Kenneth Robeson - The Man of Bronze

He had reached a decision that showed how evil and cruel he was. He had no regard at all for human life.

He crashed the bottle of Red Death cure against a rock, destroying it.

He intended to let the Mayans perish!

Doc Savage, up ahead of the sun, spent the usual time at the exercises which kept his amazing bronze body the wonderful mental and physical thing it was. From force of habit he liked to go through his ritual while alone. Bystanders were always asking questions as to what this and that was intended to do, pestering him.

Morning Breeze was still a prisoner. Doc paid the cell hut a visit to be sure. The guards on duty eyed Doc's bronze form in open wonder, marveling at its perfection. Doc had not as yet donned his shirt.

Doc's bared arms looked like those of an Atlas. The muscles, in repose, were not knotty. They were more like bundled piano wires on which a thin bronze skin had been painted. And across his chest and back great, supple cables of tendon lay layer upon layer. It was a rare sight, that body of Doc's. The Mayans' eyes popped.

Some of the morning Doc spent in conversation with King Chaac, considering the elderly sovereign had never heard of a modern university, be had some remarkably accurate knowledge about the universe.

Pretty Princess Monja, Doc discovered also, would pass in any society as a well-educated young woman. All she lacked was a course in the history of the rest of the world. It was amazing.

"We lead a life of leisure here in the Valley of the Vanished," King Chaac explained. "We have much time to think, to reason things out."

A little later King Chaac made an unexpected — and pleasant — revelation.

"You may have wondered why I said I would delay thirty days or possibly less before I disclosed to you the location of the gold supply?" he asked.

Doc admitted he had.

"It was my agreement with your father," smiled King Chaac. "I was to satisfy myself you were a man of sufficient character to put this fabulous wealth to the use to which it should be put."

"That was not a bad idea," Doc agreed.

"I am satisfied," said King Chaac in a pleased tone. "To— morrow I show you the gold. But first, to-morrow morning you must be adopted into our Mayan clan. You and your men. That is necessary. For centuries the word has come down that none but a Mayan should ever remove the gold. Your adoption into the tribe will fulfill that command."

Doc expressed the proper appreciation. The conversation came around to how the gold was to be transported to civilization.

"We can hardly take it in the plane, due to the terrific air currents," Doc pointed out.

The elderly Mayan sovereign smiled. "We have donkeys here in the Valley of the Vanished. I will simply have a number of them loaded with gold and dispatched to your banker at Blanco Grande."

Doc was surprised at the simplicity of the scheme. "But the warlike natives in the surrounding mountains — they will never let a pack train through."

"In that you are mistaken," chuckled King Chaac. "The natives are of Mayan ancestry. They know we are here; they know why. And for centuries it has been their fighting which has kept this valley lost to white men. Oh, yes, they will let the pack train through. And no white man will ever know from whence it came. And they will let others through as the years pass."

"Is there that much gold?" Doc inquired.

But King Chaac only smiled secretively and gave no other answer.

The Red Death struck in the middle of that afternoon. A cluster of excited Mayans about a stone house drew Monk's curious attention. Monk looked inside.

A Mayan was sprawled on a stone bench. His yellow skin was mottled, feverish, and he was calling for water.

On his neck were vile red patches.

"The Red Death!" Monk muttered in a horror-filled voice. He ran for Doc, and found him politely listening to attractive Princess Monja. The young lady had finally cornered Doc alone.

Doc raced to the plane, got his instrument case.

Entering the Mayan's stone dwelling, Doc became at once the thing for which he was eminently fitted above all others — a great doctor and surgeon. From the highest credited medical universities and the greatest hospitals in America, from the best that Europe had to offer, Doc garnered his fabulous fund of knowledge of medicine and surgery. He had studied with the master surgeons in the costliest clinics in the world. And he had conducted unnumbered experiments of his own when he had advanced beyond the greatest master's ability to teach.

With his instruments, his supersensitive ear, his featherllght touch; Doc examined the Mayan.

"What ails him?" Monk wanted to know.

"It escapes me as yet," Doc was forced to admit. "Obviously it is the same thing that seized my father. That means it was administered to this man in some fashion by that devil who is behind all our troubles. Whoever he is, the fiend must be in the valley now. Probably the blue airplane brought him and dropped him by parachute at night."

In that Doc's reasoning could not have been more accurate had he witnessed the arrival of the enemy.

At this juncture Long Tom ran up.

"The Red Death!" he puffed. "They're collapsing with it all over the city!"

Doc administered an opiate to the first Mayan to be stricken to ease his pain, then visited a second sufferer. He questioned each closely on where he had been, what he had eaten. Four more Mayans he asked the same thing.

Deduction then told him how the Red Death was being spread!

"The water supply!" he guessed with exactness.

He showed Long Tom, Johnny, Ham, and Renny how to administer the opiates that lessened suffering.

"Monk, your knowledge of chemistry is going to be in need," he declared. "Come on."

Securing test tubes for obtaining samples of the water, Doc and Monk hurried toward the gleaming yellow pyramid.

Although the epidemic of Red Death had been under way less than an hour, the cult of red-fingered warriors had been making full use of the panic it engendered. They were falling over themselves to spread word that the disease was a punishment inflicted upon the Mayans for permitting Doc and his friends to remain in the Valley of the Vanished.

Ominous mutterings were arising. Blue-girdled men everywhere harangued madly, seeking to fan the flames of hatred.

"And just when things were sailing smooth for us!" Monk muttered.

Doc and Monk reached the golden pyramid and started up. Instantly a loud roar of anger lifted from a crowd of Mayans who had followed them. The crowd was composed of about half red-fingered fighting men.

They made threatening gestures, indicating Doc and Monk should not ascend the pyramid. It was an altar, inviolate to their gods, they screamed. Only Mayans could ascend without bringing bad luck.

It was the red-fingered men who howled the loudest.

"We're going to have a fight on our hands if we go up," Monk whispered.

It was Doc who solved the delicate situation. He did it simply. He beckoned to attractive Princess Monja, gave her the test tubes, and told her to dip water from whatever sort of a tank or pool was on top of the pyramid.

The confidence the young woman showed Doc did its bit to allay the anger of the Mayans.

Back at the stone house assigned himself and his friends, Doc set to work.

He had brought a compact quantity of apparatus. And Monk had his tiny, wonderfully efficient chemical laboratory. Doc combined the two, went to work analyzing the water.

He had trouble with the Mayans before he had hardly started. Two of the homeliest of the ugly, red-fingered gentry came dancing and screaming into the place. They had rubbed some evil-smelling lotion on themselves, and the odor angered Doc, who depended a great deal on his sense of smell in his analyzing.