"You could get them without trouble, I haven't the slightest doubt.""Hm-m-m."

"I will want two large planes, and pilots. I want the planes equipped with bomb racks, and I'll have to have expert bombers. Preferably men who had experience in Spain or China."

"How much are you willing to pay for this?"

"That's also where you come in."

"I come in?"

"You pay for it. In return, you get cut in for twenty-five percent."

Herman Locatella leaned back and opened his mouth; it was obvious that he was going to rip out a derisive laugh. But he changed his mind. He leaned forward and stared at Spad Ames intently.

"You know, Spad, I never liked you, but I did have respect for your judgment. You always had a good sense of values. So I'm not going to laugh. Instead, I'm going to ask what in the h.e.l.l you plan on doing?"

"You said you read about the Border Patrol plane chasing me a couple of months ago."

"Yes."

"Well, it chased me out over the Grand Canyon badlands before we got away, then we ran out of fuel and crashed. We cracked up in . . . What do you know about that Grand Canyon country?"

"It's pretty wild, I've heard," Locatella admitted. "Personally, I wouldn't know, because I don't go in for roughing it."

"Some of that country," Spad Ames said, "is practically unexplored. Oh, I know that a boat or two has floated through the Grand Canyon, and planes have flown over some of the country. But there is a h.e.l.l of a lot of it that white man never set eyes on. We landed in some of that unexplored country and we found-well, it's what I'm going back after that we found."

"You found-"

"For two reasons, I wouldn't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Too fantastic," Spad Ames said levelly. "I'm not crazy, but you might think so if I told you what I located. I'm the only white man who ever got in there, and out again. And I'm going back-with planes, at least twenty men, and the most modern bombs and poison gas."

"Twenty men," Locatella muttered, "is practically an army."

"We'll need an army. That black arrowhead may help-" He stopped the sentence in the middle.

"Black arrowhead?" prompted Locatella curiously. "What black arrowhead?"

SPAD AMES made no answer, and the two men sat looking at each other. They understood each other.

Spad was not going to reveal more information, and Locatella knew it. Locatella also knew that he was being offered something big here. Spad Ames had a bad record with the law, but he had never been one to go off half-c.o.c.ked. If anything, his fault was underestimating and using too much caution."Fifty percent," Locatella said suddenly.

"Twenty-five."

"You're crazy. Since when did bankrolls start taking twenty-five percent cuts?"

Spad Ames stood up and pounded the desk with his fist and began yelling. "The h.e.l.l with you, then!" he shouted. "I'll go out and knock off an armored truck or a bank messenger and get the dough myself."

Herman Locatella knew now that he was being offered a good thing. He was being presented with a pig in a poke, but he knew other men who had accepted blind propositions from Spad Ames, and they had found it profitable.

"Sit down," he said. "How soon do you have to have the men and planes and stuff?"

"Quicker the better."

"Tomorrow morning be soon enough?" Locatella asked, and grinned.

He was proud of his ability to get such things as this done; he was even more proud of having kept underworld connections while pretending to be a Park Avenue barrister whose main love was fancy clothes.

Spad Ames nodded, and they shook hands. "Could you get some of the men together tonight?" Spad asked.

"Tonight?"

"I've got to s.n.a.t.c.h two-well-students."

"Kidnap them, you mean?"

"You might call it that. But don't get excited. They're not ordinary students, exactly."

"You mean that they're Indians?" Locatella asked, guessing.

Spad Ames shook his head queerly.

"I'm not going to launch into a lot of explaining about two-ah-strange people." Spad growled. "The whole thing is fantastic. I told you that."

"Do these two have names?"

"Mark Colorado, and his sister, Ruth-that is what they call themselves."

"Are they Americans?"

Again, Spad shook his head queerly. "I don't think," he said thoughtfully, "that you could say they had any nationality. They're from-well, never mind."

Locatella chuckled. "You're not hinting around that they're from Mars, or the moon or somewhere?"

"You'd be d.a.m.n surprised if you knew," Spad Ames advised grimly. "That's all I can say."

Locatella was consumed by curiosity, but he restrained himself."Let's go out and see people," Locatella suggested. "We'll collect some of the right people if we can, then come back here to talk over details. This room is soundproof."

Spad Ames looked around approvingly. "No chance of anybody hearing us in here, eh?"

"Not a chance," Locatella a.s.sured him.

Chapter IV. HANDS OUT OF DARKNESS.

HERMAN LOCATELLA was in slight error concerning the privacy of conversations in his sanctum. It was true that the room was of soundproof construction, as well as being, with its wood-paneled walls, sufficiently expensive looking to impress the Park Avenue set.

However, a good electric drill, working from the adjoining suite, had chewed away the wall without penetrating the wood paneling. And to the paneling, a sensitive contact type of microphone had been attached, so as to pick up all the conversation in Locatella's office.

Wires from the mike led to an amplifier, the output of which fed into a phonographic recorder which was of unusually ingenious design, being equipped with a record changer. As soon as one record was full, it was automatically removed and another blank subst.i.tuted. The records were of the large fifteen-minute type, hence four of them were used per hour.

The man who had installed this complicated eavesdropping device happened to be in the adjacent offices at the moment. He had plugged in a telephone headset, and had listened. He now removed the headset.

"By Jove!" he remarked. "The peac.o.c.k did finally turn out to be a buzzard."

He seemed much pleased. He was a broad-shouldered man with a waspish waist and the wide, flexible mouth of an orator. Most striking thing about him was the impeccable correctness of his clothing; he was somewhat more perfectly garbed than Herman Locatella, which was saying a great deal. There was no other comparison between the two, however, except that they were both lawyers.

This man was Major General Theodore Marley Brooks, eminent product of the Harvard Law School, and unquestioned leader of male fashions in America-leader, that is, until of late, when his position had been menaced by an upstart named Locatella. Major General Theodore Marley Brooks was called Ham by those who were his very good friends, or who could outrun him.

Ham Brooks picked up an innocent-looking black cane.

"Come on, Chemistry," he called. "We have tidings to bear."

Chemistry was Ham's pet chimpanzee; or it was Ham's contention that Chemistry was a pure-blooded chimp, although anthropologists were inclined to call the animal a what-is-it.

Ham and Chemistry departed a back way; they simply stepped out of the window onto a roof which could not be seen from Herman Locatella's office suite, and descending through a roof hatch, finally came out on a side street where Ham had a car parked.

Ham rode to one of the impressive skysc.r.a.pers in the midtown business district, took an elevator to the eighty-sixth floor of this building, and pa.s.sed through a door. Small letters on the door said: Clark Savage, Jr.

Ham struck an att.i.tude."Bark, gentlemen!" he ordered. "Bark!"

The two occupants of the reception room scowled at him.

One of them was remarkably wide, remarkably short, and even more remarkably homely. He had small eyes, a very wide mouth, features that had been mistreated by other men's fists, and a hide covered with bristles which resembled rusting shingle nails.

He was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett "Monk" Mayfair. Without in any way looking the part, Monk was one of the greatest living industrial chemists.

The second man who scowled at Ham was a huge framework of bones and gristle who had two outstanding features, the first of which was a sad, funeral-going expression, and the second a pair of fists so large they could hardly be inserted in gallon pails.

He was Colonel John "Renny" Renwick, eminent engineer, and noted for his habit of knocking wooden panels out of doors when he felt playful.

Monk and Renny, along with Ham, belonged to a group of five who were a.s.sistants to Doc Savage.

"COME on and bark!" Ham ordered impatiently.

Monk and Renny glared at him, their necks getting red.

"Arf!" Monk said.

"Bowwow," said Renny unwillingly.

"You didn't get down on your hands and knees when you barked," Ham said. "Do it the way we agreed.

When you lost the bet, the understanding was that you were to get down on your hands and knees and bark whenever you saw me for the next week."

Monk, losing his temper, shook a fist wildly. He had a small childlike voice ordinarily, but rage caused it to lift and take on the stridence of a steamboat siren.

"You been overdoin' it!" he squalled. "You been goin' out of your way to meet us on the street and places."

Renny, who had a voice like the roar of a pained bear in a deep cave, put in his bit. "You turn up in restaurants where we're eating, and expect us to bark."

Monk howled: "And last night, you turned up at that lecture I was giving before the Chemical Inst.i.tute, and I had to get down and bark, with all them dignified big shots watching. A fine shyster trick!"

Renny roared: "Let's dress him down with a chair."

"Let's," Monk agreed.

Ham made a wild jump, got across the reception room and through a door, which he slammed and locked before the pair of irate wager losers could reach him.

"At least," he remarked cheerfully, "they're not welshers."

Ham had fled into the library, a great vaulted room filled with the bluish glow of light from fluorescent bulbs, and packed with bookcases containing, for the most part, scientific tomes."Doc," Ham called.

"In here," came a voice from the adjoining laboratory. The voice had a deep, controlled quality that made it striking.

Ham entered Doc Savage's laboratory, the lair of scientific magic where Doc Savage concocted many inventions and devices, some of them bordering on the fantastic, which he used in his strange career. It was a vast room; the sunlight slanted in through the great windows-three walls were composed almost entirely of gla.s.s-and sprang in glittering reflections from the array of retorts, chemical gla.s.sware, microscopes, and electrical mechanisms. A great deal of the stuff was so complicated that Ham had no idea of its nature.

"What was all the noise?" Doc Savage asked.

Ham grinned. "Oh, Monk and Renny and the bet they lost. They bet me Harvard wouldn't win last Sat.u.r.day. Now they're squawking."

DOC SAVAGE-Clark Savage, Jr., although he was rarely called that-was wearing a transparent plioflim garment which covered him from head to foot, so evidently he had been working in the test chamber which stood in the center of the great laboratory. He was, Ham happened to know, endeavoring to perfect a selective germicidal disinfecting agent which would be effective in epithelial tissue, where a certain type of cancer was its inception.

Ham, looking at Doc Savage, felt a little awe. He had never lost that feeling when he came into Doc's presence, although they had been a.s.sociated for a number of years. The feeling possibly came in part from Doc's appearance. Doc Savage was a giant of a man, and possessed of even more physical strength than his size indicated: the great sinews which occasionally sprang out on the backs of his hands, or the cables that stirred in his neck, hinted slightly at his fabulous muscular ability. An ability, incidentally, that was carefully developed and maintained by a daily two-hour routine of exercises.

Doc Savage was unusual. His eyes, like pools of flake gold, seemed to have magnetic power. His skin had been burned by tropical suns until it had acquired a permanent bronzed hue that was striking. His features were regular, the cheek and jaw muscles having that lithe appearance which is noticeable about the faces of character actors. His hair, of a bronze slightly darker than his skin, lay as smoothly as a metal skull-cap.

A man of mystery, almost a legend as far as the world was concerned, this big bronze fellow.

He was most famous, probably, as the man who had given his life to the strange career of righting wrongs and punishing evildoers, frequently traveling to the far corners of the earth to do so. These feats, being spectacular, got public attention. Less well known, but more likely to go down in history, were the bronze man's unusual contributions to science and medicine, some of them possibly a century ahead of his time.

Ham Brooks, who was capable of making a young fortune each year practicing law, had become a.s.sociated himself with Doc Savage for the same reason as had the other five aids. Ham liked excitement and adventure and his a.s.sociation with Doc Savage was abundantly productive to both.

"I've got something important, Doc," Ham said. "You remember a lawyer I once told you about-name of Herman Locatella."

"The one upon whom you have been eavesdropping?" Ham nodded, then he shoved his jaw indignantly in the direction of the reception room. "Monk has been going around saying I got a mad up on this Locatella because he was mentioned in the newspapers as likely to-er-displace me as the best-dressed man. But that's a low-life lie! I'm not that vain."

Which was possibly a slight exaggeration on Ham's part; where clothes were concerned, if he was not vain, then the word had no meaning. Also, any libel on homely Monk's character which Ham spoke could be disregarded. No one had ever heard either of them give a courteous word to the other, except by accident. They squabbled perpetually, and spent their spare time thinking up gags to pull on each other. All of which meant they were actually the best of friends.

HAM stood looking self-righteous and hoping he was deceiving Doc Savage-but doubting it. This big bronze man, who rarely showed emotion, was exceptionally hard to deceive; misleading Doc Savage was so difficult that Ham at times suspected Doc might be able to read minds.

"This Herman Locatella," said Ham, "pulled a crooked deal on one of my legal clients. So I put a microphone in his private office and attached a recorder to it. That way, I began checking up on the rascal."