Doc Savage - Mystery On Happy Bones Part 15

"Exactly," Doc said. "Tell them just that. But wait one hour before you do so. But neglect to tell them that you waited an hour."

Hannah breathed inward deeply and uneasily. "All right," she said. "But I hope it works."

"I hope so, too," Doc said.

Chapter XIII. SEA TRAP.

HANNAH waited the hour. It was a long time. It was an age.

She worked her way down to the beach, and stood behind a thick palm bole thirty feet from an armed sentry.

"h.e.l.lo, there," she called. "Take it easy, pal. I want to talk."

The sentry jumped, lifted his rifle. "Who is?" he demanded in poor English.

Hannah made her voice pleasant, said, "A friend."

The sentry thought that over. He was intrigued by her voice. "Come out," he ordered. "Come here,friend."

Hannah joined him. The sentry was very favorably impressed when he saw how pretty she was.

"Ach, fraulein!"

he exclaimed. "Sprechen sie Deutsch, bitte?"

"I speak only English," Hannah said.

The sentry looked at her. He was a burly young man with sensual lips and appreciative eyes. "You native, nein?" he asked.

"You better call your boss, my amorous friend," Hannah said dryly. "He will want to talk to me."

The sentry grinned. "Talk to me, ja? Much better, ja?"

"Look, Romeo, you're playing with fire," Hannah said. "Call your boss, or you'll wish you had."

"A kiss first, bitte," said the sentry. He took a step forward.

A uniformed enemy naval officer appeared. The sentry hastily snapped to attention.

Hannah had not told the truth about understanding only English. She was not a fluent linguist. But she understood the officer asking the sentry what was going on. And the sentry replied that it was just a girl who was a native on the island.

The officer promptly knocked the sentry flat.

"That's fine," Hannah said. "I thought I would have to get around to doing that myself."

The officer didn't think it was funny. He seized her by the arm and rushed her off to the house. Around the house were some of the gang who had been in Washington.

"That's Hannah," one of them said. "She's one of them who helped stir up this trouble."

"The one who was with this Doc Savage?"

"That is right."

Instantly, the officer showed Hannah the muzzle of a pistol and a fierce expression. "Where is Savage?"

"That gun doesn't scare me," Hannah said. "Look here, I came down here because I need some money."

They did not quite understand. "Money?"

"Fifty thousand dollars," Hannah said.

The officer laughed loudly. "Over one hundred thousand marks," he said. "Ridiculous."

"Dollars, not marks," Hannah told him. "I wouldn't give you ten cents a bushel for your marks."

"Anyway," said the officer, "it is ridiculous."

"It'll be worth it."

"What do you mean?""Doc Savage did something," Hannah said, "and it will be worth fifty thousand to you to know what it was. But use your own judgment."

THE thing did not take selling. Hannah was surprised how little selling it took. They immediately believed her, and they were a great deal more worried than she expected them to be.

They were very scared of Doc Savage.

They threatened her for a while. Then they told her, in a tone which they did not succeed in making convincing, that they didn't give a d.a.m.n; that they couldn't take her on the submarine, so they'd probably have to shoot her. Then they went off and left her guarded by four fierce-looking sailors with light machine guns.

Through the window, Hannah saw that they were now landing cargo on the submarine.

The cargo surprised her.

It consisted of small, but stout wooden boxes. The boxes seemed heavy. There were not many of them.

A dozen or two.

When the last box was loaded, the officer-Hannah had concluded by now that the man was the submarine commander-came in and drew a pistol.

"Auf wiedersien, fraulein,"

he said. "If you wish to pray, you had better do so."

Hannah showed him her teeth. "I pray, all right," she said. "But not for myself."

"You might," said the officer, "help yourself by giving all the information you have concerning the doings of Doc Savage."

"I might," Hannah agreed, "for fifty thousand dollars in American money."

"Where would we get American money?"

"In gold, then," Hannah said. "You have stolen plenty of gold, I imagine."

The officer did some threatening. It got him nowhere.

"Take her on board the submarine," he said in German. "We sail at once!"

That shocked Hannah. She tried to keep her feelings off her face. So they were sailing, and taking her along. She hadn't expected that.

Doc Savage had not told her the details of his plan. She had racked her brain without thinking of anything that one man could do to remedy the situation.

The only thing pleasant and sustaining in the situation was the remarkable confidence she had acquired in Doc Savage. In the beginning, she had been skeptical about the bronze man. She had heard of him. He was a legend in the far corners of the earth. And privately, she had considered him too good to be true.

She had expected him to be a flop.

But she had seen him work, and had changed her opinion. She remembered the breathless business oftraveling through the trees, and shivered.

They took her aboard the submarine.

The sub blew its forward ballast tanks, lifted its bow free of the sand. It backed off the beach. It lay about a hundred yards offsh.o.r.e, waiting while final preparations were made for departure.

ONE of the final preparations, it became evident, was to get Hannah to talk.

The submarine commander stood in front of Hannah, scowling, for some time.

"Fifty thousand dollars, eh?" he said in English.

He went out of the compartment, squeezing through the narrow door in the emergency bulkhead. When he came back, he had a metal box which seemed heavy, and a sailor was following him carrying another box, a wooden one-one of the boxes which they had just loaded aboard.

The commander opened the metal case. There was yellow metal inside-small bars of gold, molded and stamped with its value.

The officer placed several of the little bars on the steel table.

"That," he said impressively, "is fifty thousand dollars."

"So we are going to make a deal," Hannah said, sounding pleased.

"I do not know," the commander admitted. "We might. But you must know what you are doing."

"That," Hannah said, "would be a help."

The commander studied her. "I've been doing some inquiring about you, and I find you had pirates for ancestors, and a rather unusual background," he said. "It is possible I will have to deal with you. First, however, I am going to tell you what you are getting into, and what you will have to do."

He gestured at the sailor with the wooden box, said, "Open the box and show it to the lady," in his native language.

The sailor pried the cover off the wooden box. He let Hannah view the contents.

Silver, she thought. Then she changed her idea. Not silver. This metal was different, different in texture and color and sheen.

She was no metallurgist. She knew gold when she saw it; that is, she could tell it from bra.s.s if she scratched it and found it softer. The same way with silver and lead.

She made a random guess. "Tungsten," she said.

The submarine commander jumped. He was startled. "You knew that!" he accused her. "Doc Savage told you! So Savage solved the mystery at once."

Truthfully, Hannah said, "Brother, I figured it out for myself."

The officer snorted. "Impossible! It is the opinion of geologists that no tungsten exists in this part of the world. The geological formations are not right for it. It was only through some freak in the volcanicupheaval which formed Happy Bones Island, that a small vein of almost chemically pure tungsten was brought up and exposed."

Hannah thought: So that was what Doc meant when he was talking about the geologically unusual structure of the island!

Tungsten! It had been nothing but a random guess on her part. She had seen the metal in electrical apparatus, and had read a magazine article about how essential it was in war use.

The magazine article on tungsten, she remembered, had said that the Axis powers were frantically short of it. Tungsten was a thousand times more valuable to the Axis than gold, because there was so little, and they had to have it.

"So there is tungsten on Happy Bones," she said. "Go ahead with your story, commander."

HE surprised her by complying.

"Tungsten was found on Happy Bones recently by accident," he explained. "The man who found it could sell it to America, to the United States-for the market price. Or he could sell it to us for a thousand times that price, paid in gold. So he chose to sell it to us."

"The man being Stony Smith," Hannah said.

"Do not be silly. Stony Smith is a prisoner aboard. Stony Smith's natives are prisoners aboard."

"Then who was he?"

"Nein, fraulein . His ident.i.ty would be better a secret. He contacted us, and this is the third trip to the island to get tungsten. We need much more. There is enough on Happy Bones to supply us. It may well mean the winning of the war for us."

Hannah studied him. "There was a little hitch," she said, "when the United States decided to put a flying field on Happy Bones."

The submarine commander grimaced. "Ja! Bad, that. And unexpected. We could not come to Happy Bones and get tungsten if the Americans had an air base there."

"And so?"

"So we dispatched our man to Washington to see what could be done. He took along a.s.sistants who could pa.s.s as Americans. That was in case Major Lowell, the American officer who had charge of locating the flying field, would not listen to reason."

Hannah straightened. "Listen to reason-you mean, you tried to bribe Major Lowell?"