Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 11

Renny met them.

WELL out of Tulsa, past the little city park and the swimming pool and the small bungalow, stood a filling station. It was green, and like thousands of other filling stations owned by a great corporation.

Doc drove in, saying, '"This is where the call came from."

Monk exploded, "How'd you know?"

Doc pointed at a near-by oil well which was pumping. The gasoline engine operating the bullwheel walking beam pump device was one which sputtered three times, then back-fired loudly. Three regular exhausts, then a back-fire, as regular as clockwork.

"The sound of that pump came over the telephone," Doc said. "Driving along the road, I have been listening for it."

The attendant was a lean young man, with a good forehead, eyes and jaw. He peered at them, evidently decided they looked like trouble, and his hands blurred in movement-and were suddenly holding a six-gun.

"Since them bad Tant boys got tough last spring, I been practicing the draw and also how to shoot," he said.

"Maybe you'd be so kind as to tell me whatcha want?"

"The note," Doc said.

The attendant squinted into the car and seemed to recognize Enoch Andershott, for he said, "Is it a fact that you're an old meanie to the Indians on your pennies?"

Andershott yelled, "I'll have you fired! You menial!"

"If you asked my boss to fire me, he'd laugh so hard they'd have to bandage his ribs," said the attendant.

"My boss knows you."

"The note!" Doc repeated.

The attendant snapped, "Ask for it like a gentleman-" and got a look at Doc Savage. He undoubtedly recognized the bronze man, but he did not look abashed.

"O. K. My mistake. I've heard of you, and I'm for you in a big way."

He handed over the note, and Doc glanced at it. The attendant had read it exactly as it was over the telephone.

Doc produced a bill and pa.s.sed it to the attendant.

"I don't want your money." The attendant pa.s.sed the bill back and nodded at Enoch Andershott. "But I'd take his right eye if I got a chance!"

THEY drove on, leaving the attendant with his six-gun in his hands and a big grin on his face.Old Reservoir Hill fell to chuckling, and finally to laughing, and finally he said, "I think I'll go to Timbuktu some day!"

"Why?" snarled Enoch Andershott.

"To see if there's anybody there who likes you!"

Big-fisted Renny got between them, with his extremely long face more dour and sorrowful-looking than usual, as it became when he was secretly tickled.

They pa.s.sed one of the big refineries in Sand Springs, heading for the canyon known as One Road Cut, in the wilder section of the Osage Hills. They were almost abreast of the big refinery gate when old Reservoir Hill barked out a demand.

"Stop here!" he shouted. "I got a friend in there who has a dang good repeating rifle in his office all the time.

During his spare minutes, he goes over on the bank of the river and practices popping at floating junk."

Doc stopped. Reservoir Hill got out, went through the refinery gate, and out of sight, and the others waited in the car.

They waited a long time.

Doc sent Monk in to investigate. The homely chemist came back traveling at a wild run, and with an incredulous look in his homely face.

"Reservoir Hill skipped!" Monk squeaked excitedly. "He never went in there to borrow no rifle! He just walked through and out the other side!"

Chapter XII. BLAST TRAP.

IF Doc Savage was amazed by the unexpected flight of old Reservoir Hill, he gave no sign of it, although it was a striking trait of the bronze man that only on the most unusual occasions did he show any emotion at all.

Doc put the car in motion.

Andershott yelled, "Ain't we gonna hunt the old reprobate?"

Doc said, "We are hunting your partner, Cugg."

"Of course!" Andershott nodded violently. "Let's go! To thunder with that stringy old goat, Hill!"

Renny, after keeping his chin in his palm for a time, pulled a paper out of his pocket. He tapped it.

"Editorial writer in here suggests that some nest of infernal creatures, previously unknown to man, was tapped a mile below the surface of the earth by that drilling oil well," he said.

No one spoke. The car followed the road around steep bluffs, with a river and a railroad below. Doc drove fast when he had a view of the road ahead, but slowed to an ample safety margin on the bad curves. Once they met a huge truck loaded with oil field pipe in the middle of the road. The slow speed saved them.

"That nest of strange creatures, a mile-underground theory, was advanced by somebody last night," Monk said at last.

The bluffs became very high over them. Below, fifty feet or so straight down, was the railroad, and running beside that, a giant concrete pipe running part of the time on top of the ground, sometimes on blocks, and sometimes half underground. It was a water main leading from a reservoir somewhere in the Osage.

The cliff slid down in the road ahead of the car.The happening was so casual at first as to be ordinary. A huge ma.s.s simply settled. Then it fell to pieces, and there was noise, the roar of breaking rock, and the whoop of some kind of explosive.

As the stone ma.s.s fell to pieces, there was a great gus.h.i.+ng of rock dust, and fragments came flying out of the ma.s.s, some hopping along the road, playful, innocent-looking things until one hit the car, which Doc had almost stopped, and completely wrecked the right-hand front wheel.

Andershott made a howling noise. Doc Savage and his aids gave almost no sign, scarcely changing their positions in the crowded sedan. But they knew what had happened.

The roar of rock subsided after a moment, although the dust continued to surge in a great gray pall over the ma.s.s of stone which had been blasted across the road.

"Listen to this!"

The voice came from the top of the cliff. Then something else came from the clifftop. It exploded with a deafening report and dug a considerable hole in the road behind the car.

"Dynamite!" Monk gulped.

Then the homely chemist poked his incredibly ugly features out of the car window and looked upward to see who had shouted and thrown the dynamite.

"Hy'ah, good-lookin'!" called the voice. "Get out of that iron, or we'll blow you out!"

Monk pulled his head in.

"The guy answers the description of the one who was in the plane and tried to get Vida Carlaw," he said.

"Yep. It's one of the mob that finally murdered Vida Carlaw."

THEY sat very still in the big automobile. It was crowded. Doc cut off the engine, and they could then hear noises made by small bits of rock falling down the mangled cliff face.

The voice above yelled, "You honyoks can talk over the weather after you get outta there!"

Doc Savage said, "If we do not get out, they will throw more dynamite."

They got out, looked up, and could see rifles peeking over the cliff's edge at them. A man stood in plain view, with a stick of dynamite in each hand. He wore plain black gloves.

"That lad must wear gloves all the time," Monk grunted. "I'll bet his finger prints are on file somewhere, and there's plenty charged agin' 'im!"

The dust cloud still boiled around the ma.s.s of blasted rock. Somewhere beyond the rock slide and its growing cloud of dust, a car horn was honking. A rifle whanged atop the cliff, and the car horn began to blow steadily and horribly.

A rope came snaking down the cliff.

"Climb it!" the voice above yelled.

"Well," Monk said, "it don't look like they're gonna kill us right off the bat. I guess I'll climb up."

He started up.

Then Doc Savage moved. The bronze man had s.h.i.+fted a little apart from the others, and now he whipped into motion, off like a champion sprinter. He had covered some yards before those above began to yell and shoot.

From one side to another, he pitched, still covering ground with amazing speed. He dived into the cloud of dust.The dust cloud was very dense, enough so at its most umbrageous point to hide him from those above. Dust would not keep out their bullets, though. Lead tapped fiercely at the broken stone.

Doc got a break. Feeling, he came upon a cranny under a great ma.s.s of stone which was large enough to protect him from lead.

He grasped a great dornick, heaved it so that it went bounding down toward the river, starting a miniature rock slide of its own.

"There he goes!" squawled a man on the clifftop, mistaken.

Doc writhed into the rock cranny. Bullets chased the rolling rock until the men realized their mistake, then began to hit all about, searching the rock slide. A machine gun, evidently a small hand one, joined in, along with six-shooters and shotguns. The whistle and scream of bullets, the thunder of the reports and their echoes from the cliff, made an ominous syncopation.

"We oughta got 'im by now!" a voice yelled. "Go down an see!"

Doc had been waiting for that. He could not wait too long, because the rock dust would settle soon-had settled dangerously already.

Easing out of the cranny, Doc felt his way downward. It was a bruising, nerve-shattering task, negotiating that ma.s.s of rock. He did not follow the slide all the way down, for it would have been impossible to keep from starting rocks rolling.

Doc gained the cliff's edge. He carried in his clothing a silk cord with a grapple hook of collapsible style affixed to one end, and he set the grapple behind the sharp edge of a big boulder, took a chance, and went sliding down the face of the cliff.

He landed on the railroad bed, ran, found a culvert, crawled into it, through it and out on the other side, into water that was over his head.

The Arkansas River was muddy, and he swam out into it, under water, and came up, projecting only his face, under the roots of a willow tree. He could hear what was happening up on the road.

THE ambushers had evidently climbed down, and none of Doc's companions had possessed sufficient agility to make good an escape in the manner of the bronze man. They were probably wise in not attempting it. The ambushers were hunting the rock slide. A profusion of profanity accompanied their efforts.

"He ain't here!" they yelled.

Doc Savage furtively left the willow roots where he lay and swam downstream. He had a plan. While they hunted him, he was going to circle, get behind them, and do whatever possible toward rescuing the prisoners.

But the man with the black gloves must have recognized that, and he lost no time. The prisoners were rushed up the face of the cliff, and out of sight. They must have had cars hidden on a trail at the clifftop, because Doc could hear the engines. The bronze man scrambled out of the river, through bushes, and raced furiously to intercept the automobiles.

He was not successful. The cars sped away in the direction of Tulsa.

Doc ran after the machines, not because he expected to overhaul them, but because there had been a house back a short distance, and a telephone wire ran to it. Doc reached the house, found n.o.body home, broke in, and used the telephone to advise Tulsa police to be on the look-out for the fleeing cars.

It was not much of a chance. Doc could not identify the machines by appearance, not having seen them, but he had seen the tracks and, from a vast knowledge of such subjects, named the kind of tires on the cars. He left money to pay for the damage he had done in breaking into the house, and went back to the clifftop.

He looked over the vicinity, noting particularly such footprints as were discernible. Then he descended the cliffto the car which had honked, and which was still honking, although weaker, as if the battery were running down. It was a motor horn, and sounded dreary.

THE filling station attendant who had boasted of his shooting practice was slumped across the wheel, so that he held the b.u.t.ton depressed with one shoulder. He was holding both hands to his neck, and when he saw Doc Savage, words came out of him that were half vibrations of vocal cords and half bubblings.

"You-great guy-read a lot-'bout you," he said, and It was with difficulty that even Doc understood the words.

"Followed you-figured-might help. Wasn't I-the big ninny!"

Doc Savage said, quietly, "I like your style, young man."

The lips twisted a smile, almost imperceptibly, under the red film that was over them.

"I'll tell-Saint Peter-you said that-and it-oughta be enough." He stopped and shut his eyes tightly.

"Something to tell-you. I figured-it out-after you left."

"Yes," Doc Savage said.