Doc Savage - The Freckled Shark Part 20

Doc heaved bottles of gas into the room-the stuff that worked through the skin pores. Masks would not protect against it. It was not fatal, but it would be very uncomfortable.

The gas went to work in the room almost at once, and there was screaming, so much screaming that it sounded like a great chorus singing the climax of an opera.

Monk's yelling was the loudest of all.

There was a stout fastener on the outside of the door.

Doc secured that.

And more men came running and attacked them in the corridor.

THE new attack was not entirely a surprise. They had realized there must be other men in the cache. There had to be a generator room at some spot to supply the electric current. And the prisoners-they were somewhere.

It was very dark, but one of the new attackers had a flashlight. Doc Savage threw his pocketknife, the blades closed.

He was fairly close to the flashlight, threw the knife very hard. He missed the light, but hit the hand that held it. The man dropped the light.

Doc plunged in, and there was a short and furious fight over the light on the corridor floor. The bronze man got it and used it to blind their a.s.sailants.

None of the newcomers seemed to have guns. But they did have wrenches, and one of them a wood chisel that could split a skull. They were obviously the men who maintained the cache.

They retreated, took flight soon. They were outnumbered.

Doc Savage, flinging after fugitives, began pa.s.sing barred, cell-like doors.

The wailing from elsewhere that they had heard-it came from these cells. There was not as much of it as had seemed; only four or five voices. Voices of the prisoners. Of people who had been confined and tortured and threatened until everything was gone from their bodies but fear.

On past the cells, the flight went. It ended in the generator room, where flight was no longer possible. Cornered, the men turned and fought.

The last fight did not last long-Ham and Johnny and Tex Haven did most of it with their fists, while Doc Savage blinded men with the flashlight.

They went back past the wailing cell occupants to the big concrete torture room.

Only one man was yelling in there now. It was Monk. The apish chemist was tougher than any of the others, for the pore-penetrating gas had made all but Monk unconscious. Monk was standing in the middle of the room and roaring.

They let him out. He'd been right when he predicted the gas would not take the fight out of him. He wanted to fight more than ever.

"Who turned that gas loose on me?" he bellowed. "I was lickin' all them guys, and somebody ruined it!"

He bounced up and down and squalled.

"Who did it?" he screeched.

"Henry Peace," gaunt Johnny said dryly.

They let time enough elapse for the gas to become ineffective in the torture room-the vapor lost its potency after theelapse of ten minutes or so-before they went in to count their victims and make sure all were there.

"We better tie up Horst and Senor Steel first," Ham said grimly.

But Horst and Senor Steel were not in the concrete torture room.

THERE remained, too, the group of Horst-Steel men who had been sent after Jep Dee.

Tex Haven, Monk, Ham and Johnny went after those. It was almost an hour before they returned.

They brought Jep Dee along.

"What's this all about?" Jep Dee demanded.

"We'd've been back sooner," Ham explained, "only we had to tie them up. We found the party that went after Jep Dee.

They got ga.s.sed when they tried to get into the plane."

By that time, Doc Savage had given the prisoners in the cells a brief, general examination. He had released about twenty of them. The others were pretty bad, in no mental condition to be released now.

There were at least four cases of stark insanity among the prisoners. Complete mental collapse brought on by the unspeakable tortures to which they had been subjected. Those would need treatment.

"No sign of Senor Steel or Horst?" Doc asked.

"No trace," Monk grated.

Doc Savage suggested arrangements for the cache prisoners requiring medical treatment. They would be taken to Key West hospitals, where Doc himself would attend to their care, for greatest of this strange bronze man's skills was his ability as a surgeon and physician.

His quick-formed opinion-he did not express it at the moment-was that most of the Horst-Steel political prisoners could be led to recovery.

Doc Savage went to Rhoda Haven and her father.

"Have you any demands to make," the bronze man asked, "regarding the h.o.a.rd of gold and jewels in the vault, which we incidentally haven't opened yet?"

The Havens must have talked that over. Their answer was prompt.

"No comment," old Tex Haven said dryly.

"What do you mean by that?" Doc asked.

Tex Haven had found his corncob pipe somewhere, and he had stuffed it, was filling the surrounding air with fumes so vile that Monk insisted he preferred poison gas.

"When I went to you in the first place," Tex said slowly, "I figured that you might come out on top, wind up in possession of Senor Steel's stolen wealth. To tell the truth, I didn't really mind that. I don't mind it now. It's yours."

"Mine?"

"I know enough about you," Tex said, "to be sure that you will put that money back where it belongs-to benefit the people of Blanca Grande, from whom it was taken."

Doc Savage considered that.

"Would you take over the managing of a commission to use this money to build factories and develop other means of permanently employing and benefiting Blanca Grande?" he asked.

"Me?" Tex was surprised."Yes."

Tex grinned. "I'll do it, of course. On condition that you put one of your men down there to watch me and my daughter. I don't want any suspicion of dishonesty."

Johnny, glancing at pretty Rhoda Haven, put in, "Monk would like that watching job."

Monk manifestly would like it, his expression indicated.

Monk's smug expression apparently irritated Rhoda Haven.

"I wish," she said, "that we could find a young man named Henry Peace."

"That big loud-mouth!" Monk said disgustedly.

Rhoda Haven's eyes snapped.

"I intend," she said angrily, "to marry Henry Peace. He proposed several times, you know."

Tex Haven snorted, said, "He proposed every time he saw you."

Doc Savage swallowed several times and turned red. A bit later, he got Ham and Johnny aside.

"Don't you ever let her find out who Henry Peace was," he warned grimly. "Monk still doesn't know, and see that he never does. You hear?"

The bronze man sounded so deathly serious that Johnny and Ham doubled over laughing. It was the first time they had ever laughed at Doc Savage.

THE next day, they opened the treasure vault. Monk did the opening, fully equipped with gas mask and a gas-proof rubber suit-it was an ordinary diver's suit which they had flown up from Key West during the morning-for safety's sake.

Monk came rus.h.i.+ng out of the vault.

"During that fight," he yelled, "two of them tried to get into the vault through that gas chamber. They didn't make it.

They're both dead in there. I stumbled over the bodies."

Monk was a bloodthirsty soul at times. He acted as if this was one time he was glad to stumble over two bodies.

"Who are they?" Ham demanded.

"Horst and Senor Steel," Monk said. "Who'd you think?"