"Blindfold them," the captor in charge ordered suddenly.

  The blindfolds were ready at hand, it developed, thick dark cloth which was tied on over layers of adhesive tape which was plastered over their eyes.

  "What is the idea of this?" Doc demanded. "In this kind of going, we can hardly see--" "Shut up!"

  "Is good, yes!" gasped Dartlic. "Is sign they not going to kill us."

  Doc heard a blow--he was already blindfolded--and, in a few minutes, painful gasping by Dartlic.

  They walked, then, interminably; they fell time without number, they were pushed and shoved. Renny had cause, blindfolded as he was, to regret his trick on the guard; the thing preyed on his mind; he expected to be shoved over a cliff himself any minute, until finally it became a nightmare. They began to hear the dull rumble of a waterfall, and this came nearer, but slowly, and then it faded somewhat; but had not been left entirely behind when they reached their destination.

  WOODEN steps came underfoot, then planking; the first steps had been only three in number. They walked, Renny judged, about twenty feet on a wooden floor, and pepper was suddenly tossed into his nostrils, causing him to go into paroxysms of sneezing, in the course of which he was led down more steps--about twenty risers down--and then along a passage that was fairly narrow, for he could feel the stone sides with his shoulders. Stone was underfoot now.

  A voice came. It was loud, incredibly loud. It smashed against their eardrums.

  "Untie Savage's hands, you fools!" the voice bellowed. "If you have damaged his hands, damn you!" A loudspeaker, Renny thought. Some kind of public address system--that was the source of the voice. "Consign them," the loudspeaker thundered, "to the prepared places."

  They heard Dartlic complain, "What the hell is this, yes? It is crazy like something a kid never thought of." For this, judging from the sounds, he was hit, or kicked, in the stomach.

  Presently they were led farther, this time through what was evidently a door, and, Renny judged from the banging of doors, the sliding of bars, they were being separated and locked in cells of some sort. He was shoved forward himself, and felt a knife sawing at the ropes that held his arms; as soon as one rope parted, the knife was taken away.

  "You can do the rest of it yourself," a voice said. And a door slammed, a very heavy door, judging from the noise.

  Renny, without delay, began working at the ropes on his arms. He knew, shortly, that someone else was in the place with him, and he said, "Who is it?"

  Doc Savage's voice said, "I'll get those ropes off you. Take it easy, Renny."

  A moment later, the ropes were removed. Renny, endeavoring to lift his arms, gasped in agony.

  "Whew! Holy cow!" he blurted. "They damned near ruined my arms. The circulation is gone out of them." "It will come back. I'll take the tape off your eyes. It's going to hurt."

  It did hurt, and Renny's eyes watered until he could see nothing for a while... His first impression of their surrounding was not good. "A cave," he muttered. The cavern, not particularly large and with nothing outstanding about it except that it was a cave, was apparently of natural formation, the work of some underground stream a long time ago. Caves like it, Renny reflected, could be found in almost any part of the world.

  Their prison arrangement was still more ordinary. It consisted of fences about eight feet high, made of heavy rough-sawn planking--timbers actually--dividing a section of the cave into twelve-foot squares; at least their pen was approximately twelve feet in each dimension. There was no roof, other than the cave roof, which was some thirty feet overhead at this point.

  A voice called loudly, "Doc!"

  "Monk!" Renny yelled. "Where the blazes are you?"

  MONK MAYFAIR'S voice angrily informed them that he was penned up. "I can't tell where you are with relation to where I am, on account of the blasted echoes in here," he said. "I'm to the right, though, I think. You see that gray-colored patch on the ceiling? I'm just about under that."

  Renny, searching for the lighter patch on the ceiling, shouted, "Where is Ham? Is he...?" Ham himself answered that. "I'm in the same fix with the rest of you."

  Monk yelled, "Watch out for the top of these pens. There's a wire runs around the top of them, and it's charged with electricity. You don't get a good ground hanging to the wall, but it's enough to knock the pants off you anyway. You couldn't climb out of here if you wanted to."

  Doc asked, "What happened to you two?"

  Monk and Ham tried to talk at once, but Monk finally gave the story; his rather thin and squawking voice seemed to have less trouble with the acoustics of the cave. He told about the waylaying of Bernard Perling's car in Buenos Aires, their beating, their awakening--four days later, they had been told--on a boat traveling on the lake. "We thought we were at sea," Monk explained. "Only we weren't. They get to this place--from what I hear it's the most isolated part of the lake region--by boat from a landing field about twenty miles away where they're in the habit of bringing their stuff in by plane."

  Ham said, "Tell him about Paul Cort."

  Monk gave a realistic description of their finding Paul Cort on the boat with them, being beaten, of their getting through the bulkhead to Cort, and their conversation with him.

  "You know what that guy done?" Monk demanded. "Eh?"

  "Sucked us in, that's what he did," Monk said angrily. "The guy was a phony. He said that he was an Argentinian agent. He was no more an Argentinian agent than I am. He was working for Hans Boehl."

  "Hans Boehl is behind this?"

  "Sure."

  "Have you seen him?"

  "Nah. I gather they expect him here today."

  Doc asked, "What was the idea of their taking such elaborate pains to foist Cort on to you as a friend?" "They wanted to pump us about how much you knew."

  "Oh."

  "They didn't have any luck," Monk said. "Not that it seems important now."

  "No, it doesn't seem too important now."

  "You know what this is all about?" Monk demanded.

  "Do you?"

  "They got a job they're gonna try to make you do," Monk said. "Some kind of a scientific job."

  Chapter XII

  DOC SAVAGE was taken out of the pen late in the afternoon. He was sleeping, and someone kicked him in the ribs; it was a man with a rifle, and the fellow backed away warily, said, in Spanish, "You come with me, alone."

  Renny, alarmed, looked at Doc. The only light, which came from a single naked electric bulb strung high overhead, was not very effective in the cell, but it did accentuate the lines of anxiety on Renny's long face.

  "I imagine this is just a preliminary propositioning," Doc said. "Take it easy."

  He was removed from the pen, the door was fastened again. He discovered that two other guards had gotten Susan Lane out of another pen. She appeared bewildered, terrified.

  "Obey orders, Susie," Doc said quietly. "But they--"

  "We'll play along with them."

  "Oh, no--"

  "For the time being."

  They were escorted to the right, then around a corner, and Doc decided they were not going toward the cave entrance, but deeper into the thing. They came, presently, to a narrow area which was planked up solidly except for a door, through which they were escorted.

  Now the loudspeaker voice hailed them thunderously.

  "Guards?" it said.

  "Yes, they are inside," one of the escorts said.

  "Hold them there a moment," the voice said. The loudspeaker outfit was obviously of the conventional intercommunicator type, the speakers serving as pickup microphones as well as speakers. "Mr. Savage," the voice said.

  "Yes?"

  "Good. I am Hans Boehl. I prefer not to let you get a look at me for obvious reasons. Therefore I am taking this method of addressing you."

  "I see."

  "You know," the voice demanded, "who Miss Susan Lane is?" "Yes," Doc said.

  "If your information is that she is an operative for the State Department of the United States of America, that data is correct," Hans Boehl's voice said. "You needn't admit it. I toss in the information for what it is worth."

  Doc made no comment.

  "You have," the voice said, "been brought here, at considerable expense and more elaborate scheming than perhaps was necessary, to do some specialized work."

  "You think I'll do it?" Doc asked. "I don't think you are a fool." Doc said nothing.

  "You will now be taken into the laboratory," the voice said. "You will touch nothing, or the guards will shoot Miss Lane. They will not shoot you unless it is necessary, but they will at once shoot Miss Lane. You understand that?"

  "I hear you."

  THE laboratory--it lay beyond another locked door, and was brilliantly lighted--was equipped with German apparatus almost entirely, Doc saw. It was, for its purpose, excellent equipment. He saw power generators and converters, saw bins of ore and metals that were used in experimentation; mounted prominently, lead-shielded, was a compact and fairly powerful cyclotron.

  He gave the cyclotron particular attention--it was, he knew, one of the products of Nazi scientific skill and had been built originally, he surmised, for the atom-bomb research in the Reich. There were, he saw, water shields to stop wildly thrown neutrons, indicating that no better system of control had been worked out. There was an innovation, a movable arrangement so that the thing could be pushed forward or backward, firing either at an extremely large target, or a very small one.

  "What do you think of it, Herr Savage?" Boehl's voice bawled out of the speakers. "Mediocre," Doc said bluntly.

  The other snorted. "An insult," he said. "That is a very good cyclotron, and you know it. But we will not go into a discussion about Nazi shortcomings. You are, I understand, a direct man. Is that right?"

  "Get to the point," Doc suggested.

  "Fine. The point is this: the nature of an element is determined by the number of protons in the nucleus. Bombarding by neutrons, through use of a cyclotron, has proved that the number of protons in an element can be changed. In other words, you can change molecular structure through addition or subtraction of protons. This happens under cyclotron bombardment."

  Doc said drily, "Almost any reader of the newspapers in the United States could come up with that kind of information."

  Hans Boehl agreed. "Perhaps true. I do not know. But in my experiments with atomic explosion, I find as you have found, no doubt, that the chief problem is the slowing down of the speed of neutron bombardment, so that atomic disintegration would be accomplished, rather than having the neutrons speed harmlessly past. Is that not so?"

  "If you expect any elementary instruction out of me," Doc said, "my frame of mind will have to be somewhat different from what it now is. What are you driving at?"

  The other said unpleasantly, "I am no child at this business." "Matter of opinion."

  "Would you like to know what you're going to do? You're going to complete my experiments aimed at changing a baser metal into gold."

  "Gold? Make gold out of what?" "Lead."

  "It can't be done," Doc said.

  "It can!" The man became excited. "Do not tell me black is white! I have seen it done--once, in Munich, it was done, but by accident. It happened in the course of experiments, and the man who did it could not repeat." The man cursed roundly in German, added, "You do this, you understand, or your friends will be killed. And do not tell me you will not under such compulsion, because I have seen it worked on men fully as well-equipped with ideals as yourself. Guards, take them back. You will have time to think about it."

  RENNY had come to the conclusion that the outlook was tough, and Monk and Ham agreed with him. They listened to Doc's explanation about the gold--what talking they did had to be shouted across the partitions--without too much surprise. Ham Brooks went philosophical to the extent of remarking, "That's about the sort of thing one would expect an escaped Nazi to devote his attention to. Turning cheaper metals to gold has been the dream of avarice down through the centuries. The point is, can it be done?"

  Doc said, "Boehl claims it can--claims it happened once during the course of the Nazi atomic research." "He lying?"

  "He might be."

  Renny added the practical thought that, "On the other hand, some Nazi scientist might have slipped a piece of gold into the contraption to make them think he was a very valuable guy who had discovered something special."

  "Anyway," Doc said, "it is in my lap."

  "Are you going to do it?"

  "You mean, going to try," Doc said. "I don't know."

  Fat Dartlic wailed, "If not you dry we maybe die too quick, no? You think of that?" "How much time have you to think it over?" Ham called.

  "He neglected to say."

  Dartlic demanded, "If this you do, how long it take?"

  "Months, weeks, years--no telling," Doc said.

  "Is no good," the fat man complained. "I have not a liking--" He went silent, because two guards had entered that section of the cave, and one of them said, in German, "The fat man is wanted."

  Dartlic at once emitted a howl, "Me? What am I want to do nothing for?" He shouted some more, still in English, still mixed up, while they were opening his pen door, hauling him out and taking him away. His protestations receded, could no longer be heard.

  "What you suppose they want with him?" Renny asked. "That guy, for my memory, is about as useless as they come."

  Chapter XIII

  ORLIN DARTLIC muttered to one of the guards, "Are we out of hearing, no?" When the guard grunted.

  "Ja," Dartlic stopped his howling. He went willingly with the escort, and arrived eventually in the part of the cave adjacent to the laboratory where Doc had been taken; he did not enter the laboratory, however, but was stopped in the intermediate room.

  The loudspeaker, its volume considerably reduced, addressed him. It was Boehl's voice, and the man said, "Nice work, Dartlic."

  "Is nice nothing," the fat man complained. "Is a hell of a complicated mess, yes." "You're doing all right."

  "I should hope so, maybe."

  Boehl's voice on the loudspeaker sounded friendly, and continued the compliments. "You are to be highly commended. Your whole part in the operation, the trip to New York, the summoning of Doc Savage, your pretended aid in Buenos Aires, all was very well carried out. I have good reports on you."

  "Is a job," the fat man said. "Anyway, I try."

  "There is just one thing."

  The fat man showed some alarm. "Always a fly in the soup," he grumbled. "Why did Savage come here?"

  "Eh? After all that planning and conniving you ask--"

  "Doc Savage is not a fool," Hans Boehl's voice said. "The man has a frightening reputation for coming up with the unexpected at the least expected times."

  "Is smart, yes," said Dartlic. "But not a genius, no. A man who works very hard at thinking and mind work, yes. But a dangerous man--it could be."

  "I wish you would learn to speak the English language," the other said. "Or stick to German." "Ach, nobody like the German language right now."

  Boehl swore bitterly. "Get back to the point--why did Doc Savage come here?" he said. "He was enticed here."

  "You really think so?"

  "If not, I was a sucker made of," Dartlic said. "What are you worried about?"

  The voice from the loudspeaker said, "I want you to try to find out whether Doc Savage came in here because he has a plan of action. He doesn't seem as worried as I expected."

  "He is plenty worried, you ask me," said Dartlic.

  "Well, see what you can get out of him."

  "You begin to scare me, yes," the fat man said uneasily. "What you think could happen to us?" "Savage could have something up his sleeve--"

  "He was searched, wasn't he?"

  "Don't overdo that silly ass manner," Boehl's voice growled out of the intercommunicator. "It may be that arrangements have been made with Argentine troops to follow down here and clean us out, or even with U. S. agents, the FBI or--"

  "Is fat chance of U. S. kissing with Argentine government," said Dartlic.

  "See if Doc Savage let himself be caught in this trap," the other said sharply.

 

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