The Metal Master: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  “Can you find him again?”

  They hesitated. One cleared his throat. The other spoke jerkily.

  “We know—where he hangs out—red-brick house in the Forties.”

  * * *

  The house was of red brick, right enough, and it was old, with boards over the windows on the ground floor. Doc Savage saw this from the taxicab in which he arrived with the two men.

  “Get out,” he told them.

  “You’re going to walk right in?” one demanded.

  “Going to try it.”

  They got out. The street was deserted, for it was getting along toward morning. It was still sleeting. The feet of the two fake telegraphers skidded a little as they worked across the sidewalk.

  Then they fell down. Fell slackly, heavily. But it wasn’t the slippery pavement. They had been knocked down, knocked by bullets that arrived in a bedlam of noise.

  A machine gun! It was firing, not from the house, but from a roof at the end of the block. Its cackle made the street hideous.

  Doc Savage flung sidewise, hit the sleety walk, and slid. He smashed against a fire plug. That was what he wanted. A fire plug will not shelter much more than a man’s head, but that was enough in this case. Doc Savage never went out without a garment of chain-mail under his outer clothing. Only the best of high-powered hunting rifles, shooting hard slugs, could perforate the mail.

  The machine gun continued its gobbling. Slugs, hitting the bronze man’s mail, threatened to knock him away from the fire plug.

  The gun went silent.

  Doc Savage lay where he was. The quieting of the gun might be a trick to see if he moved.

  The two men who had been his guides were dying. One was already dead, in fact. The other was groaning his last, and raving a little.

  “Trap—double-crossers!” this one was shrieking. “If we got caught—bring you here—they would rescue us—— Liars—intended fix us so we wouldn’t talk——”

  His shrieking turned to a bubbling and with a few lusty coughs that sprayed crimson over the sleety sidewalk, he turned in his checks.

  By now, Doc Savage had decided the machine gun was silent because the gunner was making a get-away. The bronze man heaved up and ran for the corner.

  He heard a car engine start up. The machine went away fast.

  * * *

  Doc turned back to the taxi in which he had come. The driver was scared. He got out and ran for dear life in the opposite direction. So Doc drove the cab in pursuit of the fleeing car, and did not get to first base, which was not his fault, but the fault of a careless motorist who had failed to put on chains to run on the sleet.

  The cab skidded uncontrollably. Doc Savage’s driving ability, which was considerable, did not help enough.

  He did not find the car he was seeking, for the cab lost its front wheels against the curb in an effort to avoid a smash.

  Doc went back and examined the machine gun. It was a foreign military weapon. Small chance of it ever being traced.

  Doc searched the house in which the two men had said he would find the big man with a black beard. There was no such man; and no others in the house. Probably there had never been such a man.

  Searching the two victims, Doc Savage found the cablegram which had been dictated by the whispering leader over the telephone, the one which had been sent to Louis Tester, in Panama, Canal Zone. They had been careless and had not destroyed it.

  Doc Savage lost no time in getting to a telephone and trying for a land-line-radio hookup to the airport in Panama. He wanted to get hold of Louis Tester.

  But Louis Tester had landed, refueled and gone on North. Louis Tester was headed for the trap.

  Doc Savage hurriedly got a telephone connection to Havana, Cuba. He spoke, when he had his party, ancient Mayan, a language which few outside his five aids and himself spoke. He talked for some time.

  Doc Savage’s regular bronze features were emotionless as he headed back toward his skyscraper aerie. Whatever was involved in this mysterious affair must be tremendous.

  The “Metal Master”! That was it, whatever it was.

  Doc Savage knew something was wrong the moment he entered the lobby of his building. He ran to the elevators. The three attendants were inside.

  They were not dead. But their heads had been thoroughly battered, probably with blackjacks. Not one was conscious. Doc ran his private elevator up to the eighty-sixth floor. He went through reception room and library into the laboratory. There, he stood still for some moments.

  His strange, fantastic trilling noise came into existence and traced its eerie tremor for some moments. It was smaller, more exotic than usual, and after it faded away into nothingness, the echo of it seemed to persist, as the strains of enthralling music sometimes seem to hang in the air afterward.

  The laboratory walls were of steel—or had been. A good bit of the steel had melted down on the tiled floor. Melted, it appeared, without any heat. A number of the secret wall compartments had been thus opened.

  The one in which Doc Savage had left titian-haired, exquisite Nan Tester had been opened. She was gone.

  Chapter IV

  INTO THE TRAP

  The next development in the mystery of the Metal Master, as it came to be called, occurred in Havana harbor.

  “Tops’l” Hertz, who was to act a grisly part in the matter of the Metal Master, was jumping about barking orders. He was trying to get his big two-masted schooner, Innocent, to sea in a hurry. He did a good deal of cursing.

  Tops’l Hertz probably would not have been jumping about swearing had he known about Doc Savage. Tops’l became a cold customer when he was scared. Tops’l had heard of Doc Savage, but as far as he knew, the bronze man had never heard of him. On occasion, Tops’l had hoped he never would.

  Doc Savage’s name often kept gentlemen of Tops’l Hertz’s brand awake nights.

  Tops’l, in his lighter moments, gave play to a foxy humor of sorts. He had named his schooner Innocent during one of these arch intervals. The hooker was anything but angelic.

  The Innocent had been a rumrunner back in the days when that paid, and now she was doing a bit of smuggling guns and ammunition to hopeful revolutionists in Central America and elsewhere. She was versatile; she also ran aliens and other things, principally narcotics, which latter is as evil a profession as the world offers.

  Occasionally, the Innocent participated in a high-class murder for hire. Her forward hatch was hacked and scarred, and the crew would tell you that fish were dressed there. Naturally, they couldn’t be expected to mention a human body or so that had been cut up on the hatch for the sharks.

  Taken altogether, the Innocent and her crew formed a combination that could have taught Blackbeard a few things.

  The schooner cast off from the fuel-oil dock and drifted out of the harbor under the thrust of her Diesels, which could, weirdly enough, hurl the vessel along at a speed that more than one coast guard cutter had failed to match.

  A mile off Morro Castle, which is at the mouth of Havana harbor, a fight broke out forward. Blows. Curses. A man howling in pain.

  “I may be a stowaway, but I object to being stowed away!” squawled a nondescript voice.

  Tops’l Hertz hopped nimbly forward, wearing his most ominous look.

  He saw one of his sailors. The man was holding a stowaway, who had just been hauled out of a deck locker.

  This stowaway was not tall, and he was thin and wan and puny-looking. His clothes were in bad shape. He seemed hardly able to stand up, as if from some constitutional weakness. Altogether, he had very few visible qualities to recommend him.

  Which shows how deceptive appearances can be.

  “What the blarsted ’ell is goin’ on ’ere?” growled Tops’l Hertz, who had a Limehouse accent, except when he desired otherwise.

  The stowaway tried to straighten his shoulders, and all but collapsed. He grasped a stay to steady himself.

  “I’m Punning Parker,” he said. “I’m in b
ad with Scotland Yard and they’ve got a man in Havana looking for me. I heard you were a good man to go to, to get into the States.”

  And thus “Punning” Parker introduced himself and his puns.

  * * *

  He produced a roll of bills amounting to several thousands of dollars. He peeled off a goodly number of the bills.

  “I’m sort of a billing worker,” he said. “Not that I’m any dough-boy.”

  Tops’l nearly shuddered. He hated puns. But he did not let his personal likes affect his business sense.

  “Stick aboard,” he said. “Hi’ll take care of you.”

  Now this was not the snap decision it seemed. Tops’l Hertz had suddenly remembered having seen Punning Parker in Havana a number of times recently, and the word had gotten around that Punning Parker was a bad but clever one. In other words, he was a “right guy.”

  “What you’re doing won’t ever Hertz you,” said Punning Parker.

  “Come aft an ’ave a drink,” invited Tops’l.

  They went aft and had, not one drink, but several, and Tops’l Hertz listened to Punning Parker talk about things he had done in England and elsewhere, after which Tops’l Hertz became convinced that Punning was indeed all right.

  The cash which Punning paid over in advance had a mellowing influence, too. Tops’l liked to think he was the kind of a guy whom people would trust.

  Tops’l Hertz got around to showing his new crony a radiogram which he took from his sweaty pants pocket. It was simple and to the point:

  GO NINETY MILES SOUTH SOUTHWEST OF DRY TORTUGAS TO MEET MAN IN PLANE STOP MAN NAMED LOUIS TESTER STOP HE WILL LAND STOP KEEP TESTER SAFE AT ALL COSTS

  CX

  The message had, of course, been in code, and was then decoded, and the “CX” was the cryptic signature of a worthy for whom Tops’l Hertz had done a little job or two in the past. Tops’l explained this to Punning Parker.

  “The landin’ of you in the States will ’ave to wait until this job is done,” Tops’l pointed out.

  “You have your Tester-day to-day,” said Punning. “Sure.”

  The truth was that Tops’l had never met “CX,” and did not know whether that personage was man, woman or organization. Tops’l did not worry on that score, because “CX” had paid well in the past, and that was all that was really necessary.

  Time passed.

  A sailor crouched on the cabin top. He was wearing a telephone headset, and wires ran from this to an amplifier box, thence up the mast to a very modern aërial listening device attached to the mast top. Tops’l had installed this plane-finder, after the coast guard started using planes.

  “Plane comin’!” yelled the sailor at the listener.

  Tops’l Hertz stood up, listened, heard the plane with his unaided ear after a bit, and was out of the shade of the mainsail like a scared cat. He ripped orders. Preparations got under way, such as had not been made already.

  And Punning Parker came ambling up out of the cabin.

  * * *

  Punning Parker was something of a character. A stranger, looking at him for the first time, could not have seen much to recommend him. But he had a lot. He was not tall, and he was thin and pallid and weak-looking. At times, when he was just standing around, he would stagger as if he had gotten weak and were going to fall down. He looked as if he were no earthly good. He had nothing visible to recommend him.

  “This must be the blarsted plane comin’,” said Tops’l Hertz. “Get the bloody Vickers ready!”

  The descriptive “bloody” was a favorite with Tops’l, but it particularly fitted that Vickers, which was a machine gun that could spray death at several hundred doses per minute.

  With a gusty buzz, the plane came down in the foggy sky. It leveled out and circled a hundred feet or so above the schooner’s mast tops. The masts projected above the fog, which was only a thin layer. The plane had done well to find the schooner.

  The plane was a cabin job fitted with pontoons. Not a large aircraft, but a fast one.

  “Get set!” yelled Tops’l.

  Tops’l had a shock of white hair which stood up straight and which had given him his name. The hair did look something like a topsail.

  “Let ’er bleed!” he screamed.

  The Vickers “bled.” It ran red at the nose and poured out lead and noise and shook itself and shook the men handling it. Empty cartridges showered the deck, for, in the general haste, there had been no catch-bag fastened to the ejector.

  Tops’l Hertz was simply taking no chance of the plane pilot getting wary and going away.

  Overhead, the plane motor got sick. It gagged and popped and had spasms. The sickness was short, then it died. The machine gun burst had done something to the motor.

  The plane spanked down on the sea somewhere off to port. They could see it until it was almost on the water. Then the fog swallowed it.

  “Start the bloody kicker!” yelled Tops’l Hertz.

  By the kicker, of course, he meant the motor, which was hardly a fitting name for that piece of machinery. It was a Diesel powerful enough for a destroyer, and less than a year old. It had been painstakingly pitted with acid, so that it looked, outwardly, rusted and practically worthless.

  The schooner Innocent came up on the plane, which was afloat like a crippled duck.

  Tops’l Hertz leaned over the rail amidships, a pistol in hand, to finish things. Punning Parker was beside him, likewise with a pistol. Punning was assisting as a matter of professional courtesy. They took a good look at the plane.

  “Who’re you?” yelled Tops’l Hertz at the man on the plane.

  “Louis Tester!” shouted the latter. “What’re you trying to do to me?”

  “You might say we have planes for you,” said Punning Parker, punning a bit more badly than usual.

  Chapter V

  THE CROSS THAT IS DOUBLE

  Louis Tester stood on the cabin of the plane. He was lean, fit, red-headed. He looked as if he wanted to fight, which was not surprising. One hand was behind him.

  He braced against the lively pitching of the plane. There was gasoline leaking from the tanks. The craft was soaked with it. Gasoline was running onto the water.

  “ ’Eave ’im a line!” ordered Tops’l.

  Punning Parker himself did this. He heaved a line that looked as heavy as he was, and, marvelously, it didn’t cause him to collapse.

  The red-headed Tester caught the line and hitched it over a cleat which was on the seaplane for mooring purpose. A moment later, the plane was bobbing alongside the Innocent.

  Tester took his hand from behind his back. He had hitched the line without showing that hand.

  “I hope you get the idea,” he said.

  A Very pistol was in his hand. One of those things with a barrel having the bore of a shotgun, used to shoot rockets. He pointed it at the plane, which was leaking gasoline.

  Tops’l Hertz and the others got the idea. The rocket in the Very could not very well help igniting the gasoline, and the plane would then blow up, and it was pretty certain the Innocent would be set afire.

  “Now,” said the red-headed man, when the idea of the situation had soaked in. “Lower your boats, get into them, and row away. Otherwise, I’m going to pull the trigger of this Very. I’m just mad enough to do it!”

  “You’ll kill your bloomin’ self!” gritted Tops’l.

  “I don’t think I’ve got much of a chance of going on living, if I come aboard,” said the redhead. “I think I know whom you’re working for.”

  “Who’re we workin’ for?” asked Tops’l, who really would have liked to know.

  “You’re mixed up with the Metal Master!” snapped Louis Tester.

  This was new to Tops’l. He had never heard of the Metal Master.

  “Eh?” he muttered. “Who’s the Metal Master, bloke?”

  The redhead snorted.

  “Get in your life boats or I’m going to shoot!” he snapped.

  Punning Parker moved aw
ay from the rail to comply, although Tops’l was still hesitating.

  “Are our ears marooned,” he murmured.

  Punning Parker helped lower a lifeboat, and they put it down on the opposite side of the ship. Punning Parker and several others slid down the davit falls to the craft.

  “You next!” ordered Louis Tester, looking at Tops’l.

  Tops’l Hertz’s neck was red. He glared. He made grinding noises with his teeth.

  “I won’t!” he choked.

  “Don’t be a fool,” said the twin of Nan Tester. “I’ll give you a tow in the small boats. Maybe let you back on board, after I figure out a way of keeping you quiet.”

  “I won’t!” screamed Tops’l.

  Louis Tester cocked his Very pistol.

  A shot cracked. The Very pistol flew from Louis Tester’s hand into the sea.

  * * *

  Punning Parker was in the water, clinging to the after end of one of the plane’s pontoons. He had, in diving under the schooner and coming up unobserved to shoot the Very pistol out of the red-headed man’s hand, executed a nice strategy. The flash of his gun had not been enough to ignite the gas fumes.

  Modern pistol cartridges are, of course, not affected by temporary submersion, so Punning had been able to take his gun under the keel of the schooner.

  Tops’l Hertz was not a mental sloth, although he had been caught flatfooted in the present instance. The moment the shot sounded and the Very pistol flew into the sea, he gave a froglike leap, sailing clear over the rail and landing on a wing of the plane.

  His yelled orders caused his scared crew to produce guns and join the fight Tops’l was having with the red-headed Tester. Tops’l only lost two teeth, some skin and hair, before they rescued him.

  The moment they were on deck, Tops’l seized a gun and aimed at the red-headed man. He was in a temper and had killing ideas.

  But Punning Parker rushed up and shoved the gun aside.