubt, Doctor Anstratton could  feel this.
  It must have pleased the scientist’s warped brain.  Under his grotesque mask, he chuckled.
  "I hope you will all eat like gentlemen to−day," he  cackled. "Perhaps then we shall have the show and you
  shall see the  little fellows of this new world in which you live. You may watch them  swarming over you. Ah,
  that will be your treat for to−day."
  Carrying an oversized syringe, Doctor Anstratton  approached a queer−shaped glass jar in a row of such jars.
  All these jars seemed to contain what might have  been green, stagnant water. The syringe which Doctor
  Anstratton carried  was of the type used to spray plants. It had a wide rubber nozzle.
  The Voice spoke from somewhere.
  "Are you ready, doctor?"
  "Ha! Ha! Ha!" chuckled the doctor. "Let us have the  globes turned on!"
  Doctor Anstratton was peering through the smoky  glass eyes of his awkward mask. He was looking into the
  jar of green  water.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  81
  
  From the outer room came first a low humming.  Generators were turning.
  Suddenly it seemed as if some force had opened the  top of the mountain. Crackling light played throughout
  the interior  caverns of Cragrock.
  "Ah, my little pets!" chuckled Doctor Anstratton.  "Now I can see you! And you will help remake the world to
  our liking!"
  The deformed doctor’s voice was almost a scream. The  doctor was dipping the nose of the syringe in the jar
  of green water.
  The Voice spoke clearly.
  "Those conduits are perfect, doctor," 
  it said, with satisfaction. "Without their resistance, the  incoming voltage would melt everything in sight. Now
  the globes are  really working."
  Though it was apparent that electrical energy was  being drawn from the sky down into the caverns of
  Cragrock, the fearful  hissing and snapping of the harnessed lightning was not sufficient to  drown out the
  terrible screaming of human voices.
  These voices came from the larger room outside that  in which Doctor Anstratton stood.
  Maddened men. One might have thought the incoming  lightning was being employed to sear their flesh. Yet
  the men who  screamed did not appear to be touched by fire or any other torture.
  THESE men were fastened in a long row to one side of  a great, vaulted room.
  Some of the men screamed profanely. Their arms and  legs were securely held in what resembled wooden
  stocks.
  Each man sat with his head, his arms and his legs  thrust through holes in the wood. These were locked
  together with iron  hasps.
  Of nearly a dozen men thus held, all but two were  giving vent to their suffering, each in his own way.
  "Let me die! I’ll give you all my millions! No! No!  I won’t go mad! I’ll help you to power!"
  That voice was none other than that of the  strong−nerved Jonas Hydebottom. The aging millionaire was
  nothing now  but a twisting gray head, which seemed to be trying to make a rag of  its neck in order to shield
  the eyes from whatever horror they were  seeing.
  "There ain’t no such daggoned animals! I ain’t  seein’ ‘em I won’t look at ‘em!"
  This came from the well−known Monk. His ugly head  looked more grotesque than the others.
  "Daggonit, Ham!" squealed Monk again. "You’re doing  this to me! When I get out of here, I’m going to feed
  you to Habeas  Corpus! Zowee! That thing’s got a million eyes!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  82
  
  Ham’s head also stuck up. Ham was keeping better  control.
  "My only regret is that I’m so busy seeing other  things I can’t observe how funny you must look right now!"
  rapped Ham.
  Jonas Hydebottom was getting to be an old man.  Perhaps that was why his nerve had broken all at once.
  Three other men  rated as multimillionaires in the blue book, were joining him with  their cries of terror.
  They were offering any price to be freed of what  they believed to be madness.
  Because the air all about them was filled with  bloated, horrible creatures, the row of imprisoned men had lost
  their  view of this remarkable cavern of Cragrock.
  Two prisoners, one at each end of the row, had been  taking the torture with tight lips. One of these was Doc
  Savage himself  in his assumed role of Renny, the giant engineer. His huge figure had  already been locked in
  a set of the wooden stocks when his companions  had been brought in.
  Apparently from the moment he had been overpowered  in the observatory of Cragrock dome, Doc had thus
  been held captive.  And during all of that time, the bronze man had seemed to be half  stunned, hardly
  understanding what was passing before him.
  DOC had been strongly doped after his capture.  Doctor Anstratton and that commanding Voice clearly did
  not  underestimate Doc Savage’s group. Each of the five was in himself a  power to be feared.
  The skeletonlike skull of Johnny gave no evidence  this smart geologist and archaeologist was "seeing things."
  In the few  minutes before the crackling of the lightning had seemed to create a  new world of monsters,
  Johnny had made an intensive study of the quartz  formation of the mountain’s interior. Even in a moment of
  greatest  danger, the scholarly Johnny was classifying the strata for future  reference.
  Long Tom had screamed with the others at first. Now  he became the third one of the row to recover himself
  somewhat.
  When first brought into the Cragrock caverns, all  the prisoners had been unconscious for a short time. Then
  they had  found themselves held in the stocks.
  Long Tom had got his view of two great copper balls  set close together upon a strange foundation. His
  electrician’s eye had  discovered their complicated hook−up with several generators.
  But it had not been the generators and the copper  balls which had puzzled Long Tom. From these great
  globes extended what  might have been brightly polished cables. These passed upward and  extended into the
  dome of soft rock overhead.
  Long Tom instantly suspected these were the new  alloy conduits which had been so mysteriously stolen from
  the Twentieth  Century Metal Alloy plant. Their attachment to the copper globes proved  they must have been
  some of the equipment Doc Savage had been using in  some strange experiment. Long Tom and Johnny
  discovered that attempting  to close their eyes did not discourage the flying horrors. In fact, it  seemed
  impossible to close their eyelids.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVII. CAVERN OF MONSTERS
  83
  
  BUT it was the scholarly Johnny whose mind remained  the clearest. The great, vaulted room now appeared to
  be filled with  thousands of varieties of beasts.
  Johnny talked suddenly. Now there were some two  score men besides the prisoners in the strange room.
  Perhaps more. And  they were at this time engaged in an occupation which indicated  preparation was being
  made by their bosses for possible departure from  Cragrock.
  None of these men could hear Johnny speak. Even if  they had heard Johnny’s words, they would not have
  understood. Johnny  was employing the language of the ancient Mayans.
  Johnny spoke quietly.
  "Long Tom, I am beginning to get the answer," he  stated. "We see a great many apparent monsters of which I
  have no  knowledge. But at least I am familiar with many of the amoeba. I know  that thing which looks like a
  monstrous anteater is nothing but a  rotifer. I know those things with the sucker mouths and those with
  flagellums which look like tentacles."
  "Good gosh!" exploded Long Tom, or the equivalent  words in ancient Mayan.
  "I haven’t time to explain," stated Johnny. "But  pass the word along to Ham and Monk. You can’t get it to
  Renny, because  they’ve got him up at the other end of the line."
  "Say!" suddenly exclaimed Long Tom. "How do you  suppose they caught Renny after we saw him hanging
  on the granite wall?  And what happened to that nosey inspector, Higgins? That copper must  have got away!"
  "There is something decidedly fishy about the whole  business," declared Johnny. "I don’t see how they could
  have got Renny  in here ahead of us, but he was here. And I saw him distinctly hanging  with Higgins on that
  parachute."
  Johnny may have had some of the answer to the world  of hideous monsters, but his knowledge did not extend
  inside the room  where Doctor Anstratton had finished filling the syringe with the long  rubber nozzle.
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  JOHNNY had succeeded in turning terror of the  floating monsters into another problem. Now he had Long
  Tom, Ham and  Monk talking with him in Mayan.
  They attempted to communicate with the drooping  figure of Renny. The bogus Renny, who was really Doc
  Savage. But the  big engineer seemed sunk in a stupor.
  Johnny said, "Perhaps they have done something to  Renny that he doesn’t see these things."
  In this, Johnny was greatly mistaken. More than the  others, Doc Savage in the end stocks was seeing all that
  was  transpiring. Though horrible monsters seemed to float about him, he  still was watching the operation of
  the immense copper globes.
  Serpents of blue fire darted between these balls of  copper. At the upper end of each globe was attached the
  cablelike  conduit. The heat being conducted along these cables must have been  terrific.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  84
  
  Only two places in the world had ever attempted to  reproduce the equivalent of a single lightning bolt. One of
  these was  in New York State. The other was in Switzerland. In each case, no more  than ten millions of volts
  had ever been harnessed.
  More electrical current than this was now entering  the queer soft rock caverns of Cragrock.
  Perhaps only Doc Savage fully understood what was  happening. The little understood electricity was raising
  electronic  energy to one of its greatest degrees.
  Possibly the slightly studied force of atomic power  was being released in minute quantities. Of the seven
  known scientific  periods of atomic energy, there was now being reproduced what might  have been the atom
  of the third period, or what scientists had termed  sodium.
  Doc Savage himself had been the inventor of those  great copper globes and their conduit connections. But the
  Voice had  announced Doc Savage was dead.
  Dead with the starving rats in an underground cellar  along the East River.
  INSIDE the smaller cavern behind the gauze curtain,  Doctor Anstratton had filled his syringe with the soft
  rubber nozzle.  The doctor approached the first of the piles of bones and flesh.
  The eyes of this inert man were intensely blue. They  retained intelligence. They sparkled with hate. Murder
  was in the  pupils. But the paralyzed man was helpless.
  "This morning we make the test," 
  spoke the mysterious Voice. 
  It was strangely like the voice of Doc Savage.  Doctor Anstratton chuckled and cracked his knuckles. He
  thrust the  rubber nozzle of the syringe into the mouth of the nearest man. The  blue eyes looked at the doctor
  with murder.
  "Observe!" said Doctor Anstratton. "You will see a  miracle!"
  The water had squirted into the inert man’s mouth.  The deformed doctor hobbled swiftly past the others.
  Before each one,  he paused. He rubbed bony hands caressingly across their foreheads.
  Now it was apparent these other men were seeing what  had happened to the first. The eyes of each of these
  paralyzed men  became stricken with horror.
  "You can’t speak!" shouted Doctor Anstratton. "I  know what you are seeing! Great boring creatures are
  coming from your  companion’s skin! They are being chased out by those other wide−mouthed  monsters with
  the long, hairy feelers! Soon all of the borers will be  gone!"
  The eleven motionless men were watching their  companion. It was true that hideous creatures of one form
  apparently  were being driven out and devoured by other equally hideous monsters.
  "Millions never will see these things!" shouted  Doctor Anstratton. "But they will be there! Whole cities will
  become  paralyzed! Whole cities will be healed and made well again! The world  will hail a new Doc Savage!
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  85
  
  This one will have more power! What the  bronze scientist planned to apply to heal many ills will now be
  employed to bring greater communities under control of the new Doc  Savage!"
  There is no doubt but that Doctor Anstratton was  crazy. Even the man of the mysterious Voice must have
  known that.  Perhaps he was merely using the extensive knowledge of the warped  scientist for his own
  purposes.
  "It is time to quit speaking," 
  said the Voice quite clearly. "Soon we must prepare to remove  all to a distant spot. Too many have come too
  close to Cragrock. Prove,  my good doctor, your latest theory will work."
  Doctor Anstratton dropped the rubber syringe. He  stepped back.
  "It is proved!" he shouted.
  One man was moving. He was the man into whose mouth  the green water had been injected. The man from
  whose skin the hideous  boring creatures had seemed to emerge, only to be devoured by the  others.
  The enemies of the boring monsters must have been in  that jar of green water. No doubt, the first creatures
  had come from  another of those same jars.
  THE man who moved was a big fellow. His blue eyes  snapped with sudden light. He drew his arms and limbs
  into motion. His  great muscles were apparent, but he was moving as slowly as a tortoise  crawling. His mouth
  had closed. His tongue must have found speech.
  Doctor Anstratton passed quickly before the other  men. He rubbed his hands across their foreheads. The
  horror left their  eyes. Only now they were watching their companion with amazement.
  "I’ll�get�I’ll�I’ll kill you!"
  These were the first words from the slowly reviving  man. Perhaps that injection worked faster than Doctor
  Anstratton had  intended. Suddenly, the big fellow was on his feet. He was lurching  toward the deformed
  doctor.
  The hands of the blue−eyed man clapped around Doctor  Anstratton’s skinny throat. His recovery must have
  given him tremendous  strength. The deformed doctor clawed at the other man’s face. Breath  gurgled in his
  throat.
  "You have proved your case indeed," 
  stated the invisible Voice. "Preserve that which we have. These  men must be destroyed. The fall of the
  mountain will care for those few  fools who have believed Doc Savage invincible."
  Doctor Anstratton was not throttled. From the  direction of the Voice shot a piercing, knifelike flame. This
  seemed to  barely touch the bare skin of the blue−eyed man’s back.
  "A−ar−agh!" 
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  86
  
  gulped the man. 
  A round, red spot appeared over the man’s spine. His  hands fell from Doctor Anstratton’s neck.
  The blue−eyed man stiffened and quivered. An  electric bolt must have disrupted his inner organs. His face
  immediately turned black. The Voice did not speak again.
  But as Doctor Anstratton struggled to his feet,  oaths frothing from his bony jaws, the knifelike, electrical
  current  crossed the room.
  Paralyzed men cannot struggle against the spasms of  death. The eleven men along the wall merely ceased to
  have murder in  their eyes. They lay quiet.
  Whatever the purpose of the experiment Doctor  Anstratton had conducted, the Voice apparently had judged it
  better to  murder a dozen men than to have the secret pass from that  gauze−curtained room.
  Doctor Anstratton looked at the dead men. He turned  back toward the row of green jars. The gauze curtain
  lifted. There was  a loud, piercing scream.
  This was the voice of a woman. Jane Davidson stood  in the entrance to the murder room. Her black eyes were
  round with  horror. She was looking at the dead men on the rock floor.
  Doctor Anstratton merely waved the rubber−nosed  syringe in her direction.
  "Get out!" he yelped. "You’ll get yourself�"
  What the doctor may have feared evidently affected  the owner of the Voice fully as much. From the near−by
  wall leaped a  great figure. As it came, the Voice spoke.
  "Stop the globes! We are finished with these! Fool,  do you want to die?"
  The owner of the voice had the build of a giant man.  He wore a white shirt, which bared his throat and
  smooth breast. His  head was bare, and his sleeves were stripped back to his elbows.
  With sweeping strength, the man lifted the plump  figure of Jane Davidson. He glided past the door of the
  gauze curtain  into the larger outer room.
  As he moved, the man must have done something to  Jane Davidson’s nerves. For her screaming abruptly
  ceased. The woman  lay in his arms as limp as a child.
  The man started across the big outside room with  long, swinging strides. Jane Davidson’s long, black hair fell
  down. Her  neck was like a rag.
  At the command of the Voice, the hissing and  crackling of the globes had ceased.
  Now, all the row of prisoners in the wooden stocks  could see clearly what was taking place. For the floating
  monsters had  suddenly disappeared. Only Jonas Hydebottom, the aging millionaire,  continued to groan.
  It might be that the older man’s mind would remain  affected for the rest of his years.
  It was the childlike voice of Monk which yelped  first.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  87
  
  "That’s him! He’ll kill the dame! Stop him!"
  "Good gravy!" rapped out Ham. "It’s Doc! He’s been  in here all the time!"
  "Doc! Doc!" shouted Long Tom. "We’re over here!"
  Johnny said nothing. But like the others, he was  staring at the bronze giant crossing the big, vaulted room.
  In the end stocks, the real Doc Savage had lifted  his head. His hair had fallen over the face that looked like
  Renny’s.  He looked as if he had been put into a permanent stupor. Even the  presence of the great figure of
  bronze walking before him did not bring  a response.
  None had known what had become of Jane Davidson  after they had been seized. All had seen the young
  woman struck down  with the electrical weapon. After that, it seemed she had been spared  imprisonment in
  the stocks. For the time, none had been given reason to  suspect where she had been taken.
  "Doc! Doc!" yelled Ham. "We’re over here! Look out  for those other fellows! They’ve got some kind of ray
  that knocks you  out!"
  The bronze giant turned his head. Every feature  marked him as the long−absent Doc Savage. If this was the
  man who had  hypnotized Jane Davidson, the young woman indeed had good reason for  accusing the bronze
  adventurer.
  Without moving his lips, the bronze man gave forth a  faint, eerie trilling. This was a mistake. Johnny spoke.
  He knew  instantly that trilling had a distinctly wrong note.
  "That is the solution, and he is the Voice we have  been hearing. Brothers, it may be that Doc has perished. If
  that is  true, then our situation is most critical."
  "Howlin’ calamities!" exploded Monk. "Haven’t you  fellows�"
  Monk did not complete his words. The bronze giant  had apparently hurled Jane Davidson roughly onto one of
  three strange  vehicles which stood to one side of the vaulted room.
  The bronze giant spoke. His words might have been  those of Doc Savage himself.
  "Bring the doctor and load the air cars," he said.  "Cragrock is charged for dissolution. We are ready to strike!"
  "Good grief!" rapped out Ham. "You don’t suppose all  this stuff about Doc being dead is true?"
  "Daggonit!" yelped Monk. "Can’t you see�" 
  From what had appeared to be a solid pillar in the  middle of the cavern vault boomed a deep voice.
  "Holy cow, inspector! I told you Doc would be down  here!"
  ONE side of the rock pillar opened. The men in the  stocks could see that this was really something like a
  spiral slide. It  must have come into this lower room directly from the observatory  above. It was much like
  fire−escape apparatus.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  88
  
  To the amazement of Ham, Long Tom and Johnny, at  least, a bulky figure shot from this spiral. This was a
  great−fisted  giant. The solemn face of Renny appeared above the mammoth shoulders.
  Across one cheek was a deep, red gouge. Apparently  Renny had been in some trouble. But whatever it had
  been, it was slight  compared to what he now faced.
  Behind this amazing figure of Colonel John Renwick  appeared the thin face of Inspector Higgins. Even at a
  distance, the  inspector’s Adam’s apple was jumping.
  "Well! Well! Well!" rapped Inspector Higgins. "So  you’re Doc Savage, and we’ve caught up with you at last!
  Whatcha doin’  with that woman? Put up your hands! You’re under arrest for�"
  Inspector Higgins had whipped out a regulation  Police Positive revolver. He pointed this at the figure of the
  bronze  man in the middle of the room. The result was no less than astounding.
  The big man of bronze did not move or issue an  order. But two of the many men working around the strange
  vehicles he  had called the air cars moved their hands slightly.
  A pair of short black rods appeared. Inspector  Higgins’s pistol exploded. But not in the manner he intended.
  It became  a blazing lump of blue flame.
  The revolver jumped up in the air and fell to the  rock floor. Inspector Higgins stuck his hands straight out. He
  fell  down and rolled over.
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" exploded Johnny.  "We have witnessed the apparition of Doc Savage, and
  it has proved to  be only a hallucination! We have gazed upon microbes that have turned  into monsters! And
  now I am looking at two Rennys!"
  If Johnny was surprised, the big bronze man seemed  no less so. His voice lost the calm tone he had been
  using.
  "Grab that fellow!" he bellowed. "Something’s been  put over on us!"
  The dull, solemn eyes of Doc Savage, imprisoned in  the stocks, looked rather vacantly at the bronze giant.
  But the newly  arrived Renny proved he was not in a stupor.
  Several men jumped toward him. They were swinging  the stubby black rods. The big engineer had seen
  something. It was a  connection from which thin wires extended to those rods.
  The hamlike fists smashed two ways at once. Before  the ray could render him powerless, big Renny had
  proved what a cyclone  can accomplish when it goes on the loose.
  One of the engineer’s feet smashed loose the  connection of the electrical rods. He did not seem to mind being
  now  surrounded by as many dancing, yelling men as could get close to him.
  NOT in a long time had the giant engineer had so  many targets for those smashing fists. He seemed to have
  only one  purpose: That was to reach the big man who apparently had been  impersonating Doc Savage.
  "Holy cow!" boomed Renny. "You will go around  lookin’ like Doc!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  89
  
  He swung a haymaker at the big bronze man, but  another fellow tripped him up and he fell to his knees.
  Perhaps half a  dozen men made the mistake of trying to make a football out of the big  engineer.
  "Howlin’ calamities!" yelled Monk. "If I could only  get into it!"
  The others were feeling much the same. But for  considerable time big Renny appeared to need no assistance.
  He was  putting up a perfect show as a one−man wrecking crew.
  Now the prisoners in the stocks were shouting  encouragement.
  "But it can’t last long," groaned Long Tom. "If  Renny only had waited. Still, I’m dizzy over the whole thing.
  That’s  Renny out there trying to smash the works, and that’s Renny fastened up  there in the stocks. Say!
  Monk? You mean�"
  Of the half a dozen men who had landed on Renny’s  broad back, at least three would be of little use for a
  long time to  come. Their skulls had been permanently cracked.
  The big bronze man had separated from the others. He  had glided toward one of the queer vehicles he had
  called air cars. He  paused only to stare strangely at the bogus Renny in the wooden stocks  and at the other
  man still playing billiards with his men.
  At last the fake bronze man rapped out.
  "We’ve been tricked, doctor! Give them the globes  again! Doc Savage lives!"
  The generators hummed and the copper globes  crackled. The fake bronze man evidently had another idea up
  his sleeve.
  "Black the lights!" he yelled. "Have the air cars  ready! Hold everything for the detonators!"
  The line of prisoners in the stocks again were  seeing monsters. But Johnny’s voice was steadying them. He
  was talking  in Mayan.
  "If you could get your hands to your eyes, it would  cease," he stated.
  The great, vaultilke cavern was plunged into  darkness. The only light now was the eerie, weird serpents
  crackling  between the big copper globes. Yet this faint illumination showed that  which might not have
  previously been observed.
  Stranger vehicles never had been seen than the  three, streamlined affairs at one side of the underground room.
  They  appeared to be merely monstrous−pointed cars, without windows or  without wheels.
  As Renny somehow managed to free himself from the  jam of the bronze man’s henchmen, a strange thing
  happened.
  ONE of the windowless vehicles seemed to have no  load. The bronze man who had been enacting the role of
  Doc Savage  rapped out an order. Five or six of his men ran over to this single car.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XVIII. MEN WHO LIVED AGAIN
  90
  
  "Good grief!" stated Ham. "I’ve got them things off  my eyes! Look! That car looks big as a railroad engine,
  but four men  have picked it up! They’re turning it around! Say, the thing has a  track underneath that unwinds
  itself!"
  Perhaps none but big Renny could see this. And for  once Renny had used rare judgment. Usually, the
  engineer would fight as  long as his fists could find a skull to smash. But this time Renny had  eluded his
  enemies.
  In the faint blue light, the men under the mountain  were cracking at each other.
  "Connect the paralysis ray!" commanded the voice of  the fake bronze man. "That will get him and the others!
  We must go with  what we have gained!"
  The mountain men had trouble connecting the  paralysis ray. This trouble was unexpected.
  Apparently Inspector Higgins had only been knocked  out for a few minutes.
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  INSPECTOR HIGGINS awoke in the midst of what he may  have mistaken for a riot. The worthy copper was
  slightly groggy. His  groping hand found his fallen revolver.
  "I’ll get Doc Savage yet!" yelled Inspector Higgins.
  The policeman was a man with one idea. Now the  greenish light from the copper balls suddenly revealed the
  figure of a  giant with bronzed skin. This man was making an effort to have his men  connect the rods which
  carried the paralysis ray.
  Inspector Higgins started shooting. The bronze man  escaped. He leaped suddenly onto the curious air car in
  which lay the  limp form of Jane Davidson.
  Two or three men attempting to connect the rod wires  were knocked down by Inspector Higgins’s bullets.
  During this bedlam, a voice started speaking  quietly. At the same instant, the bronze man beside Jane
  Davidson on  the air car heaved to his feet. The greenish electrical glow gave his  countenance a deathly cast.
  That voice was coming from his lips. It was issuing  a command.
  "Keep the copper globes alive!" said this voice.  "Release the prisoners in the stocks and drive them into the
  inner  room!"
  The men who had been attempting to get their  paralysis ray rods in action ceased this effort. A dozen men
  hastened  to obey the command. The bronze man on the air car, who apparently had  given this order, was
  clawing at his face.
  "No! No! No!" he was screaming. "Take them away!  They’re tearing me to pieces!"
  In some manner the greater illumination of the  cavern flashed on.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  91
  
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" shouted Johnny.  "Come on!"
  All of the wooden stocks had been opened by a single  lever. Monk, Ham, Long Tom and the four millionaires
  stood free. But  they did not seem to know where to go into action.
  The bronze man who had been taking the role of Doc  Savage still stood on the queer air car. He was still
  clawing at his  face. His words were meaningless screams.
  The reason for this was quickly apparent.
  THE real Renny, the big engineer who had been  fighting it out with overwhelming numbers in the middle of
  the room,  had vanished.
  The other Renny, Doc Savage, who had been locked in  the stocks, was standing motionless on his massive
  legs. From his skull  the brownish hair had been pulled away. Now there was revealed the  smooth bronze hair
  of Doc Savage himself.
  For a few seconds, a weird trilling filled the great  vault. It arose above even the crackling and hissing of the
  copper  globes and the conduits. All of the men in the room seemed transfixed.
  This was the unmistakable weird note of the real Doc  Savage. The other that had been heard several times did
  not now seem  even a good imitation.
  Doc Savage moved his hands. The bronze skin showed.  Metal flakes fell from his eyes. They were now
  stirring whirlpools of  gold. And these eyes were fixed intently on that other bronze man on  the air car.
  Monk yelled, "I could’ve told alla you what would  happen! Daggonit! I knew all the time it was Doc who
  dropped from the  gyroplane! Now we’ll clean ‘em up!"
  The bronze man on the air car spoke again in  distinct words. He was acting like a man in a nightmare. His
  hands  moved as if he wanted to stop his own words and couldn’t.
  This was the truth. This fake man of bronze couldn’t  stop those words. Nor could he find speech of his own
  to inform his men  that his crazy commands were being uttered by another.
  For it was the real Doc Savage talking. In that  cavern, on the crackling waves of the copper globes, it was
  possible to  produce a ventriloquial effect that had never before been attained.  This was one of the discoveries
  Doc Savage had made of the properties  of the new short−wave rays the globe conduits were bringing to earth.
  The speech of the fake bronze man was completely  paralyzed. In his mouth were the words of Doc Savage.
  And though he tried to avoid them, those flaky gold  eyes of Doc Savage were upon him with an intentness
  the remarkable  adventurer seldom employed.
  For a few seconds, Doc Savage was able to hold this  faker, his imitator, under a hypnotic spell. The real man
  of bronze was  using these few seconds to the best advantage. For he had seen enough  to know that the
  slightest mistake now would mean the annihilation of  his companions, the four millionaires and himself.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  92
  
  Doc Savage had known all the time those wooden  stocks had been wired for instant electrocution of prisoners
  in an  emergency. So his first order through his helpless double was to free  the captives.
  Now he caused the writhing faker on the air car to  issue another command.
  "Doctor Anstratton!" came from the twisting,  helpless lips. "You will destroy all of the jars of monsters! You
  will  make them powerless to do harm!"
  On the rounded top of the air car where the fake  bronze man stood, the plump body of Jane Davidson moved.
  The girl’s  round white face was raised. She sprang up suddenly. Her arms were  locked around the big man’s
  waist.
  At the instant the faker uttered the order to Doctor  Anstratton, Jane Davidson cried out, "It’s Doc Savage! He
  killed  Professor Spargrove! He’ll kill all of us! He wants to rule the world!"
  THE feet of the bronze faker flew from under him. He  fell beside Jane Davidson. The young woman must
  have struck this boss  of Cragrock with some object she held in her hand. His big body  stiffened and he lay
  still across the air car.
  But the eyes of all were pulled to the inner room of  the gauze curtain. From inside this room came a crashing
  and crackling  of glass. It seemed Doctor Anstratton was carrying out the order  delivered by the real Doc
  Savage through his double.
  Those who had freed their eyes of the hideous  monsters now were able to observe more of this huge room in
  which they  stood.
  In many respects it was similar to the wonderful  laboratory of Doc Savage in Manhattan. The walls of soft
  rock were  studded with electrical devices. These included radio and television.
  Apparently there had not been time to remove the big  copper globes from the strange air car on which they
  had been placed.
  On another similar car was piled a great deal of the  equipment that had been stolen from Doc Savage’s
  headquarters.
  The third car was queerly camouflaged. While its  streamlined perfection was revealed, it had the appearance
  of a very  old and very common sort of railroad coach. It was painted like a  carnival car.
  Renny, the big engineer, now crouched close behind  the big copper globes, knew exactly where he had last
  seen this coach.  It had been in the railroad yards close to the Twentieth Century Metal  Alloy Works above
  Manhattan.
  Now, when the devilish scheme of the fake Doc Savage  and Doctor Anstratton seemed about to be upset, Doc
  Savage and Renny  had become aware that the slightest mistake would mean death for  everybody.
  Doc Savage had caused that order to be given to  Doctor Anstratton merely to gain a few minutes of delay. He
  had learned  that all of Cragrock had been charged with a terrible high explosive.  Some hidden switch or lever
  would bring all of the thousands of tons of  the rock crashing down upon these hidden rooms.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  93
  
  For this reason, Doc Savage’s copper globes, his  other more important devices and the best of the equipment
  of the fake  Doc Savage and Doctor Anstratton had been loaded on the three  mysterious cars.
  Doc Savage’s liberated companions had clawed  something from under their eyelids. They stood awaiting an
  order to  attack the two score men attempting to get their paralysis rods into  action. And in the few seconds
  they waited, they heard the continued  crashing of the glass jars in the room behind the gauze curtain.
  "You would rob me of everything!" screamed a  high−pitched voice from the doorway of the gauze curtain.
  "You have  what you seek, and you would leave me with nothing! I know now! You  want to become the new
  Doc Savage! You killed the real Doc Savage and  left his bones to the rats! I won’t be tricked!"
  THE curtain of gauze swayed to one side. The figure  of Doctor Anstratton hopped into view. High above his
  one hunched  shoulder, the crazed scientist held a small glass jar. In the other  hand, the doctor balanced
  another.
  Jane Davidson was standing erect on the sloping top  of the air car. The big bronze figure at her feet had not
  moved after  she had struck him down.
  Jane Davidson screamed shrilly. There was the terror  of death in her voice.
  "This is all the work of Doc Savage!" she cried.  "Don’t let him break those jars! They contain worse than
  death! They  were filled by Professor Spargrove!"
  "Holy cow!" muttered Renny behind the crackling  copper globes. "This is about the nuttiest set−up I ever
  encountered!  Now what?"
  Apparently the two score men commanded by the fake  Doc Savage and this Doctor Anstratton knew what it
  was all about.  Moreover, they appeared to be in deadly terror of those swinging jars.
  "No, doctor! No! You can’t do that!" screamed one  man.
  Another man yelled, "Get the cars moving! Open the  wall!" 
  There was no time to get one of the queer air cars  moving. Nor was there time to open a wall.
  Doctor Anstratton chuckled with a fiendish glee,  which could be heard above the hissing of the electrical
  currents of  the big globes.
  One bony−knuckled hand hurled one of the glass jars.  This jar seemed to contain only some green stagnant
  water. The jar  struck among some of the nearest of the mountain men and exploded into  scores of splintery
  fragments.
  The green water splattered over the faces and the  hands of three of these men. Those whose eyes were clear
  and unaffected  by whatever emanation was coming from the big copper globes saw the  three men halt as if
  transfixed by lightning.
  Then these three men fell down. None writhed or  showed any other evidence of suffering. They simply
  became instantly  only motionless bundles of clothes and bones and flesh.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  94
  
  "Good grief!" exploded Ham. "Doc! I’ll get him!" 
  Ham started to spring forward. The lawyer was not  even armed with his sword cane. But he flashed toward
  Doctor Anstratton.
  "Keep back, Ham," came the calm voice of Doc Savage.  "Every one get to the first of those cars. It is our
  only way now out  of Cragrock. In a few seconds there will be no mountain."
  "So you think you’re another Doc Savage!" screamed  Doctor Anstratton. "But you have spoken the truth! In
  another few  seconds there will be no Cragrock. The detonator is set! None but  myself ever will become the
  new Doc Savage!"
  Doctor Anstratton broke the other jar. He crashed  the top of it on the rock nearest him. A howl of laughter
  came from his  throat. The scientist’s deformed shoulder twisted upward.
  Renny shouted from behind the copper globes. "He’s  drinking the stuff! He’s�"
  Jonas Hydebottom and the other millionaires perhaps  had not yet understood why they were seeing monsters,
  why they were on  the verge of madness. There had been no time for them to remove  metallic glass shells
  from under their eyelids.
  Because of this, Jonas Hydebottom and the others  were viewing much more than the mere paralysis of three
  men, and the  strange transformation of Doctor Anstratton.
  "Great grief!" yelled Jonas Hydebottom. "They’re  eating them alive! There are millions of the things! Look
  out! They’re  coming through the air!"
  JONAS HYDEBOTTOM was seeing a myriad of hydra−headed  monsters. These were equipped with dozens
  of gimletlike projectors.  They surrounded Doctor Anstratton. Their terrible borers seemed to  pierce his body.
  They emerged through his clothing.
  The same thing was happening to the three men lying  on the floor.
  As if transfixed by all these hideous creatures,  Doctor Anstratton sat down suddenly. His bony knuckles no
  longer  cracked. His hands did not move. Only his deep eyes stayed alive.
  The eyes of the three men on the floor were still  alive. But their bodies were inert.
  One of the long streamlined cars suddenly moved. It  was that containing the fake Doc Savage and Jane
  Davidson. Apparently  the plump girl attempted to leap off. The big man reared to his feet.
  One fist knocked the girl down.
  "Stay where you are!" the man shouted. "It’s too  late for the others! The detonators have been set!"
  This strange car was behind the other two. One of  the other cars was that old railroad coach. Over its metallic
  body it  had been camouflaged as a worn−out carnival car.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  95
  
  The real Doc Savage sprang toward the other bronze  man on the moving air car. As he went, he called out,
  "All get back of  the globes! Seize that other car! All can escape!"
  The mountain men had been terrorized. Robbed of  their paralysis ray, they flung themselves upon Doc
  Savage. They might  as well have got in the path of a cyclone.
  The great fists of Doc Savage were like invisible  flying circles. Men fell all around him.
  Monk, Long Tom and Johnny, having been robbed of  their weapons, were using their fists and their hands.
  The gripping  hands of the apelike Monk were more terrible than the fists of the  others.
  Doc Savage reached the sloping side of the moving  air car on which rode the other bronze man and Jane
  Davidson. He was  climbing upon it, when a ghastly laugh croaked from the throat of Doc’s  double.
  The real Doc was tossed a score of feet. The shock  which had accomplished this had come from the metallic
  alloy of the  mystery air car. Bearing the chief of the scientific monsters, and the  plump Jane Davidson, this
  air car turned on what seemed a caterpillar  track of its own. It headed directly for the closed wall of granite.
  Outside this wall was the abandoned quarry. And  there were the old switch tracks. Doc’s men could now see
  by what means  these strange cars had been moved so mysteriously.
  For the inner flanges of beltlike devices were  fitted for the standard tracks of any railroad. The facility with
  which  the cars could be moved undoubtedly made it possible for them to  operate anywhere between regular
  trains.
  At the approach of a train, the air cars simply  crawled off the rails into concealment.
  But at this moment, Doc’s companions had no time to  study this one of the several devices by which a fake
  Doc Savage had  expected to appear before the world.
  TOSSED a score of feet from the moving air car, Doc  Savage whipped to his feet. He sprang toward the car
  containing the big  copper globes. The electrical current between these globes was like the  constant play of a
  zigzagging lightning bolt.
  The special metallic conduits were glowing with the  intensity of the heat being drawn from the sky above
  Cragrock.
  The men of the mountain had put up a stubborn fight,  but they appeared more subdued by fear of their three
  paralyzed  companions than by the fists of Doc Savage’s men. Now they were fleeing  toward the air car which
  resembled a carnival car.
  The vast underground room was a bedlam of screams.
  "Get the others on the car of the globes," commanded  Doc Savage quietly. "Renny, destroy the power. It was
  a mistake in the  beginning."
  The hand of Renny, the big engineer, moved toward a  switch which had a three−way brass connection. He
  pulled this apart.
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XIX. END OF THE DOCTOR
  96
  
  From somewhere in the top of Cragrock came a  rumbling explosion. The vaulted room shook. Fragments of
  rock fell  down. Another blast quickly followed. It felt as if the domelike  observatory was being blown to bits
  far above.
  Doc Savage climbed on the car between the big copper  globes. Renny’s pulling of the switch had shut off the
  generators. The  bronze giant made a ruthless job of several delicately wired  connections.
  "This," he said quietly to Johnny, "concludes the  experiment of the magni globes. With all of its possibilities
  for great  good, we have seen what terrible evil it might bring."
  "I had guessed some of that," stated Johnny. "Are we  getting out on this car?"
  "We will help the others aboard here," advised Doc.  "Be quick. The whole mountain may go next."
  His words seemed about to be fulfilled. Long Tom had  made an effort to rescue the paralyzed Doctor
  Anstratton. The  electrician halted as a blast from far above sent a whole wall of soft  rock down upon the inert
  body of the crazed scientist.
  All the mountain men had crowded aboard the air car  with the flamboyant carnival paint. They had the
  vehicle moving. Its  remarkable motors made only a hissing, as if they were drawing in air.
  Jonas Hydebottom and the three millionaires were now  beside Doc Savage. The hands of the bronze giant
  played over the side  of one of the huge copper balls. The sphere divided. The power of the  globes, whatever it
  was, had been destroyed.
  "The others will escape through the wall," stated  Doc Savage. "Get inside the globe, it is our only chance. We
  have no  time to follow."
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  THROUGH a thousand feet of soft rock the big  telescope in the Cragrock observatory plunged into the great,
  vaulted  room. Its long metal body rested across one of the copper globes aboard  a motionless air car.
  "We have no time to attempt to follow the others,"  Doc Savage had cautioned. "Perhaps the globe will resist
  the blast."
  Doc and his men, Inspector Higgins, Jonas Hydebottom  and the other men of wealth, were crowded into the
  limited space of the  copper globe. The bronze man had closed the great ball until only a  slit remained.
  Through that slit appeared an amazing spectacle. The  soft quartz walls inside Cragrock were splitting and
  falling. Blast  after blast of high explosives shook the mountain. Apparently these had  been timed by Doctor
  Anstratton or Doc Savage’s double to take place in  a series after all had left the place.
  "Them devils meant us to be buried here! What was  the purpose, Doc?" came from Renny.
  "We are not yet sure we won’t be buried here,"  stated Doc Savage. "We have only one hope. This explosion
  may split the  whole mountain."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  97
  
  "Howlin’ calamities!" exploded Monk. "They must’ve  been startin’ off at better’n a hundred miles an hour!
  Say! They didn’t  make it!"
  It was very apparent the two fleeing air cars had  not made it. Perhaps the granite wall was supposed to open
  by some  automatic mechanism. Those two cars had been traveling at great speed.
  Possibly the blasting of the mountain had disrupted  all of the intricate mechanism by which the granite wall
  should have  opened.
  The big bronze man who had been faking the role of  Doc Savage was aboard the first of the cars. Nearly all
  his men, except  the buried Doctor Anstratton were on the other cars.
  Both cars struck the wall where the opening should  have been. Their impact was almost as great as some of
  the blasts which  had shaken Cragrock to bits.
  "Good gosh!" said Long Tom. "Nobody could be left  alive in them cars! Both of them squashed into that wall
  like bugs!"
  "We are lucky," stated Doc Savage. "Cragrock has  been split. That is real lightning we are seeing."
  THE last rumbling blast had died out. Tons of the  quartz had hammered the big copper globe, but those
  inside were  unharmed. Doc slowly widened the opening. Gusty wind blew rain through  the roof where it had
  been blown apart.
  "Well, I’ll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny.  "It looks like we’re going to be blown right out of this
  place!"
  "Daggonit, Doc!" complained Monk. "How are we ever  goin’ to get these copper globes an’ all this stuff out
  of this mess?"
  "When we have got ourselves out of this mess, that  will be sufficient," said Doc Savage. "Johnny, you said
  you had guessed  what these globes were intended to do?"
  "Yes," stated the scholarly Johnny. "As soon as I  realized I had some kind of metallic shells over my eyeballs
  and that I  saw all sorts of strange things when the globes were turned on, I had  the answer."
  "You are correct, Johnny," advised Doc. "Professor  Spargrove had been experimenting with this idea for
  years. We succeeded  in creating what might be called a supermicroscope. When the cosmic  rays and high
  voltage of the magni globes were inducted into the  special finders, which were made into metallic shells for
  the eyes,  millions of microbes were enlarged many thousands of times."
  "Yes," stated Johnny, "and this Doctor Anstratton  got in on it some way. He found hitherto invisible bacteria
  which could  be reproduced and made to paralyze those they touched. With that, he  and his companions could
  have held the greatest of cities in their  power."
  "I fear they had even a more subtle scheme in mind,"  stated Doc. "It was their purpose first to contaminate
  the water supply  of the greatest cities, then produce the enemy bacteria which would  kill off the others and
  cure the victims."
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  98
  
  "You mean," said Ham, "they really intended to put  over a kind of Doc Savage stuff of their own, by posing
  as benefactors."
  "It would seem so," stated Doc. "Invention of these  air cars would have made them millions, but they were
  not satisfied  with mere wealth. These cars are a type of Super−Diesel, which draws  nearly all of its energy
  from the stratosphere. They are held to steel  rails by magnetic belts rather than by the flanges of wheels."
  "By golly," said Long Tom, "that’s a principle which  may be applied some day!"
  "No doubt and with great benefit," stated Doc.  "Their supposed thefts by trucks were only a cover−up for the
  real way  they were carrying off the heavy stuff."
  "Well! Well! Well!" twanged Inspector Higgins. "What  was all this twaddle which made it look like I had to
  arrest Doc  Savage? That young woman, Jane Davidson�Holy Moses! I forgot! She was  on one of them
  smashed cars! Now that’s too bad!"
  Doc Savage shook his head sadly.
  "It is always to be regretted when death comes," he  stated. "But justice sometimes is dealt by the power
  which has created  the injustice. I fear Jane Davidson was the brain behind all this  scheme."
  "Holy cow!" rumbled Renny. "She was such a nice  black−eyed girl!"
  SCHOLARLY Johnny smiled slightly.
  "I was aware Jane Davidson was in on this before we  came under the mountain," he stated. "She suddenly
  became interested in  that poor fellow, Rufus Bannaford. She told me she had taken a  photograph of herself
  from his body. I happened to see that same  photograph of herself in her purse earlier. Also, I found a
  fragment of  the metallic eyeshells, which she was removing from the dead man’s  eyes."
  "Great gravy!" piped Monk. "Then who bumped off  Professor Spargrove?"
  "There appears to be no doubt but that Jane Davidson  did that," advised Doc. "Probably the professor
  suddenly suspected who  had helped steal the magni globes. The girl was his assistant. She got  dreams of
  great power." The bronze man shrugged. "It was too great a  temptation for her to resist."
  "Then who was the other Doc Savage?" inquired Long  Tom.
  "That was what made me sure of Jane Davidson’s part  in all this," stated Doc. "The other Doc Savage was
  Andrus Davidson,  brother of Jane. He had been an actor�possibly a bad one�for many  years. And he was
  built for the part. I believe it was the purpose to  discredit our own work before they tried to take up the great
  scheme of  the magni globes."
  It was now recalled by all that each time any person  had apparently "seen things," some of the principals had
  had an access  to them while they were unconscious. Even in the case of John Corbin,  the first to die, the fake
  Doc Savage had appeared just long enough to  remove the metallic eyeshells from the dead man’s eyes.
  "Well! Well! Well!" babbled Inspector Higgins. "I  think I done a swell job breaking this case!"
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  99
  
  "No doubt about it," stated Ham dryly. "You’ll  probably be promoted."
  "Daggonit!" came from Monk "why don’t you let him  alone, you shyster? You were so scared of what was
  going on here you  didn’t do anything. At least Higgins isn’t afraid!"
  "I suppose you weren’t, you hairy ape?" Ham drawled  sarcastically.
  "I was!" Monk admitted promptly. "Scared to death,  as a matter of fact." And then the hairy chemist grinned.
  For once, he  had caught Ham off guard, and the expression on the dapper lawyer’s  face was ludicrous.
  Getting Monk to admit he was scared was an  accomplishment in itself.
  THE END
   MAD EYES
  Chapter XX. WHEN CRAGROCK FELL
  100
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/051 Mad Eyes.pdf