Chapter III. DEATH IN THE AIR

"THIS man is one of the Cult of the Moccasin," explained Doc Savage, when he had dressed the prisoner and taken him back into the outer office.

"If that drug of yours has fixed the fellow so he can't reason things out, maybe he'll answer our questions truthfully," suggested Big Eric. "He can't think up lies to tell us."

Doc's bronze head shook. "The trouble is, he can't think up the answers, either. The drug is nothing in the nature of a truth serum."

Big Eric smiled widely. "I'm dang glad you're going to help me fight this Gray Spider! I like your style!"

Doc Savage did not reply immediately.

"I haven't said I would," he pointed out.

Big Eric blanched. He stuttered: "Why—won't you?"

"I will," Doc told him quietly. "Providing we can agree on the matter of the fee you will pay."

"Uh—um!" Big Eric swallowed. "Just what fee would you consider?"

"You have more money than you know what to do with, haven't you?"

"Well, I'd hardly say that," Big Eric muttered with the caution of a rich man.

"The fee is one million dollars," Doc said as calmly as though he were a laborer asking three dollars a day for his services.

"Huh!" Big Eric purpled. He all but choked. He howled: "One million! And you're the guy who goes around benefiting humanity! It looks to me like you're trying to hold me up—"

Big Eric caught Ham's eye and hastily swallowed the rest of his outburst. He looked at Doc. The remarkable bronze face was as inscrutable as the metal it resembled.

Big Eric suddenly got the idea it would be useless to squawk about being overcharged. At the same time, he was too canny to put out such an outrageous fee without knowing he would get his money's worth in results.

"You will turn this million over to a committee you and I will select," Doc continued. "It will be used to supply food and clothing and education to the poor and destitute in Louisiana."

"Oh," said Big Eric, suddenly ashamed of his outburst. He offered a hand. "I'll do it, of course."

Doc took the hand.

Big Eric had believed he owned a big, hard, powerful fist. But his hand was as a soft baby's in the case-hardened grip of Doc Savage.

Big Eric drew a long breath of awe. This bronze man possessed a strength that was unbelievable, even though one had seen the incredible sinews in his arms and hands.

"Where are Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny?" Doc asked Ham.

Doc Savage had named the other four members of his group of five friends and aids.

"They were to arrive in about an hour," replied Ham.

Doc Savage now moved to the window. He drew something from his pocket—something the others could not see. The bronze hand made rapid motions on the glass of the window.

Big Eric and Edna had no idea what Doc Savage was doing, but Ham knew.

Doc was writing a message on the window with a transparent substance. His communication would remain absolutely invisible until rays from an ultraviolet machine were turned on it. Then it would appear—brilliant, glowing with an uncanny light.

The secret message was:

Go to New Orleans at once and get in touch with me through the lumber company of Danielsen & Haas.

Doc did not sign it. There was no need. No other hand could have inscribed a script as minutely perfect and recognizable as his.

"Monk," Renny, "Long Tom," and Johnny, his four friends, would turn the ultra-violet light on the window and get the message.

"Come on!" Doc picked up the drugged prisoner as lightly as though he were an infant. "We're heading back for New Orleans."

DOC SAVAGE stood on the running board of the taxicab which carried them away from the towering white skyscraper. His presence outside the machine had a magical effect, causing policemen to open traffic for them.

The taxi ended its journey at an airport on the outskirts of New York City. The airport flunkies showed the great bronze man much attention. Mechanics scurried about.

A hangar door caved open.

"Golly!" ejaculated Big Eric, staring at the plane which was being rolled into view.

The craft was an airman's dream. It was an all-metal job, low-wing, streamlined to the height of aлronautical engineering. In the air, the landing gear could be retracted, making the ship little more than a flying wing. The three great radial motors were equipped with the latest design speed cowling.

"This is Doc's new ship," Ham told Big Eric and Edna. "He had another very like this, but it was destroyed in a terrible experience we went through in the South Seas. The present craft was delivered while Doc was away. This is the first time he has seen it."

The slick-haired prisoner approached mechanically at Doc's command. Doc told him to get in the plane, but the man did not have thinking ability enough to realize he must climb the small ladder which folded out of sight when the plane was flying. Doc lifted him in the craft as though he were a stupid puppy.

"Wouldn't it be quicker to take Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny along with us?" inquired Ham.

"It would," Doc replied. "But it is part of my plan that they should not be seen in our company in New Orleans."

Big Eric, overhearing this, was surprised. So the big bronze man already had a plan of operations! He was certainly losing no time.

Each minute in Doc Savage's presence was increasing Big Eric's respect for the prowess of the mighty bronze man.

Doc took his position at the plane controls. The motors started in quick succession.

Big Eric, noting the airport personnel standing around with open mouths, wondered what so interested them. Then he understood.

The plane motors were silenced! The sibilant swish of the propellers was the only sound. As Doc opened the throttle, this note became a terrific whine, like the noise of a great gale.

With a short run, the plane took the air. The landing wheels folded up. The ship sped like an arrow into the west.

Craning his neck, Big Eric got a glance at the air-speed indicator. His eyes popped. They were doing nearly two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Yet the motors were not straining.

"It don't take Doc long to go places," Ham grinned.

But even Ham would have been surprised to know Doc Savage had just finished a grueling flight of thousands of miles from his "Fortress of Solitude" far within the arctic. For the bronze giant showed no signs of fatigue.

Attractive Edna Danielsen had been strangely quiet the last half hour, but her eyes had followed Doc's every movement. She seemed to get a thrill out of merely watching the bronze man.

The big speed plane rushed through the night. Inside the sound-proofed cabin, only a steady, low moan told of their terrific momentum.

The prisoner lolled back in a seat. He slept. His mouth was wide open, revealing the gruesome insignia of the Cult of the Moccasin tattooed inside.

HARDLY five hours later, the plane sped across lower Mississippi. New Orleans was not far ahead. Not a cloud scummed the sky. The moon slanted bright beams against the plane.

Using the plane's radio telephone, Doc had kept in touch with various airport stations, obtaining weather information.

The remarkably bright moonlight enabled Doc to discover another plane flying some miles ahead. The craft was probably making a hundred and fifty miles an hour. But Doc's speed plane overhauled it as though it was standing still.

He altered his course slightly. The other plane also swung over.

"What do you make of that?" Ham growled. "Do you suppose the Gray Spider has sent that plane after us?"

"We'll soon see," Doc replied. "I have taken no particular pains to keep our coming secret. The Gray Spider might have heard me getting weather reports over the radio. He could use a directional radio loop and locate us."

Doc's ship held its course. The other craft drew closer. It was a high-wing monoplane, with a tube of a fuselage. As commercial jobs went, it was fast.

Suddenly the ship zoomed upward, as though to let Doc pass below.

"I guess it's just some plane making a night flight—"

Ham never completed his statement.

With an abrupt dive, the other plane flashed in front of Doc's craft. At the same instant it released a tremendous gush of vile greenish vapor. The stuff spread rapidly.

"Poison gas!" bellowed the quick-thinking Ham.

Doc's speed plane could not swerve aside in time to avoid hitting the gas cloud. It had been released almost against the trio of flashing propellers.

Comely Edna Danielsen went white, and spread her hands over her face. Big Eric, a quick thinker himself, sucked in air to fill his lungs before the poisonous fumes came. The prisoner sat still, as unconcerned as a machine—for he couldn't think enough to realize there was danger.

The plane popped into the gas cloud. It came out. One minute passed. Two. The gas cloud was left nearly five miles behind.

Nothing had happened.

Doc banked the plane swiftly. He flung it for the craft which had tried to gas them.

"Hey!" puffed Big Eric, unable to hold his breath longer. "Ain't that gas gonna—"

"The plane cabin is airtight," Doc Savage pointed out. "Haven't you noticed you have experienced no difficulty in breathing during the flight, although we flew above twenty thousand feet much of the time? That was because the cabin is air-conditioned—furnished with oxygen stored in a special supply tank."

The gas plane was striving frantically for altitude, after the manner of combat craft. But it was like a clumsy buzzard fleeing from a speedy hawk. Doc's great racer came alongside. He saw the other pilot was wearing radio earphones.

"Land—immediately!" Doc's powerful voice boomed into his own radio transmitter.

The excited actions of the other flier showed he was tuned in on Doc's wave length. He had located Doc's plane by radio!

INSTEAD of landing, the pilot banked swiftly. A machine gun, synchronized to shoot through his propeller, mouthed nasty red tongues.

The burst stopped short—for Doc's sky streak had flipped far to one side with a lightninglike maneuver.

Then the entire forward edge of the wing of Doc's ship seemed suddenly outlined in terrible little red electric bulbs. An awesome vibration swept the craft. For there was no less than ten Browning guns installed in the wings of the plane!

The other craft, able to fly but a little more than half as fast, and with only one rapid-firer, was helpless before this ultramodern sky terror. The Gray Spider pilot knew he had caught a Tartar. He shrieked and put his hands over his face as lead popped and tore and screamed about his ears.

The metal storm ceased.

Fearfully, the pilot peered up. He jumped as a commanding voice crashed in his radio ear phones.

"You have one more chance to land!"

Such a fearsome quality did that great voice hold, even though distorted by the metal telephone diaphragms, that the vicious pilot put the nose of his plane down as though his very life depended on reaching the ground in less than nothing flat.

The fellow was such a nervous wreck that he washed out his plane in landing. Coming down too heavy, the landing gear was wiped off, the propeller beat itself into a ravel of metal, and both wings were knocked askew.

Unhurt, the pilot bounded out. He looked up. Doc's plane was flashing in like a great bat. The would-be killer ran. The nearest brush was but a few rods distant.

But long before he reached it, a giant of bronze overhauled him. Arms that could be compared only to steel trapped him. He thought for an instant that the awful strength of the grip was going to crush his life away.

That did not happen. He was carried to the speed plane. He tried to struggle, but the sinewy bronze hands tightened and hurt him so he could only tremble and scream.

A small needle gouged the man, and suddenly the man ceased all action. He was the second victim to undergo an injection of Doc's special serum.

"Get in the plane!" came Doc's commanding voice.

The pilot got in the plane. He couldn't think of anything else to do.

Doc Savage entered also. In a moment, the remarkable air vehicle took off.

SOON they circled a New Orleans airport. Concealed lids on the undersides of the wings slid back, revealing the lenses of powerful landing lights. These sprayed luminance. The ship landed.

Big Eric looked at his watch.

"Golly!" he gasped his pet expression. "It ain't much past midnight!"

Then Big Eric's eyes popped as a black limousine purred out on the field and the driver threw open the door and said: "The car you ordered to meet you, sir!"

"I used the radio in the plane to summon the machine," Doc told the surprised lumberman.

"Things have got a habit of happening smooth and fast around Doc," grinned Ham, twiddling his indispensable sword cane.

Big Eric was a man who worked swiftly. He wouldn't have been a multimillionaire otherwise. But the speed with which Doc Savage was doing things had him a little dazed.

Accompanying the mighty bronze man was something like going around in the middle of a whirlwind. It was hard to keep track of things. Two of the Gray Spider's men captured, and two attempts on their own lives thwarted. A hop from New York to New Orleans! And the night was young!

The limousine rushed them to Big Eric's palatial home in a swanky district.

Doc carried his two prisoners inside.

"Sit down!" he told them.

They sat meekly in chairs. It was an awesome thing to see such vicious devils obey as though they were machines actuated by jabbing a button.

"I shall leave for a while," Doc told his three companions. "It is essential that I do certain work."

He did not explain that this work was to leave a message in the invisible ink which could only be brought out by ultraviolet rays. This message would be written on the front door of the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern's office. Doc knew that his other four men, Monk, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny, might arrive before the night was over. They were no slouches themselves, when it came to fast moving.

Doc kept silent about the message for the simple reason that the two prisoners, although unable to think, would remember everything that had happened to them, once they awakened from their strange trance. He did not want them to overhear.

Doc took his departure. The driver of the limousine was astounded when his giant bronze passenger rode outside the running board, although the tonneau was empty. But Doc Savage habitually did that when danger was aprowl. He liked to see what went on about him.

From the door, Big Eric watched Doc go.

"A remarkable man," he declared. "You know, I already feel as though I had nothing more to fear from the Gray Spider!"

Hardly were these words off his lips, when he gave a sharp start. A dazed expression came into his eyes. He fumbled at his chest.

He fell with a loud crash to the floor. His massive frame lay limply.

Beautiful Edna Danielsen shrieked. She sprang toward her father. She, too, started violently. She seemed bewildered. Then she collapsed.

Ham whirled. His sword cane was unsheathed. But he saw no enemy. He leaped wildly for a door, to escape. Then he twitched, became vacant of expression, and himself tumbled down alongside the others.

The three forms were motionless.

Big Eric had spoken too soon. For the hand of the Gray Spider had stricken down every one in the room!

Chapter IV. TWO DEAD MEN

AN ominous silence gripped the room where the three limp, unmoving forms lay. The slow tick-tock of a wooden clock in another part of the mansion was a sound like the bony footsteps of death. The motor of an electric refrigerator ran softly back in the kitchen regions.

From the Mississippi River in the distance came the forlorn toot of a packet boat. A radio played through an open window in the more immediate neighborhood. There was a party where the radio played. Glasses clinked. Giddy laughter cackled.

A voice said: "Me guess coast ees clear!"

Two queer-looking men stepped out of a closet.

They were undersized. Their skins had an unusual yellowish-brown color. Their features were pinched.

They looked like nothing so much as big, hairless monkeys, whose tails had been cut off.

Dungaree pants bobbed above the knees. Ragged, filthy shirts comprised their only other attire. They were barefooted.

Each man carried a long, slim tube.

They bent over the unconscious forms of Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. Their clumsy, foul fingers picked from each prostrate body a tiny dart. These they replaced in small leather sacks.

It was these blowgun darts which had brought disaster to Big Eric, Edna, and Ham. They had been propelled expertly through a keyhole. The long, slim tubes were the blowguns.

The two men now went to the door. They made a queer, snakelike hissing note.

In answer to that signal, several more men appeared. They looked enough like the first pair to be their brothers.

It was as though the big monkeys with bobbed tails and hair singed off were having a convention.

Big Eric stirred slightly. He was reviving!

The monkey men hastily bound him, as well as Edna and Ham. The fellows spoke a fair grade of English to each other at times, but on other occasions they lapsed into an amazing lingo. This jabber was a combination of French, English, bush African, and Spanish, all intermingled so as to be unrecognizable.

The ugly little men seemed to be as polyglot a breed as their lingo.

An expert on languages would have explained that they were a strange and little-known class of humans who have come into existence deep within the Southern swamps. For the most part, they were offsprings of criminals who had fled to the swamps for safety, down through the scores of years. From such breeding, they could hardly be less than degenerates. As a class, they were shunned by the more respectable swamp dwellers.

It was among these ignorant, vicious people that the sinister and oftentimes bloodcurdling rites of voodooism were known to be practiced. Awful things were continually happening in the fastnesses of the vast swamps, grapevine rumors had it. But officers of the law dispatched into the labyrinths of the great morasses never came back with anything definite enough to prove the tales were aught else than the imaginings of some one who had walked past a graveyard at night.

BUT it was widely known that voodooism did exist.

The leader of the monkey men strode over to the slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane.

"What ees wrong with yo’?"

The two men made a meaningless gibberish in reply. Their words expressed no coherent thought.

"Sacrй!"

rasped the monkey man. "Yo' answer me!"

The fellow slapped the faces of the two he was questioning. They merely swayed in their chairs. They did not strike back. The monkey man's little eyes began to protrude.

"Heem hexed!" he muttered.

The ignorant fellow thought a voodoo spell had been laid upon the pair!

"Yo' bat!" gulped another. "Ol' hex got heem both, sure!"

The evil crew stood about. They shifted from one bare foot to another. Sweat, like hot paraffin, came to their foreheads. They looked at the slick-haired man and the pilot as though the pair were particularly undesirable ghosts.

"What yo' want do?" one asked the leader.

The man considered. Then he grinned fiercely, as though pleased with the idea his weak brain had evolved.

"Bien!"

he ejaculated. "Keel heem both! That ees make heem all O.K."

But a couple of the others doubted whether the two should be murdered.

"Yo' reckon Gray Spider like that?" one inquired.

"Mebbe so—sure!" growled the leader. "Thees feller make beeg flop at job Gray Spider ees geeve heem! Yo' know what that ees always mean!"

"Death!" muttered the other.

"Sure teeng!"

"Maybe we better take heem along anyhow."

"Non, non!"

leered the leader. "Eet ees too much trouble. Me—I feex heem!"

With that, the evil fellow flashed a knife from inside his shirt.

He stabbed twice. Both the slick-haired man and the pilot fell out of their chairs after the blade sank into their bodies.

"That way to knockum dead, huh?" chuckled the killer. "Both plenty feenished!"

Pretty Edna Danielsen, now recovered, brought herself to realize cold murder had really been committed before her eyes. She parted her lips and screamed as loud as she could.

The leader of the monkey men struck her cruelly, knocking her senseless.

As the foul fist fell upon his daughter, a frenzy seized Big Eric. Rage made him a maniac. It gave him a maniac's wild strength. He lunged against his bonds.

Big Eric was a product of the old lumberman's school, where an employer was expected to be able to lick every man he had working for him. The massive lumberman was very strong. The ropes snapped off his wrists.

In flash seconds, Big Eric had his feet free. He leaped up.

The leader of the monkey men flung his knife.

Seizing a chair, Big Eric caught the blade on its bottom in the same manner his ancestors had probably caught tossed spears on their war shields. He wrenched the knife out and started to slice Ham's bindings. But there was no time. The vile little men rushed him.

THE heavy chair whistled around Big Eric's head. No whiskered Norseman fighting overwhelming hordes of Britons ever stood more staunchly.

The chair met a skull, and broke it as though a baseball bat had hit an egg. A pistol flamed. The lead missed. Before the gun could fire again, the whirling chair downed the man who held it.

"Sacrй—hees fight lak debbil!" wailed a monkey man.

Ham flounced to the knife Big Eric had dropped. He reached it. But brownish-yellow men piled atop him. The little fiends were tough. Laying hold of one of them was like grabbing a weasel. They held Ham helpless.

Ham saw the odds were overwhelming.

"Beat it!" he yelled at Big Eric. "Take Edna and high-tail it out of here!"

Much as he hated to leave Ham, Big Eric knew this was the best advice. The safety of Edna came first. And the odds were too great to hope for victory.

A monkey man, racing to the senseless form of Edna, would have slain the young woman with his knife.

"Non, non!"

shrieked the leader. "Gray Spider ees want either gal or Beeg Eric alive! Hees want 'em both alive eef can do! Eet be better eef they sign some papers!"

Big Eric digested this as he fought. It proved what he had already suspected. The Gray Spider was after the Danielsen & Haas lumber concern. Whatever hold the fiend expected to get on the company would be strengthened if he had papers signed by Big Eric and Edna to back his claims.