Quest of the Spider - Robeson Kenneth. Страница 28

"Yes," replied Long Tom. "Why?"

"I was just thinking," Ham muttered. He didn't elaborate on his thoughts.

Around the edges of the hollow huddled row after row of the vicious, monkeylike swamp dwellers. Long Tom and Ham were astounded at seeing so many present. Their number must run into the hundreds!

The whole ceremony had the air of something that would last for many hours, perhaps days. Gourds filled with a greenish liquor that was dipped from a troughlike container made of a hollow log, passed among the assembled voodooists quite often.

"Some kind of a vile dope the Gray Spider has fixed up for them, I'll bet!" Ham declared. "Brings them under his sway easier!"

"Yo' keep goin'!" rasped Buck Boontown at their backs. "Yo' don' stop here!"

Buck Boontown was alone among their captors in seeming not to take much stock in the voodoo ritual. He twitched a time or two in sympathy with the hideous rhythm—but no more often than Long Tom and Ham did the same thing involuntarily.

Around the edge of the natural theater, they were herded. They were led down to the group of masked men about the string of greenish fires.

It dawned on Ham and Long Tom that these men were the inner circle of the Cult of the Moccasin.

Before one of the masked men, they were halted.

This man wore, in addition to the brilliant silk handkerchief that hid his face, a long and gaudy gown embroidered with countless coiled serpents, probably intended to represent the deadly water moccasin. It concealed him from head to foot. Nothing could be told of his looks, except that he was a white man.

"I am the Gray Spider!" he informed Ham and Long Tom in a voice that sounded like it was coming out of a tomb. Obviously, the tone was disguised.

He held one clawlike hand before them. The veins on the back of the talon looked revolting as purple worms. Slowly, dramatically, the hand opened.

A hideous gray spider of a thing crawled about in the repulsive palm. A tarantula! Somehow, the ordinarily poisonous thing had been changed to a gray hue and its venomous quality eliminated. At least, it made no effort to injure the hand that held it.

The bit of dramatics was highly impressive.

But it was on the hand that the eyes of Ham and Long Tom rested. The vile skin bore smears of red ink!

Ham and Long Tom both recalled the red ink smeared over old Silas Bunnywell's office in the Danielsen & Haas building. They remembered the ink-well that had been employed to beat down some one, about the time Horace Haas and Silas Bunnywell vanished.

SUDDENLY both Ham and Long Tom made a concerted lunge at the master devil. They hoped to take their guards by surprise. But they failed.

Buck Boontown was alert. He whipped out a pistol. With lighteninglike blows, he knocked Ham and Long Tom backward. They were seized anew.

Buck Boontown now told his master of the outcome of the bridge ambush. As he was informed that his men had seen with their own eyes an alligator devouring Doc Savage's mighty bronze form, a fiendish cackle of delight rattled back of the silken mask.

"Take these two prisoners to the usual place!" he commanded. "I have told you earlier what you are to do with them. Do you understand fully? It is very important that my little experiment works out properly!"

"I savvy," mumbled Buck Boontown.

Ham and Long Tom were bustled from the natural bowl, and down the opposite side of the hill. Buck Boontown's settlement appeared unexpectedly.

They were hurled into an open shed of a building. Ropes were added to their ankles, and their wrists tied afresh. Armed guards took up a position near.

The two prisoners were absolutely helpless. Through a gaping hole that passed for a door, they could see a tall, overly thin swamp man. He was but a boy, hardly eighteen. His only garment was a meal sack with holes cut in it for his legs.

This was Sill Boontown, the son of Buck Boontown—the boy who had been feeble-minded since a blow on the head a few years ago.

Ham and Long Tom were sickened to discover Sill Boontown was leading a monster alligator around with a rope. The half-wit lad was playing with the tame reptile as though it were a dog.

This 'gator was the same one which had given Johnny such a start on his arrival at this sinister spot.

Sight of the 'gator brought to Ham and Long Tom a morbid rush of memory; the ghastly glimpse they had caught of a monster reptile worrying a bronze human arm in its hideous jaws!

Their own dire peril was submerged in their grief. Not only had they lost the friend and benefactor they admired above all else in life, but the world had lost one of its greatest forces for right, as well as prolific source of things humanitarian.

They were indeed glad when Sill Boontown disappeared into the moonlighted jungle with his pet 'gator.

About a quarter of an hour ticked away. Then a man came into their prison shack.

THE newcomer was lanky, scrawny-looking, yellowish-brown. He had thick lips and a nose that some one might have jumped on years ago. Several scars gave his eyes a mean cast.

Crouching over them, this unsavory individual began to make meaningless hocus-pocus gestures and mumble meaningless incantations.

"Ugh!" snarled Long Tom. "Ain't he the meanest-looking bat you ever saw!"

"And how he stinks!" Ham growled.

"Probably he's come to cut our throats," muttered Long Tom.

"I oughta cut your throats after a crack like that!" chuckled the sinister-looking voodoo man.

Ham and Long Tom started violently.

"Johnny!" Ham gulped, finally penetrating the clever disguise.

"Not so loud!" hissed Johnny.

"But how—"

"I've been hanging around here," Johnny explained. "I've pulled a lot of voodoo junk, but it don't seem to get me anywhere. At least, I haven't seen the real Gray Spider yet. The fellow I sent to you wasn't the master mind, was he? Buck Boontown told me, quite a bit later that he was only a minor member of the gang who liked to pretend he amounted to something."

"It was one of the two crooked lumber police," Ham explained. "We got him, though. His name is Lefty."

"How are we gonna get out of here?" Long Tom put in.

Johnny glanced at their guards, saw they were looking in another direction, and produced a knife.

"It's the best I can do," he whispered. "I was surprised when they invited me in here to put a voodoo spell over you two guys. I looked for my gun, but it had disappeared. I can't understand that, either."

"We'll make a break for it, all together!" breathed Ham.

"O.K. I'll grab a machine gun from one of the guards if I can. We might as well try it right now."

Johnny advanced on the door.

Instantly, one of the guards emitted a loud cry. In answer to the signal, scores of monkeylike swamp men poured out of the surrounding jungle. They attacked Doc's men.

Johnny went down fighting under an avalanche of the yellowish-brown fiends. He was tied securely.

The knife had done Ham and Long Tom no good. Ham did get free, only to be pinned quickly.

They were all tied securely.

Soon there approached a figure attired in a long, brilliant gown which was embroidered with countless snake designs. A hideous gray tarantula clung to one of the fellow's hands.

The Gray Spider still wore his silken mask.

"I have been suspicious of you," he told Johnny. "I let you talk to these men as a test. You were observed closely all the time. We saw you pass them a knife."