Chapter 15
Hell in a Small House
A group of five men passed under Doc. Carried among them was the giant, Renny. He was unconscious, he was dirty, and his clothing was torn as though he'd been in a terrific fight, but he seemed to have suffered no life-threatening wounds.
Men in the group complained. "This lug is heavy!" "He must eat concrete blocks for breakfast." "He's a scrapper, too. I see why Barlowe said to be careful sneakin' up on him." "Lucky for us he ran outta bullets." "Lenny and Max will be patched up and fine in no time."
After the huffing and puffing crew passed and were far enough ahead, Doc dropped back to the floor. He carefully trailed them.
Doc judged that the tunnel ran about five miles -- a longish way to travel on foot underground. Furthermore, the passage gradually sloped upward, so the crew was ascending closer to the surface. The men reached a low steel door. It was unlocked. They passed through with the still-unconscious Renny.
Doc put his ear to the shut door. He heard the hum of machinery, against which he could detect the curses of the men carrying Renny. Then there was the sound of a door slamming, leaving only the continual hum of machinery.
Cautiously, Doc opened the steel door and ducked through. He had entered what looked like the cellar of a house. The boards above his head creaked as people moved about upstairs.
The hum came from a chugging generator. A metal conduit ran from the generator to the tunnel just left by the bronze man. He decided that the generator must power the tunnel lights.
Mounds of earth filled two corners of the cellar. The mounds had settled and were well-packed, indicating that they had been there a long time. Doc decided that the piles were formed while the tunnel had been dug.
He climbed a stairway to a door. The stairs were made of unpainted lumber and dirty with tracked mud.
Doc put an ear to the door. He could hear angry shouting. He could distinguish the exclamations of the fellow he'd come to recognize as Gravel Voice.
"That's one damn big galoot, but that ain't Doc Savage!"
"How were we supposed to know that? Barlow said bring him here, so we did!"
Other noises followed -- Doc determined that Gravel Voice consulted with someone over the phone or a radio set.
While that occurred, Doc slowly opened the door and slipped through to find himself in a sort of mud room -- a type of backdoor entryway that served as a doorless closet, with hooks for hanging coats and hats, space for dirty boots and mops and brooms. He advanced into the kitchen quiet as a bronze shadow.
In the next room, a dining room without a dining table but offering a radio on a worn desk, Renny lay trussed up on the floor, still unconscious. Three of the armed men who had brought the engineer through the tunnel stood over him. They were an ugly, scar-faced lot whose looks would make a jackass scamper. Two of the men each had a finger missing. Not, Doc noted grimly, their trigger fingers.
Gravel Voice sat before the radio.
He spun around and pulled headphones from his ears to address the three guards. "Barlowe says get rid of 'im."
"Won't that big bronze guy get even more het up for killin' his helper?"
"Barlowe don't care," Gravel Voice sniffed. "He don't care if Doc Savage has to lick his own armpit. So go do it quiet-like, out in the garage. Then bury him good and deep behind the garage so he don't go to drawing buzzards."
Doc prepared to spring into the room and raise havoc, counting on surprise to enable him to bring low the armed thugs and to free Renny.
But the bronze man was the one who was surprised.
Just before he leapt among the deadly crew, Doc felt a poke in his back. He spun around to find another armed man with an evil leer cracking his face. He pointed one of those German-made machine pistols at Doc's midsection.
The fellow followed Doc into the dining room, where they were met with exclamations of surprise.
Gravel Voice squawked, "That's Doc Savage!"
Renny was stirrring by this time, and his eyes widened at the sight of Doc taken flatfooted.
The man who held his gun on Doc said, "He was so intent on you guys in front, he didn't know I was dragging behind him later. I guess the generator was so loud downstairs he didn't hear me, either." He laughed a brittle bark.
"All of you -- keep those guns trained on him," Gravel Voice ordered. "He's a devil. I'm callin' Barlowe again."
Then Gravel Voice donned the headphones and radioed his leader. After explaining the situation, he listened quietly before signing off and turning back to the assemblage.
"Kill him, too," was all he said.
There was a quiet moment, then one of the thugs gestured for Doc to head through the kitchen to the back door. "Go ahead, Mr. Big Shot."
Two of the men drew Renny to his feet to follow Doc.
One of the armed men led the group toward the back door, followed by Doc, then Renny, then the other armed thugs.
From the dining room, Gravel Voice howled a curse, and a burst of gunfire followed.
Doc took immediate advantage of this unexpected distraction by leaping into action.
He pivoted, grabbed Renny by the arm and swung the giant engineer around to smash into the leading gunman, who crashed into the mudroom wall. Continuing his spin, the bronze man whipped open the basement door, offering a moment's protection against the kitchen gunmen.
One of the kitchen guns chattered, splintering the door. Doc snapped up the gun of the stunned thug in the mudroom, whom Renny was slugging into senselessness with his bucket-sized fists. Doc poked the snout of the machine pistol through the space between the door and wall and ran off about a dozen rounds. There came a shout and a clattering thud.
Doc put an eye to the door crack. One gunman lay wounded on the kitchen floor. The other men were back in the dining room firing out the windows.
The bronze man quickly freed Renny of his bonds and handed him the gun. In the kitchen, he checked the fallen man: wounded in arm and leg, shock, unconsciousness. Doc gestured for Renny to deliver first aid, then moved toward the dining room.
The front rooms of the house presented hell's version of Bedlam. Gravel Voice and the others had pushed furniture against the dining room and parlor walls for some protection from the shots entering the house. The din from the guns was deafening. Chunks of plaster and lath rained from the ceiling and walls. Light fixtures jumped and crashed to the floor. Splinters flew from the window and door frames and furniture.
The racket from the interior and exterior gunfire covered Doc's movements as he slipped behind one then another of the gunmen and seemingly pinched their necks. In reality, Doc's pinch attacked a cluster of nerves that rendered the men unable to move and barely conscious.
Gravel Voice happened to turn and see what was going on behind him. He shouted, and the sole remaining gunman spun to turn his gun on Doc. The bronze man snatched up two chairs and threw them, smashing the spinning man and Gravel Voice into senselessness.
Clouds of plaster dust and gunsmoke choked the air. Occasional shots still peppered the room from outdoors. Doc announced loudly to the shooters, "This is Doc Savage. The gunmen in the house are now under my control. Cease firing!"
Next came a curse in the voice Doc recognized as belonging to Curly Wolfe: "That big bronze galoot is everywhere! Clear out!"
Doc chanced a look through one of the bullet-shattered windows. The house sat in a wide grass-covered clearing surrounded by shrubbery and trees. It was this growth that offered Curly Wolfe and his crew cover for their assault on the house. A rutted driveway ran through a break in the shrubs and apparently joined a country road out of sight beyond the wall of foliage.
Doc rushed to the back door, passing Renny and his charges, and exited. He whipped around the corner of the house, alert to any marksman Curly Wolfe may have left hanging behind. As he plunged into the foliage, Doc heard the clash of gears and roar of a car motor that rapidly receded. With a grunt of disgust, the bronze man turned and rejoined Renny.
"They conked me on the head from behind," the giant enginner explained how the gang captured him in the woods. "Next thing I knew, they'd brought me here."
Doc examined the gunman he had wounded. The fellow's life was in no danger, and he would be fine until he received more thorough medical attention. The bronze man then succinctly described what he had discovered in the barnlike hangars and in the tunnels. "I suspect other secondary tunnels lead to other safe houses like this one."
He pulled out the map Lt. Sherman had given them. He glanced through a window at the position of the sun and checked the time on his watch, then pointed out to Renny a spot on the map. "We're located somewhere close to here. I want you to haul this crew to Admiral Ryan. Have him assign squads to enter the tunnels from this house to flush out other gang members in houses at the ends of these other tunnels."
"What about radioing the base?"
"Curly Wolfe's crew shot the radio to bits during their attack," Doc replied, "and there seems to be no telephone."
"What are you gonna do?" Renny questioned.
"While you're gone, I'll explore the tunnels, mark the ones for the Navy squads to follow."
While Renny finished binding the rest of the gang downed by Doc, the bronze man checked the garage. Parked inside he found a sedan with plenty of room for Renny to carry the subdued gang to the authorities. The two men loaded Gravel Voice and his ugly crew into the automobile. Renny climbed in. He drove off with a wave.
Doc re-entered the house and went into the tunnel. He hurried back toward the point where this secondary passage branched off from the main trunk.
The road Renny drove over had been covered with creek gravel once, years ago. Now it was deeply rutted and very rough, and trees and underbrush crowded from both sides. The sedan bounced heavily over the sudden dips and humps, and branches scraped its sides.
The car rounded a sharp turn, then the giant engineer stomped the brake. A large log lay across the narrow road and blocked the sedan's path. A cloud of road dust enveloped the auto, then passed on. When it did so, the sedan was surrounded by gunmen pointing their guns toward the vehicle. Renny turned toward his open window to meet a large-bore pistol staring right into one of his eyes.
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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