Kenneth Robeson - The Pirate of the Pacific

"Ladio makee noise," repeated the Oriental. "If you want takee look-see, all lightee."

The cop was conducted into the rear. He noted nothing peculiar about the passage — the slits in the ceiling had been closed. He saw two bland-looklng, moonfaced men loading a large radio case onto a truck behind the store. The truck already bore other crates.

"Me show how ladio makee lacket," said the Celestial.

He turned on one of several radio sets which stood about. Obviously, it was not working properly. Loud scratchings and roarings poured from it. The voice of a woman reading cooking recipes was a procession of deafening squawks.

The cop was satisfied.

"Reckon that's what the party who called me heard," he grunted. "After this, don't turn that thing on so loud, see! I ain't got no time to go chasm' down false alarms."

The officer departed.

The proprietor of the radio store made sure the policeman was out of sight, then he padded back to the truck.

"Take our prisoner to the master, my sons," he commanded.

THE truck rumbled away. It mingled with traffic that jammed the narrow streets of Chinatown. The two Orientals sat stolidly in the cab. They did not look back once.

Eventually, the truck rolled into a large warehouse. The packing cases were all unloaded and shoved on a freight elevator. The cage lifted several floors.

Renny was having difficulty breathing. The excelsior had worked up around his nostrils. It scratched his eyes.

He felt himself being tumbled end over end across floor. He could barely hear his captors talking.

"Go and tell the master we are here," one said, speaking their native tongue.

An Oriental padded off. In three or four minutes, he was back.

With swift rendings, the lid was torn off Renny's prison. They hauled him out and plucked the excelsior away.

He was in a large storeroom. A few boxes of merchandise were scattered about. Judging from the tags, most of it was from the Orient. In addition to the elevator and a stairway door, there was an opening to the right.

A man grunting under the weight of Renny's shoulders, another bearing his feet, they passed through the opening. A flight of creaking stairs was ascended. A trapdoor lifted, letting them out on a tarred roof.

An unusually high wall concealed them from other buildings near by. Renny was carried over and flung across a narrow gap to the roof of the adjacent building. Next, he was carried to a large chimney.

Reaching into the flue, an Oriental brought out a rope. This was tied under Renny's arms. They lowered him. He saw the interior of the chimney was quite clean, fitted with a steel ladder.

He was handed down all of a hundred feet. Then half a dozen clawlike hands seized him and yanked him through an aperture in the chimney.

Renny gazed about in surprise.

His surroundings were luxurious. Expensive tapestries draped the walls; rugs, many more than an inch thick, strewed the floor. A low tabouret near one wall bore a steaming teapot, tiny cups and containers of melon seeds and other delicacies of the Far East.

Mongols and half-caste Chinese stood about. Each one was dressed neatly and might have been an American business man, except for their inscrutable faces and the hate blazing in their dark eyes. Renny counted seven of them.

Suddenly an eighth man appeared. He made a startling announcement.

"The master has received important news!" he singsonged. "News which makes it no longer necessary that we refrain from taking the life of this one who has hands the size of four ordinary men. He is to pay for slaying our fellows."

RENNY felt as if he had been shoved into a refrigerator. The Oriental's statement amounted to a pronouncement of death.

But it was more than that. It told Renny something terrible had happened. They had intended to hold him as a hostage to force Doc Savage to leave them alone. Now they no longer needed him for that Had they succeeded in slaying Doc?

"This man is to be administered the death of many cuts," continued the slant-eyed man. "Four of you bring the other two prisoners here."

Obeying the order, four men departed. They came back almost at once bearing two bound and gagged figures.

Renny had no trouble guessing who they were.

Juan Mindoro and Scott S. Osborn!

Juan Mindoro was a slender, dynamic man. His high forehead and clear eyes gave him a distinctive look. Gray peppered his dark hair. A gray mustache bristled over his gag.

Scott S. Osborn, the sugar importer, was a guinea-pig fat man. Ordinarily, his hair was stuck down with grease, but now it was disarrayed and hung in thin strings. His eyes were bubbly and running tears.

The spokesman of the yellow horde slanted an arm at Scott S. Osborn. He spoke in snarling English.

Scott S. Osborn's fat body convulsed. Tears fairly squirted from his little, fat-encircled eyes. His scream of terror was a shrill whinny through his nostrils.

The Mongol wheeled on Mindoro.

"You will watch!" he grated. "As you watch, you will do well to think deeply, my fliend!"

Juan Mindoro only glowered back at his tormentor. No quiver of fear rippled his distinctive features.

"You have lefused to give us the names of the men in the seclet political society of the Luzon Union, which you head," continued the Mongol, only a few "R's" turned into "L's" marring his pronunciation of the English words. "We need those names."

Dropping to a knee, the slant-eyed man hastily removed Juan Mindoro's gag. "Maybe so, you give us the names now. In such case, we would see fit not to halm these two men."

"I am not fool enough to trust you!" Juan Mindoro said fiercely, speaking crisp, Americanized English. "You want the names of my friends in the secret political society so you can slay them and get them out of the way. They would all be assassinated."

"But, no," smirked the Mongol. "We would only lemove them fol a sholt time. Kidnap them, pelhaps."

"Kill them, you mean!" snapped Mindoro. "You won't get their names from me. That's final!" Then, looking at Renny, he added, as though to explain his action, "The information they want would mean the death of hundreds of innocent men. The decision I must make is a horrible one, for it means my death as well as your own. I think they will tell me within a few hours."

Renny shrugged — the only reply he could make.

Snarling, the Mongol pointed at Renny. "Begin! Cut out his eyes to stalt!"

A yellow man flashed a needle-bladed knife. He dropped on Renny, put his knee on Renny's chest, grasped the big man's hair with his left fist.

The knife lifted. Every eye in the room watched it.

A Mongol over by the entrance to the chimney shrieked. He shot like a living cannon ball across the room. He struck the knifeman with a shock that knocked them both unconscious.

Wild stares centered on the chimney entrance.

A giant man of bronze stood there!

FOR once, the yellow faces of the Mongols were not inscrutable. They goggled like small boys seeing their first lion.

"Fools!" ripped their leader. "Kill this bronze devil!"

A man darted a hand to his sleeve and forked out a kris with a foot-long serpentine blade. He drew back his arm and flung the knife.

What happened next was almost black magic. The kris was suddenly protruding from the chest of the man who had thrown it! It was as though he had stabbed himself.

Not one present could believe the mighty bronze man had plucked the flashing blade out of mid-air and returned it so accurately and with such blinding speed. No one, except Renny, who had seen Doc perform such amazing feats before!

Even while the dead man sloped backward to the floor like a falling tree, Doc seized another Mongol. The fellow seemed to become light as a rag doll, and as helpless. His clubbed body bowled over a fifth Oriental.