The old ship had a truculent, sinister appearance. Atop the deck house, a large sign stood. It read:
THE JOLLY ROGER
Former Pirate Ship.
(Admission Fifty Cents)
Doc Savage vaulted the low stone wall. With prodigious leaps, he descended the precipitous slope.
Squint and his trio were racing for the old pirate vessel.
Doc knew from a Sunday newspaper-feature story that the ancient craft had anchored at this spot recently. Curious persons strolling on Riverside Drive, young swains with their girls for the most part, were wont to pay half a dollar to go aboard the unusual ship.
The fiendish instruments of torture the old-time pirates had used on their captives was a chief attraction. The buccaneer craft was supposed to be replete with death traps. Among these was a trapdoor which let an unwary stroller down a certain passage fall upon a bed of upturned swords. It was inoperative now, of course.
SQUINT and his men gained the pirate ship a dozen yards ahead of Doc. The last man aboard hauled in the rickety timber that served as a gangplank.
But that inconvenienced Doc hardly at all. A great leap carried him up twice the height of a tall man to the rail. He poised there a moment, like a bronze monster.
Squint and the others were diving into the deck house.
Doc dropped aboard.
A revolver cracked from the deck-house door. Squint and his men had found weapons inside!
Doc had seen the revolver muzzle appear. Twisting aside and down, he evaded the whizzing bullet. A capstan, of hardwood and iron and thick as a small barrel, sheltered him momentarily. From that, a quick leap sent his bronze form down a gaping deck hatch.
He landed ten feet down, lightly as a settling eagle. Rough, aged planks were underfoot. Doc went aft.
The hold was a gruesome place. It had been fitted up as an exhibit of pirate butchery. Papier-mвchй statues of whiskered buccaneers stood about, holding swords. Figures depicting victims sprawled or kneeled on the planking.
Some were beheaded, with puddles of red wax representing gore. Some were minus ears and arms. A likeness of a beautiful woman hung by chains from the ceiling.
Doc traversed a passage. Cutlasses and pikes reposed on pegs on the walls.
Seized with an idea, Doc grasped a pike and a cutlass. There was nothing fake about the weapons. They were genuine heavy steel. The cutlass was razor keen.
Doc retraced his route. He was in time to see one of his ratty quarry peering into the hatch. The villainous fellow got a glimpse of Doc’s bronze form. He fired his revolver.
But Doc had moved. The bullet upset an image of a whiskered pirate. An instant later, the pike whizzed from Doc’s long arm.
The steel-shod shaft found accurate lodgment in the gun fiend’s brain. The man toppled headlong into the hold. His body, crashing to the floor, sent a gruesome papier-mвchй head bouncing across the planks.
While the grisly head still rolled, Doc bounded to a spot below the hatch. Faint noises on the deck had reached his keen ears. One or more of the others were near the hatch.
Suddenly a thin claw shoved a revolver over the hatch lip. The gun exploded repeatedly, driving random bullets to various parts of the hold.
Doc’s powerful form floated up from the floor. The razor-edged cutlass swished. The hand that held the revolver seemed to jump off the arm to which it belonged. It was completely amputated.
The maimed wretch shrieked. He fell to the deck.
With a second leap, Doc caught the hatch rim with his left hand. The by no means easy feat of flipping his heavy form outside with one hand, he accomplished easily. The handless man groveled on the deck.
The third of Squint’s aides was running for the deck-house entrance.
Squint himself was just diving into the temporary safety of the deck structure.
The running rat twisted his head and saw Doc. He brought his gun around. But the weapon was far from being in a position to fire when the sharp, heavy cutlass struck him. Doc had thrown it.
The blade ran the gangster through like a steel thorn. He convulsed his parasite life out on the deck.
Squint fired from within the superstructure. He was hasty and missed. As Doc’s bronze form bore down upon him, he fled.
Across the first cabin in the deck house was a solid bulkhead and a door. Squint got through the door ahead of Doc. He closed the panel and barred it.
Doc hit the door once. The thick planks were too much for even his terrific strength. A great battle-ax reposed among the array of weapons in the first cabin. Doc could have chopped at the door with it. He didn’t. He went back to the ratty fellow who had lost a hand.
THE man still groveled on the deck. Doc’s golden eyes gave the fellow one appraising glance. Then the big bronze head shook regretfully.
Doc, above all his other accomplishments, was a great doctor and surgeon. He had studied under the masters of medicine and surgery in the greatest clinics until he had learned all they could teach. Then, by his own intense efforts, he had extended his knowledge to a fabulous degree.
Doc’s father had trained him from the cradle for a certain goal in life. That goal was a life of service. To go from one end of the world to the other, looking for excitement and adventure, but always helping those who need help, punishing those who deserve it — that was Doc Savage’s noble purpose in life. All his marvelous training was for that end. And the training had started with medicine and surgery. At that, of all things, Doc was most expert.
So Doc knew instantly the ratty man was dying. The fellow was a dope addict. The shock of losing the hand was ending a career that would have come to its vile termination within a year or two anyway.
Doc sank beside the man. When the fellow saw he was not to be harmed more, he quieted a little.
"You were hired to kill Jerome Coffern?" Doc asked in a calm, compelling voice.
"No! No!" wailed the dying man. But the expression on his pinched and paling face showed he was lying.
For a moment, Doc said nothing. He exerted the full, strange quality of his golden eyes. Those eyes were warm and comforting now. Doc was making them exert a command for the truth.
It was amazing, the things Doc could do with his eyes. He had studied with the great masters of hypnotism, just as he had studied with famous surgeons. He had even gone to India and the Orient to gain knowledge from the mystic cults of the Far East.
By the time Doc asked his next question, he had exerted such a hypnotic influence upon the dying man that the fellow replied with the truth.
"What is the strange substance that dissolved the body of Jerome Coffern?" Doc prompted.
"It is called the Smoke of Eternity," whimpered the dying man.
"Of what is it made?"
"I don’t know. None of us know. None of us little guys, that is. The Smoke of Eternity is just given us to use. We never get more than one cartridge at a time. And — and we get — get orders of who to use it on."
The man was about gone. Swiftly, Doc questioned, "Who gives it to you?"
The thin lips parted. The man gulped. He seemed to be trying to speak a name that started with the letter "K."
But he died before he could voice that name.
OF the five who had gone to New Jersey to slay Jerome Coffern, only Squint was now alive.
A bronze giant of vengeance, Doc made for the stern of the strange old buccaneer ship. Squint was back there somewhere.
A time or two, Doc paused to press an ear to the deck planking. To his supersensitive ears, many sounds came. Wavelets lapped the hull. Rats scurried in the hold. Animal rats, these were.