"In three minutes," rumbled big-fisted Renny, "we should sight Antof.a.gasta, Chile." He sounded positive.
"I hope the place is the hang-out of this Little White Brother," gaunt Johnny said gloomily. "I"m getting tired of this airplane traveling."
Johnny seemed loath to shed his spectacles with the magnifying left lens. He wore them perched on his forehead.
Homely Monk squinted at the plane flying below. This was a chartered craft. In it were an owner-pilot, John Acre, Dido Galligan, and Whistler Wheeler. Monk frowned with all of his homely face.
"If you ask me," he said, "I don"t think we would have to go as far as Antof.a.gasta for us to find where our villain is."
"Meaning Whistler Wheeler, eh?" asked the dapper Ham, who was engaged at the moment in polishing the rich black of his sword cane.
"Sure," said Monk. "Bet he killed that Hindu to shut his mouth.""I don"t think so," Ham said.
"You didn"t even see it," Monk snorted.
"I know," Ham agreed. "But the shooting was obviously the result of a mad rage. If Whistler Wheeler had been using his head-granting that he is the villain-he would have known that shooting the Hindu would throw suspicion on himself in the worst possible way."
"I don"t like the guy"s rabbit face," Monk grumbled. "And I don"t like the way he sits around and whistles all the time, either."
"There it is!" Renny"s great voice called suddenly.
Gleaming brilliantly in the rubious light of dusk were the colored walls and tiled roofs of Antof.a.gasta. The steel ribbon of a railway running to Oruro, Bolivia, stretched away into the mountains. Near the town were discernible the big silver smelters.
Stringing over the mountains were modern-looking high-voltage electric transmission lines. Underbrush was cut from beneath these lines for a distance on either side, making great swathes through the growth-where there was any growth at all.
"Kind of a bleak-looking country," offered Long Tom, the electrical wizard.
Doc Savage was handling the plane controls. When he entirely ignored the calm surface behind the harbor breakwater, his five men looked very much surprised.
"We"re not going to land in the harbor," Doc told them. "This is not the best harbor in the world. If a blow should come up, our plane would stand a good chance of getting smashed."
"Then where are we going to land?"
"John Acre will show us a place, he said in Colon."
"John Acre is another guy I don"t think a whole lot of," Monk muttered.
BOTH planes landed on a bleak and only moderately level field perhaps four miles from town. The cabin of Doc"s large plane was soundproof and air-tight. The air inside was not only purified mechanically, and the oxygen renewed, but also artificially cooled. The temperature in the cabin was always comfortable.
"Holy cow!" said Renny when he stepped outside. "This country is plenty hot!"
John Acre came striding over, trailed by Dido Galligan and Whistler Wheeler.
Dido Galligan made a disgusted gesture and said: "We haven"t seen a sign of them guys with my sister.
Sometimes I wonder if they even left New York at all."
Doc Savage made no reply to this.
John Acre frowned at Doc. "I shall call a meeting of the prominent nitrate plant owners tonight. They will want to know that you are on the job." He hesitated, seemed to swallow his reluctance, and added: "Will you attend the meeting, Mr. Savage? I think it would make those men feel better. The series of murders has them worried."
"I"ll be there," Doc promised.
John Acre now gave a description of the meeting place, advising Doc how to reach it. He told of the poncho disguises which were placed in the outer room.
"I will hold the meeting at ten o"clock tonight," he finished."In that case, you had better go spread the summonses," Doc suggested to him.
John Acre colored indignantly. Evidently he thought this was a somewhat too pointed invitation to depart. He walked off, heading in the direction of the town.
Whistler Wheeler promptly started walking in the opposite direction.
"Where you going?" Monk called, suspicion in his mild voice.
"I have a friend living up here on the hill," Whistler Wheeler said shortly. "I"m going to spend the night there."
Monk rumbled, and made a move to leap after the departing man.
"Let him go," Doc advised.
Dido Galligan shrugged in the gathering darkness.
"Whistler Wheeler and I were good friends, up until that shooting in Colon," he said. "Since then, he hasn"t been so friendly."
"Any particular reason for his unfriendliness?" Doc asked.
"Only that I think he was crazy to lose his temper and shoot the Hindu," said Dido Galligan. "I told him what I thought. Guess it made him mad."
"It happened that the Hindu needed killing," Doc said slowly. "Otherwise, we should have been forced to take steps to punish Whistler Wheeler."
"I told him you were being d.a.m.n white to him," Dido Galligan said. "He told me to shut up."
Doc Savage happened to be watching the distant lights of Antof.a.gasta at the moment. He saw them grow perceptibly dimmer.
It was as if a sudden, enormous drain had been placed upon the current supply.
Far under their feet, the earth began to grumble. The sound increased. It became a monstrous trembling that was like cataclysmic coughing convulsions.
The men found it impossible to keep their feet; they were flung to all fours. Near them, small rocks actually jumped off the ground, so great were the shocks.
Doc"s big plane was dancing as if it were an insect which had landed on something hot. The other ship rocked from side to side. The pilot who had flown it here leaped out, yelling in his excitement. A moment later, the plane tilted over, and one wing collapsed half its length.
Suddenly, the holocaust ceased.
HOLY cow!" muttered Renny, and began picking up objects which had been shaken from his pockets.
Long Tom scowled at the bony Johnny and said: "Don"t start telling us it"s impossible to have an earthquake here!"
Johnny said nothing.
The homely Monk yelled: "Where"s my pig? Where"s Habeas Corpus!"
A loud squealing from the plane interior answered that question.
Doc Savage whipped to the plane. He clambered aboard. It was dark enough now that he had to use aflashlight. He pressed the light on and stabbed its white beam over the stored luggage. Seizing a stout-looking black steel case, he dragged it out. It was locked. He fitted a key in it.
Opening the case, Doc delved into its contents. His manner indicated anxiety to learn how these had fared in the shake.
Monk, clambering into the cabin after his pig, popped the flash beam on the case which Doc was inspecting.
"Huh!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Why so anxious about those?"
"I was afraid the shake had broken them," Doc said. "But it didn"t."
The objects in the case were the round wax cylinders which had been on the recorder during the time of the first John Acre"s murder in Doc"s warehouse hangar in New York City.
Doc replaced them in the case.
All five of Doc"s men looked surprised when the bronze giant carried the case out of the plane.
"I don"t want to lose this," Doc told them.
Clouds of dust, raised by the quake, were sweeping over the clearing. These had made the night suddenly black. In the surrounding darkness, an occasional rock, loosened by the shake, toppled noisily.
Dido Galligan sneezed from the dust. "Didn"t you fellows think the center of that quake was over in the direction which Whistler Wheeler took?"
Monk rumbled deep in his chest. "I knew that guy was phony. I bet he made the quake."
"Let"s take a look," Doc suggested.
Glaring white flash beams illuminating the way, they set out. Over his shoulders Doc had slung the case holding the wax cylinders. It was obvious that the bronze man placed a good deal of stock in the records.
Great cracks gaped in the ground underfoot. In spots, boulders were wind-rowed together, like gravel on a shaken sieve. Each step put them amid signs of greater violence.
"The quake centered over here, all right," Renny"s big voice announced.
They came to a narrow valley. On each side hills slanted upward. Until a few minutes ago, the slopes had been covered with large boulders. Now most of this rock was down in the little valley, whence it had been shaken.
"Holy cow!" muttered Renny. "Look!"
He pointed-pointed at Whistler Wheeler. The body of the man who always whistled was strangely flattened.
A rock nearly as large as a railroad locomotive had rolled over him.
I"LL take back what I said about him," Monk announced gently. "I thought the guy was one of the crooks.
This proves he wasn"t."
Doc handed Monk the metal case which held the wax recording cylinders.
"You fellows take this and go to the hotel," he directed. "We"re going to put up at the Taberna Frio, where John Acre has quarters. And guard that case!"
Monk looked curiously at the case. "It"s valuable?" he asked.
"It is very, very important," Doc said. "Lock it in the hotel safe-providing the safe looks solid."Doc Savage now moved away into the night. His flashlight was not blazing. He was lost to view almost as abruptly as if he had stepped behind a curtain.
Doc"s five men and Dido Galligan returned to the plane, carrying the crushed, lifeless form of Whistler Wheeler. They unloaded their paraphernalia from the plane"s cabin, then placed the body inside. They would send an undertaker out for it later.
Securing their scientific equipment into great packs, the men headed for town.
"Where d"you reckon Doc went?" Renny pondered.
Long Tom, carrying a burden of electrical equipment somewhat larger than his own unhealthy-looking frame, grunted: "Guess he"s scouting around to see what made that earthquake."
Doc was doing just that. He was working his way in great circles around the spot which seemed to be the focus point of violence. His flashlight was dark, he was employing his ears.
Doc was searching for a possible human agency behind the weird quake. He prowled fully fifteen minutes, but found no one. Dust raised by the quake had settled so thickly as to cover any tracks, handicapping his ferreting.
Doc returned to the quake center. Using his flashlight now, he searched intensively. He was trying to ascertain the exact nature of the earth spasm.
Doc"s closest scrutiny yielded no clews. The cause of the fantastic shake, whatever it was, seemed to be situated deep in the earth"s innards.
When he was convinced, there was nothing to be found, he stood in the darkness for a time.
Then he did something which denoted he was greatly puzzled. His small, unconscious trilling note came into being. So low as to be scarcely audible, it rippled up and down the musical scale without adhering to any specific tune. It was as fantastic, this strangely melodious note, as the quakes which seemed a-thirst for human life.
The trilling ebbed. Doc headed for town.
The bronze man had only one tangible clew to the mystery of the shakes-the fact that lights in town had dimmed as the earth began to tremble.
DOC SAVAGE found his five men a.s.sembled at the Taberna Frio.
"What did you do with the wax cylinders?" Doc asked Monk.
"They"re in the hotel safe."
"Is it a strong safe?"