While waiting, Doc Savage was taking his remarkable two-hour routine of exercise. They were unlike anything else in the world. Docs father had started him taking them when he could hardly walk, and Doc had continued them religiously from that day.
These exercises were solely responsible for Docs amazing physical and mental powers. He made his muscles work against each other, straining until a fine film of perspiration covered his mighty bronze body. He juggled a number of a dozen figures in his head, multiplying, dividing, extracting square and cube roots.
He had an apparatus which made sound waves of frequencies so high and low the ordinary human ear could not detect them. Through a lifetime of practice, Doc had perfected his ears to a point where the sounds registered. He named several score of different odors after a quick olfactory test of small vials racked in the case which held his exercising apparatus, and which accompanied Doc wherever he journeyed.
He read a page of Braille printing the writing for the blind which is a system of upraised dots so rapidly his fingers merely seemed to stroke the sheet This was to attune his sense of touch.
He had many other varied parts in his routine. They filled the entire two hours at a terrific pace, with no time out for rest.
HAM suddenly appeared, twirling his sword cane. He had an air of bearing important news.
"You had the right dope, Doc!" he declared. "Look at this set of pictures which were telephotoed from San Francisco!"
He displayed four reproductions, still wet from their bath of the telephoto apparatus. Doc examined them.
"Four of Kars men!" he declared. "Theyre part of the group Squint assembled!"
"They sailed on the liner Sea Star, bound for New Zealand," Ham explained.
"Sailed!"
"Exactly. The vessel put out to sea yesterday."
Doc swung to the telephone. He called the number of one of New Yorks most modern airports. He instructed, "My low-wing speed plane, the large one I want it checked over and fueled to capacity at once!"
"There was no passport issued to Gabe Yuder," Ham pointed out.
"Gabe Yuder may not be Kar!" Doc declared. "Kar would fear to monkey with a passport. Possibly he stowed away on the Sea Star, in the cabin of one of his men. At any rate, its up to us to stop that gang from securing from Thunder Island the element that is the basic ingredient of the Smoke of Eternity."
Doc now called the large banking house with which he did business.
"Has it arrived?" he inquired of the firm president.
"Yes, Mr. Savage," was the answer. "The sum was exactly six million dollars. It was cabled by the National Bank of Blanco Grande, in the Central American Republic of Hidalgo, exactly on schedule."
"Thank you," said Doc, and hung up.
This fabulous sum was from Doc Savages secret reservoir of wealth a lost valley in the impenetrable mountains of Hidalgo, a valley inhabited by a race of golden-skinned people who were pure descendants of the ancient Mayan nation. In the valley was a great treasure cavern and a fabulous mine of gold the treasure-trove of ancient Maya.
It was from this amazing spot that Docs limitless wealth came. But the money was in a sense not his he must use it in the thing to which his life was devoted, in traveling to odd ends of the world in search of those needing help and punishment, and administering to them.
His method of letting the Mayans know when to send him a mule train laden with gold was as strange as the rest he broadcast from a powerful radio station on a certain wave length at high noon on a seventh day. The chief of the Mayans listened in at this hour.
"We dont need to worry about cash," Doc told Ham.
At this point Oliver Wording Bittman, the taxidermist, spoke up.
"I hope you may consider my assistance of some value."
"You mean you wish to accompany us?" Doc inquired.
"I certainly do. I must confess my contact with you thus far has been very enjoyable and the excitement highly exhilarating. I should like to continue in your company. My experience on the expedition which I took to New Zealand with Jerome Coffern should render me of some value."
"You speak any of the native dialects?"
"One or two."
To Docs lips came words of a language native to the South Seas. Bittman replied, although rather uncertainly, in the same tongue.
But Doc still hesitated. He did not want to lead this man into danger, although the fellow seemed pathetically eager to go along.
"Perhaps I can assist in finding natives who accompanied Jerome Coffern and Kar to Thunder Island," Bittman said hopefully. "Talking to those men should help us."
That decided Doc.
"You shall go with us if you wish," he said.
PREPARATIONS were pushed swiftly. Docs five men knew what they might possibly need.
Monk took a unique, extremely portable chemical laboratory which he had perfected.
Long Tom took some parts from which he could create an astounding variety of electrical mechanisms.
Renny, the engineer, took care of charts and navigation instruments, as well as machine guns for Renny was a remarkable rapid-firer marksman.
Johnny posted himself on the geology and natives of the district they were to visit, while Ham cleared up aspects of law.
"Well have to wait two days on a liner from the Pacific coast," Renny complained.
"I have a scheme to remedy that!" Doc assured him.
The afternoon was young when they took off in Docs speed plane. This craft was a latest design, tri-motored, low-wing job. The landing gear folded up into the wings, offering little air resistance. It had a cruising speed of about two hundred miles an hour.
It was the final word in aircraft.
The ship climbed rapidly. At sixteen thousand feet, it found a favorable air current. The Appalachian Mountains squirmed below. Later, clouds cracked open to give a sight of Pittsburgh.
The passengers rode in comfort. The fireproof cabin permitted them to smoke. The cabin was also soundproofed. The all-metal ship had a gasoline capacity that, in an emergency, could take it nonstop across the Atlantic.
Doc flew. He was as accomplished at flying as at other things. His five friends were also pilots of better than average ability.
At Wichita, Kansas, Doc landed to refuel, and to telephone long-distance to the San Francisco office of the shipping firm which owned the Sea Star, the liner which Kars men had boarded.
The Sea Starwas already some hundreds of miles offshore, the owners informed him.
It was night when they swooped down upon an airport near Los Angeles.
"This is what I call traveling!" Oliver Wording Bittman said admiringly.
They took on sandwiches. Monk purchased a can of tobacco and cigarette papers. The fuel tanks were filled to capacity with high test. Bittman went off with the word he was going to shop for some medicine effective against air sickness.
In the meantime, workmen had been supplanting the planes wheels with long floats. A tractor hauled it to the water. Doc had purposefully selected a flying field near the shore. The whole thing required less than two hours.
Taking the air, Doc nosed straight out into the Pacific.
"Good Lord!" Bittman gulped. "Are we going to fly the ocean?"
"Not unless Renny has forgotten how to navigate, and Long Tom cant take radio bearings," Doc replied. "Were overtaking the Sea Star."
"But the plane "
"The owners of the Sea Star, at my request, radioed the captain to lift the plane aboard his craft."
Long Tom worked continuously over the radio equipment, his pale fingers flying from dial to dial. Periodically, he called to Renny the exact direction from which the Sea Starsradio signals came, as disclosed by the directional loop aлrial he was using. It was ticklish business, flying directly to a ship so far out to sea.