Suddenly he discovered Docs men.
He bounded into the cab. The machine jumped from the curb, turned in the street like a dog chasing its own tail, and hooted away.
Fortunately, Renny had his own car parked near. It was a tiny sedan, ill befitting Rennys immense bulk. Into it, Docs men piled.
The chase was on!
FEW vehicles other than an occasional milk wagon moved on the streets. That was lucky. The headlong pace the pursuit set allowed for no niceties of traffic dodging.
Up Broadway they thundered, leaving a trail of bleating police whistles behind.
Rennys peewee limousine proved a surprise. It ran like a racer. And Renny was something of a Barney Oldfield at the wheel. The fleeing cab was slowly, steadily overhauled.
Desperate, the machine dodged, doubled back. It only lost ground.
Finally, the taxi veered over to Riverside Drive, then off the Drive and down a rutty workroad the same road followed by the gold truck Doc Savage had trailed.
Renny steered his machine in pursuit.
Behind them, a police squad car caterwauled along the Drive, but missed seeing them. It wandered off, wrapped in the bedlam of its own siren, vainly searching for the two automobiles which had used the early morning streets of New York for a race track.
The fleeing thug drove almost to the tumble-down pier where lay anchored the Jolly Roger. He hopped out, kept behind the taxi and scuttled for the pirate vessel.
A pistol flamed desperately from his hand as he caught sight of Rennys little sedan bucking down the rutty road. The murk was thick, so he missed.
Renny instantly leveled one of the compact little machine guns Doc had devised.
"It would be better if we could question the fellow!" Ham suggested. "Maybe we can make him lead us to Kar!"
Realizing the truth of that, Renny withheld his fire. He braked to a stop. Monk all but tore a door off the tiny sedan in getting out. They pounded after the fleeing rat.
Hollow clatterings arose as the rat ran across the wharf timbers, then a rowdy thunder as Renny and the rest arrived. The would-be killer had no time to draw in the gangplank. Wildly, he sprang for the first shelter handy the forward deck hatch. His body plummeted straight into the black hold interior.
The fellow made a bad landing. Monk nearly overhauled him there, his great, anthropoid hulk descending with a loud crash into the hold, and his hairy fingers trapping the quarrys coat.
But the Kar rodent twisted and tore out of his coat. He fled sternward.
It was Renny who winged the man with a quick shot. The fellow plunged down, a leg shattered by the bullet.
In a moment, Docs five men and Oliver Wording Bittman had surrounded the captive. They prepared to ask questions.
Not even the first query was put, however.
Several flashlights suddenly popped blinding beams upon them. The glare came from the hatchway above, and from the door in an aft bulkhead. The ugly nozzles of machine guns appeared in the luminance.
Docs men stood helpless. They had pocketed their own compact and deadly weapons while they examined the prisoner.
"Letm have it!" snarled a voice from the hatch rim.
Another rat suggested: "Maybe Kar will want "
"Sure he wants em dead! We got the bronze guy! Well get these fellows and finish the job! Lets have it!"
Oliver Wording Bittman gave a shrill cry and sprang to one side, seeking madly to evade the incandescent blaze of the flashlights held by Kars killers.
On the hatch rim, a machine gun in the hands of one of Kars men released an awful hail of bullets.
While Doc was seemingly in the grip of death due to Kars planning, Docs friends, too, had fallen in a trap of the evil Kar!
Chapter 13. HIDING PLACE!
DOC SAVAGE, as he braced himself on all fours with the terrific weight of the deadfall crushing down upon his back, knew the fate intended for him. He saw the slight steadying of the air gun which presages a trigger being pulled. He saw the finger of Kars hired killer snug to the trigger.
The many hundreds of pounds atop him prevented even his mighty bronze body from negotiating a leap. He could not possibly reach the air gun muzzle and knock it aside.
Nor did he attempt to!
Doc had another plan. Inside his buttoned coat, he wore a metal plate which covered most of his chest. It was no ordinary metal, that plate. It was composed of the same material as the capsule missiles which held the Smoke of Eternity.
Not without results had Doc consigned himself to his locked laboratory to analyze the capsule. The metal was a rare alloy, but its nature had soon been revealed by a searching analysis.
As a matter of precaution, in case he was shot at with the Smoke of Eternity, Doc had fashioned himself a body armor from the rare alloy, a supply of which could be assembled from the absolutely complete stock of little-known medicals and chemicals which his laboratory held.
Hence, the instant Doc saw the air gun about to discharge, he put forth a herculean effort and managed to get his armor before the muzzle. The capsule containing the terrible dissolving compound shattered on the armor.
Doc had saved himself!
Supporting the vast weight on his back with one hand, Doc used the other to tear off the armor and the front of his coat. The Smoke of Eternity was very potent it might creep around the armor.
Some of the weird stuff spilled on the deadfall. The ponderous timbers began dissolving.
Not without effort, Doc moved rearward along the passage a few feet, being careful the while not to permit the heavy roof to crush him lower.
He listened to the elated conversation of his attackers.
"That," said one of the men, "fixes the bronze guy!"
"Hey!" barked another an instant later. "Whats the noise?"
Men could be heard, charging wildly onto the Jolly Roger! "We gotta look into this!"
Docs assailants hurried away.
The moment they were gone, Doc employed the full power of his huge muscles and lifted the deadfall. He worked clear, afterward easing the deadfall down so as not to make a thump.
Doc crept out on deck. Forward, a man was snarling.
"Let em have it!" were his words.
The man never heard the mighty bronze Nemesis that towered up behind him.
DOC SAVAGE took in the scene. Renny, Long Tom, Ham, Johnny, Monk, and Oliver Wording Bittman were all in the hold, brightened by flashlight beams.
The fellows who thought they had just killed Doc were gripping machine guns.
Also gathered about were the other members of the gang who had robbed the bank.
All the thieves had returned!
Docs eyes searched for Kar. No sign of the master mind did he discern.
The machine gunners were preparing to fire. The leader of the gang would be the first to kill. He hissed,
" Now!"
But the fellows trigger finger did not discharge a single shot! The rapid firer was whisked out of his clutch by a grip of such strength there was no resisting it.
The weapon erupted a loud squawl of reports. A ghastly lead storm struck Kars assembled slayers. Dying men toppled over the hatch rim, to fall into the hold like ripe fruit.
"Doc!" howled Monk, down in the hold. "Its Doc!"
The respite furnished by their bronze leader gave the besieged men time to unlimber their compact guns.
Kar gunmen who had been covering them from the bulkhead door now tried to shoot. They were too late. A hot wind of bullets wilted them.
The captive Docs friends had been about to question tried to escape. Johnny knocked him cold with a set of bony knuckles.
With powerful leaps, Renny and Monk sailed upward and grasped the hatch rim.
"Well help Doc!" Renny clipped.
Doc needed little help, though. By the time Renny and Monk pulled themselves outside, a Kar killer flung down his weapon.
"Dont croak me!" he blubbered.
"The rest of you drop your guns!" Docs powerful voice dominated the uproar.
Weapons clattered on the deck. Arms flew skyward. The bleating pleas for mercy made a bedlam like a yelping coyote pack.
"What a brave gang!" sneered waspish, quick-thinking Ham. He kicked a dropped submachine gun. "Only take these toys away from them and they are helpless!"
"Tie them up," Doc directed. "Im going to have a talk with the one who seems to have taken Squints place as straw boss."
Doc collared the man who led him into the deadfall trap in the passage the fellow who had fired the dissolving compound at Doc only a few minutes before.