Chapter III

THE ARAB PRINCE

FOR fifteen or twenty seconds there was pin-drop silence. Sounds of the flight of the whitehaired girl and the four Arabs had died away entirely.

“Holy cow!” gulped Doc’s assailant. “Did we pull a boner!”

“Who’d you think I was?” Doc queried.

“How was we to know? We heard the girl belIer, and could tell somebody was holdin’ her, but couldn’t see who it was. We figured we’d find out. You spoke Arabic. That fooled us.”

“You had seen the girl before?”

“Sure! We saw her as soon as we hit the street after hearin’ you say four birds had stopped you. Say, how’d you manage to talk into the radio transmitter in the car without them guys gettin’ wise?”

“The windows of the limousine were closed.”

Doc’s four late captors would have been astounded at this information. They were not aware of Doc’s brief description of their first appearance, since he had spoken without moving his lips. Nor did they dream there was a short-wave transmitter in the big machine, sending on a meter length to which a receiver in Doc’s skyscraper office was attuned.

“You trailed the girl here?” Doc asked.

“Yeah. She was followin’ somebody - one man. We didn’t get a good look at him. It was too dark. But I guess he was taggin’ you and your four playmates.”

“We seem to have had quite a convention. Light a match and let’s see if we can wake Monk up.”

The man with the roaring voice thumbed a match alight. The fitful glow. revealed a remarkable personage. The fellow was a giant, yet he had fists so huge in proportion that the rest of him seemed undersized in comparison. Each was comprised of but slightly less than a gallon of rust-colored, case-hardened knuckles.

His face was long, puritanical, his mouth thin and grim. His habitual expression was that of a man who found very little in the world to approve of.

This was “Renny.” Colonel John Renwick, the engineering profession knew him - a man among the three or four living greatest in that profession. He had made a goodly fortune at his trade. His sole diversion was a disquieting habit of knocking panels out of doors with his huge fists.

Renny was one of a group of five men who had associated themselves with Doc Savage in the strange work for which he had been trained from the cradle. That work was to go to the ends of the world, punishing wrongdoers, helping those in need of help.

A desire for excitement and adventure, and a profound admiration for the astounding bronze man who was their chief, held the little group together. Some men crave money, others works of art, and some go in for society-these five specialized in trouble. There was plenty of that around Doc; his path was always that of peril, of danger and thrilling adventure.

A second member of the group reposed on the pier boards, snoring softly in unconsciousness.

Hair, gristle, arms longer than his legs, a face that was incredibly homely - that was “Monk.” He weighed all of two hundred and sixty pounds, and barely missed being as wide as he was tall.

If appearance was a guide, there was room for possibly a spoonful of brains back of a pair of eyebrows which were like two shaggy mice. Actually, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair - he was announced thus at scientific gatherings, if at no other time - was known in informed circles as a chemist whose accomplishments were almost magic.

“Sleeping beauty!” Renny snorted. “Isn’t he a picture!”

THEY revived Monk by the simple process of grasping his heels, dangling him over the wharf edge and dunking him in the chilly river. He came up groaning, holding his jaw with both furry hands.

Wryly, he squinted at Doc.

“You don’t need to tell me!” he groaned. “It was you we jumped! We made a mistake!” His voice was mild, childlike.

“Got flashlights?” Doc demanded.

“Sure.” Renny produced one. It was small, powerful. Current was not supplied by a battery, but by a tiny generator actuated by a spring motor which was wound by twisting the rear cap of the flash.

Dizzily, Monk dug out an identical light. “When my next time comes to jump somebody in the dark, I’m gonna have a look at ‘im first!” he muttered, pinching gingerly at “is jaw.

“We’ll spread out,” Doc directed. “Search this pier!”

Renny rumbled: “But they all ran off!”

“The girl and the four Arabs did,” Doc told him. “There was another fellow around here. Maybe more than one! Let’s have a look.”

They began at the shoreward end of the wharf, and worked outward.

“If you hear a shrill squeak, duck!” Doc warned.

“Say - we heard noises like that out at the end of the pier a little before we jumped you!” Monk grunted. “What was it?”

“Some kind of missiles which were fired at me.”

“But we didn’t hear shots!” Renny boomed. “No coughing of a silenced rifle, either!”

“I know.”

“Then what fired the darn things? It couldn’t have been an air rifle, because they make a noise.”

“A silenced air rifle!” Monk suggested in his small voice.

“You hairy dope!” Renny rumbled. “You can’t silence an air rifle until not a blame sound can be heard!”

Doc put in: “When you birds finish your argument, we’ll look around!”

Renny popped his enormous fists together; the resulting sound was like two concrete blocks colliding. “O. K.! Let’s go!”

They looked behind every bale, under the covers over each piece of machinery, and tried the tops of all boxes to see that they were nailed solidly.

“Well, we found what the little boy shot at,” Monk, grinning, said when the search was over. “Where’d he go, d’you reckon?”

“Whoever it was must have skipped out at the same time as the whitehaired girl and the four Arabs,” Doc concluded.

“There wasn’t a sign of an empty rifle cartridge lying around,” Monk added, his small voice somewhat ludicrous for such a giant.

“I think we’ll find those things were not propelled by explosive powder,” Doc advised.

Renny rattled his hard knuckles together. “Say, I been thinkin’! I told you the girl was followin’ somebody here when we trailed her! We only got a couple of glimpses of the fellow ahead of her, and neither of them were clear. But I think he was carryin’ somethin’ about like a big fiddle case.”

“I’m pretty certain he was!” Monk echoed.

“Then it is a safe bet that he launched those projectiles!” Doc decided.

Searching, Doc speedily located the rope bale against which he had crowded the four Arabs, preparatory to questioning them. He plucked at the burlap covering, his powerful fingers tearing it off easily.

The rope was two-inch stuff, very stiff. He worked the coils apart without great difficulty. Near the opposite side of the bale, he unearthed the missile which had made the squeaky whistle.

Monk and Renny peered at it.

“Holy cow!” exploded Renny. “First bullet I ever saw like that!”

The slug resembled nothing so much as an elongated aerial bomb, half an inch thick by four inches long. It even had the metal guiding vanes on the tapering tail. It was solid steel.

MONK picked up the strange projectile, sniffed of it, and shook his head. “No powder smell on it!”

Doc nodded. He had already made certain of that fact.

“Got any idea how it was launched?” Monk queried.

“Nothing definite enough to mention,” Doc told him.

Monk and Renny swapped glances in the flashlight glow. To an outsider, Doc’s reply might have conveyed the impression that he was utterly puzzled. To Monk and Renny, who knew this amazing bronze man and his remarkable ways as well as any did, the answer meant that Doc had a very good idea how the missile had been launched. Had he been baffled he would have said so.

They did not press for information, knowing it would be useless. Doc always kept theories to himself until they were proven facts.

Renny changed the subject. “Any idea why they wanted the submarine?”

“None whatever,” Doc assured him. “But it’s pretty evident they want it badly.”

“Pretty!” Monk grinned. “Say, that kinda describes that whitehaired girl, too! What I mean, she knocked a man’s eyes out! A looker, huh?”

“She was dressed like she’d just jumped out of some Turk’s harem!” Renny said sourly.

“Yah - you would suggest that she’s married!” Monk snorted.

Renny eyed Doc solemnly. “Did you get enough of a look at her garments to tell whether or not they were theatrical stuff?”

“They were genuine,” Doc assured him. “Some of the cloth had a weave peculiar to the southern coastal tribes of Arabia. She was no actress.”

“That’s dang queer!” Monk uttered. “Even Arabians don’t dress like that when they come to this country!”

A brief flurry of rain washed in from the river. The men dashed along the wharf, reached the street, and found a prowling taxi. The hack carried them to the murky street beside the tower of a skyscraper which held Doc’s office.

Glistening in the rain. Doc’s limousine stood where it had been deserted at the curb. Entering, Doc wheeled it toward the big metal doors. A special lift lowered the machine to the basement garage which held other cars belonging to the bronze man. These were roadsters, coupes, phaetons, and an assortment of trucks; all were powerful vehicles.

An elevator carried them to the eighty-sixth floor.

“We left Ham in the office.” Monk grunted.

Halfway down the corridor, a door bore a name in small, unobtrusive letters.

CLARK SAVAGE JR.

They opened it and walked in. A man sat in a chair across the richly fitted office. He was not facing them, and only the top of his natty slouch hat was visible.

“Ham must be asleep on the job, the shyster!” Monk chuckled.

The man in the chair stood erect.

“Huh!” Monk gulped, staring. “You’re not Ham!”

THE fellow was a sleek, expensively clad Arab. He had plenty of height, a good breadth of shoulder, and ropy muscles rolled under a skin that was smooth as brown silk.

The man’s right eye moved as he appraised Doc and his two companions - but his left eye remained strangely fixed. He showed most of his teeth in a great smile. The teeth were artificial, of platinum or white gold. In the center of each was set a clear diamond of fair size.

The combination of rigid left eye and bejeweled teeth was bizarre. The man resembled a carnival freak.

“I am Mohallet,” he said in excellent English.

Monk blinked small eyes which were like sparks in little pits of gristle. “Where’s Ham?”

The Arab seemed puzzled. “If you mean the gentleman who introduced himself as Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, he stepped into the next room a moment ago.”

“That’s him!” Monk swung across the office to a door. It let him into a vast room in which almost every foot of floor space was occupied by bookcases. This was Doc Savage’s library. It held one of the most complete collections of scientific volumes in existence.

Beyond lay another room, even larger. Stands, cases, and work tables laden with scientific apparatus stood everywhere. The mechanism was of the most modern type; indeed, much of it was so advanced as to be beyond the comprehension of the world’s leading scientists.

This library and laboratory were unique. Men of science had come from abroad to inspect them, to study there. Usually they went away proclaiming them the most perfect of their kind to be found.

There was in existence a greater library and laboratory, however. None knew of it, or its whereabouts. This establishment was also the property of Doc Savage. It was located at a remote spot in the polar regions, at the place Doc called his “Fortress of Solitude.”

To his Fortress of Solitude, the strange bronze man vanished at intervals. At such times, none knew whence he had gone, or how to find him - not even his five aids. He spent these periods - weeks and sometimes months - in intensive, uninterrupted study, preparing for greater tasks ahead.

These sojourns were responsible for the almost superhuman mental development of the bronze man. They had given him a knowledge which seemed to a layman nearly unlimited.

A slender, waspish man was bending over a workbench in the laboratory. He was dressed in the height of fashion. His garb was sartorial perfection.

He was carefully stropping the long, thornlike blade of a sword cane across a hone.

“Who’s your friend out here, Ham?” Monk demanded.

BEFORE replying, “Ham” gave his blade a few additional whets, then sheathed it. The thing became an innocent black walking stick. He flourished it a time or two, purposefully delaying to aggravate Monk.

Ham, one of Doc Savage’s five aids, was probably the most astute lawyer Harvard had ever turned out. He was never seen to go anywhere without his sword cane.

He and Monk were rarely together without being in a good-natured quarrel. This state of affairs dated back to the Great War, to an incident which had given Ham his nickname. As a joke, Ham had taught Monk several French words, which were highly insulting, telling him they were the proper things with which to flatter a Frenchman. Monk had used them on a French general, and had landed in the guardhouse.

A few days after Monk’s release, the dapper Ham had been hailed up on a charge of stealing hams. Somebody had planted the evidence. Ham had never been able to prove Monk had framed him. The incident still irked him.

Monk bloated indignantly as Ham delayed his answer.

“Some day I’m gonna muss up that pretty face of yourn!” he promised, his small voice angry.

Ham scowled at Monk’s hairy, apish frame. He waved his sword cane again. “And one of these days I’m gonna give you a shave - right down to the bone!”

Monk grinned. “Who is that Arab with the jewelry in his mouth?”

“He said he was a Mister Mohallet.” Ham advised. “He came up here a few minutes ago, looking for Doc.”

The two swapped glares, then went back to the richly equipped outer office.

Mohallet was showing his diamond-set teeth in a smile, and addressing Doc. “You are Doc Savage?”

Doc nodded, his gaze fixed on Mohallet’s rigid left eye. The orb was artificial - glass. That was why it did not move.

“Some months ago, newspapers all over the world carried a story about an expedition you made under the polar ice by submarine,” Mohallet continued. “Do you still have that submarine, if I may ask?”

“It was the Helldiver,” Doc said. “We still have it.”

Mohallet flashed his jeweled teeth. “I am an agent sent from Arabia by Prince Abdul Rajab. My mission is to charter the submarine.”