Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 14

"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 pa.s.sed 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 coupe, 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 coupe. 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 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, hoa.r.s.ely. "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 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 ident.i.ty, 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 s.e.x, 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed for some deep thought, at the same time eying 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 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!"