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Investigating, Joh
The couple had one child—a son about eighteen, named Sill. He was mentally unbalanced—crazy. He had been that way, Joh
It was a hideous, squalid colony here in the swamp. The people were an admixture of many races. They retained the bad qualities of them all, and the good points of none.
The moment he judged the time propitious, Joh
First, he "hypnotized" the pet alligator. He did this by secretly breaking one of Doc's glass balls of anaesthetic under the reptile's snout. The trick created quite a furor. Joh
Using simple acids, Joh
His crowning feat was to drive a long, thin rod of steel through his own brain. This he accomplished by having a tubing in his hat. The steel rod was flexible. It was guided around his head by the tubing—although the impression was that it passed directly through his skull.
This made the eyes of his audience stand out until they could almost have been knocked off with a stick.
THE next day, Joh
"Man here who want talk wit' you'!" he muttered to Joh
"Ees he from de Gray Spider?" Joh
Buck Boontown replied sharply: "Me—I don' know nothin' about nobody by name of Gray Spider!"
Obviously, some one had put the bee in Buck's bo
"Bien!"
said Joh
"Here I am, buddy!" said a harsh voice.
Whirling, Joh
The man was wide and thick of limb. He wore muck-caked overalls. Underneath these, he was attired in something the true swamp man never saw—a collar and necktie.
A brilliant silk mask obscured his face. It was even tied at the back of his head so as to hide the color of his hair. And he wore all-concealing cheap cotton gloves. It was impossible to as much as glimpse the hue of his skin.
Joh
"Buck Boontown tells me you're quite a voodoo guy," growled the man.
"Oui!"
said Joh
"And he says you want to join the Gray Spider's outfit?"
"Eet pay good?"
"I'll say it'll pay you good!"
"Bien!
Then I join."
The other man laughed shortly. "I'm not so sure that I’ll let you join. I must know more about you before we start talking that over."
In his best dialect, Joh
"Ees yo' de Gray Spider?" he asked boldly.
The masked man tensed visibly. He put a hand in a pocket that bulged as if it might hold a gun.
"Listen—don't go asking silly questions!" he snarled.
"Oui!"
said Joh
The other man did not renew the talk immediately. Finally he said, "I'm go
Joh
Joh
"BE yo' goin' to New O'leans?" he questioned
"What's it to you?" snarled the masked man.
Joh
He gave the masked man the address of the room where Doc Savage's bronzed, skilled fingers had applied the makeup. This room was in a private residence in New Orleans.
"Could yo' bring me my money?" Joh
"Who said anything about me being the Gray Spider?" rapped the other.
"Non, non,
nobody!" Joh
"I'll bring it," replied the man.
A subtle something in his tone told Joh
Joh
The masked man now departed.
Evading the attention of Buck Boontown and the other inhabitants of the scrawny settlement, Joh
Joh
"I sent this guy to that room where you put on my makeup," he told Doc, after explaining the situation. "You can grab him there."
"Do you think he is the Gray Spider?" Doc's voice came back clear as a fine bell. They spoke in the language of ancient Maya, of course.
"I ca
"I'll hold a reception for him," Doc said grimly. "Good work, Joh
"O.K.," said Joh
Climbing a near-by tree, he glanced about over the steaming, festering swamp. It seemed to extend to the horizon in all directions.
For an instant, Joh
The fellow flushed up a cloud of blackbirds, then trudged out of sight in the morass.
Joh
Chapter XI. THE WELL-KNOWN EGG
THE man who had worn the mask, swore at the cloud of blackbirds Joh
"That voodoo man is a dumb one!" he chuckled. "Thinks I will bring him his money! Nearly twenty thousand bucks! Imagine that!"
He shied a clod at the little lizards racing up a palmetto.
"That money goes in my own pocket and stays there!" he declared aloud. "It's so much gravy!"