They greeted Doc with fish-like flops — the only way they could express their delight!
“Quiet!” Doc’s wispy-but-penetrant whisper warned.
A knife appeared in his bronze hand. He quickly cut the prisoners free from their bonds.
Then he flashed to each of the group, handing out tiny articles which he took from a padded metal pocket case.
These objects were weird fighting weapons — weapons perfected by Doc Savage and used by no one else.
They were metallic thimbles. Each held a tiny hypodermic needle containing a drug which induced a weird helplessness. The victim could see and hear what went on about him. But he could not think for himself. He could move yet being unable to think for himself, never stirred until told to.
Ordinarily, Doc loaded his thimbles with a drug which merely produced instant unconsciousness. But now he was using his more mysterious concoction.
Armed with the thimbles, Doc and his men took up positions outside the powerhouse. Even pretty Lea Aster crouched back of a caterpillar tractor and scrutinized the heavy darkness for quarry.
The gunmen stumbled up, making considerable noise.
They were quickly vanquished. A single concerted swoop by Doc and his aides… their hands stabbed like serpent heads… and their enemies simply stopped in their tracks. Not a shot was fired.
“Drop your guns!” Doc commanded in a powerful voice.
Such were the weird effects of the drug that the thugs obeyed. Their thinking processes were paralyzed. They would do nothing unless ordered for they could not recall Doc was their enemy.
“The way this stuff works always tickles me,” Monk chuckled. “You can take the meanest guy an’ it turns him into nothin’ but a flesh&blood machine!”
“What are we going to do with them?” Renny demanded.
“The usual thing,” Doc replied.
The others knew what he meant — the institution he maintained in up-state New York where criminals were made over into honest men by the fantastic brain operations and a course of schooling. These culprits would be sent there.
“Buttons Zortell ain’t even entitled to that muc!” Monk grumbled. “He’s a murderin’, no-good louse! He killed Bandy Stevens.”
Doc did not reply. To the drugged prisoners, he said: “Get moving!”
The men moved as through in trances. They might have been unthinking robots.
When one bumped into a large boulder, he stood pressing against it, unable to reason that he could avoid the obstacle by going around it. He had to be told what to do.
Doc’s men carried the three who had been knocked unconscious. They entered the steeply sloping spillway tunnel. They found Buttons Zortell lying where Doc had dropped him with a terrific fist blow.
Monk scooped Buttons up.
“This is one guy I sure hate to see escape payment for his crimes!” Monk grumbled.
“Who’s the brains behind all this?” Renny demanded. “Believe-it-or-not, we haven’t been able to find out.”
“You shall see before long,” Doc replied grimly.
“Then you know who it is?”
“A suspicion only,” Doc replied gravely. “This man is so diabolically clever that he has managed to cover his footsteps. I have discovered the purpose behind his crimes, however. And I have learned the thing he is after.”
“What is it?” came the eager chorus.
“You recall the molten rock in the cliff dwelling and the strange odor which was present?” Doc questioned of them.
“I’ll never forget that smell!” Monk grunted. “It was something entirely new!”
“Exactly,” Doc told him. “The scent marked the presence of an entirely new gas. A gas previously unknown. A gas which — when burned — produces a heat as great as that of the hottest electric furnace!”
“How’d you find that out?”
“By analyzing the cliff-dwelling air, some of which you’ll recall I trapped in a flask. A quantity of this gas was undoubtedly burned in the cliff ruin. It turned the solid rock into lava, blocking the secret passage. Some of the stuff escaped without burning. And it was this which I secured for chemical analysis.”
“Holy cow!” Renny muttered. “Where did the stuff come from?”
“That puzzled me for a time,” Doc said softly. “But when the Mastermind went to such pains to get the lake bed flooded, the answer was plain.”
“It’s under the lakebed then!”
“Exactly. There must be a vast deposit since many thousands-of-dollars were spent in the criminal effort to secure it. The gas, of course, is extremely valuable because of its heat-producing nature. It can be used in welding, smelting — wherever tremendous heat is necessary.”
Doc dropped his voice somewhat for they were advancing up the spillway tunnel.
“The gas was found during test-drilling to learn the water-holding qualities of the lakebed, of course,” he went on. “The man who found it set out systematically to break the Mountain Desert concern so that he might buy the lake bed cheaply. Like all criminals, he was too greedy to share the profits of his discovery with others.”
Doc now halted the procession. For some moments, he was silent as though engrossed in thought.
“We have a task to perform, brothers,” he said in a tone which — although low and soft — was absolutely emotionless. “It’s not a pleasant task. But the cause of Justice demands that we do it.”
His men gathered close, lending intent ears. They knew what was coming.
Doc Savage was going to hand the Master Killer his just deserts!
XXII — The Death Light
The King Killer was uneasy.
He crouched in the gloom beside a tool shed. His cowboy hat was hauled low; his gabardine coat draped about him like a toga. He was perspiring and grinding his teeth.
The dam was only a few rods distant.
More than half-an-hour had passed since Buttons Zortell’s departure. Nothing had happened.
The Chief had ordered shooting down in the chasm beneath the great dam. Yet none had started!
He had expected Doc Savage to appear in the vicinity. But there had been no sign of the Bronze Man.
The only occurrence had been a bit of movement the masked man had thought that he observed out on the dam near the center. He had watched…
…only to discern nothing more. He had dismissed it as the breeze blowing a tarpaulin.
Why didn’t something happen? The man was anxious that his photoelectric death trap be sprung. Everything would be settled by that! His enemies eliminated! His gang wiped out so that none could demand a share in his ill-gotten gains! The Mountain Desert Construction Company would be bankrupt by the loss of their dam! A perfect master stroke!
The man stood up. He had decided he would look around and see why nothing had occurred. If necessary, he would give Doc Savage a tip which would send him into the chasm.
The man turned. His hair raised under his hat! A stifled croak came through his bandanna mask!
Doc Savage stood before him! And there was a terrible light in the Bronze Man’s golden eyes!
The masked man whipped out a six-gun. But a bronze hand struck with the dazzling speed and force of a lightning flash! The gun was knocked far away.
Terror-stricken, the masked man spun and fled. The most convenient route lay across the top of the partially completed dam. He went that way.
An unexpected event now occurred.
Out of the great maw of the spillway tunnel popped another running man — Buttons Zortell! He too chose the handiest avenue of flight — the dam top.
The 2 men — Master and hireling — bounded onto the dam almost together. They ran wildly for the opposite side of the dam.