Kenneth Robeson
The Red Skull
Into a subterranean world of red-hot lava, Doc Savage and his fantastic five descend to face the most fiendish foe of his career.
Awaiting Doc is an irresistible power that can level mountains… that can enslave the World… and that threatens to make Doc’s most dangerous adventure his very last!
Originally printed and copyrighted circa 1933 by Street &Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed circa 1963 by The Conde Nast Publications, Inc. Printed in paperback by Bantam Books. It doesn’t appear that these will be reprinted in the near future. So the following out-of-print editions may be read only for your personal interest and may not be otherwise duplicated or published for profit.
The adventurers of Doc Savage originally appeared in magazine format in 1933–1949. Note that this timeframe was before jet planes and the semiconductor technology to which we are accustomed today. The fastest planes were 400-mph propeller jobs and vacuum tube technology still ruled radio. The most fantastic weapons encountered by Doc may have been based on of John Keely’s “vibrational” and Nikola Tesla’s “scalar-wave” theories that were popular then.
At times, the writing style of the various Doc Savage “ghostwriters” was influenced by the prevailing sentiments of the Nation’s reading audience of that era. As a result, a few portions might not be “politically correct” in today’s society. Minor editing efforts have been made in these archives to “update” these. Finally — as a rough estimate — multiply all dollar($) amounts by 10 to convert to ‘2004’ dollars (e.g., $5 back then would be $50 today).
I — The Hunted Man
5 men were running across the golf links of the Widebrook Country Club. They kept in a compact group, and their manner was determined and sinister. Each carried a hooded golf bag.
The hour was near Midnight. The Moon sprayed a silver glow over fairways, sand traps, and putting greens.
The 5 men drew no clubs from their covered bags. No golf balls lay on the fairways. Not even luminous balls of the type sometimes used by those eccentric persons who play night golf. They were not indulging in a moonlight game. At least, not a golf game.
The five did not look like men who would turn to golf for recreation. They had calloused hands, thick necks, and faces which were rocky and cold. Their skins were brown, leather-like. Their eyes had a habitual squint — marks of lives spent in a land of blistering heat and white-hot sunlight.
An observer would have wondered why they carried the shrouded golf bags. He would have been alarmed at their grim manner. But there were no observers. The Widebrook was one of the elite links in the vicinity of New York. Through the day, many persons of wealth played there. At night, there was only the watchman.
That watchman now lay in one of the clubhouse lockers. He was bound with rope ordinarily used to stretch the nets on the club tennis courts and gagged with a sponge from the shower baths, held between his jaws by his own necktie. Moreover, he was still unconscious from a head blow delivered from behind. He had not seen his assailants.
“Get a move on, you hombres!” rapped the leader of the 5 runners. “We ain’t got all night!”
This man had 2 scars, one on either cheek. They looked like gray buttons sewed to his leathery brown features and indicated that he had been shot through the face sometime in the past. He was more burly than the others — his weight fell but a little short of 200 pounds. He carried his bulk with the lightness of an athlete.
The group sprinted on in silence, hugging the golf bags to keep the contents from rattling. Then at a command from the leader, they stopped.
“This is gonna be the place,” he uttered as he waved an arm to indicate the spot.
“Are you certain about that, Buttons?” asked one of the others.
“Dang tootin’!” The wolfish smile of the man called “Buttons” made the scars on his cheeks crawl back toward his ears. “Whitey’s telegram said it would be the No. 6 hole on this golf course. Whitey used to hang out around New York and he knew about this place.”
In a puzzled fashion, the first man peered around. “I don’t see no number.”
“You ain’t lookin’ in the right place! Blazes! Ain’t you ever played golf?”
“Naw. And you ain’t either! Why any grown man would fiddle away his time on this cow pasture pool is more’n I can savvy.”
“Dry up! This is the 6th hole. The number was on that white box of a contraption back there. You crawl in that sand trap.”
“You mean that hole full of sand? Do they call that a ‘sand trap’?”
“Hop into it!” snapped Buttons.
The other obeyed. With his hands, he hurriedly scooped a trench large enough to receive his form. Then he plucked open the hood on his golf bag and drew from it a short, well-worn .30–30 carbine as well as a single-action .45-caliber six-gun!
Shoving the six-shooter inside his shirt, the man stretched face-up in the trench he had dug. He placed the rifle on his chest after throwing his coat over the breech mechanism to protect it from the sand.
Buttons now plucked a large sheet of pale-brown wrapping paper from a pocket. He wrenched off a fragment, tore eye-holes in it, and spread it over the face of the man in the sand.
Then he proceeded to cover the fellow with sand, leaving the paper-masked head in the open. The job completed, he stepped back for an inspection. He was satisfied. The pale-brown paper blended nicely with the sand.
“Swell! Anybody would walk right over you and not know you was there. You savvy what you’re to do?”
“Yeah!” grunted the man in the sand. “I’m to pop out of here with my lead-slingers and get Bandy Stevens!”
“But no shootin’ unless we have to! Paste that in your bonnet! We gotta stop Bandy. Whitey’s telegram said Bandy was wearin’ somethin’ bulky in a money-belt around his waist. We want to get whatever that is. But we wanta grab Bandy alive so we can ask ‘im some questions!
“Bandy Stevens is poison! Bad medicine! Don’t forget that!” spoke the man through his paper mask. “Moreover, he is gonna be expectin’ trouble since Whitey tried to shoot him in Phoenix and missed.”
“He don’t suspect Whitey of that, the telegram said.”
“Anyway, Bandy is poison…”
“A jasper named ‘Buttons’ ain’t no milk tonic himself!” leered Buttons. “C’mon, you rannies! We’d better get set.”
On the opposite side of the fairway, another man was soon planted in a sand trap.
2 more were concealed in like fashion along the sixth hole of the golf course. Each man produced weapons from his golf bag.
After hiding all his fellows, Buttons carried the empty golf bags to a convenient tree and hung them among the branches. Then he took refuge in the foliage beside them.
Silence now enwrapped the links. In the distance, automobiles moaned on a turnpike. A night breeze shuffled the leaves of the tree which held Buttons. A furtive, hopping cottontail rabbit came out and browsed on the grass of a putting green.
The waiting men were well-concealed. And they maintained the patience of savage animals in wait for prey. There was no nervousness, no stirring about. However, each strained his ears to catch a sound for which they waited.
Buttons was first to hear it. A metallic mosquito drone in the distance. The noise grew louder and louder, becoming a throbbing howl.
Downward in the moonlight spun a plane. It was a 2-place biplane, painted yellow, a little shabby. The big radial motor boomed gently as the craft floated over the links.