Kenneth Robeson - The Polar Treasure

"All gather together!" commanded their leader. "We will rush him in a group!"

The words were hardly off the leader's lips when he dropped, his blank and senseless face looking foolishly through the rungs of the chair which had hit him.

The harm had been done. The Innuits grouped. They took fresh holds on their weapons.

They charged.

They had hit upon the only chance they had of coping with Doc. There were nearly fifty of them. Despite their short stature and fat, they were stout, fierce fighters.

With mad, bloodthirsty squeals, they closed upon the mighty bronze man. For a moment, they covered him completely. A tidal wave of killers!

Then a bronze arrow of a figure shot upward from the squirming pile.

The ceiling of the lounge was criss-crossed with elaborately decorated beams. Doc's sinewy hands grasped these, clinging to a precarious handhold as he moved away.

He dropped to the floor, clear of the fight, before he was hardly missed.

But the Eskimos still had him cut off from the exits. They closed in again. They threw spears and knives and an occasional club, all of which Doc dodged. They shrieked maledictions, largely to renew their own faltering nerve.

The situation was getting desperate. Doc put his back to a bulkhead.

He did not pay particular attention to the fact that he was near the spot where the strange, warm, soft object had touched his neck.

With hideous yells, the killing horde of Innuits charged.

A door opened beside Doc. A soft, strong hand came out. It clutched Doc's arm.

It was a woman's hand.

DOC SAVAGE whipped through the door. He caught a brief glimpse of the girl.

She was tall. Nothing more than that could be told about her form, since she was muffled in the garb of the arctic — moccasins reaching above her knees, and with the tops decorated with the long hair of the polar bear, trousers of the skin of the arctic hare, a shirt-like garment of auk skins, and an outer parka of a coat fitted with a hood.

But her face! That was different. He could see enough of that to tell she was a creature of gorgeous beauty. Enthralling eyes, an exquisite little upturned nose, lips as inviting as the petals of a red rose — they would have made most men forget all about the fight.

Had there been light to disclose Doc's features, however, an onlooker would have been surprised to note how little the giant bronze man was affected by this entrancing beauty.

Doc worked at the prosaic, but by no means unimportant, task of securing the door. He got it fast.

He turned his flashlight on the girl. He had noted something he wanted to verify. The gaze he bent upon her was the same sort he would give any stranger he might be curious about.

Her hair was white; it was a strange, warm sort of white, like old ivory. The girl was a perfect blonde.

Doc thought of Victor Vail. The violinist had this same sort of hair — a little more white, perhaps.

"You did me a great favor, Miss Vail," Doc told the girl.

She started. She put her hands over her lips. She wore no mittens. Her hands were long, shapely, velvet of skin.

"How did — ?"

"Did I know you were Roxey Vail?" Doc picked up her question. "You could be no one else. You are the image of your father."

"My father!" She said the word softly, as if it were something sacred. "Did you know him?"

Doc thought of that smear of scarlet on the ice near the spot where Victor Vail had disappeared. He changed the subject.

"Did any one besides you escape the massacre aboard this liner?"

The girl hesitated.

Doc turned his flash on his own face. He knew she was uncertain whether to trust him. Doc was not flattering himself when he felt that a look at his strong features would reassure her. He had seen it work before.

"My mother survived," said the girl.

"Is she alive?"

"She is."

Enraged Eskimos beat on the bulkhead door. They hacked at the stout panel with bayonets. They yelled like Indians.

BEAUTIFUL ROXEY Vail suddenly pressed close to Doc Savage. He could feel the trembling in her rounded, firm body.

"You won't let them — kill me?" she choked.

Doc slipped a corded bronze arm around her — and he didn't often put his arm around young women.

"What a question!" he chided her. "Haven't you any faith in men?"

She shivered. "Not the ones I've seen — lately."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know why those Eskimos attacked you?" she countered.

"No," Doc admitted. "It surprised me. Eskimos are noted as an unwarlike people. When they get through fighting the north for a living, they've had enough scrapping."

"They attacked you because of — "

A slab breaking out of the door stopped her. The Innuits were smashing the panel!

"We'd better move!" Doc murmured.

He swept the girl up in one arm. She struck at him, thinking he meant her harm. Then, realizing he was only carrying her because he could make more speed in that fashion, she desisted.

Doc glided sternward.

"You haven't visited this death ship often in the passing years, have you?" he hazarded.

She shook her head. "No. You could count the number of times on the fingers of one hand."

They reached a large, rather barren room amidships. Doc knew much of the construction of ships. He veered abruptly to the left, descended a companion, wheeled down a passage.

He was now face to face with the liner's strong room.

He took one look at the great vault. He dropped the girl.

The treasure trove was empty!

THE YOUNG woman picked herself up from the floor.

"I'm sorry," Doc apologized. He pointed at the strong room. "Has that been empty long?"

"Ever since I can remember."

"Who got the gold, and the diamonds?"

She was plainly surprised. "What gold and diamonds?"

Doc smiled dryly. "You've got me! But fifty millions dollars' worth of gold and diamonds is at the bottom of this mess. If it was carried aboard this liner, it would have been stored in the strong room. It's not there. So that means — Hm-m-m!" He shifted his great shoulders. "I'm not sure what it means.

He glanced about. Here seemed to be as good a spot as any to linger. It would take the Eskimos some minutes to find them.

"You started to tell me why the Innuits attacked me," he prompted the girl. "What was the reason?"

"I'll tell you my story from the first — I think there's time," she said swiftly. Her voice was pleasant to listen to. "My mother and myself escaped the wholesale slaughter of the others aboard the Oceanic, because we slid overboard by a rope. We were apart from the other passengers, hunting father — he had disappeared mysteriously the day before.

"We hid on land. We saw the mutineers depart over the ice, hauling the fur-wrapped figure of a man on a sledge. We did not realize until it was too late that the man they hauled was my father."

She stopped. She bit her lips. Her eyes swam in moisture. They were very big, enthralling blue eyes.

Doc made an impatient gesture for her to go on. "Oh — I'm neglecting to tell you it was the crew who murdered those aboard the liner. Men named Ben O'Gard, Dynamite Smith, and Keelhaul de Rosa, were ring leaders — "

"I know all that," Doc interposed. "Tell your side of it."

"My mother and I got food from the liner after the mutineers had gone," she continued. "We built a crude hut inland. We didn't — we couldn't stay on the liner, although it was solidly aground. The mutineers might return. And all those murdered bodies — it was too horrible. We couldn't have borne the sight — "

"When did the Eskimos come?" Doc urged her along.

"Within a month after the mutineers had departed. This spit of land was their home. They had been away on a hunting trip."