of its existence.'
'You got me wrong!' whined the craven before Doc. 'Kar is Gabe Yuder — '
'Gabe Yuder is dead! He found the unknown element or substance from which the Smoke of Eternity is made. He probably perfected the Smoke of Eternity. You saw it could be turned to criminal purposes. So you killed Gabe Yuder, and took his chemical formula. I found his grave!'
'You can’t prove — '
'Granted. I am merely guessing what happened on your first visit to Thunder Island. It does not matter how near I come to the truth. But I cannot be missing the facts far.
'Jerome Coffern saw something suspicious about your actions. He must have remarked on it. So you tried to kill him. The first time, you shot at him and missed. He suspected you of the deed. He wrote a statement, which you searched his apartment and found. I discovered a few lines of that statement upon a fresh typewriter ribbon in Jerome Coffern’s apartment. But the important part was illegible — the part which named you!
'The part which said you, Oliver Wording Bittman, were Kar!'
Kar — or Bittman — quailed as though this were the greatest blow of all.
'Yes, you are Kar, Bittman!' Doc continued. 'You are a skilled actor, one of the best I ever encountered. And you had aroused my blind confidence in you by exhibiting that letter from my father showing you had saved his life.
'You listened in on an extension phone when I called Monk from your New York apartment, and promptly sent your men after Monk. You also sent one of your gang, a flyer, to kill me as I walked. I recall I told you I was going to walk after I left your place.
'You ordered your men to get the specimens from Thunder Island out of my safe. You ordered the elevator death trap which nearly got Monk, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, and Renny — and you didn’t make a move to enter the cage that had been doctored. You tipped your men to get off the
'You even disappeared into the jungle on that coral atoll long enough to tell your man hidden there to bomb our plane. I could name other incidents when you checkmated us. You deceived us. But you did it by taking advantage of the most despicable means to get yourself into my confidence. You knew my affection for my father. So you showed me the letter which said you had saved his life.
'You knew my father — you knew the affection that existed between us. You were certain your trick would blind me to any faults you might have.'
Bittman whined, 'It was no trick! I saved his life — '
Doc Savage’s voice acquired a strange, terrible note, a note of strain.
'Did you? Or was that letter faked in some manner?'
'It was a genuine letter!' gulped Kar — or Bittman. 'I saved his life! Honest, I did! I’m not such a bad guy! You read that letter! Your father wouldn’t be fooled in a man. I’m not — '
'You can’t talk yourself out of it!' Doc said savagely. 'I do not think my father did make a mistake. Perhaps you were the man he thought you were —
'There are many possible explanations for a hitherto honest man becoming a criminal. But we will not discuss that. You ordered my friend, Jerome Coffern, murdered. For that, there can be but one penalty!'
The plane was slowly careening off on a wing tip, threatening to crash. Doc’s powerful hand, floating out, stroked the controls and brought it level. A wall of the crater was ahead — perhaps five minutes flying away.
Directly in front of the plane, an eruption was occurring in the strange horseshoe-shaped lake of boiling mud which extended nearly around the crater, but high above the jungle-clothed floor.
Kar — or Bittman — suddenly made a frantic leap. He was seeking to reach the leather suitcase back in the plane cabin.
He brought up against Doc’s bronze arm as against a stone wall. He struck at Doc repeatedly. He missed each time, for the bronze form seemed to vanish under his fists, so quickly did it move.
Increased terror seized the man. His eyes rolled desperately.
'You’ll never kill me!' he snarled.
Strange lights glowed in Doc Savage’s golden eyes.
'You are right,' he agreed. 'I could never kill with my bare hands a man who saved my father’s life. But do not think you shall escape with your crimes because of that! You will receive your punishment!'
Kar rolled his eyes again. He didn’t know what fate Doc planned for him. But it could be nothing pleasant.
Suddenly the master villain dived headlong through the plane window!
TWO hundred feet below the ship, the man cracked his parachute. It bloomed wide, a clean white bulb in the sinister gray of the crater atmosphere.
Doc Savage gave the oncoming wall of the crater a glance. It was only two minutes away now. Back into the cabin, he flung. He got the leather suitcase at which Oliver Wording Bittman had glanced so longingly.
He did not open the suitcase. The contents might have interested him not at all, judging by his actions.
The speeding plane whipped over in a vertical bank under his mighty hand. It had been almost against the crater wall. The ship seemed to slam against the cliff, then leap away.
Doc’s golden eyes ranged downward. They were a cold gold now, determined. They judged accurately.
Doc dropped the suitcase overside.
The piece of luggage revolved slowly as it fell. It hit just below the lava dike which confined the great lake of boiling-hot mud. It burst.
It had contained Kar’s supply of the Smoke of Eternity! The crater wall below the lava dike began a swift dissolving. Vile, repulsive gray smoke climbed upward in growing volume. It was such a cloud as had arisen at the destruction of the sinister pirate ship,
The smoke pall hid what was happening beneath. The play of electrical sparks made a weird glow within the squirming mass.
Suddenly, from beneath the cloud crawled a brown, smoking torrent. The lava dike confining the lake of super-heated mud had been destroyed. The molten liquid was running into the crater!
Banking, engine moaning, the plane kept clear of the foul gray cloud from the Smoke of Eternity. Doc’s golden eyes searched. They found what they sought.
Kar! The river of boiling mud overtook him swiftly. The man tried to run. He held his own for a time. Then one of the giant hopping horrors of the crater, the greatest killing machine nature ever made, confronted him. The tyrannosaurus started for Kar with great, bloodthirsty bounds.
Kar chose the easier of two deaths — he let the hideous reptilian giant snap his life out with a single bite.
But an instant later, the wall of hot mud rushed upon the prehistoric monster. The stupid thing took a gigantic leap — deeper into the cooking torrent. It went down. It rolled over slowly, kicking in a feeble way with its huge, three-toed feet.
Thus perished Kar — or Oliver Wording Bittman, the famous taxidermist — and the colossus of reptiles which had devoured him.
DOC held the plane wide open back across the crater. He landed on the narrow runway among the great lumps of stone which had, centuries ago, caved from the cliff.
Renny, Ham, Monk, Johnny, Long Tom — all five piled into the plane on the double-quick.
Doc took off again.
'Look!' Johnny muttered.
The ruptured lake seemed to contain an inexhaustible supply of boiling mud. It still poured forth. It was flooding the floor of the ghastly crater! The monsters existing there were being enveloped.
And the surviving Kar gunman would perish with them! Nothing could save him.
Steam poured upward. It was thickening in the mouth of the crater over their heads — forming a smudge
