Kenneth Robeson - The Pirate of the Pacific

"I know that place," Renny ejaculated. "It's the office of the Dragon Oriental Goods Company, across the street from the skyscraper under construction."

"Our friends were just brought in," said Doc.

Mindoro made bewildered gestures.

"That is a television instrument, of course," he muttered. "But I did not know they were made that small."

"They re not, usually," Doc explained. "But this one is not radically different from the larger sets. It is merely reduced in size. Being so small, it is effective for only a few miles."

"Where is the transmitter?" Renny questioned, "In the Dragonboat?"

"In the adjoining office. I installed it after leaving you and Mindoro in the taxi. Other transmitters, operating on slightly different wave lengths, are at the radio store and at the spot where Tom Too so nearly finished you. This one got results first."

Ham ran into the laboratory. He came out bearing several of the compact little machine guns which were Doc's own invention, gas masks, gas bombs, and bullet-proof vests.

Riding down in the high-speed elevator, Ham, Renny, and Mindoro donned the vests, belted on the machine guns, and stuffed their pockets with bombs.

Mindoro, who was unfamiliar with Doc's workin" methods, showed astonishment that the mighty bronze man did not follow their example.

"Aren't you going to carry at least one of these guns?" he queried.

Doc's bronze head shook a negative. "Rarely use them."

"But why?"

Doc was slow answering. He didn't like to talk about himself or his way of operating.

"The reasons I don't use a gun are largely psychological," he said. "Put a gun in a man's hand, and he will use it. Let him carry one and he comes to depend upon it. Take it away from him, and he is lost — seized with a feeling of helpless-ness. Therefore, since I carry no firearms, none can be taken from me to leave the resultant feeling of helplessness."

"But think of the handicap of not being armed!" Mindoro objected.

Doc shrugged and dropped the subject.

Ham and Renny grinned at this word play. Doc handicapped? Not much! They had never seen mighty bronze man in a spot yet where he didn't have a ready way out.

Doc rode the outside of the cab which whisked them down Broadway. He watched the diallike lens of his telewatch almost continuously.

Several Mongols were now in the Dragon concern office. They moved about, conversing. The image carried to Doc by television was too jittery and dim to permit him to read their lips. Indeed, he could not even identify the faces of the men in the room, beyond the fact that they were lemon-hued and slant-eyed.

Considering the compactness of Doc's tiny apparatus, how ever, the transmitted image was remarkably clear. An electrical engineer interested in television would have gone into raptures over the mechanism. It was constructed with the precision of a lady's costly wrist watch.

An interesting bit of drama was now enacted on the telewatch lens.

Monk, by squirming about in the chair in which he was bound, got his toes on the floor. Hopping like a grotesque, half-paralyzed frog, he suddenly reached the grimy window. He fell against the pane. It broke.

Some glass fell inside the room; some dropped down into the street.

A yellow man ran to Monk and delivered a terrific blow. Monk upset, chair and all, onto the floor. He landed on fragments of the window he had broken. Doc watched Monk's hands intently after the fall.

The Mongols peered anxiously out of the window. They drew back after a time, satisfied the falling glass had alarmed no one.

Doc's view was now interrupted.

A slant-eyed man came and stood directly before the eye of the hidden television transmitter. All the apparatus registered was a limited view of the fellow's back.

Doc waited, golden eyes never leaving the telewatch dial. None of his impatience showed on his bronze features. Three minutes passed. Four. Then the Mongol moved away from the television eye.

The situation in the Dragon concern office was exactly as it had been four minutes ago. The three forms bound to chairs were quiet.

Doc's head shook slowly.

"I don't like this," he told those inside the taxi. "Something strange is happening in that office."

Doc continued to watch the scanning lens. The three tied to the chairs were motionless as dead men. He could not see their faces.

"We're almost there, Doc," Renny said from the cab interior.

Doc directed the driver to stop the machine. They got out.

"Let's rush 'em!" Renny suggested, his voice a rumble like thunder in a barrel.

"That is probably what they're hoping we'll do," Doc told him dryly.

Renny started. "You think this is a trick?"

"Tom Too is clever enough to know you picked up the trail of his man at the Dragon concern office. He must surely know we are away — he has been using the office. Yet he chanced discovery in bringing our pals there, or having his men bring them. He would not do that without a reason."

"But what — "

"Wait here!"

Leaving them behind, Doc moved down a side street. Two or three pedestrians turned to stare after his striking figure, startled by sight of a physique such as they had not glimpsed before.

SOME distance down the side street, a street huckster stood beside a two-wheeled hand cart piled high with apples and oranges. This man had but recently arrived from his native land in the south of Europe, and he spoke little English.

He was surprised when a voice hailed him in his native tongue. He was impressed by the appearance of the bronze, golden-eyed man who had accosted him. A short conversation ensued. Some money changed hands.

The huckster wheeled his cart to a secluded spot. But he shortly reappeared, pushing his vehicle toward Broadway. He turned south on Broadway, and was soon before the Far East Building, on the tenth floor of which was the office of the Dragon Oriental Goods Company.

The door of the Far East Building was wide. The huckster calmly wheeled his car inside an unheard-of thing.

The half-caste elevator operator dashed forward angrily. Another man was loitering in the lobby. His broad face, prominent cheek bones and almost entire absence of beard denoted, to an expert observer, Mongol blood. He joined the elevator operator.

They proceeded to throw the fruit vender out bodily. It took both of them. They wrestled the peddler clear to the sidewalk and dumped him into the gutter. Then they came back and shoved the cart out.

Neither man noticed the fruit in the cart was not heaped as high as it had been a moment before.

The huckster wheeled his vehicle away, barking excitedly in his native tongue. He disappeared.

Doc Savage had been hidden under the fruit. No one but the peddler knew Doc was now in the Far East Building — least of all the Mongol in the lobby, who was obviously one of Tom Too's pirate horde.

"Me think that velly stlange thing to happen," the Mongol told the elevator operator.

"Allee same lookee funny," agreed the operator. "Mebbe so that fella wolk alongside blonze man?"

The Mongol swore a cackling burst in his native tongue. "Me thinkee good thing follow fluit fella! Alee same cut thloat and play safe."

With this, he felt a knife inside his sleeve and started out. He reached the door.

Splat! The sound was dull, mushy. It came from the side of the door. Thin glass fragments of a hollow ball tinkled on the floor tiling.

The Mongol went to sleep on his feet — fell without a sound.

Doc had hurled one of his anaesthetic balls from the stairway. He had not intended to reveal his presence. But it was necessary that he protect the innocent huckster whom he had bribed to bring him here.

The elevator operator spun. He saw Doc. A screech of fright split past his lips. He charged wildly for the street door.