The delivery truck rear wheels gave a spasmodic spin, caught the pavement, and propelled the vehicle away like an explosive.
'Yo' leavin' de others!' wailed the monkey man.
'Nothin' else to do!' rapped the cowardly Lefty. 'The jig is up with you and me!'
The truck sideswiped a car, careened half across the street, took a corner on two screaming wheels—and was gone.
An instant later, there was a terrific explosion inside the hotel.
DOC SAVAGE’S golden eyes lifted, seeking the source of the blast. It was a window far above the street. This window was just flying outward, Torn wood and a shower of bricks followed.
Metal shieked across the street to knock puffs of masonry off the building there. A piece of this metal fell near Doc. It was a common steel ball bearing.
Shrapnel! A blast of shrapnel had been set off in the room registered for by his men!
Doc's big bronze figure flashed across the street and into the hotel. He seized the register. He saw his men had signed for Room 720.
It must be the room in which the shrapnel had been exploded.
Doc sprang for the elevators.
Ten feet from them, he halted. One of the cages had just come down. But the door didn't open immediately. Instead, there was a terrific uproar in the cage. It sounded like a gigantic cat-and-dog fight. Loud bangings arose, as though a sizable sledge was beating the metal sides of the lift.
Men screeched. They moaned. They sobbed, cursed, blubbered. And through all the bedlam ran a fierce rumbling and roaring as of some big beast in action.
Then silence fell.
The cage doors opened.
Out of the lift walked an individual who should have been the wild man in a circus. He was a bare five feet and a half in height, but almost equally as wide. He would tip the scales at two hundred and sixty pounds. He was covered all over with coarse red hair like hog bristles. His eyes were so surrounded by gristle as to resemble little stars twinkling in pits. The rest of his face was incredibly homely.
He carried five battered and unconscious men in his arms—much as a bell boy carries several suitcases.
'Monk!' Doc's great voice seemed to fill all the hotel lobby with a glad ring.
For this remarkable individual was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of Doc's five aids. He was called by the only nickname that could possibly fit him—'Monk.' He was, despite his gorillalike looks, one of the greatest living chemists.
'Hy'ah, Doc!' Monk grinned from ear to ear. He shook his armload of captives. 'I been collectin' rats!'
'You escaped the blast?' Doc demanded.
'Sure—thanks to your advice. Like we was directed in that message you left on the Danielsen & Haas front door, we registered for one room, but got the hotel to give us another one, and not put it on the register.'
Monk chuckled. He had a surprisingly mild voice for so huge and homely a man. 'We kept a sharp lookout. We saw these rats skulkin' around, and closed in on 'em, right after the blast.'
DOC entered the elevator. Monk turned and followed him inside like a big dog, still carrying his five victims under his arms.
The elevator operator was prone on the floor of the cage. There was not a mark on him. He had simply fainted from fright during Monk's terrific fight.
'Where are the others?' Doc questioned.
'Reckon they've got the rest of them upstairs,' Monk laughed. 'Anyhow, they was goin' strong when I chased these five into the elevator.'
'What floor they on?'
'Fifth.'
Doc halted the cage at the fifth floor. He got out. Monk trailed him, pausing only to butt the head of one of his captives against the wall when the fellow seemed about to revive. Monk did this without even shifting the prisoner under his arm.
Stifled screeches and moans were coming from a room down the corridor. Doc and Monk approached the sounds.
But they had only taken a few steps when the panel flew out of the door, a torn mess of splinters. Approximately a gallon of reddish, iron-hard knuckles appeared.
'Renny is celebratin'!' Monk chuckled. 'The big lout is gonna haul off and hit a block of iron by mistake some day.'
The fist belonged to Colonel John Renwick. He was honored throughout the world for his feats in civil engineering—and for his ability to pop the panel out of the stoutest door with his fist. He had a habit of doing this when he felt good. Evidently his spirits were high now.
It was the print of Renny's gigantic thumb which had signed the blank sheet of paper they had left at the Danielsen & Haas office to show Doc they were in town.
They caught sight of Renny's features through the hole his big fist had made. The face would have surprised a stranger, who would naturally have expected to see a wide grin.
It was forbidding, solemn. Indeed, it looked as if the owner had just gone to a funeral.
But that was another peculiarity about Renny, who was six feet four, and weighed two fifty. The more joyful the occasion, the more sour he looked.
Another burst of screeches and moans came out of the room.
Doc and Monk entered.
'GLORY be!' grinned Monk. 'What're you doin' to that poor feller, Long Tom?'
Long Tom—Major Thomas J. Roberts on the military records—was the weakling of the crowd, judging by appearances. He was undersized, slender, only fairly set up. He had pale hair and pale eyes, and a somewhat sallow complexion—as though he might have spent a lot of his life in a cellar.
His ears were big and thin and pale, and since they were between Doc and Monk and the light, it was almost possible to see through them.
Long Tom sat on a beaten-up swamp man. He was busily engaged with the ends of an electric cord he had torn from a floor lamp. He was tying them to the wrists of the man on whom he sat.
'This monkey don't know what electricity is,' he snorted. 'I'm gonna give a couple of shocks. It might persuade him to tell who the Gray Spider is, and where we can get him.'
It was natural that Long Tom's thoughts should turn to electricity. That was his profession. His reputation in the electrical field had few equals. He was called in for consultations by the great electrical experts often.
A loud moan of agony drew their eyes to the window.
'Another experimenter!' Monk snorted.
The last member of Doc's group of friends and aids was near the window. He, too, sat on a prisoner. He was tall and gaunt, with a half-starved look. His hair was thin, and gray at the temples. He had the appearance of a studious scientist rather than an adventurer.
This was Johnny, or William Harper Littlejohn to the great men of archaeology and geology. Johnny possibly knew more about the structure of the earth and the habits of mankind, ancient and modern, than ninety-nine out of a hundred so-called experts on the subjects.
With one hand, Johnny was holding his glasses in the sunlight. The left lens of these spectacles was in reality a very powerful magnifying glass.
Johnny didn't need a left lens, since he had practically lost the use of that eye in the Great War. So he carried in its place a magnifier, which he could use in his business.
A curl of smoke came from the coat of the man Johnny sat on. The sun, concentrated by the magnifying lens, was burning the coat.
