Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 002 - The Land of Terror

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THE LAND OF TERROR
A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson
This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
? Chapter 1. THE SMOKING DEATH
? Chapter 2. BRONZE VENGEANCE
? Chapter 3. SHIP JUSTICE
? Chapter 4. THE NEST OF EVIL
? Chapter 5.. JEROME COFFERN’S FRIEND
? Chapter 6. THE MISSING MAN
? Chapter 7. THE UNDERWATER LAIR
? Chapter 8. THE TRAIL
? Chapter 9. THE COLD KILLER
? Chapter 10. HOT PURSUIT
? Chapter 11. DOC SPRINGS A TRAP
? Chapter 12. THE TERRIBLE DESTROYER
? Chapter 13. HIDING PLACE!
? Chapter 14. THE RACE
? Chapter 15. THE FLYING DEVIL
? Chapter 16. THE AWFUL NIGHT
? Chapter 17. RENNY, THE HUNTED
? Chapter 18. WHERE TIME STOPPED
? Chapter 19. ATTACK OF THE GNAWERS
? Chapter 20. THE DEATH SCENE
? Chapter 21. HUMAN MONSTERS
? Chapter 22. A LOST LAND DESTROYED
Scanned and Proofed by Tom Stephens
Chapter 1. THE SMOKING DEATH
THERE were no chemists working for the Mammoth Manufacturing Company who could foretell future events.
So, as they watched white-haired, distinguished Jerome Coffern don hat and topcoat after the usual Friday
conference, none knew they were never to see the famous chemist alive again.
Not one dreamed a gruesome right hand and a right forearm was all of Jerome Coffern’s body that would ever
be found.
Jerome Coffern was chief chemist for the Mammoth concern. He was also considered one of the most
learned industrial scientists in the world.
The Mammoth Manufacturing Company paid Jerome Coffern a larger salary than was received by the
president of the corporation. It was Jerome Coffern’s great brain which gave the Mammoth concern the jump
on all its competitors.
Jerome Coffern plucked back a sleeve to eye a watch on his right wrist. This watch was later to identify the
grisly right hand and forearm as Coffern’s.
"I wonder how many of you gentlemen have heard of Clark Savage?" he inquired.
Surprise kept the other chemists silent a moment. Then one spoke up.
"I recall that a man by the name of Clark Savage recently did some remarkable work along lines of ultimate
organic analysis," he said. "His findings were so advanced in part as to be somewhat bewildering. Some
points about chemistry generally accepted as facts were proven wrong by Clark Savage."
Jerome Coffern nodded delightedly, rubbing his rather bony hands.
"That is correct," he declared. "I am proud to point to myself as one of the few chemists to realize Doc
Savage’s findings are possibly the most important of our generation."
At this juncture, another chemist gave an appreciable start.
"Doc Savage!" he ejaculated. "Say, isn’t that the man who some weeks ago turned over to the surgical
profession a new and vastly improved method of performing delicate brain operations?"
"That is the same Doc Savage." Jerome Coffern’s none-too-ample chest seemed about to burst with pride.
"Whew!" exploded another man. "It is highly unusual for one man to be among the world’s greatest experts in
two lines so widely different as chemistry and surgery."
Jerome Coffern chuckled. "You would be more astounded were you to know Doc Savage fully. The man is a
mental marvel. He has contributed new discoveries to more than surgery and chemistry. Electricity,
archaeology, geology and other lines have received the benefit of his marvelous brain. He has a most
amazing method of working."
Pausing, Jerome Coffern gazed steadily at the assembled men. He wanted them to understand he was not
exaggerating.
"As I say, Doc Savage has a most amazing method of working," he continued. "At intervals, Savage
vanishes. No one knows where he goes. He simply disappears as completely as though he had left the earth.
And when he returns, he nearly always has one or more new and incredible scientific discoveries to give to
the world.
"It is obvious Doc Savage has a wonderful laboratory at some secret spot where he can work in solitude.
Nobody can even guess where it is. But any scientific man would give half a lifetime to inspect that
laboratory, so remarkable must it be."
The eminent chemist smiled from ear to ear. "And I will add more. You will, perhaps, find it hard to believe. I
have said Doc Savage is a mental marvel. Well, he is also a muscular marvel as well. He has a body as
amazing as his brain.
"His strength and agility are incredible. Why, for Doc Savage it is child’s play to twist horseshoes, bend silver
half-dollars between thumb and forefinger and tear a New York telephone directory in half.
"Were Doc Savage to become a professional athlete, there is no doubt in my mind but that he would be the
wonder of all time. But he will not employ his astounding strength to earn money, because he is one of those
very rare persons—a genuinely modest man. Publicity and world-wide fame do not interest him at all."
Jerome Coffern halted abruptly, realizing his enthusiasm was getting away with his dignity. He reddened.
"I could not resist the temptation to tell you of this remarkable man," he said proudly. "Doc Savage studied
under me many years ago. He quickly learned all I knew. Now his knowledge is vastly beyond mine."
He tugged back his right sleeve to display the watch.
"This timepiece was presented to me by Doc Savage at that time, as a token of gratitude," he smiled. "I am
proud to say he is still my friend."
Jerome Coffern gave his topcoat a final straightening tug.
"I am on my way now to have dinner with Doc Savage," he smiled. "He is to meet me in front of the plant
immediately. So I shall now bid you gentlemen good afternoon." The eminent chemist quitted the conference
room.
It was the last time his colleagues saw him alive.
THE plant of the Mammoth Manufacturing Company was located in New Jersey, only a short distance from
the great new George Washington Bridge across the Hudson River into New York City.
The brick buildings of the plant were modern and neat. Spacious grounds surrounded them. Shrubbery grew
in profusion and was kept neatly trimmed. The walks were of concrete.
Standing on the high steps in front of the building where the conference of chemists had been held, Jerome
Coffern glanced about eagerly. He was anxious to get a glimpse of the man he considered the most
remarkable in the world—his friend, Doc Savage.
It was perhaps a hundred yards across a vista of landscaped shrubbery to the main highway.
A car stood on the highway. It was a roadster, very large and powerful and efficient. The color was a reserved
gray.
Seated in the car was a figure an onlooker would have sworn was a statue sculptured from solid bronze!
The effect of the metallic figure was amazing. The remarkably high forehead, the muscular and strong mouth,
the lean, corded cheeks denoted a rare power of character. The bronze hair was a shade darker than the
bronze skin. It lay straight and smooth.
The large size of the roadster kept the bronze man from seeming the giant he was. Too, he was marvelously
proportioned. The bulk of his great frame was lost in its perfect symmetry.
Although he was a hundred yards from the bronze man, Jerome Coffern could almost make out the most
striking feature of all about Doc Savage.
For the bronze man was Doc Savage. And the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were like
pools of fine flake gold glistening in the sun. Their gaze possessed an almost hypnotic quality, a strange
ability to literally give orders with their glance.
Undeniably, here was a leader of men, as well as a leader in all he undertook. He was a man whose very
being bespoke a knowledge of all things, and the capacity to dominate all obstacles.
Jerome Coffern waved an arm at the bronze man.
Doc Savage saw him and waved back.
Jerome Coffern hurried forward. He walked with a boyish eagerness. The path he traversed took him through
high, dense shrubbery. The bronze figure of Doc Savage was lost to sight.
Suddenly two ratty men lunged from the shrubs.
Before Jerome Coffern could cry an alarm, he was knocked unconscious.
THE blow which reduced the white-haired chemist to senselessness was delivered with a bludgeon of iron
pipe about a foot long. The smash probably fractured distinguished Jerome Coffern’s skull. He fell heavily to
the concrete walk, right arm outflung to one side.
"Put the pipe on top of the body!" hissed one ratty man.
"O. K., Squint!" muttered the other man.
He placed the iron-pipe bludgeon on the chest of prone Jerome Coffern, thrusting one end inside the famous
chemist’s waistcoat so it would stay there.
The two rodentlike men now retreated a pace. They were excited. A trembling racked their bony, starved
hands. Nervous swallowing chased the Adam’s apples up and down their stringy necks. The rough,
unwashed skin of those necks gave them a turtle aspect.
Squint dived an emaciated claw inside his shirt. The hand clutched convulsively and drew out a strange pistol.
This was larger even than a big army automatic. It had two barrels, one the size of a pencil, the other a steel
cylinder more than an inch in diameter. The barrels were placed one above the other.
At prone Jerome Coffern’s chest, Squint aimed the weapon.
"H-hurry up!" stuttered his companion. The man twitched uneasy glances over the adjacent shrubbery. No
one was in sight.
Squint pulled the trigger of the strange pistol. It made a report exactly like a sharp human cough.
An air pistol!
That accounted for the two barrels, one of which, the larger, was in reality the chamber which held the
compressed air that fired the gun.
The missile from the air pistol struck the center of Jerome Coffern’s chest.
Instantly a puff of grayish vapor arose. It was as though a small cloud of cigarette smoke had escaped from
the chemist’s body at that point.
No sound of an explosion accompanied the phenomena, however. There was only the dull impact of the air
gun missile striking.
The grayish vapor increased in volume. It had a vile, oily quality. Close to Jerome Coffern’s body, it was shot
through and through with tiny, weird flashes. These were apparently of an electrical nature.
It was as though a small, foul gray thundercloud were forming about the distinguished chemist’s dead body.
About two minutes passed. The repulsive gray fog increased rapidly. It was now like a ball of ash-colored
cotton twelve feet thick. From the ground upward about half way, the green and blue and white of the electric
sparks played in fantastic fashion.
The whole thing was eerie. It would have baffled a scientific brain.
The balmy spring breeze, whipping along the narrow concrete path, wafted the vile gray cloud to one side.
Both ratty men stared at the source of the cloud.
"It’s w-w-workin’!" whined Squint. Stark awe had gripped him. He hardly had the courage to look a second
time at the source of the gray vapor.
For Jerome Coffern’s body was dissolving!
THE ghastly melting-away effect had started where the mysterious missile from the air pistol had struck.
In all directions from the point of impact, the form of the great chemist was literally turning into the vile grayish
vapor. Clothing, skin, flesh and bones—everything was going.
Nor did the dissolution stop with the human body. The concrete walk immediately below was becoming
ashen vapor as well. The trowel-smoothed upper surface of the walk was already gone, revealing the coarse
gravel below. As by magic, that, too, was wafted away. Rich black earth could be seen.
In the midst of the weird phenomenon glistened a bit of shiny metal. This resembled the crumpled tinfoil
wrapper from a candy bar. It alone was not dissolving.
"Let’s get outa here, Squint!" whined one of the ratty men. It was obvious from the man’s manner that he was
getting his first glimpse of the terrible weapon in their possession.
A substance with the power to dissolve all ordinary matter as readily as a red-hot rivet turns a drop of water
into steam!
"Aw, whatcha scared of?" sneered Squint. He pointed a skinny talon at the spot where the iron pipe bludgeon
had reposed on Jerome Coffern’s chest. "Only thing around here that had our finger prints on it was that pipe.
And it’s gone up in smoke."
"I ain’t s-scared!" disclaimed the other, trying to snarl bravely. "Only we’re two saps to hang around here!"
"Maybe you’re right at that," Squint agreed.
With this, the two men fled. The alacrity with which Squint dived into the shrubbery showed he was every bit
as anxious as his companion to quit the spot.
Hardly had they gone when the vaporizing of Jerome Coffern’s body abruptly ceased. It was apparent that the
hideous power of the weird dissolver substance had been exhausted. Only a small quantity could have been
contained in the air-pistol cartridge. Yet its effect had been incredible.
Of Jerome Coffern’s form, a right hand and forearm remained intact. This right arm had been outflung when
the chemist fell after being knocked unconscious. The potency of the dissolver had been exhausted before it
reached the hand and forearm. The two ratty men had fled before they noticed this.
On that grisly right wrist was the expensive watch Doc Savage had given Jerome Coffern as a token of
gratitude.
The grayish vapor climbed upward in the air like smoke. And like smoke it slowly dispersed.
Chapter 2. BRONZE VENGEANCE
DOC SAVAGE, seated in his large and powerful roadster, saw the cloud of grayish vapor lift above the
landscaped shrubbery.
Although it was sixty yards distant, his sharp eyes instantly noted an unusual quality about the vapor. It did
not resemble smoke, except in a general way.
But at the moment Doc was doing a problem of mathematics in his head, an intricate calculation concerning
an advanced electrical research he was making.
The problem would have taxed the ability of a trained accountant supplied with the latest adding machines,
but Doc was able, because of the remarkable efficiency of his trained mind, to handle the numerous figures
entirely within his head. He habitually performed amazing feats of calculus in this fashion.
Hence it was that Doc did not investigate the cloud of ash-hued fog at once. He finished his mental problem.
Then he stood erect in the roadster.
His keen eyes had discerned the play of tiny electric sparks in the lower part of the cloud! That jerked his
attention off everything else. Such a thing was astounding.
The rumble of machinery in the nearby manufacturing plant of the Mammoth concern blotted out whatever
conversation or sounds which might have arisen in the neighborhood of the weird fog.
Doc hesitated. He expected his old friend, Jerome Coffern, to appear momentarily. There was no sign of the
eminent chemist, however.
Doc quitted the roadster. His movements had a flowing smoothness, like great springs uncoiling in oil.
The grounds of the manufacturing plant were surrounded by a stout woven wire fence. This was more than
eight feet high and topped off with several rows of needle-sharp barbs. Its purpose was to keep out intruders.
A gate near by was shut, secured by a chain and padlock. No doubt Jerome Coffern had carried a key to this.
Doc Savage approached the fence, running lightly.
Then a startling thing happened.
It was a thing that gave instant insight into Doc Savage’s physical powers. It showed the incredible strength
and agility of the bronze giant.
For Doc Savage had simply jumped the fence. The height exceeded by more than two feet the world record
for the high jump. Yet Doc went over it with far more ease than an average man would take a knee-high
obstacle. The very facility with which he did it showed he was capable of a far higher jump than that.
His landing beyond the fence was light as that of a cat. His straight, fine bronze hair was not even disturbed.
He went toward the strange gray cloud. Coming to a row of high shrubs, his bronze form seemed literally to
flow through the leaves and branches. Not a leaf fluttered; not a branch shook.
It was a wonderful quality of woodcraft, and Doc did it instinctively, as naturally as a great jungle cat. It came
easier to him than shoving through the bushes noisily, this trick he had acquired from the very jungle itself.
Suddenly he stopped.
Before him a pit gaped in the concrete walk. The black, rich earth below the walk was visible.
On this black earth reposed a crumpled bit of metal that resembled wadded tinfoil.
Beside the pit lay a grisly hand and forearm. About the gruesome wrist was an expensive watch.
DOC studied the watch. Strange lights came into his amazing golden eyes.
Of a sudden, a weird sound permeated the surrounding air. It was a trilling, mellow, subdued sound,
reminiscent of the song of some strange jungle bird, or the dulcet note of a wind filtering through a leafless
forest. Having no tune, it was nevertheless melodious. Not awesome, it still had a quality to excite, to inspire.
This sound was part of Doc—a small, unconscious thing which accompanied his moments of utter
concentration. It would come from his lips when a plan of action was being evolved, or in the midst of some
struggle, or when some beleaguered friend of Doc’s, alone and attacked, had almost given up hope of life.
And with the filtering through of that sound would come renewed hope.
The strange trilling had the weird essence of seeming to emanate from everywhere instead of from a particular
spot. Even one looking directly at Doc’s lips would not realize from whence it arose.
The weird sound was coming now because Doc recognized the watch on that pitiful fragment of an arm.
It was the token he had presented to Jerome Coffern. The eminent scientist had always worn it. He knew this
grisly relic was a part of Jerome Coffern’s body!
Doc’s unique brain moved with flashing speed. Some fantastic substance had dissolved the body of the
famous chemist!
The bit of crumpled metal that resembled tinfoil had obviously escaped the ghastly effects of the dissolver
material.
Doc picked this up. He saw instantly it was a capsulelike container which had split open, apparently from the
shock of striking Jerome Coffern’s body.
It was the air-gun missile which had carried the dissolving substance. The metal was of some type so rare
that Doc Savage did not recognize it offhand. He dropped it in a pocket to be analyzed later.
Doc’s great bronze form pivoted quickly. His golden eyes seemed to give the surrounding shrubbery the
briefest of inspections, but not even the misplaced position of a grass blade escaped their notice.
He saw a caterpillar which had been knocked from a leaf so recently it still squirmed to get off its back, on
which it had landed. He saw grass which had been stepped on, slowly straightening. The direction in which
this grass was bent showed him the course pursued by the feet which had borne it down.
Doc followed the trail. His going was as silent as a breeze-swept puff of bronze smoke. A running man could
hardly have moved as swiftly as Doc covered this minute trail.
Things that showed him the trail were microscopic. One with faculties less developed than Doc’s would have
been hopelessly baffled. The slight deposit of dust atop leaves, scraped off by the fleeing Squint and his
companion, would have escaped an ordinary eye. But such marks were all the clews Doc needed.
Squint and his aide had escaped from the factory grounds through a hole they had clipped in the high woven
wire fence. Bushes concealed the spot. Doc Savage eased through.
The quarry was not far ahead. Neither of the two fleeing men had taken a bath recently. The unwashed odor of
their bodies hung in the air. A set of ordinary nostrils would have failed to detect it, but here again, Doc
Savage had powers exceeding those of more prosaic mortals.
Doc glided through high weeds. He reached a road, a little used thoroughfare.
A score of yards distant, five men had just seated themselves in a touring car. The car engine started.
"How’d it go, Squint?" asked one of the five in the machine.
The man’s words, lifted loudly because of the noisy car engine, reached Doc Savage’s keen ears. And he
heard the reply they received.
"Slick!" replied Squint. "Old Jerome Coffern is where he won’t never give us nothin’ to worry about!"
The touring car lunged away from the spot, gears squawling.
BEFORE the car had rolled two dozen yards, the ratty Squint looked back. He wanted to see if they were
followed.
What he saw made his hair stand on end.
A bronze giant of a man was overhauling the car. The machine had gathered a great deal of speed. Squint
would have bet his last dollar no race horse could maintain the pace it was setting. Yet a bronze, flashing
human form was not only maintaining the pace, but gaining!
The bronze man was close enough that Squint could see his eyes. They were strange eyes, like pools of
flake gold. They had a weird quality of seeming to convey thoughts as well as words could have.
What those gleaming golden eyes told Squint made him cringe with fear. One of his companions clutched
Squint’s coat and kept him from toppling out of the car. Squint squealed as though caught in a steel trap.
At Squint’s shriek, all eyes but the driver’s went backward. The trio who had waited outside the factory
grounds while Squint and his companion murdered Jerome Coffern were as terrified as Squint. Their hands
dived down to the floorboards of the car. They brought up stubby machine guns.
As one crazed man, they turned the machine gun muzzles on the great bronze Nemesis overtaking them.
The guns released a loud roar of powder noise. Lead shrieked. It dug up the road to the rear. It caromed away
with angry squawls.
But not one of the deadly slugs was in time to lodge in the bronze frame of Doc Savage. As the first gun
snout came into view, he saw the danger. His giant figure streaked to the left. With the first braying burst of
shots, tall weeds already had absorbed him.
Squint and his companions promptly fired into the weeds. Doc, however, was dozens of yards from where
they thought. Even his overhauling of the car had not made them realize the incredible speed of which he was
capable.
"Git outa here!" Squint shrieked at the car driver.
Terror had seized upon Squint’s rodent soul. He showed it plainly, in spite of a desire to have his companions
think him a man of iron nerve. But they were as scared as Squint, and did not notice.
"W-who w-was it?" croaked one of the five.
"How do I know?" Squint snarled. Then, to the driver, "Won’t this heap go any faster?"
The touring car was already doing its limit. Rounding a curve at the end of the factory grounds, it nearly went
into the ditch. It turned again, onto the main highway. It headed toward New York, passing in front of the
factory buildings.
The speeding machine flashed past a large, powerful roadster. Squint and his companions attached no
significance to this car.
But they would have, had they seen the giant bronze man who cleared the factory fence with an incredible
leap and sprang into the car. Doc Savage had simply cut back through the factory yard after escaping the
machine guns.
Like a thing well trained, Doc’s roadster shot ahead. The exhaust explosions came so fast they arose to a
shrill wail. The speedometer needle passed sixty, seventy and eighty.
Doc caught sight of Squint and his four unsavory companions. Their touring car was turning into an approach
to George Washington Bridge.
THE uniformed toll collector at the New Jersey end of the bridge stepped out to collect his fee. Directly in the
path of Squint’s racing car, he stood. He expected the car to halt. When it didn’t, the toll collector gave a wild
leap and barely got in the clear.
An instant later, Doc’s roadster also rocketed past.
The toll collector must have telephoned ahead to the other end of the bridge. A cop was out to stop the car.
His shouts and gestures had as much effect as the antics of a cricket before a charging bull. Squint’s car
dived into New York City and whirled south.
Doc followed. He slouched low back of the wheel. He had taken a tweed cap from a door pocket and drawn it
over his bronze hair. And so expertly did he handle the roadster, keeping behind other machines, that Squint
and his companions did not yet know they were being followed. The killers had slowed up, thinking
themselves lost in the city.
Behind them, a police siren wailed about like a stricken soul. No doubt it was a motorcycle cop summoned
by the bridge watchman. But the officer did not find the trail.
Southward along Riverside Drive, the wide thoroughfare that follows the high bank of the Hudson River, the
pursuit led.
Squint’s touring car veered into a deserted side street. Old brick houses lined the thoroughfare. Their fronts
made a wall the same height the entire length of the block. The entrance of each was exactly like all the
others—a flight of steps with ornamental iron railings.
Swerving over to the curb before the tenth house from the corner, the touring car stopped. The occupants
looked around. No one was in sight.
The floorboards in the rear of the touring car were lifted. Below was a secret compartment large enough to
hold the machine guns. Into this went the weapons.
"Toss your roscoes in there, too!" Squint directed. "We ain’t takin’ no chances, see! A cop might pick us up,
and we’d draw a stretch in stir if we was totin’ guns."
"But what about that—that bronze ghost of a guy?" one muttered uneasily. "Gosh! He looked big as a
mountain, and twice as hard!"
"Forget that bird!" Squint had recovered his nerve. He managed a sneering laugh. "He couldn’t follow us here,
anyway!"
At that instant, a large roadster turned into the street. Of the driver, nothing but a low-pulled tweed cap could
be seen.
Squint and his four companions got out of their touring car. To cover shaky knees, they swaggered and spoke
in tough voices from the corners of their mouths.
With a low whistle of sliding tires, the big roadster stopped beside the touring car. The whistle drew the eyes
of Squint and his rats.
They saw a great form flash from the roadster; a man-figure that was like an animated, marvelously made
statue of metal!
Squint wailed, "Hell! The bronze guy—"
"The rods!" squawled another man. They leaped for their guns in the secret recess below the touring car
floorboards. But the bronze giant had moved with unbelievable speed. He was between them and their
weapons.
SQUINT and his men gave vent to squeaks of rage and terror. That showed what spineless little bloodsuckers
they were. They outnumbered Doc Savage five to one, yet, without their guns, they were like the rats they
resembled before the big bronze man.
They wheeled toward the tenth house in the row of dwellings that were amazingly alike. It was as though they
felt safety lay there. But Doc Savage, with two flashing side-wise steps, cut them off.
One man tried to dive past. Doc’s left arm made a blurred movement. His open hand—a hand on which great
bronze tendons stood out as if stripped of skin and softer flesh—slapped against the man’s face.
It was as though a steel sledge had hit the fellow. His nose was broken. His upper and lower front teeth were
caved inward. The man flew backward, head over heels, limp as so much clothes stuffed with straw.
But he didn’t lose consciousness. Perhaps the utter pain of that terrible blow kept him awake.
Doc Savage advanced on the others. He did not hurry. There was confidence in his movements—a confidence
that for Squint and his rats was a horrible thing. They felt like they were watching death stalk toward them.
No flicker of mercy warmed the flaky glitter of Doc’s golden eyes. Two of these villainous little men had
murdered his friend, Jerome Coffern. More than that, they had robbed the world of one of its greatest
chemists. For this heinous offense, they must pay.
The three who had not committed the crime directly would suffer Doc’s wrath, too. They were hardly less
guilty. They would he fortunate men if they escaped with their lives.
It was a hard code, that one of Doc’s. It would have curled the hair of weak sisters who want criminals
mollycoddled. For Doc handed out justice where it was deserved.
Doc’s justice was a brand all his own. It had amazing results. Criminals who went against Doc seldom wound
up in prison. They either learned a lesson that made them law-abiding men the rest of their lives—or they
became dead criminals. Doc never did the job halfway.
With a frightened, desperate squeak, one man leaped for the car. He tore at the floorboards under which the
guns were hidden.
He was the fellow who had helped Squint murder Jerome Coffern.
Doc knew this. Bits of soft earth clinging to the shoes of that man and Squint had told him the ugly fact. The
soft earth came from the grounds of the Mammoth factory.
With a quick leap, Doc was upon the killer. His great, bronze hands and corded arms picked the fellow out of
the touring car as though he were a murderous little rodent.
The man had secured a pistol. But the awful agony of those metallic fingers crushing his flesh against his
bones kept him from using it.
Squint and the others, cowards that they were, sought to reach the tenth house in the row along the street.
Lunging and swinging his victim like a club, Doc knocked them back. He was like a huge cat among them.
Squint spun and sped wildly. The other three followed him. They pounded down the street, toward Riverside
Drive.
The man Doc held got control over his pain-paralyzed muscles. He fired his gun. The bullet spatted the walk
at Doc’s feet.
Doc slid a bronze hand upward. The victim screamed as steel fingers closed on his gun fist. He kicked—tore
at Doc’s chest. One of his hands ripped open the pocket where Doc had placed the capsule of metal that had
held the substance which dissolved the body of Jerome Coffern.
The capsule of strange metal flipped across the walk. It fell between the iron-barred cracks of a basement
ventilator.
Chapter 3. SHIP JUSTICE
DOC SAVAGE saw the metal capsule vanish. He wrenched at the hand of his victim. The pistol the man held
was squeezed from the clawlike fist. The fellow had desperate nerve of a sort, now that he was in deadly
terror of death. He seized the weapon with his other talon. He jammed the muzzle against Doc’s side.
The life of a less agile man than Doc would have come to an end there. But Doc’s bronze hand flashed up. It
grasped the man’s face. It twisted. There was a dull crack and the murderer fell to the walk. A broken neck
had ended his career.
Doc could have finished him earlier. He had refrained from doing so for a purpose. Whatever weird substance
had dissolved Jerome Coffern’s body, a great, if demented scientific brain had developed it. None of these
men had such a brain. They were hired killer caliber.
Doc had wanted to question the slayer and learn who employed him. No chance of that now! And Squint and
the three others had nearly reached Riverside Drive.
To the iron-barred basement ventilator, Doc sprang. He could see the capsule of strange metal. His great
hands grasped the ventilator bars. The metal grille was locked below.
Doc’s remarkable legs braced on either side of the ventilator. They became rigid, hard as steel columns. His
wonderful arms became tense also. Intermingled with Doc’s amazing strength was the fine science of lifting
great weights with the human body.
With a loud rusty tearing, the grille was uprooted. Loosened concrete scattered widely.
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THELANDOFTERRORADocSavageAdventurebyKennethRobesonThispagecopyright©2001BlackmaskOnline.http://www.blackmask.com?Chapter1.THESMOKINGDEATH?Chapter2.BRONZEVENGEANCE?Chapter3.SHIPJUSTICE?Chapter4.THENESTOFEVIL?Chapter5..JEROMECOFFERN’SFRIEND?Chapter6.THEMISSINGMAN?Chapter7.THEUNDERWATERLAIR?Chapter8.TH...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：109 页 大小：275.26KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

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