"Until he goes to Thunder Island and gets whatever unknown element or substance is the basis of the weird stuff," Doc pointed out. "I’ll show you where the cache is in a short while. First, we’ll do a couple of things. No. 1 is, tie up these prisoners."
The binding was effected in short order.
"Now we get the gold ashore," Doc directed.
This took considerably longer. Doc and Renny did the diving. They looped ropes around the sacks. The others hauled the coin to the wharf.
"Carry it to shore," Doc commanded, to their puzzlement.
The sun was well up before the task was completed.
Doc now took care that all the prisoners were clear of the Jolly Roger, and the wharf as well, by some hundreds of feet.
He dived overboard near the stern. As he had suspected, he found the shelf on which the gold coin had been hidden was not the only one fixed to the Jolly Rogerhull below the water line. On the opposite side was another.
The Smoke of Eternity cache was here. It consisted of a single large canister of the rare metal which was impervious to its effects. This had a capacity of perhaps five gallons.
Doc brought the canister to the deck. He placed it in plain view atop the deckhouse.
Going ashore, he used a pistol to perforate the canister.
The result was awesome to the extreme. The earlier phenomena when the Smoke of Eternity was released were pygmy in relation. It was like comparing a match flame to an eruption of Vesuvius. In the space of seconds, the Jolly Roger, the ramshackle wharf, and a sizable bite of the shore were wiped out.
It was impossible to tell how deep into the bowels of the earth the annihilation extended. But it must have been a respectable distance, judging from the terrific rush of water to fill the hole. Anchored ships far down the Hudson snapped their hawsers, so great was the pull of water. A Weehawken ferry gave its passengers a hair-raising ride as it went with the current.
The gray, vile smoke arose in such prodigious quantity as to make a pall over all the midtown section of New York. The play of strange electrical sparks created a sound like a hurricane going through a monster forest.
But, beyond a general scare, no harm to anybody resulted.
Chapter 14. THE RACE
ONE week had passed since the incidents on the Jolly Roger. The nearly two million dollars in gold coin, which Doc had recovered, had been restored to the bank. One noteworthy incident accompanied the return of the wealth.
The officials of the bank learned Doc was a great benefactor of mankind, that his purpose in life was the righting of wrongs. So they offered a generous reward of one hundred thousand dollars, thinking Doc would decline to accept, and that the bank would get a lot of good publicity.
Doc fooled them. He took the money. And the next day ten restaurants began supplying free meals to deserving unemployed.
The police never received a single one of Kar’s villains for trial and sentence to the penitentiary. Instead, Doc sent his prisoners to a certain institution for the mentally imperfect, in a mountain section of up-State New York.
All criminals have a defective mental balance, otherwise they would not be lawbreakers. A famous psychologist would treat Kar’s men. It might take years. But when released, they would be completely cured of their criminal tendencies.
"Which is what I call taking a lot of pains with ‘em!" Monk had remarked.
Of Kar, there had been no sign. The man had gone into hiding, probably far from New York, Doc rather suspected.
Despite the absence of any hostile move by the master villain, Oliver Wording Bittman had remained close to Doc and his men. This was a privilege Doc could not deny the man, in view of the debt of gratitude the elder Savage had owed him.
"You can play safe," Doc said. "Although it is hardly likely Kar will tackle us again, now that his supply of the Smoke of Eternity is gone. We have him checkmated — until he can replenish himself with the ghastly stuff."
"You think he will try to do that?" Bittman inquired.
"I hope so."
Bittman was puzzled.
"I have put Ham to checking on the passports issued all over the country," Doc explained. "The moment Kar leaves the United States for the South Seas, we will know it."
"You think Kar must go to Thunder Island for the unknown element or substance which is the main ingredient of the Smoke of Eternity?"
"I am sure of it. The fact that Kar stole the rock samples from Thunder Island proves it. By stealing the samples from my safe, he told me what I hoped to learn by analyzing the rocks."
Doc Savage was even now waiting for Ham to appear with an early morning report on the passports he had examined. Ham was having the pictures from all passports sent by telephoto from the west coast.
While waiting, Doc Savage was taking his remarkable two-hour routine of exercise. They were unlike anything else in the world. Doc’s father had started him taking them when he could hardly walk, and Doc had continued them religiously from that day.
These exercises were solely responsible for Doc’s amazing physical and mental powers. He made his muscles work against each other, straining until a fine film of perspiration covered his mighty bronze body. He juggled a number of a dozen figures in his head, multiplying, dividing, extracting square and cube roots.
He had an apparatus which made sound waves of frequencies so high and low the ordinary human ear could not detect them. Through a lifetime of practice, Doc had perfected his ears to a point where the sounds registered. He named several score of different odors after a quick olfactory test of small vials racked in the case which held his exercising apparatus, and which accompanied Doc wherever he journeyed.
He read a page of Braille printing — the writing for the blind which is a system of upraised dots — so rapidly his fingers merely seemed to stroke the sheet This was to attune his sense of touch.
He had many other varied parts in his routine. They filled the entire two hours at a terrific pace, with no time out for rest.
HAM suddenly appeared, twirling his sword cane. He had an air of bearing important news.
"You had the right dope, Doc!" he declared. "Look at this set of pictures which were telephotoed from San Francisco!"
He displayed four reproductions, still wet from their bath of the telephoto apparatus. Doc examined them.
"Four of Kar’s men!" he declared. "They’re part of the group Squint assembled!"
"They sailed on the liner Sea Star, bound for New Zealand," Ham explained.
"Sailed!"
"Exactly. The vessel put out to sea yesterday."
Doc swung to the telephone. He called the number of one of New York’s most modern airports. He instructed, "My low-wing speed plane, the large one — I want it checked over and fueled to capacity at once!"
"There was no passport issued to Gabe Yuder," Ham pointed out.
"Gabe Yuder may not be Kar!" Doc declared. "Kar would fear to monkey with a passport. Possibly he stowed away on the Sea Star, in the cabin of one of his men. At any rate, it’s up to us to stop that gang from securing from Thunder Island the element that is the basic ingredient of the Smoke of Eternity."
Doc now called the large banking house with which he did business.
"Has it arrived?" he inquired of the firm president.
"Yes, Mr. Savage," was the answer. "The sum was exactly six million dollars. It was cabled by the National Bank of Blanco Grande, in the Central American Republic of Hidalgo, exactly on schedule."
"Thank you," said Doc, and hung up.
This fabulous sum was from Doc Savage’s secret reservoir of wealth — a lost valley in the impenetrable mountains of Hidalgo, a valley inhabited by a race of golden-skinned people who were pure descendants of the ancient Mayan nation. In the valley was a great treasure cavern and a fabulous mine of gold — the treasure-trove of ancient Maya.