Southward along Riverside Drive, the wide thoroughfare that follows the high bank of the Hudson River, the pursuit led.
Squint’s touring car veered into a deserted side street. Old brick houses lined the thoroughfare. Their fronts made a wall the same height the entire length of the block. The entrance of each was exactly like all the others — a flight of steps with ornamental iron railings.
Swerving over to the curb before the tenth house from the corner, the touring car stopped. The occupants looked around. No one was in sight.
The floorboards in the rear of the touring car were lifted. Below was a secret compartment large enough to hold the machine guns. Into this went the weapons.
"Toss your roscoes in there, too!" Squint directed. "We ain’t takin’ no chances, see! A cop might pick us up, and we’d draw a stretch in stir if we was totin’ guns."
"But what about that — that bronze ghost of a guy?" one muttered uneasily. "Gosh! He looked big as a mountain, and twice as hard!"
"Forget that bird!" Squint had recovered his nerve. He managed a sneering laugh. "He couldn’t follow us here, anyway!"
At that instant, a large roadster turned into the street. Of the driver, nothing but a low-pulled tweed cap could be seen.
Squint and his four companions got out of their touring car. To cover shaky knees, they swaggered and spoke in tough voices from the corners of their mouths.
With a low whistle of sliding tires, the big roadster stopped beside the touring car. The whistle drew the eyes of Squint and his rats.
They saw a great form flash from the roadster; a man-figure that was like an animated, marvelously made statue of metal!
Squint wailed, "Hell! The bronze guy — "
"The rods!" squawled another man. They leaped for their guns in the secret recess below the touring car floorboards. But the bronze giant had moved with unbelievable speed. He was between them and their weapons.
SQUINT and his men gave vent to squeaks of rage and terror. That showed what spineless little bloodsuckers they were. They outnumbered Doc Savage five to one, yet, without their guns, they were like the rats they resembled before the big bronze man.
They wheeled toward the tenth house in the row of dwellings that were amazingly alike. It was as though they felt safety lay there. But Doc Savage, with two flashing side-wise steps, cut them off.
One man tried to dive past. Doc’s left arm made a blurred movement. His open hand — a hand on which great bronze tendons stood out as if stripped of skin and softer flesh — slapped against the man’s face.
It was as though a steel sledge had hit the fellow. His nose was broken. His upper and lower front teeth were caved inward. The man flew backward, head over heels, limp as so much clothes stuffed with straw.
But he didn’t lose consciousness. Perhaps the utter pain of that terrible blow kept him awake.
Doc Savage advanced on the others. He did not hurry. There was confidence in his movements — a confidence that for Squint and his rats was a horrible thing. They felt like they were watching death stalk toward them.
No flicker of mercy warmed the flaky glitter of Doc’s golden eyes. Two of these villainous little men had murdered his friend, Jerome Coffern. More than that, they had robbed the world of one of its greatest chemists. For this heinous offense, they must pay.
The three who had not committed the crime directly would suffer Doc’s wrath, too. They were hardly less guilty. They would he fortunate men if they escaped with their lives.
It was a hard code, that one of Doc’s. It would have curled the hair of weak sisters who want criminals mollycoddled. For Doc handed out justice where it was deserved.
Doc’s justice was a brand all his own. It had amazing results. Criminals who went against Doc seldom wound up in prison. They either learned a lesson that made them law-abiding men the rest of their lives — or they became dead criminals. Doc never did the job halfway.
With a frightened, desperate squeak, one man leaped for the car. He tore at the floorboards under which the guns were hidden.
He was the fellow who had helped Squint murder Jerome Coffern.
Doc knew this. Bits of soft earth clinging to the shoes of that man and Squint had told him the ugly fact. The soft earth came from the grounds of the Mammoth factory.
With a quick leap, Doc was upon the killer. His great, bronze hands and corded arms picked the fellow out of the touring car as though he were a murderous little rodent.
The man had secured a pistol. But the awful agony of those metallic fingers crushing his flesh against his bones kept him from using it.
Squint and the others, cowards that they were, sought to reach the tenth house in the row along the street. Lunging and swinging his victim like a club, Doc knocked them back. He was like a huge cat among them.
Squint spun and sped wildly. The other three followed him. They pounded down the street, toward Riverside Drive.
The man Doc held got control over his pain-paralyzed muscles. He fired his gun. The bullet spatted the walk at Doc’s feet.
Doc slid a bronze hand upward. The victim screamed as steel fingers closed on his gun fist. He kicked — tore at Doc’s chest. One of his hands ripped open the pocket where Doc had placed the capsule of metal that had held the substance which dissolved the body of Jerome Coffern.
The capsule of strange metal flipped across the walk. It fell between the iron-barred cracks of a basement ventilator.
Chapter 3. SHIP JUSTICE
DOC SAVAGE saw the metal capsule vanish. He wrenched at the hand of his victim. The pistol the man held was squeezed from the clawlike fist. The fellow had desperate nerve of a sort, now that he was in deadly terror of death. He seized the weapon with his other talon. He jammed the muzzle against Doc’s side.
The life of a less agile man than Doc would have come to an end there. But Doc’s bronze hand flashed up. It grasped the man’s face. It twisted. There was a dull crack and the murderer fell to the walk. A broken neck had ended his career.
Doc could have finished him earlier. He had refrained from doing so for a purpose. Whatever weird substance had dissolved Jerome Coffern’s body, a great, if demented scientific brain had developed it. None of these men had such a brain. They were hired killer caliber.
Doc had wanted to question the slayer and learn who employed him. No chance of that now! And Squint and the three others had nearly reached Riverside Drive.
To the iron-barred basement ventilator, Doc sprang. He could see the capsule of strange metal. His great hands grasped the ventilator bars. The metal grille was locked below.
Doc’s remarkable legs braced on either side of the ventilator. They became rigid, hard as steel columns. His wonderful arms became tense also. Intermingled with Doc’s amazing strength was the fine science of lifting great weights with the human body.
With a loud rusty tearing, the grille was uprooted. Loosened concrete scattered widely.
The feat of strength had taken but a moment. Doc dropped into the ventilator pit. He retrieved the crumpled metal capsule and pocketed it.
Squint and his trio had fled straight across Riverside Drive, dodging traffic. They vaulted the ornamental stone wall that ran along the lip of the high river bank.
Running easily, but making deceptive speed, Doc pursued. He reached the showy stone parapet.
Below him sloped the nearly clifflike river bank. It was so steep that grass and shrubs barely managed to cling. Some hundreds of yards down it and across a railroad track lay the Hudson River.
Squint and his three men were leaping and tumbling headlong in their mad haste.
At this point on the Hudson bank stood a couple of rickety piers. To one of these was anchored an ancient sailing ship. The vessel was quite large, a three-master. It was painted a villainous black color. The hull was perforated with numerous gun ports. From some of these, rusty old muzzle-loading cannon projected blunt snouts.