Doc Savage (№3) - Quest of the Spider

The man was Lefty—the survivor of the crooked lumber-detective pair.

* * *

"IT wasn't Johnny's fault we didn't get the Gray Spider," Doc explained as they rode downtown. "He had never seen Lefty. And, anyway, the man was wearing a mask when he talked to Johnny."

"Any chance of this endangering Johnny?" Ham pondered.

"Probably not," Doc replied. "This man undoubtedly came to get that money and keep it for himself, hence he would not report its existence to the Gray Spider. So the master mind has no way of knowing Johnny sent him into a trap."

They added Lefty to the ever-growing collection of sleepers waiting transportation to the up-state New York criminal-curing institution.

"We'll pay Long Tom a visit," Doc decided.

They found the pale blond electrical wizard in a long, narrow room in an office building off Canal Street. Hugging each wall of this room was a row of small tables.

Competent-looking young women sat at the tables. They wore telephone headsets. Their fingers grasped pointed pencils. Stenographic notebooks lay before them, open and ready.

At one end of the room stood a radio telephone transmitter and receiver.

Each young lady was a highly skilled stenographer. They were making records of every word of conversation to go over the phone lines of the leading lumber companies of the South.

Long Tom had done a miraculous piece of work, considering the short time he had been at it.

"Got anything?" Doc inquired.

"Only one thing of real importance," Long Tom replied. "That is the tip that an important conversation should take place soon between one of the Gray Spider's chief lieutenants and the Gray Spider subordinate who has taken control of Worldwide Sawmills."

"Any idea what the talk will be about?"

"Nope. All I know is that the man at Worldwide Sawmills has been tipped that one of the big boys will give him a ring soon." Long Tom waved at a loud-speaker at the end of the room. "I've arranged to cut the conversation into that loudspeaker when it comes in, so we can all listen."

"Fine," smiled Doc.

He said nothing more, but waited. Apparently he was entirely unaware of the panic of feminine hearts he was causing among the battery of stenographers.

Long Tom, it was to be suspected, had exercised an eye for pulchritude as well as efficiency when he hired his working force. He had picked a number of peaches. And the glances they threw in Doc's direction would have put life into a stone man. They had, however, exactly no effect on the mighty man of bronze. The stenographers didn't know it, but Doc was absolutely woman proof.

"I'm gonna have to kick Doc out of here before these girls will go back to work," Long Tom grumbled.

At this point, one young lady held up a hand.

"The call you have been waiting for!" she said.

Long Tom sprang to a panel. He threw switches. Out of the loud-speaker at the end of the room came a humming note that showed it was cut in on a telephone line, through an amplifier.

* * *

THE hum persisted for some seconds.

"Hello, you at Worldwide!" said a harsh voice.

"Hello yourself!" growled the other man.

"How much you got on hand?"

"Quarter of a million dollars. We sold that No. 3 plant for cash today."

Doc saw clearly what was going on. The Gray Spider's man in charge of Worldwide Sawmills had disposed of another part of the company. They were continuing their looting. The last unit they had sold chanced to be the No. 3 sawmill where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been rescued.

"The Gr—Well, you know who—will take personal delivery on this gob of cash," the man at Worldwide was told. "You're to meet him and hand over the jack tonight."

"Meet him—where?"

"You know where Buck Boontown's village is in the big swamp?"

"Yeah."

"Meet him there. Be on hand at ten o'clock, sharp!"

"Aw—what does he think I am? It's a terrible trip into that swamp at night."

"I can't help that, buddy. You got your orders."

"Ahr-r-r!" growled the man at Worldwide. "I'll be there."

"You better!"

This ominous warning terminated the conversation. Sharp clicks denoted receivers being hung up.

Doc, Long Tom and Ham exchanged knowing looks.

"He's going to meet the Gray Spider at Buck Boontown's swamp settlement with a quarter of a million dollars in cash," Ham clipped. He made a fighting stroke with his sword cane. "I presume we will be on hand?"

"With bells on," Doc assured him.

"How about me?" Long Tom barked. "I'm in on this! Try to keep me out!"

"Can your wire-tapping establishment here get along without you?" Doc inquired.

"Sure it can."

"Come on, then."

* * *

THEY hurried outside. Doc hailed a cab and directed: "The Danielsen & Haas building."

"What's there?" Long Tom wanted to know.

"Big Eric and Edna," Doc replied. "We will tell them what we're headed for and make sure they are safe."

Their taxi rooted its way through traffic. Here and there stores were turning on the lights in their show windows, proof that dusk was near.

"Have you heard from Renny and Monk?" Long Tom asked Doc.

"Not a word," Doc admitted. "Monk, as you know, is pretending to be a chemist fleeing from the vengeance of a country he turned traitor to. Renny is taking the part of a dishonest special forest ranger. Both hope to get into the Gray Spider's gang. But they have no radio to keep in touch with me. That's why we haven't heard from them."

At the Danielsen & Haas building, Doc and his men left their taxi waiting.

In the lobby, they encountered pretty Edna Danielsen. She was alone. She looked worried.

Doc said seriously. "It is dangerous for you to be chasing around alone without—"

"Wait!" she interrupted. "I am afraid something terrible has happened!"

"What do you mean?" Doc questioned sharply.

"Horace Haas has disappeared!" Edna Danielsen explained. "And poor old Silas Bunnywell is also gone! Worse still, I made a horrible discovery in Silas Bunnywell's little office!"

"What sort of discovery?"

"Come! I'll show you."

An elevator rushed them up to the top floor. Edna Danielsen led the way to old Silas Bunnywell’s cubby-hole.

"Look!" she gasped, and pointed.

* * *

SILAS BUNNEYWELL’S accounting table was overturned. So was a wastebasket. Red and black had spilled together in a lurid puddle. There had been a fierce struggle in the little cubicle.

To one side lay an inkwell. It was a heavy fistful of glass. Red ink from it was splashed high on the walls.

"Obviously somebody was clubbed over the head with this," Doc murmured. He picked up the inkwell. His golden eyes appraised it.

Several dark hairs clung to the bottom.

"Poor old Silas Bunnywell!" choked Edna Danielson.

"Not Silas Bunnywell," Doc corrected thoughtfully. "Hehad almost snow-white hair. These hairs are dark. Unless I'm mistaken, they came from the head of Horace Haas. You're sure Silas Bunnywell and Horace Haas are both missing?"

"Absolutely!" declared the attractive young woman. "Dad and I have looked everywhere for them."

"Where is your father?"

"In his office."

They retired to Big Eric Danielsen's office. Big Eric was treading circles on the worn carpet. The office was fogged with smoke from the cigar he was puffing.

"Where in the devil do you reckon Horace Haas and Silas Bunnywell have disappeared to?" he demanded.

"Frankly, I'm puzzled," Doc admitted.

Big Eric shivered. It did not add to his cheerfulness to hear this mighty bronze man admit he was puzzled, even though the bafflement might be only temporary.

"What are you going to do now?" he questioned.

"Unfortunately, we only have time for one bold stroke," Doc replied. "One of the men the Gray Spider has installed as a looter at the head of Worldwide Sawmills is to meet his master tonight at Buck Boontown's swamp settlement. He is to deliver a quarter of a million dollars of their loot to the Gray Spider in person. Ham, Long Tom, and myself have barely time to get there. We'll rush out there and try to grab the Gray Spider."

"I'd like to help you!" Big Eric declared.

"Nothing doing!" refused Doc. "You will stay here in New Orleans and guard the life of your daughter. We will escort you home immediately. We will also leave machine guns and hand grenades, so you can defend yourself against any attack by the Gray Spider's men."

They left this office. Almost running, they made for the elevators. The cage ferried them down.

Perhaps forty seconds after the elevator door clanked shut, one corner of the carpet in Big Eric's office lifted slowly. It flipped back. This disclosed that a section of the floor had been cunningly contrived into a trapdoor. Below it was a coffinlike cavity a few inches deep.

A man had been occupying this—listening!

* * *

THE eavesdropper stood up from his coffinlike skulking place. He wore a gaudily colored silk mask—much like a gay silk handkerchief.

The fellow looked somewhat ludicrous, for he wore a woolly overcoat. And the summer evening was rather hot! From his standpoint, there was cunning in the wearing of the coat. It had no exposed buttons which might have scraped on the sides of his hiding place and betrayed him! He had even pulled big wool socks over his toes so there would be no squeal of leather against wood.

This sinister person scooped up the telephone. He asked for a number and got it. He listened intently and recognized the voice which spoke to him.

"This is the Gray Spider!" he said in hoarse, fierce tones. "Assemble the most trusted men of the Clan of the Moccasin!"

"It will be done," replied an awed whisper.

"Tonight we wipe out the bronze devil! He cannot evade us!"

With an ugly, guttering laugh, the Gray Spider hung up. He glided into the corridor. He had not removed his silk mask, nor his foolish overcoat, nor the big wool socks from over his shoes.

He found a Window in the front of the building. Craning his neck, he managed to see down to the street. He made a snarling noise at what he saw.

Doc Savage was installing Big Eric, Edna, Ham, and Long Tom in the taxi.

Doc himself rode the running board, as was his custom. The cab rolled away from the curb.

Doc's golden eyes roved everywhere, missing nothing. They scrutinized the windows of the Danielsen & Haas building casually.

There was now no masked face at a top-floor window, however.

Big Eric and Edna were left at the Danielsen mansion. Doc handed over a pair of his wonderfully compact, extremely rapid-firing machine guns—the weapons of his own invention. He also produced gas masks and violent little hand grenades.

He made a quick, thorough search of the elaborate dwelling. Finishing, he was certain none of the Gray Spider's men were concealed about.

"Have you floodlights that will illuminate the grounds?" he questioned Big Eric.

"I sure have."

"Keep them on all night. One of you be on guard every minute. We will try to be back by morning. But it is impossible to guarantee that."

"We'll be all right," Big Eric declared.

"And you must be careful!" ravishing Edna Danielsen told Doc in a strange, tight voice, the significance of which was quite lost on him.

Ham and Long Tom exchanged knowing looks when they were outside.

"The queen has tumbled for Doc!" Ham grinned.

"And don't they all?" chuckled Long Tom.

* * *

THEIR next move was a quick return to Long Tom's "central," which he had established for all his tapped phone lines. There, Doc made an effort to get in touch with Johnny. But his rapid radio calling elicited no answer from the plane in the swamp.

"No way we can let Johnny know we're coming," Doc decided. "We'll leave the radio apparatus turned on, and if he calls, one of the stenographers can slip him the news."

Once more they entered a car. But it was Doc's roadster this time, instead of the taxi. The rumble seat and the baggage compartments already held such equipment as Doc thought they would need for just such a jaunt as this.

Doc wheeled the car into traffic. One of his bronze fingers clicked a newly installed switch. Under the hood, a police siren began to wail. The speedometer climbed past forty, fifty and sixty with ten-mile-an-hour jumps.

Ham and Long Tom sat tight and held their hat to keep them from being blown off by the terrific rush of air. Doc wore no hat. No goggles protected his golden eyes. The windshield was down. Yet the roaring wind seemed to have absolutely no effect on his bronze immaculateness.

"Hadn't we better pick up a boat somewhere?" Ham inquired.

"We’ve got it," Doc replied.

"Huh?"

"In the rumble seat—a collapsible silk boat you can almost put in your coat pocket. Also, there's an outboard motor that hardly weighs more than a portable typewriter. Other things, too!"

Ham pinched his eyes shut against the slapping, tearing wind. The uncanny way his big bronze leader had of preparing for every emergency was a continuous source of wonder to Ham. He, carrying in his head the keenest thinking machine of the adventurous group, excepting only Doc, could pick out many possible emergencies that could arise. But mighty Doc Savage saw ahead to dangers of which Ham did not dream, and seemed always to have a defense against them.

The miles streaked under the panting roadster. Darkness had fallen. The moon was out, brilliant.

Into the swamps dived the road. Great cypress towered like clouds of green over the thoroughfare. On higher ground, yellow pines stood slender and tall like arrayed sentinels.

"Great lumber country," Ham offered, to break the silence.

"Second only to the State of Washington in the value of lumber produced," Doc replied.

Long Tom chuckled. "And I sort of had the idea sugar cane and cotton was all they grew down here!"

The smokestack of a sawmill spouted sparks on their left. Steam labored. A head saw bit into a log with a sound like silk cloth being torn. The mill was ablaze with lights. More electric bulbs hung out on a cableway system used to lift logs out of the storage yard and drop them on the log dogs in the bull chain that fed the sawing carriages.

Doc's roadster whipped on and the night-working sawmill was left behind. The road seemed to sink. It became a tortuous groove in a spongy mat of steaming, ominous swamp. The moonlight did not reach it often.

The headlights danced like fat white chalk sticks juggled on the snout of the roadster.

"Is this the only road into Buck Boontown's part of the Morass?" Ham asked.

"It is," Doc assured him.

* * *

THE monotony of their swamp trip was soon shattered. The road lifted suddenly. It narrowed until there was room for only one car. The road was crossing a deep bayou on a high levee.

To either side, moonbeams shimmered up from the listless surface of the bayou. Higher and higher, the car swept. It was half across the grade.

At this point, Doc's uncanny keenness of eye was demonstrated. The others saw nothing portentous of danger. No obstruction barred the way.

But Doc's golden eyes noted a disquieting object. A small stick, smaller even than a lead pencil, projected upward from the road middle. It had been set there recently. The disturbed condition of the road showed that.

Doc trod the brake. The suspicious stick was only a few yards away. The roadster was doing sixty. It skewered. It careened from side to side, skidding. All four tires, frozen immobile by the brakes, squealed like hungry pigs.

The stick came nearer. Doc saw the roadster wasn't going to stop in time. The road was too narrow to steer to either side.

Suddenly several men ran into view at the end of the levee. They were wizened. They looked like big, hairless, bob-tailed monkeys.

Harnessed to his middle, every man had an aircraft-type machine gun.

Doc's bronze head flashed around. Behind them, more of the swamp men had appeared.

"A trap!" Ham rapped.

The exclamation was hardly off Ham's lips when a powerful bronze arm grasped him and flung him bodily out of the roadster. Ham's form cleared the levee! He sailed for the water.

Despite the suddenness of what had occurred, Ham still retained a clutch on his sword cane.

Even as he saw Ham clear the levee, Long Tom found he was also spinning through space. Turning over in the air, he got a glimpse of Doc Savage's powerful frame cleaving down after him.

Both Ham and Long Tom felt as though they had been half jerked apart by the titanic sinews of the bronze giant. They were as dazed as though a stunning electric current had unexpectedly caroused through their bodies.

There had been no time for Doc to be gentle. He had hurled both his men clear of the levee and followed himself—all in an instant so fractional only a finely calibrated stopwatch could have caught it.

The roadster had not yet hit the upraised stick.

But now the car skewered into it. There was a terrific roar. A hideous tongue of flame leaped magically into being and tore the levee apart. The burst mangled the entire front off the roadster. It spouted smoke, sparks, dirt and rent fragments of the car.

Had the roadster been moving a little faster, it would have been completely annihilated. As it was, only the fore part met destruction.

* * *

Chapter XII. HUMAN SACRIFICE

HAM and Long Tom plunked into the water in one-two succession. They collided as they kicked in the depths. Together, they stroked to the top.

Doc's bronze head was not in evidence.

Dйbris from the dynamited levee still rained. The stuff ranged from steel splinters to clods as large as pork barrels. The rear half of the roadster dived beneath the surface with a loud gurgling.

Ham and Long Tom sank hastily to keep from being brained by dropping wreckage. They realized now that the roadster, in hitting the raised stick had closed an electrical contact which released the blast.

Swimming under water, Ham and Long Tom reached the concealment of canes which grew along the levee edge.

"Where's Doc?" Ham groaned. "He should have come to the top before now!"

"Maybe—" Long Tom shivered and didn't finish. Maybe a flying missile, driven by the explosive, had pierced Doc's giant bronze form! It was possible!

Racing feet spatted the levee. Hoarse commands were gobbled in the jargon the swamp men spoke. A machine gun vomited a string of concussions.

Long Tom and Ham sank wildly as copronickel bullets scored the water about their heads. They arose deeper in the gloom beneath the canes.

Over where the blast had occurred, great bubbles were arising. They made gruesome glub-glubsounds. Air escaping from the submerged roadster caused them. One arose now that seemed large as a tub.

"Ugh!" shuddered Ham. "Why don't Doc come up?"

Long Tom gave a hoarse gasp. "Look! As if the devils above us weren't enough!"

Perhaps three score feet distant, two knots had projected from the bayou surface. They resembled a pair of black fists held close together.

"'Gator!" Ham muttered. "The infernal things feed at night, too!"

The eyes of the alligator sank.

"Yo' come on out!" rasped one of the swamp men from the levee.

Ham and Long Tom made no answer. They fingered their compact little machine guns.

Suddenly a storm of slugs from the aircraft type weapons above them poured downward. The rank canes were chewed and split as by the fangs of an invisible, wood-devouring monster.

Ham and Long Tom saw they were at a hopeless disadvantage. They held their fire, not wishing to start a fight to the finish.

"Yo' no be keeled if yo' come out!" called the swamp man. "Gray Spider ees want to talk to yo'!"

The speaker swore at the machine gunners, silencing them. Then he waited to see what Ham and Long Tom would do.

"Doc!" Ham croaked. "He hasn't shown up yet!"

"We've got to do somethin'!" Long Tom hissed. Desperate, he called up to the swamp men. "We will surrender if you'll let us dive a few times in search of our leader!"

The answer came promptly. "Go ahead an' dive!"

"You promise you won't shoot us?" Long Tom asked.

"Yo' won't be shot. Me—I geeve yo' de word of Buck Boontown on eet!"

The leader of their attackers was Buck Boontown!

Swiftly, Ham and Long Tom swam out and dived. They groped repeatedly in the depths, seeking the giant bronze form of Doc Savage. Horror closed swiftly upon their hearts as they found no trace of Doc. Only mud and foul water plants lay on the bayou bottom, perhaps a dozen feet down.

A loathsome gurgling of bubbles still came from the sunken roadster. It was as though the car were a living thing and life was slowly departing from it.

Long Tom and Ham searched around the machine several times. Their spirits, weighted like lead, they stroked listlessly to the surface.

"Maybe he swam away," Long Tom mumbled hopefully. "He can stay under water for many minutes."

"I hope so," Ham agreed.

But a horrible sight was soon to drive even this faint hope from them.

"Yo' climb up here!" commanded Buck Boontown harshly.

* * *

THERE was nothing else to do. Long Tom and Ham crawled up the steep side of the levee. The swamp men seized upon them. Their arms were taken. Many an admiring gasp went up at sight of the tiny, superefficient machine guns. A monkey man appropriated Ham's sword cane.

"We should've fought it out!" Ham gritted.

"They'd have gotten us!" Long Tom assured him. "They must have at least twenty of those aircraft machine guns. And with that metal-reлnforced leather harness they wear, I'll bet they can hold the weapons on a target without trouble."

Now came the ghastly incident they were to witness. It was by far the most shocking thing their eyes had ever beheld. Seeing it turned their very blood to water and left them despondent and crushed.

"Sacrй

— look!" shouted a swamp man.

All eyes went to a point a few score of feet out on the bayou. At this spot, the water was boiling. A great, hideous form was threshing only a foot or so down. A tapering, ridged tail squirmed into view for an instant.

"Gator!" croaked Ham. "The infernal thing has got something!"

The jaws of the alligator abruptly appeared. Moonlight glistened on the repulsive, sand-colored teeth.

Affixed in the teeth was a mighty bronze human arm!

The 'gator seemed to be worrying the limp body to which the arm was attached.

It sank from sight, leaving nothing but a turmoil of water to show where it had been.

Ham shrieked like a madman. He clutched at one of the swamp men's machine guns. He was driven to madness by the awful thing he had just seen. He wanted the rapid firer to slay the alligator.

He didn't get the gun. A swamp man nearly shot him. Buck Boontown's angry roar was all that saved Ham's life.

Long Tom also put forth a short struggle. A machine gun barrel swept against his head and stunned him. When he revived, his wrists were lashed.

Ham was also bound.

"Walk!" commanded Buck Boontown.

The cavalcade moved down the road. Soon they turned into the swamp. A labyrinth of palmettos, swamp maples, tupelo gums, cane, vines and creepers and loathsome aлrial moss closed in upon them.

At times they sank to their waists in mire that had a sickening stench. They trod rotting logs over what appeared to be bottomless abysses of slime. Once they took entirely to an aлrial thoroughfare of branches and lianas for some hundreds of yards.

The devilish little swamp men showed an amazing agility at getting through what would have seemed an impenetrable barrier of vegetation. But at frequent intervals even they were almost baffled by the steaming, festering tangle of the swamp.

* * *

LONG TOM and Ham paid no attention to the passage of time. They even took no particular pains to avoid the treacherous vines and slime pools in their, path. As a consequence, they were frequently kicked.

The resultant pain, they hardly felt. For nothing could be greater than the ache that came from the knowledge that they had lost their friend, the man to whom they owed their lives many times over—Doc Savage.

They held no hope of ever seeing the mighty bronze man again. The hoo-hoo-hoorooingof swamp owls made a sort of awful dirge to accompany their grief.

But, as they floundered deeper into the vast swamp, another and scarcely less ominous sound joined the macabre tooting of the owls.

"Listen!" muttered Ham.

Faintly, there reached their ears a monotonous drumming note. This rose and fell. One moment it would roll across the vast, foul-quagmire like syncopated thunder. The next it fell to a muted mutter, like fingers softly slapping a sponge.

It was as though the great swamp were a panting beast.

Periodically, there lifted over this unending sound a shrill caterwauling, as of a cat with its tail stepped on. Hoarser barks and howls were commingled.

The noise was altogether hideous.

"Ugh!" muttered Long Tom. "I can guess what that is!"

"So can I," Ham replied listlessly. "A voodoo ritual!"

"Notice how it's affecting our captors!" said Long Tom.

Subtle excitement was pervading the ugly little swamp men. They clucked to each other in a language so degenerate that Ham and Long Tom could hardly understand it.

Later, when they came for a moment into a moonlight glade, Long Tom and Ham observed that their captors were doing a sort of revolting muscle dance in time with the throbbing. It was as though the measured beats of the tom-toms inflicted muscular convulsions upon their bodies.

Even Ham and Long Tom found themselves unpleasantly affected by the barbaric cadence. Indeed, Long Tom, discovering his shoulders jerking to the savage tune, swore violently—something he rarely did.

"I've heard the music at these rituals has a sort of crazing effect," Ham muttered. "I can believe it after listening to this. It's more than I've ever expected in all my life."

Long Tom shuddered. "One might expect something like this in a country of savages—but right here in the United States! Ugh!"

They came soon to a circular hill. It was no more than two score of feet above the swamp. In the center was a bowl-shaped hollow, a natural amphitheater.

Standing on the rim of this, Long Tom and Ham surveyed such a tableau of barbarism as they had never expected to see within the confines of the United States.

* * *

A STRING of small fires burned in the bottom of the hollow. These were greenish, and from the nauseating odor they cast off, evidently were kindled from wood which had been treated with sulphur. No doubt the string of blazes was intended to represent a serpent, for snake deities have a prominent place in most voodoo cults.

Numerous masked figures were near the fires. Some of them leaped and spun like hideous dervishes. Others merely sat and jerked their muscles in tune with the tom-toms. All wore masks.

The beaters of the tom-toms sat farther back. From time to time, they emitted a loud howl. They were unmasked.

It was upon the masks of the men in the center of the hollow that Long Tom and Ham rested their gaze.

These were of gaudy silk!

"Remember that flashy silk handkerchief Horace Haas carried in his coat pocket?" Ham inquired.

"Yes," replied Long Tom. "Why?"

"I was just thinking," Ham muttered. He didn't elaborate on his thoughts.

Around the edges of the hollow huddled row after row of the vicious, monkeylike swamp dwellers. Long Tom and Ham were astounded at seeing so many present. Their number must run into the hundreds!

The whole ceremony had the air of something that would last for many hours, perhaps days. Gourds filled with a greenish liquor that was dipped from a troughlike container made of a hollow log, passed among the assembled voodooists quite often.

"Some kind of a vile dope the Gray Spider has fixed up for them, I'll bet!" Ham declared. "Brings them under his sway easier!"

"Yo' keep goin'!" rasped Buck Boontown at their backs. "Yo' don' stop here!"

Buck Boontown was alone among their captors in seeming not to take much stock in the voodoo ritual. He twitched a time or two in sympathy with the hideous rhythm—but no more often than Long Tom and Ham did the same thing involuntarily.

Around the edge of the natural theater, they were herded. They were led down to the group of masked men about the string of greenish fires.

It dawned on Ham and Long Tom that these men were the inner circle of the Cult of the Moccasin.

Before one of the masked men, they were halted.

This man wore, in addition to the brilliant silk handkerchief that hid his face, a long and gaudy gown embroidered with countless coiled serpents, probably intended to represent the deadly water moccasin. It concealed him from head to foot. Nothing could be told of his looks, except that he was a white man.

"I am the Gray Spider!" he informed Ham and Long Tom in a voice that sounded like it was coming out of a tomb. Obviously, the tone was disguised.

He held one clawlike hand before them. The veins on the back of the talon looked revolting as purple worms. Slowly, dramatically, the hand opened.