Doc Savage - The Man Who Shook The Earth Part 25

"How does he make the earth shake?"

"When you throw electric current through certain types of quartz, what happens?" Doc asked.

"The quartz expands and contracts," said Long Tom. "Scientists use this tendency of quartz to expand and contract to create ultra-violet sound waves. They do it by sending high-frequency current through the quartz."

"That is as good an explanation as any of how these quakes have been made," Doc announced. "Peculiar strata of rock, silica, and other quartz formations, underlying the western coast of South America, are susceptible to a projector of high-frequency current which this First Little White Brother has developed."

Long Tom chuckled again, apparently at nothing at all.

"What're you so happy about?" Monk grumbled.

"Why," said Long Tom, "to defeat this guy, Doc had merely to have the current shut off the high-line."

"I didn't do that," Doc said.

"Huh?"

"The high-line is carrying its usual load of current."

THE voice from the radio in the mine tunnel said: "You Yankees will now have the privilege of seeing another earthquake."Silence-five seconds of it. Then, far beneath their feet, there was faint rumbling.

John Acre covered his hawk face in sudden, overpowering terror.

"Use it, Tip!" Doc yelled at the girl in the plane.

"I am!"

Strangely, the grumbling underfoot was not getting louder. It kept on, however. The earth trembled slightly, as if cattle were stampeding in the distance.

Suddenly things happened at the rocky spire that thrust up fingerlike from the canyon floor. A moaning came from it, a monstrous throbbing. Boulders began rolling its sheer sides, bouncing like thrown marbles. Rock dust arose in clouds, as if the peak were strangely afire.

The high-line tower on the rocky cone lurched from side to side. The multiple cables of the transmission system whipped like strings. They gnashed together; electric fire played-it was plainly visible to the men at the mine.

Then came the spectacular climax. The entire top of the rock spike uncapped and slid. The high-line tower collapsed entirely. Then dust and flying rock enveloped the scene like a mantle of dirty cotton.

"Was the First Little White Brother on that hill, Doc?" demanded gaunt Johnny, who still had his spectacles perched on his forehead.

"He had to be," Doc declared. "It was the only point from which he could see that I was in his trap."

John Acre's hawk face was losing its fear.

"But what happened to the rock peak?" he demanded.

"The First Little White Brother's projector of high-frequency waves for starting expansion and contraction of quartz formations is-or was-really in two parts, hurling two beams," Doc explained. "Where the beams intersected, they caused a heterodyning effect which in reality set the quartz pulsating at its greatest violence."

"I am no scientist," said John Acre. "All this is incomprehensible to me!"

"It's possible," Long Tom said.

"Very possible," Johnny agreed.

"Holy cow!" snorted Renny. "Do you have to tell him? Ain't he seen some concrete examples?"

"What I did was to create a high-frequency wave-beam projector, and put it in the plane," Doc said. "Tip trained it on the hill. It intersected the First Little White Brother's projector-beam, and set up contractions and expansions in the rock underlying the pinnacle. It was not a task which required the voltage of a high-line."

Dido Galligan eyed John Acre. "Savage simply tossed this guy's earthquake back at him. Savvy?"

John Acre grinned under his hooked nose.

"I believe Mr. Savage is a man capable of catching and tossing back anything," he said. "Even an earthquake!"

COME on," Doc suggested. He set out toward the wreck of the rock spike. "You men will want to see this First Little White Brother. He's some one you know."

Dido Galligan hesitated, then said: "But my sister?""Stay with her," Doc told him. "Tell her to shut off the projector. It's no longer needed."

Dido ran for his pretty sister. This, as a matter of fact, was their first actual meeting.

The others pegged after the bronze man. They strung out in a line that progressed rapidly for the scene of the First Little White Brother's finish.

"Who is this guy, Doc?" Monk called.

"Remember the radio operator from the steamer Junio, who was murdered in my office in New York?" Doc asked.

"Sure!"

"The radioman was killed because he was trying to bring me messages which a pa.s.senger on the Junio had filed. The radio operator probably held them up, realizing they meant peril to me."

"The messages were addressed to you?"

"No. They must have been for Velvet and Biff, telling them their boss was on his way to New York. Velvet and Biff didn't get the messages, so they kidnaped their boss by mistake. They, of course, thought he was really seeking my help, instead of coming to kill me."

"You mean-"

"The whole thing is proved by a few words on those wax cylinders which were recorded at the warehouse-hangar in New York," Doc interposed. "The men who spoke didn't know what the recording device was-possibly they didn't think it was operating, if they did know what it was."

"So that's why you took such pains to keep the wax cylinders!" Renny boomed.

They were nearing the spire of rock, or what was left of it. Finding the First Little White Brother's body, it became apparent, was going to be something of a job. The peak had all but leveled itself.

That the maker of quakes was dead was certain. No man could have lived through the cataclysmic destruction of the rocky peak.

Doc's men scattered, hunting the earthly remnant of the strange foe who had sought to control a continent's nitrate industry, that his nation might have the nitrates so necessary in manufacturing explosives vital to a war of conquest.

It was Renny who found the body. He flagged a huge hand above the rocks; his great voice rumbled.

"Holy cow!" he thundered. "This guy had me plumb fooled! Is my face red!"

"He was smooth," Doc agreed. "He came to New York to wipe us out before we learned men here in Chile were seeking our aid. When he saw he had bitten off quite a job, he faked his own murder in hopes of throwing us off the trail."

They stared at the body of the First Little White Brother. It was twisted, broken, and crushed, long since devoid of life.

He had come to an earned end in his own trap, this man who had sought to seize the nitrate industry of Chile. His had been a fiendish purpose, an aim more sinister than desire for worldly goods. The war which he had hoped to foster would have meant, as wars always do, the death of thousands, and the suffering of many others.

His death signified much more than the worldly demise of one man. It meant that the Little White Brothers, an organization made dangerous to the whole world because of its fanatical nature, was smashed. With its head no longer living and its chief members destined for Doc Savage's "college" for renovating criminals, it was unlikely that the world would again hear of the Little White Brothers.The czar sinister and his menace were ended.

Rather like John Acre's was the hook-nosed, hawkish face of the lifeless First Little White Brother.

The genuine John Acre, chief of secret police, stared at the man who had been almost, if not quite, his double.

"The fellow who used my name in New York!" he guessed.

"The same bird," Monk agreed.

SIX hours after the lifeless remains of the First Little White Brother had been unearthed, Doc Savage sank his big speed plane in a deft three-point landing on the field outside Antof.a.gasta.

"I shall call a meeting of nitrate-plant owners," John Acre announced.

"There has been no mention of payment for your services, Mr. Savage. But remuneration will be ample, I a.s.sure you."

"We do not work it that way," Doc told him.

"What?"

"We take no payment for our services," Doc explained. "The usual procedure is, for those who have benefited by anything myself and my men have done, to erect a hospital and establish a trust fund for operating it, so that treatment may be given by the best surgeons and medical men, free of charge."

John Acre considered this.

Bueno!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And we will have a great celebration when the hospital is dedicated, with you as the guest of honor. All of Chile will want to see the man who has smashed the maker of earthquakes."

"Cut out the celebration part," Doc told him. "Don't depend on me being there."

THE END.