Chapter XIV

THE PIG KISS

DOC, his three men, and the whitehaired girl were not fired upon as they walked down to the beach. They retained their weapons.

“Hey!” Monk whispered. “You ain’t carryin’ no part from the submarine, Doc! Where’d you put it?”

“I didn’t remove any.”

Monk blinked his little eyes. “Then Johnny and Long Tom

“Put over some kind of a fast one,” Doc finished. “They must have removed the part themselves and given the impression we had it.”

Boats came from the submarine. Only one man was in each.

“Makin’ a big show in hopes we’ll think he’s goin’ to play square!” Renny rumbled.

Brown men appeared amid the rocks behind them. They fingered their guns eagerly, but offered no violence. Neither did they come close. They had acquired a mighty respect for their foes.

Doc and his companions entered the boats. Reluctantly, the girl followed them. Her attractive face was twisted with distress.

“She feels pretty tough about gettin’ us into this mess!” Monk decided.

Doc addressed the pretty young lady on his fingers.

“Don’t worry about us,” he told her.

She smiled wryly.

“She’s got nerve!” Ham admitted, fiddling absently with his sword cane. “I wish we had time to get her story.”

“That’ll have to wait until we get out of this scrape,” Doc told him. “If we kill time, this bird Mohallet might use the interval to think up a scheme slick enough to sink us.”

There were no weapons in sight upon Mohallet’s person, or on those of his men, when Doc reached the Helldiver.

“You see we are keeping our word.” Mohallet murmured. “Now, if you will kindly replace the missing part.”

He peered at Doc’s person, obviously wondering where the missing mechanism was concealed.

“Where are my other two men?” Doc demanded. Johnny and Long Tom were led into view. They were unharmed, although their arms were bound.

“Cut them free!” Doc commanded angrily.

This was done.

“Now, we will go below and replace the part,” Doc announced.

“All in a group, please!” Mohallet commanded. Monk had retained his pig, Habeas Corpus, throughout the trouble. Monk would not readily turn loose of such a potent instrument for annoying the well-dressed Ham. He carried the strange-looking porker, big ears flapping, as he clambered below.

They went forward, moving in a tight group. The girl and Mohallet brought up the rear.

Doc’s whisper reached only to Long Tom’s ear. “What did you fellows take off the machinery?”

“Nothin’!” chuckled Long Tom. “I simply shortcircuited some of the wires which lead to the electrical mechanism controlling the diving rudders.”

Mohallet, a hit in the rear, did not hear this statement.

He crowded up, a false smile exposing his grotesque, bejeweled teeth. He was going to permit no plots to he hatched against him.

“I must he a party in any conversation, of course,” he smirked.

Doc Savage showed no emotion. But he spoke rapidly, low-voiced. The words were a weird combination of gutturals and clackings.

MOHALLET’S one good eye stared; his other eye remained fixed, like the orb of a dead man. He had not understood a syllable of the tongue. in fact, only Monk and Mohallet had heard the words.

Mohallet did not know it, but there were few who could comprehend that language. It was the pure speech of the ancient Mayans, those people of Central America who once had a civilization that rivaled the Egyptians. Doc and his men had acquired facility in the use of this tongue on a visit to the strange spot which was the source of the fabulous wealth which Doc possessed.

in the lost valley in a remote Central American republic lay a gold mine of almost fantastic richness. A handful of survivors of the ancient Mayan race lived there, unknown to the rest of the world, and worked the mine. They had a powerful radio receiver. At high noon on certain designated days, Doc had but to broadcast several words of Mayan over a powerful radio transmitter.

Within a few days, the Mayans would send out a treasure pack train of burros. The value of these cargoes invariably ranged into millions. This wealth, it was understood, was to he used by Doc only to further his strange object in life - the righting of wrongs and the punishing of evildoers all over the globe.

Mohallet, knowing nothing of all this, was baffled by the weird words.

“You will speak a language I understand!” he snapped, teeth jewels bared in a snarl.

Doc ignored him.

Monk, a grin on his homely face, scratched Habeas Corpus behind the ears.

“I’m gonna put my pet in my stateroom,” he said mildly.

“You will stay with us!” commanded Mohallet, his evil and grotesque face ugly.

Monk paid no attention. He walked away.

Mohallet glared, did nothlng.

Doc and the others worked on forward. Several brown villains joined Mohallet. Some of them went ahead of the party. They were patently suspicious of a trick.

Doc killed time in the little compartment which housed the diving-rudder mechanism.

Monk rejoined the party. He did not have the pig. “0. K.!” Doc said loudly. “We’ll repair the mechanism!”

Long Tom whispered: “Mohallet is sure to pull something the instant we do.”

“Let him,” Doc replied in a low voice. “Let’s trail along with this thing and see what happens. There’s something big behind the whole business, and I’m getting anxious to learn what it is.”

“Make the repairs!” Mohallet commanded impatiently. “It was part of the bargain that you tell us what use you intend to make of the Helldiver,” Doc pointed out.

“I will tell you - when the repairs are made!” hissed the barbaric-looking Mohallet.

Long Tom now replaced the control wires which he had shorted. The task took only a moment. He wheeled on Mohallet.

“You could have done that yourself, if you had known anything about submarines!” he jeered.

“Son of a camel!” Mohallet gritted, sparks seeming to fly from his diamond-studded teeth.

He sprang suddenly backward. A sweep of his arm sent the whitehaired girl reeling through the low door in a steel bulkhead. With surprising speed he followed her, scooped her up, and ran aft.

She fought, but was helpless against his strength.

He crossed a compartment which contained no machinery, but was walled with bunks - the sleeping quarters.

Doc pursued them, ignoring the group of brown men behind. The swarthy fellows, not closely acquainted with Doc’s ability to move swiftly, did not note that the bronze man was a bit sluggish in his actions.

Doc and his five friends crowded into the sleeping compartment in a group. They lumbered along between the bunks.

Instantly, doors slammed fore and aft. Metal dogs rattled.

Renny crashed his great frame against one panel. He handed it a resounding wallop with one of his huge fists. Nothing happened.

At the opposite end of the chamber, Monk was fighting the other door. The slabs of plate steel were proof against anything less than a cutting torch or high explosive.

“Were trapped.”’ Monk howled. “And they’ve got the girl!”

HIGHLY perturbed, the five men stared at Doc. He showed no concern. Selecting a comfortable bunk, he stretched out in it..

Ham sheathed his sword cane. which he had bared. He peered at Doc. Then he grinned, straightening his immaculate coat.

“You expected something like this,” he accused Doc.

“Not something like this - this very thing!” Doc told him.

“But, blast it, we’re in a worse

“Keep your shirt on!” Doc soothed. “We’ll play the same game as those birds. Incidentally, they’re not quite as slick as they think they are.”

“You mean the sub still won’t run?”

“It’ll run, all right - if they have men aboard who understand the machinery.”

“They haven’t! The fact that they didn’t find the disconnected wires on the diving mechanism proves that.”

“Not necessarily. That mechanism is not the usual type. A man who has spent years on naval submarines would have to puzzle it out before he saw how it worked.”

Doc’s prediction speedily proved to be correct. The Helldiver got under way, showing there were men in Mohallet’s crowd who knew enough of underseas craft to operate this one.

They heard a deck hatch clang forward, an indication that the men in the bow compartment had clambered out and joined Mohallet and the others in the control and engine compartments.

For fully two hours, the Helldiver did nothing but cruise at varying speeds. Several times, a swaying of the steel floor showed the craft was turning.

“What’s the idea of this cruisin’ around?” Monk pondered.

“They’re familiarizing themselves with the controls and the handling of the boat,” Doc hazarded.

The aimless cruising persisted for some time longer. Then the Helldiver’ made three short dives. The first was ragged, the sub standing almost on its nose when it was down. The second was better; the third fair.

“They’re improving,” Ham admitted.

Monk made a fierce face. “1 wish they’d get along with their mud-pie making!”

He got his wish. The sub straightened out and began to cruise at fair speed. Then it turned and slowly submerged.

“They’ve gone along the coast some distance,” Doc announced. “They’re now heading straight for shore.”

The others showed surprise. It was high tribute to Doc’s concentration and keen senses that he had been able to keep track of their erratic progress. The others had no idea where they had gone.

Doc now pressed an ear to the hull plates. For a long time there was no sound but the labor of the engines.

There came a sharp shock, a blow delivered from the bottom. The Helldiver had touched the sea floor. The engines now stopped, apparently while Mohallet’s men made sure no damage had been done. They did not know that the sub would stand a much greater shock.

“Listen!” Doc suggested.

His friends crammed their ears to the sweating steel plates. They caught the sound immediately - a combination of eerie gurgling, mumbling, and hissing. Faint, fantastic, the noise went on and on.

Monk groped for a descriptive. Finally, he grunted: “Like some monster crying!”

“Crying Rock,” Doc reminded.

A MOMENT later, the engines started again. The Helldiver inched forward, the stout runners - they were attached to the keel and the sides, as well as to the deck - gritting over a rocky bottom from time to time.

“But what made that infernal crying noise?” Renny boomed.

No one answered. Doc was quiet, showing no concern, as always. The rest were on edge, nervous. They darted from one point to another in the little sleeping compartment, jamming ears to the hull. But they could hear now only the engine moan.

The Diesels used on the surface had been shut off, and electric motors were propelling. Their note was a dull whine, mingling with the harsher gear noise, the rushing of water, and the occasional gobble of machinery as diving or steering rudders were operated.

“Blast it!” Johnny snapped, wrenching off his glasses to shake sweat from the lenses. “I wish I knew where we’re goin’!”

Five minutes - ten - fifteen. The suspense grew. The motors were barely turning. The Helldiver must he making no more than three miles an hour.

A shock! It resembled a blow from the top this time. It was not especially hard.

“What the’ blazes?” rapped Johnny. He pocketed his glasses in a case which had a special recess for the thick magnifying left lens. “The deck runners hit something that time!”

“We’re evidently going places,” Doc told him dryly.

A sharp uptilt, a loud sobbing as the ballast tanks blew, showed the Helldiver was coming to the surface. The Diesels did not start; the electric motors continued propulsion.

But not for long! The submarine veered to one side - they could tell this because there was an abrupt tendency for their bodies to sway to the left.

The hull runners grated on rock. They could hear men banging feet on deck. Chains rattled. Hawsers made faint scraping noises as they were dragged from special drums in the hull.

The motors died; the Helldiver sagged backward briefly, then stopped with a faint jar. She had been moored.

Doc listened at the plates. He heard a low gurgling on the outside of the hull runners.

“We seem to be in a moving current of water,” he stated. Voices from Mohallet’s men were now audible. The stout steel walls made the words indistinguishable. But the tones were shrill, excited.

Ham, straining his ears, tapped the hull in puzzled fashion with his sword cane.

“They sounded like they’re scared stiff!” he volunteered. “Now what can be wrong?”

Monk’s homely face cracked a big grin. “Habeas Corpus must be doin’ his stuff!”

Ham bristled. “Don’t mention that pig to me! When we get out of this. the first thing I’m gonna do is make breakfast bacon out of him!”

Monk acquired a foxy look. “I’ve got a great big kiss for the little thing that’s gonna get us out of this!”

Ham should have been more wary. But he was mad. And he thought suddenly that Doc and Monk had conspired with the attractive whitehaired girl that she should release them.

“Me, too!” he snapped. “I’ll kiss the one who rescues us from this mess!”

“Mean that?” Monk demanded owlishly.

“Cross my heart! It’s a promise!” Ham scowled at Monk’s homely face. “And I’m sure it won’t make her sick. either!”

“You guys heard ‘im promise!” Monk told the others solemnly. “He said he’d kiss Habeas Corpus.”

“What?” Ham squawled.

“The pig,” Monk explained sweetly. “I put a chemical mixture on his bristles. It works kinda like the itchin’ powder the kids have fun with, only lots worse. One of Mohallet’s gang has touched Habeus Corpus and started burnin’, and when the others grabbed ‘im to see what was wrong, they began burnin, tool”

Monk leered happily at Ham. “It looks like you kiss the pig! Mohallet’s men will let us out to stop the itchin’!”

Ham said a gloomy nothing. The rescue had suddenly lost its charm.