Johnny sniffed vainly. He did not.Doc Savage went away silently. He moved with remarkable silence. Hannah was watching him go, and she saw him go into the shadow of a tall, neatly trimmed arbor vitae, then wondered why he was there so long. Why he had not gone on. She was still wondering that when Doc rejoined them, coming from an entirely different direction, with the same ghostly quiet.

"Take a look at this," he whispered.

"This" was a dog, a big Belgian shepherd with an impressive fang equipment. The animal was sprawled, with a snarl, in unconsciousness. It reeked of chloroform.

"Oh, oh!" Johnny said. "Something goes on here."

Doc told him, "Stay close by. Keep the girl with you. Somebody might come to see if the dog is still unconscious."

Again Doc left them silently.

This time, the bronze man went to the house and hunted for a lighted window. The entrance hall was illuminated, but not very brightly. Without getting too close, he saw that the hall was empty.

The other lighted window was on the second floor, and it was blanked out with Venetian blinds. There might be lights in other rooms, behind blackout curtains. It was hard to tell.

One of the simplest and most-used gadgets which Doc Savage carried was a collapsible metal grapple on the end of a long silk cord, that was knotted and looped at intervals so that it could be climbed. He used this now, and hung the grapple behind a chimney. He waited a while to learn whether the grapple had been heard hitting the roof. Apparently not.

He went up silently, found a second-floor window which was open. He had known it would be open because from below he had seen the curtains blowing out against the screen. The screen did not give his pocketknife much of an argument. He eased inside.

They were waiting inside for him, two of them with small-caliber revolvers which they had bundled in cloth-bed sheets it was evident later-to cut down their sound. The guns made a considerable noise even then, but they did not sound like guns, which probably was the idea. The men doing the shooting did not take a chance on a target as small as Doc's head, but fired at his body.

The revolvers were small enough that the cylinders held seven bullets apiece, instead of the usual six.

Two guns, and hence fourteen bullets.

At the first impact, Doc's arms went over his head as if jerked by invisible strings. He did not fall immediately. The kick of the little bullets, their impact, was not terrific. But fourteen of them would have killed anything that walked the earth.

Not until the last bullet had hit him did Doc fall. Then he went down stiffly, not bending in any of his joints. He hit the floor hard. The crash jarred a picture off the wall somewhere near.

After he was on the floor, he convulsed several times, merely doubling knees against his chest, pumping motions. The bubbling and gurgling noises which accompanied this were not pleasant.

He relaxed and his face was up and his eyes were still.

Chapter V. STONY.

THERE was no noise but the heavy breathing of the two men with the guns, and small, metallic clicking sounds as they madly stuffed cartridges into their guns.

"Turn on the light," one said.

The other turned on the light. Both of them stared at Doc Savage.

Their faces turned from ruddy to buff to pale tan to cardboard. They looked at each other.

One said, "I know this guy. It's Doc Savage!"

The other opened his mouth and said a sick something with his lips only. Then he put his chin on his chest and piled down on the floor. He had fainted.

The other man looked foolish. Then he tried to laugh. The laugh didn't come off. He went to the door and bellowed, "Hey, down there, come up here and see who we got!"

Men came up the stairs noisily, four of them, and there was movement of men in other parts of the house.

Everybody seemed to be armed. They stared at Doc.

"Doc Savage," said the man who had done the shooting.

A man said, "Major Lowell will know if it's Savage." He went to the door, and yelled, "Bring that dumb soldier up here."

Movement could be heard on the first floor.

There was no sound from outdoors, nothing to show that Johnny and Hannah were doing anything. They certainly had heard the shots.

A man went to the window and put it down. He stood looking out for a few seconds. "I see some lighted windows," he said. "People heard those shots, and got up."

"If they don't hear any more, they'll go back to bed," a man told him. "We'll have to take a chance they do, anyhow."

Two or more men were coming up the stairs. From the sounds, they were struggling along with someone who was bound hand and foot, but who was still fighting them. The bound man was evidently gagged, because he made hissings and buzzings in his efforts to yell out for help.

A man pointed at the fellow on the floor. "What happened to Big Toe?"

"Big Toe fainted," said the man who had helped shoot Doc. He tried another laugh, but that one didn't come off either.

"If that's really Doc Savage," someone said, "I don't blame Big Toe for fainting."

"It must be Savage," said the first. "Big Toe ain't the fainting type, by a long shot."

"Major Lowell will know."

"What makes you think he'll tell us."

The men bringing the bound-and-gagged man up the stairs came inside. They were having some trouble.

One of them cursed the men in the room, and added, "You might have given us some help. What the h.e.l.lare you guys, ornaments?"

All of the men, except for Major Lowell, had two things in common. They were all older men, men too old for the draft. They had a shifty, vicious air that crooks get after they have been crooks for a long time, not a definite stamp that would instantly identify them, but a quality that was very noticeable when a number of the same ilk were in a group.

Hired talent. It was stamped all over them.

Major Lowell was a different type, a fine, upstanding man with graying hair and the leathery face of a military man who had seen service in the tropics. He had a jaw that looked as if it was accustomed to pushing things out of the way.

They took the gag off Lowell's mouth. Major Lowell stared at Doc Savage.

"Doc Savage!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "What have you done to him?"

There was a brief and somehow terrible silence in the room.

Then a man said, "If that's Savage, we want to be d.a.m.ned sure he is dead."

He took out a gun and leaned to put it against Doc's temple. Reaching up, Doc got hold of the man's arm and the gun and pushed the weapon aside.

SURPRISE helped a little. Plenty of help was needed. The little bullets had not done much harm, nothing more than inflict considerable pain, through the bulletproof alloy mesh undergarment which Doc Savage always wore. He had been lying there faking, hoping to hear something of interest. But, since they were about to dispatch him with a shot in the head, there was nothing to do but try to get out of it.

Lying here, a remark had popped into his thoughts, one that Monk had once made after a fight in which he took a sh.e.l.lacking.

Monk liked to fight. He was good. Usually he did well, but this time they had taken him apart. When Ham and the others had finally gotten Monk out of the mess, Monk lay on his back and scowled at them and said, "Just like rainbows, you guys-never around until the storm is over!"

Surprise helped, all right. It helped a lot. Doc got the man's gun as easily as if the fellow had been handing it to him.

Surprise held them all stiff while Doc got to his feet. Then Doc made a mistake. There were obviously too many men in the room for anyone to fight single-handed. So Doc tried to go out of the window. He tried to back out, so the gla.s.s would not cut him as much, smashing the frame, then hanging by his knees just long enough to give himself a flip that would land him on his feet on the ground.

It was not a difficult trick, except that it was a steel-framed window. He didn't back out. There was no time to raise the window, although he tried. It was stuck. Probably the force with which he had backed into it had jammed it. He hadn't noticed it was a steel window.

The men were getting over their surprise now.

Light. The light was the devilish thing. Doc threw the gun at the fixture. It gave out blue fire and a shower of gla.s.s, and there was darkness.He made for the door, hitting the floor very hard with his feet.

In an old house like this, it wasn't the natural thing to find metal windows. That was what had thrown him off.

He put his feet down hard until he was almost at the door, then he stopped moving, but still kept putting his feet down hard. He was pleased with that. It sounded as if he had run on out of the door.

He stepped to one side, against the wall, and waited.

"The stairs!" a man howled. "Get him!"

There should have been a rush for the door. There wasn't. n.o.body was too anxious to lead the chase, apparently. Each one of them was waiting for another fellow to start it.

The man who had given the order, cursed them. He said no more than a dozen words, but the paint should have curled on the woodwork.

"Get going, or I'll shoot every d.a.m.ned one of you!" he finished.

That put them in motion. It was very dark. They converged on the door in a pack.

Doc Savage reached out, found a neck, and took it. He made no effort to break the neck, although it was feasible. It was his policy, and had always been, never to take a human life if it could possibly be helped.

Feeling of the neck gave the location of the owner's temple. He banged it with his knuckles, hit the man's jaw also. He lowered the fellow and reached for another.

He hit the next one without taking hold of him. The man fell against another, went to the floor.

"Quit shoving me!" somebody said.

"Shoving? Who's shoving?" another growled.

Then two of them fell over the body of the man Doc had knocked out, the last one.

"He's in here!" a voice yelled. "h.e.l.l, he's in here!"

DOC got away from the door fast. It was a good idea. From all around the door-gunfire!

One shot-flame would not give you light enough to see much. But muzzle flash from so many guns would.

Doc Savage sank down and got hold of the carpet, a firm hold, and pulled. It was an old trick. It was not even a very good one, because the carpet was tacked down.

But he pulled and pulled hard, and the tacks came out. There were newspapers for padding under the carpet. The carpet slid on these. Men started losing their balance.

After he had yanked the carpet about a yard, Doc ran with it, throwing it up high, getting it over as many of the men as he could, the way one would throw a blanket over an object.

It was not entirely successful, but it helped. Furniture clattered around, and something of gla.s.s that had been on a stand table broke noisily, popping.Doc got on top of the carpet and jumped on men and kicked men for a while, on his way to the door.

He reached the stairs and went down them lightly.

The whole house was dark. Obviously, the fuse of the light circuit had been blown when he smashed the light in the room.

The dark inside of the house made the moonlight outside seem quite bright when the front door opened.

Two men had thrown open the front door from the inside. They had heard someone come up on the porch, had thrown the door open as if in welcome. It was Johnny and Hannah who had come up on the porch.

The pair who had opened the door pulled a smart piece of business.

"Come in and help us!" one of them yelled in a loud, friendly, anxious voice.

Johnny was taken in. It was no reflection on Johnny's common sense. Such acting would have fooled anyone.

Johnny started to come in, and was. .h.i.t over the head. He fell like a dropped armload of stove wood.

Doc's "Watch out!" was too late.

Hannah then put on what Doc Savage considered a remarkable performance.

The second man made a confident swing, intending to club her over the head. His blow missed. It was a little weird, the way Hannah avoided the swing. She doubled over and came around with one foot out, and hooked the man's legs from under him.

She ran across the kicking and yelling man as if she was walking an animated log. It must have been unpleasant for the fellow, because she wore high heels.

She got hold of the other man, the one who had felled Johnny. She gave him a knee. She took his arm and turned her back to him and did a jujitsu throw. The man went over her head, hit the floor, seemed to bounce a foot.

Hannah kicked each fallen man in the temple in a way which showed she had made men unconscious before.

"Where are the rest of them?" she asked Doc.

She sounded as if she was just getting warmed up.