THE MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA

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THE MIDAS MAN

 

We know of at least two highly advanced scientific ideas that existed in the sunken city of Taz. One was the breathing compound around which much of the story revolved. The other was the plaque describing mental telepathy, which Doc Savage examined in the Central Science Library.

During the Taz adventure, Doc and Seaworthy examine some of the scientific records of Taz:

And Doc Savage, who was somewhat familiar with both, was slowly translating the symbols on the plaque. It was very interesting. Put into English, it would have read somewhat as:

CENTRAL SCIENCE LIBRARY
PLATE OF 1001-MENTAL TELEPATHY

BEING A RECAPITULATION OF EXHAUSTIVE EXPERIMENTS BY CENTRAL SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY WHICH PROVE CONCLUSIVELY THAT THOUGHT IMPULSE OVER THE NERVE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BODY IS A PHENOMENON AKIN TO THE FORCE KNOWN AS ELECTRICITY; THAT SUCH THOUGHT CURRENTS ARE GENERATED BY ATOMIC REACTIONS CHEMICALLY PRODUCED; THAT THERE IS A DISTINCT THOUGHT MAGNETIC FIELD AROUND HUMAN NERVES AND THE BRAIN CELLULAR STRUCTURE, JUST AS A MAGNETIC FIELD IS FOUND AROUND WIRES CARRYING ELECTRIC CURRENT.

WHEREIN THIS AND FOLLOWING PLATES IS DESCRIBED FOR POSTERITY CONSTRUCTION OF APPARATUS SUITABLE FOR RECEPTION OF SUCH THOUGHT VIBRATIONS-

Here is a description of a machine to read minds! It is exactly the premise upon which The Midas Man (August 1936) is developed. In that story, we encounter one Hando Lancaster, purported inventor of such a device. Throughout the story we are lambasted with Lancaster's lamentations about his life's work being stolen away.

Eventually, Doc Savage catches up with Lancaster and gains access to the mysterious device. What is the first thing out of Doc's mouth upon examining the extraordinary machine?

"Your life's work, eh?" Doc asked.

"Eh" -- that sounds like sarcasm to me. Why would Doc strike such an attitude? Because Hando Lancaster was not the striking inventor he purported to be. Granted he showed a certain amount of intellect but he had not invented the mind reading device. Rather, he had simply followed the instructions as described on the Taz tablet.

Remember back in Mystery Under The Sea (February 1936) at the sunken city of Taz. The mental telepathy plate that Doc and Seaworthy had examined was in the process of being packed for removal.

Seaworthy was as happy as a small boy in a toy shop. He made signals to his men. They scattered. Around their waists they were wearing sashes, long lengths of narrow cloth. They now unwound these. Taking plates from the cases, they began to wrap them carefully in the sashes.

Obviously this plate was not lost but was removed from the city. And while it seems that Captain Flamingo and his gang were all annihilated by Topping, it also appears that Seaworthy's entire crew managed to escape. It would not be a major feat to secrete the telepathy plate in a safe place for later recovery. We also know that Doc and his men stayed around for a full thirty days after the disaster in an attempt to salvage the records stored therein.

It would be logical to assume that some type of accord was reached between Seaworthy and Doc Savage such that Seaworthy's crew assisted in the salvage operation. Recovering the mental telepathy plate and smuggling it back to civilization would be a simple feat if men were going back and forth between the Caribbenda.

My guess is that Seaworthy was not involved in this maneuver. Instead, one of the crewmen was acting independently. Probably it was someone who knew who enough about the prior plates and how to get them deciphered. Someone who had high expectations from the expedition only to see it all come to ruin. This was one fellow who had decided he was not coming home empty handed.

Finally, let us not forget that Seaworthy was once Captain Flamingo's second in command as Diamond Eve Post explains:

"I financed a deep sea expedition," she wrote at length. "Captain Flamingo commanded the ship. Seaworthy was second in charge. Topping was along as technical expert."

So you can see the crewmen we are talking about are all cut somewhat from the same cloth. Seaworthy and Diamond Eve Post certainly were not motivated by altruistic ideals. It is doubtful that the crew embodied any of these selfless emotions.

Going back to The Midas Man and the story's culmination we find that Hando Lancaster has a secret laboratory on an old ship:

They mounted a flight of decrepit, ladderlike stairs, and Johnny suddenly realized where they must be.

"A ship!" he exploded.

"One of the abandoned War-time bulks, tied up in Chesapeake Bay," Doc Savage hazarded. "An excellent hideaway!"

This maritime hideout would seem to strengthen the connection between some renegade mariner on Seaworthy's crew and the current gang running around in The Midas Man. Someone had to know about these old ships and have enough knowledge about them to know that they would make a first-rate hideout.

There also seems to be a lot going on that the reader is not aware of. The first odd thing is Doc's perusal of the president's chair at the Castello Mining Corporation.

The only link Doc had to telepathy was his little visit with Hando Lancaster. He knew nothing of Johnny's experience.

The bronze man had been looking over the room as he talked. It was large for an office. The furniture, as might have been expected, had been selected to create an impression of substantial richness, the background from which shysters and confidence men prefer to work.

There was an enormous mahogany desk. A straight-backed chair for visitors was situated at either end of this. Behind that was the chair apparently used by Castello. This was a great overstuffed affair of leather and wood. Probably it had cost as much as some of the minor employees of the concern earned in a year.

"We will examine that chair closely," Doc Savage said.

That's it; just a look over the room and straight for the chair. Does it strike anyone that this an odd place to start a search? It would be unless you already had a pretty good idea of what you were searching for.

Then we get to the part in the story where the villains learn that Doc Savage has already figured out the entire scheme and even knows who the boss is.

"The bronze guy!" he exploded. "He's got our whole layout figured!"

"He can't have!" gasped one of the guards.

"He has! He even knows who the boss is!"

At the story's conclusion Monk queries Doc about the villain's identity.

How'd you come to suspect Hando Lancaster?" Monk asked Doc.

"The suicide of his business partner Castello, who headed the Castello Mining Corporation, threw suspicion on him," Doc explained. "That was about the only thing which would account for Castello's taking his own life. He had learned what Hando Lancaster was doing."

Now Lancaster might have been under suspicion but that hardly squares with the statement the clandestine mind readers gave when they discovered Doc had it already figured out.

Obviously Doc Savage knows a lot more about this entire situation and Hando Lancaster in particular than he is letting on. In recovering the errant plates Seaworthy took away from Taz on his first visit, Doc encountered clues that pointed to the mental telepathy plate. Subsequent investigations put him on the trail of Hando Lancaster and brought about the ensuing events detailed in The Midas Man.

But that is not the end of Doc's secret connection with Taz.

 

 

 

THE MYSTERY UNDER THE SEA

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RESURRECTION DAY

Let us return to the amazing sunken city of Taz:

Seaworthy shrugged, stepped to one of the cases, grasped the lid, strained, got it off. The case was filled with metal plates. These stood on edge, not unlike the plates in a storage battery. Seaworthy extracted one.

…

Seaworthy placed it on the case, picked up the slate and conveyed the statement: "It is possible that that plate alone is worth millions of dollars."

…

"I took one set of plates away on my first visit," he wrote. "Translated, it told how to mix the chemical which has made it unnecessary to breathe."

…

What do we know from this? First that the boxes the plates are stored in contain many plates. Secondly, that one plate alone can be very valuable. That leads us to believe that the entire scientific process is documented on that one plate. Lastly and perhaps most importantly we learn that Seaworthy took a "set" of plates back with him on his first visit.

Now exactly what constitutes a "set" could be the subject of much debate. My guess is that it would be one of the cases like the one Doc examined. So it does not seem too far a stretch of the imagination to think that Seaworthy might have many valuable plates in his possession.

What other information could be contained within those metal plates? Moving on to November 1936 in the Doc Savage universe we arrive at the events recorded in Resurrection Day.

Doc shocks the world with his amazing pronouncement:

"It is in my power to bring a dead man back to life," he said.

Then he waited for that to soak in.

…

"Only one man can be brought back to life," he went on. "That is because the process requires the use of a new element in a combination which takes at least ten years to develop. You all know how the juice of an apple must he allowed to ferment before it becomes vinegar. It is the same with this element combination, except that the time process covers years."

But is this really true? Does it actually take ten years to ferment this elixir of life? Perhaps this is only a cover story. If in fact such a process existed and was readily available there would be a stampede of people digging up cemeteries in the hopes of restoring life to a deceased loved one. Chaos would result from such a situation.

Was it also a coincidence that this amazing scientific discovery came about after Doc's undersea adventure in Taz?

We know Seaworthy had several plates. At the story's conclusion Doc returns to the Caribbenda to find that his men have everyone captive and under armed guard. Seaworthy is not in a position to exert much influence at this point.

My supposition is that Doc Savage took possession of the remaining plates once they returned stateside. The resurrection formula was on one of the plates. Exactly how Doc got the plates from Seaworthy and Diamond Eve Post is another issue. That could have occurred in any manner of ways from a voluntary action up to a "visit" to the Crime College.

Those missing plates were simply too dangerous to remain unaccounted for. Based on the two plates we do know about -- the breathing formula, and telepathy -- it just would not be prudent to not recover them. In some ways the Central Science Library of Taz was a precursor to Doc Savage's own Fortress of Solitude. Just as Doc would later recover the missing devices John Sunlight took from the Fortress, so too would he recover the missing plates Seaworthy possessed.

That wraps it up for another Secret Sequel.