"Well?" Doc said sharply "Haven't you a guess as to how much farther? You've been mighty positive about everything until now." "If I knew for sure how much bra.s.s this guy Williams packs, I would have a better idea of what to expect," Wail replied.

"By bra.s.s, do you mean rank?"

"That's it," Wail said. "If he's a junior grade imp, like myself, we haven't much to fear. I mean, you can cope with these fellows who rate as about ninety-ninth a.s.sistant devil. But if the chap has more rank, your goose is cooked." And in a moment, Wail added gloomily, 'And so is mine." "If you and Williams are fraternal brothers, there's probably no cause for you to be alarmed," Doc said dryly.

Wail groaned. "What kind of place do you think h.e.l.l is? It's full of devils, and they keep in practice with their work by deviling each other."

Doc chuckled in spite of himself. "Practice makes perfect, eh?"

Wail became resentful. "It's not amusing, I can tell you. It isn't a pleasant place."

"You don't sound as if you liked it down there?"

"I sure didn't," Wail declared vehemently. "I'd have liked it less, only I arrived with a pretty good record."

Then Wail added thoughtfully, "I got in about a hundred and seventy years ago, when the entrance requirements were stiffer."

"Oh, you died a hundred and seventy years ago?"

"That's right. 1781, to be exact." Wail sighed. 'A bunch of colonials were chasing me with the notion of hanging me, and my horse stumbled and I fell off and broke my neck. I wish they'd hanged me, because it would have looked better on my record. Maybe I could have made better rank than junior grade devil by now."

"But you say you arrived pretty well equipped with entrance credentials?" Doc prompted.

"Well, right fairish," Wail admitted. "I was quite a scoundrel, if I do say so myself. I looted a bank, married seven wives, financed some piracy expeditions, and sailed on one myself, although pirating was a rougher business than I liked." He sighed. "We had rugged times back in those days. But nothing compared to chaps like Genghis Khan and a couple of the Caesars and Napoleon."

"Oh, you met them down there?"

Wail sniffed. "No, of course not. Do you think a fellow could circulate and meet all the guests in h.e.l.l in a mere hundred and seventy years? But I've heard they were there, and hold pretty good ratings."

"But you didn't like it?"

"You're darn tooting I didn't," Wail said gloomily "That's why I sort of laid down on the job of catching up with Gilmore Sullivan, and fetching him back."

"The object hasn't been to kill Gilmore?"

"No, of course not. That would be worse than his staying alive on earth, although that wouldn't be good either. He would be sure to pa.s.s around information about our place down there, and people would find out about conditions in the future, and it would make the deviling business tougher. A lot of people don't believe there's a h.e.l.l. That makes our job easier."

"And if Gilmore died?" "Oh, he'd go packing his information off in the other direction. That would he bad for our side. You see, Gilmore Sullivan got a good look at our layout, and he'd have firsthand information to pa.s.s along."

"How," Doc asked, "did Gilmore happen to get this look at your place?"

"You remember a slight earthquake shock about six or eight months ago?" Wail asked.

"There was something in the newspapers about one, yes.

"Well, it opened a crack," Wail said. "Gilmore Sullivan was down about fifteen miles, exploring. And he came across the crack, and peeked through. You can imagine how he felt, and how quick he got out of there. I was despatched to bring him back, not because I was a qualified devil, being only junior-grade, but because I was the handiest man at the time."

"Only fifteen miles down?" Doc inquired.

"Yeah, they been enlarging down there, and I guess they carelessly pushed out too close to the surface."

"How about the crack? It still open?" Doc asked.

"Why? Do you want to have a look?"

"I don't believe I would care too much about that," Doc replied solemnly "You're wise. Well, about the crack - they've got a bunch of apprentices busy closing it up, but I understand it's going slow."

"Working like the devil, eh?"

"Well, they're in there trying," Wail said.

Monk Mayfair, in a mixture of plaintive rage and terror, called, "Cut out that line of kidding, will you!

You may think it's an amusing pastime, but I don't! Not in a place like this!"

"So he thinks it's kidding, no less," Mr. Wail murmured, and sniffed.

VIII.

THE nature of the cavern underwent a change as they descended, growing somewhat in proportions, becoming more precipitous, not unpleasant, the air taking on a different and more pungent quality, the strange blossomlike odor they had noted earlier becoming more p.r.o.nounced. At length, alarmed by the growing pungency of the aroma, Doc Savage stopped and used some materials from the equipment case he had been carrying, a few chemicals capable of making a fairly accurate a.n.a.lysis of almost any substance, to examine the air for dangerous gas. Monk's party joined him for this, and stood watching, tense and poised, as if momentarily expecting that the intense silence, which had become a ponderous force against their peace of mind, would explode or in some other way become a danger.

The a.n.a.lysis having shown nothing dangerous, not even what the odor was, they resumed the descent in the same manner as before, Doc Savage and Wail leading, Monk and Linningen trailing a precautionary distance to the rear.

Doc still kept the rope end fastened to Wail, giving the man twenty feet or so of play, which seemed ample. Wail had not objected, and, in fact, It was a good safety measure, because the way was becoming increasingly trying. Suddenly, things began happening. The rope, which Doc had been keeping snug, did not respond with the proper feel when Doc tugged it. Lunging forward, Doc found that Wail had adroitly slipped the rope and secured it to a rocky stalact.i.te, numbers of which were to be found around them.

"Wail!" Doc rapped, and dashed the beam of his flashlight about.

Monk yelled anxiously, "What is it, Doc? An ambush? You need help?"

At that moment, Doc caught a flicker of expensive gray coattails vanishing in a thin forest of stone pillars.

He sprang forward.

"Wail's escaping!" Doc shouted over his shoulder to Monk. "You and Linningen stay where you are!

Don't leave the trail we've been following. You might never find it again!"

Monk howled that he understood, and added an imprecation directed at Mr. Wail.

Doc himself had an opinion of Wail at the moment. More respectful. The man was fleet, faster than Doc believed such chubbiness would have permitted. However, they were on good firm footing as his flashlight disclosed.

Then it came to him how incredible it was that Wail could make such speed in blackest darkness. Wail had no flashlight! Yet the man was making respectable time, and doing it almost without sound.

Angered by Wail's performance, disgusted by his own gullibility in being duped by the rope tied to the stone, even though that had been for only a few moments, Doc made better speed himself than he would have conceded he could make.

The chase went on and on. Wail managed to keep tantalizingly out of reach, although he seemed to be losing his lead. Doc fell twice.

Finally, when Wail began to change course, Doc gained confidence. He used the black-light generator continually now, pumping the generator handle with his fingers. It, like their flashlights, was generator-driven, so the problem of batteries that would exhaust themselves was not a plague.

They must have covered, Doc reflected, at least two miles of labyrinthine caverns, before he got close enough to chance a lunge at Wail. To his disgust, his fingertips merely gave Wail's expensive suit a futile rake. The near-capture stimulated Wail to greater speed, and he drew slightly ahead.

And now Doc began to believe - and condemned himself for being fool enough to think so - that Wail in some fashion could make his own illumination. That, incredibly, there was a kind of luminous aura about the fat little scoundrel.

Wail, in a voice more of anger than terror, shouted, "You'd better go back, Savage!"

"That," Doc retorted, putting on a burst of speed, "would be a fine break for you, now that you're about to be caught!"

Wail responded by spinning around a stalagmite, so that Doc momentarily lost trace of him. A sc.r.a.ping sound, a small noise with frenzy in it, drew Doc ahead, and he came to a narrow fissure which slashed into the stone about forty-five degrees from the vertical, and which seemed to extend endlessly.

Wail was squirming along the fissure, standing upright, moving sidewise. Doc followed, For the next several minutes, each man put everything into effort and, as the fissure narrowed, he fastened his hands into Wail's coat. A stifled shriek came from Wail. The man exerted himself tremendously - there must have been a crevice, because he pushed ahead, literally dragging Doc Savage, and then suddenly Wail was out of the crevice, into a larger chamber beyond. And out of his coat, too.

Carrying Wail's garment, Doc sprinted after the man. There seemed to be light here, a phosph.o.r.escentlike illumination of greenish-purple nature. At least, Doc was able to see Wail, and presently he hurled Wail's coat, the garment entangled the chubby man's feet, and the latter fell headlong.

Doc landed astride him.

Wail was limp and very still for a long time, and when finally he spoke it was to say, "d.a.m.n you!" This was in the bitterest of tones.

"I didn't think you had it in you to give me a chase like that," Doc told him tiredly "d.a.m.n you!" Wail repeated acidly "If it hadn't been for your nagging, I would never have come back here. I don't think I would have had to. I could have coped with that Williams. He didn't have full powers, either. I don't think he ranks any higher than I do."

Doc said, "So you're still keeping up that pretense."

"Pretense! Look around you!" Wail blurted.

Warily, suspecting a trick, Doc glanced about. He had been conscious of the strangely unholy purplish illumination; now its abnormality and downright impossibility hit him a full blow Not impossibility, exactly, because there was, indeed, luminance.

"What makes the light?" he demanded of Wail.

Sneeringly, the fat man retorted, "Nuts to you. From now on, you're going to have too many questions for me to bother answering. You remember that crevice we just squeezed through? Well, that's the one the earthquake opened."

"The one Gilmore Sullivan found?" Then Doc caught himself. "Cut it out, Wail. I've had enough of this Hades stuff."

"Oh, you have, have you?" asked Wail. "Just where do you think you are, anyway?"

Doc, more at a loss for a reply than he would have liked to admit, countered with a question. 'What goes on here? Some kind of secret mining operation? Are they mining atomic fission materials?"

Wail refused to answer. Doc rolled him over, lashed the man's hands securely, took turns of the rope around the chubby body, and retained the rope end as before. "This time," he said, "you won't slip out of it so easily."

"It's too late," Wail said. "Just look around."

"I intend to do so."

This alarmed Wail, and he gasped, "No, no! You can still escape - maybe. One thing sure, you can head off Williams and the girl and her brother."

"You seem sure Williams and his prisoners haven't reached here yet," Doc remarked.

"Of course they haven't. We circled around them on the way down." "We'll see." Doc jerked Wail to his feet, returned to the mouth of the fissure, and used his black-light projector. He didn't find traces of the Williams party. There was no sign of fluorescing footprints.

"No, no, please!" Wail croaked, when Doc turned away from the fissure. "Go back! I'll even show you the way!"

"Shut up!" Doc said. "We're going to learn what goes on here."

He advanced a step at a time, patting his pockets to make sure that a half-dozen small high-explosive grenades he had placed there earlier were safe. Wail was almost a dead weight, and he had to push and drag the man along. He kept the flashlight ready, but there was no real need of it, the grim and inexplicable glow that seemed to pervade everywhere furnished at least adequate light for walking, although it was impossible to see a distance of more than a few yards.

Harsh premonition of impending evil wrapped a clammy sensation about him, but Doc Savage went steadily ahead, for he was a man who, while taking every precaution against any logical danger, was not inclined to permit mere forebodings to stay him. He was familiar with danger; he had walked its path many times before, and he believed that care and a reasonable amount of discretion, plus the right kind of action at the right time, was ample armor.

However, he was not prepared for the whispering sound he presently heard. He stopped, arrested by the note, for it was not vocal nor even human, but it had a mult.i.tudinous quality and seemed to come from many directions at once.

Then his eye caught movement over to his right, and he tensed, faced that direction, making out a dim, shapeless object or substance that seemed to have nothing in the way of reality except motion. Doc was a brave man, but his skin broke into gooseflesh and revulsion jerked at his stomach as he perceived that a grim, uncanny shape was taking form.

So great was the horror created in him that he stood, rooted, paralyzed, the instinct to flee beating in futile weakness against the frozen coldness - terror, if it were that - which held him motionless.

The shape became a ma.s.s, formless and gibbous and evil. It had movement, and body, but little else that seemed natural; it had no arms, no legs; it was headless and leathery, with a sour gray color that shed the ugly purplish-green light with a skull-like sheen. It came toward him, lurching, rolling, so that he could not actually tell how it progressed. There was some odor, not the flowery one, but a dead scent of lifelessness and emptiness. "Why, I saw the thing earlier, and mistook it for a large boulder," he thought.

'And it isn't alone!" Electrified by the last thought, and struck by premonition, he whirled to see a towering ma.s.s flying at him, too close upon him to be avoided.

So violent was the impact with which the thing struck Doc Savage that he was driven reeling, knocked breathless, stunned. The flashlight flew from his grasp; it seemed utterly unimportant that he carried a spare. He was down and the forms were lunging for him.

Wail shrieked now Terror choked the outcry down to a small thing such as a mouse would make. And Wail wheeled and went flying away, ignored by the creatures which were a.s.saulting Doc Savage, but in no way rea.s.sured by that.

The weird a.s.sailant proceeded to attack by falling forward upon Doc Savage. As soon as he understood that, Doc moved with frenzied speed, and was partially successful in evading the attack, only his right foot being caught.

But the weight of the thing was terrific, the pain in his foot a splintering agony, forcing him to cry out. Docgave the attacker a savage kick with his free foot, which was the wrong thing to do, because it was like kicking solid stone. He wrenched wildly, sure his foot would never come free of that great weight; then it did, and he stumbled backward, gaining his feet, hardly able to use the foot.

He ran, though, as he had never run before. And he kept presence of mind enough to combine flight with pursuit of Wail; sooner than he expected, he saw Wail, and realized that utter terror had rendered the man incapable of doing his best. But Wail was still traveling a respectable pace.

Turning his head, Doc saw there was pursuit. There seemed to be dozens of the shapeless objects, all bobbing along, an occasional one losing balance and tumbling headlong, but seeming to keep coming even while falling.

Doc whipped a hand to a pocket, located one of the explosive grenades, and plucked out the firing mechanism, then hurled it. Excitement caused him to throw the grenade much too hard; it traveled well over the pursuers, and landed and exploded at least ten yards behind them.

The explosion split his eardrums, filled the cavern with blue-white blast flame and cataclysmic noise. It had a surprising effect on the pursuers as well, setting them into utter confusion, so that they moved this way and that, b.u.mping together with hard stony sounds and milling senselessly Doc overtook Wail. The fat man was lying p.r.o.ne where he had been sent either by a tumble or by the blast force.

Jerking Wail to his feet, Doc demanded, "What are those things? Why did they attack me?"

Wail, his words a gabble of hysteria, said, "It wouldn't help if I told you. You're believing nothing I say"

"Don't quibble," Doc said angrily. "Come on, let's have an explanation!"

Wail drew in a sobbing breath. "They're inmates. They're sinners.

"Cut it out!" Doc snapped. "They're some kind of mechanisms, disguised as boulders. Isn't that it?"

Wail said, "That's childish, and you know it. They're stones, all right. They're stones and they can move, but they can't ever escape being stones.

"And you don't call that childish?"