A great leap launched Doc's powerful form several feet up the tree. He ran on up as easily as a squirrel. He worked out on the branch, balancing like a tight-rope walker.
It was a full thirty feet to the ground. Yet great muscles cushioned his drop until it seemed he had hardly more than stepped off a chair.
Doc's golden eyes were alert. He knew this was the most dangerous moment of his entrance. If there was a guard, it was likely the fellow would see him.
He was right.
An eye of flame batted from behind a dry kiln. It licked so rapidly it was an ugly glow. Bullets passing Doc's head made a ringing sound like a nail tapping against a bottle. Then came the tumbling gobble of a machine gun.
Doc flattened against the ground. He moved with a bewildering speed. His bronze skin and dark clothing blended surprisingly with the earth.
The gunner stopped firing. He had completely lost track of his target He stepped out into the moonlight He held his weapon ready. It was not one of the submachine or "Tommy" guns firing .45-caliber pistol cartridges, but a regulation aircraft type gun shooting the big cartridges. It was harnessed to a wide leather belt about the guard's middle so he could handle the powerful recoil.
"Eet's de bronze guy!" bellowed the fellow. "Hee's over de fence!"
"Non, non!"
called another monkeylike member of the Cult of the Moccasin. "Hees could nevair find dis place!"
"Mebbe so—but he done be in here right now!"
The second man came running. He vaulted a row of live rollers, a conveyor formerly used to move sawed lumber to the kilns.
A mighty bronze arm flashed up from the shadowy side of the conveyor. It pulled the man down. A piercing scream tore from his lips.
The gunner, hearing that scream, but not seeing what had happened because he was looking elsewhere at the instant, ran over. He took one look on the other side of the conveyor.
He turned pale as though his heart had started pumping whitewash.
His companion lay there, crimson spilling slowly from the corners of his open mouth. The man was only unconscious, but the gunner took it for granted he was dead.
He let out a howl that rivaled the one he had just heard. He tore full speed for one of the storage sheds which still held dry lumber. He considered it impossible that anything of flesh and blood could have moved from the spot under the tree to the conveyor with such swiftness. And without being seen?
He couldn't fight a bronze ghost!
HE dived into the great shed. The interior was rather dark. Rough, dry lumber was here. The piles were fully sixteen feet high. Back into the labyrinth, the scared swampman worked.
He thought he heard a noise behind. He whirled wildly with his gun. But he saw nothing to alarm.
"Vat's wrong weeth yo'?" came a harsh whisper.
The gunner gulped his relief. This was the voice of one of his own evil kind.
"A debbil!" he gulped. "A bronze debbil man! Heem move like cloud that ees tie to rabbit's tail!"
"A debbil?" The other voice was muffled.
"Yo' bat!" The gunner shuddered.
It was darker than the inside of an owl here in the rough-dry shed.
"Me—I don' hear nottin'!" declared the other man.
The gunner licked his lips. He couldn't hear anything, either.
"Yo' don' nevair hear dat debbil man!" he muttered. "Say, vat yo' out here for? Boss ees say fo' ever'body stay outta sight, except for us two on guard!"
"Me—I come out get drink," said the other shortly. "I'm dang if l can find way back."
"Ho, yo' lost?"
"Oui!
I tell yo' I'm dang if I can find way back, ain't I?"
The gunner gave a harsh snort.
"Ho, de place ees in middle of de pile right yere!"
"De one yo' leanin' on?"
"Oui!
Dat ees right!"
The next instant, a lumber pile seemed to fall on the gunner—except that it was bronze in hue and delivered paralyzing blows with great, powerful fists.
Just before the gunner went down, senseless, he realized what had befallen him.
He hadn't been talking to one of his fellows. He had been conversing with the bronze "debbil!"
Doc had simply imitated the swampman's dialect in order to learn where the kidnaped victims were being held. The spot was inside one of the great lumber piles!
DOC now did a peculiar thing. He depressed the firing lever of the aircraft type machine gun belted to the monkey man's middle. The weapon spewed flame, fumes, and copronickel slugs. The terrific din made in the narrow space between the lumber piles was like two bolts of thunder fighting.
Doc released the firing lever.
"Got heem!" he yelled, imitating the polyglot, of the swamp speech.
A soaring leap took him up some feet on the sheer side of a lumber stack. He clung there to a board that projected hardly more than a quarter of an inch.
Below him, the apparently solid side of the lumber pile opened outward. Sounds told him what had happened. It was too dark to see anything.
"Vat ees eet?" called a voice. "Who ees yo' got?"
It was right under Doc! The speaker had thrust his head out of the lumber pile.
One of Doc's mighty hands floated down. It fished. It found a head.
The victim emitted one faint, low sound like a chicken that had been stepped on. Then his head collided with the side of the lumber pile, and he hung loose and unconscious.
Doc let him fall. He whipped inside the lumber pile.
A flashing from within spiked a narrow beam. The glare found Doc. It lost him as he moved swiftly. The man with the light fired a revolver, then gritted curses because he had missed the mark.
There seemed to be a large room inside the lumber pile. The walls were built like those of a refrigerator—with an air space between inner and outer planking. No doubt the secret chamber was virtually soundproof.
A blood-curdling shriek rang inside the room. A body threshed. A gun exploded. Silence followed.
The man with the flashlight had felt the mighty hand of Doc Savage! He was now senseless on the floor.
The interior of the lumber pile held the quiet of a tomb of ancient Egypt. But a watch ticked somewhere in the black abyss. It ran rapidly. It sounded like a woman's watch.
"Doc!" called Ham's voice softly. "There was only four of them here."
"Then the roost is cleaned!" chuckled Doc. He lit a match.
Big Eric, Edna, Ham—all three were safe on the floor. Their arms were a bit purple because of the tight ropes that bound them. But such trifles could be soon forgotten.
"I thought we were as good as dead!" Big Eric muttered. "They were going to send us to their chief hide-out, the place they called the Castle of the Moccasin. There, the Gray Spider would have tried to force us to sign papers declaring we had suddenly decided to take a long vacation. Then we would have been killed, I suspect."
"The Castle of the Moccasin!" Doc said dryly. "The thing for us to do is to persuade our prisoners to tell us where the place is! We may be able to get the Gray Spider there!"
"I hate to hang crepe, Doc," Ham offered, "but you're out of luck!"
"Eh?"
"None of these fellows know where the Castle of the Moccasin is, unless I'm mistaken. From their talk, I gathered that it is sort of sacred high temple of their voodoo cult. Only the high-muck-amucks are permitted to visit it. Regular barbarian taboo stuff."
"Why are you so sure, Ham?" Doc asked.
"Because I overheard a talk they were having. They didn't think we'd ever escape. There was no reason for them to deceive us."
"Then we'll have to fall back on my original plan," Doc said steadily.
He departed to turn the deadly high-voltage current off the barbed-wire fence, and to get his roadster.
He walked swiftly, for he was in a hurry to get back to New Orleans and place his four additional prisoners with the two in a drugged sleep in the hotel room. There would be six of them to go to his amazing criminal-reforming institution in up-State New York.
No doubt more than six would be resting in the room before this affair was settled. For Doc Savage had as yet hardly started to fight the Gray Spider!
Chapter VI. DEATH-END TRAIL
A GLORIUS dawn had seized upon New Orleans. Crowds hurried to work. In Canal Street, traffic boiled. The Walnut Street, Jackson Avenue, and Canal Street ferries carried a full load every time they crossed the Mississippi.
The business day was starting.
Doc had brought his friends and prisoners to town. Leaving the prisoners in the hotel room with the previously-captured men, Doc was back again in his roadster.