Kenneth Robeson - The Man of Bronze

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.

Doc 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.