For a moment, though, it did seem the ship would escape the mighty bronze man. But a great leap sent his herculean figure sailing upward.
Doc seized a strut which braced the empennage — the rudder and elevators. The plane must have been going forty miles an hour. The wrench would have torn loose the grip of lesser fingers. But the bronze giant held on.
Kar now began to shoot with an automatic pistol. He was excited. He had to aim from a very difficult position. He missed with all his slugs — then had to devote his attention to getting the plane off the crater floor, before it reached the runway end.
The craft lurched. With a moan, it took the air!
Chapter 22. A LOST LAND DESTROYED
THE plane climbed over the great boulders and the high fern trees. It circled once. Then Kar lifted his pistol to shoot at Doc Savage once more. The plane could fly itself for a time.
Doc had been making good use of the respite. He had mounted to the main tail struts, which extended to the upper wing. He was swinging with a simian ease along these.
Kar’s first bullet missed. His second also — for Doc had twisted in a miraculous fashion and gotten atop the wing.
A hollow clackcame from Kar’s automatic. He jacked the slide back. The weapon was empty. Wildly, he started reloading the clip.
The roof hatch whipped open. A mighty bronze form dropped inside. It towered toward Kar.
In a frenzy, the master villain sought to get just one bullet into his empty gun. But the weapon was flicked from his shaking fingers. It was flung through the plane windows.
Kar’s voice lifted a screech, "Please — I did not know — "
"Talk will do you no good!" Doc Savage’s remarkable voice, although not loud, was perfectly audible amid the engine roar. "Talk will never save you! Nothing can save you!"
Kar looked at the plane windows, longingly.
He had donned a parachute before taking off.
Next, the master villain stared at a large leather suitcase which stood in the rear of the cabin. But he dared not make a move to jump out of the plane or reach the suitcase. He feared those bronze hands that were more terrible than steel.
"I was deceived for a time," Doc Savage’s vast voice said grimly. "Your method of deception was clever. It was bold. It worked because you hit me in one of my soft spots. Perhaps I should say in one of my blind spots."
Kar began, "You got me all wrong about — "
"Silence! Your lies will serve you nothing! I have too much proof. I suspected who you were last night, when I saw you signaling from the top of a tree fern with a lighted cigarette.
"You were ordering your men to decoy the big prehistoric beavers to the attack. You had carefully chosen a tree from which you could reach safety."
Doc’s face was set as metal; his golden eyes ablaze with cold, flaky gleamings.
"I became suspicious before that," the bronze man continued. "When I was shot at! When you pretended to faint! Actually, you hoped I would come to your motionless body and your man would shoot me."
"I didn’t — "
"You did! After the prehistoric beavers had been frightened away last night, I climbed your tree and removed the skinning scalpel you carried on your watch chain. That scalpel was poisoned. I put it on a spear tip and tested it on the ancestor of a common porcupine. The animal was killed by a scratch. You hoped to use that weapon on me, but could not muster the courage, and failed at the last minute."
Kar was now trembling from head to foot. He quailed from each word as from a knife stab.
The plane, no hand at the controls, was flying itself — proof it was excellently made. Straight across the crater, it boomed.
"You had many chances to slay me," Doc continued. "But you did not have the nerve to do it with your own hand. Like all criminals, however clever, you are a coward. You are like a rat. You remained with me, cannily checkmating my moves when you could, and seeking always to have your men kill me. But you dared not to do the deed yourself.
"Your craven nature was shown when we landed in the crater. You became a sniveling coward."
KAR was a sniveling coward again now — probably to a greater degree than ever before.
"Your lies were ingenious!" Doc’s relentless voice went on. "It was not alone Jerome Coffern who came to Thunder Island with Gabe Yuder. You came also. You and Gabe Yuder found this crater. Jerome Coffern never knew of its existence."
"You got me wrong!" whined the craven before Doc. "Kar is Gabe Yuder — "
"Gabe Yuder is dead! He found the unknown element or substance from which the Smoke of Eternity is made. He probably perfected the Smoke of Eternity. You saw it could be turned to criminal purposes. So you killed Gabe Yuder, and took his chemical formula. I found his grave!"
"You can’t prove — "
"Granted. I am merely guessing what happened on your first visit to Thunder Island. It does not matter how near I come to the truth. But I cannot be missing the facts far.
"Jerome Coffern saw something suspicious about your actions. He must have remarked on it. So you tried to kill him. The first time, you shot at him and missed. He suspected you of the deed. He wrote a statement, which you searched his apartment and found. I discovered a few lines of that statement upon a fresh typewriter ribbon in Jerome Coffern’s apartment. But the important part was illegible — the part which named you!
"The part which said you, Oliver Wording Bittman, were Kar!"
Kar — or Bittman — quailed as though this were the greatest blow of all.
"Yes, you are Kar, Bittman!" Doc continued. "You are a skilled actor, one of the best I ever encountered. And you had aroused my blind confidence in you by exhibiting that letter from my father showing you had saved his life.
"You listened in on an extension phone when I called Monk from your New York apartment, and promptly sent your men after Monk. You also sent one of your gang, a flyer, to kill me as I walked. I recall I told you I was going to walk after I left your place.
"You ordered your men to get the specimens from Thunder Island out of my safe. You ordered the elevator death trap which nearly got Monk, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny — and you didn’t make a move to enter the cage that had been doctored. You tipped your men to get off the Sea Star, and probably hired the yacht which removed them, by telegraphing from New York.
"You even disappeared into the jungle on that coral atoll long enough to tell your man hidden there to bomb our plane. I could name other incidents when you checkmated us. You deceived us. But you did it by taking advantage of the most despicable means to get yourself into my confidence. You knew my affection for my father. So you showed me the letter which said you had saved his life.
"You knew my father — you knew the affection that existed between us. You were certain your trick would blind me to any faults you might have."
Bittman whined, "It was no trick! I saved his life — "
Doc Savage’s voice acquired a strange, terrible note, a note of strain.
"Did you? Or was that letter faked in some manner?"
"It was a genuine letter!" gulped Kar — or Bittman. "I saved his life! Honest, I did! I’m not such a bad guy! You read that letter! Your father wouldn’t be fooled in a man. I’m not — "
"You can’t talk yourself out of it!" Doc said savagely. "I do not think my father did make a mistake. Perhaps you were the man he thought you were — then!You have changed since. Perhaps some mental disease, or prolonged brooding, warped your outlook on life.