"No atomic bomb, no," Dartlic said. "The whole world fears atomic bomb, yes? This is not that." He eyed Doc Savage intently. "I think you know what it could be, no?"

  "It could be a fake." Doc turned the print grimly in his hands. "God help us--let us hope it is." "Of a fake, we cannot take a chance."

  "No. . ."

  "Get back to Hans Boehl, I will," the fat man said. "It is known some of the best scientists in Germany got away before the Reich fell. That is no secret. One of the men who got away was Hans Boehl."

  "If he wasn't killed by the Russians."

  "They have not admitted so."

  "Or captured by them."

  "He is in Patagonia, we think," said Dartlic flatly.

  Doc Savage--the bronze man's vehemence surprised Ham--said, "Dartlic, that is important information. Can you back it up?"

  The fat man spread his hands in the gesture that he seemed to use habitually. "Prove? By producing Hans Boehl--no. By showing you men who claim to have seen him in Patagonia--yes. There were three men. Two are criminals in prison, and these men tried to buy relief from persecution by saying they could take us to Hans Boehl. They could not. When Argentine agents went to get Boehl, he was not there. The third man--murdered. Quite promptly after he talked, he was murdered."

  Ham looked at Doc, asked, "If this Hans Boehl is just a scientist--"

  "The man is more than that," Doc said quickly. "He is a genius at organization, and is generally credited with being one of the masterminds behind the whole Nazi set-up. He is not--as far as we definitely know--dangerous as a scientist. As an organizer, and a purveyor of Nazi ideology, he is vicious."

  "But," Ham said, "I don't see the point in connecting Boehl with this lake business."

  The fat man grunted painfully. He levelled an arm at the print. "If that lake--if that is what I suspect--and I am sure Mr. Savage suspects--it is a horrendous thing which Boehl could use, possibly."

  "I still don't--"

  "My mission here," Dartlic said dramatically, "is to ask Mr. Savage, to plead with Mr. Savage, to come to Patagonia and make an investigation and do--do whatever he thinks should be done."

  "You want Doc to come to Patagonia?" Ham said. "Is correct."

  THERE was silence in the room, and it was broken presently by the ringing of the telephone. Ham picked up the instrument, said, "Yes...He's rather busy... Well, all right." He extended the instrument toward Doc, explaining, "Some guy. He says he wants to speak to you about Dartlic, here."

  The fat man bolted upright. "About me!"

  Doc took the instrument. He said, "Speaking," and listened for a while. His face was quite expressionless, except for a slight downward warp of the mouth corners. He said, "Thank you, my friend. I hope we have the satisfaction of a meeting." He hung up.

  Dartlic blurted, "About me? What is said? Who was it?"

  "Let's see if you recognize the voice," Doc said. "Play it back, Ham."

  Ham worked with the recorder that was attached to the telephone, got the wire backed up, switched on to reproduce, and flicked the switch.

  They listened to Paul Cort's flat voice assuring Doc Savage that if he went to Patagonia, he would meet an abrupt end, and not a pleasant one, either. Cort was clipped, calm, expressionless.

  Fat Orlin Dartlic had turned white. "I know that voice!" he yelled. "Is man on plane. Is man named Paul Cort." The fat man buried his face in his hands, wailed, "I should have made the plane turn back in Buenos Aires."

  "Turn back?" Ham was suspicious.

  Dartlic nodded. "This Paul Cort is man we suspect. Is Portuguese. Him we have investigated, but we find nothing against him. Only rumors. He board the plane with me in Buenos Aires, and I am terrified and ask the pilot to turn back, but there is argument, and I do not press. I think I am but very nervous. Here in New York, today, I think he follow me. I am almost sure he try to follow me."

  "Paul Cort set those three guys on you downstairs, the ones who tried to kill you?" "Perhaps. It is likely."

  Doc Savage went over and played the telephone recording back, listening intently, turning the volume up until the voice bellowed out of the speaker, studying the voice tones and quality characteristics. He switched off the gadget.

  Ham said, "That's kind of corny--calling us up and threatening us."

  Doc said nothing.

  The fat man, puzzled, asked, "Corny--what is the word meaning?"

  "A dumb old trick that has been pulled before," Ham explained. "Effective the first couple of dozen times it was used, but now worn out."

  The fat man's shudder was gigantic. "It was effective on me, this corny," he said. "I am scared stiff."

  Chapter V

  COLONEL JOHN RENWICK waited, suitcase at his feet, in front of the shabby hotel on Twenty-eighth Street where he lived. He was a big man who looked awkwardly uncomfortable because of the embarrassing size of his fists, and a rather sour look which was his perpetual expression. The bitter expression was deceptive with Renny, for it was apt to be its sourest when Renny's spirits were fairly high.

  Presently Ham Brooks pulled up in a cab, and knocked open the door with a palm. "Climb in. Sorry I was a little late," Ham said.

  Renny got into the cab, examined Ham's well-dressed figure gloomily, and settled himself. Ham had a reputation for clothes, and he did his best to live up to it; just now he was wearing what the well-dressed gentleman in the tropics should wear. The air wasn't exactly tropical in New York. In fact, it was cold.

  "What about tickets?" Renny asked.

  "That's all arranged. Five on the Clipper to Buenos Aires."

  "Five?"

  "Doc, Monk, Dartlic, you and I."

  "Dartlic the fat, frightened guy you told me about over the telephone?" Ham nodded. "And don't underrate his fright. He's got it bad."

  The cab was in motion. It took a left turn up Fifth, caught a green light at the next corner, turned right and moved across town toward the less crowded speedway that would lead them to the big bridge and eventually to La Guardia field.

  "How come," Renny asked, "Doc isn't flying down there in one of our ships?" "Bait."

  "Huh?"

  "This Dartlic claims he was trailed from Argentina. And there isn't much doubt about three guys trying to put knives into him. I saw part of that myself."

  "They might have been putting on an act," Renny said suspiciously. "Act?"

  "Possible, isn't it?"

  Ham frowned. "You know something I don't?"

  "Nope."

  Ham considered the point. "Anyway, the shooting they did at me wasn't an act. The bullets were real and they did some good aiming."

  "Never teched you, eh?"

  "It's not funny."

  Renny examined Ham thoughtfully, said, "You look like a guy who found a snake in his oatmeal."

  Ham hesitated. "I guess I do at that. It's the way Doc seems to be looking at this thing. He's upset. I don't know that I've seen him quite as disturbed before."

  Renny whistled. "Holy cow. Upset, eh? He upsets about as easy as Gibraltar." "I know it."

  "Give me the story," Renny suggested. He listened to Ham's description of Orlin Dartlic's violent arrival in the uptown building--Ham glorified that part somewhat, made it plain that he was somewhat of a hero--and carried the recital through Dartlic's account of the vanished lake, the death of a metallurgist named Juan Russel, the remote vastness of Patagonia, the rumors of international rogues centering on the place, and particularly one rogue named Hans Boehl. "So Doc decided to go down and see what was cooking," Ham finished.

  "Holy cow! You saved fat boy's life, didn't you?" Renny said.

  "Go ahead, laugh."

  "I did. Silently."

  "You're acquiring some of Monk's stinking qualities," Ham said.

  "Uh-huh. I've heard of Hans Boehl."

  "You have!"

  "He's a bad boy."

  "So I gathered."

  "Now," said Renny, "you can tell me what about this vanished lake it was that stood Doc's hair on end."

  "Doc hasn't said."

  "The hell he hasn't."

  Ham nodded soberly. "You know how Doc gets close-mouthed when he runs into something so fantastic and grisly he doesn't quite believe a normal world could produce such a thing? Well, that's the way this has affected him. He acts as if it would scare the pants off us if he spread the information. That fat Dartlic acts the same way."

  MONK MAYFAIR, the chemist, was a short, wide and extremely homely man whose nickname was aptly applied. He was rated as one of the great industrial chemists of the day, but there was nothing about his appearance to betray the fact, and his behavior hit a consistent tone that was somewhat less than dignified.

  "Where's Monk?" Ham asked, after they had met Doc Savage and Orlin Dartlic at La Guardia, and introductions had been accomplished.

  "The last I saw of him, he had a blonde cornered," Doc explained.

  "Running right in form, eh?" Ham said. "Will you excuse me a minute. I'd better find the big dope and sort of protect him."

  Renny snorted when Ham was out of earshot. "Protect Monk--that's very good," he said. "What he meant was that he plans to ruin Monk with the blonde as quickly as possible."

  Ham Brooks and Monk Mayfair were very close friends, and if the occasion demanded--if it demanded very hard--either one of them would probably have risked his life for the other. However, they had not exchanged a civil sentence, as far as anyone could testify, since their first meeting. They seemed to enjoy each other's company enormously, and either one would spend infinite time and pains and effort--energy that would have earned good money if more sensibly directed--to perpetrate a dirty trick or an embarrassing practical gag on the other.

  "Whoeeee!" Ham had discovered Monk--more particularly, he had discovered the blonde. He hurried forward. "Well, well, if it isn't old love-bug himself!" he hailed Monk.

  "A viper in our midst," Monk said unpleasantly. "Look, will you run along and peddle it somewhere else?"

  Ham ignored this, beamed at the blonde, said, "Miss, I trust you don't fully understand the mistake you have made. I feel it my duty--"

  "Beat it, shyster!" Monk urged frantically. "This is a private--this is a young lady who has a six-foot-three, three-hundred-pound brother who hates lawyers. You better scram before he comes back--"

  "Why," said the blonde, "I haven't any brother."

  "That's too bad." Ham was sympathetic. "With this Monk Mayfair missing link around, any girl needs a big brother. By the way, my name is Brooks--Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks."

  "Susan Lane." The blonde extended her hand. "Susie, for short."

  Ham said, "I want to warn you, Susie, about this hairy oaf you've been talking to. He has a wife and thirteen children, most of whom are mentally deficient."

  "That's a damned lie!" Monk yelled.

  "It makes a good beginning, anyway," Ham said.

  Fat Orlin Dartlic got quite a wallop out of seeing Susie again; the wallop landing in his stomach. His jaw dropped, composure fell completely from his bulbous face for a moment. He croaked, "That--woman--" And pointed.

  Doc Savage gave Susan Lane an appraisal. His immediate thought, unspoken, was that she wasn't going to be a stabilizing influence on Monk and Ham, who were somewhat unpredictable at all times.

  "On the plane she was!" Dartlic blurted.

  "What plane?"

  "The one I come from Buenos Aires on."

  "She came up from Buenos Aires with you, eh?" "Yes--no. No! She got aboard at Rio."

  "In Brazil?"

  "Yes."

  "Rio de Janeiro," Doc suggested, "is quite a distance from Buenos Aires. It could be a coincidence. It often happens, two people riding the same plane to some destination, then taking the same plane back."

  The fat man shuddered violently. "With Hans Boehl in the picture, nothing is coincidence, maybe."

  DESPITE Orlin Dartlic's discouraging attitude at the start of the Buenos Aires flight, things took a pleasant course. Even, eventually, Dartlic himself seemed to be enjoying Susie's company. Susie had a certain rattlebrained effervescence that was amusing and, after a time, one began to suspect it was something she was born with, just as she had been born with the blonde hair, and that, underneath, there was quite a bit of hard-headed sense.

  "I'm going hunting again," Susie explained. "The Andes, this time. I guess I'm really going exploring, though."

  "Exploring for what?" the fat man asked.

  "Why, what do you explore for? Things, I guess. Maybe a lost race of giants. Don't they have giants in Patagonia? I've heard they do."

  Dartlic chuckled. "About Patagonia, almost anything you hear, yes... By the way, what became of the ocelot cub?"

  "Daniel?" "Uh--Daniel?"

  "The ocelot. I named him Daniel. You know, like Daniel in the lion's den, only he was a lion, if you want to call an ocelot a lion, which isn't exactly correct, but anyway I didn't think he would want to be called a lion, so I called him Daniel."

  "You disposed of the animal?"

  "I sent him to Papa's zoo in Tulsa. Papa has a zoo at our place in Tulsa, and I keep my animals there." Ham nudged Monk and whispered. "There! See where you're going to wind up. She has a zoo." "That isn't all she's got," Monk said cheerfully.

  Doc Savage devoted considerable thought to Susie during the southward trip, without reaching much of a conclusion as to whether she was rattlebrained or had keen intelligence. He distrusted his opinions about women anyway.

  Doc did draw from Susie's presence a certain amount of mental relief--he didn't like to do too much thinking about the grisly possibilities that could lie in the future of this matter they were launched upon. Thinking could, since they now had very little to work on, and were not yet on the scene, only take one course, that of painful contemplating of the magnitude and horror that might develop. Such thinking, which would do nothing but bring on more fear--a paralyzing state of terror was quite possible--was useless. Thought was best diverted, and Susie was a good diverter. He even, to the alarm of Monk and Ham, and the astonishment of Renny Renwick, went through the motions of playing up to Susie somewhat.

  "Holy cow!" Renny muttered, observing this unheard-of phenomenon. He told Monk, "What the hell! She's not Doc's type."

  "I wish you'd point that out to him," Monk said. "That kinda competition I can't take." "So I noticed," Renny said drily. "Ham is kinda heading you off, too, isn't he?"

  "That Ham," Monk said ominously, "had better have his sulfa kit handy, because I'm gonna work him over. I wonder how he thinks up all those lies he is telling her about me." He went back to his seat shaking his head.

  THE Clipper was slowed by head winds; it was night of the third day out of New York before the lights of Buenos Aires came into view far ahead, like sprinkled jewels, powder-fine, on a carpet of black velvet.

  Doc Savage called Renny back into the men's lounge. Orlin Dartlic was already there, but he took little part in the conference except to jerk his head repeatedly in agreement.

  "Renny, you're going to work directly with me," Doc explained. "Your engineering work has given you the kind of a scientific background that will be handy if this thing turns out to be what I--and Mr. Dartlic--believe it could be."

  Doc, Renny and Dartlic would go to a hotel, the Casa Helado, on Unos de Martes Avenue, number eighty-nine.

  "That will be our headquarters for the time--probably no more than a day--that it takes us to get organized for a trip to look at this vanished lake," Doc explained.

  Renny nodded. "What about Monk and Ham?"

  "They have the hotel address," Doc said. "They are going to follow the girl."

  "That's not much of a change for them," Renny said. "Follow the girl, eh? So you don't trust her little exploring story?"

  "Just not taking chances, is all. Mr. Dartlic feels nothing should be regarded as a coincidence when Hans Boehl is, or remotely might be, in the picture."

  Renny nodded gloomily.

  "Hans Boehl," he agreed, "takes the coincidence out of anything."

  Chapter VI

  MONK and Ham, having accepted the job of keeping tab on Susan Lane without any strenuous objections, proceeded to latch on to the young lady, to dog her footsteps. While a very obvious method, this was quite logical, because it was probably a normal thing to see young men panting around Susie. Susie herself seemed to accept it as a matter of course, but, shortly after alighting from the plane--while they were still in the customs rigamarole--another young man entered the scene.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11