CHAPTER X

Rescue

Clark Kent raced down the street at top speed, looking frantically for any place to perform his transformation into Superman unobserved. Soon enough he found it--a flight of steps leading down to the nearest subway platform, deserted at that hour of night. A passerby would have seen a man bolt down the steps, and a dark, blurred manlike shape seem to rush, leap, and finally fly from the opening. Seconds later, something streaked across the night sky. Pedestrians on the streets far below looked up, first in curiosity, then in amazement.

"Hey! What's that?"

"Look! Up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

"It's Superman!"

"Superman! Holy cow! What's he doing here?"

The citizens of New York immediately began to speculate about the answer to this question while searchlights activated throughout the city confirmed that it was indeed The Man of Steel, rocketing through the night sky in the direction of a certain warehouse on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 29th Street in Manhattan. As he drew near his destination, the Last Son of Krypton periodically cast beams of his X-ray vision toward the ground, piercing the walls of buildings where Lamont Cranston might be hidden.

Finally, Superman reached the warehouse, and his extraordinary powers confirmed what his intuition had suspected. In a tiny carefully concealed room at the rear of the building, a group of men clustered around another man, immobile and inert in a chair. Dietrich and his henchmen were apparently still interrogating Cranston--if Cranston were still alive. Superman bore down on the warehouse like a dive bomber, blasting a hole through its outer wall and terrifying the two gunmen who stood guard just inside the entrance. One thug tried to rush Superman, but the Man of Steel easily felled him with a single blow. The second thug fired a volley of shots at Superman with his revolver, but the bullets bounced harmlessly away. Superman rushed the second thug, grabbed the gun, crushed it into a lump of twisted metal, and sent the gangster sprawling against a far wall.

By this time, more thugs poured from the interior of the warehouse, armed with automatics and tommy guns. The crooks carrying machine guns aimed a fearful fusillade at the Last Son of Krypton, but he reacted to the bullets as if they were raindrops. He overpowered the gunmen and rushed to the innermost room where he could see Lamont Cranston slumped silently in a chair, head bowed under the light of a single naked bulb. Superman raced to Cranston's chair and easily undid the manacles binding his wrists.

"Don't worry, Mr. Cranston. I'm here to rescue you," The Man of Tomorrow said confidently.

"Watch . . . out . . . Dietrich . . . Black . . . still here . . ." Cranston rasped back.

Suddenly Superman caught sight of two dim, shadowy figures lurking behind a pile of crates near Cranston's chair. Karl Dietrich and Gunther Black were hoping to get the drop on the Man of Steel, but he wasn't startled or even surprised. He strode toward makeshift barricade and flung the crates aside as if they weighed nothing. Dietrich fired a Luger repeatedly, emptying a clip full of bullets in Superman's direction, but the Last Son of Krypton brushed them aside as if they were a cloud of mosquitoes. Superman advanced on Dietrich and Black, who were now apparently unable to decide between cringing in the corner and scrambling for the back door of the warehouse.

"Karl Dietrich, I presume," Superman growled in righteous anger. "Put down that gun and get your hands up! I've heard a lot about you and what you've been up to--kidnapping and espionage, for starters. I'm going to enjoy turning you over to the authorities and seeing you get what you deserve. I'll . . ."

As Dietrich raised his hands in apparent surrender, however, Superman suddenly felt weak. He staggered and his knees buckled. He felt nearly as feeble as Cranston, still slumped in the chair just behind him. Dietrich and Superman gazed at each other in astonishment, unable to guess the reason for the Man of Steel's sudden collapse. It was Gunther, of all people, who deduced the truth.

"Hey, boss!" he shouted, "look at your ring."

Dietrich glanced up at the elaborate gold ring on the third finger of his left hand. The large green stone was glowing wildly in the semidarkness of the warehouse. Superman staggered backward, hoping to use the last of his ebbing strength to protect the still weakened Cranston, whom he had come to rescue.

Now it was Dietrich's turn to advance. "Ach, so!" he exclaimed in amazement. "What is the matter, Herr Superman? You do not like my pretty ring? Perhaps you would like to examine it more closely," he said as a slow, cruel grin spread over his face. Dietrich turned the ring so that the stone faced outward in Superman's direction. Superman continued to weaken. As he walked, Dietrich retrieved the discarded Luger, reached inside his coat pocket, and rammed another clip into the pistol. "Now we shall see who gets what they deserve," he snarled.

Dietrich leveled his pistol and was about to fire, but in a desperate bid to protect the man he had come to save, Superman gathered the last of his strength, cradled the half conscious Cranston in his arms and burst through the skylight of the warehouse at tremendous speed, rocketing into the night sky where he could see the whole city spread out before him.

End of Chapter X