"I do not know," the little man replied. His voice was curiously flat and lifeless. "No one has ever seenhim. Orders are given through others."
"Where is he now?" the bronze man asked.
"An . . . an island, that is all I know."
Renny snorted. "This bird isn"t telling us anything."
Johnny pointed to a map. He pointed to the longitude and lat.i.tude that had been given by the "boss."
"But may I point out," he said, his use of small words showing his seriousness, "that there is no island at this location."
"The pirate sub?" Renny speculated.
"That-or the sea serpent," Doc said quietly.
PETE MILLS" scarred features wore as near a pleasant expression as his perpetual leer would permit.
The captain of the pirate sub was well pleased with himself. His crew of gunmen and thugs was pleased also. Their last trip was nearly through.
And it had been a successful trip. Mills" grin grew broader as he thought of the ships they had sunk, the crews they had murdered, almost under the guns of warships from a dozen nations.
"I may have been only an enlisted man in the navy, but boy, I"ve done a job those Annapolis babies couldn"t have done!" Mills exulted.
Mills chose to overlook the fact that his. .h.i.tch in the navy had come at a time when he"d been on the lam from a murder charge.
He"d deserted abruptly when civil authorities had got on his trail.
The cargo-carrying submarine was loaded to capacity. And Mills believed he had shown good judgment.
He"d taken only stuff that could be recrated and sold with little danger of its source ever being traced.
Only one job remained, and that shouldn"t be too tough.
Doc Savage had to be disposed of.
Mills forgot that he had been afraid of the bronze man not long before. But there was a reason for that.
The "boss" had figured out a perfect trap, one that not even Doc Savage could get out of.
"Then back to home port, and after that-"
A cold gleam came to Pete Mills" killer eyes. The "boss" was smart, but not too smart, Pete decided.
The "boss" intended to kill him when his usefulness was through. He knew that.
What the "boss" didn"t know was that Pete intended to do the killing first, and he hadn"t picked himself as the victim.
The pirate sub swung slightly in an ocean current. Pete wondered if he should put her down on the bottom for a time, then decided against it.
The trap was all set. All he had to do was wait.The scarred-faced man picked up headphones that connected with the listening devices, strained his ears.
Faintly, still far away, he picked up the sound of an approaching boat.
From the beat of the propeller he could tell that it was a submarine approaching under the surface.
Doc Savage was on his way. Soon he would die.
AND the death of Doc Savage was being demanded throughout the world with redoubled fury.
The captain of the British submarine had made his report.
There was no longer any doubt, even in the minds of Doc"s strongest admirers. The bronze man was connected with the terror that menaced the entire Atlantic coast.
"He had the effrontery to try and bargain with me," the British captain told newspapermen. The captain drew himself up haughtily. "I refused to bargain, of course.
"If . . . if something unforeseen hadn"t gone wrong with our propeller and diving planes just then, we"d have caught the blighter. But we will get him."
The story created a sensation. Newspapers throughout the United States started a reward fund. The government itself posted a million dollars for the capture of the bronze man.
A tall man with ramrod back heard of the reward over the radio. His square features broke into an unaccustomed smile.
This was a break he hadn"t expected.
"I"ll get that reward," he decided.
He glanced at his watch. Unless his calculations were wrong, Doc Savage would die within the next few minutes-or at least would be in a position from which escape would be impossible.
The tall man chuckled mirthlessly. It really was ironic, he thought, but he-the man responsible for the terror-was going to be idolized, was going to be paid a million dollars.
He would be hailed as a public hero because he destroyed Doc Savage.
"And I"ll show them his body, too," he promised.
The bronze man and his aids were the only ones who had different ideas.
The faint sound Pete Mills had heard through the listening device faded. A worried expression crossed Mills" leering features. He barked sharp orders.
The pirate sub got under way.
A mile away, Doc"s undersea craft had halted on orders from the bronze man. It remained motionless exactly twenty minutes.
Then Long Tom started the motors again. He followed the course charted by the bronze man. They forged ahead slowly.
Renny came in from the engine room. A thin sheath of perspiration covered his big face. Johnny kept putting his monocle in his eye, dropping it, then replacing it.Long Tom glanced anxiously at the chart, then at the instruments on the panel before him. His features grew more and more strained.
"Find Doc. Tell him to come here," he urged.
It was ten minutes more before the mystifying truth became apparent.
Doc Savage had disappeared. It was impossible. It was something that couldn"t happen.
But it had happened.
LONG TOM"S features were chalky. What it was all about he didn"t know. But one thing was positive.
The bronze man no longer was aboard the submarine.
The electrical expert tried to remember whether the stern had felt logy during their twenty-minute pause.
It might have been that Doc had left the sub through the big escape hatch for some exploration of his own.
But if that were so, he hadn"t returned. And since the bronze man wasn"t in the sub, he must have been left behind.
Johnny had been thinking along the same lines. The lean archaeologist tried to speak. He couldn"t even find any little words.
Perspiration poured from Renny"s big body. If Doc had slipped from the side of their sub when it had stopped, then he was gone. There wasn"t any chance-not even one chance in a million-of returning and finding him.
The sea was deep there. Very deep. The bronze man would have gone down, down until water pressure broke the diving suit he wore. He would have been crushed to pulp.
The same thought was in the mind of each. Renny spoke the words.
"There"s nothing to do but go ahead," he said brokenly.
The others nodded dumbly. That is what Doc would want them to do.
Long Tom looked at the chart and the instruments again. He had difficulty in seeing them, but it was apparent they were almost at their rendezvous.
It was then the voice came. It was a low, compelling voice. It came from a loud-speaker over their heads. It was the voice of Doc Savage.
"Dive! Crash for the bottom! A torpedo is on the way!"
Chapter XVII. TRAPPED.
DOC SAVAGE had left the submarine. But he"d returned again. The only thing was, he was completely cut off from his companions.
The bronze man had not told the others what he intended to do. If he had done so, one of them would have pleaded for the task. And when danger threatened, Doc preferred to take the point of greatest peril himself.
And he was in a dangerous spot. He was crammed into a small, gla.s.s-inclosed chamber. The gla.s.schamber was hooked onto the bow of the submarine. It had been attached there by Doc shortly before they had left New York.
There was no way to reach the gla.s.s chamber through the submarine. The bronze man had reached it during the sub"s brief halt, crossing the top of the undersea craft without even the protection of a diving suit.
No room had been provided for a diving suit in the narrow chamber. But there was a microphone connected with the loud-speaker in the control room.
Doc saw the torpedo just in time. Evidently it had been fired at the sound of their propellers. And the aim had been excellent.
The small gla.s.s chamber was almost torn from the nose of the sub as it made a crash dive.
The torpedo missed by inches.
Doc had seen the approaching engine of destruction through use of a special underwater light.
Even in tropical water it is difficult to see any distance beneath the surface. The light Doc used was an adaptation of the klystron rays, the new development of focusing invisible electrons into a steady beam.
Discoverers of klystron are adapting it for use in television. Doc made use of its invisible-light features in a new way. He had perfected it so that it caused illumination when it struck a metal object.
The pirate submarine had come into view first. Only seconds later had come the flash of the torpedo, speeding from one of the two tubes in the huge craft.
A moment more and the pirate sub appeared to stand almost on its bow as its stern ballast tanks were blown.
Pete Mills" ears, glued to the listening device, had heard and interpreted the move ordered by Doc. A second torpedo flashed downward.
"BLOW the forward tanks," Doc ordered calmly.
His craft acted like a toe dancer as the bow shot upward. The torpedo roared by.
"Blow the stern tanks," came the command.
The sub shot upward. The pirate craft was only a few hundred feet away.
Doc"s craft had no torpedo tubes. It could not continue a hide-and-seek game of this type indefinitely.
Sooner or later it would be caught.
The bronze man did not appear concerned. He gave curt directions. The bow of his undersea ship swung slightly.
There was a hissing roar, then a flat crack like that of two boards slapped together.
The pirate craft staggered, half turned in the water.
For a second time came the hissing roar. A white streak flashed through the water, caught the pirate broadside, rolled it violently.Pete Mills swore fiercely. His scarred features were livid. Frantically, he reached for control signals. His ship dived, raced ahead.
There was no chance to get set for another torpedo attack. Each time he would try to stop, try to get into position to fire, another shock would hit, keeping the submarine rolling and weaving.
Pete Mills could not understand it. His leering features became hard.
"O. K., wise guy," he snarled. "You win the first trick. But you won"t the second."
Grimly he seized the controls, sent the submarine on a new tack.
Behind him, Doc Savage watched grimly. Each time the pirate craft offered a target, another of those strange, white flashing streaks roared toward it.
Doc could not sink the other ship with the weapon he was using. But he could make it uncomfortable for it, and was doing it.