TEXT: RED SNOW 
  A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in "Doc Savage" magazine February 1935 
   
  Doc Savage and his men walk in the balmy Florida sunshine and get caught in a snowstorm—Red  
  Snow that leaves death and destruction behind its downy flakes! 
   
   
  Chapter I 
  MYSTERY IN SCARLET 
   
  AS far as was ever learned, a Seminole 
  Indian alligator hunter named Duck-With-No-
  Wings was the first to see the Red Snow. The 
  first to see it, that is, and live to discuss it later. 
  The Red Snow had appeared before, and 
  had been seen, it developed in the course of 
  time, but the witnesses had been victims of the 
  
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  2 
  scarlet horror and had not been heard from 
  again. Nor had their bodies been found. It was 
  very fantastic and quite inexplicable. 
  In the case witnessed by Duck-With-No-
  Wings, the victims were riding in a canvas boat, 
  one of the collapsible kind which hunters carry in 
  their automobiles. Duck-With-No-Wings saw the 
  boat pull across an open patch of water in the 
  Everglades and into a black gullet of a creek 
  which ran under the interlacing mass of swamp 
  vegetation. 
  The Seminole alligator hunter admired the 
  boat. Then he noted that the occupants—they 
  numbered two—seemed to be in a great hurry. 
  They were stripped to underwear shorts—except 
  that one had a small package slung about his 
  neck by a string. They were drenched with per-
  spiration. They looked back often. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings knew the signs. He 
  had seen before fugitives from the law flee into 
  the swamp, and they had acted thus. The Semi-
  nole drew back out of sight and watched the 
  boat vanish into the swamp. 
  Some five minutes later, Duck-With-No-
  Wings was looking at the muddy trail of a bull 
  'gator when he gave a start which was very vi o-
  lent, considering that he was a member of a 
  people noted for their command of facial ex-
  pression. He ensconced himself behind a cy-
  press. 
  The two half-naked men had appeared 
  again. They were running now, sloughing madly 
  through the morass, struggling out their hearts in 
  the hopeless tangle. Then Duck-With-No-Wings 
  saw an interesting thing. 
   One of the fleeting men paused beside 
  a tree which was dead, and from which the bark 
  was peeling. He reached up and removed the 
  small package which was slung around his neck. 
  This, he shoved under a scab of bark, conceal-
  ing it. Then they ran on. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings continued to watch. 
  He saw no sign of pursuers. But, not long after-
  ward, he saw something which caused him to 
  drop his rifle, his dearest possession, into the 
  slime underfoot. And that meant he was very 
  surprised.  
  There was no cloud in the sky. It was a 
  very warm December day in Florida. Yet snow 
  had started failing. 
  This snow was not white. It was not even 
  a dusty color. Its hue was as red as blood. 
   
   
  ALMOST any one would have been sur-
  prised, and Duck-With-No-Wings was no excep-
  tion. He stared upward, his round copper face 
  distorted with amazement. There was nothing at 
  all to show from whence the Red Snow came. It 
  seemed to materialize in the thin, warm air of the 
  swamp. 
  The flakes were not falling on Duck-With-
  No-Wings, but they were descending close 
  enough that he could clearly see that they were 
  flakes. He had seen snow, of course, and he 
  had not the slightest doubt that this stuff was red 
  snow. 
  About that time, a series of awful screams 
  began coming from the spot whence had gone 
  the two nearly naked fugitives. Their squawling 
  was extremely hideous. 
   The combination of red snow and fearful 
  shrieks made Duck-With-No-Wings decide he 
  would rather be elsewhere. But before he fled, 
  he ran over to the tree under the bark of which 
  one of the men had thrust a package. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings was an acquisitive 
  soul. He drew out the package. Then he ran with 
  great speed and did not stop until he was far 
  away in the swamp. After a due interval, he 
  found time to examine the package. He ex-
  pected to see money, or maybe jewelry. He was 
  disappointed, no little disgusted. 
  There were many wrappings of oiled pa-
  per around the object in the package. Removed, 
  these disclosed a cube, less than two inches in 
  diameter, of a substance the nature of which 
  defied Duck-With-No-Wings. It was red—a dull, 
  unimpressive carmine. 
   Duck-With-No-Wings had seen the seal-
  ing wax which they sometimes put on letters at 
  the Indian Agency, and he at first decided this 
  stuff was sealing wax. Then he thought it over, 
  and was not so sure. The man who had hidden 
  the stuff had acted as if it were extremely valu-
  able. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings decided to keep the 
  red substance and, if it was valuable, market it. 
  But he let the marketing endeavors wait. He was 
  still a little terrified by the red snow which he had 
  seen. He talked about it some, but after the 
  other Seminoles began to ridicule him, he kept 
  silent. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings sat much by himself, 
  thinking of the day when he would go to one of 
  the white man's towns and perhaps get much 
  money from the red lump which he now carried 
  in the pouch around his own neck. It was nice to 
  think of such things. 
  THE police departments in various Ameri-
  can cities were doing some thinking about this 
  time, too. In Cleveland, they were thinking about 
  
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  3 
  what could have happened to Valdemar 
  Svelaska. 
  Valdemar Svelaska was a plump, pleas-
  ant-looking man who, years ago, had designed 
  war planes for Germany; but now he was an 
  American citizen, and perhaps the greatest de-
  signer of aircraft, as well as the owner of a large 
  plane factory. 
  He 
  had 
  disappeared, 
  had 
  Valdemar 
  Svelaska. His family insisted he had gone rabbit 
  hunting with his dog. He had simply not been 
  heard from again. 
  There was a farmer who told of seeing a 
  cloud of what looked like red snow fall upon the 
  portion of his field where it was thought Valde-
  mar Svelaska might have gone rabbit hunting. 
  But this farmer was known to be something of a 
  spiritualist, a fellow who frequently claimed he 
  had seen manifestations. No one gave his story 
  a great deal of attention. 
  It was thought that the famous airplane 
  designer might have suffered amnesia and wan-
  dered away. 
  H. U. Summervane Lawmer was the next 
  one to disappear. Lawmer was a gentleman who 
  had the right to place numerous letters designat-
  ing university degrees after his name, and he 
  had just been appointed to the chair of chemical 
  research in one of the nations most erudite uni-
  versities. He was visiting in South Carolina.  
  After taking off in his private plane, flying 
  alone, H. U. Summervane Lawmer was not seen 
  again.  
  A fisherman reported seeing a cloud of 
  reddish substance in the sky, and said this 
  seemed to fall toward the earth and disperse, as 
  if it were snow melting.  
  Now it happened that this fisherman was a 
  notorious liar who was always seeing things, 
  usually sea serpents. No one credited his story. 
  This was unfortunate. The other witness 
  had been a farmer who saw visions. The second 
  witness was a confirmed liar. So the significance 
  of their stories was entirely missed, and thereby 
  was also missed a clue which might have saved 
  the world much terror and grief.  
  In the next week, five more men vanished. 
  All were, colloquially speaking, "big shots"; one 
  was an international banker, another a famous 
  mechanical engineer, the third a United States 
  senator, the fourth a noted manufacturer of 
  automobiles, and the fifth an extremely brilliant 
  young under-secretary in the United States War 
  Department. 
  Such is the phlegmatic nature of the 
  American public that these disappearances did 
  not gain a great deal of attention. No one had 
  seen any more red snow. 
  No one suspected there was a connection 
  between the disappearances. No one dreamed 
  that the disappearances had a profound impor-
  tance, that they were of a magnitude vital be-
  yond any importance of the separate individuals 
  themselves. 
  And then Doc Savage came to Florida. 
   
   
   
  Chapter II 
  THE TRUNK SNATCHERS 
   
  DOC SAVAGE saw the two fruit peddlers 
  when they first drove up and stopped before the 
  Hotel Biscayneville, the conservative and not 
  overly large hostelry where he had registered. It 
  was some moments before he suspected any-
  thing. Then, when he did, it was just a little too 
  late. 
  The peddlers and their one-horse wagons 
  were very ordinary looking; scores like them 
  ranged the streets of Miami, peddling cocoanuts, 
  grapefruit, and oranges. Neither was it suspi-
  cious that the two drivers should advance and 
  begin talking. They might have been disputing 
  over routes. 
  They were not. But it was not immediately 
  that Doc Savage became aware of that. 
  The two drivers were stocky black fellows. 
  However, their lips were not thick and both wore 
  colored sun glasses of the type not at all un-
  
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  4 
  common in Florida. These latter two facts were 
  destined to take on much significance. 
  Doc Savage neglected to give the ped-
  dlers the attention they deserved, because he 
  was interested in a group of half a dozen young 
  men who stood in front of the hotel. Two of 
  these carried large press cameras. The others 
  had pads of copy paper stuffed in their pockets. 
  They all looked indignant.  
  They were newspaper reporters and pho-
  tographers. From where he stood in his room, 
  behind a Venetian blind, Doc Savage could not 
  be seen by the journalists. He did not want to be 
  seen. He wished heartily that the newspaper 
  reporters and photographers would go away. He 
  wished that they were not even aware he was in 
  Florida. 
  Doc had tried hard enough to arrive in Mi-
  ami unobtrusively, but an attendant at the airport 
  where he had left his plane had tipped off the 
  gentlemen of the press, and they had de-
  scended like a locust swarm. 
  The fact that Doc had insisted he was in 
  Miami for nothing more spectacular than to con-
  duct scientific experiments whereby it might be 
  possible to eliminate mosquitoes by spreading a 
  peculiar insect disease fatal only to mosquitoes, 
  had not satisfied the newspaper men. 
  Doc Savage, rumor had it, was a man who 
  walked always in the shadow of peril and ex-
  citement, and the reporters refused to believe he 
  was in Florida for anything so prosaic as scien-
  tific experiments. 
  Doc Savage, the reporters knew, was a 
  man who was devoting his life to the often 
  thankless, always dangerous, and sometimes 
  seemingly mad, task of righting wrongs, of aid-
  ing the oppressed, and of—strangely enough—
  not exactly punishing evildoers, but of causing 
  things to happen to them which not infrequently 
  moved them to change their ways. 
  Furthermore, Doc Savage was supposed 
  to be something of a miracle man, a muscular 
  marvel and a mental wizard. Practically every 
  act of Doc's was supposed to be good newspa-
  per copy. That was why the scribes were indig-
  nant Doc had refused to interview them. 
  Doc Savage did not like publicity. It was 
  distasteful, for he was a genuinely modest man. 
  Sometimes, it was dangerous. 
  Doc Savage took his eyes from the news-
  paper men and glanced at the two peddlers. His 
  gaze became fixed. Doc Savage had strange 
  eyes that were like pools of flake-gold, and now 
  tiny winds seemed to stir the flakes briskly. He 
  whirled and leaped to his hand bag. He dug out 
  a pair of binoculars. Back at the window, he fo-
  cused the lenses on the conversing peddlers. 
  By intensive study, Doc Savage had 
  learned to do so many things, that he was some-
  times considered to have slightly supernatural 
  capabilities. Among other things, he could read 
  lips. He read them now through the powerful 
  binoculars. 
  The two peddlers were not speaking Eng-
  lish, but a foreign dialect. This tongue was one 
  which required use of the lips in forming many 
  words. Moreover, the language was one which 
  Doc had studied. 
  "The bronze man's baggage will be here 
  soon," said one peddler. "We will act then.” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE held no doubts about him-
  self being the subject of conversation. He gave 
  the focus screw of the binoculars a slight twist. 
  “There must be no slip," said the second 
  of the two peddlers, speaking the same foreign 
  tongue. "Our own lives and the lives of many 
  others depend on the outcome of the next five 
  minutes." 
  “It is true," agreed the other. "It is even 
  possible that the destiny of much of the world 
  rests with our success or failure." 
  Doc Savage did not move; his unusually 
  regular bronze features did not alter expression, 
  but into the hotel room there penetrated a weird 
  sound, a not unmusical trilling which ran up and 
  down a vagrant scale, a sound distinctly inspir-
  ing—unnatural, fantastic. It might have been the 
  filtering of a wind through a denuded forest, or 
  the call of an exotic tropical bird. Perhaps the 
  most startling feature was the way the sound 
  seemed to come from everywhere in the room, 
  yet from no definite spot. 
  This sound was a peculiar characteristic of 
  Doc Savage, a thing he did unconsciously when 
  his thought processes were particularly agitated. 
  Just now, it meant that he was surprised. He 
  had encountered many fantastic situations. But 
  this one was unique. 
  Two shabby fruit peddlers talking as if the 
  destiny of a good part of the world depended on 
  something they were going to do. They were 
  quite sober about it, too. And they evidently 
  thought no one was in earshot, so they could not 
  be putting on a show. 
  A little over a score of yards distant from 
  the peddlers, the party of newspaper men were 
  still looking disappointed and disgusted and the 
  cameramen were contenting themselves by tak-
  ing pictures of the Hotel Biscayneville. Traffic 
  
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  5 
  muttered on the street; an airplane made a dis-
  tant moan, and warm breezes rattled palm 
  fronds outside the hotel window. It was a very 
  peaceful scene. 
  A truck rounded the nearest corner. It was 
  not a large truck, nor a rich-looking one. Doc 
  Savage watched it closely. It was the vehicle 
  which he had hired to bring his trunks, shipped 
  ahead by several days, from the station to the 
  hotel. 
  The truck pulled in to the curb and 
  stopped, almost between the two fruit peddlers' 
  carts. Inside its large van of a body, various suit-
  cases and large trunks could be seen. All the 
  pieces of luggage were plentifully smeared with 
  hotel and steamship stickers. 
  Things began to happen. 
   
   
  ONE of the peddlers barked something in 
  his native language. He and his fellow ran to-
  ward the truck. Both drew revolvers. There were 
  two men in the truck, the driver and an assistant 
  to help him wrestle baggage. Both looked at the 
  two peddlers, then displayed excellent sense by 
  putting their hands up as quickly and as high as 
  they could. 
  "Sit very still," directed one of the ped-
  dlers.  
  Driver and assistant sat very still. 
  Doc Savage whipped away from the shut-
  tered window, ran to his hand bag—the one 
  from which he had taken the binoculars—and 
  jerked up one of the flaps which separated the 
  container into halves. This revealed five weap-
  ons which, one not knowing much about fire-
  arms, might have mistaken for automatic pistols. 
  Doc Savage removed one of these. Just 
  ahead of the trigger guard, he clipped a maga-
  zine which resembled one of the reels on which 
  film for home movie cameras is put up. Lying 
  beside the unique weapons were five cylinders 
  somewhat over an inch and a half thick and 
  nearly a foot long. Doc affixed one of these to 
  the muzzle of the over-sized automatic device, 
  by a patent coupling. 
  Going to the window, he lifted it without 
  much noise. The two peddlers were searching 
  truck driver and assistant for weapons. Doc 
  Savage took a deliberate aim. 
  There was a sound as if some one had 
  whistled and then clapped hands once in the 
  distance. There was almost no report from the 
  unusual gun; it was a machine pistol of Doc's 
  own construction, the mechanism so fashioned 
  that, unlike the ordinary type of automatic and 
  submachine gun, it could be operated with a 
  silencer. The whistle was made by the bullet; the 
  clap was the sound of the slug hitting one of the 
  peddlers. 
  The man who had been hit barked a sur-
  prise and jumped, slapping a hand to his thigh. 
  "What is it?" demanded his companion. 
  Then there was another whistle and clap, and 
  he, too, started and grabbed a portion of his 
  anatomy. 
  The pair cackled at each other in their na-
  tive speech. They stared at small holes in their 
  clothing, where the bullets had entered. Appar-
  ently this was their first experience with a si-
  lenced gun. 
  Then they returned their attention to the 
  truck driver and his assistant, finished searching 
  the pair. Finding no weapons, they ran around to 
  the rear of the truck to tug at the gate fastening. 
  They seemed to have a great deal of diffi-
  culty with the fastening. Fumbling with it ap-
  peared to make them tired. They leaned against 
  the gate. Both brushed hands over their eyes. 
  Then they sat down behind the truck. Both 
  sighed. Both fell over and to all appearances 
  went to sleep. 
  Doc Savage knocked the Venetian blind 
  aside and threw a leg over the sill. His machine 
  pistol was charged with mercy bullets, thin metal 
  shells filled with a chemical concoction produc-
  ing quick unconsciousness. They had been ef-
  fective on the two strange peddlers. 
  Down the street, the group of newspaper 
  men had vanished as if some one had waved a 
  magic wand. They had seen the peddlers' guns. 
  Now that the peddlers were down, the journalists 
  thrust heads from behind palm boles and parked 
  cars; one fat fellow ceased trying to make a fire 
  hydrant serve as shelter. 
  Doc Savage swung out on the window sill 
  and prepared to drop the two stories to the nar-
  row lawn between the hotel front and the side-
  walk. 
  The mounds of oranges, cocoanuts and 
  grapefruit on the peddlers' carts erupted like vol-
  canoes. From each cart, three men leaped. 
  Their faces were black, but they were obviously 
  not Negroes; the blackness had the shine of 
  grease paint. Each held a sawed-off automatic 
  shotgun. 
  As one man, all six leveled their shotguns 
  at Doc Savage and began shooting. 
   
   
  ONCE each day since childhood, Doc 
  Savage had forced himself to go through a rou-
  
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  6 
  tine of exercises lasting for two hours—
  exercises which had not only given him an 
  amazing physique and unusually sharp senses, 
  but had developed his thinking processes as 
  well. 
  He had, for instance, made reels of motion 
  pictures showing the encroachment of danger in 
  all the manners he could conceive, as well as 
  men attacking him in various fashions. He made 
  a practice of viewing these frequently, giving 
  himself split parts of seconds to think of a way 
  out of whatever difficulty presented, and striving 
  to think of a new way out each time he viewed 
  the scenes. 
  He always witnessed these films in pri-
  vate, because the procedure usually struck oth-
  ers as somewhat silly. But by this device, he had 
  schooled himself to think swiftly in pinches. 
  Doc was hanging from the window sill by 
  his hands. There was not much room to swing 
  back up. It would take a moment. Dropping to 
  the ground would be even more foolhardy, for 
  there was no shelter. 
  But there was another window below, with 
  a window box holding flowering plants on the sill. 
  Doc dropped. 
  The window box broke under his weight, 
  fell free, spilling rich black dirt and plants. But it 
  held the giant bronze man for an instant, long 
  enough for him to bundle his arms about his 
  face and dive through the glass panes into the 
  hotel room. He landed ungracefully in a shower 
  of glass. 
  Shotgun slugs clouted at what remained 
  of the window panes. With a loud ripping, lead 
  came completely through the thin wall of the ho-
  tel. It was a frame building, lightly constructed, 
  and the automatic shotguns seemed to be 
  charged with two or three large lead slugs to the 
  cartridge. The guns were making thunder in the 
  street. 
  Doc Savage came to his feet, ran to the 
  door, found it locked, and rammed it with a 
  shoulder. The cheap wood panel fell off its 
  hinges and let him through to his right. Outside, 
  the shotguns still whooped. 
  From the stairway came another uproar, a 
  grunting and squealing punctuated by irregular 
  thumps and yells. 
  A pig appeared, tumbling headlong down 
  the steps, squealing with every bump. This pig 
  was a truly remarkable specimen of the familia 
  suidae, having the legs of a dog, a scrawny 
  body, a snout of incredible length, and a pair of 
  ears which might well have been meant for 
  wings. 
  A man followed the shote, head over 
  heels, down the steps, yelling painfully each 
  time he collided with a tread. The man had lean 
  shoulders and thin hips which gave him a wasp-
  ish contour, and he was attired in a fashion that 
  was sartorially perfect—striped trousers, fawn 
  vest and cutaway, and a dislodged silk hat kept 
  pace with his progress down the stairs. Although 
  it looked as if the man was being jarred hard 
  enough to loosen his teeth, he still retained a 
  tight grip on a slender black cane. 
  Pig and man slammed out on the floor at 
  the bottom of the steps. The man sat up daz-
  edly, then struck furiously at the pig with his 
  cane. The shote jumped at just the right instant. 
  The dapper man got up, gave his cane a 
  wrench, and it came apart, disclosing that it was 
  a sword cane with a thin, flexible blade. He 
  made purposefully for the strange-looking pig. 
  A voice bawled from up the stairs, "You 
  touch Habeas Corpus and I'll tear an arm off 
  you, Ham!" 
   
   
   
  The dapper "Ham" yelled, "Monk, you 
  come down here and you'll get the same thing 
  that your hog is going to get!" 
  This got a roar from upstairs. 
  "You heard me!" squawled "Monk." "Lay 
  off Habeas or I’ll tie knots in you!” 
  "The infernal hog tripped me!" Ham 
  shouted back up the stairs. "I think my back is 
  broken!" 
  
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  7 
  "You'll be positive it's broken if you touch 
  that hog!" Mont promised. "Anyhow, I saw what 
  happened. You kicked at Habeas and fell down 
  the stairs." 
  Ham 
  waved 
  his 
  sword 
  cane 
  and 
  screamed, "Come down here, you missing link, 
  you awful mistake of nature! I'll hollow you out 
  and stuff you with pork!" 
  "Just as you say, brother!" Monk bellowed, 
  and came bounding down the stairs. 
   
   
   
  The man was a physical freak with all the 
  characteristics of a bull ape, being hardly more 
  than five feet in height; almost equally as wide, 
  and with arms some inches longer than his legs. 
  His pleasantly homely face was composed 
  mostly of mouth. 
  The only stitch of clothing he wore was a 
  sheet, out of which he had fashioned a loin 
  cloth. Water dripped from the rusty bristles 
  which studded his simian frame, indicating he 
  had just jumped from a bathtub. 
  Both Monk and Ham seemed to see Doc 
  Savage for the first time. They gaped at the 
  bronze man.  
  "What's the fireworks outside, Doc?" Monk 
  demanded. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE said, "That remains to be 
  learned," and whipped toward the lobby and the 
  street door. 
  Monk and Ham followed him, trailed by the 
  pig, Habeas Corpus. Monk was Lieutenant 
  Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, and although 
  there did not seem to be room for more than a 
  spoonful of brains behind his low forehead, he 
  was admittedly one of the greatest living indus-
  trial chemists. Ham was Brigadier General 
  Theodore Marley Brooks, who was perhaps the 
  most astute lawyer ever to pass through the por-
  tals of Harvard. 
  They were always quarreling, these two; 
  no one could recall one having addressed a civil 
  word to the other. One not knowing them could 
  hardly conceive that they were the best of 
  friends, that each had more than once risked his 
  life to save the other.  
  Associated with Doc Savage as assis-
  tants, bound, to the bronze man by a common 
  love of excitement, was a group of five men. 
  Monk and Ham were two members of that 
  group. 
  Doc Savage, once inside the lobby, went 
  flat on the floor as a shotgun burst slapped glass 
  out of the large lobby window. Monk and Ham 
  slammed down beside him. A shotgun roared 
  again. 
  They took a chance and looked outside. 
  Three of the men who had been under the fruit 
  in the carts were using shotguns. The other 
  three were clambering inside the baggage truck.  
  "They're after your baggage, Doc!" Monk 
  grunted.  
  "So it seems," the bronze man admitted. 
  "Why?" asked Monk, whose voice, in re-
  pose, was small and childlike. 
  "I cannot imagine," Doc replied. 
  Ham squinted at the bronze man. "You 
  haven't been cooking something up, Doc?" 
  "Certainly not," Doc told him. "This came 
  out of a clear sky. I haven't the slightest idea of 
  what it is about." 
  Monk grunted noisily and fished inside the 
  folds of the sheet from which he had made his 
  breech cloth. He brought out two metallic eggs 
  which he had grabbed when he first heard the 
  shooting. 
  "I'll lay one of these out there and see 
  what effect it has," he said, small-voiced. 
  He sailed the grenade through a window 
  from which the glass had been shot, it hit a palm 
  tree in just exactly such a way that it caromed 
  under the rear of the baggage truck and burst. 
  The gunmen with the black grease paint 
  on their features promptly whipped compact gas 
  masks from under their coats and donned them. 
  "Hah!" Ham sneered at Monk. "A lot of 
  good you did!"  
  
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  8 
  "Hah!" Monk jeered back at him. "Watch 
  and see!" 
  One of the truck attackers stepped boldly 
  into the acrid cloud of gas fumes, seemingly 
  confident that his mask would prove effective. 
  He got a surprise. He seemed to double up with 
  a great sneeze which blew the mask mouthpiece 
  out of his teeth. An instant later—and the other 
  two working in the truck rear began to sneeze 
  and reel about. In their agony, they tore their 
  masks off. 
  "Hah!" Monk nudged Ham "What do you 
  think of that? My own special product, that gas. 
  There isn't a mask made that is effective against 
  it." 
  "Rats," Ham said. "Look!" 
  The truck attackers were running away. 
   
   
  THREE attackers that were blinded were 
  helped by the three that were unaffected by 
  Monk's gas, and these six coöperated in carry-
  ing the two who had been dropped by Doc Sav-
  age's mercy bullets. 
  Monk, greatly excited, bounded out with 
  some idea of making an attack. The pig, Habeas 
  Corpus, followed him. 
  The black-faced men whirled suddenly, fi r-
  ing, and Monk flopped back, but the pig Habeas, 
  was not so lucky. He spun over and over, obvi-
  ously hit by a bullet, and began squealing.  
  Monk emitted an angry roar, but could do 
  nothing, not even reach the pig. The black-faced 
  men had a touring car waiting around the corner. 
  They reached it, and the machine moaned 
  away. 
  Still roaring, Monk lunged to his pig. He 
  made a quick examination. Great relief came 
  over his simian face. 
  "Leg nicked," he said. "Let's get them 
  guys." 
  Doc and his two men ran to the corner, 
  stopped a car, ejected the surprised driver, and 
  gave chase. But an old and entirely sufficient 
  dodge defeated them; those in the fleeing car 
  opened a large carton of big-headed roofing 
  nails on the pavement, and these punctured all 
  four tires of the pursuing machine. 
  Doc drove into a service station to have 
  the tires replaced, and they walked back to the 
  hotel. 
  "One thing sure," grumbled the small-
  voiced Monk, "whatever they were after, they 
  didn't get it." 
  Ham eyed Doc Savage. "Were those fel-
  lows Negroes, Doc?" 
  "No," said the bronze man. "Neither were 
  they Americans.” 
  "No?" Ham fingered his sword cane. 
  "They all had high cheek bones and a cer-
  tain set to their eyes," Doc reminded. "That 
  would indicate they were all of one nationality." 
  The pig, Habeas Corpus, hobbled to meet 
  them, and Monk, seizing upon his pet, bore him 
  off for bandaging—also to dress himself, for, 
  robed in the sheet, he was the center of all eyes. 
  The pig was trailed by a swarm of news-
  papermen and photographers, and for the next 
  five minutes, Doc Savage was the center of a 
  verbal mêlée as the journalists tried to get sto-
  ries for their papers. 
  When Doc Savage explained that he had 
  no idea who had made the attack on the bag-
  gage truck, or why it was made, they naturally 
  did not believe him. He tried to tell them that he 
  had come to Florida to perfect a disease fatal to 
  mosquitoes; but this only got a laugh. 
  The police arrived, and Doc repeated to 
  them the same story. He was asked if his bag-
  gage held anything of especial value, and he 
  explained that it had been packed in New York 
  with scientific equipment and shipped some 
  days before, and had been lying in a Miami sta-
  tion since. He added that he was entirely at a 
  loss to explain the affair. 
  This satisfied the police, for they had a 
  healthy respect for the man of bronze and his 
  methods. 
  The truck driver and his assistant, un-
  harmed but shaky, carried the trunks and bags 
  inside the Biscayneville, then departed, having 
  had an experience which would doubtless fur-
  nish them conversation for a long time to come. 
  The newspapermen gave up questioning 
  Doc Savage and went off to turn their stories in. 
  It was a good yarn. 
  "There'll be more hot stuff, as long as this 
  Doc Savage is in town," one scribe told his fel-
  lows. "Trouble and this Doc Savage have a way 
  of finding each other." 
   
   
  THE bronze man perched on one of the 
  large trunks while a hotel maid swept up glass 
  which had been shot out of the windows by the 
  mysterious raiders. Monk and Ham waited until 
  the maid departed, Monk had rigged his pet pig 
  up with bandages and tied him to the bed. Then 
  Doc Savage spoke. 
  "There is something behind this," he said 
  slowly. "Those men wanted my baggage. I do 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  9 
  not know why. Perhaps, if we looked through the 
  stuff, a reason might suggest itself." 
  "An idea," Monk grinned. 
  The bronze man began shifting the trunks 
  about, handling their not inconsiderable weight 
  with a casualness which gave indication of the 
  tremendous strength in his great frame. He 
  tipped one of the trunks on end. He became per-
  fectly still, rigid. 
  His strange trilling note, the fantastic 
  sound that ran up and down the musical scale 
  without adhering to a tune or without seeming to 
  come from any definite spot, came into being, 
  persisted for a brief interval, then betook itself 
  away into nothingness. 
  He put a finger on the trunk end and said, 
  "Look!" 
  There was a round puncture through the 
  metal ease of the trunk, and through the wood 
  reënforcing, a hole perhaps three-eighths of an 
  inch across. 
  "Bullet!" Monk breathed. 
  "Must have been shot into the trunk when 
  they were trying to get the baggage," Ham 
  added. 
  Doc Savage eased the trunk down and fit-
  ted a key in the lid. 
  "It is possible the raid was staged to fire 
  this shot—rather than seize the baggage, as we 
  concluded," he said. 
  He opened the lid. 
  "Blazes!" Monk exploded. 
  There was a man inside the trunk—the 
  body of a man, rather, for the bullet had made a 
  wound in the center of the skull, which had not 
  bled extensively. 
   
   
  Chapter III 
  RED IN THE RING 
   
  THE dead man was tall—they removed 
  him from the trunk to examine, that they might 
  be sure he was dead—and he wore clothes 
  which were wrinkled, yet tailored of expensive 
  cloth and not badly worn. He had a bald spot on 
  the top of his head, back of where the bullet had 
  entered; there was a typical Florida tan on his 
  face, the tan of a native, and over the bridge of 
  his nose was a pale strip, while other pale 
  streaks ran directly back from the corners of his 
  eyes to his ears. 
  "Wore shell-rimmed glasses," Monk said 
  slowly. "Wonder where they are." 
  The glasses, it developed, were inside the 
  man's coat. in one of his pockets was a small 
  flashlight; in the other pocket was a flat bottle 
  and an object wrapped in wax paper. 
  Doc Savage uncorked the bottle, tested it 
  with his nostrils, and said, “Water.” He un-
  wrapped the wax paper and found a peanut-
  butter sandwich. When they looked in the trunk 
  under the body, they found other wax papers 
  which had been around sandwiches. 
  "The fellow has been in the trunk some 
  time," Doc decided quietly. "He entered pre-
  pared for a considerable stay.” 
  The apish Monk scratched his bullet of a 
  head. "But how did he get in there? The lock 
  was not broken." 
  "Almost anyone can pick a trunk lock such 
  as this," Doc reminded. 
  "But he was locked in," Monk pointed out. 
  "Which means some one helped him," 
  Doc agreed. 
  They rolled the dead man over in order to 
  get to his hip pockets, and as they did so, there 
  was a clatter and an object rolled across the 
  floor. Monk reached down to pick it up, then 
  jerked his hand back hastily. 
  "His false teeth," he muttered. 
  The dead man had worn a complete set of 
  upper molars. Doc Savage dropped a handker-
  chief over them, lifted them, then indicated with 
  a finger. 
  The portion of the plate fitting against the 
  gums was covered with what looked like a layer 
  of red wax. This did not cover the whole forma-
  tion of the false teeth, and looked as if it had 
  been molded in place with a finger. 
  "Guess they didn't fit him and he built 
  them with sealing wax," Monk decided aloud. 
  Doc Savage tucked the false teeth in the 
  upper outside pocket of the dead man's coat, the 
  pocket commonly reserved for ornamental 
  handkerchiefs. 
  "Was he killed recently?" Ham asked. 
  "Within the last half hour," Doc replied. 
  "That means while the raid was in progress on 
  the truck, he was shot." 
  They continued examination of the dead 
  man's pockets, and came finally to the left hip 
  pocket. It held a billfold, and this, opened, 
  yielded one of the identification forms which are 
  usually found in new billfolds. It had been filled 
  out: 
   
  Prof. Casson Adams, 
  7242 Floral Cliff, 
  Miami, Florida. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  10 
   
  Monk squinted small eyes at Doc Savage. 
  "I'm going to ask a silly question. Do we look into 
  this, or do we?" 
  "We do," Doc told him. 
  Monk sighed, as if a great load had tum-
  bled off his shoulders. 
  "I was afraid this Florida trip would really 
  turn out with us spending all of our time trying to 
  give mosquitoes the influenza or something," he 
  said. "Now it looks interesting!" 
  Ham scowled at him and snapped, "I 
  wonder where this Floral Cliff is?" 
  "A city real-estate map should show us," 
  Doc said. "We will rent a car." 
  "I guess I'll leave the hog here to conva-
  lesce," Monk decided. 
   
   
  HALF an hour later, Monk was looking at 
  Floral Cliff and relieving himself of a loud snort. 
  "Floral Cliff!" he grimaced. "They should 
  call the place Aroma Flats." 
  He pinched his flattened, much-broken 
  nose between a furry thumb and forefinger. 
  There was odor in the air. It was a very 
  distinctive scent. It was remindful of a bonfire fed 
  with old overshoes, rags, and now and then a 
  fistful of sulphur. An added touch was a tang 
  similar to cooking cabbage. 
  Sand was all about them, here, and there 
  looking as if it had been played on by a prepos-
  terously huge child with a shovel, for there were 
  deep grooves, as well as mounds which bore no 
  similarity in formation. 
  Almost the only vegetation growing on the 
  dunes was palmetto, and this, in spots, was too 
  thick to permit convenient passage. But more 
  often, the sand was bare.  
  The fantastic and unpleasant odor, while it 
  was not strong, seemed to have permeated eve-
  rything in the vicinity. 
  The car which Doc Savage had rented, a 
  small touring, attacked the sand which the wind 
  had heaped across the beach trail. The exhaust 
  alternately pounded and sagged as if engaged 
  in a terrific struggle, then, with a few violent 
  jerks, the machine came to a stop half across a 
  sand drift. 
  Monk got out and looked under the car 
  and saw radius rods and front axle buried in 
  coral particles. 
  "Looks like we ride shank's mare from 
  here," he grunted. 
  They got out and went on. There was a 
  sharp wind off the sea; they could hear the noise 
  of waves breaking and it was like a great mouse 
  playing in a box of loosely wadded paper. The 
  wind buffeted their ankles and occasionally their 
  hands and faces, with sand particles; it pushed 
  the weird odor into their nostrils, making the 
  aroma seem doubly oppressive. 
  "Two bits says we're on the wrong road," 
  Monk complained. 
  "Look!" Ham pointed. 
  Barren as was the waste of sand, rather 
  ancient-looking signs, nailed to stakes, were 
  sticking up at intervals. These bore the names of 
  streets, streets which had existed only on the 
  maps of imaginative real-estate dealers. The 
  legend on one said: 
   
  7100 Block, 
  Floral Cliff. 
   
  "The number we're hunting is 7242 floral 
  Cliff," Ham added. "It is probably over that next 
  dune." 
  Monk looked at the next dune, which was 
  thick with palmetto, and snorted, "A swell place 
  for a house with a number!" 
  They continued advancing and Doc Sav-
  age, not speaking, however, pointed out the fact 
  that the barren road had been used recently, for 
  there were footprints in the sand. Most of them 
  were obliterated by wind driftage, although here 
  and there they stood out plainly. At points, there 
  was evidence that wheeled conveyances used 
  the trail, although infrequently.  
  The men topped the dune and stopped. 
  "What did I tell you?" Ham asked. 
  They had come to a wall. Once it had 
  been an impressive, carefully constructed thing 
  of stucco, but the stucco had fallen away and 
  the bricks beneath had cracked their mortar and 
  in places had fallen to the sand. The barrier had 
  a height of eight or nine feet. 
  Standing atop the dune, they could see a 
  thicket of scrawny palms inside the wall, and 
  beyond that, what seemed to be a once prepos-
  sessing house which was now in a state of al-
  most fantastic disrepair. Gaping holes, where 
  the tiles of the roof had fallen in, were visible, 
  and stucco had scabbed off such of the walls as 
  they could see. 
  "Spooky-looking joint," Monk muttered. 
  "Built during the boom, then left to go to seed." 
  The trail through the dunes angled around 
  and led them to a gate. This was an affair of 
  rusted iron bars which formed an ornamental 
  grille that was not unimpressive, but boards had 
  been nailed on the inside. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 11 
  Monk tried to find a crack in the planking. 
  He looked surprised. 
  "What d'you know!" he breathed. 
  Ham scowled at him. "What is it, you miss-
  ing link?" 
  "Canvas nailed on the inside," Monk mut-
  tered. "Looks as if we were not supposed to see 
  in." 
  There was a bell cord hanging beside the 
  gate, an iron handle secured to its end, and Doc 
  pulled this. The cord broke and the handle came 
  away in his fingers; there was no sound but the 
  rotten chug of the cord breaking. 
  Monk took another look through the gate 
  and added, "The canvas is not new. Looks as if 
  it had been there a few weeks, anyway." 
  Doc Savage called sharply, in a voice that 
  carried far: "Hello inside!" 
  The silence which answered might have 
  been that of death. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE moved to the right, sank a 
  little and leaped upward, catching the crest of 
  the wall. Bricks loosened in rotten mortar, gate 
  way, and let him back to the sand. He tried 
  again, and this time got on top of the wall.  
  He surveyed the interior for a moment, 
  then helped Monk and Ham to clamber upon the 
  wall. They all looked, over the interior. 
  Palm trees and semitropical bushes had 
  once been planted with some adherence to a 
  landscaping plan, but had grown untended, in-
  terlacing into a miserly jungle which straggled 
  like a green festering around the decrepit man-
  sion, forming a setting which made the house 
  somehow like an animal, once healthy, but 
  which had strangled in the surrounding canker. 
  They began lowering themselves inside. 
  There came a clatter from their left, near 
  the foot of the wall. It was a tiny sound. 
  "Hey!" Monk grunted. "What was that?” 
  Doc Savage shifted to the left, strange 
  flake-gold eyes downcast, searching. He came 
  to a small depression in the soft sand. He hesi-
  tated. Then he dipped bronze fingers into the 
  sand and sifted, exploring.  
  The object which he brought out gave off 
  brilliant reflections in the Florida sunlight. 
  Monk peered closely, then let a long 
  breath of surprise make a hissing through his 
  teeth. 
  "Boy, oh boy!" he gasped. "Did somebody 
  throw that at us?" 
  Doc Savage rolled the thing he had picked 
  up in the cup of one bronze palm. It was a ring, 
  delicately feminine. The band was of white gold, 
  the portion around the setting of platinum, and 
  the stone itself was a blue-white diamond, 
  something near the size of a pencil eraser. 
  "Where'd it come from?" Monk's eyes 
  started to range the decrepit mansion—then, as 
  Doc Savage made a slight gesture, he fell to 
  eyeing the diamond ring again. 
  Doc had turned the ring over so that the 
  inner band, the portion under the setting, was 
  visible. 
  The space between the gem and inner 
  surface had been stuffed with a substance which 
  resembled red sealing wax more than it resem-
  bled any other common substance. A bit of tis-
  sue paper immediately under the diamond kept 
  the red material from showing through the facets 
  of the stone. 
  "Hey!" Monk exploded. "That red stuff—
  remember the false teeth of the man who was 
  killed in the trunk?” 
  "There was some of this red material stick-
  ing to the inside of the teeth!" Ham breathed. 
  "It looked like the same thing," Monk 
  amended. 
  Doc Savage made no comment. The 
  bronze man's weird flake-gold eyes were rang-
  ing over the pocked, shabby walls of the strange 
  abandoned mansion in the sand dunes. 
  So unexpectedly that it was startling, 
  Doc's fantastic trilling came into being. It had a 
  hastened, imperative quality, and might have 
  been the product of the wind which was sucking 
  at the sand under their feet. After an excited 
  moment, the sound was gone.  
  "Get out of here!" Doc said grimly. "Do it 
  as quickly as possible!"  
  Monk and Ham rolled their eyes to see 
  what Doc had sighted. They discerned nothing. 
  "Run!" Doc said, and the word was an im-
  perative command. 
  Monk and Ham both received an impatient 
  shove. They began to run, not knowing why, but 
  sure Doc had heard or seen something. They 
  prepared to scramble wildly over the wall. 
  Then they stopped suddenly. 
   
   
  A MAN had appeared on the wall. He had 
  come up from the other side, silently, with an 
  almost uncanny ease and lack of noise. He was 
  not especially tall, and he was lean-bodied, with 
  thin arms and legs. His thinness was not that of 
  emaciation, but rather that of a cat made lean by 
  much hunting. He wore golf knickers which were 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  12 
  very large and ballooned out above his knees, 
  making him look somewhat ridiculous. 
  His striking characteristic, however, was 
  his head. It was a head large beyond normal 
  proportions, with no vestige of hair upon it—no 
  mustache, eyebrows or lashes, the top entirely 
  shiny and bald. 
  The eyes were bulging under their lids, 
  somehow like halves of ripe blue plums stuck 
  upon the face with a narrow knife slit in each so 
  that the purplish meat of the fruit showed 
  through beneath. The mouth was unnaturally 
  small, its slit seeming scarcely larger than one of 
  the eyes, and looking, too, a little like them. 
  His skin was jet, amazingly black, except 
  for the back of one thin hand, where the black 
  had been rubbed away, showing that it was 
  grease paint covering skin of a definitely yellow-
  ish hue. 
  In both hands, the newcomer held large 
  electric light globes. These were more than two-
  thirds full of a liquid which had the color and 
  consistency of coffee. Over the bottoms of the 
  bulbs where the glass point projected—they 
  were of an old-fashioned type—adhesive tape 
  had been plastered. 
  "You will each lie down on your backs," he 
  said quietly. 
  Monk dropped words from a corner of his 
  oversize mouth. "Doc, this bird wasn't with the 
  gang who made the trunk raid, was he?" 
  "No," Doc Savage said. 
  The weird-looking man on the wall held 
  out his two light globes. 
  "Two of you understand something of 
  chemistry," he murmured. "Look at these 
  closely." 
  He spoke fluidly enough, but his voice was 
  shrill, almost a flute piping. 
  Doc and his two companions eyed the liq-
  uid in the light bulbs. They said nothing. "The 
  bulbs are filled with chlorine," offered the man on 
  the wall. "Of course, you can see that it does not 
  have the true greenish-yellow color of chlorine, 
  but that is because certain other chemicals have 
  been added to make it more effective." 
  Ham breathed, "Will chlorine hurt a man?” 
  Monk said, "For a little while. Then you 
  croak. Remember, they used it in the War." 
  The man on the wall lifted his strange 
  weapons. His weird, flute voice was grim. 
  "I trust you do not think I am being dra-
  matic," he piped. "I can hit you with these bulbs, 
  and you will die. Or you can lie down on your 
  backs.” 
  Monk began, "I can get to my machine 
  pistol—" 
  "No," Doc told him. "Do as this fellow 
  says. He's not bluffing." 
   They lowered themselves to the sand, 
  then lay down on their backs. 
  "Now," piped the man on the wall, "you will 
  each scoop up handfuls of sand and pour it over 
  your eyes. You can shut your eyes first, of 
  course. I merely do not wish you to see what I 
  am doing." 
  Reluctantly, Doc and his men scooped up 
  sand. 
   
   
  DAME FORTUNE is a vagrant, unreliable 
  hussy, and Doc Savage had long ago ceased to 
  rely upon her entirely. But occasionally the 
  wench did make an offering which was not to be 
  spurned. She made one now. As Doc dug down 
  for sand, his finger tips encountered half a brick 
  which had evidently toppled from the wall 
  months ago. 
  He dug up the brick, threw it. If he stopped 
  to think, it was for no appreciable interval. 
  The black-faced man on the wall was on 
  his guard, but it did him little good. The brick hit 
  him in the face. In throwing, Doc had sacrificed 
  force for accuracy, so the brick did not kill the 
  man. It did bowl him off the wall, however. 
  The fellow showed a remarkable presence 
  of mind and threw both his light bulbs inside the 
  fence. Then he fell in the other direction. 
  The bulbs landed not more than a dozen 
  feet from Doc and his two men. They burst with 
  squishy noises. Greenish-yellow vapor spread, 
  swirled in the wind, came toward Doc. 
  Ham had bounded up from the sand. 
  Monk followed him. But Monk was howling an-
  grily. He had piled sand on his eyes before Doc 
  threw the brick fragment, and some of the parti-
  cles had gotten under the lids. 
  Doc seized his two aides and rushed them 
  away from the spreading chlorine. There was 
  only one way for them to go—toward the house. 
  Ham started to bear toward the south end, 
  the most convenient corner. 
  "The other one!" Doc rapped. "There is a 
  man with a gun at one of the windows on that 
  side. Saw him just before the other fellow ap-
  peared on top of the fence. That is why I was in 
  such a hurry to get out of here." 
  They sloped around the house corner—
  and were instantly the center of a swirl of strik-
  ing, swearing men. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 13 
  The attackers—they all had black grease 
  paint on their faces—were coming out of a side 
  door. Nearly half a dozen were at hand, and the 
  door was spitting more of them. They seemed 
  confident of their numbers, for they piled upon 
  Doc and his men, bare-handed. 
  Nor was their confidence too greatly mis-
  placed. Doc Savage went down; even his tre-
  mendous strength was not proof against four 
  pairs of arms leeching to his ankles. He began 
  to club with his fists. Men moaned, screamed, 
  fell away. 
  The wind was carrying the cloud of chlo-
  rine toward them. 
  Beyond the chlorine menace, the man with 
  the big blackhead climbed shakily back atop the 
  wall. The half brick had started his face leaking 
  red strings down over his shirt and golf trousers. 
  He screamed something. It was in a for-
  eign language—the same tongue spoken by the 
  two fruit peddlers who had led the raid upon the 
  truck bearing Doc Savage's baggage. Then the 
  man changed to English. 
  "Get the thing they picked up from the 
  sand inside the wall!" he fluted. 
   
   
  HIS words seemed to redouble the vi o-
  lence of the fight as the wearers of the black 
  grease paint sought to overcome Doc Savage, 
  Monk and Ham. Seven of them had set upon 
  Doc now and, clawing and striking, sought to 
  hold him, only to succumb, in rapid succession, 
  to blows which they hardly saw at all, so swift 
  was the delivery. In no case did the bronze giant 
  hit a man twice. He picked his spots, and each 
  terrific fist impact felled an assailant.  
  "Use knives!" shrieked the man on the 
  wall. He was pawing scarlet off his hideous, hair-
  less countenance. "Shoot them!" 
  One tried to take the leader's advice, and 
  with a thin splinter of steel in his fist, lunged in 
  upon Doc Savage. The bronze man did not shift 
  position, except to throw out an arm with a 
  speed which made it appear to vanish in mid-air 
  so that the hand, when it reappeared, was fixed 
  upon the knife wielder's wrist. 
  The bronze man moved casually and the 
  knife wielder shrieked as if he were dying, in-
  stead of having his arm merely disjointed. 
  Ham still retained his sword cane, and 
  was using it as briskly as close quarters permit-
  ted. He made no attempt to run his foes through, 
  or induce fatal wounds by slashing and cutting. 
  Instead, he merely pricked with the tip of the 
  blade, which was coated with a sticky compound 
  for the first six inches of its length. And after a 
  few seconds, the men who had been pricked 
  began to weave on their feet. 
  "The blade is poisoned!" a man screamed. 
  "Get the thing which they picked up inside 
  the wall!" shrilled the bald black man who had 
  been hit with the brick. 
  Three grease-painted fellows hit Doc si-
  multaneously. The sand gave poor footing. He 
  was upset. They clawed at him. One, purely by 
  accident, tore open one of Doc's coat pockets, 
  and it chanced that into this same pocket he had 
  dropped the ring. The ring fell out. A black-faced 
  man seized it. 
  "It's the Space girl's diamond ring!" he 
  yelled. 
  "Run!" piped the man on the fence. "The 
  chlorine!" 
  The bilious chlorine was almost upon the 
  men as they began to run. They left Doc Savage 
  and his two aides, and seemed not to care what 
  happened to their own fellows who had been 
  overcome in the fight. 
   
   
  MONK, still quite blind from the sand in his 
  eyes, had been lunging about, striking at ran-
  dom, and now he accidentally hit Ham, knocking 
  the sword-cane-carrying lawyer sprawling. 
  "That was no accident!" Ham shrieked un-
  reasonably. 
  Doc shoved Monk, getting him in motion, 
  and Monk struggled and tried to strike back until 
  it dawned on him that he was being manhandled 
  by Doc. Ham also reared up on his feet. 
  They headed to the left, toward the wall. 
  There was no shooting. For the moment, action 
  had suspended while every one escaped the 
  chlorine. 
  As it developed, the recess was hardly 
  necessary, for an air current caught the chlorine 
  as it piled along the side of the house, and the 
  stuff backed up, was swept toward the roof and 
  away, dissipating itself in the brilliant sunlight. 
  The man with the big, hairless head had 
  vanished from the wall during the excitement. 
  The others had doubled back and entered the 
  house. 
  Doc Savage reached the wall, gave his 
  two aides a hand over, then crossed over it him-
  self. 
  "The man with the big head dropped out-
  side the wall," Ham rapped. "Let's get him!" 
  But Doc Savage was already whipping 
  along the wall toward the spot where the fellow 
  in golf knickers must be lurking. Ham followed. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  14 
  Monk, eyes as yet not functioning properly, 
  stumbled along clumsily. Ham came back, 
  grabbed Monk by the short hair on top of his 
  head and guided him roughly. 
  “Ouch!" Monk groaned. 
  "You will slough me by accident, will you?” 
  Ham hissed. 
  Ahead, Doc had reached the corner. He 
  thrust his head around, ready to draw back in-
  stantly; but the bald quarry was not in sight. 
  Footprints in the sand showed where the fellow 
  had run, in the opposite direction, along the wall. 
  Doc followed them. Ham came in his 
  wake, still leading Monk urgently by the hair. 
  They stopped when they heard a voice. It 
  was the flutelike tone of the bald man, calling to 
  those inside the wall. 
  "Are you sure you got whatever it was 
  they picked up?" he piped. 
  "Sure!" some one bawled. "The ring—" 
  "I do not think it was the ring," called the 
  shrill voice. "The ring has no importance—" 
  "There's some stuff that looks like red wax 
  under the diamond!" the man inside yelled back. 
  The chief piped shrill curses in his foreign 
  tongue. 
  "So that was it!" he trebled. "They have 
  the secret and are trying to pass it on to this Doc 
  Savage!" 
  "It must have been the girl!" yelled the 
  man inside. 
  "Of course!" piped the other. "Go quickly 
  and make sure she has not freed herself." 
  Ham came up alongside Doc Savage 
  where the bronze man crouched beside the wall. 
  "This is getting involved," he breathed. 
  “That red stuff seems to be the key to some 
  mystery. And they're holding a woman prisoner." 
  Doc nodded slowly. "She must have seen 
  us come over the wall and threw the ring at us to 
  get it in our hands." 
  Monk, making horrible grimaces, dug the 
  last of the sand out of his eyes. 
  "Just what in blazes do you reckon we're 
  gettin' into?" he asked mildly. Then he shot a 
  startled look at Doc. "Say, that guy they killed in 
  the trunk was—"  
  "Was evidently trying to get to us secretly," 
  Doc said, finishing Monk's thought. 
  "But how'd he know about the baggage at 
  the depot?" Monk pondered. "How'd he know 
  about us at the hotel? And why didn't he come 
  himself, instead of hiding in a trunk so he would 
  be carried there?" 
  "It looks as if some one has been keeping 
  very close tab on our movements," Doc said. 
  They were creeping forward now, seeking 
  their hairless quarry.  
  Monk muttered, "Say, you remember that 
  red stuff sticking to the false teeth of the guy in 
  the trunk? It looked like the same material that 
  was in the ring. Now, I wonder—" 
  Whatever Monk wondered, it never be-
  came clear. They heard a clatter, a scratching, 
  and knew the man with the monstrous head had 
  vaulted over the wall into the compound. 
   
   
  Chapter IV 
  THE FOUR PEDESTALS 
   
  DOC SAVAGE whipped into violent mo-
  tion, lunging upward and over the wall, poising 
  only an instant at the top to note the lean figure 
  of the chief of the black-faced men racing for the 
  ruined mansion. The bronze giant landed lightly 
  on the other side of the wall. 
  Monk and Ham came to life. Frantic, think-
  ing the bronze man had exposed himself to 
  shots from the house, they jumped up wildly and 
  hung half over the wall. Then they realized Doc 
  had not acted without thought. There were 
  scrubby palms near the wall here, and their 
  oversize boles furnished a shelter into which the 
  bronze giant had already flung himself. 
  "Cover me!" Doc called to Monk and Ham. 
  Monk grunted understandingly and pawed 
  a machine pistol out of a special underarm hol-
  ster which was padded so that its presence un-
  der his coat was hardly noticeable. He leveled 
  the gun and pulled the trigger. It moaned; the 
  ejector ran out brass empties. Bark and miser-
  able palm fronds showered onto the sand as the 
  mercy slugs searched for the hairless man. 
  But the fugitive had gained a little head-
  way, and he flung himself prone, wriggled 
  ahead, and was lost in the tangle of untended 
  tropical shrubbery. 
  Ham, retaining his grip on his sword cane, 
  got a second machine pistol into operation, di-
  recting the stream of slugs first at one of the 
  mansion windows, then another. His gun, and 
  the one wielded by Monk, were duplicates of the 
  weapon to which Doc had attached a silencer 
  and dropped the two fake peddlers back at the 
  Hotel Biscayneville. 
  Doc Savage was working forward through 
  the tangle of palms and thorny shrubs. He could 
  hear the bald man ahead of him, scuttling fast. 
  "Ark!" a voice called from the mansion. 
  “The basement window!" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 15 
  "Those two devils on the fence?" ques-
  tioned the flutelike voice of the hairless man. 
  "They can't hit it, Ark," said the voice. "But 
  you better step!" 
  Doc Savage put on speed. He came in 
  sight of the basement window just in time to see 
  the golf-hosed legs of his quarry disappearing 
  inside. Then, in the basement, a man saw Doc 
  and bellowed profanely. 
  What might have been a thick-walled steel 
  pipe of small diameter jutted out of the window. 
  Its tip acquired a flickering red spear-point of 
  flame. The weapon was an automatic rifle of 
  military caliber and its roar volleyed through the 
  compound. 
  Doc Savage had rolled behind a palm 
  which, after the fashion of palms when stunted, 
  was extremely wide near the ground. The tree 
  shuddered, and dead leaves loosened and flut-
  tered in the wind. A copro-nickel-jacketed slug 
  came entirely through the bole. More followed. 
  The bole began to split. Sand gushed and stung. 
  The racket was terrific. 
  Moving very carefully, because he had to 
  keep thoroughly sheltered, Doc Savage re-
  moved a flat metal case from beneath his coat. 
  The velvet interior of this was recessed for half a 
  dozen objects which might have been pigeon 
  eggs imitated in steel. Doc extracted an egg. 
  There was a tiny lever projecting from it, and he 
  shifted this with a thumb nail. Then he flung the 
  egglike object—not directly at the basement 
  window, but at a spot some twelve feet to the 
  side. 
  There was a flash, brilliant even in the in-
  tense Florida sunlight, and a shock which con-
  vulsed the earth noticeably. Sand bloomed up in 
  a vast mushroom. The near wall of the old man-
  sion weaved. Great cracks ran up through the 
  flying débris and sand. A portion of the wall fell 
  outward, showing the interior of a room. 
  Fragments came showering down and the 
  wind whipped the dust away; bricks clattered 
  and settled; more of the house wall fell, together 
  with a portion of the ancient roof tiles. Then 
  there was silence, except for swearing of the 
  men inside the house. The basement window 
  was covered with a part of the ruptured brick 
  wall.  
  Doc Savage ran forward, leaped mightily, 
  and was inside the fantastic old mansion among 
  the sand dunes. 
   
   
  PLASTER ground under the bronze man's 
  feet as he lunged across the room. Dust swirled 
  in a stifling pall. There had been an army of 
  empty packing cases along the outer wall and 
  the explosion of the violent little grenade had 
  heaped them against the opposite side of the 
  room. 
  Doc shoved some of them aside and tried 
  the door. It was unlocked and he went through. 
  There was a hallway beyond. Down it, a voice 
  came. 
  "Get the damned girl!" said the voice. "Get 
  them all together. If this Doc Savage talks to 
  them, it'll be just too bad!" 
  "She's upstairs," said another voice. "I'll 
  bring her down." 
  They were excited, maybe a little deaf-
  ened by the explosion, and did not realize how 
  loud they were speaking. 
  Feet pattered on steps; a man. He 
  sounded as if he were in a hurry, and he was 
  going up. 
  Doc went forward to intercept the footstep 
  sounds. He came through a door into a hallway. 
  Against a wall stood open boxes which bore the 
  admonition, "Glass—Handle With Care," but 
  which held military automatic rifles, fully assem-
  bled, and ammunition clips, loaded. 
  The bronze man's eyes roved over the 
  weapons; his characteristic trilling came into be-
  ing, ebbed and fell for an instant, then sank into 
  inaudibility. 
  The guns were not of American manufac-
  ture. 
  There was a fumbling at a door to the rear. 
  Doc managed to get behind it before it opened, 
  and the panel shielded him as a man appeared. 
  Beyond a doubt, it was the fellow who had been 
  dispatched for the girl, and he was cautious. In-
  stead of dashing through the door, he cannily 
  shifted to the side and looked through the crack 
  by the hinges. He saw Doc. 
  "Look out!" he shrieked. "That bronze 
  devil—" 
  Then Doc Savage got hold of the man's 
  neck, and the fellow's voice ended in a strange 
  fashion, as if his vocal apparatus were a loud-
  speaker, electrically controlled, on which the 
  volume knob had been turned off suddenly. The 
  man became limp, yet his eyes were widely 
  open. He seemed to be paralyzed. 
  Doc leaned down the stairs, and from his 
  lips came a remarkably perfect imitation of his 
  victim's voice.  
  "Look out!" he yelled. "That bronze devil is 
  around somewhere!" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  16 
  The voice characterization held all the per-
  fection Doc Savage had been able to master by 
  long and intensive study. It fooled those below. 
  "You're tellin' us he's around?" snarled 
  one. "Go on and get the girl, you dope!" 
  Doc lifted his captive and bore him toward 
  a stairway which led upward. The size of the 
  bronze man was made startlingly apparent by 
  comparison with his prisoner. As he mounted 
  the steps, he continued to grope at the back of 
  the captive's neck with corded bronze fingers. 
  He was doing something which had taken 
  him, even with the profound knowledge of sur-
  gery and anatomy, a long time to perfect. He 
  was completing the induction of a state of pa-
  ralysis, merely by exerting pressure on certain 
  upper spinal nerve centers. 
  The captive was entirely helpless, when 
  Doc Savage lowered him to the second-floor 
  corridor, and would remain so for some time. 
  Doc listened. 
  Below, there was swearing, men moving 
  about, and the flutelike voice of the chief giving 
  orders. A section of wall, weakened by the bomb 
  blast, fell noisily. Monk and Ham had silenced 
  their machine pistols, and probably were watch-
  ing for targets. 
  Doc began opening doors—and behind 
  the third one, found the girl—the Space girl she 
  had been called, when the black-faced men 
  were shouting about the ring with the red sub-
  stance under the diamond. 
   
   
  SHE was a small girl, so small that at first 
  glance she seemed to be a child. It was not until 
  she shifted position, and the shadow of the 
  chain no longer fell across her face, that the ma-
  turity of her features was evident. At that, she 
  could hardly be past twenty. 
  She was a doll, exquisitely proportioned, 
  with hair that was like streaming honey, lips and 
  eyes that would have delighted an artist, and a 
  nose that had the slightest bit of retroussé. She 
  moved again and the chain clinked metallically. 
  There were really two chains. One, the 
  lighter, was padlocked around her slim waist, 
  and its end was padlocked into a larger chain 
  which ran up to a hole which had been torn in 
  the ceiling, where it was secured around a 
  beam. There was a window across the room, 
  and by stretching, she might have reached that. 
  It was open a trifle for ventilation, and was not 
  boarded up on the outside, as were most of the 
  windows. 
  She stared at Doc and words came past 
  her lips like frightened things. 
  "You got the ring I threw?" she demanded 
  Doc moved to her side, and so silent were 
  his motions that it seemed he was not treading 
  the floor at all. He grasped the chain. It was not 
  a cheap chain, but an alloy, very strong. 
  "They got it away from me again," he said. 
  "But how could they?" the girl murmured. 
  "You are Doc Savage?” 
  “Do not be silly" Doc began to tug on the 
  chain, and his arms seemed to become tremen-
  dous beams, rigid and metallic. "You seem to 
  have me overrated." 
  The girl shuddered. “They are afraid of 
  you, more afraid of you than of any living man. I 
  have heard them talking. They have been keep-
  ing track of you. They were scared when you 
  came to Florida. They did not believe you came 
  to exterminate mosquitoes, or whatever it was. 
  They were afraid that you had heard of them 
  and their plan." 
  She had spoken rapidly. Doc Savage 
  ceased tugging on the chain and, reaching up, 
  extracted a stiff steel bobbie pin from her hair. 
  He inserted this in the padlock and began to 
  probe. 
  "I saw you through the window," the girl 
  said. "I threw the ring. I was afraid to cry out. 
  One of them was outside the door of this room." 
  Doc said nothing. The bobbie pin gritted, 
  scraped. 
  "Where is Cass?" asked the girl. "Didn't he 
  come with you?" 
  The pin rasped in the lock, seeking the 
  tumblers. 
  "You mean Professor Casson Adams?" 
  Doc asked. 
  "Yes," she said. "He was going to try to 
  reach you. He was going to hide himself in one 
  of your trunks. It was the only way. They were 
  watching you. They had bribed the telephone 
  operator in your hotel to cut them in on all calls 
  you made. Cass thought the trunk was the only 
  way. He had heard that your trunks were here. 
  They knew that. The only chance for a slip was 
  that they might have been watching the trunks.” 
  The clipped rapidity of her speech made 
  her long recitals seem short. 
  Doc withdrew the bobbie pin and carefully 
  bent it. The padlock was no ordinary variety, but 
  one using a machined key which entered from 
  the bottom. 
  An automatic rifle racketed downstairs; the 
  moan of one of the mercy-bullet-firing machine 
  pistols sawed out like a titanic bullfi ddle. A man 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 17 
  downstairs swore, "Damned if they ain't makin' 
  loopholes in the wall! Hey, you upstairs!" 
  Doc again imitated the voice of the man 
  who had been sent for the girl, bellowing, "Aw, 
  keep your shirt on!" 
  "Shake it up!" roared the one below, de-
  ceived again. "Get that twist down here!" 
  The girl looked at Doc Savage, slowly, as 
  if noting the absence of wasteful gestures in his 
  movements, and the metallic repose of his fea-
  tures. He had not looked at the door since enter-
  ing and seemed concerned with but one thing: 
  getting the padlock open. 
  "I guess they were justified in being 
  scared of you," she said. "But you can't pick the 
  padlock. It is pick proof. They told me so." 
  With a snicking of tumblers, the lock came 
  open. Doc caught the chain as it came loose 
  from around her slender waist and lowered it to 
  the floor so there was no rattle. 
  "What is your name?" he asked. 
  "Nona Space," she said. "Didn't Cass tell 
  you?" 
  Doc guided her toward the window. 
  "We'll drop to the ground and run for it," he 
  said. "I'll carry you, because I am wearing a bul-
  letproof vest and that will shield you somewhat. 
  My two assistants will cover our break." 
  She began struggling violently, not trying 
  to get away so much as trying to stop him, to 
  keep him from the vicinity of the window. 
  “But what about the other two?" she de-
  manded. 
   
   
  ONE of her exquisitely small hands dipped 
  toward the lower regions of the old mansion as 
  she said, "other two"— and Doc Savage 
  stopped suddenly. 
  "Who are they?" he asked. 
  Her small mouth came roundly open. It 
  was one of the few feminine mouths which Doc 
  had seen that retained its attractiveness when 
  open. 
  "Didn't Cass tell you?" she asked. 
  "Prisoners?" Doc questioned. 
  "But Cass should have—" 
  Doc grasped her arms above the elbows 
  and lifted her until only her toes were on the 
  floor, and the pressure of his grip caused her to 
  grimace a little. 
  "Professor Casson Adams was killed," he 
  clipped. "They raided the baggage truck carrying 
  the trunk in which he was hiding. They shot 
  through the trunk. Professor Adams had identifi-
  cation in his billfold which gave this as his ad-
  dress, and we came out to investigate. We did 
  not know what it was all about. We still do not 
  know. Who are these other two persons you are 
  talking about?" 
  The girl's head went back and a stark 
  whiteness crawled up from the crumpled collar 
  of her frock and flooded her features; her lips 
  moved, but no sound came, and the moving lips 
  did not form words with sufficient clarity to permit 
  reading. 
  There came a loud yell from below. It held 
  impatience and rage. 
  "What the hell, up there!" it howled. "You 
  dead, or something?" 
  Doc faked the voice of the man sent for 
  the girl, and called, "Aw, I had trouble with the 
  lock!" 
  But feet were clump-clumping the stair 
  treads as one man came up to see what was 
  causing the delay. 
  Doc Savage leaned close to the window. 
  His lips moved, yet the words he spoke did not 
  seem to come from his vocal cords, but rather 
  from a spot below in the palms which thicketed 
  the yard. It was good ventriloquism. The words 
  were not English, but syllables of a guttural 
  tongue which would have baffled an expert on 
  languages. 
  It was Mayan which he spoke, language of 
  a lost civilization of Central America which had 
  rivaled that of Egypt. Doc and his aides had 
  mastered the tongue for use in situations such 
  as this; as far as they knew, no other individual 
  in the so-called civilized world could compre-
  hend it. 
  Monk answered, also speaking Mayan. 
  Doc sent the girl toward the window. 
  "My two men will cover your flight," he 
  said. "Drop out of the window and get over the 
  wall. I’ll find the other two prisoners." 
  Doc did not wait to see what she did, but 
  spun toward the door. The man coming up the 
  stairs was near the top. Doc scooped up a chair, 
  carried it with him. He reached the door and got 
  it open just as the man on the stairs discovered 
  the unconscious fellow who had been sent for 
  the girl. 
  The man yelled. Doc threw the chair. The 
  man's yelling turned to screaming and he fell 
  down the stairs, making a good deal of noise. 
  From below, a bedlam of shouting went up. The 
  man hit by the chair piled up on the first-floor 
  landing and did not arise. 
  At Doc's back, the girl cried out, "There's a 
  back stairway! Maybe we can reach the other 
  two! I'll show you where—"  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  18 
   
   
  Doc spun on her, and rapped, "I told you 
  to—" Instead of finishing, he pitched back into 
  the room. 
  The hairless chief of the black-faced 
  men—the one addressed only as Ark—had 
  come through a door in the rear of the room. He 
  must have mounted the back stairway of which 
  the girl, Nona Space, had spoken. 
   
   
  ARK was running a circle, so that he was 
  between the girl and the window. He held a re-
  volver, an extraordinary weapon with a re-
  markably large barrel. The snout of the gun 
  seemed nearly as large as a .20-gauge shotgun. 
  He aimed the gun at Doc and it went off, 
  making far less noise than might have been ex-
  pected, and kicking so slightly that it barely 
  jarred his hand. 
  There was a terrific crash against Doc's 
  chest, and his giant bronze frame was smashed 
  backward as if it had become suddenly fragile. 
  The simultaneous flash set his eyes aching. The 
  concussion rendered his ears temporarily inac-
  tive. Coat and vest were torn completely from 
  his chest, coat sleeves had ruptured, and the 
  skin was slit. The underside of his jaws felt as if 
  they had been wiped clean of skin. He hit the 
  floor with stunning force. 
  Ark aimed again, deliberately. His gun was 
  some special type not on the market, firing ex-
  plosive slugs. Only the excellence of Doc's bul-
  letproof vest had saved him that first time. And 
  now Ark was aiming at his head. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 19 
  There was a worn rug underfoot. Doc 
  clawed up bunches of it in his hands, pulled. It 
  was an old gag, and Ark thwarted it by sprawling 
  down deliberately on the rug so that he would 
  not be upset. But his next shot was delayed a 
  moment. 
  Doc lunged up with the rug and flung it 
  forward like a sheet. At the same time, he 
  sloped aside. 
  Ark fired. His slug blasted a hole in the 
  wall that a man could have crawled through. 
  Ark was still between the girl and the win-
  dow. She tried to run around him. It looked as if 
  he saw her under the rug and threatened her. 
  Frightened, she retreated. She dived through the 
  rear door. 
  There was a descending flight of stairs, 
  rather narrow and she ran down them, looking 
  over her shoulder, calling out something. What 
  she called, Doc could not tell. He was still deaf 
  from the concussion of the explosive bullet 
  against his chest. 
  The bronze man leaped for Ark, intending 
  to trample him under the rug. 
  Men topped the main stairway, coming up 
  from below. Ark started shrilling muffled com-
  mands under the rug. His satellites charged to 
  his aid. 
  Doc Savage could hear only the loudest of 
  sounds. He could barely see, and only when the 
  newcomers actually appeared was he aware of 
  their arrival. The bronze man was not unduly 
  reckless; he took terrific chances, it might 
  seem—although to him, they were not chances, 
  for he knew his own ability, knew what he could 
  accomplish in the face of a given set of circum-
  stances. 
  Occasionally there was a slip—as in this 
  instance when Ark had been wielding a pistol 
  loaded with explosive slugs. Nine hundred and 
  ninety-nine out of another thousand times it 
  would have been an ordinary pistol, and Doc 
  could have gotten to him before Ark learned of 
  the bulletproof vest. A man shooting in haste 
  rarely picks a head for a target. 
  Doc retreated. He was in no condition for 
  a fight against such odds. He reached the rear 
  door, got halfway down the stairs in an upright 
  position, then because he was still dazed, upset 
  and toppled the rest of the way. 
  At the foot of the stairs was a little square 
  hallway with doors on three sides. As Doc was 
  heaving dizzily erect, the farthest of these doors 
  popped open. 
  Monk and Ham appeared. Each held his 
  machine pistol with both hands. The guns had a 
  good deal of recoil when firing freely. 
  "The girl?" Doc asked, and his voice was 
  strange. 
  "Haven't seen her," Monk grunted. 
  Doc Savage seemed not to hear. 
  "The girl?" he repeated. "Where is she?” 
  Monk realized then that something was 
  wrong with the bronze man's hearing. He shook 
  his head violently to indicate he had not seen a 
  girl. 
   
   
  AN instant later, men began firing from the 
  top of the stairs, and Doc, seeing splinters fly, 
  shoved his two men outside into the brilliant 
  sunlight, following after them. 
  Monk peered at Doc and muttered uneas-
  ily, "You hurt bad?" 
  Doc was watching his lips and read the 
  query. 
  "Pain and shock is all," he said. “I am deaf 
  as a rock. Cannot tell how long it will last. The 
  girl came down the stairs. She must have gone 
  after the other two prisoners." 
  "Other two?" Ham questioned. 
  Doc was not looking at Ham. He did not 
  get the interrogation. 
  Ham got around in front of Doc, pointed at 
  his lips and repeated, “What other two?" 
  "There seem to be two other prisoners," 
  Doc advised. 
  Ham hosed a stream of mercy bullets up 
  the stairway, his manner as casual as if he were 
  presenting a point of evidence to a jury in a 
  courtroom. He drew back and got Doc's atten-
  tion to his lips again. 
  "What's it all about?" he asked. 
  "That," Doc told him, "is still a puzzle." 
  Somewhere in the house, a woman began 
  screaming. Monk and Ham, electrified, stared at 
  Doc for commands, then realized the bronze 
  man had not heard the shrieks. 
  "Girl—screaming!" Ham gasped. 
  "We will go in," Doc said. "But take it 
  easy."  
  The bronze man got out one of the tiny 
  grenades—no shock could explode them until 
  the little detonating lever was actuated—and 
  tossed one up the stairs. There was a roar—and 
  plaster, lath and splintered timbers came plum-
  meting down the steps. 
  "I didn't even hear that," Doc shouted. 
  "Show me the spot where you heard the girl 
  screaming." 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  20 
  "She's still screaming," Ham said, and 
  plunged inside. 
  Doc and Monk trailed the dapper lawyer. 
  They tried one of the doors at the left of the 
  square rear hallway. It was locked. Doc caved it 
  in by kicking it with one foot. 
  The girl stopped screaming suddenly, as if 
  she had been gagged, or something worse. 
  Monk and Ham could hear many sounds 
  of rapid movement. Strangely, the men with the 
  black grease paint on their faces seemed to be 
  concentrating in the basement. 
  Doc broke open another door. A flight of 
  stairs gaped below. They were shot at. Monk 
  and Ham streaked mercy bullets back. Then two 
  explosive bullets from Ark's unusual gun ripped 
  the stairs to fragments. 
  Doc Savage ran into another room and 
  rolled one of his grenades out on the floor. It 
  exploded and ripped a considerable cavity down 
  into the basement. Much dust was stirred up. 
  Doc waited until it settled. Then he dropped 
  down into the basement. 
  The basement seemed to be divided off in 
  rooms, and this one in which they stood was 
  clean and white with new paint. But its neatness 
  was not the only interesting feature. 
  There were four pedestals in the room, 
  waist-high affairs rigged of stout timbers. There 
  was something on these pedestals, something 
  almost as large as small automobiles. The exact 
  nature of the objects could not be ascertained, 
  due to an enveloping canopy of canvas, which 
  was tied down with thin manila ropes. 
  Doc Savage, crossing the room, veered 
  toward the nearest of the pedestals, as if to as-
  certain what the covered objects were. But the 
  girl began to scream again, her voice farther 
  away now, and Monk and Ham grasped Doc's 
  arm and pointed imperatively. 
  They ran on and shoved open a door. 
  Ahead of them was an arched opening which 
  gave into a tiled passage that sloped downward 
  for a short distance, then ran level. They fol-
  lowed it. 
  The passage had been constructed a long 
  time ago. It was not a secret tunnel, or anything 
  of the sort. Rather, it was an idea of the original 
  builder of the strange mansion, a method of 
  gaining easy access to the beach for swimming 
  purposes, for they came out along the water's 
  edge, after following the mad clatter of fleeing 
  feet ahead for some hundreds of feet. Brilliant 
  sunlight and the moaning of two automobile mo-
  tors met them. 
  The machines had been in a stuccoed 
  structure once a bathing house, as ancient as 
  the mansion inshore among the sand dunes. But 
  both cars had been pushed out of the building; 
  one was just clearing the structure, and the men 
  were piling in it, as well as loading their casual-
  ties of the recent fighting who had been carried 
  along 
  "Hey!" Monk rapped. "There's the two, 
  prisoners!" 
   
   
  ONE of the captives was a lean tower of a 
  man with flaming red hair and an unnaturally 
  pale face—unnaturally pale for one dwelling in 
  Florida. He had, moreover, one distinguishing 
  mark: a patch over one eye, a black flap held in 
  place by a string or an elastic. 
  The other man was young, light-haired, 
  robust; he had the appearance of a college boy. 
  He wore shell-rimmed spectacles and a grimy 
  polo shirt, slacks which had once been white. 
  That the pair were captives was indicated 
  positively by the handcuffs which linked their 
  wrists and by the manner in which they were 
  bustled about. 
  The girl was with them. In the fast-moving 
  group, she appeared smaller than ever. One of 
  the black-faced men picked her up bodily and 
  hurtled, her into, the, car. She struggled. Then 
  she caught sight of Doc Savage and his two 
  companions. 
  She lifted her voice in a frantic call. 
  "Go back and search the house!" she 
  called. "You will find their secret." 
  A man struck her. Then he yanked off his 
  felt hat and jammed it between her jaws. The 
  man's hair, when he took off the hat, was 
  straight and not kinky. 
  The cars began to move. The last of the 
  men was hauled inside. 
  Monk and Ham knew the mercy bullet in 
  their machine pistols would not penetrate the 
  bodies of the cars, for the mercy bullets were 
  fragile shells loaded with the sleep-inducing 
  chemical. They dug into their pockets and 
  brought out other ammo drums. These bore des-
  ignating marks. They selected drums holding 
  solid metal slugs, clipped them into their ma-
  chine pistols, and concentrated on the car tires. 
  Bullets dug up sand, made dents in the 
  cars, and tore the tires visibly; but nothing hap-
  pened to stem the mad flight of the cars. 
  "Their tires are filled with sponge rubber or 
  something!" Monk yelled.  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 21 
  "The sedan bodies are bulletproofed, too!" 
  Ham added. 
  Doc Savage was running toward the con-
  verted bathing house. He had sighted another 
  car inside. It was a shabby -looking machine, a 
  roadster of a vintage six years back, fitted with a 
  truck body. 
  They piled in and Doc trod the starter. The 
  engine stuttered, died, and finally fired with 
  some semblance of regularity. 
  The beach was a white floor, packed by 
  the waves, a miniature of Daytona, Mecca of the 
  automobile speed kings. The delivery car 
  sloughed through the first few yards of soft sand, 
  then got on the strip of hard-packed sand. It be-
  gan to travel. 
  Monk looked at the speedometer and 
  grinned doubtfully. It was calibrated to sixty, and 
  the needle was clear over the mark. 
  "I'll bet this bus is breaking its own re-
  cord," he grunted. 
  Fast as they traveled, however, the two 
  cars ahead were leaving them. They were black 
  dots by now, at times almost lost in the dancing 
  heat from the beach. 
  Then the distant cars seemed to stop re-
  ceding, and a third dot appeared, this one on the 
  sea, a short distance offshore. 
  "A boat," Ham breathed.  
  "They're being picked up!" Monk yelled. 
  The two sedans became more distinct. 
  The boat took on shape—it was a lean, black 
  speedster, and it got up on top of the water and 
  ran away across the sea almost as fast as the 
  delivery truck was traveling on the beach. 
  Doc and his two men reached the sedans, 
  which had been abandoned near a mooring at 
  which the speedboat had been secured. Monk 
  stood on the beach and made growling noises 
  while Doc examined the cars, noting license 
  numbers, then inspecting the engines and 
  frames for numeral identification. 
  “Numbers been taken off," he said of the 
  latter. 
  "Chemical treatment will bring them out 
  again," Monk offered. 
  Doc shook a negative. "These fellows 
  were clever. They used a twist drill to take the 
  numbers off, and the drill probably disturbed the 
  metal fibers until a chemical treatment will have 
  no effect in bringing the numbers back." 
  The bronze man left the sedans and 
  moved toward the delivery truck, the engine of 
  which was still running. 
  "Where are we going?" Monk demanded. 
  Doc, not looking for Monk's lips at the 
  moment, failed to catch the query and Monk got 
  around in front of him and repeated it. 
  "Remember what the girl said?" Doc 
  asked. 
  Monk blinked. "Sure—about going back 
  and searching the house? She said something 
  about finding their secret." 
  "Exactly," Doc said. 
   
   
  Chapter V 
  THE SURPRISE IN SKIRTS 
   
  THEY did not return by way of the tunnel 
  to the dilapidated mansion among the dunes, 
  but left the truck on the beach and walked over 
  the sand, wedged through palmetto clumps, and 
  came out near the wall. They scrambled over 
  the barrier without much difficulty. 
  "What'll we look for first?" Monk wanted to 
  know. 
  Doc Savage caught the words; his ears 
  seemed to be recovering from the temporary 
  deafness inflicted by the explosion. 
  "Remember those pedestals in the base-
  ment room?" he asked. "They supported bulky 
  objects covered with canvas. We might as well 
  examine them first." 
  Monk nodded his small head. "I been 
  wonderin' what them things were." 
  They made a circuit of the mansion, hop-
  ing to find some of the black-faced men who had 
  been overcome In the fight, and who might have 
  been left behind. But they located no one. There 
  was profound silence from within the house. 
  They entered the building from the rear, 
  coming into a kitchen. Adjoining was a pantry, 
  stocked with food. Beyond was a larger room, 
  with an array of folding canvas cots and plain, 
  coarse blankets. 
  Ham counted the cots, absently number-
  ing them off with his sword cane. 
  "More than a dozen men have been quar-
  tered here," he decided. "I wonder what they've 
  been up to." 
  They found the basement stairs and went 
  down. A moment later, they were face to face 
  with the stout timbered pedestals which sup-
  ported the mysterious objects covered by can-
  vas. There were electric lights in the cellar. Doc 
  found a button, thumbed it, and the globes whit-
  ened. 
  Above each of the pedestals, they now 
  noted, there was a funnel-shaped affair of sheet 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  22 
  metal, and from each of these a pipe ran out-
  doors; they might have been installed to conduct 
  away rising fumes. 
  Doc Savage stepped forward, untied the 
  ropes securing one of the canvas covers, and 
  wrenched it clear. Then he stood stock-still and 
  eyed what was revealed. His trilling came into 
  existence momentarily, but it had a disgusted 
  quality. 
  He had uncovered nothing at all except a 
  wood frame hastily thrown together from 
  shaggy, unpainted timbers—a frame obviously 
  designed to support only the canvas and make it 
  seem that something was beneath. 
  They examined the other three pedestals 
  hurriedly. All were duds. 
  "Jove!" Ham murmured. "Looks as if they 
  were trying to fool somebody!" 
  Doc Savage pointed out certain bolt holes 
  in the pedestal framework, together with inden-
  tations which had obviously been made by 
  weighty machinery. 
  "There was something on these supports," 
  he said. 
   
   
  AN hour later, they neared a filling station 
  on the sandy, little-used road which led toward 
  the house among the dunes. They had searched 
  the old mansion completely, but futilely, finding 
  nothing, not even an indication of the name of 
  those occupying the place. 
  Doc Savage had repaired his own ap-
  pearance to some extent, having discarded his 
  torn coat and shirt and washed the gore from his 
  features. He was, however, still disheveled in 
  appearance, and to avoid arousing unnecessary 
  curiosity, he rode in the rear of the touring car 
  they had rented to drive out to the old mansion, 
  and which they had picked up again after 
  searching the house. 
  Monk, at the wheel, pulled into the filling 
  station and a pleasant-faced young man began 
  filling the tank. He proved to be a conversational 
  soul, either because he was lonesome, or be-
  cause the homely-faced Monk was an individual 
  to whom people seemed to want to talk. 
  "Been to Hyman Space's place, I guess," 
  the attendant hazarded genially. 
  "You mean the old house among the 
  dunes? Monk asked.  
  The attendant nodded, grinning. "Not 
  thinking of buying land out there, are you?" 
  Monk snorted. "In that goat pasture? Not 
  us!"  
  The attendant laughed. "So you got a whiff 
  of the smell! That’s lucky! Some days, the smell 
  ain't around." 
  "Smell—" Monk squinted, realizing he was 
  uncovering something by pure accident. "What 
  do you figure it is?" 
  "Search me," said the filling station man. 
  "But you see old Hyman Space, Professor Cas-
  son Adams and Ray Wood—."  
  “Who are Adams and Wood?” Monk put 
  in. 
  "Hyman Space's hired men," the attendant 
  replied. "They're all doing some kind of work 
  down there. Nobody knows what it is. You see, 
  that old place in the sand dunes was built during 
  the boom and the fellow who built it died and 
  nobody ever took it over until Hyman Space 
  bought it a couple of years ago. He told some-
  body he wanted to work where he wouldn't 
  bother anybody. . . . How many gallons?” 
  "Ten," Monk told him. "What was Space's 
  racket?" 
  The attendant began to run gasoline into 
  the tank.  
  "Search me," he said. "Hyman Space and 
  the others are queer ducks. Don't mix much. 
  Lately, they've had a lot of Negroes workin' 
  around there. They don't use this road since the 
  sand drifted over it. They drive along the beach. 
  So I don't know much about 'em." 
  "There's a girl, isn't there?" Monk asked. 
  "Old man Space's daughter." The atten-
  dant grinned. "A pippin!" 
  Monk put more questions, but the atten-
  dant seemed to have told all he knew. Monk 
  drove out and headed the truck toward Miami. 
  Ham juggled his sword cane absently and 
  complained, “We seem to be stuck. There's 
  something queer going on, and we should do 
  something about it. That man in the trunk was 
  murdered because he was trying to reach us, 
  unless I miss my guess. But we're stuck." 
  Monk started to nod in gloomy agreement, 
  then started violently and looked back at Doc 
  Savage. 
  "Blazes!" he grunted. "Did I just have an 
  original thought, or did you think of it first?" 
  "You mean about examining that red ma-
  terial on the false teeth of the man who was 
  killed in the trunk?" Doc asked. 
  Monk sighed. "I knew I hadn't thought of it 
  first."  
   
   
  THE Hotel Biscayneville had the air of a 
  place where things were happening. Two police 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 23 
  cars stood in front of the hostelry, along with 
  other machines bearing placards with the word, 
  "Press." 
  Uniformed policemen stood about, along 
  with other individuals who were unmistakably 
  officers, although not in uniform. 
  Doc Savage, seeing evidence of excite-
  ment as Monk started to wheel their rented car 
  around the corner, snapped orders to continue 
  straight ahead. Monk pulled in to the curb and 
  parked near an alley which ran past the rear of 
  the hotel. 
  Doc got out, directed his two men to wait, 
  and drifted down the alley, concealed by a stuc-
  coed fence and numerous grapefruit and orange 
  trees. 
  A policeman and a newspaperman were 
  talking on the other side of the fence. Doc got 
  close enough to catch their words. The bronze 
  man's ears were rapidly returning to normal. 
  "—it here from New York," the officer was 
  saying. "It was a break that we found it in his 
  baggage, what I mean. He probably figured on 
  getting rid of it tonight. But it just happened that 
  the maid came in to tidy up the room and was 
  moving the trunk and let it drop, and it came 
  open and she saw the body. 
  "Boy, did she let out a bleat! She scared 
  an old guy in the next room who was shaving, 
  and they had to take him to the hospital to sew 
  up the cut he gave himself. How's that last for 
  human-interest angle, huh?" 
  "You think Doc Savage brought this boy 
  from New York in the trunk?" asked the news-
  paper reporter. 
  "Sure!" said the cop. "But we'll know for 
  certain when we find out how long the guy had 
  been dead." 
  "You are going to arrest Doc Savage?" 
  questioned the journalist. 
  "Boy—watch us!" 
  “Doc Savage has a reputation." 
  "So what?" The officer laughed. "Doc 
  Savage picked a wrong town to pull something 
  like this in. His rep will make it just that much 
  tougher on him." 
  "Meaning what?" 
  "The chief of police is out for another term, 
  and the district attorney wants to build himself a 
  name, so he can take a whirl at the governor-
  ship," the policeman explained. “They've both 
  been looking for something big. They'll land on 
  this Doc Savage hard. Orders are already out to 
  arrest him on sight. Why, we've got enough evi-
  dence to hang the guy right now.” 
  "Where is the body that was in the trunk?" 
  the reporter asked. 
  "Down at the morgue," said the other. 
  Doc Savage, not waiting to hear more, 
  eased back to the car and entered the driver's 
  seat. He got the car in motion before he spoke 
  to his two companions. Then he explained 
  tersely what had happened. 
  "So we're jammed up with the police 
  here!" Monk groaned. "But they'll find out the 
  fellow was killed only recently, and not in New 
  York." 
  “Which will not clear us, necessarily," Doc 
  replied. "We've got to help ourselves." 
  "Where is the body?" Ham asked. 
  "In the morgue," Doc told him. 
  "We'd better go there and see if we can 
  get the false teeth with that red stuff on them," 
  Ham said. 
  "That is our next move," Doc agreed. 
   
   
  THE morgue, in keeping with the majority 
  of Miami municipal buildings, was a new struc-
  ture, neat and with just the proper touch of archi-
  tectural sobriety. It stood on a street which was 
  comparatively free of traffic. 
  Doc Savage parked near the middle of the 
  block, leaving the front wheels of the touring car 
  just the legal distance from a fire hydrant, a sim-
  ple precaution for making sure the space ahead 
  of the car would remain clear for a quick get-
  away. 
  Before they got out of the machine, they 
  noted two policemen idling in front of the 
  morgue. 
  "They'll recognize us if we try to walk in," 
  Monk grumbled. 
  "Wait here," Doc said, and got out of the 
  machine. 
  The bronze man kept parked cars be-
  tween himself and the two policemen on the 
  morgue steps, and worked down the street; 
  then, when the two officers were not looking in 
  his direction, he angled swiftly across the side-
  walk. The lee of a flowering hedge received him. 
  There was no activity around the rear of the 
  morgue, no sound except the distant traffic 
  noises and the nearer sound of insects. 
  The rear windows of the morgue were tall, 
  and barred, prison fashion, with stout upright 
  rods. Doc Savage looked through the window. 
  Inside were portable slabs on rolling tables, 
  around the wall an array of cubbyholes for the 
  storage of bodies. There was no sign of life in 
  the room. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  24 
  Doc Savage brought a small metal tube 
  from his pocket and unscrewed the cap. There 
  was a glass phial inside. This was glass-
  stoppered, and to the stopper was affixed a 
  glass rod. When he pulled the rod out, the con-
  tents of the bottle—a viscous, vile-colored liquid 
  clung to the rod. 
  The bronze man smeared the stuff in a 
  ring around the bases of two of the bars, making 
  a thick deposit. Clambering up on the sill as qui-
  etly as possible, he coated a section near the 
  tops of the same two bars. After that, he waited, 
  listening. 
  The stuff he had put on the bars was turn-
  ing an intense black, and giving off bilious-
  looking vapor. 
  Doc Savage's ears had regained most of 
  their normal sensitivity, and he could catch 
  sounds inside the morgue. They were small 
  noises—voices, the click of instruments. No 
  doubt the autopsy was in progress. 
  After waiting some moments, Doc Savage 
  gripped one of the two bars he had treated and 
  gave it a yank. It seemed to have rotted magi-
  cally where he had applied the stuff from the 
  bottle. The bar broke with a grating noise. 
  Doc listened intently, heard no indications 
  of alarm, then yanked the second bar. When 
  both were broken off, he dropped them on the 
  ground. The substance in the bottle had been a 
  special acid preparation of great strength. 
  The building was new and the window 
  came up easily, noiselessly, at his tugging. He 
  dropped inside. The composition floor made 
  quiet easily attained. Beyond was a corridor with 
  doors opening off. It was from one of these that 
  came the voices, the sounds of instruments.  
  Doc used a small periscope device, the 
  barrel of which was somewhat smaller than a 
  lead pencil, and which was not likely to be no-
  ticed.  
  The body of Professor Casson Adams, en-
  tirely nude, was on an operating table under the 
  scrutiny of a medical examiner and an assistant. 
  Three other bulky fellows standing by were evi-
  dently policemen in plain clothes. 
  The dead man's garments were arrayed 
  on a table near by, each identified by a neat tag. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE drew back and produced a 
  flat case almost identical with the one which had 
  held the explosive grenades. This one contained 
  what at first glance might have been mistaken 
  for rather yellowish glass marbles; but these, 
  closer inspection would have shown, were glass 
  bulbs filled with a liquid. 
  Doc tossed two of them into the room 
  where the examination was taking place. 
  The medical examiner heard the bulb 
  strike and shatter. A dropped bird's egg would 
  have made a similar noise. The man squinted, 
  saw the tiny cluster of gossamery glass, noted 
  the liquid about it that seemed to be vanishing 
  magically, and took a step forward. 
  He seemed to become tired; he emitted a 
  loud sigh and lay down heavily on the floor. He 
  began to snore. 
  The other men in the room stared. Then 
  they also laid down and appeared to go soundly 
  to sleep. 
  The glass containers had held an anaes-
  thetic gas which produced quick but harmless 
  unconsciousness. The men would awaken in the 
  course of time, none the worse for their experi-
  ence. 
  Doc Savage entered the room hastily. He 
  found the false teeth and pocketed them. 
  He found the bullet which had killed Pro-
  fessor Adams. He pocketed that, too, after the 
  briefest of hesitations. Then he wheeled and 
  started for the door. 
  A telephone on a small desk to one side of 
  the room began ringing. 
  Doc Savage veered for the instrument. If it 
  kept on ringing some one might come to see 
  why it was not answered. He picked up the re-
  ceiver and said, "Yes?" 
  "Is the medical examiner there?" asked a 
  harsh voice. 
  "He is out for the moment," Doc said—
  very truthfully. 
  "Okay," said the voice. "This is the skip-
  per. We just found a gun under the mattress in 
  Doc Savage's hotel room. We want to check it 
  with the bullet that killed that guy. We think it's 
  the murder gun, and if it is, we've got Doc Sav-
  age clinched with this." 
  "Did you look for Doc Savage's finger 
  prints on the gun?" Doc asked. 
  "They had been wiped off," said the other. 
  "And who the hell are you to start telling the 
  homicide bureau how to run its business?” 
  "I will take care of the bullet which killed 
  the man," Doc said, and hung up. 
   
   
  THE bronze man removed the bullet from 
  his coat pocket and carefully inserted it in the 
  watch pocket of his trousers, where it was not as 
  likely to become lost. Then he eased out of the 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 25 
  rear window of the morgue, pausing to dampen 
  a cloth with chemical and remove his finger 
  prints from everything he had touched. 
  The two policemen were matching pen-
  nies. Doc got into the car without their taking 
  note of it. Monk and Ham looked questioningly. 
  "Our black-faced friends have been work-
  ing," Doc advised. 
  Monk wet the edges of his large mouth. 
  "Yeah?" 
  Doc told them about the gun. 
  "Framing us!" Monk gritted. "They sent 
  one of their gang back to hide the murder gun in 
  your room." 
  "Obviously," Doc agreed. "But we have 
  the murder bullet, so their trickery will not do 
  them much good." 
  The bronze man leaned over to loosen the 
  emergency brake. He rarely showed surprise, 
  but now he straightened suddenly, and a 
  strange expression came over his metallic fea-
  tures. 
  Monk let his jaw down until it threatened to 
  come off his face. Ham all but dropped his 
  sword cane. 
  A young woman was walking rapidly to-
  ward their car. When she saw that they ob-
  served her, she made a small gesture with one 
  hand, requesting that they wait. 
  "Whew!" Monk breathed. "The last person 
  I expected to see!" 
  Without another word, he glanced at the 
  policemen, saw they were concerned only with 
  each other's pennies, then slid over into the rear 
  seat, making a place in the front seat beside 
  Doc for the girl. 
  The young woman got into the car. 
  "Hurry!" she said. "I'll tell you where to 
  drive." 
  "Miss Space!" Monk exploded. "How did 
  you get away from them?" 
  The girl seemed smaller than ever. She 
  wrung her hands nervously, her eyes remained 
  widely open when they were not blinking, and 
  her whole figure seemed drawn, tense. 
  She did not answer, and Monk questioned 
  her again: "That gang with the black grease 
  paint on their faces—how did you escape?" 
  The girl had a small hand bag. She held it 
  tightly. 
  "I jumped out of their car in front of a bank, 
  and they were afraid of the bank guard," she 
  said rapidly. "Turn to the right here. And drive 
  faster." 
  Doc Savage looked at the clock on the in-
  strument panel. Then he absently dropped a 
  hand into the pocket where he had placed the 
  false teeth. 
  "How did you know we were here?" he 
  asked. 
  "I did not know it," she said. "I came there 
  to give the alarm to the police. You see, the 
  body of Professor Adams"—she paused, shud-
  dered, whitened a little—“the body was to be 
  taken from the police." 
  "Why?" Doc asked. 
  "He is the third man who tried to get to 
  you," the girl said swiftly. "The other two tried it 
  from the swamp. They failed. They had with 
  them a small lump of substance which looks like 
  red sealing wax. They were trying to get it to 
  you. Professor Adams had some of the same 
  substance." 
  “Huh!" Monk exploded. "The red stuff 
  sticking to his false teeth!" 
  "Then you got it!" gasped the girl. 
  "Sure!" Monk told her. "Doc's got it in his 
  pocket." 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE asked, "What is the red 
  substance?" 
  "Turn to the left here," directed the girl. 
  "When you see a large sandwich stand on the 
  left, turn into the next road branching off to the 
  north." 
  Doc swung the car around the corner, 
  said, "Answer my question, please." 
  "I do not know what the red material is," 
  said the girl. 
  Ham, his sword cane across his knees, 
  rapped, "Young lady, you will have to clarify that 
  statement." 
  The girl went through the gestures of 
  wringing her hands, but still kept a tight grip on 
  the hand bag. 
  "It's so fantastic," she said wildly. "You'll 
  understand it all as soon as I can get you to 
  where my father and Ray Wood are being held. 
  They'll explain. You see, if you have the red ma-
  terial, you'll have something that will enable you 
  to solve the whole problem. They knew that. 
  That's why they've been trying to get it to you. 
  We all carry some of it on our persons. I had 
  some in my ring. Remember when I threw the 
  ring at you?” 
  "Yes," Doc said. "Your father and Ray 
  Wood are the other two prisoners you were talk-
  ing about? Your father has the patch over an 
  eye." 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  26 
  She nodded emphatically. "Of course. I 
  tried to get to them back at that house in the 
  sand dunes, and I was seized." 
  "How many men holding them?" Monk 
  asked. 
  The girl seemed to hesitate. "Several," she 
  admitted. "Have you got guns with you?" 
  Monk exhibited his superfirer. "Sure." 
  "Oh!" The girl stared at the gun. "Those 
  men who have the black paint on their faces 
  have been keeping close check on you. I heard 
  them say they had doctored the ammunition 
  drums in your baggage. You had better examine 
  your guns." 
  Monk frowned and clipped the magazine 
  drum out of his supermachine pistol. Ham, his 
  expression worried, followed suit. An instant 
  later, both were examining the cartridges. 
  The girl slid over to the far side of the seat, 
  away from Doc Savage. She opened her bag 
  with a snaky swiftness and flashed a flat auto-
  matic pistol into view. 
  "Pull over to the side of the road and stop 
  the car," she gritted. "And don't make any funny 
  moves!" 
  Doc, his metallic features inscrutable, did 
  as she directed. 
   
   
  IN the rear, Monk and Ham showed the 
  girl open, startled mouths, then expressions of 
  great disgust. In their hands, the unloaded su-
  perfirers were quite useless. 
  "The hussy!” Monk growled. "She worked 
  that like a charm." 
  "Sit very still," the girl directed Doc Sav-
  age. 
  Then she reached over and with great 
  care, keeping the gun pointed directly at his 
  head, inserted a hand in his coat pocket. She 
  brought out the false teeth in their wrapping of 
  handkerchief, and unwound enough of the cloth 
  to see the white artificial molars glinting through 
  a crack in the fabric. 
  Doc moved slightly. 
  "Don't make the mistake of thinking I won't 
  shoot!" the girl said wildly, and jutted her gun. 
  “Careful Doc!” Ham gasped. 
  The girl, without looking closer at the false 
  teeth, but feeling the outlines to make sure she 
  had them, backed out of the car, keeping her 
  gun ready, menacing. 
  Down the road, several men had ap-
  peared. They were fellows of average size, 
  dressed in a manner designed not to attract at-
  tention. There was one exception—the man who 
  led the party. He wore golf knickers which were 
  tremendously full for his lean shanks, and he 
  had a head which was huge and entirely bare of 
  hair. 
  All of the men had black faces and hands 
  With her automatic, the girl shot holes in 
  the rear tires of the car. They were standing on a 
  dirt road, and the bursting of the tires stirred up 
  clouds of dust. The girl whirled and ran, going to 
  meet the approaching party 
  Down the road, the black-faced individuals 
  were shouting. One voice stood out: that of the 
  leader. It was a fluted piping. 
  "The lying wench!" Monk rasped. "She 
  was working with them all of the time!" 
  He clipped the ammo drum into his ma-
  chine pistol, leaned out of the car, but failed to 
  shoot when a bullet, fired by the black-faced 
  man, ripped past his head. He blasted the car 
  door open and landed in the ditch, where there 
  was partial shelter. Doc Savage and Ham joined 
  him almost simultaneously. 
  They could distinguish the words of the 
  shrill-voiced, hair-less man—Ark, if that was his 
  name. He was criticizing the girl. 
  "Why didn't you hold them until we got 
  there, you fool?" he shrilled. 
  "I was afraid!" she shrieked back. 
  Monk opened up with his machine pistol. 
  Its bullfiddle blast brought down two of the at-
  tacking party, and the rest hastily took to the 
  ditch on the opposite side of the road. 
  Not far away, down an adjacent road, a si-
  ren began wailing. Its nature was unmistakable. 
  A police car. A prowling patrol car must have 
  heard the uproar and was coming to investigate. 
  The black-faced men showed no desire to 
  mix it with the police. They got out of their ditch, 
  scuttled over and got the two who had been 
  dropped by the mercy bullets, and retreated. 
  Doc and his men tried to delay them. They could 
  do little against the menace of bullets. 
  The black-faced ones had a car hidden 
  down the road, in a clump of frees. They got to 
  it, and the machine leaped away.  
  An instant later, the patrol car, siren wail-
  ing, hove in sight and coasted forward, the two 
  occupants, guns in hand, intent on learning what 
  had happened. 
  "It's in the can for us if they pick us up," 
  Monk muttered. 
  "Exactly," Doc agreed, and led their re-
  treat. Crawling through weeds until they reached 
  a grapefruit orchard, then running. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 27 
  The two patrolmen in the car did not catch 
  sight of them, and after a quarter of an hour of 
  running, they slackened their pace slightly. 
  "Is my face red!" Monk complained. "Think 
  of that little doll of a dame putting it over on us 
  and getting the teeth and that red stuff away 
  from us!" 
  Doc Savage halted and began carefully 
  turning his coat pocket inside out. Before long, 
  flakes of reddish substance began coming to 
  light. 
  "Blazes!" Monk exploded. "How did—" 
  "Remember when she said she escaped 
  from them by jumping out of their car in front of a 
  bank guard?” Doc asked. 
  "Sure. But what—" 
  "A little matter of time," Doc explained, 
  "The banks closed about the time we were at 
  that old mansion among the sand dunes. She 
  could not have found a bank open, and that 
  made me suspicious. There was a coin in my 
  pocket. I used it to scrape the red stuff, or rather, 
  part of it, off the teeth, just on the chance that 
  she was up to something." 
  Monk grinned. "Then our next move is to 
  analyze that stuff?" 
  "It is." 
  "How long do you think it'll take?" Monk 
  asked. 
  "Depends on just how simple a compound 
  it is," Doc told him. 
   
   
  Chapter VI 
  RED FLAKES AND DEATH 
   
  ON his person, Doc Savage had only such 
  unusual gadgets as he always carried when in 
  action—numerous small contrivances which had 
  gotten him out of many jams, and enabled him 
  to accomplish remarkable results. He also car-
  ried a respectable sum of money. 
  Ham for his part, had only his super-
  machine pistol, his sword cane, and a phial of 
  the drug which he put on the tip of the sword 
  cane to make its touch conducive to instant un-
  consciousness. He had, too, a small amount of 
  money. 
  Monk had his machine pistol, but no 
  money, for he discovered he had lost his billfold 
  somewhere. 
  This comprised the extent of their equip-
  ment. 
  "What're we gonna do for instruments, to 
  analyze this red stuff with?" Monk pondered 
  aloud. 
  That proved to be a problem. They visited 
  furtively, the vicinity of the Hotel Biscayneville 
  and found that their baggage had been removed 
  by the police to some unknown storage. Asking 
  its return would be futile and foolhardy. They 
  would be arrested on sight. 
  Copies of the afternoon papers told them 
  that. It was in two-inch boldface on the front 
  pages: "DOC SAVAGE WANTED!" The fa-
  mous man of bronze, adventurer and philan-
  thropist from New York had been accused of 
  murdering Professor Casson Adams, noted 
  physicist. 
  Included in the story was a notation to the 
  effect that Professor Casson Adams, the mur-
  dered man, had been a friend of H. U. Summer-
  vane Lawmer, who had recently vanished after 
  taking off in his private plane in South Carolina. 
  The South Carolina police had been tele-
  graphed to check up on the possibility that Doc 
  Savage might have had a hand in the death of 
  H. U. Summervane Lawmer, too. 
  "They're not overlooking any bets to get 
  publicity," Ham said grimly. 
  "What're we gonna do for a laboratory to 
  analyze this red stuff?" Monk demanded. "Dang 
  it! The cops have got Habeas, I'll bet." 
  Doc Savage called, by telephone, the 
  head of a concern engaged in the manufacture 
  of certain chemical products. The concern was 
  actually one of a chain scattered over the coun-
  try, and differed from most industrial corpora-
  tions in that the employees worked for a share in 
  the profits, rather than on salaries. 
  The concern was owned by an individual 
  who took as his return only a share equal to the 
  salary of the local head. It chanced that the 
  owner had never visited the plant, but his iden-
  tity was naturally not unknown. 
  Doc Savage requested use of the plant 
  laboratory, and gave his name. He received 
  permission with alacrity, a fact which did not 
  come entirely as a surprise, because it hap-
  pened that he was the silent owner. The public 
  did not know this fact. 
  Doc and Monk went to work in the chemi-
  cal concern laboratory. Monk, although those 
  who knew him freely admitted he was one of the 
  greatest of industrial chemists, knew quite posi-
  tively that he was not Doc Savage's equal. Doc 
  had a manner of studying with incredible con-
  centration. And he had spent most of his life in 
  studying different subjects. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  28 
  Ham stood by. He could do little more than 
  go out occasionally, taking care that he was not 
  seen by policemen, and get newspapers. Thus 
  the night progressed. 
   
   
  THE nine o'clock editions of the newspa-
  pers that evening came out with a new devel-
  opment. The story about Doc Savage occupied 
  first place, but the other ran it a close second. 
  Leslie Thorne had vanished. 
  That was what the headlines said. At first 
  glance, the name of Leslie Thorne probably 
  meant no more than any other twelve letters in 
  boldface type to the majority of the citizens of 
  Miami, and the winter visitors. Neither did it 
  mean much to the newspaper editors and writ-
  ers, but it was featured because the police 
  seemed to be making an effort to keep it quiet, 
  and, furthermore, high government officials were 
  on their way from Washington to investigate. No 
  one, stated the newspapers, would say who 
  Leslie Thorne was. 
  Leslie Thorne had been taking a walk just 
  before sundown, and several persons had seen 
  something which looked like a mild fall of red 
  snow down the beach. This was highly unusual. 
  Many had hurried to investigate. It was then that 
  it had come out that Leslie Thorne had walked 
  behind a sand dune, and it was behind this dune 
  that the red snowfall had centered. The red 
  snow had melted almost instantly. 
  Leslie Thorne had vanished. He was not 
  behind the dune. Where he had gone, no one 
  knew. He had melted into the air, it seemed. 
  Leslie Thorne, according, to the newspa-
  pers, had registered at a Miami hotel, giving 
  Kirksville, Missouri, as his home, and had re-
  marked to various individuals, including the hotel 
  clerk, that he kept a shoe store in the Missouri 
  town. 
  Long distance calls by the newspapers 
  had developed that Leslie Thorne did have a 
  shoe store in Kirksville, but peculiarly enough, 
  he had been in Kirksville for only short intervals 
  during the past few years. A hired manager ran 
  the store. 
  Ham read this through, then went into the 
  room where Doc Savage and Monk were work-
  ing with grim-eyed concentration among test 
  tubes and other analyzing apparatus. 
  "Know any one by the name of Leslie 
  Thorne?" he asked.  
  Doc Savage looked at the front page. 
  "No," he said, "I never heard of Leslie 
  Thorne." 
  "He must be some one of importance," 
  Ham hazarded. "It says in the papers that the 
  government is sending special investigators 
  down from Washington. And what about that red 
  snow?" 
  "Snow—as hot as it has been here?" 
  Monk snorted. "Don't be a problem child." 
  But Doc Savage said, "There was red 
  snow, and Leslie Thorne disappeared?" 
  "Exactly," Ham said dryly. "Doc, do you 
  suppose red snow has anything to do with this 
  red stuff you and Monk are endeavoring to ana-
  lyze?" 
  Doc Savage did not answer. Instead, he 
  asked a question.  
   
  "Have you been following the newspapers 
  lately?" 
  "No," said Ham. "I used to read the comic 
  strips, but that was before Monk came along." 
  "Several prominent men have disap-
  peared," Doc stated. "Their disappearances 
  were in widely separated sections of the country. 
  Two of the stories, if I recall correctly, contained 
  small references to persons who claimed they 
  had seen red snow. These red snow stories 
  were not believed because those who saw them 
  were not persons noted for their veracity." 
  "Queer," Ham murmured. "Were these 
  prominent men engaged in the same lines?" 
  "No," Doc replied. "And as far as is known, 
  they were not even acquainted with, each other." 
  The midnight papers came out with a star-
  tling development on the Leslie Thorne case. 
  Leslie Thorne, official Washington had admitted, 
  somewhat reluctantly, was just one of the names 
  which the man used. Furthermore, Leslie Thorne 
  was one of the most dramatic figures on the 
  American scene, and at the same time one of 
  the least known. 
  There was a story in itself back of the pub-
  lishing of the story of who Leslie Thorne was. It 
  seemed a congressman, a confirmed pacifist, 
  and a fellow who liked to see his name in print, 
  knew who Leslie Thorne was and had chosen 
  this moment to spring it, along with some other 
  startling information. 
  It had been long maintained that the 
  United States had no organized spy corps, or 
  intelligence service, in operation. The con-
  gressman declared such a group had been in 
  operation for some time. 
  Leslie Thorne was the chief of this new 
  United States intelligence unit. 
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 29 
  DOC SAVAGE and Monk were still work-
  ing when Ham brought in the newspapers con-
  taining that story, and they paused only to go 
  over the yarn briefly. 
  "Looks like something big was underfoot," 
  Ham offered. 
  Doc said nothing. 
  Monk growled, "But what's behind these 
  killings? The victims have no connection with 
  each other." 
  "One was a United States senator, one an 
  undersecretary in the war department and this 
  Leslie Thorne was the chief of an intelligence 
  unit for the government," Doc said. "That makes 
  the three of the men connected with the gov-
  ernment." 
  “Uh-huh" Monk scratched his bullet of a 
  head. "But take the others. One was an airplane 
  manufacturer, one a college professor, one a 
  banker, one a mechanical engineer. What do 
  you make out of that list?"  
  "A headache," Ham said. 
  An hour later, Doc Savage went to the 
  telephone and put in a long distance call to New 
  York City, requesting the number which was 
  listed in the name of Patricia Savage, his cousin. 
  There were three other members of the 
  group of five remarkable assistants which Doc 
  Savage maintained, but they were abroad at the 
  moment. All of the five were men famous in their 
  particular lines. One of the missing trio was an 
  electrical engineer, one a civil engineer, and the 
  third a famed archaeologist and geologist. Their 
  work often took them abroad.  
  Patricia Savage was not exactly a member 
  of Doc's group of five aides. She would have 
  liked to have been. Pat loved excitement, dan-
  ger and the thrills attendant to an association 
  with Doc Savage. But Doc had turned a thumb 
  down on her joining his crew, maintaining the life 
  was too dangerous. However, when occasion 
  demanded, he did employ Pat's efficient aid. 
  Pat was voluble when he got her on the 
  telephone. 
  "I'm having my private plane tuned up at 
  the airport,” she said. "I'll be down there before 
  morning."  
  "What's wrong?" Doc asked. 
  "I've been reading the newspapers,” Pat 
  told him. "You're in a mess, as usual. And I want 
  some of it." 
  "Nothing doing," Doc told her. "I want you 
  to visit my laboratory there in New York, and 
  look through the storeroom until you find a large 
  metal case marked AN-32. Send it by air ex-
  press to the Magnolia Chemical Products Com-
  pany in Miami. I am speaking from there now. 
  See that it gets on a plane tonight." 
  "I'll bring it down," Pat said. 
  "You will not," Doc told her. 
  "What a friend you are," Pat complained. 
  "All right. I'll see that it gets on a plane. What is 
  it, anyway?" 
  "Apparatus for advanced analysis," Doc 
  said. "We have a substance here and we want 
  to know what it is. With the apparatus here in the 
  chemical company laboratory, we cannot make 
  sufficiently comprehensive tests." 
  "Behave yourself," Pat said, and that 
  ended the conversation. 
  Ham squinted at Doc Savage and Monk. 
  "So you can't find out what that red stuff 
  is?" he asked. 
  "Not with the apparatus available here," 
  Doc said. "The compound seems to be some-
  thing of a highly unusual nature." 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE and Monk busied them-
  selves straightening out the apparatus which 
  they had used, and in cleaning tubes and re-
  torts. 
  "What are we going to do now?" Ham 
  wanted to know. 
  "There is little we can do until the analyti-
  cal apparatus comes from New York and we find 
  the nature of this red substance," Doc Savage 
  explained. "No one knows we are here except 
  the local head of the chemical concern, so we 
  are comparatively safe from police interference. 
  It is just as well for us to stay here."  
  They had not used more than a third of 
  the red substance which had been on Professor 
  Casson Adams's artificial teeth. That portion 
  which remained, Doc Savage inserted in a small 
  glass bottle, which was in turn padded with cot-
  ton and encased in a wooden cylinder of the 
  type which sometimes encloses pill bottles. Doc 
  pocketed this. 
  After that, they slept a little—Doc Savage 
  soundly, Monk and Ham not so soundly. There 
  was a lagoon somewhere near by, and frogs 
  and water insects kept up something of a 
  clamor. It was very warm. For perhaps an hour, 
  thunder whooped and gobbled in the distance, 
  far out over the Atlantic, and at one time distant 
  lightning was prominent enough to flicker redly 
  on the laboratory walls. But the storm receded 
  without coming close enough to even affect the 
  strong breeze which had blown the day before 
  and continued to blow throughout the night. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  30 
  At dawn, Doc Savage arose, and without 
  speaking, began to go through the amazing rou-
  tine of exercises which he had not neglected 
  since childhood. The exercises were responsible 
  for his amazing physical development and the 
  sharpness of his senses. They consisted of ritu-
  als for development of muscles, these not differ-
  ing greatly from the accepted methods of physi-
  cal culturists, except that they were done without 
  apparatus, by a conscious tensing of one set of 
  sinews against another. 
  Doc was near the end of his routine, when 
  he broke it off abruptly. He listened. 
  “A visitor,” he said. 
  He whipped toward the door. But before 
  he reached it, the panel smacked open. 
  A portly, red-faced man came inside with 
  dramatic abruptness. He had an upstanding 
  shock of gray hair, a smoothly shaven face. His 
  mouth was large, flexible, his eyes large and 
  merry. His suit was gray, neatly pressed, and 
  there were lodge buttons on both lapels. A large 
  gold chain spanned his vest, which was of a 
  lighter color than the gray suit, and from it dan-
  gled three other lodge emblems. 
  He held a gray derby in front of his round 
  stomach with one hand. He lowered the derby. It 
  had concealed a nickeled revolver. He waggled 
  the gun playfully. 
  "The top of the morning, gentlemen, the 
  top of the morning," he said bombastically. "I 
  trust you would not be too surprised if you found 
  yourselves put under arrest." 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  THE CORPSE OF DUST 
   
  MONK said no word, but glided sidewise, 
  making almost no noise for all of his apish bulk, 
  and looked through the window. Then he turned 
  around. 
  "Noisy, here, seems to have come alone," 
  he said. 
  "A hundred and twenty million people 
  dwell in these United States, if we are to believe 
  the estimate of statisticians," murmured the 
  portly man who wore all of the lodge emblems. 
  "A number of people so vast as to be almost 
  beyond the grasp of any mind but one trained to 
  figures, a truly gargantuan population, living in a 
  civilization of infinite complexity. 
  "Yes, a remarkable hodgepodge, if I may 
  say so. Aren't we like ants in a hill so fast that it 
  defies the imagination—big ants and little ants, 
  all engaged in tasks which seem to us important, 
  but which, after all, may be of no more impor-
  tance, as far as the fate of the universe is con-
  cerned, than the machinations of the formica-
  dae, of which I just spoke. Amazing, isn't it?" 
  "What is remarkable?" Ham asked. 
  "The fact that I was able to find you," 
  smiled the newcomer. "But, believe me, it was a 
  task not without its difficulties. But, you see, I 
  had my sources. Yes, my sources. It required 
  some hours on the long distance telephone—
  which, by the way, is a truly remarkable inven-
  tion, if I may say so. But, by telephoning, I 
  learned Doc Savage was the angel, so to speak, 
  behind this chemical company, and so I thought 
  it might be well if I came out here. And it was 
  well, as it has developed." 
  Monk rolled his small eyes and said, 
  "Johnny Windbag is the name, huh?" 
  The other smiled, shook his head above 
  the shiny revolver.  
  "O. Garfew Beech is the name," he said 
  with machine gun rapidity. "Of the Arkansas 
  Beeches, it gives me no great pride to admit. 
  You see, my grandfather was hanged for, let us 
  say, purloining a span of mules which were the 
  legal appurtenances of a neighbor by the name 
  of—" 
  "Cut it out!" Monk yelled suddenly. “You 
  give me the big jeebies!"  
   
  "O. Garfew Beech is the name," repeated 
  the vociferous stranger. "Call me Fluency 
  Beech. My friends do." 
  Ham asked, "Cop?” 
  "Oh, no!" "Fluency" Beech lifted his brows 
  and shook his head violently. "My affiliations with 
  the law are spiritual only, as becomes a right-
  eous citizen who abides, or tries to abide with all 
  of the statutes which our good, if sometimes im-
  petuous legislators—" 
  “All right." Monk rolled his eyes again. 
  "What do you want?" 
  "Succor," said fluency Beech. 
  Monk misunderstood. “Who's a sucker, 
  you bag of wind?" 
  "S-u-c-c-o-r," Beech spelled. "Aid, assis-
  tance, help, support, coadjuvancy, defense—" 
  "Okay." Monk looked pained. "Then why 
  the gun?" 
  "Precaution only, my good fellow." Fluency 
  Beech stowed his shiny revolver in a pocket. "I 
  did not know who I would find here, you under-
  stand." 
  "And why that crack about an arrest, when 
  you came through the door?" Monk growled. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 31 
  "A joke, merely," smirked Beech. "I am a 
  great jokester. You will have to get used to that, 
  my good fellow." 
  Doc Savage had taken no part in the con-
  versation—it was habitual with the bronze man 
  that he said little, for he had long ago learned 
  that more information could be gained about an 
  individual by observation. Words in the mouth of 
  an expert liar can be very convincing. But Doc 
  spoke now. 
  "What kind of help do you want from us?" 
  he asked.  
  "Help of the most personal kind," said fl u-
  ency Beech. "I do not want to die. Indeed, I ab-
  hor the thought of death. I hope you will make it 
  unnecessary for me to die." 
   
   
  MONK frowned at Beech and said, "See if 
  you can put it in small words, minus the lec-
  tures." 
  Fluency Beech smiled. "Words are my 
  weakness, my love, my dissipation. If they gall 
  you, I am sorry. You see, words are also my pro-
  fession. I am a politician, although at present I 
  might be considered a benedict, being divorced 
  from the major parties of Florida politics. To be 
  more detailed, I have started my own party—the 
  National Providence and Level Deal Party, the 
  platform of which—" 
  "All right, all right!" Monk growled. "I'm 
  sorry I mentioned it. Go ahead." 
  Fluency Beech whipped an envelope from 
  inside his coat. 
  "Here," he said. “Read."  
  Doc Savage took the envelope, extracted 
  a card which had been folded once, so as to 
  cover the writing inside. There were only a few 
  words: 
   
  My Dear Beech: 
      You know what happened to Leslie Thorne. We 
  want to talk to you about that. You will meet our 
  agent at the corner of Little Palm Street and Cuba 
  Boulevard at seven o'clock in the morning. Or 
  would you rather experience the same thing that 
  Leslie Thorne experienced? You will rub a finger 
  over the black skin of our agent and make sure the 
  black grease paint smells of roses. 
  Another Black Face 
   
  "Melodramatic and slightly ridiculous, don't 
  you think?" Fluency Beech asked dryly. "Black 
  paint that smells of roses. Can you imagine? 
  Why, even the imagination of—" 
  "What do you know about Leslie Thorne's 
  death?" Doc asked. 
  Beech shivered. He took his gun out of his 
  pocket again. 
  "It was horrible," he said. "It was also im-
  possible. I thought I was going crazy." 
   "Explain," Doc requested, and only the 
  imperative rap of his unusual voice conveyed his 
  impatience. 
  "I chanced to be near this Leslie Thorne 
  when the Red Snow fell," explained Beech. "Af-
  ter—" 
  "It was actually red snow?" Doc put in. 
  "That describes it more accurately than 
  anything else," said Beech. "The stuff fell in 
  flakes. I was not close enough to touch any of 
  the flakes. But they melted when they hit the hot 
  sand, or seemed to. Of course, there were queer 
  aspects. The flakes did make a reddish liquid, 
  but that evaporated and did not leave the sand 
  stained. That is, this is what happened as nearly 
  as I could—" 
  "What about Leslie Thorne?” Doc inter-
  posed. 
  "I heard him screaming," Beech elabo-
  rated. "You see, he was on the other side of the 
  dune, where the Red Snow was falling thickest. 
  And he shrieked. He shrieked terribly. I was 
  scared at first, but mustering my courage, I 
  dashed over the dune, and what do you think I 
  saw?"  
  "Will you get to the point, guy?" Monk 
  growled. 
  "I saw Leslie Thorne, or it must have been 
  Leslie Thorne," Beech went on, as long-windedly 
  as before. "He was standing there. Just standing 
  there. He was perfectly rigid. Then—you may 
  not believe this, but I swear I saw it; yes, sir, I 
  swear I saw it—one of Leslie Thorne's arms fell 
  off!" 
  Fluency Beech paused for effect. 
  "Then Leslie Thorne himself fell over," he 
  continued. "The man just upset, as if he were a 
  stiff statue which some one had given a shove. 
  And there was a puff of reddish material. It 
  looked like dust, but I don't really know what it 
  was. Well, believe me, I stood there, half para-
  lyzed with surprise, and stared. I believe any 
  other man would have done the same thing in 
  my shoes." 
   
  "You took a good look," Monk said sourly. 
  "Then what?" 
  "I went, naturally, to investigate," Beech 
  advised. "I must confess that I did not rush in 
  wildly. I was a bit, let us say, jittery. All of the 
  time I was approaching, this reddish dust was 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  32 
  blowing away. It seemed to mix with the air and 
  vanish completely. And when I got to where Les-
  lie Thorne had fallen—you see, he was down 
  behind a small ridge of sand where I could not 
  see him after he fell—what do you think?" 
  No one said anything. 
  Beech shrugged. "Leslie Thorne was 
  gone! There was nothing there. Nothing! Abso-
  lutely nothing!" 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE said no word to that—and 
  Monk and Ham, looking as if they half expected 
  the bronze man's unusual trilling sound to come 
  into being, seemed disappointed and a little sur-
  prised when it did not. 
  Monk moved a little, putting himself 
  slightly behind Fluency Beech, then lifted a hand 
  as if to stroke the short bristles on his head, but 
  instead, tapped his forehead significantly. 
  "You told this to the newspapers?" Doc 
  Savage asked Beech. 
  "No," said the talkative man. "I did not. I 
  am a student of human nature, and a politician 
  as well, and a politician does not wish to be ridi-
  culed. I knew my story would be laughed at. I 
  have been laughed at before in print, and I do 
  not find the sensation pleasant. I simply went 
  home. An hour or two later, I found the letter I 
  have just shown you. It was thrust under my 
  door." 
  "Did you see the messenger?" Doc ques-
  tioned. 
  "Unfortunately, no." Beech looked from 
  Doc's bronze face, which he had apparently de-
  spaired of reading, to Ham's features, then the 
  simian countenance of Monk. On the latter two, 
  expression was more pronounced. 
  "I see you think I am insane," Beech said. 
  "Or you may be lying," Monk grunted. 
  "I am not offended," Beech said dryly. "In 
  fact, I don't blame you a bit. I'll wager I do sound 
  like an unmitigated liar." 
  "And so you want us to investigate?" Doc 
  asked. 
  "Exactly!" Beech nodded. "I saw the story 
  of your troubles in the newspapers and that 
  gave me the idea of locating you." 
  "You thought this Red Snow thing might 
  be connected with my difficulties?" the bronze 
  man questioned. 
  “The thought entered my mind, naturally, 
  but I had no proof," Beech explained. "It is only 
  because you are a man noted for investigating 
  strange things which moved me to think the Red 
  Snow and your presence here might be con-
  nected. If I may ask, is it?" 
  Doc Savage did not answer. 
  "We will look into this meeting at Little 
  Palm Street and Cuba Boulevard," he said. "It is 
  now twenty minutes until seven. The meeting 
  was to be at seven, was it not?" 
  "Seven, yes," said Fluency Beech. 
   
   
  A CLOCK bell struck six times in a pecu-
  liar fashion—the strokes were in pairs, with a 
  short interval between, six strokes all told. 
  "That clock is off," Ham mumbled, eyeing 
  his own plainly expensive wrist watch. "It's 
  seven, not six." 
  "Ship's bell, you dope," Monk said un-
  kindly. "It starts with one stroke at four-thirty, and 
  strikes two at five o'clock, strikes three at fi ve-
  thirty, strikes four at six o'clock, strikes— “ 
   
  "Shut up!" Ham said. "You're getting as 
  bad as that windbag, Beech." 
  They fell silent. Doc Savage was a few 
  yards away. A thicket of shrubbery concealed 
  them from the intersection of Little Palm Street 
  and Cuba Boulevard, where Fluency Beech loi-
  tered, awaiting the appearance of a man who 
  would have black grease paint on his face, paint 
  which was to smell of roses. 
  Doc Savage and his two men did not part 
  the shrubbery to watch Beech. Nothing so reck-
  less as that. The bronze man was using his tiny 
  periscope. 
  Behind them, across a narrow parkway, 
  was a narrow lagoon which opened into Bis-
  cayne Bay, the harbor of Miami, and in it were 
  anchored numerous yachts. The ship's bell had 
  struck aboard one of these. They could hear 
  others striking from time to time, their varied 
  notes making soft, not unappealing sounds. 
  Monk and Ham fell to watching Doc Sav-
  age; they saw the bronze man make a small 
  gesture, and moved to his side. He turned the 
  eyepiece of the periscope over to them in turn. 
  A figure had approached Beech, a 
  stooped, black-faced man carrying a short, 
  curved knife. They conversed. Beech was a 
  good actor. He did not look in the direction of 
  Doc Savage. 
  A moment later, both turned their backs to 
  the spot where Doc and his two men lurked. 
  "Clever of Beech," Monk grunted. "Now 
  that guy won't be so likely to notice us." 
  It was clever of Beech, all right. But the 
  black-faced man who had met him did not seem 
  to appreciate it. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 33 
  “What the hell is the idea of askin' me to 
  turn around?" he demanded. 
  "Doc Savage is, among other things, an 
  expert lip reader," said Fluency Beech. "He is 
  among those bushes, watching us.” 
  "Yeah?" growled the other. "Does he smell 
  a rat?" 
  "Not a very large one, at any rate," said 
  Beech. "If he has some slight aroma of rodent in 
  his olfactory organs, however, it is extremely 
  doubtful if he surmises anything near the truth, 
  although it might be—" 
  "You talk too much," snapped the black-
  faced man. "Let's get this over with." 
  "Wait a moment," Beech told him. "That 
  black paint is supposed to smell of roses. I must 
  rub some of it off and smell of it." 
  Beech now proceeded to stroke a finger 
  over his companion's cheek, and to make an 
  elaborate pretense of testing the grease paint 
  thus removed. He nodded as if well satisfied. 
  "It was fortunate that Doc Savage had no 
  opportunity to see a sample of my handwriting," 
  he said dryly. "Otherwise, he might have real-
  ized that the note which I showed him was my 
  own handiwork. Very careless, that. It should 
  have occurred to me to have some one else do 
  the writing—you for instance, my good fellow, 
  which would have been—" 
  "Let's get it over with!" the other gritted. 
  "This Doc Savage guy ain't small-time stuff." 
  "Patience is one of the great virtues," fl u-
  ency Beech informed his companion. "I might 
  even say—" 
  "That gift of gab you've got ain't no virtue," 
  snapped the black-faced man. "Get movin', be-
  fore I bop you one!" 
  "Watch your tongue, fellow!" Beech's 
  voice went suddenly hard. "I take no such talk as 
  that." 
  "Okay," the other mumbled. 
  "Everything is prepared?" Beech asked. 
  "Sure." 
  "Where?" 
  "We follow the path through the shrubbery 
  along the edge of the lagoon," said the black-
  faced one. "It's early, and there won't be any-
  body on the path. Everything is set about two 
  hundred yards down the path. This Doc Savage 
  will follow us, won't he?" 
  "It is to be hoped that he will," said Beech. 
  "His two men will accompany him, as well, if we 
  are as fortunate as I have reason to believe we 
  will be."  
  The two now began moving, walking al-
  most side by side, and turned into the path, 
  which at this point was little more than a deep 
  gash through luxurious tropical vegetation. It 
  was somewhat gloomy on the path, but not so 
  gloomy that both men failed to see the giant 
  man of bronze who had unexpectedly con-
  fronted them. 
  "Turning your backs was a little suspi-
  cious," Doc Savage said dryly. "I moved around 
  until I could see your lips. Quite interesting, that 
  conversation." 
   
   
  BEECH reacted strangely. He began to 
  talk. 
  "My dear man," he said, "a regrettable 
  thing has happened, which no doubt will require 
  patient elaboration and most profound—" 
  He was only talking. Making words. He 
  acted while he talked. His fat hand moved; it 
  lashed for his pocket. It got his shiny gun. He 
  yanked. Coat fabric tore. The whole pocket 
  ripped, came loose, and the gun appeared. 
  Doc Savage was lunging in. He struck 
  once, openhanded. The blow took Beech in the 
  face. The man upset, became an animated ball 
  of arms and legs. His gun flew away, hit the top 
  of a palm, stayed there among the bright green 
  cocoanuts. Beech made bleatings. 
  The other man began to hiss. He was like 
  a snake. Rushing in close to Doc Savage, he 
  drew the curved knife back. 
  "Get 'em up!" he gritted. "I'd hate to kill 
  you!" 
  He must have read the flake-gold eyes of 
  the bronze man. Probably he saw there no sign 
  of surrender. 
  "You asked for it!" he shrilled, and slashed 
  with his scythelike instrument. 
  He did not stab, or try to get to the bronze 
  man's throat. Instead, he slashed downward, 
  hooking, trying to get the blade behind Doc's 
  heels. He wanted to hamstring the bronze man. 
  Doc left the ground. He seemed to put 
  forth no effort. The curved blade went under his 
  feet. It cut off the tops of grass blades as if it 
  were a razor. 
  Then Doc Savage got both hands on the 
  black-faced man and yanked him forward. They 
  came together with an impact that could have 
  been heard hundreds of feet. The other was 
  stunned. Doc put both hands behind the fellow's 
  head. His corded bronze fingers convulsed. 
  The giant of metal was doing something 
  he had done once the night before—inflicting a 
  form of paralysis simply by exerting awful pres-
  sure on certain nerve centers. The victim's 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  34 
  struggles became weaker. His mouth fell open, 
  as if the muscles operating it had been cut. 
   
   
   
   
   
  Beech, when he had stopped rolling, had 
  landed flat on his back, and for a moment he lay 
  there grotesquely, looking very silly, with his legs 
  making running gestures in the air, and his arms 
  paddling about. Then the glaze went out of his 
  eyes and he got up and ran down the path as if 
  his very life depended on his leaving the vicinity 
  at once. 
  Doc’s captive was now breathing noisily 
  and staring straight ahead, utter vacantness in 
  his eyes. 
  Monk and Ham came rushing up, excited, 
  anxious for a fight, not knowing what it was all 
  about. 
  "Watch this man!" Doc rapped, and 
  dropped the black-faced fellow. 
  Beech was out of sight. Doc loped after 
  him. Fleetness of the wind was in the bronze 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 35 
  man's legs. He angled around a turn in the path, 
  gravel rolling a little under his feet. 
  He saw Beech. The man was a good two 
  hundred feet ahead. His head was back, elbows 
  close in, and he did not wobble. In his youth, he 
  must have been a sprinter. He was not doing 
  badly now. 
  Doc had cut half of Beech's lead when he 
  heard Monk roar out behind him. There was 
  something about that roar. Monk's fighting roars 
  were different. They were joyful, excited, reck-
  less. There was surprise in this one, amaze-
  ment, and maybe a measure of fear. 
  Doc stopped, spun about. His gaze lanced 
  above the path, fixed there. 
  The brilliant morning sunlight seemed to 
  have turned red in the one spot he could see 
  through the trees—red because scarlet flakes 
  were sifting down. 
  It was the Red Snow! 
   
   
  DOC heard a man scream. It was not 
  Monk; not Ham. It must have been the man with 
  the black grease paint on his face. Other sounds 
  seemed to indicate two men were running. Monk 
  and Ham were fleeing, possibly. 
  The sounds came as a type of muted ac-
  companiment to the weird, amazing phenomena 
  of the Red Snow falling in brilliant sunlight. 
  Doc Savage stood with his attention riv-
  eted. Behind him, he heard the fleeing Beech 
  cry out something that was not distinguishable. 
  The bronze man stepped to one side, getting a 
  tree between himself and Beech without, how-
  ever, looking around to see what Beech was 
  doing, but apprehensive lest the plump, talkative 
  man or some of his comrades waiting down the 
  trail, would use a gun. 
  The Red Snow—the 
  flakes 
  certainly 
  looked like snow—ceased to sift down; and only 
  then did Doc Savage desert the shelter of the 
  tree. He looked back. 
  Beech was not in sight. 
  Doc went toward the Red Snow, went 
  slowly, keeping under cover, not knowing ex-
  actly what he would find, guarding against all 
  possible contingencies. 
  He could see the Red Snow through the 
  trees, now. It was vanishing, literally melting into 
  nothingness—at least, it seemed to make liquid 
  stains, and these faded away, leaving the fresh 
  green of the foliage. The red flakes seemed to 
  recede before him, and they were all gone when 
  he came in sight of the black-faced man who 
  had met Beech. 
   Monk and Ham were nowhere to be 
  seen. 
  The black-faced man had managed, by 
  some overpowering of the paralytic spell which 
  had been laid upon him, to regain his feet. He 
  stood rigidly, propped against a wooden frame 
  which was around a small, freshly planted tree. 
  There was an expression of hideous immobility 
  on his face. 
  Doc stood there. Nothing moved. Even the 
  wind seemed to have stopped. That, of course, 
  was only a freakish coincidence. 
  Monk and Ham, wherever they had gone, 
  whatever had become of them, gave no sign, 
  made no sound. 
  The bronze man advanced. He moved 
  slowly, and his strange flake-gold eyes probed 
  everywhere, missing little. He came close to the 
  black-faced man, kept his eyes fixed on the 
  hideously upright figure, and when he was close, 
  reached out a hand and put it on the man's 
  shoulders. 
  There was a little weight in the hand. Not 
  much. But it went down, sinking into the shoul-
  der of the upright man, and a reddish powder 
  puffed, arose and spread in the air. The entire 
  shoulder of the man turned to the reddish pow-
  der. 
  Then a thing of seeming incredibility oc-
  curred, for the man seemed to fall to pieces. His 
  figure was like a dried toadstool filled with red 
  spores, the retaining film of which had been bro-
  ken, so that the whole form disintegrated into 
  powder. He upset. 
  The frame around the small tree, the di-
  minutive tree itself, also upset, and all, hitting the 
  ground, exploded into the carmine powder. No 
  piece of metal, not even the man's belt buckle or 
  the nails in the frame around the tree, resisted 
  the fabulous phenomenon. 
  A small breeze came sucking through the 
  tropical vegetation and picked up the powder, 
  wafting it, lifting it; and the vermilion stuff, after it 
  intermingled with the air seemed to become one 
  with the air itself, merging, vanishing completely, 
  so that it could no longer be seen. 
  In a space of time unbelievably short, the 
  pile that had been the body and the tree and its 
  retaining guard were all but gone, literally van-
  ishing into nothingness. 
  From Monk and Ham, there came no 
  sound, no indication to show that they had not 
  met a fate—fantastic though it appeared—
  similar to the one which had come upon the man 
  with the black face. 
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  36 
  Chapter VIII 
  THE PATH TO MYSTERY 
   
  DOC SAVAGE had pursued his strange 
  and perilous career for a long time, and because 
  he was often subjected to danger, to sudden 
  surprises, to inexplicable mysteries, to hideous 
  happenings for which there was, at the moment, 
  no explanation, he had become schooled and 
  hardened until he was rarely taken greatly 
  aback. 
  Yet he stood now as if mesmerized; with-
  out knowing it, he hardly breathed, and his eyes 
  were pulled wide with incredulity. He was proba-
  bly as surprised, as puzzled, as he had been in 
  his eventful life. 
  The air about him seemed to change 
  vaguely, and he wheeled, not sure there was 
  danger, but fearing there might be, and started 
  to flee. It was then that he saw his footsteps in 
  the gravel walk. They were pits from which the 
  fabulous reddish powder was blowing. 
  The pits spread, the powder caught up by 
  the wind, and the whole sidewalk to a depth of 
  four or five inches, well below the foundation of 
  courser stones, was pulled away in dust before 
  Doc's eyes. Grass and turf followed, then limbs 
  began to fall off the trees, to turn into cerise par-
  ticles. 
  Doc Savage ran. He did not often run, 
  even when the course seemed the better part of 
  valor, but he was retreating now from something 
  that even he, with his fabulous knowledge, his 
  wizardry of mind, did not understand.  
  He stopped some fifty yards distant, got 
  hold of himself, came back a little, and stood 
  there. The wind was stronger. It came in puffs, 
  rather violently. Great changing bulbs of red dust 
  squirted up and faded into nothingness. 
  Doc saw a limb fall off another tree; the 
  top of a palm came down with its load of green 
  cocoanuts. Yet there was no noise of falling, not 
  even the sluffing sound which might have been 
  expected, seemingly, if the red stuff were actu-
  ally so much dust—which it did not seem to be. 
  Over toward the basin where the yachts 
  were anchored, some sailor or yachtsman, 
  probably up early washing down a deck, was 
  calling out loudly to know what was wrong. He 
  must have heard Monk yell, or possibly had 
  caught the scream of the man with the black 
  face, the man who was now dissolved into noth-
  ingness. 
  Doc Savage looked closely at his shoes. 
  There was, as far as he could see, nothing 
  wrong with them. He stamped to see if they 
  were solid. They were. 
  The bronze man went forward, returning to 
  the spot where the Red Snow had fallen. In a 
  moment, he could view it fully. It was a strange 
  scene. There was a great spot, absolutely bare, 
  where trees and sidewalk had been. 
  It was somewhat as if a monster blow-
  torch, one giving terrific heat, heat such as as-
  tronomers say exists in the sun, had struck over 
  the region. Yet it was not like that, either. A 
  blowtorch, or terrific heat of any kind, would 
  have charred, would have raised the tempera-
  ture of the neighborhood. 
  The calling of the sailor had subsided on 
  the yacht, and silence fell, broken at intervals by 
  the calls of birds, seemingly undisturbed by the 
  sinister and eerie descent of the Red Snow. 
  Doc Savage listened. He was hoping for 
  any sound that might indicate what really had 
  happened, hoping, most of all, for some com-
  munication from Monk and Ham. 
  Then, so unexpectedly that their appear-
  ance was like a visual thunderclap, Monk and 
  Ham walked out of the shrubbery. The wild ex-
  pressions on their features showed that they had 
  seen what had happened. 
  "We ran when we saw the stuff," Monk 
  said hoarsely. 
   
   
  A GREAT weight seemed to have been 
  lifted from Doc Savage. He went to work, scoop-
  ing up samples of the soil—it was exposed down 
  to the black loam—and stowing them in the en-
  velopes which chanced to be in his inner coat 
  pocket. 
  "Did you see what started that—that red 
  snow falling?" he asked. "Was there anything in 
  the air above you?" 
  Monk and Ham shook a negative simulta-
  neously. 
  "If there was, we didn't see it." 
  Doc finished stowing away the envelopes 
  of earth samples. "It may help us if we analyze it 
  when the apparatus sent by Pat from New York 
  gets here," he said. 
  Ham 
  pointed 
  with 
  his 
  sword 
  cane. 
  "Beech—where did he go?" 
  "He had more of his gang down the path," 
  Doc said. "He yelled at them. I could not make 
  out what he said. But we'll look for him now." 
  They broke into a trot down the path, but 
  did not follow it very far, veering off into the 
  shrubbery instead, so that they were concealed. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 37 
  Doc went a little ahead, warily, his superior 
  senses straining to detect any sounds of danger. 
  Monk and Ham said little. They did look 
  back frequently, as if still in the spell of what 
  they had seen back there when the Red Snow 
  fell. 
  "In about an hour," Monk said thickly, "I'm 
  goin' back there and have a look, to see if I 
  really dreamed what happened."  
  They had covered about two hundred 
  yards, and Doc Savage stopped abruptly; not 
  turning, he motioned backward with his hands, 
  then began to study the ground.  
  Monk and Ham looked closely, then un-
  derstood, but knew they would have missed the 
  faint sign had the bronze man not called their 
  attention to it with his actions. 
  Several men had waited along the path. 
  They had been on both sides of the path, it de-
  veloped, when Doc Savage crossed over and 
  found on the other side grass trampled down 
  and dead leaves crushed where feet had 
  pressed. 
  "Nine men," Doc Savage said. 
  Monk wet the edges of his big mouth. It 
  could have been one man, or nineteen, who had 
  trampled the grass and he could not have told, 
  although his small eyes were as keen, his per-
  ception as acute, as that of any ordinary man. 
  But there was no doubt in his mind that Doc was 
  right. Doc could tell. The bronze man had pow-
  ers which quite often struck Monk as being just a 
  little beyond human. 
  "Beech joined them," Doc continued. 
  "Then they all fled." 
  “We follow 'em, huh?" Monk asked. 
  Doc answered by going forward. Monk 
  and Ham trailed him, keeping close to his heels, 
  concentrating on making as little noise as possi-
  ble, rather than looking about for danger. They 
  depended on Doc’s developed powers for that, 
  knowing from past experience that they far ex-
  ceeded their own. 
  Beech and his party had traveled at right 
  angles from the trail and Doc Savage, studying 
  the length of the footsteps, knew that they had 
  been running. But before long, the footsteps 
  shortened, indicating the men had slackened 
  speed. 
  "Careful," Doc warned. "They may have 
  stopped. They may be around here anywhere." 
  Monk complained, small-voiced, "I wish 
  my pet pig, Habeas, hadn't got bunged up at the 
  start of this, and the cops hadn't taken him along 
  with our baggage. He could scout through this 
  shrubbery. He's better than a dog at that." 
  Doc Savage had been to the left a few 
  feet an instant before, and Monk looked in that 
  direction, as if hoping the bronze man would 
  agree. Monk drew up very straight, and his small 
  eyes grew round as marbles, for Doc Savage 
  had eased away silently, was gone.  
  Doc was a dozen yards away at the mo-
  ment, bent over low, making no sound, taking 
  infinite pains to keep himself hidden from a 
  small, thick bush off to the north. He circled, get-
  ting behind the bush, but found it flanked by a 
  flowering shrub, the leaves of which were quite 
  thick. 
  He had seen movement in there, was 
  convinced it harbored some one. He came very 
  close, approaching from the rear, then tensed 
  and shot forward. As he had expected, he found 
  a form crouched in the leafage.  
   An instant later he dragged small, pretty 
  Nona Space out of the foliage. 
   
   
  MONK and Ham had heard the flutter of 
  the bush and came running up, machine pistols 
  ready, safeties unlatched. They stopped, and 
  had they seen the black-faced man who had 
  turned so fantastically into dust after the fall of 
  red snow, they could not have looked more sur-
  prised. 
  The girl struggled, not so much to get free 
  as to slacken the bronze man's grip, which was 
  unconsciously tight. 
  "After all, I'm not shatterproof!" she 
  gasped. 
  Doc Savage looked at her, possibly sur-
  prised a little that she should have used those 
  words instead of more prosaic ones although his 
  bronze features gave absolutely no indication of 
  what he thought. 
  Monk did his best to scowl darkly at her, 
  then made a crooked grin, consciously trying to 
  keep the ends of his mouth down while admira-
  tion pulled them up. 
  "You'll wish you were shatterproof before 
  we get through with you," he advised. "Where's 
  your pals?" 
  "Around somewhere," said the girl frankly. 
  "You'd better be careful." 
  Monk blinked. "Any idea exactly where?" 
  "I haven't seen them.” She shook her 
  head. "I have an idea they were here some-
  where, because they were shadowing those 
  other men, the ones working with that talkative, 
  man called O. Garfew Beech, or Fluency 
  Beech." 
  Monk blinked again, incredulously. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  38 
  "I did not see them—honestly," the girl re-
  peated. "I followed Beech's men here, but I did 
  not see the others, the ones who wear black 
  grease paint on their faces.” 
  Monk rolled his eyes skyward. 
  "This is making me very, very dizzy," he 
  said. "To be quite frank, I wouldn't be surprised if 
  you were pulling another fast one." 
  "Listen to me," said the girl. "I'll go back to 
  the very beginning." 
  "Then it has a beginning," Monk said dryly. 
  "Don't mind the ape," Ham put in. "Go 
  ahead, young lady. We are anxious to hear any-
  thing that will make heads or tails of this. We're 
  even willing to hear lies, if they'll make the thing 
  sound like there was some logic to it." 
   
   
  "UP until two months ago, I lived in At-
  lanta, Georgia," said Nona Space. "I worked in a 
  lawyer's office. One evening I was walking home 
  from work and four men with black grease paint 
  on their faces pointed guns at me and got me in 
  a car. I was forced to drink something bitter. I 
  awakened in Florida, out there in that old house 
  among the sand dunes where you were yester-
  day afternoon." 
  "It gets wilder and wilder," Monk grinned. 
  "But go on." 
  Doc Savage had moved a little away, 
  where he could hear the girl's story, and still 
  keep his keen senses focused on the more im-
  portant, for the moment, business of making 
  sure they would not be taken by surprise. 
  "My stepfather, Hyman Space, was there," 
  said the girl. "I was permitted to—" 
  "Thought he was your father?" Monk inter-
  jected. 
  "Stepfather," corrected the girl. "But I think 
  just as much of him as I would my father; I really 
  do. Anyway, I was permitted to see him and was 
  told he would be killed if I tried to escape, or 
  tried to notify the police. My stepfather seemed 
  very worried when they brought him in to see 
  me. I distinctly saw tears in his eyes, and his 
  face was horrible." 
  "What did you gather from the situation?" 
  Doc Savage put in. 
  “That they were using my welfare as a 
  club to make my stepfather do something for 
  them," said the girl. "That was borne out later, 
  when they kept me prisoner, and by the things I 
  overheard." 
  “What was their game?" Monk asked. 
  "I don't know." 
  Monk looked incredulous. "Yeah?" 
  "I don't, really." She looked from one of 
  their faces to another. "I never got to talk to my 
  stepfather, or he would have told me, if he knew. 
  A week ago, my stepfather did manage to toss 
  me some flexible red substance like gum or wax, 
  and told me to hide it in my ring, and if I got a 
  chance, to get it to you, Doc Savage. 
  "He said he and his two assistants were 
  going to try to get to you with some of the stuff—
  one of the assistants, Professor Casson Adams, 
  was going to hide himself in one of your trunks. 
  You see, my father had comparative liberty—my 
  stepfather, I mean. These men had simply 
  threatened to kill me if he did not do as he was 
  told." 
  Monk began to look slightly less unbeliev-
  ing. 
  "Yesterday afternoon, you came," contin-
  ued Nona Space. "The rescue attempt did not 
  turn out so well. The men who wear black 
  grease paint on their faces went to the morgue 
  to search the body of Professor Casson Adams. 
  They must have scared my stepfather into telling 
  them Adams had taken some of the red mate-
  rial. They saw you. I was in the car. They threat-
  ened to kill my stepfather if I did not approach 
  you and lead you into their trap, so they could 
  get the red material. They reasoned you had 
  gone to the morgue to get it." 
  "And you succeeded pretty well," Monk 
  grinned. "What next? How come you're here?" 
  "I overheard some talk which indicated my 
  stepfather and his assistant, Ray Wood, are to 
  be killed very soon," she explained, her voice 
  suddenly shriller. "It seems that whatever they 
  have been doing is completed. They are to be 
  killed. I was to be killed, too. So I escaped.  
  "I had overheard them talking about this 
  man Fluency Beech, and knew where his man 
  could be found. They knew Beech was working 
  on you, or with you, or something. They weren't 
  quite sure. But I thought Beech's men would 
  lead me to you. So I followed you and here I 
  am." 
  She stopped suddenly and pointed back in 
  the direction of the spot where the Red Snow 
  had appeared. 
  "What was that red material which looked 
  like snow?” she asked. 
  Monk gulped, "You don't know?" 
   "I've told you everything I know," the girl 
  said emphatically. 
  "You don't know what these black-faced 
  birds are up to?” Monk asked hopefully. 
  "No."  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 39 
  "And you don't know who Beech is or what 
  he is trying to do?" 
  “No.” 
  "Blazes!" Monk groaned. "This is as black 
  a mystery as it ever was." 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  MYSTERIOUS ISLE 
   
  DOC SAVAGE did not question the girl 
  further at the moment, but moved away, search-
  ing, eyes alert, following the trail made by Flu-
  ency Beech and his party. This came to a disap-
  pointing end. It terminated at a curving concrete 
  boulevard. There were fresh drops of grease on 
  the cement, as if cars had stood there recently. 
  The machines were now gone. 
  Returning to the vicinity of the fantastic 
  bare place where the Red Snow had fallen, Doc 
  Savage conducted an extensive search for 
  tracks. He found some. 
  The footprints had been made by four 
  men, and they did not approach within closer 
  than a hundred feet of the place where the Red 
  Snow had descended with such incredible re-
  sults. The men who had made the tracks had 
  retreated and had entered a car which had been 
  pulled into a clump of bushes a considerable 
  distance down the curving boulevard from where 
  Fluency Beech's men had parked their machine. 
  Doc Savage read the slowly straight-
  entering grass stems, the drying juice which 
  heavy feet had pressed from weeds, as if they 
  had been lines on a printed page. 
  "They fled about the same time that Flu-
  ency Beech's men departed," he advised. 
  “Then we're stumped," Monk muttered. 
  Doc now devoted some time to question-
  ing the young woman. She answered all of his 
  queries directly, without hesitation, and not once 
  did she alter her story in any detail. Nor was she 
  able to reveal anything of more bearing on the 
  mystery than that which she had already di-
  vulged.  
  Monk drew Doc aside. "Do you think she's 
  lying?" 
  The bronze man said, "Monk, there is one 
  subject which I gave up studying a long time 
  ago, simply because it seemed impossible to get 
  the thing down to a point where it could be un-
  derstood with any reliability." 
  "Women?" Monk asked. 
  "Exactly," Doc told him "Personally, I 
  never could even tell when one was lying to me." 
  The girl approached and said, "I haven't 
  asked you many questions. Just how much do 
  you know about this affair?" 
  "Not a whole lot," Doc admitted.  
  "Then you do not know how to get on the 
  trail of the black-faced men?" 
  "There is one possible plan," Doc said. 
   
  "What is it?" she asked. "I thought of 
  one, too. Maybe it is the same one." 
  "These fellows seem to know a great deal 
  about what is going on," Doc told her. "They un-
  doubtedly watch the newspapers. We can run 
  an advertisement which will draw their attention, 
  and possibly get in touch with them by that 
  method." 
  "Yes," said the girl. "If we can just draw 
  their attention to us in such a way that it will not 
  be too dangerous. I did not think of the newspa-
  pers. What kind of an advertisement will you 
  run?” 
  “We’ll insert it now," Doc said. "We’ll com-
  pose it on the way to a newspaper office." 
  It proved something of a task to get the 
  advertisement in the first editions of the morning 
  papers. The advertising forms were closed the 
  day before, it was explained at the newspaper 
  office. But Doc Savage, by taking half a page 
  and paying a not unattractive bonus, overcame 
  this routine obstacle. 
  The next edition carried the display: 
   
  $1,000 REWARD 
   
  FOR THE RETURN OF A SMALL ENVELOPE 
  HOLDING SEVERAL FRAGMENTS OF A 
  SUBSTANCE WHICH MIGHT  BE  MISTAKEN  
  FOR RED SEALING WAX. 
   
  PHONE BEACH 0071. 
   
  Monk narrowed his small eyes as he ap-
  praised the advertisement, then demanded, 
  "That should do the trick.” 
  He did not remark on the telephone num-
  ber. He had seen Doc Savage, enroute to the 
  newspaper office, stop at a small all-night drug 
  store and enter the one telephone booth. 
   
   
  THEY went to the drug store, and the 
  dapper Ham, at Doc's request, entered and 
  waited to take calls. To account for his waiting in 
  the store, Ham used a simple ruse. He entered 
  the booth, ostensibly telephoned, then came out 
  and told the clerk that he was waiting for a call, 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  40 
  and that it might be some time. He made himself 
  agreeable with the attendant, from time to time 
  purchasing soft drinks. 
  Ham was not entirely cheerful about his 
  task. He had two reasons. The first, it cut him off 
  from possible excitement, this serving as bait. 
  Secondly, he had discovered that he liked the 
  dimunitive Nona Space. He found talking to her 
  a pleasure, and he resented leaving her in the 
  company of the homely Monk, who, despite his 
  amazing homeliness, had the knack of charming 
  women. 
  Times without number, Ham had won-
  dered just how Monk got by with it. Ham himself 
  was more than ordinarily handsome, he was the 
  suavest of talkers and he had a remarkable line 
  of conversation. Yet he found Monk an aggra-
  vating competitor. Ham sometimes wondered if 
  young 
  women, 
  especially 
  attractive 
  young 
  women, did not feel sorry for Monk because he 
  was so utterly homely. 
  The street fronting the drug store, like 
  most of Miami's thoroughfares, was bordered 
  with shrubbery. A block distant was a small park. 
  It was in the park that Doc Savage left 
  Monk and Nona Space, an arrangement entirely 
  to Monk's satisfaction. They were seated on a 
  bench, surrounded by dense shrubbery, and 
  Doc advised them not to show themselves for 
  any reason, but to keep an eye open to see that 
  they, themselves, were not discovered.  
  Doc Savage himself departed without ad-
  vising just what he intended to do. 
  Telephone wires along this thoroughfare 
  were on poles, not in underground conduits. 
  A man in greasy coveralls, carrying a 
  metal case, wearing a floppy straw hat appeared 
  shortly. He wore lineman's climbing spurs. 
  Around his middle was one of the wide belts 
  commonly worn by linemen, and from it dangled 
  the usual profusion of tools. 
   
  This man did not seem large—except 
  when he was near some object to which his size 
  could be compared. His skin was a pasty, rather 
  unhealthy hue. 
  He climbed a pole near the drug store and 
  busied himself with pliers, wire and the inevita-
  ble test set. A moment later, he was clipped in 
  on the line which led into the drug store. 
  He heard a call from a housewife who 
  wanted a quart of ice cream delivered. He got off 
  that wire, and clipped onto another. There were 
  only two leading into the store. The second 
  would be the one to the booth. 
  The man on the telephone pole seemed to 
  be having a great deal of difficulty. Finally, a call 
  came to the booth. The man on the pole listened 
  in. It was from a newspaper reporter who 
  wanted to know what kind of a story was behind 
  the want-ad. 
  Ham told the journalist that he would call 
  him back later, then hung up. The reporter called 
  again immediately and demanded the story at 
  once. Ham hung up again. 
  A car passed on the street. The man on 
  the telephone pole could not see into the ma-
  chine, but he kept an eye on it and saw it swing 
  around the next block, turn in the middle of the 
  street when it was out of sight. It repeated this 
  after it had passed the drug store. 
  The man on the pole rang the booth. Ham 
  answered. 
  "Get out of the store, Ham," the man on 
  the pole said. "There is a car acting suspiciously. 
  I think it is our game."  
  "Very well, Doc" Ham said. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE waited until the car was 
  out of sight again, then climbed down from the 
  telephone pole and walked into a yard, then 
  stepped behind a shrub. He saw the car come 
  back and stop a little distance from the drug 
  store. 
  A man got out. He had a black face and 
  wore shabby clothes, but his features were not 
  those of a Negro. 
  He entered the drug store, removing his 
  hat as he did so. His hair was black, curly, but 
  the curls looked as if they had been put in with a 
  waving iron. They were too regular, not kinky, 
  artificial. 
  Doc Savage crouched behind the shrub-
  bery and removed his coveralls, tools, the old 
  hat, the spurs, and made a bundle of them. 
  Finding them had been a lucky break. They had 
  been in a lineman's car down the street and the 
  bronze man had simply borrowed them. 
  The black-faced man came out of the drug 
  store, looking disappointed. 
  Ham had not come into Doc Savage's 
  range of vision, evidently having left the drug 
  store by a rear door. 
  The man with the grease paint on his 
  face—it was undoubtedly grease paint, although 
  proof of the fact could not be detected from that 
  distance—went to the car. Three other men, 
  disguised like himself waited there. They spoke 
  and Doc, wrenching out his peculiar telescope, 
  got it in action in time to catch the conversation 
  by reading their lips. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 41 
  The talk was not in English, but in the 
  same foreign tongue which had been spoken by 
  the two peddlers before Doc Savage's hotel. 
  "There is no one but an attendant in the 
  shop which sells drugs," he advised. 
  One of those in the car must have asked a 
  question, but Doc did not see his lips move be-
  cause the fellow had his face averted. 
  "I ques-
  tioned the attendant," said the one who had vi s-
  ited the drug store. "He answered me that a man 
  had been there, greatly interested in the tele-
  phone, but had lately left. He described this man 
  as a slender fellow who carried a black cane." 
  "The one of Doc Savage's men called 
  Ham," said another of the trio in the car. 
  "Assuredly," agreed the first. "I questioned 
  the attendant further, and it seems that this 
  Ham, before taking his departure, requested that 
  the attendant answer the telephone—and if any 
  one spoke concerning red material in an enve-
  lope they were to be asked to call again, for this 
  Ham would return." 
  They seemed to talk this over. Part of the 
  conversation Doc Savage did not get, because 
  they shifted about, seeming nervous. 
  "You will remain here on guard," the man 
  who had entered the drug store was told. "Two 
  of us will remain with you. Together, we should 
  be able to get this red material in the envelope 
  when it is delivered—if it is delivered. And at the 
  least, we should be able to dispose of this Ham; 
  and if we are fortunate, of Doc Savage, and the 
  other, Monk." 
  "And of the girl," added some one. "Yes, 
  the girl," the man said, and swore. 
  Three of the party remained behind. One 
  man drove the car away. 
   
   
  AS Doc Savage suspected they would do, 
  the three black-faced men chose the most con-
  venient shelter, which was the same yard in 
  which he himself crouched. They entered the 
  shrubbery boldly, conversing in low voices, and 
  their fate, when it overtook them, came as a 
  complete surprise. 
  One man made a squawking sound and 
  dropped. The heavy pliers which Doc had 
  thrown at his head glanced from their mark and 
  struck another fellow, and he dodged so wildly 
  that he fell down.  
  Doc pitched out of concealment. The man 
  on his feet saw the bronze giant. He yelled 
  something in his own speech. His hand raced 
  pocketward. Too late, he saw it was hopeless. 
  He tried to twist. Doc's fist arched in. It was like 
  a maul of bronze. It slammed the man's jaw. 
  The fellow's arms shot straight out, he 
  lifted on tiptoe, his knees bent forward, and his 
  stomach went in and he collapsed downward, 
  accordion fashion. 
  The fellow who had been startled by the 
  glancing pliers squared off with a knife in his 
  hands. He was scared of the bronze man. It was 
  in his eyes. He slashed wildly, in great arcs; it 
  was as if he wanted to keep Doc off, rather than 
  do him actual damage. 
  But the man might have been striking at a, 
  particularly agile fly with a baseball bat. He 
  seemed to have no chance. Doc drifted in, got 
  the knife arm and bent it. The man tried to 
  scream, but Doc got a hand over his mouth and 
  the fellow only made noise through his nose. 
  Then Doc hit him carefully, on the very tip of the 
  jaw, and the man went to sleep. 
  Ham came running, crashed through the 
  shrubbery, his-sword cane unsheathed and out 
  before him. 
  "Well, well, well!" he said delightedly. "We 
  now have us some sources of information!" 
  Doc bent over the man hit by the pliers. 
  The fellow had been knocked out. 
   
  Doc began picking up the lineman's 
  tools and restoring them inside the coveralls. 
  "Wait here," he advised Ham. "I'll send 
  Monk and the girl." 
  He drifted away, walking slowly when he 
  was on the street, and came to the park. He 
  worked through the green foliage until he found 
  the homely chemist and the attractive young 
  woman. 
  "Ham is watching three of the black-faced 
  gang," he advised. "He is across from the drug 
  store. Go and help him take the prisoners to a 
  safe place. Bind and gag them; then question 
  them, one at a time. Try to find out—" 
  "What it's all about," Monk finished. "Sure, 
  I know." 
  Doc moved away, his motions swift. 
  "What are you gonna do?" Monk called. 
  "Try to follow that car with the other man 
  in it," Doc replied. 
  Monk's voice lifted. "But how are we 
  gonna get in touch with you if you follow that 
  car?" 
  "Call the information operator at the tele-
  phone company and tell her to direct any calls 
  that may come for Andy Blodge to a telephone 
  where you can hear them," Doc said. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  42 
  "Okay." Monk grinned. Andy Blodge was a 
  contraction of his own name, Andrew Blodgett 
  Mayfair. 
  Doc Savage ran toward the spot where 
  they had parked their car—it was another rented 
  machine. He started it, headed in the direction 
  taken by the machine bearing the one black-
  faced man, and drove fast. 
  The road was straight and wide, with only 
  smaller residential side streets cutting in. Most of 
  these were short, for this boulevard thrust out 
  into swampland which had been but partially 
  developed—it was in fact, almost a narrow neck 
  of dry land, with low ground and some water on 
  either side. 
  Doc had known that. He had been fairly 
  confident he would overhaul the other machine. 
  His confidence was justified when he 
  caught sight of the vehicle far ahead. He drove 
  more slowly, and began to shadow the other car. 
   
  FORTY-FIVE minutes later, Doc Savage 
  was crawling through palmettoes and sand. He 
  had left the car almost a quarter of a mile back, 
  having rolled it off the road where it would not be 
  noticed. The sand through which he crawled 
  was of peculiar formation, being composed 
  largely of very small sea-shells of an innumer-
  able variety of shapes. The palmettoes were 
  scrawny, the pointed leaves being particularly 
  vicious. 
  Doc Savage knew his quarry was ahead 
  somewhere. The man had parked his car in an 
  ancient shed beside the road, closed the shed 
  door and walked around behind the building. 
  Doc had been able to see that much from up the 
  road. 
  So far as he had been able to ascertain, 
  the bronze man had himself not been seen. 
  With infinite caution, Doc lifted his head. 
  He had heard a rasping sound, as if some one 
  had drawn a difficult breath. He saw the source 
  of the sound. It was not anything as sinister as it 
  had sounded. It was simply the scrape of a small 
  dory keel on the sand as the black-faced man 
  shoved the boat down toward the water. 
  The craft had evidently been moored 
  afloat by a long painter, but the tide had gone 
  out, leaving it high and dry. 
  The man got the dory into the water, 
  sprang aboard, and standing erect and using 
  one oar, paddled away in a manner which 
  showed he had not handled boats to any extent. 
  Perhaps two or three hundred yards dis-
  tant, there was an island. It lay parallel with the 
  shore, and was nearly a quarter of a mile long. 
  There was nothing to indicate how wide it might 
  be. 
  In contrast to most low islands in the vicin-
  ity of Miami, this one was covered by a luxuriant 
  tangle of tropical vegetation, literally a jungle. 
  There was no beach on the island, the man-
  groves growing out into the water itself, so that it 
  seemed there was no land, only vegetation. 
  The man in the dory was paddling for the 
  island. 
  Doc Savage studied the shell beach on 
  which the boat had been lying. Crossing it with-
  out being observed was a chance too great to 
  take, especially if there were unseen watchers 
  on the island. 
  The bronze man squirmed backward 
  through the sand and palmettoes and turned 
  north. Within a hundred feet, he came upon a 
  salt water creek. The bank of this was steep, 
  hard to climb, which perhaps explained why the 
  dory had not been moored there. 
  Doc selected the most advantageous 
  spot, one where the bank would slide less volu-
  minously; he stripped off his garments until he 
  was clad only in his silk shorts. He slid down the 
  bank, a giant of a man with muscles and sinews 
  which would have thrown a physical culture fan 
  into ecstasies, and entered the water. He carried 
  the tube of his periscope device. 
  He lengthened out and whipped sound-
  lessly along the surface until, he reached the 
  mouth of the creek, then went under without any 
  of the elaborate somersaulting usually resorted 
  to. He had made no splashing. 
  Once beneath the surface, he threw him-
  self over and over several times with quick ges-
  tures of his hands. He had a deliberate reason 
  for that. Air bubbles might have remained in his 
  ears, his nostrils, or even in his shorts, and com-
  ing up later and breaking on the surface, would 
  attract attention. He swam with long strokes, in 
  each of which his muscles got full play. 
  When his trained lungs felt the strain—
  Doc had learned the trick of staying under water 
  from the pearl divers of the South Seas—he 
  ceased striking and worked with the periscope 
  device. 
  The lenses came off easily, and were 
  stowed in the little clip-box for that purpose, af-
  fixed to the side of the telescoping tube. Then he 
  ran the tube up, fitted it between his teeth and 
  arose until, with eyes wide open, he felt that it 
  projected above water. He drank out the salt 
  water which filled it, then began to breathe easily 
  through the tube. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 43 
  He did not hurry the breathing. When he 
  was about ready to go on, he inhaled and ex-
  haled several tremendous breaths. This charged 
  his lungs with fresh oxygen. Then he took a 
  normal breath, one which could be held without 
  continual strain. 
  This latter process was one of the South 
  Seas tricks. The amateur adds to his exhaustion 
  by filling his lungs to capacity, so that there is a 
  muscular strain from the expanded ribs. 
  Doc Savage repeated this process a num-
  ber of times. Then the water seemed to grow 
  dark, indicating the mangrove branches were 
  above him. The next instant, he felt the tangled 
  roots. With infinite caution, he eased up among 
  the stems. 
  The dory was not in sight. Evidently it had 
  been drawn in among the mangroves. 
  Doc crawled up out of the water. He stood 
  for some moments on a submerged root, with 
  only his feet in the water, letting his giant frame 
  drain so that there would be no splashing. Then 
  he went forward. 
  Almost at once, he heard voices. 
   
   
  ONE of the speakers had a flutelike tone, 
  and was unmistakably the chief of the black-
  faced men, the one who had been called by the 
  somewhat strange cognomen of Ark. 
  "You fool," he was saying. "You drove out 
  without changing cars?" 
  "Why change cars?" questioned another 
  voice. "Nothing happened. No one would have 
  reason to trail me." 
  The second speaker was undoubtedly the 
  man Doc Savage had trailed to the little islet. 
  "No one would have reason—" Ark broke 
  off and swore expressively in his native tongue. 
  "We have been entirely too careless. First, it was 
  Doc Savage. Then it was this noise box, Beech. 
  Next, it will be the firing squad for us." 
  "They do not use firing squads in this 
  country," murmured the other. 
  "What they do use will be just as effec-
  tive," Ark snapped. "Use more care hereafter." 
  "I will," said the second man. "Are things 
  progressing satisfactorily here?" 
  "They are," said Ark. "Come. I will show 
  you." 
  The two moved away, and Doc Savage 
  trailed them, but not by sight. He followed by 
  sound. It was well that he did, for he discovered 
  there were other of the black-faced men, who 
  had not spoken, and who had not followed Ark 
  and the newcomer. These were lookouts, posted 
  at intervals along the jungle-matted rim of the 
  island. 
  Ark and his companion moved directly 
  across the island, where the growth was less 
  thick and where a small inlet seemed to snag 
  into the land in such a manner that its presence 
  was hardly noticeable from the seaward side. 
  There was a speedboat moored in the 
  rather shapeless harbor, the same craft in which 
  the black-faced men had escaped when Doc 
  and his two companions pursued them from the 
  old mansion among the sand dunes. 
  Tied securely to the mangroves along the 
  shore was a large, dilapidated barge. The craft 
  had seen much usage. Yet closer inspection 
  showed that it was still usable, providing it was 
  not subjected to seas too rigorous. Timbers 
  slanted from the barge to the shore, and the 
  manner in which the jungle was broken down 
  around the spot showed some heavy work had 
  been done there. 
  Ark and his companion passed the barge, 
  went on. 
  Doc Savage studied the marks where the 
  craft had been unloaded. Whatever had been 
  taken off had been heavy. The moving had been 
  done by rollers. 
   
   
  ADVANCING, the bronze man came to a 
  spot where one of the burdens had slipped over 
  a small embankment and had been hoisted 
  back, probably by the use of a block and tackle. 
  The foot of the embankment still held a fair im-
  pression of the base of the object. Doc surveyed 
  the impression closely. 
  In size, in shape, it about coincided with 
  the dimensions of the pedestals erected in the 
  basement of the house among the sand 
  dunes—the pedestals which had been covered 
  over with canvas, yet which had held nothing. 
  There seemed to be no lookouts along 
  this side of the island. Doc quickened his pace, 
  coming up to where he could hear Ark and his 
  follower talking as they moved along. 
  "If any one should land on the island and 
  see the trail made by the moving,” the follower 
  was saying in the foreign tongue, “they will be 
  suspicious. The island is supposed to be de-
  serted." 
  "We will make it seem that nothing has 
  been moved," advised Ark. 
  "That will take much work." 
  "We will do the work," Ark snapped. 
  "It is safe here?" the other muttered un-
  easily. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  44 
  Ark said, “It is not all that we might desire, 
  but we will use care. Anyway, the major part of 
  our work is done.” 
  “The odors—they may reach the shore," 
  suggested the first. 
  “We will work only when there is an off-
  shore wind," Ark told him. “When boats come 
  near, fishing, we will shut down. This is not a 
  populous spot. It will not be difficult.”  
  "Let us hope that is true," his companion 
  murmured.  
  Doc Savage had discarded much of his 
  caution. They were near the center of the island, 
  and it seemed a reasonable supposition that no 
  lookout would be posted here—and if there were 
  any, they would speak to Ark and his companion 
  in passing, thus disclosing their location to Doc. 
  So, when a man eased around a tree 
  within a dozen feet of Doc Savage, the bronze 
  man was, to his infinite disgust, caught flat-
  footed. 
  The man was burly His clothing was fairly 
  new and not cheap, but it was wrinkled and 
  there was mud to his hips. His face was squar-
  ish, grim. 
  He gestured slightly with the sawed-off 
  shotgun which he held. The gesture ordered 
  Doc to stop. 
  The man did not speak. 
   
   
  Chapter X 
  IN AND OUT 
   
  DOC SAVAGE stood perfectly still, so 
  tense that the amazing cables of muscle sheath-
  ing his great frame ridged out distinctly. He put 
  his hands up slowly. It was the wise thing to do. 
  He carried no weapon, no gadget—he was clad 
  only in shorts. 
  The square-faced man made a gesture 
  with his shotgun again, and Doc advanced 
  slowly. He could hear Ark and the other walking 
  on; their noise became fainter. 
  Doc parted his lips as if to say something. 
  "Sh-h-hi" admonished the man with the 
  shotgun. 
  Doc made his voice very low. "Why the 
  quiet? Who are you, anyway?" 
  “Pipe down," the fellow said. He shifted 
  the shotgun meaningly. “Play safe and come 
  along with me. I'm taking you to the boss. Me, 
  myself, I don t know what to do with you. So I'II 
  take you to him." 
  "Who is your boss?" Doc demanded. 
  The man said, "Don't ask goofy ques-
  tions!" and nudged Doc with the shotgun. 
  Doc began to walk. He had been guided 
  to the right, so he went that way. 
  "If you've got sense, you won't make any 
  noise," whispered the man. 
  "Why not?" Doc questioned. 
  “Oh, hell," said the other. "If you want to 
  make a noise, go ahead and make it, and the 
  whole gang will be down on our necks." 
  Doc Savage surrendered for the moment, 
  and went on, changing his course as he was 
  urged, crawling through tangles of foliage, eas-
  ing around the boles of the palms, occasionally 
  walking over tangled mangrove roots. There 
  were insects in the jungle, hordes of them, and 
  they began to make existence miserable. 
  The shotgun kept always against his back, 
  or close to it, and the square-faced man seemed 
  to be experienced in this sort of thing, for not 
  once did Doc get an opportunity to turn upon 
  him. 
  They reached a particularly thick bit of 
  growth, worked their way inside, and found 
  tracks in the soft muck where one or more men 
  had stood. These prints, due to the dusk be-
  neath the thick canopy of leafage, were indis-
  tinct. 
  Doc Savage, who could look at footprints, 
  and, because he had studied the varied charac-
  ter of feet and manners of walking, could not 
  infrequently tell whether he had seen them be-
  fore, endeavored to inspect the prints, but the 
  light was insufficient. He bent down with the idea 
  of getting a closer look, but the shotgun muzzle 
  urged him up again. 
  "Guess the boss moved," said the gun 
  wielder. "He was here not long ago. Well, we'll 
  look around some." 
  He had spoken in a very low voice and 
  Doc Savage answered in the same manner. His 
  captor seemed to have no desire that they be 
  discovered, and with this, Doc was in hearty ac-
  cord. 
  They headed toward the lower end of the 
  island, which seemed to be wider, somewhat 
  higher, and even more densely jungled. Eventu-
  ally, they heard sounds. They approached with 
  great care. Doc's captor seemed to want to hear 
  what was going on. The bronze man was 
  equally curious. 
  Men, they discovered, were at work oblit-
  erating the marks made by the heavy machin-
  ery. Doc's captor lifted up and had a long look, 
  then lowered himself and would not let the 
  bronze man make an inspection. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 45 
  "We've been wondering what they hauled 
  ashore here," the fellow breathed. "Danged if I 
  don't find out." 
  At the point of his gun, he guided Doc in a 
  circle. They came to a building, made of blocks 
  of coral and mortar and obviously built a long 
  time ago. The stocky man studied the place. 
  "That's where they took whatever it was," 
  he whispered. "Brother, you're stayin' here while 
  I have a look.” 
  "That may be dangerous," Doc warned. 
  The other eyed the bronze man intently. 
  "I wonder if we ain't made a mistake about 
  you," he grunted. Then he shrugged. "Well, I’ll 
  settle that later." 
  He produced two pairs of handcuffs. They 
  had been wrapped in cloth so that they would 
  not clink together and make a noise. He applied 
  one set of manacles to Doc's wrists, the other 
  set to the bronze man's ankles. 
  "You just play like you were petrified, and 
  I'll be back," he whispered. 
  "Careful," Doc repeated his admonition. 
  "That's my middle name," grinned the 
  other. 
  He crawled through the high grass and 
  covered fifty feet. Then a bell rang loudly. From 
  half a dozen points, armed men popped into 
  view. 
   
   
  THERE must have been hair-thin wires 
  stretched through the grass, wires painted green 
  so that they would not be noticed against the 
  verdant background, or gray so that they would 
  be mistaken for cobwebs. Breaking them must 
  have set off the alarm bell. 
  The men who appeared were all armed. 
  Some of them had the inevitable black grease 
  paint on their faces. Others did not. 
  Yelling gutturally, they charged the burly 
  man who had been so unfortunate as to set off 
  the alarm. He reared up on his feet, surveyed 
  the situation with one glance, and picked the 
  nearest shelter. This took him away from Doc. 
  Perhaps he was trying to distract attention from 
  the bronze man, as well as escape himself. 
  A rifle whacked. The blocky man ducked 
  slightly. He was not hit. The bullet must have 
  come close. He half turned his body above the 
  hips as he ran. His shotgun launched thunder 
  into the clearing. He aimed without using the 
  sights; it was a pump gun and he jacked the 
  slide with his left hand. 
  The shooting was little short of miraculous. 
  Had the blocky man been a trap-shooting expert 
  on an easy range, breaking targets for the sport 
  of it, he could not have been more deadly. He 
  did not shoot twice at any one man. He did not 
  need to. Everyone of his charges dropped a foe. 
  More rifles were adding their vicious snap 
  to the uproar. Pistols made more hollow 
  smashes. Men cursed, screamed. One of the 
  wounded was crying out awfully.  
  The blocky man with the shotgun went 
  down. For an instant, he was lost in the grass. 
  Doc could hear him swearing. The man’s profan-
  ity was like a pack of firecrackers going off—
  explosive, vituperative. 
  He must have reloaded his shotgun while 
  he lay there, for when he got up, he was shoot-
  ing again. Doc saw one of the shotgun charges 
  strike an attacker full in the face. It made three 
  round, distinct holes. That explained why the 
  charges were so deadly. The cartridges were 
  loaded with big buck-shots, slugs perhaps as 
  large as a woman's finger nail. 
  The fugitive dived into the growth. He had 
  evidently not been damaged badly by the bullet 
  which had forced him down. He disappeared. 
  His flight was a loud crashing. 
  Doc Savage had not been lying quiescent. 
  He was fighting the handcuffs. It would have 
  been simpler had he possessed padding to 
  shove inside the rings. But there was nothing 
  that would serve. He worked with his ankles, 
  straining. The steel cut in. Crimson came. With 
  his hands, he added what strain he could. 
  He had tried this thing of breaking hand-
  cuff lines before. Sometimes he succeeded. 
  Sometimes he did not. There were handcuffs so 
  strong that it was a physical impossibility to 
  break them. Those which he wore now seemed 
  to belong to the latter class. 
  He had been seen. Men ran toward him. 
  The foremost identified him, whipped up an 
  automatic rifle, took a deliberate aim and fired. 
   
   
  THE coördination of muscles and nerves 
  with which nature has endowed living creatures 
  is a fabulous thing when developed to its fullest. 
  It is said that the bird which hunters contemptu-
  ously call the helldiver can, and does, see the 
  flash of the gun and dive before the bullet ar-
  rives—at least, such is the explanation often 
  brought forward to account for the difficulty in 
  shooting the ungainly bird. 
  What Doc Savage did was a shade less 
  spectacular. He watched the trigger finger of the 
  gunman, saw it flex, and whipped madly side-
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  46 
  wise. The bullet slashed grass where he had 
  reposed. 
  The rifleman swore, took a second delib-
  erate aim. As his finger flexed, Doc leaped, this 
  time not quite sure that he would get clear, but 
  striving, as wild instinct dictated, to maintain his 
  life thread unbroken as long as possible. But 
  nothing happened. The automatic rifle was 
  empty. 
  Then Ark ran into the clearing. He was a 
  grotesque figure with his spindling limbs; he still 
  wore golf knickers, but they were a different pair, 
  these of an abominably green color. His hairless 
  head resembled a dark billiard ball. Branches 
  had scraped the grease paint off in long streaks. 
  Ark took in the situation. He began to 
  shriek in his native tongue. 
  "Do not kill him!" he yelled. "There are 
  things we should, ask him!" 
  By now, they had observed that Doc Sav-
  age was hampered by the handcuffs, and two 
  men ran up boldly. They pounced on the bronze 
  man. There was a sudden struggle. Blows 
  whacked. Both attackers came flying out of the 
  mêlée—and one, hitting the ground hard, got up 
  screaming and drawing a knife. He rushed in 
  again. 
  "No, no!" Ark bawled; "He is handcuffed, 
  you fools! Take him alive!" 
  Doc Savage suddenly ceased fighting. It 
  was futile, dangerous. It would only arouse his 
  foes, and there was no chance of his escaping, 
  anyway. 
  He was seized unceremoniously. More 
  men came running. The little island seemed to 
  be alive with them. 
  Ark indicated Doc Savage. "Carry him in-
  side. We will question him." 
  "But what about the other one who ran?" 
  asked one of the men. 
  "Perhaps he will come to rescue his chief," 
  Ark chuckled. "We will search for him, too." 
  "But the one who ran was not one of Doc 
  Savage's men," corrected the other. 
  "What?" Ark made it shriek. 
  "The other was a man whom none of us 
  had ever seen before," said one of the men. 
  The words seemed to release an emo-
  tional brake in Ark. He bounced around, spout-
  ing orders. Men ran off to push a search. 
  Another pair of handcuffs were brought 
  and clipped to Doc Savage's ankles, reënforcing 
  those which were already there, and a pair was 
  added to his wrists. Then he was carried into the 
  building of coral and mortar. 
  There was no roof over the room where he 
  was deposited, and grass and weeds grew from 
  the stone floor. 
  After a time, Ark came in. 
   
   
  "AT no time have we been introduced with 
  the formality befitting individuals of distinction," 
  Ark said. He clicked his heels, bobbed his round, 
  hairless head in a brisk bow. "I am the Baron 
  Lang Ark. You have heard of me?" 
  Doc Savage did not speak immediately, 
  but studied the features of the man before him, 
  sometimes shifting his gaze to two bodyguards 
  who had accompanied Ark into the roofless 
  room. They were foreigners, aliens who might 
  smuggle themselves into the United States. Im-
  migration officials were on the lookout for such. 
  Florida was one of the great centers of the alien 
  smuggling trade. Hence these men, noticed too 
  frequently, would have attracted attention. 
  Negroes were plentiful in Florida. These 
  men could pass as such with their skins properly 
  darkened. Few observers would note that they 
  lacked the lip contour, or observe their other tiny 
  faults. 
  The Baron Lang Ark looked impatient and 
  repeated, "You have heard of me?” 
  "No," Doc told him. 
  “Excellent!" The other laughed. "That is 
  not my true name. Now, you will answer my 
  questions. First, who was the other man?" 
  "I do not know," Doc told him. 
  "Who put the handcuffs on you?" 
  "He did." 
  Ark bowed shortly. "Then he is not a foe to 
  be ignored. I gather that you followed my man 
  here?" 
  Doc said nothing. 
  "Did you?" Ark snapped. 
  Doc held silence. 
  "The man was killed by the one with the 
  shotgun, so you need not withhold the truth to 
  prevent him being punished," said the hairless 
  man. 
  Doc said, "I followed him here." 
  "How many came with you?" 
  "No answer I could give to that would be 
  believed," Doc stated without emotion. 
  "True." Ark showed perfect white teeth in a 
  smile. "We will go back to that question later. Did 
  this man with the shotgun follow you here?" 
  Doc said in entire truth, "I have not the 
  slightest idea." 
  "Why did he take you prisoner?" 
  "That seems to be part of the mystery." 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 47 
  Ark stood and thought that over. He pro-
  duced cigarettes—long, thin, blue cylinders with 
  gold tips, and stuck one in his small mouth. Both 
  his bodyguards hastened to strike matches. 
  "This fellow with the shotgun must have 
  followed some of my men here," he said finally. 
  "That is the only way he could have found the 
  spot. None of my men have been seized and 
  tortured. This man trailed some one. That 
  means my men have been careless. Entirely too 
  careless." 
  There seemed to be no call for a reply, 
  and Doc Savage said nothing. 
  "My men need an example to show that 
  such carelessness is not wise," Ark murmured. 
  "I shall make one of the fool who permitted you 
  to trail him here." 
  Doc Savage showed no emotion. "You 
  said that one was dead." 
  "I am a famous man, not a gentleman nor 
  a man with any honor," Ark replied. "I lied to 
  you." 
  Doc Savage, made no answer. He was 
  disgusted. Not often did he fail to sift truth from 
  untruth in a man's speech. And this Lang Ark 
  had deceived him completely. The fellow was an 
  accomplished hypocrite. 
   
   
  ARK now cracked a command in his na-
  tive tongue—he had been speaking English of 
  fair quality—and the man whom Doc Savage 
  had trailed to the island was brought into the 
  roofless enclosure. 
  The fellow was scared; much of the black 
  paint on his features had been rubbed off, and 
  his skin, thus exposed, had a stark color. His 
  eyes were steadily wide, unblinking, as if the lids 
  were permanently wedged apart. But there was 
  no shaking in his limbs. 
  "The bronze man followed you here," Ark 
  told him. 
  "If that is true," the man said hoarsely, "I 
  deserve a great punishment." 
  Ark eyed him. "I am going to be very gen-
  erous." 
  The man seemed to know his chief very 
  well. He did not appear greatly relieved. He said 
  nothing. 
  "Release him," Ark commanded. 
  The man was freed. Those who had 
  brought him in stood aside. Still the accused did 
  not speak. 
  "You may go," Ark told him. 
  The man's mouth sagged. He seemed un-
  able to believe what he heard. 
  "You—you mean I can—walk out of 
  here?" he stumbled. 
  "Exactly," Ark said. 
  A great gladness came over the man's 
  face. The startling change in his features was an 
  indication of the nature of punishment he had 
  expected. He seemed overjoyed at the leniency. 
  "Go!" Ark directed. 
  The man bowed deeply to Ark, then 
  turned and walked toward the door. 
  Ark drew an automatic pistol and without 
  displaying particular emotion, shot the man in 
  the back of the head. 
  "He died happy," he said dryly," as the 
  body was carried out. 
  Doc Savage watched the man steadily. He 
  knew that the slaying had been, in part, to im-
  press him, to weaken his self control. But he had 
  schooled himself to keep such things from af-
  fecting him as they might affect another. There 
  was a way of doing it. Concentration played a 
  large part. 
  But the bronze man had seen blood shed 
  in a cold fashion on other occasions, yet never 
  quite so callously as this. He was seeing in this 
  Lang Ark a foe of more dangerous caliber than 
  he had expected, or thought. The fellow seemed 
  to have absolutely no nerves; he could tell un-
  truths as convincingly as he recited facts; he 
  was undoubtedly ingenious as well as cold-
  blooded, and, not the least important, there was 
  a certain something about his manner, an air, in 
  a sense, which meant that he was motivated by 
  some great purpose. It was the same manner 
  that drives a painter to do a great canvas, or a 
  writer to turn out a classic. 
  The Baron Lang Ark was out to accom-
  plish something, and would stop at nothing to 
  succeed. 
  Ark came over to Doc and said, "You will 
  tell me where your two men and the girl, Nona 
  Space, can be found." 
  "Then what?" Doc asked. 
  “They will be taken prisoner," Ark said. 
  "They will be held, unharmed, until certain things 
  happen." 
  "What things?" Doc asked.  
  Ark laughed, and entirely ignored the last 
  question. 
  "Where are the two men and the girl?" he 
  repeated. 
  Doc replied, truthfully, "I do not know." 
  Ark studied him for a long time. There was 
  something hideous, repulsive about Ark's hair-
  less head. It was somehow like the shiny body 
  of a spider, a body which had been stripped of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  48 
  all the legs but one, that one serving as a neck. 
  The body was a little bloated, too. 
  "I have various methods for making one 
  talk," Ark said. "We will try them." 
   
   
  THEY lifted Doc Savage bodily and car-
  ried him through an arch in the wall, an arch 
  which looked as if it were in constant danger of 
  falling down. They passed through a room 
  where the floor had been grubbed free of grass 
  and weeds. Beyond was an open court—this 
  ruin of coral had once been a dwelling of the 
  Spanish type, with a courtyard in the center. 
  In the court was a pit which had once 
  been a fountain or a swimming pool—probably 
  the latter, because it was deep, although the 
  dimensions were not large.  
  Doc Savage was lowered to the bottom. 
  One of the men brought a coil of wire, and this 
  was employed in binding the bronz e man, al-
  though there was no likelihood of his breaking 
  the handcuffs. 
  When the wire was all used, he was little 
  more than an elongated bundle of gleaming 
  metal. Some one brought two iron rods, longer 
  than Doc was high, and immensely stiff, and 
  these were wired to him, or he was wired to the 
  rods, so that he could not bend or flop about. 
  Several sheet-metal drums were rolled up. 
  These were larger than ordinary barrels. They 
  were arrayed around the edge of the swimming 
  pool so that they projected slightly over the rim.   
  A lighted lantern arrived. Ark himself re-
  moved the globe and placed it, still burning, on 
  the floor near Doc Savage. In order to make 
  sure that he could not reach it, a stout iron pipe 
  was driven through the cracked floor of the 
  pool—the latter was of concrete—and he was 
  wired to it. 
  With a hammer and a pointed punch, Ark-
  drove a hole in the lower edges of each of the 
  drums. A dark fluid ran out, splattered on the 
  pool floor, spread. Its odor identified it. Crude oil. 
  "It is not highly explosive or extremely in-
  flammable," Ark told Doc Savage quietly. "But it 
  will burn. It is the same oil which is used in Die-
  sel engines. It makes a very hot fire.” 
  Doc said nothing.   
  "This may seem like good old melo-
  drama," Ark said, still without particular emotion. 
  "But I am not doing this because I desire you to 
  meet a particularly horrible form of death. I want 
  you to think. By thinking, you may conclude to 
  answer my questions. You can watch the level 
  of the oil come up on the base of that burning 
  light. I do not know just how high it will come 
  before it does take fire. Perhaps it will be soon, 
  perhaps late. That is for you to wonder about." 
  Doc's interest seemed far away, where the 
  sun was a brazen disk high overhead. 
  "In the meantime, my men may find your 
  two aides, Monk and Ham," Ark said. 
  Then he went away. 
   
   
   
  Chapter XI 
  THE MEN OF DUST 
   
  MONK and Ham were having their trou-
  bles. 
  Their car—they had rented a machine—
  was traveling something near seventy-five miles 
  an hour. The car had a cut out; this was open. 
  Monk drove. Ham kept the tip of his sword cane 
  on the horn button. It was a special type of horn, 
  one which played cornetlike musical tones, and 
  its uproar added a unique touch to the general 
  bedlam of their hasty progress. 
  Nona Space rode in the back. She held a 
  wrench which had been taped, not too gener-
  ously, with bicycle adhesive, and from time to 
  time she discouraged their three prisoners by 
  tapping them ungently over the head. They were 
  bound tightly and gagged, but they seemed anx-
  ious to throw themselves out of the car, despite 
  the fact that, even lying on the floorboards as 
  they were, they should have been able to tell 
  that the machine was traveling at a tremendous 
  rate of speed. 
  The pig, Habeas Corpus, was in the 
  rear—Ham positively refused to sit in the front 
  seat with him. Dog fashion, the homely pig had 
  his head hanging out of a window. The rush of 
  air kept his oversize ears distended like wings. 
  Habeas was the cause of their present 
  jam—Habeas, 
  and 
  Monk's 
  impetuousness.
   
  They had been driving sedately through 
  Miami, after renting the car, hunting a secluded 
  spot where they could question their prisoners 
  without a likelihood of being interfered with. 
  Monk had sighted Habeas Corpus on a Miami 
  street. 
  "Lookout, you ape!" Ham shrilled. 
  Monk gave the wheel a frantic twist, rub-
  ber shrieked, the machine keeled up on two 
  wheels without slackening pace, and they rock-
  eted out into the highway again. Monk had mis-
  taken a wide driveway for a side road. 
  The car went on, its worn engine making a 
  great uproar and givi ng off an ominous smell of 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 49 
  something burning. Ham looked back anxiously, 
  diverting his attention only when jarring of the 
  car as they crossed bumps caused his sword 
  cane to slide off the horn button. 
  "You awful mistake!” he told Monk sourly. 
  "You got us into this!" 
  Ham gave thought to the immediate past. 
  When Habeas Corpus had been sighted sitting 
  forlornly on the sidewalk, Monk, in his excite-
  ment, had not stopped to survey the surround-
  ings closely. He had jumped out and run to get 
  the pig. That action might have been very well in 
  its place, but Habeas chanced at the moment to 
  be in front of the Miami police headquarters. A 
  cop had sighted Monk, recognized him from the 
  description which had no doubt been broadcast. 
  Monk was an individual easily described. 
  A squad car loaded with policemen had 
  taken after them. It was still on their trail. 
  “You missing link!" Ham howled. “Why 
  don't you pick another road, one that's crooked, 
  and got trees along it? They can see us for two 
  miles on this one!" 
  The road they were traversing followed the 
  bank of a river passing frequent side roads 
  which branched off and crossed, via the inevita-
  ble drawbridge, the river. 
  Monk half lifted in his seat, squinting far 
  ahead. There was a bridge a quarter of a mile 
  distant—no other as far as the eye could see. 
  "What I been lookin' for!" Monk grunted. 
  He swung onto the bridge in a manner 
  which caused Ham, whose nerves were ordinar-
  ily excellent, to make choking sounds and throw 
  up his arms as if expecting a crash. Halfway 
  across the bridge, Monk put the brakes on, and 
  the car did everything but swap ends or blow out 
  tires. 
  The square shack of the drawbridge op-
  erator stood on the opposite side. The car 
  stopped before that. Monk piled out, dived for 
  the shack. 
  A sleepy, mustached attendant appeared 
  in the shack door. His mouth hung open. 
  "Can you swim?" Monk demanded. 
  "Sure," said the attendant. “I’m a durn 
  good swimmer, but what has that got—" 
  He did not finish, because Monk had him 
  by the shirt collar and trousers seat. The homely 
  chemist ran his captive to the rail, lifted him and 
  calmly plunged him into the water a dozen feet 
  below. The fellow came up and began to swim 
  about, still not knowing what it was all about. 
  Monk was inside the shack. He found the 
  levers which set the drawbridge to lifting, and 
  operated them. Machinery started grinding. 
  Ham stared in exaggerated amazement at 
  Monk when the apish chemist popped back into 
  the car. 
  "Could it be," he gasped, "that you have 
  really got a brain?" 
  The car rocketed on. Behind them, the 
  drawbridge came up in time to block the pursu-
  ing squad car. It would take some minutes at the 
  least for a policeman to swim across, settle the 
  span back in place, and then get the pursuit re-
  sumed. By that time, it was fairly certain to be 
  too late. 
   
   
  MONK turned off into a side road through 
  a series of neat grapefruit groves, when the po-
  lice car was out of sight. He drove at a more 
  decorous pace, one which would not arouse 
  suspicion. 
  "That was what I call quick thinking," pretty 
  Nona Space complimented Monk. 
  "Rats!" Ham told her. "He had read about 
  that stunt somewhere. He never had an original 
  thought in his life." 
  Which was hardly a statement to be con-
  strued as fact, since Monk was rated, by those 
  who should know, as one of the brainiest and 
  most skilled chemists actively engaged in that 
  profession. 
  Their car came to a stretch of uncultivated 
  land which was covered by a growth of trees 
  and brush. An ancient lane penetrated this tan-
  gle. Monk got out, made an examination to be 
  sure the lane did not lead to a house, then drove 
  in until the car was out of sight. He went back 
  with a bough and switched out the car tracks as 
  best he could, especially in the dust near the 
  edge of the road. 
  The three prisoners were now hauled out 
  and, as a preliminary, the black grease paint 
  was removed from their features. It was obvious 
  that all three belonged to the same foreign na-
  tionality. 
  Monk frowned. "These eggs all comin' 
  from one place—what d'you figure that means?" 
  "It simply means that crows associate with 
  crows and vultures with vultures," Ham snapped. 
  They now began to question the three 
  prisoners. They had expected to learn nothing at 
  first, or without taking drastic measures, but they 
  were a little surprised when all three of the cap-
  tives professed not to understand English. 
   
   
   
   
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  50 
   
   
  It was the dapper Ham who had a remedy 
  for that. Ham was something of a linguist. He 
  addressed the three earnestly and to the point in 
  their native tongue, after which the trio ex-
  changed furtive, uneasy glances, a tribute to the 
  convincingness of what Ham had told them con-
  cerning their future prospects. 
  But the three still gave no signs of intend-
  ing to talk. 
  Monk leered fiercely, leaned down, picked 
  one up, and calmly began to bend the fellow 
  double. There was an awful strength in Monk's 
  simian arms—bending silver half dollars be-
  tween thumb and forefinger and tearing books of 
  fair thickness across with his naked hands were 
  among his parlor tricks. 
  His victim began to scream. Monk de-
  sisted long enough to gather a fistful of moss 
  and employ it as a gag.  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 51 
   
   
  Monk's first manipulations were executed 
  with gusto. Then they became more systematic. 
  And Monk used a beautiful judgment. Bones, he 
  did not quite break. Muscles, just on the point of 
  tearing from their moorings, were eased of 
  strain. 
  The prisoner bec ame so wet with perspira-
  tion that almost a steady thread of drops ran 
  from whatever portion of his features that was 
  lowermost. 
  Nona Space gasped and moved away, 
  where she would not have the spectacle before 
  her eyes. From time to time, Monk removed the 
  moss gag to give the man a chance to talk, but 
  without results. 
  Cars passed on the road. Ham, posting 
  himself where he could watch, observed that two 
  of them were police machines. In the brilliant sky 
  to the southward, an airplane droned. 
  "You'd better cough up, guy," Monk told, 
  his victim. "I want to know what’s behind all of 
  this. But first and foremost, I wanta know what 
  that red snow stuff was, and what actually hap-
  pened to the guy who was caught in it." 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  52 
  He got no answer. One of the other cap-
  tives hissed something, evidently an admonition 
  to Monk's prisoner not to talk. 
  Monk scowled over at the one who had 
  given a warning. "Save that! When this guy 
  wears out, it'll be your turn!" 
  The sound of the plane was coming 
  closer. 
  Monk discovered unexpectedly that his 
  victim was thrown into paroxysms by having the 
  bottoms of his feet tickled, and the homely 
  chemist fell to work with a coarse blade of grass. 
  "Monk!" Ham yelled suddenly. "That 
  plane!" 
  Monk peered upward. "Police ship!" He 
  flung off his prisoner. "Help me yank off green 
  branches and put 'em over the top of the car, so 
  they can't see it." 
  But it was apparent, even as they started, 
  that they were too late. The pilot of the plane 
  saw them. He sent his craft circling low. 
   
   
  THE car which Monk and Ham had rented 
  was a fairly distinctive, light-gray machine. This 
  had not been to their liking, but it had been the 
  only fast vehicle available. The police plane, cir-
  cling two hundred feet up, recognized the car. It 
  was doubtful if those aboard saw Monk, Ham, 
  the girl or the prisoners. They were all out of 
  sight beneath foliage. 
  The ship swung away, and Monk had a 
  false moment of relief in which he muttered, 
  "Well, they missed us." 
  Then the plane came swinging back. 
  "You were too optimistic," Ham growled. 
  The ship was directly above. Suddenly, 
  one of the captives cried out, and all three be-
  gan to thresh about violently, trying to get into 
  the open where they would be seen. One suc-
  ceeded. The police plane arched down so close 
  that its propeller blast stirred the leaves on the 
  trees.  
  Then Monk and Ham gave tremendous 
  starts as a thunderous voice crashed out. 
  "You are under arrest!" It said. "You will 
  come out into the road with your hands up and 
  await the arrival of squad cars!" 
  The underportion of the plane was fitted 
  with one of the huge loud-speakers of the type 
  sometimes used for advertising from the skies.  
  "Sure, watch us do that," Monk gritted. 
  "Ham, we'd better load everybody in the car and 
  make a run for it." 
  "But they can follow us," Ham objected. 
  "Yeah." Monk scratched in the short bris-
  tles atop his nubbin of a head. "Well, I'll take the 
  car by myself. They’ll think we're all in it. I'll de-
  coy 'em away and ditch 'em somehow. You take 
  the three prisoners and the girl and skip out 
  while they're shaggin' it after me."  
  The loud-speaker on the police plane 
  thundered "Get out into the road, you fellows! 
  You are charged with the murder of Professor 
  Casson Adams!"  
  Monk got into the car, tramped the starter 
  and backed the machine, turning around. 
  Those in the plane saw it move. The air-
  craft swooped. A uniformed officer leaned over 
  the side and tossed out three objects nearly as 
  large as one-gallon thermos jugs, and of some-
  what the same shape. These hit the ground and 
  began to spew vapor. All three landed close to 
  Monk and Ham and their companions. 
  "Tear gas!" Monk howled. He tried wildly 
  to get the car out of the little patch of timber, but 
  it was too late. He crashed into a tree, caromed 
  off, and got the machine wedged where it would 
  not move any direction under its own power. 
  Monk scrambled out blindly, making dis-
  gusted noises. 
   
   
  MONK was still making disgusted noises 
  when police patrol cars, half an hour later, ar-
  rived with sirens wailing and radio loud-speakers 
  making uproar. The officers alighted and took 
  charge of the prisoners.  
  The captives were placed in two large 
  phaetons, which started for the Miami metropoli-
  tan district, running one behind the other. Sev-
  eral officers, using their strength, got Monk's 
  rented car free of the trees, and another officer 
  drove it in. 
  Monk and Ham sat in gloomy silence. But 
  the young woman was more vociferous. She 
  seemed to think she could convince the police 
  that they had made a mistake. 
  "I should have gone to the police before 
  with the truth," she said wildly "But I was afraid 
  they could not find my father—my stepfather—
  and Ray Wood, and I feared activity of the police 
  would hurry the slaying of the two. I thought Doc 
  Savage would be my best chance."  
  "Doc is probably doing all right," Monk 
  muttered. 
  The police were letting them talk, and lis-
  tening with interest for what information they 
  could pick up.  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 53 
  "I can prove to the police that you did not 
  murder Professor Casson Adams," Nona Space 
  Said eagerly. 
  Ham, whose knowledge of the intricacies 
  of the law was exceeded by very few individuals, 
  asked, "How can you prove it?” 
  "Why, I can tell them Adams went to see 
  you, and that the black-faced men must have 
  killed him," she exclaimed. 
  Ham shook his head wearily. 
  "Policemen are very nice gentlemen who 
  have long ago learned to believe very little that 
  they are told," he assured her. "I am afraid they 
  will laugh at you."  
  "I'm going to try it, anyway," the girl said 
  firmly. 
  "By all means," Ham agreed. "But save it 
  for the chief of detectives and the district attor-
  ney. Telling these patrolmen will not do much 
  good.” 
  The police cars—the two phaetons were 
  alone now—stopped for a traffic light on the out-
  skirts of Miami, and an ambitious newsboy ap-
  proached the car, waving his, wares and crying 
  the headlines. 
  "Naval admiral lost in red snowstorm!" he 
  yelled. 
  "Huh!" grunted one of the cops. "What's 
  this?" 
  They bought several editions of the pa-
  pers, and as the two phaetons rolled along, read 
  the story. 
  Monk and Ham were both in a position 
  where they could observe the headlines and the 
  story beneath. 
   
  ADMIRAL MARVIN FOOTE SAMPSON 
  LOST 
   
   
  RED SNOW MYSTERY GROWS 
   
   
       The Red Snow has struck again. At approxi-
  mately eight o'clock this morning a heavy fall was 
  observed to descend upon the yacht Voyager, an-
  chored off Miami Beach. The yacht was lost to 
  view in the thick of the red flakes, and has not 
  been found since. Police tend toward the belief that 
  the boat sank, but dragging parties have not yet 
  located the craft. 
       Aboard the yacht Voyager was Admiral Marvin 
  Foote Sampson of the United States navy, grand 
  old tactician and dean of instructors at the U. S. 
  War College. Admiral Sampson was vacationing 
  in Florida. Also aboard the yacht were members of 
  the crew and Admiral Sampson's secretary. 
       Police are also investigating another red snow-
  fall which was reported to have occurred early in 
  the morning near a lagoon, close to the intersection 
  of Little Palm Street and Cuba Boulevard. 
   
  There was more of it. But a policeman 
  noted Monk's intense interest in the story and 
  shoved out a jaw at the homely chemist. 
  "You know anything about that?" he de-
  manded. 
  "Can't a guy read the news?" Monk coun-
  tered. 
  The cop put his jaw out farther. "You might 
  be mixed up in this Red Snow stuff, at that. Doc 
  Savage is noted for some queer things he's 
  done, ain't he?" 
  "Search me," Monk said evasively. 
  A moment later, he got time to slip a word 
  in an aside to the dapper Ham. 
  "If they connect us with the Red Snow, 
  they'll be putting up ice in Hades before they 
  turn us loose," he muttered. 
  What happened next came with entire un-
  expectedness. There was considerable traffic on 
  the boulevard. They slowed up for an intersec-
  tion. Two cars which had been following from 
  behind swung out as if to pass them. Both ma-
  chines pulled in front of the police cars. 
  There was crashing and rending of metal. 
  Only one driver was in each of the collision cars. 
  One of these was thrown completely out of his 
  machine. They saw him distinctly. He had a 
  black face, but not the features of a Negro. 
   
   
  POLICEMEN were yelling profanely. Then 
  one turned his yell into a howl of warning.  
  "Lookit!" he squawled. "Damn it! Watch 
  out!" 
  A heavy truck had hauled out alongside 
  the four smashed-up cars. It stopped, sliding on 
  all four wheels. Men dropped out, men with the 
  inevitable black-face disguise. They held auto-
  matic rifles. All wore gas masks. Two carried 
  gas bombs. 
  Occupants of the two police phaetons 
  were caught flat-footed. One cop shoved a riot 
  gun across a door of the phaeton. A greasy, 
  black-painted finger snugged a trigger and an 
  automatic rifle made a hideous cackle. The cop's 
  blue coat became ragged and began to leak 
  crimson in half a dozen places, and he laid down 
  on the floorboards and began to scream. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  54 
  That was all of that. The policemen were 
  brave enough, but none of them had a great de-
  sire to commit suicide, and that was what resis-
  tance would have meant. 
  A black-faced man slid behind the wheel 
  of each police car, let in the clutch and backed 
  away from the machines with which they had 
  collided. Other sepia attackers clambered into 
  the back and freed the three whom Doc Savage 
  had captured, and whom the police, disgusted 
  because the trio would not talk, had also taken 
  into custody. 
  There was a delighted reunion, until some 
  one remarked about what Ark would probably 
  have to say about them letting themselves be 
  captured. 
  The two police cars, trailed by the big 
  truck, turned right at the intersection. There was 
  much excitement, the shooting having attracted 
  many cars. The street, in fact, was blocked for a 
  short distance, but the obstacle was overcome 
  by driving up on the most convenient lawn, 
  smashing down flower beds. 
  A woman, evidently the owner of the 
  flower beds, came screeching from her home; 
  she ran up to the car, still shrieking because her 
  flowers were being ruined. 
  One of the black-faced men laughed and, 
  opening the phaeton door, gave the cop who 
  had been shot—he was dead now—a shove. 
  The body, with its hideous drenching of red, 
  landed at the angry woman’s feet. She took one 
  good look at it and fell over in a faint. 
  The two phaetons and the truck turned 
  again, and came into a narrow lane which 
  crossed an orchard. The cavalcade stopped. 
  The fellow who seemed in charge of things gave 
  orders in his foreign tongue. 
  Monk, Ham and the girl were hauled out of 
  the car. They were already handcuffed. Without 
  ceremony, they were shoved into the truck. The 
  work was done with smooth precision, as if it 
  were all something of no great magnitude, but 
  merely a task to be gotten out of the way quickly 
  in order to reach more pleasant tasks. 
  The policemen were ordered out. They 
  were disarmed. One was knocked unconscious 
  when he tried to resist. His senseless form was 
  dumped back into the phaeton. Once they were 
  disarmed, the policemen were ordered to get 
  into the cars and lie down on the floorboards, 
  and not to stir for five minutes. 
  Even the black-faced men smiled when 
  this last order was given. There was nothing 
  pleasant about the smiles. 
  The truck now rumbled and jolted along 
  the road. A policeman stuck his head out of one 
  of the phaetons. A rifle snapped. The policeman 
  seemed not to move; he remained with his head 
  hung over the door, staring wide-eyed, and a red 
  ribbon seemed to well mysteriously out of the 
  middle of his forehead and spread downward 
  until it became a slow scarlet flood. 
  The truck stopped. There was a pause. 
  Then more of the black-featured men scrambled 
  inside. There was controlled excitement in their 
  manner. 
  Monk listened intently. He could hear 
  shouting in the distance. There seemed to be a 
  tremendous uproar at the crossroads. It was 
  only a question of moments until pursuers 
  caught up with the truck. A swarm of police cars, 
  directed by radio, were almost sure to be on 
  their way to the spot, despite the few minutes 
  which had elapsed. 
  Then Monk reared up and got a look 
  through the back of the truck, and he understood 
  why the captors did not seem to be greatly wor-
  ried.  
  Red snow was falling on the two police 
  phaetons. 
   
   
  THE snow was a roseate pall, like a great 
  veil of red gauze. It did not spread over a great 
  area, nor did its greatest height reach more than 
  two hundred feet above the tops of the orange 
  trees in the orchard. But it was an awesome 
  thing to watch, for the flakes seemed to spawn 
  suddenly out of nothing more substantial than 
  the brilliant Florida sunlight. 
  They materialized by the millions, small 
  and red and scintillating, and fell much as if they 
  were spray of some fantastic kind thrown up 
  from a titanic fountain. The effect of the whole 
  was soon that of a spongy red dome towering 
  two hundred feet in the air, a dome that was 
  alive and shifting continuously, a thing that ap-
  peared from a distance to be solid, yet which 
  was composed only of red snow. 
  The truck drove away, and the two phae-
  tons and the uncanny horror which had envel-
  oped them were lost to sight before their fate 
  became evident. 
  The truck evaded the police. The surprise 
  caused by the Red Snow made it easy. A can-
  vas cover was stretched over the vanlike body of 
  the machine, and the motor hood was tied open, 
  changing the character of the truck a treat deal. 
  That helped, too. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 55 
  But what had happened to the two phae-
  tons and the police they held was told by the 
  next extra editions of the Miami newspapers. 
  The extras hit the streets in less than an hour. 
  The driver of the van rubbed the black 
  grease paint off his face. It was startling what a 
  difference this made. He pulled up and bought a 
  newspaper from a vendor. This drew no suspi-
  cion. Every one was buying them. 
   
  RED SNOW KILLS COPS 
   
  It was black and staring, that headline, 
  and it crossed the entire top of the page. The 
  story was beneath, and like many news yarns  
  hastily assembled about startling things, this one 
  was amazingly garbled. But it conveyed in sub-
  stance that the Red Snow had fallen, had 
  ceased to fall and had melted magically. Some 
  one had gone forward, noting the policemen 
  weirdly rigid in their cars, and the instant the 
  cars had been disturbed, they had begun falling 
  away in powder.  
  So skeptical was the newspaper editorial 
  force of this last that they had a note parentheti-
  cally below: 
   
       (There is some doubt about this falling away in 
  dust, at least until it is verified. We are merely giv-
  ing our readers the most authentic reports we have 
  available.) 
   
  One of the black-faced men laughed and 
  said, "They do not believe it did happen." 
  "Before we are through, many things will 
  have happened which they probably would not 
  have believed possible," said another of the 
  gang. 
  The story of the Red Snow which had ac-
  companied the disappearance of the yacht Voy-
  ager with Admiral Marvin Foote Sampson on 
  board, was at the bottom of the column. The 
  men read that. One of them smiled and tapped 
  the story with a finger. 
  "That one was prominent on the list," he 
  said. "Our men are doing well." 
  Monk heard that. 
  "What's this list?" he demanded. "Say, 
  what're you guys up to anyway?" 
  One of the men slapped Monk casually 
  with the newspaper, saying "Shut up!" 
  Instead of complying, Monk demanded, 
  "What are you gonna do with us?" 
  "You interest us," said the other. “We are 
  going to keep you around for entertainment." 
  "You are not fooling any one," the dapper 
  Ham put in. "You are planning to hold us, hoping 
  you can use us in some way to get Doc Sav-
  age." 
  That brought a round gush of harsh laugh-
  ter. 
  Ham, red-faced, snapped, "Doc will do all 
  right for himself!" 
  "I wish you could see him just now," the 
  other said dryly. 
  "So do I!" Monk grunted. 
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  THE TALKING BENEFIT 
   
  MONK would have been shocked had he, 
  by some legerdemain, been granted his vehe-
  ment wish. 
  Doc Savage, by an infinite amount of 
  muscular exertion, managed to lift his head 
  slightly, so that the oil did not quite reach the 
  corners of his mouth. The liquid—it was ordinary 
  fuel oil—was inches deep over the center of the 
  pool, which was lower than the edges. 
  The bronze man lay in the center. Some 
  ten feet away, the chimneyless lantern still 
  burned. It was due only to the safety nature of 
  the fuel oil that there had not been an explosion 
  and fire. The flash-point of the stuff was all that 
  had saved him thus far. 
  At first, the guards had paced along the 
  pool rim. But now they had withdrawn, and only 
  occasionally did one dart forward, take a brief 
  look, then retreat. They were, obviously, mo-
  mentarily expecting the oil to take fire. 
  Unexpectedly, Ark himself put in an ap-
  pearance. He rattled orders. Men came to the pit 
  edge. Ark ordered them down into the oil—but 
  they hesitated, horrified, until the hairless man 
  drew his gun and rapped threats. Then they 
  sprang down, and one, with trembling haste, 
  extinguished the burning lantern. 
  Doc Savage was not untied. They lifted 
  him bodily and tossed him, with the iron rods to 
  which he was bound, up on the pool edge. He 
  landed almost beside a bound figure of another 
  captive. 
  Doc eyed the strange prisoner. The fellow 
  was not exactly a stranger. He was the same 
  individual who had made Doc a prisoner when 
  the bronze man first landed on the island, the 
  fellow whom Ark’s men had been seeking. He 
  was not gagged. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  56 
  "They finally tracked me down,” he said 
  wryly. "Like a sap, I used up all my shotgun 
  shells when I was getting away from them." 
  "Who are you? Doc asked him. 
  "One of Fluency Beech's men," said the 
  other. "I should've given you the lowdown ear-
  lier, but you see, we figured you might be work-
  ing with this crowd. We made that mistake from 
  the first. When Beech trailed you down and 
  found you in that chemical laboratory, he wanted 
  to seize you, but knew he couldn't manage it 
  single-handed. So he rigged up that gag about 
  somebody threatening him. There wasn't any-
  thing to that. All he wanted to do was get you 
  where he could have a gang tie into you. He'd 
  heard about your tough reputation." 
  Ark discovered them talking, began curs-
  ing and hurried toward them. 
  "What is Fluency Beech's connection with 
  this?" Doc demanded. 
  "Well, believe it or not, we are—" 
  Ark, lunging, kicked the man in the face, 
  stopping whatever he had intended to say. The 
  man tried to speak again, and was once more 
  kicked terribly. Then, at Ark's orders, he was 
  lifted and borne down into the old swimming 
  pool. 
  Ark 
  ordered 
  him 
  tied, 
  directed 
  the 
  chimneyless lantern to be lighted again; then the 
  men climbed hastily out of the pit. 
  “When you decide to tell us the where-
  abouts of this man Beech, you can call out," Ark 
  yelled down at the captive. "And I would advise 
  you not to debate the matter too long. That oil is 
  already quite high." 
  Doc Savage was now picked up and car-
  ried away. 
  Ark, walking alongside of him, said, “You 
  will go back into that pool later. At the moment, it 
  is most urgent that we find this man Beech." 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE was deposited in a room of 
  the old building—rather, ruin of a building. Its 
  presence here was not unduly strange, for there 
  were many such places in Florida, mansions 
  built years before prior to the great hurricane 
  and which, being destroyed, had not been re-
  built. 
  That this was such a place, the bronze 
  man did not doubt, but neither did he give it 
  more than passing thought; he lay helpless, and 
  began to watch the single guard who was left 
  with him. 
  After a moment, when the guard was look-
  ing, Doc twisted his features into a peculiar and 
  terrible grimace; he made a visage so remark-
  able that the attention of the guard was seized, 
  held. The fellow opened his mouth as if to ask 
  what was wrong, but said nothing. He sat there, 
  not closing his mouth, his jaw hanging down, his 
  expression one of vacant amazement. 
  Doc did not hold the same hideous mask 
  on his face. He changed it, so slowly that it was 
  a great labor which brought perspiration out on 
  his features. This moistness added to the effect 
  of grotesque torment. The emotion he put upon 
  his face was something unearthly. It appalled. 
  The guard closed his mouth, but it lagged 
  open again as if the muscles were loose, but he 
  seemed not to notice, all of his attention being 
  concentrated in watching. 
  At first, it had been the bronze man's face 
  alone which drew his attention; but now Doc's 
  eyes acquired a growing quality of power. They 
  widened, and the flake-gold pools seemed to stir 
  madly. Stronger and stronger became the 
  strange influence of the eyes, and the guard 
  looked and looked and did not pull up his jaw. 
  "Put the gun on the floor," Doc told him. 
  The man did nothing, did not pull up his 
  dangling jaw. 
  "Put the gun down," Doc repeated. 
  The man did it this time, not looking at the 
  weapon and not taking his eyes from Doc's fea-
  tures. 
  "Untie me," Doc said. 
  That order did not require repeating, and 
  the man started plucking at the wire which se-
  cured the bronze man. It was slow work. Pliers 
  had been used to tie some of the wires. 
  Finally, Doc was free, but he managed 
  only the most awkward of movements, his limbs 
  being no more proof against stiffness than those 
  of another. He kept moving, however, and flexi-
  bility came into his muscles. 
  The guard was standing immobile, a pecu-
  liar staring expression in his eyes. 
  Doc Savage pointed toward the south end 
  of the island. 
  "You are seeing the bronze man running 
  in that direction," he said firmly. "He had gotten 
  away. He is running swiftly. You are after him. 
  You will call out for help. You will tell where the 
  bronze man went. You saw him go south. You 
  will hunt for him on the south end of the island. 
  From time to time, you will see him and yell out 
  an alarm." 
  If he heard, or understood, the guard gave 
  no sign, but Doc seemed to expect no response. 
  He knew the man's condition. The fellow was 
  hypnotized. Inducing the hypnotic spell had 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 57 
  been difficult, even with what Doc knew of the 
  subject from months of study with men who 
  were peers at such—the fakirs of India. 
  With greater firmness, Doc Savage re-
  peated the instructions. The guard wheeled. 
  Such were the peculiarities of the hypnotic spell 
  which had been laid upon him that he would do 
  exactly as he had been told—and lead pursuit 
  away from Doc Savage. 
  Doc went in the opposite direction—north. 
   
   
  THE guard began to cry out. Instantly, 
  there was an uproar, the hairless Ark and his 
  followers racing to the spot. 
  Doc Savage ran only a short distance, 
  then took to a tree, climbed swiftly and waited, 
  hidden in the branches. The men ran on. The 
  shouting of the hypnotized guard led them to-
  ward the other end of the island. 
  Doc Savage descended from the tree. He 
  worked toward the ruins of the house, gained 
  the edge of the clearing and sank prone. The 
  grass was high enough to conceal him. 
  A guard at the entrance made himself 
  known by stepping outside and cupping a hand 
  to an ear, listening to the noises the men were 
  making down on the south end of the island. 
  Then he went back inside. 
  Doc Savage shifted to the right, reached 
  the crumbling wall, and stood erect. 
  From the bronze man's lips came a per-
  fect imitation of Ark's shrill voice. He spoke the 
  foreign tongue. 
  "You, guard—do not stay in the house!" he 
  said. "Walk out to the edge of the clearing on the 
  south side and stand guard there." 
  The voice was ventriloquial in quality; it 
  seemed to come from a considerable distance. 
  The guard hesitated, then called, "Very 
  well!" and walked around the house, heading for 
  the south side of the clearing. 
  The instant he was out of sight, Doc Sav-
  age heaved up and raced inside. He made 
  straight for the old swimming pool. The reek of 
  oil was strong. He looked into the pool. 
  The burly man who had admitted he was 
  working with talkative O. Garfew Beech, was 
  gone. The burning oil lantern had been extin-
  guished. 
  Doc retreated from the pool, went to a 
  gaping aperture which had once been a window, 
  and eased inside. The room was full of débris, 
  was overgrown with vegetation. No vestige of 
  the roof remained. 
  The bronze man made a little noise cross-
  ing the rubble. It was impossible to go with abso-
  lute silence. He came to a hallway—it had no 
  roof—and began inspecting the penlike rooms. 
  Somewhere in this structure would be the ma-
  chinery—or whatever it was—which had been 
  brought from the old mansion among the sand 
  dunes, the devices which had stood on the ped-
  estals. 
  Doc rounded a corner, stopped, eyed the 
  floor. There were marks as if heavy machinery 
  had been moved. The marks led to a door—an 
  opening in the wall, rather, now boarded up with 
  two-inch planks and the small, stout doorway in 
  the center. The door was secured with a pad-
  lock. 
  Doc whipped to the door. 
  The cracks had been battened on the in-
  side. He could see nothing. He grasped the pad-
  lock, picked up various dried weed stems and 
  tried to pick it. He leaped up and saw that there 
  was a roof over the room into which the machin-
  ery had been taken. He began trying more stiff 
  weeds on the lock. It was a task almost hope-
  less. 
  A voice behind him said, "You will put your 
  hands up!" 
   
   
  THE bronze man lifted his hands, then 
  turned, coming around slowly, so as not to ex-
  cite the other. 
  Looking for the source of the unexpected 
  command, he discerned only a squarish aper-
  ture in the opposite wall, a hole left when bricks 
  had fallen away. From the shadowy cavity be-
  yond this, a metal tube—undoubtedly a rifle bar-
  rel—projected. 
  "Doc Savage!" a voice exploded beyond 
  this hole. 
  Relief in the tone told Doc that the 
  speaker was no enemy. 
  The bronze man lowered his hands, say-
  ing, "Come on out." 
  "We cannot," gasped the other. "There is 
  a chain and we are fastened to it with hand-
  cuffs." 
  Doc Savage whipped forward, rounded 
  the angle in the corridor and came upon a crude 
  door. This was not even locked. It squeaked 
  tremendously when he opened it. The room into 
  which it gave still had most of its roof, upheld 
  with great cypress beams, more than a foot 
  square. A chain had been linked around one of 
  the beams, the ends padlocked together so that 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  58 
  it dangled down in a loop. To this loop, two men 
  were manacled. 
  The first was a lean tower of a man with 
  flaming red hair and an abnormally pail face, a 
  face which was almost untouched by sunburn—
  a face which was also set off strikingly by a 
  black patch over one eye, a flap held there by an 
  elastic. 
  The other man was young and hearty, with 
  the appearance of a college boy. He still wore 
  shell-rimmed glasses, grimy polo shirt and soiled 
  slacks. 
  These two were the same pair which Doc 
  Savage had seen being forced into the escape 
  cars of the black-faced men back at the old 
  mansion among the sand dunes. The girl had 
  identified them as her stepfather, Hyman Space, 
  and his assistant, Ray Wood. 
  There was a man on the floor, one of the 
  black-faced men, but without the black grease 
  paint on his features. He lay against one wall, 
  sprawled out grotesquely, and the side of his 
  head was leaking scarlet. 
  Hyman Space gestured. It was he who 
  held the rifle. He indicated the unconscious man. 
  "Guard," he explained cryptically. "The fel-
  low miscalculated the length of our chain and we 
  got him. Took his rifle. But that did not help us 
  much. He did not have the handcuff keys." 
  Doc Savage—he still wore no garment but 
  the shorts—bent over and examined Ray 
  Wood's shell-rimmed spectacles closely. The 
  rims alone were shell; the hooks which ran back 
  over the ears were of metal. 
  "Have to wear the glasses?" Doc asked. 
  "I can get along without them," Ray Wood 
  replied. 
  He had a robust voice in keeping with his 
  appearance. It was not an unpleasant voice. 
  Doc Savage took the spectacles, broke off 
  one of the ear hooks, and used it to pick the 
  handcuff locks. It required him no more than 
  three minutes to free them both. Then he went 
  over and examined the unconscious guard. The 
  fellow was giving signs of reviving. Doc adjusted 
  his jaw to the proper position and swung a fist 
  against it. The man quivered, went back into 
  deeper senselessness. 
  Hyman Space said urgently, "Doc Sav-
  age!" 
  Doc eyed him. "Yes?" 
  "Somewhere in this place, there are four 
  large mechanical devices," Space said grimly. 
  "We must destroy them. Otherwise, the whole of 
  America is in danger." 
  Doc moved for the door. "They are in a 
  locked room opening off the hall. We can pick 
  the lock." 
  But they had hardly stepped into the hall-
  way when there was a clatter of footsteps and 
  men came into the passage. Ark and some of 
  his companions! They had come back. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE eased back into the cham-
  ber in which Hyman Space and Ray Wood had 
  been imprisoned. There was nothing else to do. 
  Ark stopped in the hallway. They could 
  hear him distinctly. He was angry, and berating 
  the guard who had moved away from the ruin, 
  tricked by Doc's ventriloquism. 
  "You fool, you were told to stay inside!" 
  Ark snarled. 
  The guard, puzzled, muttered, "But I heard 
  you call to me, telling me to take the edge of the 
  clearing." 
  Ark swore in his native tongue. 
  "That is impossible," he gritted. "I did not 
  call. It must have been some trickery on the part 
  of that bronze man. I cannot understand how he 
  escaped." 
  "I thought he was somewhere at the south 
  end of the island," grunted the guard. 
  “Three times, one of my men called out 
  that he had seen the bronze fellow," Ark rasped 
  shrilly. "It was the same man each time." 
  "Which one?" 
  "The one who was watching him when he 
  escaped," Ark piped. "And that is strange. There 
  seems to be something wrong with that man. He 
  acts strangely." 
  "Perhaps he was bought off." 
  Ark made a sound of disgust. "None of my 
  men could be bought off. I am sure of that." 
  The other man said, "All of this trouble is 
  interfering with our plans." 
  "It is" Ark agreed. "Let us tune in the news 
  report on the radio and see what we can pick up. 
  One of the Miami stations gives the news at this 
  time." 
  The men changed their position, but did 
  not go out of earshot; and a moment later a ra-
  dio speaker began to rasp static. A station was 
  tuned in; the final jangle of an orchestra 
  whooped out. Then there was a station an-
  nouncement, and the preliminary announcement 
  for a news report sponsored by an afternoon 
  newspaper. 
  "Good afternoon," the news commentator 
  came in. "We have a lot of news today, folks. 
  The whole town is in an uproar. The police are 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 59 
  going around in circles. And the cause of it all is 
  the mysterious Red Snow. Just what the Red 
  Snow is, no one seems to know. But that it is 
  something utterly mysterious, every one will 
  agree. And it is further apparent that some mys-
  terious purpose is behind the affair, for the ap-
  pearance of the Red Snow has usually marked 
  the vanishing of some prominent individual." 
  A tremendous burst of static temporarily 
  interrupted the flow of words. 
  "—latest appearance of the Red Snow 
  was not more than an hour ago, on the outskirts 
  of Miami," the commentator a voice resumed 
  after the static faded. "Two police phaetons were 
  held up by armed, black-faced men in a truck 
  and taken into an orchard, where the Red Snow 
  fell, and the cars, as well as the policemen, dis-
  appeared. There is some uncertainty as to 
  whether the truck itself also vanished." 
  There was a pause, while the commenta-
  tor spoke in an aside to some one. 
  "Here is the latest," he continued. "Police 
  have just released the information that two aides 
  of the famous Doc Savage were in the police 
  phaetons which vanished. They are Lieutenant 
  Colonel Andrew Blodgett 'Monk' Mayfair and 
  Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, bet-
  ter known as 'Ham.' With these two, and also a 
  police prisoner, was an unidentified young 
  woman and some mysterious black-faced men."  
  The talk continued, elaborating on the Red 
  Snow development; Ark and his comrades lis-
  tened with interest, chuckling among themselves 
  occasionally. It was fully ten minutes before the 
  commentator got onto other subjects. 
  "More details about the Red Snow later," 
  the commentator said. "Here is a bit of news of 
  interest to Floridians. The secretary of state of 
  the United States will arrive in Miami tonight for 
  a short vacation and some deep-sea fishing. His 
  special train is due in Miami shortly after ten 
  o'clock. And now, time is up. Good afternoon." 
  Some one switched off the radio. There 
  was silence. 
  "You got that last information?" Ark asked 
  suddenly, shrilly. 
  One of the men spoke in a hoarse voice, 
  "You mean—we shall use the Red Snow—on 
  the secretary of state's special?" 
  "We have been leading up to that," Ark 
  piped. "It is an opportunity we should not let 
  pass.” 
  Then there were shocked grunts. Some 
  one exploded a curse. There was silence. Then 
  came a new voice.  
  "Well, well, well!" it said. "You boys are 
  ambitious, are you not? Yes, indeed! Much more 
  ambitious than I gave you credit for being." 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE looked at Hyman Space, at 
  Ray Wood. Both wore blank expressions It was 
  evident they had never heard the new voice be-
  fore. 
  “Who is it?" Hyman Space breathed. 
  "A gentleman who prefers to be called 
  Fluency Beech," Doc whispered back. Then he 
  went silent. 
   Fluency Beech was talking. 
  "I find it extremely difficult to believe the 
  evidence given me by my ears," he said elabo-
  rately. "And I do not often doubt my ears. No, sir. 
  Tell me, that I may be sure. Is it true that you 
  gentlemen hold designs on the secretary of 
  state?" 
  Ark said something profane in his foreign 
  tongue. 
  "It must be true, incredible as it seems," 
  Beech said rapidly. "And I will admit that I had 
  held suspicions as to your true purpose, suspi-
  cions which are now verified to a great extent. 
  May I compliment you gentlemen. You are as 
  black a gang of devils as history ever saw, and 
  the fact that you may think you have a justifica-
  tion for what you are doing, that you may con-
  sider you are fulfilling an ordained task, does 
  not, as far as I am concerned, and as far as the 
  rest of the world is concerned, I will wager, too—
  the fact that you may consider yourselves hon-
  orable men does not lift you in my estimation." 
   
  Doc Savage eased out of his conceal-
  ment, advanced, and a moment later caught 
  sight of Fluency Beech. The portly, man stood 
  easily, a submachine gun balanced in his hands. 
  His head was capped by a steel military helmet. 
  A bulky bulletproof vest had been strapped on 
  the outside of his clothing. A gas mask dangled 
  around his neck, ready for quick use. 
  Fluency Beech might have been standing 
  before a drawing-room gathering in the regalia, 
  giving a lecture. There was entire calmness in 
  his manner. 
  "I am a man of curiosity," Beech an-
  nounced further. "For instance, I wonder greatly 
  what this red snow is, and I am curious to know 
  if the secret cannot be found in this place. As I 
  approached, I noted a door with a padlock on it. 
  Suppose we start our manipulations by examin-
  ing that room." 
  Ark snarled, “You fat fool, my men will—" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  60 
  "Be looking at a cold lifeless corpse who 
  was the late Baron Lang Ark," Beech finished. 
  "That is, unless you do as you are told. Another 
  thing—you have a man of mine, one who was so 
  unlucky as to permit himself to be captured. I 
  want him. Where is he?" 
  "I have seen no one," Lang Ark lied. 
  "In that case, we'll take a look in that 
  locker room," Beech told him. 
  There was cold fury in the portly man's 
  tone; he was hardly the bombastic soul he had 
  been when Doc first met him, although he still 
  talked much more than another would have un-
  der the same circumstances. 
  Baron Lang Ark and the others backed 
  into view, menaced by Beech's submachine gun. 
  They moved toward the door which Doc had 
  tried to open by picking the padlock with stiff 
  weed stems. Doc Savage watched them, parted 
  lips as if to speak to Beech—and did not. 
  Loose bricks had been shoved to one side 
  of the corridor floor. Doc swooped, picked one of 
  these up and threw it hard without straightening. 
  The brick whizzed through a window and 
  struck a man who was in the act of leveling an 
  automatic rifle. The fellow had crept up, unno-
  ticed by Beech. 
   
   
  THE rifle went off. The man yelled. 
  Beech showed presence of mind. Without 
  whirling, he leaped forward, bowled Ark aside, 
  and got Ark and the others between himself and 
  the spot from which yell and shot had come. 
  Then he looked. At first, he saw only Doc Sav-
  age. 
  "Nitwit!" he yelled. "Why give an alarm?" 
  Doc waved at the window. "If you have to 
  wear a bullet proof vest, put it under your 
  clothes. That fellow was aiming at the back of 
  your neck."  
  Then Beech heard the man outside the 
  window moaning. He kept Ark and the others 
  covered, ran to the aperture and looked out. He 
  drew back, grinned. 
  "That one won't bother us for a while," he 
  said rapidly. "You certainly damaged his face. 
  You certainly did!" 
  Doc said, "I want a look into that room," 
  and whipped forward. He still held the spectacle 
  ear hook with which he had picked the handcuff 
  locks. He went to work on the big padlock. It was 
  modern. Picking it would not be easy.  
  Hyman Space and Ray Wood had come 
  into sight by now, and Beech stared at them in-
  tently. 
  "Space and Wood?" he demanded. 
  The pair nodded together. 
  "Why in the hell didn't you two go to the 
  United States government with this in the first 
  place?" Beech demanded angrily. 
  Space shrugged wearily. "We were afraid. 
  We did try to send two men out of the swamp, 
  where these men have—" 
  Ark screamed, "You speak another word 
  and you will die instantly!” 
  "The same goes for you!" Beech yelled at 
  him. 
  Doc Savage got the padlock open. 
  Ray Wood pointed at Beech and de-
  manded, "Who are you, anyhow?"  
  But Beech was looking at the door which 
  Doc Savage was opening. 
  "Let's have a look in there," he said. "Eve-
  rything else can wait." 
  Doc Savage looked into the room. He saw 
  four machines, four intricate masses of machin-
  ery, no one of which resembled the other, ex-
  cept that all were about equal in bulk. Two 
  seemed to be electrical in nature, with many 
  bulbs and glass tubes, but the other pair were 
  composed more of metal, with here and there a 
  curved glass tube or a glass-walled tank. There 
  were dozens of gauges. 
  About the machines clung a strangely 
  cloying odor, a scent which was hardly pleasant. 
  Beech eyed the devices, then glanced at 
  Doc Savage. 
  "What in Hades are they?" he demanded. 
  Doc Savage advanced into the room. 
  Outside, Hyman Space bawled shrilly, 
  "Watch out! Here come Ark's men! They heard 
  that rifle!" 
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  RED ISLAND 
   
  PORTLY Fluency Beech stuttered some-
  thing profane and unintelligible and back-
  pedaled out of the room. An instant later, his 
  submachine gun made a gobbling uproar. 
  Shots answered him. High-powered bul-
  lets began to snap and scream in reply. 
  Ark began to edge toward the nearest 
  door. 
  Beech hauled a pistol out of his hip 
  pocket, flung it to Ray Wood, and snapped, 
  "Watch Ark!" 
  Ray Wood caught the pistol. Before he 
  could get it ready in his hands, Ark had leaped 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 61 
  upon him. They struggled madly. Ark's men ran 
  in to help. 
  Beech started to wheel, saw a man cross-
  ing the clearing, and turned back to cut the fel-
  low down with his rapid-firer. Then there were 
  two sounds, one following the other, as if some 
  one had whistled and struck a blow with a ham-
  mer. Beech fell over backward, losing his ma-
  chine gun. 
  Doc Savage was delaying to examine the 
  machinery, his strange flake-gold eyes taking 
  lightning glances of appraisal. But he saw what 
  was happening outside in the hallway. He spun, 
  sloped through the door.  
  One-eyed Hyman Space was racing for 
  the fallen submachine gun. One of Ark's men 
  tripped him, jumped on his back, then went on 
  toward the gun. 
  Doc Savage, lunging with lightning speed, 
  got to the submachine gun first. Ark's man back-
  pedaled. He was not swift enough. Doc's fist 
  caught him, changed the lines of his jaw, and 
  the man went walking backward, stiffly, as if he 
  were a big marionette with his legs worked by 
  strings. 
  Ray Wood and his foes were still fighting 
  over the pistol. Doc ran over, clutched the gun, 
  twisted it out of the tangle of hands and struck 
  twice. 
  Wood landed blows of his own. Then he 
  got to his feet, leaving his opponents sprawled 
  out on the floor. 
  In the clearing, men were yelling and 
  shooting. 
  Ark began piping shrilly. He used his na-
  tive tongue, and his words came with spouting 
  rapidity. Doc ran at him. Ark retreated madly, 
  heedless of the revolver which Doc held. He 
  reached the door of the room which held the 
  machinery, leaped inside and slammed the 
  pane. His movements were fast. 
  Doc hit the door. It resisted. He knew why. 
  There was a bar inside, a ponderous affair, and 
  Ark had been fast enough to throw that. 
  The bronze man wheeled back to the 
  nearest opening from which he could survey the 
  clearing. Three men were in sight, running for-
  ward grimly. In the fashion of soldiers, they held 
  their automatic rifles level at their hips. 
  Doc hefted the gun briefly. It was a good 
  weapon. He fired. The right leg of one of the 
  charging men broke over between ankle and 
  knee and he went down. Doc shot again; once 
  more. The other two fell, also shot in the legs. 
  Beech was weaving up from the floor. He 
  beat his chest, grimaced. 
  "Bulletproof 
  vest—stopped 
  bullet!" 
  he 
  gulped. "But man, oh man, I would—rather be 
  kicked by a mule!" 
  He picked up his steel helmet, which had 
  fallen off, and put it on. 
  They could hear Ark's flutelike voice. He 
  was piping frantically. 
  "What's he saying?" Beech demanded. "I 
  don't understand his language." 
  Doc Savage listened for a moment to 
  Ark's shrilling. 
  "He is telling his men to use the Red 
  Snow," he said grimly. 
  Shooting had stopped in the clearing. A 
  man called out hoarsely, answering Ark. 
  Beech stared at Doc. "What are they talk-
  ing about?" 
  "The men object to taking Ark's life," Doc 
  said. "They say Ark's life is very valuable." 
  Ark shouted some more. Doc translated. 
  "Ark says that, although he invented, the 
  Red Snow, his men now know how it is made, 
  and that therefore his life is not so important," 
  the bronze man said. "He says for them to go 
  ahead." 
  "He has nerve," Beech said. 
   
   
  HYMAN SPACE had heard, and now he 
  yelled frantically, "We've got to get out of here! 
  That infernal red horror will kill us all! Nothing is 
  proof against it." 
  Doc rapped, "You know what it is?" 
  Space shook a vehement negative. "The 
  compound is too intricate for my understanding. 
  It works on the molecular structure of matter, 
  changing its nature. I think it reduces or almost 
  stops molecular motion, thus completely chang-
  ing the nature of matter." 
  "But the red material you tried to get to 
  me?" Doc Demanded. 
  “It is an ingredient of the Red Snow—the 
  stuff itself near the completed stage," Space 
  said. "At least, that is what I think. I hoped that, 
  by getting it to you, you could tell what the Red 
  Snow is." 
  Beech put in, "How did you learn that 
  much?" 
  Space shrugged. "I am a chemist inter-
  ested in the production of new types of radio-
  active paints. I use considerable quantities of 
  radium in experimenting. Somehow, these men 
  found this out. They needed radium. So they  
  seized me, got their supply through me." 
  Doc waved an arm at the closed room. 
  "What are those machines?" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  62 
  "Devices for making the Red Snow prepa-
  ration," said Space. 
  Beech roared, "Then we've got to destroy 
  them!" 
  "There is another set of machines," Space 
  interjected. 
  "Where?" 
  "In the swamp." 
  "The Everglades? Where?" 
  Space shook his head so vehemently that 
  the black eye patch flapped. 
  "I do not know," he said. "They took me 
  there blindfolded, by plane." 
  Doc Savage peered through a window. 
  There were no men in the clearing. The silence 
  was ominous. He waited. 
  Then he heard a sound. It was a strange 
  sound, somewhat as if a man had coughed, only 
  deeper, more penetrating. It came from the op-
  posite side of the ruins. 
  Beech lunged to a door, took a chance 
  and leaped through. He looked upward. 
  “The Red Snow!" he bawled. 
  Doc Savage reached his side, glanced 
  above. The sun was past meridian, and it 
  seemed to have taken on the hue of blood, for a 
  great ball had appeared in the heavens—or so it 
  seemed, although it was not more than two hun-
  dred feet above. It spread, flowering. It seemed 
  something solid at first, then it took on a more 
  nebulous appearance. Red flakes appeared and 
  began showering slowly downward. 
  "We've got to make a run for it!" Doc 
  rapped. 
  Hyman Space and Ray Wood reached the 
  bronze man's side. Doc wheeled back, got the 
  guns of the men they had overpowered, and 
  distributed them. In a compact group, they 
  pitched through the door. The lowermost of the 
  red flakes was but a few feet above them. 
  They ran furiously. Rifles began cracking. 
  Beech lifted his submachine gun as he ran, wip-
  ing the clearing edge with a hail of lead. He was 
  either fortunate or an excellent shot, for two 
  men, hit by the bullets, collapsed and threshed 
  about. 
   Others of the attackers were shrieking at 
  Ark, yelling for him to get out of the house, to 
  make a break for his life before the Red Snow 
  fell. 
  Ark took the advice. He popped through 
  the door. 
  Ark himself was undoubtedly responsible 
  for the saving of the life of Doc Savage and 
  those with him. The attackers were not present 
  in great numbers, and they had scattered them-
  selves around the clearing. Beech, with his 
  submachine gun, had eliminated two directly 
  ahead and to the left. The ruin itself cut off the 
  aims of those behind. 
  Ark, running wildly, thinking only of his 
  own life, cut in between the riflemen on the right. 
  They could not fire without danger of winging 
  their chief. 
  Beech half turned, as if to use his machine 
  gun on Ark, but he saw the red flakes sifting 
  down overhead, changed his mind, and gave all 
  of his attention to getting out from under. 
  Ray Wood ran like an athlete. Space was 
  less agile. He was not strong. His one eye must 
  have been none too efficient, for he almost fell. 
  Doc picked him up, carried him bodily. 
  Beech went down, cursing, as rifles rat-
  tled. He got up, leaking a little red from the left 
  side, and ran as fast as before. 
  They reached the shelter of the jungle. 
   
   
  THERE was a fascination about the Red 
  Snow, which was now descending upon the ruin. 
  Beech paused, wheeled, as if to watch it. He 
  saw Ark had reached safety. Then Doc Savage 
  gave him a shove. 
  "Our chance to get away from here!" the 
  bronze man rapped. 
  They ran on through the thick growth, and 
  their enemies, a baying pack, took up the pur-
  suit. Doc set a course for the spot where the 
  speedboat and the barge lay. 
  Space, jouncing across Doc's shoulders, 
  gasped, "My stepdaughter—Nona—do you think 
  she is safe?" 
  The bronze man did not answer. The girl 
  had been safe for a time in the hands of Monk 
  and Ham. But something had happened. The 
  snatch given by the news commentator over the 
  radio indicated that. What had become of Monk, 
  Ham and the girt was problematical. 
  The ruined house was not far from the lit-
  tle harbor on the seaward side of the isle. They 
  came out on the shore. There was a dory tied up 
  to the barge. They piled in. 
  By the time Doc Savage had the oars in 
  the water, Beech had untied the painter. They 
  shoved off, and the little craft lunged under the 
  bronze man's strokes. 
  "I had a man with me," Beech grumbled.  
  "They got him. I hate to leave him, because he 
  was a good man, an excellent man, one who 
  was"—he paused to drive a burst from the rapid-
  firer and drop a man who had appeared down 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 63 
  the shore—"one who was always willing to obey 
  orders. I wonder if he is still alive?" 
  "Hard to tell," Doc said shortly, and 
  whipped the dory alongside the speedboat. They 
  scrambled aboard. 
  Rifles were stabbing from the shore. Splin-
  ters climbed off the mahogany coaming of the 
  boat. 
  "All get in the front seat," Doc directed. 
  "That way, when we are going away from them, 
  the engine, will be aft and shelter us somewhat." 
  There was a starter button. Doc jammed 
  weight on that, heard a whine of gears from the 
  mechanism; then the motor howled out. Beech 
  leaned over and shot the mooring cable apart 
  with his machine gun, then looked anxiously at 
  the ammo drum, for it was almost empty. 
  The speedboat heaved up, began to 
  pound over the waves. Rifle bullets were striking 
  the craft but the engine was large and those 
  aboard were down low, and the mass of metal 
  protected them. 
  "It looks like we are clear," Beech chuck-
  led. "And I do not mind telling you that was as 
  brisk a bit of action as I have taken part in, in 
  some time. Yes, sir, it was brisk. But it looks as if 
  we no longer had a great deal to worry about, 
  because I will get in touch with my men and we 
  will enlist the aid of the militia, or even the army 
  and navy if necessary, and clean out this nest of 
  infernal—" 
  He had started talking too soon. The en-
  gine stuttered, coughed. They plainly felt the 
  terrific speed slacken. Then the engine died 
  completely and they were rolling helplessly. 
  Doc Savage held the speed as best they 
  could, and swung around the end of the island, 
  so that the shore was to the left, but fully three 
  hundred yards distant. 
  "One of their bullets must have cut the fuel 
  line," Beech groaned. 
  But Doc, scrambling back, got the cap off 
  the gas tank and used the barrel of the subma-
  chine gun as a measuring stick. The tank was 
  shallow. The barrel touched bottom, came out 
  perfectly dry. 
  "No gas," Doc said. "Tank was empty 
  when we got aboard." 
   
   
  THE speedboat had turned broadside to 
  the island, and rifle bullets began to strike, pass-
  ing completely through the hull, opening small, 
  ugly rents. 
  "Terrible!" Beech groaned. "We cannot 
  remain aboard." He massaged his side, where 
  he had been hit by the bullet. Evidently the 
  wound was slight. 
  "Over the side," Doc directed. "We'll keep 
  the motor between ourselves and the island and 
  try to paddle to the mainland." 
  They popped overside as hurriedly as 
  possible, Beech first snapping a burst with his 
  machine gun to drive their foes under cover. The 
  water was chill at first contact, but seemed to 
  become warm after they were in for a time. That 
  was because they were hot from the action. 
  Swimming and guiding the speedboat, 
  they found, was going to be a stiff task. There 
  was a tide. It ripped along between the island 
  and the shore and made a strong current fan-
  ning outward toward the open sea. They strug-
  gled furiously, and barely made headway. 
  Beech, working forward, peered around 
  the bows, then called unpleasant news. 
  "They had rowboats on shore," he barked. 
  "Here they come." 
  Doc said nothing. He had heard the boats 
  being put into the water. 
  Beech had placed his submachine gun 
  atop the cowling. He got it, and fired it around 
  the stern of the craft, then swam forward and 
  shot around the bows. He growled disgustedly 
  when the gun clicked empty. 
  "But I got one boat," he muttered. 
  The shore still looked an infinite distance 
  away. There was nothing they could do to bring 
  it closer more swiftly. They had been swimming 
  with all of their strength before. 
  They used the pistols as the rowboats 
  came closer, and succeeded in stopping one 
  craft by putting the crew out of commission. But 
  there was a third and it came on swiftly. 
  Beech gripped Doc Savage's arm. "Listen, 
  I've heard a lot about the things you can do. Can 
  you reach shore? If you can, leave us. We're 
  sunk anyway." 
  The bronze man nodded, said, "It is not a 
  bad idea." 
  Then he sank beneath the surface. 
   
   
  IT was only a moment later that the row-
  boat rounded the bow of the speedboat. Ark 
  himself was standing erect in the stern, waving a 
  rifle. 
  "Where is Doc Savage?" he yelled, after 
  staring at those in the water. 
  Beech stared levelly. "Gone," he said. 
  "Drowned." 
  Ark piped, "That would be too good to be 
  true." 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  64 
  He juggled his rifle absently, as if contem-
  plating shooting those in the water. He even 
  lifted the gun to his shoulder and rocked it from 
  side to side, as if trying to select the first to go. 
  Then he hesitated. 
  "Have you made a report about what you 
  have learned of me?" he asked Beech. 
  The portly man tried to grin. It was more of 
  a grimace. He said nothing. 
  “It is likely that you have made a report," 
  Ark told him savagely. “It is essential, or at least 
  convenient, that your superiors receive no in-
  formation about me for a time. I will make you a 
  bargain." 
  Beech wet his lips. "Shoot." 
  "Your life," Ark said, in return for telling me 
  how this report can be intercepted before it 
  reaches Washington." 
  Beech hesitated. He nodded at his two 
  companions, Space and Wood. 
  "How about these two?" he asked. 
  "I will be generous," Ark told him. "I will 
  lock them up with you until this affair is settled. 
  You will be prisoners, honorable captives. My 
  word of honor on that." 
  "Your word is worth about as much as a 
  lead nickel," Beech growled. 
  "At present, your life is worth less than 
  that," Ark pointed out. "What is your decision?" 
  “No,” Beech said hesitantly. “I do not 
  trust—" 
  Ark leaned forward abruptly, aimed the ri-
  fle and pulled the trigger. Beech screeched an 
  instant before the weapon exploded. He thought 
  he was going to be shot between the eyes. Ac-
  tually, Ark was firing a fraction of an inch over 
  his head, by way of scaring him. 
  Whatever results Ark had expected, they 
  were far different from those the shot got. The 
  dory in which he stood was small and light. A 
  moment after the shot exploded, bronze hands 
  appeared on the boat's gunwale. They yanked. 
  The boat heeled, hesitated, and when Ark, off 
  balance and striving to stay aboard, stepped on 
  the gunwale, the craft went completely over, 
  precipitating those aboard into the sea. 
  Beech stared. Then the truth dawned. 
  "Savage!" he roared. "You didn't swim for 
  it!" 
  Doc Savage did not answer, being en-
  gaged in wrenching the rifle out of Ark's hands. 
  The bronze man had been concealed under the 
  stern of the speedboat, hanging to the propel-
  lers, projecting his nostrils above the water to 
  breathe. He had swum underwater to the dory 
  an instant before the shot. 
  Hyman Space and Ray Wood came to life 
  and joined the combat. There were only four 
  unwounded men in the dory. Even numbers. Or 
  hardly 
  even, 
  considering 
  the 
  tremendous 
  strength and agility of the man of bronze. 
  The water around the boat foamed under 
  the beat of arms. Blows smashed. A man yelled 
  out in terror; the yelling turned to hideous bub-
  bling as he was forced under. Doc struck Ark, 
  and the man with the hairless head became 
  limp. Doc lifted him, threw him across the launch 
  coaming. Men were shooting from shore, but it 
  was doing little good. 
  Within the space of three or four minutes, 
  Doc and the others had overcome the occupants 
  of the dory. 
  "We certainly have our ups and downs," 
  Beech grinned. 
  Then he listened. There was motor sound 
  in the air. Beech glanced upward, thinking it was 
  a plane, then looked along the water and saw a 
  fast boat coming toward them, its bows a welter 
  of foam. 
  "Some yachtsman who happened along," 
  Beech grinned. "Now I guess we'll get some 
  help." 
  He changed his mind when two men stood 
  on the pitching forward deck of the approaching 
  boat and began to shoot slowly and deliberately 
  with rifles. 
   
   
  THAT the newcomers were more of Ark's 
  crew was evident. Their boat was fast. 
  "We can't pull that upsetting gag again," 
  Beech wailed. "Savage, you'd better sure 
  enough swim for it this time." 
  Doc said nothing. But once more, he sank 
  beneath the surface. This time he did not re-
  main, but stroked with all of his power, seeking 
  to cover as much distance as possible before he 
  came up. 
  When he did top the surface, it was sud-
  denly, in the manner in which a porpoise breaks, 
  and he filled his lungs with air—not slowly, with 
  several deep breaths and a normal one at the 
  last, as he would have desired, but all at once, in 
  a convulsive pump. 
  After he was down again, he heard rifle 
  bullets seeking him. They made plunging noises 
  in the water. He swam for a long time, at an an-
  gle, then broke water again, got down once 
  more, then changed his course, so that they 
  would not be able to calculate exactly where he 
  would appear. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 65 
  Fortune had been against him, but now it 
  shifted a little, and he came to the shore near 
  the small creek on the mainland by which he 
  had entered the water in swimming to the island. 
  He broke the surface and scrambled madly up 
  the steep bank. 
  The men on the boat saw him. They were 
  still offshore, having tarried to pick up Ark and 
  the others. They fired hasty bullets, but the 
  pitching craft was no fit shooting platform, and 
  the slugs did nothing but throw sand and cut 
  weeds and brush. 
  Doc Savage let them see him start running 
  to the right, then doubled back and sought the 
  concealment of a palmetto cluster, from which 
  he could survey the boat, and where he could 
  get the clothing which he had stripped off before 
  he swam to the island. 
  It was not a large craft, despite its speed, 
  and he could see into the cockpit. He stood look-
  ing for a long time, until the men saw him and 
  began shooting at his giant bronze form. Then 
  he retreated, but not far. 
  He crouched in the beach growth, waiting 
  for those in the boat to land, hoping they would 
  run the craft close inshore. But they did neither, 
  and the little vessel swung away, ran out to the 
  island and vanished behind the headland. 
  Doc Savage moved away then. His metal-
  lic features rarely showed expression, but they 
  were grim now, immobile. 
  There had been prisoners in the boat—
  three of them. Monk, Ham and the girl, Nona 
  Space. They had been bound and gagged, and 
  that alone was an indication that they were alive. 
  Doc Savage reached the road and ran 
  steadily; his stride did not look particularly la-
  bored, but he covered ground at a rate which 
  would have amazed a professional runner. He 
  came finally to a house, was permitted use of a 
  telephone. He got in touch with the Coast 
  Guard. 
  The Coast Guard was efficient enough. 
  But before they reached the island, the birds had 
  flown. There was no sign of Ark and his men—or 
  of Monk, Ham and Nona Space. Where the ru-
  ined house had been, there was only an empty 
  space, slightly depressed, with the bare coral 
  formation of the island showing. 
  Doc Savage did not show himself to the 
  Coast Guardsmen, nor tell them anything except 
  that the creators of the Red Snow had been 
  there, for he was still wanted by the police for 
  the charge of murdering, or having something to 
  do with the murder of Professor Casson Adams, 
  the man who had been shot in the trunk. 
  The Coast Guardsmen, knowing no more 
  than they did, were vastly puzzled by the bare 
  pit on the island, and only one officer hazarded a 
  guess which hit upon the true cause, and he 
  was shrugged down. 
  It was mid-afternoon when Doc Savage 
  got a telephone connection by long distance to 
  Washington, D. C. The bronze man had friends 
  in official circles, individuals who in many in-
  stances owed him a debt of gratitude, and he 
  eventually got a connection with the central of-
  fice of the secret service, the body responsible 
  for guarding the life of the president. 
  "I want," the bronze man said, "to speak to 
  the chief." 
  "He is not here," the voice from Washing-
  ton replied. 
  "Who is he?" Doc questioned. "Where can 
  I get in touch with him?" 
  “He is in Florida," said the other. "His 
  name is O. Garfew Beech. He likes to be called 
  Fluency Beech." 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  DUCK-WITH-NO-WINGS 
   
  DOC SAVAGE spoke for a long time with 
  Washington. 
  An hour later, he was at the offices of the 
  chemical company of which he was silent owner. 
  He made inquiries and received four metal 
  cases which had just arrived from New York by 
  the fastest air express. He carried these to the 
  laboratory and proceeded to open them, bring-
  ing out a marvelously compact analytical kit. 
  The chemical company laboratory was 
  complete as such installations went, but it lacked 
  certain highly modern bits of apparatus which 
  Doc, through his cousin Pat Savage, had ob-
  tained from New York. There was one device in 
  particular, by which an analysis of matter could 
  be obtained in a few moments, even more accu-
  rately than by hours of working with ordinary 
  laboratory methods. 
  Doc produced the bits of the red com-
  pound which had been in his clothing and set 
  about ascertaining its nature. He had more to go 
  on than before—Hyman Space had said one of 
  the important basic ingredients was radium, or 
  radio-active substances. 
  Doc was locked in the laboratory as he 
  worked. Only a few officials in charge of the 
  plant knew his identity, or were aware of his 
  presence. These men saw that he received lat-
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  66 
  est copies of the afternoon newspapers. One 
  brought in a midget radio which would pick up, 
  not only the news broadcasts, but would get 
  down on the police station wave lengths. 
  With the radio and the newspapers, Doc 
  Savage kept in touch with developments in the 
  matter of the Red Snow. Most of what he heard 
  and read was a rehash of what had already 
  happened, with here and there a wild rumor, or a 
  guess made by some imaginative reporter. 
  There was a story to the effect that the 
  party of the secretary of state had changed 
  plans and, instead of arriving in Miami that night, 
  as expected, would be delayed until the follow-
  ing day. There was no explanation for the inter-
  ruption. For that matter, probably no more than a 
  half dozen persons knew the real reason for the 
  delay—a mysterious telephone call to Washing-
  ton made by Doc Savage. 
  Doc Savage seemed to complete his 
  analysis about four o'clock. But he did not leave 
  the laboratory then. Instead, he called the 
  chemical company officials into conference and 
  made long explanations, the result of which was 
  a hurried assembling of chemical ingredients, 
  some of them extremely rare. Fast planes were 
  dispatched to Atlanta, New Orleans, Jackson-
  ville and other southern cities. 
  Borrowing two of the most skilled chemical 
  engineers from the laboratory force, Doc Savage 
  went to work. He was busy steadily though the 
  night. Food was sent in. The two assistants 
  seemed vastly puzzled at what they were being 
  directed to do, their features wearing the ex-
  pressions of men who are beyond their depth in 
  a morass of formulae and details. 
   
   
  DAWN came. There had been no word 
  from Monk, Ham, Nona Space, or the others. 
  However, police had found a cabin cruiser which 
  had been scuttled, and a newspaper carried a 
  picture of it. Doc recognized the boat as the one 
  used by Ark's men—the craft in which he had 
  seen Monk, Ham and Nona Space. 
  The day passed without particular event. 
  Doc Savage and his two chemists still worked 
  furiously. The assistants were becoming tired, 
  but there was something about the compelling 
  power of Doc Savage which kept them working 
  on.  
  The special train bearing the secretary of 
  state and party was on its way to Miami, the 
  newspaper stated. It would arrive that night. 
  The late afternoon edition of the Globe 
  came forth with an item which interested Doc 
  Savage. 
   
  SEMINOLE INDIAN SAW 
  RED SNOW 
   
       Reports have reached the Globe which indicate 
  that a Seminole Indian alligator hunter named 
  Duck-With-No-Wings was first to see the Red 
  Snow, several days ago. A good deal of mystery 
  attaches to the matter, the Seminole having been 
  afraid to talk. It is understood by the Globe, how-
  ever, that this Indian secured a lump of strange red 
  material at the time he saw the Red Snow, and that 
  he has been trying to sell this. 
       The Globe is sending a reporter to the village of 
  Duck-With-No-Wings, which is situated in the 
  Everglades thirty miles southeast of Chokoloskee. 
  The Globe is making every endeavor to solve the 
  Red Snow mystery.  
   
  There was more, having to do with gener-
  alities—the nature of the swamp where the vil-
  lage of Duck-With-No-Wings lay, and the prob-
  able character of the Seminole alligator hunter 
  himself. This stuff has no doubt been dashed off 
  by a rewrite man to give the item body, since it 
  was an exclusive story, carried by none of the 
  other newspapers. 
  Indeed, the other newspapers completely 
  ignored it. Rumors about the Red Snow were 
  coming from all over the nation, and some of 
  them seemed more reasonable than the tale of 
  the alligator hunter. 
  But, within an hour, Doc Savage was in a 
  plane. The craft had been rented for him by one 
  of the officials of the chemical company. 
  Doc flew out over the Everglades, toward 
  the village of Duck-With-No-Wings. In the cabin 
  behind him was a metal case painted a peculiar 
  color, a case he had prepared in the laboratory. 
  The bronze man was not interested alone 
  in the lump of mysterious red substance which 
  had come into the possession of Duck-With-No-
  Wings. 
  Hyman Space had said Ark and his men 
  had another headquarters out here in the 
  swamp. 
   
   
  FROM a height of two thousand feet, Doc 
  Savage looked down on the Everglades. He flew 
  with the ease of an accomplished pilot, and from 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 67 
  time to time used binoculars to bring the terrain 
  closer. 
  The Everglades presented a vista that 
  might have been disappointing to one seeing 
  them for the first time and expecting a swamp in 
  the general sense—a mat of luxuriant vegeta-
  tion, of lianas and creepers, of interlacing trees 
  draped with hanging moss. It was nothing like 
  that. 
  For miles, there stretched what, at first 
  glance, might have been mistaken for green 
  meadow, absolutely level, with here and there 
  an irregularly shaped pond or a wide, meander-
  ing creek. But seen through the glasses, the 
  grass was rank, and rooted in shallow water 
  more often than in soil. Rarely was there a patch 
  of dry ground. 
  The plane was fast. As Doc drove it on-
  ward, the expanse below changed a little. 
  Clumps of gnarled jungle appeared, marked by 
  the great, uprearing skeletons of trees which 
  were dead, or nearly so. Off to the north 
  stretched the dismal expanse of the Great Cy-
  press Swamp, with its occasional sawmill. 
  It was a waste, this melancholy expanse 
  below, a stretch of country as impenetrable, to a 
  man on foot, as any in the country. It had, of 
  course, been seen from the air, but there were 
  undoubtedly stretches, by no means small, 
  which had been trod by no foot other than that of 
  the strange race which had sought sanctuary 
  there—the Seminoles. 
  The Seminole villages themselves were 
  picturesque. Doc picked up a few along the gray 
  ribbon of concrete which was the Tamiami trail, 
  then left them behind as he swung southward. 
  Consisting of thatched huts inside a stockade, 
  these villages might have been transplanted 
  from darkest Africa. 
  The bronze man dropped the plane a little 
  lower, and it, or its shadow, frightened up clouds 
  of birds. Buzzards took flight from the naked 
  arms of dying trees and sailed up to hang mo-
  tionless black specks in the late afternoon 
  sunlight. 
  Another plane ahead in the sky, looked 
  like one of the buzzards at first. It was a mono-
  plane, a high-wing job, and it came out of the 
  infinite distance, a speck at first, then growing. It 
  was single-motored and painted brown. 
  Doc Savage watched it closely. It altered 
  its course slightly, coming toward him, then 
  swung to draw alongside, as if to give those 
  aboard a chance to stare. On the flanks of the 
  ship, a single word was painted in big letters: 
   
  GLOBE 
   
  This, then, would be the newspaper plane 
  which the Miami newspaper had dispatched into 
  the swamp. 
  The pilot, helmeted and goggled, gave 
  close attention to his flying. But in the passenger 
  cabin, a man wrenched one of the sliding win-
  dows open, thrust his head outside and waved 
  his arms wildly. He seemed to be trying to sig-
  nal. From time to time, he pointed downward. 
  Doc looked below. His flake-gold eyes dis-
  tinguished nothing. 
  The man in the plane cabin produced a 
  flashlight from somewhere. He began blinking it. 
  Despite the brilliant sunlight the faint wink of the 
  eye was discernible. It was a large light, of the 
  searchlight type. Letters came in halting Morse. 
  M-a-n g-i-v-i-n-g n-a-m-e M-o-n-k s-i-g-n-
  a-l-e-d u-s f-o-r h-e-l-p, the light spelled out. W-e 
  a-r-e u-n-a-r-m-e-d C-a-n y-o-u d-o a-n-y-t-h-i-n-
  g?" 
  Doc Savage stood up in the cockpit and 
  gave a vehement nod. That seemed to be all the 
  answer required. 
  The man in the other plane cabin nodded 
  also, and blinked his flashlight again. 
  "W-e w-i-l-l s-h-o-w y-o-u s-p-o-t," he sig-
  naled. 
  The other plane drew ahead, and Doc 
  Savage fell in behind. It seemed logical Monk 
  might have been brought into the swamp, to 
  Ark’s other headquarters, and might have man-
  aged to free himself, to give a signal. Possibly 
  he had used the same blinker code which this 
  man was employing. Doc followed close on the 
  tail of the other plane. From time to time he 
  shifted his glance downward, studying the 
  swamp. That trifle of incaution was nearly re-
  sponsible for his finish. 
  He looked up, almost in front of the 
  plane's snout, a great scarlet mass was materi-
  alizing. It was the Red Snow. The other plane 
  had released the stuff. 
   
   
  DOC stamped the rudder, rocked the 
  stick. The plane reeled over. Braces squealed, 
  flying wires strummed and struts groaned in their 
  sockets. 
  With infinite slowness, it seemed, the ship 
  banked over and down. The screaming propeller 
  seemed reluctant to pull away from the red hor-
  ror that had bloomed out in the sun-whitened 
  sky. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  68 
  Doc Savage knew planes. He realized that 
  he was not going to get clear. The ship was too 
  sluggish on the controls. 
  Doc dived over the cockpit rim into space. 
  He let himself fall, not counting, but kicking his 
  legs to prevent any tendency to spin. He ran his 
  hands over the straps of his parachute—he 
  never went aloft without one, if it could be 
  helped—to make sure the straps were sitting 
  properly. 
  Looking up, he saw the plane cleave into 
  the cloud of red snow. It went straight through, 
  stirring up the flakes, and came out on the op-
  posite side, apparently unharmed. The controls 
  were not centralized, so that it reeled over and 
  over in the sky, and traveled some distance. 
  Then a wing fell off; the undercarriage 
  came loose; the tail detached itself. These parts 
  did not fall far before they themselves disinte-
  grated, turning into a grayish-red powder which 
  sifted down a short distance and seemed to be 
  absorbed magically by the very air itself. 
  Doc glanced downward, saw the swamp 
  close below, and gave the ripcord of his chute a 
  yank. The silk blossomed out, yanked his fall 
  short, and let him down in a puddle beside a 
  thicket of cypress. Water birds, frightened up, 
  made a great roaring by beating their wings and 
  taking the air. 
  The other plane came moaning down from 
  above. The man in the cabin had exchanged his 
  flashlight for an automatic rifle. He began shoot-
  ing. The bullets knocked drops of water high into 
  the air.  
  Doc shed the ‘chute harness and sprinted. 
  He reached the edge of the water. The mud was 
  deep, impending. Lead knocked the filth up into 
  his face. Then he got under the trees, ran a few 
  yards, changed his course, and was temporarily 
  safe. 
  Crouching there, Doc Savage watched the 
  Red Snow sift on downward. It never reached 
  the swamp, but dissipated itself in the sunlight, 
  an indication that the stuff had to be released 
  near the ground, or its effects would not touch 
  the earth. 
  The plane had not been disintegrated en-
  tirely by the Red Snow. The central section of 
  the motor and certain cabin fittings had fallen 
  into the swamp. But the rest of the ship had dis-
  integrated in the weird fashion peculiar to the 
  Red Snow. 
  Bullets began cutting into the scrawny foli-
  age. Those in the plane had seen the bronze 
  man. 
  Doc shifted his position. Thicker shelter 
  lay to the south, but he did not go in that direc-
  tion. He went north, carefully noting his position 
  by such dead trees as served as landmarks. He 
  seemed to be seeking something. 
  The plane dived overhead. The staccato 
  rap of the automatic rifle was vicious over the 
  motor rumble. The sounds the bullets made hit-
  ting into the swamp terrain, were infinitely more 
  violent. 
  Doc got under a mass of creepers, and 
  the bullets failed to search him out before the 
  plane had to pull up and circle for another at-
  tack. By the time it got back, he had changed his 
  position and the craft failed to find him. 
  A moment later, he found what he was 
  seeking—what remained of the motor of the 
  plane, and certain objects which had been in the 
  cabin. The stuff was scattered over a radius of 
  no great area. He searched carefully. 
  Not until he had found the metal case 
  which had been in the cabin, did he seem satis-
  fied. 
   
   
  THE case was bulky, unhandy to carry 
  and at the same time remain hidden from the 
  plane above. The ship circled, dived, and 
  buzzed like an angry hornet. The automatic rifle 
  stuttered at intervals. 
  Suddenly, those aboard the plane saw 
  Doc Savage. With wild haste, the pilot banked 
  and came downward. The bronze man was, for 
  the moment, in the open in tall grass which of-
  fered poor concealment. He got boldly to his 
  feet, ran and dived into a clump of brush, then 
  carefully writhed to one side, losing himself. 
  In the plane above, the rifleman fired de-
  liberately, raking the brush clump from end to 
  end. His lips writhed as he cursed. Then he 
  stopped shooting and slid forward to bellow in 
  the pilot's ear. 
  “We will use the Red Snow again!" he 
  shouted. "It is the only way!” 
  "It would be better if we did not!" the pilot 
  bellowed back. "We have no great supply of the 
  stuff, either aboard or at the headquarters! Ark's 
  orders were to save it for emergencies, or to 
  eliminate those whom we have listed to die!" 
  "This” grated the other, "is an emergency! 
  Fly close above the brush." 
  The pilot shrugged, banked his plane 
  again and sent it back. Back in the cabin, the 
  passenger fumbled with a long case and brought 
  out what resembled a grotesque air rifle. This 
  had a barrel of moderate size, but below that 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 69 
  was another cylinder of much greater diameter, 
  the latter fastened in place with set-screws and 
  clamps. 
  The man removed a second of these cyl-
  inders from the case, and with hasty fingers, 
  began substituting it for the first. 
  "Circle once more," he howled at the pilot. 
  "I have to put a fresh charge of compressed air 
  in this air gun!" 
  Obediently, the pilot arched the craft 
  around. 
  The man preparing the Red Snow for dis-
  charge opened a second box, one which was 
  carefully padded, and extracted what appeared 
  to be an ordinary rifle grenade, with a cylinder 
  perhaps a bit larger than ordinary. The nose of 
  this was tapered; to the other end was attached 
  a rod which exactly fitted the interior of the air 
  gun barrel. There was a timing device to regu-
  late detonation. 
  The plane came back over the brush 
  clump in which Doc Savage had taken shelter. 
  The pilot stared downward. 
  “There he is!" he bawled, and pointed. 
  He had sighted Doc Savage. 
  The man in the cabin leaned out, aimed 
  and jerked the trigger of the air gun. The device 
  made a gusty grunt of a noise. The grenade por-
  tion was discharged, arched outward and ex-
  ploded directly over the brush. If there was any 
  noise, it was not audible over the moan of the 
  motor. Rather, the container of the Red Snow 
  seemed to disintegrate and free the stuff. 
  The red material boiled out, gaseous in 
  nature at first, it seemed, then crystallizing into 
  flakes which fell downward, directly upon the 
  brush patch. 
  "That'll get him," the pilot yelled gleefully. 
   
   
  THE flier was a cautious soul, and he did 
  not venture too near the Red Snow. He kept the 
  plane in a gentle bank, circling the vicinity at a 
  distance varying from one to three hundred 
  yards. 
  The man in the cabin discarded his air gun 
  and clamped a pair of glasses to his eyes. He 
  studied the swamp around the spot where the 
  Red Snow was falling. 
  The red horror was down, now. It was go-
  ing through its uncanny melting process, being 
  absorbed into the air. And a moment later a 
  swamp breeze stirred the grass, the brush, and 
  this vegetation began to fall to pieces, to crum-
  ble into powder. The wind swept up the powder,  
  seemed to swallow it, and a moment later, na-
  ked earth became visible. The denuded space 
  increased in area, and a shallow depression ap-
  peared as If by magic. 
  Although the whole phenomenon ap-
  peared to take but short moments, considerable 
  time had actually elapsed, as indicated by the 
  number of times the plane circled. 
  Water began to run into the hollow where 
  the brush had been, and after a time—possibly 
  half an hour—there was only a small lake to 
  show where the growth had stood. During all of 
  that time, the plane either circled, or swept back 
  and forth in slow swings while those aboard 
  studied the surrounding swamp. The two in the 
  ship reached a conclusion. 
  "The bronze man could not have es-
  caped," said the man in the cabin. "I released 
  the Red Snow directly upon him." 
  "That," said the pilot, "is what these 
  Americans call O. K." 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  THE CONQUEST PLAN 
   
  THE plane swung away, but flew just fast 
  enough to keep its altitude while those aboard 
  studied the sky in search of any other ships 
  which might be in sight. There were none. They 
  circled, and came down upon a small lake in the 
  swamp. 
  The edges of this patch of water were 
  studded with bare-looking trees, and to the right 
  was a bit of high ground—high only in compari-
  son to the rest of the swamp, for it was merely 
  prominent enough to offer dry footing. 
  On the dry ground, almost hidden in a 
  small jungle of trees, was a Seminole village. A 
  very small settlement, it consisted of half a 
  dozen thatched huts erected on stilts and a 
  stockade of stout sticks thatched with palm 
  fronds. There was no sign of life. 
  The plane landed on the lake. The pilot 
  used great care in taxiing inshore, to a spot 
  where trees—very sizable trees for this swamp 
  district—overhung the water. The boughs of 
  these, draped with moss, hung down like a cur-
  tain. 
  When the plane was close in, what had 
  seemed to be branches and moss lifted like a 
  curtain, disclosing a long, camouflaged hangar. 
  Some of the boughs and moss was genuine, but 
  most of it was cleverly done in paint on canvas. 
  There were two planes already in the hid-
  den recess. Both were small, but overmotored 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  70 
  and capable of carrying a heavy load at high 
  speed. 
  Ark himself appeared. The black grease 
  paint was gone from his face, revealing a coun-
  tenance of olive hue. He looked considerably the 
  worse for wear. There was a purple splotch 
  where Doc Savage's fist had hit him. 
  "Well?" he snapped. "Who was in that 
  plane? You took long enough to find out!" 
  "Doc Savage," said the pilot. 
  Ark blinked. He wet his lips, swallowed. 
  "What did you do?" he asked. 
  "We used the Red Snow," explained the 
  other. "We had to employ it twice. Once on the 
  plane, when Doc Savage escaped. The second 
  time, we got him." 
  Ark made fists of his bony hands. "You are 
  sure?" 
  "Positive!" said the flier. 
  "You used two charges of the Red Snow?" 
  Ark asked. 
  The man who had been in the plane cabin 
  put in hastily, "it was necessary. We tried to get 
  him with the rifle, but it was hopeless. We had to 
  use a second charge." 
  "That was undesirable," Ark said slowly. 
  "We have no great quantity of the Red Snow on 
  hand. All of our supply is here, and it may be 
  some time before we get more. The available 
  quantity of the material is limited by the amount 
  of radium which we can get, to work into the in-
  gredients." He fell silent, then shook his head. 
  "But it was worth it. Come." 
  They shoved the plane into the concealed 
  recess behind the boughs, and lowered the cur-
  tain. The latter was a clumsy affair, and they had 
  to push outside afterward in a folding canvas 
  boat and replace branches and pennants of 
  moss which had fallen off during the lifting of the 
  curtain. 
  They went, then, to the stockade, entered 
  it and moved to one of the larger huts. It was 
  near sundown. Ark ordered a gasoline lantern 
  lighted. Carrying it he went inside the hut. 
   
   
  THE structure was erected on stilts, the 
  floor being of poles laid upon stringers. These 
  poles were stout and furnished excellent an-
  chorage for the prisoners which the shack held. 
  The 
  captives 
  numbered 
  ten. 
  Their 
  sprawled forms covered most of the floor space. 
  Monk, Ham and portly Fluency Beech 
  were together at one side, fastened more se-
  curely than the rest. Nona Space and her stepfa-
  ther, Hyman Space, were near Ray Wood; and a 
  few feet from them lay Beech's aide, the man 
  who had seized Doc Savage on the island, only 
  to himself be captured later by Ark's crew. 
   
  Off in a corner by themselves lay two 
  strangers. One of them was a young man in a 
  baggy suit, who lay so that his coat was open, 
  disclosing a bundle of rough copy paper in the 
  pocket, the type of paper used by newspaper 
  reporters. His companion still wore a flying hel-
  met, minus the goggles, and had the weathered 
  features of an airman. 
  "What's this all about? the young man in 
  the baggy suit demanded angrily. "I land a 
  dozen miles from here and ask for Duck-With-
  No-Wings, and you birds grab me and bring me 
  here. You take my plane. What's the idea?" 
  Ark told him, "You ask too many ques-
  tions." 
  "Listen," the young man gritted. "I’m a 
  newspaper reporter and the Globe will have 
  some one out looking for me before long."
   
  Ark leered at him. "My dear friend, they 
  will find you." 
  The journalist did not like the tone. He 
  moistened his lips. 
  "What do you mean?" he demanded. 
  “It will be very simple," Ark advised. "We 
  will send the plane up. You two had no para-
  chutes. My man will be aboard, but with a para-
  chute. He will step overboard, after breaking a 
  control wire." 
  The reporter tried to stutter something, 
  failed and fell into a horrified silence. 
  Ark now gave his attention to Monk, Ham 
  and the others. 
  "I was keeping you alive, thinking you 
  might be of some service to me in trapping Doc 
  Savage," he said. "Doc Savage is now dead, 
  which eliminates my reasons for permitting you 
  to exist longer." His strange voice became even 
  shriller. "It will give me much satisfaction to 
  eliminate you." 
  There was an interruption, the guard at 
  the door calling out softly that men were ap-
  proaching. A moment later, these entered the 
  stockade. There were three of them. They had a 
  captive, a bulky, sullen Seminole clad in a bril-
  liant skirt affair and a gaudy shirt. They ushered 
  him into the large hut. 
  "Duck-With-No-Wings," one announced. 
  Ark piped, "Did you find the lump of basic 
  ingredient?" 
  "We did," one of the men said, and tossed 
  a package wrapped in moss to Ark. "We got the 
  story out of this guy, too. He saw two men run-
  ning through the swamp, and saw one of them 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 71 
  hide something. He got it, after he saw the Red 
  Snow get the two men" 
  Ark eyed Hyman Space. "The two men 
  were your assistants who tried to escape from 
  here and get to Doc Savage." 
  Space said nothing. His one eye was hol-
  low, staring. The black patch had been shoved 
  aside from the other, revealing a gnarled cavity. 
  A voice called from outside, "Radio mes-
  sage for you, chief." 
  Ark went out. 
   
   
  HE was back within less than five minutes, 
  and there was a twisted smile on his hairless 
  face. He teetered on his heels and scowled at 
  Monk and Ham. 
  "That radio message was from one of my 
  spies watching the secretary of state's special 
  train," he advised. "It seems that your Doc Sav-
  age was clever enough to learn that we planned 
  a reception for the government official, and 
  managed to convey a warning." 
  Ark paused. Ham said a tight-lipped noth-
  ing. For once he was without his sword cane. 
  Monk lay beside him, tilted over on one side, an 
  eye pressed absently to one of the cracks in the 
  pole floor. 
  Monk could see his pig, Habeas Corpus, 
  prowling around under the shack. Ark's men had 
  brought the pig along, intrigued perhaps by his 
  intelligence and his unusual appearance; per-
  haps also they had wanted the pleasure of devil-
  ing Monk by promising to make bacon out of 
  Habeas, they having discovered that the sug-
  gestion was the one thing which would throw 
  Monk into a futile rage. 
  Ark continued, "It is indeed lucky that we 
  had spies watching the special train. They 
  learned that the secretary of state is not aboard. 
  He transferred, in imagined secrecy, to a plane, 
  and will arrive in Miami within the next four 
  hours." 
  Ark paused, leered. "Correctly, I should 
  say, he is expected to arrive in Miami in the next 
  four hours. Nothing of the sort will happen. I 
  fear, instead, that his plane will be lost. Perhaps 
  it will be one of the great mysteries of all time. 
  But again, the Red Snow may be seen, in which 
  case the world will know the truth." 
  Ham said quietly, "Will you answer one 
  question?" 
  Ark shrugged. "It depends." 
  "You have killed a number of persons," 
  Ham said. "One was an airplane designer—" 
  "A designer of war planes," Ark elabo-
  rated. 
  "Yes," Ham growled. "Another was a pro-
  fessor in the chemical research department of a 
  famous university—" 
  "Your nation's greatest expert on poison 
  gases," said Ark. 
  Ham blinked. He seemed to begin to com-
  prehend. 
  “There was a mechanical engineer who—" 
  Ark interrupted him. "The mechanical en-
  gineer was the inventor of remarkable war ma-
  chines. There was a United States senator who 
  possessed military information about my coun-
  try. There was also an automobile manufacturer 
  whose factories could be converted to hasty 
  manufacture of tanks. And another was an un-
  dersecretary in your war department, a man who 
  was a master of military strategy. Do you begin 
  to understand?" 
  "I get it," Ham mumbled. 
  "Of course you do," Ark piped gleefully. 
  "So your country is getting reedy to start 
  something?" Ham surmised. 
  Ark nodded. "Our fleet is not many hun-
  dreds of miles from your coast, ostensibly hold-
  ing maneuvers. The assassination of your secre-
  tary of state is the signal for a sudden declara-
  tion of war. Other of your national leaders are to 
  be killed with the Red Snow. Your country will be 
  temporarily paralyzed. Before it can get organ-
  ized, it will be too late." 
  He paused, as if to hear Ham's reaction, 
  but the dapper lawyer—he was not so dapper 
  now—said nothing, and Ark continued: 
  "It is unfortunate that we do not have more 
  of the Red Snow," he said. "It is a weapon such 
  as mankind never before saw. It is my own 
  product, an electro-chemical solution which 
  completely disrupts the molecular characteristics 
  of matter. You know that radium has the prop-
  erty of disintegrating, although the process is 
  infinitely slow? Well, I discovered that, by em-
  ploying this phenomena of radium and adding 
  certain chemical and radioactive substances, 
  treated in a certain manner, I could cause al-
  most instantaneous disintegration of practically 
  all known substances. 
  "I do not destroy them. Nothing so drastic 
  as that. I merely change their nature, as water is 
  turned into steam, as wood is burned and turned 
  into smoke and ashes. In this case, there is no 
  resulting heat. The whole affair is carried out 
  through the medium of atomic bombardment, 
  secured through the medium of these radioac-
  tive compounds in combination with—" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  72 
  A man outside emitted a terrific yell. 
  "Doc Savage!" he bawled. "The bronze 
  man is here!" 
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  DEATH IN RED 
   
  HAD the world unexpectedly started com-
  ing to an end the surprise could not have been 
  more complete. Ark stopped his boastful expla-
  nations and dived for the door, knocking a man 
  spinning out of his path. 
  Monk came to life, reared up and tried to 
  trip Ark. 
  "Shoot him!" Ark yelled, and pointed at 
  Monk. 
  The guard lifted his gun, aimed it at Monk, 
  but another cry—a shriek of awful pain this 
  time—caused him to change his mind. He fol-
  lowed Ark out through the door. 
  There was a porchlike platform before the 
  door, and the men stood upon that, staring. 
  They could see that the stockade gate was 
  open. They saw a man sprawled in front of it. 
  The fellow seemed to be alive, but unable to 
  move—gripped by a strange paralysis. There 
  was no one else in sight. 
  Then men came running. They popped 
  from the other huts. They came from the direc-
  tion of the hangar hidden on the lake edge. All 
  were excited, puzzled. 
  "Who saw Doc Savage?” Ark piped. "Who 
  shouted?" 
  At first no one answered, then a man said, 
  "it must have been the guard at the gate." 
  "Scatter," Ark directed. "Hunt the bronze 
  man." 
  The Seminole village must have been 
  abandoned when Ark and his men took it over. 
  The clearing was overgrown with brush and 
  grass. This had not been cut, but was trampled 
  down in spots. Elsewhere, it was high enough to 
  offer shelter. 
  The pig, Habeas Corpus, appeared sud-
  denly from under the shack where Ark stood on 
  the porchlike projection. The shote began grunt-
  ing loudly and trotted across the compound, 
  eyes fixed on some distant spot. 
  "Follow the pig!" Ark shrilled. "He sees the 
  bronze man!" 
  The men converged on the spot for which 
  Habeas Corpus was heading. 
  For a moment, the rear of the prison hut 
  was unwatched, and there came a soft crunch-
  ing and rattling as the thatching was torn aside. 
  The men were shouting. That covered the noise. 
  Monk heard the first sound from the hut 
  side. He stared, waiting. His homely features 
  were wet with perspiration. The nearness, a 
  moment before, to death by shooting, had given 
  him a sweating spell. 
  An aperture opened in the thatched wall. 
  A pair of bronze hands appeared, enlarging the 
  opening. 
  "Doc!" Monk breathed. 
  The bronze giant was inside an instant 
  later. He carried in his arms a large mass of 
  what resembled a yellow-red cloth of consider-
  able weight. This, he deposited on the floor. He 
  began freeing the captives. Some of them were 
  tied. He loosened those first. Others were hand-
  cuffed. Doc examined the linkage. These were 
  cheaper handcuffs, not like those which Fluency 
  Beech's aide had used the day before. 
  Doc grasped the leg manacles. He had 
  purchase, for they were linked around the floor 
  poles. He yanked, and the links snapped as if 
  they had become suddenly rotten. The depth to 
  which they cut into the floor poles, however, 
  showed the amount of strain which the bronze 
  man's muscles put upon them before they gave.  
  The men were shouting more loudly in the 
  clearing. They were angry now. 
  "The infernal pig saw nothing!" one 
  screeched.  
  Monk squinted at Doc. "What'd you do? 
  Send Habeas away to draw their attention?" 
  Doc nodded. 
  "I am going to draw their attention," he 
  said swiftly. "When they are concentrating on 
  me, you make a break. Do not try to escape 
  through the swamp. They would overhaul you. 
  Get to their planes and take off." 
  “What about you?” Monk demanded. 
  The bronze man did not answer. He gath-
  ered up the bundle of yellow-red cloth and 
  eased out through the hole by which he had en-
  tered the hut. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE worked close to the stock-
  ade edge. The construction of this had once 
  been secure enough, but age had made it de-
  crepit. He found a spot where there was room to 
  crawl through, to get outside into the jungle 
  growth. Once concealed therein, he circled, us-
  ing all of the caution possible, until he had 
  reached the opposite end of the clearing. 
  Then he tried the stockade, found another 
  opening—it was not difficult—and crawled in-
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 73 
  side. Making his way to the nearest hut, he 
  picked his chance and dived inside. 
  The structure had been a living quarters. 
  There were hammocks slung from the roof 
  poles, and various suitcases. Too, there were 
  cases holding automatic rifles and ammunition. 
  Doc dipped into one of these, got a gun and 
  charged it with ammunition. 
  He advanced to the door, aimed deliber-
  ately, and fired. Ark screamed and leaped a foot 
  into the air, fell flat, then got up and hopped to 
  cover. He had been shot through one leg. 
  Doc showed himself. He used nice judg-
  ment, giving the men long enough to see him, 
  but not long enough to target him on their gun 
  sights. Then he lunged from the door, slammed 
  flat and writhed through the grass until he was 
  lying prone in a small ditch which had been dug 
  to drain the vicinity of the hut. 
  He pulled up a large fistful of the rank 
  swamp grass and held it so as to mask his fea-
  tures while he looked around. The grass, being 
  of a nature blending with the surroundings, 
  made him less likely to be seen, although a 
  sharp eye would soon detect him. 
  The bronze man had depended on the 
  men pursuing him. Thus, they would be drawn 
  away from the hut where the prisoners were, 
  allowing the latter a chance to escape. 
  But nothing of the sort happened. The 
  men were in a tight group around Ark. 
  One of them held an air rifle similar to the 
  one employed by the man in the plane. He was 
  fitting one of the Red Snow grenades into the 
  gun. 
  "Use it!" Ark yelled. "We've got to get that 
  infernal bronze devil this time!" 
  Doc Savage hastily lowered himself. He 
  did not try to retreat. It was not feasible. If he got 
  erect, they would see him and use their rifles. If 
  he crawled, he could not make sufficient time. 
  He still carried the bundle of peculiar yel-
  low-red material. He opened it now. It proved to 
  be a sack of an affair with a drawstring opening. 
  It was almost six feet long, wide enough to con-
  tain his, giant frame when he eased inside. He 
  drew in the mouth of the bag. 
  The last glance he threw overhead 
  showed the arching grenade, showed it bloom 
  suddenly into a spreading shroud of red flakes 
  which sifted downward upon the spot where he 
  lay.  
  The bronze man worked frantically at the 
  mouth of the container. It must be more than 
  airtight. It must be sealed completely. In one of 
  his pockets was a case containing some of the 
  peculiar metallic substance with which the cloth 
  was impregnated, but it was in a paste state. He 
  smeared it on the bag mouth, clamped the cloth 
  together in his corded hands. Then he waited. 
  There was a peculiar hissing sound as the 
  Red Snow descended—a sound not loud, but 
  distinctive. Doc showed no particular interest. 
  He had heard it thus once before—out in the 
  swamp, when he had used this bag to escape 
  the grenade fired from the plane. In that in-
  stance, he had floundered clear in the bag, once 
  he thought the Red Snow had dissipated its 
  weird strength. 
  The bag was the only defense he had 
  been able to devise against the Red Snow. He 
  had analyzed the stuff in the laboratory, secured 
  a fair knowledge of its nature, and made up this 
  bag of metal which would not be affected by the 
  stuff. The Red Snow was far from universally 
  effective. Many materials would resist it partially 
  or completely. 
  When he guessed that the fall of Red 
  Snow was at its height, he drew himself up and 
  began to roll backward, so that he would leave 
  the cloud of red flakes on the side opposite Ark 
  and his men. It was a ticklish task. The opening 
  of even a single seam in the bag—they were 
  quadruple stitched and filled with the flexible 
  sealing cement—would mean instant death, 
  complete disintegration. 
  Finally, when he was sure he was clear, 
  and certain the Red Snow would have dissi-
  pated, he freed himself of the bag. 
  What he saw was not pleasant. 
   
   
  MONK, Ham and the others, true to or-
  ders, had sought to make a break during the 
  excitement. They had been discovered, and had 
  sheltered themselves by flopping down inside 
  the compound. 
  Ark and his men were advancing on them, 
  rifles ready. 
  The man with the air rifle had fitted a sec-
  ond grenade into the barrel of the pneumatic 
  weapon. 
  Doc stood up, shouted. He made no 
  words, merely yelled. 
  Ark and his men spun around, bewildered, 
  stunned. Ark had seized a stick and was em-
  ploying it as a crutch. He waved the one arm 
  with which he was not holding the crutch. 
  "Use the Red Snow on him again!" he 
  shrilled. "Then keep shooting with rifles! Some of 
  you have hand grenades. Use them!" 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  74 
  The man with the pneumatic rifle lifted his 
  weapon.  
  Over by the stockade gate, Monk stood up 
  suddenly. He must have crawled over there to 
  get the weapon of the guard whom Doc Savage 
  had knocked out in entering the compound. He 
  held the weapon now. He whipped it up, 
  snapped a shot. 
  The 
  man 
  with 
  the 
  pneumatic 
  rifle 
  screeched and fell down. He floundered about. 
  Ark leaped for the fallen one, his idea ob-
  viously being to get the air gun. But Ark was not 
  accustomed to using one leg, and he fell down. 
  The wounded man—he might have, been 
  dying—pulled the trigger of the air gun and the 
  grenade hit the ground, disintegrated. There was 
  a spout of red flakes. 
  Ark began screaming and tried to crawl 
  away. He was not fast enough, and the red par-
  ticles enveloped him. The breeze stirred them a 
  little, but not much, and they spread in all direc-
  tions. 
  There was a hut near by. The Red Snow 
  reached that. The thatching offered no resis-
  tance. 
  Ark's men began running for safety. Monk 
  howled at them, shot in the air, but they paid no 
  attention. 
  The hut which the Red Snow had pene-
  trated must have held the supply of the stuff, 
  and the disintegrating effect actuated the deto-
  nating devices, for there was a sudden, vast puff 
  of the red stuff, and it spread with tremendous 
  speed. 
  One of Ark's men was overtaken, then an-
  other. Some of them, though, must have gotten 
  away, although as far as Doc Savage was con-
  cerned, there was never evidence of that. The 
  men were not heard from again. 
  Doc and his own party were running. They 
  had a start on the red terror, enough headway to 
  get clear. 
  Monk's pig, Habeas Corpus, appeared 
  and showed an inclination to go back and inves-
  tigate the strange red pall. Monk caught him, 
  scooped him up by one oversized ear and bore 
  him away. 
  "You must be losing your good judgment," 
  Monk told the shote. 
   
   
  THAT, as far as actual events were con-
  cerned, was the end of the menace of the Red 
  Snow. The entire supply of the stuff had been 
  destroyed, and along with it, as far as any one 
  knew, the man who knew the secret of its com-
  pounding. 
  The building housing the equipment to 
  make the Red Snow was completely disinte-
  grated by the Red Snow itself. The other ma-
  chinery—the pedestals removed from the house 
  on the dunes to the island—had been previously 
  destroyed on the island. 
  Duck-With-No-Wings went back to his alli-
  gator hunting, still not knowing exactly what it 
  was all about. The Globe reporter made all 
  haste to his newspaper, and wrote a story which 
  he visioned as putting him in the front rank of 
  journalists. He got quite a shock. It was not pub-
  lished. 
  The reporter roared his disappointment. 
  The editor explained simply that he had been 
  requested to put the lid on the affair, since it 
  would only stir up international complications, 
  and 
  possibly—indeed, 
  quite 
  probably—
  precipitate a war. 
  There was no war. The battle fleet of a 
  certain foreign power, holding maneuvers near 
  the American coast, discovered itself virtually 
  surrounded by American warships, also using 
  the all sufficient excuse of battle maneuvers. 
  The foreign force betook itself home after a de-
  cent interval. 
  The secretary of state and party reached 
  Miami. The newspapers said the government 
  executive had had an excellent fishing trip. 
  O. Garfew Beech was not heard from 
  again. In his capacity as head of the secret ser-
  vice, he slid quietly out of the picture, not want-
  ing publicity, and returned to Washington. His 
  work was completed when the plot of the foreign 
  power was nipped in the bud. 
  Doc Savage faded out of the picture also, 
  and the Miami police dropped the murder charge 
  against him as if it were something hot. This was 
  after they had heard testimony offered by 
  Hyman Space and others. 
  It was to Doc Savage's liking, the manner 
  in which he eased into the background. There 
  were plenty of others who liked publicity, and he 
  was willing they should have it. He had come to 
  Florida to work on a method of eradicating the 
  mosquito pest. He went to work on that. 
  He was not destined to finish the task, al-
  though that was a fact he had no means of 
  knowing. Trouble, danger, excitement, had a 
  way of hunting the bronze man out. His reputa-
  tion as a trouble smasher had spread to the cor-
  ners of the earth, and it brought him strange 
  problems. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx RED SNOW xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 75 
  From the Arctic wastes, the next call 
  would come. But it was not from the Arctic as 
  civilized man knew it, but from a fabulous do-
  main in the depths of the earth—the Land of Al-
  ways Night—a spot unknown to civilization, yet 
  populated by a race so advanced that the intri-
  cacies of radio, of television, of surgery and 
  medicine, of electro-chemistry, were little more 
  complicated than the problems which confront a 
  small child. 
  A strange man covered with a growth of 
  golden fur, a man of mystery, of untold learning, 
  was to be the harbinger of the next amazing ad-
  venture of this bronze man and his companions. 
  Most remarkable of all would be the nature 
  of the clue on which the mystery seemed to 
  hinge—a pair of goggles with lenses so black 
  that no man could see through them. Goggles 
  with a fantastic purpose! Goggles, war for the 
  possession of which launched a stream of horror 
  such as Doc Savage and his men had never 
  before encountered.  
  But Doc Savage, having no inkling of all of 
  that, set himself to work trying to create a para-
  site which would exterminate mosquitoes and 
  nothing else. 
  Monk had a suggestion to offer, should 
  they need a laboratory subject, bearing similarity 
  to a mosquito, upon which to test the efficacy of 
  such an evolved parasite. 
  "If we find the bug," he grinned, "we can 
  try it out on Ham." 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Strange things happen in a strange land, 
   
  LAND OF ALWAYS NIGHT 
   
  to which Doc Savage and his fighting pals are called by adventure 
  and the cry for aid. People who know nothing of our civilization, yet have            
  one of their own far superior to ours, living happily under conditions which 
  we would think unlivable. 
  What is the secret which they hide, and who wants to take it from 
  them? That is the story you'll read in the next issue of Doc Savage Maga-
  zine—a story in which the fantastic, the scientific, and the criminal are all 
  embroiled in one battle. 
  Don't miss the next issue of 
   
  DOC SAVAGE MAGAZINE 
   
  Ten Cents—At All News Stands—Every Month 
   
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/024 Red Snow.pdf