Doc Savage - Mystery On Happy Bones Part 16

"Ja!

Exactly. Our man took along a sample plate of the tungsten-"

"Parrot's nest!" Hannah said, making what she realized was the wildest kind of guess.

"Ja!

So you knew that, too? It was a rare, green parrot nesting in a cage-" "That was silly wasn't it?"

The officer smiled proudly. "It was very clever. It was my idea, fraulein. The parrot was rare, its eggs rarer still, so rare that none exist in scientific inst.i.tutions. Such a parrot, in the act of sitting on its eggs, was a rare, scientific exhibit. So our man took it to Was.h.i.+ngton, to the scientists there. And of course there had to be a cage. And the bottom plate of the cage was made of our tungsten. No one thought of noticing that the bottom plate was a rare metal. Very clever, eh?"

Hannah thought it over.

"Still silly," she said.

THE submarine commander became slightly indignant. "This is not being told to entertain you," he snarled. "Now tell me, what did Doc Savage do?"

"Fifty-thousand dollars," Hannah said.

"You will get it. But you will have to go to Germany and remain until we win the war-"

"That'll be a heck of a long time," said Hannah.

"What did Doc Savage do?"

Hannah gave him the information.

"Doc showed me a grenade, a time bomb," she said. "And he told me that this submarine would never reach Europe. Then he walked off and left me."

The commander whitened. "How large a bomb?"

"Small one."

The man acted as if he had the bomb in his pocket. He did nothing, could do nothing, apparently, but bounce up and down for a while.

Then he dived out of the compartment bawling, "Quick! Everybody! Get into the hold! Get those boxes of tungsten, and get them ash.o.r.e!"

The submarine had a deep draft, and the hold was a sizeable section a little forward of amids.h.i.+ps. Aft, there was the engines, the motors, the battery room. Then the hold. And forward, in the bow, the torpedo room. The crew's quarters was under the conning tower.

The yelling of the commander drew everybody within earshot. They came scrambling. They poured into the hold.

"Grab those boxes!" the commander shouted. "Every man take a box ash.o.r.e, and quick! There is a bomb in one of them!"

Hannah thought: What makes him think there is a bomb in one of the boxes? But then, it was logical.

How else could a bomb get aboard?

The hold filled with excited men.Hannah stood outside. The excited commander was beside her. Not all the sub crew was in the hold, but the majority of them were.

Doc Savage came out of the shadows. He came down from the conning tower hatch, silently and fast.

"Here!" said the surprised commander in German. "Who are you?"

Doc hit him, knocked him headlong through the bulkhead door into the hold. Then Doc slammed the hold door shut, and came down hard on the mechanical dogs which sealed it.

"Get the prisoners loose," he told Hannah.

Chapter XIV. STICKS AND STONES.

THE prisoners were underneath, and forward of, the conning tower, in the quarters of officers and crew, and in a storeroom. Doc got to the first door, and got it open. Hannah was close behind him.

"How did you know they were here?" Hannah asked, meaning the prisoners.

"Have been lying against the hull in the darkness for an hour, listening," Doc said.

Inside the tiny cubicle was Monk and Renny, the two best of Doc's group in a free-for-all. Ham and Johnny were good in a fight, but Ham did best with his innocent-looking sword cane, and Johnny was so long that there was too much room for men to get hold of him.

Their wrists were handcuffed with steel manacles; their ankles were tied with ropes. All the prisoners seemed to be treated in that fas.h.i.+on.

"They didn't have enough handcuffs to go around," Monk yelled.

Doc cut the leg bindings.

"This is a good time to do the best you can," he said. "Get going."

They found Major Lowell in a cabin all by himself. It was the commander's cabin, so evidently having Major Lowell occupy his cabin was the commander's idea of a gesture.

"h.e.l.lo. Have you got a gun?" Major Lowell asked quietly.

"Fists, and whatever else you can pick up," Doc said. "Go to it. Part of them are locked in the hold.

Don't let them out."

Hannah was not at the bronze man's side. She was down the corridorlike pa.s.sage, so narrow that two could not pa.s.s easily inside it. She had hold of the d.o.g.g.i.ng handle of a door, and was failing to operate it because she was unfamiliar with that type of mechanism.

Behind the door, which was the door of a hold, voices were yelling angrily. It was the native prisoner group. Being cramped in the narrow, unfamiliar confines of the submarine compartment, without good air, with no idea of what actually was going to be done with them, had made them anything but pa.s.sive.

Doc got the door open.

The natives piled out. The shouting, the shooting-there was shooting in different places in the submarine now-touched off a fighting frenzy."Go aft!" Doc shouted. "Into the engine rooms. Get the enemy!"

Either they didn't understand him, or they didn't give a d.a.m.n, or they wanted to fight the first thing that moved. They made for him.

Hannah spoke loudly in a dialect. It was strictly mixed language she screamed at them-African Gullah, English, French, local improvisations.

They let Doc alone.

They flowed aft. They were a tide of black tigers.

"Wow!" Hannah shrieked. "You want to see this! They speak the same language as my natives. You should see them fight!"

She sounded full of glee.

She should have had a cutla.s.s to swing.

DOC went forward into the control room. In this type of submarine, there was usually an a.r.s.enal room near there, containing pistols and rifles and light machine guns. The crew of a submarine do not normally function as hand-to-hand fighters; so they do not go about their duties burdened with pistols and rifles.

Such weapons, never used, would be a nuisance. The chances were that not half a dozen men aboard the submarine had guns, and they would be officers.

But they were at the gun lockers when Doc reached the a.r.s.enal compartment. Two sailors were hauling out rifles and pistols and ammunition.

As he came into the compartment, Doc imitated the voice of the submarine commander, and spoke German.

"Quick, get those rifles and help me!" he said.

They knew their commander's voice. They were excited. The trick fooled them for a moment. Long enough for Doc to get his hands on them.

The first man, Doc disarmed with a yank. He hit the man with his fist, but not as successfully as he would have liked. The man did a kind of loose-legged dance backward.

The second man evidently had a j.a.panese background of jujitsu. He drew back with an ostentatious show of sending a roundhouse fist at Doc's jaw; instead of doing that, he jumped with both feet and kicked. It was very modern judo. It had disabled many a man.

Doc twisted to the side. The man's feet missed his stomach. As they went past, Doc grabbed both the legs. He plunged forward with them, twisting the man's body over.

Theoretically, when you completed the judo kick, your body naturally came to the floor, and you landed on your hands. But the twisting put the man's back toward the floor, and he hit on the back of his head.

The sailor did not move, except to kick his legs a little.

The first sailor, not greatly dazed by Doc's blow, was going up a ladder to a small, open deck hatch.He had head and shoulders outside when Doc got his legs. The bronze man pulled. The sailor, husky, had elbows hooked over the hatch rim. Doc, hanging to the man's legs, swung up and put his own feet against the ceiling and pulled. He got no results.

Doc then disjointed one of the man's ankle joints. Unjointing the ankle took strength and knowledge, because it was not like unjointing a wrist or elbow.

Doc then let him go.

The sailor flopped around out on deck, screeching. Now he was interested in nothing but his ankle.

Doc locked the a.r.s.enal with the keys which were in the lock.

He scrambled out on deck, ran past the sailor with the ankle, and headed for the bow deck hatch, the cargo hatch. They could get that open from below. It took a little time, because it was a big hatch that was best opened by power. But they could get it open, and they were.

Doc kicked fingers loose from the edge of the hatch. He got on top of the hatch, which was thick enough to keep back bullets from below.

"Bring those hand grenades!" he shouted.

There was no one near him, and no grenades as far as he knew.

"Bring those grenades!" he roared.

A square figure piled out of the conning tower and came galloping forward. Monk. He was pleased with the fight.

He got the idea about the grenades.

"Here are some Mills bombs!" he howled.

He had none, but he made it sound as if he had, and as if it would be the joy of his life to pitch a few down into the hold. "We'll blow 'em to shreds in there!" Monk hollered.

The submarine commander, down below, did not waste any more time.

"Is such a mess really necessary?" he asked. "Why couldn't we discuss a surrender."

He did not sound frightened, just weary and defeated.

THERE was just one more shot.

It did not come immediately.

First, they got the submarine crew together, searched them, and put them in the cargo hold, which was as good a temporary prison as any. It was necessary to rescue some of the submarine men from the natives, who were still indignant and bloodthirsty.

Renny Renwick, who was an artillery expert, unlimbered one of the five-inch deck guns and lobbed a couple of sh.e.l.ls ash.o.r.e, together with some threats in his thundering voice.

Soon prisoners came trooping down to the beach, arms in the air. These were the enemy who had beenash.o.r.e. They were surrendering.

Then the shot.

The shot was in the submarine, far aft. A single report. It was rather loud, for the aft deck hatch was open.

A man climbed out and sat on the hatch rim.

Doc went to him. It was Major Lowell.

The man had a pistol. He eyed the weapon distastefully, then shuddered and tossed it overboard.

Major Lowell said, "I have been a soldier fourteen years. This is the first time I have been so scared, and the first time I have killed a man."

"He came hunting you?" Doc asked. "I was afraid of that."

Major Lowell nodded. "He had to. I was the only one who could actually prove his guilt, I suppose. I do not think his natives knew he was selling the tungsten to the enemy. I think they were locked up in that prison compound so they would not suspect. And he had the enemy pretend that they had him a prisoner, in order to fool everyone."