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  1 
  THE DERRICK DEVIL 
  A Doc Savage Adventure By Kenneth Robeson 
   
  Originally published in DOC SAVAGE Magazine February 1937 
   
   
   
  From the core of the earth comes 
   
  THE DERRRICK DEVIL
   
  to plunge Doc Savage into a maelstrom of  
  danger and death! 
   
  By KENNETH ROBESON 
   
  Complete book-length Novel 
   
   
  Chapter I 
  THE FLOWING RED DEVIL 
   
  THE man carried a .30-30 rifle in one 
  hand and two boxes of cartridges, both open, 
  in the other hand. He acted as if ready to 
  drop the cartridges and use the rifle any 
  instant. 
  The girl had a shotgun. 
  “I’ve got a hunch guns ain’t a lot of 
  good against this thing!” the man muttered. 
  “What’s the matter, Reservoir?” the 
  girl asked. “Believe in hobgoblins?” 
  It was too dark to tell much about 
  them, only that the man was tall and skinny, 
  except for his middle, which was big around, 
  making him like a snake that had swallowed 
  an egg. A nice snake, of course. 
  The girl was about the right size, and 
  if she didn’t have a good form, the darkness 
  lied. It was impossible to tell about her 
  coloring. 
  
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  “I still maintain I saw something 
  coming out of the casing of that wildcat well, 
  Miss Vida,” the man muttered. “Reservoir Hill 
  may be old, but he ain’t going nuts!” 
  The girl laughed. It was, somehow, 
  not a very enthusiastic mirth. 
  “Sam Sands was to watch the well 
  until midnight,” she said. “It’s eleven. Time 
  you and I were relieving Sam.” 
  Holding the rifle with his finger in the 
  trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl 
  took long strides and kept at his side. 
  Tall, dry grass brushed their field 
  boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the 
  night breeze. Over in the hills somewhere, an 
  owl was making a racket. 
  They topped the small hill and before 
  them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well 
  derrick stood reared against the cloudy night 
  sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling 
  rig was evidently a rotary. 
  The well was not a producer, 
  because the breeze was coming from that 
  direction and it carried, instead of the smell of 
  crude oil, the odors usually found around 
  drilling wells. 
  “Reservoir” Hill stopped. 
  The girl waited, but when he did not 
  move or speak, she grew impatient. “Well!” 
  “We’ve got the wildcat shut down 
  because our boss driller has disappeared,” 
  Reservoir Hill said, slowly. 
  “Well?” the girl said again, sharply. 
  “I’ve 
  got 
  a 
  horrible 
  suspicion,” 
  continued Reservoir Hill, “that we’ve already 
  found our driller!” 
   
   
  THE girl was puzzled. She held her 
  shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed 
  her companion. A stray beam of moonlight 
  came through a crack in passing clouds to 
  illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends 
  of him had been squeezed to make him big 
  in the middle. 
  “What are you driving at, Reservoir?” 
  “Remember that gummy stuff we 
  found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was 
  near where we found the clothes our driller 
  was wearin’—when he—well, when he 
  disappeared.” 
  “That was just old lube or grease that 
  somebody had scraped out there.” 
  “It wasn’t lube,” Reservoir Hill said, 
  shuddering. 
  “No?” 
  “I know lube oil.” Reservoir Hill wet 
  his lips. “I’ve worked in refineries too many 
  years not to know grease or lube. This stuff 
  looks more like—well—” He fell silent. 
  “Like what?” 
  Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug. 
  “Forget it! When they have been in 
  the oil fields as long as I have, they 
  sometimes got funny!” 
  The two of them walked toward the 
  drilling rig. It was a complete outfit, even 
  more 
  modern 
  on 
  close 
  examination. 
  Everything was in readiness for the striking of 
  oil, catch dams have been thrown across 
  gullies with fresnos. 
  It was a steam rig, and the boiler was 
  located far enough away that a possible 
  unexpected outpouring of natural gas from 
  the well would not be likely to reach the boiler 
  fires before they could be extinguished by a 
  supply of water which was kept close at 
  hand. Steam was brought from the boiler to 
  the machinery at the well by pipe. 
  And oil field scouts, fellows who 
  know their business, would have said that 
  here was a wildcat drilling outfit which knew 
  what it was doing. 
  Hill stopped, inhaled until his chest 
  was almost half as big as his stomach, and 
  blasted a yell. 
  “Sam!” he howled. “Sam! Where are 
  you?”  
  Echoes came gobbling back from the 
  red oak carpeted hills. 
  “Tsk! Tsk!” the girl clucked. “You 
  must think Sam’s over by Ponca City or 
  somewhere!” 
  They waited. Night breeze seemed 
  to have suddenly stopped rustling the red 
  oak leaves, but it might have been a freak of 
  the night. 
  Reservoir Hill growled, “Well! Didn’t 
  answer, did he?” 
  The girl had become concerned. 
  “Sam can’t be asleep! Your yell must 
  have made half the Indian warriors in the 
  Osage sit up in their graves!” 
  They ran forward, guns ready. The 
  man, Reservoir Hill, produced a big, shiny 
  flashlight which gave poor light and not much 
  of it. The light immediately found shiny 
  substance on the ground. 
  Reservoir Hill stared. His throat 
  made a rasping noise more eloquent than 
  any other sound could have been. 
  
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  3 
  “Them’s Sam’s clothes, ain’t they?” 
  he croaked. 
   
   
  THE male clothing—hat, shirt, coat, 
  trousers, socks, heavy oil field shoes—lay 
  exactly in a position they would occupy if the 
  former wearer had lain down on his back and 
  his body had become nonexistent. 
  The shirt was inside the coat, with 
  the shirt sleeves down inside the coat 
  sleeves in a natural manner. The socks were 
  even inside the shoes. 
  “Ah-h-h!” Reservoir Hill growled. He 
  sounded as if trying to bolster his own 
  courage. 
  The girl eyed him curiously. “Why are 
  you scared? This is a practical joke! It’s too 
  silly to be anything else!” 
  “Humph!” Reservoir Hill, to avoid the 
  question, walked forward with his flashlight. 
  He took only a few paces before he 
  wrenched to a rigid halt. His throat made its 
  queer noise. 
  The girl ran forward, stood at his side 
  and stared at what he had found. 
  “Some one had dumped more of that 
  queer-looking grease,” she said. 
  Reservoir Hill wet his lips. “Listen! 
  Our boss driller disappeared! We can’t find 
  him anywhere! But we find this gummy stuff!” 
  “I still say it’s grease!’ 
  “I haven’t been working with crude oil 
  and things for nothing, all my life,” growled 
  Reservoir Hill. “And I know this ain’t grease!” 
  “What is it then?” 
  “Ain’t quite ready to say what I think 
  it is!” Reservoir Hill mumbled. 
  “Why not?” 
  “Don’t like to scare women when 
  there maybe ain’t no need!” 
  “I 
  was 
  brought 
  up 
  on 
  Indian 
  massacre stories,” the girl said, dryly. She 
  was calm enough to make it seem as if she 
  had been, too. 
  Reservoir 
  Hill 
  skulked 
  forward. 
  Silhouetted against the glare of his own 
  flashlight beam, he was like a caricature of 
  an old Indian fighter on the trail of a hostile 
  redskin. He threw his light over toward the 
  derrick. 
  He lifted his .30-30 and flame and 
  noise came out of its muzzle. 
  The girl ran forward. “What is it?” 
  “Going 
  into 
  the 
  well 
  casing!” 
  Reservoir Hill shrieked. “Throw my flashlight 
  on the durn thing!” 
  The 
  girl 
  grabbed 
  his 
  flashlight, 
  pointed its poor light in the direction of the 
  derrick floor and the drilling casing which 
  stuck upward in the center. The light was 
  extremely weak. 
  “Battery 
  about 
  gone!” 
  she 
  complained. “I can’t see—!” 
  Then she saw. Maybe she had been 
  brought up on tales of Indian massacres, but 
  the scream she poured out now would have 
  done justice to the most easily frightened 
  maid. 
   
   
  THE thing going into the oil well 
  casing had substantial reality to it, that was 
  certain. It was not transparent, like a jelly. It 
  flowed as some jellies will melt and flow 
  when dropped on a hot stove. It was going 
  into the sixteen-inch casing. 
  Color of the flowing mass was red. 
  “Whatever it is, we’ll stop it!” The 
  girl’s shotgun banged hugely, banged again. 
  Louder than the .30-30, it did not have as 
  ugly a sound. 
  But 
  the 
  translucent 
  red 
  mass 
  disappeared down the casing. 
  The girl and Reservoir Hill dashed 
  forward, weapons ready. There was no sign 
  of the red mass on the derrick floor. 
  Reservoir Hill touched the steel 
  casing pipe. He wrenched his hand back, 
  leaped to one side, grabbed up a fistful of 
  waste and scrubbed his palm furiously. 
  “There’s gooey stuff on the casing!” 
  he howled. 
  The girl looked closely. The “gooey 
  stuff” was there. She did not touch it. 
  There were other marks on the 
  casing. Shiny streaks left by lead! Big streaks 
  made by the .30-30 slugs, and small ones 
  where the shotgun slugs had hit. 
  The girl said, hoarsely, “Our bullets 
  hit everywhere!” 
  “Hah!” 
  Reservoir 
  Hill 
  took 
  the 
  flashlight out of her hand, and turned it on the 
  derrick floor. “Look! A trail of the gooey stuff!” 
  The girl said, “Let’s follow it.” 
  They followed it to the mysterious, 
  shapeless mass they had found on the 
  ground—the stuff that looked like grease, 
  and yet didn’t. 
  
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  Then the smeared path continued on 
  to the clothes lying on the ground. 
  “It goes right to Sam Sand’s duds!” 
  Reservoir Hill dropped to a knee, explored 
  briefly, then gulped, “Vida!” 
  “What?” asked the girl. 
  “The gooey stuff is all over Sam’s 
  clothes!” 
  There was rustling of leaves and 
  crackling of dry twigs in the red oak thicket 
  near by. This sound proved to be made by 
  two men, who soon galloped up. 
  Reservoir 
  Hill 
  used 
  his 
  weak 
  flashlight to identify the newcomers. 
  “Ah-h-h!” he grunted. “Andershott 
  and Cugg! Practically nobody!” 
   
   
  Chapter II 
  THE MAN NEEDED 
   
  ENOCH ANDERSHOTT was a man 
  who strove for the effect of a rugged pioneer. 
  He was big. His ruggedness stuck out all 
  over him. His clothes were calculated to 
  enhance the rugged aspect. Tweeds. He had 
  a small mouth wrapped around a big cigar. 
  His red face was redder because of running, 
  and his breathing was a wish-wish-wish 
  series of noises. 
  “Give me those guns!” he yelled. 
  “Your bullets almost hit our cabin! Such 
  carelessness is inexcusable!” 
  Which 
  was 
  typical 
  of 
  Enoch 
  Andershott, who was always trying to 
  browbeat some one. 
  Alonzo Cugg had big eyes with a 
  permanent scare deep in them, and a way of 
  holding his hands as if ready to sprint. No 
  one knew of any reason why he had ever 
  been scared of any one or why he should be. 
  He seemed about one hundred and thirty 
  pounds of skin over wires, and was about 
  two shades lighter than a khaki shirt. 
  A big black dog came out of the red 
  oak brush, making no noise. The dog was 
  nearly pony size and had bloodshot eyes. 
  The canine lifted a whiskered black lip off 
  nicotine yellow fangs that were more than an 
  inch long. 
  “Heel, 
  Whitey!” 
  ordered 
  Enoch 
  Andershott arrogantly.  
  The 
  black 
  dog 
  skulked 
  to 
  Andershott’s heels. There was no white 
  whatever on the dog. 
  Enoch Andershott and Alonzo Cugg 
  owned an adjacent oil lease. They had 
  scouted 
  the 
  Sam 
  Sands-Vida 
  Carlaw-
  Reservoir Hill drilling wildcat and a geologist 
  had told them that the way the strata was 
  running, there might be an oil dome under 
  this region, a few thousand feet under the old 
  production. So Andershott and Cugg were 
  here in person, keeping an eye on things. 
  The oil blue book listed both as 
  millionaires. 
  “You might have shot us!” Enoch 
  Andershott yelled. 
   “You got a cellar over there you can 
  get in?” suggested Reservoir Hill sourly. 
  No one said anything for a while. 
  “What was happening?” Andershott 
  growled. 
  “At risk of being called crazy,” said 
  the girl, “I’m going to tell you. 
  “Our driller, Ben Hogan, disappeared 
  last night. We’d shut down drilling when a 
  broken gear we’d ordered hadn’t come. Ben 
  Hogan took a walk. We never saw him again. 
  We found his clothes. There’s no reason why 
  he should walk off naked—” 
  “You’re forgetting that gummy stuff!” 
  interposed Reservoir Hill. 
  “We found some stuff that looked like 
  jelly or lube or something on the ground,” 
  explained the girl. “Tonight, Reservoir Hill 
  wanted to post a watch at the well. Sam 
  Sands had first part of the night.” 
   
   
  THE girl fell silent, looked at the dog. 
  The dog’s eyes were luminous green and 
  almost awful in the weak flashlight’s glow. 
  “We came out to relieve Sam Sands, 
  found his clothing, saw a red object going 
  into the oil well, and shot at it,” the girl 
  finished. 
  “We found another gob of that 
  gummy stuff and it ain’t lube oil!” added 
  Reservoir Hill. 
  Enoch 
  Andershott 
  asked, 
  “Miss 
  Carlaw, were you here last night when your 
  driller disappeared?” 
  “No.” 
  “Then you just have this man 
  Reservoir Hill’s word for it?” 
  “Bless 
  my 
  children!” 
  growled 
  Reservoir Hill. “I’m gonna pat your wrist for 
  that!” 
  Reservoir Hill started forward, and 
  the big black dog came walking, stiff-legged, 
  
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  5 
  from behind Enoch Andershott. The dog 
  made, deep inside himself, sounds like 
  something dying. His fangs curved inward 
  like a snake. 
  “Heel, 
  Whitey!’ 
  said 
  Enoch 
  Andershott. 
  The dog stopped, but did not cover 
  the fangs with lips. 
  Nobody spoke. Alarm in Alonzo 
  Cugg’s eyes had increased; his hands were 
  more than ever in position for running. 
  “If there’s more reckless shooting,” 
  said Enoch Andershott shrilly, “we’ll call the 
  sheriff!” 
  That seemed what they had come 
  over to say. They walked away. 
  There was considerable crashing of 
  brush when they went away, as if Enoch 
  Andershott were smashing his path through 
  instead of making any effort to go around. 
  “He does everything alike!” growled 
  Reservoir Hill. “Just bulls through!” 
  The girl murmured, “You don’t like 
  him?” 
  “He flimflammed me out of my first 
  stake,” growled Reservoir Hill. “I had a lease 
  over by Bartlesville, years ago. Enoch 
  Andershott, a young man then, was my 
  driller. He came into Bartlesville one night 
  and told me the tools were lost in the hole. 
  “I didnt have money enough to run a 
  fishing job. I was disgusted. He knew that. 
  Andershott bought me out through another 
  guy for a song. You know what I found out 
  the next day, Viddy?” 
  “What?” 
  “My well had hit oil!” 
  “I’m 
  sorry,” 
  the 
  girl 
  said 
  sympathetically. 
  “So was I.” 
  On a lease to the north, pumping 
  started up and walking beams squeaked. 
  The sound had an unnatural quality. 
  The girl and Reservoir Hill poked 
  about with the poor flashlight. They found 
  nothing. Then they walked toward the house. 
   
   
  THE house was one of those oil field 
  things. Wood and corrugated tin. Inside, it 
  was beaver-boarded, and no paint had been 
  used. Floors were bare. Living-room furniture 
  consisted of a table and ten kitchen chairs. 
  On the table was a deck of cards and 
  an ash tray half full of ashes and cigarette 
  butts. The girl accidentally upset the ash tray 
  when she put her shotgun on the table. 
  Reservoir Hill helped her in cleaning up the 
  mess. 
  “Wish you’d try to get along with 
  Enoch Andershott,” the girl said. “Since he 
  and Cugg have the lease adjoining us.” 
  “We’ll be all right!” Hill grunted. 
  “Unless I meet him in a dark cañon when 
  nobody is looking!” 
  They threw the ash tray mess 
  outdoors. 
   “Reservoir!” the girl said. 
  “Huh?” 
  “Why are you so worried over the 
  disappearance of our driller and Sam?” 
  Reservoir Hill went to the door and 
  expectorated into the darkness. He had not 
  laid his rifle down. He said, without looking at 
  the girl, “Viddy, did you ever hear of that 
  Indian legend about the papoose that was 
  warned by his mamma not to dig holes in the 
  tepee floor?” 
  “First 
  time 
  I 
  knew 
  you 
  were 
  interested in native folklore, Reservoir,” the 
  girl smiled. 
  “The papoose dug the hole in the 
  tepee floor, anyway,” said Reservoir. “An 
  earth devil that lives in the center of the world 
  sent his mean, red spirit up through the hole 
  and grabbed the little papoose and ate him 
  all up, except his grease, which would fry and 
  sputter in the hot place at the center of the 
  earth.” 
  Reservoir Hill gave the girl a chance 
  to speak, but she didn’t seem able to think of 
  anything. 
  “There’s other legends about earth 
  devils who send red spirits up to get men.” 
  “Nonsense!” 
  snapped 
  the 
  girl, 
  “Indians have legends about everything!” 
  “Not 
  everything!” 
  Reservoir 
  corrected. “And where there’s smoke, there’s 
  sometimes fire.” 
  “You actually believe such an insane 
  theory?” the girl asked. 
  “Now look,” Reservoir grinned wryly. 
  “Don’t be so tough on your old partner.” 
  The girl got up and paced. “But it’s 
  impossible! It’s too ridiculous!” 
  She paced some more, stopped, 
  reached for the cards, and absently turned 
  over the top one. It was a king. 
  “Reservoir!” she said suddenly. “Did 
  you ever hear of Doc Savage?” 
   
   
  
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  RESERVOIR HILL sat in the chair, 
  tilted it against the wall and balanced the rifle 
  across his knees. 
  “I guess there ain’t many who ain’t 
  heard of that fellow. Once I heard that fellow 
  was going to stop his plane for fuel in Tulsa, 
  and I drove up from Okmulgee, hell-bent for 
  election just to see him. Me, who wouldn’t 
  cross the road to see Adam eat the apple.” 
  “Did you see Doc Savage?” 
  “Nope, He had come and gone.” 
  “But you know Savage’s reputation, 
  don’t you?” Reservoir Hill eyed his rifle. “I 
  know that he has invented a type of drilling 
  bit that I think is gonna come into general 
  use. I’ve also heard that a lot of geologists 
  use his theories.” 
  “Do you know what his real business 
  is?” 
  Reservoir Hill wet his lips, did not lift 
  his eyes from the rifle, and said nothing. 
  The girl continued, “Doc Savage’s 
  life work is supposed to be the righting of 
  wrongs, the aiding of oppressed, and fighting 
  crooks whom the law cannot bring to justice.” 
  “I read that somewhere,” Reservoir 
  admitted. “I wondered how he made it pay.” 
  “Doc Savage would probably be 
  interested in this.”  
  Reservoir Hill sniffed. “He wouldn’t 
  touch a thing so small!” 
  Outdoors, a man screamed. He was 
  some distance away. His first scream 
  sounded as if it took out some of his throat 
  lining. 
  In grabbing her rifle off the table, the 
  girl knocked the saucer ash tray to the floor 
  and it broke. She and Reservoir Hill ran 
  outside. 
  “That squawk was over toward the 
  wildcat derrick!” Reservoir yelled. 
  They ran in that direction. Before 
  long, they heard a hideous growling and 
  snarling, sounds loud and utterly ferocious. 
  Enoch 
  Andershott 
  appeared 
  suddenly. He charged toward them. 
  “Help!” he squawled. “It tried to kill 
  me!” 
  It was his voice which had screamed. 
  He reached Reservoir Hill and the 
  girl and grabbed them both at once. 
  “A damned jelly thing flowing along 
  the ground!” he screamed. “It almost caught 
  me!” 
  “Hell!” Reservoir Hill ran toward the 
  oil derrick, holding his inefficient flashlight. 
  The giant black dog with the fangs 
  came unexpectedly out of the brush, and 
  stalked, snorting, toward Reservoir Hill. Hill 
  spun madly, and beat the dog back to the girl 
  and Enoch Andershott. 
  “Heel, 
  Whitey!” 
  screamed 
  Andershott, and the dog stopped. 
  “Keep that durn man-eater here!” 
  growled Reservoir Hill and went back with his 
  flashlight and rifle to search in the darkness. 
  It was almost fifteen minutes before 
  he finished. “Couldn’t find it,” he said. 
  “There’s another one of them slimy trails 
  coming out of the well casing. It goes around 
  through the brush and back again.” 
   
   
  THE giant black dog made hideous 
  slobbering and snarling noises. It had been 
  making them steadily. 
  Enoch Andershott shuddered. “I was 
  p-prowling around your lease because I 
  didn’t believe your story! This thing g-g-got 
  after me! I r-ran!” 
  “An’ didn’t fall down!” Reservoir Hill 
  said, gloomily. 
  Enoch Andershott did not resent the 
  insult. For a man who affected a rugged 
  pioneer air, he looked scared. 
  “Want us to accompany you to your 
  cabin?” the girl asked. 
  “If you would!” Enoch Andershott 
  said, gratefully. 
  Reservoir Hill sniffed. 
  The cabin on the Andershott and 
  Cugg lease was the customary type. The 
  living room held one rocking chair and only 
  six kitchen chairs. There were no cards on 
  the table. An old pipecap served as an ash 
  tray, and a newspaper was folded so that 
  black headlines showed. The headlines said: 
   
  OUTLAW “TOMAHAWK” 
  TANT TRAPPED 
   
  POSSES SURROUND 
  ELUSIVE BADMAN 
   
  Not much more of the story was 
  readable, because some one had spilled 
  coffee on the paper. 
  Alonzo 
  Cugg 
  gave 
  them 
  a 
  meaningless 
  stare. 
  Enoch 
  Andershott 
  grunted fiercely at them, having regained his 
  courage. The black dog showed long teeth. 
  
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  7 
  Reservoir Hill said, as he and Vida 
  went back to their own lease, “Fine thanks, 
  we got!” 
  The girl went into a tiny room that 
  evidently 
  served 
  the 
  Sands-Hill-Carlaw 
  partnership as an office. There was an old 
  country-style telephone beside the desk. She 
  gave the hand ringer a crank. 
  “Get me Doc Savage, in New York 
  City,” she said into the mouthpiece. 
  “Viddy!” Reservoir Hill yelled. “What 
  crazy thing you gonna do?” 
  “It has suddenly dawned on me that 
  this mystery is serious!” the girl said, grimly. 
  “I am going to get it solved!” 
  “Wait a minute!” Reservoir Hill yelled. 
  “I don’t think—” 
  “I want to talk to Doc Savage,” the 
  girl said into the telephone. 
  She listened for a time, then said, 
  “That’s unfortunate. I’m coming to New York. 
  I have to see Doc Savage. You try to find him 
  in the meantime.” 
  She hung up. 
  “Well?” asked Reservoir Hill. 
   
   
  “I TALKED to a man named Monk, 
  who said he was one of Doc Savage’s 
  assistants,” the girl explained. “He said Doc 
  Savage was not in New York, that he was off 
  at some place called a ‘Fortress of Solitude.’” 
  “That,” grunted Reservoir Hill, “let’s 
  Doc Savage out!” 
  “It does nothing of the kind!” said the 
  girl, firmly. “I’ll stop off and tell Andershott 
  and Cugg that I’m on my way to New York to 
  get Doc Savage. It may make them more 
  comfortable if they know that.” 
  “But why the heck go all the way to 
  New York yourself? Telephoning will do just 
  as good!” 
  “There’s another reason.” 
  “Huh?” 
  “Money.” 
  “Oh!” Reservoir Hill pursed his lips 
  out in the manner of a man who understands 
  perfectly. 
  The girl said, “We’re drilling this 
  wildcat well on borrowed money. It’s been an 
  expensive well. We’ve already sunk over fifty 
  thousand dollars. Our oil properties here in 
  the Indian Dome Field are mortgaged 
  heavily. Unless we can borrow more money 
  on them, we may be sunk before long.” 
  “Don’t tell me about it!” groaned 
  Reservoir. “I recite it in my sleep!” 
  “There’s money in New York,” said 
  the girl. “I’m going after it! And after Doc 
  Savage!” 
   
   
  Chapter III 
  MURDER IN THE AIR 
   
  THE plane was a big, low-winged 
  cabin job, and probably one of the fastest 
  and most comfortable commercial types of 
  airliner in the world. It was one of hundreds 
  of such planes flying regular schedules on 
  Uncle Sam’s air lines. 
  The plane was an hour out of 
  Cleveland, Ohio, bound eastward, and flying 
  high. Pilot and co-pilot were taking it easy. 
  The hostess, having noted that it appeared 
  no one was going to be sick on this flight, 
  had stopped to talk to the fellow who wore 
  pince-nez glasses. 
  The fellow was a wiry chap with a 
  plain blue suit and a bright necktie. His face 
  had a deep tan, and it was this tan which had 
  moved the hostess to stop and talk to him, to 
  permit herself to be talked to was more like it. 
  The man looked like a city grifter, 
  except for the deep tan. Tans like that did not 
  come from sunlamps. The pince-nez glasses 
  made him look more gentlemanly, too. 
  The 
  man 
  had 
  been 
  trying 
  outrageously to flirt with the hostess, and she 
  had ignored him until this point. 
  As she halted beside his seat, the 
  hostess noticed that the fellow wore plain 
  black gloves of a very rich-looking leather. 
  Privately, the hostess wondered why 
  the fellow had not tried to flirt with the girl in 
  the adjacent compartment. This girl was as 
  pretty as any young woman the hostess had 
  ever seen on a plane. That was something, 
  because chorus girls and millionaire’s cuties 
  are frequent travelers by plane. The girl in 
  the next compartment was preoccupied, as if 
  she had something on her mind. 
  The hostess happened to know that 
  this pretty girl was down on the passenger 
  list as Vida Carlaw, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
  The hostess immediately wished she 
  hadn’t stopped to let the wiry fellow with the 
  black gloves speak to her. 
  “Listen, baby,” said the man. “How 
  about you and me going places and doing 
  
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  8 
  things after this magic carpet parks us in little 
  old New York?” 
  The hostess didn’t like the dead look 
  in the man’s eyes. Anyway, it was the 
  crudest kind of approach. 
  “I beg pardon!” she said frigidly. 
  “Listen, sweetie pie,” said the black-
  gloved man. “I’m the little airplane girl’s 
  friend. I like your type. You’ve got me all up 
  in the air—” 
  “Then stay there!” suggested the 
  hostess, and walked to her seat in the rear of 
  the plane. 
  The hostess was angry as she 
  plumped down on the cushions. Perhaps the 
  anger dulled her wits. She did not dream at 
  the moment that she had been deliberately 
  insulted. The wiry man had purposefully 
  made her so angry that she would flounce 
  back to her compartment and not show 
  herself for a while. 
  The 
  hostess 
  remembered 
  that 
  another queer customer had come aboard 
  the plane at Cleveland, too. This individual 
  was big and wore a light gray-belted 
  combination topcoat and a large gray hat, 
  with the brim yanked down. 
  He had, the hostess also recalled, 
  worn gloves, but she couldn’t remember their 
  color. This man had kept his chin in his collar 
  when he came aboard, and had been 
  wearing large horn-rimmed glasses, such as 
  the movie stars affected when they wanted to 
  disguise themselves. 
  The hostess was so wrapped in her 
  thoughts that she failed to witness what was 
  happening forward in the cabin. It was just as 
  well, for it probably saved her from having 
  nightmares. 
   
   
  THE plane was of the most modern 
  type, which meant, of course, that it did not 
  have the old-fashioned line of wicker seats 
  down each side. Instead, there was a 
  succession of boxlike compartments which 
  could be made up into upper and lower 
  berths. 
  These 
  compartments 
  gave 
  comparative privacy. 
  The wiry man with the black gloves 
  suddenly whipped over into the seat beside 
  Vida Carlaw, who had picked up a magazine 
  and was reading it. 
  “Oh!” she gasped. “Say, what do you 
  think you’re doing, anyway?” 
  The wiry man did not answer. He 
  was looking at the magazine. It was open at 
  a picture of a remarkably even-featured 
  bronze man’s face. The bronze man’s hair 
  was only slightly darker than his skin, and his 
  eyes were a flake gold tint, and strange, even 
  in the picture. The caption beneath read: 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE 
  A Rare Picture of the Man of Mystery 
   
  The wiry man stared at the picture. 
  He wet his lips. He reached over and put a 
  finger on the picture. 
  “What’s the idea of gandering at 
  that?” he demanded. 
  Vida Carlaw retorted, “And why 
  should I tell you anything?” 
  “Suppose I tell you, then,” said the 
  wiry man. “You’re going to see this Doc 
  Savage. That won’t do, see!” 
  “And I presume you think you can do 
  something about it?” 
  “I hope I can,” the man said, calmly. 
  “Because, if I don’t get away with it, they’ll 
  probably hang me.” 
  The girl’s eyes mirrored her changing 
  thoughts. At first, she didn’t believe the man. 
  Then she doubted. Suddenly, she knew he 
  did mean it, and she was scared. She tried to 
  get to her feet. 
  The man was carrying a blackjack up 
  his sleeve, the thong around his wrist. He 
  struck her over the head so hard that his 
  
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  9 
  glasses fell off. She collapsed, not all at 
  once, but slowly, with every muscle rigid, her 
  eyelids doing a fast flutter. 
  The man leaned across her, grasped 
  the window and raised it. The window was 
  large enough to jump out of. 
  The wiry man replaced his glasses 
  on his nose, then crossed to his own 
  compartment and got a big bundle. Two 
  parachutes! He put one on the girl, the other 
  on himself, and cinched the harness tight. 
  He scooped up the girl and it was 
  plain what he intended to do—jump with her, 
  and open her ‘chute, then his own. 
  An unbroken fastness of wooded 
  hills lay below, offering no landing place for 
  the plane. 
  The man picked up the girl. Her eyes 
  had opened. 
  “Tough, ain’t you?” the man snorted, 
  and raised his blackjack. 
  Instead of striking, the wiry man 
  emitted a scream so full of agony that it 
  made every occupant in the plane jerk erect. 
  His glasses fell off again. 
   
   
  A NEWCOMER had seized the wiry 
  fellow. The appearance of this new arrival 
  was striking. He might have been sculptured 
  out of hard bronze. The contour of his 
  features, his mobile and muscular mouth, his 
  ample forehead, his lean cheeks denoted a 
  power of character beyond the ordinary. 
  The bronze of his hair was a little 
  darker than the bronze of his features. The 
  hair was straight and fitted so close as to 
  give the appearance of a metal skullcap. 
  Perhaps the most striking aspect of 
  all was the bronze man’s eyes—like pools of 
  flake gold, glittering when reflected light 
  reached them, so that they seemed to exert a 
  hypnotic influence. 
  The wiry man struggled with the 
  bronze giant. He had no luck at all, for his 
  Herculean captor demonstrated strength far 
  beyond the ordinary. Muscles in the bronze 
  hands, the forearms, and up and down the 
  metallic neck, were like bundles of piano 
  wire. The spectacles were stepped on and 
  broken. 
  Vida Carlaw, conscious but weak, 
  endeavored to maintain her balance as the 
  plane gave a lurch, the pilot’s attention 
  having been distracted by the fight. 
  Confusion now seized the plane. 
  Screams of the wiry man had been so 
  agonizing 
  as 
  to 
  arouse 
  pity. 
  Several 
  passengers rushed to his aid. 
  The co-pilot charged to help. He saw 
  the giant holding the smaller man, and made 
  a mistake. It was natural that, not knowing 
  the facts, his sympathy should be with the 
  little fellow. 
  The co-pilot drew a revolver which 
  regulations prescribed that he carry, and 
  jabbed it against the giant’s back. 
  “Get your hands off that man!” 
  The giant freed the wiry man. The 
  fellow scampered toward the rear of the 
  plane, parachute flopping against his shanks. 
  The co-pilot started to give the 
  bronze giant his fiercest stare. Then he got a 
  look at the big fellow, and his jaw sagged; his 
  eyes popped, and he dropped his gun. 
  “Oh, slay me for an idiot!” he gulped. 
  “Honest, I didn’t know who it was! Didn’t 
  recognize—” 
  The bronze giant ignored the co-
  pilot’s apologies, and sprang toward the rear 
  of the plane. The baggage hatch door was 
  open to the sky. 
  The wiry man was floating under an 
  open 
  parachute 
  behind 
  the 
  passenger 
  airliner. 
  The bronze giant seemed capable of 
  instantaneous decisions. He rushed back to 
  Vida Carlaw. 
  “Equal to a parachute jump?” 
  Vida Carlaw made a smile with an 
  effort. 
  “Anything,” she said, “to escape this 
  ringing in my head!” 
  The bronze man nodded, then 
  stooped, 
  scooped 
  tiny 
  particles 
  which 
  glittered on the floor and dropped them into a 
  pocket. The girl watched his actions without 
  saying a word. 
   
   
  THE bronze man now whipped to the 
  seat which he had been occupying and 
  yanked open a bag. It held a parachute. 
  At this point the plane’s hostess 
  suddenly realized this metallic giant was the 
  mysterious fellow who had gotten aboard at 
  Cleveland wearing tan combination coat, 
  horn-rimmed glasses, and hat with brim 
  yanked down. 
  The bronze man began donning his 
  parachute. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  10 
  “Bring your plane as close as you 
  can to where that man’s parachute is going 
  to land!” He did not shout, but he seemed to 
  have a voice with some unusual tonal quality 
  which caused it to carry over the confusion 
  inside the plane. 
  Somewhat 
  surprisingly, 
  the 
  pilot 
  obeyed the command, the reason being that 
  he had gotten a good look at the big bronze 
  fellow. Recognition had swept over the pilot’s 
  face like a shock. 
  If five minutes ago any one would 
  have tried to tell Vida Carlaw that she would 
  allow a strange man to persuade her to make 
  a parachute jump out of a plane some 
  thousands of feet up in the air, she would 
  have denied the remotest possibility of any 
  such thing. 
  “Count ten, then jerk the ripcord 
  ring,” she heard herself directed. 
  Then she jumped. 
  The parachute opened. Vida Carlaw 
  did not feel as much of a shock as she had 
  expected. She looked downward; the world 
  seemed to be rocking—first it would be high 
  up on the right, then on the left. She decided 
  the parachute was swinging. 
  The earth began to get bigger. What 
  had resembled bushes swelled into trees; 
  cracks became deep gullies, and a winding 
  gray string turned into a concrete road. 
  Vida Carlaw observed a car was 
  parked on the road not far from where they 
  were going to land, a man standing close to 
  the car. 
  Her late assailant! 
  The giant, who looked as if he were 
  made of metal, seemed to be trying to guide 
  his ‘chute toward the road, by spilling air from 
  one side. Entire success did not attend this. 
  He landed in some brush. 
  The young woman landed easier 
  than she had expected, picked herself up 
  and called, “Hope this isn’t a sample of what 
  the rest of my life will be like!” 
   
   
  GETTING no answer, she craned 
  her neck. The big metallic man was gone! He 
  must have twisted out of the parachute 
  harness and vanished into the brush with 
  incredible abruptness. Vida Carlaw listened, 
  and thought she heard him over toward the 
  road. She was not certain. 
  On the road, the automobile engine 
  could be heard. It speeded up, gears 
  clashed, and the car moved off. When she 
  last heard it, the car was making sound 
  indicating high speed. 
  Vida Carlaw continued to listen. A 
  few insects made a racket, but there was 
  nothing else. The birds in the woodland must 
  have been frightened into silence by the 
  descending parachutes, since birds fear 
  anything large in the air. 
  Then the bronze man appeared in a 
  near-by glade, coming from the direction of 
  the road. 
  Vida Carlaw reflected that he did not 
  look nearly as large as he had in the plane. 
  One really had to be close to him to 
  appreciate his size, a phenomenon, she 
  decided, which was due to a remarkable 
  symmetrical muscular development. He did 
  not have the pachyderm shape which usually 
  marks very strong men. 
  Vida Carlaw demanded, “Just who 
  are you anyway?” 
  The bronze giant looked at the 
  strikingly pretty woman, without being visibly 
  impressed. 
  “Clark 
  Savage, 
  Jr.,” 
  he 
  said. 
  “Sometimes called Doc Savage.” 
   
   
  Chapter IV 
  DEATH WITHOUT REASON 
   
  VIDA CARLAW’S mind promptly 
  became involved with a number of thoughts. 
  She was astonished to learn that this 
  remarkable fellow was the man she was 
  flying to New York to meet, Doc Savage. And 
  the high points of the parachute jump—her 
  first—ran through her mind. Nor was she in 
  the habit of having men try to kidnap her. 
  Besides all this, Vida Carlaw was an 
  exquisite young lady who was accustomed to 
  having members of the opposite sex show 
  marked admiration when they were in her 
  neighborhood. She was accustomed to 
  taking their breath away. But this fellow 
  appeared no more moved than if he were 
  looking at a tree. 
  “What happened to the man who 
  crowned me?” Vida asked, sharply. 
  “He got away.” 
  Vida Carlaw mused that she had 
  really never seen a more handsome man 
  than this one. 
  “How did he do it?” she asked. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  11 
  “Stopped a motorist. Pointed a gun 
  at the driver, probably.” 
  Vida Carlaw decided she liked the 
  bronze’s man’s voice, just as well as his 
  looks. That voice properly belonged to an 
  opera singer. 
  “I was coming to New York to see 
  you,” she said. “A fellow named Monk, who 
  said he was one of your assistants, told me 
  you were away at some place he called a 
  Fortress of Solitude.” 
  “My return occurred sooner than 
  expected. Monk mentioned your telephone 
  call—hence my being aboard the plane.” 
  Vida Carlaw, being as inconsistent 
  as any young woman with her looks might be 
  expected to be, decided that this bronze 
  fellow was short on chivalry. He hadn’t even 
  asked her how she felt after her first 
  parachute jump. She decided to give him 
  some frost. 
  “Why didn’t 
  you make 
  yourself 
  known in the plane?” she snapped. 
  “My life’s work is the rather strange 
  one, of helping those who are in trouble, and 
  doing a bit toward dealing with those who are 
  beyond the law. Enemies are the result. Their 
  attacks come in queer ways. Safety demands 
  caution in the case of a summons such as 
  yours.” 
  Vida Carlaw decided to feel insulted. 
  “I see! You thought I was a crook!” 
  “One cannot always tell.” 
  Vida Carlaw felt herself getting 
  angrier. Some thought might have convinced 
  her that she was not getting anywhere. But 
  this young bronze fellow—he was obviously 
  young—was not acting as a young man 
  should in the presence of a very pretty girl. 
  “So you think I’m a crook?” she 
  snapped. 
  He did not help matters by inquiring, 
  “Just what are you?” 
  “I’m an Oklahoma oil producer and 
  wildcatter! My home is in Tulsa, and I’m 
  putting down a wildcat well with two partners, 
  Sam Sands and Reservoir Hill. Something 
  has happened to our driller, and to Sam 
  Sands!” 
  With the story all out, she waited to 
  see what he would say. 
  “Give more details,” he requested. 
  The bronze man’s voice had not 
  changed, but Vida Carlaw got the feeling that 
  he was interested in the mystery—if not in 
  herself. 
  The young woman told him what had 
  happened; she even included the Indian 
  legend which Reservoir Hill had told her 
  about the papoose who had dug a hole in the 
  tepee floor, only to have the spirit of an earth 
  devil come up through the hole and consume 
  him, all but his grease. 
  At the end, Doc Savage asked, 
  “Have you any enemies?” 
  “Why, 
  no!” 
  The 
  young 
  woman 
  registered surprise.  
  “Then how do you explain the 
  attempt to kill you on the plane?” 
  Vida Carlaw studied a speck far 
  away in the sky. It had not been there a 
  moment before. 
   “I can’t imagine! The whole thing 
  completely mystifies me!” 
  There 
  was 
  silence 
  for 
  a 
  few 
  moments. 
  The 
  young 
  woman 
  became 
  conscious of the droning noise, and decided 
  the speck, now larger, was making it. 
  “A plane!” she said. 
  “Yes,” Doc Savage said. “Probably a 
  ship carrying some of my aids.” 
   
   
  THE bronze man inserted a hand 
  inside his shirt and brought out a round black 
  bottle. Apparently he wore next to his skin 
  some kind of a vest with pockets. He threw 
  the round, black thing into near-by brush. It 
  immediately gave off a prodigious quantity of 
  smoke of strikingly brilliant, yellow hue. Such 
  smoke would attract attention for miles. 
  The newcomer plane drew closer, 
  proving to be no ordinary type of ship, but a 
  gyro, a plane with the usual fuselage, but 
  with whirling wings like big windmill blades. 
  The craft demonstrated its ability to land in 
  restricted areas by coming down on the near-
  by concrete highway. 
  The first man to alight was the 
  answer 
  to 
  a 
  tailor’s 
  dream. 
  Sartorial 
  perfection itself! Slender, with a wasp waist 
  and good shoulders, he had the figure for 
  wearing clothing, and he was togged out in 
  correct afternoon dress from striped trousers 
  to cutaway, tall silk hat and a slender black 
  cane. 
  This man removed his topper and 
  executed a smart bow. His not unhandsome 
  face was characterized by the large, mobile 
  mouth of an orator. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  12 
  “This is Brigadier General Theodore 
  Marley Brooks,” Doc Savage explained to 
  Vida Carlaw. “His friends call him ‘Ham.’” 
  “And I hope I may include you 
  instantly among those thus favored,” “Ham” 
  said, gallantly. “And especially do I pray you 
  to accept my services at any time needed in 
  a protective sense. There is, unfortunately, a 
  low fellow with us who may annoy you, but I 
  beg of you to overlook him, since the poor 
  chap is actually believed not to be entirely—” 
  “Tellin’ lies about me already, huh!” 
  piped a squeaky, almost childlike voice from 
  the plane. 
  The owner of the voice appeared—
  an individual who would block traffic almost 
  anywhere. He nearly missed being as wide 
  as tall, and his hands dangled well below his 
  knees. 
  He had an incredibly homely face, 
  and his hair, rusty upstanding bristles, was 
  not confined alone to his head, but was 
  distributed over his visible anatomy. General 
  effect was that of an amiable gorilla. 
  “This is the man to whom you talked 
  on the telephone,” Doc Savage told Vida 
  Carlaw. “Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett 
  Mayfair, better known as ‘Monk.’” 
  “Monk” gave the attractive young 
  woman a grin which threatened to dislodge 
  his ears. He pointed at the well-dressed man. 
  “Don’t believe what this shyster, 
  Ham, says,” he advised. “Sometimes I 
  wonder if that wife and thirteen children 
  haven’t kinda unhinged his mind.” 
  The dapper gentleman in afternoon 
  dress looked as if he were about to explode. 
  “I’m not married!” he yelled. 
  “Tsk, tsk!” Monk clucked. 
  “These two are really friends,” Doc 
  Savage told Vida Carlaw. 
  “Friends?” Monk sneered. “I’ll tie 
  knots in his neck!” 
  “You missing link!” Ham gritted. “I’ll 
  cut so many holes in you that they’ll think the 
  moths have been in a bearskin rug!” 
   
   
  THE hilly, wooded country was not 
  thickly settled; this concrete road was the 
  only one for miles, and other roads being 
  mere trails. Automobiles were not thick. 
  There was still another man in the 
  plane, doing the flying. This individual was 
  extremely tall, and so thin that it often made 
  people nervous to look at him. He had a 
  tremendous forehead. His suit did not fit him, 
  and from the coat lapel, by a ribbon, dangled 
  a monocle which seemed to have an 
  unusually thick lens. 
  “William 
  Harper 
  Littlejohn,” 
  Doc 
  Savage said, presenting this other man to 
  Vida Carlaw. 
  “An 
  hedonistic 
  tympanum 
  of 
  concinnity,” said “Johnny.” 
  The girl looked stunned. “Johnny 
  really knows little words,” Monk explained, 
  “but he saves ‘em for birthdays!” 
  “Johnny said it was a pleasure to 
  meet such a charming beauty,” offered 
  dapper Ham. 
  “We want to find a sedan,” the 
  bronze man explained. “Baby blue color 
  faded out, model three years old, had a red-
  and-blue cover on spare advertising a 
  swimming pool.” 
  They took to the air in the gyro. 
  A bit later, Monk, in between staring 
  at the ground, in search of the car, advised 
  the young woman that Johnny was really one 
  of the world’s leading experts of geology and 
  archaeology and that the monocle which 
  dangled from Johnny’s coat lapel was not a 
  monocle at all, but a powerful magnifying 
  glass. 
  He himself, Monk admitted, was a 
  chemist whom every one but a few jealous 
  contemporaries admitted was one of the 
  greatest in the world. 
  Ham, the young woman pried out of 
  Monk with difficulty, was a lawyer. “But he 
  don’t amount to anything in the opinion of 
  anybody except Harvard Law School!” Monk 
  added. 
  Five minutes later Doc Savage said, 
  sharply, “There is a town ahead! It has a 
  flying field! The sedan we are hunting 
  appears to be parked on the field!” 
  Vida Carlaw strained her eyes in the 
  direction of the town. She could see the 
  town, and an open field which was probably 
  the airport. How Doc Savage was able to 
  spot the car was beyond her. He was not 
  using binoculars, either! 
  And it was the car! They landed and 
  inquired. 
  “There was a little, lean fellow came 
  running in here and hired my pard and our 
  plane to fly him to New York,” explained a 
  shabby fellow on the field. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  13 
  “Give me the description and the 
  numbers on the plane, and the name and 
  description of your partner,” Doc requested. 
  Once he had the information, Doc 
  Savage returned to the gyro, and they took 
  off. The craft was equipped with radio. The 
  bronze man got in touch with the authorities 
  in metropolitan areas, giving a description of 
  the plane, the pilot, and the wiry man, and 
  conveyed information that the latter was 
  wanted for attempted kidnapping. 
   
   
  AS darkness fell that night, Doc 
  Savage, his three aids and Vida Carlaw were 
  seated in the field office at Newark airport, 
  questioning the pilot of the rented plane. 
  “I ain’t done nothin’!” the pilot 
  protested. “I don’t know what’s wrong! I land 
  my plane at the field here, and a bunch of 
  cops grab me! What’s it for?” 
  “We are tracing your passenger,” he 
  was told. 
  “Oh, that skinny squirt with the tan? 
  Say—I thought there was somethin’ screwy 
  ‘bout him! He wanted to be put down in a 
  pasture anywhere on Long Island near New 
  York City. He gave me twenty dollars extra 
  for that. After I parked him in a farmer’s cow 
  pasture, I flew over here; then these cops—” 
  “Can you point out that pasture on a 
  map?” 
  The pilot could and did. 
  The farmer’s field was near Jamaica. 
  The farmer who owned it had seen the plane 
  alight, and was mad about it scaring his 
  cows. He had seen the man who got out of 
  the plane. The fellow had walked down a 
  near-by highway, trying to thumb a ride 
  toward New York, until lost to sight. 
  Thousands of cars used that highway each 
  day. 
  “We ain’t got a chance in a million of 
  finding that guy now!” Monk grumbled. 
  Doc Savage said, “With a little luck, it 
  shouldn’t be so hard.” 
  “Huh?” 
  Doc Savage lifted from a pocket 
  several fragments of broken glass. When he 
  turned his flashlight on them, they glittered. 
  “This,” he said, “is our cue.” 
   
   
  EXISTENCE 
  of 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  establishment on the eighty-sixth floor of one 
  of the most prominent buildings in the city 
  was not unknown to the general public. Very 
  few persons, however, actually knew a great 
  deal about the place. 
  No newspaper had ever been able to 
  secure actual photographs, although many 
  had tried, and there was a handsome 
  standing bonus for any staff photographer 
  who could succeed. Some artists’ drawings, 
  rank guesswork, had been published, but 
  these were nowhere near correct. 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  headquarters 
  consisted of three rooms. One, the reception 
  room, was small, and furnished with little 
  more than a huge safe, some comfortable 
  chairs, and a fabulous-looking inlaid table. 
  The other two rooms were immense. 
  One room was a library of scientific 
  tomes, almost unequaled in the world for 
  completeness, 
  and 
  the 
  other 
  was 
  a 
  laboratory which was the envy of the few 
  great scientists who had seen it. 
  “Goodness!” said Vida Carlaw, eyes 
  roving over the place. “I am beginning to 
  comprehend why you have such a fabulous 
  reputation!” 
  Doc 
  undoubtedly 
  heard 
  this 
  compliment, but his shell of calm disinterest 
  did not crack, a fact that piqued pretty Vida 
  Carlaw somewhat. She had decided to try a 
  little flattery and see what would happen. 
  Vida hadn’t been able to make the 
  bronze man out yet. She wasn’t sure he 
  approved of her; certainly he was not 
  following the example of his three aids, who 
  were giving her the gallant attention which a 
  ravishing beauty deserved. 
  Doc Savage, leaving them in the 
  reception room, entered the library. New 
  York City has several telephone directories, 
  among them one with a red cover which is 
  known as the “red book” and which lists 
  under proper headings, the names of 
  persons and firms following the various 
  professions. 
  Doc Savage took this directory to the 
  telephone. The manner in which he seated 
  himself and adjusted the light indicated he 
  was tackling a lengthy job. 
  In the reception room, his three men 
  talked with their pretty guest. Vida, as the 
  conversation 
  continued, 
  was 
  agreeably 
  surprised when it dawned on her that the 
  men were remarkably clever fellows. It was 
  at this point that she got an inkling of the 
  truth—each of Doc Savage’s aids was 
  
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  14 
  something of a wizard in his particular 
  profession. 
   
   
  WHILE they were talking, Monk’s 
  attractive 
  secretary 
  arrived 
  from 
  his 
  penthouse chemical laboratory near Wall 
  Street. This pretty young woman—Monk 
  claimed he had the snappiest secretary in 
  New York—was escorting a remarkable-
  looking pig. 
  The pig had ears made for flying, 
  legs for running, a snout for inquiry, and a 
  scrawny body. The pig gave evidence of 
  careful grooming. There was about him the 
  aroma of expensive perfume. 
  Monk’s secretary left immediately 
  after delivering the pig. 
  “This is Habeas Corpus, my pet,” 
  Monk told Vida Carlaw. 
  The 
  young 
  woman studied the 
  unique-looking porker. 
  Ham said loudly, “That insect should 
  be exterminated!” 
  Ham went to another telephone—
  there were several—and called his exclusive 
  club. 
  “Bring my Chemistry down in the 
  morning,” Ham directed. 
  After hanging up, Ham listened, and 
  could hear Doc Savage talking over the other 
  telephone, making one call after another. 
  Ham could not distinguish the bronze man’s 
  words. 
  Monk was asking Vida Carlaw, “Do 
  you believe a mysterious jellylike creature did 
  any killing?” 
  The girl hesitated, nipping at her lips. 
  “You probably think I’m foolish, but, after all, 
  no one really knows what is in the depths of 
  the earth. Of course, scientists have a 
  general idea, but there may be—things—
  down there that they don’t know anything 
  about.” 
  Monk agreed. “I’ve run up against 
  enough queer stuff in my time to learn never 
  to be too surprised.” 
  “Our oil well is deep,” said the pretty 
  girl. “It might have happened—” 
  Doc Savage came in from the library. 
  “Everything possible to locate your 
  would-be kidnapper, has been done,” he 
  said. “Only thing now is to wait. And it might 
  be advisable for all of you to get some sleep 
  in the meantime.” 
   
  Chapter V 
  HE WANTED TO HELP 
   
   
  WINDOWS 
  of 
  Doc 
  Savage’s 
  skyscraper headquarters were of unusual 
  type. The glass, perfected by the bronze man 
  himself, was of a new variety which permitted 
  occupants of the office to look out with ease, 
  but which prevented any one outside looking 
  in. The special glass admitted a rather 
  diffused light. 
  Morning sun had the reception room 
  full of gentle light when a tapping on the door 
  awakened homely Monk from sleep in a chair 
  near the inlaid table. 
  Before he started for the door, Monk 
  felt in a trousers pocket to make sure a 
  certain coin was still there. Ostensibly, this 
  coin was a half dollar; actually it was made of 
  a radioactive metal which worked upon a 
  hidden relay and electroscope combination 
  which opened and closed the door. The 
  device opened the door as Monk neared it. 
  A neat-looking fellow stood outside. 
  He had ruddy cheeks and a distinctly English 
  manner. Monk knew he was from Ham’s 
  club. 
  The flunky was leading an animal 
  which was almost an exact replica of Monk 
  himself. Whether this creature was ape, 
  chimpanzee, monkey, or some other variety 
  of anthropoid, would be difficult to tell. In 
  truth, experts had disagreed on that point. 
  “Take 
  that 
  blankety—blankety—
  blankety—blatherskite of a thing over to the 
  river and tie a rock to it!” Monk yelled. 
  Ham got out of the chair where he 
  had been sleeping. 
  “That’s 
  my 
  pet 
  Chemistry!” 
  he 
  shouted indignantly. 
  “Bless me!” Monk said, gloomily. 
  “Don’t you think I know it?” 
  The messenger departed. 
  Bony Johnny, still apparently sound 
  asleep, said without opening his eyes, “An 
  ichorous enigma of lobelia pigmentation!” 
  “Blazes!” said Monk. “It’s a wonder 
  he don’t choke on them words! Anybody 
  know what he just said in his sleep?” 
  “He’s 
  muttering 
  about 
  the 
  red 
  monster out of the ground,” Ham said. 
  From the library, Vida Carlaw called, 
  “May I come in?” 
  They said she could, and she did. 
  She looked radiant. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  15 
  The telephone rang. Doc Savage, 
  standing near the window, scooped it up and 
  said, “Yes. . . . Requested immediate 
  duplication, eh? . . . when will he return? . . 
  .Yes. That earns the reward for you.” 
  The bronze man hung up. 
  “We now have a line on the man who 
  tried to kill Miss Carlaw,” he said. “We will try 
  to trap him and induce him to tell us what is 
  behind this mystery.” 
  “Don’t see how you worked it, Doc,” 
  Monk said.  
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  made 
  no 
  explanation. Monk, after he had waited for a 
  reply until he was sure he was not going to 
  get it, passed it off with a humorous 
  suggestion that, “Somebody get a hammer, 
  so we can awaken Johnny.” 
   
   
  THE See-Well Optical Co. was not 
  an elaborate establishment, which probably 
  accounted for the proprietor having opened 
  his doors an hour earlier than was customary 
  for such firms. He was a round, bald man. 
  Doc Savage asked, “The man said 
  he would be back when?” 
  “In about twenty minutes,” replied the 
  rotund proprietor. 
  Doc said, “It is not necessary for you 
  to do anything about him. Just give him what 
  he comes for.” 
  “That’s swell!” gasped the fat man. “I 
  was afraid I was gonna mix up in something!” 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  returned 
  to 
  his 
  companions, who were waiting in a car down 
  the street. The machine, a long, discreetly 
  dark sedan, had little outward appearance of 
  armor 
  plate 
  and 
  bulletproof 
  glass 
  construction. 
  “I take it our man is going to show up 
  here,” Vida Carlaw said. “But how did you 
  find it out?” 
  “Remember his glasses?” 
  “Of course. They were broken when 
  you saved me.” 
  “I picked up the pieces,” Doc 
  explained. “Examination showed the man 
  would be very far-sighted without the 
  glasses. In fact, he would just about have to 
  have new glasses at once. Naturally, he 
  would get them as soon as possible.” 
  Monk squeaked, “So you phoned 
  optical concerns, offering a reward to be 
  tipped off when anybody had such a 
  prescription for glasses filled!” 
  The street was full of noisy cars 
  carrying people to work and newsboys calling 
  morning editions. One newsboy came along 
  the street, howling a headline. 
  “Oklahoma outlaw escapes!” the boy 
  squawled. “Tomahawk Tant evades airplanes 
  and posses!” 
  Monk said to the young woman, 
  “Your native land seems to have made the 
  headlines this morning.” 
  “Tomahawk Tant!” The girl sniffed. 
  “They won’t catch him!” 
  “No?” Monk grinned at her. “The 
  outlaw has never lived who beat the law for 
  long. Look at them. Al Spencer, Matt Kimes, 
  Pretty Boy Floyd—all bad ones. And they all 
  got licked.” 
  Doc put in casually, “What about 
  Tomahawk Tant? Not much about him has 
  reached the East.” 
  “He’s one of the old-time types of 
  outlaw out there,” Vida explained. “One of the 
  cleverest. No one really knows much about 
  him.” 
  Monk began, “Well the law will get 
  him—” 
  “Down!” Doc Savaged rapped. “Here 
  comes our man!” 
   
   
  THE wiry man appeared, walking, 
  wearing a dark-blue topcoat, which he must 
  have purchased somewhere, and a dark hat. 
  His black gloves appeared to be the same 
  ones he had worn in the plane. He entered 
  the optical concern. 
  Five minutes later, the man came 
  out, stood and beckoned for a taxicab. One 
  drew up and he stepped in. 
  “The usual method for trailing him!” 
  Doc Savage directed his aids. 
  The trailing method was not Doc’s 
  invention. Monk, Ham and Johnny each got a 
  taxi, and they took turns, one on the trail, 
  while the other got ahead. By switching about 
  casually, they made it almost impossible for 
  the man in the taxi to learn he was being 
  trailed. 
  The quarry went to an obscure hotel 
  in the theatrical district. He had his cab wait, 
  and entered. 
  A moment later, Doc eased into the 
  hotel and noted several innocent-looking 
  loafers in the lobby. The bronze man 
  purchased a newspaper, seated himself, and 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  16 
  held the paper so it concealed his face. He 
  kept watch through peepholes in the paper. 
  On Doc’s lap lay a black instrument 
  which might have been mistaken by a 
  photographer for a light meter or photometer. 
  In a few moments, the wiry man 
  came down in an elevator, carrying a small, 
  new briefcase. He passed Doc Savage 
  without 
  his 
  slightest 
  suspicions 
  being 
  aroused, and left the hotel. 
  Doc was watching the unusual 
  instrument on his lap. As the man passed—
  the indicator needle crept up on the scale, 
  then came back again when he had gone. 
  The instrument was a compact, 
  suspersensitive device which registered the 
  presence of any magnetic metal—steel, iron, 
  etc.—in the immediate neighborhood. Surge 
  of the needle probably had been caused by a 
  quantity of steel in the briefcase. Guns? 
  Doc Savage went to the hotel clerk, 
  made his identity known, exhibited some 
  money, and received a volley of information. 
  The wiry man had registered the previous 
  evening—but there was a surprising angle to 
  this. 
  The fellow had not been alone! 
  Nearly a dozen men had registered with him! 
  All of these men had been sunburned. None 
  of them were now at the hotel. 
  Doc Savage returned to his car, 
  where Vida Carlaw waited. Since the bronze 
  man had now lost track of the quarry, and his 
  own aids, he drove toward his headquarters. 
  Any report would come there, as Doc’s men 
  trailed their quarry. 
  “I have been trying to figure out why I 
  was attacked in the plane,” Vida Carlaw said. 
  “It has me baffled.” 
  “The idea was to stop you soliciting 
  the aid of my men and myself.” 
  “But why?” 
  Doc did not answer that one. 
   
   
  THEY had not been 
  in Doc’s 
  skyscraper headquarters reception room for 
  long when incredibly bony Johnny put in an 
  appearance. He fiddled with his monocle. 
  “A superabundant expenditure of 
  indefatigation,” he said. 
  Vida 
  Carlaw 
  blinked. 
  “Would 
  somebody translate that?” 
  “He says we have been wasting our 
  time,” Doc explained. 
  “Yes,” added bony Johnny. “The wiry 
  man and his pals are watching this very 
  building!” 
  Johnny replied, continuing to use 
  small words. “They don’t want us to 
  investigate this mystery of the red things out 
  of the ground.” 
  Doc Savage directed Vida Carlaw, 
  “You stay here.” 
  “Alone?” She looked uneasy. “They 
  tried to kill me once, and maybe—” 
  “This place,” Doc Savage told her, “is 
  practically impossible for an outsider to 
  enter.” 
  The girl studied the bronze man. 
  “Right,” she agreed. 
  Long ago, Doc Savage had installed 
  in the building a private high-speed elevator 
  which admitted directly to his personal 
  garage in the basement. So far as was 
  possible, existence of both elevator and 
  garage were secret. The elevator deposited 
  Doc and Johnny in the basement garage. 
  They followed a passage which 
  admitted to a near-by subway tunnel, down 
  which they ran, avoiding the electrified third 
  rail, and crouching close to the sides of the 
  tunnel to let trains go past with a deafening 
  uproar. They came to the surface some 
  blocks distant. 
  It was late enough in the morning 
  that the streets were full of sunlight. Doc had 
  a knowledge of the vicinity, so he and Johnny 
  did not take to the sidewalks, but kept inside 
  stores and business establishments, working 
  from one to the other, sometimes going to 
  the roofs to accomplish this. 
  “There’s a spy!” Doc Savage said 
  finally, and pointed. 
  The spy was a long fellow, almost as 
  long as Johnny, and his arms and legs 
  looked almost as bony as Johnny’s. His 
  middle, however, was paunchy inside a big 
  overcoat. The fellow lay prone on a rooftop, 
  peering upward at Doc’s skyscraper across 
  the street. 
  It was a tribute to Doc Savage’s 
  stealth that the spying man was unaware of 
  an impending attack until Doc got him. 
  They wrestled in silence for seconds. 
  The man kicked, butted with his head, 
  flounced his skinny body. He was a very 
  bony man with a tremendous stomach. He 
  did not cry out. 
  “Hell!” he growled suddenly, and 
  gave up. He said nothing more, stared at Doc 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  17 
  Savage intently, plainly amazed by the 
  bronze man’s strength. 
   
   
   
   
   
  They wrestled in silence for seconds. The man kicked, butted with his head,  
  flounced his skinny body. 
   
  “I’ve met strong hombres in my time!” 
  he muttered. “But this is the first time I ever 
  ran into a human bear trap!” 
  Johnny came up and searched the 
  man. The fellow had two big single-action 
  six-shooters in the waistband of his pants, 
  and plenty of cartridges in various pockets. 
  “Name?” Doc Savage requested. 
  “Considering I’ve got kind of a 
  general idea who you are, just from looking 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  18 
  at you,” the man said, “I don’t mind giving 
  you my name. I’m Reservoir Hill!” 
   
   
  BIG-WORDED 
  Johnny 
  had 
  an 
  exclamation which he invariably used when 
  surprised. It escaped him now. “I’ll be 
  superamalgamated! Vida Carlaw’s partner!” 
  “I can prove I’m Reservoir Hill!” said 
  the prisoner. 
  “You could have all kinds of papers 
  and stuff,” said Johnny. “They can be faked.” 
  “Pull up my coat tail and shirt and 
  take a look at my back,” the prisoner 
  suggested. “There is a tattoo there. You can 
  tell it’s been there for years, because there is 
  a scar through it.” 
  The tattoo was there; so was the 
  scar, and both had obviously been there for 
  years. The name read: 
   
  CROTON HILL 
   
  “Croton is a reservoir, part of the 
  water supply of New York City,” said the 
  long, lean captive. “That’s how I got 
  nicknamed ‘Reservoir.’ How’s Viddy—Miss 
  Carlaw?” 
  Doc Savage suggested, “I thought 
  she left you in Oklahoma?” 
  “Viddy just thought she did! That 
  durn red thing coming out of the ground, and 
  killing our driller and Sam Sands got me 
  kinda worried! I was afraid something might 
  happen to Viddy. I knowed she was coming 
  East to see you, so I followed her, by plane, 
  to keep her out of trouble!” 
  Reservoir Hill sighed. “So you’re Doc 
  Savage! One time I came a-helling all the 
  way from Okmulgee to Tulsa, just to get a 
  look at you, when you stopped off in a plane, 
  but you had left before I got there.” 
  Bony Johnny, catching Doc’s eye, 
  pursed his lips and looked skyward, a 
  gesture which indicated the bony geologist 
  did not believe Reservoir Hill’s story. 
  The bronze man released Reservoir 
  Hill and the old oil man made no attempt to 
  run. 
  Doc asked, “What did you fear might 
  happen to Miss Carlaw?” 
  “Well, I didn’t know!” said Reservoir. 
  “There are no oil wells around New 
  York out of which red monsters might come,” 
  Doc reminded him. 
  “Tell you, I didn’t know!” 
  “What were you doing at this spot?” 
  “Listen!” said Reservoir Hill. “I was 
  coming to see you about half an hour ago, 
  and I get me a look at an hombre who is 
  watching your hang-out. Now this hombre is 
  one I’ve seen in Oklahoma. Why should 
  some rannihan from Oklahoma be watching 
  your hang-out? So I decide to do some 
  pussy-footing! That’s what I was doing when 
  you caught me!” 
  “A glib answer to everything,” bony 
  Johnny said. 
  Reservoir Hill put out a flinty-looking 
  jaw, “Don’t you get tough, bonebag!” 
  “Acquiescence occupies ephemeral 
  supereminence,” Johnny said, dryly. 
  “Somebody translate that!” Reservoir 
  Hill requested. “If it means what I think, I’m 
  gonna see who’s best man!” 
  “He merely said that your story 
  seemed all right for the time being,” Doc 
  Savage translated, not quite literally. 
  Reservoir 
  Hill, 
  mollified, 
  asked, 
  “What do we do about these several ginks 
  around here, all watching your place?” 
  “We’ll take care of them later,” Doc 
  said. “I want to question you and Miss 
  Carlaw, in hopes of turning up something.” 
   
   
  THEY returned to Doc Savage’s 
  headquarters through subway, underground 
  tunnel and the high-speed elevator. 
  They looked in the reception room, 
  library, and the laboratory. They went out and 
  examined the hall; then Doc went back into 
  the laboratory, opened a hidden panel, and 
  consulted recording dials of concealed 
  instruments. 
  By these, he could tell if any one had 
  come near the eighty-sixth floor recently. 
  There was even a small concealed camera 
  which photographed any one who appeared 
  in the corridor, and Doc developed the tiny 
  negative which this took. 
  “Vida Carlaw left alone,” he said 
  finally. 
   
   
  Chapter VI 
  THE TRAIL 
   
  “SOMETHING 
  has 
  happened 
  to 
  Viddy!” Reservoir Hill squawled. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  19 
  Doc Savage went into the library and 
  swung out a section of bookcase, to disclose 
  a 
  device 
  which 
  recorded 
  telephone 
  conversations to his headquarters. It was not 
  unlike an ordinary office dictaphone. 
  He 
  connected 
  a 
  reproducing 
  microphone and a loudspeaker and played 
  the record back. There had been a telephone 
  call. 
  “Doc Savage’s office,” Vida Carlaw 
  had said, answering the telephone. “Doc isn’t 
  here.” 
  “Viddy,” the harsh-voiced caller had 
  said, “this is Reservoir Hill. Don’t you 
  recognize my voice?” 
  “Oh! But I thought you were in 
  Oklahoma?” 
  “No. I’m waiting down in front of the 
  building; I’m with Doc Savage. We’ve got 
  some important information. Come down 
  right away.” 
  “I’ll be right down.” 
  That had ended the call. 
  Doc Savage stopped the instrument 
  and placed a fresh record on the recorder. 
  Reservoir Hill yelled, “That guy faked 
  my voice!” 
  Johnny eyed him intently. “To me, it 
  sounded like yours!” 
  Reservoir Hill knotted his fists and 
  took a step forward. 
  “In my country, they shoot ‘em dead 
  for such cracks!” he snarled. 
  Johnny, who had been an erudite 
  college professor in his time, snarled back, 
  “Any time you’re ready, you sage-hopper!” 
  For a moment it looked as if there 
  was going to be a fight; then Reservoir Hill 
  grinned thinly. “Sage-hopper? They don’t 
  have sagebrush in my part of Oklahoma!” 
  Doc Savage led the way downstairs, 
  taking a regular elevator this time. In the 
  lobby, there was some excitement, which 
  they had missed by coming into the building 
  by the secret underground route and up in 
  the private high-speed elevator. There were 
  policemen present, and an elevator captain 
  was explaining. 
  “A girl came down in one of the 
  elevators. Some guys were waiting here in 
  the lobby and they grabbed the dame, 
  banged her over the head, and dragged her 
  away!” 
  Doc interrupted to describe Vida 
  Carlaw. 
  “That’s the one they got!” said the 
  elevator captain. 
  Doc hurried outside. There was no 
  sign of Doc’s two aids, Monk and Ham. Nor 
  was there any trace of the mysterious men 
  from Oklahoma. 
  “They got Viddy and cleared out!” 
  Reservoir Hill groaned; then he scowled at 
  Doc Savage. “They put something over on 
  you! You’re overrated! You ain’t what you’re 
  cracked up to be!” 
  Doc did not reply, and showed by no 
  sign that he was affected by the other man’s 
  opinion. 
  Johnny, not exercising as much 
  composure, scowled and demanded. “Look 
  here, Hill! What do you know about what is 
  behind this? What are you hiding?” 
  Reservoir Hill did not exactly give a 
  start, but it was evident that he was shocked. 
  He moistened his lips. “What you mean?” 
  “My personal opinion is that you’re 
  not telling all you know!” Johnny snapped. 
  Reservoir Hill put out his jaw. 
  “Any more of them cracks and one of 
  us is going to go to the hospital!” 
  Doc Savage said, “In view of the fact 
  that the affair seems to be getting more 
  involved, it might be advisable to call in our 
  other two men, Renny and Long Tom.” 
   
   
  THE remaining two members of Doc 
  Savage’s group of five aids were no less 
  remarkable than the others. 
  “Long Tom” was Major Thomas J. 
  Roberts, an electrical wizard whose name 
  would probably pass down through history 
  because of some of the things he had 
  accomplished. Yet he did not look like a man 
  of deeds. 
  He was slight, appeared fragile, and 
  his complexion was about as inviting as that 
  of a mushroom. No one could remember him 
  ever having looked differently—nor could any 
  one ever remember him having been ill. 
  Colonel John Renwick was “Renny.” 
  Fame followed Renny for two, things—his 
  fists and his engineering ability. Both were 
  big. 
  His 
  fists 
  were 
  so 
  large 
  that 
  archaeologists maintained that even the 
  famous “Cardiff giant” had not possessed 
  bigger hands. Renny’s ability as an engineer 
  matched the size of his hands. 
  Long Tom and Renny arrived a short 
  while after Doc telephoned, and the bronze 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  20 
  man gave them a short outline of what had 
  happened. 
  “What are we waitin’ for?” Renny 
  rumbled in a voice reminiscent of a peevish 
  lion roaring in his den, he being excited over 
  the prospect of action, which he loved. 
  “Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  may 
  have 
  succeeded in trailing the girl’s captors,” Doc 
  explained. 
  “More than likely Monk and Ham are 
  somewhere quarreling!” feeble-looking Long 
  Tom suggested. 
  Big-fisted Renny drew a newspaper 
  from a pocket, sat down, and began reading 
  the front page. 
  “I see an outlaw named Tomahawk 
  Tant is sorta struttin’ his stuff in Oklahoma,” 
  he rumbled. “Holy cow! If this earth devil 
  thing takes us to Oklahoma, what you say we 
  sorta relieve the citizens of Oklahoma of their 
  outlaw, Tant, too?” 
  Reservoir Hill demanded, sharply, 
  “Somebody been trying to sick you onto 
  Tant?” 
  Renny 
  looked 
  up. 
  “You 
  sound 
  interested!” 
  Reservoir Hill shrugged. 
  “Hell, no! I was just asking!” 
  Bony Johnny said, calmly, “Reservoir 
  Hill, you understand, Renny, may not be 
  telling all he knows.” 
  Reservoir Hill had been seated in a 
  chair. He got up and pushed his sleeves up 
  his wrists. 
  “Blister my britches!” he growled. 
  “I’ve took enough loose talk!” 
  “And I,” Johnny said, calmly, “haven’t 
  had any exercise for some time. When we 
  finish, bet you sing a different tune.” 
  Doc Savage requested, “Postpone 
  that a moment, please!” 
   
   
  BOTH 
  prospective 
  combatants 
  halted. They saw the bronze man go to the 
  large array of sensitive radio apparatus with 
  which the laboratory was equipped. A small 
  electric call light on one of the panels was 
  flickering, and Doc Savage touched a switch, 
  cutting a loud-speaker into circuit. 
  The apish Monk’s squeaky voice 
  came out of the loudspeaker. “Them guys 
  gave us the slip! They had a big plane 
  planted in a little field! They got the plane in 
  the air and left us twiddling our thumbs! They 
  had the girl!” 
  “They take her in the plane?” 
  “Yes!” 
  Doc Savage switched on the radio 
  transmitter and asked, “Did they learn you 
  followed them?” 
  “Don’t think so!” 
  “Which way they go?” 
  “West!” 
  Reservoir Hill shouted, “Heading for 
  Oklahoma!” 
  “Come on!” Doc said, sharply. 
  Doc’s big armor-plated sedan was 
  carrying them toward the water front a few 
  minutes later, a siren moaning under the 
  hood, to request police to clear traffic. This 
  courtesy was extended to Doc Savage 
  because of past services to law and order. 
  The clammy smell of the river was 
  soon soaking into their nostrils. 
   
  HIDALGO TRADING COMPANY 
   
  The sign decorated the front of a 
  building that was ancient, and of brick. The 
  structure had a colossal hugeness about it, 
  and it carried also the outward air of a 
  building disused. The moribund aspect was 
  deceitful, for this was Doc Savage’s giant 
  water-front hangar and boathouse. 
  A red light on the front of the car 
  served the double purpose of police light and 
  infra-red projector. The invisible ray which it 
  transmitted caused concealed photoelectric 
  eyes to actuate machinery that opened the 
  big hangar door. After the sedan was inside, 
  the door closed. 
  Reservoir Hill gazed at the interior of 
  the big building as lights came on, and his 
  eyes popped a little. 
  “Durndest place I ever saw, or I hope 
  to have rings around my tail!” 
  The 
  interior 
  proportions 
  of 
  the 
  warehouse hangar were much greater than it 
  had seemed from outside. There were 
  several planes, varying in sizes and types, 
  speed boats and a cabin cruiser, and even, 
  over to one side, what seemed to be a 
  submarine. 
  “The rest of you follow in the large 
  plane,” Doc Savage directed Johnny, Renny 
  and Long Tom. “We want to lose no time. 
  Contact Monk and Ham and pick them up.” 
  The three aids nodded. Contact 
  could be established by the short-wave set 
  that was handy in all the cars and planes, 
  and Monk and Ham had used one of the cars 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  21 
  to trail the thugs who had kidnapped the girl. 
  The car had been standing near the entrance 
  of the building. 
  In conclusion, Doc added, “Reservoir 
  Hill will go with me in the small speed ship.” 
  “You 
  hombres sure work fast!” 
  Reservoir Hill offered. 
   
   
  AN 
  hour 
  later, 
  Reservoir 
  Hill’s 
  opinion had not changed. 
  By that time, Doc’s plane had 
  traversed a slice of Pennsylvania which 
  would have surprised even an airspeed 
  expert. The ship was a small one, consisting 
  of a cockpit for two, radio equipment and a 
  tiny fuselage and wing assembly—the rest of 
  it was motor. Almost two thousand horse 
  power! 
  The largest cities of the United 
  States have police departments equipped 
  with radio receiving and transmitting stations, 
  and Doc Savage just finished communicating 
  with a number of these, with the result that a 
  net was now spread over Pennsylvania, and 
  other States over which a plane bound for 
  Oklahoma might fly. 
  “I’ll be whiskered if I knew the law 
  was fixed up so elaboratelike for catching 
  crooks!” said Reservoir Hill. 
  It was not long before they picked up 
  a report that the fleeing plane had been 
  sighted over the town of Clarksburg, West 
  Virginia. 
  Doc Savage’s little ship, setting a 
  pace that would have won any national air 
  race of recent years, overhauled the quarry 
  near the town of Middleport, on the Ohio 
  River. 
  The fleeing ship was a big modern 
  low-winged job, with two motors. She was of 
  standardized aluminum color. In ordinary 
  company, she would have been fast, but Doc 
  Savage’s small racer buzzed around her like 
  a fly around a chicken. 
  The cockpit of Doc’s machine was 
  completely enclosed. 
  The bronze man slid the hatch back, 
  stood up against the rip of the whipstream 
  and waved for the other ship to land. There 
  was farmland below, level enough to be used 
  for that purpose. The answer was rifle 
  muzzles poked out of the other plane. 
  The bronze man sank hastily into the 
  cockpit. There was little chance of ordinary 
  rifle slugs penetrating the skin of his ship, 
  which was of a new type of alloy. 
  Fully a dozen bullets hit the little 
  plane in the next few minutes. Reservoir Hill 
  heard the sounds they made, and knew what 
  they were. 
  “I wish this fight was on the ground, 
  with Winchesters!” he snorted. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE drove his little ship 
  for a spot ahead of the other ship. While he 
  was jockeying for a position ahead of the 
  nose of the other craft, he made adjustments 
  with certain knobs and controls. 
  “What’s them jiggers?” Reservoir Hill 
  asked, pointing at the gadgets which Doc 
  Savage was adjusting. 
  “The valve controls for a tank of gas 
  in the real,” Doc explained. “The gas, when 
  released in the air, is invisible, but causes a 
  chemical reaction with the air which makes it 
  noninflammable. In other words, a plane 
  flying into this vapor will stop, because the air 
  gas mixture sucked into its motor became 
  nonexplosive.” 
  Reservoir Hill craned his neck, 
  looked back. 
  “They must suspect your game!” he 
  grunted. 
  The other plane had whipped into a 
  sharp dive, almost standing on its nose. Doc 
  sent his little ship down after it. 
  The Ohio River, running high and 
  muddy, was crooked, wide, and yellow 
  below. In some places, the river overran its 
  banks. The hills had a scrubbed look, as if 
  recently rained upon. 
  “Hey!” Reservoir Hill squawled. 
  The yell was caused by the action of 
  the other plane in suddenly wrenching level. 
  Men leaned from its cabin windows with 
  rifles. Their bullets rapped the armor of Doc’s 
  ship. 
  “Viddy!” Reservoir Hill yelled. “See 
  her!” 
  Doc Savage made no comment, but 
  he could see the girl distinctly. She looked 
  attractive, even from that distance, and 
  apparently had not been harmed. She waved 
  at them, then put her fists up in a fighting 
  attitude. 
  “Viddy’s quite a gal!” Reservoir Hill 
  yelled. “Blast them rascals! May their craws 
  fill with cockleburs!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  22 
  Doc worked into a position ahead of 
  the other ship, but again the other craft dived. 
  The pilot was wary, taking no chances 
  whatever. The other ship leveled out several 
  hundred feet below. Doc arched down toward 
  it. 
  In the west, clouds hung in the sky, 
  thick clouds, black, with occasionally a long, 
  red lightning spark dropping from them to the 
  earth. 
  “Look!” Reservoir Hill pointed. 
  The men below had opened the door 
  of their plane and were hurling a figure bodily 
  out of the ship. 
  “Viddy!” screamed Reservoir Hill. 
  “They’re throwing her out!” 
  The falling, skirt-clad figure did not 
  wear a parachute. 
   
   
  “WE gotta do something to save 
  her!” Reservoir Hill screamed. 
  At the moment, that did not seem an 
  entirely sane suggestion. The form was 
  falling. In movie cartoons, they dive planes 
  down and draw falling men and women 
  aboard; but in actual life, it is not so easy. 
  Doc put the plane’s nose down. A 
  falling human body does not acquire speed 
  which cannot be bettered by a fast plane, 
  due to the resistance of the air. There was a 
  chance of the plane overtaking the falling 
  body. Reservoir Hill did not know this. 
  “Don’t follow her!” he screamed. “I 
  don’t wanta see her hit! I don’t wanta see 
  Viddy die!” 
  Doc Savage knew, split seconds 
  later, that he had wasted his time. The body 
  was going to hit before he could possibly 
  overtake it—was going to hit in the river. 
  “Maybe—hitting the water—won’t kill 
  her!” Reservoir Hill croaked. 
  Doc Savage had no such illusion. 
  Water, struck at the speed at which that body 
  was falling, had the demolishing force of a 
  solid wall. 
  The pitiful, twisting figure hit the 
  muddy, flood-bloated river. 
  Doc Savage pulled his plane out of 
  the dive so close to the surface that water 
  splashed up from the falling body and 
  actually slapped the plane’s body like so 
  much shot. 
  He hung the plane’s nose in the sky 
  until it lost momentum and was about to stall, 
  then arched off on a wingtip and came back, 
  looking overside for any traces of the body. 
  They cruised for several minutes, 
  and nothing came to the surface. 
  “We gotta land and see if we can find 
  her!” Reservoir Hill yelled. 
  “There is no chance of any one 
  surviving a fall like that,” Doc explained 
  quietly, and pointed the bawling nose of the 
  plane into the sky. 
   
   
  RESERVOIR HILL swore in the other 
  seat. He made his fists into balls of hard 
  gristle and reared up angrily. 
  “Viddy may not have died!” he 
  screeched. “You’re gonna land and look for 
  her! You’re gonna land—” 
  Doc Savage grasped the old man’s 
  arm. He did not speak, but something—it 
  might, of course, have been the evidence of 
  terrific strength which his grip conveyed—
  caused Reservoir Hill to sink back, limp and 
  defeated. 
  “Yeah, you’re right,” the old oil man 
  muttered. “Viddy’s dead. The swellest little 
  girl Oklahoma or any other durn place ever 
  saw!” 
  Doc climbed his plane after the other 
  craft, which had made good use of the delay. 
  The other pilot had flown directly toward the 
  immense mass of clouds that was the distant 
  thunderstorm, and the ship had covered a 
  good part of the distance. 
  “They’re gonna beat us to it!” 
  Reservoir Hill groaned. 
  They did. The clouds, the thunder, 
  the lightning and the rain swallowed the 
  plainload of killers like some harridan, 
  symbolic monster tossing in the sky. 
   
   
  Chapter VII 
  PREPARATION 
   
  THEY never found the plane carrying 
  the killers. The craft vanished thoroughly, 
  completely. Doc Savage and his aids even 
  flew 
  over 
  the 
  path 
  covered 
  by 
  the 
  thunderstorm, on the chance that the 
  vanished plane had been struck by lightning 
  and fallen in flames. They found nothing. 
  That afternoon, the air over the 
  States of Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, 
  Missouri and Tennessee, as well as Illinois 
  
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  23 
  and Indiana, became filled with planes, all 
  searching. Radiograms from Doc Savage, 
  addressed 
  to 
  the 
  war 
  department 
  in 
  Washington, caused every available plane to 
  be ordered to take up the search. 
  The army planes found nothing, 
  either. 
  Doc Savage and all his aids, when 
  the latter arrived in the big plane, dragged 
  the Ohio River and searched the banks for 
  hours, but likewise found nothing. 
  “Poor Viddy!” groaned Reservoir Hill. 
  “Her body probably got caught under 
  a snag, and has been buried with mud,” a 
  river man told him. “Reckon you’ll never find 
  her!” 
   
   
  EARLY next morning, a small boy 
  going out to get his cows, found an 
  abandoned airplane in a meadow on his 
  father’s farm. The spot was near Cleveland. 
  The plane had evidently landed there the 
  previous day, and it had been raining so 
  heavily that no one had seen it. 
  The farm boy noted something 
  peculiar the minute he stuck his head into the 
  plane. Some one had dipped a finger or a 
  stick into dirty oil—later examination showed 
  the oil had been drained from the plane’s 
  motor—and printed a name on the veneer 
  lining of the cabin: 
   
  TO DOC SAVAGE 
   
  Below the name was a series of the 
  strangest kind of marks—circles, dashes, 
  half-moons, 
  stars, 
  crosses. 
  Just 
  about 
  everything. It had an obvious resemblance to 
  some kind of a code. 
  The farm boy lost no time. He had 
  read the newspapers, had listened to the 
  police broadcasts about the plane over his 
  short-wave radio, and his dad’s telephone 
  connected with the long-distance system. 
  The lad telephoned Doc Savage. 
  And he was on hand when the man of bronze 
  with his aids sank his big amphibian plane 
  expertly on the meadow. They had left the 
  little ship behind. 
  Doc talked to the farm boy for some 
  time. The bronze man then took a casual 
  look around the clearing, and one glance at 
  the writing in the plane—if writing it was. 
  Then he went back and talked awhile to the 
  boy. 
  The lad 
  was bright. 
  He knew 
  something about radio, was an amateur 
  photographer, and interested particularly in 
  planes. He had, he admitted, been studying 
  books on aëronautical engineering. He had 
  even been experimenting along those lines 
  himself, having built a streamlined kite. 
  Doc Savage got a case from his 
  plane, one of the metal boxes employed to 
  transport his equipment. He removed a 
  number of objects, some of which he did not 
  unwrap, and presented them to the boy. 
  Monk, Ham and the others, much 
  more interested in the abandoned plane, 
  gathered around it. They paid little attention 
  to what Doc was telling the boy, and when 
  the bronze man joined him, they were full of 
  questions. The farm boy went toward home. 
  “Look!” Monk said, and pointed. 
  He was indicating the interior of the 
  plane. 
  But the bronze man made another 
  tour of the clearing. Apparently he found no 
  tracks. He came back. 
  By this time, the farm boy had 
  reached his home. A few moments later, his 
  kite was in the air. It was a trim-looking 
  streamlined kite. 
  Monk nodded approval. Doc, of 
  course, had asked to see the kite in the air. 
  The real purpose of that was to get the boy 
  out of the way, in case there should be 
  danger. 
  Monk decided the kite was a good 
  job. The lad surely must be interested in 
  airplanes. 
  Doc examined 
  the hieroglyphics 
  painted inside the abandoned plane with 
  cylinder oil. 
   
   
  JOHNNY had already been poring 
  over 
  them. 
  Johnny 
  had 
  translated 
  a 
  Chaldean tablet which nobody else could 
  read, except Doc, and Egyptian hieroglyphics 
  were almost English to him. But this time, he 
  was baffled. 
  Reservoir Hill walked off into the 
  damp woods which bordered the meadow. 
  Hill appeared consumed by gloom. The 
  others presumed he wanted to be alone with 
  his morbid thoughts. They did not pay him 
  particular attention. 
  Doc used a pocket mirror on the oil 
  symbols. Often a mirror will turn apparently 
  meaningless marks around and cause them 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  24 
  to become legible. It didn’t this time. The 
  bronze man tried covering different parts of 
  the marks, and scrutinizing them with the 
  mirror and without. 
  Homely Monk became impatient. 
  Monk liked action. Moreover, the horrible 
  thing that had happened to Vida Carlaw 
  preyed on his mind. By moving about, he 
  kept himself from thinking of that so much. 
  “I’m gonna see where Reservoir Hill 
  went.” Monk said. “Him and me will probably 
  look around for some trace of which way 
  these fellers went.” 
  Monk ambled into the thick brush. 
  Reservoir Hill had mashed the wet grass 
  down with his feet. The trail was easy to 
  follow. 
  None of the others paid particular 
  attention to Monk. They were occupied with 
  the puzzle of the symbols in oil. Ham, Renny, 
  Johnny and Long Tom were baffled by now. 
  As a matter of fact, they had been from the 
  first. 
  Doc Savage, however, was still at it. 
  He had produced paper and pencil, and was 
  trying different combinations of the symbols. 
  Once, he made the strange, trilling noise 
  which was so unearthly, so defiant of 
  description. It had a definitely baffled 
  undertone this time. 
  The bronze man abruptly put the 
  pencil and paper away. 
  “The characters have no meaning, 
  apparently,” he said. 
  Johnny, at least, and probably the 
  others, 
  knew 
  that 
  the 
  metallic 
  giant’s 
  admission covered a great deal of territory. 
  Doc had done more than study the marks 
  and write them down in different orders. 
  His agile brain had probably probed 
  into 
  a 
  dozen 
  ramifications 
  of 
  pictorial 
  language, not neglecting the various systems 
  of symbols used by hobos to indicate houses 
  which are good and bad pickings. 
  Suddenly, so brief that the others 
  almost failed to catch it, Doc’s trilling sang 
  out. 
  “Quick!” A crashing haste was in the 
  bronze man’s voice. “Get your weapons 
  ready!” 
  Ham gulped, “But what—” 
  “We have fallen for a trick!” Doc told 
  him. 
   
   
  MONK was at that moment having 
  trouble following the footprints of Reservoir 
  Hill. The old oil man, to Monk’s surprise, had 
  kept walking. The footprints had been close 
  together, an indication Reservoir had merely 
  plodded on. But Monk had expected to catch 
  up with him earlier. 
  A haystack appeared ahead. Monk 
  expected to find Reservoir on the other side. 
  He walked close to the stack, rounded it, and 
  stopped. No one was in sight. But the grass! 
  Not one set of footprints—many—not all 
  Hill’s—what— 
  Monk’s cogitation ended there. 
  Hay fell on him. Hay and a man. The 
  man kicked Monk in the face as he came 
  down. Monk made a honking noise, grabbed 
  the fellow, banged him on the ground. The 
  victim actually bounced. And he sounded as 
  if he had a leak somewhere, through which a 
  lot of air had been driven. 
  “Blazes!” Monk exploded. 
  The man answered the description of 
  one of the crowd which had decoyed Vida 
  Carlaw to her fate. Monk cocked a fist and 
  waited for the fellow to arise. 
  Monk was a bloodthirsty soul, and 
  had no great scruples about hitting a man 
  when he was down. He liked to see this one 
  bounce. When he couldn’t get up was time 
  enough to work him over on the ground. Doc 
  Savage had never quite succeeded in 
  training Monk to restrain his impulsiveness. 
  More hay and more men arrived. 
  One. Two. A third. Monk whooped, scooped 
  with his arms, got two of them. He did a neat 
  trick and rapped the third on the top of the 
  head with a heel. Only three! Just exercise! 
  None of them were big. 
  Monk got an arm around each of the 
  two surviving foes, jumped up and down, ape 
  fashion, turned two somersaults, and had 
  them dizzy. It was going to be simple. 
  Other men were heaving from the 
  haystack. Hands got hold of Monk. Fists hit 
  him. 
  The tops of haystacks are weighted 
  down. It is a precaution the farmer takes to 
  keep his hay from being blown away. Two 
  fence posts, joined by a wire or binder twine, 
  usually make up each weight. 
  One of these fence posts was the 
  deciding factor in the fight. For ten minutes or 
  so after it hit him, Monk lay in abysmal 
  darkness and dreamed he was just one jump 
  ahead of dapper Ham who, not surprisingly, 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  25 
  had become equipped with horns and a 
  spike-pointed tail. 
  Ham caught up with Monk, and 
  began to dig at Monk’s ear with the lip of his 
  sword cane. If Monk had had arms or legs, 
  he could have fought back—  
   
   
  MONK got around to opening his 
  eyes. There was no Ham. The sword cane in 
  his ear was a finger. The owner of the finger 
  was a hard, brown rascal with a face that 
  would have interested a criminologist. 
  “This ticklin’ always wakes ‘em up,” 
  said the owner of the finger. 
  Monk shut his eyes and relaxed. He 
  was going to let the other start screwing a 
  finger around in his ear again; then he was 
  going to knock the blazes out of the lad. 
  There was nothing wrong with the 
  idea, except that Monk discovered he was 
  tied hand and foot. 
  “Up and away with ‘em,” a man said 
  airily. 
  Monk decided to let out a bellow, on 
  the chance Doc would hear. He sucked his 
  chest full of air, got set—and they stuck a 
  wadded felt hat in his big mouth. 
  The homely chemist was lifted, 
  carried rapidly through the timber. His 
  captors did a lot of looking behind them. 
  They dropped a word or two which convinced 
  Monk they were the same mob which had 
  pursued Vida Carlaw to New York and 
  attempted to prevent her reaching Doc 
  Savage. 
  “That bronze guy isn’t anybody to kid 
  around with,” one uneasy fellow remarked. 
  “The way he moved around in New York was 
  somethin’ to see!” 
  “We got the girl outta his hands, 
  didn’t we?” another snapped. 
  “We didn’t stop’er reachin’ ‘im, did 
  we?” 
  They came to a graveled road, one 
  evidently 
  not 
  used 
  very 
  much. 
  Two 
  automobiles stood under a tree beside the 
  road. Big cars. 
  Monk noted they had well-worn tires. 
  No tread marks on such tires to make 
  identification easier. Monk scowled at the 
  cars. 
  “You old pot-belly!” Monk thought. “I 
  had a hunch you wasn’t what you let on!” 
  He’d have said it aloud, but for the gag. 
  Reservoir Hill sat in the front seat of 
  one of the cars. He pushed out his mouth at 
  Monk and spat over the side. 
  The captors heaved Monk in the 
  other car. Everyone loaded aboard. The 
  motors hooted, and the machines rolled. 
  Both cars traveled fast for two miles. 
  “You 
  figure 
  we’ll 
  be 
  safe 
  in 
  Cleveland?” a man asked, doubtfully. 
  “Sure,” said another. “When we get 
  to the city limits, a fake telephone company 
  truck will meet us. We’ll dress up as 
  telephone company linemen, ride right into 
  the burg, and nobody will suspect a thing.” 
  “It’ll take us right to the joint over 
  Blackie’s garage on Nineteenth, where we’re 
  gonna hang out?” 
  “Sure.” 
  Monk was down on the car’s 
  floorboards, where they had shoved him. He 
  had squirmed about, and quite accidentally, 
  had found a pencil. It was lying where some 
  one had dropped it, perhaps by accident. 
  Monk went through some motions 
  that might have been those of a man 
  bothered by a cootie. He got the pencil. It 
  was stubby, just right to hide between his 
  fingers. Furthermore, the floorboards were 
  exposed at one end, where the carpet had 
  been kicked up. Writing a message on them 
  would be simple. 
  Monk wrote. 
   
   
  THE car bearing Monk drove two 
  more miles and came to a bridge over the 
  same creek which ran through the farmer’s 
  place. The creek was so much larger here 
  that it could not have grown naturally. So it 
  was probably nearing Lake Erie. 
  The car stopped in the middle of the 
  bridge. The other car pulled up behind and 
  also halted. Men got out quickly and threw 
  their coats under the cars, directly beneath 
  the engine pans. 
  “That’s so no oil will leak onto the 
  bridge planks and show we stopped here,” a 
  man said. 
  They yanked Monk out of the car. 
  The bridge was a low concrete 
  structure. The men produced a rope and tied 
  it to one of the bridge’s rail pillars. 
  A motor boat was approaching. It 
  was a big craft, but had a well-silenced 
  motor. It was hardly more noisy than an 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  26 
  automobile. Those in the motor boat hailed 
  the others. 
  “Make it snappy!” they advised. 
  “Wait a minute,” a man said. “It’ll only 
  take a second to see if our trick worked.” 
  The fellow leaned into the car and 
  examined the spot where Monk had been 
  lying. He burst out in a harsh chuckle. 
  “It worked!” he said. “Here’s what he 
  wrote: ‘Fake telephone company truck, 
  Cleveland. Blackie’s garage on Nineteenth.’” 
  The man squinted more closely. “It’s followed 
  by some kind of mark. I guess it’s this guy’s 
  private sign, or somethin’. It don’t mean 
  nothin’ to me.” 
  They all burst out laughing. Monk got 
  a gleeful kick in the ribs. 
  “We foxed you,” he was told. “We 
  dropped that pencil on purpose. We fed you 
  that dope. You threw Savage off the trail 
  yourself, because we’ll let him find these cars 
  abandoned on the outskirts of Cleveland.” 
  Monk made puppy noises around his 
  gag. His eyes were rage filled. 
   
   
  THE men began climbing down into 
  the boat. Monk was lowered. It seemed two 
  of the crowd were going to drive the two cars 
  to the outskirts of Cleveland and abandon 
  them. Then old Reservoir Hill was lowered 
  into the boat. Monk’s little eyes popped. 
  Reservoir Hill was bound hand and 
  foot! 
  “They got me, then laid for whoever 
  followed my trail!” old Hill gritted. 
  The coats were yanked from under 
  the automobile oil pans. Away went the cars. 
  The boat lifted its bow and began to 
  travel. 
  Reservoir Hill told Monk, “I guess 
  you can figure what they’re gonna do?” 
  Monk nodded. 
  “They’re gonna scrag us if Doc 
  Savage don’t forget all about this!” Hill 
  growled. 
   
   
  Chapter VIII 
  THE HIGH EYE 
   
  DOC SAVAGE had done one thing 
  daily since childhood. He had devoted a two-
  hour period to exercise. Not merely a flexing 
  and strengthening of the muscles, but a 
  scientific system of actions designed to 
  strengthen eyes, olfactory senses, vision, 
  hearing, and the others. 
  Perhaps the most unusual, and no 
  doubt the more important, was the set of 
  mental exercises which quickened his wits, 
  strengthened his memory, and otherwise had 
  equipped him with the amazing physical and 
  mental powers which he possessed. 
  His 
  aids, 
  while 
  remarkable 
  gentlemen, did not have the bronze man’s 
  powers. They did not need them, however, to 
  read the story of what had happened where 
  Monk had been seized. Monk’s captors had 
  made no effort to cover up sign, and the story 
  was plain. 
  Ham, searching in the hay, came up 
  with an object and gulped, genuine grief in 
  his voice, “Monk had this in his pocket!” 
  The object was an ear of corn which 
  Monk carried to feed his pet pig, Habeas 
  Corpus. 
  Doc Savage made a quick circle, his 
  flake gold eyes reading further sign. 
  “Reservoir Hill was seized first,” the 
  bronze man explained. “Monk was following 
  Hill’s trail and was seized also.” 
  Big-fisted Renny rumbled angrily, 
  “Doc! That writing in the plane, with engine 
  oil, must have been done just to decoy us 
  here!” 
  “It was,” Doc agreed. “Here. The 
  mob went this way.” 
  They had no trouble following the 
  trail to the gravel road. But not even a 
  bloodhound could have followed it any 
  farther. 
   
   
  THEY were back at the plane when 
  the farm boy came running up. 
  “Somebody 
  wants 
  you 
  on 
  the 
  telephone,” he told Doc Savage. “He said to 
  tell you that by now you probably know you 
  had better talk to him.” 
  The bronze man whipped to his own 
  plane, entered the control cabin, and 
  switched on the radio transmitter. Ordinarily, 
  it operated on a short wave, but he 
  lengthened the wave length to that of the 
  police broadcast band. A number of police 
  stations maintained both transmitting and 
  receiving equipment 
  In not much more than a minute, 
  police were tracing the telephone call to the 
  farmhouse. This method of having the call 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  27 
  traced was necessary, since the caller was 
  waiting on the wire, and the farmhouse 
  boasted no other instrument with which to 
  locate a call. 
  Doc whipped toward the farmhouse. 
  The boy’s kite was still high in the air. It was 
  a well-designed kite, because it remained 
  almost stationary. 
  The voice on the wire was that of the 
  man who had tried to seize Vida Carlaw on 
  the big passenger plane from Oklahoma—
  the lad who had narrowly escaped from Doc. 
  “No doubt you are having this call 
  traced by now,” he said wisely. “Therefore, 
  I’m not going to be sucker enough to talk 
  very long. Get this! We’ve got one of your 
  men, and we’ve got old Hill. Hill is a meddling 
  old goop, so we’re going to shoot him and 
  leave him on a road somewhere. You’ll hear 
  about it when his body is found. 
  “This will be done to demonstrate 
  we’re not birds who can be fooled with! As 
  long as you lay off us, your man Monk won’t 
  be damaged! But no longer, see!” 
  The confidence in his voice was not 
  up to that in his words. He seemed very glad 
  to hang up. 
  Not more than three minutes later, a 
  report came that the call had come from a 
  drug store in Cleveland, but the man had 
  gone by the time police could get there. 
  Another call came half an hour later. Yes, the 
  man had escaped. 
  Doc went out and watched the farm 
  boy fly his kite. 
  “Doing all right?” he asked the boy. 
  “I think so,” the boy said. “I’m doing 
  my best.” 
  “In an hour,” Doc suggested, “you 
  can pull it down.” 
   
   
  THE telephone rang. It was the 
  Cleveland police. Two cars had been found 
  abandoned on the outskirts of town. A 
  message to Doc Savage was written on the 
  floorboards of one. His plane took Doc and 
  his aids to the spot in less than fifteen 
  minutes. 
  The police officer who guided them 
  to the abandoned cars said, “The message 
  obviously indicates that the mob is hiding out 
  on Nineteenth Street at a place called 
  Blackie’s Garage. We’ve got a squad headed 
  for there now.” 
  Doc Savage studied the message in 
  the car. 
  “You can tell your squad to forget it,” 
  he said. 
  “Huh?” 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  indicated 
  the 
  strange-looking mark which Monk had made 
  following his message. 
  “Ancient Mayan,” the bronze man 
  explained. 
  “Eh? A shunt may what?” The officer 
  hadn’t got it. 
  “A hieroglyphic in prehistoric Mayan,” 
  Doc Savage elaborated. 
  “I’ll take your word for it. What’s it 
  mean?” 
  “It conveys a message. It says that 
  nothing written is to be believed.” 
  “I’ll be damned!” said the cop. “Why’d 
  he write something if he didn’t want it to be 
  believed?” 
  “Monk 
  was 
  probably 
  kidding 
  somebody,” Ham explained. “Monk is quite a 
  brilliant fellow.” 
  This would have startled Monk, who 
  had never heard Ham call him anything less 
  dense than a bob-tailed baboon who had 
  fallen out of the nest at an early age. 
  Doc Savage left it to the police to 
  locate the drivers of the cars, who would 
  probably have made themselves hard to find 
  by now. He flew back to the farm where the 
  abandoned plane had been found. 
  “I noticed the boy had stopped flying 
  his kite,” Ham commented as they landed. 
  They found the youth in the cave 
  where his mother kept her canned fruit. 
  He was working over Doc Savage’s 
  portable equipment for developing motion 
  picture film. 
  “It was simple enough that I didn’t 
  have any trouble making it work,” the young 
  man explained, pointing at the developing 
  apparatus. 
  “What is he doing?” Renny rumbled, 
  and bent over some of the developed film. 
  “Holy cow!” he exploded after an 
  inspection. 
  Each square of film showed a large 
  area of the surrounding country. Aërial 
  photographs! 
  “Doc gave me one of his aërial 
  cameras,” the boy explained, as proud as a 
  pup with a bone. “I fixed it to my kite. It took a 
  picture every minute or two. But they’re so 
  small I can’t make out much.” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  28 
  “We will use a magnifying glass,” 
  Doc told him. 
  The bronze man produced, not a 
  magnifier, but a projector out of one of the 
  equipment cases. They operated it on the 
  plane’s battery system, and threw the images 
  in the cabin, with the windows covered. 
  The 
  pictures 
  had 
  been 
  taken 
  frequently enough for them to fairly well 
  follow what had happened. They saw 
  Reservoir Hill captured, then Monk. 
  “Monk,” Ham said, admiringly, “put 
  up quite a fight!”  
  Ham never had a civil word for Monk, 
  to his face or behind his back, except on 
  those occasions when he had a horrible fear 
  his sparring mate was in trouble. 
  The 
  pictures 
  showed 
  the 
  mob 
  shifting their prisoners from the cars to the 
  boat. 
  “Now!” Long Tom exploded, “if that 
  boat just didn’t go too far for the camera to 
  still get it!” 
  The boat had not gone far. Four or 
  five miles down the coast, once it reached 
  the lake. There was a small cove. The power 
  boat had stopped at a houseboat, had tied up 
  astern of the other craft. 
  “We will look into this,” Doc Savage 
  said, quietly. 
   
   
  WHEN their plane slid down over the 
  cove with the motors cut, Doc and his aids 
  could distinguish a number of things. First, 
  the cove, while more than a quarter of a mile 
  wide, was really the mouth of a stream. A 
  fast-running stream, and a muddy one. It 
  muddied the lake for some distance outside 
  the cove. 
  They kept their heads inside the 
  plane’s cabin. The alloy metal which covered 
  it would deflect anything but a special armor-
  piercing bullet. Also bulletproof were the 
  windows, through which they watched. 
  Ham voiced the obvious. “Nobody in 
  sight.” 
  They could have seen any one in the 
  speed boat. It was open, except for the motor 
  box. But the houseboat was different. It 
  seemed about fifty feet long, needed paint, 
  and could hide a hundred men from a plane 
  in the air. 
  Doc swung once more around the 
  cove. He flew up the stream a short distance, 
  and back, close to its muddy bosom. They 
  saw no one. They saw no boat. 
  “Eyes open while we land,” Doc said, 
  quietly. 
  The plane stroked its underside over 
  the water, not throwing up much foam. Doc 
  gunned the engines. They rode close to the 
  houseboat, but not too close. 
  No sign of life. 
  “Take the controls,” the bronze man 
  said. 
  Renny took over, but gulped, “Doc! 
  They may be ambushed aboard! They may 
  have a bomb fixed—” 
  “Swing 
  the 
  right 
  wing-tip 
  close 
  enough to permit my getting aboard,” Doc 
  interposed without appearing to have heard 
  the objection. “Then stand by.” 
  The bronze man wore under his 
  clothing, as he always did when he goes into 
  action, the alloy chain mesh which he had 
  perfected. The stuff that was so light, yet 
  almost as impervious to bullets as the skin of 
  the plane itself. 
  Before the bronze man got out of the 
  plane, he donned another device which he 
  had 
  lately 
  invented. 
  It 
  was 
  a 
  hood, 
  transparent, in shape not unlike a goldfish 
  bowl turned upside down. 
  The lower part fitted his shoulders 
  tightly, and there were straps to hold it on. 
  The material was thick, not glass, nor any 
  combination of glass, but a chemical product 
  that was as tough as steel. 
  A shoulder pack breath-purifier could 
  be used in conjunction with the hood, making 
  the wearer independent of outside air. A neat 
  gas mask. 
  Wearing it, Doc got out on a wing of 
  the plane. Renny maneuvered the ship 
  expertly. A leap, easy for the bronze man’s 
  muscles, put him aboard the houseboat. 
   
   
  HE did not step on deck immediately, 
  but maneuvered along the rail. There was a 
  chance an explosive might be set off by 
  weight on the deck’s planks. Finally, Doc did 
  go aboard. He listened. Then, with a 
  casualness that hardly showed the care he 
  was using, he went below. 
  It had never been an expensive 
  houseboat. The woodwork was cypress, 
  painted. The furniture was cheap stuff, most 
  of it made for land use. Dampness had 
  
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  29 
  caused some of the glued joints to come 
  apart. The carpets were mildewed. 
  Some one had lived aboard recently. 
  Men, evidently, and not seamen. Things 
  were not shipshape. 
  There was no one aboard, no 
  prisoners, and no niches in which any one 
  could have been concealed. 
  Doc went forward and examined the 
  manner in which boat was moored. It was not 
  anchored. It was tied to a mooring buoy, in 
  the manner of yachts in their home harbor. 
  Renny taxied the amphibian close 
  and called, “Where’s Monk and Hill?” 
  “Not aboard,” Doc replied without 
  emotion. “Pick me up.” 
  The bronze man got aboard. 
  “We are leaving immediately,” he 
  said. 
  Renny rumbled, “But, Doc! We 
  oughta do somethin’ toward finding Monk—” 
  “That,” Doc Savage told him, “is 
  exactly what we are doing when we leave 
  here in a hurry.” 
   
   
  Chapter IX 
  HIDE-OUT BELOW 
   
  MONK was tough. Men had knocked 
  him completely senseless in a fight, only to 
  see him come out of it, get up, and dive into 
  the scrap again as if nothing had happened. 
  Monk sat up and tried to bust a nose 
  which he recognized. He was, unfortunately, 
  still tied. He looked around, at himself first. 
  He was wet as the often-mentioned drowned 
  rat. His clothing had leaked a big pool of 
  water. 
  The owner of the nose retreated, 
  muttering something about how “he’d be glad 
  when the boss gave the word to turn loose 
  the works.” He was one of the mob. 
  Monk, realizing he was not gagged, 
  let out a squawk which, if it did nothing else 
  nearly deafened himself. 
  “Unless you enjoy doing that,” said 
  Reservoir Hill’s voice, “you might as well cut 
  it out.” 
  “Where are we?” Monk wanted to 
  know. 
  “Don’t you remember?” 
  Monk made a face. This usually 
  helped his thinking. “Oh, yeah!” he said. 
  “They grabbed me and started to throw me 
  overboard. I figured they was gonna drown 
  me, so I tried to kick a guy’s head off. Did I?” 
  “You did well enough,” old Hill 
  chuckled. “But another tried a rifle barrel out 
  on your head. The barrel won.” 
  Monk felt his head, groaned, then 
  asked a question, by making a statement, 
  “The air smells kinda funny in here?” 
  “I don’t wonder,” Hill told him. “We’re 
  in a submarine.” 
  “Submarine?” Monk squinted at the 
  old oil man. “They must’ve given you a bat on 
  the dome, too!” 
  “It’s 
  an 
  old 
  submarine,” 
  Hill 
  continued, unperturbed. “I don’t think it’s got 
  an engine in it. I think it’s one that was 
  showed at a fair in Chicago, or something, 
  then sold for junk. Only some crooks got hold 
  of it and made it an underwater hide-out. 
  These crooks of ours rented it from the other 
  crooks for a while, or something.” 
  “It’s complicated,” Monk said. 
  “I don’t know about that, but getting 
  out is going to be complicated. We’re under 
  the houseboat, I think. Anyhow, they climbed 
  down the mooring chain. I dang near 
  drowned.” 
  Monk said, “Doc will find us.” 
  One of the men came in at that 
  instant. He overheard Monk’s remark and 
  guffawed. 
  “Your bronze guy came, had a look 
  at the houseboat, and just left,” he advised. 
  Monk squirmed around a bit. He 
  could not get loose. So he relaxed. 
  “There must be plenty of money at 
  stake in this thing,” he said. 
  “Not for us,” the man said, somewhat 
  sourly. 
  “Huh?” Monk looked surprised. 
  “We get a hundred bucks a day 
  apiece for holding you,” said the other, even 
  more grouchily. “We got a thousand apiece 
  for catching you. We’re just doing a job. 
  Monk frowned. “You mean you’re the 
  fellows who fixed up this underwater hang-
  out, and you were only hired to get us? 
  You’re not members of the mob we’ve been 
  fighting?” 
  “That’s the idea,” the other said 
  easily. “Running this hide-away is our 
  business and—” 
  A 
  man 
  put 
  his 
  head 
  in 
  the 
  compartment. 
  
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  30 
  “I think you might go up and look 
  around,” he said. “It sounded as if that plane 
  took off more than half an hour ago.” 
  The man who had been grousing to 
  Monk nodded and went out. 
   
   
  THE fellow obviously had no love for 
  the job ahead. He picked up a diving 
  contrivance consisting of a mouthpiece, a 
  nose clip and a chemical purifier. One could 
  buy them on the market for a little over three 
  hundred dollars apiece. He adjusted it. 
  The men got in and out of the 
  submarine by a simple method. There was a 
  hole in the bottom, near the bow. Air 
  pressure held the water out. There was a 
  compressor aboard. 
  At night, when no one could observe, 
  they extended the periscope—it had been 
  elongated—to the surface and pumped air 
  down it until the compression tanks were full. 
  The man pushed himself down into 
  the hole, felt for the rope which led to the 
  mooring chain, and worked along it. The men 
  followed that route back and forth to the 
  surface. 
  The man had hardly started when he 
  seemed to step into a gigantic bear trap. The 
  jaws closed about his waist. Air left the man’s 
  lungs so fast that it blew the mouthpiece from 
  his teeth. He wrenched at what was around 
  his waist. Legs! He twisted his head. 
  When he saw the individual who held 
  him, the rest of the air left his lungs. 
  The man was almost drowned when 
  Doc Savage got him up on the deck of the 
  houseboat. It took time for him to speak. 
  “How many men are down there?” 
  Doc asked. 
  “You—you’re Savage!” the other 
  gulped. “Damn us! I knew we shouldn’t have 
  taken this job! But the blamed submarine 
  hide-out ain’t been payin’ a profit like we 
  figured it would! Guys just seem to rather 
  take a chance with the law than live down—” 
  “How many?” Doc repeated. 
  The bronze man’s tone made the 
  prisoner gulp. 
  “Keepin’ my trap shut won’t help us 
  now,” he said. “there’s a dozen. But, listen, 
  we ain’t nothin’ but hired men! We took a job! 
  It was to grab your man, or as many of ‘em 
  as we could! The guys who hired us, all left! 
  They took a canoe off the houseboat, a 
  folding canoe they could hide on shore, 
  and—” 
  He broke off to emit squeaks of pain 
  as Doc tied him. He stopped everything but 
  nose sounds when the bronze man installed 
  a gag in his mouth. When the prisoner could 
  neither move nor talk, Doc went out on deck. 
  He donned his transparent hood 
  again. The device was a good diving rig as 
  well as a gas mask. He had flown only a 
  short distance in the plane, then returned, 
  entered the water furtively, and found the 
  submarine. 
  Doc had not been sure it would be 
  there, had acted on the theory that there 
  must 
  be 
  some 
  good 
  reason 
  for 
  the 
  houseboat having a permanent mooring in 
  this out-of-the-way place. The muddy water 
  had been a hint, too. It was not such a spot 
  as a houseboat party would seek for 
  pleasure. 
  The bronze man lowered himself 
  down the mooring chain. A weighted belt 
  about his waist evened his weight with the 
  water he displaced. He worked outside the 
  submarine until he reached the stern. 
  Ham, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny 
  were waiting there. They had their feet dug 
  into the muddy bottom to maintain their 
  position. Mud on their hoods kept them from 
  seeing much. 
  Doc went to each. By pressing with 
  his fingers—long and short for dash and 
  dot—he conveyed enough Morse Code 
  words to apprise them of the situation. 
  “We will depend on a surprise 
  attack,” he finished. 
  Single file, they worked to the hole in 
  the underside of the derelict sub’s bow. 
   
   
  DOC went in first. Two of the mob 
  were standing inside, waiting the return of 
  their comrade. Doc’s glasslike helmet, rising 
  out of the opening, must have given them a 
  shock. They gaped just a moment too long. 
  Doc got hold of them. 
  They evidently didn’t have guns. 
  They tried to use their fists. That was a 
  mistake. They only hurt their knuckles on the 
  alloy mail. 
  Doc pushed one man violently in the 
  face. The fellow went back readily with the 
  blow, not realizing the steel wall was behind 
  him. His head hit. He fell. 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  31 
  The other man twisted. Muddy water 
  on Doc’s metallic hands made them slippery. 
  The man got free, but fell down doing so. He 
  scrambled up, saw a heavy wrench, and 
  grabbed it. His best bet would have been to 
  slug the bronze man in the midriff, or try to 
  break a wrist or ankle. 
  Instead, he thought the helmet was 
  glass, and tried to shatter it. The wrench only 
  bounced off. And a bronze fist, hitting the 
  man’s jaw, didn’t bounce. 
  Doc’s four men were inside by now. 
  They yanked out small machine pistols, 
  weapons which they always carried, and 
  which were usually charged with a type of so-
  called 
  “mercy 
  bullet” 
  producing 
  unconsciousness, instead of fatal injury. 
  Men in the other part of the 
  submarine heard the uproar. They came in a 
  rush, yelling questions. 
  Renny’s machine pistol made a loud 
  noise. It almost deafened them, even 
  wearing the helmets. It was as if a titanic 
  bullfiddle string had been sawed hard. 
  The effect on the enemy must have 
  been stunning. No one fell immediately. It 
  took a moment for the chemical in the slugs 
  to function; then two men sank to the deck. 
  Monk was howling, frantic because 
  there was a fight and he was tied up. 
  Doc worked through a bulkhead 
  aperture, stepped over the two fallen foes, 
  and sprang for a smaller bulkhead door. The 
  moment he got his head through, a man shot 
  at him. The bullet glanced off the helmet with 
  a deafening impact. Doc lunged on through. 
  The man who had fired turned white 
  and put up his hands. Maybe he was yellow. 
  Possibly the unearthly apparition which Doc 
  made in the helmet got the fellow’s goat. The 
  bronze man did look like something from 
  some sinister astral plane. 
  Altogether, they were not a brave 
  crowd. Typical crooks. A few blasts from the 
  machine pistols, a threat to use gas, and they 
  threw down their guns. 
  Doc assigned Ham the job of freeing 
  Hill and Monk, only to discover, a bit later, 
  that Ham had untied Hill, but was standing 
  over Monk, sneering and reciting a choice 
  history of what he contended had been 
  Monk’s ancestors. 
  It took Renny, Johnny and Long Tom 
  to hold Monk off Ham when he was finally 
  untied. 
  It was their quaint way of showing 
  they were glad to see each other alive. 
   
   
  GETTING 
  information 
  out 
  of 
  reluctant subjects was a frequent need with 
  Doc Savage. He had developed various 
  methods. They began mildly and became 
  more scientific. 
  The first treatment worked with their 
  captives. It consisted of putting Monk in a 
  room with them and shutting the door. Monk 
  was not through explaining in detail what he 
  was going to do to them when they started 
  talking. 
  As the prisoners said, what was the 
  profit in holding out? They had been caught. 
  And they were only hired men. They did not 
  belong to the Oklahoma mob, did not even 
  know what the Oklahoma crowd was after. 
  They called their employers—whom they 
  cursed heartily—the Oklahoma crowd. 
  Altogether, Doc got but one piece of 
  information. “Who is the leader of the other 
  mob?” he asked. “Enoch Andershott,” they 
  said. “That’s the name they used, anyhow.” 
  “I ain’t surprised,” old Reservoir Hill 
  growled. 
   
   
  Chapter X 
  RED MYSTERY 
   
  DOC SAVAGE left the prisoners at a 
  Cleveland hospital. They were drugged, each 
  in a stupor which would last until the bronze 
  man got around to calling for them. Later, 
  they would be consigned to a secret 
  institution which Doc maintained for curing 
  criminals of crooked tendencies by a brain 
  operation and a course of training. 
  Johnny did not arrive in Tulsa with 
  them. He had dropped out of sight. The 
  others did not know where. But they 
  suspected Johnny had remained behind to 
  keep an eye on the prisoners in the hospital. 
  They were not sure about this. It was just a 
  guess. 
  When 
  old 
  Reservoir 
  Hill 
  had 
  suggested that Johnny had remained to 
  watch the crooks who had tried to turn an old 
  submarine into a profitable hideout at so 
  much per guest, Doc neglected to deny it. 
  A newsboy was crying a paper at the 
  Tulsa airport. It sounded as if it were big 
  
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  32 
  news. Monk bought a paper, glanced at the 
  headlines, started, and handed it to the 
  bronze man: 
   
  OUTLAW TANT MEN FOUND 
  TWO BODIES STRANGELY MANGLED 
   
  The heads and shoulders of two men 
  were found in Mohawk Park this morning. 
  Police have tentatively identified the bodies 
  as “Muck” Orst and Lee “Leaping” Ketchum, 
  two bad actors belonging to the mysterious 
  Tomahawk Tant outlaw mob. Identification 
  was difficult. 
  Parts of the torsos, arms and legs of 
  the victims were missing. There was a 
  mysterious substance resembling common 
  lubricating grease under the body fragments. 
  Police refuse to explain what the 
  greasy material is. 
   
  Old Reservoir Hill whistled softly 
  when Monk read this aloud over Doc’s 
  shoulder. 
  Monk grunted, “Queer business, huh! 
  I wonder just what is goin’ on down here?” 
  Reservoir Hill made a snarling noise. 
  “Enoch Andershott can explain it, I 
  bet!” he growled. “I’ll take you to where he 
  lives.” 
  Doc dropped big-fisted Renny off 
  downtown, 
  requesting, 
  “Pick 
  up 
  what 
  information you can on the general situation 
  here. The newspapers would be a good bet.” 
   
   
  ENOCH ANDERSHOTT and his 
  partner, Alonzo Cugg, shared a home, it 
  seemed. Both lived there when in Tulsa. It 
  was a mansion. Old English style. And 
  everything had been done to carry out the 
  impression of the surroundings being a slice 
  of old Sussex countryside. 
  “They musta tore down a lotta old 
  barns to get the wood for this thing.” 
  muttered Reservoir Hill. 
  “Old dill pickle!” Monk told him. “Ain’t 
  there any of your fellow men that you love?” 
  “No,” said Reservoir. “And I’d like 
  you to show me anybody that Andershott and 
  Cugg like!” 
  A metal gate across the automobile 
  driveway was closed, but the footgate was 
  open. Doc Savage and the others left their 
  car and walked up the drive. They kept in a 
  compact group without thinking. 
  “We’d be a swell target for a shot 
  gun!” grunted Reservoir Hill 
  Doc Savage tried the door. 
  “It is open,” he said. Then the bronze 
  man called, “Andershott! Cugg!” 
  The quiet of this exclusive residential 
  district—exclusive 
  unless 
  one 
  had 
  the 
  money—made the silence which came from 
  within more impressive. 
  Inside, the house was gloomy. 
  Pictures of oil wells, of drilling rigs, of 
  refineries, of filling stations, of tank trucks, 
  hung on the walls. Over the fireplace in the 
  big library, instead of antlers or a mounted 
  game head, there was an old-fashioned 
  walking-beam. 
  The lights of the chandelier were 
  suspended from the rim of an ancient, huge 
  bullwheel. Strangely enough, even the air 
  seemed to smell of oil, but this was due to 
  the scent of crude oil carried across the 
  Arkansas River from the mammoth refineries 
  in West Tulsa. 
  Long Tom, walking into a room to 
  one 
  side, 
  suddenly 
  emitted 
  a 
  yell. 
  Simultaneously, there was a loud snarling 
  and snapping. 
  Long Tom came flying back, minus 
  almost an entire trousers leg. The huge black 
  dog of Enoch Andershott was in close 
  pursuit. Seizing up a chair, Doc Savage got 
  between the dog and Long Tom. 
  The 
  giant 
  canine, 
  frothing 
  and 
  snarling, leaped at Doc, but the bronze man 
  used the chair as a shield, after the manner 
  of an animal trainer. The dog fell back, tried 
  to get at Monk, then at Reservoir Hill. 
  Doc intercepted it each time. All the 
  while, it showed its huge fangs and kept up a 
  grisly chorus of snarling. 
  “That critter!” Monk gulped, “sure 
  must like man meat!”  
  Long Tom, who had recovered his 
  breath, gasped, “The dog was sniffing at a 
  door! I think there’s something behind it!” 
  They went into the room out of which 
  the dog had chased Long Tom. The dog 
  snarled and slavered and kept its red, evil 
  eyes fierce. 
  “That’s the door,” said Long Tom, 
  pointing. Instantly after he had spoken and 
  pointed, he gave an imitation of a man doing 
  his best to jump out of his skin. 
  “What’s that thing!” he squawled. 
  
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  33 
  What excited him was a puddle of 
  red, jellylike stuff that protruded under the 
  bottom of the door. 
   
   
  LIGHT in the room was none too 
  good, being discolored by tall, stained 
  windows in a corner with about that same 
  greenish tint which starts off putrefaction. 
  The greenish, rough walls had been carefully 
  decorated to give an impression of infinite 
  age, and the result of that effort and the 
  lighting was the feeling of an unreal, 
  dreamland dungeon in which anything might 
  be expected to happen. 
  Had the place possessed a real, an 
  earthy feeling, it would have been easier for 
  common sense to discount the possibility of 
  anything eerie. 
  They stared, as rigid and breathless 
  as so many solidly frozen figures, and they 
  all could see that the red horror on the floor 
  was in motion. It was flowing into the room, 
  coming toward them! 
  “Run!” yelled Reservoir Hill. “It’ll 
  gitcha!” 
  Doc Savage produced an object 
  which he carried in his pocket—a powerful 
  flashlight. Doc planted the beam, which was 
  like a sliver of the sun itself, upon the 
  monstrosity oozing under the door into the 
  room. 
  The huge black dog began to snarl 
  and drool and make sounds of terror. 
  The instant the light was upon the 
  horror flowing under the door, the thing 
  stopped. There was a brief pause. Gradually, 
  the semiliquid red mass began to retract itself 
  under the door. 
  “It’s afraid of bright light!” Monk 
  exploded. 
  “Quick!” Doc Savage rapped. “We’ll 
  chop a piece of the thing off!” 
  The bronze giant hurled forward, and 
  his speed was that of a jungle denizen 
  leaping to the kill. Even while he was in the 
  air, he got a knife out of his pocket, a knife 
  with a spring-snap blade, which opened 
  instantly. 
  His blinding speed was not enough. 
  For the red mass was suddenly gone back 
  under the door. Faster, almost, than the eye 
  could perceive, it went. 
  Doc hit the door, and it was of big 
  mahogany timbers, as solid in its wooden 
  ponderosity as the door of a vault. It was 
  locked. 
  “Blazes!” Monk yelled. “Didja see 
  how quick that thing went! It’s fast as light!” 
   
   
  DOC leaped backward, seized a 
  heavy table, and hurled it at the door. A 
  panel broke out of the door. Doc threw the 
  table again, causing the door to fly open, 
  revealing a room which drawn shades made 
  almost black. 
  They turned on the lights, and the 
  room became so bright it ached their eyes. 
  The big black dog kept behind them and 
  always it snarled and made sounds deep in 
  its chest that were like noises which might be 
  made by some small thing dying. 
  The lighted room was big, with rich 
  wooden panels along the walls, heavy 
  furniture and a deep rug on the floor, and the 
  rug looked as if thousands of fishing worms 
  had crawled over it in battalions, leaving trails 
  of slime. 
  No red, jellylike body could be seen. 
  It was Doc who looked up at the very 
  tall ceiling. The others followed his gaze. 
  Without exception, they started back in 
  horror. The black dog emitted a yammering 
  howl that came as near making their hair 
  stand on end as anything could. 
  “A 
  man—hanging 
  from 
  the 
  chandelier!” Long Tom gulped. 
   
   
  Chapter XI 
  SEIZED 
   
  THE hanging man was big, bony, 
  and his skin was not red alone because of 
  his hanging there, for his complexion was the 
  hearty one of the outdoors. He had an 
  aquiline nose and big eyes. His crumpled 
  morning suit, striped trousers and all, failed 
  to give him a suave appearance. One word 
  described him. Rugged! 
  The hanging man was breathing with 
  difficulty through his nose. 
  Reservoir Hill said loudly, “Too bad! I 
  thought for a minute you’d committed 
  suicide!” 
  “Who is he?” Doc asked. 
  “Enoch Andershott,” said Hill. 
  The man was not hanging by his 
  neck, but by his middle. He was buckled to 
  
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  34 
  the chain of the chandelier by a strip of 
  leather, evidently his belt. 
   
   
   
  “I’m so stiff I can’t move!” he 
  groaned. “Cut me down, somebody!” 
  Doc Savage moved forward, and 
  instantly, there was a snarling and scraping 
  of sharp claws on the floor behind him. 
  “Whitey!” 
  Enoch 
  Andershott 
  shrieked, feebly. “Heel! Stop it!” 
  The giant, ferocious black dog, which 
  had started a charge, skidded to a stop, then 
  slung back, dragging along on its stomach. 
  Enoch Andershott peered at Doc 
  Savage. Andershott was a big man, but he 
  seemed, somehow, dwarfed alongside the 
  bronze man. 
  “They 
  were 
  trying 
  to 
  kill me!” 
  Andershott 
  said, 
  hoarsely. 
  “I 
  don’t 
  understand it! I think they were trying to 
  make it look as if I was guilty of something, 
  and did not want me alive to prove 
  otherwise!” 
  Old Reservoir Hill spat noisily. 
  Andershott continued to look at Doc 
  Savage. Abruptly, he recognized the bronze 
  man. 
  “You’re Doc Savage!” he exploded. 
  “You must be! Where’s my partner, Alonzo 
  Cugg? Have you seen him?” 
  “Is he supposed to be around?” Doc 
  asked. 
   
   
   
   
   
  It was Doc who looked up at the ceiling. The others 
  followed his gaze. Without exception, they started back 
  in horror. 
  “Cugg was here when the red things 
  came,” Andershott said rapidly. “I jumped 
  and hung to the chandelier. I don’t know what 
  happened to Cugg. He fled. The red things 
  stayed on the floor, almost able to reach me. 
  “The last one fled just before you 
  broke down that window—I mean, it went 
  through that window just before you broke 
  down the door.” 
  He pointed at a window. 
  Monk ran to the window, which was 
  open. He looked out over the sun-bathed 
  morning landscape, then scowled at the 
  window sill itself. 
  “Trail of that slime goes out here,” he 
  grunted.  
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  35 
  “There are men,” said Andershott, 
  “who control, at least to some extent, those 
  red things!” 
   
   
  IT must have been a thought that 
  rendered every one in the room silent for a 
  moment. 
  “Men!” Monk exploded. “Guiding that 
  jelly thing!” 
  “Those 
  jelly 
  things,” 
  Andershott 
  corrected. “There was more than one! And I 
  saw them—the men, I mean!” 
  “What’d these guys look like?” Monk 
  yelled. 
  “Their faces were vaguely familiar,” 
  Andershott explained. “But it was a long time 
  before I kinda remembered where I had seen 
  their pictures.” 
  Andershott had been speaking fast, 
  and he paused to catch a breath. 
  “They were outlaw Tomahawk Tant’s 
  men!” he gulped. “I had seen their pictures in 
  the newspapers!” 
  “Tant’s men?” echoed Ham in a 
  surprised voice.  
  Old Reservoir Hill reacted instantly to 
  that.  
  “You’re crazy!” he howled. “They 
  couldn’t have been Tant’s men!” 
  Every one looked at Reservoir Hill. 
  The old man glared, then apparently realized 
  his howled statement had sounded queer, 
  and looked confused. 
  “What I mean is that this dang 
  gollywobbler, Andershott, couldn’t tell the 
  truth if he wanted to!” he yelled. “He’s a 
  natural-born liar. He’s lying now for some 
  reason!” 
  Enoch Andershott drew himself up 
  with some dignity, looked slightly angry for a 
  moment, then shrugged. 
  “This old man,” he said, “has held a 
  fancied grudge against me for years. He is 
  an old man with bile in his soul, and some 
  persons hold the opinion that he is not quite 
  responsible.” 
  “Not respon—crazy, huh!” Reservoir 
  Hill actually jumped up and down in his rage. 
  “I’ll wring your neck, or I hope to be put on a 
  diet of carrots, than which there’s nothing I 
  like less!” 
  Monk told Andershott, “We were told 
  you headed the mob of men who tried to 
  prevent us reaching Oklahoma.” 
  Andershott started. He opened and 
  shut his mouth. 
  “Why—I don’t—maybe—I’ve got it! 
  That is why they tried to kill me! They used 
  my 
  name 
  to 
  guide 
  suspicion 
  from 
  themselves, whoever they are! They wanted 
  to prevent me telling different!” 
  Doc queried, “If you had pictures of 
  the Tomahawk Tant mob, could you identify 
  the men you saw here, guiding these red 
  mobsters?” 
  “I could try,” said Andershott. 
  Ham interposed. “How were they—
  the monsters—guided?” 
  “I don’t know!” snapped Andershott. 
  “I didn’t see!” 
  Doc telephoned the police, and they 
  promised to come at once, bringing such 
  pictures as they had of known Tant badmen. 
  While the officers were on their way, Doc and 
  his men went over the grounds and the 
  Andershott-Cugg mansion. They found no 
  monsters. They found no Cugg, nor no pile of 
  strange-looking grease which might have 
  been a Cugg. 
  The police spread their pictures on a 
  porch table. 
  “There,” said Andershott, pointing. 
  “And there, and there. That’s four of them.” 
  “Have you a picture of Outlaw Tant?” 
  Doc asked the policemen. 
  “Tant is sort of a spook among 
  badmen,” one cop replied. “To tell the truth, 
  we haven’t a picture we’re sure is him. But 
  we have his finger prints.” 
  “Mind letting me have the finger 
  prints?” Doc requested. 
  They didn’t mind. The bronze man 
  pocketed the print card which they gave him. 
  The police heard the story of the 
  attack of the red, jellylike things. 
  “Queer,” they said. “Tant’s men 
  controlling the things! And this morning, two 
  of Tant’s outlaws were found dead, half 
  consumed!” 
  “Probably they were carrying some 
  of the red monsters and the things got loose 
  on them,” suggested Andershott. 
   
   
  THE police gave the premises a 
  thorough going over, and it developed that 
  they were more modern than usual, to the 
  extent that they had an expert chemical 
  analyst who went over the slime on the rugs 
  and on window sills, and even on the lawn 
  
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  36 
  grass outside. The chemist tested this slime 
  to learn what composed it. 
  “Whew!” he gulped, on finishing. 
  “Whew!” 
  “What is it?” Long Tom asked, 
  curiosity on his face. 
  “Digestive juices!” 
  “What?” 
  “Digestive 
  juices!” 
  repeated 
  the 
  police chemist. “Of course, these are 
  infinitely more powerful than those in the 
  human body. But, nevertheless, I can best 
  explain them to the layman by saying they 
  are powerful digestive juices. Of course, to 
  any one with a technical knowledge, I could 
  say they are composed of—” 
  Doc Savage interposed. “There’s no 
  need of going into a lengthy discussion. 
  Digestive juices does cover the stuff.” 
  “Thank you,” said the police chemist, 
  flattered. 
  Long Tom, face bewildered, said, 
  “You mean to stand there and tell us this 
  thing oozes digestive juices through its 
  hide?” 
  No one answered. 
  A 
  policeman, 
  who 
  had 
  been 
  telephoning headquarters, came into the 
  room wearing the look of a man who has just 
  been convinced there really are such things 
  as ghosts. 
  “Listen,” he said, hoarsely. “This 
  thing is getting worse! The jelly devils have 
  been down in the Seminole Field. That’s 
  about forty or fifty miles from Indian Dome 
  Field. 
  They’ve 
  been 
  seen 
  up 
  near 
  Bartlesville, during the night. Somebody near 
  Cushing saw ‘em, or one of ‘em. But that ain’t 
  the worst thing!” 
  He paused and wet his lips. Nobody 
  spoke. 
  “The jelly devils got a drilling crew in 
  the Indian Dome Field,” he said. “It was at a 
  well about three miles from the Sands-
  Carlaw-Hill lease, where the things were first 
  reported. Some men on a near-by lease 
  heard 
  the 
  drilling 
  crew 
  shouting 
  and 
  screaming and came over to investigate. 
  They found a bunch of bodies! It musta been 
  pretty bad!” 
  “What do you mean?” Doc asked. 
  “The 
  bodies 
  were 
  only 
  partly 
  consumed,” said the policeman. “The report 
  said there was that grease stuff where the 
  arms and legs and like were missing, and 
  some of the men were—well, skeletons!” 
  “Were any of the monsters seen?” 
  Doc asked. 
  “Yes,” said the policeman. “But they 
  went away, apparently because of the lights 
  the approaching men carried.” 
  The police left after a time, promising 
  to have a general search made for Alonzo 
  Cugg. 
  Long Tom said, “If you ask me, we’d 
  better find out some way of detecting the 
  presence of these red devil things. I think I 
  can do the job easily with a magnetic 
  capacity balance hook-up.” 
  Enoch Andershott looked at Long 
  Tom, surprised, and demanded, “Who is this 
  chap?” 
  “Major Thomas J. Roberts, one of my 
  aids,” Doc explained. 
  The telephone rang. Doc Savage, 
  happening to be nearest the instrument, lifted 
  the receiver. “Yes?” 
  “This is a filling station attendant on 
  the Sand Sprints road,” said a voice. 
  “Something queer just happened here.” 
   
   
  ENOCH ANDERSHOTT came over. 
  He made no effort to take the receiver from 
  Doc Savage, but put his head close to Doc’s 
  head so that he could hear. Over the wire 
  came three pops, a louder pop. 
  “Go ahead,” Doc directed the station 
  attendant. 
  “All right,” the fellow said. “A coupé 
  just drove into my station for a fill-up and a 
  quart of lube. It had a bit rack on the back, 
  and this bit rack was full of what looked like 
  canvas, maybe an old tent. I thought once I 
  saw the canvas move. 
  “I never said nothing, on account of 
  they might have had a dog or something in 
  there, and anyway, one time last spring I 
  almost got my puss shot off for sticking my 
  nose into a car where some Tant bad boys 
  were ridin’. Them boys just ups with a 
  sawed-off pumpgun and—” 
  “Just what are you trying to tell us?” 
  Doc interposed. 
  “That I found a note on the filling 
  station drive after this coupé with the bit rack 
  went on,” said the attendant. “It was wrapped 
  up in a ten-spot, which is probably the reason 
  I’m callin’ you so quicklike.” 
  “Read the note!” The three pops, the 
  louder pop, came again. 
  
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  37 
  “It says, ‘Tant behind whole thing. It’s 
  worse than anybody thinks yet. They’re 
  taking me to Tant hide-out, thirty miles due 
  north of One Road Cut.’ And it’s signed, 
  ‘Lonny.’ It’s addressed to be telephoned to 
  Mister 
  Enoch 
  Andershott. 
  There’s 
  a 
  postscript on the address which says Mister 
  Andershott will give me another fifty dollars.” 
  “Damned 
  if 
  I 
  will!” 
  growled 
  Andershott. 
  “Then hell with you!” said the 
  attendant. “I always heard you were so stingy 
  you pluck the feathers off the Indians on your 
  pennies before you spend ‘em! I’ve earned 
  the ten-spot, way I figure, so hell with you!” 
  He banged the receiver up, just 
  before the loud pop that was to be expected 
  on the tail end of three lesser popping 
  noises. 
  “Impertinent nobody!” yelled Enoch 
  Andershott. Then, in the same breath, “Come 
  on! We’ve got to save my partner, Alonzo 
  Cugg! He signed that note! Lonny! That’s 
  Cugg!” 
  “Right!” Doc Savage scooped up the 
  telephone book, looked up the number of the 
  afternoon newspaper and put in a call. “A 
  man named Renwick around there?” 
  “Prying around in the morgue, over 
  by the oil editor’s desk,” a voice replied. 
  A moment later, Doc had Renny on 
  the phone and was asking, “Find anything? 
  You’ve been looking up recent developments 
  in the oil fields.” 
  “Well,” replied Renny, slowly, “only 
  thing I’ve seen concerning anybody involved 
  in this is that Enoch Andershott and Alonzo 
  Cugg have been selling their holdings over 
  the period of the last year until now they own 
  hardly anything except the lease in the Indian 
  Dome Field adjoining the Sands-Carlaw-Hill 
  lease.” 
  Enoch Andershott roared, “And why 
  the thunder shouldn’t we conduct our 
  business any way we please?” 
  He had come up behind Doc, and 
  the bronze man had known he was there, but 
  had not given any sign. 
  “Meet us as we pass the newspaper 
  office on the way to Sand Springs road,” Doc 
  directed. 
  Renny met them. 
   
   
  WELL out of Tulsa, past the little city 
  park and the swimming pool and the small 
  bungalow, stood a filling station. It was 
  green, and like thousands of other filling 
  stations owned by a great corporation. 
  Doc drove in, saying, “This is where 
  the call came from.” 
  Monk exploded, “How’d you know?” 
  Doc pointed at a near-by oil well 
  which was pumping. The gasoline engine 
  operating the bullwheel walking beam pump 
  device was one which sputtered three times, 
  then 
  back-fired 
  loudly. 
  Three 
  regular 
  exhausts, then a back-fire, as regular as 
  clockwork. 
  “The sound of that pump came over 
  the telephone,” Doc said. “Driving along the 
  road, I have been listening for it.” 
  The attendant was a lean young 
  man, with a good forehead, eyes and jaw. He 
  peered at them, evidently decided they 
  looked like trouble, and his hands blurred in 
  movement—and were suddenly holding a 
  six-gun. 
  “Since them bad Tant boys got tough 
  last spring, I been practicing the draw and 
  also how to shoot,” he said. “Maybe you’d be 
  so kind as to tell me whatcha want?” 
  “The note,” Doc said. 
  The attendant squinted into the car 
  and seemed to recognize Enoch Andershott, 
  for he said, “Is it a fact that you’re an old 
  meanie to the Indians on your pennies?” 
  Andershott yelled, “I’ll have you fired! 
  You menial!” 
  “If you asked my boss to fire me, 
  he’d laugh so hard they’d have to bandage 
  his ribs,” said the attendant. “My boss knows 
  you.” 
  “The note!” Doc repeated. 
  The attendant snapped, “Ask for it 
  like a gentleman—” and got a look at Doc 
  Savage. He undoubtedly recognized the 
  bronze man, but he did not look abashed. 
  “O. K. My mistake. I’ve heard of you, 
  and I’m for you in a big way.” 
  He handed over the note, and Doc 
  glanced at it. The attendant had read it 
  exactly as it was over the telephone. 
  Doc produced a bill and passed it to 
  the attendant. 
  “I don’t want your money.” The 
  attendant passed the bill back and nodded at 
  Enoch Andershott. “But I’d take his right eye 
  if I got a chance!” 
   
   
  
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  38 
  THEY 
  drove 
  on, 
  leaving 
  the 
  attendant with his six-gun in his hands and a 
  big grin on his face. 
  Old Reservoir Hill fell to chuckling, 
  and finally to laughing, and finally he said, “I 
  think I’ll go to Timbuktu some day!” 
  “Why?” snarled Enoch Andershott. 
  “To see if there’s anybody there who 
  likes you!” 
  Big-fisted Renny got between them, 
  with his extremely long face more dour and 
  sorrowful-looking than usual, as it became 
  when he was secretly tickled. 
  They passed one of the big refineries 
  in Sand Springs, heading for the canyon 
  known as One Road Cut, in the wilder 
  section of the Osage Hills. They were almost 
  abreast of the big refinery gate when old 
  Reservoir Hill barked out a demand. 
  “Stop here!” he shouted. “I got a 
  friend in there who has a dang good 
  repeating rifle in his office all the time. During 
  his spare minutes, he goes over on the bank 
  of the river and practices popping at floating 
  junk.” 
  Doc stopped. Reservoir Hill got out, 
  went through the refinery gate, and out of 
  sight, and the others waited in the car. 
  They waited a long time. 
  Doc sent Monk in to investigate. The 
  homely chemist came back traveling at a wild 
  run, and with an incredulous look in his 
  homely face. 
  “Reservoir 
  Hill 
  skipped!” 
  Monk 
  squeaked excitedly. “He never went in there 
  to borrow no rifle! He just walked through and 
  out the other side!” 
   
   
  Chapter XII 
  BLAST TRAP 
   
  IF Doc Savage was amazed by the 
  unexpected flight of old Reservoir Hill, he 
  gave no sign of it, although it was a striking 
  trait of the bronze man that only on the most 
  unusual occasions did he show any emotion 
  at all. 
  Doc put the car in motion. 
  Andershott yelled, “Ain’t we gonna 
  hunt the old reprobate?” 
  Doc said, “We are hunting your 
  partner, Cugg.” 
  “Of 
  course!” 
  Andershott 
  nodded 
  violently. “Let’s go! To thunder with that 
  stringy old goat, Hill!” 
  Renny, after keeping his chin in his 
  palm for a time, pulled a paper out of his 
  pocket. He tapped it. 
  “Editorial writer in here suggests that 
  some nest of infernal creatures, previously 
  unknown to man, was tapped a mile below 
  the surface of the earth by that drilling oil 
  well,” he said. 
  No one spoke. The car followed the 
  road around steep bluffs, with a river and a 
  railroad below. Doc drove fast when he had a 
  view of the road ahead, but slowed to an 
  ample safety margin on the bad curves. 
  Once they met a huge truck loaded with oil 
  field pipe in the middle of the road. The slow 
  speed saved them. 
  “That nest of strange creatures, a 
  mile-underground theory, was advanced by 
  somebody last night,” Monk said at last. 
  The bluffs became very high over 
  them. Below, fifty feet or so straight down, 
  was the railroad, and running beside that, a 
  giant concrete pipe running part of the time 
  on top of the ground, sometimes on blocks, 
  and sometimes half underground. It was a 
  water 
  main 
  leading 
  from 
  a 
  reservoir 
  somewhere in the Osage. 
  The cliff slid down in the road ahead 
  of the car. 
  The happening was so casual at first 
  as to be ordinary. A huge mass simply 
  settled. Then it fell to pieces, and there was 
  noise, the roar of breaking rock, and the 
  whoop of some kind of explosive. 
  As the stone mass fell to pieces, 
  there was a great gushing of rock dust, and 
  fragments came flying out of the mass, some 
  hopping along the road, playful, innocent-
  looking things until one hit the car, which Doc 
  had almost stopped, and completely wrecked 
  the right-hand front wheel. 
  Andershott made a howling noise. 
  Doc Savage and his aids gave almost no 
  sign, scarcely changing their positions in the 
  crowded sedan. But they knew what had 
  happened. 
  The roar of rock subsided after a 
  moment, although the dust continued to 
  surge in a great gray pall over the mass of 
  stone which had been blasted across the 
  road. 
  “Listen to this!” 
  
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  39 
  The voice came from the top of the 
  cliff. Then something else came from the 
  clifftop. It exploded with a deafening report 
  and dug a considerable hole in the road 
  behind the car. 
  “Dynamite!” Monk gulped. 
  Then the homely chemist poked his 
  incredibly ugly features out of the car window 
  and looked upward to see who had shouted 
  and thrown the dynamite. 
  “Hy’ah, 
  good-lookin’!” 
  called 
  the 
  voice. “Get out of that iron, or we’ll blow you 
  out!” 
  Monk pulled his head in. 
  “The guy answers the description of 
  the one who was in the plane and tried to get 
  Vida Carlaw,” he said. “Yep. It’s one of the 
  mob that finally murdered Vida Carlaw.” 
   
   
  THEY sat very still in the big 
  automobile. It was crowded. Doc cut off the 
  engine, and they could then hear noises 
  made by small bits of rock falling down the 
  mangled cliff face. 
  The 
  voice 
  above 
  yelled, 
  “You 
  honyoks can talk over the weather after you 
  get outta there!” 
  Doc Savage said, “If we do not get 
  out, they will throw more dynamite.” 
  They got out, looked up, and could 
  see rifles peeking over the cliff’s edge at 
  them. A man stood in plain view, with a stick 
  of dynamite in each hand. He wore plain 
  black gloves. 
  “That lad must wear gloves all the 
  time,” Monk grunted. “I’ll bet his finger prints 
  are on file somewhere, and there’s plenty 
  charged agin’ ‘im!” 
  The dust cloud still boiled around the 
  mass of blasted rock. Somewhere beyond 
  the rock slide and its growing cloud of dust, a 
  car horn was honking. A rifle whanged atop 
  the cliff, and the car horn began to blow 
  steadily and horribly. 
  A rope came snaking down the cliff. 
  “Climb it!” the voice above yelled. 
  “Well,” Monk said, “it don’t look like 
  they’re gonna kill us right off the bat. I guess 
  I’ll climb up.” 
  He started up. 
  Then Doc Savage moved. The 
  bronze man had shifted a little apart from the 
  others, and now he whipped into motion, off 
  like a champion sprinter. He had covered 
  some yards before those above began to yell 
  and shoot. From one side to another, he 
  pitched, still covering ground with amazing 
  speed. He dived into the cloud of dust. 
  The dust cloud was very dense, 
  enough so at its most umbrageous point to 
  hide him from those above. Dust would not 
  keep out their bullets, though. Lead tapped 
  fiercely at the broken stone. 
  Doc got a break. Feeling, he came 
  upon a cranny under a great mass of stone 
  which was large enough to protect him from 
  lead. 
  He grasped a great dornick, heaved 
  it so that it went bounding down toward the 
  river, starting a miniature rock slide of its 
  own. 
  “There he goes!” squawled a man on 
  the clifftop, mistaken. 
  Doc writhed into the rock cranny. 
  Bullets chased the rolling rock until the men 
  realized their mistake, then began to hit all 
  about, searching the rock slide. A machine 
  gun, evidently a small hand one, joined in, 
  along with six-shooters and shotguns. The 
  whistle and scream of bullets, the thunder of 
  the reports and their echoes from the cliff, 
  made an ominous syncopation. 
  “We oughta got ‘im by now!” a voice 
  yelled. “Go down an see!” 
  Doc had been waiting for that. He 
  could not wait too long, because the rock 
  dust 
  would 
  settle 
  soon—had 
  settled 
  dangerously already. 
  Easing out of the cranny, Doc felt his 
  way downward. It was a bruising, nerve-
  shattering task, negotiating that mass of rock. 
  He did not follow the slide all the way down, 
  for it would have been impossible to keep 
  from starting rocks rolling. 
  Doc gained the cliff’s edge. He 
  carried in his clothing a silk cord with a 
  grapple hook of collapsible style affixed to 
  one end, and he set the grapple behind the 
  sharp edge of a big boulder, took a chance, 
  and went sliding down the face of the cliff. 
  He landed on the railroad bed, ran, 
  found a culvert, crawled into it, through it and 
  out on the other side, into water that was 
  over his head. 
  The Arkansas River was muddy, and 
  he swam out into it, under water, and came 
  up, projecting only his face, under the roots 
  of a willow tree. He could hear what was 
  happening up on the road. 
   
   
  
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  40 
  THE 
  ambushers 
  had 
  evidently 
  climbed 
  down, 
  and 
  none 
  of 
  Doc’s 
  companions had possessed sufficient agility 
  to make good an escape in the manner of the 
  bronze man. They were probably wise in not 
  attempting it. The ambushers were hunting 
  the rock slide. A profusion of profanity 
  accompanied their efforts. 
  “He ain’t here!” they yelled. 
  Doc Savage furtively left the willow 
  roots where he lay and swam downstream. 
  He had a plan. While they hunted him, he 
  was going to circle, get behind them, and do 
  whatever possible toward rescuing the 
  prisoners. 
  But the man with the black gloves 
  must have recognized that, and he lost no 
  time. The prisoners were rushed up the face 
  of the cliff, and out of sight. They must have 
  had cars hidden on a trail at the clifftop, 
  because Doc could hear the engines. The 
  bronze man scrambled out of the river, 
  through bushes, and raced furiously to 
  intercept the automobiles. 
  He was not successful. The cars 
  sped away in the direction of Tulsa. 
  Doc ran after the machines, not 
  because he expected to overhaul them, but 
  because there had been a house back a 
  short distance, and a telephone wire ran to it. 
  Doc reached the house, found nobody home, 
  broke in, and used the telephone to advise 
  Tulsa police to be on the look-out for the 
  fleeing cars. 
  It was not much of a chance. Doc 
  could 
  not 
  identify 
  the 
  machines 
  by 
  appearance, not having seen them, but he 
  had seen the tracks and, from a vast 
  knowledge of such subjects, named the kind 
  of tires on the cars. He left money to pay for 
  the damage he had done in breaking into the 
  house, and went back to the clifftop. 
  He looked over the vicinity, noting 
  particularly 
  such 
  footprints 
  as 
  were 
  discernible. Then he descended the cliff to 
  the car which had honked, and which was 
  still honking, although weaker, as if the 
  battery were running down. It was a motor 
  horn, and sounded dreary. 
   
   
  THE filling station attendant who had 
  boasted 
  of 
  his 
  shooting 
  practice 
  was 
  slumped across the wheel, so that he held 
  the button depressed with one shoulder. He 
  was holding both hands to his neck, and 
  when he saw Doc Savage, words came out 
  of him that were half vibrations of vocal cords 
  and half bubblings. 
  “You—great guy—read a lot—’bout 
  you,” he said, and It was with difficulty that 
  even Doc understood the words. 
  “Followed you—figured—might help. 
  Wasn’t I—the big ninny!” 
  Doc Savage said, quietly, “I like your 
  style, young man.” 
  The lips twisted a smile, almost 
  imperceptibly, under the red film that was 
  over them. 
  “I’ll tell—Saint Peter—you said that—
  and it—oughta be enough.” He stopped and 
  shut his eyes tightly. “Something to tell—you. 
  I figured—it out—after you left.” 
  “Yes,” Doc Savage said. 
  “That—damn note—they left it—on 
  purpose. I hope—that information—helps. 
  Men in—front seat of car—knew about note.” 
  “It helps,” Doc Savage said, “a great 
  deal.” 
  The young man kept his eyes shut 
  while he finished dying. 
   
   
  Chapter XIII 
  FLIGHT 
   
  ONE ROAD CUT was a canyon, and 
  It had gotten its name back in the days when 
  Oklahoma pioneers made their own clothes 
  and drove ox teams, and used the handiest 
  level going, more often than not a gravel 
  creek bed, for a road. 
  The bottom of One Road Cut had 
  been used as a thoroughfare, and at this 
  point was wide enough for only one team of 
  oxen at a time, hence the name. 
  Thirty miles north, the note had said 
  Outlaw Tant’s men were taking Alonzo Cugg. 
  The unfortunate filling station attendant had 
  said the note had been purposefully lost—the 
  men in the front seat had known about it. 
  That meant Tant’s men had known the note 
  was being left. Therefore, it was a fake. 
  A fake to lead Doc Savage and his 
  companions into the trap on the cliff road 
  perhaps? 
  It would seem a logical suspicion, 
  then, that there was no outlaw Tant hang-out 
  north thirty miles from One Road Cut. 
  But that was wrong. The hang-out 
  was there. A ranch, old Western style, with 
  
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  41 
  corrals, hay barns, bunk house and ranch 
  house of logs, and a very tall windmill and a 
  water tank beside it. 
  There was no water in the tank; the 
  staves were old and some had fallen; there 
  had not been water in the tank for years; nor 
  did it look as if the windmill pump had 
  pumped for an equally long time. 
  Yet there was a well-worn footpath 
  from the windmill tower to the bunk house. A 
  crude awning of boards had been rigged on 
  top of the windmill tower for a self-evident 
  reason. 
  The windmill tower had been used as 
  look-out point. No doubt the terrain could be 
  seen for miles by a man with a good pair of 
  field glasses. 
  Doc Savage did not call out. They 
  would not have answered, anyway. He 
  merely 
  watched 
  the 
  place, 
  listened, 
  discerned no sign of life, then moved 
  forward. 
  There was no one around. 
  Those who had been there recently 
  had lived well, for the empty liquor bottles 
  bore expensive labels, and the few suits left 
  hanging were costly and tailored. They had 
  dressed their women with a free hand, too, 
  judging from the frocks left behind, and there 
  were rare perfumes on the dressing tables. 
  Everywhere was confusion. They 
  had taken suitcases, and had rifled through 
  trunks, probably for the more valuable stuff. 
  Garments too bulky, or not so necessary, 
  had been thrown aside. A safe was open in 
  the ranch house. 
  There were no guns on the place, 
  but rags scattered here and there smelled of 
  oil and gunpowder, and there were quite a 
  few wads that had obviously been pulled 
  through gun barrels by ramrods. Empty 
  cartridge boxes were scattered about. 
  Doc took finger prints. He found 
  enough to be sure that the Tant outlaw mob 
  had used the place for a hang-out. 
  The outlaws had fled quite recently, 
  in a great hurry. They had taken automobiles 
  to the east, toward Pawhuska, and by now, 
  must be out of the Osage. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE left the way he had 
  come, afoot, traveling at an easy run which 
  covered ground at, all told, a speed which a 
  car could not have exceeded any great 
  amount through terrain as rough and nearly 
  impassable as this. 
  The bronze man made a telephone 
  call over the first instrument which he found, 
  one situated in a pumping station some miles 
  out of Pawhuska. He called a number. The 
  noise of a mechanical, musical device was 
  audible the instant the distant receiver came 
  down, 
  and 
  a 
  voice 
  said, 
  “Fujiyama 
  Roadhouse.” 
  “Snook Loggard,” Doc requested. 
  “Lemme talk to ‘im.” 
  The bronze man’s usual cultured 
  tones had vanished, and he had assumed 
  the voice of a typical tough guy. 
  “Who wants to talk to Snook?” the 
  distant voice asked. 
  “What’s it to you?” Doc growled. “A 
  pal. Tell ‘im it’s a little cardinal.” 
  “A what?” 
  “Ne’rmind! Snook’ll get it!” 
  “Well, I’ll see if anybody named 
  Snook is here,” said the voice, obviously 
  belonging to the roadhouse proprietor. “I ain’t 
  never heard the name. 
  A few moments passed. 
  A harsh voice over the telephone 
  said, “Well? This ain’t Snook, but I’ll take a 
  word to ‘im.” 
  “Hello, Snook,” Doc Savage said. 
  “Huh! It’s you. ‘Sall right, then. I 
  figured it might be a badge with a guy 
  fastened to it. Whatsa wrong? Why ain’t you 
  in St. Louis? Hah! This guy said you was a 
  little cardinal wantin’ to talk to me! I gitcha 
  now. The St. Louis ball club—the Cards—
  you from St. Louis—sure, sure!” 
  Doc Savage growled, “I’m just tippin’ 
  yuh, pallo. St. Louis ain’t gonna be safe for 
  mamma Snook’s boy for a dog’s age.” 
  Snook chuckled, unconcerned. “Say, 
  how long does a dog live, anyway?” 
  “It depends on how the dog lives,” 
  Doc rasped, dryly. “But you better cut St. 
  Louis off your visitin’ list for a while. Better 
  make a connection here.” 
  “Don’t worry about me,” said Snook. 
  “I’m doin’ right well by myself.” 
  “O. K., then,” Doc growled. 
  “Thanks for callin me,” Snook said, 
  coarsely. “I’ll remember you to the next 
  lawman I see.” 
  He hung up laughing. 
   
   
  
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  42 
  SNOOK had something wrong with 
  one side, it appeared from the way he 
  walked. He swung along in particularly 
  grotesque 
  fashion, 
  with 
  his 
  left 
  side 
  seemingly 
  almost 
  inoperative. 
  Yet 
  he 
  managed to travel at a good speed. 
  He was bowed over to one side by 
  his trouble, with his face twisted out of shape, 
  and he was a particularly uninviting specimen 
  as a whole. 
  He had a skin the color of a pine 
  plank that had lain for years in the weather, 
  and his mouth seemed full of gold teeth. His 
  eyes rarely met any one’s but when they did, 
  there was something about them that made 
  the other Individual turn his own gaze aside. 
  Snook lurched in to the bar, where 
  stood half a dozen men who looked as if they 
  were waiting for something and didn’t know 
  what—or such best described their perpetual 
  alertness and nervousness. Out of Snook’s 
  pocket came a big bill off a bigger roll. 
  “It’s all on me again!” he shouted, 
  boastfully. “Best the house has got!” 
  The proprietor picked up the bill, 
  eyed it, and blinked. It was a century. 
  “This hot?” he asked, sharply. 
  “Not by a damn sight!” growled 
  Snook. “Say—you too good to take my 
  money? Maybe you’d like to do somethin’ 
  about it, huh?” 
  The 
  proprietor 
  leaned 
  casually 
  against the bar. This put his hand on a 
  sawed-off shotgun lying there. 
  On the other side of the bar, a man 
  known as “Cackle,” a lean fellow with a face 
  remarkably like that of a chicken, slapped the 
  bar and said loudly: 
  “What the hell! This is too early in the 
  morning to get all het up! Bartender, I think I 
  heard the hen cackle. Will you see if she 
  didn’t lay me an eggnog?” 
  That eased the friction, and every 
  one drank, and the talk turned to horse 
  racing. It seemed there was a track wire 
  upstairs, which accounted for the presence of 
  the men this early in the morning. 
  A bit later, the man called Cackle 
  drew the proprietor aside. 
  “What was that telephone call to 
  him?” he asked, furtively. “You listened in on 
  the extension, didn’t you?” 
  “Yeah,” said the proprietor. “The 
  hombre who called him was some bird 
  tipping him off that the law wanted him bad in 
  St. Louis, and he’d better stay clear of that 
  burg.” 
  “You think he’s O. K.?” demanded 
  Cackle. 
  “Maybe. But I don’t like his snotty 
  manner, and if he gets tough with me again, 
  I’ll fix him up. The first shell in that shotgun is 
  tear gas, and the second is rock salt, and 
  when I give ‘em both, they remember—” 
  “Did you notice his left hand when 
  you put your hand on that shotgun?” Cackle 
  asked casually. 
  “Hell, no! I was watching his snaky 
  eyes. You can tell from a man’s eyes when—
  ” 
  “You better watch his hand,” Cackle 
  chuckled. “He had it full of as mean a looking 
  derringer as I’ve seen in years. Keeps it up 
  his sleeve, on that bad side, and gets it out 
  by drawing his arm up inside in a way you 
  don’t hardly notice.” 
  Cackle left a deeply 
  thoughtful 
  roadhouse proprietor, and went over to the 
  side of Snook. 
  “I think you and me has got some 
  business,” Cackle said. 
   
   
  THE two men retired to a corner of 
  the room where no one was near, and they 
  could be sure no one came near, and put 
  their heads together. They made a perfect-
  looking pair of villains. 
  No one, least of all the erudite 
  college professors with whom he had once 
  worked, would have recognized the mean-
  mannered, boastful, vicious-looking Snook as 
  the eminent archaeologist and geologist and 
  Doc Savage aid, William Harper Littlejohn. 
  Cackle certainly had no suspicion. 
  “You’re Snook Loggard from St. 
  Louis, ain’t you?” asked Cackle. 
  Johnny, playing the tough Snook to 
  perfection, leaned back. He happened to 
  know the real Snook Loggard was in an Ohio 
  penitentiary, under an assumed name. 
  Snook didn’t know the authorities knew his 
  identity, but he would find it out when they 
  got ready to release him, for a policeman 
  would be waiting to arrest him and take him 
  back to St. Louis, where he probably would 
  be hanged. 
  “I ain’t sayin’ who I am and who I 
  ain’t,” Johnny said. “Why?” 
  “I got a connection you might be 
  interested in.” 
  
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  43 
  “Yeah?” 
  “Tant.” 
  Johnny registered a badman greatly 
  impressed by the name of a worse badman. 
  He leaned forward. 
  “Look, pal,” he said. “I blow down 
  here and hang around for just such a chance 
  as this, see, I didn’t expect it to come so 
  soon.” 
  “Tant is recruiting men,” the other 
  said simply. 
  “Somethin’ up?” 
  “Yeah. Pretty big stuff. Tant needs all 
  the men he can get. And there’s a catch to 
  this.” 
  “Yeah? What?” 
  “This ain’t a job. This is a fight!” 
  Cackle stopped and moistened his lips. “It’s a 
  fight to the death between Tant and another 
  outfit!” 
  Johnny said, “O. K. I come in. But I’ll 
  expect to get my cut on what comes in after 
  this is settled.” 
  They shook hands and had a drink, 
  and set them up to the crowd. Cackle and 
  Johnny got in a car and drove off. They 
  stopped in a restaurant in Tulsa for luncheon. 
  Johnny, under pretense of going to 
  the washroom, reached a telephone. He 
  called a number which he was to call 
  whenever he wanted to get in touch with Doc 
  Savage. 
  By 
  luck, 
  Doc 
  answered 
  the 
  telephone himself. 
  “Doc,” said Johnny. “I’ve succeeded 
  in getting into the Tant outlaw mob, just 
  about. I’m on my way to their hide-out. I’ll tip 
  you off later about where it is.” 
  “You have no idea yet?” Doc asked. 
  “I couldn’t even make a guess where 
  Tant is,” Johnny replied. “I’ll get in touch with 
  you, as soon as I do. How are things going?” 
  Doc told him about the disaster on 
  the cliff road, ending, “All of our crowd but 
  yourself and myself are now prisoners.” 
  “I’ll be superamalgamated!” Johnny 
  said, hoarsely. 
  When Johnny hung up, he was so 
  stunned by the news that Monk, Ham, Renny 
  and Long Tom had been seized, that his 
  usual alert eye was dulled. He failed to make 
  an observation which would have avoided a 
  great deal of future trouble. 
  Cackle, the outlaw, was standing 
  adjacent to the telephone booth, and had 
  overheard every word that Johnny had said. 
   
   
  JOHNNY returned to the dining 
  mom. Cackle stepped from the place where 
  he had been secreted, slid out of the side 
  door of the restaurant kitchen without Johnny 
  seeing him, and ran to their car, which they 
  had parked in an alley in violation of fire 
  regulations which were not enforced anyway. 
  The built-in trunk at the rear of the 
  car proved to be the container for a compact 
  short-wave radio transmitter and receiver. It 
  operated on telephone, or voice. 
  The voice which finally came over 
  the air to the headset on Cackle’s ears was 
  crisp. “What is it?” 
  “Chief, I’ve been kidding this hombre 
  called Snook,” said Cackle. “I told him I was 
  enlisting him in Tant’s outlaw mob. The poor 
  goop swallowed it. He thinks I’m one of 
  Tant’s men.” 
  “I don’t like the chances you’re 
  taking!” retorted the other. 
  “Wait and listen to this! This Snook is 
  one of Doc Savage’s men! He just reported 
  to Doc Savage that he was on his way to 
  Tant’s hang-out, and would report its location 
  to Doc Savage!” 
  The explosion of profanity which 
  came out of the telephone receiver caused 
  Cackle to wrinkle his eyes. 
  “Do you think Doc Savage suspects 
  the truth?” asked the voice at the other radio 
  transmitter. 
  “Suspects that Tant is not behind this 
  thing at all? Naw, he ain’t got an inkling of it!” 
  “Has he any idea of what we’re after, 
  and why we’re trying to lay the blame onto 
  Tant?” 
  “I dunno. I don’t think so.” 
  Had bony Johnny, the accomplished 
  actor, heard this, he would have bowed his 
  head in shame and decided to give up the 
  pursuit of excitement and go back to teaching 
  the youth of the United States that a pyrite is 
  a native compound rock containing metals, 
  and not a fellow with a cutlass in his teeth. 
  Johnny thought he was in the 
  company of a Tant outlaw. But it seemed the 
  badman in question was a member of 
  another mob, which was engaged in pointing 
  suspicion at Tant. 
  The leader of this mysterious other 
  band was asking, “Does Doc Savage know 
  what the red monsters are?” 
  “I tell you, I don’t know what he 
  knows, chief,” the man called Cackle replied. 
  
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  44 
  “All I know is that I got suspicious of this guy 
  Snook, thought at first he was a Tant man, 
  then got the suspicion he might be a Doc 
  Savage man.” 
  The other voice said, after a pause, 
  “I think we can make use of this. We’ll trick 
  this Savage aid into trapping his boss.” 
  A long stream of command followed. 
   
   
  CACKLE returned to Johnny via the 
  front door of the restaurant. He was carrying 
  a newspaper. 
  “Went out to got a paper,” he said. 
  “Waited a few minutes, so as to grab the 
  latest edition.” 
  Johnny glanced at the paper. 
   
  FILLING STATION MAN SHOT 
  FOUND IN CAR NEAR ROCK SLIDE 
  Police Still Investigating Mystery 
  Rock Blown On Road 
   
  That was all the police had given the 
  newspaper reporters so far. 
  They went out and got in the car. 
  Cackle pulled out a map, not a road map, but 
  one of the type used by oil men, an 
  accurately surveyed map from which the 
  most exact positions can be secured. 
  Cackle pointed. 
  “There,” he said, “Is where the boss, 
  Tant, is right now.” 
  They drove out of town, east, then 
  north, then east again, and passed the 
  airport. Beyond, Cackle drove into a filling 
  station, saying, “Gotta get her filled up.” 
  While 
  the 
  gasoline 
  was 
  being 
  pumped in, and oil and tires checked, Cackle 
  roamed into a near-by orchard and began to 
  finger over worm-eaten fruit in search of an 
  apple that looked worth consuming, 
  Johnny took the bait. He slid out of 
  the car, scuttled into the filling station and 
  telephoned Doc Savage. 
  He gave Doc the exact location 
  pointed out by Cackle as the whereabouts of 
  Outlaw Tant. 
  “Be there shortly,” Doc Savage said. 
  Johnny was sitting innocently in the 
  car when Cackle returned. They drove on, 
  and covered about two miles when Cackle 
  pointed abruptly and said, “There’s one of 
  our hang-outs, too.” 
  There was nothing. It was a gag, an 
  old one, but the old ones are sometimes 
  best. Johnny looked, and never knew about 
  the blackjack which Cackle swung, until he 
  figured it out hours later, after he regained 
  consciousness. 
  Cackle looked at the senseless 
  figure 
  of 
  the 
  gaunt 
  geologist 
  and 
  archaeologist. Then Cackle pocketed his 
  blackjack. 
  “The great Doc Savage’s aids!” he 
  sniffed. “Just so much gravy! That’s what!” 
  He tied Johnny, gagged him, then 
  drove on. He began laughing to himself. 
  “The chief is sure slick!” he chuckled. 
  “Nobody even knows what we’re doing until 
  it’s almost done, and then this Tant gent gets 
  the blame!” 
   
   
  Chapter XIV 
  MASTERMIND 
   
  DOC 
  SAVAGE 
  evidenced 
  no 
  unusual haste after he received Johnny’s 
  call—the call which Johnny had been 
  unknowingly tricked into making, and which 
  was to lead Doc Savage into a trap. 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  had 
  been 
  telephoning oil field lease brokers, the 
  gentlemen known locally as “lease robbers,” 
  and possibly misnamed, because there were 
  those among them as honest and upright as 
  any businessman. 
  “Are there any leases being sold in 
  the Indian Dome Field today?” Doc asked. 
  “You mean the field where them 
  damn man-eating things escaped through a 
  casing?” the broker asked. 
  “That is the field,” Doc admitted. 
  “There’s been some more attacks by 
  the man-eating devils up there,” said the 
  broker. “Drilling crews, pumpers, and even 
  operators are beginning to get scared of the 
  place. Almost everybody will clear out if 
  there’s many more attacks. That’ll cause a lot 
  of leases to be offered for sale, because 
  nobody wants a field where no telling what 
  time something out of the ground’ll eat you.” 
  “Any leases sold in the Indian Dome 
  Field today?” Doc repeated. 
  “Yeah. One. No, wait a minute! Two! 
  One early, and one just a minute ago. They 
  sold very cheap, because the men who 
  owned them got scared. One had a brother 
  killed by the red, jellylike devils last night. 
  You know, that drilling crew that was about 
  
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  45 
  half eaten up by the monsters in the Indian 
  Dome Field last night. That lease was one 
  that was sold, on account of the brother 
  didn’t want anything more to do with it. He 
  got the big jitters and the willies and—” 
  “Who bought it?” Doc asked, sharply. 
  The lease broker evidently looked 
  the name up. 
  “The Best Bet Oil Corporation,” he 
  said. 
  “Who owns it?” 
  “Nobody seems to know. Now if you 
  want to get some leases cheap—” 
  Doc Savage seemed to consider for 
  a moment 
  “Listen,” he said, “this is Clark 
  Savage, Jr.” 
  “Is that supposed to mean something 
  to me?” the broker asked. 
  “Doc Savage.” 
  The 
  broker 
  must 
  have 
  choked 
  slightly. “That’s different!”  
  Doc said, “I am making a standing 
  offer for any lease in the Indian Dome Field. I 
  will pay one thousand dollars more than any 
  other offer made for any lease. Understand, I 
  make no offer for any lease myself. But when 
  an offer is made, I will go it one thousand 
  dollars better. See that the word gets around, 
  will you?” 
  “Will I!” exploded the broker. “Say, I’ll 
  cut my commission to five per cent! But 
  what’s the idea? You going into oil production 
  in the mid-West in a big way?” 
  Doc Savage said, “I am trying to 
  prevent one of the most gigantic extortion 
  schemes and steals ever attempted to be 
  perpetrated upon the oil industry. It is just 
  starting now. If it can be nipped in the bud, 
  now is the time to do it” 
  “Good night!” yelled the broker. “Give 
  me more details—” 
  Doc Savage hung up on him, then 
  called New York City by long-distance 
  telephone, to arrange for financing his 
  purchase of oil leases, if any. 
  Then he rented an automobile and 
  drove east, then north, heading for the spot 
  which 
  Johnny 
  had 
  been 
  tricked 
  into 
  describing to him as the hide-out of 
  Tomahawk Tant. 
   
   
  THE region of Oklahoma popularly 
  designated as the Osage is that section of 
  the State, north and central, which takes in 
  the original Osage Indian reservation and 
  some adjacent territory. The Osage is 
  nothing to look at. To the eye, it is just red 
  oak brush and hills that are not very 
  impressive. 
  But it is also one of the most noted 
  hang-outs in the United States for outlaws. 
  The fact that the era of the automobile, 
  airplane and radio had arrived had made little 
  change. For an automobile is of no use 
  without roads, a plane of no use where there 
  is no place to land, and a radio, of course, 
  cannot catch a two-gun badman. 
  Doc Savage ran his rented car into a 
  red oak thicket about a mile off the paving, 
  on the side road he was to follow. He 
  continued afoot. Not on the road, either. He 
  kept well clear of the rutted thoroughfare, and 
  as he ran, his stride was as springy, his 
  breathing as easy, as ever, although he had 
  already run many miles that day. 
  From his manner it was plain that he 
  was looking for an ambush along the road. 
  A herd of cattle galloped over a hill 
  ahead. That warned Doc. He could tell by the 
  way the cattle gathered, that they had been 
  scared by something, and the fact that they 
  did not go back curiously indicated they had 
  been scared by men. 
  They had been. The men lay behind 
  a small bush, and they had mounted a big 
  army-style machine gun to cover the road. 
  Johnny, still bound and gagged, lay a 
  short distance behind them, and they—there 
  were six men—were holding a conference. 
  Doc, who was a skilled lip reader, trained his 
  compact, powerful telescope upon the group. 
  They were squabbling over what to do with 
  Johnny. 
  “He’ll kick up a fuss and warn Doc 
  Savage when he comes down this road!” a 
  man was declaring, “I say put some lead in 
  him where it’ll keep him quiet.” 
  “Don’t be silly!” growled the chicken-
  faced Cackle. 
  “We ain’t sure this mug called Doc 
  Savage and told him the hide-out was out 
  this way. If he didn’t, we gotta make him do 
  it. How’ll he do it if he’s dead?” 
  That seemed to be a hard question 
  to answer. They argued about it, and in the 
  meantime, Doc Savage drew closer. 
  Six of them! His hands were empty 
  as he crouched in the bottom of a gully, 
  twenty feet behind them. He set his throat 
  muscles in a peculiar fashion, and his lips 
  
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  46 
  became positioned. A ventriloquist would 
  have known what was going to happen. 
  “Hands up!” yelled a voice from the 
  road. “You men are covered!’ 
  It was doubtful if a single one of the 
  men suspected that the voice was not 
  coming from the road. As ventriloquism, it 
  was very good, and it should have been, 
  considering the hundreds of hours which the 
  bronze man had practiced under some of the 
  most skilled of living ventriloquists. 
  They knew something was wrong 
  when Doc hit them. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE’S father, in training 
  him from childhood for his unique career, had 
  taken into account the fact that he would 
  many times have to fight empty-handed 
  against odds. For years, even as a small 
  child, he had been put through a daily rough-
  and-tumble brawl with larger opponents, 
  several of them, with the penalty for 
  inefficiency a severe lacing. 
  The men Doc had been pitted 
  against in these practice bouts had been paid 
  a bonus for any blows they could land. 
  Naturally, they had waded in. 
  The result of the training was now 
  evident, as Doc whipped to the attack. The 
  first two were easy. They weren’t expecting 
  anything. Two fist blows disposed of them. 
  Doc reached for another one. He 
  ducked, got clear. Not so good. The man at 
  the machine gun was trying to swivel its 
  muzzle around. Doc jumped, tripped him. 
  In an instant, the bronze giant and 
  the four men were a tangled, boiling mass of 
  arms and legs, out of which came such 
  words as “Hep!” “Now!” “No, hell!” and “Get 
  ‘im!” This was followed with some cusswords, 
  indicating what the four of them thought of 
  the big one they were fighting. 
  Johnny was acting. He flailed into the 
  mêlée. Bound and gagged, he could not do 
  much, except trip combatants. He did that. A 
  man got out a gun. Johnny kicked with both 
  bound feet. The gun sailed away. 
  Doc was fighting three now. One had 
  had his stomach stepped on. Then it was 
  two. 
  The 
  remaining 
  pair 
  were 
  easy, 
  compared to what the first of the fight had 
  been. Johnny, meanwhile, had banged the 
  other man senseless against a rock. 
  Doc 
  Savage 
  went 
  around 
  and 
  whacked each of the six men on the jaw to 
  make sure he would remain unconscious for 
  some time. 
  Johnny, when he was ungagged and 
  untied, gulped, “I’ll be superamalgamated. Is 
  my physiognomy rubescent! In other words, 
  is my face red!” 
  “They 
  would 
  have 
  killed 
  you 
  eventually,” Doc told him dryly. 
  “Which is no doubt what I deserved 
  for letting myself get taken by a trick as 
  simple as they used!” Johnny groaned. “Doc, 
  they kidded me along! I’ll never live this 
  down!” 
  The bronze man asked, “Have they 
  really a headquarters up here?” 
  Johnny shook his head. “That was all 
  a trick to kid me, and to trap you. The only 
  headquarters, and it’s not their main one, that 
  I heard about, is that Fujiyama Roadhouse, 
  near Tulsa.” 
  “We’ll try that,” Doc said. 
  “They named the place after the 
  Japanese volcano,” Johnny said. “It sure 
  lives up to its name!” 
  Doc Savage now went to the 
  prisoners and administered to each a drug 
  mixture 
  which 
  would 
  extend 
  their 
  unconsciousness indefinitely—until they were 
  given an antidote chemical to awaken them. 
  “Don’t you want to question them?” 
  Johnny demanded, forgetting his big words in 
  his surprise. 
  “No,” Doc said. “We’ll start them East 
  immediately.” 
  Johnny swallowed several times. A 
  tremendous truth had hit him. 
  Doc Savage already knew all he 
  needed to know about the mystery of the 
  weird monsters from the depths of the earth! 
   
   
  THE six men had had a car 
  concealed near by. Doc and Johnny used it 
  to carry the six men to a Tulsa hospital, 
  where they were placed in a ward to be left 
  alone. Then Doc sent a telegram to an 
  address in New York. 
  The telegram merely stated that half 
  a dozen patients were in the hospital for 
  treatment, but it would have strange results. 
  Shortly, a solemn-faced man would be flying 
  to take the six East by air. 
  In New York they would drop from 
  sight, eventually to wind up in a fantastic 
  place, the unique “criminal-curing college” 
  which Doc Savage maintained in up-State 
  
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  47 
  New York. This amazing institution, its 
  existence entirely unknown to the outside 
  world, was operated by surgeons and 
  psychologists whom Doc had trained. 
  A criminal, on entering, first had his 
  brain operated upon, so that his past memory 
  was completely wiped out, after which he 
  underwent a course of training calculated to 
  instill in him the ideals of an upright citizen; 
  but perhaps more important, he was taught 
  how to make a good living, so that there 
  would be no pressing temptation later. 
  No criminal who had ever graduated 
  from this “college” had ever returned to 
  crime. 
  The 
  Fujiyama 
  Roadhouse 
  was 
  impressive by night, with a lot of neon lights 
  around it. The front was fixed up with neon 
  light tubes to represent a volcano, and every 
  few minutes the volcano erupted. 
  There were Negroes in white coats 
  to open the doors of cars and hold their 
  hands out for tips. Gambling was wide open 
  in the place, and the dance floor was popular 
  with a certain class. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE and Johnny looked 
  the scene over from a brush clump, a 
  hundred yards distant. 
  “If this was a roadhouse in the East, 
  we could walk right in and nobody would 
  have nerve enough to start anything,” Johnny 
  said. “But some of these Oklahoma lads 
  don’t know when to behave!” 
  Johnny habitually used small words 
  when in the company of Doc Savage. 
  Probably that, more than anything, indicated 
  the gaunt archaeologist and geologist’s 
  admiration for the bronze giant. 
  “Queer!” Johnny remarked. “I thought 
  that was Tant’s outlaw crowd hang-out! Now 
  it turns out it’s some band trying to frame 
  something on Tant!” 
  Johnny eyed Doc. He hoped the 
  bronze man would volunteer his opinion of 
  the solution of the mystery. Doc didn’t. 
   
   
  Chapter XV 
  RAID 
   
  THERE was a great deal of bright 
  light around the Fujiyama, and one had to 
  know that the place was a hangout for men 
  who preferred to see the law coming, to 
  realize the purpose of so much light. 
  Half an hour had passed when a 
  plain-looking car, of a make noted for its 
  speed, drove into the grounds and to the 
  rear, where it parked. It was a coupé, and the 
  door opened just as a Negro attendant 
  arrived. 
  Bound hand and foot, a gag in his 
  mouth, tall and bony Johnny was shoved out 
  of the coupé. Another man in a tan topcoat 
  and a low-yanked hat was behind Johnny, 
  carrying him with one arm and holding a 
  revolver with the other. 
  “Things have gone wrong!” the man 
  with the gun said, sharply. “Help me get ‘im 
  out of sight! And I wanta talk to the big boss 
  right away!” 
  The 
  white-coated 
  Negro 
  had 
  evidently encountered such incidents as this 
  before, because he lent an immediate hand. 
  Johnny was dragged into a side door, and up 
  a flight of wooden stairs, dimly lighted. A man 
  with a rifle appeared at the top. 
  “What’s goin’ on?” 
  “I’m bringin’ in one of Doc Savage’s 
  men,” said the fellow in the tan topcoat who 
  was carrying Johnny. “Some things have 
  gone wrong. Ginime a hand!” 
   
   
  THEY got Johnny up the stairs and 
  into a bare room fitted with a canvas cot and 
  two hard chairs. On the floor stood an open 
  grip containing the latest in tear gas 
  grenades and guns. 
  “We’re gonna need some help!” 
  gritted the man in the topcoat. “Where’s the 
  chief?” 
  “He ain’t here!” 
  “Well, get in touch with ‘im! I got 
  some important dope for ‘im!” 
  “He’s movin’ around, tryin’ to get this 
  Doc Savage out of our hair. I dunno where to 
  find ‘im.” 
  “We’re gonna need some help, I told 
  you!” snapped the one who had brought 
  Johnny. “How many of the boys are here?” 
  “I’m the only one,” said the other 
  man. 
  “That,” said the man in the topcoat, 
  “helps!” 
  And he hit the other man on the jaw, 
  then turned and hit the Negro also, doing it 
  so swiftly that they both fell almost together; 
  and were caught almost simultaneously and 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  48 
  lowered to the floor, so that their falling would 
  not be heard below. 
  Johnny had hurled off the trick knots 
  with which his wrists and ankles had been 
  tied, something he could have done at any 
  time. He also plucked the gag from between 
  his teeth and grinned his biggest at the man 
  in the topcoat. 
  The man in the topcoat straightened, 
  turned his collar down and took off his hat, 
  and by these simple actions seemed to 
  change 
  remarkably 
  and 
  became 
  Doc 
  Savage, giant of bronze. 
  In truth, this was one of the reasons 
  Doc seldom wore a hat. People became 
  accustomed to seeing him without a hat, and 
  when he donned one, it worked so great a 
  change in his appearance that it was almost 
  a disguise in itself. 
  “Supermalagorgeous!” 
  exclaimed 
  Johnny. “We trick our way in here expecting 
  to have to whip the whole crowd, and we find 
  only one!” 
  Doc Savage said nothing, but went 
  to the nearest door and opened it, after which 
  he stood on the threshold, his small, fantastic 
  trilling sound coming into existence and 
  persisting, so faintly as to be almost 
  inaudible, for a little time before it went away. 
  Vida Carlaw was in the next room! 
  Johnny came and looked over Doc’s 
  shoulder. 
  The 
  gaunt 
  geologist 
  and 
  archaeologist, despite the fact that he was 
  not easily moved to horror, for he had seen a 
  great many of the terrible things in the world, 
  became slightly pale, and his lips moved a 
  little noiselessly before he could speak. 
  “They must have recovered her 
  body!” he said, hoarsely. “But why are they 
  keeping it?” 
   
   
  THE room was a plain one, but it 
  required not even a close inspection to show 
  that the place had been built solidly, with the 
  idea of its being as nearly soundproof as 
  possible. The walls were obviously in layers, 
  and since there were narrow slits of windows 
  in the walls, there was probably armor steel 
  between the layers also. 
  The 
  slits, 
  although 
  filled 
  with 
  windowpanes, were quite plainly loopholes. 
  This room, situated on top of the Fujiyama, 
  was literally a fighting turret. 
  Shelves around the walls were laden 
  with ammunition and a little food, as if the 
  place were equipped for a siege. Furniture 
  consisted of cots and hard chairs, and it was 
  on one of the former that Vida Carlaw lay. 
  Johnny went over and examined the 
  form of the girl, and amazement came over 
  his features. He looked at Doc Savage, 
  intently, as if trying to discern the thoughts 
  behind 
  the 
  bronze 
  man’s 
  inscrutable 
  features. 
  “You knew they didn’t throw her from 
  the plane into the Ohio River!” he accused. 
  Doc Savage said nothing, but he 
  gave the slightest of nods. 
  Johnny 
  shook 
  his 
  head 
  in 
  a 
  bewildered way. 
  “I’ll be superamalgamated! But why 
  did you go through all the motions of having 
  the Ohio dragged for her body?” 
  “Smoke-screen,” Doc said. 
  “Eh?” 
  “Didn’t want the mob we were 
  fighting 
  to 
  think 
  their 
  scheme 
  was 
  suspected,” the bronze man explained. “Also, 
  by making them believe they could fool us 
  easily, their carelessness could be increased, 
  thereby making it easier for us to fight them.” 
  Vida Carlaw was tied securely, and 
  in such a manner that it had seemed, at first, 
  that she must surely be dead. But she was 
  alive, and as Doc and Johnny untied her, she 
  could move a little. Not until they worked over 
  her for a time, however, could she speak. 
  “Faith,” she said faintly at last, “is the 
  bunk!” 
  “Eh?” Doc asked. 
  “My faith that you’d find me never 
  wavered for a minute,” said the girl. “But it 
  didn’t keep me from being scared stiff ever 
  since 
  they 
  decoyed 
  me 
  out 
  of 
  your 
  headquarters in New York with that fake 
  telephone call.” 
  Doc Savage asked, “You were kept 
  alive so your signature could be secured, by 
  force, on a legal transfer of the Sands-
  Carlaw-Hill oil lease?” 
  “Right.” The young woman nodded 
  weakly. 
  Doc queried, “You know who the 
  mastermind is?” 
  “Of course!” snapped the girl. “They 
  mentioned him by name frequently! He’s the 
  outlaw, Tomahawk Tant!” 
   
   
  JOHNNY 
  blinked, 
  then 
  smiled 
  benevolently upon the young woman and 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  49 
  said, “No, Tant isn’t behind this. Tant is just 
  being framed with the blame. The real 
  schemer is clever enough to make it look as 
  if Tant is behind the whole affair.” 
  The girl tried to speak, and had 
  difficulty until Johnny gave her some wine, a 
  bottle of which he found among the food 
  supplies in the room. 
  “Who is the leader?” she asked. 
  “I don’t know,” Johnny replied. “But 
  Doc does. Who is he, Doc?” 
  The bronze man apparently did not 
  hear the question, which was strange, 
  considering the acuteness of his auditory 
  equipment on ordinary occasions. Doc 
  merely gazed out of a window at the lighted 
  grounds of the Fujiyama. 
  When Vida Carlaw started to repeat 
  the question about the mastermind’s identity, 
  Johnny stopped her with a slight pressure on 
  one of her hands. 
  Johnny, the bony gentleman who 
  ordinarily evidenced no interest whatever in 
  the sometimes mistakenly identified gentler 
  sex, had been holding the entrancing Vida’s 
  slender hand unashamedly for the past few 
  moments. He continued to hold it. 
  “Vida,” he said, gently. “Just what 
  have you decided is behind this affair?” 
  “It’s simple—and horrible,” said the 
  girl. “Our wildcat oil well in the Indian Dome 
  Field drilled into a nest of strange monsters 
  over a mile underground. These monsters 
  are something like—well—like—” 
  “Amoebas,” Johnny suggested. 
  “What?” 
  “Amoebas, one of the most primary 
  forms of life, literally a mass of protoplasm 
  without eyes, ears or skeletal framework,” 
  Johnny replied. “They secure and digest their 
  food simply by flowing around it and covering 
  it and absorbing the nutriment from the 
  substance thus attacked.” 
  For Johnny, these were very small 
  words. And he was still holding the young 
  woman’s hand, and not in an entirely fatherly 
  manner. 
   
   
  VIDA continued, “These men are 
  using the monsters to start a reign of terror. 
  They are going to stop work in the oil fields of 
  the midcontinent. They are going to force oil 
  operators to sell out their holdings.” 
  “And the mob will take them over!” 
  Johnny exclaimed. 
  “Exactly! Legally, of course. For 
  instance, as a price for my life, I was to sign 
  a legal transfer of our lease in the Indian 
  Dome Field. It was to be transferred to the 
  Best Bet Oil Corporation.” 
  “What’s the Best Bet?” 
  “The company controlled by the 
  crowd.” 
  Johnny indulged in what passed for 
  some deep thought, at the same time eyeing 
  the attractive hand he was holding. 
  “Er—ah—you say this mob can 
  control the earth monsters?” he said, 
  vaguely. “That means they can make them 
  attack whoever they want, or get rid of them 
  when they want to, or are through with 
  them?” 
  The girl nodded, started to speak. 
  “Here it comes!” Doc Savage rapped, 
  sharply. 
   
   
  Chapter XVI 
  CAPTIVES 
   
  JOHNNY 
  was 
  in 
  something 
  resembling a hypnotic state, a condition 
  brought on by the electric quality of the 
  young 
  woman’s 
  exquisite 
  hand. 
  Doc 
  Savage’s words had the same effect as 
  being dunked in ice water. The gaunt 
  archaeologist sprang to the narrow porthole 
  of a window. 
  From their height, it was possible to 
  observe the surroundings effectively. They 
  could see men, there seemed to be several 
  of them, spreading to surround the place. 
  The Imitation volcano of neon lights 
  erupted on the Fujiyama, throwing a brighter 
  glow over the region, and it was evident that 
  the furtive men creeping upon the place had 
  rifles and shotguns. 
  “Indications,” said Johnny, forgetting 
  and using big words, “point to collucative 
  escalade—” 
  He did not finish his remark about it 
  looking as if a fight were about to start. It 
  started. A rifle whanged. It was a good shot, 
  and it must have cut the power line supplying 
  the Fujiyama with juice. Every light in and 
  around the place went out. 
  Powerful hand searchlights began to 
  flash on and off. They were carried by the 
  charging men. A few shots whanged. The 
  attacking men did most of the firing. A Negro 
  
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  50 
  ran screaming away from the darkened 
  Fujiyama.  
  “Run, 
  you 
  Negro 
  rascals!” 
  an 
  attacker yelled. 
  The parking lot boys, along with a 
  few 
  waiters, 
  scattered 
  like 
  quail. 
  The 
  attackers turned lights on them, identifying 
  them. One of the orchestra, a drummer, tried 
  to run, carrying his drum. They shot the 
  heads of his drum full of holes, but he did not 
  drop the drum. 
  Women 
  were 
  screaming 
  down 
  below. 
  “It’s the law!” somebody shouted. 
  “It ain’t the law!” yelled an attacker. 
  “It’s Tant’s boys!”  
  At that, the women screamed louder, 
  and the men fell to muttering. The attackers 
  came in, making things bright with their hand 
  searchlights. 
  Doc Savage breathed to Johnny and 
  the girl, “They’ve got the place surrounded!” 
  Then he eased through doors and reached a 
  stairway which led down to the main dance 
  hall. 
  The patrons of the roadhouse were 
  lined up along the walls, and men with 
  shotguns and rifles menaced them. One, a 
  burly fellow, stamped forward. 
  “Where’s the proprietor?” he yelled. 
  No one answered. The burly fellow 
  had his gun, an automatic rifle, pointed at a 
  waiter. He calmly pulled the trigger. The 
  scream of the waiter, shot through the 
  stomach, drowned out the roar of the shot, 
  almost. 
  “I asked you where’s the proprietor?” 
  the burly man said. 
  The waiter made gargling noises and 
  pointed at the proprietor. “That’s him!” 
  The burly leader of the Tant outlaw 
  raiders shot the wounded waiter between the 
  eyes. 
  “That,” he announced, loudly, “is for 
  not answering the question the first time!” 
  Two women fainted. A man began to 
  hold his hands over his heart and to grow 
  horribly blue in the face. His face grew more 
  and more turgid, and suddenly he slammed 
  down on the floor, gave a kick or two and lay 
  very still. 
  A man leaned over and held his 
  wrist. It was evident from this man’s manner 
  that he was a physician. He straightened and 
  said, “This man is dead!” 
  “Damned if I ain’t a tough hombre!” 
  said the burly fellow casually. “I shoot one 
  guy and scare another one to death!” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE, unobserved, noted 
  all of this from the top of the stairs. This was 
  something of an accomplishment, because 
  one raider had his eye and his rifle trained on 
  the stairs, just on the chance that some one 
  might appear there. But he did not see the 
  tiny periscope, the little portable instrument, 
  which Doc Savage always carried and which 
  he was now using. 
  The burly man threw out his chest 
  and stamped across the floor, manner 
  reminiscent of the fierceness attributed to the 
  pirates of olden days. He confronted the 
  proprietor. 
  “This is my day to kill men!” he 
  yelled. “Where’s your chief?” 
  “He ain’t here!” gulped the proprietor. 
  “I didn’t ask you that!” The burly man 
  lifted his rifle. 
  The other man sank to the floor. 
  “Don’t—don’t!” he screamed. “I don’t 
  know where the boss is! But I can take you to 
  the girl, Vida Carlaw!” 
  The burly man shoved his head 
  forward and roared, “What was that last you 
  said?” 
  “I can take you to Vida Carlaw!” 
  “Well, damn me!” howled the Tant 
  outlaw. “Won’t Tant be tickled to see her! He 
  thinks she’s dead! He’s been madder’n a 
  skinned cat over it!” 
  “She’s 
  upstairs!” 
  gulped 
  the 
  frightened proprietor.  
  The man led the way to the stairs at 
  the top of which Doc Savage stood. The 
  proprietor’s knees quaked, until he had to 
  hold onto things as he passed them to keep 
  from falling down. 
  Any one who had observed the 
  entire fight would not have blamed him for his 
  fear, either. He was in the clutches of men so 
  calloused that they would kill for no more 
  reason than to be doing something dramatic. 
  Doc Savage backed away—and 
  things went wrong. There was a sliding noise 
  and a click, and there was across the head of 
  the stairs, with embarrassing suddenness, a 
  panel of steel. 
  Attached in some way to the steps, 
  no doubt, it closed automatically when the 
  wrong stair tread was stepped upon. Doc 
  
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  51 
  knew, instinctively, which one it was—the 
  third from the top—but it was too late to do 
  anything about it. 
  He was trapped. Men below had 
  heard the click.  
  “What’s 
  that?” 
  the 
  burly 
  fellow 
  snarled. “Get up there, you men, with lights! 
  Keep your guns ready! Shoot anybody that 
  moves!’ 
  They started up the stairway, rifles 
  ready. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE had no chance 
  whatever against the men coming up the 
  stairs. True, he had overcome half a dozen 
  earlier in the evening, but that had been by 
  taking 
  them 
  unexpectedly. 
  The 
  men 
  approaching now were ready for trouble. 
  The bronze man stretched out his 
  arms, and was able to put a hand against 
  each wall of the narrow hall. He stripped off 
  his shoes and socks, stuffed them into his 
  pockets, then put his hands against the wall, 
  swung up, and put a foot against each wall. 
  By a series of gymnastic efforts, 
  employing his tremendous strength, he 
  climbed upward and forward until he was 
  close to the roof of the hallway, out over the 
  stairs. 
  Men coming up the stairs would 
  naturally have their eyes on the tread and the 
  door at the top. To see Doc where he 
  crouched, they would have to look straight 
  up, and they weren’t likely to do that. 
  They came to the door, and kicked 
  and wrenched at it.  
  “Oughta 
  be 
  back 
  doors!” 
  they 
  declared, and went around to hunt for them. 
  There was shouting. Two shots were 
  fired. Then Johnny and Vida Carlaw were led 
  outside. A few shots were fired at random 
  into the roadhouse, to keep those inside from 
  getting brave. 
  Doc got down from his perch over 
  the stairs during the shooting, and eased out. 
  The raiders were questioning the 
  proprietor of the Fujiyama. 
  “Where’s your boss?” 
  “I told you I don’t know!” 
  “You better know! It’s the only thing 
  that’ll save your skin!” 
  Doc Savage eased away from the 
  vicinity and ran with great speed to the spot 
  where he and Johnny had left their car. From 
  the rear, the bronze man extracted a small 
  fibroid box, to which were affixed two 
  substantial thumbscrew clamps. Doc took 
  this back to the roadhouse. 
  The raiders were still questioning the 
  proprietor. They had loaded guns jammed 
  into his face. “Where’s this guy who’s layin’ 
  things on Tant? Who is he?” 
  Doc found the cars in which the 
  raiders had come, big, fast tourings. He 
  approached them, his box ready, the clamps 
  distended. He got down on all fours and 
  reached under the nearest car, his purpose 
  being to affix the box to the underside of the 
  chassis, where it would not be discovered. 
  A flashlight splashed over him. A gun 
  prodded him in the back. 
  “You don’t think we’d leave these 
  cars unguarded, did you?” a voice asked, 
  harshly. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE lay perfectly still. Any 
  movement on his part might persuade the 
  gunman to shoot. 
  “Come out!” said the fellow. 
  Doc came out. It was a relief that the 
  gunman pointed his revolver at Doc’s chest, 
  because the bronze man wore a chain mail 
  undershirt which would keep out revolver 
  bullets. 
  “Whew!” The gunman’s eyes bulged 
  when he saw whom he had caught. He 
  howled at his companions, “C’mere, quick!” 
  They came running and stood about 
  Doc, squinting at him as if he were 
  something new in the form of mankind. One 
  reached forward gingerly and punched and 
  pinched the bronze man. 
  “Man alive!” the fellow exclaimed. 
  “Feel them muscles! That guy is made of 
  bronze!” 
  The burly leader came close to Doc, 
  but his manner was not so boisterous now. 
  The man, however, was not all bluff; rather, 
  he was a genuinely tough guy who knew 
  when a loud mouth would be effective and 
  when it wouldn’t. 
  “This is a hell of a note!” he told Doc. 
  “You’re the last guy we wanted to catch!” 
  Bony 
  Johnny 
  murmured, 
  “A 
  Machiavellianism!” 
  “Look!” The burly man registered 
  great rage. “He’s been spouting them 
  jawbreakers since we caught him! What’s 
  that word mean?” 
   
  
   
   
   
  By a series of gymnastic efforts, Doc climbed upward and  
  forward until he was close to the roof of the hallway. 
   
  “Johnny does not believe you did not 
  want to catch me,” Doc said. 
  “And why the hell should we want 
  you?” roared the burly man. “You’re after the 
  guy who’s trying to pull this big oil field steal, 
  ain’t you? So’re we! Why? Because the mug 
  is tryin’ to frame the blame onto Tant! We’re 
  fightin’ the same mug!” 
  Doc said, “I am also after Tant.” 
  “Yeah, that’s the trouble!” The man 
  eyed Doc hopefully. “Why don’t you just 
  concentrate first on catchin’ this other guy?” 
  Doc did not reply. 
  Johnny said, “We’re ambidexterous!” 
  “I’ll look that one up,” said the burly 
  man, “if Tant’s got a dictionary around.” 
  
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  53 
  They 
  searched 
  Doc, 
  expressing 
  wonder when they found he carried no gun, 
  commenting curiously over the contents of 
  the remarkable vest of pockets when they 
  found it, and especially exclaiming over the 
  bulletproof undergarment. 
  “He let ‘imself be caught!” yelled the 
  man who had captured Doc. “He done it on 
  purpose! I’m in favor of lettin’ ‘im go!” 
  “We’ll see what Tant says.” 
  “You gonna take ‘im to Tant?” 
  “Think I want Tant to shoot me? 
  Savage don’t know who Tant really is.” 
  They got their cars onto the road and 
  drove fast. Pretty Vida Carlaw sat between 
  two men, to whom she was handcuffed, and 
  watched the road listlessly. There was no 
  chance for her to talk because they had used 
  a sponge gag. Doc Savage and Johnny were 
  tied. 
  “We’re goin’ to a place where it’s 
  safe to telephone Tant,” said the leader. “It’s 
  a hang-out we use sometimes. We want to 
  find out what Tant wants done with you.” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE, after a time, asked, 
  “How did Tant get involved in this?” 
  The burly man scowled at Doc. 
  “Reckon it won’t hurt to tell you. Tant is a guy 
  with a rep, see. This bird, this guy who can 
  control them red devil things, got in touch 
  with Tant and wanted Tant to join up with ‘im. 
  You savvy by now what’s behind this, don’t 
  you?” 
  “The red monster method of murder 
  is going to be used to kill off and frighten oil 
  men,” the man of bronze said, “and to cause 
  so much trouble that the oil operators will be 
  broke financially, or scared out, and will sell 
  out their holdings cheaply. The plan is to buy 
  up these leases, or take them over whenever 
  possible.” 
  The burly man nodded. “It don’t 
  sound so big when you tell it casual like that. 
  But it is big! Take that Sands-Carlaw-Hill 
  lease alone! It’s worth a million or two the 
  minute that wildcat well hits oil, and 
  everybody knows it is!” 
  Doc Savage was silent for a time. 
  The cars were traveling fast, and swinging 
  wide of Tulsa, following side roads. 
  “If this fellow got in touch with Tant,” 
  Doc said finally, “how does it come that Tant 
  does not know his identity?” 
  “The fellow was no sucker,” retorted 
  the Tant outlaw. “He used a go-between and 
  a regular system, like as if he was mixed up 
  in a snatch racket and contacting a go-
  between. Tant never got a whiff of who he 
  was!” 
  The cars began to head into the 
  Osage oil field country. They passed trucks, 
  nitro wagons, touring and roadsters, cars 
  ranging from big imported jobs to the 
  smallest “whoopies.” There was a lot of 
  activity in the district. Indian Dome Field was 
  not far distant, Doc realized. 
  “Them man-eatin’ red jellyfish outta 
  the ground has sure got the oil fields around 
  here worked up,” a man offered. 
  One fellow, in the front seat, had 
  been prying into the box which Doc Savage 
  had been on the point of attaching to the 
  underside of their car. 
  “Whatcha 
  know!” 
  this 
  man 
  ejaculated. “This durn thing seems to be a 
  radio transmitter! I know a little about radio. 
  He was gonna use a direction finder to spot 
  this radio set, and keep track of us that way. 
  Whatcha know!” 
  “I know I wish you’d clam up!” he 
  was told. 
   
   
  THE car was traversing a deserted-
  looking road. Headlights heaved up ahead, 
  spilling light across a brush patch, and 
  proved to be a truck with rear wheels in the 
  ditch, and two men working around with 
  shovels. Its load was canvas-covered. 
  The truck was askew across the 
  road, and had the thoroughfare blocked, but 
  it was evident that the driver of the truck 
  could back slightly and let them past without 
  jeopardizing its own chances of escaping. 
  “Hey!” yelled the leader of the Tant 
  outlaw squad. “How ‘bout lettin’ us past, 
  buddy?” 
  The two men with shovels walked 
  around to the front of their truck. 
  “You’ll be asking Saint Peter that 
  same question dang quick, feller!” one yelled. 
  Then they both jumped behind the truck. 
  “Hey!” 
  howled 
  the 
  Tant 
  man. 
  “What’s—” 
  The tarpaulin cover slid off the load 
  of the truck, which was nearly a dozen men, 
  all armed with rifles. 
   
   
  
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  54 
  Chapter XVII 
  THE TANK TERROR 
   
  A TANT man who had not gotten a 
  good look at proceedings, because he was 
  sitting in the back of the car, called, “Say, 
  who do them guys think they are?” 
  “Imagine they know!” said the burly 
  Tant lieutenant, hoarsely. “They ain’t none of 
  Tant’s men! They ain’t law! They’ve gotta 
  belong to the crowd that’s framin’ Tant—” 
  A rifle whacked from the truck, and 
  its bullet came into the car and made a small 
  fountain of crimson come out of a man’s leg. 
  The cars were not armored, so high-powered 
  slugs would riddle them. Bullets began to 
  knock out the window glass. 
  Swearing, the outlaws piled out of 
  their cars. They had nerve, and were not 
  afraid of a fight. And they had plenty of 
  firearms. 
  Doc rolled out of the truck with the 
  others, on the side of the machine opposite 
  the truck. Johnny did likewise, and the girl. It 
  was Doc who doused the lights. 
  That 
  dousing 
  of 
  the 
  lights 
  undoubtedly saved the situation. It left only 
  the truck lights, which were pointed out over 
  the field. 
  Doc rolled madly, a bit of car window 
  glass between his hands. He located the girl. 
  “Still!” he directed, and tried to cut 
  her free. 
  Men were charging, firing as they 
  came, from the truck.  
  “Johnny!” Doc called, his remarkable 
  voice still calm.  
  “I’m O. K.!” yelled Johnny. “Cutting 
  myself loose with a piece of window glass!” 
  That was not exactly the truth. 
  Johnny had a piece of glass, but he was tied 
  in such a manner that he could not use it. 
  Johnny wanted Doc to get clear. He held his 
  breath, for Doc was hard to deceive. But the 
  bronze man scuttled away in the night, 
  carrying the girl. 
  Men were screaming, dying. Guns 
  were going off. Then some one shot holes in 
  the gasoline tank of one of the cars and 
  threw a lighted match. 
  The shooting was brisker. More men 
  shrieked. Tant outlaws, mostly. Burning 
  gasoline threw a light of hell over everything. 
  Johnny fought to free himself with the 
  fragment of glass. 
  The burly Tant lieutenant tried to run 
  off across the road into the brush. Three 
  attackers 
  aimed 
  their 
  rifles, 
  and 
  fired 
  together, as if all fingers jerked by the same 
  string. 
  The burly man, when the three rifle 
  bullets hit his vital places, acted like a rabbit 
  nailed by a shotgun charge. He went up in 
  the air, emitted a bawl of a noise, and landed 
  flat on his back and never moved afterward. 
  The 
  rest 
  of 
  the 
  Tant 
  outlaws 
  surrendered, which was the wise thing to do, 
  outnumbered as they were. 
  A man wearing black gloves came 
  over and glared at Johnny. He was wiry, 
  wore a plain blue suit under a knockabout 
  topcoat, and his necktie showed bright under 
  his chin. 
  Johnny knew him to be the man who 
  had tried to seize Vida Carlaw in the plane 
  bound for New York. 
  The wiry man said, “I think we’ll 
  croak you for good now, skin-and-bones!” 
  He swung his clubbed gun, and 
  Johnny ducked, but not enough, and he got 
  the dizzy impression that he was a ghost in 
  an infinite place where there was nothing but 
  darkness. And he had no head. 
   
   
  JOHNNY got around to feeling 
  somehow that he was somewhat like the 
  headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, except 
  that it was infinitely dark where he roamed 
  looking for his head, so dark that he could 
  never see anything. 
  But eventually it dawned on Johnny 
  that he had a head, although it was full of 
  pain, and that the darkness was a blindfold. 
  He tried not to move, and lay very still, 
  listening to voices mutter near by. 
  “We’re getting things in hand,” the 
  wiry man, who wore black gloves always, 
  was saying. “We’ve got Tant’s mob on the 
  run. We’ve got all of Doc Savage’s men.” 
  This was a surprise to Johnny, who 
  had been under the impression that Monk, 
  Ham 
  and 
  Renny, 
  along 
  with 
  Enoch 
  Andershott, had been seized by Outlaw 
  Tant’s men. Apparently Tant’s enemy had 
  done the job, cleverly making it look as if the 
  blame belonged to Tant. 
  “We’ve got this red monster business 
  pretty 
  well 
  underway,” 
  the 
  wiry 
  man 
  continued. “The whole dang midcontinent oil 
  field has been swept by the news. We’ll clean 
  
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  55 
  up in the Indian Dome Fields, and later, one 
  at a time, the monsters will appear in the 
  other oil fields.” 
  “What 
  if 
  somebody 
  gets 
  wise? 
  They’re sure to.” 
  “We’ll keep our eyes open, and wipe 
  them out. The monsters will just come along 
  and absorb that guy, see.” 
  “Uh-huh.” 
  “Furthermore, the boss has got a 
  sure-fire scheme worked out for gettin’ hold 
  of Doc Savage and gettin’ rid of him.” 
  “That scheme of decoying him out 
  the cliff road along the river was supposed to 
  be sure-fire!” 
  “Well, hell! The bronze guy was 
  lucky! But he can’t keep it up forever. 
  Anyway, this is a real scheme. It can’t fail!” 
  “What is it?” 
  Johnny strained his ears. He wanted 
  to hear this. But the next instant he was 
  kicked in the ribs with painful force. 
  “I think this bony is ‘possumin!” 
  growled a voice. 
  The wiry man came over, with the 
  one he had been talking to, and they all fell to 
  kicking Johnny. The gaunt geologist opened 
  his eyes and groaned realistically. 
  “I guess he wasn’t fakin’,” said the 
  wiry man. “Even if he was, he didn’t hear 
  anything. We never talked about nothin’ 
  important.” 
  One 
  man 
  gulped, 
  “The 
  boss’s 
  scheme to—” 
  “Shut up!” snapped the wiry man with 
  the black gloves. “That wasn’t discussed in 
  detail!” 
  They 
  gathered 
  Johnny 
  up 
  and 
  carried 
  him 
  down 
  some 
  stairs. 
  They 
  searched him thoroughly, stripping off his 
  clothing entirely and giving him an ancient 
  pair of soiled overalls to wear. 
  “Like to see ‘im get away now!” a 
  man chuckled. 
  Johnny was lifted and hurled into a 
  room which had a concrete floor and was 
  dimly lighted. 
  The wiry man with the black gloves 
  came in, leaned down, and said fiercely, “In a 
  few minutes, we’re gonna let some of them 
  jelly devils in here to eat you!” 
  Then he left. 
  Johnny rolled over, thought about the 
  situation deeply for a minute, then groaned 
  as—he realized an instant later—he had 
  never groaned before. 
  “The noises you make sure help a 
  lot!” complained a voice. 
  Johnny squirmed around and peered 
  at a number of individuals whom he had not 
  seen before due to the murk. 
  “Monk!” he exclaimed. 
   
   
  MONK, the homely chemist, was not 
  alone. With him was Ham, looking less 
  dapper than usual in a garment which 
  consisted simply of a gunnysack with holes 
  cut in it for his legs. Also present was big-
  fisted Renny, and behind him, Enoch 
  Andershott. 
  Amazed, Johnny sat up. Also in the 
  room was a man who was about one 
  hundred and thirty pounds of skin over wires, 
  and who had eyes with a scare deep within 
  them. 
  “I am Alonzo Cugg,” said this man, 
  reading the question in Johnny’s eyes. 
  Only Long Tom, the electrical wizard, 
  was not present. 
  Johnny asked, “Where are we?” 
  “Somewhere in the Osage, north of 
  Tulsa, I think,” said Monk. 
  “You ape, you don’t know where we 
  are!” Ham muttered. 
  “If I wasn’t tied, I’d kick your ears so 
  flat they’d be mistaken for crêpes suzettesl” 
  Monk snarled. 
  “It’s a good thing I’m tied!” Ham 
  assured him. 
  Johnny, looking about, observed that 
  they were all tied.  
  “I say,” Johnny suggested tentatively, 
  “If we were untied, would we have a chance 
  of escaping?” 
  A fly could almost have been heard 
  calling in the silence which followed. 
  “You mean you got a way of gettin’ 
  these ropes off?” Monk gulped. 
  Johnny opened his mouth. His 
  monocle, which during his acting of the part 
  of the crook Snook Loggard, had been 
  concealed in his clothing, now fell out of his 
  mouth. 
  “I had a heck of a time keeping it 
  hidden there,” Johnny explained. “I got it just 
  before they searched me a few minutes ago.” 
  Monk said, admiringly, “For once, 
  you can say, ‘Supermalagorgeous,’ or, ‘I’ll be 
  superamalgamated,’ and I won’t feel like 
  chokin’ you!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  56 
  Johnny now broke the monocle on 
  the floor. He grasped one of the particles, 
  moved over to Monk, and began to saw on 
  the ropes securing the homely chemist. He 
  got them sawed through. Monk began to 
  untie his own hands. 
  A man came in the door, carrying a 
  gun, saw that Monks hands were free, and 
  cried out shrilly in alarm. Other men ran in, 
  and dashed forward. They clubbed Monk 
  down and tied him again. Then they knocked 
  him senseless. 
  “Look over these ropes!” the man 
  with the black gloves ordered. “I don’t 
  understand how that hombre got loose!” 
  The knots were tested. While this 
  was being done, and to distract the attention 
  of their captors from the tiny particles of glass 
  lying half hidden upon the floor, Johnny 
  demanded, “What became of Long Tom? 
  He’s not here!” 
  The man with the black gloves 
  laughed harshly. “We took him out to ask him 
  some questions about Doc Savage! He 
  wouldn’t talk!” 
  “Where—where is he now?” Johnny 
  gulped. 
  The man made a growling sound. 
  “I’ll try to give you some kind of an 
  idea what happened to Long Tom!” the fellow 
  grunted. 
   
   
  GAUNT Johnny was now seized, 
  one man taking each of his extremities, and 
  carried out of the room and into what seemed 
  to be a porch. They dragged him along a 
  path. Soon, a sizable hulk loomed up in the 
  darkness, and proved to be a small tank. 
  Johnny, who had not neglected the 
  profitable oil field angle of geology, had been 
  around oil leases enough to recognize the 
  tank as one of the two-hundred-fifty-barrel 
  tanks which oil from small wells is pumped 
  into. But this one had not been used for a 
  long time. It was a wooden tank. A hole, 
  large enough to admit a man, had been 
  chopped in the bottom. 
  One of the men threw a flashlight 
  beam on the hole in the tank. 
  Johnny’s hair stood on end. His eyes 
  popped. 
  Squirming, 
  writhing, 
  hideously 
  translucent and ocherous in the light, was 
  one of the fantastic monsters which had first 
  been observed around the Sands-Carlaw-Hill 
  wildcat oil well. 
  The thing was going into the tank. 
  Swelling and spreading and creeping, it 
  seemed to have no arms, legs, eyes, mouth, 
  nose, nor anything else that an ordinary living 
  creature is supposed to have. It was just—
  red, semi-transparent stuff, utterly hideous, 
  and living! Back into the tank, it oozed, as if 
  afraid of the light. 
  “Our little pal was out looking for 
  more to eat,” a man chuckled. 
  Three of the men stopped. 
  “I went close to that tank to take the 
  other one!” one of these snapped. “I’m afraid 
  of that damn thing! You can’t tell what it’ll do! 
  Somebody else take this one close!” 
  “Hell, don’t be scared!” snorted the 
  man with the black gloves. “It’s in the tank 
  now! Anyhow, it just absorbed the other guy. 
  Or maybe you’d say it digested him. It hadn’t 
  oughta be so hungry.” 
  “You know durn well it ain’t got no 
  stomach like normal things!” snorted the 
  other. “It don’t know when it’s hungry, 
  because it ain’t got no brain, neither. It’s 
  just—just—well, whatever it’s made out of!” 
  “We’ll draw lots,” said the man with 
  the black gloves.  
  They 
  drew 
  lots—matched 
  coins 
  rather. 
  Johnny, 
  somewhat 
  irrelevantly, 
  reflected that Monk would have been in his 
  element here, because Monk carried around 
  a trick coin just for matching. 
  The two who lost seized Johnny and 
  carried him close to the tank. They lowered 
  him beside a post. 
  Johnny goggled at the post. It was a 
  stout piece of wood, and probably had been 
  there a long time. But what interested him 
  was the ropes around the post—and in those 
  ropes, lying loosely, was an assortment of 
  clothing. Johnny stared at the clothing, for he 
  recognized it. 
  The garments had been worn by 
  Long Tom when he went to Tulsa! 
  The black-gloved man said, “Now we 
  ain’t trying to kid nobody. We told that other 
  guy, Long Tom, we weren’t kidding. He got 
  his choice of either answering our questions, 
  or we didn’t fool around. He had his choice, 
  and it wasn’t nice. Now, you’re gonna get 
  yours!” 
  Johnny’s throat felt as if a hot poker 
  had been run up and down it, inside. He had 
  discovered something else, something that 
  was lying nearer the opening into the tank, 
  within which the red horror had withdrawn. 
  
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  57 
  The man said, “We want to know if 
  Doc Savage has found out who our chief is!” 
  Johnny looked at the thing he had 
  discovered on the ground. He began to feel 
  as if he could never breathe again. 
   
   
  THE object on the ground might 
  have passed for a bucketful, a small 
  bucketful of ordinary cup grease which some 
  one had dumped out on the ground. It was 
  rather soiled-looking, and if it had been 
  grease, could have taken on that tint from 
  having been used. 
  Long Tom’s clothes! This stuff on the 
  ground! Johnny started hearing words as if 
  from an infinite distance. 
  “I asked you if Doc Savage knows 
  who the chief is?” repeated the man with the 
  black gloves. 
  Johnny did not answer. He felt cold 
  all over. 
  “Well,” the black-gloved man said, 
  and laughed carelessly. “It’s your funeral!” 
  One of the other men said, “I 
  wouldn’t call it a funeral.” He pointed at the 
  pile of grease. “Of course, somebody might 
  bury that stuff, which is all that is left.” 
  The men began to walk away. They 
  kept their flashlight beams on the hole in the 
  tank, as if to keep the horror within at bay 
  with the light. 
  It seemed to Johnny that he could 
  hear the monster moving inside the tank 
  which was its lair. 
  The departing men were saying, “We 
  got some of Tant’s outlaws alive. Them 
  hombres ain’t as tough as this Doc Savage’s 
  crowd. We’ll make Tant’s men talk.” 
  “And when they tell us where Tant is 
  hanging out, that’ll be the last of the Scourge 
  of Oklahoma, as them newspaper lugs 
  sometimes call Tant,” offered another man. 
  “The boss’s gag will also get Doc 
  Savage,” said the one with the gloves. “This 
  next trick the boss is going to try is a honey!” 
  The men halted. One of them called 
  out to Johnny. 
  “You got one chance!” the fellow 
  shouted. “Just before the thing flows over 
  you and begins to absorb you right out of 
  your clothes, you can let out a beller and we 
  may be able to drive it away!” 
  Johnny said nothing. 
  “But you better not wait too long!” the 
  man added. 
  They departed, taking the beams of 
  their flashlights off the opening in the tank. 
  Johnny began to hear something 
  infinitely horrible. Sounds from the tank. The 
  thing must be coming out! 
  One of the men, off in the night, said, 
  “He’ll squawl like hell when he feels it touch 
  him! The other one, Long Tom, did!” 
  “They don’t always beller,” one 
  corrected. “You remember Sam Sands and 
  that driller? They didn’t beller when it began 
  to digest ‘em!” 
  “Funny how the thing absorbs men 
  right outta their clothes, and don’t digest the 
  cloth, too,” remarked another. “I guess it only 
  likes living tissue.” 
  “Animal tissue,” the first speaker 
  corrected. “Say, I know one of the guys it eat 
  up had a leather belt, and that was eaten!” 
  Johnny struggled. But they had tied 
  him to the post, and tied him securely. 
  He could see the horrible jellylike 
  mass now! It was flowing like a mucid river 
  out of the tank! The thing was huge! 
  Johnny wondered if he would faint in 
  time to save some of the agony. The hell of it 
  was that he never had fainted. 
   
   
  Chapter XVIII 
  TRICKS 
   
  DOC SAVAGE sat in a chair in a 
  Tulsa hotel and watched the morning sun 
  whiten the rooftops and the buildings about 
  him. There was utter calm in the big bronze 
  man’s manner, no hint of the horrors and 
  death that surrounded him. 
  From where he sat, he could see out 
  across the Arkansas River, see the giant oil 
  refineries of West Tulsa, and since it was a 
  very clear morning, the smoke that marked 
  the location of Sapulpa. 
  Vida Carlaw sat near by. She was 
  not calm. She held a big revolver, and her 
  face was a pale mask. 
  “We were lucky to get away when 
  Tant’s men were attacked by the fellows in 
  that truck,” she said. “But I’m awfully sorry 
  Johnny didn’t escape.” 
  Doc savage said nothing in reply. 
  It had not, after the defeat of the Tant 
  outlaw by their sinister and mysterious foes, 
  been an eventful night. Doc had attempted to 
  
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  58 
  follow the attackers, but had failed, because 
  their cars had outdistanced him. 
  Doc Savage and Vida Carlaw had 
  returned to Tulsa. Doc had taken the hotel 
  suite. His next move had been to telephone 
  the newspapers, and it looked like a queer 
  move on his part, not only because he never 
  sought newspaper publicity, but because 
  when a flock of reporters had rushed to the 
  hotel, he had merely showed himself, then 
  refused to give out any kind of an interview. 
  But even the news of his presence had made 
  the front page this morning: 
   
  DOC SAVAGE IN TULSA BELIEVED 
  WORKING ON MONSTER CASE 
   
  The name of the hotel was given. 
  The newspaper with the story lay 
  open on the floor before Vida Carlaw, where 
  she had flung it in something of a rage. 
  “That will show every one of our 
  enemies 
  where 
  we 
  are 
  staying!” 
  she 
  snapped. 
  A knock on the door interrupted any 
  answer Doc Savage might have intended to 
  make. 
  The girl leaped up, clenching her 
  gun, and gasped, “Don’t open it! It may be 
  Tant or some one!” 
  Doc went to the door, empty-handed, 
  and opened it. He had never seen the man 
  who stood outside before, but evidently the 
  fellow had seen Doc, or had had the bronze 
  man described to him, because he grinned 
  wryly and said, “Like to talk to you alone, 
  Savage.” 
  The visitor was a small man of 
  indeterminate age, and did not have any 
  outstanding qualities apparent about him, 
  except that his eyes were small. Neither did 
  he look particularly weak. He was just a man 
  who would escape notice in a crowd, which is 
  sometimes a nice thing to be able to do. 
  “Only Vida Carlaw is with me,” Doc 
  Savage said. 
  “Tant won’t mind her hearing,” said 
  the nondescript man. “Tant sent me, see. He 
  saw in the paper where you were at this 
  hotel. That way, he knew how to get hold of 
  you.” 
  “That,” Doc said, “is why the news 
  item was given to the papers.” 
  “Hell it was!” The Tant emissary 
  seemed surprised and a bit frightened. 
  “I wanted Tant to get in touch with 
  me,” Doc told him. 
  “Yeah? Then you’re willin’ for me to 
  take you to Tant?” 
  “Of course.” 
   
   
  THE small man had a car waiting in 
  the street, and it was as unobtrusive, but as 
  efficient in its way, as he himself. 
  “You wanta search me for a gun?” he 
  asked before taking his place behind the 
  wheel. 
  “Not necessary,” Doc said. 
  “I don’t believe in taking such 
  chances!” the girl said, sharply. 
  Doc Savage had long ago learned 
  something of the futility of trying to explain a 
  doubtful point to a young person of the 
  opposite sex, especially a pretty one, so he 
  did not mention that if the man was willing to 
  be searched, he doubtless didn’t have a gun 
  on his person. 
  The man drove as decorously as any 
  ordinary citizen, and fairly expertly. He did 
  not speak, and showed no desire for 
  conversation. 
  “What does Tomahawk Tant want to 
  talk to us about?” Vida Carlaw asked. 
  “I can’t tell you,” their guide said 
  shortly. 
  “Why not?” 
  “Because Tant would probably kick 
  me so hard I’d be standing on my hair roots,” 
  the man grunted. 
  After that, they said nothing, until 
  Doc Savage spoke. 
  “It might be better,” he said, “if you 
  stayed behind.” 
  “Not me!” the girl snapped. “I’m going 
  to do all I can to find Reservoir Hill!” 
  The car headed north, and once in 
  the country, picked up speed. Trucks on the 
  roads and numerous cars were all moving in 
  the direction of the Indian Dome Field, or 
  coming from the field. 
  Shortly, they began to pass truck 
  after truck, all exactly alike, all painted army 
  khaki and bulging with militia men. 
  “Stop,” Doc Savage requested the 
  guide. “I want to find out what these soldiers 
  mean.” 
  The driver hesitated, then pulled 
  alongside a truck. 
  “Where you headed for?” Doc called. 
  
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  59 
  “Indian Dome Field,” the soldier 
  driving the truck called back. “Governor has 
  ordered all oil wells in the Indian Dome Field 
  plugged with concrete or lead, so these 
  monsters can’t keep coming out.” 
  “The oil operators in Indian Dome 
  won’t like that.” 
  “They’ll have to like it!” the soldier 
  said, grimly. “The governor has declared 
  martial law to stop the wild confusion!” 
  The Tant outlaw drove on, covered 
  nearly a mile in silent thought, then said over 
  his shoulder, “The governor is playin’ into the 
  hands of this other crowd!” 
  Doc replied nothing. 
  “The idea of the whole thing is to get 
  the fields shut down so the poorer operators 
  will get hard up and have to sell cheap,” the 
  driver added. “Somebody oughta tell the 
  governor that.” 
  “Why doesn’t Tant do it?” 
  “Who’d believe Tant?” 
  As the car continued its course, their 
  exact destination became evident. 
  “We’re going to the Indian Dome 
  Field!” Vida Carlaw exclaimed. 
   
   
  THE girl’s obvious astonishment 
  seemed to tickle the driver, for he chuckled, 
  then offered, “This is one of Tant’s best 
  hang-outs!” 
  “But it’s so public!” the girl exclaimed. 
  “And there’s thousands of soldiers around! 
  Probably the place is flooded with State 
  police, too!” 
  The driver laughed again. “Would 
  you know the famous outlaw, Tomahaw Tant, 
  if you saw him face to face?” 
  The girl considered. 
  “No.” 
  “Neither would a lot of other people,” 
  said the driver. 
  They drove on some distance, and 
  the scattered derricks of the oil wells in the 
  southern end of Indian Dome Field came into 
  view. The Sands-Carlaw-Hill lease was 
  located near the northern end, in what was 
  considered unproven territory, as far as oil at 
  the deeper levels was concerned. 
  Vida Carlaw asked, “Will we get to 
  see Tant? I’d rather like to have a look at 
  him.” 
  The driver snorted. 
  “Tant won’t show himself. He’ll talk to 
  you from another room, or somehow.” 
  The girl shivered. “You’re sure we’ll 
  be turned loose?” 
  “Tant said so,” replied the man. 
  Doc Savage interposed dryly, “If you 
  were an enemy of Tant’s, as I might be 
  considered to be, since anyone outside the 
  law is my natural enemy, would you take the 
  bare word, relayed, that you would be turned 
  loose. In other words, would you do what 
  we’re doing?” 
  “Hell, no!” the driver said, promptly. 
  Then he pulled his car up before an 
  ordinary galvanized tin pumphouse building. 
  It was an unromantic-looking place. 
  The building evidently housed one of 
  those central pumping plants for shallow oil 
  wells—the plant inside would consist of an 
  engine, turning a great wheel to which was 
  attached the ends of numerous steel rods, 
  extending away over the top of the earth, 
  running through guides. A rotation of the 
  wheel gave each of these rods a push and a 
  pull, actuating the pumps attached to the 
  other ends. 
  The contraption was pumping as the 
  car 
  drove 
  up, 
  but 
  some 
  one 
  inside 
  immediately shut it down. 
  “C’mon in,” invited the driver. 
  Doc and Vida Carlaw got out of the 
  car. 
  “If anybody had told me I would ever 
  walk into Outlaw Tant’s hide-out of my own 
  accord, almost, I’d have said they were 
  crazy!” declared the girl. 
  She and Doc Savage walked into the 
  pumphouse. 
  It was a bare, cold-looking place with 
  the smell of crude oil strong. 
  The girl peered about, then gave a 
  violent shriek and whirled. 
  “Run!” she screamed. “Somebody’s 
  aiming a rifle through that door!” 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE, flashing out a bronze 
  hand, stopped her flight. 
  “You’re on edge,” he said. “Take 
  another look at it.” 
  The girl peered, and did not seem 
  relieved. She could plainly see the pipe 
  pointing at them from the small hole in the 
  door which led into the room housing the 
  pump. 
  “It’s not a rifle barrel,” Doc explained. 
  “It’s a piece of gas pipe.” 
  
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  60 
  The place where they stood, only 
  partially lighted by the door behind them, was 
  a grotesque-looking spot. The wheel—it was 
  turned by a belt running into the engine 
  room—was a huge thing. The rods extending 
  from it made a fantastic tangle. 
  The pipe was there for a man to 
  speak through and disguise his voice. 
  “This is Tomahawk Tant,” said a 
  voice out of the pipe.  
  Doc did not even try to identify the 
  voice. There was no use trying. Coming 
  through the pipe, it lost all character. It was 
  hardly understandable. 
  “Oh!” said the girl, and started 
  forward. “I’m going to have a look at that 
  fellow!” 
  “I’d hate to have to shoot a girl,” the 
  Tant voice said. 
  Vida Carlaw stopped. 
  Tant said, “This meeting is on the up-
  and-up. You’re out to get me. All right, but I 
  call you here, Savage, because I think we 
  can work together.” 
  If Doc Savage was supposed to 
  make a comment in the pause that followed, 
  he did not. 
  Tant continued through the pipe, “I 
  ain’t askin’ anything from you, Savage. You 
  don’t even have to declare a truce. You can 
  keep on trying to get me all the time.” 
  Doc said, “Then this is not an effort 
  to bargain?” 
  “I never had to bargain with nobody!” 
  boomed Tant through the pipe. “If guys want 
  to make a trade, they come to me! No matter 
  how big they are, they come to me!” 
  Doc decided to puncture the fellow’s 
  ego, “Just as this mysterious enemy of yours 
  came to you to bargain!” 
   
   
  NOISES coming out of the pipe 
  sounded as if Tant were choking on the other 
  end of it. 
  “That guy’s why I got you out here!” 
  Tant snarled finally. “He’s running me 
  ragged! He’s slicker’n my crowd! I admit that! 
  I need help! I also notice you haven’t 
  grabbed him off either, Savage! So you need 
  help! Let’s work together!” 
  Doc said, “A strange bargain! We are 
  not to postpone our private feud?” 
  “Ain’t necessary,” said Tant. “I’ll take 
  my chances with you. But this other bird has 
  got me worried!” 
  Vida Carlaw looked at Doc Savage. 
  “He’s more scared of the other man 
  than you!” she said, dryly. “That’s not very 
  flattering of you!” 
  Tant overheard her and yelled, 
  “Savage ain’t got what it takes to hogtie 
  Tomahawk Tant!” 
  Doc said, “Tant, I made no promises 
  before I was brought here.” 
  “Watcha mean, promises?” 
  “Promises not to grab you!” 
  A gargle of laughter came out of the 
  pipe. 
  Under cover of the mirth noise, Doc 
  whispered, so only the girl could bear, “Hold 
  your breath as long as you can!” 
  She began to hold her breath. Doc 
  did likewise. 
  Doc also rested his head on his 
  chest, so that his jaw pressed firmly upon his 
  necktie. There was a crunching sound as the 
  tiny glass balls in a cheesecloth sack broke 
  and released their contents—an anaesthetic 
  gas long ago developed by Doc Savage. 
  It was a gas producing a harmless 
  form of unconsciousness, but particularly 
  unusual because it became ineffective about 
  a minute after it started to mingle with the air, 
  so that the effects could be escaped merely 
  by holding the breath. 
  The 
  iron 
  pipe 
  through 
  which 
  Tomahawk Tant had been speaking fell with 
  a clatter. 
  Doc lunged forward, still holding his 
  breath. He hit the door with a crash and it 
  came open. Inside the engine room was 
  darkness. 
  The man who had brought Doc and 
  the girl here came leaping in from outside, 
  where he had been keeping lookout. He went 
  down senseless almost instantly. The gas 
  had not yet dissipated itself. 
   
   
  THERE was more than one man in 
  the 
  engine 
  room, 
  sleeping 
  from 
  the 
  anaesthetic; Doc counted. Six of them. They 
  were armed like a mop-up squad in trench 
  warfare. 
  The minute went, and Doc called, 
  “It’s all right now, Miss Carlaw.” 
  The girl approached, stopped just 
  inside the engine room door and stared at 
  the figure of Tomahawk Tant. Tant was easy 
  to identify, because he was holding the pipe 
  close to his lips in his sleep. 
  
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  61 
  The girl looked as if she were about 
  to faint. 
  “He was confident I did not know his 
  identity,” Doc said. “You see, he was 
  perfectly safe to come and go anywhere. The 
  police did not have his picture. And he had 
  established the identity of an honorable oil 
  man.” 
  The girl said nothing, only stared at 
  outlaw Tant. 
  Tomahawk Tant was her partner, old 
  Reservoir Hill! 
   
   
  Chapter XIX 
  LAST DITCH 
   
  THE men on the floor snored 
  peacefully amid their litter of machine guns 
  and rifles. They even had gas masks and 
  grenades, but the masks had done them no 
  good, Doc’s anaesthetic vapor being both 
  odorless and colorless. 
  “How 
  long 
  have 
  you 
  been 
  in 
  business with Tant—Reservoir Hill?” Doc 
  asked. 
  Vida 
  Carlaw 
  took 
  two 
  steps 
  backward and swayed a little. 
  “Five years,” she said. Then she 
  made vague stabbing gestures with her 
  hands. “But why did he do it? Why did he 
  take me into partnership? Why did—” 
  She fell silent, and her eyes grew 
  wide and horrified, her luscious skin distinctly 
  leaden in tint. 
  “Oh!” she gasped. “He was using me 
  for a front! I gave the partnership a 
  respectable appearance! I didn’t know we 
  had—had Tant—for a partner! Neither did 
  poor Sam Sands, I’m sure!” 
  Doc said, quietly, “That is true, of 
  course. Reservoir Hill, the respectable oil 
  man, would have respectable partners, who 
  would never be connected with Outlaw 
  Tomahawk Tant, one of the bloodiest bandits 
  the southwest has known.” 
  The girl looked at Tomahawk Tant. 
  “As Reservoir Hill—he was always—
  a swell guy!” she said jerkily. “It doesn’t seem 
  possible he could be—Tant!” 
  “Some people are excellent actors,” 
  Doc told her. “Tant, or Hill, was clever, or he 
  would never have become as notorious a—” 
  The bronze man stopped speaking, 
  spun and flung out of the engine room and 
  across the wheel room. He reached the outer 
  door, stopped as if he had slapped against 
  something solid, and pitched back out of 
  sight. 
  Big hailstones seemed to hit tin walls 
  and roof of the pumphouse—hailstones that 
  went through and left little round holes that 
  leaked sunlight. But the hailstones, hitting the 
  steel parts of the wheel, flattened and 
  became lead. The noise the bullets made 
  was ear-splitting. 
  “Down!” Doc’s great voice crashed 
  over the uproar. 
  Vida Carlaw raced to the big wheel, 
  leaped between its huge spokes, and lay flat. 
  “Who is it?” she called. 
  “The man with the black gloves and 
  his crowd,” Doc told her. “Somehow, they 
  have been tipped off that Tant was hiding out 
  here. They’re out to take him.” 
  Doc Savage was working, keeping 
  flat on his stomach, toward the engine room. 
  The men in there had guns. He would have 
  to use them, although it was his policy never 
  to use such weapons. Indeed, he would not 
  use them now to take life, only to stay the 
  charge of the attackers temporarily. 
  The 
  bronze 
  man 
  secured 
  a 
  submachine gun, and used it to discharge a 
  short burst in the direction of the attacking 
  men, who seemed to number at least two 
  score. 
  The men stopped, flopped into 
  ditches, and continued their advance more 
  slowly. Some of them, it could be seen, 
  carried grenades, ready to throw them when 
  they were close enough. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE dived between the 
  spokes of the wheel where the girl lay. 
  “You drove them off?” she asked. 
  “No such luck.” 
  Doc, fishing expertly inside his 
  clothing, extracted a box of metal and 
  unscrewed the top. He poured out into his 
  hand dozens of tiny things that might have 
  been BB shot. Leaping erect, he ran to a spot 
  near the door, then flung the shotlike things 
  outside. An instant later, he was beside the 
  girl. 
  “What were those things?” she 
  asked. 
  “Chemical pellets,” Doc explained. 
  “After they lie there a few moments, they will 
  absorb 
  moisture, 
  and 
  become 
  highly 
  
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  62 
  explosive. A slight compression will set them 
  off.” 
  “In other words, if they are stepped 
  upon, they will explode,” the girl said. 
  “Right.” 
  They lay there and waited. Bullets 
  continued to open rents in the roof, the walls. 
  The attackers seemed to be creeping closer. 
  “In a minute, they’ll charge,” Doc 
  offered. “We will see what happens.” 
  He had scarcely spoken when the 
  charge started. With a howling uproar, the 
  men rushed. Gun reports were a mad rattle. 
  Came a louder explosion. A man 
  screamed. There was a second blast. The 
  chemical pellets were exploding. 
  Doc heaved up, ran toward the door. 
  He had left the submachine gun lying there, 
  and it was his intention to pick it up and 
  perhaps hurry the retreat of the attackers 
  somewhat. 
  But 
  Outlaw 
  Tomahawk 
  Tant—
  Reservoir Hill—came charging out of the 
  engine room, swinging a heavy wrench. He 
  leaped upon Doc Savage, striking madly. 
  “I’ll teach you to monkey with 
  Tomahawk Tant!” he squawled. 
  He was still dizzy from the effects of 
  the anaesthetic gas, and did not know that 
  his mortal enemy was staging an attack. 
  Doc sparred warily with him. The 
  tough old fellow was fast on his feet, a 
  dangerous customer. 
  Then the door suddenly filled with 
  men. They had circled the grenades of 
  chemicals, and were charging in. Like an 
  avalanche, they came. 
  The fight that was waged in the 
  confines of the pumphouse was a classic. 
  Man after man dropped, and Doc seemed to 
  become a phantom which neither lead nor 
  human hands could touch. 
  How 
  that 
  scrap 
  would 
  have 
  terminated, had the bronze man gone on with 
  his 
  fighting, 
  never 
  was 
  determined. 
  Something happened that stopped him. 
  “Get the bronze guy alive, if you 
  can!” a voice howled. 
  “The chief will want to talk to ‘im!” 
  Instantly upon hearing that, Doc 
  Savage stopped fighting. 
  The men rushed in, and seized Doc 
  Savage, all of them that could lay hands 
  upon him. Some one brought a gunny sack, 
  and they dragged this over the bronze man’s 
  head, then tied it. 
  His easy surrender hadn’t fooled 
  them. 
  “He figures we’ll take ‘im to the chief, 
  and he’ll then bust loose and mop up on the 
  chief,” a man said. “Won’t he be fooled!” 
  They took Doc, the girl, Tomahawk 
  Tant, and Tant’s men, put them all in cars 
  and drove away. After about an hour and a 
  half of driving, Doc Savage’s sensitive 
  nostrils caught the odor of crude oil. The car 
  stopped while some one got out and opened 
  a gate, and when the machine went on, 
  grass could be heard dragging against the 
  underside. 
  “Bring them into the room where the 
  others are!” said the voice of the black-
  gloved man. 
  Doc was shoved through a door, and 
  the door then slammed, making such a 
  sound as to indicate it was a heavy and 
  strong door. 
  “I’ll be superamalgamated!” said the 
  voice of big-worded Johnny. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE stood perfectly still. 
  “Pipe 
  down, 
  Johnny!” 
  advised 
  Monk’s small voice. “We were so sure you 
  were dead that when you talk, it still seems to 
  me like your spook had come back!” 
  Doc Savage worked at the sack over 
  his head. He got it off just in time to see Vida 
  Carlaw, Tant—or Reservoir Hill—and the 
  other Tant followers shoved into a great room 
  which had concrete walls and no windows. 
  Glancing about, Doc saw just about 
  every one concerned in the mystery of the 
  red, jellylike devils from the depth of the 
  earth. His five aids were there, all very much 
  alive. 
  Long Tom, the electrical wizard, said, 
  “They just finished giving us a heck of a 
  scare, Doc! They took each one of us out 
  and rigged up a fake business so that we 
  thought they were feeding us to the red 
  devils! The idea was to make us talk!” 
  Ham put in, “Monk actually fainted, 
  he got so scared when his turn came!” 
  “That’s a lie!” Monk yelled. 
  Big-fisted Renny rumbled at Monk 
  and Ham, “Don’t you two japes ever get tired 
  of fighting with one another?” 
  Alonzo Cugg, sitting in a corner with 
  no expression except the usual fear in his 
  eyes, said, “Gentlemen, are you thinking 
  
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  63 
  about personalities, or ways of getting out of 
  this mess?” 
  Doc finished glancing 
  over the 
  crowd. One was missing. 
  “Where is Enoch Andershott?” the 
  bronze man asked. 
  “They took him off,” Monk grunted. 
  “They also took out one of Tant’s men. They 
  must’ve scared the fellow into telling where 
  Tant’s hang-out was, from the way they were 
  howling around.” 
  Reservoir Hill gritted, “So that’s how 
  they found me!” 
  Monk looked stunned. He leaped to 
  his feet. “What’d my ears just do to me?” 
  Reservoir Hill held silence. 
  “Are you Tomahawk Tant?” Monk 
  yelled. 
  Since Reservoir Hill didn’t answer, 
  Doc said, “He is.” 
  Monk opened and shut his mouth, 
  apparently could think of nothing else to do, 
  and sat down muttering. “Well, I hope to go 
  on a diet of crude oil, which I’m beginnin’ to 
  hate somethin’ huge!” 
  Men came in the door and pointed 
  rifles at Doc Savage.  
  “Come out!” they ordered. “We’re 
  gonna give you some attention!” 
  They only wanted to search him. 
  They did it, stripping him to the skin, and all 
  of the time keeping him covered with guns. 
  They put his pocketed vest on the 
  rickety table which stood to one side of the 
  room. There was a telegraph key and a 
  sounder on this table, but they did not look as 
  if they had been used in a long time. Through 
  the huge windows, long unwashed, Doc 
  Savage got a look at the surrounding 
  country. It was not what he expected. 
   
   
  THERE were giant oil storage tanks 
  all around the place.  
  A tank farm, as these collections of 
  storage tanks were called in oilfield parlance! 
  Almost half a hundred of the huge tanks must 
  surround this building, each encircled by a 
  small dike to catch the oil should the tank 
  spring a leak. 
  The tanks did not look large at this 
  distance, but Doc knew they were fifty-five-
  thousand-barrel giants, that being the usual 
  storage tank size in this area. Too, there 
  were tiny streaks of leakage on the tanks and 
  other indications which pointed to most of 
  them being full of crude oil. 
  The tank farm seemed to be situated 
  in a valley, with rolling hills on either side, 
  hills of some height. 
  As for the building in which Doc was 
  being held, that was a pumping station, or 
  had been, for it was apparently not used 
  now. The building was a substantial one of 
  brick and concrete. 
  Doc eyed the telegraph instruments, 
  once used by a gauging operator in reporting 
  to his oil dispatcher in the head office. Too 
  bad they were not connected, as it was plain 
  to see they were not. 
  The men stood about Doc’s unusual 
  vest for a time, curiously examining the 
  unusual gadgets therein. They turned tiny 
  phials of chemicals in their hands, examined 
  glass balls holding other chemicals, and 
  peered at intricate, compact devices. 
  “We’re gonna monkey around until 
  we get hell blowed outta us!” a man 
  muttered. “We better let this stuff alone!” 
  They slammed Doc back into the 
  room which had no window and a stout door. 
  The other prisoners eyed the bronze man 
  anxiously. 
  “They did nothing but search me,” 
  Doc explained. 
  “I can’t understand their holding off 
  on us!” Monk grunted. 
  “They won’t hold off on us for long!” 
  grunted old Reservoir Hill. 
  Doc eyed him. “Mind telling us how 
  you got involved in this, Tant, or Hill, or 
  whatever your name is?” 
   
   
  RESERVOIR HILL shoved out his 
  jaw fiercely, and became Outlaw Tant, 
  Oklahoma Badman, as far as appearances 
  went. 
  “This mastermind who’s holding us 
  prisoner—” 
  “Know who he is?” Doc interposed. 
  “No! Do you?” 
  Doc ignored the query and said, “Go 
  on with your story!” 
  “All right,” Hill growled with Tant 
  fierceness. “This hombre got in touch with 
  me, see? He wanted me to pitch in and help 
  him with my mob. He explained that he had 
  discovered these infernal red monsters 
  coming outt’a the ground through an oil well, 
  and had learned how to control ‘em. He was 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  64 
  gonna—well, you know what he was gonna 
  do. He was starting in the Indian Dome Field. 
  And that was the catch!” 
  “Your oil property was in the Indian 
  Dome Field,” Doc said. “That was the reason. 
  The first victim was to be the Sands-Carlaw-
  Hill lease?” 
  “Listen, I got more property than my 
  share of that lease in the Indian Dome Field! 
  I own a dozen leases under different names! 
  I’ll have you know I’m a millionaire, I am! And 
  nobody concerned suspected me of being 
  Tant!” 
  “So you refused to take part in this 
  other man’s plot, because your own holdings 
  were to be the first one’s stolen?” 
  “That’s the idea. Anyhow, I ain’t a 
  guy who likes to take orders from nobody. 
  This other mug was pushing in on my 
  territory, I figured. That kinda helped me de-
  cide to tie into ‘im.” 
  “Which was your mistake,” some one 
  said, dryly. 
  The door opened again, and the men 
  with rifles came in. They came over and 
  prodded Doc Savage. 
  “You better say good-by this time,” 
  one of the riflemen growled, “because you 
  ain’t comin’ back!” 
   
   
  Chapter XX 
  THE BLAZE OF GLORY 
   
  MONK and Ham got up from the 
  floor, where they had been sitting, and the 
  bronze man’s other aids grew tense. They 
  were fully intent on starting to fight, despite 
  the muzzles of guns menacing them. 
  “No!” Doc said sharply. 
  “Listen, Doc!” Monk growled. “You’ve 
  been searched! I’ve seen you do some 
  impossible things, but you won’t make it this 
  time! These cookies are tough, and they’re 
  gonna finish you off!” 
  “Keep your heads!” Doc said, again 
  sharply. 
  Then he added five words in a 
  tongue which himself and his five aids used 
  when they did not want to be understood by 
  listeners. It was Mayan, an ancient language, 
  lost to the so-called civilized world. 
  “And be ready to help,” Doc said in 
  Mayan. 
  Monk and the others were good 
  actors. They showed no sign that the words 
  meant anything favorable. Instead, they 
  looked more worried than before, if possible, 
  and clenched their fists and surged forward 
  threateningly. 
  “Keep back!” Doc yelled at them, 
  keeping up the deception. 
  Doc Savage was now hauled out of 
  the room, the door of which was then 
  slammed. 
  In the big room into which the bronze 
  man was dragged, a number of heavily 
  armed men stood about. They all stared at 
  the bronze giant with great interest, and 
  since he was weaponless and they had 
  firearms, and also since they outnumbered 
  him a score or more to one, they were not 
  afraid. 
  On the table, far to one side, lay the 
  stuff, which had been taken from Doc. They 
  took pains that he did not walk near it as they 
  marched him across the chamber and to a 
  door which probably led to what had been a 
  small storeroom. Several men sneered. One 
  or two laughed jeeringly. 
  Doc Savage stopped. The men 
  leading him tried to yank him on, but 
  suddenly found themselves almost helpless. 
  The bronze man did not attempt to escape; 
  he merely turned slowly. It was strange, the 
  effect this had. Every man in the room 
  became silent. 
  Doc 
  allowed 
  them 
  about 
  ten 
  seconds—long enough for the silence to 
  have its effect, but not long enough for it to 
  wear off. 
  “You men,” Doc Savage said, “are 
  doomed!” 
  His flexible voice had become deep-
  timbered and sonorous, and in it was a 
  quality of sepulchral unreality. It was as if a 
  ghostly apparition had spoken. 
  “Before many minutes pass, you will 
  feel the first clutches of death!” Doc said, 
  solemnly. 
  After that, he began to make his 
  weird, trilling noise. He could, if he desired, 
  make this consciously, although on ordinary 
  occasions the sound came without thought. 
  Indeed, it was sometimes a cause of 
  embarrassment. 
  The trilling sound mounted and 
  mounted, and from its usual resemblance to 
  a wayward breeze trickling through the naked 
  boughs of some thick forest, arose and arose 
  
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  65 
  until it became a banshee, hungry sound. 
  And throughout, it held its ventriloquial 
  quality, so that none in the room could tell for 
  certain from whence it came. 
  A man broke under the strain and 
  bawled, “Get ‘im outta here!” 
  They hauled Doc into an adjacent 
  room. 
   
   
  PRINCIPAL item of equipment in this 
  room was a wooden trough, which seemed to 
  be lined with lead. It was not more than a foot 
  deep, about two and a half wide, and seven 
  long. 
  The trough was standing about half 
  full of a vile-looking liquid, which gave off 
  fumes that almost instantly started the eyes 
  watering. 
  Several 
  men 
  still 
  grasped 
  Doc 
  Savage. The bronze man ignored them and 
  looked around. 
  Over in one corner lay several 
  strange-looking objects. 
  Soft, porous slabs of sponge rubber! 
  Stout little balloons of rubber filled with some 
  liquid, probably water. Sheets of crêpe 
  rubber. To some of these sheets were 
  attached slender lengths of bamboo; to all of 
  them were attached strings. 
  Red, every one of the things! The 
  hideous salmon tint of the “monsters” from 
  the depths of the earth! 
  The man with the black gloves came 
  in, saw Doc Savage looking at the array of 
  rubber stuff, and chuckled. 
  “You’ve probably guessed it by now,” 
  he said. “Them rubber things is what we’ve 
  been using to make people think they saw 
  monsters!” 
  Doc Savage said nothing. 
  “There ain’t no earth devils!” the man 
  rapped, sharply. “You savvy that? There ain’t 
  any! We had that wildcat well on the Sands-
  Carlaw-Hill lease fixed with the pipe tapped 
  underground, so we could pull some of the 
  rubber paraphernalia in and out. We even 
  poured acid inside the casing so the pipe 
  would be eaten away and people would think 
  the monsters could even digest steel.” 
  Doc held his silence. 
  The 
  black-gloved 
  man 
  laughed 
  harshly. 
  “We even had some stuff fixed up 
  out of the acids and stuff that make up 
  digestive juices!” he barked. “We smeared 
  that along the ground to leave a trail to make 
  ‘em think the monsters were crawling 
  around!” 
  Doc was looking, now, at the trough 
  full of fluid. 
  “Trough full of acid,” said the man. “It 
  don’t take long to destroy a body or partially 
  destroy it! That’s the monster’s digester!” 
  He lifted a gun and stepped forward. 
  “Does your chief know you are doing 
  this?” Doc asked, sharply. 
  “Sure, and why not? He’s outside, 
  hanging around where he won’t be seen, 
  until you and your men and Tant are out of 
  the way. Why?” 
  “Curiosity,” Doc said. 
  “Yeah? Well, forget him. We’re 
  gonna knock you senseless and put you in 
  the trough. When all of you is eaten up by the 
  acid but your head, we’re gonna take that in 
  and show it to the girl and some of the 
  others, who we’re gonna turn loose. But not 
  to any of your men, see!” 
  He lifted his gun. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE said, sharply. “Just a 
  moment! Suppose you go into the other room 
  and see how your friends are getting along?” 
  The black-gloved man scowled at 
  Doc, hesitated, then snarled, “If this is a trick, 
  it’ll be too bad!” and went out. 
  He was back almost instantly. 
  “What’d 
  you 
  do to them?” he 
  shrieked. “Come on! You gotta stop what’s 
  happening to ‘em!” 
  Doc was seized and hauled back into 
  the large room. 
  The 
  men 
  there 
  looked 
  as 
  if 
  something horrible was happening to them. 
  Their flesh seemed to be turning a hideous 
  purple in color, and bulging up in blisters. 
  They 
  pawed 
  at 
  themselves, 
  muttered, 
  occasionally groaned. 
  One looked at Doc Savage and 
  yelled, “It’s that bronze guy! He said—” 
  “Shut up!” gritted the man with the 
  black gloves. 
  The man with the black gloves 
  seemed to be having troubles of his own. He 
  scratched himself, pinched up folds of his 
  skin and looked at it. The better to do this, he 
  removed his black gloves. 
  The reason for his wearing the 
  gloves was instantly apparent. His hands had 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  66 
  been scarred terribly by some accident in the 
  past. They could be recognized instantly. 
  “Do something about this!” he roared 
  at Doc. 
  The bronze man, showing no sign 
  that he considered the request strange, 
  considering that they had been on the point 
  of killing him, said, “Monk can help you. This 
  stuff is merely burns caused by an acid which 
  was in my carry-all vest. The acid must have 
  been spilled. It is really a gas with some of 
  the burning properties of mustard gas.” 
  Doc did not add another fact which 
  would have astounded the man with the 
  scarred hands—that the acid had been in tiny 
  glass containers which could be broken by 
  certain frequencies of sound waves. 
  The glass containers had a certain 
  vibrating point; and a sound of that frequency 
  would start them vibrating in sympathy, with 
  the result that they shattered themselves 
  when a certain strength of sympathetic 
  vibration was reached. 
  It was the same method by which the 
  famous singer, Caruso, was able to break 
  wine glasses, except that in this case it had 
  been Doc’s trilling sound, lifted to great 
  volume, which had done the job. 
  “Monk can fix an antidote!” Doc 
  yelled. Then, as if he were angry, and 
  expressing his rage in the imprecations of a 
  foreign tongue, he said loudly in Mayan, 
  “Monk, the rest of you, be ready to make a 
  break for it when they unlock the door!” 
  Doc’s aids heard, and acted on the 
  suggestion, it seemed, for the next instant 
  the pump station became filled with shouting 
  and yelling and uproar. 
   
   
  THE 
  sudden 
  burst 
  of 
  fighting 
  distracted the men in the big room. Doc, 
  lunging sidewise, smashed a fist at the man 
  who wore black gloves to hide his scarred 
  hands. The fellow dropped. 
  Doc yelled in Mayan, “Don’t fight 
  them! Run for it!” 
  The bronze man knew the foes, once 
  they discovered there was nothing more 
  serious than a bad acid vapor burn wrong 
  with them, would fight with a will. 
  Doc himself dived for a door, got 
  through it. 
  Glass broke to the left. It was a 
  windowpane crashing out. Monk came into 
  view, whirled and caught Vida Carlaw as 
  some one heaved her out. Renny, Long Tom, 
  Johnny and Ham followed. All were burned 
  by the fumes. 
  An armed man came charging out of 
  the big room after Doc. The acid vapor had 
  affected his eyes, and he could see not too 
  well. Doc hit him. The man, in falling, 
  chanced to throw his gun in the direction of 
  Monk and the others. 
  Alonzo Cugg, fright still in his eyes, 
  was climbing through the window out of the 
  pumphouse. He hit the ground, saw the fallen 
  gun, and sprang for it. He got it. 
  “I’ll finish you, anyhow!” he shrieked. 
  He pointed the gun at Doc Savage. 
  Probably he wouldn’t have hit Doc, 
  because the bronze man was weaving 
  forward, and Cugg could see none too well. 
  But Monk was closer, hauled off, and kicked 
  Alonzo Cugg in the temple, then expertly 
  caught Cugg’s gun as it flew out of the man’s 
  senseless fingers. 
  “First I knowed Cugg was one of the 
  crooks!” Monk gulped. 
  Doc’s aids ran away from the 
  pumphouse, helping Vida Carlaw to make 
  speed. 
  Doc waited. Tant—Reservoir Hill—
  did not appear. 
  “Tant!” Doc called, sharply. “Come 
  on!” 
  “Hell with you!” roared the old 
  reprobate’s voice. “As Reservoir Hill, I might 
  run, but as Tomahawk Tant, me and my 
  hombres is gonna clean house here! Then 
  we’re gonna get you yourself!” 
  Doc did not argue. He spun and 
  drifted away from the pumping station with 
  the speed of a hard-driven cloud. 
   
   
  HIS aids and Vida Carlaw had 
  already reached the dike around an oil tank, 
  and they tucked behind this barricade. 
  Bullets began to pass close to Doc, 
  making whistling snick! noises, but he 
  reached the bank and dived over it 
  “Boy, oh, boy!” Monk groaned. “Does 
  that acid vapor burn! I feel like I’d been 
  skinned alive!” 
  “You look as if you were made for 
  skinning!” Ham said, referring slightingly to 
  Monk’s furry hide. 
  Doc said, “Whichever side wins that 
  fight, it makes no difference to us. They’ll be 
  after us. Come on!” 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx THE DERRICK DEVIL xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  67 
  They ran around the big oil tank, got 
  it between themselves and the old pump 
  station, and by running madly, reached the 
  shelter of another dike. 
  Monk paused to peer backward. 
  There was shooting at the station, a great 
  deal of it. 
  Tomahawk Tant was still inside the 
  station with his men who had been taken 
  prisoners. They must have seized weapons 
  from their late captors. Tant could be heard 
  squawling, and there was a mad rage in his 
  voice 
  which 
  one 
  would 
  never 
  have 
  suspected, after knowing him in the garrulous 
  personality of Reservoir Hill. 
  The leader of the other crowd was 
  assembling his men outside, bawling orders 
  at them. The figure of this fellow who had 
  tried to foist a mythical earth monster off on 
  the oil fields as a death device to gain control 
  of leases, could be seen plainly. 
  Monk recognized this mastermind. 
  “Blazes!” he howled. “C’mere an’ see 
  who’s got horns and a spike on his tail!” 
  Renny heaved up and had a look. 
  “Holy cow!” 
  Doc Savage said, “It is Enoch 
  Andershott.” 
  “Enoch Andershott is the leader!” 
  Renny agreed. “But when’d you guess it?” 
  “When he told about the monsters 
  besieging him in his house,” Doc said, 
  quietly. “It was obvious he was lying, telling 
  us his partner, Cugg, was kidnaped, so that 
  they could decoy us on a fake chase after 
  him, a chase that would lead us into a trap!” 
  “But you went ahead into the trap, 
  anyway!” Renny boomed. 
  Doc said, with a trace of wryness, 
  “When they laid the ambush on the cliff road, 
  it was sooner than expected.” 
  “Lookit!” Monk grunted, and pointed. 
  Enoch Andershott was leading his 
  mob in flight from the pump station. 
  Tomahawk 
  Tant 
  and 
  his 
  men 
  charged out after them. 
   
   
  TWO of Andershott’s men were shot 
  down before they reached the nearest dike 
  around a huge oil tank and popped over it. 
  They began to shoot over the bank at Tant’s 
  crowd. 
  The outlaws promptly dived into a 
  convenient ditch below the oil storage tank 
  and began to return the fire. The whack of 
  rifles was erratic and vicious, and bullets 
  made fantastic singing sounds in the sky. 
  “Reminds me of the old days in the 
  Great War!” grunted Renny. 
  Doc said, “Stay here!” 
  “Whatcha gonna do?” Monk yelled. 
  “Help whichever side seems to be 
  losing!” Doc told him. “If we can keep them 
  fighting long enough, we’ll have more of a 
  chance of thrashing the survivor.” 
  But something happened before the 
  bronze man could put his idea into practice. 
  Tomahawk Tant’s men had been 
  shooting with their most powerful rifles, at the 
  oil storage tank. The bullets had penetrated 
  the sheet steel, and oil was leaking down. 
  A firebrand came arching from the 
  ditch where the Tant outlaws lay and fought. 
  It arched over the dike around the oil tank, 
  and fell within. It did not accomplish its 
  purpose. 
  Another flaming missile was thrown. 
  This one did better. It struck the leaking oil. 
  Instantly, this burst into flame. 
  Then came what the Tant outlaws 
  had not expected. The flames climbed up 
  and reached gas escaping from top vents of 
  the tank. The tank was only partially full of 
  crude oil, so there was plenty of room for the 
  gas to collect. The tank held thousands of 
  cubic feet of it. 
  The gas went up in a titanic zo-o-m! 
  The tank top, falling apart as it arose, went 
  hundreds of feet in the air. Sides of the tank 
  split outward, disgorging flaming oil. 
  There was too much of the oil for the 
  dike to hold. It sloshed over, and went 
  pouring toward the ditch where Tant and his 
  men lay. Great sheets of the flaming stuff 
  sloshed over them, driven by the exploding 
  gas. 
  Within the next few moments, the 
  whole scene of the fight was flaming oil, and 
  black smoke was beginning to arise in a 
  cloud that would crawl like a black snake for 
  miles along the countryside—sole monument 
  to two mobs of men whose creed had been 
  to take by force such things as they might 
  want. 
  For both crowds, the portions of 
  them engaged in the fight at the time, 
  perished in the oil fire. And that meant the 
  leaders of both factions died. There were, of 
  course, other members of both sides, 
  probably numbering in the scores scattered 
  over the countryside, but these probably lost 
  
  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DOC SAVAGE xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
   
  68 
  no time in fleeing Oklahoma. At least, they 
  were never heard from again, nor could a 
  trace be found of them, although Doc Savage 
  had his five aids looking about for them. 
   
   
  DOC SAVAGE, while his aids sought 
  outlaws and Andershott followers, attended 
  to the final details of getting the earth 
  monster scare quieted. It was not hard. Oil 
  men are quick to adapt themselves. 
  There was one more surprising 
  development. Tomahawk Tant’s will—to be 
  more exact, Reservoir Hill’s will. 
  He had left everything—including the 
  properties he owned under other names—to 
  Vida Carlaw. 
  Vida refused to have anything to do 
  with the legacy. Doc discussed the matter 
  with her. There was no reason why she did 
  not have a legal right to the wealth. She was 
  adamant, didn’t want anything to do with it. 
  They compromised by establishing with the 
  funds one of the largest free hospitals in the 
  world in Oklahoma. 
  Renny, the big-fisted engineer, went 
  over the preliminary plans with Vida Carlaw. 
  Renny was also something of an architect, 
  and 
  he 
  had 
  also 
  become 
  somewhat 
  enamored of pretty Vida Carlaw, and 
  volunteered his services. 
  In fact, he gave the young lady quite 
  a 
  rush—and 
  Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  learned 
  something. 
  Monk 
  and 
  Ham 
  had 
  long 
  considered themselves the lady-killers of 
  Doc’s little group. But in the present instance, 
  big-fisted Renny left them at the post. They 
  didn’t have a chance. 
  Monk and Ham took their disgust out 
  on each other. It got to a point where it really 
  did look as if they would murder each other. 
  Even their pets, Habeas and Chemistry, 
  which 
  had 
  been 
  in 
  the 
  Tulsa 
  hotel 
  throughout, took to eating each other at 
  every chance. 
  The 
  coming 
  of 
  THE 
  MENTAL 
  WIZARD might have kept them from actual 
  mayhem. Certainly, the mystery of THE 
  MENTAL 
  WIZARD 
  was 
  a 
  thing 
  so 
  astounding, and so startling in its possibilities 
  that it completely occupied their attention—to 
  say nothing of nearly costing them their lives. 
  It was strange, the beginning of the 
  mystery of THE MENTAL WIZARD. A plane, 
  a plane long believed to be lost, came flying 
  out of the South American jungles. In it was a 
  young man, the pilot, whom the world had 
  given up hope of seeing alive again, years 
  before. Riding beside him was a young 
  woman, a young woman dressed in fantastic 
  garments, speaking a language none could 
  understand. 
   
   
  THE END 
   
   
   
  You may not be as smart as 
   
  THE MENTAL WIZARD 
   
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  you'll be smarter than the next one who failed to reserve it, and will prob-
  ably have to do without the best novel we've printed thus far. And that's 
  not all you'll miss—you'll miss other dandy stories and features in 
  addition to this book-length novel of Doc Savage and his pals. So reserve 
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SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Vault2.0.-.Fiction-and-audiobooks/Books/R/Robeson, Kenneth/048 The Derrick Devil.pdf