Doc Savage scooped up the 2 prisoners. They seemed without weight in his powerful grasp.
He pushed them out through the hole he had torn, then followed himself. He cleaned the poison off the front door knob with a handkerchief taken from one of his captives. He burned the handkerchief.
The increasing darkness then swallowed him. He carried the unconscious men.
Thunder gave a sudden thump in the distance, then rolled across the heavens like the insane laughter of a man half-choked. Lightning batted a red eye. A wind — stifling hot — scurried across the canyons and mesas. Overhead, clouds were massed in blowsy, awesome battalions.
A turbulent, threatful night promised.
The 3 partners who owned the Mountain Desert Construction Company were still in the office. Doc’s men were with them. They stared their surprise when Doc strode in with his 2 captives.
“Where’d you get ‘em?” Monk demanded.
Doc explained. He placed the 2 senseless men on separate desks.
“We’ll make them talk,” he finished. “Watch them while I go get the serum from the laboratory.”
He left the room quickly.
“Serum? Serum?” Nate Raff gave his enormous jaw a puzzled tug. “What did Savage mean by that?”
“Truth serum,” Monk replied,as if surprised that Raff did not comprehend.
“But I didn’t think that stuff was reliable,” Raff objected. “Police are not allowed to use confessions obtained by its use.”
“You watch!” Monk grinned. “Doc uses hypnotism after he administers the stuff. These 2 birds will spill everything they know!”
Thunder whooped noisily overhead as Monk spoke. It was as if some ethereal Colossus had been tickled. Lightning sprayed red flame over desert and mountain.
For a moment, the boisterous elements commanded attention. For 10 seconds-or-so, the 2 senseless captives were forgotten!
During that interval, a sharp eye might have seen each man give a small twitch. A single sharp movement as though a horrible agony had penetrated through the stupor of their slumber.
Amid the gobbling uproar of the Thunder overhead, none noticed the 2 unconscious men had stopped breathing!
Not until Doc Savage returned was the truth known. The Bronze Man halted the instant he caught sight of the two on the desks.
“They’re dead!” he said sharply.
Had lightning struck the flimsy building, the shock would not have been greater.
“They can’t be!” roared Nate Raff. “We’ve been here all the time!”
“All the time!” echoed O’Melia, hitching nervously at his khaki breeches. “Yes sir!”
“Maybe your anesthetic killed ‘em,” red-bearded Keller told Doc in a surly mutter.
Renny started for the dead men.
“Don’t!” Doc warned.
With quick gestures, he indicated the peril of going near the bodies. Splattered across the features of each unfortunate were syrupy stains.
“The poison which kills on contact,” he announced.
“But where did it come from?” Nate Raff thundered.
The office windows were open. Outside one of them, Doc found the answer to Raff’s query.
A toy water pistol! From this, the fatal liquid had been squirted. It was wiped clean of fingerprints.
“Somebody let ‘em have it through the window!” boomed Raff.
Keller nodded and explored his red whiskers with his trembly fingers. O’Melia shivered.
But grim looks passed among the aides of Doc Savage. They were trained observers, these 5 men. Although at times they might seem as children compared to the mighty Bronze Man who was their leader, each of the five had an unusually keen brain. They ranked as high above an ordinary man as they themselves were topped by their amazing bronze leader.
Every one of them saw that no tracks were outside the window where the water pistol lay! They realized the water gun had been thrown from inside the office. They knew that one of the Mountain Desert partners had killed the two so they couldn’t be questioned!
The discovery appalled them. Raff, O’Melia, Keller — which man was it? The question baffled them.
They wondered if Doc had singled out one man in his mind as the culprit. Why was he holding his hand? Was it to rescue Lea Aster? Was it to learn what was back of the crimes? Was it to solve the mystery of the red-hot lava in the ancient cliff dwelling?
Bronze and inscrutable, Doc Savage voiced no answers.
Soon after the bodies had been removed, Doc requested quarters.
He and his men were assigned a long corrugated iron building. It was one of many similar structures which lined a Skullduggery street. It was situated a short distance from the shack which Doc had already taken over as a laboratory.
Horror, peril, death — none of these visibly affected Doc Savage. He retired to the new quarters, laid down, and slept.
The satanic bedlam in the sky did not bother him. The whizzing cracks and cannonading of lightning, the stifling heat, the tinkle of wind-carried sand against the corrugated iron building — all failed to disturb him.
4 hours later, he arose. The minimum of slumber had refreshed him and tuned up his faculties for the dangerous work ahead.
Before dressing, Doc took his exercises. This was a grueling routine and lasted almost 2 hours. It was unlike anything else in the World. Doc’s father had started him on the ritual when he could hardly walk. And Doc had continued it religiously from that day.
To these exercises could be laid the credit for Doc’s tremendous physical and mental powers. He made his muscles tug against each other in a fashion he had perfected until perspiration covered his mighty bronze body in a heavy film.
He selected a number of a dozen figures and juggled it mentally, multiplying, dividing, extracting square and cube roots. This whetted his powers of concentration.
He carried with him always an apparatus that made sound waves of frequencies so high and low that the ordinary human ear could not detect them. Through a lifetime of practice, Doc had perfected his ears to a point where the sounds registered.
He named scores of assorted odors after a quick olefactory test of small vials racked in a special case.
To sharpen his touch, he read pages of very fine Braille printing — the writing for the blind which is a system of upraised dots.
He had many other varied parts in his routine. He went through them at a terrific pace, giving himself no time for rest. Dressing, he stepped out into the night.
Lightning splashed! Thunder made the earth tremble! The wind had died and it was hotter. The clouds overhead were blue-black, bloated, threatening.
Doc Savage swung off in the direction of the dam.
2 men watched him go.
Scowls distorted their faces. Both held rifles. The grips of single-action six-shooters stuck hornlike from low-slung holsters.
One gargled a curse and leveled his Winchester in Doc’s direction. The other man caught his arm.
“Nix, Jud! You might miss.”
“You’re crazy, Buttons!” growled the other. “I can get a bead on ‘im durin’ one of these lightnin’ flashes. I’m a crack shot!”
“Don’t take the chance!” Buttons snapped. “We’ve got another way of doin’ it.”
The skulking pair allowed 5 minutes for Doc Savage to get out of the vicinity.
Then they crept into a mesquite thicket and came out carrying a barrel. They handled this barrel very gingerly indeed. Toward Doc’s quarters, they bore it.
Under the eaves of the long corrugated building stood another barrel. It was used to catch rain water for washing purposes.
The barrel carried by Buttons Zortell and Jud exactly matched the one which belonged under the eaves. They made a quick exchange.