knowledge of Doc.
But some of the brainiest, most upright citizens of New York could have told Squint amazing things about the big bronze man. More than one of these owed Doc a debt of deepest gratitude for past services.
The leading political boss, the most influential man in the city government, owed his life to Doc’s magical skill at surgery. An extremely delicate operation upon the very walls of his heart had taken him from the door of death.
SQUINT did not enter the tenth house from the corner. He sidled into another several doors distant. He felt his way up a gloomy succession of stairs. A trapdoor gave to the roof. He eased out. Quietly, he closed the trapdoor behind him.
He did not notice it open a fraction of an inch a moment later. He did not dream a pair of flaky gold eyes were photographing his every move.
Squint scuttled across rooftops to the tenth house from the corner. He entered through another hatch on that roof.
He had hardly disappeared when Doc’s bronze form was floating over the roofs in pursuit. Doc pressed an ear to the hatch. His aural organs, imbued with a sensitiveness near superhuman, told him Squint had walked down a top-floor passage to the back.
A moment later, a window at the rear opened. Doc was poised above it in an instant. Squint’s relieved whisper reached him.
'No chance of anybody listenin’ from here!' Squint had breathed.
The window grated down.
With silent speed, Doc was over the roof edge. Even a bat, master of clinging to smooth surfaces, would have had trouble with the wall. Grooves between the bricks furnished the only handholds. Doc’s steel-strong bronze fingers found the largest of these.
At the window, there was no perch. But Doc hung by little more than his finger tips. His tireless sinews could support him thus for hours.
A shade had been drawn on the other side of the window. But it was old and cracked. One of these cracks let Doc look into the room.
The window sash fitted poorly. It gaped open at the bottom. Through this space, conversation seeped.
More than a dozen men were assembled in the shabby room. Some were thick-necked and burly. More were thin, with the look of drug addicts in their vicious eyes. And every one had the furtive manner of the confirmed criminal.
They were as choice a devil’s dozen as ever held unholy conclave.
Squint stood before them. He was swaggering and punctuating his talk with curses to cover his nervousness.
'Now you mugs pipe down while I call the big shot!' he snarled.
He strode to one wall. The old plaster was a network of jagged cracks. He pressed a certain spot. A secret panel, the edges cleverly disguised by the cracks, opened. Squint took out a telephone instrument.
The phone obviously was not a part of the regular city system, since Squint did not give a number, but began speaking at once.
'Kar?' he asked. 'This is Squint.'
Outside the window, Doc Savage’s strong bronze lips formed the word 'Kar.' The dying man on the pirate ship, in trying to name the master mind who had given them the mysterious dissolving substance called the 'Smoke of Eternity,' had started a name that began with a 'K.'
Kar was that name!
'Yeah,' Squint was saying over the secret phone line. 'We put old Jerome Coffern out of the way like you ordered.' Squint paused to wet his dry lips nervously, then added, 'We — we had a little tough luck.'
Squint was surprisingly modest. His four companions had died violently and he had barely escaped with his life — and he passed it off as a little tough luck!
Replying to a sharp query from Kar, Squint reluctantly explained the nature of the insignificant misfortune.
The outburst the information got from Kar was so violent the rattling of the receiver diaphragm reached even Doc Savage’s ears.
There followed what was evidently a long procession of orders. These were spoken in a low voice by Kar. Doc’s ears, sensitive to the extreme, could not hear a single word.
SQUINT hung up at last and replaced the phone. He closed the secret panel. Lighting a cigarette, he drew deeply from it, as though seeking courage. Then he faced the assembled thugs.
'Kar says I’m to tell you guys the whole thing,' he said, making his voice harsh. 'He says you will work together better if you know what it’s all about. He says it’ll show you birds where your bread is buttered. I guess he’s right, at that.'
Squint paused to blow a plume of smoke at the ceiling. But the smoke apparently reminded him of the weird dissolving of Jerome Coffern’s body. He made a face and flung the cigarette on the floor.
'This is the first time you guys have been here!' he told the men. 'Each one of you got the word from me to come to this room. I sent for you. I know every one of you. You’re regular guys. That’s why I’m ringing you in on the best thing you ever saw.'
'Aw, cut out the mush an’ get down to talkin’ turkey!' a thick-necked bruiser growled.
Squint ignored the contemptuous tone of the interruption.
'Sure, I’ll talk turkey!' he sneered. 'You just heard me jawin’ to the big shot. His name is Kar. That phone leads to his secret hangout. I don’t know where it is. I don’t even know Kar.'
'You dunno who the chief is?' muttered the thick-necked man.
'Nope.'
'Then how’d you — '
'How’d I get hooked up with him?' Squint chuckled. 'I got a telephone call from him. He said he’d heard I was a square shooter, and did I want to get in on the best thing in the world? I did. And I’m tellin’ you it’s good. This proposition is the best ever.'
'What is it?' queried he of the beefy neck.
'How does a million bucks to each of you within a year sound?' Squint demanded dramatically.
Jaws fell. Eyes popped.
'A million — '
'That much anyway!' Squint declared. 'Maybe more! The million is guaranteed. You draw fifty thousand of it tomorrow. Fifty grand for each guy! But before I say more, I gotta know if you’re comin’ in.
'I know you mugs can’t afford to run to the police and talk. You’re sure to be rubbed out if you do. And if you come in, you gotta take orders from me. And I get my orders from Kar. I’m sort of a straw boss, see!'
'Count me in!' ejaculated the thug with the ample neck.
Like flies to sugar, the others offered eager allegiance.
'Here’s the lay!' announced Squint. 'This fellow Kar has got something he calls the Smoke of Eternity. It’s something nobody ever heard of before. A few drops of it will dissolve a man’s body — make it turn into an ugly gray smoke. The stuff will dissolve brick, metal and wood — almost anything.'
For some seconds the villainous assemblage digested this. It was too much for them to swallow. The big- necked fellow voiced the thoughts of the rest.
'You’re crazy!' he said.
REDDENING, Squint swore and shook his fist.
'I ain’t nuts!' he ranted. 'The Smoke of Eternity works like that! I dunno what the stuff is. I only know it will dissolve a man. It will wipe the front right off the biggest bank vault there is. Enough of it, about a suitcase full, could turn the Empire State Building into that queer smoke.'
The others were still skeptical.
