"Renny and me will take care of this Gray Spider!" he declared.
"Renny and you and I!" corrected Big Eric. "Im in on this. We'll drop by the police station and leave Edna in safety."
"You will not!" Edna snapped. "I'm going to drive the car!"
"Glory be!" grinned Monk. "I was afraid I'd have to ride with Barney Oldfield, here, again!" He gave Renny an amiable leer.
Big Eric ran into the house, was gone a minute, and came out stuffing little hand grenades into his pockets as though they were apples. He leaped into the car. The machine whipped around expertly, Edna Danielsen's slenderly capable hand on the wheel.
Big Eric flexed an arm which was muscled like a mule's leg.
"I crave action!" he declared.
HE got it a lot sooner than he expected. The powerful touring car swerved into the street. Instantly, two other machines approached from opposite directions.
They were big vehicles, but old and dilapidated. They literally bristled with little swamp men. Almost a dozen to each vehicle!
Both old cars banged headlong into the car occupied by Big Eric, Monk, Renny, and Edna. As though splashed by the impact, wiry, vicious swamp men covered the machine.
With a bellow, Renny reared upright. He performed the well-nigh incredible feat of grasping a man by the middle of the body with each hand. Only his gigantic fists made this possible. He banged them down among the other swamp men.
Monk's armslonger by six inches than his own legsgathered a bundle of the attackers. He fell out of the car with them, contriving so his two hundred and sixty pounds of gristle and stiff red hair landed atop them. As one man, they screeched in agony.
One of the efficient light machine guns Doc had perfected turned loose in Big Eric's fist. It seemed to melt the man in front of the muzzle. A second swamp man died before the ripping weapon.
Then a car jack swung. Big Eric collapsed. He kicked weakly on the floor boards trying to rise. A hard little fist pounded his temple until he no longer squirmed.
Monk emitted a series of deep bellowings, hisses, and gruntingsthe sounds he always made when he fought. Men rushed him in clouds. They flew away from his driving arms like sparrows tackling a windmill.
Suddenly Monk seized a yellowish-brown fiend. With seeming ease, he threw the fellow fully twenty feet. The man's hurtling body knocked down another swamp man who was on the point of knifing Renny in the back.
Three of the attackers were holding Edna Danielsen. She kept them busy dodging her kicks and bites.
Renny abruptly went down, stumbling over a man he had slammed into unconsciousness with his great fists. And half a dozen swamp denizens piled atop him.
The man with the car jack ran up. He clanked his weapon off Renny's head. Renny weaved. He seemed to get sleepy on his feet.
Lunging, Monk reached Renny's side. He tore the assailants away. In a moment both giants were on their feet, fighting side by side.
A gun or two cracked. But in the gloom it was as easy to hit friend as foe.
Somewhere in the distance, a police siren started wailing. The shots had been heard. Somebody had put in a riot call.
"We got'em goin'!" Monk puffed. He tore the car jack out of the hands of the wielder, and with one pull all but ripped the man's arm from his body.
Pretty Edna Danielsen screamed piercingly.
Monk and Renny looked in her direction.
A vicious-faced swamp man was holding a revolver to her head.
"Geeve up, damn yo'!" he screeched at Renny and Monk. "Yo' want me to keel gal?"
The attackers had picked their one chance of stopping Renny and Monk. The two giants hesitatedand were suddenly down and secured. Stout ropes were lashed about their ankles and wrists.
A large bakery delivery truck now ran up. Monk remembered that Doc had mentioned the fact the Gray Spider used such trucks to transport his men in New Orleans. At least, such a truck had been waiting outside the Antelope Hotel, with Lefty at the wheel, when the swamp men had turned the shrapnel burst loose in the room they thought was occupied by Doc's men.
Such a truck would not attract attention at this hour. Bakeries often made early-morning deliveries.
Every oneprisoners and attackers alikejammed into the truck. The vehicle rumbled away, spurred by the nearing wail of the police siren.
THE spokesman of the swamp men sneered into Monk's face.
"Yo' ain't so smart!" he grated.
"You're tellin' me?" Monk snarled. He was smarting under the defeat.
"Gray Spider ees send yo' to keednap Beeg Eric as test!" growled the swamp man. "Hees want to see if yo' talk to Beeg Eric as friend. Yo' did. Bien!Dat prove yo' work fo' bronze man!"
Monk blinked slowly a few times. Then, just as slowly, he lifted what was left of his coat tails.
"Kick me!" he invited. "Hard!"
He saw now that he and Renny had been tricked into revealing their true colors. But how had the Gray Spider gotten word into town so quickly? No one could have equaled that terrific drive of Renny's.
"The Gray Spider tipped you by radio to set a trap for us at Big Eric's placethat right?" he asked.
"Oui!
Yo' guess eet!"
Monk gave Renny a downcast look. These swamp men were part of the force the Gray Spider kept in New Orleans to do his bidding, no doubt Monk could understand how it would have been simple for the master villain to set his trap.
"What a pair of busts we turned out to be!" he growled.
The worst fact wasthey had caused Big Eric and Edna to fall into the Gray Spider's clutches. And a moment later, the already gloomy outlook was enormously blackened.
For, with great glee, the spokesman of the swamp men told of the capture of Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny. He recited in detail about his fellows glimpsing an alligator in the act of devouring the giant bronze form of Doc Savage. He had evidently received this news by radio from his comrades in the swamp.
The word of Doc Savage's demise had a terrible effect on pretty Edna Danielsen. She had been holding up splendidly under the difficulties, betraying little nervousness. But now she gave a single low, wretched cry, and fainted.
She was still unconscious when her form was lifted from the delivery truck a short distance outside New Orleans. Big Eric was also forced out.
As the truck drove on, Monk caught a glimpse of a plane in a field near where Big Eric and Edna had been unloaded. It was apparent they were to be taken somewhere by air.
"To the Castle of the Moccasin!" Monk guessed.
He fell to wondering about that mysterious rendezvous. The Castle of the Moccasin! They had so far learned nothing of its whereabouts. They did not have even a wisp of information concerning the nature of the place.
The delivery truck, it soon developed, had a high-powered engine. And on the straightaway, Monk would have been willing to bet it was making eighty miles an hour.
The very speed of their going made time drag.
Chapter XIV. THE BIG SURPRISE
DAWN had not yet arrived when Renny and Monk were hauled into the presence of Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny, who lay bound hand and foot in the shack in the depths of the great swamp.
Long Tom moaned aloud. "Good night! And you fellows were our last hope!"
Monk caught sight of Ham. The faintest of amused gleams came into Monk's little eyes. If it had not been for his grief over learning of Doc Savage's demise, Monk would have burst into roars of laughter.
Any sort of misfortune Ham met with tickled Monkalthough the next instant Monk might risk his very life to rescue Ham. These two had been good-natured enemies since the War.
It was Monk who had framed the ham-stealing charge which had been the cause of Ham getting his nickname. Ham had never been able to prove it, a point that still rankled his lawyer soul.