"Half of you go outside, my sons," he commanded. "Should any one be drawn here by sounds of the fighting, kill them. This house stands alone, and probably the sounds were not heard. But if any one comes, show them that curiosity is indeed a fatal disease."
A part of the Orientals hurried out into the moon-bathed court.
"Watch the prisoner closely!" Liang-Sun directed the others. "If he should escape, I can promise there will be heads lopped off. I am going to call the master to see what he wants to do with the bronze devil."
LIANG-SUN strode through rooms, playing his flash beam about, until he located a telephone. He swept the instrument up with a flourish.
When the phone operator's voice came, Liang-Sun spoke in English. He handled the language well enough, except that, Chinese fashion, he turned all the "R's" into "L's."
"Give me numbel Ocean 0117," he requested.
It was almost a minute before he got his party. He recognized the singsong voice at the other end of the wire. Without delay. he launched rapid words in his native tongue.
"We have secured the merchandise after which we came, oh lord," he said. "We now have it rolled in a rug and bound securely. This lowly person wishes to know how you want it delivered."
"In two pieces, dumb one!" rasped the voice in the receiver. Cut the merchandise in two in the middle. Then you may leave it there. I have other work for you to do."
"My understanding of your wishes is perfect. What is this other wok?"
"The sugar importer, Scott S. Osborn, has a brother who lives up on Park Avenue. We are holding merchandise which this brother might be greatly interested in buying."
"I understand, oh lord. No doubt, Scott S. Osborn's brother will indeed want to purchase our merchandise."
The two were speaking in vague terms, lest a phone
operator be listening. But they understood each other perfectly. They had Scott S. Osborn prisoner, and were going to try to ransom him to his brother.
"This sale of merchandise is not extremely important," continued the voice over the wire. "But since we are holding the goods, we might as well take a profit. You will visit the brother and seek the best price you can obtain."
"I comprehend most clearly, oh lord. Exactly where does Scott S. Osborn's brother live, that I may find him without trouble."
"Get the address from the phone book, dumb one!"
"I shall do that."
"Returning to the subject of the merchandise you have wrapped in the rug you are perhaps aware there are five others of a similar pattern, although of lesser importance; We may find it desirable to seek them also. But I shall discuss that with you at a later time. Cut the goods you have in two pieces. Do so at once."
Liang-Sun singsonged that he understood. He hung up the receiver, drew his sword, and swung into the room where Doc Savage had been captured.
The rolled rug had not moved. The slant-eyed guards sat about the room, lost in the shadows. But their flash beams blazed upon the rug.
Liang-Sun sprang forward, sword uplifted.
"Behold, dogs!" he shouted. "I will show you how a master swings his blade."
The sword hissed down.
Rolled rug the body within it were chopped neatly in halves.
A ghastly crimson flood spurted from the rug and washed over the floor.
LIANG-SUN callously wiped his blade. "Never, my sons, will you see a man cut in halves in more expert fashion!" he addressed his men.
He got no answer.
The half-caste leader stared about. He seemed to lose inches in height. His eyes bloated out from behind their sloping lids.
"Have your tongues been eaten, that you do not answer?" he gulped.
Leaping to the nearest Mongol, Liang-Sun shook him. The man toppled out of his chair. Liang-Sun jumped to another, a third, a fourth.
All were unconscious!
With mad haste, Liang-Sun shucked the rug off the head and shoulders of the man he had cut in two.
Liang-Sun's squawl of horrified surprise was like that of a cat with its tail stepped on.
The body in the rug was one of his own men!
Terror laid hold of Liang-Sun, a fright such as he had never before experienced. He dashed headlong out into the court.
"The bronze man is a devil!" he shrilled. "Flee, my sons!"
The Orientals who had been on guard outside, needed no urging. They battled each other to be first across the drawbridge and into their cars. They had their fill of fighting the bronze giant.
They departed without knowing what had made their fellows unconscious. A close inspection of the room where the men slept would have shown the remains of many thin-walled glass balls. Perhaps they might have guessed these had originally contained an anaesthetic gas which made men unconscious the instant they breathed it, yet which became harmless after it had been in the air two or three minutes.
These anaesthetic globes were Doc's invention. He always carried a supply with him.
Cars bearing the fleeing Mongols were not out of earshot when Doc arose from the concealment of a divan not six feet from the phone over which Liang-Sun had talked to his chief.
Doc had heard that conversation.
Doc's escape from the tightly chained rug, so mystifying to Liang-Sun, had not been difficult. Doc had employed a simple trick used by escape artists. He had tensed all his muscles when the rug was being tied. Relaxing later, he had plenty of room to crawl out after he had reduced the guards to unconsciousness with the anaesthetic.
Doc had not been affected by the anaesthetic for the simple reason that he could hold his breath during the two or three minutes it was effective.
He sped out of the castle, with the idea of following Liang-Sun and the others. But they had stolen his gray roadster.
Doc ran for the nearest boulevard. It was a quarter of a mile distant. Had official timers held stop watches on that quarter, the time Doc did it in would have been good for a headline on any sport page in the country. But the only observer was a stray dog which sought to overhaul the bronze man.
On the boulevard, Doc hailed a taxi.
Chapter 5
THE DRAGON TRAIL
THE cab let Doc Savage out before an uptown New York police station. He entered. The marked deference of the cops, the celerity with which they sprang to grant his wishes, showed they knew him as a person of power. The police commissioner himself would not have gotten better service.
A "back number" telephone directory was produced. This listed the phone numbers, and the names to which they belonged, rather than the name followed by a number, as in an ordinary directory.
Doc looked up the number Liang-Sun had called Ocean 0117. It was listed as the:
DRAGON ORIENTAL GOODS CO.
The address was on Broadway, far south of the theatrical portion of the street known as the Great White Way.
Doc took a cab downtown. The hack driver wondered all the way why his passenger rode the running board of the taxi, rather than inside. The hackman had never before had a thing like that happen.
The building, housing the Dragon Oriental Goods Company, was a shabby, ten-story structure. It was decorated in the ornate fashion popular thirty years ago. "The Far East Building," a sign said.
Chinatown lay only a few blocks away.
Directly across the street, a new forty-story skyscraper was going up. The steel framework of this was nearing completion. A night force of men was pushing construction. Noise of riveting machines banged hollowly against near-by structures and throbbed in the street.
A dusty directory told Doc the Dragon concern occupied a tenth-floor office.
An elevator, driven by a man in greasy tan coveralls, was in operation. The fellow's round moon of a face and eyes sloping slightly upward at the outer ends advertised that some of his recent ancestors had come from the Far East.