like a gay silk handkerchief.
The fellow looked somewhat ludicrous, for he wore a woolly overcoat. And the summer evening was rather hot! From his standpoint, there was cunning in the wearing of the coat. It had no exposed buttons which might have scraped on the sides of his hiding place and betrayed him! He had even pulled big wool socks over his toes so there would be no squeal of leather against wood.
This sinister person scooped up the telephone. He asked for a number and got it. He listened intently and recognized the voice which spoke to him.
'This is the Gray Spider!' he said in hoarse, fierce tones. 'Assemble the most trusted men of the Clan of the Moccasin!'
'It will be done,' replied an awed whisper.
'Tonight we wipe out the bronze devil! He cannot evade us!'
With an ugly, guttering laugh, the Gray Spider hung up. He glided into the corridor. He had not removed his silk mask, nor his foolish overcoat, nor the big wool socks from over his shoes.
He found a Window in the front of the building. Craning his neck, he managed to see down to the street. He made a snarling noise at what he saw.
Doc Savage was installing Big Eric, Edna, Ham, and Long Tom in the taxi.
Doc himself rode the running board, as was his custom. The cab rolled away from the curb.
Doc's golden eyes roved everywhere, missing nothing. They scrutinized the windows of the Danielsen & Haas building casually.
There was now no masked face at a top-floor window, however.
Big Eric and Edna were left at the Danielsen mansion. Doc handed over a pair of his wonderfully compact, extremely rapid-firing machine guns—the weapons of his own invention. He also produced gas masks and violent little hand grenades.
He made a quick, thorough search of the elaborate dwelling. Finishing, he was certain none of the Gray Spider's men were concealed about.
'Have you floodlights that will illuminate the grounds?' he questioned Big Eric.
'I sure have.'
'Keep them on all night. One of you be on guard every minute. We will try to be back by morning. But it is impossible to guarantee that.'
'We'll be all right,' Big Eric declared.
'And you must be careful!' ravishing Edna Danielsen told Doc in a strange, tight voice, the significance of which was quite lost on him.
Ham and Long Tom exchanged knowing looks when they were outside.
'The queen has tumbled for Doc!' Ham grinned.
'And don't they all?' chuckled Long Tom.
THEIR next move was a quick return to Long Tom's 'central,' which he had established for all his tapped phone lines. There, Doc made an effort to get in touch with Johnny. But his rapid radio calling elicited no answer from the plane in the swamp.
'No way we can let Johnny know we're coming,' Doc decided. 'We'll leave the radio apparatus turned on, and if he calls, one of the stenographers can slip him the news.'
Once more they entered a car. But it was Doc's roadster this time, instead of the taxi. The rumble seat and the baggage compartments already held such equipment as Doc thought they would need for just such a jaunt as this.
Doc wheeled the car into traffic. One of his bronze fingers clicked a newly installed switch. Under the hood, a police siren began to wail. The speedometer climbed past forty, fifty and sixty with ten-mile-an-hour jumps.
Ham and Long Tom sat tight and held their hat to keep them from being blown off by the terrific rush of air. Doc wore no hat. No goggles protected his golden eyes. The windshield was down. Yet the roaring wind seemed to have absolutely no effect on his bronze immaculateness.
'Hadn't we better pick up a boat somewhere?' Ham inquired.
'We’ve got it,' Doc replied.
'Huh?'
'In the rumble seat—a collapsible silk boat you can almost put in your coat pocket. Also, there's an outboard motor that hardly weighs more than a portable typewriter. Other things, too!'
Ham pinched his eyes shut against the slapping, tearing wind. The uncanny way his big bronze leader had of preparing for every emergency was a continuous source of wonder to Ham. He, carrying in his head the keenest thinking machine of the adventurous group, excepting only Doc, could pick out many possible emergencies that could arise. But mighty Doc Savage saw ahead to dangers of which Ham did not dream, and seemed always to have a defense against them.
The miles streaked under the panting roadster. Darkness had fallen. The moon was out, brilliant.
Into the swamps dived the road. Great cypress towered like clouds of green over the thoroughfare. On higher ground, yellow pines stood slender and tall like arrayed sentinels.
'Great lumber country,' Ham offered, to break the silence.
'Second only to the State of Washington in the value of lumber produced,' Doc replied.
Long Tom chuckled. 'And I sort of had the idea sugar cane and cotton was all they grew down here!'
The smokestack of a sawmill spouted sparks on their left. Steam labored. A head saw bit into a log with a sound like silk cloth being torn. The mill was ablaze with lights. More electric bulbs hung out on a cableway system used to lift logs out of the storage yard and drop them on the log dogs in the bull chain that fed the sawing carriages.
Doc's roadster whipped on and the night-working sawmill was left behind. The road seemed to sink. It became a tortuous groove in a spongy mat of steaming, ominous swamp. The moonlight did not reach it often.
The headlights danced like fat white chalk sticks juggled on the snout of the roadster.
'Is this the only road into Buck Boontown's part of the Morass?' Ham asked.
'It is,' Doc assured him.
THE monotony of their swamp trip was soon shattered. The road lifted suddenly. It narrowed until there was room for only one car. The road was crossing a deep bayou on a high levee.
To either side, moonbeams shimmered up from the listless surface of the bayou. Higher and higher, the car swept. It was half across the grade.
At this point, Doc's uncanny keenness of eye was demonstrated. The others saw nothing portentous of danger. No obstruction barred the way.
But Doc's golden eyes noted a disquieting object. A small stick, smaller even than a lead pencil, projected upward from the road middle. It had been set there recently. The disturbed condition of the road showed that.
Doc trod the brake. The suspicious stick was only a few yards away. The roadster was doing sixty. It skewered. It careened from side to side, skidding. All four tires, frozen immobile by the brakes, squealed like hungry pigs.
The stick came nearer. Doc saw the roadster wasn't going to stop in time. The road was too narrow to steer to either side.
Suddenly several men ran into view at the end of the levee. They were wizened. They looked like big, hairless, bob-tailed monkeys.
Harnessed to his middle, every man had an aircraft-type machine gun.
Doc's bronze head flashed around. Behind them, more of the swamp men had appeared.
'A trap!' Ham rapped.
The exclamation was hardly off Ham's lips when a powerful bronze arm grasped him and flung him bodily out of the roadster. Ham's form cleared the levee! He sailed for the water.
Despite the suddenness of what had occurred, Ham still retained a clutch on his sword cane.
Even as he saw Ham clear the levee, Long Tom found he was also spinning through space. Turning over in the air, he got a glimpse of Doc Savage's powerful frame cleaving down after him.
Both Ham and Long Tom felt as though they had been half jerked apart by the titanic sinews of the bronze
