Doc Savage - 025 - The Devil's Playground, page 6
Except what he found.
He wrapped his hairy arms around the first figure he encountered. He swung one fist back to slug with.
"Holy cow!" the voice rumbled at him. "You might at least offer a calling card."
Monk's mouth dropped open and he stood back sheepishly.
"Renny!" he gasped. "For the love of Pete, what--"
"If the motorboat's got a chauffeur, pay him off and get in with us," Ham suggested. "This canoe is bigger than it looks."
The motorboat had a chauffeur. Monk explained to him that the effects of the gas bullets would wear off shortly and the engine would be as good as new. Renny joined the group in the big birch-bark canoe.
THE big-fisted engineer explained that about fifty cops had pounced on the plane he was riding when the man in the mask forced it down in the field outside of Flint.
A lot of unimportant gangsters were killed, Renny said, but the man in the mask got away. He also said that Marquette Heller disappeared at the Flint airport but had come on later to Sault Ste. Marie in a private plane.
Renny came on in the same plane to Sault St. Marie, where he did some investigating Doc had instructed him to do. Renny looked questioningly at the girl. Monk grunted.
"I think she knows all the answers you could find in Salt Ste. Marie, anyway," Monk opined. "And in addition to that we're goin' to keep her in sight until this thing's cleaned up."
The girl started to object. Then she glanced at Renny. Apparently she figured he would shut her up if she raised a fuss. So she didn't.
Renny said he had learned that a man named Caspar Grisholm was somehow tied up with both N. Nathan Nathanialson and Marquette Heller. Ham looked sourly at the girl.
"If this blond menace is telling the truth," Ham growled, "Caspar Grisholm is the guy who tried to have us killed this morning. He's dead."
Iris Heller flushed. Monk decided it was a good idea to make her mad. She was prettier when she was. But Monk also thought it was a good idea to have someone else the one who got her steamed. She whirled on Ham.
"Of course I'm telling you the truth, you empty-headed clotheshorse," she snapped. "What have I got to hide?"
Iris' head went up in the air, and Monk doubled up in mirth. For once he had so thoroughly queered Ham with a girl that the dapper lawyer wasn't even in the competition. Renny brought Monk up short. The engineer had sized things up pretty well.
"Perhaps," his deep voice rumbled to Iris, "you have already admitted that you were engaged to marry Marquette Heller? And that you arrived in a private plane with N. Nathan Nathanialson!"
Monk's mouth dropped open so wide his head almost disappeared from the front view. Iris' indignation left her as if she had been deluged with cold water. She stammered explanations.
"M-Mark and I broke that up," she moaned. "I hate him now. I swear I do."
"How about N. Nathan Nathanialson?" Ham snapped.
Iris' eyes flashed. Her chin seemed to grow determined.
"He was father's attorney," she said quickly. "Father was supposed to be dying, and it was natural for N. Nathan to come up with me in the plane."
"Yeah," Ham observed. "And it was also natural for G. Gordon Grisholm, a pal of both your ex-fiancé and of the lawyer, to have us bumped off!"
IRIS drew her lips back over fine white teeth. She seemed almost about to bite dapper Ham. Her voice was a low breath of new-found hatred.
"You're being absurd," she snapped. Then to Renny: "Well, what else did you find out?"
Renny's voice seemed to come from his shoe tops.
"Those things I told you are commented on in the evening paper at the Soo," Renny rumbled. "That's why I told you. Whatever else I've learned will have to wait for Doc. Those were my instructions."
Iris Heller was white. Two burning bright spots of anger showed on her ashen cheeks. She fairly screamed her accusations then.
"All right, then. I'll tell you what you found. If you are any good at all you found that old Luke Heller was the man who caused the death of Marquette's grandfather. Old Luke had a lot of scores against him among the Indians. And then he reformed. He tried to repay a lot of things by adopting Mark and making him his heir.
"But Indians don't forget that easily.
"Are those the things you found out?"
Iris was leaning close to big Renny. Her eyes glowed with a strange intensity.
Renny scarcely moved a muscle.
"Something like that," he answered. "And perhaps some more."
Iris seemed somewhat hysterical now. Ham again wondered whether she was putting on an act. He couldn't tell. But if she was, the lawyer decided she belonged on Broadway.
"Yes," Iris gritted, her breasts heaving with emotion. "You would have also found out that Paul P. Keewis and Marquette Heller are mystics who have great power over the Indians throughout this section of the country."
She whirled then on Renny, beat her small fists against his chest.
"Marquette didn't do it!" she screamed. "I tell you he didn't! He couldn't have!"
Just what it was that Marquette didn't do, Iris Heller did not explain. She swooned in the bottom of the canoe. When Monk brought her back to consciousness with smelling salts, she refused to say anything more.
"I guess I got excited," she said calmly. "Let's forget about it."
HAM shook his head as they piled out of the canoe. He got Monk to one side.
"Even you can see she's entirely unreliable," he said to Monk. "I think she's a pretty accomplished actress taking us for a perfect sleigh ride."
Monk grunted. He was almost ready to agree. Her sudden defense of Mark Heller and her refusal to say what it was he hadn't done, perplexed the hairy chemist.
Monk stood by the canoe while the others went up a path leading to the forest in the background. He was not attempting to conceal anything from Ham and Renny. But he had certain instructions from Doc. Monk did not know himself why they had been given.
First, he stripped the fine wire mesh that constituted the electrolysis hood from the craft. Then he used a waterproof zipper to open a slot along one entire side of the canoe. A pressed lever brought a thin, almost-invisible cellophanelike globe around the canoe. The stuff, a chemical combination known only to Doc, was a sort of glassite that had unbelievable strength for its weight and thinness.
The glassite globe became a superstructure over the canoe, both watertight and transparent, with the strength of so much steel. Monk sunk the canoe then, and hurried after the others.
A grunting sound behind him told him that Habeas had waited for him. Iris Heller was speaking when Monk hastened up.
"I do not know what really caused the return of the Devil's Tomahawks," she insisted. "But I do know they are pretty terrible."
As if her mention of it aroused the evil spirit that commanded the tomahawks of the lost ones, there came a preliminary rumble from the sky. There was no lightning that night. But heavy clouds were banked above.
The rumble became a steady beat. Monk's nostrils dilated.
"Jeepers!" he grunted. "That's an awful smell. Just like an old grave!"
It was pitch-black in the woods. Renny, who was leading, had not used his flashlight any more than necessary. He feared it would attract attention. He flicked it on now. A war whoop burst from Monk's wide mouth. It was not a war whoop in Ojibway. It was plain Anglo-Saxon, with a slight Dixie-rebel touch.
"YEEEEEEOUGH!" Monk yelled, and plunged past Renny.
There were Indians all over the place. A dozen or more were revealed when Renny flicked on his light. They looked to Monk like the same ones who had grabbed them in the morning. Monk sounded more Comanche than Ojibway in that fight. Monk fought best when he fought loudest. He didn't stint himself in either direction this time.
But there were more and still more Indians. It soon became evident that the fight was distinctly a losing one. There was one thing that Monk wanted to be sure of before they tied him up. If these were real, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide Indians, the mystery might be on the level. If they weren't, it was a racket. Monk decided to find out.
Monk was sitting on three Indians when the last reinforcements arrived. He whipped out a small vial and rubbed on the cheeks of the Indians nearest his head. The Indians yelled louder than Monk had ever heard an Indian yell.
Monk didn't blame him much. But it did prove to his satisfaction that it was a real Indian. If that chemical wouldn't take the pigment out, it belonged there.
THEY bound Monk then, along with the others. Three painted braves carried Monk. They were not gentle about it. Monk squalled in protest. The flat side of a stone tomahawk slammed against his head. When he regained his senses, he was standing upright.
There were four stakes driven into the ground. Iris, Ham, Monk and Renny were tied to the stakes. Monk looked quickly around and breathed a sigh of relief. Habeas and Chemistry had apparently taken to the woods. At any rate, they weren't in sight.
Monk surveyed the clearing. Four campfires burned. Painted Indians slunk around those fires. Moccasined feet beat silent time to the drumbeat that seemed to come from the lowering sky. Monk knew that pulsing beat was supposed to accompany the Devil's Tomahawks, was reputed to be the beating of the drums of death.
The hairy chemist surveyed the huge clearing. The trees at the edges of the clearing were larger than most of the stunted evergreens of the Northland. The Indian camp itself consisted of a huddled group of birch-bark huts. There was one tepee at one end of the clearing.
The braves moved mechanically around the four campfires. There was a sullenness about their faces, a tenseness about their movements. Monk was a considerable student of Indian customs and traditions. He felt the bristles at the back of his neck stiffen as the pulsing beat of the Indian drums increased in tempo.
Ham's face was inscrutable. The dapper lawyer sensed that things were probably going to happen. He was apparently steeling himself against it. Big Renny merely glowered into the campfire nearest him. Iris Heller's blue eyes were wide.
Suddenly a chant broke out among the Indians squatting around the clearing. Monk saw bottles surreptitiously passed back and forth. Sweat broke out on Monk's forehead. He knew that fire water had started many a massacre that could have otherwise been avoided in the early days of the white man's conquest of America's wilderness.
Ugly, guttural sounds came from many of the red men. Then Paul P. Keewis came into the circle of the firelight. He shot a look of contempt and hatred toward Iris Heller. Then he surveyed Monk and Ham. Renny he ignored for the moment.
"You two were warned to leave the North Woods," he said in English. "Trial by fire was the alternative given you. You have chosen."
A huge Indian broke from the line of dancers shuffling about the nearest fire. The big Indian spoke in the Ojibway tongue. Then he repeated in Chippewa and Tahquamenon.
"The White Men at Deep Cut Mine are the ones who must leave," he harangued the Indians. "We must go to them now and demand that they leave. They are the ones the drums have talked about!"
The big Indian paused, danced a war step of his own. It apparently was a tribal ceremonial dance. It brought sudden interest from the watchers.
"We the descendants of the three tribes must throw out the white invaders," the speaker intoned. "If we do not, the vengeance of the Devil's Tomahawks will fall upon us as well!"
Cries of agreement and fear came from the tribesmen. Monk looked closely at all of those painted faces. He caught words here and there in the Ojibway tongue. The hairy chemist instantly realized that these aborigines were not simulating fear.
They were scared to death of the Devil's Tomahawks! They feared that the tomahawks of the lost ones would descend upon them in spectral vengeance.
It sent a queer feeling up and down Monk's spine. Up to now, the Devil's Tomahawks had been something he thought he'd be able to cope with. Something earthly and strictly temporal, Monk had believed.
Now, he looked at those frightened Indian faces. Monk didn't know. He also did not know that events that were moving swiftly down upon him would make him doubt even less the spirit power of the Devil's Tomahawks.
Gaunt braves rushed to Iris Heller. They untied her brusquely, hauled her along behind them. The big Indian who had delivered the harangue and Paul P. Keewis led the procession toward Deep Cut Mine. Only a small guard was left to watch Monk, Ham and Renny.
"Criminy!" Monk bleated. "This thing is beginning to get me now. Ow, you heathen! Leggo me!"
Monk's last remark was inspired by a rough jostling of one elbow. A painted Ojibway began to untie him.
"You come," the red man grunted. "You what is call hostage."
Monk gave him a large piece of his mind in the Ojibway tongue that made the Indian's mouth drop open. Apparently it was stronger language than he was accustomed to at his own campfire. Then he grinned mirthlessly, gabbled Ojibway back at Monk. He pointed at Ham, who was tied nearest Monk.
Monk grinned. "He says that if I act up they'll put you in the stew pot," he told Ham genially. "Or maybe part your hair with a tomahawk."
The last remark seemed to have slipped out. Monk shuddered involuntarily. He was immediately contrite.
"Aw," he said, "I didn't mean that. I'll do just what these guys tell me."
"Don't worry about me," Ham snapped. "Take care of yourself. They probably think apes are good fresh meat."
Monk was shoved into the underbrush toward the column stalking toward Deep Cut Mine. In the distance, with the sky itself for a sounding board, came the steady, deadly beat of an Indian drum.
IX
THE GENTLE GHOST
THE combination residence and office of the mine was ablaze with light. A conference seemed to be going on.
Mark Heller sat in the chair behind Pig-iron Heller's big desk. His good-looking, dark face was lined with some great strain. N. Nathan Nathanialson was sitting on the couch. Pig-iron's body had been removed, and the floor was freshly scrubbed.
Most of N. Nathan that showed outside of his clothing was swathed in bandages. He didn't seem in great pain. Apparently the wounds of the Devil's Tomahawks had for once been thwarted before they could cut deep. Or perhaps the ghosts were gentle, just for a change.
Monk wondered as he watched the fat attorney through the window from the porch. There was something else about the lawyer that bothered him. For a man who had just been through a narrow scrape with an awful death, N. Nate seemed quite pleased with himself. He lighted a cigarette with calm deliberation, studied the end of it for a moment.
Huge, platinum-haired Igor Lakonnen strode back and forth in the big room. His hands, which were only somewhat smaller than a fielder's mitt, clenched and unclenched in agitation. His hollow roar of a voice made the windows rattle. He was engaged in some sort of a plea to Marquette Heller when Paul P. Keewis quietly opened the door from outside.
"You are part the Indian," Lakonnen said in his stiff foreign-sounding diction. "You know what they do. Stop them, Marquette Heller. Stop them or they kill us all."
Marquette Heller bit his lips. Great indecision seemed to tear him inside. He looked at the floor, seemed to hesitate to meet the big Finnish foreman's eyes. When he spoke, it was in slow, uncertain denial.
"I do not know what they do, Igor," he said. "I do not know about--"
The slam of the door interrupted him. Paul P. Keewis sprang into the room. The big Indian who had harangued the tribe in the camp clearing was at his side. Iris Heller forced her way between them. The instinctive desire to defend Marquette Heller left her with suddenness when she faced the half-breed in the room. Her eyes blazed icily.
"You lie, Marquette Heller," she rapped. "You do know about the Devil's Tomahawks. It was you who first told me about them. You said you thought they existed. You know--"
Paul P. Keewis lunged toward the girl. With one arm he swung her back into the clutching hands of the braves he had brought with him. Keewis' eyes burned darkly. There was both fear and anger in his face.
"The white daughter will not speak of the Devil's Tomahawks!" Keewis thundered. "Do not tempt the lost ones!"
Iris struggled and Keewis shoved her roughly. That nearly precipitated the end of part of Doc Savage's closely knit organization. Monk let out a howl that could have been heard nearly to Sault Ste. Marie without a telephone.
He leaped upon Keewis and began slugging with both fists.
"I'll pluck out your feathers, you animated guinea hen!" Monk bellowed. "I'll flatten that big beak! I'll--"
Monk tried to do all the things he threatened. Six Indians sat on him and made it difficult. One of them drew a flint tomahawk from a thong belt. The big Indian who had suggested the visit spoke to them sharply in Ojibway.
APPARENTLY, the big Indian's words dissuaded the one with the tomahawk. The big Indian swept the gathering with agate-black eyes that seemed to penetrate their thoughts. Then he addressed Igor, N. Nate and Marquette Heller. Occasionally he nodded toward the girl, feeling that her decision might also matter.
"You already know there is little in this mine of value," he said in perfect English. "Why tempt the Devil's Tomahawks to protect something with so little chance of profit?"
Marquette Heller compressed his lips. He looked stubborn. "I won't leave," he said flatly. "I'll stay."
The big Indian grew suave. "Does your white and greedy half tell you there is something here worth-while?"
"I'll stay," Mark Heller repeated doggedly.
The big Indian shrugged, faded into the background. The others reacted in varying manner. N. Nathan Nathanialson merely puffed his cigarette. He seemed vaguely pleased. Igor Lakonnen shrugged. He looked with distaste at Heller.
"Whatever the mistress instructs me to do, I shall," he said stiffly. "I do not wish to stay. But I owe her father much. For many years he had been good to me."
Paul P. Keewis put the finishing touch to the conversation. The big Indian apparently didn't pay much attention to it. He wandered around the room, stopped at a chart of the mine. Keewis' voice was low with emotion. It sounded as if he were a little bit enraged, but greatly frightened.
