Kenneth Robeson - Quest of the Spider

The corridor was carpeted. On tiptoes, Bugs approached the door.

Something crunched faintly underfoot. He paid no attention. It might be a bit of a cracker or a portion of a bread crumb. Bending over, Bugs put his ear to the keyhole.

He could hear everything being said in the room!

"THIS fiend who calls himself the Gray Spider is clever," Doc Savage was saying. "I am convinced that to get him, we will have to go after him with a deeply laid plan."

"Shoot the works!" Monk chuckled. "I'm r'arin' to go! I could scrap guys like them that tackled us a while ago all day, and it wouldn't be more trouble than fighting mosquitoes."

"You don't lick any one this time," Doc told him. "You use that brain nobody would suspect you've got. Starting immediately, you are a famous German chemist. You specialized on poison gas. You sold a secret gas formula to an unfriendly country, and as a result, you're taking it on the lam. You're hiding out for fear secret agents will kill you. Got it straight?"

"You bet." Monk's little eyes glittered.

"All right," Doc smiled. "You will strike out into the swamps like a man who is hunting a hiding place. Your purpose, of course, is to let the Gray Spider add you to his organization. In this way—if you don't die of snake-bite, or the alligators don't eat you, or the swamp natives fill you full of lead, or the Gray Spider get suspicious and order you killed—you should learn something."

Monk's wide grin never budged. "Ain't you the cheerful guy, Doc!"

"Renny" Doc continued, facing the big fisted engineer, "you will visit the governor of Louisiana, flying to Baton Rouge this afternoon. He will commission you a special forest ranger. I will telephone him long-distance, and see to that. Your engineering training fits you for the forest ranger job. You will go into the swamps, and, like Monk, try to learn something definite about the Gray Spider."

"Want me to pretend to be a crooked ranger, eh?" Renny grinned.

"I imagine it would get better results."

Doc's golden eyes now roved to Long Tom, the electrical wizard. "You are to tap the phone lines of the large lumber companies of Louisiana, and arrange to listen in on any conversation of importance. This will entail hiring a force of expert stenographers, of course, since no man could listen in to twenty or thirty phones simultaneously."

Long Tom nodded. "I presume it would be best to first tap the lines to the companies we know are in the power of the Gray Spider. Worldwide Sawmills, Bayou Sash & Door, and so on."

"That's the idea."

It was to Johnny that Doc's gaze now came. The gaunt, half-starved geologist and archaeologist grinned boyishly.

"What is my part in this quest of the Gray Spider?" he asked.

"It's the toughest job of all, Johnny," Doc told him seriously. "I'd tackle it myself, except that the Gray Spider has my description. You are the only other man fitted for the job, thanks to your knowledge of savage peoples and their religious beliefs and superstitions."

"Meaning?" Johnny inquired.

"That you are to enter the swamps as a high priest of voodoo!" Doc replied.

JOHNNY nodded eagerly. "That is right up my alley! I made an extensive study of voodooism in the southern United States, Haiti and Africa."

"This is highly dangerous!" Doc warned.

Johnny sobered instantly. "I know it! But I can handle the job!"

"How is your command of the gibberish these swamp men speak?"

"Only fair," Johnny admitted. "But it will get by. I speak the French patois of Haiti fluently. I will pretend to be a high priest of voodoo from another country."

"O.K." Doc got to his feet. He stepped swiftly to the door. He opened the panel.

A man lay outside in the hall. He was curled up and breathing regularly, as though asleep.

"Well, for cryin' out loud!" Monk gulped. "Who's he?"

"He is called Bugs," Doc replied. "He's one of that pair of crooked lumber detectives."

"But what's happened to 'im?"

"He crept up to the keyhole to listen," Doc said dryly. "And he went to sleep on the job."

Monk snorted. "Quit running around the bush, Doc! What put him to sleep like that?"

Doc Savage indicated several small glass bulbs on the floor. These were thin-walled, about the size of grapes, and held a colorless fluid.

"A very powerful anaesthetic," he explained. "I spread them here as a matter of precaution before we started talking. Bugs simply had the misfortune to step on one."

It was this which Bugs had mistaken for a bit of cracker or a crumb of dry bread crushing underfoot—although he never did discover that fact.

MONK departed to become an outlaw chemist fleeing from spies of a foreign country. Renny left to get his commission as special forest ranger. Long Tom ambled out full of his plans for a phone-tapping campaign, such as had probably never been equaled for wide-spread scope.

Doc and Johnny added Bugs to the growing collection of sleepers in the hotel room. In fact, so extensive was his conquest becoming, Doc engaged an additional room. He made sure each of the villains was properly under the influence of the drug which kept them slumbering and out of mischief.

"Twelve, thirteen, fourteen," Johnny counted them. "If this keeps up, you'll have to hire a special train to up-state New York. They'll be a lot of bother and expense."

"But they'll be fourteen upright citizens when they're turned loose from that institution," Doc replied.

"I don't understand how it's done!" Johnny chuckled. "I mean—how one of these rats can be taken and made into an honest man. And that whether he wants to be made an honest man or not!"

"It's too complex to go into now," Doc told him. "It is done by many methods. Most undergo intricate brain operations that wipe out all memory of their past. Then they are taught a trade by which to make a living, as well as upright citizenship.

"In other words, we merely reduce their minds to a blank and give them the sort of training they should have had. When they're released, crime does not occur to them—simply because they don't know they've ever been criminals."

They left the hotel where the prisoners slept. Going to his plane at the airport Doc secured a metal case about the size of an old-fashioned telescope bag such as granddad used to carry. They retired to a room they engaged at a private residence.

"Strip!" Doc commanded.

Johnny obeyed. Doc opened the case. It proved to be a most complete make-up box.

With ingredients from the box, Doc proceeded to dye Johnny's hide a muddy yellow from head to foot. He clipped Johnny's somewhat thin hair, dyed it an intense black, and gave it a permanent curl.

"None of this stuff will wash off," Doc reminded.

"Holy smoke!" Johnny ejaculated. "You mean I gotta go around lookin' like this until my coloring wears off?"

"Sure," Doc chuckled. "That'll only be six months or so."

DOC SAVAGE continued to work over Johnny. He stood back at last.

"From now on, you're in blackface!" he smiled.

Where Johnny had sat, there now sprawled a lanky, scrawny-looking yellowish-brown man. He had thick lips. His nose looked as if it had been stepped on during his youth. Several realistic scars gave his eyes a mean cast.

"Bien!"

ejaculated Johnny, imitating the conglomerate dialect of the swamp men. "Yo' haf feenished, non?"

"And how!" Doc declared. "You'll do. What's your name, swamp boy?"

"Name ees plain Pete. Mees swell name, Pete ees. Oui?"

"The name will do," Doc replied, judiciously. "But you're about a foot and a half taller than the rest of the swamp dwellers. Maybe they'll overlook that."