Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 18

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 gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s 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.The girl looked as if she were about to faint.

"He was confident I did not know his ident.i.ty," 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 ident.i.ty 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 partners.h.i.+p? 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 partners.h.i.+p 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 theattacking 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, fis.h.i.+ng 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 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 cla.s.sic. Man after man dropped, and Doc seemed to become a phantom which neither lead nor human hands could touch.

How that sc.r.a.p 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, gra.s.s 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 j.a.pes 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 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.