"I thought it was generally believed there would be a great explosion once the atom was shattered!" Johnny murmured.
"That was largely disproved by recent accomplishments of scientists who have succeeded in cracking the atom," Doc corrected. "I have experimented extensively along that line myself. There is no explosion, for the very simple reason that it takes as much energy to shatter the atom as is released."
"But why the specimens from Thunder Island?" persisted Johnny.
"The basis of this Smoke of Eternity must be some hitherto undiscovered element or substance," Doc elaborated. "In other words, it is possible Gabe Yuder discovered on Thunder Island such an element.
"The man is a chemist and electrical engineer. From that element, he might have developed this Smoke of Eternity. I want to examine the rock specimens from Thunder Island in hopes they may give me some clew as to what this unknown element or substance is."
"Ill get the specimens!" Johnny declared.
He hurried out.
"Hm-m-m Renny!" Doc addressed his other two friends. "I want you two to hurry down to Monks penthouse place. See if you can find him."
These two also departed, Renny moving lightly as a mouse in spite of his elephantine bulk; Ham twirling his sword cane.
Doc Savage tarried only to enter the laboratory. From his clothing he removed the crumpled capsule of metal that had contained the Smoke of Eternity which had wiped out the body of poor Jerome Coffern.
Doc concealed the capsule by sticking it to the bottom of a microscope stand with a bit of adhesive wax.
Quitting his headquarters, Doc journeyed the eighty-six floors downward in an elevator. He got into a taxicab. The driver, he directed to take him to a point on Riverside Drive near where an ancient pirate ship was tied up.
Doc Savage intended to examine the old corsair bark at his leisure. His suspicions were aroused. The fact that the ill-savored Squint and his companions had found modern guns aboard, the familiarity they had shown with the strange craft, indicated they had been there before.
Aboard the buccaneer vessel, Doc hoped to find something that would lead him to the master fiend, Kar.
THE moment he came in sight of the Jolly Roger, Docs golden eyes noted something a bit puzzling.
Some distance down the river drifted a smudge of particularly vile black smoke. No factory smokestacks along the river were disgorging such stuff. Nor were any water craft, which might have thrown it off, to be seen.
The slight breeze was such that this darksome pall might have been swept from the vicinity of the Jolly Roger.
Too, far up the river, was a seaplane. It taxied along the surface, receding.
Doc strained the telescopic quality of his vision. He recognized the seaplane as the same which had attempted his life in Central Park!
Doc was thoughtful. His suspicions were now stronger.
But he had no way of knowing he was viewing the after-signs of Monks being taken aboard the submersible tank hiding place!
Down to the pirate vessel, Doc hurried. A springy leap from the ramshackle wharf put his bronze form aboard. A leaf settling on the deck planks would have made more noise than he did in landing.
Doc glided to the superstructure. Pausing, he listened. A stray rope end, swinging in the breeze, made brushing noises up in the labyrinth of rigging.
Another sound, too! A man muttering in the vicinity of the galley!
Doc backed a pace. His sharp gaze rested on the galley stovepipe. The faintest wisp of dark smoke drifted out. The smoke was like that pall hanging downriver.
Instantly, Doc became a wary, stalking bronze hunter. He slid aft, then went down a companion. He made for the galley. He was shortly framed in the galley door.
Beside a rusty old cook oven stood a strange contrivance.
This was larger than the oven, but built along similar lines. It seemed to be a furnace for burning resinous, smoke-making material. A big pipe from this led the smoke to the galley flue.
A printed sign above the contraption read:
OLD-TIME PIRATES
USED SMOKE SCREENS
Modern warships were not the first to employ smoke screens! Below is an apparatus used by the rovers of the Spanish Main to throw off clouds of smoke intended to baffle the aim of pursuing men-of-war.
If visitors desire to see this smoke-maker in performance, an attendant will put it in operation.
There is a small charge of one dollar for this.
DOC Savages mobile, strong lips made the slightest of appreciative smiles. Whether old-time corsairs had actually used smoke screens was immaterial. This was probably faked, like most of the other stuff aboard the ship.
But if it was desired to lay a smoke screen over this part of the river without attracting suspicion, here was an ingenious method. If anybody asked questions, the proprietors of the pirate exhibit could claim somebody had paid them a dollar to make the smoke.
BESIDE the smoke-maker stood a man. He had not yet become aware of Docs presence. The man was cleaning ashes out of the smoke-maker.
The fellow was tall and thin. His pasty complexion, his shaking hands, his inarticulate mumbling, marked him as a drug addict.
"Well?" said Doc.
The man whirled. His mean eyes goggled. His teeth rattled as a great terror seized him.
He was one of the unsavory crew assembled by Squint in that tenth house of the row of similar dwellings.
Suddenly, he leaped across the galley, pitched through a door. His feet hammered down a passage.
"Stop!" Doc rapped.
The terrified man never heeded. He was not long on nerve. And he had heard enough about Doc to know the giant bronze man was Nemesis to his kind.
Doc pursued. He put a great deal of effort in his flashing lunge. He wanted to question this rat. And he knew he would have to get the fellow before
It happened!
Came a piercing shriek! It ended in a ghastly thunking sound and a horrible gurgling.
The man had fallen through the death trap in the passage the trap from which the spar had saved Doc.
The upended swords in the pit under the trapdoor had thorned out the life of the fellow before Doc reached him!
Doc slowly returned to the deck. He had hoped to learn why the smoke screen had just been placed. His chance for that was gone with the thin mans death.
Thus also had vanished whatever chance Doc might have had of learning that Monk was in a submersible barge under the river near by.
Chapter 9. THE COLD KILLER
DOC SAVAGE moved toward the bows of the corsair craft. He desired to ascertain what had become of the bodies of Squints unlucky companions. He had noted that the one who had died from the shock of a dismembered hand no longer reposed upon the deck.
The bodies had been added to the grisly exhibits of pirate butchery in the hold. A few garments of the seventeenth century had been drawn carelessly upon the bodies. So realistic was the rest of the exhibit that the real corpses fitted in perfectly with the ghastly scene. They could hardly be told from the papier-mвchй victims of corsair lust.
Doc began at the bows and searched the buccaneer craft minutely.
He soon found a twisted pair of insulated wires of a telephone line. These came aboard inside one of the rope hawsers that moored the vessel to the wharf. So cleverly were they concealed that they would have escaped any but an unusually intent inspection.
Doc traced the wires. They descended to the very keel, near the limber board. Here they were covered with rubber for protection from the bilge water. They progressed aft. At times Doc was forced to tear up planking to keep track of them.