Dusk Before the Dawn

This is the seventh story originally published by Street and Smith. The Bantam one I have is in great condition, though it is a 4th printing (July 1972, seven years after the 1st Bantam printing).

The Lost Oasis begins with a publicized reward, $1 million if Doc Savage will help unknown persons arriving on a ship. Doc sneaks board and overhears Lady Nelia and two male companions, who have apparently escaped some terror and are seeking Doc’s help. One of the men is attacked by unknown creatures (unknown unless you look at the Bantam cover) and is killed.

Lady Nelia and her remaining companion escape in a boat, only to be captured by Sol Yuttal and Hadi-Mot, slavers and smugglers whom they were running from and seeking Doc’s help. A car chase and airplane chase ensues, leading to the northeast United States, where a missing Zeppelin is waiting to take the slavers with Lady Nelia in tow back to a place where they have other slaves. Doc and team stowaway on the Zeppelin, and find themselves a few days later over the desert in Africa, approaching an oasis. The original crew of the Zeppelin and others are kept as slaves to mine diamonds, with poisonous vampire bats used to keep them subdued and a surrounding jungle of carnivorous plants and the desert keeping them from escape.

Doc and team, of course, wreck havoc and demise upon the slavers, and Doc avoids the charms of Lady Nelia while helping her to again escape, rescuing the other slaves as well (and gaining more funding, for fighting evil is expensive work).

My sortable table of Doc Savage books is here.

• Written by: Lester Dent
• Villain: Hadi-Mot and Yuttal, slavers and diamond smugglers
• Doc Gadget: vials of acid that slowly ate through the bat protector cages;
• Doc Feat: walking on the outside of an in-flight dirigible;
• Exotic locale: an Oasis in the African desert
• By the numbers: originally published September, 1933;  Bantam #6 published April 1965; Philip Jose Farmer dated August 1931