His coming had been silent, as though suddenly projected there by an invisible motion-picture machine.
His golden eyes surveyed the scene. The slick-haired man and the pilot of the gas plane lay beside their chairs. They had fallen there after being stabbed, and had not moved since. The one monkey man Big Eric had slain in his fight also reposed on the floor.
The latter's jaws were agape. The tatooed serpent was visible on his mouth roof.
Even Lefty and Bugs, crouched outside, could see the strange flickerings in the golden eyes of the bronze giant. Those weird gleamings conveyed something terrible to the two villains. Just looking at them seemed to suck the courage out of their stocky bodies.
They were so awed that they hardly dared breathe.
A blowgun tube was projecting from a keyhole. Lefty and Bugs could see it. They were glad it was behind the bronze man. If he just wouldn't turn! And he was giving no sign of wheeling.
One secondtwoand death would strike at Doc Savage's back.
But Doc suddenly went to the pilot of the gas plane, moving out of range of the blowgun. He bent over the man.
He had noticed the fellow breathing! The knife stroke had not been fatal!
Swiftly, Doc administered some of the compound which annulled the effects of the weird drug which the pilot had been given.
Outside the window, Bugs and Lefty were on the horns of a dilemma. They didn't want to shoot the bronze man, for fear the shot, fired outdoors, might attract attention. Too, they were downright afraid to start trouble. So they waited for the blowgun to do its grisly work.
Lefty and Bugs knew there was a poison dart in the blowgun now. It would bring instant death!
THE pilot of the gas plane stirred feebly. Control of his faculties had returned.
"The devils!" gritted the pilot. "The dirty, double-crossing swamp snipes!"
The fellow could remember all that had happened while he was helpless! He knew his own gang had tried to murder him. And it might be that they would succeed. The pilot was very far gone from his stab wound.
"Where is Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?" Doc's compelling voice filled all the room. The power of it made Lefty and Bugs shiver outside the window.
A fit of coughing seized the pilot as he tried to reply. Crimson frothed his lips.
Working rapidly, Doc gave the man some relief from his wound. He did this by sinking his fingers into certain nerve centers, massaging them so as to produce a paralysis that deadened pain somewhat. It was in the realm of surgery that Doc Savage was most proficient, and osteopathy, chiropractic, and other similar fields were a part of his training.
When Doc finished, the pilot could speak.
"Look out!" he choked. "Behind the door across the room! They're hiding there with a blowgun!"
He had warned Doc!
The big bronze man spoke softly. No one but the dying pilotDoc knew now that the fellow could not liveheard the words.
"I knew they were there!" Doc said.
The pilot couldn't understand it. "But how"
"They're in need of a bath," Doc replied. "I could smell them. I also saw their blowgun project from a keyhole. I am out of range here."
But Doc did not know the two devils, Lefty and Bugs, lurked outside with revolvers in hand and a mixture of fear and murder in their hearts!
The pilot had not been able to note any unusual odors in the room. It was incredible to him that the bronze giant could not only detect a foreign smell, but locate its sourceall without seeming to.
But the pilot had no way of knowing Doc exercised his olefactory senses intensively each day through his life. He knew nothing of the two-hour routine of high-pressure exercises which this bronze man put himself through each morning. An exercise routine which had made him the superman he was!
"The Cult of the Moccasin got the others," breathed the pilot. "The devils also left me for dead!"
"Do you know where they took the prisoners?" Doc inquired swiftly.
Outside the window, Lefty and Bugs were shivering in their excitement. Why didn't the monkey men go into action? They began to raise their own pistols.
"Yes," gulped the dying pilot. "I know where the captives were to be taken. It is a spot at which they will be held for a time. Then other members of the Cult of the Moccasin will come and take them to the Castle of the Moccasin. Only the Gray Spider and a few others know where the Castle of the Moccasin is."
"Where can I find them?" Doc interrupted. "You can tell me the rest later!"
The pilot drew in breath to answer. But the answer did not come.
The monkey men leaped out of the adjoining room. They rushed to the attack. One lifted the blowgun to his lips. He discharged it.
But big bronze Doc moved so quickly that he seemed to vanish completely, to reappear several feet to one side.
The blowgun dart missed by a yard. It plinked into the wall and stuck by its needlelike point.
Before the four monkey men could realize what had happened, there towered among them a Nemesis which might have been made out of metal.
The four clutched their sharp knives. They were at least not cravens. They would fight to the death!
TO the death it was! And it came more swiftly than they had dreamed possible.
One monkey man launched a stab he felt certain would end the fray. It was aimed directly for the bronze giant's heart. But the monkey man felt a terrible paralysis seize his wrist and arm. He did not have time to realize a steel-thewed hand had grasped his darting knife fist and turned it toward his own vitalsthe blade was in his heart before he could realize that fact.
The wounded pilot of the plane put forth a terrific effort and hauled himself across the room. He took refuge in a closet, laboriously pulling the door shut after him.
Another monkey man struck at Doc with a razor-sharp stiletto. He, too, believed his stroke would go home. But by some miracle the bronze man moved a trifle. The blade only sheared open his coat and shirt.
"Sacrй"
The beginning of the oath was the fellow's last word. He tried to strike again. There was a hollow snap. He collapsed. Great hands had broken his neck.
Lefty and Bugs, outside the window, leaped out, fearful of throwing themselves into the fray. They hoped the swamp men would soon overpower Doc.
Suddenly the bronze man strode across the floor. He held the surviving two monkey men, one in each hand. The swamp rats squirmed. They tried feebly to knife the giant. But such was the agony of the hold upon them that they could not.
A pair of mighty arms propelled them for the window. They flew through the air. Their spinning bodies wiped the glass out of the window.
Both fell at the feet of Lefty and Bugs. This fact led the two crooked lumber detectives to think they had been discovered.
They were cowards. Terror seized them. Although they could have shot at the bronze man, they spun and fled instead. The threshing of the two dazed monkey men who had been hurled through the window covered the sound of their flight.
Doc Savage lunged to the side of the dying pilot. It was important that he get an answer to his questionwhere had the men of the Cult of the Moccasin taken Big Eric, Edna, and Ham?
But the man was dead!
From his stiffening lips would never come word of where Big Eric, Edna, and Ham had been taken!
Chapter V. THE BRONZE RESCUER
THE giant bronze form of Doc Savage moved to the window. He did not see Lefty and Bugs, because they were already out of sight.
Dropping lightly through the window, Doc searched the two dazed monkey men. He threw their weapons away. They seemed to grow light in his powerful grasp, and sailed through the window into the house. They tumbled end over end across the floor, such was the momentum with which they had been tossed.
Doc did not bother to tie them. When one tried to flee, he was knocked flat on his back before he had taken a single step. They had no more chance of escaping Doc than a captured mouse has of evading the cat that caught it.