THE hour was well past midnight when the touring car flung into New Orleans. The engine was throwing off waves of heat. The radiator was boiling. Renny, at the wheel, had latched the hand throttle clear out and let it stay. He had taken many a corner at sixty.

"If I ever ride with you again, I want my head examined!" Monk complained. "Such crazy driving I never saw!"

"We got here, didn't we?"

"Yeah—in spite of you!" Monk jerked a thumb. "There's a boulevard that leads to Big Eric's home. Take it! We'll probably find Doc at Big Eric's joint."

"O.K." Renny yanked the car about, purposefully all but spilling Monk over the side.

"When this is over," Monk promised, still rankling from the wild ride the solemn-faced Renny had given him, "I'm gonna twist one of them big fists off you!"

A few minutes saw them before Big Eric Danielsen's mansion.

The grounds were brilliant with floodlights, as the Gray Spider had said they would be. The massive iron gates at the entrance were locked.

Monk got out of their touring car boldly. He strode to the gates. He gave the lock a mighty yank.

Pin-n-g!

A bullet left a shiny spot on the wrought iron of the gate, not a foot from his head. It had been fired from the mansion.

Monk did not bat an eye. That in itself was proof that he had pretended great terror at the recklessness of Renny's driving merely to have something to quarrel about good-naturedly.

Monk was never satisfied unless picking on somebody, or being picked on in turn. Usually it was the waspish Ham who insulted him and promised at intervals to see Monk skewered on the sword cane. But Ham and Monk had not been thrown together much in this adventure.

"Hey!" Monk's small voice sounded injured. "You wouldn't shoot a guy, would you, Doc?"

From the mansion, Big Eric's bellow rolled. "Who're you? Come a yard closer, and by golly, I'll put windows in your skull!"

Monk was surprised. This must be Big Eric Danielsen. And Big Eric had never met either Monk or Renny.

"Where's Doc Savage?" Monk called eagerly.

"What business is it of yourn?" Big Eric was canny.

Monk explained who he was. Big Eric was not easily convinced, not even when Renny added his solemn-faced assertions.

"Aw—where’s Doc?" Monk demanded. "We gotta see him. And we ain't got all night."

"Doc Savage went into the swamp with Long Tom and Ham to seize the Gray Spider," Big Eric admitted grudgingly.

"What?"

Without waiting for an answer, Monk leaped easily upward. He caught the bars of the gate. In a surprisingly short time he had surmounted the barrier, monkeylike. He threw the gate lock and Renny drove the car inside.

Big Eric was growling and holding one of Doc's compact machine guns at ready. But he did not fire. As Monk and Renny approached, he concluded they were actually Doc's men.

Pretty Edna Danielsen added the only word needed to allay Big Eric's suspicions.

"These men are Monk and Renny," she said. "They answer Mr. Savage's description."

FOR a moment, Monk and Renny were held quite speechless by Edna Danielsen's superb beauty. Monk, especially. Monk was something of a connoisseur of feminine pulchritude, homely soul though he might be himself. The secretary who presided over his correspondence in the penthouse laboratory Monk maintained near Wall Street in New York was conceded to be the prettiest in town. She couldn't hold the well-known candle to Edna Danielsen, though.

"But the Gray Spider has left the swamp by now!" Renny declared. "He was to wait for us here in New Orleans."

"When did you last see the Gray Spider?" inquired Big Eric.

"It was nearly midnight."

Big Eric's massive face tensed. "That does not sound so good! The appointment at which Doc Savage intended to seize the Gray Spider was set for ten o'clock. Something went wrong."

Worried expressions came over the features of Monk and Renny. They exchanged glances.

"What do you reckon?"

"Hard to tell," Monk growled. "The thing for us to do is set a trap of our own for the Gray Spider."

"Shall we call in the police?" asked Big Eric.

"And spend the rest of the night explaining and wading around in red tape?" Monk snorted. "Nix!"

"Yeah," Renny couldn't resist razzing Monk. "The cops would take one look at you and swear there'd been a break at the zoo."

Monk grinned widely. Strangely enough, any and all nasty cracks about his looks tickled Monk. He was one of those rare individuals—a homely man who was genuinely proud of the fact that his features were something to stop a clock.

"Renny and me will take care of this Gray Spider!" he declared.

"Renny and you and I!" corrected Big Eric. "I’m in on this. We'll drop by the police station and leave Edna in safety."

"You will not!" Edna snapped. "I'm going to drive the car!"

"Glory be!" grinned Monk. "I was afraid I'd have to ride with Barney Oldfield, here, again!" He gave Renny an amiable leer.

Big Eric ran into the house, was gone a minute, and came out stuffing little hand grenades into his pockets as though they were apples. He leaped into the car. The machine whipped around expertly, Edna Danielsen's slenderly capable hand on the wheel.

Big Eric flexed an arm which was muscled like a mule's leg.

"I crave action!" he declared.

HE got it a lot sooner than he expected. The powerful touring car swerved into the street. Instantly, two other machines approached from opposite directions.

They were big vehicles, but old and dilapidated. They literally bristled with little swamp men. Almost a dozen to each vehicle!

Both old cars banged headlong into the car occupied by Big Eric, Monk, Renny, and Edna. As though splashed by the impact, wiry, vicious swamp men covered the machine.

With a bellow, Renny reared upright. He performed the well-nigh incredible feat of grasping a man by the middle of the body with each hand. Only his gigantic fists made this possible. He banged them down among the other swamp men.

Monk's arms—longer by six inches than his own legs—gathered a bundle of the attackers. He fell out of the car with them, contriving so his two hundred and sixty pounds of gristle and stiff red hair landed atop them. As one man, they screeched in agony.

One of the efficient light machine guns Doc had perfected turned loose in Big Eric's fist. It seemed to melt the man in front of the muzzle. A second swamp man died before the ripping weapon.

Then a car jack swung. Big Eric collapsed. He kicked weakly on the floor boards trying to rise. A hard little fist pounded his temple until he no longer squirmed.

Monk emitted a series of deep bellowings, hisses, and gruntings—the sounds he always made when he fought. Men rushed him in clouds. They flew away from his driving arms like sparrows tackling a windmill.

Suddenly Monk seized a yellowish-brown fiend. With seeming ease, he threw the fellow fully twenty feet. The man's hurtling body knocked down another swamp man who was on the point of knifing Renny in the back.

Three of the attackers were holding Edna Danielsen. She kept them busy dodging her kicks and bites.

Renny abruptly went down, stumbling over a man he had slammed into unconsciousness with his great fists. And half a dozen swamp denizens piled atop him.

The man with the car jack ran up. He clanked his weapon off Renny's head. Renny weaved. He seemed to get sleepy on his feet.