The Polar Treasure

The moment he finished speaking, Doc beckoned Re

The others, Monk, Ham, Long Tom, and Joh

There would be no trouble explaining. Each of Doc's five men bore the honorary rank of captain on the New York police force.

ENTERING HIS eighty-sixth-floor office, Doc secured the sprayerlike contraption which he had abandoned at the start of the fight down in the street.

'What's that doofu

"I'll show you." Doc indicated a sticky material on the corridor floor outside his office door. This resembled extremely pale molasses. The color blended with the floor tiles so as to be hardly noticeable. "See that?"

"Sure," Re

"I chanced to have the foresight to spread that stuff outside the door when I left Monk here with Victor Vail," Doc explained.

"What is it?"

"I'm showing you. Take off your shoes."

Bewildered, Re

Doc now pointed the nozzle of his sprayer down the corridor — away from the pale molasses material. A shrill fizzing sounded. A cloud of pale vapor came out of the nozzle.

"Smell anything?"

"Not a thing," Re

Doc aimed a puff of the strange vapor at the molasses stuff.

"Smell anything now?"

"Ph-e-w!" choked Re

Doc hauled Re

"The stuff in this sprayer and the sticky material on the floor form a terrible odor when they come together, even in the tiniest quantities," Doc explained as the cage raced them down. "So powerful are these chemicals that any one walking through the stuff in front of the door will leave a trail which can be detected for some hours. That's why we took off our shoes. We had walked through it."

"But I don't see — "

"We're going to trail Victor Vail," Doc explained. "But cross your fingers and hope he didn't take a taxi, Re

But Victor Vail hadn't taken a taxi. He had walked to the nearest subway, and entered the side which admitted passengers to uptown trains, feeling his way along the building.walls.

"We're sunk!" Re

"Far from it," Doc retorted. "We merely drive uptown and throw our vapor in each subway exit until we find the odor which will result from its contact with Victor Vail's tracks."

Re

They tried the exits of seven stations. At the eighth, Doc's remarkable vapor, a chemical compound of his own making, combined with the other chemical left by Victor Vail's shoe soles, and gave them the nauseating odor.

"It goes down this side street!" declared Re

There were few pedestrians on the street at this late hour. Even these, however, promptly stopped to gawk at Doc and Re

More likely, it was Doc's mighty bronze form which caught their eye. Doc was a sensation whenever he appeared in public.

"What puzzles me is how the blind guy got around like this," Re

"Simply by asking help of those near him," Doc retorted. "Every one is glad to aid a blind man."

Re

"Scat!" he told the rubberneckers violently. "Ain't you folks got a home you can go to?"

Re

Five minutes later, Doc and Re

DENTIST.

"He went in there, Doc," said Re

LIKE TWO dark cotton balls before a breeze, Doc and Re

"Wait here," Doc directed. Doc was always leaving his men behind while he went alone into danger. Long ago, they had become resigned to this, much as it irked them to stand back when excitement offered. They literally lived for adventure.

But no one could cope with danger quite as Doc could. He had an unca

Around to the rear of the brick building, Doc glided. He found the back door. It was not locked inside — it was bolted. Heavy iron bars crisscrossed it.

Doc leaped upward. The height of that tremendous spring would have astounded an onlooker. He clutched an extended ledge and worked his way to a window on a second-floor hallway, with hardly more sound than the noise of a prowling cat.

The hall was dark. Doc drew things from his pockets. Some sticky gum, he affixed to the windowpane. Then a faint, gritty hiss sounded.

Doc had cut the glass cut of the window! He kept it from falling inward by the gum he had stuck to it. He eased inside.

Silence gripped the interior of the house. Doc prowled noiselessly. Only one room held a light. It was downstairs. The door was locked.

Doc let Re

"We might as well go in there all of a sudden!" Doc breathed.

"0. K., Doc," murmured Re

He lifted his gallon of iron-hard knuckles. He struck. With a rending crash, the door panel was driven inward by Re

They sprang into the room. Re

Horrified surprise halted them.

Only two men were in the room. One was Victor Vail. The other, as denoted by the sanitary smock he wore, was obviously the dentist who had his place of business here.

Both men hung suspended by ropes around their necks from a stout ceiling chandelier.

Chapter 7

THE MAP

THE SUN was up. Doc's remarkable companions lounged in the skyscraper office. They had lost a night's sleep, but showed no effects of it.

Ham was honing the blade of his sword cane to a razor edge, looking ominously at Monk each time he tested its sharpness. Monk sat in an easy chair, reading a pocket manual of how to raise hogs. He took pains to hold the book so Ham could see the title. Monk often maintained — always within earshot of Ham — that some day he was going to retire and raise pork for a certain finely dressed lawyer he knew. Joh

Long Tom, looking pale as an invalid, was in the laboratory, humped over an apparatus which for intricacy would have given Steinmetz a headache.

Truly an amazing crew, these men.

Doc Savage entered. With him was Victor Vail. Re

The blind man's neck was swollen somewhat where the rope had nearly strangled him to death — Doc had arrived just in time to save him.

The explanation of Vail's situation was quickly made.

"The dentist don't know a thing about the gang that seized him," Doc concluded. "They called him to the door and cracked him over the head."