The Man of Bronze (19 page)

Rich gold ore, broken loose, clattered down the pyramid. But Doc left it far behind. Mere sliding speed was not enough. He jumped outward, did it again, until he traveled faster than a falling object.

He hit the foot of the pyramid at a speed that would have shattered the body of an ordinary man. Tremendous muscles of sprung steel cushioned Doc’s landing. He never as much as lost his balance. Like a whippet, he was away.

Into a low depression, he sank. Hungry lead slugs rattled like hail—but always a yard or two behind Doc. The speed of his movements was too tremendous for inexperienced marksmen. Even an expert shot at moving objects would have had trouble getting a bead on that bronze, corded form.

The depression let Doc into low bushes. And from that moment he was lost to the murderers with the machine guns.

To the red-fingered warriors, it was incredible! They clucked among themselves, and looked about wildly for the flashing thing of bronze that was Doc. They did not find it.

Their leader, the repulsive figure masqueraded in snakeskin and feathers, was more perturbed than the others. He cowered among them. He kept very close to a machine gun, as though he expected that great, bronzed Nemesis of his kind to spring upon him from thin air.

Great was the snake man’s terror of Doc Savage.

D
OC Savage sped for the stone city. It lay only a few rods away. He haunted low tropical vegetation to the first stone-paved street. Among the houses he glided.

So quiet was his going that wild tropical birds perched on the projecting stone roofs of the houses were unfrightened by his passage; no more scared than had he been the bronze reflection of some cloud overhead.

Doc was making for the building which had been his headquarters. In it, he had left his machine guns, rifles, pistols, and the remarkable gas that was Monk’s invention.

He wanted those weapons. With them, the fifty or so warriors could be defeated in short order. Armed equally, the men of Morning Breeze could not stand against Doc and his five veteran fighters. So Doc had taken tremendous chances to get guns.

The headquarters house appeared ahead. Low, replete with stone carving, it was no more elaborate than the other Mayan homes. It seemed deserted.

The door, which could be closed solidly with a pivoted stone slab, but which was ordinarily only curtained, gaped invitingly. Doc paused and listened.

Back toward the pyramid, a machine gun snarled out a dozen shots. He heard nothing else.

Doc pushed back the curtain and slid into the stone house.

No enemies were there.

Doc went across the room, seeming to glide on ice, so effortlessly did he move. He tried the door of the room in which they had placed their arms.

He perceived suddenly that Long Tom’s electric burglar alarm had been expertly put out of commission.

No Mayan knew enough to do that!

“The man in the snakeskin!” Doc decided. “He did it!”

The room door gave before a shove by a great bronze arm. Doc had expected what he saw when he looked in.

The weapons were gone!

A faint sound came from the street.

Doc spun. Across the room he flashed—not to the door, but to the window. His keen senses told him a trap was closing upon him.

Before he reached the window, an object flashed into it, thrown from the outside. The object—a bottle—broke on the stone wall. It was filled with a vile-looking fluid. This sprayed over most of the room.

Doc surmised what the stuff was. Monk’s gas!

His bronze features set with determination, Doc continued for the window. But a gun muzzle snaked in. It spat flame. Doc ducked clear of the screaming lead. Gas was everywhere in the room.

There was no escape that way. He whirled on the door. But the muzzles of two automatic pistols met him. They were the guns he had invented. He knew just how fast they could deal death.

Then, slowly, Doc Savage collapsed.

He made a great bronze figure on the stone floor.

“THE gas got him!” snarled the man in the snake masquerade, appearing from a haven of safety behind several red-fingered fighters.

Then, realizing he had spoken in a language the Mayans could not understand, the man translated: “The all-powerful breath of the Son of the Feathered Serpent has vanquished the chief of our enemies.”

“Indeed, your magic breath is powerful!” muttered the warriors in great awe.

“Retreat from the doorway and windows until the wind has time to sweep my magic breath away,” commanded the snake man.

A gentle breeze had sprung up, slightly stronger in the streets of the Mayan city than elsewhere. In ten minutes, the serpent man decided all the gas had been swept out of the stone house.

“Go in!” he directed. “Seize the bronze devil and drag him to the street!”

His orders were complied with. It was, however, with the greatest fear that the red-fingered ones laid hands upon the magnificent bronze form of Doc Savage. Even though the great figure was still and limp, they feared it.

In the street, they dropped the bronze giant hastily.

“Cowards!” sneered the snake man. He was quite brave now. “Can you not see he has succumbed to my magic? He is helpless! Never again will he defy the son of Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent!”

The red-fingered Mayans did not look as relieved as they might. All too well, they remembered an occasion when Doc had brought three of his white companions out of the sacrificial well, very much alive, when they should have been dead. Doc might do the same for himself, they reasoned.

“Fetch tapir-hide thongs!” commanded the snake man. “Bind him. Not with a few turns, but with many! Tie him until he is a great bundle of tapir thongs!”

The warriors hurried to obey. They returned, bearing long strings of the tough hide.

“Fear him not!” said the serpent man. “My magic breath has stricken him, so that he will lie helpless for two hours.”

The fellow had profited by talking to the victim of Monk’s gas. He had learned about how long its effects lasted.

“I shall go now to send my magic breath into the interior of the pyramid!” snarled the snake man. “Six of you remain here and bind the bronze devil. Bind him well! Death shall strike all six of you if he escapes! He is to be sacrificed to the Feathered Serpent.”

With that warning, the fellow departed, the long, feather-studded snake tail scraping behind him. He was even more sinsiter than the reptilian monster after which he was disguised.

He moved from view.

The six evil Mayans seized their festoons of tapir-hide thongs and leaned over to lay violent hands on Doc. They got the shock of their lives.

STEEL talons seemed to trap the throats of two. Another pair bounced away, driven by pistoning bronze legs.

At no time had Doc Savage been unconscious. Monk’s remarkable gas depended for its action upon inhalation. Unless some of it penetrated to the lungs, the stuff was quite ineffective.

Because of his conscientious exercises, Doc had lungs of tremendous capacity. An ordinary man can, by straining himself, usually hold his breath about a minute. Several minutes is not uncommon for pearl divers in the South Seas. And Doc Savage, thanks to years of practice, could hold his breath fully twice as long as the most expert pearl diver.

He had held his breath all the while the snake man was waiting for the gas fumes to blow from the stone house.

By this ruse, which only he could manage, Doc had escaped being shot on the spot.

Doc shook the two Mayans whose throats he held. He brought their heads together, knocking their senses out. The other two were tangled in the tapir-hide strands, trying to reach their obsidian knives.

Using the two men in his hands as human clubs, Doc beat the others down. The two his powerful legs had knocked away had collapsed where they fell.

A single piercing squawl of agony, one warrior managed to emit. Then all six were sprawled unconscious in the stone-paved street.

Doc straightened. Into the stone house be leaped. He would only have a moment. That yell of the red-fingered man would spread an alarm.

The metal case which contained Monk’s chemicals was not behind the stone bench where Monk had kept it.

Doc was disappointed. He had hoped to get enough chemicals to rig up gas masks effective against Monk’s remarkable vapor. But the snake man had evidently appropriated the chemicals.

Out of the building, Doc ran. A machine gun blasted at him from down the narrow street. But it was poorly aimed. The slugs went wide.

Before the serpent-skin-clad man—it was he who had fired—could correct his aim, Doc’s metallic form had vanished like smoke. It seemed to float to a building top.

To another roof, Doc leaped, thence onward. Dropping down into a street, he ran several hundred feet.

There, he purposefully let the red-fingered crew glimpse him. He disappeared with lightning speed before they could fire. Howling like a wolf pack, they rushed the spot.

Dozens of them quitted the siege of the pyramid to aid in the chase.

That was what Doc had maneuvered for. It was imperative that he get back into the pyramid and devise something to defend the Mayans against the gas now in the possession of the fiendish warrior sect.

Unseen by any, Doc raced for the pyramid. So silently did he come, and so swiftly, that he was gliding up the steps before they saw him. And then it was too late.

A machine gun cackled angrily. Lead ricocheted off the steps, or splattered like raindrops.

But Doc was already up the stairs and inside the pyramid.

EVEN Renny and the others were a little startled at the suddenness of his appearance. They were awed, too. It was near unbelievable that even Doc could go and come as he had, with four alert machine guns emplaced about the pyramid.

“They have secured Monk’s gas,” Doc explained. “They’ll try to toss bottles of it into the secret doorway exposed by moving the idol.”

“Then we’ll move the idol back!” Monk grunted.

Straightway, exerting his enormous strength, Monk shifted the massive stone image of Kukulcan back.

A light sprang up below. One of the Mayans had lighted a torch. This was composed of a bowl filled with animal oils and equipped with a wick, not unlike an ordinary lamp. Evidently it had been placed in this weird place for just such an emergency.

“Chink the cracks with mud,” Doc directed. “They’ll break the glass bottles of the liquid that makes the gas, hoping it will seep inside.”

“But what about our peepholes!” Renny objected. “We can’t see them if they start up the stairs!”

For answer, Doc reached over and took off Johnny’s glasses which had the powerful magnifying lens on the left side.

“Use the right glass—the one that does not magnify,” he suggested. “Pack mud around it, and where could you find a better porthole. It will keep the gas out.”

“Dag-gone!” Monk grinned. “I don’t believe anything will ever stump Doc!”

The Mayans were string about below. Hundreds of them had gone into the pyramid, Doc reflected. There must be something in the nature of an underground room, or perhaps passages below.

“If they throw the gas bottles,” Doc told Renny, “they won’t rush the steps until they know the fumes have blown away. So when you see them coming, you’ll know it is safe to open the secret door and roll rocks down the stairs. You can tell the Mayans to pass up rocks, using sign talk.”

“Where you goin’?” Renny wanted to know.

“To explore. I am very curious about this place!”

D
OC Savage took Johnny and Monk with him as he wended into the depths of the golden pyramid.

He was surprised at the amount of wear the steps underfoot showed. In spots, they were pitted to half their depth. It must have taken thousands of human feet to do that.

The sovereign of the Mayans, King Chaac, had said only he knew of the existence of this place. That meant it had not been used extensively for generations—possibly not for hundreds of years. For information about a place such as this would be handed down from father to son for ages.

At a spot which Doc’s expert sense of distance told him was several feet below the surface of the surrounding ground, they entered a large room.

Doc noted a cleverly constructed stone pipe which bore the water that fed the pool on top of the pyramid. This crossed the room and vanished into another, larger chamber beyond.

This latter was a gigantic hallway, narrow and low of roof, but of unfathomable length. In fact, it was more of a tremendous tunnel. It stretched some hundreds of yards, then was lost in a turn upward.

Down the middle of it ran the finely constructed stone conduit carrying water.

In this subterranean corridor, King Chaac and pretty Princess Monja waited with their subjects.

The entrancing young Mayan princess had retained her nerve remarkably well during the attack. Her golden skin was a trifle pale, but there was no nervousness in her manner.

King Chaac was maintaining a mien befitting a ruler.

Doc drew the aged Mayan sovereign aside.

“Would you care to guide Johnny and Monk and myself into the depths of this cavern?”

The Mayan hesitated. “I would, gladly! But my people—they might think I had deserted them in their need.”

That was good reasoning, Doc admitted. He had about decided to go on alone with Monk and Johnny when King Chaac spoke again.

“My daughter, Princess Monja, knows as much of these underground passages as I do. She can guide you.”

That was agreeable to Doc. It seemed very welcome to Princess Monja, too.

They set off at once.

“This has the appearance of having been built and used centuries ago,” Doc offered.

Princess Monja nodded. “It was. When the Mayan race was in its glory, rulers of all this great region, they built this tunnel and the pyramid outside. A hundred thousand men were kept working steadily through the span of many lifetimes, according to the history handed down to my father and myself.”

Johnny murmured wonderingly. Johnny had been taking notes on bits of little-known Mayan lore, intending to write a book if he ever got time. He probably never would.