Doc Savage - Terror and the Lonely Widow Part 10

Monk chuckled gaily. "I told you I'd shoot his hand off, if he tried that again," he said with satisfaction.

"But I don't think I got it clear off," he added regretfully.

FORWARD, there was some kind of goings-on among the pirates, but nothing gave a hint of what it was. One man thrust his head into the corridor and jerked it back again quickly, but otherwise the pa.s.sengers were obeying the instructions to keep in their seats.

Doc wondered how many of them were armed, and decided not many, probably.

"Ham," he said.

"Yes?"

"See what has happened to Renny."

It developed that Renny Renwick was on the upper deck, watching and waiting. As soon as Ham reported this, Doc worked aft to a companionway, and joined Renny.

Renny said, "I was up here looking over the ship when all the bang-bang started. I jumped out to see what it was, and came face to face with one of them. It scared the h.e.l.l out of both of us. He ran forward,and I ran aft." Renny indicated the niche where he was hiding. "I been posted here, but nothing has happened."

Doc asked, "How well do you know the lay out of this ship?"

"I know all about it."

"I mean the mechanical layout."

"That's what I mean, too."

"Can you get to a fuel line, a gasoline line, without being shot?"

Renny nodded immediately. "One of them, yes. But if we drained that tank, it won't do any good. It's an auxiliary tank, only holding a little fuel. And I don't think we can make the main wing and belly tanks.

From where they are the-control compartment, the engineer's compartment and the navigator's place-they could shoot us full of holes."

"Any gasoline line will do," Doc said. "Here's what I want you to do: get some containers. Small ones, half a dozen at least. Fill them with gas, and get them back in the rear."

"Will these air-sick containers do?"

"Not if they're sacks."

"They're like the ones they sell ice cream in."

"Good enough, as long as they have lids."

Doc moved back to the upper deck warily. The ship had been quiet-there hadn't been any more shooting anyway but he held no confidence that this would last.

He explained his plans to Monk and Ham.

Monk was alarmed.

"My G.o.d, the whole ship might explode!" he objected.

"Probably not," Doc said. "I don't think we have the least chance of getting them overpowered. What we need to do is scare the socks off them, make them afraid to bother ... Renny is getting the gasoline now.

Monk was not rea.s.sured. "This is too much like cutting off your head to cure a toothache," he muttered.

Chapter XI.

THE big seaplane had finished its climb to cruising alt.i.tude and, leveled out now with props in cruising pitch and the trim tabs on elevators, ailerons, rudders, all set for straight and level flight, the ship was driving through perfectly clear, stable air. There was none of the surface turbulence, thermal updrafts and downdrafts, that would have been felt flying over land. This air, cool, crisp, stable, had a firm solidarity about it, and the plane, for all the jumping about it was doing, could have been embedded in impossibly clear gla.s.s.

Waiting for Renny to get the gasoline, Doc Savage weighed their chances of reaching the control area-c.o.c.kpit, engineer's cubicle, navigator's room-without getting killed. He decided it was not worth the risk, which approximated certainty, that one or all of them would lose their lives.The loudspeaker addressed them fiercely.

It said: "Attention! Attention! There are, among the pa.s.sengers, four men, These men are Doc Savage, Renny Renwick, Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks. Overpower them. They are armed. Take their guns away from them, overpower them, and turn them over to us. Unless you do this, everyone aboard will be killed!"

There were a few moments of silence.

"Think it over!" the loudspeaker advised.

Ham said uneasily, "That's going to make some trouble for us, I'll bet."

There were, Doc had observed, two water-proof bulkheads which roughly divided the cabin section of the plane hull into three parts. There were waterproof hatches which could be closed manually so that, if the hull sustained damage, buoyancy of the other two sections would keep the seaplane afloat.

"They're not bulletproof," Doc decided regretfully, after examining one of the bulkheads.

"None of these bulkheads are bulletproof," Ham said.

"I'm afraid not."

"What's to keep them from working their way aft, riddling each compartment with bullets, then breaking through into it, and riddling the next one?"

Doc looked at him grimly. "They won't have to take that trouble. If they have a good rifle, which they probably have, they can slaughter the pa.s.sengers-and us-by merely shooting through the bulkheads."

"I hope they don't think of that."

"They probably have already," Doc said gloomily. "I imagine they'll try to get us overpowered and turned over to them before they really get rough."

A FEW minutes later, the loudspeaker verified Doc's sour prediction. The voice in the speaker was quite belligerent this time. It said: "Attention! You have two minutes to seize Doc Savage and his friends and turn them over to us!"

There was an impressed silence.

Renny rejoined them. He had five waxed cardboard containers with push-on lids, which gurgled, and he looked alarmed.

"Some of the pa.s.sengers are upset," he reported.

Monk said he didn't blame them. "Who wouldn't be upset," he added.

"I mean, some little pot-bellied guy is trying to say they've got to overpower us, the way they've been instructed."

Monk was very angry with the pot-bellied man. I'm gonna change that guy's ideas!" He started aft. "I'll make him wish-"

A bullet came aft, pa.s.sing through the bulkheads successively, making a loud rip of a sound. It had been fired from forward. It was a rifle bullet, probably metal-jacketed ... Aft, a woman shrieked. A man cried,"She's shot!" His voice fluttered with horror.

"Give me one of those containers of gasoline!" Doc said urgently.

He loosened the lid on one of the containers, put his head out in the corridor, and threw the thing toward the bow. He watched it strike-on the steps that led to the control section-and the lid came off. The gasoline sloshed out, spread.

Renny said, "That's hundred-octane stuff-the same kind of gas they used on that house in New York."

Doc nodded. "I suppose that-the burning of the New York house-gave me the idea."

Nothing happened for a while.

The loudspeaker said, "You understand we can shoot you down helplessly, don't you?" It sounded fierce, triumphant.

Ham moistened his lips, asked, "I wonder how they escaped from the house in New York?"

Doc said, "Probably went out on the roof of the front porch, then climbed down a trellis, and walked off up the street. There was a trellis handy, I noticed before the house burned completely."

"But didn't you see them?"

"I was in the back yard, and couldn't see what went on in front of the house," Doc explained.

The loudspeaker crashed out.

"Attention!" it said. "You have had a chance to seize Savage and his friends. You have not done so.

Some of you will now be shot."

"Oh, oh," Monk said. "Here's where we'll wish we had parachutes."

The explosions-two of them, rifle and gasoline blast-came very shortly. The rifle blast was sharp, grim, decisive. The gasoline made a longer, softer, more sinister sound. But it was quite effective. Flame actually ran back, for an instant, as far as the compartment where Doc and the others were posted.

"If the whole ship don't go now ..." Monk was terrified and not trying to hide it.

DOC SAVAGE stepped into the corridor to watch. He surmised, and correctly, that the enemy would be too busy with firemanship to take a shot at him.

He was, as a matter of fact, quite concerned. He knew the fire-extinguishing equipment aboard the plane should be ample to handle a cabin blaze. But something could always go wrong.

He said, "Monk, Ham, if there are any extinguishers around, better get them."

Forward, they were using foam type extinguishers of a somewhat new type, which made great quant.i.ties of foamy substance which resembled soapsuds of a creamy consistency. The quant.i.ty of this stuff was enormous. In a few moments, it had coated the pa.s.sage walls, lay inches deep on the pa.s.sage floor, and the gasoline blaze was extinguished.

Doc dispatched Monk to close the bulkhead door on the other deck He closed the one on this deck himself. Then he made his voice very loud and demanded, "Can you hearme?"

Presently Mr. Moore's voice informed him that he was a blank-blank-blank and so-and-so, and continued along this vein for thirty seconds. Mr. Moore sounded very frightened. He demanded, "Don't you know this plane will blow up?"

"That was half a pint of gasoline we threw up there," Doc informed him. "Next time-the next shot that is fired we'll throw a gallon."

Mr. Moore thought this would burn everyone to a crisp, and also the plane. "Are you crazy?" he yelled.

"That is about as appealing as sitting here and let you shoot us full of holes," Doc said.

Mr. Moore cursed him.

Doc interrupted. "Another thing-head this plane back to San Francisco."

"The h.e.l.l with you!" Mr. Moore said viciously.

That was the end of the conversation.

Renny said thoughtfully, "You think they'll be afraid to do any more shooting?"

"Wouldn't you, if you were in their position?"

Renny said he would. He added, "But they're not going to turn back."

Doc agreed they probably wouldn't. He and Renny were discussing their probable destination- they were sure this wasn't likely to be Hawaii when Monk Mayfair burst into their presence. Monk was excited.

"Who do you think I found in a compartment aft?" he yelled.

Doc stated that he couldn't imagine, unless it was Miss Berthena Gilroy, federal agent.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned!" Monk said, his eyes protruding. "How did you know that?"

Chapter XII.

THE one hundred and seventy-second meridian of longitude-east of Greenwich, not west-nearly bisects Kiska in the Aleutian island chain, from which point it drops southward some thousands of miles across almost limitless blue seas. Although it is crossed by shipping lanes to j.a.pan and Russian Asia in this stretch, the loneliness is also almost without limit. It pa.s.ses Wake island something less than five hundred miles to the east, and, dropping straight southward another few hundred miles, cuts, but does not quite bisect, the Gilbert group. On the maps after that, islands drop thick and fast, Howland Island, Phoenix Island, the Samoan group, Fiji. This is the heart of the South Seas of romance and story, and the islands stand pretty much untouched by time, white man, war, pestilence and strife. Not all the atolls are untouched, but many are. The j.a.ps did not get this far, their occupation plans, whatever they were, having run into a snag at Guadalca.n.a.l a thousand miles or so westward. The turmoil of war had moved northward, and now, peace having come, there was not even the occasional drone of a scouting seaplane high up in the incredibly blue tropical, sky.

There are volcanic islands and coral atolls, and some that are both volcanic and coral. Existence, as well as the scenery, being less inviting on the purely coral islands, population on them is scarcer and, more frequently than romantic tales have indicated, non-existent. Contrary also to romantic story, they do notalways have the uniform shape of horseshoe reef enclosing an atoll, although there is enough uniformity in this pattern to be monotonous. Universal, though, are the popular touches of tall palm trees with fronds curtseying lazily, the rolling surf and the sea made varicolored by its changing depths over reefs.

Undeniably, these small coral atolls are lovely and romantic, and they are at their best in the glow of brilliant moonlight, as rich as platinum, which seems to be the gift of no sky but a tropical sky.

It was down a slanting beam of this moonlight that the big seaplane seemed to slide, its objective an island which was unnamed on many charts but labeled Alu on some, and Dave's Folly on others. One chart, a French one, drawn twenty years ago, had optimistically designated the atoll as Oeuf a la Coque, which, unromantically, meant Boiled Egg. A Frenchman named Bovet had given it this designation.

Monsieur Bovet now rested, and had rested for years, under a large coral boulder which served his grave as a marker only figuratively actually the boulder had been placed there originally to hide the signs of digging necessarily connected with burying a man.

The plane seemed tired, and it was crippled in one engine. Two other engines were bleeding oil smoke; thus, of the six engines, three only were not ailing, and for them all there was not sufficient gasoline for more than another fifteen minutes. Down through the moonlight the ship came slanting heavily, and inside the cabin the loud-speaker addressed the frightened pa.s.sengers harshly, elatedly, saying, "We are landing. Anyone who shows himself, anyone who makes trouble, will be shot!"

DOC SAVAGE, glancing at the loud-speaker, compressed his lips, said, "You know what you are to do. Let's not have any slips."