The Polar Treasure - Robeson Kenneth. Страница 32

One Eskimo in particular rambled a short distance from the others. He floundered through a snowdrift.

He did not see a portion of the drift seemingly rise behind him. No suspicion of danger assailed him until hard, chill bronze fingers stroked his greasy cheek with a caress like the fingers of a ghost. Then it was too late.

The Innuit collapsed without a sound.

Doc pounced upon the inert Eskimo. From his lips came a loud shout-words couched in the tongue of the native.

Excitement seized the white man who understood the Eskimo lingo, and he listened intently to the distant voice.

"Dat Eskimo bane kill the bronze feller!" he shrieked. "He bane say come an' look!"

Three men sprinted for the voice they had heard.

The interpreter glimpsed two figures. One was prone, motionless. The second crouched on the first. That was about all Doc Savage could see in the flying gale.

"There they bane!" he howled.

They charged up. Two of them prepared to empty their guns into the prone form. just to make sure.

The crouching man heaved up. Strikingly enough, he seemed to grow to the proportions of a mountain. Two Herculean bronze fists drove accurate blows. Both gunmen described perfect flip-flops in mid-air — unconscious before their feet left the glacier.

The interpreter whirled and ran. He knew death when he saw it. And big Doc Savage was nothing less.

Doc did not follow him. For to the bronze man's sensitive ears came a stifled cry.

Roxey Vail was being seized!

EVEN AS he raced toward where he had left her, Doc fathomed what had occurred. She had disobeyed his injunction to stay hidden. The reason — she had heard the shouted information that Doc was dead. She had started out with some desperate idea of avenging him.

Doc appreciated her good intentions. But at the moment, he could have gotten a lot of satisfaction out of turning her over his knee and paddling her.

A bullet squeaked in Doc's ear. He folded aside and down. A machine gun picked savagely at the ice near him. He traveled twenty feet on his stomach, with a speed that would have shamed a desert lizard.

"Take the hussy to the boat!" Keelhaul de Rosa's coarse voice rang. "Step lively, me lads!"

Doc tried to get to the hideous voice. Murderous lead drove him back.

He was forced to skulk, dodging bullets while Roxey Vail was taken aboard the ice-coated hulk of the lost liner.

More Eskimos soon arrived. Keelhaul de Rosa was arming some of them with guns. The interpreter instructed the Innuits on how to operate the unfamiliar firearms.

The natives were far from effective marksmen. More than one greasy eater of blubber dropped a big pistol after it exploded in his hand and ran as though the worst tongak, or evil spirit, were hot on his trail. But the guns made them more dangerous, for wild shots were almost as liable to hit the elusive figure of Doc Savage as well-aimed ones. In fact, they were worse. Doc couldn't tell which way to dodge.

The heat of the hunt finally drove Doc to the remote reaches of the glacier and rock crest of the land.

There he replenished his vast reservoir of strength by dining on frozen, raw steaks he wrenched with his bare, steel-thewed fingers, from the polar bear he had slain.

The mighty bronze man might have been a terrible hunter of the wild as he crouched there at his primeval repast. But no such hunter ever possessed cunning and knowledge such as Doc Savage was bringing to bear upon the problem confronting him.

But caution remained uppermost in his mind. He had been crouching with an ear pressed to a pinnacle of rock. The stone acted as a sounding board for any footsteps on the surrounding glacier.

Noise of men passing in the blizzard reached Doc. There seemed to be four or five in the group.

Doc fell in behind them. He followed as close as was possible without discovery. Growled words told him they were white men.

"De skipper says for us to take de stern of de liner, mateys," one said. "Our pals will join us dere. Everybody's helpin' in dis party, even de cook."

"We'd better throw out an anchor," another grunted. "Keelhaul an' his whole bloody crew, together wit' de Eskimos, is movin' bag an' baggage onto de liner. We wanta give 'em time to get settled."

Doc Savage sought to get even closer. He was not three yards away as the group of men came to a stop in the shelter of a rock spire. There were five of them.

What he was hearing was most interesting!

ONE OF the five men laughed nastily.

"De bronze guy has just about got Keelhaul de Rosa's goat!" he chuckled. "To say nothin' of de panic de Eskimos are in. Dat's why they're all movin' onto de liner. Dey figure dey can fight 'im off better."

Another man swore.

"Don't forget, pal, dat we gotta smear de bronze guy ourselves before we leave here!" he growled.

"Time to begin worryin' about dat after we got Keelhaul an' all de others croaked!" another informed him.

"Yer sure Keelhaul an' his gang don't suspect we're around?"

"Dey sure don't. I crawled up close an' listened to 'em gabbin'. Here's what happened, pal — de bronze guy got de idea we had croaked. He tol' de skoit dat. De broad, she up an' told it to Keelhaul when they caught her. An' he believes her."

Once more, an evil laugh gurgled in the blizzard.

"Well, Keelhaul is sure due to change his mind!" sneered the one who had laughed.

"Yeah — only he won't have the time to change 'is mind before we boin 'is insides out wit' Tommy lead."

"How long yer figure we'd better wait here?"

"About an hour."

A brief silence ensued.

"I don't like dis ting much," muttered one of the five uneasily. "We could light out wit'out all dis killin'."

"Yah — an' have somebody from dis place show up in a few years an' spill de woiks to de law," was the snarled reply. "We gotta clean up de loose ends, pal. We ain't leavin' nothin' behind but stiffs. We're playin' safe."

Once more there was quiet. One of the evil gang broke it with a startled ejaculation.

"What was dat?"

They peered at each other, turtling their vicious faces forward to see in the blizzard.

"I didn't hear nothin'!" muttered one.

"Sounded like de wind," suggested another.

They got up and circled their shelter. They saw nothing. They heard only the hoot of the gale. They gathered behind the outthrust of stone once more, huddling close for warmth.

They had dismissed what they heard as a child of the storm.

Indeed, it almost could have been some vagrant creation of the wind — that strange, low, trilling note which had come into being for a moment, then trailed away into nothingness. However, it was Doc's sound which they had heard.

Doc was now scores of yards away. He had much to do for he had learned a great deal.

The five were Ben O'Gard's thugs. And Doc's listening ears had detected enough to tell him the submarine had not met disaster, as he had thought. Yet he had carried the all-important valve with him in the folding seaplane!

The survival of the Helldiver without the valve could be explained, though. Ben O'Gard's crew had simply fashioned a substitute valve. There was a small machine shop aboard the underseas craft which they could use for this purpose.

No doubt they had started work on the substitute shortly after they marooned Doc on the iceberg during the walrus hunt. It had not been finished in time to use when they were so nearly trapped in the ice. But they had completed it while Doc was locked in the compartment aboard the Helldiver.