"I always did appreciate Yankee nerve," he said.
This brought something resembling a truce. Together, the three men moved on toward the center of town.
"I am going to cable Doc Savage the latest developments," John Acre offered.
"And I am going to get in touch with Tip," said Dido Galligan.
"Who is Tip?"
"My sister."
NEWSPAPERS delivered in the morning are of necessity printed the night before. A number of editions are run off during the course of the night, each carrying the latest news to come in. In towns large enough to boast all-night news stands, such stands are kept supplied with the latest editions.
John Acre and his party pa.s.sed such a stand. Dido Galligan stopped to pick up a paper. He wanted to read about the earthquake, from the debris of which they had helped extract a victim.
"Hey!" he barked. "Look at this-"
John Acre peered at the indicated headline. His jaw dropped from under the end of his beaked nose. He looked like a man who had just discovered half of a worm in an apple he was eating.
"Impossible!" he exploded.
"At least slightly exaggerated," Dido Galligan agreed.
The headline they were inspecting read: JOHN ACRE MURDERED IN NEW YORK.
CHIEF OF SECRET POLICE SLAIN BODY THROWN IN HUDSON RIVER.
But I am not even in New York," John Acre said in an amazed voice as he stared at the paper.
Dido Galligan scrutinized the paper more closely. Suddenly he became deathly pale. Farther down he had discovered another, smaller headline. This one said: TIP GALLIGAN SEIZED BY.
JOHN ACRE"S SLAYERS.
YOUNG WOMAN IS FAMOUS SPY.
Tip!" Dido Galligan choked. "Tip has been kidnaped!"
Whistler Wheeler made a bewildered gesture. "But how did they-the Little White Brother-learn Tip was coming down here?""That is simple," said John Acre. "Through his agents, the Little White Brother has secured copies of all outgoing and incoming radiograms. He got your messages to her."
"I guess that"s what happened," Dido Galligan muttered. "I"ve got to do something about this!"
John Acre finished skimming through the account of his own death. He reread the description of this other John Acre who had been slain, according to the papers.
"Strange," he said wonderingly. "They have described me most accurately. This fellow must be my twin."
"Have you got a twin brother?" Dido Galligan demanded.
"No," said John Acre. "I have no brothers at all."
Dido Galligan strained his hair through his fingers. He was perspiring, and not entirely from the heat of the night. "What am I going to do about Tip?" he groaned. He was very upset at his sister"s fate.
"I am leaving at once for New York City to see Doc Savage!" rapped John Acre. "Perhaps that may ease your mind somewhat."
"It does-some," Dido Galligan murmured.
JOHN ACRE strode away swiftly. When the first taxicab pa.s.sed, he hailed it and got in. He rode it only a few blocks, alighted, and doubled erratically through the narrow streets.
Convinced no one was on his trail, John Acre entered a telegraph office. Seizing a blank, he carefully printed a message. The communication was in a secret code, the key to which John Acre kept in his head.
The head of the secret police stood at the operator"s elbow while the message was being sent. Then, heedless of the telegrapher"s protest, he seized the message original, applied a match to it, and ground the ashes to powder under his heel.
John Acre was feeling fairly satisfied with himself as he left the telegraph office. This was one of his messages which would not find its way into the hands of the Little White Brother! He knew the telegrapher could not possibly remember its text.
"It"s in the government code, anyway," John Acre told himself. "If they did get it, I doubt that they could decipher it."
His satisfaction would not have been so smug had he been able to witness what was occurring at a spot along the telegraph lines a few miles from town. Here, the wires pa.s.sed through a patch of cactus. In the thick thorns a man crouched.
The fellow had several long bamboo poles. To the ends of these, hooks were fastened. Wire ran from the hooks to portable telegraph instruments below.
The man skulking in the cactus growth had merely to reach up and hook onto the wires to tap them. He was now packing his paraphernalia. That done, he crept furtively away from the spot.
The man was an expert telegrapher. In his pocket reposed a letter-perfect copy of John Acre"s communication.
Reaching a road a few hundred yards distant, the man mounted a motor cycle. He sped away into the night.
"The message was in code," he chuckled. "But the Little White Brother"s men have a copy of the code key."
Heedless of this bit of drama in the distant night, John Acre hurried to the town"s most pretentious hostelry.
This inn bore the name of Taberna Frio.
Translated literally, the name meant the hotel where it was cool. The interior was anything but that. The clerkwas asleep with his head on the desk. Perspiration dripping off his face had formed a puddle on the desk top.
John Acre wiped at his forehead, as if the sight made him feel hotter. He went up to his room, stripped entirely naked, and stretched out on the bed, which had an insect-proof canopy. He perspired prodigiously, but he slept.
JOHN ACRE did not sleep the night through, however. Well before dawn he was awakened by a caller. This gentleman wore the uniform of a naval officer. John Acre dressed swiftly and went with the man.
"Is everything in readiness" he asked his companion.
"Yes, sir," said the naval officer. "I have received explicit orders from the head of the navy department."
"I sent a message earlier tonight, asking that those orders be issued," John Acre explained.
The naval man bowed slightly. He had heard of John Acre, but this was his first actual contact with the head of the secret police.
A destroyer lay at anchor in the bay, just inside the costly breakwater. It was a comparatively new craft, a lean tiger of the sea. Activity aboard denoted that steam was up.
The destroyer hauled anchor the instant John Acre was on her deck. The craft swooped out around the end of the breakwater, and headed northward.
John Acre repaired to the radio cabin and wrote out a message. It was not in code, and was addressed to Doc Savage in New York City.
COMING TO NEW YORK BY WARSHIP AND PLANE TO ASK YOU FOR AID AND EXPLAIN SITUATION IN.
CHILE STOP WISH TO WARN YOU WATCH OUT FOR MYSTERIOUS MENACE KNOWN TO ME ONLY.
AS LIITLE WHITE BROTHER STOP.
JOHN ACRE.
The destroyer was fitted with modern radio equipment. John Acre watched his message being sent to a station far to the north, from whence it would be relayed to New York.
"That is one message Doc Savage will get," he told himself grimly.
John Acre was thoughtful as he left the radio cubicle. As a matter of fact, he had, during the past two days, received several radiograms which purported to be from Doc Savage. From what he had overheard the unlucky radio operator in Antof.a.gasta say, he knew these messages were fakes.
The communications had said Doc Savage was en route to Chile. John Acre now doubted that Doc Savage had ever received a single message from Chile.
For a short time, the head of the secret police stood at the destroyer"s stern. He watched the ribbon of wake unreeling behind. This ribbon was speedily lost in the night.
Although dawn was not far off, it was still quite dark. It was very hot and sultry. The smoke pouring from the destroyer funnels, instead of climbing upward, sank to the sea behind, where it rolled and squirmed like a great serpent with stomach pains.
"They are very clever; these devils I am up against," John Acre told himself thoughtfully. "Not only must I take no chances, but I must make some move aimed at outsmarting them."
The man suddenly waved his arms with great violence. An onlooker would have thought he had been shot; but John Acre was of the South American temperament which likes to express feeling by arm-waving.
He had been smitten with an idea."I am clever," he told himself with scant modesty. "This move should insure my reaching New York."
He went in search of the destroyer commander. They spoke together for a time. After that, there was a bustle of activity on the destroyer decks.
The lean steel craft turned unexpectedly and slackened speed. For a time it cruised slowly. During this interval, all of the crew were ordered below decks. None of them saw what occurred outside.
Then the destroyer resumed its speed.
DAWN came up like a forest fire on the towering crest of the Andes. The sun, very big and red when it first appeared, seemed to shrink in size and grow hotter as it traveled upward. A thermometer on the destroyer bridge mounted in amazing fashion. An observer might almost have seen the red line climbing.
The day was going to be a scorcher. The sky was as clean of clouds as the scoured interior of an inverted crock. The sea was an expanse of blue which looked as brittle as gla.s.s.
The destroyer was traveling fast, and close insh.o.r.e. Like a long gray string pulled by the craft, the wake stretched for miles behind.
The sun mounted. The mercury in the thermometer seemed to be trying to get out of the top of the tube. The deck plates were so hot that spray landing upon them dried almost instantly.
Sailors and officers fanned themselves and mopped perspiration. They looked at the frowning walls of the sh.o.r.eline. The cliff seemed close enough to touch.
"Our pa.s.senger, John Acre, has not appeared on deck," said an officer.
"He is sleeping," another replied. "There are strict orders given that no one shall go near his cabin."
"How a man can sleep in this heat is beyond me," the first speaker groaned.
The men fell silent. Three or four minutes later, however, they both looked sh.o.r.eward. Their eyes ranged the jutting bleak cliffs.
"Did you hear something?" one muttered.
No answer was needed. By now, every one aboard the destroyer could hear the sound.
From the frowning rock heights off to the right, a great rumbling and grumbling was coming. It was as if an underground monster were aroused to an insane fury.
The hideous clamor increased. A weird change came over the waves about the destroyer. All around it blue humps of water raised. These were like boils, and they broke with a great upheaving of spray.
The destroyer itself shook as if palsied; loose objects rattled.
"A quake!" shouted one of the sailors.
The shuddering grew in volume. It became cataclysmic. Men could not stand upon the destroyer decks. So great was the thunderous roaring that they could hardly hear each other shout.
Along the sheer cliff great clouds of dust suddenly arose. These came from landslides started by the quake.
The slides gathered in size and violence.
"The whole land is coming into the sea!" shrieked a sailor. It was hardly as tremendous as that, but millions of tons of rocks came plunging into the water. These shoved up a great tidal wave, which rolled for the destroyer.
The warship lifted, lifted-but the strain was too much. Her plates sheared apart in the middle. Foam seemedto boil up around her and cover her in a mist.
Smaller waves followed the first great upheaval. These subsided. The roaring and trembling of the earth abated. A great cloud of dust caused by the rock slide eventually drifted away.
No sign of the destroyer could be discerned on the sea. It had gone down, carrying to death every man aboard the vessel.
The sun beat upon the scene, creating a near-furnace heat.
Chapter X. CUT WIRES CLEW.