Doc Savage: Glare of the Gorgon (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage Book 19) (52 page)

Engaging the automobile, Doc completed the journey, and soon found his speed plane behind a shelter break of trees, in a spot identical to the one in which they had previously parked.

Seated in the darkness, the bronze man took stock of his surroundings. All seemed quiet. Satisfied on that score, he began divesting himself of his disguise, removing the blue optical shells that had concealed his flake-gold orbs last. When this was accomplished, Doc did something to his eyes and nose that could not be discerned in the darkness of the automobile interior. Next, he went through the pockets of his handy gadget vest, as if taking inventory. Certain items he replaced, others he stored about his person for convenience. It was impossible to tell very much about these things, or their purpose, but they soon vanished from view.

Exiting his vehicle, the bronze man checked the plane, discovered it to be securely locked, and moved in the direction of the looming coal works.

The quarter moon furnished greater illumination than it had two nights previously. Thus the bronze man spotted the coupe that was parked in a turn-off from the main highway.

Gliding to the dark machine, Doc examined it carefully. It was a moderately expensive make of automobile, but it was unoccupied. The license tag number meant nothing to him. But the presence of the vehicle told of someone visiting the colliery who was not one of his aides.

The vehicle was securely locked. In the back seat rested a black valise, but nothing else to indicate who owned the machine. Coming to rest upon the valise, Doc Savage’s eerie orbs did not register any flicker of surprise. Indeed, they looked cold and opaque in the moonlight, as if the gold flakes had been transmuted to silver by some arcane alchemy.

As a precaution, the bronze giant let the air out of one of the tires, using a clasp knife to puncture the inner tube. This precaution might or might not prove useful, but it was an example of the bronze man’s foresightedness. Doc left little to chance.

Doc Savage drifted from shadow to shadow, keeping to the shadow-drenched side of the great coal-washing plant, slipping into it, but not employing his spring-generator flashlight, lest he betray his prowling presence.

The bronze giant gave a great deal of attention to the ground, seeking footprints and other telltale signs of recent visitors.

The distinctive tracks of Monk, Ham and Long Tom were plain to read. There was another set of footprints, which led away from the coupe, but took a meandering path. Doc studied these and, if one could conceivably read the bronze man’s mind, he would have learned that Doc had deduced from the size and depth of the prints the owner’s approximate size and weight.

He seemed on the point of following these unfamiliar footprints when his acute nostrils began twitching slightly. They had picked up an odor.

Doc traced this smell, and his progress paralleled the tracks left by his men to the mouth of the coal mine. He paused to listen, and heard no sound. The air smelled of freshly disturbed coal dust, which brought the briefest flickers of concern to the bronze giant’s chilly eyes. For this was the scent that had aroused his concern.

Gliding into the yawning maw, he moved along the tunnel until he felt it prudent to turn on his flashlight, which illuminated the way.

Fifty yards in, Doc discovered the blockage of rough stone and broken timber. The atmosphere was choked with particles of disturbed coal. The bronze man quickly realized that there had been a calamity.

Lifting his voice, he called out, “Monk! Ham! Long Tom! Can you hear me?”

His voice echoed hollowly, but no response penetrated the plug of broken rock.

Doc Savage removed his coat, revealing his many-pocketed gadget vest, rolled up his sleeves and attacked the plug with his bare hands, after first setting his spring-generator flashlight on a slab of stone to illuminate the work.

The muscular strength of Doc Savage was prodigious. Few witnessed exactly how powerful his muscles could be. There were no witnesses now. Had there been any such observers, their jaws would have sagged comically, and their eyes protruded like finger-squeezed grapes.

Doc Savage wrapped his corded arms around a great boulder, pulled it back, flung it aside. The boulder probably weighed two hundred pounds. But Doc Savage handled it as though it fell short of fifty.

Metallic fingers dug in, yanked out smaller stones, pitching them backward. Doc was forced to pause and wind the spring-generator flashlight several times, which hampered his progress significantly.

The bronze colossus’ strength seemed to be inexhaustible. Rocks flew. Boulders were yanked out of cavities, timbers hoisted free. It soon looked as if Doc Savage was poised to single-handedly break through.

A trickle of dirt and coal dust came down from the vaulted ceiling to spill onto one broad shoulder.

With flashing speed, Doc swept up the flashlight, gave it a twist, and examined the source of the leakage.

It was well that he did so. For high above, fissures showed, and from one crevice poured grit and dirt in a lazy but alarming trickle.

Came a kind of threatening rumble. Doc stepped back with alacrity.

He swept his flashlight about, examining the situation.

A stout timber, half buried in debris, showed a distinct bowing in its middle. Before his eyes, thick hairs of splinters were slowly popping free.

Doc moved to this weakening support, put his back to it, seeking to arrest its imminent collapse. As he leaned backward, he could feel bristling wood splinters bite into his back. The weight of the ceiling was slowly and inexorably buckling the ancient timber.

His broad back to the thing, the bronze giant moved his great hands around, searching for a means to avert disaster.

But this particular disaster proved beyond his power.

Doc sensed the approach of the breaking point before it happened. Whipping to one side, he scooped up his flashlight and sprinted for the entrance, knowing that it was the only recourse left to him.

The ceiling gave away. A giant coughing came next, expelling an ugly breath clogged with gas and grit. Doc Savage was out of the mine before the cloud of dust chased him into open air.

The final collapse consisted of a splintering, grinding, gnashing of timber and stone. It went on for perhaps half a minute, and was followed by the trickling of dirt and a clatter of settling stones.

Doc Savage donned a heavy-duty gas mask that had been stuffed in a coat pocket, gave the spring-generator flashlight fresh juice, and attempted to penetrate the mine.

When he reached the plug, it was more choked with debris than before. All his efforts had been for naught.

Once again, he lifted his voice in a great crashing cry. “Monk! Ham! Long Tom! Answer me!”

Doc tried several times, but received no encouragement that his associates still lived.

Reluctantly, the bronze giant picked his way back out to open air, and began a careful reconnoiter of the dismal old coal works. On his previous visits, he had sought other ways in and out, but had discovered none. Before, he had been pressed for time, but now the urgency of locating another means of egress consumed him.

During the course of his investigation, Doc Savage again picked up the trail of the meandering footprints that originated from the parked coupe.

Having no better trail to follow, Doc followed the licking light of his flashlight as they illuminated the earth-ridged impressions which swept around to the north side of the prominence forming the mine.

The area was messy with colluvium—a mixture of stony debris and sediment deposited by rainwash and what a geologist would call downslope creep. The tracks began to peter out. They came to a stop abruptly. Here the silty sheetwash gave way to rock and stone clutter, some of this rather flat.

Nothing stood out, so Doc knelt and searched for any indication of where the owner of the footprints might have vanished to.

Doc Savage was a fund of varied knowledge. Geology was but one of the studies he had mastered. He recognized the stones as the type that were common to this part of Illinois. But one of the flat stones was a segment of shale that the bronze man knew to be out of place. It seemed unremarkable except for its flatness.

His questing flashlight disclosed nothing out of the ordinary, but when Doc reached down, he discovered that the shale plate lifted up easily.

Below was a cavity large enough for a man, which showed indications of having been entered. The sides of the hole were ordinary soil, and some of this had sifted down, and in the middle of the mound, at the bottom, was a nearly perfect footprint.

It matched the print he had followed to this point.

Doc Savage squeezed his massive frame down the hole, dropping several feet, landing on the dirt pile, and directing his flashlight all about.

He found himself in a kind of natural tunnel, but there were signs of shoring—though not of the type involving heavy timber. Planks had been laid along the floor, end to end, to form a makeshift walkway. This passage was not a typical drift carved out to follow a coal ore seam, but a hidden entrance.

There was room enough for one man to walk single file, although Doc Savage’s broad shoulders had difficulty avoiding the sides of the wall.

Illuminating the way ahead with his torch, Doc moved with great stealth, preferring to keep his presence unknown to any who might be lurking up ahead in the shadow-clotted darkness.

Where the occasional footprint was illuminated, it showed a lack of heel, indicating the the person passing this way did not wear a modern shoe.

Chapter XLIX

ENTOMBED!

MONK MAYFAIR, HAM BROOKS, and Long Tom Roberts made their cautious way back into the forbidding depths of the ancient coal mine. They crept carefully, for every misstep dislodged rocky detritus, creating ghoulishly unnerving echoes rebounding off the unsafe passage walls.

Long Tom had removed from a pocket his extra ram’s horn ammunition clip containing hypodermic needles. He was fitting this into the clumsy-looking magnetic gun, which in its most recent use had utterly failed him.

Eyeing this operation in his flashlight wash, Monk muttered, “What good’s that trick pistol gonna do you?”

Long Tom said sourly, “Maybe I can hit the thing in the eyes.”

“Good thinkin’!” admitted Monk. Turning to Ham, he asked, “What kinda ammunition are you packin’?”

“Mercy bullets,” whispered Ham. “That’s all. And you?”

“I hadda leave my ammunition case back at the coal seam, but I got an extra drum in my pocket. I’m just not sure what it is, though.”

Monk had holstered his supermachine pistol in order to wield his flashlight, at the same time fishing around in his pocket for the ammunition drum.

He paused, took his flashlight between his strong teeth, withdrew the weapon and inserted the canister, locking it tight with the lug nuts.

“Aren’t you going to check on the ammunition?” demanded Ham, tight-voiced.

The homely chemist shrugged carelessly. “What’s the point? It’s all I got. It’ll be a mighty big surprise if I have to uncork this thing.”

They continued moving, Long Tom taking the lead. He seemed determined to demonstrate that his magnetic gun could finish off the prowling Medusa haunting the old coal works.

They stepped carefully, trying to avoid making any betraying sounds. Shifting shadows crawled along the crumbling walls, and a cold dread seized at their vitals, for they knew they were walking into the very den of their awful adversary.

Monk was muttering, “Do you suppose there really is a Medusa? One that lived in this mine?”

“Rubbish!” snapped Ham, contradicting his former opinion.

“Whatever it is,” Long Tom admitted, “it doesn’t act human.”

They crept along, flashlight beams waving about like questing feelers of light.

It was perfectly natural that they would pay more attention to the passage ahead than what lay at their feet, and so it was that Long Tom, shoving ahead in the lead, failed to pay sufficient attention to where he stepped. As a consequence, he put one foot atop a board that was one of a group that lay athwart a drainage pit, which had escaped their notice before.

The board slipped, clattered, and before he knew it, Long Tom went tumbling down, his flash beam spinning madly.

“Long Tom!” howled Monk. He rushed up, drove his torch ray downward, and saw the puny electrical wizard sprawled in a litter of planking and mining debris at the pit bottom.

Long Tom’s flashlight had fallen in such a way that it illuminated his stunned features. He looked up with an expression of dull incomprehension in his eyes.

Ham joined Monk, spiked his beam down as well and bleated, “Stunned!”

“At least he’s not out cold!” grumbled Monk. “Hold my flashlight, shyster. I’m gonna need a lot of light. I’m climbin’ down after him.”

Without waiting for a response, Monk dropped from sight, grabbing hold of the crumbling rim of the pit with his hairy paws, held himself suspended for a few moments, and then let go.

The simian chemist landed next to the prostrate electrical wizard, scooped up his flashlight, and gave Long Tom a violent shaking with his other paw.

“Snap out of it, you clumsy runt!” Monk growled. “This ain’t no time to fall down on the job.”

Low moans escaped Long Tom’s lips, and his eyes had a glazed look.

Seeing that the electrical expert was for the moment not himself, Monk gathered him up, threw his slender form over and across one burly shoulder, and began scrambling up the shaft, using the irregularities and rocky outcroppings to make his way back up.

Standing guard alone at the lip, Ham Brooks’ anxious eyes naturally followed what transpired below in the pit eye.

No audible sound signaled the approach of the Medusa.

The dapper lawyer suddenly directed his gaze upward, sensed something, then heard the rhythmic rustling of a long garment. His flashlight jumped toward the stealthy sounds.

The beam was set wide, and it happened to fall upon the head of the thing. Ghastly apparition! The face was like a mask of unearthly flesh, thick and cold as marble. All around the hideous features varicolored serpents jerked and twisted, jaws distended.