Kenneth Robeson - Quest of the Spider

"It might interest you, wise guy," Ham put in, "to know that an attempt was just made on our lives from your office. And, to be very frank, you are under suspicion!"

THIS blunt declaration had a marked effect on Horace Haas. He reddened even more—then suddenly went quite pallid. He fumbled for a chair with a jeweled hand and sat down heavily.

Doc Savage watched the man. Either Horace Haas was a finished actor, or he was genuinely shocked at the accusation.

"I—er—suppose I had better tell where I was." Horace Haas pulled a large silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. The piece of silk was brightly colored.

"I received a telephone call from a—er—young lady," Haas began.

"A chorus stepper?" rumbled Big Eric.

Horace Haas flinched. "Ah—yes, a young lady of the chorus. At least, that is who she said she was. She asked me to meet her at a soda fountain near here. So I went—"

"An old goat of your age!" Big Eric snorted. "I oughta get up and kick the seat of your pants!"

"—but I didn't find the young lady!" Horace Haas finished desperately. "She did not appear. I waited some time, decided I was being stood up, and came back."

Big Eric rumbled a noisy laugh. "Somebody played you for a sap to get you out of your office so an attempt could be made on our lives!" He whirled to Doc. "Don't you think that was it?"

Doc had formed no definite opinion. He had no proof against Horace Haas—he had no real proof that he was innocent, either. He gave a noncommital answer.

"Possibly."

Swinging over to the telephone, Doc called the number of the telegraph company branch office from which he had engaged his messenger. He was merely checking up on whether the dictaphone records had been delivered to his fellow scrappers.

He received the bad news.

"What?" he demanded. "The messenger was waylaid and robbed en route?"

Hanging up, Doc let his golden eyes range over his companions.

"It seems," he said slowly, "that the Gray Spider is setting out to carry the warfare to us."

"The boys may be in danger!" Ham clipped.

Doc nodded. "Exactly. You stay here, Ham. Take every precaution to guard against the Gray Spider. I'm going to see if our four brothers are in any kind of a mess!"

He left the building swiftly.

THE hotel to which Doc Savage had directed his four men was the Antelope. It was neither the largest nor most luxurious in New Orleans. Conservative business men and drummers patronized it for the most part.

Doc parked his roadster a block from the hotel, and on the opposite side of the street. He mingled with the pedestrians. These turned, practically without exception, to stare at the amazing bronze man. He was far more striking in appearance than the pictures that accompany the strong-man advertisements in magazines. The fact that Doc wore no hat added to his prominence.

Before the Antelope Hotel stood a vanlike delivery truck. This was marked with the name of a prominent baking concern.

On the truck seat sat the burly, hard-featured crook of a lumber detective, Lefty.

A monkeylike swamp man occupied the seat beside him.

Their actions betrayed nervousness. They glanced repeatedly upward. It seemed they momentarily expected something to happen in one of the upper-floor hotel rooms.

Lefty and his monkeylike companion discovered Doc Savage's great bronze form about simultaneously.

"Get 'im!" Lefty gulped—and turned loose with his revolver. The monkey man followed suit with a sawed-off shotgun. Their shooting started thunder bumping about in the street. But that was about all it did.

Doc Savage had seen the pair before they started their fireworks. By the time the first shot crashed, he was sheltered behind a parked limousine. Glass from the limousine windows sprayed his back. Bullets hit the car body with tinny noises.

A bronze blur, Doc scuttled fifty feet down the walk and calmly seated himself behind a fire hydrant. He had no gun. Indeed, he so rarely found necessity for a weapon, that he seldom carried one. He waited.

Shrieking pedestrians were darting about like chickens in a pen into which a hawk had suddenly dived. From the volume and terror of the yelling, one might judge half of them were suffering mortal wounds. As a matter of fact, a foppish youth who had a foot-long cigarette holder blown out of his mouth by a shotgun burst was the only casualty.

Lefty and the monkey man, both shooting wildly, emptied their respective weapons. They didn't take time to reload.

"We're gettin' outta here!" Lefty gulped.

The delivery truck rear wheels gave a spasmodic spin, caught the pavement, and propelled the vehicle away like an explosive.

"Yo' leavin' de others!" wailed the monkey man.

"Nothin' else to do!" rapped the cowardly Lefty. "The jig is up with you and me!"

The truck sideswiped a car, careened half across the street, took a corner on two screaming wheels—and was gone.

An instant later, there was a terrific explosion inside the hotel.

DOC SAVAGE’S golden eyes lifted, seeking the source of the blast. It was a window far above the street. This window was just flying outward, Torn wood and a shower of bricks followed.

Metal shieked across the street to knock puffs of masonry off the building there. A piece of this metal fell near Doc. It was a common steel ball bearing.

Shrapnel! A blast of shrapnel had been set off in the room registered for by his men!

Doc's big bronze figure flashed across the street and into the hotel. He seized the register. He saw his men had signed for Room 720.

It must be the room in which the shrapnel had been exploded.

Doc sprang for the elevators.

Ten feet from them, he halted. One of the cages had just come down. But the door didn't open immediately. Instead, there was a terrific uproar in the cage. It sounded like a gigantic cat-and-dog fight. Loud bangings arose, as though a sizable sledge was beating the metal sides of the lift.

Men screeched. They moaned. They sobbed, cursed, blubbered. And through all the bedlam ran a fierce rumbling and roaring as of some big beast in action.

Then silence fell.

The cage doors opened.

Out of the lift walked an individual who should have been the wild man in a circus. He was a bare five feet and a half in height, but almost equally as wide. He would tip the scales at two hundred and sixty pounds. He was covered all over with coarse red hair like hog bristles. His eyes were so surrounded by gristle as to resemble little stars twinkling in pits. The rest of his face was incredibly homely.

He carried five battered and unconscious men in his arms—much as a bell boy carries several suitcases.

"Monk!" Doc's great voice seemed to fill all the hotel lobby with a glad ring.

For this remarkable individual was Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, one of Doc's five aids. He was called by the only nickname that could possibly fit him—"Monk." He was, despite his gorillalike looks, one of the greatest living chemists.

"Hy'ah, Doc!" Monk grinned from ear to ear. He shook his armload of captives. "I been collectin' rats!"

"You escaped the blast?" Doc demanded.

"Sure—thanks to your advice. Like we was directed in that message you left on the Danielsen & Haas front door, we registered for one room, but got the hotel to give us another one, and not put it on the register."

Monk chuckled. He had a surprisingly mild voice for so huge and homely a man. "We kept a sharp lookout. We saw these rats skulkin' around, and closed in on 'em, right after the blast."

DOC entered the elevator. Monk turned and followed him inside like a big dog, still carrying his five victims under his arms.