They were indeed glad when Sill Boontown disappeared into the moonlighted jungle with his pet 'gator.
About a quarter of an hour ticked away. Then a man came into their prison shack.
THE newcomer was lanky, scrawny-looking, yellowish-brown. He had thick lips and a nose that some one might have jumped on years ago. Several scars gave his eyes a mean cast.
Crouching over them, this unsavory individual began to make meaningless hocus-pocus gestures and mumble meaningless incantations.
"Ugh!" snarled Long Tom. "Ain't he the meanest-looking bat you ever saw!"
"And how he stinks!" Ham growled.
"Probably he's come to cut our throats," muttered Long Tom.
"I oughta cut your throats after a crack like that!" chuckled the sinister-looking voodoo man.
Ham and Long Tom started violently.
"Johnny!" Ham gulped, finally penetrating the clever disguise.
"Not so loud!" hissed Johnny.
"But how—"
"I've been hanging around here," Johnny explained. "I've pulled a lot of voodoo junk, but it don't seem to get me anywhere. At least, I haven't seen the real Gray Spider yet. The fellow I sent to you wasn't the master mind, was he? Buck Boontown told me, quite a bit later that he was only a minor member of the gang who liked to pretend he amounted to something."
"It was one of the two crooked lumber police," Ham explained. "We got him, though. His name is Lefty."
"How are we gonna get out of here?" Long Tom put in.
Johnny glanced at their guards, saw they were looking in another direction, and produced a knife.
"It's the best I can do," he whispered. "I was surprised when they invited me in here to put a voodoo spell over you two guys. I looked for my gun, but it had disappeared. I can't understand that, either."
"We'll make a break for it, all together!" breathed Ham.
"O.K. I'll grab a machine gun from one of the guards if I can. We might as well try it right now."
Johnny advanced on the door.
Instantly, one of the guards emitted a loud cry. In answer to the signal, scores of monkeylike swamp men poured out of the surrounding jungle. They attacked Doc's men.
Johnny went down fighting under an avalanche of the yellowish-brown fiends. He was tied securely.
The knife had done Ham and Long Tom no good. Ham did get free, only to be pinned quickly.
They were all tied securely.
Soon there approached a figure attired in a long, brilliant gown which was embroidered with countless snake designs. A hideous gray tarantula clung to one of the fellow's hands.
The Gray Spider still wore his silken mask.
"I have been suspicious of you," he told Johnny. "I let you talk to these men as a test. You were observed closely all the time. We saw you pass them a knife."
Johnny replied nothing.
"You are one of the bronze devil's helpers!" snarled the Gray Spider. "The bronze man is dead. You three men shall die also. I will watch my swamp friends offer you in a voodoo sacrifice. In a few hours, they will be worked up to the proper pitch for the human offering!"
He fell silent. Into the ramshackle hut throbbed and boomed the disquieting note of the tom-toms. It seemed to set the very brain cells of the listeners vibrating in sympathy to its barbaric cadence.
"In a few hours—they will be ready!" repeated the Gray Spider.
He wheeled away.
Chapter XIII. A KIDNAPING GONE WRONG
THE Gray Spider shuffled back up the hill, the hollowed-out top of which was the scene of the voodoo ritual. He stepped along swiftly, as though he had important work to do. He seated himself in the middle of his sinister inner circle.
Machine gunners were much in evidence.
"Bring in the two new recruits," he ordered.
There was a commotion in the jungle near by. Two men came out.
One was built like a gorilla. He looked big enough and tough enough to even whip one in a fight. His face was scarred and unbelievably homely. His hide was covered with coarse red bristles.
The second man was so huge as to seem like a small hill in motion. His face was long, somber. His lips were pinched together as though he had just finished a disapproving, "tsk, tsk!" The outstanding thing about the giant, though, was his hands—for each was composed of about a gallon of knuckles that looked like rusted iron.
Monk and Renny in person!
Without seeming to, Monk and Renny noted the number of machine guns in evidence.
"The first time we've seen the Gray Spider!" Renny growled. "And we don't dare make a funny move because of those machine guns!"
"I got a notion to tackle 'im, anyway!" rasped Monk.
Monk was nothing if not reckless. The bigger the odds, the bigger the fight, Monk seemed to reason. And he did love a fight. Several times during the World War, he had started out single-handed to mop up on the enemy army. From the results, a suspicion was harbored that he might have succeeded had the opposition not been scattered from the Channel to Switzerland. They had too much room to dodge in.
"Lay off, you missing link!" Renny grunted. "You ain't got no brains! Lemme do the thinkin'!"
This was not strictly the truth. Monk was rated one of the half dozen greatest chemists ever to live.
They confronted the Gray Spider. Naturally, both tried to penetrate the puzzle of the serpent-embroidered gown and the brightly colored silk mask. They had no success.
Again they cocked an eye on the array of machine guns near by, and saw a hostile move would be unwise. Indeed, it would be suicide.
"I have been told of you men," said the Gray Spider.
Monk and Renny were disappointed when they failed to recognize the voice. It was thoroughly disguised. It had an unreal note. They made no answer because none seemed needed.
"One of you is a chemist experienced in poison gas," continued the cavernous tones of the Gray Spider. "That man fled to this swamp to evade agents of the country he turned traitor to. The other man is not averse to making a dollar or two on the side."
An impressive pause now followed. "Neither of you men had met before you were introduced by my aids."
"Nope. We never saw each other before." Monk chuckled and opened and closed his furry paws. "But we're what you'd call a natural! He knocks 'em down, an' I tear 'em apart!"
Monk was not bad as an actor. His attitude was fierce and bloodthirsty—to say nothing of his looks.
"You wish to join my organization, I understand," said the Gray Spider.
Renny watched the hideous gray tarantula crawl around on the master fiend's hand, and stifled an impulse to lean over and swat the repulsive thing with one huge paw.
"You got it right," he rumbled.
IN the wait which followed, Monk and Renny noted a minor incident up on the side of the saucerlike depression.
An enormous alligator appeared. It crawled around the edge of the hollow.
"Shoot dat 'gator!" somebody called over the monotonous throbbing of the tom-toms.
"Eet ees Sill Boontown's pet!" some one else objected. "No wild 'gator would go crawlin' around dis crowd!"
"T'row a stick at heem!" directed the first speaker. "Eef hees don' go away, shoot heem! Sacrй!We no want to be bothered weeth durn 'gator!"
A stick whacked the crawling alligator soundly. The reptile straightaway slithered out of sight into the night-blackened jungle. It displayed an intelligence that seemed human.
The Gray Spider resumed—his words coming as from a tomb, the repulsive tarantula never still on his hand.
"I have decided to take you into my organization," he told Monk and Renny. "Your first job will be assigned you immediately. It is to be done tonight. It will pay ten thousand dollars—five thousand for each of you."
"That's a lot of jack," Renny growled. "What's the job?"
"You are a forest ranger—you should know by sight the famous lumberman, Big Eric Danielsen. Perhaps you even know his daughter?"
Renny made the only answer he could. "Yeah. I know 'em."
"Good!" hissed the Gray Spider. "Tonight, you are to kidnap them!"
Renny covered his surprise with a loud snort. "You don't want much, do you?"
"What do you expect to do for ten thousand dollars?"
"Yeah—that's the other way of lookin' at it," Renny admitted. "You got it planned how we're to get them?"
"Again—what do you expect for ten thousand!" intoned the Gray Spider. "You are to make your own plans. You will find Big Eric Danielsen and his daughter at their home. They are heavily armed and equipped with gas masks. The grounds are brilliantly lighted. You will get them—"