Chapter 13

FEAR CAY TRAIL

A THOUSAND big, noisy thunderbolts seemed to be making music for Johnny while he sat on a cloud in sepia blackness. The thunder music was steady, and not nice to listen to, nor to feel, either, because one of the cannonading thunderbolts occasionally flew off at a tangent and struck Johnny heavily in the chest, making him feel as if he wanted to open his eyes and jump, except that the cloud which held him up was so soft and comfortable.

Somebody said, “Close the windows. I think Johnny is coming out of it.”

Johnny opened his eye and what he saw showed him that he was not on a cloud, but on a comfortable berth in Doc Savage’s largest speedplane.

Monk was closing the windows to shut out the motor noise, which was terrific, the silencers being cut off from the exhausts for greater power efficiency.

Around about were Kel Avery, burly Da Clima, Doc’s five men and Doc himself. The plane hit an air bump, jumped a little, then settled level again. Cloud scud scraped past the windows.

“Where are we?” asked Johnny, and was surprised at the strength of his own voice.

“Over the Caribbean,” Monk advised.

“What?”

“A good many miles off the southern tip of Florida,” Monk elaborated.

“But the last I remember is folding up on that Long Island beach!” Johnny gulped. “How did you find out where Santini went?”

“You talked,” Monk assured him. “Maybe you don’t remember it. Doc shot some stuff into you to make you rest. You told us a complete story.”

Johnny shut his eyes; opened them. “I recall now. It was like a dream. How badly am I hurt?”

“A few cracked ribs,” said Monk. “You can navigate all right now, Doc says, unless you jump around too brisk.”

“I’ll be superamalgamated!” said Johnny.

“Which means he’s all right,” snorted Ham, who was on a berth opposite, sword cane across his knees. “A sick man couldn’t think of such words.”

Johnny sat up, found himself fairly steady, then asked, “How long have I been out of the picture?”

“You got slammed night before last,” Monk explained.

The bony geologist asked hastily, “Have I missed anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“What about the patriarch with the alabaster locks?”

“Dan Thunden?” Monk grunted. “Believe it or not, he hired one of the fastest planes in New York and lit out for this part of the world. A bird named Windy Allen owned the plane and flew it.”

“How did you acquire that knowledge?”

“The pilot he hired, Windy Allen, was talkative and told around what a swell wad of coin he was to get for flying the old goat down to the Caribbean. Doc checked up the airports as a matter of routine, and got the dope there. That Windy Allen sure lived up to his name.”

Johnny raised higher, leaned over and peered down through gossamer puddles of cloud which were almost blindingly white because of the sun shining upon them. Perhaps a mile below was a finely riffled expanse of ultramarine, a limitless vista of blue that slid away to the horizons in a panorama so vast that it was a bit breath-taking.

“The Caribbean,” Johnny said. “Right.”

“Bring me a chart and I’ll point out the exact spot that Santini indicated.”

Long Tom had retired to the tiny, soundproofed cubicle which held the radio apparatus. He popped into view like a pale jack-in-a-box.

“I just got an S.O.S.!” he barked.

DOC SAVAGE swung back to his side. “Where is it coming from, Long Tom?”

“The bird isn’t giving his position,” advised the electrical expert. “From the sound of his fist, he’s sending the letters as he picks them off a code chart.”

The bronze man bent over the instruments and adjusted the dials. The signals from the loudspeaker were very weak, and he turned on more volume. Irregular, hesitant, the dots and dashes whined out of the ether.

“Whoever is sending does not know the code,” Doc agreed. “We’ll try the directional antenna.”

Doc turned a larger knob, and this swung a directional loop aerial mounted in the plane fuselage to the rear of the cabin. Possibly thirty seconds were required to pick the point at which the erratic signals were the loudest.

“Either northwest or southeast of us,” he decided.

Kel Avery wrinkled her brow, “But can’t you tell nearer

“The directional loop only shows the plane of greatest intensity of radio signals,” Doc explained. “The sending station is on a line drawn through our present position from the northwest to the southeast, but the only way we can tell the exact direction is to take another bearing when we have gone on a few miles.”

Johnny came hobbling back, favoring his injured chest, holding a chart in both bony hands. He pointed.

“The place Santini indicated is southeast of here,” he said.

“The radio S. 0. S.!” Long Tom barked. “I wonder — ” He did not finish.

The radio speaker continued to buzz three dots, three dashes, three dots in monotonous succession. The signals seemed to grow weaker as the minutes passed.

Doc worked with dividers, rule and pencil on the chart, and some five minutes later, when the great plane had hurtled through almost twenty-five miles of sun-scorched sky, he took a second radio-compass bearing and drew a line. Where this intersected the first bearing, was the location of the wireless appeal for aid.

“Southeast,” he announced, and promptly went forward to change the course of the plane.

Johnny had fallen to studying the chart. A puzzled expression overspread his long, studious face.

“I’ll be supermalgamated!” he muttered.

“What’s eating you?” Renny wanted to know.

“There is no island shown where Santini had his finger on the map,” Johnny muttered.

Doc came back from the cockpit, having turned the flying over to the ingenius mechanical robot. Johnny met the bronze man with a look of bewilderment.

“The chart does not show an island, Doc,” he advised.

The bronze man considered for a moment, then went on back. to the radio cubicle. He switched on the transmitter and alternately sent and received for some time.

“There may be an island, after all,” he said at last.

“Huh?” Renny grunted. “But the map — “

“I got in touch by radio with the hydrographic office of the Navy Department,” Doc explained. “They looked over old charts of this region for us, and it seems some ancient maps did show the presence of an island.”

“Did the island have a name?” Renny asked.

“Fear Cay,” Doc said. “It was named that on the old maps.”

RETURNED to the wave length on which the S. 0. S. call was being sent, the radio speaker continued to buzz dots and dashes. At no time, however, was anything received other than three dots, three dashes, three dots.

“Queer the guy don’t give his position,” Monk muttered. “Anybody with gumption would know enough to do that.”

Long Tom, after listening intently, glanced around. “That sender cannot be far away,” he said.

“How can you tell!” Kel Avery asked curiously.

Long Tom shrugged. “Oh, when you’re close to a station, very close that is, there’s a noticeable difference. You can almost hear the key close.”

Ham laid his sword cane aside, got a pair of binoculars and began to use them through the scattered patches of cloud. A slight quantity of oil from the engines had smeared the windows and he slid one of the panes back in order that he might see better. The motor moan came in with whooping volume.

“Fear Cay!” Ham bawled suddenly.

Every one in the plane crowded to cabin windows.

Pretty Kel Avery was breathless. She looked even more the cinema star now, for she wore about what a movie director would request his star to affect when making an adventure picture. Her boots, laced breeches and leather blouse were new, but serviceable.

Big, overmuscled Da Clima hulked in the background, his square face slightly purple, as if he were straining mentally, possibly trying to envision what not even Ham’s powerful glasses could as yet reveal.

Fear Cay was still miles away. But it seemed to rush toward them, so terrific was the speed of the plane.

Doc went to the pilot’s cockpit and tilted the plane downward.

The sea heaved up at them like& a bloating green paunch and the cay, climbing out of the haze, took on definite contour.

“I say,” Ham pointed out excitedly. “It doesn’t look like a place where a boat could land!”

The lawyer was drawing attention to the coral reef around Fear Cay. Such reefs encircling islands of coral formation were a rule rather than an exception, but usually ‘they had one or more openings which gave access to the lagoon within. But there were no apertures in the jagged band around this cay.

Looking down from the height of the plane, the reef resembled a necklace of ugly gray foam, for the waves broke over the coral fangs with smashing violence.

The island itself was low, a bog of mangrove swamp and jungle. Nowhere did it project more than a few yards above the sea.

“Couldn’t be seen from a great distance,” Renny boomed. “That helps explain why it isn’t on the modern charts.”

Long Tom jammed his head into the radio box, then hauled it out again.

“That S 0.5. is being sent from Fear Cay!” he barked.

Ham dropped the binoculars and scooped up his sword cane to point.

“Yes, and I think I see where it’s being sent from,” he shouted. “Look! That wrecked plane!”

THE REEF around Fear Cay was a foaming ring of stone, but the isle itself had at most points a wide beach of silver-colored sand, lined with tall royal and cocoanut palms. The trees bobbed, their bundled fronds contorting, for there seemed to be considerable of a breeze.

The plane lay at the beach edge, half buried in a tangle of mangroves. Both slender wings were wiped off. The wind fluttered fabric around the edge of a great hole which gaped in the fuselage, and the single engine was detached and lay deeper in the mangroves, barely distinguishable.

Ham called, “Doc! See any one?”

“No,” said the bronze man.

“Are we going to land?”

“We are.”

Doc banked the plane out over the reef where jade and emerald surf sloshed itself into an ivory suds, then swooped over the lagoon with its kaleidoscopic coloring. The hull touched so lightly that only the braking effect and the appearance of a long foam tail showed them they were down. Whooping motor gusts kicked them inshore.

The royal palms seemingly grew larger, standing up like pillars of silver from the gaudiness of oleanders, jessamine, poinsettia. Gulls and a fork-tailed frigate bird sailed inquiringly about the plane.

The breeze was blowing inshore, and the air above the beach was gray with fine driven coral sand. The palm fronds convulsed steadily, and palmetto leaves trembled to the wind.

Doc cut the motors. The plane was kicked around with its nose into the wind, then sailed backward until the reinforced hull grounded on the beach.

The men unloaded.

“Eyes open!” Doc warned.

They all ran toward the wrecked plane. The wind-blown coral grains gnawed at their naked skin like sleet, and the sun was brazen, merciless with its heat. They waded into palmettos, sank ankle-deep in soft ground, then worked through mangroves.

Doc stopped abruptly and pointed, saying nothing.

“Holy cow!” Renny gulped.

A long, grisly object lay under a bush. He was clad in khaki trousers, boots, a leather blouse, an aviator’s helmet. It bore the shape of a man, vaguely, but where face and hands should have been there was only grisly, bare bone.

“A skeleton!” Renny rumbled. “But Doc, it takes years to turn a body into a skeleton! And those clothes are not even weather-beaten!”

Doc Savage advanced, while Monk caught Kel Avery’s arm and guided her back so that she would not be unnecessarily upset.

The leather blouse of the thing on the ground was unbuttoned. Only rib bones were beneath. They were bare and white; almost polished.

“A freshly made skeleton,” Long Tom decided aloud. “Now, I ask you, brothers, what do you make of that?”

A brittle silence was his only answer. Doc picked up one of the boots, shook it — and bare white tibia, fibula and metatarsal bones rattled out.

“Whew!” Ham gulped, and his knuckles whitened on his sword cane.

“What d’you make of this?” Long Tom asked.

Doc Savage indicated the skull, after removing the helmet. “The top of the head is caved in, as if it might have been fractured when the plane crashed.”

“I’ll be superamalgamated!” Johnny murmured. “You maintain this is the pilot of the demolished aircraft?”

Doc did not answer, but arose and studied the tracks around the plane and the marks it had made when wrecked.

“The ship was trying to take off, probably just got into the air, and a number of bullets put the motor out of commission,” he said. “The ship is full of bullet holes. Possibly it crashed trying to land!”

Doc came back and searched the leather jacket which had enclosed the bones. He found papers and letters which bore a name.

“This is Windy Allen, old Dan Thunden’s flier,” he announced.

THE BRONZE man gave attention to the wrecked plane. Inside, there was a radio transmitter and receiver. Doc removed the metal shields and held a palm on the vacuum tubes on the transmitter side.

“Hot,” he said. “That means some one used them for sending, probably up until the time our plane was sighted.”

“Who?” asked Renny.

The big-fisted engineer did not put the query with the manner of a man asking a question to which he does not expect an answer. Renny knew Doc’s ability as a sign reader.

Doc circled slowly, the flake-gold pools of his eyes seeming a bit more agitated, more refulgent. There were tracks in the soft earth, prints which told the bronze man what had occurred.

He had seen the footprints of Santini, Leaking, Hallet, old Dan Thunden and the others on the south beach of Long Island. All of those prints were here about the wrecked plane.

“The ship seems to have been shot down by Santini and his crowd,” Doc announced. “Thunden and his pilot were aboard. Dan Thunden escaped into the jungle, but the pilot got a fractured skull in the crash.”

Renny indicated the skeleton. “But what made the pilot like — this? They couldn’t have been here more than a few hours? What made him a skeleton so quickly?”

Doc Savage did not reply, and there was a somewhat breathless silence while the others waited hopefully. Then Renny shivered, knowing Doc was not going to commit himself.

“Who used the radio?” the big-fisted engineer persisted.

“Thunden,” Doc said.

Renny boomed, “Then the whole crooked crew — Santini, Thunden and everybody — is on this island!”

“Exactly!” Doc said. “And that means it would not be a bad idea to locate Santini’s plane.”

“How?”

“From the air.”

Renny nodded and looked about. Monk and Kel Avery were somewhere back toward the beach. Ham, Johnny, Long Tom and Da Clima had separated, evidently to look over the vicinity.

“We’d better call our gang together and get in the air,” Renny decided.

They moved toward the beach, the whisper of wind-blown coral particles increasing, palm fronds a-rattle above, the small gale wailing faintly in the mangroves.

“I wonder if Pat is all right.” Renny rumbled, and made flinty blocks out of his massive fists. “Say, if they’ve done anything to her — ” His teeth ground audibly.

They gathered about the plane, prepared to wade out and clamber aboard.

“Look!” Doc said sharply, and pointed.

Down the beach some two hundred yards, a man had popped out of the mangroves. He was a wiry man with white beard that covered his chest like the front of a dress shirt, and a great mane of snowy hair.

“Dan Thunden!” Monk breathed.

Dan Thunden threw out his chest, fashioned a cup around his mouth with his hands and howled into the wind.

“Bomb in your plane!” he yelled.

HAD THE bomb gone off at that point, astonishment could not have been more complete. Kel Avery and Doc’s five men, all of whom had come running at the call, stood rigidly and stared at Dan Thunden.

Da Clima for once showed a nimble wit. He leaped toward the plane, big feet churning up water and sand. He dived through the cabin door. Doc Savage was on his heels. They raked the plane interior with anxious glances.

Doc worked aft, for there was the most likely hiding place. Da Clima went forward, muscle-bound shoulders hunched, eyes roving.

“The bomb, how she get in the plane?” he mumbled anxiously. “Every damn minute some of us feller, he watch the plane. Yes.”

Doc pounced abruptly. He had discovered a cabin pocket which looked more plump than it had before. His hand delved in gingerly and brought out a bundle of six or eight sticks of dynamite to which was attached a trio of flashlight batteries wired together, a detonating coil, and an alarm clock with a crude set of contacts rigged on the minute hand and the clock face.

Da Clima lumbered up and looked.

“That, meester, she no so funny!” he gulped. “To go off in five minutes, the clock she is fixed, no?”

Doc clambered out of the plane with his explosive prize, carefully adjusted the clock hands to close the contact earlier, then flung the bomb far down the beach. It bounced, rolled close to a royal palm, lay there an instant, then detonated.

Coral sand climbed in a great mushroom. Tiny seashells were mixed with the sand and whistled about like buckshot. The silver bole of the royal palm split, fronds fell out of the top, then the palm upset slowly and majestically. Echoes coughed hollowly then subsided.

Even the whine of the breeze, the hissing of coral sand, seemed to subside. Dan Thunden still stood on the beach two hundred yards away.

Abruptly, down the beach in the opposite direction from there Dan Thunden stood, there was a commotion behind a gum bush. A man stepped out, stood staring at the plane, seeming surprised that it had not been blown into fragments.

The newcomer was Santini, and he was so far away that the red ribbon across his chest seemed small as a scarlet thread.

Doc Savage spoke rapidly in a low voice.

“Monk, Ham, Da Clima and Miss Avery — stay with the plane,” he directed. “Johnny, you and Long Tom and Renny get hold of Dan Thunden if you can. He and Santini are fighting each ‘other, and I’d like to know why Thunden won’t throw in with us. He warned us and probably saved our plane from that bomb.”

Renny rumbled, “What about you, Doc?”

“I’ll try to do business with Santini,” Doc said grimly.