The Metal Master: A Doc Savage Adventure Read online

  As he drove rapidly in the direction of the water front, Renny wished fervently that he knew where to get in touch with “Long Tom.”

  Long Tom was Major Thomas J. Roberts, electrical wizard extraordinary, and another of Doc Savage’s aids. Long Tom was also engaged in investigation of the narcotic trade. Where he was, Renny did not know. Long Tom had been in Havana two weeks ago, then he had dropped out of sight.

  It was usual that none of Doc Savage’s aids knew the whereabouts of their fellows during the course of a secret investigation. In this way, if one fell into the hands of the enemy, and they forced him to talk, he could not give information that would imperil another of the bronze man’s little group.

  Renny reached the water front in time to observe the raiders loading into a gasoline launch. They had Louis Tester along.

  Renny let them vanish in the gloom of the harbor, then ran to the bumboat wharf. At this hour of the night, there seemed to be only a single bumboat in operation. Several swarthy men were idling in it. To all appearances, the boat was loaded and about to start across the bay.

  Renny got aboard. He had reasoned that the Innocent would be anchored across the bay.

  “Fifty centavos extra if you hurry,” Renny told the bumboat man.

  “Si, señor,” that worthy agreed.

  They shoved off. The bumboat engine was a one-lunger and it made a great deal of noise, sobbing and popping and rattling. Particularly loud was an occasional backfire.

  Unexpectedly, one of the backfires seemed to explode inside Renny’s head.

  * * *

  Renny awakened from a period of unconsciousness with his ears still ringing. He had a vague impression that a number of things had happened to him while he was in no shape to prevent it. He had been moved about a good deal. He opened his eyes and peered about.

  He was fastened with ropes to a chair. The chair, in turn, was fastened to the floor of what seemed to be a ship’s cabin. But there was no porthole. That the ship was at sea was evident from the motion, and the swinging of the kerosene lamp in its gimbals. The boat could not be a very large one, judging from the movement. And the kerosene lamp indicated it was a sailboat. For some reason, kerosene lamps are usually found on sailboats.

  There was no one in the cabin. So Renny opened his mouth and let out an ear-splitting roar.

  A head surmounted by an upstanding tuft of white hair popped into the door.

  “Blimme!” growled the owner of the head. “That yell of your’n would make a sweet fog’orn.”

  “How’d I get here?” Renny rumbled.

  “I ’ad some of my ’earties on that bumboat, just on the chance some blighter might get on our trail,” grinned Tops’l Hertz. “They thumped you on the bloomin’ noggin when you weren’t lookin’, an’ ’ere you are.”

  Renny shut his eyes in disgust.

  “There have been rumors of late that I’m slippin’,” he growled.

  “ ’Tain’t necessarily that,” said Tops’l. “You just went up against some foxy lads.”

  Renny took a deep breath. His bulletproof vest was gone. He did not believe he could break the ropes which held his ankles and wrists.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “ ’Tis very simple,” Tops’l leered. “A certain party ’ired us to do a bit of a job for ’im, and we learned what this party is plannin’ on doin’. It looked good to us. So we ’ave decided to take over the thing ourselves.”

  A new voice spoke from the door.

  “It Hertz me to give advice,” it remarked. “But you might take some, Tops’l.”

  Tops’l Hertz looked around. “Yeah?”

  Punning Parker came into the cabin. He looked, more than usual, an insignificant runt.

  “What this fellow don’t know won’t Hertz us,” said Punning.

  Tops’l scowled and snapped, “Quit makin’ them bloody puns with my name!”

  Renny was eying Punning Parker intently. It had just struck Renny that there was something familiar about the fellow. Renny had an idea he had seen Punning Parker’s picture in a rogues’ gallery somewhere. He tried to think where.

  Punning Parker came over, leaned close to Renny and snarled, “What d’you know about the Metal Master, Big Fists?”

  “Think I’d tell you?” Renny countered.

  “Did you get in touch with Doc Savage, after Louis Tester visited you?”

  Renny said, “You want to keep away from fly swatters, you organism!”

  Tops’l Hertz broke in with a roar.

  “ ’E won’t answer questions!” Hertz shouted. “ ’E probably got in touch with Doc Savage! Hi’m actin’ on that supposition, anyway. Hi’ve already acted, in fact.”

  “What have you done?” asked Punning Parker.

  “Hi’ve radioed to New York an’ made arrangements to take care of Doc Savage ’imself,” said Tops’l.

  “You might as well have taken poison!” Renny boomed.

  “Maybe.” Tops’l frowned. “But this Metal Master thing is big. So big that I’m even willin’ to mix it with Doc Savage! An’ I know ’is reputation, too.”

  “You don’t know it,” Renny rumbled, “or you wouldn’t start trouble with him.”

  “Ho, ho,” said Tops’l, not very heartily. “I’m shakin’ in my boots!”

  “Let’s hope you don’t wind up by dying in them,” said Punning Parker.

  “What’re you birds gonna do with me?” Renny demanded.

  “If we must be frank,” said Tops’l Hertz. “You are going to be which I call ge-e-e-eked.”

  “And what are you going to try on Doc?” Renny persisted.

  Punning Parker answered that with a gesture. He drew his finger across his throat, as Tops’l Hertz often did, and said, “Ge-e-e-ek!”

  “You may get the idea,” he added.

  Chapter VII

  THE TRICKY MAN

  A noise in the corridor outside Doc Savage’s office was unexpected and loud. It was not a hard noise to recognize: A shot. There came a second.

  Doc Savage was in the laboratory, working with test tubes, acids and a spectroscopic analyzer device. He was analyzing samples of metal from his office doors, which had been so strangely melted without heat, and from the car in the alley, imbedded in which had been found the body of poor old Seevers.

  Doc Savage had not found anything much unusual about the samples of metal. It was just like metal which had been melted by some terrific heat.

  The shot noises put Doc Savage in motion. He flung out of the laboratory, through the library, and across the reception room. The outer door, which had been melted down the previous night, had been replaced.

  During the last twenty-four hours, Doc Savage had been able to get no trace of the girl, Nan Tester, nor of her brother Louis, nor of Renny.

  Nothing had happened to give a hint of what was behind the mystery. There had been no clue to show what the Metal Master was.

  In fact, the whole affair was, so far, a profound puzzle.

  Doc Savage wrenched the corridor open and flashed through.

  A man crouched in the corridor, a sleek woodchuck of a chap with dark hair. He had squirrel teeth in front, and his little ears stuck up. He evidently patronized a barber often, and paid a good price to his tailors.

  His hand gripped a gun. He watched the stairs with a frightened steadiness. The stairs were to the left of the bank of elevators.

  The woodchuck man’s gun was an automatic. An empty cartridge from it lay on the modernistic corridor floor.

  Doc Savage stopped. Instead of barking excited questions, he kept silent. This seemed to surprise the man with the gun. He blinked at Doc Savage.

  “That man was getting ready to kill me!” he said.

  Doc Savage said nothing.

  The woodchuck man pointed at the stairs.

  “A man,” he said. “He was leaning around the corner there getting ready to shoot when I saw him. I yelled, and that must have startled him or so
mething, because I got my gun out and shot at him. I missed him. He ran.”

  These words came out of the man very rapidly, as if he were a phonograph which had lost its governor. Yet his words were clear enough to be understood.

  Doc Savage extended a bronze right hand, palm up.

  “Eh?” said the other, puzzled.

  “Your gun,” Doc Savage said quietly.

  The man swallowed. He handed over his automatic pistol without a word.

  Doc Savage whipped toward the stairway. The gliding effect about the giant bronze man’s movements was noticeable, and his speed was striking.

  He descended the stairs. He found no one. He looked about. There were no suspicious persons. The floor immediately below his headquarters had been without a tenant for a long time, because it was a risky location, so close to the bronze man of mystery. Too many things happened around Doc Savage that might prove dangerous to a neighbor.

  Doc Savage paid rent on the floor, so that the building operators would not lose money.

  There was no excitement. Apparently the shots had not been heard. Doc Savage went back upstairs.

  “I found nobody,” he said.

  * * *

  The plump man looked relieved. He had been holding too much air in his lungs. He let it out with a long swish!

  “I was frightened,” he said, emitting his words as a machine gun emits bullets. “I was very frightened indeed. I am not a man accustomed to violence.”

  “Describe the man,” Doc Savage requested.

  “Tall. Dark. Leathery skin. Outdoors man. Nickeled revolver. Fair clothes.”

  “Thank you,” Doc Savage said. “Who are you?”

  “Decitez. Napoleon Murphy Decitez.”

  “You were coming to see me?” Doc Savage asked quietly.

  “I was. Indeed, yes!”

  Doc Savage indicated that the man should enter. They went into the reception room. Doc Savage waved the man to a chair. Then Doc went into the laboratory and scrutinized a bank of instruments, which were recording devices attached to a burglar alarm system which covered all of the approaches to his headquarters. These recorders were of the type which inked a line on a moving roll of paper.

  There were no wigglings in the lines in which Doc Savage seemed particularly interested.

  Plump, groomed Napoleon Murphy Decitez had composed himself and put away his gun, when Doc Savage rejoined him.

  “I came to you for counsel,” he said.

  “Go ahead with your story,” Doc Savage requested.

  The bronze man’s quiet and powerful voice obviously impressed Decitez. He studied the bronze man, and his expression became that of an awed man.

  “I have heard much of you,” he said. “And even on such short acquaintance, I have not the slightest doubt that you are all they say you are.”

  “All who says?” Doc asked curiously.

  “The newspapers,” replied the other promptly. “I have read of the marvelous scientific discoveries which you have perfected, and of your great work in the fields of surgery, electricity——”

  “Go ahead with your story,” directed Doc Savage.

  “You are a genuinely modest man, I believe,” murmured the other.

  “Go ahead with your story,” said Doc.

  Decitez sighed.

  “I think a man has pulled a fast one on me,” he said. “I don’t mind that so much, but I think he is also trying to kill me.”

  “That,” Doc Savage agreed, “is bad.”

  “I think so,” Decitez admitted. “This man came to me with a map. The map was about a treasure. The man had a gold bar. He said there were a lot more of them at the spot marked on the map. He wanted me to help finance him. He would pay part of it with the gold bar. I was to pay the rest, and we were to split. I agreed.”

  Decitez sighed again, more deeply.

  “That was six weeks ago,” he said. “The man left for South America to get the treasure. Yesterday, a bullet went through my car as I was driving in the park.”

  He leaned forward earnestly.

  “I went to bed early to-night. A sound awakened me. It was a masked man. He had a knife. I knocked him over the head and he fell senseless. I tied him up and put him in a closet. Then I decided to come and get you to question the man.”

  He waited, apparently for Doc Savage to speak. But Doc said nothing.

  “Will you come?” he asked.

  “What is the name of the man you financed to hunt treasure?” Doc Savage inquired.

  “Louis Tester,” said the woodchuck man.

  * * *

  Doc Savage’s small, eerie trilling noise was briefly audible. It had a quality vaguely different than usual. It had a faintly surprised note.

  Napoleon Murphy Decitez started slightly and peered about. He had not been able to tell where the sound came from. He did not know what it was.

  Decitez brought his round-eyed gaze back to Doc Savage.

  “Look here,” he said. “This man I knocked out and tied up in a closet did some mumbling. He mumbled about a man named Renny, who was a prisoner somewhere and was to be killed. I remembered you had an aid named Renny. That’s why I came to you.”

  “And your mysterious enemies followed you and tried to shoot you?” Doc suggested.

  “They must have.”

  “Maybe they also freed the man you left tied up in a closet.”

  “The closet is hard to find,” said Decitez. “But perhaps we had better hurry back, to see that they don’t frisk the place.”

  “Perhaps we had,” Doc Savage agreed.

  They hurried out and took Doc Savage’s private speed elevator to the basement, where they entered a coupe which was armored and equipped with a lot of gadgets, but which looked like an ordinary car. Among the gadgets was a concealed short-wave, radio transmitter-and-receiver.

  Doc Savage switched on the radio transmitter, so that the bulbs would be warmed up for instant use, should he need to transmit. But he did not send any messages during the ride, although he left the instrument on.

  During the ride, Doc Savage asked some questions.

  “Did you ever hear of Louis Tester having a sister named Nan?”

  “Louis Tester told me positively that he had no living relatives on whom he could call to finance his treasure hunt,” said Decitez.

  “Did you ever hear of a man named Seevers?”

  “No.”

  “What about the Metal Master?”

  “The what?”

  “Metal Master.”

  “I never heard of any such a thing. What is it?”

  If Doc Savage had any ideas about what or who the Metal Master was, he did not offer them. He kept silent.

  Decitez said he lived down in Greenwich Village, which is a section in the southerly center of Manhattan, supposed to have an arty atmosphere. The house proved to be an ancient white brick pile on a private street. Part of the lower floor was given over to a private garage, which had a large door that slid up to permit one to drive in. Decitez suggested that, because of the lateness of the hour, Doc park his car in the garage.

  Doc drove in, then got out and shut the door. Decitez got out also. He turned round from fastening the door.

  He took another gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Doc Savage.

  “You were easy!” he said.

  * * *

  A door at the back of the garage opened. Men filed out—four of them. They were flabby fellows, but well-dressed. They looked like men who did not do any physical work, but who had occupations which caused them to worry a great deal. This helped catalogue them for what they were, since a modern crook has to do a wealth of worrying to keep out of jail.

  They pointed guns at Doc Savage. They did it with a desperate earnestness, as if the bronze man were a dangerous lion which might do anything at any minute.

  “We oughta give him the works right now!” one man gulped.

  Chapter VIII

  THE KEY MAN

  “
Hold it!” cried Decitez rapidly. “Don’t do any half-smart thing like that! Search him!”

  “Suppose your search ’im yourself,” retorted the other. “I ain’t gettin’ close to ’im. I’ve heard all about this bronze baby!”

  Decitez puffed out his chest like a little balloon.

  “He’s overrated,” he said rapidly. “He’s easy! You saw how I put it over on him. We can handle him.”

  “Them’s been the last words of some guys,” snorted the other.

  “With five guns pointed at him, what can he do?” snapped Decitez.

  “I don’t know,” said the other. “I ain’t anxious to find out. All I know is that this bronze guy is arsenic on anybody’s bush. You search ’im.”

  Doc Savage seemed to have nothing to say. He was standing still and not acting belligerently. He had his hands partially raised.

  Decitez hesitated. His expression showed that he had a bull by the horns, mentally. He had said Doc Savage was easy to handle, and he was face to face with the necessity of proving it. He took his courage between his clenched teeth and stepped forward. His hands slapped over Doc Savage’s person.

  “Whew!” Decitez exploded wildly. “Aim at his head! He’s got on a bulletproof union suit of some kind!”

  “I got a notion to resign my part in this right now,” said the man who had expressed fear of Doc Savage.

  “Shut up!” snapped Decitez. “Watch this fellow!”

  Doc Savage offered no resistance, as Decitez began to strip off the bronze man’s outer garments. Doc’s coat came off first, then his vest, shirt and necktie. A strange-looking under-vest came to sight.

  The vest was covered with innumerable pockets. These held gadgets and tiny phials of chemicals. The vest was padded, so that its presence under the bronze man’s clothing had not been noticeable.

  “Better strip ’im,” some one suggested.

  “A good idea,” Decitez admitted.

  Doc Savage let them strip him. He had the reputation of a tiger, a name that struck fear into the souls of wrongdoers in many a far corner of the earth. But he did not live up to his fame now.